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BRUSSELS, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- As of Saturday, visitors will be able to see the five giant pandas at the Pairi Daiza zoo in Belgium, according to decisions taken by the Belgian authorities.
Belgium currently is home to five giant pandas, a record outside of China. Tian Bao, the first giant panda born in Pairi Daiza on June 2, 2016, should have been returned to China in 2020, but according to an agreement signed last year, he could be allowed to stay another year in the company of his parents and twins Bao Di and Bao Mei, born in August 2019.
Hair salons will also reopen their doors on Saturday, but hairdressers and customers are required to wear masks, said Yves Van Laethem, inter-federal spokesperson for the fight against COVID-19, on Friday.
Belgium is continuing its vaccination program. To date, "a first dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine has been administered to approximately 350,000 people, while 131,000 people have received a second dose," said Van Laethem.
Given the low percentage of vaccination coverage, Van Laethem said "people who are vaccinated can still carry the virus, therefore transmit the disease."
The epidemiological situation in Belgium is still on a plateau. In the first week of February, an average of 2,054 new contaminations per day was reported by the public health institute Sciensano, a decrease of 13 percent from the previous week.
The country has so far recorded a total of 733,100 coronavirus cases and 21,551 deaths since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic.
As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in many European countries with the already-authorized coronavirus vaccines.
Meanwhile, 242 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Feb. 9. Enditem