In this file photo taken on Dec 23, 2021, a girl is inoculated against coronavirus COVID-19 during a children's vaccination action in the the Red City Hall in Berlin, Germany. (TOBIAS SCHWARZ / AFP)
BERLIN / PARIS / JOHANNESBURG / NAIROBI / SAO PAULO / BRUSSELS / STOCKHOLM / GENEVA / SANTIAGO / ROME / CAPE TOWN / LISBON / JOHANNESBURG / MADRID – Though surging cases are still weighting on the long-strained health systems in Europe, multiple European countries have decided to scrap COVID-19 restrictions, relying on vaccination to reach "collective immunity."
Starting from Feb 2, certain COVID-19 related restrictions were lifted in France, French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on Jan 20 during a press conference.
The caps on the number of people allowed in indoor and outdoor events will be lifted. Masks will no longer be required outdoors. Teleworking will no longer be mandatory, but still encouraged. Starting from Feb 16, standing in bars, concerts and the opening of nightclubs will be allowed.
The Finnish government also decided to ease the restrictions on restaurants from Feb 14. Restaurants can serve drinks until 11 pm and remain open until midnight.
An official with the Italian government told local media that Italy would abandon most of the COVID-19 restrictions at the end of February, and would not extend the state of emergency at the end of March.
Starting Feb 5, restaurants and shops will be allowed to open in Austria until midnight. Besides, rules effectively barring unvaccinated people from restaurants and stores will be phased out.
Starting Feb 19, people without proof of vaccination or recent recovery will be able to visit restaurants and tourist attractions using a negative coronavirus test result.
The Dutch government has decided to further relax its COVID-19 policy, reopening all restaurants, cafes, cinemas, museums and theaters under certain conditions.
Malta, where outdoor mask-wearing has not been mandatory since mid-January, will no longer request vaccination certificates for entry into restaurants, snack bars and social clubs from Feb 7. From Feb 14, certificates will not be requested for access to bars, gyms, spas, pools, cinemas and theatres.
After France's decision to facilitate travels with Britain, the British government as well will proceed to ease entry restrictions.
All testing measures for eligible fully vaccinated travellers arriving in Britain will be scrapped from Feb 11, as the government takes one step further to reopen the travel sector.
Brazil
Brazil reported on Thursday 298,408 new cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, breaking the country's previous record for daily infections, and 1,041 COVID-19 deaths, according to data released by the Health Ministry.
The South American country has now registered 26,091,520 confirmed cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 630,001, according to ministry data.
Britain
Britain on Thursday approved Novavax's two-dose COVID-19 vaccine for use in adults, bringing a fifth coronavirus shot to the country amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant that has led to a spike in cases.
The vaccine, Nuvaxovid, was approved for use in Britons aged 18 years and older as it met the required safety, quality and effectiveness standards, the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said in a statement.
A woman receives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 at a vaccination centre in Santiago, on Dec 23, 2021. (JAVIER TORRES / AFP)
Chile
Chile's new daily cases of COVID-19 surpassed 35,000 on Thursday for the first time, after tests detected 35,197 infections in 24 hours, raising the nation's caseload to 2,258,005, the Health Ministry said.
In the same 24 hours, 82 more people died from causes related to the virus, the highest daily death toll in six months, which raised the overall pandemic death toll to 39,824.
The daily positivity rate registered 23.06 percent nationwide and 22.86 percent in the metropolitan region of Santiago, home to more than 7 million people, according to the ministry's pandemic update.
Chile saw a 73 percent jump in new infections nationwide over the past seven days and a 219 percent jump in the past 14 days.
It also registered record-high spikes in infections in recent weeks, with over 30,000 new cases in one day and more than 118,000 active cases, driven by the spread of the Omicron variant of the virus.
This file photo dated April 20, 2021 shows an exterior view of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. (PETER DEJONG / FILE / AP)
European Medicines Agency
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Thursday that there was "insufficient evidence" for it to recommend the administration of a second booster vaccine against COVID-19.
"At the moment, there is insufficient evidence from clinical trials or real-world evidence that could support our recommendation for the general population," said Marco Cavaleri, who heads the EMA's Biological Health Threats and Vaccines Strategy Office.
Cavaleri stressed at a press conference the importance of continuing the vaccination campaigns, including the first booster, which offers a high degree of protection against the virus.
He highlighted the emergence of new sub-variants of Omicron, such as the so-called BA.2 variant, which is spreading in many countries.
