The vaccines proved that they are working and that they keep those fully vaccinated safe until the Delta variant came out and started to infect even those with high vaccine immunity. Although many people remained vaccine hesitant and decided not to get the shot, majority of US residents are already vaxxed and more are about to get the shot in the upcoming period.
The efficacy and the safety of the vaccines have been hot topics since the vaccines were initially rolled out last December. Up until the Delta variant of the virus, vaccines kept those vaccinated safe from the virus, but in the last two months things have changed and even the World Health Organization is aware of the issue.
According to the latest announcement by the WHO EUROPE CEO on Friday, vaccines don’t seem efficient enough to end up the pandemic despite everyone’s effort involved in the vaccination process, including the public.
Since vaccines were rolled out, WHO has been pushing the public to get the shot as soon as the vaccine is available to them claiming the only way to end the pandemic is herd immunity, something that can only be reached with vaccination.
But it looks like WHO is chaining their narrative over the pandemic and now they prepare the public for something else, getting used to the virus and to learn and live with it at least in the next couple of years. According to Dr. Hans Kluge, countries will now have to focus on gradual adaption on the vaccination process since herd immunity is not likely.
In May, the WHO director had said “the pandemic will be over once we reach 70 per cent minimum coverage in vaccination”.
Asked by AFP if that figure was still a target or whether more people would need to be vaccinated, Dr Kluge acknowledged that the situation had changed due to new, more transmissible variants, such as Delta.
“I think it brings us to the point that the aim of a vaccination is first and foremost to prevent more serious disease, and that’s mortality,” he said.
“If we consider that Covid will continue to mutate and remain with us, the way influenza is, then we should anticipate how to gradually adapt our vaccination strategy to endemic transmission and gather really precious knowledge about the impact of additional jabs,” he added.
Health experts now realized that the vaccines are not efficient enough and the herd immunity is very unlikely scenario since decent number of vaccinated people are still getting infected with the virus. Epidemiologists have a reason to believe that if this was the case with the Delta variant, it’s very likely that the same will apply for future Covid-19 variants.
High vaccination rates are also necessary to “to unload the pressure from healthcare systems” that desperately need to treat other diseases pushed to the backburner by Covid, Dr Kluge said.
As of now, multiple studies have shown that the Delta variant of the Covid-19 is more than 60% more transmissible compared to the Alpha variant and at least twice as contagious to the original virus.
As expected, vaccinated people slammed the WHO Europe director on the social media ending up disappointed by his latest announcement. We expect official WHO statement or announcement in the upcoming days over these comments since this is clearly not the way to make more people receive the shot.
