Protesters walk around trucks parked in the downtown area in protest of COVID-19 restrictions, in Ottawa, Ontario, Saturday, Feb. 5, 2022. (ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS VIA AP)
VIENNA / SAO PAULO / HAVANA / ROME / MOSCOW / NEW YORK / TORONTO / OTTAWA / LISBON / ADDIS ABABA – Thousands of people demonstrated in Canadian cities, including the financial hub Toronto, on Saturday as mostly peaceful but noisy protests against vaccine mandates spread from Ottawa, the capital.
The "Freedom Convoy" began as a movement against a Canadian vaccine requirement for cross-border truckers, but has turned into a rallying point against public health measures and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government.
“We're all sick and tired of the mandates, of the intimidation, of living in one big prison,” said Robert, a Toronto protester who did not give his last name. "We just want to go back to normal without having to take into our veins the poison which they call vaccines.”
Protesters have shut down downtown Ottawa for the past eight days, with some participants waving Confederate or Nazi flags and some saying they wanted to dissolve Canada's government.
"The protesters in Ottawa have made their point. The entire country heard their point," said Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, who urged protesters to "go home and engage elected officials."
About 5,000 people demonstrated in Ottawa, police said, while hundreds more gathered in Toronto, Canada's biggest city, and Quebec City, coinciding with the city's annual winter carnival. Four people were injured in Manitoba after a pick-up truck drove into a crowd late Friday, police said.
In Toronto, about 500 healthcare workers and supporters rallied downtown in opposition to the trucker convoy, according to a Reuters witness.
Several Toronto healthcare workers said they received advice from their hospitals to not wear hospital scrubs in public in light of the protest.
Ottawa police, which warned on Friday of a crackdown on the protest and dedicated more officers, do not have enough resources to end the protests, the city's police chief said on Saturday. Trudeau ruled out the use of troops against truckers in the capital earlier this week.
Africa
A total of 10,896,302 COVID-19 cases were reported in Africa as of Saturday evening, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.
The specialized healthcare agency of the African Union said the COVID-19 death toll across the continent stands at 241,112, and 9,917,757 patients have recovered from the disease so far.
South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia are among the countries with the most cases on the continent, said the Africa CDC.
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)
Austria
The total number of COVID-19 infections reported in Austria since the start of the pandemic has exceeded 2 million, according to data from the Austrian Interior Ministry.
The 2-million mark was crossed on Saturday as the Alpine country, with a population of about 9 million, registered 32,258 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours.
Austria has seen a surge recently in COVID-19 infections due to the highly infectious Omicron variant. Daily infections in the country have been hovering around 30,000 cases in the past two weeks.
Meanwhile, an Austrian law making it compulsory for adults to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, the European Union's first such sweeping COVID-19 vaccine mandate, was promulgated on Friday and will go into force on Saturday.
Austria's upper house of parliament passed the bill on Thursday by a large margin. It was officially published on Friday afternoon after being signed into law by President Alexander Van der Bellen and Chancellor Karl Nehammer, meaning it will take effect the next day.
The mandate will be implemented in phases. There will be no checks until March 15, when police will start verifying the vaccination status of people they stop in their regular patrols. More thorough checks will begin at a later, unspecified date in a third phase once a vaccination register is up and running.
Roughly 69 percent of Austria's population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the lowest rates in western Europe, which the conservative-led government says justifies the measure and its fines of up to 3,600 euros ($4,109) for breaches.
A health worker poses with a syringe with dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at the Museum of Tomorrow where adults and children between the ages of five and eleven are being vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, in Rio de Janeiro on Jan 18, 2022. (CARL DE SOUZA / AFP)
Brazil
Brazil registered 197,442 COVID-19 infections and 1,308 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing its nationwide counts to 26,473,273 and 631,802 respectively, the National Council of Health Secretaries said Saturday.
Sao Paulo, the most populous state in Brazil with 46 million inhabitants, has so far reported 159,536 deaths and 4,740,153 cases.
The national seven-day moving average of deaths reached 754, the highest since August last year, while the seven-day moving average of daily infections stood at 179,807.
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Children attend a ceremony to mark the resuming of the 2020-2021 school year at the educational centre Ciudad Escolar Libertad in Havana, on Nov 15, 2021. (Yamil LAGE / AFP)
Cuba
Cuba reported on Saturday the lowest daily count of 1,380 COVID-19 cases in several weeks, raising the national count to 1,052,220.
The Ministry of Public Health said that four more related deaths were registered, bringing the nationwide tally to 8,431.
The central province of Ciego de Avila detected 171 new cases, the highest daily count, followed by Holguin with 164 and Matanzas with 163.
A total of 9.8 million of Cuba's 11.2 million people have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and 5.4 million have received a booster dose, according to the authorities.
