Moscow closing schools, many businesses as virus deaths soar

October 21, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Restaurants, movie theaters and many retail stores in Moscow will be closed for 11 days starting Oct. 28, along with other new restrictions, officials said Thursday, as Russia recorded the highest numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths since the pandemic began.

The government coronavirus task force reported 36,339 new infections and 1,036 deaths in the past 24 hours. That brought Russia’s death toll to 227,389, by far the highest in Europe. President Vladimir Putin has voiced consternation about Russians' hesitancy to get vaccinated and urged them to get the shots, but firmly ruled out making them mandatory.

He responded to the rising infections and deaths by ordering Russians to stay off work from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7, when the country already is observing a four-day national holiday, and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin followed up by introducing new restrictions in the capital, starting even earlier.

Gyms, cinemas and other entertainment venues, as well as most stores will close in Moscow from Oct. 28 to Nov. 7, along with kindergartens and schools. Restaurants and cafes will only be open for takeout or delivery orders during that period. Food stores and pharmacies can stay open.

Access to museums, theaters, concert halls and other venues will be limited to those holding digital codes on their smartphones to prove vaccination or past illness, a practice that will remain in place even after Nov. 7.

Most state organizations and private businesses, except for those operating key infrastructure and a few others, will halt work in the 11-day period, Sobyanin added. Earlier this week, he said unvaccinated people over 60 will be required to stay home except for brief walks and open-air exercise. He also told businesses to keep at least a third of their employees working remotely for three months starting Oct. 25.

“The situation in Moscow is developing according to the worst-case scenario,” Sobyanin wrote on his blog, adding that the number of infections in the capital is nearing all-time highs. Russia’s daily infections have been surging for weeks and mortality numbers topped 1,000 for the first time last weekend amid low vaccination rates, lax public attitudes toward taking precautions and the government’s reluctance to tighten restrictions. Only about 45 million Russians — roughly a third of its nearly 146 million people — are fully vaccinated.

Russia was the first country in the world to authorize a coronavirus vaccine, launching Sputnik V in August 2020, and has plentiful supplies. But citizens have been reluctant to get it. Putin, who was vaccinated with Sputnik V earlier this year, said Wednesday he was bewildered by that hesitancy, even among his close friends, who told him they would get the shot after he did, but then kept delaying it.

Speaking Thursday at a panel with foreign policy experts, Putin said that “there are just two options for everyone — to get sick, or receive a vaccine. And there is no way to walk between the raindrops.”

Asked if Russia could make vaccines mandatory, Putin said he believes they should remain voluntary. “I believe we mustn't force it but persuade people and prove to them that vaccination is better than illness,” he said. “We must try to increase people's trust in the government's actions. We need to be more convincing and prove it by example. I hope we will succeed.”

Some critics have blamed the slow pace of vaccination on conflicting signals from authorities. While extolling Sputnik V and three other domestic vaccines, state-controlled media often criticized Western-made shots, a message that many saw as feeding doubts about vaccines in general.

Russia is still waiting for the World Health Organization to approve Sputnik V. On Thursday, WHO formally restarted the process to approve the vaccine for emergency use — a process that had been put on hold for months because of legal procedures to secure the agreement of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that bankrolls the vaccine to WHO rules and procedures.

Dr. Mariangela Simao, a WHO assistant director-general for medical products, didn’t specify when a possible approval would come for an emergency use listing for Sputnik V. She said WHO expects to receive in the next two weeks additional data on the vaccine, such as technical and clinical data, manufacturing practices and quality management systems.

Russian authorities believe the order to keep people off work should help limit the spread of the virus by keeping them out of offices and off public transportation, where mask mandates have been widely ignored. The government also urged local authorities to tighten their own restrictions during the period.

In some regions where the situation is even more threatening, Putin said the nonworking period could start as early as Saturday and be extended past Nov. 7. After imposing a nationwide lockdown early in the pandemic, the government has balked at them since then, for fear of hurting the economy and sapping Putin’s popularity. Authorities have instead allowed regional authorities to decide on local restrictions.

Many of Russia’s 85 regions already have restricted attendance at large public events and introduced the digital codes for access to restaurants, theaters and other venues. Some have made vaccinations compulsory for certain public servants and people over 60.

