Tens of thousands of people protested in Australia, France, Italy and Greece on Saturday, sparking clashes with police as they railed against COVID-19 measures and government sanctions against the unvaccinated aimed at prodding more people into getting their shots.Dozens of protesters were arrested after an unauthorized march in Sydney, with the city’s police minister calling those who took part “morons.”Organizers had dubbed the protest a freedom rally. Attendees carried signs and banners reading “Wake up Australia” and “Drain the Swamp.”In France, where police deployed tear gas and a water cannon against some protesters, an estimated 160,000 took to the streets in nationwide protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s health pass that will drastically curtail access to restaurants and public spaces for unvaccinated people.’Don’t touch our children'”Freedom, freedom,” chanted demonstrators in France, carrying placards denouncing “Macron, Tyrant,” “Big Pharma shackles freedom” or saying “No to the pass of shame.”The demonstrations highlight the conflict globally between the advice of the World Health Organization and other public health agencies and people who for one reason or another refuse to be vaccinated.In Indonesia and the United Kingdom, governments have eased pandemic restrictions even in the face of surging cases of coronavirus infection.Meanwhile, around 5,000 people demonstrated in Athens, carrying placards touting slogans such as, “Don’t touch our children,” according to an AFP journalist at the scene.Thousands of people protested in at least 80 cities across Italy as Rome tries to slow an upturn in COVID-19 infections. Most were not wearing masks.The Green Pass, an extension of the EU’s digital COVID certificate, will be required starting Aug. 6 for anyone who wants to enter cinemas, museums, indoor swimming pools or sports stadiums, or eat indoors at restaurants.It will serve as proof bearers have either been vaccinated, undergone a recent negative COVID-19 test, or recovered from a coronavirus infection.The decision Thursday to make the pass mandatory for many activities saw a boom in vaccine bookings, up 200% in Italy’s smaller regions, according to COVID-19 emergency chief Francesco Figliuolo.Half of Australia in lockdownEarlier in Sydney, demonstrators pelted officers with potted plants and bottles of water as they defied a monthlong stay-at-home order, a day after authorities suggested the restrictions could remain in place until October.New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was “utterly disgusted” by the protesters whose “selfish actions have compromised the safety of all of us.”Police said they issued nearly 100 fines and arrested 57 people.In Melbourne, six people were arrested. police said.New South Wales Police Minister David Elliott said a team of detectives would be scouring footage to identify and charge as many people as possible in the coming days.”Sydney isn’t immune from morons,” he said.Sydney, a city of more than 5 million people, is struggling to contain an outbreak of the delta variant, first identified in India and now spreading globally.After escaping much of the early pandemic unscathed, about half of Australia’s 25 million people are now in lockdown across several cities.There is growing anger at the restrictions and the conservative government’s failure to provide adequate vaccine supplies.Just 11% of the population is fully vaccinated.Harder to put off shotsIn France, as elsewhere in Europe, the government is making it harder for reluctant citizens to put off getting their shots.Legislation now being considered by lawmakers will make vaccinations compulsory for certain professions, while the controversial health pass will severely restrict social life for holdouts starting at the end of this month.There were signs the tougher measures announced on July 13 were having the desired effect: 48% of the population were fully vaccinated as of Friday, up 8 percentage points from July 10.While more than three-quarters of French people backed Macron’s measures, according to a July 13 Elabe poll for BFMTV, a sizeable and vocal minority do not.Elodie, 34, a care assistant at a Strasbourg nursing home, denounced “the blackmail of caregivers who were at the front line” during the first wave and who are now threatened” with “no more pay” and even being fired.”They’ve been lying to us since the beginning,” she said. 
