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France will relax Covid isolation rules from Monday, the government announced, in a bid to ease their impact on society and the economy. Fully vaccinated people who test positive will only have to isolate for seven days regardless of the coronavirus variant they were infected with, but can leave quarantine after five days if they show an antigen or negative PCR test. There will be no quarantine for fully inoculated individuals who have a close […]
The Philippines will tighten coronavirus restrictions in the capital Manila over fears of an “exponential growth” in cases due to the highly contagious Omicron variant, the government said on Friday. The metropolis of 13 million will be placed on the third-highest level of alert from Monday until January 15, under a new system that aims to balance the need to contain infections with the reopening of the Philippine economy, which has been hit hard […]
Europe has recorded over 100 million coronavirus cases, more than a third of all infections worldwide, since the start of the pandemic, an AFP tally Saturday showed. The continent has once again become the pandemic’s epicentre in recent months, and is battling an upsurge of cases spurred on by the highly transmissible Omicron strain of the virus. The European region, including 52 countries and territories from the Atlantic coast to Azerbaijan and Russia, has recorded […]
by Gildas LE ROUX / Alexandria SAGE ROME, Italy (AFP) — “We are inundated,” Antonino Marchese says wearily as his Rome Covid hospital fills up with patients, most of them unvaccinated despite tougher restrictions for Italians who are not jabbed. As daily coronavirus infections in Italy hit new highs, hospital admissions across the country are surging once again due to the new Omicron variant and the persisting reluctance among some to get vaccinated. At Rome’s […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — England is building temporary hospitals to help cope with rising coronavirus cases, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday issued a stark warning to those not fully vaccinated. The new “surge hubs” would deal with a potential overspill of inpatients as surging virus cases put the country’s health service on a “war footing”, according to officials. Fuelled by the highly contagious Omicron variant, daily cases have ballooned, standing at more […]
OTTAWA, Canada (AFP) — Canada’s Quebec province on Thursday announced a nighttime curfew ahead of New Year’s Eve celebrations as Covid cases across the country soar. Several provinces in recent days introduced stricter gathering limits, while delaying students’ return to school after the Christmas holidays. Quebec Premier Francois Legault said the 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew would start on Friday, and that it was needed to slow a Covid-19 surge that is threatening to overwhelm […]
by AFP bureaus PARIS, France (AFP) — Millions around the world braced Thursday for drastically curtailed New Year celebrations as record coronavirus cases fuelled by the Omicron variant saw the WHO warn a Covid “tsunami” threatens to overwhelm healthcare systems. Coronavirus, first detected two years ago and declared a global pandemic in March 2020, has killed more than 5.4 million people, triggered economic crises and seen societies ricochet in and out of lockdowns. The latest […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — Residents in the locked-down Chinese city of Xi’an said they were struggling to find enough food, despite Beijing insisting Thursday that there were now adequate supplies. China has followed a strict “zero Covid” approach involving tight border restrictions and swift, targeted lockdowns since the virus first surfaced in a central city in late 2019. The country’s commerce ministry told reporters on Thursday that Xi’an’s 13 million residents — who were placed […]
by Kenan Augeard with AFP Bureaus A Covid variant-driven “tsunami” threatens to overwhelm healthcare systems, the WHO said Wednesday as AFP data showed cases have surged across the world in the past week to levels never seen before. Highly transmissible Omicron propelled the United States, France and Denmark to fresh records on Wednesday, with AFP’s tally of 6.55 million infections reported globally for seven days through Tuesday showing the unprecedented spread. They were the highest […]
by Khaliun Bayartsogt Agence France-Presse DUNDGOBI, Mongolia (AFP) – Nurse Sodkhuu Galbadrakh clutches a box of Covid-19 vaccines on his lap as he journeys along a bumpy track through a remote region of the Mongolian steppe, going home-to-home to offer booster doses to herders. The country of three million has taken some of the world’s toughest and most enduring measures against the coronavirus pandemic, shutting schools for much of the last two years and closing […]
by Robin MILLARD Agence France-Presse GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) – The risk posed by the Omicron variant is still “very high”, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, after Covid-19 case numbers shot up by 11 percent globally last week. Omicron is behind rapid virus spikes in several countries, including those where it has already overtaken the previously-dominant Delta variant, the WHO said in its Covid-19 weekly epidemiological update. “The overall risk related to the new variant […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Rapid Covid home tests are more likely to give a false negative with the heavily-mutated Omicron variant compared to earlier strains, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Tuesday. The news comes as the country is facing a massive surge in cases that experts say is being under-captured as a result of a testing crunch, with long wait times for the more accurate PCR tests, and home kits in […]
