Live Coronavirus News: WHO Warns Vaccine Nationalism Will Cause New Covid Mutations’ World News

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and World Bank President David Malpass on Tuesday stressed the need to respond to the global pandemic, improve access to vaccines for the poorest countries and combat climate change, said the treasury.

Reuters: During a call with Malpass, Yellen “stressed that climate change is an existential threat to our environment and the world economy, and urges strong support for low-income countries,” the Treasury said in a statement.

“The secretary stressed that it must now work to help countries reduce debt vulnerability and improve debt sustainability and transparency,” he added. She noted her appreciation for the World Bank’s efforts in these areas.

Mexico was on the verge of approving Russian coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V after the publication of early results of an advanced study, Mexican officials said Tuesday.

AP: Health Assistant Hugo López-Gatell, spokesman for the government’s pandemic, said the health ministry on Monday signed a contract for 400,000 doses of Sputnik V that will arrive this month. He said regulatory approval is expected within hours.

It can not come a moment too soon. Mexico was hit so hard that hospitals in the capital were 87% full, and ambulance drivers waited for hours to find an open bed for patients.

“Unfortunately, due to the saturation of the hospitals and the telephone lines, we wait three or four hours before they can assign a hospital to us, and to get there,” said Eduardo Vigueras, ambulance chief of staff.

According to Vigueras, patients are sometimes sent to the only available beds in hospitals, far away from the overwhelming east side of Iztapalapa. He said some family members become angry and aggressive towards paramedics due to the delays in treatment.

Because some patients are in such a bad condition, some families make a more difficult choice. Paramedics say they often pick up a seriously ill coronavirus patient to find that their loved ones want to cancel the emergency call because they know the treatment is so little and that they may never see their family member again.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said “all vaccines” approved by the EU’s drug regulator were welcome, including Russian and Chinese shots, Reuters reported.

In a TV interview, she said Germany welcomed the strong data from trials with the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.

Any vaccine approved by the European Medicines Agency is welcome. I talked to the Russian president about this. We saw good data today [about the Russian vaccine]. Every vaccine is welcome in the EU, provided it is approved by the EMA.

This comes after she said last month that she was ‘open to the idea’ of using European manufacturing capacity to increase production of the Russian vaccine.

Earlier today, Merkel said that by the end of the first quarter, Germany had vaccinated ten million people against the new coronavirus.

Merkel added that the EU was right not to opt for the emergency authorization that allowed Britain to release the first vaccine for public use in front of anyone else, as it is important to maintain people’s confidence in vaccines.

‘You can say that in the first quarter we will already be able to vaccinate 10 million people with both vaccines, or that others will say’ only ‘ [10 million]; but in any case it will go up from there, ‘she said.

She also said that consideration would be given to whether those who refuse a vaccination should experience restrictions at some point.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that all his countrymen who wanted a vaccine would be offered “by the end of the summer”, Reuters reported.

He told the TF1 channel that 80 percent of the residents of the care home – about 500,000 people – would be vaccinated in early March.

Macron defended France’s record in the face of criticism of its slow rollout, especially compared to neighboring Britain, which launched its vaccination program weeks earlier than EU countries and set a much faster rate.

He said the rollout of France ‘may seem too slow’ compared to countries that ‘made other bets’.

“But I defend the strategy we have adopted with Germany, with the European Union, which must vaccinate in Europe in particular,” he said.

The nationalism of the coronavirus vaccine is detrimental to everyone, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said on Tuesday, saying poor cooperation between countries is a major obstacle to achieving global vaccination on the scale needed to to end the coronavirus pandemic.

“Despite the growing number of vaccination options, current manufacturing capacity meets only a fraction of global demand,” the WHO Director-General said in a paper published in the journal Foreign Policy.

‘Allowing the majority of the world’s population to not be vaccinated will not only perpetuate unnecessary diseases and deaths and cause the pain of constant closures, but also cause new virus mutations, as Covid-19 continues to spread among unprotected populations, ‘he wrote.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.

As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned on Tuesday that poor cooperation between countries is a major obstacle to achieving global vaccination on the scale needed to end the coronavirus pandemic.

“Keeping the majority of the world’s population vaccinated will not only continue unnecessary illnesses and deaths and the pain of constant blockages, but also new virus mutations, as Covid-19 continues to spread among unprotected populations,” writes Tedros the journal Foreign Policy. .

Here are the other important developments of the past few hours:

• The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the Covid-19 vaccine was harmful to nationalism. He said poor co-operation between countries was a major obstacle to achieving global vaccination on the scale needed to end the pandemic.
• The number of patients in hospital with coronavirus in France is at its highest since November. According to the Ministry of Health, 28,029 people were hospitalized with the virus and 3,270 in intensive care. Both figures set new 2021 highs.
• Nicola Sturgeon has announced a phase return to school for the youngest children of Scotland, with kindergartens and all primary pupils from P1 to P3 planning to be in the classroom again from 22 February. The announcement will put pressure on the British government to respond to calls from Conservative MPs as to why England is operating on a slower schedule.
• Saudi Arabia access to 20 countries suspended in an effort to curb an increase in coronavirus infections. The Interior Ministry has announced that the ‘temporary suspension’ of Wednesday 21:00 will take effect.
• A single dose of Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine provides at least three months of continuous protection against Covid-19 and reduces the transmission of the virus by two thirds, according to a new study.
• French President Emmanuel Macron has said that all French people who are prepared to be vaccinated will receive a vaccine by the end of the summer.
• Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said most of the closure measures in the Netherlands, many of which have been in place since October, would run until at least March 2. due to fear of an increase in cases due to new coronavirus variants.
• Portugal, who is currently feeling the full force of his third wave of coronavirus pandemic, has called for international help to alleviate overwhelming hospital staff. Prime Minister Antonio Costa acknowledged that the hospitals were under ‘huge pressure’. The government took action after the country’s 24-hour death toll exceeded the 300 mark and television stations broadcast photos of ambulances parked outside the largest hospital in Lisbon.
• The Palestinian Authority has vaccinated its health workers in the occupied West Bank against Covid-19 after receiving doses from Israel.