The director of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDE), Andrea Ammon, said this Friday that vaccination against covid-19 may still be necessary for several “decades”. “We have to keep watching and adapting covid vaccines to the risks that may emerge. The need to deploy these vaccines in a timely mannera could be required for decades to come, as the virus could enter an endemic phase,” the ECDC director said in a public session during a Council of European Health Ministers held in Brussels.
Ammon specified that “the vaccination strategy of each country could vary” based on criteria such as “the epidemiological situation, the risk population or the level of immunity”. In this sense, several experts have spoken about the possible future of the covid-19 pandemic. One of the hypotheses about the future of the coronavirus health crisis suggests that, over time, this virus could become an endemic disease, which would imply that the virus will never completely disappear but that, unlike the current context, its impact will be much less. That is, fewer and more manageable cases. For example, with vaccination campaigns.
“Variants Soup”
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Regarding the current situation of infections in Europe, the expert told the European ministers that the EU appreciates “increases, moderate for the moment and from a low level, but we see that other respiratory diseases increase“. “The concern is that, if three diseases come at the same timethere could be a lot of pressure on hospitals,” Ammon added, adding that there is currently a “variant soup” in the EU, with many strains and none particularly standing out.
Ammon therefore stressed the “Importance of continuing to vaccinate“, as did his counterpart at the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Emmer Cooke, and the Health Commissioner, Stella Kyriakides. “Vaccines continue to be our best tool (…). They are our insurance policy and we must not give up this insurance,” said the commissioner.