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COVID-19: Latest updates 

28 October 2021

“This is a big number and a major achievement credited to all the health-care workers relentlessly saving lives on the frontlines of this crisis, but we can’t allow hubris to take hold. Dig deeper and you discover that these one billion doses are unequally shared, leaving many in our region behind,” says Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe.

It is reassuring that these doses are providing protection against severe illness and death caused by COVID-19, but the pandemic is now raging among the non-vaccinated, with devastating and sometimes deadly consequences. “For the non-vaccinated, nothing has changed in two years while everything has changed for the vaccinated,” says Dr Kluge.

We spoke to Dr Richard Pebody, who leads the High-threat Pathogen team and the Surveillance and Laboratory pillar of the COVID-19 Incident Support Management Team (IMST) at WHO/Europe, to find out what danger influenza (flu) poses this year, what people can do to stay healthy, and what implications a possible “twindemic” of flu and COVID-19 could have for people, authorities and health systems.

Throughout the pandemic, WHO reference laboratories have played a vital role in the confirmation of COVID-19 cases. They are mainly used when countries do not have the capacity to do all the testing they need themselves and when experience of testing for the virus is limited.

Country impact

In light of the current resurgence of COVID-19 in Romania, WHO/Europe is increasing its support to the country through the deployment of a senior expert, who will strengthen country-level response activities and facilitate the provision of essential COVID-19 supplies including 34 000 COVID-19 rapid diagnostic tests and close to 200 oxygen concentrators. This expanded technical support will cover key areas of the COVID-19 response, from surveillance, clinical guidance, risk communications and community engagement to vaccine roll-out.

Updates from the following countries are available here: 
AlbaniaArmeniaAzerbaijanBelarusKazakhstanKyrgyzstanNorth MacedoniaRepublic of MoldovaRussian FederationSerbiaTajikistanTurkeyTurkmenistanUkraine.

Around the world

The World Health Organization and partners have issued an urgent call for concrete action to better protect health and care workers worldwide from COVID-19 and other health issues. 

The organizations are concerned that large numbers of health and care workers have died from COVID-19, but also that an increasing proportion of the workforce are suffering from burnout, stress, anxiety and fatigue.

In a Joint Statement issued this week, WHO and partners are calling on all Member State governments and stakeholders to strengthen the monitoring and reporting of COVID-19 infections, ill-health and deaths among health and care workers. They should also include disaggregation by age, gender and occupation as a standard procedure, to enable decision makers and scientists to identify and implement mitigation measures that will further reduce the risk of infections and ill-health.

Beyond its leadership role in the COVAX Facility that has enabled the global roll-out of vaccination, WHO has also been working with partners in wider response efforts to the pandemic and other health emergencies, focusing on areas with fragile health systems and vulnerable communities. This involves coordination efforts, guided by a collaborative spirit to deliver assistance as well vital goods and equipment where they are needed most. With donors’ strong support, WHO works through the complexities of logistics movement in order to prevent disease outbreaks, protect health workers, improve health systems, enable communities to withstand difficult circumstances and save lives.

The world has not learned from previous epidemics. Reacting to events as they occur, without adequately strengthening prevention and preparedness, meant that countries were caught unprepared for a pandemic of this speed and scale. COVID-19 has hit vulnerable populations particularly hard and exacerbated preexisting inequalities even further. This highlights the need for countries to take every opportunity to rebuild their health systems sustainably, more equitably and closer to communities.

“The pandemic has been a significant setback in our efforts to support Member States to progress towards universal health coverage,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We cannot build a safer world from the top down; we must build from the ground up. Preparing for, preventing, detecting and responding rapidly to epidemics starts with strong primary health care and public health systems, skilled health workers, and communities empowered and enabled to take charge of their own health. That must be the focus of our attention, and our investment.”

Persons with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, both directly because of infection, and indirectly because of restrictions to reduce the spread of the virus. This video, developed by WHO and UNICEF, provides a summary of the considerations for governments, health care providers and persons with disabilities when accessing COVID-19 vaccination.
Visit our COVID-19 website for daily updates

In focus

Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 (26 October 2021)

Weekly operational update on COVID-19 - 25 October 2021

Joint ECDC-WHO Regional Office for Europe Weekly COVID-19 Surveillance Bulletin 

Statement on the ninth meeting of the International Health Regulations (2005) Emergency Committee regarding the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic

Guidance documents

WHO, WIPO, WTO update information note on an integrated health, trade, IP response to COVID-19

Health and Care Worker Deaths during COVID-19

COVID-19 vaccine tracker and landscape


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