Europe is facing 500,000 more Covid deaths by February, World Health Organisation (WHO) warns.
The agency also sounded alarm over a surge in cases and bemoaned stuttering vaccination rollouts on parts of the continent.
And in a dire new warning, WHO regional director Hans Kluge said the pace of transmission across the region was of “grave concern.”
“We are, once again, at the epicenter,” Kluge said in a statement.
“According to one reliable projection, if we stay on this trajectory, we could see another half a million COVID-19 deaths in Europe and Central Asia by the first of February next year,” he warned, adding that 43 of the 53 countries on his patch could also see high or extreme stress on hospital beds.
The WHO has earlier warned that a new coronavirus “variant of interest” named Mu, also known by its scientific name as B.1.621.
The health organisation said it closely monitors the new variant’s spread.
The mu SARS-CoV-2 strain first appeared in Colombia in January, as a “variant of interest.”
Since then, there have been “sporadic reports” of cases and outbreaks in South America and Europe.
Variants of interest have genetic changes that affect virus characteristics including transmissibility, disease severity and immune escape.
According to the WHO, variants of interest differ from variants of concern. The later can cause a decrease in effectiveness of public health measures, vaccines or therapeutics.