Italy
Italy reported 93,157 COVID-19 cases on Saturday, down from 99,522 the day before, the health ministry said, while the number of deaths decreased to 375 from 433.
Italy has registered 148,542 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February 2020, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the ninth highest in the world. The country has reported 11.54 million cases to date.
Patients in hospital with COVID-19 – not including those in intensive care – stood at 18,615 on Saturday, down from 19,000 a day earlier.
There were 104 new admissions to intensive care units, down from 114 on Friday. The total number of intensive care patients fell to 1,411 from a previous 1,440.
Portugal
The Portuguese Council of Ministers decided on Saturday that a negative COVID-19 test is no longer required to enter Portugal from Feb 7.
From that date onwards, it is only necessary to present the digital vaccination certificate from the European Union or another proof "duly recognized," according to an official note sent to the press on Saturday.
Within Portuguese territory, the government reduced the validity of the antigen test for entry into indoor public places, which now "has to be done within 24 hours before its presentation."
Portugal recorded 41,511 new COVID-19 cases with 44 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the national counts to 2,884,540 and 20,171 respectively.
In this file photo taken on Dec 14, 2021, a pedestrian wearing a face mask walks along a street in central Moscow. (YURI KADOBNOV / AFP)
Russia
Russia will ease some of its COVID-19 restrictions from Sunday, the consumer health watchdog announced on Saturday, despite reporting a record daily number of cases as the Omicron variant spreads across the country.
The number of daily infections has been surging since January. But the highly transmissible Omicron variant has not led to a significant increase in deaths, and the Kremlin has recently dismissed concerns about the risk of new lockdowns.
According to the latest order from the consumer health watchdog, from Sunday people will no longer need to self-isolate after contacting those infected with COVID-19.
In Moscow, schools and nurseries may end isolation requirements for pupils from next week, the capital's coronavirus task force said.
Earlier this week, Anna Popova, the head of the watchdog, said that some of the restrictions no longer made sense as the Omicron variant was spreading too fast. Up to 20 percent of infected people in Russia and 40% of people in Moscow have no symptoms.
The order to lift quarantine restrictions comes as new daily cases in Russia jumped to 177,282 on Saturday, from 168,201 a day earlier, and compared with less than 16,000 a day that Russia reported a month ago, the government coronavirus task force said.
It also reported 714 deaths in the past 24 hours, down from all-time high levels above 1,200 recorded in November.
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This file photo taken on June 4, 2021 shows a vial of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at a pharmacy in Paris, France. (STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)
United States
The director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off on the US Food and Drug Administration's full approval of Moderna Inc's COVID-19 vaccine in those aged 18 and over, the agency said on Friday.
The vaccine has been in use under the US Food and Drug Administration's emergency use authorization since December 2020, and is now the second fully approved vaccine for COVID-19 in the United States.
Earlier on Friday, a CDC panel voted unanimously to recommend the vaccine's use, after the FDA granted full approval of the shot on Monday.
While the FDA approves vaccines, the CDC needs to sign off on how they will be implemented in the United States. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky's green light is the final formality of the approval process.
The vaccine will now be sold under the brand name as Spikevax.
In another development, US health officials on Friday said they are considering lengthening the recommended interval between the first two doses of the most widely used COVID-19 vaccines to eight weeks to lower the risk of heart inflammation and improve their effectiveness.
Dr. Sara Oliver, an official at the CDC, said the agency was considering making the recommendation for Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech shots during a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel of outside advisers to the CDC.
In the United States, the recommended interval between the first two shots of Pfizer's vaccine is three weeks and for Moderna's, four.
In her presentation, Dr. Oliver said an extended interval appears to reduce the risk of already rare cases of myocarditis, and that the lowest rates of heart inflammation following vaccination occur if the vaccines are given eight weeks apart.
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)
World Health Organization
The mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine produced at the World Health Organization-backed vaccine hub in South Africa could take up to three years to get approval if companies do not share their technology and data, a WHO official said on Friday.
The WHO-backed tech transfer hub in South Africa was set up in June to give poorer nations the know-how to produce COVID-19 vaccines, after market leaders of the mRNA COVID vaccine, Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna , declined a WHO request to share their technology and expertise.
Martin Friede, coordinator of the WHO Initiative for Vaccine Research, said if companies with approved COVID vaccines or late stage clinical data shared their technology and data with the consortium, the vaccine produced in South Africa could be approved in 12 to 18 months.
"..It could be 12 months if there was a partnership with a company that already has an approved vaccine. Otherwise, it's more like 24 to 36 months depending on what the approval process is."
On Thursday, South Africa's Afrigen Biologics, which was part of WHO's consortium, said it has used the publicly available sequence of Moderna's mRNA vaccine to make its own version of the shot.
The WHO has been trying to persuade Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to join forces with its African tech transfer hub.
Friede said the vaccine will be going into first clinical trials in fourth quarter of this year.
