Category: Breaking News

BERLIN, Nov 25 (Reuters) – Germany crossed the sombre threshold of 100,000 COVID-19-related deaths on Thursday with a surge in new infections posing a challenge for the new government. Since the start of the pandemic, 100,119 people have died with the virus in Germany, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed. The number of new daily cases hit a new record of 75,961. Hospitals in some areas, especially in eastern and southern Germany, are under pressure and virologists have warned that many more people could die. The head of the Robert Koch Institute has put the mortality rate at about 0.8%, meaning that at daily case numbers around 50,000, some 400 people per day will end dying. Germany’s incoming three-party government, which announced its coalition deal on Wednesday, said it would create a team of experts who would assess the situation on a daily basis. Greens co-leader Annalena Baerbock said the new government, comprising the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Free Democrats (FDP), had set itself 10 days to decide if further restrictions are needed. Germany has already limited large parts of public life in areas where the situation is acute to people who have been vaccinated or have recovered. FDP leader Christian Lindner said tighter regional restrictions would probably be needed if a national lockdown, like that in neighbouring Austria, is to be avoided. With a vaccine rate of just 68.1%, far behind some European countries such as Portugal, Spain and even France, Chancellor-in-waiting Olaf Scholz promised to ramp up vaccinations and did not rule out making it compulsory. “We must vaccinate and give booster shots to prevent the spread of the virus,” said Scholz. “Vaccination is the way out of this pandemic,” he said. He said long queues for booster shots in some areas that are slowing things down had to be sorted out. A growing number of politicians are calling for compulsory vaccinations, initially for workers in some sectors, but possibly later for everyone.

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Germany reported its highest single day surge of Covid-19 infections as Chancellor Angela Merkel said the “dramatic” situation was the result of the fourth wave “hitting our country with full force.” The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s disease and control center, has reported 65,371 new cases within the last 24 hours — it is an increase of 12,545 new infections compared to the previous 24-hour period. But these figures are likely to be under reported, and true scale of infections could be “twice or three times as many,” RKI chief Lothar Wieler told an online discussion with Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer on Wednesday evening. Thursday, pushing the total number of deaths since the pandemic began to 98,000 people in Germany, according to RKI data. Germany’s seven-day incidence rate also hit record levels of 336.9 cases per 100,000 people, up from 249.1 cases reported a week ago, RKI reported. Germany has one of the lowest vaccination rates in western Europe, with just over 67% of the population fully vaccinated. Around 33% have no protection against the virus, according to the RKI. This is one of the reasons why infections have soared to record levels, say experts, aided by waning immunity of the Covid-19 vaccines and the more infectious Delta variant. “As the vaccination campaign started in Germany at the beginning of this year, we now see some age groups and some people lose their immunity against Covid-19 quickly,” Tobias Kurth, a professor of public health and epidemiology at the Charité university hospital in Berlin, told CNN. ”The current pandemic situation in Germany is dramatic, I can’t say it any other way,” outgoing Chancellor Merkel told mayors from across Germany on Wednesday. Hospitalizations and deaths remain at a much lower level than in previous peaks, but there is growing concern about gaps in the country’s vaccination coverage as it moves into the winter months. ”It would be a disaster to act only when the intensive care units are full, because then it would be too late,” she added. The situation means Germany is on track to become the next country to impose stricter rules on those who haven’t been fully inoculated. Three parties making up the country’s prospective new coalition government approved a draft law on Thursday that would see stricter rules come into effect. The measures — which will be debated in the upper house of parliament on Friday — would require Germans to wear face masks and provide proof of vaccination, a certificate of recovery, or a negative Covid-19 test in order to ride a bus or board a train, in an expansion of the country’s “3G” system that required a negative Covid-19 test to enter certain venues and settings. Free Covid-19 tests would be reintroduced as well as permission to work from home whenever possible. The new legislation is designed to provide a nationwide framework in which the country’s regions can choose from a toolbox of other measures, depending on the severity of the outbreak. To that end, regions have room to tighten curbs in Covid-19 hotspots as needed. Green Party co-leader Robert Habeck told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday that the rules in effect amount to a “lockdown for the unvaccinated.” Continue reading “COVID cases break records in Europe, prompting booster shot expansion”

