The World Health Organization chief warned Wednesday that the rush in wealthy countries to roll out additional Covid-19 vaccine doses was deepening the global inequity in access to jabs and thereby prolonging the pandemic.

The UN health agency has long warned about the glaring inequity in access to Covid vaccines, which has left many vulnerable people in poorer nations without a single jab as richer countries roll out booster programmes.

“Blanket booster programmes are likely to prolong the Covid-19 pandemic, rather than ending it, by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.

“No country can boost its way out of the pandemic,” Tedros added.

The WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunisation said Wednesday that at least 126 countries around the world have already issued recommendations on boosters or additional vaccine doses, and 120 had started implementing those programmes.

“No low-income country has yet introduced a booster vaccination programme,” it said in a statement.

Without ‘coordinated strategy’, world will ‘always be chasing’ Covid-19 variants

Health experts have long warned that failure to expand vaccinations globally would pave the way for more variants of the coronavirus to develop.

Tedros’s comments came as the Omicron variant’s lightning dash around the globe since it was first detected in South Africa last month has dampened hopes the worst of the pandemic is over.

The new variant is spreading at unprecedented speed and has already been detected in 106 countries, the WHO said.

Early data indicates that the heavily-mutated variant is not only more transmissible than previous strains, but could be better at dodging some vaccine protections, although additional doses appear to push protection levels higher.

Tedros said Wednesday that the existing vaccines continue to provide significant protection against severe disease from Omicron.

“It’s important to remember that the vast majority of hospitalisations and deaths are in unvaccinated people, not un-boosted people,” he said.

He also stressed that we all must take all necessary precautions to halt the spread of Covid as we head into the Christmas holiday.

“Boosters cannot be seen as a ticket to go ahead with planned celebrations,” he said.

Earlier this week, the WHO chief urged people to postpone holiday gatherings, warning that festivities would in many places lead to “increased cases, overwhelmed health systems and more deaths”.

“An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled,” he added.

Source: REUTERS

The fast-spreading Omicron variant is now the dominant strain of Covid-19 in the United States, health authorities reported Monday, as the WHO called for greater efforts to ensure the pandemic ends next year.

The new variant has helped fuel record case surges, forcing a return to harsh restrictions in some countries. But in the United States, President Joe Biden does not plan on “locking the country down”, press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier in the day.

Omicron now accounts for 73.2 percent of new US cases over the past week ending Saturday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. In some regions of the country – the Pacific Northwest, South and parts of the Midwest – it already comprises more than 90 percent of new infections.

With Biden set to deliver an address on Covid-19 Tuesday, the White House reported that a mid-level, fully vaccinated and boosted staff member had tested positive for Covid-19 after spending 30 minutes in proximity to the president three days prior. Biden has so far tested negative.

Early data suggests Omicron could be more infectious and possibly have higher resistance to vaccines, despite indications that it is not more severe than the Delta variant.

Since it was first reported in South Africa in November, Omicron has been identified in dozens of countries, dashing hopes that the worst of the pandemic is over.

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for nations to redouble efforts to help end the pandemic, calling for new year events to be cancelled because it was better to “celebrate later than to celebrate now and grieve later.

“We have to focus now on ending this pandemic,” he said.

More restrictions

The European Union approved its fifth Covid-19 jab Monday – from US firm Novavax – with Europe already far ahead of other parts of the world with its rollout of vaccines and booster shots.

Authorisation of the jab, which uses a more conventional technology than other Covid vaccines, has raised hopes that people worried about getting vaccinated might now come forward.

The other vaccines approved in the bloc are from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, and the EU has already signed a deal to buy up to 200 million doses of the two-shot Novavax vaccine.

“At a time where the Omicron variant is rapidly spreading… I am particularly pleased with today’s authorisation of the Novavax vaccine,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.

London on Monday announced it had cancelled a New Year’s Eve event in the central Trafalgar Square for 6,500 people.

Paris has already cancelled its new year celebrations, and Germany is expected to roll out tight restrictions on private parties and close nightclubs, according to a proposal seen by AFP.

“New Year’s Eve celebrations with a large number of people are unjustifiable in the current situation,” reads the draft document.

Morocco has announced a blanket ban on New Year’s Eve celebrations.

But British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ruled out any further tightening of England’s coronavirus rules over Christmas, while pledging to keep the situation “under constant review.”

