What comes the latest developments related to the spread of the new Corona virus in the world, Saturday, in light of the latest numbers, new measures and notable events:
The Italian Prime Minister announced a gradual home quarantine plan that will run from December 21 to January 6 to limit movement and gatherings during the holidays.
All parts of Italy will be classified "red" regions, which is the stricter level of home quarantine on Christmas and New Year, but Italians will be allowed to go out to attend a family dinner in which the number of participants is limited, according to a decree issued on Saturday.
Italians will be able to travel once a day within their regions to visit relatives or friends, outside the strictly imposed curfew hours from 10 pm to 5 am. The government allowed each family to invite two relatives or friends to accompany their children if they were under the age of 14.
Switzerland has permitted the use of the Pfizer / Biontec laboratory vaccine against the Covid-19 epidemic, according to what the national health regulator "Swissmedic" announced Saturday, considering it "safe and its benefits outweigh the risks."
Switzerland, with a population of 8.6 million, has guaranteed access to about 15.8 million doses of vaccines against Covid-19 through agreements with three manufacturing laboratories, and it has signed contracts to obtain three million doses of the Virus / Bionic vaccine and about 7.5 million doses. Of Moderna and about 5.3 million doses of AstraZeneca.
For the three vaccines, each person should receive two doses.
On Friday, the United States gave emergency permission to use Moderna´s vaccine against Covid-19, according to the US Food and Drug Agency.
A new strain of the emerging corona virus has been detected in the United Kingdom, and it can spread faster, according to what the British health authorities announced, indicating that they are still trying to find out whether it is more deadly as well.
A fire broke out in a hospital in Gaziantep, southeast Turkey, killing nine people. The fire occurred in the intensive care unit for patients with Covid-19, after the explosion of an oxygen tube in a respirator.
The famous Sydney-Hobart sailing race was canceled for the first time in 76 years due to the Covid-19 epidemic, organizers announced Saturday.
The new Corona virus has caused the death of 1,675,362 people in the world out of more than 75,611,670 cases of the Covid-19 epidemic since the WHO office in China reported the outbreak of the disease at the end of December 2019, according to a census conducted by Agence France-Presse based on official sources Saturday at 11 o´clock , 00 GMT.
The United States is the country most affected by the epidemic, with 313,660 deaths out of 17,465,147 injuries, followed by Brazil (185,650 deaths out of 7,162,978 injuries), India (145,136 deaths out of 10,004,599 injuries), Mexico (117,249 deaths out of 1,301,546 injuries) and Italy (67,894 deaths out of 1,921,778 injuries).
In France, the number of deaths since March has exceeded 60,000 cases, according to the French Public Health Authority figures issued Friday. The authorities have feared for several days that the epidemic will resume its spread in a "worrying" manner, days before the end of the year holidays.
