PM issues new circular to allow public mobility

14-01-2021

Ammon News -

Prime Minister, Dr. Bisher Khasawneh, has issued Circular No. 20, to regulate citizen mobility in all the Kingdom's regions, starting 6a.m. until 12: midnight, during all week days.

The Circular's provisions take effect as of Friday morning, January 15, until further notice, according to the government.

Under the new circular, outdoor swimming pools inside hotels and tourist and residential complexes are also allowed to operate, per the times specified for this purpose, and reopens equestrian clubs and public parks, including their shops, at the times set by the competent authorities until 11:pm.

The circular, which was issued based on the provisions of Defense Order No. 19 for 2020, stressed the importance of the target sectors' adherence to the defense orders and gov't decisions related to public safety.

Source: Ammon News.

Link: https://en.ammonnews.net/article/45982.

Jordan records 16 COVID-19 fatalities, 1, 075 new cases on Thursday

14-01-2021

Ammon News -

The Ministry of Health announced 16 Covid-19 fatalities and 1,075 new cases were recorded in the Kingdom on Thursday, bringing the death toll to 4,107 and the caseload to 312,043.

The new infections comprised 531 cases in the capital Amman, 188 in Irbid, including 34 in the northern border district of Ramtha, 98 in Balqa, 57 in Zarqa, 56 in Mafraq, 42 in Jerash, 27 in Karak, 25 in Madaba, 23 in Ajloun, 12 in Tafila, 12 in Aqaba, and 4 in Ma'an, according to the media statement issued by the Prime Ministry and the Ministry of Health.

The number of patients who were admitted to hospitals today stood at 77, while 61 cases have recovered and discharged, the statement added.

According to the brief, the cumulative number of recoveries recorded Thursday, whether at hospitals or home, stood at 1,271, bringing the total to 294,802 since the outbreak began.

Moreover, the number of patients still receiving treatment at hospitals has reached 462, including 76 on ventilators.

The statement also indicated that the number of confirmed and suspected cases on ICU beds has reached 165, or 17% of the total ICU bed capacity.

With regard to testing, 25,014 tests were conducted Thursday, 4.30 percent of which were positive, the statement noted.

The total number of tests administered since March has increased to 3,515,132, the joint statement noted.

Source: Ammon News.

Link: https://en.ammonnews.net/article/45981.

Lebanon enters full lockdown to stem virus uptick

By AFP

Jan 14,2021

BEIRUT — Lebanon went into a tight lockdown on Thursday, with residents barred even from grocery shopping and forced to rely on food deliveries as the country battles to slow spiking novel coronavirus cases.

The new restrictions were only loosely respected in some areas of the country, however, reflecting deep mistrust of a political elite held responsible for a deepening economic crisis.

The lockdown, ordered after some hospitals started to run out of intensive care beds, includes a 24-hour curfew until January 25.

Non-essential workers are barred from leaving their homes, and supermarkets are only allowed to operate by delivery.

Those needing an emergency exemption -- to see a doctor, say -- can request one via a text message or by filling in a form online.

In the capital, roads were quieter than usual, while non-essential shops remained shuttered. Security forces stopped drivers at several checkpoints in the center of the city.

Security forces said compliance with the new measures stood at 94 per cent.

But in some areas, some people ventured out to buy groceries.

As the lockdown went into force, authorities announced Thursday that 41 people had died of the coronavirus over the previous 24 hours, with 5,196 new infections registered.

Heart attacks 

Recent days have seen Lebanon hit record daily Covid-19 caseloads in one of the steepest increases in transmission worldwide.

In Geitawi Hospital in Beirut on Thursday, director Pierre Yared said the emergencies department was brimming over with more than 30 people suffering from Covid-19 the previous day.

"The ER was filled with corona patients, there were no other patients," he said.

Cases skyrocketed after authorities loosened restrictions during the holiday season, allowing restaurants and night clubs to remain open until 3:00 am, despite warnings from health professionals.

A partial lockdown in place since January 7 has failed to halt the spread of the virus.

Firass Abiad, the prominent director of the main state hospital treating Covid patients, warned the latest lockdown must not fail.

"In the last 24 hours alone, four Covid positive patients presented in cardiac arrest to our emergency room," he wrote on Twitter.

"One of them was a 19 years old patient. This is serious."

The new measures came into effect after caretaker health minister Hamad Hasan was admitted to hospital with Covid-19 late Wednesday, state media said.

The announcement on Monday raised fears of food shortages in impoverished and remote regions where deliveries are not readily available.

For several days, Lebanese have flooded supermarkets and chemists to stock up on supplies.

Some are worried the new restrictions will pile additional suffering on the country's poorest.

Political crisis 

Lebanon, a country of more than 6 million, was already grappling with its worst economic downturn in decades when the pandemic hit.

Previous lockdowns have forced businesses to close and deprived some, particularly informal day laborers, of income. Around half Lebanon's population lives in poverty.

The World Bank Group on Tuesday approved a $246-million aid package to help 786,000 vulnerable Lebanese, but it is unclear when it will arrive.

Lebanon has recorded 237,132 cases since February last year, including 1,781 deaths.

Parliament is expected to convene Friday to examine a bill to allow the import and use of Covid-19 vaccines, which authorities have previously said will arrive in Lebanon by February.

Coming after months of political crisis and mass anti-government demonstrations, the country's Covid-19 response is being overseen by a caretaker administration.

The previous government had resigned after a massive explosion of ammonium nitrate fertilizer at Beirut port last summer killed 200 people, wounded thousands and ravaged large parts of the capital.

A deeply divided political class has been unable to agree on a new Cabinet to launch urgently needed reforms.

Source: The Jordan Times.

Link: http://jordantimes.com/news/region/lebanon-enters-full-lockdown-stem-virus-uptick.

German lockdown loopholes criticized as deaths hit new high

January 14, 2021

(AP) Germany has too many loopholes in its coronavirus lockdown rules, the head of the country's disease control agency said as figures published Thursday showed the highest number of daily deaths since the start of the pandemic.

The Robert Koch Institute said 1,244 deaths from COVID-19 were confirmed in one day up to Thursday, taking the total number to 43,881. There were also 25,164 newly confirmed cases, putting Germany’s total known infections close to 2 million.

Lothar Wieler, president of the institute, said data indicated people in Germany are traveling more than during the first phase of the pandemic in spring, contributing to the virus' spread. German authorities have imposed restrictions on social contacts, largely closed schools and limited travel for those in areas with high infection rates, but the rules aren't uniformly enforced across the country's 16 states.

“To me, these measures we're now taking aren't a complete lockdown,” said Wieler. “There are still too many exceptions and they aren't being strictly implemented.” Officials are considering tougher restrictions to curb the continued rise in infections.

The 7-day rolling average of daily new cases has risen over the past two weeks from 23.36 per 100,000 people on Dec. 30 to 26.03 per 100,000 people on Jan. 13. Wieler pointed to the sharp spike in infections recently seen in Ireland as an example of how quickly the outbreak can escalate again if rules are relaxed, especially given the new seemingly more contagious variant of the virus circulating there and in neighboring Britain.

All infections with the variants so far confirmed in Germany involved people who had traveled outside the country, said Wieler. “We need to be very careful, especially of the British mutation of this virus,” Ralph Brinkhaus, the parliamentary leader of Merkel’s bloc, told broadcaster n-tv. ”So we don't yet know what further measures will be necessary in coming weeks."

To ease the strain on working families having to look after school-age children and discourage them from using emergency care facilities, parliament passed a bill Thursday doubling the amount of paid parental leave to 40 days for 2021. Public health insurances will pay out up to 112.88 euros ($137) a day to parents if they stay home to care for children under 12 who couldn't go to school because of the pandemic.

'At 6 p.m., life stops': Europe uses curfews to fight virus

January 14, 2021

PARIS (AP) — As the wan winter sun sets over France's Champagne region, the countdown clock kicks in. Laborers stop pruning the vines as the light fades at about 4:30 p.m., leaving them 90 minutes to come in from the cold, change out of their work clothes, hop in their cars and zoom home before a 6 p.m. coronavirus curfew.

Forget about any after-work socializing with friends, after-school clubs for children or doing any evening shopping beyond quick trips for essentials. Police on patrol demand valid reasons from people seen out and about. For those without them, the threat of mounting fines for curfew-breakers is increasingly making life outside of the weekends all work and no play.

