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COVID-19

Video: Spaniard under lockdown proves it’s possible to ski at home

When Philipp Klein Herrero had to cancel a skiing holiday because of the coronavirus pandemic he recreated the winter sport experience in confinement in his Barcelona flat. The video has gone viral.

Video: Spaniard under lockdown proves it's possible to ski at home

“I had a spark of creativity,” the 28-year-old video maker and amateur skier told AFP.

The result was a 57-second video called “Freeride at home” shot from a camera attached to the ceiling which has been viewed several hundred thousands times on YouTube and other platforms.

“The day Spain decreed a lockdown for the whole country, I had a bus ticket to go to La Grave, France, for a week’s skiing with my family.

“It was the freeride trip I had saved up for all year, everything was planned,” said Klein Herrero, an engineer at Spanish car-maker SEAT, told AFP.

“I could have got on that bus, but when I saw that the situation was getting crazier by the minute, I decided that it was a bit immoral to go skiing while people were dying in Spain,” he added.

The total number of deaths from the coronavirus in Spain has passed 11,700.

“The lockdown had me thinking about skiing the whole time, so I started to think how I could ski without leaving my living room,” he wrote when he posted the video.

In the video, edited in stop-motion, Klein Herrero wakes on the floor in a sleeping bag in full gear.

Shot from above to make it seem that he is standing when he is, in fact, lying on the floor, he climbs a show-capped peak made of white sheets and then skis down.

He finishes with a crash. As his helmeted disappears into the sheets, the message: “Stay safe, stay at home,” appears.

“I’ve seen a lot of funny videos of people doing outdoor sports at home. So I wanted to do the same,” he told AFP.

“On Thursday morning, I saw there was good light outside, so I went for it. I moved all the furniture, set up all the lights, hung the camera on the ceiling, and within six hours everything was in the box,” he said.

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COVID-19

Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

Sweden's Public Health Agency is recommending that those above the age of 80 should receive two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine a year, once in the spring and once in the autumn, as it shifts towards a longer-term strategy for the virus.

Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

In a new recommendation, the agency said that those living in elderly care centres, and those above the age of 80 should from March 1st receive two vaccinations a year, with a six month gap between doses. 

“Elderly people develop a somewhat worse immune defence after vaccination and immunity wanes faster than among young and healthy people,” the agency said. “That means that elderly people have a greater need of booster doses than younger ones. The Swedish Public Health Agency considers, based on the current knowledge, that it will be important even going into the future to have booster doses for the elderly and people in risk groups.” 

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People between the ages of 65 and 79 years old and young people with risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes, poor kidney function or high blood pressure, are recommended to take one additional dose per year.

The new vaccination recommendation, which will start to apply from March 1st next year, is only for 2023, Johanna Rubin, the investigator in the agency’s vaccination programme unit, explained. 

She said too much was still unclear about how long protection from vaccination lasted to institute a permanent programme.

“This recommendation applies to 2023. There is not really an abundance of data on how long protection lasts after a booster dose, of course, but this is what we can say for now,” she told the TT newswire. 

It was likely, however, that elderly people would end up being given an annual dose to protect them from any new variants, as has long been the case with influenza.

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