We will do everything we can to avoid a new lockdown, said French Prime Minister Jean Castex on Friday when announcing a new raft of tighter restrictions including border control to contain COVID-19.
Speaking after a defense council on the epidemic, Castex admitted that the question of confinement is a legitimate one as the development of (the virus) variants poses a high risk of accelerating the epidemic.
But we know the very heavy impact (of lockdown) for French people. We believe that we can still give ourselves a chance to avoid it, he said.
In a bid to complement a nightly curfew, which produces real effects but insufficient, France would close borders to non-European Union countries except for essential travel starting from Sunday.
France imposes stricter restrictions to avoid new lockdown - World News sina.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sina.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
BRUSSELS, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) The European Commission granted conditional marketing authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by British company AstraZeneca and Oxford University on Friday, although the bloc seems unlikely to get the amount of doses as agreed for the moment.
TIRANA, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) Albania on Saturday reported 901 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, a new daily record, bringing the country s total number of confirmed cases to 77,251. The previous daily record was 896 new COVID-19 cases, which was reported on Friday. Over the past five days, the Albanian health ministry has registered a total of 4,439 new cases, the biggest increase since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Saturday, Albania reported 11 new COVID-19-related deaths and 507 recoveries, bringing the total number of fatalities and recoveries to 1,369 and 46,927, respectively. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said Saturday that the first batch of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines will arrive on Feb. 1, according to a bilateral agreement signed between the Albanian government and the U.S. drug maker Pfizer.
Portugal to renew state of emergency on Jan 31 to contain COVID-19 theuknews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theuknews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.