Tag Archives: COVID-19

France sees biggest jump in COVID-19 intensive care patients in months

PARIS (Reuters) – France reported on Friday that 5,254 people were in intensive care units with COVID-19, an increase of 145 people in one day and the highest daily increase in five months.

New confirmed cases also jumped by the highest week-on-week rate since the end of November, when France was in its second nationwide lockdown.

The ministry reported 46,677 new cases, 6.2% more than a week ago, taking the total to 4.74 million cases.

For months, the government tried to contain the epidemic with a curfew and regional confinement measures. But faced with a rapidly-growing case count and pressure on the hospital system, President Emmanuel Macron ordered a new nationwide lockdown, starting next week.

France on Friday also reported 332 new deaths from COVID-19, taking the toll to 96,280, but the new death tally included only 32 deaths in retirement care homes over three days.

Death rates in retirement homes, which were several hundreds per week at the end of 2021, have dropped off sharply as the government focused its vaccination campaign on the elderly.

The health ministry reported on Friday that 12.13 million people had received a vaccine shot so far, including just over three million second doses and more than nine million first doses.

The nine million first doses amount to 13.6% of the population and 17.3% of the adult population.

By mid-April, the government will make vaccination available to people over 60.

(Reporting by Matthieu Protard and Geert De Clercq; Editing by Edmund Blair)

Russia’s COVID-19 death toll as of February crosses 225,000 – stats service

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has recorded over 225,000 deaths related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic in April, the Rosstat statistics service said on Friday, a figure that is more than double the death toll cited by the government coronavirus task force.

The statistics, which are reported on a monthly basis and with a lag, covering the period from April 2020 to February 2021, suggest that Russia has the third highest death toll in the world.

At 225,572, the total coronavirus-related death toll places Russia third after the United States, which has reported over 553,000 deaths, and Brazil, with over 325,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The figure is also more than double the widely-reported rolling death toll provided by the Russian government’s coronavirus task force on a daily basis.

That figure is currently at 99,633 deaths.

The authorities have said in the past that Rosstat’s figures are more complete, including data from autopsy reports not available for the daily tally.

Rosstat also provided monthly data, saying that 29,493 more people died in February this year than during the same month last year.

This marks an increase of 20.6% compared with February 2020, the last month to see no cases of coronavirus reported in Russia.

Of the total number of excess deaths in February, 24,369 were considered linked to the coronavirus, Rosstat said.

Russia recorded its first COVID-19 infection in early March 2020. The total number of cases since then recently crossed the 4.5 million mark.

(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Polina Ivanova; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Marguerita Choy)

CDC discourages Americans from travel despite ‘low risk’ to vaccinated people

By David Shepardson and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday said people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can safely travel at “low risk” but still discouraged Americans from doing so because of high coronavirus cases nationwide.

The CDC’s shift in guidance should be a shot in the arm for the travel industry, which is still struggling from the dip in passengers since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.

But CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters that, despite the new guidance for vaccinated people, now was not a good time to take a trip.

“We know that right now we have a surging number of cases. I would advocate against general travel overall,” she said. “We are not recommending travel at this time, especially for unvaccinated individuals.”

The CDC had held off changing its travel guidance even as vaccinations increased, irking the travel industry.

Its new guidance on Friday seemed to be an attempt to thread a needle of acknowledging that vaccines made travel significantly safer while seeking to thwart a big increase until more people have had their shots.

The new guidance greenlights vaccinated grandparents getting on airplanes to see grandchildren, for example, and says COVID-19 testing and quarantining are not necessary before or after travel as long as take precautions such as wearing masks and maintaining social distance.

A group representing major U.S. airlines including American Airlines, Delta Air lines, United Airlines Southwest Airlines and other trade groups had urged the CDC on March 22 to immediately update its guidance to say “vaccinated individuals can travel safely.” Air travel still remains down 43% from pre-COVID levels and business and international travel remain even harder hit.

Roger Dow, chief executive of the U.S. Travel Association, said the “new travel guidance is a major step in the right direction that is supported by the science and will take the brakes off the industry that has been hardest hit by the fallout of COVID by far.”

