Nightlife returned to normal in France on Friday, while elsewhere in Europe authorities were reimposing restrictions highlighting the fragility of success in containing Covid-19. AFP
Nations across the globe hit new pandemic highs and reimposed Covid-19 restrictions on July 10 as the Group of 20 (G20) finance ministers meeting in Venice warned that the economic recovery was threatened by variants and uneven vaccination campaigns.
The highly transmissible Delta variant, first detected in India, is sweeping the world as countries race to inoculate their populations to ward off fresh outbreaks and allow for economies and daily life to resume.
“The recovery is characterised by great divergences across and within countries and remains exposed to downside risks, in particular the spread of new variants of the Covid-19 virus and different paces of vaccination,” the G20 finance ministers said in a final statement.
The EU – lambasted early on in the pandemic response for a botched vaccine acquisition programme – on July 10 said it had 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 Europwe,” 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.
Supply shortages in South Korea have meant only about 11 per cent of the country’s 52 million population is fully vaccinated, according to health authorities.
The nation, held up as a model of how to combat the pandemic, reported 1,378 new coronavirus cases on July 10, a third straight record high.
From July 12, gatherings of more than two people will be banned after 6:00pm, schools, bars and clubs will be closed.
Russia announced on July 10 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. It also recorded 25,082 new infections, meaning there have been more than 5.7 million cases.
State statistics agency Rosstat, which defines coronavirus-related 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.
Despite the rising infections and deaths, 54 per cent of a deeply sceptical Russian public don’t plan to get vaccinated, according to a survey by the independent Levada-Centre published last week.
While vaccines have been successful in mitigating the worst effects of infections, concerns have been raised about how well some of them will cope with more virulent strains.
In Indonesia, which is fighting a ferocious wave of infections, more than a dozen fully inoculated frontline health workers have died, according to the country’s medical association.
Authorities on July 9 said medics would be given a third booster jab to provide extra protection, using the vaccine made by US company Moderna.
The Southeast Asian nation has been depending heavily on China’s Sinovac shots amid the global shortage of alternatives that have been mostly supplied to rich nations.
The rapid spread of the Delta variant across Asia, Africa and Latin America is exposing crucial vaccine supply shortages for some of the world’s most poorest and most vulnerable populations.
Senegal, the EU, the US, several European governments and other partners, signed an accord in Dakar on July 10 to finance vaccine production in the West African state.
And Cuba approved its home-grown Abdala vaccine for emergency use, the first Latin American coronavirus jab to get the green light and a possible lifeline for a region trying to battle a killer pandemic with modest means.
