The first large independent study on the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine has concluded that the vaccine against Covid-19 is very effective, news expected as the world tries to vaccinate its population.
In France, the situation is deteriorating in several departments, after the implementation of local measures in the Alpes-Maritimes and Dunkirk.
Jean Castex will speak this Thursday
Prime Minister Jean Castex will hold a press conference this Thursday, February 25, in view of the worrying situation in several departments.
The situation in the fight against Covid-19 "
is deteriorating
" and "
is very worrying in a dozen departments
", said government spokesman Gabriel Attal on Wednesday after the Council of Ministers.
This degradation "
requires rapid and strong measures
," said the spokesperson.
Pfizer 94% effective, Israeli study finds
Pfizer's vaccine is 94% effective against symptomatic cases of Covid-19, according to a very large study carried out in Israel and published on Wednesday, confirming data from clinical trials and the crucial role of vaccination campaigns in bringing an end to the pandemic.
"
This is the first peer-reviewed evidence of the effectiveness of a vaccine under real world conditions
," Ben Reis, one of the co-authors of the study published on Wednesday, told AFP. in the prestigious
New England Journal of Medicine
.
Read also: Covid-19: who can be vaccinated, where, by whom and with what product?
European summit for a coordinated strategy against variants
European leaders will attempt Thursday at a virtual summit to display a common strategy in the face of the threat of variants of the coronavirus, despite uncoordinated movement restrictions and sharp differences over the future "
vaccine passport
".
The leaders of the Twenty-Seven meet by videoconference from 2 p.m. when the number of contaminations is struggling to decrease on the continent, due to sluggish vaccination campaigns and the rise of the British and South African variants.
Concerned, ten EU countries have adopted restrictions on their borders.
The European Commission has summoned six of them to explain themselves on the movement restrictions that it considers disproportionate, fearing dysfunctions of production chains.
Vaccination: Brussels "
optimistic
"
The President of the European Commission said she was "
optimistic
" about the development of the vaccination campaign, on the eve of the EU summit, despite some production difficulties in Europe.
"
I am confident
" about the goal of vaccinating 70% of Europeans by the end of the summer, Ursula von der Leyen told German daily
Augsburger Allgemeine
.
Johnson & Johnson effective against severe forms
The U.S. Medicines Agency confirmed the effectiveness of Johnson & Johnson's single-dose vaccine on Wednesday, February 24, two days before a meeting of its advisory committee to review its authorization in the United States.
The vaccine's efficacy is 85.9% against severe forms of the disease in the United States, and it is also effective against these severe forms at 81.7% in South Africa and 87.6% in Brazil, where variants are widespread.
Version of Moderna vs. South African variant
US biotech company Moderna announced on Wednesday that a modified version of its vaccine, developed specifically against the South African variant, was ready for testing in humans in clinical trials.
"
Moderna has sent doses of its specific candidate vaccine against the variant (...) first identified in South Africa to the NIH (American National Institutes of Health, editor's note), for a clinical study,
" said the company in a press release.
Read also: Anti-Covid vaccines: Moderna launches an assault on the South African variant
Meeting of a G20-Finance
Coordination of stimulus plans and aid to poor countries will be on the menu of the G20's major financiers who will meet on Friday under the Italian presidency, the French Ministry of the Economy said on Wednesday.
Finance ministers and central bankers of economies weighing 85% of the world's gross domestic product (GDP) will meet by videoconference, as the spread of variants of the coronavirus looms the threat of additional restrictive measures on some economies.
Mexico and Argentina want to collaborate
Mexico and Argentina said in a joint statement on Wednesday that they wanted to work together so that Latin America "
attains
self-sufficiency in the production of vaccines
" against Covid-19 and that no country in the region is excluded from it. 'access to vaccines.
Chinese vaccine in Hungary
Hungary starts using the vaccine from Chinese laboratory Sinopharm, becoming the first EU country in this case, having already stood out by using the Russian vaccine Sputnik V.
Israel: communicating the identity of the unvaccinated
Israel's parliament has authorized the health ministry to release the identities of unvaccinated people to other authorities in the country, raising concerns about the privacy of citizens who refuse a vaccine.
More than 2.48 million dead
The pandemic has killed more than 2.48 million people worldwide since the end of December, according to a report established by AFP on Wednesday in the middle of the day.
The United States is the country with the highest number of deaths (504,891), ahead of Brazil (249,957), Mexico (181,809), India (156,567) and the United Kingdom (121,305).
These figures are globally underestimated.
They are based on daily reports from national health authorities, without including reassessments based on statistical bases.
