Afp
Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, October 25, 2022, p. 16
Copenhagen. The World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted yesterday the need not to lower our guard now that cases of covid-19 and flu are increasing in Europe as winter approaches, using the example of polio to justify the usefulness of vaccination .
It’s not the time to relax
said the WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, during an online press conference.
At the beginning of autumn, the European region, which groups 53 countries, including some in Central Asia, was once again the epicenter of the epidemic with 60 percent of the new cases of covid-19 in the world and at the same time it was registered an increase in seasonal flu.
With this new wave of infections, deaths and intensive care admissions increased very slightly, the WHO indicated, insisting on the link with vaccination.
Vaccination remains one of our most effective tools against the flu and covid-19
he stated during this world day against polio.
Polio, which mainly affects the young and causes paralysis, has practically disappeared in the Western world, but a variant of the poliovirus derived from oral vaccines has recently been detected in the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Israel and New York.
This variant, less viral than the natural virus, can still cause serious symptoms, such as paralysis of the limbs of non-immunized patients. Although rare, it has become more frequent in recent years due to the low percentage of inoculated in certain communities.
Around the world, if we leave people behind, the polio virus is a very good barometer to tell us who they are.
highlighted an expert from WHO Europe, Siddhartha Datta. These are neglected population groups because, for one reason or another, they were not covered by the WHO recommendation of 95 percent (vaccination) coverage.
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No case of wild poliovirus has been reported in Europe for more than 20 years.
In the region as a whole, coverage of the third dose of polio vaccine decreased by one percent between 2019 and 2020. In 2021, only 25 of the 53 countries reached the 95 percent polio vaccination coverage rate.
The covid-19 pandemic has caused to date 627 million 870 thousand 674 confirmed cases and 6 million 579 thousand 281 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
