Euro 2020, Puskas Arena, And The Effectiveness Of The COVID-19 Vaccine

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JAKARTA - Many were surprised to see that the Puskas Arena Stadium in Budapest, Hungary, which held three group stage matches for the 2020 European Cup, could be crowded with spectators without masks and without keeping their distance.

But the surprising situation that occurred in the midst of the pandemic was not without reason.

European football's governing body UEFA actually advised spectators of Euro 2020 matches at the eleven hosting stadiums to adhere to health protocols.

However, UEFA cannot go far when it comes to state authorities, even though UEFA wants stadiums to be filled with spectators.

Launching Antara, Friday, June 25, there are eleven stadiums in eleven cities in ten countries that will host Euro 2020. The eleven are Wembley and Hampden Park in Great Britain, Stadio Olimpico in Italy, Allianz Arena in Germany, Estadio de La Cartuja in Spain. , Johan Cruyff Arena in the Netherlands, Parken Stadium in Penmark, Puskas Arena in Hungary, National Arena in Romania, Gazprom Arena in Russia, and Baku Olympic Stadium in Azerbaijan.

Only the Puskas Arena was filled with spectators. Others are mostly not full and even require masks and social distancing, including the Allianz Arena in Munich.

The Hungarian government may be political in allowing the Puskas Arena to be filled, but still the reference is to recommendations for data and health facts, especially the graph of COVID-19 infection and vaccination rates in the country.

After all, what was done by Hungary was also done by China during the last Lunar New Year on a much larger scale.

But, like Hungary, China did it on the recommendation of health facts, not denying the existence of a pandemic as is often stirred up by conspiracy theorists who, strangely enough, are still loved by a few people in Indonesia.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is a big football fan, wants this big event to be watched with joy by his people, as a celebration of their discipline during the lockdown.

For Orban himself, Euro 2020 is an opportunity to show his country has succeeded in defeating COVID-19.

In fact, Hungary has been relatively successful in fighting the pandemic. And part of that success is due to Orban's refusal to politicize the pandemic, including the politicization of vaccines by the European Union.

Perpendicular to infection rate

"Human life and health are above political interests and therefore it is very irresponsible for vaccines to become a political issue," Orban told the European Union, which was slow to approve vaccine use when vaccines made in China and Russia were already on the market.

Orban also did not want to wait for the European Union. So, he ordered five million doses of Sinopharm vaccine from China and two million doses of Sputnik V vaccine from Russia. February 2021, those vaccines are injected into the people.

Hungary became the only EU member state to recognize and inject Russian and Chinese vaccines before the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommended their use.

But whatever the reason, the rapid vaccination in Hungary paid off, until the second wave of the pandemic did not work in Hungary. The country is one of the countries with the lowest COVID-19 death rate per 100,000 people in the world.

Hungary also proved that there is a strong correlation between vaccines and a decrease in COVID-19 cases.

Hungary, with a population of 9.7 million people, is the country with the second largest vaccination program after the UK, except for European mini-countries such as Gibraltar and Malta.

From the data from the Statista page and Johns Hopskins University data analyzed by ANTARA, until June 21, 2021, Hungary has injected an average of 95.74 doses for every 100 residents. This means that nearly one hundred percent of Hungary's population has been vaccinated against COVID-19.

This fact is perpendicular to the sloping Hungarian infection graph. The average new infection cases in Hungary in the last seven days until June 23, 2021, was 81 cases.

Hungary only lost to England, which on average had given 109.86 doses per 100 people. This means that the entire UK population of 67 million people has been injected with at least one dose of vaccine.

Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands are in the range of 75.45 to 79.32 doses per 100 people. Denmark and Romania between 45 – 52 percent. Azerbaijan 29 percent, and Russia the lowest 23.92 percent.

And the ten countries hosting Euro 2020 also have a sloping infection graph, even now flat. That is, the penetration of the vaccine is perpendicular to the reduced number of infections.

Interactive data made by Reuters (https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps) shows that except for Belarus and Russia, the number of COVID-19 infections in Europe is generally declining and mostly flat.