“At 6 p.m., life stops,” says Champagne producer Alexandre Prat. Trying to fend off the need for a third nationwide lockdown that would further dent Europe’s second-largest economy and put more jobs in danger, France is instead opting for creeping curfews. Big chunks of eastern France, including most of its regions that border Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, face 6 p.m.-to-6 a.m. restrictions on movement.

The rest of France could quickly follow suit, losing two extra hours of liberty that have been just enough for residents to maintain bare-bones social lives. Until a couple of weeks ago, the nightly curfew didn't kick in until 8 p.m. in Prat's region, the Marne. Customers still stopped to buy bottles of his family's bubbly wines on their way home, he said. But when the cut-off time was advanced to 6 p.m. to slow viral infections, the drinkers disappeared.

“Now we have no one," Prat said. The village where retiree Jerome Brunault lives alone in the Burgundy wine region is also in one of the 6 p.m. curfew zones. The 67-year-old says his solitude weighs more heavily without the opportunity for early evening drinks, nibbles and chats with friends, the so-called “apero” get-togethers so beloved by the French that were hurried but still feasible when curfew started two hours later.

“With the 6 p.m. curfew, we cannot go to see friends for a drink anymore,” Brunault said. "I now spend my days not talking to anyone except for the baker and some people by phone.” Imposing a 6 p.m. curfew nationwide is among options the French government is considering in response to rising infections and the spread of a particularly contagious virus variant that has swept across Britain, where new infections and virus deaths have soared.

Prime Minister Jean Castex could announce a curfew extension Thursday evening, as well as other restrictions, to fight the virus in a country that has seen over 69,000 confirmed virus deaths. An earlier curfew combats virus transmission “precisely because it serves to limit social interactions that people can have at the end of the day, for example in private homes,” French government spokesman Gabriel Attal says.

Overnight curfews have become the norm in swaths of Europe but the 6 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew in 25 regions of eastern France is the most restrictive anywhere in the European Union's 27 nations. Others countries' curfews all start later and often finish earlier.

The curfew in Italy runs from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., as does the Friday night to Sunday morning curfew in Latvia. Regions of Belgium that speak French have a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew while in Belgium's Dutch-speaking region, the hours are midnight to 5 a.m.

People out between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. in Hungary must be able to show police written proof from their employers that they are either working or commuting. There are no curfews in Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, Sweden, Poland or the Netherlands, although the Dutch government is thinking about whether imposing a curfew would slow new COVID-19 cases.

In France, critics of the 6 p.m. curfew say the earlier time actually crams people together more after work, when they pile onto public transportation, clog roads and shop for groceries in a narrow rush-hour window before they must be home.

Women's rugby coach Felicie Guinot says negotiating rush-hour traffic in Marseille has become a nightmare. The city in southern France is among the places where the more contagious virus variant has started to flare.

“It's a scramble so everyone can be home by 6 p.m.,” Guinot said. In historic Besançon, the fortressed city that was the hometown of “Les Misérables” author Victor Hugo, music store owner Jean-Charles Valley says the 6 p.m. deadline means people no longer drop by after work to play with the guitars and other instruments that he sells. Instead, they rush home.

“People are completely demoralized,” Valley said. In Dijon, the French city known for its pungent mustard, working mother of two Celine Bourdin says her life has narrowed to “dropping kids at school and going to work, then going back home, helping kids with homework and preparing dinner.”

But even that cycle is better than a repeat of France's lockdown at the start of the pandemic, when schools also closed, Bourdin says. “If my children don’t go to school, it means I cannot work anymore," she said. "It was terribly difficult to be all stuck almost 24 hours a day in the house.”

Leicester reported from Le Pecq, France. AP journalists across Europe contributed.

Virus collides with politics as German election year starts

January 09, 2021

BERLIN (AP) — The coronavirus pandemic is colliding with politics as Germany embarks on its vaccination drive and one of the most unpredictable election years in the country's post-World War II history.

After months of relatively harmonious pandemic management, fingers are being pointed as the center-left junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government takes aim at what it says has been a chaotic start to vaccinating the population.

The discord is likely a sign of the times to come. An electoral marathon in Germany starts in mid-March, when two of six state elections scheduled this year will be held, and culminates on Sept. 26, when voters choose a new national parliament. Germany's choices will help set the tone for Europe in the coming years.

Merkel, who has led Germany since 2005, plans to step down at the September election. It's the first election since post-war West Germany's inaugural vote in 1949 in which there is no incumbent chancellor seeking another term.

Surveys have shown high approval ratings for the 66-year-old Merkel during the pandemic. She has taken a science-led, safety-first approach that has helped her center-right party into a strong poll lead, although Germany has struggled since the fall to get the coronavirus under control.

“We can be glad in Germany and Europe to have such an experienced chancellor as Angela Merkel in this pandemic,” Health Minister Jens Spahn said Wednesday. But with the new year, the end of the Merkel era is looming closer. This week, the center-left Social Democratic Party, which only reluctantly entered a coalition with the longtime leader after Germany's last election, latched onto frustration with the slow start of vaccinations to open political hostilities.

“It was always clear that the start of vaccinations would be the point at which we would see the end of the tunnel,” the party's general secretary, Lars Klingbeil, said. “And now we see that we are in a much worse position than other countries. We ordered too little vaccine. There is barely a prepared strategy.”

The responsibility for that, he said, lies with Spahn, a rising star in Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, who is Merkel's vice chancellor and the Social Democrats' candidate for chancellor in this year's federal election, reportedly sent Spahn a list of questions about vaccine-related issues.

Spahn rejected the criticism, saying politicians must learn from mistakes but that Germany's vaccination campaign is going according to expectations. “It has been clear for weeks and months ... that we would have too little vaccine in the beginning” because production capacities are still limited, he said, not because too little was ordered.

The health minister also noted that a deliberate decision was made to vaccinate the most vulnerable people in nursing homes first, and that process is relatively time-consuming. Germany had vaccinated nearly 477,000 people by Friday, a week-and-a-half after it started giving shots against the coronavirus. That's a better showing than in several European countries, but critics point to faster progress in the U.K., the United States and Israel.

Some in the governing coalition and elsewhere have accused the European Union of bungling the ordering of vaccines. But Merkel insists that having the EU take the lead in ordering doses was and is the right thing to do.

Germany's management of the public health emergency was a relative bright spot in Europe during the early phase of the pandemic. However, virus-related deaths increased significantly in the past two months, and the government this week extended and tightened the country's second lockdown.

Spahn is a tempting target for political opponents not just as health minister, but because it's still unclear which center-right candidate will seek Merkel's job — and he is a possible contender. Her party is choosing a new leader on Jan. 16. That person likely will have the best chances of running for chancellor. It's unclear whether any of the three main candidates for CDU party leader — conservative-leaning Friedrich Merz, a one-time rival of Merkel; Armin Laschet, a more liberal state governor; and prominent lawmaker Norbert Roettgen — will be able to match Merkel's broad appeal. Spahn is bidding to be Laschet's deputy.

At some point after that, the center-right bloc of Merkel's CDU and its Bavaria-only sister party, the Christian Social Union, will choose a candidate for chancellor. Bavarian governor Markus Soeder, the Christian Social Union's leader, has gained stature during the pandemic as a strong advocate of tough shutdown measures, and is viewed as another possible contender to succeed Merkel. Or the two parties could turn to someone other than their leaders.

The parties currently in Germany's government are traditionally the country's biggest. But the Social Democrats, who provided three of Germany’s eight post-war chancellors, are very weak in polls after serving as Merkel's junior governing partners for all but four years of her tenure.

The party has lower support in polls than the environmentalist Greens, who are likely to make their first run for the chancellery this year but have yet to nominate a candidate. The co-leader of the Greens, Robert Habeck, described the squabbling in the governing coalition as “pathetic.”

“The (vaccination) strategy is OK, but its implementation is miserable,” he told German television channel n-tv. It remains to be seen how polls will develop as the political battleground takes shape in 2021.

While that happens, Merkel's coalition risks regaining its lackluster pre-pandemic image, a result of persistent squabbling. Government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer assured reporters Wednesday that “of course the government is fully functional" — the kind of statement that had become scarce in recent months.

Biggest Czech crematorium overwhelmed by pandemic deaths

January 08, 2021

OSTRAVA, Czech Republic (AP) — All three cremation chambers are working round the clock, while storage capacity for caskets has been repeatedly boosted. Despite all the efforts, the Czech Republic's biggest crematorium, in the northeastern city of Ostrava, has been overwhelmed by mounting numbers of pandemic victims.

On Thursday, cars from funeral companies delivered caskets every few minutes, some with “COVID” written on them. These days, the crematorium receives more than 100 coffins daily, about double its maximum cremation capacity.

