A child looks at her band aid after receiving the vaccination against the COVID-19 virus in Tulln, a city close from Vienna, Austria on Dec 1, 2021. (LISA LEUTNER / AP)
PARIS / BUCHAREST / JOHANNESBURG / BERLIN / THE HAGUE / NEW YORK / HAVANA – Austria is suspending its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, its ministers for health and constitutional affairs said on Wednesday, six days before fines for breaches were due to start being handed out.
Health Minister Johannes Rauch told a news conference there would be another review of the public health and constitutional law aspects of the measure within three months. He and the minister for constitutional affairs, Karoline Edtstadler, said the measure could yet be brought back if necessary.
Cuba
Cuba registered 447 new COVID-19 infections and no death in the last day, bringing the total caseload to 1,073,951 cases, while remaining the death toll at 8,501, the Ministry of Public Health said Tuesday.
The daily report also noted that there were currently 2,391 active cases in the country, a figure that has continued to decline in recent weeks.
People wait during an observation period after having received Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine, in a vaccination center, in Nantes, western France on Dec 30, 2021. (JEREMIAS GONZELES / AP)
France
French health authorities reported 93,050 new COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, the highest daily total since Feb 22, and an increase of 16.6 percent versus a week ago.
The number of new daily infections has now shown a week-on-week rise for the fourth consecutive day, reversing a declining trend that started end January.
The daily COVID-19 death toll increased by 167, to 139,618, versus a rise of 176 on Monday.
The number of people hospitalized with the disease fell by 309, to 21,899, a low point since early January.
Meanwhile, the French government will lift on March 14 the health protocol at workplace, Minister of Labor Elisabeth Borne announced on Tuesday.
The wearing of masks inside the working space will not be mandatory and the physical distance will be lifted, she said, cited by French newspaper Le Figaro.
She added that employees who still want to wear the mask at work will not be opposed by the employer as "the virus continues to circulate."
Germany
The recent discovery of fake COVID-19 vaccination certificates has prompted German police to search 70 homes and company premises, local police in Cologne said on Tuesday.
A physician's assistant is suspected of forging vaccination cards and digital vaccination certificates, and selling them to dozens of buyers, according to the police.
Other cases were also identified in which "fake vaccination cards were allegedly presented at pharmacies or to employers for digitization," the police said.
Germany's COVID-19 rules that required people to present a valid vaccination or recovery pass in many areas of public life have led to a rise in fake health documents. The police already searched 40 homes and a doctor's office in February.
People walk past a sign outlining COVID-19 guidelines in the center of Amsterdam, the Netherlands on Dec 18, 2021. (PETER DEJONG / AP)
Netherlands
The number of positive COVID-19 tests in the Netherlands increased by almost 80 percent in the past week, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) said on Tuesday.
In its weekly update, the RIVM reported that between March 1 and March 8, the number of people who tested positive for COVID-19 rose by 79 percent to 439,775 from 245,898 the week before. The increase follows several weeks of declines.
"This significant increase is a combined effect of the Carnival week and the relaxed measures," the RIVM said.
In the middle of February, just after the Omicron wave reached its peak, the Dutch government decided to lift almost all COVID-19 restrictions and "return to normal life."
In this file photo taken on Aug 16, 2021,
medics transfer a patient on a stretcher from an ambulance outside of Emergency at Coral Gables Hospital where coronavirus patients are treated in Coral Gables near Miami. (CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP)
Oxford University
COVID-19 can cause the brain to shrink, reduce grey matter in the regions that control emotion and memory, and damage areas that control the sense of smell, an Oxford University study has found.
The scientists said that the effects were even seen in people who had not been hospitalized with COVID-19, and whether the impact could be partially reversed or if they would persist in the long term needed further investigation.
"There is strong evidence for brain-related abnormalities in COVID-19," the researchers said in their study, which was released on Monday.
Even in mild cases, participants in the research showed "a worsening of executive function" responsible for focus and organizing, and on an average brain sizes shrank between 0.2 percent and 2 percent.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the Nature journal, investigated brain changes in 785 participants aged 51–81 whose brains were scanned twice, including 401 people who caught COVID-19 between their two scans. The second scan was done on average 141 days after the first scan.
