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Press conference at 11 am: Canton of Zurich presents vaccination strategy
The most populous canton in Switzerland will present its vaccination strategy at 11 am Follow the Zurich Health Directorate press conference live on the broadcast and on the ticker.
Federal Council advises on mutated virus in Britain
The Federal Council is holding a meeting today on the mutated corona virus that has emerged in Britain. Federal Council spokesman André Simonazzi announced this to the media in Bern.
During the morning, the Federal Council wanted to report on the decisions, Simonazzi said. There have been no flights between Switzerland and Great Britain since midnight Monday due to the mutated virus.
The mutated virus could be significantly more contagious than the known form. The Federal Office of Civil Aviation wrote late Sunday that the flight ban should prevent the new variant of the virus from spreading further.
Berlin Charité switches to emergency operation
The largest university clinic in Germany and Europe, the Berlin Charité, will once again operate on an emergency program for two weeks from Monday.
In this way, staff must come together to develop more intensive Covid-19 capabilities. The planned interventions do not take place during Christmas and the turn of the year, as the clinic announced last week. Emergencies will continue to be attended and tumor operations will be performed. The operation also continues in the rescue centers.
The Charité is currently expecting a further increase in crown patients. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), 16,643 more people in Germany tested positive for the corona virus on Sunday. This increases the total number to 1,510,652 positive tests.
Legend:
Ulrich Frei, a member of the Charité board of directors, speaks of a “crisis like the one we have not yet experienced.” The hospital is the first address for the treatment of Covid-19 patients with severe disease processes, but it also cares for infected people in normal wards.
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Aargau will vaccinate from January 5
If the IT solution provided by the federal government is ready for use on January 4, as announced, a regular start of vaccination will be possible in the canton of Aargau from January 5, announced the State Chancellery.
The development of the vaccination offer for the population will be staggered and adapted to the amount of vaccine available. In the first phase, especially vulnerable mobile people will be vaccinated in the two vaccination centers attached to the hospitals of the cantons of Aarau and Baden.
Mobile units supplied by vaccination centers are used to vaccinate non-mobile, especially vulnerable people who, for example, live in homes or are cared for by Spitex.
In the second phase, other hospitals, clinics and medical centers should also be able to vaccinate. Aspects of regional supply are also considered. As soon as the vaccine is available in sufficient quantities, the canton will expand the range of vaccines, for example to include doctors in private practice.
British minister: border closure does not inhibit vaccination program
According to British Transport Minister Grant Shapps, the closure of the borders between Britain and the continental EU has no effect on the ongoing mass vaccination. “Most of the vaccine doses do not arrive in the country by truck. They are shipped in containers, ”Shapps told Sky News. Furthermore, there are currently sufficient stocks available. “This will not affect the vaccination program,” he said.
So far, around 500,000 Britons have been vaccinated against the coronavirus. Due to the rapid spread of the corona virus variant discovered in Britain, France, along with other countries, has closed its borders with the UK. This means that trucks can no longer cross the English Channel. According to the BRC trade association, about 10,000 trucks cross the driveway every day in the run-up to Christmas.
Due to virus mutation: Britain is increasingly isolated
Now Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Poland and Turkey also suspend flights from Great Britain. This is due to the possibly much more contagious variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus discovered in southern England. Several other countries had already taken corresponding measures in advance, including Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Ireland, Austria and Switzerland.
The Netherlands has extended its entry ban for travelers from Britain to ferry passengers, and truck drivers are excluded from the measure.
Because France has closed the borders with the United Kingdom, the important British port of Dover in the English Channel and the Eurotunnel were also closed. Freight traffic and passengers were asked not to arrive, the port announced Sunday night on Twitter.
Addiction center calls for long-term changes in heroin distribution
Thanks to Corona, addicts in heroin-assisted treatment, such as the one offered by the Arud Addiction Center in Zurich, can now take seven daily doses of medicinal heroin in tablet form (the so-called diaphine) home.
In normal times, you will need to personally pick up your dose every other day. The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) extended the regulation to seven daily doses in Switzerland in late September, as it had already done during the first corona wave. The new regulation will apply until December 31, 2021.
That’s not enough for Arud’s chief physician, Thilo Beck. He claims to have extended it until the time after the pandemic. Long-term dispensing works, users treat drugs responsibly. Forcing them to go to the addiction center every other day is “inhumane.” Such a requirement makes a self-determined lifestyle impossible and hampers reintegration into society.
Beck, Arud’s chief physician, specifies: Because there is no stress of constantly having to go through the dispensing point, many are “more with themselves” and can go to work for the first time.
Giving in the long term means autonomy for our clients.
Variant of virus in England: Drosten (still) keeps blood calm
Virologist Christian Drosten assumes that the virus mutation discovered in Great Britain has already reached Germany. But that doesn’t worry him, says the Berlin Charité researcher about Deutschlandfunk.
He didn’t want to downplay the situation and was, like everyone else, in a “somewhat confused information situation.” Whether the new variant of the virus is actually much more contagious cannot yet be assessed. This week we would have to wait for information from Great Britain. Drosten says he doesn’t expect the change in virus type to make vaccines less effective.
Legend:
Their assessments have weight: Christian Drosten, director of the Institute of Virology of the Charité in Berlin The American scientific journal “Science” counts him among the “world’s leading experts on coronavirus.”
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Interpol warns of attacks on vaccine shipments
Interpol expects a wave of global crime around the vaccination campaign. “With the launch of vaccines, crime will increase dramatically,” said the secretary general of the International Police Organization, Jürgen Stock, of “Wirtschaftswoche”.
“We will see robberies, break-ins and incursions into vaccine transports.” Corruption will be rampant in many places. “A virus spreads from Asia to every continent, and it is followed by a crime wave, a parallel crime pandemic, so to speak.”
As vaccines roll out, crime will increase dramatically.
A new variant of the virus also appeared in Australia
The state of New South Wales in Australia confirms that Britain’s apparently rapidly spreading new strain of coronavirus was discovered in a group in northern Sydney. The number of cases related to the Northern Beaches outbreak stands at 83, according to the Australian government.
USA: A stimulus package expires shortly before Christmas
Democrats and Republicans in the United States Congress agreed to another huge stimulus package from the crown after months of bickering. The respective heads of the two parties in the United States Senate, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer, announced the agreement in the House of Congress. Republican McConnell said the package was worth about $ 900 billion.
According to Democrat Schumer, the plans include more financial help for small businesses and a temporary increase in unemployment benefits of $ 300 a week. Citizens with a certain maximum income should receive a one-time direct aid payment of $ 600 per person. Money is also planned for schools, nurseries and distribution of vaccines in the country.
The United States had previously distributed about $ 3 trillion in aid.
The most important thing in the afternoon and at night.
- Following the discovery of a new, more contagious variant of the coronavirus in Britain and South Africa, numerous countries in Europe and around the world responded by suspending flights from affected areas, including Switzerland.
- The federal scientific task force assesses the new variant of the coronavirus as “very problematic.” The mutation has not yet been tested in Switzerland. She assumes “that the variant is here in small quantities.”
- Due to the new variant of the corona virus, the German presidency of the EU Council is calling for an emergency meeting with representatives of other member states for Monday. Berlin is convening national experts as part of the international community’s crisis reaction mechanism (IPCR), as a spokesman for the German Council Presidency announced on Sunday. On the agenda is the coordination of the European Union regarding the new variant of the virus.
- You can find more news from the last days here.