Effective vaccine

Even Russia's 59 percent increase in infections is still better than Indonesia, which according to Reuters data is one of the countries with an infection rate of over 90 percent compared to its previous peak, which was the highest rate of increase measured by Reuters.

Meanwhile, from Statista data as of June 21, the number of doses per 100 people given in Russia is also still higher than Indonesia's 13.14 doses per 100 people, or only 13 percent.

Indonesia's figure is also still lower than India, which in the last two months experienced the third wave, where until June 23, India had injected an average of 20.53 doses to every 100 residents.

There was an increase in the vaccination scale by nine percent in the month after the peak of the third wave, which saw India's number of new infections soar to an average of 400,000 new cases per day.

Now, that number has dropped drastically to 60,867 new cases per day. The combination of tough health emergency measures and extensive vaccinations allowed India to reduce its infection rate again.

In Asia alone, two Arab countries, namely Bahrain and Qatar, are the countries with the highest vaccination rates, with 114.94 doses and 100.62 doses per 100 people, respectively. This means that all residents in the two countries have been vaccinated, at least the first dose is injected.

Other Asian countries with high vaccination rates are Singapore 85.96 percent, China with a population of 1.39 billion already 72.93 percent, Turkey 51.73 percent and Saudi Arabia 48.07 percent. And on average in these countries, the infection rate is much lower than before, even leveling off.

“Obviously the vaccine is effective. In countries where infection cases have fallen in recent months, vaccines have saved many lives. And in countries battling a third or fourth wave, vaccines also save lives," the Financial Times, or FT, wrote in its April 21, 2021 report.

FT's analysis of data in five countries including the UK, US, France and Chile showed that infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths decreased dramatically in the elderly group after the vaccine was injected.

This figure was even created at a time when countries were facing a new variant of COVID-19 and the third wave of the pandemic. The elderly are the most vaccinated age group because they are prioritized everywhere.

This fact contradicts the pattern seen in the first wave of the pandemic, before the vaccine, where mortality rates in the elderly were still high.

The end of the pandemic

The correlation of vaccination with the decline in cases of infection is believed to be ubiquitous. More and more countries are realizing it, especially after the third wave in India last month.

Vietnam, for example, which is rising by hundreds per day, is already very nervous, knowing that the current health protocol is not enough to stem the new, more dangerous variant.

Vietnam realized it was too late to vaccinate its citizens. High nationalism that does not want to buy foreign-made vaccines, especially China, has made Vietnam wait for the release of domestically produced vaccines. But new variants come faster than the arrival of domestic vaccines.

The country which in terms of the epidemic always has the principle of "prepare an umbrella before it rains" immediately closed itself again, even proposing to ASEAN countries that the SEA Games be postponed for fear that social traffic between countries would create a more devastating wave of infection.

Meanwhile, Malaysia, which is also aware that its vaccination rate is still low, only slightly above Indonesia at 18.70 doses per 100 people, does not want to be exposed to new variants and does not want to be swept away by the third wave like India when it became the country with the highest increase in cases. They also imposed a lockdown.

Malaysia learned from the case of India, which was euphoric when the vaccine penetration was only 10 percent even though the proportion was not strong enough to fight the third wave of COVID-19 that came undetected.

Malaysia realizes that until herd immunity is created, lockdown is still the most reasonable option.

WHO cannot estimate what percentage of the population must be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to create herd immunity, because it depends on the type of disease. But Johns Hopskins University estimates the figure to be 70 percent of the total population, although the range is 50-90 percent.

And if that figure is the benchmark, then on average the ten countries hosting Euro 2020 have vaccinated 50 percent of their population. Even the UK, Hungary and Germany have given 70 to 109 doses of vaccine for every 100 people of the population.

Therefore, if you watch Puskas Arena or Euro 2020 filled with people who may ignore health protocols, and immediately conclude that Europe doesn't care about COVID-19, you are very wrong.

Instead they did that after a year and a half of caring about the pandemic and they are increasingly convinced that they are approaching a state of creating herd immunity because they extensively vaccinate the population.

Precisely from Euro 2020 it was revealed that the vaccine has shown, the 'endgame' or 'final round' of the pandemic is in sight.