France will make working from home compulsory three days a week to contain the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant.
Workers that have the option to stay away from the office must do so a minimum of three days and if possible four days to help reduce social contacts, Prime Minister Jean Castex said Monday.
He announced the measures — which are due to enter into force on Jan. 3 for three weeks — after a special cabinet meeting convened by President Emmanuel Macron amid skyrocketing coronavirus infections in the country.
“In France and in Europe, the health situation is, as you know, extremely tense,” Castex told reporters. The government refrained from ordering a curfew for New Year’s Eve.
France reported a daily record of more than 100,000 new cases on Saturday fueled by omicron’s rapid spread, mirroring significant infection rates in the U.K. and Italy. Macron, who is widely expected to seek a second term in April’s presidential election, has vowed to contain the virus while shielding the economy from another full lockdown.
More than 16,000 people are currently hospitalized for Covid in France, including some 3,300 in intensive care — above the crisis threshold of 3,000 set by health officials.
TEL AVIV – An Israeli hospital began administering fourth coronavirus vaccine doses to a test group of health-care workers on Monday, in what its calling the worlds first trial of its kind, as the country weighs approval of a wider campaign for at-risk Israelis in efforts to stem the rapid spike in infections by the omicron variant.
The trial at Sheba Medical Center in central Israel involves 150 medical workers who received third doses before Aug. 20 and have antibody counts below 700, signifying low protection, according to a statement from the hospital. The trial is being carried out in conjunction with Israel’s Health Ministry.
“It’s one jab in the shoulder, but one giant leap for mankind,” said Jacob Levee, director of the hospital’s heart transplant unit and the first recipient of the fourth vaccine at Sheba.
He said he wanted to get vaccinated to protect his heart transplant patients, whose “immunity following the third dose has diminished significantly, so they’re exposed,” according to research at Sheba.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced that Israel would be the first country in the world to offer fourth Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses to citizens over the age of 60, people with compromised immune systems and health-care workers. He called on health-care facilities across the country to prepare to roll out the campaign, but the decision has not yet been approved by Health Ministry Director Nachman Ash.
The Sheba study will produce initial results within the coming days and weeks, which may help steer the next steps in the fourth-dose immunization campaign, said its head researcher, Gili Regev-Yochai.
“This research is very important because then we will have initial data about the safety,” Regev-Yochai said.
One major unknown about coronavirus vaccines is whether, and with what frequency, additional doses will continue to generate strong immune system responses, as opposed to weaker or even immune-dampening effects, if administered too close to the previous shot.
Sheba Hospital spokesperson Steve Walz said the study is designed “to find out if indeed this fourth vaccine will show it produces enough antibodies to fend off omicron and delta,” as well as whether there is any “adverse reaction,” other than the usual post-vaccine side effects.
“The idea is before the government decides whether to go ahead with another vaccination campaign, to check the efficacy of this vaccine,” he said.
The advisory board to Israel’s coronavirus cabinet concluded last week that the potential benefits of a fourth vaccine dose far outweigh its risks. The board pointed to early signs that immunity has waned since the first Israelis received their third shot in the summer. It warned that, with the omicron variant spreading rapidly across the country and the globe, it could not afford to wait.
“We can’t close our eyes and think happy thoughts,” Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said in an interview with public broadcaster Kan on Monday. He cited a rise in infections and serious illnesses caused by the omicron variant, mostly among the unvaccinated. “We have to prepare,” he said.
According to Israeli Health Ministry data, 1,760 people tested positive on Sunday for the coronavirus, accounting for almost 2 percent of all tests performed. There are 87 people hospitalized in serious condition, including 38 on ventilators.
Early data from South Africa, where omicron first surged and has in recent days been receding, suggests that the variant may cause 80 percent fewer hospitalizations and instances of severe symptoms than delta and other previous variants.
But the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that this might not be the case in all other countries.
“Let’s be careful not to extrapolate what we [are] seeing in South Africa across the continent or across the world,” Africa CDC Director John Nkengasong said Thursday.
On Friday, the United Kingdom reported 122,186 cases, a record high. One in 20 – a ratio that has perhaps grown to as many as 1 in 10 people – are believed to be carrying the virus in London, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Israeli health experts have said that even if omicron cases are milder than those in previous waves, the sheer number of infected people could overwhelm hospitals.
