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Hungary has submitted to Brussels a national plan for accessing the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund, which it had previously threatened to veto over proposals to link some payments to rule of law conditions, the European Commission has said.
AFP reports:
The €750-billion rescue package of grants and loans comprises funds contributed by the EU’s 27 member states to help the bloc’s economies hard hit by the coronavirus.
Budapest and Warsaw threatened to veto the fund last year, along with the entire EU budget, over proposals to link some fund payments to rule of law conditions, describing it as “political blackmail”.
Every person living in Germany will have developed immunity against Covid-19 within the next one and a half years, the country’s leading coronavirus expert has predicted, arguing that those who decide not to get vaccinated are certain to eventually catch a virus that will continue to circulate around the population.
Christian Drosten, the director of the Charité Hospital’s Institute of Virology in Berlin, said in an interview podcast with broadcaster NDR that debates around herd immunity might be important for political planning but were largely “irrelevant” from a patient’s point of view.
“Everyone will gain immunity, one hundred percent, not seventy or eighty”, Drosten said. “Either through vaccination or natural infection, because this virus will become endemic”.
The scientist said he expected the virus to continue to silently circulate through the population as social distancing restrictions were lifted, for example via the throats of people who have been vaccinated or children under the age of 12.
“Those who actively choose not to be vaccinated have to know that they are actively opting for a natural infection instead”, Drosten warned. “There’s nothing that can be done about it.”
A third of Germany’s population has received at least one shot of a vaccine, with 35.7 million doses administered by yesterday afternoon. Almost 10% have received two doses of a vaccine.
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