New Delhi (AFP)
India has officially exceeded 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus, while in Europe, Madrid woke up on Saturday in partial closure and in Germany, it was opponents of the Covid restrictions who demonstrated again.
The pandemic continues to rage in India, the second most populous country in the world with 1.3 billion people.
A total of 100,842 deaths have been recorded, according to the Indian Ministry of Health, making India the third country in terms of deaths after the United States and Brazil.
And, with its 6.47 million cases of contamination, it should in the coming weeks overtake the United States and become the country with the greatest number of contagions.
However, the fact that India's population is four times the population of the United States, while the United States has twice as many deaths as India, raises doubts about the accuracy of the Indian figures.
"We don't know how reliable the death rates are in India," virologist T. Jacob John told AFP.
The announced million tests per day remain, as a percentage of the population, five times lower than in the United States, according to the world statistics site Worldometer.
In Europe, the virus has taken worrying proportions again since last month.
A few days ago, the French authorities announced for Paris probable more restrictive measures from Monday.
- Madrid cordoned off -
On Saturday, it was Madrid who woke up in partial closure - a measure intended to slow the expansion of the epidemic but difficult to apply.
Since Friday at 10 p.m. (8 p.m. GMT), the inhabitants of the capital and nine surrounding municipalities particularly affected by the virus can no longer leave their municipality for reasons of first necessity such as going to work, studying or going to the doctor.
However, they can move freely within their city and are not obliged to stay at home as during the very strict confinement decreed in March.
The authorities, however, called for all unnecessary travel to be avoided.
This type of restriction had already affected a million people for several days in areas of the region where the rate of contagion is the highest.
This partial closure of Madrid, ordered by the central government of the socialist Pedro Sanchez, had for two weeks been the subject of a standoff with the government of the region, flagship of the Popular Party (PP, right).
The questions which now arise are that of the real effectiveness of these measures, insufficient according to many epidemiologists, and especially of the capacity of the authorities to control the entries and exits of each city in an agglomeration where there are two million. trips every day.
- Trump in the hospital -
The pandemic has killed at least 1,024,093 people around the world, according to a report established by AFP from official sources on Friday, and more than 34.3 million cases have been diagnosed.
In the United States, President Donald Trump, who tested positive for Covid-19, was admitted Friday evening to a military hospital, while ensuring, in a brief video message, that he was "very well".
A little earlier, it had been announced that the doctors had injected him with a dose of the experimental cocktail of synthetic antibodies developed by the company Regeneron.
According to his spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany, this hospitalization, which should last "a few days", was decided "for the sake of extreme caution" and on the recommendation of medical experts.
Donald Trump will work there "from the presidential offices" of the Walter Reed hospital, she said.
She added later that after consulting with specialists, Mr. Trump was receiving the antiviral remdesivir, and that he "did not need extra oxygen."
- Human anti-virus chain -
While almost everywhere in Europe, faced with this second wave of the virus, we are getting more and more cautious, these restrictions are greeted with more or less docility.
In Germany, the "anti-corona" continue to make noise.
Opposition to mask wearing and restrictions has caused a deterioration in the political climate in recent weeks and thousands of opponents were expected in Constance, southern Germany, for a weekend of protests under heavy police protection .
Highly awaited Saturday: a huge human chain must be organized on the shores of Lake Constance at the initiative of "free thinkers", a motley gathering of opponents to measures related to the Covid-19 pandemic who have already held two protests with tens of thousands of people in Berlin during the summer.
Their goal is to bring together enough people to reach Austria and Switzerland, with the shores of Lake Constance located in three countries.
Finally in Costa Rica, researchers have been experimenting for several weeks on 27 patients with a treatment against the coronavirus based on horse plasma.
Scientists at the Clodomiro Picado Institute at the University of Costa Rica inoculated six horses with proteins from the coronavirus and then collected the antibodies developed by the animals, contained in their blood plasma.
After in vitro tests, a diluted version of the plasma is now being tested on people with the virus but before the onset of severe symptoms, with good preliminary results.
© 2020 AFP