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Forty-five percent of the Americans who have not been inoculated with COVID-19 vaccines say they definitely do not have any plans to get the shots, according to a new poll.Another 35% are a little less sure and say they will probably not get the vaccines, the survey, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research said.Meanwhile, 3% of those polled said they would definitely get the shots, while 16% say they would probably get the vaccines.In addition, 64% of the unvaccinated Americans who participated in the survey told the pollsters that they had little to no confidence that the vaccines are effective against the COVID-19 variants, including the highly transmissible delta variant. Eighty-six percent of those vaccinated believe the vaccines work.U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky recently called the current U.S. surge in cases “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” because nearly all current patients and those who have recently died from the coronavirus are unvaccinated.Kay Ivey, the governor of Alabama, says it is “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for the current surge in cases.  The Republican governor said the vaccines are “the greatest weapon we have to fight COVID.” She said the unvaccinated “are letting us down.”The European Union’s main drug regulator has given its nod for the use of the Moderna vaccine for use in children 12-17 years old.  The Moderna vaccine is already authorized for people 18 and older.  The European Medicines Agency said in a statement that the protocol for the use of the vaccine with children would be the same as with adults — “two injections in the muscles of the upper arm, four weeks apart.”  The European Commission must give the final approval.Thousands of people have staged an anti-lockdown rally in Sydney, Australia, in defiance of the city’s stay-home order to curb a COVID-19 outbreak. The Associated Press reported that “mounted police and riot officers” were on the scene and several demonstrators were arrested. AP reported that New South Wales police said the demonstration was a breach of public health orders.Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Saturday that there are more than 193 million confirmed global COVID cases with more than 4 million deaths.Some information for this report came from the Associated Press. 
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The United States says it is buying 200 million more doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to anticipate future needs, including the possibility of booster shots as well as doses for children under 12 if regulators approve its use.White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday the additional doses would be delivered between this fall and spring of next year.She said the Biden administration is “going to prepare for every contingency” and wants to have “maximum flexibility” to deal with future possibilities.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve any COVID-19 vaccine for children under 12, but drugmakers have been testing their vaccines’ efficacy and safety in that age group.Health officials have begun to discuss the possibility of booster shots, but so far have said that Americans who are fully vaccinated do not need them at this time.In Europe, regulators Friday recommended approval of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for 12- to 17-year-olds. The European Medicines Agency has already approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for use by teens.The approval paves the way for the European Commission and individual European governments to follow suit and allow the vaccine for teens.In another development Friday, the World Health Organization called for all countries to work together to investigate the origins of COVID-19, a day after China rejected plans by the WHO for another investigation.WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said another investigation is not about “politics” or a “blame game.” He said it is “about basically a requirement we all have to try to understand how the pathogen came into the human population.”The top Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, called Friday for a congressional investigation into the origins of COVID-19, saying he has more evidence that the virus was leaked from a Chinese laboratory.China has repeatedly rejected that theory.Commuters crowd a bus promoting the use of face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 23, 2021.The vice minister of the Chinese National Health Commission, Zeng Yixin, said Thursday the WHO’s proposal to reopen its investigation into a Chinese lab leak as the source of the global outbreak lacked “respect for common sense and an arrogant attitude toward science.” He said China “can’t possibly accept such a plan.”An investigation China and the WHO conducted earlier this year concluded it was “extremely unlikely” that a Wuhan lab leak was the source of the virus. Some international experts say, however, that Chinese scientists wielded too much influence in determining the results of the investigation.In Japan on Friday, after a one-year pandemic delay, the Tokyo Olympics formally opened.The event is being held amid tens of thousands of empty seats in Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium, with only about 900 dignitaries and other officials attending because of COVID-19 precautions.The Japanese public is broadly opposed to holding the Games, fearing they will worsen Japan’s already deteriorating pandemic situation.In New Zealand, officials announced the suspension of the country’s quarantine-free travel arrangement with Australia, as that country struggles to bring an outbreak of the highly contagious delta variant under control.“This is not a decision we have taken lightly, but it is the right decision to keep New Zealanders safe,” the country’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said Friday.India’s health ministry said Friday it had recorded more than 35,000 new COVID-19 cases and 483 deaths in the previous 24-hour period.In the United States, some local health officials recommended reinstituting mask mandates because of the spread of the delta variant. Washington state’s top epidemiologist, Dr. Scott Lindquist, recommended that everyone wear a mask in crowded indoor places regardless of whether they have been vaccinated.Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on Friday cited increasing hospitalizations across the state in encouraging people to wear masks indoors if they could not socially distance.According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, worldwide cases of COVID-19 have reached nearly 193.2 million. Global deaths stand at 4.14 million.
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