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The World Health Organization’s (WHO) director for Europe said Thursday that the COVID-19 situation in the continent has taken a step backward, with more people dying from the disease than at this time last year.
 
During a virtual briefing from his office in Copenhagen, Hans Kluge told reporters he is particularly concerned about central Europe, the Balkans and the Baltic states, where new cases, hospitalizations and deaths are now among the highest in the world.
 
Kluge said Europe is averaging more than 20,000 deaths from COVID-19 per week, with the overall death toll passing 900,000. He said there were more than 1.2 million new cases reported across Europe last week, the third consecutive week that infection numbers have increased.
 
Kluge said 46 countries in the region have administered more than 107 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine, with 3% of the population in 45 countries having received a completed vaccination series. He said while that represents progress, it is not enough to significantly slow the spread of the virus.
 
“Let there be no doubt about it, vaccination by itself — particularly given the varied uptake in countries — does not replace public health and social measures,” Kluge said.
 
He said 21 European nations are gradually easing COVID-19-related restrictions based on the assumption that increasing vaccinations would immediately lead to an improved epidemiological situation. Kluge added, “Such assumptions are too early to make.”
 
Kluge also weighed in on the AstraZeneca vaccine controversy, in which several countries have suspended its use after reports of patients developing blood clots. He reiterated a statement from WHO officials Wednesday saying the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh its risks, and it should be used.
 
Europe’s drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency, though it issued a similar recommendation earlier this week, is expected to announce the results of a review of the vaccine and the blood clot cases later Thursday.
 
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Leading United Nations agencies are calling for urgent action to combat ageism, which they say harms the well-being of older people and national economies. The World Health Organization, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs and U.N. Population Fund have released the first global report on ageism.A survey of more than 83,000 people in 57 countries finds 1 in every 2 people holds moderately or highly ageist attitudes. Those beliefs are based on stereotypical  ideas about older people drummed into them at an early age.Alana Officer is the World Health Organization’s unit head for demographic change and healthy aging. She says biases start early in life and are reinforced over time. She says ageism is pervasive — in health care systems, in workplaces and in the media.Why Aging of America Poses Huge Risk to US Economy

        Americans are getting older and family size is shrinking, which means the nation will have fewer working-age adults going forward."I think it is a cause for concern if we are calibrating our expectations of having a strongly growing population," says David Kelly, chief global strategist for JP Morgan Asset Management. "If you're investing in things like the housing industry or the auto industry and you need an ever-growing population, then you have to adjust to a world in which the U.S. population is…

