Bombay (AFP)
From Bombay to Bogota, tens of millions of people are facing new lockdowns and curfews this weekend, as anti-covid vaccination campaigns in Europe face shortages and fears of side effects.
While the number of new contaminations is soaring in India (+132,000 in 24 hours), the state of Maharashtra, the most affected by the second wave of coronavirus, is confined on Saturday for the whole weekend, a measure that affects 125 million people and will be repeated every weekend throughout the month of April.
"I am not at all in favor of confinement but I do not believe that the government has any other option," notes Neha Tyagi, 27, in Bombay, lamenting that the population "does not take the virus seriously".
Vaccine stocks are dwindling as 94 million doses of vaccine have been administered in this country of 1.3 billion people.
Mumbai's 72 private vaccination centers are closed until Tuesday while opening hours are restricted in public centers, threatened with closure if not supplied.
Neighboring Thailand is also trying to contain the tide by restricting the Buddhist New Year holiday, canceling street celebrations in Bangkok, while opening ten field hospitals in anticipation of an increase in the number of sick people.
More than a thousand contaminations have been recorded in the past two days, many among textile workers and sellers in markets, bringing the number of cases in the country to 4,081, which has recorded 26 deaths from the Covid.
The eight million inhabitants of Bogota, Colombia, will also have to confine themselves this weekend, announced the mayor of the capital Claudia Lopez.
Colombia is the second country most affected by the epidemic in Latin America behind Brazil, with nearly 2.5 million cases.
Argentina, also suffering from an exponential increase in contamination, has been under curfew for three weeks since Friday.
"In the last seven days alone, cases have increased by 36% nationwide and 53% in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires," said President Alberto Fernandez.
- Vascular problems?
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In Europe, where the third wave is hitting many countries hard, the already slow vaccination campaign is encountering new questions about the side effects potentially linked to the sera from Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and AstraZeneca.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced on Friday to examine a possible link between J & J's vaccine and cases of blood clots, and to expand its investigation into that of AstraZeneca, already implicated for the same kind of symptoms, to vascular problems.
For its part, its American counterpart, the FDA, announced on Friday that it had not established a "causal link" at this stage between the formation of blood clots and the injection of the J&J vaccine.
- Mistrust -
In the immediate term, mistrust of the AstraZeneca vaccine has prompted many countries to set age limits for its use, or even to suspend its use.
For example, it is reserved for over 30s in the United Kingdom, where it has been widely used, over 65s in Sweden, and over 60s in the Philippines, Portugal, the Netherlands or Germany, which is now considering purchasing the Russian vaccine Sputnik V.
The Spanish region of Castile and Leon and Denmark have completely discontinued the use of the AstraZeneca.
The effectiveness of vaccines also remains uncertain in the face of coronavirus variants.
To anticipate this problem, the EU will launch negotiations to order 1.8 billion additional doses of so-called "2nd generation" vaccines against Covid-19, with a binding delivery schedule, a source told AFP to the European Commission.
It intends to avoid supply problems this time around, while AstraZeneca has announced delays on half of its deliveries this week in the European Union.
In contrast to the problems of AstraZeneca, the Pfizer / BioNTech alliance has taken a new step by filing Friday in the United States a request for authorization of its vaccine for adolescents aged 12 to 15 years.
- Tighten the anti-Covid law -
In Germany, the government will toughen pandemic legislation next week, so it can impose restrictions on the whole country.
In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called the progression of the third wave "worrying" and called for "stricter measures" in several parts of the country.
The pandemic has infected more than 134.6 million people and killed at least 2.9 million people worldwide since the end of 2019, according to an AFP count on Friday.
burx-ahe-cac / cls
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