On Saturday, more than 60 participants of a protest against the lockdown organized by the movement Save Our Rights UK were arrested in the center of London. The London police reported that people were arrested for a variety of offenses, in particular for violating epidemiological norms. Many protesters came to the rally without masks, booed the police, shouted “Shame!” and refused to disperse. “The best Christmas gift is our freedom,” “Give up the masks,” and “Stop controlling us” were the main slogans of the recent rally. Home Secretary Priti Patel thanked the police for their work and recalled that the government had introduced restrictive measures to save as many lives as possible.
On Saturday, shops will reopen and quarantine measures will be relaxed in many European countries after the second lockdown, against the background of a decrease in the number of coronavirus infections. But in the USA, where the pandemic is still raging, restrictions remain in place, in Los Angeles virtually all events are still banned, and in Britain dissenters have recalled the Great Charter of Liberties. In the UK, shops, restaurants and bars will reopen on December 2, but significant restrictions will remain in place across the country, depending on the level of epidemiological threat assigned to each region. However, during the second lockdown, several independent shops and cafes continued to operate by fulfilling online orders, and the owner of a hair salon in northern England refused to comply with the authorities’ order and has now been fined 27,000 pounds ($43,000). Shined Quinn, owner of Quinn Blakey Hairdressers in Oakenshaw, near Bradford, was initially fined £1,000 on November 5 when the second closure was introduced. However, citing the legal provisions of the Great Charter of Liberties of 1215, she did not close her business and continued to serve her clients. Clause 61, to which Quinn refers, granted 25 peers 800 years ago the right to lawful disobedience or rebellion in the case of what they considered unjust leadership. Among the rebels who remembered the Charter of Liberties were a tattoo parlor in Bristol and a children’s entertainment center in Liverpool. Enforcement agencies issuing fines remind Britons that all businesses must comply with today’s laws. Legal experts also say that this provision of the Charter was invalidated and never became part of English law.
The Paris department store Le Printemps Haussmann welcomed its first visitors on Saturday. Against a backdrop of general public fatigue with quarantine restrictions, authorities in many European countries are relaxing measures to allow families to spend the Christmas and New Year holidays together before a possible third and final wave of the pandemic begins and mass vaccination with approved drugs begins. According to Johns Hopkins University, there have been over 61,700,000 infections and over 1.4 million deaths worldwide. However, the true numbers are unknown because testing and data collection methods vary widely around the world. The virus is spreading fastest in Asian and Latin American countries, especially Mexico. The top five countries with the highest number of officially reported cases are as follows: USA, India, Brazil, France, Russia.
In Lombardy, where restrictions will be lifted on Sunday, students protest against online learning. Europe has become the second region in the world, after Latin America and the Caribbean, with the highest number of deaths from the new coronavirus – 400,649 out of a total of 17,606,370 infected. More than 60% of these deaths are attributed to the United Kingdom – 57,551 out of 1.6 million cases. This is followed by Italy (53,677 deaths out of 1.5 million infected), France (51,914 deaths out of 2.2 million cases), Spain (44,668 deaths out of 1.6 million cases) and Russia (39,068 deaths out of 2.2 million Covid-19 diagnoses). In Russia, the second day records a record increase in new cases: on Saturday, this number reached 27,100 – 443 fewer people than the day before.
The lockdown has already been eased in Wales, where shoppers rushed to stores. We explain quickly, simply, and clearly what happened, why it matters, and what happens next. The number of offers should remain: Episodes End of story. Podcast Advertising. In France, where authorities postponed “Black Friday” for retail chains to the following week to avoid giving online retailers an unfair advantage, stores will open on Saturday and residents will be allowed to spend up to 3 hours outside their homes and travel up to 20 km. Poland is also opening its stores this Saturday. In Belgium, stores will open next week, but some restrictive measures will remain in place. Residents of Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands can also expect relief. Italian authorities partially lifted the quarantine in the northern regions of Lombardy and Piedmont and in Calabria in the south on Sunday, changing the risk level from red to orange. Ireland has announced a gradual lifting of restrictions to allow some business owners to return to work and residents to celebrate Christmas together. In a televised address, the country’s prime minister, Micheál Martin, said that “this Christmas cannot and will not be the same as we knew it before,” but noted that the easing of restrictions would provide a respite from the hardships of 2020, especially the past six weeks.
The party congress of the “Alternative for Germany” takes place in the city of Kalkar in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Germany, which until recently successfully coped with the growth of the infection and did not introduce strict restrictions, is currently registering 22 thousand cases daily during the second wave. According to the Robert Koch Institute, the total number of Covid-19 cases in the country has exceeded 1 million, and the number of patients with severe disease requiring intensive care has increased from 360 at the beginning of October to 3500 – according to last week’s data. Despite the rise in infection rates, the far-right Alternative for Germany party is holding a two-day convention with 600 delegates. According to a court order, everyone must wear masks, but many party activists and congress participants refuse to do so. Analysts explain this by the fact that public support for the party has dropped to less than 10%, so the A.d.G. is trying to attract more supporters through a small but radical social movement that accuses Chancellor Angela Merkel of exaggerating the danger of the coronavirus. According to polls, however, the majority of Germans support the government’s approach to the pandemic.
In New York, stores were open on Black Friday. In the United States on Friday, the total number of infected people exceeded 13 million, which became a world record; about 265 thousand Americans have died from Covid-19, about 90 thousand are hospitalized. Officials are concerned that the curve of infection rates will soon spike again due to the fact that millions of Americans traveled to visit for Thanksgiving, which was celebrated on Thursday, despite calls from authorities to stay home. In several states and cities, quarantine measures have been tightened, most notably in Los Angeles, where people who do not live together are banned from gathering indoors. However, the ban does not apply to protests and religious institutions. Restrictions in the second largest city in the United States will continue through December 20. Last week, the state of California imposed a virtually universal nighttime curfew. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has already announced that it will be organizing mass shipments of the vaccine, which is expected to be approved for emergency use soon.
In Toronto, despite the lockdown, the owner of Adamson Barbecue (center) did not decide to close his restaurant. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the country’s vaccination program will be led by General Denis Fortin, who previously led the NATO mission in Iraq and Canadian forces in Afghanistan and Bosnia. “This will be the largest vaccination program in the history of our country,” Trudeau promised. “And, as our experts say, if everything goes well, we have every chance of vaccinating the majority of Canadians by next September.” Canada is also experiencing an increase in coronavirus cases, despite a lockdown in the country’s most populous city, Toronto.
Normally, we get enough vitamin D by spending time outdoors, as it is produced when open areas of our skin are exposed to sunlight. But with the pandemic forcing us to stay indoors more often, the “sunshine vitamin” is in short supply. In England this winter, vitamin D will be given free of charge to people with weak health. This will affect approximately 2.7 million people, primarily those who live in nursing homes or whose health conditions require them to protect themselves from any infection, including coronavirus. A person normally gets vitamin D from sunlight, but this year many people have spent most of their warm time indoors due to lockdowns. In addition, older people and those with darker skin tones need higher doses. While a definitive link between low levels of this vitamin in the blood and the severity of coronavirus infection has not been established, some clinical data suggest that such a relationship may exist.