Covid Vaccination Rates Have Plunged and It’s a Concern for Experts

August 19, 2021

“This high transmission is deeply worrying — particularly in the light of low vaccination uptake in priority populations in a number of countries,” Kluge said.

“In the past 6 weeks, vaccination uptake in the region has slowed down,

influenced by a lack of access to vaccines in some countries and a lack of vaccine acceptance in others. As of today, only 6% of people in lower and lower-middle-income countries in our region have completed a full vaccination series.”

What caused the slowdown

Late last year, both Europe and the U.S. have started inoculating their population. While the United Kingdom and the United States were fast enough to inoculate elderely and health care workers in a record time, the EU’s vaccination rollout was slow due to the late ordering, supply constraints and contentions over clinical data (mainly with the AstraZeneca shot) hindering the progress of some rollouts in the EU.

To date, 69.2% of adults in the EU are now fully vaccinated, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (although the European Commission announced last Tuesday that it reached its goal of vaccinating 70% of the EU’s adult population).