Berlin (AFP)
The Covid-19 epidemic is accelerating with 20,000 additional deaths on Sunday in Belgium and 40,000 in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, warning that the worst is yet to come while waiting for the vaccinations to take effect.
Since Beijing announced just a year ago, on January 11, 2020, of the first death of Covid-19, a man who was shopping in a Wuhan market, the virus has killed more than 1.9 million people on the planet that he has further plunged into an unprecedented economic crisis.
A year later, the spread of new, more contagious variants led to a further increase in the number of patients and a risk of asphyxiation in hospitals, as in the United Kingdom, which exceeded the threshold of 80,000 deaths, and in Germany, as well as new restrictive measures, from Quebec to Sweden.
The coming weeks will be "the hardest phase of the pandemic" with medical staff working to the maximum of their abilities, Angela Merkel warned.
More than 80% of the beds in intensive care units in his country were occupied.
Especially since, stressed the Chancellor, the full impact of the intensification of social contacts during the Christmas and New Year periods is not yet visible in the statistics.
Belgium passed 20,000 dead on Sunday, half living in retirement homes.
With a rate of 1,725 deaths per million inhabitants, this country ranks first in the world for mortality reported to the population.
In the United Kingdom, the health system is "currently facing the most dangerous situation we can remember," warned Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England.
"If the virus continues on this trajectory, hospitals will be in real difficulty, and that very soon."
While waiting for the acceleration of vaccination campaigns, the slowness of which is criticized, governments, as in France and Sweden, are toughening measures to reduce contacts, at the risk of aggravating the economic gloom.
With his country currently in difficulty, with one of the highest infection rates in the world, Czech President Milos Zeman announced on Sunday that he had asked Israel to share its expertise in vaccination.
An appeal made as thousands of people demonstrated in central Prague to protest the ongoing campaign in this area and the strict government restrictions aimed at stemming the epidemic.
"We are not sheep!", "No to vaccination!"
and "let's open the Czech Republic!", chanted the protesters.
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In France, eight new departments are advancing their curfew to 6:00 p.m., to the chagrin of food businesses, joining fifteen departments which did so last weekend.
In the rest of the country - which has a total of around 100 departments - it is set at 8 p.m.
In Monaco, it will be brought forward to Monday at 7 p.m.
Forty cases of contamination by the British variant have so far been detected in France.
In Marseille (south-east), the situation is considered "worrying".
Russian health authorities announced on Sunday that they had discovered a first case of this variant in a person returning from the United Kingdom.
In Quebec, a nighttime curfew came into effect on Saturday evening to stem the second wave of coronavirus, an unprecedented measure in Canada on a province-wide basis since the Spanish flu epidemic a century ago.
The acceleration of the epidemic has forced Sweden to break with its policy until then less strict than elsewhere.
From Sunday, it can toughen measures, including for the first time to close shops and restaurants in targeted areas.
But these devices are also causing revolts: in Denmark, where cases linked to the British mutant strain are increasing, demonstrations against the restrictions degenerated into clashes on Saturday and nine people were arrested.
Leading by example, Queen Elizabeth II, 94, and her husband Prince Philip, 99, received their first injection of the novel coronavirus vaccine on Saturday at Windsor Castle, west London, where they are confined.
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The government aims to have all adults in the UK vaccinated by autumn and has already taken the lead with 1.5 million people having already received their first injection.
To help "vulnerable countries" to also access vaccines, the government announced Sunday that it had collected from its allies one billion dollars (820 million euros).
In Jordan, Prime Minister Bicher al-Khasawneh and several other members of the government were injected with a dose of the Chinese vaccine from Sinopharm, the second to be approved in this kingdom after the one designed by the American Pfizer and the German BioNTech.
Recently contaminated by the new coronavirus, the Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, for his part returned to Germany on Sunday to be treated for complications to a foot linked to Covid-19, according to public television.
The Israelis began their first work week on Sunday since new restrictions were imposed to tighten the third nationwide lockdown, implemented last month.
The schools, which had remained open during the first confinement, this time remained closed.
In Gaza, mosques reopened at dawn, following a decision by the leaders of Hamas (Islamist) to allow Sunday-Thursday prayers only.
burx-cac / at / fio / bds
© 2021 AFP