Recent declines in COVID-19 transmission and new deaths in the European region in past weeks were referred to as "a false sense of security" by WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge on Thursday.
"Whilst this is good news, the decline in cases conceals increasing numbers of outbreaks and community spread involving variants of concern, meaning that we need to watch overall trends in transmission carefully and avoid rash decisions," Kluge said during an online press briefing.
The WHO official made particular reference to the troubling coronavirus variant originally found in South Africa, which is now present in 19 European countries and increasingly being linked to outbreaks in the region's local communities.
According to Kluge, the suppression of transmission of all variants at the current juncture required "measured decision-making" as a prerequisite to the effectiveness of any vaccine.
He pointed out that vaccinations currently accounted for just a small part of the European response against the virus, referring to 29 out of the 37 countries currently vaccinating in the European Region having just completed their immunization series and vaccinated 7.8 million people, equivalent to only 1.5 percent of the population.
Addressing the apparent disparity in vaccine distribution in the region, Kluge accentuated the divide between rich and poor countries, warning that "unfair access to vaccines" had the potential to "backfire."
"The longer the virus lingers, the greater the risk of dangerous mutations," he said.
In response to the vaccine disparity, Kluge said that WHO, together with the European Union, would launch a 40-million euro program to ensure effective deployment of COVID-19 vaccines in six countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova.
"Equitable access is a moral imperative, one that mitigates the pandemic's impact on all of us, not just some," he said.
As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in some countries with the already-authorized vaccines. Meanwhile, 242 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to the latest information released by the WHO.
