Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 28th Nov 2022

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Shanghai rocked by protests as zero-Covid anger spreads

Protests in Shanghai escalated on Sunday evening as police struggled to disperse large crowds who gathered in the city, part of a nationwide movement that poses one of the most brazen challenges to the Chinese Communist party’s authority in decades. The unrest began on Saturday night and centred on a road named after the Chinese city of Urumqi, where a deadly fire on Thursday killed ten people. That incident, in the northwestern Xinjiang region, fuelled social media outrage and prompted a series of vigils around the country, as people blamed coronavirus restrictions for the tragedy — allegations that the authorities denied.
27th Nov 2022 - Financial Times

Study says as Covid evolves in long-term infections it may become more harmful

A South African laboratory study using Covid-19 samples from an immunosupressed individual over six months showed that the virus evolved to become more pathogenic, indicating that a new variant could cause more illness than the current predominant omicron strain.  The study, conducted by the same laboratory that was to first test the omicron strain against vaccines last year, used samples from a person infected with HIV. Over the six months the virus initially caused the same level of cell fusion and death as the omicron BA.1 strain, but as it evolved those levels rose to become similar to the first version of Covid-19 identified in Wuhan in China.
26th Nov 2022 - Bloomberg

China Covid-19 Cases Hit Record High, Forcing Fresh Control Measures

China’s new Covid-19 cases hit a record high, testing the government’s push to contain the virus with more-targeted virus controls and avoid damaging the economy. Almost 30,000 locally transmitted infections were recorded for Wednesday, surpassing the previous record in April, when Shanghai’s two-month lockdown severely hurt China’s economy and snarled global supply chains. Economists say the risk that China’s “zero-Covid” policy will again force officials to impose sweeping measures is one of the main threats to world growth. China’s leaders this month told local officials to be more precise and targeted in implementing pandemic controls, but at the same time said there would be no change to the zero-Covid stance. As new variants send cases surging, more cities are tightening controls on people’s mov
25th Nov 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China Recovery Set Back by Record Covid Outbreak as Lockdowns Spread

Widespread lockdowns imposed across China as authorities there struggled this week to contain the country’s largest Covid-19 outbreak threaten to again create uncertainty in global supply chains and dim the prospects for world economic growth. Beijing’s battle to contain the virus—including sharp restrictions on everyday life and commerce in cities from the major port city of Tianjin in the north to Guangzhou in the south—comes as economies elsewhere lose speed as central banks raise interest rates to beat back inflation. The heavy-handed and widely applied steps send a strong signal that the country and its leaders aren’t ready for a sustained reopening almost three years after the start of the pandemic and long after other major economies have dismantled almost all Covid controls.
24th Nov 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China's iPhone City Locks Down Urban Areas as Covid Cases Rise

Zhengzhou, home to Apple Inc.’s largest iPhone manufacturing site, will be largely locked down for five days as officials in the Chinese city resort to tighter curbs to quell a swelling Covid-19 outbreak. Mobility controls -- a euphemism for lockdown -- will be imposed in the main urban areas of Zhengzhou from Friday through Nov. 29 because of rising virus cases, Zhengzhou’s pandemic task force said in a statement late Wednesday. The city reported 996 infections on Wednesday, up from 813 a day earlier. The new restrictions were announced after hundreds of workers at the plant, known as ‘iPhone City’ for its scale, streamed out of dormitories earlier in the day.
23rd Nov 2022 - Bloomberg

China Sees Lockdowns Surge in Week Since Covid Policy Adjusted

Covid control restrictions now weigh on a fifth of China’s economy as infections continue their upward march, defying the central government’s call for more targeted, less disruptive Covid Zero measures. There were 27,307 new cases recorded for Monday, just shy of the previous record 28,973 reached in April when Shanghai’s outbreak sparked a surge in infections. The southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou remains the epicenter of the current wave, reporting the bulk of the 8,588 infections in the broader Guangdong province. The metropolis of Chongqing detected 6,297.
22nd Nov 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 21st Nov 2022

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Covid cases fall across the UK for second week in a row, with less than a million infections in England

Covid levels have fallen in all four UK nations for the second week in a row, with infections in England dropping below one million for the first time since mid-September. Hospital numbers are also continuing to decrease, in fresh evidence the latest wave of the virus has peaked. Health experts hailed the autumn booster vaccine programme as helping drive down infections – though nearly a quarter of over-70s have yet to receive a fresh jab.
20th Nov 2022 - MSNNow

Covid rise: Hong Kong close to cutting non-emergency services at public hospitals again

Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority chief has warned that a rapid rise in Covid-19 cases has put the city on the verge of cutting non-emergency services to meet increasing demand from patients infected with the virus. Dr Tony Ko Pat-sing on Saturday said public hospitals were also treating more elderly patients suffering from long-Covid symptoms, urging older residents to get vaccinated as soon as possible. “We observed that in the last two weeks, there has been a significant increase in the number of patients diagnosed with Covid-19,” Ko said, adding the surge was more rapid than what was recorded in September.
20th Nov 2022 - South China Morning Post

Taiwan reports 16571 new COVID-19 cases, 59 deaths

Taiwan's Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) reported 16,571 new COVID-19 infections on Saturday, all but 57 of which were locally transmitted, and 59 deaths from the disease. The deceased ranged in age from their 50s to their 90s, and all of them had underlying health issues, while 29 were unvaccinated against COVID-19, the CECC said. Meanwhile, the CECC also reported 82 new cases classified as moderate and 56 as severe.
20th Nov 2022 - Focus Taiwan

Beijing district urges staying home for weekend as COVID cases rise

Beijing's biggest district urged people to stay home during the weekend and COVID-19 outbreaks grew in numerous Chinese cities on Friday, even as China further fine-tuned its COVID rules by removing capacity limits at entertainment venues. Under a series of measures unveiled last week, authorities have sought to be more targeted in applying COVID-19 curbs that are taking a heavy toll on the economy and fuelling public frustration and anger, sparking investor hopes this week for more significant easing.
18th Nov 2022 - Reuters

China's COVID cases rise, record daily numbers seen in Beijing and other cities

China reported 14,878 new COVID-19 infections for Nov. 12, including a record number of new daily cases in capital city Beijing, as well as in manufacturing hubs Guangzhou and Zhengzhou. The new cases come as industrial activity in Guangzhou and Zhengzhou has been disrupted by restrictions aimed at controlling outbreaks. The number of daily cases in China rose from 11,950 on Nov. 11, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Sunday. Excluding imported infections, China reported 14,761 new local cases, up from 11,803 a day earlier.
13th Nov 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 14th Nov 2022

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China's Xi, out of COVID bubble, faces changed world at G-20

After a lengthy absence from major international gatherings, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is leaving his country’s COVID-19 bubble and venturing abroad next week into a dramatically changed world marked by rising confrontation. Xi will attend the G-20 meeting of industrial and emerging market nations in Indonesia followed by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Thailand. He will meet individually with other leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday in their first in-person talks since Biden took office in January 2021. The Chinese leader has relied mainly on speeches by video to deliver China’s message at the U.N. and other forums since 2020. The period has seen a sharp deterioration in China’s relations with the West over the COVID-19 pandemic, a crackdown on civil rights in Hong Kong, military threats against Taiwan and Beijing’s tacit support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
13th Nov 2022 - The Associated Press

AstraZeneca drops submission to US regulators for Covid-19 vaccine approval

AstraZeneca has abandoned its submission for US regulatory approval for the Covid-19 vaccine it developed with Oxford university, almost two years after it was initially approved in the UK and Europe. Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s chief executive, said the company had decided to focus its regulatory team’s efforts on areas with larger unmet medical need, pointing to 19 regulatory approvals since the last earnings call. “We have decided to withdraw application in the United States simply because the US marketplace is well supplied and in fact, the demand for vaccine in the US and elsewhere in the world is declining,” he said.
13th Nov 2022 - Financial Times

Visiting curbs at hospitals, residential care homes to be extended 2 weeks due to COVID-19 situation

The Ministry of Health (MOH) will extend current visiting restrictions at all hospital wards and residential care homes for two weeks until Nov 23. This is to relieve pressure on hospitals and homes and to protect vulnerable patients and residents, said the ministry in a press release on Wednesday (Nov 9).
12th Nov 2022 - CNA

China Eases Zero-Covid Rules as Economic Toll and Frustrations Mount

China eased pandemic controls on Friday, as the country’s leaders seek to lessen the pain of a stringent zero-Covid policy that has exacted a heavy economic toll and stoked rising public resentment. The newly appointed Politburo Standing Committee of the nation’s top leaders, in one of its first major decisions, set out new rules to “optimize and adjust” the policy to minimize its impact on economic growth and people’s lives, as well as further open the country’s borders to foreign visitors, according to a release Friday by the National Health Commission. The new guidance shortened the mandatory quarantine time for inbound travelers and for those identified as close contacts, but notably didn’t declare an end to policies intended to completely vanquish Covid, insisting that the country “firmly stick to the dynamic zero-Covid policy.”
11th Nov 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China's COVID curbs intensify as cases surge to highest since Shanghai lockdown

China on Friday eased some of its strict COVID rules, including shortening quarantines by two days for close contacts of infected people and for inbound travellers, and removing a penalty for airlines for bringing in too many cases. The loosening of curbs, a day after President Xi Jinping led his new Politburo Standing Committee in a meeting on COVID, cheered markets even as many experts warned that the measures were incremental and reopening probably remained a long way off.
11th Nov 2022 - Reuters

U.S. COVID public health emergency to stay in place

The United States will keep in place the public health emergency status of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing millions of Americans to still receive free tests, vaccines and treatments, two Biden administration officials said on Friday. The possibility of a winter surge in COVID cases and the need for more time to transition out of the public health emergency to a private market were two factors that contributed to the decision not to end the emergency status in January, one of the officials said.
11th Nov 2022 - Reuters

'Hellhound': the delightfully-names new Covid variant sweeping across Spain

The new Covid variant that is sweeping through Spain has unofficially been given the delightful moniker of 'Hellhound' by social media users. It is certainly easier to remember than its official designation - technically referring to two separate Omicron subvariants as BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 -while they are only 2.7% of the cases at this moment they are expected be dominant in just a few weeks
11th Nov 2022 - Olive Press

Covid Hospitalizations Are Rising in Kids Under 6 Months, CDC Director Walensky Says

Covid-19 hospitalizations are rising among babies under 6 months old, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging mothers to get vaccinated to reduce the risk of infection in those not yet eligible for shots, Director Rochelle Walensky said. “We’re seeing more and more of those younger babies getting hospitalized,” Walensky said in an exclusive interview at CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta. “That’s really where we’re trying to do some work now because we think we can prevent those by getting mom vaccinated.”
10th Nov 2022 - Bloomberg

China to ‘Unswervingly’ Keep to Covid Zero Policy, Dashing Hopes

China will “unswervingly” adhere to its current Covid controls as the country faces increasingly serious outbreaks, health officials said, damping hopes that Beijing will ease its stringent policies that have put cities and factories under prolonged lockdowns. “Previous practices have proved that our prevention and control plans and a series of strategic measures are completely correct,” Hu Xiang, an official at National Health Commission’s disease prevention and control bureau, said at a briefing Saturday. “The policies are also the most economical and effective.”
8th Nov 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 7th Nov 2022

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Chinese officials signal no change to 'zero-COVID' policy

Chinese health officials are giving no indication of any relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions following several days of speculation that the government was considering changes to a “zero-COVID” approach that has stymied economic growth and disrupted daily life
5th Nov 2022 - The Independent

China to 'Unswervingly' Keep to Covid Zero Policy, Dashing Hopes

China will “unswervingly” adhere to its current Covid controls as the country faces increasingly serious outbreaks, health officials said, damping hopes that Beijing will ease its stringent policies that have put cities and factories under prolonged lockdowns. “Previous practices have proved that our prevention and control plans and a series of strategic measures are completely correct,” Hu Xiang, an official at National Health Commission’s disease prevention and control bureau, said at a briefing Saturday. “The policies are also the most economical and effective.”
5th Nov 2022 - Bloomberg

Rise in RSV, Flu and Other Respiratory Viruses Could Result in Tripledemic

The fall is shaping up as a rough and unpredictable one for respiratory viruses, as federal health officials warn of an early increase in activity this season. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Friday recommended that healthcare providers offer flu and Covid-19 shots to patients, use diagnostics to guide patient management and provide treatments as early as possible. Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are simmering at a sustained level, with new Omicron subvariants and the coming holiday season threatening to drive them higher. Other viruses including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, are surging earlier than usual, after two years of unusually low or sporadic transmission.
5th Nov 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China vows to continue with 'dynamic-clearing' COVID strategy

China will persevere with its "dynamic-clearing" approach to COVID-19 cases as soon as they emerge, health officials said on Saturday, adding that measures must be implemented more precisely and meet the needs of vulnerable people. The country's strict COVID containment approach is still able to control the virus, despite the high transmissibility of COVID variants and asymptomatic carriers, an official from the China National Health Commission told a news conference.
5th Nov 2022 - Reuters

China Plans Easing Covid Restrictions, Canceling Flight Suspensions

China is working on plans to scrap a system that penalizes airlines for bringing virus cases into the country, according to people familiar with the matter, a sign authorities are looking for ways to ease the impact of the Covid Zero policy. The State Council, which oversees China’s bureaucracy, recently asked government agencies including the civil aviation regulator to prepare for ending the so-called circuit-breaker mechanism, said the people, asking not to be identified because the matter is sensitive. The system sees airlines banned temporarily from specific routes into China for one-to-two weeks, depending on how many Covid-positive passengers they bring in to the country. A similar mechanism for Hong Kong was halted in July. The request is part of a broader three-step plan devised mid-year to normalize China’s aviation industry, the people said, with the country effectively cut off from the rest of the world by its pandemic border curbs.
4th Nov 2022 - Bloomberg

China vows commitment to growth as investors bet on easier COVID policy

Chinese policymakers pledged on Wednesday that growth was still a priority and they would press on with reforms, helping further boost stock markets buoyed by hopes that Beijing will ease off on its strict COVID-19 measures. The policymakers' comments came in an apparent bid to soothe fears that ideology could take precedence as Xi Jinping began a new leadership term and strict COVID curbs exact a growing toll on the world's second-largest economy.
2nd Nov 2022 - Reuters

China Covertly Locks Down Cities as Covid Zero Pushback Rises

It’s nearly impossible to eat in a restaurant in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where Covid-19 was first detected nearly three years ago. There are few flights out of Zhengzhou, home to the country’s largest iPhone factory. And many children in the tech hub of Shenzhen haven’t been inside a classroom in weeks. Sweeping lockdown orders like that deployed in Shanghai earlier this year haven’t been announced in any of these places, yet people, businesses and entertainment venues are operating as if they’re in place.
2nd Nov 2022 - Bloomberg

Macau reimposes COVID curbs as China loosens visa rules for gambling hub

Macau authorities reinstated tough COVID-19 curbs including locking down a major casino over the weekend after a handful of cases were detected, even as China announced a loosening of visa rules for visitors to the world's biggest gambling hub. Authorities locked down the MGM Cotai casino resort owned by MGM China on Sunday, with staff and guests ordered to stay inside until Nov. 1. More than 1,500 people are sealed inside the property, the government said on Monday.
31st Oct 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 31st Oct 2022

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Wuhan Locks Down Part of City Center as Covid Cases Emerge

Wuhan locked down one of its central districts after Covid cases were found, as China persists with a zero-tolerance approach to the virus almost three years since the pathogen first emerged in the city. The roughly 900,000 residents of Hanyang district were told to stay in their homes from Wednesday, a spokeswoman from the area’s CDC told Bloomberg News by phone. Another official at Hanyang’s health bureau said the lockdown would last until Sunday, and that all non-essential businesses had been told to shut. Supermarkets and pharmacies will remain operational.
28th Oct 2022 - Bloomberg

China Ramps Up Lockdowns, Covid Restrictions Across Country

Article reports that investors hoped China would ease its stringent Covid Zero strategy once the pivotal Communist Party congress cemented President Xi Jinping’s grip on power. Instead, the opposite seems to be happening. Fresh lockdowns are being imposed from Wuhan, Covid’s original epicenter, to China’s industrial belt on the east coast. Schools and dining in at restaurants in the southern manufacturing powerhouse of Guangzhou have been suspended, while targeted shutdowns in the metropolises of Beijing and Shanghai continue, with apartment blocks and neighborhoods subject to stay-at-home orders if even a close contact of someone infected has visited.
28th Oct 2022 - Bloomberg

Covid-19 Rules Take Shine Off Hong Kong's Bid to Reopen

Hong Kong will attempt to show it is back in business with a financial summit and premier rugby tournament next week, as strict pandemic controls have led to an exodus of talent and business from the city. But with most visitors still being forced to take PCR tests on arrival and banned from bars and restaurants for three days, business leaders say the two events intended to serve as marquee attractions for the Asian financial hub are likely to fall flat. “The overall feedback we got was: Thanks, but call us when you are actually opened up,” Johannes Hack, president of the German Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, said of how people feel about business travel to the city. As long as the restrictions are in place, “no one can come to Hong Kong with the peace of mind that their schedule won’t be impacted,” he added.
29th Oct 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

COVID-19: New report predicts how many daily cases there will be by February

Global coronavirus cases are projected to rise slowly in the coming months to about 18.7 million per day by February. The current daily average is around 16.7 million, according to the University of Washington report. It is far fewer than last winter when the Omicron variant pushed the estimated peak daily average to about 80 million - and the increase is also not expected to cause a big increase in deaths. The university's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) forecasts average deaths will rise from about 1,660 now to 2,748 on 1 February.
26th Oct 2022 - Sky News

Biden gets latest COVID vaccine, urges Americans to do same

U.S. President Joe Biden rolled up his sleeve and received an updated COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, using the occasion to urge more Americans to get the booster before the upcoming holiday season, especially seniors. "I'm calling on all Americans to get their shot just as soon as they can," Biden said shortly before a doctor gave him the new shot. With some Americans resistant to the vaccines, Biden urged them to put partisan politics aside, noting that more than 1 million people in the United States have died from COVID-19.
25th Oct 2022 - Reuters

China's Shanghai Migrant Worker Villages Blamed for Covid Face Demolition

Tens of thousands of migrant workers in Shanghai, who have long been living on the margins in one of China’s wealthiest cities, are facing renewed threats of eviction after their ramshackle villages were blamed for causing the Covid-19 outbreak that led to a monthslong lockdown. Like many other major Chinese cities, Shanghai has for years been razing and redeveloping the densely populated neighborhoods — known as “cheng zhong cun” or “villages within a city” — to make room for new residential and commercial complexes to drive growth in the world’s second-largest economy. This year, the demolition in Shanghai is gathering pace.
23rd Oct 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 24th Oct 2022

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No way out in sight for China's zero-COVID strategy

For almost three years, China has been implementing one of the strictest pandemic control policies in the world, shutting down borders, imposing lockdowns across the country and conducting mass-scale COVID-19 tests to try and contain the spread of coronavirus. Millions of Chinese residents have been wondering whether authorities may begin to ease these stringent measures, but the latest signal from the Chinese leader has dashed that hope. On Sunday, Chinese President Xi Jinping lauded the success of the zero-COVID strategy, arguing that the policy has saved lives while saying China has launched an "all-out people's war to stop the spread of the virus." His message comes amid reinforced calls from Chinese state media for Beijing to persist with its COVID-19 policies. Experts largely agree that China seems to have no plan to end the zero-COVID strategy anytime soon, nor is it prepared to pivot away from the strategy. "China lacks effective vaccines and treatment options, has a dangerously low vaccination rate for older populations, and a highly stressed health care system," said Xi Chen, an associate professor of health policy and economics at the Yale School of Public Health.
23rd Oct 2022 - Deutsche Welle

In ‘post-Covid’ Singapore, doctors warn against complacency as XBB cases surge

Many doctors in city state are worried about complacency, saying some residents are too laid-back, including some young people. Cases are rising fuelled by XBB Omicron variant so ‘exercise extra precautions. You do your part; society does its part.’
22nd Oct 2022 - South China Morning Post

Cases of BQ.1, BQ.1.1 COVID variants double in U.S. as Europe warns of rise

U.S. health regulators on Friday estimated that BQ.1 and closely related BQ.1.1 accounted for 16.6% of coronavirus variants in the country, nearly doubling from last week, while Europe expects them to become the dominant variants in a month. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said the variants are likely to drive up cases in the coming weeks to months in the European region. The two variants are descendants of Omicron's BA.5 subvariant, which is the dominant form of the coronavirus in the United States. Regulators in Europe and the U.S. have recently authorized vaccine boosters that target it.
22nd Oct 2022 - Reuters

China is Debating a Reduction to Covid Quarantine For Inbound Travelers

Chinese officials are debating whether to reduce the amount of time people coming into the country must spend in mandatory quarantine, according to people familiar with the discussions, as the country’s Covid Zero policy leaves it increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. Bureaucrats are looking at cutting the quarantine period to two days in a hotel and then five days at home, said the people, asking not to be identified as the discussions are private. Currently, China requires 10 days of isolation on entry into the country, with seven days confined to a hotel room, and then another three days at home, where people are still monitored and subject to regular testing.
20th Oct 2022 - Bloomberg

Chinese capital steps up COVID measures as cases quadruple

China's capital, Beijing, has dialled up measures to stop COVID, strengthening public checks and locking down some residential compounds after a quadrupling of its case load in recent weeks, just as a key Communist Party congress entered full swing. The city of 21 million people on Thursday reported 18 new locally transmitted cases for the previous day, bringing the tally for the past 10 days to 197. That is four times more than the 49 infections detected in the previous 10-day period. While the number of cases is very small compared with other countries, China's zero-COVID policy has compelled the capital to ratchet up preventive measures, particularly with the Communist Party holding its once-every-five-years congress this week, during which President Xi Jinping is expected to win a precedent-breaking third term as its leader.
20th Oct 2022 - Reuters

U.S. committee recommends COVID shot for CDC's free vaccine program

An expert committee on Wednesday recommended that COVID-19 shots become part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) vaccine program for children, which provides many types of free inoculations to millions of kids each year. While all COVID-19 vaccines are currently provided free in the United States by the federal government, the U.S. public health emergency is expected to end in early 2023 and the private market will take over distribution of COVID vaccines and treatments. The committee's recommendation allows for distribution by the Vaccines for Children Program under the CDC's current COVID vaccine guidance, which is for all children over the age of 6 months to be vaccinated and those age 5 and older to receive booster shots.
19th Oct 2022 - Reuters

Hong Kong Covid News: City to Lift Public Gathering Limit to 12

Hong Kong will increase the number of people allowed to gather in public, with the substantial tweak to one of its most criticized Covid rules marking another gradual step toward reviving its reputation as a financial hub. As many as 12 people will be able to congregate together in public places starting Oct. 20, the government said in a statement late Tuesday. That’s up from the current limit of four people. The change brings the rule in line with the cap for groups at restaurants, gyms and theme parks. But the ongoing limits have been criticized by health professionals as lacking scientific support given as many as 240 people are allowed to attend an indoor banquet.
19th Oct 2022 - Bloomberg

China says its zero-COVID policy is the best, most cost-effective, will improve

China's COVID-19 measures are the best, most cost-effective and will continue to improve, a spokesman for the ruling Communist Party said on Saturday. "We firmly believe that the light is ahead and perseverance is victory," Sun Yeli told a news conference in Beijing ahead of the party's 20th congress. Sun was responding to a question about whether China risks being isolated from the rest of the world if it continues with its zero-COVID policy.
16th Oct 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 17th Oct 2022

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Coronavirus: Singapore’s Covid resilience means XBB ‘not a concern’ even as cases spike during huge events like F1 race

City state reported 11,732 new cases on Tuesday, at a time the new XBB variant has caused some worry in Asia over its ability to ‘evade vaccines.’ Singapore officials say there’s no cause for concern yet, citing the country’s ‘resilience built up through vaccination and previous waves of infection’
15th Oct 2022 - South China Morning Post

World Faces New Threats From Fast-Mutating Omicron Variants

The subvariants known as BQ.1.1, BQ.1, BQ.1.3, BA.2.3.20 and XBB are among the fastest-spreading of the main omicron lineages. Based on UK data, the BQ variants, as well as BA.2.75.2 and BF.7 are the most concerning due to their growth advantage and immune evasiveness, the country’s health security agency said on Oct. 7. BF.7 has also been gaining ground in the US, where it accounted for 4.6% of Covid cases in the week ending Oct. 8, from 3.3% the week before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Atlanta-based agency noted BA4.6 was the most prevalent after BA.5, accounting for 13.6% of cases in the first week of October, from 12.7% the week before. In Bangladesh and Singapore, the XBB strain has been linked to a small surge in cases.
14th Oct 2022 - Bloomberg

After COVID lockdown, eyes on Shanghai chief at party congress

Once seen as a sure bet for elevation to China's elite Politburo Standing Committee or even as the country's next premier, Li Qiang's glide path to the upcoming Communist Party Congress was buffeted by Shanghai's grinding two-month COVID-19 lockdown. As the top official in China's commercial hub and its most populous city, Li's position as Shanghai party chief has traditionally been a stepping stone towards a top-two role in China's power structure - including for Xi Jinping himself.
12th Oct 2022 - Reuters

Almost two-thirds of long Covid patients are women, study finds

Women account for almost two-thirds of long Covid cases, according to a new study of the illness in multiple countries. Extreme tiredness, loss of smell, shortness of breath, and muscle aches are some of the most widely-reported symptoms of long Covid, which affects about six percent of Covid-19 patients.
12th Oct 2022 - The Independent

Shanghai Lockdown Fears Back as China Covid Cases Rise Before Party Congress

China is stepping up efforts to contain Covid-19 outbreaks ahead of the Party Congress, with national cases climbing to the highest in almost two months and concerns about widening lockdowns rippling across the financial hub of Shanghai. The country reported 1,878 cases for Sunday, the highest since Aug. 20, as the week-long National Day holiday saw cases flare among returning travelers. Shanghai posted 34 new local infections, the most in almost three months, with two infections found outside of its quarantine system.
11th Oct 2022 - Bloomberg

China urges 'patience' as COVID cases rebound ahead of key congress

China called for "patience" with its tough COVID policies and warned against any "war-weariness" as local cases soared to their highest since August, days ahead of a pivotal Communist Party congress. Many countries are learning to co-exist with COVID-19, but China has repeatedly quashed any speculation of a let-up in its policies, which can range from locking down a local community to an entire city, even though fatalities remain low by global standards and symptoms, if any, are mostly mild.
10th Oct 2022 - Reuters

China's Tolerance for Xi's Unyielding Covid Fight Is Cracking

Since the initial outbreak emerged in the central city of Wuhan, many people in China have been more or less supportive of mass testing, citywide lockdowns and strict hotel quarantine that has restricted overseas travel. But signs are emerging that patience is wearing thin. While there aren’t reliable surveys on Chinese attitudes toward Covid-19 and social media is heavily censored, more criticisms of Xi’s policy have broken through of late. On the official Weibo account of Li Wenliang, a whistle-blowing doctor in Wuhan who was lionized by China’s government after his death, a greater number of complaints have emerged about lockdowns and constant PCR tests in recent weeks.
10th Oct 2022 - Bloomberg

Pfizer exec denies CEO negotiated EU COVID vaccine contract via text message

A Pfizer executive with a lead role in negotiating a COVID-19 vaccine bulk supply agreement with the European Commission "categorically" ruled out that the U.S. drugmaker's chief executive agreed the contract via mobile phone text messages. "As to whether a contract negotiation such as this contract which you referred to, 1.8 billion doses, was negotiated through an SMS, I can categorically tell you that would not be the case," Janine Small, president of international developed markets at Pfizer, told the European Parliament's special committee on COVID-19 on Monday.
10th Oct 2022 - Reuters

China's Covid-19 Lockdowns Deal Another Blow to Consumer Spending

A renewed wave of pandemic-related lockdowns in major Chinese cities is hampering hopes for a recovery in consumer spending, showing how difficult it is for Beijing to rekindle growth without loosening Covid-19 restrictions. Official data released in recent days showed consumer spending falling sharply during the seven-day National Day holiday when compared with a year earlier, while a private survey of services activity fell into contraction in September. Travelers in China made 422 million trips during the National Day holiday between Oct. 1 and 7, down 18% from a year earlier and 39% lower than prepandemic levels in 2019, China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism said Friday.
10th Oct 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 10th Oct 2022

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Illness, isolation and suicidal thoughts: Hong Kong’s senior caregivers struggle through COVID-19

There’s a short flight of steps leading to their house. But to 73-year-old Pun Sum Wing, it takes some effort getting his wife, a wheelchair user, around. So he built a wooden ramp, complete with rubber strips, to wheel her in and out of the house. It’s a steep incline and his wife, Law Mui, needs assurance. Mr Pun gently comforts her and within a few moments, they’re home. Mrs Pun has dementia and is unable to move on her own, so Mr Pun bathes and feeds her. It’s a familiar routine; one that the couple has been following for most of the past decade. “It’s my responsibility to take care of my wife. I don't want to bother my children as they’re working and need to take care of their own families,” he said.
9th Oct 2022 - Channel NewsAsia Singapore

Spike in COVID-19 cases across Europe could mean fast-spreading winter wave

With winter weather just around the corner, the first hints of another wave of COVID-19 have emerged in Europe, according to data released by the World Health Organization this week. Infections across Europe — the majority of them caused by omicron subvariants that dominated the summer months — have been steadily climbing in several nations, including in the United Kingdom, France and Italy. According to WHO data released Wednesday, cases across the European Union spiked to 1.5 million last week, up 8% from the week prior. Hospitalizations are also up across the 27-nation bloc, with Italy reporting a 32% jump in admissions and a 21% increase in intensive care admissions for the week ending on Oct. 4. Britain, meanwhile, reported a 45% increase in hospitalizations when compared with the week prior.
9th Oct 2022 - The Times Leader

What the COVID-19 pandemic revealed about intellectual property

An investigation into the development of the vaccines tells a different story. The work on mRNA vaccine technology dates back many decades and was almost entirely publicly funded. Even some of the critical elements of the Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, such as the lipid nanoparticle container5, were also publicly funded7. Both BioNTech and Moderna developed their own proprietary platforms — requiring considerable ingenuity, effort and cost — relying on both patents, trade secrets and regulatory exclusivity. Pfizer’s development of Paxlovid was conducted in-house. During the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, Pfizer developed an intravenous protease inhibitor to combat that coronavirus. Pfizer was able to do so as it had recently acquired Agouron Pharmaceuticals, a firm that had been working on a similar protease in rhinovirus.
8th Oct 2022 - Nature.com

New Zealand could face another COVID-19 wave before year-end: report

New Zealand could be hit by another COVID-19 wave before the end of the year, a COVID-19 modeler warned on Tuesday. Prof. Michael Plank of the University of Canterbury called on Kiwis to get boosted if they haven't been, according to a report in the New Zealand Herald. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have been increasing in European countries such as Germany, Denmark, Belgium and Britain, Plank said, citing this as an example of another imminent pandemic wave. Factors such as waning immunity and new Omicron sub-variants BQ.1.1, a BA.5 descendant, and another sub-type, BA.2.75.2, have been combined to contribute to the forming of another wave in the future, he said.
8th Oct 2022 - Xinhua

Zero-Covid measures cause chaos as China prepares for Beijing summit

Lockdowns and travel restrictions are continuing to cause chaos across China in the run-up to a crucial political meeting next week as the government holds fast to hardline zero-Covid policies. As thousands of Communist party delegates prepare to descend on Beijing for the twice-a-decade congress meeting, where Xi Jinping is expected to start his third term as leader, local authorities are under pressure to control contain outbreaks. This week 2,883 cases were reported across more than 25 provinces, including 227 on Wednesday. The number is small compared with global cases but relatively high for China’s zero-tolerance approach. China’s government has remained committed to its zero-Covid policy, despite major damage to the economy and growing opposition from the general public to frequent sudden lockdowns that trap people inside their homes, shops and workplaces, and other overzealous reactions to handfuls of cases.
8th Oct 2022 - The Guardian

White House says COVID booster campaign going well, should pick up

The White House expects the rate of vaccination in its fall booster campaign to pick up over the coming weeks, and its COVID response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha on Friday characterized the initial pace as "a really good start."
8th Oct 2022 - Reuters

Covid wave looms in Europe as booster campaign makes slow start

A new Covid-19 wave appears to be brewing in Europe as cooler weather arrives, with public health experts warning that vaccine fatigue and confusion over types of shots available will likely limit booster uptake. Omicron subvariants BA.4/5 that dominated this summer are still behind the majority of infections, but newer Omicron subvariants are gaining ground. Hundreds of new forms of Omicron are being tracked by scientists, World Health Organization (WHO) officials said this week. WHO data released late on Wednesday showed that cases in the European Union reached 1.5 million last week, up 8% from the prior week, despite a dramatic fall in testing. Globally, case numbers continue to decline.
8th Oct 2022 - Egypt Independent

Early signs a new U.S. COVID surge could be on its way

As the U.S. heads into a third pandemic winter, the first hints are emerging that another possible surge of COVID-19 infections could be on its way. So far, no national surge has started yet. The number of people getting infected, hospitalized and dying from COVID in the U.S. has been gently declining from a fairly high plateau. But as the weather cools and people start spending more time inside, where the virus spreads more easily, the risks of a resurgence increase. The first hint of what could be in store is what's happening in Europe. Infections have been rising in many European countries, including the U.K., France, and Italy.
7th Oct 2022 - NPR.org

Pfizer COVID vaccine clears Japan panel for use with young children

A Japanese health ministry panel on Wednesday recommended approving Pfizer Inc's (PFE.N) COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as six months old. Japan in January expanded use of the vaccine to those as young as five years old. Last month, health authorities started to dispensing Pfizer and Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) booster shots that target the Omicron variant of the virus. The panel also recommended approval of a version of the Pfizer vaccine that protects against the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of Omicron. Moderna said earlier on Wednesday it was seeking Japanese approval of its own subvariant shot.
5th Oct 2022 - Reuters.com

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 3rd Oct 2022

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First on CNN: US government to provide $266 million to build community, public health work force

The US government is awarding more than $266 million from the American Rescue Plan to expand the nation’s community and public health work force, officials will announce Friday. The plan’s overall investment in community health, outreach and health education workers – totaling more than $1.1 billion – is one of its “crown jewels,” said Gene Sperling, coordinator of the American Rescue Plan and a senior adviser to President Joe Biden. The funding comes as some public and community health workers have faced intense workloads, backlash and burnout during the Covid-19 pandemic and throughout other overlapping health emergencies, including record-high drug overdose deaths, the monkeypox outbreak and the re-emergence of polio.
2nd Oct 2022 - CNN

Ending mandatory isolation does not mean Covid is over. But we need to move beyond short-term fixes

Changes in Covid-19 policy settings always invoke mixed reactions, and the national cabinet decision to stop isolation requirements for most people is one of the more substantial announcements since the opening of international borders, and the end to supervised quarantine. Some of us have felt protected by rules, others frustrated by them, while the majority probably sit somewhere in the middle – being reassured that they were there when needed, and relieved when we can ease them safely. This is not about “giving up”, or “letting it rip”, it is about handing over to sustainable measures that will take us forward.
2nd Oct 2022 - The Guardian

Bereaved families fear Covid inquiry cover-up after ban on testimony

Families of those who died from Covid-19 have been barred from submitting individual testimony to the official public inquiry about the standard of care received by their loved ones during the pandemic, the Observer can reveal. Instead, the inquiry chair, Lady Hallett, is proposing they submit “pen portraits” to a private research company as part of a parallel “Listening Project” that will not have the power to demand the disclosure of documents or investigate claims about their relatives’ care. “It would appear that Lady Hallett would rather outsource the grief of bereaved families to the Listening Project than engage with us constructively,” said John Sullivan, whose daughter, Susan, died in March 2020 at Barnet hospital after being denied access to an intensive therapy unit because of her Down’s syndrome and supposed cardiac comorbidities. “The inquiry is becoming a farce and an exercise in cover-up,” he said, ahead of the first hearing on Tuesday.
2nd Oct 2022 - The Guardian

China's Covid Rules Wreak Havoc With Holidays in Blow to Economy

Chinese holidaymakers are bracing for more disruption during a weeklong break as the government tightens controls to contain Covid outbreaks before the Communist Party’s top leaders meet in Beijing for a crucial political meeting. Passenger trips by road are expected to plunge by about 30% from a year ago during the National Day break, according to government data. Prices of air tickets for the period are lower compared to last year and travelers are taking shorter journeys, figures from hotel booking sites show. Cinema box office takings are expected to decline by more than 20%.
2nd Oct 2022 - Bloomberg

Hong Kong's Abrupt Quarantine End Triggers New Crisis for Hotels

Hong Kong’s former quarantine hotels are awash with empty rooms, after the city axed its dreaded mandatory isolation rule for arrivals but kept other virus curbs likely to repel inbound tourists. The Ovolo group’s Southside and Central properties had just four bookings left on Monday after logging some 1,500 quarantine cancellations over the weekend, said Mael Vastine, director of operations in Hong Kong. “Business has been impacted and it will take some time to recover,” he added, noting that neither hotel had taken a new reservation in recent days.
1st Oct 2022 - Bloomberg

Australia draws flak over plan to end home quarantine for Covid patients

Australia will end the mandatory five-day home quarantine for Covid-infected people on Oct. 14, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Friday, even as some doctors warned the move would put the public at risk. The decision to let Covid-infected Australians decide whether they need to isolate or not removes one of country’s last remaining restrictions from the pandemic era, and comes about a month after the quarantine period was cut to five days from seven. “We want a policy that promotes resilience and capacity-building and reduces a reliance on government intervention,” Albanese told reporters after a meeting of the national cabinet.
30th Sep 2022 - South China Morning Post

Australia is now living with COVID-19, but in aged care, thousands are dying with it

They're known as the Silent Generation: Australia's elders often have a reputation for copping hard knocks on the chin without complaint – but they’re also among our most vulnerable. While the COVID death rate in aged care has significantly decreased in 2022, the number of total deaths has increased exponentially Advocates say not enough people are aware of the trauma still happening in aged care. Residents are torn between fearing the outside world and wanting to be a part of it. It's because of that vulnerability many of their lives have been slower to return to a pre-COVID 'normal'. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, Australians united to protect each other. During the first two years, the country was devastated to see almost 900 deaths from the illness in aged care. That figure made up about 40 per cent of the 2,220 deaths recorded during the same time frame. Floral tributes and homemade signs of hope were tied to fences of locked-down aged care facilities, where residents could only peer through the windows.
30th Sep 2022 - ABC News

Physician Burnout Has Reached Distressing Levels, New Research Finds

Physician Burnout in the United States Has Reached Distressing Levels, New Research Finds
30th Sep 2022 - The New York Times

Hong Kong Scraps Hotel Quarantine Requirement

Hong Kong has scrapped hotel quaratine stays as a requirement of its Covid-19 quarantine practice.
26th Sep 2022 - Regulation Asia

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Grim milestone as Australia’s aged care homes mark 4,000 Covid deaths

The Covid-19 pandemic may have slipped from the forefront of most Australians’ minds. But in aged care, another grim milestone has just been recorded. This week, Australia marked its 4,000th death in residential aged care since the pandemic began. Data released Friday shows the aged care death toll now sits at 4,012, after another 32 Covid-related deaths were recorded last week. Aged care has been the pandemic’s epicentre in Australia and 2022 has been the most deadly year by far. Nine months into the year, and the death toll in 2022 is already well above 3,000. The toll was greater than the first two years (231 in 2021 and 686 in 2020) of the pandemic combined.
25th Sep 2022 - The Guardian

Patients Suffered at For-Profit Nursing Homes Early in Pandemic, Congress Says

One nurse caring for more than 30 patients. Hours- or even days-long waits for basic care. Threats against sick staff. These are some of the conditions described in a new congressional report examining several for-profit nursing-home chains in the early days of the pandemic. The report by the House of Representatives’ Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis examined five for-profit chains operating about 850 homes with 80,000 residents during the early months of the pandemic, drawing on complaints filed against the companies. About 70% of nursing homes in the US are run by for-profit operators.
23rd Sep 2022 - Bloomberg

Japan to Restore Visa-Free Travel From Oct. 11 as Covid Pandemic Recedes

Japan will abolish a slew of Covid border controls from Oct. 11, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in New York, in a move that looks set to revive the tourism industry. Individual visitors will be allowed to enter, and Japan will reinstate visa waivers, Kishida said at a news conference Thursday morning in New York. The cap on daily arrivals in Japan will also be ended, he said. Later in the day, at the New York Stock Exchange, Kishida said Japan “will relax border control measures to be on par with the US,” spurring applause from the audience.
23rd Sep 2022 - Bloomberg

Goldman Sachs Will End Covid Vaccination Requirements in Its New York Office

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will drop vaccination requirements for staff at its New York City office, as the waning pandemic prompts Wall Street banks eager for employees to return to their desks to scrap remaining restrictions. The bank will end the requirement beginning Tuesday Nov. 1, according to a memo to staff seen by Bloomberg News. It follows the announcement by New York City Mayor Eric Adams that the city will no longer mandate that private employers require all of their workers to be vaccinated for Covid-19. Goldman Sachs had previously removed vaccine requirements in other US locations
23rd Sep 2022 - Bloomberg

Pfizer to supply up to 6 mln COVID pill courses for lower income countries

Pfizer Inc said on Thursday it would supply up to 6 million courses of its COVID-19 antiviral treatment to NGO Global Fund for low- and middle-income countries that seeks to address worldwide disparities in COVID response. The company said Paxlovid treatment courses will be available for procurement through Global Fund's COVID-19 Response Mechanism to 132 low- and middle-income countries this year, subject to local regulatory clearances.
23rd Sep 2022 - Reuters

COVID complications push Australian deaths to highest numbers in 40 years

The alarm has been sounded about COVID-19’s hidden impact as new data shows that the highest number of people have died in the March quarter of 2022 than in any of the past 41 years. Australian Bureau of Statistics population data published on Wednesday shows an 18 per cent increase in deaths in the quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, rising from 36,100 to 46,200 deaths.
23rd Sep 2022 - Sydney Morning Herald

Zero-COVID policy has cost Hong Kong its aviation hub status - IATA

Hong Kong has lost its position as a global aviation hub due to China's zero-COVID policy, the head of airlines group IATA said on Wednesday, warning the industry's recovery from the pandemic would be slowed if Beijing continued its restrictions next year. Attending an International Air Transport Association (IATA) conference in the Qatari capital Doha, IATA Director General Willie Walsh said China's zero-COVID policy had "devastated" Hong Kong and hit airline Cathay Pacific hard.
23rd Sep 2022 - Reuters

Covid hospitalisations rise by nearly 20% in a week in England

Coronavirus cases and hospitalisations are rising once again in England after declining since early July, data suggests, with experts warning people should stay at home if ill and get a Covid booster if eligible. According to the latest figures on the government coronavirus dashboard, both the number of cases detected through mass community testing, and patients admitted to hospital with Covid have risen in the past seven days, suggesting the country could be facing a resurgence of the virus. On Monday, 781 Covid patients were admitted to hospital in England, up from 519 the week before, with the seven day total rising 17%, from 3,434 in the week ending 12 September to 4,015 in the week ending 19 September.
22nd Sep 2022 - The Guardian

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 18th Sep 2022

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How did Pfizer vaccine fare against Omicron in NZ?

New Zealand confronted Omicron as one of the most vaccinated populations on the planet – so what difference did that make in blunting the worst impacts? That's what researchers plan to find out in a new study exploring the effectiveness of multiple doses of the Pfizer vaccine against the variant, in what was also one of the world's few "infection-naïve" populations. Study leaders Dr Anna Howe and Dr Matt Hobbs also aim to answer another critical question: what protection the vaccine gave Māori, Pasifika and other high-risk groups. By the time the Omicron outbreak forced the whole of New Zealand into the red traffic light setting on January 23, about 93 per cent of our eligible adult population – that's 3,910,251 people – had already received at least two doses of Pfizer's Comirnaty vaccine
18th Sep 2022 - New Zealand Herald

Australians believe life is improving after lockdowns and are more confident in government, survey finds

Australians believe their life is improving and are more confident in the government compared with last year, with much of this wellbeing boost being reported among young people, the results of a national survey suggest. The latest Covid Impact Monitoring survey of more than 3,510 adults, completed in August, found the 18 to 24 age group in particular are feeling more positive about their lives. This is despite being the age group to suffer some of the greatest psychological distress during the peak of the pandemic. “That does not mean that Australia has returned to pre-pandemic levels of wellbeing and mental health,” the results of the latest survey, published on Wednesday, found.
18th Sep 2022 - The Guardian

UK Covid-19 inquiry delayed by two weeks to respect national mourning period

The UK Covid-19 inquiry has been delayed by two weeks out of respect for the national mourning period following the Queen’s death, officials have said. The inquiry, which will investigate decisions made by Boris Johnson’s government during the pandemic, was due to begin on September 20, but has been postponed until October 4. It will begin with a preliminary hearing, which will outline how the inquiry will develop and what it will investigate. During this hearing, inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett will hold a short period of silence to commemorate the impact of the pandemic on people’s lives.
16th Sep 2022 - Evening Standard

China Covid lockdowns leave residents short of food and essential items

Residents under Covid lockdowns in areas across China are complaining of shortages of food and essential items. Tens of millions of people in at least 30 regions have been ordered to stay at home under partial or full lockdowns. "It's been 15 days, we are out of flour, rice, eggs. From days ago, we run out of milk for kids," said one resident in western Xinjiang. Authorities are scrambling to contain local outbreaks ahead of the Communist party's congress in October. China's zero-Covid policy requires strict lockdowns - even if just a handful of cases are reported. On Monday China recorded 949 new Covid cases across the entire country.
16th Sep 2022 - BBC News

China's Chengdu exits full citywide COVID lockdown on Thursday

The Chinese city of Chengdu will on Thursday lift a full COVID-19 lockdown in all districts still facing strict movement curbs as a recent outbreak comes under control, local authorities said. Chengdu, the capital of southwestern China's Sichuan province, was locked down on Sept. 1 after COVID cases were detected, becoming the largest Chinese metropolis hit with curbs since Shanghai's lockdown in April and May. Some districts in Chengdu, a city of more than 21 million people, have already started to exit from a full lockdown since Sept. 8.
16th Sep 2022 - Reuters

WHO Saying Pandemic End in Sight Falls Flat in Covid Zero China

Article repots that the World Health Organization chief’s comment that the end of the pandemic is within reach sparked lively online debate -- and some censorship -- in China, the only major country still trying to stop the spread of the virus. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday that “we have never been in a better position to end the pandemic. We are not there yet, but the end is in sight.” China Newsweek and popular online media outlet Guancha.cn reported on Tedros’s remark and shared videos on social media platform Weibo, but those were removed in the afternoon. A hashtag on Tedros’s comments that gathered some 4.5 million views also appeared to have been removed, and Chinese media disabled the comment function on Weibo posts sharing the news.
15th Sep 2022 - Bloomberg

Nigeria Strikes Deal with Serum Institute of India

Nigeria will start building a vaccine plant by end of the year after signing a contract manufacturing agreement with the Serum Institute of India for local production of the jabs, the country’s health minister said. The country struck the deal with the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer on Wednesday, Health Minister Osagie Ehanire said at a briefing in the capital, Abuja. The plant should be producing routine vaccines -- initially against polio, measles and yellow fever, among others -- by 2028, he added.
14th Sep 2022 - Bloomberg

Malaysia to purchase updated COVID-19 vaccines tailored for new variants: Khairy

The Malaysian government will procure new COVID-19 vaccines which are tailored to fight new strains of the virus, said Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin. The vaccines will be administered free of charge to high-risk groups such as the elderly and those with serious comorbidities, the Malaysian media quoted Mr Khairy as saying on Tuesday. "A decision on this procurement will be announced later along with the vaccines for children under five," he said at a press conference after launching the Record Breaking COVID-19 Vaccination Report: Public-Private Partnership, according to Bernama.
14th Sep 2022 - Channel NewsAsia Singapore

Vietnam appreciates Thailand’s support in COVID-19 fight: Ambassador

The Vietnamese Government appreciated the contributions of the Thailand-Vietnam Friendship Association (TVFA) and five Thai corporations as well as their efforts to call for donations of medical equipment and materials to Vietnam during the fight against COVID-19 last year, said Vietnamese Ambassador to Thailand Phan Chi Thanh. Thanh made the statement during a ceremony in Bangkok on September 14 to present the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs' certificates of merit to the TVFA and Thai corporations, including Thai Beverage, SCG, Berli Jucker, Amata Vietnam and B.Grimm Power, in recognition of their assistance in calling for medical equipment and supplies in the fight against COVID-19 in Vietnam in 2021, when the two countries celebrated the 45th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic ties.
14th Sep 2022 - VietnamPlus

We Are Failing to Use What We've Learned About COVID

Podcast - This is Eric Topol for Medscape. I'm with my co-host Abraham Verghese for a new edition of Medicine and the Machine. We have an extraordinary guest today, Professor Christina Pagel. She is a force — a professor at University College London with an extraordinary background in math, physics, and even interplanetary space. We've never had a guest with such a diverse background. Welcome, Christina.
9th Sep 2022 - Medscape

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 5th Sep 2022

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Coronavirus: Hong Kong health minister slams report suggesting internal conflict on quarantine, city logs 10,683 cases

Hong Kong Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau does not name news outlet but says report had cost the media its integrity, three days after Bloomberg piece. Meanwhile, city logs highest daily tally since March 24
4th Sep 2022 - South China Morning Post on MSN.com

Look Who’s Rushing Covid Vaccines Now

Democrats and the public-health clerisy denounced President Trump for rushing Covid vaccines. They’ve been curiously quiet about the Food and Drug Administration’s gunshot approval last week of revamped booster shots with no trials showing they are safe or effective. The FDA granted emergency-use authorization to mRNA shots by Pfizer and Moderna that are bivalent, targeting the initial Wuhan variant as well as the currently predominant BA.4 and BA.5 strains. The Biden administration ordered 171 million doses earlier this summer, so FDA authorization seems to have been a fait accompli. The FDA probably should have made the reconfigured vaccines available to high-risk and elderly patients. But the case is weak for young people, given the limited benefit and uncertain risks.
4th Sep 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Ex-minister Liam Fox gets donation from Covid test firm he recommended

Tory MP Liam Fox received a £20,000 donation in June from a Covid testing firm on whose behalf he had contacted the then health secretary Matt Hancock. Mr Fox recommended SureScreen Diagnostics to Mr Hancock in 2020, an email seen by campaign group Good Law Project and the BBC shows. The company went on to win a £500m contract to provide tests without facing competition. A spokesperson for Mr Fox said the story was a "baseless smear". It was "concocted by the political activist Jolyon Maugham and the Good Law Project", the spokesman said, and Mr Fox would be making a complaint. "It is appalling that this should be propagated by the BBC," the statement issued after publication, added.
4th Sep 2022 - BBC News

China's tech hub Shenzhen goes into COVID lockdown

Six districts within Shenzen will remain in lockdown for seven days as they are considered at high-risk for COVID-19 transmission, Reuters reports. Shenzhen will suspend bus and train services for the lockdown.
4th Sep 2022 - Axios

Jacinda Ardern is losing support in NZ, but can the PM's international star power save her?

NZ's Opposition says Kiwis are facing a cost-of-living crisis, and analysts say it is impacting support for the PM. Ms Ardern's government now has less support than the National Party, according to recent polling. Analysts say the key issues at next year's election will be the economy and inequality
4th Sep 2022 - ABC News

China's Covid Spread Persists After Mega-City Lockdown

New coronavirus cases in China stayed at elevated levels on Friday following the lockdown of a mega-city of 21 million, as the nation pursues its rigid Covid-zero policy with dogged determination. The country reported 1,819 new local Covid-19 infections on Friday in 25 out of its 32 provinces and municipalities, according to a statement of National Health Commission. That compares with 1,885 reported Thursday. Chengdu, the nation’s sixth-largest city which was ordered to lock down on Thursday, reported 155 new local Covid-19 cases on Friday, edging up from the 150 the previous day.
3rd Sep 2022 - Bloomberg

Shenzhen districts locked down as China battles COVID outbreaks

Most residents of the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen went into a weekend lockdown on Saturday as mass COVID-19 testing kicked off in much of the city of 18 million people. The lockdown, and the suspension of bus and subway services, came into effect two days after city authorities said rumours about a lockdown were based on a "misinterpretation" of the latest COVID-19 prevention and control measures.
3rd Sep 2022 - Reuters

Covid: Millions invited for booster jabs from Monday

Millions of people will be invited for their autumn Covid booster jab in England and Scotland next week, with care home residents the first to receive them. Although infections are falling, health bosses are predicting a resurgence of Covid and flu this autumn and winter. They are urging those eligible to protect themselves from serious illness by getting vaccines against both. A recently approved vaccine against the Omicron variant will be used first.
3rd Sep 2022 - BBC News

Denmark expects winter without COVID restrictions - health minister

Denmark is preparing to go through the coming winter without any coronavirus restrictions even with an expected rise in infections, Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said on Friday. The Nordic country expects to be able to avoid lockdown measures due to new improved booster vaccines, greater immunity in the population and being able to better track the spread of the virus through measures such as waste-water testing.
2nd Sep 2022 - Reuters

Deadline looming, White House sees spike in demand for at-home virus tests

The White House on Thursday said Americans have increased requests for at-home COVID-19 tests as the federal government prepares to stop providing free tests on Friday. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that "we're going to do everything we can to get people their tests."
2nd Sep 2022 - Reuters

Omicron-Targeting Covid Booster Shots Offer Only Slight Advantage

How much better will an omicron-specific Covid-19 booster be? Research that models the protective effect of variant-modified shots found they’ll probably offer a slight advantage over existing immunizations. Antibodies that neutralize the virus jump about 11-fold after a booster targeting the original “Wuhan” strain of the coronavirus, and are increased a further 1.5-fold when a variant-modified shot is used, researchers at the University of New South Wales’ Kirby Institute found. “A variant-modified booster does provide at least a marginal improvement,” said Deborah Cromer, head of the institute’s infection epidemiology and policy analytics group in Sydney, who led the study.
30th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 2nd Sep 2022

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Hong Kong's Lee Gets Nod for Reverse Quarantine Into China

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee has secured China’s support for a “reverse quarantine” program to boost travel into the mainland, after two years of strict Covid curbs thwarted cross-border ties. The city leader said at a Thursday news briefing that officials from neighboring Guangdong province had backed his plan for travelers to first isolate in Hong Kong and then enter China quarantine-free during a virtual meeting. “The main purpose is to first of all alleviate the burden of hotels in the mainland,” he said. “The second goal of this proposal is to ensure that we will have a system to allow a regular flow of people from Hong Kong into Shenzhen.”
1st Sep 2022 - Bloomberg

China Locks Down Megacity Chengdu as Covid Zero Rolls On

The Chinese metropolis of Chengdu locked down its 21 million residents to contain a Covid-19 outbreak, a seismic move in the country’s vast Western region that has largely been untouched by the virus. The capital of Sichuan province, Chengdu is the biggest city to shut down since Shanghai’s bruising two-month lockdown earlier this year. The move -- which will upend the lives of millions of people and businesses, with repercussions for China’s economy and beyond -- shows the country’s commitment to the Covid Zero approach espoused by President Xi Jinping, despite the disruption it’s causing.
1st Sep 2022 - Bloomberg

Hong Kong Officials Target End to Hotel Quarantine in November

Hong Kong is targeting an end to hotel quarantine in November, ahead of a summit of global bankers and an international rugby competition, even as a resurgence in Covid-19 cases prompts health officials to push back on the plan, according to people familiar with the debate. Chief Executive John Lee is leaning toward scrapping hotel quarantine before the November events to signal Hong Kong is back in business, despite the objections of some in his administration, the people said. Health Secretary Lo Chung-mau is among those who want to tighten restrictions as cases surge, one person added, on the hope that suppressing cases will lead to the reopening of the mainland border.
1st Sep 2022 - Bloomberg

China's Chengdu to conduct mass COVID testing, lockdowns as cases climb

Chengdu locks down during four-day citywide testing. Shenzhen has districts with over 15 mln residents and this will hit business, Most curbs in big Chinese cities are intended for a few days according to the Zero Covid plan.
1st Sep 2022 - Reuters

Nine million foreigners visited Spain in July, near pre-pandemic levels

More than twice as many tourists visited Spain in July than in the same month last year, a number only slightly below pre-pandemic levels, National Statistics Institute data showed on Thursday. The 9.1 million visitors in July spent close to 12 billion euros ($12 billion), more than twice as much as in 2021. Tourism earnings are a significant component of Spain's gross domestic product. Before COVID-19 put a halt to international travel in 2020, Spain received a record number of foreign tourists in 2019, with 9.9 million visiting in July of that year.
1st Sep 2022 - Reuters

COVID-19 took a unique toll on undocumented immigrants

Imelda fled sexual violence at the hands of drug cartels in rural Puebla, about two hours outside of Mexico City, and arrived in New York City in 2013. She had no health insurance, barely spoke English, and as an undocumented immigrant, she avoided situations that required revealing her identity. So in March 2020, even as the city became the national epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, Imelda, who asked that her surname not be used due to risk of deportation, resisted going to the hospital for her escalating fever and fatigue. “When the symptoms began, I wanted to go,” Imelda says, but her fears outweighed her desire for treatment. Since arriving in the U.S. Imelda had visited a hospital only once, for the birth of her second daughter. But in addition to worries about revealing her immigration status, she was afraid of incurring medical bills that exceeded what she earned cleaning houses.
1st Sep 2022 - National Geographic

UK downgrades Covid-19 alert level amid falling cases

The UK’s Covid-19 alert level has been downgraded to level 2, meaning the virus is in “general circulation” but healthcare pressures and transmission are “declining or stable”. The chief medical officers of the UK nations and the national medical director of the NHS in England have jointly recommended that the Covid alert level be moved down from level 3 amid falling cases. They said the Covid-19 wave of the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 was “subsiding”. Rates of Covid have decreased as have the number of severe cases needing hospital care, they added. However, they said further Covid surges were “likely” as they urged people to take up the offer of vaccination. The autumn booster campaign is due to start within days.
1st Sep 2022 - The Guardian

Ontario's top doctor drops COVID-19 isolation requirements, expands booster eligibility to kids 5 to 11

Ontario is dropping the mandatory five-day isolation period for those who test positive for COVID-19, the province's top doctor announced Wednesday. The move is part of the province's broader plan to prepare for the fall respiratory illness season, and comes just as Ontario wastewater data is showing a slight uptick in the amount of COVID-19 in the province. Dr. Kieran Moore said the COVID-19 pandemic has moved out of a "crisis phase" and become something that will require long-term management. The seventh wave has crested, he said, but the virus "remains in the community" and Public Health Ontario expects to see an increase in transmission as more people gather inside during the cooler fall months.
1st Sep 2022 - CBC.ca

Canada's Ontario allows masked people with asymptomatic COVID in public

Canada's most populous province, Ontario, said on Wednesday that residents can come out of isolation with a mask as soon as 24 hours after their COVID-19 symptoms dissipate, under a strategy to homogenize guidance for all respiratory illnesses. Asymptomatic COVID-positive residents, as well as those who come in contact with an infected person, can go to work or school but they must wear a face mask for 10 days, the Ontario government said.
1st Sep 2022 - Reuters

U.S. plans to move COVID vaccines, treatments to private markets in 2023

The U.S. government expects its supply of COVID-19 vaccines and antiviral treatments to run out over the next year and is preparing for them to be sold via the commercial market, the Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday. President Joe Biden's administration expects to run out of federal funding for buying and distributing COVID-19 vaccines by January, although it has already bought over 170 million doses for a booster campaign later this year, according to a blog post written by Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Dawn O'Connell.
1st Sep 2022 - Reuters

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More than 100 officials in Tibet punished over zero-Covid failures

Tibet had seen only one imported Covid-19 case since 2020 until an outbreak earlier this month. Heads roll also in hard-hit tourist hub Hainan, with provinces keen to show total commitment to zero-Covid ahead of key party congress, analyst notes.
1st Sep 2022 - South China Morning Post

China places millions in new Covid lockdown after fresh outbreaks

Millions of Chinese citizens were placed under a new lockdown on Tuesday following a fresh outbreak of coronavirus as the government remains committed to its “zero- Covid ” policy. The tougher curbs on activities have sparked concerns over the health of the barely-growing economy
1st Sep 2022 - The Independent on MSN.com

Americans Could Have to Pay for Covid Shots Starting Next Year

The US government anticipates that it will stop purchasing and providing Covid-19 shots as soon as January due to a lack of funds, leaving Americans to obtain vaccines through insurers or pay for them out-of-pocket. US health officials convened a meeting of more than 100 representatives from drugmakers, state and local health departments, health providers and insurers on Tuesday to discuss the government’s plans to transition sales of Covid vaccines and therapeutics to the commercial market, according to Dawn O’Connell, who heads the Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.
1st Sep 2022 - Bloomberg

U.S. FDA green lights Omicron-targeted COVID boosters ahead of revaccination campaign

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized updated COVID-19 booster shots from Pfizer)/BioNTech and Moderna that target the dominant BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants, as the government prepares for a broad fall vaccination campaign that could begin within days. The new vaccines also include the original version of the virus targeted by all the previous COVID shots.
31st Aug 2022 - Reuters

What you need to know about fall booster shots of coronavirus vaccine

New coronavirus boosters are just around the corner following authorization Wednesday by federal regulators. The updated shots are designed to provide a stronger shield against the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants still causing tens of thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths every day in the United States. The boosters will be part of a campaign by the federal government, to be kicked off within days, to persuade Americans to bolster their immune defenses before a potential surge in covid-19 cases as cooler weather arrives in the fall.
31st Aug 2022 - The Washington Post

US clears updated COVID boosters targeting newest variants

The U.S. on Wednesday authorized its first update to COVID-19 vaccines, booster doses that target today’s most common omicron strain. Shots could begin within days. The move by the Food and Drug Administration tweaks the recipe of shots made by Pfizer and rival Moderna that already have saved millions of lives. The hope is that the modified boosters will blunt yet another winter surge — and help tamp down the BA.5 omicron relative that continues to spread widely. “These updated boosters present us with an opportunity to get ahead" of the next COVID-19 wave, said FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf.
31st Aug 2022 - ABC

Cyprus ends mandatory mask wearing as COVID-19 measures eased

Article reports that Cyprus on Wednesday said it would end all restrictions on gatherings and the mandatory use of face masks in most areas after cases of COVID-19 were declining. Effective Wednesday, all restrictions on public or private gatherings would be eased, while wearing face masks would only be compulsory in areas such as hospitals, care homes and on public transport, Health Minister Michalis Hadjipantela said.
31st Aug 2022 - Reuters

S.Korea to end pre-departure COVID test requirement for overseas travellers

South Korea will from Saturday no longer require travellers to the country to test for COVID-19 before departure, although they will still need to take a PCR test within 24 hours of arrival. The latest relaxing of rules comes amid an easing in case numbers with daily COVID infections hovering around 100,000 in recent weeks compared with more than 180,000 in mid-August. "The weekly number of infections have declined for the first time in nine weeks and the virus is showing signs of slowing down," Lee Ki-il, the country's second vice health minister, told reporters.
30th Aug 2022 - Reuters

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China’s Covid Zero Tested as Broadest Outbreak Hits All Provinces

China is battling Covid-19 in every province despite its use of the world’s strictest measures to keep the virus out. All 31 mainland provinces recorded at least one local Covid case over the past ten days, reflecting the broadest exposure to the virus since at least February 2021, when national health authorities began disclosing detailed records on where asymptomatic infections were occurring daily.
31st Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

Goldman Sachs to lift COVID protocols - memo

Goldman Sachs Group Inc will lift pandemic-era protocols at its offices effective Sept. 6, according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters. The Wall Street investment bank had already called its employees back to the office full time in June last year, although it relaxed those requirements during periods when coronavirus cases surged, sources familiar with the matter said. The new guidelines will allow employees to enter the company's Americas offices regardless of vaccination status, except in New York City and Lima.
30th Aug 2022 - Reuters

U.S. plans to move COVID vaccines, treatments to private markets in 2023

The U.S. government expects its supply of COVID-19 vaccines and antiviral treatments to run out over the next year and is preparing for them to be sold via the commercial market, the Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday. President Joe Biden's administration expects to run out of federal funding for buying and distributing COVID-19 vaccines by January, although it has already bought over 170 million doses for a booster campaign later this year, according to a blog post written by Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Dawn O'Connell.
30th Aug 2022 - Reuters

As Americans ditch Covid measures, pandemic worsens for the vulnerable

In the last few months, Dr Jeannina Smith has seen organ transplant recipients who have been very careful throughout the pandemic venture out for one activity, contract Covid-19 and lose their transplant. ‘Most have thrown their hands up’: has the US forgotten about Covid? “I have been at the bedside of a transplant recipient” who “was very ill and in the hospital, and she got Covid the second time in a healthcare setting”, said Smith, medical director of the infectious disease program at University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics. “She was sobbing because she said, ‘It’s so hard for me to see that people care so little about my life that wearing a mask is too much for them.’”
30th Aug 2022 - The Guardian

Coronavirus vaccine: 90% student third-jab rate needed for Hong Kong secondary schools to resume full-day, in-person classes

Article reports that Hong Kong secondary schools will only be allowed to conduct full-day classes on campus if 90 per cent of their students have been triple-vaccinated against Covid-19, with education authorities tightening the existing two-jab requirement. The same threshold also applies to secondary and primary school students from October if they hope to take part in extracurricular and mask-off activities such as music and sports, according to a letter from the Education Bureau to the sector on Tuesday. “We encourage staff and students to get vaccinated as far as possible to protect themselves and others, if they are suitable for vaccination,” it wrote. “[We] also demand that schools actively reach out to those who have yet to get vaccinated to understand their concerns and difficulties, and encourage them to get the jabs.”
30th Aug 2022 - The Star Online

U.S. first lady Jill Biden tests negative for COVID-19

Article reports that U.S. first lady Jill Biden has tested negative for COVID-19 and will return to Washington from Delaware on Aug. 30, a spokeswoman said on Monday. Jill Biden, 71, had tested positive in a rebound case of COVID-19 after first testing positive on Aug. 16. She had ended her first isolation after a course of Paxlovid, an antiviral medication, which has proven to be highly effective at preventing serious disease and death among those at highest risk from COVID-19.
30th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Thailand targets $11 bln tourism revenue in H2 as COVID controls ease

Thailand aims to generate 400 billion baht ($11 billion) in tourism revenue in the second half of the year, the government said on Tuesday, as the tropical holiday destination welcomes back more visitors after pandemic-induced border controls. The Southeast Asian nation has seen a rebound in tourism numbers in the first eight months of 2022, registering more than 4 million tourists, government spokeswoman Rachada Dhnadirek said. It is aiming for 10 million tourists this year.
30th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Why Some Americans Are Still Isolating From Covid-19

Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are in decline. People are traveling, socializing and returning to workplaces in greater numbers. But a group of people are still keeping mostly to themselves and taking other measures to minimize infection risks. Compromised immune systems and the risks of long Covid are among reasons they say they are maintaining caution. Two-and-a-half years into the pandemic, their relative isolation speaks to divides that remain over how to live with the virus. With imperfect insight into the risks of infection as the virus mutates and immunity shifts, people are setting their own boundaries for safe behavior. While about one-quarter of 1,243 people surveyed by the Kaiser Family Foundation recently said they had resumed all activities they were pursuing before the pandemic, 17% said they were doing very few of those things.
29th Aug 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

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Moderna Says It's Suing Pfizer, BioNTech Over Covid Shots

Moderna Inc. sued Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, claiming the technology in their Covid-19 shot infringes on its patents, a move that sets the stage for a massive legal clash between the vaccine titans. Moderna accused Pfizer and BioNTech of violating intellectual property rights on key elements of its messenger RNA technology in developing the Comirnaty vaccine. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna said it had patents from 2010 to 2016 on the mRNA technology that made its Spikevax shot possible but that the other two companies copied the technology without permission.
27th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

Chinese province neighbouring Beijing expands COVID lockdown

Another city near Beijing imposed a partial lockdown as COVID-19 infections climbed, taking extra precautions even as cases nationwide continued to ease. Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital of China’s Hebei province that borders Beijing, said mass testing will be done on residents in four major downtown districts and they are required to stay at home for three days from 2pm on Sunday. It reported 25 local COVID cases for Saturday.
29th Aug 2022 - Sydney Morning Herald

Moderna suing Pfizer over Covid vaccine technology

Moderna said it is suing Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for patent infringement linked to the development of the first Covid-19 vaccines. The US biotech company is alleging that mRNA technology it developed before the pandemic was copied. The lawsuit, which is seeking unspecified financial damages, was filed in the US and Germany. Pfizer said it was "surprised" by the action and would "vigorously defend" itself against the allegations. In a statement, Moderna said Pfizer/BioNTech copied two key elements of its intellectual property.
27th Aug 2022 - BBC News

Clash of the titans: Moderna sues Pfizer, BioNTech for mRNA patent infringement

Moderna has filed patent infringement lawsuits in the U.S. and Germany accusing Pfizer and its partner BioNTech of stepping on patents that Moderna says it filed between 2010 and 2016. Pfizer and BioNTech have reeled in tens of billions of dollars with their world-leading COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty, so a win for Moderna in either case could be quite lucrative. Moderna is seeking to "protect the innovative mRNA technology that we pioneered, invested billions of dollars into creating, and patented during the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic," CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. Moderna began working on the "foundational" mRNA platform way back in 2010, he added, which enabled it to develop its coronavirus vaccine Spikevax in "record time."
26th Aug 2022 - FiercePharma

Factbox: Moderna sues Pfizer as patent owners fight over mRNA vaccine technology

Pfizer /BioNTech and Moderna have been hit with patent lawsuits by other companies related to their COVID-19 vaccines. In the latest turn of events, the two mRNA vaccine makers are locking horns, with Moderna suing Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for patent infringement in their race to develop the shot approved in the United States. Moderna on Friday alleged that they copied a technology that it had developed years before the pandemic
27th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Cambodia to build factory to produce 104 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from 2024 to 2026

A pharmaceutical company in Cambodia signed a memorandum with Chinese company Sinovac Biotech to build a factory for filling and packaging vaccines in that country. The factory is expected to produce around 104 million COVID-19 doses from 2024 to 2026 and explore the possibility of making other vaccines. China has become a reliable, stable and indispensable provider of COVID-19 vaccine supplies to the developing world, experts and officials from several countries said.
27th Aug 2022 - Khmer Times

Taiwan reports 25901 new COVID-19 cases, 40 deaths

Taiwan on Saturday reported 25,901 new cases of COVID-19 and 40 deaths from the disease, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC). The deceased ranged in age from less than 5 years old to their 90s. All except two suffered from chronic illnesses or other severe diseases, while 18 had not been vaccinated against COVID-19, the CECC said. Also on Saturday, the CECC reported 41 COVID-19 cases newly classified as severe and 138 newly classified as moderate.
27th Aug 2022 - Focus Taiwan

China customs drops some COVID reporting for international arrivals; quarantine remains

China still requires international passengers to take pre-departure COVID-19 tests and quarantine upon arrival, the customs office said on Friday, a day after dropping some reporting requirements for travellers clearing customs. China, which has shortened the quarantine period and removed some testing and self-isolation requirements for inbound international travellers, still has some of the world's most stringent COVID-19 policies.
26th Aug 2022 - Reuters

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Free asymptomatic Covid-19 testing for nurses to end in England next week

Nurses and other health workers will no longer be tested for Covid-19 unless they have symptoms, the government has announced. From 31 August, routine asymptomatic testing in England will be paused across health and care settings.
25th Aug 2022 - Nursing Times

Covid-19 booster vaccine now available for over-50s in Ireland

The second Covid-19 booster jab is now available for all people aged over 50 in Ireland. The HSE confirmed that appointments can now be made by anyone within the age bracket online. The jabs are provided at participating pharmacies,
25th Aug 2022 - MSN.com

China drops some COVID reporting rules for cross-border travellers at customs

Chinese customs said on Thursday it no longer required cross-border travellers to report certain COVID-related information, such as tests and previous infections, when clearing customs. Mainland China, which still has some of the world's most stringent COVID policies for international travellers, has taken steps to make cross-border travel less onerous, such as shortening the quarantine period and removing some testing and self-isolation requirements for inbound travellers.
25th Aug 2022 - Reuters

China reopens to Japanese students after long COVID break

The Chinese government will soon start accepting Japanese international students after a two-and-a-half year pause caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The Chinese embassy in Japan has made visas for long-term overseas study in China available for applications as of Tuesday. Prospective students are expected to be allowed to sit in university classes after undergoing 10 days of isolation and health observation upon entry. This change, which would encourage exchange among the younger generation, appears to be a move to ease bilateral tensions ahead of next month's 50th anniversary of the two countries normalizing diplomatic relations.
25th Aug 2022 - Nikkei Asia

Covid: Qantas says pandemic 'existential crisis' is over

The national carriers of Australia and New Zealand say that the worst of the coronavirus crisis is now behind them, even as they posted annual losses for a third year in a row. Qantas says it is seeing demand increase "with the existential crisis posed by the pandemic now over". Air New Zealand says it has also experienced "a very strong recovery in bookings and revenues" since March.
25th Aug 2022 - BBC News

Hong Kong Could Tighten Social Distancing Restrictions If Covid Cases Worsen

Hong Kong health officials said tighter social distancing restrictions could be considered if rising Covid-19 cases increase the pressure on the city’s medical system. The financial hub reported 7,884 new Covid cases Wednesday, the highest number since the end of March and up from fewer than 5,000 a month ago. Increasing hospitalizations have put pressure on the health-care system, prompting hospitals to scale back non-emergency services and spurring the reopening of community isolation facilities. Expanding virus-related restrictions would be seen as a step back for the international city, which has struggled to balance reopening its borders with mainland China’s conservative approach to the virus, known as Covid Zero.
25th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

New York State Led US Life-Expectancy Drop in 2020, CDC Says

Life expectancy in New York plummeted by three years in 2020, the biggest decline among all states in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Residents of the state are expected to live to just under 78, the 15th-highest life expectancy in the country and a steep drop from 2019, when they had the third-highest ranking, the health authority said in state-level data published Tuesday.
23rd Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

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Pandemic sets back fight against poverty in Asia by at least 2 years

The Covid-19 pandemic has set back the fight against poverty in Asia and the Pacific by at least 2 years, and many in the region will likely find it harder than before to escape poverty, according to a report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The region's economic growth this year is expected to reduce extreme poverty—defined as living off less than $1.90 a day—to a level that would have been achieved in 2020 had the pandemic not happened, according to Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2022, released today. Data simulations also show that people in the region with lower pre-pandemic levels of social mobility—the ability to escape poverty—may experience longer-lasting setbacks.
25th Aug 2022 - The Daily Star

Covid 19: How many lives did NZ's pandemic response save?

A new analysis has shown how New Zealand's pandemic response left it with one of the lowest rates of excess mortality in the world – sparing it the thousands of extra deaths seen even in "elimination" countries like Taiwan and Australia. But the Otago University public health experts who crunched the data say that, with the Zero-Covid era now well behind us, there's much more the Government could be doing to keep Kiwis safer. It comes as the Ministry of Health announced another 17 virus-related deaths today, and 3140 new Covid-19 cases.
24th Aug 2022 - New Zealand Herald

China reopens doors for foreign students as pandemic concerns ease

China is easing its tight restrictions on visas after it largely suspended issuing them to foreign students and others more than two years ago at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The website of the Chinese Embassy in India said the updated procedures would take effect from Wednesday, without making a specific mention of vaccine requirements or proof of a negative test for the virus. China still requires those arriving from abroad be quarantined at a hotel or private home and proof of a negative test is required for entry to many public and commercial spaces.
24th Aug 2022 - The Independent

COVID-19 pandemic fallout worse for women

Researchers from The University of Queensland have found the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia has had a greater financial and psychological impact on women than men. A study conducted by the UQ Business School shows women have experienced more significant impacts on their overall employment, hours of work, domestic labor and mental health and well-being.
24th Aug 2022 - Phys.org

Bulgaria to treat COVID-19 as influenza – EURACTIV.com

Bulgaria will start considering COVID-19 as influenza and other respiratory viruses, Professor Radka Argirova announced after the expert group at the Ministry of Health meeting, which monitors the epidemic situation in the country. This approach, to be adopted as the school year starts in September, would mean that those infected with coronavirus and their contacts would not be subject to the mandatory quarantine. Spain was the first country in the EU to consider COVID-19 as seasonal flu at the end of March when the mandatory quarantine for the infected was lifted.
24th Aug 2022 - EURACTIV

Leaving no one behind in the fight against COVID-19

Domestic travel in Europe this summer is projected to fully return to 2019 levels, and many countries have been easing COVID-19 restrictions since spring. While this state of “normality” is a huge relief for many, it is a cause for greater concern among the immunocompromised community. COVID-19 continues to circulate, with infections increasing in many European countries — including Germany, France, Italy, Greece and Austria.
24th Aug 2022 - POLITICO Europe

Japan to ease COVID-19 border controls from Sept. 7

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced plans to ease border controls from early September by eliminating requirements for pre-departure COVID-19 tests for travelers who have received at least three vaccine doses, and he will also consider increasing daily entry caps as soon as next month. Japan, which has imposed some of the toughest border measures for the coronavirus, currently requires negative PCR test results within 72 hours of departure for all entrants, a practice that has been criticized as cumbersome.
24th Aug 2022 - The Independent

German health minister expects renewed coronavirus wave in autumn

German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Wednesday he expects a wave of COVID-19 infections this autumn but ruled out further lockdowns or school closures. He made the comments after a cabinet meeting during which the government approved stricter mask rules on trains and planes from October.
24th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Japan to waive pre-departure COVID tests for vaccinated travellers

Japan will waive pre-departure COVID-19 tests for vaccinated travellers to the country, but daily caps on entrants will remain in place, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Wednesday. Japan has maintained some of the strictest pandemic border measures among major economies, requiring travellers to present a negative coronavirus test taken within 72 hours of departure.
24th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Parents urged to take children for their Covid jabs before school returns

Along with new shoes, pencil cases and PE kits, parents across Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire are being advised to put the Covid-19 vaccine at the top of their children’s back-to-school to-do list. Schools across the region will start to return after the summer holidays next week, and mums and dads are being urged to make sure their child is protected against coronavirus before heading back to class.
24th Aug 2022 - Yahoo UK & Ireland

China's jobless turn to car boot sales as COVID-hit economy stalls

Once considered too low-status for many, peddling wares on the street has made a comeback as people who lost their jobs or closed down their businesses seek new ways to make a living and work around China's relentless anti-COVID policies. Hospitality, tourism and after-school tutoring have been particularly hard hit.
24th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Australia's COVID-19 vaccine rollout flawed, audit finds

The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine by Australia’s health department was “partly effective” but planning was slow and incomplete in the early stages, delivery to priority groups was flawed and it failed to meet targets, according to a review by the country’s National Audit Office. Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese said on Sunday that he would call an inquiry into the federal government’s wider response to the pandemic “as soon as practicable”. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) review, published last Wednesday, found that while the Department of Health and Aged Care undertook “largely appropriate” administration and logistics planning, that “initial planning was not timely”. It said that detailed planning with states and territories was not complete before the vaccine rollout commenced, and that it “underestimated the complexity of administering in-reach services to the aged care and disability sectors”. While 90% of the eligible population was vaccinated by the end of 2021, the planning and implementation of the vaccine rollout to priority groups “was not as effective” as for the population as a whole, the report said.
24th Aug 2022 - Global Government Forum

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Masks not needed in most situations as S'pore becomes Covid-19 resilient: Experts

After going through two Covid-19 Omicron waves without its healthcare system being overwhelmed, Singapore is ready to move to the next phase, where indoor mask wearing is no longer mandatory except on public transport and in hospitals, experts said. Singapore handled the Omicron waves successfully without having to reimpose strict measures, noted Associate Professor Alex Cook, vice-dean of research at the National University of Singapore's Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. "The first Omicron wave, earlier in the year, still had some restrictions in place, and we managed to avoid the healthcare system being overwhelmed. In the second, which is ebbing away now, we managed to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system with almost no restrictions except indoor mask wearing. Thus, we are ready to move to the next phase," he said.
24th Aug 2022 - The Straits Times

Pfizer Picks China Firm Involved in Drug Recall for Covid Pill

Pfizer Inc. has picked a Chinese drug-making giant once embroiled in a global medicines recall for supplying tainted ingredients to make its Covid-19 antiviral pill in the country. Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical Co. will produce and sell Paxlovid in mainland China for five years, the companies said Thursday in separate statements. Pfizer will provide ingredients to make nirmatrelvir, the antiviral portion of the drug, and ritonavir, which slows the antiviral’s breakdown in the body. Huahai will manufacture and combine the two into Paxlovid.
23rd Aug 2022 - BNN Bloomberg

Western University to require vaccinations and masking, says updated COVID-19 policy

Effective Sept. 1, students, staff, and faculty are still required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and to wear medical-grade masks in classrooms and seminar rooms, with the exception of those presenting, performing, and/or speaking to a group who can remain two metres apart. But new this year, the University will also require all attendees to have received at least one booster shot.
23rd Aug 2022 - Global News

The Covid-19 Financial Crisis That Wasn't

The sudden realization in mid-March 2020 that Covid-19 was going to be a once-in-a-century pandemic created the kind of disruption that financial crises are made of. Pundits predicted an unprecedented triple shock: lockdowns would decimate demand, travel bans would devastate supply, and the “dash for cash” would freeze financial activity. Stock markets plunged and bond yields jumped. But despite the disastrous human toll and the inevitable economic downturn, the financial crisis didn’t happen. To understand what went right, our research team at the Yale Program on Financial Stability compiled a database of some 9,000 government actions in 180 countries. The lessons: Go big, go early, and prepare for next time.
23rd Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

Dr Anthony Fauci to step down in December: How the top doctor became face of US’ COVID-19 response

Dr Anthony Fauci who became the face of COVID-19 response in America is all set to step down as chief medical adviser to US President Joe Biden. Announcing his decision on 22 August, 81-year-old Fauci said he would also depart from his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in December this year to “pursue the next chapter” of his career. Fauci added that even though he would be leaving his current positions, he is not retiring. “After more than 50 years of government service, I plan to pursue the next phase of my career while I still have so much energy and passion for my field,” Reuters quoted him as saying. As per The New York Times, Fauci’s decision to quit does not come as a surprise as the top US doctor had said last month that he was thinking of retiring and would “almost certainly” do it by 2025.
23rd Aug 2022 - Firstpost on MSN.com

China says COVID has exacerbated decline in births, marriages

China's National Health Commission said COVID-19 has contributed to the decline in the country's marriage and birth rates that has accelerated in recent years due to the high costs of education and child-rearing. Many women are continuing to delay their plans to marry or have children, it said, adding that rapid economic and social developments have led to "profound changes". Young people relocating to urban areas, more time spent on education and high-pressure working environments have also played their part, it added.
23rd Aug 2022 - Reuters

The deadly virus Nigerians fear more than COVID-19: Lassa fever

Inside a Nigerian hospital ward treating Lassa, a virus that infects 100,000 to 300,000 people in West Africa every year.
21st Aug 2022 - AlJazeera

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U.S. CDC recommends use of Novavax's COVID shot for adolescents

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday signed off on the use of Novavax Inc's COVID-19 vaccine for adolescents aged 12 through 17. The recommendation follows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's authorization for the vaccine for the age group last week.
23rd Aug 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer seeks U.S. authorization for vaccine booster retooled for Omicron

Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech said on Monday they had sought U.S. authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine booster retooled to target the Omicron variant, and would have doses available to ship immediately after regulatory clearance. The request to the Food and Drug Administration was for a so-called bivalent vaccine containing the dominant BA.4/BA.5 variants of the virus along with the original coronavirus strain. It is intended for ages 12 and above.
23rd Aug 2022 - Reuters

Fauci, face of U.S. COVID response, to step down from government posts

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease official who became the face of America's COVID-19 pandemic response under Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, announced on Monday he is stepping down in December after 54 years of public service. Fauci, whose efforts to fight the pandemic were applauded by many public health experts even as he was vilified by Trump and many Republicans, will leave his posts as chief medical adviser to Biden and director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Fauci, 81, has headed NIAID since 1984.
23rd Aug 2022 - Reuters

COVID-19 remains an issue as South Florida students start new school year

Students across South Florida are settling into their second week of school and while this is the most normal start to the school year since the start of the 2019 school year, COVID-19 does remain an issue for students to deal with.
22nd Aug 2022 - CBS News

Covid-19: Free lateral flow testing ends in Northern Ireland

Free lateral flow tests are no longer available to most people in Northern Ireland. While the scheme ended in the rest of the UK in May, Stormont's Department of Health retained the measure. Health officials announced last week that testing will be more "targeted to protect the most vulnerable".
22nd Aug 2022 - BBC News

Japan Considers Downgrading COVID-19 to Less Serious Category

Japan is considering reclassifying COVID-19 to the same category as seasonal influenza to reduce the administrative burden on medical facilities diagnosing and treating people who have been infected.
22nd Aug 2022 - Nippon.com

Kishida working remotely after COVID-19 diagnosis

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will continue work from his official residence after testing positive for COVID-19 over the weekend, senior government officials have confirmed. Kishida, who received his fourth shot of a coronavirus vaccine on Aug. 12, is thought to have become infected while on a weeklong vacation that began Aug. 15. The diagnosis was confirmed by doctors Sunday after the 65-year old began experiencing mild symptoms, including a cough and slight fever, on Saturday. “Given the prime minister’s mild symptoms, we have set up a remote workstation from which he can continue his daily duties as planned,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said at a news conference Monday morning.
22nd Aug 2022 - The Japan Times

Philippine children back in school as pandemic restrictions ease

Millions of Philippine students returned to classrooms for the first time in more than two years on Monday, after the country lifted most remaining COVID-19 curbs to try and reverse learning losses. Students, all wearing face masks, queued to enter their classrooms and attended flag raising ceremonies in their schoolyards across the Southeast Asian country as the government phases out remote learning.
22nd Aug 2022 - Reuters

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Australia is at the back of the bus on living with COVID-19

I just got back to Australia after a month in a country where you would not know COVID existed. I saw about three people wearing masks. Public transport and bars were packed. Life was normal, and I don't mean the perverted "new normal". People are living with COVID and they are not afraid anymore. Everyone who found out I was from Australia asked me if life was still really bad here. One government official even asked "how does it feel to be out of that prison and a free man again?". So much for being the "envy of the world". On the trip back, I sat in a maskless crowded bus for four hours, then I sat in a maskless packed departure lounge and walked shoulder to shoulder with a maskless horde of people to the plane, when I had to put on a mask, until I ordered my first drink. I kept a drink in front of me for the duration because apparently it is the best protection against COVID.
21st Aug 2022 - The Canberra Times

‘Covid is over’ idea may threaten booster uptake in England, scientists warn

The prevailing idea that “Covid is over” may jeopardise England’s autumn booster programme, scientists have said, warning mixed messages about the threat of the disease could reduce the uptake of jabs. The booster campaign is set to begin on 5 September, with the new dual-variant Covid vaccine from Moderna among those to be administered. However, with England ditching other Covid measures such as mass testing, and using terms such as “post-pandemic recovery”, experts have raised concerns that many of those eligible may not come forward for their vaccination. “I think it’s very likely we will see a lower uptake for the autumn Covid-19 vaccine boosters than for the first two vaccinations,” said Azeem Majeed, a GP in west London and professor of primary care and public health at Imperial College London.
21st Aug 2022 - The Guardian

China Adds Almost 2200 New Covid Cases, Tourist Spots Worst Hit

China reported 2,181 new Covid-19 cases, as conditions worsen in the country’s biggest outbreak since the lockdown of Shanghai earlier this year. About 553 people were confirmed to be infected and there were another 1,628 asymptomatic cases as of Saturday, according to a statement released by the National Health Commission. In a separate statement, the NHC said the country has administered 3.43 billion doses of Covid vaccines as of Aug. 20. Infections have surged to a three-month high, with tourist destinations worst hit among the current round of flareups.
21st Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

Repeat waves prompt 'long COVID' fears

COVID-19 infections and deaths continue to rise as a leading infectious diseases expert warns Australia is losing its battle with the virus. Burnet Institute director Brendan Crabb says current strategies to combat the country's caseload are not working. "What the numbers say is that we're simply not winning," Professor Crabb told Seven's Sunrise. "The latest wave we just had ... was the worst wave we've had this year. More hospitalisations and more deaths." Australia reported another 10,500 cases and 36 fatalities on Sunday, with the nation on track to record its 10 millionth case within a week.
21st Aug 2022 - The Canberra Times

Tibet autonomous region's COVID-19 situation shows increase

The Tibet autonomous region reported 32 locally confirmed COVID-19 cases and 946 asymptomatic carriers between Thursday and 2 pm Friday, health authorities said at a news briefing in Lhasa on Friday. As of Thursday, the region had 375 areas designated as high-risk for COVID-19 and 208 for medium-risk. A total of 11 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals after recovery on Thursday, 15 asymptomatic infectors and 196 close contacts were dismissed from medical observation, but 33,760 close and secondary contacts have been traced are still under centralized isolation for further medical observation.
20th Aug 2022 - China Daily

Long Covid: Girl, 10, struggles to walk and talk

A 10-year-old girl with long Covid struggles to walk and can barely speak, six months after catching the virus. Libby caught Covid in February and is still struggling with extreme fatigue, constant headaches, and is using a wheelchair due to feeling too weak. The Office for National Statistics predicted only 0.6% of people aged two to 11 in the UK had long Covid. However, Kate Davies from charity Long Covid Kids said it could be higher as "many children go under the radar"
20th Aug 2022 - BBC News

Covid-19: Free lateral flow testing to end in NI from Monday

Free lateral flow testing for people with Covid symptoms will end in Northern Ireland from Monday. The scheme ended in GB in May, but Stormont's Department of Health retained the measure. It has now said testing will be more proportionate and "targeted to protect the most vulnerable",
19th Aug 2022 - BBC News

Covid-19 to be declared endemic in October

The government will declare Covid-19 endemic in October, and the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) will then no longer be the main agency dealing with the disease. CCSA spokesman Taweesilp Visanuyothin said on Friday that from October the disease would be under the emergency operations centre of the Public Health Ministry and provincial communicable disease committees, instead of the CCSA chaired by the prime minister. He gave no specific date. From November, the provincial committees would be the sole agencies dealing with it.
19th Aug 2022 - ฺBangkok Post

Covid-19 testing Northern Ireland: Changes as those with symptoms no longer advised to test

Changes to Covid-19 testing for those with symptoms in Northern Ireland are set to come into force on Monday. It has been announced that most people in the general population with symptoms of coronavirus will no longer be advised to take a lateral flow test from August 22. Free lateral flow tests will no longer be available for this purpose, a move in line with the Test, Trace and Protect Transition plan published in March 2022. It aims to make testing more proportionate and targeted to protect the most vulnerable.
19th Aug 2022 - Belfast Live

How African countries coordinated the response to COVID-19: lessons for public health

Multiple reasons for the slower spread have been put forward. One was that the continent’s population is relatively young and younger people were at lower risk of severe illness in the event of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The possible contribution of pre-existing immunity from other viral infections was also put forward. And it was suggested that the slower spread might not be the real picture: there could be underestimation of the true magnitude of the pandemic, resulting from weak surveillance systems. There is another aspect to consider, though. It is possible that what countries did to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infections actually worked to some extent. Diverse sectors and disciplines collaborated towards the shared goal of mitigating the pandemic effects.
19th Aug 2022 - The Conversation

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WH COVID-19 chief: Vaccines will be ‘commercialized’ by 2023

The U.S. will pivot toward the “commercialization” of COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests in the coming year instead of a scenario in which the government is the main purchaser, according to the White House virus coordinator.
18th Aug 2022 - Washington Times

Millions of COVID-19 vaccines have been wasted: report

More than five million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been discarded in South Korea, according to a report released by the National Assembly on Thursday. More vaccines, however, are expected to be discarded with their expiration dates approaching. The issue of COVID-19 vaccines going to waste is likely to continue as more are scheduled to arrive in South Korea by the end of this year. According to the National Assembly Budget Office, the country discarded a total of 5.29 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of July 6, about 3.6 percent of the total 145.8 million doses that the country had secured.
18th Aug 2022 - The Korea Herald

Israeli, Australian public health leaders to exchange COVID-19 knowledge

A group of 15 leading Australian public health experts and clinicians will visit Israel in September for a high-level exchange of lessons about the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Israel and Australia had impressive achievements during the COVID-19 pandemic – Israel was a model for rapid distribution and injection of vaccines into the whole population and Australia was the first country outside of China to isolate the virus and had one of the world’s lowest death rates from it.
18th Aug 2022 - The Jerusalem Post

Will Covid-19 Vaccines Continue To Protect Us From Hospitalization And Death?

Vaccines are integral to our control of Covid-19—if not for preventing infection, at least for preventing severe illness and death. But what if vaccine-induced immunity lost its efficacy against new variants on all accounts? Along with earlier work published by MIT, a recent study from Cardiff University places this thought into the realm of possibility. In their paper, Dolton et al. investigate the origins of a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein mutation and its impacts on T cell immune responses in recovering Covid-19 patients and vaccine
18th Aug 2022 - Forbes

A year on from NZ's longest Covid-19 lockdown - The Bay's News First

One year on from the country's longest Covid-19 lockdown, an epidemiologist says further lockdowns cannot be ruled out, instead preparing to do them better. On August 17, 2021, New Zealand went to alert level 4 because the deadly Delta variant had arrived. Aucklanders had no idea that day that they would still be in lockdown till December, and that after 18 months of trying to keep Covid-19 out, it would be here to stay. The city was asked to hold the line so the country could get vaccinated, something critics said should have happened much earlier. Auckland University epidemiologist Rod Jackson was vocal in urging the country to aim high and vaccinate more than 95 per cent of eligible people. Reflecting back, he says New Zealanders responded well, with most areas hitting that mark or higher by the measurements at the time.
18th Aug 2022 - SunLive

Nuvaxovid gets expanded provisional approval in NZ as COVID-19 booster for adults

US-based Novavax has announced that New Zealand (NZ)'s Medsafe has granted expanded provisional approval for Nuvaxovid (NVX-CoV2373) COVID-19 vaccine for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 as a heterologous and homologous booster dose in adults aged 18 and older. Following the expanded provisional approval decision by Medsafe, New Zealand, people may now choose Nuvaxovid as their first and/or second COVID-19 booster dose(s) after completion of their primary series using any of the authorized COVID-19 vaccines. The request for expanded provisional approval for the booster dose is supported by data from Novavax' Phase 2 trial conducted in Australia, from a separate Phase 2 trial conducted in South Africa, and from the UK-sponsored COV-BOOST trial. As a booster for adults, Nuvaxovid is also provisionally registered in Australia and approved in Japan, and is actively under review in other markets. New Zealand previously granted provisional approval for Nuvaxovid in adults aged 18 and older in February 2022. Novavax' sponsor in Australia and New Zealand is Biocelect Pty. Ltd.
18th Aug 2022 - BioSpectrum Asia

Viewpoint: We Cannot Afford to Surrender to COVID-19 Now

Last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relaxed recommendations which I feel neither control or prevent a rapidly evolving and disabling disease, COVID-19. Many of the relaxations appeared to be timed with the opening of schools, ignoring the high rate of COVID-19 related hospitalizations, national deaths hovering just under 500 per day, and the urgent need for a reformulated vaccine, whose delivery is expected in the fall of this year. The relaxed guidelines no longer recommend those individuals exposed to COVID-19 participate in test-to-stay programs in schools. They no longer restrict the mixing of children in different classrooms, and they eliminated social distancing recommendations. In addition, there is no need to quarantine after exposure to the virus, and there are no longer recommendations for routine screening of individuals without symptoms.
17th Aug 2022 - Infection Control Today

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Easing of Covid-19 travel restrictions in S'pore could lead to uptick in flu cases, doctors warn

People should take their flu jabs to protect against concurrent infection of both Covid-19 and the flu, which can lead to severe disease, doctors have advised. This is especially important as Singapore continues to ease its travel restrictions and opens up its borders, they said, adding that influenza cases can be expected to rise. With the new vaccinated travel lanes, more people here will be travelling abroad during the northern winter that typically sees countries there experiencing a spike in flu cases.
18th Aug 2022 - The Straits Times

Australia, Israel share notes on pandemic

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant will lead a team of delegates to Israel next month for a high-level information exchange on managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Fifteen Australian public health experts and clinicians will meet with counterparts from Israel's health and foreign affairs ministries along with leading academics to discuss ongoing handling of the viral disease.
18th Aug 2022 - The Canberra Times

U.S. CDC plans to focus on public health response after pandemic failings

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it will prioritize its public health response in a revamp of its structure after months of criticism over its handling of the COVID-19 and monkeypox pandemics. A briefing document provided by the agency on Wednesday said an external report into its response found public guidance had caused confusion, while important information were sometimes released too late to inform federal decisions
17th Aug 2022 - Reuters

CDC Director Outlines Restructuring Plans

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be restructured to strengthen its response to public-health threats, the agency’s director said, acknowledging shortcomings in its fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday that she intended to improve the agency’s communication, timeliness and accountability. The CDC has at times amended its guidance on masking, isolation and other mitigation efforts in ways that spurred confusion or lagged behind the trajectory of the pandemic. The agency has faced new criticism recently for its response to the monkeypox outbreak. “In our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” Dr. Walensky said. “I want us all to do better, and it starts with CDC leading the way.”
17th Aug 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Covid vaccine volunteer army set for autumn rollout return as thousands of extra helpers sought

Thousands of extra volunteer vaccination staff will be recruited across the country to assist with the autumn booster rollout. St John Ambulance said it was looking for around 5,000 volunteers to help meet demand and is already training hundreds of people ahead of the booster campaign starting next month. It played a leading role in the delivery of the initial Covid vaccination campaign and is now stepping up its resources as it anticipates a surge in demand over autumn and winter.
17th Aug 2022 - iNews

New York City Department of Education relaxes COVID-19 rules for public schools

The New York City Department of Education will no longer randomly test students for COVID-19 when the new school year begins Sept. 8, the department said Tuesday. Instead, test kits will be sent home for students, parents and teachers to use if they are exposed to the virus. As part of the department's new COVID-19 protocols, students will no longer be required to submit a daily health screening form.
17th Aug 2022 - ABC News

The end of quarantine? What people should know about the CDC's new Covid-19 guidelines

Last week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced key changes to its nationwide Covid-19 guidelines. Among them was the end of required quarantine after someone is exposed to a close contact with the coronavirus. The CDC also revised isolation guidance for people infected with Covid-19. With the required quarantine ending, what should people do if they've been exposed? How long should they isolate if they do get infected? What's the rationale for making the changes? And are there exceptions—who should take precautions above and beyond the new recommendations? To guide us through the changes, I spoke with CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health.
17th Aug 2022 - CNN

A complicated fall vaccine campaign: Updated Covid boosters, flu shots, and how to time the jabs

For the health officials who steer vaccination campaigns, it’s going to be a complicated fall. The U.S. plan to roll out updated Covid-19 boosters will not only coincide with the logistical tangle of the regular flu shot drive, but will also face questions about when people should get the new shots to provide themselves with the best protection through our third Covid winter. It’s a balancing act that health officials run into every year with flu. Vaccinating tens of millions of people takes weeks. People also need a few weeks after their shot for their immune systems to be fully primed. And yet, vaccinators don’t want to put shots in arms too early, either.
16th Aug 2022 - STAT News

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Marshall Islands, Once Nearly Covid-Free, Confronts an Outbreak

As a remote nation in the Pacific, the Marshall Islands had been almost completely spared from Covid-19, registering just a handful of cases throughout the pandemic, with no community transmission detected. But in just over a week, more than 4,000 people have tested positive in a population of about 60,000, including the country’s secretary of health and human services, Jack Niedenthal. He has been providing updates on Facebook and said 75 percent of those tested in Majuro, the capital, had Covid, “an incredibly high positivity rate.” In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Niedenthal said there was some panic and concern, given that the islands, about halfway between Hawaii and the Philippines, had not recorded a single Covid case last year.
17th Aug 2022 - The New York Times

Carnival Cruise bookings soar after it eases COVID testing requirements

Carnival Cruise Line said booking activity nearly doubled pre-pandemic levels on Monday after it announced an ease in COVID-19 testing requirements for passengers, sending its shares more than 3% higher. The company's parent, Carnival Corp, said on Friday it would drop mandatory testing for guests vaccinated against COVID-19 and allow unvaccinated passengers to travel without an exemption in some cases, after a similar move by rival Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd
17th Aug 2022 - Reuters

India sees huge decline in daily Covid-19 cases, logs 8,813 new infections | Mint

Covid-19 cases in India witnessed a huge decline on Tuesday with the country recording 8,813 new infections in the past 24 hours, taking the cumulative caseload to 4,42,77,194, according to the Union Health Ministry data. The country's overall death toll stands at 5,27,098. Currently, India's active caseload stands at 1,11,252. The country registered daily positivity rate at 4.15%, while the weekly positivity rate is 4.79%. So far, a total of 4,36,38,844 people have been recovered from the coronavirus infections since the onset of the global pandemic, including 15,040 recoveries reported in the past 24 hours. The recovery rate is 98.56%.
16th Aug 2022 - Mint

China's economic ills persist under COVID-19 lockdowns

A rash of COVID-19 outbreaks and a bump in consumer prices saw China’s economy slump in July, with economic authorities reporting slower retail growth and record high youth unemployment. Data released Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics of China showed retail sales grew 2.7% in July, down from the 3.1% year-over-year increase seen in June. Unemployment among 16-24 year-old consumers has also continued rising, reaching 19.9% in July, according to Monday’s data — topping June’s previous record high of 19.3%. Urban unemployment across all age groups decreased slightly to 5.4%, a difference of 0.1 percentage points from the prior month.
16th Aug 2022 - CFO Dive

Jill Biden tests positive for COVID-19, has 'mild' symptoms

First lady Jill Biden tested positive for COVID-19 and was experiencing “mild symptoms,” the White House announced Tuesday. She had been vacationing with President Joe Biden in South Carolina when she began experiencing symptoms on Monday. She has been prescribed the antiviral drug Paxlovid and will isolate at the vacation home for at least five days. Joe Biden tested negative for the virus on Tuesday morning, the White House said, but would be wearing a mask indoors for 10 days in line with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance. He recovered from a rebound case of the virus on Aug. 7.
16th Aug 2022 - The Independent

Western Trust eases Covid-19 restrictions for Altnagelvin, South West Acute and Omagh Hospital

The Western Trust has eased Covid-19 visiting rules in hospitals in Derry, Tyrone and Fermanagh by increasing the number of people allowed to visit their loved ones. The new guidance will now allow for two visitors to visit at the same time, for one hour per day, per patient from four nominated visitors. The Northern Ireland trust said that e xceptions would continue to apply in some areas, but it's hoped that a move to a further ‘gradual easing’ of restrictions would continue during the next review on September 5.
16th Aug 2022 - Belfast Live

Covid-19: Masks no longer needed in clinical settings in Wales

THE use of masks in clinical settings in Wales is no longer mandatory as of today. Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) says the change comes amid a reduction in the rates of Covid-19 infections over recent weeks. It adds however that the position will be reviewed once more should numbers begin to rise again in Wales.
16th Aug 2022 - Rhyl Journal

Michigan hits COVID-19 spike as state adds 23,165 cases, 103 deaths over last week

The state added 23,165 cases and 103 deaths from COVID-19 on Tuesday, including totals from the previous six days, a 44% increase from last week, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Michigan reported an average of about 3,309 cases per day over the last seven days, a double-digit increase from 2,305 cases per day a week prior. On Aug. 9, the state said it had added 16,137 cases and 137 deaths from the virus in the previous week. On Monday, the state reported that 1,004 adults and 33 pediatric patients were hospitalized with confirmed infections, an increase from last week's 969 adults and 22 children. Inpatient records were set on Jan. 10, when 4,580 adults were hospitalized with COVID.
16th Aug 2022 - Detroit News

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UK Says People Must Take Any Covid Shot Available This Fall

British health authorities said people should take whatever Covid-19 booster shot is offered to them this fall, even as the country became the first in the world to approve a new two-strain vaccine. The UK will start providing another round of Covid booster shots to about 26 million patients -- aged 50 or above or those with weak immunity -- from September in a bid to bolster defenses against further waves of Covid infections this winter. Patients could receive a vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, or Moderna Inc.’s original or bivalent shot, which specifically targets the omicron variant and was only approved by the UK drugs regulator today.
16th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

‘Living with Covid’ should be countered by containing the virus once and for all

Last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidelines for the Covid pandemic, heralding “a new strategy [that] pivots from wide approach to a focus on the most vulnerable”. Coincident with the opening of schools across the country, relaxation of some restrictions, such as quarantining and physical distancing, will help keep children in school, a cardinal objective. Sadly, the CDC missed an opportunity to help protect seniors and highly vulnerable Americans.
15th Aug 2022 - The Guardian

Students throughout Southland return to school without strict COVID-19 protocols in place

Article reports that LAUSD has faced a noted decrease in enrollment this year versus those in the past. Experts say this is because of the cost of living in L.A., prompting families to move elsewhere, as well as opting to make different schooling choices for a variety of reasons both related to and unrelated to coronavirus. In an effort to bring numbers back up, Carvalho and other district employees set out to door knock throughout Los Angeles County to find children who needed to return to education. "We have progressively identified the 'Lost Children of Los Angeles. That's my name for them.
15th Aug 2022 - CBS News

Student exchange programs resume with caution after COVID-19 disruption, but some delays persist

Exchange programs were thrown into turmoil due to COVID-19 and related travel bans. Some programs have recently resumed but hold-ups persist in some regions such as WA. Students in the first cohort of post-COVID exchanges were relieved they did not miss out
15th Aug 2022 - ABC News

GDP falls 0.1% as Covid-19 vaccination programmes wind up

The UK’s economy shrank over the last three months as spending on test and trace and the Covid-19 vaccine programme subsided, figures show. Gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.1% between April and June, the Office for National Statistics said. It is a big step down from the first quarter of the year, when GDP rose 0.8%. The data may not be the start of a recession – which is defined as two quarters of GDP decline – but experts are predicting the UK will slip into a recession later this year.
15th Aug 2022 - The Independent

Pandemic pushed millions more into poverty in the Philippines, government says

About 2.3 million people in the Philippines were pushed into poverty between 2018 and 2021, largely due to the economic downturn caused by the pandemic, the statistics agency said on Monday. The number of people living in poverty in 2021 rose to a total of almost 20 million or 18.1% of the population from 16.7% in 2018, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said, overshooting the government's target of 15.5%-17.5%. Recently inaugurated President Ferdinand Marcos Jr aims to slash the poverty rate to 9% by the end of his single six-year term in 2028 - a target that remains achievable despite soaring inflation, according to Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.
15th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer CEO Bourla shows mild symptoms after testing positive for COVID

Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said on Monday he had tested positive for COVID-19 and was experiencing very mild symptoms. Bourla, 60, said he had started a course of the company's oral COVID-19 antiviral treatment, Paxlovid, and was isolating and following all public health precautions. "I am confident that I will have a speedy recovery," Bourla said in a statement. Several public figures have tested positive for the infectious disease in the past few months including U.S. President Joe Biden and his chief medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci.
15th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai to reopen all schools Sept. 1 as lockdown fears persist

China's financial hub Shanghai said on Sunday it would reopen all schools including kindergartens, primary and middle schools on Sept. 1 after months of COVID-19 closures. The city will require all teachers and students to take nucleic acid tests for the coronavirus every day before leaving campus, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission said. It also called for teachers and students to carry out a 14-day "self health management" within the city ahead of the school reopening, the commission said in a statement.
15th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Japan's economy stages modest bounce from COVID jolt, global outlook darkens

Japan's economy rebounded at a slower-than-expected pace in the second quarter from a COVID-induced slump, data showed on Monday, highlighting uncertainty on whether consumption will grow enough to bolster a much-delayed, fragile recovery. A revival in Japan, like many other economies, has been hobbled by the Ukraine war and surging prices of commodities even as rising consumption propped up growth in April-June.
15th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Pandemic-Era Free School Meals Expire, Leaving Some Districts Seeking Solutions

Millions of school children are heading back to class this month without free breakfast or lunch for the first time in two years, to the disappointment of many parents and school administrators who are facing rising costs of food and supplies due to inflation. Some federal pandemic-era provisions that allowed schools to serve universal free meals will expire when districts start school for the fall, leaving many districts unprepared to make up the difference and urging parents to apply for a free or reduced-price lunch. While the provisions were always meant to be temporary, the expiration comes as supply-chain disruptions and rising food prices are pushing school-meal prices higher.
14th Aug 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

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Shanghai to reopen all schools Sept. 1 with daily COVID testing

China's financial hub Shanghai said on Sunday it would reopen all schools including kindergartens, primary and middle schools on Sept. 1 after months of COVID-19 closures. The city will require all teachers and students to take nucleic acid tests for the coronavirus every day before leaving campus, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission said. It also called for teachers and students to carry out a 14-day "self health management" within the city ahead of the school reopening, the commission said in a statement.
14th Aug 2022 - Reuters

China Local Covid-19 Cases Top 2000 as More Lockdowns Imposed

China reported more than 2,000 local Covid-19 cases on Friday as infections in the southern Hainan island edged higher despite stricter curbs imposed earlier this week. The southern province, a popular tourist destination, reported 1,426 cases. More than 1,230 of them were in the beach resort city of Sanya, where more restrictions were added on Thursday. Hainan’s authorities had aimed to eliminate community transmission by Aug. 12.
14th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

China's ex-COVID patients live under 'dark shadow' of stigma

When Zuo tested positive for COVID-19 while working as a cleaner in one of Shanghai's largest quarantine centres, she hoped it wouldn't be long before she could pick up the mop and start earning again. But four months on, she is still fighting to get her job back - one of scores of recovering COVID-19 patients facing what labour rights activists and health experts say is a widespread form of discrimination in zero-COVID China. Using snap lockdowns and mass testing, China is the last major economy still pursuing the goal of stamping out the virus completely.
14th Aug 2022 - Channel NewsAsia Singapore

U.S. Schools Put Covid-19 Safety Measures in Rearview, Dividing Some Parents

Schools nationwide are eliminating Covid-19 protocols as students return for fall, shifting resources from combating the waning virus to addressing academic crises that cropped up during the pandemic. Districts across the country are reducing testing, de-emphasizing social distancing and dropping mask mandates that were in place for the start of classes last year. A handful are still requiring masks or attempting vaccine directives. With deaths and hospitalizations linked to the current subvariants largely stabilizing, school officials say they have other pressing matters to attend to, such as learning loss, enrollment declines and staffing shortages. Los Angeles will discontinue its weekly testing program when classes begin Aug. 15, and officials in New York City say they are considering the same. Districts in Illinois, Washington, Colorado and Texas are also loosening Covid-19 rules.
12th Aug 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

CDC relaxing its COVID-19 guidelines

The nation's top public health agency relaxed its COVID-19 guidelines Thursday, dropping the recommendation that Americans quarantine themselves if they come into close contact with an infected person.
12th Aug 2022 - USA Today

'Eligibility criteria' required for free Covid-19 Lateral Flow Kits as Manx care to stop PCR tests

The Isle of Man is changing its Covid-19 testing providers and policies. From 31 August Manx Care will no longer deliver PCR testing as part of the Island's approach to "living with the virus". People may still get a PCR test, for example if needed for travel, through private providers on Island. In addition, from 15 August Lateral Flow Tests will no longer be free for all. From Monday people will also no longer be required to perform a Lateral Flow Test before entering a health and social care setting. This includes patients attending day clinics, visitors to Noble's Hospital and visitors to residential or care homes operated by Manx Care.
12th Aug 2022 - ITV News

Carnival drops mandatory COVID-19 testing for vaccinated passengers

Carnival Corp's major cruise lines will drop mandatory COVID-19 testing for vaccinated guests and allow unvaccinated passengers to travel without an exemption in some cases, the company said on Friday. The decision affects Carnival Cruise, Princess Cruises and Cunard and follows a similar move by rival Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NCLH.N) earlier this week. Unvaccinated guests - who still have to present a negative COVID-19 result - no longer need to apply for an exemption except for Carnival Cruise's sailings in Australia or on its voyages 16 nights and longer.
12th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Years of Covid School Closures Leave Philippines With Deep Scars

On Aug. 22, schools in the Philippines will finally reopen their doors to students after two and a half years – one of the longest pandemic-induced school closures in the world. As well as devastating the individual prospects of countless children, the extended hiatus is threatening to leave long-term scars on an economy historically reliant on sending high-skilled workers abroad. Protracted school closures worsen basic literacy standards and will likely reduce the productivity and earnings of children once they enter the workforce, the World Bank warned in a recent report. About 10% of Filipinos work abroad and the economy is dependent on remittances sent back by its overseas nurses, teachers and engineers, among other workers.
12th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

UK decision not to buy Covid drug Evusheld disappoints charities

The UK will not buy the drug Evusheld, which can help prevent Covid infections in people with weakened immune systems, the government has said. The decision, revealed on Friday in an official statement to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, has been met with criticism from a host of charities who say it means many people who are immunocompromised will be left with no option but to avoid contact with loved ones for fear of catching Covid. “We’re deeply disappointed to hear that today the government has announced that they have no plans to buy Evusheld. Many of our community will be left feeling let down and vulnerable,” said Helen Rowntree, the director of research at Blood Cancer UK. She said the charity was calling on the government to outline its rationale and review the decision.
12th Aug 2022 - The Guardian

Years of Covid School Closures Leave Philippines With Deep Scars

On Aug. 22, schools in the Philippines will finally reopen their doors to students after two and a half years – one of the longest pandemic-induced school closures in the world. As well as devastating the individual prospects of countless children, the extended hiatus is threatening to leave long-term scars on an economy historically reliant on sending high-skilled workers abroad. Protracted school closures worsen basic literacy standards and will likely reduce the productivity and earnings of children once they enter the workforce, the World Bank warned in a recent report.
11th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

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Moderna Vaccine to Run Out of Stock in Hungary

Those who want to get a Moderna vaccine against the coronavirus should hurry because the last batches are being used at vaccination centers and GPs, according to the official government coronavirus website, koronavirus.gov.hu. Hungary has received 1.7 million doses of the Moderna vaccine under the EU procurement, of which the last doses are now being used for vaccination.
12th Aug 2022 - Hungary Today

Infectious disease experts warn Omicron wave not the last of Australia's COVID-19 pandemic

Health authorities say Australia may have hit its winter COVID-19 peak earlier than predicted. But they warn the virus has repeatedly mutated and different strains still pose a real risk. On August 10, there were 133 deaths and 27,263 new cases recorded nationwide
12th Aug 2022 - ABC News

Long Covid Symptoms: Big Drop in Stress Hormone Cortisol Shown in Study

Striking decreases in the stress hormone cortisol were the strongest predictor for who develops long Covid in new research that identified several potential drivers of the lingering symptoms afflicting millions of survivors. Levels of cortisol in the blood of those with the so-called post Covid-19 condition were roughly half those found in healthy, uninfected people or individuals who fully recovered from the pandemic disease, researchers at Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York found. No one knows yet what causes the constellation of symptoms, often termed long Covid, that afflict some 10% to 20% of people after the acute phase of infection from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The US government is spending more than $1 billion to learn why it occurs and to devise strategies to treat and prevent the condition.
11th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

North Korea Claims Victory Over COVID-19 and Blames Seoul for the Outbreak

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared victory over COVID-19 and ordered preventive measures eased just three months after acknowledging an outbreak, claiming the country’s widely disputed success would be recognized as a global health miracle.
11th Aug 2022 - Time

Covid-19 and Politics: Pandemic Deepened Countries' Divisions, Survey Says

The Covid-19 pandemic created deeper social divisions compared to the beginning of the outbreak, exposing weaknesses in political systems, according to findings of a survey conducted in 19 upper- and middle-income countries. Overall, 61% of respondents said their countries became more divided during the pandemic, according to the recent Pew Research Center survey. The perception of increased social friction was highest in the US, where 81% of those surveyed held that view, and two-thirds said the country’s pandemic response revealed political frailty.
11th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

North Korea declares victory over COVID, suggests leader Kim had it

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared victory over COVID-19 and his sister indicated that he too caught the virus, while vowing "deadly retaliation" against South Korea, which the North blames for causing the outbreak.
11th Aug 2022 - Reuters

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India to start COVID mix-and-match booster vaccines on Friday

India said on Wednesday that Biological E's COVID-19 vaccine Corbevax can be administered as a booster dose in people who have taken the country's other two main shots, Covaxin and AstraZeneca's Covishield, from Friday. Corbevax will be available to over 18s as precautionary booster six months after a second dose, the health ministry said in an Aug. 8 letter to state authorities and shared with reporters on Wednesday.
10th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Covid-19 Northern Ireland: Expert 'optimistic' autumn wave can be avoided

A leading immunology expert believes high Omicron infection rates should protect the general population against an autumn wave of Covid — unless a new variant emerges. Professor of Experimental Immunology, Kingston Mills, has also said it would be a mistake to offer vaccine booster doses before an updated, and more effective vaccine, becomes available in Europe over the coming months. During the most recent study week between July 14–July 20, the Department of Health estimated that 113,400 people in Northern Ireland had Covid-19 — around 1 in 16 people. In the week ending July 29, the NI Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) reported 22 Covid-related deaths, taking the total to 4,774 since the pandemic began.
10th Aug 2022 - Belfast Telegraph

People vaccinated against Covid share common symptom after testing positive

While it may be widely known that common symptoms of Covid include fatigue, a sore throat, and headaches, there is another widespread symptom being cited among sufferers. According to data gathered by the ZOE Health Study app, diarrhoea is a common symptom of Covid for vaccinated Britons. “It usually lasts for an average of two to three days, but can last up to seven days in adults,” the ZOE team said. The data found this symptom has become less prevalent with each variant, as nearly a third of adults aged over 35 reported having diarrhoea during the Alpha wave, while just one in five said they experienced it during the Omicron and Delta waves. The people who experienced it during the latter two waves had been vaccinated either twice or had also received their booster jab.
10th Aug 2022 - The Independent

Commuting in, DIY out: UK’s new ‘new normal’ after end of Covid controls

Britain’s love for green fingers and blackened thumbs during the first Covid lockdown has since evaporated as people again find a “new normal” after the ending of restrictions, a survey suggests. The amount of time people spent gardening and doing DIY soared in March and April 2020, with people spending 40 minutes a day improving their homes and gardens compared with just 15 minutes in 2014-15. But it plummeted back to 20 minutes a day in March 2022, Office for National Statistics data shows. Lockdown lie-ins are also a thing of the past, with people sleeping 30 minutes less than they did in early 2020, while the amount of time people spend watching television and streaming is down by 34 minutes on average.
10th Aug 2022 - The Guardian

The US is on a Covid plateau, and no one's sure what will happen next

The United States seems to have hit a Covid-19 plateau, with more than 40,000 people hospitalized and more than 400 deaths a day consistently over the past month or so. It's a dramatic improvement from this winter -- there were four times as many hospitalizations and nearly six times as many deaths at the peak of the first Omicron wave -- but still stubbornly high numbers. And there are big question marks around what might happen next, as the coronavirus' evolution remains quite elusive 2½ years into the pandemic. "We've never really cracked that: why these surges go up and down, how long it stays up and how fast it comes down," said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research. "All these things are still somewhat of a mystery." BA.5 remains the dominant subvariant in the US for now, causing most new cases as it has since the last week of June
10th Aug 2022 - CNN

Californians are staying infected with the coronavirus for a long time. Here’s why

Health officials recommend that anyone infected with the coronavirus isolate for at least five days. But for many, that timeline is becoming overly optimistic. The isolation period, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shortened in December from 10 days to five, is more a starting point than a hard-and-fast rule in California. According to the state Department of Public Health, exiting isolation after five days requires a negative result from a rapid test on or after the fifth day following the onset of symptoms or first positive test — a step not included in federal guidelines. But many people don’t start testing negative that early. “If your test turns out to be positive after five days, don’t be upset because the majority of people still test positive until at least Day 7, to Day 10 even,” Dr. Clayton Chau, director of the Orange County Health Care Agency, said during a briefing Thursday. “So that’s the majority. That’s the norm.” The isolation period, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shortened in December from 10 days to five, is more a starting point than a hard-and-fast rule in California. According to the state Department of Public Health, exiting isolation after five days requires a negative result from a rapid test on or after the fifth day following the onset of symptoms or first positive test — a step not included in federal guidelines.
10th Aug 2022 - LA Times

WHO: COVID-19 deaths fall overall by 9%, infections stable

The number of coronavirus deaths fell by 9% in the last week while new cases remained relatively stable, according to the latest weekly pandemic report released by the World Health Organization Wednesday. The U.N. health agency said there were more than 14,000 COVID-19 deaths in the last week and nearly 7 million new infections. The Western Pacific reported a 30% jump in cases while Africa reported a 46% drop. Cases also fell by more than 20% in the Americas and the Middle East. The number of new deaths rose by 19% in the Middle East, while dropping by more than 70% in Africa, 15% in Europe and 10% in the Americas. The WHO said that the omicron subvariant BA.5 remains dominant globally, accounting for nearly 70% of all virus sequences shared with the world's biggest publicly available virus database. The agency said other omicron subvariants, including BA.4 and BA.2, appear to be decreasing in prevalence as BA.5 takes over.
10th Aug 2022 - Journal Review

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Despite awareness of COVID-19 risks, many Americans say they’re back to ‘normal’

Many Americans know of the potential risks to themselves and their families from infection with Covid-19, but growing numbers say they have returned to living their “normal” pre-pandemic lives, according to July 2022 national survey data from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC). Increasing numbers say they personally know someone who has died from Covid-19 and personally know someone who has suffered the lingering effects such as neurological problems and fatigue that are commonly known as “long Covid,” according to the APPC survey, which was conducted July 12-18, 2022. Despite awareness of the continuing risks of Covid-19, worries about its health effects have declined, the percentage of Americans who often or always wear masks indoors with people from outside their household has plummeted, and the number saying they have returned to living their “normal, pre-Covid-19 life” has more than doubled over the past six months.
9th Aug 2022 - EurekAlert!

Norwegian Cruise Line removes mandatory Covid vaccine requirement from September

Norwegian Cruise Line has removed its mandatory Covid vaccine requirements for its cruises beginning on September 3, 2022. Norwegian Cruise Line issued a statement on the removal of its mandatory Covid vaccine requirements, that read: “As the world continues to open up, luring travelers to explore their favorite destinations once again more freely, we have updated our health and safety protocols to further align to those of the broader travel, leisure and hospitality industry worldwide.” “The relaxation of global protocols and travel requirements, makes it easier for guests to return to sea with us. As such, for sailings beginning September 3, 2022, all travellers are invited to sail with us once again, regardless of vaccination status.”
9th Aug 2022 - Euro Weekly News

People ‘still travelling less and exercising more than before Covid’

People are still travelling less and exercising more than they did before the pandemic, despite the scrapping of most Covid-19 restrictions earlier this year, new analysis suggests. Working habits appear to have undergone a permanent change – though the amount of time spent sleeping and resting has returned to pre-pandemic levels. The way people use their time has been studied since 2014/15 by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), with the latest figures capturing behaviour in March 2022, when almost all the UK’s coronavirus rules had been lifted. Adults spent an average of 52 minutes a day in March this year travelling, such as driving or walking, to places, the stats show. This is up from 32 minutes in March 2021, when many Covid-19 restrictions were still in place, but well below the figure of 84 minutes in 2014/15.
9th Aug 2022 - Evening Standard

How We Mourn Covid’s Victims

Piece by piece, the Covid-19 sanctuary was born on a hilltop in the town of Bedworth in central England. The process was meant to be a metaphor for a human life. Like bones fused over time, it grew taller as the memorial’s creators spent months joining intricate pieces of wood into a skeletal structure that finally stood on its own, 65 feet high. Then they burned it all down. There have always been monuments to commemorate the loss of life from calamitous events, such as the thousands of memorials dedicated to world wars, the Sept. 11 attacks, the Holocaust.
9th Aug 2022 - The New York Times

Post pandemic Britons still spend more time working from home - ONS

British workers are spending more time working from home compared with pre-pandemic times despite the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, according to official data released on Tuesday that offered a glimpse of what the 'new normal' looks like. In March 2020 the global coronavirus outbreak triggered a radical redesign of swathes of the world economy, forcing many firms and their workers to give up on the office temporarily and adapt to working from home.
9th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Jack Dorsey Tweets 'End the CCP' After China Covid Report

Twitter Inc. co-founder Jack Dorsey tweeted the words “end the CCP” over the weekend in response to a report about China’s strict Covid-19 measures. Dorsey, who’d been chief executive officer at Twitter until November, tweeted his terse message, ostensibly referring to China’s Communist Party, while quoting a CNN report about the rigorous testing and app-based contact tracing implemented by Beijing. He didn’t elaborate on his reasoning.
9th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

Biden Cleared to Resume Public Events After Negative Covid Test

President Joe Biden tested negative for Covid-19 for a second consecutive day, ending more than two weeks spent mostly self-isolating at the White House. The latest antigen test for Biden, 79, came back negative on Sunday morning, presidential physician Kevin O’Connor said in a letter released by the White House. “He will safely return to public engagement and presidential travel,” the doctor said. “I’m feeling great,” Biden told reporters outside the White House. Biden’s diagnosis, including a so-called rebound case after he received Pfizer Inc.’s antiviral drug Paxlovid, has hampered his political schedule ahead of midterm elections in November, though he has done a series of virtual events.
9th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

UK Economy Likely Hit Worst Slump Since Lockdown With GDP Shrinking

The UK economy probably shrank for the first time since the nation was in a coronavirus lockdown at the start of 2021, adding to pressure for action from the contenders vying to take over as prime minister. Gross domestic product for the second quarter probably shrank 0.2%, according to a survey of economists by Bloomberg News ahead of the official figures due to be published this week.
9th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

Analysis: More Chinese women delay or give up on having babies after zero-COVID ordeal

Seeing Chinese authorities exercise extraordinary powers during a stringent COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai earlier this year altered Claire Jiang's life plans: she no longer wants to have babies in China. During the April-May lockdown, the hashtag "we are the last generation" briefly went viral on Chinese social media before being censored. The phrase echoed the response of a man who was visited by authorities in hazmat suits threatening to punish his family for three generations for non-compliance with COVID rules.
9th Aug 2022 - Reuters

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Why K-12 schools aren’t requiring students to get Covid-19 vaccines

For the third summer in a row, school leaders are facing the question of what — if anything — they’re going to do to stop the spread of Covid-19 when students return to classrooms. One thing is clear: Almost none of them will be requiring vaccines. Just 31 percent of children between 5 and 11 in the US have been fully vaccinated, and 61 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds have been. (Only about 3 percent of children under 5 had received a first dose by July 20.) Still, no state in the country is planning to require student vaccinations, a marked turnaround from where things seemed to be headed last winter, when multiple states and school districts suggested vaccine mandates were coming soon.
8th Aug 2022 - Vox.com

What it would mean for Japan to downgrade its COVID classification

Calls are growing once more to consider downgrading Covid-19 to a level of disease classification similar to that of influenza, despite cases surging,
8th Aug 2022 - The Japan Times

Thailand to Lower Covid-19 to Same Disease Category as Influenza

Thailand will downgrade Covid-19 from a “dangerous” communicable disease to one that “needs monitoring” starting from October, as the country’s virus situation has started to stabilize, according to the Ministry of Public Health. The move, which will remove Covid-19 from the same category as plague and smallpox to the same level as influenza and dengue, is to reflect the reality of the situation in Thailand, said Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul. The move reflects Thailand’s health-system readiness, availability of treatments and “appropriate self-protection behavior” of people around the country, Anutin said in a statement.
8th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

Chile's Easter Island reopens to tourists after pandemic shutdown

Chile's Easter Island received its first group of tourists on Thursday after closing its borders for more than two years due to the coronavirus pandemic. Easter Island, over 2,000 miles (3,219 km) from the coast of Chile, has over a thousand stone statues -- giant heads that were carved centuries ago by the island's inhabitants -- which have brought it fame and UNESCO World Heritage Site status. "(Easter Island) is the biggest open air museum in the world," said Pedro Edmunds, the mayor of Easter Island, adding that it was time to open the island after it shut its borders 868 days ago.
8th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Colleges, Parents Fight in Court Over Tuition Charged During Pandemic Closures

Colleges and universities faced a barrage of lawsuits in the peak pandemic days of 2020 after schools shut down their campuses and moved classes online while charging students their usual tuition rates. Two years later, the Covid-19 tuition wars are building toward a decisive phase. A number of courts have issued rulings that provided a boost to students and parents seeking refunds, including last week in a case against a small private university in California. That decision followed a recent federal appeals court ruling that allowed claims to proceed against Loyola University Chicago. But those rulings stand in tension with other decisions for schools that said students don’t have valid claims. Pending cases from higher-level courts could bring more clarity.
8th Aug 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

COVID lockdown turns Chinese tourist hotspot Sanya into nightmare for stranded tourists

When Chinese businesswoman Yang Jing was planning this year's summer holiday in 2021, she chose the tropical southern island of Hainan because of its nigh-perfect COVID track record. The island in the South China Sea recorded just two positive symptomatic COVID-19 cases in the whole of last year. Fast forward to this month, however, and the number of cases has suddenly soared, prompting a lockdown in the city of Sanya and leaving tens of thousands of tourists like Yang stuck on the island
8th Aug 2022 - Reuters

BioNTech reports strong first half, expects demand to grow

BioNTech, which teamed with Pfizer to develop a powerful COVID-19 vaccine, has reported higher revenue and net profit in the first half of the year and expects demand to grow as it releases updated vaccines to target new omicron strains. The German pharmaceutical company said Monday that revenue hit about 9.57 billion euros ($9.76 billion) in the first six months of 2022, up from nearly 7.36 billion euros in the same period a year earlier. But revenue dropped to about 3.2 billion euros in the second quarter from 5.31 billion euros in April through June of last year. BioNTech said the dynamic nature of the pandemic has led to changes in orders and revenue but that it expects a strong end to the year. It said it plans to release revamped vaccines tailored to the latest omicron variants as early as October, which could lead to a fall booster campaign.
8th Aug 2022 - The Associated Press

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CDC: 85% of Americans Should Be Wearing a Mask Indoors or Considering It

Nearly 85% of Americans should be wearing a mask while indoors in public spaces or considering the measure, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over 55% of the U.S. lives in counties that are considered a “high” COVID-19 community level by the CDC. Under the agency’s guidance, those people should be wearing a mask while inside. More than 29% of the country lives in counties considered a “medium” level where they should consider the measure based on their risk of severe COVID-19. The percentage is a slight decrease over the previous week, when nearly 88% of the population was in a high or medium community level.
7th Aug 2022 - U.S. News & World Report

With second negative COVID test, Biden exits isolation and gets back on the road

U.S. President Joe Biden tested negative for COVID-19 for a second consecutive day on Sunday and ended his isolation at the White House with a trip to his vacation home in Delaware and a reunion with his wife, first lady Jill Biden. Biden has been holed up at the White House for more than two weeks with COVID, leading to canceled trips and events even as his symptoms stayed mild. The president tested negative on Saturday but waited until a second negative test on Sunday before ending his isolation.
7th Aug 2022 - Reuters

The EU says Novavax's COVID-19 vaccine should carry a warning. But this Australian expert says there's 'no major issue'

TGA figures show about 189,200 doses of Novavax have been administered in Australia to 24 July 2022. The EMA has requested more data from Novavax about its vaccine. An Australian epidemiologist says "a very small number of people" have been affected
7th Aug 2022 - ABC News

Desperately seeking nurses: What can be done to retain them?

The pandemic has taken a toll on nurses. Across nations, nurses are quitting in large numbers. In Singapore, they are resigning in record numbers, causing a severe shortage at the hospitals. The Straits Times looks at why they quit and where some of them have gone to.
6th Aug 2022 - The Straits Times

Covid in Schools: Masks, Shots Helped Protect College Students from Infection

Vaccinated and masked college students had virtually no chance of catching Covid-19 in the classroom last fall, according to a sweeping study of 33,000 Boston University students that bolsters standard prevention measures. The researchers screened the college’s health records to find nine sets of students who developed Covid at about the same time, were in class together without social distancing and had no known contact outside school, suggesting that they might have transmitted it in the classroom. However, genome analysis of coronavirus samples from the groups showed that all of them more likely were infected in other places.
6th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

Chinese tourist hot spot Sanya imposes COVID lockdown

The southern Chinese beach holiday city of Sanya imposed a lockdown on Saturday and shut its public transport system to try to stop a COVID-19 outbreak during its peak tourist season. Authorities announced the curbs would start at 6 a.m. (2200 GMT), saying the COVID situation was "very severe" and people's movements were being restricted. It did not say when the measures might be lifted. "We urge the general public and tourists to understand and give their support," authorities said in a statement on the city government's WeChat account.
6th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Covid-19: North Korea claims to have recovered from outbreak

North Korea says everyone who fell sick since the country confirmed its first Covid-19 infections has recovered. On Friday state media reported zero fever cases for a seventh straight day. North Korea refers to "fever" rather than "Covid" patients due to a lack of testing equipment. The country announced its first Covid outbreak in May and has reported fever infections and deaths since. But there is widespread doubt over the data, especially the number of deaths. "No new fever cases were reported during the past week and all those receiving treatment have recovered across the country," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Friday.
5th Aug 2022 - BBC News

Long Covid symptoms experienced by one in eight patients, research suggests

One in eight adults are likely to develop long Covid symptoms after being infected with Covid-19, a new study suggests. New research has compared common symptoms of long Covid, such as chest pain, breathing difficulties, loss of taste and smell, in thousands of people who had been diagnosed with Covid-19 during the Alpha wave with those who hadn’t been infected. Professor Judith Rosmalen from the University of Groningen, lead author of the study, said: “There is urgent need for data informing the scale and scope of the long-term symptoms experienced by some patients after Covid illness. “However, most previous research into long Covid has not looked at the frequency of these symptoms in people who haven’t been diagnosed with Covid-19 or looked at individual patients’ symptoms before the diagnosis of Covid-19.”
5th Aug 2022 - The Independent on MSN.com

U.S. Schools Spent Millions of Dollars on Faulty COVID Scanners and Cameras

In August 2020, with COVID-19 outbreaks proliferating and back to school plans shifting, U.S. tech vendors popped up, promising a solution. They were selling thermal imaging cameras and scanners that they said could screen large groups of students for virus-related fevers in real time. The catch: they didn’t work. The Daily Beast has found over 200 school districts nationwide that were persuaded to buy these devices between 2020-21 by a number of companies, spending a combined total of more than $11 million. Internal emails obtained through public record requests show how districts were sold technology by an industry which experts compare to the “wild west,” and how now in many instances, the scanners sit dormant in schools, gathering dust.
5th Aug 2022 - The Daily Beast

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China's Covid Zero Strategy Could Last Years Under Xi

It’s 2025 in Beijing, five years since the start of the pandemic, and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Covid Zero policy is still an inescapable part of daily life. Residents must get PCR tested every few days at one of the booths on nearly every street corner. A personalized health code app determines who can move around the capital, and where. Children have to test negative to go to the park. Something as simple as a visit to a coffee shop or supermarket can result in being locked down in your apartment, not even allowed out for food – which the state instead provides. Because a few positive cases prompt officials to restrict movement in all or parts of the city, CEOs assume they must deal with several shutdowns a year.
5th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

China Resort Town Sanya Is Covid Hotspot, Stranding Summer Vacation Tourists

The Chinese beach resort city of Sanya has become the nation’s latest virus hotspot with more than 100 Covid-19 cases recorded Thursday, leaving thousands of holidaymakers stranded in one of the country’s most popular summer destinations. The city in the southern province of Hainan -- often called the “Hawaii of China” -- reported 107 new infections since noon Thursday, a sharp jump from the 11 cases found Wednesday, according to CCTV. Authorities partially locked down the city on Thursday, closing indoor venues like karaoke parlors and bars. People in areas categorized as high-risk are banned from leaving their homes or lodgings, while others can only venture out of their compounds once every two days to purchase necessities.
5th Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

Toronto senior diagnosed with rare disorder after COVID vaccine last summer still waiting for compensation

Fernando Caballero misses the way he used to be: happy-go-lucky, the life of the party and the protector of his family. The 67-year-old was active and enjoyed rollerblading in the summer, ice skating in the winter and dancing all year round. But now, he uses a cane or walker to get around and takes several medications for nerve pain to help manage Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) — a rare neurological disorder he developed after getting the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in early 2021. He tracks his rehabilitation progress in part by counting how many small dance steps he can do in a row.
4th Aug 2022 - CBC.ca

Covid-19: Unprecedented levels of chronic absence in schools

The impact of the Covid pandemic has resulted in "unprecedented" numbers of children chronically absent from school, the Department of Education (DE) has said. It said the rate of absences was evident from figures it collected during the 2021-22 school year. Chronic absence is classed as missing more than 10% of the year. The children's commissioner in England is concerned some pupils never fully returned to school after lockdowns. An investigation by Dame Rachel de Souza suggested persistent absence from school was at a rate in England almost twice as high as before the pandemic. Previous reports from the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (NICCY) also said that the pandemic and restrictions had "a severe impact" on children and young people. Most pupils in Northern Ireland were taught remotely out of school for months in 2020 and in early 2021.
4th Aug 2022 - BBC News

U.S. CDC expected to ease COVID-19 guidelines for schools this week - CNN

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to ease its guidelines to control the spread of COVID-19, including in schools as soon as this week, CNN reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the plan. The updated guidelines are expected to ease quarantine requirements for people exposed to the virus and would no longer recommend maintaining a six-feet distance at schools, according to the report.
4th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Covid has settled into a persistent pattern — and remains damaging. It may not change anytime soon

Our tussle with Covid-19 — after a harrowing introduction and then wave upon wave of infections — seems to have settled into a persistent pattern. It may stay that way for a while. While Covid is not nearly the threat it once was, transmission of the coronavirus remains at sky-high levels. At the same time, the death rate has dropped thanks to vaccinations and improved treatments, and the overwhelming majority of people in the United States have developed some level of protection, from shots, a previous infection, or some combination of the two. In some ways, Covid is increasingly looking like other respiratory infections — mild in many people, but sometimes severe in certain high-risk populations.
4th Aug 2022 - STAT News

Economically inactive Britons with long Covid has ‘doubled’ in a year

One in 20 people in the UK who are neither employed nor seeking paid work are suffering from long Covid, with the figure more than doubling in the past year, official data has revealed. The proportion is far higher than for the one in 29 people who are unemployed but seeking work who have long Covid symptoms, or the one in 30 employed people who are sufferers, data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows.
4th Aug 2022 - The Guardian

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Long COVID comes in three forms: study

New research from scientists from King’s College London supports the idea that there are three different types of long COVID, each with their own symptoms. Researchers studied over 1,000 people suffering from post-COVID syndrome and found that there are three different subtypes of the condition. The first subtype consisted of respiratory symptoms, the second neurologic and third autoimmune.
4th Aug 2022 - The Hill

EU says Novavax COVID shot must carry heart side-effect warning

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is recommending Novavax's COVID-19 vaccine carry a warning of the possibility of two types of heart inflammation, an added burden for a shot that has so far failed to win wide uptake. The heart conditions - myocarditis and pericarditis - should be listed as new side effects in the product information for the vaccine, Nuvaxovid, based on a small number of reported cases, the EMA said on Wednesday.
4th Aug 2022 - Reuters

Japan learns to live with COVID-19 as locals flock to travel spots

Japan’s residents are flocking to tourism hot spots and snapping up normally hard-to-get restaurant reservations even as COVID-19 infections surge to a record, in a sign one of the slowest major economies to fully reopen is adjusting to life with the virus. Domestic travel is booming as people enjoy their first restriction-free summer since 2019 and as still-tight border rules keep away the hordes of foreign visitors that typically crowd popular attractions. Most residents are shaking off concerns about the current wave of virus cases, with travel agencies H.I.S. and JTB reporting no obvious rise in cancellations. Nippon Travel Agency Co. says any spots that become available are quickly booked.
3rd Aug 2022 - The Japan Times

Tokyo is giving out free Covid-19 self-test kits

Article reports that with the current surge in Covid-19 infections across Japan, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is now providing free rapid antigen self-test kits to those with Covid-19 symptoms. This new initiative is exclusive to Tokyoites in their 20s, born between August 2 1992 and August 1 2002.
3rd Aug 2022 - Time Out

Biden continues to test positive for COVID, his doctor says

U.S. President Joe Biden continued to test positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday and will maintain his isolation procedures, but he is feeling well and does not have a fever, his physician said in a memo released by the White House. "The President continues to feel well, though he is experiencing a bit of a return of a loose cough," his physician Kevin O'Connor said. "He remains fever-free and in good spirits."
3rd Aug 2022 - Reuters

Survey: A third of US kids had excessive screen time amid COVID

More than one third of US children used media addictively in fall 2020, a finding tied to family stressors but not a decrease in the number of screen-time rules implemented, finds a survey of US parents published today in Pediatrics. Investigators from Seattle Children's Research Institute surveyed 1,000 US parents who had at least one child aged 6 to 17 years to evaluate how COVID-19 pandemic-related family stressors and the number of screen-time rules affected their children's media use in October and November 2020. The sample included 500 parents each with children in the 6- to 10-year-old group and in the 11- to 17-year-old group. Parents completed the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4) and the Problematic Media Use Scale and were asked about parental employment status, demographic characteristics, and whether their child attended school in person or remotely.
2nd Aug 2022 - CIDRAP

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 3rd Aug 2022

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The Guardian view on long Covid: an unknown enemy

How do you tackle a problem when you don’t know what it is? Covid-19 was an unknown enemy, but was quickly identified. Long Covid, its equally unwelcome offspring, is a lesser threat, but is proving harder to pin down. Doctors are clear that it is widespread – yet are not sure how common it is, or how to respond. This is in part because it is an umbrella term for a wide range of symptoms; the World Health Organization says that up to 200 have been recorded, with shortness of breath, brain fog and fatigue the most common, while others range from loss of smell and tinnitus to stomach aches and depression. It may be that five or six separate syndromes are involved. Most of the symptoms have numerous potential non-Covid causes, making it still harder to isolate which are related to the infection.
2nd Aug 2022 - The Guardian

Hong Kong Will First Roll Out Only Sinovac Shot for Infants

Hong Kong will initially offer only one choice when it expands Covid-19 vaccine access to some of its youngest residents: CoronaVac from China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd. Children six months to three years of age will become eligible for the Sinovac shot from Thursday, health care officials said at a press briefing on Tuesday. While a panel of medical advisers recommended that an immunization from Germany’s BioNTech SE should also be available, the government doesn’t yet have access to the proper dose, said Chuang Shuk-kwan, an official at the Health Department’s Center for Health Protection.
3rd Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

If You Test Positive for Covid, Can You Still Cancel Flights, Hotels and Travel?

A recent rise in Covid-19 cases is making travel even tougher this summer. The Omicron subvariant BA.5 has been spreading just as people are taking long-awaited vacations. More than half of American travelers report having taken at least one trip in July, according to the most recent survey from Destination Analysts, a market-research firm. But travel hasn’t been easy. Travelers have faced flight delays, cancellations, long lines and lost luggage. Airlines and hotels laid off staff and have struggled to rehire them, which means there aren’t enough baggage handlers, pilots and housekeepers, among others. For those looking to hit the road or travel by plane, the wise move is to plan ahead. Read up on your airline or hotel’s cancellation policy before a trip, consider travel insurance and have a contingency plan in case you do test positive while traveling.
2nd Aug 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Hong Kong Experts Back Covid Shots Starting at Six Months of Age

A Hong Kong panel of health advisers said children as young as six months old should be offered Covid-19 vaccines from BioNTech SE and Sinovac Biotech Ltd. in an effort to protect the city’s youngest residents, according to Lau Yu-lung, the chairman of the Scientific Committee on Vaccine Preventable Disease. The committee unanimously approved both Sinovac and BioNTech vaccines for children aged six months and above, Lau told reporters on Monday evening. “Both vaccines are safe and induces effective immunity, we all agreed on this,” he said.
2nd Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

US locks up 66M retooled COVID shots from Moderna

As U.S. regulators turn their attention to revamped, variant-specific COVID-19 vaccines for the fall, Pfizer and Moderna could have their retooled shots ready shortly after Labor Day, according to multiple reports. But while the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) late last week inked deals with both companies to initiate a new booster campaign in a couple of months, it warned in its release that this stock would not be enough for every single U.S. resident. The HHS locked up a deal for 66 million doses of Moderna’s bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster candidate. It also inked an agreement to get 105 million bivalent booster doses from Pfizer and BioNTech. Should the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sign off on the updated prophylactics, HHS says it expects to receive its first deliveries of the retooled Pfizer and Moderna shots in “early fall.”
2nd Aug 2022 - FiercePharma

Apple drops mask requirements for most of its corporate workers - The Verge

Apple Inc is dropping its mask mandate for corporate employees at most locations, the Verge reported on Monday, citing an internal memo. This comes even as COVID-19 infections in the United States have been on the rise with the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the Omicron variant accounting for more than 90% of infections, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
2nd Aug 2022 - Reuters

Health officials predict COVID-19 cases will rise once school starts, as millions of kids remain unvaccinated

Health officials predict COVID-19 cases will rise once school starts, fueling community spread, as millions of kids remain unvaccinated and the BA.5 omicron subvariant remains the dominant strain.
2nd Aug 2022 - YAHOO!News

France Ends All Covid-19 Travel Restrictions And Tests

It was one of the last European countries to do so, but this month France has rescinded all its Covid-19 travel restrictions and testing requirements for any travelers entering the country. Crucially, France has come out of the State of Emergency that President Macron's government instigated at the outset of the pandemic, which means that the country requires less bureaucracy of its visitors. As of 1 August 2022, it is no longer necessary to show proof of having had Covid-19, any vaccinations or the results of any testing. Nor is it a requirement anymore to sign an attestation saying that you are devoid of Covid-19 symptoms (that had been necessary up until last week). For both the vaccinated and unvaccinated, it is not a legal requirement either for visitors to justify why they are traveling.
2nd Aug 2022 - Forbes

Biden feels good as he continues to test positive for COVID - White House

U.S. President Joe Biden feels good and is looking forward to getting back on the road as he continues to test positive for COVID-19 and maintains isolation procedures, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday. "He's feeling fine," Jean-Pierre told reporters at a White House briefing. Biden, 79, had just emerged from isolation on Wednesday after testing positive for COVID for the first time on July 21, when he tested positive again on Saturday in what his physician Kevin O'Connor described as a "rebound" case seen in a small percentage of patients who take the antiviral drug Paxlovid.
2nd Aug 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 2nd Aug 2022

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US Pandemic Revamp Raises Worry of 'More Cooks in the Kitchen'

Covid-19 revealed how federal offices and agencies, as well as state and local public health offices, lack coordination or central control. Elevating ASPR is meant to better align some of those functions. But former health officials from the office and other agencies say that the changes don’t provide clarity on which parts of the federal government will be responsible for certain emergency-response activities. They also caution that the office needs additional resources. Nicole Lurie, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response under President Barack Obama, describes ASPR’s role as “the place where all of emergency response sort of comes together,” reporting directly to the secretary of Health and Human Service
2nd Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

D.C. Schools covid vaccine mandate rare among national school systems

D.C. students who are 12 and older must be vaccinated against the coronavirus to attend school this upcoming academic year. The youth vaccine mandate in D.C. is among the strictest in the nation, according to health experts, and is being enacted in a city with wide disparities in vaccination rates between its White and Black children. Overall, about 85 percent of students between the ages of 12 and 15 have been vaccinated against the virus, but the rate drops to 60 percent among Black children in this age range.
1st Aug 2022 - The Washington Post

How Covid-19 has changed the world's view on education

Coronavirus was a transformative global event. The Covid-19 pandemic affected the whole world and with it came many significant changes. It disrupted and influenced the education sector drastically and affected all students and educators, not just in regard to academics but also in their broader health and wellbeing. Overall, education has become increasingly more flexible and accessible for those across the world. We know now that every curriculum can be taught online – whilst still allowing students to learn alongside their peers meaning that they don’t feel isolated. After the historic period of disruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic, most schools across the globe are back to operating again. But the education industry is still massively in recovery and assessing the damage and lessons learned during the global pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic affected more than 1.5 billion students worldwide, with the most vulnerable learners having the greatest impact.
1st Aug 2022 - Independent Education Today

Macau to reopen following COVID-19 lockdown as casinos report record-low profits

The reopening comes as the casinos report their lowest July revenue on record. Macau has reported about 1,800 infections since mid-June. Strict COVID-19 restrictions will remain in place
1st Aug 2022 - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Macau to reopen city as no COVID infections detected for 9 days

Macau will reopen public services and entertainment facilities, and allow dining-in at restaurants from Tuesday, authorities said, as the world's biggest gambling hub seeks a return to normalcy after finding no COVID-19 cases for nine straight days. Beauty salons, fitness centres, and bars too will be allowed to resume operations, the government said in a statement on Monday. The announcement came as authorities also reported on Monday that July monthly casino revenues dropped 95% year on year to 0.4 billion patacas ($49.5 million), the lowest on record.
1st Aug 2022 - Reuters

New Zealand's borders fully open after long pandemic closure

New Zealand will welcome all international travellers from July 31. Jacinda Arden says the final stages included welcoming back those on student visas and letting cruise ships and foreign yachts dock in the country. The country imposed some of the world's strictest border controls when COVID-19 first hit
1st Aug 2022 - ABC News

Confessions of a Covid-19 dodger

Lately, most conversation starters revolve around a single question: "Have you had Covid yet?" Then come the tales of when/how/where, the extent of symptoms, and the solemn raise of hands for the chosen few who have not.
1st Aug 2022 - The Straits Times

Londoners Leaving the City in Droves as Covid Trend Persists

The push to leave London sparked by the coronavirus pandemic shows no sign of slowing down even after millions of workers returned to their city center offices. Almost 8% of the British homes purchased outside of the capital were bought by Londoners in the first half of the year, the same proportion as a year earlier when the post-Covid rush kicked off. That’s up from 6.9% in the first half of 2019, the year before the the pandemic struck, according to data compiled by broker Hamptons. Buyers have flocked to the countryside in search of more green space after being cooped up in their homes during a series of lockdowns in 2020, taking advantage of more flexible working patterns and pent up savings.
1st Aug 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 1st Aug 2022

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Covid Booster: US to Buy $1.7 Billion of Moderna Omicron-Specific Vaccine (MRNA)

Moderna Inc. said it secured a $1.74 billion contract to supply the US government with its new omicron-specific vaccine. The deal is for 66 million doses of a new booster that includes the existing shot as well as components targeting omicron subvariants of the Covid-19 virus. The agreement also allows the government to purchase another 234 million doses of the company’s booster shots in the future. “Moderna’s mRNA platform is enabling us to rapidly create mRNA-1273.222, a bivalent vaccine that specifically targets omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, the most prevalent variants of concern in the US today,” Stephane Bancel, the company’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.
31st Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Inside the super-secure Swiss lab trying to stop the next pandemic

The setting is straight from a spy thriller: Crystal waters below, snow-capped Swiss Alps above and in between, a super-secure facility researching the world's deadliest pathogens. Spiez Laboratory, known for its detective work on chemical, biological and nuclear threats since World War Two, was tasked last year by the World Health Organization to be the first in a global network of high-security laboratories that will grow, store and share newly discovered microbes that could unleash the next pandemic.
31st Jul 2022 - Reuters

UK Pays Lenders £352 Million So Far to Cover Virus Loan Losses

The UK has paid lenders £352 million ($429 million) to cover losses so far on virus loans to small businesses, a number that’s likely to grow further with £1.6 billion of further claims lodged by the lenders at the end of March. Metro Bank Plc, which lent a total of £1.4 billion under the Bounce Back Loan Scheme, has received £122 million as of March 31 after claims for 3,015 loans were processed and payment released, according to a report published Thursday. Barclays Plc received £88 million and Starling Bank £61 million. The £352 million represents about 0.7% of the 1.5 million loans at the end of March. About 3.2% are in the claimed stage, 4% of the loans are in default and 7.4% are in arrears, the data shows.
30th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

How the Covid-19 Pandemic Changed Americans’ Health for the Worse

The ripple effects of the Covid-19 pandemic’s influence on nearly every aspect of health in America are becoming clear. Covid-19 has killed more than one million people in the U.S., a toll mounting by some 350 people a day. A range of other chronic diseases and acute threats to health also worsened during the pandemic, data show, as people missed screenings, abandoned routines and experienced loss and isolation. “In addition to just the terrible burden of a million Americans dying, there are other repercussions from the pandemic that we need to address,” said Chrissie Juliano, executive director of Big Cities Health Coalition, an organization of city health officials.
30th Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

NHS staff with 'disabling conditions' after COVID-19 should be able to claim benefits, say government advisers

By listing health complications from COVID-19 as part of the Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit scheme, people affected by the virus would qualify for up to £188.60 in weekly benefits.
29th Jul 2022 - The Pharmaceutical Journal

Japan's factory output zooms as China eases COVID curbs

Japan's factories ramped up output at the fastest pace in more than nine years in June as disruptions due to China's COVID-19 curbs eased, a welcome sign for policymakers hoping the economic outlook will improve. Separate data showed retail sales rose for the fourth straight month in June, supporting the view that rising consumption helped the economy return to growth in the second quarter after contracting in January-March
29th Jul 2022 - Reuters

If you are high risk, do not wait for updated COVID vaccines, experts say

People at high risk of severe disease who have yet to get a second COVID-19 booster should not wait for next-generation, Omicron-targeted vaccines expected in the fall, five vaccine experts told Reuters. In many countries, including the United States, the BA.5 Omicron subvariant of the virus is surging, but current vaccines continue to offer protection against hospitalization for severe disease and death.
29th Jul 2022 - Reuters

AstraZeneca Outlook Raised as Covid Therapies Offset Vaccine Drop

AstraZeneca Plc raised its outlook for 2022 revenue as sales of its Covid-19 therapies offset a decline in its coronavirus vaccine. The UK drugmaker now expects revenues to rise by more than 20% this year, according to a statement Friday that showed its second-quarter earnings beat analysts’ estimates. The positive results, helped by a lower-than-anticipated tax bill, were largely due to Evusheld, AstraZeneca’s Covid antibody therapy for people with compromised immune systems. Sales for the company’s Covid offerings are now expected to remain flat compared to a year ago, erasing a previously estimated drop of 20%. AstraZeneca shares fell more than 3% in early trading before paring back slightly.
29th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

LA Holds Off Reimposing Mask Mandate as Covid Cases Fall

Los Angeles held off reimposing a universal indoor masking mandate as new Covid-19 infections and hospitalizations begin to go down. Local public health officials have been warning for the past two weeks that a mask mandate may be reinstated, after the county surpassed 10 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents and entered a “high” community alert level. However, officials decided to pause a masking order as fresh county-level data indicate the community is likely entering a lower transmission threshold, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told reporters Thursday.
28th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

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When will Covid really be over? Three things that will mark the end of the pandemic

Analysing past epidemics shows us that actual endings are long, drawn-out and contested. Societies must grapple not just with the medical realities of the disease, harms and treatments, but the political and economic fallout from emergency measures, and disputes over who has the authority to declare an end and what should be measured to guide this process. This is why there is so much uncertainty about the current state of Covid-19: different groups have vastly different experiences of the medical, political and social aspects of the epidemic, and different ideas of what an ending may look like.
28th Jul 2022 - The Guardian

Russia daily covid cases hit highest since April

Russia reported 11,515 new daily coronavirus cases on Thursday, authorities said, the highest such figure since April 13. Forty-one people in Russia died of coronavirus over the last day, the country's anti-COVID-19 taskforce said in an update. Russia has recorded 18,565,551 cases of COVID since April 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic in the country.
28th Jul 2022 - Reuters

After Biden COVID recovery, admin launches new booster push

President Joe Biden’s administration is launching a renewed push for COVID-19 booster shots for those eligible, pointing to the enhanced protections they offer against severe illness as the highly transmissible BA.5 variant spreads across the country. The initiatives include direct outreach to high-risk groups, especially seniors, encouraging them to get “up to date” on their vaccinations, with phone calls, emails and new public service announcements. All Americans age 5 and over should get a booster five months after their initial primary series, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also says those age 50 and over — or those who are immunocompromised — should get a second booster four months after their first. According to CDC, tens of millions of eligible Americans haven’t received their first booster, and of those over 50 who got their first booster, only about 30% have received their second.
28th Jul 2022 - The Associated Press

Malaysia's Women Graduates Close Gender Jobless Gap Amid Virus

Malaysia’s female graduates have narrowed the unemployment rate gap with men for a third straight year, yet major differences remain for jobs requiring higher level degrees. The overall jobless rate for 2.476 million women graduates in the Southeast Asian nation declined to 4.3% in 2021, versus 4% for men. That’s a huge improvement from 2018, when female employment was a full percentage point lower than males. Still, much of the shrinkage has been based on lower level diploma jobs, according to data released by the Department of Statistics.
28th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Will Singapore see surge in Covid-19 deaths that New Zealand is facing now?

New Zealand is one of a small number of countries that had done well in curbing Covid-19 infections and deaths over the past two years, with rapid lockdowns and safety measures. But the number of people dying from the coronavirus has surged in recent months - with 168 deaths in the week ending July 25, up from 163 the previous week. Of the 2,093 deaths from Covid-19, more than 2,000 have occurred since March this year.
29th Jul 2022 - The Straits Times

2,390 new Covid cases, 30 more deaths

The country registered 2,390 more Covid-19 in-patients and 29 new fatalities during the previous 24 hours, the Public Health Ministry announced on Sunday morning, with the number of deaths and severe cases gradually rising over the past week. The new numbers compared with 2,578 new cases and 29 coronavirus-related fatalities reported on Saturday morning. All the new infections reported on Sunday were transmitted inside Thailand.
29th Jul 2022 - ฺBangkok Post

Zoe Tay tests positive for Covid-19, attended two large gatherings recently

Actress Zoe Tay has tested positive for Covid-19, she revealed on Instagram Stories on Wednesday (July 27). Showing herself holding a rapid test with two lines and shaking her head, she also added a sticker with the words "Quarantine Mode On". According to the 54-year-old's Instagram posts, she had in recent days attended two large gatherings. On Sunday, she was at socialite-heiress Kim Lim's birthday extravaganza, a joint celebration for Lim, 31, and her son Kyden, five.
29th Jul 2022 - The Straits Times

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 28th Jul 2022

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Almost 9% have received second Covid-19 vaccine booster

The average percentage of people who have received a second Covid-19 vaccine booster is almost 9% across the country’s Local Electoral Areas (LEAs), new figures show. Data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) reveals that the average rate for a second booster shot was 8.7%, with individual areas ranging from 2% to 15%. The LEAs with the lowest second booster levels are Blanchardstow, Mulhuddart, Tallaght South and Ongar.
27th Jul 2022 - Belfast Telegraph

Millions of US children remain unvaccinated as BA.5 spreads and new school year looms

Millions of school-age children in the United States are still unvaccinated against Covid-19 as many prepare for a return to school. A new CNN analysis finds that less than half of children and teens are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, and only a tenth have been boosted. Many of the nation's largest school systems -- including Los Angeles Unified, City of Chicago, Miami-Dade County and Clark County in Nevada -- start school next month.
27th Jul 2022 - CNN

Austria ends COVID-19 quarantine for those with no symptoms

People infected with COVID-19 will no longer have to quarantine themselves in Austria if they don't exhibit any symptoms, the country's health minister announced Tuesday.
27th Jul 2022 - Business Standard

Covid-19 Northern Ireland: New symptom spotted as Health Minister extends availability of coronavirus tests

Lateral flow testing for those with Covid-19 symptoms in Northern Ireland is to continue into August, the Health Minister has confirmed. Robin Swann had previously explained the tests would remain available until the end of this month, citing the rising level of cases of the virus both in Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole. It comes as a warning has emerged over a new strain of the virus that could be causing some sufferers to experience night sweats. Professor Luke O’Neill from Trinity College Dublin said the Omicron BA.5 variant - which has contributed to rising cases across the UK and globe – was causing the “strange” symptom.
27th Jul 2022 - Belfast Telegraph

Report: NBA will not have vaccination mandate in 2022-23

After some high-profile vaccine-related absences from games last season, the NBA will not have a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for players in 2022-23, Yahoo Sports reported Tuesday, citing a memo from the league office it had obtained. The league will "strongly suggest" team personnel stay up-to-date with vaccinations, per the report. Discussions between the league and the NBA Players Association remain ongoing about whether unvaccinated players will be subject to periodic COVID-19 testing during the upcoming season.
27th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Wuhan Locks Down 1 Million Residents in Echo of Pandemic’s Start

A district on the outskirts of Wuhan has been locked down, the first time the Chinese city that saw the world’s first Covid-19 lockdown has imposed such a measure since 2020, underscoring how far the country is from post-pandemic normalcy. More than two years since the city was sealed off to contain what was then a mysterious pneumonia, almost 1 million residents of Wuhan’s Jiangxia district have been told to stay in their homes and not go out unless necessary. All public transport has been stopped and entertainment venues shut for three days after four asymptomatic cases were found in the district on Tuesday.
27th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

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Rise in long Covid sufferers unable to work costs UK £1.5bn a year

Long Covid is costing the UK £1.5bn in lost earnings per year as the number of people off work with the condition rises to almost 2 million, according to new research. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank estimated that 110,000 people are absent from work at any time due to long Covid, with those who were on lower incomes before the pandemic more likely to be sufferers. One in 10 long Covid sufferers who were in employment stop work while they have the condition, the IFS said. The findings will heap further pressure on the government to tackle a problem which is expected to grow further as infections rise again.
27th Jul 2022 - The Independent

Isolation facilities for covid-19: towards a person centred approach

Chuan De Foo and colleagues argue that isolation facilities have the potential to interrupt the transmission of infectious agents, particularly in the earlier stages of infectious disease outbreaks, but they must deliver person centred care. Two years into the covid-19 pandemic, footage from isolation centres in Shanghai showing unrest have raised questions about the safety, utility, and appropriate use of such facilities
26th Jul 2022 - The BMJ

Schools Choose Cheaper Ventilation Options as BA.5 Subvariant Spreads

As the highly contagious Omicron BA.5 subvariant surges across the nation, weeks before schools reopen for fall, most U.S. districts are choosing fast, cheap ventilation solutions despite billions in federal aid, data show. A federal study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found nearly two-thirds of schools aren’t planning to replace or upgrade their heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. Instead, about 70% of schools in the CDC survey reported low-cost steps to increase student safety, including relocating activities outdoors, inspecting and validating existing HVAC systems, and opening doors and windows. About a third of schools were installing high-efficiency particulate air-filtration systems in high-risk areas, according to the study released in June. Some schools have cited supply-chain issues, tight deadlines or bureaucratic challenges as reasons for not upgrading.
26th Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Calling In Sick or Going on Vacation, Workers Aren't Showing Up This Summer

A rise in Covid-19 absences in recent weeks amid the spread of the BA.5 subvariant, combined with planned time off, has left restaurants, hotel chains, manufacturers and other workplaces struggling to keep operations running this summer. At some companies, bosses say, staffing is harder now than at any previous stage in the pandemic. For the period from June 29 to July 11, 3.9 million Americans said they didn’t work because they were sick with Covid-19 or were caring for someone with it, according to Census Bureau data. In the comparable period last year, 1.8 million people missed work for those reasons. Many workers also are taking vacations that they put off over the previous two years. According to the Labor Department, 4.8 million workers took vacation or personal days during the week of the Census Bureau’s June household survey this year, compared with 3.7 million workers who were taking time off in the comparable period last year.
26th Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Joe Biden’s Covid symptoms ‘almost completely resolved’, doctor says

Joe Biden’s Covid-19 symptoms have “almost completely resolved,” according to a new note from the US president’s doctor. Although he still has some nasal congestion and hoarseness, his vital signs remain “absolutely normal,” wrote Dr Kevin O’Connor. The 79-year-old has been taking Paxlovid, an antiviral drug that helps reduce the chance of severe illness from Covid-19, and he plans to continue isolating in the White House residence.
26th Jul 2022 - Evening Standard on MSN.com

COVID symptoms almost resolved, Biden says he is feeling great

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday said he was "feeling great," as he recovers from COVID-19, and that he expected to end his isolation and return to normal working conditions by the end of the week. Biden held a virtual event with semiconductor manufacturers and several top administration officials to promote legislation aimed at boosting chip production in the United States. His voice was raspy but he seemed otherwise in good health.
26th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Covid origin studies say evidence points to Wuhan market

Scientists say there is "compelling evidence" that Wuhan's Huanan seafood and wildlife market was at the centre of the Covid-19 outbreak. Two peer-reviewed studies published on Tuesday re-examine information from the initial outbreak in the Chinese city. One of the studies shows that the earliest known cases were clustered around that market. The other uses genetic information to track the timing of the outbreak. It suggests there were two variants introduced into humans in November or early December 2019. Together, the researchers say this evidence paints a picture that Sars-Cov-2 was present in live mammals that were sold at Huanan market in late 2019. They say it was transmitted into people who were working or shopping there in two separate "spillover events", where a human contracted the virus from an animal.
26th Jul 2022 - BBC News

Despite their anger over high drug prices, Americans are giving pharma credit for helping contain Covid-19

Nearly three quarters of Americans give the pharmaceutical industry credit for helping contain Covid-19 — and for a sector that’s been roundly criticized for nearly a decade, that’s a reason to celebrate. A new survey, conducted by the Harris Poll for STAT, asked more than 4,000 people what industries they credit for helping contain the coronavirus, and 71% of those surveyed said that the pharmaceutical industry deserves credit — more than the number who gave credit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, or the White House. The only entities that received a statistically significant amount more credit were hospitals, makers of protective equipment, scientists, doctors, and nurses.
26th Jul 2022 - STAT News

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Slow uptake of Pfizer's Covid drug hints at end to sales boom

Sales of Pfizer’s antiviral drug Paxlovid have leapfrogged a rival pill developed by Merck and now dominate the Covid-19 treatments market, but slower than expected patient uptake could dent sales over the next six months and beyond. Airfinity, a health data analytics group, said recent data showed the whirlwind pace of new supply deals Pfizer signed had begun to slow because of the lacklustre rollout of a treatment billed as a key tool to help quell the pandemic. By the end of 2022 there could be a surplus of up to 70mn courses of Paxlovid on the global market following an increase in Pfizer’s production and weak demand for a treatment that US president Joe Biden is taking to fight his Covid infection.
25th Jul 2022 - Financial Times

White House to launch effort to develop next generation of Covid vaccines

The Biden administration is preparing a sweeping initiative to develop a next generation of Covid-19 immunizations that would thwart future coronavirus variants and dramatically reduce rates of coronavirus infection or transmission, building on current shots whose impact has been mainly to prevent serious illness and death, the White House told STAT. To kick off the effort, the White House is gathering key federal officials, top scientists, and pharmaceutical executives including representatives of Pfizer and Moderna for a Tuesday “summit” to discuss the new technologies and lay out a road map for developing them.
25th Jul 2022 - STAT News

EU states should act now before winter COVID waves strike, official says

EU member states should start preparing now for a new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in autumn and winter, the bloc's health chief said on Monday, saying there had been a "worrying increase" in outbreaks. European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides also warned there was no room for complacency, saying the pandemic was not over. "Unfortunately the pandemic has shown a worrying increase in several countries," she told Cyprus state radio.
25th Jul 2022 - Reuters

EU states should act now before winter COVID waves strike, official says

EU member states should start preparing now for a new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in autumn and winter, the bloc's health chief said on Monday, saying there had been a "worrying increase" in outbreaks. European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides also warned there was no room for complacency, saying the pandemic was not over. "Unfortunately the pandemic has shown a worrying increase in several countries," she told Cyprus state radio.
25th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Defence force to expand aged care support as COVID-19 wave hits sector

The federal government is expanding Defence force support for Australia's coronavirus-stricken aged care sector. More than 200 extra military medical personnel will be deployed to aged care homes in coming weeks, Defence Minister Richard Marles has announced. The move came after aged care providers and trade unions requested Defence force support for the sector be extended beyond the August 12 end date.
25th Jul 2022 - 9News

Xi's Covid Rules and Tech Crackdown Push Gen Z in China to 'Bailan'

The most educated generation in China’s history was supposed to blaze a trail towards a more innovative and technologically advanced economy. Instead, about 15 million young people are estimated to be jobless, and many are lowering their ambitions. A perfect storm of factors has propelled unemployment among 16- to 24-year-old urbanites to a record 19.3%, more than twice the comparable rate in the US. The government’s hardline coronavirus strategy has led to layoffs, while its regulatory crackdown on real estate and education companies has hit the private sector.
25th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Biden's Covid-19 Symptoms Continue to Get Better, White House Says

President Biden’s symptoms are improving after he tested positive for Covid-19 last week, one of his advisers and his doctor said. “He’s doing just fine,” White House Covid-19 coordinator Ashish Jha said Sunday during an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Dr. Jha encouraged Americans to get vaccinated and boosted, and to seek treatment if they contract Covid-19. Mr. Biden is taking Pfizer Inc.’s antiviral drug Paxlovid, which has been approved by federal authorities as a Covid-19 treatment. “This is a president who is double-vaccinated, double-boosted, getting treatments that are widely available to Americans and has at this moment a mild respiratory illness. This is really good news,” Dr. Jha told ABC’s “This Week.”
25th Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

H.K. to Cut Hotel Quarantine With Health Code, Report Says

Hong Kong plans to cut hotel quarantine for arrivals with the introduction of a two-color health code system, local media reported on Monday. The government is considering moving to five days of hotel quarantine, after which arrivals will be issued with a so-called yellow health code for two days that would prohibit them from entering high-risk areas where masks can be removed. Another option under consideration is four days of hotel isolation followed by three days of yellow code restrictions, according to Sing Tao, which cited a person it didn’t identify. Hong Kong currently requires seven-day quarantine for arrivals. Separately, the South China Morning Post said authorities could even shorten the hotel quarantine to three days as they put the finishing touches to the China-style health code.
25th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

China's Choice: Covid Zero or Xi's Three Red Lines

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. It’s an expression that warns people not to want things that are inherently incompatible. China would do well to heed this wisdom. In recent years, the government launched quite a few ambitious top policies that would fundamentally alter its economy. At the top of mind was its response to the Covid-19 pandemic. While the world is living with the virus, China still has no tolerance for outbreaks.
25th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Biden's COVID symptoms have improved considerably, mainly has sore throat -doctor

U.S. President Joe Biden's condition since contracting COVID-19 has improved considerably and his greatest symptom now is a sore throat, his physician said on Sunday. Biden's cough and body aches have diminished since he tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday and he is not experiencing any shortness of breath, the physician, Dr. Kevin O'Connor, said in a memo released by the White House.
25th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Coronavirus: Japan struggles with record-setting seventh wave

Just a few short weeks ago, coronavirus infections in Japan were hovering around the 10,000-cases-a-day level, and there was optimism across the nation that the worst of the health crisis was over and that the summer holidays would be more carefree than the last two years. As it has done in the past, however, the virus has mutated and caused a spike in infections. On Saturday, authorities recorded a record 200,975 new cases. Health experts say the seventh wave to wash over Japan is of the highly transmissible BA.5 omicron subvariant of the virus, with 17 of the nation's 47 prefectures reporting record-high case loads. On Monday, officials confirmed that there have been a total of 11.39 million confirmed cases in Japan, a nation of 125.8 million, and 31,902 fatalities. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has called for "maximum caution" among the public, but his government has stated that there are no plans at present to reintroduce the states of emergency that punctuated the first two years of the outbreak in Japan.
25th Jul 2022 - DW (English)

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Covid hits a third of Australia’s aged care homes as 6,000 residents infected

Aged care providers are calling for urgent action to protect residents and staff from a winter Covid-19 wave which is hitting more than one-third of the country’s facilities. The Aged and Community Care Providers Association said 6,000 residents and 3,400 staff were infected in 1,013 facilities as of Thursday. The association’s interim chief executive, Paul Sadler, said 10 to 15% of staff were already isolating or quarantining at home, and the coming weeks will put intense pressure on aged care residents and workers.
24th Jul 2022 - The Guardian

Recoveries greater than new cases as COVID total drops

After enjoying almost 2 months of being COVID free, Cambodia today again recorded new COVID cases. Today’s official daily new COVID case total (diagnosed by PCR test) was 20, bringing the COVID case total to 136,565 cases. Cambodia announced 0 new deaths, bringing the total to 3,056 direct deaths from COVID-19 in Cambodia.
23rd Jul 2022 - Khmer Times

China considers further easing Covid quarantine rules

China is considering a further reduction in its quarantine requirements to lessen the economic impact of strict Covid-19 controls. The announcement came on the heels of promises by Premier Li Keqiang this week that China would continue to refine its Covid-19 response with more targeted measures in terms of visa access and testing policies as well as allowing more international flights to China. Wang Liping, an infectious diseases expert with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told a media briefing on Thursday that the centre is constantly looking to improve its epidemic control playbook.
23rd Jul 2022 - South China Morning Post

NZ has mask mandates and isolation, but the Omicron daily death rate is still 'very concerning'

Across the Tasman, New Zealanders who were once asked to lock down over a single case of COVID-19 are now being urged to wear masks as the country records a seven-day rolling average of nearly 10,000 cases a day. Authorities believe there is widespread community infection in every region of New Zealand, driven by the highly transmissible Omicron BA.5 sub-variant. And for a nation of just 5.1 million people, attention is now turning to New Zealand's daily death rate, which has been among the highest in the world according to one World Health Organization measure.
23rd Jul 2022 - ABC News

Biden's Covid Diagnosis Is a Wake-Up Call for America

The news that President Joe Biden has tested positive for Covid should serve as a wake-up call for the rest of us: Almost three years on, the pandemic is still not going very well. Perhaps it’s human nature to put bad news out of mind. Still, one reason so many people have chosen to ignore Covid-19 may be that they are wary, and weary, of public health authorities. If people admit Covid is still a big problem, they are implicitly giving regulators permission to control their lives once again. But people are tired of lockdowns, mandatory testing, canceled school sessions and travel restrictions. And so they are fighting back with the ultimate form of non-violent resistance — forgetting about the issue altogether.
23rd Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

UK Covid Cases Rise to Highest in 3 Months: ONS Data

Covid-19 infections are continuing to rise in England and have reached their highest level for three months, but the trend in the rest of the UK is uncertain, figures show. Hospital numbers also appear to have stopped climbing, though it is too early to say if the latest wave of the virus is starting to peak, experts have cautioned. It comes as a new survey suggests public concern about Covid-19 has dropped to its lowest level since the pandemic began. A total of 3.8 million people in private households in the UK are estimated to have had Covid-19 in the week to July 13/14, up 7% from 3.5 million the previous seven days, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS)
22nd Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Australia facing nursing shortage as more than two years of COVID takes its toll

Unions say the country is facing a significant nursing shortage and things are only going to get worse. The number of registered nurses in Australia has increased year on year, but the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation said there was still a severe shortage. However, the ANMF cannot put a figure on the actual shortfall
21st Jul 2022 - ABC News

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Independent review planned for New York's COVID-19 response

A third-party auditor will review the New York state government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including efforts by the administration of the previous governor to downplay the number of deaths of nursing home residents. The state plans to select an auditor, who would have until late 2023 to deliver a final report, under a timeline released Tuesday by the office of current Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat. Initial findings are expected in May. The report will include a planning guide for future emergencies and will explore issues from the transfer of nursing home patients to the reopening of schools and businesses to efforts to purchase needed medical supplies.
21st Jul 2022 - The Associated Press

How Moderna’s Covid Vaccine Boosted Boston’s Real-Estate Market

Things started well when a Pfizer employee agreed on the spot to purchase a 16th-floor condo with views of Boston Harbor for $4.85 million, she said. Two hours later, a Moderna executive honed in on the same unit. When she remarked on the coincidence, Ms. Angelini said, “He just looked at me, completely serious and said, ‘I want the same home, but I need to be one floor higher than Pfizer.’ ” He reserved the option to buy a 17th-floor unit for $4.95 million that day, she said. Ms. Angelini’s buyer is just one in a flurry of Moderna employees who have descended on the Boston-area real-estate market since the company’s blockbuster Covid vaccine helped drive the company to its first profitable year in 2021, more than a decade after its founding in 2010.
21st Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Biden Contracts Covid as Pandemic Shows Its Staying Power

President Joe Biden tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday, finally contracting the virus whose control and ultimate defeat he had made a centerpiece of his campaign for the White House. Biden’s illness, coming after a five-day trip to the Middle East during which he made few efforts to avoid infection, highlights the endurance of a pandemic that has killed millions of people worldwide and upturned the global economy. Biden, 79, is experiencing mild symptoms and has begun taking Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid treatment for the disease, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said in a memo to staff obtained by Bloomberg. He will isolate at the White House while continuing his duties via phone and Zoom until he tests negative.
21st Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Australia battles fresh Omicron outbreak as COVID deaths rise

Australia reported one of its highest daily death tolls from the novel coronavirus on Thursday while hospital admissions hovered near record levels, as authorities struggle to get ahead of highly contagious Omicron variants. The BA.4/5 variants are good at evading immune protection from vaccination or prior infection and have been driving a surge of new infections globally. Australia is reporting the highest daily numbers since the first Omicron wave earlier this year, with 89 deaths from the coronavirus on Thursday and 90 on Wednesday. Just over 55,600 new cases were recorded on Thursday, the highest since May 18.
21st Jul 2022 - Reuters

Tokyo hits pandemic record on rise of new Covid-19 subvariants

The numbers show a resurgence has taken hold in the Japanese capital ahead of the summer holidays, when travel and activity levels typically soar. Rising cases are forcing leaders to reconsider what steps might be needed to contain the outbreak – may add pressure to slow the pace of reopening to tourists
21st Jul 2022 - South China Morning Post

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Covid. Vacation. Covid.

Public health officials warn that this is no time for complacency. In the United States, BA.5 has become the dominant strain and is driving a significant spike in cases -- more than 120,000 a day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), though experts say that number may be more like 1 million, given the underreporting of home test results. Europe, meanwhile, has seen a tripling of new Covid-19 infections over the past six weeks, with nearly 3 million reported last week, accounting for almost half of all new cases worldwide. Hospital admissions in Europe over the same period have doubled.
20th Jul 2022 - CNN

China braced for renewed lockdowns as Omicron subvariant spreads

China is at risk of more frequent lockdowns and mass testing as officials struggle to contain the spread of the highly transmissible BA.5 Omicron subvariant despite the damage pandemic restrictions have already wrought on the world’s second-biggest economy. Forty-one Chinese cities are under full or partial lockdowns or district-based controls, covering 264mn people in regions that account for about 18.7 per cent of the country’s economic activity, according to an analysis released on Monday by Japanese investment bank Nomura.
20th Jul 2022 - Financial Times

Data shows most Hong Kong Covid inpatients are elderly from community

New trend deviates from start of fifth wave when Omicron variant swept across care homes. Officials racing for measures to prevent healthcare system from being overwhelmed
20th Jul 2022 - South China Morning Post

Micronesia last of bigger nations to have COVID-19 outbreak

Article reports that Micronesia has likely become the final nation in the world with a population of more than 100,000 to experience an outbreak of COVID-19. For more than two-and-a-half years, the Pacific archipelago managed to avoid any outbreaks thanks to its geographic isolation and border controls. Those people who flew into the country with the disease didn’t spread it because all new arrivals were required to quarantine. But as has been the case in several other Pacific nations this year, those defenses couldn’t keep out the more transmissible omicron variant forever.
20th Jul 2022 - The Associated Press

Hospitalisation rates double as COVID cases triple across Europe

The World Health Organization (WHO) says coronavirus cases have tripled across Europe in the past six weeks, accounting for nearly half of all infections globally. Super-infectious relatives of the Omicron variant have been driving the new wave of disease across the continent, with repeated infections potentially leading to long COVID. Although intensive care admissions have remained low, the United Nations’ health agency said on Tuesday hospitalisation rates had doubled. “With rising cases, we’re also seeing a rise in hospitalisations, which are only set to increase further in the autumn and winter months,” Hans Kluge, WHO’s Europe director, said in a statement. “This forecast presents a huge challenge to the health workforce in country after country, already under enormous pressure dealing with unrelenting crises since 2020,” he added.
20th Jul 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Covid-19 Complication Among Children Fades in Latest Wave of Virus

A serious inflammatory complication that strikes some children in the weeks following a Covid-19 infection has almost disappeared. A buildup of immunity and changes to the virus both likely play a part, pediatric infectious-disease doctors and researchers said. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome is afflicting far fewer children as a proportion of known Covid-19 cases than during earlier waves of the pandemic, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The condition, also known as MIS-C, is similar to Kawasaki disease, another rare pediatric inflammatory condition. Early in the pandemic, doctors believed they were seeing Kawasaki disease but soon recognized MIS-C as a distinct condition associated with an earlier Covid-19 infection.
20th Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Nurse Burnout Reaches New High as Latest Omicron Variant Surges

Many people may be moving on from Covid, but nurses certainly aren’t — and as the latest variant sweeps the US, the mental stresses on the profession have reached new highs. A survey of 2,500 nurses released Wednesday finds that 64% are looking to leave the health-care profession, a nearly 40% increase from a similar survey a year ago. Three-quarters of those surveyed said they’ve experienced burnout since the pandemic began and half said they had experienced feelings of trauma, extreme stress or PTSD. “Our nurses are the backbone of our health system,” said Dr. Dani Bowie the vice president of clinical strategy and transformation at Trusted Health, a healthcare advocacy group that released the survey. “So, if they're not operating out of their best state, it's very detrimental to the wellbeing of our community and our patients.”
20th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

First case of antibody-avoiding Covid subvariant detected

The first case of Covid-19 attributed to a new antibody-avoiding subvariant, BA.2.75, has been detected in Thailand, but experts do not foresee it causing serious outbreaks, according to the Centre for Medical Genomics. The centre, part of the faculty of medicine at Ramathibodi Hospital, said on Wednesday the subvariant was detected in the southern province of Trang in a sample collected for examination on June 28.
20th Jul 2022 - Bangkok Post

‘None of us has a crystal ball’: Scientists try to keep up with faster coronavirus evolution.

The rapid evolution of the coronavirus into an alphabet soup of subvariants presents a vexing challenge to health officials: They must make far-reaching policy decisions based on little biological certainty of which viral variants will be dominant this fall or winter. The Food and Drug Administration said at the end of June that it would update coronavirus vaccines for a booster campaign in the fall targeting highly contagious Omicron subvariants. But the ground is shifting beneath its feet. In just eight weeks, the subvariant known as BA.5 has gone from a blip in U.S. case counts to the dominant version of the virus in the country, now making up more than three-quarters of new cases. Perhaps the most transmissible subvariant yet, it is pushing up positive tests, hospitalizations and intensive care admissions across the country. There is no evidence that BA.5 causes more severe disease, but the latest metrics certainly bust the myth that the virus will become milder as it evolves.
20th Jul 2022 - The New York Times

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Europe Can't Shake Off Covid as Variant Fuels Summer Spike

It was supposed to be a post-Covid-19 summer in Europe. Masks are gone in most places, and vacation season is in full swing as workers rush for the beaches and cities they missed in the two years marked by the pandemic. But instead, the reality confronting people is that the virus never went away. A super-transmissible subvariant of the omicron strain, known as BA.5, is fueling a fresh increase in infections, with cases climbing across the UK and the continent
16th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Macau to extend city lockdown, casino closure until Friday

Macau's government will extend a lockdown of casinos and other businesses until Friday, as authorities grapple to stop the spread of COVID-19 in the world's biggest gambling hub, according a statement on its website. The lockdown in the Chinese special administrative region had been due to end on Monday. Macau imposed the shutdown last Monday, shuttering the city's economic engine - its casinos - and forbidding residents from leaving their apartments, except for essential activities such as grocery shopping.
16th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Covid Fuels Worst Decline in Childhood Vaccinations in 30 Years

Global childhood vaccination rates experienced the largest decline in about three decades amid Covid disruptions, putting growing number of children at risk from devastating but preventable diseases. The percentage of children who received three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) was set back to its lowest level since 2008, falling to 81% in 2021, according to official data published by the World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund on Friday. The decline means 25 million children missed out on at least one dose of DTP through routine services in 2021 alone, two million more than in 2020 and six million more than in 2019.
16th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Column: The new economic normal - living with COVID

Central banks are jacking up interest rates to tackle the highest inflation in decades, economic growth is slowing, recession looms, and financial markets are in a deep funk. That's the bleak backdrop against which consumers, workers, and businesses are coming round to the realization that, despite successful global vaccination programs and 'V-shaped' recoveries across economies and markets, COVID-19 has not gone away.
16th Jul 2022 - Reuters

UK to Offer Covid Boosters to Everyone 50 and Over This Autumn

The UK will offer Covid-19 boosters to a wider number of people in the fall as a new wave of infections increases pressure on the health system. Everyone 50 and over will be eligible for a booster shot this autumn under plans to increase protection ahead of winter, the government said on Friday.
15th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

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Spanish response to Covid poverty was too little, too late, report says

The Spanish government’s efforts to tackle the economic turmoil unleashed by the Covid pandemic were “too little, too late and too few”, according to a report that finds thousands of people are still reliant on emergency food aid and facing even greater hardship as prices soar. The Human Rights Watch study, which documents cases of parents skipping meals so their children can eat, says the pandemic has revealed and exacerbated weaknesses in Spain’s social security system. All too often, food banks, community groups and NGOs have had to step in and help people in need – particularly those in informal work who were not eligible for state help. According to the report, which comes as a seventh wave of Covid sweeps across Spain, pandemic poverty has disproportionately affected families with children, older people dependent on state pensions, migrants and asylum seekers, and people working in the hospitality, cleaning, care and construction sectors.
15th Jul 2022 - The Guardian

Doctor warns COVID becoming 'too clever' and 'breaking past immune defences'

Dr David Nabarro, the World Health Organisation's special envoy on COVID, urged people to "respect the virus" and warned that precautions still matter, a day after the UK death toll passed 200,000.
15th Jul 2022 - Sky News

IMF says China needs more fiscal, monetary support to fight COVID slowdown

The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday that China needs to add more fiscal and monetary policy support to combat an economic slowdown brought on by continued COVID-19 lockdowns, but less-restrictive pandemic containment policies also were needed. "We welcome the shift to a more expansionary fiscal policy this year, but even more support would help counter the ongoing growth slowdown," IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told a news briefing when asked about the Fund's policy advice for China.
14th Jul 2022 - Reuters

AFL lifts COVID-19 vaccine mandate for players and club staff

In Australia, the AFL has removed its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, paving the way for exiled players to return to the top level. Players, coaches and club staff will no longer need two doses of an approved vaccine in order to train and play. The move brings the league into line with government requirements that legislate only specific industries need employees to be fully vaccinated.
14th Jul 2022 - ABC.Net.au

Covid-19: MPs call for greater efforts to reach the unvaccinated and partially vaccinated

MPs have called on NHS England and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to redouble efforts to reach the almost three million adults in England who remain unvaccinated against covid-19 as well as those who are only partially vaccinated. The Public Accounts Committee has challenged the government to reduce the overall number of unvaccinated people to 2.5 million and achieve an 80% uptake for first boosters within four months. The committee’s report on the rollout of the covid-19 vaccine programme acknowledged its early success but said low vaccination rates persist in many vulnerable groups including pregnant women and minority ethnic groups
14th Jul 2022 - The BMJ

Australia athletes barred from other Commonwealth Games venues over COVID risk

Australian athletes will be banned from supporting their team mates at other Commonwealth Games events at Birmingham due to the risk of COVID-19 transmission, team chef de mission Petria Thomas said. They will also have to wear face masks when not in their rooms or exercising at the July 28 - Aug. 8 Games as part of team health protocols.
14th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Japan warns of COVID surge, Tokyo raises alert level

Japan warned on Thursday that a new wave of COVID infections appeared to be spreading rapidly and urged people to take special care ahead of an approaching long weekend and school summer vacations. Tokyo's 16,878 new cases on Wednesday were the highest since February, while the nationwide tally rose above 90,000, in a recent surge of COVID-19 infections to levels unseen since early this year. The Japanese capital marked 16,662 new cases on Thursday.
14th Jul 2022 - Reuters.com

Analysis: China makes tweaks, but tough COVID policy still drags on economy,

China has been tweaking its stringent COVID curbs but shows no sign of backing off from its "dynamic zero" policy, and has lagged in vaccination efforts that would enable it to do so, casting a heavy shadow over the world's second-largest economy. The absence of a roadmap out of zero-COVID and expectations that it will persist well into 2023 leaves residents and businesses facing a prolonged period of uncertainty.
14th Jul 2022 - Reuters

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UK Covid Death Toll Passes 200,000 With Omicron Subvariants Sparking New Cases

Britain’s Covid death toll topped 200,000 and could rise further as a new wave of infections driven by highly-contagious omicron subvariants sweeps across Europe. Just over 3% of all deaths last week were linked to Covid-19, pushing the total number of deaths to 200,247 up to July 1, according to the Office for National Statistics. The UK has been hit hard by the pandemic, with one of the highest fatality rates globally and concern rising again as omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 drive a new wave of cases.
14th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

UK Government Seeks to Block Disclosures to the Covid Inquiry

The UK government is trying to block disclosures to the inquiry investigating its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Officials have asked the government’s top lawyer, Sir James Eadie QC, to assess how much information the administration has to provide to the inquiry about its policy discussions during the pandemic, the people said. Eadie, who is responsible for advising the government on issues of the highest national importance, has advised the Cabinet to limit the scope of information provided to the inquiry and warned ministers they are likely to face vast claims for damages from families of Covid victims.
14th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

U.S. FDA authorizes Novavax COVID vaccine for adults

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the use of Novavax Inc's COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, clearing the way for a shot whose more traditional technology has raised hopes of wider acceptance among vaccine skeptics. Shares of Novavax rose 1.3% to $70.89 after its two-dose vaccine became the fourth COVID shot to be authorized for use in adults in the United States. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) still needs to sign off on the use of the vaccine before it can be made available to people.
14th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Fauci says that Americans should not allow BA.5 COVID-19 variant to 'disrupt our lives'

Dr Anthony Fauci says that the BA.5 variant should not disrupt the lives of Americans if they get vaccinated, boosted, and use a mask. He also recommends that Americans once again mask-up in indoor crowded places, but does not see mandates coming soon. The BA.5 variant now makes up 65% of active cases in the U.S., making it the dominant strain only weeks after first appearing on CDC surveillance reports. The new strain is likely responsible for recent upticks in Covid cases in deaths - with daily infections jumping 15% and deaths by 50% over the past week
13th Jul 2022 - Daily Mail

Netherlands detects 'Centaurus' Covid subvariant

The BA.2.75 subvariant, nicknamed 'Centaurus', first emerged in India in May. It has since spread to around 10 countries, including the US, UK and Germany. Now, it 'has also now been identified in the Netherlands,' the Dutch National Institute of Public Health said in a statement on Wednesday. The substrain appears to be outcompeting all other variants in India,. Experts say there is no evidence it causes more serious disease than Omicron
13th Jul 2022 - Daily Mail

NHS awarded George Cross for efforts shown during the COVID-19 pandemic

The NHS has been awarded the George Cross by Her Majesty The Queen in recognition of the dedicated service of healthcare workers that includes their ‘courage, compassion and dedication’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. The George Cross, which is given in recognition of ‘acts of the greatest heroism or of the most courage in circumstances of extreme danger’, has only been bestowed to a collective group of people twice before, most recently in 1999. May Parsons, the nurse who administered the first COVID-19 vaccination in the world, joined NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard to attend the presentation on 12 July – exactly one week after the NHS’s birthday. The pair were joined by Pritchard’s counterparts, Caroline Lamb from NHS Scotland and Judith Paget from NHS Wales, along with Peter May, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and chief executive of Health and Social Care Northern Ireland.
13th Jul 2022 - PMLiVE

Government braces to fund 'substantial' number of Covid-19 vaccine liabilities

The government is bracing to fund a “substantial” number of liabilities relating to negative impacts from Covid-19 jabs, having spent more than £34bn on the vaccine rollout so far. The Department of Health and Social Care told vaccine manufacturers at the start of the programme that it would cover future claims against producers for any adverse effects of their vaccines which “may add to the cost of the programme in the long term”, according to a Public Account Committee report today. As of the beginning of the month, 1,984 vaccine-related damages claims have been received by the NHS Business Services Authority, which describes itself as an arm’s length body of the Department of Health and Social Care, managing over £35bn of NHS spend annually,
13th Jul 2022 - City A.M.

