More than half of the countries in Europe have seen an increase in infections with the coronavirus in the past week. As the European Office of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today, the number of new infections has increased by nine percent. This ended the promising decline of the last six weeks.
Virus variant B.1.1.7, which first appeared in Great Britain, has now appeared in 43 of the 53 European countries. The mutation B.1.351 first detected in South Africa was reported in 26 countries, the mutation P.1 first detected in Brazil in 15 countries.
Call for more vigilance
The regional director of WHO Europe, Hans Kluge, called on countries to be more vigilant for variants with increased portability. „We have to suppress the spread of the virus everywhere by using the means that we know will work,“ said Kluge. It is particularly important to test and isolate sick people and to follow up on their contacts.
Vaccination has now started in 45 countries in the European region and positive effects have been registered. For example, in countries like Israel and Great Britain, where the vaccination rate is very high, the number of deaths and hospital stays of people in the risk groups has decreased.
