[News] WHO calls on Europe to intensify efforts in light of the advance of the COVID-19 pandemic

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Europe must increase its efforts to curb the pandemic because cases increase in the region due to the new strain, even more contagious, the WHO requested this Thursday, at a time when other countries, from Japan to Mexico, also register a serious increase of infections.

"It is an alarming situation, which means that for a short period of time we are going to have to do more than we have already done," said the director for the Europe region of the World Health Organization (WHO), Hans Kluge, in a telematic press conference this Thursday.

According to the organization, the new variant of the virus "could progressively replace those already in circulation in the area, as has been observed in the United Kingdom and Denmark."

For this reason, the person in charge insisted, the use of masks must be generalized, the number of meetings limited, physical distance and hand washing must be respected, and these measures must be combined with adequate detection and isolation systems for patients.

So far, 22 countries in the WHO Europe zone, which includes a total of 53, have registered cases linked to this new strain, which according to the first studies is responding to vaccines, WHO said.

Europe, the region most affected by the pandemic, has already registered almost 28 million cases of coronavirus and more than 600,000 deaths, according to a count based on official figures.

 

- No beds in hospitals in England -
Many countries see day by day how the figures get worse again and without feeling that they left the second wave, they are immersed in the third.

In the UK, where this new strain was detected, a new lockdown is in place in all regions. The country is the worst hit in Europe by the pandemic, with more than 77,000 deaths.

Hospitals in England are considering transferring some patients to nursing homes or other facilities due to an exponential increase in cases that threatens to overwhelm the system, medical officials said Thursday.

"The situation is escalating very rapidly. Last week we saw 5,000 new COVID-19 patients arriving in hospitals, the equivalent of 10 hospitals full of COVID patients in just seven days," Chris Hopson, director of NHS Providers, told the BBC. , a public body in charge of supplying medical centers.

In Spain, the government admits that the increase in infections generates "a lot of concern."

"Complicated weeks are coming and we must once again have our guard very high," warned the Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, this Thursday. But a confinement of the po[CENSORED]tion "is not in our mind nor is it a measure that we contemplate at this time," he added.

Several regions of the country, competent in health matters, have tightened restrictions and maintained the prohibition to enter and leave an area without authorization.

 

- Record of deaths and cases in Mexico -
On the other side of the Atlantic, Mexico registered a new record of daily deaths from COVID-19 on Wednesday, with 1,165 people dead. The country already accounts for almost 130,000 deaths from coronavirus and is, in general terms, the fourth most mourning country in the world due to the pandemic, behind the United States, Brazil and India.

Mexico also registered a record of infections, with 13,345 new cases in 24 hours.

In Uruguay, the closure of borders will be extended until January 30 in an effort to try to contain the increase in cases of covid-19.

The situation is not better in China either, where 63 new infections were reported this Thursday in the last 24 hours, a record since July. Most of the cases are registered in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, bordering Beijing.

In Japan, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declared a new state of emergency for a month in Tokyo and its periphery on Thursday due to the increase in infections.

Six months before the scheduled opening of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, postponed last year due to the pandemic, this state of emergency may further discourage the Japanese po[CENSORED]tion, mostly in favor of a further postponement or cancellation of the event.

 

- A long battle -
Worldwide, the new coronavirus pandemic has caused at least 1.88 million deaths and more than 87 million infections.

Only on Wednesday 14,615 new deaths and 748,244 infections were registered in the world. The countries with the most deaths, according to the latest official balances, are the United States with 3,626, Brazil (1,242) and Mexico (1,165).

Faced with this threatening photograph, the hope is vaccination. The European Medicines Agency (EMA), a regulatory body, gave its go-ahead to the vaccine from the American laboratory Moderna, after having authorized the one produced by the Pfizer and BioNTech laboratories at the end of December.

"We will have 160 million supplementary doses" with Moderna, after the 300 million doses already ordered from Pfizer / BioNTech, congratulated the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

So far, one million inhabitants of the EU have received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to AFP figures.

But several EU countries have criticized the slowness of vaccination. In the United States, there are already more than 5 million people vaccinated, in the United Kingdom, 1.3 million and in Israel 1.4 million. In Latin America, vaccination has already begun in Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile and Argentina.

Vaccination will be a "very long battle", the WHO has already warned.