A member of French Red Cross welcomes a vacationer at a COVID-19 vaccination center set up at a camp on Aug 13, 2021 in Argeles-sur-Mer, southern France.
(RAYMOND ROIG / AFP)
OTTAWA/HAVANA/DUBLIN/NICOSIA/LONDON/ROME/PARIS/AMSTERDAM/NEW YORK -Reluctant French people lined up to get vaccinated as authorities were set to get tougher on the mandatory health pass for entering restaurants, trains and public places.
From this week, citizens have been required to show the pass in public places, proving that they have been vaccinated or have recently been tested negative for the coronavirus.
While police had instructions to be lenient the first week, the government has vowed to get tougher on health pass checks from next week.
With testing set to be no longer free from October, many went to vaccination centers with heavy hearts in order to get the pass and be able to carry on with their lives as normal.
France has registered 6.39 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 112,468 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
More than 45 million French people have been vaccinated with at least one jab, with an increase after President Emmanuel Macron's July 12 speech where he announced the health pass and mandatory vaccination for health workers.
Car crosses the border into Canada, in Niagara Falls, Ontario, on Aug 9, 2021. (EDUARDO LIMA / THE CANADIAN PRESS VIA AP)
Canada
Canada’s government announced plans on Friday to require vaccinations for employees in the federal government and the transportation sector, as well as for travelers.
The plan will begin “early fall” for public sector workers, it was announced at a press conference with Dominic LeBlanc, minister for intergovernmental affairs, and Transport Minister Omar Alghabra.
Alghabra said air, rail and cruise ship passengers will have to be vaccinated. The plan is to implement regulations no later than the end of October.
That would be more in line with the United States, where the White House is requiring all US federal workers be vaccinated or face regular testing and mask mandates.
The Canadian government also said it had signed an agreement with Moderna for additional supply of its COVID-19 vaccine for 2022 and 2023, with an option to extend into 2024.
Canada will receive 40 million doses, as per the deal, with an option for an additional 65 million doses.
The partnership "will help to bridge Canada's capacity to maintain a reliable and rapidly available supply of vaccines into 2022 and 2023 ahead of Moderna's Canadian vaccine facility becoming operational," Procurement Minister Anita Anand said in a statement.
Meanwhile, US drugmaker Merck & Co Inc has initiated a rolling submission to Health Canada for Molnupiravir, an oral antiviral therapy treatment for COVID-19, it said in a statement on Friday.
Molnupiravir is being developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics for the treatment of non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
Canada has one of the best inoculation rates in the world, with more than 82 percent of eligible people having one shot and 71 percent fully-vaccinated. Still, active cases have doubled in two weeks amid a Delta-driven fourth wave.
Netherlands
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday said the government is considering lifting social distancing rules on Sept 20 as COVID-19 cases in the Netherlands ease.
In the week ended Aug 10, cases fell by 14 percent in the Netherlands to 103 per 100,000 inhabitants, the country's National Institute for Health (RIVM) found.
However, Rutte said some pandemic restrictions are still needed for now, including keeping nightclubs and restaurants closed after midnight.
An attempt to lift most restrictions, including on nightlife, on June 26 had to be canceled two weeks later after cases in young adults surged.
Around two-thirds of Dutch people aged 16 and older are fully vaccinated, and 90 percent said they have had or plan to have a vaccine.
Russia
Russia's daily COVID-19 deaths hit a new record of 819 on Saturday, a day after Moscow's health department reported the highest number of monthly deaths in the city since the start of the pandemic.
Russia's daily coronavirus deaths are on the rise after infections peaked in July. Authorities blame the infectious Delta variant and a slow vaccination rate.
Russia's official total coronavirus death toll stands at 169,683. Rosstat, the government statistics agency, keeps a separate count from the pandemic task force and says it recorded around 315,000 deaths related to COVID-19 between last April and June this year.
Alberto Fernandez (HECTOR VIVAS/GETTY IMAGES/BLOOMBERG)
Argentina
Argentina President Alberto Fernandez apologized after a photo that showed him hosting a birthday party for his longtime partner during the country’s strictest phase of last year’s COVID-19 lockdown came to light, triggering opposition calls to start an impeachment process.
The photo taken in July 2020 and published Thursday by a local TV channel shows Fernandez with first lady Fabiola Yanez at the presidential residence on the outskirts of Buenos Aires along with several friends in celebration mode. No one in the photo is wearing a face mask.
Fernandez insisted on Friday afternoon that “we didn’t hide anything,” and noted that Yanez organized the party.
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“On July 14, birthday of my dear Fabiola, Fabiola organized a gathering and toast with her friends, that she shouldn’t have done,” said Fernandez at an event in rural Buenos Aires province. “I lament what happened, it won’t happen again.”
Opposition leaders are now threatening to start an impeachment process in congress, arguing the president breached the regulations he established to contain the virus from spreading.
Argentina confirmed on Friday 8,472 new COVID-19 infections in one day, bringing the total to 5,074,725 cases, the Ministry of Health reported. It recorded 246 more deaths, bringing the tally to 108,815.
US
The recent COVID-19 hospitalization rate among adults aged 30 to 39 is the highest it's ever been in the United States, while that among seniors aged 70 and older is about a quarter of what it was in January, showed the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Children account for a larger share of hospitalizations now than they did in January, as the hospitalization rate among those under the age of 18 hovers right around the record high.
Florida, together with Louisiana, is now reporting a record number of COVID-19 hospital admissions. In Mississippi and Arkansas, daily admissions are at more than 87 percent of their earlier peak, and in Oregon, Alabama and Washington, daily admissions are at more than 75 percent of their peak.
