Faced with a lower level of hospitalizations in intensive care than in previous waves, several European countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands have announced considerable relief or the lifting of the bulk of their restrictions, despite record or very high cases. The level of risk linked to the Omicron variant remains very high, estimated the World Health Organization (WHO) in its weekly bulletin.
- Denmark plans to lift restrictions entirely
Despite record cases, Denmark announced on Wednesday that it wanted to lift all its internal anti-Covid restrictions on February 1, deeming its high vaccination coverage sufficient in the face of the lesser severity of the Omicron variant. If the government’s plan receives the backing of a parliamentary committee later today, the Nordic country would become the first in the European Union to take the plunge despite the wave of the Omicron variant, according to the European offices of AFP. .
“I wish (…) that the categorization of Covid-19 as a disease threatening to society will be abolished from February 1, 2022”, wrote the Minister of Health Magnus Heunicke in a letter addressed to Parliament. The end of this designation leads de facto to the lifting of all national restrictions currently in force, such as the use of a health pass, the wearing of a mask or the early closing of bars and restaurants. The Danish government only wants to maintain for four additional weeks certain restrictions on entering the territory, namely tests and/or quarantine depending on the country of origin. The Scandinavian kingdom had already lifted all restrictions on September 10, before reintroducing the health pass in early November and then introducing new restrictions.
With more than 46,000 new cases on Tuesday, the contamination rate is extremely high in the Nordic country. “But our current assessment is that the epidemic will soon reach its peak”, justified the minister Magnus Heunicke on Twitter. “We have good control of hospitalization rates, thanks to the combination of the 3.5 million Danes now revaccinated and the milder nature of Omicron,” he said. Nearly 60% of the 5.8 million Danes received a booster dose, one month ahead of the schedule envisaged by the health authorities.
- Netherlands: reopening of restaurants and cultural venues
The Dutch government, under pressure, announced the reopening under conditions from this Wednesday of bars, restaurants and cultural venues in the Netherlands, where health restrictions against Covid-19 were among the strictest in Europe. The executive took the decision to lift the “containment”, put in place just before Christmas, in response to “great tensions” in the catering and cultural sectors, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Tuesday.
“You missed in the Netherlands”, he launched to the address of restaurateurs, cafetiers and actors of the world of culture. “Today we are taking a big step to further deconfine” the country, said Mark Rutte during a press conference in The Hague. “It seems contradictory as the number of contaminations explodes, and we must be clear that we are taking a risk,” he added.
Shops and hairdressers were allowed to reopen on January 15, while bars, restaurants, museums and theaters had to remain closed, angering part of the population. Some museums have turned into beauty salons for a day as a sign of protest.
- Two-thirds of people who test positive for Covid-19 in England have already had it
Nearly two-thirds of people positive for Covid-19 in January in England said they had already been infected with the coronavirus, shows a study from Imperial college London published on Wednesday. As part of the React programme, a large study measuring the evolution of the transmission of the virus in the population, 100,000 PCR tests were sent between January 5 and 20, 2022 to the homes of volunteers in England. Of the 3,582 people who then tested positive, almost two-thirds (64.6%) said they had already tested positive for Covid-19.
Paul Elliott, professor of epidemiology and public health medicine at Imperial College London and director of the REACT programme, however, clarified that these cases could not technically be called reinfections because an individual could test positive twice for the same contamination. “They may have had a positive test for Omicron, in December, and then were tested by us,” he pointed out, quoted by The Telegraph. “We don’t know when they got it, it could have been May 2020, or last week.” Some 1400 positive samples were analyzed, and Omicron was detected in 99% of these tests. This variant caused a spike in the number of cases this winter in the United Kingdom, which have since been declining.
- Omicron: the level of risk still very high, warns the WHO
The level of risk linked to the Omicron variant remains very high, estimated the World Health Organization (WHO) in its weekly bulletin, the number of Covid-19 contaminations having reached a new record last week. “Based on currently available data, the overall risk associated with Omicron remains very high,” the organization warned. “More than 21 million new cases have been recorded (in the past seven days), which is the highest number of weekly cases recorded since the start of the pandemic,” she said.
- Armenia: Prime Minister isolates himself after a positive test
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has isolated himself after testing positive for coronavirus, the Caucasian country’s government said on Wednesday. “The Prime Minister of Armenia has taken a coronavirus test, which turned out to be positive,” the government said in the statement posted on its official Facebook page.
Nikol Pashinian does not show symptoms of Covid and will continue to work remotely during his isolation, according to the same source. Nikol Pashinyan and his family were already infected with the coronavirus in June 2020. Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, this former Soviet republic with a population of approximately three million inhabitants has officially registered 355,662 cases of coronavirus and 8033 deaths.
- One million doses of vaccine delivered to Gaza from the Emirates
A million doses of the Russian coronavirus vaccine Sputnik were delivered to the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, a donation from the United Arab Emirates to the Palestinian enclave. The batch of vaccines, the largest sent to the Palestinian territory since the start of the pandemic, was transported through the Rafah crossing point between Egypt and Gaza before being stored in warehouses of the Ministry of Health of the Hamas, the Islamist movement in power in the Palestinian territory.
The delivery comes as the enclave, under Israeli blockade for 15 years, is facing the spread of the Omicron variant and a rise in infected people, noted Majdi Dahir, director of preventive medicine at the Ministry of Health. The doses arriving on Wednesday will be intended primarily for schoolchildren over 12, said at a press conference in Rafah an official from the Ministry of Health, Mahmoud Hammad.
The health authorities of the territory of 2.3 million inhabitants have officially identified 197,000 people infected since the start of the pandemic, of which some 1,750 have died. They do not indicate how many patients are infected with the Omicron variant precisely. With Wednesday’s batch, about 2.9 million doses were delivered to Gaza in total, but only 578,665 residents received two doses of the vaccine, according to data from local authorities.