WHO said the 53 countries in its European region, which stretches to central Asia, reported nearly 3 million new coronavirus infections last week and that the virus was killing about 3,000 people every week.
would be the over 65s. in addition, these groups, like health and care workers and other younger age groups with health conditions will be eligible for an autumn booster. the virus is spreading fast now the latest survey from the office for national statistics suggests that about 3.5 million people in the uk had the virus last week, that s up 29% from the week before. it s still not as high, though, as the level in late march when there were 4.9 million infections. scotland has the highest case rates. 1 in 16 people there had the virus last week. in england, it was1 in 19 and in wales and northern ireland, 1 in 17 people. professor adam finn from thejoint committee on vaccination and immunisation joins us now. good morning. where do you think we are in terms of this latest covid wave? ~ ., wave? well, we are right in the middle of wave? well, we are right in the middle of it, wave? well, we are right in the middle of it, and
difference between having received no vaccines at all and people who have been vaccinated or vaccinated and boosted. there is a benefit, again, from getting the boosters. but a much bigger benefit from having received a vaccine in the first place. we are nearly 2.5 years into this pandemic. most people have returned to a version of normal life back in the office, restaurants, concerts. but dr. michael mina, mep genealogist, expect another covid wave in the fall. should we be making adjustments in our daily life now in anticipation? i think so. the ways we are going to be thinking about this is the way we think about the weather. the weather when it rains. try to keep yourself dry. we know there is a lot of high risk out there. let me show you, the community map the cdc puts out, you find on the website. it basically gives you an indication of how much virus there is and uses hospitalization data. a lot more read over the last few months.
or medium covid risk area, and that comes as summer travel hits pre-pandemic levels. we look at the numbers compared to a year ago. where are we? in some aspects we re much better, in some aspects we re not. the hard part is we don t have good numbers. reporter: while there s less demand for vaccines, moderna just had to throw away about 30 million doses. dr. agus says they re the best weapon against another deadly covid wave. we re in a controllable situation, that s good, that s partly because of these vaccines. we have to get better at the booster campaign and in certain circumstances we may have to change our behavior by wearing masks and other things. reporter: updated vaccines by pfizer and moderna are expected in october. dr. agus says we ll need booster shots to give us greater protection against variants. sounds like we have to be flexible in all of this. thank you. today at the wnba all-star game, players honored brittney griner. one of the team s top players,