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Border restrictions are tightening around the world today in the face of a relentless threat from coronavirus.
It comes after a weekend in which anger over social distancing rules turned into fierce fighting in the Netherlands.
The United States will join with France, Israel and Sweden in raising the drawbridge towards certain arrivals, with particular concern about new strains of the pathogen detected for the first time in Britain and South Africa.
The stipulations came as Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador became the latest public figure to test positive for the disease, and New Zealand reported its first community case in more than two months.
President Joe Biden will reimpose a ban on most non-U.S. Citizens who have been to Britain, Brazil, Ireland and much of Europe, in addition to adding South Africa to the list, said a senior White House official .
Biden last week tightened the rules for wearing masks and ordered a quarantine for people flying into the country, where there have been more than 25 million cases as of yesterday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also stepping up its efforts to track coronavirus mutations and maintain effective vaccines and treatments against new variants until herd immunity is achieved.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the biggest immediate culprit for the slow distribution of vaccines was a supply shortage compounded by inventory confusion inherited from the Trump administration.
“The fact that we do not know today, five days after this administration and weeks of planning, how much vaccine we have gives you an idea of the challenges that have left us,” he told Fox News yesterday.
Since it emerged in late 2019, Covid-19 has killed more than 2.1 million people, with nearly 99 million cases recorded worldwide, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Yesterday France began requiring a negative PCR test for sea and air arrivals from European Union neighbors.
Sweden said it would ban entry from neighboring Norway for three weeks, after cases of the most infectious strain first discovered in the UK were detected in Oslo.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country was “closing the skies tightly, with rare exceptions” for both arrivals and departures for a week.
The protests against the coronavirus curfew in the Netherlands yesterday degenerated into clashes with the police and looting in cities across the country.
It came a day after a Covid-19 testing center caught fire in the northern village of Urk.
Police used water cannons and dogs in Amsterdam, public television NOS reported, after hundreds of people gathered to protest the 9 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. curfew, which will last until February 10.
At least 30 people were arrested in Eindhoven, where Mayor John Jorritsma told reporters that if the country continued “down this road, then I think we are heading for a civil war.”
In New Zealand, officials confirmed the first case of Covid-19 in the community for more than two months, in a 56-year-old woman who recently returned from Europe, prompting Australia to suspend quarantine-free travel from the country. neighbor for at least 72 hours.
Scientists say the only way out of the pandemic is large-scale vaccines, but rollout has faltered in many places.
Egypt began its program, with a doctor and nurse receiving the Sinopharm jab made in China.
Health Minister Hala Zayed said Cairo had signed agreements for shipments of vaccines from British, Chinese and Russian companies, totaling around 100 million doses, enough for about half of Egypt’s population.
In India, about a third of people do not show up for vaccination appointments, and fear of side effects is high after reports of some cases of serious reactions were widely disseminated through the media and services courier.
Australia’s medical regulator formally approved the Pfizer vaccine, and the first doses are expected to be administered in late February, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.
On the long-term economic impacts of the pandemic, poverty-fighting group Oxfam said the emergency was exacerbating inequality.
“The 1,000 richest people on the planet recovered their losses from Covid-19 in just nine months, but the world’s poorest could take more than a decade to recover,” the group said.
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