WHO says COVID-19 remains a global health emergency

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that COVID-19 remains a global emergency, nearly 2-1/2 years after it was first declared. The Emergency Committee, made up of independent experts, said in a statement that rising cases, ongoing viral evolution and pressure on health services in a number of countries meant that the situation was still an emergency. Cases reported to WHO had risen by 30% in the last fortnight, although increased population immunity, largely from vaccines, had seen a "decoupling" of cases from hospitalisations and deaths, the committee's statement said.
13th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Astra's Covid Vaccine Saved Over Six Million Lives in First Year

Covid vaccines from AstraZeneca Plc and Pfizer Inc. had the biggest impact in preventing deaths in the first year of the global rollout, saving an estimated 12 million lives. That’s the upshot of a new analysis from Airfinity Ltd., a London-based data firm. The AstraZeneca vaccine developed with the University of Oxford saved 6.3 million lives, Airfinity said Wednesday. The estimate for the Pfizer-BioNTech SE shot was 5.9 million. The companies swiftly scaled up production and delivered doses before other manufacturers, according to the report. The findings build on a study last month estimating that vaccines saved about 20 million lives in the first year of the campaign, more than half of them in wealthier countries.
13th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

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Hopes of Covid-19 Reprieve Fade as BA.5 Subvariant Takes Over

Covid-19 is circulating widely as the BA.5 Omicron subvariant elevates the risk of reinfections and rising case counts, spoiling chances for a summer reprieve from the pandemic across much of the U.S. Covid-19 levels are high in a fifth of U.S. counties, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s metric based on case and hospital data, a share that has been mostly rising since mid-April. BA.5 is estimated to represent nearly two in three recent U.S. cases that are averaging just more than 100,000 a day, CDC data show. The true number of infections may be roughly six times as high, some virus experts said, in part because so many people are using at-home tests that state health departments largely don’t track.
13th Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

UK Covid cases hit record 351,000 as government accused of ignoring rising infections

Covid cases have hit a new record in the UK with daily symptomatic infections soaring to 351,546, according to the ZOE Covid study app. UK infections are expected to rise even higher, to nearly 400,000 a day, next week before starting to drop down. Cases are starting to plateau in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland but are still rising in England.
13th Jul 2022 - iNews

Italy to start administering second COVID booster to over-60s

Italy will soon start its campaign to administer a second COVID-19 booster to everyone aged over 60, the health minister said on Monday, after receiving a green light from European Union health agencies. The European recommendation came on Monday amid a new rise in infections and hospitalisations across Europe and was expected to facilitate national decisions to speed up vaccination campaigns, which have been slowing in recent months. Health Minister Roberto Speranza said the government had already given the go-ahead to Italy's 20 regional administrations to start the second booster campaign, after the approval of national medicine agency AIFA.
12th Jul 2022 - Yahoo Style UK

As New Zealand reopens, exodus worsens labour crunch

New Zealand's easing of its strict border curbs has triggered a rush of new departures among locals seeking fresh opportunities abroad, adding further pressure to the country's already tight employment market. A net 10,674 people left the country over the 12 months to May, according to government data released on Tuesday, extending a drain that ran over the past year and is expected to last until new immigrants arrive in greater numbers in 2023.
12th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Covid-19: Ethnic minority staff felt “vulnerable” during pandemic, says senior leader

Healthcare workers from ethnic minority groups have felt “vulnerable” and uncared for during the covid pandemic, with some reporting that managers hid personal protective equipment from them and refused to carry out the required risk assessments, a senior nurse has said. Speaking at the NHS Race and Health Observatory conference at BMA House on 7 July, Felicia Kwaku, chair of the Chief Nursing Officers Black and Minority Ethnic Strategic Advisory Group, shared some findings from her discussions with thousands of ethnic minority staff since April 2020. “This is the stark reality of what some staff went through. Some died in their rooms on their own because of social distancing. Some couldn’t get to the phone because they were so hypoxic, so they died alone,” she said. “If you were a nurse or midwife who was new to the country, you didn’t have a lot of the networks, so it was very isolating.”
12th Jul 2022 - The BMJ

Chris Whitty to be honoured for steering nation through Covid pandemic

Leading medical figure Professor Sir Chris Whitty, consumer expert Martin Lewis and Olympic diver Tom Daley are among those who will be recognised with honours during an investiture ceremony. England’s chief medical officer Sir Chris, who appeared on the daily briefing broadcasts to the nation during the coronavirus pandemic, will be appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath for services to public health. He previously received the Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 2015 for services to tropical medicine in the UK and Africa, after he helped draw up the Government’s response to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, but will receive the higher accolade from the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle on Tuesday after guiding the nation through the Covid-19 pandemic.
12th Jul 2022 - The Independent

Global life expectancy falls after Covid pandemic

Global life expectancy has fallen since the Covid pandemic hit, according to the United Nations. The world average was nearly two years lower in 2021 compared to 2019, its latest world population report found. In some countries, such as Bolivia and Russia, the decline was even more dramatic at more than four years. The first case of Covid was recorded in China in late 2019, before other countries started to detect infections from the start of 2020. Since then, more than 6.7 million people are estimated to have died from the virus, according to a tally by Reuters.
12th Jul 2022 - The Independent

Covid rules as thousands told not to take tests even if they have symptoms

As Covid-19 infections continue to rise across the UK, millions of people are thought to currently be infected with the virus. New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that almost 4% of the English population had tested positive for coronavirus at the end of June, with higher figures (4.93%, 5.36%, and 5.94%) in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, respectively. The number of hospital admissions is also increasing amid new BA.4 and BA.5 covid variants. And there are no longer any restrictions around the virus in the UK, and as we learn to live with covid.
12th Jul 2022 - Liverpool Echo

WHO Chief Warns of Rising Infections, Deaths From New Covid Wave

The World Health Organization urged governments and health care systems to take steps to curb Covid-19 transmission as a fresh wave of infections moves across Europe and the US. Sub-variants of the omicron strain are lifting case numbers and leading to further fatalities, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. Tedros, as the head of the WHO is known, recommended the revival of protocols like mask-wearing to stop the spread. “New waves of the virus demonstrate that Covid-19 is nowhere near over,” Tedros said, adding that he is “concerned about a rising trend of deaths.
12th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

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Omicron Strains Drive New Covid Wave in Europe as Measures Fall Away

A Covid-19 infection wave driven by two hyper-infectious Omicron subvariants is moving rapidly across Europe, leading to an uptick in cases and hospitalizations in countries that have dropped the majority of preventive measures against the virus ahead of the summer months. European governments have discarded many Covid-19 mitigation strategies like mask mandates, mass testing and so-called Covid passports as their focus shifts to economic recovery and the war in Ukraine. A recent survey by McKinsey shows that fewer than 12% of the public in Germany, France, the U.K., Italy and Spain count the pandemic as a primary concern. Scientists don’t expect that the wave of infections will lead to the high death tolls seen before vaccine rollouts. But they are concerned that public and national health systems are ill-prepared for fall and winter waves that some predict could see double the current infection figures.
11th Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Macau Shuts All Casinos as City's Worst Outbreak Widens

Macau will shut almost all business premises including casinos for a week from Monday as a Covid-19 outbreak in the gambling hub showed few signs of abating. Essential services such as water and gas utilities as well as businesses including supermarkets, pharmacies and hotels will remain open, according to a government announcement Saturday. The measures, which follow multiple rounds of mass testing, return the enclave to its toughest pandemic restrictions. Macau announced on Sunday that it recorded 93 new cases the day before, bringing the total number of infections in the latest outbreak starting June 18 to 1,467.
11th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

New Coronavirus Mutant Raises Concerns in India And Beyond

The quickly changing coronavirus has spawned yet another super contagious omicron mutant that’s worrying scientists as it gains ground in India and pops up in numerous other countries, including the United States. Scientists say the variant – called BA.2.75 – may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infection. It’s unclear whether it could cause more serious disease than other omicron variants, including the globally prominent BA.5. “It’s still really early on for us to draw too many conclusions,” said Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “But it does look like, especially in India, the rates of transmission are showing kind of that exponential increase." Whether it will outcompete BA.5, he said, is yet to be determined.
11th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

New data on Moderna's omicron-containing bivalent booster candidate

US mRNA specialist Moderna announced new clinical data on its bivalent Omicron (BA.1) booster candidate, mRNA-1273.214, lifting the firm’s shares 1.5% to $179.07 by mid-morning. One month after administration in previously vaccinated and boosted participants, a 50μg booster dose of mRNA-1273.214 elicited significantly higher neutralizing antibody responses against the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5
11th Jul 2022 - The Pharma Letter

Moderna announces its Omicron-specific COVID-19 booster is more effective against the now-dominant BA.5 variant than previous versions of the shot: Daily deaths from the virus ...

Moderna announced that its second formulation of a COVID-19 booster targeted at the Omicron variant is more effective against the BA.5 variant. The new strain is now dominant in the U.S. and its ability to evade protection from previous infection has health officials fearing it could cause another outbreak. Some experts have opposed the launching of new Omicron-specific booster - expected this fall - until more data on the shots is available. Covid deaths in America have creeped upwards to 430 per day over the past week - jumping 13% in seven days
11th Jul 2022 - Daily Mail

The Human Cost of Shanghai’s Covid-19 Lockdown: Helplessness, Isolation, Despair

The Wall Street Journal team spoke to various residents across Shanghai about what the Covid lockdown meant to them. Residents who lived through the city’s battle against the virus share deeply personal accounts.
11th Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Workforce: the persistent victim of the covid-19 pandemic

In the past week, 11 000 people were admitted to hospitals in England with covid and the picture in the devolved nations is likely to be similar. High rates of hospital admissions, even if the patients aren’t very unwell, are disruptive for the running of hospitals. Most in the UK continue to use open bays, and this makes wards inefficient and vulnerable to outbreaks. The UK has fewer hospital beds than almost any other European comparator and we can ill afford any loss of hospital capacity. While covid has undoubtedly worsened performance, crowding in emergency departments was a problem before the pandemic. Hospitals are now full, and our “inadvertent natural experiment” has shown that occupancy rates over 92% are invariably associated with full emergency departments and delayed ambulance handovers.
11th Jul 2022 - The BMJ

Practice supervisors' and assessors' experiences in the Covid-19 pandemic

The pandemic placed additional pressures on nursing practice assessors and supervisors. This article explores their experiences of supporting students during this period
11th Jul 2022 - Nursing Times

U.S. orders 3.2 million doses of Novavax COVID vaccine

The U.S. government will get 3.2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine developed by Novavax Inc once the shot has been authorized by the regulators, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the company said on Monday. The shot will be made available for free in the country after it gets authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) recommendation.
11th Jul 2022 - Reuters

EU backs second COVID booster for over-60s, before variant-adapted vaccines are ready

European Union health agencies on Monday recommended a second COVID-19 booster for everyone over 60, as well as medically vulnerable people, amid a new rise in infections and hospitalisations across Europe. While existing coronavirus vaccines continue to provide good protection against hospitalisation and death, vaccine effectiveness has taken a hit as the virus has evolved. EU health agencies have since April recommended a second booster only for those older than 80 and the most vulnerable
11th Jul 2022 - Reuters

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Wow, what a view! China’s ‘digital nomads’ seek paradise while on the clock

Known as ‘digital nomads’, many were born out of China’s strict pandemic measures – but families and friends are still trying to process this new way of life. China’s remote-working trend is in its early stages, but even local governments and businesses are taking stock and looking to capitalise on development opportunities.
11th Jul 2022 - South China Morning Post

Macau closing all casinos to fight Covid

Macau will shut almost all business premises including casinos for a week from Monday as a Covid-19 outbreak in the gambling hub showed few signs of abating. Essential business operations including supermarkets and pharmacies will remain open, the Macao Daily reported, quoting city officials at a briefing on Saturday. The measure, which follows multiple rounds of mass testing, returns the enclave to its toughest pandemic restrictions. Macau on Saturday announced 71 new cases, bringing the total in the latest outbreak since June 18 to 1,374.
11th Jul 2022 - Bangkok Post

Shanghai identifies new COVID Omicron subvariant

The city of Shanghai has discovered a COVID-19 case involving a new subvariant Omicron BA.5.2.1, an official told a briefing on Sunday, signalling the complications China faces to keep up with new mutations as it pursues its "zero-COVID" policy. The case, found in the financial district of Pudong on July 8, was linked with a case from overseas, said Zhao Dandan, vice-director of the city's health commission.
10th Jul 2022 - Reuters

China's Shanghai asks public to share 'heart-warming' COVID lockdown stories

The government of Shanghai has called on citizens to share "heart-warming" photographs, videos and stories about a punishing two-month lockdown imposed in April by the authorities to curb China's biggest COVID-19 outbreak. The government of China's most populous city has launched the propaganda campaign to "tell epidemic stories, spread volunteer culture and inherit the traditional values of solidarity, friendship and mutual help," local newspaper Wen Hui Bao said on Saturday.
10th Jul 2022 - Reuters

‘Stealthy’ new Covid variant can reinfect you every month

Health experts across the globe are signalling alarm as they begin reporting that Omicron BA.5, the coronavirus strain that is currently outpacing other variants in infection and has become the dominant strain in the US and abroad, has the ability to reinfect people within weeks of contracting the virus. Andrew Roberston, the chief health officer in Western Australia, told News.com.au that though previously the wisdom held that most people would retain a certain level of protection against reinfection if they were vaccinated or had retained some level of natural immunity due to a recent contraction of the virus, this hasn’t been the case with the most recent strain. “What we are seeing is an increasing number of people who have been infected with BA.2 and then becoming infected after four weeks,” the doctor explained during an interview with the Australian news outlet. “So maybe six to eight weeks they are developing a second infection, and that’s almost certainly BA.4 or BA.5.” The ability for strains BA.4 and BA.5 to reinfect individuals who would in previous waves of Covid-19 had stronger immunity has led some experts to start calling this latest strain the most transmissible yet.
10th Jul 2022 - The Independent

African Union launches coronavirus vaccine passport

An African Union vaccine e-passport has been introduced and will enable easier travel within and outside Africa. The passport will be in digital format. A QR code will be scanned to show proof that one has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 and has a valid vaccine certificate. The passport was launched on Friday at the Africa Integration Day, Boma of Africa virtual event. African heads of state and global health leaders present at the event said the virtual document and the e-health backbone are part of Africa’s new health order. Acting head of Africa CDC, Ahmed Ogwell, says the vaccine passport will soon expand its bracket to include other vaccines such as the Yellow Fever vaccine.
8th Jul 2022 - TODAY

Slow pace for youngest kids getting COVID vaccine doses

Nearly 300,000 children under 5 have received COVID-19 shots in the two weeks since they became available, a slower pace than for older groups. But the White House says that was expected for the eligible U.S. population of about 18 million kids. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was to publish initial data on shots for the age group later Thursday, reflecting doses administered since regulators authorized them on June 18. The first vaccinations didn't begin until several days later because the doses had to be shipped to doctors' offices and pharmacies. U.S. officials had long predicted that the pace of vaccinating the youngest kids would be slower than for older groups. They expect most shots to take place at pediatricians’ offices. Many parents may be more comfortable getting the vaccine for their kids at their regular doctors, White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told The Associated Press last month. He predicted the pace of vaccination would be far slower than it was for older populations.
8th Jul 2022 - The Independent

Thinking of mixing and matching COVID-19 vaccine booster shots? There doesn't seem to be much point

As of Monday, an extra 7.4 million Australians will be eligible for a fourth COVID-19 vaccine booster shot. On Thursday, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) recommended everyone over 50 have a fourth dose. And while it didn't go as far as to recommend people aged 30-49 have a fourth dose, ATAGI said they can if they want to. It also reduced the length of time between booster shots from four to three months. Let's unpack what it means for you.
8th Jul 2022 - ABC News

WTO faces new battle over COVID tests, drugs

Less than a month after a hard-won deal was reached on a partial waiver of intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, a fresh battle may be looming at the World Trade Organization over extending the waiver to treatments and tests. The June deal includes an agreement to debate waiving certain IP rights for tests and drugs, which the pharmaceutical industry says could lead to a broader unraveling of protections for treatments for other diseases.
8th Jul 2022 - Reuters

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China Covid News: Shanghai Virus Outbreak Persists as Shandong Cases Jump

Shanghai reported more coronavirus cases, with concerns that persistent transmission fueling fears China’s financial hub may ramp up movement restrictions, while cases flared in the eastern province of Shandong. Shanghai announced 45 new local infections for Thursday, with all detected in quarantine. This week, the city rolled out mass testing of 10 districts and parts of two others -- out of the financial hub’s total of 16 -- in order to weed out transmission. Residents across all areas are already required to get tested every weekend until the end of this month following a bruising two-month lockdown.
8th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Covid-19 vaccines for young kids could have been OK'd sooner

Until mid-June, 1 in 13 persons living in the United States — that’s all children age 5 and younger — weren’t eligible to get Covid-19 vaccines. On June 17, the Food and Drug Administration finally authorized the use of the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, based largely on advice from a panel of outside experts. It could have — and should have — made it possible for young children to be vaccinated much sooner.
7th Jul 2022 - STAT News

Study finds growing Covid vaccine acceptance across world

Covid-19 vaccine acceptance across the world increased by about 4 per cent between 2020 and 2021, according to a new study whose findings could help improve the coverage of future immunisation drives. The research, published in Nature Communications, studied Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy globally in June 2021 in over 23,000 individuals across 23 countries. Researchers, including those from City University of New York in the US, found that more than three-quarters of respondents reported vaccine acceptance, up from 71.5 per cent the previous year.
7th Jul 2022 - The Independent

Norwegian Cruise scraps COVID testing for select voyages

Passengers boarding Norwegian Cruise Line ships won't have to take COVID-19 tests from next month unless required by local law, the U.S. cruise operator said on Wednesday as the crucial summer sailing season gathers steam. Cruises setting sail from the United States, Canada or Greece's Piraeus will still require pre-cruise COVID testing, and all of the company's guests aged 12 and above have to be fully vaccinated.
7th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Yorkshire nurse says scrapping special Covid sick pay for NHS staff is 'incomprehensible'

The Government’s decision to cut enhanced Covid-related sick pay and special leave for NHS workers in England has been called “incomprehensible” by a Yorkshire nurse suffering with Long Covid.
7th Jul 2022 - The Yorkshire Post

COVID-19: New wave of Omicron mutations spreading across Europe, EU Medicines Agency warns

A new wave of Covid-19 is sweeping across Europe driven by Omicron mutations, an EU Medicines Agency official has warned. Head of vaccines at the agency, Marco Cavaleri, has said "the increase in transmission among older age groups is starting to translate into severe disease". The increase in the number of people testing positive is being driven by the BA.4 and BA.5 mutations of the Omicron variant. In April, the EMA advised people aged over 80 to get a second vaccine booster. Now, they recommend people aged between 60-79 and medically vulnerable of any age to get the booster.
7th Jul 2022 - Sky News

NHS staff criticise ‘incomprehensible’ scrapping of special Covid leave

Covid-related absences had been fully paid for all NHS workers, regardless of their length of service. However from July 7 staff terms and conditions in coronavirus workforce guidance will be withdrawn, meaning the immediate end to sick pay for new episodes of Covid-19 sickness, according to the Royal College of Nursing, and access to special leave for the purposes of self-isolation will also be withdrawn.
7th Jul 2022 - Peeblesshire News

Beijing Rolls Out China’s First Ever Covid Vaccine Mandate

The city will require live performances, entertainment venues such as movie theaters, museums and gyms, as well as training and tutoring locations, to restrict entry to people who are vaccinated, Li Ang, deputy director at the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, told reporters at a briefing Wednesday. The requirement will also apply to medical staff, people working in community service operations, home furnishing operators, express delivery providers and conference attendees. They’ll need to have received a booster shot to continue as normal, Li said. There will be exemptions for people who don’t qualify for vaccination.
6th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

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China Covid News: Shanghai Cases Rise, Fueling Lockdown Fears

Shanghai reported the most virus infections since late May, fueling concerns China’s financial hub may look to ramp up restrictions to curb transmission. The city announced 54 local Covid infections for Wednesday, including two that were found outside of quarantine, with the latter raising concerns that the virus could be quietly spreading through communities. Shanghai has already increased its mass testing, with with 10 districts and parts of two others -- out of the financial hub’s total of 16 -- conducting two PCR tests over a three-day period. Elsewhere, Beijing announced four cases. Authorities said Wednesday that they had detected the highly infectious BA.5.2 subvariant in the capital.
7th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

How to book covid booster vaccine as Scotland records highest infection rate

Scotland is experiencing a high rate of Covid-19 infections as experts warn we are seeing the highest amount since April. On top of this, summer brings with it holidays, social events and mass events, all of which is opportunity for the new sub-variants of Omicron, B.A.4 and B.A.5 to spread. Scotland reported that one in 18 people had the virus last week with 288,200 people infected. Some European countries such as Spain are also preparing for a spike in cases and it haven't relaxed all covid restrictions yet. To be considered fully vaccinated if travelling from the UK to Spain, you must have a booster vaccine if it's been over 270 days since your second dose.
6th Jul 2022 - Glasgow Live

Canada Plans To Throw Out 13.6 Million Doses Of Coronavirus Vaccine

Canada is going to throw out about 13.6 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine because it couldn’t find any takers for it either at home or abroad. Canada signed a contract with AstraZeneca in 2020 to get 20 million doses of its vaccine, and 2.3 million Canadians received at least one dose of it, mostly between March and June 2021.
6th Jul 2022 - HuffPost

Australia removes final Covid-19 travel restrictions

Two years, three months and 25 days since the World Health Organisation first declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, Australia is removing its final coronavirus-related travel restrictions. From Wednesday, visitors no longer need to show proof of vaccination when flying Down Under. The last of the Covid-19 restrictions for inbound visitors have been dropped following Australia's removal of other rules put in place during the pandemic, including PCR tests for holidaymakers and mandatory quarantine periods. “As more and more of us travel internationally and we get more confident in managing our risk of Covid, our airports are getting busier,” Clare O’Neil, Minister for Home Affairs, said.
6th Jul 2022 - The National

Covid-19 Vaccine Doses, Once in High Demand, Now Thrown Away

Governments, drugmakers and vaccination sites are discarding tens of millions of unused Covid-19 vaccine doses amid sagging demand, a sharp reversal from the early days of the mass-vaccination campaign, when doses were scarce. Vaccine manufacturer Moderna Inc. recently discarded about 30 million doses of its Covid-19 shot after failing to find takers, while pharmacies and clinics have had to throw out unused doses from multi-dose vials from Moderna and Pfizer Inc. and its partner BioNTech SE that have a short shelf life once they are opened. Germany’s health officials have disposed of about 3.9 million Covid-19 vaccine doses that were sitting in a federal central warehouse and expired at the end of June.
6th Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Beijing city mandates COVID vaccinations, relaxes curbs on domestic travellers

China's capital on Wednesday mandated COVID-19 vaccinations for most people to enter crowded venues such as libraries, cinemas and gyms, the first such move by Beijing which it coupled with a slight easing of domestic travel curbs. From July 11, people wanting to enter certain public would need to be vaccinated unless they have issues that render them unsuitable for shots, a city official told a news briefing. Restaurants and public transportation are exempt from the rule.
6th Jul 2022 - Reuters

CDC: Mask-wearing recommended in growing number of counties

People in 24 Oregon counties — including the county around Portland — and 15 counties in Washington state should resume mask-wearing indoors in public and on public transportation, according to recommendations from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data from the CDC shows the counties are considered high risk for COVID-19 infection, KPTV reported. The Oregon counties include: Clatsop, Tillamook, Lincoln, Lane, Douglas, Josephine, Jackson, Klamath, Lake, Deschutes, Crook, Jefferson, Wasco, Sherman, Hood River, Clackamas, Washington, Multnomah, Morrow, Umatilla, Union, Wallowa, Baker, and Malheur counties. In Washington, the counties at high risk include: Clallam, Grays Harbor, Pacific, Lewis, Thurston, Pierce, Chelan, Douglas, Grant, Walla Walla, Columbia, Asotin, Lincoln, Ferry and Spokane. That’s an increase from six Washington counties at high risk as of June 23.
6th Jul 2022 - The Associated Press

Cyprus brings back indoor mask wearing amid COVID-19 surge

Cyprus is bringing back compulsory mask-wearing in indoor areas for everyone age 12 and over amid a surge of COVID-19 infections. The government said Wednesday the infection spike is in line with a global trend that’s mainly owed to the BA.4 and BA.5 variants of the coronavirus. According to Health Ministry figures, 19,503 people tested positive from a total of 147,623 samples between June 25 to July 5 out of a population of approximately 916,000. The numbers don’t include the approximately 250,000 people in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north of the ethically divided island nation. The measures take effect on Friday. The government said mask wearing isn’t compulsory at home, for family members inside a vehicle, during meals, athletes, cooks during grilling and for people with ailments and deformities that make it difficult for them to wear a face mask.
6th Jul 2022 - The Associated Press

U.S. FDA allows pharmacists to prescribe Pfizer's COVID-19 pill

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday it had authorized state-licensed pharmacists to prescribe Pfizer Inc's COVID-19 pill to eligible patients to help improve access to the treatment. The antiviral drug, Paxlovid, has been cleared for use and available for free in the United States since December, but fewer than half of the nearly 4 million courses distributed to pharmacies by the government so far have been administered.
6th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Europe Is at Center of New Wave of Covid Infections, WHO Says

Europe is at the center of a resurgence in Covid-19 infections as more people mix at large-scale events and travel, according to the World Health Organization. “We are seeing a much more intense wave of the disease passing through Europe again,” Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said at a media briefing Wednesday. “And we will see it happen elsewhere -- we are already seeing it in South East Asia and in the eastern Mediterranean region as well.”
6th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Beijing Rolls Out China's First Ever Covid Vaccine Mandate

Beijing residents wanting to enter a raft of public places will need to show proof of vaccination from Monday, the first time China has deployed a vaccine mandate, as the city rushes to quash a new outbreak caused by a more infectious subvariant. The city will require live performances, entertainment venues such as movie theaters, museums and gyms, as well as training and tutoring locations, to restrict entry to people who are vaccinated, Li Ang, deputy director at the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, told reporters at a briefing Wednesday.
6th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

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Shanghai Covid Testing Fuels Concern of Another China Lockdown

Shanghai is once again mass testing for Covid, fueling concerns that China’s financial hub will find itself back in lockdown in pursuit of Covid Zero. Nine districts, as well as some areas in another three districts, will conduct two rounds of Covid mass testing until Thursday in order to “identify and prevent outbreak risks as early as possible,” the city government said in a statement. There are 16 districts in Shanghai. The city reported 24 local Covid cases for Tuesday, all of them inside quarantine, authorities said Wednesday.
6th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Macau locks down landmark Lisboa hotel after COVID cases found

Macau has locked down one of the city's most famous hotels, the Grand Lisboa, after more than a dozen COVID-19 cases were found there on Tuesday, with infections spreading rapidly in the world's biggest gambling hub. At least 16 other buildings across the special Chinese administrative region are also locked down with no one allowed to exit or enter. The authorities have placed more than 13,000 people under quarantine orders as the city battles to contain its biggest outbreak since the pandemic began.
6th Jul 2022 - Reuters

COVID and bust: China's private health system hurt by tough coronavirus controls

On March 24, a court in the central Chinese city of Fuyang announced that a $1.5 billion hospital built just four years earlier had filed for bankruptcy because it was unable to pay its debts. For most of the last two years, the Fuyang Minsheng Hospital had been fully involved in mass coronavirus vaccination and testing programmes in the city, training almost 100 staff to perform throat swabs and setting up mobile vaccination facilities to go to schools and workplaces, at the order of city officials.
6th Jul 2022 - Reuters

Egyptian official assures hospitals at the ready for future coronavirus outbreaks

Hospitals are prepared at any time to receive coronavirus cases, Adviser to the President of the Republic for Health Affairs Mohamed Awad Tag Eddin assured Monday, during a telephone interview with presenter Ahmed Moussa, on Sada al-Balad channel. Tag Eddin advised citizens to adhere to wearing masks and using disinfectants at gatherings or in contact with people infected with the coronavirus. He stressed that most of the infections are mild and do not require hospitalization, explaining that 90 million doses of the vaccine have been provided in Egypt. The effectiveness of the vaccine ranges between four and six months, he added, explaining that people most vulnerable to infection with coronavirus must obtain the third dose – available free of charge to everyone.
5th Jul 2022 - Egypt Independent

JCVI chief calls for mandatory masks in hospitals amid Covid surge

It would be “sensible” for hospitals to reintroduce mandatory mask-wearing, the chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has said, as several trusts in England and Wales announced the move. When NHS rules on wearing masks in England were dropped on 10 June, local health bodies were given the power to draft their own policies. Their guidance, however, is no longer legally enforceable. Figures from NHS England show there were about 10,658 patients hospitalised with coronavirus on Monday. Infections have doubled in a fortnight across England – with about 1,000 patients being admitted with the virus each day.
5th Jul 2022 - The Guardian

One million set to perform Hajj as COVID-19 restrictions ease

After a two-year absence, international pilgrims will perform the yearly Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia for the first time starting Wednesday, after previously being restricted amid the kingdom’s battle to curb the coronavirus pandemic. Some one million people are expected to be in attendance in the holy city of Mecca in Masjid al-Haram (Grand Mosque) for the start of the five-day ritual – a large jump from last year when only 60,000 pilgrims were permitted. In 2020, during the height of the pandemic’s early waves and before vaccines were available, about 10,000 were selected.
5th Jul 2022 - Al Jazeera English

US seeks 250000 mentors, tutors to address pandemic learning loss By Reuters

The Biden administration on Tuesday will launch a new effort to recruit 250,000 mentors and tutors to help students who have fallen back in their learning during the coronavirus pandemic, the White House said. The program, which will be led by AmeriCorps and the Department of Education along with other service organizations, will seek to get adults to fill the roles over the next three years. Students on average are two to four months behind in reading and math as a result of the pandemic, a White House official said. The program is intended to help address that deficit. "Research shows that high quality tutors and mentors positively impact student achievement, well-being, and overall success," the White House said in a statement.
5th Jul 2022 - Investing

Many won’t rely on virtual options after COVID: AP-NORC poll

Many Americans don’t expect to rely on the digital services that became commonplace during the pandemic after COVID-19 subsides, according to a new poll, even as many think it’s a good thing if those options remain available in the future. Close to half or more of U.S. adults say they are not likely to attend virtual activities, receive virtual health care, have groceries delivered or use curbside pickup after the coronavirus pandemic is over, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Less than 3 in 10 say they’re very likely to use any of those options at least some of the time. Still, close to half also say it would be a good thing if virtual options for health care, for community events and for activities like fitness classes or religious services continue after the pandemic.
5th Jul 2022 - The Associated Press

Lockdown Pain Fails to Break Elderly Vaccine Resistance in China

There’s been one consistent silver lining to Covid-19 outbreaks: they trigger a surge in vaccinations that provide protection against severe infections in the future. China’s elderly are an exception. Take Shanghai. After the financial hub emerged from a bruising two-month lockdown and vaccination clinics reopened, the number of fully immunized people aged 60 or above increased just one percentage point to 63% in mid-June, despite hundreds of deaths.
5th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 5th Jul 2022

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Can new Omicron subvariants evade vaccine immunity?

Many parts of Western Europe and the United States are seeing a rise in COVID-19 cases thought to be driven by new subvariants of Omicron. These rises come alongside the easing of safety measures that were previously put in place to curb the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, testing being scaled back, and COVID booster vaccine take-up at lower-than-expected levels. The latest data shows cases are on the rise in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Greece and Denmark. Portugal, a popular holiday destination for many people each summer, is experiencing the biggest surge. Hospital admissions have risen in several countries including France and England, according to data analysed by the Financial Times.
4th Jul 2022 - Al Jazeera English

China Imposes Fresh Restrictions as Covid-19 Cases Rise

China is imposing fresh restrictions in some eastern cities as Covid-19 cases have spiked to near their highest levels in more than a month. The country recorded 380 locally transmitted coronavirus cases on Sunday, China’s National Health Commission reported on Monday. Two thirds of Monday’s cases came from the eastern province of Anhui, the commission said. The bulk of those cases stem from a growing cluster in Si County, a busy transit hub of 760,000 residents located in Anhui, according to state-run media, citing local government officials. Coronavirus case counts in China have jumped almost 10-fold in less than a week. On June 29, China had recorded 39 such cases. By Saturday, nationwide locally transmitted cases had jumped to 385, the biggest tally since May 25.
4th Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China's New Covid Flareup Threatens Crucial Yangtze Delta Region

China is racing to quash a new virus flareup that risks spilling over into one of its most economically significant regions, raising the specter of disruptions that could roil global supply chains for solar panels, medicines and semiconductor chips. Infections have surged in Si county in the eastern province of Anhui, with officials reporting 287 cases for Sunday and nearly 1,000 since late last week. Authorities locked down Si and a neighboring county late last week to try and stop the virus from spreading to nearby Jiangsu, the second biggest contributor to China’s economic output and a globally important manufacturing hub for the solar sector.
4th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Australia entry rules explained: The latest Covid travel advice as vaccine requirement is dropped for tourists

Strict vaccination rules will be lifted on Wednesday, taking the hassle out of Australian holidays and family reunions. However, flag carrier Qantas is set to keep its vaccine mandate
4th Jul 2022 - iNews

Thailand ends almost all travel restrictions — but one key rule remains

Travellers wondering what it’s like to visit Thailand now may be interested to know the country is “allowing almost everything” again. That’s according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), the governmental entity responsible for promoting tourism to the country. Masks are no longer required, and the country’s color-coded system — which placed limits that varied by province on dining activities, gatherings and travel — is also a thing of the past, according to TAT. It’s also far easier to get into Thailand now too.
4th Jul 2022 - CNBC

Hard-hit Kyoto is conflicted as Japan prepares to reopen to foreign tourists after COVID lockdown

Kyoto locals say they want some foreign tourists, but not too many. Japan is restricting the number of foreign tourists allowed in to a small number. The yen is at its weakest in two decades, acting as a boon for tourists
4th Jul 2022 - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

For now, wary US treads water with transformed COVID-19

The fast-changing coronavirus has kicked off summer in the U.S. with lots of infections but relatively few deaths compared to its prior incarnations. COVID-19 is still killing hundreds of Americans each day, but is not nearly as dangerous as it was last fall and winter. “It’s going to be a good summer and we deserve this break,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. With more Americans shielded from severe illness through vaccination and infection, COVID-19 has transformed — for now at least — into an unpleasant, inconvenient nuisance for many.
4th Jul 2022 - The Associated Press

With hospitalizations up, France weighs return to masks

Tourism is booming again in France — and so is COVID-19. French officials have “invited” or “recommended” people to go back to using face masks but stopped short of renewing restrictions that would scare visitors away or revive anti-government protests. From Paris commuters to tourists on the French Riviera, many people seem to welcome the government’s light touch, while some worry that required prevention measures may be needed. Virus-related hospitalizations rose quickly in France over the past two weeks, with nearly 1,000 patients with COVID-19 hospitalized per day, according to government data. Infections are also rising across Europe and the United States, but France has an exceptionally high proportion of people in the hospital, according to Our World in Data estimates.
2nd Jul 2022 - The Associated Press

UK Covid Cases Surge 32% as Subvariants Trigger Fresh Concerns

Britain’s Covid-19 infections are rising sharply with omicron subvariants sparking new outbreaks across the country and raising concerns that the latest wave could upend health systems and businesses. The number of people testing positive for Covid-19 is estimated at 2.3 million in the week through June 24, up 32% from the previous week, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics on Friday
1st Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

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China Covid Outbreaks Widen With More Cases Found in Anhui

China’s virus cases continued to climb over the weekend with hundreds of infections detected in Anhui province, where two counties were already in lockdown. Anhui, the center of the latest outbreak, reported 287 cases for Sunday. A lockdown was imposed in Lingbi county in northeastern Anhui from Friday afternoon, while the neighboring Si county conducted its sixth mass testing on Sunday. While China seems to have brought earlier outbreaks in mega cities Shanghai and Beijing under control, its Covid-Zero goal is facing a test again in its eastern provinces. Shanghai’s neighboring Jiangsu province reported 59 cases on Saturday, while the city of Wuxi found 35 infections on Sunday.
4th Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

Merck Covid-19 Pill Prescribed Frequently in Some Countries Despite Low Efficacy

Paul Griffin, an infectious diseases physician at the University of Queensland who advises both Pfizer and Merck on Covid-19 antivirals, said people in Australia may be unaccepting of even a modest risk associated with Paxlovid because the country had done well on Covid-19 in general. He added that risks can be worked through “if people understand what to look for and how to manage them.” Japan has approved both antiviral drugs for patients who are at high risk of developing severe disease. The Japanese government isn’t giving priority to Paxlovid over Lagevrio. Regulators in Japan also didn’t require people to use contraception due to reproductive risks associated with Lagevrio.
3rd Jul 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Brexit Has the UK Traveling the Wrong Way in Time

The trouble about getting Brexit done, but aborting the revolution in government, is that you risk just turning the clock back to a time today’s politicians only remember from their childhoods, if at all — the time before Britain joined the European Economic Community, under the leadership of Ted Heath in January 1973.
3rd Jul 2022 - Bloomberg

China's Wuxi tightens COVID curbs as new clusters emerge

Cities in eastern China tightened COVID-19 curbs on Sunday as coronavirus clusters emerge, posing a new threat to China's economic recovery under the government's strict zero-COVID policy. Wuxi, a manufacturing hub in the Yangtze Delta on the central coast, halted operations at many public venues located underground, including shops and supermarkets. Dine-in services in restaurants were suspended, and the government advised people to work from home.
3rd Jul 2022 - Reuters

German health minister in move to boost use of COVID treatment Paxlovid

Germany's health minister said on Sunday he will push for more prescriptions of Pfizer's oral COVID-19 antiviral treatment Paxlovid by family doctors to reduce severe cases of the disease. "A system involving family doctors will be prepared to administer this far too rarely-used COVID life saver more routinely," he wrote on Twitter on Sunday, adding that sufficient stockpiles were available.
3rd Jul 2022 - Reuters

Government set to cut enhanced sick pay for NHS staff off work with Covid

The government is to cut special sick pay for NHS staff off work with Covid from next week – even as cases soar – The Independent has learnt. The Department of Health and Social Care is set to announce an end to the enhanced pay arrangements provided during the pandemic, meaning that staff who go off sick with either Covid or long Covid will be subject to normal sick-pay rules. Nursing leaders have hit back, arguing that the move is “neglectful and unfair” for NHS staff, who are disproportionately likely to be affected by Covid.
2nd Jul 2022 - The Independent

Muslim pilgrims flock to Mecca for first post-pandemic haj

Thousands of pilgrims started arriving in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia on Friday, among some one million Muslims expected to attend the 2022 haj pilgrimage season after two years of major disruption caused by the COVID pandemic. Wrapped in white robes, with some carrying umbrellas against the burning desert sun, hundreds performed the first ritual of the haj, which involves walking in a circle around the Kaaba, the sacred building at the centre of Mecca's Grand Mosque
1st Jul 2022 - Reuters

Russia scraps remaining COVID restrictions

Russia said on Friday it was ending all restrictions to combat the spread of COVID-19, including the requirement to wear masks, citing a steady decline in deaths from the virus. However, it did not rule out re-introducing restrictive measures if the situation deteriorates. Consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said it was "suspending previously introduced restrictions, including the mask regime, a ban on public catering at night, and a number of other measures".
1st Jul 2022 - Reuters

UK Covid levels rise 30% in a week to estimated 2.3m cases

Covid infection levels in the UK have risen by more than 30% in a week, with an estimated 2.3 million people thought to have had the disease in late June. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) based on swabs collected from randomly selected households show that in the week ending 25 June, 1,829,100 people in the community in England are estimated to have had Covid, equating to about one in 30 and up from 1,360,600 the week before. Increases were also seen in the rest of the UK, with an estimated one in 18 people in Scotland, one in 30 in Wales and one in 25 in Northern Ireland thought to have had Covid in the most recent week. While still shy of the peak infection levels seen earlier this year, when about one in 13 people in England had Covid, the estimated number of infections in the UK is the highest since late April and the highest yet seen for a summer month.
1st Jul 2022 - The Guardian

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Pfizer asks for formal U.S. approval of oral COVID treatment Paxlovid

Pfizer Inc said on Thursday it is seeking full U.S. approval for its oral COVID-19 antiviral treatment Paxlovid, which is currently available under an emergency use authorization (EUA). Pfizer said it submitted a New Drug Application for Paxlovid to the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of COVID-19 in vaccinated and unvaccinated people at high risk of progression to severe illness.
1st Jul 2022 - Reuters

Analysis: Easing COVID-19 rules, growth focus aid China bulls' cautious return

The latest easing of coronavirus travel rules combined with other encouraging policy signals have began luring some foreign investors back to Chinese stocks, raising the chances that the market can sustain its bounce after months of heavy selling. As the S&P 500 is about to close its worst first half of any year since 1970 and bonds have taken a thrashing, China's beaten-down equity markets start looking like a shelter from a global storm of runaway inflation, interest rate hikes, and recession fears.
30th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Bhutan to welcome tourists 'who can spend' for first time since COVID

Bhutan will reopen for international tourists from September for the first time since the pandemic began more than two years ago, officials said on Thursday, as the tiny Himalayan kingdom looks to revive its economy. Wedged between China and India, the country with scenic natural beauty and ancient Buddhist culture, took drastic early steps and banned tourism, a major source of income, in March 2020 when the first COVID-19 case was detected there.
30th Jun 2022 - Reuters

China summer railway travel expected to rebound as COVID curbs ease

As China loosens its months-long COVID-19 curbs, railway travel is expected to see an uptick in passengers just in time for the summer transport season, which starts on July 1. By Aug. 31, the number of passenger trips on China's railway network is expected to reach 520 million, and 10 million on peak days. The national railway is also opening new stations such as the Xiangwan section of the Zhengzhou-Chongqing high-speed railway, the Puzheng section of the Jizheng high-speed railway, the Heruo Railway, and the Beijing Fengtai Station.
30th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai Disneyland theme park re-opens after three-month closure

More than a thousand visitors streamed in on Thursday as Walt Disney Co's Shanghai Disney Resort theme park opened after a closure of three months, with face masks and social distancing the order of the day. The park shut on March 21 as cases rose in the Chinese business hub, leading to a two-month-long citywide lockdown that eased on June 1. Just over a week later, the resort began opening some areas, with the theme park the last to re-open.
30th Jun 2022 - Reuters

China's factory, service sectors shake off 3 months of lockdown pain

China's factory and service sectors snapped three months of activity decline in June, business surveys showed on Thursday, as authorities lifted a strict COVID lockdown in Shanghai, reviving output and consumer spending. The official manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) rose to 50.2 in June from 49.6 in May, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. That slightly missed the forecast for 50.5 in a Reuters poll but rose above the 50-point mark that separates contraction from growth for the first time since February.
30th Jun 2022 - Reuters

COVID restrictions ease in Shanghai as case numbers drop

Shanghai is moving to allow in-person dining and reopening its Disney Resort theme park as domestically transmitted cases of COVID-19 in China’s largest city remain at zero following a more than two-month lockdown. Chinese officials hail their hardline “zero-COVID” policy for stemming the growth of cases and deaths from the virus, despite the enormous cost to the Chinese economy and international supply chains reliant on China’s manufacturing and shipping abilities that have been thrown askew. China has repeatedly defended the policy and indications are it will maintain “zero-COVID” at least through the spring of 2023, when President Xi Jinping is expected to be installed for a third five-year term as head of the world’s second-largest economy and a rising competitor to the United States in the Indo-Pacific region. In remarks carried by the official Xinhua News Agency, Xi on Wednesday said China’s policies against the virus have “protected people’s lives and health to the greatest extent.”
30th Jun 2022 - The Associated Press

US FDA wants COVID boosters targeting Omicron BA.4, BA.5 subvariants

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday recommended COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers change the design of their booster shots beginning this fall to include components tailored to combat the currently dominant Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the coronavirus. If authorized, the changes would mark the first major retooling of COVID vaccines, but also could slow their rollout as the FDA has recommended a design somewhat different from what the companies had already tested and started producing.
30th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Covid Shots Worked Better for Obese Than Underweight in UK Study

People who are underweight or obese are most at risk of severe Covid, but a UK study found that two doses of vaccine still protect both groups well. The researchers, who focused on patients at the two extremes of the body mass index scale, found that the shots worked slightly better for those at the high end of the measure in a study published in medical journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology on Friday. The scientists used health records of more than 9 million patients from generalist practices in England taking part in the database QResearch. “Our findings provide further evidence that Covid-19 vaccines save lives for people of all sizes,” said Carmen Piernas, the study’s lead author and a lecturer at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences.
30th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

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Norway Was a Pandemic Success. Then It Spent Two Years Studying Its Failures.

If you could have flown anywhere in the world in 2019 to ride out a hypothetical pandemic, you probably wouldn’t have picked Norway. In fact, when a group of distinguished health experts gathered that year to rank hundreds of countries based on their pandemic readiness, they put Norway in 16th place. They were quickly proven wrong. It turned out that few places outperformed expectations more than Norway. Not long ago, the World Health Organization published mortality stats from the past two years, which showed that nearly every country’s excess death count spiked during the pandemic. Norway’s barely moved. The Norwegians had pulled off the closest thing possible to an optimal response to the most vexing problems that Covid-19 presented. So how did they do it? As it happens, the Norwegians also wanted to know.
30th Jun 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China Quarantine Cut Just First Step in Ending Global Isolation

China cut in half the length of time inbound travelers must spend in quarantine, making it easier for citizens to return and foreign companies to tend to business in the world’s second-largest economy after two-and-a-half years of isolation. Experts on topics from economics to health to business welcomed the move, though they said the reduction to 10 days of quarantine, from as long as three weeks previously, was just a first step toward reintegrating with the world. Health leaders in China said it wasn’t a major policy change, but a subtle adjustment as the virus itself continues to mutate.
30th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Video: The Dance School Lifting Up Kenya's Lost Girls of Covid

On this episode of “The Pay Check,” Bloomberg Digital Originals explores how closed schools and economic hardship created a crisis for young women and girls in Kenya, and how an after-school program in Nairobi’s biggest informal settlement is creating a safe haven for some of them.
30th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Searches for overseas flights surge after China shortens quarantine

Online searches for air tickets on international routes with China surged after Beijing unexpectedly said it would slash COVID-19 quarantine norms, travel platforms said on Wednesday, a sign of pent-up demand after two years of tough curbs.
30th Jun 2022 - Reuters on MSN.com

China's easing COVID curbs spark travel inquiry surge, and caution

Online searches for Chinese airline tickets on domestic and international routes surged on Wednesday, after Beijing said it would slash COVID-19 quarantine requirements and made changes to a state-mandated mobile app used for local travel. The unexpected moves mark a significant easing of rigid curbs that have severely curtailed travel and battered China's economy, although tough measures remain in place including a scarcity of international flights, and many social media users voiced caution.
29th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Widespread relief for Shanghai's restaurant sector as dine-in resumes

Restaurants and eateries in China's largest city Shanghai begun reopening their doors to diners on Wednesday, bringing widespread relief to an industry that was badly hit by the city's two month COVID-19 lockdown. Large chains such as hot pot brand Haidilao, fine dining establishments and family owned eateries had started scrubbing tableware and getting uniforms laundered since Saturday when authorities announced the curbs were lifting, a month after the city's lockdown eased on June 1.
29th Jun 2022 - Reuters

COVID can't break South Africa's love affair with shopping malls

With two days to go until opening to the public, workers rush to put the finishing touches on the Kwena Square shopping complex, a shiny $13 million sign that South Africans are defying the global "retail apocalypse". Not even COVID-19 could separate them from their beloved malls. "I love going to the mall with my daughter and my grandkids," said 54-year-old Kowie Erasmus, who's eagerly awaiting Friday's grand opening of Johannesburg's Kwena Square, which broke ground at the height of the pandemic.
29th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Japan May retail sales rise faster than expected as COVID curbs ease

Japanese retail sales rose for a third straight month in May, reinforcing views that strong consumption will lead an economic rebound this quarter, although rising inflation poses a risk to household spending for the rest of 2022. Retail sales rose 3.6% in May from a year earlier, government data showed on Wednesday, slightly higher than the median market forecast for a 3.3% gain. It followed an upwardly revised 3.1% increase in April and marked the third month of advancement since March, when the government lifted all coronavirus restrictions on face-to-face services.
29th Jun 2022 - Reuters

The Best and Worst Places to Be as World Enters Next Covid Phase

Since November 2020, Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking has tracked the best and worst places to be during the pandemic, using a range of datapoints to capture a monthly snapshot of how the world’s biggest economies were handling this once-in-a-generation health crisis. Twenty editions in, the virus has become something most countries are living with. After nearly two years of fluctuation—during which the top and bottom of the Ranking shifted as the pandemic shape-changed—places have largely settled into their permanent positions, drawing the project to a natural close. June, 2022 will be our last update. In a reflection of how far we’ve come since the coronavirus first emerged in central China, this month’s top ranked are those most effectively putting the pandemic in the rearview mirror, with the fewest scars. They’ve been able to reopen their borders and economies without a substantial spike in deaths.
29th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

China Cuts Covid Quarantine to 10 Days for Travelers and Close Contacts

China reduced quarantine times for inbound travelers by half, the biggest shift yet in a Covid-19 policy that has left the world’s second-largest economy isolated as it continues to try and eliminate the virus. Travelers will now only need to spend seven days in a quarantine facility, and then monitor their health at home for a further three days, according to a revised government protocol released Tuesday by China’s National Health Commission. That’s down from 14 days hotel quarantine in many parts of China currently, and as many as 21 days of isolation in the past. The change, which still leaves China an outlier in a world that has mostly adjusted to living with the virus, comes after Beijing and Shanghai said they had no new locally-transmitted Covid infections on Monday, for the first time since February, following months of bruising curbs.
28th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

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Pfizer, Moderna to be ready with BA.1-specific COVID boosters

Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc said on Tuesday they will be ready with COVID-19 vaccines designed to combat the BA.1 Omicron variant that was dominant last winter earlier than those designed to target currently dominant subvariants. Moderna said it would be ready with a "couple of hundred million" of bivalent vaccines designed to combat BA.1 by September, but it would be late October or early November if the vaccine maker needed to design a vaccine to combat the currently dominant BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.
29th Jun 2022 - Reuters

What causes long COVID? Canadian researchers think they’ve found a key clue

Olympic gold medallist Alex Kopacz may be used to being out of breath when pushing a bobsled, but last year after he was hospitalized for COVID-19, he experienced a very different kind of breathlessness. He was put on oxygen for two months and experienced a number of other health setbacks in the months following his COVID-19 infection, including blood clots in his lungs and throughout his body. “It was hard to breathe and pretty much it was just going to be a matter of time to see if my body was going to heal from it,” Kopacz said. It took him almost four months before he was back on his feet and breathing normally again. But without even an official diagnosis of so-called long COVID, the then-31-year-old didn’t have answers about what was happening to him.
28th Jun 2022 - Global News

Wimbledon reviews Covid-19 protocols after Berrettini is forced out by virus

Wimbledon’s Covid-19 protocols are under review after Matteo Berrettini was forced to withdraw from Wimbledon on the morning of his first round match after testing positive for Covid-19. Berrettini, the No 8 seed, was one of the biggest contenders for the title having reached the Wimbledon final last year. After being out for nearly three months due to undergoing surgery on his finger, the Italian had returned at the beginning of the grass season and immediately won nine matches in a row, with titles in Stuttgart and Queen’s.
28th Jun 2022 - The Guardian

Shanghai's Disneyland theme park to re-open on Thursday

The Walt Disney Co's Shanghai Disney Resort said on Tuesday it would reopen the Disneyland theme park on June 30, a month after the Chinese economic hub lifted a two month-long COVID-19 lockdown. The theme park has been shut since March 21, when the resort closed its doors amid an uptick of cases in Shanghai. The city lifted its lockdown on June 1 and the resort begun opening some areas just over a week later.
28th Jun 2022 - Reuters.com

U.S. FDA advisers recommend inclusion of Omicron component for COVID boosters

Advisers to the U.S Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday overwhelmingly recommended the inclusion of an Omicron component for COVID-19 booster vaccines in the fall. The panel of advisers voted 19-2 in favor of the recommendation.
28th Jun 2022 - Reuters

U.S. FDA classifies recall of GE's ventilator batteries as most serious

U.S. health regulators on Tuesday classified the recall of some backup batteries of GE Healthcare's ventilators, which the company had initiated in mid-April, as the most serious type, saying that their use could lead to injuries or death. The CARESCAPE R860 ventilator's backup batteries, including replacement backup batteries, were recalled as they were running out earlier-than-expected, which could cause the device to shut down preventing the patient from receiving breathing support, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.
28th Jun 2022 - Reuters.com

Omicron sub-variants BA.4, BA.5 make up more than 50% of U.S. COVID cases - CDC

The fast-spreading BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants of Omicron are estimated to make up a combined 52% of the coronavirus cases in the United States as of June 25, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Tuesday. The two sublineages accounted for more than a third of U.S. cases for the week of June 18. They were added to the World Health Organization's monitoring list in March and designated as variants of concern by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
28th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Novartis to cut up to 8000 jobs globally

Novartis said on Tuesday a previously announced restructuring programme could lead to 8,000 jobs being cut, or about 7.4% of its global workforce, including up to 1,400 in Switzerland. The job cuts, previously projected by Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan to be in the "single digit thousands", are part of a restructuring programme the Swiss pharmaceutical group announced in April, targeting savings of at least $1 billion by 2024.
28th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Pharma largely failed to follow human rights principles with its Covid-19 vaccines and drugs

More than two years after the Covid-19 pandemic emerged, a new scorecard finds that 19 of 26 pharmaceutical companies that marketed vaccines or therapeutics to contain the virus rank poorly when it came to complying with human rights principles. The rankings were compiled by examining actions taken to provide access to products, including commitments and measurable targets; transparency in disclosing R&D and production costs, and profits; the extent to which international cooperation was pursued and patents were enforced; and a willingness to provide fair pricing, equitable distribution, and technology transfers, among other things.
27th Jun 2022 - STAT News

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 28th Jun 2022

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Covid-19: UK makes first payments to compensate injury or death from vaccines

The first compensation payments in the UK have been made to families who have been bereaved, or to people who have been injured, as a result of a covid-19 vaccine. Vikki Spit from Cumbria is believed to be the first person to receive compensation, after her 48 year old partner, Zion, became ill eight days after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. Zion, a former rock singer, died at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle in May 2021. A handful of other people have received payments in the past few days under the government’s vaccine damage payment scheme (VDPS), which pays out up to a maximum of £120 000 (€140 000; $150 000). Sarah Moore, a partner at the Hausfeld law firm, which is representing people seeking compensation, told The BMJ it was an important moment. “While the VDPS payments are very modest in amount, and will do very little to alleviate the financial difficulties with which many families are now struggling as a consequence of injury or bereavement, the fact of payment for some will mark a moment of vindication in that it is the clearest statement yet, by the government, that in some rare instances the covid-19 vaccines have caused very significant injury or death.”
27th Jun 2022 - The BMJ

Shanghai will gradually resume dining-in at restaurants from June 29

Shanghai will gradually resume dining-in at restaurants from June 29 in low-risk areas and areas without any community-level spread of COVID-19 during the previous week，a Shanghai government official said on Sunday. The Chinese econonic hub lifted a two month city-wide lockdown on June 1, but many establishments have remained unable to offer indoor dining since mid-March. Shanghai reported no new locally transmitted cases - either symptomatic or asymptomatic - for June 24 and June 25.
27th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Beijing to reopen schools, Shanghai declares victory over COVID

Beijing on Saturday said it would allow primary and secondary schools to resume in-person classes and Shanghai's top party boss declared victory over COVID-19 after the city reported zero new local cases for the first time in two months. The two major cities were among several places in China that implemented curbs to stop the spread of the Omicron wave during March to May, with Shanghai imposing a two month-long city-wide lockdown that lifted on June 1.
27th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Bereaved may take legal action against Government over coronavirus inquiry delay

Bereaved families have warned they may take legal action against the Government over delays to starting the coronavirus public inquiry. The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group is considering bringing a judicial review over the failure to provide a setting up date for the inquiry into the Government's handling of the pandemic. They say this leaves the inquiry in "limbo", more than six months after Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed Baroness Hallett to chair the probe in December 2021.
27th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

No Government Money, No Problem for Moderna and Pfizer

A Food and Drug Administration committee will meet Tuesday to discuss how to move forward with the next generation of vaccines ahead of a booster campaign this fall. Paying for them is another matter. Congress has so far failed to approve additional funding for the shots—bad news for the U.S. population at large, but not bad at all for vaccine makers. They will just charge higher prices in the private market. The White House already is preparing to ration its vaccine supply to the most vulnerable Americans, according to White House coronavirus coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha. For Moderna, MRNA the first manufacturer to release data for an updated vaccine based on the Omicron variant of Covid-19, this could herald a new phase of the pandemic. “Either the government will find the money or we will go to the private market,” said Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel in an interview. “There’s no way Moderna won’t be there for the U.S. booster campaign this fall.”
27th Jun 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

COVID-19: People in France 'should wear masks again on public transport' as new coronavirus wave hits nation

People in France should wear masks again in crowded areas, particularly if they are on public transport, to help tackle a new COVID-19 wave, according to the country's health minister. The increase in coronavirus cases is being fuelled by new variants, with 17,601 fresh infections over the past 24 hours - the highest Monday figure since 18 April. It comes as the number of people in England's hospitals who have tested positive for COVID jumped by more than a third in a week.
27th Jun 2022 - Sky News

UK Covid cases break 250,000 a day for first time since mid-April after BA.4 and BA.5 surge

Covid-19 cases have passed the 250,000-a-day mark in the UK, rising by 130 per cent in only three weeks. New daily cases are now at the highest level they have been for all but a month of the pandemic so far. That is an increase of 148,350 cases, or 130 per cent, in just over three weeks – putting rates well above any peak seen before 2022, although still some way behind the record of 349,011, on March 31 this year. New infection levels have only ever been above 250,000 a day in the UK between mid-March and mid-April this year. Scientists say the rapid growth of the new Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5 is the main driver of the increase. Daily symptomatic cases have more than doubled this month, rising from 114,030 on June 1 to 262,380 on Friday, according to the latest figures on the ZOE Covid Study app.
27th Jun 2022 - iNews

COVID an 'inconvenience' rather than 'life-threatening' for many now, says WHO

COVID is now an "inconvenience" for most people rather than "life-threatening", the World Health Organisation's special envoy on the virus has told Sky News. But concerns remain for those who are older and with health conditions, as well as the unvaccinated, warned Dr David Nabarro. He urged people to be "responsible" and continue to wear masks and social distance "to protect others" - as COVID cases continue to surge. Around 1.7 million people in the UK are estimated to have tested positive for the virus last week, up 23% from 1.4 million the previous week, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
27th Jun 2022 - Sky News

Covid-booster response hope for most vulnerable

More than a million vulnerable people could improve their protection against Covid by taking a short break from medication after a booster jab, a trial suggests. It found stopping the common immune-suppressing drug methotrexate for two weeks doubled spike antibody levels for up to 12 weeks. Some people experienced disease flare-ups but no impact on quality of life. Research is needed to find out if a similar approach works for other drugs. Patients should always consult their doctor or specialist hospital team before pausing their medication, scientists writing in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine said.
27th Jun 2022 - BBC News

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 27th Jun 2022

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An NFT of a Covid-19 Vaccine Heads to Auction

A nonfungible token, or NFT, showcasing the molecular technology of the mRNA vaccine used to fight Covid-19, will be auctioned at Christie’s online next month to raise money for future medical research. The 3-D digital work is designed by the University of Pennsylvania and Drew Weissman, a doctor whose research helped create mRNA vaccines. The one-minute visual work also comes with a storyboard that explains how mRNA vaccines work to fight the Covid-19 virus; copies of original mRNA patent documents owned by the University of Pennsylvania; and an original letter from Weissman, director of Vaccine Research at The Perelman School of Medicine at the university. mRNA, short for messenger ribonucleic acid, is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds to the genetic sequence of a gene. Unlike traditional vaccines, which use a weakened or inactive germ to trigger an immune response, mRNA vaccines are designed to teach the body to create a protein that triggers the immune response.
26th Jun 2022 - Barron's

Thais 'willing' to wear masks in public

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has expressed satisfaction over news that most Thais are voluntarily wearing masks for protection against Covid-19 despite the mask mandate being lifted on Thursday. Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana, government spokesman, on Saturday said the PM expressed concern about the health of the public as coronavirus infection risks remained. The Department of Disease Control (DDC) recommends that people with underlying conditions, the elderly and pregnant women who have yet to get boosters keep wearing masks.
26th Jun 2022 - ฺBangkok Post

Bereaved May Take Legal Action Against UK Over Covid Inquiry Delay

Bereaved families have warned they may take legal action against the Government over delays to starting the coronavirus public inquiry. The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group is considering bringing a judicial review over the failure to provide a setting up date for the inquiry into the Government's handling of the pandemic. They say this leaves the inquiry in "limbo", more than six months after Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed Baroness Hallett to chair the probe in December 2021. The PM has previously said the inquiry would start in spring 2022, but its terms of reference have not yet been published, nor a setting-up date specified. The group says the delay could cost lives, as it slows down how quickly lessons can be learned, and is worried key evidence could be tampered with or destroyed.
26th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Hong Kong hospitals experience uptick in Covid-related admissions

Hong Kong hospitals have experienced a slight uptick in coronavirus-related admissions but the number of serious cases is stable, a health official has said, as the daily infection tally remained in the four-digit range for the 12th day. The city on Sunday recorded 1,917 coronavirus cases, comprising 1,799 local and 118 imported infections. The figure marked an increase from Saturday’s total of 1,794. No additional coronavirus-related deaths were reported. Hong Kong’s overall coronavirus tally currently stands at 1,237,623 cases and 9,398 fatalities.
26th Jun 2022 - South China Morning Post

Covid-19: Hospital patients with coronavirus in the East of England is highest for six weeks

Article reports that the number of patients with coronavirus being treated in hospitals in the East of England is at the highest level for nearly six weeks as confirmed cases in the community surge. There were 625 people with Covid-19 in hospital in the region on Thursday, 23 June, which is more than one-third more than the previous week. The number of patients had dropped to below 350 in early June as the Omicron wave subsided. The figures come as health experts warned nearly one in six people aged 75 and over have not received any dose of vaccine in the past six months, putting them more at risk of severe disease. The growing prevalence of the virus is likely to be driven by the spread of the latest Omicron variants, BA.4 and BA.5, which are now thought to be the dominant strains in much of the UK. Dr Mary Ramsay of the UK Health Security Agency said: "We continue to see increases in Covid-19 outbreaks within care homes and hospitalisations among those aged 75 years and over.
25th Jun 2022 - ITV News

Examining the Partnership Between Pharmacy and Public Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Pharmacy and public health have a long history of collaboration during an emergency. One example involves efforts taken during the H1N1 influenza pandemic, when pharmacy was mobilized to help administer thousands of influenza vaccines across the country as an extension of public health services.1 More recently, the world faced a new pandemic: coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Pharmacies and pharmacists continue to play a vital role during this pandemic in providing education and clinical services to support public health mitigation strategies. Since the first COVID-19 vaccines were authorized for emergency use in the United States, strategies have evolved to provide COVID-19 vaccinations, booster doses, testing, and treatment. In addition, steps have been taken to ensure that people wear high-quality masks, maintain social distancing, and access good ventilation in indoor spaces.2 This article highlights the myriad of ways that pharmacists have reinforced and bolstered public health policies over the last 2 years to meet the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic head-on.
25th Jun 2022 - Pharmacy Times

UK prepares to include over-50s in autumn Covid booster campaign

The UK government is getting ready to roll out Covid-19 booster jabs to all adults aged over 50, in a broader autumn campaign than its vaccine advisers had previously suggested. Under provisional guidance issued last month, only care home residents, the over-65s, frontline health and social workers and vulnerable younger people would be eligible for the next round of vaccines. But Sajid Javid, health and social care secretary, told the Financial Times that he had asked his team “to be ready for it to be over-50s and above."
25th Jun 2022 - Financial Times

Finally, we're (almost) outrunning Covid-19

It’s a joy to run with the masses in the city, but we’re not out of the woods yet. And although we're finally, we're (almost) outrunning Covid-19, in Singapore we still have a way to go yet
25th Jun 2022 - The Straits Times

Latin America's kids slid into education black hole during pandemic

In Bolivia's highland city La Paz, Maribel Sanchez's children spent much of the last two years huddling over a small smartphone screen to attend online classes amid a lengthy lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. The two boys, aged 11 and eight, frequently missed lessons when their timetables collided as the family had no computer. Bolivian school children only finally returned to in-person classes in March this year, many still not full time. The story is echoed around the region from Mexico to Brazil. Latin American has one of the worst records of school closures globally, according to a World Bank report, which shows children here faced almost 60 weeks of fully or partially closed schools between March 2020 and March this year. That's behind only South Asia and twice the level of Europe, Central and East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa or the Pacific. In North America there were long partial closures, but just seven weeks of full closures versus 29 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
24th Jun 2022 - Reuters

UK Covid Cases Rise Again Driven by BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron Subvariants

Covid infection rates are rising again in the UK and across much of Europe, driven by newer versions of the omicron variant, amid concerns that another wave will disrupt businesses and add to pressure on health systems. In England, the estimated number of people testing positive for Covid-19 climbed to almost 1.4 million -- about 1 in 40 people -- in the week ending June 18, according to an Office for National Statistics report published Friday. That compares with around 1 in 50 people in the prior week. In Scotland, the estimate in the latest week increased to around 1 in 20 people.
24th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Covid Resurgence Across UK, Europe Driven by Omicron Subvariants

Covid infection rates are rising again in the UK and across much of Europe, driven by newer versions of the omicron variant, amid concerns that another wave will disrupt businesses and add to pressure on health systems. In England, the estimated number of people testing positive for Covid-19 climbed to almost 1.4 million -- about 1 in 40 people -- in the week ending June 18, according to an Office for National Statistics report published Friday. That compares with around 1 in 50 people in the prior week. In Scotland, the estimate in the latest week increased to around 1 in 20 people.
24th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 24th Jun 2022

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Video: How the Pandemic Has Accelerated Child Marriage in India

In a bid to combat child marriage, Archana Sahay started a 24-hour helpline based in the central Indian city of Bhopal. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, she was inundated with calls: Some were what she had come to expect from already-vulnerable girls and people concerned with their welfare. Others caught her by surprise. On this episode of “The Pay Check,” Bloomberg explores how another unforeseen consequence of Covid-19 in India has been a significant increase in child marriage—and how one woman is trying to fight it.
24th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Both sides blast WTO's patent waiver for COVID vaccines

Now that the World Trade Organization has relaxed intellectual property restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines, the question is: Will any developing countries take advantage to produce their own shots? With wealthy nations discarding expired vaccines and poor countries turning down donations because of a lack of demand, it’s hard to imagine manufacturers in countries such as India and South Africa being motivated to produce jabs. Nonetheless, South Africa hailed the move, which allows vaccines and their ingredients to be produced without authorization from the patent holder over the next five years. The South African government also admitted however to the daunting task of gearing up for the manufacture of shots. “To scale up the production on the continent, further partnerships will be needed including access to know-how and technologies,” the South Africa government said in a statement.
24th Jun 2022 - FiercePharma

Eric Adams Stopped Enforcing Covid Vaccine Mandate for NYC Businesses

Mayor Eric Adams of New York City has not enforced the city’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for employees at private businesses, and has no plans to begin inspecting businesses or begin fining those that are not in compliance. Newsday first reported on the lack of enforcement of the vaccine mandate for private employers. “We have been focused on prioritizing education instead of enforcement when it comes to the private sector mandate, which is how we’ve been able to get more than 87 percent of all New Yorkers with their first dose to date,” Fabien Levy, a spokesman for New York City Mayor Eric Adams, said in an email. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a vaccine mandate for employees at private businesses in December, the most far-reaching local measure in the United States at the time. The mandate applied to around 184,000 businesses of all sizes with employees who work on-site in New York City.
23rd Jun 2022 - The New York Times

Austria scraps COVID vaccine mandate, says it split society

Austria’s health minister announced Thursday that the country is scrapping a dormant coronavirus vaccine mandate, saying the measure risked polarizing society and could even lead to fewer people getting the shot. The government announced plans last year requiring all people aged 18 and over to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the first country in Europe to do so. The law took effect in February but lawmakers suspended the mandate before police were due to enforce it in mid-March. Health Minister Johannes Rauch said the rise of new virus variants had changed citizens’ perception of the effectiveness and necessity of a vaccination, even among those willing to get the shot. This could deter them from voluntarily getting booster shots that will help curb the outbreak in the fall, he said. “The vaccine mandate hinders some people who are generally willing to get the shot from taking the booster, the idea being: I’m not going to be told what to do,” said Rauch.
23rd Jun 2022 - The Associated Press

South Africa repeals COVID rules on mask-wearing, gatherings, entry

South Africa has repealed COVID-19 restrictions on mask-wearing in indoor public spaces, limits on the size of gatherings and entry requirements at its borders, a notice in the government gazette showed.
23rd Jun 2022 - CNBC Africa

Austria scraps already-suspended COVID vaccine mandate

Austria is scrapping an already-suspended COVID-19 vaccine mandate as it has divided the country and is unlikely to raise one of western Europe's lowest vaccination rates, Health Minister Johannes Rauch said on Thursday.
23rd Jun 2022 - Reuters

COVID-19 vaccine scheme for world's poorest pushes for delivery slowdown

Leaders of the global scheme aiming to get COVID-19 vaccines to the world's poorest are pushing manufacturers including Pfizer and Moderna to cut or slow deliveries of about half a billion shots so doses are not wasted. COVAX, the World Health Organization-led scheme, wants between 400 and 600 million fewer vaccines doses than initially contracted from six pharmaceutical companies, according to internal documents seen by Reuters.
23rd Jun 2022 - Reuters

Covid-19 Vaccines Prevented 20 Million Deaths in One Year: Study

Covid vaccines that were developed in record time saved an estimated 20 million lives in the first year of the rollout, more than half of them in wealthier countries, according to the first study of its kind to quantify the impact. While more than 7 million deaths were likely averted in countries covered by Covax, the World Health Organization-backed distribution program, the research nonetheless highlights the devastation caused by uneven access. About one in five lives lost due to Covid in poorer countries could have been prevented if WHO targets had been reached, data published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal show.
23rd Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 23rd Jun 2022

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COVID-19: Britons to have first access to vaccines and treatments when new science super-centre opens

Britons will have access to all the latest vaccines and treatments when a new research and manufacturing centre opens in the UK. American pharmaceutical giant Moderna is opening a new mRNA Innovation and Technology Centre that will develop vaccines for a wide range of respiratory diseases, including COVID vaccines that can protect against multiple variants. Construction is expected to start as early as this year, with the first mRNA vaccine due to be produced in the UK in 2025.
22nd Jun 2022 - Sky News

From Indonesia to Pacific, women have borne brunt of pandemic challenges: UN

Women have borne the brunt of hardship two years after the pandemic, facing less access to vaccines and food, and taking on more domestic work, a new UN report shows. Experts say that gender policies must be implemented to ensure that women and girls are included in the recovery taking place across Asia and the Pacific
22nd Jun 2022 - South China Morning Post

CDC lowers the Covid-19 travel risk for 2 nations in Europe

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its travel advisory page for Covid-19. Just two new places, both in Africa, joined the crowded "high" risk category.
22nd Jun 2022 - CNN

US babies, toddlers get their first COVID-19 shots

Babies and toddlers began getting the COVID-19 vaccine in thighs and arms across the United States on Tuesday, in many cases in front of cameras and a masked cheering audience.
22nd Jun 2022 - Reuters

Universal Beijing Resort to reopen on June 25 as COVID cases drop

The Universal Beijing Resort said on Wednesday it will reopen on June 25 after being closed for nearly two months, as the number of new COVID-19 cases in the Chinese capital falls. The resort said on its official WeChat account that after it reopens, all visitors must show a negative PCR test taken within the past 72 hours and wear masks at all times.
22nd Jun 2022 - Reuters

As Kids Under 5 Start Getting the Covid-19 Vaccine, Parents Struggle to Find Appointments

In the US, federal health authorities on Saturday recommended Moderna’s two-dose vaccine as well as a three-dose regimen by Pfizer and BioNTech for children as young as 6 months. It was a moment some parents and caregivers had been eagerly awaiting, yet some of them haven’t managed to book appointments for their children, while others are holding off.
22nd Jun 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

$1 Billion Pledged to Help Countries Cope With Future Pandemics

Donors including the US and the European Union have pledged $1.1 billion in financing to help countries cope with future pandemics. Indonesia, as this year’s host of the Group of 20 meetings, pushed the world’s biggest economies to create a global health fund that would aid nations struggling with the next global health crises, said Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati in a late Tuesday briefing. The Southeast Asian country is also among the donors, along with Germany, Singapore and the Wellcome Trust, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said after the G-20 meeting of health and finance ministers in Yogyakarta. The goal is to reach $10 billion of financing each year, he added. The fund is set to start operating after an expected June 30 approval from the board of the World Bank, which is hosting the financing mechanism.
21st Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 22nd Jun 2022

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Wrist-worn trackers can detect Covid before symptoms, study finds

Health trackers worn on the wrist could be used to spot Covid-19 days before any symptoms appear, according to researchers. Growing numbers of people worldwide use the devices to monitor changes in skin temperature, heart and breathing rates. Now a new study shows that this data could be combined with artificial intelligence (AI) to diagnose Covid-19 even before the first tell-tale signs of the disease appear. “Wearable sensor technology can enable Covid-19 detection during the presymptomatic period,” the researchers concluded. The findings were published in the journal BMJ Open. The discovery could lead to health trackers being adapted with AI to detect Covid-19 early, simply by spotting basic physiological changes.
22nd Jun 2022 - The Guardian

COVID-19: Brits to have first access to vaccines and treatments when new science super-centre opens

US pharmaceutical firm Moderna is to establish a global clinical trials base in the UK, which it says will endorse the country as a science superpower - and future-proof it against emerging health threats.
22nd Jun 2022 - Sky News

Moderna to Build mRNA Manufacturing and Research Center in UK

Moderna Inc. plans to build a research and manufacturing center in the UK in a partnership with the government aimed at providing the country with messenger RNA vaccines against future health threats. The agreement will ensure National Health Service patients gain access to mRNA vaccines targeting a range of diseases, including potential shots that can protect against multiple Covid variants, the government said in a statement. The UK, which expects the first mRNA vaccine to be produced in 2025, declined to disclose the size of the investment or the location of the center. “The center will be able to scale up production rapidly in the event of a health emergency, significantly boosting the UK’s ability to respond to future pandemics,” according to the statement.
22nd Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Singapore Sees Surge in Covid Cases Linked to New Subvariants

Singapore saw a 23% week-on-week increase in Covid-19 community infections, with the surge in cases mainly driven by newer omicron subvariants. The new variants, known as BA.4 and BA.5, account for about 30% of new Covid-19 cases in the past week with the rise in related cases likely to continue, the country’s Ministry of Health said in a statement Tuesday. Both strains have higher transmissibility though evidence currently shows that the severity of infections linked to these subvariants is similar to that of earlier strains of omicron. The country has not seen a significant increase in the number of severe Covid-19 cases in hospitals and cases in the intensive care units remain low, the ministry said.
22nd Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

IP is no barrier to COVID vaccine access, says industry -

While proponents argue waiving IP on COVID-19 vaccines would better enable low- and middle-income countries to inoculate their populations, the pharma industry has called the proposals “unnecessary and harmful to innovation”. Proposals to waive COVID-19 product patents have been described as “political posturing” and an “answer to a problem that does not exist”. The Quad compromise, a World Health Organization plan which would, if enacted, release members from granting or enforcing COVID-19 vaccine patents, was discussed at the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) last week. But the pharmaceutical industry has said the move could “undermine innovation and industry’s ability to partner, invest at risk, and respond quickly to future pandemics”.
21st Jun 2022 - Pharmaphorum

New Covid vaccine which protects against Omicron variant could be in the UK by autumn

Older British people and medical workers may be given a new version of the Covid-19 vaccine this year which is tailor-made to protect against the Omicron variant. Ministers hope that the next generation of jabs made both by Pfizer and Moderna will be ready in time for autumn, when a new round of vaccines will be administered to certain groups. Over-65s, vulnerable people below that age, and frontline health and care workers are due to be invited for another vaccination to top up their immunity levels.
21st Jun 2022 - iNews

Covid surges across Europe as experts warn not let guard down

Multiple European countries are experiencing a significant surge in new Covid-19 infections, as experts warn that with almost all restrictions lifted and booster take-up often low, cases could soar throughout the summer leading to more deaths. According to the Our World in Data scientific aggregator, the rolling seven-day average of confirmed new cases per million inhabitants is on the rise in countries including Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands and Denmark. Portugal has experienced the most dramatic wave, with infections per million remaining at a seven-day average of 2,043 on Monday – the second highest new case rate in the world, although down somewhat from an early June high of 2,878.
21st Jun 2022 - The Guardian

Biggest Risk Factor For Severe Covid-19 Other Than Age? Autoantibodies

Although only between 1% and 4% of individuals carry autoantibodies that neutralize type I IFNs, they consistently make up around 20% of Covid-19 fatalities across age categories. Other than age, presence of type I interferon autoantibodies is the strongest predictor of severe Covid-19 — more so than sex, common comorbidities, and most genetic variants. Future research should focus on how and why people develop autoantibodies against type I IFNs, and whether or not this is preventable
21st Jun 2022 - Forbes

PhRMA says COVID-19 vaccine patent waiver is a 'political stunt,' while advocate argues it doesn't go far enough

Now that the World Trade Organization has relaxed intellectual property restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines, the question is: Will any developing countries take advantage to produce their own shots? With wealthy nations discarding expired vaccines and poor countries turning down donations because of a lack of demand, it’s hard to imagine manufacturers in countries such as India and South Africa being motivated to produce jabs. Nonetheless, South Africa hailed the move, which allows vaccines and their ingredients to be produced without authorization from the patent holder over the next five years. The South African government also admitted however to the daunting task of gearing up for the manufacture of shots.
21st Jun 2022 - FiercePharma

UK scientists urge higher uptake of Covid boosters among elderly

Around a fifth of people aged 75 and over in England have yet to have a fourth Covid jab, data suggests, leading to calls for a renewed push for vaccination of the vulnerable amid rising infections and hospitalisations. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), in the week ending 11 June an estimated one in 50 people in England had Covid – about 1.13 million people – a rise from 1 in 70 the week before. Upticks have also been seen in the rest of the UK, while hospitalisations are also rising. The resurgence is thought to be down to a rise in Omicron variants including BA.4 and BA.5, although scientists say other factors may also be at play, including a return to pre-pandemic behaviour, and waning immunity.
21st Jun 2022 - The Guardian

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Over-75s urged to get Covid booster jab as cases rise

Over-75s and people at high risk have been urged to get a Covid booster vaccine, amid warnings of a new wave of infections in Scotland. The spring booster jab is available until 30 June to everyone in the older age group and people over 12 if they have a weakened immune system. About a third of Scots in the immunosuppressed group have not yet come forward for an additional vaccine. Latest data estimates that around one in 30 people in Scotland has Covid. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that 176,900 people have the virus - about 3.36% of the population.
19th Jun 2022 - BBC News

CDC Recommends Covid-19 Vaccines for Young Children

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that children as young as 6 months receive newly authorized Covid-19 shots, the final step to making the vaccines available. The CDC said Saturday that the young children should receive either the two-dose series from Moderna Inc. or the three-dose series made by Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE. As soon as Monday, children under 5 years, who haven’t been able to get vaccinated during the pandemic, could start getting inoculated. “Together, with science leading the charge, we have taken another important step forward in our nation’s fight against Covid-19. We know millions of parents and care givers are eager to get their young children vaccinated, and with today’s decision, they can,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said.
19th Jun 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

WTO Approves Vaccine-Patent Waiver to Help Combat Covid Pandemic

Article reports that the World Trade Organization approved a politically important deal Friday to water down intellectual property restrictions for the manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines after an almost two-year effort involving scores of high-level meetings and much political arm twisting. During the early morning hours in Geneva, WTO ministers approved a package of agreements that included the vaccine patent waiver, which Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala previously said was necessary to end the “morally unacceptable” inequity of access to Covid-19 vaccines. The WTO’s last-minute deal -- secured after an all-night negotiating session in Geneva -- is an important victory for Okonjo-Iweala, the former head of Gavi - the vaccine alliance, who actively stumped for the accord during her first year as the WTO’s top trade official.
19th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

WTO agrees partial patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccines

The World Trade Organization has struck deals on a partial patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccines, and made agreements in several other fields of global contention, after a tense six-day ministerial meeting that has renewed some faith in the battered multilateral trading system.
18th Jun 2022 - Financial Times

BioNTech chief calls for speedy ruling on Covid vaccines that target latest strains

Health regulators should decide by the end of the month whether to approve Covid-19 vaccines targeting the most recent virus strains without first requiring clinical data, BioNTech’s chief executive has said, as studies suggest jabs developed earlier in the pandemic are less effective against the latest variants. Uğur Şahin warned that a sub-variant of Omicron that fully escapes vaccines’ protection might emerge as countries prepare to launch autumn booster campaigns. The debate over whether to allow a more rapid switch to an updated vaccine is becoming more “urgent”, he said
18th Jun 2022 - Financial Times

How Japan achieved one of the worlds lowest Covid-19 death rates

Article reports that Japan’s Covid-19 death rate is the lowest among the world’s wealthiest nations, with health experts pointing to continued mask wearing, extensive vaccination and an already healthy population as the core factors behind its success. The population has continued to adhere to basic infection control measures, including avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated venues, as other parts of the world grapple with pandemic fatigue. And Japan’s measures have been bolstered by a robust vaccination program and free medical care
18th Jun 2022 - Business Standard

Covid hospital admissions rise in Europe as sub-variants fuel new wave

European countries are experiencing a surge in Covid-19 hospital admissions driven by sub-variants of the highly infectious Omicron strain, threatening a fresh global wave of the disease as immunity levels wane and pandemic restrictions are lifted. Admissions have risen in several countries including France and England, according to data analysed by the Financial Times. The BA.5 sub-variant of Omicron now accounts for more than 80 per cent of new infections in Portugal. In Germany, where admissions have been rising for over a week, the share of Covid-19 infections ascribed to BA.5 doubled at the end of last month.
18th Jun 2022 - Financial Times

China's Zero-Covid Policy Will Stretch Into 2023, US Envoy Says

China’s stringent “zero Covid” policy of travel restrictions and city-wide lockdowns is likely to stretch into next year, and is actively discouraging American and European investment in China, the US ambassador to the country said. “My honest assumption is that we’ll see the continuation of ‘zero Covid’ probably into the beginning months of 2023 -- that’s what the Chinese government is signaling,” Nicholas Burns, the American envoy in Beijing, said during an online event on Thursday. The harsh lockdown in the commercial center and financial hub of Shanghai -- where many US companies have operations and base executives -- has prompted many American businesspeople to leave the country, Burns said.
18th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

EU drugs watchdog begins review of Moderna's variant COVID vaccine

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) started a rolling review on Friday of a variant-adapted COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna (MRNA.O), as coronavirus cases linked to Omicron sub-variants see an uptick in the region. U.S.-based Moderna's so-called bivalent vaccine targets two strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus behind COVID, the original strain first identified in China, and the Omicron variant. Last week, Moderna said its bivalent vaccine produced a better immune response against Omicron than the original shot.
17th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Swiss COVID-19 vaccine purchase plan fails to pass parliament

The Swiss parliament failed to finance the government's plan to buy COVID-19 vaccines in 2023, forcing the cabinet to try to renegotiate contracts with Moderna and Pfizer/Biontech, for millions of doses. With the two houses of parliament split over the funding request, budget rules required the adoption of the cheaper version of draft legislation, the SDA news agency said in a report posted on parliament's website.
16th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 17th Jun 2022

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COVID-era health funding extended by Anthony Albanese in first meeting of new national cabinet

$760 million more in COVID-era funding will be given to the states. The extended funding deal was given in recognition that the pandemic was continuing. National Cabinet also agreed to health network reforms to ease pressure on emergency departments.
17th Jun 2022 - ABC News

China Perspective Podcast: China tightens restrictions with 'flash lockdowns' as Covid-19 cases flare-up

An increase in cases makes China tighten up restrictions again, but how sustainable are these "flash lockdowns"? On the international front, despite the strong words directed toward the US during Minister Wei's speech during the Shangri-La Dialogue, his meeting with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the summit could indicate that China does not want their relationship with the US to veer into conflict.
17th Jun 2022 - The Straits Times

Thailand Mulls Longer Hours for Pubs, Bars as Covid Cases Drop

The country’s main Covid-19 task force will consider a proposal on Friday to scrap the mandatory closure, Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters on Thursday. Businesses must still adhere to local rules, which may differ among provinces, he said. Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy has shredding travel and economic restrictions to kick-start growth as new infections have dropped. The relaxations comes as tourism-dependent countries scramble and compete to woo travelers amid accelerating inflation and sagging consumption. “It’s time to bring back some normal activities with serious risk of Covid-19 to the public health having receded,” said Anutin. The panel will also discuss declaring more safe areas, or the so-called green zones, where the virus outbreak has subsided in recent weeks, he said.
16th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Pregnant Mothers in Mexico Saw Death Rates Surge During Height of Covid Pandemic

Vallejo is among the 2,240 mothers in Mexico who’ve died because of complications from their pregnancy since the pandemic began. When Covid-19 patients overwhelmed the health-care system, government leaders prioritized their care over that of expectant mothers, turning labor and delivery—and more broadly, women’s health—into an afterthought. Pregnancy-related death rates across the country spiked by more than 60% in the first year of the pandemic, an analysis published in the journal BMC Public Health shows. By the beginning of 2021, 81 women were dying for every 100,000 live births, based on government data, compared with 24 at the same time in 2019.
16th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Beijing Bar-Linked COVID Outbreak Is Easing as Measures Take Effect, Official Says

The city of Beijing on Thursday declared an initial victory in its latest battle with COVID-19 after testing millions of people and quarantining thousands in the past week to stem an outbreak prolonged by a sudden wave of cases linked to a bar. The flare-up at the popular Heaven Supermarket Bar known for its cheap liquor and rowdy nights emerged just days after the Chinese capital started to lift widespread curbs. Restrictions had been in place for around a month in Beijing to tackle a broader outbreak that began in late April is very modest by global standards, with a total of 351 cases found so far, but reflects how challenging it is, with the high transmissibility of the Omicron variant, for China to make a success out of its strategy of stamping out each cluster of cases as soon as it materialises. "After eight days of hard fighting and the concerted efforts of Beijing residents in the battle, the swift and decisive measures have shown their effect," Beijing city government spokesperson Xu Hejian said.
16th Jun 2022 - Reuters

The Bahamas Removes COVID-19 Testing Requirement for Fully Vaccinated Travellers

In addition to eliminating the mandatory Bahamas Travel Health Visa, the Government of The Bahamas announced today that fully vaccinated travellers will no longer be required to submit to pre-travel COVID-19 testing to enter the country.
16th Jun 2022 - Business Insider

Trends are shifting, but Covid-19 and its effects are still not equitable

Through the many phases of the Covid-19 pandemic -- nearly a dozen variants, the introduction of vaccines, the dropping of prevention measures and more -- one thing has remained constant: The virus and its effects are not one-size-fits-all. Over the past few months, two unique trends have emerged: For the first time in the pandemic, Covid-19 case rates in the United States are higher among Asian people, and death rates are higher among White people than any other racial or ethnic group. These trends are a marked shift among groups that, data suggests, have tended to fare better overall during the pandemic. But there are critical limitations in federal data that mask persistent inequities, experts say.
16th Jun 2022 - CNN

Dogs trained to sniff out COVID in schools are getting a lot of love for their efforts

Huntah is part of a program developed by scientists at Florida International University in Miami who have trained dogs to detect COVID on surfaces and in people. The researchers started working with the animals in the early months of the pandemic — and have successfully deployed them in Florida, Hawaii and Massachusetts to sniff out the virus. Similar projects are underway in other countries, including Finland and France.
16th Jun 2022 - NPR

India's May trade deficit widens to $24.29 billion - trade ministry

Covid recovery - India's May trade deficit widened to $24.29 billion from $6.53 billion a year ago, a government statement said on Wednesday. May's trade deficit was pushed up by a surge in imports, which rose 62.83% year-on-year to $63.22 billion, while exports rose 20.55% to $38.94 billion, revised trade data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry showed.
15th Jun 2022 - Reuters

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Hong Kong RAT proof nothing to get hungover about

Try as Hong Kong might, the number of daily Covid-19 cases remains stubbornly high. In an effort to reduce them in time for celebrations of the city’s 25th anniversary of its return to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, patrons of pubs, bars and clubs are from Thursday required to show proof of a negative rapid antigen test (RAT) result. It is an understandable move given such places are behind half a dozen recent clusters in entertainment districts involving hundreds of people. Random raids by police of numerous premises have led to dozens of fines and temporary closures for the violation of rules. Authorities have opted for the RAT strategy rather than rolling back a phased reopening of social and economic activity. The last of three stages remains to be implemented, but outgoing Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor contends circumstances are not right for that to happen before July 1.
16th Jun 2022 - South China Morning Post

Shanghai to Mass Test Whole City Every Weekend Till End July

Shanghai, which reported just 16 Covid cases for Wednesday, will conduct mass testing drives every weekend until the end of July in the latest display of the lengths authorities are going to in order to adhere to nation’s zero tolerance approach to the virus. A temporary lockdown will also be imposed on residential complexes where a Covid case is detected in the week leading up to the weekend testing, Zhao Dandan, an official with the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission said at a briefing Wednesday. The lockdown will be lifted once everyone in the compound has been tested, he said. In an effort to detect cases early and break transmission chains, the city’s residents will need to take nucleic acid tests at least once a week until the end of July, with workers at supermarkets, barbers, drugstores, shopping malls and restaurants required to undergo daily testing.
16th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Hong Kong Covid Cases Top 1000 as Home Isolation Tweaked Again

Hong Kong reported more than 1,000 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, the highest in two months, with the rise in infections spurring officials to continue to tighten rules around who can isolate at home. There were 971 new local infections, including many among school children, their families and patrons of nightlife venues, Department of Health official Albert Au said at the daily virus briefing. Another 76 infections were detected among travelers who recently entered the city, bringing the total to 1,047 -- the highest since April 14.
16th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

UK to Roll Out Drugs From Pfizer, Shionogi to Fight Superbugs

England is rolling out a pair of antibiotics from Pfizer Inc. and Shionogi & Co. as part of a pioneering program aimed at stimulating a broken market and taking on the rising threat of superbugs. Under the deal announced Wednesday by the National Health Service, the drug companies will receive a fixed annual fee for their antibiotics. The payments in the program, the first of its kind, will be as much as £10 million ($12 million) a year for up to 10 years. About 1,700 patients a year with severe bacterial infections will be eligible for the drugs. With germs becoming increasingly resistant to current antibiotics, the NHS said the drugs will provide a lifeline to patients with life-threatening infections like sepsis or hospital or ventilator pneumonia.
15th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

The inside story of Recovery: how the world’s largest COVID-19 trial transformed treatment – and what it could do for other diseases

Two years ago this week, the Recovery trial transformed the care of COVID patients with its dexamethasone announcement. Within four hours, the steroid was included in NHS treatment recommendations. Almost overnight, treatment of COVID patients around the world changed completely. It has been estimated that dexamethasone may have saved a million lives in the first nine months following the announcement. Recovery, jointly led by Oxford Population Health and the Nuffield Department of Medicine, is a groundbreaking scientific machine which, from the outset, moved at unprecedented speed. Within 15 days, more than 1,000 participants around the UK had joined the trial; five weeks later, that number had risen to 10,000. In the first 100 days alone, the trial produced three groundbreaking results that would completely reshape COVID care.
15th Jun 2022 - The Conversation

Europe's medicines watchdog publishes new report identifying COVID-19 lessons learned

In 2021, the European Commission, Parliament and Council gave the EMA greater tools enabling it to both support innovation and respond to emergencies, in an acknowledgement of the agency’s vital role in tackling the pandemic. The EMA approved five treatments and four new vaccines against COVID-19. It also passed regulation on medical devices—a year later than planned because of the pandemic—and took steps towards developing an information network designed to generate data about health patterns across the continent, called the Data Analysis and Real World Interrogation Network (DARWIN EU).
15th Jun 2022 - Healthcare IT News

Beijing Covid cluster bar loses licence as staff face criminal probe

The authorities in the Chinese capital say the Heaven Supermarket bar in the Sanlitun nightlife district did not enforce controls properly. The Covid cluster, which has been linked with 320 cases, is the latest outbreak linked to bars stretching from Hong Kong to Beijing.
15th Jun 2022 - South China Morning Post

2,153 new Covid cases, 17 more deaths

The country registered 17 more Covid-19 fatalities and 2,153 new cases during the previous 24 hours, the Public Health Ministry announced on Thursday morning. This compared with the 18 coronavirus-related fatalities and 2,263 new cases reported on Monday morning.
15th Jun 2022 - Bangkok Post

How months-long COVID infections could seed dangerous new variants

virologist Sissy Sonnleitner tracks nearly every COVID-19 case in Austria’s rugged eastern Tyrol region. So, when one woman there kept testing positive for months on end, Sonnleitner was determined to work out what was going on. Before becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 in late 2020, the woman, who was in her 60s, had been taking immune-suppressing drugs to treat a lymphoma relapse. The COVID-19 infection lingered for more than seven months, causing relatively mild symptoms, including fatigue and a cough. Sonnleitner, who is based at a microbiology facility in Außervillgraten, Austria, and her colleagues collected more than two dozen viral samples from the woman over time and found through genetic sequencing that it had picked up about 22 mutations (see ‘Tracking spike’s evolution’). Roughly half of them would be seen again in the heavily mutated Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 that surged around the globe months later1. “When Omicron was found, we had a great moment of surprise,” Sonnleitner says. “We already had those mutations in our variant.”
15th Jun 2022 - Nature

Long Covid Is Showing Up in the Employment Data

Given that you have to be unable to work for at least 12 months to qualify for Social Security disability and going on the program is a momentous step that effectively requires leaving the labor market, the still-new phenomenon that is Long Covid is probably not playing a big role (the Social Security Administration has said that only about 1% of recent claims mention Covid). Still, the turnaround in disability applications is at least not incompatible with a rise in long-term health problems related to the disease — and it turns out there are stronger signs of Long Covid in other employment-related data.
15th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

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Beijing's Virus Cases Remain Elevated in Threat to Covid Zero

Beijing recorded more than 50 Covid cases for the fifth day in a row as authorities crack down on venues linked to the outbreak, including starting a criminal probe into management of a bar at the center of the latest flareup. The capital reported 63 infections for Tuesday, following 74 on Monday. Cases have spiked in recent days, having dropped to single-digits last week. The management of a bar that has been linked to at least 287 cases is under criminal investigation for potentially breaching Covid control and prevention protocols.
15th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

'Inspirational' teachers awarded in Perth for their efforts during Covid-19 pandemic

Teachers who were at the forefront of providing free virtual geography lessons for secondary school pupils stuck at home during the Covid-19 pandemic have been awarded medals by the Perth-based Royal Scottish Geographical Society. The Tivy Education Medal has been presented to a group of volunteers and inspirational teachers, for their collective work during the pandemic. When Covid-19 struck, there were very limited learning resources for students during lockdown. RSGS pulled together a small team of teachers and film makers to try and help. The team created 26 virtual Chalk Talks lessons covering the entire National 5 and Higher Geography curriculum, from glaciers to coasts, cities to deserts, and everything in between.
14th Jun 2022 - The Courier

South Africa Covid-19 Hospital Admissions Show Story of Inequality

The confluence between race and inequality in South Africa has been starkly illustrated through hospital admissions over the course of the coronavirus pandemic. Black people living in the country were likely to be hospitalized at a younger age, less likely to have access to intensive care units and ventilators and had higher mortality from the disease than White residents, according to a study led by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. Indian and mixed race South Africans, locally known as Colored, also fared worse. “Blacks, Indians and Coloreds were more likely to die,” Waasila Jassat, a researcher with the NICD and one of the authors of the study, said in an interview on Tuesday. The study shows “the interplay between race, age, sex and socio-economic status” and how different groups experienced Covid-19, she said.
14th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Saudi Arabia ends COVID protective measures

Saudi Arabia announced on Monday the lifting of measures that had been taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the state news agency (SPA) reported, citing an official in the interior ministry. The measures lifted include the requirement to wear face masks in closed places, with the exception of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet's Mosque.
14th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Canada to end COVID vaccine mandate for domestic travel -CBC News

The Canadian government on Tuesday will announce an end to COVID-19 vaccine mandates for domestic travel on planes and trains and outgoing international travel, CBC News reported on Monday, citing unidentified sources familiar with the matter. The government, which has faced criticism over ongoing pandemic restrictions, may bring back the vaccine mandate if a new variant of the virus is discovered, the report added.
14th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai Disney Resort to reopen Disneytown, hotel on June 16

Shanghai Disney Resort said on Tuesday it will reopen Disneytown and Shanghai Disneyland hotel on June 16 but the main Disneyland park will remain closed until further notice. Toy Story Hotel, one of its two resort hotels will also remain closed, the resort operator said in a statement. The Shanghai Disney Resort reopened some retail and park areas last week.
14th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer stops enrollment in Paxlovid trial in standard-risk population

Pfizer Inc said it would halt enrollment in a trial for its COVID-19 antiviral drug, Paxlovid, in standard-risk patients after a study revealed the treatment was not effective in reducing symptoms in that group. The drug has emergency use authorization for high-risk groups in which it has been effective in reducing hospitalizations and deaths. The new data, however, showed a 51% relative risk reduction in standard-risk groups, which the company said was not statistically significant.
14th Jun 2022 - Reuters

U.S. FDA advisers back authorization of Moderna COVID vaccine for ages 6-17

Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday recommended the authorization of Moderna Inc's COVID-19 vaccine for children and teens aged 6 to 17 years of age.
14th Jun 2022 - Reuters

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Bank of England to drop post-COVID capital buffer rule

The Bank of England said on Monday that it would remove a post-COVID capital buffer adjustment now that risks from the pandemic had subsided. "Removing a temporary capital adjustment that is no longer necessary aims to achieve simplicity and enhances proportionality, thereby facilitating effective competition," the BoE said in a statement. In July 2020, the BoE's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) announced the temporary increase of the buffer for all firms that received a Pillar 2A reduction under its PS15/20 policy to reconcile capital requirements and macroprudential buffers
14th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Thousands of Queenslanders in the dark over COVID-19 hotel quarantine fee waivers

As of this month, Queensland Health has issued 84,463 invoices for hotel quarantine. 21,401 people had applied for a quarantine fee waiver, and so far 4,639 have been approved in part or in full. The remaining 16,762 people are either still having their applications processed or considered — or they've been rejected
13th Jun 2022 - ABC News

Covid-19: Patients without respiratory symptoms no longer have to wear a face mask in GP surgeries

Patients who enter general practices in England no longer have to wear a face mask unless they have respiratory symptoms, NHS England and NHS Improvement says. But the updated guidance also underlines the importance of local risk assessments and says that increased measures can be used when deemed necessary. A letter sent to clinical commissioning groups and trusts set out the changes to infection prevention and control measures following updates from the UK Health Security Agency.1 It said that health and care staff should continue to wear face masks as part of personal protective equipment when working with patients with suspected or confirmed covid-19, including untriaged patients in primary care and emergency departments.
13th Jun 2022 - The BMJ

Don’t be complacent, another Covid wave is coming. Here’s how we can manage it

As we move into summer, more than two years since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the words “new wave” are probably the last thing anyone wants to hear. Yet it is true that recent UK data (as well as data from Florida and other places) indicates that sublineages of the Omicron variant, BA.4 and BA.5, are kicking off a new wave of cases. With the pandemic no longer dominating the news in the way it once did, it’s worth taking stock of where we are and what needs to be done. After all, these variations on Omicron are not more severe, but they do have the capacity to reinfect people, even those who have had a previous version of Omicron. This is further evidence that reaching “herd immunity” (where enough people are vaccinated or infected to stop further circulation) against Covid-19 is probably impossible.
13th Jun 2022 - The Guardian

Coronavirus: More than 100 TfL workers died from Covid-19

More than 100 Transport for London (TfL) workers are known to have died from Covid-19, new figures show. Of those who died from the virus, 75 worked on London buses, while 23 worked on the Tube network. The majority were people belonging to ethnic minorities and only five were women, TfL said. London Mayor Sadiq Khan said TfL had "put in place a range of additional support for families and colleagues where there has been a bereavement". TfL said a permanent memorial would be completed later this year to "help pay tribute to the critical role transport workers played during the global pandemic".
13th Jun 2022 - BBC News

Saudi Arabia ends COVID-19 protective measures - state news agency

Saudi Arabia announced on Monday the lifting of measures that had been taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the state news agency (SPA) reported, citing an official in the interior ministry. The measures lifted include the requirement to wear face masks in closed places, with the exception of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet's Mosque.
13th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Simmering disputes persist as Covid patent waiver talks come down to the wire

As of this month, Queensland Health has issued 84,463 invoices for hotel quarantine. 21,401 people had applied for a quarantine fee waiver, and so far 4,639 have been approved in part or in full. The remaining 16,762 people are either still having their applications processed or considered — or they've been rejected
13th Jun 2022 - STAT News

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Waive Pharma's Vaccine Rights? What That Would Mean: QuickTake

The world’s top trade ministers will soon determine the fate of a World Trade Organization proposal to water down intellectual property protections for makers of Covid-19 vaccines. The accord as proposed is supported by the European Union, though its other original backers are not quite on board with it. It has also met fierce opposition from both public interest groups and the pharmaceutical industry who are urging nations to reject it.
12th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Shanghai kicks off new round of mass COVID testing, Beijing cases jump

China's capital Beijing is experiencing an "explosive" COVID-19 outbreak connected to a bar, a government spokesman said on Saturday, as the commercial hub, Shanghai,conducted mass testing to contain a jump in cases tied to a hair salon. The warning followed a new tightening of COVID curbs in Beijing since Thursday, with at least two districts closing some entertainment venues after a flare-up in a neighbourhood full of nightlife, shopping and embassies.
12th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Beijing warns of 'explosive' COVID outbreak, Shanghai conducts mass testing

China's capital Beijing is experiencing an "explosive" COVID-19 outbreak connected to a bar, a government spokesman said on Saturday, as the commercial hub, Shanghai,conducted mass testing to contain a jump in cases tied to a hair salon. The warning followed a new tightening of COVID curbs in Beijing since Thursday, with at least two districts closing some entertainment venues after a flare-up in a neighbourhood full of nightlife, shopping and embassies.
11th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Valneva working on remediation plan for COVID-19 vaccine candidate

French drugmaker Valneva said on Friday it had proposed a remediation plan after receiving the European Commission's notice of intent to terminate the advance purchase agreement for its inactivated COVID-19 vaccine candidate. "Some member states have confirmed their interest in having an inactivated, adjuvanted whole-virus vaccine solution in their portfolio," the company said in a statement. "However, the preliminary, unofficial volume indications received from the EC (European Commission) would not be sufficient to ensure the sustainability of Valneva's COVID-19 vaccine programme." Valneva had warned on May 16 that its COVID-19 vaccine agreement with the European Commission was likely to be scrapped as Brussels had informed the company of its intent to terminate the advance purchase agreement.
10th Jun 2022 - YAHOO!News

US lifts COVID-19 test requirement for international travel

The Biden administration is lifting its requirement that international air travelers to the U.S. take a COVID-19 test within a day before boarding their flights, easing one of the last remaining government mandates meant to contain the spread of the coronavirus .
10th Jun 2022 - The Associated Press

Covid-19 infections in UK show early signs of rise

Covid-19 infections in the UK are no longer falling, with some parts of the country showing early signs of a possible increase, figures show. The rise is likely to have been caused by a jump in infections compatible with the original Omicron variant BA.1, along with the newer variants BA.4 and BA.5. It comes as separate figures suggest the recent drop in the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 may also have come to a halt. A total of 989,800 people in private households in the UK are estimated to have had the virus in the week ending June 2, up from 953,900 the previous week, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
10th Jun 2022 - The Independent on MSN.com

Shanghai to lock down millions, again, for mass COVID-19 testing

Over the weekend, residents in 14 of Shanghai's 16 districts will be locked down and tested for COVID-19. Supermarkets are already overwhelmed with panic-buyers. Shanghai's existing rules mean residents must test for entry to public transport, offices and shopping centres.
10th Jun 2022 - ABC News

COVID-19 vaccine uptake in children stalls as less than 10% of 5-11s jabbed

Less than one in 10 children aged 5-11 have received a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, more than two months after NHS England began rolling out jabs for this age group, official data shows.
10th Jun 2022 - GP Online

COVID-19: Infections increase in UK for the first time in two months

Almost 990,000 people have tested positive for the virus in the past week - up from around 954,000 last week, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
10th Jun 2022 - Sky News

Shanghai to lock down millions again for mass COVID testing

China's commercial hub of Shanghai will lock down millions of people for mass COVID-19 testing this weekend - just 10 days after lifting its gruelling two-month lockdown - unsettling residents and raising concerns about the business impact. Racing to stop a wider outbreak after discovering a handful of community cases, including a cluster traced to a popular beauty salon, authorities have ordered PCR testing for all residents in 14 of Shanghai's 16 districts over the weekend.
10th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Covid infections on the rise in England and Northern Ireland

The UK may be entering its third wave of coronavirus this year, researchers warn, as official figures show infections are on the rise again in England and Northern Ireland. The Office for National Statistics said its latest analysis of swabs from households across Britain revealed a mixed picture with a “small increase” in positive tests in England and Northern Ireland, while the trend in Wales and Scotland remained unclear. The ONS data, which give the most reliable picture of the state of the UK outbreak, suggest that the steady fall in infections over recent months may have gone into reverse as cases are driven up by the more transmissible BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants.
10th Jun 2022 - The Guardian

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China Markets Spring Back Into Action as Covid Lockdowns Ease

Financial markets across China are buzzing with activity as easing Covid lockdowns boost trading. Yuan-trading volumes in the onshore market bounced off two-year lows while stock turnover topped the key 1 trillion yuan ($149 billion) mark for two straight sessions this week. That’s after Shanghai officially reopened following a two-month lockdown and Beijing further loosened Covid curbs, spurring bets of an economic rebound and a return of foreign inflows into the country. “It appears that the re-pricing of China macro growth risk due to the lockdowns has run its course,” Ken Cheung, strategist at Mizuho Bank Ltd. said. A slew of pro-growth measures and the reopening in Shanghai and Beijing have helped stabilize expectations for China’s economy, he said.
10th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

Parts of Shanghai impose new COVID lockdown measures

Shanghai and Beijing went back on fresh COVID-19 alert on Thursday after parts of China's largest economic hub imposed new lockdown restriction and the city announced a round of mass testing for millions of residents. The most populous district in the Chinese capital, meanwhile, announced the shutdown of entertainment venues, while news of the lockdown of Shanghai's Minhang district, home to more than 2 million people, pulled down Chinese stocks.
10th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai faces unexpected round of COVID testing for most residents

A round of mass COVID-19 testing for most residents this weekend - just 10 days after a city-wide lockdown was lifted - unsettling residents and raising concerns about the impact on business. Shanghai officials on Thursday said seven of the city's 16 districts would carry out PCR testing for all residents over the weekend due to the discovery of a few cases in the community, saying they wanted to prevent a renewed outbreak
10th Jun 2022 - Reuters

White House shifts $10 billion in coronavirus aid to buy vaccines and treatments

The Biden administration is shifting dwindling federal coronavirus funds toward securing another round of vaccines and treatments — rationing money and cutting back on other critical public health programs as Congress remains at odds over whether to spend more to battle the pandemic. The U.S. government plans to redirect about $5 billion in existing funds so it can purchase any new, updated versions of the vaccines if they become available, according to an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the deliberations. The government also intends to repurpose another $5 billion in previously authorized aid so it can secure access to therapeutics, including the pill Paxlovid, the aide said. Without the change in approach, White House officials fear that the United States would not be able to source new vaccines or other treatments, particularly in the face of any potential fall or winter surge, given high global demand. Even so, the Biden administration’s emergency measures may not be enough to secure vaccines for every American should a new, next-generation version reach the market, according to a second White House aide.
9th Jun 2022 - The Washington Post

Officials: Millions of COVID-19 shots ordered for youngest

Millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses have been ordered for small children in anticipation of possible federal authorization next week, White House officials say. The government allowed pharmacies and states to start placing orders last week, with 5 million doses initially available — half of them shots made by Pfizer and the other half the vaccine produced by Moderna, senior administration officials said. As of this week, about 1.45 million of the 2.5 million available doses of Pfizer have been ordered, and about 850,000 of available Moderna shots have been ordered, officials said. More orders are expected in the coming days.
9th Jun 2022 - The Independent

Explainer: Can we still avoid Covid-19 and is there any point trying?

With new Covid-19 case numbers down, many may be asking if there's any point keeping up precautions to avoid the virus, particularly those who haven't caught it yet. Is it still possible to protect ourselves from the illness? Surely we're all going to get it at some stage, and the 'milder' Omicron variants make it less of a threat to our health, so what's the big deal? Here's what you need to know. We are now more than two years into a pandemic that turned many people's lives upside-down.
9th Jun 2022 - RNZ

PM Johnson says UK out of sync with OECD due to earlier COVID reopening

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday that Britain was out of sync with the other OECD countries' growth cycles because the country emerged out of the pandemic first and had a faster recovery. Asked why the OECD on Wednesday predicted Britain would have the lowest 2023 growth in the G20 apart from Russia, Johnson said: "Because we came out first, because of the steps that we took, we were slightly out of sync with much of the rest of the OECD."
9th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Biden administration 'not too worried' about slow pace of pre-orders of child COVID vaccine

Pre-orders of vaccines for children under age five have been slow, but Biden administration senior officials say they are not alarmed and expect the pace to pick up after federal approvals later this month. The administration expects vaccinations of young children to start as early as June 21 if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approve the vaccines next week, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said on Thursday.
9th Jun 2022 - Reuters

COVID vaccine rights waiver within reach, WTO chief says ahead of meeting

Ministers from across the globe are convening for a conference at the World Trade Organization in Geneva for the first time in more than four years from June 12-15. It comes at a critical juncture for the body and for global trade. The meeting, delayed twice by COVID-19, is a chance for the 27-year-old body to prove it can respond to what Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has described as a "polycrisis" of economic, health, environmental and security challenges.
9th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai Disney Resort to reopen some areas, main park and hotels remain closed

Shanghai Disney Resort said it will reopen some retail and park areas from Friday but the main Disneyland park, Disneytown and its two resort hotels will remain closed until further notice. "Wishing Star Park, the World of Disney Store and Blue Sky Boulevard will resume operations on June 10, 2022," it said in a statement on Thursday. "Shanghai Disneyland, Disneytown and the two resort hotels remain closed until further notice as the resort team continues to prepare for the reopening of the entire resort."
9th Jun 2022 - Reuters

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Over the top? Denmark to secure 22 million COVID-19 vaccines in 2022

Last year, Denmark spent around 2.4 billion kroner on coronavirus vaccines – a figure that looks set to be surpassed in 2022. The State Serum Institute (SSI) has revealed that it has agreements in place for this year involving 22 million vaccine doses worth some 2.8 billion kroner. And as the Corona Crisis continues to wane in Denmark, some experts question whether so many doses are needed.
8th Jun 2022 - Copenhagen Post

US has a "very serious" problem with Covid-19 vaccine uptake

The United States has a "very serious" problem with Covid-19 vaccination uptake, a top health official has warned. Vaccines are by far the most powerful tool available against the coronavirus, protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying from the virus. Unlike many less developed countries, the US has enough doses to vaccinate everyone as well as the necessary infrastructure to support the rollout. The problem: not everyone wants the shot. "We do have a problem with vaccine uptake that is very serious in the United States and anything we can do to get people more comfortable to be able to accept these potentially life-saving medical products is something that we feel we are compelled to do," said Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
8th Jun 2022 - CNN

COVID vaccine rights waiver within reach, WTO chief says ahead of meeting

Director-General Ngosi Okonjo-Iweala has called COVID-19 vaccine inequity "unconscionable" and given top priority to a deal to facilitate the flow of vaccines more widely. Even though demand for COVID-19 shots has tapered off, India, South Africa and some 100 other backers are seeking a potential waiver of intellectual property rights for vaccines and treatments. However, WTO members remain divided over a draft deal for vaccines negotiated between the four main parties (India, South Africa, the European Union and the United States) that was forged to break an 18-month deadlock. Protest groups are urging members to reject it and China has lodged an objection.
8th Jun 2022 - Reuters

After lockdown, Shanghai tries to mend fences with foreign firms

Shanghai officials are seeking to revive confidence among multinational companies bruised and frustrated by the city's COVID-19 lockdown by holding multiple meetings with foreign firms and easing a key border requirement for overseas workers. The image of China's most cosmopolitan city and its biggest business hub was badly damaged by the two-month lockdown, with countless expatriates relocating and foreign businesses warning that they are reconsidering investment plans.
8th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Novavax's New Covid-19 Vaccine Might Be Late to the Party

Novavax shares jumped 5.4% Wednesday after the agency’s vaccine expert panel voted to recommend its two-dose vaccine. It is quite the victory for the 35-year-old Maryland biotech, which was running out of cash in late 2019 before the pandemic came to its rescue. But the nod from the expert group comes as the pool of Americans seeking a booster shot continues to nosedive. The seven-day average for booster shots administered daily was about 55,600 this week, down from over a million in early December, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency says only about half of booster-eligible people have gotten one so far—a clear sign of vaccine fatigue.
8th Jun 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

The kids who have never known life without Covid-19

At this point, two and a half years into the pandemic, many kids have begun to catch up on experiences they missed. Children under 5, however, still aren’t able to be vaccinated, leaving some families unsure how much return to normalcy is really safe — or possible. At the same time, infants, toddlers, and preschoolers have gone through crucial years of early social and emotional development at a time of trauma and isolation for many Americans.
8th Jun 2022 - Vox on MSN.com

Official warns of COVID wave; PM, health minister hold off new restrictions for now

As cases rise, indoor masking recommended for the public; virus czar says 5th vaccine dose may be needed; transmission rate continues to rise, positive test rate over 20%
8th Jun 2022 - The Times of Israel

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BA.4, BA.5 Variants Rise Among U.S. Covid-19 Cases

Omicron Covid-19 variants BA.4 and BA.5 are on the rise in the U.S., adding two more highly contagious versions of the virus to the mix that has fueled a springtime surge in cases. The closely related subvariants represented a combined 13% of U.S. cases for the week ended June 4, according to estimates the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Tuesday. Evidence suggests the variants are yet-more contagious versions of Omicron, public-health experts said, that may be able to evade some of the immune protections people built up from infections triggered by another version of Omicron during the winter. The spread of the subvariants could at least prolong the time it takes to emerge from the current wave fueled by other versions of Omicron, some health experts said. “BA.4 and 5 may end up becoming the dominant Omicron lineages in the coming weeks or months,” said Nathan Grubaugh, an associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University’s School of Public Health.
8th Jun 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

US has thrown out more than 82m Covid vaccine doses

The United States has thrown out 82.1m Covid vaccine doses from December 2020 to the middle of last month, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control. That number of wasted vaccines accounts for more than 11 per cent of the doses distributed by the federal government during the pandemic, reports NBC News. Retail pharmacy chains CVS and Walmart were responsible for more than a quarter of the discarded doses in the US during the time period. This is a reflection of the volume of doses each company handled, said the report. The wasted vaccines were caused by a variety of factors, including doses that expired at pharmacies before they could be used, power cuts, broken freezer storage and open vials being thrown out at the end of business days unused. CVS wasted nearly 11.8m doses, or about 13 per cent of the 89.9m it received.
7th Jun 2022 - The Independent

Flu cases rise in Canada amid eased COVID-19 restrictions

The easing of public health restrictions that were aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 has lead to a surge in cases of another virus, experts say. Since the start of April, Canada has seen a sharp increase in cases of influenza, something not typically seen in the spring. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada's (PHAC) most recent FluWatch report, there were 1,580 laboratory-confirmed cases of the flu between May 22 and May 28. This is down from the peak of 2,121 flu cases seen during the week of May 8 to 14, but PHAC warns that the number of flu cases "remains above the epidemic threshold." Last year, the period between May 23 and June 19 saw just one laboratory-confirmed flu case. Prior to the pandemic, a five-week period in May and June 2019 saw 864 laboratory-confirmed cases, an average of 172.8 cases per week.
7th Jun 2022 - CTV News

Universal Beijing Resort to reopen on June 15 as COVID curbs ease

The Universal Beijing Resort said on Tuesday it will reopen on June 15 after being closed more than a month to comply with China's COVID-19 prevention measures, but it will cap the number of visitors at no more than 75% of capacity. The resort, which includes a retail district, two hotels and the Universal Studios theme park, was shut on May 1. After it reopens, all visitors must show a negative PCR test taken within the past 72 hours and wear masks at all times, in line with city-wide measures. The resort will also test its employees daily and carry out regular disinfection, it added.
7th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Japan to open to tourists after COVID, with masks, insurance and chaperones required

Foreign tourists visiting Japan will be required to wear masks, take out private medical insurance and be chaperoned throughout their stay, the government said on Tuesday, as it plans a gradual opening from two years of COVID-19 restrictions. Only visitors on package tours will be allowed in during the first phase of reopening, from June 10, the Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) said, adding that travel agency guides accompanying visitors will have to ensure they wear their masks. "Tour guides should frequently remind tour participants of necessary infection prevention measures, including wearing and removing masks, at each stage of the tour," the JTA said in its guidelines.
7th Jun 2022 - Reuters

U.S. Open called off due to COVID-related organisational complications

The Badminton World Federation (BWF) said on Tuesday this year's U.S. Open has been cancelled due to organisational complications caused by COVID-19. The U.S. Open, a Super 300 tournament on the BWF World Tour, was due to take place from Oct. 4-9. "USA Badminton concluded that it was no longer feasible for them to host their tournament this year due to organisational complications coming out of COVID-19," badminton's governing body said in a statement. This is the third straight edition of the tournament to have been cancelled due to COVID-19.
7th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Long Covid patients face lottery over treatment

Patients with long Covid are facing a postcode lottery across the UK when it comes to getting care, nurses say. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said treatment varied hugely with some services treating it as a physical condition, but others as psychological. The union also highlighted long waits in parts of England, which has a network of specialist clinics. It warned that patients in Scotland and Wales may be missing out because of a lack of dedicated clinics. But officials there say patients are getting support via core NHS services.
7th Jun 2022 - BBC News

Care for 2m Britons with long Covid ‘woefully inadequate’, say top nurses

NHS services for the 2 million Britons struggling with long Covid are “woefully inadequate” given how many people are being diagnosed with the condition, nurses’ leaders have warned. There are too few specialist clinics to handle the soaring demand for treatment, with only a tiny number of sufferers receiving any help, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said. The Office for National Statistics estimated last week that the number of people in the UK suffering with continuing symptoms of Covid such as fatigue, muscle pain and breathing problems has doubled in a year from 1 million in May 2021 to 2 million last month.
7th Jun 2022 - The Guardian

Washington hospitals again strained by COVID-19 spread

Hospital officials in Washington are warning that facilities are heading toward another COVID-19 case peak amid high spread in the community. Washington State Hospital Association CEO Cassie Sauer on Monday said at the end of last week, almost 600 people with COVID-19 were in hospitals across the state with about 20-25 patients a day on ventilators, The News Tribune reported. That compares with an average of around 230 hospitalized cases in the daily census in April and 1,700 in February during the Omicron wave. In response to the rising hospitalizations, officials on a media briefing call Monday implored people to wear high-quality masks indoors in crowded, public spaces, and to get COVID-19 booster shots on top of vaccinations.
7th Jun 2022 - The Associated Press

COVID amid food insecurity: A perfect storm is brewing in N Korea

On May 12, North Korea reported the country’s first COVID outbreak, a significant public admission after two and a half years of stringent lockdowns and border closures. Since then, the country has seen its infection rates soar with over two million cases of “fever” recorded. North Korea has remained unyielding in its stance towards foreign aid, declining COVAX (the global vaccine sharing scheme) and providing no response to the offer of medicines and vaccines from South Korea. While its leader, Kim Jong Un, has declared that the virus is under control, the true scale of North Korea’s cases remains unclear.
6th Jun 2022 - Al Jazeera English

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Covid-19: Hong Kong steps up checks on bars and restaurants as cases linked to nightlife area rise

Hong Kong has seen an uptick in Covid-19 infections amid the recent easing of social distancing rules, with clusters linked to a number of bars in Central. In the seven-day period from last Monday to Sunday, authorities confirmed an average of 153 positive nucleic acid tests per day, up from 103.9 the week before.
6th Jun 2022 - Hong Kong Free Press

Beijing Cautiously Reopens After Covid-19 Wave

China’s capital took tentative steps toward reopening on Monday as much of Beijing lifted restrictions on dining in restaurants and many workers returned to their offices. But new flare-ups of Covid-19 clusters around the country and fresh lockdowns in parts of Shanghai continued to pose major risks for China’s economy. For more than a month, Beijing health authorities imposed increasingly stringent measures on the city’s businesses and residents’ personal movements in a bid to stamp out the Chinese capital’s worst Covid-19 outbreak since the early days of the pandemic. City officials say those efforts are working as new daily infections have dipped to around a dozen cases or fewer in recent days, following weeks of mass testing of much of the city’s more than 20 million residents. By allowing restaurants, gyms and other businesses to reopen, Beijing authorities are signaling that they believe they have managed to control the latest outbreak without having to resort to the sorts of harsh lockdown measures experienced recently in Shanghai and elsewhere.
6th Jun 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Beijing reopens restaurants as new COVID-19 cases drop

Diners returned to restaurants in most of Beijing for the first time in more than a month Monday as authorities further eased pandemic-related restrictions after largely eradicating a small COVID-19 outbreak in the capital under China's strict “zero-COVID” approach. Museums, cinemas and gyms were allowed to operate at up to 75% of capacity and delivery drivers could once again bring packages to a customer's door, rather than leave them to be picked up at the entrances to apartment compounds. The return to near-normal applied everywhere in Beijing except for one district and part of another, where the outbreak lingered. Schools, which partially reopened earlier, will fully do so on June 13, followed by kindergartens on June 20. Authorities conducted multiple rounds of mass testing and locked down buildings and complexes when infections were discovered to stamp out an outbreak that infected about 1,800 people over six weeks in a city of 22 million. The number of new cases dropped to six on Sunday. The ruling Communist Party remains wedded to a “zero-COVID” strategy that exacts an economic cost and inconveniences millions of people, even as many other countries adopt a more relaxed approach as vaccination rates rise and treatments become more widely available.
6th Jun 2022 - The Independent

Beijing to allow indoor dining, further easing COVID curbs

Beijing will further relax COVID-19 curbs by allowing indoor dining, as China's capital steadily returns to normal with inflections falling, state media said on Sunday. Beijing and the commercial hub Shanghai have been returning to normal in recent days after two months of painful lockdowns to crush outbreaks of the Omicron variant. Dine-in service in Beijing will resume on Monday, except for the Fengtai district and some parts of the Changping district, the Beijing Daily said. Restaurants and bars have been restricted to takeaway since early May. Normal work will resume and traffic bans will be lifted on Monday in most areas of Beijing, the newspaper reported. Employees in some areas have been required to work from home.
6th Jun 2022 - Investing.com

Turkey removes all Covid-related restrictions for Indian travellers

Turkey has relaxed all the conditions for travellers entering the country and is expecting to welcome the highest-ever number of Indian tourists this year, Turkiye Tourism Board said on Monday. Earlier, Indian travellers were required to submit either a vaccination certificate or an RT-PCR test report to visit Turkey, according to a statement. Now, Indian travellers no longer have to show proof of vaccination against coronavirus or proof of recovery from the disease or a negative RT-PCR test result, it added. With both Indigo and Turkish Airlines resuming direct international flights to Turkiye, the country is expecting to welcome the highest-ever number of Indian tourists this year, it said.
6th Jun 2022 - The Financial Express on MSN.com

U.S. aims to ramp up international tourism hit hard by COVID

The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday will unveil a new strategy aimed at boosting international tourism hit hard by COVID-19 and government travel restrictions by streamlining the entry process and promoting more diverse destinations. The "National Travel and Tourism Strategy" sets a goal of 90 million international visitors by 2027 who will spend an estimated $279 billion annually, topping pre-pandemic levels, the department told Reuters.
6th Jun 2022 - Reuters

XpresSpa and Ginkgo Bioworks Are Hunting For New Covid Variants at Airports

As the pandemic engulfed the world in March 2020, no one was thinking much about getting a manicure. So XpresSpa Group Inc., an airport chain that offers mani-pedis and massages to travelers, closed all 50 of its locations. To survive the next two years, it would have to pivot. It turned to the most obvious next market: Covid testing. Through a partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and synthetic biology firm Ginkgo Bioworks Inc., XpresSpa launched a surveillance operation to hunt for new and emerging Covid variants among international travelers. Over the last eight months, the trio has tested tens of thousands of passengers arriving from more than 15 countries around the globe
6th Jun 2022 - Bloomberg

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Beijing to allow indoor dining, further easing COVID curbs

Beijing will further relax COVID-19 curbs by allowing indoor dining, as China's capital steadily returns to normal with inflections falling, state media said on Sunday. Beijing and the commercial hub Shanghai have been returning to normal in recent days after two months of painful lockdowns to crush outbreaks of the Omicron variant. Dine-in service in Beijing will resume on Monday, except for the Fengtai district and some parts of the Changping district, the Beijing Daily said. Restaurants and bars have been restricted to takeaway since early May.
5th Jun 2022 - Reuters

After Shanghai lockdown, many struggle to pick up the pieces

As many Shanghai residents rushed onto the streets this week to reunite with friends and pop champagne to celebrate the end of a two month-long lockdown, Li Menghua was busy packing up his hair salon, a casualty of the draconian quest to stamp out COVID-19. Li, 24, set up his salon three years ago after leaving home in Henan province to seek his fortune in China's largest and most prosperous city. "Our business was really good, always busy with customers. But because of the pandemic, a lot of shopfronts have to close," he said.
5th Jun 2022 - Reuters

Moderna delays COVID vaccine deliveries to EU by several months

Moderna Inc said on Thursday it has agreed to push back some COVID-19 vaccine deliveries to the European Union by several months to later in 2022 or early next year. Shares of Moderna fell nearly 2% before the bell over the delay, even though the company stuck to its vaccine sales forecast of $21 billion for 2022. Delivery of the doses were originally planned in the second quarter, the European Commission said in a statement.
3rd Jun 2022 - Reuters

S.Korea to lift quarantine requirement for non-vaccinated foreign arrivals

South Korea's prime minister on Friday said the country will lift its quarantine requirement for foreign arrivals without vaccination from June 8 and also start lifting aviation regulations imposed for international flights. However, the government will maintain the requirement of a negative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result prior to entry and a PCR test within 72 hours after arrival.
3rd Jun 2022 - Reuters

UAE achieves 100% COVID vaccination target -state news agency

The United Arab Emirates has vaccinated all those who must be vaccinated against COVID-19 in the oil-rich Gulf Arab state, state news agency WAM reported on Thursday. The UAE "announces that 100% of the targeted categories have been vaccinated," it said.
3rd Jun 2022 - Reuters

When Will This COVID Wave End?

In mid-March, I began to notice a theme within my social circle in New York, where I live: COVID—it finally got me! At that point, I didn’t think much of it. Only a few of my friends seemed to be affected, and case counts were still pretty low, all things considered. By April, images of rapid tests bearing the dreaded double bars were popping up all over my Instagram feed. Because cases had been rising slowly but steadily, I dismissed the trend to the back of my mind. Its presence nagged quietly throughout May, when I attended a party at a crowded hotel and hurled myself into a raging mosh pit. As I emerged, sweating, cases were still creeping upward. Only last week, more than two months later, did cases finally stop rising in New York—but they’ve plateaued more than they’ve fallen back to Earth. If you simply look at the case counts, this surge is not even in the same stratosphere as the peak of Omicron during the winter, but our current numbers are certainly a massive undercount now that rapid tests are everywhere. The same sort of drawn-out wave has unfolded across the Northeast in recent months, and frankly, it’s a little weird: The biggest waves that have struck the region have been tsunamis of infections that come and go, as opposed to the rising tide we’re seeing now. Other parts of the country currently seem poised to follow the Northeast. In the past two weeks, cases have noticeably increased in states such as Arizona, South Carolina, and West Virginia; California’s daily average case count has risen 36 percent. In April, I called the coronavirus’s latest turn an “invisible wave.” Now I’m starting to think of it as the “When will it end?” wave.
3rd Jun 2022 - The Atlantic

WHO says COVID in N.Korea likely 'getting worse, not better'

The World Health Organization has cast doubts on North Korea's claims of progress in the fight against a COVID-19 outbreak, saying it believes the situation is getting worse, not better, amid an absence of independent data. North Korean state media has said the COVID wave has abated, after daily numbers of people with fever topped 390,000 about two weeks ago. Pyongyang has never directly confirmed how many people have tested positive for the virus but experts suspect underreporting in the figures released through government-controlled media, making it difficult to assess the scale of the situation.
2nd Jun 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai Celebrates Reopening as Beijing's Zero-Covid Plan Stays in Place

Shanghai residents took selfies outside and toasted with champagne as the city emerged from a Covid-19 lockdown that lasted more than two months. But there are economic challenges ahead as China shows no signs of easing its zero-covid strategy.
1st Jun 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China Plans for Years of Covid Zero Strategy With Tests on Every Corner

After a bruising lockdown in Shanghai and severe curbs in Beijing were needed to halt the spread of Covid-19, China is doubling down on mass-testing in a move that’s dashing hopes for a shift away from its costly Covid Zero strategy. A network of tens of thousands of lab testing booths are being set up across the country’s largest and most economically vital cities, with the goal of having residents always just a 15 minute walk away from a swabbing point. The infrastructure will allow cities like Beijing, Shanghai, tech hub Shenzhen and e-commerce heartland Hangzhou to require tests as often as every 48 hours, with negative results needed to get on the subway or even enter a store.
31st May 2022 - Bloomberg

Japan to resume tourism in June; only packaged tour for now

Japan will open its borders to foreign tourists in June for the first time since imposing tight pandemic travel restrictions about two years ago, but only for package tours for now
26th May 2022 - The Independent

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Cuba lifts mask mandate as vaccination rate soars and deaths plummet

Cuba on Tuesday lifted a mask mandate in place for two years following a successful vaccination drive that health officials say has contributed to a sharp drop in cases and nearly three weeks without a single death from COVID-19. The island, whose communist government has long sought to stand out by providing a free healthcare system that focuses on preventative treatment such as vaccinations, developed its own COVID vaccines and became the first country in the world to begin the mass vaccination of kids as young as age 2. rge Luis Banos/Pool via REUTERS HAVANA, May 31 (Reuters) - Cuba on Tuesday lifted a mask mandate in place for two years following a successful vaccination drive that health officials say has contributed to a sharp drop in cases and nearly three weeks without a single death from COVID-19. The island, whose communist government has long sought to stand out by providing a free healthcare system that focuses on preventative treatment such as vaccinations, developed its own COVID vaccines and became the first country in the world to begin the mass vaccination of kids as young as age 2. Cuba has since vaccinated 94% of its population with at least one dose of its home-grown vaccines, according to a Reuters tally. Health minister José Ángel Portal said the wide-ranging vaccination program had led to a "radical change" in contagion and health risks and prompted the decision to do away with masks in most scenarios.
1st Jun 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai Unveils 50-Point Plan to Return to Normalcy

Banks will be asked to renew SME loans; asset managers are asked to set up global or regional investment management centres in Shanghai. Shanghai has unveiled a comprehensive 50-point plan to reopen the city and its economy in stages, with the goal of restoring normalcy to business and daily life following the two-month-long lockdown. Last week, Premier Li Keqiang called for efforts to be made to stabilise the economy and restore investor confidence. New Covid-19 cases in Shanghai have also fallen fell to their lowest levels since mid-March. The 50-point plan to reopen the city covers measures to help enterprises reduce their operating costs, incentives to prevent job losses, and broader reopening measures. Companies will no longer need to be on a “whitelist” to resume production starting from 1 June. Under the existing whitelist system, about 6,000 companies are allowed to resume production provided they adhere to certain pandemic prevention guidelines.
31st May 2022 - Regulation Asia

After Ontario's COVID-19 school closures, a responsive recovery plan is critical

Three years into the pandemic, it’s clear that Canada’s provinces have been hampered by a lack of a comparative cross-Canada analysis of school closures and the effects on students. What we do know about the disruptive impact of school closures on Ontario and other provinces comes largely from a June 2021 Ontario Science Table study documenting the extent of school closures from province-to-province.
31st May 2022 - The Conversation

As UK Covid cases fall to lowest level for a year, what could the future look like?

After enduring record-breaking levels of Covid in the past six months, Britain has seen cases fall to their lowest for a year. But as the country eases back into a life more normal, will the disease remain in the background – or is another resurgence on its way? Science editor Ian Sample explains how the virus is changing – and why one expert thinks infection rates “are not going to get down to very low numbers again in our lifetimes”.
31st May 2022 - The Guardian

Israel to cancel quarantine for coronavirus patients?

Professor Salman Zarka, Israel's coronavirus czar, estimates that quarantine for coronavirus-positive individuals will be canceled. Speaking to reporters, Prof. Zarka estimated that in the middle of June, those testing positive for COVID-19 will no longer need to quarantine. Though both the infection coefficient and the percent positive have held relatively steady since mid-April, Prof. Zarka also claimed that the fifth wave of the virus is continuing to slow down
31st May 2022 - Arutz Sheva

Italy Scraps COVID-19 Entry Rules For Travellers As Cases Drop

Italy said it was dropping the requirement to show proof of coronavirus vaccination, recent recovery or a negative test before entering the country. The health ministry announced that the requirement to show a so-called "Green Pass" to enter Italy "will not be extended" when it expires on May 31. Italy was the first European country hit by coronavirus in early 2020 and has had some of the toughest restrictions, including requiring all workers to show a Green Pass.
31st May 2022 - NDTV

Shanghai starts to dismantle fences as Covid lockdown due to end

Shanghai authorities have begun dismantling fences around housing compounds and ripping police tape off public squares and buildings, to the relief of the city’s 25 million residents, before a painful two-month lockdown is lifted at midnight. On Monday evening, some of the people allowed out of their compounds for brief walks took advantage of suspended traffic to congregate for a beer and ice cream on deserted streets, but there was a sense of wariness and anxiety among residents.
31st May 2022 - The Guardian

South Africa Had Fifth Covid Wave Despite 97% Antibody Protection

South Africa experienced a fifth wave of Covid-19 infections despite 97% of the population having antibodies due to previous infections or vaccination, the results of a blood survey show. Examination of 3,395 samples from blood donors earlier this year, at the tail end of the fourth wave of infections, showed that 87% of South Africans had previously been infected with the virus, while just over 97% had either had a previous infection or a vaccination or both. The study was lead by Stellenbosch University’s DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Epidemiological Modeling and Analysis and the South African National Blood Service.
30th May 2022 - Bloomberg

China's Covid Outbreak Wanes as Curbs Eased to Boost Economy

China reported the fewest new Covid-19 cases in almost three months, with the easing of outbreaks in Beijing and Shanghai emboldening authorities to relax some of the strictest virus controls of the pandemic and move to stimulate the country’s faltering economy. Shanghai will lift lockdown measures for residents in low-risk areas, allowing them to leave and enter their compounds freely starting from Wednesday, according to a statement from the municipal government on Monday. The city will resume taxi and ride hailing services while allowing cars on the road in low-risk areas. Cases in the financial hub fell to 67 for Sunday from 122 on Saturday with bus and subway services to reopen in an orderly manner from June 1.
29th May 2022 - Bloomberg

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Wary of foreign 'bad manners', Japan cautiously eases borders to aid tourism

Japan's easing of a two-year ban on foreign tourists seeks to balance the enormous economic importance of tourism with concerns that travellers would trigger a COVID outbreak, insiders say. Under the decision, Japan will allow in a limited number of foreign tourists on package tours starting June 10. Last week a few "test tours", mainly of overseas travel agents, started to arrive. Relaxing some of the world's strictest pandemic border measures required months of pressure from travel and tourism executives, three insiders told Reuters, describing both the government's fears of public backlash if infections spiked and the industry's concerns of an economic wipeout.
30th May 2022 - Reuters

India to provide scholarships, counselling to those orphaned by COVID-19

India's federal government will provide educational scholarships, mental health counselling and health insurance to children who have been orphaned by the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday. "For those who have lost a loved one to coronavirus, the change it has brought to their lives is so difficult," Modi said during an online event as he announced government benefits for minor children who have lost both parents to COVID-19.
30th May 2022 - Reuters

N.Korea lifts COVID lockdown amid 'stable' virus situation -media

North Korea has lifted movement restrictions imposed in the capital Pyongyang after its first admission of COVID-19 outbreak weeks ago, media reported, as the isolated country says the virus situation is now under control. The North has been in a heated battle against an unprecedented COVID wave since declaring a state of emergency and imposing a nationwide lockdown this month, fuelling concerns about a lack of vaccines, medical supplies and food shortages.
30th May 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai declares lockdown end from June 1 after two months

Shanghai on Monday announced an end to its two-month long COVID-19 lockdown, allowing the vast majority of people in China's largest city to leave their homes and drive their cars from Wednesday. The news brought an outpouring of relief, joy and some wariness from exhausted residents. "I'm so emotional that I'm going to cry," said one Weibo user. Most of the city's 25 million residents have been confined to their homes for almost all of the lockdown which began on April 1, with curbs only slightly relaxing in recent weeks to allow some to go out for short periods of time.
30th May 2022 - Reuters

Beijing reports 16 new symptomatic COVID cases for May 30, 2 asymptomatic cases

Article reports that China's capital Beijing reported 16 new domestically transmitted symptomatic coronavirus cases for May 30, up from eight a day earlier, the city government said on Tuesday. Local asymptomatic cases fell to two from four from the previous day, it said.
30th May 2022 - Reuters

CDC Plans to Stop Reporting Suspected Covid Cases to Ease Burden

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to simplify the Covid-19 hospital data it collects as the demands of the pandemic evolve and some assembled information has become outdated or redundant. The agency is likely to stop collecting data from hospitals on suspected Covid cases that haven’t been confirmed by tests, for example, and may also wind down federal reporting from rehabilitation and mental health facilities that aren’t major intake points for virus cases, according to a draft of the plan that was viewed by Bloomberg News.
30th May 2022 - Bloomberg

Paxlovid Becomes Household Name for Covid-19 Patients

Pfizer’s antiviral drug, called Paxlovid, totaled more than 412,000 prescriptions through May 6, compared with about 110,000 prescriptions of molnupiravir, an antiviral from Merck & Co. and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP, according to drug-data firm Iqvia Holdings Inc. Both pills were cleared for use in high-risk individuals early in the course of their disease in December by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to keep people from becoming hospitalized.
30th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Archbishop of Canterbury tests positive for Covid and will miss jubilee service

The archbishop of Canterbury will miss the service of thanksgiving for the Queen’s reign this week after being diagnosed with pneumonia and testing positive for Covid. Justin Welby had been due to preach at St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday. Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, will take his place. Welby, 66, was diagnosed with mild pneumonia last Thursday. On medical advice, he reduced his work schedule to allow for rest and recovery. After developing symptoms over the weekend, he tested positive for Covid on Monday.
30th May 2022 - The Guardian

Launch of Scenario Hub projecting future COVID-19 health impact

A new online modelling hub launched today, the European COVID-19 Scenario Hub, will present modelling projections on how the COVID-19 pandemic may evolve in terms of cases, hospitalisations and deaths. It will serve as a resource for Member States in their pandemic planning and inform decisions aimed at minimising the expected burden caused by COVID-19 under different scenarios. The hub is developed and run by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in co-operation with the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases (CMMID) at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). “The Scenario Hub will help inform public health preparedness and anticipatory action as Europe transitions into new phases of the pandemic” said Andrea Ammon, ECDC Director. “It will also play a key role in supporting ECDC's risk analysis, assessment of public health advice and strategic planning.”
30th May 2022 - European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)

N. Korea moves to soften curbs amid doubts over COVID counts

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and other top officials discussed revising stringent anti-epidemic restrictions during a meeting Sunday, state media reported, as they maintained a widely disputed claim that the country’s first COVID-19 outbreak is slowing. The discussion at the North’s Politburo meeting suggests it will soon relax a set of draconian curbs imposed after its admission of the omicron outbreak this month out of concern about its food and economic situations. Kim and other Politburo members “made a positive evaluation of the pandemic situation being controlled and improved across the country,” the official Korean Central News Agency said.
29th May 2022 - Reuters

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Testing Positive in Zero-Covid China

Millions of people around the world have had Covid-19 in the last two years. I’m one of a small number of Americans to have had it in zero-Covid China, and with it a taste of a public-health approach that has, over the past two years, locked down large swaths of the world’s most populous nation for weeks and even months at a time. I tested positive 19 hours after arriving in Beijing on Feb. 4 to cover figure skating at the 2022 Olympic Games. Under U.S. protocols I would simply have secluded myself in my hotel room. In China, after five days of resistance, I was marched by two strangers into an elevator whose floor was slick with sanitizer, through a lobby cordoned off with yellow police tape, and into an ambulance that would take me to an isolation facility for open-ended detention.
29th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Beijing Says Outbreak Under Control as City Eases Movement Curbs

China’s capital Beijing will loosen mobility curbs in several districts from Sunday after authorities said its outbreak is under control, while total case numbers in the financial hub of Shanghai continued to decline. Most public transportation services including buses, subways and taxis will resume in three districts including Chaoyang, according to Xu Hejian, a spokesman for the Beijing city government. Shopping centers outside of controlled areas in the city will also be allowed to reopen with capacity limits on the number of people. Chaoyang is home to Beijing’s central business district, most foreign embassies and expatriates.
29th May 2022 - Bloomberg

Shanghai edges towards COVID reopening as Beijing plans to ease curbs

The Chinese metropolis of Shanghai inched further towards a gradual reopening from two months of grinding COVID-19 lockdown, while officials in Beijing prepared to ease curbs in parts of the capital,
29th May 2022 - Reuters

U.S. doctors reconsider Pfizer's Paxlovid for lower-risk COVID patients

Use of Pfizer Inc's Covid-19 antiviral Paxlovid spiked this week, but some doctors are reconsidering the pills for lower-risk patients after a U.S. public health agency warned that symptoms can recur after people complete a course of the drug, and that they should then isolate a second time. More quarantine time "is not a crowd-pleaser," Dr. Sandra Kemmerly, an infectious disease specialist at Ochsner Health in New Orleans, told Reuters. "For those people who really aren't at risk ... I would recommend that they not take it."
29th May 2022 - Reuters

Swiss to destroy more than 620000 expired Moderna COVID doses

Switzerland will destroy more than 620,000 expired doses of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine, health officials said on Friday, as demand for the shots drops dramatically. "It was consciously accepted that under certain circumstances too much vaccine was procured for Switzerland's needs," a spokesperson for the Federal Office of Public Heath said, confirming a report by broadcaster RTS. "The aim is to protect the population in Switzerland at all times with sufficient quantities of the most effective vaccines available."
28th May 2022 - Reuters

Beijing to relax COVID curbs in some areas from Sunday

Beijing will ease curbs in some low-risk areas of the Chinese capital on Sunday to allow a return to normal life, city officials said on Saturday. Fangshan and Shunyi districts can shift from work-from-home to normal mode, the officials told a news conference. Public transportation including busses, taxis and subway will resume service in three districts, and shopping malls will be allowed be reopen in some areas.
28th May 2022 - Reuters

Modelling predicts Western Australia's COVID-19 cases will keep falling as state enters home stretch of Omicron outbreak

Western Australia has officially recorded more than 700,000 COVID-19 cases in the past five months. But modelling by the Telethon Kids Institute and Curtin University suggests the true figure might be closer to 850,000 due to asymptomatic cases and some people who failed to get tested or report their results.
28th May 2022 - ABC News

Cyprus gets rid of required COVID-19 tests for visitors

Travelers to Cyprus will no longer be required to show either a valid COVID-19 vaccination or a recovery certificate and won’t need to produce a negative recent COVID-19 test of June 1, the Cypriot government said Friday. The government also decided to abolish a requirement to wear face masks in all indoor areas in Cyprus as of June 1 with the exception of hospitals, nursing homes and other indoor medical facilities. Transport Minister Yiannis Karousos said the decision to lift COVID-19 screening requirements at airports signals the tourism-reliant island nation is ready to return to normality.
28th May 2022 - The Associated Press

Moderna aims to provide Omicron vaccine in Japan in autumn

A senior Moderna official says the US pharmaceutical company aims to provide a coronavirus vaccine for the Omicron variant as early as this autumn in Japan using the country's new emergency approval system. Paul Burton, chief medical officer at Moderna, had an exclusive interview with NHK in Tokyo on Thursday. He said his company is developing a vaccine that works for the Omicron variant and other strains that have been detected earlier. He said Moderna should have data on the new vaccine "in the next couple of weeks." He said he thinks "it is going to provide strong, long-lasting protection even against Omicron."
27th May 2022 - NHK WORLD

China's industrial profits slump in April as COVID curbs squeeze firms

Profits at China's industrial firms fell at their fastest pace in two years in April as high raw material prices and supply chain chaos caused by COVID-19 curbs squeezed margins and disrupted factory activity. Profits shrank 8.5% from a year earlier, swinging from a 12.2% gain in March, according to Reuters' calculations based on National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data released on Friday. The slump is the biggest since March 2020.
27th May 2022 - Reuters

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COVID-19: Wales set to lift final remaining coronavirus restrictions

The final remaining COVID restrictions are expected to be lifted in Wales, the government has said. Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford will announce the update on Friday, with the restrictions to be removed from Monday, 30 May. Wales moved to alert level 0 in January and the majority of measures were removed in March. But there are still some remaining: • Face coverings are legally required in health and care settings (but nowhere else) • Workplaces and premises open to the public must continue to carry out coronavirus work assessments • If you have COVID symptoms you must take a lateral flow test
27th May 2022 - Sky News

Global firms warn of sluggish China demand due to lengthy COVID curbs

Two months into harsh COVID-19 lockdowns that have choked global supply chains, China's economy is staggering back to its feet, but businesses from retailers to chipmakers are warning of slow sales as consumers in the country slam the brakes on spending.
27th May 2022 - Reuters on MSN.com

Hospitals are exploring a way to pay for uninsured Covid-19 care

The federal health department shut down a program that paid hospitals and clinics for caring for uninsured Covid-19 patients, but some hospitals are now eyeing a backdoor option to get those costs paid for. Throughout much of the pandemic, the costs of testing, vaccinating, and treating uninsured patients were mostly funneled to a multi-billion-dollar program run by the Health Resources and Services Administration, but that program ran out of money and shut down in April. The program paid out more than $1 billion per month, which means its closure was a big hit for some facilities that serve large numbers of uninsured patients.
26th May 2022 - STAT News

Analysis: Britain's shrunken workforce hampers COVID recovery

Britain's economy regained its pre-COVID size late last year, but in one crucial way it has not recovered: there are 400,000 fewer workers than at the start of the pandemic.
26th May 2022 - Reuters

New Study Shows Vaccination Reduces Long Covid Risk, but Modestly

Vaccination reduces your risk of developing long Covid, but not by much on average, new research suggests. A Veterans Affairs study out Wednesday found that vaccinated people with breakthrough Covid-19 infections had a 15% reduction in experiencing persistent or new symptoms and health conditions up to six months after infection compared with those who were unvaccinated and got Covid.
26th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Breakthrough infections may be less contagious; vaccine protection wanes faster in cancer patients

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. Breakthrough infections may be less contagious Fully vaccinated individuals who get infected with the coronavirus spread the infection to fewer people and are contagious for less time compared to people who are partially vaccinated or unvaccinated, a small study from South Korea suggests. In 173 hospital workers with COVID-19, including 50 who had breakthrough infections, researchers found that the virus had been transmitted to others in the hospital by 7% of the vaccinated group compared with 26% of the unvaccinated, even though the two groups had similar viral loads when diagnosed. In a separate group of 45 people with mild COVID-19 who were being quarantined, the researchers observed shedding of infectious virus particles for four days in the six people who had been fully vaccinated, 8 days in the 11 partially vaccinated people, and 10 days in the 28 unvaccinated people.
26th May 2022 - Reuters

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China’s Top Two Leaders Diverge in Messaging on Covid Impact

When China’s top two leaders sought to reassure foreign executives increasingly frustrated over the country’s stringent Covid-control measures last week, Chinese leadership seemed to be speaking with two voices. On May 18, President Xi Jinping spoke by video about economic challenges the world faces as a result of the pandemic but made little mention of China’s own economic downturn—which has been exacerbated by the costs of China’s stringent measures to combat Covid outbreaks. A day later, in an in-person meeting, Premier Li Keqiang struck a more candid and conciliatory tone, focusing his remarks largely on China’s own issues. Speaking to a group of senior representatives for American, European and Asian multinationals operating in China, Mr. Li said China is “committed to striking a balance” between reviving the economy and containing repeated Covid-19 outbreaks, said people who attended the meeting with Mr. Li, held at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing.
26th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Employers more open to part-time working post-Covid-19, report finds

The furlough scheme brought in by the Government during the Covid-19 pandemic did not just save millions of people from unemployment and economic hardship, but may have had a lasting effect on the ways in which their employers allow them to work in the future, according to a new report out today (25 May). Introduced in March 2020, and further modified in July that year to allow for a part-time furlough option, the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) enabled organisations to reclaim up to 80% of the wage costs of employees that could not work during the pandemic. Successful in avoiding mass redundancies during a time of crisis, new research from Cranfield School of Management and the CBI has found the scheme may also have ongoing benefits, by increasing employer openness to and knowledge of how to facilitate part-time working.
25th May 2022 - Cranfield University

Pfizer warns of 'constant waves' of Covid as complacency grows

Growing complacency about Covid-19 and politicisation of the pandemic response will cost lives as the world is hit by new waves of the virus in the coming months, Pfizer’s chief executive has warned. Albert Bourla said people were growing “tired” of the measures introduced to slow the spread of the virus, while “politicians want to claim victory”. Compliance with authorities’ requests for people to get booster shots would fall even among those who are already vaccinated, he predicted.
25th May 2022 - Financial Times

French health body backs new COVID vaccine booster campaign for this autumn

France's Haute Autorite de Sante (HAS) health authority recommended preparing for a new vaccination campaign this autumn to give people aged 65 and older, and those with special health risks or conditions, access to a COVID-19 "booster" jab. The French government typically follows the recommendations of the country's health authority body.
25th May 2022 - Reuters

Germany eases COVID-19 entry rules from June 1 -Funke

Germany's Health Ministry will ease COVID-19 entry rules for travellers from June 1, suspending a requirement for vaccination, recovery from the virus or a negative test, Funke media group reported on Wednesday, citing the health minister. "We will suspend the 3G rule on entry until the end of August," Health Minister Karl Lauterbach was quoted as saying. The new regulations still need to pass the Cabinet on Wednesday and will recognise all COVID-19 vaccines that are approved by the World Health Organisation even if not approved by the European Union, Funke reported.
25th May 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer to offer low-cost medicines, vaccines to poor nations

Pfizer said Wednesday that it will provide nearly two dozen products, including its top-selling COVID-19 vaccine and treatment, at not-for-profit prices in some of the world’s poorest countries. The drugmaker announced the program at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, and said it was aimed at improving health equity in 45 lower-income countries. Most of the countries are in Africa, but the list also includes Haiti, Syria, Cambodia and North Korea. The products, which are widely available in the U.S. and the European Union, include 23 medicines and vaccines that treat infectious diseases, some cancers and rare and inflammatory conditions
25th May 2022 - The Associated Press

Manhattan return-to-office plans face persistent headwinds over COVID, safety

Efforts by financial firms and others to bring workers back to Manhattan offices more than two years after the start of the coronavirus pandemic face persistent headwinds, consultants said, with commuters still worrying about COVID-19 as well as safety. New York has lagged others major markets in the percentage of employees regularly working in the office, in part because of high usage rates of public transportation and COVID concerns, said David Lewis, chief executive of HR consultant firm OperationsInc, which works with several firms in the financial sector.
24th May 2022 - Reuters

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Covid-19 Vaccine and Drug Sales, Once Booming, Plateau

The gold rush for drugmakers making Covid-19 vaccines and treatments might be over, as demand plateaus, supplies turn ample and the pandemic evolves. Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson are among the companies cutting sales expectations for pandemic products this year as they assess the outlook. Analysts, meantime, are lowering sales estimates for Covid-19 drugs such as Pfizer Inc.’s antiviral Paxlovid, citing softening demand and few new supply deals. The situation marks a new phase in the pandemic, according to analysts, one without the record sales that certain companies such as Pfizer and Moderna Inc. notched just a few months ago.
25th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Retailer Selloff Leaves Covid Slump in the Dust as Rout Widens

The darkest days of the pandemic might be long gone, but for chain stores and other merchants, it’s March 2020 all over again. And it’s getting worse. A selloff in Target Corp. and Walmart Inc. shares has pushed the SPDR S&P Retail exchange-traded fund (ticker XRT) down 44% from its November record high, outpacing the fund’s 41% rout during the pandemic. The $484 million ETF’s 16% slump in May would be the second-worst month since 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Rising costs on everything from transportation to labor are eating into the profit margins of some of America’s best known retailers, stoking concerns over whether companies will be able to pass on the increased expenses to consumers.
25th May 2022 - Bloomberg

Beijing ramps up COVID quarantine, Shanghai residents decry uneven rules

Beijing stepped up quarantine efforts to end its month-old COVID outbreak as fresh signs of frustration emerged in Shanghai, where some bemoaned unfair curbs with the city of 25 million preparing to lift a prolonged lockdown in just over a week.
24th May 2022 - Reuters

61% of Americans Underestimate Their Odds of Contracting Long COVID-19

Two years into the pandemic, most people underestimate the prevalence of long COVID-19, according to a new survey from fintech leader Policygenius. More than half of Americans (61%) estimate that long COVID affects up to 20% of COVID-19 cases, when studies show that it actually affects 31% of North Americans who have contracted COVID-19.
24th May 2022 - Business Insider

Sweden: 5th COVID-19 shot to people over 65, pregnant women

Sweden is recommending a fifth COVID-19 vaccine dose for people with an increased risk of becoming seriously ill, including pregnant women and anyone aged 65 and over, authorities said Tuesday, adding that the country must "be prepared for an increased spread during the upcoming autumn and winter season.” “The vaccine is our strongest tool for preventing serious illness and death,” Swedish Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren said, adding the pandemic is not over. As of Sept. 1, Sweden recommends that another booster shot is given to people aged 65 and older and people over 18 in the risk groups.
24th May 2022 - ABC News

Why the Gym is Risky for COVID-19, and Tips for Keeping Safe

Now a new experiment has given us a more exact sense of just how many aerosols a single person can spew during an intense workout—and the results aren’t pretty. According to research by scientists in Germany published in PNAS on May 23, people emit about 132 times as many aerosols per minute during high intensity exercise than when they’re at rest, which the researchers warn raises the risk of a person infected with COVID-19 setting off a superspreader event. At rest, people emitted an average of 580 particles each minute, but during maximal exercise—in which researchers gradually increased intensity until the subjects were exhausted—people emitted an average of 76,200 particles a minute.
23rd May 2022 - TIME

Covid can cause ongoing damage to heart, lungs and kidneys, study finds

Damage to the body’s organs including the lungs and kidneys is common in people who were admitted to hospital with Covid, with one in eight found to have heart inflammation, researchers have revealed. As the pandemic evolved, it became clear that some people who had Covid were being left with ongoing symptoms – a condition that has been called long Covid. Previous studies have revealed that fewer than a third of patients who have ongoing Covid symptoms after being hospitalised with the disease feel fully recovered a year later, while some experts have warned long Covid could result in a generation affected by disability.
23rd May 2022 - The Guardian

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Indian vaccine giant Serum plans African plant in global expansion

"It's never been a better time to be a vaccine manufacturer. I'm looking at expanding our manufacturing across the globe," SII Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla said during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "There are some great countries out there: South Africa, Rwanda, you know, to name a few that we're looking at." Poonawalla said he was meeting some African officials in Davos to discuss his plans. Asked about possible investments, he said such projects typically required at least around $300 million.
24th May 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai reopens some public transport, still on high COVID alert

Shanghai reopened a small part of the world's longest subway system on Sunday after some lines had been closed for almost two months, as the city paves the way for a more complete lifting of its painful COVID-19 lockdown next week. With most residents not allowed to leave their homes and restrictions tightening in parts of China's most populous city, commuters early on Sunday needed strong reasons to travel.
23rd May 2022 - Reuters

Tesla plans to ramp up to pre-lockdown output in Shanghai by Tuesday

Tesla Inc plans to restore production at its Shanghai plant to the level at which it had operated before the city's COVID-19 lockdown by Tuesday, a day later than its most recent recovery plan, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. Tesla will more than double its daily output to 2,600 electric vehicles at its Shanghai plant from Tuesday, according to the memo detailing the plan. That compares to around 1,000 EVs produced on Monday, according to the memo, and would bring Tesla's weekly output to nearly 16,000 units, the memo showed.
23rd May 2022 - Reuters

N.Korea says virus situation 'under control'

North Korea said on Tuesday it was witnessing a "stable" downward trend in its first confirmed COVID-19 outbreak, reporting less than 200,000 new patients with fever symptoms for a third consecutive day on Tuesday. The COVID wave, declared on May 12, has fuelled concerns over a lack of vaccines, inadequate medical infrastructure and a potential food crisis in the country of 25 million. At least 134,510 people newly showed fever symptoms as of Monday evening, taking the total number of such cases to 2.95 million since late April, the official KCNA news agency reported. The death toll stood at 68.
23rd May 2022 - Reuters

BoE's COVID policy not to blame for inflation, Bailey says

Governor Andrew Bailey on Monday pushed back against his critics who blame the Bank of England for allowing inflation to accelerate to a 40-year high, saying the facts do not support this. The British central bank has been accused by lawmakers in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's ruling Conservative Party and even by former governor Mervyn King of being too slow to halt a rise in consumer prices that are up 9% compared with a year ago.
23rd May 2022 - Reuters

China Covid Lockdowns: Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai Rules Still Widespread

Beijing and Tianjin continue to ramp up Covid restrictions as cases climb, while reopening in Shanghai looks to be taking place in fits and starts, with most people still unable to move about freely. The emergence of the highly contagious omicron variant has spurred increasingly stringent pandemic curbs in China since March, in some cases snap lockdowns that carried heavy costs for the local population and economy. The pattern of transmission and restrictions across the country could offer insight into what regions may be vulnerable to disruption in the days ahead. Nationwide, overall cases are trending down. Of China’s top 50 cities by economic size, only Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai currently have widespread restrictions in place.
23rd May 2022 - Bloomberg

Oman ends all COVID protective measures

Oman announced on Sunday the lifting of all measures that had been taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19, in all venues and for all activities, state TV reported, citing a statement from the government committee dealing with the pandemic. There have been 389,943 infections and 4,260 coronavirus-related deaths reported in the sultanate since the pandemic began, according to Reuters data.
22nd May 2022 - Reuters

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Apple Looks to Boost Production Outside China

Apple Inc. has told some of its contract manufacturers that it wants to boost production outside China, citing Beijing’s strict anti-Covid policy among other reasons, people involved in the discussions said. India and Vietnam, already sites for a small portion of Apple’s global production, are among the countries getting a closer look from the company as alternatives to China, the people said.
22nd May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Switzerland buys Pfizer's COVID-19 antiviral Paxlovid

Switzerland signed a contract to buy Pfizer's anti-viral drug Paxlovid to treat Covid-19, it said on Friday. The European country said it had signed a contract to buy 12,000 packages and first treatments for certain at-risk patients would start this month.
21st May 2022 - Reuters

Senior, Nursing Homes Rocked By Covid Costs Struggle to Escape Closure

That’s a huge difference from the strongest financially performing nursing homes that saw up to 10% returns before the pandemic, said John Tishler, who specializes in transactions involving distressed and bankrupt health-care facilities at Nashville law firm Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis. The pandemic revealed and amplified long-existing shortcomings at the more than 15,000 nursing homes in the US, such as inadequate staffing, poor infection control and regulatory failures, according to an April report from the National Academy of Sciences. As of last month, more than 150,000 nursing home residents and 2,362 workers had died from Covid-19, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.
22nd May 2022 - Bloomberg

Beijing ramps up local COVID-19 lockdowns as Shanghai slowly starts to move again

Authorities in Beijing are ramping up COVID-19 restrictions, while some residents of Shanghai said they were able to leave their apartments on brief trips outside on Friday. Much of Chaoyang district in the eastern part of the Chinese capital was under lockdown on Friday, while 100 subway stations and 24 administrative districts in Fangshan district were locked down after 10 positive PCR tests among college students there. The Beijing municipal health commission reported 64 newly discovered local cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, of which 10 were students at the Beijing Institute of Technology's Fangshan campus. While the authorities haven't declared a lockdown, parts of the city are indeed in a locked-down state, a Fangshan resident surnamed Zhang told RFA.
21st May 2022 - Radio Free Asia

COVID-19 alert level in UK reduced - as Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 reclassified as variants of concern

The UK's coronavirus alert level has been reduced - as two rare types of Omicron have been reclassified as variants of concern. The level has moved from four to three after advice from the four nations' chief medical officers and the NHS England medical director. They said that "the current BA.2 driven Omicron wave is subsiding" and "direct COVID-19 healthcare pressures continue to decrease in all nations". Their statement added: "Whilst it is reasonable to expect the number of cases to increase due to BA.4, BA.5 or BA2.12.1, it is unlikely in the immediate future to lead to significant direct COVID pressures." The alert level was last raised on 12 December as Omicron spread rapidly.
21st May 2022 - Sky News

North Korea shuns outside help as COVID catastrophe looms

Like no other country, North Korea could do with help against COVID-19. The country’s population is unvaccinated and susceptible to disease due to chronic malnourishment. Its dilapidated healthcare system lacks supplies of basic drugs and equipment. But even as North Korea faces the prospect of a humanitarian catastrophe amid its first officially confirmed coronavirus outbreak, Pyongyang is steadfastly refusing offers of international assistance. The United States and South Korea have not received a response to offers to help tackle the outbreak, including by sending aid, according to South Korean officials. The World Health Organization, which is “deeply concerned at the risk of further spread”, said the country had not responded to requests for information about the outbreak.
21st May 2022 - Al Jazeera English

North Korea's Low Death Count Questioned Amid Covid-19 Outbreak

North Korea said Friday that nearly 10% of its 26 million people have fallen ill and 65 people have died amid its first COVID-19 outbreak, as outside experts question the validity of its reported fatalities and worry about a possible humanitarian crisis. After admitting the omicron outbreak last week following more than two years of claiming to be coronavirus-free, North Korea has said an unidentified fever has been explosively spreading across the country since late April. Its anti-epidemic center has since released fever tallies each morning via state media, but they don’t include any COVID-19 figures.
20th May 2022 - Bloomberg

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Tea and infomercials: N. Korea fights COVID with few tools

“North Koreans know so many people around the world have died because of COVID-19, so they have fear that some of them could die, too,” said Kang Mi-jin, a North Korean defector, citing her phone calls with contacts in the northern North Korean city of Hyesan. She said people who can afford it are buying traditional medicine to deal with their anxieties. Since admitting what it called its first domestic COVID-19 outbreak one week ago, North Korea has been fighting to handle a soaring health crisis that has intensified public anxiety over a virus it previously claimed to have kept at bay.
20th May 2022 - The Associated Press

Shanghai Finds First Covid Cases Outside Quarantine in Six Days

Shanghai found the first cases of Covid-19 outside of quarantine in six days, raising questions about whether the easing of the city’s lockdown will be impacted. Total infections in Shanghai rose to 858 on Thursday from 719 on Wednesday, with three of the cases found outside of government quarantine. Authorities started to ease the lockdown -- which had confined residents to their homes and curtailed business activity -- earlier this week after the city hit a milestone of three days of zero community transmission. However, many restrictions remain in place and swaths of the city’s population are still largely stuck inside their compounds.
20th May 2022 - Bloomberg

UK vaccine advisers eye autumn COVID boosters for over-65s

Britain's vaccine advisers on Thursday said that an anticipated autumn COVID booster campaign would be aimed at people aged over 65, care home residents, frontline health and social care workers and all adults in a clinical risk group. Britain is offering a spring booster to the over-75s, care home residents and immunosuppressed people, and ministers have spoken openly of plans for a further booster campaign in the autumn.
20th May 2022 - Reuters

White House warns the US can't buy updated Covid-19 vaccines 'for every American who wants one' without more funding

White House Covid-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha warned Wednesday that without more funding from Congress the US will not be able to buy enough Covid-19 vaccines for every American who wants an updated shot later this year. Scientists are working to develop new vaccines that would offer additional protection from infection and severe illness from new variants, including the possibility of a bivalent vaccine, a vaccine that would combine a currently approved vaccine with an Omicron-specific vaccine, for example. The US Food and Drug Administration could make a decision as soon as next month based on data from manufacturers Moderna and Pfizer for distribution in the fall.
19th May 2022 - CNN

Taiwan firms resuming production in China as COVID curbs ease -minister

Roughly half of Taiwanese companies that had previously suspended work in China due to COVID-19 control measures have resumed production as curbs ease, the island's economy minister said on Thursday. Shanghai and neighbouring Kunshan, a hub for Taiwanese electronics makers including Apple supplier Quanta Computer, last month imposed stringent lockdowns to control the country's biggest COVID outbreak.
19th May 2022 - Reuters

COVID vaccine patents not discussed at G7 health ministers meeting

The question of COVID-19 vaccine patents was not discussed at a meeting of the health ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) countries in Berlin, German Health Ministers Karl Lauterbach said on Thursday. "We haven't discussed the release of patents because the question hasn't come up yet, but that can definitely happen," Lauterbach told a joint news conference with German Development Minister Svenja Schulze.
19th May 2022 - Reuters

Germany’s top court OKs vaccine mandate for health workers

Germany’s top court said Thursday it has approved rules requiring health workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The Federal Constitutional Court announced that it had rejected complaints against the measure, arguing that the importance of protecting vulnerable people in hospitals and care homes outweighs any infringement of health workers’ rights. The limited mandate came into effect in mid-March. The constitutional court had previously refused to issue an injunction blocking its implementation while it reached a final decision. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach welcomed Thursday’s ruling, saying in a statement that “the state is obliged to protect vulnerable groups.”
19th May 2022 - Associated Press

Shanghai to reopen subways in easing of COVID lockdown

The locked-down Chinese metropolis of Shanghai will reopen four of its 20 subway lines Sunday as it slowly eases pandemic restrictions that have kept most residents in their housing complexes for more than six weeks. The city will also restart 273 bus lines connecting major urban centers, airports, train stations and hospitals as it resumes cross-district public transit, Yu Fulin, director of the Shanghai Transport Commission, said at a daily pandemic briefing Thursday.
19th May 2022 - Associated Press

N. Korea’s low death count questioned amid COVID-19 outbreak

North Korea said Friday that nearly 10% of its 26 million people have fallen ill and 65 people have died amid its first COVID-19 outbreak, as outside experts question the validity of its reported fatalities and worry about a possible humanitarian crisis.
19th May 2022 - The Associated Press

A third of US should be considering masks, officials say

COVID-19 cases are increasing in the United States — and could get even worse over the coming months, federal health officials warned Wednesday in urging areas hardest hit to consider reissuing calls for indoor masking. Increasing numbers of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are putting more of the country under guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that call for masking and other infection precautions. Right now, about a third of the U.S. population lives in areas that are considered at higher risk — mostly in the Northeast and Midwest. Those are areas where people should already be considering wearing masks indoors — but Americans elsewhere should also take notice, officials said.
18th May 2022 - Associated Press

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Doctors let down by Government during Covid-19 pandemic, says BMA

The Government “failed in its duty of care” to doctors during the coronavirus crisis, a union has said. The British Medical Association (BMA) launched a scathing attack on the ministerial response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The union, which has conducted its own review of the Government’s handling of the crisis, highlighted the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the early stages of the pandemic. It also pointed to the mental and physical exhaustion felt by most doctors as they cared for hundreds of thousands of patients with Covid – all while working in a “dystopian reality”, the union said.
19th May 2022 - The Independent

North Korea's suspected COVID-19 caseload nears 2 million

North Korea on Thursday reported 262,270 more cases of people with suspected symptoms of COVID-19 as its pandemic caseload neared 2 million — a week after the country acknowledged the outbreak and scrambled to slow the rate of infections despite a lack of health care resources. The country is also trying to prevent its fragile economy from deteriorating, but the outbreak could be worse than officially reported because of scarce resources for virus testing and the possibility that North Korea could be deliberately underreporting deaths to soften the political impact on authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea’s anti-virus headquarters reported a single death in the 24 hours to 6 p.m. Wednesday to bring its death toll to 63, which experts have said is abnormally small compared to the suspected number of infections.
19th May 2022 - The Associated Press

A third of US should be considering masks, officials say

COVID-19 cases are increasing in the United States — and could get even worse over the coming months, federal health officials warned Wednesday in urging areas hardest hit to consider reissuing calls for indoor masking. Increasing numbers of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are putting more of the country under guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that call for masking and other infection precautions. Right now, about a third of the U.S. population lives in areas that are considered at higher risk — mostly in the Northeast and Midwest. Those are areas where people should already be considering wearing masks indoors — but Americans elsewhere should also take notice, officials said.
19th May 2022 - The Associated Press

Other People Are Working Through Covid. Do You Have To?

As the disease and corporate sick policies evolve, a number of factors have made it less clear-cut when workers can, or should, take a break to recover. Employers such as Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. have recently cut back the expanded sick leaves they introduced in the early days of the pandemic. The Omicron variant’s often milder symptoms are also prompting many employees with remote-work options to simply power through their illness from home. As cases rise in places with high vaccination rates, many say they feel the same pressure to minimize sick days as they did in prepandemic times. A survey of 3,600 hourly workers by The Shift Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School this spring found that two-thirds of those who reported getting sick with Covid-19 or otherwise worked through their illness. People cited financial responsibilities as the top reason, followed by being afraid they would get in trouble for calling in sick and not being able to get their shifts covered.
19th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Latest Covid-19 Wave Expands to More of U.S.

The latest Covid-19 case surge is expanding beyond the Northeast, with places from the Midwest to Florida and California under rising pressure. Fueled by highly contagious versions of the Omicron variant, the tide is posing a test of how much new infections matter in a changing pandemic. Though built-up immunity in the population has kept more people out of hospitals, federal health officials on Wednesday urged people in hot spots to take precautions, from booster shots to pre-gathering tests and masks, to limit the virus’ spread. “We’ve got to do what we can to prevent infections,” said Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator. “We’ve got to do what we can to ensure that infections don’t turn into severe illness.”
19th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

N.Korea boosts production of drugs, medical supplies to battle COVID

North Korea is ramping up production of drugs and medical supplies including sterilisers and thermometers as it battles an unprecedented coronavirus outbreak, state media KCNA said on Thursday. The isolated country, which has imposed a nationwide lockdown, is also increasing production of traditional Korean medicines used to reduce fever and pain, KCNA said, calling them "effective in prevention and cure of the malicious disease."
19th May 2022 - Reuters

Germany OKs more COVID-19 vaccine spending for this fall

Germany plans to spend another 830 million euros ($872 million) to buy new coronavirus vaccines that will allow the country to deal with a series of possible variants this fall, the health minister said Wednesday. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said that the government, via the European Union, already has ordered enough of the existing vaccines and of one that has been developed by Germany’s BioNTech to counter the omicron variant. He said the new funding is earmarked for a vaccine being developed by Moderna to tackle both omicron and other variants. “We are betting on a broad portfolio of vaccines; we must be prepared for all eventualities,” Lauterbach said. “We don't know what variants will confront us in the fall.” “One lesson from the pandemic is that we never again want to have too little vaccine,” he added, alluding to the sluggish start early last year of the EU's and Germany's COVID-19 vaccination campaign. “We want to be able to offer all those who need or want it a fourth shot.”
18th May 2022 - The Independent

Covid-19 wastewater surveillance is promising tool, but critical challenges remain

Covid-19 surveillance is at a crossroads in the United States. With at-home tests now outnumbering those done in laboratories, official case counts are more incomplete than ever as the nation -- and world -- faces down increasingly transmissible coronavirus variants. Wastewater surveillance is poised to fill in the gaps and help avoid the threats that an invisible wave of the virus could bring. This surveillance can help identify trends in transmission a week or two earlier than clinical testing, giving public health leaders the chance to focus messaging and resources. It can be used as a tool to sequence the virus and find new variants sooner, too. But eagerness to use this tool is stifled by uncertainty about exactly how to do so, along with a lack of resources and support to learn. Testing sewage for virus particles can provide early warning signs of increased transmission in a community, capturing even those who have asymptomatic infections or aren't being tested.
18th May 2022 - CNN

What to do if you test positive for Covid-19 now

Covid-19 infections are on the rise, with most US states reporting an increase in cases. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the highly contagious BA.2.1.21 subvariant of Omicron is now the dominant strain of coronavirus nationwide. Two years into the pandemic, many aren't sure what to do after testing positive for Covid-19. Should they isolate, and if so, for how long? How important is it to see a doctor? What therapies are available, and who is eligible? To help answer these and other questions, I spoke with CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. She is also author of "Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health" and the mother of two young children.
18th May 2022 - CNN

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Covid support schemes left ‘open goal’ to fraudsters, says watchdog

The business department’s handling of Covid support schemes left an “open goal” to fraudsters and embezzlers that has added “billions to taxpayer woes”, parliament’s spending watchdog has found. In its review of the annual report of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said it recognised that the government offered crucial support to businesses at the height of the pandemic. However, it said efforts to identify fraud and error had come too late, given that by the time they are confirmed the money will have been spent and “trails will have long ago gone cold”. “BEIS says it saw this risk coming but it’s really not clear where government was looking when it set up its initial Covid response,” said the PAC’s chair, the Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier.
18th May 2022 - The Guardian

N.Y.C. urges people to wear masks indoors, but stops short of requiring it.