“In the past 10 days, the number of people who have tested positive for the omicron variant rose from 20 a day to 450. That is more than a twentyfold rise within 10 days,” Eran Segal, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science and consultant to the Israeli coronavirus cabinet, said in an interview Sunday with the Israeli news site Ynet. “I anticipate that within a week we’ll see thousands of people testing positive for omicron, and within two weeks we may cross the record high since the beginning of the pandemic – around 10,000 people testing positive daily.”
The number of Covid-19 cases crossed 14.75 million across Southeast Asia, with 22,230 new cases reported on Sunday (December 26). New deaths are at 281, bringing accumulated Covid-19 deaths in Asean to 302,830.
Malaysia reported 3,160 new Covid-19 infections as of midnight Saturday, bringing the national total to 2,738,401, according to the health ministry. Some 156 of the new cases are imported, with 3,004 being local transmissions, data released by the ministry showed. Another 25 deaths have been reported, bringing the death toll to 31,315.
Meanwhile, Vietnam’s Ministry of Health has told four central-level hospitals to provide training in resuscitation services to staff without these skills who work in Covid-19 healthcare facilities in HCM City. The city had earlier said it needed 1,000 doctors and 2,000 nurses, including 300 doctors and 600 nurses who specialise in resuscitation, to work at Covid field hospitals, resuscitation centres, and so-called three-level Covid hospitals in the city.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate and veteran who helped abolish apartheid in South Africa, died on Sunday at the age of 90.
South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa said the churchman had helped liberate the country and was an iconic spiritual leader, anti-apartheid activist and global human-rights campaigner.
He said Tutu was one of the key driving forces behind the movement to end the policy of racial segregation and discrimination enforced in South Africa from 1948 until 1991.
Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his non-violent role in the struggle to end the apartheid system.
However, South African officials gave no details on the cause of death.
China sent a new resource satellite into planned orbit from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north Chinas Shanxi Province on Sunday.
The resource satellite, ZY-1 02E, was launched at 11:11 a.m. (Beijing Time) by a Long March-4C carrier rocket.
The satellite, developed by the China Academy of Space Technology, will work in the solar synchronous orbit. It carries a near-infrared camera, a hyperspectral camera and an infrared camera, according to the China National Space Administration.
Another resource satellite, ZY-1 02D, was sent into orbit on Sept. 12, 2019. The two resource satellites will form a network to meet the current need for medium-resolution remote sensing data in natural resources monitoring and investigation, mineral exploration, and geological environment monitoring.
They will also provide services for sectors such as disaster reduction, environmental protection, housing development, transportation and agriculture.
The Long March-4C carrier rocket also sent into orbit a small satellite that belongs to Beijing 101 Middle School. It carries payloads such as a small imaging camera, intelligent processing equipment, and equipment for conducting experiments on semiconductor thermoelectric generation.
It will carry out auxiliary geography teaching, scientific and technological experiments and other popular science activities for middle school students.
It was the 403rd flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series.
At least 46 people have been confirmed dead with five other missing in the massive floods that strike several states in Malaysia.
The number of people who died in the massive floods in Malaysia has risen to 46 as of Saturday, authorities said.
Besides those confirmed dead, at least five other individuals have been reported missing, Inspector-General of Police Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani told a media briefing.
He also said 68 stretches of roads in Kelantan, Pahang, Negeri Sembilan and Selangor were still closed due to the floods.
Rescuers evacuate flood victims in Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia, Dec. 20, 2021. (Photo by Chong Voon Chung/Xinhua)
The number of displaced persons due to flooding in Malaysia has dropped to some 37,526 in five states as of 10:00 p.m. local time (1400 GMT) Saturday, according to data from the Malaysian social welfare department.
The worst-hit state is Pahang along the east coast of Peninsula Malaysia, with over 20,000 people being evacuated to flood relief centers, followed by Selangor state with over 16,000 evacuated.
The country’s meteorological department has warned of more rain and storms on Sunday in parts of Peninsula Malaysia and the northern Borneo state of Sabah.
While airline travel was starting to pick back up before the Omicron variant emerged, the massive spike in positive COVID-19 cases seen in recent weeks has become a cause for concern to airlines in keeping airline staff and passengers safe.
