LONDON — Britain has recorded 106,122 new daily coronavirus infections, the highest total of the pandemic and the first time the figure has topped 100,000.
Confirmed infections have risen almost 60% in the past week, driven by the highly transmissible omicron variant.
The British government has re-imposed face masks in shops and ordered people to show proof of vaccination at nightclubs and other crowded venues. Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he won’t bring in new measures before Christmas Day, but may do so after the holiday.
U.K. health authorities are racing to give all adults a booster vaccine to help combat omicron. So far almost half the U.K. population has had a booster.
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HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC:
— COVID-19 case drop may show South Africa’s omicron peak has passed
— As COVID-19 fueled the drug crisis, Native Americans hit the worst
— Biden pivots to home tests to fight omicron surge as Christmas nears
— Omicron casts a new shadow over economy’s pandemic recovery
— Parents, schools face another reckoning over pandemic
Go to https://APNews.com/coronavirus-pandemic for updates throughout the day.
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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING TODAY:
MADRID — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will convene a special Cabinet meeting Thursday to pass a decree-law making the wearing of masks mandatory outdoors, amid a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Sánchez announced at a meeting with the leaders of regional governments Wednesday that he was consenting to their appeals for mask-wearing rules to be extended, his office said.
A decree-law does not require a debate and vote in parliament before coming into force.
He also announced a raft of other measures, including an offer to deploy the armed forces to help the regions step up their vaccination rollout and put military hospital beds at their disposal if they are needed, a statement said.
Sánchez said he is targeting 80% of the 60-69 age group to receive booster shots by the end of next week, among other goals.
Also, COVID-19 tests for professional use will temporarily be placed on sale at pharmacies and medical teams can be reinforced with retired staff and specialists who earned their qualifications outside the European Union.
Furthermore, fully vaccinated people won’t need to quarantine if they have been in contact with an infected person — a measure that seemed to be aimed at avoiding the shortages of essential personnel that other countries are experiencing.
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CONCORD, N.H. — New Hampshire has put a pause on all superior court jury trials and grand juries through January because of rising COVID-19 cases.
Chief Justice Tina Nadeau said Wednesday the pause is partly due to “the difficulty in managing a juror population who are increasingly having to drop out because of sickness or exposure and the unique challenges these proceedings entail.”
She said jury trials are scheduled to resume in February if the rate of COVID-19 infections decreases substantially.
All New Hampshire courts will continue to remain open for the public for all other purposes.
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BERLIN — The head of the World Health Organization is warning that blanket booster programs in rich countries risk prolonging the COVID-19 pandemic and says that “no country can boost its way out of the pandemic.”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday that while vaccines have saved many lives this year, their unequal sharing “has cost many lives.”
Tedros has previously called for a moratorium on boosters for healthy adults until the end of this year to counter unequal global vaccine distribution.
He said that about 20% of vaccine doses being given every day are currently boosters. He added that “blanket booster programs are likely to prolong the pandemic rather than ending it, by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate.”
Tedros said that the vast majority of people who are hospitalized or die are unvaccinated.
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VIENNA — Germany will begin requiring PCR tests for those traveling from “virus variant areas” in an effort to further slow the spread of the omicron variant, the German government announced Wednesday.
The new rules, for which the government did not give a specific starting date, will require travelers from “virus variant areas” to provide a negative PCR test less than 48 hours old. Exceptions will be made for travelers under 6 years old.
Currently nine countries, including the United Kingdom and South Africa, are recognized by Germany’s national disease control center as “virus variant areas.”
Entry from these countries is already severely restricted: Those coming to Germany from them must quarantine for 14 days regardless of vaccination status.
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NEW YORK — New York’s city-run hospitals are again limiting visitation to curb the spread of COVID-19, with some exceptions such as allowing people in labor to have someone with them, parents accompanying hospitalized children and loved ones seeing a person in hospice.
The hospitals had been operating under a modified visitation policy since early in the pandemic, with visits limited to four hours per day and one person at a time. Dr. Mitchell Katz, CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, said Wednesday that the new, stricter limits were being put in place after an outbreak at one city-run hospital appeared to be linked to a visitor.
“For a short time, in order to make sure that we don’t cause more disease, we need to limit the number of visitors,” Katz said.
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LONDON — Britain’s medical regulator has approved the new pediatric formulation of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said Wednesday the vaccine is safe and effective for children in that age group.
Dr. June Raine, the chief executive of the agency, said “parents and carers can be reassured that no new vaccine for children would have been approved unless the expected standards of safety, quality and effectiveness have been met.’’
However, a separate panel that advises the government on the use of vaccines recommended the Pfizer BioNTech shot be given only to children in a clinical risk group or those who live in a household with someone who is immunosuppressed.
Britain is not the first country to approve the vaccine for children. The United States Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency have already granted emergency use authorization for the vaccine in children 5 to 11 years of age.
