Vaccines stop variants but avoid travelling, says WHO

UAE reports 1,401 new cases, 3 deaths; availability of Pfizer vaccine expanded, says Seha; Bahrain restricts access for unvaccinated; all adults in France eligible for vaccine from May 31: PM; cases of Indian variant in UK rise to 3,424.

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COPENHAGEN

Progress against the coronavirus pandemic remains “fragile” and international travel should be avoided, a World Health Organisation (WHO) director warned on Thursday, while stressing that authorised vaccines work against variants of concern.

“Right now, in the face of a continued threat and new uncertainty, we need to continue to exercise caution, and rethink or avoid international travel,” WHO’s European director Hans Kluge said, before adding that “pockets of increasing transmission” on the continent could quickly spread.

The so-called Indian variant, which might be more transmissible, has now been identified in at least 26 of the 53 countries in the WHO Europe region, Kluge said during his weekly press conference.

But he said that authorised vaccines are effective against the new strain.

“All COVID-19 virus variants that have emerged so far do respond to the available, approved vaccines,” Kluge said, adding that all Covid-19 variants can be controlled with the same public health and social measures used until now.

The UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) announced that it conducted 244,880 additional COVID-19 tests and detected 1,401 new coronavirus cases.