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The EU aims to halt air travel from the southern African region amid rising concern about a new Covid-19 variant detected in South Africa, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday. Follow FRANCE 24’s live updates for all the latest developments.
10:48 Paris time
German air force to move ICU patients as cases rise
The German air force will begin assisting the transfer of intensive care patients Friday as the government warned that the situation in the country is more serious than at any point in the pandemic.
Citing the sharp rise in cases, Health Minister Jens Spahn said contacts between people need to be sharply reduced to curb the spread of the virus.
“The situation is dramatically serious, more serious than it’s been at any point in the pandemic,” he told reporters in Berlin.
German news agency dpa reported that a Luftwaffe A310 medevac plane will fly seriously ill patients from the southern town of Memmingen to North Rhine-Westphalia state Friday afternoon.
Hospitals in southern and eastern regions of Germany have warned they are running out of intensive care beds because of the large number of seriously ill Covid-19 patients.
The country’s disease control agency said 76,414 newly confirmed cases were reported in the past 24 hours. The Robert Koch Institute, a government agency, said Germany also had 357 new deaths from Covid-19, taking the total since the start of the outbreak to 100,476.
10:15 Paris time
EU plans ’emergency brake to stop air travel’ from southern Africa
In a statement posted on Twitter Friday, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said she would “propose, in close coordination with Member States, to activate the emergency brake to stop air travel from the southern African region”.
The @EU_Commission will propose, in close…
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Source : france24
