Saturday 18 / May / 2024
Berlin: German soccer fans have been urged not to travel to London for Tuesday's Euro 2020 match against England by a senior official of the World Medical Association.
Concerns abound over the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus, which has resulted in a surge in cases in Britain, prompting Frank Ulrich Montgomery, chairman of the WMA, to tell Bavarian newspaper Passauer Neue Presse: "Anyone who is unvaccinated is acting irresponsibly, given the delta variant prevalent in the UK and its risk of infection.
"Even a vaccinated person who follows the social distancing rules and makes a pilgrimage to the stadium is taking a limited risk," he added.
Germany's nerve-wracking 2-2 draw with Hungary set up Tuesday's clash with England at Wembley Stadium in an encounter that will decide who proceeds to the quarter-finals.
Under current COVID-19 travel restrictions, anyone returning to Germany from Britain must undergo a two-week quarantine, primarily because of the highly contagious variant.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday she would like to see this policy mirrored throughout the European Union.
Crowds of 25,000 attended England's three group games, and now authorities have given the green light for some 45,000 to attend England's encounter with Germany, which is around 50% of the stadium's capacity. That will rise to more than 60,000 for the semi-finals and final match, which will also take place at Wembley.
"I consider this to be populism and I can only advise against travel to see the games," Montgomery said. "I don't understand why Prime Minister Boris Johnson is allowing this."
Vaccine news
The vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioNTech is highly effective against the Delta variant, a Pfizer official said on Thursday.
First identified in India, Delta is becoming the globally dominant COVID-19 variant, according to the World Health Organization.
"The data we have today, accumulating from research we are conducting at the lab and including data from those places where the Indian variant, Delta, has replaced the British variant as the common variant, point to our vaccine being very effective, around 90%, in preventing the coronavirus disease, COVID-19," Alon Rappaport, Pfizer's medical director in Israel, told local broadcaster Army Radio.
Europe
Russia on Thursday reported more than 20,000 new infections and 568 deaths, a peak not seen since January, as the country battles a surging outbreak of the Delta variant exacerbated by a sluggish vaccine rollout.
Of those deaths, 92 were recorded in Moscow — the highest in one day since the start of the pandemic, according to the state-run TASS news agency.
The surge in cases since mid-June has been sparked by the variant first identified in India. It represents some 90% of new infections in Moscow, the city's mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
French President Emmanuel Macron has called on EU countries to "be vigilant because of the much-talked-about delta variant." Speaking ahead of an EU summit in Brussels, Macron added that the EU needed to up its vaccination campaign even more.
"For me, one of the issues of discussion is to be really taking coordinated decisions in terms of opening of borders to third countries and on recognizing vaccines because at this stage we have to limit this to the vaccines that have been approved by the European medical authority," he said.
Malta and the Balearic Islands will be added to England's green list of places that are safe to vis
it without requiring quarantine upon return, UK transport minister Grant Shapps has announced.
"We're adding Malta to the green list," Shapps tweeted. "We're also adding Madeira, the Balearic Islands, several UK Overseas Territories and Caribbean Islands (including Barbados) to the green list."
"Six countries including Tunisia and Haiti will be put on the red list. All these changes will come into effect from Weds 30 June at 4am."
