Although millions of people around the world have spent a New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Eve quietly unprecedented, the Covid-19 pandemic still shows signs of complicated development on a global scale, with the continues to record new cases and deaths. Meanwhile, the Covid-19 vaccination campaign has been slow in many countries due to logistics and supply problems.
The US continued to record more sad records when the number of Covid-19 cases exceeded the threshold of more than 20 million people, doubling in just under 2 months. It is also the country with the highest number of deaths due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the world, with more than 356,000 cases. One of the reasons for this alarming increase is the travel of millions of Americans during Thanksgiving last November.
The vaccination campaign, meanwhile, has been slower than expected due to logistical difficulties and constant overcrowding of hospitals. By the end of January 1 at US time, only 2.8 million people in this country were vaccinated with the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine, quite far from the target of 20 million people that the presidential administration was about to leave the US set until the end of December 2020.
President-elect Biden yesterday (January 1) expressed his disappointment and pledged to speed up the progress once he officially entered the White House on January 20: “The Donald Trump administration’s vaccine delivery plan is far behind. A few weeks ago, Mr. Trump set a target of 20 million Americans that could be vaccinated by the end of December. However, so far only a few million have been vaccinated. If immunization rates continue as they are now, it would take years, not months, to vaccinate all Americans.”
Not only in the US, many European countries also witnessed the same situation. Many health workers in Germany have yet to be vaccinated despite being a priority, while experts in France are constantly warning of a delay in the process of vaccine delivery and delivery.
Speaking on the occasion of the New Year, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged not to allow any delay in vaccination to the public: “We can all hope for a vaccine that the talented human minds have created in just a year. Something that no one could have imagined just a few months ago. I will not allow anyone to play around with the safety our scientists and doctors have brought. Immunization must be performed. I will not allow any unreasonable delays. ”
Part of these difficulties is due to the relatively low number of orders placed by the European Union for the 27 member countries, with vaccine contracts signed only two months ago, later than other countries. German pharmaceutical company BioNTech yesterday confirmed that it is stepping up efforts to work with US partner Pfizer to offset the lack of Covid-19 vaccines in Europe while waiting for vaccines from other pharmaceutical companies to be licensed.
The complicated developments of Covid-19 have resulted in a series of European countries having to partially blockade or tighten measures to prevent Covid-19 epidemics during the New Year.
Despite being one of the countries with the lowest Covid-19 morbidity and mortality rates in Europe, the Norwegian government also requires that starting today (January 2), anyone wishing to enter All countries are subject to a Covid-19 screening test. The decision was made after Norway discovered 5 new cases of the new variant of the virus SARS-CoV-2 originating from the UK.
The US health agency this week also announced new cases of the variant in the states of Colorado, California and most recently Florida. Not only in Europe or America, a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has appeared in a number of countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Turkish Ministry of Health recently announced stopping all flights from the UK.