But Moscow had avoided such restrictions until now, and crowds have flocked to its restaurants, movie theaters, nightclubs and karaoke bars. Authorities have avoided restrictive measures until now, partly because the capital's health care system has more resources than other regions.

But Sobyanin said tougher measures are now inevitable. “The experience shows that nonworking days are the most effective way to reduce contagion and deaths,” he said.

Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

French vaccine rollout slowed by focus on elderly, red tape

January 09, 2021

PARIS (AP) — The few hours it took to give the first coronavirus vaccine shots to 14 residents of the John XXIII nursing home — named after a pope and not far from the birthplace in eastern France of vaccine pioneer Louis Pasteur — took weeks of preparation.

The home's director, Samuel Robbe, first had to chew his way through a dense 61-page vaccination protocol, one of several hefty guides from the French government that exhaustively detail how to proceed, down to the number of times (10) that each flask of vaccine should be turned upside down to mix its contents.

“Delicately,” the booklet stipulates. “Do not shake." As France tries to figure out why its vaccination campaign launched so slowly, the answer lies partly in forests of red tape and the decision to prioritize vulnerable older people in nursing homes. They are perhaps the toughest group to start with, because of the need for informed consent and difficulties explaining the complex science of fast-tracked vaccines.

Claude Fouet, still full of vim and good humor at age 89 but with memory problems, was among the first in his Paris care home to agree to a vaccination. But in conversation, it quickly becomes apparent that his understanding of the pandemic is spotty. Eve Guillaume, the home's director, had to remind Fouet that in April he survived his own brush with the virus that has killed more than 66,000 people in France.

“I was in hospital,” Fouet slowly recalled, “with a dead person next to me.” Guillaume says that getting consent from her 64 residents — or their guardians and families when they are not fit enough to agree themselves — is proving to be the most labor-intensive part of her preparations to start inoculations later this month. Some families have said no, and some want to wait a few months to see how vaccinations unfold before deciding.

“You can’t count on medicalized care homes to go quickly,” she says. “It means, each time, starting a conversation with families, talking with guardians, taking collegial steps to reach the right decision. And that takes time.”

At the John XXIII home, between the fortified town of Besancon and Pasteur's birthplace in Dole, Robbe has had a similar experience. After the European Union green-lighted use of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine in December, Robbe says it took two weeks to put together all the pieces to this week vaccinate 14 residents, just a fraction of his total of more than 100.

Getting consent was the biggest hurdle for a doctor and a psychologist who went from room to room to discuss vaccinations, he says. The families of residents were given a week over the December holidays to approve or refuse, a decision that had to be unanimous from immediate family members.

When one woman's daughter said yes but her son said no, a shot wasn't given because “they can turn against us and say, ‘I never agreed to that,’” Robbe explained. “No consensus, we don't vaccinate.” Only by cutting corners and perfunctorily getting residents to agree could the process go quicker, he says.

“My friends are saying, ‘What is this circus? The Germans have already vaccinated 80,000 people and we’ve vaccinated no one,'" he says. "But we don’t share the same histories. When you propose a vaccine to Germans, they all want to get inoculated. In France, there is a lot of reticence about the history of vaccinations. People are more skeptical. They need to understand. They need explications and to be reassured.”

France prioritized nursing homes because they have seen nearly one-third of its deaths. But its first vaccination on Dec. 27, of a 78-year-old woman in a long-term care facility, quickly proved to have been only the symbolic launch of a rollout that the government never intended to get properly underway before this week.

Only on Monday, as scheduled, did authorities launch an online platform where health workers must log all vaccinations and show that those inoculated got an obligatory consultation with a doctor, adding to the red tape.

In some countries that are moving faster than France, the bureaucracy is leaner. In Britain, where nearly 1.5 million have been inoculated and plans are to offer jabs to all nursing home residents by the end of January, those capable of consenting need only sign a one-page form that gives basic information about the benefits and possible side effects.

No doctor interviews are needed in Spain. It started vaccinating the same day as France but administered 82,000 doses in the first nine days, whereas France managed just a couple of thousand. Germany, like France, also mandates a meeting with a doctor and is prioritizing shots for care home residents, but it is getting to them quicker, using mobile teams. At its current rate of nearly 30,000 vaccinations per day, Germany would need at least six years to inoculate its 69 million adults. But while the German government is facing criticism for the perceived slow rollout, France made an even more leisurely start, at least in numerical terms, but has pledged to reach 1 million people by the end of January.