It is too early to say to what extent this variant differs from Omicron in terms of transmissibility and immune evasion, but it remains a closely related strain to Omicron.
The EMA "would support any requests for approval of an upgraded COVID-19 vaccine targeting only the new Omicron variant," he said.
A picture taken on June 16, 2021 in Brussels shows a passport behind a mobile phone whose screen bears a EU Digital COVID-19 certificate. The European health certificate, which Belgium began using on June 16, 2021, will become operational across the EU on July 1, 2021. (KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP)
European Union
The European Commission proposed on Thursday a change to rules on COVID-19 certificates that would allow participants in vaccine trials to get a valid pass despite having received unapproved shots.
The move follows concerns raised by Germany's BioNTech and Spain's Hipra about difficulties in enrolling volunteers for their COVID-19 vaccine trials because participants could face limitations to access public spaces and to travel.
The changes to the rules, which also extend by one year the validity of the EU COVID pass until the end of June 2023, will certify that EU countries can issue vaccination certificates to participants in trials. Some countries are already doing so.
The tweak however falls short of requiring EU countries to recognise these exceptional vaccine certificates when issued by other states in the bloc. As a result, when travelling across the 27-nation union, participants may be treated as not fully vaccinated and face restrictions.
A spokesman for the EU Commission said he expected EU countries will recognize the COVID passes issued to trial participants in other countries in the bloc.
The proposal must be adopted by EU lawmakers and governments.
COVID-19 vaccination certificates are required in many EU countries to enter restaurants, gyms or cinemas. They are also necessary to travel across the bloc.
Dozens of people queue outside a pharmacy for a COVID-19 antigenic test on Jan19, 2022 in Savenay, western France, as COVID-19 cases soar in Europe. (LOIC VENANCE / AFP)
France
The cumulative total for confirmed COVID-19 cases in France since the start of the pandemic has passed 20 million, health ministry data showed on Thursday.
The health ministry registered 274,352 new infections on Thursday, pushing the total to 20.15 million, Reuters calculations showed. The cumulative death toll is nearly 132,000.
The health ministry has not published the total number of infections since mid-January, when it stood at just over 14 million. Since then, the seven-day average of new infections has held at over 300,000 per day, adding about a million new cases every three days.
The first few infections in France were recorded at the end January 2020. The seven-day average of new cases rarely rose over 30,000 per day throughout 2020 and 2021.
But the arrival of the highly contagious Omicron variant in late 2021 pushed the seven-day average of new cases to more than 100,000 a day just after Christmas and the cumulative total of cases passed the 10 million cases milestone on Jan 1, 2022.
As the infection rate sped up, the seven-day average of new cases rose to a record high of over 366,000 per day on Jan 25.
Since then, the increase has slowed and the average has now fallen back to just under 300,000, but France still recorded nearly 10 millon new cases in January.
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
Germany's health experts are divided over whether the country is ready to ease COVID-19 restrictions as its neighbours start dialling back curbs.
Germany on Thursday reported a record of 236,120 new daily cases thanks to the more-infectious Omicron variant of the coronavirus, but some health experts say it is time to put a "freedom plan" for how restrictions will be eased gradually.
"Formulating this Freedom Plan is now the most important task of politics," Andreas Gassen, the head of the KBV family doctors' association, told Rheinische Post newspaper on Friday.
Gassen said Germany should accept living with COVID-19 as it does with influenza which has always new variants and cases tens of thousands of deaths annually.
"We have to accept that with corona and at the same time continue to offer vaccinations for risk groups," Gassen added.
Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declined to give details about national plans to relax restrictions before the latest infection wave peaks, which is expected in mid-February.
But some German states, such as Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein have already announced easing curbs earlier this week; a step that was criticized by some German health experts as premature.
A worker of the Cremona hospital cleaning staff, wearing a personal protective equipment, walks past the COVID-19 intensive care unit of the Cremona hospital, in Cremona, northern Italy on Jan 11, 2022. (MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP)
Italy
Italy recorded 112,691 new infections on Thursday, a decrease of some 6,300 compared to a day earlier and a reduction of more than 20,000 compared to two days earlier.
After plateauing for weeks, weekly totals for Italy's COVID-19 infections dropped over the last seven-day period, data from health monitoring entity GIMBE Foundation showed Thursday.
The foundation, which bases its calculations on data supplied by Italy's Ministry of Health, reported that after several weeks of increases, the weekly totals of new infections had held steady at 1.2 million for three weeks in January, but the latest figures totaled over 900,000 for Jan. 26-Feb. 1, recording a decrease of 24.9 percent.