Citing high community transmission and rising hospitalizations from a fifth wave of coronavirus cases, New York City health officials on Monday strongly recommended that all individuals wear medical-grade masks in offices, grocery stores and other public indoor settings citywide. The new recommendations, issued in a health advisory by the city health commissioner, came as the city approached the orange, or “high” alert level for Covid-19, a benchmark it expects to hit in the coming days. The new advisory also called on those who are at increased risk for severe illness, including unvaccinated children under 5 and people over 65, to avoid nonessential indoor gatherings and crowded settings.
17th May 2022 - The New York Times

US-China Fight May Spoil Global Deal for a Covid Vaccine-Patent Waiver

A brewing trade fight between the US and China may unravel a nearly two-year effort to ease intellectual-property rules for producing Covid-19 vaccines and cast further doubt on the World Trade Organization’s reputation as a negotiating forum. US President Joe Biden’s top trade official in Geneva said any WTO agreement related to Covid-19 vaccines must explicitly exclude China from being able to benefit from the deal.
17th May 2022 - Bloomberg

African leaders urge global vaccine body to buy locally made Covid jabs

African leaders have called on the organisation in charge of procurement for the Covax vaccine sharing scheme to commit to buying at least 30 per cent of all Covid-19 jabs produced on the continent, as the future of Africa’s biggest manufacturing facility hangs in the balance. Covid-19 vaccine production at the Aspen Pharmacare facility in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, ground to a halt in late March because of a drop-off in demand, putting its future in doubt and threatening to undermine African Union plans to increase local jab production.
17th May 2022 - Financial Times

Austria lifts COVID-19 entry requirements – EURACTIV.com

Entering Austria no longer requires proof of vaccination, recovery passes, or testing after all COVID-19-related entry requirements were dropped from Monday. Provided there is no extension or change, these measures, presented by the health ministry Friday evening (13 May), should remain lifted until the end of September. According to the ministry, the current epidemiological situation justified lifting the entry regulations.
17th May 2022 - Euractiv

Japan to allow limited tour groups from May as step to full re-opening

Japan said on Tuesday it would start conducting "test tourism" in the form of limited package tours in May as a way of gathering information prior to a full re-opening of the country to tourism. Though tourism was a major pillar of Japan's economy, tourists have not been permitted to enter since it adopted strict border controls in 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
17th May 2022 - Reuters.com

Indonesia to drop outdoor mask mandate as COVID infections drop

Indonesia will drop requirements for people to mask up outdoors and for vaccinated travellers to show negative pre-departure tests, officials said on Tuesday, as COVID-19 infections decline in the Southeast Asian country. Masks are no longer required outdoors as "the pandemic is getting more and more controlled", President Joko Widodo said in a statement streamed online. But masks must still be worn indoors and on public transportation, he said
17th May 2022 - Reuters.com

Omitting long Covid from pandemic messaging is harmful for public health

Public health messaging about Covid-19 has focused almost exclusively on hospitalizations and deaths. The omission of long Covid, which may affect between 8 million and 23 million Americans, deprives the public of the knowledge necessary to understand the risks of various activities, make informed decisions about risk-taking, and understand what is happening to them if they feel sick for an extended period. Local and national public health entities continue to characterize infections not resulting in hospitalization as “mild,” and most media have followed their lead. Authorities have been shaping a narrative in which the primary risks from Covid are acute illness, death, and impacts on health care systems. Yet evidence is rapidly mounting that post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC, or long Covid) can cause symptoms — often debilitating symptoms — that persist for months or even years after infection.
17th May 2022 - STAT News

Beijing's retail, industry upended by COVID restrictions

The economy of China's capital Beijing took a hit in April as authorities wrestled with a new COVID outbreak, telling residents to avoid going out or work from home and halting many businesses. Retail sales in the city of nearly 22 million people, a key gauge of consumption, shrank 16.05% in April from a year earlier, according to Reuters calculations based on January-April data released by the city's statistics bureau on Tuesday, outpacing the nation's 11.1% contraction.
17th May 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 17th May 2022

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US Surpasses One Million Covid-19 Deaths - WSJ

The Covid-19 mortality count—just over one million and still rising—is reflected in death certificates recorded by the CDC. Of these certificates, at least 90% list Covid-19 as the underlying cause of death, the CDC said. The remainder list the disease as a contributing cause. These records show how deaths have swept through the U.S. since the pandemic began, hitting states and populations unevenly. Early hot spots included places like New York City and New Jersey. The burden later shifted southward, including in states where vaccination rates have lagged behind. Vaccines have shown they reduce the risk of severe illness and death.
17th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China's economy cools sharply in April as lockdowns bite

China's retail and factory activity fell sharply in April as wide COVID-19 lockdowns confined workers and consumers to their homes and severely disrupted supply chains, casting a long shadow over the outlook for the world's second-largest economy. Full or partial lockdowns were imposed in major centres across the country in March and April, including the most populous city Shanghai, hitting production and consumption and heightening risks for those parts of the global economy heavily dependent on China.
16th May 2022 - Reuters

Jersey's digital Covid vaccine certificates to show more doses and last longer

Jersey's digital Covid vaccine certificates have been upgraded. They will now show up to five doses rather than three and last for six months instead of one. The display has also been simplified for travel purposes to only include a single QR code showing the most recent vaccine.
16th May 2022 - ITV News

Covid-19 pushed 55 mn Africans into extreme poverty in 2020: UN Report

The disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic pushed an estimated 55 million Africans into extreme poverty in 2020 and reversed more than two decades of poverty reduction in Africa, said a report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). The report with the theme "Fight against poverty and vulnerability in Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic", was issued by the ECA during the 54th session of the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.
16th May 2022 - Business Standard

Children less active after Covid-19 restrictions eased, study finds

Activity levels among children fell below national guidelines after Covid-19 restrictions eased, a study finds. A university of Bristol study found by the end of 2021, less than a third were meeting the recommended guidelines of 60 minutes of physical activity daily. The findings showed children in England aged between 10 and 11 were doing eight minutes less activity than before 2021. Researchers said it "highlights a greater need" to work with families, and schools to get children active.
16th May 2022 - BBC News

We need a definitive exit from our Covid-19 pandemic. Here’s the roadmap

As the virus accelerates its evolution, the humans capitulate. For two and a half years, the virus has been outrunning our response, getting progressively more and more transmissible, reaching a level of infectiousness that few pathogens have ever attained. Instead of taking a stance of getting ahead of the virus, and out-smarting it, people have succumbed. In recent months, we experienced a striking jump in transmissibility when the Omicron (BA.1) variant became dominant with at least a three-fold increase in reproductive number beyond Delta. Despite the hope that this might be reaching the upper limit of the virus’s spread ability, we quickly transitioned to a BA.2 wave with at least another jump of about 30% transmissibility, and now we are heading, in the United States, to a dominant subvariant known as BA.2.12.1, which is another 25% more transmissible than BA.2 and already accounting for close to 50% of new cases.
16th May 2022 - The Guardian

Omicron Is Turning Out to Be a Weak Vaccine

With each new variant, that period of protection keeps getting shorter. In the past few weeks, studies out of South Africa, the US, and China have revealed that Omicron subvariants BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5 are alarmingly good at escaping immunity from a previous Omicron infection. In practical terms, this means that for the large swath of the US population that was first infected with Covid over the winter, the post-infection honeymoon may be over. Those people might wonder how safe it is to travel, attend large gatherings and have dinner with vulnerable friends and relatives. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. “People want it to be, ‘Am I safe or not?,’” says Abraar Karan, an epidemiologist at Stanford University. But risk is a continuum.
16th May 2022 - Bloomberg

Detroit Three automakers reinstate mask mandate at some Michigan facilities

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler parent Stellantis are reinstating a requirement that employees wear masks in southeastern Michigan where there are high levels of COVID-19. The Detroit Three automakers said in early March they would allow auto workers to stop wearing masks at workplaces where U.S. health officials said it was safe to do so
16th May 2022 - Reuters

US deaths from COVID hit 1 million, less than 2 1/2 years in

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 1 million on Monday, a once-unimaginable figure that only hints at the multitudes of loved ones and friends staggered by grief and frustration. The confirmed number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly equal to how many Americans died in the Civil War and World War II combined. It’s as if Boston and Pittsburgh were wiped out. Some of those left behind say they cannot return to normal. They replay their loved ones’ voicemail messages. Or watch old videos to see them dance. When other people say they are done with the virus, they bristle with anger or ache in silence.
16th May 2022 - Associated Press

Official: China’s economy reviving as anti-virus curbs ease

China’s sluggish economy is reviving as anti-virus curbs are eased and businesses in its commercial capital of Shanghai are allowed to reopen, a Cabinet official said Monday, while data showed April factory and consumer activity was even weaker than expected. About half of the 9,000 biggest industrial enterprises in Shanghai are back at work after controls that shut down most of the city starting in late March eased, said Fu Linghui, director of statistics for the National Bureau of Statistics. The ruling Communist Party is trying to reverse a deepening slowdown without giving up “zero-COVID” tactics that also have shut down sections of Beijing and other major cities to isolate every infected person.
16th May 2022 - Associated Press

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South Africa in new surge of COVID from versions of omicron

South Africa is experiencing a surge of new COVID-19 cases driven by two omicron sub-variants, according to health experts. For about three weeks the country has seen increasing numbers of new cases and somewhat higher hospitalizations, but not increases in severe cases and deaths, said Professor Marta Nunes, a researcher at Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Analytics at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. “We’re still very early in this increase period, so I don’t want to really call it a wave,” Nunes said. “We are seeing a slight, a small increase in hospitalizations and really very few deaths.”
15th May 2022 - The Associated Press

North Korea reports more deaths, says taking 'swift measures' against COVID outbreak

North Korea said on Sunday a total of 42 people had died as the country began its fourth day under a nationwide lockdown aimed at stopping the impoverished country's first confirmed COVID-19 outbreak.
15th May 2022 - Reuters

China's Covid-Zero Policy Is Producing a Deluge of Waste

China’s lockdowns and restrictions to battle the nation’s biggest Covid outbreak since the early days of the pandemic are causing a massive increase in garbage in its biggest cities. Waste related to Covid prevention, including those from hospitals, fever clinics and isolation facilities, has increased 4.5 times to 1,400 tons a day in Shanghai from 308 tons before the current outbreak began in March. The city of 25 million residents has been in lockdown for five weeks, and daily household waste related to Covid reached 3,300 tons this month, compared with only 73 tons a day in February, according to People’s Daily.
14th May 2022 - Bloomberg

North Korea's Kim says COVID 'great turmoil', 21 new deaths reported

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said on Saturday the spread of COVID-19 had thrust his country into "great turmoil" and called for an all-out battle to overcome the outbreak, as 21 daily deaths were reported among people with fever. North Korea this week acknowledged for the first time a COVID outbreak, imposing a nationwide lockdown. But there was no sign of a rigorous testing or treatment campaign in the isolated country's rudimentary healthcare system. "The spread of the malignant epidemic is a great turmoil to fall on our country since the founding," Kim told an emergency meeting of the ruling Workers' Party, according to state news agency KCNA.
14th May 2022 - Reuters

S.Korea's Yoon pledges $300 million to global COVID response initiative

South Korea's new President Yoon Suk-yeol pledged on Thursday to provide an additional $300 million won to a global initiative to fund COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines for poorer countries. Yoon made the announcement in his speech to a second global COVID-19 summit, held virtually, aimed at facilitating efforts to end the pandemic and prepare for future health threats. His funding pledge would bring South Korea's total donations to the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other aid groups, to $510 million.
13th May 2022 - Reuters

Biden marks one million U.S. COVID deaths after losing political battles

President Joe Biden on Thursday commemorated the COVID-19 deaths of 1 million people in the United States, marking what he called "a tragic milestone" and urging Americans to "remain vigilant" during the ongoing pandemic. In a statement, Biden acknowledged the impact of the deaths on families left behind and urged the country not to "grow numb to such sorrow." The United States on Wednesday reached more than 1 million COVID-19 deaths, according to a Reuters tally, crossing a once-unthinkable milestone about two years after the first cases upended everyday life.
13th May 2022 - Reuters

'Not free from COVID': Thousands pray at Portuguese shrine despite fears of new wave

Last year, only 7,500 were allowed inside the sanctuary and people had to stand in circles to maintain social distancing. For many, it was a special moment to see the sanctuary finally opening doors to a big crowd after the vast majority of COVID-19 rules were lifted last month. But, as daily infections rise again, Teresa Maria decided to keep her mask on. "I always try to take precautions," she said as she waited for the farewell procession, one of the highlights of the event, to begin. "We are not free from it because cases are going up."
13th May 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai Lays Out Covid-19 Reopening Plan as China Cancels 2023 Soccer Tournament

Shanghai officials outlined plans for a phased reopening of shopping malls, supermarkets and other businesses, even as many residents in China’s financial hub remained confined to their locked-down homes. Chen Tong, Shanghai’s deputy mayor, said Sunday that the city would begin allowing businesses to open on a limited basis starting Monday as daily Covid-19 infection cases continue to decline nearly two months into a hard lockdown of the city of 25 million people. Mr. Chen characterized the city’s approach to the pandemic as entering a new transition phase, “from emergency response to normalized prevention and control.” On Sunday, Shanghai health authorities reported roughly 1,200 new Covid cases for the previous day, from a high of more than 20,000 last month. Daily infection counts have been below 5,000 for nearly two weeks.
13th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 13th May 2022

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Biden Calls for Renewed Efforts to Bolster Fight Against Covid-19

Article reports that President Biden is seeking to bolster the U.S. role in the world-wide fight against Covid-19, pledging to share vaccine patents and urging world leaders to redouble their efforts to thwart the virus. “We have to start working to prevent the next variant and the next pandemic now,” Mr. Biden said Thursday at the second virtual Covid-19 Summit, held as the U.S. approaches the milestone of 1 million Covid-19 deaths. “That’s going to require all of us to do more.” Heads of state and organizations convened at the Summit to accelerate efforts to get people vaccinated, enhance access to tests and treatments, and finance and build health security against future pandemics and other health crises. The Summit secured more than $3 billion from countries and philanthropies for Covid-19 relief efforts.
13th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Biden marks 1 million Americans dead from COVID

President Joe Biden on Thursday commemorated the COVID-19 deaths of 1 million people in the United States, marking what he called "a tragic milestone" and urging Americans to "remain vigilant" during the ongoing pandemic. In a statement, Biden acknowledged the impact of the deaths on families left behind and urged the country not to "grow numb to such sorrow." The United States on Wednesday reached more than 1 million COVID-19 deaths, according to a Reuters tally, crossing a once-unthinkable milestone about two years after the first cases upended everyday life.
12th May 2022 - Reuters

Biden urges world to renew COVID fight as US nears 1M deaths

President Joe Biden appealed to world leaders at a COVID-19 summit Thursday to reenergize a lagging international commitment to attacking the virus as he led the U.S. in marking the “tragic milestone” of 1 million deaths in America. He ordered flags lowered to half-staff and warned against complacency around the globe. “This pandemic isn’t over,” Biden declared at the second global pandemic summit. He spoke solemnly of the once-unthinkable U.S. toll: “1 million empty chairs around the family dinner table.” The coronavirus has killed more than 999,000 people in the U.S. and at least 6.2 million people globally since it emerged in late 2019, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
12th May 2022 - Associated Press

Covid-19 deaths in the United States: Reinforcing the notion of ‘two Americas’

The notion of Covid-19 causing two Americas was on many minds in the summer of 2021. The Washington Post and LA Times both wrote about it; Dr. Anthony Fauci mentioned it in an interview. One America had high demand for Covid-19 vaccines, the other had widespread vaccine hesitancy and opposition to mask and vaccine mandates. This narrative helped shape the understanding of what happened as well as what the country should be doing now to control the pandemic. But Covid has been dividing the nation since the start of the pandemic. Our recent analysis of Covid-19 deaths by region, published in PLoS One, supports the two Americas idea.
12th May 2022 - STAT News

U.S. will share COVID-19 vaccine technology, Biden tells global summit,

The United States will share technologies used to make COVID-19 vaccines through the World Health Organization and is working to expand rapid testing and antiviral treatments for hard-to-reach populations, President Joe Biden said on Thursday. Speaking at the second global COVID-19 summit, Biden called on Congress to provide additional funds so that the U.S. may contribute more to the global pandemic response. "We are making available health technologies that are owned by the United States government, including stabilized spike protein that is used in many COVID-19 vaccines," Biden said in his opening speech.
12th May 2022 - Reuters

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Shanghai Covid Spread Damps Prospect of Easing China Lockdown Curbs

Shanghai continued to find Covid-19 cases in the community Wednesday, damping prospects for an easing of a punishing lockdown that has hampered business activity and confined millions of people to their homes for more than a month. Shanghai reported a total of 1,449 new Covid cases for Wednesday, down slightly from 1,487 on Tuesday. While the daily total has steadily fallen, two cases were found in the community Wednesday, CCTV reported, after none were detected on Tuesday. Shanghai officials have said that three days of zero community transmission is required before they can start to ease restrictions.
12th May 2022 - Bloomberg

Western Australia records more than 17,000 new COVID-19 cases, sparking fears for hospitals

Western Australia has experienced an explosion of COVID-19, recording 17,033 new daily cases — the highest since the beginning of the pandemic. Medical experts are concerned the already stressed health system is in danger of being overrun over the next week, saying it would be "unforgiveable" not to reintroduce restrictions. The state's latest coronavirus figures are higher than any other state or territory at the moment.
12th May 2022 - 9News

Half of Covid-hospitalised still symptomatic two years on, study finds

More than half of people hospitalised with Covid-19 still have at least one symptom two years after they were first infected, according to the longest follow-up study of its kind. While physical and mental health generally improve over time, the analysis suggests that coronavirus patients discharged from hospital still tend to experience poorer health and quality of life than the general population. The research was published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine. “Our findings indicate that for a certain proportion of hospitalised Covid-19 survivors, while they may have cleared the initial infection, more than two years is needed to recover fully,” said the lead author, Prof Bin Cao, of the in China.
12th May 2022 - The Guardian

Failure to address a global surplus of COVID vaccines raises the risk of new variants emerging, health experts warn

The world finds itself awash in COVID-19 vaccines, but governments can’t get them into arms fast enough, as hesitancy and logistical hurdles threaten to indefinitely extend the pandemic. Advocates for widespread inoculation say participants at the second global COVID-19 summit need to come up with a plan to shift focus from producing vaccines to administering shots. They warn that failure raises the risk of new variants arising, potentially with the ability to evade vaccine immunity and spark yet another wave of infections and deaths.
11th May 2022 - Fortune

China Censors WHO Chief’s Call to End Covid-19 Strategy Dubbed Unsustainable

China’s censors blocked rare public criticism of its zero-Covid strategy by the World Health Organization from social media Wednesday, as officials in Shanghai insisted there would be no change to policies that have locked tens of millions of people in their homes for weeks. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said China’s inflexible approach to Covid-19 needs to adapt to the evolving nature of the virus.
11th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China CPI Exceeds Forecasts as Covid Lockdowns Roil Supplies

China’s factory and consumer prices rose faster than expected in April as Covid lockdowns battered supply chains and pushed people to stockpile food. The producer price index rose 8% from a year earlier compared to 8.3% in March, official data showed Wednesday, above the median estimate of a 7.8% increase in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Consumer-price growth accelerated to 2.1% from 1.5% in the previous month, faster than a projected 1.8% gain.
11th May 2022 - Bloomberg

China Risks 1.6 Million Deaths in Virus 'Tsunami' If Covid Zero Is Abandoned: Study

China risks a “tsunami” of coronavirus infections resulting in 1.6 million deaths if the government abandons its long-held Covid Zero policy and allows the highly-infectious omicron variant to spread unchecked, according to researchers at Shanghai’s Fudan University. The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, found that the level of immunity induced by China’s March vaccination campaign would be “insufficient” to prevent an omicron wave that would swamp intensive care capacity, given low vaccine rates among the elderly and the virus’s ability to evade immunity from existing shots.
11th May 2022 - Bloomberg

Tourists return to Paris post-pandemic but Asians, Americans stay away

The Paris tourist office is forecasting that foreign visits will increase more than five-fold in May-July compared to the same period last year, mainly thanks to tourists from Spain, Germany, Britain and Italy. That will, however, still be a third less than pre-pandemic levels, partly because U.S. and Asian tourists are not expected to be back in large numbers yet.
11th May 2022 - Reuters

EU lifts mask requirement for air travel as pandemic ebbs

The European Union will no longer require masks to be worn at airports and on planes starting next week amid the easing of coronavirus restrictions across the bloc, authorities said Wednesday. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said it hoped the joint decision, made with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, would mark “a big step forward in the normalization of air travel” for passengers and crews. The new guideline “takes account of the latest developments in the pandemic, in particular the levels of vaccination and naturally acquired immunity, and the accompanying lifting of restrictions in a growing number of European countries,” the two agencies said
11th May 2022 - Associated Press

Untapped Global Vaccine Stash Raises Risks of New Covid Variants

The world finds itself awash in Covid-19 vaccines, but governments can’t get them into arms fast enough, as hesitancy and logistical hurdles threaten to indefinitely extend the pandemic. Shots that were once rare are now piling up and even expiring, a problem on the agenda of a second global Covid-19 summit the US is co-hosting on Thursday. President Joe Biden kicked off the first summit eight months ago by announcing the US would donate another 500 million doses to the international vaccination campaign, nearly doubling its total pledge. But now, vaccine makers are idling production or face shutdowns as demand for shots wanes, even with the world still far from a target of inoculating 70% of humanity. Republicans in Congress have so far blocked additional funding for the US and international vaccination campaigns.
11th May 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 11th May 2022

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Shanghai's Covid Lockdown Leaves Thousands Sleeping in Its Streets

Shanghai’s lockdown has kept tens of millions of residents trapped indoors for a month and a half. Thousands of others in China’s wealthiest city have found themselves in the opposite predicament: living in the street. Victims of the same strict Covid-19 rules that are keeping most residents homebound, many of the newly homeless are migrant laborers from rural areas and smaller cities who often live hand-to-mouth while sharing an apartment with other workers. For many, the companies they work for have closed down in the lockdown, including boarding up worker dormitories. Some have chosen to join the tens of thousands who zip around Shanghai on bikes or scooters for food-delivery platforms like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Ele.me and Meituan’s namesake service. But with the income comes the stigma of a higher Covid risk. While the Shanghai government has granted special lockdown exemption for food-delivery workers, residential compounds have their own rules barring them from returning to their apartments for fear they will bring the virus back with them.
11th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

WHO offers rare criticism for China's steadfast and strict COVID-19 measures

The head of the World Health Organization said on Tuesday China's zero-tolerance COVID-19 policy is not sustainable given what is known of the disease, in rare public comments by the United Nations agency on a government's handling of the virus. "We don't think that it is sustainable considering the behaviour of the virus," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a media briefing. Speaking after Tedros, WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan said the impact of a "zero-COVID" policy on human rights also needs to be taken into consideration alongside the effect on a country's economy. He also noted that China has registered 15,000 deaths since the virus first emerged in the city of Wuhan in late 2019 — a relatively low number compared with 999,475 in the United States and more than 500,000 in India.
11th May 2022 - CBC.ca

Employers requiring job applicants to have a Covid-19 vaccine is declining, study finds

The share of job ads that require candidates to have a Covid-19 vaccine seems to be on the decline. About 6.7% of U.S. job listings cited vaccination as a necessity for applicants as of April 29, according to a new analysis by AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at Indeed, a job site. The share has slowly fallen since March 12, when it touched a pandemic-era peak of 7.1%.
10th May 2022 - CNBC

U.S. will limit next-generation Covid vaccines to high-risk people this fall if Congress doesn't approve more funding

The U.S. will have to limit the next generation of Covid vaccines this fall to individuals at the highest risk of getting seriously sick from the virus if Congress fails to approve funding to purchase the new shots, according to a senior Biden administration official. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, warned the U.S. faces a substantial surge of Covid infections this fall as immunity from the current vaccines wanes and the omicron variant mutates into more transmissible subvariants. The U.S. needs more money for next-generation vaccines, therapeutics and tests to prevent infections from turning into hospitalizations and deaths, the official said.
10th May 2022 - CNBC

Why a Covid Vaccine Mandate for N.Y.C. Schoolchildren Is Unlikely Soon

Teachers at New York City public schools are required to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Children involved in after-school activities that have a higher risk of spreading the virus — including many sports, as well as chorus and band — must be vaccinated, too. But while New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul have both said they support making Covid vaccination for all public school children mandatory, that does not necessarily mean it is happening soon. Momentum on the issue, both in New York and across the country, has stalled, lawmakers and experts say. In part, this is because the F.D.A. has not yet granted full approval to a Covid-19 vaccine for children under 16. Another problem is the disappointing efficacy of the current Pfizer vaccine against preventing infection in children under 12. (The F.D.A. has granted emergency authorization for children 5 to 16.)
10th May 2022 - The New York Times

For widows in Africa, COVID-19 stole husbands, homes, future

Across Africa, widowhood has long befallen great numbers of women — particularly in the continent's least developed countries where medical facilities are scarce. Many widows are young, having married men decades older. And in some countries, men frequently have more than one wife, leaving several widows behind when they die. Now, the coronavirus pandemic has created an even larger population of widows on the continent, with African men far more likely to die of the virus than women, and it has exacerbated the issues they face. Women say the pandemic has taken more than their husbands: In their widowhood, it’s cost them their extended families, their homes and their futures.
10th May 2022 - ABC News

Norway discards COVID-19 vaccines as supplies exceed demand

Norwegian health authorities said Tuesday that the country has a surplus of COVID-19 vaccines and has already discarded more than 137,000 doses because there is declining demand in low-income countries. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health said it plans a further disposal of doses if global demand does not change. In Norway there is high vaccine coverage while globally a demand for donations has fallen.
10th May 2022 - ABC News

Pandemic gets tougher to track as COVID testing plunges

Testing for COVID-19 has plummeted across the globe, making it much tougher for scientists to track the course of the pandemic and spot new, worrisome viral mutants as they emerge and spread. Experts say testing has dropped by 70 to 90% worldwide from the first to the second quarter of this year — the opposite of what they say should be happening with new omicron variants on the rise in places such as the United States and South Africa. “We’re not testing anywhere near where we might need to,” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, who directs the Duke Global Health Innovation Center at Duke University. “We need the ability to ramp up testing as we’re seeing the emergence of new waves or surges to track what’s happening” and respond.
10th May 2022 - Associated Press

China Risks 1.6 Million Deaths in Virus 'Tsunami' If Covid Zero Is Abandoned

China risks a “tsunami” of coronavirus infections resulting in 1.6 million deaths if the government abandons its long-held Covid Zero policy and allows the highly-infectious omicron variant to spread unchecked, according to researchers at Shanghai’s Fudan University. The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Nature, found that the level of immunity induced by China’s March vaccination campaign would be “insufficient” to prevent an omicron wave that would swamp intensive care capacity, given low vaccine rates among the elderly and the nation’s reliance on less effective, domestic shots.
10th May 2022 - Bloomberg

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BioNTech posts tripled Q1 vaccine sales but still flags full-year decline

BioNTech's first-quarter sales and earnings more than tripled thanks to demand for the COVID-19 vaccine it developed with Pfizer, but the German biotech firm is still forecasting a full-year decline in vaccine sales. "As a result of an increased order volume initially placed in late 2021 following the then-emerging Omicron variant, we began the year 2022 with strong revenues and earnings, leaving us well-positioned to achieve the 2022 financial guidance," finance chief Jens Holstein said. BioNTech stood by its 2022 vaccine revenue guidance of 13 to 17 billion euros, down from 19 billion last year, implying a decline during the rest of the year. Quarterly revenues more than tripled from a year earlier to 6.37 billion euros ($6.73 billion), as did net income, to 3.70 billion euros, the company said on Monday.
9th May 2022 - Reuters

COVID vaccine makers shift focus to boosters

COVID-19 vaccine makers are shifting gears and planning for a smaller, more competitive booster shot market after delivering as many doses as fast as they could over the last 18 months. Executives at the biggest COVID vaccine makers including Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc said they believe most people who wanted to get vaccinated against COVID have already done so - more than 5 billion people worldwide. In the coming year, most COVID vaccinations will be booster shots, or first inoculations for children, which are still gaining regulatory approvals around the world, they said.
9th May 2022 - Reuters

Covid: Learning to live with the virus in the UK

The latest survey from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed a continued fall in Covid 19 infections from a recent peak in April in the UK. The arrival of summer means more people will congregate outdoors at lower risk to themselves. But the return of people from holidays to work and study after summer holidays, and the onset of cooler autumnal weather could create conditions for another uptick in infections. More immediately, new strains of the Omicron variant could cause problems. The BA.2 version has proved more transmissible than BA.1.
9th May 2022 - BBC News

Affordable Covid drugs kept out of reach by sluggish WTO

There is still a long way to go before South Africa and other developing countries can manufacture Covid vaccines and treatments quickly and without paying the huge charges demanded by the big US and European drug companies. Last week, the World Trade Organization (WTO) announced that the 180-member trade forum had taken a step towards a patent waiver that would allow developing countries to make the drugs they need – including vaccines, tests, and treatments – for as long as five years, without payments to pharma giants such as Pfizer. The EU, India, South Africa and the US, known as the Quad, claimed to have come to an agreement on the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (Trips) waiver proposal, with China also expected to vote in favour.
9th May 2022 - The Guardian

Once a zero-Covid poster child, Taiwan learns to live with the virus

Once a poster child for the success of zero-Covid, Taiwan is now dealing with an “Omicron tsunami”. In response – and in stark contrast to regional neighbours – health authorities have decided zero-Covid is no match for the new variant and have flipped the switch to “living with the virus”. “It is the right decision, and it’s also the decision we had to make,” says Dr Chen Chien-jen, Taiwan’s former vice-president and professor of epidemiology. Taiwan closed itself off in early 2020, and employed a regime of stringent contact tracing, social restrictions and personal hygiene measures which it kept even as vaccines and antivirals were developed. It defeated an outbreak of the Alpha strain and another of Delta in 2021. But after the highly virulent Omicron began affecting countries in November and December, Chen says he and other scholars advised the government to start shifting towards living with the virus.
9th May 2022 - The Guardian

Covid-19 guidance changes announced for universities and colleges

The Welsh Government has formally removed the Infection Control Framework for Higher and Further Education institutions from today. The change will bring higher and further education into line with the wider public health guidance followed by businesses, employers and event organisers. The advice covers control measures that could be implemented to reduce the risk of transmission of the most common communicable diseases, including Coronavirus, flu and norovirus.
9th May 2022 - Wales 247

Laos reopens to tourists and other visitors from abroad

The landlocked Southeast Asian nation of Laos reopened to tourists and other visitors on Monday, more than two years after it imposed tight restrictions to fight the coronavirus. Thipphakone Chanthavongsa, head of the government’s agency for controlling COVID-19, announced on Saturday the reopening date, the last in a three-phase plan, state news agency KPL reported. She said vaccination certificates or virus tests will still be required for Lao citizens and foreigners entering the country.
9th May 2022 - Associated Press

US lobby fears 'exodus' of foreign staff in China due to COVID measures

American businesses are struggling to persuade overseas staff to join them in China due to the country's strict COVID-19 control measures and ongoing lockdowns, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said on Monday. In a survey of 121 members, 49% said foreign workers are either significantly less likely to - or are refusing to - move to China because of COVID-related policies, with 82% singling out uncertainty over how long quarantine and lockdown times will last as the main reason.
9th May 2022 - Reuters

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China Rejects Its Exclusion From WTO Vaccine Waiver Proposal

China objected to a key provision of a World Trade Organization proposal to waive intellectual-property rights for Covid-19 vaccines that Beijing said would discourage shipments of doses to poorer nations. The development may complicate the WTO’s multi-year effort to reach an agreement to help speed production of vaccines in the developing world by permitting certain countries to authorize the use of Covid-19 jabs without the consent of the holders of the patent rights. China’s opposition is problematic because WTO agreements require support from all 164 members, meaning any one government can block the adoption of a vaccine IP waiver for any reason.
7th May 2022 - Bloomberg

War in Europe and China’s Battle With Covid Boost U.S.’s Business Appeal

European businesses are stepping up U.S. investment as executives search for growth and stability amid turbulence caused by the war in Ukraine and tough Covid-19 lockdowns in China. The U.S. economy has emerged strong from the pandemic, while Europe’s recovery prospects have been cast into doubt by the Ukraine war. Plus Beijing's stringent zero-Covid policy and regulatory crackdowns on technology companies and debt problems at large real estate businesses have raised questions about its commitment to economic growth. Exposure to the Chinese market has provided enormous growth and profits for European companies over the past decades. Few European executives are considering a wholesale withdrawal from China, but as its economy creaks, businesses are rethinking their investment strategies.
7th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Omicron’s Trajectory Shows Challenge of Maintaining Immune Defenses

New Omicron subvariants are proliferating even in the face of significant protection from vaccinations and prior infection, as policy makers consider measures including open-ended vaccination drives to keep the evolving virus at bay. Much of the U.S. population already had some level of antibodies to the virus when Omicron hit late last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. That likely shielded many from more-severe disease, but the variant still fueled a record case surge and the second-highest peak in Covid-19 deaths. Immune defenses bolstered by the massive wave appear to be muting the impact of the yet-more-infectious Omicron variants even as cases and hospitalizations increase once again.
7th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Covid in Africa: Why the continent's only vaccine plant is struggling

Some experts blame concerns over the safety and efficacy of Covid vaccines for the slow uptake in many African countries. However others argue that after struggling to get vaccines, Africa experienced a glut of supply which was difficult to use in the required time,
7th May 2022 - BBC News

14.9 million excess deaths associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021

New estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that the full death toll associated directly or indirectly with the COVID-19 pandemic (described as “excess mortality”) between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021 was approximately 14.9 million (range 13.3 million to 16.6 million). “These sobering data not only point to the impact of the pandemic but also to the need for all countries to invest in more resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises, including stronger health information systems,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “WHO is committed to working with all countries to strengthen their health information systems to generate better data for better decisions and better outcomes.” Excess mortality is calculated as the difference between the number of deaths that have occurred and the number that would be expected in the absence of the pandemic based on data from earlier years.
7th May 2022 - World Health Organization

Pent-up demand prompts European travel recovery as COVID curbs ease

"There is a lot of pent-up demand. People want to see their families and travel again," said Phil Seymour, president of IBA Group, a UK-based consultancy and aircraft valuation firm. That echoes soaring domestic demand in the United States. "The big overlay is that air travel demand is back and it is back in a massive way," Sean Egan, Chief Executive of the Egan-Jones Ratings Company, told the Airfinance Journal conference. Challenges remain in the form of rising costs and staff shortages causing flights to be cancelled. Some airlines have promised more than they can deliver this summer, delegates warned.
8th May 2022 - Reuters

China Premier Warns of 'Grave' Jobs Situation as Lockdowns Bite

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang warned of a “complicated and grave” employment situation as Beijing and Shanghai tightened curbs on residents in a bid to contain Covid outbreaks in the country’s most important cities. Li instructed all government departments and regions to prioritize measures aimed at helping businesses retain jobs and weather the current difficulties, according to a late Saturday statement, which cited the premier’s comments in a nationwide teleconference on employment. “Stabilizing employment matters to people’s livelihoods, it is also a key support for the economy to operate within a reasonable range,” Li said,
8th May 2022 - Bloomberg

Wisconsin is experiencing an increase in COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations and cases

The state is experiencing an uptick in new reported deaths, hospitalizations and cases as new data analysis shows that this is not just a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The pandemic’s toll is no longer falling almost exclusively on those who chose not to or could not get shots, a Washington Post analysis that was published late last month found. During the omicron variant surge, the vaccinated made up 42% of deaths in January and February, compared with 23% of the dead in September, the peak of the delta wave, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
8th May 2022 - Yahoo

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FDA Limits Authorized Use of J&J's Covid-19 Vaccine

The Food and Drug Administration limited the use of the Covid-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson after reviewing the risk of life-threatening blood clots. The agency said Thursday that the J&J shot’s authorization was now only for adults for whom other shots aren’t available or medically appropriate, or who won’t take another vaccine. The FDA said it was making the move after confirming a total of 60 cases, including nine deaths, of the clotting condition known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS, among the millions of people who got the J&J shot. The change will likely sharply scale back use of a vaccine that health authorities had once hoped would be a convenient option for many people, but has become a third choice for most people because of the emergence of the risk for the rare but life-threatening side effect.
6th May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Carnival Cruise Passengers Complain After Covid-19 Outbreak

Guests aboard a Carnival Corp. ship with an outbreak of Covid-19 say the staff was overwhelmed by the number of cases, showing the cruise industry is continuing to struggle with the illness. Carnival didn’t say how many people were infected on the Carnival Spirit, which docked Tuesday in Seattle and has a capacity of more than 2,000 passengers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is looking into the situation, according to its website. The CDC is investigating cases on 53 cruise ships, more than half of those participating in its program. The agency investigates ships that report more than 0.3% of passengers or crew testing positive. Carnival, the largest cruise line operator, had 24 of its ships under investigation. But all of the major carriers have ships that met that criteria.
6th May 2022 - Bloomberg

New York City could bring back Covid mask mandate, vaccine checks if hospitals come under pressure

New York City could bring back mask mandates and proof of vaccination status to go to restaurants, bars and other venues if Covid hospitalizations rise to a concerning level, according to the city’s top health official. The city increased its Covid alert level from low to medium earlier this week as infections surpassed a rate of 200 per 100,000 people, driven by the more contagious omicron BA.2 subvariant. For now, health officials are asking residents to exercise increased caution by voluntarily masking indoors and getting tested before and after gatherings. However, Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said New York might reinstate mandatory masking and vaccine checks if the city raises its Covid alert level to high.
5th May 2022 - CNBC

Is Covid over? What scientists say about when the pandemic will end, why restrictions ended

With life now largely getting back to normal in many parts of the UK, people could be forgiven for believing the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic is behind us. Foreign travel has opened up and self-isolation rules have been scrapped for most of the UK. But cases of Covid-19 infection and deaths reported (28 days after testing positive for Covid) are still high in the UK.
5th May 2022 - iNews

Spain's tourist arrivals jump 8-fold in March, edge toward pre-COVID levels

Spain received 4 million tourists in March, more than eight times as many as in the same month last year, after most pandemic-related restrictions were lifted, data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) showed on Thursday. Foreign tourists spent 5.07 billion euros ($5.37 billion) while on holiday in the country in March, up from a mere 544 million euros a year earlier, the data showed. "Spain closes this first quarter with good data on arrivals and tourist spending, a trend that we hope will intensify in the summer period," Tourist Minister Reyes Maroto said on her Twitter account.
5th May 2022 - Reuters.com

U.S. summer travelers can expect long lines, higher prices as COVID restrictions ease

With more U.S. travelers expected to take to the skies and the roads this summer as COVID restrictions ease, unbridled demand will strain capacity in the leisure and travel industry and push prices even higher. Airlines, hotels, rental car companies and booking sites all reported a surge in demand for their services in the latest batch of company earnings. But at the same time, many of those companies face a tight labor market and limited volume as they scramble to restart and expand operations after more than two years of depressed demand due to the pandemic.
5th May 2022 - Reuters

Covid Killed About 1 Out of Every 500 People, WHO Report Shows

The Covid-19 death toll probably climbed to almost 15 million in its first two years -- about one out of every 500 people globally -- according to a new World Health Organization estimate. The figure, far higher than the official numbers for 2020 and 2021, includes deaths directly due to Covid infection and those indirectly caused by pandemic disruptions, the Geneva-based health agency said Thursday. The WHO’s new estimate is more than twice the figures from individual governments’ reports showing about 6.2 million Covid deaths.
5th May 2022 - Bloomberg

Almost three times as many died as a result of COVID than officially reported - WHO

Almost three times as many people have died as a result of COVID-19 as the official data show, according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) report, the most comprehensive look at the true global toll of the pandemic so far. There were 14.9 million excess deaths associated with COVID-19 by the end of 2021, the U.N. body said on Thursday. The official count of deaths directly attributable to COVID-19 and reported to WHO in that period, from January 2020 to the end of December 2021, is slightly more than 5.4 million.
5th May 2022 - Reuters.com

'How did we catch it?': spread of COVID baffles locked-down Shanghai residents

For weeks, their housing estate was free of COVID. But in late April, after what Veronica thinks was her 12th PCR test, she, another member of her family, and a handful of neighbours tested positive. "I have no idea how we caught it," said Veronica, who declined to give her full name, citing privacy. Her building was declared "sealed". She, her family and the others who tested positive were sent into quarantine. Everyone else was ordered back indoors for another 14 days.
5th May 2022 - Reuters

U.S. limits use of J&J's COVID vaccine on blood clot risks

The U.S. health regulator said on Thursday it was limiting the use of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine for adults due to the risk of a rare blood clotting syndrome, the latest setback to the shot that has been eclipsed by rivals. The J&J shot, which received U.S. clearance in February 2021 for adults, can be administered in cases where authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccines are not accessible or if an individual is less keen on using the other two shots, the Food and Drug Administration said.
5th May 2022 - Reuters

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Novavax files for authorization of COVID-19 shot among adolescents in Britain

Novavax Inc said on Wednesday it had filed an application with Britain's drugs regulator for the authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine among adolescents aged 12 and older. Britain had in February cleared the two-dose vaccine, Nuvaxovid, for use in adults amid a spike in cases fueled by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. Novavax's submission includes data from a late-stage trial in the United States, where the vaccine showed 80% efficacy among adolescents when Delta was the dominant variant in the country.
5th May 2022 - Reuters

U.S. CDC says travelers should still wear masks on airplanes

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday recommended travelers continue to wear masks in airplanes, trains and airports despite a judge's April 18 order declaring the 14-month-old transportation mask mandate unlawful. The CDC said it based its recommendation on current COVID-19 conditions and spread as well as the protective value of masks.
4th May 2022 - Reuters.com

Main negotiators reach 'outcome' on COVID vaccine IP waiver, WTO says

The four main parties to negotiations on an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines have prepared an "outcome document" for approval by the broader membership, the WTO said on Tuesday, with its chief hoping for a final deal by June. WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who has made vaccine equity her top priority since taking office in 2021, has been working for months to broker a compromise between the United States, the European Union, India and South Africa to break an 18-month-long impasse.
4th May 2022 - Reuters.com

Fewer than 1 in 5 US parents say they'll get Covid-19 vaccines for kids under 5 as soon as they can, survey finds

US children under 5 are getting closer to authorized Covid-19 vaccines, but most parents may be reluctant to actually get them when they become available, a new survey found. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation's Vaccine Monitor survey, published Wednesday, only 18% of parents of children under 5 said they would vaccinate their child against Covid-19 as soon as a vaccine was available.
4th May 2022 - MSN.com

FDA officials say annual Covid-19 shots may be needed in the future

The United States might need to update its Covid-19 vaccines each year, according to a trio of top US Food and Drug Administration officials, and "a new normal" may include an annual Covid-19 vaccine alongside a seasonal flu shot. "Widespread vaccine- and infection-induced immunity, combined with the availability of effective therapeutics, could blunt the effects of future outbreaks. Nonetheless, it is time to accept that the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is the new normal. It will likely circulate globally for the foreseeable future, taking its place alongside other common respiratory viruses such as influenza. And it likely will require similar annual consideration for vaccine composition updates,"
4th May 2022 - CNN

Sleeping pods being trialled in Yorkshire to keep homeless safe from Covid-19

Sheffield Council has received Government funding to help increase vaccination uptake among the homeless population and to provide Covid secure accommodation. The Salvation Army has already trialled two rough sleeping pods as a Covid safe alternative. The small self-sufficient insulated structures can be moved around depending on the most appropriate locations.
4th May 2022 - The Yorkshire Post

1 in 3 new COVID cases caused by new omicron subvariant, CDC data shows

There is new information on a variation of omicron that is causing more COVID-19 cases in the U.S. The omicron variant offshoot, a highly contagious spinoff of BA.2, is gaining steam in the U.S., caused more than one in three new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. last week. That is up from one in four the week before, according to the latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We’re set up for another big wave in the summer. I think that’s quite possible,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College School of Medicine. Cases of the variant spinoff are not evenly spread through the U.S. Last week, the CDC estimated it caused around 62% of cases in the region that includes New York and New Jersey, as well as in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.The CDC estimated it caused about 40% of cases in the mid-Atlantic states and more than 36% of cases in the South. It’s least common in the Pacific Northwest.
4th May 2022 - The Week

Covid's toll in the U.S. reaches a once unfathomable number: 1 million deaths

The U.S. on Wednesday surpassed 1 million Covid-19 deaths, according to data compiled by NBC News — a once unthinkable scale of loss even for the country with the world's highest recorded toll from the virus. The number — equivalent to the population of San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the U.S. — was reached at stunning speed: 27 months after the country confirmed its first case of the virus. "Each of those people touched hundreds of other people," said Diana Ordonez, whose husband, Juan Ordonez, died in April 2020 at age 40, five days before their daughter Mia's fifth birthday. "It's an exponential number of other people that are walking around with a small hole in their heart."
4th May 2022 - NBC

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China Covid News: Shanghai Lockdown End Delayed by Community Cases

Shanghai’s final exit from a punishing five-week lockdown is being delayed by Covid-19 infections persistently appearing in the community, despite China’s hardline strategy of isolating all positive cases and their close contacts. While total cases in the financial hub keep falling -- 4,982 infections were reported for Tuesday, down from 5,669 on Monday -- community spread remains stubbornly present. After briefly hitting zero late last week, the count has bounced back to more than 50 a day this month. Shanghai authorities have indicated the lockdown will only be lifted once community transmission reaches zero -- the same path taken in Jilin province in the northeast, where a lockdown gradually started to ease once there was no more community transmission.
4th May 2022 - Bloomberg

Taiwan won’t go into lockdown like Shanghai despite Covid surge, premier says

Taiwan will not go into a Shanghai-like lockdown to control a rise in Covid-19 cases as the vast majority of those infected have no symptoms or show only minor symptoms, the premier, Su Tseng-chang, has said. Taiwan has been dealing with a spike in local cases since the start of the year, but the numbers overall remain small – 18,436 since 1 January for a population of some 23 million – and just four people have died. Backed by a high vaccination rate, the government has been promoting the “new Taiwan model”, learning to gradually live with the virus and avoiding shutting down the economy, unlike in Shanghai, which is in its third week of a lockdown to control the pandemic.
4th May 2022 - The Guardian

Beijing 'preparing 1000-bed hospital for new Covid spike'

Beijing is preparing thousands of hospital beds to deal with a spike in Covid-19 cases, according to local reports. A 1,000-bed hospital at Xiaotangshan in the northeastern suburbs, built for the 2003 Sars outbreak, has been refurbished in case it is needed,
4th May 2022 - The Independent

India releases 2020 death data ahead of WHO COVID mortality study it objects

India registered about 475,000 more total deaths in 2020 than the previous year, government data released months ahead of schedule on Tuesday showed, as the World Health Organization readies its estimates of excess COVID-19 deaths whose methodology New Delhi has opposed. Some experts estimate India's actual COVID death toll is as high as 4 million, about eight times the official figure, especially as a record wave driven by the Delta variant killed many people in April and May of last year. The WHO's estimate will be published on Thursday.
4th May 2022 - Reuters India

Main negotiators reach 'outcome' on COVID vaccine IP waiver, WTO says

The four main parties to negotiations on an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines have prepared an "outcome document" for approval by the broader membership, the WTO said on Tuesday, with its chief hoping for a final deal by June. WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who has made vaccine equity her top priority since taking office in 2021, has been working for months to broker a compromise between the United States, the European Union, India and South Africa to break an 18-month-long impasse. "What the discussions were aiming at was coming up with something workable," Okonjo-Iweala told Reuters, saying she hoped the WTO's 164 members would finalise and approve the proposal by a major conference in June. "This will advance the discussion and dialogue. For the next pandemic or a flare up of this one, this is hugely important," she said. The document showed that there were still unresolved areas in the draft deal, including on the duration of the waiver's application which could be either three or five years.
4th May 2022 - Reuters

Vietnam Reports First Day Without a Covid Death Since Aug. 21

Vietnam on Tuesday reported its first day without an official death from Covid-19 since Aug. 21 as recorded daily infections have dropped significantly in recent weeks, the health ministry’s publication Suc Khoe Doi Song said on Wednesday. Vietnam’s seven-day local infection average dropped to 5,121 a day on Tuesday, down from a seven-day average of 75,319 reported on April 3, according to the health ministry. The nation’s seven-day average of deaths dropped to two a day from 42 a day a month earlier.
4th May 2022 - Bloomberg

CDC restates recommendation for masks on planes, trains

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended on Tuesday that Americans age two and older wear masks while on planes, trains and buses. It comes after the Department of Justice filed an appeal at the request of the CDC over a Florida judge's decision to strike down the mandate on April 18. The CDC's recommendation does not have to be enforced after many airlines opted to drop the masking and let passengers and employees do as they please. United Airlines said it would not reimpose its masking requirements following the CDC's latest recommendation. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg suggested on Tuesday that the administration may not want to bring back the mask mandate
3rd May 2022 - Daily Mail

Harris negative for COVID-19 after taking antiviral pill

US Vice President Kamala Harris tested negative on Monday for COVID-19, six days after she tested positive for the virus, and has been cleared to return to the White House on Tuesday. Harris press secretary Kirsten Allen said Harris, who was prescribed the antiviral treatment Paxlovid last week, was negative on a rapid antigen test. Allen said Harris would continue to wear a “well-fitting mask while around others” in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines until through her tenth day after her positive test.
3rd May 2022 - The Independent

Costa Rica to roll out fourth COVID shot for some

Costa Rica will offer a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to the immunocompromised and to those over 50, the country's Health Ministry said. The fourth dose will be optional and can be applied three months after the third shot, said Dr. Roberto Arroba, secretary of the National Commission for Vaccination and Epidemiology at the Ministry of Health. More than 85% of the Central American country's population has received at least one shot, while 79% have had two doses, and 41% have received a third vaccine, according to official data.
3rd May 2022 - Reuters

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New York City Raises Covid-19 Alert Level to 'Medium' as Case Numbers Rise

The recent uptick in Covid cases across New York City has prompted increased caution from the city. The city has moved to a “medium” alert level from “low” as new cases per 100,000 people over the last seven days has surpassed 200. The latest figure of 209.02 cases per 100,000 is the highest since early February. New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan and Mayor Eric Adams said they’ve seen an increase in hospitalizations from the latest wave. At an unrelated press conference on Monday, they repeated calls for vaccinations, boosters, indoor masking to help the city curb the rise in virus cases.
2nd May 2022 - Bloomberg

U.N. chief calls for debt relief, post-COVID investment on West Africa trip

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday urged debt relief for African countries and more investment to help their economies recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and weather the impacts of the Ukraine war. The United Nations chief spoke in Senegal on the first leg of a trip that will also include Niger and Nigeria, where he will visit communities affected by conflict and climate change. Supply disruptions due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine have caused simultaneous food, energy and finance crises in Africa and beyond, Guterres said. The coronavirus pandemic pushed many poor countries into debt distress and the Ukraine war has disrupted their economic recovery, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Public debt ratios in sub-Saharan Africa are at their highest in more than two decades, the IMF said last week.
2nd May 2022 - Reuters on MSN.com

Tears and chocolate as New Zealand opens its borders to 60 more countries

New Zealand welcomed thousands of travellers from around the globe on Monday as the country opened its borders to visitors from around 60 nations including the United States, Britain and Singapore for the first time since COVID-19 hit in early 2020. Maori cultural performers sang songs at the arrivals gate in Auckland and travellers were handed popular locally made chocolate bars as the first flights came in from Los Angeles and San Francisco.
2nd May 2022 - Reuters

Poland has no 'rationale to invoke force majeure in Pfizer vaccine deal, EU official says

Poland has no "coherent rationale" to invoke force majeure in an existing contract in order to stop paying for more COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, a European Commission official told Reuters. In April Poland's health minister Adam Niedzielski said Warsaw had informed the European Commission and Pfizer that it would no longer take or pay for COVID-19 vaccines under a supply contract co-negotiated by the EU, acknowledging this would trigger a legal conflict.
2nd May 2022 - Reuters

Amazon ends COVID paid leave for U.S. workers

Amazon.com will end its paid time-off policy for employees with COVID-19 from May 2, the company told U.S.-based staff on Saturday. The change follows the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and revised guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it said. The U.S.-based staff will now get five days of excused, unpaid leave following a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, Amazon told workers in a message it provided to Reuters.
2nd May 2022 - Reuters

Greece lifts COVID curbs for travellers ahead of key summer season

Greece lifted COVID-19 restrictions on Sunday for foreign and domestic flights, its civil aviation authority said, ahead of the summer tourism season that officials hope will see revenues bouncing back from the pandemic slump. To fly in or out of the country, travellers were previously required to show either a vaccination certificate, a certificate saying they had recovered from coronavirus or a negative test. From May 1, passengers and crew will need only to wear a face mask, the civil aviation authority said.
2nd May 2022 - Reuters

Covid-19 Cases Rise in the U.S., With Limited Impact

As new Omicron variants further infiltrate the U.S., a jumble of signals suggest the latest increase in Covid-19 infections hasn’t sparked a commensurate surge in severe illness even as risks remain. Covid-19 virus levels detected in wastewater in the Northeast, the first region to see significant concentrations of the easily transmitted Omicron BA.2 variant, appear to have flattened out in the past two weeks. Covid-19 hospital admissions have risen in the region, but they remain far below levels during earlier surges that indicated widespread severe illness and taxed healthcare facilities. “This wave of Covid in the United States, in the places where it is, is not dangerous in a way that prior waves of Covid were,” said Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and academic dean at Brown University’s School of Public Health.
2nd May 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

COVID's new Omicron sub-lineages can dodge immunity from past infection, study says

Two new sublineages of the Omicron coronavirus variant can dodge antibodies from earlier infection well enough to trigger a new wave, but are far less able to thrive in the blood of people vaccinated against COVID-19, South African scientists have found. The scientists from multiple institutions were examining Omicron's BA.4 and BA.5 sublineages - which the World Health Organization last month added to its monitoring list. They took blood samples from 39 participants previously infected by Omicron when it first showed up at the end of last year.
1st May 2022 - Reuters

Taiwan calls China's COVID lockdowns 'cruel', says won't follow its steps

China's lockdowns to control the spread of COVID-19 are "cruel" and Taiwan will not follow suit, Premier Su Tseng-chang said on Sunday. Having controlled the pandemic with tough border controls and quarantines, Taiwan has been dealing with a surge in domestic infections since the start of this year, with some 75,000 infections driven by the Omicron variant. But with more than 99% of those having mild or no symptoms, a handful of deaths so far and high vaccination levels, the government has moved to ease restrictions as it seeks normalcy and to gradually reopen the island of 23 million people to the outside world
1st May 2022 - Reuters

South Africa's Aspen COVID-19 vaccine plant risks closure after no orders, executive says

Africa's first COVID-19 vaccination plant, touted last year as a trailblazer for an under-vaccinated continent frustrated by sluggish Western handouts, risks shutting down after receiving not a single order, a company executive said on Saturday. South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare (APNJ.J) negotiated a licensing deal in November to package and sell Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ.N) COVID-19 vaccine and distribute it across Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO) called the deal a "transformative moment" in the drive towards levelling stark inequalities in access to COVID vaccines.
1st May 2022 - Reuters

AstraZeneca beats quarterly estimates, maintains forecasts

AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine still has a role to play in the fight against the pandemic, even as sales slow and the company charges more in some places, CEO Pascal Soriot said on Friday, the latest drugmaker to warn about a global supply glut. The comments come after the company reported better-than-expected first-quarter profit and sales driven by the vaccine, its second bestseller last year raking in $3.9 billion. It also confirmed its forecast that 2022 sales of the shot would fall.
30th Apr 2022 - Reuters

China's April factory activity contracts amid Shanghai lockdown - official PMI

China's factory activity contracted at a steeper pace in April, as widespread COVID-19 lockdowns curbed production and disrupted supply chains, an official survey showed on Saturday. The official manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) fell to 47.4 in April from 49.5 in March, for a second straight month of contraction, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. The 50-point mark separates contraction from growth on a monthly basis.
30th Apr 2022 - Reuters

More than 12 million in Shanghai can leave homes as COVID risk ebbs

As many as 12.38 million Shanghai residents, nearly half the population of China's financial hub, are now in lower-risk areas, meaning they can leave their homes, the government said on Friday. Shanghai, battling China's biggest ever COVID-19 outbreak, put the entire city into lockdown at the beginning of the month, though it has cautiously lifted some restrictions on residential areas that have gone two weeks without a positive case.
30th Apr 2022 - Reuters

'Entry only. No exit:' Beijing sees more COVID closures as anger grows in Shanghai

China's capital Beijing closed more businesses and residential compounds on Friday, with authorities ramping up contact tracing to contain a COVID-19 outbreak, while resentment at the month-long lockdown in Shanghai grew. In the finance hub, fenced-in people have been protesting against the lockdown and difficulties in obtaining provisions by banging on pots and pans in the evenings, according to a Reuters witness and residents.
30th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Russia's total number of COVID-related deaths surpasses 800000

Russia's total number of COVID-related deaths has exceeded 803,000 since the start of the pandemic in April 2020, Reuters calculations based on new data from the Rosstat state statistics service showed on Friday. Rosstat said that 35,584 people had died of COVID-19 or related causes in March, down from 43,543 in February.
30th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Ukraine seeks urgent WHO meeting on impact of invasion on health

Ukraine, backed by dozens of other countries, has written to the World Health Organization's regional chief calling for an urgent meeting on the impact of Russia's invasion on health and healthcare, a letter obtained by Reuters on Friday showed. The letter, sent this week by Ukraine's diplomatic mission in Geneva, Switzerland, where the WHO is headquartered, is signed by some 38 other members of the agency's European region, including France, Germany and Britain.
30th Apr 2022 - Reuters

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Xi in a Bind Over Who to Blame for Shanghai's Covid Outbreak

Li Qiang, 62, once served as a top aide to Xi, and has long been included among the most likely contenders to join him on the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee after a party congress planned for later this year, perhaps even as premier. All but one Shanghai party secretary has made it to the top body since 1987, with former Premier Zhu Rongji and Xi himself among those who have advanced. The outbreak in Shanghai, however, has raised the price of elevating Li. The financial hub has seen food shortages, overwhelmed quarantine facilities and clashes between citizens and health workers, generating an unusual outpouring of anti-government posts on social media. Some residents have dismissed his public visits during the lockdown as “choreographed.” In one exception, he was intercepted by a woman in a wheelchair who scolded the government for failing to provide enough food.
29th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

S.Korea to lift outdoor mask mandate starting next week

South Korea said on Friday it will lift an outdoor face mask mandate next week in the country's latest step to ease COVID-19 restrictions, despite opposition from the incoming government which labelled the decision "premature". Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said the decision was made as the government could "no longer look away" from the inconveniences experienced by its citizens when the country's virus situation was stabilising.
29th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Italy orders mask wearing for some indoor venues until mid-June

Face masks will remain compulsory in Italy on public transport and in some indoor venues until June 15, the health minister said on Thursday, as one of the country's hardest hit by COVID delayed an end to pandemic restrictions. Masks will still be required to access cinemas, theatres, indoor events and to enter hospitals, Health Minister Roberto Speranza said, adding that the government intends to be cautious in lifting the remaining measures. "We have decided to keep in place for a while, at least until June 15, an element of caution that I believe is necessary," Speranza said at an event organised by a medical doctors' union.
28th Apr 2022 - Reuters

A fight over coronavirus safety at journalists' gala event

More than 2,000 journalists, celebrities and politicians, including President Biden, are set to descend on the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner this weekend in what is shaping up to be a major test of whether large gatherings can be safely held at this stage of the pandemic. Organizers say they are committed to holding an event that significantly reduces the risk of coronavirus infections, pointing to vaccine and testing requirements that were strengthened after a dinner hosted by Washington’s Gridiron Club this month was linked to at least 85 infections that sickened Cabinet members, reporters and other guests. Yet some White House officials and experts worry that those measures are insufficient and that this weekend’s events may become another high-profile superspreader event, said three administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue. Behind the scenes, one prominent coronavirus expert is scrapping with party organizers hesitant to install devices that disinfect the air using ultraviolet light because of concerns the devices might interfere with the program.
28th Apr 2022 - The Washington Post

COVID-19: Denmark suspends COVID vaccination programme with health chiefs saying virus under control

Health chiefs have said Denmark is in "a good position" after all remaining COVID restrictions were lifted two months ago. It is believed to be the first country in the world to pause the vaccine rollout.
28th Apr 2022 - Sky News

Fauci: 'Pandemic phase' over for US, but COVID-19 still here

Dr. Anthony Fauci has given an upbeat assessment of the current state of the coronavirus in the United States, saying the country is “out of the pandemic phase” when it comes to new infections, hospitalizations and deaths, but that it appears to be making a transition to COVID-19 becoming an endemic disease — occurring regularly in certain areas. Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said on the PBS “NewsHour” on Tuesday that the coronavirus remains a pandemic for much of the world, but the threat is not over for the United States, adding that he was speaking about the worst phase of the pandemic. "Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now,” he said.
28th Apr 2022 - The Independent

Denmark becomes the first country to "pause" its Covid vaccination program

Denmark has become the first country to halt its Covid vaccination program, saying it is doing so because the virus has been brought under control. “Spring has arrived, vaccine coverage in the Danish population is high, and the epidemic has reversed,” Danish Health Authority said in a statement Wednesday announcing the move. Far from scrapping its vaccination program altogether, however, the Danish Health and Medicines Authority said there will probably be a need to vaccinate against Covid-19 again in the fall.
28th Apr 2022 - CNBC

Hungary, EU at odds over billions of euros of COVID funds

Hungary sees no obstacles to the European Union releasing billions in economic stimulus funds to Budapest, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's top aide said on Thursday, but the bloc's executive disagreed, quoting corruption and anti-LGBT policies. The executive European Commission has been withholding its approval to pay out money meant to help lift economies from the COVID-19 malaise to Poland and Hungary, accusing them of undermining the rule of law.
28th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Mental health issues in kids rose during pandemic; awareness and use of COVID treatments is low

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. Pandemic linked with mental health issues in kids. The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the mental health of children and adolescents, researchers say, based on their analysis of findings from 17 earlier studies.
28th Apr 2022 - Reuters

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China's Hangzhou, Home to Alibaba, to Start Mass Covid Testing

The Chinese city of Hangzhou, home to tech giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., will start mass testing for Covid-19, while cases in Shanghai fell for a fifth day. The testing drive will cover most of Hangzhou’s downtown area, with 10,000 free test sites to be set up, the municipal government said in a statement late Wednesday. It urged residents to get tested every 48 hours. Just a short train ride from Shanghai, the city of around 12 million people is home to a small but notable network of tech companies, including games maker NetEase Inc. and video-surveillance product company Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co.
28th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

England Covid-19 Cases: 70% of Country Has Been Infected

Around seven in 10 people in England are likely to have had coronavirus since the early months of the pandemic, new figures suggest. An estimated 38.5 million people in private households - or 70.7% of the population - have had at least one infection since the end of April 2020. The figures have been compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) using data from its long-running Covid-19 infection survey. The survey began in England on April 27 2020, which means the estimates do not cover most of the initial wave of the virus that began in early March.
28th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

China Economy Data Paints Different Tale Than Party Line

Even in a country where the credibility of official statistics frequently comes under question, a data release on April 18 looked particularly suspicious. It showed China’s gross domestic product growth accelerated to 4.8% in the first quarter, from 4% in the final three months of 2021, even though property sales worsened and lockdowns were imposed in dozens of cities. With access to data from satellites, independent surveys, and industrial output, China watchers can make corrections to the official picture. Their information suggests the reality is worse, though some government numbers seem reliable. Here’s a user’s guide on China’s economic statistics this year. With the real estate sector and demand for materials accounting for 20% of GDP, the rest of the economy would have to grow at a 7% to 8% pace to produce the official growth number for the first quarter. Logan Wright, head of China markets at Rhodium Group LLC, says that would imply a “highly improbable” acceleration from pre-pandemic growth rates.
28th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

EU estimates up to 80% of population has had COVID

The European Commission said that between 60% and 80% of the EU population was estimated to have been infected with COVID-19, as the bloc enters a post-emergency phase in which mass reporting of cases was no longer necessary. In preparing for this less acute phase, European Union governments should ramp up COVID-19 immunisations of children, the bloc's executive body said, signallingit was considering plans to develop antivirals.
28th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Fauci: US 'out of the pandemic phase'

President Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci on Tuesday said that the United States has moved “out of the pandemic phase” with COVID-19. “We don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now,” the infectious diseases expert said to host Judy Woodruff during an appearance on “PBS NewsHour.” “So, if you’re saying if we are out of the pandemic phase in this country? We are,” Fauci added. Fauci, however, warned that the U.S. was not going to “eradicate” the virus and said that globally the pandemic is “ongoing.” “We’re not going to eradicate this virus,” Fauci said. “If we can keep that [viral] level low, and intermittently vaccinate people — and I don’t know how often that would have to be, Judy, that might be every year, that might be longer — in order to keep that level low.”
27th Apr 2022 - The Hill

Mexico says coronavirus now endemic, not pandemic

The Mexican government said Tuesday that COVID-19 has passed from a pandemic to an endemic stage in Mexico, meaning authorities will treat it as a seasonally recurring disease. Mexico never enforced face mask requirements, and the few partial shutdowns of businesses and activities were lifted weeks ago. “It is now retreating almost completely,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. New case numbers have declined. But that may be because Mexico, which never did much testing, is now offering even fewer tests.
27th Apr 2022 - ABC News

The US is out of the Covid-19 pandemic phase, Fauci says

The United States is "certainly, right now, in this country, out of the pandemic phase," Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on PBS's "NewsHour" on Tuesday.
27th Apr 2022 - CNN on MSN.com

Dutch celebrate first King's Day holiday without COVID curbs since 2019

The city streets around the Netherlands streamed with festival-goers wearing orange on Wednesday in celebration of the national holiday King's Day in traditional fashion -- with music and open-air markets -- for the first time since 2019, without COVID-19 restrictions. King Willem-Alexander, who turns 55 on Wednesday and whom the holiday celebrates, was visiting the southern city of Maastricht with his family, keeping a promise that had been postponed for two years due to the pandemic. In Amsterdam, where Kings' Eve is a party comparable to New Year's Eve, the streets of the historic centre have been mobbed with tens of thousands of celebrants since late Tuesday.
27th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Malaysia to lift more COVID curbs, eases mask mandate

Malaysia will ease more COVID-19 curbs from the start of next month, including lifting restrictions on those who are not vaccinated against the coronavirus and scrapping the need to wear masks outdoors, its health minister said. The Southeast Asian nation has seen some of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the region, but infection surges have since subsided amid a ramped up vaccination programme. Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said on Wednesday people will now be able to enter public premises regardless of their vaccination status, except those who have tested positive for COVID-19 or unvaccinated travellers undergoing quarantine.
27th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Beijing in race to detect COVID infections as locked-down Shanghai in distress

Millions in Beijing's largest district on Wednesday took their second COVID-19 tests this week as the Chinese capital tried to keep an outbreak of dozens from spiralling into a crisis that could force it into a distressing Shanghai-type lockdown.
27th Apr 2022 - Reuters

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Beijing to test 20 mln for COVID in bid to avert Shanghai lockdown misery

Three-quarters of Beijing's 22 million people lined up for COVID-19 tests on Tuesday as authorities in the Chinese capital raced to stamp out a nascent outbreak and avert the debilitating city-wide lockdown that has shrouded Shanghai for a month. Having seen the struggles of China's commercial hub to meet the basic needs of its increasingly frustrated 25 million residents, people in Beijing were stocking up on food and supplies.
26th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Covid Pills to Become More Widely Available

The Biden administration on Tuesday is expected to outline plans to make it easier for infected people to get Covid-19 treatments, which some health leaders and patient advocates say are too difficult to obtain despite a federal program to help make them more widely available. The administration has heavily touted vaccines to reduce the risk of serious illness from Covid-19. Officials also have been urging greater use of two pills given they are easy to take at home: Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid and Merck & Co.’s and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP’s molnupiravir, also known as Lagevrio. Both were cleared for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December. The authorization of those pills marked a turning point in the treatment of Covid-19 because people can take the therapies at home shortly after they develop symptoms, helping prevent hospitalization.
26th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

More Than Half of People in U.S. Likely Had Covid-19, CDC Says

Nearly 60% of people in the U.S., including three in four children, exhibited signs of previous Covid-19 infection as of February, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report said. The estimated proportion of people in the U.S. with detectable, infection-induced antibodies jumped from 34% in December 2021 to 58% by February 2022, according to a study the CDC released Tuesday, highlighting the reach of the winter Omicron surge that washed over the country. “We do believe that there is a lot of protection in the community both from vaccination, as well as from boosting and from prior infection,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said. “Those who have detectable antibodies from prior infection, we still continue to encourage them to get vaccinated.”
26th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China Covid Situation Worsened by Lack of Local mRNA Vaccine

Weeks into a Covid-19 outbreak in Shanghai that brought China’s financial hub to a standstill, the government of President Xi Jinping has demonstrated its willing to go to extremes in its quest to contain the virus. One thing Xi has so far been unwilling to do is deploy a powerful tool against the highly contagious omicron variant: mRNA vaccines. Those shots could reduce the chances of elderly and other vulnerable Chinese getting seriously ill or dying—and possibly help the country transition away from its “Covid Zero” stance.
26th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Covid Case Metrics Fall Behind Omicron Variant

Throughout the pandemic, tallying hospitalizations has been one of the best ways of measuring the virus’s consequences. Case numbers undercount the number of sick and lump in the barely symptomatic with the gravely ill. Deaths are a final reckoning but come weeks or even months too late to have any predictive value. Hospitalizations tally the strain on the health system and the financial costs, as well as the impact on those who spend weeks in an inpatient bed.
26th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

About 6 in 10 Americans have signs of previous COVID-19 infection: CDC

Almost 6 in 10 Americans have signs of previous COVID-19 infection, showing the widespread reach of the virus, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC study shows that the percentage of people testing positive for antibodies — an indication of previous COVID-19 infection — increased from about 34 percent in December to about 58 percent in February. That period of a sharp increase coincides with the surge in cases from the omicron variant. But the antibody testing shows that even more people than reported have been infected, as has long been estimated, given that not all cases are detected or reported.
26th Apr 2022 - The Hill

WA COVID mask mandate lifts along with capacity restrictions as Omicron peak passes

Western Australia's mask mandate will be dropped from Friday, as the state moves to new baseline public health measures. Other changes include removing capacity limits at all venues, including the two square metre rule, and the 75 per cent limit at stadiums. The G2G pass system will also be dropped, as will the requirement for domestic arrivals to be triple-dose vaccinated. Proof of vaccination requirements for entry into venues such as pubs and nightclubs will also be removed, but they will remain for hospitals and aged care facilities.
26th Apr 2022 - ABC News

Relief, revival as Singapore scraps its COVID curbs

Strict limits on workplaces and gatherings were no more on Tuesday, with employees lingering outside workplaces and public transport teeming with commuters eager for normalcy after two years of containment. "Almost full office today, first time in quite a while," said Slava Nikitin, 34, a product manager. "There were queues for elevators this morning, even though we have six elevators." Singapore has been lauded for its speed and success in its vaccine rollout, with 93% of the population inoculated, one of the highest rates in the world, helping to limit COVID fatalities to just 1,331.
26th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Which Countries Are Open to Unvaccinated Tourists?

The U.K. doing away with all coronavirus-related travel restrictions on March 18 was major news—that is, until six more European countries (and counting) followed suit since. Whether they’re vaccinated or not, travelers entering the region now have even more destinations in which they won’t have to take a pre- or post-arrival test, follow any quarantine rules, or fill out passenger-tracking forms. International travelers still need the requisite visas, of course, but there are now nations on every continent that have adopted a post-pandemic attitude toward travel—even internally with mask-free living and no-quarantine requirements for those who test positive. The loosening of restrictions is sparking optimism for wanderlust after two years of stay-home pandemic rules and border closings. It’s also, alternately, serving as a red flag for travelers still taking a more cautious approach.
26th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Workers Are Winning the Return-to-Office War Because They're Right

The masks are coming off. Restaurants are filling up. International travel is resuming. But one thing is missing from this picture of returning normality: the rows of office workers bent over their desks. Just over two months ago, I wrote that returning to the office was the great class struggle of our time. I’m happy to report that, so far at least, the workers are winning. In the U.S., office occupancy rates seem to have flatlined at about 43% according to Kastle Systems, which collects figures on the number of workers who are working at their desks in America’s ten largest business districts by measuring key swipes. Occupancy rates fell to 42.8% on April 13, having risen to 43.1% on April 6. Across the Atlantic, London’s occupancy peaked at 42% last month.
26th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Singapore Almost Returns to Pre-Pandemic Normal With Latest Curbs Lifted

Singapore is shedding key pieces of its pandemic armor with relative alacrity. While officials have long been adamant the city-state would never have a U.K.-style “Freedom Day,” sweeping changes that take effect Tuesday get pretty close. It may just be a question of semantics. In what the nation’s health minister called a “happy day,” Singapore abandoned limits on group size, jettisoned social distancing and dropped curbs on the number of people who can work from offices. Many venues will no longer require folks to check in with the government contract-tracing app. Vaccinated visitors can forgo pre-departure tests.
26th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

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Eid al-Fitr events return to Birmingham after Covid-19 restrictions lifted

Large-scale celebrations at the end of Ramadan are returning to Birmingham after a two-year break caused by the pandemic. Eid al-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan and fasting. Before Covid-19 restrictions, an event in Birmingham's Small Heath park was among the largest in Europe, regularly attracting more than 60,000 people. It returns at the beginning of May, albeit with a reduced 20,000 capacity, with public health measures in place. Celebrations will also be held at Edgbaston Stadium for the first time. "Eid is a joyous occasion, where Muslims come together to celebrate, spend time with family and worship as a community," project manager Saleem Ahmed said.
25th Apr 2022 - BBC News

Covid-19 data reporting is becoming less frequent, making trends harder to track

Many states are scaling back on how often they report key Covid-19 statistics, a shift that some experts worry might hinder efforts to mitigate outbreaks and negative effects of the coronavirus. A year ago, all 50 states were reporting new Covid-19 cases on a daily basis. But that has gradually trailed off. This week, Pennsylvania will be the latest state to switch from daily to weekly updates, leaving just six states that will still be reporting new Covid-19 cases every day of the week. About half of states now report just once a week, with Florida down to every two weeks.
25th Apr 2022 - CNN

Anzac Day: health authorities urge Covid-19 precautions at gatherings

Health officials are urging Australians to take Covid-19 precautions at Anzac Day commemorations despite restrictions easing in most states and territories. With many jurisdictions preparing for the return of full-scale Anzac Day services after two Covid-disrupted years, Victoria’s health department has shared risk-mitigation tips. It recommends patrons wear a mask when unable to physically distance, particularly in crowds or indoor environments.
25th Apr 2022 - The Guardian

Americans back flexible approach on masks, but eager to move on from COVID-Reuters/Ipsos

Most Americans support a flexible approach to the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, with cities reimposing mask mandates when cases surge, even as a growing number are eager to get on with their lives, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Friday found. The results of the two-day poll illustrate the balancing act facing U.S. officials - particularly President Joe Biden's Democrats - as they navigate a health crisis that will not go away. Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults - including 83% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans - said cities and states should impose mask mandates for indoor public places if there is a resurgence of COVID-19 in their area, the poll found.
25th Apr 2022 - Reuters

OCA confident Asian Games will go ahead in September - official

The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) has requested an update from Beijing on the COVID-19 situation in China but remains confident the Asian Games will go ahead in Hangzhou in September, a senior official at the body told Reuters on Monday. The 19th edition of the multi-sports Games, second in size only to the Summer Olympics, is scheduled to take place from Sept. 10-25 in the capital of Zhejiang province, some 175 kilometres southwest of Shanghai. A media report last week quoted the OCA's director-general as saying that there was a possibility the Games would have to be postponed because of the month-long COVID-19 lockdown in China's financial capital
25th Apr 2022 - Reuters

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Biden admin to promote availability of COVID antiviral pill

President Joe Biden and his administration want Americans and their doctors to know that the country has an ample supply of the life-saving COVID-19 antiviral treatment Paxlovid and that it no longer needs to be rationed. First approved in December, supply of the Pfizer regimen was initially very limited, but as COVID-19 cases across the country have fallen and manufacturing has increased it is now far more abundant. The White House is now moving to raise awareness of the pill and taking steps to make it easier to access. Paxlovid, when administered within five days of symptoms appearing, has been proven to bring about 90% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths among patients most likely to get severe disease.
24th Apr 2022 - The Associated Press

Shanghai, China Covid Lockdown: Residents Complain Online

Chinese internet users rallied to outwit government censors on a video documenting weeks of lockdown in Shanghai, flooding social media feeds as frustration continued to escalate over strict Covid Zero rules. The six-minute video titled “The Sound of April” was posted on Friday and soon got censored as it went viral. Chinese Wechat users then uploaded the film from different accounts and in various forms including upside-down and mirrored versions until late night, as newly-uploaded clips were also removed. The film, on a slowly-moving frame of overhead shots of the city in black-and-white, spliced in sound clips from government press briefings, voice call recordings seeking medical help and information transparency, hungry and frustrated residents chanting in unison for government rations, and chats between neighbors and ordinary people helping each other out.
24th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Covid-19 Restrictions in Israel: Indoor Mask Mandate Dropped

Israel has lifted an indoor mask mandate in place for nearly a year as the country’s new cases of coronavirus continue to drop. The end of the masking requirement took effect Saturday night. Masks remain mandatory in hospitals, elderly care facilities and on international flights. Israel has seen new cases of COVID-19 drop since the peak of the latest wave of infections in January. Serious cases of coronavirus have plummeted from a high of over 1,200 during the omicron variant outbreak to around 200. Since the start of the pandemic two years ago, Israel has recorded over 4 million cases of coronavirus and at least 10,658 deaths — over one-fifth of them since January, according to the Health Ministry
24th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

No Covid tests on arrival for vaccinated travellers from May 1

The Test & Go process for foreign arrivals will be terminated at the end of the month and vaccinated travellers will be only advised to do self-antigen tests for Covid-19 from May 1, to stimulate tourism and the economy, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said on Friday. "Tourism is recovering and antigen tests will be more convenient and faster for visitors," Gen Prayut said after chairing a meeting of the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) at Government House. "Many countries are relaxing travel restrictions significantly and our country depends considerably on tourism to support our economy," the prime minister said.
23rd Apr 2022 - ฺBangkok Post

Woman catches Covid twice in 20 days

31-year-old healthcare worker caught Covid twice within 20 days, researchers in Spain have claimed. The woman was infected by the Delta variant in late December but then caught the Omicron strain in January, tests from the research showed. The woman did not develop symptoms after her first positive PCR test but less than three weeks later, she developed a cough and a fever which made her take a second test. Following further tests, it was discovered the woman had been infected by two strains of Covid.
23rd Apr 2022 - Evening Standard

Shanghai easing virus rules, Hong Kong ending entry ban

Officials in Shanghai promised Friday to ease anti-virus controls on truck drivers that are hampering food supplies and trade, while Hong Kong’s government announced the end of a 2-year-old ban on non-residents flying into the city as its outbreak fades. Streets in Shanghai were largely empty despite an easing of restrictions that confined most of its 25 million people to their homes. Many residents still were barred from leaving their neighborhoods. A deputy mayor, Zhang Wei, promised “every effort” to resolve problems that prompted complaints about lack of food and fears the shutdown of China’s most populous city might disrupt global trade.
23rd Apr 2022 - The Associated Press

COVID-19 third leading cause of death again in 2021- U.S. study

COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the United States for the second year in a row in 2021, with death rates rising for most age groups, a government study showed on Friday. COVID-19 was the underlying or contributing cause of 460,513 deaths in the United States last year, a nearly 20% jump compared to 2020, the study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed. The researchers analyzed death certificate data for deaths occurring among residents in the United States during January to December last year. They found that 2021 saw the highest overall death rate since 2003, with heart disease and cancer being the first and the second leading cause of death, respectively.
22nd Apr 2022 - Reuters

New Details of Shanghai Nursing Home Covid Deaths Suggest City Is Overwhelmed

China’s policy of lockdowns, coupled with low vaccination rates among older people, hasn’t been effective during the highly contagious Omicron wave. Despite a high rate of vaccination in China overall, with 88% in the country vaccinated, millions of elderly people, including most of Donghai’s residents, remain unvaccinated. In Shanghai, only 62% of people 60 and over are vaccinated. The rate drops to a minuscule 15% for those over 80. Many are suspicious of the shots, skeptical of Chinese brands or vaccines in general, while others figured full vaccination of people around them would be enough of a shield.
22nd Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

UK patient had COVID-19 for 505 days straight, study shows

A U.K. patient with a severely weakened immune system had COVID-19 for almost a year and a half, scientists reported, underscoring the importance of protecting vulnerable people from the coronavirus. There’s no way to know for sure whether it was the longest-lasting COVID-19 infection because not everyone gets tested, especially on a regular basis like this case. But at 505 days, “it certainly seems to be the longest reported infection,” said Dr. Luke Blagdon Snell, an infectious disease expert at the Guy’s & St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Snell’s team plans to present several “persistent” COVID-19 cases at an infectious diseases meeting in Portugal this weekend.
22nd Apr 2022 - The Associated Press

Weekly Covid cases continue to fall in Africa

Africa is experiencing its longest-running decline in Covid-19 infections since the onset of the pandemic. This is according to the World Health Organisation Africa (WHO Africa), which said weekly cases have fallen for the past 16 weeks, while deaths have dropped for the past eight. Infections– largely due to the Omicron-driven fourth pandemic wave – have tanked from a peak of over 308 000 cases weekly at the start of the year to less than 20 000 in the week ending on April 10. Over the past week, around 18 000 cases and 239 deaths were recorded, a decline of 29% and 37% respectively compared with the week before.
22nd Apr 2022 - IOL

South Australia records four new COVID-19-linked deaths along with an increase in daily cases

South Australia has recorded four COVID-related deaths along with 4,500 new infections. Three men — aged in their 70s — and a man in his 80s who tested positive to the virus have passed away. There are 246 people with the virus in hospital, including 10 people in ICU and two people on a ventilator. The number of active cases has also risen for the first time in almost a fortnight – to 28,991. The number of new cases jumped despite a 13 per cent reduction in testing.
22nd Apr 2022 - ABC News

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UK patient had COVID-19 for 505 days straight, study shows

A U.K. patient with a severely weakened immune system had COVID-19 for almost a year and a half, scientists reported, underscoring the importance of protecting vulnerable people from the coronavirus. There’s no way to know for sure whether it was the longest-lasting COVID-19 infection because not everyone gets tested, especially on a regular basis like this case. But at 505 days, “it certainly seems to be the longest reported infection,” said Dr. Luke Blagdon Snell, an infectious disease expert at the Guy’s & St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Snell’s team plans to present several “persistent” COVID-19 cases at an infectious diseases meeting in Portugal this weekend. Their study investigated which mutations arise — and whether variants evolve — in people with super long infections.
22nd Apr 2022 - The Associated Press

How to Avoid Getting Covid in a Mostly Mask-Free World

This week’s lifting of mask requirements on airplanes and, in many parts of the country, on public transportation is a major turning point in the U.S. pandemic response. From now on, it seems, avoiding or minimizing Covid-19 infection will be a personal endeavor, not a societal one. This is for some people a welcome shift toward normalcy and for others a cause for anxiety and confusion. Many occupy an awkward middle space between not wanting to throw in the towel and also wanting to break free of some restrictions. About 42% of adults in the U.S. have gone back to some but not all of their pre-pandemic activities, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll.
21st Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Hong Kong reopens venues, extends dining hours as COVID cases fall

Hong Kong reopened gyms, beauty parlours, theme parks, and cinemas for the first time in more than four months on Thursday, as authorities relax some of the world's most stringent COVID restrictions that have weighed on residents and businesses.
21st Apr 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai people 'not free to fly' out of homes as COVID cases tick back up

Shanghai authorities said on Thursday tough restrictions would remain in place for now even in districts which managed to cut COVID-19 transmission to zero, prolonging the agony for many residents who have been stuck at home for most of this month. That sober assessment, prompted by an unexpected rise in the number of cases outside quarantined areas, came after health officials earlier in the week had fuelled hopes of some return to normal by saying that trends in recent days showed Shanghai had "effectively curbed transmissions". At a regular press conference, an official from the Chongming district, an outlying island area, said most curbs would be kept in place, although it has reported zero cases outside quarantined areas and 90% of its 640,000-or-so residents were now in theory allowed to leave their homes.
21st Apr 2022 - Reuters

COVID-19: Hotel quarantine scheme cost taxpayers almost £400m despite being estimated to break even - government's own watchdog finds

The government's coronavirus hotel quarantine system, which was originally expected to break even, cost the taxpayers almost £400m - its own spending watchdog has found. A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that despite the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) previously estimating that the cost of running the hotel quarantine service would be met by the price people were charged to stay in the rooms, the taxpayer has subsidised half of the scheme's total £786m cost. The NAO report adds that the overall cost of the scheme to the taxpayer is likely to be even higher as DHSC cannot ensure that everyone who stayed in a quarantine hotel has paid their bill - with the government owed £74m from outstanding hotel costs and COVID test purchases as of 1 March 2022.
21st Apr 2022 - Sky News

Hong Kong reopens venues, extends dining hours as COVID cases fall

Hong Kong reopened gyms, beauty parlours, theme parks and cinemas on Thursday for the first time in more than four months, as authorities relaxed some of the world's toughest COVID-19 curbs, which have weighed on people and businesses. Some in the global financial hub flocked to salons and massage parlours, while others visited temples and churches which had also been shut. Many schools have also resumed in-person learning after months of online instruction.
21st Apr 2022 - Reuters

Hong Kong Disney opens as COVID eases; Shanghai deaths rise

Hong Kong relaxed pandemic restrictions on Thursday, with Disneyland and museums reopening and nighttime restaurant dining resuming as the city’s worst COVID-19 outbreak appears to be fading. Enthusiastic visitors ran into Disneyland the moment the gates opened after a three-month closure. Popular theme parks were ordered to close in January as Hong Kong’s fifth wave of the coronavirus took hold. Nearly 1.2 million people in the city of 7.4 million were infected in less than four months, and nearly 9,000 have died.
21st Apr 2022 - Associated Press

Cambodia cuts quarantine for unvaccinated visitors to 7 days

Cambodia on Thursday reduced the required quarantine period from two weeks to one for arriving travelers who are not fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, acting after recording consistently low numbers of new infections in recent days. The Health Ministry also said that travelers arriving by air who have not been fully vaccinated must take a rapid antigen test on the last day of their quarantine. Arrivals by land -- mostly Cambodian workers in neighboring countries -- are required to take rapid antigen tests on arrival as well as on the last day of quarantine. Cambodia had already opened its borders to fully vaccinated travelers on Nov. 15 in an effort to revitalize its tourism-reliant economy.
21st Apr 2022 - Associated Press

California set to keep workplace pandemic rules through 2022

California workplace regulators are poised to extend mandatory pay for workers affected by the coronavirus through the end of 2022, more than two months after state lawmakers restored similar benefits through September. The decision expected Thursday again pits management against labor as the seven-member Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board renews revised workplace safety rules that would otherwise expire in early May.
21st Apr 2022 - Associated Press

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Brazil meat exporters face hurdles shipping product via COVID-hit Shanghai -lobby group

Brazil's ABPA, a lobby group representing large pork and chicken processors like JBS SA and BRF SA, said on Wednesday its member companies are facing difficulties shipping products through the Port of Shanghai. The statement, sent in response to a question from Reuters about the effects of the COVID lockdown in the Chinese city, said cargoes are being redirected to other ports, such as Yantian. "There are no reports of suspension of sales," the statement said, referring to rumors about potential contract cancellations.
21st Apr 2022 - Reuters

Should I still wear a mask on a plane?

The abrupt end of the federal mask mandate for public transportation and an uptick in coronavirus cases across the country have left some Americans wondering: Should I still wear a mask in certain situations or places? The confusion comes after a federal judge struck down the transportation mandate, prompting airlines and transportation agencies to lift their mask rules just as cases are starting to tick up again. Most states and cities that still had indoor mask mandates lifted them weeks ago. President Biden said Tuesday that people should decide for themselves if they want to wear masks or not. Here’s what we know about the science of masking to help you make decisions about if, when and where to cover your face.
20th Apr 2022 - The Washington Post

COVID-19: Social distancing requirement scrapped in hospital and GP waiting rooms in England

Social distancing rules in the NHS have been scrapped, according to new guidance issued by the health service. Patients in England will no longer need to be distanced from one another in GP and hospital waiting rooms. NHS organisations have been told to return to "pre-pandemic physical distancing in all areas", but people will still be encouraged to wear face coverings. The new guidance covers "all areas" including emergency departments and other hospital settings, ambulances, patient transport services and GP surgeries.
20th Apr 2022 - Sky News

Close contacts of COVID-19 cases in NSW no longer required to isolate at home for seven days

The NSW government has scrapped the requirement for close contacts of COVID-19 cases to isolate at home for seven days. Those deemed a close contact of a positive case will have to undertake a daily rapid antigen test and wear a face mask in indoor settings. Close contacts are urged to work from home where possible and will have to notify their employer that they are a close contact and stay away from hospitals and aged care settings.
20th Apr 2022 - ABC.Net.au

Sharp fall in people fully self-isolating since Covid-19 rules scrapped

The proportion of people who fully self-isolate after testing positive for Covid-19 has fallen sharply since the rules were scrapped in England at the end of February, a new survey suggests. Just over half (53%) of people questioned said they had followed the full advice for self-isolating, down from four in five (80%) in February when isolation was a legal requirement. The survey was carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) between March 17 and 26, nearly a month since the Government removed all rules for self-isolation in England on February 24.
20th Apr 2022 - The Independent

America's mask manufacturers take it on the chin

A U.S. judge's ruling this week that the Biden administration's mask mandate for public transportation was unlawful dealt another blow to an industry that built dozens of small U.S. mask factories during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just a year ago, 26 of these upstart producers signed a letter to the administration, urging a crackdown on an influx of low-priced Chinese masks that was undermining their new operations, all of which were opened in response to a health crisis that highlighted U.S. dependence on foreign producers of all types of medical safety gear.
20th Apr 2022 - Reuters.com

Israel scraps indoor COVID-19 mask order for second time

Israel told its citizens on Wednesday they could stop wearing COVID-19 masks indoors, its second such revision after the measure was briefly dropped and then restored last year in response to a rise in cases. The scrapping of mandatory masks in closed public venues will go into force on Saturday, subject to approval by a parliament oversight committee, a government statement said.
20th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Uber, Lyft and Disney end mask mandates as COVID cases fall

Uber and Lyft have scrapped face mask mandates for their riders and drivers in the United States, the ride-hailing companies said on Tuesday, as COVID cases have fallen sharply from their January peak. Walt Disney also said that wearing masks would be optional for fully vaccinated visitors at its indoor and outdoor locations and transport facilities. It recommended guests who are not fully vaccinated to continue wearing face coverings at all indoor locations and enclosed transportation
20th Apr 2022 - Reuters.com

IMF's Georgieva says China should stimulate consumption as lockdowns mount

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Wednesday that China should use fiscal space to stimulate consumption as it faces an economic slowdown prompted by renewed COVID-19 lockdowns. Georgieva said that China had ample fiscal and monetary policy space to counteract this, but it would be better to stimulate consumption. "What we see in China is that consumption is falling short, it is not recovering as strongly as necessary," Georgieva told a news conference at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings.
20th Apr 2022 - Reuters

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Omicron Covid Wave Hit Unvaccinated Children Hardest: CDC

Almost 90% of U.S. children hospitalized for Covid during the omicron wave this winter were unvaccinated, according to a government study. Omicron caused a record-breaking number of pediatric hospitalizations from December to February, and national data on hundreds of kids aged 5 to 11 highlight the importance of vaccinating them, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in the report. “Increasing vaccination coverage among children, particularly among racial and ethnic minority groups disproportionately affected by Covid-19, is critical to preventing Covid-19-associated hospitalization and severe outcomes,” the CDC said.
20th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

UK PM Johnson apologises to parliament over lockdown breaches

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologised to parliament on Tuesday after he was fined by police for breaking lockdown rules, saying he did not know a birthday gathering at the height of the pandemic was in breach of the rules he had set. Opposition lawmakers argue that the prime minister must go, saying he set stringent rules during COVID-19, broke those rules in Downing Street and then repeatedly lied to parliament when he said all guidelines had been met.
20th Apr 2022 - Reuters

First COVID, now floods empty South Africa's eastern beach resorts

After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic keeping tourists away, South African resorts along the popular eastern Indian Ocean coastline were hoping for a bumper Easter weekend. But torrential rain last week triggered floods and mudslides, killing more than 440 people, knocking out power and water supplies and covering the beaches in and around the main port city of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal province, with debris. Some hotels had a third of bookings cancelled and others were forced to close during what is normally the second-busiest time of the year.
20th Apr 2022 - Reuters

COVID-19 vaccines go to waste as rollout stalls

Australian medical professionals are speaking out about mass amounts of COVID-19 vaccine wastage, calling for more government direction in donating the vaccines to developing countries. It comes as GPs are reportedly throwing out thousands of expired vaccines due to dwindling demand. More than 95 per cent of Australians over the age of 16 have received two doses, and about 300,000 vaccines are administered nationally each week.
19th Apr 2022 - 9News.com.au

Rise in at-home testing means we could be undercounting Covid-19 cases even more than before

As the number of Covid-19 cases grows in the United States, experts wonder if the country fully understands the current threat from the pandemic. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that only 7% of positive Covid-19 cases in the US are being detected, meaning case rates are actually 14.5 times higher than officially reported. The last time the infection detection rate was this low was at the outset of the pandemic, in March 2020. "It's a dynamic situation, and things are changing fast," said Ali Mokdad, a professor and chief strategy officer of population health at the institute.
19th Apr 2022 - CNN

COVID-19: Face masks no longer needed on public transport in the US after judge voids national mandate

People are no longer required to wear a mask on public transport in the US after a federal judge voided a national mandate, in a decision that has been described as "disappointing" by the White House. The judge, in Tampa, Florida, ruled that the national mask mandate, which covered airlines, airports, mass transit and taxis, was unlawful. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) failed to justify its decision to extend the rule until 3 May and did not follow proper law making.
19th Apr 2022 - Sky News

Cairo's Ramadan street feasts return after coronavirus suspension

Communal meals in which hundreds of people pack around long tables to break their fast during the holy month of Ramadan have returned to Egypt's streets after being widely suspended for the past two years due to COVID-19 restrictions. Egypt has been hit by successive waves of COVID-19 infections and imposed a nighttime curfew that coincided with Ramadan in 2020. Most restrictions have now been lifted.
19th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Second Global COVID-19 Summit scheduled for May 12

A second Global COVID-19 Summit will be held virtually next month for countries to discuss efforts to end the pandemic and prepare for future health threats, according to a joint statement on Monday. "The emergence and spread of new variants, like Omicron, have reinforced the need for a strategy aimed at controlling COVID-19 worldwide," the White House said in a news release with the Group of Seven and Group of 20 nations.
19th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Uber scraps mask requirement for riders, drivers as COVID cases fall

Uber has scrapped mandatory face masks for its riders and drivers in the United States, the ride-hailing company said on Tuesday, adding that riders have the option to cancel their trip if they feel uncomfortable with its move. The company introduced mask mandates for its drivers, riders and delivery workers around the world in May 2020 as COVID-19 cases rose.
19th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Cheers and fears as US ends mask mandates for travel

A federal judge’s decision to strike down a national mask mandate was met with cheers on some airplanes but also concern about whether it’s really time to end one of the most visible vestiges of the COVID-19 pandemic. The major airlines and many of the busiest airports rushed to drop their requirements on Monday after the Transportation Security Administration announced it wouldn’t enforce a January 2021 security directive that applied to airplanes, airports, taxis and other mass transit. But the ruling still gave those entities the option to keep their mask rules in place, resulting in directives that could vary from city to city.
19th Apr 2022 - Associated Press

Uber, Lyft end mask mandates for riders, drivers as COVID cases fall

Uber Technologies and Lyft Inc have scrapped face mask mandates for their riders and drivers in the United States, the ride-hailing companies said on Tuesday, as COVID cases have fallen sharply from their January peak. Walt Disney Co also said that wearing masks would be optional for fully vaccinated visitors at its indoor and outdoor locations and transport facilities. It recommended guests who are not fully vaccinated to continue wearing face coverings at all indoor locations and enclosed transportation. Lyft, which also ended requirements for vehicle windows to be kept open and for the front seat to empty, said health safety reasons will no longer appear under cancellation options on its app.
19th Apr 2022 - Reuters

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BA.2 Proves the Pandemic Isn’t Over, but People Are Over It

BA.2 is spreading in the U.S., although few want to talk about it. The Omicron subvariant is contributing to school and work absences, yet two years of dealing with Covid-19 have made people tired of taking precautions, getting tested and asking about other people’s status, say physicians, psychologists and behavioral scientists. If this is a pandemic wave, then many have decided the best response is a weary shrug. Part of that reaction comes from the fact that while cases are ticking up in some areas, hospitalizations remain low. Research has so far shown most people who are up-to-date with Covid-19 vaccines face little risk of landing in the hospital with BA.2, and prior infection with another variant also bolsters the body’s defenses. In addition, people in many places got on with their lives long ago and are unwilling to return to a pandemic crouch.
18th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China Inflation Rises as Lockdowns, Ukraine War Drive Up Prices

Inflation in China picked up in March as soaring global commodity prices and lockdowns in major cities drove up prices for consumers and businesses. The overall inflationary picture in China remains far more benign than in the U.S. and other major economies, though, giving the government and central bank ample room to support the slowing economy with stimulus. The inflation data highlight how China’s stringent pandemic control measures are increasingly affecting consumer prices
18th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Officials Adopt New Message on Covid-19 Behaviors: It’s Your Call

In the latest phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, federal and local officials are telling people to decide for themselves how best to protect against the virus. Health officials are leaving it up to people to assess if they need booster shots, whether to wear a mask and how long to isolate after a positive test. Businesses, schools and other entities are scaling back specific guidelines as they prepare for a return to normal. The question of when older adults should get a second vaccine booster is the latest example of the government shifting decisions from broad-based community outreach to personal choice.
18th Apr 2022 - Wall Street Journal

Australia's Pandemic-Era Ban on Cruise Ships Comes to an End

Australia’s two-year long ban on cruise ships expires on Sunday, another step toward the rehabilitation of tourism from the damage wrought by the pandemic. The ban on foreign cruise ships -- imposed in March 2020 after a Covid outbreak aboard the Ruby Princess spilled into Sydney once the vessel docked -- cost the Australian economy more than A$10 billion ($7.4 billion), the Cruise Lines International Association estimates. Operators “are preparing for a carefully managed resumption of operations in a sector that previously supported more than 18,000 Australian jobs,” the association said in a statement ahead of the ban’s expiry.
18th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

UK's Johnson shredded ministerial code with lockdown breaches, constitutional expert says

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has thrust Britain into a constitutional crisis by breaking the law he set for pandemic restrictions, effectively "shredding the ministerial code", the country's leading constitutional expert said on Sunday. Peter Hennessy, a historian and member of the upper house of parliament, said Johnson had become "the great debaser in modern times of decency in public and political life" after he was fined by police for attending a social gathering in Downing Street while lockdown restrictions were in place.
18th Apr 2022 - Reuters

As ‘zero COVID’ bites, China’s leadership sounds alarm on economy

When Chinese Premier Li Keqiang called for a “sense of urgency” about growing economic risks during a meeting with provincial officials earlier this week, it was his third such warning in days. “We need to be highly vigilant for unexpected changes in the international and domestic situations, and downward economic pressure has further mounted,” China’s No 2 official told a symposium in Jiangxi province on Monday, according to a report in South China Morning Post, less than a week after drawing attention to the “complicated and evolving” global situation and COVID-19 outbreaks at home.
15th Apr 2022 - Al Jazeera English

China Covid-19 Lockdowns Spread Beyond Shanghai to Other Cities

Localized Covid-19 lockdowns are proliferating across China, suggesting Shanghai’s struggle to contain the virus might be the prelude to a broader battle that threatens to hobble the world’s second-largest economy. Chinese health authorities on Thursday reported more than 29,000 new infections, the highest daily tally since the pandemic began in the central city of Wuhan more than two years ago. Strict measures appear to be working in China’s far Northeast, where local officials are declaring victory following an extended lockdown. Yet localized lockdowns are being newly imposed, expanded or extended elsewhere in the country, including the northern industrial city of Taiyuan, and the southern megacities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
15th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China's Covid Deaths Data Questioned as Tally Lags Other Nations

Almost two months into China’s worst Covid-19 outbreak, the vast country has reported only two deaths -- a striking number that’s the subject of growing debate because it appears to best even nations with higher vaccination rates. China reported more than 386,000 cases in the first six weeks of its latest outbreak, giving it a fatality rate of about 0.5 for every 100,000 people infected through April 13. The deaths both occurred in the northeastern province of Jilin, while financial hub Shanghai, now the epicenter of the country’s outbreak with a record 27,719 cases on Thursday, hasn’t reported any so far. The low death rate is in marked contrast to what happened when the highly transmissible omicron variant coursed through Singapore, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, some of the world’s best performers in curbing Covid and vaccinating to a high level, a data analysis by Bloomberg News shows.
15th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

'Last few tweaks' being made to COVID IP waiver deal -WTO chief

The head of the World Trade Organization told Reuters on Thursday that negotiations on an intellectual property deal for COVID-19 vaccines were ongoing between the four parties, saying they were seeking to agree on the proposal's final terms. Since the draft compromise emerged in the media a month ago, pressure from civil society groups has been rising for the parties - the United States, the European Union, India and South Africa - to walk away from the deal. Other public figures have also criticised it such as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, saying it is too narrowly focused on vaccines
15th Apr 2022 - Reuters

WHO: COVID cases, deaths in Africa drop to lowest levels yet

The number of coronavirus cases and deaths in Africa have dropped to their lowest levels since the pandemic began, marking the longest decline yet seen in the disease, according to the World Health Organization. In a statement on Thursday, the U.N. health agency said COVID-19 infections due to the omicron surge had “tanked” from a peak of more than 308,000 weekly cases to fewer than 20,000 last week. Cases and deaths fell by 29% and 37% respectively in the last week; deaths decreased to 239 from the previous week. “This low level of infection has not been seen since April 2020 in the early stages of the pandemic in Africa,” WHO said, noting that no country in the region is currently seeing an increase of COVID-19 cases.
14th Apr 2022 - The Associated Press

Latino Mortality Rate Spiked 48% in Los Angeles During Covid

The death rate of Latinos in Los Angeles rose dramatically more than any other ethnic group during the Covid-19 pandemic. Between 2019 and 2021, the percentage rate of deaths for any reason for Latinos spiked 48%, data from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health show. Just under half of the city’s population is of Hispanic or Latino descent, according to Census data. While all ethnic groups suffered more than usual deaths during the first year of the pandemic, only the Latino population saw the trend continue the following year. The overall two year mortality-rate for Black people increased 23% and 22% for Asian people, consistent with the broader county statistics. The overall mortality rate for White residents rose by 7% in the two-year span. Black residents in Los Angeles, who comprise just under 9% of the population, still have the highest death rate of any group.
14th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

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Transportation Mask Mandate to Be Extended 15 Days

Passengers will be required to wear masks on airplanes and other forms of transportation through May 3 as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looks to evaluate whether rising Covid-19 case numbers will lead to more hospitalizations, the CDC said. The Transportation Security Administration’s directive requiring masks was set to expire after April 18 but is being extended another 15 days. The recent rise in newly reported Covid-19 cases in parts of the country, fueled by the Omicron BA.2 variant, has complicated efforts to topple one of the most visible and persistent remnants of pandemic restrictions. The extension will give additional time for the CDC to learn more about BA.2, the latest Covid-19 variant, and make an informed decision, the CDC said. Since early April, there have been increases in the seven-day moving average of cases in the U.S. and the extension will help the CDC assess the potential impact of the uptick on severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths, and healthcare-system capacity, the CDC said.
14th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Diversifying supply chains from China 'probably good for everyone' -World Bank chief

Countries around the world are working to diversify their supply chains and reduce their dependence on China, which is "probably good for everyone," World Bank President David Malpass said on Tuesday. Malpass said cross-border trade would remain important to the global economy, and China - already the world's second largest economy and likely to become the largest - had a big role to play as both a consumer and producer of goods. But, speaking at an event in Warsaw, he said China also needed to be part of a value system shared by other countries in the global trading system, and added, "I don't know that that will happen."
14th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Mexico plans vaccinations for more children, presses for COVAX doses

Mexico will vaccinate more children against COVID-19, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday, urging global health authorities to deliver the doses it had ordered for the purpose. Mexico last year began inoculating some at-risk children, and children with disabilities, but has so far held back from rolling out a broader vaccination program for minors. Lopez Obrador said he was awaiting doses under the COVAX program, run by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).
14th Apr 2022 - Reuters

US renews COVID-19 public health emergency

The United States on Wednesday renewed the COVID-19 public health emergency, allowing millions of Americans to keep getting free tests, vaccines and treatments for at least three more months. The public health emergency was initially declared in January 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began. It has been renewed each quarter since and was due to expire on April 16. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in a statement said it was extending the public health emergency and that it will give states 60 days notice prior to termination or expiration. This could be the last time HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra extends it, policy experts have said.
13th Apr 2022 - Reuters

A million empty spaces: Chronicling COVID's cruel US toll

On the deadliest day of a horrific week in April 2020, COVID took the lives of 816 people in New York City alone. Lost in the blizzard of pandemic data that’s been swirling ever since is the fact that 43-year-old Fernando Morales was one of them. Two years and nearly 1 million deaths later, his brother, Adam Almonte, fingers the bass guitar Morales left behind and visualizes him playing tunes, a treasured blue bucket hat pulled low over his eyes. Walking through a park overlooking the Hudson River, he recalls long-ago days tossing a baseball with Morales and sharing tuna sandwiches. He replays old messages just to hear Morales’ voice. “When he passed away it was like I lost a brother, a parent and a friend all at the same time,” says Almonte, 16 years younger than Morales, who shared his love of books, video games and wrestling, and worked for the city processing teachers’ pensions. “I used to call him just any time I was going through something difficult and I needed reassurance, knowing he would be there... That’s an irreplaceable type of love.”
13th Apr 2022 - The Associated Press

Herd immunity now seems impossible. Welcome to the age of Covid reinfection

The rising number of documented Covid reinfections, sometimes occurring relatively quickly after the initial infection, as well as the high number of infections with the Omicron variant among the fully vaccinated, means that herd immunity is likely impossible – even if seroprevalence hits 100%. Relying on herd immunity to manage Covid-19 rather than on the strategies of east Asian countries to suppress it until a vaccine was available was a gamble that Britain took early in March and unfortunately lost. Especially given the presence of variants, Sars-CoV-2 will just keep circulating and reinfecting people.
13th Apr 2022 - The Guardian

Greece to lift most remaining coronavirus measures

Greece’s health minister announced Wednesday that most remaining coronavirus measures will be lifted over the next couple of months until the end of August, including the use of vaccine certificates for access to certain services and the mandatory use of masks indoors. Health Minister Thanos Plevris said the need for vaccine certificates or negative COVID-19 tests will be lifted from May 1 to Aug. 31, and would be re-evaluated on Sept. 1. The use of masks indoors will no longer be mandatory as of June 1
13th Apr 2022 - Associated Press

Coronavirus: Pupil Covid absence rate falls to lowest level

In Northern Ireland, the number of school pupils absent due to Covid-19 has fallen to its lowest level of the 2021/22 school year. That is according to attendance data provided by schools and published by the Department of Education (DE). In the last full week before most schools broke up for Easter only 1 in every 200 pupils (0.5%) was off sick with Covid-19. However, pupil absences for other reasons are higher than they were pre-pandemic.
13th Apr 2022 - BBC News

Dutch COVID-19 rate sees significant drop – EURACTIV.com

The average number of daily COVID-19 infections in the Netherlands has fallen below 10,000 for the first time since November, health authorities revealed in a new report. According to the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, 66,788 people tested positive since 4 April – a 48% drop compared to the previous week when 129,188 people tested positive. Meanwhile, the Dutch have slowly relaxed COVID-19 rules like lifting the mandatory mask and teleworking requirements.
13th Apr 2022 - EURACTIV

COVID-19: Emotions released as New Zealand eases border restrictions for first time in two years

Border restrictions for New Zealand have eased, with residents, visa holders and Australians now able to enter quarantine-free after two years. Other travellers will be allowed easy access from next month.
13th Apr 2022 - Sky News

IMF board approves new trust to help members deal with climate change, pandemics

The International Monetary Fund's executive board on Wednesday approved creation of a new facility to help low-income and most middle-income countries deal with longer-term challenges such as climate change and pandemics. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva announced approval of the new Resilience and Sustainability Trust in a statement after the board meeting, and said it would take effect from May 1, with a goal of raising at least $45 billion. She said the trust would amplify the impact of last year's $650 billion allocation of IMF Special Drawing Rights by allowing richer members to channel their emergency reserves to allow vulnerable countries to address longer-term challenges that threatened their economic stability.
13th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 13th Apr 2022

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A ‘Zero Tolerance’ Covid-19 Policy In China Leads To A Dystopian Nightmare For 26 Million Residents

A “zero tolerance” Covid-19 policy in China has caused chaos, fear, panic and dread. Shanghai, one of the largest cities in the world, with around 26 million residents, is under strict lockdown, due to draconian government orders. It's somewhat surprising, as Shanghai is a relatively wealthy area, financial hub and home to large global corporations, including Tesla and Apple. For weeks, people have been locked up in their homes and apartments. Many are unable to secure food and supplies. They are forbidden to leave. Disturbing videos are floating around TikTok and Twitter showing a dystopian surreal atmosphere.
12th Apr 2022 - Forbes

Shanghai tweaks lockdown rules amid COVID-19 surge

Shanghai has eased a punishing citywide lockdown that it imposed to break a surge in cases that is the biggest test of China’s two-year strategy to stamp out the disease wherever it appears. Authorities in Shanghai introduced the three-tier disease control system on Monday, allowing residents in areas where no cases have been reported for 14 days to leave their homes so long as they follow health protocols and remain in their sub-district.
12th Apr 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Chinese Stockpile Food as Covid-19 Concerns Ripple Out From Shanghai

As Shanghai battles the country’s worst Covid-19 outbreak in two years, people across the rest of China are stockpiling necessities as they brace for the prospect of similar lockdowns. In Beijing, where some residential districts have been closed in recent weeks as infections have been discovered, supermarket shelves in some parts of the city have been picked clean of toilet paper, canned foods, instant noodles and rice in recent days. In Suzhou, an industrial hub roughly two hours’ drive west of Shanghai, residents swarmed supermarkets to fill their grocery baskets with instant noodles and other food on Tuesday morning, hours after local officials said they would conduct districtwide testing in one section of the city.
12th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Novartis to cut thousands of jobs in global revamp

Swiss drugmaker Novartis will cut thousands of jobs worldwide as it combines its pharma and oncology businesses in a reorganisation announced last week, Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed company sources. More than 100 jobs could also disappear at Novartis's Swiss sites in Rotkreuz and Basel, the paper reported. Contacted by Reuters, a Novartis spokesperson said efficiencies would come through leaner structures and would "inevitably lead to roles being impacted", but it was too early to give specific numbers.
12th Apr 2022 - Reuters

200,000 Covid-19 vaccines donated to Ivory Coast

The Maltese government has donated 200,000 vaccine doses to Ivory Coast, while it continues to show solidarity with countries in need, in particular to Sub-Saharan Africa. It is the largest ever Covid-19 vaccination donation by the government thus far with national carrier Air Malta facilitating the donation. As part of the humanitarian aid Malta is offering throughout the pandemic, AirMalta conducted its second longest direct flight to the Sub-Saharan country of Ivory Coast. The flight occurred at the beginning of April and took five hours 45 minutes to reach the destination. This was a conjoined effort by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the Ministry of Health. So far Malta has donated and delivered more than 710,000 vaccines to countries in need. These countries included Libya, Egypt, Ghana and Rwanda.
12th Apr 2022 - The Malta Independent

Japan, US to exclude Russian COVID vaccines over Ukraine invasion

Japan and the United States are set to exclude Russian COVID-19 vaccines from a list of items subject to financial assistance when manufactured in developing countries, sources familiar with the plan said Tuesday. The move, which comes as Western nations step up sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, is especially aimed at dissuading India from fulfilling an agreement to produce Russian vaccines under the funding support scheme, the sources said. India has built close relations with Russia, including cooperation in the fields of energy and military technology. Japan and the United States are planning to gain India's understanding and make necessary arrangements ahead of a summit of the Quad nations, also involving Australia, according to the sources. Japan will host the summit, possibly in May.
12th Apr 2022 - Kyodo News Plus

Thailand Ramps Up Vaccinations as Festival Seen Fueling Covid

Thailand is rushing to vaccinate its elderly citizens and other vulnerable groups ahead of the local New Year celebrations as the festivities are seen fueling a surge in Covid cases and deaths, potentially derailing a tentative economic and tourism recovery. Millions of Thais will travel to their hometowns this week from cities such as Bangkok to join families in celebrating Songkran, the first time they can do so without any travel curbs since the outbreak of the pandemic. That’s prompted the Health Ministry to warn new daily cases could jump to as high as 100,000 a day from almost 20,000 on Tuesday.
12th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

The Folly of World-Wide Covid Vaccination

“Many countries have lost substantial ground in providing routine immunizations, preventive services, and chronic disease management,” notes a recent report by Duke University and the Covid Collaborative. Clinics that normally provide childhood immunizations and treatments for other infectious diseases have been administering Covid vaccines instead. The logistics of vaccine distribution have also diverted critical resources from things like HIV prevention, testing and treatment. While the U.S. has donated hundreds of millions of mRNA vaccines to low-income countries, these must be stored at frigid temperatures and usually administered within hours once vials are opened. Many doses have been thrown out or simply can’t be distributed.
12th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

CDC eases COVID travel assessment for Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Haiti

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday eased its COVID-19 travel ratings for Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and Haiti. The CDC said it had changed its COVID-19 travel recommendation for the three countries to "Level 1: Low" from "Level 4: Very High," which urges Americans to avoid travel to those locations. In recent weeks, the CDC has been easing ratings on a number of countries around the world as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes. The CDC also on Monday lowered to "Level 1" ratings for Bangladesh, Philippines, and Saint Kitts and Nevis from "Level 2: Moderate."
12th Apr 2022 - Reuters

With aid to spend, schools look for students who need help

Schools across America are racing to make up for time they lost during the pandemic by budgeting billions of dollars for tutoring, summer camps and longer school days and trying to untangle which students need help most urgently after two years of disruptions. Many schools saw large numbers of students fall under the radar when learning went online for the pandemic. Many skipped class, tests and homework. Record numbers of families opted out of annual standardized tests, leaving some districts with little evidence of how students were doing in reading and math. Now districts are trying to address that lack of information by adding new tests, training teachers to spot learning gaps and exploring new ways to identify students who need help. In many districts, the findings are being used to guide the spending of billions of dollars in federal relief that’s meant to address learning loss and can be used in myriad ways.
12th Apr 2022 - The Associated Press

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 12th Apr 2022

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GM develops continuity plan amid China's COVID-19 outbreak

General Motors Co said it has developed a global continuity plan with its partners and suppliers to mitigate the uncertainty faced by the auto industry following China's COVID-19 outbreak. The Detroit-based automaker said it was on track to launch more than 20 new and refreshed models in the world's biggest auto market despite the pandemic's impact. The COVID-19 curbs introduced in China to fight the worst outbreak in two years caused auto sales in the country to plunge in March, with automakers like Tesla Inc feeling the pain of limits on production.
11th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai eases lockdown in some areas despite record COVID infections

China's financial centre of Shanghai started easing its lockdown in some areas on Monday despite reporting a record of more than 25,000 new COVID-19 infections, as authorities sought to get the city moving again after more than two weeks. Pressure has been mounting on authorities in China's most populous city, and one of its wealthiest, from residents growing increasingly frustrated as the curbs dragged on, leaving some struggling to find enough food and medicine. City officials announced on Monday morning that they were grouping residential units into three risk categories as a step towards allowing "appropriate activity" by those in neighbourhoods with no positive cases during a two-week stretch, adding that district authorities would publish further details.
11th Apr 2022 - Reuters

With COVID mission over, Pentagon plans for next pandemic

In the early days of the pandemic, the Pentagon steamed hospital ships to New York City and Los Angeles, and set up massive hospital facilities in convention centers and parking lots, in response to pleas from state government leaders. The idea was to use them to treat non-COVID-19 patients, allowing hospitals to focus on the more acute pandemic cases. But while images of the military ships were powerful, too often many beds went unused. A more agile approach emerged: having military medical personnel step in for exhausted hospital staff members or work alongside them or in additional treatment areas in unused spaces.
11th Apr 2022 - Associated Press

Nursing Homes Face Growing Number of Lawsuits From Covid-19 Fallout

Two years after the coronavirus ravaged through nursing homes, families of residents who died from Covid-19 are bringing a wave of negligence and wrongful death lawsuits against the facilities. The surge of suits, spurred by a repeal of liability protections and statutory deadlines to file the suits, largely accuses nursing homes of failing to properly curb the spread of disease, identify infected residents and treat their illnesses.
11th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

With fewer cases and less demand, many Covid-19 testing sites are shutting down

As Covid-19 numbers reach pandemic lows across the United States, many Covid-19 testing sites have begun closing their doors. Some testing sites have been open for almost two years, many seeing hundreds or even thousands of people a day. Now, home tests are more readily available, and demand for testing sites is falling. Sarah Henderson, director of the Public Health Services Division of the Haywood County Health and Human Services Agency in North Carolina, says most states will see closures soon, if they haven't already.
11th Apr 2022 - CNN

This invisible Covid-19 mitigation measure is finally getting the attention it deserves

Two-plus years into the Covid-19 pandemic, you probably know the basics of protection: vaccines, boosters, proper handwashing and masks. But one of the most powerful tools against the coronavirus is one that experts believe is just starting to get the attention it deserves: ventilation.
11th Apr 2022 - CNN

Moderna names Jorge Gomez as new CFO

Moderna Inc named Jorge Gomez, a senior executive at dental products maker Dentsply Sirona Inc, as its new chief financial officer, effective May 9. Gomez, who has been serving as the finance chief of Dentsply since August 2019, will succeed David Meline, who has decided to retire, Moderna said. Before joining Dentsply, Gomez was with drug distributor Cardinal Health Inc (CAH.N) for over a decade in several roles, including CFO. Moderna's current finance chief Meline joined the company in June 2020, as it was preparing to advance its COVID-19 vaccine into late-stage development.
11th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer taps David Denton from Lowe's as CFO

Pfizer Inc said that Lowe's Cos Inc Chief Financial Officer David Denton would succeed company veteran Frank D'Amelio as the U.S. drugmaker's finance chief. Denton, who has also held leadership positions at CVS Health, will join Pfizer on May 2, the company said. He will also be a member of Pfizer's Executive Leadership Team and report to Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla. Pfizer announced the retirement of D'Amelio in November and started an external search for his replacement.
11th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Which Cities Have Mask Mandates? Philadelphia Reinstates Indoor Requirement

Philadelphia’s return to a masking mandate is unlikely to catch on in other U.S. cities, highlighting a split among public health officials over how to contain future outbreaks of the virus. The City of Brotherly Love will make masks a requirement again in indoor settings starting on April 18, but Philadelphia is unique in breaking from guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC shifted its recommendations earlier this year to emphasize hospitalizations over case counts, with universal masking only suggested at its highest risk level. The change has allowed many local government officials to continue reopening and relax restrictions even as the virus rebounds across some parts of the country, since hospitalizations remain low in most places. Indeed, by the CDC’s measurements, Philadelphia County remains low-risk. But the city made a commitment when it lifted mask mandates that it would reinstate them if another wave hit.
11th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Boris Johnson Rejects NHS UK New Covid Restrictions Request

Boris Johnson rejected calls from National Health Service officials for new measures to curb the spread of coronavirus, saying hospital data don’t justify shifting from the U.K. plan for “living with Covid.” The NHS Confederation over the weekend demanded a “revamp” of the strategy to ease pressure on hospitals, which the organization said are struggling to deal with “critically high demand for emergency care.” It also accused the government of abandoning “any interest in Covid whatsoever.” More than 20,000 patients are currently in the hospital with Covid-19, the most since February 2021. That’s hampering NHS efforts to reduce waiting times that soared during the pandemic, according to the confederation.
11th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Battery Giant CATL Isolates Workers to Avoid Covid Shutdown

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., the world’s biggest maker of electric-vehicle batteries, has implemented a so-called closed loop for workers at its main factory in China in a bid to avoid the kind of Covid-19 shutdowns hurting Tesla Inc. and Volkswagen AG. Workers will be shuttled between their dormitories and the factory in Ningde, where an outbreak of Covid cases has prompted the local government to tighten prevention and control measures, the company, better known as CATL, said in a statement Sunday. “To ensure market supply to the best of our capabilities, we have adopted strict grid management measures for the orderly operation of the Ningde production base,” the company said.
11th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

States of Covid Performance

More than two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s time to draw some conclusions about government policy and results. The most comprehensive comparative study we’ve seen to date was published last week as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and it deserves wide attention. The authors are University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan and Stephen Moore and Phil Kerpen of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. They compare Covid outcomes in the 50 states and District of Columbia based on three variables: the economy, education and mortality. It’s a revealing study that belies much of the conventional medical and media wisdom during the pandemic, especially in its first year when severe lockdowns were described as the best, and the only moral, policy.
11th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 11th Apr 2022

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China labels U.S. concerns over COVID regulations 'groundless accusations'

China's foreign ministry expressed "strong dissatisfaction" with the United States late on Saturday after it raised concerns over China's coronavirus control measures. The U.S. State Department said on Friday that non-emergency staff at its Shanghai consulate and families of U.S. employees could leave due to a surge in COVID cases and coronavirus restrictions in the city. "We express strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the groundless accusations against China's pandemic prevention policy from the U.S. in its statement, and have lodged solemn representations," foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said in a statement.
10th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai seeks to reassure residents over COVID-hit supplies

Shanghai reported nearly 25,000 locally transmitted COVID-19 infections on Sunday and sought to assure locked-down residents of China's most populous city that supply bottlenecks affecting availability of food and other items would ease. Streets remained largely silent in the city of 26 million people as curbs under its "zero tolerance" policy allow only healthcare workers, volunteers, delivery personnel or those with special permission to move freely.
10th Apr 2022 - Reuters

U.K.'s Johnson Refuses to Rule Out Further Covid-19 Lockdowns

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson refused to rule out further Covid-19 lockdowns, saying only that it would be “irresponsible” to do so. The virus is currently “losing its potency overall,” Johnson told GB News, but “there could be a new variant more deadly” that emerges in future. “I can’t rule out something, I can’t say we wouldn’t be forced to do non-pharmaceutical interventions again of the kind we did,” he said. Johnson was interviewed by two Members of Parliament from his own ruling Conservative Party -- Esther McVey and Philip Davies -- for the news channel, which published extracts on Friday. The comments are likely to alarm those Tories who want him to reject the possibility of any further lockdowns, amid concerns over mental health and civil liberties.
9th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Saudi Arabia expands Haj to 1 mln pilgrims, easing COVID curbs

Saudi Arabia will let up to 1 million people join the Haj pilgrimage this year, greatly expanding the key event to participants from outside the kingdom after two years of tight COVID restrictions, state media said on Saturday. Pilgrims to Mecca this year must be under age 65 and fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, the ministry of Hajj and Umrah said in a statement carried by the SPA news agency. Participants from abroad will be allowed this year but must present a recent negative COVID PCR test, and health precautions will be observed, it said.
9th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai’s Omicron Outbreak Corners Chinese Leader

After two years of relying on broad, hard-edged lockdowns to control Covid-19, Chinese leader Xi Jinping tried something new in Shanghai. Mindful of the economic toll and public anger from China’s zero-Covid strategy, Mr. Xi gave the city leeway to tackle local outbreaks, people close to the government’s decision-making said. The idea was to let Shanghai target only affected neighborhoods with lockdowns. If successful, the approach would offer a template for coexisting with the virus in the years ahead. Instead, China’s most populous city saw Covid-19 cases surge by nearly five times over the past week. While low by Western standards, Shanghai’s tally Thursday of more than 20,000 has pushed the country’s daily total to record highs. Now Mr. Xi faces a spiraling outbreak and the return of lockdowns, a twinned dilemma other world leaders hope their nations never see again.
9th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Second Covid Booster Vaccines: Are Fourth Shots Effective?

Everyone agrees that more coronavirus variants are likely. But how much the virus will evolve and how long existing vaccines will continue protecting against severe cases of Covid-19 remains uncertain. That’s led a short list of countries to recommend second boosters of existing vaccines for the especially vulnerable. These doses -- often referred to as a fourth shot, though it will be the third for those who initially got the single-dose immunization made by Johnson & Johnson -- are essentially a stopgap measure. Longer term, many researchers believe the vaccines will need to be periodically updated to counteract new strains, just as flu shots are tweaked annually.
9th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Shanghai Sees Another Record Covid Cases Friday at Over 23000

Shanghai announced another round of mass coronavirus testing, while the southern metropolis of Guangzhou said it will do the same for all 18 million residents, as authorities accelerate efforts to curb China’s worst outbreak since the early days of the pandemic. The nationwide tally for Friday was 25,701 new cases, with more than 23,600 from Shanghai, a new record, according to official data. Shanghai Deputy Mayor Zong Ming announced tweaks to the government’s lockdown policy at a press briefing Saturday. Overall measures remained stringent, however, as residents living in communities with Covid cases in the past seven days are barred from leaving their homes, while those residing in compounds without infections in the past week won’t need to be confined to their homes, but can’t leave those areas.
9th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

India to widen COVID booster effort to all adults from Sunday

India will offer booster doses of COVID-19 vaccine to all adults from Sunday, although free third doses will be limited to frontline workers and those older than 60 who get them at government centres. The country has given 1.85 billion vaccine doses among its population of 1.35 billion. Of these, 82% are the AstraZeneca dose made domestically and called Covishield. Those older than 18 who received a second dose nine months ago will be eligible for the "precaution" dose, the health ministry said, using the government's term for boosters.
9th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Fauci: US ‘likely’ to see fall COVID-19 surge

President Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci predicted Wednesday that there will likely be a rise in COVID-19 cases in the coming weeks as well as a potential surge in the fall. “I think we should expect, David, that over the next couple of weeks, we are going to see an uptick in cases – and hopefully there is enough background immunity so that we don’t wind up with a lot of hospitalizations,” Fauci told Bloomberg TV’s David Westin. Fauci, who serves as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that the increase in infections could come as a result of waning immunity and the loosening of COVID-19 restrictions across the U.S.
9th Apr 2022 - The Hill

Covid-19: Ending free testing is a mistake

In light of escalating rates of infection, hospital admissions, and rising sickness absence rates, the UK government should reconsider the end to free covid-19 testing. Helpfully, in the UK, we now have nine more “official” symptoms to consider when deciding if we might have covid-19. What we do not have is universally free testing so many people are left to make up their own minds about whether they have a cold, hay fever, normal aches and pains, or indeed covid-19. If they can afford to, and can find stocks, they can buy a lateral flow test. On the day that free testing finished, we saw one of the highest infection rates of the pandemic so far, with one in 13 of us infected with covid-19.1 We have now got the highest number of people with covid-19 being admitted to hospital, each week, since the pandemic began, and covid-19-related deaths reaching a level not seen for a while. The UK government’s strategy for “Living with covid-19” clearly means potentially living with chaos. This chaos is typified by the woeful communications that surround the government’s decisions. How will this new state of being affect the public, NHS staff, and those who are clinically extremely vulnerable—and what should be done about it?
9th Apr 2022 - The BMJ

WHO: Two-thirds of people in Africa may have had COVID

More than two-thirds of people living in Africa may have contracted COVID-19 over the past two years, about 97 times more than the number of reported infections, a World Health Organization (WHO) report has suggested. Laboratory tests have detected 11.5 million COVID-19 cases and 252,000 fatalities across the African continent. But according to the report released on Thursday, some 800 million people could have already been infected by last September. Officials at the WHO’s Africa region said the study – which is still being peer-reviewed – suggests the officially confirmed numbers were “likely only scratching the surface of the real extent of coronavirus infections in Africa”. “A new meta-analysis of standardised sero-prevalence study revealed that the true number of infections could be as much as 97 times higher than the number of confirmed reported cases,” said WHO Africa boss Matshidiso Moeti.
9th Apr 2022 - Al Jazeera English

The leaked WTO COVID patent waiver text promises a very bad deal

In October 2020, South Africa and India’s governments tabled a bold proposal (PDF) at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to temporarily waive intellectual property (IP) protections for producing COVID-19 vaccines and other coronavirus-related medical tools for the duration of the pandemic. The proposal aimed to address an urgent problem: multinational pharmaceutical companies and their backers using their monopoly power to prevent vaccine and medical product manufacturers across the world from scaling up production to meet global needs. It has been more than a year since the proposal was tabled, and the ongoing disparities in access to timely supplies of vaccines and other key technologies show the need for a waiver agreement is still as urgent as ever.
9th Apr 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Women of Lesotho's garment industry lose jobs, hope in COVID

Vekile Sesha stood outside the rusted gates of a garment factory in the industrial district of Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, willing her luck to change. Four months earlier, the blue jeans factory where she worked nearby abruptly shut, blaming plummeting demand from the Western brands it supplied amid the pandemic. She had loved the job fiercely: “I was talented, and I was doing something that was needed by the world.” Her monthly paycheck of 2,400 loti (about $150) supported a constellation of family members in her rural village. “Because of me, they never slept on an empty stomach,” she said.
9th Apr 2022 - The Associated Press

Are Second Covid Booster Shots Effective? What Experts Know So Far

Everyone agrees that more coronavirus variants are likely. But how much the virus will evolve and how long existing vaccines will continue protecting against severe cases of Covid-19 remains uncertain. That’s led a short list of countries to recommend second boosters of existing vaccines for the especially vulnerable. These doses -- often referred to as a fourth shot, though it will be the third for those who initially got the single-dose immunization made by Johnson & Johnson -- are essentially a stopgap measure. Longer term, many researchers believe the vaccines will need to be periodically updated to counteract new strains, just as flu shots are tweaked annually.
8th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 8th Apr 2022

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Shanghai, in Lockdown, Struggles to Feed Itself

A citywide Covid-19 lockdown in China’s financial capital of Shanghai has badly disrupted food supplies, causing a wave of anxiety as residents ration dwindling stores of vegetables and staples. Covid-test requirements for truckers entering Shanghai have caused delays in the delivery of foods and other commodities. Within the city, many food delivery workers have been confined to their homes or choose not to work for fear of catching the virus, leaving fewer people to distribute food once it makes it into the city. Dai Yuanyuan, a 33-year-old Shanghai resident who has been locked down in her apartment for more than three weeks, said she was running low on groceries from two government-organized deliveries. She has cut her egg consumption down from a few a day to just one. “I’m not sure if I can last for longer than five more days,” Ms. Dai said. Local authorities have banned private deliveries because they fear infected drivers might spread the virus in her residential compound, she said.
8th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Shanghai Racing to Build Hundreds of Thousands of Isolation Beds

Shanghai is transforming conference centers and conscripting neighboring provinces to create isolation facilities for hundreds of thousands of people, a sign of its commitment to a zero tolerance approach to Covid-19 amid China’s worst outbreak to date. The Chinese financial hub is adding tens of thousands of beds to what are already some of the world’s biggest isolation sites as it sticks to a policy of quarantining all those positive for the virus, regardless of severity, plus everyone they interacted with while infected. Nearly 150,000 people have been identified as close contacts and put into isolation. More than 100,000 others are considered secondary contacts and are being monitored, according to the government. It’s a strategy that grew out of the original outbreak in Wuhan, which China successfully quelled, but is proving more challenging to maintain in the face of ongoing outbreaks and more transmissible variants.
8th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

U.S. House passes $55 billion in COVID aid for restaurants, other hard-hit firms

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a $55 billion COVID-19 aid bill aimed at helping restaurants, bars and other businesses that are still struggling through the pandemic. By a vote of 223-203, the House approved the measure earmarking $42 billion for restaurants that have applied for aid but not received it because a $28.6 billion fund is depleted. The measure, which has not yet been considered by the Senate, was moving through the House as Congress was about to embark on a nearly three-week spring recess. The legislation was supported by only a handful of Republicans.
7th Apr 2022 - Reuters

How many Americans are actually vaccinated against covid-19?

Millions of Americans are now eligible for a second covid-19 booster shot. By all accounts, efforts to vaccinate older people in many states have gone well — unbelievably well, in fact. According to official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) counts of vaccinations among those above age 65 as compared with census data, 117 percent of those in that demographic in Massachusetts have had at least one shot of a coronavirus vaccine. New Hampshire would show that no less than 140 percent of that group are vaccinated. Buried deeper in the CDC website is an explanation of why the figures are so weird: Sometimes the data that the CDC has access to fail to link individuals to doses. This means that first doses are overestimated, because second and third doses are attributed as being a first dose for someone else. These reporting challenges will only get worse as people line up for a second booster shot. Very likely, the CDC’s underlying figures will soon show that more than 100 percent of those above age 65 across every U.S. state have had at least one shot. The bigger issue here is that all the data we have on U.S. vaccinations are subject to these distortions.
7th Apr 2022 - The Washington Post

GPs diagnosing 'in the dark' after end of free COVID-19 testing

Speaking at a Royal Society of Medicine webinar, Professor Dame Clare Gerada said it was important that patients could continue to do home tests to allow GPs to rule out COVID-19 among other conditions, such as the common cold and hayfever. The London GP admitted that family doctors worked ‘completely in the dark’ during the early stages of the pandemic when widespread COVID-19 testing was unavailable. Professor Gerada added that the virus was a ‘community-based’ disease, often managed first by primary care teams. Maintaining a robust testing programme to help GPs was vital to support primary care, she warned.
7th Apr 2022 - GP online

Almost 3,000 Covid deaths added to UK total after discovery of data error

Almost 3,000 Covid-19 deaths have been added to the UK’s official figures after the discovery of a data error. The cumulative number of people who have died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus rose by an extra 2,714 on Wednesday, in addition to 233 newly reported deaths. It means the total number of deaths in the UK within 28 days of a positive test is 169,095.
7th Apr 2022 - The Guardian

Long Covid numbers rise to 1.7m in UK as MPs warn of economic impact

More than three-quarters of a million people in the UK have had long Covid for at least a year, figures show. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates 1.7 million people were likely to be experiencing symptoms of long Covid in the four weeks to March 5, the equivalent of 2.7 per cent of the population. This is up by 13 per cent from 1.5 million people a month earlier, and includes 784,000 people who first had Covid-19, or suspected they had the virus, at least one year ago – the highest number so far.
7th Apr 2022 - iNews

NHS under huge strain as A&Es turn away ambulances

Hospitals are under "enormous strain", with growing numbers so busy they are having to divert ambulances to other sites because they are unable to cope. Over the past week, 20 NHS Accident and Emergency departments in England issued diverts, with patients taken elsewhere. Those A&E departments still taking new patients have seen long delays, with more than 25% of ambulances waiting at least 30 minutes to handover patients. Hospital bosses said they were "very concerned" about the situation. All areas of the country are facing huge pressures, but NHS bosses in West Yorkshire and the south central area of England - covering Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Oxfordshire and Berkshire - have reported particularly severe strain.
7th Apr 2022 - BBC News

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In China's Covid Fight, Respect for Seniors Backfires

China’s strict Covid-zero policy is getting costlier by day. As the infectious omicron variant spreads, the government is resorting to widespread lockdowns. Shanghai, a city of 25 million people, is at a standstill, and cities accounting for a quarter of China’s gross domestic product are under some form of restrictions on movement, estimates Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Politics is an often-cited reason to explain why China is sticking with Covid-zero. Looking for stability, Beijing is unlikely to relent before this fall’s 20th Party Congress, when President Xi Jinping is expected to start his third term.
6th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

U.K. Covid Cases at Highest Level as Immunity Wanes, Study Finds

Covid-19 infections in England reached their highest level in March since the pandemic began, driven by the omicron subvariant BA.2 and waning immunity among older adults, according to a new study. The overall Covid prevalence rate more than doubled last month from February when infection rates were falling from the omicron-led January peak, the React-1 study led by Imperial College London found. Since then the emergence of BA.2 -- a more-transmissible version of omicron- has accelerated new infections and become the dominant strain in England, accounting for about 90% of the samples that tested positive. The higher infection rates may result in an increase in hospitalizations despite the higher levels of vaccination among the population, said Paul Elliott, director of the React program, and chair in Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine, Imperial College London.
6th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg on MSN.com

China's Daily Covid Cases Top 20000 as Isolation Efforts Expand

China reported 20,472 new Covid-19 cases for Tuesday, driven by surging infections in Shanghai where local officials are building the world’s largest makeshift isolation facility to help contain the outbreak there. The National Exhibition and Convention Center, a 1.2 million square-meter space known for hosting international auto shows and other massive events, will be converted to house more than 40,000 people, according to local media reports. The effort shows how far the financial hub will go to fight the virus, on top of the lockdown that has kept its 25 million residents confined to their homes.
6th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Shanghai says it will make some exceptions in COVID children separation policy

Guardians of children with special needs who are infected with COVID can apply to escort them, a Shanghai city official said on Wednesday, pointing to a relaxation of a child-separation policy that has triggered widespread public anger. The city has been separating COVID-positive children from their parents, citing epidemic prevention measures. China's elimination strategy against COVID sees it test, trace and centrally quarantine all cases. In the face of rising public criticism, the government said on Monday it would allow children to be accompanied by their parents if the parents were also infected, but that they would still separate them if they were not.
6th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Biden launches U.S. plan to help Americans struggling with long COVID

President Joe Biden has tasked the U.S. health department with developing a national action plan to tackle the looming health crisis of long COVID, a complex, multi-symptom condition that leaves many of its sufferers unable to work. Long COVID, which arises months after a COVID-19 infection, affects nearly 7% of all U.S. adults and 2.3% of the overall population and has cost an estimated $386 billion in lost wages, savings and medical bills, according to an analysis by the Solve Long Covid Initiative, a non-profit research and advocacy group
6th Apr 2022 - Reuters.com

Japan to lift COVID entry ban for 106 countries including U.S.

Japan plans to ease COVID 19-related border restrictions by lifting its entry ban for foreign nationals from 106 countries including the United States, Britain and France on Friday, the government said. Tokyo has been gradually relaxing pandemic-induced curbs but the loosened border regime does not mean a full reopening to tourists.
6th Apr 2022 - Reuters.com

'COVID is not a cold' - Germany U-turns on ending mandatory isolation, article with image

Germany will not end mandatory isolation for most people who catch COVID-19, the health minister said on Wednesday, reversing course after concerns were raised that lifting quarantine restrictions would suggest the pandemic was over. "Coronavirus is not a cold. That is why there must continue to be isolation after an infection," Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Twitter, adding he had made a mistake by suggesting an end to mandatory quarantine. Under the existing rules, people with COVID must isolate for at least seven days. Lauterbach suggested last week a shift to a voluntary five-day period of self-isolation with the recommendation of a COVID test at the end of that time.
6th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Covid’s Next Big Wave Worries FDA Advisers Mapping Vaccine Plans

Health officials should be developing a consistent standard for Covid-19 vaccines as they prepare for the rapid emergence of new variants, U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisers said. Chances are roughly 20% that there will be another “omicron-like” event in the next 12 months, according to research reviewed Wednesday by the FDA and its advisory panel on vaccines. A key portion of the spike protein that coronavirus uses to enter cells is changing at least twice as fast as one common influenza strain, which requires new types of shots every year because of mutations. Many of the FDA advisers agreed that the agency needs to come up with a single standard for updating Covid-19 shots to prevent a confusing situation where vaccine manufacturers come out with different updates. Several panel members also said that a multiple-strain vaccine makes the most sense for the next iteration of the Covid shot, given the great uncertainties about future viral evolution
6th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Global groups propose strategy to tackle ongoing COVID risks

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and three global health partners today proposed a strategy to manage future risk from COVID, factoring in different scenarios on how the pandemic could evolve and setting ambitious price tags that would enable key policies to take shape.
5th Apr 2022 - CIDRAP

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 6th Apr 2022

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Covid deaths in England may rise as cases in over-55s increase

Article reports that a rise in Covid infections in the over-55s could see an increased number of hospitalisations and deaths in the coming weeks, experts have warned. Imperial College London’s latest React-1 study found that while infections appeared to be slowing down or plateauing in most younger age groups in England, they were rising in over-55s, with no clear sign of when they will peak. According to their latest data, the average prevalence of Covid-19 across England stood at 6.4%, based on swabs collected between 9 and 31 March from a random sample of nearly 100,000 people. “That’s by far the highest we’ve seen at any time since [the study began] in May 2020,” said Prof Paul Elliott, who led the research.
6th Apr 2022 - The Guardian

Citing decreasing COVID cases, South Africa ends emergency

With declining cases of COVID-19, South Africa on Tuesday ended its national state of disaster, the legal framework used for two years to impose restrictions to combat the pandemic. South African sports fans can now return to stadiums in large numbers to watch soccer, rugby and cricket matches. Sports venues can take up to 50% of capacity with people who show proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test done within 72 hours. Most restrictions will be lifted, but people will be required to wear masks in indoor public spaces. International travelers must provide proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test done within 72 hours. “While the pandemic is not over, and while the virus remains among us, these conditions no longer require that we remain in a national state of disaster,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a nationally televised speech Monday night. “Going forward, the pandemic will be managed in terms of the national health act.”
6th Apr 2022 - The Associated Press

Do I Need Covid Booster? Third Dose Protects Against Omicron for Months: Study

Three Covid-19 vaccinations offer protection against severe symptoms even after four months, according to a study from Denmark, one of the countries first hit by the fast-spreading omicron variant. More than 121 days after being administered, third doses of vaccine still offered as much as 77.3% protection against symptoms that require hospitalization, the study found. Denmark estimates that about 70% of its adult population contracted omicron from November to March. The Nordic country ended all virus restrictions on Feb. 1 because a high vaccination rate prevented omicron from overburdening its hospitals. The study, published by Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut for infectious diseases, isn’t yet peer-reviewed. It also showed that the third dose offered as much as 90.2% protection against hospitalization immediately after it was taken and that three shots reduces the risk of getting omicron by almost 50%.
5th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Hit by staff shortages, airlines and airports struggle with travel recovery

Thousands of holidaymakers have seen their Easter getaways disrupted or cancelled because airlines and airports do not have enough staff to meet the recovery in demand as pandemic restrictions are eased in Europe. High rates of COVID-19 in Britain have caused staff absences for airlines and airports that were already struggling to recruit after workers deserted the industry during the pandemic. Low-cost carrier easyJet was one of the worst affected, saying it cancelled around 60 UK flights on Tuesday and expected to pull a similar number in the coming days.
5th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Global groups propose pandemic plan costing $10 billion a year

It will take $15 billion in grants this year and another $10 billion annually after that to establish and maintain an adequate toolkit to respond to COVID-19 and address future pandemic threats, according to four organizations focused on global health and the economy. The estimate is laid out in "A Global Strategy to Manage the Long-term Risks of COVID-19," a working paper published on Tuesday by the International Monetary Fund, in partnership with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the Global Fund and Wellcome Trust.
5th Apr 2022 - Reuters

Queensland's COVID-19 vaccination mandate for cafes, pubs and clubs set to ease

A mandate preventing people unvaccinated against COVID-19 from visiting many public venues in Queensland will be eased from next Thursday. People will no longer need to prove they have had two doses of a vaccine before heading into cafes, pubs and clubs from 1:00am on April 14. This also includes theme parks, casinos, cinemas, weddings, showgrounds, stadiums, galleries, libraries and museums.
5th Apr 2022 - ABC.Net.au

New Zealand’s Covid strategy was one of the world’s most successful – what can we learn from it?

Two weeks ago marked the two-year anniversary of New Zealand’s adoption of the elimination strategy and a lockdown that successfully stamped out the first wave of Covid-19. By chance, it was also the week that the government announced a major relaxation of Covid-19 control measures in response to the Omicron variant wave sweeping the country. By most metrics, the New Zealand Covid-19 response – the initial elimination strategy which has now transitioned to a mitigation strategy – has been one of the most successful in the world. It got the country through the first 18 months of the pandemic until vaccines became widely available, giving it very low Covid-19 mortality rates. Life expectancy actually increased during this period. Protecting public health has also been good for protecting the economy, resulting in relatively good economic growth and low unemployment
5th Apr 2022 - The Guardian

IMF calls for $15 bln this year to manage long-term risks of COVID

Countries around the world should provide $15 billion in grants this year and $10 billion a year thereafter to manage the long-term risks of COVID-19, the International Monetary Fund said in a new staff paper released on Tuesday. The paper, prepared with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the Global Fund, and charitable group Wellcome, said a new, more comprehensive approach was needed immediately to strengthen global health systems and limit the already staggering $13.8 trillion cost of the pandemic.
5th Apr 2022 - Reuters

S.Africa's COVID state of disaster to end at midnight - Ramaphosa

South Africa's national state of disaster, in place for more than two years in response to COVID-19, will end from midnight local time on Monday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said. The national state of disaster has been the government's main mechanism for managing the pandemic. Removing it will do away with the vast majority of remaining COVID-19 restrictions, aside from a few that will remain in place on a transitional basis, Ramaphosa said.
5th Apr 2022 - Reuters

US pulls GSK's COVID drug as omicron sibling dominates cases

GlaxoSmithKline’s IV drug for COVID-19 should no longer be used because it is likely ineffective against the omicron subvariant that now accounts for most U.S. cases, federal health regulators said Tuesday. The Food and Drug Administration announced that the company’s antibody drug sotrovimab is no longer authorized to treat patients in any U.S. state or territory. The decision was expected, because the FDA had repeatedly restricted the drug’s use in the Northeast and other regions as the BA.2 version of omicron became dominant. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that BA.2 accounts for 72% of the COVID-19 cases sequenced by health authorities. Some experts have warned of a BA.2-driven surge similar to those that have hit European countries, though U.S. case counts have yet to rise.
5th Apr 2022 - The Associated Press

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Shanghai Extends Lockdown as City Tests Its 25 Million Residents for Covid

Shanghai extended lockdown measures as it concluded a day of testing of all 25 million of its residents for Covid-19 Monday, aided by thousands of medical workers who arrived over the weekend from across the country. Late Monday, which was meant to be the final day of lockdown, the municipal government said the lockdown would continue until after the authorities finished evaluating the situation, including reviewing the results of the mass-testing effort. It said by evening, it was nearly done with the citywide testing. Shanghai had planned a two-phase lockdown, in which half the city’s residents would be confined to their homes at a time, depending on which side of the Huangpu River they lived. The first four-day lockdown of residents to the east and south of the river was to have ended Friday. The second stage was due to end at 3 a.m. Tuesday.
4th Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China Covid Crisis Grows With Cases Surging, New Sub-Strains

China’s Covid-19 situation is on a knife’s edge, with a lockdown of its financial hub intensified over the weekend amid a surge in new cases and reports of new sub-strains of the omicron variant emerging. The country, which managed to live much of the pandemic effectively virus free after quashing its initial outbreak in Wuhan, is experiencing its biggest jump in daily infections since 2020. Shanghai reported 9,006 cases for Sunday as the city prepares to test all its 25 million residents in another effort to weed out infections, amid accounts of un-reported deaths in a nursing home and ongoing food shortages. After announcing a partial lockdown a week ago, the uptick in cases now means Shanghai’s entire population is now under some form of movement restrictions.
4th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg on MSN.com

China Variants and Omicron XE Put Fresh Focus on Covid Mutations

The disclosure of new Covid variants emerging in China and the rise of a potentially more transmissible strain in the U.K. has recast the spotlight on the ongoing risk of the virus, even as health experts say there’s no reason to panic. The World Health Organization said a hybrid of two omicron strains -- BA.1 and BA.2 -- that was first detected in the U.K. and dubbed XE could be the most transmissible variant yet. It is estimated to spread 10% more easily than BA.2, which itself was more transmissible than the original omicron famous for its ease of penetration. Meanwhile in China, which is experiencing its biggest outbreak since Wuhan, authorities have disclosed two novel omicron subvariants that don’t match any existing sequences. It’s unclear if the infections were one-off events of little significance, or if they may be a sign of problems ahead.
4th Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

Gilead's remdesivir fails to show benefit in European trial; no fetus risk seen with first trimester vaccination

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. Two promising drugs for COVID-19 fail to deliver. Two drugs that looked like promising treatments for COVID-19 in preliminary studies - remdesivir for hospitalized patients and camostat for patients who are not seriously ill - failed to show a benefit in those groups in randomized controlled trials, researchers reported in two separate papers.
4th Apr 2022 - Reuters

U.S. Senator Romney announces deal on $10 billion in COVID funding

An agreement to provide $10 billion in U.S. funding for COVID-19 aid has been reached in the Senate, lawmakers said on Monday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the chamber, and Republican Senator Mitt Romney hailed the deal, but Schumer said he was disappointed that an agreement on $5 billion of global health funding had not also been reached. The deal provides $10 billion in funding for COVID needs and therapeutics by repurposing unspent COVID funds. It is well below the $22.5 billion the Biden administration had sought.
4th Apr 2022 - Reuters.com

Covid-19: Vaccine passes gone by midnight – but businesses can keep using them

Four months after becoming the entry key to many events, bars and restaurants, gyms, hairdressers, sports and faith-based gatherings, vaccines passes will soon be optional for hosts. My Vaccine Pass – brought in as part of the Government's Covid-19 protection framework – will no longer be required from 11.59pm Monday, although businesses will still be able to use the system if they want. Those supplying basic needs, such as supermarkets, pharmacies, petrol stations, public transport, schools and health services, were exempt, but were a legal requirement for many other close-proximity businesses. Also from 11.59pm Monday, some government vaccine mandates for workers will be removed. Those still covered include health and disability sector workers, including aged-care workers, along with prison staff and border and MIQ workers.
4th Apr 2022 - Stuff.co.nz

Sweden to offer fourth COVID vaccine jab to people aged 65 and above

Sweden will give a fourth shot of COVID-19 vaccine to people aged 65 and above to boost their defences against the disease, the health agency said on Monday. "For people aged 65 and over, it is now four months since the previous vaccine dose, and the protective effect of the vaccine diminishes over time," the Health Agency said in a statement. Sweden had previously offered a fourth jab to people aged 80 or older.
4th Apr 2022 - Reuters

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China's Covid Variants: New Omicron Virus Subtype Discovered

China added more than 13,000 new Covid-19 infections with state media reporting a case infected with a new subtype of the omicron variant. The new iteration of the virus, isolated from a mild Covid-19 patient in a city less than 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Shanghai, evolves from the BA.1.1 branch of the omicron variant, Global Times reported, citing sequencing data from local health authorities. The report said the subtype doesn’t match other coronavirus that’s causing Covid in China nor those submitted to GISAID, where scientists around the world share the coronavirus they sequenced as a way to monitor mutations. A case in Dalian city in northern China reported on Friday also didn’t match any coronavirus found domestically, the municipal government said on its WeChat account.
3rd Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

‘One per cent of UK population’ newly infected with Covid-19 every day

Around one in every 100 people in the UK is likely to have been newly infected with Covid-19 per day during the current surge of the virus, figures suggest. Infections are estimated to have climbed as high as 657,300 every day by March 16, according to new modelling published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This is the equivalent of roughly 1% of the population. It is also more than double the number of daily infections that were occurring at the end of February. The figures suggest that by mid-March the virus was circulating at levels higher even than those reached during the Omicron-led surge at the start of the year.
2nd Apr 2022 - Evening Standard

Rising Covid infections pile pressure on hospitals

Surging coronavirus infections are putting hospitals across the UK under mounting pressure and undermining efforts to get on top of waiting lists more than two years after the start of the pandemic. Several NHS trusts across England have been forced to declare critical incidents in recent weeks as the number of Covid-19 cases has increased. Ambulance services are reporting widespread delays at hospitals and in reaching those dialling 999.
4th Apr 2022 - The Times

Senators Eye $10 Billion Covid-19 Deal Ahead of Possible Resurgence

Senators are looking to close a deal this coming week to reappropriate roughly $10 billion to pay for Covid-19 treatments and vaccines, with lawmakers saying they need to act quickly ahead of a possible resurgence of the pandemic. A bipartisan group of senators has sought to give the Biden administration some of what it has requested to address future variants of Covid-19 and secure a domestic supply of tests, vaccines and treatments in coming months, as well as send vaccines abroad. Negotiators are looking at pandemic-related funds that Congress has previously passed that remain unspent, after Republicans resisted new outlays and many Democrats rejected a previous deal involving $15.6 billion in repurposed funding.
3rd Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

WHO Suspends Procurement, Supply of Bharat Biotech Covid Vaccine

The World Health Organization suspended procurement and supply of Covaxin, a Covid-19 vaccine made by Bharat Biotech International Ltd., citing issues following an inspection at the company’s facilities. The Indian vaccine maker has committed to address deficiencies in good manufacturing practices and is developing a corrective and preventive action plan, the World Health Organization said, without specifying when the suspension will be lifted. It recommended countries which have received the vaccine to “take actions as appropriate.” The World Health Organization granted emergency use authorization to the vaccine co-developed by India’s medical research agency and the local manufacturer in November. It said the suspension doesn’t change the vaccine’s risk assessment, and data indicates it is effective and no safety concerns exist.
3rd Apr 2022 - Bloomberg

New Omicron variant XE found in UK but ‘too soon to say’ how contagious it is

A new Covid variant has been found in the UK but experts say it’s too soon to know if it is more transmissible than previous strains. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSCA) said it was studying XE - a mutation of the BA.1 and BA.2 Omicron strains, referred to as a "recombinant". The government body said that, as of 22 March, 637 cases of XE had been detected in England, only a small fraction of the tens of thousands of Covid cases being reported every day since restrictions were lifted.
2nd Apr 2022 - The Independent

China expects sharp drop in holiday travel due to COVID outbreaks

China's transport ministry expects a 20% drop in road traffic and a 55% fall in flights during the three-day Qingming holiday due to a flare-up of COVID-19 cases in the country. More than 27 Chinese provinces and regions have recently reported coronavirus cases, mostly the highly transmissible Omicron variant, forcing the authorities to impose stringent mobility restrictions or even city-wide lockdowns. Chinese typically travel back to their home towns to worship their ancestors during the tomb-sweeping festival.
3rd Apr 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai asks entire city to self-test for COVID as frustration grows

Shanghai on Sunday ordered its 26 million residents to undergo two more rounds of tests for COVID-19 as public anger grows over how authorities in China's most populous city are tackling a record coronavirus surge. Residents should self-test on Sunday using antigen kits and report any positive results, Shanghai government officials told a news conference, while a nucleic acid test would be conducted citywide on Monday. "The main task is to completely eliminate risk points and to cut off the chain of transmission so that we can curb the spread of the epidemic as soon as possible," said Wu Qianyu, an inspector from Shanghai Municipal Health Commission.
3rd Apr 2022 - Reuters

NYC to keep school mask rule for kids aged 2 to 4 in place

With COVID-19 cases rising once again, New York City is keeping a mask mandate for children under 5 in place and will appeal a judge’s ruling that struck it down, Mayor Eric Adams announced Friday. City health officials are recommending that everyone cover their faces in indoor public settings and will continue to require masks for children aged 2 to 4 in schools and daycare centers, Adams said. Adams had said previously that the mask mandate for young children would be lifted on April 4 if coronavirus numbers remained low. New York City is now averaging just under 1,300 new cases of COVID-19 per day, more than twice the number on the average day in early March.
2nd Apr 2022 - The Associated Press

Why We Are Covid Broke

Washington dysfunction is so comprehensive, it’s sometimes difficult to know where to start. So there is usefulness in a recent White House missive to Congress—which in a few short pages neatly sums up the dishonesty and malpractice of today’s Beltway. “Dear Madame Speaker,” begins the March 15 letter, devoted to the topic of Covid poverty. “We are notifying you of the following actions necessitated by the lack of critical funding.” Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young and White House Covid coordinator Jeffrey Zients explain that unless Congress supplies tens of billions more in taxpayer dollars, the federal government will no longer be able to “secure sufficient booster doses,” will end “the purchase of monoclonal antibody treatments,” will halt “critical testing,” and will scale back “preventive treatments for the immunocompromised.”
2nd Apr 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

S.Korea likely to lift outdoor mask mandate, most COVID curbs this month

South Korea said on Friday it would further relax its social distancing rules next week and possibly scrap most pandemic-related curbs later this month, including an obligation to wear masks outdoors. From April 4, a curfew on eateries and other businesses will be pushed back to midnight from 11 p.m., and private gatherings of up to 10 people will be allowed, Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol said. The decision is South Korea's latest step in easing anti-coronavirus measures, after scrapping vaccine mandates and a mandatory quarantine for vaccinated travellers arriving from overseas, despite an ongoing Omicron wave.
1st Apr 2022 - Reuters

Italy ends COVID-19 state of emergency, curbs to be lifted gradually

Italy on Friday began to phase out its COVID-19 restrictions, ending a state of emergency public authorities declared more than two years ago that allowed it to bypass bureaucracy and swiftly impose rules via decrees. The state of emergency was introduced on Jan. 31, 2020, but Prime Minister Mario Draghi's government announced plans in March to return to normal after deciding not to extend it. read more It officially ended on Thursday. "A new phase is beginning ... This does not mean that the pandemic is over. There is no 'off' button that magically makes the virus disappear," Health Minister Roberto Speranza told the newspaper la Repubblica.
1st Apr 2022 - Reuters

COVID fears raise Japan's dementia risks as seniors shun hospitals

Doctors warn avoiding treatment could cut healthy life expectancy. The spread of COVID-19 is not the only pandemic-related health risk cropping up in Japan. Seniors, who are more likely to fall seriously ill if they contract the virus, are putting off visiting hospitals for other ailments.
30th Mar 2022 - Nikkei Asia

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States Close Mass Test and Vaccine Sites, but Virus May Swell Anew

As Americans shed masks and return to offices and restaurants, local and state officials are scaling back the most visible public health efforts to address the coronavirus pandemic. States like Illinois are shuttering free Covid-19 testing sites after nearly two years of operation. Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Ohio have stopped releasing daily data on virus hospitalizations, infections and deaths. And, perhaps most notably, some places are diminishing their campaigns to vaccinate residents even as federal authorities announced on Tuesday that people 50 and older could get a second booster shot. The slowing of state and local efforts comes as the virus in the United States appears, at least for now, to be in retreat, with cases falling swiftly in recent weeks. But the cutbacks also arrive at a moment when a more transmissible version of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, known as BA.2, is spreading through Europe, Asia and is now the dominant version of new virus cases in the United States. New coronavirus infections are edging upward once again in several states, including New York.
31st Mar 2022 - The New York Times

COVID-19: How can I get lateral flow tests from Friday and how much do they cost?

In England, the majority of people who want to be tested for COVID-19 will have to pay for their own lateral flow tests from this Friday under new plans put forward by ministers. The government has announced who will be eligible for free tests when free universal testing in England comes to an end. People have been discouraged from ordering packs of lateral flow tests (LFTs) from the government website in a last-minute scramble to get hold of them by 1 April.
31st Mar 2022 - Sky News

U.S. CDC scraps COVID warning for cruise travel after 2 years

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday removed its COVID-19 notice against cruise travel, around two years after introducing a warning scale showing the level of coronavirus transmission risk on cruise ships. The move offers a shot of hope to major U.S. cruise operators such as Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise that have struggled to bring in revenue since the pandemic started.
31st Mar 2022 - Reuters

S.Koreans flock overseas for 'revenge travel' as COVID rules ease

Vaccinated and boosted, Kim and his wife are among South Koreans joining in a rush for "revenge travel" - a term that has been trending on social media as people scramble to book overseas trips that were delayed by coronavirus restrictions. The boom started after March 21 when South Korea lifted a seven-day mandatory quarantine for fully vaccinated travellers arriving from most countries. The restriction had been eased last year but was reimposed in December as the highly infectious Omicron variant spread.
31st Mar 2022 - Reuters

China reopens one city as Shanghai lockdown enters 2nd phase

The city of Shanghai prepared Thursday to reopen its eastern half and shut its western half, while authorities elsewhere announced the lifting of a citywide lockdown in the province hit hardest by China’s ongoing omicron-driven coronavirus outbreak. Residents of the city of Jilin will be able to move about freely starting Friday for the first time in more than three weeks, state broadcaster CCTV said, citing a notice issued by the city. They will be required to wear masks and, when indoors, stay one meter (three feet) apart. Public gatherings in parks and squares are prohibited.
31st Mar 2022 - Associated Press

U.S. Senate negotiators near agreement on $10 bln round of COVID funds

U.S. Senate negotiators on Thursday were nearing a deal on a $10 billion COVID-19 bill to help the federal government acquire more vaccines and medical supplies as it prepares for future variants of the virus that upended American life. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said senators were "close to a final agreement" on a bill aiming to shore up stockpiles to be used both domestically and internationally. If a deal is finalized in coming days, the Senate might be able to pass the bill and send it to the House of Representatives before the start of a spring recess at the end of next week.
31st Mar 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai to expand lockdown to most residents as COVID cases rise

Shanghai is set to put the vast majority of its residents under COVID lockdown from Friday, as it expands curbs to include the western half of the city and extends restrictions in the east where people have already been forced to stay home since Monday. The Chinese commercial hub, home to 26 million people, is on the fourth day of a 10-day lockdown that was to cover the city in two phases, with first the east and then the west entering lockdowns of five days each. The stay-at-home measure in the financial and industrial districts in the east began on Monday and was due to lifted at 5 a.m. on Friday. However, the city government late on Thursday said it would lift the curbs in stages instead.
31st Mar 2022 - Reuters

Unreported Covid Infections, Deaths Plague a Shanghai Hospital for the Elderly

Many patients have died in recent days at a large Shanghai elderly-care hospital that is battling a Covid-19 outbreak, according to people familiar with the situation, a sign that a new wave of infections is hitting China’s financial capital harder than authorities have publicly disclosed. Shanghai’s government hasn’t reported any Covid-related deaths or outbreaks in its hundreds of elderly-care centers since cases began climbing in the city in March. Six replacement orderlies at the city’s Donghai Elderly Care Hospital, brought in after previous caretakers were sent away to quarantine, told The Wall Street Journal that they had witnessed or heard of the recent removal of several bodies from the facility, where they said at least 100 patients had tested positive for Covid-19.
31st Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

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Biden, 79, will receive his second booster today

President Joe Biden will receive his second COVID-19 booster shot Wednesday afternoon. On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a fourth dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines for Americans over age 50. Immunocompromised adults over 12 could get a fourth Pfizer dose, while those 18 and older could get a fourth Moderna shot. Biden received his original Pfizer booster in late September, rolling up his sleeve in the White House complex's South Court Auditorium. He'll use the same venue Wednesday for his second booster shot, receiving the dose after delivering a COVID-19 update to the American people
30th Mar 2022 - Daily Mail

Is Covid Over? Probably Not — Just Ask Australian Rabbits

The case of Australia’s rabbits is particularly instructive. European rabbits, brought to Australia by humans, overran the country and devoured its farmland. In a desperate attempt to remedy the problem, scientists working with the Australian government released a virus called myxoma, which is endemic to other animals and was thought to be unlikely to make a jump to humans. “It was the biggest, most devastating outbreak of virus for any vertebrate that we know of,” says Andrew Read, a Penn State University evolutionary biologist who studies pathogens and their hosts. “The virus was extremely virulent … it killed 99.9% of rabbits.” But a few rabbits carried a winning combination of genes that allowed them to survive the attack. Their descendants, armed with better resistance, allowed the species to bounce back, though the rabbits have never reached their previously copious numbers.
30th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Switzerland Mask Mandate: Last Covid Restrictions Dropped to Return to Normal

Switzerland is lifting the remaining pandemic-related restrictions, pushing ahead with a plan to return to normal life after two years. A mask mandate on public transport and in health-care facilities will be abandoned as of April 1, the Swiss government said Wednesday. People who test positive will also no longer have to adhere to a five-day isolation period. The move comes after the more transmissible BA.2 subvariant of omicron led to a resurgence of cases across Europe, though authorities have shrugged off the increase as it has had a less severe impact on hospitals. Switzerland had already scrapped most of its safety measures in February, including a work-from-home recommendation and the need for Covid-documentation to enter the country.
30th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Never Had Covid? You May Hold Key To Beating the Virus

More than half of Americans may have never had Covid, according to U.S. government data, leaving scientists wondering whether those who’ve avoided the novel coronavirus might actually be immune to the virus altogether. This could offer new clues into how to attack Covid. At this stage in the pandemic, people may be immune due to vaccines, a past infection, or a combination of both. There’s also evidence that, in rare instances, some people may be Covid-immune without infection or vaccination at all.
30th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Shanghai expands lockdown to more areas as new local cases hit 5,982

Shanghai on Wednesday extended its shut downs to some western parts of the city, earlier than scheduled, as it reported a total of 5,982 new local cases.
30th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Opinion | Failing to fund the U.S. covid response bodes trouble for the entire world

Atul Gawande, who leads global health and is co-chair of the Covid-19 Task Force at the U.S. Agency for International Development, writes: "The global battle against covid-19 is not done. Instead, the challenge has changed. The lowest-income countries, where vaccinations have reached less than 15 percent of people, are now declining free vaccine supply because they don’t have the capacity to get shots in arms fast enough. We must therefore not just provide an arsenal; to protect our allies against future variants, we must also provide the support they need to ramp up their vaccination campaigns. That effort requires money, and despite generously funding our covid-19 response up to this point, Congress is now failing to provide the resources we need."
30th Mar 2022 - The Washington Post

Despite High Covid-19 Case Counts, Asian Nations Learn to Live With the Virus

The Covid-19 wave that is tearing through South Korea is the largest that any developed country has experienced, reaching three times the number of new daily cases per capita than previous peaks in the U.S. and the U.K. Yet, South Korea has all but given up on trying to stop the spread of the virus. Health officials recently called such a mass outbreak necessary. It was a test of faith for a health system—and a population—ahead of a new pandemic target: downgrading Covid-19 from the riskiest category of infectious disease.
30th Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Britain may be wasting nearly 3 billion pounds on COVID gear

Britain may be wasting nearly 3 billion pounds ($3.94 billion) on contracts for COVID-19 gear that have not given value for money, with millions spent each month storing unneeded and sometimes out-of-date kit, a watchdog said on Wednesday. The report by the parliament-supervised National Audit Office (NAO) will fuel opposition claims that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government was wasteful and nepotistic in its allocation of huge contracts during the two-year pandemic.
30th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Swiss to lift last of COVID-19 restrictions from April 1

Switzerland will lift the last of its remaining COVID-19 restrictions from Friday, the government said on Wednesday, as the country seeks to live with the virus. The obligation to wear a mask on public transport and at health facilities, as well as the requirement to self-isolate for five days after a positive test will be removed, the government said. Responsibility for containing the virus will be handed to local authorities, it added, with a phase of heightened vigilance planned over the next 12 months.
30th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 30th Mar 2022

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UK police to issue first 20 fines over Downing Street lockdown parties

British police said on Tuesday that 20 fines would be issued over gatherings in Boris Johnson's offices and residence that broke coronavirus lockdown rules, sparking fresh calls for the prime minister to resign.
29th Mar 2022 - Reuters

U.S. authorizes second COVID booster for Americans 50 and older

U.S. health officials on Tuesday authorized a second COVID-19 booster dose of the two most commonly used COVID-19 vaccines for people age 50 and older, citing data showing waning immunity and the risks posed by Omicron variants of the virus. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration agency said the new boosters - a fourth round of shots for most vaccine recipients - of the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc vaccines are to be administered at least four months after the previous dose. They are intended to offer more protection against severe disease and hospitalization.
29th Mar 2022 - Reuters

World Moves From Shortages to Possible Glut of Covid-19 Vaccines

After racing to build capacity and meet once seemingly insatiable orders for Covid-19 shots, the global vaccine industry is facing waning demand as many late-to-market producers fight over a slowing market. The trend is poised to rein in the blockbuster sales that global pharmaceutical giants from Pfizer Inc. to AstraZeneca Plc saw at the peak of the pandemic. It also stands to create new problems for local manufacturers from India to Indonesia that built mammoth capacity to make shots but are now grappling with excess supply. Even as boosters are likely to keep demand alive for Covid inoculations worldwide, the desperate shortages that existed for much of last year have waned. Instead, in a dramatic reversal, the possibility of a global glut is now looking more likely.
29th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Future of Covid memorial wall still uncertain one year after the first heart

Despite the dedication of a team of volunteers who continue to touch up the red hearts and the messages in black pen, the Covid memorial wall is yet to be granted a permanent status and could still be removed. On Tuesday, bereaved families and supporters will be handing a petition with more than 106,000 signatures and counting to 10 Downing Street, calling for the memorial wall to be made permanent. The day will include a silent procession along the length of the wall, as well as a candlelit vigil in the evening. Boris Johnson promised a “commission” on Covid commemoration in May last year, but nothing further has been done, and the prime minister has refused to commit to making the wall permanent.
29th Mar 2022 - The Guardian

U.S. eases COVID-19 travel advisory for India

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and State Department eased government COVID-19 travel ratings for India and some other countries on Monday. The CDC said had changed its COVID-19 travel recommendation for India to "Level 1: Low" from "Level 3: High," which urges unvaccinated Americans to avoid travel to those locations. The CDC also lowered Chad, Guinea and Namibia to "Level 1." The State Department on Monday lowered its travel advisory for India to "Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution," reflecting the lower COVID-19 risk, but also cited the risk of "crime and terrorism."
29th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 29th Mar 2022

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Shanghai Lockdown Experiment Begins as Officials Race to Clear Covid-19

Half of Shanghai went into lockdown on Monday, as authorities escalated measures to contain a spiraling Covid-19 outbreak in China’s financial capital. After announcing the snap two-stage lockdown of the city on Sunday, Shanghai reported 3,500 new Covid-19 cases, another record, with the number of infections doubling every few days. On Monday, barricades were seen splitting up the city, while many metro services and bus lines were suspended. Companies including Tesla Inc. suspended manufacturing for four days.
28th Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Shanghai reports record asymptomatic COVID cases as lockdowns begin

China's financial hub of Shanghai launched a two-stage lockdown of its 26 million residents on Monday, closing bridges and tunnels and restricting highway traffic in a scramble to contain surging COVID-19 cases. The snap lockdown, announced by the local government late on Sunday, will split China's most populous city roughly along the Huangpu River for nine days to allow for "staggered" testing by healthcare workers in white hazmat suits. It is the biggest COVID-related disruption to hit Shanghai, and sent prices of commodities including oil and copper lower on fears that any further curbs could hurt demand in China, the world's second-largest economy
28th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai locks down as COVID surges in China's financial hub

China's financial hub of Shanghai launched a two-stage lockdown of its 26 million residents on Monday, closing bridges and tunnels and restricting highway traffic in a scramble to contain surging COVID-19 cases. The snap lockdown, announced by the local government late on Sunday, will split China's most populous city roughly along the Huangpu River for nine days to allow for "staggered" testing by healthcare workers in white hazmat suits. It is the biggest COVID-related disruption to hit Shanghai, and sent prices of commodities including oil and copper lower on fears that any further curbs could hurt demand in China, the world's second-largest economy
28th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Ghana opens borders and eases majority of Covid-19 restrictions

Ghana is the latest African country to ease its Covid-19 rules. In his 28th Covid-19 address, President President Akufo-Addo announced an update on the measures taken to limit the spread of the virus. Citing a "review premised on the background of rapidly declining infections, the relative success of the vaccination campaign ... and the increased capacity in the public and private health sectors", the leader presented measures set to take effect on Monday, March 28. 2 years after President Akufo-Addo closed all borders, he announced the opening of sea and land borders vowing the economy would soon rebound.
28th Mar 2022 - Africanews

COVID-19: 600,000 people to be invited for spring booster jabs next week

More than 600,000 people in England will be invited for a COVID-19 booster jab next week. Since the beginning of the spring booster programme last week, NHS England said more than 470,000 people have already come forward for a jab. Around 5.5 million people in England aged over 75 or immunosuppressed will be eligible for a spring booster over the coming weeks and months.
28th Mar 2022 - Sky News

G20 chair Indonesia seeks standardised health requirements for travel

Group of 20 major economies (G20) chair Indonesia has started talks with members on standardising health protocols for travel, its health minister said, stressing the importance of harmonising rules and technology as global travel resumes. An aide to Indonesia's health minister, Setiaji, said countries were getting ready to roll out a global website to scan and verify travellers' vaccination status. All G20 members support the rollout, but China will not participate yet "due to technical reasons," he said without giving further details.
28th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 28th Mar 2022

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Shanghai Imposes Staggered Lockdowns to Keep Coronavirus at Bay

Shanghai imposed stringent pandemic restrictions it has long tried to avoid on its 25 million residents that are likely to disrupt commercial activity well beyond the city limits. Local authorities said on Sunday they plan to lock down the city in two phases over the next week and a half to try to control an outbreak of the highly infectious Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus. All over Shanghai, the government’s announcement sparked frenzied scrambles to food markets and grumbling about the disruption to urban life in a city that until recently appeared relatively unaffected by Covid.
27th Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

China Covid Spike Preceded by Surge in Cases From Hong Kong

Just across the border from Hong Kong, tech hub Shenzhen is emerging from a week-long lockdown called to tackle an outbreak of the omicron variant. Shanghai, meanwhile, is seeing its highest new case levels of the pandemic, with half the city locked down for testing after a handful of infections ballooned into more than 2,000 in a matter of weeks. An analysis by Bloomberg News found the uptick in cases in both cities -- key entry points into the mainland -- came around the same time or shortly after a surge in infections was recorded in quarantined travelers coming from Hong Kong, where the number of recorded new cases still hovers above 8,000.
27th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

The Vaccine-Hesitant Could Use Some Friendly Shame

If we look at the crisis as a matter of the community’s health and survival, the Covid vaccine seemed like an ideal opportunity to deploy healthy shame. Getting vaccinated kept people from dying. Refusing was a form of freeloading, leaving the work of building herd immunity to others. Those who didn’t take the trouble to get vaccinated, it could be argued, were lazy, selfish, and ignorant. But in this case, societal shaming turns out to be counterproductive. Pressure coming from authority figures can send people running in the opposite direction. Many African Americans, for example, are quite reasonably skeptical of vaccines, knowing all too well about the horrors visited upon their community.
27th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Travel, Alcohol, Masks: Singapore Lifts Major Covid Restrictions

Singapore will significantly ease Covid-19 curbs, lifting most restrictions for fully vaccinated visitors and a requirement to wear masks outdoors, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Travel-related stocks gained. With the latest wave of the virus subsiding, Lee said that Singapore will double the group size limit to 10 people and allow up to 75% of employees who can work from home to return to their workplaces. The city-state will ease testing and quarantine requirements for travelers and lift a ban on alcohol sales in pubs and eateries after 10:30 p.m.
27th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Premier calls for pre-Songkran vaccine drive

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has ordered authorities to speed up inoculation of vulnerable groups ahead of the Songkran festival next month, a spokesman says. Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana, government spokesman, said Gen Prayut has ordered state agencies to encourage people aged 60 and over, those suffering from underlying illnesses and pregnant women to receive their shots against Covid-19 before the holidays as a precautionary measure. The goal is to offer booster jabs to at least 70% of the elderly who have already been vaccinated at least twice, he said. The Songkran festival marks an important time when families return home and pay respects to the elderly.
27th Mar 2022 - ฺBangkok Post

Experts worry about how US will see next COVID surge coming

As coronavirus infections rise in some parts of the world, experts are watching for a potential new COVID-19 surge in the U.S. — and wondering how long it will take to detect. Despite disease monitoring improvements over the last two years, they say, some recent developments don’t bode well: —As more people take rapid COVID-19 tests at home, fewer people are getting the gold-standard tests that the government relies on for case counts. —The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will soon use fewer labs to look for new variants. —Health officials are increasingly focusing on hospital admissions, which rise only after a surge has arrived.
27th Mar 2022 - The Associated Press

Plan now to deal with effects of ‘long Covid’

Scientists and epidemiologists are still writing, revising and updating the medical literature on the Covid-19 pandemic. It will keep medical authorities and professionals engaged for some time. Meanwhile, reference texts on “long Covid”, or “post Covid-19 syndrome”, are barely works in progress. That is because so little is known about it. But it could remain a public health and disability issue after the pandemic file is closed. Most people who catch the virus do not become severely ill and get better relatively quickly. But some have long-term problems after recovering from the original infection even if they weren’t very ill.
27th Mar 2022 - South China Morning Post

Shanghai to lock down in two stages for testing as COVID cases spike

China's financial hub of Shanghai said on Sunday it would lock down the city in two stages to carry out COVID-19 testing over a nine-day period, after it reported a new daily record for asymptomatic infections. Authorities said they would divide Shanghai into two for the exercise, using the Huangpu River that passes through the city as a guide. Districts to the east of the river, and some to its west, will be locked down and tested between March 28 and April 1. The remaining areas will be locked down and tested between April 1 and 5.
26th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Costs of going unvaccinated in America are mounting for workers and companies

Nearly a year after COVID vaccines became freely available in the U.S., one fourth of American adults remain unvaccinated, and a picture of the economic cost of vaccine hesitancy is emerging. It points to financial risk for individuals, companies and publicly funded programs. Vaccine hesitancy likely already accounts for tens of billions of dollars in preventable U.S. hospitalization costs and up to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, say public health experts. For individuals forgoing vaccination, the risks can include layoffs and ineligibility to collect unemployment, higher insurance premiums, growing out-of-pocket medical costs or loss of academic scholarships.
25th Mar 2022 - Reuters

German health minister urges people at risk to get second COVID booster

Germany's health minister on Friday urged people over age 60 with risk factors such as high blood pressure or a weak heart to get a second booster shot against COVID-19 to reduce their risk of getting seriously ill. Karl Lauterbach said he had asked the STIKO vaccine authority to adjust its current recommendation for a second booster to include a bigger group of people. STIKO currently recommends second boosters for people aged 70 and above, and for people belonging to particularly high risk groups. Only 10% of those have received it so far, Lauterbach told a news conference.
25th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Harvard Economist Says Covid Hit Worse by Education Than Gender

While the pandemic disproportionately hurt women in the workforce more than men, the bigger divide was among education levels, according to a new paper by Harvard University economist Claudia Goldin. When restaurants, retailers and other service providers closed, those without college degrees were more likely to lose their jobs. Meantime, many college-educated Americans could continue to work from home. “The pandemic produced both a he- and a she-cession,” Goldin wrote in a report discussed at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity conference Thursday. “Relative to previous recessions, women have been harder hit. But the largest differences in pandemic effects on employment are found between education groups rather than between genders within educational groups.”
25th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 25th Mar 2022

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Majority of GPs think England Covid restrictions removed too soon

The majority of GPs in England think Covid restrictions should still apply, a Pulse survey has revealed. Speaking to Pulse, GPs said removing restrictions meant difficulties keeping vulnerable people safe, and they expressed particular concern with regards to the scrapping of free Covid testing. More than two-thirds of GPs are also concerned about their own health in light of the lifting of restrictions. Since the end of last month (24 February), fully-vaccinated people and children have not been required to isolate if they develop symptoms of Covid-19 and, from next week (1 April) free testing will be scrapped altogether except for the most vulnerable. However, asked in a Pulse survey to what extent they agreed with the Government’s decision to remove restrictions: Well over half (59%) of GPs said they disagreed and almost a quarter (24%) of GPs said they ‘strongly’ disagreed. Although another quarter (27%) of GPs did agree with scrapping restrictions, only 7.5% ‘strongly’ agreed. Of the respondents, more than two thirds (69%) felt concerned about their own health with the removal of restrictions – 23% of these felt very concerned. Just 31% felt unconcerned.
25th Mar 2022 - Pulse

COVID-19: More elderly people being admitted to hospital with coronavirus than at peak of Omicron wave, latest data shows

More elderly people are now being admitted to hospital with COVID than they were at the peak of the Omicron wave, according to the latest official data. The statistics from the UK Health Security Agency will add urgency to the new drive to vaccinate the over-75s with a "spring booster". Figures from the Weekly Flu and COVID Surveillance Report show that the admission rate in England for every 100,000 people over the age of 85 was 178.29 in the week to 20 March, compared with 158.43 at the turn of the year. The rate in people aged between 75 and 84 was 74.34 per 100,000 last week. At the beginning of January, it was 70.3. Although hospitalisation rates in younger patients are also rising, they are still below the level of the original Omicron surge.
25th Mar 2022 - Sky News

Moderna says its low-dose COVID shots work for kids under 6

Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine works in babies, toddlers and preschoolers, the company announced Wednesday — a development that could pave the way for the littlest kids to be vaccinated by summer if regulators agree. Moderna said that in the coming weeks it would ask regulators in the U.S. and Europe to authorize two small-dose shots for youngsters under 6. The company also is seeking to have larger doses cleared for older children and teens in the U.S. The announcement is positive news for parents who have anxiously awaited protection for younger tots and been continuously disappointed by setbacks and confusion over which shots might work and when. The nation’s 18 million children under 5 are the only age group not yet eligible for vaccination.
25th Mar 2022 - The Associated Press

Moderna Warns on Variants; Firms Leave Hong Kong: Virus Update

Chances are one in five that new Covid-19 variants will arise that are more dangerous than the current versions, Moderna Inc.’s chief executive officer said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Meanwhile, nearly half of the European companies in Hong Kong plan to fully or partially relocate operations and staff out of the city amid the travel and quarantine restrictions, a new survey suggests. After conquering Covid-19 for almost two years with a zero-tolerance approach, China is now in the midst of its worst wave since the initial outbreak in Wuhan. Shanghai reported a daily record of 1,609 cases, according to state television.
25th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Hong Kong’s Completely Avoidable Covid Catastrophe

Around 8 p.m. one evening in late February, an elderly man in a Hong Kong nursing home began struggling to breathe. He wasn’t the only one who was ill. An unprecedented outbreak of Covid-19 was gathering pace, and roughly half of the facility’s 100 residents had already tested positive for the virus. Less than a third were fully vaccinated; even fewer had received a booster dose. Isolating the infected was impossible. Like most dwellings in the city of 7.4 million, the nursing home was cramped. Instead of a private room, each resident’s dedicated space was only big enough for a 2½-foot-wide bed, separated from neighbors by thin wooden dividers. As the man’s condition worsened, staff called an emergency hotline for help.
25th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Singapore extends quarantine-free entry as Asia shifts to "living with COVID"

Singapore said on Thursday it will lift quarantine requirements for all vaccinated travellers from next month, joining a string of countries in Asia moving more firmly toward a "living with the virus" approach. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the financial hub will also drop requirements to wear masks outdoors and allow larger groups to gather. "Our fight against COVID-19 has reached a major turning point," Lee said in a televised speech that was also streamed on Facebook. "We will be making a decisive move towards living with COVID-19."
25th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Shanghai's daily COVID caseload at nearly 1,000, but containment in sight

New daily COVID-19 cases in the Chinese commercial hub of Shanghai remained close to 1,000 on Thursday as authorities scrambled to identify and isolate asymptomatic infections, though a leading expert said the outbreak was being contained. Though the number of cases in Shanghai remains small by global standards, the densely populated city has become a testing ground for China's "zero-COVID" strategy as it tries to bring the highly infectious Omicron variant under control. In a meeting on Wednesday, Shanghai's Communist Party leaders emphasised the need to continue testing, implementing "closed loops" and cutting off transmission chains in order to bring new infections to zero as soon as possible.
25th Mar 2022 - Reuters

COVID booster provides protection for over-65s after 15 weeks -UK data

A booster dose of vaccine against COVID-19 continues to provide robust protection against hospitalisation for older people nearly four months after getting the third dose, new data from the UK's Health Security Agency on Thursday showed. Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation for people aged over 65, 15 weeks after a booster, was 85%, down from 91% two weeks after getting the third dose, the latest vaccine surveillance report from the agency estimated. The data is the first released by the UK on the longer term durability of boosters. The UK is administering fourth doses to vulnerable age groups, joining a number of other countries including Israel as the world fights the more infectious Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
25th Mar 2022 - Reuters

South Africa drops Covid test for vaccinated travellers

South Africa is the latest country to ease rules for inbound travellers. With immediate effect, fully vaccinated arrivals no longer need to present a Covid test to enter the country, the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa has announced. Visitors who are partially vaccinated or unvaccinated are permitted entry, but must present a negative PCR result from a test taken within the 72 hours prior to arrival. Unlike some European countries, South Africa currently classes anyone with two or more doses of a recognised vaccine as “fully vaccinated”. Children under five are exempt from testing requirements, regardless of vaccination status.
24th Mar 2022 - The Independent

Poland scraps most mask, quarantine rules

Poland will lift the requirement to wear masks in confined spaces, except for health care facilities, and remove quarantine rules for travellers and roommates of infected people, Poland's Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said on Thursday. "I have decided to introduce two changes as of March 28 - an end to the obligation to wear masks, stipulating that it does not apply to health care facilities", Niedzielski said. "The second decision is to abolish home isolation and home quarantine for roommates (of infected people) and all quarantines for people entering Poland."
24th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Singapore extends quarantine-free entry as Asia shifts to "living with COVID"

Singapore said on Thursday it will lift quarantine requirements for all vaccinated travellers from next month, joining a string of countries in Asia moving more firmly toward a "living with the virus" approach. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the financial hub will also drop requirements to wear masks outdoors and allow larger groups to gather. "Our fight against COVID-19 has reached a major turning point," Lee said in a televised speech that was also streamed on Facebook. "We will be making a decisive move towards living with COVID-19."
24th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Australia to roll out fourth COVID vaccine shot ahead of winter

Australia will roll out a fourth dose of COVID-19 vaccines to its most vulnerable population starting next month, authorities said on Friday, as the country looks to limit fresh outbreaks ahead of winter. The decision comes amid a steady rise in cases fuelled by the highly contagious BA.2 sub-variant of the Omicron strain and concerns of co-circulation of COVID-19 and flu viruses during colder months as most social distancing restrictions end. A second booster shot will be offered from April 4 to people who had their previous booster shot at least four months ago and are over 65 years, Indigenous Australians over 50, people with disability or severely immunocompromised, Health Minister Greg Hunt said during a media briefing.
24th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 24th Mar 2022

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Vaccine Passports Redundant as More Inoculated, Star Chief Says

Vaccine passports will probably become redundant as more people are inoculated against Covid, and efforts to create a common standard are stymied by differing entry requirements, the head of the world’s biggest airline alliance said. “There’s no way that this has been integrated in one place,” Star Alliance Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Goh said in an interview in Singapore. “If you look to the future, if we were all vaccinated, or if we were all 90% vaccinated, why would you get a vaccination certificate? There will come to a point where maybe you don’t really need this.” Efforts to create a vaccine passport to make travel easier have faced challenges because governments initially didn’t recognize some vaccines, Goh said. Airlines and governments also use many different technology platforms, making it difficult to find a common standard, he said.
24th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Biden's Covid Team Warns on Lack of Funds Ahead of Meeting

President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 team warned that a lack of funding could leave the U.S. unprepared to administer fourth doses of vaccine as administration officials prepared to meet with Senate Democrats on the issue later Wednesday. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, budget director Shalanda Young and Biden’s coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients are expected to attend the meeting, according to a White House official who requested anonymity to give details that aren’t public. The push comes after the administration failed to secure around $15 billion in additional funding as part of an omnibus spending bill Biden signed earlier this month. Republicans demanded that new coronavirus funds be offset by canceling spending in other areas, while House Democrats scuttled a bipartisan proposal to repurpose aid to states. That led to the proposal being stripped from the fiscal 2022 spending package enacted last week.
24th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Moderna says its COVID-19 vaccine safe for children as young as six months old after 'successfully' completing clinical trial

Moderna announced Wednesday morning that it has successfully completed clinical trials for its COVID-19 vaccine in children as young as six months old and soon plan to submit data to regulators to get its jab approved.
24th Mar 2022 - Daily Mail

S Africa eases COVID restrictions for vaccinated travellers

Article reports that South Africa, the country in Africa worst affected by coronavirus, has relaxed some of its remaining COVID-19 restrictions, dropping mandatory negative results for inbound fully-vaccinated travellers, a move expected to boost tourism. On Tuesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa made the announcement to scale down restrictions – imposed since March 2020 – as new infection rates slow and death rates decline. “Travellers entering South Africa will need to show proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test not older than 72 hours,” said Ramaphosa. Previously all travellers entering the country were required to produce a costly negative PCR test. Inside the country, vaccinated individuals or those that have a negative test result will be allowed back into sporting stadiums and music and theatre shows – which will be permitted to operate at half capacity.
23rd Mar 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Indonesia's annual holiday exodus to go ahead this year as COVID cases ease

Indonesia will lift a ban on domestic travel during the Muslim holiday season of Eid al-Fitr in early May, President Joko Widodo said on Wednesday, after banning the annual tradition for two years during the pandemic. The decision to allow the annual exodus after the holy month of Ramadan is the latest in a series of measures aimed at easing COVID-19 restrictions and reviving Southeast Asia's largest economy. Indonesia, a country of 270 million, banned the mass travel known locally as 'mudik' in early 2020 as it scrambled to contain the spread of coronavirus along with the rest of the world.
23rd Mar 2022 - Reuters

New Zealand sports to welcome back crowds as COVID rules eased

New Zealand sports will welcome full-capacity crowds when COVID-19 rules ease this weekend after a bruising period for revenues. New Zealand capped crowds at 100 people for outdoor events while battling an outbreak of the Omicron variant, but will lift the curbs from Saturday, along with the need for fans to wear masks, the government said on Wednesday. "While Omicron is transmissible the natural ventilation of an outdoor seating reduces the risk," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.
23rd Mar 2022 - Reuters

U.K.'s Lockdown Anniversary Marked by Another Virus Surge

Two years ago, Prime Minister Boris Johnson locked down the U.K., instructing people to stay at home and imposing sweeping restrictions in a desperate effort to slow the surging coronavirus. Today, lockdowns are history. But Covid-19 remains. In recent weeks, cases have risen anew, driven by the highly infectious omicron BA.2 subvariant. On Wednesday, the government reported more than 100,000 new cases -- far above levels during the first wave in 2020, when testing was less widespread. The number has averaged almost 80,000 over the past two weeks, based on reporting-date figures.
23rd Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

UK Covid Test Contracts: National Audit Office Finds Inadequate Record-Keeping

When the pandemic hit, ministers were forced to act quickly to scale up testing capacity – working with the private sector to secure the necessary services and supplies, according to the National Audit Office (NAO). As part of these efforts, between January 2020 and December 2021, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Public Health England (PHE) awarded 22 contracts to health company Randox, or its strategic partner, Qnostics Ltd, with a maximum value of £776.9 million, the watchdog said. By value, almost all the contracts were for the provision of Covid testing services, with less than 1% (£6.9 million) for the provision of testing-related goods, it added. The NAO found that 60% of the total value of the contracts (£463.5 million) was awarded directly without competition, under emergency procurement rules.
23rd Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Moderna’s Covid-19 Vaccine Works Safely in Young Children, Company Says

Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine safely induced robust immune responses in children ages 6 months to 5 years in a new study, the company said, though the shot had modest efficacy against the Omicron variant. Moderna said Wednesday the vaccine’s efficacy against symptomatic infections was 43.7% in children ages 6 months to 2 years, and 37.5% in children ages 2 to 5. The efficacy rates were lower than seen during adult testing, which took place before Omicron emerged, but comparable to the real-world effectiveness of two doses of Moderna’s vaccine found among adults during the Omicron wave.
23rd Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

NHS under pressure from new Covid wave across England, says Chris Whitty

The NHS is coming under “significant” pressure amid a rise in Covid cases in virtually every area of England, the chief medical officer has warned, with hospitalisations likely to continue increasing at least until April. Prof Chris Whitty said the mounting numbers of people becoming infected was likely to be largely driven by the new Omicron variant, BA.2. The sharp resurgence of the coronavirus underlined that the crisis “is not over”, Whitty added. Speaking at the annual conference of the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Public Health, Whitty also said those hoping for an “end point” should not expect one, with coronavirus likely to remain a threat to public health for decades.
23rd Mar 2022 - The Guardian

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New Zealand lifts most vaccine mandates as Omicron outbreak nears peak

New Zealand's government said on Wednesday it would lift vaccine mandates for a number of sectors including teaching and police from April 4 as the current COVID-19 outbreak nears its peak.
23rd Mar 2022 - Reuters

Hong Kong Data Show Benefit to Third Shot of Sinovac in Preventing Omicron Deaths

New study of the city’s continuing Covid-19 outbreak underscores the importance of booster shots for the Chinese vaccine
22nd Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

How Quickly Is the Omicron BA.2 Variant Spreading in US?

CDC data show BA.2 accounts for more than a third of U.S. Covid cases and more than half in the Northeast
22nd Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Italian study shows ventilation can cut school COVID cases by 82%

An Italian study published on Tuesday suggests that efficient ventilation systems can reduce the transmission of COVID-19 in schools by more than 80%. An experiment overseen by the Hume foundation think-tank compared coronavirus contagion in 10,441 classrooms in Italy's central Marche region. COVID infections were steeply lower in the 316 classrooms that had mechanical ventilation systems, with the reduction in cases more marked according to the strength of the systems. With applications guaranteeing a complete replacement of the air in a classroom 2.4 times in an hour, infections were reduced by 40%.
22nd Mar 2022 - Reuters

Covid-19 vaccine policy should be made by public health experts, not company executives

In a March 13 interview, Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s CEO, said his company intended to apply to the FDA for authorization of a fourth mRNA vaccine dose and implied that this was something all adults needed. Two days later, it did just that — but only for adults over 65. That same day, Stephen Hoge, Moderna’s president, took a different perspective: that a fourth dose of his company’s mRNA vaccine wasn’t required for all adults but could benefit older and immunocompromised Americans. Two days later, Moderna announced it was requesting FDA authorization of a fourth vaccine dose for everyone aged 18 or over. So over a mere four-day period, the two mRNA vaccine companies made internally inconsistent and seemingly arbitrary statements, and then took different actions. Is competition between the two companies for market share now a factor in their decisions? Are they seeing the science differently? And when company executives are, in effect, saying “our vaccines are no longer doing very well, so you need more of them,” isn’t there a risk of playing into the anti-vaccine narrative that vaccines don’t work?
22nd Mar 2022 - STAT News

Why Covax, the best hope for vaccinating the world, was doomed to fall short

Unlike many national governments, those behind Covax saw the risk presented by the coronavirus early. But the initiative has fallen well short of its aims. More than a third of the world is yet to have a vaccine dose. That has left a huge gap between rich and poor countries. Experts say the lack of vaccinations in poor countries is not only inequitable but also dangerous, exposing the world to a greater likelihood that more-virulent variants will emerge. And the challenges for Covax continue. Covax has raised $11 billion in total, well short of the $18 billion it initially said it needs. Falling short of funding targets for the spring could cost 1.25 million lives, backers say.
22nd Mar 2022 - The Washington Post

No funds to buy fourth Covid vaccine dose for all Americans, White House warns

White House officials say that there are no funds to buy a potential fourth dose of the Covid-19 vaccine for all Americans. The Washington Post reports that while the Biden administration has enough doses to provide Americans over the age of 65 with a fourth shot of the vaccine but orders cannot be placed for more to cover other age groups unless Congress passes a stalled $15bn funding package. Doses have also already been secured for children under the age of five should those shots be deemed necessary by regulators.
22nd Mar 2022 - The Independent

Could the Covid-19 vaccine become a yearly shot? Some experts think so

Some scientists think we might be rolling up our sleeves each year not just for flu shots but for Covid-19 jabs too. Public health experts aren't quite clear on what the future holds for Covid-19 vaccines -- but some say it's looking more and more like these shots could be needed on a yearly basis, similar to how flu shots are recommended each fall. "In order to keep it under control, we likely will need some form of periodic vaccination. Now, whether that's annual or every two years or every five years, we don't really know that yet. I think that that will emerge as we gather more data," Dr. Archana Chatterjee, dean of the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University, said.
22nd Mar 2022 - CNN

Pfizer, Unicef Strike Covid-19 Pill Deal

Pfizer plans to sell to the United Nations Children’s Fund up to four million treatment courses of its Covid-19 pill Paxlovid, which will go to 95 low- and middle-income countries, as part of the company’s effort to expand access to the pill beyond wealthy countries. Pfizer said that Afghanistan, Pakistan and Zimbabwe are among the countries where Unicef will distribute the easy-to-use pill. A Pfizer spokeswoman said the company is charging Unicef a “not-for-profit price,” but declined to disclose it.
22nd Mar 2022 - Wall Street Journal

Pfizer inks deal with UNICEF to supply Covid pill to poor countries, but advocates say it isn’t enough

As part of an effort to widen access to its Covid-19 pill, Pfizer has reached a deal with UNICEF to supply up to 4 million treatment courses to 95 low- and middle-income countries representing 53% of the global population. But consumer advocates have quickly argued the move falls short.
22nd Mar 2022 - STAT News

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India considers widening COVID booster effort to all adults, sources say

Article reports that India is considering making all adults eligible for booster doses of COVID-19 vaccine, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Monday, as infections grow in some countries and some Indians find it hard to travel abroad without a third dose. Only frontline workers and those older than 60 are currently allowed to take booster doses in India, whether free in government centres or paid for in private hospitals. The government is debating whether to provide boosters to other groups for free, said one of the sources, who both sought anonymity as the government has yet to make a decision.
21st Mar 2022 - Reuters

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA to Hold Advisory Committee Meeting on COVID-19 Vaccines to Discuss Future Boosters

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a virtual meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on Wed., April 6, to discuss considerations for future COVID-19 vaccine booster doses and the process for selecting specific strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus for COVID-19 vaccines to address current and emerging variants. Along with the independent experts of the advisory committee, representatives from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health will participate in the meeting.
21st Mar 2022 - Associated Press

The Covid-19 vaccine market is getting crowded — as demand begins to wane

CureVac, a pioneer in the effort to use messenger RNA as a vaccine platform, and its partner, GSK, saw the writing on the wall last fall. When CureVac’s Covid-19 mRNA vaccine candidate underwhelmed in a Phase 2b/3 trial, the pair shifted plans. Too many other vaccines had already proven superior and been cleared by regulators. Rather than spend months tweaking a candidate that would end up battling for a rapidly shrinking share of the Covid vaccine market, they would focus instead on a second-generation product. Soon, other would-be Covid vaccine manufacturers are set to confront the same kinds of hard reality. With two new players — Novavax and a Sanofi-GSK partnership — making or about to make their way into the already crowded global Covid vaccine market, the prospects for those still struggling to prove their vaccines are protective are becoming ever slimmer.
21st Mar 2022 - STAT News

Scots could be given different covid vaccine to protect against 'multiple variants' in future

Scots may be given different covid vaccines if new variants emerge in the future, according to a leading health expert. Linda Bauld, professor in public health at the University of Edinburgh and adviser to the Scottish Government, said there were signs the protection from coronavirus was starting to wane in the population. The surge in infections prompted the First Minister to row back on plans to scrap the legal requirement to wear face coverings on public transport and other indoor settings.
21st Mar 2022 - Daily Record

Charities call for annual Covid-19 memorial day in recognition of pandemic death toll

In the UK, charities are calling for an annual memorial day ahead of the second anniversary of lockdown this week as Covid cases and hospitalisations continue to rise. Marie Curie is among the charities taking part in a National Day of Reflection on Wednesday to support the millions of people who are grieving, and remembering the family, friends, neighbours and colleagues lost to the virus over the last two years. People can join a minute’s silence at noon or visit a local centre to see a “wall of reflection”, the charity said.
21st Mar 2022 - iNews

South Korea to buy 10 million doses of SK Bioscience's COVID vaccine

South Korea has reached a deal to buy 10 million doses of the country's first experimental coronavirus vaccine, developed by SK Bioscience Co Ltd, authorities said on Monday. The South Korean company has since August conducted Phase 3 trials of its vaccine candidate, codenamed "GBP510", jointly developed with the University of Washington's Institute for Protein Design and aided by global drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). "They aim to secure formal approval in the first half of this year, and public distribution is expected to begin in the latter half," Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) director Jeong Eun-kyeong told a briefing.
21st Mar 2022 - Reuters

Gordon Ramsay Says Covid Lockdowns Got Rid of Bad Restaurants With Good Locations

Covid lockdowns have eliminated bad restaurants taking advantage of their "prime locations", Gordon Ramsay said. The celebrity chef said the past two years have been "devastating" for the hospitality industry - but said the upside is "the crap's gone" now. Asked if he meant any particular chains, the 55-year-old told the Radio Times: "Well, just shitholes in a prime position and taking advantage because they're in a great location and they've got the footfall. "But now we've wiped the slate clean, which is good."
21st Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

The Future of Boosters Is Somewhere Between Unnecessary and Urgent

The omicron wave is finally on the decline in the U.S. Workers are returning to offices again, hospital wards are emptying, and states have lifted mask mandates. But a new strain, BA.2, has spread widely in Europe and is growing in prevalence in the U.S. And Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. have now asked U.S. regulators to clear an additional Covid-19 booster as protection provided by the first three shots fades. While the vaccines at first were remarkably good at preventing Covid infections, successive mutations and the passage of time have rendered the shots less effective. The boosters people received late last year did help ward off some Covid infections during the most recent surge, but those may not end up being the final shots for those who want to stay ahead of this virus.
21st Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Why China Is Sticking With Its 'Covid Zero' Strategy

Two years ago, China was being lauded by the World Health Organization for its success in beating the coronavirus. But its insistence on adhering to a so-called Covid Zero policy is leaving it increasingly isolated as other countries, most of which suffered far worse outbreaks and higher death tolls, wean themselves off harsh countermeasures and return to a semblance of pre-pandemic life. Their populations have built up a large degree of protection through previous infections and more effective vaccines. Chinese officials have said vaccines alone aren’t enough and stringent curbs aimed at wiping out the virus are needed to avoid a health care calamity. But President Xi Jinping has pledged to try to reduce the economic impact of the longstanding strategy, which Hong Kong also follows.
21st Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Why China's Covid-Zero Policy Has Found Success While Hong Kong's Falters

Hong Kong appears to have accepted defeat. On Monday, Chief Executive Carrie Lam set out a blueprint for undoing the stringent social distancing measures and border curbs that severely curtailed residents’ daily lives for the past two years. Despite the government’s Covid-zero measures, 3.6 million of the city’s 7.3 million residents may have been infected. The statistic reflects badly on Hong Kong. But that doesn’t mean that the same policy in China has failed. To most of the world, there is a simple reason for why Hong Kong is a pandemic shambles: The territory is acting on guidance from Beijing. But the mainland has been far more clever and dynamic with the implementation of its Covid-zero agenda. While the territory has been reactive and prone to slapping down panicky measures, the mainland’s economically important metropolises, such as Shanghai and Shenzhen, have been efficient and resilient.
21st Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

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Shanghai's Disney resort shut amid record daily local COVID infections

China's financial hub of Shanghai reported on Monday a record daily surge in local COVID-19 infections as authorities scrambled to test residents and rein in the Omicron variant, while closing its Disney (DIS.N) resort until further notice. Until recent weeks relatively unscathed by coronavirus, Shanghai reported 24 new domestically transmitted COVID cases with confirmed symptoms for Sunday and 734 local asymptomatic infections, official data showed on Monday. It is the fourth consecutive day that Shanghai's local asymptomatic infections have increased.
21st Mar 2022 - Reuters

Covid: Rise in UK infections driven by BA.2 Omicron variant

Covid cases have continued to rise in the UK, with an estimated one in every 20 people infected, figures from the Office for National Statistic suggest. All age groups are affected, including the 75s and over, who are due a spring booster jab to top up protection. Hospital cases are also rising, but vaccines are still helping to stop many severe cases, say experts. An easily spread sub-variant of Omicron, called BA.2, is now causing most cases. Recent easing of restrictions and waning immunity from the vaccines could be factors behind the rise too.
20th Mar 2022 - BBC News

Toronto to hold 24 pop-up COVID-19 vaccine clinics in new spring campaign

The City of Toronto will be holding 24 pop-up COVID-19 vaccination clinics around the city through its new ‘Vax and Spring’ campaign. In a press release issued Sunday, the city said the campaign is part of the city’s “continued equity-focused, hyper-local mobile strategy to make COVID-19 vaccines as accessible and convenient as possible” to help “bring COVID-19 vaccine clinics to many locations across Toronto.” The city said 24 pop-up vaccine clinics will be held in 22 locations over seven days, beginning on March 20.
20th Mar 2022 - Global News

Covid restrictions easing across Europe despite surge in cases

In Germany most pandemic controls will be lifted on Sunday after a heated parliamentary debate on Friday which led to both houses of parliament voting in favour. That was despite cases in Germany reaching a new daily record of almost 300,000 on Friday – a seven-day incidence rate of 1,706 cases per 100,000 residents – and a majority of the population expressing concern that the relaxations were coming too soon. Germany has been recording daily deaths of over 200 for several weeks.
20th Mar 2022 - The Guardian

Ukraine’s World-Class Drug-Molecule Industry Imperiled by Russia Invasion

Article reports that Russian attacks are endangering Ukraine’s world-leading medicinal chemistry industry, which supplies scientists across the globe with molecular building blocks needed for early drug development. Ukraine’s dominance in medicinal chemistry is little known beyond drug developers, who fine-tune a drug’s molecular design to give it the best chance of hitting the desired biological target in the body. Kyiv-based Enamine Ltd. has become a go-to supplier for drug-discovery scientists at academic laboratories and the largest pharmaceutical companies. “It’s a bit like Amazon for chemistry,” said Ed Griffen, a U.K.-based medicinal chemist working with closely held Enamine on a low-cost Covid-19 antiviral pill.
20th Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

COVID-19: Spring booster jabs to be offered to millions of vulnerable people in England

Millions of vulnerable people in England will be offered a fourth COVID vaccine in a bid to top up protection against the coronavirus. Spring booster jabs will be available to care home residents, people who are 75 and over, and the immunosuppressed aged 12 and over. A total of around five million people are expected to be given the jab, with around 600,000 invited to book their dose this week, the NHS says.
20th Mar 2022 - Sky News

Public health measures are key to curbing Covid in UK, say scientists

Stopping the spread of Covid-19 through public health measures remains vital to curbing the pandemic, one of Britain’s most senior scientific figures has warned. On the eve of the second anniversary of the lockdown that began the UK’s Covid response, Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, called for investment in next-generation vaccines and better access to vaccinations for poorer countries. Farrar joined several of the UK’s most eminent scientists in praising the extraordinary response to the pandemic by the clinicians, researchers and business leaders. But with Covid infections and hospital admissions rising across the UK, measures such as masks, social distancing and ventilation are key.
20th Mar 2022 - The Guardian

EU health body recommends free COVID tests, vaccines for Ukrainian refugees

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said on Friday that countries should provide free COVID-19 testing for refugees from Ukraine to avoid outbreaks as more than three million people flee their war-stricken homeland. Infectious diseases and conflict often go hand-in-hand, and the risk of infections spreading could be further exacerbated as COVID vaccination rates in Ukraine have been low overall at 35% versus the EU average of 71.7%. Those fleeing the country should be offered a full course of COVID-19 vaccines, and booster doses, if they do not have proof of prior inoculation, with an emphasis on those at greater risk of severe COVID-19, the ECDC said.
20th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Ecuador ends COVID limits on gatherings after hitting vaccination goal

Ecuador's president on Friday announced an end to coronavirus limits on public and private gatherings, but the South American country will continue to require foreign visitors to show proof of vaccinations or a negative COVID-19 test. President Guillermo Lasso said the government made the decision to end two years of pandemic containment measures because Ecuador has reached its goal of fully vaccinating 85% of the population above five years old. Both new infections and COVID-related deaths have steadily fallen in recent weeks, according to government data.
20th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Hong Kong plans to review COVID restrictions on Monday as cases ease

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Sunday she plans to review COVID-19 restrictions on Monday, just days after acknowledging that many people in the global financial hub were "losing patience" with the city's coronavirus policies. The Chinese-ruled city has some of the most stringent COVID-19 rules in the world, with a ban on flights from nine countries including Australia and Britain, and hotel quarantine of up to two weeks for incoming travellers. The city has also imposed a ban on gatherings of more than two people, while most public venues are closed, including beaches and playgrounds, face masks are compulsory and there is no face-to-face learning for students.
20th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Parents up in arms against an Ontario school board's move to keep masks on

As students in Canada's most populous province return to mask-free classes after two years on Monday, one Ontario school board is facing backlash for defying the province's decision to drop masks, potentially setting the stage for a clash on a contentious pandemic issue. The mask mandate and other pandemic measures have become a lightning rod in Canada for an anti-government movement, sparking a three-week protest in capital Ottawa last month.
20th Mar 2022 - Reuters

WHO says global rise in COVID cases is 'tip of the iceberg'

Figures showing a global rise in COVID-19 cases could herald a much bigger problem as some countries also report a drop in testing rates, the WHO said on Tuesday, warning nations to remain vigilant against the virus. After more than a month of decline, COVID cases started to increase around the world last week, the WHO said, with lockdowns in Asia and China's Jilin province battling to contain an outbreak. A combination of factors was causing the increases, including the highly transmissible Omicron variant and its BA.2 sublineage, and the lifting of public health and social measures, the WHO said.
19th Mar 2022 - Reuters

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Chinese President Vows to Control Covid Outbreak With Smallest Cost

As other countries have moved away from lockdowns and social distancing, Beijing has touted the success of its draconian measures in keeping the number of cases low, despite a mounting toll on its people and economy. However, Chinese officials have scrambled to boost confidence in the Chinese economy as the more contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus has prompted a surge in cases. The costs of fighting outbreaks add to recent headwinds, as Mr. Xi’s campaign of regulatory tightening last year has slowed economic momentum more than expected. The geopolitical crisis over the war in Ukraine, and the potential costs to China of its recent alignment with Russia, have also rattled investors’ nerves. In a Thursday meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist Party’s top decision-making body, Mr. Xi asked officials to minimize the impact on the Chinese economy and people’s lives from Covid-19 control measures, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
18th Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern Welcomes Australia Tourists in Reopening

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is making a play for Australian tourists as she prepares to open the border to foreigners for the first time in more than two years. Appearing on Australian breakfast shows on Friday, Ardern said New Zealanders will welcome back Australians with open arms when the border opens to them on April 13, despite the friendly rivalry between the two nations.
18th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Moderna Seeks FDA Approval for 2 Covid Boosters, 4 Vaccines in Total

Moderna Inc. has filed for U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance of a second Covid-19 booster shot for all adults, covering significantly more people than Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s earlier request for emergency authorization for those over 65. The application comes amid heated debate over how long vaccinations protect from infection and whether repeated shots are necessary to prevent severe disease and death. Several countries including Israel have started administering a fourth dose to adults, with data showing a fivefold increase in the production of infection-fighting antibodies.
18th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Fauci Says US Covid Cases Could Rise as Congress Stalls on Pandemic Funding

The U.S. could soon see Covid-19 cases rise again and vulnerable people are likely to need a fourth vaccine dose, one of President Joe Biden’s top health advisers warned as the White House calls for more money to fight the pandemic. Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a Biden adviser, said U.K. officials are already warning him of an increase there driven by the BA.2 sub-variant, easing restrictions and waning protection from vaccines, and that the U.S. tends to be a few weeks behind case curves in the U.K. “We have all three of those factors right now in this country,” Fauci said in an interview Thursday.
18th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Thailand's Covid Cases Jump to Record Ahead of Review of Curbs

Thailand reported 27,071 new Covid-19 cases on Friday, a record daily count, ahead of a key government panel meeting to consider further easing of entry rules for vaccinated foreign visitors and lifting of some curbs on local businesses. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha will chair a meeting of the Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration’s later Friday and is set to consider a set of recommendations from the Health Ministry to loosen Covid restrictions. The panel is also set to discuss a road-map to classify the pandemic as endemic from July, according to officials. The Southeast Asian nation, battling an omicron-fueled Covid wave, also reported 80 new deaths, the highest daily fatalities since Nov. 5, official data showed.
18th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

U.S. COVID chief Zients to be replaced by Brown University health expert Jha

U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday named public health expert Dr. Ashish Jha to replace White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients, who will leave his post next month, as the administration prepares for new COVID-19 variants and infection surges that could hit the country. Jha, a highly respected internist who leads the Brown University School of Public Health, takes on the role as the United States shifts to a new phase of the pandemic two years after the coronavirus upended the nation, the White House said. "Americans are safely moving back to more normal routines, using the effective new tools we have to enable us to reduce severe COVID cases and make workplaces and schools safer," Biden said in a statement. "But our work in combating COVID is far from done
18th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Germany to lift most COVID restrictions

Germany will lift most restrictions to contain the coronavirus despite infections hitting a record in the country on Thursday. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after talks with leaders of Germany's 16 states that a record of almost 300,000 infections in one day was not good news, but the easing of restrictions was justified given intensive care units were not overwhelemed. As of March 20, requirements to wear a mask will be dropped in indoor places like schools and at supermarkets but will remain mandatory in medical clinics and care homes.
18th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Countries Try to Win Support for Deal to Waive Patent Protections on Covid-19 Vaccines

After 18 months of fierce debate, a group of countries, including the U.S., has reached an agreement to waive patent protections on Covid-19 vaccines. Now they are racing to get other countries to support the deal at the World Trade Organization, officials involved in the discussions said. The U.S. and the European Union have reached a compromise with South Africa and India that would allow developing countries to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines without the permission of the holder of the intellectual-property rights. It also would set a precedent for future pandemics.
17th Mar 2022 - Wall Street Journal

Doctors urge Boris Johnson to do better on global Covid-19 vaccine drive

More than 130 leading NHS clinicians and several medical bodies have called on the government to step up funding for the global Covid vaccine drive, saying Britain’s failure to do so is condemning poorer nations to an “ongoing pandemic”. In a letter to Boris Johnson, shared with The Independent, they say government must “play a bigger role in achieving the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) 70 per cent global vaccination target by July 2022”. Key signatories include the presidents of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of GPs.
17th Mar 2022 - The Independent

Cambodia drops COVID testing requirements for overseas visitors

Cambodia on Thursday dispensed with a requirement for visitors from overseas to take COVID-19 tests, as the country moved ahead of most neighbours by relaxing most restrictions to spur more investment and tourism, officials said. The Southeast Asian country has vaccinated 92.31% of its population of 16 million against the coronavirus, one of the highest vaccination rates in the region, official data shows
17th Mar 2022 - Reuters

New Zealand returns to growth in Q4 as COVID restrictions ease

New Zealand's gross domestic product (GDP) returned to growth in the final quarter of 2021 as the economy emerged from COVID-19 lockdowns, and economists said the data supported expectations the central bank would raise interest rates further. Economic growth improved as New Zealand's largest city, Auckland, moved out of a lengthy lockdown that had hit retail, manufacturing, construction and recreational activities in the prior quarter.
17th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Analysis: Clear roadmap needed for Hong Kong's revival as COVID sweeps through city -experts

In just under two months, Hong Kong went from being one of the best places in the world at controlling COVID-19 to one of the worst. Deaths have skyrocketed, the health system is swamped, morgues are overflowing and public confidence in the city government is at an all-time low. While the government sticks to a "zero-COVID" policy similar to that of mainland China, city leader Carrie Lam hinted on Thursday she could ease restrictions amid concerns over the city's status as a global financial hub.
17th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Alnylam files patent infringement lawsuits against Pfizer, Moderna

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc on Thursday filed lawsuits in Delaware federal court against Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc, claiming their multibillion-dollar mRNA COVID-19 vaccines infringe one its patents. Alnylam said it was seeking damages over the use of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology used in the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to carry and deliver genetic material into the body. Representatives for Pfizer and Moderna did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuits.
17th Mar 2022 - Reuters

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Omicron linked to rise in croup in babies; TB vaccine improves immune response to coronavirus

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. Omicron linked with croup in babies. The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is causing a dramatic rise in cases of croup, a dangerous respiratory condition usually seen in babies and toddlers, new data suggest. Croup, which causes a distinctive barking-like cough and high-pitched sounds when patients inhale, happens when viruses cause swelling in the respiratory tract that makes it hard to breathe.
17th Mar 2022 - Reuters

In Kharkiv, critical COVID patients at the mercy of Russian bombardment

In Kharkiv's regional infectious diseases hospital, doctors escort those COVID-19 patients they can down to the bomb shelter in the basement when the air raid sirens sound. But the most seriously ill, needing constant oxygen supply, cannot be moved, even if this means leaving them vulnerable to Russian bombardment. "The ones in critical condition remain in their rooms. If we bring them down here they will simply die," said Pavlo Nartov, the hospital's director. "Most of our patients are on oxygen supply all the time. They can't be cut off from the oxygen."
17th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Global powers inch closer to agreement to waive Covid vaccine patents

The document detailing the compromise position suggests the negotiated form of the waiver has veered substantially away from the initial proposal first raised by India and South Africa in October 2020, which sought to suspend patents for successful Covid vaccines, treatments and diagnostics – invented by pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer and Moderna – for the duration of the pandemic. The document details a tentative proposal that would still need final agreement from the four negotiators, as well as from all WTO member nations, to be passed. If passed, the compromised version of the waiver will see only patents for Covid-19 vaccines suspended for either three or five years, and means that treatment and testing formulas will still be subject to intellectual property protections.
16th Mar 2022 - The Guardian

Vietnam drops COVID-19 restrictions for foreign visitors

Vietnam on Wednesday scrapped quarantine and other travel restrictions for foreign visitors in an effort to fully reopen its border after two years of pandemic-related closure, the government said. Visitors entering the Southeast Asian country only need to show a negative COVID-19 test prior to arrival, according to the Health Ministry, which said the new measures were effective immediately. Visitors must monitor their own health during the first 10 days of their stay and notify medical professionals in Vietnam if they experience any COVID-19-like symptoms. Vietnam also reinstated visa exemptions and the issuance of visas on arrival similar to their pre-pandemic status.
16th Mar 2022 - The Independent

COVID-19: Most people still taking voluntary precautions to prevent spread of COVID two years into pandemic, ONS survey shows

Two years on from the start of the pandemic, and despite the fact that almost all COVID restrictions have now been lifted, the majority of people are still taking voluntary precautions against infection. According to an ONS attitudes survey released today, most adults report taking at least one preventative measure to stop the spread of COVID-19. Around four-fifths, 81%, of people say they are still frequently washing or sanitising hands, 76% are still wearing face coverings and 57% are avoiding crowded places.
16th Mar 2022 - Sky News

U.S., EU, India, South Africa reach compromise on COVID vaccine IP waiver text

The United States, European Union, India and South Africa have reached a consensus on key elements of a long-sought intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, according to a proposed text reviewed by Reuters. Sources familiar with the talks described the text as a tentative agreement among the four World Trade Organization members that still needs formal approvals from the parties before it can be considered official. Any agreement must be accepted by the WTO’s 164 member countries in order to be adopted. Some elements of the consensus deal, including whether the length of any patent waivers would be three years or five years, still need to be finalized, according to the text. It would apply only to patents for COVID-19 vaccines, which would be much more limited in scope than a broad proposed WTO waiver that had won backing from the United States, according to the document.
16th Mar 2022 - CNBC Africa

Germany to secure COVID-19 vaccine production through 2029

Germany plans to spend up to 2.861 billion euros ($3.14 billion) to ensure that COVID-19 vaccine makers have enough production capacity available to supply the country with shots in future outbreaks through 2029, the economy ministry said. Germany's cabinet approved plans on Wednesday to sign contracts with BioNTech, CureVac/GSK, Wacker/CordenPharma, Celonic and IDT, the ministry said in a statement. The contracts will maintain the ratcheted-up production capacities created during the coronavirus pandemic by paying an annual standby fee, ensuring enough vaccine can be produced quickly for the population.
16th Mar 2022 - Reuters

WTO chief welcomes COVID shot patent plan, drugmakers balk

The World Trade Organization (WTO) praised a provisional deal to waive patent rights for COVID-19 vaccines after more than a year of deadlock, though drugmakers said the move risked undermining the industry's ability to respond to future health crises. The United States, the European Union, India and South Africa agreed on Tuesday on key elements for a waiver. It now needs the backing of the 164 members of the WTO, which takes decisions based on consensus, so rejection by just one country could still block an accord
16th Mar 2022 - Reuters

WHO says global rise in COVID cases is 'tip of the iceberg'

Figures showing a global rise in COVID-19 cases could herald a much bigger problem as some countries also report a drop in testing rates, the WHO said on Tuesday, warning nations to remain vigilant against the virus. After more than a month of decline, COVID cases started to increase around the world last week, the WHO said, with lockdowns in Asia and China's Jilin province battling to contain an outbreak. A combination of factors was causing the increases, including the highly transmissible Omicron variant and its cousin the BA.2 sub-variant, and the lifting of public health and social measures, the WHO said.
16th Mar 2022 - Reuters

China's local COVID cases decline for 2nd day as Jilin outbreak grows at slower pace

Mainland China's new local symptomatic COVID-19 cases declined for a second consecutive day, official data showed on Thursday, as a flare-up in the northeast - the worst since China's first outbreak in 2020 centred on Wuhan - grew at a slower pace. China reported 1,226 new domestically transmitted COVID-19 infections with confirmed symptoms on March. 16, data from the National Health Commission showed, down from 1,860 a day earlier. It marks the fifth day of over 1,000 such cases on the mainland. China's current case wave is still tiny by global standards, but national officials have warned that virus control is becoming increasingly difficult with more than two dozen regions reporting infections recently
16th Mar 2022 - Reuters

WHO delays review of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine on Ukraine conflict

The World Health Organization (WHO) has delayed its ongoing assessment of Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine for emergency use because of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, an official from the health agency said on Wednesday. The Sputnik V shot, widely used in Russia and approved in more than 60 countries, is also being reviewed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). "We were supposed to go do inspections in Russia on March 7, and these inspections were postponed for a later date," Mariângela Simão, WHO assistant-director general for Access to Medicines and Health Products, said during a press briefing.
16th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Drugmakers condemn plan for COVID vaccine patent waiver

Global drugmakers condemned on Wednesday an initiative by four World Trade Organization members to introduce an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, saying it could undermine the industry's ability to respond to health crises in future.
16th Mar 2022 - Reuters on MSN.com

New Covid Wave in China Hits Sellers of ‘Quarantine Insurance’

In a country where one person inadvertently crossing paths with a Covid-19 patient can instantly put an entire apartment complex under lockdown for 14 days or more, Chinese insurers last year began offering what they called “quarantine insurance”—get locked down, receive a payout. Now, as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads rapidly across the country, overwhelmed insurers are pulling the plug on the products. On Thursday, China’s Public Mutual Insurance Corp. will become the latest insurer to close itself off to new premium holders, following in the footsteps of ZhongAn Online Property & Casualty Insurance Co., which stopped selling quarantine insurance on Monday. ZhongAn is an online insurer started by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma, Tencent Holdings Ltd. chairman Pony Ma and Ping An Insurance Group Co. chairman Ma Mingzhe. The disappearance of the new policies reflects the speed with which new infections have swept across a country that has kept daily case counts low since the initial outbreak in Wuhan in early 2020.
16th Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

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S.Korea reports record 400741 new daily COVID cases - KDCA

South Korea reported a record 400,741 new daily COVID-19 cases, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said on Wednesday, as the country seeks to further ease social distancing rules despite a wave of Omicron infections.
16th Mar 2022 - Reuters

U.S. Life Insurance Sales Rise on Covid-19 Fears

Americans went on a buying spree for life insurance in 2021, driven by concerns of death from the continuing coronavirus pandemic. Premium volume for new individual life-insurance policies surged 20% compared with 2020, while the number of policies issued rose 5%, the biggest year-over-year percentage gains since the 1980s, according to industry-funded research firm Limra. “As we zero in on one million Americans who tragically lost their lives, it’s not a surprise that people are thinking about their own mortality and the impact on loved ones if anything were to happen to them,” said David Levenson, Limra’s chief executive.
16th Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

US Says WTO Covid Vaccine Talks Led to IP Compromise

World Trade Organization members have arrived at a compromise on intellectual property rules for Covid-19 vaccines, the Biden administration said. While there is no text for an agreement, there is an understanding that offers “the most promising path toward achieving a concrete and meaningful outcome,” Adam Hodge, a spokesman for U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, said in a statement on Tuesday. The statement came after Politico Pro reported the compromise earlier Tuesday between the European Union, South Afirca, India and the U.S. that covers only vaccines and still requires approval from the EU and WTO members. The USTR statement didn’t provide details of the compromise.
16th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Ardern Opens Border to Foreigners as 'Fortress New Zealand' Ends

New Zealand will begin reopening its border to the world next month, bringing an end to the “fortress” settings that kept Covid-19 out for much of the pandemic. Vaccinated Australians will be allowed to enter without needing to isolate on arrival from 11:59 p.m. on April 12, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Wednesday in Wellington. The border will open to visitors from other visa-waiver countries such as the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Singapore and Germany from midnight May 1, she said. “We’re ready to welcome the world back,” Ardern told a news conference. “Now that we’re highly vaccinated and predicted to be off our omicron peak, it’s now safe to open up.”
16th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Singapore's Chan Sees More Online School Learning in Covid Shift

Singapore plans to move more school lessons online and make better use of technology to improve the learning and teaching experience, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said Wednesday. Transmission of knowledge can be done via digital channels, which will free up in-person school time for pupils to sharpen their collaborative skills and creativity, Chan said in an interview to be broadcast as part of the Bloomberg Asean Business Summit. The minister also sees technology as “a great enabler” that helps lighten the workload of teachers and accelerate the pace of education. “We will move more and more of our lessons online, allowing our students to do more self-paced learning” Chan said, citing the experience from the Covid-19 pandemic. The city-state began preparations for virtual classrooms even before the start of the virus spread, he added.
16th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Will ‘open-source’ vaccines narrow the inequality gap exposed by Covid?

