Geneva (AFP)

The WHO is now calling for vaccination in all countries "in the next 100 days" to deal with the pandemic which has claimed more than two million lives worldwide.

In total, 2,000,066 deaths have been recorded, for 93,321,070 declared cases, according to a count made by AFP from official reports provided by the authorities on Friday at 18:25 GMT.

Europe, with 650,560 dead, is the most affected region, ahead of Latin America / Caribbean (542,410) and the United States / Canada (407,090).

"I want to see vaccination start in all countries within the next 100 days," agency director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference in Geneva, as campaigns have not started for it. moment that almost exclusively in rich countries.

The emergency committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) for its part called on Friday to extend the sequencing of the genome of the variants of the new coronavirus, more contagious and which raise fears of a resurgence of the pandemic.

Germany has listed 22,368 new cases of contamination over the last 24 hours, for a total of 2,000,958, announced the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), and Chancellor Angela Merkel is pleading for significantly tightened restrictions.

Hope in the face of the pandemic, at least 35.61 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have already been administered worldwide, in at least 58 countries and territories, according to an AFP count from official sources on Friday .

But the American laboratory Pfizer announced Friday that its vaccine deliveries would slow down in late January-early February, time to make changes in the production process.

These delays have been announced to the countries of the European Union, causing great concern.

Health ministers from six EU countries (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Sweden) expressed in a joint letter their "serious concern".

France will have to "adjust the pace of vaccinations" against the coronavirus due to the "sharp drop" expected in deliveries of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine in the coming weeks, for its part declared a source within the executive.

However, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Pfizer assured the EU that the doses promised in the first quarter would be delivered as planned.

- New containment in Portugal -

India, the second most populous nation on the planet with 1.3 billion inhabitants, begins on Saturday the vaccination of 300 million people against the Covid-19, a phenomenal challenge complicated by security constraints, uncertain infrastructure and public mistrust.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated sharply in most parts of the world over the past seven days, with 724,700 new cases recorded per day (+ 10% compared to the previous week), a record, according to an AFP report stopped at Thursday.

According to the WHO, the number of countries and territories where the variant initially identified in Great Britain is found is 50 and it is 20 for the variant identified in South Africa, but the organization considers this assessment very likely under estimated.

Another mutation, originating in the Brazilian Amazon and whose discovery Japan announced on Sunday, could impact the immune response according to the WHO, which mentions "a worrying variant".

The United Kingdom has decided to close its borders on Friday to arrivals from all South American countries as well as Portugal, due to this new change.

Portugal begins a new general confinement on Friday, which will remain in force for at least a month.

The streets of central Lisbon were less crowded on Friday, but many of its residents had gone out to take their children to school.

"There are fewer people in the street but look, the buses are full!", Testified Maria Andrade, a 71-year-old woman who decided to open her small restaurant for take-out.

France will, for its part, extend a curfew to its entire territory on Saturday from 6 p.m. (5 p.m. GMT) and will require travelers coming from a country outside the European Union to test negative for Covid-19.

This country recorded in 2020, a year marked by the epidemic, some 53,900 more deaths than in 2019 (+ 9%) from all causes, according to a provisional report made public on Friday.

- Explosion of cases in Spain -

Italy, which has exceeded one million people vaccinated against the new coronavirus, will reconfine from Monday three regions deemed at high risk of contagion to fight against the pandemic, Lombardy (north), Sicily (south) and Alto Adige (north).

In one month, the incidence of the epidemic has more than doubled in Spain, from 194 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants in two weeks to 523 on Thursday, according to the Ministry of Health.

The Madrid region announced new restrictions on Friday.

The resurgence of the Covid-19 does not spare China, which has placed in forced quarantine 20,000 inhabitants of rural areas in the province of Hebei (northeast), according to a state media.

This country, which had recorded its first death from the virus on Thursday since May, also reported on Friday 144 new patients with Covid-19, a figure not seen since March.

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