More than half of European adults now fully vaccinated
COVID-19 cases in Germany rising exponentially: Merkel: deaths soar in Southeast Asia; China rebuffs WHO’S terms for further virus origins study; Biden says geting vaccine ‘gigantically important’
More than half of all European adults are now fully vaccinated, the EU said on Thursday, as several countries across Europe and Asia batle fresh outbreaks blamed on the fast-spreading Delta variant.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said cases in her country were rising “exponentially,” while in Japan the delayed Olympics Games were set to open with almost no spectators and with a blanket of COVID-19 rules in place.
And the spotlight once again turned to the virus’ origins ater the WHO called for an audit of the Chinese lab at the heart of speculations about where the virus first emerged, sparking a fiery response from Beijing.
More than four million people have now died from the virus since it first emerged in December 2019, and though vaccines are picking up globally, Delta is fuelling a rise in infections and prompting governments to reimpose anti-virus measures to avoid dreaded new waves.
The EU said on Thursday that 200 million Europeans had been fully vaccinated, more than half of the adult population but still short of a 70 per cent target set for the summer.
The fresh data came as Merkel urged more Germans to get vaccinated, sounding the alarm over a fresh spike in cases in Germany.
“The infection figures are rising again and with a clear and worrying dynamic,” Merkel told a press conference in Berlin.
“We are seeing exponential growth,” she said, adding that “every vaccination... is a small step towards a return to normality.”
Germany on Thursday recorded 1,890 new infections over the past 24 hours and an incidence rate of 12.2 new cases per 100,000 people over the past seven days — more than double rates in early July.
“With a rising incidence rate, it could be that we need to introduce additional measures,” she said.
Germany joins a number of European nations that have seen cases climb in recent weeks.
The new outbreaks have been largely fuelled by the Delta variant, first detected in India, which is expected to become the dominant strain of the virus over the coming months, the World Health Organisation ( WHO) said on Wednesday.
It has now been recorded in 124 territories — 13 more than last week — and already accounts for more than three-quarters of sequenced specimens in many major countries.
Countries in Asia are seeing some of their worst outbreaks to date, with Indonesia becoming a new global hotspot as Vietnam and Thailand face new anti-virus rules.
In Tokyo, the Olympics were due to open on Friday ater a year-long pandemic delay, though it promised to be a Games like no other in history.
With no clear end to the pandemic in sight, atention turned once again to the international probe origins of the virus.
The WHO said last week that a second stage of the probe should include audits of Chinese labs, as the US increases pressure for an investigation into a biotech lab in Wuhan.
Long dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory and vehemently rejected by Beijing, the idea that COVID-19 may have emerged from a lab leak has been gaining momentum.
But China’s vice health minister Zeng Yixin told reporters on Thursday that he was “extremely surprised” by the WHO plan, which he said showed “disrespect for common sense and arrogance towards science.”
President Joe Biden expressed pointed frustration over the slowing COVID-19 vaccination rate in the US and pleaded that it’s “gigantically important” for Americans to step up and get inoculated against the virus as it surges once again.
Two doses of Pfizer or Astrazeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine are nearly as effective against the highly transmissible Delta coronavirus variant as they are against the previously dominant Alpha variant, a study published on Wednesday showed.
Officials say vaccines are highly effective against the Delta variant, now the dominant variant worldwide, though the study reiterated that one shot of the vaccines is not enough for high protection.