Over the past two years, global health authorities have consistently warned of iniquitous access to tools to help counter the pandemic. High-income nations such as the UK, the US and those in Europe began their vaccine rollouts in December 2020, having reached substantial proportions of vulnerable groups by February 2021. The first shipment of vaccines — 600,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca version — delivered by Covax, only arrived in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, in late February 2021. Since then mRNA manufacturers, such as BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna, have booked record-breaking revenues and become key players in business and geopolitics. Yet, more than three-quarters of people in low-income countries aged 12 and over have still to receive a single dose, compared with 10 per cent in high-income countries. The Cape Town initiative is part of a new push by global health authorities, academics and philanthropists to address that and promote alternatives to “Big Pharma’s” business model, which relies on legally enforceable patent protections to raise investment to fund new drugs.
15th Mar 2022 - Financial Times

Mexico to uphold existing agreements for Russian COVID vaccine

Mexico will uphold its existing agreements with Russia for its Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, as well as those made with other countries, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday. Speaking at a regular news conference, Lopez Obrador said he expected Mexico to have sufficient vaccines going forward, and reiterated that Mexico would not participate in sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine.
15th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Europe Is Getting Caught by a Covid Resurgence After Rushed Exit

Europe tried to leave Covid-19 behind, but the rush to unwind restrictions is now setting the stage for a revival of pandemic risks. Accelerated by the emergence of BA.2 -- a more-transmissible strain of the omicron variant -- the virus has spread rapidly. Germany on Tuesday set a fresh record for infection rates for the four straight day. Austria has also reached new highs, while cases in the Netherlands have doubled since lifting curbs on Feb. 25. Most authorities have shrugged off the surge, showing little appetite to re-impose curbs after easing measures just a few weeks ago. But the virus threatens to cause problems anyway, with businesses and schools disrupted as people call in sick.
15th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Dutch to drop last remaining COVID-19 restrictions next week

The Dutch government will drop its last remaining COVID-19 restrictions next week despite a recent rise in infections as the nation learns to live with the coronavirus, officials said Tuesday. The Netherlands has already ended a nationwide lockdown and scrapped most virus measures. As of March 23, wearing a face mask on public transport will no longer be obligatory. Masks will still have to be worn on airplanes and behind security screening at airports. The government also is halting the use of a digital COVID-19 pass to get into nightclubs and other large-scale events, the only place where they were still required
15th Mar 2022 - Associated Press

White House begs Congress for Covid funding amid concern about Omicron sister variant

The White House is begging Congress for more funds to help with Covid-19 surveillance, testing, and treatments — a call that could be bolstered by the emerging signs of an increase in Covid-19 cases in Europe. After lawmakers’ plan to provide $22.5 billion in Covid-19 funding imploded last week, the White House has been faced with cutting back on its pandemic response activities because its budget is nearly exhausted. It’s unclear whether additional funding is on the way. The Biden administration on Tuesday laid out a roadmap of the cutbacks and shortages that could happen if no more funding is provided. Specifically, senior administration officials said they would need to wind down some Covid-19 surveillance investments, and that testing capacity could crater after June.
15th Mar 2022 - STAT News

Omicron sub-variant BA.2 is just as contagious as measles

Professor Adrian Esterman said it was 40 per cent more transmissible than BA.1. Britain's daily cases have risen continuously over the last two weeks. Some experts say BA.2 is the 'most important driver' behind this increase
15th Mar 2022 - Daily Mail

U.S., EU, India, S.Africa reach compromise on COVID vaccine IP waiver text

The United States, European Union, India and South Africa have reached a consensus on key elements of a long-sought intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, according to a proposed text reviewed by Reuters. Sources familiar with the talks described the text as a tentative agreement among the four World Trade Organization members that still needs formal approvals from the parties before it can be considered official. Any agreement must be accepted by the WTO's 164 member countries in order to be adopted.
15th Mar 2022 - Reuters

UK to end all COVID-19 travel rules ahead of Easter break

Britain’s government said Monday all remaining coronavirus measures for travelers, including passenger locator forms and the requirement that unvaccinated people be tested for COVID-19 before and after their arrivals, will end Friday to make going on holiday easier for the Easter school vacation. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the changes will mean people “can travel just like in the good old days.” The passenger locator forms require people to fill in travel details, their address in the U.K. and their vaccination status.
14th Mar 2022 - Associated Press

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Covid-19 Outbreak Shuts Down Some China Factories, Including Apple Supplier

A surge in Covid-19 cases led Chinese manufacturing hubs Shenzhen and Changchun to lock down in recent days, halting production at many electronics and auto factories in the latest threat to the world’s battered supply chain. A number of manufacturers including Foxconn, Technology Group, a major assembler of Apple Inc.’s AAPL, iPhones, said they were halting operations in Shenzhen in compliance with the local government’s policy. The government placed the city into lockdown for at least a week and said everyone in the city would have to undergo three rounds of testing after 86 new cases of domestic Covid-19 infections were detected Sunday.
15th Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

How Australia's Swift Bid to Crush Covid Saved Lives

When the world was confronted with the coronavirus in early 2020, Australia responded hard and fast with what would be—at first—one of the most successful efforts to combat the pandemic. On this episode of Storylines, we recount how Australia leveraged its geography and strict travel rules to quickly become an example for holding Covid-19 at bay. But a lack of diligence on the vaccine front coupled with the arrival of the delta variant would upend this Covid-zero strategy.
15th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

New Zealand Teenagers Ineligible for Covid Vaccine Booster Shot

New Zealand teenagers will remain ineligible for Covid-19 booster shots for several more weeks, even as the omicron outbreak runs through universities and schools. Government ministers are not expected to make a final decision on boosters for 16 and 17 year olds until April “at the earliest,” said Astrid Koornneef, Director of the National Immunisation Programme. Pfizer boosters are currently only approved by medicines regulator Medsafe for those aged 18 years and up. “Medsafe has only very recently received Pfizer’s application for the use of its vaccine for 16 and 17 year olds,” Koornneef said in an emailed statement. “Medsafe is working at pace to review the application, however we do not expect a final decision on this from ministers until April at the earliest.”
15th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Are Covid Cases Going Back Up? Sewer Data Has Potential Warning

A wastewater network that monitors for Covid-19 trends is warning that cases are once again rising in many parts of the U.S., according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data by Bloomberg. More than a third of the CDC’s wastewater sample sites across the U.S. showed rising Covid-19 trends in the period ending March 1 to March 10, though reported cases have stayed near a recent low. The number of sites with rising signals of Covid-19 cases is nearly twice what it was during the Feb. 1 to Feb. 10 period, when the wave of omicron-variant cases was fading rapidly. It’s not clear how many new infections the signs in the sewage represent and if they will turn into a new wave, or will be just a brief bump on the way down from the last one. In many parts of the country, people are returning back to offices and mask rules have been loosened — factors that can raise transmission.
15th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

China's pandemic playbook runs low on pages

Chinese policymakers might have to add new pages to their Covid-19 playbook. Recycling tough policies from 2020 will put an aggressive “around 5.5%” annual growth target even further out of reach. With financial hubs Shanghai and Shenzhen locking down as contagion surges, Chinese companies might feel a sense of disheartening déjà vu. Draconian measures adopted in Shenzhen, a city of nearly 20 million adjacent to Hong Kong, are reminiscent of 2020, when authorities sealed buildings, banned public transport, and shut malls and factories while necessities like food were often rationed and delivered by officials
15th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Hong Kong rules out tightening COVID curbs for now as death toll soars

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Monday there were no plans to tighten strict social distancing measures as the Chinese-ruled territory battles to contain a coronavirus surge that has submerged its health system amid soaring deaths. Lam said there was limited room to tighten further, with the global financial hub already having put in place the strictest measures since the pandemic started. Gatherings of more than two people are banned, most venues are shut - including schools - and masks are compulsory everywhere, even when exercising outdoors.
15th Mar 2022 - Reuters

More than 200 people given wrong dose of coronavirus vaccine

In the Netherlands, more than 200 people have been offered an extra coronavirus vaccine after it emerged they were mistakenly given an insufficient dose. A mix-up with needles and syringes meant 247 people were injected with 0.15ml of the vaccine rather than 0.25ml, the regional health service in West Brabant said. All those affected were given the Moderna vaccine at Breda International Airport on March 4.
14th Mar 2022 - DutchNews.NL

Covid-19: Two Christchurch vaccination sites to close over next few weeks

Two Covid-19 vaccination centres are set to close in Christchurch to allow health authorities to focus on “priority areas and at-risk populations” where booster uptake has been lagging behind. Dr Helen Skinner, the Canterbury District Health Board's Covid-19 emergency co-ordination centre controller, said the Omicron outbreak and staffing challenges has meant the Canterbury DHB has had to re-prioritise its Covid-19 vaccination programme.
14th Mar 2022 - Stuff.co.nz

Coronavirus Daily: A Rural-Urban Vaccine Divide in the US

In President Joe Biden’s National Covid-19 Preparedness Plan there’s a glaring omission: efforts to improve on high levels of vaccine hesitancy in rural parts of the U.S. First-dose vaccination coverage is about 59% for people in rural areas compared with 75% for those in urban areas, according to a recent government study, and that disparity has more than doubled since April 2021. Overall, more than 65% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated. The divide is particularly stark among children and teenagers who need parental consent to get vaccinated. Only about 15% of children ages 5-11 have been vaccinated in rural areas, compared with 31% in urban areas.
14th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

France lifts COVID-19 rules on unvaccinated, mask wearing

France lifted most COVID-19 restrictions on Monday, abolishing the need to wear face masks in most settings and allowing people who aren’t vaccinated back into restaurants, sports arenas and other venues. The move had been announced earlier this month by the French government based on assessments of the improving situation in hospitals and following weeks of a steady decline in infections. It comes less than a month before the first round of the presidential election scheduled on April 10.
14th Mar 2022 - The Independent

America marks two years of Covid – is it prepared for the next pandemic?

Even as Covid-19 remains a threat, US public health officials and researchers are looking to the next potential pandemic – whether it’s influenza, another coronavirus, antimicrobial resistance, or a different health threat entirely – as they hope to build on the progress and avoid the pitfalls of the past two years. Knowledge of how respiratory viruses work – and how to battle them – has increased exponentially during this outbreak. But at the same time, misinformation about infectious diseases, especially vaccines and treatments, has multiplied, presenting new challenges. Scientists, several of whom have advised Joe Biden, recently released a 136-page “roadmap” for moving from Covid crisis to what they term the “next normal”. These investments include supporting health workers and strengthening health systems, as well as supporting survivors with long-term symptoms.
14th Mar 2022 - The Guardian

White House: Omicron BA.2 COVID variant has circulated in U.S. for some time

The White House said on Monday that the Omicron BA.2 sub-variant of COVID-19 had been circulating in the United States for some time, with roughly 35,000 cases at the moment, and more money was needed to help fight it. White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said the tools the country had, including vaccines and medicines, were all effective tools against the virus. "We need additional COVID funding," Psaki said, referring to a White House request for more money from Congress. "Some programs, if we don't get funding, could abruptly end or need to be pared back and that could impact how we are able to respond to any variant."
14th Mar 2022 - Reuters

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Australia's vaccine diplomacy in Pacific islands wards off Beijing, prime minister says

Australia has been able to stop an "incursion" by Beijing into the Pacific islands by talking with leaders there weekly and offering vaccine aid, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday. Concern over China's military ambitions for the region, after it provided police and riot equipment to the Solomon Islands, prompted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to last month announce Washington would open a Solomon Islands embassy. Morrison said China had been "very clear" about aspirations to build a military base in the Pacific islands, but this had not occurred.
13th Mar 2022 - Reuters.com

Dismay as funding for UK’s ‘world-beating’ Covid trackers is axed

If anything about the UK’s response to Covid-19 was world-beating, it was our surveillance system. From the World Health Organization to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), public health teams around the world have praised the UK’s infection-tracking capability, and used our data to plan their own pandemic measures. Despite this health ministers have cancelled future funding for the React-1 study and other research projects. The decision has been met with dismay among leading scientists and researchers worldwide, who have questioned the UK’s ability to respond to future Covid threats.
12th Mar 2022 - The Guardian

Kenya lifts remaining COVID restrictions

Kenya lifted its remaining COVID-19 restrictions on Friday, including a ban on large indoor gatherings such as religious services and a requirement to present a negative COVID-19 test for arriving air passengers. Though Kenyans should continue heeding public health measures such as handwashing and social distancing, face masks are no longer mandatory in public and all quarantine measures for confirmed COVID-19 cases are halted with immediate effect, Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe told a news conference.
12th Mar 2022 - CNBC Africa

98% of U.S. population can ditch masks as COVID eases -CDC

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said some 98% of the U.S. population live in locations where COVID-19 levels are low enough that people do not need to wear masks indoors. The CDC on Feb. 25 dramatically eased its COVID-19 guidelines for when Americans should wear masks indoors, saying they could drop them in counties experiencing what it described as low or medium COVID-19 levels
12th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Swiss secure COVID-19 vaccines for 2023

Switzerland has secured at least 14 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for 2023, the government said on Friday. "For 2023, in addition to the seven million doses of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine already purchased, the Federal Council has decided to also procure seven million doses from Moderna. At the same time, Switzerland has options – to be exercised only if needed – to procure a further seven million vaccine doses from each provider," it said in a statement.
12th Mar 2022 - Reuters

COVID-19: Official pandemic inquiry's public hearings set to begin in 2023

Public hearings for the inquiry into the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic are not set to begin until next year, raising the possibility that its findings won't be published before the next election. The revelation came in an open letter to the public from Baroness Hallett, the chair of the inquiry. She said representatives of the inquiry will visit towns and cities across the UK over the next few weeks to meet with people affected by COVID-19.
12th Mar 2022 - Sky News

Britain outlines terms of COVID-19 inquiry

Britain on Thursday outlined the terms of reference of its planned inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic, looking into the preparedness of the country as well as the public health and economic response to the coronavirus. Britain has recorded 19.3 million COVID-19 infections and 162,000 deaths - the seventh highest fatality total globally - and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised for mishandling England's three national lockdowns. He has promised an inquiry into the pandemic, chaired by judge Heather Hallett.
12th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Call to offer more people fourth jab as Covid rises in England

Ministers should consider extending the plan to give a fourth dose of Covid vaccines to older people because of evidence of waning immunity, scientists say. The number of people being admitted to hospital with Covid began rising last week, and on 9 March 1,521 were admitted in England – the highest number since the end of January. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that one in 25 people, or 3.8% of England’s population, was infected on 5 March, and research by the React-1 study indicated that cases are rising in those aged 55 and over.
12th Mar 2022 - The Guardian

Yellen: COVID-19 aid funds will help U.S. withstand Ukraine war economic turmoil

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Friday the U.S. economy is better prepared to weather economic turbulence from Russia's invasion of Ukraine because of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid package passed a year ago. Yellen, speaking at a Denver social services agency on the first anniversary of the American Rescue Plan, (ARP) said the United States is now much better able to withstand unforeseen crises -- such as the war in Ukraine -- than it was a year ago.
12th Mar 2022 - Reuters

China approves five COVID-19 antigen kits for self-testing - CCTV

China has granted approval to five COVID-19 antigen kits made by local companies to be used for self-testing, state broadcaster CCTV said on Saturday, as it tweaks its testing regime that has been pressured by Omicron. China's National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) published a notice saying Beijing Huaketai Biotechnology had been allowed to make changes to its COVID-19 antigen test kit's device certificate. It published a similar approval for four other companies, Nanjing Vazyme Biotech, Guangzhou Wondfo Biotech, Beijing Jinwofu Bioengineering Technology and a BGI Genomics subsidiary, Shenzhen Huada Yinyuan Pharmaceutical Technology, on Saturday.
12th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Hong Kong leader Lam says city not yet past COVID peak

Hong Kong reported 27,647 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, with city leader Carrie Lam saying the outbreak was not yet past its peak despite recent daily case numbers slightly levelling off. Health authorities reported 27,647 new positive cases in Hong Kong on Saturday, versus 29,381 new infections on Friday read more and 31,402 new cases on Thursday. 198 new deaths were also reported in the past 24 hours.
12th Mar 2022 - Reuters

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Australia leaders to meet amid Omicron sub-variant concerns, flood damage

Australia's national cabinet will meet on Friday against a backdrop of concerns about the spread of the new sub-variant of the Omicron strain of the coronavirus, while eastern states battle to clear tonnes of debris after devastating floods.
11th Mar 2022 - Reuters

As Omicron surges, New Zealand's businesses want COVID bubble burst

New Zealand's tight COVID-19 bubble was once globally lauded but for local business, the strict border controls increasingly feel like a straitjacket as a lack on foreign workers and tourists squeezes the island nation's economy. Meat processors have cut production, grapes are withering on vines and a dearth of international visitors has some tourism operators worried they will have to close shop by the time borders reopen later this year. New Zealand's swift response to the pandemic, including the strict border controls, kept the country largely COVID-19 free until the end of last year, winning Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's government strong praise at home and abroad.
11th Mar 2022 - Reuters

98% of U.S. population can ditch masks as COVID eases -CDC

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) late on Thursday said some 98% of the U.S. population live in locations where COVID-19 levels are low enough that people do not need to wear masks indoors. The CDC on Feb. 25 dramatically eased its COVID-19 guidelines for when Americans should wear masks indoors, saying they could drop them in counties experiencing what it described as low or medium COVID-19 levels. Last month, the CDC initially said 70% of counties covering 72% of Americans could drop masks. The latest update says 98% of Americans who live in 94% of U.S. counties can ditch masks.
11th Mar 2022 - Reuters

How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed after two years?

How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed after two years? More countries are shifting toward a return to normal and learning to live with the virus. Safe, effective vaccines have been developed and there's better understanding of how to treat people sickened by the virus. Two years after the pandemic began, questions remain about the coronavirus. But experts know a lot more about how to keep it under control.
10th Mar 2022 - The Independent

United Airlines to let unvaccinated workers return - WSJ

United Airlines will allow workers who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 for religious or medical reasons to return at the end of this month, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move permits staffers with exemptions from the carrier's vaccination requirement for its U.S. employees to return from unpaid leave or from the non-customer-facing roles they were allowed to apply for as an alternative to their regular jobs, the report said.
10th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Seniors, freed from COVID isolation, sashay in New York dance class

Seniors sway hips and stomp feet as they salsa, cha-cha, merengue and bachata in a New York dance class to get moving again after two years of COVID-19 pandemic isolation. Despite stiff joints - or even the loss of a limb - the students stick it out in the free class taught by Walter Perez at the YM & YWHA of Washington Heights and Inwood in upper Manhattan.
10th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Britain outlines terms of COVID-19 inquiry

Britain on Thursday outlined the terms of reference of its planned inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic, looking into the preparedness of the country as well as the public health and economic response to the coronavirus. Britain has recorded 19.3 million COVID-19 infections and 162,000 deaths - the seventh highest fatality total globally - and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised for mishandling England's three national lockdowns.
10th Mar 2022 - Reuters

'Lost generation' feared as COVID school closures fuel inequality

Around 1.6 billion children globally - more than 90% of all school students - have been affected by pandemic school closures, which threaten to widen wealth inequalities both within and between countries. "We're running the risk of a lost generation," U.N. education expert Robert Jenkins told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "It's a now-or-never moment to turn things around." Without urgent action, many countries could end up without the skilled workers they need for their future development, said Jenkins, head of education at UNICEF.
10th Mar 2022 - Thomson Reuters Foundation

How will COVID end? Experts look to past epidemics for clues

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the world has seen a dramatic improvement in infections, hospitalizations and death rates in recent weeks, signaling the crisis appears to be winding down. But how will it end? Past epidemics may provide clues. The ends of epidemics are not as thoroughly researched as their beginnings. But there are recurring themes that could offer lessons for the months ahead, said Erica Charters of the University of Oxford, who studies the issue. “One thing we have learned is it’s a long, drawn-out process” that includes different types of endings that may not all occur at the same time, she said. That includes a “medical end,” when disease recedes, the “political end,” when government prevention measures cease, and the “social end,” when people move on.
10th Mar 2022 - Associated Press

China's daily local symptomatic COVID cases nearly double to 402

Mainland China reported 402 locally transmitted COVID-19 infections with confirmed symptoms for March. 9, official data showed on Thursday, nearly doubling from the daily count a day earlier. Of those, 165 were in the northeastern province of Jilin, the National Health Commission said in a statement. That marks the highest daily count for the province since China contained its first national outbreak in early 2020. The number of new domestically-transmitted asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, was 435, a near two-year high.
10th Mar 2022 - Reuters

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U.S. leaning toward ending COVID-era expulsions of migrants at Mexico border - sources

President Joe Biden's administration is leaning toward ending a COVID-era order that has blocked more than a million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter, a major policy shift that would restore the U.S. asylum system but could provoke backlash from Republicans. A third official said the policy was being actively debated and a decision could come within weeks, though the outcome was not yet clear. All three requested anonymity to provide details on internal conversations. The discussions, which have not been previously reported, were prompted by recent U.S. court decisions that complicate the implementation of the so-called "Title 42" border order coupled with major moves by U.S. public health officials to loosen pandemic restrictions across the United States, the officials said
10th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Americans can now order four more free at-home Covid-19 tests

Americans can now order a second set of free at-home Covid-19 rapid antigen tests from the federal government. Covidtests.gov, the website to sign up for the free tests, launched in January, when people could order a maximum of four tests per household. Households that took part in that first round can now order an additional four.
9th Mar 2022 - CNN

Austria says it is putting its COVID-19 vaccine mandate on ice

Austria is suspending its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, its ministers for health and constitutional affairs said on Wednesday, six days before fines for breaches were due to start being imposed. The measure, the most sweeping in the European Union as it applied to all adults with few exceptions, has been in effect since Feb. 5, but enforcement was only due to begin on March 15.
9th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Architect of Sweden's light-touch COVID response gets job at WHO

The man who became the face of Sweden's no-lockdown pandemic policy, Anders Tegnell, is stepping down as chief epidemiologist to take up a role at the World Health Organization (WHO), the Swedish Health Agency said. Tegnell, whose almost daily news conferences had Swedes glued to their screens for much of the pandemic, will become a senior expert at a WHO group tasked with coordinating the COVID vaccine response between health and vaccine organisations.
9th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Austria suspends mandatory Covid vaccination law

Austria is suspending a law making Covid-19 vaccinations mandatory for all adults, just a month after the legislation took effect in an EU first. The country of 9 million people was among few in the world to make coronavirus jabs compulsory for all adults. The law took effect in February and called for fines of up to €3,600 (£3,000) from mid-March for those who did not comply. But the minister Karoline Edtstadler said the law’s “encroachment of fundamental rights” could no longer be justified by the danger posed. “After consultations with the health minister, we have decided that we will of course follow what the [expert] commission has said,” Edtstadler said after a cabinet meeting. “We see no need to actually implement this compulsory vaccination due to the [Omicron] variant that we are predominantly experiencing here.” The highly contagious variant is widely believed to be less severe than previous forms of the virus, and so far Austrian hospitals have been able to cope with a surge in cases.
9th Mar 2022 - The Guardian

In ‘zero COVID’ Hong Kong, deaths smash global records

The Hong Kong nursing home where Amy’s 78-year-old mother lives battened down the hatches when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Elderly residents were confined within the walls of their rooms. Families were not allowed to visit. As the Chinese territory battled its biggest outbreak of coronavirus cases, staff at the private facility camped out in the office for weeks to avoid bringing the virus with them from outside. Even so, the inevitable happened. In February, Amy’s mother was among the residents sent to a public hospital’s emergency ward after developing a fever. “This elderly home has some of the strictest standards in the industry,” Amy, who asked to only be referred to by her first name, told Al Jazeera. “If 80 percent of its residents can be infected, then no other nursing home in Hong Kong can remain unscathed." As Hong Kong reports tens of thousands of coronavirus cases each day, the city’s large population of unvaccinated elderly residents has resulted in the highest official death rate per capita of any jurisdiction during the pandemic.
9th Mar 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Dems set for House approval of Ukraine aid, drop COVID funds

The House approved a massive spending bill Wednesday night that would rush $13.6 billion in U.S. aid to battered Ukraine and its European allies, after top Democrats were forced to abruptly drop their plan to include fresh funds to battle COVID-19. Passage of the Ukraine aid and the $1.5 trillion government-wide legislation that carried it let both parties lay claim to election-year victories for their priorities. Democrats won treasured domestic initiatives, Republicans achieved defense boosts, and both got their imprint on funds to counter Russia’s brutal invasion of its western neighbor. Senate approval was assured by week’s end or perhaps slightly longer. Hours earlier, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had to abandon the bill’s $15.6 billion for combating the pandemic, a decision she called “heartbreaking” and that spelled defeat for a top priority of President Joe Biden and party leaders.
9th Mar 2022 - The Associated Press

Covid hospital admissions rising across the UK ‘likely due to waning immunity among older people’

Waning immunity from booster shots among the elderly and vulnerable is likely to be behind a sudden uptick in hospital admissions of people with Covid over the past week, public health officials believe. Hospitalisations are rising in all seven English NHS regions, Scotland and Wales, after a period of decline since the start of January. In south west England, admissions are higher than they were at the peak of the Omicron wave in January. Other areas that are seeing an increase are still well below their January peak, however.
9th Mar 2022 - iNews

Covid UK: Cases rise 50 PER CENT in a week as hospitalisations and deaths creep up

Government dashboard data shows there were 67,159 new positive tests recorded over the last 24 hours. Deaths within 28 days of a confirmed coronavirus case also increased to 123, up 66.2 per cent in a week. Covid hospital admissions increased to 1,192 on March 5, the latest date UK-wide data is available for
9th Mar 2022 - Daily Mail

German govt produces new legal framework for pandemic rules

The German government introduced a legal framework for pandemic regulations and rules Wednesday. Most of the country’s current coronavirus restrictions are set to end by March 20. The country’s health and justice ministers said if German lawmakers pass the framework, the country’s 16 state legislatures could adopt the new “hot spot” measures if virus cases rise again in certain regions, if hospitals are at risk of becoming overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients, or if new virus variants start spreading. The regulations cover matters such as mask requirements, social distancing, and requiring proof of vaccination, recovery of the illness or negative tests to be able to participate in certain parts of public life.
9th Mar 2022 - Associated Press

Ignoring behavioral and social sciences undermines the U.S. response to Covid-19

The U.S. has bungled many of its efforts to rein in the Covid-19 pandemic. Francis S. Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, perfectly captured the country’s fundamental flaw: “Maybe we underinvested in research on human behavior,” he said on PBS NewsHour. “I never imagined a year ago, when those vaccines were just proving to be fantastically safe and effective, that we would still have 60 million people who had not taken advantage of them because of misinformation and disinformation that somehow dominated all of the ways in which people were getting their answers.” In just 60 words, Collins captured the limitations of the nation’s biomedicine-centric coronavirus response strategy, which has grossly underutilized insights and expertise from the behavioral and social sciences that might have bolstered the likelihood that the country’s single best tool — effective vaccines — would achieve their potential to stop a highly contagious, rapidly evolving respiratory virus in its tracks.
9th Mar 2022 - STAT News

Variant that combines Delta and Omicron identified; dogs sniff out virus with high accuracy

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. "Deltacron" with genes of Delta and Omicron found Hybrid versions of the coronavirus that combine genes from the Delta and Omicron variants - dubbed "Deltacron" - have been identified in at least 17 patients in the United States and Europe, researchers said. Because there have been so few confirmed cases, it is too soon to know whether Deltacron infections will be very transmissible or cause severe disease, said Philippe Colson of IHU Mediterranee Infection in Marseille, France, lead author of a report posted on Tuesday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. His team described three patients in France infected with a version of SARS-CoV-2 that combines the spike protein from an Omicron variant with the "body" of a Delta variant.
9th Mar 2022 - Reuters

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New Zealand to Reduce Covid Self-Isolation Period to Seven Days

New Zealand will reduce the isolation period for Covid-19 cases and their household contacts to seven days in order to get more people back to work. The period will reduce from 10 days effective at 11:59 p.m. on Friday March 11 in Wellington, Minister for Covid Response Chris Hipkins said in a statement. “The most up to date public health advice is that there is a decline in infectiousness of omicron over time, and that in most cases transmission occurs within seven days,” he said. “Seven days isolation will break the vast majority of potential transmissions, while ensuring people can get back to work quicker and therefore reducing the impact on business operations.”
9th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Puerto Rico to lift mask mandate as COVID-19 cases ease

Puerto Rico’s governor announced that he is ending a requirement for mask use indoors for the second time since the pandemic began as the number of cases and hospitalizations ease. The change will take effect Thursday with a few exceptions. Face masks will still be required in health facilities and nursing homes. In addition, starting March 10, domestic travelers will no longer have to present proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test or fill out a currently required form.
8th Mar 2022 - The Independent

Romanian government to lift COVID restrictions from March 9

Romania will lift all COVID restrictions from Wednesday including requiring a digital pass to access institutions and the obligation to wear protective masks both indoors and outside, Health Minister Alexandru Rafila said on Tuesday. The decision stems from the coalition government's decision to no longer extend a nation-wide state of alert two years after the pandemic first hit Romania. The country remains the European Union's second-least vaccinated state, with just under 42% of the population fully inoculated amid distrust in state institutions and poor vaccine education
8th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer to Submit Data to FDA on Fourth Covid Shot Soon, CEO Says

Pfizer Inc. will soon submit data to U.S. regulators on a fourth dose of its Covid-19 vaccine, Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said. Bourla said he spent Tuesday morning reviewing new data from various Covid vaccine studies, including one looking at the effects of a fourth dose of the currently available vaccine, as well as a new formulation that will protect against multiple coronavirus variants. “They look encouraging,” Bourla said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power With David Westin,” noting that Pfizer still needs to collect more information.
8th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

As virus cases go from 1 to 24000, New Zealand changes tack

Back in August, New Zealand’s government put the entire nation on lockdown after a single community case of the coronavirus was detected. On Tuesday, when new daily cases hit a record of nearly 24,000, officials told hospital workers they could help out on understaffed COVID-19 wards even if they were mildly sick themselves. It was the latest sign of just how radically New Zealand’s approach to the virus has shifted, moving from elimination to suppression and now to something approaching acceptance as the omicron variant has taken hold. Experts say New Zealand’s sometimes counterintuitive actions have likely saved thousands of lives by allowing the nation to mostly avoid earlier, more deadly variants and buying time to get people vaccinated. The nation of 5 million has reported just 65 virus deaths since the pandemic began.
8th Mar 2022 - The Associated Press

Mask mandates go away in schools, but parent worries persist

Major school districts around the US are allowing students into classrooms without masks for the first time in nearly two years, eliminating rules that stirred up intense fights among educators, school boards and parents throughout the pandemic. New York City became the latest school district to do away with its mask requirement Monday and Philadelphia is poised to lift its mandate Wednesday, joining big cities such as Houston and Dallas and a number of a states that made similar moves in the last week. Chicago schools will end their mask mandate next Monday.
7th Mar 2022 - Associated Press

Experts map out 'new normal' as US enters third pandemic year

As America enters the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic and approaches the 2-year anniversary of business and school shutdowns put in place when little was known about the novel coronavirus, a group of public health experts have published a new roadmap laying out how the country can enter the "new normal" stage of the pandemic and manage the virus without eliminating it. The roadmap recommends against future school closings, suggests the United States will need to manufacture 1 billion at-home COVID-19 tests per month, and says the nation can lift pandemic restrictions when it is tallying 165 or fewer deaths per day from the virus.
7th Mar 2022 - CIDRAP

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 8th Mar 2022

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Bali welcomes first foreign tourists after COVID quarantine rule lifted

Indonesia's resort island of Bali on Monday welcomed its first foreign tourists under relaxed coronavirus rules that no longer require arrivals to quarantine, part of a broader easing of curbs in the Southeast Asian country after infections declined.
8th Mar 2022 - Reuters on MSN.com

Florida breaks with CDC, recommends no COVID vaccine for healthy children

Florida's top health official said on Monday the state would recommend against the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children, breaking with guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In announcing the move during press briefing convened by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the state's surgeon general Dr. Joseph Lapado cited studies that showed few COVID fatalities among healthy children and elevated risk among young boys receiving the vaccine of side effects such as myocarditis.
8th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Moderna Signals It May Enforce Covid-19 Vaccine Patents in Wealthy Nations

Moderna Inc. said it will never use its Covid-19 vaccine-related patents to stop others from manufacturing its vaccine in more than 90 low- and middle-income countries, but signaled it was prepared to begin enforcing patents in wealthier countries. The drugmaker said Monday it now expects anyone in higher-income countries that want to use its patented technologies to respect the company’s intellectual property. It also said it is willing to license its patents to others in those countries on “commercially reasonable terms.” Such terms usually involve royalties on the sales of products using the licensed technology. The new stance opens up the possibility of Moderna filing patent-infringement suits against companies in wealthier countries that don’t reach agreements on using Moderna’s technology, though it didn’t say when it might begin seeking to enforce its patents.
8th Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Moderna Starts Human Trials of 15 Vaccines as Prepares for Next Pandemic

Moderna Inc. plans to start human trials for vaccines against 15 threatening viruses and other pathogens by 2025, part of a strategy to develop shots that could be made quickly in response to a future pandemic. The effort will include prototype vaccines against the virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome, a cousin of Covid-19; the Ebola and Marburg viruses; a tick-borne virus that causes Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever; and mosquito-borne viruses such as chikungunya and dengue fever, according to a company statement Tuesday. Moderna has come under criticism from vaccine advocates who say the company has been slow to ship doses of its Covid vaccine to poor countries and that patents it is pursuing in South Africa threaten access to shots. The company is rowing back, announcing an agreement Monday to open a vaccine plant in Kenya that will make as many as 500 million doses annually, although it didn’t specify which vaccines might be produced there.
8th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Hard for China to Exit Covid Zero With Unprepared Hospitals

When Covid-19 flared in the northern Chinese border region of Ejin late last year, it revealed a key impediment to the country charting an exit from its zero-tolerance pandemic strategy. The healthcare system is so unprepared that any major shift away from Covid Zero -- which in China has meant frequent mass testing, swift quarantines, lockdowns and sealed international borders -- risks a public health crisis. In Ejin, home to about 30,000 in the Chinese province that borders Mongolia, several dozen infections in mid-October quickly overwhelmed the two local hospitals. Authorities had to transfer more than 140 patients by train to the provincial capital of Hohhot, over 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) away, according to local media.
8th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Covid Cases Linked to Brain Shrinkage, Cognitive Decline Months Later

Even a mild case of Covid-19 can damage the brain and addle thinking, scientists found in a study that highlights the illness’s alarming impact on mental function. Researchers identified Covid-associated brain damage months after infection, including in the region linked to smell, and shrinkage in size equivalent to as much as a decade of normal aging. The changes were linked to cognitive decline in the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature. The findings represent striking evidence of the virus’s impact on the central nervous system. More research will be required to understand whether the evidence from the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging at the University of Oxford means Covid-19 will exacerbate the global burden of dementia -- which cost an estimated $1.3 trillion in the year the pandemic began -- and other neurodegenerative conditions.
8th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

HK Ponders New Strategy; China Reports 505 Cases: Virus Update

Hong Kong is considering prioritizing reducing Covid-19 deaths over a compulsory citywide test as authorities struggle to contain its worst wave of virus cases in the pandemic, a local newspaper reported. The U.S. raised its Covid travel advisory for the city by one step to Level 4, or Very High. China reported 505 local covid cases for March 7, down slightly from 526 cases the previous day -- its biggest one-day tally of coronavirus infections since the Wuhan outbreak at the start of the pandemic. More than 6 million people worldwide have died from Covid-19 two years after the novel pathogen started spreading globally.
8th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Ireland entry requirements: All Covid restrictions scrapped for arrivals, regardless of vaccination status

Ireland has dropped all Covid entry restrictions on arrivals, regardless of vaccination status. The relaxation of border rules came into force on Sunday 6 March and includes the end of Passenger Locator Forms. Travellers are no longer required to show proof of vaccination, recovery or a negative Covid test on arrival.
7th Mar 2022 - iNews

Americans significantly less worried about contracting COVID-19: Gallup

A new Gallup poll shows that concerns about the pandemic have fallen, with just over a third of respondents saying they are now worried about contracting COVID-19. Americans questioned in the survey released Monday are more optimistic about the state of the pandemic than they have been since June, before the pandemic's delta and omicron variants contributed to a significant uptick in infections, according to the survey giant. For example, just 34 percent of people said they are worried about contracting COVID-19, compared to 50 percent in January.
7th Mar 2022 - Yahoo News

Belgium scraps almost all COVID-19 measures as crisis eases

Belgium began easing most COVID-19 restrictions Monday in the biggest move to relax measures since the onset of the crisis some two years ago. Gone are the coronavirus passport that allows entry into bars, restaurants, theater and cinemas as well as capacity limits. The government announced last week that the nation of 11 million will go from code orange - the second-toughest for virus measures - to code yellow as of Monday.
7th Mar 2022 - ABC News

Bali welcomes first foreign tourists after COVID quarantine rule lifted

Indonesia's resort island of Bali on Monday welcomed its first foreign tourists under relaxed coronavirus rules that no longer require arrivals to quarantine, part of a broader easing of curbs in the Southeast Asian country after infections declined. Known for its surfing, temples, waterfalls and nightlife, Bali drew 6.2 million foreign visitors in 2019, the year before COVID-19 struck. But only a trickle of visitors have returned since Bali started opening up to foreign tourists last October, discouraged by the need to quarantine and other rules.
7th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Public health experts sketch a roadmap to get from the Covid pandemic to the ‘next normal’

A new report released Monday charts a path for the transition out of the Covid-19 pandemic, one that outlines both how the country can deal with the challenge of endemic Covid disease and how to prepare for future biosecurity threats. The report plots a course to what its authors call the “next normal” — living with the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a continuing threat that needs to be managed. Doing so will require improvements on a number of fronts, from better surveillance for Covid and other pathogens to keeping tabs on how taxed hospitals are; and from efforts to address the air quality in buildings to continued investment in antiviral drugs and better vaccines. The authors also call for offering people sick with respiratory symptoms easy access to testing and, if they are positive for Covid or influenza, a quick prescription for the relevant antiviral drug.
7th Mar 2022 - STAT News

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 7th Mar 2022

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Covid Reality Arrives For Kiwis as 'Fortress New Zealand' Falls

Two years after the pandemic began, New Zealanders are finally facing its reality. After keeping the virus at bay for so long, Covid-19 is now tearing through the nation’s population courtesy of the highly infectious omicron variant. In the space of two weeks, new case numbers exploded from less than 1,000 a day to more than 22,000. “Psychologically it’s quite a big shock because to date the pandemic has been largely something that’s happened to other people,” said Michael Baker, Professor of Public Health at the University of Otago. “Until recently, the only people I knew who got infected with the virus lived overseas.”
7th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Hong Kong residents urged not to panic ahead of COVID mass testing

Hong Kong reported 31,008 new COVID-19 cases and 153 deaths on Sunday as the city's chief secretary said residents should not worry about a looming mass testing scheme, with details to be announced and authorities ensuring a steady supply of food.
7th Mar 2022 - Reuters

U.S. waives COVID test for Americans leaving Russia, Belarus

The United States is waiving a requirement for negative COVID-19 tests from Americans leaving Belarus or Russia to travel home, the State Department said on Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it would exercise its discretion to allow travel by U.S. citizens, permanent residents and holders of valid immigrant visas who were in either country by a Feb. 28 cut-off date.
6th Mar 2022 - Reuters

Hong Kong's Distress Signals Are Rising

With some kind of lockdown and grim isolation centers looming, the city shows signs of trauma. Two years into the pandemic and counting, the biggest toll may be psychological.
6th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Death Toll Nears 6 Million as Pandemic Enters Its 3rd Year

The official global death toll from COVID-19 is on the verge of eclipsing 6 million — underscoring that the pandemic, now entering its third year, is far from over. The milestone is the latest tragic reminder of the unrelenting nature of the pandemic even as people are shedding masks, travel is resuming and businesses are reopening around the globe. The death toll, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, stood at 5,997,994 as of Sunday afternoon. Remote Pacific islands, whose isolation had protected them for more than two years, are just now grappling with their first outbreaks and deaths, fueled by the highly contagious omicron variant.
6th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

China's Own mRNA Vaccine Isn't Its Best Bet After Zero Covid

China’s zero-Covid policy initially provided a shield from viral infection and an example of disciplined pandemic management. It’s now become a trap from which Beijing is trying to escape without provoking a major health crisis. But being stuck on a home-grown solution is likely to lead to more problems, as Bloomberg Opinion’s Therese Raphael and Bloomberg Intelligence pharmaceutical analyst Sam Fazeli discuss here.
6th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Bankers Are Abandoning Hong Kong as Beijing and Covid Remake the City

In Hong Kong’s affluent Mid-levels, in the subtropical foothills of Victoria Peak, the talk today among well-heeled expatriates inevitably turns to one subject: Who will be the next to leave. Down the mile-long escalator, in the skyscrapered Central business district, the quiet exodus is gaining momentum. A few bankers at Citigroup Inc. A few more at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and HSBC Holdings Plc. The numbers are small, but they’re adding up. A net 71,000 people from all walks of life left Hong Kong in February – a portent, many here worry, of worse to come.
6th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Barnsley Hospital suspends patient visits due to Covid case rise

Article reports that Barnsley Hospital has suspended non-essential visits to inpatients due to a rise in Covid-19 cases. The decision, made on Friday because of "extreme circumstances", is in force until further notice, Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said. A trust spokesperson said the move will protect vulnerable patients and reduce the number of people on hospital wards. The hospital has also asked for outpatients to attend alone unless they require a carer also to be present.
5th Mar 2022 - BBC News

UK's Covid outbreak is GROWING: 11% rise in cases puts end to month of falling infections

Britain's daily Covid cases rose for the first time in a month today in a sign the outbreak may be growing again, while hospitalisations also ticked upwards. Government dashboard data shows another 44,017 infections were detected over the last 24 hours, up 11 per cent on the tally last Wednesday. It brings an end to more than four weeks of tumbling daily cases, with about 33,700 cases now being recorded every day on average. Latest hospital data shows 1,040 people were admitted to hospital with the virus on February 26, up seven per cent on the 970 from the previous week. But the seven-day average number of daily admissions is still falling, meaning today's rise could be a blip. Daily Covid deaths, however, have continued to fall, with the 74 victims announced today down 54 per cent in a week
5th Mar 2022 - Daily Mail

Nearly half of Hong Kong's delegates barred from China meetings due to Covid-19

As members of China's lawmaking body file into the Great Hall of the People on Saturday (March 5) to the strains of the Welcome March for the country's largest political gathering, one figure will notably be missing: Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam. The Chief Executive, who is traditionally invited to attend the opening of the National People's Congress (NPC), has turned down her invite to focus on battling the city's most serious coronavirus outbreak yet, with tens of thousands of new cases reported daily this week. Nearly half of Hong Kong's almost 240 delegates, including its sole representative to the NPC Standing Committee, Mr Tam Yiu Chung, have been barred from attending or are under quarantine because of Covid-19. Beijing had ordered the deputies, as delegates are known as, to first self-quarantine in Hong Kong for a week, and undergo another week of centralised quarantine in China's Shenzhen city, before they could attend the meetings in Beijing.
5th Mar 2022 - The Straits Times

Coronavirus lockdown: what can Hong Kong learn from China's cities?

As Hong Kong contemplates a mass lockdown to contain a runaway increase in coronavirus infections, there is at least a precedent the city can look to to keep daily necessities flowing to people under stay-at-home orders. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, 11 million people in the central Chinese city of Wuhan spent an unprecedented 76 days in lockdown, with public transport shut down, residential buildings sealed off and residents barred from leaving home. In spite of the extreme measures, people had access to essentials. “I panicked at the beginning of the lockdown,” Liu Chaoye, a retired teacher in Wuhan, said. “Food was in short supply and vegetable prices surged. But one week later, everything seemed to be on track.”
5th Mar 2022 - The Star Online

Hong Kong cuts Sinovac jab interval for care home elderly; 52,523 Covid cases logged

Hong Kong has cut the recommended interval between the first and second dose of the Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine for care home residents from four weeks to three, as the city battles a worsening coronavirus crisis with more than 52,500 new cases confirmed on Friday. Officials recorded another 52,523 new coronavirus infections, 11 of which were imported, pushing the overall tally to 403,080 cases. Dr Albert Au Ka-wing, a principal medical and health officer at the Centre for Health Protection, revealed the change for the mainland China-made Sinovac jabs, but said the interval for the German-produced BioNTech vaccine remained the same, at 21 days between the first and second shot.
5th Mar 2022 - South China Morning Post

Belgium to lift most coronavirus measures Monday

Belgium will lift most coronavirus restrictions at the start of next week, shifting its pandemic barometer to Code Yellow, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo announced Friday. Wearing masks will still be recommended but will only remain mandatory for anyone from the age of 12 in health care establishments and in public transport. Masks will no longer be mandatory in schools. Belgium’s Covid Safe Ticket — providing proof of vaccination, recovery, or of a negative test — will no longer be required in the hospitality sector or to attend events. Starting March 11, Belgium’s travel rules will also change. Notably, travelers coming to Belgium will only be required to complete a Passenger Locator Form if they are arriving from a country not on the so-called white list of countries deemed safe.
5th Mar 2022 - POLITICO Europe

COVID and the Russian invasion: Ukraine’s dual crisis

Most of us could be forgiven for thinking there were glimmers of light at the end of a very long pandemic tunnel. We are not out of the pandemic yet, but with vaccines, advances in therapeutics and a wealth of knowledge on how the COVID-19 virus works and spreads, things have been improving. However, Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine has opened up a dark chapter, one which will likely drive COVID infections up – not just in Ukraine but in surrounding countries. And history tells us warzones can provide the ideal conditions for infectious diseases to spread. Distracted government institutions, faltering health services, and the congregation of large numbers of vulnerable people, alongside environmental degradation, can create the perfect storm of conditions for an outbreak of a catastrophic infectious disease.
5th Mar 2022 - Al Jazeera English on MSN.com

Half of Insured Americans Owe Medical Debt, Boosted by Covid

More than half of Americans have medical debt -- whether they have health insurance or not. A recent survey of 1,250 U.S. adults found that 56% owe health-related debt and almost one in six people with medical bills aren’t currently paying it off. A large chunk of the debt came from Covid-19 treatment and testing, according to the poll conducted by Affordable Health Insurance.
5th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Hong Kong Mortuaries Bring in Mobile Fridges as Deaths Surge

Hong Kong’s mortuaries are so overwhelmed they’re deploying mobile refrigeration units to store bodies, as scenes reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic play out amid the city’s worst Covid-19 wave yet. Photos taken at the Fu Shan Public Mortuary show four refrigerated units in a car park. Nearby, bags of ice are stacked next to an empty coffin. Hong Kong’s resources are straining under the pressure of a record outbreak that’s pushed its death rate to one of the highest in the world. Fatalities have been concentrated in the under-vaccinated elderly, and the spread of the virus to more than 750 care facilities – including those that are home to disabled residents – has sparked concerns of worse to come.
5th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 4th Mar 2022

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Japan's Unemployment Rate Jumps as Covid Restrictions Hit Activity

Japan’s unemployment rate edged up in January as a record wave of Covid-19 infections prompted renewed restrictions that are likely to continue slowing progress in the recovery of the labor market in February and March. The jobless rate rose to 2.8% as the number of people working fell by a seasonally adjusted 190,000 from December, the ministry of internal affairs reported Friday. Analysts had expected the unemployment rate to hold steady at 2.7%. A separate report offered a slightly more encouraging view of the labor market as job offers outnumbered applicants by a greater margin, a leading indicator of the employment trend. There were 120 jobs offered in January for every 100 applicants, compared with 116 positions a month earlier.
4th Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

France to suspend Covid vaccine passport rules from March 14

France has announced that Covid passport rules will be lifted later this month. Prime Minister Jean Castex said regulations requiring people to show they had been vaccinated to access certain public venues will be relaxed from March 14, as infection numbers are dropping across the country. “The health situation is improving,” Castex told TF1 television on Thursday. The relaxation will come into force about a month before the presidential election. The first round of the French election takes place on April 10. The expected run-off between candidates takes place a fortnight after that. The man who oversaw the pandemic, President Emmanuel Macron is the favourite to win again.
3rd Mar 2022 - The Independent

Covid News: C.D.C. Drops Contact Tracing Recommendation

Almost two years after the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for 100,000 contact tracers to contain the coronavirus, the C.D.C. said this week that it no longer recommends universal case investigation and contact tracing. Instead it encourages health departments to focus those practices on high-risk settings. The turning point comes as the national outlook continues to improve rapidly, with new cases, hospitalizations and deaths all continuing to fall even as the path out of the pandemic remains complicated. It also reflects the reality that contact-tracing programs in about half of U.S. states have been eliminated.
3rd Mar 2022 - The New York Times

How Covid-19 Could Shift From Pandemic to Endemic Phase

What is an endemic and how will we know when Covid-19 becomes one? WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez breaks down how public-health experts assess when a virus like Covid-19 enters an endemic stage.
3rd Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Turkey relaxes mask mandate amid drop in COVID-19 cases

Turkey relaxed its mask mandate on Wednesday and is also scrapping the use of codes assigned to citizens that allowed authorities to track those who have been in contact with infected people. Turkey relaxed its mask mandate on Wednesday, allowing people to ditch them in open-air spaces and in places with sufficient ventilation and where social distancing can be maintained. In a news conference following a meeting of the country’s Covid-19 advisory council, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said people would be required to continue wearing masks in planes, buses, theatres, cinemas, hospitals and classrooms. In other steps, Turkey will no longer close down classes where two or more students have tested positive for the virus, the minister said.
3rd Mar 2022 - The New Arab

Greece lifts mask-wearing outdoors as COVID infections recede

Greece will lift its requirement of mask-wearing outdoors from Saturday, its health minister said on Wednesday, as COVID-19 infections are trending lower. The advisory committee of infectious disease experts recommended the lifting and the government accepted the recommendation, Health Minister Thanos Plevris said. "But it is highly recommended to wear masks outdoors when there is a lot of crowding," he said. The move comes after the lifting of curbs that barred standing customers at bars and night entertainment establishments earlier this month and the resumption of school excursions.
3rd Mar 2022 - Reuters

Moscow drops QR codes, other COVID-19 restrictions

Russian capital Moscow will no longer require locals to use QR codes to prove they are vaccinated or immune to COVID-19 and is dropping all restrictions at entertainment and sport venues, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Thursday. The situation in the city is gradually normalising with fewer infections and hospitalisations reported, Sobyanin wrote on his blog.
3rd Mar 2022 - Reuters

Sweden sees clear drop in COVID cases despite scrapped curbs

COVID-19 cases in Sweden are falling sharply, the country's health agency said on Thursday, even as nearly all pandemic-related restrictions were lifted less than a month ago. The government removed curbs on restaurant opening hours and attendance limits for indoor venues on Feb. 9, in a move that drew criticism from scientists at the time. The number of cases is difficult to assess in Sweden given reduced testing, but the proportion of positive cases and the number of patients requiring hospital care have both declined. "There are no indications that the opening increased spread so we asses that it was relevant and correct," Health Agency Director-General Karin Tegmark Wisell told a news conference.
3rd Mar 2022 - Reuters

Why formally ending the pandemic is going to be a huge headache for the entire health care system

President Biden made it clear this week he wants to transition toward a new phase of the Covid-19 pandemic — one where people are “moving forward safely, back to more normal routines,” as he said this week.
3rd Mar 2022 - STAT News

Covid Deaths Among Hong Kong's Young Children Alarm Parents

Three children under the age of five have died in Hong Kong’s spiraling Covid outbreak, a disproportionately large number that has local parents anxious, though pediatricians say it could just be a grim coincidence. While the numbers are too low to draw any conclusions, according to experts, the children -- aged 11 months, 3 and 4 years old -- make up nearly 0.3% of the 1,153 fatalities that have occurred in this wave of infections. None had known underlying health conditions. Their deaths are being investigated by the coroner, according to the Hospital Authority. The child deaths are higher than in countries such as Australia and Singapore, which originally adhered to the same zero-tolerance policy as Hong Kong but are now opening up
3rd Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

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White House readies roadmap for future COVID outbreaks, seeks funding

Top U.S. health officials on Wednesday laid out a national blueprint to manage COVID-19 going forward, vowing to prepare for any new variant outbreaks without shutting down schools and businesses and calling for additional funding from Congress. The plan will help "move America from crisis to a time when COVID-19 does not disrupt our daily lives," the White House said, one day after President Joe Biden acknowledged the nation's fight against the coronavirus had entered a new phase. "We must be prepared to respond to a new variant quickly and keep our schools and businesses open," the updated National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan said, citing a need to maintain vaccines and booster shots, treatments, tests and masks.
2nd Mar 2022 - Reuters

Biden’s Address Cites New, Calmer Phase in Fight Against Covid-19

President Joe Biden signaled a shift to a new phase of the Covid-19 pandemic in his State of the Union address, arguing that it is time for Americans to return to normal life. “Thanks to the progress we have made this past year, Covid-19 need no longer control our lives,” Biden said. The president called for Americans to return to their offices, and said that the government would allow easier access to Pfizer’s Covid-19 antiviral pill, and send more free Covid-19 rapid antigen tests to Americans in their homes. “It’s time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again,” Biden said. “People working from home can feel safe to begin to return to the office.
2nd Mar 2022 - Barron's

Americans can order another round of free at-home Covid-19 tests next week

Americans can order additional free at-home Covid-19 tests supplied by the US government starting next week. "If you already ordered free tests, tonight, I'm announcing you can order another group of tests. Go to Covidtest.gov starting next week and you can get more tests," President Joe Biden said during his Tuesday State of the Union address. In January, the government launched its effort to provide free rapid antigen tests to any household that requested them through that website or by calling 800-232-0233. There was a limit of four tests per residential address.
2nd Mar 2022 - CNN

Two years after world's biggest lockdown, India surges back to normal life

Almost two years after India went into the world's biggest lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, students headed back to school in Maharashtra state on Wednesday, a sign of normal life resuming as infection rates fall. India's daily coronavirus infections rose by less than 10,000 for a third straight day on Wednesday, a level last seen in late December before the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, data from the health ministry showed.
2nd Mar 2022 - Reuters

Hong Kong Virus Fight Went From Confidence to Reliance on China

Throughout the pandemic, the government has prominently displayed slogans at Lam’s news briefings to signal her government’s evolving Covid approach. But the sometimes awkward tag lines -- such as vowing to fight “the aggravating virus” -- have prompted ridicule. They’ve also provided a record of Hong Kong’s rocky path from early outbreak site to global safe haven to a place with one of the highest Covid death rates in the developed world. From an early promise to battle “the virus with confidence” against a backdrop of blue skies, to trumpeting goals to “resume travel” and achieve “vaccination for all” that were never met, the slogans have recently grown more defensive.
2nd Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

Biden outlines COVID plans, says it’s time to return to work

It’s time for America to stop letting the coronavirus “dictate how we live,” President Joe Biden’s White House declared Wednesday, outlining a strategy to allow people to return to many normal activities safely after two years of pandemic disruptions. One highlight is a new “test to treat” plan to provide free antiviral pills at pharmacies to people who test positive for the virus. The 90-page National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan spells out initiatives and investments to continue to drive down serious illness and deaths from the virus, while preparing for potential new variants and providing employers and schools the resources to remain open. “We know how to keep our businesses and our schools open with the tools that we have at our disposal,” said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients.
2nd Mar 2022 - The Associated Press

Pfizer to provide 10 mln courses of COVID pill to developing countries -the Global Fund

Pfizer Inc is expected to provide around 10 million courses of its highly effective COVID-19 antiviral treatment Paxlovid to low- and middle-income countries this year, according to an official with the Global Fund, a healthcare NGO working to buy the pills from the drugmaker. The Fund's head of strategy for policy, Harley Feldbaum, said Pfizer had committed to at least that many doses and could increase shipments later if organizations involved show they are able to distribute the pills well, noting most will be available toward the end of the year.
2nd Mar 2022 - Reuters

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Pfizer’s Covid-19 Vaccine Protected Kids During Omicron, CDC Study Finds

The Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE was highly effective at reducing the risk of severe disease in children 17 years and younger during the Omicron surge but didn’t work as well at preventing infection, according to a new government study. The two-dose vaccine reduced the risk of Covid-19 hospitalization in children 5 to 11 years by 74% and by 92% or higher in children 12 to 17, according to the study published Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the vaccine was 51% effective at reducing the risk of infection among 5- to 11-year-olds, while Omicron was predominant, and between 34% and 45% effective in children 12 to 17 years, depending on the age, for the first five months after the second dose, according to the study. The vaccine was 90.7% effective at preventing symptomatic disease in the pivotal study that led to authorization. That study was conducted before Omicron emerged.
1st Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

DOH to shift to weekly COVID-19 case updates

The Department of Health (DOH) will forego the daily release of COVID-19 case updates, Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said in a report aired on Tuesday. "Babaguhin din po natin ang COVID-19 public reporting at gagawing weekly na," he added. [Translation: We will change the COVID-19 public reporting to weekly reports.] DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, in an earlier meeting with media editors, said the agency’s daily case bulletins will continue only until this week. It will then be posted every Monday starting March 7.
1st Mar 2022 - CNN Philippines

Here's how to cope with anxiety as COVID-19 restrictions are lifted across Canada

Learning to live with COVID-19 is a message that's been repeated by provincial and territorial leaders across the country. But learning to live with the virus isn't that simple for millions of Canadians whose medical condition or age has increased their risk of developing complications from a COVID-19 infection. As provinces and territories lift pandemic restrictions such as mask mandates and vaccine passport programs, society's most vulnerable are being forced to assess their risk tolerance. "For some people — immunocompromised or the frail elderly, for example — it might be quite dangerous for them to get COVID. We shouldn't be cavalier," Dr. Steven Taylor, a clinical psychologist and professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of CBC podcast The Dose.
1st Mar 2022 - CBC.ca

California, Oregon, Washington to drop school mask mandates

Schoolchildren in California, Oregon and Washington will no longer be required to wear masks as part of new indoor mask policies the Democratic governors of all three states announced jointly on Monday. “With declining case rates and hospitalizations across the West, California, Oregon and Washington are moving together to update their masking guidance,” the governors said in a statement. There are more than 7.5 million school-age children across the three states, which have had some of the strictest coronavirus safety measures during the pandemic. The new guidance will make face coverings strongly recommended rather than a requirement at most indoor places in California starting Tuesday and at schools on March 12, regardless of vaccination status.
1st Mar 2022 - The Associated Press

Demand for Science Lab Buildings Soars During Covid-19 Pandemic

The rapid growth of life-science research during the pandemic is triggering a record boom in the development of new lab space and offices serving these companies. Development of buildings geared toward biotechnology, pharmaceutical and other laboratory firms was already on the rise before 2020. But demand for this space intensified as billions of dollars poured into research and development of a Covid-19 vaccine and other therapies for the virus. Life-science space has also been enjoying high occupancy rates because—unlike traditional office buildings—much of the lab work requires specialized equipment and building infrastructure that cannot be easily replicated at home.
1st Mar 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

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Cambridge scientists release study into effectiveness of England's Covid travel rules

Throughout the Covid pandemic travel rules were put in place to prevent the spread of the virus - part of these rules included quarantining after going abroad. Anyone arriving in England in summer 2020 was made to quarantine for 14 days, and according to new research this did have the desired effect. Cambridge scientists found that the measures put in place did reduce the spread of coronavirus. They found it was particularly effective for travellers aged 16-20. The requirement for people arriving in England to self-isolate for a fortnight was introduced on June 8 2020, following the first few months of the pandemic.
1st Mar 2022 - Cambridge News

Nearly third more Covid deaths among England’s poorest since turn of the year

At least 30 per cent more coronavirus deaths have occurred in the most deprived areas of England since the turn of the year, data shows, reinforcing concern that the poorest communities will carry the greatest burden of disease under the government’s plans for “living with Covid”. Of the 7,053 deaths registered in the six weeks after 1 January, 1,589 (22.5 per cent) were from the most deprived 20 per cent of the country, compared to 1,188 (16.8 per cent) in the least deprived 20 per cent. Ministers have been warned that these disparities will only widen as the government scales back free testing and mandated isolation, and removes sick payments for those ill with Covid.
1st Mar 2022 - The Independent

Hong Kong to Lock Down City For Mass Testing, Sing Tao Says

Hong Kong is planning to enforce a lockdown of the city to ensure a mandatory Covid-19 testing drive planned for this month is effective, Sing Tao Daily reported. Testing of the financial hub’s 7.4 million people will start after March 17, the newspaper reported, citing people it didn’t identify. Officials are aiming to test the whole city three times over nine days, with a stay-at-home order in place to maximize the impact, the report said. Hong Kong’s core financial services including the operations of the stock exchange and Covid vaccination program will continue during the testing period, according to the report. Officials are still working out the details, Sing Tao said. Residents will still be allowed to leave their homes to buy necessities like food during the lockdown, the Hong Kong Economic Times reported, citing unidentified people.
1st Mar 2022 - Bloomberg

U.S. CDC says unvaccinated travelers should avoid Hong Kong travel

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday recommended unvaccinated travelers avoid travel to Hong Kong over rising COVID-19 cases. The CDC raised its COVID-19 level for Hong Kong from Level 1: Low to Level 3: High, one level below its highest warning level. Hong Kong is facing a record number of COVID-19 fatalities and battling to control a surge in cases. The global financial hub reported a daily record high of 34,466 new coronavirus infections and 87 deaths on Monday, health authorities said.
28th Feb 2022 - Reuters

New Zealand ends isolation rules for vaccinated travellers from Australia as transmission rates soar

New Zealand has ended its self-isolation requirements for vaccinated travellers arriving from Australia, as the country’s Covid transmission rates soar to among the highest in the world. From Wednesday, vaccinated travellers will no longer need to self-isolate but will still be required to undergo a Covid-19 test on arrival and on day five or six, prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday. If the traveller tests positive for the virus, they will be required to self-isolate, in line with requirements for New Zealanders. Unvaccinated travellers will still have to stay in managed isolation, or MIQ.
28th Feb 2022 - The Guardian

Covid-19 pills will ‘allow UK to fully reopen economy’ as pandemic impacts weigh

Landmark Covid-19 pills will “allow the UK to fully reopen its economy”, according to analysts, as the impacts of the pandemic continue to weigh on the economy. Companies including famed vaccine maker Pfizer, which has won regulatory approval for its Paxlovid pill, and Merck, have revolutionized the global immunisation process with antiviral pills. “The acceleration of the roll out of new accessible medications against Covid-19 is expected to have a meaningful impact in terms of our ability to move beyond the pandemic and will help us to learn to live with the disease in the background,” Manx Financial Group CEO Douglas Grant told Business Matters. “Easy-to-take medication will be a catalyst for the return to business as usual and help remove these damaging blockages, unleashing a sector that is desperate to grow.” Grant added that it is “particularly good news for the UK’s SMEs” who have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic, and its longer-lasting impacts of rising costs of goods, utilities and labour, as inflation teeters on a 30-year high.
28th Feb 2022 - Business Matters

Covid-19: Republic of Ireland removes mask rules

The legal requirement to wear face masks in some public settings in the Republic of Ireland has been removed. It has been replaced with public health advice that masks should still be worn while on public transportation and in healthcare settings.
28th Feb 2022 - BBC News

New Zealand gears to end Covid-19 travel curbs, travellers need not isolate

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday said the requirement that vaccinated travellers isolate for a week after arriving would end on Wednesday. Initially the changes will apply only to returning New Zealanders, as tourists are still not allowed to visit.
28th Feb 2022 - Hindustan Times

Italy to receive first 21 billion euros from EU Covid-19 fund - Von der Leyen

Italy will receive a first payment of 21 billion euros ($23.53 billion) from the "Next Generation EU" fund to help states compensate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday.
28th Feb 2022 - Reuters

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Community Workers Push to Get Covid-19 Tests to the Vulnerable

As the Biden administration distributes hundreds of millions of Covid-19 tests, some public-health workers are moving to deliver the kits a final mile to some of the people most vulnerable to the virus. In some places, including low-income areas, rural parts of the country and some communities of color, a more local effort from health providers and community organizations is needed to get tests into people’s hands, officials and providers said. That work echoes efforts to bring Covid-19 vaccines to people who struggled to reach vaccination sites or were hesitant to get a shot.
27th Feb 2022 - Wall Street Journal

UAE drops face masks outdoors, quarantine for COVID contact cases

The United Arab Emirates, the Middle East tourism and commercial hub, over the weekend ended a requirement to wear face masks outdoors and obligatory quarantine for COVID-19 contact cases. Fully-vaccinated passengers arriving in the country will no longer require PCR tests, said the National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority in updated guidance that went into effect on Saturday.
27th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Sweden's COVID response was flawed but allowed freedoms - commission

Sweden should have shut venues and taken other tougher measures early in the COVID-19 pandemic, though its no-lockdown strategy was broadly beneficial, a commission said on Friday. Sweden polarised opinion at home and abroad when it chose not to follow most of the rest of the world in ordering lockdowns and adopted a largely voluntary approach of promoting social distancing and good hygiene. The commission - set up by the government under pressure from parliament - said Sweden's broad policy was "fundamentally correct".
27th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Perth's homeless population remains vulnerable to COVID-19, with many unvaccinated

As one of Perth's 1,000 or so rough sleepers, Des is particularly vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19. Getting vaccinated would almost certainly protect him against the worst of the virus, but he is just not comfortable taking that step yet. "People just not gonna put something in their body without the information," he said. "Information don't just go straight to the streets. "We need to look at TVs, we need to look at internet for information, which none of our mob have." His experience highlights something hidden in WA's high vaccination rates – a group of about 50,000 people who remain unvaccinated for various reasons.
27th Feb 2022 - ABC News

Names of firms given huge Covid loans will be secret

The names of thousands of companies which benefited from billions of pounds of Covid-19 loans schemes are to be kept confidential under new government rules to only publish state subsidies of £500,000 or more. The higher threshold has been brought in after Brexit despite warnings that it may hamper the fight against fraudsters believed to have plundered billions from the schemes. The loan schemes have been called a “bonanza for fraudsters”. Under the EU rules in force until the end of 2020, all pandemic business loans above €100,000 were required to be publicly disclosed with details of the recipients.
27th Feb 2022 - The Guardian

Hong Kong's success in fending off COVID comes back to haunt

For two years, Hong Kong successfully insulated most of its residents from COVID-19 and often went months without a single locally spread case. Then the omicron variant showed up. The fast-spreading mutation breached Hong Kong’s defenses and has been spreading rapidly through one of the world’s most densely populated places, overflowing hospitals and isolation wards and prompting measures to test the entire 7.4 million population and hastily build six isolation and treatment centers. The surge shows what happens when COVID-19 strikes a population unprotected by immunity from previous infections, and has exposed a low vaccination rate among elderly citizens who are bearing the brunt of the crisis.
27th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

S. Korea has deadliest day of pandemic amid omicron surge

South Korea saw its deadliest day of the pandemic on Saturday, reporting 112 fatalities in the latest 24-hour period, as it grapples with a wave of coronavirus infections driven by the fast-moving omicron variant. Health workers diagnosed 166,209 new cases, which came close to Wednesday’s one-day record of 171,451 and represented more than a 37-fold increase from daily levels in mid-January, when omicron first emerged as the country’s dominant strain. Omicron has so far seemed less likely to cause serious illness or death than the delta strain that hit the country hard in December and early January. But hospitalizations and deaths are beginning to creep up amid a growing outbreak that is stretching worn-out health and public workers.
27th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Hong Kong allows COVID home testing as daily cases soar

Hong Kong health authorities said on Saturday they would adjust COVID testing procedures to allow some people to test from home to ease long queues at designated testing centers, as the city's outbreak proves increasingly hard to control. Health secretary Sophia Chan said a record 17,063 new COVID-19 daily cases had been recorded, and 66 deaths in the past 24-hours in the city of 7.4 million. "We're in a very dire situation," she told reporters.
26th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer, Moderna and Other Drugmakers Make Billions Responding to Covid-19 Pandemic

Healthcare companies that came up with effective Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and tests are seeing a huge financial payoff and are starting to spend their cash, while grappling with questions about whether the growth is sustainable. Companies including Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. so far have reported at least $79 billion in combined global sales of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments for 2021, according to a Wall Street Journal review of recent earnings reports. Diagnostic sales also have been strong for companies including Abbott Laboratories, which had $7.7 billion in Covid-19 test sales last year. It’s a market that didn’t exist prior to the pandemic. Many companies attempted to find pandemic countermeasures during 2020 but only some were successful.
25th Feb 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

U.S. eases COVID indoor mask guidelines for most of country

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday dramatically eased its COVID-19 guidelines for masks, including in schools, a move that means 72% of the population reside in communities where indoor face coverings are no longer recommended. The new masking guidelines shift from a focus on the rate of COVID-19 transmission to monitoring local hospitalizations, hospital capacity and infection rates. Under the prior guidelines, 95% of U.S. counties were considered to be experiencing high transmission, leaving just 5% of U.S. counties meeting the agency's criteria for dropping indoor mask requirements.
25th Feb 2022 - Reuters

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Analysis: China steps in to steer Hong Kong's COVID crisis as risks loom

As COVID-19 rages across Hong Kong at the start of a sensitive political year for China and President Xi Jinping, Beijing is determined not to be embarrassed and undermined as it was by the often-violent protests that rocked the city in 2019. In the past week, since Xi told the city its "overriding mission" was to control the worsening crisis, Hong Kong has stepped up anti-COVID measures, including plans for mass testing buttressed by equipment, testing vehicles and personnel from the mainland. Foremost for Beijing, some advisers to China's government say, is a fear that, unless Hong Kong contains the virus and prevents a lot of people from suffering, the city could see a return to the instability of 2019 when anti-government protests posed a major crisis for Xi..
24th Feb 2022 - Reuters

EMA backs Pfizer COVID booster for teens, Moderna shot for ages 6-11

The European Union's health regulator on Thursday backed giving a booster shot of Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine to adolescents aged 12 and over, as well as the expanded use of Moderna's shot in children ages six to 11. The recommendations by the European Medicine Agency's (EMA) Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use will be followed by final decisions by the European Commission. The moves come after several EU countries already started to offer booster doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to teens.
24th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Serco prepares for life after Covid-19 as NHS Test and Trace winds down

Serco is preparing to live with Covid-19. CEO Rupert Soames said today that around £60 million of profit linked to Covid-19 contracts is likely to disappear this year as governments around the world roll back controls. The UK government this week announced an end to free testing and contact tracing. Outsourcer Serco has been a major beneficiary of the billions spent on NHS Test and Trace, a programme dubbed “muddled, overstated, [and] eye-wateringly expensive” by MPs last year.
24th Feb 2022 - Evening Standard

COVID-19: All remaining coronavirus restrictions lifted in England

People in England who test positive for COVID are no longer legally required to self-isolate. From today, all remaining restrictions have been replaced by the government's "living with COVID plan". This comes just days after guidance for staff and students in most education and childcare settings to undertake twice weekly asymptomatic testing was scrapped.
24th Feb 2022 - Sky News

Colombia will not require face masks outdoors in areas with 70% COVID vaccination

Colombia's government will no longer require the use of face masks outdoors in areas where more than 70% of the population has been vaccinated against COVID-19, President Ivan Duque said. The move is a further softening of measures adopted by the country to curb the spread of the coronavirus, as well as an incentive for people to get vaccinated. Colombia is aiming to vaccinate at least 80% of its 50 million inhabitants
24th Feb 2022 - Reuters Canada

Japan to accept J&J COVID vaccine for border entry next month

Japan said on Thursday international travellers showing proof of a COVID-19 vaccination with the Johnson & Johnson shot would be allowed in and be eligible for a shorter time in quarantine when border controls are eased next month. The J&J shot, which has not been approved in Japan, will join a list of three other shots that have been approved by regulators as sufficient for non-residents to enter, after a nearly two-year ban on such travellers.
24th Feb 2022 - Reuters

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A Pandemic Baby Bump Shines a Spotlight on the Nordic Welfare Model

Finland’s government has been working arduously to stem the country’s rapid population decline. Since the 2019 elections, a cabinet run by a millennial woman has produced eight offspring, with two more on the way. Regular Finns have joined in the baby making: The number of live births jumped 6.7% last year, the most in nearly five decades. Other nations on Europe’s northern rim have experienced their own pandemic baby bumps, making the region of 28 million people an outlier among advanced economies, several of which have seen fertility rates drop to historic lows.
23rd Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

UK in most challenging time for monetary policy since 1992: BoE's Broadbent

Article reports that Britain is in the midst of its most challenging period for monetary policy since it started to target inflation 30 years ago, Bank of England Deputy Governor Ben Broadbent said. In an annual report to parliament, Broadbent said there was no guarantee that the inflationary impact of rising import prices would fade quickly, adding that rate-setters would monitor domestic cost pressures carefully. He said it remained to be seen what that meant for policy decisions. "This is the most challenging period for monetary policy since inflation targeting began in 1992," he wrote.
23rd Feb 2022 - Reuters

COVID raises risk of mental health problems; new Omicron version not making people sicker in S. Africa

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. Coronavirus infection raises risk of mental health issues Psychological stress from the pandemic may be widespread, but those who have had COVID-19 are at much higher risk for new mental health problems than individuals who have managed to avoid the virus, according to a new study. Researchers compared nearly 154,000 people who survived at least a month after a SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis to more than 5.6 million peers without prior COVID infections. Over the course of one year, infection survivors were at 35% higher risk of new anxiety disorders, 39% higher risk for new depressive disorders, 55% higher risk for new use of antidepressants, 34% higher risk for a new opioid use disorder, and 20% higher risk for a new non-opioid substance use disorder
23rd Feb 2022 - Reuters

Scotland Covid restrictions: Face mask rules and vaccine passports to end but tests will remain free for now

Wearing a face mask in shops, on public transport and in other shared indoor spaces in Scotland will no longer be a legal requirement after 21 March. All other legal restrictions designed to protect the public from Covid will also be scrapped from that date, with a greater emphasis placed on individual responsibility. Scotland’s vaccine passport scheme, which was previously used to gain entry to nightclubs and big sporting events, will also be scrapped from Monday 28 February.
23rd Feb 2022 - iNews

Face masks scrapped on Tube and TfL services from Thursday

Face coverings will no longer be required on Transport of London (TfL) services - including the Underground - from tomorrow. They had been a "condition of carriage" but now they will only be "strongly recommended" for customers and staff, according to TfL. TfL said it "considered a variety of factors" including "the shift in the government's approach towards living with the virus" and decreasing infection rates in London.
23rd Feb 2022 - Sky News

Slovakia to lift most COVID restrictions over the coming month

Slovakia will lift most COVID-19 restrictions over the next month, beginning with loosening measures for the unvaccinated before cancelling crowd limits in a later phase, according to plans approved by the government on Wednesday. The first phase of the loosening will begin on Feb. 26, material on the government's website showed. A second phase will follow on March 26 to end limits on crowds and opening hours.
23rd Feb 2022 - Reuters

Polish prime minister says Poland will remove most COVID curbs

Poland will remove most COVID-19 restrictions from March 1, while keeping the obligation to wear face masks in enclosed public spaces, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Wednesday. "After medical consultations and watching what's happening in other countries we can introduce far-reaching changes in our restrictions policy. We can remove restrictions that have been with us for many months," Morawiecki told reporters. While face masks will remain compulsory in public spaces including shops and transportation, limits on the number of people visiting stores, restaurants and cultural venues will be removed.
23rd Feb 2022 - Reuters

Iceland to lift all COVID-19 restrictions on Friday

Iceland will lift all remaining COVID-19 restrictions on Friday, including a 200-person indoor gathering limit and restricted opening hours for bars, the Ministry of Health said on Wednesday. "Widespread societal resistance to COVID-19 is the main route out of the epidemic," the ministry said in a statement, citing infectious disease authorities. "To achieve this, as many people as possible need to be infected with the virus as the vaccines are not enough, even though they provide good protection against serious illness," it added.
23rd Feb 2022 - Reuters

EU countries agree to admit travellers vaccinated with WHO-approved shots

European Union countries agreed on Tuesday to open their borders to travellers from outside the bloc who have had shots against COVID-19 authorised by the World Health Organization, easing restrictions on those who received Indian and Chinese vaccines. The EU has so far authorised vaccines produced by Pfizer-BionTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca (when produced in Europe), Johnson & Johnson and Novavax. In addition to these shots, the WHO has also approved the vaccines produced by Chinese makers Sinopharm and Sinovac and by Indian company Bharat Biotech
23rd Feb 2022 - Reuters

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Hong Kong to Shut Schools to Fight Omicron; Foreigners Rush to Leave

Within hours of the city’s top official saying late Tuesday that schools would be closed and turned into response centers to tackle a surge in the Covid-19 Omicron variant, a rush occurred among foreign residents to find a way out of the city. Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s decision to shift the summer holidays forward several months to start in March—repurposing schools as testing, vaccination and isolation centers—caught educators and parents off guard. Some foreign workers immediately tried to book their families on flights out of the city as soon as possible. They took to WhatsApp messaging groups and other social-media platforms to discuss how to get out, with hundreds of posts inquiring about flight options and chartering planes amid sharply reduced commercial schedules in and out of the city. Heads of international schools sent hastily composed emails to parents and staffers saying that they would meet with the city’s education department Wednesday to try to mitigate the situation. One urged parents not to act hastily.
22nd Feb 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

In Hong Kong's All-Out Fight Against Covid, Singapore Is Winning

In pursuit of a tough Covid Zero strategy to fight its worst ever coronavirus outbreak, Hong Kong is ceding ground to Singapore, a rival Asian financial and transport hub that’s been easing pandemic-linked restrictions to get its economy back on track. Key data compiled by Bloomberg Economics economists Tamara Mast Henderson and Eric Zhu show that some businesses, weary of stringent quarantine rules and the inability to travel freely, have been shifting to Singapore. The analysts have cut their economic growth forecast for Hong Kong by 0.6 percentage point to 1.4% this year, and expect Singapore’s gross domestic product to grow 4.7%
22nd Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Scotland's Mandatory Vaccine Passports Will Be Scrapped From Monday

Scotland’s mandatory coronavirus vaccine passport scheme is to be scrapped from Monday, Nicola Sturgeon has announced, with other legal restrictions expected to be ended in March. The Scottish First Minister said this would happen assuming there were “no significant adverse developments” in the fight against the virus. However, while the legal requirement to wear masks in some settings will be dropped from March 21, the Scottish Government will still “strongly recommend” people continue to use face coverings
22nd Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Hong Kong Lockdown Gets China Support to Curb Covid Outbreak, Sources Say

Chinese officials have told Hong Kong that they think a lockdown will be needed to contain surging Covid-19 cases, according to people familiar with the discussions, with the city’s government conceding some kind of targeted stay-at-home restrictions may be necessary if the situation continues to spiral out of control. The two sides have been meeting frequently to discuss Hong Kong’s outbreak, which has seen the financial hub go from a handful of Covid cases early this year to more than 7,000 a day after the highly transmissible omicron variant infiltrated its tight border and quarantine defenses. Mainland officials say their experience shows a lockdown will be more effective at containing virus cases in a shorter period of time, said the people, asking not to be identified as the talks are confidential.
22nd Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Can You Catch Omicron Twice? Danish Study Says Yes

A study from Denmark, one of the countries where omicron has spread the fastest, suggests that in rare cases people can be infected by the virus variant twice. Samples from 1.8 million positive tests showed that 47 people had both the BA.1., and the BA.2. sub-variant of omicron with a 20 to 60 day interval, Denmark’s institute for infectious diseases said in a statement on Tuesday. Those who had both variants were predominately young and unvaccinated and they only suffered mild symptoms, according to the data, which hasn’t yet been peer reviewed. Another 20 people have likely been infected with the same omicron variant twice.
22nd Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Ireland drops most of its remaining COVID restrictions

Ireland said it will drop most of its remaining pandemic-linked restrictions from Feb. 28 as an Omicron-fuelled wave of infections ebbs. The country has been one of the most cautious in the European Union on the risks of COVID-19, putting in place some of the longest-running curbs on travel and hospitality. People will no longer be legally required to wear masks, physical distancing measures in schools will end, and the national testing and tracing program will be scaled back. Government advice that masks should be worn on public transport and in healthcare settings will remain.
22nd Feb 2022 - Reuters

Europe entry requirements: EU to scrap Covid tests for fully vaccinated with uniform travel rules by Easter

Covid tests for fully vaccinated arrivals are to be scrapped across the EU in time for the Easter holidays. As part of a new protocol, approved by the European Council on Tuesday 22 February, unvaccinated children aged six to 17 will also be allowed to enter any EU country with proof of a pre-departure PCR test. Unvaccinated adults who can provide proof of a recent Covid infection within the past 180 days may also enter, although they may be required to test before arrival.
22nd Feb 2022 - iNews

Covid-19: Most restrictions to be ended by Irish government

Almost all remaining Covid-19 restrictions in the Republic of Ireland are set to end from Monday. At a cabinet meeting the three government parties backed a plan to end measures including mandatory mask wearing in most settings. It follows a recommendation from the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), which will also be abolished. Physical distancing measures in schools will also end, while testing and tracing will be scaled back. Masks in schools, retail settings and on public transport will be voluntary. However, masks will still be required in health care settings.
22nd Feb 2022 - BBC News

Covid-19: Rethink end to free Covid tests, Naomi Long urges

It is "crucial" the government rethinks its decision to end free Covid-19 testing in England from April, Northern Ireland's justice minister has said. Naomi Long said it was important that people are supported financially to test and self-isolate if required.
22nd Feb 2022 - BBC News

Official Sees ‘Strong Possibility’ Covid Shots Will Be Given Every Autumn

There is a "strong possibility" that Covid jabs will be given every autumn alongside flu vaccines for those most in need, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has said. Professor Adam Finn told BBC Breakfast it was important that older people and the vulnerable came forward for their spring booster, with a wider rollout to be announced for the autumn. Asked if people could expect an annual jab, he said: "It's hard to be absolutely sure about that, but the direction of discussion at the moment is certainly a booster campaign in the autumn, directed probably at the people who... we think are most at risk.
22nd Feb 2022 - CIDRAP

UK unveils game plan for 'living with COVID'

Ahead of his speech, Johnson said yesterday on Twitter that the COVID-19 threat remains, but because of the country's efforts over the past 2 years, it can now transition from government regulations to personal responsibility. He hailed Britain's strong vaccine uptake, the arrival of new treatments, and the scientific understanding of what the virus can do. The United Kingdom is reporting declining cases, though the proportion of the more transmissible BA.2 Omicron subvariant viruses is increasing. About 82% of adults have received three vaccine doses, according to the Office for National Statistics. As of Feb 24, people won't legally be required to self-isolate after testing positive, but adults and children will be advised to do so. Free PCR and rapid tests will wind down on Apr 1, but a limited number will still be available for high-risk groups and nursing home staff. Contact tracing and financial support for low-income people infected with COVID-19 will also wind down. In an open letter to the country's chief medical advisor and its chief scientific adviser, who appeared with Johnson at today's briefing, a group of doctors and scientists aired concerns about the government's plans to end testing, surveillance surveys, and the legal requirement for isolation. "We do not believe there is a solid scientific basis for the policy. It is almost certain to increase the circulation of the virus and remove the visibility of emerging variants of concern," they wrote. Johnson said a community testing survey, a key part of surveillance, will continue at the Office for National Statistics, but it's not clear if will continue in its current form or be pared down, according to The Guardian.
21st Feb 2022 - CIDRAP

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FDA Reportedly Mulling Approving Second Covid Booster Shot

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering authorizing a fourth dose of a Covid-19 vaccine later in the year, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The Food and Drug Administration has started reviewing data to authorize a second booster dose of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the WSJ reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the situation. The FDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last month, the FDA amended its emergency authorization for the Moderna shot, shortening the interval for a booster shot from six months to five months. Earlier in January, the FDA cut the recommended interval between the second and third doses of the Pfizer vaccine for all adults to five months. Planning is still in the early stages, and several issues would need to be resolved yet
21st Feb 2022 - Barron's

As Covid-19 Cases Wane, U.K. to Lift Remaining Curbs

The U.K. government will lift all remaining Covid-19 restrictions in England this week, including a legal requirement that those infected with the virus self-isolate, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson looks to fully reopen the British economy and society two years after the pandemic first hit. Mr. Johnson said Monday that with the virus on the wane, government-mandated rules are no longer necessary to stop the spread of Covid-19. “We don’t need laws to compel people to be considerate of others,” he told Britain’s Parliament. “Let us learn to live with this virus and continue protecting ourselves and others without restricting our freedoms.” In a plan the government has dubbed “Living With Covid,” contact tracing will end in England by Thursday, as will government payments for those who isolate with the disease. The government said it would end public access to free Covid-19 testing on April 1. Other parts of the U.K. set their own pandemic-related policies.
21st Feb 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Coronavirus Daily: Tracking in the UK Works. So Why Stop It?

These days in Europe, it seems as though the pandemic is behind us. An increasing number of countries are ditching the use of certificates to enter indoor venues like restaurants or gyms and abandoning quarantine rules. And more people are going bare-faced, which reflects a certain level of regained normalcy. The U.K. was one of the first nations to accelerate that return to normal. Now, concerns are mounting that it may be getting ready to go a step further and scrap the weekly Covid-19 survey by the Office for National Statistics. While the U.K. Health Security Agency opened a new laboratory last week that will test new Covid vaccines, gather research and assess variants, the ONS weekly survey helps the government keep on top of infection rates and antibody levels across the country. It is less prone to fluctuations because it studies the same households, and can detect Covid in people who might not get tested, or in those who don’t know they’re infected as well as asymptomatic cases.
21st Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

UK Second Booster: Most Vulnerable to Get Fourth Dose of Vaccine in Spring

Britain’s most vulnerable people will be offered another Covid-19 booster shot this spring to bolster their protection as the country prepares to abandon all pandemic restrictions. The shot will be offered to adults aged 75 and older, care home residents, and those over the age of 12 who are immuno-suppressed and at much higher risk of severe Covid, U.K. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said in a statement Monday. The booster is advised for around six months after a previous dose and is seen as a bridge before another, potentially broader, booster campaign this fall.
21st Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Staff shortage concerns challenge Germany's vaccine mandate

Frank Vogel, a 64-year-old local politician from the eastern German Erzgebirge region, has been scrambling to find ways to keep nursing homes open when a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers takes effect next month. His region near the Czech border has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Germany. With only 57% of healthcare workers there having received two shots against the coronavirus, implementing the mandate would result in staff shortages that would force facilities to shut. "In the end, you have the question: How do you then deal with the people being cared for in these facilities?" Vogel told Reuters.
21st Feb 2022 - Reuters

Covid: Living with Covid plan will restore freedom, says Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson is due to set out his plans to scrap all remaining Covid legal restrictions in England, including the requirement to isolate. His meeting with the cabinet ahead of updating MPs in the Commons was delayed, however. There are reports of tensions between the Treasury and the Department of Health over how parts of the plan will be funded. Some experts have urged caution and Labour queried plans to reduce testing. Speaking before Monday's announcement, Mr Johnson said his plan would bring society "towards a return to normality". No 10 said the Covid vaccination programme had put England in a "strong position to consider lifting the remaining legal restrictions".
21st Feb 2022 - BBC News

COVID-19: Emotional reunions as Australia opens border to vaccinated tourists

Australia has reopened its borders to vaccinated travellers after almost two years of pandemic-related closures. Hundreds of people have been reunited with family and friends, with more than 50 international flights arriving in Australia through the day. "It is a very exciting day, one that I have been looking forward to for a long time, from the day that I first shut that border right at the start of the pandemic," Prime Minister Scott Morrison said during a visit to the island state of Tasmania, which relies heavily on tourism.
21st Feb 2022 - Sky News

'Welcome back world!': Australia fully reopens borders after two years

Australia on Monday fully reopened its international borders to travellers vaccinated against the coronavirus after nearly two years of pandemic-related closings as tourists returned and hundreds of people were reunited with family and friends. More than 50 international flights will reach the country through the day, including 27 touching down in Sydney, its largest city, as the tourism and hospitality sectors look to rebuild after getting hammered by COVID-19 restrictions. "It is a very exciting day, one that I have been looking forward to for a long time, from the day that I first shut that border right at the start of the pandemic," Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in the island state of Tasmania, which relies heavily on tourism.
21st Feb 2022 - Reuters

UK's Johnson set to scrap COVID restrictions in England

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's "living with COVID" plan, scrapping coronavirus restrictions and cutting access to free tests, drew 11th-hour objections on Monday that it was premature and would leave the country vulnerable to new viral variants. As Hong Kong builds isolation units and Europe retains social distancing and vaccine rules, Johnson is moving to repeal in England any pandemic requirements that impinge on personal freedoms, such as self-isolating after a positive COVID test. But the plan, geared to help deflect discontent over his scandal-ridden leadership among lawmakers in his Conservative Party that has threatened his grip on power, ran into difficulty just hours before he was due to launch it.
21st Feb 2022 - Reuters

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Germany Spent $48 Billion to Protect Jobs From Covid Fallout

Germany spent about 42 billion euros ($48 billion) on a program to secure jobs threatened by the coronavirus pandemic. A government program to pay most of an employee’s wages when they can’t work because of operational issues like lockdowns was worth the cost, Germany’s Labor Minister Hubertus Heil said in an interview with Tagespiegel on Sunday. “The alternative -- namely allowing mass unemployment to return -- would have been much, much more expensive for Germany, socially and economically,” he said. The program was just one of the measures the government in Berlin implemented to shield its economy from the crisis. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Germany has also paid out around 78 billion euros in aid to companies and extended 55.2 billion euros in loans.
20th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Israel to allow in all tourists regardless of COVID vaccination status

Israel will begin allowing entry to all tourists, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated against COVID-19, from March 1, a statement from the prime minister's office said on Sunday. Entry into Israel will still require two PCR tests, one before flying in and one upon landing in Israel, the statement said. Currently only COVID-19 vaccinated foreigners are allowed into Israel. "We are seeing a consistent decline in morbidity numbers, so this is the time to gradually open up what we were the first in the world to close," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said.
20th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Growing number of states, major cities lift Covid-19 restrictions

As the number of new Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations slowly falls, cities and states are loosening vaccine and mask requirements. Boston lifted the city's proof of vaccine policy which required patrons and staff of indoor spaces to show proof of vaccination, Mayor Michelle Wu announced Friday. "As of today, our public health data show that Boston is officially below the 3 critical thresholds for heightened Covid protections, so we are lifting the proof of vaccination requirement," Wu said in a tweet. "This news highlights the progress we've made in our fight against Covid-19 thanks to vaccines & boosters -- which have always been our most effective weapon against the pandemic. It's a win for every Bostonian doing our part to keep our communities safe, and we have to keep going," Wu said
19th Feb 2022 - CNN

Dropping COVID isolation requirement in England could lead to epidemic growth -advisers

Scrapping COVID tests and isolation periods in England could lead to rapid epidemic growth as people's behaviour changes more swiftly than at previous times in the coronavirus pandemic, government advisers said in a document published on Friday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will outline his plans for living with COVID on Monday, and has said that he aims to scrap the legal requirement to self-isolate for people who test positive for the coronavirus. Health leaders have urged him not to be too gung-ho, with a survey showing most believed he should not scrap the requirement to self-isolate or end free testing
19th Feb 2022 - Reuters

‘No light at the end’: How Hong Kong’s Covid response went so wrong

The beds pile up outside Hong Kong’s Caritas hospital. In the cold night, elderly patients lie on gurneys covered with blankets and thermal foil sheets. A woman in pink folds her arms against the chill, while another reaches across her bed in an apparent gesture of comfort to a neighbour. Nearby, others crowd into yellow and blue spillover tents lining the car park edges. The hospital staff attend people calling out when they can, but they are outnumbered. Wails from patients carry through the air. There are similar scenes across the city, where 11 public hospitals were operating at or beyond capacity as of Friday. Private hospitals refuse to take Covid patients. Photos supplied to the Guardian show a treatment room inside one hospital earlier this week (88% capacity) with gurneys three deep across the thoroughfare, on a floor strewn with garbage. Bathrooms that no one has had time to clean were soiled with faeces, dirt and discarded biohazard bags.
19th Feb 2022 - The Guardian

Six African countries to kick off mRNA vaccines production

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced the first six countries that will receive the technology needed to produce mRNA vaccines in Africa, in the latest effort to boost production on the continent. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia have been selected to ramp up jabs production on the continent. “No other event like the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that reliance on a few companies to supply global public goods is limiting, and dangerous,” said Tedros during a ceremony hosted by the European Council, France, South Africa and the WHO. “In the mid-to-long term, the best way to address health emergencies and reach universal health coverage is to significantly increase the capacity of all regions to manufacture the health products they need, with equitable access as their primary endpoint,” he added.
19th Feb 2022 - Al Jazeera English

"What's the point?" Hong Kong resident questions quarantine ordeal

Hong Kong accountant May Ng says her family made huge sacrifices last month to comply with the city's COVID-19 policies, but now thinks these were in vain as she does not expect the latest outbreak to be contained. The global financial hub follows mainland China in deploying a "dynamic zero-COVID" strategy aimed at ending any outbreaks as soon as possible after they occur, but the highly-transmissible Omicron variant has proven hard to keep under control. Despite extensive contact tracing and draconian isolation policies, daily infections have risen 60-fold since Feb. 1 to several thousands, pushing the city further and further away from its goals.
18th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Long COVID a global issue for patients and healthcare systems, UK review finds

British researchers led by Oxford University said on Friday that the current understanding of long COVID and options to treat it is emerging as a major long-term issue for global healthcare systems after reviewing the illness' effects on patients. The review, published in the European Heart Journal, looked at direct impacts of a coronavirus infection such as myocardial infarction or inflammatory myocarditis - severe heart conditions - and long-term effects such as fatigue and mental wellbeing. "Long COVID is, besides its huge impact for the affected individual, of great societal and economic importance as it leads to leave of absence from work, reduced work performance and hence unforeseen costs," said Thomas Lüscher from the Royal Brompton and Harefield Clinical Group.
18th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Hong Kong 'cannot afford to lose' fight against surging COVID

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Friday that it would take up to three months to stabilise a worsening COVID-19 pandemic that has overwhelmed health facilities and forced the postponement of an upcoming leadership election. "Our government needs to focus on the epidemic," Lam said at a news conference after a week that saw daily infections jump by 60% so far this month. It "cannot be diverted... we cannot afford to lose," she said. Quarantine facilities in Hong Kong have reached capacity and hospital beds are more than 95% full as cases spiral, with some patients, including elderly, left on beds outside in chilly, sometimes rainy weather.
18th Feb 2022 - Reuters

A Reopening Australia Encourages Travelers to Come Take a Long Vacation

The Australian government’s tourism department is attempting to lure visitors back for a longer stay in the country with a new ad campaign as the nation prepares to open its borders to vaccinated travelers on Feb. 21. The campaign, which bears the tagline “Don’t Go Small. Go Australia,” focuses on destinations found throughout the country, from the Avoca Caves in New South Wales to the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland. The strategy is to get travelers thinking beyond the weekend trips and weeklong stays that became common during the Covid-19 pandemic, said Susan Coghill, chief marketing officer of Tourism Australia.
18th Feb 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Americans Are Emerging From the Pandemic Ready to Splurge on Events and Travel

More Americans are satisfying their wanderlust and spending big to do it, companies say. With daily new Covid-19 cases falling, restrictions easing and the strongest consumer finances in recent history, Americans are finally emerging from the pandemic eager to splurge on everything from travel and sports events to restaurants, cruises and theme parks, executives say. Companies including Marriott International Inc., Expedia Group Inc., Coca-Cola Co. and MGM Resorts International MGM told analysts recently that business is already improving from an Omicron dip and indications point to an American public eager to live large. “Premium customers, who after being cooped up for 2020 and the first part of 2021, are traveling and spending again with a vengeance,” Wynn Resorts Ltd. Chief Executive Craig Billings said Tuesday of the latest quarter.
18th Feb 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Washington State to Lift Mask Mandate in Schools, Most Indoor Locations March 21

Washington, one of just a handful of U.S. states with indoor mask mandates, will lift that requirement for most spaces, including schools, on March 21 as Covid cases decline and hospital crowding eases. “That’s a very important step in our journey to normalcy,” Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat, said Thursday at a press conference. “This is both good for our health and our education of our children and the total reopening of our economy.” Masks will still be mandatory in hospitals, medical offices, long-term care and correctional facilities. Federal law requires masks on public transportation.
18th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Oscars to require COVID tests for all, vaccines for most

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will require attendees of the 94th Oscars ceremony in March to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination and at least two negative resultsfrom PCR tests, a person with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday. Performers and presenters at the film industry's highest honors also must undergo polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, but will not need to show proof of vaccination, the source said. Face covering requirements will vary at the event on March 27 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, according to the source.
18th Feb 2022 - Reuters

WHO calls for strengthened role as U.S. proposes new pandemic fund

Efforts to strengthen global health security will only succeed if the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) is enhanced, the agency's head said on Thursday, as its biggest donor, Washington, proposed a new global pandemic prevention fund. Speaking via video link at a G20 meeting of finance leaders, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was responding to the idea of a separate global health fund tasked with delivering emergency funds, vaccines and other medical needs. "It's clear that at the centre of this architecture, the world needs a strong and sustainably financed WHO ... with its unique mandate, unique technical expertise and unique global legitimacy," Tedros told a panel in the Indonesian capital.
18th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Israel drops 'Green Passes' as Omicron infections wane

Israel on Thursday dropped a "Green Pass" policy requiring proof of vaccination, recovery from COVID-19 or a negative test to enter some public venues, further rolling back restrictions as a wave of infections recedes. The highly contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus peaked in Israel towards the end of January with daily cases reaching record highs of some 85,000, but numbers have steadily declined since to around 21,000 by Wednesday. "The wave has broken," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said at the start of a discussion with health officials on the state of the pandemic where he said Green Passes were being completely scrapped.
17th Feb 2022 - Reuters

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Vulnerable to Covid, High-Risk Americans Feel Left Behind

Millions of Americans with weakened immune systems, disabilities or illnesses that make them especially vulnerable to the coronavirus have lived totally isolated since March 2020, sequestering at home, keeping their children out of school and skipping medical care rather than risk exposure to the virus. And they have seethed over talk from politicians and public health experts that they perceive as minimizing the value of their lives. As Year 3 of the pandemic approaches, with public support for precautions plummeting and governors of even the most liberal states moving to shed mask mandates, they find themselves coping with exhaustion and grief, rooted in the sense that their neighbors and leaders are willing to accept them as collateral damage in a return to normalcy.
17th Feb 2022 - The New York Times

Coronavirus restrictions ease across Europe despite high case rates

France’s nightclubs reopen for the first time in three months on Wednesday and the Netherlands returns to “almost normal” from next Friday, as European countries continue to lift their coronavirus curbs despite relatively high infection numbers. Groups may also play to standing audiences in French concert venues, customers in bars and cafes will be allowed to eat and drink while standing at the counter and cinemagoers and train passengers can snack during their film or journey. “The skies seem finally to be clearing,” said the French government’s official spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, adding that restrictions “can be lifted according to schedule” but urging people to continue to exercise caution and restraint.
17th Feb 2022 - The Guardian

Some immunocompromised Canadians face anxious future with lifting of COVID-19 restrictions

Joel Bhikoo has multiple sclerosis, needs an IV infusion of medication every six months and for the most part has been isolating himself since the COVID-19 pandemic hit nearly two years ago. Bhikoo is just one of thousands of Canadians whose medical condition has put them more at risk for developing complications in case of infection from COVID-19. And some of them are now facing a more anxious future as many provinces, in an attempt to get things back to normal or learn to live with COVID-19, announce the lifting of measures.
17th Feb 2022 - CBC.ca

Japan Lifts Covid-19 Ban on Foreigners’ Entry, but Scars Remain

Japan said Thursday that it would reopen its border to a limited number of overseas students, workers and business travelers after a three-month ban that left scars on the country’s relations with foreigners. The ban has been popular among voters and helped Prime Minister Fumio Kishida maintain healthy poll ratings during an Omicron infection wave. Opponents included Japanese business leaders and foreign students, who said the severe steps harked back to the country’s centuries of isolation from the 1600s through the 1850s.
17th Feb 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

As states drop COVID-19 restrictions, some experts warn it's premature to declare victory

After months of unrelenting surges, COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are falling rapidly across the US, a welcome reprieve for many Americans, who are hoping that the decline will herald the beginning of the end of a difficult two years and a return to a much-awaited normalcy. Although COVID-19 infections remain at levels comparable to prior peaks, with an average of 147,000 new cases still reported each day, politicians across the country, sensing the public pandemic fatigue, are eagerly moving to lift restrictions. Although health experts agree the COVID-19 decline is encouraging, many are urging caution not to declare victory prematurely out of fear of a potential viral resurgence. Many experts are also expressing concern over declining data availability.
17th Feb 2022 - abc News

Switzerland lifts almost all COVID-19 restrictions

The Swiss government will lift nearly all pandemic restrictions from midnight Thursday, amid confidence that COVID-19 infection rates had been successfully uncoupled from hospitalizations. People in Switzerland will no longer have to show COVID certificates in restaurants, bars or other venues like theaters and concert halls. But self-isolation for those infected with COVID-19 will remain in force until the end of March, as will the requirement to wear masks while visiting health care facilities and on public transport.
17th Feb 2022 - POLITICO Europe

How to move: exercising after having Covid-19

The Omicron variant has caused an avalanche of Covid-19 cases in Australia in the past months. While most people who catch the disease experience mild symptoms, many report feeling short of breath and sluggish for weeks afterward. “It’s normal to feel tired after a viral infection, and everyone’s recovery is different,” says Janet Bondarenko, a senior respiratory physiotherapist at Alfred hospital in Melbourne. “But the severity of your Covid illness doesn’t necessarily predict whether you will have those lingering symptoms.” The coronavirus can damage various organs, causing ongoing fatigue, says Dr Robert Newton, professor of exercise medicine at Edith Cowan University. “The cardiorespiratory system can’t deliver oxygen to the working muscles efficiently. So what was a light to moderate intensity activity previously feels quite vigorous now.”
17th Feb 2022 - The Guardian

Fauci says time to start 'inching' back toward normality

Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said that it is time for the United States to start inching back towards normality, despite remaining risks from COVID-19. Fauci said U.S. states are facing tough choices in their efforts to balance the need to protect their citizens from infections and the growing fatigue with a pandemic that has dragged into its third year. "There is no perfect solution to this," said Fauci, President Joe Biden's top medical adviser and a member of the White House COVID-19 Response Team.
17th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Portugal drops most COVID-19 rules as Omicron ebbs

As an Omicron-fuelled wave of infections ebbs, Portugal said on Thursday it would drop most of its remaining coronavirus rules, including the requirement to show the COVID-19 digital pass to stay at hotels or a negative test to enter nightclubs. "This is a very important moment," Cabinet Minister Mariana Vieira da Silva told a news conference. "This is another a step towards a return to normal life." The new measures will come into force in the next few days, Vieira da Silva said, as they need still the final stamp of approval from the president.
17th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Australian unemployment holds at 13-year low as Omicron hits hours

Australia's unemployment rate held at a 13-year low in January as a surge in coronavirus cases took more of a toll on hours worked than on jobs, and hiring still rising moderately in the month. Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday showed employment rose 12,900 in January, pipping forecasts of a flat outcome and following two months of exceptional gains. The unemployment rate stayed at 4.2%, matching the lowest reading since 2008 when it bottomed out at 4.0%. The impact of the Omicron wave was felt most in hours worked which slid 8.8% as employees stayed home sick or were forced to isolate.
17th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Estimated 73% of US now immune to omicron: Is that enough?

The omicron wave that assaulted the United States this winter also bolstered its defenses, leaving enough protection against the coronavirus that future spikes will likely require much less — if any — dramatic disruption to society. Millions of individual Americans’ immune systems now recognize the virus and are primed to fight it off if they encounter omicron, or even another variant. About half of eligible Americans have received booster shots, there have been nearly 80 million confirmed infections overall and many more infections have never been reported. One influential model uses those factors and others to estimate that 73% of Americans are, for now, immune to omicron, the dominant variant, and that could rise to 80% by mid-March.
17th Feb 2022 - Associated Press

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BioNTech plans modular vaccine factories in Africa

German vaccine maker BioNTech, which developed the first widely approved shot against COVID-19 together with Pfizer, unveiled plans Wednesday to establish manufacturing facilities in Africa that would boost the availability of much-needed medicines on the continent. The modular design presented at a ceremony in Marburg, Germany, consists of shipping containers fitted with the equipment necessary to make the company’s mRNA-based vaccine, save for the final step of putting doses into bottles, a process known as fill and finish. “Our goal is to enable mRNA production on all continents,” BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told The Associated Press. BioNTech has been criticized by some campaign groups for refusing to suspend its vaccine patents and let rivals manufacture the shots as part of an effort to make them more widely available, especially in poor countries. The company argues that the process of making mRNA vaccines is difficult and it prefers to work with local partners to ensure consistent quality of the shots worldwide.
16th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Swiss government lifts nearly all COVID-19 restrictions

Switzerland will lift almost all its coronavirus pandemic restrictions from midnight, the government said on Wednesday, as fears waned that a spike in infections fuelled by the Omicron variant would overwhelm the health care system. The government said only the requirement to wear masks on public transport and while visiting healthcare facilities would remain in force temporarily after the changes, which end nearly two years of restrictions on public life. "The light on the horizon is very visible," President Ignazio Cassis told a news conference in Bern, although he added the government was ready to reimpose curbs if needed.
16th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Companies revert to more normal operations as COVID wanes

For the first time in two years for many people, the American workplace is transforming into something that resembles pre-pandemic days. Tyson Foods said Tuesday it was ending mask requirements for its vaccinated workers in some facilities. Walmart and Amazon — the nation’s No. 1 and 2 largest private employers respectively — will no longer require fully vaccinated workers to don masks in stores or warehouses unless required under local or state laws. Tech companies like Microsoft and Facebook that had allowed employees to work fully remote are now setting mandatory dates to return to the office after a series of fits and starts. “There has been a sharp decline in COVID-19 cases across the country over the past weeks,” Amazon told workers in a memo.
16th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

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Xi Says Hong Kong Should Tackle Covid by All Means, Report Says

President Xi Jinping called for “all necessary measures” to get Hong Kong’s virus outbreak under control, an unusually direct intervention that leaves the city’s leaders even less room to deviate from China’s Covid Zero policy. The Chinese leader said Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s government should make stabilizing the Covid-19 situation its top priority, the state-run Wen Wei Po newspaper reported Wednesday, without saying where it got the information. The message came a day after Lam said she had no plans for a citywide lock down, while acknowledging the omicron outbreak had overwhelmed officials’ capacity to respond. “Hong Kong’s government must take up the main responsibility to stabilize and control the pandemic as soon as possible as a mission that overrides everything, mobilize all available forces and resource and take all necessary measures to ensure the safety and health of Hong Kong’s citizens and the stability of Hong Kong’s society,” Xi said, according to Wen Wei Po.
15th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Belgium permits four-day week to boost work flexibility post COVID

Belgian employees will be able to work a four-day week after the government on Tuesday agreed a new labour accord aimed at bringing flexibility to an otherwise rigid labour market. Speaking after his seven-party coalition federal government reached a deal overnight, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said the coronavirus pandemic had forced people to work more flexibly and combine their private and working lives. "This has led to new ways of working," he told a press conference. Employees who request it will be able to work up to 10 hours per day if trade unions agree, instead of the maximum 8 now, in order to work one day less per week for the same pay.
16th Feb 2022 - Reuters

DC to drop coronavirus vaccine requirement to enter businesses

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser is dropping the city’s requirement that people show proof of coronavirus vaccination before entering many businesses in the city, as coronavirus transmission continues to trend downward throughout the region. The District’s requirement for residents to show proof of vaccination to enter most businesses — announced in December — will cease Tuesday, said Bowser (D). She also said she’s allowing the city’s mandate to wear masks in all indoor public spaces to be lifted starting March 1. Bowser had rescinded the indoor masking mandate in November before the surging omicron variant spurred her to bring it back.
15th Feb 2022 - The Washington Post

Covid-19: Relief mixed with concern as regulations removed in NI

From mask wearing to Covid certificates, restrictions have been a part of life in Northern Ireland for nearly two years. But Health Minister Robin Swann advised people to be vigilant and warned that coronavirus remains a threat to public health. BBC News NI spoke to people in Belfast and Londonderry, who expressed a mixture of relief and concern.
15th Feb 2022 - BBC News

D.C., Maryland join others in easing COVID restrictions

Washington, D.C. will no longer require people show proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter many businesses beginning on Tuesday, its mayor said, joining a slew of local leaders who are dialing back pandemic restrictions as the Omicron wave ebbs. Mayor Muriel Bowser also announced on Monday that the city will no longer make masks mandatory in many indoor settings - including restaurants, bars, gyms and houses of worship - starting on March 1. Masks will still be required in schools, libraries, nursing homes, public transit and healthcare facilities, among other settings.
15th Feb 2022 - Reuters

U.S. says it could spend $22 mln a month testing unvaccinated federal employees

The U.S. government said it faces "significant harm" if an a appeals court fails to reverse an injunction barring enforcement of President Joe Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for government workers, and that testing unvaccinated employees could cost up to $22 million a month. White House Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Jason Miller disclosed in an declaration cited late on Monday by the Justice Department that the government would be hurt on several fronts if it cannot enforce the vaccine requirements. "While most federal civilian employees are fully vaccinated, hundreds of thousands of them are not vaccinated," Miller said in the Jan. 28 declaration.
15th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Canada to ease travel requirements as COVID cases decline

Canada will ease entry for fully vaccinated international travelers starting on Feb. 28 as COVID-19 cases decline, allowing a rapid antigen test for travelers instead of a molecular one, officials said on Tuesday. Antigen tests are cheaper than a molecular test and can provide results within minutes. The new measures, which include random testing for vaccinated travelers entering Canada, were announced by federal government ministers at a briefing.
15th Feb 2022 - Reuters

S. Korean COVID deaths rise, hope rests on high booster rate

South Korea reported its highest number of COVID-19 deaths in a month Tuesday as U.S. health authorities advised Americans to avoid traveling to the country grappling with a fast-developing omicron surge. The 61 deaths reported by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency on Tuesday was the highest daily tally since the 74 reported on Jan. 19, when the country was emerging from an outbreak driven by the delta variant. While omicron so far seems less likely to cause serious illness or death, the greater scale of the outbreak is fueling concerns that hospitalizations and fatalities could spike in coming weeks. The 57,177 new cases reported by the KDCA was another one-day record and more than a 12-fold increase from the levels seen in mid-January, when omicron became the dominant strain.
15th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

WHO urges increased COVID vaccination efforts in Eastern Europe

A new wave of COVID infections from the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus is heading towards Eastern Europe, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned. The WHO’s European office on Monday called for authorities to boost vaccination efforts in the region, warning that a “tidal wave” of infections was approaching. WHO Europe director, Hans Kluge, said the number of new daily COVID-19 cases had more than doubled in six countries in the region in the past two weeks. Kluge said the 53-country region has tallied more than 165 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 1.8 million deaths linked to the pandemic – including 25,000 in the last week alone. “Today, our focus is towards the east of the WHO European region,” Kluge said in Russian at a media briefing, pointing to a surge of Omicron cases. “Over the past two weeks, cases of COVID-19 have more than doubled in six countries in this part of the region [Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine],” the director said.
15th Feb 2022 - Al Jazeera English

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China’s Approval of Pfizer Pill Opens Door to Ending Covid Zero

China’s surprise decision to clear Pfizer Inc.’s coronavirus pill for use offers rare insight into how Beijing may be planning to move beyond the Covid Zero strategy that’s leaving it increasingly isolated. Paxlovid’s conditional approval over the weekend makes it the first foreign pharmaceutical product China has endorsed for Covid-19, with the country until now sticking steadfastly to domestically developed vaccines and therapeutics, even withholding approval for the highly potent mRNA shot co-produced by Pfizer and BioNTech SE. Pfizer’s pill will serve a strategic purpose, said Zeng Guang, a former chief scientist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention who advised Beijing on Covid control, told investors in a briefing organized by Sealand Securities Co. on Saturday, hours after the approval was announced.
15th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Hong Kong Virus Cases Top 2,000 And Are Set to Double Again

Hong Kong’s daily virus cases topped 2,000 for the first time, with the worsening outbreak throwing the city’s Covid Zero push into disarray. Health authorities announced 2,071 cases on Monday, as well as 4,500 preliminary infections. Cases have exceeded capacity at Hong Kong’s public hospitals, health officials have said, adding they will now shift to prioritizing care for the elderly and children who get Covid. Authorities said thousands of people are waiting to be hospitalized and a backlog at its testing facilities means there is a delay in confirming positive cases.
15th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

U.S. offers $69 million in aviation manufacturing assistance

The U.S. Transportation Department said on Friday it was offering $69 million to 127 aviation manufacturing and repair businesses under a COVID-19 relief program created by Congress in 2021. In total, the department has offered $673 million nationwide in three rounds of awards. Some previously offered awards were not ultimately paid. The $3 billion aviation manufacturing payroll subsidy program covers up to half of eligible companies' compensation costs for up to six months. Grantees may not conduct furloughs without employee consent or lay off workers covered by subsidies during that period.
14th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Kuwait lifts many COVID restrictions, allows travel abroad

Kuwait's cabinet has lifted many COVID-19 restrictions including a ban on foreign travel, a move that will also apply to those who are not vaccinated, Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Khalid al-Sabah said on Monday. The unvaccinated will still have to get a PCR test 72 hours before boarding a flight to the Gulf Arab state and quarantine for seven days after arrival, while those who are vaccinated would not be required to do so. Some of the restrictions lifted from next week would include allowing the unvaccinated to enter shopping malls, as well as inside cinemas, theatres and banquet halls if they present a negative PCR test.
14th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Turk sets unenviable COVID record by testing positive for 14 straight months

When Muzaffer Kayasan first caught COVID-19, he thought he was destined to die since he was already suffering from leukemia. Fourteen months and 78 straight positive tests later, he is still alive - and still battling to shake off the infection. Kayasan, 56, has Turkey's longest recorded continuous COVID-19 infection, doctors say, possibly due to a weakened immune system from the cancer. Despite being in and out of hospital since November 2020, his spirits have been high. "I guess this is the female version of COVID - she has been obsessed with me," Kayasan joked last week as he found out that his latest PCR test was, yet again, positive.
14th Feb 2022 - Reuters

U.S. urges Americans to avoid travel to South Korea, Belarus over COVID

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday advised against travel to six countries and territories including South Korea, Azerbaijan and Belarus due to widespread COVID-19. The CDC also added Comoros, French Polynesia, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon to its risk list of "Level Four: Very High." The U.S. State Department also raised its travel advisory rating on Monday for South Korea, Indonesia and Azerbaijan to "Level 4: Do Not Travel."
14th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Germany's COVID case numbers drop as country waits for opening

Coronavirus case numbers have slightly dropped in Germany, as the government plans to loosen coronavirus restrictions in Europe's biggest economy. Germany reported 76,465 new daily coronavirus cases on Monday, down 20% from the same day last week. The 7-day infection incidence per 100,000 people also fell to 1,460 from 1,467 on Sunday. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the heads of the federal states are due to meet on Wednesday to discuss possible easing.
14th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Norway to end most pandemic curbs

Norway will scrap nearly all its remaining COVID-19 lockdown measures as high levels of coronavirus infections are unlikely to jeopardise health services, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said on Saturday. The Nordic country, which removed most curbs on Feb. 1, will still keep some restrictions for the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. The new rules will take effect from Saturday at 1000 CET (0900 GMT). read more "We are removing almost all coronavirus measures," Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told a news conference.
14th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Hong Kong "overwhelmed" as COVID infections hit record

The latest wave of COVID-19 infections has "overwhelmed" Hong Kong, the city's leader said on Monday as daily cases surged by some 20 times over the past two weeks, leaving hospitals short of beds and struggling to cope. Carrie Lam, the head of the administration in the Chinese ruled city, issued a grim update for residents already subjected to tight restrictions on social gatherings as health authorities reported a record 2,071 infections on Monday, with 4,500 separate preliminary positive cases. "The onslaught of the fifth wave of the epidemic has dealt a heavy blow to Hong Kong and overwhelmed the city's capacity of handling," Lam said
14th Feb 2022 - Reuters

President Biden's Global Covid Vaccine Push Falters, Echoing Domestic Struggle

President Joe Biden’s effort to vaccinate the world against Covid-19 is falling short, echoing the faltering campaign to inoculate Americans and raising the risk that more dangerous variants of the virus will yet emerge. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged in a virtual meeting with other countries on Monday that the globe is not on pace to meet a goal of vaccinating 70% of the entire human population by later this year, a target set in 2021 both by Biden and the World Health Organization. Low-income countries -- particularly in Africa, where the omicron variant was first detected -- remain overwhelmingly unvaccinated.
14th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Trucker Protests: Justin Trudeau Invokes Emergency Powers, Seeks to Halt Funding

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked sweeping emergency powers Monday to quell protests against vaccine mandates and other Covid-19 restrictions, including measures to choke off the flow of money to demonstrators. Banks and financial institutions will be required to review their relationships with anyone involved in an illegal blockade and report them. They’ll have the authority to stop providing services to those suspected of using their accounts to help the protesters and to freeze accounts without getting a court order.
14th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

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Omicron’s Threat to Global Economy Increasingly Runs Through China

it has also become clear that Omicron causes milder symptoms in vaccinated people than its predecessors, and an increasing number of European countries have lifted restrictions put in place when the variant emerged. U.S. job growth accelerated in January, even though the number of people not working because of illness more than doubled from December. So while business surveys and other data indicate economic growth slowed in Europe and the U.S. as 2022 began, many economists expect the Omicron variant to do less damage than previous surges.
13th Feb 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Hong Kong in 'Crisis' Leans on Beijing to Contain Covid Surge

Hong Kong’s health officials warned that the city is facing a “crisis” as a record 2,000 preliminary positive cases threatened to overwhelm hospitals and upend its Covid Zero strategy. Authorities on Sunday reported 1,347 infections and said more than 3,400 confirmed patients were receiving treatment. Cases have exceeded capacity at Hong Kong’s hospitals, health officials said, adding they will now shift to prioritizing care for the elderly and children who test positive.
13th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

French COVID protest convoy defies Paris stay-away order

A convoy protesting COVID-19 restrictions breached police defences and drove into central Paris on Saturday, snarling traffic around the Arc de Triomphe and on the Champs Elysees, as police fired tear gas at demonstrators. Protesters in cars, campervans, tractors and other vehicles had converged on Paris from Lille, Perpignan, Nice and other cities late on Friday, despite warnings from Paris authorities that they would be barred from entering the capital. Inspired by horn-blaring "Freedom Convoy" demonstrations in Canada, dozens of vehicles slipped through the police cordon, impeding traffic around the 19th century arch and the top of the boutique-lined Champs Elysees, a magnet for tourists.
13th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Germans pin hopes on Novavax moving the needle among anti-vaxxers

Benedikt Richter, a 40-year-old teacher in the southwest German city of Kaiserslautern, long held out against getting vaccinated against COVID-19. He felt uneasy about the novelty of the mRNA technology used in two of the most commonly administered shots. It did not help that his sister-in-law was hospitalised with heart muscle inflammation a day after receiving her second shot, which doctors officially linked to her vaccine, Richter said. Regulators have acknowledged such conditions as a rare and mostly mild side-effect. But when the European Union in December approved the use of the Novavax vaccine Nuxavoxid, which deploys a long-established protein-based technology, he became interested.
13th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Hong Kong reports 1347 COVID cases as healthcare system overwhelmed

Hong Kong reported 1,347 new daily COVID-19 infections on Sunday, down from the previous day's record, but the spread, with 2,000 more suspected cases, threatens the city's overstretched healthcare system, authorities said. The surge in coronavirus cases, the biggest test yet for Hong Kong's "dynamic zero-COVID" strategy, comes a day after the government said China would help the city with testing, treatment and quarantine capacity.
13th Feb 2022 - Reuters

When Will Covid End? What New Covid Variants, Post-Pandemic Life Mean for 2022

As a virus-weary world limps through the third year of the outbreak, experts are sending out a warning signal: Don’t expect omicron to be the last variant we have to contend with — and don’t let your guard down yet. In the midst of a vast wave of milder infections, countries around the world are dialing back restrictions and softening their messaging. Many people are starting to assume they’ve had their run-in with Covid-19 and that the pandemic is tailing off. That’s not necessarily the case. The crisis isn’t over until it’s over everywhere. The effects will continue to reverberate through wealthier nations — disrupting supply chains, travel plans and health care — as the coronavirus largely dogs under-vaccinated developing countries over the coming months.
13th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

UK Treasury pushes to end most free Covid testing despite experts’ warnings

The Treasury is pushing for most free Covid testing to end as soon as next month to save billions despite warnings from public health experts and scientists. Several sources told the Guardian that Rishi Sunak’s department wants to end most PCR testing for people with Covid symptoms, possibly by the end of March. The exception would be those in hospitals, high-risk settings and for the 1.3m extremely vulnerable people who are eligible for antivirals if they contract Covid. Under the plans, everyone else with symptoms would be either given some free lateral flow tests or no testing at all. A third option would be restricting the offer of lateral flows to symptomatic people over 50 and the clinically vulnerable. The advice for people without symptoms to take routine lateral flow tests is expected to be scrapped entirely.
12th Feb 2022 - The Guardian

COVID pandemic’s ‘acute phase’ could end by midyear: WHO

The head of the World Health Organization has said the acute phase of the pandemic could end this year, if about 70 percent of the world gets vaccinated. “Our expectation is that the acute phase of this pandemic will end this year, of course with one condition, the 70 percent vaccination [target is achieved] by mid this year around June, July,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told reporters in South Africa on Friday. “If that is to be done, the acute phase can really end, and that is what we are expecting. It’s in our hands. It’s not a matter of chance. It’s a matter of choice.” He was speaking during a visit to Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, which has produced the first mRNA COVID vaccine made in Africa using Moderna’s sequence.
12th Feb 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Beijing's ambitious Olympic COVID bubble: So far, so good

For a country determined to keep out the virus that first emerged within its borders, bringing in more than 15,000 people from all corners of the world was a serious gamble. It appears to be working. One week into the 17-day event, China seems to be meeting its formidable COVID-19 Olympic challenge with a so-called “bubble” that allows Beijing Games participants to skip quarantine but tightly restricts their movement so they don’t come in contact with the general population. There have been 490 confirmed cases — many of them positive tests on symptomless visitors — and no reports of any leaking out to date. Inside the bubble, Olympic organizers are employing a version of the government’s zero-tolerance approach. Everyone is tested daily for the virus, and anyone who tests positive is rapidly isolated to prevent any spread. Athletes and others are required to wear N95 face masks when not competing.
12th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

COVID-19: Children over 12 can visit Spain without being fully vaccinated after rule scrapped

Children over 12 from non-EU countries will no longer have to be fully vaccinated against coronavirus to enter Spain. The country is scrapping the rule from Monday to line up with UK half term. Children aged 12 to 17 will now be able to visit by showing a negative PCR test taken in the past three days. It will make holidays easier for many families, some of whom had to cancel plans because of the rule. Adults must still be fully vaccinated to go to Spain (the NHS COVID pass is acceptable) and travellers must also fill in a health control form before departure.
11th Feb 2022 - Sky News

US buys 600K doses of new COVID antibody awaiting clearance

Addressing diminished treatment options in the omicron wave, the Biden administration has purchased enough of a yet-to-be approved antibody drug to treat 600,000 COVID-19 patients, officials said Thursday. The new monoclonal antibody from pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly will be shipped out to states free of charge if the Food and Drug Administration approves the company’s request for emergency use authorization, said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. “We are going to try to be there to meet the demand,” he added. The government’s move comes after the two leading monoclonal antibody treatments in the U.S. turned out to be ineffective against the omicron variant, which now accounts for nearly all COVID-19 cases in the country. Data indicate that the Lilly drug works against omicron, including the new BA.2 mutation. Lilly said the contract for its new drug — bebtelovimab — is worth at least $720 million. That name is pronounced “beb-teh-LO-vi-mab.”
11th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

German court rules coronavirus vaccine mandate for health workers can proceed

The mandate requires all employees in nursing homes, hospitals, doctors' offices and outpatient clinics to prove they are vaccinated against COVID-19. An emergency motion had attempted to delay its enforcement. Germany's Constitutional Court on Friday ruled that a mandate requiring health care workers to present proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 or recovery from the disease should go into force as planned. Opponents of the mandate had petitioned the court to postpone its application. The mandate is due to begin on March 15. Friday's ruling was on whether the mandate could be enforced ahead of a final decision on whether the move is constitutional under German law.
11th Feb 2022 - Deutsche Welle on MSN.com

CDC recommends people with weakened immune systems get booster doses after three months instead of five

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance on Friday for some people with weakened immune systems, recommending they get a booster dose of the coronavirus vaccine three months after completing the initial series of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots, rather than the current interval of five months. The guidance also said immunocompromised people who received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine should get an additional dose. That means two doses, at least 28 days apart, followed by a booster dose of one of the mRNA vaccines. “Although COVID-19 vaccines continue to work well to prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death, we have seen reduced protection against mild and moderate disease,” the agency said in a statement. “With the number of cases of COVID-19 still high across the United States and globally, this guidance helps to ensure that people have optimal protection against” the virus that causes the disease.
11th Feb 2022 - The Washington Post

EU investigates reports of menstrual disorders after mRNA COVID shots

The European Medicines Agency's safety committee said on Friday it was reviewing reports of heavy menstrual bleeding and absence of menstruation from women who had received COVID vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. The assessment was in view of reports of menstrual disorders after receiving either of the two vaccines, both based on messenger RNA technology, and it was not yet clear whether there was a causal link, the agency said. It was not yet clear whether there was a causal link between the vaccines and the reports, the agency said.
11th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Germany’s Covid Boomtown Stumbles Over Its Newfound Riches

While pandemic lockdowns continue to rock cities around the world, Germany’s Marburg has emerged with a windfall that makes the quaint university town with cobbled streets and a hilltop castle look like a long-term winner of the crisis. A Covid-19 vaccine plant operated by BioNTech SE helped provide more jobs and more income for the city of roughly 80,000, located in verdant hill country about 55 miles north of Frankfurt. Tax receipts for 2021 ballooned to 480 million euros ($550 million), the equivalent of about 6,000 euros per resident and quadruple the city council’s initial projections. “We had an unbelievable amount of money all of a sudden,” Mayor Thomas Spies said in an interview. “We were extremely happy” that BioNTech expanded here. But then....
11th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Belgium Eases Virus Curbs With Omicron Outbreak Past Peak

Belgium agreed to loosen most of the virus restrictions it introduced late last year now that all but one of the indicators used to monitor the surge of the omicron variant show that the outbreak is past its peak. Starting on Feb. 18, the requirement to work from home four days a week will disappear and become a recommendation, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said on Friday. At that time, nightclubs will also reopen, pubs and restaurants won’t face a mandatory closing hour or table limits, and a ban on events with moving crowds will subside, along with the obligation for children younger than 12 to wear masks. “This is an enormous step, but it would be wrong to say we have eradicated the virus,” De Croo said at a briefing in Brussels. “Let’s not make that mistake again and mind ourselves that our behavior is what matters the most.”
11th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

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US urges Canada to use federal powers to end bridge blockade

The Biden administration urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government Thursday to use its federal powers to end the truck blockade by Canadians protesting the country’s COVID-19 restrictions, as the bumper-to-bumper demonstration forced auto plants on both sides of the border to shut down or scale back production. For the fourth straight day, scores of truckers taking part in what they dubbed the Freedom Convoy blocked the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, disrupting the flow of auto parts and other products between the two countries. The White House said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke with their Canadian counterparts and urged them to help resolve the standoff.
11th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Russia's daily COVID-19 infections near 200000 for 1st time

Russian authorities on Thursday reported nearly 200,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases, in another record fueled by the rapid spread of the omicron variant amid a low vaccination rate and the absence of major restrictions for adults. The state coronavirus task force tallied 197,076 new infections over the past 24 hours, some 14,000 more than the day before and twice as many as two weeks ago. The task force also reported 701 deaths. While infections have soared, daily fatalities in recent weeks have remained steady between roughly 600 and 700. The highly contagious omicron variant accounts for 60% of current infections, according to Anna Popova, head of Russia’s public health agency Rospotrebnadzor.
11th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Unions and scientists claim Boris is moving 'too far, too soon'

Mr Johnson has declared that all coronavirus rules including self-isolation set to go from end of the month. Unison boss warned 'Covid risks haven't disappeared' and the PM's plans are 'going too far, ​way too soon.' And SAGE member said No10's scientists haven't discussed the move, cautioning that they bring 'dangers.' A top epidemiologist warned relaxing curbs is a 'political type of statement rather than a scientific one.' YouGov poll shows 75% believe self-isolation requirement should be in place for at least the next few months Nicola Sturgeon's may now extend emergency Covid curbs until September - but will axe masks in classrooms
10th Feb 2022 - Daily Mail

Sweden stops mass COVID-19 PCR testing as symptomatic people are urged to stay home

Sweden has halted wide-scale testing for COVID-19 even among people showing symptoms of an infection, putting an end to the mobile city-square tent sites, drive-in swab centres and home-delivered tests. The move puts the Scandinavian nation at odds with most of Europe, but some experts say it could become the norm as costly testing yields fewer benefits with the easily transmissible but milder Omicron variant.
10th Feb 2022 - ABC News

Germany's COVID-19 wave flattens as regions ease curbs

Germany's daily rise in the number of coronavirus infections is slowing, data from the Robert Koch Institute showed on Thursday, indicating that a fourth wave of the pandemic could flatten soon. Germany reported 247,862 new daily coronavirus cases on Thursday, up 5% from the same day last week. The 7-day infection incidence per 100,000 people also rose to 1,465 from 1,451 a day earlier. Germany's adjusted hospitalisation rate rose only slightly to 10.96 per 100,000 people from 10.88 a day earlier.
10th Feb 2022 - Reuters

India's pandemic recovery is in awkward full swing

Article reports that India’s cities are bustling and economic growth is humming along once more, thanks to officials taking a pragmatic approach to managing the recent wave of Covid-19. It’s a sharp contrast to China’s rigid approach. Still, rising impatience from bond markets over the government’s debt hangover puts the giant emerging market on an awkward trudge back to normality.
10th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Africa transitioning out of pandemic phase of COVID: WHO

Africa is transitioning out of the pandemic phase of the COVID-19 outbreak and moving towards a situation where it will be managing the virus over the long term, the head of the World Health Organization on the continent has said. “I believe that we are transitioning from the pandemic phase and we will now need to manage the presence of this virus in the long term,” Dr Matshidiso Moeti told a media briefing on Thursday.
10th Feb 2022 - Al Jazeera English

AstraZeneca says COVID vaccine demand high in Latam, Middle East, Asia

Astrazeneca said global interest in government purchase agreements for its COVID-19 vaccine was driven by strong demand in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, even as aggregate global demand this year will fall. Speaking on a media call after the release of the company's fourth-quarter results, CEO Pascal Soriot said the shot, branded Vaxzevria, is receiving a "fantastic welcome" in those regions. The drugmaker earlier flagged a likely fall in COVID-19-related product sales this year, as an expected decline in vaccine revenue is to be partially offset by growth in sales of its antibody drug Evusheld
10th Feb 2022 - Reuters

U.S. Agrees to Pay Lilly $720 Million for New Covid Treatment

The U.S. struck a $720 million deal with Eli Lilly & Co. for supplies of an experimental Covid drug that appears to fight the omicron variant that’s sweeping the country. Under the agreement, Lilly will provide the Department of Health and Human Services with 600,000 doses of bebtelovimab, a monoclonal antibody under U.S. regulatory review for treatment of mild-to-moderate Covid in certain high-risk patients. The new drug is a bid for a Covid comeback by Lilly, whose earlier antibody cocktail was pulled from U.S. treatment programs after it proved ineffective against omicron, which accounts for almost all U.S. cases of the disease. Lab tests of bebtelovimab demonstrate that it neutralizes omicron and the BA.2 subvariant that’s also spreading in some countries.
10th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

New York eases COVID-19 rules, Massachusetts to drop school mask mandate

The governors of New York and Massachusetts announced on Wednesday that they would end certain mask mandates in their states, joining a growing list of U.S. state leaders planning to lift face-covering rules as the latest COVID-19 surge eases. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said her state would stop requiring people to wear a mask or prove they had received a COVID-19 vaccine when entering most indoor public places, starting on Thursday, thanks to a decrease in COVID cases and hospitalizations.
9th Feb 2022 - Reuters

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Funds to End Pandemic Amount to 'Rounding Error' for Rich Nations, WHO Head Says

The $16 billion in funding needed to provide low-income countries with better access to Covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments represents a “rounding error” in rich countries’ budgets, according to the head of the World Health Organization. Finance ministers of wealthy nations have indicated the money needed would be a relatively insignificant commitment, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an appeal to wealthy nations to fill the funding gap for the WHO’s ACT-Accelerator plan budget for 2022. “If there is commitment, it can be done,” Tedros said at a media briefing Wednesday. “If the finance ministers call it a rounding error I don’t think they are wrong because that is their job.”
9th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

CDC Studies Advice for Easing Mask Rules as States Drop Them

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention experts are developing guidance to help states ease Covid-19 rules for mask-wearing, even as U.S. health officials said it’s still premature to dispense of the measures, as some governors are doing. “We are working on that guidance,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday in a White House press call, cautioning that “our hospitalizations are still high, our death rates are still high. So as we work towards that, and as we are encouraged by the current trends, we are not there yet.”
9th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Sweden declare pandemic over, despite warnings from scientists

Sweden scrapped almost all of its few pandemic restrictions on Wednesday and stopped most testing for COVID-19, even as the pressure on the healthcare systems remained high and some scientists begged for more patience in fighting the disease. Sweden's government, which throughout the pandemic has opted against lockdowns in favour of a voluntary approach, announced last week it would scrap the remaining restrictions - effectively declaring the pandemic over - as vaccines and the less severe Omicron variant have cushioned severe cases and deaths.
9th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Exclusive: EU wants pandemic treaty to ban wildlife markets, reward virus detection

The European Union is pushing for a global deal aimed at preventing new pandemics that could include a ban on wildlife markets and incentives for countries to report new viruses or variants, an EU official told Reuters. International negotiators will meet for the first time on Wednesday to prepare talks for a potential treaty, said the official, who is not authorised to speak to media and so declined to be named. The aim is to reach a preliminary agreement by August.
9th Feb 2022 - Reuters

UK PM Johnson speeds up plan to end COVID self-isolation rule

People in England with COVID-19 will from late February no longer be legally required to self-isolate to stem the spread of COVID-19, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday, proposing to speed up existing plans to live with the virus. Johnson ended almost all COVID-19 restrictions in England last July, and last month lifted "Plan B" measures that had been temporarily imposed to slow the spread of the more recent Omicron variant of the coronavirus. He has said he wishes to go further as part of the shift towards learning to live with COVID, and England is set to become the first major economy to replace legal requirements for people to self-isolate with guidance
9th Feb 2022 - Reuters

COVID infections, deaths on the rise in Middle East - WHO

Middle Eastern countries have seen a rise in coronavirus infections in the last six weeks because of low vaccination rates, officials at the WHO's Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office said on Wednesday. Reported COVID-19 cases rose to a daily average of 110,000 in the past six weeks, while average daily deaths rose to 345 in the last three weeks, WHO regional director Ahmed Al-Mandhari said on Wednesday. More than 35% of the region's population is fully vaccinated. But one quarter of the countries have not yet reached 10% vaccination coverage, said Rana Hajjeh, director of programme management.
9th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Japan to extend COVID-19 curbs for 13 regions by three weeks

Japanese Prime Minister said on Wednesday that the government would extend COVID-19 restrictions in Tokyo and 12 prefectures by three weeks as the Omicron variant continued to spread. Japan has been breaking daily records for coronavirus cases and deaths amid a surge in infections driven by the Omicron variant. It will add one more prefecture to the list of regions facing quasi-emergency measures, including restrictions on the business hours of eateries, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters.
8th Feb 2022 - Reuters

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New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern warns of more COVID-19 variants in 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic will not end with the Omicron variant and New Zealand will have to prepare for more variants of the virus this year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Tuesday (Feb 8) in her first parliamentary speech for 2022. Ardern's warning came as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the parliament building in the capital Wellington, demanding an end to coronavirus restrictions and vaccine mandates. "Mr Speaker, advice from experts is that Omicron will not be the last variant we will face this year," Ardern told lawmakers in the speech which was livestreamed. "It’s not over. But that doesn’t mean we cannot move forward. And keep making progress. And so we are," she said.
8th Feb 2022 - Channel NewsAsia

Governors in 4 states plan for end to school mask mandates

The governors of four states announced plans Monday to lift statewide mask requirements in schools by the end of February or March, citing the rapid easing of COVID-19′s omicron surge. The decisions in Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Oregon were announced as state and local governments grapple with which virus restrictions to jettison and which ones to keep in place. The changes also come amid a growing sense that the virus is never going to go away and Americans need to find a way to coexist with it. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy called the move “a huge step back to normalcy for our kids” and said individual school districts will be free to continue requiring masks after the state mandate ends March 7.
8th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Quarter of UK employers cite long COVID as driving absences - survey

A quarter of British employers have cited long COVID as a main cause of long-term sickness absences, a survey by a professional body found on Tuesday, adding that it raised questions over how workers with the condition were being supported in their jobs. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is leading a strategy for the country to live with COVID, lifting restrictions as booster shots and the lower severity of the Omicron variant weaken the link between cases and death.
8th Feb 2022 - Reuters

For burned-out health workers, exhaustion from Covid-19 surges mixes with a sense of betrayal

Beneath the bone-deep exhaustion, burned-out health care workers say they are grappling with another feeling: betrayal. Many clinicians have felt that with the waves of Covid have come waves of abandonment — by employers unable or unwilling to protect workers, by lawmakers undercutting public health measures, and by a public resigned to the ongoing crisis. And ultimately, health workers can feel betrayed by themselves, as circumstances outside their control make it painfully difficult to care for their patients or colleagues.
8th Feb 2022 - STAT News

J.&J. Pauses Production of Its Covid Vaccine Despite Persistent Need

A crucial Johnson & Johnson plant has stopped making its Covid vaccine, though the company says it has millions of doses in inventory. Johnson & Johnson has quietly stopped making batches of its vaccine at its facility in the Dutch city of Leiden.
8th Feb 2022 - The New York Times

New York considers making outdoor dining a permanent fixture

The New York City Council held a hearing on Tuesday to consider a plan to make sidewalk dining - first allowed in 2020 as a temporary measure to help blunt economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic - part of the new normal. The plan to give permanent status to thousands of "streateries" outside of restaurants and bars has the support of Mayor Eric Adams and the New York Hospitality Alliance, an industry association. Opponents say outside dining has created unsanitary conditions, helped draw more rats to sidewalks, drawn noise complaints in some neighborhoods and reduced the number of available parking spaces.
8th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Global COVID response program 'running on fumes' amid budget shortfall

A global initiative to get COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines to poorer nations has only received 5% of the donations sought to deliver on its aims this year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and other aid groups. The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator budgeted $23.4 billion for its efforts from October 2021 to September 2022, of which it hoped $16.8 billion would come in the form of grants from richer countries.
8th Feb 2022 - Reuters

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Critics of AstraZeneca Vaccine “Probably Killed Hundreds of Thousands,” Oxford Scientist Says

An Oxford scientist who worked on the AstraZeneca vaccine says he thinks scientists and politicians “probably killed hundreds of thousands of people” by damaging the reputation of the jab. Speaking to the BBC, Professor Sir John Bell said: “They have damaged the reputation of the vaccine in a way that echoes around the rest of the world.” “I think bad behaviour from scientists and from politicians has probably killed hundreds of thousands of people – and that they cannot be proud of.”
7th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Thailand to seek travel bubbles with China, Malaysia

Thailand will have talks on bilateral travel bubble arrangements with China and Malaysia later this month, an official said on Monday, as part of efforts to bolster a steady recovery in its crucial tourism sector. Thailand received a record of nearly 40 million foreign visitors in 2019 - more than a quarter of those from China - but total arrivals slumped to about 0.5% of that last year, due to weaker external demand and tight quarantine and entry requirements.
7th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer's COVID cash pile opens opportunities for deals

Investors on Tuesday hope to learn Pfizer Inc's plans for what could be a once-in-a-generation cash infusion from COVID-19 treatments and vaccines in 2022, with some looking for the drugmaker to spend on deals. Pfizer's 2021 sales are expected to top $80 billion - its highest ever annual figure, according to Chief Executive Albert Bourla. Analysts expect revenue to top $100 billion in 2022 as production of Pfizer's oral antiviral treatment Paxlovid picks up. The 173-year-old U.S. drugmaker expects 2021 sales of $36 billion and another $29 billion in 2022 just for its COVID-19 vaccine developed with Germany's BioNTech SE .
7th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Indonesia to tighten COVID curbs as infections climb

Indonesia will tighten social restrictions in Jakarta and Bali, as well as in two other cities on Java island, in a bid to contain a spike in coronavirus infections, according to a senior cabinet minister. The measures announced on Monday include caps on attendance in some indoor venues and came as the transport ministry clarified that overseas tourists would still be able to enter the country through the capital, Jakarta.
7th Feb 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Can Sinovac protect Indonesia from the Omicron wave?

About 79 percent of those vaccinated in Indonesia have received the Sinovac shot. While all vaccines have been shown to be less effective against Omicron ... Indonesia’s deadly second wave in a report published by Al Jazeera a month before the peak ...
7th Feb 2022 - Al Jazeera English on MSN.com

Australia to open borders to vaccinated travelers on Feb. 21

Australia will open its borders to all vaccinated tourists and business travelers from Feb. 21 in a further relaxation of pandemic restrictions announced Monday. Australia imposed some of the world’s toughest travel restrictions on its citizens and permanent residents in March 2020 to prevent them from bringing COVID-19 home. When the border restrictions were relaxed in November in response to an increasing vaccination rate among the Australian population, international students and skilled migrants were prioritized over tourists in being welcomed back to Australia.
7th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Omicron forces S. Korea to end GPS monitoring, some checkups

South Korea will no longer use GPS monitoring to enforce quarantines and will also end daily checkup calls to low-risk coronavirus patients as a fast-developing omicron surge overwhelms health and government workers. The speed of transmissions has made it impossible to maintain a tight and proactive medical response, Jeong Eun-kyeong, the country’s top infectious disease expert, said Monday. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 38,691 new cases of the virus, a nine-fold increase from the levels seen in mid-January, when omicron became the country’s dominant strain. Jeong said the country may see daily jumps of 130,000 or 170,000 by late February.
7th Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

These COVID vaccines will get you into Australia when the international border reopens

With the countdown now on in Australia until the international border reopens to everyone for the first time since 2020, no doubt some people are starting to make travel plans. The only rule that's different this time around is you need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Vaccines used in other countries can be quite different to the ones in Australia, and only certain jabs are recognised by the government for entry into the country. Here's which ones will get you past passport control.
7th Feb 2022 - ABC.Net.au

After two years of closed borders, Australia welcomes the world back

Australia said on Monday it will reopen its borders to vaccinated travellers this month, ending two years of misery for the tourism sector, reviving migration and injecting billions of dollars into the world No. 13 economy. The move effectively calls time on the last main component of Australia's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which it has attributed to relatively low death and infection rates. The other core strategy, stop-start lockdowns, was shelved for good in December. The country had taken steps in recent months to relax border controls, like allowing in skilled migrants and quarantine-free travel arrangements - "travel bubbles" - with select countries like New Zealand.
7th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Australia to open borders to vaccinated travelers on Feb. 21

Australia will open its borders to all vaccinated tourists and business travelers from Feb. 21 in a further relaxation of pandemic restrictions announced Monday. Australia imposed some of the world’s toughest travel restrictions on its citizens and permanent residents in March 2020 to prevent them from bringing COVID-19 home. When the border restrictions were relaxed in November in response to an increasing vaccination rate among the Australian population, international students and skilled migrants were prioritized over tourists in being welcomed back to Australia.
7th Feb 2022 - Associated Press

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Can the Technology Behind Covid Vaccines Cure Other Diseases?

Now scientists, governments and drugmakers are asking, what else can mRNA do? Many believe that mRNA could serve as the basis for a new generation of vaccines and drugs against a range of other diseases. Efforts in development include cancer therapies tailored to individual patients that can be assembled in a few weeks and HIV vaccines to be given periodically in lieu of current daily pills. Clinical trials for mRNA products are also under way for influenza, and vaccines are in development for malaria, tuberculosis and liver ailments. Questions remain about whether mRNA can be readily applied to other diseases. The technology has been especially effective against Covid-19 for reasons peculiar to the virus. Other diseases pose a series of new challenges, from whether mRNA can get to where it needs to go in the body to how long it needs to remain to be effective.
4th Feb 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Poor Countries Affected by Covid Worst, Facing Pandemic Debt Crunch

The pandemic has taken its heaviest toll in some of the world’s poorest countries. Indebted governments from Latin America to Africa spent money they didn’t have to shore up rickety health systems and provide a safety net for citizens, pushing their finances further into the red. Creditor nations helped them by suspending debt repayments and lending them more. Now those waivers have ended and global borrowing costs are on the rise, raising the risk of disorderly defaults.
4th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Britain's pandemic modellers say future large waves of COVID possible

There is a realistic possibility of large waves of COVID-19 infection in the future in Britain and such waves might even be considered likely, epidemiologists who model the COVID-19 pandemic to inform government advice have said. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ditched legal restrictions in England, saying that, while the pandemic was not over, Britain needs to learn to live with COVID. The Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational sub-group (SPI-M-O) said the emergence of new viral variants was the biggest unknown factor in the medium-to-long term, along with waning population immunity and changes in mixing patterns.
4th Feb 2022 - Reuters UK

New Zealand PM Ardern urges unity on COVID on Waitangi Day

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern urged New Zealanders on Sunday to unite in their battle against COVID-19, as the pandemic forced the country to celebrate its national Waitangi Day online. A growing outbreak of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has pushed all commemorations online, prompting Ardern to urge vaccinations. "We all have a duty to do everything we can to protect our communities with all the tools that science and medicine have given us," Ardern said in a pre-recorded speech. "Togetherness is something we have shown throughout the last few years. I know it hasn't always been easy ... But together we have, and we continue to, overcome."
5th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Some 50 Iranian MPs test positive for COVID as Omicran rages - lawmaker

Some 50 members of Iran’s 290-seat parliament have contracted COVID-19, a senior MP said on Saturday as the Omicron variant spreads unabated across the county. MP Alireza Salimi, speaking to YJC, a news agency linked to Iran’s state TV, said this week’s parliamentary session would be held in accordance with health regulations. Parliament was suspended for two weeks last April due to an outbreak among MPs. In the early days of the pandemic, several lawmakers died from the virus.
5th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Turkey's President Erdogan tests positive for COVID-19

Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that he had tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID-19. "The result of COVID-19 tests done with my wife after showing mild symptoms came back positive," Erdogan said in a tweet, adding that both had the Omicron variant of the virus. "We will continue our work at home. We look forward to your prayers," he added. Officials of his AKP ruling party, ministers and opposition leaders wished him a speedy recovery.
5th Feb 2022 - Reuters

What parents want to know about Covid-19 vaccines for children

Increasing numbers of children around the world are becoming infected with Covid-19 as the Omicron variant fuels a surge in cases. In many places this reflects the fact that children are less likely to be vaccinated, prompting many governments to redouble their efforts to boost vaccination rates. In Hong Kong, for example, the Sinovac and BioNTech vaccines will be made available to 400,000 children aged between five and 11. Some parents have questioned whether the vaccines will affect their children’s growth and development, or whether there are pros and cons to different types of vaccine. Here are some of the most common issues raised.
5th Feb 2022 - South China Morning Post

Health minister on gatherings, vaccine mandates and the end of masks in South Africa

In a media briefing on Friday (4 February), Phaahla said this is in line with previous trends, with vaccinations still seen as the country’s best form of protection. He added that the country could see an increase in cases earlier than expected should they be driven by a new Covid variant. South Africa has seen a plateau in the decline of new Covid-19 cases in the last two weeks, with an increase in infections reported in the Free State, Gauteng and Mpumalanga. Phaahla said this plateau can be linked to the opening of schools, with more people under 20 testing positive in recent weeks. It is also possible that increased movement after the December holidays has also contributed.
5th Feb 2022 - BusinessTech

Malaysia’s Covid Cases May Hit 15,000 a Day as Omicron Spreads

Malaysia’s new coronavirus infections may hit 15,000 a day soon from the spread of the highly-contagious omicron variant, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said as he urged citizens to take their booster shots. The nation is “fully into omicron wave,” he said in a tweet after Sunday’s caseload topped 10,000 for the first time in four months. “There are still 1 million seniors who do not have a booster dose. Please inform your loved ones to get booster dose immediately.” Health Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a separate tweet that daily cases could reach 22,000 by the end of March if the reproduction factor of the virus remains at 1.2. Still, the nation’s wide vaccination coverage would ensure the severity of the infections and hospital admissions remain low, he said.
6th Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

China’s Forever War Against Covid-19

First, thanks to the underreported prevalence of mild and symptomless cases in Wuhan, the disease was likely already present globally and in the U.S. Second, look for China’s Orwellian online and offline monitoring capabilities to be employed in an ...
6th Feb 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

No large fluctuations in Olympics COVID cases expected, organisers say

A sharp drop in COVID-19 cases on Feb. 5 among Beijing Olympics-related personnel was due to fewer arrivals at the airport and organisers said on Sunday that they did not expect any more large fluctuations in infection numbers. China detected 10 new COVID cases among Olympic Games-related personnel on Feb. 5, the organising committee of the Games said. That was down from Feb. 4's 45 cases - the second highest daily tally since arrivals commenced last month.
6th Feb 2022 - Reuters

Some Virginia college students worried about end of coronavirus vaccine mandates

Coronavirus vaccines — and more specifically, vaccine mandates — have been an integral part of the reopening plans on college campuses throughout the country. At one point in Virginia, more than a dozen public universities were requiring students and employees to get their doses. But recent changes in the state’s government have complicated that strategy. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who took office last month, ordered state agencies, including public colleges and universities, to stop requiring employees to be vaccinated. Attorney General Jason S. Miyares later issued a legal opinion that public campuses are not authorized to impose vaccination mandates for students. The changes were a blow to students who have been pushing leaders to take additional safety precautions during the pandemic.
6th Feb 2022 - The Washington Post

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Omicron sub-variant BA.2 harder to identify, found in 5 African nations -WHO

The BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron has been found in five African countries, a World Health Organization scientist said on Thursday, adding she was concerned about the development because samples of BA.2 may not be spotted as a form of Omicron. The BA.2 sub-variant has begun to replace Omicron's more common "original" BA.1 variant in countries such as Denmark. Data from there suggests no difference in disease severity, according to another WHO official
3rd Feb 2022 - Reuters

Bangladesh extends closure of schools over Omicron

The government of Bangladesh has decided to extend the closure of schools, as COVID-19 cases surge, mostly because of the highly transmissible Omicron coronavirus variant. The school closure initially was just for two weeks, until February 6. But on Wednesday, Minister of Education Dipu Moni said it would be extended by two more weeks. The announcement was met with disappointment by some teachers and experts. At a school in the Moghbazar area of the capital, Dhaka, teachers were frustrated over having to restart online classes for their 500 students. “Students just don’t get the lessons the same way online as in the classroom. It’s very important to use teaching materials to help them understand clearly,” Mizanur Rahman, a teacher at Provati Bidya Niketon, told The Associated Press news agency.
3rd Feb 2022 - Al Jazeera English on MSN.com

Long after COVID lockdowns, India’s youth struggle to find work

Ravi Bansod lost almost everything when India imposed a nationwide lockdown to halt the spread of the coronavirus in March 2020. After investing five years and one million Indian rupees ($13,515) in his Mumbai curry shop, the 29-year-old small business owner was forced to shut up shop. Once outgoing, he became so depressed and withdrawn that his friends referred him to a psychotherapist. Two years later, Bansod is still trying to rebuild his life and lives in fear of the government taking away everything he has worked for again amid the spread of the Omicron variant. “I feel that lockdowns should be imposed so that only vulnerable people like the old and those with comorbidities are restricted from going outside,” Bansod told Al Jazeera.
3rd Feb 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Olympic spotlight back on China for a COVID-tinged Games

Long before the global pandemic upended sports and the world in general, the 2022 Winter Olympics faced unsettling problems. It started with the fact that hardly anybody wanted to host them. Beijing ended up solving that problem, but only after four European cities thought about it and dropped out, mostly because of expense and lack of public support. In the end, it was a race between two authoritarian countries. The IOC narrowly chose China’s capital and its mostly bone-dry surrounding mountains over a bid from Kazakhstan. “It really is a safe choice,” IOC President Thomas Bach said after the balloting.
3rd Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

A different COVID-19 vaccine debate: Do we need new ones?

COVID-19 vaccines are saving an untold number of lives, but they can’t stop the chaos when a hugely contagious new mutant bursts on the scene, leading people to wonder: Will we need boosters every few months? A new vaccine recipe? A new type of shot altogether? That’s far from settled, but with the shots still doing their main job many experts are cautioning against setting too high a bar. “We need collectively to be rethinking what is the goal of vaccination,” said Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, infectious disease chief at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. “It’s unrealistic ... to believe that any kind of vaccination is going to protect people from infection, from mild symptomatic disease, forever.”
3rd Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Succession scramble grips Italian family firms after COVID scare

"Italian entrepreneurs often tighten their grip on their firms as they get older, fearing there may not be a future without them at the helm," he said. Yet a year into the pandemic, Giacomo Carlo Archiutti sold 30% of the kitchen manufacturer he founded in 1967 in Italy's industrial north east to a private equity firm. Pre-pandemic the Archiuttis would have stood out as a rarity, an Italian family-owned business welcoming an external investor as a first step to addressing succession planning.
3rd Feb 2022 - Reuters on MSN.com

Covid: Europe set for ‘long period of tranquillity’ in pandemic, says WHO

Europe could soon enter a “long period of tranquillity” that amounts to a “ceasefire” in the pandemic thanks to the less severe Omicron variant, high levels of immunity and the arrival of warmer spring weather, the World Health Organization has said. In an upbeat assessment, Hans Kluge, the WHO’s Europe director, said the region was in a position of “higher protection” that could “bring us enduring peace”, even if a new, more virulent variant than Omicron should emerge. Kluge said the 53-country region – which includes the UK – had recorded 12 million new coronavirus cases last week, the highest single weekly total of the pandemic, with about 22% of all tests returning a positive result.
3rd Feb 2022 - The Guardian

Brown University Hopes to Drop Masks in Classrooms This Spring

Brown University may allow students to finally ditch their masks this spring, barring any new disruptive variants, said President Christina Paxson. “I would love to lose the masks,” Paxson said in an interview with Bloomberg News. Going maskless allows people to see people’s smiles and confused faces, expressions that matter in an educational environment, she said. Providence, Rhode Island-based Brown, like many other institutions, is preparing for the point when Covid becomes endemic. Two years into the pandemic, that day may be nearing, with vaccines required by many colleges and the contagious omicron variant starting to pass its crest in the U.S. Paxson said she consulted with Ashish Jha, dean of Brown’s School of Public Health, and the institution could end indoor mask mandates in the coming months.
3rd Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

COVID inequity: In Africa, at-home tests are scarce, costly

After learning that a friend tested positive for COVID-19, Thembi Ndlovu went to a health clinic in Zimbabwe’s capital in search of a free coronavirus test. But there were none left that day, leaving the 34-year-old hairdresser unsure if she needed to take precautions to protect clients. “I wish we could just walk into a pharmacy and buy a cheap self-testing kit like we do with pregnancy or HIV,” she said as she left the clinic in a working-class township of Harare. “It would be much easier.” For millions of people in rich countries, COVID-19 self-tests are abundant and free, including in Britain, Canada, France and Germany. But most people across Africa have limited access to them.
3rd Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Fortress New Zealand delays full reopening until October

New Zealand on Thursday announced a phased reopening of its border that has been largely closed for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but travel bodies said self-isolation rules need to be removed to revive the struggling tourism sector. Vaccinated New Zealanders in Australia can travel home from Feb. 27 without a requirement to stay at state-managed quarantine facilities, while New Zealand citizens in the rest of the world will be able to do so two weeks later, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. Foreign vaccinated backpackers and some skilled workers can come to the country beginning March 13, while up to 5,000 international students will be allowed to enter from April 12.
3rd Feb 2022 - Reuters

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Exposure to one nasal droplet enough for Covid infection – study

Exposure to a single nasal droplet is sufficient to become infected with Covid-19, according to a landmark trial in which healthy volunteers were intentionally given a dose of the virus. The trial, the first to have monitored people during the entire course of infection, also found that people typically develop symptoms very quickly – on average, within two days of encountering the virus – and are most infectious five days into the infection. The study was carried out using a strain of the virus before the emergence of the Alpha, Delta and Omicron variants. The trial’s chief investigator, Prof Christopher Chiu, of Imperial College London, said: “Our study reveals some very interesting clinical insights, particularly around the short incubation period of the virus, extremely high viral shedding from the nose, as well as the utility of lateral flow tests, with potential implications for public health.”
2nd Feb 2022 - The Guardian

Uganda’s night life roars back after nearly two years of COVID restrictions

Throngs of revellers filled The Levels bar in Uganda’s capital Kampala, dancing to live music and ordering bottle service to their tables, on Monday night. Nearly two years after the government shut down bars and nightclubs and banned outdoor musical performances and other entertainment activities to combat COVID-19,
2nd Feb 2022 - CNBC Africa

Germany to allow large events with up to 10000 spectators

Germany will allow up to 10,000 spectators at major outdoor events such as Bundesliga soccer games, the 16 federal states agreed on Wednesday. The decision, which also allows up to 4,000 participants in indoor spaces, aims to harmonize currently varying rules for stadium attendance at a state-by-state level. The new rules take effect as soon as the federal states update their regulation. Masks must be worn, and proof of vaccination or recovery, as well as a booster shot or negative test status, depending on the state, will also be required, said the resolution seen by Reuters.
2nd Feb 2022 - Reuters

Finnish government to remove COVID-19 restrictions

Finland will begin lifting restrictions put in place to check the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant, with the aim of removing all curbs at the beginning of March, Prime Minister Sanna Marin told reporters on Wednesday. Heavy restrictions put in place just after Christmas had forced many restaurants and cultural and sports venues to temporarily lay off staff and cancel events. The government now plans to allow restaurants to remain open until midnight and remove curbs on public gatherings from Feb. 14, Marin said, adding the aim is to remove all restrictions at the start of next month.
2nd Feb 2022 - Reuters

Norway ends most curbs despite rising COVID infections

Norway will scrap most of its remaining COVID-19 lockdown measures with immediate effect as a spike in coronavirus infections is unlikely to jeopardise health services, the prime minister said on Tuesday. Restaurants will again be allowed to serve alcohol beyond 11 o'clock at night, working from home will no longer be mandatory and the limit of 10 visitors in private homes will be removed, Jonas Gahr Stoere told a news conference. "Even if many more people are becoming infected, there are fewer who are hospitalised. We're well protected by vaccines. This means that we can relax many measures even as infections are rising rapidly," Stoere said.
2nd Feb 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer asks FDA to allow COVID-19 vaccine for kids under 5

Pfizer on Tuesday asked the U.S. to authorize extra-low doses of its COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5, potentially opening the way for the very youngest Americans to start receiving shots as early as March. In an extraordinary move, the Food and Drug Administration had urged Pfizer and its partner BioNTech to apply earlier than the companies had planned — and before it’s settled if the youngsters will need two shots or three. The nation’s 19 million children under 5 are the only group not yet eligible for vaccination against the coronavirus. Many parents have been pushing for an expansion of shots to toddlers and preschoolers, especially as the omicron variant sent record numbers of youngsters to the hospital.
2nd Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Olympic advisors at ease with COVID rate, see cases falling

With more than 30 new COVID-19 cases being detected daily ahead of the Beijing Olympics, organizers said Wednesday they aren’t worried and expect numbers to drop within days. A total of 32 new cases — 15 in tests of people arriving at the airport and 17 within the Olympic bubbles — were reported by the Beijing organizing committee on Wednesday, two days before the opening ceremony. The average was 31 cases over the past three days. Athletes and team officials accounted for nine of the latest cases and 23 were “stakeholders,” a category that includes workers and media. Athletes testing positive now could miss their events. Eleven people have been treated at the hospital for a symptom among the 232 positive tests registered since Jan. 23, though “none of those are seriously ill in any way,” Olympic medical advisor Brian McCloskey said.
2nd Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Beijing says COVID-19 situation 'controllable,' 'safe'

Beijing reported three new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday as officials said the virus situation was under control with the Olympic Games set to open later in the week. The three cases reported in the 24-hour period from Tuesday to Wednesday all involved people under some sort of quarantine. “The current pandemic situation in the capital is overall controllable and it’s headed in a good direction,” said Xu Hejian, a spokesman for the city government, at a daily press briefing. “Beijing is safe.” The Chinese capital has been on high-alert as it prepares to host the Winter Olympics starting Friday.
2nd Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

U.S. considers authorization of first COVID vaccine for children under 5

U.S. regulators are considering the first COVID-19 vaccine for children under the age of 5, the only age group not yet eligible for the shots, after Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and BioNTech SE began the regulatory approval process on Tuesday. A decision is expected as soon as this month. The companies said they began submitting data for an emergency use authorization even though they did not meet a key target in their clinical trial of 2- to 4- year olds. They are submitting the data at the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in order to address an urgent public health need in the age group, they said.
2nd Feb 2022 - Reuters

Czech Republic to end mandatory COVID testing this month

The Czech Republic’s government has agreed to end mandatory coronavirus testing at schools and companies this month, the prime minister said Wednesday. The testing “undoubtedly” helped slow down the spread of infections and prevented the health system from being overwhelmed, Prime Minister Petr Fiala said. “Given the development, we’ve decided to end the compulsory testing on Feb. 18,” Fiala said. All company employees have been tested twice a week while schoolchildren and all school employees have been tested once a week since Jan. 17.
2nd Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Daily Covid death toll will no longer be published by Easter under plan to ‘live with Covid’, source says

The Government has refused to rule out cancelling the daily publication of Covid deaths after a senior Whitehall source told i that Boris Johnson wants to end the update by Easter “at the latest”. Downing Street, the Department of Health and Social Care and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) all refused to comment on proposals to bring an end to the daily Covid figures that have become part of the daily routine of the pandemic. However, a senior Whitehall source familiar with the plans told i: “The Prime Minister has pencilled in Easter as the latest date by which the daily Covid statistics will be published in their current form. In an ideal situation he will bring an end to them sooner if the current downward trend in deaths continues.”
1st Feb 2022 - iNews

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Norway Scales Back Most Covid-19 Restrictions

Norway is easing most of the measures to curb infection and aims to remove the rest in a couple of weeks as it bets a high level of vaccination will be enough to shield the health system from overloading. Limits on guests at private gatherings, a curb on the service of alcohol in bars and restaurants, and testing after arriving at the border have all been removed, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told reporters in Oslo on Tuesday. Face masks will still need to be worn in shops, shopping centers and on public transport where a distance of a meter can’t be maintained. Norway is joining countries such as neighboring Denmark, Ireland and the U.K. in scaling back restrictions, expecting the coronavirus to turn endemic. The omicron variant has pushed infection rates to records, but hospitalization rates have remained below highs, indicating that the milder variant and booster shots will enable the country to return to an everyday without controls.
2nd Feb 2022 - Bloomberg

Gilead COVID drug takes top spot for U.S. hospital spending -report

Gilead Sciences Inc's COVID-19 drug remdesivir last year overtook AbbVie Inc's 20-year-old arthritis drug Humira as the medicine that U.S. hospitals spent the most on, according to Vizient Inc, a purchasing group used by about half the nation's hospitals. Remdesivir, an intravenous antiviral approved early in the pandemic for hospitalized COVID patients and authorized last month for high-risk outpatients, could retain the top spot through mid-2023, according to Vizient's projections. The group purchasing organization said Gilead's drug, sold as Veklury, made up 3.42% of total member spending on pharmaceuticals during October 2020 to September 2021.
1st Feb 2022 - Reuters

US urges Pfizer to apply for under-5 COVID shots

Pfizer on Tuesday asked the U.S. to authorize extra-low doses of its COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5, potentially opening the way for the very youngest Americans to start receiving shots as early as March. In an extraordinary move, the Food and Drug Administration had urged Pfizer and its partner BioNTech to apply earlier than the companies had planned — and before it’s settled if the youngsters will need two shots or three. The nation’s 19 million children under 5 are the only group not yet eligible for vaccination against the coronavirus. Many parents have been pushing for an expansion of shots to toddlers and preschoolers, especially as the omicron variant sent record numbers of youngsters to the hospital.
1st Feb 2022 - The Associated Press

Dr. Tom Frieden: Why I'm cautiously optimistic about Covid-19

Although it's possible that deadly new coronavirus variants could emerge, I'm more optimistic today than at any point since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Here's why. Despite growing pandemic fatigue and rough weeks ahead as the Omicron tsunami recedes, we're better defended against Covid than ever. Vaccines and prior infection have steadily strengthened our collective immune defenses. We have now built up a wall of immunity -- although we have lost far, far too many people along the way to get here. In 2020, failure to follow public health recommendations greatly increased the death toll in the United States and elsewhere. In 2021, failure to reach people with vaccination -- largely due to partisan opposition and entrenched resistance in the US, and lack of access in many countries -- had lethal consequences. We've already lost nearly 900,000 people to Covid in the United States alone and are closing in on the grim milestone of a million American deaths. Most could have been prevented. But now, we can have the upper hand over Covid because our defenses are multilayered and strong, starting with immunity.
1st Feb 2022 - CNN

Denmark ends most COVID-19 restrictions

Denmark on Tuesday became one of the first European Union countries to scrap most pandemic restrictions as the Scandinavian country no longer considers the COVID-19 outbreak “a socially critical disease.” The reason for that is that while the omicron variant is surging in Denmark, it's not placing a heavy burden on the health system and the country has a high vaccination rate, officials have said. Denmark has in recent weeks seen more than 50,000 daily cases on average while the number of people in hospital intensive care units has dropped. The most visible restriction disappearing is the wearing of face masks, which are no longer mandatory on public transportation, shops and for standing clients in restaurant indoor areas. Authorities only recommend mask use in hospitals, health care facilities and nursing homes.
1st Feb 2022 - The Independent

Covid-19: ‘Highest risk’ patients to get faster access to NHS treatment after testing rule change

Cancer patients and others at highest risk of dying from Covid-19 will have quicker access to life-saving antibody and antiviral treatments on the NHS after the Government quietly altered the rules over PCR tests. It comes after i revealed thousands of cancer and other patients with severely compromised immune systems fear they will die from the virus because delays and bureaucratic chaos is stopping them from getting fast-acting drugs in time for them to work. Around 1.3 million people the Government has classified as most at risk from Covid should have received a rapid PCR test and eligibility letter about the targeted NHS treatment programme by January 10, but charity helplines have been flooded with people complaining they have been left out.
1st Feb 2022 - iNews

As Israel learns to live with COVID, hospitals struggle to cope

A global leader in vaccine rollout during early waves of the coronavirus, Israel's government has adopted "Living with COVID" as its mantra since a few months before Omicron arrived. The variant is milder than previous incarnations of the virus, but that's scant consolation to the medics and nurses staffing COVID-19 wards whose workloads have soared again in parallel with case numbers. "The staff are exhausted," said Yoram Weiss, acting director general of Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. "It's not like we're starting the first outbreak where everybody was full of energy."
1st Feb 2022 - Reuters

COVID shines spotlight on imbalanced approach to death globally -expert panel

The way we die needs a fundamental rethink, according to a group of international experts, who say COVID-19 has shed a harsh spotlight on care for the dying. Death has been “overmedicalized” and millions around the globe are suffering unnecessarily at the end of their lives as a result, with healthcare workers in wealthy nations seeking to prolong life rather than support death, according to an expert panel convened by the Lancet medical journal. At the same time, around half of people globally die without any palliative care or pain relief, particularly in lower-income countries
1st Feb 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 1st Feb 2022

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Thailand Ready for Rush of Tourists With Quarantine-Free Visas

Thailand expects to welcome hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers a month with the kickoff of a quarantine-free visa program that’s set to serve as a model for tourism-reliant countries balancing safe border reopenings with economic revival. Starting Tuesday, visitors of any nationality can apply for quarantine-free entry into Thailand, provided they are fully vaccinated. The government expects between 200,000 and 300,000 travelers to take advantage of the so-called Test & Go program in February alone, with the numbers expected to swell in the following months.
31st Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

U.S. Treasury economist sees inflation pressures easing if pandemic recedes

U.S. inflationary pressures should ease in 2022 due to weaker demand for goods, easing supply bottlenecks and a receding coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Treasury's top economist said on Monday. In a statement released alongside the Treasury's quarterly borrowing estimates, Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy Ben Harris said he expects energy prices to stabilize in 2022, but geopolitical instability could push prices higher. Harris said the course of the pandemic remains a primary downside risk to the U.S. economic outlook, along with supply chain disruptions, high energy prices and housing costs.
31st Jan 2022 - Reuters

Johnson vows changes after lockdown parties report condemns UK leadership failures

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced renewed calls to resign on Monday after a report found that alcohol-fuelled events at his offices and residence when COVID-19 lockdown rules were in force should never have taken place. The report by senior civil servant Sue Gray into the lockdown gatherings, which occurred when Britons were all but banned from social mixing under coronavirus restrictions, pointed to "serious failures of leadership" at the heart of the British government. She condemned some of the behaviour in government as being "difficult to justify", saying "the excessive consumption of alcohol is not appropriate in a professional workplace at any time".
31st Jan 2022 - Reuters

England plans to revoke mandatory COVID jabs for health workers

The British government plans to revoke its decision to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for health workers in England after warnings that an already-stretched service could face serious staff shortages. The policy would have required employees in the state-run National Health Service and social care workers to be fully vaccinated by April 1. This means they would have to receive their first shot this week to meet that deadline.
31st Jan 2022 - Reuters

‘Felt like a bullet’: Bhutan PM mourns kingdom’s rare COVID death

Bhutan’s success in avoiding coronavirus is almost unrivalled but a rare patient death – just the kingdom’s fourth – shows more work was needed to fight the pandemic there, its leader says. The remote Himalayan nation of around 800,000 people, sandwiched between China and India, has recorded fewer COVID-19 fatalities than almost anywhere else in the world.
31st Jan 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Report slams lockdown parties by Boris Johnson and staff

Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologized Monday after an inquiry found that Downing Street parties while Britain was in lockdown represented a “serious failure” to observe the standards expected of government or to heed the sacrifices made by millions of people during the pandemic. Johnson brushed off calls to quit over the “partygate” scandal, promising to reform the way his office is run and insisting that he and his government can be trusted. But he faced criticism from some of his own Conservative colleagues, who have the power to oust a leader some fear has become damaged goods. One Conservative lawmaker accused the prime minister of taking him for “a fool.” “I get it, and I will fix it,” Johnson said in Parliament after senior civil servant Sue Gray published interim findings on several gatherings in 2020 and 2021 while the U.K. was under government-imposed restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
31st Jan 2022 - The Associated Press

Omicron Pushes Health Authorities Toward Learning to Live With Covid-19

The Omicron variant spreads so quickly and generally causes such a mild form of illness among vaccinated populations that countries are tolerating greater Covid-19 outbreaks, willingly letting infections balloon to levels that not long ago would have been treated as public-health crises. From different starting points, authorities in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific are moving in the same direction, offering a glimpse into a future in which Covid-19 becomes accepted as a fact of everyday life, like seasonal flu. Health officials everywhere, many for the first time, are forgoing some of the sharpest tools they have to combat Omicron—even as infections soar. They are accepting the virus like never before to minimize disruptions to economies, education and everyday life.
31st Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

This map is the key to when US might start easing Covid-19 restrictions

Denmark has decided to lift all Covid-19 restrictions within the country, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced Wednesday evening, adding that Covid-19 "should no longer be categorized as a socially critical sickness." "Denmark will be completely open from 1 February," Frederiksen said. "Tonight we can start lowering our shoulders and find our smiles again. "The pandemic is still here, but with what we know now, we dare to believe that we are through the critical phase," Frederiksen added, highlighting the success of Denmark's vaccination program and booster shots.
31st Jan 2022 - CNN

Experts say the COVID-19 emergency could end this year. What would it look like?

On the cusp of the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is battling back the biggest surge of the virus yet with the omicron variant. Cases, even while receding in some places, are near record levels. And daily deaths, while lower than the peak of last winter, are still averaging more than 2,000 nationwide. Despite pitched battles over masks and vaccines, life appears somewhat normal in many respects -- kids are going to school, people are going into work and large indoor gatherings and events are being held.
31st Jan 2022 - ABC News

Indonesia says Bali to reopen to foreign travellers, again

Indonesia's holiday island of Bali will start welcoming back travellers from all countries from later this week, officials said on Monday, more than three months after announcing it was open to selected nationalities. Though Bali officially opened to visitors from China, New Zealand, and Japan among other countries in mid October, there has since been no direct flights, Tourism minister Sandiaga Uno told a briefing. The reopening follows similar announcements by Thailand and the Philippines, which put quarantine waivers on hold in December over initial uncertainty about vaccine efficacy against the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
31st Jan 2022 - Reuters

Give back the money, UK tells COVID fraudsters

Britain's public spending chief on Monday urged fraudsters who swindled billions of dollars of COVID support money from the state to give the cash back. Chief Secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke said the tax service, known in Britain as HM Revenue & Customs, would pursue anyone who had taken money fraudulently. "We will now pursue anybody who has taken this money fraudulently," Clarke told LBC radio. "And I would urge anyone who's taken that money and didn't really need it to make contact with HMRC."
31st Jan 2022 - Reuters

Clinics in Moscow now offering Sputnik M vaccines to 12-17s

The Russian capital on Monday has started offering a domestically developed coronavirus vaccine to children in the 12-17 age group amid the country’s biggest infection surge yet due to the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant.
31st Jan 2022 - The Associated Press

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 31st Jan 2022

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Covid-Infected HIV Patient Developed 21 Mutations, Study Shows

A South African woman suffering from inadequately treated HIV, and who harbored Covid-19 for nine months saw the respiratory virus develop at least 21 mutations while in her body, according to a study. Once the 22-year-old adhered to the anti-retroviral medication used to treat HIV and her immune system strengthened she was able overcome the Covid-19 infection within six to nine weeks, the study, led by scientists from Stellenbosch and the University the University of KwaZulu-Natal showed. The research has not been peer reviewed.
30th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Britain to offer COVID vaccinations to vulnerable children aged 5-11

Britain will this week begin offering vaccinations to children aged between five and 11 who are most at risk from coronavirus, the state-run National Health Service said on Sunday. Britain has been slower than some other countries in offering the shots to 5-11 year olds, and is not planning to vaccinate the age group more broadly unlike countries such as the United States and Israel. NHS England said children in the cohort who were in a clinical risk group or who live with someone who is immunosuppressed would be able to get a first COVID-19 shot, in line with advice issued last month by the Joint Committee on Vaccine and Immunisation (JCVI).
30th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Explainer: Scientists on alert over rising cases caused by Omicron cousin BA.2

The highly transmissible Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus - the most common form of which is known as BA.1 - now accounts for nearly all of the coronavirus infections globally, although dramatic surges in COVID cases have already peaked in some countries. Scientists are now tracking a rise in cases caused by a close cousin known as BA.2, which is starting to outcompete BA.1 in parts of Europe and Asia. The following is what we know so far about the new subvariant:
30th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Beijing reports highest number of Covid cases in 18 MONTHS just five days before Winter Olympics

Covid cases in China have spiked to their highest point in 18 months, Beijing said There were 54 cases across the whole country, with 13 in athletes and officials The Winter Olympics are set to begin in just five days in China's capital of Beijing
30th Jan 2022 - Daily Mail

Long Covid study finds abnormality in lungs that could explain breathlessness

Abnormalities have been identified in the lungs of long Covid patients that could offer a potential explanation for why some people experience breathlessness long after their initial infection. The findings, from a pilot study involving 36 patients, raise the possibility that Covid may cause microscopic damage to the lungs that is not detected using routine tests. Breathlessness is a symptom in the majority of long Covid patients, but it has been unclear whether this is linked to other factors such as changes in breathing patterns, tiredness, or something more fundamental. According to Dr Emily Fraser, a consultant at Oxford university hospitals and a co-author of the study, the latest findings are the first evidence that underlying lung health could be impaired.
29th Jan 2022 - The Guardian

China reports jump in COVID cases among Olympic athletes, officials

Daily COVID-19 infections among athletes and team officials at the Beijing Winter Olympics jumped to 19 on Friday from two a day earlier, as Games organisers warned of more cases in coming days. Including the athletes and officials, 36 Games-related personnel were found to be infected - 29 when they arrived at the Beijing airport and seven already in the "closed loop" bubble that separates event personnel from the public, the organising committee said in a statement on Saturday. "We are now just going through the peak period of people arriving in China and therefore we expect to see the highest numbers at this stage," the Games' medical chief, Brian McCloskey, told a news conference.
29th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Morocco starts construction of COVID vaccine plant

Morocco has inaugurated the construction of a COVID vaccine manufacturing plant in partnership with Swedish firm Recipharm, as the country also announced it would end a flight ban that has been in place since last November. The factory, to be known as Sensyo Pharmatech, will produce vaccines against coronavirus and other diseases, with production expected to reach 116 million units in 2024, the official news agency MAP reported on Thursday.
29th Jan 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Covid-19 Curbs Eased Further in Europe as New Version of Omicron Spreads in Places

Several European countries have lifted or relaxed Covid-19 restrictions, citing the milder symptoms being caused by the Omicron variant in vaccinated people—even as daily infections continued to surge in some countries and a new version of Omicron was identified as spreading in places. In the U.S., the number of recorded cases and the number of patients with Covid-19 in hospitals slipped further, while the number of recorded Covid-19 deaths rose to its highest since early last year. The daily average of Covid-19 deaths recorded over the seven days to Wednesday was 2,301, the highest figure since February. Denmark said it would lift most mandatory restrictions on Feb. 1. Premier Mette Frederiksen said Wednesday that measures ranging from mask mandates, to mandatory vaccinations for access to some public spaces and shortened opening times for some businesses would all end, with some traveling restrictions remaining in place until the end of February.
28th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Lifting England Covid rules while 3bn people unvaccinated reckless – experts

Boris Johnson has been accused of taking a reckless approach to public health by failing to take enough action to get jabs to 3 billion unvaccinated people in poorer countries while lifting all plan B Covid restrictions in England. The prime minister has robustly defended his record on the pandemic this week while awaiting the findings of the Sue Gray report on the “partygate” scandal, insisting he “got the big calls right” on the biggest global health crisis in a century. But now more than 300 leading scientists, health experts and academics have said his failure to take sufficient action to boost vaccination levels worldwide means it is more likely new variants will put thousands of lives at risk across the UK. “We write to you as scientists, academics, and public health experts concerned about the emergence of the Omicron variant and the threat that future variants may pose to public health, the NHS, and the UK’s vaccination programme,” they said in a two-page letter delivered to 10 Downing Street.
28th Jan 2022 - The Guardian

Britain to start rolling out Pfizer COVID pill next month

Britain will start rolling out Pfizer's COVID-19 pill to vulnerable people next month, the health ministry said on Friday, targeting the treatment at people with compromised immune systems for whom the vaccine can be less effective. The health ministry said that Pfizer's antiviral treatment Paxlovid, a combination of Pfizer's pill with an older antiviral ritonavir, will be made available to thousands of people from Feb. 10. "It is fantastic news that this new treatment, the latest cutting-edge drug that the NHS is rolling out through new COVID-19 medicine delivery units, will now be available to help those at highest risk of COVID-19," National Health Service medical director Stephen Powis said.
28th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Russia Suffered Deadliest Year Since World War as Covid Unbroken

Russia suffered its deadliest year since World War II as the Covid-19 pandemic shows little sign of relenting. There were 54,630 deaths associated with the virus last month, according to data released by the Federal Statistics Service late Friday. That was a 38% decrease from the record set in November but still the third-highest month since the start of the pandemic. The latest data bring total fatalities linked to Covid-19 in Russia to more than 680,000 since the virus first spread. Excluding immigration, Russia’s population fell by 1.04 million last year. The country has been ravaged by Covid-19 amid widespread resistance to getting inoculated, despite the availability of free domestic vaccines.
28th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Embattled CDC Rethinks Pandemic Response After Criticism of Guidelines

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is looking to reassert itself in the country’s Covid-19 response amid criticism it has sown more confusion than it has offered answers. Among the first orders of business, according to the agency, is upgrading data collection that has hobbled decision making and clearing up messaging that has confused many. Yet the steps may not be enough to fix problems at the nation’s premier public-health agency exposed by the pandemic. And the CDC may not have much time, as a new variant could emerge after Omicron crests. “Moving fast and risk-taking in a setting of ambiguity is not CDC’s strength—it’s not what they do,” said Charity Dean, previously a California Department of Health official who resigned during the pandemic.
28th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Locking down homes, Hong Kong takes COVID lesson from Beijing

Collecting sewage samples, mandatory mass-testing and sealing off residential buildings for days on end, Hong Kong is stamping out its worst COVID-19 outbreak by taking a page out of Beijing’s playbook – much to the frustration of its residents. At Kwai Chung Estate, the site of a growing Omicron outbreak, authorities have placed three blocks under lockdown for five to seven days. On Thursday, the city, which has adopted a strict “zero COVID” policy to align with mainland China, reported a daily record of 164 cases.
28th Jan 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 28th Jan 2022

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Hong Kong to cut quarantine for arrivals to 14 days from next month

Hong Kong will cut quarantine for arriving travellers to 14 days from 21 starting Feb. 5, leader Carrie Lam said on Thursday, a move that follows intense lobbying from finance executives and diplomats who said the measure was hurting competitiveness. Tough coronavirus rules have made Hong Kong one of the world's most isolated cities, with flights down as much as 90%. Residents returning from more than 160 countries have been required to quarantine for 21 days in designated hotels will now have to spend 14 days in a hotel, followed by seven days of self-monitoring, with further details to be announced.
27th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Despite U.S. cases decline, the country doesn't have 'control' of virus, Fauci says

On Wednesday, infections declined to an average of 601,302 in the seven-day average, and current hospitalization have leveled off to 148,710, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. These numbers do not indicate the country has “sufficient control,” a critical point the nation must reach so the virus doesn’t “dominate” our lives, Anthony S. Fauci said at a briefing by the White House covid-19 task force. Fauci said the nation can still reach some level of normalcy with effective tools, referring to vaccinations, boosters and antivirals. “That is not where we are at this point,” he said. “So we still have a way to go.”
27th Jan 2022 - The Washington Post

COVID-19: Sainsbury's and Waitrose advise shoppers and staff to keep wearing face coverings

Supermarket chains Sainsbury's and Waitrose will be asking people to continue to wear a face covering in their stores when restrictions ease in England on Thursday. Mandatory wearing of face masks is being scrapped as part of the lifting of Plan B measures - with work from home guidance and COVID passports also being dropped. Sainsbury's told Sky News it will continue to have a number of safety measures in its stores in an effort to keep customers and staff safe. Its guidance will also apply to Argos and Habitat stores, which are part of the Sainsbury's business group. A spokesperson for Sainsbury's said: "Safety remains our highest priority.
27th Jan 2022 - Sky News

COVID-19: North Korea set to reopen borders and resume trading with China

North Korea is poised to reopen its borders amid fears its fragile economy is on the brink of collapse following a strict two-year lockdown. Pyongyang has shown signs it will finally ease tough restrictions as it resumed freight train traffic into neighbouring China last week. Trade between the two nations - crucial to North Korea - is said to have slumped by 80% in 2020. And it plunged again by two-thirds between January and September last year after North Korea sealed off its borders, according to South Korean estimates.
27th Jan 2022 - Sky News

Denmark becomes first EU country to scrap all COVID-19 restrictions

Denmark is to lift all remaining COVID-19 restrictions, with Omicron hospital admissions and deaths remaining stable and high rates of vaccination. “Tonight we can ... find the smile again. We have incredibly good news, we can now remove the last coronavirus restrictions in Denmark,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at a press conference, following recommendations from the Epidemic Commission and with all the main political parties’ support. The last restrictions will be dropped on February 1. The announcement comes as a new subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, is gaining a foothold in Denmark and driving infections up, with 46,000 new COVID-19 cases recorded on Wednesday.
27th Jan 2022 - POLITICO Europe

Virus-ravaged Iran finds brief respite with mass vaccination

As much of the world sees vaccination slowing and infections soaring with the spread of omicron, Iran has found a rare, if fleeting, respite from the anxiety and trauma of the pandemic. After successive virus waves pummeled the country for nearly two years, belated mass vaccination under a new, hard-line president has, for a brief moment, left the stricken nation with a feeling of apparent safety. Now, the specter of an omicron-fueled surge looms large. Hospitals are preparing for the worst as infections tick upward after a monthslong lull. But so far, the variant has not battered the Islamic Republic as it has many Western countries where most adults got jabs a year ago.
27th Jan 2022 - The Associated Press

Expats head for the exit as 'easy' Singapore's COVID controls bite

Atar Sandler arrived in Singapore in 2019, seizing the opportunity to live in a buzzing global city that is also a convenient base to jet off to more exotic locales nearby. But after two years of mask-wearing, socialising in small groups and travel restrictions to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the Israeli human resources professional packed her bags for New York with her husband and children this month. "It's been like this for so long. And it doesn't feel like anything's going to change here," said Sandler.
27th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Finland moves up planned easing of COVID restrictions

Finland will begin gradually easing COVID-19 restrictions from Feb. 1 instead of mid-February as initially planned as the burden on its hospitals eases, the government said late on Thursday. On Jan. 18, Prime Minister Sanna Marin said Finland would begin scaling back restrictions from mid-February, but signs of stabilization in the infection rate caused by the Omicron variant of the virus led the government to alter its plan. "The burden on intensive care units has taken a turn in a better direction," Finland's minister for health and social affairs Hanna Sarkkinen told reporters.
27th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Anti-vaccine Canada truckers roll toward Ottawa, praised by Tesla's Musk

Canadian truck drivers determined to shut down central Ottawa over a federal government vaccine mandate rolled across the country toward the capital on Thursday, boosted by praise from Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk. The protesters are unhappy that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government has imposed a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for cross-border truck drivers. Industry officials say 90% of drivers traversing the U.S. frontier are inoculated but a minority have refused, saying the mandate contravenes personal freedom.
27th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 27th Jan 2022

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Omicron Deaths in U.S. Exceed Delta’s Peak as Covid-19 Optimism Rises in Europe

More signs emerged that the Omicron wave is taking a less serious human toll in Europe than earlier phases of the pandemic, while U.S. data showed daily average deaths from the disease exceeding the peak reached during the surge driven by the previously dominant Delta variant. In the U.S., the seven-day average for newly reported Covid-19 deaths reached 2,258 a day on Tuesday, up about 1,000 from daily death counts two months ago. That is the highest since February 2021 as the country was emerging from the worst of last winter’s wave. While there is a large body of evidence suggesting that Omicron is less likely to kill the people it infects, it spreads much more quickly and therefore infects many more people than earlier variants, epidemiologists say. Case counts in the U.S. have dwarfed previous records.
26th Jan 2022 - Wall Street Journal

Lufthansa Bans Freight From Transiting Frankfurt Due to Omicron

Deutsche Lufthansa banned cargo from moving through its Frankfurt hub due to surging Covid-19 infections and related staff shortages in the German city. The move will impact goods arriving from other parts of Germany, the rest of Europe and North America. Direct deliveries to Frankfurt -- a major transport hub for coronavirus vaccines -- are still possible, Lufthansa said.
26th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Denmark to End Covid Curbs as Premier Deems Critical Phase Over

Denmark will end virus restrictions next week and reclassify Covid-19 as a disease that no longer poses a threat to society, even as infections in the Nordic nation are at record high. The Nordic country won’t extend the pandemic measures beyond Jan. 31, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a news conference, confirming earlier reports by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper and Bloomberg News. Denmark’s hospitalizations are declining, indicating that omicron is less dangerous than earlier variants of the virus despite a million Danes infected in the last two months.
26th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Where Is the Operation Warp Speed for Covid Testing?

