Note: This is an automated translation (using DeepL) of the original German article.
Policy brief of Prognosis Consortium: nearly 1 million additional first-time vaccinations needed to brake 4th wave
While COVID-19 case numbers are steadily increasing, the pace of vaccination is decreasing in Austria. In light of these dynamics, the COVID Prognosis Consortium has updated its situation assessment of July 8, 2021. The Ministry of Health’s COVID Forecasting Consortium consists of experts from Vienna University of Technology/DEXHELPP/dwh GmbH, Vienna Medical University/Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH), and Gesundheit Österreich GmbH.
In its July situation assessment (Policy Brief), the consortium assumed in the worst case that the vaccination rate would drop to 40% (compared to June 2021). In June, an average of 37,200 people were vaccinated daily. However, in August, this average dropped to just 6,100 people. This represents a vaccination rate of only 16% now! In contrast, infection incidence in summer 2021 was at the high end of the expected range of variation. Therefore, an update to the formulated population vaccination coverage scenarios was made to update the long-term simulations based on current conditions.
The entire policy brief update can be downloaded from the Department of Health website.
Summary at a Glance
- The critical factor will be whether attenuating factors (vaccination coverage, vaccination coverage rates, and protective measures) or driving factors (increased delta variant infection rates, seasonality effect) predominate.
- Increasing the pace of vaccination by almost 1 million initial vaccinations within the next 12 weeks would cause the 4th wave to level off much sooner.
- Meanwhile, vaccine protection for the delta variant can also be assessed based on data. With two vaccinations, there is 96% protection against the risk of hospitalization.
- Due to the high protective effect of vaccination against infection after full immunization (80%), case incidence is dominated by the unvaccinated.