A Wave of COVID-19 Overshadows The European Union Ahead of Winter, Last Week Hit 1.5 Million Cases

Illustration of a COVID-19 vaccination center in London, England. (Wikimedia Commons/OwenBlacker)

JAKARTA - A new wave of COVID-19 appears to be brewing in Europe as cooler weather arrives, with public health experts warning that vaccination exhaustion and confusion about the types of vaccines available are likely to limit booster use.

The Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants that dominated this summer are still behind most infections, but newer Omicron subvariants are starting to develop.

Hundreds of new forms of Omicron are being tracked by scientists, World Health Organization (WHO) officials said this week.

WHO data released late Wednesday showed cases in the European Union (EU) topped 1.5 million last week, up 8 percent from the previous week, despite a dramatic drop in testing. Globally, the number of cases continues to decline.

The number of hospitalizations in many countries in the 27-nation bloc, as well as the UK, has risen in recent weeks.

In the week ending October 4, hospital admissions for COVID-19 with symptoms jumped by nearly 32 percent in Italy, while intensive care admissions rose by about 21 percent, compared with the previous week, according to data compiled by the independent scientific foundation Gimbe.

During the same week, COVID hospitalizations in the UK saw a 45 percent increase over the previous week.

The Omicron-adapted vaccine was launched in Europe in September, with two types of injections aimed at BA.1 as well as BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants available with existing first-generation vaccines. In the UK, only types that are compliant with BA.1 are given the green light.

European and British officials have endorsed the new booster only for certain groups of people, including the elderly and those with weakened immune systems.

Further complicating matters is the "choice" of vaccine as a booster, which is likely to add to the confusion, public health experts said.

However, the desire to get another dose, which could be the fourth or fifth for some people, is getting less and less.

"For those who may be less concerned with their risk, the message that it's over coupled with a lack of publicity campaigns, is likely to reduce uptake", said Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

"So on balance, I'm afraid the uptake will be a bit lower."

It is known that when new vaccine rollouts began in the European Union on September 5, about 40 million doses of vaccines manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna had already been delivered to member states, according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

However, weekly doses of vaccine administered in the European Union were only between 1 million and 1.4 million during September, compared with 6-10 million per week over the previous year's period, ECDC data showed.