New measures, new reports and highlights: an update on the latest developments in the Covid-19 pandemic around the world.
The situation in France
Cases of reinfection “not rare” in France. Cases of reinfection with Covid-19 are “not rare” in France, particularly in the context of the outbreak of contamination linked to the Omicron variant, noted Public Health France. We speak of reinfection when a first episode of Covid is followed by a second, with two different strains of the virus, explained the health agency.
Number of new cases. 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.
Number of dead. 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.
In the rest of the world
Boris Johnson responds to police. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson responded to the questionnaire sent by London police in the investigation of gatherings in Downing Street during confinement, his services said on Friday evening. The head of the British government, whose political survival is at stake in this case, in accordance with Scotland Yard’s request, returned the survey questionnaire within the seven-day period that had been set. A dozen receptions are targeted by the police investigation, spread over eight dates in 2020 and 2021, when the British saw their social contacts severely hampered by the restrictions.
The police intervene to unblock the streets of Ottawa. Canadian police launched a major operation on Friday to unblock the streets of central Ottawa, which have been paralyzed for three weeks by a movement of opponents of health measures, forcing the Canadian Parliament to remain exceptionally closed. The police, deployed en masse in the streets of the federal capital, made around a hundred arrests.
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.
Hong Kong will test all its inhabitants. Authorities in Hong Kong, facing their worst Covid-19 outbreak in two years, have announced that all of the city’s 7.5 million residents will undergo mandatory testing and that the designation of the next local chief executive was postponed.
balance sheet in the world
The pandemic has officially made more than 5,860,577 dead worldwide since the end of December 2019, according to a report established by AFP Friday in the middle of the day. In absolute value, the United States are the country with the most deaths (933,749), ahead of the Brazil (643.029), theIndia (510.905) and the 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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