2024-07-27 19:05:24
Since the beginning of the year, deaths due to Covid-19 in Italy have already reached 2,000 and the increase in cases and hospitalizations recorded in recent weeks represents an alarm bell that should not be underestimated according to experts, who invite institutions to promote an intense vaccination campaign in the fall to immunize all the fragile subjects, most at risk. But currently, Italy appears “unprepared”, notes infectious disease specialist Massimo Andreoni, who considers it short-sighted that the government has decided to purchase only one of the three updated vaccines currently available in Europe.
Italy, Andreoni stressed to ANSA, “should make sure it has all the updated vaccines currently available, to better respond to the different needs and not depend on a single vaccine, but, on the contrary, to date it has only purchased one type”. The vaccines currently available internationally, he explains, “are already updated against the new dominant JN1 variant. Italy has purchased the Pfizer vaccine, which is an updated mRNA vaccine, but unfortunately it has not considered purchasing the other two updated vaccines available. So, on the one hand we have a good chance of vaccination coverage because there are already several million vaccines purchased, but on the other it would have been better to acquire all the different types of vaccines to ensure greater vaccination appropriateness”. These are the Moderna vaccine, which is also mRNA but is a single dose and therefore would make vaccination much simpler, and the Novovax vaccine, which is a single dose vaccine different from the first two because it is of the adjuvanted protein type and guarantees slightly longer protection than the others. As for the current situation, “with the number of Covid cases increasing significantly, there will inevitably be more and more vulnerable people affected and therefore also hospitalizations and deaths. The latter have already reached 2,000 since the beginning of the year”. The problem, warns the expert, is that the majority of citizens have been vaccinated for too long and therefore have ineffective immunity against the virus that is circulating: “We are certainly unprepared at the moment. Italy is one of the countries with the least vaccinated people overall and only 12% of vulnerable people – he recalls – have been immunized in recent months. We need a strong vaccination campaign”.
Also for Roberta Siliquini, president of the Italian Society of Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Public Health, and member of the Covid Transition Initiative (Cti), “the heat plays an important role in the increase in hospitalizations. However, it is necessary to make people understand that in the autumn the vulnerable must get vaccinated to avoid the thousands of deaths we had last year”. The Cti – an independent and pan-European group, composed of experts, patient advocates and policy makers, established and funded by Novavax at the beginning of 2024 – has also recently published a document in which they invite the governments and institutions of the EU to “undertake all necessary actions to achieve optimal vaccination coverage in order to reach the goal of 75% adherence among risk groups, as is expected for the flu vaccination”. Along the same lines is epidemiologist Cesare Cislaghi, who says he is concerned about the constant increase in Covid infections, hospitalizations and deaths and “we don’t know how long this growth will last”, he notes. For this reason, in his opinion it would be appropriate to recommend greater precautions, and first of all an isolation, voluntary if not mandatory, of those infected. But, he comments, “it seems that the attitude of politics today is to minimize the problem. Let’s hope this does not turn out to be a gamble”. The latest monitoring by the Ministry of Health-ISS, from 18 to 24 July, indicates that this week the reported infections went from 8,942 to 13,672 (+52.9%), while the total number of hospitalizations on 24 July is 1,555 compared to 1,226 on 17 July, with an increase of +26.8%.
2024-07-27 19:05:24