Another 1,244 Covid-19 deaths have been reported in Germany in a 24-hour period, the highest daily figure since the start of the pandemic, official data showed.

To date, 43,881 people in Germany have succumbed to the disease, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the government’s agency for disease control, Xinhua news agency reported.

Another 25,164 people have tested positive in the 24 hours, raising the total number of confirmed cases in Germany to about 1.98 million, RKI data showed.

At a press conference on Thursday,  January 14, RKI President Lothar Wieler warned that a lag in testing over the New Year could mean that the latest numbers still don’t show the full picture, German news agency dpa reported.

Germany “must massively reduce the case numbers” so as to bring normal life back to Germany, he said, urging more employers to switch to work-from-home models and appealing to the public to reduce contact with others to an absolute minimum. “It is possible that the case numbers have stabilized,” but much more still needed to be done, dpa quoted Wieler as saying.

Brazil’s Covid vaccination drive to begin Jan-end

Brazil’s vaccination campaign against the novel coronavirus will begin at the end of January in pandemic hotspot Manaus, capital of northern Amazonas state, Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello said.

“We are going to vaccinate in January,” Xinhua news agency quoted the Minister as saying to reporters on Wednesday, January 13.

While Manaus will be the first city to immunise residents, the vaccine will be distributed simultaneously to every state across the country, he said.

Immunization does not mean “go out to party “, Pazuello warned.

“It’s not take the vaccine on the 20th and party in the streets on the 22nd.”

Pazuello explained that “the vaccine induces the production of antibodies” but “this production of antibodies does not happen the next day. The literature speaks of 30 to 60 days”.

This month, Manaus among Brazil’s hardest-hit cities, registered a rise in deaths from the disease that forced authorities to set up a cold storage to prevent bodies from being buried in mass graves.