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The crush of new COVID-19 infections in Mississippi has become so dire that the state has turned to efforts reminiscent of the earliest days of the US pandemic, when a field hospital was set up in New York's Central Park and a medical ship was moored in the Hudson River.
A tent awaits is partially assembled in a University of Mississippi Medical Center garage, Aug 11, 2021, as the conversion of the parking facility into a field hospital begins in Jackson, Mississippi.
(ROGELIO V. SOLIS/AP)
Cuba
Cuba, grappling with a dire COVID-19 outbreak fueled by the Delta variant, said "only 21,000," or 0.8 percent of the 2.5 million people inoculated with its homegrown vaccines, had fallen ill with the disease so far.
Of those, 99 or 0.003 percent of those inoculated had died, in what state biopharmaceutical corporation BioCubaFarma said late on Thursday was an encouraging sign that the shots were working, including against Delta, in particular to prevent severe illness.
"This is really promising data," BioCubaFarma head Eduardo Martinez said on state-run television. The corporation is on track to produce the doses necessary to fully inoculate the whole population with its three-shot vaccines, Abdala and Soberana 2, by September, he added.
The island state of 11 million inhabitants is racing to fully inoculate its population as it battles one of world's the highest COVID-19 caseloads, with more than 8,000 confirmed cases per day for the last two weeks.
The country’s caseload exceeded 500,000 Friday after recording 8,312 new infections on Thursday. The infection tally stood at 500,216, according to the Ministry of Public Health.
Brazil
Brazil has registered 966 more COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, raising its national death toll to 567,862, the health ministry said on Friday.
The ministry said that the total caseload rose to 20,319,000 after 33,933 new cases were detected.
Chile
Chile on Friday reported 882 new COVID-19 infections and 44 deaths in the last 24 hours, for a total of 1,627,428 cases and 36,287 deaths.
Chile's 16 regions all registered COVID-19 positivity rates of 2 percent or less in the last day, Health Minister Enrique Paris said.
Spain
The Belize Tourism Board said that 27 people tested positive for COVID-19 on Carnival Corp’s Carnival Vista this week, according to a statement on its website.
They were all vaccinated and were mostly asymptomatic or had “mild” symptoms, according to the statement, which said that 99.98 percent of crew and 96.5 percent of passengers were vaccinated on the vessel with 2,895 guests and 1,141 crew. The Carnival Vista sailed from Galveston, Texas, a coastal city near Houston.
The most recent surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows at least 25 cruise ships have recently reported COVID-19 cases.
Ireland
COVID-19 cases have kept surging in Ireland despite the fact that over 80 percent of adults in the country have now been fully vaccinated.
The Irish Department of Health on Friday reported a total of 1,978 new cases, setting a new daily high for the second day in a row since the current wave of infections hit the country in July.
"We have reported over 10,000 cases in the last week," said Ronan Glynn, deputy chief medical officer of the department in a statement, adding that "incidence is rising across all 26 counties" of the country.
He also said that while the incidence is particularly high in those aged 16-29, it is now rising across all age groups.
Germany
Germany reported 5,644 new coronavirus infections Saturday, the biggest daily increase since the end of May. A week ago, the number stood at 3,206.
The seven-day incidence – a measure used by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to decide on pandemic restrictions – continued to rise and reached a level last seen at the beginning of June.
Germany must “hold out once again until spring,” Health Minister Jens Spahn said in a video conference Friday with his party’s parliamentary group, according to the Bild-Zeitung newspaper. “The fourth wave is coming. But we have not yet vaccinated enough people that a burden on the health system can be excluded.”
As of Friday, more than 47.0 million people in Germany have been fully vaccinated, bringing the country's vaccination rate to 56.6 percent, according to the RKI. More than 52 million people have received at least one vaccine dose.
UK
Another 32,700 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 6,211,868, according to official figures released Friday.
The country also reported another 100 coronavirus-related deaths. The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 130,801. These figures only include the deaths of people who died within 28 days of their first positive test.
The latest R value of COVID-19 for England is between 0.8 and 1.0, which means, on average, every 10 people infected with the virus will infect between 8 and 10 other people, according to the UK Health Security Agency.
Italy
Most Italian regions showed data consistent with a moderate pandemic risk while three regions have the most probability of moving to a higher risk level, the National Health Institute (ISS) said on Friday.
Eighteen of 21 regions and autonomous provinces were classified at moderate risk in the latest monitoring report issued by the ISS and the Health Ministry.
Only the central Lazio region, and northeast autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano were assessed as at low risk.
The incidence of new infections on the overall population slightly grew to 73 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the week Aug 2-8, compared to 68 cases per 100,000 in the previous week, the report also showed.
However, some regions registered an incidence rate much above the national average, especially Sardinia (141.8 cases per 100,000), central Tuscany (129.9), and southern Sicily (127.2).
According to the country's parameters, the incidence rate is consistent with a low-risk scenario when it stays below the threshold of 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
While still classifying them as at moderate risk in the report, the ISS specified Tuscany, Sicily, and Apulia were the regions with the most probability of moving to a higher level of risk.
In the report, the ISS also confirmed the Delta virus variant was widely prevalent in the country.
Cyprus
Seventy percent of the population of Cyprus hade been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus by Aug 12, achieving an "important target", the Health Ministry said in a statement on Friday.
The statement added that 76.3 percent of the population over 18 have received at least the first dose of an European Union (EU) approved vaccine, namely Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson.
However, vaccination rates are still low among the younger age groups of 16 to 17 and 12 to 15, which are the target of the current vaccination drive of the health authorities.
Egypt
Egypt received a new batch of about 1.7 million AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses through the global COVAX initiative, the health ministry said late on Friday.
The new shipment, the third of its kind, brings the total number of AstraZeneca shots received by Egypt via COVAX to about 4.3 million doses.
