‘New strains spread to dozens of countries’
WHO says the Covid variant detected in UK had spread to 70 nations by Jan 25
PARIS/GENEVA: New Covid-19 variants that make the coronavirus more contagious and could render vaccine and antibody protection less effective have spread rapidly across dozens of countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, even as infections zoomed past 100 million.
The WHO said the more contagious variant first spotted in Britain had by January 25 spread to 70 countries. That variant had spread to 10 more countries over the past week, it said.
Cannes Film Festival postponed to July
The Cannes Film Festival has been rescheduled for July 6-17 postponed by around two months due to the pandemic, organisers said on Wednesday. “As announced last autumn, the Festival de Cannes reserved the right to change its dates depending on how the global health situation developed,” they said in a statement. It was initially scheduled from May 11-22.
In a collaboration to speed up Covid-19 vaccination efforts, French drugmaker Sanofi agreed to produce millions of doses of the Pfizer-biontech vaccine in its production facilities as the world raced to inoculate populations against the coronavirus.
Sanofi agreed to help produce 125 million doses of the Pfizer jab at its factory in Frankfurt after abandoning development of its own vaccine.
The row over the slow progress of the Oxford-astrazeneca vaccine’s delivery in EU cooled down on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Astrazeneca had sent an email to European Commission saying it is pulling out of crunch talks on the issue. Later, the commission said talks will go ahead on Wednesday.
Astrazeneca will license Japanese
biotech company JCR Pharmaceutical to produce some 90mn doses to help Japan avoid shortages and delays.
Countries around the world, meanwhile, are continuing to impose curbs. UK citizens returning from 30 “high-risk” countries will have to quarantine in hotels near airports for 10 days with in-room meals and security guard supervision costing £1,500.
CDC: US may see 514,000 deaths by February 20
Rochelle Walensky, the new head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has said that her agency’s latest forecast indicates the US will record between 479,000 to 514,000 coronavirus deaths by February 20.