The U.S. is awash in vaccine doses, but the availability of tests has been a problem throughout the most intense surges of the Covid-19 crisis. That’s because while there was an Operation Warp Speed to create vaccines, there hasn’t been a comparable initiative for tests. In response to the omicron wave, the administration of President Joe Biden has stepped up its investments in testing.
26th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

German lawmakers debate compulsory COVID shots as infections surge

German lawmakers agonised over whether to impose compulsory COVID-19 shots on Wednesday, as new record daily COVID-19 infections and the country's stuttering vaccination campaign forced them into an ethical and constitutional dilemma. Protesters stood in small groups around the Reichstag parliament building, surrounded by police, as politicians within presented cross-party motions. Chancellor Olaf Scholz backs compulsory vaccines for over-18s but his coalition government is divided on the issue and he has told lawmakers to vote according to conscience.
26th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Covid-19: Vaccine passports scrapped as coronavirus rules ease

Proof of Covid-19 status to enter bars, restaurants and cinemas has been scrapped in Northern Ireland. The change took effect at 12:00 GMT following a decision by Stormont ministers last week. Nightclubs - which were forced to close on 26 December - can now also reopen, along with the return of indoor standing events. Vaccine passports will still be required to access nightclubs and large events.
26th Jan 2022 - BBC News

COVID-19 booster drive is faltering in the US

The COVID-19 booster drive in the U.S. is losing steam, worrying health experts who have pleaded with Americans to get an extra shot to shore up their protection against the highly contagious omicron variant. Just 40% of fully vaccinated Americans have received a booster dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention And the average number of booster shots dispensed per day in the U.S. has plummeted from a peak of 1 million in early December to about 490,000 as of last week. Also, a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that Americans are more likely to see the initial vaccinations — rather than a booster — as essential.
26th Jan 2022 - The Independent

China to mass test millions for Covid ahead of 2022 Winter Olympics

China is trying to squash any coronavirus outbreaks by repeatedly mass testing citizens before fans start arriving for the Winter Olympics next month. Beijing’s Fengtai district announced it would start testing its two million people on Tuesday, making it the third time the capital’s residents are getting tested since last weekend. The spectacle is set to start in just nine days – on February 4 – and officials are taking extremely careful measures to make sure Covid does not ruin any plans. Anyone in China who buys headache, fever or other cold medicine will be forced to get tested within 72 hours of doing so.
26th Jan 2022 - Metro

U.S. weighs letting diplomats leave China over tough COVID rules

The U.S. State Department is considering whether to authorize departures for American diplomats and their families in China who wish to leave due to the U.S. government's inability to prevent Chinese authorities from subjecting them to intrusive pandemic control measures. Two sources familiar with the issue said the U.S. Embassy had sent the request to Washington for formal sign off, as China ramps up COVID-19 containment protocols ahead of the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics in less than two weeks.
26th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Austria ends lockdown on unvaccinated as pressure on hospitals eases

Austria's lockdown for people not fully vaccinated against the coronavirus will end on Monday because the pressure on hospitals has eased, the government said. New daily coronavirus infections are rising, driven by the extremely contagious Omicron variant. They hit a new record above 30,000 on Wednesday, Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein told a news conference, adding that they would peak in the next two weeks at around 35,000 to 40,000.
26th Jan 2022 - Reuters

UK's Sunak vows to go after COVID loan fraudsters

British finance minister Rishi Sunak said on Wednesday the government would "do everything we can" to recover COVID-19 emergency business loans stolen by fraudsters that critics have said could run into the billions of pounds. "I'm not ignoring it, and I'm definitely not 'writing it off,'" Sunak said on Twitter. A British junior government minister resigned on Monday in protest at what he said were "woeful" efforts to stop the fraudulent abuse of coronavirus support schemes.
26th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 26th Jan 2022

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Student nurses urged to have Covid-19 jab or risk ability to join register

Nursing students who have not been double vaccinated against Covid-19 by April will not be able to undertake clinical placements, risking their ability to complete their studies and join the register. New guidance published by Health Education England (HEE) on 21 January offers answers to frequently asked questions around what the upcoming change in vaccination rules will mean for the nursing student population. All patient-facing health and care workers in England, unless medically exempt, will be required to have two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine by April, or they risk being redeployed or losing their jobs altogether. Unvaccinated staff and students will need to have had their first dose by 3 February in order to meet the requirements. In recent weeks, nursing leaders have called for the government’s new mandate to be delayed amid concerns over the impact it will have on the workforce.
25th Jan 2022 - Nursing Times

COVID-19: As UK restrictions lift, what challenges do we face before the 'end' of the pandemic - and when could that be?

The World Health Organisation has criticised political leaders for comparing coronavirus to flu again and stressed it is still "full of very nasty surprises" despite restrictions lifting in the UK. Announcing the scrapping of Plan B measures in England last week, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said that with "Omicron in retreat" we "must learn to live with COVID" as it could be "with us forever". But Dr David Nabarro, WHO special envoy on COVID-19, warned that "governments everywhere should not suggest the data has suddenly changed, or the virus got incredibly weak".
25th Jan 2022 - Sky News

Israel mulls offering 4th COVID vaccine dose to all adults

An Israeli government advisory panel has recommended offering a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose to all adults, on condition that at least five months have passed since they received the third or recovered from the illness, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday. Implementation of the measure, which would significantly expand eligibility now limited to the over-60s and other high-risk groups, is subject to approval by the ministry's director-general. It was not immediately clear when that might happen.
25th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer and BioNTech launch trial of Omicron-targeted COVID vaccine

Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE said they started a clinical trial to test a new version of their vaccine specifically designed to target the COVID-19 Omicron variant, which has eluded some of the protection provided by the original two-dose vaccine regimen. Banking on volunteers in the United States, the companies plan to test the immune response generated by the Omicron-based vaccine both as a three-shot regimen in unvaccinated people and as a booster shot for people who already received two doses of their original vaccine. They are also testing a fourth dose of the current vaccine against a fourth dose of the Omicron-based vaccine in people who received a third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine three to six months earlier.
25th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Omicron spreads in New Zealand, spoiling PM's wedding plans

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is postponing her wedding after announcing new COVID-19 restrictions Sunday following the discovery of nine cases of the omicron variant in a single family that flew to Auckland to attend a wedding. The so-called “red setting” of the country’s pandemic response includes heightened measures such as required mask wearing and limits on gatherings. The restrictions will go into effect on Monday. Ardern stressed that “red is not lockdown,” noting that businesses can remain open and people can still visit family and friends and move freely around the country. “Our plan for managing omicron cases in the early stage remains the same as delta, where we will rapidly test, contact trace and isolate cases and contacts in order to slow the spread,” Ardern told reporters.
24th Jan 2022 - The Associated Press

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 25th Jan 2022

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Canada's Trudeau slams 'fear mongering' over COVID vaccine mandate for truckers

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused conservative politicians of stoking fear that COVID-19 vaccine mandates for cross-border truck drivers are exacerbating supply chain disruptions and fueling inflation. The United States imposed a mandate, meant to aid the fight against the fast spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus, on Jan. 22, while Canada's started on Jan. 15. The trucking industry has warned the measure will take thousands of drivers off the roads during what is already a dire labor shortage in the industry
25th Jan 2022 - Reuters

India's Omicron wave may intensify in coming weeks -experts

India's COVID-19 infections, led by the Omicron variant, may see a sharp rise in the coming weeks, some top experts said, noting that the variant was already in community transmission and hospitals were seeing more patients despite a decline in cases in major cities. India reported 306,064 new infections over the last 24 hours, the health ministry said, about an 8% decline from the average daily cases reported in the last four days. Deaths were 439, the lowest in five days. But weekly positivity rates have risen to 17.03% in the week to Jan. 24, from about 0.63% Dec. 27, led by the highly-transmissible Omicron variant.
25th Jan 2022 - Reuters

S.Korea's daily COVID-19 count exceeds 8,000 for the first time -KDCA

South Korea's daily count of new coronavirus cases topped 8,000 for the first time on Tuesday, as the highly infectious Omicron variant spreads rapidly despite the recent extension of strict social-distancing rules to slow infection. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 8,571 cases for Monday, exceeding the previous high posted in mid-December of 7,848. The new record came amid the spread of the more transmissible Omicron variant which became dominant last week.
25th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Do not assume COVID pandemic reaching 'end game', warns WHO

Article reports that the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday that it was dangerous to assume the Omicron variant would herald the end of COVID-19's acutest phase, exhorting nations to stay focused to beat the pandemic. "It’s dangerous to assume that Omicron will be the last variant and that we are in the end game," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a WHO executive board meeting of the two-year pandemic that has killed nearly 6 million people. "On the contrary, globally the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge."
25th Jan 2022 - Reuters

England to drop COVID travel test demand, PM Johnson says

Fully vaccinated travellers arriving in Britain will no longer have to take a COVID-19 test, transport minister Grant Shapps said on Monday, as the government sets out plans to move beyond restrictions and live with the virus. Currently, vaccinated people arriving in Britain are required to take a lateral flow test within 2 days of arriving. At times, the government has previously also required all passengers to take tests before departing for Britain.
24th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Rich countries' access to foreign nurses during Omicron raises ethical concerns, group says

The Omicron-fuelled wave of COVID-19 infections has led wealthy countries to intensify their recruitment of nurses from poorer parts of the world, worsening dire staffing shortages in overstretched workforces there, the International Council of Nurses said. Sickness, burnout and staff departures amid surging Omicron cases have driven absentee rates to levels not yet seen during the two-year pandemic, said Howard Catton, CEO of the Geneva-based group that represents 27 million nurses and 130 national organisations. To plug the gap, Western countries have responded by hiring army personnel as well as volunteers and retirees but many have also stepped up international recruitment as part of a trend that is worsening health inequity, he continued.
24th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Biden says nation weary from COVID but rising with him in WH

President Joe Biden acknowledged that the pandemic has left Americans exhausted and demoralized but insisted at a news conference marking his first year in office that he has “outperformed” expectations in dealing with it. Facing sagging poll numbers and a stalled legislative agenda, Biden conceded Wednesday he would likely have to pare back his “build back better” recovery package and instead settle for “big chunks” of his signature economic plan. He promised to further attack inflation and the pandemic and blamed Republicans for uniting in opposition to his proposals rather than offering ideas of their own.
24th Jan 2022 - Associated Press

There is an urgent need to make WHO financially fit for purpose

The failure to invest in pandemic preparedness, response and, more generally, in the health of all people has been the most glaring symptom of the world’s ailing approach to investing in global public health, and universal health coverage, for decades. The G20 leaders meeting in Rome last year doubled down but failed to do enough to address the inadequacies in funding the work needed to protect the world from pandemics, and in particular in the financing of the World Health Organization (WHO) to deliver on its broad – and ever-growing – mandate to act as the world’s leading authority on global health.
24th Jan 2022 - MSN.com

Schools May Be Open—But They’re Struggling

The fast-spreading Omicron variant of Covid-19 has dealt a fresh pandemic blow to Brooklyn Tech, one of the nation’s largest high schools, with more than 5,800 students, and among the most competitive, with an admission rate under 10%. The problem there and in many other schools boils down to a mismatch between demand and supply. While many officials and parents nationwide push to keep kids in school and away from remote learning, Omicron has left many schools short of the essentials needed to operate, like teachers, substitutes, bus drivers, cafeteria workers—and sometimes students themselves.
24th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

U.S. COVID peak may be over but not the pain as deaths rise

Even as COVID-19 cases drop and hospitalizations show signs of plateauing in hard-hit pockets of the United States, the still-rising death toll from the Omicron variant highlights the trail of loss that follows every virus surge. Coronavirus deaths hit an 11-month high on Sunday, climbing 11% in the past week when compared to the prior week, according to a Reuters analysis. COVID-19 fatalities are a lagging indicator, meaning their numbers usually rise a few weeks after new cases and hospitalizations.
24th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Sinovac regimen gets strong boost from Pfizer, AstraZeneca or J&J COVID shots - study

Article reports that a third booster dose of a COVID-19 vaccine made by AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech or Johnson & Johnson increases antibody levels significantly in those who have previously received two doses of Sinovac's CoronaVac shot, a study has found. The study found that CoronaVac received the strongest boost from a viral vector or RNA shot, including against the Delta and Omicron coronavirus variants, researchers from Brazil and Oxford University said on Monday. China-based Sinovac's vaccine uses an inactivated version of a coronavirus strain that was isolated from a patient in China
24th Jan 2022 - Reuters

U.S. FDA limits use of Regeneron, Lilly COVID-19 antibody treatments

The U.S. health regulator revised on Monday the emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 antibody treatments from Regeneron (REGN.O) and Eli Lilly (LLY.N) to limit their use, as the drugs are unlikely to work against the Omicron coronavirus variant. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the treatments are currently not cleared for use in any U.S. states or territories, but may be authorized in certain regions if they work against potential new variants.
24th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Britain says 6000 more people needed for trial of Merck COVID pill

Britain said on Tuesday it needed to recruit 6,000 more people onto a trial of Merck's (MRK.N) COVID-19 antiviral pill molnupiravir to inform how the drug can be rolled out more widely. Britain's MHRA medicine regulator approved the pill, made by Merck and Ridgeback Therapeutics, in November, and the government launched a national study to establish the best way to use the drug. The health ministry said that while 4,500 trial participants had signed up, thousands more were needed to gather the data needed.
24th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 24th Jan 2022

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France's Consitutional Council approves Macron's vaccine pass

France's Constitutional Council on Friday approved - with conditions - the country's new COVID-19 vaccine pass, which will require people aged 16 and above to show proof of vaccination to enter public places like bars, restaurants and cinemas. The new pass is part of President Emmanuel Macron's drive to make life difficult enough for the small minority of unvaccinated people that they are compelled to get COVID shots. The Council's ruling paves the way for the vaccine pass to take effect on Jan. 24, replacing a health pass that showed proof of vaccination, a recent negative test or past infection.
21st Jan 2022 - Reuters

A divided nation: Western Australia stays shut as COVID deaths mount in east

Australia will remain a divided nation, with the vast mining state of Western Australia cancelling plans to reopen its borders on Feb. 5, citing health risks from a surge in the Omicron COVID-19 variant in eastern states. The country reported 86 deaths from the virus on Friday, figures from the state and territory jurisdictions that have reported so far showed, its deadliest day since the start of the pandemic. Australia's most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), reported 46 deaths of patients with COVID-19, also its worst day, including one infant, while Victoria state saw 20 deaths. Yet, a drop in hospitalisations in both states did offer hope the latest outbreak might have peaked.
21st Jan 2022 - Reuters

WHO recommends reduced dose Pfizer COVID vaccine for under 12s

The World Health Organization on Friday recommended extending the use of a reduced dosage of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine to children aged 5 to 11 years old. The recommendation comes after the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on immunisation held a meeting on Wednesday to evaluate the vaccine. It is currently recommended for use in people aged 12 years and above. The recommended dosage for the younger population is 10 micrograms instead of 30 micrograms offered to those 12 years and older.
21st Jan 2022 - Reuters

Covid-19: 'We'll be second-class citizens if self-isolation rules go'

Work-from-home guidance has been scrapped, mandatory mask-wearing will soon go and Health Secretary Sajid Javid has said compulsory self-isolation could be next. But what happens to people who cannot live with the virus, because their immune conditions mean vaccines may not work? For nearly two years, Julie - not her real name - has worked from home and lived like "an absolute hermit", knowing that her condition means a coronavirus infection could be more deadly. That didn't change even after her third jab, because she has to take medication to suppress her immune system, meaning her body may not be able to respond to the vaccine.
21st Jan 2022 - BBC News

Covid: New Zealand PM Ardern cancels wedding amid Omicron wave

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has cancelled her wedding after announcing new Covid restrictions. The entire country is set to be placed under the highest level of Covid restrictions after an outbreak of the Omicron variant. The restrictions include a cap of 100 vaccinated people at events and mask wearing in shops and on public transport. New Zealand has recorded 15,104 Covid cases and 52 deaths. Ms Ardern confirmed to reporters on Sunday that her wedding to television host Clarke Gayford would not be going ahead.
23rd Jan 2022 - BBC News

Beijing introduces more COVID measures as cases mount before Olympics

Beijing's city government on Sunday introduced new measures to contain a recent outbreak of COVID-19, as China's capital continued to report new local cases of the virus less than two weeks before it hosts the Winter Olympic Games. Nine locally transmitted cases were found in Beijing on Jan. 22, the National Health Commission said on Sunday, of which six were in the city's Fengtai district. Fengtai will organise nucleic acid tests for COVID-19 for all of its residents on Sunday, district health authorities said.
23rd Jan 2022 - Reuters

U.S. opposes plans to strengthen World Health Organization

The United States, the World Health Organization's top donor, is resisting proposals to make the agency more independent, four officials involved in the talks said, raising doubts about the Biden administration's long-term support for the U.N. agency. The proposal, made by the WHO's working group on sustainable financing, would increase each member state's standing annual contribution, according to a WHO document published online and dated Jan. 4. The plan is part of a wider reform process galvanised by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has highlighted the limitations of the WHO's power to intervene early in a crisis.
22nd Jan 2022 - Reuters

Two-thirds of passengers on first flight to Covid-free Kiribati diagnosed with virus

After remaining Covid-free for the entirety of the pandemic, Kiribati has reopened its borders – only for two thirds of the passengers on the first international flight to arrive in ten months to test positive for the virus. The island nation is now set to impose a four-day lockdown from Monday after the virus was found to have spread into the community. All 54 passengers, 36 of whom were diagnosed with Covid after arriving from Fiji last Friday, have now been quarantined and are recovering well, according to authorities.
21st Jan 2022 - The Guardian

Get back to the office, Britain's business minister says

People should get back to the office to benefit from in-person collaboration because the world must learn to live with the coronavirus after a pandemic that has wiped trillions of dollars off global output, Britain's business minister said on Friday. After the novel coronavirus emerged in China in late 2019, work-from-home instructions across the world emptied office towers from Manhattan to Canary Wharf leaving millions toiling from home. Juggling sometimes shaky home internet connections, frustrated lockdown children and unmuting - or not - on often meandering video calls with work colleagues became the norm for many office workers.
21st Jan 2022 - Reuters UK

Two Australian states to test school students twice weekly for COVID

Australia reported 58 deaths from COVID-19 on Sunday, as the two most populous states, New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, said students would be tested twice weekly for the Omicron variant when classes resume next week. NSW reported 34 deaths of patients with COVID-19, while Victoria state saw 14 deaths, and Queensland reported 10 deaths. Health officials said they believe an Omicron outbreak has peaked in NSW and Victoria, which reported 20,324 and 13,091 new cases respectively on Sunday
23rd Jan 2022 - Reuters

India's COVID-19 cases rise by 333533 in last 24 hours - govt

India reported over 300,000 new COVID-19 infections for the fourth straight day even though the caseload over the last 24 hours was slightly lower than a day before, data released by the government on Sunday showed. India reported 333,533 new COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours with 525 dead, according to the figures released by the government. India's total death toll due to COVID-19 now stands at 489,409, the health ministry said. On Saturday, India had reported 337,704 new cases of COVID-19 and 488 dead.
23rd Jan 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 21st Jan 2022

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'Some people may not make it': athletes risk failing Beijing COVID-19 tests - IOC expert

Strict COVID-19 testing requirements for the Beijing Winter Olympics could see more athletes from high-risk Omicron regions banned from participating, but the system in place will be as flexible as possible, an Olympic medical adviser told Reuters. Experts have warned that China's strict "zero-COVID" strategy, as well as its more sensitive testing protocols, could see more athletes excluded from the Games scheduled to take place between Feb. 4 and Feb. 20 - especially from regions that have seen a spike in the highly infectious Omicron variant.
21st Jan 2022 - Reuters

U.S. to require COVID vaccines for essential workers crossing borders

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is announcing Thursday it is requiring that non-U.S. essential workers such as truck drivers and nurses who are crossing land borders be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, effective Saturday. The Biden administration first announced in October that effective Nov. 8 it would again allow non-essential foreign visitors to travel from Canada and Mexico into the U.S. across land borders if they were vaccinated. The U.S. land borders with Canada and Mexico had been closed to non-essential travel for 20 months because of COVID-19 concerns.
21st Jan 2022 - Reuters

Austria set to make COVID shots compulsory after bill clears parliament

Austria's lower house of parliament passed a bill on Thursday making COVID-19 vaccinations compulsory for adults as of Feb. 1, bringing Austria closer to introducing the first such sweeping coronavirus vaccine mandate in the European Union. Faced with a stubbornly high number of vaccine holdouts and a surge in infections, the government said in November it was planning the mandate. Since then it has raised the age as of which the mandate will apply, to 18 from 14.
21st Jan 2022 - Reuters

U.S. preparing for possible future COVID variants -White House

The Biden administration is preparing for future variants of COVID-19, White House chief of Staff Ron Klain told MSNBC in an interview that aired on Thursday as the Omicron-related wave of cases appeared to be easing in parts of the country. "We're prepared. We're increasing the production of tests. We're increasing the production of masks," Klain said. "We have to be prepared for whatever comes next... there's a lot of steps left in fighting this pandemic. We are taking those steps."
20th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Britain must learn to live with COVID-19, it could be with us forever - Javid

Britain must learn to live with COVID-19 as it may be with us forever, health minister Sajid Javid said on Thursday, adding that Britain was moving ahead of other countries as the government lifted coronavirus measures. "We need to learn to live with it. Sadly people die of flu as well: in a bad flu year you can sadly lose about 20,000 lives, but we don't shut down our entire country," Javid told Sky News.
20th Jan 2022 - Reuters UK

Indonesia to Propose New Global Health Agency at G20 Summit

Indonesia will propose the creation of a new global health agency when leaders meet at the Group of 20 Summit. The agency would set up standard operating procedures for international travel and health protocols, as well as procure vaccines and ensure access and investment in medical equipment and medicines for developing countries, President Joko Widodo said in a statement at the World Economic Forum event
20th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

New Zealand Won’t Resort to Lockdowns When Omicron Arrives

New Zealand will tighten Covid-19 restrictions when the omicron variant hits but won’t resort to lockdowns, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. When omicron starts to spread in the community, the country will move to “red” from “orange” in its Covid protection framework, which will see gathering limits of 100 imposed on events, social distancing in hospitality venues and greater use of face masks, Ardern told reporters. However, “we won’t use lockdowns,” she said.
20th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Western Australia state to stay shut as Omicron stalks the east

Australia will remain a divided nation with the vast mining state of Western Australia cancelling plans to reopen its borders on Feb. 5 citing health risks from a surge in the Omicron COVID-19 variant in eastern states. Australia's most populous state New South Wales (NSW) on Friday reported its deadliest day of the pandemic. NSW reported 46 deaths of patients with COVID-19 including one infant, while Victoria state saw 20 lives lost. Yet, a drop in hospitalisations in both states did offer hope the latest outbreak might have peaked.
20th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Canadian vaccine mandate to lead to inflation, empty shelves, trucking executives say

The premier of Canada's Alberta province on Thursday called on the federal government to pause a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers that companies say will disrupt the supply chain and fuel inflation. The mandate, imposed by Ottawa to help curb the spread of the coronavirus, has cost Canadian trucking companies about 10% of their international drivers, six top executives said this week. They said they are hiking wages to lure new operators during the worst labor shortage they have experienced.
20th Jan 2022 - Reuters

The pandemic is birthing billionaires and killing the poor

We enter 2022 witnessing the biggest increase in billionaire wealth since records began. A billionaire was created every 26 hours during this pandemic. The wealth of the world’s 10 richest men alone has doubled, rising at a rate of $15,000 per second. But COVID-19 has left 99 percent of humanity worse off. Our malaise is inequality. Inequality of income is now a stronger indicator of whether you will die from COVID-19 than age. In 2021, millions of people died in poorer countries with scant access to vaccines as pharmaceutical monopolies, protected by rich countries, throttled their supply. We minted new vaccine billionaires on the backs of denying billions of people access to vaccines.
20th Jan 2022 - AlJazeera

Biden's Team Says It's on Alert for Omicron Disruptions in China

The Biden administration is monitoring real-time data obtained from businesses operating in China to determine whether outbreaks of the omicron variant of coronavirus pose a risk to U.S. supply chains, an administration official said. It’s too early to tell whether there will be any impact on the American economy from the variant’s spread in China or from aggressive efforts by officials there to stamp it out, the official said. The official asked not to be identified discussing the administration’s efforts because the data is not public.
20th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Wearing a mask on planes DOES cut risk of COVID spreading, study finds

Study used simulation to test how far virus-laden droplets could travel and infect They then compared it to real world flights where passengers had caught Covid Their model was 80 per cent right in predicting who did and didn't get the virus In one flight, the team found masks would have cut Covid infections from 12 to 1
20th Jan 2022 - Daily Mail

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 20th Jan 2022

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Covid-19 Cases Fall Sharply in India’s Biggest Cities, Raising Hopes for Nearing Peak

A swift decline of cases following a huge surge is a pattern seen with the Omicron variant in other countries such as South Africa, epidemiologists say. But they are watching India especially closely because of its large population, its relatively low vaccination rate and the severity of last year’s wave—factors which led public-health experts to warn the country’s hospitals could be overwhelmed by Omicron. “The virus is meeting up with a whole population of people already previously infected and immune or vaccinated and immune,” said T. Jacob John, a retired professor of virology at the Christian Medical College in India’s southern city of Vellore. “That adds to the mildness of the disease.”
20th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Scientists develop new Covid diagnosis test using X rays

A new covid diagnosis could replace PCR tests using X-rays - within minutes. Experts developed Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect the virus faster than PCR. In testing, this groundbreaking technique was found to be 98 per cent accurate. It is hoped that this technology could be used to aid medical staff on frontline.
19th Jan 2022 - Daily Mail

Airlines Step Up Hygiene to Keep Covid Out of the Air

In that long-ago time before the pandemic, most travelers chose an airline based on a single, straightforward factor: price. And those who didn’t grab the cheapest fare typically steered their business toward a carrier where they had frequent-flyer miles. Cleanliness, by contrast, barely registered. These days, hygiene is the most important factor in choosing a travel company for almost 60% of Americans, according to a survey by aerospace products manufacturer Honeywell International Inc. That tracks with International Air Transport Association data showing that passengers worry about boarding planes, with 42% of them uncomfortable using lavatories and more than a third concerned about breathing recirculated cabin air. “We know that our customers are more conscious than ever about hygiene,” says Anil Jain, engineering chief at Air India Express, which has introduced robots to clean its planes. “We need to be proactive.”
19th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Beijing Covid Flareup Worsens with New Clusters at Cold Storage

China’s capital found a Covid-19 cluster among cold chain workers on Wednesday, the latest sign the country is seeing more infections resulting from a controversial claim of transmission through contaminated goods. Five people who worked at a cold chain storage facility in the Fangshan district of Beijing tested positive for Covid, with genetic sequencing showing three of them were infected by the delta variant, Beijing officials said at a briefing on Wednesday. The refrigeration facility also deals with imports, and the workers who tested positive hadn’t left the city in the past two weeks, they added. While authorities are still investigating the source of the infection, the cluster among cold chain workers adds to a growing body of cases linked to exposure to Covid-contaminated goods ranging from frozen seafood and fruits to international parcels.
19th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

China's Zero Covid, Vaccine Program Leaves It With Omicron Whack-a-Mole

The U.S. recently passed the grim marker of 850,000 deaths from Covid-19. By contrast, China has recorded 4,636 Covid-related deaths since the pandemic began. And yet the policies that were so successful for Beijing over the past two years have now become something of a trap. On the face of it, China has changed its policy to reflect its high rate of vaccination. Beijing recently replaced “Zero Covid,” an approach that kept infections and deaths extremely low while allowing the economy to grow, with what it calls “dynamic clearing.” The new policy accepts that infections will happen and empowers local regions to deal with them.
19th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Omicron Pushes Japan to Consider Living With Covid Like the Flu

Calls are growing in Japan to treat Covid-19 as endemic, adding to a global chorus pushing for a return to normal life as people tire of pandemic restrictions, vaccines become more accessible and virus deaths remain low. Drawing on data that shows omicron posing a less severe risk than previous variants, public figures from Tokyo’s governor to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have signaled their support for downgrading the legal status of the virus in Japan. The change would widen health care access for patients, effectively casting the virus as no different than the flu.
19th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

End of Plan B Covid Restrictions: Boris Johnson Drops Work-From-Home Guidance

Most Covid-19 restrictions are being lifted in England over the coming days, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, as he set out his ambition for a transition to “living with” the virus -- including the end of mandatory isolation for positive cases -- by the end of March. People are no longer being asked to work from home, and rules forcing people to wear face masks in shops and on public transport will be dropped from Jan. 27, Johnson told the House of Commons on Wednesday. Mandatory Covid passes for businesses will also end next week. The move unwinds rules put in place in December, when the omicron variant was spreading rapidly across the U.K. “Scientists believe it is likely that the Omicron wave has now peaked nationally,” Johnson said.
19th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Prior COVID infection more protective than vaccination during Delta surge -U.S. study

People who had previously been infected with COVID-19 were better protected against the Delta variant than those who were vaccinated alone, suggesting that natural immunity was a more potent shield than vaccines against that variant, California and New York health officials reported on Wednesday. Protection against Delta was highest, however, among people who were both vaccinated and had survived a previous COVID infection, and lowest among those who had never been infected or vaccinated, the study found. Nevertheless, vaccination remains the safest strategy against COVID-19, according to the report published in U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
19th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Starbucks suspends vaccine, test requirement after U.S. court ruling

Starbucks Corp suspended COVID-19 vaccine-or-test requirement for U.S. employees that had been mandated by the government, according to a memo sent to workers on Tuesday, following an adverse U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The coffee giant had said earlier this month it would require its around 220,000 U.S. employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing. The U.S. Supreme Court last week struck down Joe Biden administration's vaccination-or-testing mandate for large businesses, ruling that the policy overstepped executive authority.
19th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Greece imposes rolling fines to push COVID-19 vaccinations in older people

Greece has begun imposing recurring fines on those over the age of 60 who are unvaccinated against COVID-19 to try to boost inoculation in the most vulnerable age group even as infection rates from the fast-spreading Omicron variant are slowing. After hitting an all-time high of 50,126 registered coronavirus infections on Jan. 4, mainly driven by the spread of the Omicron variant over the Christmas holidays, cases have been falling in recent days
19th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Coronavirus spreading like never before in Americas, health agency says

COVID-19 infections are reaching new peaks in the Americas with 7.2 million new cases and more than 15,000 COVID-related deaths in the last week, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said. "The virus is spreading more actively than ever before," PAHO Director Carissa Etienne told a briefing. The Caribbean has had the steepest increase in infections since the start of the two-year-old pandemic, the regional agency said. In North America, the United States and Canada are experiencing a surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations.
19th Jan 2022 - Reuters

UnitedHealth says Omicron-driven cost impact cushioned by healthcare deferrals

UnitedHealth Group Inc said added costs of testing and treatment related to the recent surge in COVID-19 cases are being offset by postponements of non-urgent healthcare procedures, and the health insurer maintained its 2022 profit forecast. The comments should help allay investor concerns that the steep rise in COVID infections and hospitalizations driven by the Omicron variant of the virus in recent weeks would significantly drive up medical costs for health insurers. Adding to those concerns was a Biden administration initiative requiring insurers to reimburse Americans for up to eight at-home rapid COVID-19 tests per month, while setting no limit for tests, including at-home tests, that insurers must cover if they are ordered or administered by a healthcare provider.
19th Jan 2022 - Reuters

U.S. judge calls unvaccinated adults 'unpatriotic' as Omicron prompts trial delay

A federal judge in Florida in a scathing order delayed an upcoming trial due to the surge in COVID-19 cases as he blasted adults who have yet to get vaccinated as "uninformed and irrational, or – less charitably – selfish and unpatriotic." U.S. District Judge Robert Scola, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, in Tuesday's order said that given the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, he had proposed requiring all jurors in the Feb. 7 trial to be vaccinated. But Scola said lawyers for Progressive Select Insurance Co, which is defending against claims for coverage by a motorist who was in a car crash in 2019, objected, saying they did not want to exclude unvaccinated jurors.
19th Jan 2022 - Reuters

U.S. to distribute 400 million free N95 masks at CVS, Walgreens in COVID fight

The U.S. government will make 400 million non-surgical "N95" masks from its strategic national stockpile available for free to the public starting next week, a White House official said, as the Biden administration tries to curb the COVID-19 pandemic. Snug-fitting N95 face masks, so-called because they filter at least 95% of particulate matter from the air, will be shipped to pharmacies and community health centers this week, the official said, and will be available for pickup late next week. The U.S. government is leveraging the "federal retail pharmacy program" it used for vaccines, the White House said, as well as federally funded health clinics that serve minority groups hit hard by COVID infections and deaths.
19th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Djokovic has 80% stake in biotech firm developing Covid drug

Novak Djokovic is the controlling shareholder in a Danish biotech firm aiming to develop a treatment for Covid-19 that does not involve vaccination, it has emerged. The world No 1, who was deported from Australia this week after the government cancelled his visa in a dispute over a medical exemption relating to his unvaccinated status, bought an 80% stake in QuantBioRes in 2020. Ivan Loncarevic, the company’s chief executive, confirmed the investment to Reuters. He subsequently told the Financial Times that he had not spoken to Djokovic, who has won more than $150m in prize money, since November and that the tennis star was “not anti-vax”
19th Jan 2022 - The Guardian

Ireland announces annual bank holiday to honour Covid victims and workers

Ireland is to get a bank holiday as a national commemoration of those who have lost their lives to Covid and to recognise those who worked on the frontline of the pandemic, the government has announced. Frontline healthcare workers in hospitals and nursing homes are also to receive a €1,000 (£830) tax-free bonus for their contribution to the national pandemic effort as part of a package of measures agreed by the cabinet on Wednesday. The government has estimated the cost of the giveaway at €100m, but questions remain as to who will qualify for the ha
19th Jan 2022 - The Guardian

Why Some Vaccinated People Resist Omicron and Others Don’t

A recent study led by Harvard and MIT showed that about 20% of people get much poorer protection from their vaccines against omicron. They’re still better off than completely unvaccinated people, but this variability could account for some of the fully vaccinated people who’ve been hospitalized in the omicron wave. The researchers looked at blood samples from 76 volunteers to examine the part of the immune system known as the T cells. While antibodies wane over time, T cells last longer and provide a second line of defense by identifying and killing infected cells. In vaccinated people, T cells are primed to fight SARS-CoV-2 and can usually clear the infection within a couple of days. Many experts consider them the most critical part of our defenses against omicron.
19th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Young Brazilians Studying Less, Dropping Out More During Covid

Young Brazilians are studying less and dropping out more during the pandemic, reversing decades of educational advances and exacerbating the country’s demographic inequalities, a new study found. School dropout rates among children aged 5-9 years old rose from 1.4% in 2019 to 5.5% by the end of 2020, the highest percentage seen since 2006, according to research from the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a Brazilian think tank. Although the dropout rate improved to 4.25% in the third quarter of 2021, that was still 128% higher than before the pandemic. “Younger children, the age group in which we have made great educational advances in the last 40 years, is where we are having the greatest losses,” co-author and economist Marcelo Neri said during a phone interview Wednesday. There was also a socioeconomic gap when it came to time spent hitting the books when school wasn’t in session.
19th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Covid-19, Endemic or Not, Will Still Make Us Poorer

The prospect that Covid-19 is transitioning from pandemic to endemic has brought out the bulls on Wall Street. “Meaningful upside to our medium-term economic outlook,” writes Bank of America Corp. “A positive for risk assets,” says JPMorgan Chase & Co. A “silver lining” of the “highly infectious” Omicron variant, says BlackRock Inc. By “endemic,” they mean Omicron will leave almost everyone highly immune through vaccination, prior infection, or both. Then, they reason, Covid-19 will be a more predictable, less deadly presence, much like flu, and the world will return to normal. Such optimism needs a reality check. This new normal won’t be the same as the old normal: Endemic Covid-19 will still take a toll on health, work and mobility; the only question is how big.
19th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

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Covid pandemic is 'nowhere near over' and new variants are likely to emerge, WHO warns

WHO chief warned against dismissing the coronavirus Omicron variant as mild. Omicron more contagious than previous variants but causes less serious disease Some have suggested that Covid is passing from pandemic stage to endemic. But Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the sheer numbers of people still being infected will mean many vulnerable people falling ill and dying
19th Jan 2022 - Daily Mail

Swift End to Covid Threatened by Unvaccinated Faraway Locales

After losing her son who got infected with Covid-19 last year, 79-year-old Tomasa Valdez was desperate to get vaccinated. But on the remote Philippine island of San Salvador, where she lives, there were no shots to be had. Getting to the mainland, where the vaccinations were available, meant a boat ride that was arduous at her age and expensive for her meager income from drying sea grass which she sells for less than 100 pesos ($1.95) a sack. Help only arrived in December 2021 -- 10 months after the Philippines began its national program and about a year after Western nations like the U.S. and U.K. started theirs.
18th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Covid Infections Ravage Venezuela’s Congress, Delaying Session

Dozens of Venezuelan lawmakers tested positive for Covid-19 Tuesday amid a wave of new infections in the country, delaying the start of a meeting of congress. Forty-two members of the National Assembly tested positive for the disease on Tuesday ahead of a meeting of the legislative body,
18th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

COVID-19 concerns force U.N. to prepare tsunami-hit Tonga relief aid at a distance

The United Nations is preparing for distanced relief operations in Tonga to avoid a COVID-19 outbreak in the Pacific island nation that is reeling under the impact of a volcanic eruption and tsunami, an official said on Wednesday. All the homes on one of Tonga's small outer islands have been destroyed and three people have so far been confirmed dead, the government said in its first statement after Saturday's devastating eruption. With communications badly hampered by the severing of an undersea cable, information on the scale of the devastation so far has mostly come from reconnaissance aircraft.
18th Jan 2022 - Reuters

French Covid Infections Hit Record as Patients Fill Up Hospitals

France registered a record number of daily Covid-19 infections as the omicron variant spreads across the country, sending a growing number of patients to hospitals. New cases totaled 464,769 Tuesday, according to data from the public health office. That far surpassed the previous high of 368,149 recorded a week ago. The surge comes as France is poised to require a complete vaccination regimen for many public activities -- from eating in restaurants to attending the theater or getting on an airplane -- saying a recent negative test isn’t good enough anymore
18th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

COVID-19: All Omicron restrictions in Scotland to be lifted next Monday

Nightclubs will reopen and limits on hospitality come to an end as all of Scotland's Omicron coronavirus restrictions are lifted next Monday. The changes - first introduced to slow the spread of the Omicron variant - will take place from 24 January, as First Minister Nicola Sturgeon confirmed the country is on a "downward slope" of infections. The requirement for table service in hospitality will come to an end and attendance limits on indoor events will also be lifted, as well as restrictions preventing adults from taking part in indoor contact
18th Jan 2022 - Sky News

Sweden scraps demand for negative COVID test to enter country

Travelers to Sweden will no longer be required to show a negative COVID test before entering the country, the government said on Tuesday. Sweden introduced rules for a recent negative COVID test on Dec. 28 last year in a bid to slow the spread of the more contagious Omicron variant. Since then, Sweden has repeatedly set new daily case records with Omicron now the totally dominant variant. "Travelers are no longer considered to pose a particular risk of affecting the spread of Omicron in Sweden," the government said
18th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Denmark eases coronavirus restrictions, as cases hit new record

Denmark registered a record number of coronavirus infections on Monday, as cinemas, museums and other cultural institutions reopened after a month-long COVID-19 lockdown. The Nordic country registered 28,780 new cases in the space of 24 hours and the number of coronavirus-related hospitalisations rose to 802, the highest in a year. Still, health authorities said earlier this month that the now-predominant Omicron variant was milder than initially thought and that around 29% of those in hospital were there due to reasons other than COVID-19
18th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Analysis: With Omicron, global economy spots chance to push past COVID

Governments worldwide are easing quarantine rules, reviewing coronavirus curbs and dialling back pandemic-era emergency support as they bid to launch their economies back into some version of normality. The moves, motivated by the lower severity of the Omicron variant and the need to keep workers in work and the global recovery on track, have generated a whiff of optimism that has lifted oil and stock prices. Health experts say the variant's rapid spread may yet herald a turning point in the pandemic.
18th Jan 2022 - Reuters

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Beijing Says International Mail Is Possible Culprit in First Omicron Case

Health authorities in Beijing said they haven’t been able to trace the source of the Chinese capital’s first local Omicron infection but indicated it might have arrived by international mail. Beijing announced the Omicron case on Saturday after the patient developed a low-grade fever on Friday and took a voluntary test that came back positive for Covid-19. Authorities sealed off the patient’s residential compound and office building, and launched contact-tracing efforts. Tests for more than 16,500 people identified as potentially being exposed to the patient came back negative, Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the city’s municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a press conference on Monday.
18th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

CDC Director Aims to Improve Covid-19 Messaging, Data Collection

One year into her tenure as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky acknowledged that she hasn’t been clear enough with the American public. She says the pandemic threw curveballs that she should have anticipated. She thinks she should have made it clearer to the public that new rules and guidelines were subject to change if the nature of the fight against Covid-19 shifted again. “I think what I have not conveyed is the uncertainty in a lot of these situations,” Dr. Walensky said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The CDC director has come under fire from public-health experts for the way she has communicated pandemic guidelines from mask wearing to isolation requirements. Some Biden administration officials said the CDC’s explanations of new and amended guidelines can sometimes be hard to grasp.
18th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Chile Toughens Mobility Limits in Santiago on Covid-19 Surge

Chile’s Health Ministry toughened mobility restrictions in Santiago’s Metropolitan Region and 45 other municipalities nationwide, as the government copes with a surge in Covid-19 cases due to the Omicron variant. Fewer people will be allowed at events in homes and public spaces, and restaurants will cut seating capacity, the Health Ministry informed on Monday. Healthcare workers will also start receiving a second booster shot this week.
18th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Fourth Pfizer Dose Is Insufficient to Ward Off Omicron, Israeli Trial Suggests

A fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was insufficient to prevent infection with the omicron variant of Covid-19, according to preliminary data from a trial in Israel released Monday. Two weeks after the start of the trial of 154 medical personnel at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, researchers found the vaccine successfully raised antibody levels. But that only offered a partial defense against omicron, according to Gili Regev-Yochay, the trial’s lead researcher. Vaccines which were more effective against previous variants offer less protection with omicron, she said. Still, those infected in the trial had only slight symptoms or none at all.
18th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Beijing Olympics tickets will not be publicly sold due to COVID-19

Olympics set to begin on Feb. 4 will be distributed to "targeted" groups of people and will not be sold to the general public, the organising committee said on Monday, in the latest setback to the Games inflicted by COVID-19.
18th Jan 2022 - Reuters

French COVID hospitalisations see biggest jump since Nov 2020

The number of people with COVID-19 in French hospitals rose by 888 to 25,775, the health ministry said on Monday, the biggest one-day increase since early November 2020 - before the start of the country's vaccination campaign. The last time the number of COVID patients was over 25,000 was on Dec. 17, 2020. Health ministry data on Monday also showed that the number of people with COVID-19 in intensive care units rose by 61 to 3,913, after being flat to stable for four days.
18th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Chinese cities on high COVID-19 alert as peak Lunar New Year travel season starts

Several Chinese cities went on high COVID-19 alert as the Lunar New Year holiday travel season started on Monday, requiring travellers to report their trips days before their arrival, as the Omicron variant reached more areas including Beijing. Authorities have warned the highly contagious Omicron adds to the increased risk of COVID-19 transmission as hundreds of millions of people travel around China for the Lunar New Year holiday starting at the end of the month. Cities such as Luoyang in central China and Jieyang in the south said on Sunday travellers need to report to communities, employers or hotels their trips three days ahead of arrival. The southwestern city of Yulin said on Saturday those who want to enter should fill in a digital form including their health credentials and trip details one day in advance.
18th Jan 2022 - ARY News Live

COVID updates: Canada approves Pfizer COVID pill

Several Chinese cities are on high alert as hundreds of millions of people travel around China before the Lunar New Year celebration on February 1. Governments around the world are also enforcing stricter measures to contain the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant. In the Philippines, unvaccinated commuters have been banned from accessing public transport, despite opposition.
18th Jan 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Analysis: China's 'zero-COVID' campaign under strain as Omicron surges

China is doubling down on its "zero-COVID" strategy, saying the spread of the potentially milder Omicron variant is no reason to lower its guard amid warnings of economic disruptions and even public unrest as lockdowns drag into a third year. As other countries talk about a transition from "pandemic" to "endemic", China has stepped up policies to stamp out any new outbreak as soon as it arises, sealing off cities, shutting transport links and launching mass testing programmes.
18th Jan 2022 - Reuters on MSN.com

Return of the flu: EU faces threat of prolonged 'twindemic'

Influenza has returned to Europe at a faster-than-expected rate this winter after almost disappearing last year, raising concerns about a prolonged "twindemic" with COVID-19 amid some doubts about the effectiveness of flu vaccines. Lockdowns, mask-wearing and social distancing that have become the norm in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic knocked out flu last winter, temporarily eradicating a virus that globally kills about 650,000 a year, according to EU figures.
18th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Beijing Winter Olympics: Tickets won't be sold to general public due to 'severe and complex' COVID-19 situation

Tickets for Beijing's Winter Olympics will not be sold to the general public due to worries about COVID. Only "targeted" groups will be able to get tickets for the games - which start on 4 February, said organisers. International fans are already excluded because of China's strict border policy to prevent importing cases
17th Jan 2022 - Sky News

French parliament approves vaccine pass

France's parliament gave final approval on Sunday to the government's latest measures to tackle the COVID-19 virus, including a vaccine pass contested by anti-vaccine protestors. Lawmakers in the lower house of parliament voted 215 in favour to 58 against, paving the way for the law to enter force in the coming days. The new law, which had a rough ride through parliament with opposition parties finding some of its provisions too tough, will require people to have a certificate of vaccination to enter public places like restaurants, cafes, cinemas and long-distance trains.
17th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Chinese cities on high COVID-19 alert as peak Lunar New Year travel season starts

Several Chinese cities went on high COVID-19 alert as the Lunar New Year holiday travel season started on Monday, requiring travellers to report their trips days before their arrival, as the Omicron variant reached more areas including Beijing. Authorities have warned the highly contagious Omicron adds to the increased risk of COVID-19 transmission as hundreds of millions of people travel around China for the Lunar New Year on Feb. 1.
17th Jan 2022 - Reuters

COVID review for England could come this week, early next - source

A review of "Plan B" measures to tackle the spread of COVID-19 in England could take place this week or early next, a senior government source said on Monday, part of efforts to move attention away from lockdown-breaking events at Downing Street. Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes to reset his agenda after coming under fire for attending a gathering in the garden of his Downing Street office and residence in May 2020, when strict COVID-19 rules forbade almost all socialising.
17th Jan 2022 - Reuters

'Upside down again': Omicron surge roils U.S. small businesses

Phillip Howard pointed toward a stack of black ski pants piled atop a counter in his winter sports shop as evidence of the hurdles small business owners still face as the pandemic drags on. The pants were supposed to arrive by August at Troy's Ski Lubbock shop in west Texas - well before his five-month hot season of selling that kicks off in October. Instead, they came from China the first week of January, delayed by supply-chain failures.
17th Jan 2022 - Reuters

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Omicron hits Beijing: City records first local case of the highly transmissible variant

An Omicron case has been detected in Beijing, officials in the Chinese capital said Saturday, as the country battles multiple outbreaks of the highly transmissible coronavirus variant ahead of the Winter Olympics. Lab testing found 'mutations specific to the Omicron variant' in the person, Pang Xinghuo, an official at the city's disease control authority, told a news briefing. Officials have sealed up the infected person's residential compound and workplace, and collected 2,430 samples for testing from people linked to the two locations, a Haidian district official said.
16th Jan 2022 - Daily Mail

U.S. CDC recommends Americans wear 'most protective mask you can'

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) late on Friday revised its guidance for Americans on wearing masks, recommending wearing "the most protective mask you can," although the agency stopped short of calling for nationwide N95 usage.
15th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Burned by COVID supply crunch, hospitals invest in U.S. mask-making

Two days before Christmas, a cargo ship left Mumbai with a mask-making machine bound for Illinois-based OSF HealthCare, which will use the equipment to make its own N95 masks. It isn't the hospital group's first foray into manufacturing. After COVID-19 border closures in early 2020 choked shipments from Asia, producer of about 80% of the world's medical masks and protective gear, OSF and some other hospital groups started investing in U.S. production of key supplies including masks, gowns and critical pharmaceuticals.
14th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Gene Linked to Severe Covid to Provide Clues for Those at Risk

Polish scientists have discovered a gene that they say more than doubles the risk of falling severely ill with, or even dying from Covid-19. The Health Ministry in Warsaw expects the discovery to help identify people who are most at risk from the disease, which has already killed more than 100,000 people in Poland alone. It also plans to include genetic tests when it screens patients for potential Covid-19 infections as soon as the end of June. The research from the Medical University of Bialystok estimates that the gene could be present in about 14% of the Polish population, compared with around 9% in Europe and 27% in India. It’s the fourth most important factor determining the severity of the illness after age, weight and gender, it said.
14th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Biden Forms New Group to Plan for Future Coronavirus Variants

The Biden administration has assembled a group that will prepare new countermeasures for the emergence of future Covid-19 variants and other pandemic threats, after the arrival of the omicron strain led to tumult in the U.S. economy and health-care system. The Pandemic Innovation Task Force, formed by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP, will focus on developing vaccines, treatments, diagnostic tests and other tools, said officials familiar with the matter, who asked for anonymity as the details aren’t yet public. That will help prepare the country in case new versions of the virus surface, and for future biological threats beyond Covid-19, they said.
14th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

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China's Covid Absolutism Is Making It a No-Go Zone for Airlines

Entering the third year of the pandemic, China’s unbending approach to Covid-19 has left the world’s second-largest economy all but shut off from international travel, with fewer than 500 inbound flights scheduled this week, compared with about 10,000 this time two years ago. Capacity cuts are intensifying as China tries to snuff out virus flareups with aggressive lockdowns. Since mid-December, airlines have eliminated almost 1,000 flights that would have arrived in the country between now and Feb. 1, the start of the Lunar New Year -- typically the busiest time for travel anywhere on the planet.
13th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Norway Eases Measures as It Prepares to Live With Omicron Wave

Norway is scaling back some of its infection restrictions as it moves into a new phase of the pandemic. The omicron variant has pushed infection rates to records, and the country now needs to ready itself to tolerate living with the virus, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told reporters on Thursday. It isn’t possible to stop an omicron-driven wave, but the likelihood of hospitalization is lower and vaccination provides good protection against serious sickness, he said.
13th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Hundreds of Millions of Covid Vaccine Doses Risk Going to Waste

Hundreds of millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses purchased by wealthy countries are at risk of going to waste, a new analysis shows, while large parts of the world remain unprotected amid the spread of the omicron variant. About 240 million doses purchased by the U.S., U.K., Japan, Canada and the European Union are expected to go unused and expire by March, London-based analytics firm Airfinity Ltd. said Thursday in a report. The number of potentially wasted doses could climb to 500 million by that point if other countries receiving donated doses don’t have enough time to administer them, it said. “Even after successful booster rollouts, there are surplus doses available that risk going to waste if not shared very soon,” Rasmus Bech Hansen,
13th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Analysis: India's new COVID-19 rules aim to free up resources but carry risks

India has eased its COVID-19 rules on testing, quarantine and hospital admissions in a bid to free up resources for its neediest people, a strategy hailed by experts even though it carries the risk of a heavy undercount of infections and deaths. The moves will offer a breathing space for healthcare facilities, often overstretched in a far-flung nation of 1.4 billion, as they battle a 33-fold surge in infections over the past month from the highly contagious Omicron variant.
13th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Australian Open crowds capped at 50% capacity due to COVID

Crowds at the main Australian Open tennis stadiums will be capped at 50% capacity under updated COVID-19 restrictions, organisers said on Thursday, as authorities battle a surge of cases in Melbourne. Face masks will also be mandatory for all patrons, except when eating or drinking, and there will be density limits of one person per two square metres at indoor hospitality venues. Tennis Australia (TA) said the 50% cap only applied for ticket sales at the Rod Laver Arena centre court and the second show court Margaret Court Arena.
13th Jan 2022 - Reuters

CES unable to confirm COVID-19 cases after 70 S.Korean nationals test positive

The organizer of CES, the world's largest technology show, said on Thursday it was unable to confirm the number of COVID-19 cases from its in-person event in Las Vegas last week after South Korean authorities said about 70 attendees from the country tested positive for the virus. The 70 South Korean nationals included representatives from Samsung Electronics and chipmaker SK Hynix sources told Reuters on Tuesday. Of the 40,000 that attended CES, 30% traveled from outside the United States.
13th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Volkswagen China shuts two plants in Tianjin due to COVID-19 outbreaks

Volkswagen Group's China unit said on Thursday it has shut a plant it jointly runs with FAW Group in the city of Tianjin, as well as a component factory, due to recent COVID-19 outbreaks there."Due to the recent COVID-19 outbreaks both the FAW-VW vehicle plant and VW Automatic Transmission Tianjin component factory have been shut down since Monday," a spokesperson told Reuters. "Both plants have conducted COVID -19 testing twice for all employees this week and are waiting for the results
13th Jan 2022 - Reuters

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Omicron Is Dominant US Variant, Hospitals Face Dark Days as Covid Cases Soar

The highly infectious omicron variant has flushed out the delta strain across the U.S., but the ascendance of the purportedly milder form of Covid-19 has done nothing so far to ease the burden on stretched hospitals. The omicron variant represents about 98% of cases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday. That number is based on data for the week ending Jan. 8 and is a significant increase from just two weeks prior, when omicron accounted for 71.3% of cases. Omicron’s heightened transmissibility coupled with the immunity some have built to combat the delta through vaccination and exposure, have made conditions favor the “more mild” variant, said David Wohl, a professor at the Institute of Global Health and Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. But experts warn that for those who remain unvaccinated or who suffer from other health concerns, infection from any Covid-19 variant is a major concern.
13th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Colorado's Covid-19 Test Positivity Is Highest of Pandemic at 30%

Thirty-percent of people tested for Covid-19 in Colorado are receiving positive results, the highest of the pandemic, as the omicron variant rages, officials said Wednesday. The data imply a high level of community spread with the number of Covid-19 hospitalizations surpassing an autumn peak, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There are more hospital beds available in Colorado than during the delta variant peak in late 2021, Scott Bookman, the state’s Covid-19 incident commander, said during an online briefing.
12th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Almost All Teens Needing ICU Care for Covid Are Unvaccinated

The vaccine prevented 98% of ICU visits and 94% of Covid-related hospitalizations in the real-world study of more than 1,000 adolescents ages 12 to 18 in 23 states published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. While adolescents can develop severe Covid complications, it’s relatively rare that they do, making it harder to study vaccine efficacy than among older adults, and leading to some controversy about the use of the shots in younger people. For example, the trial data Pfizer submitted for authorization of its shot for 12- to 15-year-olds didn’t include enough cases to assess efficacy in preventing severe Covid. The research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a network of 31 hospitals is one is one of the most detailed yet showing that vaccines can prevent severe Covid complications in teenagers.
12th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

France Records More Than 360000 New Covid Cases for Second Day

France on Wednesday registered more than 360,000 new Covid-19 infections, just shy of Tuesday’s record, highlighting the omicron variant’s fast-paced spread across the country. New cases totaled 361,719 on Wednesday after 368,149 on Tuesday, according to data from the public health office. The death toll rose by 246 to 126,305, while the number of Covid patients in emergency care climbed by 16 of 3,985, the highest level since mid-May last year. More than half of Europe’s population may be infected with omicron within weeks at current transmission rates, a World Health Organization official said Tuesday.
12th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

China Faces Mounting Economic Damage From Its Covid-Zero Policy

As Goldman Sachs noted in a Jan. 5 report, the economic costs of Beijing’s Covid-zero stance “appear to be increasing over time as each new variant is more transmissible than the previous ones.” Omicron is a threat of a different magnitude, even for a population that’s 87% vaccinated, because the China-made shots appear to provide inadequate protection against it. Expect more citywide lockdowns like the one instituted in Xi’an, a metropolis of 13 million residents.
12th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

U.S. Orders 500000 More Doses of AstraZeneca Covid Cocktail

The U.S. government is in talks with AstraZeneca Plc to order 500,000 doses of its coronavirus antibody drug, used by vulnerable people before exposure to the virus to prevent severe illness. Jeff Zients, Biden’s Covid-19 response coordinator, said Wednesday that the administration and AstraZeneca are “in the process of ordering” the doses, which are aimed at immunocompromised people. The new order will push the total U.S. purchase to 1.2 million doses, all due by the end of March, AstraZeneca said in a statement. “The federal government was instrumental in the research and development of this product,” Zients said. “Bottom line, we’ve acted aggressively to support and secure a diverse portfolio of Covid treatments.”
12th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Denmark to offer fourth coronavirus jab while easing curbs

Not enough Canadian children are being vaccinated against COVID-19 at a time when the Omicron variant threatens to swamp healthcare systems, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Wednesday. As of Jan. 1, 87.6% of Canadians above the age of 12 had received two shots. But among those aged from 5 to 12, that number dipped to just 2%, with 45.6% having received one dose. "Almost half of kids across this country have gotten their vaccine. ... We need to get more, so please ask your parents if you can get vaccinated," Trudeau said, addressing children directly during a regular briefing.
12th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Not enough Canadian children are getting COVID-19 jabs, health systems at risk - Trudeau

Not enough Canadian children are being vaccinated against COVID-19 at a time when the Omicron variant threatens to swamp healthcare systems, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Wednesday. As of Jan. 1, 87.6% of Canadians above the age of 12 had received two shots. But among those aged from 5 to 12, that number dipped to just 2%, with 45.6% having received one dose. "Almost half of kids across this country have gotten their vaccine. ... We need to get more, so please ask your parents if you can get vaccinated," Trudeau said, addressing children directly during a regular briefing.
12th Jan 2022 - Reuters

WHO's Ryan counters Brazil's Bolsonaro and says no virus is welcome

World Health Organization Emergency Director Mike Ryan on Wednesday refuted statements made by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus would be welcome and that it could even bring about the end of the pandemic. In an interview earlier, Bolsonaro played down the advance of the new variant in Brazil. During a news conference in Geneva, when asked about the statements made by the Brazilian president, Ryan affirmed that while Omicron is "less severe as a viral infection in an individual, that doesn't mean it's a mild disease." There are many people around the world in hospitals, in ICUs, gasping for breath, which "obviously makes very clear that this is not a mild disease," he added.
12th Jan 2022 - Reuters Canada

UK acted unlawfully with 'VIP' COVID contract lane, court rules

The British government acted unlawfully by setting up a fast-track "VIP lane" to allow ministers and officials to recommend suppliers of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the coronavirus pandemic, a London court ruled on Wednesday. Opposition politicians have accused the government of running a "chumocracy", awarding deals to those with family or business links to people in power, including for what turned out to be unusable PPE in some cases. The campaign groups, the Good Law Project and EveryDoctor, brought legal action claiming some suppliers were given an unfair advantage in obtaining contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
12th Jan 2022 - Reuters UK

Omicron Has Workers on Edge About Returning to the Office: Poll

Workers grew more uncomfortable about heading back to the office in the first week of the year and were much more likely to consider quitting if their employer demanded they return, a sign that companies’ efforts to get people back amid rising Covid caseloads face stiff resistance. The share of remote workers who would consider leaving their job if they were asked back to the office before they felt safe rose to 55% as of Jan. 6, up from 45% just a week earlier, according to pollster Morning Consult. More than 4 in 10 workers felt unsure about returning to the office, compared with 35% who said so on Dec. 30. People were also less likely to want to attend indoor sporting events, go to the movies and dine out, Morning Consult’s weekly U.S. survey found.
12th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Europe Slowly Starts to Consider Treating Covid Like the Flu

Spain is calling for Covid-19 to be treated as an endemic disease, like the flu, becoming the first major European nation to explicitly suggest that people live with it. The idea has gradually been gaining traction and could prompt a re-evaluation of government strategies on dealing with the virus. British Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi on Sunday told the BBC that the U.K. is “on a path towards transitioning from pandemic to endemic.” The omicron variant’s lower hospitalization and death rates despite record infections prompted Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to hold out the tantalizing prospect of Europe moving beyond pandemic-style restrictions on normal life.
12th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Work Anywhere and Commute by Plane, Yahoo Tells Japan Employees

Yahoo Japan is telling its 8,000 employees they can work anywhere in the country -- and even be flown into work when the job requires it -- bucking the trend of companies looking to return workers to offices in the third year of the coronavirus pandemic. The program takes effect April 1 and allows employees to commute by plane, which wasn’t previously an option, the company said in a statement Wednesday. While Yahoo is best known for its internet portal in Japan, it’s a unit of SoftBank Group Corp.’s Z Holdings Corp., which also owns the Line messaging app and PayPay mobile payments service.
12th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Omicron wave prompts media to rethink which data to report

For two years, coronavirus case counts and hospitalizations have been widely used barometers of the pandemic’s march across the world. But the omicron wave is making a mess of the usual statistics, forcing news organizations to rethink the way they report such figures. “It’s just a data disaster,” said Katherine Wu, staff writer who covers COVID-19 for The Atlantic magazine. The number of case counts soared over the holidays, an expected development given the emergence of a variant more transmissible than its predecessors. Yet these counts only reflect what is reported by health authorities. They do not include most people who test themselves at home, or are infected without even knowing about it. Holidays and weekends also lead to lags in reported cases.
12th Jan 2022 - The Associated Press

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Vaccination in Africa: Countries Struggle to Give Shots Despite Improved Doses

As shipments of Covid shots ramp up for billions of people left behind last year, and new vaccines make their way to the public, dozens of countries are struggling to turn supplies into inoculations. A dearth of immunization sites in Cameroon, weak communication and Covid denial in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a syringe shortfall in Kenya are among the hurdles complicating rollouts. In Zimbabwe, which initially raced ahead of many peers, complacency and a perception of omicron as less serious have slowed the campaign. Starved for vaccines for most of last year, Covax, the World Health Organization-backed program that aims to tackle vaccine inequity, is now approaching 1 billion doses in shipments. As the focus shifts to increasing immunization in poorer countries, officials worry the rapid spread of the omicron variant could spur the emergence of more shot-evading variants.
12th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Pfizer plans to produce up to 100 million doses of new Omicron-specific Covid vaccine by spring

Pfizer, producer of the most popular vaccine in the U.S., says it could produce up to 100 million doses of an Omicron specific vaccine by early April. The Omicron Covid variant, first discovered in November, has the ability to evade protections provided by the vaccine. This has sent pharma companies and vaccine manufacturers into a race to develop new vaccines and treatments for the variant. Bourla has said that the virus will likely be around for the next decade but his company's shots will allow Covid to be able to be controlled
11th Jan 2022 - Daily Mail

A million set to throng India's Ganges for holy dip despite COVID-19

Nearly one million Hindu worshippers are expected to gather on the banks of the Ganges river this Friday and Saturday for a holy bathe despite galloping COVID-19 infections across the country, an official told Reuters on Tuesday. India reported 168,063 new COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, a 20-fold rise in a month. Most infected people have recovered at home and the level of hospitalisations has been less than half of that seen during the last major wave of infections in April and May.
11th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Spain Calls for Debate to Consider Covid as Endemic, Like Flu

Spain is calling on Europe to debate the possibility that Covid-19 can now be treated as an endemic illness, setting a model to monitor its evolution akin to the one used for flu.
11th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Bill Gates Expects Fewer Covid Cases, Yearly Shots After Omicron

A decline in the number of coronavirus cases is likely after the current wave of the omicron variant crests and the disease could be “treated more like seasonal flu,” billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates says in a Twitter discussion with Professor Devi Sridhar of Edinburgh University Medical School. “A more transmissive variant is not likely but we have been surprised a lot during this pandemic. Omicron will create a lot of immunity at least for the next year,” he writes. Gates, who has committed resources via his foundation to help in the global fight against the virus, says people may have to take “yearly shots for Covid for some time”
11th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

J&J Vaccine Gets Additional Warning on Bleeding Side Effect

The fact sheet for Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine has been revised by U.S. regulators to warn of the risk of a rare bleeding disorder. The Food and Drug Administration said in a letter to the company on Tuesday that adverse-event reports suggested an increased risk of immune thrombocytopenia during the 42 days following vaccination. Symptoms include bruising or excessive or unusual bleeding, according to the agency. The changes to the fact sheet include recommendations to vaccination providers about giving the J&J shot to people with existing medical conditions, including those who have a low level of platelets, a type of blood cell that helps stop bleeding.
11th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

China: Twenty million under strict COVID lockdown amid fears Omicron could disrupt Beijing Winter Olympics

About 20 million people in China are now under a stay-at-home order after a third city brought in a strict COVID lockdown. Anyang in Henan province, with a population of 5.5 million, confirmed a lockdown after 84 cases were detected since Saturday - at least two of them Omicron. Mass testing is being carried out - established practice in China after even a handful of cases - and non-essential vehicles are banned from the streets.
11th Jan 2022 - Sky News

No vax, pay tax, says Canada's Quebec as health system struggles

Quebec, Canada's second most populous province, is planning to force adults refusing to get COVID-19 vaccinated pay a "health contribution" in a move likely to spur a debate about individual rights and social responsibility. Premier Francois Legault told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday that the proposal, details of which were still being finalised, would not apply to those who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons.
11th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer to cut U.S. sales staff as meetings with healthcare providers move to virtual

Pfizer Inc said on Tuesday it is reducing its U.S. sales staff as it expects doctors and other healthcare providers to want fewer face-to-face interactions with sales people after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. The move comes as the company is expected to announce more than $80 billion in revenue in 2021 on strong sales of the COVID-19 vaccine it developed with Germany's BioNTech SE . That would be record sales for a pharmaceutical company, according to Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla. "We are evolving into a more focused and innovative biopharma company, and evolving the way we engage with healthcare professionals in an increasingly digital world," the company said in a statement.
11th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Abbott Labs CEO expects strong COVID-19 testing demand in near term

Abbott Laboratories Chief Executive Officer Robert Ford said on Tuesday demand for COVID-19 testing has surged globally and that sales of its tests should stay strong in the near term. "We've obviously you know, had a pretty, pretty strong last couple of months of testing and we expect that to continue here in the more immediate future," Ford said at the annual J.P. Morgan Health care conference. He added his company has the capacity to support demand. While testing demand will eventually dwindle, there will be a portion that is sustained, Ford said.
11th Jan 2022 - Reuters

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Chile, a vaccine front-runner, launches fourth COVID dose

Chile, one of the world's fastest movers on COVID-19 vaccines, started its campaign to give fourth doses on Monday to immunocompromised people, a regional first, as infections rise driven by the fast spread of the Omicron variant. The South American country has seen daily infections rise to over 4,000, doubling over the last week, government data show, a reflection of soaring infections globally, despite hopes over data suggesting Omicron may be less fatal, if more contagious. "This vaccine, this fourth dose or second booster dose, will be available to everyone
10th Jan 2022 - Reuters

U.S. Covid-19 Cases Set to Triple Pre-Omicron Record

The seven-day average of newly reported Covid-19 infections in the U.S. is on track to triple the pre-Omicron record set a year ago, when America saw a quarter million daily cases, as concerns grow over access to and reliability of testing both in the U.S. and Europe, where the highly transmissible Omicron variant has also taken root. Growing demand for tests has led some laboratories to ration access, giving priority to people exhibiting symptoms or who have other underlying health concerns. The University of North Carolina’s microbiology lab, for instance, is restricting tests to those showing Covid-19 symptoms, employees and patients who need a test before undergoing surgery. The University of Washington temporarily closed some of its testing sites last week and is giving appointment priority to people with Covid-19 symptoms or a known exposure, amid growing demand, though health experts worry that asymptomatic people might continue to spread the virus if they are unable to access testing.
10th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Italy's COVID woes mainly caused by unvaccinated, Draghi says

The small number of Italians who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19 are largely responsible for the continued health crisis, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Monday. The government last week made vaccinations mandatory for everyone aged over 50, one of very few European countries to take such a step, in an attempt to ease pressure on its hospitals as new cases surge. "We must never lose sight of the fact that most of the problems we have today are because there are non-vaccinated people," Draghi told a news conference. "For the umpteenth time, I invite all those Italians who are not yet vaccinated to do so, and to get the third shot."
10th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Omicron takes over as Czech Republic's dominant coronavirus variant

The Omicron variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus has become the dominant strain in the Czech Republic, the country's National Institute of Public Health (SZU) said on Monday. The central European country of 10.7 million expects the Omicron wave to culminate in late January, with about 50,000 daily cases detected, but that may not be a complete picture because of the expected strain on testing capacity, the government and independent experts have said. The SZU said that Omicron had accounted for more than 50% of positive tests as of Jan. 8, with samples from mainly big cities on Jan. 9 showing 79% of COVID-19 cases were the Omicron variant
10th Jan 2022 - Reuters

U.S. breaks COVID-19 hospitalization record at over 132000 as Omicron surges

COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States reached a record high on Monday, according to a Reuters tally, as a surge in infections caused by the highly contagious Omicron variant strains health systems in several states. There were 132,646 people hospitalized with COVID, surpassing the record of 132,051 set in January last year. Hospitalizations have increased steadily since late December, doubling in the last three weeks, as Omicron quickly overtook Delta as the dominant version of the virus in the United States.
10th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Pfizer CEO predicts omicron vaccine will be ready in March

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Monday said that his company is aiming to have a vaccine that targets the omicron variant as well as other COVID-19 variants ready in March. “This vaccine will be ready in March,” Bourla said in an appearance on CNBC’s "Squawk Box." “We [are] already starting manufacturing some of these quantities at risk,” he added. Pfizer will produce the doses to be ready in case countries want the shots, but Bourla noted that it was unclear if a vaccine targeting variants was necessary or how exactly it would be used. “The hope is that we will achieve something that will have way, way better protection particularly against infections, because the protection against the hospitalizations and the severe disease — it is reasonable right now with the current vaccines as long as you are having let’s say the third dose,” Bourla said.
10th Jan 2022 - The Hill

Spanish PM calls for debate on treating COVID-19 as endemic

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez says that amid falling lethality rates for COVID-19, Spain wants European officials to consider whether to move away from the detailed tracking that the pandemic has required until now to a flu-like monitoring system. The change would mean treating COVID-19 as an “endemic illness” rather than a pandemic, Sánchez said Monday, adding that deaths as a proportion of recorded cases have fallen dramatically since the initial onset of the pandemic. “I believe that we have the conditions for, with precaution, slowly, opening the debate at the technical level and at the level of health professionals, but also at the European level, to start evaluating the evolution of this disease with different parameters than we have until now,” Sánchez told Cadena SER radio.
10th Jan 2022 - The Independent

COVID-19: 'End in sight' but there will be more 'bumps' for next three months - WHO envoy

COVID-19 could continue to pose a "difficult" situation for the next three months but "we can see the end in sight", the World Health Organisation's special envoy on the virus has said. Disease experts are looking at when coronavirus will become endemic and how governments will need to change the way it is managed in the future. The WHO's Dr David Nabarro told Sky News: "I'm afraid we are moving through the marathon but there's no actual way to say that we're at the end - we can see the end in sight, but we're not there. And there's going to be some bumps before we get there."
10th Jan 2022 - Sky News

Covid-19 news: Ministers plan for UK to ‘live with covid’

UK government ministers are hinting at plans for the nation to “live with covid”. “I hope we will be one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how you transition from pandemic to endemic,” Nadhim Zahawi, former minister for covid vaccine deployment, told Sky News on Sunday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce details of such a plan within the coming weeks. “We are moving to a situation where it is possible to say that we can live with covid and that the pressure on the NHS and on vital public services is abating,” senior minister Michael Gove told Sky News. “But it’s absolutely vital to recognise that we are not there yet.” To be considered endemic, a disease outbreak would be consistently present in a region, with predictable spread and infection rates. The spread and rates of the disease would be predictable. This is currently far from the case in the UK, where over 150,000 deaths have been reported so far, and 141,472 new cases were reported on Sunday. Scientists have expressed concern. Devi Sridhar at the University of Edinburgh points out that no country has learned to live with covid without “crashing health services, social life, the economy or having widespread disruption” in one way or another.
10th Jan 2022 - New Scientist

Schools return amid Omicron havoc, but hopes flicker

European governments are relaxing COVID-19 rules to keep hospitals, schools and emergency services going as the much more contagious but less lethal Omicron variant changes their approach to the pandemic. Even though a record surge in infections has yet to peak in Europe, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the time was right to start evaluating the disease's evolution "with different parameters". The mass return of children to school after the Christmas holidays is evidence that few wish to see a return to the online-only learning that marked some of the early waves of infection. Even as France registered a record seven-day average of almost 270,000 cases a day, it eased testing protocols for schoolchildren, saying too many classes were closed
10th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Europe loosens COVID policies as Omicron takes out key workers

The Czech Republic said on Monday it would allow critical workers such as doctors and teachers to go to work after a positive COVID-19 test, the latest European country to ease restrictions to keep services running as cases surge. As the much more contagious Omicron variant becomes dominant and forces hundreds of thousands to isolate, the pressure is growing on health workers, police and firefighters, with teachers set to follow as schools resume after Christmas holidays.
10th Jan 2022 - Reuters

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COVID: Record number of children admitted to hospital in a single day

A record number of children in England were admitted to hospital with COVID on 3 January, according to government data. Some 157 children were admitted on the Bank Holiday Monday, 110 of whom were aged 5 or younger. The figure surpasses the previous record on 145 admissions on 28 December. In the last seven days, a total of 567 children have been admitted to hospital with COVID.
8th Jan 2022 - Yahoo News UK

Covid: Thousands protest in France against proposed new vaccine pass

French authorities say more than 105,000 people have taken part in protests across the country against the introduction of a new coronavirus pass. A new draft law would in effect ban unvaccinated people from public life. Demonstrators in the capital, Paris, held placards emblazoned with phrases like "no to vaccine passes". Interior Ministry officials said 34 people were arrested and some 10 police officers were injured after the protests turned violent in some places. The bill, which passed its first reading in the lower house of France's parliament on Thursday, would remove the option of showing a negative Covid-19 test to gain access to a host of public venues.
8th Jan 2022 - BBC News

Chile to become first country in Latin America to offer fourth COVID shot

Chile will begin offering a fourth shot of the coronavirus vaccine next week to immunocompromised citizens, the government said on Thursday, the first country in Latin America and one of the first in the world to offer the extra dose. "Starting next Monday, January 10, we are going to start a new mass vaccination process with a fourth dose or a second booster dose," said Pinera in a press conference. Chile has one of the world's highest vaccination rates and has been hailed as a model for its response to the pandemic, having administered two doses to over 85% of the population. About 57% have received a third booster shot, according to Our World in Data.
7th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Omicron pushes U.S. COVID hospitalizations toward record high

COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States are poised to hit a new high as early as Friday, according to a Reuters tally, surpassing the record set in January of last year as the highly contagious Omicron variant fuels a surge in the number of cases. Hospitalizations have increased steadily since late December as Omicron quickly overtook Delta as the dominant strain of the coronavirus in the United States, although experts say Omicron will likely prove less deadly than prior variants.
7th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Government ‘failing’ on classroom ventilation as thousands will not get air purifiers

The government's plan to provide 7,000 air purifiers to schools falls thousands short of what is needed to ensure adequate ventilation in every classroom, according to a survey of teachers. The Department for Education said ventilation in classrooms was key to reducing the spread of Covid-19 among schoolchildren but many teachers report that they have been left unable to even monitor the quality of their air. Labour said the government was providing “just a fraction” of the ventilation support that schools need. A survey of nearly 2,000 teachers by Nasuwt, the teachers' union, found that more than half (56 per cent) did not have access to a CO2 monitor despite a commitment by ministers to provide all schools and colleges with them at the start of the school year.
7th Jan 2022 - The Independent

Biden, in Shift, Prepares Americans to See Covid-19 as Part of Life

As Covid-19 cases climb across the U.S., President Biden and his administration are preparing Americans to accept the virus as a part of daily life, in a break from a year ago when he took office with a pledge to rein in the pandemic and months later said the nation was “closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” The recalibration of Mr. Biden’s message comes as the country braces for another round of disruptions wrought by the pandemic. A growing number of schools temporarily have returned to virtual instruction and many businesses are strained by staffing shortages, in both cases due to infections triggered by the highly transmissible Omicron variant. Thursday marked the 12th straight day of more than 1,000 flight cancellations, and many states warned that ongoing testing shortages will make it harder to return people to work and school.
7th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

Work-From-Home Access Is Skewed Across U.S. Race, Education Gap

Remote work is here to stay and newly released U.S. government data show how much it could exacerbate inequalities. The ability to telework differed sharply by race and by level of education in a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of workers in their late 30s and early 40s. Almost half of White respondents worked from home at least part-time during the February 2021 through May 2021 survey period, compared with 38% of Black workers.
7th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Record numbers of NHS staff quit as frontline medics battle Covid pandemic trauma

More than 27,000 people voluntarily resigned from the NHS from July to September last year, the highest number on record. NHS medics have been quitting in record numbers as staff warned of burnout among an overwhelmed workforce. One worker revealed he battled PTSD and had to quit as an intensive care nurse last year after the trauma of working on Covid wards, with others left in tears due to the strains of the job. Meanwhile, NHS Million, a campaigning website that supports NHS staff said it is receiving a “constant flood” of “disturbing” messages from workers who have spent almost two years working during the pandemic.
7th Jan 2022 - iNews

Canada warns provinces they need to do more to fight Omicron variant

Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos on Friday warned some of the country's 10 provinces that they needed to do more to fight the Omicron coronavirus variant and prevent healthcare systems from being swamped. New daily cases of COVID-19 soared by 65% in the last week across Canada, and hospitals say it is becoming increasingly hard to maintain staffing levels. Duclos said provinces should pay attention to Ontario and Quebec, which together account for around 61% of Canada's population of 38.4 million. Both have reimposed severe restrictions on businesses and gatherings.
7th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Omicron Study in South Africa Points to End of Acute Pandemic Phase

A South African study from the epicenter of the world’s omicron surge offers a tantalizing hint that the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic may be ending. The infection wave moved with “unprecedented speed” and caused much milder illness than earlier strains, a study of patients infected with Covid-19 at a large hospital in the South African city where the first outbreak of the omicron variant was recorded showed. “If this pattern continues and is repeated globally, we are likely to see a complete decoupling of case and death rates,” the researchers said. That suggests “omicron may be a harbinger of the end of the epidemic phase of the Covid pandemic, ushering in its endemic phase.” The study at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital Complex analyzed records of 466 patients from the current wave and 3,976 from previous bouts of infection. Researchers that worked on it included Fareed Abdullah, a director at the council and an infectious disease doctor at the hospital.
7th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Hong Kong Faces Worst of Both Worlds as Omicron Ruins Covid Zero

Hong Kong is at a Covid-19 tipping point. The once-vibrant gateway to China sacrificed its status as an international hub to “Covid Zero,” its strategy for eliminating the virus by isolating itself from a world awash in the pathogen. It worked for nearly a year, keeping residents safe and largely unfettered while raising the tantalizing possibility of reopening the border with China, the city’s economic lifeblood. Now it’s living with the worst of both worlds, after a couple of imported infections caused by the highly transmissible omicron variant started spreading in the under-vaccinated city, triggering renewed curbs. Residents can no longer go to the gym or the cinema, and the once-ubiquitous banquets where people gathered to celebrate the Chinese New Year were cancelled for another year.
7th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

U.S. Investors Will Return to the Office, but Probably in London

Even as the Omicron strain forces London’s white-collar workers to do their job from home, U.S. investors are eyeing the U.K. capital’s offices. Returns are better than other European hubs, but maybe not for long. North Americans were the biggest purchasers of London offices in the fourth quarter of 2021, accounting for 39% of deals by value overall and 56% within the City of London district, based on data from real-estate firm Knight Frank. Typically, they make around one in five purchases. The numbers may be skewed by the fact that Asian buyers, who usually dominate London deals, face travel restrictions. But higher returns on the city’s offices are also becoming a draw. Average rent yields on the best properties are around 4%, while in Paris and Berlin they are below 3%.
6th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

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India: New COVID cases jump nearly four times since start of year

India’s new COVID-19 cases have soared by 90,928 in the past 24 hours, up nearly four-fold since the start of the year, mostly from cities where health officials say the Omicron variant has overtaken Delta. Cities such as capital New Delhi, Mumbai in the west and Kolkata in the east are experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases, although without a corresponding rise in hospitalisations.
6th Jan 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Scepticism grips Romania, the EU’s second-least vaccinated nation

“There is a quote attributed to Mark Twain: it’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled,” says Marius Mioc, a self-published Romanian author, as he clutches two copies of his latest book: Covid, The Lie of The Century. “This is not a real pandemic, but hysteria, and it is driven by politics and the want to make money.” Despite having previously sold his books about Romania’s 1989 revolution against the former Communist regime in local bookshops, Mioc found retailers did not want to stock his latest work, which was first published in 2020 and costs 45 RON (just more than $10). That, he says, is all part of the conspiracy. In Romania, which has among the lowest spending on healthcare in Europe and a health system that is consistently ranked the worst in the European Union, doctors are bracing for a surge of the fast-spreading Omicron variant. Head of the communicable disease centre, Adriana Pistol, recently warned a peak of 25,000 daily cases was soon possible – a significant jump from the current 1,800 or so cases per day now in the country of 20 million.
6th Jan 2022 - Al Jazeera English

Chicago schools shut for 2nd day over virus safety protocols

Hundreds of thousands of Chicago students remained out of school for a second straight day Thursday after leaders of the nation’s third-largest school district failed to resolve a deepening clash with the influential teachers union over COVID-19 safety protocols. The Chicago Teachers Union, which voted to revert to online instruction, told teachers to stay home starting Wednesday during the latest COVID-19 surge while both sides negotiate. The move just two days after students returned from winter break prompted district officials to cancel classes. Chicago Public Schools, like most other districts, has rejected a return to remote learning, saying it worsens racial inequities and is detrimental to academic performance, mental health and attendance. District officials insist schools can safely remain open with protocols in place.
6th Jan 2022 - The Associated Press

Omicron surge vexes parents of children too young for shots

Afternoons with Grammy. Birthday parties. Meeting other toddlers at the park. Parents of children too young to be vaccinated are facing difficult choices as an omicron variant-fueled surge in COVID-19 cases makes every encounter seem risky. For Maine business owner Erin Connolly, the most wrenching decision involves Madeleine, her 3-year-old daughter, and Connolly’s mother, who cares for the girl on the one day a week she isn’t in preschool. It’s a treasured time of making cookies, going to the library, or just hanging out. But the spirited little girl resists wearing a mask, and with the highly contagious variant spreading at a furious pace, Connolly says she’s wondering how long that can continue “and when does it feel too unsafe.”
6th Jan 2022 - The Associated Press

Schools sticking with in-person learning scramble for subs

Principals, superintendents and counselors are filling in as substitutes in classrooms as the surge in coronavirus infections further strains schools that already had been struggling with staffing shortages. In Cincinnati, dozens of employees from the central office were dispatched this week to schools that were at risk of having to close because of low staffing. The superintendent of Boston schools, Brenda Cassellius, tweeted she was filling in for a fifth grade teacher. San Francisco’s superintendent, Vince Matthews, has called on all employees with teaching credentials to take a class.
6th Jan 2022 - The Associated Press

French parliament approves Macron's vaccine pass

France's parliament on Thursday approved President Emmanuel Macron's plans for a vaccine pass to help curb the spread of the Omicron variant after a tumultuous debate whipped up by Macron's comments that he wanted to "piss off" the unvaccinated. Macron told Le Parisien newspaper earlier this week that he wanted to make the lives of those refusing the COVID-19 vaccine so complicated by squeezing them out of public places that they would end up getting jabbed. read more. Macron's coarse language barely three months before a presidential election was widely seen as a politically calculated, tapping into a intensifying public frustration against the unvaccinated.
6th Jan 2022 - Reuters

French Prime Minister not in favour of compulsory COVID vaccination

French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Thursday that making vaccination compulsory to rein in the new coronavirus would not be very helpful, as that move would bring more problems than solutions. "We already have some difficulties to control the health pass compliance. Those difficulties would be even bigger if we made vaccination compulsory," Castex told BFM TV and RMC Radio.
6th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Dogs to visit 3 school districts to sniff out COVID-19

Two dogs trained to detect an odor distinct to people who are sick with COVID-19 will visit three school districts in Bristol County this week. A black Labrador named Huntah and a golden Lab called Duke can detect the smell of the virus on surfaces and will sit to indicate when they pick up the scent. The dogs will visit schools in the Freetown, Lakeville and Norton school districts, WBZ-TV reported Tuesday. “With COVID, whether it’s the omicron, whether it’s the delta, our dogs will hit on it,” said Bristol County Capt. Paul Douglas. “And if there’s a new variant that comes out in six months, hopefully there isn’t, but if there is one, COVID is COVID.” Fairhaven School Superintendent Tara Kohler welcomed the dogs saying their presence shows students, “we are doing everything we can to mitigate the risk and I want them to feel secure and safe and not anxious about their surroundings.”
5th Jan 2022 - The Associated Press

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CDC advisory panel in favor of Pfizer vaccine booster for ages 12 to 15

A panel of outside experts advising the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday voted to recommend booster shots of Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE's COVID-19 vaccine be made available to 12- to 15-year-olds. The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 13 to 1 to recommend that the U.S. health agency support booster shots for those aged 12 to 15 at least five months after their second dose. The panel also said the CDC should strengthen its recommendation for boosters ages 16 and 17. The agency had previously made the shots available to those teenagers, but had stopped short of suggesting that all of them should receive the additional jab.
6th Jan 2022 - Reuters

England to suspend PCR confirmation of positive rapid COVID tests

People who test positive for COVID-19 on rapid lateral flow tests will not need to confirm their results with a follow-up PCR test if they are not showing symptoms, the UK Health Security Agency said on Wednesday. Britain is reporting record daily case numbers, and the UKHSA said that the high prevalence meant the chance of a false positive from a lateral flow device (LFD) was low. The move could also reduce the burden on the testing system, and reduce confusion if the test results contradict each other. At current levels of prevalence, officials say a positive LFD result is likely to be accurate, even if a follow-up PCR were negative.
5th Jan 2022 - Reuters

COVID testing policy put under the microscope as Omicron sweeps world

Britain and Israel are overhauling their COVID-19 testing policies as governments seek to reduce the burden on laboratories and struggle with tight supplies of kits amid soaring infection rates fuelled by the Omicron variant. This time last year, vaccines offered hope that the pandemic could be over by now. But Omicron has brought new challenges, including overloading public health systems, even if - as many scientists say - it leads to less severe illness than the earlier Delta variant.
5th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Italy extends COVID vaccine mandate to everyone over 50

Italy on Wednesday made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for people from the age of 50, one of very few European countries to take a similar steps, in an attempt to ease pressure on its health service and reduce fatalities. The measure is immediately effective and will run until June 15. Italy has registered more than 138,000 coronavirus deaths since its outbreak emerged in February 2020, the second highest toll in Europe after Britain.
5th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Portugal could ease isolation rules by Jan. 30 vote as infections soar

Portugal's authorities said on Wednesday that isolation rules for quarantined voters may need to be eased ahead of a snap general election on Jan. 30 as the country reported a daily record of 39,570 COVID-19 infections. As the Omicron variant sweeps the country that has one of the world's highest vaccination rates, hospital admissions and mortality remain well below levels seen in the previous peak of the disease in early 2021.
5th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Thailand fears "tens of thousands" of new COVID-19 cases, weighs curbs

Thailand is considering measures such as limiting large gatherings and banning alcohol sales in restaurants to discourage customers to avert a wave of coronavirus infections, a health official said on Wednesday. The country reported 3,899 cases on Wednesday, up from an average of 2,600 daily cases towards the end of last year, and the Omicron variant itself has tripled from last month's holiday period, government data showed. If measures like wearing masks and regular testing were not followed, infections could reach the "tens of thousands in the next two weeks," Sumanee Watcharasin, a spokeswoman for the country's coronavirus taskforce, said.
5th Jan 2022 - Reuters on MSN.com

Australia's health system under pressure as COVID-19 cases hit fresh records

Australia's daily COVID-19 cases hit a record high for a third day on Wednesday, further straining hospital resources and testing facilities as public anger grew over the handling of the fast-moving outbreak of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. Many Australians, already unhappy about long queues at public testing centres and a shortage of at-home tests, were further incensed when news broke that tennis world number one Novak Djokovic had been given a medical exemption to enter the country. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, under pressure at the start of an election year, announced a further relaxing of testing requirements to shorten long lines, and provided access to free rapid antigen tests for pensioners, the poor and veterans.
5th Jan 2022 - Reuters on MSN.com

Germany could reduce COVID isolation periods to keep country running

Germany is considering shortening COVID-19 self-isolation periods over fears that critical services could grind to a halt as the highly infectious Omicron variant takes hold, a health ministry plan showed on Wednesday. Workers in critical sectors, such as hospitals or electricity suppliers, would be able to end their isolation after five days, provided they test PCR negative for the virus, under the draft proposals being sent to regional leaders. The current isolation period is 14 days for everyone. For the general population, the isolation period would be reduced to seven days with a negative PCR test, according to the draft document prepared for the leaders, who will meet Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday to discuss how to respond to the spread of the Omicron variant.
5th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Bank of America to staff: Get a booster, we'll give a food bank $100

Bank of America Corp told workers on Wednesday it will donate $100 to local food banks for every one of its employees who gets a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot and notifies the bank before Jan. 31, according to a memo seen by Reuters. It is a new spin on the $100 financial incentives that some cities and states offered newly vaccinated residents, and comes as companies look for ways to protect staff and ultimately return to work in offices. Bank of America, the United States' second-largest bank, said it would donate up to $10 million for workers who get booster shots this month or who have already gotten the shot if they register that information with the bank.
5th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Shares in COVID-19 vaccine developer Valneva extend fall

Shares in biotech company Valneva fell again on Wednesday, declining for the seventh day in a row due to a growing belief amongst investors that the COVID-19 Omicron variant might lessen the need for mass vaccination. Valneva shares were down 3% at 17.10 euros, meaning the stock has now lost close to 40% since its Dec. 27 close of 26.38 euros. It did gain more than 200% a year in 2021 and 2020 as Valneva's COVID-19 vaccine candidate came increasingly closer to approval. It is still awaiting a green light for its shot in the European Union and Britain.
5th Jan 2022 - Reuters on MSN.com

One in 10 Londoners Had Covid-19 at the End of 2021

Covid-19 afflicted one in 10 people in London by the end of 2021, according to estimates by the Office for National Statistics. That’s the highest infection rate of any part of the U.K., where omicron is now the dominant variant. Infections increased everywhere across the country, reaching over 3.7 million in total.
5th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Scarce At-Home Covid Tests Leave Some Consumers Paying $40 a Pop

High prices for at-home Covid-19 tests are hitting the wallets of U.S. families who need them to get back to school and work — if they can find any to buy at all. One restaurant worker in New York said she paid an acquaintance double the retail price in a sidewalk exchange for a test kit. A mom in Missouri said she’s rationing her last two-pack for if her kids show serious symptoms. Another parent is keeping her daughter home from school, where tests are required before returning after the holiday, until an in-person appointment later this week because the $80 price tag she saw in online community groups was too steep.
5th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Italy to Require Covid Shots for Those Over 50 to Blunt Record Cases

Italy made vaccination compulsory for people over 50 and further reduced what the unvaccinated can do in its latest bid to fight the surge in Covid-19 cases. “We want to slow down the growth of the contagion curve and push Italians who still aren’t vaccinated to do so,” Prime Minister Mario Draghi said during the cabinet meeting, according to a statement. “We are acting in particular on age groups that are most at risk of hospitalization, to reduce pressure on hospitals and save lives.”
5th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Inside a Covid-19 School Closing: A Pennsylvania Superintendent Agonizes Over Going Remote

Teachers calling in sick from Covid-19 are prompting superintendents across the country to close schools and move classes online, forcing parents to scramble for child care and reorder work schedules. Nationally, more than 4,500 schools will be closed at least one day this week due to the pandemic, the highest number this academic year, according to Burbio Inc., a Pelham, N.Y., data company that tracks K-12 school closures. On Wednesday, Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest district, canceled classes after the teachers union said the classrooms presented unsafe conditions. City leaders called the vote by the Chicago Teachers Union an illegal job action and said teachers who didn’t report to work wouldn’t receive pay. Districts in other cities such as Atlanta and Milwaukee moved over the weekend to shift classes online as the highly contagious Omicron variant has driven a surge in cases.
5th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

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Germany needs 15 million additional boosters to slow Omicron

Germany needs to offer booster shots to an additional 15 million people to slow the spread of the Omicron strain and hopefully avoid a rush on intensive care units, its health minister said in remarks published on Wednesday. Karl Lauterbach told the RND group of newspapers that modelling by the Robert Koch Institute for public health showed that more than 80% of people who have already received two vaccination shots against the coronavirus would need a third.
4th Jan 2022 - Reuters

Lockdown of Chinese City Leaves 13 Million Stranded

A week and a half into one of the biggest pandemic lockdowns in China, residents of Xi’an voiced desperation online about challenges in getting food and medical care. China’s Covid-19 count remains low in comparison with other countries, hovering at around 100 a day. In the past few days, about 90% of cases have been in Xi’an, the city of terracotta-warrior fame in China’s northwest, which has confirmed 1,758 total Covid-19 infections since Dec. 9, a high number for China. Most of the cases have been mild, officials said. No deaths related to Covid-19 have been reported anywhere in China in the past 11 months, including Xi’an.
4th Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

WHO Official Downplays Coronavirus Variant Found in France

The World Health Organization said a coronavirus variant found in France hasn’t become much of a threat since it was first identified in November. The variant “has been on our radar,” Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on Covid, said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. “That virus had a lot of chances to pick up.” The variant was identified in 12 people in the southern Alps around the same time that omicron was discovered in South Africa last year. The latter mutation has since traveled the globe and kindled record levels of contagion, unlike the French one that researchers at the IHU Mediterranee Infection -- helmed by scientist Didier Raoult --nicknamed IHU.
4th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

India's Political Parties Campaign On With Huge Rallies Despite Omicron

Covid-19 cases are surging in India. Still, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his political opponents are on the campaign trail. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party plans the “biggest ever political rally” in the northern state of Punjab (which is also under a range of virus curbs). As many as 300,000 people are expected at Wednesday’s gathering, organizers told local media. Meanwhile, the capital, New Delhi, is under a strict nighttime and weekend curfew. Its Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who belongs to a rival party and is just back from a heavy few days of campaigning across the north, announced on Tuesday he’d tested positive for the virus.
4th Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

France vows to go ahead with vaccine pass despite parliamentary glitch

French government officials on Tuesday vowed to enact by mid-January as planned a law to block unvaccinated people from hospitality venues, despite the legislation hitting a procedural hitch in parliament overnight. "January 15 remains our goal," for the law coming into force, European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune told LCI television. Until now France has enforced a COVID-19 health pass, which means in order to get into restaurants, cafes or cinemas or board trains, people need to either show a fresh negative test, or proof of vaccination. The legislation will remove the option of showing a negative test, effectively barring unvaccinated people from hospitality venues or trains.
4th Jan 2022 - Reuters

South Korea court exempts private schools from vaccine passes

A South Korean court ordered that private educational facilities, including cram schools, should be temporarily excluded from government COVID-19 vaccine pass mandates, the health ministry said on Tuesday. The injunction is one of the first legal obstacles to South Korea's vaccine mandates, which require passes or testing for entry to facilities including restaurants, cafes, gyms, and bars, as well as privately-run schools. A Seoul administrative court ruled that the mandate at private education facilities such as tuition centres, libraries and study cafes should be blocked while it considers a legal challenge filed against the Ministry of Health by federations of private education and parents' groups, the ministry said.
4th Jan 2022 - Reuters

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COVID-19: New variant, B.1.640.2, detected in France - study

A new coronavirus variant has been discovered in southern France, spreading in a small outbreak, according to a new study. The variant, tentatively identified B.1.640.2 according to a recent study backed by the French government that has yet to be peer-reviewed, is believed to be Cameroonian in origin and have so far spread to 12 patients in southern France. This new variant seems to have 46 new mutations as well as 37 deletions.
3rd Jan 2022 - The Jerusalem Post

South Africa lifts curfew as it says COVID-19 fourth wave peaks

South Africa has lifted a midnight to 4 a.m. curfew on people's movement with immediate effect, believing the country has passed the peak of its fourth COVID-19 wave driven by the Omicron variant, a government statement said on Thursday. The country made the changes based on the trajectory of the pandemic, levels of vaccination in the country and available capacity in the health sector, according to a press release issued by Mondli Gungubele, a minister in the presidency. South Africa is currently at the lowest of its five-stage COVID-19 alert levels.
31st Dec 2021 - Reuters

Omicron dampens worldwide New Year celebrations, but London throws party on TV

The Omicron coronavirus variant dampened New Year festivities around much of the world, with Paris cancelling its fireworks show, London relegating its to television, and New York City scaling down its famous ball drop celebration in Times Square. The illuminated ball made of Waterford crystal panels slid down its pole at the midnight hour in Times Square, but only 15,000 spectators were allowed into the official viewing area instead of the usual 58,000.
1st Jan 2022 - Reuters

New Year celebrations muted by Omicron, but South Africa ...

The Australian city of Sydney was one place where the New Year charged in with something like full swagger, as spectacular fireworks glittered in the harbour above the Opera House. But many other landmark cities were forgoing pyrotechnics as midnight rolled across the globe, with displays called off at Paris's Arc de Triomphe, London's riverside and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. The glittering ball is still due to drop at New York's Times Square, but the crowd shouting out the countdown of the year's exit is set to be a quarter the usual size - masked up, socially distanced, and with vaccine proof in hand. Still, South Africa, which first raised the alarm about the new fast-spreading coronavirus variant, gave the world one of the last big good surprises of the year, becoming the first country to declare its Omicron wave had crested - and with no huge surge in deaths. The abrupt lifting
1st Jan 2022 - Thomson Reuters Foundation

UK honours COVID scientists and medics, Bond actor Daniel Craig

Britain recognised the scientists and medical chiefs at the forefront of the battle against COVID-19 in Queen Elizabeth’s annual New Year’s honours list, while James Bond actor Daniel Craig was given the same award as his famous onscreen character.
31st Dec 2021 - Reuters UK

Australia starts 2022 with record COVID cases

Australia started 2022 with a record number of new COVID-19 cases as an outbreak centred in the eastern states grew, and New South Wales eased its isolation rules for healthcare workers as the number of people hospitalised with the virus rose. New South Wales, the most populous state, and Victoria both posted daily record case numbers of 22,577 and 7,442 respectively on Saturday, health department figures showed.
1st Jan 2022 - Reuters

China ends 2021 with highest weekly COVID cases since taming original epidemic

China ended its final week of 2021 with its biggest tally of local coronavirus cases for any seven-day period since subduing the country's first epidemic nearly two years ago, despite an arsenal of some of the world's toughest COVID-19 measures. The National Health Commission reported on Saturday 175 new community infections with confirmed clinical symptoms for Dec. 31, bringing the total number of local symptomatic cases in mainland China in the past week to 1,151. The surge has been driven mostly by an outbreak in the northwestern industrial and tech hub of Xian, a city of 13 million.
1st Jan 2022 - Reuters

Paris attacks trial to be paused after main suspect catches COVID -source

The trial of Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect in the November 2015 Islamist attack that killed 130 people in Paris, and others will be paused briefly in January as Abdeslam has caught the coronavirus, a judicial source told Reuters on Friday. The criminal trial will resume as scheduled on Jan. 4 but then be officially suspended until Jan. 13., the source said. French news agency AFP earlier reported on the planned suspension, citing an e-mail sent to the parties by the court's president.
1st Jan 2022 - Reuters

U.K. Tinkers With Covid Measures as Omicron Cases Spike

The U.K. is trying various strategies to limit the impact of record high Covid-19 cases on health care and other sectors, while attempting to stay true to a vow to avoid new lockdowns. Among the latest moves, Boris Johnson’s government is developing contingency plans to help companies and supply chains avoid disruptions caused by rising staff absences, the Financial Times reported. It’s asked private businesses to test the plans against a worst-case scenario of as much as 25% in workforce absences, according to the newspaper. Covid-related absences among hospital staff jumped nearly two-thirds between Dec. 26 and Dec. 31, the Times reported on Sunday, citing National Health Service figures.
2nd Jan 2022 - Bloomberg

Fauci warns of danger of hospitalization surge due to large number of COVID cases

Top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said there was still a danger of a surge in hospitalization due to a large number of coronavirus cases even as early data suggests the Omicron COVID-19 variant is less severe. "The only difficulty is that if you have so many cases, even if the rate of hospitalization is lower with Omicron than it is with Delta, there is still the danger that you will have a surging of hospitalizations that might stress the healthcare system," Fauci said in an interview on Sunday with CNN. The Omicron variant was estimated to be 58.6% of the coronavirus variants circulating in the United States as of Dec. 25, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
2nd Jan 2022 - Reuters

Israel reports first case of 'flurona': Doctors say they have found rare double infection of influenza and Covid in young pregnant woman

A young pregnant woman has become the first person in the world to be infected with both Covid and the flu. The woman tested positive for both viruses in Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikva city, Israel, on Thursday. She is suffering mild symptoms and Israeli health officials are studying her case to determine whether the combination causes any greater severity of illness. Her case is first documented in the world but doctors believe there could be more 'flurona' infections in the country.
2nd Jan 2022 - Daily Mail

English school children to wear masks to tackle Omicron surge

Children in secondary schools in England will be told to wear face coverings when they return after the Christmas holiday next week to tackle a surge in cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said on Sunday. "We want to maximise the number of children in school and college for the maximum amount of time," he said in an article in the Sunday Telegraph. "One of the additional, temporary measures that will help achieve this in light of the omicron surge is recommending face coverings are worn in secondary school classrooms and teaching spaces for the coming weeks – although not for longer than they are needed."
3rd Jan 2022 - Reuters

U.S., Europe Weigh Isolation Requirements as Omicron Disrupts Daily Life

European governments are relaxing some quarantine requirements to help keep daily life open with new Covid-19 infections surging, while the top U.S. infectious-disease expert suggested health authorities might tighten isolation measures. Countries have been grappling with isolation requirements, trying to balance health concerns as the Omicron variant takes hold, with the risk that those quarantine periods sideline medical staff, teachers and other workers for so long that hospitals, schools and other workplaces are unable to function effectively. Throughout the pandemic, Europeans have typically been required to self-isolate for 10 days if they or a close contact have tested positive for the virus. Some governments are responding to the threat of breakdown by shortening or otherwise easing their quarantine rules.
3rd Jan 2022 - The Wall Street Journal

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France reports ‘dizzying’ daily record of 208,000 COVID cases

France is seeing a “tsunami” of COVID-19 infections, with 208,000 cases reported during the past 24 hours on Wednesday, a new national and European record, Health Minister Olivier Veran has told lawmakers. France has been breaking infection records repeatedly during the past few days, with Tuesday’s 180,000 cases already the highest for a country in Europe, according to data on Covidtracker.fr. “This means that 24 hours a day, day and night, every second in our country, two French people are diagnosed positive,” Veran said. “We have never experienced such a situation,” he said, describing the increase in cases as “dizzying”. Global COVID-19 infections have hit record highs during the past seven days, data from the Reuters and AFP news agencies showed on Wednesday, as the new Omicron variant spreads rapidly, keeping many workers at home and overwhelming testing centres.
29th Dec 2021 - Al Jazeera English

New COVID-19 cases in US soar to highest levels on record

More than a year after the vaccine was rolled out, new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. have soared to their highest level on record at over 265,000 per day on average, a surge driven largely by the highly contagious omicron variant. New cases per day have more than doubled over the past two weeks, eclipsing the old mark of 250,000, set in mid-January, according to data kept by Johns Hopkins University. The fast-spreading mutant version of the virus has cast a pall over Christmas and New Year’s, forcing communities to scale back or call off their festivities just weeks after it seemed as if Americans were about to enjoy an almost normal holiday season. Thousands of flights have been canceled amid staffing shortages blamed on the virus.
29th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

U.S. COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations 'comparatively' low despite Omicron surge, CDC director says

COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations are "comparatively" low as the highly infectious Omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said on Wednesday as cases in the United States reached a record high. "In a few short weeks Omicron has rapidly increased across the country, and we expect will continue to circulate in the coming weeks. While cases have substantially increased from last week, hospitalizations and deaths remain comparatively low right now," she said, referring to overall cases.
29th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Fauci says Omicron likely to peak in U.S. by end-January

Top U.S. infectious disease adviser Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday that the surge in the COVID-19 Omicron variant in the United States is likely to peak by the end of January. "I would imagine given the size of our country, and the diversity of vaccination versus not vaccination, that it's likely to be more than a couple of weeks, probably by the end of January," he said on CNBC.
29th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Ireland smashes daily COVID-19 case record

Ireland became the latest country to smash its previous record number of daily COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, reporting 16,428 new infections as those requiring treatment in hospital also began to rise, the health department said. That topped the 11,182 reported on Dec. 24 with the fast- spreading Omicron accounting for almost all cases and making tests hard to come by. There are 568 coronavirus patients in hospital, sharply up on the Dec. 25 two-month low of 378.
29th Dec 2021 - Reuters

WHO's Tedros concerned about 'tsunami of cases' from COVID-19 variants

The simultaneous circulation of the Delta and Omicron variants of the coronavirus is creating a "tsunami of cases", World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news briefing on Wednesday. "Delta and Omicrom are now twin threats driving up cases to record numbers, leading to spikes in hospitalisation and deaths," said Tedros. "I am highly concerned that Omicron, being highly transmissible and spreading at the same time as Delta, is leading to a tsunami of cases."
29th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Bolivia reports all-time record in COVID infections

Bolivia reported late on Tuesday an all-time record of 4,934 new cases of COVID-19, as the omicron variant spreads worldwide but without any confirmed cases of the variant in the Andean nation. "(This is) the worst epidemiological storm that we have lived through since the pandemic started," said Carlos Hurtado, a top health official in Santa Cruz, the country's most populated region and the most affected by the spread of the virus. Bolivia is going through its fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Its previous record number of infections had been of 3,179 cases on May 25, during its third wave, according to Reuters data.
29th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Many Latin American countries now have higher vaccination rates than Europe and North America

Many countries in Latin America were hit with soaring Covid-19 death rates early in the pandemic, as coronavirus raged throughout the region. The tide is turning in many Latin American nations today, where vaccination rates are outpacing countries in Europe and North America and helping drive down deaths. The vaccine rollout was slow at the start, with just getting the vaccines in hand a major issue. Just six months ago, Latin America and the Caribbean were reporting just under half of all Covid-19 related deaths worldwide. Now, the region accounts for about 10% of Covid-19 related deaths, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. That's due to the accelerated delivery of European, American, Chinese and homegrown vaccines that a number of Latin American nations have received in the second half of this year, according to Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) data.
28th Dec 2021 - CNN

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Madrid's free COVID tests struggle with demand as infections hit new high

Demand for free COVID-19 testing kits provided by Madrid's regional government far outstripped supply on Tuesday, with long queues forming outside pharmacies as nationwide infections continued to climb amid the Omicron variant's rapid expansion. Spain's coronavirus infection rate hit a new record, rising to 1,360 cases per 100,000 people, measured over the preceding 14 days, from 1,206 cases reported on Monday, a five-fold rise since the beginning of December, according to health ministry data.
28th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Japan, China Vaccine Makers Under Fire for Third-World Trials

Japanese drugmaker Shionogi & Co. sealed a deal to conduct a placebo-controlled trial of its Covid-19 vaccine in Vietnam and will be expanding it in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries, even as criticism of such tests mounts in the scientific community. The Osaka-based company began testing the efficacy of its shot in Vietnam from Dec. 25, a spokesman at Shionogi said Monday. Participants of the trial, which will eventually total 50,000 volunteers, need to be unvaccinated, the spokesman said, with two-thirds of them receiving the inoculation and others getting a placebo. The company is also planning to analyze whether it’s effective against the omicon strain, the spokesman added.
27th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Greece expands restrictions to contain Omicron variant surge

Greece on Monday announced further restrictions effective from Jan. 3-16 to contain a further upsurge in COVID-19 infections including the Omicron variant, targeting mainly night-time entertainment venues. As confirmed new COVID-19 cases surged to a record of 9,284 on Monday, resulting in 66 deaths, the health minister said that under the new measures, high-protection masks would be compulsory at supermarkets, public transport and eating establishments. Bars and restaurants will have to close at midnight and no standing customers at entertainment venues will be allowed. There will also be a maximum limit of six people per table.
27th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Health experts say Italy faces paralysis under quarantine rules

Health experts urged the Italian government on Monday to relax COVID-19 quarantine rules, saying that the country otherwise risked paralysis as the highly infectious Omicron variant spreads. Under current rules, people who have come into close contact with a COVID-19 sufferer have to self-isolate for seven days if they are vaccinated and for 10 days if they have not had a shot. Nino Cartabellotta, head of the Gimbe health foundation, said each positive person had, on average, five to 10 close contacts, and predicted that within two weeks some one million people in Italy might have come down with COVID-19.
27th Dec 2021 - Reuters

UK sets new record for COVID cases as Omicron sweeps London

Britain reported another day of record COVID-19 cases on Friday, with new estimates showing swathes of London's population are carrying the virus, underlining the relentless advance of the Omicron variant. Omicron's rapid spread has driven a surge in cases over the last seven days, especially in the capital. Around 1 in 20 Londoners likely had COVID-19 on Dec. 16 and early estimates - which could yet be revised - suggest this may have risen to 1 in 10 on Sunday, models from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed on Friday.
25th Dec 2021 - Reuters

France Reports Record 100000 New Covid Cases as Omicron Rages

France reported a daily record of more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases as President Emmanuel Macron weighs measures to contain the fast-spreading omicron variant. Covid-19 cases totaled 104,611 on Saturday, according to data from the public health office, topping the 94,124 infections logged the previous day. The country reported 84 deaths. Macron, who is widely expected to seek a second term in April’s election, will convene his health defense council on Monday to discuss the coronavirus.
25th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Pressure Mounts on India to Begin Boosters as Omicron Spreads

India’s government faces a growing clamor from business leaders and public health experts to launch a Covid-19 booster drive and begin vaccinating children as the nation braces for a surge of omicron-fueled infections. With ample vaccine supplies, India could begin inoculating those under 18 as well as administer third doses to front-line health care workers, the elderly and those at high risk since they got their first shots in early 2021, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the founder and chair of Biocon Ltd. -- one of India’s largest drugmakers -- told Bloomberg on Thursday. “We need a booster policy for sure,” she said. “I really don’t know what’s holding it up -- it’s got nothing to do with vaccine availability.”
24th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Israel Plan to Push Ahead With Fourth Covid Jab May Be Scuttled

Israel’s plan to administer a fourth coronavirus vaccine dose to older adults and medical personnel may be delayed or abandoned if the country’s top health official fails to sign off on the program. The plan, which would have made the country the first in the world to offer a fourth dose on such a widespread basis, was announced on Tuesday by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett following a recommendation from a panel of experts. The decision was based on a forecast showing that fast-paced spread of omicron would leave the population largely unprotected from infection.
24th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Universal Orlando reinstates mask rule as COVID cases rise

Universal Orlando is reinstating its mask requirements beginning Christmas Eve as COVID-19 cases are surging as a result of the omicron variant. Daily cases of coronavirus have quadrupled in the past week in the state of Florida,
24th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

China puts city of 13 million in COVID lockdown before Olympics

China has put a city of 13 million people into lockdown over an increase in coronavirus infections, just weeks before it is set to host the Winter Olympics. The restrictions in the city of Xi’an in the northeastern Shaanxi province took effect on Thursday, with no word on when they might be lifted. They are some of the harshest since China imposed a strict lockdown last year on more than 11 million people in and around the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019. One person from each household will be allowed out every two days to buy household necessities, a government order said.
24th Dec 2021 - Al Jazeera English

German President Issues Pandemic Warning as Omicron Spreads

Germany’s head of state had little good cheer in his annual Christmas address to the nation, warning that the coronavirus will remain a challenge for Europe’s largest economy. “The pandemic won’t suddenly be gone one day,” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in the text of a speech to be delivered on Saturday. “It will occupy us for a long time to come.” The country’s largely ceremonial head of state -- who’s likely to secure a new five-year mandate in February -- reinforced a public call to get inoculated against Covid-19. He also exhorted Germans to rein in festivities and limit social contact to curb an expected exponential rise in new infections from the fast-spreading omicron variant.
24th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Bulgaria offers cash reward to boost vaccination rates among pensioners

Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said on Thursday that elderly people who get a COVID-19 shot will be eligible for a cash reward as part of his government's drive to boost the vaccination rates, the lowest in the European Union. Petkov, who took office this month, said every retired Bulgarian will get a one-off payment of 75 levs ($43.40) in addition to their pension in the next six months when vaccinated with a first or second dose. Pensioners who have already received three shots will also be eligible for the add-on.
24th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Ecuador makes COVID-19 vaccination obligatory

Ecuador's government said on Thursday it has made it obligatory for eligible people to be vaccinated against COVID-19, amid an increase in cases and the circulation of new variants of the disease. About 12.4 million Ecuadoreans - or 77.2% of those aged 5 and over - have been fully vaccinated against the disease, the health ministry said in a statement. Indonesia, Micronesia, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan require vaccination for adults, and German and Austria will next year.
24th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Greece cancels Christmas events, brings back mask mandate

Christmas concerts and other events have been canceled in Greece under new restrictions announced Thursday that include a general mask mandate for outdoors and all public areas. Incoming travelers will also be required to have follow-up tests for COVID-19 on the second and fourth days after their arrival. The restrictions will take effect Friday as the country braces for the expected impact of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, with the public health service already under pressure and intensive care space at more than 90% capacity. “Due to the large amount of Christmas activity and crowded conditions that it creates, the mandatory use of masks is fully justified,” Health Minister Thanos Plevris said during a live-streamed presentation of the measures, which will remain in effect at least through Jan. 3.
23rd Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

Pre-Christmas Omicron surge leads to record new British COVID cases

Britain recorded a record number of new coronavirus cases on Thursday as the Omicron variant swept across the country, with the daily tally reaching 119,789 from 106,122 a day earlier. Many industries and transport networks are struggling with staff shortages as sick workers self-isolate, while hospitals in Britain have warned of the risk of an impact on patient safety. Omicron's rapid advance has driven a surge in cases in Britain over the last seven days, with the total rising by 678,165, government data showed.
23rd Dec 2021 - Reuters

French kids line up to get vaccine shots as omicron spreads

French schoolchildren clung nervously to their parents as they entered a vast vaccine center west of Paris on Wednesday — then walked excitedly away with a decorated “vaccination diploma,” as France kicked off mass COVID-19 inoculations for children age 5 to 11. It’s not a moment too soon for the French government, which is facing the highest recorded infection rates since the pandemic began but trying to avoid a new lockdown. The health minister said Wednesday that the swiftly-spreading omicron variant is expected to be dominant in France by next week, but ruled out additional restrictions on public life for now. Officials are hoping that a surge in vaccinations will be enough to limit the mounting pressure on hospitals, where COVID-19 patients occupy more than 60% of beds.
22nd Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

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WHO boss: western countries’ Covid booster drives likely to prolong pandemic

The world will have enough doses of Covid vaccines early next year to inoculate all of the global adult population – if western countries do not hoard those vaccines to use in blanket booster programmes, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday there would be sufficient vaccine supplies in global circulation in the first quarter of 2022. “Blanket booster programmes are likely to prolong the Covid-19 pandemic, rather than ending it, by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate,” Tedros said, adding: “No country can boost its way out of the pandemic.” His remarks follow predictions by officials with the WHO’s Africa region earlier this month that African countries should receive almost a billion doses within the same timeframe.
22nd Dec 2021 - The Guardian

Some reduction in hospitalisation for Omicron v Delta in England: early analysis

Estimates suggest Omicron cases are 15% less likely to attend hospital, and 40% less likely to be hospitalised for a night or more, compared to Delta. The researchers stress that these estimated reductions in severity must be balanced against the larger risk of infection with Omicron, due to the reduction in protection provided by both vaccination and natural infection. For example, at a population level, large numbers of infections could still lead to large numbers of hospitalisations. They say the estimates provided in this paper will assist in refining mathematical models of potential healthcare demand associated with the unfolding European Omicron wave.
22nd Dec 2021 - Imperial College London

Germany says FOURTH Covid shot needed to tackle Omicron as health minister backs vaccine mandate

Germany has warned a fourth Covid vaccine will be needed to stop the spread of the contagious Omicron variant. Health minister Karl Lauterbach, who has thrown his support behind a vaccine mandate, has ordered 80million doses of a Biontech vaccine which targets Omicron and should arrive in Germany by May. He has also ordered 4million doses of the newly approved vaccine Novavax - seen as more acceptable to vaccine sceptics - and 11million doses of the new Valneva shot, which is waiting for marketing authorisation.
22nd Dec 2021 - Daily Mail

UK Covid cases soar by record 106,122 in biggest EVER increase since pandemic began

UK Covid cases have soared by 106,122 in the biggest ever increase since the beginning of the pandemic. A further 140 deaths have also been reported over the past 24 hours. Last Wednesday 78,610 cases were reported - meaning there has been a 30% increase over the last seven days. It comes as cases of the new Omicron variant also continue to rise across the country. A total of 301 Covid-19 admissions were recorded by hospitals in London on December 20, NHS England said. This is up 78% week-on-week and the highest number for a single day since February 7.
22nd Dec 2021 - The Mirror

Australian PM says no Christmas lockdown

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday ruled out a Christmas lockdown, saying hospitals were coping well with a record surge in COVID-19 cases fuelled by the Omicron variant.
22nd Dec 2021 - Reuters

COVID-19: More than 100,000 daily coronavirus cases reported in UK for first time in pandemic

The UK has reported more than 100,000 daily COVID cases for the first time since of the start of the pandemic. Some 106,122 cases have been recorded in the latest 24-hour period - around 13,000 more than the previous high of 93,045 on 17 December. A further 140 coronavirus-related deaths have also been recorded. The figures compare with 90,629 cases and 172 fatalities reported on Tuesday.
22nd Dec 2021 - Sky News

Israel to Offer Fourth Covid-19 Shot to Over 60s

Israel is set to offer a fourth dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to older people and healthcare workers to reduce the impact of an expected surge of infections driven by the Omicron variant—as two major studies found that the variant causes significantly less serious disease than earlier strains. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland concluded that the risk of hospitalization with Omicron was two-thirds lower than with earlier variants. South African researchers said earlier on Wednesday that they estimate the risk of hospitalization at around 70% to 80% lower.
22nd Dec 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Omicron's march revives urgent global calls for vaccinations

Australia's political leaders were set to hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday as cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant broke infection records and forced countries around to world to double down on vaccinations, just days before Christmas.Authorities globally have imposed new restrictions and stepped up inoculation efforts as Omicron emerges as the dominant strain of the virus, upending imminent reopening plans that many governments hoped would herald the start of a post-pandemic era in 2022.
22nd Dec 2021 - The Himalayan Times

With warning for unvaccinated, Biden lays out plan to fight surging Omicron

U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday more federal vaccination and testing sites to tackle a surge in COVID-19 driven by the Omicron variant, and said 500 million free at-home rapid tests will be available to Americans starting in January. Biden offered both a warning to the unvaccinated, who he said have "good reason to be concerned," and reassurance that those who are inoculated can gather for the holidays despite the new variant sweeping the country.
22nd Dec 2021 - Reuters

U.K. on Edge Heading Into Christmas Overshadowed by Omicron

Boris Johnson has given Britons the Christmas he has long promised -- some light-touch pandemic restrictions but with no limits on family gatherings. The big question is over what comes next. When the U.K. prime minister ruled out tighter restrictions in the coming days, he also urged Britons to be cautious and warned tougher curbs may yet be needed after Dec. 25 if an omicron-fueled wave of Covid-19 infections threatens to overwhelm the National Health Service.
22nd Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

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Many mutations of Omicron variant allow it to bond with human cells better than other Covid strains

Several mutations in the Omicron variant allow this coronavirus strain to bond with human cells more efficiently than past variants, a new study finds. Researchers at the University of British Columbia studied the variant with a highly powerful microscopy technique, examining its mutations. They found that Omicron has a much greater capacity to bind with human cell receptors than the original version of the coronavirus. The researchers also tested Omicron against antibodies, finding that it's more resistant to these immune system particles than other variants This study was posted as a preprint and has not yet been peer-reviewed, but it aligns with other recent research on Omicron's capacity to spread very fast
21st Dec 2021 - Daily Mail

Unvaccinated people who caught Delta have virtually no protection against Omicron infection, lab study suggests — but jabbed survivors are 'super immune'

People who are unjabbed but previously had the Delta Covid variant may have very little protection against Omicron infection, a lab study suggests. Austrian scientists tested the blood of those who had beat the older strain of the virus against the new super-variant to measure their antibody response. They found only one out of seven samples produced enough of the infection-fighting proteins to neutralise Omicron. It suggests that prior infection from Delta alone offers virtually no protection against catching Omicron — but the jury's still out on severe illness.
21st Dec 2021 - Daily Mail on MSN.com

Israel to offer fourth dose of COVID-19 vaccine to people over 60

Israel announced on Tuesday that it will offer a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to people older than 60, amid concern about the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. A Health Ministry expert panel recommended the fourth shot, a decision that was swiftly welcomed by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett as "great news that will help us overcome the Omicron wave that is spreading around the world." Although the decision is pending formal approval by senior health officials, Bennett urged Israelis to get the dose as soon as possible, saying: "My message is - don’t waste time, go get vaccinated." The decision follows the first known death in Israel of a patient with the Omicron variant.
21st Dec 2021 - Reuters

Oxford, AstraZeneca launch work on Omicron-targeted vaccine

AstraZeneca Plc said on Tuesday it is working with Oxford University to produce a vaccine for the Omicron coronavirus variant, joining other vaccine-makers who are looking to develop the variant-specific vaccine. "Together with Oxford University, we have taken preliminary steps in producing an Omicron variant vaccine, in case it is needed and will be informed by emerging data," a spokesperson for the company said in a statement. Oxford did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours.
21st Dec 2021 - Reuters

COVAX delivers 15,977,160 doses, more than its commitment

Until a few months ago, the proportion of the doses of Covid-19 vaccine supplied to Nepal by COVAX, the United Nations backed international vaccine sharing scheme, was much lower compared to the doses purchased by the government. But at present, the number of doses supplied by the facility is almost equal to the doses purchased by the government. According to data provided by the Ministry of Health and Population, Nepal has so far received 38,539,367 doses of Covid-19 vaccines—Vero Cell, Covishield, AstraZeneca type, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Janssen and Pfizer and BioNTech. The facility, which had committed to supply sufficient doses for 20 percent of the Nepali population which will be around 13 million, has already supplied over 15 million doses(15,977,160 doses) to Nepal. “Yes, we received more doses than what the facility had committed to provide us,” Dr Bibek Kumar Lal, director at the Family Welfare Division, told the Post.
21st Dec 2021 - The Kathmandu Post

Covid-19 Relief Drives Largest Federal-Grant Increase to States Since 2009

A surge in emergency Covid-19 funds contributed to the largest increase in federal grants to U.S. states since 2009, when Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Federal grants to states rose 37% in fiscal 2020 from the prior year, outpacing the average annual increase of 4% in the prior half-decade, according to a report by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Relative to 2008, the grants climbed 93%, accounting for inflation. The jump was mostly driven by pandemic-related grants, for needs such as coronavirus testing and housing assistance, but Medicaid and other health spending also contributed, and largely fueled the steady growth in funding to states for the past several years.
21st Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Spain Faces New Restrictions Despite High Vaccine Rates

Despite vaccination rates that make other governments envious, Spain and Portugal are facing the hard truth that, with the new omicron variant running rampant, these winter holidays won't be a time of unrestrained joy. Portugal on Tuesday announced a slew of new restrictions over Christmas and the New Year, making working from home mandatory and shutting discotheques and bars beginning Saturday night. Also, a negative test result must be shown to enter Portuguese cinemas, theaters, sports events, weddings and baptisms until at least Jan. 9.
21st Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Thailand reinstates mandatory COVID-19 quarantine over Omicron concerns

Thailand will reinstate its mandatory COVID-19 quarantine for foreign visitors and scrap a quarantine waiver from Tuesday due to concerns over the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. The decision to halt Thailand's "Test and Go" waiver means visitors will have to undergo hotel quarantine, which ranges between 7 to 10 days. Meanwhile, a so-called "sandbox" programme, which requires visitors to remain in a specific location but allows them free movement outside of their accommodation, will also be suspended in all places except for the tourist resort island of Phuket.
21st Dec 2021 - Reuters

'Significant surge' in European cases expected as Omicron spreads - WHO

The World Health Organization's European head on Tuesday warned countries to brace for a "significant surge" in COVID-19 cases as Omicron spreads, and advised the widespread use of boosters for protection. Since it emerged in late November, Omicron has been detected in at least 38 of the 53 countries in the WHO's European region and is already dominant in several of them including Denmark, Portugal and the United Kingdom, Hans Kluge told a news conference in Vienna.
21st Dec 2021 - Reuters

EU sets binding 9-month validity of vaccinations for COVID-19 travel pass

The European Commission on Tuesday adopted rules that will make the European Union COVID-19 certificate valid for travel nine months after the completion of the primary vaccination schedule. The proposal comes as several EU states introduce additional requirements on travellers in a bid to reduce the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant. EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders told Reuters the EU Commission was against additional requirements, and was assessing the measures.
21st Dec 2021 - Reuters

Europe considers new curbs as Omicron sweeps world

Countries across Europe considered new curbs on movement on Tuesday as U.S. President Joe Biden called on military medics to support hospitals and fight the Omicron variant that has swept the world days before the second Christmas of the pandemic. Omicron infections are multiplying across Europe, the United States and Asia, including in Japan, where a single cluster of COVID-19 cases at a military base has grown to at least 180. "We can see another storm coming," said Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization's European head, warning European countries to brace for a "significant surge" in COVID-19.
21st Dec 2021 - Reuters

China must share more data on virus origins - WHO chief

China must be more forthcoming with data and information related to the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that there had been "many failures" during the COVID-19 pandemic due to a lack of rules or obligations under the WHO's current 2005 International Health Regulations.
21st Dec 2021 - Reuters

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Omicron infections appear no less severe than Delta; COVID-19 lowers sperm count, motility

Researchers at Imperial College London compared 11,329 people with confirmed or likely Omicron infections with nearly 200,000 people infected with other variants. So far, according to a report issued ahead of peer review and updated on Monday, they see "no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta, judged by either the proportion of people testing positive who report symptoms, or by the proportion of cases seeking hospital care after infection." For vaccines available in the UK, effectiveness against symptomatic Omicron infection ranged from 0% to 20% after two doses, and from 55% to 80% following a booster dose. The report also estimated that after taking individual risk factors into account, the odds of reinfection with Omicron are 5.4 times greater than for reinfection with Delta.
20th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Europe weighs Christmas curbs as Omicron sweeps continent

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday he would tighten coronavirus curbs to slow the spread of the Omicron variant if needed, after the Netherlands began a fourth lockdown and as other European nations consider Christmas restrictions. Speaking after UK media reported Britain might impose new curbs after Christmas, Johnson said the situation was "extremely difficult" and hospitalisations were rising steeply in London. "I have to say to the British public, and I say to everybody, we will not exclude the possibility of going further if we have to do things to protect the public," Johnson said after a cabinet meeting.
20th Dec 2021 - Reuters

UK’s Johnson defies pressure to impose COVID curbs over Christmas

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has defied pressure to tighten coronavirus rules over Christmas to curb surging Omicron cases, but pledged to keep the situation “under constant review”. The embattled leader, who is reeling from weeks of crises over various scandals and is facing mounting disquiet within his ruling Conservative Party, said on Monday that “the possibility of taking further action” remained.
20th Dec 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Moderna: Initial booster data shows good results on omicron

Moderna said Monday that a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine should offer protection against the rapidly spreading omicron variant. Moderna said lab tests showed the half-dose booster shot increased by 37 times the level of so-called neutralizing antibodies able to fight omicron. And a full-dose booster was even stronger, triggering an 83-fold jump in antibody levels, although with an increase in the usual side effects, the company said. While half-dose shots are being used for most Moderna boosters, a full-dose third shot has been recommended for people with weakened immune systems. Moderna announced the preliminary laboratory data in a press release and it hasn’t yet undergone scientific review. But testing by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, announced last week by Dr. Anthony Fauci, found a similar jump.
20th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press on MSN.com

Israel to add US, Canada to travel ban over omicron variant

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office announced the decision following a Cabinet vote. The rare move to red-list the U.S. comes amid rising coronavirus infections in Israel and marks a change to pandemic practices between the two nations with close diplomatic relations. The U.S. will join a growing list of European countries and other destinations to which Israelis are barred from traveling, and from which returning travelers must remain in quarantine.
20th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press on MSN.com

Trump reveals he got COVID-19 booster shot; crowd boos him

Trump made the disclosure Sunday night during the final stop of “The History Tour,” a live interview show he has been doing with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. "Both the president and I are vaxxed," O’Reilly said at the American Airlines Center, drawing some jeers from the audience, according to video shared online by O’Reilly’s “No Spin News.” “Did you get the booster?” he asked the former president. “Yes," Trump responded. “I got it, too," O'Reilly said, eliciting more hectoring. “Don't! Don't! Don't! Don't! Don't!” Trump told the crowd, waving off their reaction with his hand.
20th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press on MSN.com

UK medics warn of looming breaking point as omicron spreads

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. Omicron infections no less severe based on early UK data. Infections caused by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus do not appear to be less severe than infections from Delta, according to early data from the UK. Researchers at Imperial College London compared 11,329 people with confirmed or likely Omicron infections with nearly 200,000 people infected with other variants
20th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

Why changing the definition of 'fully vaccinated' could be difficult

Article reports that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might consider redefining what it means to be "fully vaccinated" against Covid-19 to include a third dose of vaccine -- but the question is when the definition could change. Such a change is "on the table and open for discussion," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Friday. "That's certainly on the table. Right now, it is a bit of semantics," Fauci told CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin on "Squawk Box." Fauci was referring to the definition of "fully vaccinated" for the purpose of regulations or businesses that may require vaccination.
20th Dec 2021 - CNN

WHO sounds warning over fast-spreading Omicron

WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan added it would be "unwise" to conclude from early evidence that Omicron was a milder variant that previous ones. "... with the numbers going up, all health systems are going to be under strain," Soumya Swaminathan told Geneva-based journalists. The variant is successfully evading some immune responses, she said, meaning that the booster programmes being rolled out in many countries ought to be targeted towards people with weaker immune systems. "There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the briefing.
20th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Omicron sweeps across nation, now 73% of US COVID-19 cases

Omicron has raced ahead of other variants and is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S., accounting for 73% of new infections last week, federal health officials said Monday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showed nearly a six-fold increase in omicron’s share of infections in only one week. In much of the country, omicron’s prevalence is even higher. It’s responsible for an estimated 90% of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest.
20th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

After reprieve, NYC is rattled by a stunning virus spike

Just a couple of weeks ago, New York City seemed like a relative bright spot in the U.S. coronavirus struggle. Now it’s a hot spot, confronting a dizzying spike in cases, scramble for testing, quandary over a major event and exhausting sense of déjà vu. An omicron-variant-fueled wave of cases is washing over the nation’s most populous city, which served as a nightmarish test case for the country early in the pandemic. While health officials say there are important reasons why it’s not spring 2020 all over again, some Broadway shows have abruptly canceled performances, an indoor face mask mandate is back and testing is hard to come by. “It’s disappointing that we haven’t developed a better system for this and that we weren’t better prepared for there to be another wave,” Jordan Thomas said Monday in her fourth hour of waiting for a test at a city-run health clinic near downtown Brooklyn.
20th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

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New U.S. push for vaccines, boosters to stem 'raging' Omicron

U.S. health officials urged Americans on Sunday to get booster shots, wear masks and be careful if they travel over the winter holidays, as the Omicron variant raged across the world and was set to take over as the dominant strain in the United States. The government is gearing up for the next phase of battle in a two-year fight against a virus that has killed 800,000 people in the United States and disrupted every aspect of daily life. Two U.S. senators, Democrats Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, said on Sunday they tested positive for COVID-19 but were experiencing only mild symptom
20th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Vaccine Data Gaps Point to Millions More in U.S. Who Lack Shots

The U.S. government has over-counted the number of Americans who are at least partly vaccinated against the coronavirus, state officials warn, meaning millions more people are unprotected as the pandemic’s winter surge gathers steam. Last weekend, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised a bellwether metric -- the share of people 65 and older with at least one shot. The agency reduced the proportion from 99.9%, where it had been capped for weeks, to 95%, without changing its raw shot totals. The move acknowledged a dynamic state officials have discovered: in collating reams of data on vaccinations, the U.S. has counted too many shots as first doses when they are instead second doses or booster shots.
19th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

France Curbs New Year's Eve Partying in a Bid to Shield Hospitals

French officials will curb outdoor revelry on New Year’s Eve in a bid to limit Covid-19 infections that risk overwhelming hospitals, Prime Minister Jean Castex said. “I’m appealing to everyone’s responsibility to find other ways to celebrate than large gatherings, and avoiding moments of conviviality,” Castex said in a televised speech on Friday, as many people in France began their winter vacations. Regional prefects will ban spontaneous parties and ask cities to hold off on fireworks and other celebrations, he said. “I understand the frustration to limit yourselves in such festive moments, but we owe that to our health-care personnel,” Castex said. France closed nightclubs this month, though not bars.
19th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Omicron may sideline two leading drugs against COVID-19

As strained U.S. hospitals brace for a new surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the fast-spreading omicron variant, doctors are warning of yet another challenge: the two standard drugs they’ve used to fight infections are unlikely to work against the new strain. For more than a year antibody drugs from Regeneron and Eli Lilly have been the go-to treatments for early COVID-19, thanks to their ability to head off severe disease and keep patients out of the hospital. But both drugmakers recently warned that laboratory testing suggests their therapies will be much less potent against omicron, which contains dozens of mutations that make it harder for antibodies to attack the virus. And while the companies say they can quickly develop new omicron-targeting antibodies, those aren’t expected to launch for at least several months.
19th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

England Has Hundreds of Thousands of New Omicron Cases Daily

Article reports that England is “almost certain” to be suffering hundreds of thousands of omicron variant cases a day, the U.K.’s top scientific advisers said as they urged the government to act within days to prevent hospitals being overrun. “The earlier interventions happen, the greater the effect they will have,” the scientists said. Levels of infection from the new strain are at their highest in London, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, or SAGE, said in the minutes of its Dec. 16 meeting, released on Saturday.
18th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

CNN Closes Offices as Covid-19 Cases Spike

CNN is closing its offices to nonessential employees, network President Jeff Zucker told employees in a memo Saturday, as Covid-19 cases rise at the network and nationwide. Employees who don’t need to be in the office to produce shows or provide other essential functions for the network’s broadcast operations will be asked to work from home, Mr. Zucker said, citing a surge of cases of Covid-19 at CNN. “If your job does not require you to be in the office in order to do it, please work from elsewhere,” Mr. Zucker said in the memo. Mr. Zucker said the network would be making changes to studios and control rooms to “minimize the number of people in our spaces.”
18th Dec 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

France brings forward third COVID-19 vaccine shot

France will from next month reduce the time between second and third COVID-19 vaccination injections to four months and require people to show proof of vaccination to enter some venues, Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Friday. The gap between shots is currently five months but the French government is concerned about the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant. Castex said that big public parties and fireworks would be banned on New Year's Eve and recommended that people - even if vaccinated - test themselves before attending year-end parties.
17th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Pfizer says pandemic could extend to 2024, vaccine data for younger children delayed

Pfizer Inc on Friday forecast that the COVID-19 pandemic would not be behind us until 2024 and said a lower-dose version of its vaccine for 2- to 4-year-olds generated a weaker immune response than expected, potentially delaying authorization. Pfizer Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten said in a presentation to investors that the company expects some regions to continue to see pandemic levels of COVID-19 cases over the next year or two. Other countries will transition to "endemic" with low, manageable caseloads during that same time period.
17th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Omicron rewrites the COVID plan for 2022

As the Omicron variant gains momentum in Europe and the United States, scientists are rewriting their expectations for the COVID-19 pandemic next year. Just weeks ago, disease experts were predicting that countries would begin to emerge from the pandemic in 2022 after enduring a series of surges driven by the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants. First among them would be populations with a significant amount of exposure to the coronavirus, through a combination of infections and vaccination.
17th Dec 2021 - Reuters

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COVID SCIENCE-Omicron thrives in airways, not lungs; new data on asymptomatic cases

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. Omicron multiplies faster in airways, slower in lungs Major differences in how efficiently Omicron and other variants of the coronavirus multiply may help predict Omicron's effects, researchers said on Wednesday. Compared to the earlier Delta variant, Omicron multiplies itself 70 times more quickly in tissues that line airway passages, which may facilitate person-to-person spread, they said. But in lung tissues, Omicron replicates 10 times more slowly than the original version of the coronavirus, which might contribute to less-severe illness.
16th Dec 2021 - Yahoo News

CDC Advisers Back Use of Pfizer, Moderna Covid Shots Over J&J’s

Messenger RNA vaccines made by Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. are preferable for use in adults over Johnson & Johnson’s, U.S. public health advisers said. All 15 members of an outside panel of experts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to make the recommendation on J&J’s vaccine. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met Thursday after U.S. regulators announced revisions to the shot’s fact sheet to warn of a rare clotting syndrome linked to the shot. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky still must sign off on the recommendation before any changes to vaccinations can be implemented.
16th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg on MSN.com

Sweden extends COVID vaccination rules as hospitalisations rise

Sweden will require visitors from other Nordic nations to have a vaccine pass to cross the border as it tightens restrictions in the face of rising number of COVID-19 infections and worries about the Omicron variant, the government said on Thursday. Sweden has seen new infections jump in recent days, if from levels below most European countries. It has reintroduced a limited number of measures and authorities said further steps would be needed if infections kept rising.
16th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Britain's hospital admissions could hit new high with Omicron - chief medic

New cases of COVID-19 in Britain hit a record high for the second day running on Thursday, as England's Chief Medical Officer warned daily hospital admissions could also hit new peaks due to the fast-spreading Omicron coronavirus variant.
16th Dec 2021 - Reuters

France halts British visitors, EU nations tighten borders as Omicron rises

France imposed travel restrictions on travellers from Britain on Thursday due to surging COVID-19 cases there, and several European countries also strengthened border controls on visitors from other EU states. Plans for Christmas celebrations in Europe and many countries across the globe have been thrown into disarray by the rapid spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant, which emerged in Hong Kong and Southern Africa last month.
16th Dec 2021 - Reuters

France hardens travel curbs with Britain over Omicron concerns

France announced on Thursday that because of surging COVID-19 cases in Britain only designated categories of people would be allowed to travel between the two countries, and anyone arriving from Britain would have to self-isolate. Truck drivers will though be exempt from the new rules, the French government said, easing British concerns the restrictions could cause supply chain disruptions. France said it was acting now because the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus, which scientists say appears to be highly infectious, is spreading rapidly in Britain.
16th Dec 2021 - Reuters

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U.S. universities move final exams online as COVID-19 spreads anew

A growing number of U.S. colleges and universities were moving final exams online and cancelling non-essential gatherings as the rapidly spreading Omicron coronavirus variant sent people in droves to medical clinics to be tested in scenes reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic. Many schools were reassessing campus policies as confirmed cases of the Omicron variant turned up in at least 36 states, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said at a briefing on Wednesday. The Delta variant remains responsible for the vast majority of cases, she added
15th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Shortage of vaccinated nannies adds fuel to US childcare crisis

As if working parents didn’t have it hard enough during the pandemic, now a shortage of vaccinated nannies, babysitters and day-care workers is making the seemingly impossible quest to find child care even harder. Almost every parent who comes to Tiny Treasures Nanny Agency, which makes nationwide placements, are seeking vaccinated providers. Yet, just 60% of the nannies looking to get work through the company have gotten the shots, according to founder Ruka Curate. The mismatch is creating a feeding frenzy for fully vaccinated, qualified nannies, driving hourly rates to eye-poppingly high levels. Six-figure jobs that two years ago would have been filled in a day are now met with resistance from inoculated child-care workers who realize they can ask for more money, Curate said.
15th Dec 2021 - Al Jazeera English

UK reports highest daily COVID cases, ‘staggering’ rise feared

The United Kingdom has recorded its highest daily coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic as a further 78,610 COVID-19 infections were reported, about 10,000 more than the previous high reported in January.
15th Dec 2021 - Al Jazeera English on MSN.com

Inside the Botswana lab that discovered Omicron

The day that Dr Sikhulile Moyo ruefully calls “Omicron Day” started like any normal day, or as normal as one can be for a medical virologist in the middle of a global coronavirus pandemic. That Friday morning, November 19, the 48-year-old Zimbabwean prayed as usual with his wife and children, wolfed down some cereal and then raced to beat the traffic in Botswana’s capital Gaborone. Later that day...“There were four sequences showing very strange patterns that we had never seen before. I felt a lot of emotions in my heart,” says Dr Moyo, recalling rising feelings of concern. On the computer, mismatches in the samples’ genetic code against the original SARS-CoV-2 virus had been flagged across rows of multicoloured letters. The discrepancies were so great that Dr Moyo worried there was some kind of mistake. But after the team ran thorough quality checks, they still came up with the same results. “It was quite alarming to us simply because we’d never seen such a lineage in Botswana,” adds Choga. “It was heavily mutated.”
15th Dec 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Omicron spreading so fast it threatens Britain's hospitals

The omicron variant is spreading so rapidly it has the potential to overwhelm Britain’s hospitals, highlighting the need to strengthen coronavirus restrictions and speed up the delivery of booster vaccine shots, the country’s health minister said Tuesday. Omicron is so transmissible that even if it proves to be less severe than other variants, there is still likely to be a surge in hospital admissions if it goes unchecked, U.K. Health Secretary Sajid Javid told lawmakers. His comments came as the government rushed to accelerate the national vaccination program, with a goal of offering a booster dose to every adult by the end of December.
15th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

UK COVID cases hit record; Top doctor warns of worse to come

Professor Chris Whitty described the current situation as two epidemics in one — with omicron infections rising rapidly even as the country continues to grapple with the older delta variant, which is still causing a large number of infections. Public health officials expect omicron to become the dominant variant across the U.K. within days. Omicron already accounts for a majority of cases in London. The U.K. recorded 78,610 new infections on Wednesday, 16% higher than the previous record set in January. While scientists are still studying the risks posed by the highly transmissible omicron variant, Witty said the public should be braced for the figures to continue rising in coming weeks. “There are several things we don’t know,” Whitty said. “But all the things we do know are bad, the principal one being the speed at which this is moving. It is moving at an absolutely phenomenal pace.”
15th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

US faces a double coronavirus surge as omicron advances

The new omicron coronavirus mutant speeding around the world may bring another wave of chaos, threatening to further stretch hospital workers already struggling with a surge of delta cases and upend holiday plans for the second year in a row. The White House on Wednesday insisted there is no need for a lockdown because vaccines are widely available and appear to offer protection against the worst consequences of the virus. But even if omicron proves milder on the whole than delta, it may disarm some of the life-saving tools available and put immune-compromised and elderly people at particular risk as it begins a rapid assault on the United States. “Our delta surge is ongoing and, in fact, accelerating. And on top of that, we’re going to add an omicron surge,” said Dr. Jacob Lemieux, who monitors variants for a research collaboration led by Harvard Medical School.
15th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

Germany scrambles to buy millions of coronavirus vaccine doses

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach and Finance Minister Christian Lindner on Wednesday announced that Germany is prepared to shell out an extra €2.2 billion ($2.48 billion) of its budget to secure 92 million doses of coronavirus vaccines as the omicron variant spreads and Germany's new government sounds the alarm over dangerously depleted vaccine stocks. The order will see Berlin purchase 80 million doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine through EU programs and another 12 million doses on the open market. Lauterbach said, "We need more vaccines quickly for speedy booster shots and possible omicron vaccinations."
15th Dec 2021 - Deutsche Welle

Norway faces Omicron 'contagion bomb' with up to 300,000 infected daily, health chiefs warn while strain is set to become most dominant in Denmark in days as Europe faces new ...

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health said restrictions must be imposed or up to 300,000 people will be infected with Covid every day. Norway's PM set to announce the country will further tighten Covid restrictions. Denmark is second worldwide only to the UK in confirmed cases of Omicron, with the Nordic country reporting a total of 3,437 cases since variant emerged. France set to be hit by a sixth Covid wave in January due to the Omicron variant.
15th Dec 2021 - Daily Mail

U.K. Faces Inevitable Surge in Hospital Cases From Omicron

The “phenomenal pace” at which the new Covid-19 omicron strain is spreading across the U.K. will trigger a surge in hospital admissions over the holiday period, according to Boris Johnson’s top medical adviser. “Substantial numbers” of people will be hospitalized and that will “become apparent soon after Christmas, Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, said at a televised press conference alongside the prime minister Wednesday. That is a “reasonably nailed on prospect,” he added, using a Britishism to refer to an outcome being certain. The stark assessment of the threat posed by omicron, on the day the U.K. reported a record number of new coronavirus cases, will raise further questions about the steps taken by Johnson’s government to tackle the variant and whether the National Health Service can withstand the surge in infections.
15th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Whitty calls for caution over promising hospital data in South Africa

Professor Chris Whitty today called for 'serious caution' over a raft of promising data which suggests Omicron may cause milder disease. Fewer Covid-infected patients are being admitted to hospital wards in South Africa now compared to previous waves, sparking hopes that the strain is less lethal than the rivals it has outcompeted. But England's chief medical officer told a Downing Street press briefing that the figures were to be expected, simply because the country had higher levels of immunity going into the wave than during the summer, when Delta struck. Professor Whitty warned the same pattern may not be replicated in the UK because it wasn't hit as badly by the variant it took over from, warning that South Africa's most recent wave was more recent so its population-wide immunity was fresher.
15th Dec 2021 - Daily Mail

Omicron is responsible for 60% of COVID cases in London - minister

Britain's health minister Sajid Javid said on Wednesday that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus was now responsible for about 60% of cases of COVID-19 in London. "No one wants to see any more restrictions," Javid told BBC television when asked if the government planned to tighten its rules to slow the spread. "At the same time, people want to be safe, for themselves, for their family for their friends." The United Kingdom recorded its highest daily coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic earlier on Wednesday.
15th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Australia re-opens borders to non-citizens despite Omicron worries

Australia on Wednesday reopened borders to vaccinated skilled migrants and foreign students after a nearly two-year ban on their entry, in a bid to boost an economy hit by stop-start COVID-19 lockdowns. The emergence of the new Omicron variant forced officials to delay the reopening of international travel by two weeks after health officials sought a pause to get more information about the strain, which appears to show milder symptoms than other coronavirus variants. "I just met my mum for the first time in four years, I'm so happy and thankful borders have opened," Kang Jin, a traveller from South Korea, told reporters in Sydney.
15th Dec 2021 - Reuters

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Kroger to End Some Covid-19 Benefits for Unvaccinated Workers

Kroger Co. is eliminating some Covid-19 benefits for unvaccinated employees, a move to encourage inoculations as the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate faces legal challenges. The Cincinnati-based grocery chain told employees last week that it will no longer provide two weeks of paid emergency leave for unvaccinated employees who contract Covid-19, unless local jurisdictions require otherwise. Kroger will also add a $50 monthly surcharge to company health plans for unvaccinated managers and other nonunion employees, according to a memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Both policies are effective Jan. 1, the memo said.
15th Dec 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

When Two Nations Are Divided by a Common Pandemic

Covid is possibly even more political in the U.S. than it is in the U.K., and the federal system allows for far greater differences in response between states. But Covid fatigue is universal and a political tripwire at this point. So is the U.K. right to regard omicron as such a serious danger? Let’s look at the evidence from South Africa, where the variant was first identified and provides the most data. Capital Economics Ltd. of London has produced these excellent charts.
15th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

U.K.'s 'Warp Speed' Booster Rollout Is Already Struggling

Boris Johnson’s strategy for tackling a U.K. surge in omicron infections is already facing setbacks, as medics warn of bottlenecks and staffing shortages in the vaccine booster program. The British prime minister promised to ramp up delivery of boosters to “warp speed” to achieve its target of reaching all adults by the end of December, and late Monday announced that hundreds of new vaccine sites would open across the country, including at soccer stadiums and racecourses.
15th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Conservative revolt over COVID curbs deals stinging blow to UK PM Johnson

Almost 100 Conservative lawmakers voted on Tuesday against new coronavirus restrictions, dealing a major blow to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's authority and raising questions about his leadership. After a day of frenzied failed lobbying, Johnson was handed the biggest rebellion against his government so far by his party over measures he said were necessary to curb the spread of the new Omicron variant. The new rules, which included ordering people to wear masks in public places and use COVID-19 passes for some venues, passed thanks largely to the main opposition Labour Party.
15th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Google says employees flouting vaccination rules will eventually be fired - CNBC

Alphabet Inc's Google told its employees they would lose pay and eventually be fired if they do not follow its COVID-19 vaccination rules, CNBC reported on Tuesday, citing internal documents. A memo circulated by Google's leadership said employees had until Dec. 3 to declare their vaccination status and upload documentation showing proof, or to apply for a medical or religious exemption, according to the report. After that date, Google said it would start contacting employees who had not uploaded their status or were unvaccinated and those whose exemption requests were not approved, CNBC reported.
15th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Finland to Tighten Travel Restrictions to Slow Omicron Spread

Finland is considering tightening travel restrictions to stop passengers from bringing in the coronavirus, particularly the new omicron variant, said Krista Kiuru, the minister overseeing the pandemic response. The Nordic country will require travelers from outside the European Union and the Schengen area to present a negative test result from the prior 48 hours, Kiuru told broadcaster YLE on Tuesday. The government is still discussing when to begin enforcing the rule, she said. Finland will also recommend all travelers, including from the EU, take a test before arrival and a home test afterward. Arrivals from certain countries, such as Denmark, Norway and the U.K., are likely to be subject to compulsory health checks, Kiuru said.
14th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

WHO Warns Against Underestimating the Omicron Threat

The World Health Organization is concerned that the omicron variant is being dismissed as mild, even as it spreads at a faster rate than any previous strain of Covid-19. The recently detected variant has been reported in some 77 nations, though it’s probably in most countries already, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We’re concerned that people are jumping to a conclusion that this is a mild disease,” Bruce Aylward, senior adviser at the WHO, told journalists at a briefing on Tuesday. “A more transmissible virus can do just as much damage -- or more -- than one which is more severe but less transmissible.”
14th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

U.S. government may request more COVID-19 testing funds

President Joe Biden's administration may request additional funds from Congress for COVID-19 testing, depending on the severity of the Omicron variant, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said on Tuesday. The department has $10 billion left in federal relief funds for testing from the $50 billion made available by Congress back in March, but might need more, Becerra said at a meeting with reporters.
14th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Apple makes masks mandatory at U.S. retail stores as COVID-19 cases rise

Apple Inc will require all customers and employees to wear masks at its U.S. retail stores, the iPhone maker said on Tuesday, as COVID-19 cases surge in the country. Last month, Apple had scrapped its mask mandate for customers at more than 100 of the company's about 270 stores across the United States, according to Bloomberg News, as coronavirus cases declined. "We regularly monitor conditions and we will adjust our health measures in stores to support the wellbeing of customers and employees," the company said on Tuesday.
14th Dec 2021 - Reuters

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Canada could see surge in COVID-19 cases as Omicron spreads - health official

COVID-19 cases in Canada may rapidly rise in the coming days due to community spread of the Omicron variant, mirroring the situation in the country's most populous province of Ontario, Canada's top health official said on Monday. The surge of COVID-19 cases in Ontario, which accounts for almost 40% of Canada's population of 39 million people, has prompted the provincial government to suspend easing of restrictions that were planned to be lifted ahead of the holiday season
14th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Norway in partial lockdown as Omicron 'changes the rules', PM says

Norway will further tighten restrictions and speed up vaccination in a bid to limit an expected surge of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said on Monday. Presenting its fourth round of measures in two weeks, the government announced a ban on serving alcohol in bars and restaurants, a closing of gyms and swimming pools to most users and stricter rules in schools, among other things.
14th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Masks come off, rallies begin as India's COVID-19 patient load falls

India reported its lowest tally of active COVID-19 cases in 18 months on Monday, but a sharp drop in the use of protective face masks is causing concern after a rise in the number of infections with the Omicron variant. Many people have been standing or sitting close to each other without masks, or covering only their chins, at big rallies held by political parties in several states before elections. Something similar happened before the Delta variant ravaged India from April.
13th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Chinese manufacturing hub fights its first 2021 COVID-19 outbreak

Major Chinese manufacturing province Zhejiang is fighting its first COVID-19 cluster this year, with tens of thousands of citizens in quarantine and virus-hit areas suspending business operations, cutting flights and cancelling events. The province reported 74 locally transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms on Dec. 12, official data showed on Monday, almost double the previous day's 38 cases, lifting to 173 the total since the province started to report cases for the latest outbreak. The outbreak in three Zhejiang cities - Ningbo, Shaoxing and Hangzhou - was developing at a "relatively rapid" speed, while the situation nationwide was largely stable, National Health Commission official Wu Liangyou said on Saturday.
13th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Exclusive: Senegal expects 400000 COVID-19 vaccines to expire by year-end

At least 200,000 COVID-19 vaccines have expired in Senegal without being used in the past two months and another 200,000 are set to expire at the end of December because demand is too slow, the head of its immunisation programme said on Monday. African governments have been calling for more COVID-19 vaccines to help catch up with richer regions, where vaccine rollouts have been humming along for more than a year. Yet, as the pace of supply has picked up in recent weeks some countries have struggled to keep pace. Logistical problems, the short shelf life of vaccines that arrive from donors, and vaccine hesitancy have all kept doses from reaching arms.
13th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Virus Cases Surge in Australia's Most Populous State as Curbs Eased

Australia’s most-populous state has recorded its highest daily Covid-19 infection tally in more than two months as authorities battle the fast-spreading omicron variant, even as New South Wales readies to remove almost all restrictions. The state recorded 804 new virus infections in the 24 hours to 8 p.m. Monday, a 50% jump from the day before, officials said in statement Tuesday. It’s the largest tally since Oct. 2, when its largest city Sydney was in the midst of a months-long lockdown to combat the delta variant.
13th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Some Hospitals Drop Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates to Ease Labor Shortages

Some of the largest U.S. hospital systems have dropped Covid-19 vaccine mandates for staff after a federal judge temporarily halted a Biden administration mandate that healthcare workers get the shots.
13th Dec 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Omicron Oil Demand Impact Will Be ‘Mild and Short-Lived,’ OPEC Says

The new variant’s impact on global oil markets won’t be as seismic as initially feared, because governments and businesses are now better adapted to dealing with the coronavirus. the cartel said.
13th Dec 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

How Covid Increased the Cybersecurity Threat to Healthcare Companies

The healthcare industry has long been a prime target of cybercriminals looking to mine patients’ personal information or disrupt facilities’ operations in ransomware attacks. The Covid-19 pandemic has made matters much worse, as the adoption of new technologies to enhance remote care and increased remote work has created a multitude of new potential targets for hackers. Wall Street Journal news editor Sara Castellanos spoke with Kathy Hughes, chief information security officer at Northwell Health, and Joey Johnson, chief information security officer at Premise Health, at the WSJ Pro Cybersecurity Executive Forum, about the cybersecurity threat and how the industry can protect itself. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow.
13th Dec 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Austria ends Covid lockdown restrictions for vaccinated people

Austria has ended lockdown restrictions for vaccinated people across most of the country, three weeks after reimposing strict rules to combat a rising wave of coronavirus infections. The rules, which vary by region within the country, largely allow for the reopening of theatres, museums and other cultural and entertainment venues on Sunday. Shops will follow on Monday. Some regions are reopening restaurants and hotels on Sunday, while others will wait until later in the month. In all cases, there will be an 11pm curfew for restaurants, and masks will still be required on public transport and inside stores and public spaces.
12th Dec 2021 - The Guardian

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NHS website hit by technical problems amid rush to book COVID-19 booster doses - The Independent

The UK's NHS website crashed as people rushed to book COVID-19 booster doses after Prime Minister Boris Johnson said everyone above the age of 18 could get booster shots from Monday, The Independent reported on Sunday. "The NHS website is currently experiencing technical difficulties. We are working to resolve these issues. Thank you for your patience," the report said, citing a statement on the NHS website. The NHS did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
13th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Boris Johnson Warns of `Tidal Wave' of Omicron Infections, Pushes Boosters

Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned the U.K. is facing a “tidal wave” of omicron infections and set an end-of-year deadline for the country’s booster vaccination program. “Everyone eligible aged 18 and over in England will have the chance to get their booster before the New Year,”Johnson told the nation in a hastily-arranged address on Sunday night. Johnson, who has been the subject of scathing headlines over his handling of the pandemic, tried to change the narrative in a somber address. While he is accelerating a plan to deliver booster jabs, in practice he’s bringing the deadline forward by a month.
12th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Australia shortens wait time for COVID-19 booster doses as Omicron cases rise

Australia said on Sunday it will shorten the wait time for people to receive a COVID-19 booster following a rise in cases of the Omicron variant. Australia had previously said it would offer the booster to everyone over 18 who had had their second dose of the vaccine six months earlier. But with rising cases of the Omicron variant, Health Minister Greg Hunt said the time interval will be shortened to five months after the second dose.
12th Dec 2021 - Reuters

UK's Johnson warns of Omicron 'tidal wave', says two doses not enough

Britain faces a "tidal wave" of the Omicron variant of coronavirus and two vaccine doses will not be enough to contain it, Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Sunday, as he accelerated the booster rollout programme. Speaking hours after government scientists lifted the COVID alert level to 4 on a 5-point scale, Johnson said the booster programme must go faster because scientists did not yet know if Omicron was less severe than other variants. "A tidal wave of Omicron is coming," Johnson said in a televised statement on Sunday evening. "And I'm afraid it is now clear that two doses of vaccine are simply not enough to give the level of protection we all need."
12th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Pfizer Booster Shots Are Effective Against Omicron Variant, Israeli Study Says

Researchers at the Sheba Medical Center and from the Israeli Health Ministry examined the blood samples of 20 Sheba employees who received a booster at least a month ago, and 20 employees who are five or six months past their second shot and haven’t received a third shot. Employees with a booster were much more likely to neutralize the Omicron variant than the two-shot group, the study showed. But the booster shots were still less effective against preventing Omicron than other variants, including Delta, still the most prevalent strain of the virus circulating globally.
12th Dec 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

US COVID-19 deaths reach 800,000

The U.S. has reached the grim milestone of 800,000 deaths related to COVID-19, Reuters reported. More than 450,000 people in the United States have died after contracting COVID-19 so far in 2021, according to the news service, which added that the total accounts for 57 percent of all U.S. deaths from the illness since the pandemic started.
12th Dec 2021 - The Hill

Preparing for Omicron as a covid veteran

Now I’m disillusioned. I’ve seen how our medical trends with how to treat covid-19 can change by the hour, with self-declared experts always ready to criticise decisions and cherry pick evidence to follow. I’ve watched how systematically hospital systems continue to prioritise efficiency, rankings, and profits over patient centred care. I’ve learnt that I am nothing but one of millions of healthcare workers expected to come to work every day based solely on my own goodwill. The calls for the protection of healthcare workers with life insurance, disability insurance, and student debt forgiveness have been forgotten just as quickly as they were proposed. Lacking these investments in my personhood, it’s hard to feel like more than another faceless number in the system. My patients are now jaded too, as politics has entered their hospital bed. Some ask for ivermectin and refuse to have conversations about quarantine for family members they have exposed to the virus. They “other” me, seeing me as part of the healthcare system that mocks the political right, rather than as another human being at their bedside feeling just as vulnerable as they are to the pandemic. My vaccinated patients remind me of their status over and over again, as if trying to clue me in to give them preferential treatment or empathy for having a breakthrough infection. I empathise with both my patients who are vaccinated and unvaccinated, but I still leave each room feeling a sense of defeat, powerlessness, and anger that the pandemic persists.
11th Dec 2021 - The BMJ

Pfizer Omicron Efficacy at 22.5% in South Africa Lab Experiments

A two-shot course of Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine has just 22.5% efficacy against symptomatic infection with the omicron variant, but can thwart severe disease, according to laboratory experiments in South Africa. Researchers at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban issued additional data on a small study released earlier this week. The research considered blood plasma samples from 12 participants. Scientists found omicron resulted in about a 41-fold reduction in levels of neutralizing antibodies produced by people who had received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech SE shot, compared with the strain detected in China almost two years ago.
11th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

England Deaths Estimated at 75,000 This Winter on Omicron: Study

The omicron variant has the potential to cause a wave of Covid infections in England and fuel almost 75,000 deaths this winter, if the government doesn’t impose additional precautionary control measures, according to a research report by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Under the government’s ‘Plan B’ rules imposed last week in response to omicron, the most optimistic scenario for England indicates about 175,000 hospital admissions and 24,700 deaths for the five-month period from December to April. The worst-case projection is for 74,800 deaths. That is more than half the 127,154 fatalities registered in England since the start of the pandemic. England accounts for more than two thirds of almost 172,000 deaths in all of the United Kingdom, which includes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The research is not yet peer reviewed, LSHTM said on its website.
11th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Early U.S. Omicron Cases Caused Mild Illness in Vaccinated

The first omicron cases in the U.S. were detected mostly in vaccinated people who experienced mild illnesses, with only one hospitalization and no deaths reported so far, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. As of Dec. 8, the U.S. had investigated 43 cases of the Covid-19 variant that set the world on high alert last month because of mutations that may make it spread more easily. About four-fifths of those cases occurred in people who had been fully vaccinated, the CDC said on Friday, including one who was in the hospital for two days. Common symptoms included cough, tiredness and congestion or runny nose, according to the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
11th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Brazil health ministry website hit by hackers, vaccination data targeted

Brazil's health ministry said its website was hit on Friday by a hacker attack that took several systems down, including one with information about the national immunization program and another used to issue digital vaccination certificates. The government put off for a week implementing new health requirements for travelers arriving in Brazil due to the attack. "The health ministry reports that in the early hours of Friday it suffered an incident that temporarily compromised some of its systems ... which are currently unavailable," it said in a statement.
11th Dec 2021 - Reuters

India's top syringe maker asks PM Modi to lift factory shutdown order

Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices (HMD) has shuttered its factories on the outskirts of New Delhi following the directive from a state pollution control board, triggering concerns of an acute shortage of syringes and needles in India just as its COVID-19 vaccination programme is in full swing. "The closure of needles and syringes manufacturing factories will create disruption in the supply chain," said Rajiv Nath, managing director of HMD, in a letter to Modi's office which was released to media.
11th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Global shortage of nurses set to grow as pandemic enters third year - group

The numbers of nurses around the world are falling further just as the Omicron coronavirus spreads, and there is a also an imbalance as Western countries step up recruitment of healthcare workers from African and other poorer countries, the International Council of Nurses said on Friday. Many nurses are burned out from the COVID-19 pandemic and rates of "intention to leave" within a year have doubled to 20-30%, said Howard Catton, CEO of the Geneva-based group that represent 27 million nurses in 130 national associations.
11th Dec 2021 - Reuters

England could face Omicron wave without further restrictions- report

England could face a wave of COVID-19 infections caused by the Omicron variant leading to as many as 75,000 deaths by the end of April if no new control measures are brought in, according to modelling research published on Saturday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government has already brought in new rules for England to slow the spread of Omicron with orders for people to work at home if possible, to wear masks in public and for entertainment venues to use vaccine passports.
11th Dec 2021 - Reuters

China vaccinates over 80% of its people against COVID-19

China has vaccinated 82.5% of its population of 1.41 billion against COVID-19, a health official said on Saturday. A total of 1.162 billion have received the required number of doses to complete vaccinations, Wu Liangyou, an official of the National Health Commission (NHC) told a news briefing, adding that 120.6 million had received a booster shot. Despite the high national rate, vaccination coverage was patchy among the elderly, a vulnerable group facing a high risk of severe cases and death after infection.
11th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Vaccinated, maskless crowds enjoy Christmas markets in Budapest

Traditional Christmas markets have opened in Budapest's main squares only for people vaccinated against COVID-19, but have drawn many tourists and locals alike even as central Europe battles a renewed surge of the coronavirus. There were no festive outdoor markets in Budapest a year ago as Hungary was in complete lockdown against the virus, before any vaccines were available. "It's great to have the market back. It was very depressing when I visited the square last year - it was decorated but there were no people," said Adrienn, bundled up in a black fur coat against the subzero cold in front of the Hungarian capital's neo-classical St. Stephen's Basilica.
11th Dec 2021 - Reuters

South African Covid Hospitalizations at 5,344, 7.6% in ICU

South African hospitals have 5,344 Covid-19 patients of which 7.6% are in intensive care units, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said in a report on Friday. Of the 404 people in ICU, 144 are on ventilators, the institute said. Almost half of the admissions are in Gauteng, the province that includes Johannesburg and Pretoria. The numbers compare with the 4,795 who were in the hospital a day earlier, with 8.3% of those in ICU.
10th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Denmark’s Omicron Surge Is a Warning to the Rest of World

Denmark is seeing the number of people infected with the omicron variant of Covid-19 double every second day, offering a glimpse of a development that is probably unfolding throughout Europe. The Nordic country can offer valuable insights into what to expect from omicron, as it has Europe’s most rigorous screening program, with a high level of testing, and variant-screening of all positive PCR tests. That explains why Denmark has reported the highest number of omicron cases in the European Union, Troels Lillebaek, chair of the Danish SARS-CoV-2 variant assessment committee, said.
10th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

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India’s Serum Institute let Africa down on vaccines: Africa CDC

The Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, let Africa down by pulling out of talks to supply COVID-19 vaccines, creating distrust that has affected demand, according to the head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control. John Nkengasong on Thursday denounced recent comments from Serum that uptake of its COVID-19 shots had slowed because of low demand from Africa and vaccine hesitancy, saying the real problem was that Serum had acted unprofessionally. Nkengasong said Serum had engaged in discussions last year with the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT), and that at one point he had believed a deal was very close, but then Serum abruptly ended the talks. “Serum just decided to act in a very unprofessional manner and stop communicating with AVATT team, so that created a situation where we found ourselves extremely unhappy … and then engaged with Johnson & Johnson,” he said.
9th Dec 2021 - Al Jazeera English on MSN.com

Austria plans to fine vaccine holdouts up to 3600 euros a quarter

Austria's conservative-led government on Thursday gave details of its plan to make coronavirus vaccines compulsory, saying it will apply to people 14 and over and holdouts face fines of up to 3,600 euros ($4,071) every three months. Roughly 68% of Austria's population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the lowest rates in western Europe. Many Austrians are sceptical about vaccines, a view encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, the third biggest in parliament.
9th Dec 2021 - Reuters

How will the world decide when the pandemic is over?

The pandemic may be widely considered over when WHO decides the virus is no longer an emergency of international concern, a designation its expert committee has been reassessing every three months. But when the most acute phases of the crisis ease within countries could vary. “There is not going to be one day when someone says, ‘OK, the pandemic is over,’” says Dr. Chris Woods, an infectious disease expert at Duke University. Although there’s no universally agreed-upon criteria, he said countries will likely look for sustained reduction in cases over time. Scientists expect COVID-19 will eventually settle into becoming a more predictable virus like the flu, meaning it will cause seasonal outbreaks but not the huge surges we’re seeing right now. But even then, Woods says some habits, such as wearing masks in public places, might continue. “Even after the pandemic ends, COVID will still be with us,” he says.
9th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

Vaccine equity is essential. Vaccine makers need to drop barriers to reaching refugees and other displaced people

It is estimated that 167 million people, concentrated in low- and middle-income countries, are at risk of outright exclusion from Covid-19 vaccination campaigns. That number is subject to sudden shifts: overnight, a storm, a flood, an intensifying conflict, a toppled government, disputed boundary, or shifted frontline can push hundreds of thousands of people out of health systems’ oversight. More people have been forcibly displaced in the last decade than ever before, because the weather is both more extreme and less predictable and violent conflict is increasingly common. For everyone, but most starkly for the most vulnerable people, the pandemic has had a compounding effect on insecurity. Not only are these individuals omitted from vaccination campaigns, but many of them are at extra-high risk of contracting the disease because they live in close quarters with limited ability to physically distance or self-isolate and often with poor sanitation.
9th Dec 2021 - STAT News

Ending the pandemic requires global solidarity, not blame

When historians write about the Covid-19 pandemic, they will certainly highlight the essential research behind safe and effective vaccines, the remarkable pace of vaccine development, and the sacrifices made by clinicians and clinical trial participants. They will also write about the gross neglect of global partners when designing a worldwide public health strategy, which has been plagued by vaccine inequity, nationalism, and fear. The latest misguided response by the U.S. government bans incoming travel from a number of southern African countries — some which have no known cases of Covid-19 caused by the Omicron variant — but not from European ones where the variant has already been detected. Moreover, the ban does not apply to U.S. nationals flying into the U.S., who need show only proof of a negative Covid-19 test.
9th Dec 2021 - STAT News

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Act now to curb Omicron's spread, WHO's Tedros tells world

Governments need to reassess national responses to COVID-19 and speed up vaccination programmes to tackle Omicron, though it is it too early to say how well existing shots will protect against the new variant, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. The variant's global spread suggests it could have a major impact on the COVID-19 pandemic, and the time to contain it is now before more Omicron patients are hospitalised, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "We call on all countries to increase surveillance, testing and sequencing," he told a media briefing. "... Any complacency now will cost lives."
8th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Record COVID cases in S Korea as ‘immunity wanes among elderly’

South Korea’s daily count of COVID-19 cases has surpassed 7,000 for the first time, with experts attributing the record jump to waning immunity among older people. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KCDA) reported 7,175 new cases on Wednesday, 2,221 more than the previous day. It said infections were rising particularly among older adults who had “suffered a drop in vaccine efficacy, and children who have yet to receive their first doses”, according to the Yonhap news agency. The number of critically ill patients also reached an all-time high of 840, up from 66 the previous day.
8th Dec 2021 - Al Jazeera English on MSN.com

UK's Johnson orders probe of staff party during lockdown

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday ordered an inquiry and said he was “furious” after a leaked video showed senior members of his staff joking about holding a lockdown-breaching Christmas party. The video has poured fuel on allegations that officials in the Conservative government flouted coronavirus rules they imposed on everyone else. It release came as Johnson urged people to work from home and introduced vaccine passes for crowded venues to try and slow the spread of the new omicron variant. “I understand and share the anger up and down the country” at officials seeming to make light of lockdown rules, Johnson said. “I was also furious to see that clip,” he told lawmakers in the House of Commons. “I apologize unreservedly for the offense that it has caused up and down the country, and I apologize for the impression it gives.”
8th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

Work from home again: UK tightens rules amid omicron spread

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced tighter restrictions Wednesday to stem the spread of the omicron variant, urging people in England to again work from home and mandating COVID-19 passes for entrance into nightclubs and large events. Johnson said it was time to impose stricter measures to prevent a spike of hospitalizations and deaths as the new coronavirus variant spreads rapidly in the community. “It has become increasingly clear that omicron is growing much faster than the previous delta variant and is spreading rapidly all around the world,” he said in a press conference. “Most worryingly, there is evidence that the doubling time of omicron could currently be between two and three days.”
8th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press on MSN.com

Fans must show vaccine pass to attend top-level games in England

Fans in England will need to show proof of double vaccination against COVID-19 or a negative test to attend top-level sport after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed tougher COVID-19 restrictions in the country on Wednesday. The British government has made the NHS COVID Pass mandatory for any event with more than 10,000 people in a bid to slow the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant.
8th Dec 2021 - Reuters

South Africa's Covid cases hit highest level in five MONTHS

Covid cases in Omicron-stricken South Africa spiralled to their highest level in five months today — but early data suggests the mutant strain is milder than Delta. The country's National Institute for Communicable Diseases has recorded another 19,842 infections over the past 24 hours, more than double the number last Wednesday. This was also the highest number of infections detected on a single day since early July, when the nation's Delta wave was dying down. Despite doctors on the ground in South Africa insisting that Omicron is causing only mild illness, today's 374 hospital admissions are up 170 per cent in a week.
8th Dec 2021 - Daily Mail

Pfizer booster vaccine CAN beat Omicron: Company says top-up dose bolsters protection from two jabs

Pfizer's Covid booster jab triggers a 25-fold increase in antibody levels against Omicron, company said today. The vaccine-maker said three injections provide a 'more robust' defence against the variant. Third dose triggers antibody response against Omicron similar to that seen against older strains after two jabs. South Africa study shows 40-times less Pfizer-triggered antibodies can fight against Omicron infection. Sweden found that drop in the body's ability to neutralise Omicron, but decline is smaller than feared. WHO official said Omicron is likely more transmissible than other variants, but data suggests it is less severe But Germany study found double-jabbed people do not produce any neutralising antibodies against Omicron
8th Dec 2021 - Daily Mail

COVID cases spike even as US hits 200M vaccine milestone

The number of Americans fully vaccinated against COVID-19 reached 200 million Wednesday amid a dispiriting holiday-season spike in cases and hospitalizations that has hit even New England, one of the most highly inoculated corners of the country. New cases in the U.S. climbed from an average of nearly 95,000 a day on Nov. 22 to almost 119,000 a day this week, and hospitalizations are up 25% from a month ago. The increases are due almost entirely to the delta variant, though the omicron mutation has been detected in about 20 states and is sure to spread even more. Deaths are running close to 1,600 a day on average, back up to where they were in October. And the overall U.S. death toll less than two years into the crisis could hit another heartbreaking milestone, 800,000, in a matter of days.
8th Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

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Norway Tightens Restrictions on Omicron Spread

Norway is tightening restrictions again to try to regain control of the spread of the omicron variant and prevent an overloading of an hospital system already struggling with other types of illness as winter sets in. Social distancing and limiting the number of guests in private homes to 10 is recommended again, while bars and restaurants must stop selling alcohol at midnight and face masks are now mandatory where a meter’s distance can’t be maintained, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told reporters on Tuesday.
7th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Bill Gates Thinks 'Acute Phase' of Pandemic Will End in 2022 Despite Omicron

To Bill Gates, 2021 did not bring as much improvement to the pandemic as he had hoped. With more Covid-19 deaths this year than in 2020, the delta variant and challenges with vaccine uptake, progress has been underwhelming, the billionaire indicated in a year in review post on his blog Tuesday. “I underestimated how tough it would be to convince people to take the vaccine and continue to use masks,” Gates said. But the Microsoft Corp. co-founder is optimistic about 2022. “I think the acute phase of the pandemic will come to a close some time in 2022,” Gates said. His prediction comes as the world deals with a new variant and in the U.S. cases are are approaching 50 million.
7th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

U.S. judge blocks last remaining Biden admin COVID-19 vaccine rule

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the last of the Biden administration's COVID-19 vaccine mandates for businesses, saying the government exceeded it authority with a requirement that millions of employees of federal contractors be inoculated. The ruling was the latest setback for President Joe Biden, a Democrat, who announced a series of measures in September aimed at increasing vaccination rates to fight the pandemic that continues to kill more than 1,000 Americans daily. "Abuse of power by the Biden administration has been stopped cold again," Republican South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who joined the lawsuit, said in a statement. U.S. District Judge Stan Baker in Savannah, Georgia, said Congress did not clearly authorize the president to use procurement to impose a vaccine requirement on contractors that will have "vast economic and political significance."
7th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Africa needs to make own vaccines but hurdles are high, experts say

Africa needs to make its own vaccines to avoid a repeat of its supply problems in the COVID-19 pandemic but faces big obstacles in turning itself from a pharmaceutical testing ground into a place where vaccines are created, experts said on Tuesday. The Partnership for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM) has set as a target that 60% of the continent's routine vaccine needs, or between 1.4 and 1.7 billion doses yearly, should be met by local manufacturing by 2040, up from about 1% now. Experts meeting at a PAVM conference in Rwanda said the pandemic had shown Africa urgently needed to tackle its dependence on imported vaccines. But they outlined daunting obstacles, from brain drain to power shortages.
7th Dec 2021 - Reuters

The world has the tools to end the coronavirus pandemic. They're not being used properly

The Covid-19 pandemic will not last forever. It will likely continue to fizzle and fade as it heads towards its third year, resurging with new variants and then waning in the face of vaccines, mitigation measures and human behavior. But even if the virus is never stamped out, immunity will improve and the world will eventually be able to live with Covid. On that, experts generally agree. "The large majority of infectious disease specialists think, and have thought for many months, that SARS-CoV-2 is here to stay," said Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia in the UK. "Our grandchildren's grandchildren will still be catching (the virus)," he said. But "Covid, the disease, will become part of our history as the infection morphs into just another cause of the common cold."
7th Dec 2021 - CNN

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Nearly 70 ICU medics at Spanish hospital COVID-19 positive after Christmas party

Nearly 70 nurses and doctors working in the intensive care unit at a Spanish hospital have tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a Christmas party, health authorities said on Monday. Sixty-eight medics at the University Regional Hospital in Malaga had been diagnosed with the coronavirus, the Andalusian regional government said. Health authorities said they were investigating the source of the infection but added all 68 attended a Christmas party on Dec. 1 at which 173 people were present.
7th Dec 2021 - Reuters

Philippines tentatively reopens schools as COVID-19 cases ease

Some children in the Philippines' capital Manila returned to school on Monday after a near two-year suspension as the country, which has imposed some of the world's toughest coronavirus curbs, tries to get life back to normal. Wearing face masks and sitting at desks fitted with plastic screens, the children are part of a trial at 28 schools in the capital region. The government aims to reopen all schools in January. Against the backdrop of mass vaccination drives and falling virus cases, parents cautiously welcomed the move.
6th Dec 2021 - Reuters

England has community transmission of Omicron variant, health minister says

Britain's health minister said on Monday there is now community transmission of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus across regions of England but it is too early to say if this will "knock us off our road to recovery". Defending the introduction of stricter rules to slow the spread of the virus, Sajid Javid told parliament the government was "leaving nothing to chance" while scientists assessed the variant, which was first reported in South Africa last month. Javid said there are now 261 Omicron cases in England, 71 in Scotland and four in Wales - a total of 336.
6th Dec 2021 - Reuters

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Omicron’s Spread Exposes South Africa’s Vaccination Struggles, Public Distrust

South Africa’s sputtering Covid-19 vaccine rollout, hampered first by dose shortages and more recently public distrust, has left many of its 60 million people potentially exposed as the new Omicron variant spreads across the country. In recent days, more people have turned out to get their shots amid warnings from scientists and the World Health Organization about Omicron, which has driven a sharp increase in Covid-19 infections in the country’s most populous province of Gauteng, home to Johannesburg, over the past two weeks.
5th Dec 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Clues to Omicron Variant’s U.S. Spread Include Test Samples, Sewage

Covid-19 test samples and wastewater are helping researchers across the U.S. figure out how widespread the Omicron variant might be. Surveillance is more robust in the U.S. than when the Alpha or Delta variants of the Covid-19 virus emerged, public-health officials and experts say. A fault in some commonly used Covid-19 tests also helps scientists flag potential Omicron cases. But gaps remain, particularly from one part of the country to another. Nearly 30% of known Covid-19 cases were sequenced and shared online in Vermont during the past three months, according to an international database of genetic sequences called GISAID, compared with some 1% in Oklahoma. “We’ve greatly increased the number that we have been sequencing, but they’re not equally distributed,” said Julie Swann, department head of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina S
5th Dec 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

COVID-19 curbs China's power in Indo-Pacific, risks of war 'significant' - report

The coronavirus pandemic has weakened China's power in the Indo-Pacific, and the region's deepening security uncertainties present a "significant" risk of war, the Lowy Institute said in a report on Sunday. U.S. allies in the region and key balancing powers such as India have never been more dependent on American capacity and willingness to sustain a military and strategic counterweight in response to China's rise, said the Sydney-based foreign policy think tank.
5th Dec 2021 - Reuters

We Have to Live With Covid. Here's How We Get Our Lives Back

Two years into the pandemic, the emergence of yet another Covid-19 variant has brought home the fact that the virus is here to stay. That means the world will need to find long-term strategies to co-exist with delta, omicron and the strains to come. As governments reopen at varying paces, there are things individuals and companies can do to navigate a careful return to some kind of normalcy. Simple but permanent changes in how people live and work can limit the risks. “So far, the governments have been responsible for people’s behavior but I don’t think they will intervene so much anymore, and it’s becoming individual choice,” said Benjamin Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong.
5th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Covid Vaccine Inequity Could Get Worse With Omicron Emergence

“Inequity derives from scarcity, and when there’s scarcity those with resources will use their resources to meet their own needs first,” said Richard Hatchett, head of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. “So the question would be -- if this proves to be a really dangerous variant -- will countries rush to secure supplies?” CEPI is discussing the potential deployment of modified vaccines with other partners in Covax, the global vaccine distribution program, he said. Covax is in a more advantageous position than it was early in the crisis when it was still being formed, and any shortage of shots shouldn’t last as long this time, but the concern “is real,” he said. “If the data suggests we really do need to be introducing an omicron vaccine, we’re going to be wanting to move as quickly as we can to secure doses to reduce the inequity that could otherwise potentially emerge,” he said.
4th Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Omicron Leaves Britons Stranded Due to Lack of Quarantine Space

The U.K.’s sudden decision to quarantine Britons returning from southern Africa due to the omicron Covid variant has left travelers stranded because rooms are unavailable in the government booking system. South Africa and nine other nations were placed on the U.K.’s so-called pandemic red list last week, meaning Britons already in those countries must quarantine in designated hotels for 10 days on their return to the U.K. -- at a cost of 2,285 pounds ($3,030) per person or 3,715 per couple. But travelers are struggling to book rooms due to high demand, leading many to fear they won’t be able to get home in time for Christmas. Boris Johnson’s government is facing accusations it wasn’t prepared for the policy change.
3rd Dec 2021 - Bloomberg

Special Report: U.S. rushed contracts to COVID-19 suppliers with troubled plants

In all, less than 20% of the companies awarded fast-track contracts examined by Reuters were experienced manufacturers with a clean FDA record for their U.S. plants in the two years prior. Four of every five either had no U.S. manufacturing experience, poor domestic inspection results or serious recalls before their COVID contract awards, Reuters found. “These are red flags,” said Peter Lurie, a former FDA associate commissioner who is now president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “The government ought to be able to find companies in this country that aren’t tainted by previous poor performance.”
3rd Dec 2021 - Reuters

African Union health watchdog CDC appeals for calm over Omicron

The African Union’s health watchdog has appealed for calm over Omicron, the new, heavily mutated coronavirus variant which has prompted many countries to impose new restrictions. The variant was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) by South Africa a week ago, and has quickly showed up across continents, deepening fears of another deadly wave of infections and signalling that the nearly two-year battle against the pandemic is not over.
3rd Dec 2021 - Aljazeera.com

South Korea tightens social distancing to fight virus wave

Starting next week, private social gatherings of seven or more people will be banned in the densely populated capital Seoul and nearby metropolitan areas, which have been hit hardest by a delta-driven spread that threatens to overwhelm hospital capacities. Gatherings will be limited to eight people in areas outside the capital region, officials said Friday. Adults will also be required to verify their vaccination status through apps to use restaurants, movie theaters, museums, libraries and other indoor venues. Most of these venues will admit only fully vaccinated adults, while restaurants and coffee shops will be allowed to accept one adult in each group who isn’t fully vaccinated or vaccinated at all.
3rd Dec 2021 - The Associated Press

WHO says vaccine makers right to adjust COVID jabs

The World Health Organisation said Omicron has been detected in 38 countries but there are no reported deaths so far from the new COVID-19 variant. WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier also said it is “commendable” that makers of COVID-19 vaccines are planning for the “likelihood” of needing to adjust their products to protect against the Omicron variant. WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan urged people not to panic over the emergence of the Omicron coronavirus variant and said it was too early to say if COVID-19 vaccines would have to be modified to fight it. Swaminathan said during an interview at the Reuters Next conference on Friday that the right response was to be prepared and cautious and not to panic in face of the new variant.
3rd Dec 2021 - AlJazeera

Germany imposes curbs on unvaccinated, considers jab mandate

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said unvaccinated people will be excluded from non-essential shops, and cultural and recreational venues in Germany, and parliament will consider imposing a general vaccine mandate. Speaking on Thursday after a meeting with federal and state leaders, Merkel said the measures were necessary in light of concerns that hospitals in Germany could become overloaded amid a surge in COVID-19 infections, which are more likely to be serious in those who have not been vaccinated. “The situation in our country is serious,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin, calling the measures an “act of national solidarity”. She said officials agreed to require masks in schools, impose new limits on private meetings and aim for 30 million vaccinations by the end of the year. The plans include a blanket ban on entering venues, including bars, restaurants and cinemas for anyone who has not been vaccinated or recovered from COVID, according to a document signed off by the leaders.
2nd Dec 2021 - Aljazeera.com

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UK Covid cases soar past 50,000 for a second time in seven days as numbers reach the highest since October

The UK has reported a further 53,945 daily Covid infections, with cases passing the 50,000 mark for the second time in the last seven days and reaching the highest daily total since mid-October. A further 45,880 people in England tested positive in the last 24-hour period, while 3,002 cases were recorded in Scotland, 2,791 in Wales and 2,272 in Northern Ireland. It marks the highest number of daily infections since 18 October, when there were 56,710 daily cases, amid concerns that the UK could see a surge in infections this winter.
3rd Dec 2021 - iNews

New Zealand's COVID-19 re-opening plans leave Maori feeling exposed

As New Zealand prepares to ease its COVID-19 pandemic controls and global isolation after nearly two years, health risks for its under-vaccinated indigenous Maori are posing a challenge for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Some of the world's toughest pandemic measures enforced by the South Pacific nation are easing on Friday, with businesses reopening nationwide after Ardern's government abandoned its elimination strategy in the face of the contagious Delta variant. Domestic border curbs in the pandemic epicentre Auckland are due to end mid-December and international borders restrictions will loosen progressively from January.
2nd Dec 2021 - Reuters

UK study finds mRNA COVID-19 vaccines provide biggest booster impact

COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna that use mRNA technology provide the biggest boost to antibody levels when given 10-12 weeks after the second dose, a British study published on Thursday has found. The "COV-Boost" study was cited by British officials when they announced that Pfizer and Moderna were preferred for use in the country's booster campaign, but the data has only been made publicly available now. The study found that six out of the seven boosters examined enhanced immunity after initial vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine, while all seven increased immunity when given after two doses of AstraZeneca's (AZN.L) vaccine. "A third dose will be effective for many of the vaccines we've tested and in many different combinations," Professor Saul Faust, an immunologist at the University of Southampton and the trial's lead, told reporters.
2nd Dec 2021 - Reuters

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COVID-19: Emerging picture from South Africa suggests Omicron variant could be real cause for concern

These graphs are showing a "sustained increase" in cases in recent days in most of South Africa's provinces. Out in front, is Gauteng province, home to Johannesburg and South Africa's capital Pretoria. This is where the Omicron was first documented. I've been told that data being published later this week will shows that nearly all this increase is likely due to cases of the Omicron variant. Like labs here in the UK, a PCR test for Omicron looks clearly different to the previously dominant Delta variant due to the "S-gene dropout". This is now the typical feature of cases in South Africa's fourth wave.
2nd Dec 2021 - Sky News

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Austria extends COVID-19 lockdown by 10 days

An Austrian parliamentary committee on Tuesday, as widely expected, approved a decree extending the country's COVID-19 lockdown by 10 days, bringing its total duration to 20 days, which the government has said is the longest it will last. Faced with surging daily coronavirus infections, the conservative-led government introduced the lockdown on Monday of last week, the first country in Western Europe to reimpose a lockdown this autumn.
1st Dec 2021 - Reuters

The race is on to trace the new COVID-19 variant

Governments around the world are urgently scouring databases for recent cases of COVID-19 infections, screening travellers and decoding the viral genomes of the new variant as they try to measure how far it has spread. The pace of the work highlights the pressure on governments and public health authorities to decide quickly whether they need to take unpopular, economically damaging steps to curb Omicron's spread. Data shows it was circulating before it was officially identified in southern Africa last week and it has since been detected in more than a dozen countries read more . Work to establish if it is more infectious, deadly or evades vaccines will take weeks.
1st Dec 2021 - Reuters

Singapore close to vaccinating all eligible people against COVID-19

Singapore's COVID-19 vaccination rate has risen to 96% of the eligible population and authorities are now racing ahead to administer booster shots amid concerns over the Omicron variant. The health ministry of the city-state, which has among the highest vaccination rates in the world, said late on Tuesday that it had updated the official vaccination rate to account for a small drop in the population. As of Nov. 29, 96% of the eligible population had completed the full vaccination regimen, updated from 94%, the ministry said. That translates to about 86% of the total population of about 5.5 million.
1st Dec 2021 - Reuters

CDC says it is moving to tighten international COVID-19 testing rules

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed late Tuesday it is working to impose stricter COVID-19 testing rules for air travelers entering the United States amid concerns about a new COVID-19 variant. The CDC confirmed in a statement it is working to revise its current Global Testing Order "for travel as we learn more about the Omicron variant; a revised order would shorten the timeline for required testing for all international air travelers to one day before departure to the United States."
1st Dec 2021 - Reuters

UK PM Johnson says boosters should give higher protection from Omicron

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday said that it was likely booster COVID-19 vaccinations would increase protection against severe disease from the new Omicron variant even if effectiveness against infection was reduced. "The answer is everywhere and always to get the booster because we think it's overwhelmingly likely that the booster (and) getting vaccinated will give you more protection," he told broadcasters.
30th Nov 2021 - Reuters UK

How South African scientists spotted the Omicron COVID variant

On Friday Nov. 19, Raquel Viana, Head of Science at one of South Africa's biggest private testing labs, sequenced the genes on eight coronavirus samples - and got the shock of her life. The samples, tested in the Lancet laboratory, all bore a large number of mutations, especially on the spike protein that the virus uses to enter human cells. "I was quite shocked at what I was seeing. I questioned whether something had gone wrong in the process," she told Reuters, a thought that quickly gave way to "a sinking feeling that the samples were going to have huge ramifications".
30th Nov 2021 - Reuters

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Omicron: Are gov’ts prepared to deal with a new COVID variant?

