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Johannesburg (AFP)
South Africa has banned the sale of alcohol and made masks mandatory in public starting Tuesday after a surge in coronavirus cases, as the World Health Organization warned that pandemics far more deadly than Covid-19 are looming.
Nations around the world are battling winter spikes in infections that have brought the global case burden to about 81 million, even as vaccine rollouts accelerate in North America and Europe.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a ban on the sale of alcohol on Monday, saying the masks will be mandatory in public after his country became the first in Africa to record one million cases.
“We have let our guard down and unfortunately now we are paying the price,” Ramaphosa said, blaming the “super spreader” social events and an “extreme lack of vigilance during the holiday period” for the increase.
Ramaphosa said the data shows that “binge drinking” leads to an increase in trauma cases reported in hospitals, putting “unnecessary” strain on public health facilities.
The escalating cases also forced authorities in Rio de Janeiro, one of Brazil’s hardest-hit cities, to announce on Monday that they will block access to beaches on December 31 to prevent crowds from celebrating New Year’s Eve.
And in Spain, where the death toll has exceeded 50,000, the Health Minister said the government would establish a registry of people who refuse to be vaccinated and share it with other member states of the European Union.
Vaccines in Spain and other EU countries started over the weekend, and authorities fear that vacillation and rejection of vaccines could hamper those efforts, especially due to misinformation campaigns on social media.
That was not a concern for Jacques Collineau, 75, a resident of a nursing home in Joue-les-Tours, France.
“Fear? Fear of what? I’ve been vaccinated against the flu before, now it’s the same,” Collineau said when he received the vaccine Monday.
“We don’t make vaccines to kill people, we make vaccines to try to save them.”
– ‘This is not the biggest’ –
The coronavirus has devastated lives and economies around the world, but the WHO warned on Monday that worse pandemics could occur in the future, urging the world to take preparedness seriously.
“This is a wake-up call,” WHO emergency chief Michael Ryan told reporters at a briefing marking a year since the UN agency first learned of the spread of the new virus. in China.
“This pandemic … has spread around the world extremely rapidly and has affected every corner of this planet, but this is not necessarily the largest,” Ryan added.
“We need to prepare for something that may be even more serious in the future.”
While great scientific progress was made to study the virus and develop vaccines at record speed, WHO senior adviser Bruce Aylward warned that the world was far from ready for the next pandemic.
“We are in the second and third waves of this virus and we are not yet ready to deal with and manage them,” he said.
“While we are better prepared … we are not fully prepared for this one, much less the next one.”
– ‘Have a good trip, 2020!’ –
The warnings were backed up by worrying figures and trends reported around the world.
South Korea, one of the nations hailed for its success during the first months of the pandemic, recorded its highest daily death toll since the start of the pandemic on Tuesday as it battled a third wave of infections.
India, with the second-highest number of cases in the world, reported the detection of the new coronavirus strain, but officials said the nation’s pandemic patterns have not changed because of that.
Highlighting the frustration and suffering caused by the crisis, presentations from around the world arrived for the Goodbye Day celebration in New York City.
When Raúl, a resident of Westbury, New York, was asked what he wanted to say goodbye to, he replied: “Like anyone else, I want to get rid of the coronavirus. That’s it!”
burs-qan / heh
© 2020 AFP
