More of half of Europeans might get omicron in the next two months At the rate of current infections, the World Health Organization, WHO, warned on Tuesday, as China reaches the second anniversary of the first death from covid-19 with three cities confined.
The contagious variant has spread across countries at breakneck speed, forcing governments to reimpose strict measures and accelerate vaccination programs.
Europe is at the epicenter of this alarming rebound. The WHO warned on Tuesday that half of the continent’s population might be affected.
“At this rate, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, anticipates that more than 50% of the region’s population will have been infected with the omicron variant in the next six or eight weeks”Said Hans Kluge, director of the WHO Europe region.
The delimitation of the WHO Europe region includes 53 countries and territories, including some in Central Asia. Of them, 50 have cases of the variant.
For Kluge, this “unprecedented” transmission of the virus translates into an increase in hospital admissions, but not an increase in mortality. The new wave “is a challenge for health systems,” he warned.
The warning occurs just two years following a 61-year-old man from the Chinese city of Wuhan became the first person to die for this disease, later named as covid-19.
Since that January 11, 2020, the balance has grown to almost 5.5 million people worldwide, according to official data, notably lower than reality.
Confinements in China
Within months of its emergence in Wuhan, China brought the pandemic under control with a mix of lockdowns, border closures and mass screening, but recent outbreaks put this strategy to the test. weeks away from the Winter Olympics from Beijing.
The authorities of the city of Anyang, In central Henan province, its five million residents were ordered to stay indoors and not drive in private vehicles on Monday night, the official Xinhua agency said.
They thus join the one million people confined since last week in Yuzhou, in the same province, and the 13 million inhabitants of the historic city of Xi’an, who entered his third week of confinement.
China registered 110 new local cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, a ridiculous number compared to those registered daily in the United States or Europe. But the strategy in China is one of maximum prudence, especially before Beijing-2022.
For its part, Japan extended tough border restrictions that prevent nearly all arrivals from abroad until the end of February and announced the reopening of massive vaccination centers in the face of an upturn in cases linked to omicron.
Health experts insist that vaccines remain the most effective weapon once morest the pandemic, although the skeptical movement towards these immunizers has been marked somewhat by the case of tennis player Novak Djokovic in Australia.
The Serbian won the legal battle once morest his deportation from Australia for not being vaccinated and on Tuesday trained for the first time on the Australian Open venue, in which you trust to be able to participate if the authorities do not cancel your visa once more.
Protests in Bolivia
In Bolivia, several thousand people marched in La Paz on Monday once morest the new vaccination card imposed to access public places, temporarily suspended because its entry into force saturated the inoculation centers.
“They are forcing us to use these experimental vaccines,” said Gregorio Gómez, a neighborhood leader who participated in the peaceful protest.
Italy also applies measures once morest the unvaccinated since Monday, who will not be able to use a wide range of public transport or access restaurants, gyms or cinemas.
“Most of the problems we face now depend on the fact that there are unvaccinated people,” said its Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
And in Mexico, the president Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that he had contracted the disease for the second time, although he was only experiencing mild symptoms.
Good news came from the pharmaceutical side. Pfizer said Monday that it expects to have a specific version of its omicron variant vaccine ready in March.
And the European Union’s drug regulator said on the same day that it expects to approve this laboratory’s anticovid pill in weeks.
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