She says ageism leads to poorer physical and mental health and to a reduced quality of life for older people. Ageism, she says, determines who receives medical procedures and treatment and who does not. She says age discrimination denies older people jobs and job training.“Half of the world’s population are ageist against older people, which rates much higher in low- and lower middle-income countries …The report indicates that you are likely to be ageist against older people if you are younger, you are male, you are fearful of dying or you are less educated,” Officer said.The report finds women are more likely to be targets of ageism than men. It says younger people also suffer from ageism across many areas, such as employment, health, housing and politics.Vania de la Fuente-Nunez is technical officer in the WHO’s Demographic Change and Healthy Ageing Department. She says the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how prevalent ageism is against both the young and the old.“Older people have been systematically and homogenously framed as vulnerable and dependent and younger people have been stereotyped as invincible and selfish, which of course fails to recognize the great diversity that we see in both younger people and in older people,” Fuente-Nunez said.She says the stereotypical portrayal in the media is both inaccurate and harmful.The report finds the economic cost of ageism is huge. A 2020 study in the United States shows ageism led to excess annual costs of $63 billion for a broad range of health conditions.Another study in Australia suggests the national economy would be boosted by $37 billion annually if 5% more people aged 55 or older were employed.
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The European Union’s medications watchdog is due to release initial results Thursday of its investigation into whether there is a connection between the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and cases of recipients developing blood clots.The European Medicines Agency has been examining 30 reported blood coagulation disorders among the 5 million people in the EU who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine. Among the considerations is whether that rate is more common than the incidence found in the general population.The World Health Organization said Wednesday it is conducting its own assessment of the latest available safety data for the vaccine, but that at this time the agency considers the benefits of the vaccine outweigh its risks.“In extensive vaccination campaigns, it is routine for countries to signal potential adverse events following immunization,” the WHO said in a statement.  “This does not necessarily mean that the events are linked to vaccination itself, but it is good practice to investigate them.”India said Wednesday it would continue using the AstraZeneca vaccine.Concerns about the vaccine prompted a number of EU countries to suspend its use, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed confidence in AstraZeneca on Wednesday, but continued criticism of the company’s pace of vaccine deliveries.“AstraZeneca has unfortunately under-produced and under-delivered, and this painfully, of course, reduced the speed of the vaccination campaign,” she told reporters.Von der Leyen said the EU is targeting vaccinating 70% of all adults by September.
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Australia is beginning an urgent rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations in the Torres Strait in northern Queensland because of a sharp increase in infections in neighboring Papua New Guinea, a situation Health Minister Greg Hunt called a “clear and present danger” to both nations.Papua New Guinea, a South Pacific nation of more than 7 million people, is Australia’s nearest neighbor.It’s facing a public health crisis, and in Canberra, Australia Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton is increasingly worried. Some of Australia’s most northerly islands are just a few kilometers from Papua New Guinea, raising concern the virus could spread easily and quickly across the border.“We do not want the virus sneaking across what is obviously a very small area, and we do not want people in north Queensland, particularly Indigenous communities, facing the incursion of that disease,” he said.Officially, Papua New Guinea has recorded more than 2,300 coronavirus cases since the pandemic began. More than 25 people have died, according to research from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.Australia’s Chief medical officer, professor Paul Kelly, believes the real situation is far worse.“We are seeing a large number of health care workers on the front lines in Papua New Guinea now coming down with COVID-19,” he said. “These are all the signs that there is a major epidemic in the community. They do not have the resources for mass testing as we do here in Australia, and so any number you see coming out of Papua New Guinea in terms of cases and even deaths will be a major underestimate.”Australia is sending 8,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses to its northern neighbor, along with vital supplies for health workers. It is asking the European Union to provide another 1 million doses to help Papua New Guinea. Australian doctors are also starting an urgent vaccination program to protect islanders on the Australian side of the Torres Strait that separates the two nations.The opposition Labor party in Canberra believes Australia has been too slow to react.In Papua New Guinea, Prime Minister James Marape has said COVID-19 has “broken loose” and he warned that hospitals would soon be overwhelmed.His country occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea between the Coral Sea and the South Pacific Ocean and lies to the east of Indonesia and to the north of Australia. Agriculture provides a subsistence livelihood for an estimated 85% of the population.