The administration is not lifting restrictions that bar most-non U.S. citizens from the United States who have recently been in China, Brazil, South Africa and most of Europe. It is also keeping requirements that nearly all international U.S. air visitors getting a negative COVID-19 test before traveling to the United States.

A U.S. official briefed on the matter said the Biden administration is beginning to have conversations about how and when it might eventually lift those travel restrictions but no change is imminent. The United States also still maintains restrictions at the Canadian and Mexican borders that bar non-essential visitors.

The CDC’s new guidance says fully vaccinated people do not need COVID-19 tests before international travel unless it is required by the international destination and vaccinated people returning from foreign travel do not need to self-quarantine after returning to the United States, unless required by state or local authorities.

The CDC had repeatedly declined in recent weeks to change the guidance and repeated it was still discouraging all non-essential travel because of a concern about new variants.

Many Americans have not been heeding the CDC’s advice.

The Transportation Security Administration screened 1.56 million people at U.S. airports on Thursday, just below Sunday’s 1.57 million, which was the highest daily total since March 2020. The last time the number of airport passengers screened was below 1 million was March 10.

The Biden administration has taken steps to reduce international travel and mandated masks in nearly all forms of public transit. The administration is not eliminating any mask rules.

The administration is sticking by its goal that all adults will be eligible for vaccines in the coming weeks. Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told reporters that studies showed children would be able to be vaccinated, too.

“There are studies under way in children that go from six months to 11 years. And by the end of this year we should have enough information to be able to safely vaccinate children of virtually any age,” he said.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Jeff Mason; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Marguerita Choy)

Turkey’s new daily COVID-19 cases exceed 40,000, highest level yet – ministry

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey recorded 40,806 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, health ministry data showed on Thursday, the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic.

Cases have surged since the government eased measures to curb the pandemic in early March.

On Monday, President Tayyip Erdogan announced a tightening of measures, including the return of full nationwide weekend lockdowns for the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, which starts on April 13.

The total number of cases stands at 3.358 million, the data showed. The latest daily death toll was 176, bringing the cumulative toll to 31,713.

(Reporting by Daren Butler;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)

Merkel appeals to Germans to stay home for Easter to stem pandemic third wave

By Emma Thomasson

BERLIN (Reuters) -Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed to Germans on Thursday to stay at home over Easter and meet fewer people to help curb a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, as the capital Berlin announced a nighttime ban on gatherings from Friday.

“It should be a quiet Easter, with those closest to you, with very reduced contact. I urge you to refrain from all non-essential travel,” Merkel said in a video message, adding this was the only way to help doctors and nurses fight the virus.

Merkel was accused of losing her grip on the COVID-19 crisis last week after she ditched plans for an extended Easter holiday agreed two days earlier with governors of Germany’s 16 states.

She has since tried to shift the blame for the third wave of the pandemic onto state premiers, accusing them of failing to stick to earlier agreements to reimpose restrictions if infections rose.

On Thursday, the city government of Berlin said it will impose a nighttime ban on gatherings from Friday and only allow children of essential workers to attend nursery from next week.

As the weather has turned warm in recent days, Berliners have been flocking to public spaces. About a hundred youngsters threw bottles and stones at police in one park on Wednesday when they tried to break up the party, the Berliner Zeitung reported.

Merkel said it was no longer the elderly who were fighting for their lives in the pandemic, but the middle-aged and even younger patients who were ending up on ventilators in hospital.

She held out hope, however, that the sluggish distribution of vaccinations would speed up after Easter, when family doctors will start giving shots.

Christian Karagiannidis, the scientific head of the DIVI association for intensive and emergency medicine, said Germany needs a two-week lockdown, faster vaccinations and compulsory tests at schools if hospitals are not to be overwhelmed.

“If this rate continues, we will reach the regular capacity limit in less than four weeks,” he told the Rheinische Post daily. “We are not over-exaggerating. Our warnings are driven by the figures.”

The Berlin city government said people would only be allowed to be outside on their own or with one other person from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m., though children under 14 are exempted.

This will be the first limited curfew imposed in Berlin since the pandemic began a year ago. The city of Hamburg already announced on Wednesday it will restrict nighttime outings from Friday, with supermarkets and takeaways shut from 9 p.m.

