TRAGIC STATISTICS FOR BRITAIN AND THE WORLD
a feud over vaccine access
By Natasha Frost
Inoculations at a vaccine center in Salisbury Cathedral in England. Tom Jamieson for The New York Times
Britain passes a grim pandemic milestone
As the world surpassed 100 million known cases, Britain this week hit a tragic milestone of its own: 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus.
Though the country's death toll has long been the worst in Europe, a fast-spreading variant has propelled Britain's daily fatality rates to levels not seen since April. Per capita, Britain's death rate has been the worst in the world over the last week. So far, one in eight adults in the country had received the first of the two required vaccine doses.
Health experts in the United States worry that new variants of the virus could cause a resurgence in numbers there, as they have in Britain, Ireland and South Africa. Such fears have prompted new lockdowns and travel restrictions around the world.
Official response: "It's hard to compute the sorrow contained in that grim statistic," Prime Minister Boris Johnson said of Britain's deaths. "You'd exhaust the thesaurus of misery. It's an appalling and tragic loss of life." The toll has laid bare the missteps in his government's handling of the pandemic, as well as the tough choices Mr. Johnson faces in grappling with the new variants.
Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.
In other developments:
■ France and Britain are among the many countries considering tightening their borders over rising cases and the threat of more contagious variants.
■ President Biden announced that his administration was nearing a deal with Pfizer and Moderna to secure an additional 200 million doses of their vaccines by the end of the summer. It is unlikely that it would accelerate the current pace of vaccination for months.
■ Shopkeepers in several cities across the Netherlands boarded up windows and sent employees home early, as the country braced for a fourth night of protests against a curfew intended to reduce virus transmission.
■ Hong Kong's first virus lockdown, in a working-class neighborhood, raised questions about whether residents are being treated fairly.
Syringes filled with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a Brussels hospital. Yves Herman/Reuters
A cross-Channel scrap over vaccines
As vaccine production falls behind schedule and the European Union lags in inoculating people, Brussels and London are lobbing threats and accusations at each other.
The E.U., stung by its slow progress on vaccinations, threatened this week to tighten rules on shipping Belgian-made shots to Britain, while British lawmakers have accused their European counterparts of a blackmail campaign that could embitter relations for a generation.
The feuding holds echoes of the dark, early days of the pandemic, when scores of countries banned or restricted the export of protective equipment and medical devices. Nearly a year later, that spirit of protectionism continues: Not only are vaccine supplies too scarce for many poorer countries to begin inoculations, but wealthy countries also cannot figure out how to share the available doses among themselves.
Kris ~ Dreamweaver
www.poetrypoem.com/Dreamweaver
27th January 2021.