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Scientists are rethinking the cause of water loss on Mars in the face of new evidence that challenges the long-held theory that the water may have evaporated into space. That’s according to new NASA-funded research published this week in the journal Science.Researchers hypothesize that about 30% and 99% of the water on Mars may have been lost to the crust, likely trapped within the minerals there.The lead author of the study, Eva Scheller, said “the water was lost by 3 billion years ago, meaning Mars has been the dry planet it is today for the past 3 billion years.”Once upon 3 billion years ago, Mars was covered with plentiful water that collected into pools, lakes, and deep oceans about half the volume of Earth’s Atlantic Ocean, researchers concluded based on geological evidence.In search of the missing water, scientists believed water on the Martian crust escaped through the atmosphere because of low gravity on the red planet.Now that theory is being challenged by a new study that theorizes a new model to explain the loss of water.“Atmospheric escape doesn’t fully explain the data that we have for how much water actually once existed on Mars,” she said.Scheller further disclosed that there are three key processes within their model.“Water input from volcanism, water loss to space and water loss to the crust.”She said the model allowed them to match their hydrogen isotope data set in order to calculate the amount of water lost to space and that which was lost to crust.Presenting the study at the 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, the Caltech Ph.D. candidate explained the research findings are based on the fact that not all hydrogen atoms are the same.There is the most common hydrogen which contains a proton and the less common variant that comprises both proton and neutron. This type is widely referred to as the deuterium or “heavy” hydrogen.When water is lost on a surface, lighter hydrogen atoms defy gravity quicker, leaving behind the “heavy” hydrogen.But the researchers said the amount of the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio observed in the Martian atmosphere and large amounts of water in the past does not support this theory.
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Testing is under way for modified versions of COVID-19 vaccines that aim to deal with coronavirus variants. Experts say current vaccines still seem to work against the variants and prevent the most severe forms of disease, though the evidence is limited. Making changes may not be necessary for all the vaccines.  “We don’t know yet,” said Emory University Vaccine Center Associate Director Walter Orenstein. “But people want to get prepared just in case we need to.” Testing and manufacturing will likely take months, he said, so now is the time to get started. All major Western manufacturers with shots in use have announced studies involving either new shots targeted against a specific variant or additional booster shots of their existing vaccines. A woman reacts to seeing a syringe of the Sinovac vaccine for COVID-19 as health workers vaccinate residents in the Kalunga Vao de Almas quilombo on the outskirts of Cavalcante, Goias state, Brazil, March 16, 2021.The A pharmacist prepares to fill a syringe with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at the Vaccine Village in Antwerp, Belgium, March 16, 2021.B.1.351 shares mutations with a strain first found in Brazil, where cases are surging. These mutations are thought to help both viruses spread more easily and also make them less susceptible to the effects of the vaccines. A vaccine against one variant may protect against both, said Baylor College of Medicine vaccine expert Peter Hotez. “The hope is that they’ll be close enough that [one variant vaccine] should cross-protect,” he said. “But these studies take time, so we don’t know for certain.” Moderna’s shot was less potent against B.1.351 in test tube studies, but still appeared strong enough to work. The company announced earlier this month that it had A man receives a dose of the Moderna vaccine against the coronavirus, at the Music Auditorium in Rome, Italy, March 17, 2021.Like Moderna’s shot, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine suffered in A nurse fills a syringe with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at Zinga Zanga village hall vaccination center in Beziers, southern France, March 17, 2021.Both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are easier to change than earlier types of vaccines, which used dead or weakened germs or germ parts to trigger the immune system. The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech shots are genetic recipes for those parts, not the parts themselves.  “It’s relatively straightforward to swap out the genetic recipe for an earlier variant with a newer variant,” said William Moss, executive director of the Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center. “Technologically, that’s not a big lift.” Booster dose While that remains an option, Pfizer-BioNTech said in February that they are focusing mainly on testing a third, booster dose of their original vaccine. Further strengthening the immune response might overcome a variant’s ability to evade it.  FILE – A health worker loads syringes with the vaccine on the first day of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine being made available to residents at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza in Los Angeles. California, March 11, 2021.One of the biggest advantages of this vaccine is that it only requires one dose, while Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech take two. But Johnson & Johnson announced last November that it was testing the effects of a second dose. The AstraZeneca-University of Oxford vaccine took the biggest hit from B.1.351: just 10% effective against mild to moderate illness in a study published Wednesday. The study did not test how well it works against severe disease and death. Experts expect that it does still provide protection, though that has not been studied yet.  Lead developer Sarah Gilbert at the University of Oxford told the BBC that she expected a modified version against B.1.351 would be ready by late this year. The AstraZeneca vaccine is the one most widely used in the World Health Organization-backed COVAX vaccine distribution program.   The shots are currently on hold in several European countries over concerns about blood clots, though these may be coincidental and unrelated to the vaccine. 
 
