Wuhan virus - Page 9

PARIS (AP) — The number of patients in intensive care in France is fast approaching the worst point of the country’s last coronavirus surge in the autumn of 2020, another indicator of how a renewed crush of infections is bearing down on French hospitals.

LONDON (AP) — It’s being dubbed Happy Monday. England is embarking on a major easing of its latest coronavirus lockdown that came into force at the start of the year, with families and friends able to meet up in outdoor spaces and many sports permitted once again.

BERLIN (AP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel has blamed her country’s difficulties during the coronavirus pandemic – from the slow vaccine rollout to the back-and-forth over lockdown rules – on “a tendency toward perfectionism” and called for greater flexibility to tackle the latest surge in cases.

Left-wing model Chrissy Teigen claims politicians have “put a target on Asian people’s backs” by calling the Chinese coronavirus, “the China virus.”

PARIS (AP) – France’s president says he has nothing to be sorry about for refusing to impose a third virus lockdown earlier this year, even though his country is now facing surging infections that are straining hospitals and more than 1,000 people with the virus are dying every week.

LONDON (AP) – British lawmakers were voting Thursday on whether to prolong coronavirus emergency measures that have given the government unprecedented powers to restrict citizens’ everyday lives.

BRUSSELS (AP) – European Union leaders are meeting Thursday to look for ways of ramping up COVID-19 vaccinations across the 27-nation region amid a shortage of doses, spikes in new cases, a feud with the United Kingdom and internal quarrels.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) – Greece’s celebrations for the bicentenary of the start of the nation’s war of independence are culminating in a military parade and warplane flyby in Athens on Thursday, the country’s Independence Day.

PARIS (AP) – France’s high-profile culture minister has been hospitalized for COVID-19, the latest senior official to become ill as the nation faces a third surge of coronavirus infections, this one propelled by a highly contagious variant first found in Britain.

Britain held a minute’s silence today to mark one of the most shaming moments in her long island story: the day Prime Minister Boris Johnson put the whole nation under house arrest in order, so he claimed, to save the National Health Service.

Many thousands of people rallied for freedom in cities across the world on Saturday in protest against their governments’ draconian lockdown policies. But you wouldn’t know this if you get your news from the mainstream media where the coverage has been pitiful: either non-existent or, in the case of discredited sources like the BBC and Sky News, wilfully dishonest in their blatant underestimation (“hundreds”) of the numbers involved.

BRUSSELS (AP) – A leading European Union official has lashed out at the AstraZeneca vaccine company for its massive shortfall in producing doses for the 27-nation bloc, and threatened that any shots produced by them in the EU could be forced to stay there.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has offered his “sincere condolences” to people who have lost loved ones to the pandemic on the one-year anniversary of lockdown.

BERLIN (AP) – Under pressure to ease Germany’s virus restrictions, officials last month agreed to gradually reopen schools. Confirmed COVID-19 cases started climbing again, leading some states to backtrack while others pressed on and insisted that in-class teaching must be the rule.

BERLIN (AP) – German authorities are expected to extend lockdown measures again on Monday and possibly tighten some restrictions as they face a steady rise in new coronavirus infections.

Wearing masks and social distancing could go on for “years”, says Public Health England’s chief of immunisation.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) told Breitbart News on Wednesday that the federal government provided funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for researching bat coronaviruses.

Ireland’s National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) has recommended that use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is temporarily suspended after Norwegian regulators reported “serious blood clotting events”.

(AFP) — The European Union was faced with another setback in its coronavirus vaccination programme after AstraZeneca announced a shortfall, as countries across the world tried to step up their Covid-19 immunisation drives.

Brexit Britain has helped Australia source vaccines after the European Union backed Italy’s seizure of doses bound for Down Under. 

Former Labour prime minister and Iraq War architect Tony Blair’s reinvention as a Covid sage has suffered a setback after segments of his autobiography in which he boasts of doing “the minimum” to prepare for a “panpanic” resurfaced.

BERLIN (AP) – A lawmaker with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party said Sunday he will give up his seat in parliament and leave politics after it emerged that his company profited from deals to procure masks early in the pandemic — drawing sharp criticism in an election year.

MILAN (AP) — The virus swept through a nursery school and an adjacent elementary school in the Milan suburb of Bollate with amazing speed. In a matter of just days, 45 children and 14 staff members had tested positive.

A recent survey commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care found that just 72.5 per cent of black people in England either have received or would accept the vaccine. That compares with 87.6 per cent for Asians and 92.6 per cent for whites.

BRUSSELS (AP) – Europe’s vaccine solidarity got a shot in the arm Friday as France rallied to support Italy, saying it could follow suit in blocking exports of coronavirus vaccines outside the European Union if necessary to enforce its own contracts with drugs manufacturers.

LONDON (AP) – Regulators in the UK and four other countries have announced new rules to fast-track the development of modified COVID-19 vaccines to ensure drugmakers can move swiftly to target emerging variants of the disease.

MOSCOW (AP) – The European Medicines Agency said it has started a rolling review of Sputnik V, many months after the vaccine was first approved for use in Russia and after dozens of countries around the world have authorized it.

Policemen on the migrant hotspot island of Lampedusa have complained they are not getting enough protection after ten officers tested positive for the Wuhan virus.

The British government is advising that secondary school pupils wear masks when they reopen — but that they cannot be made compulsory. 

Europe’s best-selling tabloid has congratulated the UK for its coronavirus vaccine rollout, stating that Germany “envies” their neighbours.

The Member of Parliament for the Port of Dover has called for illegal migrants to be put on the same quarantine “red list” as legitimate travellers, including British citizens, entering the United Kingdom from high-risk countries. 

The last restrictions on public gatherings and businesses won’t be repealed until June at the earliest, Boris Johnson said Monday.

Barbers, hairdressers, gyms, pubs, and restaurants are expected to remain restricted when Boris Johnson announces a loosening of the national lockdown regulations in England. 

A High Court judge has ruled that Health Secretary Matt Hancock acted unlawfully in failing to publish multi-billion-pound COVID-19 government contracts within the 30-day period required by law.

LONDON (AP) — The British government announced a small step out of the nation’s lockdown on Saturday – allowing nursing home residents to have a single friend or family member visit them indoors.

The United Kingdom, which the EU compared to a “speedboat” in vaccine development, has committed to giving 80 per cent of its spare doses to the third world once all adults in Britain have been vaccinated.