HQ Team
June 28, 2023: Extreme summer heat and a resurgence of mpox in Europe are adding to the hardship created by the Covid-19 virus, which is still killing 1,000 people in the continent every week, a senior WHO official said.
Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, said Covid-19 continued to disproportionately affect the weak and the most vulnerable.
Covid-19 exploited an epidemic of diseases, including cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and chronic lung illnesses, which “account for 75% of mortality in our region today,” he said.
“Those with such underlying conditions were, and still are, far more vulnerable to severe forms of Covid-19.”
Covid-19 deaths
The Covid-19 virus, whose origins are yet to be traced, killed about seven million people officially. Unofficial figures put the global death toll at 20 million since the virus was detected in late 2019.
Though the WHO had removed the pandemic tag on the virus, Covid-19 has not gone away. “Close to 1,000 new Covid-19 deaths continue to occur across the region every week, and this is an underestimate due to a drop in countries regularly reporting Covid-19 deaths to WHO,” Dr Kulge said.
About 36 million people across the WHO European Region may have experienced long COVID in the first three years of the pandemic, he said.
“That’s approximately one in 30 Europeans over the past three years. One in 30 could be suffering in silence, left behind as others move on from Covid-19.”
‘Blind spot’
“Long Covid remains a glaring blind spot in our knowledge, that urgently needs to be filled.”
Dr Kulge said a new report from the European Union and the World Meteorological Organization had recently warned that Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, and extreme heat in the summer months is becoming the norm, not the exception.
The European summer period starts in June and ends in August.
“Last year in our region, extreme heat claimed 20 000 lives between June and August. Last week, Spain and Portugal recorded temperatures in excess of 40 degrees, greatly increasing the risk of wildfires.
New mpox cases
“Earlier this month, Kazakhstan saw deadly wildfires claim the lives of at least 15 people, 14 of whom were firefighters. At the same time, other parts of our region saw flash flooding and landslides, which also claimed lives,” he said.
Alongside an increased recent risk of extreme heat, Dr Kulge also drew attention to a recent resurgence of mpox infections, first in the US and then in the UK, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
The European Region recorded 22 new mpox cases during the month of May.
“While this might seem low, it tells us the virus continues to circulate in the European Region, particularly affecting men who have sex with men, and we could see a resurgence,” he said.