The total number of currently positive cases also fell, though by only 7.9 percent, the foundation reported.
A woman and child enter a vaccination center in Lisbon on Dec 18, 2021. (ARMANDO FRANCA / AP)
Portugal
Portugal will drop a requirement to present a negative COVID-19 test for air passengers arriving with a valid digital European Union certificate or recognized proof of vaccination, the government said on Thursday.
The move, approved in a cabinet meeting, is aligned with European Union rules.
In a statement, the government said negative tests will no longer be required for "those who present the EU COVID-19 Digital Certificate in any of its modalities or other proof of vaccination that has been recognized".
It did not say when the decision would take effect, but the rules now in force were meant to last until Feb 9.
The Interior Ministry, which is responsible for the entry of people into the country, could not immediately provide further details, including whether British or American proof of vaccination would be considered valid.
The EU digital certificate is issued to people who have been vaccinated, received a negative test result or have proof of recovery from COVID-19.
In this file photo taken on Dec 8, 2021, a woman is vaccinated by a member of the Western Cape Metro EMS in an ambulance which has been converted to facilitate vaccinations at a COVID-19 vaccination event in Cape Town. RODGER BOSCH / AFP
South Africa
South Africa is seeing more cases of the BA.2 sub-variant of the Omicron coronavirus variant and is monitoring it, but there is no clear sign that BA.2 is substantially different from the original Omicron strain, a senior scientist said on Friday.
Michelle Groome, from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, showed in a presentation that BA.2 accounted for 23 percent of the 450 samples from January sequenced by South Africa's genomic surveillance network and the original strain 75 percent.
Of the 2,243 samples from December that were sequenced, BA.2 accounted for 4% and the original strain 94 percent.
"We are seeing this increase with the BA.2, we are still trying to get more information on this particular sub-lineage … and so we are increasing sequencing from those provinces where we are seeing increases (in cases) monitoring the proportion that is due to BA.2," Groome told a news conference.
"At this stage, there is no indication that there would be … differences between these different sub-lineages of Omicron. As we saw with Delta there were lots of lineages and we didn't see a lot of difference between them, but we will keep monitoring," she added.
Asked whether there were signs BA.2 was causing different symptoms, she said she was not expecting marked changes. Scientists will analyse hospitalization data for clues about the severity of illness linked to the sub-variant, she said.
An employee at the Afrigen biotechnology company and Vaccine Hub facility, works in a room housing the bio-reactor, in Cape Town, on Oct 05, 2021. A South African biotech consortium is gearing up to make Africa's first homegrown messenger RNA jab against COVID-19 in a bid to overcome unequal access to inoculations and help the continent towards vaccine autonomy. Backed by the World Health Organization, Cape Town-based Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines is leading the pilot project which will use reverse-engineering to try and get the formula from the Moderna mRNA vaccine. (RODGER BOSCH / AFP)
In another development, South Africa's Afrigen Biologics has used the publicly available sequence of Moderna Inc's mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to make its own version of the shot, which could be tested in humans before the end of this year, Afrigen's top executive said on Thursday.
The vaccine candidate would be the first to be made based on a widely used vaccine without the assistance and approval of the developer. It is also the first mRNA vaccine designed, developed and produced at lab scale on the African continent.
The World Health Organization last year picked a consortium including Afrigen for a pilot project to give poor and middle-income countries the know-how to make COVID vaccines, after market leaders of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, Pfize, BioNTech and Moderna, declined a WHO request to share their technology and expertise.
The WHO and consortium partners hope their technology transfer hub will help overcome inequalities between rich nations and poorer countries in getting access to vaccines. Some 99 percent of Africa's vaccines against all diseases are imported and the negligible remainder manufactured locally.
During the pandemic, wealthy countries have hoovered up most of the world's supplies of vaccines.
Biovac, a partly state-owned South African vaccine producer, will be the first recipient of the technology from the hub. Afrigen has also agreed to help train companies in Argentina and Brazil.
In September, the WHO's hub in Cape Town decided to go it alone after failing to bring on board Pfizer and Moderna, both of which have argued they need to oversee any technology transfer due to the complexity of the manufacturing process.
"If this project shows that Africa can take cutting edge technology and produce cutting-edge products, this will banish this idea that Africa can't do it and change the global mindset … this can be a game-changer," Charles Gore, executive director at MPP, told Reuters at Afrigen's facility, a converted warehouse.
