Berlin worries, US warns citizens
Germany was deeply concerned on Monday about the rise in Covid-19 contaminations, which led Washington to advise Americans not to go there.
Germans line up to get vaccinated in Hamburg on November 22, 2021.
AFP
The US State Department issued two bulletins falling to level 4, the highest level of warning, its alert level regarding Germany and Denmark, indicating “a very high level of Covid-19”, so that Europe has once again become the epicenter of the pandemic.
In a shocking formula, the German Minister of Health Jens Spahn warned that “almost everyone will be vaccinated, cured or dead” by “probably the end of winter” due to the spread of the Delta variant “very, very contagious ”, which has been wreaking havoc for several weeks. The number of new daily infections broke a record of over 65,000 last week.
Chancellor Angela Merkel also warned of a “highly dramatic situation”. The current restrictions are “no longer sufficient”, she warned, just four days after having decided with her probable successor Olaf Scholz of severe coercive measures against the unvaccinated.
In Germany as in neighboring Austria, the vaccination rate is below 70%, a level lower than in other European countries such as France where it reaches 75%. The Austrians, despite a strong grumbling expressed in the streets this weekend, are again confined until December 13. Shops, restaurants, Christmas markets, concerts and hairdressers lowered the curtain on Monday. But the schools remain open.
The return of the restrictions caused violence during the weekend in several countries of Europe, once again epicenter of the pandemic, in particular in the Netherlands where the Prime Minister denounced acts of “pure violence” on behalf of ” idiots ”.
“Radical” measures
Since vaccines were made available to as many people as possible, no country in the European Union had dared to take the plunge.
Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz had declared the pandemic “over”, at least for those vaccinated. Arrived in October, his successor Alexander Schallenberg “has maintained the fiction for too long” that all was well, comments political scientist Thomas Hofer, interviewed by AFP.
Faced with the surge in cases which have reached unprecedented levels since the start of the pandemic, he had to resolve to “radical” measures that he had however initially excluded. In addition to confinement, adult vaccination will thus become mandatory on February 1, 2022, which very few countries have implemented so far.
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, especially now that we have the vaccine. It’s dramatic, ”says Andreas Schneider, a 31-year-old economist met by AFP in a shopping street in Vienna.
In Slovakia, where incidence rates are high, restrictions for unvaccinated people were introduced on Monday. “We have opted for strict containment of unvaccinated people because we have to protect them,” Prime Minister Eduard Heger said.
Meanwhile, Israel began its campaign to immunize children ages five to eleven on Monday evening, becoming one of the first countries, after the United States, to lower the age of access to the vaccine to stem the pandemic. . The Hebrew state was one of the first countries to launch, in December 2020, a vast vaccination campaign that gave it rapid access to millions of doses. More than 5.7 million of the estimated nine million Israelis, or more than 80% of adults, have been immunized.
Massive mobilization
In France, Prime Minister Jean Castex tested positive on Monday. This resulted in the quarantine in Belgium of Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who had received him earlier in the day.
Four other members of the Belgian government, who also participated in a Franco-Belgian meeting on Monday morning on security, “will also take a PCR test and remain in quarantine until the test result is negative,” the government said. Belgian.
In several European countries, protests against the tightening of anti-Covid measures continued over the weekend. However, they were not marked by violence as in Rotterdam on Friday and in The Hague on Saturday.
In Brussels, clashes punctuated the gathering of some 35,000 demonstrators on Sunday, according to the police.
And in the French department of Guadeloupe, in the Caribbean, the challenge to the vaccination obligation for caregivers has degenerated into a major social crisis.
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