A doctor and a nurse examine patients at the COVID-19 unit of a hospital in Kjustendil on Oct 19, 2021, one of the municipalities in the 'dark Red COVID-19 zone' of Bulgaria, where more than 500 people out of every 100,000 are infected with coronavirus. (NIKOLAY DOYCHINOV / AFP)
NEW YORK / WASHINGTON / LONDON / SANTIAGO / THE HAGUE / MOSCOW / WARSAW / VIENNA – Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania all hit their highest infection rates of the pandemic on Wednesday, driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, and yet were reluctant to impose sweeping curbs to limit the spread.
The region has some of Europe's lowest vaccination rates, particularly in Romania and Bulgaria, and saw some of the highest COVID-related death rates towards the end of 2021.
Poland reported 53,420 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, while the Czech Republic registered record daily tallies of new coronavirus cases for two days in a row this week, reaching almost 40,000 on Tuesday
Poland reported 53,420 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, while the Czech Republic registered record daily tallies of new coronavirus cases for two days in a row this week, reaching almost 40,000 on Tuesday.
Hungary, a country of 10 million, reached over 20,000 new daily coronavirus cases while the EU's least vaccinated countries, Romania and Bulgaria, also reported record high case counts.
"We have to be ready for a further rise in cases, even above 60,000," a Polish Health Ministry spokesperson told a news conference.
However, countries have yet to set tougher and more sweeping restrictions, such as mandatory lockdowns, unlike during earlier waves of the pandemic in 2020-21 when strict measures were imposed.
The World Health Organization said on Jan. 12 that Omicron causes less serious illness than earlier variants of the coronavirus but that it remained a "dangerous virus", especially for the unvaccinated.
Poland said older primary and secondary schoolchildren must switch to remote learning from Thursday, but restaurants, cinemas and other public places could remain open.
There are some limits on unvaccinated customers in Poland, but enforcement is lax. read more
In an effort to shield businesses and minimize the extent of remote learning, Bulgaria recently said it would impose tougher restrictions based on occupancy of intensive unit beds, rather than based on number of daily infections.
Poland has stepped up testing, performing a record 173,000 official tests in 24 hours. Yet the number of tests per thousand people in the country of 38 million remains much lower than in Western European countries, Our World in Data shows.
Austria
Austria's lockdown for people not fully vaccinated against the coronavirus will end on Monday because the pressure on hospitals has eased, the government said on Wednesday.
New daily coronavirus infections are rising, driven by the extremely contagious Omicron variant. They hit a new record above 30,000 on Wednesday, Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein told a news conference, adding that they would peak in the next two weeks at around 35,000 to 40,000.
The occupancy rate of hospital and intensive-care beds, however, has been falling.
"We came to the conclusion that the lockdown for unvaccinated people in Austria is only justifiable in the event of the threat of an imminent over-burdening of intensive-care capacity," Mueckstein told a news conference, adding experts no longer saw it as necessary.
Since Nov 15 those not vaccinated against the coronavirus have been under lockdown, meaning they are only allowed to leave their homes for a limited number of reasons such as shopping for essentials or working. The measure, which was suspended over Christmas, has been criticized as very difficult to enforce.
While that restriction on their movement will be lifted, the unvaccinated will still be barred from taking part in a range of leisure activities including eating in restaurants or shopping for non-essential items as part of government efforts to increase the vaccination rate, which is among the lowest in western Europe.
People wait to receive a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 at a vaccination center in Santiago on Jan 20, 2022. (JAVIER TORRES / AFP)
Chile
Chile surpassed 2 million accumulated cases of COVID-19 after detecting 14,291 new cases in 24 hours, raising the total caseload to 2,001,346, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
In its daily pandemic report, the ministry said eight more deaths related to COVID-19 in the same 24 hours brought the death toll to 39,543.
A sign indicated the way to a free rapid testing center in the city of Duesseldorf, western Germany on Jan 19, 2022, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. (INA FASSBENDER / AFP)
Germany
German lawmakers are due to debate introducing a bill making vaccination against COVID-19 mandatory. The idea is facing resistance from politicians as well as ordinary Germans.
The government is worried that rising COVID-19 infections and the risk of new variants could strain the health system next autumn or winter. It wants to increase vaccination rate significantly by then.
In Germany, around 75 percent of the population has received at least one shot against the virus – lower than other western European countries such as France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands on 80 percent, 86 percent , 83 percent and 77percent respectively.
The bill could face a legal challenge as it's seen by some as a violation of the constitution's second article, which guarantees citizens' right to self-determination over their own bodies
The government wants to allow lawmakers to freely put forward proposals for a vaccine mandate. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said this parliamentary procedure "gives the process the grandeur it needs."
On Wednesday, Germany's lower house of parliament will debate the topic. Details of the bill will be finalized after the debate, and a draft law should be ready for a vote in parliament by March.
However, it's not clear if a future bill can muster a majority to pass. Some lawmakers from the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats – the junior coalition partners of Scholz's Social Democrats – are opposed to the measure.
Scholz wants the mandate to apply to everyone aged 18 and older. Austria has set the same age for its vaccine mandate.
