Outdoor group socialising allowed from Monday in England; Merkel presses German states to get tough with Covid curbs; Dr Birx says earlier action would have mitigated US deaths
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Dr Deborah Birx, who coordinated the White House coronavirus task force under President Donald Trump, believes the Covid death toll in the United States would have been substantially lower if the government had responded more effectively.
Reuters: In an interview with CNN, parts of which were released before broadcast later on Sunday, Birx said there was an “excuse” for the initial surge of deaths last year as the government grappled with the start of the pandemic.
“There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge,” Birx said. “All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”
More than 542,000 people have died from Covid in the United States, according to a Reuters tally, and almost 30 million have been infected.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel pressed Germany’s states on Sunday to step up efforts to curb rapidly rising coronavirus infections, and raised the possibility of introducing curfews to try to get a third wave under control, Reuters reports.
Merkel expressed dissatisfaction that some states were choosing not to halt a gradual reopening of the economy even as the number of infections per 100,000 people over seven days had risen over 100 - a measure she and regional leaders had agreed on in early March.
“We have our emergency brake ... unfortunately, it is not respected everywhere. I hope that there might be some reflection on this,” Merkel said in a rare appearance on broadcaster ARD’s Anne Will talk show.
Coronavirus infections have risen rapidly in recent weeks, driven by more transmissible strains of the virus. Merkel’s chief of staff warned earlier on Sunday that the country was in the most dangerous phase of the pandemic and must suppress the virus now or risk dangerous mutations that were immune to vaccines.
On Sunday, the incidence of the virus per 100,000 rose to 130 from 104 a week ago. The number of total confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 17,176 to 2,772,401, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday. The reported death toll rose by 90 to 75,870, the tally showed.
from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3swgFND
