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Thursday March 28, 2024

Covid third wave peak in France ‘appears to be behind us’: PM

By AFP
April 23, 2021

PARIS: The peak of the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in France "appears to be behind us", Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Thursday, while travel restrictions will be relaxed from early next month.

He told reporters there had been a "genuine fall in the circulation of the virus over the last 10 days", confirming that restrictions confining people to a 10-km radius of their homes would be dropped from May 3.

France is currently under its third lockdown to stem the coronavirus but this time it has been considerably more relaxed than the previous ones, with outdoor activities encouraged to promote mental health.

Most non-essential shops have been closed, however, along with cafes, restaurants and also cultural venues, with players in many sectors piling pressure on the government for a reopening after months of closure.

Castex said "shops, certain cultural and sporting activities and the cafe terraces" could reopen "around mid-May", depending on the evolution of the health situation. He emphasised that the government could also allow reopenings on a regional basis starting with those areas with lower virus prevalence.

The European Commission is looking to launch legal action against AstraZeneca for underdelivering Covid-19 vaccine doses to the EU, hobbling the bloc’s early rollout of jabs, diplomats said on Thursday.

The EU executive informed member state envoys of its plans on Wednesday, the diplomats told AFP, confirming information first published by the Politico website.

They said any lawsuit against AstraZeneca would begin in a Belgian court -- the jurisdiction agreed under the commission’s contract with the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company. A Commission spokesman, Eric Mamer, told journalists that "no decision has yet been taken".

Another spokesman, Stefan De Keersmaecker, added: "As you know, AstraZeneca is not delivering the number of doses which have been agreed upon in the contract... This is one of the reasons why we keep our options open together with member states to take any further steps."

One EU diplomat said the commission wants EU member states -- which also had a role in negotiating the vaccine contracts for the bloc -- to back the lawsuit and to say so by the end of this week.

"The problem is that the member states do not know the complaint" being formulated, the diplomat said. "It is a sensitive procedure and you do not want to further damage trust in the vaccine."

Another diplomat said that "not all member states are in agreement" on taking the company to court, stressing that their aim was simply to have AstraZeneca deliver the doses it had promised in its contract.Meanwhile, fake doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine were being sold in Mexico and Poland for as much as $2,500 a shot, the US drugmaker and an official confirmed.

At a clinic in Mexico some 80 people received bogus vaccines, which appeared to have been physically harmless though offered no protection against the potentially deadly disease ravaging the country, a report in the Wall Street Journal said.

Mexico’s government spokesman on Covid-19 Hugo Lopez-Gatell said "no product was found that could affect" the health of those scammed, adding several people had been arrested. Lopez-Gatell said the false drugs were offered on social networks for up to $2,500 per unit and were detected by cyber police.

The vials were found in beer coolers and were initially identified by fabricated lot numbers and expiration dates, Mexican officials said. Confiscated vials of bogus Covid vaccines in Poland contained a cosmetic substance, thought to be anti-wrinkle cream, the company said.

"We are cognizant that in this type of environment -- fueled by the ease and convenience of e-commerce and anonymity afforded by the internet -- there will be an increase in the prevalence of fraud, counterfeit and other illicit activity as it relates to vaccines and treatments for Covid-19," a Pfizer spokesperson told ABC News.