LONDON – England’s medical chief warned on Monday that the coming weeks would be the worst pandemic for the National Health Service, as he called on the public to strictly follow the guidelines to prevent the spread of the disease.
Chris Whitty said political leaders are considering tightening the rules because a new, more portable variant of COVID-19 exacerbates an already difficult situation. Hospitals are overflowing and exhausted medical staff are under stress.
“I think everyone accepts that this is the most dangerous time we have had in terms of numbers in the NHS,” Whitty told the BBC.
English hospitals now treat 55% more COVID-19 cases than during the first peak of the pandemic in April.
England entered a third national exclusion last week that closed all non-essential shops, schools, colleges and universities for at least six weeks. But police report many violations of rules that require people to stay home, except for material reasons.
Seven new large-scale vaccination centers opened on Monday, joining about 1,000 other sites across the country. The British government’s goal is to vaccinate 15 million people by 15 February.
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THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:
– President-elect Joe Biden challenges towards America after the Trump era, but success on virus, economy can help
Health expert says the worst time for the UK health service strike now
– China World Health Organization experts will arrive on Thursday to investigate the origins of the pandemic
– A doctor the use of a horse-drawn carriage to reach patients in mountain villages in Ukraine, is concerned that its closure was too late
– In the took a shortcut to a homemade vaccine despite little evidence of its effectiveness
– Follow AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus- vaccination and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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THIS HAPPENS DIFFERENTLY:
TIRANA, Albania – Albania’s Prime Minister says his country plans to start COVID-19 vaccinations with doses guaranteed from an unknown European Union country.
Edi Rama said he may not say which EU country supplied the vaccines. He said the 27-nation bloc had generally left the Western Balkans to wonder when they would get any coronavirus vaccines, and the UN-backed COVAX program to deliver vaccines more fairly around the world so far lagged behind.
“If we were to wait for COVAX, we would still be waiting, and no one knows how long such a wait would last,” he said.
Health Minister Ogerta Manastirliu said health workers at the country’s four virus hospitals would receive the first shots, followed by sick and over 75s.
Rama said the first batch of about 10,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines would arrive next week. During the launch, the Prime Minister will have a chance to show that it ‘is not only safe, but that it is the weapon to kill this invisible enemy.’
Albania had 1,241 virus-related deaths and 63,595 confirmed cases.
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JOHANNESBURG – South Africa is struggling to cope with an increase in COVID-19 cases, which has already overwhelmed some hospitals as people returning from a wide-ranging coastal holiday spread the country’s more contagious coronavirus variant .
It is of particular concern that the province of Gauteng, the country with the largest population, includes the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria. Authorities say they are already seeing an increase in new infections, after people traveled to coastal areas, where the variant is dominant.
“Gauteng will be hit very quickly and very badly,” said Professor Willem Hanekom, director of the Africa Health Research Institute. “Gauteng is expected to have a steep curve of increasing cases and hospitalizations.”
The Steve Biko Hospital in the Pretoria area has already reached capacity and is putting COVID-19 patients in a field hospital outside the main building.
In response to the revival, South Africa has imposed restrictions to curb the spread of the virus, including banning alcohol sales, closing bars, enforcing a night watch and restricting public gatherings, including church services and funerals.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to address the country on Monday on the pandemic.
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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said on Monday that Malaysia’s healthcare system was at its “breaking point” when it reintroduced travel restrictions to curb a sharp rise in coronavirus cases.
Starting Wednesday, he said Kuala Lumpur, the government administrative capital of Putrajaya and five other states would be under lockout for two weeks, similar to a nationwide lockdown in March last year. This time, however, he said that manufacturing, construction, services, trade and distribution and plantations may operate according to strict guidelines.
Interstate travel is prohibited, no meals may be allowed and movement within a radius of ten kilometers will be restricted. He said conditional restrictions would apply to other low-risk states.
He said 476 new virus groups have been identified since a new outbreak in September. He said daily cases of coronavirus, which has transgressed 2,000 over the past few weeks, could jump to 8,000 by the end of May if nothing is done. He said Malaysia would get its first batch of Pfizer vaccine next month.
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SEOUL, South Korea – The President of South Korea says that the country will offer free COVID-19 vaccinations to all its people in phases.
President Moon Jae-in made the remark in his New Year’s speech on Monday. The government had earlier announced that vaccinations would begin in February.
South Korean officials have said they will have vaccinations for 56 million people, an amount that is apparently enough for the country’s 52 million people.
Officials say they will work out detailed vaccination plans later this month. They say those who are recommended to get vaccinations first will include medical staff, the elderly, adults with chronic illnesses, police and soldiers.
