FOCUS ON “MINIMISING DISRUPTION”
The European Commissioner for Internal Markets, Thierry Breton, whose brief includes vaccine production, said Sunday that it will be possible to adapt existing vaccines to any new variants that may emerge.
“We will be able to better resist, including to new variants”, he told French television LCI.
“We will be ready to adapt the vaccines, especially the mRNA ones, if necessary to adapt them to more virulent variants”.
In the WHO Europe region, which comprises 53 countries including several in Central Asia, Omicron represented 15 per cent of new cases as of Jan 18, compared to 6.3 per cent a week earlier, the health body said.
Omicron is now the dominant variant in the European Union and the European Economic Area (EEA, or Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), the EU health agency ECDC said last week.
Because of the very fast spread of the variant across Europe, Kluge said emphasis ought to be on “minimising disruption of hospitals, schools and the economy, and putting huge efforts on protecting the vulnerable”, rather than measures to stop transmission.
He meanwhile urged people to exercise personal responsibility.
“If you don’t feel well, stay home, take a self test. If you’re positive, isolate”, he said.
Kluge said the priority was to stabilise the situation in Europe, where vaccination levels range across countries from 25 to 95 per cent of the population, leading to varying degrees of strain on hospitals and health-care system.
“Stabilising means that the health system is no longer overwhelmed due to COVID-19 and can continue with the essential health services, which have unfortunately been really disrupted for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and routine immunisation”.
Asked whether fourth doses would be necessary to bring an end to the pandemic, Kluge was cautious, saying only that “we know that that immunity jumps up after each shot of the vaccine”.
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