Countries around the world reimpose travel restrictions in response to new Omicron variant. Countries around the world were starting to reopen their borders and lift COVID-19 restrictions. But a new variant is now threatening to derail the progress made in the past few months. Several nations have already imposed travel restrictions to and from Southern Africa, where the Omicron variant was first detected.
29th Nov 2021 - Aljazeera.com

WHO warns that new virus variant poses ‘very high’ risk

The World Health Organization warned Monday that the global risk from the omicron variant is “very high” based on the early evidence, saying the mutated coronavirus could lead to surges with “severe consequences.” The assessment from the U.N. health agency, contained in a technical paper issued to member states, amounted to WHO’s strongest, most explicit warning yet about the new version that was first identified days ago by researchers in South Africa. It came as a widening circle of countries around the world reported cases of the variant and moved to slam their doors in an act-now-ask-questions-later approach while scientists race to figure out just how dangerous the mutant version might be.
29th Nov 2021 - The Associated Press

Pilots union asks Britain to set up winter fund amid Omicron concerns

The British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) on Monday urged the government to establish a "winter resilience fund" to support the ailing aviation industry, after some travel curbs were brought back to contain the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant. "The latest changes have shattered the fledgling confidence in air travel including for Christmas and new year bookings," said BALPA in a statement. Britain, which has so far reported 11 cases of the variant, has said arrivals from all countries would have to self-isolate until they receive a negative result from a PCR test and that face masks must be worn in retail settings.
29th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Omicron COVID-19 variant poses risks to global growth, inflation -rating agencies

The Omicron COVID-19 variant could hurt global growth prospects while also pushing prices higher, rating agencies Fitch Ratings and Moody's Investors Service said on Monday, after the World Health Organization said the variant carried a very high risk of infection surges. "The Omicron variant poses risks to global growth and inflation, especially as it comes during a period of already stretched supply chains, elevated inflation and labor market shortages," Elena Duggar, Associate Managing Director at Moody's, told Reuters in emailed comments.
29th Nov 2021 - Reuters

White House says U.S. agencies can delay punishing unvaccinated federal workers

The White House told federal agencies on Monday they can delay punishing thousands of federal workers who failed to comply with a Nov. 22 COVID-19 vaccination deadline. On Wednesday, the Biden administration said a total of 92% of U.S. federal workers have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Overall, 96.5% of the 3.5 million federal workers were considered to be in compliance with the administration's mandate announced in September because they either were vaccinated or had an exemption request granted or under consideration.
29th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Analysis: How fast does it spread?: Scientists ask whether Omicron can outrun Delta

As scientists race to understand the consequences of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, one of the most important questions is whether this new version of the coronavirus can outrun the globally dominant Delta variant. The World Health Organization on Friday designated Omicron a "variant of concern" just days after the variant was first reported in southern Africa. The WHO said it is coordinating with many researchers worldwide to better understand how the variant will impact the COVID-19 pandemic, with new findings expected within "days and weeks."
29th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Singapore, Malaysia reopen land border amid worries over the Omicron variant

Singapore and Malaysia reopened one of the world's busiest land borders on Monday, allowing vaccinated travellers to cross after nearly two years of being shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although travellers welcomed the chance to reunite with family and friends, there were concerns the border might be closed again due to the new Omicron coronavirus variant. As many as 300,000 Malaysians commuted daily to Singapore before the pandemic. The sudden closing of the border in March 2020 left tens of thousands stranded on both sides, separated from families and fearing for their jobs.
29th Nov 2021 - Reuters

New Zealand to ease COVID measures this week despite Omicron threat - PM

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday the country will move into a system of living with the COVID-19 virus later this week despite the new Omicron variant posing a fresh health threat to the world. There were no cases of the Omicron variant in New Zealand at this stage but the developing global situation showed why a cautious approach was needed at the borders, she said.
29th Nov 2021 - Reuters

COVID passports, vaccines helped EU tourism recovery - U.N.

Widespread use of COVID-19 "passports" and vaccines helped tourism recover faster in the European Union than in other parts of the world in the third quarter of 2021, a U.N. report said on Monday. Globally, international tourist arrivals rose 58% between July and September compared with the same period in 2020, the U.N. World Tourism Organisation barometer said. That was still 64% below the same period in 2019, before the pandemic.
29th Nov 2021 - Reuters

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WHO reaches draft consensus on future pandemic treaty

Member states of the World Health Organization have reached a tentative consensus to negotiate a future agreement on preventing pandemics, bridging the gap between sides led by the European Union and United States, diplomats said on Sunday. The draft resolution, hammered out in negotiations over the weekend, will be presented for adoption to health ministers at the WHO's three-day special assembly that opens on Monday, they said.
28th Nov 2021 - Reuters

China study warns of 'colossal' COVID outbreak if it opens up like U.S., France

China could face more than 630,000 COVID-19 infections a day if it dropped its zero-tolerance policies by lifting travel curbs, according to a study by Peking University mathematicians. In the report published in China CDC Weekly by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the mathematicians said China could not afford to lift travel restrictions without more efficient vaccinations or specific treatments. Using data for August from the United States, Britain, Spain, France and Israel, the mathematicians assessed the potential results if China adopted the same pandemic control tactics as those countries.
28th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Aussie vaccine researchers rush to include Omicron in jab development

Australian vaccine researchers will be putting the Omicron coronavirus variant under the microscope, with experts saying the rise of the new strain highlights the urgent need for sovereign vaccine manufacturing. The emergence of Omicron has prompted the companies that make COVID-19 vaccines for Australia, including Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna, to evaluate the efficacy of their products against the variant. Pfizer said it expects new data on the variant within a fortnight and would be able to tailor a new vaccine-specific variant within 100 days if it is found to be necessary. Nasdaq-listed Moderna, which is planning to set up operations in Australia, has said it is using a three-pronged strategy against Omicron. The company will evaluate data from a stronger booster shot of its original vaccine to see whether it is effective against the new strain. It is also studying two multi-variant booster candidates and will start work on an Omicron-specific booster in coming weeks.
28th Nov 2021 - The Age

Covid: Two cases of new variant Omicron detected in UK

Two people in the UK have been found to be infected with the new Covid variant, Omicron, the health secretary has said. Sajid Javid said the cases in Brentwood, Essex, and Nottingham were confirmed by the UK Health Security Agency after genomic sequencing. They are linked and connected to travel in southern Africa, and both cases and their households were self-isolating. The new variant has also been identified in South Africa, Botswana, Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is holding a press conference at Downing Street with the chief scientific adviser to the government, Sir Patrick Vallance, and the UK's chief medical adviser Prof Chris Whitty.
27th Nov 2021 - BBC News

Covid Will Keep Spawning Variants Till the World Is Immune

So far, SARS-CoV-2’s most devastating impacts have been in developed countries. The U.S., U.K. and European Union have accounted for about a third of deaths, compared to their roughly 10% share of the world’s population. However, it’s been in the BRICS grouping of fast-growing middle- income nations where an outsized share of new variants of concern have been isolated and analyzed for the first time. From the original strain in China, to the Delta lineage picked up in India, the Gamma variety isolated in Brazil and the Beta and latest Omicron strains from South Africa, only the U.K.-related Alpha variant has emerged outside these countries.
27th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Israel to close borders to all foreigners due to omicron variant

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement that the country's borders would be closed to all foreigners due to concerns about the omicron variant and that Israeli citizens coming into the country would have to quarantine, regardless of their vaccination status. The statement, issued on Saturday, said that beginning at midnight between Sunday and Monday, the country’s borders would be closed to international travelers for two weeks pending approval from the government, Reuters reported. One case of the omicron variant has been confirmed in Israel and seven others in the country are suspected to have the variant, according to the news outlet.
27th Nov 2021 - The Hill

Israel Finds Case of New Covid Variant Discovered in South Africa

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Israel was “on the verge of an emergency situation” after the new Covid-19 variant discovered in southern Africa was detected in a passenger arriving from Malawi. “Our cardinal principle is to act now forcefully and quickly,” Bennett said at a meeting with health officials, according to a statement from his office. “We are in a new situation now. This new variant is very worrying.” Scientists are still trying to determine whether the new strain, called B.1.1529, is more transmissible or more lethal than previous ones. What’s clear is that it has the most mutations of any strain yet identified. That’s raised concerns in South Africa and internationally, with authorities fearing a wave of cases that could increase pressure on already strained health-care systems.
26th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

New Covid-19 variant raises risk of recovery limbo

A new Covid-19 mutation is threatening to suspend the world in coronavirus limbo. Countries including Britain and Singapore have imposed bans on travellers from South Africa and other nations where a concerning new variant has been detected. A highly infectious strain is a particular problem for economies with low vaccination rates. If it evades vaccines, another round of lockdowns could be on the cards at a time when governments and central banks have depleted firepower.
26th Nov 2021 - Reuters

WTO postpones major meeting over COVID-19 concerns -sources

The World Trade Organization (WTO) became the first major diplomatic casualty of the new coronavirus variant on Friday when it postponed its first ministerial meeting in four years due to the deteriorating health situation. Ministers from WTO members were due to have gathered next week for a meeting widely seen as a test of the WTO's relevance. The WTO said that its members had agreed late on Friday to postpone the ministerial conference after the new variant outbreak led to travel restrictions that would have prevented many ministers from reaching Geneva.
26th Nov 2021 - Reuters

U.S. President Biden calls for intellectual property protection waivers on COVID-19 vaccines

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday called on nations expected to meet at the World Trade Organization next week to agree to waive intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines in the wake of the identification of a new coronavirus variant in South Africa. However, the meeting he was referring to was later postponed after the new variant led to travel restrictions that would have prevented many participants from reaching Geneva
26th Nov 2021 - Reuters

New COVID variant Omicron triggers global alarm, market sell-off

The discovery of a new coronavirus variant named Omicron triggered global alarm on Friday as countries rushed to suspend travel from southern Africa and stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic suffered their biggest falls in more than a year. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said Omicron may spread more quickly than other forms, and preliminary evidence suggested there is an increased risk of reinfection. Epidemiologists warned travel curbs may be too late to stop Omicron from circulating globally. The new mutations were first discovered in South Africa and have since been detected in Belgium, Botswana, Israel and Hong Kong.
26th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Hong Kong finds two cases of new Covid variant identified in Africa

Two cases of the new Covid-19 strain raising alarm in parts of southern Africa have been found in travelers arriving in Hong Kong. A traveler from South Africa was found to have the variant—currently known as B.1.1.529—while the other case was identified in a person quarantined in the hotel room opposite them, the Hong Kong government said late Thursday. That person may have been infected as air flowed between the rooms, according to the government. B.1.1.529 carries an unusually large number of mutations and is “clearly very different” from previous incarnations, Tulio de Oliveira, a bio-informatics professor who runs gene-sequencing institutions at two South African universities, said at a briefing on Thursday.
26th Nov 2021 - BusinessMirror

WHO Says New Strain Is a Variant of Concern, Names It Omicron

The World Health Organization said that a strain of coronavirus recently discovered by South African researchers is a variant of concern, posing a threat that could confound countries’ efforts to slow the spread of Covid-19. The WHO assigned the Greek letter omicron to the variant, which had been known as B.1.1.529, following a meeting by a panel of experts Friday. Scientists say the variant carries a high number of mutations in its spike protein, which plays a key role in the virus’s entry into cells in the body. It’s also what is targeted by vaccines, so if the protein changes enough, it raises concern that the mutations could make immunizations less effective.
26th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Dozens of COVID-19 cases on flight from South Africa, Dutch authorities say

Dutch health authorities said that dozens of people who arrived in Amsterdam on two flights from South Africa on Friday are likely infected with COVID-19, and they are conducting further testing to see if people are infected with the recently discovered Omicron coronavirus variant. Around 600 passengers arrived at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on the two KLM flights on Friday and then faced hours of delays and testing due to concerns over thenew virus variant. On the basis of initial testing, the Dutch health ministry estimated there may be around 85 positive cases among the passengers.
26th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Chris Whitty: I worry people won't accept more Covid curbs

England's chief medical officer Chris Whitty has said his "greatest worry" is whether people will accept fresh curbs on activities to tackle Covid variants. His comments came after the government announced quarantines on travellers from some African countries following the emergence of a new strain. Prof Whitty said he questioned whether "we could take people with us" if restrictions had to be imposed. England has been through three national lockdowns since Covid first struck. There have also been many local restrictions imposed at various points during the past 20 months.
26th Nov 2021 - BBC News

New Covid variant: World could be dealing with a ‘totally new pandemic,’ WHO envoy David Nabarro says

The new super-variant could pose such a risk to vaccines that the world could be dealing with a “totally new pandemic”, a covid expert has said. David Nabarro, special envoy on Covid-19 for the World Health Organisation, said the variant B.1.1.529 that has been found in South Africa has been provisionally labelled with the Greek letter Nu. He said the variant posed a serious threat because the extent of its 32 mutations suggested it had a greater capacity to evade immunity from vaccines.
26th Nov 2021 - iNews

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Portugal reimposes rules as COVID-19 cases rise

Portugal, which has one of the world's highest rates of vaccination against COVID-19, announced it would reimpose restrictions to stop a surge in cases, ordering all passengers flying into the country to show a negative test certificate on arrival. "It doesn't matter how successful the vaccination was, we must be aware we are entering a phase of greater risk," Prime Minister Antonio Costa told a news conference on Thursday. "We have seen significant growth (in cases) in the EU and Portugal is not an island," he added.
26th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Israel labels 7 African countries ‘red’ as new variant stokes worry

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Thursday evening ordered that several countries in southern Africa be labeled “red,” heavily restricting entry from them following the emergence of a new, highly mutable coronavirus variant in South Africa, South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, and Eswatini were added to the list of countries from which foreigners are barred entry to Israel. The list had been empty for some six weeks, as no country met the Health Ministry’s criteria. Israelis returning to the country, including those fully vaccinated, from any of the countries now considered “red” will be required to isolate at a state-run hotel for a week and will be released after receiving two negative PCR virus tests, Bennett said in a statement.
26th Nov 2021 - The Times of Israel

New Coronavirus Variant a 'Serious Concern' in South Africa

Scientists in South Africa are studying a recently identified new coronavirus variant of concern, stoking fears the country may face a potentially severe fourth wave that could spread internationally. The new discovery, called B.1.1.529 until a Greek letter is assigned to it by the World Health Organization, carries an unusually large number of mutations and is “clearly very different” from previous incarnations, Tulio de Oliveira, a bio-informatics professor who runs gene-sequencing institutions at two South African universities, said at a briefing on Thursday. “Here is a mutation variant of serious concern,” Health Minister Joe Phaahla said at the same media event. “We were hopeful that we might have a longer break in between waves -- possibly that it would hold off to late December or even next year January.”
25th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Slovaks lock down to slow world's highest COVID-19 infection rate

Slovakia went into a two-week lockdown on Thursday, as the country with one of the EU's lowest vaccination rates reported a critical situation in hospitals and new infections that topped global tables. Slovakia, a country of 5.5 million, ordered all but essential shops and services closed and banned people from travelling outside their districts unless going to work, school, or a doctor. Gatherings of more than six people were banned. The decision comes as coronavirus cases surge across Europe, making the continent the centre of the pandemic again, and follows neighbouring Austria which started a lockdown on Monday.
25th Nov 2021 - Reuters

South Africa detects new COVID-19 variant in small numbers

South African scientists have detected a new COVID-19 variant in small numbers and are working to understand its potential implications, they said on Thursday. The variant - called B.1.1.529 - has a "very unusual constellation" of mutations, which are concerning because they could help it evade the body's immune response and make it more transmissible, scientists told reporters at a news conference. Early signs from diagnostic laboratories suggest the variant has rapidly increased in the most populated province of Gauteng and may already be present in the country's other eight provinces, they said.
25th Nov 2021 - Reuters on MSN.com

When fighting COVID-19, "every day counts," Merkel warns her successors

Germany is in a phase of exponential growth in numbers of coronavirus cases, Chancellor Angela Merkel said, adding that every day counted when it came to enacting social distancing measures designed to slow its spread. Some of outgoing conservative chancellor's allies have criticised Social Democrat Olaf Scholz's government-in-waiting for declining to extend some lockdown measures that were put in place by Merkel's government. Merkel said more social distancing measures were needed. "The situation is so serious because we are seeing exponential growth," she said. "And the people who get ill today are the ones who will be in intensive care in 10 to 14 days' time.... Every day counts."
25th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Europe’s Christmas markets warily open as COVID cases rise

The holiday tree is towering over the main square in this central German city, the chestnuts and sugared almonds are roasted, and kids are clambering aboard the merry-go-round just like they did before the pandemic. But a surge in coronavirus infections has left an uneasy feeling hanging over Frankfurt’s Christmas market. To savor a mug of mulled wine — an uncomplicated rite of winter in pre-pandemic times — masked customers must pass through a one-way entrance to a fenced-off wine hut, stopping at the hand sanitizer station. Elsewhere, security officers check vaccination certificates before letting customers head for the steaming sausages and kebabs. Despite the pandemic inconveniences, stall owners selling ornaments, roasted chestnuts and other holiday-themed items in Frankfurt and other European cities are relieved to be open at all for their first Christmas market in two years, especially with new restrictions taking effect in Germany, Austria and other countries as COVID-19 infections hit record highs
25th Nov 2021 - The Associated Press

New proposed lineage

Description - Sub-lineage of: B.1.1 = Earliest Sequence: 2021-11-11 - Latest Sequence: 2021-11-13 Countries circulating: Botswana (3 genomes), Hong Kong ex S. Africa (1 genome, partial) Description: Conserved Spike mutations - A67V, Δ69-70, T95I, G142D/Δ143-145, Δ211/L212I, ins214EPE, G339D, S371L, S373P, S375F, K417N, N440K, G446S, S477N, T478K, E484A, Q493K, G496S, Q498R, N501Y, Y505H, T547K, D614G, H655Y, N679K, P681H, N764K, D796Y, N856K, Q954H, N969K, L981F Conserved non-Spike mutations - NSP3 – K38R, V1069I, Δ1265/L1266I, A1892T; NSP4 – T492I; NSP5 – P132H; NSP6 – Δ105-107, A189V; NSP12 – P323L; NSP14 – I42V; E – T9I; M – D3G, Q19E, A63T; N – P13L, Δ31-33, R203K, G204R Currently only 4 sequences so would recommend monitoring for now. Export to Asia implies this might be more widespread than sequences alone would imply. Also the extremely long branch length and incredibly high amount of spike mutations suggest this could be of real concern (predicted escape from most known monoclonal antibodies) Genomes: EPI_ISL_6590608 (partial RBD Sanger sequencing from Hong Kong) EPI_ISL_6640916 EPI_ISL_6640919 EPI_ISL_6640917
25th Nov 2021 - Github.com

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 25th Nov 2021

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New Botswana variant with 32 'horrific' mutations is the most evolved Covid strain EVER

Only 10 cases of the strain — dubbed B.1.1.529 — have been spotted to date so far. The variant has 32 mutations, many of which suggest it is more vaccine resistant. Scientists warn the variant could be worse 'than nearly anything else about.' Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College who first picked up on its spread, described the variant's combination of mutations as 'horrific'. He warned that B.1.1.529, its scientific name, had the potential to be 'worse than nearly anything else about' — including the world-dominant Delta strain. Scientists told MailOnline, however, that its unprecedented number of mutations might work against it and make it 'unstable', preventing it from becoming widespread. They said there was 'no need to be overly concerned' because there were no signs yet that it was spreading rapidly.
24th Nov 2021 - Daily Mail

Non-profit groups tell WTO to reverse 'vaccine apartheid' before any meeting

More than 130 civil society groups largely from developing countries are calling for the World Trade Organization to cancel a ministerial conference next week and instead concentrate on approving an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines. The groups, organized under a loose coalition called "Our World is Not For Sale," said in a letter on Wednesday to WTO members that "vaccine apartheid" caused by WTO intellectual property rules must be resolved first. The meeting would otherwise "lack any pretence of legitimacy," especially when some ministers may not be able to travel to Geneva, it said.
25th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Germany mulls full lockdown, vaccine mandate

German officials are mulling the possibility of enacting stricter coronavirus restrictions across the country amid a surge in daily infections. Chancellor Angela Merkel called on German state heads to decide whether to opt in to a full lockdown and vaccine mandate by Wednesday, according to CNBC. On Tuesday, health minister Jens Spahn starkly warned citizens that “pretty much everyone in Germany will be vaccinated, recovered or dead" by the end of this winter while calling for more restrictions to be put in place. He also called for more public places to implement the "3G rule," or to limit access to only those who are vaccinated, have had a negative COVID-19 test or recently recovered from the virus, CNBC reported.
24th Nov 2021 - The Hill

Germany faces grim COVID milestone with leadership in flux

As Germany inches toward the mark of 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, the country’s leader-in-waiting announced plans Wednesday to create an expert team at the heart of the next government to provide daily scientific advice on tackling the coronavirus pandemic. Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats announced the measure, along with the creation of a standing emergency committee, at the start of a news conference laying out the deal his party and two others have agreed to form a new government. “Sadly, the coronavirus still hasn’t been beaten,” Scholz said. “Every day we see new records as far as the number of infections are concerned.” German officials — from outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel to state governors and the three parties now poised for power — have been criticized for failing to take decisive steps to flatten the curve of infections during the transition period since September’s nation election.
24th Nov 2021 - The Associated Press

Unvaccinated Russian minors won't have to quarantine for Beijing

Russia's Olympic Committee chief said on Wednesday it had received assurances from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that its Under-18 athletes would not be subjected to three weeks of quarantine ahead of next year's Beijing Winter Games. China requires athletes and team officials to be vaccinated to avoid 21 days in quarantine ahead of the Games, which run from Feb. 4 to Feb. 20. Some exceptions for medical reasons can be granted on a case-by-case basis.
25th Nov 2021 - Reuters

France to announce COVID-19 booster shots for all adults - media

France is expected to announce that COVID-19 booster shots will be made available to all adults as well as stricter rules on wearing face masks and more stringent health pass checks to curb a new wave of infections, French media reported. Health Minister Olivier Veran is due to hold a press conference at midday on Thursday. President Emmanuel Macron's government on Wednesday said it would focus on tougher social distancing rules and a faster booster shot programme and that it wanted to avoid the lockdowns being imposed once more by some other European countries.
25th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Here’s what the UK can learn from other countries’ responses to Covid-19

Looking at how health services in different countries have responded to Covid, we can see some common ground. Many countries are increasing funding for health services, expanding the number of frontline clinical staff, providing separate areas to care for patients with confirmed or suspected Covid-19, and using digital technology to deliver virtual rather than face-to-face appointments. But there are some distinctions: peer a bit closer and it is clear that we have something to teach and something to learn from every healthcare system. The UK has its achievements to share, from a nationalised (and devolved) system that can pool surgical resources in local areas and support mass trials to test new treatments, to a historically strong primary care model that played a key role in delivering the largest vaccination programme in British history while continuing to deliver daily care to patients.
24th Nov 2021 - The Guardian

EU should make COVID booster shot a condition for free travel, Greek PM says

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis proposed on Wednesday that the EU's executive arm make having a booster shot against COVID-19 a condition for some Europeans to travel freely across the bloc, amid a resurgence in infections. Data from a large study released by Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE has shown that a booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by them was 95.6% effective against the coronavirus when compared with a vaccinated group that did not get the third shot
24th Nov 2021 - Reuters

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Covid jab wait for 12- to 15-year-olds in England could be up to five months

Delays to the vaccination rollout mean some 12- to 15-year-olds may not get their Covid jab until February next year – 15 weeks after the government’s original target for offering the jab to all eligible teenagers, according to Labour. Officials originally set October half-term as the target to invite those in the age group to receive the vaccine in schools after criticism that England was slow to approve it for children compared to other countries. New analysis by Labour suggests however that if the vaccination of the 2.8m eligible 12- to 15-year-olds continues at the current rate, it could take until 7 February for some teenagers to be jabbed – a five-month wait for some.
24th Nov 2021 - The Guardian

Germans Line Up at Vaccine Centers as Booster Push Accelerates

Germany’s sluggish Covid vaccine campaign is rattling back to life, with many snapping up online appointments for shots and others enduring hours of lines in the cold to receive more protection against the coronavirus. Some are taking to Twitter to voice frustration, elation or both at the surge in demand for Covid shots. Comments thanked those hardy enough to brave the elements for a shot, while others criticized authorities for not better organizing the latest inoculation push.
23rd Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

COVID-19: Take a lateral flow test before you visit busy places this Christmas, says government

The government is advising people to take a COVID-19 test before they spend time in "crowded and enclosed spaces" this winter. The Cabinet Office had previously advised people to take two lateral flow tests a week, especially if they have school-age children or are meeting clinically vulnerable people. Now the public is being told to take rapid lateral flow tests "if it is expected that there will be a period of high risk that day". It does not state what a high-risk scenario may be, but it could be an activity such as Christmas shopping in busy high streets or shopping centres. The Cabinet Office website says: "You are at higher risk of catching or passing on COVID-19 in crowded and enclosed spaces, where there are more people who might be infectious and where there is limited fresh air
23rd Nov 2021 - Sky News

Covid Curbs, Vaccine Mandates Spark Unrest in French Caribbean

Week-long protests on the French-Caribbean island of Guadeloupe spilled over into nearby Martinique this week, as residents rebel against Covid-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates for healthcare workers. The unrest comes as the two French jurisdictions have seen their tourism-based economies throttled by the pandemic and where distrust of politicians in Paris runs high, as does the unemployment rate. French Prime Minister Jean Castex held a video conference with Guadeloupe officials late Monday to discuss ways to end the crisis, his office said in an e-mailed statement. That meeting was supposed to happen in person but was held online after Castex tested positive for Covid-19.
23rd Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

U.S. Has Lost More Lives to Covid This Year Than Last

This was supposed to be the year vaccines brought the pandemic under control. Instead, more people in the United States have died from Covid-19 this year than died last year, before vaccines were available. As of Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had recorded 386,233 deaths involving Covid-19 in 2021, compared with 385,343 in 2020. The final number for this year will be higher, not only because there is more than a month left but because it takes time for local agencies to report deaths to the C.D.C. Covid-19 has also accounted for a higher percentage of U.S. deaths this year than it did last year: about 13 percent compared with 11 percent.
23rd Nov 2021 - The New York Times

As Virus Cases Rise in Europe, an Economic Toll Returns

Europe’s already fragile economic recovery is at risk of being undermined by a fourth wave of coronavirus infections now dousing the continent, as governments impose increasingly stringent health restrictions that could reduce foot traffic in shopping centers, discourage travel and thin crowds in restaurants, bars and ski resorts. Austria has imposed the strictest measures, mandating vaccinations and imposing a nationwide lockdown that began on Monday. But economic activity will also be dampened by other safety measures — from vaccine passports in France and Switzerland to a requirement to work from home four days a week in Belgium.
23rd Nov 2021 - The New York Times

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Official: More than 90% of fed workers got shots by deadline

More than 90% of federal workers received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by Monday’s deadline set by President Joe Biden. Biden announced in September that more than 3.5 million federal workers were required to undergo vaccination, with no option to get regularly tested instead, unless they secured an approved medical or religious exemption. A U.S. official said the vast majority of federal workers are fully vaccinated, and that a smaller number have pending or approved exceptions to the mandate. In all, more than 95% of federal workers are in compliance with the Biden mandate, the official said, either by being vaccinated or having requested an exemption. Workers who are not in compliance are set to begin a “counseling” process that could ultimately result in their termination if they don’t get a shot or secure an approved exception to vaccination.
23rd Nov 2021 - The Associated Press

Canada ends COVID-19 policy turning back asylum-seekers between border crossings

Canada is ending its pandemic-era policy of turning back asylum-seekers trying to cross into the country between ports of entry, according to a revised policy document released on Sunday. Canada turned at least 544 would-be refugees back to the Unites States between March 2020 and mid-October. The government did not immediately respond to questions regarding why it was ending the policy now and what if any quarantine rules would apply to asylum-seekers who are not vaccinated.
23rd Nov 2021 - Reuters

Israel starts vaccinating young children as coronavirus cases rise

Israel began rolling out Pfizer/BioNtech COVID-19 vaccinations for 5- to 11-year-olds on Monday hoping to beat down a recent rise in coronavirus infections. A fourth wave of infections that hit Israel in June began subsiding in September. But over the past two weeks the "R", or reproduction rate of the virus, that had remained below one for two months began climbing and has now crossed that threshold, indicating the virus could again be spreading exponentially. Daily cases have also crept up over the past few days, with half the confirmed infections presently among children age 11 and younger.
23rd Nov 2021 - Reuters

U.S. issues 'Do Not Travel' COVID-19 warning for Germany, Denmark

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the State Department on Monday advised against travel to Germany and Denmark because of a rising number of COVID-19 cases in those countries. The CDC elevated its travel recommendation to "Level Four: Very High" for the two European countries, telling Americans they should avoid travel there, while the State Department issued parallel "Do Not Travel" advisories for both countries.
23rd Nov 2021 - Reuters

Experimental chewing gum may reduce virus spread; Booster shot protection may be longer lasting

An experimental chewing gum containing a protein that "traps" coronavirus particles could limit the amount of virus in saliva and help curb transmission when infected people are talking, breathing or coughing, researchers believe. The gum contains copies of the ACE2 protein found on cell surfaces, which the virus uses as a gateway to break into cells and infect them. In test-tube experiments using saliva and swab samples from infected individuals, virus particles attached themselves to the ACE2 "receptors" in the chewing gum. As a result, the viral load in the samples fell by more than 95%, the research team from the University of Pennsylvania reported in Molecular Therapy. The gum feels and tastes like conventional chewing gum, can be stored for years at normal temperatures, and chewing it does not damage the ACE2 protein molecules, the researchers said. Using gum to reduce viral loads in saliva , they suggest, would add to the benefit of vaccines and would be particularly useful in countries where vaccines are not yet available or affordable.
22nd Nov 2021 - Reuters

90% of U.S. federal employees have received at least one COVID-19 dose - White House

The White House confirmed Monday that more than 90% of 3.5 million federal employees covered by a presidential COVID-19 vaccine mandate have received at least one vaccine dose ahead of a Monday deadline. In total, the administration has deemed 95% of federal workers comply with its requirements in that either they have been vaccinated, are completing vaccinations or have a pending religious or medical exemption request, the White House said. Officials declined to disclose to Reuters the total number of fully vaccinated federal employees, but said the "vast majority" of the 90% have received both doses.
22nd Nov 2021 - Reuters

U.S. families plan big holiday celebrations with COVID-19 shots in arms

Tanya Primiani will host 12 people around a long Thanksgiving table in her Silver Spring, Maryland home on Thursday, a boisterous scene she looks forward to welcoming after the COVID-19 pandemic limited the size of last year's gathering. Her parents are coming from Montreal, driving across the recently reopened U.S.-Canada border. Her sons, ages 7 and 10, have gotten their first round of COVID-19 vaccinations, and all the other guests are fully vaccinated against the virus
22nd Nov 2021 - Reuters

New Zealand to end tough COVID curbs, adopt new virus-fighting system

New Zealand will adopt a new system of living with the coronavirus virus from Dec. 3, which will end tough restrictions and allow businesses to operate in its biggest city, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday. New Zealand remained largely COVID-19 free until August but has been unable to beat an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant, forcing Ardern to abandon an elimination strategy and switch to treating the virus as endemic.
22nd Nov 2021 - Reuters

EU wants to harmonize validity period of vaccination certificate

The European Commission aims to harmonize the duration of the validity of the COVID-19 vaccination certificate, including the effects of booster shots, Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said on Monday, amid record infection numbers in some EU states. "I fully agree with the urgency, and this is why the European Commission is working with the utmost urgency to strengthen the coordination of free movement, including the length of validity and the role of boosters in the vaccination campaign," she told European lawmakers in Strasbourg
22nd Nov 2021 - Reuters

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Singapore relaxes tight COVID-19 social curbs from Monday

Singapore's government is easing some of the tight social curbs it imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19, after infections stabilised in the city-state over the past month. From Monday, limits on social interactions and dining out will be expanded to five people from the current rule of up to two vaccinated people, government ministers told a news conference on Saturday.
20th Nov 2021 - Reuters

COVID surge in Europe shows 'critical' need to vaccinate millions still not jabbed in UK, SAGE expert warns

Spiking coronavirus infections across Europe show the "critical" need for people in the UK get vaccinated, a government scientific adviser has told Sky News. Soaring cases on the continent underlined "how quickly things can go wrong", said Professor John Edmunds, who pointed out there were still "many millions" across Britain, who were still not fully vaccinated while some had not had any COVID-19 shots. His comments came as a number of European countries wrestle with a resurgence of the coronavirus.
20th Nov 2021 - Sky News

Austria imposes full COVID lockdown, makes vaccination mandatory

Austria will become the first country in Western Europe to reimpose a full coronavirus lockdown to tackle a new wave of infections and will require its whole population to be vaccinated by February, its government has said. Friday’s announcement came as roughly two-thirds of Austria’s population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the lowest rates in western Europe. The country’s infection rate is among the highest on the continent, with a seven-day incidence of 991 per 100,000 people. Austria had introduced a lockdown for all those who were unvaccinated on Monday but since then, infections have set new records.
20th Nov 2021 - Aljazeera.com

Scientists mystified, wary, as Africa avoids COVID disaster

There is something “mysterious” going on in Africa that is puzzling scientists, said Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University. “Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” she said. Fewer than 6% of people in Africa are vaccinated. For months, the WHO has described Africa as “one of the least affected regions in the world” in its weekly pandemic reports.
20th Nov 2021 - The Associated Press

Covid Surge May Be New Year Market Risk Missed by Strategists

A fresh blast of the pandemic may be catching traders and investment strategists off guard. As countries throughout Europe announce new restrictions going as far as full lockdowns, research notes outlining risks and opportunities for 2022 appear to completely ignore the virus. The word “lockdown” isn’t even mentioned in year-ahead outlooks for Europe circulated by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley. Meanwhile, in a Bank of America Corp. survey this week, fund managers saw Covid-19 as only the fifth-biggest tail risk, with just 5% expressing concern about its potential impact on markets. Inflation, central bank rate hikes, stalling Chinese growth and asset bubbles topped the list.
20th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

COVID comeback threatens fresh setback for European market bulls

COVID-19 lockdowns have returned anew to haunt Europe's economic prospects, forcing investors on Friday to reassess portfolios and sell vulnerable assets such as the euro and bank stocks. Days after the Netherlands, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic reimposed curbs, Austria put itself back under lockdown and Germany's health minister refused to rule out one.
20th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Philippines to reopen 'soon' to vaccinated foreign tourists

The Philippines has approved a plan to allow entry soon to foreign tourists vaccinated against COVID-19, its tourism ministry said on Friday, following moves by other Southeast Asian countries to relax travel curbs. The coronavirus task force "approved in principle the entry of fully vaccinated tourists" from countries with low COVID-19 cases, the ministry said, adding that guidelines must be finalised.
20th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 19th Nov 2021

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Australia's Political Capital Is Almost Completely Vaccinated

Almost all eligible citizens in Australia’s “Bush Capital” have had at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine and it is expected to reach full inoculation next month, a milestone that shows just how fast the nation has overcome a slow start to its vaccination rollout. Canberra, one of a number of highly vaccinated cities in the Asia-Pacific region, achieved the feat by relying on education and access to get its citizens to embrace the rollout, according to Andrew Barr, the chief minister of the Australian Capital Territory which oversees the city. Data show the city’s vaccination rate is at 96.8% for eligible people aged 12 and over. In terms of first doses, it’s given more than its population size as estimated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Barr says the real figure is likely to be around 99.9%, with just a few hundred people remaining unvaccinated. He expects a similar threshold for full inoculation to be reached by mid-December.
19th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Bill Gates Says Covid Deaths May Drop to Flu Levels by Mid-2022

Covid deaths and infection rates may dip below seasonal flu levels by the middle of next year assuming new dangerous variants don’t emerge in the meantime, Bill Gates said. Between natural and vaccine immunity and emerging oral treatments, “the death rate and the disease rate ought to be coming down pretty dramatically,” the billionaire founder of Microsoft Corp. said Thursday at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore. The constraints on vaccinating the world against Covid-19 will shift next year, Gates said, as supply issues are resolved and replaced by questions of how to logistically distribute them all. “The vaccines are very good news, and the supply constraints will be largely solved as we get out in the middle of next year, and so we’ll be limited by the logistics and the demand,” Gates said in a virtual interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait.
19th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Prospects of Intellectual-Property Waiver on Covid-19 Vaccines Fade

An agreement to waive the intellectual-property rights underpinning Covid-19 vaccines—a prospect poor countries have hoped would ease supplies to the developing world—is becoming increasingly unlikely, say people familiar with the situation, with the U.S. not acting to bridge disagreements between developing world countries and those opposing such a measure. In May, the Biden administration said it would support temporarily suspending patents and other IP linked to the shots to allow developing countries to produce the Covid-19 vaccines created by big drug companies. The U.S. was under pressure to help get vaccines to poor countries, which have suffered severe shortages. Confirmed deaths from Covid-19 in the developing world have far outstripped those in rich countries this year.
18th Nov 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

New Reconstruction Points to Animal Origins for Covid-19

A scientist known for investigating viral origins has reconstructed the first known weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, adding to a growing body of evidence that the virus behind it jumped from infected animals to humans rather than emerging from laboratory research. In a paper published Thursday in the academic journal Science, Michael Worobey concludes a wholesale seafood market in Wuhan, China, where live mammals were sold is very likely to be the site of the origin of the pandemic. The precise role of the Huanan market in the pandemic has been debated by scientists. Dr. Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who previously unearthed clues about the origins of the 1918 pandemic flu and HIV, showed that most of the known Covid-19 cases in December 2019 had a direct or indirect link to the Huanan market. These infected people worked at the market, visited it, had contact with someone who was there or lived nearby, he found by piecing together genetic data, reports and accounts of early patients.
18th Nov 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Germany to limit public life for the unvaccinated

Germany will limit large parts of public life in areas where hospitals are becoming dangerously full of COVID-19 patients to those who have either been vaccinated or have recovered from the illness, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday. The move is necessary to tackle a "very worrying" fourth wave of the pandemic that is overburdening hospitals, she said. "Many of the measures that are now needed would not have been needed if more people were vaccinated. And it isn't too late to get vaccinated now," Merkel said.
18th Nov 2021 - Reuters

India allows export of 20 mln Novavax vaccine doses to Indonesia -document, source

India has approved the export of 20 million doses of the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India (SII) to Indonesia, according to a government document seen by Reuters and a government source.
18th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Macron says France will not need to lockdown non-vaccinated people as COVID spreads

France does not need to follow those European countries imposing COVID-19 lockdowns on unvaccinated people, because of the success of its health pass in curbing the virus' spread, President Emmanuel Macron said. Europe has again become the epicentre of the pandemic, prompting some countries including Germany and Austria to reintroduce restrictions in the run-up to Christmas and causing debate over whether vaccines alone are enough to tame COVID-19.
18th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Ardern’s Covid lockdown finds favour as New Zealand watches Sydney’s Delta disaster

The loudest overseas critics of its elimination approach have been mostly greeted with bemusement or defiance. New Zealanders have consistently supported even the toughest anti-Covid measures. About 80% rated the government’s Covid-19 response as overall good, according to polling commissioned by the Spinoff in February, and 59% rated the response as “excellent”. The satirical hashtag #NZhellhole, which pokes fun at some of the more hysterical reactions to NZ lockdowns, was again trending on Wednesday. “If [overseas commentators] are surprised then they haven’t been paying attention,” says Dr Siouxsie Wiles, one of the country’s prominent epidemic communicators. In New Zealand, Wiles says, “the vast majority of people understand what we are up against, and are supportive of our response.”
18th Nov 2021 - The Guardian

'Life back to normal': More COVID-19 curbs eased in Melbourne

Melbourne's pubs and cafes can have unlimited patrons from Thursday night, while stadiums can return to full capacity as authorities lifted nearly all remaining COVID-19 restrictions for the vaccinated residents in Australia's second-largest city. Victoria, the state that is home to Melbourne, has been gradually easing curbs when dual-dose inoculations reached 70%, 80% and 90%, with the latest relaxations part of a shift in strategy towards living with the coronavirus. The full vaccination level for the eligible population is expected to reach 90% over the weekend.
18th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Mask-wearing cuts Covid incidence by 53%, says global study

Mask-wearing is the single most effective public health measure at tackling Covid, reducing incidence by 53%, the first global study of its kind shows.Vaccines are safe and effective and saving lives around the world. But most do not confer 100% protection, most countries have not vaccinated everyone, and it is not yet known if jabs will prevent future transmission of emerging coronavirus variants. Globally, Covid cases exceeded 250 million this month. The virus is still infecting 50 million people worldwide every 90 days due to the highly transmissible Delta variant, with thousands dying each day. Now a systematic review and meta analysis of non-pharmaceutical interventions has found for the first time that mask wearing, social distancing and handwashing are all effective measures at curbing cases – with mask wearing the most effective.
18th Nov 2021 - The Guardian

Portugal's Madeira Island Imposes Curbs on Unvaccinated People

The Portuguese island of Madeira will impose new restrictions on unvaccinated residents and visitors amid a surge in coronavirus cases across Europe. People who have not been vaccinated will be banned from attending public events such as concerts from Saturday, Miguel Albuquerque, the president of Madeira’s regional government, said in a televised press conference on Thursday. Unvaccinated people are allowed to attend mass or go to the supermarket as long as they show a negative Covid-19 test. The use of masks will become mandatory in public spaces. Mass testing will also be carried out on a weekly basis to try to contain the spread of the virus, Albuquerque said.
18th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Greece Is the Latest European Country to Restrict the Unvaccinated

Greece will tighten restrictions on people unvaccinated against the coronavirus as rising cases and hospitalizations strain the nation’s health systems. It joins Germany, Austria and other European countries in attempting to pressure more people into getting their inoculations. "Even those who are still hesitant can change their minds by listening to what the unvaccinated who get sick have to say,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a televised national address on Thursday. Almost nine out of every 10 people in Greek ICUs with Covid-19 are unvaccinated, he said.
18th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 18th Nov 2021

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Spain Plans Booster Shots for Health Workers, Elderly as Covid Cases Rise

Spain will roll out Covid-19 booster shots to health workers and people older than 60, as the country seeks to contain a surge in infections that’s hitting across Europe. The move, which will be discussed with authorities in autonomous regions, aims to protect vulnerable groups, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday. He said the country’s high vaccination rates of about 80% has so far shielded the former hot spot from the worst of the latest wave of the pandemic. Spain’s 14-day average infection rate has climbed 67% in two weeks to 82 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, but it remains well below countries like Germany and Austria, where less than 70% of the people are vaccinated.
18th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Germany Pushes Work From Home to Counter Europe’s Covid Surge

Germany’s likely next ruling coalition is pushing ahead with tougher measures to tackle record increases in coronavirus cases, including requiring companies to let employees work from home where possible. The proposed law also in some cases limits access to the workplace to people who are vaccinated, recovered or provide a negative test, according to parliamentary documents published Wednesday. The Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats aim to use their Bundestag majority to get it through the lower house of parliament on Thursday. “The current pandemic situation in Germany is dramatic,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told a conference of municipal leaders on Wednesday. “The fourth wave is hitting our country with full force.”
18th Nov 2021 - Yahoo Finance

Europe Fights Winter Covid Surge With New Restrictions for Unvaccinated

It’s getting harder to be a vaccine holdout in Europe and continue with life as usual. As governments battle another wave of the outbreak, new restrictions are being introduced, many aimed at the unvaccinated. That’s adding to the pressure on those who’ve resisted the shot so far. Germany is proposing to limit access to the workplace to people who are inoculated, recovered or provide a negative test, and those who have refused shots are increasingly banned from cafes and hairdressers. The country, which has seen a surge in cases, has a vaccination rate below that of Italy, Spain and Portugal.
18th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

UK health agency extends gap between infection and shots for children

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said on Wednesday that children aged between 12 and 15 should delay getting a COVID-19 vaccine if they've recently had COVID to at least 12 weeks after they were infected. The advice brings guidance for 12 to 15-year-olds into line with that for 16 and 17-year-olds, who were advised to wait 12 weeks after infection before getting a shot when officials gave a go ahead for second doses for that age group. Currently, 12 to 15-year-olds are only advised to get an initial shot of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, which has been associated with rare, mild and usually short-lived side effect of heart inflammation known as myocarditis.
18th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Defense Department will help relieve 2 Minnesota hospitals

The Department of Defense will send medical teams to two major Minnesota hospitals to relieve doctors and nurses who are swamped by a growing wave of COVID-19 patients, Gov. Tim Walz announced Wednesday. The teams, each comprising 22 people, will arrive at Hennepin County Medical Center and St. Cloud Hospital next week and begin treating patients immediately, Walz said in a conference call from the Finnish capital of Helsinki. the latest stop on his European trade mission. Minnesota has become one of the country’s worst hotspots for new COVID-19 infections. Hospital beds are filling up with unvaccinated people, and staffers are being worn down by the surge. Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said Tuesday that she’s ready to expand access to booster vaccines to all adults by the end of the week if the federal government doesn’t act first. “Our best defense against this is the vaccine,” Walz told reporters. He noted that Minnesota is No. 2 in the county for the number of booster shots given, behind only Vermont, and that first doses have risen 60% over the last week. “And we know that that is our way out of this. ... I need Minnesotans to recognize, as we’ve been saying, this is a dangerous time.”
18th Nov 2021 - The Associated Press

Sweden to introduce COVID vaccine passes for indoors events

The Swedish government plans to introduce a requirement for COVID-19 vaccine passes at indoor events where more than 100 people attend, a step recommended by health officials warning of a rising tide of infections in coming weeks. Infection rates have soared across large swaths of Europe in recent weeks and while Sweden - hard hit at times earlier in the pandemic - has yet to record a similar surge, healthy agency modelling suggests infections will reach a peak in mid-December. The centre-left government was preparing a bill to be put forward to parliament with the aim to having the vaccination passes in effect from Dec. 1, Health Minister Lena Hallengren said.
17th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Mulled wine only for vaccinated at some German Christmas markets

At the Christmas market on Hamburg's main square this year, only revellers who are vaccinated against COVID-19 or recently recovered will be able to indulge in steaming hot mulled wine and candied almonds or gingerbread under festive fairy lights. The unvaccinated will still be able to peruse the bottle-green stalls selling handicrafts, listen to carols, ride on the merry-go-round or admire the nativity scenes.
17th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Merck's Covid Pill Partner in India Sees a Short-Lived Boom

For a drugmaker licensed to produce Merck & Co.’s promising Covid-19 pill and sell Russia’s Sputnik V shot, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd. is surprisingly mellow about the rewards it expects from these medical breakthroughs even as virus waves continue to hit parts of the world. “Covid portfolios are going to be short-lived,” G.V. Prasad, its co-chairman and managing director said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. “Life-cycles tend to be shorter, the opportunity will be very competitive, so I don’t see Covid medicines as a driver of profit.”
17th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 17th Nov 2021

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Dutch plan to drop 'corona pass' for unvaccinated faces political push back

The Dutch government's plan to scrap the "corona pass" for people not vaccinated against COVID-19 faced strong opposition in parliament on Tuesday, including from within the ruling coalition. The pass, which grants access to indoor public venues, is now available to people who have been vaccinated, have recovered from COVID-19 or have tested negative for the virus. Under a proposal put forward by caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday, the last option would be dropped. But in an evening debate, even one of Rutte's own four-party coalition government partners expressed concerns that it would cause social division.
16th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Pfizer Will Allow Its Covid Pill to Be Made and Sold Cheaply in Poor Countries

Pfizer announced a deal on Tuesday to allow its promising Covid-19 treatment to be made and sold inexpensively in 95 poorer nations that are home to more than half of the world’s population. The agreement follows a similar arrangement negotiated by Merck last month, and together the deals have the potential to vastly expand global production of two simple antiviral pills that could alter the course of the pandemic by preventing severe illness from the coronavirus.
16th Nov 2021 - The New York Times

U.K. Missing 465000 People From Workforce Since Covid Hit

Britain continues to face severe labor market shortages despite the end of the furlough program because 465,000 people have disappeared from the workforce since the start of the pandemic, according to Bank of America. Ending the benefit on Sept. 30 for those out of work during lockdowns was expected to bring people who had given up on job hunting back into employment. “That has not happened yet,” Bank of America economist Rob Wood said in a note on Tuesday. U.K. payroll numbers jumped by 160,000 to a new high in October, suggesting the economy can absorb many of the 1 million workers who were on furlough when the program closed. Official unemployment for the month of September dropped to 3.9%, lower than immediate pre-pandemic levels.
16th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Germany Plans Stricter Covid Restrictions for Unvaccinated People

Germany is heading toward stiffer restrictions on people who have refused a Covid-19 vaccine, as authorities across Europe seek to rein in a renewed surge of the disease. Europe’s largest economy is grappling with its worst outbreak in the pandemic, posting a fresh record in its contagion rate on Tuesday. The country’s response has been complicated by a change in power, with Chancellor Angela Merkel in a caretaker role while negotiations to form a new government proceed. Under pressure to act, lawmakers from the potential ruling coalition are planning to introduce legislation later this week that would impose tougher curbs on people who haven’t been inoculated, including requiring tests to go to work and take public transportation.
16th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Pfizer Covid Pill: US to Buy Enough for 10 Million Patients

The Biden administration plans to buy enough of Pfizer Inc.’s new Covid-19 pill to treat 10 million patients, people familiar with the matter say. Pfizer’s pill to treat the disease caused by the coronavirus showed extraordinary results in a clinical trial, reducing hospitalization and death by 89% among high-risk Covid-19 patients. The company said Tuesday it asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency-use authorization for the pill, administered twice a day for five days. The administration has also ordered about 3.1 million courses of a pill from Merck & Co., and has an option in its contract to purchase more than 2 million additional courses.
16th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Slovakia plans curbs on those unvaccinated for COVID-19 as hospitals fill up

Slovakia's hospitals are in a critical situation dealing with a surge in coronavirus infections and the government will approve measures on Thursday to limit access to services for unvaccinated people, Prime Minister Eduard Heger said. Europe has again become the epicentre of the pandemic, prompting countries like Slovakia and neighbouring Austria to re-introduce restrictions in the run-up to Christmas.
16th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Germany to follow Austria's lockdown apartheid: Berlin considers rules for 14m unvaccinated citizens

Incoming government recommending unvaccinated citizens be banned from public transport. It will also bar the unvaccinated from going to work and recommend WFH for all. Comes amid soaring infections and sluggish vaccine rollout across country States are warning that their hospitals will hit capacity by early December
16th Nov 2021 - Daily Mail

India opens borders to vaccinated foreign tourists

India opened its borders to fully vaccinated foreign tourists entering the country on commercial flights for the first time in nearly two years on Monday. Tourists entering the country must be fully vaccinated, test negative for the virus within 72 hours of their flight and follow all Covid-19 protocols, according to the health ministry. Travelers from countries that have mutual agreements with India on the recognition of vaccination certificates, including the United States, United Kingdom and multiple European nations, can leave the airport without undergoing a Covid-19 test. However, they must monitor their health for 14 days after their arrival.
16th Nov 2021 - CNN

Russia to lift COVID-19 ban on flights to Brazil, Argentina, other countries from Dec. 1

Russia will lift its COVID-19 ban on flights to countries including Bangladesh, Brazil, Mongolia, Costa Rica and Argentina from Dec. 1, the government coronavirus task force said on Tuesday. The government stopped normal commercial flights abroad when the pandemic struck last year, but it has since been gradually relaxing the restrictions. The flight bans dealt a heavy blow to Russia's airlines.
16th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 16th Nov 2021

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No 10 plans booster jab requirement for people to obtain Covid pass

Ministers are set to require three vaccinations from those eligible for booster jabs in order to qualify as being fully vaccinated in areas where people must prove their status, such as travel or avoiding mandatory isolation. Downing Street sources said the intention was to end up in a place where three jabs, rather than two, was the requirement to obtain a Covid pass showing full vaccination – though currently only over-40s are eligible for the booster. If the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) continues to recommend boosters for all adults six months after their second jab, then the requirement could be in place in England by the early spring.
16th Nov 2021 - The Guardian

Europe Toughens Rules for Unvaccinated as Fourth Covid Wave Swells

As temperatures drop and coronavirus infections spike across Europe, some countries are introducing increasingly targeted restrictions against the unvaccinated who are driving another wave of contagion and putting economic recoveries, public health and an eventual return to prepandemic freedoms at risk. On Monday, Austria set a new bar for such measures in the West. Facing a 134 percent increase in cases in the last two weeks, the Austrian government cracked down on its unvaccinated population over the age of 12, restricting their movement to traveling for work, school, buying groceries and medical care.
16th Nov 2021 - The New York Times

U.S. CDC raises COVID-19 travel warnings for Czech Republic, Hungary

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised against travel to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Iceland because of a rising number of COVID-19 cases in those countries. The CDC raised its travel recommendation to "Level Four: Very High" for the three countries, telling Americans they should avoid travel there. The CDC separately lowered its COVID-19 travel advisory to "Level One: Low" for Japan, India, Pakistan, Liberia, Gambia and Mozambique.
15th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Boris Johnson Warns New U.K. Lockdown Is Possible With NHS Struggling

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson left the door open to another coronavirus lockdown this winter, warning that people must get their Covid-19 vaccinations and booster doses to avoid fresh restrictions. A “new wave” of Covid-19 is spreading across Europe and forcing governments to reimpose tougher rules, Johnson said at a televised press conference on Monday. “History shows we cannot afford to be complacent.” Asked directly about the possibility of another lockdown this Christmas, Johnson replied that there is nothing in the current data that signaled the need for restrictions, but warned: “clearly we cannot rule anything out.”
15th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Racial disparities in kids’ vaccinations are hard to track

The rollout of COVID-19 shots for elementary-age children has exposed another blind spot in the nation’s efforts to address pandemic inequalities: Health systems have released little data on the racial breakdown of youth vaccinations, and community leaders fear that Black and Latino kids are falling behind. Only a handful of states have made public data on COVID-19 vaccinations by race and age, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not compile racial breakdowns either. Despite the lack of hard data, public health officials and medical professionals are mindful of disparities and have been reaching out to communities of color to overcome vaccine hesitancy. That includes going into schools, messaging in other languages, deploying mobile vaccine units and emphasizing to skeptical parents that the shots are safe and powerfully effective.
15th Nov 2021 - The Associated Press

COVID-19: Vaccine certificates now needed to visit theatres, cinemas and concert halls in Wales

People in Wales will now have to prove they are fully vaccinated or have had a negative lateral flow test to visit theatres, cinemas and concert halls after the existing NHS COVID Pass scheme was widened. Proof of full vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test in the previous 48 hours has been a requirement to enter nightclubs and similar venues in the nation since 11 October. But the Welsh Parliament has now extended the rules to cover cinemas, theatres and concert halls in response to a high level of COVID-19 cases across the country. The guidance on self-isolation had also changed and people are being encouraged to work from home to help bring the coronavirus under control.
15th Nov 2021 - Sky News

Philippines starts to reopen schools after 20-month coronavirus closure

Thousands of children in the Philippines returned to school on Monday for the first time in nearly two years, kicking off a pilot scheme to resume face-to-face learning after the pandemic disrupted the education of 27 million students. A hundred public schools in lower-risk areas are holding classes in person for a two-month pilot run, with the reopening of more dependent on vaccination rates and a sustained decline in COVID-19 cases. The Philippines, which had imposed some of the world's longest lockdowns, is among the last countries to reopen schools, in stark contrast to many western countries.
15th Nov 2021 - Reuters

India opens to fully vaccinated foreign tourists

India began allowing fully vaccinated foreign tourists to enter the country on regular commercial flights, in the latest easing of coronavirus restrictions as infections fall and vaccinations rise. Tourists entering India, starting on Monday, must be fully vaccinated, follow all COVID-19 protocols and test negative for the virus within 72 hours of their flight, according to the health ministry. Many will also need to undergo a post-arrival COVID-19 test at the airport.
15th Nov 2021 - AlJazeera

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 15th Nov 2021

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Austria brings back COVID-19 lockdown, this time for the unvaccinated

Austria is the first European country to reinstate the same restrictions on daily movements that applied during national lockdowns before vaccines were rolled out, though this time they only affect a minority of the population. "We are not taking this step lightly but it is necessary," Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg told a news conference announcing the new measure, under which the unvaccinated can only leave their homes for a limited number of reasons like going to work or shopping for essentials.
14th Nov 2021 - Reuters

As the U.S. Races to Vaccinate Kids Against Covid-19, Some Countries Hold Back

The U.S. is at the forefront of the race to vaccinate young children. Many governments elsewhere are treading more cautiously. In Mexico, the president says he won’t be held hostage by vaccine makers and there are no plans to inoculate under-18s except those at risk. In many parts of Africa, rollouts are going so slowly that vaccinating children is a distant ambition. Some governments are waiting to see how the campaign in the U.S. goes before moving ahead. The U.S., where children between 5 and 11 are getting shots for the first time this month, isn’t alone: Children as young as 3 are being vaccinated in countries such as Colombia, Argentina and China.
13th Nov 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Brazil's top court rules that companies can require employee vaccination

Brazil's Supreme Court on Friday suspended a government order that prevented companies from requiring employees to provide proof that they have been vaccinate against COVID-19 and stopped dismissals of those not immunized. Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a vaccine skeptic, has criticized vaccine passports required in other countries. Brazil has suffered the second-deadliest coronavirus pandemic outside of the United States. Justice Luis Roberto Barroso said the pandemic had killed 610,000 Brazilians and it was reasonable to surmise that the presence of unvaccinated employees poses a threat to the health of the others.
13th Nov 2021 - Reuters

U.S. FDA may approve COVID-19 booster without outside advisory panel opinion -CNN

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is unlikely to ask its outside vaccine advisers to weigh in on whether the agency should authorize Pfizer (PFE.N) COVID-19 boosters for all adults, CNN reported on Friday, citing a source. The source told CNN "it's unlikely there is going to be a meeting" of the outside advisers and "there has been no discussion of a meeting" to discuss Pfizer's application. The FDA said the agency "will determine whether to hold a meeting of the advisory committee ... following its initial review of the information submitted," CNN added.
13th Nov 2021 - Reuters

As Merkel urges unvaccinated to reconsider, German army prepares to step in

Three German state health ministers urged parties negotiating to form a new government to prolong states' power to implement stricter pandemic measures such as lockdowns or school closures as the country's seven-day COVID incidence rate hit record highs. The number of people per 100,000 infected last week rose to 277.4, data from the Robert Koch Institute showed on Saturday, and has risen to over 500 in some regions of the country. The head of Germany's largest doctors association Marburger Bund told German media group Funke Mediengruppe that overburdened intensive care units may need to move patients between regions to find beds in coming weeks.
13th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Government ordered to release Covid lockdown impact assessments after refusing to make documents public

The government has been ordered to publish its assessments on the impact of national lockdowns and Covid restrictions after resisting making them public, The Independent can reveal. Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) officials drew up documents predicting how changing coronavirus rules would affect different groups but they have so far been kept secret. The Liberty human rights group requested the equality impact assessments under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, but was refused and told releasing them would “not be in the public interest”.
13th Nov 2021 - The Independent

German Vaccines Lag, Cases Spike, With Troops on Standby to Help

Germany is being battered by a fourth Covid wave, with low vaccination rates in its eastern states a big reason the virus has regained a foothold. The four regions registering the lowest vaccination rates -- Saxony, Thuringia, Brandenburg, and Saxony-Anhalt -- are all in the formerly communist East. No state in eastern Germany has an inoculation level that exceeds the nationwide rate of 67.5% fully vaccinated, with the exception of once-divided Berlin, according to health ministry data. Germany’s military will put as many as 12,000 troops on standby to help overburdened health clinics and to speed the rollout of booster vaccines, Der Spiegel reported Saturday
13th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Dutch return to partial lockdown as Covid surges

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday announced Western Europe's first partial lockdown of the winter, with three weeks of Covid curbs on restaurants, shops and sporting events. Protesters set off fireworks in The Hague after Rutte unveiled the "annoying and far-reaching" measures following a record spike of infections to more than 16,000 a day. At a news conference, Rutte said the situation required a "hard blow of a few weeks because the virus is everywhere, throughout the country, in all sectors and all ages". "Fortunately, the vast majority have been vaccinated, otherwise the misery in the hospitals would be incalculable at the moment."
12th Nov 2021 - Yahoo News

Dutch gov’t orders partial lockdown amid COVID surge

The lockdown that begins Saturday night is the first to start in Western Europe since a new wave of infections began surging across parts of the continent. Under the lockdown, bars, restaurants and supermarkets will have to close at 8pm (19:00 GMT), professional sports matches will be played in empty stadiums and people are being urged to work from home as much as possible. Stores selling non-essential items will have to close at 6pm. “Tonight we have a very unpleasant message with very unpleasant and far-reaching decisions,” Rutte said on Friday.
12th Nov 2021 - Al Jazeera English on MSN.com

Dutch Are Back to Partial Lockdown After Record Infections

The Netherlands is entering another lockdown after coronavirus infections hit records in recent days, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. “We have a very difficult message tonight combined with drastic measures,” Rutte said at a press conference in The Hague on Friday. The country will enter a partial lockdown with bars and restaurants that need to shut down effective from Saturday 8 p.m. local time, Rutte added. Non-essential shops must close at 6 p.m. He strongly urged people to work from home as much as possible while there also will be a limit to invite a maximum amount of 4 people to socialize at home. The package will be reviewed Dec. 3, Rutte said.
12th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Austria set to place millions of unvaccinated people in lockdown, as chancellor slams 'shameful' shot uptake

Austria is days away from ordering millions of unvaccinated people to stay at home, its chancellor has said, in a rare move that underscores the increasing exasperation of European leaders towards those who have not yet been inoculated against Covid-19. Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg told reporters on Friday that the government should give the "green light" for the move this weekend. "The aim is clear: we want on Sunday to give the green light for a nationwide lockdown for the unvaccinated," Schallenberg said at a news conference in Innsbruck. He had earlier called the country's vaccination rate "shamefully low," and hinted that the measure would be triggered within days. "In other states that rate is a lot higher -- it is shameful as we have enough vaccines available,"
12th Nov 2021 - CNN

Austria plans to approve lockdown for the unvaccinated on Sunday

Austria's government is likely to decide on Sunday to impose a lockdown on people who are not fully vaccinated against the coronavirus as daily infections have surged to record levels, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said on Friday. Schallenberg did not say when the lockdown would take effect, but the two provinces hardest-hit by this wave of infections, Upper Austria and Salzburg, will introduce the measure for themselves on Monday.
12th Nov 2021 - Reuters

An Interview With Dr. Anthony Fauci

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, described the current status of the pandemic in the United States as a “mixed bag” that is leaning more toward the positive than the negative. But there is still work to do, he said, including dealing with complicated factors such as vaccination rates, contagious variants of the virus and waning immunity to infection. In our conversation, Dr. Fauci weighed in on vaccine mandates, booster shots and the end of the pandemic. “Ultimately, all pandemics burn themselves out,” he told us, adding: “So you have a choice. Do you want it to burn itself out and kill a lot more people and make a lot more people sick? Or do you want to do something about it to prevent further deaths and further illness?”
12th Nov 2021 - The New York Times

Ten EU Nations Causing 'Very High Concern' Over Covid

Ten countries in the 27-member European Union face a Covid situation of "very high concern", the bloc's diseases agency said Friday, warning the pandemic was worsening across the continent. "The overall epidemiological situation... was characterised by a high and rapidly increasing overall case notification rate and a low but slowly increasing death rate," the European Centre for Disease Control said. "Case notification rates, death rates, and hospital and ICU admissions are all forecast to increase over the next two weeks." In its latest weekly risk assessment, the agency listed 10 EU countries in its highest category of concern -- Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia.
12th Nov 2021 - Barrons

Experts optimistic Spain will avoid sixth coronavirus wave despite surge in cases across Europe

Despite the success of Spain’s Covid-19 vaccination drive – 88.9% of the over-12 population is fully vaccinated, according to the Health Ministry – there are growing concerns about the delicate situation in many other European countries. Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, which have lower vaccination rates than Spain, on Thursday reported the highest daily number of coronavirus cases seen since the beginning of the pandemic. Fatalities for Covid-19 are also rising in these countries. The question many are asking now is if Spain is on the brink of a sixth wave.
12th Nov 2021 - EL PAÍS

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Unvaccinated should reflect on their duty to society, Merkel says

People who are still not vaccinated as the fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic takes hold in Germany must understand they have a duty to the rest of society to protect others, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday.
12th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Austrian Covid Hotspot to Impose Lockdown for Unvaccinated

The Austrian region with the highest coronavirus infection rate plans to impose a lockdown for unvaccinated people, as worsening outbreaks force authorities across central Europe to seek stronger incentives to get inoculated. Upper Austrians who haven’t taken the vaccine will only be allowed to leave home for work and to buy everyday goods from Monday, several newspapers said Thursday, citing state leader Thomas Stelzer. The national Covid task force has also recommended a similar measure for Salzburg.
11th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Dutch experts recommend Western Europe's first lockdown since summer

An advisory panel of pandemic experts in the Netherlands recommended on Thursday imposing western Europe's first partial lockdown since the summer, putting pressure on the government to take drastic and unpopular action to fight a COVID-19 surge. Caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte's cabinet is expected to take a decision on Friday on new measures following the recommendation of the Outbreak Management Team, a panel of experts, broadcaster NOS reported. Among measures under consideration are the cancellation of events, closing theatres and cinemas, and earlier closing times for cafes and restaurants, the NOS report said. Schools would remain open.
11th Nov 2021 - Reuters on MSN.com

Covid: Austrians heading towards lockdown for unvaccinated

Austrians are days away from a first lockdown for anyone not fully vaccinated, after record infections were reported across the country. Upper Austria province will impose restrictions from Monday if it gets the go-ahead from the federal government. Salzburg also plans new measures. Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said a national lockdown for the unvaccinated was "probably inevitable". Two-thirds of people should not suffer because others were hesitant, he said. Upper Austria, which borders Germany and the Czech Republic and has a population of 1.5 million, has the country's highest level of infection and the lowest vaccination rate.
11th Nov 2021 - BBC News

Taiwanese families say COVID-19 deaths didn't have to happen

It is at lunchtime that Nancy Chen misses her father the most. For 30 years, she ate every day with her parents at their apartment. Her father, despite being partially impaired by a stroke, would buy her a box lunch with cod. If she were 15 minutes late, he would worry and ask if she was working too hard. For the first year and a half of the coronavirus pandemic, it seemed that Taiwan would remain largely unscathed by the devastation playing out elsewhere. Aside from near-universal mask wearing, people went about their lives as normal. But Taiwan was caught off guard when the virus came. The health system couldn't handle the number of COVID tests needed and doctors lacked the right medications. The death toll rose quickly from just 12 to more than 800.
11th Nov 2021 - The Independent

Malaysia to reopen to international visitors by Jan. 1 - govt council

Malaysia will reopen its borders to international visitors by Jan. 1 at the latest, a government advisory council said on Thursday, as the country seeks to revive its ailing tourism sector. The Southeast Asian country has gradually reopened its economy in recent weeks as coronavirus infection rates have slowed amid a ramped-up vaccination programme. More than three-quarters of Malaysia's 32 million population are vaccinated, government statistics show.
11th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Diabetes problem makes Africa more vulernable to COVID-19 death, says WHO

Death rates from COVID-19 infections are much higher in patients with diabetes in Africa, where the number of people with diabetes is growing rapidly, the World Health Organization said on Thursday. A WHO analysis of data from 13 African countries found a 10.2% case fatality rate in COVID-19 patients with diabetes, compared with 2.5% for COVID-19 patients overall. "COVID-19 is delivering a clear message: fighting the diabetes epidemic in Africa is in many ways as critical as the battle against the current pandemic," said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, in a statement.
11th Nov 2021 - Reuters

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France experiencing start of fifth wave of COVID epidemic -minister

France is at the beginning of a fifth wave of the coronavirus epidemic, Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Wednesday. "Several neighboring countries are already in a fifth wave of the COVID epidemic, what we are experiencing in France clearly looks like the beginning of a fifth wave," Veran said on TF1 television, adding the circulation of the virus was accelerating. The health ministry registered 11,883 new cases on Wednesday, the second day in a row with a new case tally over 10,000. New cases have seen double-digit percentage increases week-on-week since around mid-October.
11th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Denmark revisits its 'corona pass' as third wave of epidemic looms

Denmark's government on Monday proposed reinstating the use of a digital "corona pass" to be presented when Danes visit indoor bars and restaurants, as the country is entering a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Denmark was one of few countries to lift almost all remaining restrictions in September after having avoided a third wave of infections over spring and summer due to broad lockdown measures imposed since Christmas.
10th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Denmark to reintroduce Covid restrictions just two months after dropping them

Denmark is to reintroduce its coronavirus passport amid rising case numbers in the Nordic country. Parliament is preparing to designate the virus a “critical threat to society” just two months after almost all of Covid-19 restrictions were dropped, on September 10. It comes amid growing concerns about the pandemic’s resurgence in Europe as winter arrives. The Covid passport will be reintroduced in indoor bars and restaurants, as well as nightclubs. The digital “corona pass” indicates whether a person has been vaccinated, has had a recent negative test, or has recently recovered from Covid.
10th Nov 2021 - Evening Standard

The US and Europe have finally reconnected, but they're moving in different directions on Covid-19

In September, when the White House announced its long-awaited plan to welcome vaccinated European travelers, the United States was consumed by a Covid-19 surge that far outpaced Europe's. At that point the US rate of new cases per capita dwarfed Europe's by nearly three to one. While European governments were plotting their roadmaps towards normality, America was battling a rise in infections and warning of pressure on hospitals. But by Monday, when the new rules came into effect and thousands of tourists jetted across the Atlantic to American cities, the two regions had experienced a dramatic reversal in fortunes.
10th Nov 2021 - CNN

Aucklanders return to malls as New Zealand eases lockdown in biggest city

Article reports that sShops and malls in New Zealand's biggest city Auckland flung their doors open for the first time in three months on Wednesday as the city, which is at the epicentre of the country's coronavirus outbreak, gradually reopened. Retail stores filled up within hours of reopening due to pent up demand while some shoppers reportedly queued up outside malls overnight to take advantage of early bird offers at some stores.
10th Nov 2021 - Reuters

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New data from Texas suggests unvaccinated people are 20 times more likely to die from COVID-19

The Texas Department of State Health Services released a report that analyzed COVID-19 cases and deaths starting from Jan. 15 through Oct. 1. The report initially found that unvaccinated people were 40 times more likely to die from COVID-19 between Jan. 15 and Oct. 1. But as the unvaccinated population shrunk, between Sept. 4 and Oct. 1 that number dropped to 20 times more likely to die.
10th Nov 2021 - The Hill

In vaccine-wary Latvia, bodies pile up in hospital morgue

In an inconspicuous building of the main hospital in the Latvian city of Daugavpils, bags containing the bodies of dead COVID-19 patients lie on the ground of a makeshift morgue, held here as city gravediggers clear space for new graves. Latvia, one of the least vaccinated countries in the European Union, is facing its most severe outbreak of COVID-19 yet. In Daugavpils, where vaccine uptake is especially low, deaths have soared.
9th Nov 2021 - Reuters

AstraZeneca to create separate division for vaccines, antibody therapies

AstraZeneca is creating a separate division for vaccines and antibody therapies to be led by senior executive Iskra Reić, the drugmaker said on Tuesday, as it builds focus on its COVID-19 shot and development of coronavirus treatments. News comes after review of vaccine operations. COVID-19 shot has suffered setbacks during pandemic. Company has antibody therapy proven to prevent infection Move shows company sees future for COVID-19 vaccine beyond pandemic - analyst.
9th Nov 2021 - Reuters

French president Macron: rise of Covid incidence rate is worrying

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that those aged 65 and older will need to present proof of a COVID-19 booster shot from mid-December for health passes that give access to restaurants, trains and planes to remain valid. Besides, the third shot, so far available only for people older than 65 and the vulnerable, will from early December also be available for the 50-64 age group, Macron said in a televised address.
9th Nov 2021 - Reuters

India’s Race to Vaccinate Its Villages Meets With Rural Resistance

The stakes could hardly be higher, both for India and for the world. Public-health experts fear that a third wave of infections could soon wash over the subcontinent, shattering the uneasy calm that’s prevailed since the end of the second, which crested in May. Then, medical resources were so overwhelmed that some Delhi parks were converted into open-air crematoriums; in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the bodies of victims were left to float down the Ganges. Now, with most urban residents either vaccinated or previously exposed to infection, it’s in rural areas where the virus will find the largest pool of immunologically naive targets.
9th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

AstraZeneca Creates New Vaccines Unit for Its Covid-19 Assets

AstraZeneca Plc is creating a new unit to house its coronavirus assets, after the pandemic spurred the British pharmaceutical giant to move into the vaccines space. The company’s Covid-19 shot and antibody therapy will be placed in the new division, which will be run by executive Iskra Reic, Astra said in a statement Tuesday. The unit will house teams from the research, manufacturing and commercial departments. “In order to optimize the management of our existing portfolio of vaccines and antibodies for viral respiratory infections, we are creating a dedicated vaccines and immune therapies unit,” Astra said. “The team will be dedicated to our Covid-19 vaccine, our long-acting antibody combination and our developmental vaccine addressing multiple variants of concern.”
9th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

The death rates from Covid in red America and blue America are growing further apart | TheHill

A partisan gap in COVID-19 deaths is widening, with just 40 percent of people in counties that had voted for Trump vaccinated compared to 53 percent of people in counties that had voted for Biden. The White House said last month that unvaccinated Americans face a more than 18 times higher risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19 than those who are vaccinated. Though former President Trump has received a COVID-19 vaccine and has encouraged other adults to do the same, other conservative leaders continue to make dubious or false claims about the vaccines.
9th Nov 2021 - The Hill

The US is reopening its borders to Europe, the global epicenter of Covid-19

The United States has reopened its borders to vaccinated international travelers, ending a 20-month travel ban at the same moment Europe is battling a surge of Covid-19 cases that has pushed the continent back into the epicenter of the pandemic.Fully vaccinated travelers from 33 countries -- including the United Kingdom and much of Europe -- can now enter the US without needing to quarantine, provided they have proof of vaccination and a negative viral test. Families and friends separated since the start of the pandemic streamed into airports across major European cities on Monday morning, excited to see loved ones for the first time since former President Donald Trump imposed tough travel restrictions at the outset of the pandemic in an effort to control the virus.
9th Nov 2021 - CNN

Covid-19: Majority in NI 'want to keep working from home'

A majority of workers in Northern Ireland would like to work from home even after pandemic restrictions are fully lifted, a survey has suggested. YouGov surveyed 1,000 local workers online during August, weighted to give a representative sample of adults in work. It was carried out for the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development. The survey suggests that of those working fully from home, only 3% wanted to return to their office full time.
9th Nov 2021 - BBC News

U.S.-Mexico border reopens after 20 months of COVID shutdown

There were fewer crossings at the Mexico-United States border than expected on Monday as it reopened to nonessential travel following a 20-month closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with many residents staying home to avoid potential chaos. Officials in the Mexican border city of Tijuana said people did not make the most of restrictions being lifted along the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border due to fears of being caught in traffic.
9th Nov 2021 - Reuters

WHO warns of shortage of 1-2 bln COVID vaccine syringes

There could be a shortage of one to two billion syringes needed to administer COVID-19 vaccinations in 2022 which could also impact routine immunisations and undermine needle safety, the World Health Organisation warned on Tuesday. National health authorities should plan their needs well in advance to avoid the "hoarding, panic buying and type of situation" seen early in the pandemic with the lack of personal protective equipment, WHO expert Lisa Hedman said.
9th Nov 2021 - Reuters

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Denmark Will Bring Back Some Restrictions as Covid-19 Cases Soar

Denmark, which has one of Europe’s highest vaccination rates, plans to re-introduce some restrictions to halt a recent spike in Covid-19 contamination cases. Danes will have to again present so-called corona passports to attend public events, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at a press conference late on Monday. The move follows a recommendation from health authorities that the country reclassifies the virus as a disease that poses a critical threat to society.
8th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Chinese city orders COVID tests for visitors to sprawling commercial centre

China's southwestern city of Chengdu on Monday required visitors at a mega entertainment centre to undergo COVID tests, in the country's second mass screening for the coronavirus at a large venue in days. Those who were tested for COVID-19 were required to return home to await their results and not venture outdoors until advised, local authorities in Chengdu said in a notice. It was unclear how many visitors were at the New Century Global Center, which houses numerous shops, offices, a massive water park, and a university.
8th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Eager travellers line up for U.S. flights as COVID travel curbs are lifted

Paul Campbell had waited nearly two years to reunite with his German fiancée at Boston's Logan airport on Monday, the day the United States eased travel restrictions imposed on much of the world since the COVID-19 pandemic began. "I'm just ecstatic that she's here, I'm happy," said Campbell, 63, a retired firefighter from Vermont who greeted her with a heart-shaped balloon. "Our relationship is still thriving even though we've been apart for two years." At John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, a child held a sign reading, "Do I look bigger?" as he waited for the first British Airways flight from London's Heathrow. "730 days missed u! Aunty Jill + Uncle Mark," his sign said.
8th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Fully vaccinated South Africans can travel to the US from today – with a negative test

Travel between South Africa and the United States has been severely disrupted throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. But from Monday, fully vaccinated travellers will be allowed to enter the United States, regardless of where they’re coming from. Travellers will still need to provide a negative Covid-19 test result before departing. Children under 18 can enter even if they’re not fully vaccinated but will be subject to further testing and self-quarantine.
8th Nov 2021 - Business Insider South Africa

Singapore eases some virus curbs as music returns to restaurants

Singapore is easing some tough Covid restrictions put in place more than a month ago to tackle a surge in infections, with five people from the same residence allowed to dine at restaurants starting from Wednesday. The changes mark some relaxation of restrictive curbs that were reimposed in late September on one of the most vaccinated countries in the world amid a jump in infections that have tested its health-care system. “We are easing off slightly on the bicycle brakes, but we must not let our guard down and lose control as we go down slow,” finance minister Lawrence Wong, who also co-chairs the business hub’s virus task force, said in a briefing on Monday.
8th Nov 2021 - Bangkok Post

Proof of vax required as strict mandate takes effect in LA

Yoga studio owner David Gross felt relieved after Los Angeles passed a vaccine mandate that is among the strictest in the country, a measure taking effect Monday that requires proof of shots for everyone entering a wide variety of businesses from restaurants to shopping malls and theaters to nail and hair salons. For Gross, the relief came from knowing he and his co-owner don’t have to unilaterally decide whether to verify their customers are vaccinated. In another part of town, the manager of a struggling nail salon feels trepidation and expects to lose customers. “This is going to be hard for us,” Lucila Vazquez said.
8th Nov 2021 - The Associated Press

Schools take lead role in promoting vaccines for youngsters

With the approval of the COVID-19 vaccine for younger children, many elementary schools around the U.S. are preparing to offer the shots, which educators see as key to keeping students learning in person and making the classroom experience closer to what it once was. Some district leaders say offering vaccine clinics on campus, with the involvement of trusted school staff, is key to improving access and helping overcome hesitancy — particularly in communities with low overall vaccination rates. Still, many school systems are choosing not to offer elementary schools as hosts for vaccination sites after some middle and high schools that offered shots received pushback.
8th Nov 2021 - The Associated Press

COVID: Austria restricts unvaccinated people from public spaces

Austria, which has a rising coronavirus caseload and is struggling to convince a significant number of people to get vaccinated, has rolled out new physical distancing measures. From Monday, unvaccinated people are barred from entering restaurants, cafes and hairdressers and will not be able to attend large public events.
8th Nov 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Whistleblowers and fears of losing funds key to enforcing U.S. vaccine rules

Workplace whistleblowers and a fear of losing federal funds are expected to play vital roles in ensuring compliance with COVID-19 vaccine mandates ordered by President Joe Biden's administration for U.S. businesses, nursing homes and hospitals, according to experts. Biden announced last Thursday that his administration will enforce the vaccine mandates starting on Jan. 4. The rules apply to employers with at least 100 workers, federal contractors and employees of nursing homes and other healthcare facilities that receive reimbursements under the Medicare and Medicaid government healthcare programs.
8th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Vaccinated patients are dying of Covid due to waning immunity, says Dr Susan Hopkins

Double-jabbed vulnerable and elderly people are dying from Covid-19 due to the efficacy of the vaccine waning, a senior adviser has said. The effects of coronavirus vaccines are known to wane some five or six months after the second dose, as discovered in multiple studies during the pandemic. It comes as the government launches a campaign to encourage take-up of booster jabs this autumn. While most of those dying with Covid-19 are unvaccinated, reports last week said Number 10 was concerned about hospital admissions and deaths among double-vaccinated people rising due to waning immunity.
8th Nov 2021 - The Independent

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Healthy buildings can help stop Covid-19 spread and boost worker productivity

Healthy buildings have become the latest enticement to bring employees back into the office, and the first step is to make sure ventilation systems are working the way they are supposed to. Improving indoor air quality in offices could add as much as $20 billion annually to the U.S. economy, according to estimates from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “I don’t think business people realize the power of buildings to not only keep people safe from disease but to lead to better performance,” said Joseph G. Allen, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health associate professor.
6th Nov 2021 - CNBC

U.S. braces for surge of vaccinated international travelers

The United States is expecting a flood of international visitors crossing its borders by air and by land on Monday after lifting travel restrictions for much of the world's population first imposed in early 2020 to address the spread of COVID-19. United Airlines is expecting about 50% more total international inbound passengers Monday compared to last Monday when it had about 20,000. And Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Ed Bastian has warned travelers should be prepared for initial long lines.
7th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Sydney to further ease COVID-19 curbs on Monday as vaccinations pick up

Australia's largest city of Sydney will further ease social distancing curbs on Monday, a month after emerging from a coronavirus lockdown that lasted nearly 100 days, as close to 90% of people have got both doses of vaccine, officials said. Although limited to people who are fully inoculated, the relaxation in the state of New South Wales, home to Sydney, lifts limits on house guests or outdoor gatherings, among other measures. "We're leading the nation out of the pandemic," said state premier Dominic Perrottet, as he called for a "final push" to reach, and even surpass, a milestone of 95% vaccinations.
7th Nov 2021 - Reuters

U.S. to convene foreign ministers on COVID-19 next week, pledges to talk vaccine equity

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday he would convene a virtual meeting of foreign ministers from around the globe to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic next week, pledging to work to address global inequalities in access to vaccines. "Despite progress in worldwide vaccination, we are not where we need to be," Blinken said in a statement announcing the meeting on Nov. 10.
6th Nov 2021 - Reuters

More proof England's Covid outbreak has 'peaked'

The Office for National Statistics' (ONS) weekly surveillance report estimated 1.1million people were infected with the virus at any time in the week to October 30 — the equivalent of one in 50. This was approximately the same as the previous seven-day spell, bringing an end to nearly three months of rising cases which began in August. Experts say the levelling off suggests the latest wave of Covid triggered by the return of schoolchildren has 'likely' come to a natural peak, due to a combination of vaccine immunity and previous infection. But the ONS data suggests the outbreak is still as big as it was at the peak of the second wave in January and the weekly total is the third highest ever recorded, even though deaths are just a fraction of levels seen during the darkest days of the crisis.
6th Nov 2021 - Daily Mail

AIIB to continue vaccine funding for developing nations in 2022

China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will continue to finance developing countries acquire COVID-19 vaccines, a senior executive said on Thursday. Last year, AIIB had set up a funding facility to help public and private sectors fight the pandemic. The investment bank has approved 42 projects amounting to over $10.3 billion, as of Nov. 5. Its Crisis Recovery Facility has up to $13 billion allocated to support AIIB members and clients in withstanding economic and health impacts of the health crisis.
5th Nov 2021 - Reuters

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Biden’s Vaccine Mandate Means Millions of Workers Must Get Shots by Jan. 4 or Test Weekly

Many employers will have to ensure by Jan. 4 that their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly for Covid-19 under a set of new vaccine requirements. by the Biden administration that will cover more than 80 million employees. The requirements released Thursday by the Labor Department implement a vaccine directive that President Biden announced in September. They apply to employers with 100 or more employees. While the administration has said the requirements are necessary to curb the Covid-19 pandemic, they have drawn opposition from many Republicans.
4th Nov 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Inside the World’s Most Blatant Covid-19 Coverup: Secret Burials, a Dead President

Last year, President John Magufuli declared the virus a “satanic myth” propagated by imperialist powers. While his neighbors sealed borders and locked down, his country of 58 million stayed open. His government barred doctors from registering coronavirus as the cause of death and labeled those who wore masks unpatriotic. Seeking to keep the economy open and rally nationalist sentiment ahead of elections, he blocked foreign journalists from entering the country, rejected vaccines and refused to provide data to the World Health Organization. News organizations reporting on Covid-19 were shut down for “scaremongering,” and reporters threatened with jail. By this spring, the president was dead, along with six other senior politicians and several of the country’s generals. The official cause of Mr. Magufuli’s death was heart failure. The details remain secret. Diplomats, analysts and opposition leaders say he had Covid-19.
4th Nov 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Philippines Eases Virus Restrictions in Manila Capital Region

The Philippines will ease coronavirus restrictions in the Manila capital region from Friday until Nov. 21 as infections eased. The Southeast Asian nation’s virus task force decided to place the capital -- which accounts for a third of economic output -- under Alert Level 2 where businesses can operate at higher capacities, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in a statement late Thursday.
4th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Europe Is Covid Epicenter Once Again As Cases Surge, WHO Says

The World Health Organization warned that a surge of coronavirus cases in Europe and Central Asia has pushed the region back as the epicenter of the pandemic. There are now 78 million cases in the European region, which is more than infections reported in Southeast Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Western Pacific and Africa combined, according to the WHO. Last week, Europe and Central Asia accounted for almost half of the world’s reported deaths from Covid-19. The outbreak has accelerating in Europe over the last four weeks as colder temperatures lead to more socializing indoors, while many countries have eased restrictions. The WHO has repeatedly said that the pandemic is not yet over, and that governments should keep public-health measures such as mask-wearing along with vaccinations.
4th Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

New York City, union reach agreement on vaccine mandate

New York City's public-sector employee union District Council 37 and the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday reached an agreement on a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for over 55,000 city workers. District Council 37 members who have not provided proof of at least one dose of the vaccine will have the option to resign or take a leave of absence and in both cases, employees will maintain their health benefits, the union said in a statement. Employees without proof of vaccination who have either not submitted an application for an exemption or who have been denied an exemption may be placed on unpaid leave beginning Nov. 1 through Nov. 30, the union said.
4th Nov 2021 - Reuters

Chile's campaign trail goes virtual as all but two candidates forced into COVID lockdown

Chile's presidential candidates had to host news conferences from home and cancel travel plans on Thursday as five out of seven candidates were forced to isolate for a week after left-wing hopeful Gabriel Boric tested positive for COVID-19. In addition to Boric, four candidates had all been in close contact with him recently and have since tested negative for the virus, they said on social media. But Chile's regulations mandate that any close contacts isolate for at least seven days regardless of test result.
4th Nov 2021 - Reuters

COVID cases break records across Europe as winter takes hold

Coronavirus infections are hitting record levels in many countries across Europe as winter takes hold, prompting a call for action from the World Health Organization which described the new wave as a "grave concern". Soaring numbers of cases, especially in Eastern Europe, have prompted debate on whether to reintroduce curbs on movement before the Christmas holiday season and on how to persuade more people to get vaccinated. That conversation comes as some countries in Asia, with the notable exception of China, reopen their tourism sectors to the rest of the world
4th Nov 2021 - Reuters

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Some Parents Rush to Get Covid-19 Vaccines for Young Kids

Younger children began to get vaccinated against Covid-19, adding to the nation’s defenses against a pandemic that has upended learning and life for kids across three school years. Some hospitals and pediatrician’s offices started giving shots to children between the ages of 5 and 11 on Wednesday, a day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended use of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s vaccine for that age group. The Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized a two-dose regimen of the vaccine, in a smaller dosage and different packaging than that used on adults.
3rd Nov 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

China’s Vaccine Diplomacy Could Have a Big Payoff Beyond Covid

Studies have found the Chinese Covid shots to be less effective than some Western ones, such as the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna Inc., and there have been repeated questions about the transparency and data standards of its vaccine makers. Even so, developing nations that have had little access to other coronavirus vaccines are poised to grow more dependent on Chinese companies for shots against other ailments.
3rd Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Canadian employers shed unvaccinated workers, labor lawyers in demand

Canadian employers are firing or putting on unpaid leave thousands of workers who refused to get COVID-19 shots, squeezing an already tight labor market and raising prospects of potentially disruptive legal challenges. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised vaccine mandates as a central part of his successful campaign for re-election in September, setting a precedent that has spread from the public to the private sector.
3rd Nov 2021 - Reuters

Netherlands reintroduces face masks to curb spike in COVID-19 cases

The Dutch government on Tuesday decided to re-impose measures aimed at slowing the latest spike in COVID-19 infections, including the wearing of face masks, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. The use of a "corona pass", showing proof of a COVID-19 vaccination or recent negative coronavirus test, will be broadened as of Nov. 6 to public places including museums, gyms and outdoor terraces.
3rd Nov 2021 - Reuters

COVID: Face masks compulsory again in some French schools next week

Face masks will again become compulsory from next week for French school kids in 39 regional departments where the COVID-19 virus has been ramping up, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Wednesday. French health authorities reported 7,360 daily new COVID-19 infections on October 30, the first time the tally has topped 7,000 since Sept 21
3rd Nov 2021 - Reuters

China suffering its most widespread Covid-19 outbreak since Wuhan with 19 provinces seeing new cases

More than 600 locally-transmitted cases have been found in 19 of China's 31 provinces amid what the government called a 'serious' new outbreak of the infectious Delta variant.
3rd Nov 2021 - Daily Mail on MSN.com

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Greek Covid Restrictions Target Unvaccinated as Daily Cases Hit Record

Greece announced new Covid-19 measures targeting the unvaccinated as daily infections hit their highest level since the pandemic began. From Nov. 6, those who haven’t been jabbed but want to attend their place of work must undergo two rapid tests a week instead of one -- paid for themselves. To enter most stores, banks and restaurants, they’ll need to present a negative rapid or PCR test. Fines for businesses that don’t comply will double, starting at 5,000 euros ($5,791) and a 15-day suspension of operations. Tests won’t be needed for supermarkets and pharmacies. “The restrictions will apply to unvaccinated people because they’re much more at risk than the vaccinated,” Health Minister Athanasios Plevris said Tuesday in a televised statement.
2nd Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Pfizer expects 2021, 2022 COVID-19 vaccine sales to total at least $65 bln

Pfizer Inc said it expected 2021 sales of the COVID-19 vaccine it developed with German partner BioNTech SE to reach $36 billion and forecast another $29 billion from the shot in 2022, topping analyst estimates for both years. The U.S. drugmaker said it is seeking to sign more vaccine deals with countries, which could drive sales even higher next year. It has the capacity to produce 4 billion doses in 2022 and has based its projections on sales of 1.7 billion doses. Still, Chief Executive Albert Bourla said he was concerned that low- and middle-income countries would not place orders for next year's vaccine doses early enough, and could again end up behind wealthier countries.
2nd Nov 2021 - Reuters

Covid-19 Australia: Overseas travellers banned from shops pubs and schools

Australia's international borders finally reopened on Monday, November 1. Victoria, NSW allowing vaxxed overseas travellers to land 'quarantine-free.' Vaxxed NSW arrivals had movement limited for 7 days but restrictions eased
2nd Nov 2021 - Daily Mail

Japan eases COVID-19 border curbs, trails major partners

Japan confirmed on Tuesday plans to gradually ease COVID-19 border curbs, but fell short of demands by business lobbies to open up in line with major trading partners. In relaxing its controls, Japan will take a phased approach, chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters, responding to media reports that quarantine periods for business travellers would be cut to three days from 10. The easing could start next Monday, while daily limits on the numbers of border entrants would be raised to 5,000 people later this month from 3,500, national broadcaster NHK said.
2nd Nov 2021 - Reuters

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US prepares to roll out COVID vaccines for children aged 5 to 11

The United States’s COVID-19 vaccination programme for children between the ages of five and 11 will be “running at full strength” as of next week, the White House has announced, a significant milestone in the country’s fight against the virus. Children in the age group will be able to get Pfizer-BioNTech jabs at paediatricians’ offices, medical clinics, pharmacies and community health centres, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said during a news briefing on Monday.
1st Nov 2021 - Aljazeera.com

China Locks 30,000 Visitors Inside Shanghai Disneyland After One Guest Got Covid-19

Shanghai Disneyland was temporarily shut down from Sunday after a visitor was found to be Covid-19-positive, underscoring the economic disruption businesses in China face as the country strives to stamp out infections. The world’s most populous nation has committed to maintaining “zero tolerance” for the virus despite criticism from business groups, a close to 80% vaccination rate, and a world which is gradually learning to live with Covid-19. China is taking stringent measures to contain pockets of the coronavirus in the country. It recorded 48 domestic cases on Saturday across several provinces.
1st Nov 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Thai capital welcomes first tourists for quarantine-free holiday

More than a thousand foreign tourists arrived in Bangkok on Monday, the first wave of travellers to the Thai capital in 18 months, as part of a quarantine waiver for visitors vaccinated against COVID-19. There were 1,534 foreign arrivals and 890 Thais on 40 international flights on the opening day on Monday, senior health official Kiattiphum Wongraijit said. The waiver covers more than 60 countries, including the United States and China, plus several places in Europe, from where some were escaping the winter blues.
1st Nov 2021 - Reuters

Australia eases international border restrictions for first time in pandemic

Australia eased its international border restrictions on Monday for the first time during the coronavirus pandemic, allowing some of its vaccinated public to travel freely and many families to reunite, sparking emotional embraces at airports. After more than 18 months of some of the world's strictest coronavirus border policies, millions of Australians are now free to travel without a permit or the need to quarantine on arrival in the country. While travel is initially limited to Australian citizens, permanent residents and their immediate families, it sets in motion a plan to reopen the country to international tourists and workers, both much needed to reinvigorate a fatigued nation
1st Nov 2021 - Reuters

Thailand, Australia, Israel ease travel curbs as lockdowns bite elsewhere

Thailand, Australia and Israel eased international border restrictions significantly on Monday for the first time in 18 months, offering a broad test of demand for travel worldwide amid the coronavirus pandemic. The relaxation contrasts with tightening lockdowns elsewhere, notably in eastern Europe where infections have hit record numbers, and in parts of China, which has taken a zero-tolerance approach to COVID-19 despite relatively few cases. Hundreds of vaccinated foreign tourists arrived in the Thai capital for quarantine-free travel after the Southeast Asian nation approved visitors from more than 60 countries, including China and the United States.
1st Nov 2021 - Reuters

WHO Calls for More Experts to Study Covid's Disputed Origins

The World Health Organization reopened a search for experts to join a committee to study Covid-19’s origins to add more specialists in areas such as biosecurity. Applicants have until Wednesday to express interest, and the WHO said Monday it’s looking for experts in social science, anthropology, ethics, political science and biosafety. In October, the WHO proposed a fresh team of 26 experts to lead an investigation into the origins of Covid-19 and other diseases after an earlier effort was beset by controversy. The list was subject to a two-week public consultation process. The agency is still reviewing comments from the consultation and is seeking more diversity in the areas the members focus on, a spokesman said by e-mail.
1st Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

How Many People Have Died From Covid? More Than 5 Million Covid Deaths Worldwide

More than 5 million people worldwide have died from Covid-19 less than two years after the novel pathogen was first documented, despite the arrival of vaccines that have slashed fatality rates across the globe. The latest 1 million recorded deaths came slower than the previous two. It took more than 110 days to go from 4 million deaths to 5 million, compared to less than 90 days each to reach the 3- and 4-million marks. The rate has returned to what was seen during the first year of the pandemic, when the virus was still taking hold.
1st Nov 2021 - Bloomberg

Cambodia reopens to 'new way of life' after beating COVID-19 vaccine target

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen declared his country reopen and ready for a new way of life on Monday, having surpassed its COVID-19 vaccination target and recorded one of Asia's highest inoculation rates. Cambodia has vaccinated nearly 86% if its more than 16 million people, with two million given booster shots already and 300,000 school children age 5 set to be inoculated on Monday alone. The ratio is similar to that of Singapore.
1st Nov 2021 - Reuters

COVID-19: Christmas will be lockdown-free despite rising coronavirus cases, prime minister says

There is "no evidence" to suggest that England would be forced into a Christmas lockdown, according to the prime minister. Boris Johnson said that, despite rising COVID-19 cases, he has seen no evidence to indicate a Christmas lockdown is "on the cards". Speaking to reporters during his trip to Rome for the G20 summit, Mr Johnson once again insisted ministers are sticking with the current plan to tackle coronavirus and there is no reason to activate the government's Plan B.
1st Nov 2021 - Sky News

COVID-19: Tears, hugs and laughter at Sydney airport as Australia reopens border

There have been tears, laughter and warm embraces at Sydney's international airport after Australia's border opened for the first time in 20 months. Travellers tore off their face masks as they saw their loved ones for the first time in almost two years. The airport, Australia's busiest international hub, has been almost deserted during the pandemic, but now the country is hoping its vaccination rates are high enough to mitigate the danger of allowing international visitors again
1st Nov 2021 - Sky News

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Vote, vaccinate and get vouchers: Government incentivises voter turnout

Voters who turnout to cast their ballot can also receive their Covid-19 vaccine and if they are over the age of 60, receive a R100 grocery voucher. Health Minister Joe Phaahla said in a media briefing on Friday that there would be 1 000 vaccination pop-ups at voting stations across the country. “We are very pleased with the partnership with which we've agreed on with the Independent Electoral Commission to vaccinate on election day. The sites will be set up in the voting precinct but outside the area demarcated strictly for voting so that the vaccination site will not interfere with the main purpose of the day,” he said. The vaccination pop-ups will mainly be set up in areas where the uptake of vaccination has not been very good up to now. The list of vaccination sites can be found on the SA Coronavirus website.
30th Oct 2021 - Independent Online

Gordon Brown’s Covid vaccine plea to help developing countries

Gordon Brown on Friday called on the Government to urgently speed up plans to fund covid vaccination programmes in developing countries. The former prime minister and chancellor said wealthier countries are being “too slow” in sending unused jabs overseas. He has organised a letter signed by 160 global leaders calling on richer countries to share their surplus doses. It argues unless action is taken at the G20 summit, hundreds of thousands of lives could be lost.
29th Oct 2021 - Evening Standard

New Delta variant spotted in Australia for first time

The first case of a new COVID-19 variant that is now the fastest-growing coronavirus strain in the UK has been detected in Australia, but virologists say there is no reason to slow reopening plans. The variant, known as AY.4.2., was uncovered in hotel quarantine in NSW and is so far the only case detected. But experts expect more to follow as Australia prepares to open its international borders.
29th Oct 2021 - Sydney Morning Herald

Denmark Will More Than Double Testing as Virus Numbers Rise

Denmark, which has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, will more than double its testing capacity after the number of virus infections has jumped in recent weeks. Denmark will increase so-called PCR tests to about 150,000 a day from currently 100,000 and will also re-introduce private quick-test facilities, which will be able handle about 100,000 tests daily, health authorities said in a statement on Friday.
29th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Russia Suffers Deadliest September Since World War II With Covid Untamed

Russia suffered its deadliest September since World War II, according to figures published Friday, even before the peak of its current wave of the Covid-19 pandemic forced authorities to order non-working days for the first week of November. There were 44,265 deaths associated with the virus last month, bringing the pandemic’s total to nearly half a million, according to Federal Statistics Service data published late Friday. That contributed to the highest number of September fatalities since the war, said Alexei Raksha, a demographer who left the agency last year after a dispute over its coronavirus numbers.
29th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

England's COVID prevalence rises to highest since start of year, ONS says

The prevalence of COVID-19 infections in England hit its highest level since the start of the year, reaching around 1 in 50 people in the week ending Oct. 22, Britain's Office for National Statistics said on Friday. The prevalence of infections rose for a fifth straight week, having been at 1 in 55 people in the previous week, the ONS said. Prevalence was last at 1 in 50 people in the week ending Jan. 2, shortly before England began a third national lockdown. The reproduction "R" number was also estimated to be slightly higher.
29th Oct 2021 - Reuters UK

Covid booster jabs offered a month earlier for UK care home residents

Care home residents and some vulnerable people will be able to get their Covid booster vaccine a month early, ministers have announced, in an effort to boost immunity during the winter. Currently the wait between second and third doses is six months, but medics will be able to decide to reduce it to five for care home residents and people who are housebound who are offered their flu jab at that point, so they can receive both vaccines together. For people who are about to receive immunosuppressive treatment that would hinder their immune system, the wait for a booster will be cut even further, to four months.
29th Oct 2021 - The Guardian

Australia's Melbourne Back to the Races, Shops as Vaccination Rate Hits 80% | World News | US News

Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city which has endured nearly nine months of lockdowns since the start of the pandemic, saw people flocking to shops and gigs for the first time in months on Saturday as public health curbs eased.
29th Oct 2021 - U.S. News & World Report

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Covid Vaccination Rates: How Black Doctors Increased Shots in Philadelphia

Earlier this year, Philadelphia’s partnership with the student-led group Philly Fighting Covid Inc. abandoned testing sites in Black neighborhoods. It seemed like the latest affront in a long legacy of racism that has fueled distrust in the medical system, dating back to the infamous Tuskegee experiments in the 1930s. But Philadelphia, after a slow start, is closing out the year with one of the highest Black vaccination rates in a major U.S. city. In Philadelphia, 54% of Black citizens are now vaccinated. That puts it at the top of a group of the country’s 10 most Black cities, with populations of 500,000 or more and with Black people making up anywhere from 77% to 28% of the population. (The country’s second-largest city, Los Angeles, has vaccinated 55% of its Black residents, but they’re just 8% of the population.)
28th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Hungary to require COVID-19 vaccinations at state institutions

Hungary's government will require employees at state institutions to be vaccinated against COVID-19 after a jump in new coronavirus cases, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff told a briefing on Thursday. Gergely Gulyas also said that private company employers will also be empowered to make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for employees if they believe that is necessary and mask wearing will be mandatory on public transport from November 1.
28th Oct 2021 - Reuters

New Zealand to start easing COVID-19 border restrictions

New Zealand said on Thursday it would ease coronavirus border restrictions that have been in place since March 2020, and move to a system of home isolation for fully vaccinated overseas arrivals from early next year. The country was the among the first to shut down its borders in response to the pandemic last year, and has retained these tough border restrictions - leaving many expatriate citizens and residents stranded for months.
28th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Indonesia warily weighs holiday travel with virus concerns

Indonesians are looking ahead warily toward the holiday travel season, anxious for crucial tourist spending but worried an influx of visitors could spread the coronavirus just as its pandemic situation seems to be subsiding. After seeing infection and death rates soar in July and August, officials said this week they are sticking to plans to allow travel with some limitations. They expect nearly 20 million people to vacation in the popular islands of Java and Bali.
28th Oct 2021 - The Associated Press

Australia advises caution overseas when border opens Monday

Australia advised its nationals traveling overseas on Thursday to “exercise a high degree of caution” as it prepares to open its borders for the first time in 19 months. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reinstated its travel advice for 177 countries and territories ahead of fully vaccinated Australians becoming free to travel from Monday. No destination has been given a risk assessment lower than the second-tier warning: “Exercise a high degree of caution.”
28th Oct 2021 - The Associated Press

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WHO: Europe had most COVID-19 cases, deaths over last week

Europe stood out as the only major region worldwide to report an increase in both coronavirus cases and deaths over the last week, with double-digit percentage increases in each, the U.N. health agency said Wednesday. The World Health Organization said new COVID-19 cases in its 53-country European region, which stretches as far east as former Soviet republics in Central Asia, recorded an 18% increase in COVID-19 cases over the last week — a fourth straight weekly increase for the area. In WHO’s weekly epidemiological report on COVID-19, Europe also saw a 14% increase in virus-related deaths. That amounted to more than 1.6 million new cases and over 21,000 new deaths.
28th Oct 2021 - The Associated Press

Slovenia eyes possible lockdown as COVID-19 infections surge

Slovenia’s health minister on Wednesday warned that the country could face a nightmare scenario if it does not contain the virus outbreak raging in the small Alpine nation and other low-vaccination countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Health Minister Janez Poklukar said hospital beds have been filling up as the country logged the highest number of daily cases since January. With more than 3,000 confirmed infections in the past 24 hours, Poklukar said a lockdown is looming. “While we watched with fear at neighboring Italy at the start of the epidemic, we are now at a turning point because of low vaccination rates and we could easily have a Bergamo scenario,” Poklukar said, evoking the hardest-hit Italian city last year.
28th Oct 2021 - Associated Press

Romanian senate rejects COVID-19 health pass, lower house votes next

Romanian senators narrowly rejected a bill on Wednesday requiring medical staff, public sector workers and those of large privately-owned firms to hold a COVID-19 health pass, but parliament's lower house has the final say and could revive it. The bill, introduced by centrist lawmakers and designed to boost vaccine uptake, was two votes short of the required majority to pass.
27th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Sweden to extend COVID booster shots to all aged 65 or above

Sweden will start offering COVID-19 booster shots to people aged 65 or older as well as many care workers and plans to gradually extend the third jabs to most Swedes in the coming months, the government said on Wednesday. The booster shots of mRNA vaccine will be gradually extended to cover all people in the Nordic country aged 16 or older during the winter and spring, Health Minister Lena Hallengren told a news conference.
27th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Covid-19 UK: Top Government adviser hints No10 could drop mass testing from January

Professor Lucy Chappell says mass testing could be ditched in January next year Department of Health chief scientific adviser says system is being reconsidered Professor Andrew Pollard called for testing in schools to be ditch this winter. But with 74.8 per cent of over 16s now fully vaccinated, the Prime Minister has revealed when the borders will finally come down. He told Parliament on Wednesday: 'By the end of the year, Mr Speaker, I fully anticipate that we'll be able to achieve seeing international visitors, including backpackers, Mr Speaker, who are double-vaccinated, being able to come back to Australia.'
27th Oct 2021 - Daily Mail

Covid-19 borders: Tourists WILL be back to Australia before the end of year, says Scott Morrison

Tourists will be able to enter Australia without quarantine by the end of the year - but they must be double vaccinated, Scott Morrison has announced. Australia's international border has been closed since March 2020 to reduce the spread of coronavirus and the country has been alone among democratic nations in banning its own citizens from leaving. The move has helped reduce the impact of Covid-19, which has only claimed 1,669 lives in Australia, compared with 140,000 in the UK and 739,000 in the US.
27th Oct 2021 - Daily Mail

Plan C strategy to tackle Covid-19 has been discussed, Government adviser says

A potential “Plan C” Covid-19 lockdown has “been mentioned” in Government but no details have been confirmed, a scientific advisor said. Boris Johnson has set out a winter strategy for tackling Covid-19, should the number of cases rise to a point of concern , known as Plan B. This would see the reintroduction of compulsory face masks in indoor public places, a return to working from home and the use of vaccine passports to get into certain events.
27th Oct 2021 - iNews

COVID-19: NHS Test and Trace failed in its 'main objective', highly-critical report from committee of MPs finds

NHS Test and Trace has failed to achieve its "main objective" of helping break chains of COVID transmission and allowing people to return to normality despite being given an "eye-watering" amount of money, a highly-critical report from MPs has said. According to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the programme's outcomes have been "muddled" and a number of its goals have been "overstated or not achieved". Test and Trace was developed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to test the public and trace the contacts of positive coronavirus cases.
27th Oct 2021 - Sky News

Americas COVID cases are down, vaccine inequity still a problem

New coronavirus cases and deaths in the Americas have reached the lowest levels in more than a year, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said, but access to COVID-19 vaccines, remains a challenge. PAHO Assistant Director Jarbas Barbosa on Wednesday said the Americas reported more than 800,000 new infections and 18,000 deaths during the past seven days – a drastic decrease from previous weeks. “We have reason to be optimistic, but we must remain vigilant,” Barbosa said during a regular virtual news briefing. Many of the Caribbean islands are seeing decreases in new infections, Barbosa said, including Cuba, a nation that had for months been battling an intense outbreak of the disease. The downward trend in COVID-19 infections comes amid advances in vaccination campaigns across the region. But, PAHO officials said, gaps remain and many countries especially, those with low vaccination rates, remain at risk of more outbreaks.
27th Oct 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Coronavirus infections at U.S. meat plants far higher than previous estimates -House subcommittee

Cases and deaths from COVID-19 among workers at the leading U.S. meatpacking plants were three times as high as previously estimated, according to a report by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis seen by Reuters. The subcommittee surveyed major meatpackers Tyson Foods, JBS USA, Cargill, National Beef, and Smithfield Foods, which together control over 80% of the beef market and 60% of the pork market in the United States. At those companies’ plants, worker cases of COVID-19 totaled 59,147 and deaths totaled 269, based on counts through January of this year, according to the report which was expected to be released later on Wednesday.
27th Oct 2021 - Yahoo News

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New York City Inches Toward Covid-19 Becoming Endemic

Each wave of Covid-19 patients that has crashed through the doors of Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens has been more manageable than the last. In the spring of 2020 and the following winter, the hospital needed extra spaces to care for Covid-19 patients in need of oxygen and struggling to breathe. At the height of the Delta surge this summer and fall, Covid-19 patients didn’t fill its ICU. “We’re seeing it more as a chronic problem than as an immediate, huge pandemic problem like we were before,” said Mangala Narasimhan, a critical-care pulmonologist and director of critical-care services at Northwell Health, a large health system in the New York region that includes Long Island Jewish Medical Center.
26th Oct 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

BioNTech to Start Building Vaccine Plant in Africa Next Year

BioNTech SE said it plans to start construction on its first start-to-finish vaccine plant in Africa in the middle of next year, aiming to build a manufacturing network that would eventually supply hundreds of millions of doses to the continent. The German company said it’s developing the plans with the governments of Rwanda and Senegal, and initially the factory will have annual capacity of 50 million messenger RNA vaccine doses. The location hasn’t been decided yet, and the company didn’t announce a timeline for completion. The news comes as Moderna Inc. said Tuesday it agreed to sell as many as 110 million doses of its Covid-19 shot to the African Union following months of pressure, though most of the shipments won’t arrive until the second quarter of next year. The purchase was made possible by the U.S. government giving up its place in the supply queue, African Union coronavirus envoy Strive Masiyiwa said at a briefing.
26th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Thousands of Nicaraguans go to Honduras border for vaccines

Nearly 8,000 Nicaraguans received COVID-19 vaccines at two customs border crossings with neighboring Honduras in recent days, Honduran health authorities said on Monday, as supplies of the inoculations in Nicaragua have run low. Promoting the vaccines for Nicaraguans, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez wrote in a post on Twitter that "the solidarity and brotherhood of Hondurans crosses borders." He added that up to 500 doses were being given out daily to Nicaraguans. Honduran health authorities also pitched the cross-border assistance as a way to help beat back the risk of more infections at home.
26th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Beijing Marathon postponed indefinitely due to COVID-19

The Beijing Marathon has been postponed indefinitely after Sunday's race was called off amid rising COVID-19 cases in China, the BBC quoted organisers as saying. Organisers said they were cancelling next weekend's race "in order to prevent the risk of the epidemic spreading (and) effectively protect the health and safety of the majority of runners, staff and residents," the BBC reported. The marathon was set to return this year after it was suspended in 2020 due to COVID-19. The Wuhan Marathon, which was due to be held last Sunday, was also called off with a new date yet to be determined.
26th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Exclusive: African Union to buy up to 110 million Moderna vaccines -officials

The African Union (AU) intends to buy up to 110 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna Inc in an arrangement brokered in part by the White House, which will defer delivery of some doses intended for the United States to facilitate the deal, officials told Reuters. The AU's doses will be delivered over the coming months, with 15 million arriving before the end of 2021, 35 million in the first quarter of next year and up to 60 million in the second quarter. "This is important as it allows us to increase the number of vaccines available immediately," AU coronavirus envoy Strive Masiyiwa said in an email. "We urge other vaccine producing countries to follow the lead of the (U.S. government) and give us similar access to buy this and other vaccines."
26th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Vaccine passports could fuel spread of Covid, says leaked government report

A leaked government document suggests vaccine passports could be counterproductive and fuel the spread of Covid-19, it has been reported. The government’s impact assessment, seen by the Telegraph, suggests the passports could be “counterintuitive and potentially counterproductive” as they may push people from larger venues into poorly ventilated pubs. The newspaper also quoted the impact assessment as saying the policy would slash turnover for organisers of large events. It estimated one month of Covid certification, which Boris Johnson has said could be rolled out as part of his “plan B” if cases continue to rise, could see profits of venues where they would be required drop between £345m and £2.067bn.
26th Oct 2021 - The Independent

‘Plan B’ Covid measures could cost UK economy £18bn, documents suggest

Treasury documents have suggested that a return to home working, a key plank of Boris Johnson’s “plan B” proposal to deal with rising Covid-19 cases, would cause up to £18bn of damage to the UK economy over five months. A government source said there was no suggestion restrictions would be that length, if they were introduced at all. Johnson has so far resisted a move to plan B in England, which would also entail more widespread mask-wearing and the extended use of vaccine passports. Instead, the government has said it will focus on ramping up booster jabs for the over-50s and vulnerable adults, as well as the vaccine programme for over-12s. The documents, leaked to Politico, were drawn up by the Treasury and the Cabinet Office’s Covid-19 taskforce on the basis that a move to plan B would last until March 2022.
26th Oct 2021 - The Guardian

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Vaccine Cash Incentives Don't Work, US Study Shows

Financial incentives and other nudges by local governments and employers have failed to increase Covid-19 vaccinations among Americans who are hesitant about getting the shot, a new study shows. What’s more, financial incentives and “negative messages” actually decreased vaccination rates among some groups, underscoring fears about a public backlash, according to the paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The pace of Covid-19 vaccinations climbed rapidly earlier this year as availability increased, with millions of adults getting the jab each day. However, that pace has slowed sharply. In the last week in the U.S., an average of about 800,000 doses per day were administered.
25th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

S.Africa's Aspen aims to sharply increase COVID-19 vaccine capacity

South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare is aiming to ramp up its COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing capacity to 1.3 billion doses a year by February 2024, up from a current annual output of around 250 million doses, the company's CEO told Reuters on Monday. Aspen is doing the final stages of manufacturing for Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ.N) COVID-19 vaccine under a so-called "fill and finish" deal, but CEO Stephen Saad said in an interview that the companies were close to announcing a broader deal for Aspen to produce J&J's COVID-19 shot under licence.
25th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Moderna says its COVID-19 vaccine protective, safe in young children

Moderna Inc said on Monday its COVID-19 vaccine generated a strong immune response in children aged six to 11 years and that it plans to submit the data to global regulators soon. Moderna said its two-dose vaccine generated virus-neutralizing antibodies in children and safety was comparable to what was previously seen in clinical trials of adolescents and adults. It cited interim data that has yet to be peer reviewed.
25th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Covid vaccines: Brits double-jabbed abroad still forced to self-isolate despite having UK approved shots

People who were double-jabbed abroad are still being forced to self-isolate after being pinged by Test and Trace, despite their vaccines being recognised by the UK Government, i can reveal. Self-isolation rules were scrapped on 16 August for people in England who have received both doses of a Covid vaccine and are identified as having come into contact with someone who has tested positive for coronavirus. However, the exemption does not apply to people who received both vaccine doses outside of the UK.
25th Oct 2021 - iNews

First weekend of enforcement of vaccine passport scheme was an 'unmitigated disaster' according to hospitality industry

The Scottish Hospitality Group (SHG) said that staff have faced “intolerable levels of abuse” and some venues saw a drop in footfall of up to 40 per cent. It is calling on the Scottish Government to scrap the scheme, which has been legally enforceable since October 18. Proof of full vaccination is required to enter nightclubs and large events as part of the Scottish Government’s efforts to limit the spread of coronavirus and increase vaccine take-up.
25th Oct 2021 - The Scotsman

Ministers to ramp up Covid vaccine rollout as hospitalisations rise

Two million people who are eligible for a Covid booster vaccine in England will receive their invitation this week as ministers seek to intensify the rollout. The government has launched a media blitz encouraging people to get a booster jab, amid mounting concern over the speed of the vaccination rollout as Covid hospitalisations rise. NHS England said on Sunday that more than 5 million people had had a third jab since the vaccination programme began administering them last month. About 7.5 million people have already been invited by text, email and letter, encouraging them to book through the national booking service. Two million more will receive invitations this week
25th Oct 2021 - The Guardian

COVID-19: Millions of booster jab invitations being sent out as government resists more calls for Plan B

Two million eligible people will be invited to receive a COVID-19 booster jab from the NHS this week, as the government seeks to see off a sharp rise in cases without introducing Plan B measures. Calls for the reintroduction of masks, social distancing and working from home continued over the weekend, but ministers have so far shown no sign of doing so despite fears over the pressure on hospitals.
25th Oct 2021 - Sky News

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Endemic Covid-19 Has Arrived in Portugal. This Is What It Looks Like.

Close to 100% of people over the age of 50 have received at least one vaccine dose, according to the Portuguese government. For those between the ages of 25 and 49 it is 95% and from 12 to 17 it is 88%. Some 89% of Portugal’s entire population of 10 million has had at least one vaccine dose, not far behind the rate in the world-leading United Arab Emirates, compared with 65% in the U.S. and 73% in the U.K., according to Oxford University’s Our World in Data. Portugal has been averaging six deaths a day for the past month, compared with almost 300 at the peak in January. Adjusted for population, the current rate equates to about 200 in the U.S. The deaths plunged to one or two a day in May and June before rising to 20 in July. The number of new daily recorded infections and hospitalizations has been trending down since the summer. The country is now averaging about 750 new cases a day, compared with almost 13,000 in January. There are about 320 people hospitalized, down from almost 6,700 at the peak
24th Oct 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine for Young Kids Satisfied FDA Criteria, Agency Says

The Food and Drug Administration said the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. PFE 0.70% and BioNTech met the agency’s criteria for immune responses in a study in children ages 5 to 11 years. In a report released Friday, the agency flagged the risk of heart-inflammation conditions including myocarditis associated with the vaccine but said the overall benefits, in preventing Covid-19 disease and hospitalizations, would outweigh the risk of the heart conditions. The FDA assessment could support the agency’s authorization of the vaccine in children in the coming days or weeks, but the myocarditis risk is likely to be a topic of debate among advisers to the FDA who are scheduled to first review the application.
23rd Oct 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

The Unlikely Outsiders Who Won the Race for a Covid-19 Vaccine

Uğur Şahin and Stéphane Bancel were long underestimated by investors and scientists. But when Covid-19 threatened the globe, these two unknowns had a solution.
23rd Oct 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Austria Threatens New Lockdown for Unvaccinated as Cases Spike

Austria has laid out a framework for potential new lockdown measures to apply only to unvaccinated people, as Covid-19 inoculations lag and cases rise sharply. “I will do everything I can to ensure that the health system in this country does not reach its limit and is not overloaded because we have too many procrastinators,” Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said in a statement Saturday. If the number of Covid patients in intensive care units hits 500, or 25% of the country’s capacity, unvaccinated people would be barred from hotels and restaurants. If ICU capacity reaches one-third, or 600 units, a lockdown would go into effect for the unvaccinated, who would only be allowed to leave their homes for certain reasons.
23rd Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Adobe Sets Dec. 8 Vaccination Deadline for US Workers

Adobe Inc. warned its U.S. workers that they must be vaccinated against Covid-19 by Dec. 8. U.S. companies are giving notice to employees as they seek to comply with orders from President Joe Biden requiring federal contractors to have all staff vaccinated by the December deadline. The government is also drawing up rules for businesses with 100 or more employees to require vaccines or test unvaccinated staff at least once a week. The White House is set to issue additional guidelines in the near future. Adobe, the maker of Photoshop and Illustrator, said in a statement Friday that 94% of its U.S. workforce is “or will soon be fully vaccinated.” The San Jose, California-based company said it will consider accommodation requests for employees who aren’t vaccinated for religious or medical reasons.
22nd Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Britain must control Covid now – or face a winter lockdown

It’s not surprising, then, that Germany is managing to control its Covid epidemic and bring down the numbers of cases and deaths. England (and the UK) by contrast is seeing a sharp rise in cases. Deaths are now on the increase too: this week’s daily reported toll was the highest since March. While the UK government continues to ask people to be vigilant and keep calm and carry on, the clock is ticking. Time is running out to put in some basic measures to prevent a further spike in cases, the NHS becoming overwhelmed, and very possibly another lockdown. Germany, meanwhile, is keeping its economy and society running, and looks in a strong position heading into the bumpy winter months.
22nd Oct 2021 - The Guardian

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Rise in Cases and Deaths Tests Britain’s Gamble on Few Virus Restrictions

For the last four months, Britain has run a grand epidemiological experiment, lifting virtually all coronavirus restrictions, even in the face of a high daily rate of infections. Its leaders justified the approach on the grounds that the country’s rapid rollout of vaccines had weakened the link between infection and serious illness. Now, with cases, hospital admissions and deaths all rising again; the effect of vaccines beginning to wear off; and winter looming, Britain’s strategy of learning to live with the virus is coming under its stiffest test yet. New cases surpassed 50,000 on Thursday, an 18 percent increase over the last week and the second time cases have broken that psychological barrier since July. The number of people admitted to hospitals rose 15.4 percent over the same period, reaching 959, while 115 people died of Covid-19, an increase of almost 11 percent.
22nd Oct 2021 - The New York Times

COVID-19: Health minister denies existence of Plan C to ban Christmas household mixing

A health minister has denied there is a "plan C" to control COVID-19 by restricting household gatherings in England at Christmas if hospital admissions get worse. Edward Argar told Sky News it is "not something I'm aware of" after reports claimed Whitehall officials are considering not allowing members of different households to meet in each other's homes - as was the case most of last year. The plan, the reports said, would be imposed if COVID-19 cases continue to rise towards Christmas and the government would want to minimise the economic impact by keeping shops, pubs and restaurants open.
21st Oct 2021 - Sky News

NHS Wales chief executive on Covid-19, winter, and whether restrictions could be reintroduced

The chief executive of the Welsh NHS has laid bare the significant challenges facing the health and social care system this winter. Dr Andrew Goodall, who is set to leave his role at the end of October, said the coming months could prove to be the most difficult in the careers of many frontline staff. His comments come following the publication of the NHS winter plan which focuses on protecting people against Covid-19 and other respiratory viruses while trying to cope with mounting demand for elective and emergency care. We sat down with Dr Goodall at the Welsh Government's offices in Cathays Park to talk about some of the biggest issues facing the Welsh NHS and how the plan will help.
21st Oct 2021 - Wales Online

Melbourne readies to exit world's longest COVID-19 lockdown

Millions in Melbourne are readying to come out of the world's longest COVID-19 lockdown later on Thursday even as cases hover near record levels, with pubs, restaurants and cafes rushing to restock supplies before opening their doors. Since early August, residents in Australia's second-largest city have been in lockdown - their sixth during the pandemic - to quell an outbreak fuelled by the highly infectious Delta strain.
21st Oct 2021 - Reuters

WHO estimate: 115,000 health workers have died from Covid-19, as calls for vaccine access grow

Some 115,000 health care workers died from Covid-19 from January 2020 to May of this year, according to a new World Health Organization estimate, as the agency pushed once again for efforts to address vaccine inequity. Globally, 2 in 5 health care workers are fully vaccinated, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing Thursday. But, he added, “that average masks huge differences across regions and economic groupings.” In most high-income countries, more than 80% of health care workers are fully vaccinated, Tedros said. But in Africa, the rate is less than 1 in 10. “The backbone of every health system is its workforce — the people who deliver the services on which we rely at some point in our lives,” Tedros said. “The pandemic is a powerful demonstration of just how much we rely on health workers and how vulnerable we all are when the people who protect our health are themselves unprotected.”
21st Oct 2021 - STAT News

Covid-19 Herd Immunity Proves Elusive in U.K.

The U.K., in an experiment watched by the world, lifted most Covid-19 restrictions in the summer, wagering that immunity from vaccinations and prior infections would keep the virus at bay. Three months later, the British experience shows that, in the face of the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, herd immunity is elusive. Covid-19 cases and deaths have risen in recent weeks as winter has begun to close in. The bottom line: Reliance on immunity, which is imperfect to begin with and wanes over time, doesn’t guarantee a quick victory over Delta. Lifting restrictions “was done on the hope that the vaccinations and natural immunity were going to win pretty quickly,” said Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London. “What it’s shown is that that alone doesn’t work.”
21st Oct 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 21st Oct 2021

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Novavax Shares Plunge on Report of Covid-19 Vaccine Manufacturing Problems

A new report in Politico cast further doubt on the Novavax vaccine’s effectiveness. Politico said the methods the company uses to test the purity of its vaccine have fallen short of regulators’ standards, with the publication citing multiple people familiar with Novavax’s difficulties. Novavax issued a statement Wednesday saying it expects to complete ongoing regulatory submissions over the next few weeks in the U.K., Europe and Canada. It said it has already filed for authorization in India and for emergency use with the World Health Organization. The company said it plans to file its vaccine for emergency-use authorization in the U.S. by the end of 2021.
20th Oct 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

As U.K. Covid Cases Surge, Israel Offers Lesson in Boosters

As Covid-19 cases soar again in the U.K., officials could look to a country that’s moved past a similar crisis for a possible roadmap. The search for answers in Israel may be useful, health experts say, because both countries were among the fastest in the world with their vaccination programs, yet were similarly quick to lift lockdown restrictions. And just as Israel experienced a spike in cases in June, so the U.K. is now, having just reported the biggest single daily jump in infections in three months. Israel’s response to its renewed outbreak was to roll out an aggressive booster program, a decision that appears to have quelled the worst of the outbreak within weeks.
20th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

U.K. Rules Out Another Lockdown Even With Cases on the Rise

The U.K. will not yet be bringing back restrictions to help curb Covid cases, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said, despite a surge in infections and a rise in hospitalizations and deaths. Javid put the onus on the general public to get vaccinated and behave responsibly, such as by wearing masks in crowded spaces, to avoid the need for further restrictive measures in the winter. He made the plea as he warned that new daily virus cases could rise to 100,000.
20th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

U.S. readies plan to vaccinate kids ages 5-11 against COVID-19

The Biden administration on Wednesday outlined its plan to vaccinate millions of U.S. children ages 5 to 11 as soon as the COVID-19 shot is authorized for them, readying doses and preparing locations ahead of the busy holiday season. Unlike the mass vaccination centers used in the initial COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the White House said it is working to set up clinics in more than 100 children's hospital systems nationwide as well as doctor's offices, pharmacies and potentially schools.
20th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Canada to require COVID-19 vaccinations for federal lawmakers, some MPs to miss out

Canada's House of Commons will require all 338 lawmakers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 when they return to work next month, potentially locking out some members of parliament from the official opposition Conservatives. Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau narrowly won re-election last month, saying he would insist on vaccine mandates for federal workers, people traveling domestically, and his own candidates.
20th Oct 2021 - Reuters

UK cases may hit 100000 a day, no contingency measures for now, minister says

Britain's COVID-19 infection numbers could rise to 100,000 a day, but the government will not implement its so-called "plan B" contingency measures at this time, health minister Sajid Javid said on Wednesday. "We're looking closely at the data, and we won't be implementing our plan B of contingency measures at this point, but will be staying vigilant, preparing for all eventualities," he told a news conference.
20th Oct 2021 - Reuters UK

Restricting travel over vaccine type could be discrimination, PAHO warns

Countries should grant entry to vaccinated travelers regardless of which shot they received to prevent discrimination and facilitate business, a top official of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Wednesday. With vaccination rates on the rise, countries are facing fresh questions about how to contain the spread of COVID-19 while easing pandemic travel restrictions. The United States last week said it would reopen the land border with Mexico - the busiest in the world - but only allow people who have been inoculated with vaccines authorized by the World Health Organization (WHO), leaving out two shots heavily used in Mexico - Russia's Sputnik V and one from China's Cansino Biologic
20th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Premier League reveals 68% of players are fully vaccinated against Covid

The Premier League says that 68% of its players are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 after concerns over a lack of take-up. Estimates had earlier placed the number of double-jabbed players at less than 50%, with a number of managers, including Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp, calling on top-flight players to comply. The Premier League has released official figures for the first time, which show 81% have had at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. The league said it would “continue to work with clubs to encourage vaccination among players and club staff”.
20th Oct 2021 - The Guardian

Kenya Lifts COVID-19 Curfew as Infection Rates Ease, President Says | World News | US News

Kenya lifted a nationwide curfew on Wednesday that has been in place since March 2020 to curb the spread of the coronavirus, President Uhuru Kenyatta announced. The East African nation, which has a population of 54 million, has recorded 252,199 infections since the pandemic erupted and 5,233 COVID-19 deaths, health ministry data shows.
20th Oct 2021 - U.S. News & World Report

Melbourne welcomes vaccinated Sydney residents without quarantine

Travel restrictions between Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's largest cities, eased on Wednesday as Victoria opened its borders to fully vaccinated residents from New South Wales amid a rapid rise in immunisation levels. With cases trending lower in New South Wales, including Sydney, residents will be allowed quarantine-free entry into Victoria for the first time in more than three months. Travellers from Melbourne who wish to enter Sydney, however, must undergo a two-week home quarantine.
20th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Iran braces for new COVID wave despite accelerated jab rollout

Iran is bracing for a sixth major wave of COVID-19 infections even as its nationwide vaccination efforts have accelerated in recent weeks. Health Minister Bahram Einollahi said on Tuesday it is “certain” the worst-hit country in the Middle East will face another surge in cases next month. “But we’re fully prepared to fight the disease in the sixth wave, and hospitals are now ready in terms of medicine and oxygen equipment so we can fight it,” he said. The virus has so far killed close to 125,000 people while more than 5.8 million cases have been reported in Iran since February 2020, according to health ministry figures. Daily deaths are significantly down from the peak of 709 registered in late August, but still more than 150 Iranians are falling victim to the virus as more than 10,000 new cases are detected each day.
20th Oct 2021 - AlJazeera

UK hospitals on the edge as government resists fresh COVID measures

British hospitals are on the edge and people should wear masks and come forward for vaccines to stop them being overwhelmed by a rising wave of COVID-19 cases, senior medical figures said on Wednesday, as the government resisted calls for new measures. Britain has the eighth biggest death toll globally from COVID-19, with nearly 139,000 fatalities. But it also had a quick start to its vaccine programme and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has lifted almost all COVID-19 restrictions in England, ending social distancing measures and mask mandates.
20th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 20th Oct 2021

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Bolsonaro's Pandemic Handling Draws Explosive Allegation: Homicide

A Brazilian congressional panel is set to recommend mass homicide charges against President Jair Bolsonaro, asserting that he intentionally let the coronavirus rip through the country and kill hundreds of thousands in a failed bid to achieve herd immunity and revive Latin America’s largest economy. A report from the congressional panel’s investigation, excerpts from which were viewed by The New York Times ahead of its scheduled release this week, also recommends criminal charges against 69 other people, including three of Mr. Bolsonaro’s sons and numerous current and former government officials.
19th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

New York City Schools Data Shows Few Covid Cases

When roughly one million public school students returned to classrooms in New York City last month amid the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, families and educators expressed profound concern. But for the past five weeks, case counts have remained low. The average weekly positive rate among students in public schools is 0.25 percent — well under the city’s daily average rate of 2.43 percent. Experts, however, say the city may not be testing enough students.
19th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

Covid Made London and Paris Cheaper — for the Rich

Yes, remote work has decreased demand for office space, and should eventually soften housing demand too, but it’s not happening yet. Plus, look at city streets and you’ll see how the splendid isolation of the elite, suburban “Zoomocracy” is already starting to backfire: The shift to “hybrid” home and office working has drivers commuting into town at ever more random times. Traffic congestion over the past month in Paris and London has been even worse than the comparable period in 2019, according to TomTom. Cities, after all, are still where the jobs are, especially when it comes to high-skill services — Google Inc. recently announced a 7 million square-foot campus in San Jose.
19th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

200 Queenslanders may die of COVID-19 when borders reopen, modelling predicts

COVID-19 modelling suggests about 200 people in Queensland could die in just the first three months after borders reopen to New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. The modelling by QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, based on vaccination levels of 80 per cent in those aged 16 and older, predicts deaths would be "heavily skewed" towards the elderly. Since the pandemic began more than 20 months ago, Queensland has recorded 2,071 known cases of the virus and seven deaths.
19th Oct 2021 - ABC News

No special deals to allow unvaccinated players at Australian Open: official

Australia's Victoria state will not do special deals with unvaccinated athletes to allow them to compete at major events, an official said on Tuesday, putting Novak Djokovic's Australian Open title defence and bid for the Grand Slam record in doubt. World number one Djokovic, level on 20 Grand Slam titles with Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, declined to reveal his vaccination status again this week and said he was unsure if he would defend his Australian Open crown as authorities work out COVID-19 restrictions for the tournament. Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said he opposed special arrangements to let unvaccinated athletes compete in the state, which is scheduled to host the Grand Slam at Melbourne Park in January. "On the question of vaccination, no," he told a media briefing.
19th Oct 2021 - Reuters

‘Make a gesture of humanity’: Pope Francis urges drug makers to release Covid-19 vaccine patents

Amid controversy over global access to Covid-19 vaccines, Pope Francis lent his moral authority to the debate and urged drug makers to make their intellectual property available so that other companies can manufacture enough shots for low and middle-income countries. In a video address to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, the Pope made a simple, straightforward plea: “I ask all the great pharmaceutical laboratories to release the patents. Make a gesture of humanity and allow every country, every people, every human being, to have access to the vaccines. There are countries where only 3% or 4% of the inhabitants have been vaccinated.” His remarks came as the pharmaceutical industry continues to resist pressure at the World Trade Organization to agree to a temporary waiver of intellectual property for Covid-19 medical products. Despite support from the Biden administration, a proposal made a year ago has stalled amid objections from the European Union and some countries where several large drug makers are based.
18th Oct 2021 - STAT News

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 19th Oct 2021

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Why Are U.K. Covid Cases So High Compared to the Rest of Europe?

Surging Covid cases in the U.K. have left the country behind the rest of Europe with former U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb calling for urgent research into a mutation known as delta plus. Britain, faster to reopen and relax restrictions than other European countries, reported the highest daily jump in new cases on Sunday since mid-July. Weekly deaths from the virus topped 800 for each of the past six weeks, higher than in other major western European nations, according to Bloomberg’s tracker.
18th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

UK government ordered to reveal firms awarded ‘VIP’ Covid contracts

The UK government has been ordered to reveal which companies were given “VIP” access to multimillion-pound contracts for the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the early months of the Covid pandemic, in a ruling from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has previously refused to disclose the names of 47 companies that had contracts awarded through the privileged, fast-track process allocated to firms with political connections. A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) last year found that companies referred as possible PPE suppliers by ministers, MPs or senior NHS officials were given high priority by the DHSC procurement process, which resulted in a 10 times greater success rate for securing contracts than companies whose bids were processed via normal channels. The Good Law Project (GLP), which first revealed the existence of a VIP lane, is together with fellow campaign group EveryDoctor challenging the DHSC over the lawfulness of the VIP lane and large contracts awarded to three companies: PestFix, Ayanda Capital and Clandeboye Agencies.
18th Oct 2021 - The Guardian

Russia's Low Vaccination Rates Leads to Record-Breaking Toll

After Sofia Kravetskaya got vaccinated with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine last December, she became a pariah on the Moscow playground where she takes her young daughter. “When I mentioned I volunteered in the trials and I got my first shot, people started running away from me,” she said. “They believed that if you were vaccinated, the virus is inside you and you’re contagious.” For Ms. Kravetskaya, 36, the reaction reflected the prevalent mistrust in the Russian authorities that has metastasized since the pandemic began last year. That skepticism, pollsters and sociologists say, is the main reason only one third of the country’s population is fully vaccinated, despite the availability of free inoculations.
18th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

Latvia announces four weeks of lockdown as COVID-19 cases spike

Latvia announced a COVID-19 lockdown from Oct. 21 until Nov. 15 to try to slow a spike in infections in one of the least vaccinated European Union countries. "Our health system is in danger ... The only way out of this crisis is to get vaccinated," Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said after an emergency government meeting, blaming low vaccination rates for the spike in hospitalisations. Only 54% of Latvian adults have been fully vaccinated, well below EU average of 74%, EU figures show.
18th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Enforcement of Covid-19 vaccine passports comes into effect in Scotland

Enforcement of Scotland's controversial Covid-19 vaccine passport scheme has come into effect. Proof of full vaccination is required to enter nightclubs and large events as part of the Scottish Government's efforts to limit the spread of coronavirus and increase vaccine take-up. The measures technically came into effect from October 1, but an 18-day grace period was announced following backlash from affected industries and significant problems with the new app. The policy will now be enforceable for nightclubs, strip clubs and unseated indoor events with more than 500 people, unseated outdoor events with over 4,000 and any event with more than 10,000 people. Scots will have to show proof they have had both vaccine doses, with a paper copy of the certificate or a QR code on a new app, although the latter has been plagued with problems since its launch. More than 700,000 people had downloaded the app, and a further 750,000 people have a paper copy of their vaccination status.
18th Oct 2021 - ITV News

Some Sydney school students return as more COVID-19 curbs eased

Thousands of children returned to school in Sydney on Monday, putting an end to months of home learning as Australia's largest city eased more COVID-19 curbs, thanks to rising rates of vaccinations. Masks are no longer mandatory in offices and larger groups are to be allowed in homes and outdoors after the state of New South Wales, home to Sydney, hit a double-dose inoculation rate of 80% at the weekend among those older than 16. The latest in a series of planned relaxations is part of a shift in strategy by Australia's largest cities towards living with the virus, though officials have warned it will bring more COVID-19 cases.
18th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Social distancing at Mecca’s Grand Mosque dropped

The Grand Mosque in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, has returned to operating at full capacity, with worshippers praying shoulder-to-shoulder for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began. On Sunday, floor markings that guide people to social distance in and around the Grand Mosque were removed. “This is in line with the decision to ease precautionary measures and to allow pilgrims and visitors to the Grand Mosque at full capacity,” the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported. Pictures and footage on Sunday morning showed people praying side by side in straight rows of worshippers, the formation revered in Muslim prayers, for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold last year. While social distancing measures were lifted, authorities said visitors must be fully vaccinated against coronavirus and must continue to wear masks on mosque grounds.
17th Oct 2021 - AlJazeera

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 18th Oct 2021

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Melbourne to ease world's longest COVID-19 lockdowns as vaccinations rise

Melbourne, which has spent more time under COVID-19 lockdowns than any other city in the world, is set to lift its stay-at-home orders this week, officials said on Sunday. By Friday, when some curbs will be lifted, the Australian city of 5 million people will have been under six lockdowns totalling 262 days, or nearly nine months, since March 2020. Australian and other media say this is the longest in the world, exceeding a 234-day lockdown in Buenos Aires.
17th Oct 2021 - Reuters

The Latest: Fauci dismayed by Texas’ move to ban mandates

Dr. Anthony Fauci is saying Sunday that it is “really unfortunate” that Gov. Greg Abbott has moved to ban vaccine mandates in the state of Texas. The nation’s leading infectious disease doctor, speaking on Fox News Sunday, said that the Republican governor’s decision to block businesses from requiring inoculations would damage public health since vaccines are the “most effective means” to stop the spread of COVID-19. Fauci was largely encouraged by the downward trend of coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths across the nation and suggested that vaccinated individuals could have a normal holiday season with others who have received the shot. But he said that those who have not been vaccinated should continue to avoid gatherings and should wear a mask.
17th Oct 2021 - The Associated Press

New Zealand faces growing calls for ‘circuit breaker’ Covid-19 lockdown

The nation of 5 million was largely virus-free until mid-August, when it was hit by an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant. Health ministry data shows cases have been concentrated among people from the indigenous Maori community, who are also the least likely to be vaccinated
16th Oct 2021 - South China Morning Post

India reopens for foreign tourists after 19 months as COVID ebbs

India has reopened to fully vaccinated foreign tourists travelling on chartered flights in the latest easing of its coronavirus restrictions as infection numbers decline. Foreign tourists on regular flights will be able to enter India starting from November 15, officials said on Friday. It is the first time India has allowed foreign tourists to enter the country since March 2020 when it imposed its first nationwide coronavirus lockdown. It is unclear whether arriving tourists will have to quarantine but they must be fully vaccinated and test negative for the virus within 72 hours of their flight.
16th Oct 2021 - Al Jazeera English

We cannot continue to ignore the COVID childcare crisis

The world is facing a global care crisis that we must address urgently. When children live in unstable family environments or lose crucial family bonds at an early age, it can have irreversible consequences on the rest of their lives. We see it when we meet children like eight-month-old Aleksander* and his 10-year-old sister Natalyia, who both live in Ukraine. Tragically, they recently lost their mother who was raising them as a single parent. Local child protection authorities put them in the care of their father, Ivan. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ivan lost his job and also found himself unable to adequately provide for the children. The pandemic exacerbated the suffering of children like Alexander and Natalyia all over the world.
16th Oct 2021 - Al Jazeera English

New Zealand dispenses record number of jabs at 'Vaxathon'

New Zealand health care workers administered a record number of vaccine jabs Saturday as the nation held a festival aimed at getting more people inoculated against the coronavirus. Musicians, sports stars and celebrities pitched in for the “Vaxathon” event which was broadcast on television and online for eight hours straight. By late afternoon, more than 120,000 people had gotten shots, eclipsing the daily record of 93,000 set in August. The event stretched into the evening. A throwback to TV fundraising “telethon” events that were popular from the 1970s through the 1990s, it comes as New Zealand faces its biggest threat since the pandemic began, with an outbreak of the delta variant spreading through the largest city of Auckland and beyond.
16th Oct 2021 - The Associated Press

Italy Implements Tough Covid-19 Mandate for Workers, Prompting Protests

In one of the toughest anti-Covid-19 regimes in the Western world, Italy now requires all private and public sector workers to have a so-called green pass. The policy has kicked in amid unresolved questions on how it will be enforced and whether Italy will have enough testing kits to meet the expected surge in demand by millions of unvaccinated people who want to guarantee access to their workplace. The new requirement positions Italy, where 85% of people over the age of 12 have received at least one shot, as a test case for how hard Western countries can push their populations to get vaccinated.
16th Oct 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

New Zealand Attempts a Record-Setting ‘Vaxathon’

Since New Zealand closed its borders in March 2020, setting the stage for one of the world’s most successful Covid-19 responses, the wide-body jets that once ferried its citizens to every corner of the globe have mostly been redeployed for shipping freight. And the vast majority of Kiwis have, throughout the pandemic, been as flightless as their eponymous birds. But on Saturday, some 300 residents of Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, boarded an Air New Zealand Boeing 787 jet once again at the city’s international airport. This time, it was not to take a trip, but to receive a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the booth of a business-class seat. The doses were kept cool with dry ice on the trolleys that typically offer a choice of chicken or beef.
16th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

Nigeria Awaits Supply of 30 Million Covid Vaccines That It Purchased

Nigeria is yet to receive supplies of 30 million coronavirus vaccines that it ordered and paid for, the country’s finance minister said Friday. “We have paid for vaccines, the supplies are not coming,” Minister of Finance Zainab Ahmed said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “The donations that have been pledged to us are trickling in.” Africa’s most populous country has only been able to give the Covid-19 jabs to 4 million people from a population of about 211 million. “We need to be able to find vaccines to ensure that we are able to contain the pandemic,” Ahmed said. The country has set a target of vaccinating 70% of its population.
16th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

The Million-Dollar Misfire of Vaccine Lotteries

In May 2021, as the U.S. vaccination campaign started to lose momentum, several U.S. states and some cities arrived at the same conclusion: To boost uptake, they’d launch vaccine lotteries, giving locals who’d gotten their shot the chance to win a million or more dollars. But a new study published in JAMA Health Forum on Friday suggests that, on their own, the lotteries launched for vaccinated residents in 19 states failed to achieve their goals of encouraging people to take the Covid vaccine. It found no significant difference in rates of vaccine uptake in states that launched lotteries compared to those that did not. “Everyone was rooting for this to work, but you’ve got to check,” says Andrew I. Friedson, an associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver and an author of the report. “The way the evidence has stacked up it seems that there are better ways to spend our money.”
16th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

43,000 in UK may have received false negative Covid-19 test results

British health officials said on Friday that 43,000 people may have been wrongly told they do not have the coronavirus because of problems at a private laboratory. The UK Health Security Agency said the Immensa Health Clinic Ltd. lab in Wolverhampton, central England, has been suspended from processing swabs after the false negatives. Will Welfare, the agency’s public health incident director, said it was working “to determine the laboratory technical issues” behind the inaccurate tests.
15th Oct 2021 - South China Morning Post

Biden Administration Renews Support for the WTO

During a speech in Geneva, Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, affirmed the Biden administration’s commitment to supporting the World Trade Organization but said the intergovernmental organization needed reform.
14th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 15th Oct 2021

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Coronavirus breakthrough: Stunned scientists discover uncommon antibody in 45-year old man that halts most Covid variants

Scientists were left stunned after they discovered a natural Covid antibody that seems to neutralise multiple Coronavirus variants. The ‘potent’ antibody was reportedly found in a 45-year old man who recovered from Covid-19 more than three months ago. One of the antibodies, labelled as ‘54042-4’, seemed to be able to halt multiple mutations, including the Delta and Alpha variants. The researchers wrote in Cell Reports that the antibodies have ‘uncommon genetic and structural characteristics’ thereby setting themselves apart from others. They are now looking into developing the antibody with the aim of protecting more people against a range of viruses.
14th Oct 2021 - City A.M.

Indonesia Covid: Slow start as Bali re-opens to foreign tourists

The much anticipated re-opening of Indonesia's famed tourist island Bali has seen a slow start, with no international flights scheduled. As of Thursday, fully vaccinated travellers from 19 countries including China, India, and France can enter Bali. The UK is not on the list. But visitors must first serve a five-day quarantine in a hotel. Officials had closed the international airport in April last year to stop the coronavirus from spreading. In July, Indonesia became the epicentre of Covid in Asia, but daily cases have since reduced significantly.
14th Oct 2021 - BBC News

Australians can test themselves for Covid-19 at home in two weeks

Rapid antigen tests have been used extensively in countries around the world They have finally been approved for use at home in Australia from November 1 States and territories will decide how residents can use the tests
14th Oct 2021 - Daily Mail

Covid-19: NHS facing exceptionally difficult winter - Chris Whitty

The NHS faces an "exceptionally difficult" winter whether there is a Covid surge or not, England's chief medial officer Prof Chris Whitty says. GPs in England are being told to see more patients face-to-face as ministers unveil a £250m winter rescue package. But the doctors' union says the package shows "a government out of touch with the scale of the crisis." The British Medical Association adds doctors will be "horrified" by the idea the plan will save them when it could "sink the ship altogether"
14th Oct 2021 - BBC News

Covid-19: More restrictions are relaxed in Northern Ireland

More relaxations to Northern Ireland's Covid-19 restrictions have taken effect. The decision by Stormont last week allows up to 30 people from an unlimited number of households to meet indoors at a private home. Audiences at indoor venues will also no longer have to stay seated during performances. Nightclubs are due to reopen on 31 October, with the end of indoor social distancing rules for hospitality. From then, the need to be socially distanced will also move to guidance, with people asked to minimise face-to-face contact.
14th Oct 2021 - BBC News

Bayer, CureVac terminate COVID-19 shot production partnership

Bayer AG has terminated a vaccine manufacturing partnership under which it would have helped produce CureVac's COVID-19 shot, a spokesperson for Bayer told a German newspaper. The news comes after CureVac earlier this week said it will give up on its first-generation COVID-19 vaccine candidate and instead focus on collaborating with GSK (GSK.L) to develop improved mRNA vaccine technology. "Jointly with CureVac we have decided by mutual agreement to not continue the cooperation," the Bayer spokesperson told Rheinische Post.
14th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Italy: Fresh pandemic woes for those jabbed with ‘wrong’ vaccines

When Duccio Armenise, an Italian, decided to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in Russia, the only jab he could receive was Sputnik. “We were in the middle of an outbreak, and I had seen what COVID had done to a few friends, so I was really scared,” he told Al Jazeera. “I didn’t want to face COVID without antibodies, so I got the shots.” He expected some problems once he returned to Italy, since Sputnik was not in use in the European Union, “but I was confident that by the time I came back they would be solved.” But months later, Sputnik is yet to receive approval from the World Health Organization (WHO), it is still being evaluated by the European Union, and Italy will not hand out a Green Pass to anyone who got the Russian shot.
14th Oct 2021 - AlJazeera

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 14th Oct 2021

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English school return spurred COVID in children, but cases fell in adults - study

COVID-19 infections in children in England rose in September after schools returned from summer holidays, helping to keep cases high even as there was a fall among adults, a large prevalence study showed on Thursday. The REACT-1 study, led by Imperial College London, is the latest to find that more children are getting infected with COVID-19 following the reopening of schools at the start of September. Infection numbers in Britain are currently much higher than in other western European countries, with more than 30,000 new cases reported every day this month, but have not risen above summer levels following the return of schools in England despite the higher infection rates in children.
14th Oct 2021 - Reuters UK

The Covid report lays bare Test and Trace failings – Dido Harding’s mistakes won’t be forgotten

When the damning Parliamentary report into the Covid pandemic was published today, there was quiet pride within the NHS that its own performance was largely the subject of praise. Many of the best things about the state’s response to the virus, from the vaccine rollout to new treatments to agile management, were down to the health service. But there was also a sense of relief, as most of the heaviest criticism was directed at not just the government and scientific advisers but also at ‘NHS Test and Trace’ (which should really have been called ‘DHSC Test and Trace’, as Matt Hancock’s Department of Health and Social Care ran it, not the NHS). Some in the health service, who have long resented their brand being used and abused by Dido Harding’s controversial unit, pointedly remarked today that she had tried – and failed – this summer to become chief executive of the NHS itself. Or, as one insider put it: “We dodged a bullet there.”
13th Oct 2021 - iNews

Blackstone in London Sets Vaccine Rule to Work in Office

Blackstone, the giant private equity firm, will require employees who want to work in its London office to be vaccinated beginning next week, as the American company takes a more forceful approach to vaccinations than many other businesses in Britain. Across the United States, vaccine mandates, which require employees to be inoculated to remain in their jobs, are becoming increasingly common ahead of a rule by President Biden that will apply to companies with more than 100 employees. But in Britain, data protection and employment discrimination laws have prevented companies from mandating their own “no jab, no job” policies and have made it harder to physically separate unvaccinated workers. Instead, companies have been advised to encourage vaccinations rather than enforce them.
13th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

WHO Creates New Team to Study Covid-19 Origins

The World Health Organization established a new panel of scientists whose mandate will include attempting to revive a stalled inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus that caused a global pandemic. The 26-member team, drawn from countries including the U.S., China, India, Nigeria and Cambodia, is larger than a 10-member international group of scientists sent earlier this year to Wuhan, the Chinese city that was the site of the first confirmed Covid-19 outbreak in December 2019. The team will also have a broader mandate to lead investigations of future epidemics as well as Covid-19. It may encounter some of the same difficulties that hampered the first team’s efforts earlier this year, global health experts have said, including blocked access to data on possible early Covid-19 cases and other potential evidence. WHO officials have said that time is running out to examine blood samples and other important clues in China regarding when, how and where the pandemic started.
13th Oct 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Bill Gates Says World Must Increase Vaccine-Making Capacity

Bill Gates, whose foundation has focused efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic, said Wednesday that government and industry leaders around the world need to “get serious” about increasing vaccine-making capacity so that they can respond faster in the future. While changes to how the world allocates and shares doses can help, the ability to quickly make large volumes of mRNA vaccines can lesson the political tensions that can arise from scarcity, Gates wrote in his blog. “The world should have the goal of being able to make and deliver enough vaccines for everyone on the planet within six months of detecting a potential pandemic,” Gates said. “If we could do that, then the supply of doses would not be a limiting factor, and the way they were allocated would no longer be a matter of life and death.”
13th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

U.K.'s Vaccine Passport App Fails, Spoiling Trips From Heathrow

The U.K.’s vaccine-passport app temporarily failed on Wednesday, in the latest outage of government-run technology to disrupt travel. “There are currently issues with accessing the Covid Pass on the NHS App and website,” the National Health Service said in a tweet. “We are investigating the issue and will update as soon as we can.” Two hours later, the app was up and running again, according to a subsequent tweet sent just after 4 p.m. London time. Officials at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports said they saw no repeat of the backups that occurred twice in the past three weeks, when automated Border Force gates failed.
13th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Honeywell mandates COVID-19 shots at all U.S. offices

Honeywell International Inc said on Wednesday it will require employees at all its U.S. offices and some manufacturing locations to be vaccinated against COVID-19 under an executive order from President Joe Biden for federal contractors. Other government contractors including Boeing Co, International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N) and Raytheon Technologies Corp have also mandated vaccines, with the White House last month setting Dec. 8 as the vaccination deadline for millions of employees of federal contractors. "The vaccination mandate applies to all Honeywell locations within the U.S. and its territories that support U.S. government contract work.
13th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Union Pacific to comply with COVID vaccine deadline for U.S. workers

Union Pacific Corp said on Wednesday it will require its 31,000 U.S. employees to be vaccinated under President Joe Biden's executive order requiring that federal contractors mandate vaccines by Dec. 8, except for employees who receive an approved exemption. "As a federal contractor who ships goods supporting our nation's armed services, ... all employees are required to report their vaccination status or have an approved medical or religious accommodation by the federally mandated deadline," Union Pacific, the top U.S. railroad operator, said in a statement.
13th Oct 2021 - Reuters

U.S. COVID-19 vaccine rates up thanks to mandates; cases and deaths down -officials

Vaccination rates against COVID-19 in the United States have risen by more than 20 percentage points after multiple institutions adopted vaccine requirements, while case numbers and deaths from the virus are down, Biden administration officials said on Wednesday. White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters that 77% of eligible Americans had received at least one shot of a vaccine. Vaccination rates went up thanks to mandates put into place by private businesses, healthcare systems, social institutions and state and local governments, he said in a briefing.
13th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Malfunctioning NHS app for Covid vaccine status causes travel delays

Travellers have been blocked from boarding flights and ferries for trips abroad after a four-hour outage of England’s NHS app left people unable to access a Covid pass to prove their vaccine status. Hundreds tried to download information that many countries require before departure – including a QR code and details about the jabs they have had – but were told to “try again later”, sparking chaos and fury. The app and nhs.uk website began malfunctioning just before noon on Wednesday, and NHS Digital said the problem had been resolved by 4.30pm. It blamed the outage on “a technical issue with a global service provider that affected many different organisations”.
13th Oct 2021 - The Guardian

US ramps up vaccine diplomacy, China ramps up donations. What happens next?

Washington is ramping up international contributions but competition may not ease shortages in all developing countries. Poorer nations may receive vaccines from Beijing but not necessarily its influence, analysts say
13th Oct 2021 - South China Morning Post

Back from the brink: how Japan became a surprise Covid success story

Just days after the Tokyo Olympics drew to a close, Japan appeared to be hurtling towards a coronavirus disaster. On 13 August, the host city reported a record 5,773 new Covid-19 cases, driven by the Delta variant. Nationwide the total exceeded 25,000. Soaring infections added to resentment felt by a public that had opposed the Olympics, only to be told they could not watch events in person due to the pandemic. Hospitals were under unprecedented strain, the shortage of beds forcing thousands who had tested positive to recuperate – and in some cases die – at home. The then prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, who had ignored his own chief health adviser in pushing ahead with the Games, was forced to step down amid stubbornly low approval ratings. A state of emergency in the capital and other regions that had been in place for almost six months looked likely to be extended yet again.
13th Oct 2021 - The Guardian

South Korea launches panel to debate 'living with COVID-19'

South Korea established a panel on Wednesday to debate a strategy on how to "live with COVID-19" in the long-term, as the country seeks to phase out coronavirus restrictions and reopen the economy amid rising vaccination levels. Under the strategy, the government aims to relax coronavirus restrictions for citizens who can prove they have been fully vaccinated, while encouraging asymptomatic and mild COVID-19 patients aged below 70 to recover at home, the health ministry said last week. The government will also focus on the number of hospitalisations and deaths rather than new daily infections, and will consider not publishing the latter on a daily basis, Yonhap news agency has reported.
13th Oct 2021 - Reuters

US to reopen land borders in November for fully vaccinated

Beleaguered business owners and families separated by COVID-19 restrictions rejoiced Wednesday after the U.S. said it will reopen its land borders to nonessential travel next month, ending a 19-month freeze. Travel across land borders from Canada and Mexico has been largely restricted to workers whose jobs are deemed essential. New rules will allow fully vaccinated foreign nationals to enter the U.S. regardless of the reason starting in early November, when a similar easing of restrictions is set for air travel. By mid-January, even essential travelers seeking to enter the U.S., such as truck drivers, will need to be fully vaccinated. Shopping malls and big box retailers in U.S. border towns whose parking spaces had been filled by cars with Mexican license plates were hit hard by travel restrictions.
13th Oct 2021 - The Associated Press

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Australians Planning to Get Covid Vaccine More Optimistic: Westpac

Australian consumers who intend to get vaccinated are far more optimistic than those who don’t intend to have a jab, Westpac Banking Corp.’s October household sentiment survey showed. Respondents who are not vaccinated but intend to be recorded an index reading of 122 points, while those who aren’t vaccinated and don’t intend to be posted a reading of 84.8, Westpac’s monthly survey showed Wednesday. The overall consumer sentiment index slid 1.5% from last month to 104.6. “The confidence level of those not intending to get vaccinated has also fallen quite sharply in the last month,” said Bill Evans, chief economist at Westpac. “Encouragingly, the size of this group has fallen as well, accounting for only 6% of respondents in the October survey compared to 9% in September and just under 20% at the start of the year.”
13th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Covid: UK's early response worst public health failure ever, MPs say

The UK's failure to do more to stop Covid spreading early in the pandemic was one of the country's worst public health failures, a report by MPs says. The government approach - backed by its scientists - was to try to manage the situation and in effect achieve herd immunity by infection, it said. This led to a delay in introducing the first lockdown, costing thousands of lives, the MPs found. But their report highlighted successes too, including the vaccination rollout. It described the approach to vaccination - from the research and development through to the rollout of the jabs - as "one of the most effective initiatives in UK history".
12th Oct 2021 - BBC News

EU may consider deal on Merck's COVID pill after approval procedure begins -source

The European Union may consider signing a supply deal with U.S. drugmaker Merck for its experimental COVID-19 pill, but only after the company starts the process of seeking approval for the drug in the bloc, a senior EU official said on Tuesday. The oral antiviral treatment molnupiravir has been developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.
12th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Moderna's search for African site set to intensify - chairman

Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa could be potential locations for Moderna's planned vaccine factory in Africa, the U.S. drugmaker's co-founder and chairman said as it steps up its search for a site on the continent. Moderna said last week it would build a plant in Africa to produce up to 500 million doses of vaccines a year, including its COVID-19 shot, as pressure grows on pharmaceutical companies to manufacture drugs in lower-income countries.
12th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Covid Spread Was 8% Lower In Democrat-Led States Than GOP Because Of Stricter Restrictions, Study Finds

The peer-reviewed study, led by researchers at Binghamton University, determined a Public Health Protective Policy Index (PPI) that measured the “stringency” of states’ public health policies and analyzed those findings in relation to states’ Covid-19 transmission and the governors’ partisan affiliation. The researchers looked at Covid-19 rates and policies between March and November 2020, as well as when specific states’ Covid-19 cases peaked. Democratic-led states had a PPI that was approximately 10 points higher on average than states with GOP governors, though the study notes some Republican-led states like Maryland, Vermont and Massachusetts had stricter measures that were closer to the Democratic states.
12th Oct 2021 - Forbes

Thailand to reopen for some vaccinated tourists from November

Thailand plans to fully re-open to vaccinated tourists from countries deemed low risk from 1 November, the country’s leader said, citing the urgent need to save the kingdom’s ailing economy. Before the pandemic, Thailand attracted nearly 40 million visitors a year drawn to its picturesque beaches and robust nightlife, with tourism making up almost 20% of its national income. But Covid-related travel restrictions have left the economy battered, contributing to its worst performance in more than 20 years.
12th Oct 2021 - The Guardian

COVID-19: Thailand reopens to vaccinated UK travellers, as visiting dozens of destinations now easier after red list cut to just seven countries

Thailand will end quarantine for fully vaccinated UK travellers, as British COVID advice has been relaxed making it easier to visit almost 90 countries. Forty-seven nations were taken off the red list at 4am, meaning anyone arriving from places including South Africa, Brazil and Argentina no longer need to quarantine in a hotel.
12th Oct 2021 - Sky News

Covid and Age

Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University who frequently writes about parenting, published an article in The Atlantic in March that made a lot of people angry. The headline was, “Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma.” The article argued that Covid-19 tended to be so mild in children that vaccinated parents could feel comfortable going out in the world with their unvaccinated children.
12th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

COVID-19 curbs in Sydney could ease early amid surge in vaccinations

New South Wales could ease more restrictions in Sydney a week earlier than planned on Oct. 18 as Australia's most populous state races towards its 80% double-dose vaccination target, the government said on Wednesday. The southeastern state is expected to hit the mark over the weekend, beating forecasts, and officials previously promised to relax further restrictions on vaccinated residents on the first Monday after reaching that milestone. "If we hit 80%, we've always said it will be the Monday following," state Premier Dominic Perrottet told ABC Radio. "We will have this discussion with our team on Thursday and we will make a decision to be announced on Friday."
12th Oct 2021 - Reuters

COVID-19: 'A slap in the face' - Families of pandemic victims attack MPs' report and call for judge-led inquiry

Families of COVID-19 victims have attacked an MPs' report into government failings during the pandemic as "laughable" and a "slap in the face" - and say a judicial inquiry is needed to get to the truth. The report said decisions on lockdowns and social distancing early in the pandemic were "one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced" and cost thousands of lives. It said "groupthink" among officials meant chances to delay the spread of the virus were missed, and it was a "serious early error" not to lock down sooner.
12th Oct 2021 - Sky News

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Russian spy ‘stole Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine blueprint and used it to develop Sputnik jab’

Russian spies stole the blueprint for the Oxford/AstraZenecacoronavirus vaccine and used it to create their own Sputnik V jab, according to reports. UK security services have allegedly told ministers they now have solid proof an agent stole vital information from the pharmaceutical company, including the blueprint, according to The Sun. The late security minister James Brokenshire last year said Britain was “more than 95 per cent sure” Russian state-sponsored hackers had targeted the UK, US and Canada in attacks on drug companies.
12th Oct 2021 - The Independent

Covid response ‘one of UK’s worst ever public health failures’

Britain’s early handling of the coronavirus pandemic was one of the worst public health failures in UK history, with ministers and scientists taking a “fatalistic” approach that exacerbated the death toll, a landmark inquiry has found. “Groupthink”, evidence of British exceptionalism and a deliberately “slow and gradualist” approach meant the UK fared “significantly worse” than other countries, according to the 151-page “Coronavirus: lessons learned to date” report led by two former Conservative ministers. The crisis exposed “major deficiencies in the machinery of government”, with public bodies unable to share vital information and scientific advice impaired by a lack of transparency, input from international experts and meaningful challenge. Despite being one of the first countries to develop a test for Covid in January 2020, the UK “squandered” its lead and “converted it into one of permanent crisis”. The consequences were profound, the report says. “For a country with a world-class expertise in data analysis, to face the biggest health crisis in 100 years with virtually no data to analyse was an almost unimaginable setback.”
12th Oct 2021 - The Guardian

‘Extraordinary omission’: key findings in scathing UK Covid report

The joint report by the Commons health and science committees on lessons to be learned from the UK’s response to Covid spans 150 pages and is divided into six themes. Here are the main findings from each. The findings are damning
12th Oct 2021 - The Guardian

COVID-19: Report shows despite UK's vaccine success massive mistakes were made

The UK's independent inquiry into COVID-19 is due to launch in Spring 2022. Until then, this parliamentary report is the best assessment we are likely to get into the government's pandemic response. And putting aside the success of the vaccine and former health secretary Matt Hancock's "100,000 tests target", the cross-party committee's conclusions are damning. The government's initial "fatalistic" approach was "a serious early error". The test, trace and isolate system was "often chaotic" and "ultimately failed". Thousands of care home deaths "could have been avoided".
12th Oct 2021 - Sky News

Coronavirus: Can the flu and dengue case spike impact the third COVID wave?

Over the course of past weeks, the rising cases of flu, viral ailments, dengue have overtaken COVID to be the current prevailing health threats in the country. While COVID-19 remains to be a problem which we'll continue to face, bleak awareness about the flu vaccination, newer, potentially severe variants of the dengue causing DENV virus, reports of serious infections and lax measures have made us fear the ill-effects of twindemic, i.e., if two or more infectious diseases are to strike us together.
11th Oct 2021 - Times of India

Indonesia cuts quarantine to 5 days as borders reopen further

Southeast Asia’s largest economy will allow arrivals from 18 countries and reduce the minimum quarantine period to five days, from eight previously, said Luhut Panjaitan, coordinating minister for maritime and investment affairs who’s overseeing the pandemic response. He didn’t specify which are the 18 countries. The country has gradually eased border restrictions, starting with the resumption of offshore visa applications and followed by the reopening of tourist spot Bali to foreign visitors this week. People’s mobility has started to bounce back as cinemas and gyms are reopened, with daily Covid-19 case and fatality numbers continuing to ease to the lowest since June 2020.
11th Oct 2021 - Bangkok Post

Coronavirus: Moderna has no plans to share its Covid-19 vaccine recipe

Moderna has no plans to share the recipe for its Covid-19 vaccine because executives have concluded that scaling up the company’s own production is the best way to increase the global supply, the company’s chairman said Monday. In an interview with Associated Press, Noubar Afeyan also reiterated a pledge Moderna made a year ago not to enforce patent infringement on anyone else making a coronavirus vaccine during the pandemic. “We didn’t have to do that,” Afeyan said. “We think that was the responsible thing to do.” He added: “We want that to be helping the world.” The United Nations health agency has pressed US-based Moderna to share its vaccine formula. Afeyan said the company analysed whether it would be better to share the messenger RNA technology and determined that it could expand production and deliver billions of additional doses in 2022.
11th Oct 2021 - South China Morning Post

Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine Is World’s Preferred Shot

Countries from Latin America to the Middle East have lined up for the shot, driven by its effectiveness and ample supply, especially compared with Chinese and Russian rivals.
11th Oct 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Covid 19: 'Almost no one' in Australia medically exempt from coronavirus vaccinations - health expert

Australia's body for GPs has revealed just how tricky it will be for people to attain a legitimate digital Covid-19 vaccine exemption certificate, set to launch this month. Despite popular belief among vaccine-hesitant circles, they won't be handed out to people with chronic illnesses, auto-immune conditions, blood clotting disorders, allergies, or histories of strokes or heart attacks. In fact, "almost no one" in Australia will be eligible for an exemption, according to Professor Kristine Macartney, director of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS). The only people the three Covid vaccines available in Australia could be dangerous for are those with allergies to both polyethylene glycol (PEG) – contained in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines – and polysorbate 80, an ingredient of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Macartney told The Age newspaper.
11th Oct 2021 - New Zealand Herald

It's too soon to declare victory against Covid-19 ahead of the holidays, but these festivities are safe to resume, experts say

With holidays approaching, health experts said some festivities can start to return to a sense of normalcy -- but they also warned that Covid-19 isn't defeated yet. Experts said Sunday that outdoor trick-or-treating -- particularly for children who are vaccinated -- should be fine this year. "It's a good time to reflect on why it's important to get vaccinated. But go out there and enjoy Halloween as well as the other holidays that will be coming up," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN's Dana Bash Sunday.
11th Oct 2021 - CNN

COVID-19: Travel between UK and dozens of destinations now easier after red list cut to just seven countries

Forty-seven nations were taken off the red list at 4am, meaning anyone arriving from places including South Africa, Brazil and Argentina no longer need to quarantine in a hotel. In addition, advice against non-essential travel to a further 42 countries and territories has been lifted too. Now Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha said the country will gradually reopen, with quarantine requirements lifted for vaccinated visitors from ten low-risk countries -
11th Oct 2021 - Sky News

Sydney celebrates 'Freedom Day' after lockdown

Sydney's cafes, gyms and restaurants welcomed back fully vaccinated customers on Monday after nearly four months of lockdown, as Australia aims to begin living with the coronavirus and gradually reopen with high rates of inoculation. Gloria Tso reports.
11th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Sydney emerges from pandemic lockdown, beer in hand

The Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE BNTX -1.19% has emerged as the world’s vaccine of choice. From Latin America to the Middle East, dozens of governments are turning to the shot. Australia is now offering the vaccine, after shifting away from competitors. Turkey, the U.K. and Chile are providing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to people who took other shots. Demand rose so high in Argentina that the country rewrote a new vaccine-purchasing law so it could reach a deal with Pfizer.
11th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Sydney opens to vaccinated after 100-plus days of lockdown

Sydney hairdressers, gyms, cafés and bars reopened to fully vaccinated customers on Monday for the first time in more than 100 days after Australia’s largest city achieved a vaccination benchmark. Sydney planned to reopen on the Monday after 70% of the New South Wales state population aged 16 and older were fully vaccinated. By Monday, 73.5% of the target population was fully vaccinated and more than 90% have received at least one dose. Some businesses opened at midnight due to demand from people impatient to enjoy their freedom. More pandemic restrictions will be removed at the 80% benchmark, and New South Wales residents will be free to travel overseas for the first time since March last year.
11th Oct 2021 - The Associated Press

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As International Travel Returns, Confusion Over Coronavirus Vaccines Reigns

When Turkey was taken off Britain’s red list for travel last month, Sally Morrow, an English expatriate living in the Turkish capital of Ankara, rushed to her computer and booked flights to London, so that she could reunite with her ailing parents after more than six months apart. But soon after her ticket confirmation came through, Ms. Morrow, 47, read that the certificate she received when she was vaccinated in Turkey — with the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine — would not be accepted in Britain. As a result, Ms. Morrow would be required to quarantine for 10 days and take at least three negative coronavirus tests before being permitted to leave isolation there. “I had the Pfizer jab, the Rolls-Royce of vaccines, the exact same one as millions of Brits, yet I’m considered unvaccinated simply because I got my vaccine abroad,” Ms. Morrow said.
9th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

COVID-19 Special: Bolsonaro's Pandemic Failure

Brazilian President Bolsonaro called it "a little flu". Now his country has the highest coronavirus death toll after the United States. Infection and death rates are slowly easing but that's little consolation for the bereaved.
9th Oct 2021 - Deutsche Welle

The coronavirus pandemic is far from over

The goal for all countries is to make it to the blue section of the chart and stay there. Countries and territories in this section have reported no new cases for four weeks in a row. Currently, that is the case for five out of 188 countries and territories. How has the COVID-19 trend evolved over the past weeks? The situation has deteriorated slightly: 65 countries have reported more cases in the past two weeks compared with the previous 14 days. What is the current COVID-19 trend in my country? Based on the newly reported case numbers — which can reflect local outbreaks as well as the countrywide spread — in the past 28 days, countries and territories classify as follows:
9th Oct 2021 - DW (English)

New FDA chief can't come soon enough for beleaguered agency

Straining under a pandemic workload and battered by a string of public controversies, one of the leading agencies in the government’s fight against COVID-19 is finally on the verge of getting a new commissioner. After nearly nine months of searching, President Joe Biden says he’s close to naming his choice to lead the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees vaccines, drugs and tests. Former FDA officials and other experts say the decision cannot come soon enough for the agency’s beleaguered regulators. Thousands of FDA staffers are exhausted after racing for more than a year and a half to review products to battle the coronavirus, and the agency’s reputation for rigorous, science-based regulation has been threatened by contentious disputes over COVID-19 booster shots and an unproven new Alzheimer’s drug.
9th Oct 2021 - Associated Press

The Pandemic’s Toll on Women’s Careers

For all the change brought on by the pandemic, women in white-collar roles still made strides at nearly every level of U.S. companies last year, a comprehensive new study shows. The proportion of women in the corporate workforce didn’t decline significantly last year, and the number of women holding some senior roles increased, according to data from the 2021 Women in the Workplace report by McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.Org. But the report also found that women are experiencing higher rates of burnout than men, and are questioning whether they want to remain with their companies and on their existing career paths. Lareina Yee, a senior partner at McKinsey who previously served as the firm’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, and Rachel Thomas, Lean In’s co-founder and CEO, spoke separately with the Journal about some of the takeaways from this year’s report. Here are edited excerpts of the conversations.
9th Oct 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Latvia Declares Three-Month Covid State of Emergency

The Latvian government declared a three-month state of emergency after coronavirus infections hit a record and hospitalizations rose, the country’s public broadcaster reported. The state of emergency will start on Oct. 11, and will mandate vaccinations for public sector workers, restrictions on retail and bars and push more people to work from home. Latvia recorded a record 1,752 new Covid cases on Thursday, with more than 700 in the hospital.
9th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

U.S. will accept WHO-approved COVID-19 vaccines for international visitors

The United States will accept the use by international visitors of COVID-19 vaccines authorized by U.S. regulators or the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said late on Friday. On Sept. 20, the White House announced the United States in November would lift travel restrictions on air travelers from 33 countries including China, India, Brazil and most of Europe who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. It did not specify then which vaccines would be accepted. A CDC spokeswoman told Reuters Friday, "Six vaccines that are FDA authorized/approved or listed for emergency use by WHO will meet the criteria for travel to the U.S."
9th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Anxiety surged during pandemic, particularly among women - study

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in anxiety and major depressive disorders across the world, particularly among women and young people, a study published in the Lancet on Friday found. Young people suffered as school closures kept them away from friends, and many women found themselves bearing the brunt of household work and facing an increased risk of domestic violence, the researchers said. The study, led by academics at the University of Queensland, Australia, recorded 76 million additional cases of anxiety disorders and 53 million of major depressive disorder as COVID-19 spread in 2020.
8th Oct 2021 - Reuters

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Explainer: What researchers say about the long-term effects of COVID-19

The World Health Organization (WHO) this week issued a definition for "long COVID," a term used to describe the persistent health problems that affect some survivors of COVID-19. Scientists are still working to understand the syndrome. Here is what they know so far.
7th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Companies face pressure to act on vaccine mandates even as they wait for clear rules.

Last month, President Biden asked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to write rules that would require companies with more than 100 employees to mandate coronavirus vaccinations or weekly testing. But with OSHA still going through a lengthy rule-making process, which could take several more weeks, the White House is urging companies to act now. Several big employers have imposed mandates since Biden’s announcement, including 3M, Procter & Gamble and the airlines American, Alaska and JetBlue. IBM said on Thursday that it will require all of its U.S. employees to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8, regardless of how often they come into the office. It will allow for “limited” medical or religious exceptions.
7th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

How a Vaccine Mandate Could Worsen a Shortage of Home Care Aides

In the upstate city of Johnstown, north of Albany, two-thirds of the home health aides at one small agency have notified their director that they intend to quit rather than get vaccinated against the coronavirus, as they are required to do this week under a state mandate. At the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, the state’s largest home health care organization, about 400 workers are expected to be unable to work after the mandate takes effect. And in the New York City area, a union leader for home health care workers says he expects thousands of his members will be put on leave. “We need more time,” said Joe Pecora, the vice president of Home Healthcare Workers of America, a union that represents about 32,000 home health care workers in New York City and its suburbs. “It’s unrealistic to get all these people vaccinated by the deadline.”
7th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

Pfizer Asks F.D.A. to Authorize Its Covid-19 Vaccine for Children 5 to 11

Pfizer and BioNTech said on Thursday morning that they had asked federal regulators to authorize emergency use of their coronavirus vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, a move that could help protect more than 28 million people in the United States. The companies have said they were submitting data supporting the change to the Food and Drug Administration. The agency has promised to move quickly on the request and has tentatively scheduled a meeting on Oct. 26 to consider it. A ruling is expected between Halloween and Thanksgiving. “With new cases in children in the U.S. continuing to be at a high level, this submission is an important step in our ongoing effort against Covid-19,” Pfizer said on Thursday.
7th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

With Masks On or Off, Schools Try to Find the New Normal

Despite some turmoil, the vast majority of students have been in classrooms full-time and mostly uninterrupted this fall. Now, educators debate what’s next. Coronavirus infection rates declined 35 percent nationally through the month of September, as many schools opened their doors.Credit.
7th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

Covid Hospital Traffic in Some States Drops to Pre-Delta Levels

The U.S. is far from a full recovery from the latest Covid-19 wave, but some recent hot spots are getting close. In Florida, the seven-day average of new adult hospital admissions with Covid is about 469 a day. That’s just slightly above the level on May 13, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention significantly relaxed its masking guidance for fully vaccinated people -- a change that it reversed when the highly contagious delta variant ripped through the U.S. In at least eight other states and the nation’s capital, the numbers are below or close to May levels. There are other positive signs. The one-week average of new cases nationally has dropped 40% from its Sept. 21 peak, according to CDC data.
7th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

IBM Vaccine Mandate: Unvaxxed Employees Will Be Suspended in December

International Business Machines Corp. said all of its U.S.-based employees must be vaccinated by Dec. 8 or be put on unpaid suspension. The Armonk, New York-based company told workers that because it’s a government contractor, it’s required to adhere to President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors. IBM said the new mandate will apply to all U.S. employees regardless of where they work or how often they go into a company office and will offer “limited” medical or religious exemptions. The decision was prompted by “the continued spread of Covid-19, local clinical conditions around IBM sites, and the reality that vaccines are readily available nationwide,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.
7th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

WHO Wants Less Talk, More Action From Rich Nations on Doses

The World Health Organization called on countries with high vaccination rates to swap their places in line and prioritize the delivery of Covid-19 shots to lower-income nations. The WHO set out a strategy for countries to follow to reach a goal to inoculate 40% of the population in every nation in the world by the end of the year, and 70% by mid-2022. The health body urged countries with high vaccine coverage to change their vaccine delivery schedules for the coming months to make room for Covax, which will ensure countries in need can receive doses and catch up. Manufacturers should be transparent on total monthly production and schedules for supplies to Covax.
7th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Biden to tout vaccine mandates for large companies in Chicago trip

President Joe Biden on Thursday said more U.S. businesses should obligate workers to receive COVID-19 vaccinations, calling the move vital to ending the pandemic and sustaining the economy. "Today I'm calling on more employers to act," Biden said. "My message is: Require your employees to get vaccinated. With vaccinations, we're going to beat this pandemic finally. Without them, we face endless months of chaos in our hospitals, damage to our economy and anxiety in our schools."
7th Oct 2021 - Reuters

Malaysia’s vaccine roll-out success lifts coronavirus gloom

After 150 days in operation, one of Malaysia’s biggest Covid-19 vaccination centres shut its doors on Sunday, with over 1.2 million doses having been administered there. At its peak, the World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur – the country’s first mega Pusat Pemberian Vaksin (PPV or vaccination centre) was seeing some 18,000 doses administered daily. Vaccine tsar and health minister Khairy Jamaluddin wrote on Twitter that the centre was the “biggest workhorse” in the country’s national vaccination programme.
7th Oct 2021 - South China Morning Post

‘Reaching a detente’ with SARS-CoV-2: Helen Branswell on covering Covid-19, misinformation and more

On Wednesday, STAT senior writer Helen Branswell spoke with Seth Mnookin, director of the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing. The AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards sponsored the talk as part of its annual fall lecture series and in honor of Sharon Begley. Branswell spoke about Begley’s legacy, reporting on infectious diseases, and the past and future of the Covid-19 pandemic. Highlights from the conversation have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
6th Oct 2021 - STAT News

A New Vaccine Strategy for Children: Just One Dose, for Now

Even as parents in the United States wrestle with difficult questions over vaccinating their children against the coronavirus, families in other countries have been offered a novel option: giving children just one dose of the vaccine. Officials in Hong Kong as well as in Britain, Norway and other countries have recommended a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 12 and older — providing partial protection from the virus, but without the potential harms occasionally observed after two doses. Health officials in those countries are particularly worried about increasing data suggesting that myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, may be more common among adolescents and young adults after vaccination than had been thought.
6th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

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UK readying payment systems to charge for rapid COVID-19 testing -sources

Britain is aiming early next year to be ready to start charging for some previously free COVID-19 tests, two sources close to the health service said, a step one described as driven by the finance ministry's desire to rein in spending. The government and health officials have said that rapid testing, via easy-to-use lateral flow tests, is crucial for tracking the spread of COVID-19, with regular testing of those without symptoms identifying around a quarter of all cases.
7th Oct 2021 - Reuters

China Is Last Holdout on Covid-Zero Strategy

For much of the pandemic, a group of places in the Asia-Pacific brought infections to zero, becoming virus-free havens in a world ravaged by the pathogen. Now, with the rise of the delta variant and the proliferation of vaccines, only one is still holding fast to that goal of eliminating Covid-19: China. With New Zealand preparing to shift away from the zero-tolerance strategy, China’s isolation is complete, raising the stakes on how long it can stick to a playbook that requires closed borders, abrupt lockdowns, and repeated disruption of social and economic activity. One by one, Covid Zero places like Singapore and Australia have decided that the approach is unsustainable, pivoting instead to vaccination to protect people from serious illness and death while easing off on attempts to control the number of infections.
6th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

BofA Gives $200 to Merrill Staff Who Confirm Vaccination Status

Bank of America Corp. is offering $200 awards to Merrill Lynch Wealth Management branch employees who return to the workplace and confirm they’re fully vaccinated against Covid-19. The company will give the award to client associates, administrative support and operations staff “in recognition of the important work they are doing as the business has transitioned back into the office,” a Merrill spokesman said in a statement to Bloomberg News. While the new policy stops short of being a mandate like those put in place by United Airlines Holdings Inc. and Microsoft Corp., Bank of America is following other U.S. companies in providing a financial incentive to get the shots. Delta Air Lines Inc. is imposing a $200 monthly surcharge on employees who aren’t vaccinated.
6th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Sweden, Denmark pause Moderna COVID jabs for younger age groups

Sweden and Denmark have said they will pause the use of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for younger age groups after reports of possible rare side effects, such as myocarditis. The Swedish health agency said on Wednesday it would pause using the shot for people born in 1991 and after as data pointed to an increase of myocarditis and pericarditis among youths and young adults that had been vaccinated. Those conditions involve an inflammation of the heart or its lining. “The connection is especially clear when it comes to Moderna’s vaccine Spikevax, especially after the second dose,” the health agency said in a statement, adding the risk of being affected was very small. Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, said the health agency would continue to “follow the situation closely and act quickly to ensure that vaccinations against COVID-19 are always as safe as possible and at the same time provide effective protection” against the disease.
6th Oct 2021 - AlJazeera

The stages of pandemic emotion: from horror to hope to rage — and now, an anxious optimism

The first days of summer this year saw Americans jubilant, as Covid-19 cases plummeted across the country. The sentiment morphed to anger as the Delta variant exploded, and as vaccine holdouts prolonged the pain of the pandemic — and then to despair, that even with remarkably protective shots, some communities with low vaccine coverage endured their worst stretches of the crisis. Now, with trend lines heading in the right direction, we’re moving toward a kind of timid optimism. “People are almost holding their breath,” said Columbia University epidemiologist Wafaa El-Sadr. “They’re encouraged, but at the same time, they’re hypervigilant. It’s really a result of prior experiences.” There are reasons to allow, at least partially, for an exhale. The Southern states that witnessed horrific summertime waves have seen them subside, after the Delta variant swept through so many of the people who remained susceptible. Nationally, cases have fallen by a third in recent weeks, and have been dropping for enough time that now deaths are coming down. Hospitalizations have declined to below 75,000 for the first time in weeks. All those metrics got so high, however, that they have quite a ways to plunge to reach the levels of June.
6th Oct 2021 - STAT News

Los Angeles requires proof of vaccination to enter many businesses, one of the nation’s strictest rules.

Los Angeles will require most people to provide proof of full coronavirus vaccination to enter a range of indoor businesses, including restaurants, gyms, museums, movie theaters and salons, in one of the nation’s strictest vaccine rules. The new law, which was approved by the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday, will allow people with medical conditions that do not allow them to be vaccinated, or who have a sincerely held religious objection, to instead show proof of a negative coronavirus test taken within the preceding 72 hours. It will take effect on Nov. 4, which city officials have said should give the city and businesses enough time to figure out how the rule should be enforced.
6th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

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Arizona can't use COVID money for anti-mask grants, feds say

The Biden administration on Tuesday ordered Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to stop using the state’s federal pandemic funding on a pair of new education grants that can only be directed to schools without mask mandates. In a letter to Ducey, the Treasury Department said the grant programs are “not a permissible use” of the federal funding. It’s the latest attempt by the Biden administration to push back against Republican governors who have opposed mask mandates and otherwise sought to use federal pandemic funding to advance their own agendas. Ducey, a Republican, created the grant programs in August to put pressure on school districts that have defied the state’s ban on mask mandates.
5th Oct 2021 - The Associated Press

How has COVID-19 affected Australia’s homeless?

