The coronavirus “appears to be very well adapted to humans.
So we must prepare for what remains among us ”.
That's the warning issued on Friday by Andrea Ammon, director of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), an EU agency.
"It would not be the first virus to stay with us forever, so this is not an unusual characteristic for a virus," points out the head of this health agency based in Stockholm (Sweden) and interviewed by AFP.
The variants complicate the situation.
Many questions are still awaiting answers.
How soon will it be clearer if vaccines stop transmission?
According to Andra Ammon, “It will take a few months.
Studies are in place but we need a larger volume of people vaccinated to be able to follow ”.
The variants, especially South African and Brazilian, complicate the situation because it is suspected that they may reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine.
A new vaccine every year?
"The question is what this implies for the effectiveness of the vaccine," underlines the director of the ECDC, pointing to the example of seasonal flu.
"It is possible that the same thing will happen, or that at some point (the virus) stabilizes and we can use a vaccine for a long time," she says.
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Maintain the restrictions.
The director of this European agency also calls on EU countries to maintain the restrictions currently in force, despite a decrease in cases in the majority of them.
"It's still a mixed picture [...] We are not yet at the end of our sentences", she affirms, pointing out that all the States of the Union - with the exception of Finland - were still in a “serious” epidemiological situation, according to ECDC criteria.
“Everyone is fed up with measurements but, when you run a long distance race […] you have to run the last kilometers,” she pleads.
The release must be "gradual".
The number of new daily cases across Europe is currently around 150,000, up from around 250,000 a month ago, according to official data compiled by AFP.
Any relaxation of the measurements must be done in a "gradual" way, "and it is only when you observe that the cases remain stable or go down further that you can take a step further," she advises.
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Vaccinate 70% of the adult population by “end of summer”.
Faced with a shortage of vaccines aggravated by delivery delays, the European Union experienced a sluggish start to its vaccination campaign, which began at the end of December.
According to the latest official data tally on Friday, only 3% of the EU population had received at least one dose, and 1.4% both, with a total of 20 million doses administered.
The Commission, whose management has been widely criticized, has set itself the objective of vaccinating 70% of the adult population by “the end of the summer” “Everyone is aiming for this, all efforts are going in this direction, ”says Andrea Ammon, when asked whether this objective seemed credible to her.