The worst is yet to come

The coronavirus continues to rage against Europe, where Belgium topped 20,000 dead on Sunday and Germany more than 40,000, amid new restrictions. And although vaccination is progressing, German head of government Angela Merkel has issued a strong warning: the coming weeks will be “the most difficult phase of the pandemic”.

Since China announced a year ago on January 11, 2020, the first death from covid-19, that of a man shopping in a market in Wuhan (center of the country), the coronavirus has killed more of one, 9 million people in the world, and plunged the planet into an unprecedented economic crisis.

A year later, the rapid spread of new, more contagious strains causes the cases to rebound and the risk of hospital collapse, as is the case in the United Kingdom, which has already passed 80,000 deaths, or in Germany, which has led to new restrictive measures all over the planet, from Canada to Sweden.

Bordering hospitals

The next few weeks will be “the most difficult phase of the pandemic”, with health workers working to the best of their ability, Merkel warned. Over 80% of beds intensive care units across the country are occupied.

Merkel highlighted the strong impact of increasing social contacts during the Christmas and New Year holidays, which are yet to be translated into statistics.

Meanwhile, Belgium exceeded 20,000 coronavirus-related deaths this Sunday. Half were elderly residents of nursing homes. With a rate of 1,725 ​​deaths per million inhabitants, Belgium is the country with the highest death rate in the world in proportion to its population.

In the UK, the health care system “is currently facing the most dangerous situation in living memory,” warned Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer of England. “If the virus continues on this journey, hospitals will face real difficulties, and it will be very soon,” he said.

Taking the example, Queen Elizabeth II, 94, and her husband Prince Philip, 99, administered their first injection of the covid-19 vaccine on Saturday at Windsor Castle, west London, where they are confined.

The government is aiming to vaccinate all UK adults by the fall and has taken the lead with 1.5 million people already vaccinated. The European country with the most deaths from the pandemic, which topped 80,000 deaths and 3 million infections on Saturday, has embarked on a race against time against the new strain.

While waiting for the development of vaccination campaigns, the slowness of which is strongly criticized, governments such as France and Sweden harden measures reduce contacts, at the risk of worsening the economic situation.

In France, eight new departments advanced the curfew to 6 p.m., to the chagrin of food stores, and joined 15 departments which had already done so last weekend. In the rest of the country, the curfew applies from 8 p.m.

Investigations and new tests are stepped up in the country to achieve traceability of the British variant, of which forty cases have been detected.

Curfew in Canada

In Quebec, Canada, a nighttime curfew went into effect from Saturday to stop the second wave of covid-19, an unprecedented measure at the provincial level since the Spanish flu pandemic a century ago.

The acceleration of the pandemic has forced Sweden to break with its policy, which is much less strict than elsewhere. From this Sunday, he could toughen preventive measures, including the closure of shops and restaurants for the first time in some areas.

But the measures also raise boredom and revolts: in Denmark, where cases of the British strain are on the rise, on Saturday protests against restrictions they degenerated into clashes with the security forces and nine people were arrested. “Freedom for Denmark, we have had enough,” chanted the protesters.

Worrisome data in Latin America

Figures from Latin America and the Caribbean are also worrying. There, 529,080 deaths and 16,444,245 infections have been recorded to date, according to the AFP news agency on Sunday.

The worst-affected country in the region is Brazil, which with 202,631 deaths is the second most grieving country in the world after the United States, where 372,522 deaths from covid-19 have been confirmed in the past 24 hours.

But the pandemic does not give a truce in the rest of the continent either.

In Bolivia, there is a “very rapid escalation of infections,” said the government, which has found the country to be mired “in the second wave”. To date, Bolivia has accumulated 171,154 infected people and 9,328 deaths, and last Friday recorded a record of single-day infections (2,263).

In the Vatican, Pope Francis, 84, announced on Saturday that he would be vaccinated “next week” and called on to follow his example, denouncing “a suicidal denial that he could not explain” against the vaccine.

India, for its part, is aiming to vaccinate some 300 million people with one of the world’s largest vaccination campaigns against covid-19, which will begin in a week. The Asian giant is the second most affected country – behind the United States – with more than ten million confirmed cases.

To help “vulnerable countries” to access vaccines, the United Kingdom announced on Sunday that it had collected with its allies 1 billion dollars (820 million euros).

“We will only be safe from this virus when we are all safe, which is why we are focusing on a global solution to a global problem,” Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said.

Source: AFP

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