AFP, published on Sunday, February 20, 2022 at 03:20
New measures, new reports and highlights: an update on the latest developments in the Covid-19 pandemic around the world.
– Tension mounts in Ottawa –
“Significant progress” was achieved on Saturday in the evacuation of central Ottawa, paralyzed for weeks by anti-sanitary measures truckers, police said on Saturday who were still working to dislodge a hard core of protesters from the Canadian capital. .
Spraying the protesters with pepper spray, destroying the windows of the vehicles in which some had taken refuge, the authorities had resumed in the afternoon the major axis in front of the Canadian Parliament, where hundreds of trucks had been parked for 23 days.
At least 170 people were arrested on Friday and Saturday, around 50 vehicles towed away, and weapons seized, police said, who also destroyed tents, shacks, food stalls and other structures erected by protesters.
– New anti-pass demonstrations in Paris –
Opponents of the vaccine pass and the health policy of the French government marched again in the streets of Paris and several other cities on Saturday, convinced that the announced reductions in restrictions linked to Covid-19 are only an “electoralist” promise. .
– France: drop in new hospitalizations –
While contaminations have been falling since the end of January in France, hospital pressure also continues to decrease, according to figures published on Saturday by Public Health France. French hospitals currently have 28,632 patients with Covid, compared to 31,522 a week earlier.
This downward trend is also found in critical care services, which receive the most serious cases, in particular in intensive care, with 2,918 patients, against 3,324 a week ago.
As for contaminations, the daily average over seven days stands at 86,509, against 145,619 the previous week.
– More than 5.87 million dead –
The pandemic has officially killed more than 5.87 million people worldwide since the end of December 2019, out of more than 420 million confirmed contaminations, according to a report established by AFP on Saturday at 7:00 p.m. GMT.
The United States is the country with the most deaths (934,951), ahead of Brazil (643,880) and India (511,230).
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, taking into account the excess mortality directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19, that the toll of the pandemic could be two to three times higher than that officially established.