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When the Covid-19 vaccines first appeared, trialed and authorized for emergency use in a record time, millions of people wanted to get protected from the fatal collateral damage that it causes.

But after nine months since the inoculation started in the West, a major slowdown has been noticed across the U.S. and Europe and experts are worried about this. This is because the Covid-19 restrictions that were imposed in the U.S. and some parts of Europe have been lifted and this has caused cases to surge.

“The stagnation in vaccine uptake in our region is of serious concern,” Dr. Hans Kluge, regional director of WHO’s European region, said in a press statement last week.

“Now that public health and social measures are being relaxed in many countries, the public’s vaccination acceptance is crucial if we are to avoid greater transmission, more severe disease, an increase in deaths and a bigger risk that new variants of concern will emerge.”

He added there had been 64 million confirmed cases and 1.3 million deaths in the region, which comprises 53 countries ranging from those in Western Europe to Russia and its surrounding countries. Kluge added that 33 countries in the region had reported a greater-than-10% increase in their 14-day case incidence rate.

“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).

In the U.K., 79.8% of all over-16s are fully vaccinated and in the U.S., 62% of the population over the age of 12 is fully vaccinated, according to the U.S.′ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.