“New infections with coronavirus are increasing in Poland. Last 24 hours, 989 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed. Compared to the previous week, this is an increase of more than 40 %”, said Deputy Health Minister Waldemar Kraska on Tuesday.

“Our forecasts show that systematically these infections will increase. This is also linked to new variants of omicron, which have emerged. This is the famous kraken, which is also in Poland. This is a variant that is 40 % more infectious than its predecessor”, said the deputy minister.

Waldemar Kraska stressed that the good news is that the symptoms after infection with this sub-variant do not result in a more severe course of the disease, and the services do not record more people having to be hospitalised.

Waldemar Kraska encouraged vaccination against COVID-19 and against influenza. He pointed out that the available vaccines against COVID-19 contain the latest variants of the coronavirus.

“We should continue to think about vaccination. It seems that February is close and there is no point in getting vaccinated, but the flu season lasts until the end of March. So far 809,000 people have been vaccinated, which is a poor result when it comes to flu vaccinations, previous years were much better, more Poles were vaccinated”, said the Deputy Minister. 

He added that there could be an increase in flu and COVID-19 cases in early March and the infections could coincide. The lack of immunity is also due to the fact that our bodies have not been in contact with viruses.

“It is not just flu, COVID or RSV, there are other viruses, adenoviruses are present in our life, a consequence of two years of pandemics. We are catching viruses that are in our environment, as we can see outside the window, the weather is favourable for this, it’s damp, it’s cool, it’s the best time for the spread of viruses”, said the Deputy Health Minister.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński