Geneva (AFP)
UN chief Antonio Guterres called on the world to go beyond solidarity and enter a “war economy” against the coronavirus pandemic, at the opening of the World Health Assembly on Monday as India becomes the third country to cross the threshold of 300,000 dead.
“We are at war with a virus. We need the logic and urgency of a war economy,” Antonio Guterres said before the scheduled annual meeting of members of the World Health Organization (WHO) online until June 1 in Geneva.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for his part wanted 10% of the inhabitants of each country to be vaccinated by September, deploring that a “small group of countries” monopolizes vaccines.
And “some 500 million jobs have been destroyed; trillions of dollars have been taken from company balance sheets,” Guterres said. “The most vulnerable are those who suffer the most, and I fear this is far from over.”
The UN chief has asked the G20 to set up a key players’ working group for vaccines, warning that further outbreaks could “slow the global economic recovery” if the virus continues to circulate and mutate in poor countries.
At a health summit in Rome organized by Italy’s G20 presidency and the European Commission on Friday, major vaccine producers, G20 countries and the International Monetary Fund pledged to speed up vaccination in poor countries.
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In Asia, India, where according to many experts the coronavirus mows many more lives than officially announced, has become the third country in the world to exceed 300,000 deaths from Covid after the United States and Brazil, with more of 26.7 million contaminations.
Japan, which is facing a fourth wave of the virus, opens its first vaccinodromes on Monday to accelerate its much-criticized slow vaccination campaign, less than two months from the Tokyo Olympics (July 23-August 8). Just 2% of its population received the two doses of vaccine, against 40% in the United States or 15% in France.
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– Health pass –
The European Union, with the external borders closed since March 2020 for “non-essential” travel, should establish on June 9, according to Paris, the list of extra-European countries whose nationals fully vaccinated, with serums authorized at European level, will be able to enter freely as part of the health pass on which the 27 agreed on Wednesday.
To this “green” list will be added more restrictive “orange” and “red” lists – the latter currently includes Brazil, Argentina and India.
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For the United Kingdom, France is considering restrictive measures linked to the circulation of the Indian variant which has already pushed Germany to impose restrictions on travelers from this country since Sunday with a quarantine of two weeks.
Spain is rolling out the red carpet for British tourists, welcomed on Monday without PCR tests, as are those from Australia, China, South Korea, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Rwanda, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and Macao.
Following in the footsteps of Greece, Spain intends to welcome, from June 7, “all vaccinated people” regardless of their country of origin.
The anti-virus strategy of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the most bereaved country in Europe (more than 127,000 dead) was crushed on Saturday by his ex-adviser Dominic Cummings, three days before a hearing before a parliamentary committee.
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After Europe (1.12 million deaths), Latin America and the Caribbean in turn exceeded one million deaths on Friday. The United States and Canada have 614,898 deaths, Asia 443,497, the Middle East 140,211, Africa 128,250 and Oceania (1,094).
Argentina began a full nine-day containment on Saturday. In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro, helmeted but without a mask, took the lead on Sunday of a procession of motorcycle demonstrators in Rio de Janeiro. On Friday, he was fined by the state of Maranhao (Northeast) because of a walkabout without a mask.
In the Middle East, Israel plans to lift all health restrictions on its territory from June 1, for the first time since the outbreak of the virus. Entry restrictions on travelers will remain and may even be tightened due to the variants.
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– Vaccines for adolescents –
On the vaccination side, the health authorities in the United States report very rare cases of heart problems last week in adolescents or young adults who have received a messenger RNA vaccine such as those from Pfizer / BioNTech or Moderna, without the link to the vaccination. is established for the time being.
The American Moderna will file “at the beginning of June” an application for authorization in the EU for his vaccine for 12-17 year olds, according to his boss Stéphane Bancel. Currently, only Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine is authorized for 16-18 year olds in Europe and an application for 12-16 year olds has been filed there by Pfizer.
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burs / lch / pz
© 2021 AFP
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