Under pressure to make drugs in lower-income countries, Moderna and BioNTech have announced plans to build mRNA vaccine factories in Africa, but production is still a long way off.
"We haven't copied Moderna, we've developed our own processes because Moderna didn't give us any technology," Petro Terblanche, managing director at Afrigen, told Reuters.
"We started with the Moderna sequence because that gives, in our view, the best starting material. But this is not Moderna’s vaccine, it is the Afrigen mRNA hub vaccine," Terblanche said.
A child receives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Principe de Asturias de Alcala hospital en Madrid, on Dec 15, 2021. (OSCAR DEL POZO / AFP)
Spain
The Spanish government will lift the requirement for people to wear masks outdoors as an anti-coronavirus measure from next Thursday, Health Minister Carolina Darias said on Friday.
The measure was reinstated in late December to curb the spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant.
The cabinet plans to approve the change at its weekly meeting scheduled for Tuesday and make it effective two days later, Darias told La SER radio station.
The government "always said it would last only while it was strictly necessary," she said. As contagion rates have fallen for several days, the government considers situation has changed, she said.
In the past two weeks, COVID-19's contagion rate, measured over the past 14 days, has been steadily falling to 2,421 cases per 100,000 people on Thursday down from almost 3,400 in early January.
Despite the surge in cases between November and January as Omicron spread, hospital admissions and deaths remain well below those seen in earlier waves of the pandemic, thanks in large part to Spain's high vaccination rate.
Spain's total death toll from the pandemic stands at 94,040 and the number of cases at 10.2 million.
Sweden
Sweden will lift pandemic restrictions next week despite record levels of infections as it banks on booster shots and high rates of past COVID-19 infections to keep hospitalisation rates manageable.
Current restrictions, which include bars and restaurants having to close early and a cap of 500 people inside larger indoor venues, were extended last month until Feb 9.
"It's time to open Sweden up again," Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson told a news conference.
"Looking ahead, infection rates will remain high for a while longer, but as far as we can judge, the worst consequences of the contagion are now behind us," she said.
Fuelled by the more contagious Omicron variant, Sweden has repeatedly set newly daily case records over the past month that has strained the healthcare system, although to a lesser extent than in previous waves.
Some recommendations, such as getting vaccinated and isolating at home when sick, will remain in place and they will be more restrictive for the unvaccinated, Health Minister Lena Hallengren told the news conference.
People queue at a COVID-19 test center installed in a street of Swiss capital Bern on Sept 17, 2021. (FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP)
Switzerland
Despite its record high new COVID-19 infection figures, Switzerland on Thursday lifted the requirements to work from home and to quarantine after contact with an infected person.
The Swiss government has also proposed to further ease other pandemic-related restrictions later, but the final decision is expected to be made on Feb. 16.
The Swiss Federal Council said in a statement that the decision was made because hospitals in the country have not been overburdened and the occupancy of intensive care units has fallen further.
"This is probably due to the high level of immunity among the population thanks to vaccination and recovery from COVID-19," according to the government statement.
"In addition, Omicron is causing fewer cases of severe illness than previous virus variants. There are increasing signs that the acute crisis will soon be over, and the endemic phase could begin," it added.
This photograph taken on March 5, 2021 shows the flag of the World Health Organization at their headquarters in Geneva amid the COVID-19 outbreak. (FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP)
World Health Organization
Africa needs to speed up vaccinations six-fold if it hopes to beat the COVID-19 pandemic, and people on the continent should not become complacent because of reports Omicron is milder than previous variants, the WHO's Africa director said on Thursday.
Only 11 percent of Africans are fully vaccinated, lagging most of the rest of the world. The World Health Organization's Matshidiso Moeti said around 6 million Africans were being vaccinated per week, but "that number needs to increase exponentially to 36 million a week to put countries on the path to beating this pandemic."
She said she was worried that reports that the Omicron variant was milder than earlier strains of the virus would undermine vaccine programs.
"I think we are already seeing signs that people's understanding is that this virus is spreading very fast but it is not very lethal and therefore some people will feel 'why, why bother?'" she said.
Health experts say that although Omicron can be milder than other coronavirus variants, it can still cause serious illness and death. Vaccines sharply reduce those risks, saving lives and protecting healthcare systems from becoming overwhelmed.
The African Union has launched a campaign urging young Africans in particular to come forward for vaccination. Other organisations such as the WHO and UNICEF are also working to make vaccination easier for Africans.