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Mass migration and the COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to the worldwide spread of female genital mutilation, or FGM, executed on girls from infancy to puberty, say aid organizations.Perpetrators cross borders to perform FGM in countries such as Chad, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan, where there is no legislation against the practice, according to research by This map from the University of Virginia Medical School is from 2017 and shows where FGM occurs most in the world.The practice dates back more than 2,000 years and is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the partial or total removal of external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital tissues, including suturing the genitalia. Among the four levels of FGM, some are banned in some countries, while other types remain legal.“In many cases, families are aware that FGM carries a physical and mental health risk, but they have girls undergo FGM to increase their marriageability or as a way of safeguarding their chastity,” said Nankali Maksud, senior adviser of Prevention of Harmful Practices at UNICEF.“While communities cite reasons such as religion, culture or hygiene for practicing FGM, the practice is a human rights violation and an expression of power and control over girls’ and women’s bodies and sexuality,” she said.Despite bans, practice continuesFGM “If a country bans FGM, they’ll usually ban a particular practice of it, so people will just do something else,” said Dena Igusti, a 24-year-old artist and activist from New York who underwent FGM in 2006.“If a country bans FGM, they’ll usually ban a particular practice of it, so people will just do something else,” said Dena Igusti, 24, an artist and activist from New York who underwent FGM in 2006. “If that doesn’t work, they’ll go to a country that’s outwardly against it, like Western countries. But because there isn’t a focus on it, and there is this denial that it happens here, they get away with it.”In early January, the United States tightened its ban on FGM nationally, and it is explicitly banned in 39 states. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 500,000 women and girls have undergone or are at risk of undergoing FGM in the U.S.In all member states of the European Union, FGM is criminalized. But six African nations — Chad, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan — have no laws against FGM, CoP-FGM says.While FGM is banned in the EU, Britain and the United States, it still occurs in these areas. The private nature of the practice and the silencing of victims or their hesitation to come forward continue to make FGM challenging to track.“Because it’s being brought to other places, the thought of it as something that happens in a faraway country doesn’t matter, because if you know someone who can do it, they’ll do it,” Igusti said. “There isn’t protection here. There are legal protections, but it doesn’t really matter.”Some parents travel back to their home countries to administer FGM to their children. Igusti underwent FGM while in Indonesia visiting family.“When it happened, it was kind of out of nowhere,” Igusti said. “My aunt said that we were going to the supermarket, but it was a completely different route. It happened in a way that was painful. I couldn’t walk for a couple of days, and I had gauze stuck in me.Some parents travel back to their home countries to administer FGM to their children. Dena Igusti underwent FGM while in Indonesia visiting family. “It was kind of out of nowhere,” she said.“There’s the physical pain of it, but there’s also the threats of what can happen afterwards. For me, it was always the threat of getting cut again.”Anecdotal evidence shows that when families migrate outside practicing communities, the pressure to conform still compels them to cut their daughters in secret or take them back home, Maksud said.“Discriminatory gender norms, poverty, low levels of education, lack of access to services, poor governance and humanitarian crises may all still lead to girls being cut, even following migration,” she said.Intervention by international organizations to end FGM has been disrupted by COVID-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions, the U.N. Children’s Fund reported in February. Over the next decade, 2 million additional women and girls may undergo this procedure as a result of halted outreach and school closures, the report said.“Before the pandemic, there were educational programs,” said Ann-Marie Wilson, founder and executive director of 28 Too Many, an anti-FGM advocacy group. “Either the funding has stopped for some of the programs, the people delivering the programs have gone away, or the girls aren’t able to access it anymore because of school closures.”Without checks on girls in schools, many have been sent out to work, married off by their parents or sent to work in the sex industry, said Wilson.Wilson said her organization and others like it have had difficulty continuing their FGM intervention programs during the pandemic because of a lack of funding. The group received most of its funds through in-person events. In the first quarter of 2021, 28 Too Many’s income was down by a quarter, according to Wilson.“We’d like to make sure that we do make it through this pandemic and carry on to the future, expanding our work and seeing it into the future,” Wilson said. “We want to work until there is nobody left who has FGM and is vulnerable.”UNICEF adapted its FGM intervention programs to accommodate social distancing during the pandemic by switching to digital media platforms, conducting door-to-door campaigns and conducting community dialogues, according to Maksud.In 2019, the U.N. called for action to eliminate FGM globally by 2030. But with intervention tactics halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, this goal may be out of reach.UN Calls for Ending Female Genital Mutilation by 2030

