UPDATE BY SITUATION – New measures, new reports and highlights: Le Figaro takes stock of the latest developments in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Olivier Veran warns of a “rebound” in France, China is rebuilding a city of nine million, a “critical situation” in Germany… This Friday, March 11, Le Figaro sums up the latest information related to the Covid-19 pandemic. .
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134 dead in 24 hours, 21,023 hospitalized in France
134 people have died in the past 24 hours, according to French public health data. There are currently 21,023 patients hospitalized (versus 21,287 on Thursday), including 1,099 who arrived today. 1875 patients are being treated in intensive care units. 119 of them have been since Friday.
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Olivier Veran warns about “rebound »
Health Minister Olivier Véran said on Friday that the Covid-19 epidemic is “rebounding”, stressing the need for vulnerable people to “keep protecting themselves”. “We are currently seeing a rebound in France, in the countries around us, that is, Covid is no longer decreasing, but even increasing,” the minister said during a trip to Isère. “Given the latest data from yesterday, this is a 20% increase,” he said.
The number of new positive cases rose to 74,818 on Thursday evening from 60,225 a week ago, according to French public health data. “On the other hand, the load on hospitals continues to fall, but the pace of this reduction has begun to slow down, so we are extremely vigilant,” continued Olivier Veran. Intensive care services, where the most seriously ill are being treated, admitted 1,928 patients on Thursday (including 121 admitted in the last 24 hours), up from 1,962 on Wednesday and 2,231 the previous Thursday.
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This week the pandemic accelerated again because of Asia
This week, the global Covid-19 pandemic stopped declining and infection rates started to rise again due to a resurgence of cases in Asia. According to the AFP report, 1.59 million infections are registered daily worldwide, and this figure is rising again (+8% compared to the previous week) after five weeks of decline. However, daily infections remain half as high as during the peak at the end of January (3.37 million cases per day).
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Asia and Oceania remain the two areas where the situation has deteriorated the most this week, with pollution up 27% and 20% respectively from the previous week. On the other hand, the situation continues to noticeably improve in the US/Canada zone (-30%), the Middle East (-27%) and the Latin America/Caribbean zone (-12%).
Globally, the number of daily deaths continues to decline (-12%, 6700 deaths per day). The US has the highest number of daily deaths in absolute terms, 1,165 per day this week, ahead of Russia (700) and Brazil (501). In relation to the population, the most deaths in the last week were recorded in Hong Kong (23.8 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants), far ahead of Lithuania (6.0) and Denmark (5.5).
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China is rebuilding
Facing the worst epidemic outbreak in two years, China had to make the decision on Friday to lock down the northeast major city of Changchun. In this city of nine million residents, only one person per household is now allowed to go outside every two days to secure supplies, the mayor’s office said, which is preparing to screen the entire population. This conclusion is the largest announced in China since the Xi’an metropolis (north) and its 13 million inhabitants at the end of last year. China also announced that it would introduce rapid tests for Covid-19 antigens for the first time.
»SEE ALSO China: Covid-19 cases hit highest level in two years
“Critical situation” in Germany
Germany is in a “critical” health situation due to rising Covid-19 cases, the health minister warned on Friday, still betting on mandatory vaccinations. In Germany, which plans to ease a number of restrictions from March 20, more than 250,000 new cases of Covid-19 were reported on Friday, with the seven-day infection rate exceeding 1,400. The incidence is rising again (…). In many areas, the incidence is still over 2,000 or even 2,500,” added Lothar Wieler, director of the Robert Koch Institute for Health Monitoring.
“The situation is objectively much worse than the general atmosphere (…) We cannot be satisfied with a situation where 200 to 250 people die every day. »
Karl Lauterbach, German Health Minister this Friday.
Valneva vaccine: first shipments to Europe in spring 2022
Franco-Austrian laboratory Valneva plans to deliver the first doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to Europe in the second quarter of 2022, the company said. This vaccine “is currently the only candidate inactivated and adjuvanted Covid-19 vaccine in clinical development in Europe,” emphasizes Valneva.
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European Union: Companies and airports call for lifting of sanitary restrictions
Refuse vaccination certificates, tests and even masks for traveling by plane in Europe? The major airport and airline organizations asked for this in a joint statement on Friday, believing that herd immunity is enough to return to pre-crisis rules.
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Kenya removes the requirement to wear masks in public places
The Kenyan government announced on Friday it is lifting the obligation to wear a mask in public places as part of the easing of Covid-19-related restrictions that have been in place for two years. The announcement comes as the East African nation’s coronavirus infection rate was less than 1% for the month, Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe said. “The mandatory wearing of masks in open public spaces has now been lifted,” Mutahi Kagwe said in a statement, while encouraging the continued use of masks at indoor events and social distancing in public spaces.
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Over 6 million deaths worldwide…
The pandemic has officially killed at least 6,026,306 people worldwide since the end of December 2019, out of more than 451 million confirmed infections, according to a report prepared by AFP. The United States is the country with the most deaths (965,464), ahead of Brazil (654,086), India (515,714) and Russia (359,585). But compared to the population of the country where the epidemic has caused the most damage, it is Peru with 641 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, Bulgaria (518) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (476).
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), taking into account the excess mortality directly and indirectly associated with Covid-19, the losses from the pandemic could be two to three times higher than officially estimated.
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…but the study puts the number of deaths at 18 million
According to a study published in The Lancet, the Covid-19 pandemic would have killed more than 18 million people worldwide between the beginning of 2020 and the end of 2021, more than three times the official figure. Although the official figure is 5.94 million deaths worldwide between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, various works consider this to be a gross underestimate and try to better estimate the overall pandemic estimate.