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MADRID — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is holding a meeting with the heads of Spain’s regional governments to assess what new measures might be required to stem a record surge in COVID-19 infections.
Spain on Tuesday officially recorded almost 50,000 cases of the coronavirus. That’s higher than last January, when a surge placed the national health system under severe strain.
Spain is reporting almost 700 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over 14 days, more than double the accumulated cases before last year’s Christmas holidays. The omicron strain has soared from 5% of new cases in Spain to 47% within one week.
But vaccinations are credited with sparing many people from the virus’s worst effects. While at the end of last January some 30,000 COVID-19 patients were in hospital, now it’s fewer than 8,000.
As Sánchez spoke via video link with the leaders of 17 regional governments and the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, there appeared to be little political appetite for introducing tough restrictions just two days ahead of Christmas Eve.
Sánchez told the Spanish parliament earlier in the day that 90% of the target population over 12 years old is fully vaccinated. He told lawmakers: “Don’t worry, families will be able to celebrate Christmas. Spain has prevailed.”
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LAGOS, Nigeria — Authorities in Nigeria have destroyed about one million expired doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine even as the West African country’s vaccination rate has almost doubled in the last one week amid a spike in confirmed infections.
The expired doses — numbering 1,066,214 — were destroyed on Wednesday in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, a week after the nation said it will no longer accept donated COVID-19 vaccines with short shelf lives.
Faisal Shuaib, head of Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency, said Nigeria was put in a difficult situation by developed countries who had “procured these vaccines and hoarded them in their stories (and) at the point they were about to expire, they offered them for donation.”
Vaccination is also rapidly picking up in the most populous country in Africa, which has set an ambitious goal of fully vaccinating 55 million of its 206 million citizens before February 2022, although only 2% have received their two doses.
The country is seeing a spike in confirmed infections, a 500% increase in cases in the past two weeks.
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WARSAW, Poland — Poland on Wednesday reported 775 deaths from COVID-19 over the past day, the highest death toll in this latest wave of infection.
The last time the nation in central Europe recorded such a high number was in the spring, while vaccines were still being rolled out and when the region was a global hot spot for infection and death.
A spokesman for the Health Ministry said that most of those who died in the past 24 hours were not vaccinated.
The European Union nation of 38 million has now reported nearly 93,000 virus deaths. It has a vaccination rate of 54.8%.
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JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s noticeable drop in new COVID-19 cases in recent days may signal that the country’s dramatic omicron-driven surge has passed its peak, medical experts say.
Daily virus case counts are notoriously unreliable, as they can be affected by uneven testing, reporting delays and other fluctuations. But they are offering one tantalizing hint — far from conclusive yet — that omicron infections may recede quickly after a ferocious spike.
South Africa has been at the forefront of the omicron wave and the world is watching for any signs of how it may play out there to try to understand what may be in store.
After hitting a high of nearly 27,000 new cases nationwide on Thursday, the numbers dropped to about 15,424 on Tuesday. In Gauteng province — South Africa’s most populous with 16 million people, including the largest city, Johannesburg, and the capital, Pretoria — the decrease started earlier and has continued.
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PRAGUE — The new Czech government has approved a series of measures to slow down the spreading of the omicron variant.
Health Minister Vlastimil Valek says all stores bigger than 200 square meters (2,153 sq. feet) will have to close on Christmas Eve at noon and will remain closed on Christmas Day.
Also, a number of people sitting at one table in bars and restaurants was reduced to four while up to 50 people who have been vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19 will be allowed to attend New Year’s celebration parties.
Starting in January, schoolchildren, teachers and other school staffers will be tested for the coronavirus twice a week, on Monday and Thursdays.
As of Monday, all citizens 30 and older will be eligible for a booster shot. Only dozens of omicron cases have been seen here so far. After a record surge of infections in late November caused by the delta variant, new cases have been declining since.
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ROME — The Italian government is weighing possible outdoor mask mandates, increased testing and other measures to combat the new surge in infections fueled by the omicron variant.
Premier Mario Draghi also wouldn’t rule out expanding mandatory vaccinations to other categories of people during an end-of-the-year press conference Wednesday. Currently, health care workers, teachers, law enforcement and military workers must be vaccinated.
Draghi said the government wasn’t considering a lockdown for unvaccinated. But he said other measures on the table at a Thursday meeting include an outdoor mask mandate, as well as increased testing at schools to ensure in-presence learning when students return from Christmas and New Years holidays.
Though Italy is faring better than much of Western Europe, it reported 30,000 cases on Tuesday — the most in a year — and 153 deaths. The country has vaccinated more than 85% of the over-12 population and has begun administering shots to kids aged 5-11 while making boosters available for anyone over 18.
Draghi noted that two-thirds of the people in intensive care, and two-thirds of the people who are dying of COVID-19, are unvaccinated. “This is a tragic reality,” he said.
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