Waldemar Kraska made the assessment in an interview with public broadcaster Polish Radio.
He told Polish Radio: “At the moment, COVID-19 is in retreat in Poland.”
Kraska said: “Looking at the number of new cases, we can say that COVID-19 has gone easy on us, although people are still dying of the coronavirus.”
He added: “This can be avoided if we adopt a different attitude to vaccination than in previous months.”
Asked about the influx of refugees from war-torn Ukraine, where vaccination levels had been much lower than in Poland, Kraska said "it hasn’t resulted in a bigger number of COVID-19 infections."
'We have a population that is immune to COVID-19'
“This is because Polish people have naturally acquired immunity through interpersonal contacts,” he explained.
Kraska told Polish Radio: “During the summer holidays, some 17 million Polish people had contact with COVID-19. This creates a certain natural immunity. If it is further boosted by vaccination, then we have a population that is immune to COVID-19.”
He added that the latest COVID-19 data were “rather optimistic” and that while the number of infections may rise slightly in late January, “it won’t put much strain on the health service.”
‘Hopefully the coronavirus pandemic will be dying down on its own,” Kraska told Polish Radio.
The government announced on Thursday that there had been 602 new COVID-19 infections and 22 deaths of people with COVID-19 in the previous 24 hours, the PAP news agency reported.
Flu, RSV cases on the up
During Friday’s interview, Kraska warned that “flu infections have already reached figures usually seen at the height of the flu season, in early February,” while many children, "especially those aged 2 to 4,” were contracting the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Poles urged to wear face masks
Kraska urged the public to wear face masks, maintain hygiene and vaccinate themselves against both COVID-19 and the flu, Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
He also offered assurances that "the RSV situation is being closely monitored” by the health authorities.
“Hopefully the coming weeks will be better,” he said.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, rynekzdrowia.pl