The holiday season travel stress has only escalated amid the surge of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, with several airlines reporting staff shortages from the spread of the coronavirus, leaving passengers with delayed or cancelled flights.
According to FlightAware, a flight-tracking site, 880 flights within, into or out of the United States were cancelled on Dec. 25. That’s among the approximately 2,521 flights that have been cancelled so far this day worldwide, reported National Public Radio (NPR).
“U.S.-based airlines such as Delta, United and JetBlue are also seeing high cancellation numbers,” the report said. Delta alone has cancelled 290, or 14 percent, of its Christmas Day flights, and American Airlines (AAL) cancelled 88 flights on Saturday.
Their operations have been “running smoothly” but that COVID-related sick calls led them to pre-cancel some of their scheduled flights for the day, and affected customers were notified the previous day, AAL was quoted as saying in a statement.
International tourists arrive at San Francisco International Airport, the United States, Nov. 8, 2021. (Photo by Li Jianguo/Xinhua)
“While airline travel was starting to pick back up before the Omicron variant emerged, the massive spike in positive COVID-19 cases seen in recent weeks has become a cause for concern to airlines in keeping airline staff and passengers safe,” reported NPR.
Lawmakers are calling on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to make a major change and require proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test in order to travel on all domestic flights, it added.
“Ensuring the health and safety of air travelers and their destination communities is critical to mitigating the ongoing COVID-19 surge, especially as the virus continues to evolve,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the CDC and FAA on Monday.
Vaccination protocols for international travelers coming into the United States are already in place, according to the CDC.
WASHINGTON – The pandemic helped suppress U.S. population growth across the country, new data released this past week showed – but in the District of Columbia, the decrease was particularly sharp: After steadily growing for a decade and a half, the city shrank this year by around 20,000 residents, or 2.9%.
Most of the loss was due to domestic migration (more people moving out than in), raising questions about whether the exodus is a blip or heralds a flattening out or even a reversal of the city’s long growth spurt.
About 23,000 more people moved out of the city than moved into it between July 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021, according to Census Bureau estimates, a decrease that was offset by a gain of about 2,100 people from natural increase (births over deaths) and about 1,100 from international migration.
In 2020, by comparison, Washington lost just 658 people through domestic migration. Before 2018, the domestic migration numbers had been positive going back to 2008. The city’s population had been growing since 2006.
The pandemic is a large driver of the change, analysts say. A report this summer using U.S. Postal Service data found that the District lost at least 17,000 more people during 2020 than the previous year, with at least 9,000 of the loss appearing to be permanent.
The report, by Ginger Moored, a financial analyst at the city’s Office of Revenue Analysis, showed 29,362 more people moved out of the city than into it during 2020, with moves accelerating after March. The net loss was much higher that year than in 2019, which saw 11,480 net moves out, the report said.
The analysis, which studied change of address forms filed with the USPS by individuals and families, found that while there was some decline in the number of moves into the District in 2020, about 90% of the increase in net moves out were due to additional people leaving the city.
Helen and Josh Folk didn’t expect to be among them last year. They had lived in a Capitol Hill rowhouse for a decade and had planned to stay there with their two small children for a few more years. Then the pandemic hit.
Helen, 34, a customer-facing manager for a national bank, was suddenly using the kitchen table as her office space – right across from her husband, Josh, 39, an executive at IdeaScale, a cloud-based software company. Conference calls and Zoom meetings became an elaborate dance as the couple ducked in and out of bedrooms or out the front door.
The Folks had planned to move to Northern Virginia by the time their girls started elementary school, but the pandemic pushed them to make the move earlier.
“All of the things we loved about living in the city – being able to walk around and go to restaurants, hanging out with friends, the social aspect – none of that was happening,” Helen Folk said. “It made us start to reevaluate what we wanted.”
A year ago, they moved to a house in Great Falls, Va., where each adult has a separate office space and the yard is big enough for the kids to play in and for friends to safely visit. “There are things we miss about D.C., but with the pandemic and having two little kids, we wouldn’t exactly have been able to enjoy those things anyway,” she said.
It’s not clear whether all of those who moved are gone for good.
