COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Health authorities in Denmark said Friday that they were considering “winding down” the country's coronavirus vaccination program in the spring and see no reason now to administer a booster dose to children or a fourth shot to anymore residents at risk of severe COVID-19.

The Danish Health Authority said in a statement outlining its reasoning that the third infection wave in the European nation was waning “due to the large population immunity."

"The very high vaccine coverage in Denmark, especially with the third shot, means that we can cope with increasing infection without getting serious illness,” the government agency said in a statement.

Last month, the Danish government said it was offering a fourth vaccine dose to older adults and other vulnerable citizens because the pandemic situation had worsened amid the rapid spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

But a Health Authority assessment concluded that three shots had provided good protection to nursing home residents and people over age 85, and the agency decided it was unnecessary to provide them with additional shots right now.

Bolette Søborg, a unit manager and chief physician with the authority, said the approaching end of winter, when time spent indoors makes it easier for the virus to spread, is another reason to hold off on fourth doses.

Only a handful of countries worldwide have started offering fourth shots or announced plans to do so.

Denmark expanded its vaccination program to children ages 5-11 in November, when the delta variant was dominant and there was a fear youngsters could infect older generations. Health authorities said Friday that they were “now starting to plan to round off the current vaccination program for all target groups, including the program for children aged 5-11.”

More than 80% of the population has received two shots while 61.3% have had a booster, according to official figures.

The agency said it was looking at “winding down the entire general vaccination program later in the spring.”

____

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa's efforts to produce vaccines are key to helping the African continent become more self-sufficient in inoculations to combat COVID-19 and many other diseases, the visiting chief of the World Health Organization said Friday.

On his visit to Cape Town, WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus is viewing three facilities that are starting work to manufacture vaccines.

Tedros visited the Biomedical Research Institute at the Tygerberg campus of Stellenbosch University on Friday. He is also scheduled to visit Afrigen Biologics & Vaccines and the Biovac laboratories in Cape Town.

The pandemic had shown the need for local production of vaccines in low and middle-income countries, he said addressing a press briefing on Friday.

“More than half of the world’s population is now fully vaccinated, and yet 84% of the population of Africa is yet to receive a single dose," he said. “Much of this inequity has been driven by the fact that globally vaccine production is concentrated in a few, mostly high-income countries. One of the most obvious lessons of the pandemic, therefore, is the urgent need to increase local production of vaccines, especially in low and middle-income countries."

Tedros was also scheduled to visit the Afrigen lab that, with support from the WHO, is creating a COVID-19 vaccine from scratch. The laboratory is replicating the Moderna vaccine using mRNA vaccine technology. The Afrigen facility has backing from WHO and several other partners including the governments of South Africa, France and Belgium. The initiative is also supported by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

___

BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgium will ease a slew of COVID-19 measures from next week, with restaurants and bars allowed to open for full hours and children under 12 no longer forced to use face masks, as authorities anticipate a further decline in infections.

The government announced Friday that the nation of 11 million will go from code red, the toughest for virus measures, to code orange as of Feb. 19.

“We can start easing several measures. There will be no closing time in bars and restaurants anymore and no more limits on how many people can sit together at a table,” said Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.

Beyond the full expansion of bar and restaurant opening hours, that means that customers will no longer have to wear masks. Nightclubs and dancing venues will also be allowed to reopen.

Outside activities, including concerts, will be able to operate under far more relaxed measures again.

Infections in the week ending Feb 7 fell by 44% compared to the previous week and stood at 23.239 cases. New hospitalizations and intensive care cases also started to decline.

“Never forget that the past months were extremely difficult” De Croo said. “But we got through this.”

Other European countries are also relaxing their pandemic measures, as more and more governments design protocols to co-exist with the coronavirus.

___

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's Constitutional Court has refused to temporarily block the implementation of a coronavirus vaccine mandate for care and health workers that is due to come into force in mid-March.

The country's top court said Friday that it had rejected a bid to impose an injunction against the measure until a legal challenge against its constitutionality is formally reviewed. The Karlsruhe-based court received dozens of complaints after Parliament approved the measure late last year.

The German government welcomed the decision.

“A vaccinated person has a minimal risk of side effects,” Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, an epidemiologist, wrote on Twitter. “(The vaccination) protects elderly and sick people he cares for from death or serious illness.”

Staff in nursing homes, hospitals and doctors' practices, physiotherapists and midwives have to prove by March 15 that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Those who fail to do so can be banned from working, to prevent vulnerable people from being infected by unvaccinated staff.

Lawmakers from the three governing parties on Friday also presented a first proposal for a universal vaccine mandate. The plan would require all adults in Germany to show upon request from Oct. 1 that they have received three vaccinations or recovered from COVID-19. Medical exemptions would be possible; the law would need to be reviewed every three months and automatically expire at the end of 2023.

Germany's main opposition party, the center-right Union bloc, has backed away from compulsory vaccinations, which were supported by its former leader former Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Christian Bernreiter, a regional official in the southern state of Bavaria, warned Friday that there could be a shortage of staff to care for older and disabled people if authorities enforce the vaccine mandate in the health care sector.