The European Medicines Agency is continuing its review of the Moderna vaccine, the BioNTech laboratory is issuing a warning, England is confined ... To not miss any of the latest highlights related to Covid-19,
Le Figaro
takes stock of the latest news for this Wednesday, January 6.
Europe reviews Moderna vaccine
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) resumes its evaluation of the Moderna vaccine against Covid-19 on Wednesday, under pressure from European Union countries facing an upsurge in contamination and slowness in vaccinations.
The Amsterdam-based European regulator has set January 12 as the deadline for recommending or not the approval of the vaccine, already authorized in the United States.
Moderna's formula has the advantage of being able to be stored at -20 ° C, and not -70 ° C like that of Pfizer, which has forced the group to develop specific containers for transport.
Warning from the BioNTech laboratory
The BioNTech laboratory has warned that the maximum effectiveness of its vaccine developed with the Pfizer laboratory was not demonstrated if the second injection was delayed, a strategy applied or considered by several countries, to vaccinate more people.
The recommended space between the two injections is 21 days, but Denmark has increased it to six weeks and the UK to 12. The second injection of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine can be delayed for a few weeks in
" exceptional circumstances of epidemiological contexts and supply constraints
,
”
without exceeding six weeks, WHO experts said on Tuesday.
England confined until March
The new containment put in place in England in the face of the surge in contamination due to the new variant of the coronavirus should not begin to be lifted until March, and perhaps partially, a British government minister warned on Tuesday.
With more than 75,400 dead, the United Kingdom is one of the countries in Europe most bereaved by Covid-19 and was the first in the world to administer the vaccine from the British laboratory AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford .
Scotland is also on lockdown and in both cases schools remain closed.
Read also: English variant of the Covid-19: "France is two months behind England"
Elsewhere, restrictions are increasing
Germany is extending until January 31 and strengthening its partial confinement, in particular encouraging citizens to further reduce their contacts.
Most non-food stores, bars, restaurants, cultural and recreational facilities and schools will remain closed.
Read also: Covid-19: what are the restrictions in force among our European neighbors?
In Senegal, the state of emergency with a night curfew for two regions (Dakar and Thiès) was announced by Senegalese President Macky Sall.
These new restrictions to stop the rise of the coronavirus are valid from Wednesday.
The country has been facing a second wave of coronavirus since mid-November.
In Latin America, several provinces of Argentina including that of Buenos Aires decided to impose again on Tuesday curfews or traffic restrictions to contain the spread of Covid-19, whose number of new cases has increased in recent years weeks, authorities said.
They attribute these increases to end-of-year festivities and underground parties, especially in tourist areas.
More than 1.85 million dead
The novel coronavirus pandemic has killed at least 1,854,305 people worldwide since the WHO office in China reported the onset of the disease at the end of December 2019, according to a latest report established by AFP on Tuesday .
The United States is the most affected country in terms of both deaths and cases, with 357,067 deaths, according to the Johns-Hopkins University count.
Next come Brazil with 197,732 dead, India (149,850), Mexico (127,757) and Italy (75,680).