“The coronavirus seems to have adapted very well …

The world must prepare because the coronavirus “will stay with us for a long time,” warned the head of the European health agency Andrea Ammon, director of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC, for its acronym in English) on Friday. ).

“It seems like he’s adapted very well to humans. So we have to prepare for what’s left with us,” the scientist explained. “It wouldn’t be the first virus to stay with us indefinitely, so that’s not an unusual feature for a virus,” added the head of the Stockholm-based agency.

While vaccines significantly reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19, scientists are still unsure whether they also prevent transmission of the virus. The variants, especially South African and Brazilian, complicate the situation, as it is suspected that they may decrease the effectiveness of the vaccine.

“The question is, what does this mean for the effectiveness of the vaccine,” Ammon warned. For the scientist, “it is possible that the same thing will happen, or that at some point (the virus) stabilizes and we can use a vaccine for a long time”.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization mission to the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first cases of covid-19 were detected, failed to identify the origin of the virus, ruling out that it comes from a laboratory.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of WHO, stressed at a remote press conference held in Geneva with head of mission, Peter Ben Embarek, that the team had carried out “very important scientific work under the circumstances very difficult “.

For the head of the agency, “questions have been raised as to whether certain assumptions have been ruled out and I want to confirm that all assumptions remain open.” He noted that “we have always said that this mission will not find all the answers, but added important information that brings us closer to understanding the origin of the virus.”

Vaccination

Vaccination, on the other hand, continues at a different pace around the world, and in some cases with an obvious lack of doses, as in Brazil. In the South American giant, the vaccination of the population began late, and is already threatened by the lack of vaccines, according to information from the authorities of several states.

The Rio de Janeiro mayor’s office warned in a statement that it only has enough doses to vaccinate “until Saturday” and in two towns on its outskirts, San Gonzalo and Niteroi, vaccination has already been suspended for several days this week.

The same is true in Salvador de Bahía and in the state of San Pablo, where health authorities also had to postpone the start of vaccination until March 1.

In Brazil, vaccination started three weeks ago and more than 4.5 million people have already been vaccinated. In the United States, some countries in the European Union, and other countries in South America, like Argentina, it started in late 2020.

For its part, in the United Kingdom, more than 14 million people belonging to three priority groups (over 70 years old, health workers and chronically ill) had received a first dose of AstraZeneca / Oxford or Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines on Friday, according to to official figures. More than 530,000 people have been vaccinated with the two necessary doses, which the British authorities have decided to space out for up to 12 weeks in order to be able to vaccinate as many people as possible.

In France, health authorities advised this Friday to “offer a single dose” of the covid-19 vaccine to people who have already contracted the disease, thus becoming the first country to make this recommendation. People with coronavirus “have developed an immunological memory after infection” and “the single dose of the vaccine will therefore play a reminder role”, explained the French National Authority for Health (HAS).

In Italy, the ban on travel between the regions has been extended from this Friday for another ten days as part of measures to fight the pandemic, according to what was reported by official sources.

Finally, and to curb the increase in infections, Portugal maintains “border controls” with Spain at certain points and limits movement between the two countries, with the exception of the transport of goods, border crossings and emergency services.