Covid news live: South Korea reports record daily cases; more face mask use ‘could save 160,000 lives in Europe this winter’

We’re seeing waning immunity of vaccines, especially after the 30 week mark. We’ve got 45-47% of the entire population [of Europe] unvaccinated. Let me be absolutely clear, the majority of people in intensive care units today are the unvaccinated.

But there are other compounding factors. Winter. There is a seasonality observation we’re making at the moment. People moving indoors. The need for masks and need for more ventilation. As you possibly saw, the British Medical Journal last week showed a study where 53% of transmission was prevented by mask use. We only have 48% of the population in the European region using masks. The moment we see that go up, if we see this go up, we will see a reduction in cases and a reduction in deaths. If we saw 95% universal mask use, we can project that we would save about 160,000 lives.

So there’s a number of factors, plus the more transmissible Delta variants, which is accounting for about 99% of the cases in Europe today.



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