Coronavirus: update on the pandemic in the world

2022-03-11T13:14:36.518Z

New measures, new reports and highlights: an update on the latest developments in the Covid-19 pandemic around the world.

China is reconfiguring

Faced with its worst epidemic outbreak in two years, China had to resolve on Friday to confine the large city of Changchun, in the northeast of the country.

In this city of nine million inhabitants, only one person per household is now allowed to go out, once every two days, to ensure supplies, said the town hall, which is preparing to screen the entire population.

This confinement is the largest announced in China since that of the metropolis of Xi'an (north) and its 13 million inhabitants at the end of last year.

"Critical situation" in Germany, rebound in France

Germany is in a “critical” health situation due to the increase in the number of Covid-19 cases, the Minister of Health warned on Friday, still betting on compulsory vaccination.

In France, his counterpart reported a "rebound" in the epidemic, highlighting the need for fragile people to "continue to protect themselves".

More than 18 million dead worldwide, according to a study

The Covid-19 pandemic would have caused more than 18 million deaths worldwide between the beginning of 2020 and the end of 2021, more than three times the official toll, according to a study published in the journal The Lancet.

While the official figure counts 5.94 million deaths worldwide between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, various works have deemed it to be highly underestimated and have attempted to better assess the overall assessment of the pandemic.

Valneva vaccine: 1st deliveries to Europeans in spring 2022

The Franco-Austrian laboratory Valneva plans to deliver the first doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to Europe in the second quarter of 2022, the company said.

This vaccine is “currently the only inactivated and adjuvanted vaccine candidate against Covid-19 in clinical development in Europe”, underlines Valneva.

"Serious" food crisis for refugees in Hong Kong

Nearly three-quarters of refugees and asylum seekers living in Hong Kong face "serious" food difficulties, according to a survey released Friday by an aid organization.

Fearing a containment of the city to curb an unprecedented epidemic of Covid, the inhabitants emptied the shelves of the supermarkets.

EU: companies and airports call for an end to health restrictions

Do away with vaccination certificates, tests and even the mask to travel by plane in Europe?

The main airport and airline organizations asked for it in a joint statement on Friday, believing that collective immunity is sufficient to return to pre-crisis rules.

More than 6 million dead

The pandemic has officially killed at least 6,026,306 people worldwide since the end of December 2019, out of more than 451 million confirmed contaminations, according to a report established by AFP on Friday at 11:00 GMT.

The United States is the country with the most deaths (965,464), ahead of Brazil (654,086), India (515,714) and Russia (359,585).

But compared to the population, the countries where the epidemic has caused the most damage are Peru with 641 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, Bulgaria (518) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (476).

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, taking into account the excess mortality directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19, that the toll of the pandemic could be two to three times higher than that officially established.

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