At least 1.4 million lives were saved in Europe due to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s European regional office said on Tuesday.

This was according to a new WHO study released on a preprint server analysing the influence of COVID-19 vaccines in 34 countries – all but one – in Europe.

COVID-19 vaccines reduced deaths by 57 per cent between December 2020 when the vaccine rollouts began and March 2023, the study found.

The cumulative death toll in the European region, which currently sits at 2.5 million lives, could have reached nearly 4 million people without vaccines, the WHO said.

“​​Just think about it today and the 1.4 million people in our region, most of them elderly, who are around to enjoy life with their loved ones because they took the vital decision to be vaccinated against COVID-19,” said Dr Hans Kluge, WHO’s European regional director.

“This is the power of vaccines. The evidence is irrefutable,” he added.

He recommended once again that people who are at risk for severe COVID-19, such as those who are older or immunocompromised, get a booster vaccination six to 12 months after their most recent dose.

The study estimated, in particular, that 96 per cent of those whose lives were saved due to vaccination were over the age of 60.

The estimations about the number of lives saved by the vaccines were done by back-calculating based on the number of deaths reported, estimations about the vaccines’ effectiveness, and what would have happened if people in certain age groups had not been vaccinated.

There were discrepancies between the countries: those with higher vaccine uptake reduced deaths by a higher percentage than those with lower vaccine uptake.

The countries that reduced deaths by the highest percentage were Israel, Malta, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, and the UK, while those that reduced deaths by the smallest percentage were Romania and Ukraine.

“Countries that vaccinated early and vaccinated at high levels were likely to see much higher deaths averted than countries who were vaccinating a bit later,” said Dr Marc-Alain Widdowson, WHO Europe’s lead on infectious hazard management.

‘Influenza increases fourfold’

The WHO warned meanwhile that Europe faces high levels of influenza infections.

In the last two weeks, there has been a 58 per cent increase in reported hospitalisations and 21 per cent increase in ICU admissions compared to the previous two weeks, according to Kluge, with flu infections increasing fourfold between November and December.

In response to a question from Euronews Next about rising influenza levels, Widdowson said that with all viruses, we should expect the unexpected.

But he added that after the COVID-19 pandemic, many people “haven’t been exposed to influenza,” which could be contributing to rising cases as some people may still be susceptible.

WHO Europe also warned that the COVID-19 situation, with cases currently decreasing, could change in the region, as a new variant called JN.1 is rising in prevalence among cases.

Health is ‘slipping from the political agenda’

Kluge warned that he was deeply concerned that “health is slipping from the political agenda and that we are failing to address that ticking time bomb facing our health and care workforce”.

Some 13 countries in the region, for instance, did not report their respiratory illness surveillance data despite it being a “first line of defence” to monitor pathogens.

WHO Europe’s Dr Natacha Azzopardi-Muscat, who is in charge of country health policies, also warned that addressing the strain on health systems is not about adding hospital beds, but rather addressing the main “bottleneck” of a health workforce shortage.

“In many countries, our health workforce is ageing and needs to be replenished. Having said that, unfortunately some health systems are struggling even to retain the current health workforce because of the pressures that they are under,” she said, adding that remuneration, demographics, and working conditions can also have an influence.

Multiple European countries, including Germany, France, Portugal, and the UK, have seen health workers go on strike over concerns about pay and worker shortages.

In response to Euronews Next, Kluge warned that health, which was at the top of many political agendas during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been replaced by other pressing issues such as inflation, energy, and war.

But while “health may not be everything, without health there is nothing,” he warned.