The study was conducted when the Alpha variant was dominant in Britain and is unlikely to include anyone infected with the Delta variant.
Studies have found some people who had COVID-19 suffered from "brain fog" or mental cloudiness that included impairment to attention, concentration, speed of information processing and memory. read more
The researchers did not say if vaccination against COVID-19 had any impact on the condition but the UK Health Security Agency said last month that a review of 15 studies found that vaccinated people were about half as likely to develop symptoms of long COVID-19 compared with the unvaccinated.
A member of the medical staff adjusts her gloves at the COVID-19 ICU unit of the Marius Nasta National Pneumology Institute in Bucharest, Romania on Sept 23, 2021. (ANDREEA ALEXANDRU / AP)
Romania
Romania will lift all COVID-19 restrictions from Wednesday including requiring a digital pass to access institutions and the obligation to wear protective masks both indoors and outside, Health Minister Alexandru Rafila said on Tuesday.
The decision stems from the coalition government's decision to no longer extend a nation-wide state of alert two years after the pandemic first hit Romania.
The country remains the European Union's second-least vaccinated state, with just under 42 percent of the population fully inoculated amid distrust in state institutions and poor vaccine education. The pandemic has killed 64,094 people in the EU state of 20 million.
The number of new coronavirus infections in Romania stood at 5,461 on Tuesday, far off a record high 40,018 cases at the start of February.
Other restrictions which will be lifted include curfews for shops, capacity limits for restaurants, theatres and events and mandatory passenger locator forms for travelers. The government will no longer enforce isolating positive cases, Rafila said, adding it will only recommend it.
Rafila had initially recommended lifting restrictions in stages. On Tuesday, he recommended Romanians continue wearing masks indoors and avoid crowds.
This photo shows a box of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine in a refrigerator at the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic in Toppenish, Washington, March 25, 2021. (TED S. WARREN / AP)
South Africa
South African drugmaker Aspen Pharmacare on Tuesday concluded an agreement with Johnson & Johnson to package, sell and distribute the American group's COVID-19 vaccines under its own brand in Africa.
The agreement also allows Aspen to "discuss the expansion of the agreement to include any new versions of the drug substance, such as those developed for new variants or a different formulation for administration as a booster", Aspen said in a statement.
J&J had contracted Aspen to package the COVID-19 vaccine drug substance into final doses, a process called fill and finish, and supply it back to J&J. This, however, gave Aspen no rights over who gets the vaccine and where it goes.
In a separate statement, J&J said the agreement means that Aspen can now supply the COVID-19 vaccine under the Aspenovax brand to all 55 African countries and multilateral entities supporting Africa's vaccination plan.
A person receives a COVID-19 test out of a mobile testing van on Jan 5, 2022 in New York City. (ANGELA WEISS / AFP)
United States
The BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron was estimated to be 11.6 percent of the coronavirus variants circulating in the United States as of March 5, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.
US daily cases have started to decline in recent weeks after touching record levels in January, with the CDC dramatically easing its COVID-19 guidelines for masks, including in schools.
Other Omicron sub-variants that have been circulating since December – called BA.1.1 and B.1.1.529 – now make up around 73.7 percent and 14.7 percent of circulating variants, respectively.
Separately, the rate of wasted COVID-19 vaccines was about 9.5 percent of the more than 687 million doses that had been delivered as of late February in the United States, which equates to about 65 million doses, The Associate Press reported last week.
Nearly 1.5 million doses in Michigan, 1.45 million in North Carolina, 1 million in Illinois and almost 725,000 doses in Washington couldn't be used. In California where 84 million doses were received, about 1.8 percent, or roughly 1.4 million doses, went wasted, according to the report.
State health departments were quoted as saying that they had tracked millions of doses that went to waste, including the ones that expired, those in a multi-dose vial that couldn't be used completely or had to be tossed for some other reason like temperature issues or broken vials.
