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Covid-19: WHO accuses European vaccination of "unacceptable" slowness

2021-04-02T05:34:50.205Z


New measures, new reports and highlights: Le Figaro takes stock of the latest developments in the Covid-19 pandemic around the world.


While the pandemic has killed at least 2.8 million people around the world since the end of December 2019, including nearly a million in Europe, a race against time has been launched against the virus whose main weapon is the vaccine.

If some countries like Israel, the United Kingdom or the United States are already seeing the beneficial effects of a campaign carried out with full force, Europe is forced to extend health restrictions to cope with a third wave punctuated by variants.

Read also: Can we go up to 10,000 intensive care beds without degrading the quality of other care?

"

Unacceptable

"

slowness

of vaccination in Europe

"

The deployment of these vaccines is unacceptably slow

," lamented Thursday April 1 Hans Kluge, director for Europe of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Faced with a "

regional situation, the most worrying that we have observed in several months",

he called on Europe to "

accelerate the process by strengthening production, reducing obstacles to the administration of vaccines and using the lower dose that we have in stock

”.

Read also: Vaccine against Covid-19: where is France compared to its neighbors?

If the United Kingdom stands out clearly with 52.5% of its major population vaccinated with a first dose, only three countries have exceeded 5 million first injections (Germany, France and Italy).

Others have chosen to focus on the two doses, such as Hungary, which vaccinated 8.6% of its population, or Denmark with 7.9%.

As EU member countries remain divided over a solution to split ten million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the company claimed its vaccine retained very high efficacy against the South African variant, citing findings clinical trials conducted in South Africa.

Read also: How Air France delivers Covid vaccines around the world

"

Emergency brake

" in Canada

Faced with a third wave, Canada's two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec, have tightened restrictions to slow the spread of the virus as vaccination struggles to take off despite hundreds of millions of pre-ordered doses.

Ontario will activate an "

emergency brake

" starting Saturday for at least four weeks.

Schools will remain open and the 14 million residents have not been ordered to stay at home, but businesses deemed non-essential will only be able to accommodate 25% of their regular customers.

Pleasure of the scene rediscovered in New York

New Yorkers rediscover the pleasure of live shows on Friday with the reopening of theaters made possible by a massive vaccination campaign.

Theaters and concert halls in the American cultural capital, closed since March 12, 2020, reopen their doors, with a capacity limited to 100 people.

President Joe Biden, however, called on the people of the United States to respect sanitary measures, in particular the wearing of masks, and asked sports clubs not to reopen stadiums to their full capacity.

Read also: Covid-19: Joe Biden speeds up vaccination by forced march across the United States

Chile closes its borders, Peru refines

Chile will close its borders throughout the month of April, Bolivia for at least a week with its Brazilian neighbor and Peru is reconfigured for the long Easter weekend: the countries of South America are trying to slow down the increase sudden outbreak of coronavirus contamination.

Subject to this same epidemic resurgence, Turkey has recorded more than 40,000 cases of Covid-19 in 24 hours, its highest daily toll since the start of the pandemic, according to official figures released Thursday evening.

Madagascar joins Covax

The Malagasy Minister of Health announced that the country had joined the Covax mechanism to help underprivileged nations, following a recent pledge to deploy vaccines against Covid-19, after months of resistance from the president.

More than 2.8 million dead

The pandemic has killed at least 2,816,908 people around the world since the end of December 2019, according to an AFP report from official sources on Thursday.

The United States is the country with the most deaths with 553,084 dead, ahead of Brazil (325,284), Mexico (203,210), India (162,927) and the United Kingdom (126,713).

These figures are globally underestimated.

They are based on daily reports from national health authorities, without including reassessments based on statistical bases.

Source: lefigaro

All tech articles on 2021-04-02

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