daniel chigunwe
BERLIN/WASHINGTON. – Unvaccinated people across Germany will soon be excluded from non-essential stores, restaurants and sports and cultural venues, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced yesterday, and parliament will consider a general vaccine mandate as part of efforts to curb coronavirus infections.
Merkel announced the measures after a meeting with federal and state leaders, as the nation again topped 70 000 newly confirmed cases in a 24-hour period. She said the steps were necessary to address concerns that hospitals could become overloaded with patients suffering from Covid-19 infections, which are much more likely to be serious in people who have not been vaccinated.
“The situation in our country is serious,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin, calling the measures an “act of national solidarity.”
The United States was due to announce further travel curbs as countries around the globe scramble to keep out the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the variant showed the pandemic could be around for “some time,” as countries including the United States, India and France reported their first cases.
In an interview with Reuters, Yellen said she hoped the pandemic would not completely stifle economic activity, adding that the US stimulus at the start of the pandemic had helped fuel a very strong recovery.
The new measures agreed in Germany focus on the unvaccinated, who will only be allowed in essential businesses such as grocery stores and pharmacies, while legislation to make vaccination mandatory will be drafted for early next year.
Eager to avoid derailing a fragile recovery of Europe’s biggest economy, Germany kept businesses open to the almost 69 percent of the population that is fully vaccinated as well as those with proof of having recovered from the virus.
Much remains unknown about Omicron, which was first detected in southern Africa last month and has been spotted in at least two dozen countries, just as parts of Europe were already grappling with a wave of infections of the Delta variant.
But the European Union’s public health agency said Omicron could be responsible for more than half of all Covid-19 infections in Europe within a few months, lending weight to preliminary information about its high transmissibility.
In the United States, the Biden administration was expected to announce steps included extending requirements for travellers to wear masks through mid-March.
By early next week the United States will require inbound international travellers to be tested for Covid-19 within a day of departure, regardless of vaccination status.
It will also require private health insurance companies to reimburse customers for at-home COVID-19 tests, a senior administration official said.
South Africa said it was seeing an increase in Covid-19 reinfections in patients contracting Omicron – with people who have already had the illness getting infected again – in a way that it did not see with other variants. – AP/Reuters
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