It seems that Europe is waiting for a “long period of rest” in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. This assumption was voiced by the Director of the European Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Hans Kluge. His assumptions are based on a combination of factors – the coming spring, the less severe course of the “omicron” and the high level of vaccination of Europeans. “All this can be seen as a truce that permanent peace can bring us,” concluded Kluge, who compared the fight against COVID-19 to a full-fledged military conflict.
In Israel, at least 30 infections with the lambda strain of coronavirus and 2 cases with the mu strain have been detected. Both strains were discovered several months ago. They were found in South America. They do not provoke a severe course of the disease and are not too contagious. And therefore, they do not cause concern among experts and WHO.
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Spain plans to abolish the mandatory wearing of protective masks on the street. The Council of Ministers plans to adopt a decision on February 8, and the next day it will come into force.
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Almost all restrictions are being lifted in Switzerland: from February 17, there will be no need for masks and QR codes.
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The Swedish government has made a similar decision: starting from February 9, bars and restaurants will be able to work there without restrictions, and in public transport during peak hours it will be possible not to wear a mask.
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Vaccination certificates or certificates of the transferred coronavirus are no longer needed in the Czech Republic at the entrance to restaurants and similar establishments. It will also stop mandatory testing for COVID-19, introduced earlier in schools and at a number of enterprises. But wearing masks indoors will remain among the restrictive measures.
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New Zealand, which kept its borders closed for two long years due to the coronavirus, announced that starting from the end of February, it will gradually begin to accept foreigners. It was planned that this would happen earlier, but the plan for the gradual opening of the borders was disrupted by a wave of the “omicron” strain.
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In Germany, linguists summed up the results of the year, which determined the main anglicism of the German language. They became the verb boostern (booster), denoting a booster (additional) vaccination against COVID-19, which must be done a few months after full vaccination.
