Vaccines won't prevent short-term Covid-19 surge: WHO emergency expert

The UN World Health Organization has warned people to maintain social distancing and other norms to restrict the spread of Covid-19, as it believes that there will not be enough quantities of coronavirus vaccines in the next three to six months to prevent a surge of infections.

'We are not going to have sufficient vaccinations in place to prevent a surge in cases for three to six months,' WHO top emergency expert Mike Ryan told a social media event.

People living in areas where the virus is spreading should always wear masks in shops, workplaces and schools that lack adequate ventilation, WHO said.

If they cannot maintain physical distancing of at least one metre (3 feet), people in those indoor locations including children and students aged 12 or above should wear a mask even if the spaces are well ventilated, it said in a tightening of its guidelines on Wednesday.

WHO also suggested wear masks outdoors if physical distancing cannot be maintained, it said.

The World Health Organization has received data from Pfizer and BioNTech on the vaccine and is reviewing it for 'possible listing for emergency use,' a benchmark for countries to authorise national use.

Vaccination in Germany will take over a year, an expert panel head told on Wednesday. 'It will take until 2022 to vaccinate the whole population of Germany due to capacity limits', according to the head of an expert panel that will help decide in which order people should receive the vaccine.

'If you can administer shots on 150,000 to 200,000 people a day, so on five or six days a week, assuming vaccines are available and people are willing to be vaccinated, then you can calculate how long it will take,' Thomas Mertens, head of STIKO, Germany's expert panel on vaccine use, told Rheinische Post.

'Then you would need 100 days to vaccinate 15 million people,' he said, according to a summary of an interview to be published by the daily paper on Thursday.

Italy will launch a huge, free coronavirus vaccination programme early next year, Health Minister Roberto Speranza said on Wednesday, as the government readies restrictions to avoid a surge in infections during the winter holidays.