Other countries have racked up bigger numbers by offering shots to broader cross-sections of people who are easier to reach and can get themselves to appointments. The large majority of the more than 400,000 doses administered in Italy have gone to health-care workers.

Lucile Grillon, who manages three nursing homes in eastern France, says the many hours invested to prepare vaccinations for 50 residents and staff who got jabs on Friday was time well spent. She worked through the holidays to get ready.

“We can’t wait until we have the doses in our fridge to realize that we’re not ready to vaccinate and then have to throw doses away and say, ‘Rats! I didn’t think of that,’” she adds. “The doses are too precious.”

“It takes us two months to prepare for flu shots. Here, we have been asked to set records, to vaccinate against COVID in under 15 days," she says. “I don’t see how we could have gone any quicker.”

Associated Press writers Pan Pylas in London, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Ciaran Giles in Madrid and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed.

France's go-slow coronavirus vaccination strategy backfires

January 04, 2021

PARIS (AP) — France’s cautious approach to rolling out a coronavirus vaccination program appears to have backfired, leaving barely 500 people inoculated in the first week and rekindling anger over the government’s handling of the pandemic.

Amid public outcry, the health minister vowed Monday to step up the pace, and made a belated public plea on behalf of the vaccine, saying it offers a “chance” for France and the world to vanquish a pandemic that has killed more than 1.8 million people. President Emmanuel Macron was holding a special meeting with top government officials Monday to address the vaccine strategy and other virus developments.

The slow rollout of the vaccine made by Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech was blamed on mismanagement, staffing shortages during holiday vacations and a complex French consent policy designed to accommodate unusually broad vaccine skepticism among the French public.

Doctors, mayors and opposition politicians pleaded Monday for speedier access to vaccines. “It’s a state scandal,” said Jean Rottner, president of the Grand-Est region of eastern France, where infections are surging and some hospitals are over capacity.

“Getting vaccinated is becoming more complicated than buying a car,” he said on France-2 television. In France, a country of 67 million people, only 516 people were vaccinated in the first six days, according to the French Health Ministry. Health Minister Olivier Veran promised that by the end of Monday, “several thousand” people will have been vaccinated, with the tempo picking up through the week — but that still leaves France well behind its neighbors.

Germany’s first-week total surpassed 200,000 and Italy’s was over 100,000 — and even those countries are under fire for being too slow to protect the public from a pandemic that has killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.

The U.S. and China, meanwhile, have vaccinated millions. Britain on Monday became the first nation in the world to start giving people shots of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, so the U.K. now has two approved vaccines to use.

France started its vaccination campaign on Dec. 27 in nursing homes, because so many elderly people have died with the virus. But facing fears that people with cognitive problems would be vaccinated against their will, the government devised a time-consuming screening process before the vaccines can be ordered and administered.

Macron's government is also keen not to appear that it is forcing vaccines on anyone. Though France has lost more lives to the virus than most countries — over 65,000 — polls suggest the French are unusually wary of vaccines. They remember past French drug scandals, worry about how quickly these new vaccines were developed and their long-term impact, and wonder about the profits they bring to big pharmaceutical companies.

But many other French people are eager to vaccinated and have been frustrated by the surprisingly slow rollout. “We are doing anything we can to motivate people to get vaccinated,” said Frederic Leyret, director of the St. Vincent Hospital in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, whose geriatric rehabilitation facility started vaccinations Monday.

He lamented a mixed message from leading French officials, which he sums up as: “Go get vaccinated, but we will go slowly because it could be dangerous.” Now that millions of people in multiple countries are getting injected, he said attitudes are starting to shift. The French government adjusted its policies over the weekend to allow immediate vaccinations for medical workers over 50, alongside nursing home residents. Vaccines will gradually be made available to others.

On Monday, French authorities reported 378 new deaths from the virus and said numbers of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in intensive care units — more than 2,600 people — remained stable. Similar troubles have surfaced around Europe.

Spain saw vaccinations move slowly over the New Year holiday, blamed on shortages of medical personnel and of freezers for the vaccine, after a batch of them were caught in a bottleneck of trucks trying to enter the European mainland from Britain.

Spain has received in total 718,535 vaccine doses from Pfizer and BioNTech, but had only administered 82,334 by Monday, Health Minister Salvador Illa said. He added authorities that are confident that vaccination levels will reach “cruising speed” by next week, once the holiday period is over.