Unlike Britain and France, Germany’s 16 states, which run their own healthcare and security affairs, have been reluctant to impose drastic limits on movement out of fear of further damaging the economy, as well as an aversion to far-reaching restrictions on freedoms in a country wary of its Nazi past.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany, Europe’s most populous country and largest economy, rose 24,300 to 2.833 million on Thursday, the biggest daily increase since Jan. 14. The reported death toll rose by 201 to 76,543.

(Reporting by Emma Thomasson, editing by William Maclean and Mark Heinrich)

COVID pandemic increased stillbirth and maternal death rates, study shows

(Reuters) – Rates of stillbirth and maternal deaths rose by around a third during the COVID-19 pandemic, with pregnancy outcomes getting worse overall for both babies and mothers worldwide, according to an international data review published on Wednesday.

Pooling data from 40 studies across 17 countries, the review found that lockdowns, disruption to maternity services, and fear of attending healthcare facilities all added to pregnancy risks, leading to generally worse results for women and infants.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on healthcare systems,” said professor Asma Khalil, who co-led the research at St George’s University of London. “The disruption caused … has led to the avoidable deaths of both mothers and babies, especially in low- and middle-income countries.”

Published in the Lancet Global Health journal, the review found an overall increase in the risks of stillbirth and maternal death during the pandemic, and found the impact on poorer countries was disproportionately greater.

It also found significant harm to maternal mental health. Of the 10 studies included in the analysis that reported on maternal mental health, six found an increase in postnatal depression, maternal anxiety, or both.

The study did not analyze the direct impact of COVID-19 infection itself during pregnancy, but was designed to look at the collateral impact of the coronavirus pandemic on antenatal, birth and postnatal outcomes.

Commenting on the findings, Jogender Kumar of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in India said they highlighted worrying disparities in healthcare.

“In resource-poor countries, even under normal circumstances, it is a challenge to provide adequate coverage for antenatal checkups, obstetric emergencies, universal institutional deliveries and respectful maternity care,” he wrote in a commentary. “The COVID-19 pandemic has widened this gap.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, Editing by William Maclean)

Macron orders COVID-19 lockdown across all of France, closes schools

By Sudip Kar-Gupta and Geert De Clercq

PARIS (Reuters) -President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday ordered France into its third national lockdown and said schools would close for three weeks as he sought to push back a third wave of COVID-19 infections that threatens to overwhelm hospitals.

With the death toll nearing 100,000, intensive care units in the hardest-hit regions at breaking point and a slower-than-planned vaccine rollout, Macron was forced to abandon his goal of keeping the country open to protect the economy.

“We will lose control if we do not move now,” the president said in a televised address to the nation.

His announcement means that movement restrictions already in place for more than a week in Paris, and some northern and southern regions, will now apply to the whole country for at least a month, from Saturday.

Departing from his pledge to safeguard education from the pandemic, Macron said schools will close for three weeks after this weekend.

Macron, 43, has sought to avoid a third large-scale lockdown since the start of the year, betting that if he could steer France out of the pandemic without locking the country down again he would give the economy a chance to recover from last year’s slump.

But the former investment banker’s options narrowed as more contagious strains of the coronavirus swept across France and much of Europe.

For school-children after this weekend, learning will be done remotely for a week, after which all schools go on a two-week holiday. Thereafter, nursery and primary pupils will return to school while middle and high school pupils continue distance learning for an extra week.

“It is the best solution to slow down the virus,” Macron said, adding that France had succeeded in keeping its schools open for longer during the pandemic than many neighbors.

Daily new infections in France have doubled since February to nearly 40,000. The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care has breached 5,000, exceeding the peak hit during a six-week-long lockdown late last year.

Bed capacity in critical care units will be increased to 10,000, Macron said.

The new restrictions risk slowing the pace of recovery in the euro zone’s second-largest economy from last year’s slump.

Macron said the vaccine rollout needed to be accelerated. It is only now finding its stride three months in, with just 12% of the population inoculated.

(Additional reporting by Michel Rose and Jean-Stephane Brosse; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Christian Lowe)

‘Falling like flies’: Hungary’s Roma community pleads for COVID help

By Marton Dunai

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Coronavirus infections are ravaging Hungary’s 700,000-strong Roma community, according to personal accounts that suggest multiple deaths in single families are common in an unchecked outbreak fueled by deep distrust of authorities.

