Merkel warns the worst of the pandemic is yet to come

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel, warned that the coming weeks will be “the most difficult phase of the pandemic”, where more than 80% of intensive care unit beds are occupied.

About half a million Germans have received the first of two doses of the vaccine, with an average of around 40,000 vaccinations performed per day in the country of 83 million people.

Merkel had previously pledged that her government would increase the pace of its national immunization program, after agreeing last week with the 16 leaders of federal states to adopt new restrictions and extend the lockdown until January 31.

Immersed in the second wave of the pandemic, Germany has exceeded 40,000 daily deaths due to coronavirus and warned of the high occupancy rate of intensive care hospitals, as Belgium exceeded 20,000 deaths, two dramatic figures which do not appear to decrease since mid-Decemberas European governments juggle to speed up their vaccination plans and impose new restrictions.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the government body responsible for fighting infectious diseases in Germany, announced 16,946 cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours and 465 deaths, bringing the total number of infections and deaths to 1908,527 and 40,343 respectively. .

Belgium, for its part, with some 11.5 million inhabitants, is one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic by recording a rate of 1,725 ​​deaths per million inhabitants, one of the highest in the world.

The country, whose capital is home to the headquarters of the European Union (EU), has passed the tragic threshold of 20,000 deaths, at least half of which were elderly living in nursing homes, which is why this week the government has given priority to vaccinating this at-risk group.

Meanwhile, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that around 2 million people were vaccinated last week in the UK, the first country to start mass vaccination on December 8.

However, Hancock’s remarks came the same day the British medical director warned that “the situation has deteriorated even more” since last Monday, when the national alert level was first raised in the category. the highest.

In Catalonia, one of the worst affected regions in Spain, new restrictions have been applied to reduce infections, but the director of the Catalan health service, Adrià Comella, said the measures were struggling to work.

He also predicted that “Over the next week and the following week, we are expected to continue entering more hospital beds.”.