Coronavirus: new restrictions in Europe | Stra …

With a marked increase in coronavirus cases and the threat posed by the new UK variant due to its high transmission capacity, the situation in Europe it is more and more critical. This Sunday, several countries have applied new restrictions to stop the spread of infections, while developing one of the most important vaccination campaigns in history.

In Germany, one of the first countries to start vaccination against covid-19, 338,809 people have already been vaccinated, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the government entity in charge of the fight against infectious diseases.

However, in the past 24 hours, 10,315 new coronavirus infections and 312 deaths have been recorded, bringing the total to 1.76 million infections and 34,272 deaths, figures which could be higher given that they are carried out. non-working days. fewer tests and some offices submit their data with delays.

The country is one of the ten most infected countries, with Hungary and Slovakia, who decided not to wait until Sunday, December 27, when European Union (EU) member countries launched the campaign in a coordinated fashion, and began administering the Pfizer / BioNTech injection late the day before.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán criticized the EU strategy for the distribution of doses and was not “satisfied” with the “pace” of acquisition of vaccines by the bloc. “There are manufacturers whose products were already available in Canada, the United Kingdom and Israel, for example in the EU,” he denounced. And he shot: “We are taking care of the network of contacts in the East, since Brussels does not.”

In addition broke away from the media campaign against Sputnik V circulating in several countries around the world and said it was a “good” option, although he maintains his reservations about its scope as he believes that “probably” there will not be enough doses at the ‘future due to limited production capacities’, so the one made in China seems to be ‘more promising’ since it could be ‘sooner and in greater quantity’.

France, for its part, continues with the curfew which, given the increase in cases, had to be extended this weekend between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. In recent days, the French government has also faced a series of criticisms of the speed of your vaccination campaign.

“We do not take stock of the vaccination policy in 6 days,” Minister of Transport Jean-Baptiste Djebbari told the channel. BFMTV. According to the official, the goal is to vaccinate 26 million people by next summer, a figure that doubles the figure initially estimated.

Italy, where there is also an increase in infections, will return from this Monday in the “orange zone”, which will allow movement between municipalities and the reopening of shops, but will return to the “red zone” on Tuesday 5 and Wednesday 6 during the feast of San Esteban, a bridge traditional tourist attraction in Italy, with the aim of restricting the crowds of people.

In the country, which has accumulated a total of 2.14 million infections and 74,985 deaths from the virus, more than 84,000 people have already been vaccinated. Last week, the government announced that it would not rule out making the coronavirus vaccine compulsory if “in the coming months” the inoculation does not reach the two-thirds of the population necessary to consider immunity from mass.

In the case of Swiss, which had initially adopted a more flexible strategy against the coronavirus, the government ended up leaning towards a more active strategy with a month of strict quarantine, to avoid a third wave during the end-of-year holidays. In fact, the authorities They even admitted to underestimating the pandemic situation in the country., which currently strikes with more than 4,000 cases and 100 deaths per day.

“Between July and September, we underestimated the situation. We thought we could control the virus, but that did not happen”, admitted the new president of the Swiss Confederation, Guy Parmelin.

meanwhile at United KingdomPrime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Sunday that he would tighten restrictions even further in an attempt to curb the contagion curve, which this weekend reached a record of nearly 58,000 new cases. Among the possible restrictive measures, he said, could be the closure of schools.

“I have become completely used to the idea of ​​doing whatever it takes to contain this virus,” Johnson explained in the rise of Wave 2 and with a new, more contagious variant circulating in part of the country. In total, the UK already has nearly 2.6 million infections and more than 74,500 deaths from coronavirus.

The British variant, which has already spread to several countries around the world, was detected this Sunday also in Portugal. According to the public broadcaster RT, it is estimated that 16 people could be infected with this virus mutation. In the last 24 hours, the country recorded 3,389 infections and 73 deaths from covid-19, bringing the totals to 427,254 and 7,118 deaths, respectively.