European nations are making progress with their vaccine programs but COVID-19 outbreaks continue to cause pain, with Portugal's hospitals under pressure and Denmark discovering its first case of the South African variant.
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Germany has now carried out more than one million vaccinations, figures on Saturday showed, but new infections and deaths remain high in the nation of 83 million people.
The UK is also pinning its hopes on a rapid rollout of vaccines and data shows almost 3.6 million people have received one dose of vaccine, the most in Europe and an increase of 324,000 on the day before.
Britain is aiming to have given first doses of vaccines to 15 million people in high-risk categories by mid-February.
The country reported its lowest number of daily coronavirus infections for the year on Saturday, adding to signs the national lockdown is slowing the spread of a more infectious variant of the disease.
However the effect of the recent surge in cases remains clear in the death toll, with another 1295 deaths reported on Saturday, the third-highest on record.
Denmark found its first case of the more contagious coronavirus variant from South Africa, and saw a rise in the number of infections with the highly transmissible B117 variant first identified in Britain.
The Nordic country extended its lockdown for three weeks on Wednesday in a bid to curtail the spread of the new variant from Britain, which authorities expect to soon be the dominant one.
Since mid-November, 256 Danes were infected with the new variant, the State Serum Institute said on Saturday.
Denmark has become a front-runner in monitoring coronavirus mutations by running most positive tests through genome sequencing analysis.
Meanwhile, Portugal's fragile health system is under growing pressure due to a worrying rise in coronavirus infections.
The country reported 10,947 new cases and 166 deaths on Saturday, the worst surge since the pandemic started.
The cases, which come a day after a new lockdown was imposed, bring the total number of cases in a country of just over 10 million people to 539,416, with the death toll increasing to 8709.
The health system, which prior to the pandemic had the lowest number of critical care beds per capita in Europe, can accommodate a maximum of 672 COVID-19 patients in ICUs, according to Health Ministry data.
There are currently 638 people in ICUs and the the Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators said the number of coronavirus patients needing hospitalisation was likely to dramatically increase over the next week.
Also on Saturday, Italy suspended flights from Brazil in response to a new coronavirus variant.
And in France the national curfew was tightened, restricting residents to be indoors between 6pm and 6am as it races to vaccinate the population.
Australian Associated Press
