WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) – US President Joe Biden announced plans to vaccinate most Americans by the end of July with the help of 200 million newly acquired doses, as the country’s inoculation campaign kicked off a new phase in drugstores and supermarket pharmacies, some of which will offer shots as of Friday.
Even as the Biden administration inked deals to acquire “100 million more
Moderna and 100 million more Pfizer vaccines” and Covid-19 cases fall in
Europe, the World Health Organization warned against rash reopenings, in a sobering reminder of the long global battle ahead in taming the pandemic.
“The decline in cases conceals increasing numbers of outbreaks and
community spread involving variants of concern,” said WHO Europe director Hans Kluge.
“At this point, the overwhelming majority of European countries remain
vulnerable,” he added, pointing out the “thin line between the hope of a
vaccine and a false sense of security.”
More than a million cases are still registered every week across the 53
member states in the UN agency’s European region, which includes several
Central Asian countries.
With the latest vaccine purchases, the United States — the world’s
hardest-hit country with more than 470,000 deaths — is on track “to have
enough supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July,” Biden said,
meaning enough inoculations for all eligible people.
He made the announcement Thursday after touring the National Institutes of Health near Washington, with a million previously acquired vaccine doses already headed to around 6,500 drugstores and supermarket pharmacies.
The US immunization campaign got off to a shaky start in December, and even as recently as Thursday, Los Angeles moved to temporarily close five major inoculation centers including its giant Dodger Stadium site, due to vaccine shortage.
Mass Covid-19 vaccination programs are being ramped up in many countries in the race against more contagious variants, and governments are urging populations to continue to cope with closures as the inoculation campaigns move forward.
Worldwide deaths now stand at nearly 2.4 million, with the Middle East
surpassing 100,000 fatalities on Thursday.
Germany, meanwhile, said it will ban travel from Czech border regions, as
well as Austria’s Tyrol due to concern over new variants.
Europe’s biggest economy had already in late January banned most travelers from countries classed as mutation areas or places hardest-hit by more contagious variants.
It has halved its daily infection rate after more than two months of
painful curbs, but fears are growing that the positive trend could be
compromised by travelers from border regions reporting sky-high case rates.
France’s health minister Olivier Veran warned of a “worrying situation” in
Moselle, across the border from Germany, after a high number of South African and Brazilian variants were detected, possibly leading to new restrictions. — NNN-AGENCIES
