WHO tackles new virus strains

Global death toll from Covid-19 tops 2 million, fresh restrictions imposed

Geneva, Jan. 15: Global health experts gathered on Thursday to tackle new Coronavirus strains blamed for a fresh surge in infections as countries including Britain and France tightened restrictions to head off a further worsening of the pandemic.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) emergency committee session came as their colleagues were seeking the origins of the virus on a long-delayed mission to the pandemic ground zero in Wuhan.

The global death toll from Covid-19 topped 2 million Friday as vaccines developed at breakneck speed are being rolled out around the world in an allout campaign to vanquish the threat.

“When you first met almost a year ago, just 557 cases of the disease we now call Covid-19 had been reported to WHO,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his opening remarks to the emergency meeting.

Much of the planet is facing a second or third wave of infections, with populations chafing under painful and economically damaging restrictions.

Already hard-hit by a new variant at home, Britain announced on Thursday it was banning all arrivals from South America, Panama, Cape Verde and Portugal.

The step was taken over fears of importing yet another new coronavirus variant in Brazil, where the northern Amazonas state announced a 7 pm to 6 am curfew.

The health system has been pushed to breaking point in the state capital Manaus. The strain, known as E484K, was detected initially in South Africa and on subsequent variants in Brazil and Japan, and it has raised greater alarm among researchers over its possible impact on immunity.

Partly over fears of new variants, France said it would impose a daily nationwide curfew at 6 pm starting from Saturday and remaining in force for

at least two weeks.

Most of France had been under an 8 pm curfew, with some areas, especially in the hard-hit east, already under the stricter 6 pm limit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday called for tougher restrictions to contain the country’s worsening Coronavirus outbreak and pushed for crisis talks with regional leaders, sources from her party said.

They quoted her as saying the virus could only be stopped with “significant additional measures”. Lebanon meanwhile went into full lockdown with residents barred even from grocery shopping.

There was better news for those who have already had Covid-19, with a British study suggesting recovery can confer immunity for at least five months.

But the virus’s new strains were causing increasing worry and went under the WHO microscope in Geneva on Thursday after being logged in dozens of countries.

WHO's emergency committee normally gathers every three months, but the meeting was brought forward by two weeks. In China, millions of people have been locked down again to try to tame a fresh outbreak that has now claimed the country’s first reported Covid-19 death in eight months. —