        Wednesday marks the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. Coinciding with the day, the United Nations is calling for action to eliminate the procedure by 2030.

The U.N. estimates at least 200 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to female genital mutilation, a procedure that partially or totally removes female genital organs.

“Even before COVID-19 upended progress, the Sustainable Development Goals’ target of ending female genital mutilation by 2030 was an ambitious commitment,” said the report, written by UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore and Natalia Kanem, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA). “Far from dampening our ambition, however, the pandemic has sharpened our resolve to protect the 4 million girls and women who are at risk of female genital mutilation each year.”
   
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Kenya’s constitutional court has dismissed a petition to strike down the Female Genital Mutilation Act, which outlaws the traditional practice of female circumcision.Women’s rights groups welcomed the ruling and said the judges’ pronouncement would protect millions of women and girls.The 2017 petition sought to invalidate the FGM measure on the ground that it took away a grown woman’s right to undergo the cut.Judge Lydia Achode read the ruling on behalf of the other two judges:”Our final orders shall be as follows: The amended petition is devoid of merit and is hereby dismissed. Two, the attorney general … shall forward a proposal to the national assembly to consider amendment of Section 19 of the prohibition of female genital mutilation … with a view to prohibiting all human practices of FGM as set out in this judgment above.”Sofia Rajab Leteipan, a lawyer with Equality Now, an organization that fights for women’s and girls’ rights, said the ruling had saved women and girls from the practice.”We are extremely pleased with the judgment from the three judges, and I think this judgment goes very far in reaffirming the rights of women and girls to human dignity, to their right to health and also ensuring that we do not use cultural practices as an excuse to undermine the rights of women and girls,” Leteipan said. Law passed decade agoIn 2011, Kenya passed legislation barring female genital mutilation, also called female circumcision. The legislation imposed harsh penalties on those involved in cutting girls and women, including a minimum fine of $1,800 or three years’ imprisonment.Speaking after Wednesday’s ruling, Tatu Kamau, the petitioner, she said she was not happy with the court’s ruling.”Generally for me I am disappointed,” she said. “I feel that the rights of women have been subsumed by those of a child.”Achode disagreed.”We have also discussed the absence of consent by victims. …  We are not persuaded that one can choose to undergo a harmful practice from medical and anecdotal evidence presented by the respondent.  We find that limiting this right is reasonable in an open and democratic society,” the judge said.According to UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, more than 200 million women and girls have undergone FGM in 31 countries.  
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U.S.-based pharmaceutical company Moderna has begun testing its two-dose COVID-19 vaccine in young children to determine if vaccinations should be expanded to people younger than 18 years of age.   The company will administer the vaccine to about 6,750 children in the United States and Canada between the ages of six months and 12 years old.  The doses would be given 28 days apart so researchers can monitor the side effects from the vaccine and determine its ultimate effectiveness.   The study is being conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped Moderna in development of the vaccine. Moderna has been conducting a separate study on the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness since December involving 3,000 children between the ages of 12 and 18 years old.A nurse draws a Moderna coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine, in Los Angeles, March 12, 2021.In a related development, the Vietnamese government says its homegrown COVID-19 vaccine called Nanocovax will be available by the end of this year. Vietnam has inoculated more 15,000 of its citizens with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine this month, and is negotiating to purchase more vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and the developer of Russia’s Sputnik V.  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Wednesday that the country will send about 8,000 doses of its supply of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to neighboring Papua New Guinea, which is battling an ever-increasing spread of the disease.  Prime Minister Morrison also called on the European Union and AstraZeneca to ship one million doses of the vaccine to Papua New Guinea that had been purchased by Canberra. The EU recently blocked a shipment of more than 250,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to Australia in order to help make up an acute shortage of vaccines in Europe, plus Australia’s success in largely containing the virus.  Australian Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly told reporters that half of expectant mothers who have been admitted to hospitals in the capital of Port Moresby have tested positive for COVID-19. Kelly said large numbers of frontline health care workers have also contracted the virus.  Morrison says all travel between Australia and Papua New Guinea has been suspended.   
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Researchers in Japan recently discovered that some sea slugs can regrow their bodies. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports that studying these slugs may one day help answer questions about our own health.Produced by: Arash Arabasadi 
 