Data on infections in the community is unavailable but interviews with about a dozen Roma, who often live in cramped and unsanitary conditions, reveal harrowing stories of suffering and death and of huge health-care challenges.

“Our people are falling like flies,” said Aladar Horvath, a Roma rights advocate who travels widely among the community.

When asked by phone to describe the overall situation, he broke down sobbing and said he had learned an hour before that his 35-year-old nephew had died of COVID.

Another Roma, Zsanett Bito-Balogh, likened the outbreak in her town of Nagykallo in eastern Hungary to an explosion.

“It’s like a bomb went off,” she said.

“Just about every family got it…People you see riding their bikes one week are in hospital the next and you order flowers for their funerals the third.”

Bito-Balogh, who herself recovered twice from COVID-19, said that at one point she had 12 family members in hospital. She said she had lost two uncles and her grandmother to the virus in the past month, and a neighbor lost both parents, a cousin and a uncle within weeks.

She says she is now rushing to organize in-person registration points for vaccines and plans to have the network up and running in a few weeks.

Despite the challenges in persuading many Roma to turn to health authorities for medical care and vaccinations, Roma leaders are urging the government to do more to intervene and tackle what Horvath describes as a humanitarian crisis.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, said vaccinations would be rolled out to Roma but that the community needed to volunteer for their shots.

“Once we get to that point, the younger Roma should get in line,” Gulyas said in answer to Reuters questions. The Roma community is predominantly young, which means their vaccinations are scheduled later than for older Hungarians.

The government’s chief epidemiologist did not respond to requests for comment.

DECADES OF MISTRUST

Barely 9% of Roma want to be vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a survey carried out at Hungary’s University of Pecs in January but published here for the first time. It was conducted by Zsuzsanna Kiss, a Roma biologist and professor at Hungary’s University of Pecs.

Kiss said the Roma have mistrusted doctors and governments for decades because of perceived discrimination.

However, gaining Roma trust is not the only challenge.

Hungary’s 6,500 general practitioners are leading the vaccine roll-out, but 10% of small GP clinics are shut because there is no doctor to operate them, mostly in areas with high Roma populations, government data shows.

Although the government has deployed five “vaccination buses” that tour remote areas, people must first register for inoculations.

“The rise in cases (among the Roma) is clearly proportionate to vaccine rejection,” said former Surgeon General Ferenc Falus.

“This more infectious virus reaches a population whose immune system has weakened greatly during the winter months. If they go without vaccines for long, it will definitely show in extra infections and fatalities among the Roma.”

Hungary currently has the world’s highest weekly per capita death toll, driven by the more contagious variant first detected in Britain, despite a rapid vaccination rollout, data from Johns Hopkins University and the European Union indicates.

“We never trusted vaccines much,” said Zoltan Varga, a young Roma also from Nagykallo.

(Reporting by Marton Dunai; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Mark Heinrich)

COVID-19 third leading cause of U.S. deaths in 2020 after heart disease, cancer: U.S. report

By Vishwadha Chander

(Reuters) – COVID-19 was the primary or contributing cause of 377,883 deaths in the United States last year, with a particularly high toll among the elderly, according to a government report released on Wednesday.

The COVID-19 mortality rate made it the third leading cause of death in the United States in 2020 after heart disease and cancer, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analysis found.

The CDC said that the overall U.S. mortality rate increased for the first time since 2017, by nearly 16%, to 3,358,814 deaths. The jump was driven by COVID-19, which accounted for an increase of 11.3%.

The overall death rate was lowest among children aged 5 to 14 years, and highest among people over age 85, the report found. A total of 134 children aged 14 and under died from COVID-19 in 2020, while 120,648 people aged 85 and older died from the disease. People 75-84 years old accounted for 104,212 deaths.

The COVID-19 death rate was highest among Hispanics, followed by Black non-Hispanics, the CDC’s analysis found. A total of 68,469 Hispanics died from COVID-19 and 59,871 non-Hispanic Black people died. It said 228,328 White non-Hispanics died.

The CDC report is based on death certificate data between January and December 2020.

Provisional estimates from the CDC, published last month, showed that life expectancy in the U.S. fell by a year in the first half of 2020 – the biggest decline since World War 2 – and stood at the lowest levels since 2006.

