[News] The U.S. will begin vaccinating against COVID-19 on Monday. This is the panorama in countries most affected by coronavirus

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Americans will begin to be vaccinated against covid-19 on Monday, after the arrival of the first batches of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines on the same day.

In Europe, Italy happened this Saturday to become the country with the most deaths from the new coronavirus on the continent since the beginning of the epidemic, with 64,036, displacing the United Kingdom to second place.

Sign of the seriousness of the situation, the peninsula has registered as many deaths since November 1 (25,418) as between April 2 and the end of October (25,463).

Globally, the pandemic has claimed nearly 1.6 million lives since the WHO China office reported the onset of the disease in late December 2019, according to a report by AFP from sources. officers on Saturday noon.

The countries that have registered the most deaths in the last 24 hours are the United States, with 2,599, Italy (761) and Mexico (693).

 

"100% safe"
In the United States, the first batches of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines will finally arrive Monday morning at vaccination centers across the country to immediately begin being administered to Americans, health authorities announced Saturday.

"Distribution has started" and "the first shipments will arrive on Monday morning," said General Gus Perna of Operation Warp Speed, set up by the government to ensure delivery of the vaccine.

"We have 100% operational confidence that we will deliver the vaccine" on schedule, he added.

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, said on Friday night, following the emergency authorization of the health authorities, that the first injections of this vaccine would be made within 24 hours, that is, on Saturday.

Under pressure from the president, who has focused his response to the pandemic on the ultra-rapid development of a vaccine, the United States Drug Agency (FDA) announced on Friday that it had given the green light to the product.

"We are working fast because of the urgency of this pandemic, not because of any external pressure," FDA chief Stephen Hahn said during a virtual press conference on Saturday, downplaying the risks related to "severe allergies."

The United States thus became the sixth country to approve the US-German alliance vaccine, after the United Kingdom, Canada, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Mexico.

"We can expect 145 sites in every state to receive the vaccine on Monday, an additional 425 sites on Tuesday, and the final 66 sites on Wednesday, which will complete the first delivery of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine," explained General Perna.

This first phase affects about three million people.

 

Millions of doses
It has only been three weeks since the manufacturers submitted their application for authorization for this vaccine, of which the United States had pre-purchased 100 million doses.

The country also bought an additional 100 million doses of another vaccine, Moderna's, on Friday, doubling the number of doses ordered from this American biotech.

Nearly 235,000 COVID-19 cases were identified in 24 hours in the United States on Friday, an unprecedented number.

Just before the United States, Mexico approved the marketing of Pfizer's vaccine. Vaccination should begin at the end of December, with a first batch of 250,000 doses for the administration of the product, in two stages, to 125,000 people.

Peru announced on Friday that it had temporarily suspended, as a precaution, clinical trials of a Chinese vaccine after the detection of neurological problems in one of the volunteers for these tests.

The National Institute of Health of Lima decided to "protect the health of the volunteers during the third test sentence of the vaccine", after "the identification of a serious adverse event", according to the Ministry of Health.

According to local media, the volunteer in question showed difficulty moving his legs, neurological symptoms that "could correspond to a complication known by the name of Guillain-Barré," explained one of those responsible for the tests, quoted by the press.

 

France and Brazil
According to data compiled by AFP, Europe is the area with the most new infections this week (236,700 on average per day).

The pandemic, which had been decreasing since mid-November, has stabilized on the continent at a high level.

In the last 7 days, among European countries, Italy has registered the highest number of new deaths (4,522), ahead of Russia (3,769), Germany (2,949), the United Kingdom (3,012) and Poland (2,815).

In France (about 57,000 deaths), there is a "high risk" of an outbreak "in the coming weeks," the public health body warned on Friday, while the government announced on Thursday a cautious lack of refinement since December 15.

The pandemic is also "too high and dangerous" in Belgium, warned virologist Steven Van Gucht, spokesman for the health authorities on Friday.

Among the most affected countries (excluding microstates), Belgium is the one that regrets the highest number of deaths in the world in relation to its po[CENSORED]tion, with 154 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Peru (111), Italy (106) and Spain (102).

The UK registers 94 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.

As for Switzerland, where there is an "exponential" growth in the epidemic (5,000 new cases per day) and contamination rates among the highest in Europe, it is "in a critical situation", warned its president, Simonetta Sommaruga.

Also in the United Kingdom, the epidemiological situation remains precarious, with an outbreak in London and the South East.

But the country launched its vaccination campaign on Tuesday, after being the first to give the green light to the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.

Labs Sanofi, France, and GSK, Great Britain, suffered a setback: their vaccine against COVID-19 should not be ready until the end of 2021, after worse-than-expected results in the first clinical trials.

Brazil, which is in the middle of the second wave of the pandemic, surpassed the 180,000 mark on Friday.

The South American giant has a mortality rate compared to its po[CENSORED]tion (85 per 100,000) identical to that of France.

China, where the pandemic began a year ago, has confined one city in the north of the country and launched a major testing campaign in another, both near the Russian border, following the discovery of a case of coronavirus in each of these cities. .