With new confirmed COVID-19 infections around record highs, the situation looks set to worsen. Authorities in Ostrava have been speeding up plans to build a fourth furnace but, in the meantime, have sought help from the government’s central crisis committee for pandemic coordination.

“It’s an extraordinary situation,” said Katerina Sebestova, a deputy mayor in Ostrava. “Nobody here remembers anything like that.” The facility belongs to Ostrava City Hall. “It’s simply because we have 60% more deceased than we had a year ago. So, we have to deal with storage capacity and the capacity to cremate," she said.

Up to 1,000 bodies a month were cremated in Ostrava before the pandemic struck. The number rose to 1,550 in November and 1,570 in December after a surge at the end of October, crematorium director Ivo Furmancik said.

The Czech Republic was spared the worst of the pandemic in the spring only to see its health care system approach collapse in the fall, about the time the spike began. It has been hard-hit again with new infections reaching a record high of 17,668 on Wednesday, a record set for the second straight day.

The surge in infections is likely again to be followed by a surge in deaths. “To tell the truth, I expect that the situation won’t get any better but unfortunately will likely get worse,” Furmancik said.

The crematorium has built an overflow cold storage container to double its storage capacity by 60 coffins, and further boosted it by adding a couple of movable freezers for another 100. But the cremation chambers can’t take any more.

“For two-and-a-half months we have been working nonstop with no pause for maintenance,” Furmancik said. “So, this really is not an optimal situation. How long can this last? I am worried that because of this intensive use the crematories could get seriously damaged at any moment.”

The country of 10.7 million has registered 794,740 confirmed cases and 12,621 deaths. November was the deadliest month with 4,937 deceased. Ostrava is the capital of the Moravian-Silesian Region, which, together with another region, tops the country's virus death toll with some 1,500 deaths.

Interior Minister Jan Hamacek, who heads the central crisis committee, has promised to create a system to distribute bodies to other crematoriums across the country but some have already indicated they are reaching their own limits.

“Another, tougher option, is that we’ll take only the number of the deceased we are capable of cremating,” Furmancik said.

Balkans feel abandoned as vaccinations kick off in Europe

January 06, 2021

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — When thousands of people across the European Union began rolling up their sleeves last month to get a coronavirus vaccination shot, one corner of the continent was left behind, feeling isolated and abandoned: the Balkans.

Balkan nations have struggled to get access to COVID-19 vaccines from multiple companies and programs, but most of the nations on Europe's southeastern periphery are still waiting for their first vaccines to arrive, with no firm timeline for the start of their national inoculation drives.

What is already clear is that Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia — home to some 20 million people — will lag far behind the EU's 27 nations and Britain in efforts to reach herd immunity by quickly vaccinating a large number of their people.

North Macedonian epidemiologist Dragan Danilovski compared the current vaccine situation in the Western Balkans to the inequalities seen during the 1911 sinking of the Titanic. “The rich have grabbed all the available lifeboats, leaving the less fortunate behind,” Danilovski told broadcaster TV 24.

Such sentiment as the world faces its gravest health crisis in a century has gained traction in the Western Balkans - a term used to identify the Balkan states which want to join but still are not part of the EU. It is actively being stoked by pro-Russian politicians in a region sandwiched between Western and Russian spheres of influence.

“I felt as if the bottom fell out of my hopes for a return to a normal life,” 50-year-old Belma Djonko said in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, describing the emotional fallout of hearing that thousands of doctors, nurses and the elderly across the EU had received the first doses of a vaccine developed by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech while her war-ravaged country is kept waiting.

Many Balkan nations are pinning their hopes on COVAX, a global vaccine procurement agency set up by the World Health Organization and global charity groups to address rising inequities of vaccine distribution. COVAX has secured deals for several promising COVID-19 vaccines but, for now, it will only cover doses to inoculate 20% of a country’s population.

Alongside other politically unstable post-communist Balkan nations that have long professed their desire to join the EU but keep failing to fulfil conditions to achieve that goal, Bosnia has reserved vaccines through COVAX and expects to start receiving its first doses in April at the earliest.

That seems like an eternity from now. “Meanwhile, I must continue depriving my 83-year-old father of the company and love of his grandchildren,” Djonko said, referring to the low-tech but heartbreaking defense against the virus, keeping the elderly isolated from potential sources of infection.

Serbia is the only Western Balkan nation to receive vaccine shots so far, getting deliveries from Pfizer-BioNTech and the Russian-developed Sputnik V vaccine. However, Serbia does not have enough doses to begin mass vaccinations, as only 25,000 shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 2,400 of the Russian vaccine have arrived.

Serbia's vaccination program began on Dec. 24, three days before the EU, when Prime Minister Ana Brnabic received a dose in a bid to increase public trust in the vaccine, as many Balkan governments also struggle to counter a strong anti-vaccination movement.

The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, recently agreed upon a 70 million-euro ($86 million) package to help Balkan nations get access to the vaccines, on top of 500 million euros ($616 million) the bloc has already contributed to COVAX.

“Throughout the pandemic, the EU has shown that we treat the Western Balkans as privileged partners,” said EU Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi. Ursula von der Leyen, head of the Executive Commission, says the EU will have more vaccines than necessary for its residents in 2021 and indicated the bloc could share its extra supplies with the Western Balkans and countries in Africa.

Yet in the Balkans, the dominant impression is that the bloc has once again failed the underdeveloped European region. In the words of Albanian political analyst Skender Minxhozi, the EU has reached its “put up or shut up” moment.

“Either show us that you care about us, or don’t be surprised if some of us follow the call of Russian or Chinese pied pipers who are traversing the world with pockets full of their vaccines,” Minxhozi said.

The apparent lack of Western solidarity amid the pandemic is being exploited by local pro-Russian politicians to portray the EU as solely profit-oriented. Russia and China, meanwhile, are vying for political and economic influence.

“I trust (the Russian vaccine), I don’t trust the commercial narratives that are coming from the West,” Milorad Dodik, Bosnian Serb's leader, declared before he was hospitalized with coronavirus. In the Albanian capital of Tirana, Prime Minister Edi Rama demanded an apology from the Russian embassy after it published a message on social media that Moscow stood ready to immediately supply Albania with the Sputnik V vaccine, although that shot is not certified in the EU.

“As a person I felt indignant and as a European I felt ashamed, while as Albania’s prime minister I felt more motivated than ever not to allow Albanians from being excluded from the possibility of being protected simultaneously with other Europeans," Rama said while announcing a contract to buy 500,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Some believe the vaccination delay might prove to be a blessing in disguise in a region where years of declining trust in government and public institutions have amplified the voices of virus deniers and vaccine skeptics.

“I cannot wait for life to return to normal and for that to happen we need a successful vaccine,” said Belma Gazibara, an infectious disease specialist working in Sarajevo's COVID-19 hospital. Gazibara says watching the coronavirus vaccine rollout elsewhere in Europe will increase Bosnians' desire to have the shots too.

“If, as I strongly hope, the approved vaccines keep their promise elsewhere in Europe, I expect the uptake to be much higher than it would have been right now,” she said.

Stojanovic reported from Belgrade, Serbia. Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, and Konstantin Testorides, in Skopje, Macedonia, contributed.

Pandemic haunts new year as virus growth outpaces vaccines

January 06, 2021

LONDON (AP) — Despite growing vaccine access, January is looking grim around the globe as the coronavirus resurges and reshapes itself from Britain to Japan to California, filling hospitals and threatening livelihoods anew as governments lock down businesses and race to find solutions.

England headed back into lockdown. Mexico City’s hospitals hold more virus patients than ever. Germany reported one of its highest daily death tolls to date Tuesday. South Africa and Brazil are struggling to find space for the dead. Even pandemic success story Thailand is fighting an unexpected wave of infections.

And as doctors face or brace for rising numbers of COVID-19 patients after end-of-year holiday gatherings, more and more countries are reporting cases of a new, more contagious variant that has already swept across Britain.

January is going to be “a tough one,” said Dr. Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization. “This idea that seems to be ‘Ah, we’re all sick of it. We want to look at something else. Oh, this doesn’t apply to me' ... that’s got to go away. It really is all hands on deck.”

While Britain rolled out a second vaccine this week and some U.S. states are starting to give the second round of shots, access to inoculations globally is sharply unequal. The supply isn’t remotely close to meeting the epic demand needed to vanquish a foe that has already killed over 1.85 million people.

