Frustrated European Union member states faced shortages and a slow rollout of vaccine supplies. Leaders of countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Austria are looking to eastern nations seeking Russian and Chinese vaccines which were not previously approved by the European Commission’s unifying strategy. On Feb.16, the first batch of the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm arrived in Budapest making Hungary the first EU member state to purchase and authorize the use of Chinese vaccines. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was photographed receiving the Sinopharm vaccine in a recent Facebook post stating, “Today is an important day because (on) this day we are starting to vaccinate with Chinese vaccines,” said Orban. This public endorsement came two days after Hungarian president Janos Ader also opted for the Sinopharm vaccine which boasts a 72.5 per cent efficacy rate according to the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products. According to government-collected data, as of Feb. 28, over 677,682 Hungarians have received at least one dose of the vaccine, while over 249,499 have received two doses. In the Czech Republic, President Miloš Zeman along with Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, reached out to Russian President Vladimir Putin requesting an order of vaccines from the Russian manufacturer Sputnik....
The World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Europe said Sunday he believes the coronavirus outbreak will end in early 2022. Hans Kluge told Danish state broadcaster DR that COVID-19 will still be prevalent in 2021, but it will be more manageable than in 2020. Stating that the worst scenarios are now over, Kluge said there is more information concerning the virus compared to 2020, when it first began spreading. He cautioned, however, that no one can know the future of the COVID-19 pandemic in advance. “There will continue to be a virus, but I don’t think restrictions will be needed. This is an optimistic message,” he said. Kluge said mutations are normal and the virus is trying to adapt to the person infected, but the rapid spread of the mutations are a concern for them. Adding that the WHO is closely monitoring the effectiveness of vaccines developed against COVID-19 due to the fast-spreading types of the virus, he said vaccines can be altered based on the new mutations if necessary and there is no need to produce them from the ground up. He said mutations will not make the virus out of control but noted that countries whose health...
Slovakia’s foreign minister called on EU partners on Monday to send an advance vaccine shipment to the central European country which he said was in a “tragic” coronavirus situation with record numbers of cases. Slovakia has suffered about 100 deaths per day recently, the highest in the world relative to population on a one-week basis and ahead of the Czech Republic, according to data tracker ourworldindata.org. The country had 3,672 patients in hospital with confirmed coronavirus as of Sunday. “I will inform my foreign minister colleagues about the very serious and what can be called tragic situation we have with COVID,” Ivan Korcok told reporters ahead of a foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels. “I will turn to them to ask them, if they have a vaccine they cannot use at the moment, to provide it to us. “I believe it would be a very good sign of cooperation on the EU level. I fully realize that other countries have a vaccine shortage as well but Slovakia now, also based on the fact that we have the highest death rate, at the moment needs it most.” Slovakia has asked through the EU’s emergency mechanism for the help of 10 doctors and...
The President of the European Union Commission Ursula von der Leyen supports the idea of a common vaccination certificate, which can be established by the EU, and issued by the Member States to every person who gets vaccinated against COVID-19. In an interview for Portuguese media, Von der Leyen was asked regarding the proposal of the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to introduce a common document that would be issued to EU citizens who receive the vaccine against COVID-19. At a meeting with the European Commission, Portugal’s Interior Minister Eduardo Cabrita ventured that vaccine certification would be easier to manage than the current Covid-19 requirements. Certificates “should act as proof of security and do away with certain requirements at borders — in particular, the requirement for PCR tests,” he said. The number of EU countries warning they are planning to introduce ‘vaccination passports’ which will enable their citizens who are vaccinated to prove it while their travel, is on the rise. Even the United Kingdom is preparing a certification system that would allow inoculated citizens to travel abroad this summer has reported the London Times. British Foreign Office Minister James Cleverly told BBC Radio 4’s Today program it was “not an uncommon practice” for...
