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by Jerome CARTILLIER WEST PALM BEACH, United States (AFP) — After delaying for nearly a week and under pressure from all sides, US President Donald Trump finally signed a massive $900 billion stimulus bill Sunday, in a long-sought boost for millions of Americans and businesses battered by the coronavirus pandemic. The package “providing coronavirus emergency response and relief” is part of a larger spending bill that, with Trump’s signature, will avoid a government shutdown on […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — A Chinese citizen journalist held since May for her livestream reporting from Wuhan as the Covid-19 outbreak unfurled was set for trial Monday, almost a year after details of an “unknown viral pneumonia” surfaced in the central China city. Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, could face up to five years in jail if convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for her reporting in the chaotic initial stages of the outbreak. […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — Three cases of a particularly infectious coronavirus variant that recently emerged in Britain have been confirmed in South Korea, health authorities said Monday. The three individuals are members of a London-based family who arrived in the country on December 22, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. They have been placed in isolation since testing positive for Covid-19 on arrival, the KDCA statement said. The new strain of […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — More than 80 million confirmed cases of coronavirus have been detected worldwide since the pandemic began a year ago and 1.76 million deaths, according to an AFP tally based on official figures at 0800 GMT Sunday. In total, 80,145,185 cases and 1,756,060 deaths have been recorded. Last week, an average of 580,000 new cases were registered every day. Europe is the world’s hardest-hit region, passing the 25-million-case mark on Friday […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US President-elect Joe Biden warned Saturday of “devastating consequences” if President Donald Trump continues to delay signing a Covid-19 economic relief bill passed by Congress. Biden spoke out as millions of Americans saw their jobless benefits expire after Trump threw a long-awaited pandemic aid package into doubt — demanding lawmakers more than triple the $600 direct payments to US taxpayers. “This abdication of responsibility has devastating consequences. Today, about […]
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — Spain received its first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine on Saturday, a day before the country is set to begin its immunisation campaign. A refrigerated truck arrived at Pfizer’s warehouse in Guadalajara in central Spain with the shipment, three days after it left the company’s factory in Puurs in northeast Belgium, the health ministry said in a statement. After repackaging, the vaccines will be redistributed to Spain’s 17 autonomous […]
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — Four cases of a coronavirus variant believed to be particularly infectious that recently emerged in Britain have been confirmed in Madrid, the regional government said Saturday, the first cases detected in Spain. All four cases involved people who recently arrived from the UK, the Madrid regional government’s deputy health chief Antonio Zapatero told a news conference. “The patients are not seriously ill, we know that this strain is more transmissible, […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — France’s first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine were delivered early Saturday to the Paris hospital system’s central pharmacy outside the capital, an AFP journalist saw. After more than 62,000 Covid-19 deaths in France, shots are set to begin with people in two elderly care homes on Sunday, the same day the rest of the EU begins injections. A refrigerated truck brought the roughly 19,500 doses from the Pfizer factory […]
RABAT, Morocco (AFP) — Morocco said Thursday it had ordered 65 million doses of novel coronavirus vaccine, as the North African kingdom prepared to launch a vaccination campaign targeting 25 million people. “Preparations have reached very advanced stages,” Health Minister Khalid Ait Taleb said in a statement on the roll-out plans. “Field exercises covering all stages of the process of vaccinating citizens have been put in place.” A government source confirmed to AFP that […]
by Barnaby CHESTERMAN with AFP bureaus Agence France Presse MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AFP) — Three Latin American countries launched mass immunization programs on Thursday as fears grew in Europe over a variant coronavirus strain that is believed to be far more contagious than the original version. Frontline medical staff in Mexico and Chile were among the first to receive their vaccines while Costa Rica began its own immunization program, with President Carlos Alvarado hailing what “may […]
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) — Clinical trials of the CoronaVac coronavirus vaccine developed by Chinese laboratory Sinovac have “reached the efficacy threshold” demanded by the World Health Organization, the Brazilian institute charged with its production and distribution said on Wednesday. However, the Butantan Institute didn’t publish the results of those trials — the last before authorization. “We’re reached the efficacy threshold that allows us to seek an emergency use” authorization from Brazil’s Anvisa […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — More than a million Americans have received the first dose of their Covid-19 vaccines, a senior official said Wednesday, as the US eyes a return to normal by next summer. The news comes as the winter surge in cases rages across the country, where the virus has claimed more than 320,000 lives and is on course to be the third leading cause of death in the year. Centers for Disease […]
