⁍ France posted more than 50,000 daily cases for the first time on Sunday.

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⁍ The continent passed the threshold of 250,000 deaths.

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⁍ The vast region accounted for 46% of global cases and nearly one third of deaths.

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– “We’re not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics, and other mitigation areas,” White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told CNN on Sunday. The World Health Organization isn’t buying it. “Although we agree with the chief of staff that protecting the vulnerable is important, but giving up on control is dangerous,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference Monday, per Reuters. He was referring to comments by Meadows that the US is “not going to control” the Pandemic coronavirus. “We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics, and other mitigation areas,” Meadows said. “And that’s why we are saying, although we agree with the chief of staff (Meadows), that protecting the vulnerable is important, but giving up on control is dangerous,” said Ghebreyesus, who added that Italy and Spain “took serious action to protect the vulnerable but at the same time reduce transmission.” The virus is surging in Europe, with France reporting more than 50,000 cases a day on Sunday, while the continent passed the 250,000 mark for deaths, said Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergencies expert. “Right now we are well behind this virus in Europe, so getting ahead of it is going to take some serious acceleration in what we do,” Ryan said. “We are seeing a large number of cases, we are seeing widespread disease, we are seeing very very high positivity rates, and an increasing lack of capacity to do any effective form of contact-tracing, which is further going to drive the disease into the darkness.”