NEW YORK, Nov 23 (Reuters) – Top U.S. infectious disease official Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday the vast majority of Americans who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 should receive a booster shot, and that an additional dose could eventually become the country’s standard for determining who is fully vaccinated. Fauci and other disease experts have said they expect that COVID-19 will transition this spring from a pandemic phase in the United States to an endemic disease, meaning that the virus will continue to circulate at a lower level, causing smaller, less disruptive but still significant outbreaks in the coming years. But some are expressing new concern over a rise in U.S. infections in recent weeks, a trend that is likely to accelerate as more Americans travel and gather for U.S. Thanksgiving this week and other upcoming holidays. “We’d like to get as many people who were originally vaccinated with the first regimen boosted,” Fauci said in an interview for the upcoming Reuters Next conference. Asked to quantify, he said, the “overwhelming majority” of Americans who have been fully vaccinated should now receive a COVID-19 booster shot based on data showing they provide “substantial” protection beyond what is seen from the original inoculation. To date, about 33 million Americans have received a booster dose. The government recently expanded eligibility for an additional shot to all U.S. adults. Studies from Israel and other countries have shown that vaccine protection wanes over time. While data first suggested that was mostly a problem in the elderly, there is newer evidence that it occurs among all age groups, Fauci said. “That’s the reason why we’re very keen on getting as many people who are originally vaccinated to get a booster … because they really do work,” he said. As experience with COVID-19 vaccines grows, it is conceivable that the definition of a “full and complete regimen” in the United States would comprise three doses of the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNTech and Moderna (MRNA.O) and two doses of the Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) vaccine, he said, similar to what some other countries have done. Continue reading “Fauci says vast majority of vaccinated Americans should get a COVID-19 booster”

Throughout the COVID pandemic, what has been missing from our medical tool kit is an easy-to-take treatment that keeps people out of the hospital. Yet, within the next few weeks, we will have two new antivirals: Merck’s molnupiravir and Pfizer’s Paxlovid. As part of the unimaginable speed that has characterized the medical countermeasure response to COVID, the advent of two highly effective treatments for COVID is nothing short of game-changing. But given that nearly 30 percent of adults are not fully vaccinated against COVID, it is natural to wonder if having these highly effective oral drugs will diminish the value or role of COVID vaccines in our response. There is a real fear being voiced by public health practitioners that if highly effective treatments stand at the ready, people who have so far shunned the vaccine will likely never get vaccinated. That they will get COVID is likely inevitable, prolonging the pandemic, continuing to endanger high-risk individuals, and further taxing our hospitals and their staff. Continue reading “Covid Antivirals Don’t Replace Vaccines: Johns Hopkins’ Adalja”

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The Netherlands started transporting COVID-19 patients across the border to Germany on Tuesday to ease pressure on Dutch hospitals, which are scaling back regular care to deal with a surge in coronavirus cases. The number of COVID-19 patients in Dutch hospitals has swelled to its highest level since May in recent weeks and is expected to increase further as infections jump to record levels. As of Monday, 470 of a total 1,050 intensive care beds in the Netherlands were being used for COVID-19 patients. Hospitals were already scaling back other procedures including cancer treatments and heart operations https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/facing-new-covid-wave-dutch-delay-care-cancer-heart-patients-2021-11-19, to make room. The Dutch health authority (NZA) on Tuesday said almost a third of all operating theatres in the Netherlands had been closed to limit the use of intensive care beds. Deadlines for critical operations can’t be met in about a fifth of all Dutch hospitals, the NZA said, while various types of care had been scrapped in 49 of the country’s 73 hospitals. German hospitals in total have offered 20 beds for patients from the Netherlands, after treating dozens during previous waves of the pandemic. Plans by the Dutch government to impose further curbs to contain the virus prompted three nights of rioting https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/dutch-pm-lashes-out-idiots-after-third-night-violence-2021-11-22 starting on Friday and more than 170 arrests in cities cross the country. Plans include limiting access to many public places to people who have been vaccinated or have recently recovered from COVID-19. It remains unclear whether the government will find a majority to enact the rules into law.