This week, 6,303 new cases of Covid-19 were reported in Switzerland, up 26% from the week before (4,988). At the same time the week saw 3 deaths, the same number as the week before.
Most of the vulnerable have now been been vaccinated in Switzerland and the vast majority of new cases are now among the unvaccinated, who are more likely to be younger.
Over the last two weeks of July 2021, only 9 out of 1,030 recorded cases in the canton of Vaud were among the fully vaccinated. With less than 1% (9 / 1,030) of reported cases coming from the roughly 45% of the population that was fully vaccinated, the power of vaccines to protect against the disease is clear.
The same research, published this week, calculated that the chance of someone who has received two doses of vaccine getting Covid-19 is more than 80 times lower than the rest of the population.
Overall, 49% of Switzerland’s population is now fully vaccinated and 55% have had at least one shot. But the rate of vaccination has slowed sharply in recent weeks, a trend concerning Swiss health officials. Both of the figures above rose by a single percentage point this week.
This week the daily number of cases on a 7-day rolling average reached 900. The faster spreading Delta variant made up nearly all (95%) of the samples sequenced in Switzerland on 26 July 2021.
Much of the current focus is on the Delta variant. However, recent research done on Lambda, a variant first identified in Peru, has raised concerns among some scientists. This highly infectious variant, which has become dominant in Peru (88% on 14 June 2021), shows resistance to vaccine-induced antibodies in lab experiments, according to Japanese research. In a paper posted on bioRxiv, researchers warn that the current World Health Organization labelling of Lambda as a “Variant of Interest” rather than a “Variant of Concern” may not reflect the variant’s true threat level. Currently, Lambda is rare in Europe and North America, making up fewer than 1% of samples sequenced in France, Germany, Switzerland, the US and Canada.
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