After weeks of turmoil, the virus load in South Korea has gradually declined amid strict social distance rules that include a ban on gatherings of five or more people. Earlier Monday, South Korea reported 451 new virus cases, the first time its daily count had dropped below 41 in 41 days. The country’s total stands at 69,114, including 1,140 deaths.
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PARIS – Authorities in northern France on Monday launched a week-long mass testing program to determine the rate of coronavirus infections and the spread of a more contagious variant that appeared in the south of England in November.
In the city of Roubaix, health officials said they hope to test 10% of the population by Saturday. It represents 10,000 people.
Sequencing will be performed on the positive samples to determine if the variant is present.
France has been criticized for its slow vaccination program because it vaccinated only a fraction of some of its neighbors.
As of Friday, only 80,000 French citizens have been vaccinated against the coronavirus. Neighboring Germany has done hundreds of thousands of vaccinations.
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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Schools partially reopened in Sri Lanka after being closed for almost three months.
The move is seen as an attempt to return to normal from the months of confinement containing the coronavirus.
But the government has decided not to reopen schools in the capital Colombo and its suburbs, as the majority of recent COVID-19 cases are reported from those areas.
The schools that reopened were under strict health guidelines, such as wearing masks, bringing home-made food, washing hands regularly and maintaining social distance.
Sri Lanka closed schools in October when two COVID-19 clusters emerged, one having a garment factory and the other at the fish market. Some reopened in November but closed again for holidays in December. Sri Lanka has also banned public gatherings and restricted public transport.
The confirmed cases from the two groups grew to 44,596 on Monday, accounting for most of the 48,000 cases reported in the country since the pandemic.
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BEIJING – Chinese health authorities say many more people have tested positive for the coronavirus in Hebei Province, which borders the capital Beijing.
The outbreak, which focuses on the Hebei cities of Shijiazhuang and Xingtai, is one of China’s most serious in recent months and comes amid measures to curb further spread during next month’s New Year holidays. Authorities urged citizens not to travel, and ordered schools to close a week early and conduct large-scale tests.
The National Health Commission said on Monday that another 82 people had tested positive in Hebei and were showing symptoms. In the country, another 36 people tested positive without showing symptoms, although it was not immediately clear how many of them were in Hebei.
The outbreak in Hebei has raised concerns about its proximity to the country’s capital. Parts of the province are locked up and interprovincial travel is largely cut off, and those entering Beijing to work must provide proof of employment and a clean health certificate.
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TOKYO – The Japanese Ministry of Health has found a coronavirus variant in people arriving from Brazil, unlike those in Britain and South Africa.
The variant was found in four people tested at the airport, the ministry said Sunday. Japan has worked with other countries, the World Health Organization and other medical experts to analyze the variant.
The previously identified variants from Britain and South Africa are more contagious, but the behavior of this variant and the disease that causes it are not yet known.
The Tokyo area has been in a state of emergency since Friday to try to stop the spread of the virus. Japan has so far had about 4,000 deaths related to COVID-19, and more than 280,000 confirmed cases.
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BALTIMORE – Coronavirus infections have now surpassed 90 million confirmed cases, as more countries have increased the greater spread of more virulent strains of a disease that has now killed nearly 2 million worldwide.
The number of infections worldwide has doubled in just ten weeks, according to a version from John Hopkins University on Sunday. COVID-19 infections hit 45 million as recently as the end of October.
John Hopkins counted 90,260,464 infections confirmed by the government and other agencies early Monday.
The United States, now with more than 22.2 million infections, has confirmed the most cases and deaths worldwide. The number of U.S. cases was more than double that in India, which recorded nearly 10.5 million infections.
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. – U.S. Representative Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee said Sunday he was tested positive for the coronavirus after coming into contact with another member of Congress with whom he shares a home in Washington.
Fleischmann said in a statement on Twitter that he has been in quarantine since Wednesday night, when he heard that the other person had tested positive.
In November, the Republican won his sixth term in the U.S. House from the 3rd Congressional District in southeast Tennessee.
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MEXICO CITY – Mexican Presidential spokesman Andrés Manuel López Obrador said on Sunday he had tested positive for coronavirus, but there was no word on whether the president had been tested.
Spokesman Jesús Ramírez Cuevas wrote on his Twitter account: “I am in good health and will work from home.”
Ramírez Cuevas is near López Obrador and regularly gives him documents or travels with the president. López Obrador is 67 and has high blood pressure but almost never wears a mask.
On Sunday, López Obrador toured the Pacific Ocean through the Manzanillo seaport and gave a speech, as usual without a mask.