Global pandemic update

New Measures, New Reports, and Highlights: An update on the latest developments in the Covid-19 pandemic around the world.

– Lifting restrictions in Manila –

On Monday, Philippine authorities announced that, in effect for a month to contain a record number of Covid cases linked to the highly contagious delta variant, confinement in Manila will be lifted this week and replaced with local measures.

Facilitating capital controls, the country’s true economic lung, should allow businesses in particular to reopen.

– New Zealand: The next disassembly –

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Monday that she will end national containment of the archipelago this week, specifying that it will remain in place in Auckland, the North Island big city where the delta shape first appeared in mid-August.

On the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, about three million New Zealanders will be able to go out again and schools will reopen on Thursday, for the first time in three weeks, Ms Ardern detailed.

– France: Health card reduction in shopping centers –

In France, a health permit will not be mandatory from Wednesday at the entrance to departmental shopping centers where the coronavirus infection rate has remained below the threshold of 200 per 100,000 inhabitants over the course of one week.

There are still exceptions, in 64 shopping centers with an area of ​​u200bu200bmore than 20,000 square meters, located in nine sections.

– New Caledonia is reshaping itself –

A strict 15-day confinement will start on Tuesday in New Caledonia, where three indigenous cases of Covid-19 were detected on Monday while the French archipelago has so far been kept from the disease.

Wearing a mask outside the home becomes mandatory. Schools, colleges, high schools and university will not welcome students anymore. External and inter-island air links have been suspended until further notice, with the exception of medical personnel.

– Italy: Life expectancy is declining –

On Monday, in Italy, the National Institute of Statistics (Istat) announced that Covid-19 reduced life expectancy by 1.2 years in 2020, and for more than four years in some of the hardest-hit provinces.

In 2020, life expectancy at birth was 82 years: 79.7 years for men and 84.4 years for women, compared to 81 years and 85.3 years in 2019.

The differences are significant depending on the region. In the north, in the provinces of Bergamo and Cremona, the heaviest in Italy, men lost 4.3 and 4.5 years, respectively, of life expectancy, and women 3.2 and 2.9 years.

– More than 4.56 million dead –

The COVID-19 pandemic has killed at least 4,565,622 people worldwide since the end of December 2019, according to a report released Monday at 10:00 am GMT by AFP from official sources.

The United States is the country with the highest number of deaths (648,472), ahead of Brazil (583,628), India (440,752), Mexico (263,140) and Peru (198488).

The World Health Organization estimates, taking into account the increase in deaths directly and indirectly related to Covid-19, that the epidemic toll could be two to three times higher than that calculated from the official figures.

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