The emergence in Britain and South Africa of two new variants of Sars-CoV-2, which are potentially far more infectious versions of the virus, has prompted widespread concern. One mutation has now been detected in countries across the world, including the US, France and India.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday that she has agreed with state governors to extend the country’s current lockdown by three weeks until Jan. 31.
Merkel said they also are tightening curbs on social contacts, in line with measures imposed at the beginning of the pandemic in March. And they called for new restrictions on movement for people living in areas with particularly high infection rates.
The decision came as new coronavirus cases and deaths are running at stubbornly high levels, and officials remain uncertain what effect the Christmas and New Year holidays have had on the situation.
Germany launched a nationwide partial shutdown on Nov. 2, closing restaurants, bars, leisure and sports facilities. That failed to reduce infection figures, and the current lockdown — which closed nonessential shops and schools, and further limited social contacts — took effect Dec. 16. It was initially due to run through Jan. 10.
Germany's disease control centre on Tuesday reported 944 more COVID-19 deaths, fueling expectations that Chancellor Angela Merkel and the country's 16 state governors will extend the country's lockdown until the end of the month.
Germany’s latest lockdown took effect Dec. 16 after a partial shutdown starting in early November failed to reduce the number of daily new coronavirus infections. It was initially set to expire Jan. 10.
Merkel's meeting with the governors on Tuesday will decide how long the lockdown should go on and to what extent schools will reopen. Another topic high on the agenda will be addressing criticism of the country's vaccination program amid frustrations over its gradual start.
Slow start to vaccines
Vaccinations in Germany and the rest of the 27-nation European Union started over a week ago. In Germany, a nation of 83 million, nearly 265,000 vaccinations had been reported by Monday, the Robert Koch Institute said.
Opposition politicians and even some within Germany's governing coalition have criticized the EU’s cautious advance ordering of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — the only one so far cleared for use in EU nations. The EU's medical regulator is also evaluating a vaccine by Moderna.
The country's health minister has repeatedly said that the vaccinations are progressing as expected and that the slow start is because mobile teams are first going to nursing homes to vaccinate the most vulnerable, which takes more time than inviting people to mass vaccination centers.
Still, in a nod to the heavy pressure, Health Minister Jens Spahn said he has asked the country's agency in charge of vaccinations if the second shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine could be delayed in order to be able to vaccinate more people right away with a first shot. Britain has embraced such a plan with its vaccinations, but the move is being hotly debated by scientists and governments around the world.
Germany’s new infections remain at more than twice the level of 50 per 100,000 residents over seven days, which the government wants to reach. In part because of lower testing and delayed reporting, it’s not yet clear what effect the Christmas holidays will have on Germany's new coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths.
Germany has reported 35,518 virus-related deaths overall.
A 101-year-old woman became the first German to receive a vaccine against the coronavirus on Saturday, a day ahead of the official start of the country’s vaccination campaign, local broadcaster MDR reported.
The woman, from Halberstadt in the Harz hill range, lives in a care home for elderly people, where 40 residents as well as 11 staff were vaccinated, MDR reported.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn said earlier on Saturday that trucks were on their way to deliver the vaccine to nursing homes, which are first in line to receive the vaccine.
The federal government is planning to distribute more than 1.3 million vaccine doses to local health authorities by the end of this year and about 700,000 per week from January.
“There may be a few hiccups at one point or another in the beginning, but that is quite normal when such a logistically complex process begins,” Spahn said.
Germany, with a population of 83 million, has built up more than 400 vaccination centres, including in venues like Berlin’s former Tegel and Tempelhof airports and Hamburg’s trade fair hall.
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Vaccinations will be free and available to everyone from mid-2021, when the priority groups are expected to have finished vaccination campaigns. There is no obligation to be inoculated.
The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Germany rose by 14,455 to 1,627,103, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed on Saturday. More than 29,000 people in total have died.
Mexico said Monday that it was ready to offer political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, after a British judge blocked his extradition to the United States to face espionage charges.
"I'm going to ask the foreign minister to carry out the relevant procedures to request that the UK government releases Mr. Assange and that Mexico offers him political asylum," President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters.
The leftist leader welcomed the British court's rejection of the US request to extradite the 49-year-old Australian publisher due to the risk of suicide, calling it a "triumph of justice."
"Assange is a journalist and deserves a chance," he said.
Lopez Obrador said Mexico would ensure "that whoever receives asylum does not intervene or interfere in the political affairs of any country."
Mexico has welcomed many political asylum-seekers over the years, from Nicaraguan anti-imperialist hero Cesar Augusto Sandino to Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and, more recently, former Bolivian president Evo Morales.
"Mexico has a long history of offering asylum," Adolfo Laborde, an academic and foreign relations expert, told AFP.
Whether Assange joins the list would depend on political pressures and the stances of the various actors and countries with an interest in his fate, Laborde said.
Assange is wanted on 18 charges in the United States relating to the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If convicted in the US, he faces up to 175 years in jail.
Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, said the asylum offer risked causing tensions with the incoming administration of US President-elect Joe Biden.
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He said Lopez Obrador appeared to be ignoring or overlooking WikiLeaks' publication of 20,000 hacked emails from the US election campaign team of Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The Mexican president "is turning the issue into another potential area of friction with the next US administration," Sarukhan said.
Lopez Obrador's relations with Biden had already got off to a rocky start as he was one of the last high-profile leaders to congratulate him on his victory, saying he wanted to wait until legal disputes were resolved.
Activists held a protest in front of the British embassy in Mexico City after the court decision, demanding Assange be released.
https://aleksandrgorelnikov875.medium.com/merkel-confirms-germany-will-extend-coronavirus-lockdown-until-january-31-930655134ea9
https://www.guest-articles.com/art-culture/in-germany-101-year-old-woman-first-to-receive-covid-19-vaccine-05-01-2021
https://www.thewyco.com/general/germany-to-prolong-shutdown-as-vaccine-row-intensifies-05-01-2021
https://steemit.com/vaccine/@kocakfilm/merkel-confirms-germany-will-extend-coronavirus-lockdown-until-january-31
(REUTERS)