Delta puts brakes on return to post-covid normality
PARIS: Nations across the globe hit new pandemic highs and reimposed Covid-19 restrictions on Saturday as the highly contagious Delta variant forced governments to put the brakes on plans to return to normality.
The highly transmissible Delta variant, first detected in India, is sweeping the globe as countries race to inoculate their populations to ward off fresh outbreaks and allow for economies and daily life to recover.
The European Union — lambasted early on in the pandemic response for a botched vaccine acquisition programme — said on Saturday it has delivered enough shots to cover 70 per cent of the bloc’s population.
“By tomorrow, some 500 million doses will have been distributed to all regions of Europe,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
But according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the proportion of adults aged 18 years or over fully vaccinated in the EU and European Economic Area is still only 44.1 per cent.
Russia announced on Saturday that cases continued to surge and it had a new record number of daily deaths, the fifth since the beginning of the month.
The 752 new deaths bring Russia’s total toll to 142,253. The country also recorded 25,082 new infections, meaning there have been more than 5.7 million cases.
State statistics agency Rosstat, which defines coronavirusrelated deaths more broadly, put the figure at 270,000 by the end of April.
Less than 20 per cent of Russians have received a single dose, despite shots of locally developed vaccines being readily available.