European Union has successfully vaccinated 70% of adults against COVID-19 and is preparing to give boosters

The European Union announced this Tuesday that Achieves Target of Providing Full COVID-19 Immunization Schedule to 70 percent of its Adult Population before the end of summer.

“70% of adults in the EU are fully vaccinated. I would like to thank the many people who made this great achievement possible. Corn we must go further. We need to vaccinate more Europeans. And we have to help the rest of the world to vaccinate. We will continue to support our partners“, Wrote on Twitter the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

The Health Commissioner, Stella Kyriakides, celebrated that this was “an important step” in the efforts to end the pandemic, but also insisted that it will be necessary to continue to vaccinate, to fight against the misinformation on this question and monitor public health measures.

“We can’t stop there. The new variants force us to go beyond 70% to be sure. We have to stay one step ahead. We urgently need to address the worrying vaccination gap between our Member States and be ready to roll out booster vaccines if scientific evidence shows this is the way forward ”, he said in a statement released by his cabinet.

The European Commission, responsible for centralizing vaccine purchases for EU states, set at the start of the year the objective of vaccinating 70% of the adult population before the end of the summer, about 255 million people.

After a slow start to the campaign due to the shortage of vaccines, delays in deliveries and the temporary suspension of the administration of AstraZéneca in certain countries, Brussels already succeeded in July in delivering the necessary doses to the States, which have also accelerated and perfect their vaccination strategies.

However, rates vary widely among the Twenty-Seven, with Ireland in the lead with 85.5% of its adult population fully vaccinated, followed by Denmark (83.5%) and Portugal (82.4%); While at the bottom are Bulgaria (20%), Romania (31.9%) and Latvia (45.5%), according to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC).

Table of some EU countries and others outside the European area, as a percentage of the total population:

Spain, one of the most advanced, has already administered the full immunization schedule to 76.7% of adults and 87.6% have at least one dose.

The The EU has authorized four vaccines against COVID-19: those developed by Pfizer-Biontech, Astrazeneca, Moderna (all two-dose) and Johnson & Johnson (single-dose). According to the European Commission, “the EU exported around half of the vaccines produced in Europe to other countries in the world, as much as it delivered them to its citizens”.

Although many states have yet to reach the 70% mark, EU is already considering whether to give a booster doseAlthough the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has not yet ruled on its need.

If this is the case, the European Commissioner for the Single Market, Thierry Breton, assures that there would be no shortage of vaccines since the EU has increased its manufacturing capacity and is currently generating “300 million doses per month”.

In the second half of the year, the European Commission will deliver 950 million doses to member states, he explained in an interview with French public television last week.

(With information from EFE and AFP)

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