The regional office of the World Health Organization for Europe is concerned about an increase in the number of corona cases in the east. WHO European Regional Director Hans Kluge said the focus is now on the east of the WHO region, which comprises 53 countries, including former Soviet republics in Central Asia. “Over the past two weeks, Covid-19 cases have more than doubled in six countries in this part of the region,” said Kluge, referring to the spread of the highly infectious omicron variant.
Affected are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. The WHO region has now recorded more than 165 million corona cases and more than 1.8 million deaths related to the pandemic, 25,000 of them in the past week alone. “As expected, the omicron wave is moving eastwards: ten eastern member states have now detected this variant,” said Kluge.
The WHO regional director highlighted improvements in vaccination rates, which are lagging behind in eastern Europe compared to the rest of the Region. At the same time, he pointed out that less than 40 percent of people over the age of 60 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan are fully vaccinated against the virus.