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by Marc BURLEIGH BRUSSELS, Belgium (AFP) — EU leaders on Tuesday welcomed the introduction of a bloc-wide Covid-19 pass that they hope will unlock a tourist surge this summer. The 27 member states want the EU Digital Covid Certificate, to be launched July 1, to turn the page on coronavirus restrictions that have crimped Europeans’ cherished freedom of movement. Coupled with a separate plan to let in fully vaccinated travelers from countries outside the EU, […]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Brazil’s Covid-19 death toll surpassed 450,000 on Tuesday, as delays plague the hard-hit country’s vaccine rollout and epidemiologists warned a brutal new surge of the virus could be coming. The health ministry reported 2,173 deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the official number of lives lost to the coronavirus in Brazil to 452,031, second only to the United States. The situation has stabilized somewhat, with an average of […]
MEDAN, Indonesia (AFP) — Four people have been arrested in Indonesia for allegedly stealing Covid-19 vaccines marked for prisoners and selling them to the public, authorities said Tuesday. The suspects took more than 1,000 doses made by China’s Sinovac from the prisoners’ quota, offering them to buyers in the capital Jakarta and in North Sumatra’s Medan city for around 250,000 rupiah ($17) each. The four arrested included a doctor at a prison in Medan and […]
SINGAPORE, Singapore (AFP) — Singapore Airlines said Tuesday it was rerouting flights to avoid Belarus after Minsk forced a jet to land to arrest a dissident. “We are currently rerouting our flights that are bound for Europe to avoid the Belarusian airspace, and we will continue to closely monitor the situation,” a spokesperson told AFP. © Agence France-Presse
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — New Zealand suspended quarantine-free travel with Australia’s Victoria state over a new coronavirus cluster Tuesday, the fourth time the trans-Tasman travel bubble has been disrupted since it opened last month. Officials in Wellington said they were taking a cautious approach after Melbourne recorded nine locally acquired cases in the past two days, believed to be related to a leak from a quarantine hotel. New Zealand’s Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China on Monday dismissed as “totally untrue” reports that three researchers in Wuhan went to hospital with an illness shortly before the coronavirus emerged in the city and spread around the globe. Since infecting its first victims in the central Chinese city in late 2019, the pathogen has afflicted almost every country in the world, killing more than 3.4 million people and pummelling national economies. Beijing has always fiercely fought the […]
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — Spain sent a clear message to Morocco Monday, insisting on respect for its shared borders a week after over 8,000 migrants entered its Ceuta enclave, with 1,000 minors still there. Speaking in Brussels during an EU summit, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the crisis had “triggered a crisis unprecedented in recent years between the European Union and Morocco”. Spain’s two tiny enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla have Europe’s only land border […]
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AFP) — A 39-year-old British woman died in a Cypriot hospital after a blood clotting incident after receiving the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, the official Cyprus News Agency said Monday. Charalambos Charilaou, the spokesperson for the state health services, told CNA that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) would investigate the death. The woman, treated at Nicosia General Hospital’s intensive care unit, received the first dose of the vaccine on May 6 in the […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — In what might be the unlikeliest indicator of a post-pandemic recovery, a pair of premium Japanese melons have sold for $24,800 at auction, over 22 times more than last year’s virus-hit price. The 2.7 million yen price tag at the season’s first auction for the famed Yubari melons is still a snip compared to records for the prized produce. “This year’s recovery in price can be seen as a result of […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japan opened its first mass vaccination centres on Monday in a bid to speed up a cautious Covid-19 inoculation programme with just two months until the virus-postponed Tokyo Olympics. The two military-run centres in Tokyo and Osaka will administer thousands of shots daily, initially to elderly residents of the cities, as the country battles a fourth wave of virus cases. Just two percent of Japan’s population of 125 million are fully […]
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — India said Monday it had passed more than 300,000 coronavirus deaths, the third country after the United States and Brazil to hit the figure as it battles a huge wave of infections. The South Asian nation has been hitting record single-day rises in infections and fatalities in recent weeks, with its healthcare system overwhelmed by the Covid-19 wave. India’s toll now stands at 303,720 after adding 50,000 deaths in just […]
by Patrick GALEY PARIS, France (AFP) — Dogs can be trained to detect more than 90 percent of Covid-19 infections even when patients are asymptomatic, according to research published Monday, which authors hope could help replace the need to quarantine new arrivals. Using their remarkable sense of smell — which can pick up the equivalent of half a teaspoon of sugar in an olympic-sized swimming pool — dogs have already shown that they can sniff […]
