Coronavirus Live News: WHO Warns ‘Vaccine Nationalism Will Spawn New Covid Mutations’ | World news

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and World Bank President David Malpass on Tuesday stressed the need to coordinate in responding to the global pandemic, improving access to vaccines for the poorest countries and fighting climate change, Treasury said.

Reuters: Speaking with Malpass, Yellen stressed “that climate change is an existential threat to our environment and the global economy, and urged strong support for low-income countries,” Treasury said in a statement.

The Secretary stressed the need to work closely together to help countries reduce debt vulnerabilities and improve debt sustainability and transparency, he added. She noted her appreciation for the World Bank’s efforts in these areas.

Mexico was on the cusp of approving Russia’s coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V after the release of the first results of an advanced study, Mexican officials said Tuesday.

AP: Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell, the government’s pandemic spokesman, said the Ministry of Health signed a contract Monday for 400,000 doses of Sputnik V to arrive this month. He said regulatory approval was expected within hours.

It couldn’t come a moment too soon. Mexico has been hit so hard that hospitals in the capital were 87% full and ambulance drivers had to wait hours to find an open bed for patients.

“Unfortunately, due to the saturation of the hospitals and telephone lines, we wait about three or four hours before they can assign us a hospital and get there,” said Eduardo Vigueras, chief of the ambulance crew.

Vigueras noted that sometimes patients are sent to the only beds available in hospitals, far from the overwhelmed eastern side of Iztapalapa. He said some family members are getting angry and aggressive with paramedics because of the delays in treatment.

Because some patients are in such bad shape, some families make an even more difficult choice. Paramedics say they often go to pick up a critically ill coronavirus patient only to find that their loved ones want to cancel the emergency call because they know there are so few treatments and that they may never see their family member again.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that “all vaccines” approved by the EU’s drug regulator are welcome, including Russian and Chinese shots, Reuters reports.

In a TV interview, she said Germany welcomed the strong data from trials with the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.

Any vaccine approved by the European Medicines Agency is welcome. I have discussed this with the Russian President. We saw good data today [about the Russian vaccine]. Any vaccine is welcome in the EU, provided it has been approved by the EMA.

It comes after she said last month that she was “open to the idea” of using European manufacturing capacity to increase production of the Russian vaccine.

Earlier today, Merkel said Germany will have vaccinated 10 million people against the new coronavirus by the end of the first quarter.

Merkel added that the EU had been right not to go for the emergency approval that had allowed Britain to release the first vaccine for public use before anyone else, as it was crucial to boost people’s confidence in vaccines. to keep.

“You could say that in the first quarter we could already vaccinate 10 million people using both vaccines, or others say ‘only’ [10 million]; but anyway, it will go up from there, ”she said.

She also said it would be considered whether those who refuse a vaccination would face restrictions at some point.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that all his fellow countrymen who want a vaccine will get one “by the end of the summer,” Reuters reports.

He told the TF1 channel that 80 percent of nursing home residents – some 500,000 people – would have been vaccinated in early March.

Macron defended France’s record despite criticism of its slow rollout, especially compared to neighboring Britain, which started its vaccination program weeks earlier than EU countries and has moved at a much faster pace.

He said France’s rollout “may seem too slow” compared to countries that “had other bets”.

“But I defend the strategy we have adopted with Germany, with the European Union, which is precisely to vaccinate in Europe,” he said.

Nationalism in the coronavirus vaccine is harmful to everyone, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday, saying the weak cooperation between countries is a major obstacle to achieving global vaccination on the scale needed to end it. to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Despite the growing number of vaccine options, the current production capacity only meets a fraction of the global need,” said the WHO director general in a paper published in the journal Foreign Policy.

“If the majority of the world’s population is not vaccinated, it will not only perpetuate unnecessary illnesses and deaths and the pain of ongoing lockdowns, but also spawn new virus mutations as Covid-19 continues to spread among unprotected populations,” he wrote.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.

As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Tuesday that weak cooperation between countries is a major impediment to achieving global vaccination on the scale needed to end the coronavirus pandemic.

“If the majority of the world’s population is not vaccinated, it will not only perpetuate unnecessary illnesses and deaths and the pain of ongoing lockdowns, but also spawn new virus mutations as Covid-19 continues to spread among unprotected populations,” Tedros wrote in the journal Foreign. Policy.

Here are the other major developments in recent hours:

• The nationalism of the Covid-19 vaccine is harmful to everyone, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization. He said weak cooperation between countries is a major barrier to achieving global vaccination on the scale needed to end the pandemic.
• The number of patients in hospital with coronavirus in France is the highest since November. The Ministry of Health reported that 28,029 people with the virus were in hospital and 3,270 in intensive care. Both songs set new highlights for 2021.
• Nicola Sturgeon announced a staged return to school for Scotland’s youngest children, with playgroups and all primary school students from P1 to P3 scheduled to be back in class from February 22nd. The announcement will pressure the UK government to respond to calls from Conservative MPs as to why England is on a slower timetable.
• Saudi Arabia suspended access from 20 countries in an effort to curb a wave of coronavirus infections. The Interior Ministry announced that the “temporary suspension” will take effect on Wednesday from 9:00 pm.
• A single dose of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine provides sustained protection against Covid-19 for at least three months and reduces the transmission of the virus by two-thirds, according to a new study.
• French President Emmanuel Macron said all French people willing to get vaccinated will be offered a vaccine by the end of the summer.
• Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said most lockdown measures in the Netherlands, many of which have been in effect since October, will remain in effect until at least March 2. for fear of an increase in the number of cases as a result of new coronavirus variants.
• Portugal, currently feeling the full force of the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, has appealed to international help to relieve overwhelmed hospital staff. Prime Minister Antonio Costa acknowledged that the country’s hospitals are under “tremendous pressure”. The government stepped in after the 24-hour death toll in the country passed 300 and television stations broadcast images of ambulances queuing in front of Lisbon’s largest hospital.
• The Palestinian Authority began to vaccinate its health workers in the occupied West Bank against Covid-19 after receiving doses from Israel.