When Melbourne went into lockdown between March and October last year, the city’s rough sleepers were considered to be at high risk. Without a secure and isolated place in which to lock down, the concern was that they could easily catch and transmit COVID-19. The Victorian government responded by providing funding for people experiencing homelessness to access hotel rooms across the city, which were empty due to the lack of tourists. Dave Lovelock is an outreach worker at Launch Housing, a not-for-profit organisation that assists people experiencing homelessness. Launch Housing are one of a number of similar organisations who were involved with the government hotel programme due to their close connections with rough sleepers. Dave Lovelock’s job was to scour the streets to find people who were at risk of rough sleeping during the pandemic and offer them a place to stay at one of the designated hotels.
5th Oct 2021 - Al Jazeera English

AstraZeneca Submits Preventive Covid-19 Treatment for FDA Authorization

The company asked U.S. regulators for emergency-use authorization for an antibody drug that earlier this year showed strong efficacy in preventing symptomatic Covid-19, offering a potential alternative in evading the disease.
5th Oct 2021 - Wall Street Journal

English Schools Drop Mask Mandates, but Questions Rise Along With Cases

England took a high-stakes gamble when it sent millions of students back to school last month with neither vaccines nor a requirement to wear face masks, even as the coronavirus continued to course through the population. On Tuesday, the country’s Education Department issued its latest report card on how the plan is working: 186,000 students were absent from school on Sept. 30 with confirmed or suspected cases of the virus, 78 percent more than the number reported on Sept. 16, and the highest number since the pandemic began. Yet to hear many parents tell it, the bigger risk would have been to force the students to keep wearing masks or, worse, to keep them home.
5th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

EU Panel May Start Accelerated Review of Merck's Covid Pill

A European Union advisory committee will consider starting an accelerated review for Merck & Co.’s experimental antiviral pill against Covid-19 following the company’s announcement last week that it will seek emergency-use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as soon as possible. The panel will consider starting a “rolling review” in coming days, Marco Cavaleri, the head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy at the European Medicines Agency, said at a press briefing Tuesday. That’s a procedure where data is evaluated as it becomes available to speed up the process. Merck’s new drug, molnupiravir, has led to optimism about the course of the pandemic after early studies show the drug has the potential to cut the rate of hospitalization and death by around 50% in mild to moderate Covid patients.
5th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

'It's Like There's No Covid': Booster Shots Bring Tel Aviv Back to Life

Tel Aviv’s mayor has a message for cities struggling to reopen: Covid booster shots are allowing his city to roar back to life. The mass distribution of third shots in Israel has driven down new cases and hospital admissions, allowing restaurants and shops to fill up with customers. New variants of the disease could change the pandemic’s trajectory again, but for now, the boosters are working, Mayor Ron Huldai said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “On the streets of Tel Aviv now, it’s like there’s no Covid,” said Huldai, 77, who has run Tel Aviv for more than two decades since he was elected in 1998. He said 99% of city workers are vaccinated.
5th Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Australia won’t welcome foreign tourists until at least 2022

Foreign tourists won’t be welcomed back to Australia until at least next year, the prime minister said Tuesday as he outlined plans for lifting some of the toughest and longest COVID-19 travel restrictions imposed by any democracy. The country will instead prioritize the return of skilled migrants and students after it hits Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s benchmark for reopening its external borders: the full vaccination of 80% of the population aged 16 and older. It is expected to reach that point Tuesday. The news comes just days after Morrison announced plans to allow vaccinated citizens and permanent residents to fly overseas from November for the first time since March 2020.
5th Oct 2021 - The Associated Press

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Italian studies show COVID-19 shots less effective in immunocompromised

COVID-19 vaccines are less effective on people with weakened immune systems, three small Italian studies show, which the studies' researchers say highlight the need to deploy booster shots for this group of vulnerable people. The studies show that, on average, 30% of immunocompromised patients do not develop immunity to the virus after vaccination. The remaining 70% respond to the vaccine, especially after the second dose, but to a lesser extent than healthy people and with differences from group to group, the Bambino Gesu Hospital in Rome, which conducted the three small studies, said in a statement on Monday.
4th Oct 2021 - Reuters

In Alaska’s Covid Crisis, Doctors Must Decide Who Lives and Who Dies

There was one bed coming available in the intensive care unit in Alaska’s largest hospital. It was the middle of the night, and the hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, had been hit with a deluge of coronavirus patients. Doctors now had a choice to make: Several more patients at the hospital, most of them with Covid-19, were in line to take that last I.C.U. spot. But there was also someone from one of the state’s isolated rural communities who needed to be flown in for emergency surgery. Who should get the final bed? Dr. ​​Steven Floerchinger gathered with his colleagues for an agonizing discussion. They had a better chance of saving one of the patients in the emergency room, they determined. The other person would have to wait.
4th Oct 2021 - The New York Times

Thailand joins Asian nations in rush to buy Merck's COVID-19 pill

Thailand's government is in talks with Merck & Co (MRK.N) to buy 200,000 courses of its experimental antiviral pill for COVID-19 treatment, the latest Asian nation to scramble for supplies of the drug after lagging behind Western countries for vaccines. Somsak Akksilp, director-general of the Department of Medical Services, told Reuters that Thailand is currently working on a purchasing agreement for the antiviral drug, known as molnupiravir. South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia said they are alsoin talks to buy the potential treatment, while the Philippines, which is running a trial on the pill, said it hopes its domestic study would allow access to the treatment.
4th Oct 2021 - Reuters

COVID-19: Amber list and UK's traffic light system for international travel scrapped as rules simplified

The UK's traffic light system for travel has been scrapped and replaced with just two categories - countries on the red list and everywhere else. The number of countries on the red list - currently 54 - is expected to be cut to as few as nine, with places such as South Africa, and Mexico expected to become available to quarantine-free travel. People arriving in the UK fully vaccinated against COVID-19 - and everyone under 18 - will also see changes.
4th Oct 2021 - Sky News

New Zealand drops COVID-19 elimination strategy under pressure from Delta

New Zealand on Monday abandoned its long-standing strategy of eliminating coronavirus amid a persistent Delta outbreak, and will instead look to live with the virus and control its spread as its vaccination rate rises. The Pacific nation was among just a handful of countries to bring COVID-19 cases down to zero last year and largely stayed virus-free until an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant in mid-August frustrated efforts to stamp out transmission. "With this outbreak and Delta the return to zero is incredibly difficult," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a news conference in a major policy shift.
4th Oct 2021 - Reuters

How Merck's antiviral pill could change the game for COVID-19

A new drug by Merck significantly reduces the risk of hospitalisation and death in people who take it early in the course of their COVID-19 illness, according to the interim results of a major U.S. study released last week. It is the first oral antiviral found to be effective against this coronavirus. People who took this drug, called molnupiravir—four pills twice a day for five days—within five days of showing symptoms were about half as likely to be hospitalised as those taking the placebo. They were also less likely to die, with eight deaths in the placebo group reported within a month of treatment and none in those who received the medicine.
4th Oct 2021 - National Geographic

MUSC says COVID-19 hospitalizations in children is higher than it's ever been

On Oct. 4, the Medical University of South Carolina’s Shawn Jenkins Children Hospital reported that the number of children admitted with COVID-19 in August and September proved to be the highest two-month total of the pandemic. In that time frame, 74 kids were admitted, making up 40 percent of all coronavirus-related admissions since the start of the pandemic. The surge doesn’t stop there. In September, the hospital reported the number of kids suffering from multisystem inflammatory syndrome, an often life-threatening COVID complication, nearly doubled the previous monthly high for the pandemic. Cases during that month accounted for nearly 25 percent of all total cases at MUSC Children’s Health since the start of the pandemic.
4th Oct 2021 - Charleston Post Courier

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BioNTech chief predicts need for updated Covid vaccines next year

In an interview with the FT, Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech, told the Financial Times the Covid-19 variants currently in circulation, particularly the Delta strain, were more contagious but not different enough to undermine the effectiveness of current vaccines. Booster shots seem able to tackle the main variants, Sahin said. But the virus will eventually develop mutations that can escape the immune response bestowed by the vaccine, he said, necessitating a “tailored” version to specifically target the new strain. “This virus will stay, and the virus will further adapt,” he said. “We have no reason to assume that the next generation virus will be easier to handle for the immune system than the existing generation. This is a continuous evolution, and that evolution has just started.”
3rd Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Britain’s Covid infection rate is one of the worst in the world, data reveals

Britain’s current Covid infection rate is by far the highest in western Europe and is only exceeded by a handful of countries around the world, latest research reveals. The UK’s average daily reported cases on stood at 52 per 100,000 population on Friday, according to the respected Johns Hopkins University in the US. That puts the country 14th out of more than 200 states in a global list of Covid infection rates – well above the likes of the US, Canada and the whole of western Europe, as well as other former global “hotspots” such as India and Brazil. A total of 191,771 people tested positive for Covid in England in the week to 22 September, a rise of 18 per cent on the week before, it was revealed on Thursday.
2nd Oct 2021 - Evening Standard

In Portugal, There Is Virtually No One Left to Vaccinate

Portugal’s health care system was on the verge of collapse. Hospitals in the capital, Lisbon, were overflowing and the authorities were asking people to treat themselves at home. In the last week of January, nearly 2,000 people died as the virus spread. The country’s vaccine program was in a shambles, so the government turned to Vice Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a former submarine squadron commander, to right the ship. Eight months later, Portugal is among the world’s leaders in vaccinations, with roughly 86 percent of its population of 10.3 million fully vaccinated. About 98 percent of all of those eligible for vaccines — meaning anyone over 12 — have been fully vaccinated, Admiral Gouveia e Melo said.
2nd Oct 2021 - The New York Times

Return to Covid restrictions as hundreds of schools told to ‘prepare for bubbles’

At least two councils have told schools to reintroduce some Covid measures as cases threaten to spiral out of control. Schools in Staffordshire have been issued with new guidance including the reintroduction of classroom bubbles and face coverings in crowded places after infections increased by nearly a third in the past week. Wolverhampton secondary school pupils have also been told to wear masks in communal areas as councils take it upon themselves to tackle the latest outbreaks. All compulsory measures were scrapped by the government for the start of the latest term, with schools able to operate mostly as normal.
2nd Oct 2021 - Metro

Indonesia Eyes 10000-Strong Event in Test of Life With Virus

As many as 10,000 people attended the opening ceremony of Indonesia’s first major sports event since its worst Covid-19 outbreak -- a test of its strategy of living with the virus. The national sporting week called PON started Saturday at the newly renovated stadium in the eastern city of Jayapura, with the number of spectators meeting the 25% maximum capacity set by the domestic affairs ministry. Spectators have to be tested before entering the venue, wear masks and maintain social distancing, according to the ministry. Normal activities are starting to return in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy as its coronavirus cases and deaths are brought under control. That’s a stark contrast to just a month ago, when the country was reporting the world’s highest number of coronavirus deaths each day. The country added 1,414 cases on Saturday and 89 deaths from the virus.
2nd Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

Anti-Vaxxers Aren't Quitting Over Vaccine Mandates

It turns out most of them would rather be inoculated than unemployed.
1st Oct 2021 - Bloomberg

S.African president Ramaphosa eases COVID-19 restrictions to lowest level

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has eased restrictions aimed at combating the coronavirus pandemic to the country's lowest alert level, the second such loosening this month as the country looks to open up its economy ahead of the summer holiday season. In a televised address, Ramaphosa announced the country would move down one level in a five-tier system of restrictions, where five is the highest, to an 'adjusted level 1' as South Africa emerges from its third wave dominated by the Delta variant of the virus.
1st Oct 2021 - Reuters

New Zealand's Auckland logs more Delta cases ahead of key decision on restrictions

New Zealand logged 19 more cases of the highly infectious Delta coronavirus variant on Friday - all in Auckland, making it highly likely that the country's biggest city will continue to be sealed off even if some restrictions are eased next week. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern enforced what was meant to be a "short and sharp" nationwide lockdown nationwide in mid-August after the Delta outbreak. But while the rest of the country has largely returned to normal life, Auckland's population of 1.7 million has now been in lockdown for about seven weeks.
1st Oct 2021 - Reuters

Fire at Romanian COVID-19 hospital kills seven people

Seven people died on Friday when a fire broke out in a Romanian intensive care unit treating COVID-19 patients, officials said, the country's third deadly hospital fire in less than a year. Video footage showed patients jumping out of windows from the hospital's lower levels and firefighters carrying people out. The country's emergency response unit had initially said nine people had died, but Transport Minister Lucian Bode later said there had been a miscommunication between firefighters and hospital staff.
1st Oct 2021 - Reuters

Get a friend vaccinated and eat out on us, Swiss govt tells citizens

Swiss citizens who persuade their friends to get COVID-19 shots can look forward to a free restaurant meal or cinema outing courtesy of the state, under a scheme aimed at boosting the country's low vaccination rate. Switzerland has witnessed numerous anti-vaxxer protests and 42% of its 8.7 million population are not yet fully vaccinated, relatively high by European standards. Announcing what he admitted was an unusual incentive scheme to bring that number down, Health Minister Alain Berset told a news conference in Bern: "The immunisation rate ...remains very low and this means we cannot end containment measures."
1st Oct 2021 - Reuters

Global COVID-19 deaths hit 5 million as Delta variant sweeps the world

Worldwide deaths related to COVID-19 surpassed 5 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, with unvaccinated people particularly exposed to the virulent Delta strain. The variant has exposed the wide disparities in vaccination rates between rich and poor nations, and the upshot of vaccine hesitancy in some western nations. More than half of all global deaths reported on a seven-day average were in the United States, Russia, Brazil, Mexico and India.
1st Oct 2021 - Reuters

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My patients in Melbourne tell me how they caught Covid, and the reasons leave me sad and frustrated

When I do my ward round on my patients with Covid, I don’t ask them why they aren’t vaccinated. I don’t ask them how they caught Covid. My role is to provide caring, compassionate non-judgmental care. But sometimes people tell me unprompted and the reasons leave me feeling sad and frustrated for the inequality in our health system. Many of my patients don’t speak much English, and since I am monolingual, we rely on phone calls with family members to help us communicate. We always ask how everyone else in the household is. One patient told me they live with seven people and all have Covid. In our hospital, there are multiple families with more than one person who has been admitted.
30th Sep 2021 - The Guardian

AP-NORC poll: Virus fears linger for vaccinated older adults

Bronwyn Russell wears a mask anytime she leaves her Illinois home, though she wouldn’t dream of going out to eat or to hear a band play, much less setting foot on a plane. In Virginia, Oliver Midgette rarely dons a mask, never lets COVID-19 rouse any worry and happily finds himself in restaurants and among crowds. She is vaccinated. He is not. In a sign of the starkly different way Americans view the coronavirus pandemic, vaccinated older adults are far more worried about the virus than the unvaccinated and far likelier to take precautions despite the protection afforded by their shots, according to a new poll out Wednesday from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
30th Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

Vaccine apartheid: The Global South fights back

Could the rich world’s obscene selfishness on vaccine equality ultimately help bring about a fairer economy? If we fight for it. When diplomats start speaking like campaigners, you know geopolitics is starting to shift. This week United Nations chief Antonio Guterres lectured world leaders on the disgraceful state of vaccine inequality, calling it “a moral indictment of the state of our world. It is an obscenity.” A fortnight earlier, World Health Organization head Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the press: “I will not stay silent when the companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think the world’s poor should be satisfied with leftovers.”
30th Sep 2021 - Al Jazeera English

France orders anyone aged 12 and older to show Covid 'health pass' to enter public sites in bid to stave off winter coronavirus flare-up

Policy is an extension of 'health pass' already in place for adults for two months The pass proves vaccination, a recent negative test or a recovery from the virus French President Macron introduced the pass for adults in July, sparking rallies But it also triggered millions of people to get the jab after holding out for months
30th Sep 2021 - Daily Mail

Beijing 2022 presents COVID-19 protocol to IOC

International spectators will be barred from the Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics, while all the Games' participants are encouraged to be fully vaccinated, according to Beijing 2022's COVID-19-prevention policies. The Beijing 2022 Organizing Committee on Wednesday presented its key COVID-19 countermeasures for the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) during an IOC executive board meeting chaired by President Thomas Bach, in the presence of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) President Andrew Parsons, outlining its principles regarding key policies, including vaccination, Games-time closed-loop management, spectators and ticketing. All athletes and Games participants who are fully vaccinated will enter the closed-loop management system, or known as "bio-secure bubbles", upon arrival, according to a press release from Beijing 2022. Games participants who are not fully vaccinated will have to enter a 21-day quarantine upon arrival in Beijing.
30th Sep 2021 - China Daily

How Denmark beat Covid and lifted all restrictions, and the lessons the UK can learn

Denmark appears to have defeated Covid-19, with low infection rates, 75 per cent of the population fully vaccinated and normality returning after all restrictions were lifted this month. The country is recording 367 new infections on average each day compared with 34,241 in the UK. Crucially, the Danes had the “highest level of optimism” and “lowest levels of concern” of eight countries including the UK surveyed in the Hope Project, a global initiative led by Danish universities.
30th Sep 2021 - iNews

End of Covid-19 Jobs Program to Test U.K. Recovery

European capitals spent big on wage subsidies to prevent job losses at the start of the pandemic. A U.K. experiment in preventing mass layoffs is coming to an end, in a test of how quickly economies can reabsorb workers idled by the pandemic and wean companies off government support. The closure Thursday of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme marks the first big move by a European government to step back from the emergency economic policies in place since the virus swept the continent last year.
30th Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

EU wants to extend looser state aid rules for virus-hit companies to mid-2022

The European Commission on Thursday proposed extending looser state aid rules for virus-hit companies for six months to June 2022 in a bid to slowly wean them off the billions of euros provided by governments across the European Union. The EU executive, tasked with ensuring a level playing field in the 27-country bloc, also proposed two new measures to encourage investment support and solvency support for a limited time to help Europe rebound from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The so-called Temporary Framework, adopted in March last year and due to expire at the end of this year, has allowed EU countries to pump in more than 3 trillion euros to thousands of companies across the bloc.
30th Sep 2021 - Reuters

European Countries Are at Risk of Autumn Covid Surge, ECDC Says

European countries with lower vaccination rates could see a surge in Covid-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths over the next two months, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The EU agency, in its latest Rapid Risk Assessment, said the virus’s high level of circulation within the population puts poorly inoculated countries in the EU and European Economic Area at risk between now and the end of November. The group also cited the concern that even vaccinated people can experience severe outcomes from infection.
30th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Vaccine Mandates Reach 25% of U.S. Companies After Biden Order

One in four companies has instituted a vaccine mandate for U.S. workers, a sharp increase from last month, following President Joe Biden’s directive ordering large employers to require shots or weekly testing. Another 13% of companies plan to put a mandate in place, Brian Kropp, chief of human-resources research at consultant Gartner, said in a panel discussion Thursday. The firm’s findings are based off a survey of roughly 400 organizations.
30th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

How Asia, Once a Vaccination Laggard, Is Revving Up Inoculations

The turnabout is as much a testament to the region’s success in securing supplies and working out the kinks in their programs as it is to vaccine hesitancy and political opposition in the United States. South Korea, Japan and Malaysia have even pulled ahead of the United States in the number of vaccine doses administered per 100 people — a pace that seemed unthinkable in the spring. Several have surpassed the United States in fully vaccinating their populations or are on track to do so, limiting the perniciousness of the Delta variant of the coronavirus
30th Sep 2021 - The New York Times

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PAHO says in advanced talks to buy more COVID vaccines

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Wednesday it is in advanced talks with vaccine makers to buy additional COVID-19 shots for its member states to complement bilateral deals, donations, and doses they are receiving via the COVAX mechanism. PAHO has reached an agreement with Chinese vaccine maker Sinovac, and is expecting to sign new accords soon to buy vaccines with emergency use listing approval from other suppliers for 2021 and 2022, PAHO Director Carissa Etienne said.
29th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Floundering private sales of vaccines in India deal blow to Russia's Sputnik V

Some of India's private hospitals have cancelled orders for Russia's Sputnik V vaccine as they struggle to sell COVID-19 shots amid surging supplies of free doses of other vaccines offered by the government. Industry officials said low demand and the extremely cold storage temperatures required have spurred at least three big hospitals to cancel orders for Sputnik V, sold only on the private market in the world's biggest vaccine-producing country. "With storage and everything, we have cancelled our order for 2,500 doses," said Jitendra Oswal, a senior medical official at Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College and Hospital in the western city of Pune
29th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Covid-19 in South America: Vaccine Rollout Led to Big Drop in Cases

South America, exceptionally hard-hit by Covid-19, is seeing a sudden drop in cases and deaths, apparently from rapid and thorough vaccines on the heels of a horrific wave that provided antibodies to those it didn’t kill. Over a seven-day period, the continent now makes up 6% of cases and 9% of deaths, the lowest since the start of the pandemic. At its peak in June, it represented 38% of global infections and 44% of fatalities. One peculiarity of the continent is that the delta variant upending plans from Asia to the U.S. hasn’t found traction there. It had similarly contagious mutations, known as gamma and lambda, and their presence may be keeping delta at bay and extending immunity. This is distinct from Mexico, Central America and Cuba, where delta has taken hold and the other two hadn’t.
29th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

A winter with twin threats of Covid-19 and flu will require adjustments to daily life, says former FDA commissioner

The US is bracing for a combination of threats this winter as both the flu and Covid-19 spread, and the country will likely have to change daily life to cope with both, an expert said. "I think the twin threats of this pathogen and the flu circulating every winter, as coronaviruses settle into a more seasonal pattern, is going to be too much for society to bear," former US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, told CNN's Jake Tapper. "I think we're going to have to readjust how we live our lives." Covid-19 cases have been driven up by the more transmissible Delta variant, but Gottlieb said last week that this could be the last major wave of infection the country sees. But that depends on enough people obtaining protection from either infection or vaccination, he added.
29th Sep 2021 - CNN

COVID-19: Cruise ship industry faces calls to prevent spread of infectious diseases after pandemic

The billion dollar industry is being urged to carry out "more monitoring" of the major health impacts that cruising can potentially cause for passengers.
29th Sep 2021 - Sky

COVID-19: Boris Johnson commits to appointing chair of public inquiry by Christmas as he meets bereaved families

Boris Johnson has promised families who lost loved ones to coronavirus that a chair of the public inquiry will be appointed by Christmas, as he was accused of adding "insult to injury" by delaying meeting them for more than a year. The prime minister held talks with members of COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice in Downing Street on Tuesday. In May, he announced an independent public inquiry into the government's handling of the pandemic will begin in the spring of next year.
29th Sep 2021 - Sky News

UK’s Johnson says COVID bereaved will have role in inquiry

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday he will appoint a chair this year to the planned public inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic and that bereaved families will have a role in the proceedings. Following a “very emotional” meeting with the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, Johnson said the experiences of those who have suffered a loss during the pandemic would form a major part of the public inquiry. “And obviously, there’s very little I could say to mitigate their own suffering,” he said. “But what I did say was that we were determined to make sure that the experience of the bereaved was something we took account of.” The event, which took place more than a year after the prime minister promised to meet the bereaved, lasted just over an hour and took place outside at the request of the families. Five members of the group, which included co-founder Jo Goodman, shared how their loved ones caught the virus and died.
28th Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

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Vaccine Mandate Leads Thousands of New York Health Workers to Get Vaccinated

When New York State officials issued a sweeping coronavirus vaccine mandate for health care workers in August, they expressed confidence that it would pressure reluctant doctors, nurses and support staff to get the shot. On Monday, as the deadline for vaccinations for about 600,000 nursing home and hospital workers arrived, it seemed that bet had proved to be at least partially correct. With just days or even hours to spare, thousands of health care workers got inoculated, according to health officials across the state.
28th Sep 2021 - New York Times

Behind Israel’s Swift Rollout of Covid-19 Vaccine Boosters

In late July, dozens of Israeli scientists and government health officials were locked in a marathon video call where they examined new data indicating that the effectiveness of the Covid vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE was waning. Infections from the new Delta variant were increasing, and growing numbers of people were falling seriously ill, even those who had had both shots of the vaccine. Lives were potentially on the line. Within days of the midnight vote that decided to distribute a third shot, the first of millions of booster shots were administered, months before the U.S. or any other country would take the same step. “It was a really tough discussion,” said epidemiologist Gili Regev-Yochay, who presented key research on the effectiveness of booster shots. “[But] it was a decision that was reached essentially with one voice.”
28th Sep 2021 - Wall Street Journal

New York's Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates Are Working, Officials Say

New York Governor Kathy Hochul says a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for health workers that went into effect this week is working to boost vaccination rates, providing a road map to other states that are trying to fight the highly transmissible delta variant. About 92% of nursing home staff in New York had received at least one vaccine dose as of Monday evening, up from 82% on Sept. 20 and 71% when Hochul was sworn in on Aug. 24, according to the governor’s office. And 85% of hospital staff were fully inoculated, up from 84% on Sept. 22 and 77% on Aug. 24, according to state data.
28th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Defying Delta: Back to school goes better than feared

School for children in many nations has been underway for more than a month and fears the Delta coronavirus variant would derail in-person learning have largely proven unfounded. In a dozen countries with high vaccination rates in Asia, Europe and the United States, case rates that surged in August have mostly fallen back, according to local data and officials. The jury is out on how much this is due to seasonal factors amid a global decline in cases, and how much it is linked to vaccinations and other preventative measures. Public health experts say they will continue to watch for signs of an increase in cases as winter approaches.
28th Sep 2021 - Reuters

COVID-19: Scotland delays enforcement of vaccine passport scheme

Scotland's new vaccine passport scheme for entry into nightclubs and large events will not be enforced until two weeks after it is introduced. From 5am on Friday, people going to venues open after midnight with alcohol, music and dancing will need proof they have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. But First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said venues which fail to obey the new rules will not face punishment for another 17 days. Ms Sturgeon said she had made the change after listening to the "reasonable concerns of business".
28th Sep 2021 - Sky News

Covid-19: Unlocking options 'limited' by jab passport delay

In Northern Ireland, a delay by the executive in agreeing a Covid-19 vaccine certification policy has "significantly limited" the options for easing restrictions, the health minister has said. In a letter to the first and deputy first ministers, Robin Swann said he was frustrated by the lack of progress. He asked as a "matter of urgency" that the Executive Office brings forward a paper "without further delay". He said people would lose out if that did not happen. The absence of vaccine certification could leave them disadvantaged "when they travel to neighbouring jurisdictions where such schemes are mandatory", he said
28th Sep 2021 - BBC News

Boris Johnson meets with members of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families group for first time... 18 months after first death to the virus was recorded in UK

Boris Johnson is meeting a group of families bereaved by coronavirus - more than a year after he first promised to do so - with the PM to be told by campaigners: 'If we'd been listened to - other lives might have been spared'. The Prime Minister held a private meeting with members of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group in the Downing Street garden this afternoon, with each person attending carrying an A4 photo of the loved-one they lost. Families have asked for it to take place outdoors with social distancing and said they would tell Mr Johnson how their loved ones caught the virus and died, and repeat their calls for a public inquiry to start.
28th Sep 2021 - Daily Mail

Sydney's unvaccinated warned of social isolation when COVID-19 lockdown ends

Sydney residents who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 risk being barred from various social activities even when they are freed from stay-at-home orders in December, New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned. Under a roadmap to exit lockdown in Australia's biggest city, unvaccinated people are already subject to delays in freedoms that will be gradually granted to inoculated residents between Oct. 11 and Dec. 1. Berejiklian said people who choose not to be vaccinated could be barred entry to shops, restaurants and entertainment venues even after the state lifts all restrictions against them on Dec. 1.
28th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Brazil hospital chain hid COVID-19 deaths, whistleblowers' lawyer tells Senate

A Brazilian hospital chain tested unproven drugs on elderly COVID-19 patients without their knowledge as part of an effort to validate President Jair Bolsonaro's preferred 'miracle cure,' a lawyer for whistleblowing doctors told senators on Tuesday. At least nine people died of COVID-19 during the trials at the Prevent Senior hospital chain from March to April 2020, but their charts were altered to hide the cause of death, lawyer Bruna Morato told a Senate inquiry. Prevent Senior rejected the accusations as unfounded and said it had "rigorously reported" all deaths. It added in a statement that 7% of the 56,000 COVID-19 patients it treated had died, a better record that other public and private hospitals.
28th Sep 2021 - Reuters

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How France Overcame Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy

The French have long been wary of vaccines, but a mixture of mandates and inducements encouraged millions to get the shot as the Delta variant spread.
27th Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Crowdsourced Covid Antiviral Project Gets $11 Million in Funding

A crowdsourced effort to design a Covid-19 pill won 8 million pounds ($11 million) in funding from the Wellcome Trust, a significant boost for a project that aims to make a low-cost antiviral broadly available. The project, called Covid Moonshot, started with locked-down scientists around the world sharing data and ideas online in March 2020. Some 250 people eventually submitted more than 4,500 potential molecular designs intended to block the virus’s main protease -- the key protein that helps it replicate. The Wellcome funding will help pay for the expensive last step of research needed to bring the project into human clinical trials.
27th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

How Much Covid Has Reduced Life Expectancy Around the World

American men lost 2.2 years of life expectancy last year because of Covid-19, the biggest decline among 29 nations in a study of the pandemic’s impact on longevity. Deaths among working-age men contributed the most to declining lifespans in the U.S., according to research led by demographers at the U.K.’s University of Oxford. Only Denmark and Norway, who have excelled at controlling their outbreaks, avoided drops in life expectancy across both sexes, the study published Sunday in the International Journal of Epidemiology found.
27th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Chile Begins Vaccinating Young Children With Sinovac Vaccine

The Chilean government began vaccinating children ages 6 to 11 as it moves forward with one of the most advanced Covid-19 prevention campaigns in Latin America. Children will get shots made by Sinovac Biotech Ltd following Chile’s approval for emergency use earlier this month. The government will begin giving shots in schools, and Health Undersecretary Paula Daza attended a ceremony in Santiago to mark the beginning of the vaccination campaign.
27th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

EU Commission proposes extending vaccine export-control scheme

The European Commission has proposed extending the period of its scheme for monitoring and potentially limiting exports of COVID-19 vaccines from the bloc, a European Commission spokesperson told Reuters on Monday. If not prolonged, the scheme would expire this week. It is unclear whether the 27 EU states will support the proposal, which requires a qualified majority to be adopted. "Discussions are ongoing with member states, so we cannot comment further," the spokesperson said. If extended, the scheme would remain in place until the end of the year.
27th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Global vaccines project to revamp rules after Britain got more than Botswana

In March, as wealthy Britain led the world in vaccination rates and almost half its people had received a shot, the organisation meant to ensure fair global access to COVID-19 vaccines allotted the country over half a million doses from its supplies.
27th Sep 2021 - Reuters on MSN.com

New York may tap National Guard to replace unvaccinated healthcare workers

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is considering employing the National Guard and out-of-state medical workers to fill hospital staffing shortages with tens of thousands of workers possibly losing their jobs for not meeting a Monday deadline for mandated COVID-19 vaccination. The plan, outlined in a statement from Hochul on Saturday, would allow her to declare a state of emergency to increase the supply of healthcare workers to include licensed professionals from other states and countries as well as retired nurses.
27th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Biden to get COVID-19 booster on Monday as additional doses roll out

U.S. President Joe Biden rolled up his shirt sleeve and received a COVID-19 vaccine booster inoculation on Monday, hoping to provide a powerful example for Americans on the need to get the extra shot even as millions go without their first. "Boosters are important, but the most important thing we need to do is get more people vaccinated," he said, noting that about 23% of people in the United States have not received a shot.
27th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Thailand to reopen to more vaccinated visitors from November

Thailand will waive its mandatory quarantine requirement in Bangkok and nine regions from Nov. 1 to vaccinated arrivals, authorities said on Monday, as the country tries to boost its immunisation rate and revive its battered tourism sector. The regions include popular tourist areas Chiang Mai, Phangnga, Krabi, Hua Hin, Pattaya, and Cha-am, and follow the successful reopening of Phuket and Samui islands to vaccinated people in pilot schemes since July. The regions include popular tourist areas Chiang Mai, Phangnga, Krabi, Hua Hin, Pattaya, and Cha-am, and follow the successful reopening of Phuket and Samui islands to vaccinated people in pilot schemes since July.
27th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Sydney's COVID-19 lockdown to end sooner for the vaccinated

Australian authorities announced plans on Monday to gradually reopen locked-down Sydney, unveiling a two-tiered system that will give citizens inoculated for COVID-19 more freedoms than their unvaccinated neighbours for several weeks. Movement restrictions across New South Wales, the country's most populous state and home to Sydney, will be lifted gradually between Oct. 11 and Dec. 1 as vaccination rates push through 70%, 80% and 90%. However, people who are not fully inoculated will be barred from joining the vaccinated to resume community sports, dining out, shopping and other activities until the final date.
27th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Venezuelan academy of medicine expresses concern over use of Cuban vaccine

Venezuela’s National Academy of Medicine on Monday expressed concern over the use of Cuba’s Abdala coronavirus vaccine due to a lack of scientific research on its safety and efficacy. Cuba said on Saturday it had exported the three-shot vaccine for the first time, sending an initial shipment to Vietnam as part of a contract to supply five million doses to the Southeast Asian country. The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has so far been relying on the Russian Sputnik V and the Chinese Sinopharm vaccines, and in recent months received its first shipment of doses via the global COVAX program.
27th Sep 2021 - Reuters

New U.S. travel rules close door on those fully vaccinated with Russia's Sputnik V

The United States announced last week that it would soon open its doors to foreign travelers vaccinated against the coronavirus, loosening restrictions for broad swaths of global visitors for the first time since the pandemic began. But the new rules, set to take effect in November, appear to also shut out many people who consider themselves to be fully immunized — including millions who have received two doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. Hundreds of thousands of Russians could be directly affected. Despite frosty diplomatic relations and limited demand for international travel, roughly 300,000 Russians visited the United States in 2019, the last year for which figures are available, according to the U.S. Travel Association.
27th Sep 2021 - The Washington Post

‘Covid hit us like a cyclone’: An Aboriginal town in the Australian Outback is overwhelmed

In two weeks, more than one-tenth of the town of 600 people had been infected, making Wilcannia the hardest-hit place in Australia. Soon, the number of cases would approach 150, with about 90 percent of them Aboriginal people. The remote community’s crisis reflects not only the recent collapse of “covid zero” in Australia but also the country’s historical failings. For 18 months, state and federal leaders had been promising to protect Indigenous Australians, who have higher rates of chronic disease and shorter life expectancies. They were declared a priority for vaccination
27th Sep 2021 - The Washington Post

Rowdy celebrations erupt in Norway as COVID restrictions end

Police in Norway on Sunday reported dozens of disturbances and violent clashes including mass brawls in the Nordic country’s big cities after streets, bars, restaurants and nightclubs were filled with people celebrating the end of COVID-19 restrictions that lasted for more than a year. The Norwegian government abruptly announced Friday that most of the remaining coronavirus restrictions would be scrapped beginning Saturday and that life in the nation of 5.3 million would return to normal. The unexpected announcement by outgoing Prime Minister Erna Solberg to drop coronavirus restrictions the next day took many Norwegians by surprise and led to chaotic scenes in the capital, Oslo, and elsewhere in the country.
26th Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

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Pfizer CEO predicts 'normal life' within a year

Pfizer's CEO Albert Bourla said on Sunday he anticipates a return to normal life post-pandemic within the year."I agree that, within a year, I think will we able to come back to normal life," Bourla said on ABC's "This Week. Bourla added that he does not think that this means variants will no longer exist or that vaccines would be unnecessary. Bourla said that the "most likely scenario" was that the world would continue to see new variants and have vaccines that would last "at least a year." "I think the most likely scenario is annual revaccination, but we don't know really. We need to wait and see the data," Bourla said.
26th Sep 2021 - The Hill on MSN.com

'Is my child going to die?' This is Covid-19 as a pediatric doctor

Dr. Sarah Ash Combs' first step of treatment for children brought into her emergency room with Covid-19 usually begins with a question: "What socks are you wearing today?" As her school-aged young patients look up at indistinguishable faces covered by PPE, Combs pulls up a pant leg of her scrub to show her own socks. Sometimes they're mismatched, sometimes they're covered in animals. And if she's wearing her favorite, they have sushi. The surge in Covid-19 cases brought on by the highly transmissible Delta variant has meant an increase in hospitalizations among children -- many of whom are not eligible for a vaccine yet. Nearly 26% of all Covid-19 cases nationwide are reported in children, according to recent data published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
26th Sep 2021 - CNN

One in five psychologists close books to new patients under pandemic strain

Psychologists are struggling to keep up with the mental health demands of the pandemic, with a survey showing one in five were forced to close their books to new patients and others have wait times of up to three months as ongoing restrictions take their toll. Clinical psychologist Dr Lee Cubis, who works in a two-person practice in inner Melbourne, said demand has been huge.
26th Sep 2021 - Sydney Morning Herald

NYC Temporarily Blocked From Imposing School Vaccine Mandate

New York City’s school system, the largest in the U.S., has been temporarily blocked from imposing a mandate forcing teachers and other staff from getting vaccinated against Covid-19, according to a ruling from a federal judge. That mandate is scheduled to go into effect on Monday at midnight. Late Friday, a judge from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit referred the case to a three-judge panel “on an expedited basis.” The hearing will take place on Wednesday, Reuters reported.
26th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Logistics, Staff Shortage Hurt Indonesia's Vaccination Progress

A shortage of healthcare workers and logistical flaws are hampering Indonesia’s efforts to inoculate its people against Covid-19, leaving the world’s largest archipelago trailing its neighbors despite being among the first in Southeast Asia to start the program. Only 17.9% of Indonesia’s 270 million people are fully vaccinated, behind almost every major economy in the region, according to Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. About 32% have received their first dose, placing the nation among the bottom four on the list.
26th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

India tells Quad will allow export of 8 mln Indo-Pacific vaccine doses

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told fellow leaders of the Quad partnership on Friday India will allow the export of 8 million COVID-19 vaccines by end of October in line with a deal reached by the grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States in March, India's foreign secretary said on Friday.
24th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Rochelle Walensky’s Finest Hour

The Biden Administration’s booster vaccine plan has been messy and confusing, but at least it arrived at the right outcome. Credit to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky late Thursday for overruling the agency’s outside advisers and backing a broad booster rollout. Last month White House officials and agency heads said they planned to make boosters available on Sept. 20. They were right to prepare, but boosters hadn’t been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration. Two senior career FDA officials told reporters they are leaving the agency because they disagreed with the White House booster plan.
24th Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

White House says millions of government contractors must be vaccinated by Dec. 8

The White House said on Friday that millions of federal contractors must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Dec. 8 and that the administration will add clauses to future government contracts mandating inoculations. President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Sept. 9 requiring federal contractors to mandate vaccinations, but many U.S. companies with federal contracts have awaited formal guidance from the White House before moving forward.
24th Sep 2021 - Reuters

2021 Lasker Awards Honor Work in mRNA Vaccines, Neuroscience and More

Katalin Kariko, a senior vice president at BioNTech, and Dr. Drew Weissman, a professor in vaccine research at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, shared this year’s Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. In retrospect, their 2005 breakthrough was apparent when Dr. Kariko and Dr. Weissman proudly published a surprising finding they had made about messenger RNA, also known as mRNA, which provides instructions to cells to make proteins. The scientists noticed that when they added mRNA to cells, the cells instantly destroyed it. But they could prevent that destruction by slightly modifying the mRNA. When they added the altered mRNA to cells, it could briefly prompt cells to make any protein they chose.
24th Sep 2021 - The New York Times

Beijing Olympics Is on Course to Have Stricter Covid-19 Rules Than Tokyo

With just over four months to go until the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the developing picture of the Games is one of severe Covid-19 restrictions for outsiders, and possible advantages for domestic athletes. The U.S. will require vaccinations for its participants—something it stopped short of for the Tokyo Games, and which some observers say could be a precursor to a requirement imposed by China. Early steps taken last week by China to safeguard its “National Games,” a major multisport domestic event, have also raised the prospect of intense measures for people arriving in the country as athletes, officials and media. Those measures could potentially include pre-event quarantines that could disrupt training at the most critical moment for many Olympians.
24th Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Covid-19 Australia: Prime Minister makes bold promise to Aussies stranded overseas

Australian PM says stranded Australian expats are able to return once vaccination hits 80%. 80% of Australia's population are expected to be double jabbed by December. There are currently 45,000 Aussies stuck overseas waiting to return back home.
24th Sep 2021 - Daily Mail

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 24th Sep 2021

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Covid variant that originated in Japan should be watched closely, expert says

Covid variant R.1 is a variant 'to watch', according to disease expert Dr Haseltine. He claimed it had established a foothold in both Japan and the US. But figures show it has been displaced in both countries by the Delta variant
24th Sep 2021 - Daily Mail

Delta Air says employee vaccination rate against COVID-19 rises to 82%

Delta Air Lines said on Thursday its employee vaccination rate against COVID-19 had risen to 82%, weeks after announcing a monthly health insurance surcharge for unvaccinated workers. The U.S. airline last month said employees will have to pay $200 more every month for their company-sponsored healthcare plan if they choose to not be vaccinated against COVID-19.
24th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Uganda loosens anti-coronavirus restrictions as pandemic ebbs

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday eased anti-coronavirus restrictions, including allowing resumption of education for universities and other post-secondary institutions, citing a decline in infections in the country. The east African country started experiencing a second wave of the pandemic around May, shortly after authorities announced detection of the highly transmissible Delta variant.
23rd Sep 2021 - Reuters

Olympics-USOPC will require COVID-19 vaccine for all US athletes at Beijing Games

The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee on Wednesday said all U.S. athletes hoping to compete at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19. "Effective Nov. 1, 2021, the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee will require all USOPC staff, athletes and those utilizing USOPC facilities – including the training centers – to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19," USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland wrote in a letter reviewed by Reuters. "This requirement will also apply to our full Team USA delegation at future Olympic and Paralympic Games." Athletes and staff would have to opportunity to obtain a medical or religious exemption to the mandate, the USOPC said.
23rd Sep 2021 - Reuters on MSN.com

School Reopenings Falter on Rising Delta Variant Cases

Over the past month, with kindergarten through 12th grade in session, the country has reported almost 1 million cases among those under 18. Though kids typically are less likely than adults to become severely ill with Covid, they increasingly are contracting the highly contagious delta variant. As of Sunday, 2,000 schools nationwide had closed — 18% more than a week earlier, according to the Burbio tracker.
23rd Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

The World Is at War With Covid. Covid Is Winning.

So when vaccine developers were figuring out how to produce billions of Covid-19 vaccine shots as quickly as possible, they decided to use an alternative: disposable bioreactor bags. At first, it was a win-win. The bags are quicker and cheaper to make than the tanks, and using them can shave precious hours off manufacturing times because they don’t have to be cleaned and sterilized after each use. But before long, even this innovation became an obstacle in the quest to end the Covid pandemic. First, larger vaccine makers bought up many more bags than they could use, leaving smaller vaccine makers with no recourse and potential manufacturing sites underutilized. Then as the vaccination campaign wore on, supplies began drying up altogether. Only a few companies make the bags, and they have little incentive to ramp up their manufacturing efforts because there’s no telling how long the uptick in demand will last.
21st Sep 2021 - The New York Times

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 23rd Sep 2021

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'Soul-crushing': US COVID-19 deaths are topping 1900 a day

COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have climbed to an average of more than 1,900 a day for the first time since early March, with experts saying the virus is preying largely on a distinct group: 71 million unvaccinated Americans. The increasingly lethal turn has filled hospitals, complicated the start of the school year, delayed the return to offices and demoralized health care workers. “It is devastating,” said Dr. Dena Hubbard, a pediatrician in the Kansas City, Missouri, area who has cared for babies delivered prematurely by cesarean section in a last-ditch effort to save their mothers, some of whom died. For health workers, the deaths, combined with misinformation and disbelief about the virus, have been “heart-wrenching, soul-crushing.”
23rd Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

COVID-19 creates dire US shortage of teachers, school staff

One desperate California school district is sending flyers home in students’ lunchboxes, telling parents it’s “now hiring.” Elsewhere, principals are filling in as crossing guards, teachers are being offered signing bonuses and schools are moving back to online learning. Now that schools have welcomed students back to classrooms, they face a new challenge: a shortage of teachers and staff the likes of which some districts say they have never seen. Public schools have struggled for years with teacher shortages, particularly in math, science, special education and languages. But the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem. The stress of teaching in the COVID-19 era has triggered a spike in retirements and resignations.
23rd Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

U.N. Climate Summit Attendees Push U.K. for Vaccines

Known as COP26, the climate summit will be one of the largest in-person international gatherings since the start of the pandemic. The British government says it’s on track to provide promised shots for attendees,
22nd Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

United says more than 97% of U.S. employees are vaccinated

United Airlines said more than 97% of its U.S. employees have been vaccinated ahead of the company's Sept. 27 deadline for staff vaccination. The airline has taken a tough stance on employees who decline to get vaccinated and became the first U.S. carrier in early August to announce it would mandate vaccines for employees.
22nd Sep 2021 - Reuters

Under pressure, U.S. donates half billion more COVID-19 vaccine doses to world

The United States promised to buy 500 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses to donate to other countries as it comes under increasing pressure to share its supply with the rest of the world. President Joe Biden made the announcement during a virtual summit aimed at boosting global vaccination rates against the coronavirus and rallying world leaders to do more. "To beat the pandemic here we need to beat it everywhere," Biden said as he kicked off the summit, which included leaders from Britain, Canada, Indonesia and South Africa as well as World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
22nd Sep 2021 - Reuters

Global coronavirus vaccine inequity is 'an obscenity', UN chief says

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has reprimanded the world for the inequitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, describing it as an "obscenity" and giving the globe an "F in ethics". Addressing the annual UN gathering of world leaders in New York, Mr Guterres said images from some parts of the world of expired and unused vaccines in rubbish told "the tale of our times" - with the majority of the wealthier world immunised while more than 90 per cent of Africa has not even received one dose. "This is a moral indictment of the state of our world. It is an obscenity. We passed the science test. But we are getting an F in ethics," Mr Guterres told the UN General Assembly.
22nd Sep 2021 - SBS News

UK to send 1m Pfizer vaccine doses to South Korea in swap deal

One million doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine are being sent from the UK to South Korea as part of a swap deal. South Korea will return the same “overall volume of doses” before the end of the year, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said. The initiative will help South Korea hit its target of administering a second dose to 70% of its population by the end of October, the DHSC said. The first batch of doses is due to be shipped within weeks.
22nd Sep 2021 - The Guardian

IMF calls for coordinated action, accountability in COVID-19 battle

The chief economist of the International Monetary Fund called for coordinated action and greater accountability to ensure that the world meets a target of vaccinating 40% of people in every country against COVID-19 by the end of 2021. India's decision this week to resume vaccine exports was "a very important part of the solution," but major economies also had to ratchet up vaccine deliveries to honor their pledges, Gita Gopinath told Reuters in an interview. The pandemic has killed nearly 5 million people across the world, and the IMF has warned that highly unequal health prospects - with just 2% of people in low-income countries vaccinated to date - poses "severe risks".
22nd Sep 2021 - Reuters

Argentina talks up 'last stage' of pandemic as controls loosened

Argentina unveiled plans to ease coronavirus pandemic restrictions, including loosening strict border controls, allowing more commercial activities and getting rid of the mandatory wearing of face masks outdoors. Health Minister Carla Vizzotti said the easing of rules would allow more economic, industrial and commercial activities in closed places, while borders would gradually reopen from this month, with all tourists allowed back in from November. "We are in a very positive moment, we know that the pandemic has not ended, we have to maintain care," Vizzotti said in a news conference in Buenos Aires. "We are moving toward the full recovery of activities."
22nd Sep 2021 - Reuters

Pressure Grows on U.S. Companies to Share Covid Vaccine Technology

Moderna accepted $2.5 billion in taxpayer money to develop its Covid-19 vaccine. But officials in the U.S. and overseas are having trouble persuading the company to license its technology. The discussions with Moderna have not been fruitful, said the official, who expressed deep frustration with the company but requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
22nd Sep 2021 - The New York Times

‘It’s scary’: record Covid absences cause concern in England’s schools

Last week more than 100,000 children were absent from school in England with confirmed or suspected Covid infections, the highest number during the pandemic, according to the Department for Education. Five parents and teachers in England share their experiences since the start of the new school year, including how they, their families and their pupils have been affected.
22nd Sep 2021 - The Guardian

FDA backs Pfizer COVID-19 boosters for seniors, high-risk

The U.S. moved a step closer Wednesday to offering booster doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to senior citizens and others at high risk from the virus as the Food and Drug Administration signed off on the targeted use of the extra shots. The FDA authorized booster doses for Americans who are 65 and older, younger people with underlying health conditions and those in jobs that put them at high-risk for COVID-19. The ruling represents a drastically scaled back version of the Biden administration’s sweeping plan to give third doses to nearly all American adults to shore up their protection amid the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.
22nd Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

Ravaged by war, Syrian rebel area struggles with virus surge

Coronavirus cases are surging to the worst levels of the pandemic in a rebel stronghold in Syria — a particularly devastating development in a region where scores of hospitals have been bombed and that doctors and nurses have fled in droves during a decade of war. The total number of cases seen in Idlib province — an overcrowded enclave with a population of 4 million, many of them internally displaced — has more than doubled since the beginning of August to more than 61,000. In recent weeks, daily new infections have repeatedly shot past 1,500, and authorities reported 34 deaths on Sunday alone — figures that are still believed to be undercounts because many infected people don’t report to authorities.
22nd Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

Amnesty blames top COVID jab makers for vaccine inequality

Six top manufacturers of the COVID-19 vaccine “are fuelling an unprecedented human rights crisis through their refusal to waive intellectual property rights and share vaccine technology”, Amnesty International said in a report. In the report titled “A Double Dose of Inequality”, the rights group denounced AstraZeneca, BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer for “wheeling and dealing in favour of wealthy states”. “Vaccinating the world is our only pathway out of this crisis,” said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general. “It should be time to hail these companies, who created vaccines so quickly, as heroes. But instead, to their shame and our collective grief, Big Pharma’s intentional blocking of knowledge transfer and their  wheeling and dealing in favour of wealthy states has brewed an utterly predictable and utterly devastating vaccine scarcity for so many others.”
22nd Sep 2021 - AlJazeera

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John Nkengasong, of the Africa C.D.C., Will Lead PEPFAR

The Biden administration plans to nominate John Nkengasong, a virologist and director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to lead the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, according to several sources familiar with the matter. President Biden is expected to make the announcement in the coming days. PEPFAR is a $7 billion operation that funds and sets goals for AIDS care in many nations, most of them in Africa. Dr. Nkengasong, who was born in Cameroon, is the first person of African origin to head the program, which is housed in the Department of State.
21st Sep 2021 - The New York Times

Opinion | I Ran the CDC. Here’s How to Prove That Americans Are Vaccinated.

This month, President Biden announced a comprehensive plan to reinvigorate America’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. A big part of this plan hinges on mandating the vaccination of millions of federal workers. Employees of companies with more than 100 staff members will have to provide proof of vaccination or test negative for the coronavirus at least once a week. The businesses and other institutions that must enforce these mandates will have to verify vaccination status and test results to make this system work. Even before the plan was announced, a number of state and local governments and school districts and more than 1,000 colleges and universities adopted at least some vaccination requirements for employees and students. But without a unified approach to verify compliance, ideally through federal leadership, verification will be inaccurate, inconsistent and potentially insecure.
21st Sep 2021 - The New York Times

The Covid-19 Pandemic Put Many Pregnancy Plans on Hold. Some Women Aren’t Waiting Anymore.

On a Thursday morning in May, Kristyn Hodgdon entered a doctor’s office and laid eyes on the nitrogen tank containing the embryos that might one day become her babies. Pandemic restrictions in her Long Island town were easing at the time and vaccination rates were climbing. But at that moment, the 32-year-old still wasn’t ready. She decided to postpone trying for her third baby. “I had been working from home with my two toddlers for about a year with no child care,” Mrs. Hodgdon said of her decision. “It just felt like a mental overload that I couldn’t put myself through.”
21st Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

U.S. Pledge to Vaccinate Poor Countries Stumbles Amid Logistical Challenges

A White House plan to donate hundreds of millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines has been hampered in many developing countries by a lack of infrastructure to handle storage and distribution, leaving poorer nations far behind the developed world in vaccination rates. After a delayed start—the U.S. missed its first donation target—the Biden administration has been ramping up overseas donations, shipping around 137 million doses, most of them Moderna Inc. and Johnson & Johnson. It expects to send 500 million doses of a shot developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE by the end of June 2022, the largest donation total of any country.
21st Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Argentine Economy Shrank in Second Quarter Amid Worst Covid Wave

Argentina’s economy contracted in the second quarter as the country’s worst wave of the pandemic reduced activity and government trade restrictions cooled relations with the private sector. Gross domestic product fell 1.4% in the second quarter compared to the previous period, compared with economists’ expectations of a 1.6% decline. From a year ago, GDP rose 17.9% as a result of the base effect from the beginning of the pandemic in Argentina, according to government data published Tuesday
21st Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

U.S. to donate an additional 500 mln COVID-19 vaccines to the world

The United States plans to donate an additional 500 million COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE to nations around the world, lifting the total the country is sharing to more than 1 billion doses, according to a source familiar with the plans.
21st Sep 2021 - Reuters

Covid: US opens up to fully vaccinated travellers

The US is easing its coronavirus travel restrictions, reopening to passengers from the UK, EU and other nations. From November, foreign travellers will be allowed to fly into the US if they are fully vaccinated, and undergo testing and contact tracing. The US has had tough restrictions on travel in place since early last year. The move answers a major demand from European allies, and means that families and friends separated by the restrictions can be reunited.
21st Sep 2021 - BBC News

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India to resume exports of coronavirus vaccines in October

India, the world’s largest vaccine producer, will resume exports and donations of surplus coronavirus vaccines in October after halting them during a devastating surge in domestic infections in April, the health minister said Monday. Mansukh Mandaviya said the surplus vaccines will be used to fulfill India’s “commitment towards the world for the collective fight against COVID-19,” but vaccinating Indians will remain the government’s “topmost priority.” India was expected to be a key supplier for the world and for the U.N.-backed initiative aimed at vaccine equity known as COVAX. It began exporting doses in January but stopped doing so to inoculate its own population during a massive surge in infections in April that pushed India’s health system to the breaking point
21st Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

COVID has killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 flu

COVID-19 has now killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic did — approximately 675,000. The U.S. population a century ago was just one-third of what it is today, meaning the flu cut a much bigger, more lethal swath through the country. But the COVID-19 crisis is by any measure a colossal tragedy in its own right, especially given the incredible advances in scientific knowledge since then and the failure to take maximum advantage of the vaccines available this time. “Big pockets of American society — and, worse, their leaders — have thrown this away,” medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan said of the opportunity to vaccinate everyone eligible by now.
21st Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

U.S. to Require Most Foreign Travelers Be Vaccinated for Entry

The U.S. will soon allow entry to most foreign air travelers as long as they’re fully vaccinated against Covid-19 -- while adding a testing requirement for unvaccinated Americans and barring entry for foreigners who haven’t gotten shots. The measures announced Monday by the White House are the most sweeping change to U.S. travel policies in months, and widen the gap in rules between vaccinated people -- who will see restrictions relaxed -- and the unvaccinated. The new rules will replace existing bans on foreigners’ travel to the U.S. from certain regions, including Europe.
20th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

New Zealand eases coronavirus curbs in Auckland amid hope Delta variant outbreak now under control

New Zealand eased coronavirus curbs slightly in Auckland on Monday, as the government expressed confidence that there was no widespread regional transmission of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. But tough restrictions will continue even after midnight on Tuesday, when the alert level drops to 3 from 4 in the city of about 1.7 million at the centre of the latest Delta outbreak. Schools and offices must still keep closed, for instance, with businesses limited to offering only contactless services.
20th Sep 2021 - Evening Standard

Qatar wants mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations for all World Cup footballers

World Cup 2022 hosts Qatar are pushing to make it mandatory for all players who compete at next year’s tournament to have had both Covid-19 vaccinations. The Qatari government has already announced that any fans who attend the tournament next November will need to be fully vaccinated, and now that ruling could also extend to the players – and coaching staffs – taking part too. According to The Athletic, Qatari medical authorities have been in talks with FIFA and other stakeholders in an effort to ensure all participating players are double jabbed.
20th Sep 2021 - Metro.co.uk

Can we live with COVID-19? Singapore tries to blaze a path

Only 60 people in Singapore have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic first emerged, and some 82 percent of its population is now fully vaccinated against the disease. In June, the government announced it would move towards a “living with COVID-19” strategy, focusing on tracking and treating outbreak clusters with vaccinations and hospital admissions – but without the strict lockdowns, border closures, and work-from-home orders that have been the defining feature of much of the pandemic across the world.
20th Sep 2021 - Al Jazeera English

US Lifts Ban For Fully Vaccinated Travellers From UK And Europe

The White House is to lift the US travel Covid ban and allow fully vaccinated arrivals from the UK and Europe to enter the country from early November. Other countries including Brazil, China, India, Iran, Ireland and South Africa will also be included in the new policy. Passengers will not need to quarantine upon arrival but will need to prove they were vaccinated before boarding a flight and provide a negative Covid test which was taken within the last three days.
20th Sep 2021 - Huffington Post

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Covid-19 Vaccinations Boost the Global Economy, but May Not Cure It Alone

The global recovery is slowing as Covid-19 resurges, spurring governments to try to raise vaccination rates in hopes of fueling stronger economic growth. The thinking is, first, that vaccinations will ease consumers’ worries about infection, prompting them to spend more on travel, dining out, going to concerts and other activities that involve proximity to other people. Second, reduced Covid-19 case counts would mean fewer government shutdowns of ports, factories and other operations critical to global supply chains.
19th Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Melbourne Expects to Exit Its Sixth Lockdown in Late October

Melbourne will exit its sixth lockdown since the pandemic began once 70% of Australia’s Victoria state is fully vaccinated, authorities said Sunday as they outlined plans to unwind virus measures next month. Limits on “reasons to leave your home and the curfew will no longer be in place” once that target is met around Oct. 26, Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters. “Lockdown will be off.” Pubs, clubs and entertainment venues in the nation’s second-most populous city will be allowed to operate outdoors with up to 50 people who have received two shots. Schools are expected to start reopening on Oct. 5.
19th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

The Delta Wave Is Tough on Kids, But Deadly for the Middle-Aged

A lot of kids have been getting Covid-19 in the U.S. this summer, thanks to the more-transmissible delta variant, the full return to in-person schooling and the unvaccinated status of virtually every American under 12. Those under 18 accounted for 28.9% of reported Covid cases in the first week of September, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, more than their 22.2% share of the population and much more than their 15.5% share of cumulative cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
19th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Led by the nose: Meet the UAE's COVID-19 sniffer dogs

Police in Dubai have built up a special unit of 38 sniffer dogs that can detect COVID-19 from human sweat samples with 92% accuracy, the supervisor of the training programme told Reuters. Dubai Police trained the cohort, which includes German Shepherds, Labradors, Cocker Spaniels and Border Collies, to recognise the scent of COVID-19 using samples of sweat from people with confirmed infections, collected by holding a swab in an armpit for a few minutes.
19th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Supply fears lead EU vaccine industry to seek home comforts

European companies playing key supporting roles in COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing are working to move production and supply chains closer to their customers to guard against trade restrictions that have interrupted supplies during the pandemic. Germany's Merck, whose Life Science unit is one of the world's largest makers of bioreactor gear and supplies, told Reuters it is pushing to spread its production network geographically so that fewer shipments have to cross customs borders.
19th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Australia reports 1607 COVID-19 cases as states learn to live with virus

Australia reported 1,607 new coronavirus cases on Sunday as states and territories gradually shift from trying to eliminate outbreaks to living with the virus. Victoria, home to about a quarter of Australia's 25 million people, recorded 507 cases as its premier said a weeks-long lockdown will end once 70% of those 16 and older are fully vaccinated, whether or not there are new cases. Premier Daniel Andrews said the state might reach that vaccination threshold around Oct. 26. About 43% Victorians have been fully vaccinated and just over 46% people nationwide.
19th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Abu Dhabi cancels COVID-19 entry testing for UAE travellers

Abu Dhabi will cancel COVID-19 testing requirements to enter the emirate for travellers from the UAE starting on Sunday, the United Arab Emirates' state news agency WAM said on Saturday. The UAE's capital had restricted entry into the emirate to those with a negative PCR test. Earlier this month, Abu Dhabi removed the need to quarantine for all vaccinated travellers arriving from international destinations.
18th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Beijing 2022 Games to have rigorous COVID-19 measures-IOC

The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will have tight COVID-19 countermeasures in place to ensure the safety of all participants, the International Olympic Committee said on Friday.
17th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Denmark returns to pre-pandemic life with a huge pop concert

While many in Europe fretted over the Delta variant, university student and care worker Sofie Mari Jensen joined tens of thousands of people at Copenhagen’s Parken Stadium to watch the pop-rock band The Minds of 99. The event on September 11, a day after Denmark dropped all coronavirus restrictions, was Europe’s first concert hosting more than 50,000 people since the pandemic began.
17th Sep 2021 - AlJazeera

How Facebook Hobbled Mark Zuckerberg’s Bid to Get America Vaccinated

Company documents show antivaccine activists undermined the CEO’s ambition to support the rollout by flooding the site and using Facebook’s own tools to sow doubt about the Covid-19 vaccine
17th Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

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IMF, World Bank urge more COVID-19 vaccination doses to go to poor countries

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and other multilateral-organization leaders on Thursday urged countries with high COVID-19 vaccination rates to boost efforts to send doses to low- and middle-income countries. Georgieva and the heads of the World Bank Group, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization expressed concern in a joint statement that it would not be possible to vaccinate at least 40% of the population in all countries by the end of 2021 without urgent action.
17th Sep 2021 - Reuters UK

Mississippi Surpasses New Jersey as Worst State for Covid Deaths

Mississippi has overtaken New Jersey as the state with the highest per-capita death toll from Covid-19. Since the end of June, Mississippi has been among the states hardest-hit by the latest wave of infections, fueled by the fast-spreading delta variant. In that period, Mississippi’s cumulative deaths rose by about 22% to 306 per 100,000 residents, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
16th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

EU launches health crisis body to prepare for future pandemic

The European Commission launched on Thursday a health crisis body that will coordinate EU spending of almost 30 billion euros ($35.3 billion) to prepare for a future pandemic. The new health emergency preparedness and response authority (HERA) will assess potential health threats, promote research, ensure the availability of critical production and help build stockpiles. If a new health crisis struck, it would activate emergency funding and help coordinate monitoring, procurement and purchase of medical equipment or treatments.
16th Sep 2021 - Reuters

France suspends 3000 health staff as Europe targets vaccine refusal

Hospitals, care homes and health centres have suspended around 3,000 workers across France for failing to comply with mandatory COVID vaccination, the government said on Thursday, as countries around Europe weigh how far to go to combat the pandemic. While Italy is set to announce later on Thursday that proof of vaccination or a negative test will be compulsory for all workers, going further than any other country in the region, the Netherlands plans a similar step - but only to go to bars or clubs.
16th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Malaysians enjoy taste of travel after lockdown in tourism restart

The first plane carrying tourists in more than four months touched down on the Malaysian island of Langkawi on Thursday and was greeted by a twin water cannon "salute", in the launch of a programme to revive a travel sector frozen by the pandemic. The first batch of 159 travellers from the capital, Kuala Lumpur, arrived eager for a vacation after a monthslong, nationwide lockdown imposed to address one of Asia's highest per-capital coronavirus infection rates.
16th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Majorities in new poll support requiring proof of vaccine to fly, enter arenas

A majority of people in the U.S. support requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination in order to board airplanes or enter indoor arenas, a new Monmouth University poll shows. The poll found 59 percent of Americans said people should need to show proof of vaccination to be able to get on an airplane, while 55 percent say they support the measure for indoor arenas. Forty-six percent of people support requiring proof of vaccination to attend events at outdoor arenas.
16th Sep 2021 - The Hill

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Pope urges COVID inoculations, says vaccines are humanity's friends

Pope Francis said on Wednesday he was puzzled why so many people, including some cardinals in Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, have refused to get inoculated against COVID-19. "It is a bit strange because humanity has a history of friendship with vaccines," he said aboard the plane returning from Slovakia, responding to a question from a reporter about the reasons for vaccine hesitancy. "As children (we were vaccinated) for measles, polio. All the children were vaccinated and no one said anything," he said.
16th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Opinion | The Delta Variant's Economic Damage Isn't Over

Without more immigration, businesses won’t come close to filling the record number of open job positions. Endemic labor shortages were businesses’ No. 1 problem before the pandemic. It is even more serious now as many baby boomers have stopped working. Until the pandemic winds down and immigration of both skilled and unskilled workers revives, businesses, especially in big cities, will be unable to get the help they need.
15th Sep 2021 - New York Times

Moderna says COVID-19 vaccine protection wanes, makes case for booster

New data from Moderna Inc's large COVID-19 vaccine trial shows that the protection it offers declines over time, supporting the case for booster doses, the company said in a news release on Wednesday. Several recent studies have suggested that its vaccine may have an edge over a similar shot from Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE in terms of maintaining efficacy over time.
15th Sep 2021 - Reuters

India considers resuming vaccine exports soon, focus on Africa, says source

India is considering resuming exports of COVID-19 vaccines soon, mainly to Africa, as it has partly immunised a majority of its adults and supplies have surged, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. India, the world's biggest maker of vaccines overall, stopped vaccine exports in April to focus on inoculating its own population as infections exploded.
15th Sep 2021 - Reuters India

Unvaccinated children suffering COVID impact, Americas health agency warns

As more adults get their COVID-19 vaccines, children who are not yet eligible for vaccination in most countries are representing a larger percentage of hospitalizations and even deaths, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned on Wednesday. Nine months in to this year, infections among children and adolescents in the Americas have surpassed 1.9 million cases, and they face significant health risks, the regional branch of the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
15th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Alberta’s top doctor says COVID-19 surge stems from removal of restrictions

Alberta’s top health official says the fourth wave of COVID-19 that has swamped intensive-care units and forced the widespread cancellations of surgeries was set in motion when the province dropped all public-health restrictions over the summer. Deena Hinshaw, the Chief Medical Officer of Health, also said she regretted her announcement in late July that the province would treat COVID-19 as an “endemic” respiratory illness like influenza. She said it wrongly gave some people the impression that the pandemic was over, which she added has made it more difficult to make the case for additional public-health measures. She made the comments in a presentation to family doctors that was recorded Monday evening and then posted to social media.
15th Sep 2021 - The Globe and Mail

1 in every 500 US residents have died of Covid-19

The United States has reached another grim milestone in its fight against the devastating Covid-19 pandemic: 1 in 500 Americans have died from coronavirus since the nation's first reported infection. As of Tuesday night, 663,913 people in the US have died of Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University data. According to the US Census Bureau, the US population as of April 2020 was 331.4 million.
15th Sep 2021 - CNN

U.S. pushes world leaders to embrace 70% global COVID-19 vaccination target

The United States is pushing global leaders to endorse what it calls ambitious targets for ending the COVID-19 pandemic, including ensuring 70% of the world's population is vaccinated against the virus by the 2022, according to a draft U.S. document viewed by Reuters on Tuesday.
15th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Dutch PM Rutte: Netherlands to ease COVID-19 restrictions

The Dutch government on Tuesday announced they are easing COVID-19 restrictions and will introduce a "corona" pass showing proof of vaccination to go to bars, restaurants, clubs or cultural events. Prime Minister Mark Rutte said most social distancing requirements will be dropped from Sept. 25.
15th Sep 2021 - Reuters

EU pledges 200 million vaccine doses to low-income nations

The European Union’s top official said Wednesday that ramping up COVID-19 vaccinations around the world was the bloc’s No. 1 priority right now and committed another 200 million vaccine doses to Africa and low-income nations. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen used her State of the European Union speech on Wednesday to announce the new donation that will be fully delivered by the middle of next year and comes on top of 250 million vaccine doses already pledged.
15th Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

As rich-poor divide widens between nations, UN urges reform

A new report from the United Nations on Wednesday highlights divergent economic recoveries between nations and throws fresh urgency behind warnings that richer nations are not doing enough to help poorer countries from falling further behind as the world recovers from COVID-19 disruptions. “It’s really frustrating to see how responses to the pandemic have panned out rather disjointedly,” said Inu Manak, an expert in international political economy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank based in Washington, DC in the United States.
15th Sep 2021 - AlJazeera

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England Unveils Winter Covid Strategy

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain announced a plan on Tuesday to offer all those age 50 and older a booster vaccine as part of a winter coronavirus strategy — plunging Britain into a growing debate over whether lower-income countries should get shots first. The prime minister is taking the step to try to prevent a new surge in cases from overwhelming the National Health Service, and to avoid another lockdown in a country wearied by the pandemic and earlier measures that included some of the strictest restrictions in the world.
14th Sep 2021 - The New York Times

Johnson Doubles Down on Vaccine Strategy as His Popularity Wanes

When Prime Minister Boris Johnson fumbled his initial response to the coronavirus pandemic, his political fortunes faltered, only to rebound quickly thanks to Britain’s surprisingly effective vaccine rollout. With his popularity now waning again — this time following a broken promise not to raise taxes — Mr. Johnson is hoping that history will repeat itself. On Tuesday, he announced a campaign to offer vaccine booster shots to people aged 50 and over, as well as first shots to three million children, aged 12 to 15 — all while reiterating his vow to avoid future lockdowns.
14th Sep 2021 - The New York Times

WHO Says India May Resume Covid-19 Vaccines to Africa This Year

The World Health Organization said talks are underway with India for a resumption of Covid-19 vaccine exports to African countries following a pause during a deadly wave of infections earlier this year. “Be assured the conversation is ongoing, be assured that supply will restart this year,” Bruce Aylward, a senior WHO official, said at a briefing Tuesday. “We are hoping we can get assurance it can start even faster than later this year and in the coming weeks.”
14th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Biden gathers support for global pandemic summit

Yesterday, President Biden invited world leaders to a virtual summit on ending the pandemic, with a goal of vaccinating at least 70% of the world by next September, according to the Washington Post. At a World Health Organization (WHO) briefing today, health officials—including several from African groups—welcomed the partnership, but said there are urgent steps countries can take now to free up more vaccine doses for countries that don't have enough access.
14th Sep 2021 - CIDRAP

UK would not have approved Valneva COVID vaccine, health secretary says

Britain cancelled its contract for about 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine being developed by France's Valneva (VLS.PA) in part because it was clear it would not be approved for use in the country, UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said on Tuesday. "There are commercial reasons that we have cancelled the contract, but what I can tell her is that it was also clear to us that the vaccine in question that the company was developing would not get approval by the MHRA here in the UK," he said in response to a question from a Scottish lawmaker.
14th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Covid: Significant return to office could see ‘rapid’ rise in hospitalisations, Sage warns

It is “highly likely” that a decrease in the number of people working from home in the next couple of months would lead to a “rapid” rise in hospital admissions for Covid, scientific advisers to the government have warned. Millions of Britons have been heading back to the office this month, coinciding with the return of schools and universities. Last week, London saw its busiest morning rush-hour since the pandemic hit, with hundreds of thousands of journeys made across the city, according to official data. But modelling published on Tuesday by a sub-group of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) suggests there is the “potential” for another large wave of hospitalisations in the coming months.
14th Sep 2021 - The Independent

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Manulife Joins Banks With Vaccine Mandate for Canadian Employees

Manulife Financial Corp. will require employees in Canada to provide proof of their vaccination status by the end of October and will force unvaccinated staff to undergo regular Covid-19 testing before they work in its offices. Employees who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons must provide a note from a licensed health care professional, Manulife Canada Chief Executive Officer Mike Doughty said in a memo Monday. Those refusing the shots for religious reasons must make a written attestation.
13th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Even the Swiss Are Tightening the Screws on the Unvaccinated

Switzerland, which has stood out among European neighbors for its generally more laissez-faire approach to the pandemic, is joining the ranks of countries now increasing pressure on the unvaccinated. With hospitals filling up and inoculations lagging the rest of Western Europe, the government is doing what just a few weeks ago one of its members termed “bizarre” by requiring vaccine certificates for public activities. As of Monday, residents of one of the world’s wealthiest countries will have to show passes to enter restaurants, cinemas and fitness centers. They must attest to having been jabbed, tested or recovered from the virus.
13th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Pfizer Supplies Jordan, Lebanon With Covid Vaccines for Refugees

Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE are donating hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 vaccine doses to Jordan and Lebanon as a part of a broader push to aid refugees during the pandemic. On Monday, 100,000 doses of the companies’ coronavirus vaccine arrived at the coastal Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport. There, the donated doses are being loaded into UPS trucks and delivered to nearby warehouses at the Rafic Hariri Hospital, the largest Lebanese public hospital located on the outskirts of Beirut.
13th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Australia Plans Digital Border Pass for Vaccinated Travelers

Australia is developing a digital border pass to show the vaccination status of travelers in a step toward further reopening its international border. The government awarded Accenture Plc the tender to deliver the pass that will replace the current Covid-19 travel declaration form and incoming passenger card. It “will support the safe re-opening of Australia’s international borders” Minister for Home Affairs Karen Andrews said in a statement.
13th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

School starts for 1 million NYC kids amid new vaccine rules

School started Monday for about a million New York City public school students in the nation’s largest experiment of in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic. The first day of school coincided with several milestones in the city’s pandemic recovery that hinge on vaccine mandates. Nearly all of the city’s 300,000 employees were required to be back in their workplaces, in person, Monday as the city ended remote work. Most will either need to be vaccinated, or undergo weekly COVID-19 testing to remain in their jobs.
13th Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

Bangladesh reopens schools after 18-month COVID shutdown

In a report last week, UNICEF warned that prolonged school closures during the COVID crisis accentuated “alarming inequities” for more than 430 million children in South Asia. “School closures in South Asia have forced hundreds of millions of children and their teachers to transition to remote learning in a region with low connectivity and device affordability,” UNICEF’s regional director, George Laryea-Adjei, said in a statement. “As a result, children have suffered enormous setbacks in their learning journey.”
13th Sep 2021 - AlJazeera

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How Outrage Over Vaccine Mandates Became a Mainstream G.O.P. Stance

Resistance to vaccine mandates, once a fringe position, has entered the Republican mainstream. But the governors fighting President Biden’s Covid-19 vaccine requirements impose mandates of their own.
12th Sep 2021 - The New York Times

Spread of 'Delta' COVID-19 knocks wind out of UK economy in July

Britain's economy unexpectedly slowed to a crawl in July as the Delta variant of COVID-19 spread rapidly after lockdown restrictions were eased and as many workers stayed at home self-isolating as the virus spread
11th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Biden’s Covid-19 Vaccine Push Aligns Him With a Fed-Up, Vaccinated Majority

After President Biden resisted comprehensive vaccine mandates for months, his forceful steps on Thursday to pressure the 80 million unvaccinated Americans to get their shots put him squarely on the side of what had been a fairly quiet but increasingly frustrated majority: vaccinated Americans who see the unvaccinated as selfishly endangering others and holding the country back.
11th Sep 2021 - The New York Times

Denmark lifts all Covid restrictions as vaccinations top 80%

Denmark’s high vaccination rate has enabled it to become one of the first EU countries to lift all domestic restrictions, after 548 days with curbs in place to limit the spread of Covid-19. The return to normality has been gradual, but as of Friday, the digital pass – a proof of having been vaccinated – is no longer required when entering nightclubs, making it the last virus safeguard to fall. More than 80% of people above the age of 12 in the Scandinavian country have had the two shots, leading the Danish government to declare as of midnight it no longer considers Covid-19 a “socially critical” disease.
11th Sep 2021 - The Guardian

Poor countries say lack of vaccines may exclude them from climate talks

The world's poorest countries asked for more help on Friday to meet vaccination and quarantine requirements and costs to ensure they can take part in next month's global climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. The talks aim to spur bigger commitments to start reducing manmade greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and keep the rise in the global average temperature since pre-industrial times to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), to stave off the worst effects of climate change.
11th Sep 2021 - Reuters

No proof of vaccines or tests required to enter Dubai Expo

The Dubai World Expo, which is expected to attract 25 million visitors over the course of six months, won’t require visitors to present coronavirus vaccination certificates or COVID-19 tests, a spokesperson tells Bloomberg News.
11th Sep 2021 - Aljazeera.com

Denmark becomes only European country with no COVID curbs

Denmark has become the only European country with no coronavirus-related restrictions in place, as vaccine rates have reached more than 70 percent of the population. The return to normality has been gradual, but as of Friday, the digital pass – proof of having been vaccinated – is no longer required when entering nightclubs, making it the last COVID-19 safeguard to fall.
11th Sep 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Covid-19: Pupils will not have to 'routinely self-isolate'

Pupils in the same class as a positive Covid case "will not routinely be asked to isolate and book a test", ministers have said. Health Minister Robin Swann and Education Minister Michelle McIlveen said the Public Health Agency (PHA) would take a "more targeted approach" to contract tracing.
11th Sep 2021 - BBC News

Covid-19: Rules ease on dining, dancing and live shows in NI

Covid-19 rules for hospitality businesses in Northern Ireland have been eased, with table service restrictions now removed. The measure took effect from 17:00 BST on Friday. Customers can now queue for service in bars and pubs for the first time since pandemic measures were introduced. It is one in a series of relaxations to Covid-19 rules in Northern Ireland taking effect after agreement by Stormont ministers this week.
11th Sep 2021 - BBC News

Officials: Health care rationing could spread across Idaho

Amid the Idaho coronavirus surge that prompted officials to authorize hospitals to ration health care, Army soldiers sent to one hospital have traded their fatigues for personal protective equipment to help treat a flood of infected patients.
11th Sep 2021 - Associated Press on MSN.com

Vietnam to reopen resort island to foreign tourists to boost economy

Vietnam plans to reopen the beach-fringed island of Phu Quoc to foreign tourists from next month, authorities said, as the country looks at ways to revive an economy suffering from extended lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic. The island, 10 km (6 miles) off the coast of Cambodia, is expected to open for a trial period of six months, the government said in a statement issued late on Thursday
11th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Australia's Queensland state warns of possible COVID-19 lockdown

Australia's third most populous state said on Saturday it may order a snap lockdown after a cluster of COVID-19 cases, as the country posted a record one-day rise in daily infections. Queensland state, home to more than 5 million people, said it had detected five new infections in the past 24 hours after a family tested positive. The next few days would be critical to see if a lockdown was warranted, authorities said.
11th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Cricket: England-India 5th test cancelled after COVID outbreak

The fifth and final cricket test of the series was cancelled just hours before play was due to start, following a coronavirus outbreak in Indian camp.
10th Sep 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Biden Is Right: Vaccine Refusal ‘Has Cost All of Us’

As Americans contemplate the prospect of a second winter trapped in the grip of Covid-19, remember that it didn’t need to be this way. Vaccines were developed in record time, and have proved to be both incredibly safe and stunningly effective. Nearly two-thirds of eligible Americans have accepted these facts and done their part by getting fully vaccinated.
10th Sep 2021 - The New York Times

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The Pandemic Has Set Back the Fight Against H.I.V., TB and Malaria

The Covid-19 pandemic has severely set back the fight against other global scourges like H.I.V., tuberculosis and malaria, according to a sobering new report released on Tuesday. Before the pandemic, the world had been making strides against these illnesses. Overall, deaths from those diseases have dropped by about half since 2004. “The advent of a fourth pandemic, in Covid, puts these hard-fought gains in great jeopardy,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, a nonprofit organization promoting H.I.V. treatment worldwide.
9th Sep 2021 - The New York Times

Covax, a global program to distribute Covid vaccines, cuts its 2021 forecast for available doses by a quarter.

The United Nations-backed program to vaccinate the world against the coronavirus slashed its forecast for doses available in 2021 by roughly a quarter on Wednesday, another setback for an effort that has been hampered by production problems, export bans and vaccine hoarding by wealthy nations. Shortly after the forecast was released, the World Health Organization asked wealthy countries to hold off on administering booster shots for healthy patients until at least the end of the year as a way of enabling every country to vaccinate at least 40 percent of their populations. The organization had previously called for a booster shot moratorium until the end of September.
9th Sep 2021 - New York Times

Africa’s C.D.C. director urges wealthy nations to forego Covid vaccine boosters and donate them instead.

The decision by some rich nations to offer booster shots will hinder coronavirus vaccine access for low-income countries, the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday, arguing there is no conclusive evidence healthy people who are not immunocompromised need an extra shot. In wealthy countries — including Germany, France, Israel and the United States — there has been growing momentum to offer additional doses to certain vulnerable populations, including older citizens, and to the general public.
9th Sep 2021 - New York Times

Least Vaccinated States Lead Spike in Children’s Cases, Leaving Some Hospitals Stretched

Just as millions of families around the United States navigate sending their children back to school at an uncertain moment in the pandemic, the number of children admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 has risen to the highest levels reported to date. Nearly 30,000 of them entered hospitals in August. Pediatric hospitalizations, driven by a record rise in coronavirus infections among children, have swelled across the country, overwhelming children’s hospitals and intensive care units in states like Louisiana and Texas.
9th Sep 2021 - New York Times

Biden to Require All Federal Workers, Government Contractors Be Vaccinated Against Covid-19

All employers with 100 or more employees would have to require their workers to be vaccinated or undergo at least weekly Covid-19 testing under a new plan by President Biden to curb the spread of the pandemic, senior administration officials said. The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the coming weeks plans to issue an emergency temporary standard implementing the new requirement, which will cover 80 million private-sector workers, officials said. Businesses that don’t comply can face fines of up to $14,000 per violation, they said. The employers will also have to give workers paid time off to get vaccinated or to recover from any side effects of getting vaccinated.
9th Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate Guide: Which US Employers Are Requiring Inoculation

To mandate, or not to mandate? That is the question facing corporations right now as they weigh the pros and cons of requiring a Covid-19 vaccine for employees. The answers, so far, are all over the place. A Bloomberg compilation of policies of more than 100 big companies found that about half have implemented a vaccine mandate for at least some of their U.S. staff, but the requirements vary widely. For many, the measure applies to anyone entering a U.S. office—but that can leave wide swaths of the workforce unaffected. Walmart Inc., for instance, hasn’t required its more than 1 million store and warehouse workers to get jabbed. For roughnecks on oil rigs, it might depend where they’re drilling.
9th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Shell weighs 'jab or job' policy for employees -document

Royal Dutch Shell is considering making it mandatory for workers in some operations to get COVID-19 vaccinations or risk being fired, an internal company document seen by Reuters shows. Shell, which employs some 86,000 workers in more than 70 countries, will weigh the pros and cons of the policy at an executive committee meeting on Friday, said two sources who declined to be identified. Shell declined to comment.
9th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Vaccine passports planned to be used for some events in Scotland from October 1

The new SNP-Green government clinched its first major parliamentary victory when a controversial scheme to introduce vaccine passports for nightclubs and large scale events was passed by its coalition majority.
9th Sep 2021 - The Scotsman

Biden requiring federal workers to get COVID shot

President Joe Biden on Thursday is announcing sweeping new federal vaccine requirements affecting as many as 100 million Americans in an all-out effort to increase COVID-19 vaccinations and curb the surging delta variant that is killing thousands each week and jeopardizing the nation’s economic recovery. The expansive rules mandate that all employers with more than 100 workers require them to be vaccinated or test for the virus weekly, affecting about 80 million Americans. And the roughly 17 million workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid also will have to be fully vaccinated.
9th Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

COVID-19 disruption causing many deaths from TB, AIDS in poorest countries, fund says

Hundreds of thousands of people will die of tuberculosis left untreated because of disruption to healthcare systems in poor countries caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a global aid fund said. In a few of the world's poorest countries, excess deaths from AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) could even exceed those from the coronavirus itself, said the head of the Geneva-based aid body, known as the Global Fund.
9th Sep 2021 - Reuters

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Brazilian regulator still unsatisfied with safety of 12 mln Coronavac doses

Brazil's federal health regulator said on Wednesday that documents provided by a Sao Paulo biomedical center attesting to the safety of over 12 million doses of the Coronavac COVID-19 vaccine were insufficient to ensure their safety. Last week, the regulator, known as Anvisa, suspended the use of millions doses of the vaccine developed by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd, as they were produced in a plant that had not been authorized by the authority.
9th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Number of children and teens with COVID-19 exceeds 250000 for first time since start of pandemic, as mask and vaccination fights continue

The number of children and teens suffering from the coronavirus-borne illness COVID-19 exceeded 250,000 for the first time since the start of the pandemic in the week through Sept. 2, a worrying trend coming just as they return to school in person. Data published by the American Academy of Pediatrics showed the number of child cases has been climbing fast through the summer months after declining at the start of the season, with more than 750,000 cases being added between Aug. 5 and Sept. 2. Children accounted for 26.8% of reported cases in the latest week.
8th Sep 2021 - MarketWatch

WHO seeks COVID-19 vaccines for poor nations, 'not empty promises'

The World Health Organization on Wednesday said low-income countries were ready to run effective COVID-19 vaccination campaigns and it was now down to manufacturers and rich countries to deliver the pledged doses to ease global health inequalities. About 80% of the 5.5 billion vaccines doses that have been administered globally went to high and upper-middle income countries, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news briefing on Wednesday
8th Sep 2021 - Reuters

COVID-19 cases among minors reach record 250,000 cases, youth account for 25% of active infections

More than 250,000 COVID-19 cases were recorded among children and teens during the week that ended September 2. The new case count is the highest total during the pandemic and 25% higher than the previous week. There have been 444 Covid deaths among children, meaning kids make up less than 0.1% of all deaths in the U.S. More than half of COVID-19 cases among children are in the South in states such as Florida and Texas
8th Sep 2021 - Daily Mail

WHO urges rich countries to hold off on booster shots until 2022

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has called on wealthy countries with large supplies of coronavirus vaccines to refrain from offering booster shots through the end of the year, expanding an earlier request that has been largely ignored. Speaking to journalists on Wednesday in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said he was “appalled” at comments by a leading association of pharmaceutical manufacturers a day earlier who said vaccine supplies are high enough to allow for both booster shots and vaccinations in countries in dire need of jabs but facing shortages.
8th Sep 2021 - AlJazeera

Judge: Florida can't enforce ban on school mask mandates

A Florida judge ruled Wednesday that the state cannot enforce a ban on public schools mandating the use of masks to guard against the coronavirus, while an appeals court sorts out whether the ban is ultimately legal. Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper lifted an automatic stay of his decision last week that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and state education officials exceeded their authority by imposing the blanket ban through executive order and tagging defiant pro-mask local school boards with financial penalties.
8th Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

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Getting a Covid-19 Vaccine Can Still Save Your Life

News stories tend to freak people out by focusing on “breakthrough cases,” in which people get Covid despite vaccines. Most official data cover the whole period since vaccinations began, so they obscure the more recent effect of delta. Just looking at the share of vaccinated among the hospitalized and dead isn’t great, either: If everyone were vaccinated, it would be 100%. In the absence of good data, the message about vaccines keeps getting foggier. The information that filters through often ends up providing fodder for anti-vaxxers. What people hear is, don’t bother getting vaccinated because you can still get Covid and even die.
7th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

U.K. Is Among First Western Nations to Increase Taxes to Cover Covid-19 Costs

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Tuesday announced tax increases to support the country’s state-funded National Health Service as it struggles to manage a backlog of millions of patients in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. With the announcement, Mr. Johnson is renouncing an election pledge not to raise payroll taxes, a move that sparked criticism from within his own Conservative Party and underscored the pressure the pandemic has put on governments to find funding for social services stretched by Covid-19 and aging populations.
7th Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Vaccines Versus Covid-19: The Great Immunity Debate

There’s emerging evidence that getting sick provides better protection than at least one brand of shots. That’s scientifically significant. But it’s not an excuse to avoid the jab.
7th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Israel's Covid Surge Shows the World What's Coming Next

Epidemiologists say cases among the over 30s are already declining thanks to the boosters and restrictions on bars and restaurants to the fully vaccinated. The highest rate of new cases in recent weeks is among children under the age of 12, according to Ran Balicer, chair of the expert advisory panel to the government. There’s also a record level of testing. “Waning immunity is a real challenge that every country needs to prepare a contingency plan to tackle,” said Balicer, who is also chief innovation officer for Israeli health maintenance organization Clalit. The data coming from Israel in the coming weeks will allow the world to assess the efficacy of the booster shot program, he said.
7th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Biden's Covid booster shot plan mired in confusion amid regulatory hold-ups

The Biden administration’s plans to widely administer Covid-19 vaccine booster shots later this month have become mired in confusion over regulatory approvals, eligibility and logistics, in the latest blow to its efforts to curb the pandemic. US health officials announced last month that they planned to start offering Americans another round of Covid jabs from September 20, following evidence that the effectiveness of some vaccines starts to wane after a few months.
7th Sep 2021 - Financial Times

Boris Johnson faces a battle to achieve buy-in for vaccine passports

The pandemic is far from over. The UK is in the throes of a wave that could overwhelm the NHS if hospitalisations rise too rapidly. Newly reported Covid cases are running above 35,000 a day, with daily patient admissions close to 1,000 every 24 hours. The optimists hope that the wave is peaking and will eventually fizzle out. The pessimists fear worse is to come. Discussions in Whitehall focus on how to get through the winter under the combined pressure of coronavirus, flu and long NHS waiting lists. The mooted idea of an October “firebreak” lockdown to ease the pressure has “almost zero chance”, says one minister. If the situation worsens, Johnson would first try everything else, starting with mandatory masks, then social distancing, then restrictions on indoor gatherings.
7th Sep 2021 - Financial Times

Sweden to lift most remaining restrictions this month

Sweden will push ahead with easing Covid-19 restrictions at the end of this month, removing most curbs and limits on public venues such as restaurants, theatres and stadiums, the government said. With most adults vaccinated, Sweden has gradually eased some restrictions during a summer lull in the pandemic. While it has seen infections mount in recent weeks amid the rapid spread of the more contagious Delta variant, deaths from the disease have remained low.
7th Sep 2021 - RTE.ie

Malaysia will start treating Covid as 'endemic' around end-October, trade minister says

Malaysia will start treating Covid-19 as an endemic disease around the end of October, said International Trade and Industry Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali. More than 75% of Malaysia’s adult population is expected to be fully vaccinated by then, said Azmin. Malaysia’s Southeast Asian neighbors including Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines have also experienced a resurgence in Covid cases caused by the more transmissible delta variant.
7th Sep 2021 - CNBC

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Overwhelmed Morgues Belie U.S. Illusion of a Defanged Pandemic

The fast-spreading delta variant has flooded hospitals across the South. It’s killed more people in Florida and Louisiana than the darkest days of the pandemic winter, and left so many Covid-19 patients gasping for breath that some places face shortages of medical oxygen. This harsh reality, likely fueled by a failure to adequately vaccinate the most vulnerable, has undercut the best efforts of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and other Republican leaders to simply move past Covid.
6th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Vaccination of young linked to downward Covid trend

The impact of vaccination among young people is driving optimism among senior Government figures and health chiefs that the level of Covid-19 infection in the country is on a downward trajectory. Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said on Sunday night that the number of cases among 15-24 year olds had been “coming down significantly and coming down for quite a while”. He told The Irish Times that cases in these groups, “which were very, very high, have been falling markedly”.
6th Sep 2021 - The Irish Times

India's Hetero gets emergency use nod to make Roche's COVID-19 drug

Indian drug developer Hetero said on Monday it has received emergency use approval from the country's health authorities to make a generic version of Roche Holding AG's COVID-19 drug.
6th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Florida doctor says she will no longer accept in-person visits from unvaccinated patients

A Florida doctor says she will no longer accept in-person visits from patients who are not vaccinated against the coronavirus. In a letter to her patients, Lisa Marracini said she will no longer continue in-person services for unvaccinated patients beginning Sept. 15, NBC Miami reported. Marracini wrote that her practice will “no longer subject our patients and staff to unnecessary risks.” “This is a public health emergency — the health of the public takes priority over the rights of any given individual in this situation,” Marracini wrote, according to the news outlet.
6th Sep 2021 - The Hill

Covid: School attendance fines 'could be unlawful'

The government is facing mounting legal pressure over its decision to continue fining medically vulnerable families for poor school attendance during the pandemic. The Good Law Project has said that education secretary Gavin Williamson could be "in breach of the law" over the issue.
6th Sep 2021 - TES News

Europe Denmark cancels tender for domestic coronavirus vaccine production

Denmark has cancelled its previously announced plans for a public tender to establish a national COVID-19 vaccine production facility as it bets on a vaccine already under development by a Danish firm, the Business Ministry said on Monday. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced in April that Denmark aimed to produce COVID-19 mRNA-vaccines by 2022, and that a tendering process would be initiated within a few weeks.
6th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Getting jabbed in New York: Vaccines for a sick system?

Though I was born and raised in the US, I had abandoned it in 2003 in favour of global meandering through countries that, unlike my homeland, did not give me panic attacks – and where people behaved like human beings rather than alienated automatons. I had not so much as set foot in the US since 2015, in the interest of my mental health and of avoiding eternal debt in the event of some sort of medical emergency – such being the perils of life in capitalist civilisations where basic rights like healthcare are converted into punitive, for-profit enterprises. At the start of the pandemic in 2020, I had gotten stuck in a village on Mexico’s Oaxacan coast (not complaining), from where I had planned to travel to Cuba as soon as the Cuban government had finished vaccinating its domestic population and embarked on its promise to jab all foreign visitors to the island.
6th Sep 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Two anchors of COVID safety net ending, affecting millions

Mary Taboniar went 15 months without a paycheck, thanks to the COVID pandemic. A housekeeper at the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort in Honolulu, the single mother of two saw her income completely vanish as the virus devastated the hospitality industry. For more than a year, Taboniar depended entirely on boosted unemployment benefits and a network of local foodbanks to feed her family. Even this summer as the vaccine rollout took hold and tourists began to travel again, her work was slow to return, peaking at 11 days in August — about half her pre-pandemic workload.
6th Sep 2021 - The Associated Press

Rich countries to have 1.2bn surplus COVID vaccine doses

Wealthy countries could potentially have a surplus of more than one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses available by the end of the year that are not designated as donations to poorer nations, according to a new analysis Vaccine stock in Western countries has reached 500 million doses this month, with 360 million not earmarked for donations, according to new research by data analytics firm Airfinity. By the end of the year, these countries will have a potential of 1.2 billion surplus vaccine shots, with the overwhelming majority – 1.06 billion – not marked for donations, it said.
5th Sep 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Virus pummels French Polynesia, straining ties with Paris

France’s worst coronavirus outbreak is unfolding 12 time zones away from Paris, devastating Tahiti and other idyllic islands of French Polynesia. The South Pacific archipelagos lack enough oxygen, ICU beds and morgue space – and their vaccination rate is barely half the national average. Simultaneous outbreaks on remote islands and atolls are straining the ability of local authorities to evacuate patients to the territory’s few hospitals. “The problem is, there are a lot of deaths before we get there,” lamented Vincent Simon, the head of the regional emergency service.
4th Sep 2021 - Associated Press

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Brazil-Argentina Match Stopped When Health Officials Storm Field

A World Cup qualification game between Brazil and Argentina, South America’s most successful soccer teams, was halted after only a few minutes on Sunday after Brazilian health authorities walked onto the field during play in an apparent dispute about coronavirus quarantine regulations. In chaotic scenes in São Paulo, a group of Brazilian public health officials entered the field minutes into the highly anticipated showdown and ordered Argentina’s players off the field as officials from both sides, a small crowd allowed inside the stadium and a global television audience struggled to comprehend just what was taking place.
5th Sep 2021 - The New York Times

Ex-UK PM Brown accuses West of 'moral outrage' over COVID vaccine stockpiling

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown accused rich countries of committing a "moral outrage" by stockpiling COVID-19 doses while poor countries are struggling to get supplies. Brown, who is a United Nations special envoy, called on U.S. President Joe Biden and other Group of Seven leaders to urgently ship vaccines from warehouses in America and Europe to Africa. Western countries are hoarding nearly 300 million shots while only 70 million people in Africa have so far been vaccinated, Brown said in an opinion piece published in the Sunday Mirror newspaper, citing research by data firm Airfinity.
4th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Each COVID-19 surge poses a risk for healthcare workers: PTSD

Nurse Chris Prott's knees jump, his heart races, his mouth goes dry and his mind floods with dark memories when he talks about working in the Milwaukee VA Medical Center's intensive care unit (ICU) during pandemic surges. Prott shares a struggle common to many of the military veterans for whom he has cared for years: symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
5th Sep 2021 - Reuters

Child Covid-19 Cases Rise in States Where Schools Opened Earliest

The recent spread of the highly contagious Delta variant has thrown back-to-school plans into disarray, temporarily driving tens of thousands of students back to virtual learning or pausing instruction altogether. Since the school year kicked off in late July, at least 1,000 schools across 31 states have closed because of Covid-19, according to Burbio, a Pelham, N.Y., data service that is monitoring school closures at 1,200 districts nationwide, including the 200 largest. The shutdowns are hitting classrooms especially hard in the Deep South, where most schools were among the first to open, a possible warning of what’s to come as the rest of the nation’s students start school this month.
5th Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Italy to Decide on Compulsory Vaccine This Month, Minister Says

Italy will decide by the end of September whether Covid-19 vaccines will become mandatory for all people aged 12 and over, according to a minister in Mario Draghi’s coalition. “If we will not have reached a vaccination level between 80% and 90% we will pass a law to impose the Covid-19 vaccine to all people against it,” Public Administration Minister Renato Brunetta said Sunday in an interview at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy. “We will decide by the end of the month.”
5th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

Fauci Cites Possible Delay for Moderna Booster

Anthony Fauci said U.S. booster shots against Covid-19 are likely to start only with the vaccine by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, while the Moderna Inc. shot may be delayed. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain pushed back against criticism that the Biden administration is rushing booster shots ahead of scientific evidence. The Group of 20 are set to pledge to do more to tackle the impact of the pandemic on mental health as ministers meet in Rome this weekend.
5th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

White House Unveils $65 Billion Plan to Combat New Pandemics

The Biden administration unveiled a $65.3 billion plan to prepare for future pandemics threats, likening the ambitious proposal to the Apollo mission to the moon. The proposal announced Friday by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Security Council focuses on protecting the U.S. against potentially catastrophic biological threats, including those that are naturally occurring, accidental or deliberately set in motion by bad actors.
4th Sep 2021 - Bloomberg

A generation of young people is at risk from the UK’s latest Covid experiment

The country is an international outlier in restoring in-person learning without mitigations or vaccination of 12 to 15-year-olds. Neurologists warned that Covid-19 could fuel a pandemic of dementia, because of long-term brain damage wrought in some patients. Second, a paper in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology noted that “long Covid” sufferers are at increased risk of kidney damage. Millions may need dialysis for years to come, a costly tragedy for patients and creaking healthcare systems.
3rd Sep 2021 - Financial Times

China administered total of 2.092 bln doses of covid-19 vaccines as of Sept 3

China had administered a total of around 7.5 million COVID-19 vaccines on Friday Sept. 3, bringing the accumulated total to 2.092 billion doses, data from the National Health Commission showed on Saturday.
4th Sep 2021 - Reuters

England's schools must be made safe: An open letter to the education secretary

We write as researchers, parents, and educators concerned about the impact of the pandemic on children’s education. Like you, and in agreement with the World Health Organization (WHO), we recognise the importance of schools staying open over the autumn and in the longer term. However, as the WHO also notes, schools must be made safe by adopting measures to minimise transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We are therefore writing to express our concerns about the lack of mitigations for children and educational staff, and the subsequent risk to children from covid-19 as schools reopen in England this September. We offer nine evidence based recommendations to reduce new infections in children.
4th Sep 2021 - The BMJ

Tyson Foods Offers Vaccinated Workers More Paid Time Off

Tyson Foods said it would provide 20 hours of paid sick time a year to fully vaccinated employees to enhance benefits for workers willing to receive coronavirus vaccinations. The new benefit, announced on Friday, followed discussions with the United Food & Commercial Workers, which represents several thousand Tyson workers, over the company’s requirement that all its U.S. workers be vaccinated “as a condition of employment” by Nov. 1. The paid sick leave policy takes effect on Jan. 1, and also applies to all nonunion employees.
3rd Sep 2021 - The New York Times

More Companies Weigh Penalizing Employees Without Covid-19 Vaccinations

Companies unwilling to require employees to get vaccinations are increasingly considering healthcare-benefit surcharges and other more aggressive measures to make their workplaces safer from Covid-19, employment and benefit experts say. What started as a campaign of encouragement and lobbying by many employers is now turning into a more forceful effort, with businesses considering measures that penalize employees who remain unvaccinated.
3rd Sep 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Opinion | Doctors should be allowed to give priority to vaccinated patients when resources are scarce

I’m going to come right out and say it: In situations where hospitals are overwhelmed and resources such as intensive care beds or ventilators are scarce, vaccinated patients should be given priority over those who have refused vaccination without a legitimate medical or religious reason.
3rd Sep 2021 - The Washington Post

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Australia's Perth to exit COVID-19 lockdown

The government of Western Australia state said it will lift a three-day COVID-19 lockdown in Perth and neighbouring Peel region as planned from midnight on Monday after no new cases were found in the past two days. Perth and the Peel region were placed into a hard lockdown from Saturday after an infected traveller from overseas, who likely contracted the novel coronavirus during his two-week quarantine in a Perth hotel, visited several venues while unknowingly infectious.
27th Apr 2021 - Reuters Australia

Vienna easing lockdown cautiously, with swipe at government plans

Vienna will cautiously loosen its coronavirus lockdown next week a month after it was introduced, its left-wing mayor said on Tuesday, criticising the conservative-led government's plans for a broad easing of restrictions nationally next month. Austria has had three national lockdowns, the last of which eased in February. Vienna, however, reintroduced a full lockdown on April 1 to help hospitals facing rising cases, particularly of the more dangerous so-called British variant. Infections nationally have eased this month but remain stubbornly high at more than 1,500 a day. Despite that, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz last week said restaurants, hotels and theatres will reopen nationally on May 19, though provinces can have stricter rules locally if needed.
27th Apr 2021 - Reuters

France's Macron expected to announce easing of COVID rules in coming days - minister

French President Emmanuel Macron will probably make an announcement on plans to relax COVID-19 restrictions in the next few days, employment minister Elisabeth Borne told BFM TV on Tuesday. France, the euro zone's second biggest economy, started its third national lockdown at the end of March after suffering a spike in COVID-19 deaths and case numbers. Macron is hoping the effects of that lockdown, along with an accelerated vaccination campaign, will improve France's COVID-19 figures, which would then allow certain businesses and leisure activities - such as outdoors dining - to reopen in mid May.
27th Apr 2021 - Reuters

Amid green shoots, Chile keeps borders closed but eases capital's lockdowns

Chilean authorities announced that they would extend the closure of the country’s borders for another 30 days as hospitals remain near-full and COVID-19 cases high despite a gradual improvement in recent weeks. Health Minister Enrique Paris said seven and 14-day averages each showed a 7% decrease in confirmed cases and COVID-19 positivity test rates were down. On Monday, 6,078 new infections were identified, compared to a record high of 9,171 cases on April 9. “The health situation is showing some signs of improvement. We are seeing changes but that doesn’t mean we can stop fighting,” Paris said. Chile is running one of the world’s fastest vaccination campaigns, with half of its target population already inoculated with one shot and 38.8% with two
27th Apr 2021 - Reuters

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COVID-19: Major cities falling well behind in UK's bid to vaccinate its way out of lockdown

So, while it's clear that age is a major factor driving the different pace of vaccination locally, it isn't the only one. The reason for the difference is made more difficult to determine in affluent areas of central London which may be skewed by non-residents. Ethnicity and deprivation appear to be key in determining uptake and could mean some parts of England have less protection from COVID-19 than others.
26th Feb 2021 - Sky News

South Korea preps coronavirus vaccines after political scuffle over first shots

South Korean politicians won’t be the first in line when the county kicks off its coronavirus vaccination drive on Friday, despite calls from the opposition party for the president to roll up his sleeve and take a shot to reassure vaccine sceptics. Leading political figures spent the week trading rhetorical shots over who should be the first to take a literal jab, but in the end, health authorities said widespread acceptance of vaccines in South Korea means they would stick to plans to vaccinate healthcare workers and other at-risk individuals first. On Thursday, the first doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine were distributed to clinics in preparation for the initial inoculations.
25th Feb 2021 - Reuters

COVID-19: Lockdown easing risks 'cold wave' hospital pressure as non-COVID patients return to A&E

Senior hospital staff have admitted the prime minister's roadmap out of lockdown is making them "a bit anxious and nervous". Doctors and nurses at Warrington Hospital have weathered the first and second wave of the pandemic and are now bracing themselves for the "cold wave". This is the winter surge of patients coming into their emergency department with seasonal respiratory illnesses. This year the cold wave came late, but the sharp spike in A&E attendances means it is here now.
25th Feb 2021 - Sky News

New Zealand still candidate for Covid-19 'best responder' but slow vaccination a concern, Time magazine says

New Zealand remains a contender for the title of Covid-19 “best responder” but this country’s slow rate of vaccination is a cause for concern, according to an article in Time magazine. A year into the Covid-19 pandemic, the group took a second look at several countries it had considered to be standouts for their handling of the initial stages of the pandemic. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has explained the timing of New Zealand’s vaccination rollout, pointing out this country did not have the Covid-19 public health emergencies being experienced by some other countries where vaccine emergency use authorisations had been granted. The Government wanted to ensure vaccines being used in New Zealand were “safe for New Zealanders” and were approved by regulator Medsafe, Ardern said.
25th Feb 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

Covid 19 coronavirus in NZ: One year into the pandemic, five lessons for 2021 and beyond

Exactly one year ago tomorrow, the first confirmed case of Covid-19 arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand. What are some of the lessons we have learned about this pandemic? And what are the implications for improving our response in future? Arguably, New Zealand's greatest lesson is that an elimination strategy is the optimal response for a moderate to severe pandemic like Covid-19. The strategy provides a vivid example of how protecting public health also protects the economy when compared with mitigation or suppression strategies. This successful approach has required decisive science-backed government action and outstanding communication to create the social licence needed for an effective response.
25th Feb 2021 - New Zealand Herald

COVID-19: EU leaders divided over vaccine passports to allow European travel this summer

European Union leaders are divided over developing vaccine passports to open the continent up to tourism this summer. Some countries want an EU-wide approach instead of individual nations having their own certificates, while others are concerned such documentation could result in discrimination. Leaders of the EU's 27 countries met online on Thursday to start a two-day summit to discuss the pandemic, and while they agreed to work on vaccine certificates, they could not come up with a unified plan.
25th Feb 2021 - Sky News

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Singapore's first Chinese COVID-19 vaccines arrive ahead of approval

Singapore received its first batch of the COVID-19 vaccine made by China’s Sinovac Biotech on Tuesday, its health ministry said, although the shot is still awaiting approval for use in the city-state. Sinovac has started submitting initial data but the Health Sciences Authority is currently awaiting all the necessary information to carry out a thorough assessment, the ministry said in a statement late on Wednesday.
25th Feb 2021 - Reuters

New coronavirus variant identified in New York: researchers

A new coronavirus variant that shares some similarities with a more transmissible and intractable variant discovered in South Africa is on the rise in New York City, researchers said on Wednesday. The new variant, known as B.1.526, was first identified in samples collected in New York in November, and by mid-February represented about 12% of cases, researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, said on Wednesday. The variant was also described in research published online this week by the California Institute of Technology. Neither study has been reviewed by outside experts.
25th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Madrid’s vaccination plan for teachers and over-80s mired in confusion

Healthcare centers in Madrid are facing a frenetic countdown to begin vaccinating 130,000 people aged over 80. This next phase of the ongoing Covid-19 inoculation program is due to start on Thursday, but professionals from the sector who will have to administer the injections did not get any details of the operation until yesterday. The situation was mired in confusion on Monday thanks to contradictory statements made by the regional government, which first stated that the campaign would begin next week before rectifying and setting the start date for tomorrow. Workers from the sector voiced their complaints on Tuesday about the lack of planning.
24th Feb 2021 - El País

Holidaymakers rush to book summer getaways to Greece, Spain and Turkey after PM announced aim to restart international travel from May 17 - but SAGE scientist warns don't book a trip abroad before 2023

Britons are rushing to book their summer getaways ahead of the return of international travel from May 17 - despite a SAGE professor warning holidaymakers not to go on foreign trips before 2023. Some of Britain's biggest airlines and travel firms revealed a surge in holiday bookings to destinations including Greece, Spain and Turkey in the hours after Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled the roadmap out of lockdown yesterday.
24th Feb 2021 - Daily Mail

After UK Lockdown, Brits Can Start Packing for Their Summer Holidays in Greece

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Monday announcement that international travel may restart as soon as May 17 prompted a surge in bookings at TUI AG, the world’s biggest package holiday company, and budget airline EasyJet Plc. But the government’s rules were only one obstacle keeping Brits from their favorite vacation spots. European countries are still discouraging or restricting foreign travelers. It’s far from clear when they’ll fully open their borders to holidaymakers again. Right now, Brits are betting they will be welcomed back in time for summer. TUI said U.K. bookings were up 500% after the prime minister spoke compared with a week ago. Greece, Turkey and the Balearic Islands were the most popular destinations.
24th Feb 2021 - Bloomberg

In boost for COVID-19 battle, Pfizer vaccine found 94% effective in real world

The first big real-world study of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be independently reviewed shows the shot is highly effective at preventing COVID-19, in a potentially landmark moment for countries desperate to end lockdowns and reopen economies. Up until now, most data on the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines has come under controlled conditions in clinical trials, leaving an element of uncertainty over how results would translate into the real world with its unpredictable variables. The research in Israel - two months into one of the world’s fastest rollouts, providing a rich source of data - showed two doses of the Pfizer shot cut symptomatic COVID-19 cases by 94% across all age groups, and severe illnesses by nearly as much. The study of about 1.2 million people also showed a single shot was 57% effective in protecting against symptomatic infections after two weeks, according to the data published and peer-reviewed in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday. The results of the study for the Clalit Research Institute were close to those in clinical trials last year which found two doses were found to be 95% effective.
24th Feb 2021 - Reuters

New normal? 'Green Pass' opens music concert to vaccinated Israelis

It was an event that could set a precedent in a world longing for a return to normal - a music concert attended by scores of Israelis vaccinated against COVID-19. The open-air concert in Tel Aviv on Wednesday was one of the first in a programme to restart cultural events by restricting attendance to people who have been vaccinated or those with immunity after contracting the disease. Attendees were required to show a “Green Pass”, a government-validated certificate showing they had received both doses of the vaccine more than a week prior to the event or that they had recovered from COVID-19 and were presumed immune. The passes are valid for six months from the time of full vaccination.
24th Feb 2021 - Reuters

White House to roll out Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses next week, pending authorization

The United States expects to roll out three to four million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine next week, pending authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said on Wednesday. A Johnson & Johnson executive on Tuesday said the company expected to ship nearly 4 million doses of the vaccine once it gained authorization. The additional vaccine will help President Joe Biden’s administration in its goal of ramping up vaccination across the country as it seeks to control the pandemic that has cost more than 500,000 lives in the United States and pummeled the economy.
24th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Moderna developing booster shot for new coronavirus variants, increases vaccine production target

Moderna Inc said on Wednesday it is working with U.S. government scientists to study an experimental booster shot that targets a concerning new variant of the coronavirus, and has raised its global COVID-19 vaccine production goal for this year by 100 million doses. The U.S. biotech company has produced raw material for a booster shot aimed at addressing the virus variant first found in South Africa that may be more resistant to existing vaccines, it said. It has shipped the vaccine to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which helped develop Moderna’s current vaccine, for additional study. Moderna is experimenting with several potential ways to combat new variants of the virus.
24th Feb 2021 - Reuters

EU mulls vaccination passports to resurrect tourism after COVID-19

European Union leaders will agree on Thursday to work on certificates of vaccination for EU citizens who have had an anti-COVID shot, with southern EU countries that depend heavily on tourism desperate to rescue this summer’s holiday season. Lockdowns to slow the pandemic caused the deepest ever economic recession in the 27-nation bloc last year, hitting the south of the EU, where economies are often much more dependent on visitors, disproportionately hard. With the rollout of vaccines against COVID-19 now gathering pace, some governments, like those of Greece and Spain, are pushing for a quick adoption of an EU-wide certificate for those already inoculated so that people can travel again. However, other countries, such as France and Germany, appear more reluctant, as officials there say it could create de facto vaccination obligation and would be discriminatory to those who cannot or will not take a jab.
24th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Johnson & Johnson COVID jab safe and effective, US FDA staff find

Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot COVID-19 vaccine appeared safe and effective in trials, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in documents published on Wednesday, paving the way for the vaccine’s approval for emergency use later this week. The regulator’s panel of independent experts meets on Friday to decide whether to approve the shot. While it is not bound to follow the advice of its experts, the FDA usually does and has authorised vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
24th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

NHS Covid app could be used to prove status and access venues in England

People could use a revamped NHS app to prove their Covid status on entering pubs or theatres in England under plans being considered by ministers, as one major care provider said staff have two months to get jabbed or lose their jobs. Ministers are expected to give businesses in England the power to check Covid certification – whether people have been vaccinated or the result of recent tests. That will include small-scale venues like restaurants or bars. However, the equalities watchdog and trade unions have said that any move that relies solely on vaccine certification could be unlawful and that passes must not be used to relax Covid safety measures in workplaces.
24th Feb 2021 - The Guardian

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World Bank threatens to halt funding for Lebanon’s COVID jabs

The World Bank has threatened to suspend financing for coronavirus vaccines in Lebanon over what it said were violations by legislators who were vaccinated inside Parliament. The comments by the international lender on Tuesday came as frustration grew among some residents and doctors that the national plan that requires people to get vaccinated at predetermined centres could be riddled with violations and favouritism.
24th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Even the World's Most-Vaccinated Economy Faces a Tough Reopening

But even as that brings hope for businesses shuttered for months, and for economies across the globe that have spent trillions of dollars to support people during lockdowns, the Israel experience shows that an emerging new normal that may not look much like the pre-pandemic world for some time to come.
24th Feb 2021 - Bloomberg

'Closer to normality': New York City arenas open doors to elated fans

On Tuesday, standing outside Madison Square Garden in the chilly February air, Cumello was grateful her long-awaited game had finally arrived. “I’m really excited that we finally got to go because I was really upset when it got canceled,” said Cumello, who plays point guard in her youth league in Fairfield, Connecticut. “I’m excited that we just get to be here and get to watch.” Cumello and her mother were among the 2,000 fans ready to watch the New York Knicks take on the Warriors, as New York City welcomed ticketholders at live sports events for the first time since the pandemic brought sports to a halt nearly a year ago.
24th Feb 2021 - Reuters

COVID-19: Is work from home here to stay? What UK businesses are planning post-lockdown

Businesses have started preparing plans to get their employees back to the office, although some suggest office culture may look different post-pandemic. The government's work-from-home (WFH) guidance has been in place now for almost a year, and under Boris Johnson's roadmap out of lockdown it could remain until summer.
23rd Feb 2021 - Sky News

South Korea coronavirus: PM aims for 'herd immunity by autumn'

Health officials will start inoculating medical staff in hospitals and care homes later this week. The aim is to give some 800,000 people the jab over the next month using vaccines produced by AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech. In an interview one year since he became the country's coronavirus figurehead, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun defended the later rollout and said it allowed South Korean officials to see how the vaccine had fared elsewhere. "You know that Koreans are the master of speed," said Mr Chung.
23rd Feb 2021 - BBC News

Holiday bookings surge in UK after lockdown exit plans revealed

Airlines and travel companies have reported a surge in holiday bookings after the Boris Johnson announced his roadmap out of lockdown. EasyJet, Ryanair, Tui and Thomas Cook reported a jump in bookings to destinations including Spain and Greece after the prime minister said international trips could potentially resume from 17 May, subject to review and assuming there was no resurgence in coronavirus and vaccination programmes went well. The increase bolstered shares in airlines and travel companies on Tuesday. EasyJet and Tui were among the top risers on the FTSE 250, up 7% and 3% respectively. On the FTSE 100, British Airways’ owner International Airlines Group, was up 3.5%.
23rd Feb 2021 - The Guardian

New Zealand coronavirus cluster grows with three new cases

New Zealand reported three new locally transmitted cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, as the cluster in its biggest city of Auckland expanded just days after authorities were forced to impose fresh curbs. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern lifted a brief COVID-19 lockdown in Auckland last week, saying the measures had helped limit the spread of the infection to a family of three. However, a student from Papatoetoe High School in Auckland was reported to have tested positive for COVID-19 earlier in the day. Health authorities later said that two siblings of the student were also infected with the virus, and have asked everyone linked to the school to get re-tested.
23rd Feb 2021 - Reuters

Britons rush to book holidays amid plans to end lockdown

Stir-crazy Britons rushed to book overseas vacations after Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled plans to slowly ease a national lockdown, boosting optimism that travel restrictions will be removed in time for the summer holiday season. TUI, the U.K.’s largest tour operator said bookings increased six-fold on Monday, the company’s busiest day in more than a month. Discount airline easyJet said demand for flights more than tripled, and package holiday company Thomas Cook said traffic on its website increased 75%. International travel has nearly ground to a halt globally, so the increases are a sign of hope for the beleaguered industry.
23rd Feb 2021 - Associated Press

Executives with Pfizer, Moderna say they're ramping up vaccine supplies

Executives with Pfizer and Moderna said the companies are ramping up their supply of coronavirus vaccines, with shipments expected to double and possibly triple in the coming weeks, in congressional testimony Tuesday. In a prepared statement before a House subcommittee Tuesday, John Young, Pfizer's chief business officer, is expected to say the company plans to increase its delivery capacity of 4 million to 5 million doses a week to more than 13 million by mid-March. Richard Nettles, the vice president of medical affairs at Johnson & Johnson, said the company plans to have enough of their single-dose Covid-19 vaccine for 20 million Americans by the end of March.
23rd Feb 2021 - Yahoo News

States rush to catch up on delayed vaccines, expand access

A giant vaccination center is opening in Houston to administer 126,000 coronavirus doses in the next three weeks. Nevada health officials are working overtime to distribute delayed shots. And Rhode Island is rescheduling appointments after a vaccine shipment failed to arrive as scheduled earlier in the week. From coast to coast, states were scrambling Tuesday to catch up on vaccinations a week after winter storms battered a large swath of the U.S. and led to clinic closures, canceled appointments and shipment backlogs nationwide. But limited supply of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines hampered the pace of vaccinations even before extreme weather delayed the delivery of about 6 million doses.
23rd Feb 2021 - The Associated Press

Exclusive: AstraZeneca to miss second-quarter EU vaccine supply target by half - EU official

AstraZeneca Plc has told the European Union it expects to deliver less than half the COVID-19 vaccines it was contracted to supply in the second quarter, an EU official told Reuters on Tuesday. Contacted by Reuters, AstraZeneca did not deny what the official said, but a statement late in the day said the company was striving to increase productivity to deliver the promised 180 million doses. The expected shortfall, which has not previously been reported, follows a big reduction in supplies in the first quarter and could hit the EU’s ability to meet its target of vaccinating 70% of adults by summer.
23rd Feb 2021 - Reuters

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Pfizer set to double weekly production of coronavirus vaccine

Pfizer expects to roughly double the number of coronavirus vaccine doses it makes per week for use in the U.S, CEO Albert Bourla said Friday at an event with President Joe Biden held at the company's plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The boost in production should take effect in the next "couple weeks," Bourla said, noting the drugmaker currently manufactures about 5 million doses each week. Pfizer has supplied approximately 40 million doses to the U.S. government through February 17, some 29 million of which have been administered since the vaccine's emergency authorization last December. Pfizer's stepped-up manufacturing is a result of improvements the company's made in reducing by half the time it takes to make and do quality checks on each vaccine lot. The pharma is also expanding its production network, tapping a site in Kansas to aid in the fill and finish of vaccine vials.
23rd Feb 2021 - BioPharma Dive

Australia to ramp up COVID-19 vaccination drive as more doses arrive

Australia will ramp up its COVID-19 immunisation drive with more shots to be rolled out from next week, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Tuesday, after a second shipment of the vaccine reached the country overnight. About 166,000 doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and Germany’s BioNtech arrived late Monday, authorities said, as the country entered the second day of a nationwide inoculation programme. Total weekly doses will be raised to 80,000 next week from 60,000 doses this week, with the number expected to reach 1 million a week by the end of March when CSL Ltd begins to locally produce the AstraZeneca vaccine.
23rd Feb 2021 - Reuters

Coronavirus vaccine rollout begins in Western Australia with two hotel quarantine nurses

Two hotel quarantine nurses have become the first people in Western Australia to be given the COVID-19 vaccine. Four thousand five hundred doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine arrived at Perth Airport yesterday and were stored overnight in a Perth Children's Hospital (PCH) pharmacy freezer at minus 80 degrees Celsius. It is the first COVID vaccine approved for use in Australia by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
22nd Feb 2021 - ABC.Net.au

A year after its 1st COVID-19 cases were discovered, Italy is cautiously bouncing back

Italy discovered its first COVID-19 infections one year ago. The outbreak led to the first nationwide lockdown outside of China, and it has claimed more than 95,000 lives across the country. But as CBS News correspondent Chris Livesay reports, it's a very different story there now. Life has slowly been returning to normal, and Italians packed the streets over the weekend – even in the country's north, which was once the epicenter of its coronavirus epidemic. Old traditions are bouncing back across Italy, but with some differences. A year ago, something as simple as drinking a cappuccino out in the open had become unthinkable. Life is hardly back to normal; the law still requires that you to wear a mask at all times in public, even outside, except when you're eating or drinking.
22nd Feb 2021 - CBS News

Air New Zealand to trial digital Covid `vaccination passport`

Air New Zealand will trial a digital travel pass to give airlines and border authorities access to passenger health information, including their Covid-19 vaccination status, the carrier said Monday. The scheme, dubbed a "vaccination passport" by industry observers, is intended to streamline travel once borders reopen by allowing passengers to store their health credentials in one place.
22nd Feb 2021 - WION

Covid 19 coronavirus: Auckland lockdown was 'frustrating' but justified, says expert

Auckland's latest Covid-19 episode will have proven "frustrating" to many - but the snap lockdown was nonetheless ultimately justified, an expert says. Scientists today welcomed Cabinet's call to move Auckland to alert level 1, and to require masks on public transport across the whole country, at all alert levels. Covid-19 modeller Professor Michael Plank said the drop down made sense, with a vast number of negative tests now giving officials "good confidence" there wasn't an undetected community outbreak.
22nd Feb 2021 - New Zealand Herald

WHO calls for other steps to ease COVAX vaccine access

At a press briefing today, the World Health Organization's (WHO) top official said money isn't the only obstacle to getting vaccines to lower income countries through the COVAX program, designed to offer equitable access to tamp down the COVID-19 activity across the globe. In other developments, the WHO pleaded with Tanzania to report on its COVID-19 situation and describe measures it's taking, as some countries in Europe looked toward easing measures, while a few other nations tracked rising cases.
22nd Feb 2021 - CIDRAP

Pfizer to ship 13 million COVID-19 vaccine doses per week to U.S. by mid-March, says executive

Pfizer Inc expects to deliver more than 13 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine per week to the United States by the middle of March, more than doubling its shipments from early February, a top Pfizer executive said in prepared testimony ahead of a Tuesday congressional hearing. Pfizer has shipped around 40 million doses to locations across the United States so far and is on track to deliver 120 million doses of its two-dose regimen by the end of March, said John Young, Pfizer’s chief business officer.
22nd Feb 2021 - Reuters

New pledges boost COVAX, but critics say more is needed to ensure global vaccine access

After months of uncertainty and frustration, a World Health Organization program designed to ensure access to Covid-19 vaccines in dozens of low-income countries late last week received a spate of good news. First, Novavax pledged 1.1 billion doses of its shot to the WHO effort, which is known as COVAX. Meanwhile, the U.S. agreed to contribute $4 billion in aid over the next two years, with Germany adding $1.2 billion and the European Commission providing $600 million. Collectively, the G7 countries have now committed a total $7.5 billion. And the U.K. promised to provide surplus vaccines to low-income countries. The sudden rush of announcements was in stark contrast to increasing concerns that COVAX was faltering. For much of the past year, wealthy nations and drug makers reached deals that critics argued would leave low-income nations with little access to vaccines. As a result, the vast majority of vaccinations have so far occurred in high-income countries.
22nd Feb 2021 - STAT News

On the Post-Pandemic Horizon, Could That Be an Economic Boom?

The growing optimism stems from the confluence of several factors. Coronavirus cases are falling in the United States. The vaccine rollout, though slower than hoped, is gaining steam. And largely because of trillions of dollars in federal help, the economy appears to have made it through last year with less structural damage — in the form of business failures, home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies — than many people feared last spring
21st Feb 2021 - The New York Times

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South Korea to begin using Pfizer coronavirus vaccines on Feb. 27, PM says

South Korea will begin administering the first of 117,000 doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine on Feb. 27, a day after the country begins its first vaccinations with AstraZeneca’s products, the prime minister announced on Sunday. Plans call for about 10 million high-risk people, including health care workers and staffers and some residents of assisted care facilities and nursing homes, to be inoculated by July. The first AstraZeneca vaccines are scheduled to be administered on Friday, with Pfizer’s shots being deployed the next day, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said
21st Feb 2021 - Reuters

Scott Morrison reveals who his priorities for the coronavirus vaccine are

Scott Morrison has revealed who his priorities are for the Covid vaccine, after being one of the first people in Australia to receive the jab. The prime minister said the 'average Joes and Jills' who work in aged care and hotel quarantine will come first. 'There are many average Joes and Jills who work in aged care and disability care and who have disabilities and live in aged care facilities or who do hotel quarantine - they are the priorities,' he said.
21st Feb 2021 - Daily Mail

Covid-19 vaccinations begin in Australia with Scott Morrison among first group

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has received the Pfizer vaccine, as he joined a small first group to be vaccinated against Covid-19 on Sunday – a step the government says is intended to build public confidence in the safety of the vaccines. Morrison – the 12th member of the group to receive the vaccine at a televised event in Sydney – described it as a “curtain raiser” for the formal start of the vaccine rollout on Monday. He said the initial jabs were designed to show “that it’s safe, that it’s important, and we need to start with those who are most vulnerable and on the front line”.
21st Feb 2021 - The Guardian

How is Sweden coping with Covid-19? The hands-off strategy hasn't changed, officials insist

Now, in the short, gloomy days of February, Sweden’s laissez-faire approach has changed. The government has overruled the public health agency, which has primacy in deciding how to tackle the pandemic, in a number of areas. Commuters are advised to wear masks at rush hour, and bars stop serving alcohol at 10pm. Gatherings of more than eight people are banned. While the restrictions are still not as tight as in the UK, perhaps the biggest change is in the public’s perception of the pandemic. Trust in the authorities has dipped: according to a poll published last month only half of Swedes think that the public health agency is doing a good job, compared with 70 per cent last spring. Other agencies have fared far worse — with trust plunging to record lows. A year after the pandemic came to Sweden, more than 12,500 people have died of Covid-19 in a country of 10.2 million. In Norway, Denmark and Finland — which have a total population of 16.5 million — there have been 3,600 deaths.
21st Feb 2021 - The Times

COVID sickness dropped 95.8% after both Pfizer shots: Israeli Health Ministry

The risk of illness from COVID-19 dropped 95.8% among people who received both shots of Pfizer’s vaccine, Israel’s Health Ministry said. The vaccine was also 98% effective in preventing fever or breathing problems and 98.9% effective in preventing hospitalizations and death, the ministry said. The findings were based on data collected nationally through Feb. 13 from Israelis who had received their second shot at least two weeks previously. Previous reports from individual health care providers also showed positive results, spurring Israel to remove restrictions on the economy after weeks of lockdown. On Sunday, schools and many stores will be allowed to reopen.
21st Feb 2021 - Reuters

G-7 vows 'equitable' world vaccine access, but details scant

Leaders of the Group of Seven economic powers promised Friday to immunize the world’s neediest people against the coronavirus by giving money, and precious vaccine doses, to a U.N.-backed vaccine distribution effort. But the leaders, under pressure over their vaccination campaigns at home, were unwilling to say exactly how much vaccine they were willing to share with the developing world, or when. Chancellor Angela Merkel said after the G-7 leaders held a virtual meeting that fair distribution of vaccines was “an elementary question of fairness.” But she added, “No vaccination appointment in Germany is going to be endangered.”
20th Feb 2021 - The Associated Press

Victorian family tests positive to Covid a day after state emerges from lockdown

Three members of a Victorian family, two of whom quarantined at the Melbourne airport Holiday Inn, have tested positive to coronavirus a day after the state’s five-day lockdown was lifted. Health authorities were confident the new cases, which came after two days of zero cases in Victoria, will not spark further infections as they were isolating at home during their infectious period. The health minister, Martin Foley, said the cases involved two parents and a child, two of whom were classified as primary close contacts because they had been in quarantine on the third floor of the quarantine hotel at Tullamarine. The other family member was deemed a secondary contact. Foley said the trio had multiple negative tests between 10 February and 12 February after returning from overseas in early Februrary.
20th Feb 2021 - The Guardian

Australia's travel bubble with New Zealand to restart as Victoria records no new Covid cases

Australia’s coronavirus travel bubble with New Zealand will recommence on Sunday, the Department of Health has announced. In a statement issued on Saturday afternoon, the department said “green zone” flights from New Zealand could resume at 12.01am on Sunday, subject to some conditions. “The AHPPC monitors the situation in many locations and will continue to advise on a range of decisions in the interest of the health of all Australians,” said the chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly. “These decisions are not easy and we do not take them lightly – and all AHPPC members appreciate the ongoing patience and flexibility of Australians and New Zealanders, including those in the tourism and travel industry."
20th Feb 2021 - The Guardian

After snap lockdown, New Zealand begins vaccine programme

A few days after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ended the snap lockdown in Auckland, New Zealand has launched its first COVID-19 vaccination programme. The country is using Pfizer-BioNtech's vaccine against the deadly coronavirus. On Saturday, a small group of medical professionals were injected with the approved vaccine in Auckland. Following this, border staff and so-called Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) workers will initiate a bigger and wider rollout of the vaccine.
20th Feb 2021 - WION

Escaping lockdown: when will life return to normal?

Governments and societies will have to learn how to manage a complex series of risks, both in the short term while only part of the population has been vaccinated, and in the long term as the disease lingers even after most people have received the jab. International travel could face restrictions for some time to come. Some scientists describe a long drawn-out battle with an endemic virus that constantly evolves — with new vaccines and treatments being deployed in a way that they hope will allow much but not all of normal life to return. “The challenge is to find a way to live with it without keeping huge restrictions in place,” says Azra Ghani, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London.
20th Feb 2021 - The Financial Times

Covid-19: Which countries in Africa are administering vaccines?

Africa has now recorded more than 100,000 deaths from coronavirus, and there's been concern over the delay in rolling out Covid-19 vaccinations there. There has been global competition to get hold of vaccines, and African countries have generally not been as successful as richer countries in securing supplies. "It is deeply unjust that the most vulnerable Africans are forced to wait for vaccines while lower-risk groups in rich countries are made safe," says Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization regional director for Africa. France President Emmanuel Macron has proposed that rich countries in Europe and the US share their vaccines with Africa.
20th Feb 2021 - BBC News

New G7 support gives COVAX program a shot in the arm

COVAX, the push to equitably distribute COVID-19 vaccine throughout the world, got a major boost with a fresh infusion of pledges, as G7 leaders gathered virtually at a security conference. In other international developments, Johnson & Johnson submitted its COVID-19 vaccine for World Health Organization (WHO) assessment, and two researchers published more promising findings for already listed vaccines, AstraZeneca-Oxford and Pfizer-BioNTech.
19th Feb 2021 - CIDRAP

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 19th Feb 2021

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Rich nations stockpiling a billion more COVID-19 shots than needed: report

Rich countries are on course to have over a billion more doses of COVID-19 vaccines than they need, leaving poorer nations scrambling for leftover supplies as the world seeks to curb the coronavirus pandemic, a report by anti-poverty campaigners found on Friday. In an analysis of current supply deals for COVID-19 vaccines, the ONE Campaign said wealthy countries, such as the United States and Britain, should share the excess doses to “supercharge” a fully global response to the pandemic. The advocacy group, which campaigns against poverty and preventable diseases, said a failure to do so would deny billions of people essential protection from the COVID-19-causing virus and likely prolong the pandemic. The report looked specifically at contracts with the five leading COVID-19 vaccine makers - Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax.
19th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Experts warn against COVID-19 variants as states reopen

As states lift mask rules and ease restrictions on restaurants and other businesses because of falling case numbers, public health officials say authorities are overlooking potentially more dangerous COVID-19 variants that are quietly spreading through the U.S. Scientists widely agree that the U.S. simply doesn’t have enough of a handle on the variants to roll back public health measures and is at risk of fumbling yet another phase of the pandemic after letting the virus rage through the country over the last year and kill nearly 500,000 people. “Now is not the time to fully open up," said Karthik Gangavarapu, a researcher at Scripps Research Institute whose team works closely with San Diego health officials to watch for mutant versions of the coronavirus. “We need to still be vigilant.”
18th Feb 2021 - The Independent

Victoria's statewide lockdown ends. Data can tell us what to do next time

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced today the state’s five-day circuit-breaker lockdown would end at midnight tonight. The state’s health department reported zero new cases overnight from nearly 40,000 tests — the highest number of daily tests recorded in Victoria since the start of the pandemic. Andrews said a five-day lockdown is “infinitely better” than taking a chance and ending up with a five-week lockdown or worse. But in truth, we don’t know for sure what that chance is. The fact Victoria uses comprehensive “contacts of contacts” tracing means we have rich data to explore how testing and tracing would stand up under more dire transmission scenarios involving the UK variant and a multi-case seeding event.
18th Feb 2021 - The Conversation AU

Victoria's snap lockdown is over but it comes at a political cost for Daniel Andrews

Victoria has survived its third lockdown. Cases are contained and restrictions have eased. There has been untold economic damage and fresh concerns for the mental health of Victorians already doing it tough. The snap lockdown was a last resort, the Premier says, but that does not necessarily mean it won't happen again if the virus gets out of control.
18th Feb 2021 - ABC News

Covid 19 coronavirus: Auckland out of lockdown - Jacinda Ardern sounds warning, Professor Des Gorman criticises alert-level response

Staff at a South Auckland workplace where a woman tested positive for Covid-19 have all tested negative for the virus. LSG Sky Chefs, based in Māngere, made the announcement in a statement to media just before 10.30am. "A comprehensive test of all LSG Sky Chefs employees - conducted mainly on site by a task force from the local health authority - showed that no other member of the workforce is infected," a spokeswoman for the company said.
18th Feb 2021 - New Zealand Herald

Lockdown over, tennis fans back as Australia says no new virus cases for over 48 hours

Australia said on Thursday it had gone more than 48 hours since detecting the last locally acquired case of COVID-19, as Victoria state ended a lockdown letting thousands of tennis fans back in Melbourne Park for the last days of the Australian Open. Jack Barber, a 25-year-old student, was among 7,477 spectators in the stadium watching Japan’s Naomi Osaka defeat the United States’ Serena Williams to go through to the ladies final. “Yeah, it’s awesome. I wasn’t sure if they were going to put the event on. It’s been really nice to be here. I actually kind of like the lower crowds,” said Barber, with the Rod Laver Arena limited by social distancing restrictions to half its capacity. “It’s kind of nice to be able to walk around and go wherever you want.”
18th Feb 2021 - Reuters Australia

White House announces plans to ramp up COVID testing

The White House announced new efforts on Wednesday to expand and improve testing for the coronavirus, as the United States ramps up efforts to vaccinate Americans. In a news briefing, Carole Johnson, the nation’s new COVID-19 testing coordinator, announced that the federal government would invest $1.6bn to increase nationwide testing. “We need to test broadly and rapidly to turn the tide of this pandemic but we still don’t have enough testing and we don’t have enough testing in all the places it needs to be,” Johnson said during a news briefing. She said the funds would support testing in schools and in underserved populations, increase manufacturing of critical testing supplies, as well as increase genomic sequencing – key to studying virus variants. According to a White House factsheet, $650m will go towards expanding testing capacity for schools, which will assist them in reopening.
18th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

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Brazil’s coronavirus vaccine rollout beset by supply problems

Authorities in Rio de Janeiro and several other Brazilian cities have said they would pause some coronavirus jabs because of a shortage of vaccines, as supply bottlenecks threaten to slow the inoculation programme in Latin America’s largest nation. A number of municipalities including Rio, home to 6.7m people, have in recent days paused first injections — or said they intend to — because of a lack of supply, with priority given to those waiting for a second shot. Salvador, home to almost 3m residents, has suspended first vaccine doses for health workers and the elderly. “We are waiting for a new delivery from the federal government so we can proceed with the vaccination schedule in our city,” Bruno Reis, Salvador’s mayor, tweeted this week.
17th Feb 2021 - Financial Times

In Naples, Muslim families struggle to bury coronavirus victims

When Ahmed Aden Mohamed brought his mother, Zahra Gassim Alio, to the hospital with knee pain, he never imagined that it would be the last time he saw her alive. After a series of complications, Alio was exposed to the coronavirus and she died soon after. When he went to the hospital to collect her body, Mohamed realised how complicated it would be to lay her to rest. Since his city of Naples, in southern Italy, did not have a Muslim cemetery, he was faced with a difficult decision: have his mother’s body cremated, which is forbidden in Islam, or bury her in one of the two closest Muslim cemeteries, both of which are about 150km (93 miles) away. The lack of a Muslim cemetery in Naples, Italy’s third-largest city, and one with a fast-growing Muslim community, has been a challenge for many families for several years. But the coronavirus pandemic has made things even harder.
17th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

‘Wildly unfair’: UN boss says 10 nations used 75% of all vaccines

The United Nations chief has sharply criticised the “wildly uneven and unfair” distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, pointing out that just 10 countries have administered 75 percent of all vaccinations. Addressing a high-level meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Antonio Guterres said 130 countries have not received a single dose of vaccine. “At this critical moment, vaccine equity is the biggest moral test before the global community,” he said. Guterres called for an urgent Global Vaccination Plan to bring together those with the power to ensure fair vaccine distribution – scientists, vaccine producers and those who can fund the effort – to ensure all people in every nation get inoculated as soon as possible. The secretary-general further called on the world’s leading economic powers in the Group of 20 to establish an emergency task force that should have the capacity to bring together “the pharmaceutical companies and key industry and logistics actors”. Guterres said a meeting on Friday of the Group of Seven top industrialised nations “can create the momentum to mobilise the necessary financial resources”.
17th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Slovakia and Croatia in talks with Russia over Sputnik coronavirus vaccine

Croatia and Slovakia are in talks with Russia about buying its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, local media reported Wednesday. “It is timely for the government to start talks with the Russian side about supplies of Sputnik V,” Slovakian Prime Minister Igor Matovič said on Facebook, adding that his government will discuss the matter Thursday and that he's in favor of the jab. Sputnik is a "great vaccine with great efficiency," he said.
17th Feb 2021 - POLITICO.eu

Brussels gives vaccine strategy an injection

The European Commission on Wednesday moved to give its slow-rolling vaccine strategy a booster shot. Battered after weeks of criticism over production delays and other missteps, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen laid out her long-term vaccine promises. She vowed to speed up the approval of vaccines to fight new coronavirus variants and expand genomic sequencing of those variants. She pledged to look into an EU-wide emergency authorization process to more swiftly approve other vaccines. She talked about a new “clinical trial network” and said the EU would buy more vaccines overall through the bloc’s joint procurement program. But what von der Leyen could not — and did not — promise was to immediately make more vaccines available to citizens whom she admitted were rightly frustrated that other countries like the U.K. and Israel have raced ahead.
17th Feb 2021 - POLITICO.eu

Johnson & Johnson has only a few million COVID vaccine doses in stock as likely launch nears

Johnson & Johnson has only a few million doses of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine in its inventory even as likely U.S. regulatory authorization is only a few weeks away, White House officials said on Wednesday. J&J remains committed to providing 100 million doses by June but deliveries are likely to be “back-end loaded” as J&J works with the U.S. government to boost supply, Jeffrey Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, said during a press call. “Across the last few weeks we’ve learned that there is not a big inventory of Johnson and Johnson. There’s a few million doses that we’ll start with,” Zients said.
17th Feb 2021 - Reuters

New Zealand releasing Auckland from brief COVID-19 lockdown

New Zealand will lift a COVID-19 lockdown of its largest city of Auckland and ease restrictions across the rest of the country from midnight on Wednesday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. Auckland’s nearly 2 million residents were plunged into a snap three-day lockdown on Monday, after a more contagious COVID-19 variant that first emerged in Britain was detected in a family of three. Health authorities reported three new locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, all of them from the same home as the child who tested positive on Sunday.
17th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Victoria state to end snap lockdown, allow fans at Australian Open

A five-day snap lockdown in Australia’s Victoria state will end on Wednesday, officials said as they reported no new cases in a cluster linked to a quarantine hotel in the city of Melbourne. State Premier Daniel Andrews said most mobility restrictions will be lifted at midnight, but masks will remain mandatory both indoors and outdoors when social distancing rules cannot be followed. “In a broader sense, we are safe and open,” Andrews said in a televised media conference, but cautioned the latest outbreak had not yet been fully contained. The lifting of restrictions will allow at least some spectators at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne, where players have competed in empty stadiums during the lockdown.
17th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Scottish pupils to begin returning to school from Monday

Pupils in Scotland will begin returning to schools from Monday, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said, but the move would mean wider COVID-19 lockdown restrictions may have to stay in place longer. Sturgeon announced that a phased return would go ahead as previously planned with some age groups allowed to return next week, and others dependent on the success of that move and data on overall infection rates. “We are very deliberately choosing to use the very limited headroom we have right now to get at least some children back to school, because children’s education and wellbeing is such an overriding priority,” she told the Scottish parliament on Tuesday.
17th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Covid: Melbourne and Auckland snap lockdowns to end

The Australian state of Victoria and the New Zealand city of Auckland will both exit snap lockdowns on Thursday. Authorities in Australia said they had gained control of a hotel quarantine cluster in Melbourne, which prompted a five-day lockdown. New Zealand will lift curbs put in place in Auckland three days ago, despite three new local cases. Both countries, known for their strict measures, have seen relatively few deaths and cases during the pandemic.
17th Feb 2021 - BBC News

New Zealand ends lockdown after deciding outbreak contained

A lockdown in the New Zealand city of Auckland will end at midnight, the government announced Wednesday after concluding a coronavirus outbreak had been contained. “This is good news,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. The move to end the lockdown came as health authorities said the outbreak had grown by three cases to six in total. But Ardern said the additional cases were to be expected because they involved close contacts. Ramped-up testing indicates the outbreak hasn’t spread far.
17th Feb 2021 - Associated Press

Calls to overhaul Victoria’s hotel quarantine system ramp up

Victoria’s latest COVID-19 leak from hotel quarantine has ramped up calls to completely overhaul the system, with one expert warning the current system put in place by Premier Daniel Andrews can’t be trusted to keep the community safe from future breaches. Leading infectious disease expert Professor Lindsay Grayson said Mr Andrews’ current approach to hotel quarantine is “placing the rest of the country at risk”. “It should be removed from the national quarantine program until proven safe,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.
17th Feb 2021 - News.com.au

Australia's second-largest city comes out of 3rd lockdown

Melbourne will relax its third lockdown on Wednesday after authorities contained the spread of a COVID-19 cluster centered on hotel quarantine. The Victoria state government has yet to say whether spectators will be allowed to return to the Australian Open tennis tournament under the same conditions as before the five-day lockdown. Health authorities will soon settle on a final crowd figure for the final days of the tournament, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said.
17th Feb 2021 - The Independent

Auckland lockdown to end despite three new cases of Covid-19

New Zealand has reported three new locally transmitted cases of Covid-19, as prime minister Jacinda Ardern surprised many by announcing Auckland’s three-day lockdown would end at midnight. Ardern said she did not believe community transmission was “widespread”, as new cases were minimal, and wastewater testing had reported negative results in the country’s largest city. The rest of the country will drop to Level 1 restrictions. “I wanted enough time at a cautious level to give us reassurance,” Ardern said. “Much better to have 72 hours in [lockdown]… than have 72 hours of unchecked spread.”
17th Feb 2021 - MSN.com

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Peru’s ex-president sought COVID jab out of turn, doctor says

The doctor leading a coronavirus vaccine trial in Peru has said former President Martin Vizcarra got a COVID-19 jab out of turn, as a scandal over government officials receiving vaccines before the general public continues to roil the South American nation. Dr German Malaga testified in parliament on Tuesday that Vizcarra, who previously said he had been inoculated as a clinical trial volunteer, was not, in fact, a volunteer. “He asked me for two vaccines,” Malaga, of the Cayetano Heredia University in Lima running the trial, told a virtual session of a congressional commission. Vizcarra’s wife also received a shot. Malaga said Vizcarra had approached him about being vaccinated on October 1, when the drug was being rolled out to 12,000 trial volunteers. Vizcarra knew he would be getting the real vaccine from Chinese company Sinopharm, the doctor added.
16th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Mexico surpasses 2 million coronavirus cases; more than 175,000 deaths

Mexico’s total number of coronavirus cases crossed 2 million with another 8,683 cases recorded on Tuesday, the health ministry said. The country’s tally of infections now stands at 2,004,575. Mexico also reported 1,329 additional fatalities, bringing the total to 175,986 deaths. The government says the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
16th Feb 2021 - Reuters

UK retail must stay open when third lockdown ends - Ocado chairman

Britain’s retail sector must stay open when it emerges from the latest coronavirus lockdown, sector veteran Stuart Rose said on Tuesday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to set the path out of a third lockdown which has closed all non-essential shops on Feb. 22. “The short term need is for us to have some clarity. We need to have confidence that when we re-open again we will stay open,” Rose, the current chairman of Ocado and a former boss of Marks & Spencer, told BBC radio.
16th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Australia approves AstraZeneca vaccine, bolstering inoculation programme

Australia’s medical regulator granted provisional approval for AstraZeneca Plc’s COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, bolstering a national inoculation programme it plans to begin rolling out next week. The vaccine boost came as Australia’s second-most populous state neared the likely end of a five-day snap lockdown sparked by a fresh cluster of cases. The federal government says it has ordered enough of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which will mostly be manufactured in Australia, to cover the country’s population of 25 million people. It has also ordered enough doses of a vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech, which is being manufactured offshore, for a fifth of the population.
16th Feb 2021 - Reuters Australia

French unemployment falls to pre-crisis levels in fourth-quarter, skewed by lockdown

Unemployment in France fell to pre-pandemic levels in the fourth quarter of 2020, though the data was partially skewed by a six-week COVID-19 lockdown during which jobseekers were unable to register as jobless, the INSEE statistics office said. Unemployment in the euro zone’s second biggest economy fell 1.1 percentage points to 8%, official data showed on Tuesday. That compared with a revised 9.1% in the third quarter and 8.1% in the last three months of 2019.
16th Feb 2021 - Reuters

What will life look like after lockdown?

British prime minister Boris Johnson has said he is “optimistic” about the prospect of lifting the current national lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic while also pleading with the public to remain “patient”. Mr Johnson is due to unveil a “roadmap to recovery” on 22 February, laying out a timeline for the easing of the social restrictions his government introduced in early January to quell the spread of Covid-19, which has claimed 117,000 lives in the UK since March 2020 and worsened when the country was hit by a brutal second wave of infections towards the end of the year.
16th Feb 2021 - The Independent

South Korea warns against lax distancing as daily COVID-19 count hits one-month high

South Korea’s Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun on Wednesday warned against the loosening enforcement of social distancing rules after the number of new coronavirus cases hit the highest levels in nearly 40 days. The government relaxed distancing curbs on Saturday to take effect starting this week, after getting on top of a third wave of COVID-19 outbreaks that peaked at around 1,200 daily cases in late December. But the numbers shot back up in just three days, topping 600 for the first time in 39 days on Tuesday, after a ban on nighttime entertainment facilities was lifted and a restaurant curfew extended by one hour to 10 p.m.
17th Feb 2021 - Reuters

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Kent variant may be 70 percent more deadly: UK study

The highly infectious variant of the novel coronavirus that is predominant in the United Kingdom may be up to 70 percent more deadly than previous strains, according to a report by the government’s scientific advisers. The findings from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG), published on Friday on the government’s website, underscored concerns about how mutations may change the characteristics of SARS-CoV2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – and alter the course of the pandemic. Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the negative test results since the first three were found was an encouraging start, but cautioned a fuller picture of the outbreak wouldn’t emerge until Tuesday, when the results from an expanded testing regimen would be known.
15th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

'It's been scary’: getting vaccinated akin to lottery for US teachers

Keeping teachers safe is not easy – or consistent. Across the US the availability of vaccines to teachers and other workers in American schools has become something of a lottery, with it being available in some areas, and not in many others even as public schools are being reopened. For many American teachers, access to the vaccine seems to depend less on what you do as a frontline educator and more on where you do it. As more schools around the US have started to reopen to in-person learning, teachers and staff are pushing back on doing so without vaccinations for employees. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to issue new guidance on school reopenings during the pandemic.
15th Feb 2021 - The Guardian

Pfizer coronavirus vaccine doses arrives in Australia, ahead of first jabs next week

The first doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine have touched down in Australia as preparations continue for the first stage of the national rollout, Health Minister Greg Hunt says. People will begin receiving the vaccine from Monday, February 22, with more than 142,000 doses arriving in Sydney from Europe just after midday on Monday. "They will now be subject to security, quality assurance, in particular to ensure that temperature maintenance has been preserved throughout the course of the flight, to ensure the integrity of the doses, and to ensure there has been no damage," Mr Hunt said. Mr Hunt said the doses would be split up among the states based on their populations, and more information would be released later this week.
15th Feb 2021 - ABC.Net.au

Imperial College expert warns new coronavirus wave could kill tens of thousands of Britons by late summer if lockdown is completely lifted too early

Professor Azra Ghani revealed how a model forecasts significant wave of deaths by summer 2021 if restrictions are eased in July - even despite a vaccine rollout. The government has vowed to release its plan to exit lockdown on February 22. Government is seemingly taking a cautious approach to returning to normality
16th Feb 2021 - Daily Mail

Incoming WTO head warns 'vaccine nationalism' could slow pandemic recovery

The World Trade Organization’s incoming chief on Monday warned against “vaccine nationalism’ that would slow progress in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and could erode economic growth for all countries - rich and poor. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told Reuters her top priority was to ensure the WTO does more to address the pandemic, saying members should accelerate efforts to lift export restrictions slowing trade in needed medicines and supplies. The former Nigerian finance minister and senior World Bank executive was appointed on Monday in a consensus process and starts her new job on March 1. “The WTO can contribute so much more to helping stop the pandemic,” Okonjo-Iweala said in an interview at her home in a suburb of Washington.
16th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Australia medical regulator approves AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine

Australia's medical regulator said on Tuesday it had granted provisional approval for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca, making it the second vaccine to get regulatory approval in Australia.
16th Feb 2021 - Reuters on MSN.com

South Korea reaches deals to buy more COVID-19 vaccines for 23 million people

South Korea has arranged to buy coronavirus vaccines for 23 million more people, its prime minister said on Tuesday, a day after authorities decided to scale back initial vaccination plans, citing delays and efficacy concerns. The deals include vaccines from Novavax Inc for 20 million people and Pfizer products for 3 million, bringing the total number of people to be covered to 79 million, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said. “The government has been working to bring in sufficient early supplies, but there is growing uncertainty over our plan for the first half due to production issues with global drugmakers and international competition to adopt more vaccines,” he told a televised meeting.
16th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Syringe shortage hampers Japan's COVID-19 vaccination roll out

Japan is scrambling to secure special syringes to maximise the number of COVID-19 vaccine shots used from each vial, but manufacturers are struggling to ramp up production quickly, raising fears that millions of doses could go waste. Japan, with a population of 126 million, last month signed a contract with Pfizer Inc to procure 144 million doses of its vaccine, or enough for 72 million people, with the vaccination campaign set to start on Wednesday. One vial is meant for six shots, Pfizer says, but it takes special syringes that retain a low volume of solution after an injection to extract six doses, while only five shots can be taken with standard syringes that the government has stored up in preparation for the inoculation drive.
16th Feb 2021 - Reuters on MSN.com

Mexico begins vaccinating elderly against COVID-19

Mexico began vaccinating senior citizens in more than 300 municipalities across the country on Monday, after receiving approximately 870,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. The effort was largely concentrated in remote rural communities, but hundreds of people over the age of 60 also lined up before dawn in a few far-flung corners of the sprawling capital, Mexico City, for the chance to get vaccinated. Officials encouraged people to not come all at once, but with shots distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, the demand was immediate. The government has designated 1,000 vaccination sites, including schools and health centres, mostly in the country’s poorest communities.
16th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Zimbabwe receives first batch of Sinopharm vaccines

Zimbabwe has received its first 200,000 coronavirus vaccines, a donation by the Chinese government. Vice President and Health Minister Constantino Chiwenga was at the Robert Mugabe International Airport in the capital, Harare, in the early hours of Monday for the arrival of the doses of the Sinopharm vaccine from China.
16th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

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Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

Israel’s largest healthcare provider on Sunday reported a 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of the Pfizer’s vaccine in the country’s biggest study to date. Health maintenance organization (HMO) Clalit, which covers more than half of all Israelis, said the same group was also 92% less likely to develop severe illness from the virus. The comparison was against a group of the same size, with matching medical histories, who had not received the vaccine.
14th Feb 2021 - Reuters

The show goes on in Madrid as cultural life continues despite pandemic

Madrid’s Teatro Real opera house is busy preparing its latest productions in what at any time would be an ambitious season. With Spain battling some of Europe’s worst coronavirus infection rates, its plans are all the more remarkable. The Real’s premiere of a production of Wagner’s four hour-long Siegfried takes place on Saturday while two other operas with largely foreign casts — Bellini’s Norma and Britten’s Peter Grimes — will be staged this month. The performances are part of a flurry of artistic activity that has continued in the Spanish capital despite the pandemic, as Madrid gives its answer to the question: how much should cultural life be closed down to keep the virus in check?
13th Feb 2021 - Financial Times

China’s Lunar New Year plan shows what living with Covid really means

One year ago, things in China were very different. Around the time of the 2020 Lunar New Year people had already brought Covid-19 back to their families, hospitals in Wuhan were overwhelmed and doctor Li Wenliang, who tried to warn his the world of the virus, had passed away. This year, China’s central government in Beijing has advised people to stay where they are for the holiday. The government hasn’t banned travel but people are following official guidance. The number of passengers travelling during the three-day pre-festival rush fell 70 per cent year on year. Usually billions of trips are made across China for the Lunar New Year period. Train tickets sell out weeks in advance. Stations are mobbed in the days running up to the holiday. This year, they're not.
13th Feb 2021 - Wired UK

Masks no longer mandatory in Perth, as final lockdown measures lift

The last of Perth and WA's lock lockdown measures lifted at midnight (3am AEDT), meaning masks are no longer mandatory. It means the city — which was put into a five day lockdown alongside Peel and parts of the state's south-west on January 31 after a single virus case in a hotel quarantine worker — returns to pre-lockdown conditions. No new cases were reported yesterday.
13th Feb 2021 - 9News

Coronavirus: in Wuhan, a Lunar New Year rush to pay tribute to Covid-19’s victims

Early on Friday, the first day of the Lunar New Year, shops in the central Chinese city of Wuhan were selling out of chrysanthemums as residents bought them to take to the grave or home of a deceased family member. Throughout Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, it is a tradition to visit the household of a person who has died in the last lunar year to offer flowers and burn incense soon after midnight. This year, demand for the flowers for shao qing xiang or “burning incense” was particularly high, with many residents buying the yellow and white chrysanthemums to remember those who died from the coronavirus.
13th Feb 2021 - South China Morning Post

New Zealand to start coronavirus vaccinations on February 20

New Zealand's COVID-19 inoculation program will begin on February 20, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced, bringing forward the schedule after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was received earlier than anticipated. Pressure has been mounting on Ms Ardern to start vaccinations for the country's five million people in order to take advantage of its rare position of having virtually eliminated the virus domestically. "Last year we indicated the vaccine would arrive in quarter two, and earlier this year we updated that to quarter one," Ms Ardern said.
13th Feb 2021 - ABC News

Patient diagnosed with Covid-19 dies in New Zealand hospital

A patient diagnosed with Covid-19 has died at a New Zealand hospital, the Ministry of Health has confirmed, after being transferred from a managed isolation facility for treatment of a separate, serious health condition last week. The person, whose death was not yet being included in New Zealand’s official Covid-related death toll, was diagnosed with the virus after their admission to North Shore hospital in Auckland. The ministry said more information on the case would be provided on Monday, pending further investigations.
13th Feb 2021 - The Guardian

Covaxin not finding international takers even when supplied free of cost by India

According to sources, of the 64.7 lakh Covid vaccine doses that have been sent out by India pro bono as part, only 2 lakh are doses of India’s Covaxin. The rest are doses of Serum Institute's Covishield.
13th Feb 2021 - India Today

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AstraZeneca expects COVID variant vaccine by mid to late 2021

AstraZeneca has said it expects to have a new version of its COVID-19 vaccine ready for use by mid to late 2021, responding to concerns about emerging variants of the disease that may be more transmissible or resistant to existing vaccines. The Anglo-Swedish company, which makes a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, said on Thursday that researchers began the work on the updates months ago when the new variants were first detected. “We’re moving fast and we’ve got a number of variant versions in the works that we will be picking from as we move into the clinic,” Mene Pangalos, head of biopharmaceuticals research for AstraZeneca, said on a conference call with reporters. The comments came as CEO Pascal Soriot defended the company’s efforts to develop and ramp up production of the shot amid criticism from the European Union and a preliminary study that raised concerns about the vaccine’s ability to combat a variant of COVID-19 first discovered in South Africa.
12th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Indigenous leaders warn of missionaries turning Amazon villages against vaccines

Medical teams working to immunize Brazil’s remote indigenous villages against the coronavirus have encountered fierce resistance in some communities where evangelical missionaries are stoking fears of the vaccine, say tribal leaders and advocates. On the São Francisco reservation in the state of Amazonas, Jamamadi villagers sent health workers packing with bows and arrows when they visited by helicopter this month, said Claudemir da Silva, an Apurinã leader representing indigenous communities on the Purus river, a tributary of the Xingú. “It’s not happening in all villages, just in those that have missionaries or evangelical chapels where pastors are convincing the people not to receive the vaccine, that they will turn into an alligator and other crazy ideas,” he said by phone.
12th Feb 2021 - Reuters India

Over 100,000 people from Mumbai got Covid-19 vaccine shots

After vaccinating 5,707 beneficiaries on the 20th day of the vaccination drive, Mumbai crossed the milestone of 100,000 beneficiaries on Thursday. A total of 1,01,364 beneficiaries have been vaccinated in Mumbai since January 16, when the vaccination drive began. Of these, 85,034 are healthcare workers (HCWs) and 16,330 are frontline workers (FLWs). On Thursday, the turnout was 61%, but the average turnout over the past 20 days is over 70%.
11th Feb 2021 - Hindustan Times

France is seeing a baby bust nine months after its first covid lockdown

When France confined more than 64 million people under one of the world's strictest coronavirus lockdowns last spring, there was widespread speculation that a baby boom would follow. Nine months on, though, instead of a boom, France is witnessing a sharp decline in births. Economic uncertainty, social stress and in some cases anxieties about the virus itself appear to have prompted families to abandon or postpone plans to have a baby. The number of babies born at the Saint-Denis hospital plummeted by about 20 percent between mid-December and mid-January and is expected to remain below 2020 levels for at least the first half of the year. While the coronavirus wards were hives of activity last week, lights in the maternity ward were dimmed and the corridors empty.
11th Feb 2021 - The Washington Post

People getting slack about protecting themselves from Covid risk, government survey shows

In New Zealand, a government survey suggests people are becoming increasingly relaxed about protecting themselves from the risk of Covid-19. Use of the Tracer app, wearing masks, washing hands, and taking precaution when coughing or sneezing are all being reviewed on a monthly basis by the Ministry of Health. Other survey questions focus on mental health and how worried people are about catching the virus. The Ministry of Health's latest Health Survey shows that in January 27.5 percent of people recorded where they had been and who they were with. That marks a sharp fall from 45.6 percent of respondents questioned in September last year who said they were doing this.
11th Feb 2021 - RNZ

South Africa to use J&J, Pfizer COVID vaccines, says Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa says country has secured 9 million Johnson & Johnson and 20 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses. South Africa has secured millions of doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to fight a highly infectious variant of the coronavirus that is dominant in the country, according to President Cyril Ramaphosa. During a televised annual state of the nation address, Ramaphosa said on Thursday the continent’s hardest-hit country had secured nine million doses of the yet-to-be approved J&J vaccine, of which 500,000 would arrive over the next four weeks so authorities could start vaccinating health workers. Another 20 million Pfizer doses have also been secured, he added, with deliveries expected to begin at the end of March.
11th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

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WA bans COVID hotel staff from second jobs

A ban on hotel quarantine security guards and other staff working second jobs in Western Australia is set to come into effect from next week. It comes as WA again recorded no new local COVID-19 cases after a breach involving a hotel guard plunged more than two million people into lockdown last week. The guard, who unwittingly roamed the streets of Perth while infectious, had also been employed as a rideshare driver, although authorities soon established that he had not worked in that job since becoming infected.
10th Feb 2021 - 7NEWS.com.au

Australia considers plan to quarantine arrivals in isolated rural camps

Australia is considering controversial plans to set up isolated rural quarantine camps for people entering from overseas as the country tries to plug the final gap in its efforts to combat Covid-19. The proposal to relocate quarantine facilities away from hotels in dense city centres was first raised by the state of Queensland, which imposed a three-day lockdown in Brisbane, after a cleaner at a quarantine hotel in the capital was infected with the contagious British strain of the virus. Following the lockdown, the state's Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk proposed setting up quarantine accommodation at mining camps in regional centres such as Toowoomba and Gladstone.
10th Feb 2021 - The Straits Times

Coronavirus lockdowns costing Australian economy millions

Australia’s COVID-19 success is the envy of the world, with just 909 deaths more than 12 months after the deadly pandemic first reached our shores. That feat has been breathlessly praised by the international media, with the Washington Post reporting in November that we had “almost eliminated the coronavirus by putting faith in science” and The New York Times celebrating the fact our “short, sharp responses have repeatedly subdued the virus and allowed a return to near normalcy”. It is undeniably a cause for celebration given how seriously the pandemic has devastated other nations, with the death toll in the US alone rapidly approaching 465,000.
10th Feb 2021 - NEWS.com.au

New Zealand approves use of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine

New Zealand announced Wednesday it has approved use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Chris Hipkins, the COVID-19 response minister, told reporters during a press conference that the New Zealand Cabinet has confirmed formal approval for the administration of the vaccine developed jointing between U.S. pharmaceutical Pfizer and German biotech BioNTech. The approval came a week after Medsafe, the archipelago nation's medical regulator, gave the vaccine provisional approval. Hipkins said the Cabinet signed off for the vaccine to be administered to those 16 years of age and older and that information about the vaccine, including common side effects such as fever, muscle pain and fatigue, be provided. Patients undergoing some therapies should not receive the inoculation while pregnant women are being advised to discuss the vaccine's pros and cons with their physician, he said.
10th Feb 2021 - koreatimes.co.kr

New Zealand to inoculate high-risk people first as COVID-19 vaccine gets full approval

New Zealand will first administer COVID-19 vaccines to quarantine personnel, front line health workers and airline staff, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said, as the government formally approved its use on Wednesday. New Zealand’s medicines regulator last week provisionally approved the use of the COVID-19 vaccine jointly developed by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc and Germany’s BioNTech. “Now we’ve reached the crucial stage of approval for the first vaccine, we are in a much better position to start having a conversation with New Zealanders about how we plan to proceed,” Hipkins said in a statement. Authorities expect the Pfizer vaccine to arrive in the country by end-March but they had expressed concerns about export curbs.
10th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Australia tennis chief urges strict quarantine for Tokyo Olympics

Making the Olympics safe from coronavirus will be difficult for Tokyo without stiff quarantine measures that will also inspire athletes and spectators with the confidence to attend events, Australia’s top tennis official said on Wednesday. The Japanese capital is expected to welcome 11,000 athletes at the end of July, when it holds the summer Games postponed from last year because of the virus, but is not currently considering wholesale quarantine for them. Speaking on the sidelines of the Australian Open, the first major Grand Slam event to host crowds, the chief executive of Tennis Australia said his experience of organising the contest suggested the Olympics needed rigorous quarantine measures.
10th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Australia's Victoria keeps cap on arrivals after cluster at quarantine hotel

The Australian state of Victoria stepped back on Wednesday from plans to let more people return from abroad each week, following a cluster of cases linked to a hotel at Melbourne Airport used for quarantining arrivals from overseas. Eight COVID-19 infections were linked the hotel after two more people - one a guest in quarantine and the other a worker -tested positive in the past 24 hours, state authorities said. The remaining guests were transferred to another hotel to serve their quarantine and more than 100 workers were also placed in quarantine, authorities said. Everyone arriving in Australia has faced a mandatory 14-day quarantine period at a hotel, including tennis players competing in the Australian Open tournament that got underway in Melbourne earlier this week.
10th Feb 2021 - Reuters

International CEO avoids medi-hotel lockdown in Adelaide

A high-powered international businessman who landed in Adelaide from COVID-stricken France will quarantine at a suburban home instead of a medi-hotel. He has been granted an exemption by authorities. Pierre-Eric Pommellet is the global CEO of Naval Group, the company contracted to build Australia's submarines in South Australia.
10th Feb 2021 - 9News.com.au

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European Union will not block Pfizer coronavirus vaccine doses bound for Australia, ambassador says

Millions of doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine bound for Australia will be allowed to leave the European Union (EU), its ambassador has confirmed. Australia has secured 20 million doses of the vaccine, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison previously saying the goal was to vaccinate 80,000 people a week from the end of February. Concerns were raised about whether Australia would receive its order after the EU introduced new rules on exports of COVID-19 vaccines produced within the bloc, including Pfizer.
9th Feb 2021 - ABC.Net.au

South Korea’s Seoul to test pet cats, dogs for COVID

Several weeks after South Korea reported its first COVID-19 case involving a pet cat, Seoul will start testing cats and dogs for coronavirus infection if they show symptoms of the illness, an official from the country’s capital said on Tuesday. While the disease mostly spreads from person to person, it can also spread from people to animals, or from animals to human – although that is much less significant – according to health experts. A number of pet cats and dogs have been reported to be infected with the virus in several countries. Other animals including mink, gorillas, and tigers were also reported to have tested positive. The Seoul metropolitan government rolled out the test on Monday, the Yonhap news agency reported.
10th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Can Spanish tourism survive a second Covid summer?

Gabriel Escarrer hopes that foreign tourists will come back to Spain this year — but he knows how much his company and his industry will suffer if they do not. As chief executive of Meliá Hotels International, the 326-hotel, €1.4bn-valued group that takes pride in its beach resort roots, Escarrer is all too aware of the wounds left by last year’s drastically shortened summer season. “If we lose this summer, we would be talking about practically zero activity from October 2019, when [travel agent] Thomas Cook collapsed, to June of 2022,” he said, noting that about half of Spanish tourism revenues normally come between June and September. “It would be devastating for the fabric of the tourist industry.”
9th Feb 2021 - Financial Times

One year after lockdown, Wuhan tones down Lunar New Year celebrations

The 2020 Spring Festival did not go as Wuhan people had expected. On Chinese New Year's eve last year, the 11-million-population city was put into a lockdown unparalleled in modern society that lasted for 76 days. A year on, the most important festival for Chinese people is approaching again. How are people in Wuhan, still reeling from the pain brought by the coronavirus, celebrating this time round? After suffering the panic and agony of the virus, emerging from lockdown in a swoon and then moving on cautiously after life returned to normal, many Wuhan people reached by the Global Times said they will "stay put, and quietly celebrate the Spring Festival this year… We don't want to bring trouble to others or to our country."
9th Feb 2021 - Global Times

No Covid-19 lockdowns in Hong Kong over holiday but residents told to stay vigilant

Hong Kong’s leader has said the government will suspend its controversial “ambush-style” lockdown operations over the Lunar New Year holiday, even as a government adviser urged the public to remain vigilant or risk going “back to square one” after the festivities. Speaking ahead of her Executive Council meeting, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said on Tuesday the “very staff intensive” operations involving more than 10,000 workers would temporarily stop as the pandemic had started to ease, with the number of new infections – including untraceable ones – decreasing.
9th Feb 2021 - South China Morning Post

After Outbreak, Trains Start Running Again in North China City as Lockdown Loosens

Travel curbs on Shijiazhuang, the capital of North China’s Hebei province and center of a recent flare-up of Covid-19, were eased on Monday, with trains to and from the city resuming after a 34-day suspension. However, travel by highway and air remains banned. Operators of the city’s highways said business will “be resumed in an orderly manner” without giving a specific timeline, while intercity bus services will also stay suspended.
9th Feb 2021 - Caixin Global

WA Premier Mark McGowan would consider alternative health advice on borders from CHO

WA Premier Mark McGowan says he will consider any alternative advice to the current benchmark for lifting interstate borders, if it is provided by the state's Chief Health Officer. The WA Government has continued to rely on health advice that required states and territories to record 28 days of no community cases of COVID-19 before it considered lifting the border entirely to allow quarantine-free travel. In his latest advice, provided on January 29, Dr Andrew Robertson said health officials were reviewing a 14, 21, or 28-day policy, to determine the best option moving forward
9th Feb 2021 - ABC.Net.au

Covid: Why Australia's 'world-class' quarantine system has seen breaches

Australia's hotel quarantine system has been an extremely effective first line of defence against Covid-19. The country has largely eliminated the virus, often going weeks without a locally acquired infection. Hotel quarantine is credited a huge part of that success. But a series of isolated local cases in recent months - all from hotel quarantine leaks - have caused alarm. Since November, three cities have entered snap lockdowns on the back of such infections, aiming to halt outbreaks at their source. But how does the virus keep slipping through what officials hail as a "world-class" first defence?
9th Feb 2021 - BBC News

Covid-19: Study says clearer information needed from Government in event of future lockdowns

Greater flexibility of bubble rules and more concise information from the Government is needed if New Zealand was to go back into a coronavirus lockdown, a new study has found. New Zealand spent 49 days at Covid-19 alert levels 4 and 3 after cases of the virus were reported in the community. People were asked to stay home and only leave in order to access essential services.
9th Feb 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

Austrian hairdressers reopen but COVID-19 rules ruffle some

Austrian hairdressers reopened for the first time in more than six weeks on Monday as a national lockdown loosened, but new rules including a coronavirus test requirement for customers ruffled some. Despite stubbornly high infection numbers, the conservative-led government let schools and non-essential shops reopen on Monday, arguing that the economic and social toll of lockdown would otherwise be too great. With the lockdown loosening came new rules aimed at slowing the spread of the virus. Shops can only have one customer for every 20 square metres of floor space at a time. For hairdressers it is half that, but customers must show a negative coronavirus test no more than 48 hours old.
9th Feb 2021 - Reuters

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Global health officials back AstraZeneca vaccine after South Africa study rings alarm

Health officials around the world gave their backing to the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19, after a study showing it had little effect against mild disease caused by the variant now spreading quickly in South Africa rang global alarm. The prospect that new virus variants could evolve the ability to elude vaccines is one of the main risks hanging over the global strategy to emerge from the pandemic by rolling out vaccines this year. South Africa, where a new variant now accounts for the vast bulk of cases, initially announced a pause in its rollout of a million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. But it said on Monday it could still roll it out in a “stepped manner”, giving out 100,000 doses and monitoring it to see if it prevents hospitalisations and deaths.
9th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Britons set for a post-Covid spending binge, says Bank chief

The Bank of England is braced for the possibility that a mood of national depression that engulfed Britain as it plunged into a third national lockdown will end with a spending spree when restrictions are lifted. In an interview with the Observer, the Bank’s governor, Andrew Bailey, said there was a chance after being cooped up for so long people would “go for it” once the vaccine programme allowed the economy to reopen. Bailey said that while the crisis of the past 12 months had accelerated the shift to online shopping and would change working patterns, the long-term structural impact on the economy would be less pronounced than the shift from manufacturing to services in the 1980s and 1990s. “It won’t be as fundamental as that”, he added.
8th Feb 2021 - The Guardian

Bad online experiences for children ‘invisible’ to parents during lockdown

When Australia’s online safety investigators are investigating coercive child sex abuse material, which involves children being urged to perform sexual acts for the camera, there is often a concerning common factor: parents are having a conversation just metres away. “Our investigators can hear the parents’ voices in the next room,” said Julie Inman Grant, the country’s eSafety commissioner. “This is happening under parents’ noses, in the home.” The commissioner is ramping up calls for parents to improve awareness of their children’s digital lives, as young people’s reports of negative online experiences – including unwanted contact, cyberbullying and harassment – have spiked during the coronavirus pandemic.
8th Feb 2021 - Sydney Morning Herald

Man arrested for allegedly threatening to spit on Perth coronavirus hotel quarantine guard

Police in Western Australia have charged a returning overseas traveller with failing to comply with a COVID-19 quarantine direction and threatening to spit on security staff. South Australian man Dariusz Tarnowski allegedly left his quarantine hotel room last night and entered the emergency stairwell where he threatened to spit in the face of a security guard. The 48-year-old travelled into Perth from Poland via Doha on January 28 and was ordered to quarantine in the hotel for 14 days. WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said he was arrested after security allegedly saw him leave his room.
8th Feb 2021 - ABC.Net.au

Sharp rise in smoking linked to loneliness in lockdown

People who felt distressed and lonely during the country's lockdown last autumn were three times more likely to smoke more, a new study has found. The results of the survey, undertaken by University of Otago, Wellington researchers professor Janet Hoek, Dr Philip Gendall, associate professor James Stanley, Dr Matthew Jenkins and Dr Susanna Every-Palmer, have been published in the international journal, Nicotine and Tobacco Research. Dr Every-Palmer said people who felt lonely or isolated almost all the time were more than three times more likely to increase their cigarette intake than those who were never lonely
8th Feb 2021 - New Zealand Herald

New Zealand's Māori tribes deserve recognition for their part in vanquishing Covid-19

Global business leaders and others rightly rate New Zealand’s Covid-19 response as the best in the world. But is it equally right to simply credit Ardern and her government for this success? Partly, of course, but another group deserve credit too – iwi. When the country went into lockdown in March 2020 iwi on the East Coast of the North Island, its west coast, and its northerly tip swung into action distributing masks, sanitizer, written advice, and food parcels to vulnerable people in their region. Crucially, they also set up checkpoints to regulate movement in and out of their territory, ensuring the virus had no chance to transmit as the country went about its restrictions. In the early days some New Zealanders were furious with that particular intrusion on their movements. But despite the small yet vocal backlash, the government came around to the iwi initiatives.
8th Feb 2021 - The Guardian

What recovery? Clothes retailers cut orders while factories fight to survive

Clothes retailers in Europe and America sit on excess inventory and cut back on spring orders. Sourcing agents face late payments. Garment factories in Bangladesh are on the rack. The global apparel industry, reeling from a punishing 2020, is seeing its hopes of recovery punctured by a new wave of COVID-19 lockdowns and patchy national vaccine rollouts. The pain is consequently flowing to  major garment manufacturing centres like Bangladesh, whose economies rely on textile exports. Factories are struggling to stay open.
8th Feb 2021 - Reuters

'It's all open!': French flock to Madrid cafes for pandemic reprieve

French tourists weary of their strict national lockdown are flocking over the border to Madrid, where bars and restaurants are open and people can stay outdoors until 10 p.m., even as COVID-19 batters Europe in a virulent third wave. Though it made mask-wearing mandatory and slashed occupancy of public spaces by half, Madrid’s conservative regional government has set one of Spain’s loosest curfews, defying national recommendations to shut hospitality venues and non-essential shops. The city’s counter-current policies stand out in Spain which, like France, is being pummelled by a third infection wave.
8th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Pfizer expects to cut COVID-19 vaccine production time by close to 50% as production ramps up, efficiencies increase

Pfizer expects to nearly cut in half the amount of time it takes to produce a batch of COVID-19 vaccine from 110 days to an average of 60 as it makes the process more efficient and production is built out, the company told USA TODAY. As the nation revs up its vaccination programs, the increase could help relieve bottlenecks caused by vaccine shortages. "We call this 'Project Light Speed,' and it's called that for a reason," said Chaz Calitri, Pfizer's vice president for operations for sterile injectables, who runs the company's plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan. "Just in the last month we've doubled output."
8th Feb 2021 - USA Today on MSN.com

WHO backs AstraZeneca vaccine after South Africa delays jabs

The AstraZeneca shot has run into several setbacks, including concerns about its efficacy against a Covid-19 variant, and its suitability for people over 65. The vaccine accounts for almost all of the 337.2 million vaccine doses the WHO-led Covax scheme is preparing to begin shipping to some 145 countries
8th Feb 2021 - South China Morning Post

AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 Vaccine Defended by World Health Officials

World Health Organization officials expressed confidence that AstraZeneca PLC’s Covid-19 vaccine can prevent severe cases of the disease, as well as hospitalizations and deaths, despite questions about the protection it offers against a fast-spreading strain of the virus first detected in South Africa. The remarks followed a release of information over the weekend about a small clinical trial of the vaccine in South Africa, which prompted the government there to halt a planned rollout of the shot. The preliminary data, which hasn’t been published in detail, suggested the vaccine may not prevent mild and moderate cases of Covid-19 from a new variant that has become the dominant version of the virus in South Africa and the broader southern African region. The WHO’s director-general, Tedros Ghebreyesus, said the trial’s findings were “clearly concerning news,” but stressed that they came with “important caveats.”
8th Feb 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

UK defends AstraZeneca vaccine after South Africa halts roll-out

The Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID vaccine prevents death and serious illness and is effective against the main variants of the virus in the United Kingdom, a government official has said after South Africa suspended its roll-out of the shots. Pointing out that the dominant strains in the UK were not the so-called South African variant, junior health minister Edward Argar told UK broadcaster Sky News on Monday that the vaccine was highly effective and there was no evidence that it was not preventing hospitalisations and severe illness in the country.
8th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

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World is on course for a coronavirus vaccine ‘apartheid’, experts warn

Senam Agbesi has been trying to make the best of lockdown in London. “I’ve done lots of Zooms, lots of walks,” he said. The 34-year-old NHS manager believes he could get the vaccine this month, as he is starting a new job that would mean visiting hospitals regularly. Despite the good news about his own vaccine, he worries about his father, Yao, who lives in Accra, Ghana. Yao is 65 and has sickle cell trait, a condition that puts him at higher risk of suffering severe illness if he catches Covid-19. A close family friend recently died of the virus and Senam wishes his father would be more careful. “He thinks he’s invincible. He drinks his little tea of lime juice and ginger in the mornings and thinks he has an invisible fortress around him,” he told The Bureau of Investigative Journalism for this report.
6th Feb 2021 - The Independent

South Africa's Ramaphosa says access to concessional loans key to Africa's recovery

Access to loans on favourable terms will be crucial to Africa’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Saturday. Ramaphosa, who is the outgoing chair of the African Union (AU), told the bloc’s summit that even though the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have deployed significant financial resources for the coronavirus outbreak response, more needed to be done. “Assess to concessional finance will remain crucial as countries rebuild their economies,” Ramaphosa told the virtual summit.
6th Feb 2021 - Reuters

First doses of AstraZeneca to be given next week as 190,000 shots to arrive this month

Ireland will receive 190,000 AstraZeneca shots this month with an early delivery of 21,000 doses arriving this weekend, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said. Frontline healthcare workers who have not yet received their first dose will be first in the queue for these shots, Minister Donnelly confirmed. “Now, there aren’t 190,000 people [in this category] so the rest of these will be scheduled accordingly, and we will begin looking at cohorts 4,5,6 and 7,” Minister Donnelly said on RTÉ News at One.
6th Feb 2021 - Independent.ie

Calls grow for US to rely on rapid tests to fight pandemic

When a Halloween party sparked a COVID-19 outbreak at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, school officials conducted rapid screening on more than 1,000 students in a week, including many who didn’t have symptoms. Although such asymptomatic screening isn’t approved by regulators and the 15-minute tests aren’t as sensitive as the genetic one that can take days to yield results, the testing director at the historically Black college credits the approach with quickly containing the infections and allowing the campus to remain open. “Within the span of a week, we had crushed the spread. If we had had to stick with the PCR test, we would have been dead in the water,” said Dr. Robert Doolittle, referring to the polymerase chain reaction test that is considered the gold standard by many doctors and Food and Drug Administration regulators.
6th Feb 2021 - The Associated Press

How AstraZeneca’s vaccine was hit by flawed trials, defects and politics — but might still save the world

This account of a turbulent period for the Anglo-Swedish company is based on interviews with more than 30 executives, scientists and government officials in the UK, US and EU. Even before selecting their partner in April, the university scientists had made a head start — but took a route that would cause trouble later. The scientists decided not to test the vaccine among large groups of over-65s, until they had plenty of evidence that it was safe in younger people. Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told the FT the decision was “cautious — and at the time, that was right”.
5th Feb 2021 - Financial Times

The Latest: Sri Lankan officials say vaccinations advancing

Sri Lankan health officials said on Saturday that more than half of the health workers and frontline military and police officers have so far been vaccinated against COVID-19. Sri Lanka last week began inoculating it’s frontline health workers, military troops and police officers against COVID-19 amid warnings that the sector faces a collapse with a number of health staff being infected with the new coronavirus. The ministry had planned to first vaccinate 150,000 health workers and selected 115,000 military and police personnel. By Saturday, 156,310 had been given with COVISHIELD vaccine. India had donated 500,000 does of Oxford-AstraZenica vaccine also known as the COVISHIELD which is the only vaccine approved by the regulatory body in Sri Lanka. Health ministry says Sri Lanka has ordered 18 millions doses of COVISHIELD vaccines and also had asked to allocate 2 million doses of Pfizer-BioNtech. Besides, China has promised to provide 300,000 shots of Sinopharm vaccine this month.
5th Feb 2021 - The Associated Press

Europe moves toward COVID-19 vaccine passports but not every country is on board

A few European Union countries have taken steps to distribute special passes to allow citizens inoculated against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 to travel freely. Others countries, including the U.K., are considering such a measure.
5th Feb 2021 - MarketWatch

Governor Cuomo Announces List of Comorbidities and Underlying Conditions Eligible for COVID-19 Vaccine Starting February 15

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today released the list of comorbidities and underlying conditions that New York State will use to determine eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine. New Yorkers who have one of the comorbidities on the list will be eligible for the vaccine beginning February 15. "New Yorkers with comorbidities and underlying conditions exist throughout the state's population—they're our teachers, lawyers and carpenters, in addition to the doctors who keep us safe every day, and they are a highly affected population," Governor Cuomo said. "We're committed to vaccinating vulnerable populations that have suffered the most as we distribute a strictly limited supply of vaccines, and people with comorbidities are 94 percent of the state's COVID deaths. That's why we'll open eligibility to people with comorbidities starting February 15 and give hospitals the ability to use extra doses they have to address that population. Local governments have a week to prepare for the new change—they need to get ready now."
5th Feb 2021 - ny.gov

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Sixteen African nations show interest in AU COVID vaccine plan

Africa CDC director says countries asked for 114 million doses in total and allocations could be announced within three weeks. Sixteen African countries have shown interest in securing COVID-19 vaccines under an African Union (AU) plan, and allocations could be announced in the next three weeks, the head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said. While many rich nations have already begun mass inoculation drives, only a few African countries have started vaccinations, and the 55-member African Union hopes to see 60 percent of the continent’s 1.3 billion people immunised in the next three years.
5th Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

New Covid strains ‘may even escape the immune response,’ says Biden Covid advisor

Three highly contagious mutations of Covid have been detected in at least 33 states across the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “They’re more virulent, can cause more death, and some of them may even escape the immune response, whether it’s natural or from the vaccine,” said Dr. Celine Gounder. Gounder said that she’s “concerned” that people will let their guards down in March and that it could potentially lead to another surge.
5th Feb 2021 - CNBC

How to heal the 'mass trauma' of Covid-19

When the pandemic is over, how should we process the memories of what happened? Ed Prideaux discovers counter-intuitive answers from the science of trauma. "After the pandemic ends, the effects of the mass trauma it has inflicted will linger across societies for years. How might we understand this mental fallout? And what does the science of trauma suggest that we should – and shouldn't – do in order to heal?" "Covid-19 is a mass trauma the likes of which we've never seen before. Our most complex social extensions, and the building-blocks of our personal realities, have been coloured indelibly. The ways we live and work together, and view each other as common citizens: everything means something different in the viral era, and with potentially traumatic effect. All pandemics end, however. And this one will. But to forget the trauma, move on, and pay it no mind, won't help. It'd be a disservice to history and our own minds. Maybe to the future, too. "
4th Feb 2021 - BBC News

Restaurants face 'wave of bankruptcies' after lockdowns

The food services sector has been hit hard by the Coronavirus pandemic, but governments are struggling to find ways to reopen safely. On Monday, Italy eased restrictions in sixteen regions, allowing restaurants and museums to reopen after months of closure. But the country remains an exception in Europe. In Brussels, the streets of the normally lively city centre have been eerily empty for more than three months now. To make matters worse, the sector has had to adjust to wildly zig-zagging policy decisions over the past year that have varied enormously between different countries.
4th Feb 2021 - EURACTIV

Macron's Lockdown Conundrum Will Decide France's Recession Fate

The French economy is on the brink of tipping into another recession, depending on President Emmanuel Macron’s next move to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. If the government replaces the current curfew with a seven-week nationwide lockdown similar to November’s, the economy would shrink 1% in the first quarter after a 1.3% contraction at the end of last year, national statistics agency Insee estimates. If France keeps current restrictions unchanged, the economy would grow 1.5%.
4th Feb 2021 - Bloomberg

Face masks mandatory beyond WA lockdown

West Australians will be required to wear face masks while out in public and be restricted to seated service at bars and restaurants for another week when the state emerges from lockdown. WA has posted four consecutive days of no new community COVID-19 cases, paving the way for metropolitan Perth, the Peel region and South West to exit lockdown at 6pm on Friday. But Premier Mark McGowan has announced a range of restrictions will remain in place for Perth and Peel until 1201am on Sunday February 14.
4th Feb 2021 - The Canberra Times

‘Dodged a bullet’: Expert explains why WA may have escaped COVID spread

Amid questions of how Western Australia could have escaped further community spread, an infectious disease expert has dispelled suggestions the security guard dubbed Case 903 might have been a false positive. Senior Australian infectious disease experts are also at odds over the effectiveness or benefit of WA’s short, sharp lockdown. A security guard who worked at one of Perth’s quarantine hotels tested positive to the highly infectious UK strain of COVID-19 on Saturday and dozens of locations around the city have been established as possible exposure sites. But extensive testing over the past three days has not produced any further cases of community spread. Professor Adrian Esterman from the University of South Australia told 6PR’s Gareth Parker the reason might be that Case 903 was one of those people who was not very infectious.
4th Feb 2021 - WAtoday

Britain's COVID-19 hotel quarantine policy to start Feb. 15

Britain’s hotel quarantine policy for travellers arriving from COVID-19 hot spots will start on Feb. 15, the government announced on Thursday after critics said it was not moving fast enough to bring in the measures. The mandatory 10-day stay in government-provided accommodation, first announced last month, is designed to tighten borders against new variants of the coronavirus which could endanger Britain’s vaccination programme. Opposition lawmakers have criticised Boris Johnson’s government for not implementing the plan more quickly, saying the delay was putting lives at risk. The prime minister said on Wednesday details would be announced on Thursday, only to be contradicted by his spokesman less than 24 hours later.
4th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Why Israel Can't Celebrate Its Vaccine Success Yet

Israel is still struggling to contain the virus. This isn’t because the vaccine is failing, but because many Israelis still refuse to follow restrictions imposed to limit the spread of infections. Israel began its vaccination program by inoculating its oldest citizens and those with serious underlying conditions. In cities with high levels of vaccination, there’s been a 50% drop in confirmed cases, a 40% decrease in hospitalizations and there are 15% fewer serious patients. “The vaccine's effect is profound,” says Professor Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute. The virus’s reproduction rate is under the magic number of one, meaning infection rates should continue to decline. Even so, January has been a cruel month in which Covid-19 claimed 1,400 fatalities, about a third of total deaths since the start of the pandemic. Most of these were elderly patients for whom the vaccine didn’t arrive in time. If Israel is bending the curve, it isn’t doing it as fast as it could be.
4th Feb 2021 - Bloomberg

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Denmark: ‘Digital corona passport’ will be ready in months

Denmark’s government has said it is joining forces with businesses to develop a digital passport that would show whether people have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, allowing them to travel and help ease restrictions on public life. Finance Minister Morten Boedskov told a news conference on Wednesday that “in three, four months, a digital corona passport will be ready for use in, for example, business travel.” “It is absolutely crucial for us to be able to restart Danish society so that companies can get back on track. Many Danish companies are global companies with the whole world as a market,” he added. As a first step, before the end of February, citizens in Denmark would be able to see on a Danish health website the official confirmation of whether they have been vaccinated.
3rd Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Covid is the greatest test of global solidarity in decades – we have to work with, not against, each other

In September 2000, 189 countries signed the Millennium Declaration, shaping the principles of international cooperation for a new era of progress towards common goals. Emerging from the Cold War, we were confident about our capacity to build a multilateral order capable of tackling the big challenges of the time: hunger and extreme poverty, environmental degradation, diseases, economic shocks, and the prevention of conflicts. In September 2015, all countries again committed to an ambitious agenda to tackle global challenges together: the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
3rd Feb 2021 - The Independent

Travellers at Perth hotel at centre of WA coronavirus lockdown 'shocked' by poor communication and PPE use

They might be quarantining at the same hotel that produced Western Australia's first COVID-19 case in 10 months, but returned travellers at the Four Points by Sheraton say they are being left in the dark on key issues. An unknown number were due to leave the hotel yesterday after undergoing 14 days of quarantine but — only a short time before they were due to leave — they learned the plan had changed when they saw a press conference broadcast live on television. At the media briefing, WA Premier Mark McGowan said the travellers would have to produce another negative test before they could be released.
3rd Feb 2021 - ABC.Net.au

Global vaccine trust rising, but France, Japan, others sceptical

People’s willingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is rising around the world and more than half of those questioned said they would take the shot if it were offered next week, an updated survey of global vaccine confidence found on Thursday. But attitudes and confidence vary widely in the 15 countries covered in the survey, with France showing high levels of scepticism and some Asian countries showing declining trust in vaccines, while some European nations see rising confidence. Overall, vaccine confidence is higher than in November, when the same survey - conducted in 15 countries and covering 13,500 people each time - found that only 40% would be willing to get vaccinated.
4th Feb 2021 - Reuters

Vaccination sites opening in hard-hit California communities to tackle COVID disparities

New vaccination centers are due to open this month in the heart of two California communities especially hard hit by the coronavirus, as state and federal officials try to tackle racial and economic disparities hindering U.S. immunization efforts. Joint plans to launch the two sites on Feb. 16, at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum in Oakland and the California State University campus in east Los Angeles, were detailed separately on Wednesday by Governor Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response coordinator, Jeff Zients.
4th Feb 2021 - Reuters

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UK coronavirus variant develops vaccine-evading mutation

In a handful of instances, the U.K. coronavirus variant has developed a mutation that may help it evade current vaccines, according to news reports. The variant, called B.1.1.7, was first identified in the U.K. in September 2020 and has since spread around the world, Live Science previously reported. This variant is more contagious than earlier versions of the coronavirus. On Monday (Feb. 1), officials in the United Kingdom revealed that, out of about 214,000 samples of the variant that underwent genetic sequencing, they had identified 11 samples that had acquired a mutation known as E484K, according to government documents. This mutation has been seen before — notably, in another coronavirus variant called B.1.351, which was first identified in South Africa in October 2020. Officials are concerned about this mutation because it could impact the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. Indeed, data from several vaccine makers, including Johnson & Johnson and Novavax, have found that their COVID-19 vaccines were less effective in South Africa, where B.1.351 is dominant.
2nd Feb 2021 - Livescience.com

Biden administration to provide COVID-19 vaccines to pharmacies

The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it will begin providing COVID-19 vaccines to US pharmacies, part of its plan to ramp up vaccinations as new and potentially more serious virus strains are starting to appear. Coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients said starting from next week some 6,500 pharmacies around the country will receive one million doses of vaccine. The number of participating pharmacies, and the allocation of vaccines, are expected to accelerate as drugmakers increase production. “This is a key component of president Biden’s national strategy: offering vaccination in America’s pharmacies,” Zients said during a White House virtual briefing.
3rd Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

China arrests suspects in fake COVID-19 vaccine ring

Chinese police have arrested more than 80 suspected members of a criminal group that was manufacturing and selling fake COVID-19 vaccines, including to other countries. Police in Beijing and in Jiangsu and Shandong provinces broke up the group led by a suspect surnamed Kong that was producing the fake vaccines, which consisted of a simple saline solution, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The vaccines were sold in China and to other countries although it was unclear which ones. The group had been active since last September, according to state media.
2nd Feb 2021 - The Independent

Covid: 'Mutations of concern' prompt government to look at vaccine effectiveness

A coronavirus "mutation of concern" has been identified in England, prompting the government to work with vaccine firms to assess the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines on new strains of the virus. Scientists have described the discovery of the mutation, which has been shown to reduce the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing people contracting Covid-19, as a "worrying development”. The mutation - known as E484K, which is found on the South African and Brazilian variants - has now been identified on some samples of the UK variant of Covid-19 which was first found in Kent. A door-to-door testing blitz is underway in eight postcode areas in England, after 105 cases of the South African variant were found, to contain the strain and ensure it does not interfere with the vaccine rollout. Public health experts still believe current vaccines will still be effective against these strains and are good at preventing severe disease. But laboratory studies have shown that antibodies – which are produced by the body to counteract infection – are less able to bind to a part of the virus known as the spike protein, in order to stop it from unlocking human cells to gain entry.
2nd Feb 2021 - ITV News

Palestinians begin COVID vaccinations in occupied West Bank

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has started COVID vaccination in the occupied West Bank after receiving 2,000 doses from Israel, Palestinian officials said. The Moderna vaccines are the first batch of the promised 5,000 shots to be delivered by Israel to inoculate medical workers. In recent weeks, Israel has faced mounting global pressure, including from the United Nations, to help Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip to gain access to vaccines. “We started today,” Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said on Tuesday, adding that a supply of doses would be sent to Gaza, an Israeli-blockaded territory controlled by the Palestinian group Hamas, so that inoculation of front-line workers could begin in the enclave. “We have given highest priority to health personnel … and those working in intensive care units,” she said in a video distributed by Palestinian television.
2nd Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

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Thousands in England to be tested in 'sprint' to halt South African Covid variant

Tens of thousands of people will be tested in a door-to-door “two-week sprint” to halt the spread of the South African coronavirus variant as cases were found across England. Squads of health officials, firefighters and volunteers have been established to deliver and collect PCR test kits door-to-door and mobile testing units will be sent to each area. Wastewater could also be tested to determined the prevalence of the strain. The new South Africa variant, which is more transmissible than the original virus, appears to show a slightly “diminished” response to vaccines, and may eventually require a booster shot, Public Health England (PHE) said.
2nd Feb 2021 - The Guardian

After the dire predictions, does India really have a handle on Covid-19?

Just days after India marked a year since its first reported Covid-19 case, the country seems to be hurtling into the light after a long spell inside a dark tunnel. Some hospitals in the capital, New Delhi, have no coronavirus patients. Markets are full of masked shoppers. People meet in cafes and restaurants, at tables set a cautious distance apart. The more risk-averse socialise outdoors, on their terraces and balconies. Students are returning in batches to universities, and some classes in schools have begun again. Cinemas, with protocols in place, reopened on Monday at full capacity. Wedding planners, hung out to dry for a year, have swung back into action. Flights to most parts of the country are full.
2nd Feb 2021 - South China Morning Post

Moderna proposes filling vials with additional doses of COVID-19 vaccine

Moderna Inc said on Monday it is proposing filling vials with additional doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to ease a crunch in manufacturing as the company approaches the manufacturing of almost a million doses a day. “The company is proposing filling vials with additional doses of vaccine, up to 15 doses versus the current 10 doses,” Moderna said in an emailed statement. “Moderna would need to have further discussions with the FDA to assure the agency’s comfort with this approach before implementing,” the company said, referring to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
2nd Feb 2021 - Reuters

'We’re in fine fettle': joy on Isle of Man as Covid lockdown ends

The Isle of Man brought in a “circuit-breaker” lockdown on 7 January following a cluster of Covid cases. On Monday, the restrictions were lifted after the government declared no community transmission was taking place. Social distancing measures have been lifted and face coverings are no longer required. There are no time limits for exercise or leisure activities and non-essential shops have reopened, as have schools, nurseries, colleges and entertainment venues. The island, a self-governing British crown dependency, has not been untouched by Covid-19: there have been more than 400 cases and 25 deaths. But it maintains strict border controls and, most agree, has reacted nimbly to challenges posed by the virus.
1st Feb 2021 - The Guardian

A year after the pandemic struck, Italians reflect on their grief

On February 21, 2020, Italy’s “patient one” tested positive for COVID-19 at a hospital in Codogno, a town in Lombardy – and that was the day the lives of millions of people across the world changed beyond imagination. It took another 20 days for Italy to announce a blanket lockdown, on March 9, closing all commercial activities and confining citizens to their homes. The lives Europeans had taken for granted in peacetime changed almost overnight: Access to healthcare, free movement and seeing friends and family were no longer a given. A year later, more than 88,000 people have died after contracting the virus in Italy, the second-highest death toll in Europe after the United Kingdom.
1st Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Australia will have enough Covid-19 vaccine to cover its population 'several times over', Scott Morrison says

Australia will spend more than $2 billion (A$1.9b) on equipping hospitals and other health centres to administer coronavirus vaccines that will see 26 million Australians vaccinated by the end of the year in one of the country's largest-ever logistical exercises. Prime Minister Scott Morrison made the funding commitment during a major speech to the National Press Club in Canberra on Monday. “Our aim is to give Australians the opportunity to be vaccinated by October of this year, commencing in just a few weeks’ time.”
1st Feb 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

Covid-19 update: No new cases in community or at border

In New Zealand, there have been no new cases of Covid-19 in the community or managed isolation reported today, Covid-19 Response minister Chris Hipkins says. No new community cases were reported in New Zealand on Sunday, following last week's three confirmed border-related infections. One new case was confirmed in managed isolation.
1st Feb 2021 - RNZ

Italians flock back to coffee bars as COVID-19 restrictions eased

The familiar tinkling of ceramic cups and chatter returned to coffee bars across most of Italy on Monday, as rigid COVID-19 restrictions were eased. After severe curbs over the Christmas and New Year period, two-thirds of Italy was declared a “yellow zone” allowing bars in those less risky areas to serve customers at counters and tables again instead of offering only take-away in plastic cups. The Health Ministry eased restrictions in 15 of Italy’s 20 regions, as the number of people infected continued to fall. Five regions remain red zones and travelling between regions of any colour remains prohibited until mid-February.
1st Feb 2021 - Reuters

Mumbai's suburban train services restored after 11 months

One of the world’s busiest urban rail systems situated in India’s financial capital Mumbai was restarted for all commuters on Monday, 11 months after it was shut down to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection in the city. An average of eight million people were using the train services daily before the pandemic. Operations were stopped in March last year, as part of a strict lockdown imposed by the government. On Monday, commuters trickled into still empty train coaches, wearing masks and armed with sanitisers.
1st Feb 2021 - Reuters

COVAX to send millions of AstraZeneca shots to Latin America

The COVAX global vaccine sharing scheme expects to deliver 35.3 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine to 36 Caribbean and Latin American states from mid-February to the end of June, the World Health Organization’s regional office said. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said the Americas region needed to immunise about 500 million people to control the pandemic. It said WHO would complete its review in a few days of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use listing (EUL). “The number of doses and delivery schedule are still subject to EUL and manufacturing production capacity,” PAHO said, adding that supply deals also had to be agreed with producers. Of the 36 nations receiving AstraZeneca’s shot, it said four countries, namely Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador and Peru, would also receive a total of 377,910 doses of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine from mid-February.
1st Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Pakistan receives first COVID vaccine shipment from China

Pakistan has received its first doses of the coronavirus vaccine, with China donating half a million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine to the country, the health minister says. A Pakistani military aircraft carrying the shipment landed in the Pakistani capital Islamabad early on Monday, Dr Faisal Sultan said. “Praise be to Allah, the first batch of Sinopharm vaccine has arrived! Grateful to China and everyone who made this happen,” he said. Video footage showed a forklift unloading boxes of the vaccine from a military transport plane. Sinopharm, a Chinese state-owned company, has developed one of two major Chinese vaccines to have been rolled out around the globe, alongside Sinovac’s Coronavac vaccine. Phase three trials for the Chinese CanSino vaccine are also ongoing in Pakistan, which granted emergency use authorisation for the Sinopharm, AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines last month.
1st Feb 2021 - Al Jazeera English

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Will ‘vaccine nationalism’ prolong the pandemic?

