Doctors see little relief from vaccination for months

German doctors are daunting hopes that the pandemic will ease quickly. It should be clear that “vaccination will hardly provide any relief, at least in the first three months of the new year,” Marburger Bund President Susanne Johna of the Funke media group said Saturday. While Britain will receive two million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine per week starting in mid-January, the metropolises of Seoul and Tokyo are facing further emergency measures.

According to the “Rheinischer Post”, the president of the German association of emergency and intensive care physicians, Uwe Janssens, does not expect lasting relaxation in intensive care units until the summer. The president of the Medical Association, Klaus Reinhardt, says “Bild”, we must make it clear to the people “that we are now two, three or four months old, which will require everyone’s effort.”

Meanwhile, the UK is pressing the accelerator with vaccines to slow the spread of the coronavirus. After the controversial vaccine from the national company AstraZeneca was approved on Wednesday alone, two million doses of vaccine per week will be delivered to the government of the former EU member from mid-month.

“By the third week of January we should be at two million a week,” the newspaper “The Times” quoted an anonymous employee of the team that is developing the vaccine together with the University of Oxford. AstraZeneca did not provide any comments. Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered more than 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Rising crown numbers prompted authorities in the Asian metropolises of Seoul and Tokyo to take stricter measures. In the South Korean capital, restrictions on social contacts will extend until January 17, a representative of the health authority in Seoul announced on Saturday. The Japanese daily Nikkei reported that the governor of Tokyo would request emergency measures from the central government.

Until now, the two Asian states had overcome the first and second wave of pandemics without any problem, South Korea was one of the few countries that managed to survive without a national blockade. However, all gatherings of more than four people were recently banned in the Seoul metropolitan area. In South Korea, 824 new cases were registered on Friday, representing a slight decrease compared to the previous day (1,029). In Tokyo, a record 1,337 cases were published on New Year’s Eve.