Mobile app inoculation certificate aims to help reopen economy, but privileges are untested and raise ethical questions
Israel is preparing itself to be split in half from next week, with the government creating a new privileged tier in society: the vaccinated.
Nearly 50% of the population who have chosen to be inoculated against Covid will be provided with a “green pass” a week after their second shot, as will those with presumed immunity after contracting the disease.
Continue reading...Pressure mounts for patent waivers to allow poorer countries to develop their own manufacturing capacity to boost availability
The domination of global medicine by major pharmaceutical companies needs to be confronted to provide fairer access to vaccines, a leading South African official has said.
The scramble over Covid vaccines should alert rich countries to the power of profit-driven companies that control production of crucial medicines, said Mustaqeem De Gama, South Africa’s delegate at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on intellectual property rights.
Continue reading...While the UK and US strive for herd immunity, Russia and China are leveraging their Covid jabs
“Today it is easier to get a nuclear weapon than to get a vaccine,” the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, declared in January. He was bragging. The Balkans country had just received its first shipment of almost 1m Covid-19 vaccine doses from Sinopharm, a state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company.
Since then, Serbia has augmented its stockpile with tens of thousands of shots of Russia’s Sputnik V, signed an agreement to build a bottling plant for the Russian vaccine and now boasts the fastest vaccination rate in continental Europe.
Continue reading...The Games are due to begin in July but Shimane prefecture says it might pull out of the prestigious pre-Games event
The head of a prefecture in Japan has said the area is considering pulling out of the Olympic torch relay, as the nation became the latest major economy to begin its vaccine rollout.
Tatsuya Maruyama, the governor of Shimane prefecture, said on Wednesday that it could withdraw from the key Olympic event and has called for the Tokyo 2020 Games to be cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...The strict 14-day hotel quarantine system has been key to keeping the nation’s coronavirus cases low, but major leaks and controversies have forced constant rethinks
Australia’s strict 14-day hotel quarantine system, and simultaneous stifling of its citizens’ ability to travel freely overseas, are widely acknowledged as a major factor in the nation’s successful containment of Covid-19, low death rate and ability to resume a semblance of pre-pandemic life.
However the nation’s quarantine regime has been progressively tightened in response to instances of the virus leaking out of hotels since the mandatory order was introduced for international arrivals from all countries in March last year.
Continue reading...Pandemics are global by definition. Only travel restrictions and equal vaccine access for all countries will end this crisis
Most people have already adjusted their expectations to a spring of disruption – but most are quietly hoping that by the summer, and into the autumn, life in the UK will have returned more or less to normal. Are they right to be confident? What can we do to avoid slipping back into a cycle of lockdowns? In short: how does this pandemic end, and how can we end it faster?
Globally, the UK is in the strong position of having at least five effective and safe vaccines, but there are major challenges ahead. We already know about variants, such as those arising in Kent, Brazil and South Africa, which are proving challenging in terms of being more transmissible, and having potentially more severe health outcomes in the case of the UK variant.
Continue reading...Pressure mounts for Coalition to announce a permanent increase to unemployment payment; Australia closes quarantine-free border to New Zealand after coronavirus cases confirmed as UK variant. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
NSW has recorded no new locally acquired cases - or any cases in hotel quarantine.
So another zero day for NSW
Daniel Andrews:
Again, the types of cases, this UK strain, the fact that despite the amazing efforts of all of our contact traces and testers and lab workers and the work of so many genuine hard-working Victorians, we had a situation where at the same time as we are becoming aware of the primary case, they have already infected their close contacts, that is not something we’ve seen before.
The speed at which this has moved saw our public health team make the very difficult decisions based on the best of science and the best understanding you can possibly have on any outbreak, that this was a difficult but proportionate and necessary thing to do.
Continue reading...There will continue to be plenty more data gaps because the Covid-19 strain simply behaves like all influenzas and mutates continuously
By the time you read this it will be out of date.
Why? Because every day we receive new data that causes us to rethink and rewrite our response to Covid-19, notably vaccine programs. This is good. I will explain.
Continue reading...Australian infection expert, part of a team visiting Wuhan, says they were provided only with a summary of data
There is growing controversy over a World Health Organization investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic after one of its members said China had refused to hand over key data, and the US national security adviser said he had “deep concerns” about the initial findings.
An international delegation travelled to the Chinese city of Wuhan last month, as part of efforts to understand how the outbreak began. Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious disease expert who was part of the team, said they had requested raw patient data but were only given a summary.
Continue reading...A year ago, two scientists began work on the response to a new virus. Now, as their vaccine is being given to millions, they tell of their incredible 12 months
Exactly a year ago, Oxford University scientists launched a joint enterprise that is set to have a profound impact on the health of our planet. On 11 February, research teams led by Professor Andy Pollard and Professor Sarah Gilbert – both based at the Oxford Vaccine Centre – decided to combine their talents to develop and manufacture a vaccine that could protect people from the deadly new coronavirus that was beginning to spread across the world.
A year later that vaccine is being administered to millions across Britain and other nations and was last week given resounding backing by the World Health Organization. The head of the WHO’s department of immunisation, vaccines and biologicals, Professor Kate O’Brien, described the jab as “efficacious” and “an important vaccine for the world”.