In Germany, where nearly 265,000 coronavirus vaccinations had been reported by Monday, impatience is growing with what is seen as a slow start. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert promised that “some things can and will improve.”

Amid the criticism, a European Commission spokesman defended the European Union’s collective vaccine strategy, saying Monday that the main problem is a shortage of production capacity. The European Medicines Agency, the medical regulator for the 27-nation bloc, was meeting Monday to discuss approval of Moderna's coronavirus vaccine.

Samuel Petrequin in Brussels, Aritz Parra in Madrid, and Geir Moulson in Berlin, contributed to this report.

'New start:' Medics juggle surgery backlogs and virus fight

December 08, 2020

PARIS (AP) — Chatting before they go under the knife, the two women picture their lives after surgery. Caroline Erganian hopes to be rid of her pain. Lolita Andela imagines being able to be active with her kids.

After multiple false dawns, they scarcely dare believe that their Paris hospital, no longer monopolized by COVID-19 patients, is once again able to perform their stomach surgeries to treat obesity. When the pandemic was burning through France's health system, the women's operations were repeatedly pushed back. But after months of waiting, their turn has now come.

Lying on a gurney, ready to be wheeled into the operating room, Erganian, a retired secretary, tells the surgeon: “I’m doing this surgery to have a better life. So I'm enthusiastic, not a bit scared."

“A new start,” replies the surgeon, Lara Ribeiro Parenti, thrilled to be back at work with her scalpel. “This is what we know best and what we enjoy doing. It’s a renewal, a new start, for us, too.” For these women, yes. But many thousands of others in France and other European countries hardest-hit by the pandemic are still waiting for medical procedures that could change their lives and improve their health, but which were deemed nonessential when the virus ripped through hospitals.

To prevent the collapse of public health systems, their decks were cleared. People who had been scheduled for joint replacements to free them from pain, for cataract removals to defog their sight, for cancer checks, and myriad other life-improving and even potentially life-saving procedures, were told to stay home as staving off COVID-19 took priority.

At the Bichat Hospital in Paris, one of the French capital’s largest with 900 beds, wards fell silent as resources were poured into critical care units in the basement. But doctors are now better able to treat virus patients and better equipped for the double challenge of fighting COVID-19 while also doing other medicine. With France’s most recent virus spike now stabilized, Bichat is using the lull to tackle the backlog of surgeries. An Associated Press team spent two days this month with its staff, seeing how they are recovering from virus surges that left more than 55,600 dead in France.

Bichat was the first hospital outside Asia to report a COVID-19 death, back in February, and was turned upside down when the pandemic struck with full force in March. Makeshift plastic screens were erected to stop contamination spreading, held up with duct tape and bits of wood. Operating rooms and a recovery room the size of a tennis court were among spaces hastily converted for floods of sick people, who were plugged into ventilators, one next to the other.

“It was cataclysmic," recalls Simon Msika, the head of digestive surgery whose unit was among those that emptied. “The basement was teeming with people.” When President Emmanuel Macron declared that France was at war with the virus and put the country into lockdown in March, Erganian and Andela both immediately understood that their surgeries wouldn't happen as planned.

“It was a hammer blow for the family, because we were ready," says Andela, who is the carer for a man with disabilities. Admissions for COVID-19 aside, hospitalizations across France plunged, with 2 million fewer hospital stays from March to July compared to the same period of 2019, the French Hospitals Federation says. Cataract surgeries stopped almost entirely for eight weeks, and colonoscopies used to spot cancers plummeted by 87%. There were half as many kidney transplants from March to September, according to the federation. Its statisticians estimate that the number of patients waiting for postponed procedures has swelled by hundreds of thousands.

Neighboring Spain was battling long waiting lists for non-urgent surgeries even before the virus caused more than 45,600 deaths there. Public health data shows that in the first half of 2020, surgeries plunged by more than a third year-on-year. The average waiting time has grown from 115 days to 170. At the end of June, 691,508 people were registered as waiting for non-urgent procedures — 20,000 more than a year earlier.

In Portugal, almost 100,000 surgeries had been postponed by October. And the association of hospital surgeons in Italy says more than 600,000 operations have been canceled there, 50,000 of them for cancer. By June, the association was already warning that more than 13 months would be needed to clear the backlog.