Queen Elizabeth II is nonetheless understood to have cancelled plans to spend Christmas at her Sandringham estate and will instead take “sensible precautions” and stay at Windsor Castle, according to British media.

The Netherlands has already imposed a Christmas lockdown, and von der Leyen has warned that the Omicron variant could be dominant in Europe by mid-January.

World Economic Forum postponed

As the pandemic gathers pace, weary populations are faced once again with new rounds of restrictions and cancellations of big events.

The World Economic Forum said it was postponing its annual January get-together of the world’s rich and powerful in the Swiss ski resort of Davos because of the new variant.

“Despite the meeting’s stringent health protocols, the transmissibility of Omicron and its impact on travel and mobility have made deferral necessary,” the WEF said Monday.

Israel’s health ministry recommended banning nationals from traveling to the United States, and added several European countries to its Covid “red list.”

The world of sport continues to be buffeted by the virus spread, with several English Premier League football teams recording outbreaks that forced games to be abandoned in recent days.

However, the Premier League said after a meeting on Monday it had rejected a plan to temporarily halt the season, saying: “It is the League’s collective intention to continue the current fixture schedule where safely possible.”

Tennis also continues to suffer major blows, with Spanish star Rafael Nadal the latest player to test positive, throwing his participation in next month’s Australian Open into doubt.

Source:  AFP

Turkey will send 15 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to Africa, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Saturday at a major summit of the continent’s leaders, adding that the low vaccination rates there were a blot on humanity.

Ankara has invested heavily in developing trade and diplomatic ties with the world’s poorest continent during Erdogan’s rule as prime minister and then president since 2003.

Speaking to dozens of attending leaders and ministers, Erdogan said Turkey would ship 15 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to Africa, where cases are rapidly rising and vaccination rates are low.

“We are aware of the global injustice in accessing the Covid-19 vaccine and Africa’s unjust treatment,” Erdogan said.

“It is disgraceful for humanity that only six percent of Africa’s population has been vaccinated.”

Turkey is developing its own vaccine, known as Turkovac, which is in the process of receiving emergency use approval.

Following any authorisation, it will be shared with Africa, Erdogan said.

It was not immediately clear from his remarks whether Turkey would first send some doses of the internationally approved vaccines it was currently using, including those developed by Pfizer-BioNTech.

“In order to contribute to the resolution of this issue, within our means, we plan to share 15 million vaccine doses in the period ahead,” he said.

Soaring infection rates

The number of new infections in Africa has shot up by 57 percent in the past week, according to AFP calculations based on official figures.

South Africa is the hardest-hit country, becoming one of the first in the world affected by the new Omicron variant, which is believed to be even more contagious than past coronavirus strains.

Erdogan said Turkey wanted to strengthen relations with Africa in a wide range of areas including health, defence, energy, agriculture and technology.

“The real potential between us goes far beyond the targets we have,” he said.

In a final declaration, Turkey and African countries agreed to strengthen cooperation in several fields, including health “through further health sector investments”.

“With the declaration we have accepted at this summit and the joint action plan, we agreed on a road map to deepen our relations,” Erdogan told a closing media event.

Focus on trade

Trade between Turkey and Africa has grown in the past 20 years from $5.4 billion to $25.3 billion (4.8 billion euros to 22.5 billion euros) last year.

And in the first 11 months of 2021, it had reached $30 billion, Erdogan said.

Turkey has set an even higher target of trade volume for the future: $75 billion.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the third Turkish-African summit — by far the largest to date — was being attended by 16 African heads of state and 102 ministers, including 26 top diplomats.

Erdogan also held one-on-one meetings with African heads of state, including Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who have both expressed an interest in Turkey’s defence industry.

The next Turkey-Africa summit will be held in 2026 in an unspecified African country.

Source: AFP

The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that the Omicron variant was spreading at an unprecedented rate and was likely already present in most countries. While Africa has recorded a massive rise in Covid cases over the past week, the number of deaths is lower than with previous waves, the health agency said.

The past week has seen an 83 percent jump in Covid-19 cases in Africa, with the increase in South Africa at 66 percent.

“We are cautiously optimistic that deaths and severe illness will remain low in the current wave,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Regional Director for Africa. “But slow vaccine roll-out in Africa means both will be much higher than they should be.”

Low vaccination rates risk providing a breeding ground for new variants, such as the rapidly spreading Omicron strain, which was first identified in South Africa, said the latest update from the WHO in Africa.