A “Covid jail” has been opened in Germany for people who repeatedly break quarantine rules. The facility in Neumünster, in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, launched this month and sees inmates locked up to ensure they self-isolate, with 40 retired police officers volunteering as guards. “The isolation of suspected infected people in their own homes is an essential element in getting the infection rate under control,” Sönke Schulz, representative of the local district council in Neumünster in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, told reporters when the facility was opened in January. “Anyone who does not comply with this is putting other people at risk,” he added. “The infection protection act therefore rightly allows isolation in locked facilities as the last resort.” The center is not a traditional jail. Detainees will be allowed home comforts like televisions, laptops, and mobile phones, and will also be able to access psychological support if needed. Councillor Peter Schröder, who will be overseeing the facility, said it was intended more to “set an example” than to be in regular use. “We hope there will be hardly any [detainees]. Up until now, there have not been many,” he said.
The coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford has been approved by Europe’s drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency. That will make it the bloc’s third certified vaccine, along with those made by the US-German enterprise BioNTech-Pfizer and the US firm Moderna. AstraZeneca requested market authorization through the EMA on 11 January. The approval comes at a tricky time for the EU, with its vaccination program sluggish at best, and looking very vulnerable to supply shortages. The EU contract with AstraZeneca is an advance purchase agreement for the supply of at least 300 million doses, with doses delivered in stages. 📢 EMA has just recommended granting a conditional marketing authorisation for the #COVID19vaccine AstraZeneca to prevent #COVID19 in people from 18 years of age. 👉Read our press release: https://t.co/YDbOvZEMUN pic.twitter.com/Sbj6TdlGTW — EU Medicines Agency (@EMA_News) January 29, 2021 In a statement this afternoon, the Amsterdam-based EMA said that it had approved the vaccine’s use for all age groups over 18, despite the decision by German authorities not to use it for over 65s. “With this third positive opinion, we have further expanded the arsenal of vaccines available to EU and EEA member states to combat the pandemic and protect their citizens,” said Emer...
The would-be thief was said to have burst into the station in Bratislava on Tuesday night before he demanded money from staff – but a member of the public intervened to keep him there. The man, a 24-year-old Serb, had been attempting to rob a petrol station on the outskirts of Bratislava overnight on Tuesday when the incident took place. While trying to get money from the safe, a 36-year-old Czech woman began to perform a sex act on him, before officers found the pair half-naked on the floor. The robber punched a staff member behind the counter multiple times, before taking money from the cash register. He then went to the back office, where a second member of staff was sitting and demanded that they open the safe. While the safe was being opened, the first member of staff ran outside and called police, who raced to the scene. It was while he was there and attempting to get money from a safe that “under mysterious circumstances” an unknown woman arrived inside the station. Reportedly, the woman said to be a 36-year-old Czech woman, then performed a sex act on the suspect until the police eventually turned up and...
The crowdfunded ONA is overturning stereotypes about what this famously gourmet country likes to eat. For the first time ever, a vegan restaurant in France has been awarded a coveted Michelin star. The French edition of the Michelin guide, published Monday, awarded a star to ONA. The name stands for Origine Non-Animale, or animal-free origin, BBC News reported. The Michelin verdict: “more than a restaurant, it’s a way of life. The beautifully dressed plates feature a splendid array of fruit and vegetables. Greatly deserving of the attention it is garnering.” The restaurant is located in Arès, near Bordeaux in southwestern France, and was started by chef Claire Vallée, a 41-year-old former archeologist who became a vegan after a trip to Thailand. Restaurant owner Claire Vallée urged customers to “follow your dreams” after winning the star on Tuesday. “It felt like I got hit by a train,” the restaurant owner told AFP of the moment the Michelin Guide called her with the good news. ONA opened its doors in 2016. The restaurant offers a seven-dish gourmet menu that uses ingredients such as fir-tree, boletus mushrooms, and celery. The restaurant was launched by La Nef, a green bank that finances ethical projects. However, it is...