Delays are more than mere inconveniences for patients. Erganian weighed 140 kilograms (308 pounds) before surgery; Andela was 133 kilos (293 pounds). Both were terrified of becoming infected by the virus, acutely aware that obesity puts them at greater risk of dying from COVID-19. Other than for work and groceries, Andela says she barely left the house. Erganian says she lived in “monstrous fear.”

Both gained additional kilos in lockdown. Andela wept when her nutritionist weighed her. “I have three kids. I dream of doing lots of things with them that I cannot do now: rollerblading, scootering, hoverboarding, going to the swimming pool without having to hide,” the 33-year-old said the afternoon before her gastric bypass surgery.

Erganian, 58, hopes to shed more than a third of her weight as a result of having a large part of her stomach cut out and be free of knee and back pain — and of her cane. She prayed in the final weeks that her phone wouldn’t ring with news of another delay.

“In a European country as developed as France, I find it abnormal that surgeries that should have been done couldn’t be carried out because of COVID,” she says. “We should not be choosing between one sick person and another.”

The pandemic hit with such force initially that hospitals in many countries barely coped, but that is changing. During France's second lockdown from Oct. 30, surgeons at Bichat performed many more operations than during the first shutdown. All 22 of the hospital's operating rooms were functioning again this month.

The operating room schedule that Aurelie Gouel manages was largely filled with gaping holes in March but is now a tightly packed puzzle of colored blocks, each representing a surgery. She likens the task of fitting in as many operations as possible to the computer game Tetris.

Gouel calculates that the pandemic has so far forced the postponement of more than 600 surgeries at Bichat. Even with operating rooms again going full tilt, she can't see how the hospital will catch up.

“There will always be other patients who take priority," she says. "It is going to be complicated for a long time.”

Associated Press writers Aritz Parra in Madrid, Barry Hatton in Lisbon and Frances d'Emilio in Rome contributed.

Belgium braces for another surge in COVID-19 cases

October 21, 2021

BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgium's government warned Thursday that the country could well be on the cusp of another major surge in COVID-19 cases despite its high vaccination rate. Though the government recently relaxed the mandatory use of facemasks, it is again starting to encourage the population to use them to counter a rise in cases reminiscent of the first three surges of the past 1 1/2 years.

“We are clearly in a fourth wave,” Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke told the VRT network. “We will see a major increase in infections and, unfortunately, hospital admissions.” The government has this month loosened some restrictions, including allowing for more indoor events and dropping requirements for customers to wear masks in bars.

Belgium, a nation of 11 million, again has over 3,000 infections a day, an increase of 50% compared to the week earlier. Hospital admissions are at 80 a day now, an increase of over 40%. Even if the total numbers are still manageable, there are worries about the curve spiking again, even though 85 percent of the adult population is vaccinated.

Moscow to shut shops, schools as COVID-19 deaths soar

October 21, 2021

MOSCOW (AP) — Authorities in Moscow on Thursday announced plans to shut restaurants, cinemas and non-food stores and introduce other restrictions later this month, as Russia registered the highest daily numbers of new coronavirus infections and deaths since the start of the pandemic.

The government coronavirus task force reported 36,339 new confirmed infections and 1,036 deaths in the past 24 hours. That brought Russia’s death toll to 227,389, by far the highest in Europe. President Vladimir Putin has voiced consternation about vaccine hesitancy and sought to urge more to come forward for jabs.

Putin on Wednesday responded to rising contagion and deaths by ordering Russians to stay off work from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7, and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin followed up Thursday by introducing a slew of restrictions in the capital.

All non-food stores, gyms, cinemas and other entertainment venues in the Russian capital will be shut from Oct. 28 to Nov. 7. Restaurants and cafes will only be allowed to deliver takeaway orders, and schools and kindergartens will also be closed during that period.

Access to museums, theaters, concert halls and other venues will be limited to holders of digital codes proving vaccination or past illness, a practice that will also remain in place after Nov. 7 per the Cabinet's advice.

Most state organizations and private businesses except for those operating key infrastructure and a few others will halt work in the 11-day period, the mayor added. Earlier this week, Sobyanin said unvaccinated people over 60 will be required to stay home except for brief walks and open-air exercise. He also told businesses to keep at least a third of their employees working remotely for three months starting Oct. 25.

