Washington (AFP)
Joe Biden on Tuesday promised "a war effort" to relaunch the vaccination program of the United States, the country most heavily affected by Covid-19, whose number of cases has exceeded 100 million worldwide.
The goal is to order 200 million additional doses of Covid-19 vaccine in order to be able to vaccinate the entire American population by the end of the summer, he announced.
As the United States surpassed the threshold of 25 million confirmed cases and 425,000 dead, the new White House tenant on Tuesday presented measures to speed up vaccine distribution, which has experienced delays and logistical problems at the end of Donald Trump's term.
"It's a war effort," he said, citing a potential death toll of 500,000 at the end of February.
Contrasting with the minimization of risks and conflicting messages about mask wearing and barrier gestures that have characterized the Trump presidency, he warned that while waiting for collective immunity, "it is the masks, not the vaccines, that are the best defense ".
Vaccination began a month ago: more than 63.5 million doses have been administered in at least 68 countries or territories, according to AFP counts.
But the vaccine gap between rich and poor is widening, worried the World Health Organization (WHO).
- Acceleration of cases in Portugal -
Another striking figure, a sign that the pandemic is not weakening, the United Kingdom on Tuesday became the first country in Europe to exceed 100,000 deaths from the new coronavirus.
Currently re-defined, it is in its third wave of the pandemic, much more virulent due to a variant considered to be much more contagious, potentially more lethal, and which has already spread all over the planet.
According to the British daily The Times, the government will announce on Wednesday a plan obliging British nationals returning to their country from 30 countries considered to be at high risk, including Portugal, to observe a ten-day quarantine in hotels.
Non-British nationals from these countries will be purely and simply prohibited from entering the territory.
The implementation of these measures is expected to take three weeks, the newspaper said, and would require British travelers to pay 1,500 pounds (nearly 1,700 euros) to stay in hotels near airports where they would be kept and fed.
Portugal, despite the implementation ten days ago of a new general containment, is the country which has identified the most new cases in the world, reported to the population (849 cases per 100,000 inhabitants). last week.
- Icelandic certificates -
The pandemic, which limits freedoms and has been testing the patience of populations for a year, causing clashes and riots, will cut the world's gross domestic product by 22,000 billion dollars between 2020 and 2025, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated on Tuesday. almost the equivalent of US GDP.
In the Netherlands, after three nights of violent riots in several large cities and towns to protest against the establishment of a curfew, a strong police presence seemed Tuesday evening to have prevented further unrest.
At least 184 people have been arrested and ten police officers injured in these riots, the "worst in forty years" according to Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
In Greece, police have announced that all gatherings will be banned for a week for "public health" reasons, while a student protest is scheduled for Thursday and another from the far left on Friday.
In Israel, after the first clashes on Monday, violence broke out again on Tuesday between police and ultra-Orthodox Jews opposed to health measures in Jerusalem.
Iceland on Tuesday became one of the first countries to issue "certificates" of vaccination to its nationals, with the "aim of facilitating the movement of people between countries", as the issue divides EU members , and that their value is not recognized internationally.
Germany, for its part, is considering "drastic measures", including "more stringent border controls, (...) but also reducing air traffic to Germany to almost nothing".
burx-uh / roc
© 2021 AFP