Other lawmakers suggested imposing the mandate on over 50s as they have a higher risk of developing life-threatening COVID-19 symptoms. A similar step was taken in Italy.
The bill could impose three doses of vaccination and will have a time limit set by experts, said Dirk Wiese, a lawmaker involved in initiating the bill.
Refusing vaccination entails a financial penalty in line with a person's income, Wiese said.
ALSO READ: Omicron survives longer on plastic, skin than prior variants
The bill could face a legal challenge as it's seen by some as a violation of the constitution's second article, which guarantees citizens' right to self-determination over their own bodies.
"The state is violating that right to physical integrity when it says 'I dictate that you must take this drug'," said Steffen Rabe, the chairman of "Doctors for Individual Vaccination Decisions" association which opposes a mandate.
The absence of a general registry for vaccination could be another obstacle, as it limits the government's ability to monitor who is vaccinated and who isn't.
Netherlands
Despite high infections, the Dutch government announced new relaxations of its COVID-19 policy on Tuesday, reopening all restaurants, cafes, cinemas, museums and theaters under certain conditions.
During a press conference in the Hague, Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport Ernst Kuipers emphasized that they are taking a risk with these relaxations and that it remains important to continue to follow the basic rules.
"With the relaxations, we are consciously looking for the limits of what is possible," Rutte said. "We take a risk now. We do this because behind all understandable cries for help and actions are such major problems and tensions."
A health worker prepares a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 at a vaccination center in Santiago on Jan 20, 2022. (JAVIER TORRES / AFP)
Pfizer
Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE said on Tuesday they started a clinical trial to test a new version of their vaccine specifically designed to target the COVID-19 Omicron variant, which has eluded some of the protection provided by the original two-dose vaccine regimen.
The companies plan to study the safety and tolerability of the shots in the more than 1,400 people who will be enrolled in the trial
Banking on volunteers in the United States, the companies plan to test the immune response generated by the Omicron-based vaccine both as a three-shot regimen in unvaccinated people and as a booster shot for people who already received two doses of their original vaccine.
They are also testing a fourth dose of the current vaccine against a fourth dose of the Omicron-based vaccine in people who received a third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine three to six months earlier.
The companies plan to study the safety and tolerability of the shots in the more than 1,400 people who will be enrolled in the trial.
Russia
Russia reported a record daily number of COVID-19 cases on Wednesday as the Omicron variant of the virus spreads, authorities said.
New daily cases jumped to 74,692, up from from 67,809 a day earlier. The government coronavirus task force also reported 657 deaths in the last 24 hours.
A man receives a dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at Babington Hospital in Belper on Dec 16, 2021 as the UK steps up the country's booster drive to fight a "tidal wave" of Omicron. (OLI SCARFF / AFP)
UK
An English COVID-19 study reported record prevalence in January after an Omicron-fueled spike in infections, Imperial College London said on Wednesday, adding that infections had dropped back from their peak but were now plateauing.
Imperial found that prevalence of infections between Jan 5 and Jan 20 was 4.41 percent, more than three times higher than it was in December.
Although prevalence decreased over the course of the month, the overall trend was unclear by the end of the study period, with cases rising in children and falling in adults.
"There is good news in our data in that infections had been rapidly dropping during January, but they are still extremely high and may have recently stalled at a very high prevalence," said Paul Elliott, director of the Imperial REACT program.
Omicron had also almost entirely displaced Delta, with only 1 percent of sequenced swabs belong to the formerly dominant variant.
It found prevalence among over-75s of 2.43 percent, a lower proportion than in the population overall but still "a high level of infection among a highly vulnerable group," the researchers said.
Nearly 65 percent of people asked reported that they had a confirmed previous infection. However, Elliott said that while some of these could be reinfections, they could also be the same, recent infections being picked up a second time by the survey.
ALSO READ: Canadian hospitals strain as Omicron hits health workers
A nurse administers a pediatric dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to a girl at a LA Care Health Plan vaccination clinic at Los Angeles Mission College in the Sylmar neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, Jan 19, 2022. (ROBYN BECK / AFP)
US
An appeals court judge on Tuesday granted a stay in an appeal over mask mandates in New York, keeping the rule in effect during the legal process, New York Attorney General Letitia James said.
A day earlier, a judge had struck down the state's mask mandate, one week before it was due to expire. The state attorney general had filed a motion to stay the ruling in an attempt to put it on hold while the state filed a formal appeal.
Justice Robert Miller of the state appeals court temporarily blocked the lower-court ruling, siding with the state.
Disagreements and court action over mask mandates in a number of states have become a flashpoint of the pandemic response in the United States, often dividing Democrats and Republicans.
Earlier this month, the US Supreme Court blocked President Joe Biden's vaccination-or-testing mandate for large businesses. A judge in Texas last week ruled that Biden could not require federal employees to be vaccinated.
Meanwhile, more than 10 million children in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to the latest report of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association.
A total of 10,603,034 child COVID-19 cases had been reported across the country as of Jan. 20, and children represented 18.4 percent of all confirmed cases, according to the report published late Monday.