“We’ve known for quite some time now that new variants like Beta, Delta or Omicron could regularly emerge to spark new outbreaks globally, but vaccine-deprived regions like Africa will be especially vulnerable,” said Moeti.

At the current rate, WHO estimates it will take until May 2022 to have 40-percent vaccination coverage in Africa and until August 2024 to reach 70 percent, said the WHO-Africa statement.

“But we can still save many lives if we accelerate the pace of vaccination in early 2022,” Moeti said.

As of 13 December, only 20 African countries had vaccinated at least 10 percent of their population – the global target WHO had set for September 2021.

Only six countries have hit the year-end target of fully vaccinating 40 percent of their population, while only two – Mauritius and Seychelles – have reached 70 percent.

The latest surge across the continent was fuelled mainly by the Delta and Omicron variants.

Worldwide there have been more than 2,700 Omicron cases reported in about 60 countries, including 11 African countries.

Omicron spreading at unprecedented rate

The latest regional report came as the WHO reported that the Omicron variant was spreading at an unprecedented rate “probably in most countries”.

Since the new, heavily-mutated variant was first detected in southern Africa last month, it has been reported in 77 countries, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.

But, he said, “the reality is that Omicron is probably in most countries, even if it hasn’t been detected yet.”

“Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant,” he said.

His comments came amid growing evidence that the new variant might also be better at skirting vaccine protections than previous ones, but could cause milder symptoms.

But Tedros cautioned against “dismissing Omicron as mild”.

“Surely, we have learned by now that we underestimate this virus at our peril,” he said.

“Even if Omicron does cause less severe disease, the sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems.”

Not against boosters, against inequity

The WHO chief also voiced concern that many countries are rushing to provide booster vaccine doses in response to the spread of Omicron, in light of the persistent glaring inequity in vaccine access between wealthy and poorer countries.

“WHO is concerned that such programmes will repeat the Covid-19 vaccine hoarding” seen previously this year, he said.

He said there was not yet enough data to show a third dose is needed to effectively protect healthy adults against the variant, although he said that “as we move forward, boosters could play an important role”.

At the same time many vulnerable people in poorer countries have not yet received a single dose.

“Let me be very clear: WHO is not against boosters. We’re against inequity. Our main concern is to save lives everywhere,” Tedros said.

 “It’s a question of prioritisation,” he said.

 “The order matters. Giving boosters to groups at low risk of severe disease or death simply endangers the lives of those at high risk who are still waiting for their primary doses because of supply constraints.”

Source:  AFP

Under a blazing sun, two Cameroonian health workers, Irene and Lucienne, try to convince passers-by to be vaccinated against Covid. They accost a young man in his thirties, who refuses to accept.

“I don’t trust the vaccine,” Ramos says at the outset. “White people don’t like us. They want to kill us with vaccines in which they introduce illicit products,” he says.

In Cameroon, one of the sub-Saharan African countries most affected by Covid-19 with more than 107,000 infections, including 1,795 deaths, preconceived ideas, and misinformation on social networks are holding back the vaccination campaign.

Only 4.1% of the population aged over 18 has been vaccinated since the first doses were administered seven months ago, according to the Ministry of Health, a long way from the stated objective of 40%, five weeks before the African Cup of Nations scheduled to take place in the country.

“Psychosis”

Faced with the reluctance of Cameroonians, the government has launched a double vaccination campaign: one of 5 days, from November 17 to 21, targeting the entire population, and another of one month, from November 10 to December 10, for civil servants.

Irene and Lucienne positioned themselves in the early hours of the day in front of a small public hospital in Odza, a neighborhood of Yaoundé, where a vaccination post had been opened.

Their deployment, in the middle of the street, on a busy road leading to the airport, aims to arouse the interest of passers-by. But, says Lucienne, “very few” accept the proposal. “It is very difficult to convince. There is a real psychosis among Cameroonians,” she admits.

The day before, she reports, “someone threatened to punch me if I persisted in offering him the vaccine.

The argument that comes up the most is that the “Europeans” (referring more generally to Westerners, editor’s note) want to kill us,” adds Irene, her colleague.

The two young women try to convince another passer-by, Jamiro. She also declines the offer to be vaccinated.

“I read on the internet, and also learned in the street, that this vaccine makes you sterile”, she worries.

Disinformation

“The reluctance of the population is the result of disinformation through social networks,” David Messy, an agent of the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI, a government initiative), explained to AFP.

