Nearly 20 months after pandemic lockdowns first began, governments across Europe are beginning to tighten restrictions again amid the latest wave of new coronavirus cases, threatening the gains that the region has made against the pandemic. France is racing to offer booster shots to all adults and will not renewContinue Reading
Good morning. We’re covering booster shots in France, Peng Shuai’s piercing accusations in China and the Pakistani madrasa that has educated many Taliban leaders. A French rush for boosters Thousands rushed to book appointments for coronavirus booster shots on Thursday after the French government said that health passes would soonContinue Reading
LONDON — In the four months since Prime Minister Boris Johnson took a gamble by lifting virtually all of England’s coronavirus restrictions, his country has settled into a disquieting new normal: more than 40,000 new cases a day and a thousand or so fatalities every week. Yet those grim numbersContinue Reading
South Korean officials said on Tuesday that they had shut down a religious facility in the city of Cheonan after 210 of its 427 residents tested positive for the coronavirus this week, an outbreak that comes as the country’s cases surge to record highs. At least 191 of the settlement’sContinue Reading
Austria will go into a nationwide lockdown on Monday and impose a coronavirus vaccination mandate in February, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said on Friday. It is the first such lockdown in a European nation since the spring, and the first national vaccine mandate on the continent. “Nobody wants a lockdown —Continue Reading
A scientist who has pored over public accounts of early Covid-19 cases in China reported on Thursday that an influential World Health Organization inquiry had likely gotten the early chronology of the pandemic wrong. The new analysis suggests that the first known patient sickened with the coronavirus was a vendorContinue Reading
Two states in Austria will restrict public life for vaccinated and unvaccinated people starting next week as hospitals strain under the latest surge in coronavirus infections. The general lockdown in the states — Salzburg and Upper Austria — goes into affect a week after the country imposed broad restrictions onContinue Reading
German lawmakers approved tighter Covid restrictions on Thursday, a day after the head of the national agency responsible for monitoring the pandemic warned of a “really bad Christmas” and said that the coronavirus had again become a countrywide emergency. “Every man and mouse who can vaccinate should vaccinate now,” LotharContinue Reading
Spain’s Basque region on Tuesday announced new restrictions on gatherings to control its latest coronavirus wave, after months in which Spain stood out as a country that had largely reined in the pandemic, in particular thanks to a high vaccination rate. The virus has spread unevenly in Spain in recentContinue Reading
Unvaccinated Austrians ages 12 and older awoke on Monday morning confined to their homes for all but essential activities, as one of the strictest coronavirus lockdowns in Europe went into effect to battle a surge in infections. Under new rules announced by the government on Sunday, adults and minors 12Continue Reading