“We are in a race to prevent infections, bring cases down, protect health systems and save lives while rolling out two highly effective and safe vaccines to high-risk populations," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “This is not easy. These are the hard miles.”

England is facing a third national lockdown that will last at least six weeks, as authorities struggle to stem a surge in COVID-19 infections and relieve hospitals, where some patients are left waiting in ambulances in a parking lot for access to overcrowded wards.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's tough new stay-at-home order for England took effect at midnight. It will shut schools, restaurants and all nonessential stores and won’t be reviewed until at least mid-February. Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon imposed a lockdown that began Tuesday.

The two leaders said the restrictions are needed to protect the National Health Service amid the emergence of the new variant that has sent daily infections, hospitalizations and deaths soaring. The NHS "is going through probably the toughest time in living memory,″ said Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst of the King’s Fund think tank.

Elsewhere in Europe, Italy and Germany extended their Christmastime lockdowns, Spain is restricting travel, and Denmark lowered the number of people who can gather in public from 10 to five. France is likely to announce tougher measures Thursday, and Ukraine is closing schools and restaurants starting Friday.

In Latin America, some warn the worst is yet to come. “The boost we are experiencing here in Brazil is much more serious than what was happening months ago,” said Domingos Alves, an adjunct professor at the University of Sao Paulo.

Brazil's number of patients in intensive care reached its highest level since August, just as the nation reopened shops and offices after the end-of-year holidays — and the vast country still hasn't approved or received any vaccines. Some Brazilian hospitals reinstalled refrigerated containers outside to hold the corpses of COVID-19 victims.

Mexico’s capital has more virus patients than at any point in the pandemic and is flying in doctors from less hard-hit states. Its beach resorts are readying for more cases after thousands of U.S. and European tourists visited over the holidays.

“Probably in the third week of January, we are going to see the system stressed more, that there will be more ambulatory cases and cases requiring hospitalization,” said Dr. Mauricio Rodriguez of Mexico’s National Autonomous University. He blamed the rise on fatigue with social distancing, mixed messages from public figures and Mexicans lowering their guard during the holidays.

Zimbabwe reintroduced a curfew, banned public gatherings and indefinitely suspended the opening of schools. In South Africa, which is seeing yet another fast-spreading variant of the virus and is the continent’s hardest-hit nation, authorities re-imposed a curfew, banned liquor sales and closed most beaches.

South Africa’s undertakers are struggling to cope with the rise in deaths, National Funeral Practitioners Association of SA President Muzi Hlengwa told state broadcaster SABC. “It is something that you have never seen before. ... We have run out of coffins, we have run out of space at the mortuary," he said. “We normally have cremations during the day, but now we have cremations even at night."

The pandemic is even reaching countries that seemed to have the virus under control. Thailand is facing a surge that has infected thousands in the past few weeks, blamed on complacency and poor planning. The government is locking down large parts of the country, including the capital, Bangkok, and considering tougher measures.

Japan is getting ready to declare a state of emergency this week, beefing up border controls and speeding up vaccine approval after a surge of cases around New Year’s Eve. And holiday worries aren’t over now that 2021 has arrived.

Pope Francis abandoned an annual ritual of baptizing babies in the Sistine Chapel tied to Wednesday's Epiphany holiday. Orthodox Christian countries like Russia and Greece could face more infections after they celebrate Christmas on Thursday. And China is closing schools early ahead of next month's Lunar New Year holiday, telling migrant workers not to go home and tourists to avoid Beijing.

Vaccinations are getting off to a slow start in many places. In the U.S., where over 350,000 people have died, some states are struggling to secure enough shots and organize vaccinations. The Netherlands has come under heavy criticism for being the last European Union nation to start inoculations, which it will do Wednesday. Australia isn't planning to do so until March. And most poorer countries are even further behind.

Opposition politician Geert Wilders called the Dutch government “the village idiot of Europe.” Yet India offers a glimmer of hope. Its infection rate is down significantly from a September peak, and the country is kicking off one of the largest inoculation programs in the world, aiming at vaccinating 300 million people by August.

AP reporters around the world contributed to this report.

Dates, plans of WHO expert visit to China under negotiation

January 06, 2021

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China said Wednesday it was still negotiating with the World Health Organization the dates and itinerary for a visit by international experts looking into origins of COVID-19, after the head of the agency criticized Beijing for not finalizing permissions for the mission.

China’s position on the hunt for the origins of the pandemic “has always been open and responsible,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a daily news briefing in Beijing. She said that China has a close cooperation with WHO. However, the dates and itinerary need to be finalized, she said.

“The origins problem is very complex. To ensure that the work of the global experts group in China is successful, we need to carry out the necessary procedures and relevant concrete plans. Currently both sides are still in negotiations on this,” Hua said. “I understand that it’s not just a visa problem and the actual date and itinerary. Both sides are still in close communication.”

China’s disease experts are currently busy with multiple small-scale clusters and outbreaks reported in the past couple of weeks, she added. “Our experts are wholeheartedly in the stressful battle to control the epidemic,” she said.

An international team of experts had been due to visit the central city of Wuhan in January, where the pandemic first appeared a year ago. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday that members of the international scientific team began departing from their home countries over the last 24 hours as part of an arrangement between WHO and the Chinese government.

“Today, we learned that Chinese officials have not yet finalized the necessary permissions for the team’s arrival in China,” Tedros said during a news conference in Geneva on Tuesday. “I’m very disappointed with this news, given that two members had already begun their journeys and others were not able to travel at the last minute, but had been in contact with senior Chinese officials,” he said.

The Chinese government has been strictly controlling all research at home into the origins of the virus, an AP investigation found, and state-owned media have played up reports that suggest the virus could have originated elsewhere.

UK hospitals stagger as new virus variant takes huge toll

January 05, 2021

LONDON (AP) — Britain is facing a long, bleak winter as cold, wet weather and a more contagious variant of the coronavirus put unprecedented strain on the nation's hospitals and force record numbers of patients to wait 12 hours or more, sometimes on ambulance gurneys, before receiving treatment.

That picture made Prime Minister Boris Johnson order a third national lockdown that started Tuesday and requires everyone in England to stay at home for at least the next six weeks except for exercise, medical appointments, essential shopping and a few other limited exceptions.

“It’s not hyperbole to say that the (National Health Service) is going through probably the toughest time in living memory,″ said Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst of the King’s Fund, a U.K. think tank that focuses on health and social care. “I was speaking to an emergency care physician from London last week, and she was saying that half of her shift was spent delivering care in ambulances because they couldn’t get the patients into the emergency department.″

England's previous nationwide lockdown ran from Nov. 5 to Dec. 5. In announcing the new stay-at-home order, Johnson said it won’t be reviewed for lifting until at least mid-February. By that time, the government hopes to have given one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to about 13 million people who are most at risk, potentially allowing some relaxation of the restrictions.

Under the latest lockdown, schools and outdoor sports facilities are closed along with bars, restaurants, hair salons, gyms, theaters and most shops. “The weeks ahead will be the hardest yet, but I really do believe that we are entering the last phase of the struggle,” Johnson told the nation Monday night. “Because with every jab that goes into our arms, we are tilting the odds against COVID and in favor of the British people.”

Scotland's leader, Nicola Sturgeon, also imposed a lockdown that began Tuesday. Northern Ireland and Wales had already imposed tough measures, though rules vary. Each nation in the United Kingdom controls its own health policy under the country's system of devolved government.

Johnson and Sturgeon said the restrictions were needed to protect the hard-pressed National Health Service as a new, more contagious variant of coronavirus sweeps across Britain. On Monday, hospitals in England were treating 26,626 COVID-19 patients, 40% more than during the first peak in mid-April.

Many U.K. hospitals have already been forced to cancel elective surgeries and the strain of responding to the pandemic may soon delay cancer surgery and limit intensive care services for patients without COVID-19.

In December, a record 2,930 people were forced to wait 12 hours or more before hospitals could find beds for them, the Health Service Journal reported Monday, citing leaked figures from the National Health Service. The previous high of 2,847 waits of at least 12 hours for a hospital bed was reported in January 2020.

Public health officials hope the new lockdown will reduce the strains on the NHS while they roll out a national vaccination program that targets older people, health care workers and those particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. Britain has approved two vaccine shots so far — one from Pfizer-BioNTech and the other from Oxford University and AstraZeneca.

As of Monday, the NHS had vaccinated 1.3 million people across the U.K. The government plans to have almost 1,000 vaccination centers operating across the country by the end of this week, Johnson said.

