The 14-day case notification per 100 000 inhabitants which is a key indicator among all countries differs greatly among EU members. It is 161 in Spain, 248 in Germany and 704 in France. In Czech republic, Hungary and Estonia – it is more than 1 000 cases per day. France entered its third national lockdown which will end in April as Italy extended the measures until end of April. Germany extended it until at least 18th of April.
However, EU aims to achieve 7-% of adults inoculation by mid-July 2021. EU will distribute 100 million vaccines during April after distributed in total 90 million in March and February. The records shows that only 14.2% of adults received at least one vaccine dose. In UK, it is more than 50% as of today. If EU wants to achieve the goal by July, it needs to increase its vaccination process significantly. However, there are other problems.
EU members decided to ban Astra-Zeneca due to possible link with rare blood clot problem. Although WHO and EU Health department suggest that it should be applied even though such link might exist, EU members decide not to. That adds additional problems to vaccination campaign.
Countries like Poland, Hungary and Serbia have already received vaccines from Russia and China in order to boost the vaccination process. These vaccinations help those nations to expedite the process i.e. 24% of adults in Hungary had the first dose of vaccination.
These data show that the economic recovery will not be even among EU nations since the vaccination efforts are not in satisfactory level. According to calculations, it will take nearly a year to reach “herd immunity” threshold unless dramatic increase is seen in EU.
Same is also applied to Turkey. According to data, Turkey applies 270 000n doses per date. That means it takes around 2 months to vaccinate 10% of the population. It will take 5-6 months to reach “herd immunity” unless increase in vaccination is sustained. Thus, construes Turkey’s economic recovery, despite all positive forecast by IMF and other financial institutions, may not be reached unless vaccination campaign is increased like in Europe.
