The United States has reached a new sad record, with more than 100,000 people hospitalized because of Covid-19, but the medical front is making progress: vaccination campaigns, which are getting closer everywhere in the world, should start as early as the week next in UK and Russia.
This is the first time that the milestone of 100,000 hospitalizations has been crossed in the United States, the country which is paying the heaviest human price for the pandemic in the world, with more than 273,000 deaths out of a total of almost 1.5 million in the world. world.
The country also recorded more than 2,700 new deaths from Covid-19 on Wednesday, a daily level it had not seen since April, according to Johns Hopkins University. It identified 195,121 new infections in one day.
The coronavirus crisis will be from Thursday the subject of a special meeting at the UN, where Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Boris Johnson and Narendra Modi among others will speak virtually. But many international leaders, including Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Jair Bolsonaro will ignore this event.
Across the Atlantic, the UK government on Wednesday became the first in the world to approve the mass use of Pfizer / BioNTech’s US-German vaccine, which will be available next week in the world’s most bereaved country. Europe with nearly 60,000 dead.
British Health Minister Matt Hancock said his country’s speed was due to Brexit, because the EU, which London left on January 31, is moving “a little slower”.
– 100 million vaccines in the United States –
Hours after the British announcement, Vladimir Poutine demanded that “large-scale” vaccinations, free for Russians, begin “at the end of next week”.
Sputnik V, developed by the Gamaleïa research center in Moscow, is in the third and final phase of clinical trials with 40,000 volunteers. Its creators say it is 95% effective, like Pfizer / BioNTech.
In the United States, the American Medicines Agency (FDA) has also been approached by Pfizer / BioNTech and, since Monday, by Moderna. In the event of a green light, both vaccines could be available in December in the country.
With these two vaccines, the administration of Donald Trump plans to have inoculated doses to 100 million people in the United States by the end of February.
Some caregivers, priority to be vaccinated, however still wary of the new vaccines which they consider insufficiently tested.
“I think I will get the vaccine later,” Yolanda Dodson, 55, a nurse at a Bronx hospital in New York told AFP. “The published studies are promising, but the data are insufficient.”
These reservations seem fairly widespread among the 20 million caregivers in the United States, according to Dr. Marcus Plescia, medical officer of ASTHO, an organization that brings together health officials from American states.
While a surge in contamination is expected after the Thanksgiving celebrations, US health authorities have also recommended reducing the quarantine of people who have come into contact with a positive case for the coronavirus to 10 days. They hope for better respect for the rules.
In France, where former President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing died Wednesday evening of Covid-19, at the age of 94, Prime Minister Jean Castex exposes on Thursday the government’s strategy on vaccines, a decisive step that the executive does not want not fail in the fight against the epidemic.
The Prime Minister assured Wednesday that he “pre-ordered enough to vaccinate 100 million people”.
– No travel between regions in Italy –
The rate of contamination has started to decelerate in Europe, where some countries are easing their restrictions.
Symbol of deconfinement in France, the Eiffel Tower will reopen to the public on December 16. But the 2021 edition of the Carnival in Nice, in the south-east of France, is canceled.
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