While rollout of the vaccination program is complicated, Anandaciva of the King's Fund said the structure of the NHS will help it deliver the shots. In addition to a nationwide network of hospitals, doctors and nurses, it can rely on other allied health care professionals, such as pharmacists, to deliver the vaccine.

“That’s one area where you can really maximize the benefits of having a nationalized service because you can … establish hubs, you can pool staff, and you’ve got a very strong brand to attract people,″ he said. “I think the NHS is doing quite a good job of setting up the logistics of how you will get the vaccine into the right places."

In the meantime, grants are being given to help businesses further strained by the new rules. Grants of up to 9,000 pounds ($12,200) will be offered to businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors.

“The new strain of the virus presents us all with a huge challenge - and, whilst the vaccine is being rolled out, we have needed to tighten restrictions further,'' Treasury chief Rishi Sunak said. "Throughout the pandemic we’ve taken swift action to protect lives and livelihoods and today we’re announcing a further cash injection to support businesses and jobs until the spring.''

Johnson announced the lockdown after the chief medical officers of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales raised the U.K.-wide COVID-19 threat assessment to the highest level. The health system is already under “immense pressure,” they said.

The new measures are similar to those imposed last spring, with people being told to work from home unless it’s impossible to do so, and to leave home only for exercise or essential trips such as grocery shopping. Schools across England were ordered to close their doors except for the children of critical workers and most vulnerable children, and shift to online instruction beginning Tuesday. University students won’t return to campus until at least mid-February.

All nonessential shops and personal care services like hairdressers will stay closed. Restaurants will be allowed to offer takeout services only. New COVID-19 infections have soared in recent weeks as public health officials struggled to contain the new variant, which the government says is 50% to 70% more contagious. The number of confirmed new daily infections in the past seven days jumped 50% from the previous week, and coronavirus-related deaths rose 21% in the same period.

Britain reported 830 coronavirus-related deaths on Tuesday. The death toll from the pandemic is now 76,423, one of the world's highest tallies.

UK prime minister orders new virus lockdown for England

January 04, 2021

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday a new national lockdown for England until at least mid-February to combat a fast-spreading new variant of the coronavirus, even as Britain ramped up its vaccination program by becoming the first nation to start using the shot developed by Oxford University and drugmaker AstraZeneca.

Johnson said people must stay at home again, as they were ordered to do so in the first wave of the pandemic in March, this time because the new virus variant was spreading in a "frustrating and alarming” way.

“As I speak to you tonight, our hospitals are under more pressure from COVID than at any time since the start of the pandemic,” he said. Under the new rules, which are set to come into effect as soon as possible, primary and secondary schools and colleges will be closed for face to face learning except for the children of key workers. University students will not be returning until at least mid-February.

All nonessential shops and personal care services like hairdressers will be closed, and restaurants can only operate takeout services. As of Monday, there were 26,626 COVID patients in hospitals in England, an increase of more than 30% from a week ago. That is 40% above the highest level of the first wave in the spring.

The U.K. has seen an alarming surge in coronavirus cases in recent weeks as public health officials struggle to control the spread of a new variant of COVID-19 that is more contagious than previous variants. Authorities have recorded more than 50,000 new infections a day since passing that milestone for the first time on Dec. 29. On Monday, they reported 407 virus-related deaths to push the confirmed death toll total to 75,431, one of the worst in Europe.

The U.K.'s chief medical officers warned that without further action, “there is a material risk of the National Health Service in several areas being overwhelmed over the next 21 days.” Hours earlier, Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon also imposed a lockdown in her nation until the end of January.

Beginning Tuesday, people in Scotland will be required to stay at home except for essential reasons, to help ease the pressure on hospitals and intensive care units, Sturgeon said. Under the new rules, people can go out for exercise but can only meet one person from another household. Schools will remain closed until February, except for children of key workers and those in social care.

“I am more concerned about the situation we face now than I have been at any time since March last year,” Sturgeon said in Edinburgh. Scotland, which controls its own health policy under the U.K.'s system of devolved government, has often imposed stricter coronavirus restrictions than those in England.

The announcements come on the day U.K. health authorities began putting the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine into arms around the country, fueling hopes that life may begin returning to normal by the spring.

Britain has secured the rights to 100 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is cheaper and easier to use than some of its rivals. In particular, it doesn’t require the super-cold storage needed for the Pfizer vaccine.

The new vaccine will be administered at a small number of hospitals for the first few days so authorities can watch out for any adverse reactions. But the NHS said hundreds of new vaccination sites — including local doctors’ offices — will open later this week, joining the more than 700 vaccination sites already in operation.

A “massive ramp-up operation” is now underway in the vaccination program, Johnson said. But aspects of Britain’s vaccination plan have spurred controversy. Both vaccines require two shots, and Pfizer had recommended that the second dose be given within 21 days of the first. But the U.K.’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization said authorities should give the first vaccine dose to as many people as possible, rather than setting aside shots to ensure others receive two doses. It has stretched out the time between the doses from 21 days to within 12 weeks.

While two doses are required to fully protect against COVID-19, both vaccines provide high levels of protection after the first dose, the committee said. Making the first dose the priority will “maximize benefits from the vaccination program in the short term,” it said.

Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said policymakers are being forced to balance the potential risks of this change against the benefits in the middle of a deadly pandemic.

“We have a crisis situation in the UK with a new variant spreading rapidly, and as has become clear to everyone during 2020, delays cost lives,” Evans said. “When resources of doses and people to vaccinate are limited, then vaccinating more people with potentially less efficacy is demonstrably better than a fuller efficacy in only half.”

In England alone, 24,957 people were in hospitals with COVID-19 on Sunday. While figures for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales haven’t been updated in recent days, that’s higher than the U.K.-wide peak during the first wave of the pandemic.

The government closed non-essential shops across London and parts of southeast England before Christmas to try to contain the new variant, but health officials say tougher measures are now needed. Johnson said there were “tough, tough” weeks to come in the fight against COVID-19.

While schools in London are already closed due to high infection rates in the capital, students in many parts of the country were returning to in-person classes Monday after the Christmas holidays. Unions representing teachers, however, have called for schools throughout England to remain closed for at least two weeks, with classes shifted to remote learning.

But with vaccination, there is hope. Brian Pinker, an 82-year-old dialysis patient, received the first Oxford-AstraZeneca shot at 7:30 a.m. at Oxford University Hospital. “The nurses, doctors and staff today have all been brilliant, and I can now really look forward to celebrating my 48th wedding anniversary with my wife, Shirley, later this year,” Pinker said in a statement released by the National Health Service.

France charges an alleged organizer of giant New Year's rave

January 04, 2021

PARIS (AP) — An alleged organizer of an illegal New Year's Eve rave that at least 2,500 people attended for more than a day in western France was charged Monday with endangering lives amid a coronavirus curfew and other restrictions.

The 22-year-old man also faced property damage and drug charges among other offenses, and was placed in custody, prosecutor Philippe Astruc told a news conference. The suspect acknowledged participating in the organization of the event, Astruc said.

Ravers from France and abroad converged Thursday night on a hangar in Lieuron, in Brittany, to party into the new year. They left Saturday morning about 36 hours later. Officials said the partygoers attacked the police on the first night, torching a police vehicle and slightly injuring three officers with bottles and stones.

The suspect was arrested Saturday after a police search found money, illegal drugs and sound equipment in the Brittany town of Iffendic. Astruc said investigators were working to identify other organizers in order to prosecute them.

Police have fined more than 1,600 people, including 1,200 for violating virus-related rules and over 200 for drug-related offenses, Astruc added. Less than 5% of participants were wearing a mask during the party, he said.

The investigation also showed that illicit drugs were supplied at the site, the prosecutor said. The party took place despite France’s nationwide nighttime curfew, which seeks to dissuade people from gathering during the pandemic.

The Regional Health Agency of Brittany warned that partygoers had a high risk of spreading the virus and urged participants to self-isolate for a week and get a test in seven days. France has reported more than 65,000 virus-related deaths.

In Greece, 'vaccination selfies' anger unions, opposition

December 30, 2020

(AP) Greece’s center-right government says senior state officials will no longer be given priority for the COVID-19 vaccination after posts on social media by Cabinet ministers receiving the shot triggered a backlash from health care unions and opposition parties.

Aristotelia Peloni, a deputy government spokeswoman, said Wednesday that a plan to vaccinate 126 officials from the government and state-run organizations was being cut short after around half had received the shot.

It had been expected that a small number of senior officials would receive the vaccine publicly, as part of a plan to persuade everyone that it was safe and necessary, but the number of people on the list took many by surprise.