When filling out the USPS forms, people mark their moves as permanent or temporary; the report estimated that of the increase of 17,882 net moves out, 9,335 were permanent and 8,547 were temporary.
The wave of departures comes even as decennial census data show the city grew by a robust 14.6% between 2010 and 2020. That growth came largely in the first part of the decade, peaking in 2013 before slowing down. Last year was the first time in a decade and a half that the city registered a net population loss. A shrinking population translates to less revenue for the city from income tax, real estate tax and sales tax.
The decline was confirmed by apartment vacancy rates, which shot up from 2.6% in the third quarter of 2019 to 7.7% in the first quarter of 2021, said the city’s interim chief financial officer, Fitzroy Lee.
The sharp drop in the District’s population was no surprise to local real estate professionals, who have for months been seeing residents ditch high-density parts of town in search of more space.
Harrison Beacher, the 2022 president of the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors (GCAAR), said condominium sales have limped along through much of the pandemic, prompting some sellers to take their apartments off the market until spring 2022 in hopes of securing a better offer.
Neighborhoods full of high-density buildings and shared living options have cooled off as buyers looked to parts of the District with detached single-family homes, backyards, and access to nature and walking paths, setting records for sales in neighborhoods that had previously been considered less desirable, Beacher said.
“In moderate and higher income households, you don’t really see as many people leaving the area as you see them looking at slightly different neighborhoods,” Beacher said. “People were unwilling to pay as much for a tiny box.”
There are signs that the past year was an anomaly. As of May 2021, the USPS data show net moves out of the city have returned to 2019 levels. “But for the city to regain the population it lost, we would need to see an influx of residents into the city at levels we have not seen in several years,” it said.
The vacancy rate has recently returned to below the pre-pandemic level, registering at 1.8% in the third quarter of this year, Lee said, adding that this offered hope that the slowdown would be temporary.
“Frankly, I was worried until I started seeing the later data from USPS and the vacancy rate,” he said. “There is evidence that people are coming back.”
The Zip codes registering the largest declines in 2020 were areas with relatively high numbers of multifamily buildings, including Dupont and Logan circles, Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, 14th and U Street NW, and Southwest Waterfront.
Zip codes with the fewest losses tended to be toward the edges of the city and have more single-family homes such as Shepherd Park, Takoma, Chevy Chase, Friendship Heights and Barnaby Woods. At least 31% of people leaving D.C. are believed to have moved to places in the Washington metro area, with Bethesda and Arlington gaining some of the highest percentages of people moving from the District, according to the report.
Zip code 20003, which includes Navy Yard, a neighborhood with many multifamily buildings, had the largest influx from other parts of the city. “New apartments coming online and offering incentives for moving in may be why Navy Yard and adjacent areas were able to attract so many residents from other parts of the city,” the report said.
William Frey, a senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, said the patterns suggest the city’s population may bounce back after the pandemic.
“I think it says that D.C., with its exceptionally large young population of students, interns and others who moved from out of state – many of them renters – who are more primed to make a covid-related move, will have lost a higher share of residents than many other cities,” he said. “The fact that a good portion of the D.C. out movers were labeled temporary, or destined to D.C. suburbs, suggests that there is a good chance the District can see a population rebound once the pandemic has subsided.”
Even before the pandemic, the city’s meteoric growth had slowed considerably, which Lee attributed to rising housing prices and scarce availability.
The prices of homes in the District have remained high through the pandemic. Even with a population drop, a housing shortage – and limited supply of single-family homes – has continued an imbalance of supply and demand that favors sellers and pushes home prices up and up, Beacher said.
In D.C., the median sale price for homes in November was $725,000 – a nearly 3% increase from the previous month and a more than 6.5% increase from the same time period in 2020, according to the GCAAR.
For this reason, several real estate agents said, some families have opted to leave the District, looking at homes in the suburbs and exurbs of Maryland and Virginia. In Montgomery County, just over the D.C. border, the median sale price for homes was $525,000, up more than 7% from November 2020, according to GCAAR data.
“When people were in their house in 2020 and realized they needed more space to do more things inside, they realized there are limited options to do that in the city unless you have a million dollar budget,” Beacher said.
Bic DeCaro, a real estate agent in Northern Virginia, said the transition to remote work pushed many to begin looking beyond D.C. borders.
