More than 213 million people have tested positive for the virus worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 4.4 million infected people have died. About 5 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide.
Despite the lockdown that has been in effect for eight weeks, the Australian state of New South Wales with the metropolis of Sydney is not getting its severe Corona wave under control. On Wednesday (Aug. 25), authorities recorded 919 new infections within 24 hours – the highest number since the pandemic began. Two people, including a woman only about 30 years old, had died in connection with Covid-19, said regional Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian. The local government had most recently extended the strict lockdown in much of the region until at least the end of September. Berejiklian, however, now announced that the first relaxations for those fully vaccinated are expected to take place this week. Nearly one-third of the region’s roughly eight million residents already have full vaccination coverage, it said.
The U.S. will donate 1 million Pfizer/Biontech vaccine doses to Vietnam. The U.S. vice president made the announcement to Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh during a meeting in Hanoi on Wednesday (Aug. 25). Vietnam has one of the lowest Covid-19 vaccination rates in Asia, with just under 2 percent of its 98 million population fully vaccinated.
For U.S. public health expert Anthony Fauci, an end to the Corona pandemic in the United States depends largely on people’s willingness to be vaccinated. With vaccinations, people in the U.S. could significantly shorten the time frame until the end of the pandemic, the immunologist said Tuesday (Aug. 24) at a press conference. Earlier, Fauci had said in a television interview that he expected the Corona pandemic could be brought under control by spring 2022 ,if people got vaccinated.
Israel is now also giving a third dose of the vaccine to people 30 and older in an effort to stop an increase in new Corona infections. Several teams of experts had made a recommendation to expand the vaccination campaign, the Health Ministry said Tuesday (Aug. 24). So far, just under 17 percent of the approximately 9.4 million Israelis have received a booster vaccination, according to the report. Nearly 59 percent have been vaccinated twice. The country on Tuesday registered nearly 10,000 new infections in one day for the first time since January.
The economic downturn in the wake of the Corona crisis may have resulted in the deaths of more than 260,000 babies last year alone, mainly in poorer countries around the world. To this conclusion experts of the World Bank come in a modeling study presented in the specialized magazine “BMJ Open” on Tuesday (24. 8.). According to the study, there are several underlying mechanisms: poorer care and nutrition in impoverished households, restricted access to health services, and impaired offerings and dwindling quality of health services in the wake of the economic crisis.
In London, dozens of anti-vaccination activists invaded the headquarters of the ITN news channel on Monday (Aug. 23) in the wake of protests against the Corona measures. A video posted on the Internet shows a news anchor being berated by protesters as he entered the building. According to Deutschlandfunk radio, an ITN spokeswoman said journalists had been prevented from going about their work. Employees had been instructed to either stay in their offices or not enter the building at all until the situation calmed down. The police eventually made sure that the demonstrators left the building again.
- source: nzz.ch/picture: pixabay.com
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