“These (vaccination) selfies were wrong. The symbolism around this issue has been exhausted at the highest level and nothing more was required.” Peloni told private Parapolitika radio. Greece’s prime minister, president, and the head of the armed forces were all vaccinated at the weekend at the start of a national rollout expected to last months in an effort to ease public concerns over the safety of the program.

They were followed by opposition party leaders as well as Cabinet ministers and other senior government officials — drawing criticism from medical workers’ unions. “Cabinet ministers and their general secretaries have been lining up for a selfie with the vaccine, while doctors, nurses and other front line workers may have to wait their turn until the end of summer to get vaccinated,” Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the left-wing opposition, said Tuesday after getting his own vaccine shot. “That’s not symbolism, it’s favoritism.”

Peloni, the government spokeswoman, said 66 officials had been vaccinated by midday Wednesday out of a total of 1,128 people who had received the vaccine. The last official on that list was the leader of the Greek Communist Party, Dimitris Koutsoumbas.

Germany set for longer lockdown as death figures spike

December 30, 2020

BERLIN (AP) — German officials made clear Wednesday that they won't be able to relax lockdown restrictions in early January as the country recorded more than 1,000 deaths in one day for the first time.

That figure was likely swollen by delayed reporting but underlined the severity of the situation. Germany, the European Union's most populous country, shut restaurants, bars, sports and leisure facilities on Nov. 2. That partial shutdown halted a fast increase in new infections for a while but failed to bring them down, prompting authorities to impose a fuller lockdown from Dec. 16, shutting nonessential shops and schools.

Those measures run through Jan. 10. Chancellor Angela Merkel and the governors of Germany's 16 states will consult Tuesday on how to proceed. “We have to lament 1,129 deaths this morning alone — 1,129 families will be in mourning this new year,” Health Minister Jens Spahn said at a news conference.

“These figures show how brutally this virus is still striking. But the numbers of deaths and infections also show that we are a very long way from the normality we would like,” he added. “So in this situation, I don't see how we can return to the pre-lockdown mode.”

“My expectation is that the lockdown will continue, because we must not take any further risks. The hospitals ... are at their limits,” said the governor of Germany's most populous state, Armin Laschet.

The deaths reported to Germany's national disease control center, the Robert Koch Institute, over the past 24 hours exceeded the previous record set a week ago of 962 and brought Germany’s total death toll to 32,107.

The institute's chairman, Lothar Wieler, said “the most plausible explanation” for the spike in reported deaths was delayed reporting of cases over the Christmas holiday, following relatively low figures over several days.

However, the figure fits into a recent pattern of high numbers of deaths. Germany had a relatively low death rate in the first phase of the pandemic but has seen hundreds of deaths per day in recent weeks. Among major European nations, Italy, the U.K., France and Spain still have higher death tolls.

Wieler appealed to Germans to keep reducing their contacts to the absolute minimum, saying: “Let's take the wind out of the virus' sails together." He said that, as of Tuesday, there were over 5,600 COVID-19 patients in intensive care, the highest number yet.

The Robert Koch Institute said 22,459 new coronavirus cases were reported over the past 24 hours in Germany, which has 83 million inhabitants. Germany has reported nearly 1.69 million cases in total.

The vaccination program launched in Germany and across the EU over the weekend offers hope. So far, 78,109 people in Germany have received their first vaccine dose. All the same, Wieler said Germans will have to stick to social distancing, hygiene and mask-wearing rules for months.

“It will take months before so many people are vaccinated that the circulation of the virus in the population is reduced,” he said. It's unclear what measures exactly will continue beyond Jan. 10. Schools are the responsibility of state governments alone in Germany.

Spahn said it's “normal” to discuss what happens with schools, but “in case of doubt, I favor a week too many now rather than a week too few.”

Greek nurse erects ICU at home to treat relatives with virus

December 30, 2020

AGIOS ATHANASIOS, Greece (AP) — What does a medical professional do when his wife and in-laws contract the disease at the center of a months-long pandemic? Gabriel Tachtatzoglou, a critical care nurse, did not feel good about the treatment options available in Greece's second-largest city when his wife, both her parents and her brother came down with COVID-19 in November. Thessaloniki has been among the areas of Greece with the most confirmed coronavirus cases, and hospital intensive care units were filling up.

Tachtatzoglou, who had to quarantine and could not go to work once his relatives tested positive for the virus, decided to put his ICU experience to use by looking after them himself. That decision, his family says, probably saved their lives.

“If we had gone to the hospital, I don’t know where we would have ended up,” Polychoni Stergiou, the nurse's 64-year-old mother-in-law, said. “That didn’t happen, thanks to my son-in-law.” Tachtatzoglou set up a makeshift ICU in the downstairs apartment of his family's two-story home in the village of Agios Athanasios, located about 30 kilometers (nearly 20 miles) from the city. He rented, borrowed and modified the monitors, oxygen delivery machines and other equipment his loved ones might need.

He also improvised. Out of a hat stand, he fashioned an IV bag holder. At one point, the repurposed pole supported four bags dispensing antibiotics, fluids to address dehydration and fever-reducing medicine.

“I’ve been working in the intensive care ward for 20 years, and I didn’t want to put my in-laws through the psychological strain of separation. Plus, there was already a lot of pressure on the health service,” Tachtatzoglou told the AP in an interview.

In most countries, doctors and nurses are discouraged from treating close relatives and friends on the theory that emotional bonds could cloud their judgment and affect their skills. Tachtatzoglou says he remained in daily contact with doctors at Papageorgiou Hospital, the overwhelmed facility where he works, while caring for his sick family members, and that he would have hospitalized any of the four if they needed to be intubated..

“I looked after them up until the point where it would pose no danger," he said. "At all times, I was ready to move them to the hospital, if needed.” Greece, which has a population of 10.7 million, spent the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic with some of the lowest infection rates in Europe. As cold weather set in, the number of confirmed cases and virus-related deaths began doubling. The country's cumulative death toll in the pandemic went from 393 on Oct. 1 and 635 a month later to 2,517 on Dec.1. As of Tuesday, it stood at 4,730.

With ICU wards in Thessaloniki pushed to capacity, COVID-19 patients deemed too sick to a wait for a bed were taken to hospitals in other parts of Greece, riding in torpedo-shaped treatment capsules. Meanwhile, the situation for Tachtatzoglou’s family deteriorated as his wife and in-laws fell ill in alarming succession.

Tachtatzoglou said he agonized constantly over whether to transfer his relatives to hospitals in Thessaloniki, knowing it would mean they would not be able to see each other and might get moved to a hospitals farther away.

“We were reduced to tears. There were times when I was desperate, and I was really afraid I would lose them,” the nurse said. They all pulled through, although Tachtatzoglou eventually became infected with the virus himself.

“I took precautions when I treated them, but I didn’t have the personal protection gear you find in hospitals," he said. "That’s probably how I got sick."

British hospitals scramble for space as virus cases soar

December 28, 2020

LONDON (AP) — British hospitals are canceling non-urgent procedures and scrambling to find space for COVID-19 patients as coronavirus cases continue to surge despite tough new restrictions imposed to curb a fast-spreading new variant of the virus.

Dr. Nick Scriven, immediate past president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said Monday that the rising number of hospitalized patients was “extremely worrying.” “With the numbers approaching the peaks from April, systems will again be stretched to the limit,” he said.

British authorities are blaming a new variant of the coronavirus for soaring infection rates in London and southeast England. They say the new version is more easily transmitted than the original, but stress there is no evidence it makes people sicker.

In response, authorities have put a swath of England that’s home to 24 million people under restrictions that require nonessential shops to close, bar indoor socializing and allow restaurants and pubs only to operate for takeout.

Even so, hospital admissions for COVID-19 in southeast England are approaching or exceeding the levels seen at the first peak of the outbreak. Government figures show 21,286 people were hospitalized with the coronavirus across the U.K. on Dec. 22, the last day for which data is available. That is only slightly below the high of 21,683 COVID-19 patients who were recorded in U.K. hospitals on April 12.

Dr. Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, described her experience working in a hospital on Christmas Day as “wall-to-wall COVID.” “The chances are that we will cope, but we cope at a cost,” Henderson told the BBC. “The cost is not doing what we had hoped, which is being able to keep non-COVID activities going.”

Britain has already recorded more than 70,000 deaths among people with the coronavirus, one of the highest tolls in Europe. Cabinet Minister Michael Gove said more parts of England might have to be put into the toughest tier of restrictions if case numbers do not fall. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also have implemented strong lockdown measures.

