Young women wearing facemasks and traditional costumes of Song dynasty and Tang dynasty are seated on a bench in a park next to the East Lake in Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province on May 17, 2020. The Guardian picture desk has chosen on December 17, 2020, the AFP photojournalist Hector Retamal as “Agency Photographer of the Year 2020” for his coverage of the novel coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan, China. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP Photo)

This aerial photo shows bullet trains parked at a station in preparation for the upcoming Lunar New Year travel peak in Nanjing, in eastern China's Jiangsu province on January 27, 2021, as authorities have encouraged people to stay put during the Spring Festival to curb the spread of of COVID-19 coronavirus. (Photo by AFP Photo/China Stringer Network)

A young girl sits on a mat, as worshippers arrive to pray to mark the Muslim Eid-al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifices) without observationg precautionary measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, in Kara, Ogun State in southwest Nigeria, on July 31, 2020. Nigerian Muslim faithfuls joined their counterparts across the world to celebrate Eid-El-Adha, Islamic festival of sacrifice. (Photo by Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP Photo)

Young adults wearing a mask, attends a ceremony as they commemorates the Coming of Age Day of young people entering adulthood in Tokyo, Japan, on January 10, 2022. While the COVID-19 epidemic continues to progress in Japan due to the new Omicron variant, the events that have been organized by the various municipalities of Tokyo have followed a strict sanitary protocol, such as temperature control, disinfection of hands, and the wearing of a protective mask. (Photo by David Mareuil/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Sabrina Crespo da Silva removes electrical tape from a client at her Sabrina Bronze rooftop salon, where she offers the service of taping on bikini tops which create crisp tan lines, in the Turano favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, January 27, 2022. Even though beaches reopened amid the COVID-19 pandemic, some clients using Sabrina's rooftop service say they are still anxious about returning to the crowded seashore and potentially catching the virus. (Photo by Silvia Izquierdo/AP Photo)

A fantasy figure promotes a video game at the Gamescom computer gaming fair in Cologne, Germany, Thursday, August 25, 2022. Around 1,100 exhibitors from 53 countries expect tens of thousands gaming enthusiast daily for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic at the world's largest gaming event. (Photo by Martin Meissner/AP Photo)

Ray Yang, a celebrity trainer, takes a selfie before the start of a workout session during TV program "The Body Show" at a gym in Seoul, September 19, 2015. Looks no longer centre only on the face in beauty-obsessed South Korea, where more women are hitting the gym to improve muscle tone and physical health. As the ideal of beauty evolves in a country that is a trendsetter in cosmetics and the pursuit of plastic surgery, women's fitness has become a growth business, say purveyors of health products, from diet supplements to dumb-bells. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

A pregnant woman poses on June 19, 2018 in Vertou, western France. France had an estimated population of 68.4 million by January 1, 2024, representing a further year-on-year increase of 0.3 percent, limited by a marked drop in the birth rate, the INSEE national statistics bureau of France reported on January 16, 2024. In 2023, 678,000 babies were born in France, 6.6 percent fewer than the previous year, the lowest number of births in any year since 1946. Over the same period, there were 631,000 deaths, down 6.5 percent on 2022, a year marked by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and episodes of extreme heat. (Photo by Loic Venance/AFP Photo)