Moscow (AFP)
Russia announced on Monday new records for daily deaths from the coronavirus in Moscow and St. Petersburg, a host city of Euro football where supporters have been infected, while the Delta variant continues its global boom, further pushing away the prospects for a return to normal life.
According to official data, the Russian capital has recorded 124 dead and St. Petersburg 110 in the past 24 hours, surpassing the records that the two largest Russian cities had already broken over the weekend.
According to the mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin, nearly 2,000 people are hospitalized every day because of Covid-19 in this city of more than 12 million inhabitants and about 75% of the available beds are occupied.
A general confinement, as in spring 2020, is however not envisaged for the moment in order to preserve the economy.
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As for St. Petersburg, the quarter-final of Euro football, which will pit Switzerland against Spain, will take place on Friday despite the epidemic outbreak, organizers told AFP on Monday.
And this, while nearly 300 supporters returning to Finland after attending the Euro in this city have tested positive for Covid-19.
They were present on June 21 for the match between their country and Belgium.
The Russian vaccination campaign has been lagging behind since December, amid widespread public mistrust and despite repeated calls from President Vladimir Putin.
Russia is, with 133,893 deaths recorded by the government, the most bereaved European country and one of the hardest hit in the world.
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The statistics agency Rosstat, which has a broader definition of deaths linked to Covid-19, recorded some 270,000 deaths at the end of April.
Germany is closing its borders to travelers from Russia and also Portugal on Tuesday, with the exception of German citizens or permanent residents.
- New containments -
Identified for the first time in India, the more contagious Delta variant is now present in at least 85 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), raising fears, despite vaccination campaigns, of new waves of the disease. pandemic.
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It has forced some states to review their strategies.
Bangladesh, which recorded 119 dead on Sunday, a daily record, closed almost all of its public transport on Monday, forcing thousands of employees in the capital Dhaka (20 million inhabitants) to walk to work , before strict confinement on Thursday.
In Australia, new cases attributed to the Delta variant, which appeared following flaws in the quarantine systems for travelers coming from abroad, were recorded on Monday in several cities.
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Sydney is confined for two weeks, Darwin until Friday, Perth for at least four days from Tuesday while the inhabitants of Brisbane saw themselves in the day of Tuesday respondents to stay at home three days.
Distancing rules have been tightened in other regions.
Neighboring Indonesia, the country currently most affected by Covid-19 in Southeast Asia, on Sunday recorded a new daily record of contaminations (more than 21,000 new cases), at a time when hospitals are overwhelmed, causing fear a generalized failure of the health system.
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South Africa, the most affected country on the African continent and which is suffering the full brunt of a third wave of the pandemic due to the Delta variant, announced on Monday that it had passed the threshold of 60,000 deaths.
New restrictions were announced on Sunday.
- Italy relaxes -
Conversely Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic with more than 127,472 dead, is continuing its easing momentum.
Masks will no longer be mandatory outdoors, except in crowded places - a much anticipated measure from the north to the south of the peninsula, currently swept by a heat wave with temperatures that can exceed 40 ° Celsius locally.
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The curfew was also lifted on Monday in Valle d'Aosta (north-west), the last Italian region where it was still in force.
The new British Minister of Health, Sajid Javid, meanwhile maintained the government's objective of lifting on July 19 the last restrictions still in force in England despite the increase in the number of contaminations.
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However, Hong Kong will ban all flights from the United Kingdom from July 1 in an attempt to curb contamination, after discovering several cases of a mutation linked to the Delta variant among travelers arriving from this country.
In Pakistan, hundreds of people have invaded a vaccination center in Islamabad to demand to be vaccinated.
They mostly work abroad and said they needed to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is hard to find in this country, to be allowed to travel to the Gulf states.
Regarding AstraZeneca, a study published on Monday shows that an interval of several months between the first and the second doses improves protection against Covid-19.
This Oxford University study sees it as a "reassuring" element for countries with supply problems.
In Brazil, three senators have asked the Supreme Court to open an investigation against President Jair Bolsonaro, whom they accuse of turning a blind eye to a corruption scandal in the purchase of anti-Covid vaccines.
The pandemic has killed nearly four million people around the world since the end of December 2019, according to an assessment established by AFP from official sources on Monday.
The United States is the country most affected both in terms of death toll (604,105) and cases (33,639,513).
And after plummeting for two months, the number of contaminations has stagnated since mid-June, reaching a plateau due to peaks of infections in the least vaccinated areas.
© 2021 AFP