Still, there is rising confidence help could soon be on the way, with expectation mounting that U.K. regulators may authorize a second coronavirus vaccine this week. British media reports say the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency is likely to give the green light to a vaccine made by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

The regulator authorized a jab made by U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer and German firm BioNTech on Dec. 2, making Britain the first country to gain access to a rigorously tested vaccine. More than 600,000 people in the U.K. have received the first of the two shots needed of the vaccine.

If the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is authorized this week, members of the public could start receiving it from Jan. 4. Britain has ordered 100 million doses, compared to 40 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.

The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is considered a potential game-changer in global immunization efforts because it is less expensive than the Pfizer shot and does not need to be stored at freezer temperatures, making it easier to distribute.

But it had less clear-cut results from clinical trials than its main rivals. Partial results suggest that the shot is about 70% effective for preventing illness from coronavirus infection, compared to the 95% efficacy reported for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

But the trials produced two different results based on the dosing regimen used. Researchers said the vaccine protected against disease in 62% of those given two full doses and in 90% of those given a half dose followed by a full dose. However, the second group included only 2,741 people — too few to be conclusive.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot told the Sunday Times newspaper that he was confident the vaccine would work against the new strain and would prove as effective as its rivals. “We think we have figured out the winning formula and how to get efficacy that, after two doses, is up there with everybody else,” Soriot said.

British army helps clear backlog of virus-stranded drivers

December 25, 2020

LONDON (AP) — Around 1,000 British soldiers were spending Christmas Day trying to clear a huge backlog of truck drivers stuck in southeast England after France briefly closed its border to the U.K., then demanded coronavirus tests from all amid fears of a new, apparently more contagious, virus variant.

Even though an estimated 4,000 or so international truck drivers are spending yet another day cooped up in their cabs, some progress was evident Friday, with traffic around the English Channel port of Dover moving in an orderly fashion towards the extra ferries that were put on to make the short crossing across to Calais in northern France. Rail operator Eurotunnel was also back in action, offering a way back into France.

The military personnel were directing traffic and helping a mass testing program for the drivers, who must test negative to enter France. French firefighters have also been drafted to help the military test drivers for coronavirus. Poland's Territorial Defense Force also sent reinforcements to help with testing and food distribution.

British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he had instructed the army to take control of testing as part of efforts to get “foreign hauliers home with their families as quickly as we can.” Officials from the transport department have said that all but three of the tests conducted so far have been negative. Those testing positive are being offered accommodation. Most of the testing is being conducted at a disused airfield at Manston Airport, 20 miles (33 kilometers) from Dover.

France closed its border for 48 hours to the U.K. last Sunday after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a variant of the virus that is 70% more transmissible is driving the rapid spread of infections in London and surrounding areas. As a result, the capital and many other parts of England have seen lockdown restrictions tightened and family holiday gatherings canceled.

Free food and drink was being sent to the stranded truck drivers and more than 250 portable toilets were put in at Manston, with 32 others placed along the gridlocked M20 highway. Britain's coast guard said its teams in the Dover area had so far delivered 3,000 hot meals, 600 pizzas and 2,985 packed lunches.

“The most reassuring thing is that food is getting through at Manston, and I have to say a big thank you to everyone who volunteered to help drivers stick it out in cold conditions in the days leading up to Christmas," said Duncan Buchanan of Britain's Road Haulage Association.

The mood among the stranded drivers appeared to be mostly sanguine, especially compared to their anger earlier this week at the situation and the lack of facilities. The virus has been blamed for over 1.7 million confirmed deaths worldwide. On Friday, the U.K. recorded another 570 virus-related deaths, taking the total to 70,195, the second-highest death toll in Europe behind Italy.

On Saturday, Britain is extending tighter lockdown restrictions to more areas as authorities try to stem the spread of the new variant. Over the past two days, the U.K. has recorded its two highest daily infection numbers, at just below 40,000. That is stoking fears that the country's beloved National Health Service will face acute capacity issues in its hospitals soon and thousands more people will die from the virus.

In a video message to the nation, Johnson said this Christmas was “not about presents, or turkey, or brandy butter” but about hope, in the form of coronavirus vaccine shots being delivered and more vaccines being developed.

“We know there will be people alive next Christmas, people we love, alive next Christmas precisely because we made the sacrifice and didn’t celebrate as normal this Christmas," the prime minister said.

Johnson said Thursday that more than 800,000 people in Britain have received the first dose of the vaccine developed by American pharmaceutical firm Pfizer and German biotechnology company BioNTech. The U.K. was the first country in the world to approve the vaccine and began inoculations for health workers and those over 80 on Dec. 8.

Virus besets Belarus prisons filled with president's critics

December 26, 2020

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A wave of COVID-19 has engulfed prisons in Belarus that are packed with people in custody for demonstrating against the nation’s authoritarian president, and some of the protesters who contracted the coronavirus while incarcerated accuse authorities of neglecting or even encouraging infections.

Activists who spoke to The Associated Press after their release described massively overcrowded cells without proper ventilation or basic amenities and a lack of medical treatment. Kastus Lisetsky, 35, a musician who received a 15-day sentence for attending a protest, said he was hospitalized with a high fever after eight days at a prison in eastern Belarus and diagnosed with double-sided pneumonia induced by COVID-19.

“Humid walls covered by parasites, the shocking lack of sanitary measures, shivering cold and a rusting bed —-that was what I got in prison in Mogilev instead of medical assistance,” Lisetsky told the AP in a telephone interview. “I had a fever and lost consciousness, and the guards had to call an ambulance.”

Lisetsky said that before he entered prison, he and three bandmates were held in a Minsk jail and had to sleep on the floor of a cell intended for only two people. All four have contracted the virus. Lisetsky must return to prison to serve the remaining seven days of his sentence after he’s discharged from the hospital.

He accused the government of allowing the virus to run wild among those jailed for political reasons. “The guards say openly that they do it deliberately on orders,” Lisetsky said. More than 30,000 people have been detained for taking part in protests against the August reelection of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in a vote that opposition activists and some election workers say was rigged to give Lukashenko a sixth term.

Police have repeatedly broken up peaceful protests with clubs and stun grenades. The alleged vote-rigging and the brutal crackdown on demonstrations have prompted the United States and the European Union to introduce sanctions against Belarusian officials.

Opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who placed second in the presidential election and was forced to leave the country after she challenged the official results giving Lukashenko 80% of the vote, urged foreign leaders and international organizations to intervene to help stem the coronavirus outbreak in Belarus' prisons.

“In the center of Europe, inmates are being deliberately infected with coronavirus,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press. “They move the infected people from one cell to another, and the cells are overcrowded and lack ventilation. It’s an atrocity, it can only be assessed as abuse and torture.”

Authorities haven’t released the number of prisoners with COVID-19, but rights activists say that thousands of protesters tested positive after they were detained. “The horrible condition of Belarus’ penitentiary system has contributed to an outbreak of COVID-19 in prisons, but the authorities haven’t even tried to improve the situation and have put thousands of activists on that conveyer,” Valiantsin Stefanovic, vice chairman of the Viasna rights center, said.

Artsiom Liava, a 44-year-old journalist, said he got infected last month while awaiting a court hearing in a jail cell intended to accommodate 10 but housing about 100 inmates. Liava was detained while he was covering a protest in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, for the independent Belsat TV channel.

“First, fellow inmates and then me stopped feeling the prison stench,” he told The Associated Press. “All of us had a fever, strong cough and were feeling feeble, but they weren’t giving us even hot water.”

Liava said that after receiving a 15-day sentence, he was moved to different jails and prisons in Minsk and nearby towns as authorities struggled to house inmates in overcrowded detention facilities. He said he witnessed similar conditions in all of them — cellmates coughing or experiencing difficulty breathing, and prison wardens treating them with emphatic neglect.

“It was like a mockery, doctors weren’t responding to pleas and complaints,” Liava said. “It was forbidden to lie down during daytime and mattresses were folded up. We all felt exhausted, but we were forced to stay seated on iron beds in the basement without any access to fresh air.”

The journalist said he didn't get a single dose of medicine during his stint behind bars. The day after he left prison, Liava said, he tested positive for COVID-19, and a CT scan showed that his lungs were badly affected.

“Prison doctors should be prosecuted for negligence. They put our lives in danger by refusing us (basic) medical treatment,” said Liava, who had a strong cough and was breathing with difficulty while speaking to the AP.

Belarus has reported more than 180,000 confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, but many in the ex-Soviet republic of 9.4 million people suspect authorities of manipulating statistics to hide the true scope of the country's outbreaks.

