BERLIN, April 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Europe has taken delivery of more than 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines that should help the region’s initially sluggish inoculation drive finally gather momentum, according to a weekly monitoring report.
A total of 104 million doses have been sent to countries in the European Union and European Economic Area, working out at 27.7 doses per 100 inhabitants, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said.
That compared to 82 million doses that have been administered to date, according to figures showing an increase in the number of doses available to inject into the arms of Europeans.
It’s a rare piece of good news for a vaccination campaign that has relied on a centralised EU procurement and approvals process that has been made to look slow by Israel, Britain and the United States.
Europe also bet heavily on the vaccine from AstraZeneca, which has encountered production problems, while cases of rare blood clotting in some recipients have prompted governments to recommend its use only in people aged over 60.
The data tied in with a pick-up in the pace in big EU countries like Germany, which hit a record daily tally of more than 700,000 doses administered on Thursday – after drafting family doctors this week to support its existing network of vaccination centres.
“With increasing deliveries, the number of vaccinations we can do is rising,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Friday, forecasting a further acceleration in doses to be sent to family doctors in May.
On average, 16 per cent of adults in Europe have received a first shot while 6.7 per cent have been fully vaccinated, typically by getting a second injection. By contrast, 62 per cent of Israelis have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, 47 per cent in Britain and 34 per cent in the United States.
Meanwhile, Britain said it had given 545,511 COVID vaccine doses on April 8, the highest daily total since Apr 1, while a further 60 people had died within 28 days of a positive test for the disease, raising this death toll to 127,040.
The number of people in Britain who have received two vaccine doses rose to 6.541 million and the number who have received at least one dose increased to 31.903 million, more than 60 per cent of the adult population according to government daily figures.
Some 3,150 people were reported to have tested positive for COVID-19 in the daily data published on Apr 9, taking the number of cases over the past 7 days to 19,804, 32 per cent lower than the week before.
Health officials also said they had revised down some cumulative data after positive cases detected by rapid lateral flow tests later turned out to be negative. In 8,010 cases the lateral flow tests were followed within 3 days by a gold-standard PCR test and found to be negative.
Cheaper and faster lateral flow tests are increasingly being used to reopen the economy and some scientists have raised questions about the volume of false positives they can produce.
Public Health England has said that anyone receiving a positive test on a lateral flow device should follow it with a PCR test to be sure. — NNN-AGENCIES
