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The first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab arrived in Italy, Spain and France on Saturday, ready to be distributed to nursing homes and care staff.
PARIS – Several European Union (EU) nations were ready to start vaccinating their most vulnerable groups on Sunday when a new variant of the coronavirus spread internationally and the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the current pandemic will not be the last.
The first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab arrived in Italy, Spain and France on Saturday, ready to be distributed to nursing homes and care staff.
The approval and launch of vaccines has raised hopes that 2021 could bring a respite from the pandemic, which has killed more than 1.7 million people since it emerged in China late last year.
However, in a video message ahead of the first International Epidemic Preparedness Day, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was time to learn the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“History tells us that this will not be the last pandemic and epidemics are a reality,” Tedros said.
“Any effort to improve human health is doomed unless it addresses the critical human-animal interface, and the existential threat of climate change that is making our Earth less habitable,” he added.
101-YEAR-OLD WOMAN VACCINATED
A 101-year-old woman in a nursing home became the first person in Germany to be vaccinated on Saturday, in what the country’s health minister called a “day of hope.”
The first blows were also distributed in Hungary and Slovakia.
The three countries joined China, Russia, Britain, Canada, the United States, Switzerland, Serbia, Singapore and Saudi Arabia, which have also started their vaccination campaigns.
“We will regain our freedom, we will be able to hug each other again,” Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said, urging his compatriots to receive the vaccine.
But surveys show that only 57% of Italians intend to take the hit, while scientists estimate that herd immunity can only be achieved if 75 to 80% have it.
Outbreaks of the virus continue to impose stricter restrictions, with Israel entering a two-week blanket lockdown from Sunday and France’s health minister saying his government would take similar action in the event of a post-Christmas spike.
The nervousness was also maintained by a new strain that has emerged in Britain and reached several other European countries and Japan.
Four cases were confirmed in Madrid on Saturday, although the patients were not seriously ill, according to health official Antonio Zapatero, who said “there is no need for alarm.”
Canada reported Saturday that it had detected two variant cases in the province of Ontario in a couple who had not recently traveled or had high-risk contacts with other people.
The new strain, which experts fear is more contagious, prompted more than 50 countries to impose travel restrictions on the UK.
LICORICE CURE CLAIM
Before a WHO investigation into the origins of the disease, China’s communist leadership issued a statement praising the “extremely extraordinary glory” of its handling of the virus, state media reported.
China has largely slowed the domestic spread of the virus and was one of the only major economies to report growth this year. But he has been accused of covering up the initial outbreak and thus helping the virus to “spread internationally.”
Australian great golfer Greg Norman became the last known name in quarantine, saying on Saturday that he was isolated at home after spending Christmas Day in hospital with symptoms of COVID-19.
Around the world, people continued to be urged to adhere to social distancing guidelines, even as millions of people were celebrating Christmas.
Swiss Health Minister Alain Berset said on Saturday that his country had placed emphasis on personal responsibility.
But he admitted that it hadn’t worked and that the government made a mistake by loosening restrictions too much, resulting in some of the fiercest infection rates in Europe during the second wave of the pandemic.
In authoritarian post-Soviet Turkmenistan, where the government says no coronavirus cases have been detected, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov claimed that licorice root could cure COVID-19.
“Licorice stops the development of the coronavirus,” said former dentist Berdymukhamedov, without citing any scientific evidence.
Turkmenistan has “sufficient reserves” of licorice, he added, and ordered the national academy of sciences to study the supposed effects of the plant on health.
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