“The situation in Moscow is developing according to the worst-case scenario,” Sobyanin wrote on his blog, adding that the number of infections in the capital is nearing all-time highs. Russia’s daily infections have been surging for weeks and coronavirus mortality numbers topped 1,000 for the first time over the weekend amid low vaccination rates, lax public attitudes toward taking precautions and the government’s reluctance to tighten restrictions. Only about 45 million Russians — roughly a third of its nearly 146 million people — are fully vaccinated.

Putin strongly urged Russians to get vaccinated, saying “why wait for the illness and its grave consequences?" The Russian leader, who got the domestically developed Sputnik V vaccine earlier this year, said he was bewildered by vaccine hesitancy, even among his close friends, who told him they would get the shot after he does and then kept delaying it.

“I can’t understand what’s going on,” Putin said Wednesday. “We have a reliable and efficient vaccine. The vaccine really reduces the risks of illness, grave complications and death.” Russia became the first country in the world to authorize a coronavirus vaccine in August 2020 and has plentiful supplies. But citizens have been hesitant to take up the jabs, and some have blamed the skepticism on conflicting signals from authorities.

While extolling Sputnik V and three other domestic vaccines, state-controlled media often criticized Western-made shots, a message that many saw as feeding doubts about vaccines in general. The nonworking period, which includes a two-day state holiday, should help limit the spread by keeping people out of offices and off crowded public transportation. The government also urged local authorities to restrict access to restaurants, theaters and other entertainment venues during the period.

Putin said that in some regions where the situation is the most threatening, the nonworking period could start as early as Saturday and be extended past Nov. 7. The Kremlin has ruled out a nationwide lockdown like the one early in the pandemic that dealt a heavy blow to the economy and sapped Putin’s popularity. Authorities have instead allowed regional authorities to decide on local restrictions.

Many of Russia’s 85 regions already have restricted attendance at large public events and introduced digital codes proving vaccination or past illness for access to restaurants, theaters and other venues. Some have made vaccinations compulsory for certain public servants and people over 60.

But Moscow had avoided restrictions until now, with restaurants and movie theaters brimming with people, crowds swarming nightclubs and karaoke bars, and commuters widely ignoring mask mandates on public transportation even as ICUs have been filling quickly.

Authorities in the capital have avoided restrictive measures until now partly because Moscow's health care system has more resources compared to other regions. But Sobyanin said that tougher measures are now inevitable amid soaring infections and deaths.

“The experience shows that nonworking days are the most effective way to reduce contagion and deaths,” he said.

Spain pledges quicker help for La Palma volcano damage

October 23, 2021

SANTA CRUZ DE LA PALMA, Canary Islands (AP) — Spain's prime minister announced Saturday that his government will speed up already promised aid to help the thousands of residents on La Palma island whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed by a protracted volcanic eruption.

On his fifth visit since the Atlantic island was shaken by the Sept. 19 eruption, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that his government would pass new measures this week to help millions of euros in aid to reach those in need.

Sánchez's government had already assigned 63 million euros ($73 million) in direct aid, with another 6 million euros ($7 million) for the local farming and fishing industries impacted in the impacted area.

Lava flows from the eruption on the Cumbre Vieja volcanic ridge have damaged or destroyed more than 2,100 buildings, mostly houses and farms. The molten rock, which has covered over 850 hectares (2,100 acres), has also knocked out irrigations systems and roads in the largely agricultural area.

Though most of the island of 85,000 people off northwest Africa is unaffected by the eruption, part of the western side is facing an uncertain future. The lava flows are still going strong over a month later, gobbling up more buildings and forming newly-born land where it has reached the sea. Locals are also feeling the toll of the nonstop roar from the volcano and the constant series of low-level earthquakes under their island.

About 7,500 residents have had to be evacuated from their homes in prompt action by authorities that has prevented the loss of any lives. Most have taken refuge with family or friends but around 430 people are in temporary lodgings provided by the local government.

The Canary Islands government is buying up empty apartments to house those whose homes have been demolished. It has also pledged to modify regulations to help rebuilding efforts once the eruption finally stops.

But the end is nowhere in sight, warned Canary Islands president Ángel Víctor Torres. “We still have weeks ahead of us,” Torres said. “We are living through some very difficult times. (But) no resident of La Palma will have to leave the island to continue their lives.”