The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called on vaccinated people to continue to adhere to prevention to avoid catching and spreading COVID-19.
He pointed out that in the past week, more than 60 percent of injuries and deaths due to Covid-19 were recorded again in Europe.
He said that the huge number of injuries puts pressure on health systems and their exhausted workers.
He added, “We are concerned about the false sense of safety that vaccines have ended the epidemic and the people who have been vaccinated do not need to follow any preventive measures,” explaining that “vaccines save lives, but they do not completely prevent transmission.”
He continued, “The data indicate that before the arrival of the delta mutant, the vaccines reduced the transmission of infection by about 60 percent. With Delta, the percentage decreased to about 40 percent.”
The faster-spreading delta mutant is now largely dominant worldwide, having dislodged all other mutants and the original strain.
Of the 845,000 strains uploaded to the Gesid scientific initiative, an open database of influenza and Covid virus strains, with samples collected in the last 60 days, 99.8 percent of them belong to the delta strain, according to the World Health Organization’s weekly epidemiological report.
“If an individual receives the vaccine, they will be less likely to develop severe symptoms and die, but still be at risk of infection and infecting others,” Tedros said.
He added: “We cannot say this more clearly: Even if a person receives the vaccine, he must continue to take preventive measures to prevent his infection, and another person may die.”
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