Prince William County, Loudoun County and even parts of Warren County have become pandemic destinations, DeCaro said.
“When people feel they can leave and work remotely from anywhere, permanently, they start thinking about quality of life,” DeCaro said. “If they can get paid the same amount they’re getting paid to live in a city, but live in a cheaper area, then all of a sudden they can save more money, they can move to a better school district, they can get a head start on living in the place they want to retire to.”
But Steven Martin, a senior demographer at the Urban Institute, said the latest numbers don’t necessarily signify a radical shift, saying in a city where upward of 100,000 people move in and out each year, the current numbers are not out of line.
“Movement in is happening, just at a lower rate than before, so people are still being attracted into the area,” he said. “I’m not ready to decree that a new age has dawned in D.C.”
The D.C. government has cast doubt on the accuracy of the 2020 Census count, which helps inform the latest estimates. The District is conducting its own analysis of the count to determine if or by how much its population may have been undercounted.
Deputy Mayor John Falcicchio cautioned against drawing long-term conclusions on the viability of urban living or high-density housing based on one year of population data, noting the strong home sales throughout the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the city is doing what it can to lure people back: Mayor Muriel E. Bowser this past week said coronavirus vaccines would be required for patrons to enter restaurants, gyms and other businesses starting in mid-January, and a mask mandate was reinstated amid rising coronavirus case counts.
These measures, Falcicchio said, are part of a long-term strategy to make D.C. visitors and residents feel secure.
“We want to make sure when people come back and enjoy the vibrancy the city has to offer that they know we’ll put in more steps to make the city safe,” he said. “We’re on our way to a comeback.”
India will begin vaccinating teenagers from the ages of 15 to 18 from Jan. 3 and also administer booster vaccine doses for health-care workers a week later, as omicron-fueled Covid-19 cases spike, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.
Citizens who are older than 60 years and suffer from co-morbidities can also get booster shots of Covid vaccines in January, Modi said in a televised national address.
“India needs to be vigilant about the spread of the coronavirus,” Modi said, adding that people should not pay attention to rumors nor panic about rising infection numbers.
India has so far reported 415 cases of omicron infections from across 17 states, according to the latest data from the federal Health Ministry Saturday.
The South Asian nation’s confirmed Covid cases so far total nearly 34.8 million.
“In our country, a nasal vaccine and the world’s first DNA vaccine will also start soon,” Modi said, adding that “since the beginning, India’s fight against Corona has been based on scientific principles, scientific opinions and scientific patterns.”
Besides widening the vaccination drive, Modi urged citizens to follow Covid-appropriate behavior, but stopped short of announcing any nationwide curbs to stem omicron’s spread.
His government has kept the budget loose to support the economy, while the nation’s central bank has vowed to keep monetary policy easy to ensure a durable recovery even as infections tick up.
“This is a material and a positive change in the country’s strategy against the virus,” said Abhay Agarwal, fund manager at Piper Serica Advisors Pvt. “The investor community had been wondering on when India would expand its vaccination band as a number of countries have included the younger population in the inoculation plan.”
KUDAMATSU, Japan – Kyushu Railway Co. (JR Kyushu) has unveiled a new Shinkansen bullet train called Kamome to be used on the Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen line scheduled to open next autumn.
The unveiling to the media was held Wednesday at the Kasado Works of Hitachi, Ltd. in Kudamatsu, Yamaguchi Prefecture. The new model was manufactured there based on the N700S, a next-generation Shinkansen series developed by Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai).
Kamome’s exterior is mainly white, while the bottom is red as a nod to JR Kyushu’s corporate color. It was designed by Eiji Mitooka, an industrial designer who worked on the luxury sleeper train Seven Stars in Kyushu.
Before the new Shinkansen line, which will run between Saga Prefecture’s Takeo Onsen and Nagasaki stations, will go into operation, the railway company plans to build four Kamome trains, each of which will comprise six cars, and transfer them to a railroad depot in Nagasaki Prefecture.
Rescuers evacuate flood victims in Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia, Dec. 20, 2021. (Photo by Chong Voon Chung/Xinhua)
International tourists arrive at San Francisco International Airport, the United States, Nov. 8, 2021. (Photo by Li Jianguo/Xinhua)
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