In the United States Over 500,000 new cases of Covid have been recorded in the past 24 hours, the highest number since the start of the pandemic. In New York City alone, the average positivity rate for the past seven days is nearly 20%, 19.97% to be exact. They are more than 180,000 and contagion of Covid recorded in the last 24 hours in France, a new record since the beginning of the pandemic. The health authorities report it. The country had surpassed 100,000 cases for the first time on Christmas Day. In the UK, another 17,269 cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus have been recorded in the last day. This is what emerges from the data released by the UK Health Security Agency (Ukhsa). The total thus comes to 177.201, although data for Scotland or Wales are missing from 23 December due to the holiday period. The total number of deaths in England caused by Omicron has risen to 49. While hospital admissions, again due to the mutation, have reached 668.
Europe overwhelmed by infections – Finland off limits for unvaccinated foreign tourists. The Land of Lakes is the first in the EU to take a step that will lead to discussions also in the corridors of European institutions, having opted for an absolute ban on entry for non-residents who are not immunized or cured. More generally, it is a Black Tuesday for Europe in the battle against the coronavirus. Omicron is rampant everywhere. The new variant, after Denmark and Portugal, has also become dominant in the Netherlands and Switzerland, while France in the last 24 hours has recorded a cyclopean increase in infections, beating all records with 180,000 new positives.
Scandinavia is among the European regions that is facing a very rapid rise in infections. In fact, Denmark records the highest rate of infections in the world: according to data from the past few hours, 1,612 out of 100,000 inhabitants are positive for Covid. And Finland, after a lightning-fast meeting of the government, has decided to run for cover in the most drastic way: by banning, with some exceptions, all unvaccinated foreigners over the age of 16 from entering the country. Non-residents vaccinated, on the other hand, will still have to undergo the swab in the 48 hours prior to their entry, in the wake of what has been decided in recent days by Italy and a growing number of European countries. Also in Finland, according to the deputy of Fdi Augusta Montaruli who announced a question about it, there is a particular case involving two Italian citizens. Both, after having tested positive at the Helsinki airport, would have been closed in an airport bathroom for isolation, was the complaint of Montaruli, who asked for the intervention of Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio.
In Europe, Omicron advances everywhere although not in a homogeneous way. France, in the last 24 hours, has been literally overwhelmed by infections, registering 180,000 positives, a figure significantly higher than that of Christmas Day, when the country had broken through the ceiling of 100,000 cases. In Great Britain there were 129,471 positives, with 18 deaths, but the data are incomplete due to the holiday period. And the vast majority are concentrated in England, where the positives are over 117,000, a new all-time high for the most populous nation in the United Kingdom.
In the Holland of the lockdown, the growth of infections is slowing down but, according to experts, after Omicron officially ousted Delta, the country could face a new leap in positive cases and hospital admissions. Germany, where the so-called lockdown of the unvaccinated is in force, for the moment seems to hold up while Belgium records a moderate but constant decline in infections and, thanks to a sentence of the Council of State which canceled the royal decree of December 22, will see in the next hours reopen cinemas and theaters. Covid is also returning with arrogance to where it all began, in China. In the last 24 hours, the city of Xi’an, with its 13 million inhabitants in lockdown for six days, has registered 209 new cases, the highest daily level since March 2020. Official figures are less dramatic than European ones but Beijing has already chosen to extend the very strict restrictions to nearby areas to stem the largest Covid outbreak after the Wuhan one. Thus, hundreds of thousands of other people ended up in lockdown in Yan’an, which is about 300 kilometers from Xi’an.
Use reduce the quarantine for positives to 5 days – Quarantine halved for asymptomatic positives. The US is the first state in the Western world to take countermeasures to the danger of social paralysis due to the hundreds of thousands of people forced into isolation. And in the wake of Washington, other capitals could move in the coming days, starting with Rome and Paris. But the risk for the European Union is that the member countries will once again move in random order. Overseas, the quarantine for asymptomatic positives has been reduced from 10 to 5 days. “The change is motivated by the fact that science tells us that transmission occurs in the two days before the symptoms and in the 2-3 days after,” explained the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Cdc), which recommended, to whom it is positive and asymptomatic, to wear the mask anyway in the 5 days following the end of the isolation. The Center also recommended 5 days of isolation for vaccinated people who have had contact with a positive. No quarantine, however, for those who have had contact with a positive but have made the third dose.
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