Lukashenko cavalierly dismissed the coronavirus early during the pandemic, shrugging off the fear and national lockdowns the new bug had caused as “psychosis” and advising citizens to avoid catching it by driving tractors in the field, drinking vodka and visiting saunas. His attitude has angered many Belarusians, adding to the public dismay over his authoritarian style and helping fuel the post-election protests.

Ihar Hotsin, a doctor working at a top oncology hospital in Minsk, was detained when he joined a rally of medical workers opposing the crackdown on demonstrations. He said he and four of his colleagues who were arrested all contracted the virus in custody.

Hotsin, 30, believes he got infected at the prison in the city of Baranovichi where he was held in a 12-square-meter (129-square-foot) cell together with about 80 other inmates. “Five doctors from our hospital were detained, and all five tested positive for COVID-19 after being released, a 100% rate,” Hotsin said. “We must cry out loud about an outbreak of COVID-19 in jails overcrowded with political prisoners.”

Mass anti-coup protests in Myanmar as UN warns of crackdown

February 17, 2021

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Tens of thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets of Myanmar's biggest city Wednesday, in one of largest protests yet of a coup, despite warnings from a U.N. human rights expert that recent troop movements could indicate the military was planning a violent crackdown.

In Yangon, protesters marched carrying signs calling for ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to be released from detention, while others feigned car trouble, strategically abandoning their vehicles — and leaving the hoods up — to prevent security forces from easily accessing the demonstrations. Large rallies were also held in the country's second-biggest city, Mandalay, and the capital of Naypyitaw, in defiance of an order banning gatherings of five or more people.

One motorist, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared being targeted, explained tongue-in-cheek that his car had broken down “due to the suffering that our people are undergoing now. We just stopped the cars here on the road to show that we do not want the military regime.”

The demonstrations came a day after U.N. rapporteur Tom Andrews expressed alarm at reports of soldiers being transported into Yangon, noting that such movements had previously preceded killings, disappearances and mass arrests.

“I am terrified that given the confluence of these two developments­ — planned mass protests and troops converging — we could be on the precipice of the military committing even greater crimes against the people of Myanmar,” he said in a statement issued by the U.N. Human Rights office in Geneva.

By Wednesday evening, there had been no reports of major violence at the protests. However, residents of Mandalay reported hearing gunshots about an hour after the start of the nightly curfew at 8 p.m. as dozens of police and soldiers roamed a neighborhood with housing for state railway workers.

There have been similar reports of gunshots and other aggressive actions in several cities since last week — apparently part of attempts to intimate people rather than cause injury. Railway workers could be targets because they have declared their support for the protest movement and carried out work stoppages.

The military seized power on Feb. 1, the day newly elected parliamentarians were supposed to take their seats — a shocking backslide for a country that had been taking tentative steps toward democracy. The junta said the takeover was necessary because Suu Kyi’s government had failed to investigate fraud claims in elections her party won in a landslide; the election commission has dismissed those claims.

The high protest turnout came a day after junta leaders had declared that the demonstrations were dying down — and Kyi Pyar, a former lawmaker from Suu Kyi’s party, said that dismissal only served to spur on the resistance.

“This upset the people,” she said. “We are not weak, we will never step back in the fight against the military regime. So we are back on the street again.” In Naypyitaw, thousands of people, including private bank employees and engineers, marched down the city's wide boulevards, chanting for the release of Suu Kyi and President Win Myint.

Protesters also poured into the streets of Mandalay, where earlier in the week security forces pointed guns at demonstrators and attacked them with slingshots and sticks. Local media reported that several people were injured.

The marches have been organized as part of a civil disobedience movement, spearheaded by medical workers and supported by many civil servants. Police filed a new charge against Suu Kyi, her lawyer said Tuesday, a move likely to keep her under house arrest and further fuel public anger. It was the second charge against Suu Kyi — the first for illegally possessing walkie-talkies, the second for an alleged violation of coronavirus restrictions — both apparent attempts to provide a legal veneer for her detention.

State television also announced charges Wednesday against several prominent entertainers, including actors and directors, who have all been publicly supportive of the protests against the coup. They were charged under a law that penalizes those who act in a manner intended to hinder or prevent members of the military and government employees from carrying out their duties.

The entertainers were apparently accused of inducing civil servants to walk off the job — and the move reflects the junta’s concern about the widespread and increasing involvement of civil servants in the protests.

On Tuesday night, the military for a third day in a row ordered an internet blackout — almost entirely blocking online access from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. While the military did not say why the internet was being blocked, there is widespread speculation that the government is installing a firewall system to allow it to monitor or block online activity.

Texas outages below half-million but water crisis persists

February 18, 2021

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Power outages in Texas dropped below a half-million on Thursday morning for the first time in four days, but many people remained without electricity or safe drinking water after winter storms wreaked havoc on the state's power grid and utilities.

Meanwhile, heavy snow and ice were expected Thursday in the Appalachians, northern Maryland and southern Pennsylvania. Snow started falling in New York City early Thursday morning and was coating cars and rooftops. The National Weather Service predicted up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) would fall in the New York metropolitan region Thursday and Friday.

In Little Rock, Arkansas, 15 inches (38 centimeters) of snow was on the ground Thursday after back-to-back storms, tying a record for snow depth set in 1918, the National Weather Service said. More than 320,000 homes and businesses were without power in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama after a wave of storms dumped as much as 4 inches (10 centimeters) of snow and ice across the region. In Tennessee, 12 people were rescued from boats after a dock weighed down by snow and ice collapsed on the Cumberland River on Wednesday night, the Nashville Fire Department said.

This week's extreme weather has been blamed for the deaths of more than 30 people, some of whom perished while struggling to keep warm inside their homes. In the Houston area, one family succumbed to carbon monoxide from car exhaust in their garage. A grandmother and three children died when flames escaped the fireplace they were using to keep warm.

In Texas, just under 500,000 homes and businesses were still without electricity Thursday morning, down from about 3 million the day before. The state's grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said Thursday morning that the remaining outages are largely weather-related, rather than forced outages that were made early Monday to stabilize the power grid.

“We will keep working around the clock until every single customer has their power back on,” ERCOT Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin said. Adding to the misery, the snowy weather has jeopardized drinking water systems throughout the state.

Texas officials ordered 7 million people — a quarter of the population of the nation’s second-largest state — to boil tap water before drinking it following days of record low temperatures that damaged infrastructure and froze pipes.

In Austin, some hospitals faced a loss in water pressure and in some cases, heat. “Because this is a state-wide emergency situation that is also impacting other hospitals within the Austin area, no one hospital currently has the capacity to accept transport of a large number of patients,” St. David's South Austin Medical Center CEO David Huffstutler said in a statement.

Water pressure has fallen across the state because lines have frozen, and many residents are leaving faucets dripping in hopes of preventing pipes from freezing, said Toby Baker, executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Gov. Greg Abbott urged residents to shut off water to their homes, if possible, to prevent more busted pipes and preserve pressure in municipal systems. Weather-related outages have been particularly stubborn in Oregon, where some customers have been without power for almost a week. A Portland supermarket without power threw perishable food into dumpsters, leading to a clash between scavengers and police.

The damage to the power system was the worst in 40 years, said Maria Pope, CEO of Portland General Electric. At the peak of the storm, more than 350,000 customers in the Portland area were in the dark. More than 100,000 customers remained without power Thursday in Oregon.

“These are the most dangerous conditions we’ve ever seen in the history of PGE,” said Dale Goodman, director of utility operations, who declined to predict when all customers would have power restored.

Utilities from Minnesota to Texas have implemented rolling blackouts to ease the burden on strained power grids. The Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities covering 14 states, said the blackouts were “a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole.”

The weather also disrupted water systems in several Southern cities, including in New Orleans and Shreveport, Louisiana, where city fire trucks delivered water to several hospitals, and bottled water was being brought in for patients and staff, Shreveport television station KSLA reported.

Power was cut to a New Orleans facility that pumps drinking water from the Mississippi River. A spokeswoman for the Sewerage and Water Board said on-site generators were used until electricity was restored.

In the southwest Louisiana city of Lake Charles, Mayor Nic Hunter said Wednesday that water reserves remained low and local hospitals were faced with the possibility they might have to transfer patients to other areas.

Bleed reported from Little Rock, Arkansas. Associated Press journalists Gillian Flaccus in Portland, Ore.; Rebecca Reynolds Yonker in Louisville, Ky., Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala.; and Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this report.