Organize vaccination campaigns against Covid-19 regularly and in line with national recommendations, with particular attention to the protection of risk groups; guarantee all available anti-Covid vaccination technologies; clarify the timing and process of selecting vaccine strains for Sars-CoV-2 and set a vaccination coverage target of 75%, similar to that of seasonal influenza. These are the recommendations of the ‘Covid Transition Roadmap’ report identified by the Covid Transition Initiative (Cti), an independent and multi-stakeholder group made up of leading European experts, including representatives of patient associations and political decision-makers, to improve vaccination rates against Covid-19 in Italy and Europe, currently worryingly low.
The CTI – explains a note – was initiated and made possible thanks to the support of Novavax, while the contents and recommendations (and any other output of the CTI) remain independent opinions of the members of the group. “The vaccination rate of 12% reported by the ECDC”, European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, “is too low to keep the most vulnerable groups in Italy protected – says Roberta Siliquini, member of the CTI and president of the Italian Hygiene Society , preventive medicine and public health (Sites) – We must set a coverage target of 75%, as for seasonal influenza. It is essential to measure our progress with consistent and timely data collection.”
Last year alone, the specialist recalls, “Italy recorded 10 thousand deaths and over 80 thousand hospitalizations due to Covid-19, which almost exclusively involved vulnerable individuals, the elderly and the chronically ill. A contributing factor was a slow vaccination campaign, with only 13% of the most at-risk people having been vaccinated. Despite the effectiveness of the vaccines in fighting Covid-19 and reducing the risk of Long Covid, vaccination coverage has decreased considerably, especially among at-risk groups. We must act urgently to improve vaccination rates this autumn.”
‘With dependence on just one type of vaccine we risk supply problems’
Among other things, “a concern I have and which is highlighted in the Covid Transition Roadmap – underlines President Siti – is Europe’s excessive dependence on a single type of vaccine”.
“The ECDC declared that 97% of the doses administered between 1 September 2023 and 15 January 2024 were of a single type of anti-Covid-19 vaccine. This could – warns Siliquini – expose Europe to potential problems at the of supply and not allowing individuals and health workers to access the vaccination technology best suited to them”.
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