“Some Cameroonians in the diaspora send messages to those in the country to present the supposed harm of this vaccination,” he accuses, while “vaccination protects”.

“The government strongly and firmly encourages all populations to be vaccinated,” pleads Manaouda Malachie, Minister of Health, on CRTV, the state radio. “We have enough doses for everyone,” he said.

But authorities need to do more to convince. “The biggest challenge is getting the right information to the people, who need to make their choice based on facts and not just opinions drawn from social networks,” says Professor Yap Boum II, regional representative of Epicentre, the research and epidemiology arm of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF).

“There are 30 times fewer deaths among vaccinated people than among unvaccinated people,” he continues.

“We have to go and vaccinate Paul Biya,” says an old man in the street who is offered the vaccine. Unlike other countries where heads of state have been publicly vaccinated, in Cameroon it is not known whether Mr. Biya, 88 years old, 39 of them in power, is vaccinated or not.

His Prime Minister, Joseph Dion Ngute, and some of his ministers have taken their shots on camera.

But some Cameroonians still question the existence of the virus, deeming the vaccine useless. “I’m not interested in the vaccine because I haven’t seen anyone sick yet. I doubt the existence of this disease,” says Jeannette Aboudi, 53, an orange seller in the market of Nfou, a small town in central Cameroon.

Andréa, a young woman in her twenties, has no hesitation since her aunt contracted respiratory distress from the virus. “After that, the family decided that everyone should be vaccinated,” she says, adding that she recently took her first dose.

Source: AFP

In the book ‘The Congo Cables: From Eisenhower to Kennedy,” there is a detailed plan in the presence of a sitting US president to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, whom the US considered a threat to its national interests. Nothing has changed since that plot to assassinate that great pan-Africanist about how the US and western nations operate internationally. It is all about national interests and the concerns of big western businesses. Many governments have figured out how to function internationally, but sub-Saharan African countries have not.”

If any evidence is required that Africa is considered on the global stage as only suitable for supplying vital raw materials for the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has made that clear. The UK, EU, and the USA’s latest travel bans on travelers from nine African countries have come as no surprise. The ban comes as the Centre for Disease Control announced that no cases of the Omicron virus had been found in the US. Why then was a ban against scientific advice imposed on these nine African countries?

Politics in the international arena have been laid bare since the coronavirus pandemic started.  Ever since the Covid-19 vaccine was manufactured over twelve months ago, the rich countries of the West have gone into hoarding and isolationist mode. Internationalism has had to wait as the rich countries look after their citizens and big businesses first, while hundreds of thousands die in Africa, Asia, and South America.

Although governments paid for many Covid-19 vaccine researches, the subsequent vaccine and cures have become the property of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical businesses. And they are waxing fat from the profits and patents. Due to the urgency of the moment and the havoc this global virus is causing worldwide, South Africa and India have led calls for rich nations to suspend intellectual property agreement that allows pharmaceutical conglomerates to monopolize medical knowledge. This proposal, expected to save millions of lives in developing countries, has been blocked by the UK and the EU. This is shameful.

The Omicron virus is the result of vaccine-nationalism, vaccine-apartheid, vaccine hoarding and a neo-colonial mindset. Scientists now say if immediate action is not taken to vaccinate the populations of the developing countries; more variants will make their appearance soon. Western nations have snatched and keep accumulating as many million vaccine doses as they can and are accomplishing some of the highest vaccination rates in the world. According to COVAX, around 100m of the vaccines in Western countries will pass their use-by dates in December while people in developing countries are dying from a global pandemic that was not their creation.

The disparity in vaccination numbers around the globe makes for depressing reading. South Africa has achieved only 27% vaccination rate, while most Western countries have attained vaccination rates higher than 69% with vaccines produced by Johnson & Johnson in South Africa. The vaccination rates in other parts of Africa are lamentable. According to the live tracker at https://africanarguments.org/, Chad has vaccinated 250,000 of its 16.5 million people. Cameroon has vaccinated 924,000 of its 26 million people. Nigeria has vaccinated 10.5 million of its 205 million inhabitants. The numbers are pathetic, but this is not a western problem; this is our—African—problem. The time for a change in Africa is now.

The international community has failed Africa if it cannot put lives before profits in a global pandemic. Our leaders and continent cannot afford to rely on cooperation with a world that values us not. We are better than just supplying raw materials and young qualified professionals to oil the economic wheels of the West. The time has come for Africans to realize that the world order and global institutions created after 1945 have failed our continent.

