COVID-19 Daily - July 23, 2021: Hungary introduces mandatory vaccine for health care providers; over 200 million Europeans have been vaccinated!

The European Union has announced that the threshold of 200 million vaccinated people in Europe has been exceeded. Hungary announces it will make your vaccine mandatory for those in the health field. Several protests took place in France and Greece. Let's see the news of COVID-19 from July 23!

• More than 200 million Europeans have been vaccinated, the European Union said on Thursday. It represents more than half of the EU's population, but less than the 70% target for this summer.

• Italy introduces "health permit" for access to enclosed and crowded places. The measure will enter into force on August 6, 2021.

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel is concerned about the increase in the number of cases. "The number of new cases is growing alarmingly fast and worrying. We see an exponential increase. Each vaccination is a small step towards a return to normalcy.

• Pthe protesters confronted the police in Athens, Greece. About 1500 people took to the streets to protest compulsory vaccination of health workers and nursing home staff.

Protests against the new government legislation COVID-19 took place on Wednesday evening in Paris, Toulouse and other cities in France. 

• Two doses of Pfizer have been shown to be 88% effective compared to the Delta variant, while two doses of AstraZeneca are 67% effective in preventing symptomatic diseases., according to a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine . The Delta variant is now the dominant COVID-19 strain in the world.

• Pfizer and BioNTech enter into agreement with South African company Biovac to produce COVID-19 vaccine locally, starting in 2022. The Cape Town-based company will complete the final stage in vaccine manufacturing. The doses produced will be distributed exclusively in the African Union.

• Hungary will make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for health workers, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has announced.

• Workers in sectors such as health, transport, food and energy in the UK will not have to isolate themselves if COVID-19 requires them to do so, as long as they are fully vaccinated.