Europe in inoculation race against Delta variant

LISBON, Portugal — Countries across Europe are scrambling to accelerate coronavirus vaccinations and beat the spread of the more infectious Delta variant in a highstakes race to prevent hospital wards from filling up again with patients fighting for their lives.

This urgency coincides with Europe’s summer holidays, with the fair weather welcoming more social gatherings and governments reluctant to clamp down on them. Social distancing is being neglected, especially among the young, and some countries are scrapping requirements to wear masks outdoors.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, or ECDC, which monitors 30 countries on the continent, said the risk of infection from the Delta variant is “high to very high” for partially or unvaccinated communities. It estimates the variant will account for 90 percent of cases in the European Union’s 27 nations by the end of August.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead on COVID-19, said the variant makes transmission growth “exponential”.

Daily new case numbers are already climbing sharply in countries such as the UK and Russia.

In the United Kingdom, cases of the Delta variant have increased fourfold in less than a month, with confirmed cases on Friday up 46 percent from the previous week.

Lockdowns unwanted

Reports of new infections in Russia more than doubled in June, topping 20,000 a day last week, with 697 new deaths on Saturday — the fifth day in a row that the daily death toll set a record.

Still, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing that “no one wants any lockdowns”, though he admitted that the virus situation in a number of Russian regions is “tense”.

The emerging variants have also shone a light on the unprecedented scale of immunization programs. The ECDC says 61 percent of people over the age of 18 have had one shot and 40 percent are completely vaccinated in the countries it surveys.

Hans Kluge, head of the WHO’s Europe office, cautioned last week that the Delta variant is poised to become dominant in the 53-country region by next month. He noted that 63 percent of people in that region have not had their first vaccination dose.

“The three conditions for a new wave of excess hospitalizations and deaths before the (fall) are therefore in place: New variants, deficit in vaccine uptake, increased social mixing,” Kluge said.