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Pakistan says it is now facing a third wave of the novel coronavirus. Officials have particularly expressed concern over the spread of the so-called UK variant of the virus. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem reports from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Camera: Malik Waqar Ahmed   Produced by: Malik Waqar Ahmed, Rob Raffaele 
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Europe’s medical regulator, the European Medicines Agency, will announce Thursday its findings on the safety of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine as more European Union countries suspend its use over fears it might be linked to blood clots. Critics say governments are putting politics over science.The European Medicines Agency’s executive director, Emer Cooke, said Tuesday that for now, the regulator stands behind its conclusion the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe, even as its experts conduct a thorough safety review.The AstraZeneca vaccine has been injected into millions of arms, with just a few reported cases of blood clots—and it’s uncertain if they’re linked to the shot.  “We need to have the facts first,” Cooke said. “We cannot come to a conclusion before we’ve done a thorough scientific analysis. And we owe it to the European citizens to deliver this clear and science-based response.”The medicines agency, or EMA, has also tapped international experts for its review, which will also look at whether certain specific batches could be problematic. Scientists will also look at chances of blood clots with other COVID-19 vaccines beyond AstraZenaca’s.”At present there is no evidence that vaccination has caused these conditions,” said Cooke. “They have not come up in clinical trial and they are not listed as known or expected side events with this vaccine.”  But increasingly, European Union governments are taking no chances. Sweden and Latvia are among the latest to join more than a dozen EU countries to temporarily halt their AztraZeneca rollouts.In France, which suspended the shot Monday, Health Minister Olivier Veran said he hoped the AstraZeneca vaccine campaign will quickly resume — pending a positive EMA ruling. Veran himself received the AstraZeneca inoculation and he told French citizens who have done likewise not to worry.The World Health Organization also recommends AstraZeneca, pending evidence to the contrary. Dozens of countries have authorized its use, although the United States has yet to do so. And AstraZeneca still has EU champions. Belgium, for example, argues suspending the vaccine’s rollout would be irresponsible.That’s also the view of many French medical experts. Dr. Jean-Paul Hamon, honorary president of the French doctor’s federation, told French TV the decision to suspend the vaccine’s use reflected political rather than medical considerations.  “National governments are afraid for safety concerns,” said Simona Guagliardo, an analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre. “But at the same time, I’m not convinced that this is the right way to go about it.””I wonder what could be the damage in the public opinion,” she said. “People are already scared, and I fear that this might scare them off even more.”The vaccine suspensions couldn’t come at a worse time for the EU, with some member states hit by a third wave of the pandemic. Italy is again under lockdown. France and Germany may follow shortly.  And suspending the shot’s use may further delay the EU’s much-criticized vaccine rollout that sees the 27-member bloc lagging behind countries like the United States, Israel, Bahrain and even ex-member Britain—which has jabbed millions in the UK with the AstraZeneca shot. While acknowledging mistakes, EU officials also blame some of the problems on production delays by AstraZeneca itself.
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Despite the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, France is once again under pressure to take new measures to curb a new spread of the virus in the country.  The situation is once again deteriorating rapidly in the French capital. Hospitals in the Paris region are close to capacity and health professionals are rushing daily to find beds for their COVID patients. As of Monday, more than 4,200 patients were in intensive care units across France. The pandemic’s third wave is a reality in France and health workers have been evacuating seriously ill COVID patients to other parts of the country to cope with bed shortages. Enrique Casalino, a medical director with Hopitaux de Paris, the largest health system in Europe, describes the epidemic situation as deteriorating in the Paris region where every 12 minutes a new patient enters an intensive care unit. Casalino thinks medical evacuation to other French regions is just a temporary solution that does not solve the current crisis. He says there are only two options: a quick and massive immunization campaign to safeguard 70% of the population, which he doubts is currently achievable in France. The other would be a strict lockdown to prevent the virus from spreading further.On top of a delay in the delivery of vaccines, France is among European nations that are pausing the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine due to public concerns about side effects.Lockdowns have already been imposed in some hotspots in France, including Dunkirk and Nice, but not in the capital region.  A national nighttime curfew has been in force since the end of January, and bars, restaurants, museums, and movie theaters remain closed.  Still, a general lockdown in the Paris region has not been ordered.  Jerome Béglé, deputy director at Le Point, a French weekly, sees a lockdown of the Paris region as equivalent to a national lockdown as this region is the main economic center of France with 12 million people living there and a few tourists still visiting.With neighboring Italy imposing new restrictions Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron resisted the idea of a third national lockdown.Jean Castex, France’s prime minister says a national lockdown would be a last resort that cannot be ruled out due to the current situation. He says he would like to avoid one as it would place a heavy burden on the population.More than 90,000 people have died so far in France due to the COVID. The country is expected to reach a dreaded 100,000-death milestone next month.
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