Britain races to COVID-19 vaccine target

Britain races against the clock to vaccinate as many people as possible while Germany warned of the hardest days yet to come.

An ambulance crew outside the Royal London hospital. Picture: AFP

Britain on Monday raced against the clock to vaccinate as many people as possible while Germany warned of the “hardest” days yet to come with Europe battling to contain soaring coronavirus infections.

Monday marked a year since China confirmed its first death from COVID-19, a 61-year-old man who was a regular at Wuhan city’s market, where the pandemic emerged before spreading around the world.

Nearly two million deaths later, the pandemic is still thriving, with new variants again prompting governments from Israel to Australia to impose lockdowns, curfews and restrictions — even with mass inoculation drives under way.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Sunday every adult in Britain would be offered a jab by the northern autumn, with officials vaccinating 200,000 people daily in a race to meet a target of 15 million of the most vulnerable by the middle of next month.

The vaccine drive comes as Britain on Sunday recorded another 563 fatalities from the virus, bringing its deaths to more than 81,400, one of the highest tolls in Europe.

Soaring cases are forcing UK medical chiefs to try to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed and the government to reinforce its campaign for people to abide by stay-at-home orders.

“Of course we are all tired of restrictions, but we must find the collective strength to get through this critical stage and save as many lives as we can,” England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty wrote in The Sunday Times.

Germany topped 40,000 fatal­ities on Sunday, the centre for disease control announced.

Chancellor Angela Merkel warned in a weekly video message that the country had yet to feel the full impact of socialising over the Christmas and the new year. The coming weeks would be “the hardest phase of the pandemic” so far, she said, with hospitals stretched to their limits.

More than 1.9 million people have been infected so far, with ­almost 17,000 new cases in Germany since Saturday.

Belgium also passed a significant threshold, topping 20,000 deaths, more than half in retirement care homes.

In France, where there has been criticism of the slow pace of vaccinations, more than 50,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine were due to arrive on Monday, Health Minister Olivier Veran said.

The remote Pacific nation of Micronesia recorded its first case of COVID-19 on Monday, ending its run as one of the few ­places on Earth without the ­coronavirus.

President David Panuelo acknowledged that the development was “alarming” for the country’s 100,000 inhabitants but said the case had been contained at the border.

“For this reason, citizens across the nation should remain calm,” he said in a televised ­address. “Do not panic because the situation is contained.”

Mr Panuelo said the positive test came from a crewman on a government ship Chief Mailo, which had been in The Philippines undergoing repairs.

He said the man and his ­colleagues remained on the vessel, which was anchored in a ­lagoon under round-the-clock surveillance.

“We remain in what we call COVID-condition-four, which means that schools, churches, and businesses of all kinds are still open,” he added.

Far-flung Pacific island nat­ions have been among the most successful in the world at keeping out the virus after closing their borders early in response to the threat, despite the huge cost to tourism-reliant economies.

Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, the Marshall Islands, Samoa and now Micronesia have lost their virus-free status, although none has so far reported community transmission.

The island nations and territories of Kiribati, Nauru, Palau, Tonga and Tuvalu are believed to still be free of the coronavirus.

The approach adopted in the Pacific was prompted by fears they were particularly vulnerable because of poor hospital infrastructure and high rates of underlying health conditions such as obesity and heart disease.

AFP