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by James PHEBY Agence France Presse LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Britain on Wednesday became the first country in the world to approve AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s low-cost Covid vaccine, raising hopes it will help tackle rising cases and ease pressure on creaking health services. The independent Medicines and Healthcare products and Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said the vaccine “met its strict standards of safety, quality and effectiveness”, and a roll-out was set for January […]
SANTIAGO, Chile (AFP) — Chile’s health authorities said on Tuesday they had detected a case of the new coronavirus strain initially found in Britain, the first such confirmed infection in Latin America. Experts believe this Covid-19 variant to be considerably more contagious than the original strain first detected in China. The case was found in a Chilean woman who returned to the country on December 21 from Madrid, having also traveled to Britain and […]
BERLIN, Germany (AFP) — Germany’s daily coronavirus death toll has crossed 1,000 for the first time, health authorities said Wednesday. A total of 1,129 people died in the previous 24 hours, according to figures from the Robert Koch Institute, up from the previous record of 962 logged last Wednesday. There were 22,459 new infections over the same period, it added. An apparent drop in new infections and deaths in recent days was a result […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Jobless Americans who risked not receiving unemployment aid this week due to President Donald Trump’s delay in signing off on it will indeed receive the money, the Labor Department said on Tuesday. Congress in March expanded the US unemployment safety net as the coronavirus pandemic struck, creating the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) for freelancers and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) for the long-term unemployed but only funding them until […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — Phase 3 trials of a Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine found it was 79 percent effective, the Chinese pharma giant said Wednesday, lower than rival jabs developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna but a potential breakthrough in the battle to stem the pandemic in Asia. China has been racing against the West to develop its own Covid-19 vaccines, with five already in large-scale Phase 3 clinical trials. But Wednesday’s announced was the first […]
by Shaun Tandon with James Pheby in London and AFP bureaus Agence France Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A worrying new variant of Covid-19 was detected for the first time Tuesday in the United States and Latin America as President-elect Joe Biden vowed he will significantly ramp up a fledging vaccination drive. The new strain, which first emerged in the UK, pushed Britain to a new daily record of coronavirus infections and led […]
MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russian rescuers on Tuesday were continuing to search for 17 missing fishermen after their trawler capsized during a storm and sank in the freezing Barents Sea a day earlier. The spokesman for the maritime and river transport agency Rosmorrechflot, Alexei Kravchenko, told AFP that rescuers were conducting the operation by air and sea. “We are formally continuing the search and rescue operation,” Kravchenko said, adding that two ships and an An-74 […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The US state of Colorado has recorded what is reportedly America’s first case of the particularly infectious coronavirus variant that emerged recently in Britain, the governor said Tuesday. “Today we discovered Colorado’s first case of the COVID-19 variant B.1.1.7, the same variant discovered in the UK,” state governor Jared Polis tweeted. He attached an official statement from his office and state health officials that said the individual is a “male […]
by Hugues HONORE PARIS, France (AFP) — France is considering starting its curfew earlier in the evening in parts of the country to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus, Health Minister Olivier Veran said Tuesday. The government has for the moment ruled out a return to a full lockdown, either nationally or at the local level, he added. The proposal is to extend the existing 8pm-6am overnight curfew, starting it at 6pm in […]
by Lajla VESELICA PETRINJA, Croatia (AFP) — A search for survivors in Croatia stretched into the night Tuesday after a powerful earthquake killed at least seven people in the country’s interior, tearing down rooftops and piling bricks in the streets. The 6.4-magnitude quake was felt as far afield as Vienna but the heavy damage was concentrated in and around Petrinja, a town of around 20,000 some 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Croatia’s capital Zagreb. […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris received her Covid vaccine live on television Tuesday and urged public trust in the process, while her choice of hospital highlighted the plight of the hard-hit African-American community. A mask-wearing Harris received the first of her two shots at United Medical Center, located in an area of Washington, DC with a large African-American population. African-American communities nationwide have seen disproportionately high levels of death and […]
ZAGREB, Croatia (AFP) — A powerful 6.4 magnitude earthquake tore down buildings in central Croatia on Tuesday, striking near the town of Petrinja where rescue teams raced to comb through the rubble. The tremor, one of the strongest to rock Croatia in recent years, collapsed rooftops in Petrinja, home to some 20,000 people, and left the streets strewn with bricks and other debris. “We are pulling people from the cars, we don’t know if […]