Continue reading...Victoria’s Holiday Inn outbreak rises to 16 cases on second day of state lockdown; Boris Johnson urges G7 leader to unite against virus. Follow the latest updates live
The press conference in Wellington, held in response to the discovery of three community cases in Auckland, has now finished. As of 11.59PM tonight Auckland will be placed under tougher restrictions, at level three, while the rest of the country will be moved to level two restrictions. (Details of the alert levels can be found online here).
Ardern said she was asking the public “to be strong and to be kind”:
I know we all feel the same way when this happens, we all get that sense of - not again. But remember we have been here before and that means we know how to get out of this again, and that is together. If you know someone in Auckland reach out, please check on them. If you are in Auckland please check on your neighburs and ensure they are looked after and supported.
Related: New Zealand Covid outbreak: Ardern puts Auckland into three-day lockdown
Dr Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s director-general of health, said officials were working under the assumption that the new Auckland cases were one of the new variants of Covid-19. “Regardless of where people have come from, these are the common variants and we do know they are more transmissible,” he said.
Ardern said that the decision to introduce tougher restrictions was “not taken lightly”. However, the cost to the economy would be far greater, she said, if the country was slow to react.
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Health minister says officials ‘really concerned’ after three deaths from the infectious disease
Guinea has entered an Ebola “epidemic situation” with seven cases confirmed, including three deaths, a leading health official in the west African nation has said.
“Very early this morning, the Conakry laboratory confirmed the presence of the Ebola virus,” Sakoba Keita said after an emergency meeting in the capital.
Continue reading...Prime minister says priority is to reopen schools on 8 March once 15m in priority groups vaccinated
Boris Johnson has said he is optimistic about announcing the easing of some lockdown measures soon as the government nears its target of offering vaccines to 15 million people in priority groups.
Speaking on Saturday at a visit to the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies plant in Billingham, Teesside, where the new Novavax vaccine will be manufactured, the prime minister said his first priority remained opening schools in England from 8 March, to be followed by other sectors.
Continue reading...Trial will use 300 volunteers to assess whether jab produces strong immune response in children aged six to 17
The efficacy of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in children is due to be tested in a new clinical trial beginning this month.
Researchers will use 300 volunteers to assess whether the jab – known as the the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine – produces a strong immune response in children aged between six and 17.
Continue reading...Coronavirus R number falls below 1 in UK; Cuomo faces calls to resign amid allegations of hiding nursing home deaths; High-risk groups missed off UK’s vaccine priority list. Follow the latest updates live
The UK government has been accused of repeatedly ignoring concerns that the quarantine rules for incoming passengers will fail to halt the spread of new coronavirus variants in the country, unions revealed two days before the measures become law.
The GMB Union has said its members and airport staff had been telling the Home Office for the past fortnight that they were concerned that passengers from 33 designated high-risk countries were still being allowed to mix with other travellers and staff before entering hotel quarantine for 10 days at a cost of £1,750.
Related: Long-awaited quarantine hotels have 'failed at first hurdle', say unions
More than 800,00 people have died from coronavirus across Europe since the pandemic began in December 2019, according to an AFP tally Saturday based on official sources.
AFP reports:
As of Saturday, 1630 GMT, there were 800,361 deaths recorded in the 52 countries and territories that make up the continent - including Russia and Turkey - for 35,395,270 declared cases.
That puts the continent’s death toll ahead of Latin America and the Caribbean, which has 635,834 dead for 20,021,361 cases; of the United States and Canada’s 502,064 deaths for 28,312,719 cases; and Asia’s 247,730 deaths for 15,641,940 cases.
Continue reading...Experts say it is not just the pandemic that makes these feel like unusually significant times
It was in the first few weeks of 2020, when early reports began filtering through of a mystery virus threatening to spread across the world, that Rob Perks decided to begin collecting.
As lead curator for oral history at the British Library, Perks’s team routinely gather testimony to be archived for future research. But a comment by a historian who advises the institution stopped him in his tracks.
Continue reading...John Jobber’s flight home, after being stuck in Ireland, will not be accepted due to lockdown restrictions
Terminally ill Australian man John Jobber is running out of time to make it back from Ireland and fulfil his wish of dying back home in Tasmania.
After nearly a year of fighting to get Jobber home, his daughter Samantha John finally secured plane tickets to Melbourne for next week, but now she fears Melbourne’s snap lockdown means he will never see home again.
Continue reading...Everyone in top four categories has been offered first vaccine dose, says first minister
Wales has become the first UK nation to have offered a Covid jab to everyone in the top four priority groups, the first minister, Mark Drakeford has announced.
Last month, Drakeford was forced to defend Wales’s vaccination programme after criticism of delays from opposition parties and doctors. But at a press conference on Friday, he said that 66 days after people in Wales first began getting the jab, the key target had been achieved.
Continue reading...French health authority will give one jab to previously infected people; Germany to ban travel from Czech border regions and Austria’s Tyrol
Reuters reports:
The French government has no plans for now to order local lockdown measures in the eastern area of Moselle to rein in the spread of highly contagious Covid-19 variants, health minister Olivier Veran said on Friday.
Veran told reporters that a high number of cases of the South African Covid-19 variant had been found in the region.
The World Health Organizations’ director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has discussed US support for COVAX vaccines:
I so appreciated today’s call with @CDCDirector Dr. Rochelle Walensky on our organizations' enduring partnership. It was good to discuss ‘s support for @ACTAccelerator and COVAX, #VaccinEquity, prioritizing robust public health systems, and our partnership to #EndPolio. pic.twitter.com/LVba0R3aFq
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