Top Headlines

· Portugal's parliament has voted to extend its current state of emergency through to March 1. As part of the country's vaccine roll-out plans, firefighters are now set to be vaccinated, followed by police officers.

· France is recommending that people who have recovered from the virus should only receive one single dose of the vaccine. 

· Ukraine will receive $60 million to buy vaccines and refrigeration equipment from the European Investment Bank, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced on Friday.

· Germany's armed forces will extend their pandemic medical aid for Portugal for an additional six weeks.

· New data have shown the British economy shrank by 9.9 percent last year due to the fallout of COVID-19, despite growth in the second half of the year.  

· In Germany, the government has decided to temporarily reinstate border controls after identifying Czechiac and parts of Austria as "mutation areas," due to their high cases of infection from coronavirus variants.

· The number of coronavirus cases in Eastern Europe has surpassed 10 million. The region has recorded 214,691 deaths since the pandemic started, however, the daily average has declined by around 31 percent in the past 30 days.

· In Ireland, healthcare workers who refuse to take the vaccine may be removed from their positions. The CEO of Ireland's Health Service Executive has said it's "inexcusable" for any healthcare worker who works with patients not to take the vaccine.

· Norway's economy shrank 2.5 percent last year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

· In France, the mayor of Metz has called for a local lockdown as the city and region deal with an explosion in cases.

Across Europe 

Mia Alberti in Lisbon

Portugal has extended the current state of emergency for an extra two weeks until March 1. That means only essential shops may remain open, working from home continues to be mandatory and schools will remain closed.

This lockdown was first imposed in January, when Portugal was registering the highest infection and death rate in the world. Now, with the number of infections falling every day, Prime Minister Antonio Costa said the restrictions are working but that it's still not the time to think about the end of lockdown.

"Many times we've been asked what is the limit and every week that limit has been crossed," Costa said during a press conference on Thursday. 

"With the current levels of ICU patients, we cannot stop considering this situation extremely serious."

Costa warned the already burdened health services will also facing some challenges: Portugal will only receive half of the vaccines it was expecting for the first trimester of the year, and the coronavirus variant first found in the UK is already responsible for 43 percent of all cases.

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Toni Waterman in Brussels 

Belgium's COVID-19 reproduction rate has once again dipped below 1.0, meaning each infected person is passing the virus along to less than one other person. New infections also continue to fall, with an average of 2,054 cases a day in the past week, a 13 percent drop from the week before. Despite the promising signs, the government has decided to extend a ban on all non-essential travel to April 1, as concerns grow over the spread of variants that are less susceptible to vaccines. 

Brussels has passed a major milestone in its coronavirus recovery efforts. The Recovery and Resilience Facility was signed on Friday. It is the biggest part of the bloc's $900 billion COVID-19 recovery fund and consists of grants and loans to support the green and digital transition. 

The signing brings the EU one step closer to issuing bonds to fund its pandemic recovery. The money is expected to start flowing to member states in the second half of the year. It can't come soon enough. On Thursday, the Commission once again lowered its economic growth forecasts for the eurozone as lockdowns persist and immunizations remain lackluster.

Iolo ap Dafydd in London 

Australian medics and officials have warned UK authorities just before new rules on arrivals and quarantine in Britain are supposed to start. It seems the UK government's requirements for travelers arriving from COVID "red list" nations are less stringent for hotel operators and new arrivals. 

Medical experts interviewed on UK national radio pointed out that Australia's system introduced last year, is seen as a gold standard internationally. But because of repeated outbreaks among hotel staff and guests, and the arrival of the variant first discovered in the UK and others, rules in Australia have been reviewed and tightened again.

In another news interview, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin, the scientist behind the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, says the time between the first and second dose should not be longer than six weeks. He was responding to the UK's decision to delay the second dose by up to 12 weeks to allow more people to get a first dose quickly.  

Julia Chapman in Budapest 

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban says further restrictions won't be implemented in the country, as he expects vaccines to curb the spread of COVID-19. It comes as Hungary recorded 1,862 new infections on Thursday, the highest number since mid-January. 

A national consultation is due to begin next week on easing lockdown restrictions, which could include incentives for vaccination. Orban says he hopes the vaccine roll-out will accelerate in the lead-up to Easter, with the help of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, which is already being used, and China's Sinopharm, which is due to be launched next week.

Ross Cullen in Paris

The mayor of the eastern French city of Metz has called for a local lockdown as the city and the wider region deal with an explosion in cases. Today, February 12, the French health minister will travel to the eastern region of Moselle, where Metz is located. Olivier Veran says the situation there is "more worrying as the Brazilian and South African variants are particularly present." 

Veran said: "Three variants [those first identified in the UK, Brazil, and South Africa] are especially worrying ... the South African and Brazilian mutations could cause reinfections." But he said the COVID-19 "vaccines are very efficient" against the variant first identified in the UK. "We have already gained precious hours," he said at the government's weekly coronavirus update. "We hope to be able to avoid a third national lockdown."

He said that the variants first identified in Brazil and South Africa make up 4 to 5 percent of new COVID-19 infections but 25 percent of all new cases are the variant first identified in the UK. He did try to strike a tempered but positive tone when he assessed the overall situation in France, saying that "the evolution of the epidemic is on a plateau but it is sloping slightly downwards."

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Source(s): AFP, Reuters, AP