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- Experts, the worst of the Covid-19 disease is yet to come for the US, as daily cases hit a record high.
- Several companies developed vaccines to deal with the pandemic.
- The race has begun to vaccinate populations to limit the spread.
The United States recorded its highest daily death toll from coronavirus on Wednesday as the world prepares to turn the page in a grim year defined by the pandemic, with much of the world united in one hope for 2021 – that a host of new vaccines will do so. do. end the Covid-19.
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New Year’s Eve marks a year since the World Health Organization first mentioned a mysterious pneumonia in China later identified as Covid-19, which in 2020 killed more than 1.79 million people and devastated the world economy in unprecedented ways.
In the worst-affected country in the world, the US, the numbers continue to rise: on Wednesday more than 3,900 people died of Covid-19, a new record, raising the number of victims since the pandemic began to more than 19 , 7 million infections and 341000 lives. lost.
And experts believe the worst is yet to come, as US healthcare workers brace for a surge in cases after big holiday gatherings.
But international efforts helped develop vaccines in record time.
Lower cost vaccine
Britain on Wednesday approved a lower-cost vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, making it the third vaccine to gain approval in the Western world, after the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
Britain, hard hit by a troubling new strain of the virus and now divorced from the European Union due to Brexit, “will act to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted.
Unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the AstraZeneca and Oxford vaccines do not need to be stored at very low temperatures.
It can be stored, transported and handled under normal refrigeration conditions, which makes it easier and cheaper to administer, which is particularly important for less wealthy nations.
Hours later, Argentina became the second nation to approve the vaccine, and it was soon followed by El Salvador. Argentina and Mexico have agreements to distribute the vaccine in Latin America.
But the United States and the European Union indicated that they would not soon follow suit.
Moncef Slaoui, chief adviser for Operation Warp Speed, the US military-led vaccine effort, told reporters that he awaited approval “sometime in early April.”
He did not blame the British health agency, but said the United States was following its own tests and evaluations.
He also expressed hope that Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine, which, unlike the initially approved injections, only requires one dose, could be ready for approval in the US in the first half of February.
International trust
Russia and China also claim to have developed Covid-19 vaccines and have already started administering them.
Chinese pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm said Wednesday that its candidate’s phase 3 trials had shown 79% effectiveness, less than the 90% achieved by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
The firm has applied to China’s drug regulator for approval.
But Beijing has struggled to gain international trust for its vaccines, hampered by a lack of data transparency, as well as criticism over its handling of the initial virus outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
Earlier this week, a Chinese court imposed a four-year prison sentence on a citizen journalist who provided rare and unadorned reports from Wuhan on the early days of the pandemic.
A new official Chinese study said that infections in Wuhan may have been 10 times higher than official figures suggest.
The China Center for Disease Control found that 4.4% of the city’s 11 million residents had developed antibodies against the virus that causes Covid-19 in April, or about 480,000 infections, very above the official count of 50,000 cases to date.
Even as vaccines increase in Europe and North America, global infections have risen to more than 82 million.
Germany, which had handled the first wave of coronavirus relatively well, has been hit hard by the second.
More than 1,000 deaths a day were recorded for the first time, authorities said Wednesday, when Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that the country’s “difficult times” were going to last “for a long time yet.”
Germany is under partial lockdown, with most stores closed along with schools, restaurants, and cultural and leisure facilities, and high-level politicians are already pushing to extend closures beyond the current deadline of 10 December. January.
Experts believe the new variant in nearby Britain could be more contagious, contributing to a record number of daily cases in England and sparking fear as it spreads rapidly.
Indian authorities on Wednesday tried to trace tens of thousands of newcomers from Britain, as cases of the new variant doubled in 24 hours.
California became the second US state to detect the variant, after Colorado, with a 30-year-old San Diego man testing positive.
US government chief scientist Anthony Fauci said he was “not surprised” by the spread of the variant and cautioned that the nation “will likely see reports from other states.”
Ireland also announced tightening of coronavirus restrictions for at least a month, including closing non-essential retail stores and gyms.
“We will do whatever it takes to eliminate the virus,” Prime Minister Micheal Martin said in a televised address. “Now it is growing exponentially.”
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