It is an open secret that African leaders have been nothing short of embarrassments for the last forty years, and their people, at home and in the diaspora, have been rightfully disappointed with them. Africa has had its fair share of self-inflicted injury, from auctioning its raw materials to western companies for private gain for the political elite to butchering constitutions to stay in power forever; our recent past has been unpleasant.

This global pandemic has presented an opportunity for many African leaders to rehabilitate themselves with their people. Many Africans are now prepared to give their leaders another chance. African leaders must start putting African structures and institutions in place to serve their people. China has shown that you can lift 600 million people from extreme poverty within a generation. Africa has 1.3 billion people, and many are young, educated, and hungry for success. We have trillions of dollars worth of raw materials scattered around the continent. No continent is blessed with more natural materials and people potential than Africa.

How can vaccines manufactured cheaply in Africa be cheaper in Europe and the US than in Botswana? This is where political leadership comes in. Presidents Kagame, Nana Akufo-Addo and Ramaphosa must assume leadership immediately and invite African philanthropists, scientists, academics and billionaires to fashion concrete plans on how our continent should shield itself from future pandemics and shocks. This is the first step towards restoring self-pride.

For many in Africa, the lesson from this pandemic is painful as African governments have found it hard to protect their citizens. In contrast, the West has displayed its ruthlessness and selfishness. They might not plot to poison another Lumumba, but Western ways have not changed. It is called self-interest.  After this pandemic, it cannot be business as usual. We must seize the moment and build institutions that work for Africa.

By Isong Asu

Cameroon Concord News

Senior Political Researcher in London

At least eight people have died and more than 180 others infected in a cholera epidemic that is sweeping across two health districts in Southwest region, international medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Tuesday.

“The Ekondo Titi Health District has reported over 160 cases of cholera, with 62 patients hospitalized at the Cholera Treatment Unit, 15 patients treated at the Oral Rehydration points, and 5 deaths recorded. The Bakassi Health district has also reported 29 suspected cases with three deaths from October 27 to November 29. The condition is particularly worrying because it means that cholera has spread in the community,” Donatien Tshishimbi, MSF Medical Coordinator said in a statement released by MSF on Tuesday.

The population is vulnerable to infectious diseases like cholera because access to health care is difficult and the living conditions are poor, MSF said.

The international medical charity has established two cholera treatment centers and dispatched a team of health personnel to the affected areas to provide free treatment to the population.

In early November, the country’s health authorities in the region warned that cholera was spreading in parts of the region accompanied by a rise in COVID-19 cases.

Cholera, which is spread by ingesting fecal matter, causes acute watery diarrhea and can kill within hours if not treated.

Source: Xinhuanet

Covid vaccines began to show promise just months after the novel coronavirus started spreading across the globe. So why have decades of HIV/AIDS research yielded so little progress on a jab to prevent a disease that claimed some 680,000 lives in 2020?

As the globe marks World AIDS Day on Wednesday, why is there still no vaccine to protect people from the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)?

One answer is that the political will and colossal investment that have spurred on Covid vaccine development have largely been missing from AIDS vaccine research since HIV was discovered in 1983.

But another lies in the complexity of the science behind HIV.

“With Covid vaccines, researchers worry about the vaccine being able to fend off a handful of variants that have become particularly worrisome,” reads a June report by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).

“But for HIV, there are millions and millions of different viruses that have resulted from the virus’s stealth ability to rapidly mutate… It is this astonishing level of diversity that any HIV vaccine must contend with.”

Olivier Schwartz, head of the viruses and immunity unit at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, says that while most people can recover naturally from an initial coronavirus infection and thus acquire immunity, this is not the case for HIV.

“HIV mutates much more easily than Covid and so it is more difficult to generate so-called broadly neutralising antibodies that could prevent infection,” he said.

Only a handful of people naturally produce these antibodies when exposed to HIV.

Research into a vaccine has meant studying those rare responses, understanding how they work, and trying to replicate them in healthy people’s immune systems.

An mRNA jab?

Several dozen vaccines are being studied, with one by US firm Moderna seeking to use the same mRNA delivery method as its popular Covid vaccine.

The June report describing the research explains how the mRNA jab is meant to deliver instructions for a process called “germline targeting”.

This means “guiding the immune system, step by step, to induce antibodies that can counteract HIV”, the report explains.

So far, the technique is complex, involving an initial shot to activate important B-cells before several jabs attempt to spur the body into producing a range of antibodies.