The CDC’s current analysis is based on provisional death estimates, but they provide an early indication of shifts in mortality trends, the agency said.

The CDC pointed out that limited availability of testing for the coronavirus at the beginning of the pandemic might have resulted in an underestimation of COVID-19–associated deaths.

(Reporting by Reporting by Vishwadha Chander and Caroline Humer; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Coronavirus costs climb as Europe’s farmers seek seasonal workers

By Joan Faus and Nigel Hunt

BARCELONA/LONDON (Reuters) – Fruit and vegetable harvests are underway in western Europe with seasonal workers gathering crops in top producer Spain, but costs are rising as farmers fear a third wave of COVID-19 might cause a repeat of 2020’s damaging disruptions in labor supply.

Harvests rely heavily on workers from Africa and eastern Europe, but many couldn’t travel a year ago as borders closed in the first wave of the pandemic. Shortages of key goods appeared in supermarkets while prices rose as consumers hoarded.

Coronavirus cases are surging again in Europe, raising the risk of crop losses and adding to farmers’ costs on everything from extra transport to keep workers socially distanced to buying protective gear for seasonal laborers.

In Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region, farmer Josep Cabre said he had spent about 6,000 euros ($7,000) on masks and other protective equipment for seven seasonal workers from West Africa working on his farm picking apples, pears and peaches.

“We have been lucky and, as far as we know, none of us has contracted COVID-19,” Cabre said, adding that shutting his business for 15 days could mean a 150,000 euro loss.

“A bar or shop can close for 15 days … but if I don’t pick the fruit at its right time and I do it later it would be damaged. To stop for 15 days would be an economic disaster,” he added.

Cabre tries to give workers tasks to keep them distanced. He has stopped using a nine-seat van to take them to fields near the city of Lleida, instead using several vans and reimbursing transport costs to workers who travel alone.

Lleida saw a infection cluster last summer, partially linked to migrants seeking seasonal jobs to pick fruit.

This year, thousands of workers have arrived on chartered flights from Morocco to help gather crops in Spain for the first major harvest of strawberries in the southern Huelva province.

“COVID measures have forced us to take on more people to do the same job,” Fernando Gomez of Murcia’s Proexport growers organization said, adding that a hike in Spain’s minimum wage also put pressure on margins.

TOUGHER CHECKS

Growers in Germany still expect to have enough workers from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and elsewhere for the asparagus harvest. But workers face tougher health and safety checks.

“The extensive corona-regulations and hygiene measures are creating great challenges, both organizational and financial,” Daniela Rixen, spokesperson for the LKSH agricultural chamber representing farmers in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein.

Bernhard Kruesken, secretary general of German national farming association DBV, said normally about 300,000 seasonal harvest workers come to Germany every year but fewer are expected in 2021 for the second year running.

France needs about 1 million seasonal workers each year. Fruit and vegetable growers have been seeking to attract local students and jobless people to compensate for lower numbers of foreigners if new travel restrictions are imposed.

Last year, France raised a so-called “shadow army” to pick crops from furloughed workers in other sectors including hotel receptionists, restaurant waiters and hairdressers.

Non-European Union workers account for about 25% of seasonal workers in France.

“You never know. At any moment rules can change and borders can be closed,” Jerome Volle, deputy-chairman of France’s largest farm lobby FNSEA said.

Similar concerns are rising in Britain, which needs about 70,000 seasonal workers with the highest demand during the berry season in late May to June.

“There is a concern that European borders end up shutting down or that people can’t travel and that will put huge pressure on the availability of seasonal workers,” said Tom Bradshaw, vice president at Britain’s National Farmers Union.

In a normal year, just 1% of the seasonal workforce comes from Britain.

Despite the challenges, there is still little likelihood of fruit shortages this year, said Natalia Aguilera, head of the Andalusian chapter of the cooperativas agro-alimentarias cooperative.

“If there weren’t any (shortages) last year, complicated as it was during the pandemic, this year there is absolutely no chance,” she said.

($1 = 0.8531 euros)

(Additional reporting by Nathan Allen in Madrid, Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris and Michael Hogan in Hamburg; Editing by Veronica Brown and Edmund Blair)