Patience again. Masks, social distancing and intensive hand washing will still be the daily life of humanity “at least until the end of this year“.

“We are not going to achieve (…) collective immunity in 2021WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said. The deployment of vaccines, when it comes to billions of doses, “takes time“, she explained, urging to”have a little patience“.

For his part, the director of health of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Emanuele Capobianco, warned against a “potential false sense of security due to vaccine deployment“.

The threat of variants

This concern is justified by the worldwide circulation of the variant identified in Great Britain, of increased contagiousness.

Russian health authorities announced on Sunday that they had discovered a first case in a person returning from the United Kingdom. Mexico, a country which has more than 130,000 dead, has also detected a first case in the state of Tamaulipas, bordering the United States.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus further indicated that the agency “was informed by Japan over the weekend of a new variant of the virus“.

“The more the Covid-19 spreads, the more likely it is that it will still evolve. Note that the transmissibility of certain variants of the virus seems to increase“, he added.

Read also : A new variant of Covid-19 detected in Japan

Tightening of restrictions

In the short term, the European states are tightening up measures to reduce contacts, at the risk of aggravating the economic gloom.

Portugal, where the epidemic has reached new records, “will enact something very similar to the first containment in March“, according to the head of government Antonio Costa. Outgoing President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, 72, has tested positive. Asymptomatic, he went into solitary confinement.

In France, where the number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients continues to climb, the curfew has been extended in eight departments.

In Lebanon, the response to the soaring spread of the new coronavirus is radical: a total curfew for eleven days, from Thursday, during which it will be forbidden to go out, even for shopping for food or for walking your dog. .