New measures, new reports and highlights: update on the latest developments in the Covid-19 pandemic around the world.
The situation in France
The pressure caused by Covid-19 on hospitals continues to decrease with just over 29,000 patients who tested positive currently hospitalized, for contaminations in sharp decline, according to figures from Public Health France. French hospitals currently have 29,194 patients with Covid (including 1,795 who arrived in 24 hours), a number down from the previous day (29,843) and last Friday (31,939).
The downward trend is also found in the critical care services which receive the most serious cases, in particular in intensive care, with 2,970 patients (including 196 new admissions) against 3,055 patients the day before and 3,371 a week ago. On the other hand, the number of deaths remains stable, since the disease killed 273 people in hospital in 24 hours, against 259 the day before and 269 a week earlier. In two years of the epidemic, the Covid has caused the death of 108,444 people in hospital and 136,446 in France in total.
On the contamination front, the laboratories recorded 82,553 positive cases over 24 hours, against 92,345 Thursday and 131,376 cases last Friday. The seven-day daily average, which smooths out the differences observed from one day to the next, is down sharply to 92,504 against 159,323 a week earlier.
Cases of reinfection with Covid-19 are “not rare” in France, Public Health France noted on Friday. Initial work, on samples between January 1, 2021 and January 27, 2022, showed 416,995 possible cases of reinfection for people with two positive tests at least 60 days apart, i.e. 2.8% of confirmed cases on this period.
To read : Covid-19: an explosion of reinfection cases since December 2021
The positivity rate (over the last seven days consolidated at D-3), which measures the proportion of positive results over that of the number of people tested, is down to 26.3%. It was 31% last Friday. More than 54.1 million people have now received at least one injection (80.3% of the total population) and 53.1 million are fully vaccinated (78.8% of the population). 38.4 million people received a booster dose.
The situation in France
Six African countries will produce their RNA vaccine. Six countries in Africa have been chosen to host their own production of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, as the first beneficiaries of WHO’s global program to produce these vaccines. South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia have been chosen by the World Health Organization to enable the African continent, which has suffered from restricted access to vaccines against -Covid, to manufacture its own vaccines to fight against the coronavirus pandemic but also other diseases.
Easing of restrictions in South Korea. South Korean authorities have announced an easing of anti-Covid restrictions, fearing too great economic damage if they were maintained as they are, even as the country crossed the 100,000 daily cases mark for the first time.
In China, rewards for information. Chinese cities are offering thousands of euros in rewards for any clues to illegal entries from Hong Kong, after illegal immigrants who tested positive for coronavirus were found in mainland China.
The balance sheet in the world
The pandemic has officially killed more than 5,860,577 people worldwide since the end of December 2019, according to a report established by AFP on Friday midday.
In absolute value, the United States is the country with the most deaths (931,741), ahead of Brazil (641,902), India (510,905) and Russia (343,957). Reported to the population, the countries where the epidemic has caused the most damage are Peru, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Hungary and North Macedonia.
The WHO estimates, taking into account the excess mortality directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19, that the toll of the pandemic could be two to three times higher than that officially established.
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