The world closes borders in the face of the pandemic as protests over curfews increase

• Coronavirus Madrid advances the curfew at 10 p.m., at 9 p.m. the closure of the hostelry

Several countries on Monday reinforced restrictions on their borders in the face of the incessant threat of the coronavirus, amid new protests against curfews, which in the Netherlands caused riots.

The United States joined France, Israel and Sweden in limiting certain arrivals, responding to concerns about new strains of the virus originating in the United Kingdom and South Africa.

“We have to show that we are civic,” Spanish Claudio Barraza told AFP upon his arrival at the main international airport in Paris, after the entry into force of new test rules for arrivals from the EU.

In Mexico, President Andrà © s Manuel López Obrador became the most recent public figure to test positive for the disease.

In Washington, President Joe Biden will reimpose the entry ban on Monday for most non-US citizens who have been to the UK, Brazil, Ireland and much of Europe, adding South Africa to the list, said a senior White House official.

Biden last week tightened the rules on the use of masks and ordered a quarantine for people flying into the country, which on Sunday exceeded 25 million cases.

Since it appeared at the end of 2019, Covid-19 has killed more than 2.1 million people, with more than 99 million registered cases, according to the latest AFP balance from official figures.

By region, the two most affected are Europe, with 699,965 deaths and 32,075,371 infections, and Latin America and the Caribbean, with 573,797 deaths and 18,210,181 cases.

On Sunday, France began requiring a negative PCR test for those arriving by sea and air from neighboring countries of the European Union.

Sweden said it would ban entry from neighboring Norway for three weeks, after cases of the most infectious British strain were detected in Oslo.

In Spain, to curb the epidemic, the government has been applying a night curfew, mobility between regions is very restricted and several of them tightened the measures, such as the one in Madrid, which brought forward the closure of the hostelry at 21:00.

The country is one of the worst hit in Europe, with more than 55,000 deaths and almost 2.5 million infections. Despite this, the Government announced that the Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, will leave his post on Tuesday to campaign as a candidate in the Catalan regional elections.

Fury in Holland

Government measures to curb the spread of the virus continue to face opposition from some citizens. In the Netherlands, protests against the curfew on Sunday degenerated into clashes with the police and looting in cities across the country, a day after a Covid-19 test center in the town of Urk caught fire ( north).

Police used water cannons and dogs in Amsterdam, NOS public television reported, after hundreds of people gathered to protest the curfew between 9:00 p.m. and 4:30 a.m. , which will apply until February 10.

At least 30 people were detained in Eindhoven, where the mayor, John Jorritsma, said that if the country continued “down this road, I think we are headed for civil war.”

In New Zealand, authorities confirmed the first community case of Covid-19 in more than two months in a 56-year-old woman who had just returned from Europe.

The challenges of vaccination

Scientists say the only way to overcome the pandemic is large-scale vaccination, but deployment is stagnant in many places.

Egypt started its program, with a doctor and a nurse receiving the injection of Sinopharm, made in China. In Australia, the medical regulator has approved Pfizer’s vaccine and the first doses are expected to be administered in late February, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday.

On the long-term economic impact, anti-poverty NGO Oxfam said the emergency was exacerbating inequality. “In just nine months, the world’s 1,000 largest fortunes had already recovered the economic losses caused by the pandemic,” the organization said in its annual report on inequalities, but the poorest will need “more It’s a decade to recover from the economic shocks of the crisis. ”