Peter Kenny
28 January 2021•Update: 29 January 2021
GENEVA
A regional chief of the World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday that the growing expectations on science and vaccine development are causing tensions in communities as cases and deaths swell.
"More than 700,000 Europeans have lost their lives to a virus that has had a brutal impact on our economies, our mental health and education, our private and professional lives, and our relationships," said Hans Kluge, the WHO Europe head.
Updating journalists on the impact of the pandemic, Kluge said that more than 38,000 people died in the Europe region last week from the disease.
He alluded to tensions in the region on vaccines and their distribution as country leaders and drug makers come to verbal blows over the flow of jabs.
"We face a pandemic paradox. Vaccines, on the one hand, offer remarkable hope.
"On the other hand, newly emerging variants of concern are presenting greater uncertainty and risk," said Kluge.
The EU and representatives of vaccine company AstraZeneca had failed Wednesday to resolve a dispute over vaccine deliveries to EU citizens.
EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides and AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot discussed the delivery of the company's vaccine in line with the contractual arrangements foreseen in an advanced purchasing agreement, Kyriakides had tweeted.
- Vaccines vs variants
Kluge said 35 countries in the European region had begun vaccinations, administering 25 million doses so far, adding that the measures have shown "efficacy and safety."
"The increasing expectation of science and vaccine development, production and equitable distribution is not being met as fast as we would all like," said Kluge, noting that communities sensed that an end to the pandemic was in sight with a vaccine.
At the same time, he said, populations being "called to adhere to restrictive measures in the face of a new threat is causing tension, angst, fatigue, and confusion."
In his speech, Kluge also referred to new strains of the novel coronavirus that surfaced in Britain and South Africa.
"Continued high rates of transmission and emerging COVID-19 variants of concern, however, have raised the urgency of the task to vaccinate priority groups," said Kluge.
On Wednesday, the world exceeded 100 million COVID-19 cases, according to the US-based Johns Hopkins Univeristy. A third of these are in the European region.
In two days, Kluge said it would be a year since the WHO declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, the health organization's highest level of alarm.
- Cooperation in vaccinations
Siddhartha Datta, a WHO disease program manager, said: "We have heard from AstraZeneca and Pfizer as well about the delays of the other manufacturing units."
Datta said there should be a "shared responsibility between the government, the public, and private enterprise, so all can come together.
"Nobody can deliver this entire scale of vaccination alone," he asserted, adding that everybody should have a responsibility in "engaging and ensuring that these challenges [...] can be addressed" as vaccines are rolled out and produced.
Separately, Kluge mentioned a new center of excellence in Istanbul on humanitarian and health emergencies, supported by the Turkish government.
"That will serve the 53 countries in the region. So that's really an additional resource available to the countries in the region," said the WHO regional chief on the center, known as a geographically dispersed office, that was inaugurated in the Turkish city in October.
He added that discussions are ongoing for a joint meeting of European ministers and the Turkic Council at the end of March.