Being able to visualise a way forward has given researchers hope, and some say it’s thanks in no small part to the pandemic.

“These last few years have seen unprecedented growth in our understanding of the immune system,” Serawit Bruck-Landais of French AIDS organisation Sidaction told AFP.

But even with seeming breakthroughs, Bruck-Landais says, progress on an HIV jab is “not enough to be able to say we will have an AIDS vaccine soon”.

The US clinical trials for the Moderna vaccine that were set to begin in August are still listed on the National Institutes of Health website as “not recruiting”.

‘Lack of investment’

Researchers looking into vaccines say they are overlooked in terms of funding.

“The market is too weak for pharmaceutical groups and there’s a disappointing lack of investment,” says Nicolas Manel, a research director at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM).

“Many researchers are very motivated, but they have to make do with the funds they have.”

In the absence of a vaccine, focus has historically been on promoting preventative measures like protected sex, clean needles, and overall better access to healthcare for marginalised populations.

Some 38 million people across the globe live with the virus.

Monsef Benkirane, research director at the France-based Institute of Human Genetics, points to important improvements in medicine that allow many people with HIV to live longer, healthier lives.

Importantly, by reducing an infected person’s viral load, HIV treatments today can vastly decrease or eliminate a person’s chances of transmitting HIV to another person.

But Benkirane says many people lack access to the treatments, while those who do have access sometimes struggle to follow through and take all the necessary medications.

“In addition to improving access to treatments, there are still problems with people actually sticking to the treatment regimens, even in Europe,” he said.

Source: AFP

The Dutch government on Friday ordered further restrictions including a nighttime closure of bars, restaurants and most stores to stem a record-breaking wave of COVID-19 cases that is threatening to overwhelm the country’s healthcare system.

The surge in the Netherlands, the worst in Western Europe, came even though 85% of the adult population have been vaccinated, with infections now rising most quickly among schoolchildren, who are not vaccinated.

“The (infection) numbers per day are high, higher, highest,” caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte said at a televised press conference. “That means that we can’t get there with just a few small adjustments.”

The current wave of Dutch cases, running above 20,000 infections per day for the past week, has continued despite restrictions including the reintroduction of face masks and closure of bars and restaurants after 8 p.m. imposed by Rutte’s government earlier this month.

Rutte said on Friday non-essential stores would be closed from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m., and masks would be required in secondary schools.

His government urged everyone who can to work from home, and if they cannot, to follow social distancing guidelines.

The new measures go into effect from Nov. 28.

Some experts had argued that a short, near-total lockdown, including school closures, would be needed to push infections down.

Law enforcement officials were preparing for possible unrest after a demonstration in The Hague on Friday to protest against the new measures.

A government proposal – which is not yet policy – to bar unvaccinated people from public places prompted three nights of rioting last weekend.

Dutch hospitals were instructed on Friday to postpone all non-emergency operations to free up beds in intensive care units. Some patients have been transferred to neighbouring Germany.

Source: REUTERS

Europe remains “in the firm grip” of COVID and the death toll on the continent could top 2.2 million this winter if current trends continue, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

Some 700,000 could die in the coming months, the WHO said, as cases creep up across Europe, prompting some countries to reimpose tough restrictions.

The WHO expects “high or extreme stress in intensive care units (ICUs) in 49 out of 53 countries between now and March 1, 2022”.

“Cumulative reported deaths are projected to reach over 2.2 million by spring next year,” it added, up from the current 1.5 million.

COVID-19 is the leading cause of death across Europe and Central Asia, the WHO reported, citing figures from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

The rise in Europe was being driven by a combination of the highly-contagious Delta variant, insufficient vaccination coverage and the easing of measures such as mask wearing and physical distancing, it said.

According to WHO data, COVID-related deaths increased last week to nearly 4,200 a day, doubling from 2,100 deaths a day at the end of September.

The WHO also said evidence was growing that vaccine-induced protection against infection and mild disease was declining.

“The COVID-19 situation across Europe and Central Asia is very serious. We face a challenging winter ahead,” regional director for WHO Europe, Hans Kluge, said in a statement.

He called for a “vaccine plus” approach, consisting of vaccinations, social distancing, the use of face masks and hand washing.

The WHO said face masks reduce COVID incidence by 53 percent according to a recent study, and “over 160,000 deaths could be prevented (by March 1) if universal mask coverage of 95 percent was achieved”.

(Source: AFP)