A prototype ocean cleaning facility by Slovak designer Lenka Petráková has scooped the highest award in an architectural competition for projects posing creative solutions to environmental challenges. Called The 8th Continent, the floating station designed to solve one of the world’s most pressing pollution problems: ocean plastic waste. Marine debris currently covers a surface of approximately 1.6 million square metres in the North Pacific — known as the Great Pacific garbage patch — which, as Petráková suggests, could be considered the world’s eighth continent. The 8th Continent was awarded the 2020 Grand Prix Award for Architecture and Innovation of the Sea from Foundation Jacques Rougerie, a French institute that awards visionary projects that encourage sustainable collaborations between scientists and designers. Petráková’s model consists of interconnected petal-shaped buildings that stand on tentacle-like platforms, and all work together to collect plastic debris from the water surface and transform it into recyclable material. The prototype also features a research and education centre that studies and showcases marine environments, a greenhouse where plants are grown using hydroponic cultivation — a method for growing plants without soil just using water — and living facilities for the station’s researchers. Petráková prototype is conceptualized to be self-sufficient...
Norway became the first country in the world where electric cars accounted for more than 50 percent of new registrations in 2020, according to figures published Tuesday by an industry group. Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) made up 54.3% of all new cars sold in the Nordic country in 2020, a global record, up from 42.4% in 2019 and from a mere 1% of the overall market a decade ago, the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) said. The four best-selling models in the Nordic country were the Audi e-tron, the Tesla Model 3, the Volkswagen ID.3 and the Nissan Leaf — all fully electric. Other countries are playing catch up. The United Kingdom said in November that it would ban the sale of new cars that run only on fossil fuels in 2030, five years earlier than previously planned. Electric vehicle sales are expected to continue to soar in 2021, according to industry analysts and car distributors, as more models are brought to the market. New car sales in the country last year were 141,412, of which 76,789 were fully electric. Norway, the largest producer of oil in Western Europe, is making headway in electric mobility thanks to heavy subsidies. The Nordic...
A young German pilot said Sunday he traced a giant syringe in the sky as a way of marking the start of Germany’s rollout of vaccines against the coronavirus. Samy Kramer, a 20-year-old amateur pilot, had carefully plotted out the route he needed to take in advance in order to create the effect in the skies above Baden-Wuerttemberg. The manoeuvres included a number of 90-degree turns during the flight on Wednesday that lasted one hour and 40 minutes and covered around 280 kilometres. “There are still relatively many people opposing the vaccination and my action may be a reminder for them to think about the topic, to get things moving”, Kramer told Reuters TV on Sunday, adding that his flight should not be understood as a direct call to be inoculated. “Perhaps it was also a bit of a sign of joy, because the aviation industry has been hit pretty hard by the pandemic,” he said. The syringe-shaped route showed up on the internet site flightradar24. The European Union kicked off its COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Sunday. The 27-nation bloc staged a coordinated rollout aimed at projecting a unified message that the shot was safe and Europe’s best chance to emerge from...
Slovakia started its COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Saturday, a day earlier than the European Commission’s planned coordinated roll-out across all member states. EU member states each received a first shipment of just under 10,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine on Saturday but vaccination was not supposed to start across the bloc’s 27 nations until Sunday. Vladimir Krcmery, a member of the government’s Pandemic Commission, was the first person in the country inoculated by the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BionTech. The first ten vaccines, administered in front of cameras, went to members of the government’s advisory body, top experts in immunology, infectology, and epidemiology. President Zuzana Čaputová, cabinet ministers, and representatives of the parliament will be vaccinated in Bratislava on Sunday. Today, we start turning the page on a difficult year. The #COVID19 vaccine has been delivered to all EU countries. Vaccination will begin tomorrow across the EU. The #EUvaccinationdays are a touching moment of unity. Vaccination is the lasting way out of the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/pYOj5vS2gV — Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) December 26, 2020 In an effort to ensure fair access across the bloc, the EU is carrying out a coordinated vaccination program. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm,...
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