WHO warns wealthy countries against blocking supply of COVID vaccines to the developing world. At least 50 countries have now begun vaccination programmes against the coronavirus. But it is a slow process in many places, and drug makers are struggling to keep up with deliveries.
1st Feb 2021 - Aljazeera.com

EU offers UK ‘reassurances’ over vaccine supply after Irish border row

The EU has moved to assure Britain that vaccine exports into the country won’t be stopped by the bloc’s new trade restrictions, British Trade Secretary Liz Truss said. “We have received reassurance from the European Union that those contracts will not be disrupted,” Truss told Sky News on Sunday. “Vaccine protectionism is fundamentally problematic,” she later told BBC presenter Andrew Marr, reiterating that the U.K. government has “had reassurances about our contracted supply” coming from the EU.
31st Jan 2021 - POLITICO.eu

Germany is already ordering vaccines for 2022, minister says

Germany is ordering vaccines for 2022 in case regular or booster doses are needed to keep the population immune against variants of COVID-19, Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Saturday, amid growing frustration in Europe at the slow pace of vaccination. Speaking at an online town hall of healthcare workers, Spahn defended the progress made on procuring and administering vaccines, saying 2.3 million of Germany’s 83 million people had already received a dose. European governments have faced criticism over supply and production bottlenecks as vaccine makers AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna have all announced cuts to delivery volumes just as they were expected to ramp up production
31st Jan 2021 - Reuters

COVID-19: Life won't return to normal for at least two years, expert warns, saying pandemic 'isn't over until it's over globally'

Life globally will not return to normal for two or three years based on the rate of the current vaccination rollout, it has been warned - but there are early signs jabs are reducing cases in the UK. Speaking to Sky News, Dr Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health policy at London School of Economics, said the COVID-19 pandemic will not be over until the world's population is protected. "At the moment, the data is showing it's going to be 2023/24 before the global vaccines are distributed to everybody," she said. "That's a long time. And distributing some now might be able to get us back to normal life sooner."
31st Jan 2021 - Sky News

COVID-19: 'People in their 30s are dying' - exhausted ITU staff reveal brutal truth of coronavirus frontline

Hope and agony on the COVID wards. It's around 4 o'clock when seven ambulances arrive all at once. COVID-19 hospital admissions may have dipped slightly this week, but glimpse into Barnet Hospital's emergency department for a reality check. You will see we are still in the thick of a crisis. Domestic cleaner Larisa Atanasova, renowned in the hospital for her machine-like efficiency, can barely wipe down the bays quickly enough. She wipes and wipes and wipes; beds, rails, sinks and taps.
31st Jan 2021 - Sky News

Pakistan battles tsunami of Covid-19 patients with few vaccines in sight

Keeping vigil outside the hospital ward in Karachi, Daniyal Ameen watched his father breathing through a ventilator via a live video link from the intensive care unit (ICU). He came every day to see his father, 73-year-old Muhammad Ameen, as he spent weeks on oxygen battling Covid-19. The video link was set up at the private South City Hospital in Karachi to enable relatives to feel closer to their loved ones in the ICU, as visits inside that facility are prohibited. The screen is the closest Ameen has come to seeing his father for about 18 months. The 33-year-old flew back to Pakistan from his home in Melbourne, Australia, when his dad was hospitalized. "Seeing him on a screen like that was pretty traumatizing for me," said Ameen. "We told him that yes, I am here, and I want to see him healthy and smiling back again." But Ameen's father didn't survive. Instead, he became one of thousands of Pakistanis to die from the virus.
31st Jan 2021 - CNN

AstraZeneca pledges EU 9 million extra doses of COVID vaccine

EU Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen says AstraZeneca will deliver 9 million additional COVID-19 vaccine doses making a total of 40 million doses to Europe. World Health Organization experts have visited the market in Wuhan, central China, linked to the first known COVID-19 cluster, seeking clues about the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak as a number of nations further tightened restrictions in a bid to slow the spread of the pandemic. France has closed its borders to non-European countries except for essential travel, a day after Germany imposed a ban on most travellers from nations hit by new, more contagious coronavirus variants. Globally more than two million people have died from the virus, with nearly 102 million cases recorded and 56 million recoveries.
31st Jan 2021 - AlJazeera

Australian Open to be allowed 30,000 fans a day

The Australian Open will be allowed to admit up to 30,000 fans a day, around 50% of the usual attendance, when the Grand Slam gets underway on Feb. 8, Victoria state sports minister Martin Pakula said on Saturday. The limit will be reduced to 25,000 over the last five days of the tournament when there are fewer matches, but Pakula said the announcement would ensure some of the biggest crowds for a sporting event since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’ll mean that over the 14 days, we will have up to 390,000 people here at Melbourne Park and that’s about 50% of the average over the last three years,” he told reporters at the venue for the tournament.
30th Jan 2021 - Reuters

'Simple is beautiful': One-shot vaccine proves effective

The first one-shot COVID-19 vaccine provides good protection against the illness, Johnson & Johnson reported in a key study released Friday, offering the world a potentially important new tool as it races to stay ahead of the rapidly mutating virus. The pharmaceutical giant’s preliminary findings suggest the single-dose option may not be as strong as Pfizer’s or Moderna’s two-dose formula, and was markedly weaker against a worrisome mutated version of the virus in South Africa. But amid a rocky start to vaccinations worldwide, that may be an acceptable trade-off to get more people inoculated faster with an easier-to-handle shot that, unlike rival vaccines that must be kept frozen, can last months in the refrigerator. “Frankly, simple is beautiful,” said Dr. Matt Hepburn, the U.S. government’s COVID-19 vaccine response leader.
29th Jan 2021 - The Associated Press

The west’s vaccine myopia

In the past few days, we have heard increasingly urgent warnings about vaccine nationalism. A better term would be vaccine myopia. In theory, nationalists are putting their own country first — or continent, in the case of the EU. In a global pandemic that approach makes no sense. If protecting your people is a priority, as it must be, nationalist logic should endorse global vaccine equity. Either the west tackles coronavirus globally, or we totally wall ourselves off. “The prevailing combination of vaccine nationalism and half-open borders is a losing strategy,” argues Jean Pisani-Ferry. “There is no effective middle way.”
29th Jan 2021 - Financial Times

We asked coronavirus experts what summer 2021 will be like

From the midst of England’s third lockdown, it’s clear that any return to normality is not coming soon. It may still be several weeks before we see significant drops in the number of daily deaths and schools will not reopen until March 8 at the earliest. But if you look beyond the bleak winter and into the spring and summer, there are reasons for cautious optimism. Over 11 per cent of the UK’s population have received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and the number of new infections is falling. That doesn’t mean that summer will be normal. With Glastonbury cancelled for a second year running and Wimbledon hedging its bets by planning for multiple different scenarios, the shadow of the pandemic will loom large over the coming months. When an uptick in Covid-19 cases could see even the most modest holiday plans go awry, it’s clear there is plenty more uncertainty in store
29th Jan 2021 - Wired.co.uk

The pandemic will not end unless every country gets the vaccine

We can all see the outlines of a post-pandemic world. With vaccinations ramping up in the United States and Britain, and with Israel and the United Arab Emirates racing toward herd immunity, it is easy to imagine that a return to normalcy is on the horizon. The only question seems to be: How long will it take? But we might be seeing a false dawn. Despite the amazing progress we’ve made with vaccines, the truth is that our current trajectory virtually guarantees that we will never really defeat the coronavirus. It will stay alive and keep mutating and surging across the globe. Years from now, countries could be facing new outbreaks that will force hard choices between new lockdowns or new waves of disease and death.
28th Jan 2021 - The Washington Post

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Covid-19: How to break the cycle of lockdowns

The dominance of new, more transmissible variants means that a policy of trying to “live with” the virus will fail, certainly in the UK where the new B.1.1.7 variant is now the most common. I know of no country that is successfully living with the virus while avoiding lockdown and restriction cycles, a high death toll, or—as in the UK—both. We need to set our sights instead on where we want to be and then work out how to get there. The role models we have are Vietnam (35 deaths, 98 million population), Thailand (73 deaths, 70 million population), South Korea (1371 deaths, 51 million population), and New Zealand (25 deaths, 5 million population) where people have been living much more normal lives for months. Following their example, the way out is for the UK to pursue a national suppression strategy—zero tolerance for any community transmission—which comes with the added benefit of protecting ourselves from homegrown vaccine resistant variants.
29th Jan 2021 - The BMJ

Behind AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 Vaccine Stumble

The setbacks, which come on the eve of a decision from regulators whether to recommend the shot for use in Europe, suggest AstraZeneca is falling behind in the vaccine arms race. The company has relatively little experience in vaccines, a tricky, typically low-margin niche in the global pharmaceuticals industry. The manufacturing process the company uses, piggybacking on a chimpanzee cold virus, can be more difficult to quickly scale up than the one employed by Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc., both of which use a new genetic technology. The company has also proved maladroit politically. After learning of the glitches early this month, AstraZeneca deployed engineers to troubleshoot but didn’t warn European officials, hoping the company could fix the problems to minimize the dent in production, according to a person familiar with the matter. Lower output of raw vaccine substance had first been spotted in December, but worsened in January, with the clock ticking. When production didn’t improve, AstraZeneca’s bad news hit like a bombshell. Now it is grappling with a political backlash just when the pandemic seems to be entering a more dangerous phase.
29th Jan 2021 - The Wall Street Journal

Covid: Social workers 'braced for tsunami of needs' after lockdown

Social workers say they are braced for a "tsunami of needs" as the UK recovers from the pandemic. The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) expects workloads to increase as restrictions are lifted. One worker described a "big surge" in referrals after the first lockdown and the fears of missing something wrong. Officials in all four nations praised the efforts of social workers and highlighted schemes to help vulnerable children set up in the pandemic.
28th Jan 2021 - BBC News

Opinion | Inside the U.K.'s Second Covid Wave

Nearly a year into the pandemic, the situation in Britain is dire. A vicious first wave has given way to an even more deadly second one. On Tuesday, the country passed a milestone of 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus — which amounts to one of the worst fatality rates in the world. A national lockdown, in place since Jan. 4, has only recently begun to lower the eye-wateringly high number of cases, fueled in part by the emergence of a new, apparently more contagious strain of the virus. The toll on the National Health Service is close to unbearable: Nearly 40,000 Covid-19 patients are in hospitals, almost double the peak last year.
28th Jan 2021 - The New York Times

Australia extends Trans-Tasman travel bubble suspension for a further 72 hours, after New Zealand detects two new coronavirus cases

Australia has extended its suspension of the safe travel bubble with New Zealand for a further 72 hours. The decision was made after another two cases of the South African strain of coronavirus were detected in returned travellers in Auckland. "This recommendation has been made to the Australian Government," Acting Chief Medical Officer Professor Michael Kidd said. "The government has accepted the advice, and so the travel pause on green zone flights from New Zealand to Australia has been extended for a further 72 hours until 2pm on Sunday, 31 January."
28th Jan 2021 - 9News.com.au

Covid: Australian states to reopen to Sydney after outbreak contained

Two Australian states will reopen their borders to New South Wales (NSW) after it managed to control a Covid-19 outbreak in Sydney. South Australia and Queensland will remove their travel restrictions on Sunday and Monday respectively. It comes after NSW reported 11 days without a locally acquired infection. About 180 cases were tied to the Sydney cluster, which emerged just before Christmas and prompted nationwide travel bans on the city's residents. "Credit to New South Wales. They got on top of their cases," said Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk
28th Jan 2021 - BBC News

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All countries should pursue a Covid-19 elimination strategy: here are 16 reasons why

The past year of Covid-19 has taught us that it is the behaviour of governments, more than the behaviour of the virus or individuals, that shapes countries’ experience of the crisis. Talking about pandemic waves has given the virus far too much agency: until quite recently the apparent waves of infection were driven by government action and inaction. It is only now with the emergence of more infectious variants that it might be appropriate to talk about a true second wave. As governments draw up their battle plans for year two, we might expect them to base their strategies on the wealth of data about what works best. And the evidence to date suggests that countries pursuing elimination of Covid-19 are performing much better than those trying to suppress the virus. Aiming for zero-Covid is producing more positive results than trying to “live with the virus”.
28th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

Lucky break or gold standard? How NSW got Covid under control

After weeks of no reported community cases of the virus, a man from south-west Sydney tested positive on 16 December. By the end of that day, two further cases were announced, affecting Sydney’s northern beaches. By mid-January, the summer outbreaks had reached a total of 217 cases. But not long after, on 26 January, NSW marked nine days in a row without any new cases of the virus in the community. NSW’s containment was achieved without the premier, Gladys Berejikian, resorting to the drastic statewide lockdowns or business closures that many called for. Instead, the NSW approach was to focus lockdowns on the most affected suburbs and to reintroduce limits on indoor and outdoor gatherings without banning them altogether. It is not the first time NSW has contained an outbreak with potential to spiral beyond control.
27th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

Mexico’s pandemic policy: No police. No curfews. No fines. No regrets.

As the coronavirus swept the globe early last year, Mexican officials made an unusual decision: They would not impose "coercive" measures to force citizens to obey pandemic restrictions. No curfews. No arrests. No fines. Mexico had lived through 70 years of authoritarian rule. The country had “a sad, unfortunate, shameful history” of abuse by security forces, said Hugo López-Gatell, the coronavirus czar. Nearly a year later, Mexico is battling a severe epidemic. Hospitals are at the breaking point. Residents flouting stay-at-home messages fueled a new explosion of cases during the Christmas holidays. Deaths have soared past 150,000 — the fourth-highest total in the world and 19th-highest based on population. So was Mexico wrong? The answer is nuanced, say health experts and human rights advocates, and reflects the difficulty of balancing public health and civil rights.
27th Jan 2021 - The Washington Post

One year after lockdown, Wuhan clubbers hit the dancefloor

Glow-in-the-dark rabbit ears, pulsating beats, and a flexible attitude to masks: nightlife in China's Wuhan is back with a vengeance almost a year after a lockdown brought life to a standstill in the city of 11 million. As the rest of the world continues to grapple with lockdowns and soaring infections, young people in the city, once the epicentre of the novel coronavirus, are enjoying their hard-earned freedom. The hedonistic vibes and champagne on ice are far from the austerity preached by authorities in Beijing. But Chen Qiang, a man in his 20s, praised the Communist Party for having practically eliminated the epidemic, despite a recent surge in cases in other parts of the country in the past few days.
27th Jan 2021 - Times of India

Serena Williams praises 'super intense' Australian Open coronavirus quarantine rules

Seven-time Australian Open singles champion Serena Williams has backed Tennis Australia's quarantine rules ahead of the season-opening major amid criticism of the arrangements from other players. Williams has been quarantining in Adelaide, as have the likes of Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, and has been spared the hard 14-day lockdown that has affected 72 players who arrived in Melbourne almost a fortnight ago. Several players based in Melbourne have publicly voiced their frustration about being confined to their rooms after passengers on the charter flights that carried them to Australia tested positive for COVID-19.
27th Jan 2021 - ABC.Net.au

South Auckland GPs 'burnt out and tired' after Covid-19 outbreak, lockdown

South Auckland GPs and medical practices are still feeling the pressure after the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, according to a new report. The report, to the Counties Manukau District Health Board's Community and Public Health Advisory Committee, shows low staff morale and burnout are exacerbating the problem. “The overall morale in general practice is low at the moment. People are feeling burnt out and tired and the stress levels are probably at a greater level than in the general population,” it said.
27th Jan 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

New Zealand borders to stay closed until citizens are 'vaccinated and protected'

Jacinda Ardern has said New Zealand and “the world” need to return to some semblance of normality before she opens the country’s borders to foreign nationals. The prime minister shut the border in mid-March and said on Tuesday she would not open it again until New Zealanders were “vaccinated and protected” – a process that will not start for the general population until the middle of this year. Ardern also cast doubt on the prospects for a travel bubble with Australia in the near future, and said she was “disappointed” with the Australian government’s decision to suspend quarantine-free access for New Zealanders for three days in the light of the case of community transition in Northland.
27th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

Positive COVID-19 tests linked to Australian Open downgraded to eight

The number of positive COVID-19 tests linked to the Australian Open has been downgraded to eight after authorities reclassified one of the results as a previous infection, health officials said on Wednesday. “One case has been reclassified due to evidence of previous infection, meaning there is now a total of eight positive cases related to the AO cohort,” COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria (CQV) said. The agency confirmed that another positive case had been “medically cleared” to leave isolation, leaving the total number of active cases at seven.
27th Jan 2021 - Reuters

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California ends wide lockdown as Covid hospital strain eases

California lifted blanket "stay-at-home" orders across the US state Monday, paving the way for activities including outdoor dining to return even in worst-hit regions as the pandemic's strain on hospitals begins to ease. The western state has suffered one of the nation's worst winter Covid spikes, with hospital intensive care units overwhelmed, ambulances backed up for hours at a time, and cases more than doubling since December to over three million. The "stay-at-home" measures were ordered for some 20 million people in southern and central California since December 3, but public health director Tomas Aragon said the state was now "turning a critical corner."
26th Jan 2021 - FRANCE 24

New Zealand may approve COVID-19 vaccine next week, start general vaccinations mid-year

New Zealand may approve a COVID-19 vaccine as early as next week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Tuesday, a day after the country confirmed its first case of the new coronavirus in the community in months. “We’re making swift progress towards vaccinating New Zealanders against the virus, but we’re also absolutely committed to ensuring the vaccines are safe and effective,” Ardern said in a statement. The recent community case, in a woman who returned to New Zealand on Dec. 30 and had tested positive for the South African strain of the virus after leaving a two-week mandatory quarantine, led Australia to immediately suspend a travel bubble with New Zealand for 72 hours. Pressure has been mounting on Ardern’s government to vaccinate the population, but New Zealand has repeatedly said the process will not start for months.
26th Jan 2021 - Reuters

New Zealand's borders may stay shut for most of the year as Covid-19 rages on, PM Ardern says

New Zealand's borders will remain closed for most of this year as the Covid-19 pandemic rages on, but the country will pursue travel arrangements with neighbouring Australia and other Pacific nations, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Tuesday. Medical authorities, meanwhile, may approve a Covid-19 vaccine as early as next week, Ardern said, as pressure mounts for a start to vaccinations after the country confirmed its first case of the new coronavirus in the community in months. "Given the risks in the world around us and the uncertainty of the global rollout of the vaccine, we can expect our borders to be impacted for much of this year," Ardern said
26th Jan 2021 - MSN.com

The help firms will get if there is another Covid lockdown

In New Zealand, most businesses would dread going into another Covid lockdown, but the Government has planned ahead what financial support would be available if the worst happens. Finance Minister Grant Robertson set out the assistance that would be offered “next time around” before Christmas. And while wage subsidies would again do the heavy lifting when it came to propping up the economy, some of the help would be new.
26th Jan 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

'Treat every case like a murder': How New Zealand-like Zero Covid approach could work in Ireland

The calls for a zero-Covid approach in Ireland are growing louder, and the Government may soon be forced to act. As images from packed festivals and sports events in New Zealand made their way to Ireland, where it is illegal to travel further than 5km from home and household visits are banned, the calls to put an end to rolling lockdowns have grown more desperate. Public health expert Dr Tomás Ryan explained how a Zero Covid approach could work in Ireland should it be brought in. Stating that the approach is "perfectly realistic", Dr Ryan said we have a choice of "taking control of our situation or [choosing] to live in rolling lockdowns or permanent lockdown for the rest of 2021". In order for Ireland to live Covid-free, Dr Ryan said, "We need three things. We need to chase, we need to crush, and we need to contain the virus."
26th Jan 2021 - Irish Post

Coronavirus Covid 19: Auckland Mayor Phil Goff calls for council involvement in local lockdowns

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff does not want Wellington running the whole show when local lockdowns are imposed for Covid-19. The former Labour MP is urging his colleagues in Parliament to break the shackles of centralised bureaucracy and bring local councils to the table. He would like to see a multi-agency "command centre" set up working with Cabinet ministers and local councils when a local outbreak occurs.
26th Jan 2021 - New Zealand Herald

'No system is perfect': Siouxsie Wiles on New Zealand's fight against Covid complacency

Last January Siouxsie Wiles was a microbiologist at the University of Auckland, specialising in the scientific possibilities of bioluminescence, as well as a widely awarded media commentator. Twelve months later, Wiles is New Zealand’s most famous scientist (at least its most visible, thanks to her trademark pink hair) and a lynchpin of its pandemic success, having been tireless and ever-present in her efforts to explain how the virus spreads. At her peak she was doing 20 to 30 interviews a day. But while many might see her as a figure of 2020, for Wiles the threat remains very much at hand. Though New Zealand’s border restrictions have been bolstered since the new variant of coronavirus took off in December, a steady stream of cases have been confirmed in arrivals in quarantine.
26th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

Johnson & Johnson on track for 100 million vaccine doses by end of June, bolstering US supply | TheHill

Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday that it is on track to meet its target of 100 million coronavirus vaccine doses for the United States by the end of June, one of a string of confident announcements on vaccine supply. Johnson & Johnson's vaccine trial is being closely watched as it has the potential to produce a third vaccine for the U.S., helping further an increase in available doses. The company said Tuesday that it expects results from its Phase 3 trial “by early next week.” If the vaccine proves to be safe and effective and is authorized in the coming weeks, the company’s chief financial officer, Joseph Wolk, told CNBC, “We're very confident and on track to meet all of our commitments, which would include 100 million doses to the U.S. by the end of June.”
26th Jan 2021 - The Hill

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 26th Jan 2021

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Foreign workers flee UK as pandemic and Brexit bite

An estimated 1.3m have gone home, with hospitality and retail the sectors most heavily affected. Lorenzo di Cretico, a manager at the central London restaurant and club 100 Wardour Street, moved to the UK 12 years ago with high hopes. He had been a manager at a trattoria in Rome but wanted to learn English and said London “had always been my dream”. He found a waiting job within a week. Now, however, Mr di Cretico is returning home. He has only worked for four months of the past year because of restaurant closures during the pandemic and, with little hope of venues reopening soon, decided to start his own delicatessen in Rome.
26th Jan 2021 - Financial Times

Australia approves Pfizer vaccine amid concerns over global supply of Oxford jab

Australia became one of the first countries in the world to complete a comprehensive process to approve the rollout of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine after AstraZeneca announced a delay in its initial global supply. The inoculation drive is expected to start in late February with a target of 80,000 doses per week initially, health minister Greg Hunt told reporters. The vaccine has been approved for people aged 16 years and above and would be given in two doses to each recipient. The country approved Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine after AstraZeneca suggested to the Australian government that it is experiencing a significant “supply shock”.
25th Jan 2021 - The Independent

What life is like in Wuhan 1 year after the lockdown

One year after China imposed a harsh lockdown in Wuhan, CNN returns to the original epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. The city of 11 million has emerged from a crippling lockdown attempting to portray a renewed, vibrant image, but there are deep wounds yet to heal.
25th Jan 2021 - CNN

'I can't save money for potential emergencies': COVID lockdowns drove older Australians into energy poverty

Many of us who endured lockdowns in Australia are familiar with the surge in energy bills at home. But for older Australians who depend on the Age Pension for income, lockdowns drove many deeper into “energy poverty”. Some faced up to 50% higher bills than in 2019, as a result of COVID. Energy poverty involves low-income households restricting their energy consumption by avoiding certain activities like showering, spending high proportions of their income on energy and, sometimes, being unable to pay bills.
25th Jan 2021 - The Conversation AU

New Zealand probes first 'probable' community COVID-19 case in months

New Zealand health officials said on Sunday they were investigating what they said was probably the country’s first community coronavirus case, in months in a woman who recently returned from overseas. The 56-year-old, who returned to New Zealand on Dec. 30, tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19 days after leaving a two-week mandatory quarantine at the border where she had twice tested negative. “We are working under the assumptions that this is a positive case and that it is a more transmissible variant, either the one identified first in South Africa or the UK, or potentially Brazil - or another transmissible variant,” Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told a news conference.
25th Jan 2021 - Reuters

New Zealand Covid case appears to be South African variant, officials say

New Zealand authorities have said a new case of Covid-19 that emerged outside quarantine appeared to be the South African variant. Health officials said on Monday that they believed the infected woman, aged 56, contracted the virus from an infected person on the same floor of the Pullman hotel in Auckland where they were both quarantining. She had left the hotel isolation regime after producing two negative tests, as is standard, but then developed muscle aches and reported her symptoms to health workers in follow-up interviews. While surface or airborne infection was still a possibility, person-to-person infection looked the most likely, said the director general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield.
25th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

Australia halts New Zealand travel bubble amid fears of South African coronavirus strain

The Federal Government has suspended quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders arriving in Australia for 72 hours amid fears of a South African strain of COVID-19 across the Tasman. A New Zealand woman infected with the highly infectious variant of COVID-19 first detected in South Africa visited around 30 sites before her case was detected. Travellers coming from New Zealand to Australia in the next 72 hours will have to go into mandatory hotel quarantine. "This will be done out of an abundance of caution whilst more is learnt about the event and the case," Mr Hunt said.
25th Jan 2021 - ABC.Net.au

The daily grind never felt sweeter: New Zealanders should enjoy their Covid-free liberties

Most working New Zealanders are back to the grind after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Schools start next week. Parliament resumes on 7 February. Business as usual, but there’s something light-hearted about it in 2021. The tedium and drab necessity of returning to work is tempered by the knowledge that it’s not that bad, that it could be a lot worse. The mere fact we can move around the towns and cities, squeeze into elevators, and mooch around with each other in offices and cafes and doctor’s waiting rooms and any confined space you care to name, is a joy. Freedom isn’t just the open road; freedom is also a day measured in paperclips and paper jams. It’s a freedom denied other countries in lockdown.
25th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

Hong Kong lifts lockdown in Kowloon district after testing 7,000 people

The Hong Kong government lifted a lockdown in an area of Kowloon district in the early hours of Monday after testing about 7,000 people for coronavirus to curb an outbreak in the densely populated area. The government set up 51 temporary testing stations on Saturday and found 13 confirmed cases in the restricted area that is home to many ageing, subdivided flats in which the disease could spread more quickly. “Businesses in the area have been hit hard and brought to a standstill,” the government said in a statement. “The government hopes this temporary inconvenience will completely cut the local transmission chains in the district and ease residents’ worries and fear, so that they will regain confidence in resuming social and business activities in the area, and return to a normal life.”
25th Jan 2021 - Reuters

Ukraine completes tough COVID lockdown with optimistic expectations

Ukraine reopens schools, restaurants and gyms on Monday, ending a tough lockdown introduced on Jan. 8 to prevent a new wave of coronavirus infections, Ukrainian authorities said. The number of new cases of coronavirus infection in Ukraine has significantly decreased from 6,000 to 9,000 cases a day at the beginning of January to 2,516 new cases on January 25, the fewest since early September. “Such statistics, which indicate the stabilisation of the situation, the improvement of the situation could be obtained only thanks to you, Ukrainians,” health minister Maksym Stepanov told a televised briefing.
25th Jan 2021 - Reuters

As this second Covid wave rips through minorities, inequalities are becoming even more apparent

Within months of Britain’s first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, it grew clear that the virus attacked fiercely along pre-existing pathways of inequality. By May last year, studies showed that the virus discriminates in the same way as society: along racial, class and regional lines, causing twice as many tragic deaths among Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities and in the most deprived areas. Many wondered if the UK’s inequality epidemic, at last so viscerally exposed, might finally be addressed.
25th Jan 2021 - iNews

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 25th Jan 2021

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Sorry, Europe: AstraZeneca follows Pfizer/BioNTech in cutting back EU vaccine delivery plans

As AstraZeneca nears European authorization for its highly anticipated COVID-19 vaccine, the drugmaker has notified officials that initial shipments will come in lighter than originally expected. Two German-language publications, Bild and oe24, report that AZ notified EU officials this week that its first-quarter deliveries will come in lower than originally expected. An AstraZeneca spokesperson attributed the dip to "reduced yields at a manufacturing site within our European supply chain." "We will be supplying tens of millions of doses in February and March to the European Union, as we continue to ramp up production volumes," she said.
23rd Jan 2021 - FiercePharma

Why did the world's pandemic warning system fail when COVID hit?

The World Health Organization (WHO) sounded its highest alarm on 30 January 2020 — a declaration called a ‘public health emergency of international concern’, or PHEIC, signalling that a pandemic might be imminent. Few countries heeded the WHO’s call for testing, tracing and social distancing to curb the coronavirus. By mid-March, it had spread around the world. Now, health officials and researchers are evaluating why the organization’s warning system failed and how to overhaul it. Many say the organization should have declared a PHEIC about a week earlier than it did. But the largest failing, researchers agree, is that so many countries ignored it. “The biggest issue to me is that for six to eight weeks after the PHEIC declaration, countries, except for in Asia, sat on their hands,” says Joanne Liu, a former president of Médecins Sans Frontiérs (also known as Doctors without Borders), who serves on an independent panel tasked with assessing and improving the WHO’s alarm system. World health officials are evaluating potential improvements to the system during the WHO's executive board meeting, being held 18–26 January. Talks will continue in advance of the annual World Health Assembly in May, when any changes would occur. Some of the proposals include modifying the PHEIC alarm to have colour-coded warning levels, and having countries sign on to a new treaty on preparing for pandemics.
23rd Jan 2021 - Nature.com

Covid: Vaccinated people may spread virus, says Van-Tam

People who have received a Covid-19 vaccine could still pass the virus on to others and should continue following lockdown rules, England's deputy chief medical officer has warned. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam stressed that scientists "do not yet know the impact of the vaccine on transmission". He said vaccines offer "hope" but infection rates must come down quickly. A further 32 vaccine sites are set to open across England this week. Prof Van-Tam said "no vaccine has ever been" 100% effective, so there is no guaranteed protection. It is possible to contract the virus in the two- to three-week period after receiving a jab, he said - and it is "better" to allow "at least three weeks" for an immune response to fully develop in older people.
23rd Jan 2021 - BBC News

Belgium sees large initial shortfall of AstraZeneca vaccine

Belgium will receive less than half the number of COVID-19 vaccines it had expected from AstraZeneca in the first quarter, the country’s vaccine taskforce said on Saturday. Belgium had been expecting 1.5 million doses of the vaccine, which has still to be approved, by March, but would instead get around 650,000 doses. Reuters reported on Friday that AstraZeneca had informed European Union officials it would cut deliveries of the vaccine by 60% to a total 31 million doses in the first quarter due to production problems. Belgium had been expecting 1.5 million doses of the vaccine, which has still to be approved, by March, but would instead get around 650,000 doses. Reuters reported on Friday that AstraZeneca had informed European Union officials it would cut deliveries of the vaccine by 60% to a total 31 million doses in the first quarter due to production problems. The EU has a deal to purchase at least 300 million doses from AstraZeneca, with an option for an additional 100 million. The EU drug regulator is due to decide on approving the vaccine on Jan. 29.
23rd Jan 2021 - The Guardian

India’s female health workers on rural front line get COVID shot

Jyoti Bhambure is usually the one dispensing medicine – this week she was at the receiving end, among the first in India’s million-strong force of women health workers to win a COVID-19 vaccine. Dressed in a bright green sari with a gold border, Bhambure visited the small, rural hospital in western India at the time allotted and said the jab had lifted a weight off her shoulders. “I no longer fear the coronavirus,” said Bhambure, after getting her initial dose on Tuesday, one of the first tranche of front line workers to win protection in the pandemic. “We handle children and interact with mothers,” she said. “So I am glad I am vaccinated. I have no fear left in my mind.” India has suffered 152,000 deaths due to the virus and has prioritised about 30 million front-line workers in the first phase of an inoculation drive that began on January 16.
22nd Jan 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Covid vaccine: 'Over my dead body are we wasting a drop of this'

There was nervous anticipation at Saxonbury House surgery as doctors and staff prepared for their first coronavirus vaccination clinic last weekend. The seven surgeries that combined for the vaccination programme on the Sussex High Weald had been cautious, waiting for the national roll-out to be well under way before joining “wave six”. Then last Friday afternoon, the eve of their local V Day, months of careful planning were thrown up in the air. The white refrigerated van carrying their vaccines arrived as scheduled at Saxonbury House, Crowborough, around 2pm. The driver carefully unloaded the consignment and drove off. Mistakenly, however, he left two boxes of Pfizer vaccine rather than the one that had been promised and planned for.
23rd Jan 2021 - The Times

West Virginia touts COVID-19 vaccination success story as national rollout sputters

Even as President Joe Biden laments the nation’s sluggish COVID-19 immunization launch for a pace he calls “dismal,” West Virginia is touting its relative success in making the most of vaccine supplies it has received so far. Fewer than half of the nearly 38 million vaccine doses shipped to date by the federal government have actually made it into the arms of Americans, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Thursday. Some individual states have lagged behind with just a third or 40% of their vaccine allotments being administered as of Thursday, marking the one-year anniversary of the first locally transmitted COVID-19 case documented in the United States.
21st Jan 2021 - Reuters

'Heroic hymn of the people': Chinese government film marks year since Wuhan lockdown

China premiered a patriotic documentary film on Friday to mark the one-year anniversary of Wuhan’s coronavirus lockdown, part of a broader effort by authorities to cast the government’s early response to COVID-19 in a positive light. Small numbers of viewers gathered in Beijing to watch the film “Wuhan Days and Nights” as it opened to the public exactly a year after Wuhan went into a surprise 76-day lockdown in the early hours of Jan. 23, 2020. Wuhan, in the central province of Hubei, is believed to be the epicentre of the global pandemic that has infected nearly 100 million people and killed over two million so far. China managed to quash the virus months later with strict control measures and life in Wuhan has largely returned to normal, but the government’s early response drew widespread public criticism.
23rd Jan 2021 - Reuters

Phnom Penh yoga fans return to mat after lockdown - with a beer

For some, a post-lockdown group activity that combines exercise with alcohol may seem like the ideal coronavirus stress-buster - though yoga purists should probably avoid Phnom Penh’s TwoBirds Craft Beer brewery while it’s taking place. The brewery’s yoga classes, resumed after a six-week lockdown across Cambodia - which has officially recorded not a single COVID death - was lifted on Jan. 1, combine holding a pose with clutching a beer, and they’re attracting devotees. “I have more fun with beer yoga. It’s not as serious as traditional yoga,” said Sreyline Bacha, 25, as she reached for a beer glass, wobbling just a little to maintain her balance in a pose.
23rd Jan 2021 - Reuters

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 22nd Jan 2021

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U.K. Hospitals Struggle to Cope With a New Coronavirus Variant

As a new and more contagious variant of the coronavirus pounds Britain’s overstretched National Health Service, health care workers say the government’s failure to anticipate a wintertime crush of infections has left them resorting to ever more desperate measures. Hundreds of soldiers have been dispatched to move patients and equipment around London hospitals. Organ transplant centers have stopped performing urgent operations. Doctors have trimmed back the level of oxygen being given to patients to save overloaded pipes.
22nd Jan 2021 - The New York Times

This is what will happen to Covid-19 when the pandemic is over

After months of not knowing how the Covid-19 pandemic would end, we now have some answers. Vaccines that came even faster and work even better than anticipated are the light at the end of this very dark, long tunnel – the beginning of the end is in sight. But the virus is unlikely to go away for good. The global race to vaccinate as many people as possible will usher in a new phase of our fight against Covid-19, yet there is little chance it will deliver a knockout blow. In the long run, what started as a global pandemic may become yet another example of humankind learning to live alongside a deadly virus.
21st Jan 2021 - Wired.co.uk

Australia posts zero virus cases; state premier calls for 'Pacific bubble'

Australia recorded a fourth day of zero coronavirus cases on Thursday, prompting the chief of the country's most populous state to call for a special travel "bubble" with Pacific island nations. New South Wales has reined in an outbreak in mid-December that prompted a strict lockdown in Sydney's Northern Beaches, while broader social distancing rules and mandatory mask wearing were imposed for the rest of the city. Signaling those restrictions were set to be eased next week, Premier Gladys Berejiklien told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper the federal government should consider establishing a travel arrangement with the Pacific. "There is no reason why we shouldn't aim to travel to New Zealand or some of the Pacific Islands well within the next 12 months," Berejiklian said. The comments come after Australia's chief medical officer Paul Kelly cautioned about restarting international travel, given the country was in an "envious position" compared to most of the world.
21st Jan 2021 - Japan Today

Wuhan bustles a year after world's first coronavirus lockdown

Barriers still enclose Wuhan's notorious seafood market -- one of the few immediate reminders the city was once the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic that has transformed the world. Otherwise, the new normal in the central Chinese city of 11 million is much like the old reality; cars buzz down highways, sideways bustle with shoppers and public transport and parks are busy
21st Jan 2021 - Times of India

New Covid strain: Australian city lifts ban on wearing mask indoors

People living in Australia's third-largest city of Brisbane will no longer need to wear a mask in indoor venues from Friday onwards as the state of Queensland announced that it has managed to bring the local spread of a mutant Covid-19 strain under control. "From 1 am tomorrow we will be back to having amongst the lowest restrictions in our economy in the country - this is great news for business, great news for tourism, and great for the people of Queensland to celebrate," Xinhua news agency quoted the state's Health Minister Yvette D'Ath as saying on Thursday. As of Thursday, Queensland continues to record zero local cases, allowing the authorities to further ease the pandemic restrictions. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk attributed the result to the state's "go hard and go quickly" strategy.
21st Jan 2021 - Khaleej Times on MSN.com

Tennis-Anderson urges players to show more respect for Australia's COVID-19 fight

Former U.S. Open and Wimbledon finalist Kevin Anderson appealed to players at the Australian Open to show more respect for the local community’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, following a chorus of complaints about quarantine conditions in Melbourne. As many as 72 players are confined to their hotel rooms for two weeks and unable to train for the Feb. 8-21 Grand Slam after passengers on three charter flights tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Complaints by some players over the severity of the health measures, food quality and even mice infestations in their rooms have sparked a backlash in Australia, which has many citizens stranded overseas due to pandemic-linked border restrictions. Novak Djokovic was panned after writing to Tennis Australia chief Craig Tiley to ask for reduced isolation periods and having players moved to “private houses with tennis courts”.
21st Jan 2021 - Reuters

Air New Zealand's first quarantine-free flight lands in Auckland

The first quarantine-free flight in 10 months has landed in Auckland with friends and family ready to greet passengers from the Cook Islands with an emotional welcome. The Air New Zealand flight landed at Auckland Airport shortly after 11am with a small gathering of family and friends waiting in the arrivals area.
21st Jan 2021 - The New Zealand Herald

Emotional scenes as first quarantine-free flight from Rarotonga lands in Auckland

It was an emotional and cheerful reunion for those that gathered at Auckland Airport arrivals on Thursday, to greet friends and families who arrived in the first quarantine-free flight from Rarotonga. Air New Zealand Flight NZ941 departed at 7.43am local time from the Cook Islands and landed in Auckland at 11.06am. It is the first flight out of Rarotonga in New Zealand’s first travel bubble since the coronavirus lockdown. The bubble, although one way for now with New Zealanders still expected to undergo managed isolation on the island, is the first quarantine-free travel from the Pacific.
21st Jan 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 21st Jan 2021

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Brazil lacks timeline on when coronavirus vaccines will arrive from India and China

Brazil’s foreign minister, Ernesto Araujo, said on Wednesday he still could not provide a timeline when new coronavirus vaccine doses would arrive from India and China, raising concern in a country that is lagging others in vaccinating its people. Brazil is waiting for a shipment of AstraZeneca vaccines from India and a shipment of Sinovac vaccines from China. Brazil’s right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, has repeatedly antagonized China in recent years for political reasons.
21st Jan 2021 - Reuters

China triumphant one year after Wuhan lockdown

"People Supremacy, Life Supremacy" reads the sign at a Wuhan exhibition, where visitors are greeted by a paean to China's triumph over the pandemic and the agility of its communist leadership in a crisis. Saturday marks one year since the start of a 76-day lockdown of Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the coronavirus was first detected before sweeping across the world and killing more than two million people. With China's official death toll from the virus under 5,000, Beijing is on a prolonged victory lap to promote its narrative of how it contained Covid-19, engineered vaccines and rebooted its economy.
20th Jan 2021 - FRANCE 24

Australian Open linked to more coronavirus cases after arrivals for grand slam

Ten people who have flown to Melbourne for the Australian Open have tested positive to coronavirus, authorities said. Lisa Neville, police minister for the state of Victoria, reported three new cases on Wednesday, adding one of the cases was a player who has been in "hard lockdown" since arrival into Australia as he came in on a flight where positive cases had been recorded. The second case related to another player and the third is a support person with the player, she added. Tennis Australia chief executive Craig Tiley said the safety of the Victorian community will not be compromised, but added the body was walking a "tightrope"
20th Jan 2021 - The Independent

Why is Australia risking everything for tennis?

Following fraught negotiations between Tennis Australia and the Victorian government, the Australian Open is set to take place next month. Like all arrivals to Australia, the players must quarantine for 14 days. However, they have been granted five hours a day of leave to practise. That is, unless they come into contact with a positive case. Despite the best efforts of Tennis Australia, which put on socially-distanced chartered flights, a handful of positive tests have forced over 70 players to ‘hard’ quarantine - unable to leave their rooms.
20th Jan 2021 - Evening Standard

Tennis Australia confirms it will pay for players' quarantine as cases linked to Australian Open rise

Tennis Australia has backtracked from comments made by its chief executive, Craig Tiley, that the Victorian government would foot part of the bill for quarantining Australian Open players, coaches and officials. The organisation was forced to clarify the details after Tiley told radio station 3AW on Wednesday morning that the state government was contributing to an expected $40m in quarantine costs. The comments prompted a sharp rebuke from the Victorian police minister Lisa Neville, who insisted Tennis Australia – and not taxpayers – would foot the entire bill for quarantining those associated with the Australian Open, as the number of positive Covid-19 cases linked to the tennis tournament grew to 10.
20th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

Why a trans-Tasman bubble by April is still on the cards

The border is still up. Kiwis returning from anywhere in the world – with the exception of Australia and some Pacific nations – will have to get a Covid-19 test before boarding their planes from Monday. Australia is recovering from another Covid outbreak that hit New South Wales just before Christmas. So what, realistically, are the odds of a trans-Tasman​ bubble opening by the end of March, as the Government signalled in December? Still pretty good.
20th Jan 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

Covid unlikely to die out, says New Zealand health chief Ashley Bloomfield

Covid-19 is unlikely to ever die out, even with vaccination efforts, but it could become more transmissible and less deadly, New Zealand’s director general of health has warned. “If you think about influenza, which was first recorded in 1172 I think, in Europe … these viruses don’t tend to die out … They change over time and in fact what we are seeing with these new variants with the Covid-19 virus is that they tend become more transmissible and less deadly over time,” Dr Ashley Bloomfield said. However, Bloomfield said that vaccines would help humans develop immunity, adding to the natural immunity that people who have been infected will also develop. He also warned if some of the new variants of Covid-19 escape managed isolation and quarantine, the impact could be greater than it was last year.
20th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

New Zealand Hosts 20,000-Person Concert as Country Marks 2 Months Without COVID in Community

On January 16, New Zealand held a 20,000-person outdoor concert where attendees neither had to wear face masks nor observe social distancing measures. The concert occurred as the country marked its second month without any new COVID-19 transmissions occurring between citizens. The concert was the first stop in the six-stop summer tour of the native soul-pop band Six60. Before Six60's concert, the country had hosted various New Year's Eve music festivals that also had massive crowds, including Rhythm and Vines, Rhythm & Alps and the Northern Bass festivals, each held in different parts of the nation, according to NME
20th Jan 2021 - Newsweek

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 20th Jan 2021

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China defends COVID-19 response after criticism by experts

China has defended its actions as “prompt and decisive” in containing the coronavirus outbreak during its early days, rebuking criticism made by an independent panel of experts over Beijing’s handling of the outbreak. “As the first country to sound the alarm against the pandemic, we took prompt and decisive measures even though we had incomplete information at the time,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said on Tuesday. Hua said Beijing imposed early measures – including the announcement of a hard lockdown on Wuhan weeks after the virus was detected – that “reduced infections and deaths”. Her comments came after the release of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response’s interim report that highlighted how China could have acted “more rapidly” against a virus that has now killed more than two million people worldwide. The panel was formed last year following a request by member countries of the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) to identify new information on the spread of COVID-19.
19th Jan 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Fang Fang: Author vilified for Wuhan Diary speaks out a year on

She has faced a nationalist backlash for her diaries documenting life in Wuhan in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, but Chinese author Fang Fang she says she will not be silenced. "When facing a catastrophe, it's vital to voice your opinion and give your advice," she told BBC Chinese in a rare email interview with international media. In late January, when Wuhan became the first place in the world to enter a state of complete lockdown, many of the city's 11 million residents found solace in reading Fang Fang's online diaries. They also provided a revealing glimpse into the city where the virus first emerged.
19th Jan 2021 - BBC News

The massive logistical exercise behind Australian Open players' COVID hotel quarantine

Burying into the numbers of what has already happened without a single ball being served provides a unique perspective on what's required to run an event in the COVID-19 era where players and officials are already being stretched to their limits.
19th Jan 2021 - Australian Broadcasting Corporation on MSN.com

Australian Open players trapped in hard hotel lockdown could see strict rules eased EARLY

Australian Open players and staff in hard quarantine may be released early Three of four new cases in Victoria announced on Tuesday are linked to the Open Daniel Andrews said there are now nine Covid-19 cases linked to the Grand Slam Mr Andrews said the cases may be reclassified as non-infectious shedding Players in hard quarantine would then be able to train for five hours like others
19th Jan 2021 - Daily Mail

New Zealand looks to secure small batch of vaccines early as pressure mounts

New Zealand said on Tuesday that it was looking to secure a small batch of COVID-19 vaccines early to protect its high-risk workers, as pressure mounts on the government to vaccinate its population. A tough lockdown and the geographic advantage of being at the bottom of the world helped New Zealand virtually eliminate the novel coronavirus within its borders. But with the pandemic raging globally, more people are returning to New Zealand with infections including the new variants from the U.K. and South Africa, raising concerns the virus may spread in the community again.
19th Jan 2021 - Reuters on MSN.com

New Zealand women taking leap into entrepreneurship during Covid-19 era

Many women are starting their own small businesses after a wave of Covid-19-related redundancies, according to Chooice NZ founder Sarah Colcord. More than 5000 new businesses registered with the companies office in 2020, the only rise in the number of companies in New Zealand in the past five years. The novel coronavirus has changed how many people work and live, with side-hustles often transformed into a main income source - a trend that is tipped to grow. Small businesses have long been the backbone of New Zealand. There are 546,732 small enterprises in Aotearoa - making up over 97 percent of all companies. Sarah Colcord founded New Zealand's largest Facebook Group, Chooice (formerly NZ Made Products) and co-founded its e-commerce partner Chooice.co.nz.
19th Jan 2021 - RNZ

International arrivals to New Zealand must return negative Covid test before flight

New Zealand has imposed a blanket testing regime for all flights arriving internationally, with passengers now required to return a negative Covid test result before departure. The Covid-19 response minister, Chris Hipkins, said while New Zealand already had tight border controls in place, the rising number of cases around the globe meant further protections were called for. Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands will be exempt from the new requirement. “As we signalled last week, given the high rates of infection in many countries, most global air routes are of critical concern for the foreseeable future,” Hipkins said.
19th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

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New York governor asks Pfizer to directly sell COVID-19 vaccine doses

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo asked Pfizer Inc Chief Executive Albert Bourla on Monday if the state could buy COVID-19 vaccine doses directly from the U.S. drugmaker. Pfizer, however, told Reuters that such a proposal would first require approval by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “With hospitalizations and deaths increasing across the country this winter, we are in a footrace with the virus, and we will lose unless we dramatically increase the number of doses getting to New Yorkers”, Cuomo said in a letter to Pfizer’s CEO.
18th Jan 2021 - Reuters

Timeline: Wuhan, one year after coronavirus lockdown

China locked down the central city of Wuhan a year ago at the start of the Lunar New Year, the country’s biggest holiday, as it battled to contain the spread of a novel coronavirus. Following is a timeline of key events since the first cases of the virus were detected in the city of 11 million residents in Hubei province.
18th Jan 2021 - Reuters

Covid: New Zealanders attend largest ever concert since pandemic began

Thousands of New Zealanders flocked to a music concert on Saturday, in stark contrast to the UK which remains under lockdown. Huge crowds gathered to watch the nation’s most famous band, Six60, perform at a sports grounds in Waitangi – the largest outdoor show allowed to go ahead in the country since the pandemic began. People were pictured brushing against each other and coming into close contact without wearing masks. Guitarist Chris Mac even interacted with the crowd, which did not have to abide by social distancing rules. As of January 15, New Zealand had 76 active cases of the virus, raising its overall total to 2,246 infections since the start of the outbreak. Residents are no longer required to social distance due to low rates of transmission and are only encouraged to wear face masks on public transport except for in Auckland, where it is a legal requirement.
18th Jan 2021 - Metro.co.uk

Lockdown: Tennis players getting on with life in Australia

With no way out, tennis players in lockdown are figuring out ways to keep themselves fit within the confines of their Melbourne hotel rooms as they prepare for the Australian Open. Victoria state, which has Melbourne as its capital, accounted for 810 of Australia’s 909 deaths from COVID-19, most of those during a deadly second wave three months ago which resulted in curfews and lockdowns for the city. So there's been some debate locally about whether it's right to stage a Grand Slam tournament bringing in people from parts of the world where the coronavirus is still taking a big toll. With that in mind, Australian health and government officials aren't taking any chances.
18th Jan 2021 - The Independent

72 Australian Open tennis players in lockdown; reports of Novak Djokovic ideas for changes

The number of players in hard quarantine swelled to 72 ahead of the Australian Open after a fifth positive coronavirus test was returned from the charter flights bringing players, coaches, officials and media to Melbourne for the season-opening tennis major. That means they won’t be allowed to leave their hotel rooms or practice for 14 days, creating a two-speed preparation period for the tournament. Other players in less rigorous quarantine will be allowed to practice for five hours daily. Australian Open organizers confirmed late Sunday that the latest case involved a passenger on the flight from Doha, Qatar to Melbourne who was not a member of the playing contingent, But all 58 passengers, including the 25 players, now cannot leave their hotel rooms for 14 days.
18th Jan 2021 - NBC Sports

China's economy expands at faster rate than before coronavirus

China’s gross domestic product expanded 6.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2020, beating forecasts and making the country one of the few in the world to register positive growth for the year. Year-on-year GDP growth for the final quarter beat expectations, according to official data released on Monday, with the Chinese economy expanding 2.3 per cent over the course of the full year as industrial production continued to drive the country’s recovery. The new data underlined a rapid turnround in the world’s second-largest economy, which declined in early 2020 for the first time in more than four decades after authorities imposed an extensive lockdown to stem the pandemic’s initial outbreak.
18th Jan 2021 - Financial Times

China silenced doctors to cover up Covid outbreak, new documentary claims

New evidence uncovered by a TV programme about coronavirus suggests China covered up the outbreak and stopped medics from speaking out. An ITV documentary, called ‘Outbreak: The Virus That Shook The World’ and airing tomorrow, shows a secret interview with some of the Chinese doctors who were silenced. Leaks of Chinese official data show the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in Wuhan can be traced back to November 17, 2019. By late December, increasing numbers of people were in hospital with unexplained pneumonia, and medical professionals had discovered a new coronavirus similar to SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in samples. The provincial leaders told the hospitals not to tell the truth.’ Despite the risk of being caught, the medics revealed shocking claims of how they were silenced, had their passports removed and their access to the internet was restricted
18th Jan 2021 - Metro

Covid-19: China's economy grows in fourth quarter, bucking global trend

China's economy grew at the slowest pace in more than four decades last year, official figures show, but remains on course to be the only major economy to have expanded in 2020. The economy grew 2.3% last year, despite Covid-19 shutdowns causing output to slump in early 2020. Strict virus containment measures and emergency relief for businesses helped the economy recover. Growth in the final three months of the year picked up to 6.5%.
18th Jan 2021 - BBC News

S Korea leader urges businesses thriving in pandemic to share profits

South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in has called on companies prospering during the coronavirus pandemic to share their profits with struggling people and businesses, as fears rise over worsening economic inequality. The call from the leader of Asia’s fourth-biggest economy highlights the pressure on many world leaders amid surging stock and property prices coupled with rising unemployment and slow wage growth. “Whether it is called profit sharing, or whatever . . . I think it is the right way to go,” Mr Moon said at a rare press conference on Monday.
18th Jan 2021 - Financial Times

Five Countries, Five Experiences of the Coronavirus Pandemic

Adam Oliver, a professor at the London School of Economics, is one of many researchers who have tracked how different countries have responded to the pandemic. Oliver thinks that our usual back-of-the-envelope way of comparing countries, using a snapshot of covid cases and deaths, is of limited value. “We have to think about the non-health implications of pandemic response, too,” he told me. “Those are much more difficult to gauge at the moment. When you lock down businesses and citizens, there are many downstream consequences. There’s an economic impact. There’s social damage. There’s loss of freedom—which, especially in countries already bordering on authoritarianism, could be hard to roll back. If you consider these broader implications, I don’t think we’ll know the best path for years, if ever.” Oliver classifies pandemic responses into three broad, sometimes overlapping categories: the quick approach, the soft approach, and the hard approach.
18th Jan 2021 - The New Yorker

What India Can Learn From Covid-19 To Build A Healthier Nation

2020 was a terrible year, especially for India. Covid-19 had a devastating impact on people’s health and healthcare, and the economy took a beating. India finished the year with the second highest number of Covid-19 cases (currently over 10.5 million reported cases, with over 152,000 deaths, which is likely to be an under-estimate). With the Covid-19 incidence declining over the past few weeks, and with the launch of an ambitious vaccination campaign, 2021 could, hopefully, be a better year. But only if the country learnt from the experience of Covid-19 and rebuilt the foundations of it’s public health system.
18th Jan 2021 - Forbes

UK facing ‘gonorrhoea outbreak’ when lockdown ends

The UK could face a gonorrhoea outbreak once lockdown comes to an end, as high rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) return, medics have claimed. Before the pandemic, Britain was experiencing the worst rates of STDs since the Second World War. In February last year a Station of the Nation report found gonorrhea had risen by 249% and syphilis by 165% over the last decade. Since then, Covid restrictions have prevented people from socialising and meeting up with others from outside their homes. The number of people visiting sexual health clinics dropped by 85% due to lockdown, data revealed. Experts fear this will rise suddenly once restrictions are changed.
18th Jan 2021 - Metro

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Despite Trump administration promise, government has no more 'reserve' 2nd vaccine doses

Hopes of a surge in Covid-19 vaccine shipments under a new policy to release second doses held in reserve appear to be evaporating -- with the revelation that those doses have already been distributed, contrary to recent indications by the Trump administration. A senior administration official told CNN that when the administration announced that it would be releasing reserved doses Friday, many of those reserves had already been released into the system starting last year as production was ramping up. When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was asked Friday whether there is in fact a reserve of second doses left to release, he said, "No. There's not a reserve stockpile."
17th Jan 2021 - CNN

Coronavirus in London: 1,300-body mortuary opens

A temporary mortuary that can hold up to 1,300 bodies has been opened in Ruislip, west London, as the capital faces a growing coronavirus death toll. London recently exceeded 10,000 Covid-related deaths, a figure mayor Sadiq Khan described as "heartbreaking". Four temporary mortuary sites were set up in London during the first wave of coronavirus, but were put on standby. The use of the Ruislip site has been called "a visual, sobering reminder" of the continuing cost of the pandemic. Westminster City Council chief executive Stuart Love, who is leading the London-wide response, added: "We want to give people hope but we are not there yet. "From my point of view, we have built this really hoping it doesn't get used to its capacity.
16th Jan 2021 - BBC News

African Union vaccines to be allocated according to population

Millions of coronavirus vaccine doses secured by the African Union (AU) will be allocated according to countries’ population size, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday. Ramaphosa, who is the current AU chairman, said on Wednesday that vaccines from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca would be available this year, but he did not specify how much each African country would get. No African countries have begun large-scale coronavirus vaccination campaigns and the AU’s 270 million shots, if administered two per person, would still only cover around 10% of the continent’s 1.3 billion people.
15th Jan 2021 - CNBC Africa

Scotland Covid vaccine plan that included exact numbers taken offline

Scotland’s plan for the distribution of coronavirus vaccinations has been taken offline after the UK government raised concerns that the document included sensitive details about vaccine supply. The plan, which was published on Wednesday evening but removed by Thursday morning, set out the exact numbers of vaccines from Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna the Scottish government expected to receive on a weekly basis up to the end of May, revealing two weeks when no AstraZeneca vaccine would be available. The UK government is reportedly furious at the publication of such detailed figures, amid anxieties it could lead to suppliers coming under pressure from other countries.
17th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

India launches vaccine drive as scepticism mounts

Narendra Modi has kicked off one of the world’s most ambitious inoculation drives in the midst of growing vaccine scepticism over the contentious approval of an indigenously developed jab. The Indian prime minister launched the campaign with an emotional live address on Saturday, saying “the nation has been desperately waiting for this moment” and warned against “false propaganda” about vaccine safety. India, a country of 1.4bn people, has the world’s second-highest number of coronavirus infections at 10.5m. Lockdowns have had limited effect in controlling the spread of the virus and contact tracing has faltered, making a successful inoculation programme essential. The first phase of the vaccination rollout targets 30m healthcare and frontline workers, with the goal of inoculating 300m people by July.
17th Jan 2021 - Financial Times

Covid: 10 new mass vaccination centres to open in England

Ten new mass Covid vaccination centres are to open in England from Monday, as the government bids to meet its target of offering 15 million people in the UK a dose by 15 February. Blackburn Cathedral and St Helens Rugby Ground are among the venues chosen to join the seven hubs already in use. NHS England said the new centres would offer "thousands" of jabs a week. It comes as a further 324,233 vaccine doses were administered across the UK, taking the total above 3.5 million. As the latest figures were announced on Sunday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted his thanks to "everyone who is helping in this fantastic national effort".
17th Jan 2021 - BBC News

COVID-19: Every UK adult could be offered a vaccine by mid-July - if these figures are anything to go by

For a few hours this week, we were given an insight into the closely-guarded secret at the centre of the UK's vaccination programme. It came courtesy of the Scottish government, which published its vaccination plan on Wednesday. The plan included detailed figures for the number of vaccines that would be supplied to Scotland by the UK each week until the end of May. The UK government objected, saying the publication of the figures would create difficulties for the pharmaceutical companies, and the offending page was quickly removed - but not before some clever internet users were able to save a copy.
16th Jan 2021 - Sky News

Spain rejects virus confinement as most of Europe stays home

While most of Europe kicked off 2021 with earlier curfews or stay-at-home orders, authorities in Spain insist the new coronavirus variant causing havoc elsewhere is not to blame for a sharp resurgence of cases and that the country can avoid a full lockdown even as its hospitals fill up. The government has been tirelessly fending off drastic home confinement like the one that paralyzed the economy for nearly three months in the spring of 2020, the last time Spain could claim victory over the stubborn rising curve of cases. Infection rates ebbed in October but never completely flattened the surge from summer. Cases started climbing again before the end of the year. In the past month, 14-day rates more than doubled, from 188 cases per 100,000 residents on Dec. 10 to 522 per 100,000 on Thursday.
15th Jan 2021 - Associated Press

Coronavirus: Texas becomes first US state to administer 1m vaccine doses

Germany’s 2020 contraction shows economy in better shape than thought. Norwegian to abandon long-haul market as it fights for survival. France tightens Covid curfew and border controls.
15th Jan 2021 - MSN.com

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Three dozen mayors ask Biden for direct shipments of COVID-19 vaccine

Mayors of some three-dozen U.S. cities have asked the incoming Biden administration to send COVID-19 vaccine shipments directly to them, bypassing state governments, saying local officials were best positioned to ramp up lagging inoculations.
15th Jan 2021 - Reuters

Returning Australians could be sent to remote mining camps

Remote mining camps have been earmarked as possible quarantine facilities for Australians returning from overseas, after a COVID outbreak at a Brisbane hotel put millions at risk of contracting the disease. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is pushing the national cabinet to consider shifting quarantine sites out of capital cities to avoid a widespread outbreak. Ms Palaszczuk said her government would investigate whether sending returning Australians to quarantine in mining camps "stacks up" before putting forward a model for other states to copy.
14th Jan 2021 - Brisbane Times

Brazil's Amazonas state running out of oxygen as COVID-19 surges

The Brazilian state of Amazonas is running out of oxygen during a renewed surge in COVID-19 deaths, its government said on Thursday, with media reporting that people on respirators were dying of suffocation in hospitals. The state has made a dramatic appeal to the United States to send a military transport plane to the capital city Manaus with oxygen cylinders, Amazonas Congressman Marcelo Ramos said. “They took my father off the oxygen,” Raissa Floriano said outside the 28 de Agosto hospital in Manaus, where people protested that relatives suffering serious cases of COVID-19 were being unhooked from ventilators for lack of oxygen.
14th Jan 2021 - Reuters

Siouxsie Wiles: Any new Covid variants 'would spread like wildfire'

The new variants of the virus can spread like wildfire, and all of us have a role to play in keeping them out of the community. I have to admit, when I first heard UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson talking about a new, more transmissible strain of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19, part of me did wonder whether he was doing a bit of his trademark exaggerating to help explain away he and his government's woeful pandemic response. Within days many countries were restricting travel from the UK to stop the new variant from spreading. But the horse had already bolted. The B1.1.7/501Y.V1 variant has now been reported in over 50 countries. It's all well and good expecting everyone working in MIQ to be doing their bit to keep New Zealand safe from Covid-19. But the rest of us have a role to play in this too. If any variants of the virus got out, never mind these more infectious ones, they would spread like wildfire. The cost of living at alert level one is that we still need to be doing all we can to ensure that any outbreak can be contained as quickly as possible.
14th Jan 2021 - New Zealand Herald

Covid-19: Mysterious cluster in Brisbane a warning to stop using hotels for managed isolation, experts say

Australian health authorities have evacuated a Queensland hotel and are considering alternative isolation facilities – including mining camps – following an outbreak of the highly contagious UK strain of Covid-19, prompting questions about New Zealand's response. On Wednesday 129 hotel guests were transferred from the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Brisbane to an undisclosed facility and required to isolate for another 14 days after six previously identified cases from the hotel were found to be linked. Australian-based New Zealand epidemiologist professor Tony Blakely said the guests were moved from the building because the cause of the outbreak had not been confirmed. The further isolation was needed because they could have been exposed to the virus through the hotel’s ventilation system.
14th Jan 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

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New COVID-19 lockdowns imperil global economy’s recovery

A major chunk of the global recovery in companies’ earnings – recovery expected in the first quarter of 2021 – is at risk of being pushed back further as coronavirus lockdowns and mobility restrictions in several countries cloud hopes of a swifter economic rebound, investment banks said. China announced lockdowns in four cities and European countries unveiled tighter and longer coronavirus restrictions on Wednesday, denting back-to-normal hopes and sparking worries about further economic damage in 2021.
14th Jan 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Will poorer nations miss out on COVID-19 vaccine?

The WHO has urged countries to prioritise COVAX, an initiative to secure vaccines for low and middle-income nations. The global roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines is widening the divide between the world’s rich and poor. The United Nations warns “vaccine nationalism” is on the rise, as Europe, the United States and many wealthier countries buy up millions of potential doses. The World Health Organization urged countries to prioritise COVAX, an initiative to secure vaccines for low and middle-income nations. So how can we ensure protection for everyone? Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom
14th Jan 2021 - Aljazeera.com

France’s Six Nations matches at risk without safety ‘guarantees’

The French sports minister has said she requires further government guarantees before France will be permitted to play in England and Ireland during the Six Nations. Roxana Maracineanu confirmed France would be given clearance to play their opening fixture of the championship, against Italy in Rome, on February 6. However she has concerns over Fabien Galthié’s squad travelling to face Ireland in Dublin on February 14 and England at Twickenham on March 13 because of the rapid rise in Covid-19 cases in both countries.
13th Jan 2021 - The Times

Return with confidence: Using tech to create safe offices, post-pandemic

How can technology help companies worldwide return to work safely when lockdown ends? At Siemens, Ruth Gratzke is overseeing a “Return with Confidence” campaign to create safe and healthy indoor office environments. “It addresses everything from elevators where you don’t have to touch the buttons, touchless interactions throughout the building or management of meeting rooms and desks around social distancing,” said Gratzke, who is president of Siemens Smart Infrastructure, U.S., a unit of Siemens AG. “It’s about using creative and new technologies, looking at what’s available in tech and giving people the confidence to return to the office.”
13th Jan 2021 - Reuters

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For many, COVID-19 has changed the world of work for good

The upheaval in global labour markets triggered by the coronavirus pandemic will transform the working lives of millions of employees for good, policymakers and business leaders told a Reuters virtual forum on Tuesday. Nearly a year after governments first imposed lockdowns to contain the virus, there is a growing consensus that more staff will in future be hired remotely, work from home and have an entirely different set of expectations of their managers. Yet such changes are also likely to be the preserve of white-collar workers, with new labour market entrants and the less well-educated set to face post-COVID-19 economies where most jobs growth is in low-wage sectors.
12th Jan 2021 - Reuters

Retailers remove product limits on groceries after Brisbane lockdown ends

Retailers have removed product limits for popular grocery items in Brisbane after the end of its three-day lockdown. Shoppers descended on stores in large numbers on Friday after the Queensland government confirmed five local government areas would shut down for 72 hours to stop the spread of the UK strain of COVID-19. Punches were thrown and supermarkets stripped bare as residents defied advice to raid shelves and stock up on supplies. It prompted major retailers like Coles and Woolworths to reintroduce product limits on multiple items
12th Jan 2021 - The Australian

Australia clamps down in response to cases of UK coronavirus variant

Authorities in Australia have responded swiftly to contain potential outbreaks of the UK variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19. On Thursday 7 January, a cleaner for a hotel quarantine facility in Brisbane tested positive for the more contagious B.1.1.7 variant, first sequenced in the UK in September, which has now reached at least 45 countries.The following morning, with no further positive cases, Queensland state Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced a short, citywide circuit-breaker lockdown affecting some 2 million residents. The city, where life has been normal for months, hadn’t locked down since the first wave in Australia in March. The lockdown began on Friday at 6pm Brisbane time, and ended on Monday 11 January at the same time. It included a strict mask mandate for anyone leaving their homes, including while driving and exercising.
12th Jan 2021 - New Scientist

New Zealand to ask international travellers for negative virus test before flying in

New Zealand will ask international travelers from most countries to show negative COVID-19 test results before boarding flights to the country as new contagious variants of COVID-19 spread across globally. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that most global air routes will be of critical concern for the foreseeable future,” COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said in a statement. Hipkins said the pre-departure test requirement would soon expand to all countries and territories excluding Australia, Antarctica and some Pacific Island nations.
12th Jan 2021 - Reuters

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The Lancet editor: UK ‘steadfastly refused to follow the science’

Richard Horton: The primary reason why the UK has struggled is because it has not learned the lessons of the first wave of the pandemic in 2020 and it has steadfastly refused to follow the science, despite claims that it is doing so. The lessons from the science have been that when there is a rise in infections, you need to clamp down immediately to suppress transmission to reduce the prevalence of infection in the community. But at every stage, the government has delayed and delayed and delayed locking down, with the result that the virus has got out of control. The result of that is increased hospitalisations and deaths. This has been entirely preventable if the government had acted with more decisiveness, and sooner.
12th Jan 2021 - Al Jazeera English

WHO: Won’t achieve ‘herd immunity in 2021’ despite vaccines

WHO stresses need for measures like physical distancing, hand washing and mask wearing to rein in the pandemic. Herd immunity will not be achieved this year despite COVID-19 vaccines being rolled out in a number of countries, the World Health Organization has warned. Last month, the United Kingdom became the first country in the world to start administrating its citizens with a fully trialled and tested COVID-19 vaccine. “We are not going to achieve any levels of population immunity or herd immunity in 2021,” WHO’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told a briefing in Geneva on Monday. “Even if it happens in a couple of pockets in a few countries, it’s not going to protect people across the world.”
11th Jan 2021 - Al Jazeera English

Australia closes hospital emergency unit over virus case as city lockdown lifts

A hospital emergency department in Sydney was closed after a patient tested positive for COVID-19, Australian authorities said on Monday, as the city of Brisbane made face masks compulsory at public venues. A man in his 40s tested positive for the virus on Sunday after coming to Sydney’s Mount Druitt Hospital, prompting it to close its emergency unit for cleaning, with media reports saying ambulances were diverted to other hospitals. Although the unit reopened on Monday, health officials said they would investigate the man’s movements to determine where he contracted the illness and whether it was linked to a highly-contagious strain that was first detected in Britain.
11th Jan 2021 - Reuters

Covid 19 coronavirus: Spike in border cases, Brisbane lockdown shows need for 'extra vigilance' - expert

New Zealand might need to close its border to the United Kingdom if cases of the new Covid-19 variant there continue to skyrocket, says a leading public health expert. The comments come in response to news on Sunday of 31 new Covid-19 cases in managed isolation over the past 72 hours, with 11 of the new highly-infectious UK variant. One case is linked to the South African strain. "I am very concerned, and this is possibly the most dangerous phase we have been in since the August Auckland outbreak," epidemiologist Dr Michael Baker told the Herald.
11th Jan 2021 - New Zealand Herald

Partner of Queensland cleaner with UK Covid variant tests positive as Brisbane comes out of 72-hour lockdown

The partner of a Queensland cleaner who tested positive to the UK variant of Covid-19 has also tested positive, hours before a lockdown of greater Brisbane was lifted. The Queensland chief health officer, Dr Jeannette Young, said the partner had been in quarantine since 7 January. She said it was likely that genome sequencing would confirm it was the second case of the UK variant detected in the Australian community. Young said the result was unsurprising given the variant was more contagious. “However, it highlights the importance of why the greater Brisbane lockdown was so important to ensure any potential spread of the virus is contained,” she said on Monday evening.
11th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

The West should envy Japan's COVID-19 response

On Jan. 1, the world total of coronavirus cases was 83,748,593 and deaths 1,824,140. Japan’s corresponding figures were 230,304 and 3,414. Unusually, in Japan the disease killed more people in autumn-winter than spring. Still, for balance and perspective it’s worth noting that more Japanese died from 25 other causes in 2020. Japan attracted world notice for neither imposing a lockdown nor obsessively testing asymptomatic people. As Tomoya Saito put it in these pages, “Encouraging people with mild or no symptoms to take PCR tests would have revealed nothing but resulted in isolating false-positive cases.”
11th Jan 2021 - The Japan Times

COVID-19 pandemic puts Barcelona urban greening plan in the fast lane

One of Barcelona’s largest parks, named after Spanish painter Joan Miro, is just a stone’s throw from the busy crossroads between Consell de Cent and Rocafort streets, but here you could be mistaken for thinking nature is a million miles away. That could be about to change under an ambitious new 10-year plan, unveiled by Barcelona City Hall in November, aimed at drastically cutting traffic and expanding green spaces in the central district of Eixample. The 38 million-euro ($46.5-million) plan aims to turn one in three streets in the densely populated residential and commercial area into green zones. It responds to longstanding problems of air pollution and cramped living conditions in the Spanish region of Catalonia’s main city, brought to the fore by COVID-19, said Janet Sanz, Barcelona’s deputy mayor for ecology, urban planning and mobility. Lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19 made urban residents realise how important nature is to them personally and to their wider communities, said Josep M. Pages, secretary general of the Belgium-based European Nurserystock Association
11th Jan 2021 - Reuters

Malaysia's king declares state of emergency to curb spread of COVID-19

Malaysia’s King Al-Sultan Abdullah declared a state of emergency across the country on Tuesday to curb the spread of COVID-19, after consenting to a request from Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, who is facing a leadership challenge. An emergency would give the prime minister and his cabinet extraordinary powers, including allowing the government to introduce laws without the approval of parliament. It was not immediately clear how the emergency would impact day to day activities, but the constitution allows for parliament to be suspended during that period - which could for now put an end to political uncertainties faced by Muhyiddin.
12th Jan 2021 - Reuters

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WHO warns countries are helping Covid thrive through inequitable vaccine distribution

The coronavirus will continue to thrive if there isn’t a more equitable distribution of vaccines across the globe, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday. There are 42 countries that are now rolling out their initial doses of Covid-19 vaccines, and a majority of them are high-income nations, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. No low-income countries have started their vaccine programs, he said, which is “a clear problem.”
9th Jan 2021 - CNBC

Thanks to deep pockets, Germany snaps up extra coronavirus jabs

When it comes to EU vaccine solidarity, Germany is looking to have its cake and eat it, too. While Berlin championed the bloc's joint purchasing of coronavirus vaccines while holding the European Union's rotating presidency in the second half of 2020, it simultaneously made additional agreements with vaccine producers — including BioNTech/Pfizer and CureVac — for extra doses. And it's now purchasing additional vaccines other EU countries didn't want. Germany, a country of 83 million people, said it's getting 94 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, 64 million from the EU and 30 million from a separate bilateral deal. On top of that, Berlin will buy doses that other countries don't buy, securing 50 million of 160 million Moderna doses — far more than its pro-rata allocation.
7th Jan 2021 - POLITICO.eu

Lockdown 3.0: an opportunity to join up thinking

As we embark on what may be the very early stages of Lockdown 3.0, our fears for the future are made darker both by a real uncertainty about the course of the next few months and by the knowledge that it did not have to be like this. It is tempting to attribute such comment to hindsight, but in fact we have been led by a government which has egregiously disregarded what is actually little more than common sense. A health emergency of this potential scale required a strategic and systems-based approach from the start. This approach should have led early on to the production of a coherent plan with clear purpose. It should throughout have shown itself nimble to adapt in real time to new circumstances and to new knowledge.
9th Jan 2021 - The BMJ

North Wales Police Federation rep says officers should get Covid vaccine 'as a priority'

A North Wales Police Federation rep has said officers should get the Covid vaccine as a priority. More than 9,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Welsh Government to change the fact that police are not on the priority list to be immunised for Covid-19. Police forces across the UK are currently experiencing high sickness rates as officers face a greater risk of contracting the virus due to the public facing nature of their jobs. Mark Jones, general secretary of the North Wales Police Federation, said his colleagues had even been spat at by offenders, raising the potential for them to catch the coronavirus even further.
8th Jan 2021 - Deeside.com

Biden to reverse Trump policy by speeding release of Covid-19 vaccines

US president-elect Joe Biden will rapidly release most available coronavirus vaccine doses to protect more people, his office has said, in a reversal of Trump administration policies.
8th Jan 2021 - Belfast Telegraph

Biden plans to release available COVID-19 vaccines instead of holding back for second doses

Biden's transition team said Friday that it doesn't make sense to hold back vaccine at a time when more American's are dying than at any point in the pandemic. Instead, they want to get shots into more arms, then follow up with second doses later. “The president-elect believes we must accelerate distribution of the vaccine while continuing to ensure the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible," spokesman T.J. Ducklo said in a statement sent to USA TODAY. Biden “supports releasing available doses immediately, and believes the government should stop holding back vaccine supply so we can get more shots in Americans’ arms now.”
8th Jan 2021 - USA Today

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Rush to administer coronavirus vaccine to all hospital staff

Hospitals have been told by NHS England to immediately step up efforts to vaccinate all their staff.Yesterday GPs started administering the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine to protect care home residents
8th Jan 2021 - The Times

Pharmacies set for role in Wales coronavirus vaccination plan

Pharmacies in Wales are set to become involved in the process of vaccinating people against coronavirus, with discussions going on over how that will happen, says Wales' Chief Medical Officer. Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, like its counterparts across Wales, has been checking the suitability of community and other venues across Gwent that might be suitable for use as mass vaccination centres, and GP surgeries will also play a central role. The challenge in Wales, as it is across the UK, is to provide sufficient vaccination sites to enable as many people in the priority groups to be vaccinated as quickly as possible - and Wales' CMO Dr Frank Atherton said all health boards in Wales are developing plans to "rapidly increase the vaccine coverage".
8th Jan 2021 - South Wales Argus

More than 1000 Swindon residents volunteer for coronavirus vaccine studies

The rollout of the coronavirus vaccine is under way across the UK, giving hope for a way out of the crisis which changed our lives nearly a year ago. But developing a vaccine wouldn't have been possible without a pool of volunteers from across the four nations, with more than 1,000 people from Swindon putting their name forward to be a part of the effort. Researchers need people to take part in studies to find out which potential vaccine is most effective, and those involved are required to visit a hospital or research site every few months.
8th Jan 2021 - Swindon Advertiser

Coronavirus vaccine will be rolled out in Australia in February

Australians will start getting vaccinated against Covid-19 in mid-February and the jab may be compulsory for some people, Scott Morrison announced on Thursday. The prime minister said he expects regulators to approve the Pfizer vaccine, which has already been rolled out around the world, before the end of January. The American company ships the vaccine two weeks after approval and then another week will be spent testing the batch when it arrives in Australia. Hotel quarantine workers, healthcare workers and aged care staff and residents will be vaccinated first. Elderly people, indigenous Australians over 55, people with clinical conditions and high-risk workers will be next.
7th Jan 2021 - Daily Mail

Australia's vaccine rollout will now start next month. Here's what we'll need

Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout will now begin in mid- to late February. Vaccination will commence with workers dealing with international arrivals or quarantine facilities, frontline health workers and those living in aged care or with a disability. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government “optimistically” aims to vaccinate 80,000 Australians a week, and four million by the end of March. The first vaccine doses were initially planned for March, but the rollout has now been brought forward, pending the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine, anticipated by the end of January.
7th Jan 2021 - The Conversation Australia

Covid 19 coronavirus: Four new cases in managed isolation; 2 more infections linked to UK strain

There are four cases of Covid-19 in managed isolation in New Zealand - and officials have linked two more cases to the rapidly-spreading UK coronavirus strain. There are no new cases in the community, the Ministry of Health says. The total number of active Covid-19 cases in New Zealand is 62.
7th Jan 2021 - New Zealand Herald

Covid vaccine: National vaccination booking system will be launched in the UK

A new national system allowing the public to book a Covid-19 vaccination will be launched in the UK to make it easier to roll out the immunisation programme, Boris Johnson has announced. The Prime Minister said during a press conference on Thursday that nearly 1.5 million people have now been vaccinated against coronavirus in the UK, including 1.26 million in England. The process of getting a vaccination will be made easier, he said, by the launch of the new national appointment booking service – but did not reveal any further details about how it would work.
7th Jan 2021 - iNews

Pharmacies to roll out Covid vaccine in ‘Herculean effort’ to immunise Britain

High street pharmacies will form a major part of the “Herculean effort” to vaccinate the nation against coronavirus, the vaccines tsar has announced. Nadhim Zahawi, the minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, told BBC’s Today programme that community pharmacy networks will be “very much involved” in plans to vaccinate 13.4m Brits by mid-February. Current government plans will see vaccines given to GPs to be rolled out to the public, then national vaccination centres, and then distributed across local pharmacies, Zahawi announced. “The NHS has a very clear plan and I’m confident that we can meet it,” he said, adding that it would require a “Herculean effort” to roll out the jab to the most vulnerable in just seven weeks’ time. It comes after ministers were yesterday accused of ignoring an army of trained vaccinators at pharmacies. Simon Dukes, the chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Negotiating Services Committee, told the Telegraph the NHS was “scrabbling around” for vaccinators while trained medics in the pharmaceutical industry were ready to help.
7th Jan 2021 - City A.M.

Coronavirus Northern Ireland: We may never return to normality despite success of vaccine, warns Professor Young

After almost a year living under the shadow of a pandemic, the approval of two Covid-19 vaccines finally brought some hope to a world weary of coronavirus. There isn't a part of our lives that hasn't been affected by Covid-19 - schools are closed for the third time, life-saving operations are being cancelled, the business community is on its knees, even the simple act of giving a loved one a hug is no longer acceptable. Throughout everything that Covid-19 has thrown at us, we've held on to the day when a vaccine would be rolled out and lives could finally return to normal.
7th Jan 2021 - Belfast Telegraph

England to require travellers to show negative COVID tests

Britain’s government will require people entering England to present a negative COVID-19 test result on arrival starting next week to protect against new strains of the coronavirus from other countries, the government said on Friday. Passengers arriving by boat, plane or train will have to take a test up to 72 hours before departing for England, the transport ministry said, mirroring measures taken by many other countries around the world. “We already have significant measures in place to prevent imported cases of COVID-19, but with new strains of the virus developing internationally we must take further precautions,” Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said in a statement. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered a new lockdown for England this week after a surge in cases linked to a new variant of the coronavirus believed to have originated in the country.
7th Jan 2021 - Reuters

UK extends England entry ban to travellers from 11 African countries for COVID variant

The United Kingdom said on Thursday it would extend a ban on travellers entering England to southern African countries in a measure to prevent the spread of a new COVID-19 variant identified in South Africa. “Entry into England will be banned to those who have travelled from or through any southern African country in the last 10 days, including Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Eswatini, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Mozambique and Angola – as well as Seychelles and Mauritius,” the country’s Department for Transport said. In addition, it said, “Israel (and Jerusalem) would be removed from the list of travel corridors for England and people arriving from Jan. 9 from Botswana, Israel (and Jerusalem), Mauritius or Seychelles would need to self-isolate.”
7th Jan 2021 - Reuters

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David Oliver: 'I've seen five people die in 90 minutes - coronavirus isn't being exaggerated'

I've been an NHS doctor for 31 years and worked in some demanding jobs. But since last March I have looked after wards where all the patients have Covid-19 for months on end. I've never seen anything like it. Total UK Covid deaths hit 70,000 this week but many more infected people end up in hospital, get sick in care homes or have a rough few weeks at home. On call for emergency admissions, as I was this week, around half the patients I admit are sick due to Covid. Right now, a quarter of our beds are filled by Covid patients and our Intensive Care Units and High Dependency Units, have nearly doubled in size to cope with the surge in demand. The current peak is already as high as it was in April and the models suggest it will worsen through January
7th Jan 2021 - Mirror Online

Covid-19: New details revealed in government's vaccine distribution plan

New details have emerged in the government’s hunt for a Covid-19 vaccine distributor – including the requirement to be able to move doses through roadblocks during another lockdown. The exacting requirements for prospective distributors have emerged in a Ministry of Health procurement document obtained by Stuff. They include the ability to distribute dangerously large quantities of dry ice and transport items at ultra-cold temperatures, down to minus 70 Celsius. Interested companies are also asked about contingency plans for delivering a vaccine in another Covid-19 lockdown scenario, including whether they could handle disruptions to their networks such as roadblocks.
6th Jan 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

Covid-19 pre-departure tests and more lockdowns: Additional measures rolled out to battle new variant

Since the new Covid-19 variant began spreading rapidly around the world, new measures have been rolled out to slow it down. The B.1.1.7 strain, which was first identified in the UK on September 20, is more transmissible than other coronavirus variants. According to Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield, it is roughly one-and-a-half times more infectious than earlier versions of the virus. The new variant has since been found in more than 30 countries, including New Zealand.
6th Jan 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

Covid-19 scare: Hamilton District Court lockdown lifts, isolation worker tests negative

A worker at a managed isolation facility who sparked a lockdown at Hamilton District Court has tested negative for Covid-19. The lockdown was triggered shortly before 10am and was lifted around 11.20am, when members of the public were allowed out again. The court then closed for the rest of the day. People who were inside have been told they are only casual contacts so don't have to do any mandatory quarantine at home. A source has told the Herald that the lockdown was triggered because a woman who worked at a managed isolation facility had turned up at court and told a staff member she had a runny nose and was awaiting the result of a Covid-19 test.
6th Jan 2021 - New Zealand Herald

Life after lockdown: New Zealand creatives on navigating a post-Covid world

In a year that mostly felt devoid of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel emerged from a surprising source: the bottom of the world. Long-since illuminated for its history-making politics, 2020 saw New Zealand burn even brighter on the global stage for all but eliminating coronavirus (twice) with remarkable efficiency — announcing 95 percent probability of zero local transmissions — as other first-world nations confronted yet another surge. Perhaps it was the country’s dispersed population, borderless isolation or high governmental trust index, but once again a small island nation just North of Antarctica (and often confused with Australia) had set an undeniable precedent.
6th Jan 2021 - VICE

Operation Warp Speed’s Moncef Slaoui will stay on as a consultant for Biden

Moncef Slaoui, the controversial head of Operation Warp Speed, will serve as a consultant in the Biden administration, he confirmed Wednesday. He suggested it would be a less active role than his current position, as the initiative’s chief adviser. “I will continue to support as needed, I think we are getting close to the point where my value add is more limited and therefore I’ll expect my activity to decrease gradually after January 21,” Slaoui told STAT Wednesday during a briefing with reporters.
6th Jan 2021 - STAT News

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World risks ‘moral catastrophe’ if Covid vaccine delayed in Africa, its CDC chief says

The world risks a “moral catastrophe” if Covid-19 vaccinations are delayed in Africa while wealthier regions inoculate their entire populations, the head of the continent's disease control body said on Thursday. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hopes significant vaccination campaigns on the continent will begin in April, its head, John Nkengasong, told reporters. “That's a long way to go given that this virus transmits very quickly,” he said, adding that in Africa, “the second wave is here with a vengeance”. Cases of the new coronavirus increased by nearly 19% since last week and deaths increased by 26%, according to Africa CDC data. Africa has recorded 2.7 million coronavirus infections and 64,000 deaths as of Thursday, it says.
5th Jan 2021 - The Independent

Indonesia to start mass COVID vaccination drive on January 13

Indonesia will begin its nationwide COVID-19 vaccination programme on January 13, with President Joko Widodo set to be given the first jab, made by China’s Sinovac Biotech. The mass inoculation programme will begin in the capital, Jakarta, Indonesia’s Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin announced on Tuesday, while vaccinations in other regions will follow on January 14 and 15.
6th Jan 2021 - Al Jazeera English

China's latest potential culprit in its search for foreign coronavirus sources? Auto parts packaging

More than a year since the coronavirus pandemic began, while a surprising -- and frustrating -- number of points remain unclear, one thing is certain: the first major outbreak was in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. While scientists are still examining the exact origins of the virus, whether or not it came from bats or another animal, how it mutated to become so infectious and so deadly, and how long it was around before the initial outbreak, that Wuhan was the initial epicenter is undeniable. Equally undeniable, is how effectively the city has rebounded, just last week hosting a New Year's party as much of the world remains in effective lockdown -- a success that has become a major point of pride in China.
5th Jan 2021 - CNN

New UK coronavirus strain found in Perth hotel quarantine system as three arrivals test positive

Three people in Western Australia's hotel quarantine system tested positive for the new COVID-19 variant from the UK, Premier Mark McGowan has revealed. The cases all arrived from London between the 16th and 20th of December 2020, and have recovered and since left hotel quarantine. It comes after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a new national lockdown for England to combat the fast-spreading mutant strain of coronavirus. "We've done testing of the most recent cases. Unfortunately, what we've found in our hotel quarantine system is three people have the new UK variant … a more rapidly spreading variant of the virus," he said.
5th Jan 2021 - ABC News

WHO's Tedros 'very disappointed' China hasn't granted entry to coronavirus experts

The head of the World Health Organization said on Tuesday he was "very disappointed" that China has still not authorised the entry of a team of international experts to examine the origins of the coronavirus.
5th Jan 2021 - Reuters

Watching New Zealand's Covid success from bungling Britain has been torture

Like most Britons this past year, I’ve spent more time than I care to admit doomscrolling social media. But in between the muted festive lockdown celebrations, I also saw photos of crowded house parties, family barbecues and road trips to baches and beaches. My social feeds have split into alternate realities. Because although I’m a British citizen living in Oxford, I’m also a resident of New Zealand, where things really couldn’t be more different. As a resident of two countries, with friends and family in each, I’m used to witnessing events and political developments in both places at once. Usually this experience is a rewarding one where new ideas and cultural differences cross-pollinate in my brain and expand the way I see the world. But in 2020 it’s been an exercise in frustration. The torture of watching how one country has handed the Covid pandemic so well, while living in another that has bungled it so badly, has been one of the defining characteristics of my past year.
5th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

Major concern at failure to tell over-65s in mental health facilities when they will get Covid-19 vaccine

Major concern has emerged that residents aged over 65 in mental health facilities have not yet been told when they will get the Covid-19 vaccine. The HSE has promised that all residents and staff in long-term care over-65 will be among the first to receive the jab. However, today the watchdog Mental Health Commission (MHC) said it has been contact with individuals in mental health centres over the Christmas and New Year period as part of its ongoing remit to monitor, risk-rate and support units in the management and mitigation of the virus. Many have confirmed that they are still to receive a timeline from the Health Service Executive (HSE) for the roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine in their facility.
5th Jan 2021 - Independent.ie

China steps up COVID measures near Beijing as local infections rise

-Chinese authorities shut sections of highways running through Hebei province that surrounds Beijing on Wednesday and closed a key long distance bus terminal in the provincial capital Shijiazhuang in efforts to stave off another coronavirus wave. The province, which entered a “wartime mode” on Tuesday, accounted for 20 of the 23 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases reported in mainland China on Jan. 5, more than the total of 19 cases in the province in the three previous days. The total number of new mainland cases, including those originating from overseas, fell to 32 from 33 a day earlier. Hebei also accounted for 43 of the 64 new asymptomatic cases - patients who have been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus but not yet showing symptoms of COVID-19.
5th Jan 2021 - Reuters

Large US airlines back global COVID-testing requirements: Report

A group representing airlines in the United States has backed a proposal by public health officials to implement a global testing programme requiring negative tests before most international air passengers return to the US, according to a letter seen by the Reuters news agency. Airlines for America, which represents American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and other large carriers, also urged the Trump administration in a letter to Vice President Mike Pence on Monday “to move ahead with recommendations to rescind current entry restrictions on travellers from Europe, the United Kingdom and Brazil as soon as possible … concurrently with the testing programme.”
5th Jan 2021 - Aljazeera.com

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Outpacing Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, China to give coronavirus vaccine to 50 million in a month

China has begun a nationwide drive to vaccinate some 50 million front-line workers against the coronavirus before the Lunar New Year travel rush next month, in hopes of avoiding a repeat of last year’s grim holiday season. Workers in a range of industries will receive their first of two vaccine shots by the middle of this month, with the next shot coming two to four weeks afterward, according to the national plan. The nine prioritized groups include health sector workers, delivery workers, people whose jobs require overseas travel, public servants and utilities employees. China’s target of vaccinating 50 million people in a month is an ambitious goal, more than the populations of California and Michigan combined. In the United States, where the Trump administration has touted its Operation Warp Speed to fast-track delivery of vaccines, 4.2 million people have received a first dose since distribution began on Dec. 14
4th Jan 2021 - Washington Post

Covid-19: New UK virus variant reaches NZ as Government introduces tougher testing rules for travellers

The mutant coronavirus strain that sent large parts of England into a “tier 4" lockdown earlier this month has reached New Zealand. There were 19 new cases of Covid-19 within New Zealand since the New Year. Of the new cases announced on Sunday, one was historical and the rest were in managed isolation. However, six cases of the mutant UK strain have also been found in New Zealand, the Ministry of Health confirmed. The six cases, five of whom travelled from the United Kingdom and one who travelled from South Africa, arrived into New Zealand between December 13 and 25.
4th Jan 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

New Zealand tightens border again amid fears over new Covid strain

Travellers from UK and US now required to test negative before departure and take an extra test on arrival as ‘extra precautionary steps’
4th Jan 2021 - The Guardian

Covid-19: What you need to know about UK coronavirus strain now in New Zealand

The arrival of a highly-transmissible Covid-19 strain on New Zealand shores from the United Kingdom has experts warning the country's quarantine process will be put to the test. On Sunday, health authorities announced six cases of Covid-19 have been found to match a newly identified variant of the disease, known as B.1.1.7, which spread rapidly and caused infection rates to soar in the UK. Six people carrying the new variant – thought to be 50 to 70 per cent more infectious than the regular coronavirus – arrived in New Zealand between December 13 and 25.
4th Jan 2021 - Stuff.co.nz

Five key milestones in the Covid-19 pandemic that we’re anticipating in 2021

If 2020 was defined by the explosion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, 2021 could be about its dwindling. But how many people will fall ill, and die, as that happens is dependent on our leaders, individuals, vaccine makers, and public campaigns to encourage people to get the Covid-19 shots developed with unprecedented speed. STAT News publishes its forecast regarding what to anticipate for the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021
4th Jan 2021 - STAT News

How it started: A Q&A with Helen Branswell, one year after Covid-19 became a full-time job

Before the virus that causes Covid-19 had a name — before Covid-19 itself had a name — it was a medical mystery. It wasn’t even clear it was a virus. All the world knew, or the tiny sliver of the world that was paying attention, was that a handful of cases of unexplained pneumonia had been reported in central China. That is what STAT reported on this date, one year ago. The author of the story, infectious disease reporter Helen Branswell, has written 147 others in the hazy, horrible months that have followed. We took a break recently to mark today’s anniversary and look back at where we’ve been. Rest assured, reader, her wish at the end of this Q&A shall be granted.
4th Jan 2021 - STAT News

Why Indonesia is vaccinating its working population first, not elderly

As Indonesia prepares to begin mass inoculations against COVID-19, its plan to prioritise working age adults over the elderly, aiming to reach herd immunity fast and revive the economy, will be closely watched by other countries. Several countries such as the United States and Britain that have already begun vaccinations are giving priority to elderly people who are more vulnerable to the respiratory disease. The following are experts’ views on merits and risks of the Indonesian approach, under which working age adults will be vaccinated after frontline health workers and public servants.
4th Jan 2021 - Reuters

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Parents face week of uncertainty over school reopenings in England

Parents face more disruption and uncertainty as local authorities across the country scramble to delay schools reopening in the face of rising coronavirus infection rates and the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, admitted that more could be shut in the coming weeks. On the day before millions of children were set to return to their classrooms, Essex council said it would unilaterally close schools to most pupils until at least Wednesday and Kent county council joined England’s largest education authority in Birmingham in asking the education secretary to allow primaries to stay closed. They said the argument for reopening amid high infection rates “does not stack up”.
3rd Jan 2021 - The Guardian

UK public transport downturn to continue after pandemic ends

Over half of public transport users in the UK say they will continue to avoid buses and trains after the pandemic is over in favour of cycling or walking, a study of consumer spending reveals. The Co-op’s annual ethical consumerism report, which has monitored ethical spending habits for over 20 years, this year singles out public transport as “the biggest loser” of changed spending priorities due to Covid-19, with users reluctant to jump back onto buses and trains because of the threat to their personal space. In other sectors, the study found that the “stay at or near home” culture which has led to a boom in online shopping and home deliveries is likely to stay, with 58% of shoppers determined to continue to support their local high street.
2nd Jan 2021 - The Guardian

Voice of the Mirror: Government must ensure the rollout of new Covid jab is efficient and fast

Our despair at the rising tide of Covid cases is at long last tinged with hope. The green light for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in such a short time is a tribute to the brilliance and ingenuity of our scientists. It is now imperative that the Government ensures the rollout is efficient and fast. Vaccination can save lives, reunite families and start to get life back to normal. So the approval of a second vaccine could not have come at a more needed time.
1st Jan 2021 - Mirror Online

A new year brings same problems with delayed vaccine distribution

The Trump administration enters 2021 well short of its goal to vaccinate 20 million people by January 1, leaving state health officials across the country scrambling to ramp up a massive vaccine distribution effort that is crucial to defeating the pandemic and yet faces critical delays. So far, just over 12.4 million doses have been distributed to states, yet only 2.8 million doses have actually been administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some states have expressed disappointment with the rollout, acknowledging their own issues but also seeking more federal resources amid concerns about the burden they now have to get vaccines into patients' arms. In several cases, local snafus on the ground have created their own delays, not to mention dangerous and costly mistakes. In West Virginia, for instance, 42 people were mistakenly given a Covid-19 antibody treatment instead of the coronavirus vaccine, according to the West Virginia National Guard. In Wisconsin, police have arrested a recently fired pharmacist who they say removed 57 vials of the Moderna vaccine from a local hospital's refrigerator and left them to sit out, leading to 500 doses being discarded.
1st Jan 2021 - CNN

Coronavirus in Ireland: Sluggish vaccine programme will hurt high street, sector warns

A retail group has expressed concern that a slow rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine in Ireland will lead to long-term closures for non-essential retail.Retail Excellence Ireland (REI), an industry group
31st Dec 2020 - The Times

'Vaccine diplomacy' sees Egypt roll out Chinese coronavirus jab

When Egypt’s health ministry sent out an invitation to doctors to be vaccinated against Covid-19, they neglected to make clear it was a clinical trial. Instead, it assured them that two Covid-19 vaccines developed by China’s National Biotec Group, part of a state-owned conglomerate known as Sinopharm, had no side-effects and that “the minister of health was vaccinated today, and orders were issued to vaccinate all doctors and workers who wish to be vaccinated”. Many were sceptical. “When my colleagues and I got that message, none of us participated, as we cannot trust it,” said one worker at a state hospital, who said there was a “lack of credibility” in the government’s approach to the pandemic and the vaccines. The doctor, who cannot be named to protect their safety, described Egypt’s extensive publicity campaign around the vaccines, featuring a well-known actor driving to a sunlit clinic to get his jab, as “government propaganda intended to boost people’s morale”.
31st Dec 2020 - The Guardian

Will I need a coronavirus vaccine to fly or travel in 2021? – Which? News

Qantas has said COVID-19 inoculation will be mandatory when it restarts international flights, with some other airlines and destinations likely to follow suit
31st Dec 2020 - Which?

Oxford AstraZeneca Coronavirus vaccine: What does approval mean for Scotland?

This development has been welcomed by many in Scotland, with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon calling it “much needed good news” and adding that “spring will bring better times”. The approval of the Oxford AstraZeneca candidate is fundamental to Scotland’s vaccine rollout, as it will be the one received by the majority of Scots.
30th Dec 2020 - The Scotsman

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Care homes still waiting weeks for Covid vaccines - despite 'tsunami' of cases

Care homes are still waiting for coronavirus jabs, weeks after the Tories ­promised them. One boss warned they face a Covid “tsunami” as they battle the new virus variant. Raj Sehgal said: “We’ve had no vaccines at all.” And staff fear the growing crisis could leave them on their knees as they battle a worrying shortage of workers struck down by the virus. It comes as officials last night said approval of the Oxford vaccine was “imminent”, which would be a game-changer for care homes. Mr Sehgal, who runs homes in Norfolk, including Summerville House in Heacham, said he was still desperately waiting for jabs, despite those in care being identified as the most urgently in need of them.
30th Dec 2020 - Mirror Online

Wuhan's low-income workers struggle to find jobs eight months after Covid-19 lockdown lifted

Hundreds of low-income workers gather at a roadside in the central Chinese city of Wuhan at 4am each morning, waiting for employers to come and offer them odd jobs. Most are looking for construction work. But eight months after the city lifted lockdown measures put in place to stop the spread of Covid-19, many workers at the morning job market say there are still very few jobs, and they are struggling to make a living.
29th Dec 2020 - South China Morning Post

Greece hoping for tourism recovery from summer 2021 after pandemic slump

Greece’s tourism sector is expected to recover next summer following a dramatic fall in revenues due to the coronavirus pandemic this year, a senior industry official said on Tuesday. Tourism is the main driver of Greece’s economy, accounting for about 20% of its output and employing one in five workers. Yannis Retsos, head of the country’s tourism confederation, said tourism revenues this year had reached 4 billion euros, down from 18 billion in 2019, due to global travel restrictions to contain the spread of the coronavirus. “We need to wait for the second half of the year to see some sort of action in tourism,” Retsos told a Greek radio station.
29th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

Britain to place more parts of country in tier 4 of COVID curbs

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has approved placing more parts of the country into tier 4 restrictions, as the country battles a new variant of COVID-19 which scientists say can spread more rapidly, The Times reported. Ministers were considering imposing the toughest measures on parts of southwest England and Cumbria, where the variant appears to be gaining ground even though cases remain relatively low, said the report.
29th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

China meat association calls for exporters to disinfect shipments to prevent COVID-19

Chinese meat importers and processors have called on exporters in countries with COVID-19 outbreaks to step up checks on shipments before they are sent to the world’s biggest market, China’s top industry group said. “China has been importing a large quantity of meats this year, and has detected virus on the packaging of cold chain products many times, even as lots of disinfection has been done domestically,” Gao Guan, spokesman for the China Meat Association, said on Tuesday. It would be better to handle virus control at the point of origins and carry out disinfection at production plants as the cost would be lower and efficiency higher, Gao said. China has ramped up disinfection and virus testing on frozen food after it found coronavirus on imported products and packaging.
29th Dec 2020 - Reuters

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People with coronavirus are still getting on planes. No one knows how many.

In the days after a man on their flight stopped breathing, fellow passengers wondered if he was infected with coronavirus — and whether they might be at risk. The airline said it didn’t know, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wouldn’t say publicly. An answer didn’t come until a local coroner released a report a week later confirming that covid-19 was a cause of the 69-year-old man’s death on Dec. 14, along with acute respiratory failure. By Wednesday, three different passengers said they still hadn’t gotten official word from any public health authorities. The tale of United Flight 591 illustrates the challenges of keeping the novel coronavirus off planes — and informing travelers about possible exposure in a timely manner so they can take their own precautions.
28th Dec 2020 - The Washington Post

UK faces Covid third wave unless vaccination target is doubled, ministers warned

Britain must vaccinate two million people a week to avoid a third wave of the coronavirus outbreak, a new study claims. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) paper has issued ministers with the stark warning coming as hospital admissions surpassed the peak of the first wave of the pandemic. Around 200,000 people are being inoculated each week, which is expected to raise to one million by the middle of January, according to the Daily Telegraph. "The most stringent intervention scenario with tier 4 England-wide and schools closed during January and 2 million individuals vaccinated per week, is the only scenario we considered which reduces peak ICU burden below the levels seen during the first wave," the study said.
29th Dec 2020 - Mirror Online

Hospital Covid admissions are set to surge PAST first wave peak amid fears NHS is being 'overwhelmed' by highly infectious new strain - with ministers to decide in days if ...

The number of patients in hospital with the virus is likely to exceed the peak in the spring, with 21,286 coronavirus patients being treated on December 22. In comparison, the figure on April 12 was 21,
29th Dec 2020 - Daily Mail

Scarred by 2020, Gen Z looks to a COVID-free future

Lives that had been focussed on school, university, sports or even going to K-pop concerts vanished overnight for members of Gen Z as the global pandemic struck. While a lot was heard about older people at risk from COVID-19, this younger generation - born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s - also saw their worlds turned upside down in 2020. Reuters profiled 10 young people around the world to learn how their lives had been affected by the coronavirus. Shut up in bedrooms - many forced to live with their parents - some went from being students, athletes and workers to caring for sick relatives and doing whatever they could to earn money to support families. One teen even became a mother
27th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

Russia admits COVID death toll is three times higher than reported

Russia has admitted its coronavirus death toll is more than three times higher than previously reported. New figures show that more than 186,000 Russians have died from the virus, up from the 55,265 the country officially reported. This means that Russia has the third-highest number of fatalities, moving ahead of India and sitting behind only the US and Brazil. Russia has reported more than three million infections since the beginning of the pandemic but its comparatively low fatality rate had raised eyebrows.
29th Dec 2020 - Sky News

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US California hospitals discuss rationing care as virus surges

With about 98 percent of intensive care beds full, California hospitals are making contingency treatment plans. On the West Coast of the United States, California’s overwhelmed hospitals are setting up makeshift extra beds for coronavirus patients, and a handful of facilities in hard-hit Los Angeles County are drawing up emergency plans in case they have to limit how many people receive life-saving care. The number of people hospitalised across California with confirmed COVID-19 infections is more than double the state’s previous peak, reached in July, and a state model forecasts the total could hit 75,000 patients by mid-January.
22nd Dec 2020 - Al Jazeera English

U.S. loses one life every 33 seconds to COVID-19 in deadliest week so far

In the United States last week, someone died from COVID-19 every 33 seconds. The disease claimed more than 18,000 lives in the seven days ended Dec. 20, up 6.7% from the prior week to hit another record high, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports. Despite pleas by health officials not to travel during the end-year holiday season, 3.2 million people were screened at U.S. airports on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Health officials are worried that a surge in infections from holiday gatherings could overwhelm hospitals, some of which are already at capacity after Thanksgiving celebrations.
22nd Dec 2020 - Reuters

New Covid-19 variant hasn't yet been identified in New Zealand, but expert says likely to get here

A new, more infectious, variant of the Covid-19 virus identified in the UK is highly likely to make it to New Zealand’s borders, says an expert. The new variant is being blamed for faster-than-expected spread of Covid-19 in London, the southeast and east of England, which have been placed into tighter restrictions over the Christmas holidays. Several other countries have halted flights from the UK in a bid to stop it spreading further. But the Ministry of Health said on Monday the specific new strain identified in the UK had not yet been seen in this country.
21st Dec 2020 - Stuff.co.nz

Top epidemiologist warns what Sydney's Covid-19 outbreak means for New Zealand

As Australian health officials scramble to contain the Covid-19 outbreak in Sydney, a top epidemiologist here is warning "that could be us". Professor Michael Baker says New Zealand is arguably entering "our most dangerous stage" since the August Auckland outbreak as the pandemic surges in the Northern Hemisphere. Baker, from the University of Otago's school of public health, is now calling for returnees from countries where the virus is "out of control" to take an additional step and isolate under supervision at a hotel and be tested before even stepping on the plane.
21st Dec 2020 - New Zealand Herald

New virus strain not out of control, says WHO as more nations ban UK travel

Roughly 30 countries have shut their borders to people coming from the UK or South Africa, where another variant has emerged. British PM Boris Johnson hopes to see border issues with France sorted out ‘within hours’ amid food shortage fears.
21st Dec 2020 - South China Morning Post

Austria will offer coronavirus tests to its entire population with those testing negative receiving 'more freedoms' as country prepares for third lockdown

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced Austria will enter a third lockdown It will run between December 26 to January 24, but will see mass testing done Those who take part in the series of testing will be allowed more freedoms Such freedoms include visiting cultural events and restaurants, Kurz said It was also announced the country will be reopening ski lifts despite lockdown
19th Dec 2020 - Daily Mail

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Postcards from Wuhan: One year on, residents share lockdown memories, hopes for 2021

In China’s Wuhan, the original epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak, the city’s residents are returning to normal life, even as they continue to grapple with memories of the early outbreak, which struck fear in the city. It’s been almost seven months since the city recorded a locally transmitted case of the disease due to a strict city-wide lockdown and a mass testing event of almost all the city’s 11 million residents. Today, restaurants, shopping streets and bars are crowded, but locals are still experiencing the lasting impact of the lockdown on mental health and work.
20th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

European states ban travel from UK as new Covid strain takes hold

European countries have banned flights and ferries carrying passengers from the UK in a desperate attempt to suppress the spread of a new variant of the coronavirus that has plunged south-east England into a tier 4 lockdown. In the most dramatic development, France announced it was suspending passenger and human-handled freight transport from the UK for 48 hours from 11pm GMT. The Road Haulage Association warned the move would have a “devastating effect” on supply chains already disrupted by Brexit stockpiling and pandemic restrictions. The UK government said it expected “significant disruption in Kent” as a result of the French move and was “urging everybody – including all hauliers” to avoid travelling to ports in the county until further notice.
20th Dec 2020 - The Guardian

Congress agrees to a Covid stimulus deal. Here’s who’s likely eligible for a $600 check and when you’ll get it

After months of failed negotiations, lawmakers have finally agreed to a new $900 billion coronavirus relief package. Congressional leaders have not yet released text of the more than $2 trillion legislation — which will include broader government spending measures — but the pandemic recovery bill was set to include direct payments of up to $600 to eligible adults, plus $600 per child dependent. While the adult benefit would be half the size of the first stimulus check, the amount earmarked for qualifying dependents was raised by $100.
20th Dec 2020 - CNBC

Stanford apologizes for coronavirus vaccine plan that left out many front-line doctors

Stanford Health Care apologized Friday for a plan that left nearly all of its young front-line doctors out of the first round of coronavirus vaccinations. The Palo Alto, Calif., medical center promised an immediate fix that would move the physicians into the first wave of inoculations. Stanford’s turnaround followed a raucous demonstration by some of those doctors, who demanded to know why other health-care workers — including pathologists and radiologists who do not attend to covid-19 patients — would be vaccinated before they are.
19th Dec 2020 - The Washington Post

Scott Morrison's economic humblebrag disproved by New Zealand comeback

Here’s some news I reckon some of you will have missed in a stressful week. New Zealand’s economy grew by 14% between July and September. Yep, 14%. Feel free to select your superlative of choice: stellar, extraordinary, remarkable. No rush, I’ll wait. While you are doing that, let me give you some context. The report card from across the ditch isn’t all brilliant. When assessed year-on-year, New Zealand’s economy shrank by 2.2%. Why? Because the pandemic isn’t over. The world remains mired in the biggest global economic crisis since the Great Depression.
18th Dec 2020 - The Guardian

President-Elect Biden Will Get Coronavirus Vaccine Monday

President-elect Joe Biden and first lady-elect Dr. Jill Biden will receive the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine on Monday, incoming White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a press briefing Friday, noting he is taking the vaccine publicly to show the American people it is safe.
18th Dec 2020 - Forbes

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States report confusion as feds reduce vaccine shipments, even as Pfizer says it has ‘millions’ of unclaimed doses

The changes prompted concern in health departments across the country about whether Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s vaccine accelerator, was capable of distributing doses quickly enough to meet the target of delivering first shots to 20 million people by year’s end. A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said the revised estimates for next week were the result of states requesting an expedited timeline for locking in future shipments — from Friday to Tuesday — leaving less time for federal authorities to inspect and clear available supply.
18th Dec 2020 - The Washington Post

Covid: Sir Ian McKellen praises NHS after first dose of Pfizer vaccine

Sir Ian McKellen has praised the NHS saying he wants to "give them all a big hug" after having his first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. The 81-year old also urged others to get the Covid-19 jab if they could. "I would encourage everybody to do the sensible thing, not just for themselves but for everybody else because if you're virus-free that helps everybody else, doesn't it?"
17th Dec 2020 - ITV News

New Zealand's 'go hard and early' Covid policy reaps economic rewards

New Zealand’s economy has accelerated out of a coronavirus induced recession to grow by a record 14 per cent in the third quarter, reflecting authorities’ adept handling of the pandemic. Figures published on Thursday showed a resurgence in household spending drove the country’s recovery. The easing of some of the world’s toughest social distancing restrictions prompted 11.1 per cent growth in service industries and 26 per cent growth in the goods producing sector. New Zealand’s statistics agency also revised the decline in gross domestic product in the June quarter to 11 per cent, from previous estimates of a 12.2 per cent contraction. However, the damage wrought by a nationwide lockdown remained evident in the annual growth figure, which shows economic activity fell 2.2 per cent in the year to the end of September.
17th Dec 2020 - Financial Times

Ardern unveils New Zealand Covid vaccine deals as economy rebounds

New Zealand has ordered 15m courses of Covid-19 vaccine from four providers as the country approaches the end of 2020 on a promising note, with a recovering economy and plans to open numerous travel corridors in the new year. On Thursday, the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, confirmed the treatment would be free for everyone, with health workers and border officials prioritised. The vaccine will be made available in the second quarter of next year. Ardern said readiness for New Zealand’s “largest-ever immunisation programme” was progressing well, and the country had now pre-ordered vaccines from four providers: 750,000 courses from Pfizer, 5m from Janssen, 3.8m from Oxford/AstraZeneca and 5.36m from Novavax. One course refers to all the doses needed for one person.
17th Dec 2020 - The Guardian

New Zealand economy bounces back with record growth as pandemic contained

New Zealand's economy grew a record 14% in the third quarter, bouncing back from a COVID-19 lockdown earlier in the year that shut businesses and brought activity to a standstill, official data showed on Thursday. Annual gross domestic product (GDP) rose 0.4%, Statistics New Zealand said, with both figures beating expectations in a Reuters poll for quarterly growth of 13.5% and an annual contraction of 1.3%. The GDP numbers also topped the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's November forecast of quarterly and annual growth of 13.4% and minus 1.3% respectively.
17th Dec 2020 - Reuters

NHS hospitals running out of beds as Covid cases continue to surge

Growing numbers of hospitals in England are running short of beds and having to divert patients elsewhere and cancel operations as the NHS struggles to cope with the resurgence of coronavirus, a Guardian analysis shows. According to the NHS figures, hospitals had to tell ambulance crews to divert patients elsewhere 44 times last week – the highest number for four years. With hospitals in London, Leicester and Northampton particularly hard hit, Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, warned: “It already feels like we’re in the grips of a really bad winter, and there’s a very long way to go.”
17th Dec 2020 - The Guardian

One night in Wuhan: COVID-19's original epicenter re-learns how to party

“After experiencing the first wave of epidemic in Wuhan and then the liberation, I feel like I’m living a second life,” says Zhang, 29, who works in a textiles shop in the central Chinese city that was the original epicenter of COVID-19. Outside, maskless partygoers spill onto the streets, smoking and playing street games with toy machine guns and balloons. Nightlife in Wuhan is back in full swing almost seven months after the city lifted its stringent lockdown and the city’s young partygoers are embracing the catharsis.
16th Dec 2020 - Reuters

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China embarks on campaign of Covid vaccine diplomacy

From the moment the first cases came to light in the Wuhan wet market last December, the coronavirus pandemic represented a profound loss of face for China. A superpower-in-waiting, proudly but defensively emerging on to the world stage, has inadvertently unleashed the worst global catastrophe since the Second World War. You didn’t need to talk about the “China virus” or believe in conspiracies about leaks from bio labs to recognise the humiliation for the communist government of Xi Jinping. But now Beijing is attempting to win back international prestige by providing the solution to the problem that it incubated in the first place. After effectively quelling the pandemic among its own people, China, and to a lesser extent Russia, are positioning themselves as benefactors to countries which are struggling to secure supplies of vaccine.
16th Dec 2020 - The Times

A pandemic atlas: China's state power crushes COVID-19

In many ways, normal life has resumed in China the country where COVID-19 first appeared one year ago. “It feels like life has recovered,” said moviegoer Meng Xiangyu, when Beijing theaters re-opened with 30 percent of their seating after a six-month hiatus. “Everything feels fresh.” China's ruling Communist Party has withdrawn some of the most sweeping anti-disease controls ever imposed, but remains on guard against fresh outbreaks and cases from abroad. Health authorities report a dozen or so imported cases every day.
16th Dec 2020 - The Independent

New Zealand Says Harsh Lockdown Paying Off as Economy Rebounds

New Zealand’s government said the fiscal and economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic will be less severe than first feared as its decision to impose one of the world’s strictest lockdowns pays off. Economic growth will recover more rapidly while budget deficits and net debt will be much lower than expected just three months ago, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said Wednesday in Wellington when presenting the half-year fiscal and economic update. Unemployment will now peak at 6.9% at the end of next year rather than the 7.8% predicted in September
16th Dec 2020 - Bloomberg

Jacinda Arden on how New Zealand eliminated Covid-19: 'You just have to get on with it'

New Zealand this year pulled off a moonshot that remains the envy of most other nations - it eliminated the coronavirus. But the goal was driven as much by fear as it was ambition, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern revealed in an interview with The Associated Press. Ms Ardern said the target grew from an early realisation the nation's health system simply could not cope with a big outbreak.
16th Dec 2020 - Irish Independent

Alaska health worker has serious allergic reaction to Pfizer’s COVID vaccine

A health worker in Alaska suffered a serious allergic reaction after getting Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine and is now hospitalized but stable, a report said Wednesday. The New York Times reported that the person received their shot on Tuesday, and Pfizer confirmed that the company was working with local authorities to investigate the incident.
16th Dec 2020 - The Times of Israel

Covid-19: Europeans urged to wear masks for family Christmas

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged Europeans to wear masks during family gatherings at Christmas. It said Europe was at "high risk" of a new wave of coronavirus infections in the early part of 2021, as transmission of the virus remained high. Countries across the continent have been registering thousands of daily cases and hundreds of deaths. Germany was among countries tightening restrictions on Wednesday, closing schools and non-essential businesses. Meanwhile European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the first Covid vaccine would be authorised for use within a week.
16th Dec 2020 - BBC

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New Covid-19 case in Western Australia as a teenager catches virus from his younger brother after entering hotel quarantine to take care of his sibling

An Australian teenager has tested positive for COVID-19 after entering hotel quarantine to take care of his younger brother. The 18-year-old boy went into quarantine at a Perth hotel to look after his younger brother, who had returned to Western Australia from overseas. The younger brother, who is under 18, tested positive for COVID-19 before the older brother also tested positive to the disease on Monday. 'The brothers remain in hotel quarantine,' a WA Health spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
15th Dec 2020 - Daily Mail

Parisians enjoy taste of lockdown freedom ahead of Christmas, while hospitality workers protest bar and restaurant ban set to last until January 20

Parisians last night enjoyed a taste of lockdown freedom ahead of Christmas, while hospitality workers took to the streets in protest at a festive season ban. In a Christmas Village at Hotel de Ville in the heart of the French capital last night, masked revellers were seen enjoying fairground rides and market stalls. But while some enjoyed the festivities, just a short distance away, near the Arc de Triomphe, face mask-wearing police officers protested their working conditions. Hospitality workers also protested a possible ban on reopening bars and restaurants until January 20. It comes as France plans to ease measures from its second national lockdown today.
15th Dec 2020 - Daily Mail

Child marriage revived across Asia and Africa as pandemic deepens poverty

Many countries had made progress against traditional and transactional marriages of girls in recent decades, but the economic havoc amid COVID-19 has caused significant backsliding. The United Nations estimates that hardships resulting from COVID-19 will drive 13 million more girls to marry before the age of 18. Though most such marriages take place in secret, Save the Children estimates that this year alone nearly half a million more girls under 18 are at risk of being married off worldwide — most in Africa and Asia, but also in the Middle East. One aid organization said staffers in a remote corner of Sierra Leone overheard a relative offering up a girl as young as 8 for marriage earlier this year. When chastised, the grandmother later denied doing so.
15th Dec 2020 - The Japan Times

Covid-19: New Zealand and Australia agree on quarantine-free travel bubble

New Zealand has agreed to a quarantine-free travel bubble with Australia "in principle". The country's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said trips under the agreement could begin early next year. However, the much-anticipated deal will depend on the Covid-19 situation in both counties remaining as it is now.
15th Dec 2020 - BBC

Auckland Council staff struggling with post-lockdown stress at work - report

A new report shows Auckland Council staff have been struggling with the pressures of the post-lockdown work environment, with concerns about their stress levels and wellbeing. The report's findings were taken from two staff surveys, conducted in May and September. "The aim of each was to highlight issues and trends in wellbeing, especially given the change for many staff to more remote working," it said. The report showed the stress staff are feeling in relation to Covid-19 has increased, while their feelings of health and wellbeing have decreased
15th Dec 2020 - New Zealand Herald

Prepare for a short lockdown while on holiday, pack a 'Covid kit', Government warns

Holidaymakers in New Zealand are being asked to pack a “Covid kit” and stay put at their campgrounds if Covid-19 emerges during the summer break. The Government has assembled a Covid-19 resurgence plan aimed at giving the country an unrestricted holiday, as Britons arrange “Christmas bubbles”, the Netherlands and Germany enter lockdowns, and the pandemic death toll in the United States eclipses 300,000 people. The resurgence plan largely resembles the existing response, with loosely mapped out summer scenarios providing some guide to travellers about how to respond to Covid-19 cases. Holidaymakers may be asked to return home if an alert level change occurs, and events may be cancelled.
15th Dec 2020 - Stuff.co.nz

Europe wanted to keep schools open this winter. Coronavirus surges have disrupted those plans.

Surging coronavirus outbreaks in a number of nations are forcing governments to close schools, despite initial promises to keep them open this winter. The latest country to change course is Germany, where most schools will move to distance learning Wednesday as part of tougher new lockdown rules. Widening outbreaks have also triggered the closure of schools in the Netherlands and in Asia, where the South Korean capital, Seoul, opted for similar measures this week.
15th Dec 2020 - The Washington Post

Covid safety advice at Christmas ‘set to be significantly strengthened’

Guidance from the Government about how to safely celebrate Christmas across the UK is expected to be strengthened, it has been reported. Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove held talks with leaders of the four devolved nations on Tuesday night about the plans to ease coronavirus restrictions over a four day period for Christmas. And following the discussions the Government’s advice on how to safely celebrate over the festive period will be “significantly strengthened” in the coming days, reports BBC News. However, the broadcaster added that plans to allow up to three households to form a bubble from December 23 to 27 is not expected to change.
15th Dec 2020 - Evening Standard

Northern Ireland hospital treating patients in parked ambulances

Patients were being treated in the back of ambulances in a Northern Ireland hospital car park on Tuesday, a health official said, a day after a warning that COVID-19 was putting healthcare under “unbearable pressures”. The British-run region has been in and out of some form of lockdown since mid-October when it was one of Europe’s worst COVID-19 hotbeds. The most recent curbs were lifted last week, when all shops, restaurants and pubs serving food reopened.
15th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

Mental health tech startups fetch record investments with COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has put the spotlight on mental health tech startups, globally marking a record year for venture capital investment in the sector, according to data firm PitchBook. PitchBook data showed 146 deals raked in nearly $1.6 billion in venture capital investments as of Dec. 10. Last year the total was $893 million from 111 deals. A decade ago there were only 3 deals, worth $6.6 million. The investments come as employers are increasingly seen as customers for these startups. Consulting firm McKinsey reported last month that 52% of companies offer mental-health and bereavement counseling.
15th Dec 2020 - Reuters

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The shift to working from home can outlast COVID-19

For the past eight months, office life has been transformed as – in the interest of social distancing – millions were told to work from home. The shift to remote working is surprisingly widespread. The percentage of people who work from home has of course climbed in tech-savvy sectors such as IT and finance. But it has risen significantly in some old economy sectors too. In construction, for instance, the share of work-from-home workers jumped from 15 per cent pre-COVID to 34 per cent in September, according to Fair Work Australia. Yet from Monday, the NSW Public Health Order requiring employers to allow all workers to work remotely lapsed. Bosses will now have the option of ordering staff back to the office. Yet the return to the pre-COVID status quo also poses problems because some Australian employers are more enthusiastic about returning to the old work arrangements than their workers, who have enjoyed the flexibility and the time saved from the daily commute.
14th Dec 2020 - The Sydney Morning Herald

Australia's Shops See Year-End Spending Boom as Optimism Returns

Australia’s retailers are preparing for a late-December spending splurge that could fuel the kind of recovery on the year-end wishlist of Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe. Consumer confidence rose for a fourth straight month in December, climbing to a 10-year high. Lowe said just two months ago that greater confidence was the catalyst needed to prompt households to part with the extra savings they squirreled away during the lockdown.
14th Dec 2020 - Bloomberg

New Zealand offers travel bubble with Australia if coronavirus cases stay low

Health Minister Greg Hunt says the Federal Government welcomes New Zealand's announcement of a travel bubble, describing it as the "second half of the equation". New Zealand's Cabinet agreed in principle to establish a trans-Tasman bubble with Australia early next year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday. It would be conditional on coronavirus case levels staying low and pending approval by the Federal Government. Mr Hunt said the Federal Government would "absolutely" approve the agreement, and that increased travel between the two countries would benefit both economies.
14th Dec 2020 - ABC.Net.au

Covid 19 coronavirus update: Zero new cases today

There are no new Covid cases in New Zealand today. The total number of active cases in New Zealand is 56. Officials are still investigating how an Air NZ crew member caught Covid-19. The person flew into New Zealand from the United States. "Preliminary genome sequencing results suggest the source of their infection was in the United States," the Ministry of Health said. "The Air New Zealand aircrew member remains in the Auckland quarantine facility. Three other aircrew members who are close contacts are in isolation. All three close contacts will have a day 5 Covid test today," the ministry said.
14th Dec 2020 - New Zealand Herald

New Zealand agrees on 'travel bubble' with Australia in early 2021

New Zealand agreed on Monday to allow quarantine-free travel with Australia in the first quarter of 2021, nearly a year after it locked down its borders to protect its population from the novel coronavirus. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the cabinet had agreed in principle on a trans-Tasman, quarantine-free travel bubble pending confirmation by Australia’s cabinet and no significant change in circumstances in either country. “It is our intention to name a date ... in the New Year once remaining details are locked down,” Ardern said at a news conference in the capital, Wellington. New Zealand’s has virtually eliminated the novel coronavirus by enforcing a tough lockdown and keeping its borders shut to all foreigners for most of the year.
14th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

US deaths from COVID-19 pass 300,000 as vaccine rolls out

The death toll from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States has topped 300,000 on the same day the first vaccines against COVID-19 were administered in the country, which has been the hardest hit globally in terms of cases and deaths. The number of dead is roughly five times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War and equivalent to the number of people killed in the 2001 9/11 World Trade Center attacks times 100.
14th Dec 2020 - AlJazeera

Kids and COVID isolation & stress: What parents need to know

Experts voice concern over how children are relating to the world outside their homes during the pandemic, as well as the stress they are feeling from their parent’s COVID-related financial struggles.
14th Dec 2020 - AlJazeera

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When will COVID-19 vaccinations start in African countries?

With the United Kingdom rolling out the world’s first approved coronavirus vaccine this week and other clinical trials showing promising results, the focus has swiftly turned towards the distribution of the doses worldwide and which countries will get them first – and which will be pushed to the back of the queue. On Thursday, Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director John Nkengasong warned “it will be extremely terrible to see” wealthy nations obtaining vaccines and African countries missing out, as he called on for an extraordinary United Nations session to discuss this “moral issue” and avoid a “North-South distrust in respect to vaccines, which is a common good”.
11th Dec 2020 - AlJazeera

Historic U.S. COVID vaccine campaign launches with convoy of trucks

Tractor trailers loaded with suitcase-sized containers of COVID-19 vaccine will leave Pfizer Inc’s manufacturing facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Sunday morning - launching the largest and most complex vaccine distribution project in the United States, where the virus is raging. U.S. regulators late on Friday authorized the vaccine from Pfizer and partner BioNTech for use, and U.S. marshals will accompany the tightly secured shipments from factory to final destination. “We have spent months strategizing with Operation Warp Speed officials and our healthcare customers on efficient vaccine logistics, and the time has arrived to put the plan into action,” Wes Wheeler, president of UPS Healthcare, said on Saturday.
13th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

Covid vaccine: Four Pfizer trial participants developed facial paralysis, FDA says

New documents have revealed that four participants in the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine trial developed Bell's palsy - a condition that causes a temporary weakness or paralysis of the muscles in the face. The patients were taking part in the US vaccine trial, which included 38,000 participants. The Bell’s palsy is believed to be unrelated to the vaccine, with cases in the trial occurring at the same rate as in the general population. A document by the FDA said: “Among non-serious unsolicited adverse events, there was a numerical imbalance of four cases of Bell’s palsy in the vaccine group compared with no cases in the placebo group, though the four cases in the vaccine group do not represent a frequency above that expected in the general population.”
11th Dec 2020 - Mirror Online

Covid-19 vaccine-distribution timeline will keep slipping, experts say

When Bruce Y. Lee was helping the U.S. government model delivery plans for H1N1 influenza vaccines, he came to expect one constant: The schedule would always change. “We’d constantly have to update the models as new production numbers came out,” said Lee, a professor at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy, who developed computational models to guide the national response to the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009. “That just became accepted.”
11th Dec 2020 - STAT

Africa's hurdles toward a COVID vaccine

Coronavirus vaccines are now being administered in Europe, while Africa hopes to start by mid-2021. Until then, the continent of 54 countries will need to put the necessary logistics, such as refrigeration, in place. On December 8, 2020, the United Kingdom became the first country to begin vaccinating its citizens with the new BioNTech-Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Canada and Bahrain have also greenlighted it. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) will meet on December 29 and is expected to approve the vaccine. But European Union countries are already putting modalities in place to receive and distribute the vaccine. Africa's hopes of receiving the vaccine are pinned on the global COVAX initiative, which aims to buy and deliver vaccines for the world's poorest people.
11th Dec 2020 - Deutsche Welle

UN chief warns 'vaccine nationalism' is moving at full speed

Director General Antonio Guterres warned Wednesday that “vaccine nationalism” is moving “at full speed,” leaving poor people around the globe watching preparations for inoculations against the coronavirus in some rich nations and wondering if and when they will be vaccinated.
11th Dec 2020 - Sun Star

Grief in the Covid era will weigh on the American psyche for years to come

The rituals of grief and mourning are as old as time: the swift Jewish burial and seven days of sitting shiva to honor the dead; the Muslim washing and three-sheeted shrouding of a body; the solemn Mass of Christian Burial with Holy Communion and the promise of an afterlife. All these — and other rites of faith and community across the globe — have been brutally curtailed by the Covid-19 pandemic, with effects on the mental and physical health of those left behind that have yet to be grasped.
12th Dec 2020 - STAT

Walgreens to hire 25,000 as part of plan to give COVID-19 vaccine to nursing home residents and staff

Walgreens expects to receive its first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine Dec. 21 and plans to inoculate nursing home residents and workers at more than 30,000 long-term care facilities nationwide. The company plans to hire about 25,000 people across the U.S., including up to 9,000 pharmacists and other health care workers, to administer the vaccine to long-term care facilities through a partnership with pharmacy service provider PharMerica, the companies said during a panel discussion Friday on the vaccine rollout.
12th Dec 2020 - Bangor Daily News

South Korea begins anti-coronavirus period ahead of college entrance exam

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in warned on Sunday that COVID-19 restrictions may be raised to the highest level after a second day of record increases in cases as the country battles a harsh third wave of infection. Presiding over an emergency meeting at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters for the first time since February, Moon urged vigilance and called for an all-out efforts to contain the virus. “Unless the outbreak can be contained now, it has come to the critical point of considering escalating social-distancing measures to the third level,” he said, referring to the tightest curbs under the country’s five-tier system.
13th Dec 2020 - Reuters

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Europe can’t ignore Global South in coronavirus vaccine race

The news of ground-breaking vaccines that could spell the end of the global coronavirus pandemic was met with a collective sigh of relief in the West. But in the Global South, the overwhelming feeling was one of dread and anger at the new social chasm on the horizon: between the vaccine haves and have-nots. We know that vaccinating populations that are most at-risk will be key to meeting the challenges of the long year ahead and getting the pandemic under control. But under current vaccine distribution mechanisms such as the World Health Organization’s COVAX initiative, which are commendable, there simply will not be enough vaccine doses to go around by the end of 2021. This is not only a moral issue. Failure to provide equitable access to the vaccine will have dire and long-lasting consequences for human health and make it more difficult to end the pandemic. The virus may even have a chance to mutate and become vaccine resistant, raising the possibility of new waves of infection.
10th Dec 2020 - POLITICO.eu

GPs across the country to start booking coronavirus vaccine appointments within days

GPs across England will be starting to book coronavirus vaccination appointments over the coming days. As a million more doses are set to arrive in Britain next week, the elderly and care home workers will begin to receive letters organising their appointments. The jabs will come just days after vaccinations began in hospitals this week. According to Mirror Online, details of the next stage of the staggered rollout emerged as Prof Chris Whitty said social distancing restrictions could start being lifted once 20 million vulnerable Brits have been vaccinated. The Chief Medical Officer also offered hope of a return to normality before Spring
10th Dec 2020 - Liverpool Echo

DOD Unveils Its Coronavirus Vaccine Distribution Plan

In the U.S., the Department of Defense aims to administer just under 44,000 doses of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine within 24 to 48 hours of authorization for emergency use. U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials have said they will make a decision soon after they hear from an advisory committee which meets Thursday. The vaccine will be distributed through 16 DOD installations, 13 in the U.S and three overseas. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Thomas McCaffery said some senior leaders will also receive the vaccine "as one way of helping to message the safety and efficacy, and underscore that we are encouraging all those eligible personnel to take the vaccine."
10th Dec 2020 - NPR

Few cases, outbreaks in UK schools reopened after lockdown

A study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases found low COVID-19 case rates and outbreaks in schools and childcare centers that reopened after lockdown. Researchers used data from HPZone—a national online database for events that require public health management—to estimate the rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection and outbreaks among staff and students in a total of 57,600 schools attended by a median of 928,000 students per day. The researchers identified 113 single cases of COVID-19 infection, nine coprimary cases—two confirmed cases within 48 hours of one another, typically within the same household—and 55 outbreaks, defined as two linked cases leading to secondary diagnosed cases within 14 days in the same educational setting. Outbreaks were strongly correlated with local infection rates, showing a 72% increase in the risk of an outbreak for every five cases per 100,000 population increase in community incidence
10th Dec 2020 - CIDRAP

Alarming levels of hunger in India even post-lockdown, says survey

In India, the hunger situation remains grave among the marginalised and vulnerable communities even five months after the lockdown has ended, with a large number of families going to bed without food, showed a ‘Hunger Watch’ survey conducted across 11 states. About 56 per cent of the respondents never had to skip meals before lockdown. In September and October, 27 per cent respondents went to bed without eating. About one in 20 households often went to bed without eating.
10th Dec 2020 - The New Indian Express

Why Australians are still waiting to come home

COVID-19 has exposed many weaknesses in Australia's federation but nowhere is this more glaring than the debate over the failure to get Australians home by Christmas. On September 18, Scott Morrison said he wanted to "get as many people home, if not all of them, by Christmas", a line that has stuck in people's mind. In truth, Morrison has not broken a promise. Since then, more than 32,000 Australian citizens and permanent residents have returned home - 8000 more than were registered at the time. But in that time the worsening international situation has increased the size of the problem. Three months ago there were about 24,000 Australians wanting to return home. Today that number has blown out to about 39,000.
10th Dec 2020 - The Sydney Morning Herald

UK economic activity picks up after November lockdown - ONS

More British people went out shopping and got in their cars over the past week following the end of a partial lockdown in England, official figures showed on Thursday. The proportion of British adults who went shopping for goods other than basic necessities rose by 5 percentage points to 18% in the week to Dec. 6, while traffic on Dec. 7 rose 7 percentage points from a week earlier, the Office for National Statistics said.
10th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

Worldwide distribution of Covid-19 vaccines is crucial for the economy, Melinda Gates says

As coronavirus vaccines begin rolling out — a crucial step in ending the pandemic that has killed more than 1.5 million people and caused economic pain around the globe — Melinda Gates is urging leaders of wealthy countries not to forget about the rest of the world. "Everybody needs this vaccine," Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, told CNN's Poppy Harlow in a broadcast interview Thursday. "If we only get it to the high-income countries, this disease is going to bounce around. We're going to see twice as many deaths. And our recovery of our economies is going to be much slower than if we get the vaccine out to everybody." The Gates Foundation on Thursday said it plans to commit an additional $250 million to support the "research, development and equitable delivery" of tools to fight Covid-19, including tests, treatments and vaccines.
10th Dec 2020 - CNN

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Nine out of 10 in poor nations to miss out on inoculation as west buys up Covid vaccines

Nine out of 10 people in 70 low-income countries are unlikely to be vaccinated against Covid-19 next year because the majority of the most promising vaccines coming on-stream have been bought up by the west, campaigners have said. As the first people get vaccinated in the UK, the People’s Vaccine Alliance is warning that the deals done by rich countries’ governments will leave the poor at the mercy of the rampaging virus. Rich countries with 14% of the world’s population have secured 53% of the most promising vaccines. Canada has bought more doses per head of population than any other – enough to vaccinate each Canadian five times, said the alliance, which includes Amnesty International, Frontline AIDS, Global Justice Now and Oxfam.
9th Dec 2020 - The Guardian

Amnesty: rich countries have bought too many COVID-19 vaccines

Rich countries have secured enough coronavirus vaccines to protect their populations nearly three times over by the end of 2021, Amnesty International and other groups said on Wednesday, possibly depriving billions of people in poorer areas. Amnesty and other organisations including Frontline AIDS, Global Justice Now and Oxfam, urged governments and the pharmaceutical industry to take action to ensure intellectual property of vaccines is shared widely. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also called on governments repeatedly this year to make a vaccine protecting against COVID-19 a “public good”.
9th Dec 2020 - Reuters

British grandmother says she feels great after Pfizer vaccine

Margaret Keenan, the 90-year-old British grandmother who became the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine outside of a trial, said she feels great after being discharged from hospital on Wednesday. Pictures of Keenan went around the world on Tuesday as she received the shot during a short stay in her local hospital for heart checks. Video footage showed the former jewellery shop assistant wearing a light blue mask, a grey cardigan and a blue T-shirt with a penguin in snow and the message “Merry Christmas”
10th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

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UK's chief science advisor says masks may be needed for another year - The Telegraph

People in the United Kingdom may have to wear face masks for another year despite the country’s national vaccination programme getting under way, The Telegraph reported, citing chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance. Restrictions may remain in place long after a full rollout of a vaccine, Vallance suggested, according to the report.
8th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

UK retail sales growth slows as November lockdown hits non-food sales - BRC

British retail sales growth slowed in November when non-essential stores shut as part of a four-week lockdown in England, but online sales were able to fill more of the gap than in the first lockdown in March, industry data showed on Tuesday.
9th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

Singapore 'cruise-to-nowhere' turns back after COVID-19 case aboard

A passenger aboard a Royal Caribbean ‘cruise-to-nowhere’ from Singapore has tested positive for COVID-19, forcing all guests to be quarantined in their cabins and the Quantum of the Seas ship to return to dock on Wednesday. Singapore has been piloting the trips, which are open only to residents, make no stops and sail in waters just off the city-state. There were around 2,000 passengers aboard at the time who have all been confined to their rooms. The global cruise industry has taken a major hit from the coronavirus pandemic, with some of the earliest big outbreaks found on cruise ships. In one case in February off the coast of Japan, passengers were stuck for weeks aboard the Diamond Princess with over 700 guests and crew infected.
9th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

Tearful family reunions after WA ends border lockdown

Western Australia's hard border came down at midnight after a nine-month closure, marking another major milestone in Australia's fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Passengers were greeted by loved ones, some of whom told 9News they have not seen their family in over a year. "It's been 14 months since we have been together," one person said. Those who arrive in WA today will no longer need to complete the 14-day quarantine. However, visitors will need to complete a G2G declaration pass and undergo a health screening on arrival. Some may be asked to take a COVID-19 test.
8th Dec 2020 - 9News.com.au

A year on, markets bustling in Chinese city where COVID-19 emerged

Hundreds of shoppers pack a wet market on a December weekday morning in the Chinese city of Wuhan, jostling to buy fresh vegetables and live fish, frogs and turtles. Almost a year since the city reported the world’s first cases of COVID-19 in one of its handful of vast wet markets, and even as several other countries remain firmly in the grip of the subsequent pandemic, life in Wuhan has largely returned to normal. Wuhan has not recorded a new locally transmitted case in several months and is now indistinguishable from other Chinese cities with crowded shopping streets, traffic jams and tightly packed restaurants.
8th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

Summer holidays and ‘normal life’ on horizon as health chiefs hail ‘historic’ Covid vaccine rollout

The UK’s coronavirus vaccine tsar has said she expects families will be able to go on holiday next summer as the Covid jab started its historic rollout. Kate Bingham, chair of the coronavirus vaccine taskforce, said she expects by the summer that people will be in a “better place” to get on planes. She made the comments just hours after Margaret Keenan, 90, became the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer jab on what has been dubbed “V-Day”. Ms Bingham told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "My gut feel is that we will all be going on summer holidays.
8th Dec 2020 - Evening Standard

Biden, introducing health teams, vows 100 million COVID-19 vaccinations in first 100 days

President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday laid out his plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic during his first 100 days in office, saying his administration would vaccinate 100 million Americans, push to reopen schools and strengthen mask mandates.
8th Dec 2020 - Reuters

Testing times: More work needed on Astra/Oxford vaccine trials

Detailed results from the AstraZeneca/Oxford trials have been eagerly awaited after some scientists criticised a lack of information in their initial announcement last month. However, the Lancet study gave few extra clues about why efficacy was 62% for trial participants given two full doses, but 90% for a smaller sub-group given a half, then a full dose. “(This) will require further research as more data becomes available from the trial,” the study said. Less than 6% of UK trial participants were given the lower dose regimen and none of them was aged over 55, meaning more research will be needed to investigate the vaccine’s efficacy in older people who are particularly susceptible to COVID-19. Pooling the results, overall efficacy was 70.4%, the data on Tuesday showed. That is above the 50% minimum set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
8th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

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Austrian shops open after 3 weeks as lockdown loosened

Austrians lined up to enter stores on Monday as the country relaxed its coronavirus lockdown, allowing nonessential shops to reopen after three weeks. But many restrictions remain in place, and the country’s leader advised people against all rushing to the shops at once. Tough lockdown measures took effect Nov. 17. The government decided last week that enough progress had been made in cutting coronavirus infections to relax some restrictions. Schools were reopened, except for older students, as were museums, libraries and some other businesses such as hairdressers. But restaurants remain closed for all but takeout and deliveries, as do bars, and hotels are only open to business travelers
7th Dec 2020 - Washington Times

UK shops reopen after lockdown - but footfall still down 30% on 2019

Britons flocked to the High Street after for the first weekend following the lifting of the nationwide lockdown - but footfall remained lower than pre-pandemic levels. The number of shoppers out this weekend was down 30% on the same period in 2019. Crowds keen for a Christmas bargain flocked to shopping areas across the UK on Saturday with large numbers of shoppers photographed on London's Regent Street and in Manchester. Diane Wehrle, marketing director for Springboard who produced the figures, said the boost was partly down to people desperate to leave their homes after lockdown
7th Dec 2020 - Daily Mail

Christmas market closed as shopping crowds spark concern in Nottingham and London

Christmas shoppers hit the high streets in droves on the first weekend since lockdown was lifted in England, sparking concerns over social distancing. Queues formed in London’s West End as crowds flooded Oxford Street and Regent Street on Saturday to make the most of non-essential shops reopening under the new tiered system. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was out in the West End on Saturday as a show of support for retailers, but he warned people to continue following coronavirus rules, with the majority of England under tier 2 or tier 3 restrictions, which limit social contact between households.
7th Dec 2020 - The Independent

Covid-19: One new case in managed isolation, ministry cuts back on updates

In New Zealand, the Ministry of Healthy is reducing the frequency of its regular Covid-19 updates to four times a week. The news comes as the ministry announced one new case of Covid-19 in New Zealand on Monday, in managed isolation. Covid-19 updates, which had been published every day at 1pm, will now be scheduled for Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. On those days, the Ministry will report cases that have tested positive in managed isolation in the preceding days since the last update.
7th Dec 2020 - Stuff.co.nz

England's malls attract Christmas shoppers after lockdown ends

Footfall across all retail destinations in England rose by 81% compared to the previous week after a second lockdown ended on Wednesday, allowing non-essential shops to begin trading again, Springboard said on Monday. Shopping centres saw the biggest boost, with a 121.3% rise from Wednesday, while high streets saw a 79.8% rise and numbers in retail parks were up 40.7%, Springboard said.
7th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

New Covid app reveals which areas could change tiers next week

A new app has revealed which areas are most likely to move into another tier next week. The ZOE Covid Symptom Study app shows how many cases there are per 100,000 people and the prevalence rate for each area in England. It also shows where these cases are rising, and which places are in tier two. This data helps experts at science company ZOE and King’s College London predict which parts of the country can expect new restrictions to be brought in soon. The dashboard’s most recent reports, which are presented to the Government every day, show most of England’s prevalence rate falling or staying the same.
7th Dec 2020 - Metro.co.uk

Every week coronavirus lockdowns drag on increases odds Americans will binge drink by nearly 20%

Researchers surveyed nearly 2,000 US adults between mid-March and mid-April They found that 34% of participants reported binge drinking during coronavirus pandemic lockdowns. About 60% of binge drinkers increased their alcohol consumption during the pandemic compared to non-binge drinkers. The odds of heavy alcohol consumption among binge drinkers increased 19% for every week of lockdown. Binge drinkers were more likely to have their job status 'negatively impacted,' to be essential workers or to have a history of depression
7th Dec 2020 - Daily Mail

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China begins huge COVID-19 vaccine rollout, with doses reportedly already administered to 1 million citizens

Health officials in China have begun giving at-risk citizens emergency access to vaccine doses, according to a report. More than a million healthcare workers and others in at-risk groups have already received vaccines, The Associated Press reported Sunday. It detailed millions of orders from the country's provinces. Health officials in world's most populous country, which is home to almost 1.4 billion people, haven't yet released a comprehensive plan. Chinese government researchers are testing several vaccines from about a dozen countries, with a domestic vaccine from China Pharmaceutical Group, or Sinopharm, nearing final approval
6th Dec 2020 - Business Insider

Covid-19: Children 'isolating three times in three months'

In Wales, there are calls for an alternative to school contact groups isolating for 14 days after a classmate tests positive. Some parents say their children have isolated three times in the past three months - and that it is detrimental to their wellbeing. A petition to the Senedd also says working parents are suffering, with employers not always sympathetic if they have to stay home with children. The Welsh Government said it was working hard on testing developments.
6th Dec 2020 - BBC

COVID-19: Christmas shoppers flood high streets in return after lockdown

Christmas shoppers flooded England's high streets for the first weekend since lockdown was lifted and non-essential stores were allowed to reopen. Despite the difficulties of the pandemic, retail experts predicted £1.5bn would be spent in shops nationwide on Saturday. Taking advantage of the first non-working day to do their Christmas shopping, people flooded London's Regent Street and city centres in Manchester and York. Shoppers visiting Westfield, east London and stores in central Birmingham had to contend with hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters staging demonstrations against more potential restrictions next year.
6th Dec 2020 - Sky News

China Gearing Up for COVID Vaccine Program

China is gearing up to roll out a huge coronavirus vaccine initiative. The Associated Press reports provincial governments across the country are placing orders for experimental, domestically made coronavirus vaccines, though health officials have yet to say how well they work or how they may reach the country’s 1.4 billion people. The AP says more than a million Chinese health care workers have already received experimental vaccines under emergency use permission, but there have been no indications about possible side effects.
6th Dec 2020 - Voice of America

First week of eased restrictions in SA as state records no new cases of COVID-19

Hospitality venues in South Australia are bracing for a busy weekend after restrictions were eased, allowing twice as many people to be seated in pubs, bars and restaurants. The state's top police officer, Police Commissioner Grant Stevens, overruled health advice to increase the capacity in venues to one patron per two square metres, to help the state's economy during the Christmas trading period. The easing of restrictions come as SA records another day of zero cases of locally acquired COVID-19.
6th Dec 2020 - 9News.com.au

How Melbourne and Victoria eliminated Covid-19 cases with a lockdown

In July and August, the Australian state of Victoria was going through a second Covid-19 wave. Local leaders set an improbable goal in the face of that challenge. They didn’t want to just get their Covid-19 numbers down. They wanted to eliminate the virus entirely.By the end of November, they’d done it. They have seen no active cases for a full four weeks. Melbourne, the state’s capital and a city with about as many people as the greater Washington, DC, area, is now completely coronavirus-free. Victoria’s Covid-19 restrictions were controversial with some residents, but Australia in general enjoys more political homogeny than the US does. That must make it easier to build solidarity for these extraordinary measures.
6th Dec 2020 - Vox.com

First COVID-19 vaccines may reach Poland in January: PM's top aide

The first coronavirus vaccines could reach Poland in January, the Polish prime minister’s top aide said on Friday, as emerging Europe’s biggest country prepares to roll out its COVID-19 vaccination programme. Poland has ordered 45 million COVID-19 vaccines, and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said the country intended to start vaccinating health workers, security forces and the elderly in February. “Similarly to other countries, it looks like the first batches of vaccine will reach Poland in January, because the approval process will take place in late December and early January,” the prime minister’s chief of staff Michal Dworczyk told public broadcaster Polskie Radio Program 1. Dworczyk added there may be around 8,000 vaccination points in Poland. “We want there to be a vaccination point in every community,” he said. As of Thursday, Poland had reported 1,028,610 cases of the coronavirus and 18,828 deaths.
5th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

Analysis: First U.S. delivery of COVID-19 vaccine will leave out many high-risk workers

The U.S. government’s first shipment of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses to be divided among states and federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, will fall far short of protecting high priority groups such as healthcare workers, a Reuters analysis has found. Across the country, state health departments are preparing local hospitals for the first shipments of Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorizes it, possibly as early as mid-December.
5th Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

Nursing home residents added to first wave of Texans eligible for COVID-19 vaccine

Residents at nursing homes and assisted living facilities will be among the first wave of Texans eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, joining the ranks of healthcare workers already at the front of the line. State officials announced the addition Friday, while also unveiling plans to send the state’s first 224,250 doses to hospitals, including nine in Dallas County.
4th Dec 2020 - Dallas Morning News

COVID-19 crisis: Fewer women than men feel they can ask for raise

Ginning up the courage to ask for a raise is tough in any labour market, let alone one ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic. But men are exhibiting more moxie than women when it comes to bargaining for better pay during the pandemic. That is the finding of a study released this week by Moody’s Analytics and Morning Consult that surveyed 5,000 adult workers in mid-September.
4th Dec 2020 - AlJazeera

WHO hopes to have 500 million vaccine doses via COVAX scheme in first quarter of 2021 - chief scientist

The World Health Organization hopes to have half a billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines available for distribution by the global COVAX initiative in the first quarter of 2021, its chief scientist said on Friday. To date 189 countries have joined the COVAX programme, which is backed by the WHO and seeks to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines. The United States is not among them, having secured bilateral deals. The initial COVAX plan is to vaccinate the 20% of populations at highest risk, including health workers and people aged over 65.
4th Dec 2020 - Reuters

COVID-19: Hackers targeted vaccine 'cold supply' chain network - state actors suspected

A cyber espionage campaign targeted at companies vital to the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines has been detected. According to an alert issued by the US government and a research blog published by IBM, the hacking campaign started in September. It targeted a range of organisations, including in government and across the energy and IT sectors, that are associated with the COVID-19 'cold supply' chain.
3rd Dec 2020 - Sky News

Q&A: Cold chains, COVID-19 vaccines and reaching low-income countries | Imperial News

Many low-income countries lack the infrastructure to deliver vaccines effectively, so how can we ensure COVID-19 vaccines are accessible for all? As COVID-19 vaccine candidates begin to show promising trial results, and as the Pfizer mRNA vaccine is approved for use in the UK, many are cautiously optimistic that they could hold the key to lower infection rates, fewer deaths, and at least a partial return to normalcy. However, many lower income countries lack the infrastructure and resources needed to distribute potential vaccines safely – with extra logistical challenges for vaccines stored at extremely cold temperatures – which could leave their populations just as vulnerable to COVID-19 as before.
3rd Dec 2020 - Imperial College London

COVID-19: India says entire population may not need vaccinating

India may not need to vaccinate all of its 1.3 billion people if it manages to inoculate a critical mass and break the transmission of the coronavirus, senior government officials said on Tuesday. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who toured the facilities of three vaccine makers over the weekend, has emphasised the importance of a vaccine to rein in COVID-19.
2nd Dec 2020 - AlJazeera

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Pfizer supply chain challenges led to slashing COVID-19 vaccine production target: WSJ

Challenges in Pfizer Inc’s supply chain for the raw materials used in its COVID-19 vaccine played a role in its decision to slash its 2020 production target, a Pfizer spokeswoman told Reuters. Pfizer has said in recent weeks that it anticipates producing 50 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine this year. That is down from an earlier target of 100 million doses. Pfizer’s vaccine relies on a two dose regimen, meaning 50 million doses is enough to inoculate 25 million people.
3rd Dec 2020 - Global News

Coronavirus: WHO considers e-vaccination certificates to ease travel

The WHO recommended that countries do not begin issuing immunity passports A number of governments have suggested they are a route back to normality British experts warned issuing immunity passports would lead to inequality WHO: Rich nations will lose hundreds of billions if vaccine isn't issued equally
3rd Dec 2020 - Daily Mail

Spain's government is studying a four-day work week

Spain's government is analysing shortening working hours as well as cutting the working-week to four days. According to Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias, leader of the left-wing Unidas Podemos, the government is considering proposing shorter working hours to boost employment. The idea of a shorter working week has been around for years across the world, but the pandemic this year, and its impact on work, wellbeing and inequality, has led to a new push to think about economies and social structures.
3rd Dec 2020 - Luxembourg Times

Biden says he will join former presidents in publicly getting COVID vaccine

President-elect Joe Biden said he would publicly take a vaccine when it's available to encourage the public to get vaccinated, joining three former presidents who recently pledged to do the same. Biden said he'd "be happy" to join former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in getting the vaccine in public to prove it is safe. "When Dr. Fauci says we have a vaccine that is safe, that's the moment in which I will stand before the public," Biden said during an interview on CNN Thursday night. “People have lost faith in the ability of the vaccine to work,” Biden told CNN, pointing to the high number of cases. "It matters what a president and vice president do. I think my three predecessors have set the model on what should be done."
4th Dec 2020 - USA Today

Biden asks Fauci to join COVID-19 team, stresses need for masks

Biden told CNN that he plans to ask the public to wear masks for 100 days to help drive down the spread of the novel coronavirus. “I’m going to ask the public for 100 days to mask,” Biden said. “Not forever, 100 days.” His office would issue a standing order for people to wear masks in federal buildings and on interstate transportation, including aeroplanes and buses, he added. Biden also said he would get the COVID-19 vaccine when Fauci says it is safe and would be happy to take it publicly. “It’s important to communicate to the American people it’s safe, safe to do this,” he said.
3rd Dec 2020 - AlJazeera

Bali struggles with ‘COVID-poor’ as Indonesian cases hit record

Chronic malnutrition that has long afflicted isolated communities in the remote eastern cape of Bali has ballooned as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with a new wave of “COVID-poor” emerging in urban areas, NGOs have said thousands of people on the island are going hungry. With about 60 percent of Bali’s gross domestic product attributed to tourism before the coronavirus struck, the island’s economy has been the hardest hit in Indonesia by the pandemic – the central bank reported negative growth of just less than 11 percent for the province in September.
4th Dec 2020 - AlJazeera

Coronavirus claims 1.5 million lives globally with 10,000 dying each day

Over 1.5 million people have lost their lives due to COVID-19 with one death reported every nine seconds on a weekly average, as vaccinations are set to begin in December in a handful of developed nations. Half a million deaths occurred in just the last two months, indicating that the severity of the pandemic is far from over. Nearly 65 million people globally have been infected by the disease and the worst affected country, United States, is currently battling a third wave of coronavirus infections.
4th Dec 2020 - Reuters

Pizza bar worker linked to SA coronavirus lockdown 'in hiding', but Premier stands by comments

The lawyer for a pizza bar worker who was accused of causing South Australia's coronavirus lockdown by allegedly lying to contact tracers says his client is "worried about stepping outside" for fear of backlash. SA Police on Wednesday revealed they would not press charges against the man due to a lack of evidence, saying SA Health had not provided key information which was deemed "confidential and privileged".
3rd Dec 2020 - ABC.Net.au

Key test: South Koreans sit university exam amid COVID-19 surge

Nearly 500,000 high school students are sitting the test with stringent measures imposed to curb the virus. South Korea fell quiet on Thursday as hundreds of thousands of students sat for the country’s high-stakes national university entrance exam amid a surge in coronavirus cases that has prompted new measures to curb its spread, including for candidates sitting the test. Teenagers spend years preparing for the exam, which can mean a place in one of the elite colleges that are seen as key to future careers, incomes and even marriage prospects.
3rd Dec 2020 - AlJazeera

First batch of Pfizer's Covid vaccine will arrive in UK in 'HOURS' as military carry out dry run for Britain’s biggest-ever vaccination programme – but care homes will have ...

Initial batches of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab are already heading to Britain after it was approved by UK regulators. Vaccine will be distributed at hospitals first, and then GPs and city hubs in stadiums and conference centres. The UK has ordered 40million doses in total, with several millions due by end of 2020 and the rest next year
4th Dec 2020 - Daily Mail

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Covid-19: Traders hope shoppers return for Christmas after lockdown

Many businesses are getting ready to welcome back customers after four weeks of closure. When England's new tier system comes into force on Wednesday, shops, gyms and personal care services, like hairdressers, can reopen, if they are Covid-secure. But pubs and bars in tier three will be unable to open and only if they serve a "substantial meal" under tier two.
2nd Dec 2020 - BBC

Queues form as England's high streets reopen after lockdown

England’s high streets were back in business on Wednesday – but shoppers returned slowly, with queues outside only a few stores such as Primark and Debenhams, which had announced it was going into liquidation the day before. Non-essential stores in England reopened after the month-long lockdown brought in by the government in its latest effort to control the spread of Covid-19. The number of shoppers out and about on English high streets, retail parks and in shopping centres on Wednesday was up 85% on the same day a week before, but the expected rush to make up for lost time did not materialise: numbers were still down by 22% on last year.
2nd Dec 2020 - The Guardian

SA pizza bar worker who misled contact tracers will not be charged

The Woodville Pizza shop worker who misled contact tracers will not be charged. South Australia's Assistant Police Commissioner Peter Harvey said the facts of the original phone conversation between contact tracers and the man, a Spanish national, cannot be used in court. In short, the evidence compiled by police has been judged not to succeed if they took the case to court.
2nd Dec 2020 - 9News.com.au

No charges for pizza bar worker who 'misled' South Australian authorities, sparking coronavirus lockdown

No criminal charges will flow from misleading information given to South Australian health officials which sparked last month's short-lived statewide lockdown as a cluster of coronavirus case emerged in Adelaide. Police have conducted an investigation into a man who initially told contact tracers he had only picked up a takeaway meal from a venue, known to be a coronavirus hotspot, but later conceded he had worked at the business. His initial information prompted SA to be placed into a six-day lockdown amid fears of growing community transmission, with officials later cutting that short to just three days after the fresh information was revealed.
2nd Dec 2020 - SBS News

Australia's economy powers out of Covid-19 recession

Australia has exited its first recession in almost three decades, with the economy growing by a better than expected 3.3 per cent in the September quarter, reflecting authorities’ adept handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. A boom in household spending drove the recovery as the easing of social distancing restrictions prompted a 7.9 per cent jump in spending on goods and services in the third quarter. However, the damage wrought by stringent lockdowns was expressed in the annual growth figure, which showed economic activity fell 3.8 per cent in the year to end September.
2nd Dec 2020 - Financial Times

Covid-19: Economic effects expected to endure in New Zealand

In New Zealand, a global survey by HSBC bank showed nearly two-thirds of local firms were doubtful they would return to pre-Covid levels of profitability in the next year. That compared with 55 percent of businesses globally. The survey showed local firms were also less optimistic about the prospect of sales growth in the next 12 months. HSBC interim chief executive Rob Roughan said New Zealand businesses had performed well given that firms overseas were able to trade normally throughout the pandemic.
2nd Dec 2020 - RNZ

Ukraine scraps weekend lockdowns against COVID pandemic: PM

Ukraine has lifted weekend lockdown restrictions in place to fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic but is still considering whether to introduce a tighter lockdown at a later stage, Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said on Wednesday. The government last month introduced a lockdown at weekends, closing or restricting most businesses except essential services such as grocery shops, pharmacies, hospitals and transport.
2nd Dec 2020 - Reuters India

Pfizer jab will be distributed at hospitals first, then GP surgeries and stadiums

Initial batches of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab are already heading to Britain after it was approved by UK regulators. Vaccine will be distributed at hospitals first, and then GPs and city hubs in stadiums and conference centres. The UK has ordered 40million doses in total, with 10m due by the end of 2020 and the rest coming next year
2nd Dec 2020 - Daily Mail

Berlin plans six mass COVID-19 vaccination centres handling 4000 people a day

Berlin is racing to open six mass vaccination centres capable of handling up to 4000 people per day by mid-December, the project co-ordinator says, as the city waits for authorities to approve the first vaccines. An empty trade fair hall, two airport terminals, a concert arena, a velodrome and an ice rink will be turned into six vaccination centres where city officials plan to administer up to 900,000 shots against the coronavirus in the first three months.
27th Nov 2020 - The Sydney Morning Herald

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Lawmakers introduce bipartisan COVID-19 relief proposal with uncertain future in Congress

In the U.S., negotiations restarted Tuesday and lawmakers introduced coronavirus relief proposals in the latest effort to break the logjam and reach a deal in the few remaining weeks a divided Congress has left in session. The day started with a bipartisan group of lawmakers introducing a roughly $908 billion proposal intended as a temporary package that would run until April. It ended with two additional proposals, one offered privately by Democratic leaders to Republicans and a third that Republicans have approved with the White House and could be voted on by the Senate.
1st Dec 2020 - USA Today

Tomelloso: Battered in first wave, Spanish town emerges scarred but safer

Although Spain was struggling with one of Europe's most deadly outbreaks, Tomelloso was particularly hard-hit, losing almost one percent of its 36,000 residents in the first wave. During the second wave, it has been a completely different story, with the figures significantly lower, although memories of the earlier nightmare remain all too fresh. "Around 300 people were buried in the local cemetery" in the first wave, Mayor Inmaculada Jimenez told AFP. Every day, they were burying 10, 11 or 12 people, it was incredibly hard." These days, as Spain and Europe grapple with a second wave, Tomelloso has stayed well out of the headlines, with just 13 deaths between May and September.
1st Dec 2020 - RTL Today

Spain appeals for Covid 'common sense' after shopping crowd scenes

The Spanish government has called on people to behave responsibly and use their “common sense” after pictures over the weekend showed the streets of Madrid and other big cities heaving with crowds despite the country’s ongoing struggle with the second wave of the coronavirus. Spain has been in a state of emergency since the end of October and is subject to an overnight curfew. The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has asked people to drastically curtail their social lives and limit their movements for the common good. However, a combination of Black Friday, seasonal shopping and the switching on of Christmas lights appears to have brought large numbers of people out on to the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Málaga over the weekend.
1st Dec 2020 - The Guardian

France's Macron warns against going skiing in Switzerland

France will apply restrictions to prevent vacationers from going to Swiss ski resorts, and French slopes will remain closed during the Christmas period amid the coronavirus pandemic, President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday. “If there are countries ... which maintain their ski resorts open, we will have to take control measures" to dissuade people to go to these areas and to be fair toward French ski resorts, Macron said. France has started relaxing lockdown measures on Saturday, but bars and restaurants will remain closed at least until Jan. 20.
1st Dec 2020 - ABC news

OECD warns Australia not to withdraw economic support too early in pandemic recovery

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has warned Australia not to withdraw fiscal and monetary policy support before the recovery from the economic shock associated with the coronavirus pandemic is “well entrenched”. The new outlook published on Tuesday night notes the planned unwinding of Australia’s “strong” fiscal support rolled out during the first wave of the pandemic “will be a headwind to higher GDP growth in the second half of 2021”.
1st Dec 2020 - The Guardian

Tradition of an eight-hour day five days a week will come to an end, report claims

Britain's workers are unlikely to return to the traditional nine to five ever again and lockdown habits such as stockpiling could also become 'the new normal' once the pandemic is over, a new reports claims. In her report, titled Zoomsday Predictions, author and cultural commentator Marian Salzman said staff will continue to work the same hours but in a way that combines their personal and professional lifestyles - with many moving to a four-day week.
1st Dec 2020 - Daily Mail

Hospitals catch up with Covid-19 lockdown cancer backlog, Cancer Control Agency says

In New Zealand, the country's hospitals have caught up with the cancer backlog caused by the Covid-19 lockdown in March and April, Te Aho o Te Kahu Cancer Control Agency chief executive Diana Sarfati says. Diagnostic services and cancer screening programmes stopped during lockdown as the health service prepared for the pandemic, and the Cancer Society in June warned 400 people could die if hospitals didn’t act quickly. But unpublished figures for September show the number of people diagnosed with cancer mirrors that of last year, indicating hospitals have worked through the backlog, Sarfati said.
1st Dec 2020 - Stuff.co.nz

Analysis: Could COVID knock out flu in Europe this winter?

As Europeans brace for a grim winter with the threat of rising COVID-19 infections, minimal numbers of flu cases recorded so far point to a possible silver lining. Data available for Europe since the beginning of October, when flu case numbers usually start to ramp up, mirror shallow figures seen in the Southern Hemisphere earlier this year and in the United States where the flu season has also just begun. Some doctors say a combination of lockdowns, mask wearing and handwashing appear to have hampered transmission of the flu, while warning that the data should be treated with caution because the peak of the season is weeks or even months away. According to Flu News Europe, a joint monitoring platform of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization which collects samples in 54 European regions, only one person was diagnosed with flu out of 4,433 sentinel tests during Sept. 28-Nov. 22.
1st Dec 2020 - Reuters UK

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The Wuhan files

That same day, Chinese authorities reported 2,478 new confirmed cases -- raising the total global number to more than 40,000, with fewer than 400 cases occurring outside of mainland China. Yet CNN can now reveal how official documents circulated internally show that this was only part of the picture. In a report marked "internal document, please keep confidential," local health authorities in the province of Hubei, where the virus was first detected, list a total of 5,918 newly detected cases on February 10, more than double the official public number of confirmed cases, breaking down the total into a variety of subcategories. This larger figure was never fully revealed at that time, as China's accounting system seemed, in the tumult of the early weeks of the pandemic, to downplay the severity of the outbreak. The previously undisclosed figure is among a string of revelations contained within 117 pages of leaked documents from the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, shared with and verified by CNN.
1st Dec 2020 - CNN

Italy Green-lights New Anti-Covid Stimulus Package

Italy's government said Monday it had approved a new stimulus package to shore up businesses affected by the latest round of anti-coronavirus restrictions in the eurozone's third-largest economy. The aid package, the fourth since the pandemic gripped the country in March, is worth eight billion euros ($9.6 billion) and delays tax deadlines for companies in areas subject to harsh lockdown measures. It also offers a 1,000-euro lump sum to workers in tourism, the arts, sports and leisure -- as well as setting aside funds for the conventions sector and a boosted police presence to ensure anti-coronavirus measures are respected.
30th Nov 2020 - Barron's

Japan and South Korea see surge of suicides among young women, raising new questions about pandemic stress

Suicide rates among young women have increased notably in Japan and South Korea, raising possible links to the prolonged coronavirus pandemic as it amplifies stress levels, worsens economic woes and aggravates feelings of loneliness and isolation. No comprehensive global studies are yet available on whether the pandemic has caused higher suicide numbers or how it may have affected different age groups and genders. But Japan and South Korea are among the few countries to issue current data on suicides, with most nations taking a year or two to issue their numbers. Experts worry that the emerging trends in the two countries could be an early warning for the rest of the world as the pandemic and lockdowns take a toll on mental health.
30th Nov 2020 - The Washington Post

South Australia now open to Victoria once again

As of midnight, South Australia is rolling out a list of changes to COVID-19 restrictions, after the state recorded zero new cases yesterday. Since 12.01am, the border with Victoria has finally been reopened, allowing travel between the two states. Victorians entering South Australia are still required to fill in an online permit form, to get pre-approval. Masks are also mandatory for people in allied health and residential care, and the state is rolling out its QR code mandatory check-in system for businesses and venues. But also, stand-up drinking is returning to pubs and weddings, and patron caps on businesses are now removed.
30th Nov 2020 - 9News.com.au

International students arrive in Australia after 9 months of COVID lockdown

The first international students to arrive in Australia since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic have landed in Darwin, signalling another change for the country’s locked-down border. Students from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam and Indonesia have arrived at Darwin International Airport on a charter SilkAir flight from Singapore as part of a pilot program to return international tourists to Australia. The 63 students who landed this morning were to be transferred straight to the Howard Springs Quarantine Facility east of Darwin for 14 days of quarantine, the ABC reported.
30th Nov 2020 - NEWS.com.au

Pandemic Motors: Europeans snap up old cars to avoid public transport

Want a cheap used car to nip around town without running the gauntlet of coronavirus on public transport? Welcome to Pandemic Motors, we have just what you need. Across Europe, people are snapping up old bangers, clunkers, Klapperkasten, tacots and catorci, desperate to avoid buses and trains but wary of splashing out on a shiny new motor in uncertain economic times. “Public transportation is terrific here, but with the COVID and all that, it’s better to avoid it,” said Robert Perez, who recently moved to Spain’s capital Madrid from Argentina.
30th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

How the COVID-19 recession will forever impact Gen Z

The coronavirus pandemic has brought much of the world’s economies into a recession, affecting every sector of the global population. But one demographic – Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012 – may never recover. From a lack of socialisation to not being able to start their careers, we are examining how Gen Z’ers from ages eight to 23 will have to manage these unprecedented challenges.
30th Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

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Malaria gains at risk from COVID-19 pandemic: WHO

Funding shortfalls and disruptions to treatment in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic risk tens of thousands more lives being lost to malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned in its annual report on the mosquito-borne disease on Monday. The UN’s health agency said it was concerned that even moderate disruptions in access to treatment could lead to a “considerable loss of life”. A 10-percent disruption in access to effective anti-malarial treatment in sub-Saharan Africa could lead to 19,000 additional deaths, the report found. That number rose to 46,000 with a 25-percent disruption in access and 100,000 at 50-percent disruption. “Progress has stalled,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. “COVID-19 threatens to further derail our efforts to overcome malaria, particularly treating people with the disease. Despite the devastating impact COVID-19 has had on African economies, international partners and countries need to do more to ensure that the resources are there to expand malaria programmes which are making such a difference in people’s lives.”
29th Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

South Korea bans year-end parties, some music lessons, as virus spikes again

South Korean authorities announced a ban on year-end parties and some music lessons on Sunday and said public saunas and some cafes must also close after coronavirus infections surged at their fastest pace since the early days of the pandemic. South Korea has been one of the world’s coronavirus mitigation success stories but spikes in infections have reappeared relentlessly, triggering alarm in Asia’s fourth-largest economy. Authorities reported 450 new infections on Sunday after more than 500 cases were recorded for three days in a row, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said. What authorities are calling a third wave of infections is spreading at the fastest rate in nearly nine months, driven by outbreaks at military facilities, a sauna, a high school and churches.
30th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

Raab: There is a risk of third coronavirus wave

Britain is at risk of suffering a third wave of coronavirus infections if it does not get the approach to lockdown restrictions right in the coming weeks, foreign minister Dominic Raab said on Sunday. “There’s a risk of that (if) we don’t get the balance right,” Raab told the BBC when asked about a possible ‘third wave’ resurgence of cases in January and February. He said the government was doing everything it could to avoid another national lockdown.
30th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

South Australia and NSW record new Covid-19 cases as Victoria passes elimination benchmark

A casual contact of a Covid-19 case is among two people newly diagnosed with coronavirus in South Australia, while New South Wales has announced eight new cases, all in hotel quarantine. Meanwhile, the ACT has recorded one new case in a returned traveller and Victoria has surpassed the benchmark for eliminating coronavirus, recording a 29th straight day without a single new infection.
28th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

More shops open as France starts easing virus lockdown measures

France and other parts of Europe reopen "non-essential" stores on Saturday in time for the holiday season after progress in containing the coronavirus pandemic. Most countries hope to ease their virus rules for Christmas and New Year, allowing families a respite before bracing for what the world hopes is one last wave of restrictions until a clutch of promising new vaccines kick in. Stores selling non-essential goods will lift their shutters in France on Saturday, though bars and restaurants will remain shut until early next year.
28th Nov 2020 - FRANCE 24

Shops reopen in France as national lockdown eases

Queues formed outside hairdressers’ shops and department stores sold gifts and Christmas decorations on Saturday as France partially reopened after a month-long lockdown. Shops selling non-essential goods, such as shoes, clothes and toys, reopened in the first easing of national restrictions since 30 October. Bars and restaurants remain closed until 20 January. As a condition for reopening, the government reduced the number of people allowed in shops. Many small business owners complained it was hard to operate under the new rules
28th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

How 'Dictator Dan' Defied a Dangerous Murdoch Media and Led Australia to COVID Victory

Australia is on the verge of eliminating the Coronavirus now that the epicentre of its second wave – Melbourne – has recorded its twenty-eighth consecutive day of no new cases. It is a milestone epidemiologists say signals the elimination of COVID-19 in the community, leaving the city of five million residents now without a single active case. The land of Down Under has become the world’s benchmark for managing the pandemic: following the science, placing faith in bona fide public health experts and rejecting the kind of unthinking, know-nothing, right-wing populism pushed by Rupert Murdoch-employed pundits in the media and members of the country’s right-wing Government, the Liberal Party.
28th Nov 2020 - Byline Times

Queues at barber shops as France eases coronavirus lockdown

People eager to get a haircut stood in line outside barber shops and department stores selling gifts and Christmas decorations were busy on Saturday as France partially reopened following a month-long lockdown. Shops selling non-essential goods such as shoes, clothes and toys reopened in the first easing of a nationwide lockdown that started on Oct. 30 and will remain in place until Dec. 15. Bars and restaurants remain closed till Jan. 20,
28th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

India’s Economy Shrinks Sharply as Covid-19 Slams Small Businesses

The latest data firmly establishes India’s position among the worst-performing major economies, despite government spending meant to blunt the pandemic’s impact.
27th Nov 2020 - The New York Times

India falls into recession as pandemic weighs on output

India’s economy contracted 7.5 per cent year-on-year in the quarter ending September, taking it into a technical recession as strict lockdown measures to deal with the coronavirus pandemic continued to weigh on output. The performance was better than many analysts had forecast but still reflected the heavy blow the pandemic has delivered to what was recently the world’s fastest-growing large economy. India’s output contracted by a record 24 per cent year-on-year in the April to June quarter, when much of the economy was shuttered by a strict lockdown, but activity has since picked up somewhat after businesses and industry were allowed to reopen. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
27th Nov 2020 - Financial Times

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WHO's Ryan sees progressive control of COVID-19 in 2021, cautions on Christmas

The World Health Organization's top emergency expert said on Thursday the introduction of a COVID-19 vaccine should allow the world to gain progressive control over the disease next year. "Life as we used to know it, I think that's very, very possible but we will have to continue with the hygiene, physical distancing. Vaccines do not equal zero COVID. Adding vaccines to our current measures will allow us to really crush the curve, avoid lockdowns and gain progressive control over the disease," Mike Ryan told RTE television in his native Ireland. "We need to be absolutely aware that we need to reduce the chance that we could infect someone else in just organising households carefully around the Christmas festivities. The usual thing in Ireland of 15 people in the kitchen peeling potatoes and basting turkeys, that's not what we should be doing."
26th Nov 2020 - Reuters

Queensland police officers forced to isolate after contact with Covid-infected man at hotel

Almost a dozen Queensland police officers have been forced into Covid-19 isolation after they came into close contact with an infected man in hotel quarantine. The incident happened at the Rydges Hotel in South Brisbane on Sunday when police were called to check on a 41-year-old-man’s welfare, police say. The man was later tested for the virus and returned a positive result, a spokeswoman said. All 11 officers are in either home isolation or hotel quarantine and have tested negative for the virus.
26th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Coronavirus spread to a teenager picking up a pizza — so why isn't SA back in lockdown?

South Australia went into a brief but drastic lockdown last week over fears a medi-hotel worker had contracted coronavirus merely by picking up takeaway at a suburban pizza shop. On Thursday a similar scenario was revealed as the likely cause of one of the state's two new COVID-19 cases, both of which are part of a growing cluster. SA Health suspects a year 9 student picked up a pizza from the shop 12 days ago, on Saturday, November 14. Authorities were quizzed about why the girl's case had not triggered a wider lockdown like last week's, and replied that circumstances were different, with SA better placed to respond.
26th Nov 2020 - abc.net.au

EasyJet says domestic bookings rise as England lockdown ends

British airline easyJet said domestic bookings for December had risen significantly this week compared to last week after news that some COVID-19 restrictions in its home market would be eased. England’s current lockdown bans most international travel, but when it ends on Dec. 2 people will be free to go abroad. Over Christmas, COVID-19 restrictions across the UK will be relaxed to allow families to mix for five days.
26th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

Cleaning up: COVID-19 vaccine will not derail disinfectants market, industry exec says

Vaccines against COVID-19 will take some steam out of the market for hygiene products, but demand will remain above pre-pandemic levels as frequent hand-cleaning is here to stay, an executive at Ecolab, a leading firm in the sector, said on Thursday.
26th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

Rapid COVID-19 tests provide lifeline for London orchestra

Maxine Kwok, a violinist in London’s oldest symphony orchestra, is delighted that rehearsals have resumed thanks to a rapid, lab-free COVID-19 test that gives the musicians the confidence to work together again. “It was so difficult not to play for months,” Kwok, a member of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), said after being tested. “But the moment that we were able to have this kind of testing at this regularity, meaning we could just come back to work and feel comfortable and safe, really made a huge difference for us,” Kwok told Reuters. “I was so thrilled. I can’t describe it really,” she added ahead of a rehearsal attended by around 40 musicians, all masked and still observing social distancing rules.
26th Nov 2020 - Reuters

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Britain to detail post-lockdown restrictions in England

The British government on Thursday will set out which COVID-19 restrictions each local authority in England will face when a national lockdown ends next week allowing businesses to reopen in areas where infection rates are lower. Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered England into a month-long lockdown in early November after coronavirus cases and deaths started to rise again, angering businesses and some of his own political party over the economic consequences. He set out new measures on Monday to replace the lockdown from Dec. 2, reinforcing a previous regional approach and warning that some areas would move into a higher alert level than the one they were in before.
26th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

COVID-19: Mystery as coronavirus is found in sewage in major Queensland city

Seventeen suburbs on high alert after traces of COVID-19 were found in sewage Cairns, Far North Queensland, has not had a case of coronavirus for months People in the area urged to get tested if they experience COVID-19 symptoms
25th Nov 2020 - Daily Mail

UK Covid lockdown scientist 'hopeful' of booking spring holiday

Professor Neil Ferguson, whose modelling led to a complete shutdown in March and April, said he was confident vaccinations would lead to social distancing being lifted. He told a symposium yesterday hosted by the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA) at Imperial College, where he works: "I think it will vary from place to place, but in the UK or much of Europe, I think we will see a very difficult two or three months ahead as we go through winter.
25th Nov 2020 - The Scotsman

‘Relocation of the nation’ expected to spike next month

They were once the cities people would move to for work but the coronavirus pandemic has made things look dramatically different now. While people have anecdotally shared stories of people moving from Melbourne after the Victoria’s harsh lockdown restrictions, new data shows just how true that is. But Melburnians don’t want to move to Sydney either, with the city being snubbed for Brisbane. South Australians are also heading to the sunshine state, according to Muval, a national online removalist booking platform.
25th Nov 2020 - NEWS.com.au

How Australia succeeded in lowering COVID-19 cases to near-zero

Unlike other nations, including Canada, which have aimed to maintain new infections at a level that won't overwhelm the medical system, Australia set out to virtually eliminate the virus from its shores. When Australia was hit with a surge of COVID-19 cases in late July just weeks after declaring victory against the first wave, it prompted one of the world's longest lockdowns in Melbourne, for example, closing virtually everything that wasn't a grocery store or hospital for nearly four months. In many cities, roadblocks were established to ensure people stayed home. Even when restrictions were eased there was a nightly curfew, and in the initial lockdown people weren't allowed to be more than five kilometres away from home in certain regions. Break a rule, and you could face a fine of $1,300.
25th Nov 2020 - CBC.ca

UK spent 849 million pounds on COVID dining subsidy

Britain’s government spent almost twice as much as expected on encouraging people to eat in restaurants, cafes and pubs during what proved to be a temporary lull in COVID-19 cases in August. Official figures released on Wednesday ahead of new spending plans from finance minister Rishi Sunak showed his Eat Out to Help Out scheme cost 849 million pounds, much more than an initial government estimate of 500 million pounds.
25th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

Coronavirus pandemic: Germany seeks EU deal to close ski resorts

Germany is seeking an agreement with EU countries to keep ski resorts closed until early January, in an attempt to curb the spread of coronavirus. "I will say this openly that it won't be easy, but we will try," Chancellor Angela Merkel said after speaking to Germany's regional leaders on Tuesday. The news came as the country extended its partial lockdown until 20 December. Some of the early European coronavirus hotspots were at ski resorts, helping spread infections across the continent.
25th Nov 2020 - BBC

Coronavirus: Domestic abuse offences increased during pandemic

The number of domestic abuse offences recorded by police in England and Wales has increased during the pandemic. But the Office for National Statistics said such offences gradually rose in recent years so it cannot be determined if it was related to the pandemic. Police recorded 259,324 domestic abuse offences between March and June - 7% up on the same period in 2019. During and after the first lockdown in April, May and June, roughly one-fifth of offences involved domestic abuse.
25th Nov 2020 - BBC

‘Zero infection’ unlikely without drastic action to curb Covid-19

Beijing has agreed to set aside some vaccine supplies for Hong Kong if needed, Carrie Lam says. Experts say lack of public support makes it hard to implement lockdown, compulsory testing
25th Nov 2020 - South China Morning Post

General: COVID-19 vaccines will be ready for delivery 24 hours after FDA authorization

Gen. Gustave Perna, who is leading Operation Warp Speed's effort to distribute coronavirus vaccines nationwide, told ABC News he is confident that vaccines will be "on the street" and headed to communities just 24 hours after being authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. While the first two vaccines to be distributed will likely be from Pfizer and Moderna, Alex Azar, the U.S. secretary of health and human affairs, described the news from Astra Zeneca's clinical trials as "very promising" and noted that the company's vaccine is already being produced in the country so it too can be ready for distribution once authorized by the FDA. Perna and Azar made their comments in exclusive interviews with ABC News' correspondent Bob Woodruff during a visit to Operation Warp Speed's offices at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
25th Nov 2020 - ABC News

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Special Report: 50,000 COVID-19 deaths and rising. How Britain failed to stop the second wave

Faced with one of the highest death tolls from the first wave of the coronavirus, Boris Johnson pledged a “world-beating” test-and-trace system to prevent a resurgence this winter. A Reuters investigation reveals how that promise came unstuck.
24th Nov 2020 - Reuters

Melbourne's brutal coronavirus lockdown does job

It was a grim, lifeless mid-winter in shuttered Melbourne — Australia’s second largest city and the nation’s cultural and gastronomic capital. As a second coronavirus outbreak took hold, triggered by lapses in the city’s mandatory hotel quarantine system for returning overseas travellers, the southern state of Victoria and its capital entered another lockdown, one of the West’s harshest.
24th Nov 2020 - The Times

UK's four nations will relax COVID restrictions to save Christmas

The four nations of the United Kingdom have agreed to relax COVID-19 restrictions for Christmas to allow up to three households to meet at home for five days. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have taken differing approaches to handling the pandemic so far but the leaders of the devolved nations reached agreement with London on Tuesday on rules governing the festive period. Three households will be able to form a “Christmas bubble”, allowing them to meet up at home, places of worship and in outdoor public places but not at indoor hospitality or entertainment venues from Dec. 23 until Dec. 27 under the plans.
24th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

Hong Kong to shut bars, nightclubs for the third time as new COVID-19 cases jump

Hong Kong will close bars, nightclubs and other entertainment venues for the third time this year, Health Secretary Sophia Chan said on Tuesday (Nov 24) as authorities scramble to tackle a renewed rise in COVID-19 cases. Authorities are also reopening a temporary COVID-19 treatment hall near the city's airport. On Tuesday, Hong Kong reported 80 new coronavirus cases, taking the total since late January to 5,782 COVID-19 infections and 108 deaths. The financial hub has so far managed to avoid the widespread outbreak of the disease seen in many major cities across the world, with numbers on a daily basis mostly in single digits or low double digits in the weeks prior to the spike.
24th Nov 2020 - Channel NewsAsia

Coronavirus vaccine boss says 'dosing error' led to 90% success rate discovery

Mene Pangalos, head of AstraZeneca's non-oncology research and development, said a dosing mistake during late-stage trials for the Oxford University vaccine got the team over the line
24th Nov 2020 - Mirror Online

Vaccine Expert: Once A COVID Vaccine Is Available, 'Don't Overthink It. Don't Wait'

As coronavirus cases continue to surge both in the U.S. and around the world, there's promising news on the vaccine front. Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Moderna and, more recently, AstraZeneca have all announced that their vaccines have shown better-than-expected results. Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital, says that a vaccine release could begin for selected populations by the middle of December — and that a broader vaccination effort could soon follow. "By the early part of next year, we're going to move pretty quickly, I think, in vaccinating a significant percentage of the [U.S.] population," Hotez says.
24th Nov 2020 - NPR

Coronavirus vaccine: Transport staff and teachers should be prioritised

Key workers including transport staff and people from deprived areas should be among those included in the priority list for the Covid-19 vaccine, experts involved in health inequalities have said. Nicola Sturgeon this week set out the Scottish Government’s plan to vaccinate 4.4million Scots over the age of 18. There are hopes that around 1million people could receive the jag before the end of January. Frontline health and social care staff, care home residents and staff and all those aged 80 and over will be the first to receive the vaccine.
24th Nov 2020 - HeraldScotland

Oxford coronavirus vaccine volunteer explains minimal side effect from injection

A volunteer who took part in the Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial has opened up about what it was like to take the injection and said that he noticed a very limited amount of side effects. Appearing on Lorraine today, volunteer Jack Sommers spoke about his experience on the trial. On Monday, it was revealed that the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine was revealed to have 70% efficacy. Speaking to host Lorraine Kelly via video link from Shropshire, Jack opened up about the minimal side effects he had experienced from the injection.
24th Nov 2020 - The Mirror on MSN.com

Moderna's chief scientist says its vaccine prevents coronavirus from making people sick - but the shot may NOT stop you from spreading the virus

Moderna's chief medical officer Tal Zaks told Axios the firm does not have data that shows whether their vaccine prevents people from spreading the virus. Moderna announced earlier this month its shot is 94.5% effective at preventing people from getting sick or severely ill from coronavirus in trials. But because the company did not test asymptomatic participants it doesn't know whether vaccinated people can be silent carriers and spreaders, Zaks said. He added that he believes the vaccine should prevent viral spread - but doesn't have the data to prove it
24th Nov 2020 - Daily Mail

Nursing homes will be first to get COVID-19 vaccine in Spain

Elderly residents and staff in nursing homes will be the first to get vaccinated against the coronavirus in Spain, starting as early as January, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Tuesday, unveiling a national vaccination plan. Other healthcare workers will be next in line, with a total of 18 groups of citizens being, one after the other, allowed to get the vaccine in one of 13,000 local public health centers. Spain expects to cover a substantial part of the population within the first six months of 2021. “The COVID-19 vaccine will be free,” Illa told a news conference, adding vaccination would not be compulsory. “We’re convinced that a vaccine is better accepted if it’s voluntary.”
24th Nov 2020 - Reuters

Covid-19 vaccine: 'My son shouldn't miss school over my vulnerability'

A father with motor neurone disease is calling for the government to prioritise those with clinical vulnerabilities for the roll-out of the vaccine. Shaan has motor neurone disease and has been shielding with his family since March, meaning his five-year-old son has not been able to go to school or socialise with his friends. Shaan and his wife Jessica, from Walthamstow in east London, are calling on the government to prioritise people who are clinically vulnerable in the roll-out of any future Covid-19 vaccination programme.
24th Nov 2020 - BBC

Ford snaps up freezers to store COVID-19 vaccine for autoworkers

Workers at automotive assembly plants are considered essential in most US states, but are not at the top of the list for early vaccine distribution. Ford Motor Co said on Tuesday that it has ordered a dozen ultra-cold freezers that can safely store Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine, a move aimed at ensuring the United States automaker’s workers have access to vaccines when they are rolled out nationally. Ford’s purchase mirrors efforts by US states and cities to buy equipment to store millions of doses of Pfizer’s vaccine at temperatures of -70C (-94F), significantly below the standard for vaccines of 2-8C (36-46F).
24th Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

'It's a great day': Oxford coronavirus vaccine volunteers on trial data

Dan McAteer describes his reaction more as a sense of relief than elation when his phone pinged on Monday morning with a push alert reporting that the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine has up to 90% efficacy. Several months on from becoming one of thousands of volunteers in trials of the Covid-19 vaccine, the 23-year-old student is trying to comprehend the news that people could be vaccinated as early as next month
23rd Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Hackers 'try to steal Covid vaccine secrets in intellectual property war'

State-sponsored hackers from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are engaged in concerted attempts to steal coronavirus vaccine secrets in what security experts describe as “an intellectual property war”. They accuse hostile-state hackers of trying to obtain trial results early and seize sensitive information about mass production of drugs, at a time when a range of vaccines are close to being approved for the public. Previously the hackers’ primary intention was to steal the secrets behind the design of a vaccine, with hundreds of drug companies, research labs and health organisations from around the world targeted at any one time.
22nd Nov 2020 - The Guardian

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England to use testing to shorten quarantine for incoming passengers

England will introduce a new system on Dec. 15 allowing passengers arriving from high-risk countries to take a COVID-19 test after five days of quarantine and to be released from any further self-isolation if they test negative. Airlines and other companies in the travel and tourism industries had been calling for such a scheme for months, having suffered devastating consequences from a 14-day quarantine rule that has deterred people from travelling. “The move will give passengers the confidence to book international trips in the knowledge that they can return home and isolate for a shorter period if they have received a negative test,” the government said in a statement on Tuesday.
24th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

India’s top court slams states for COVID surge

India’s Supreme Court has excoriated regional governments, including Delhi’s, over the surge in COVID-19 cases and warned the situation could worsen further if authorities did not effectively deal with the pandemic. The court, which took up the issue on its own, is seeking status reports from New Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Assam, which have recorded a spike in cases, about the management of patients and steps taken to ease the situation. “We are hearing of a huge spike in the current month. We want a latest status report from all states. Worse things may happen in December if states aren’t well prepared,” the three-judge bench said, according to broadcaster NDTV. The judges were particularly concerned about Delhi, which has been topping India in the number of infections and deaths. “What extra efforts are you taking? … Delhi has to answer a lot of things,” the judges told Delhi government lawyers in court.
23rd Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

Covid: Australia state reopens border after Covid cases plummet

The Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) has reopened its border with neighbouring Victoria for the first time since July after coronavirus cases there fell to zero. Victoria, which imposed a tough lockdown after a surge in cases, has reported no new infections since the beginning of November. The state is also relaxing its rules on wearing face masks. Australia has recorded about 900 deaths and 28,000 infections in total.
23rd Nov 2020 - BBC

Covid-19 lockdown recovery sees record increase in retail sales for September quarter

Data released by Stats NZ today shows retail sales values have seen the highest jump year-on-year in the three months to September since at least 1995, when records began. But, the rise didn’t make up for the historic fall of 15 per cent ($3.6 billion) in the June 2020 quarter, which was affected by the pandemic. “While Auckland recorded the largest dollar value increase, in percentage terms the increase was lower than that for other main regions, partially due to a further lockdown period,” retail statistics manager Sue Chapman said.
23rd Nov 2020 - 1News

Singapore upgrades Q3 GDP as lockdown measures ease

Singapore’s economy contracted less than initially estimated in the third quarter due to gradual easing of COVID-19 lockdown measures, official data showed on Monday. Gross domestic product (GDP) fell 5.8% year-on-year in the third quarter, the ministry of trade and industry said on Monday, versus the 7% drop seen in the government’s advance estimate.
23rd Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

Gaza declares COVID-19 disaster with health system near collapse

A rapid rise in coronavirus infections in the Gaza Strip has reached a “catastrophic stage”, with the blockaded Palestinian enclave’s medical system likely to collapse soon, health officials warn. COVID is spreading exponentially in Gaza – one of the most crowded places on Earth – especially in refugee camps, and the health ministry has warned of “disastrous” implications.
23rd Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

Doctors say CDC should warn people the side effects from Covid vaccine shots won't be 'a walk in the park'

The CDC must be transparent about the side effects people may experience after getting their first shot of a coronavirus vaccine, doctors urged during a meeting Monday with CDC advisors. Dr. Sandra Fryhofer said that both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines require two doses and she worries whether her patients will come back for a second dose because of potentially unpleasant side effects after the first shot. Both companies acknowledged that their vaccines could induce side effects that are similar to symptoms associated with mild Covid-19, such as muscle pain, chills and headache.
23rd Nov 2020 - CNBC

England gets new set of restrictions for end of COVID-19 lockdown

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson set out new measures on Monday to replace a COVID-19 lockdown in England from Dec. 2, reinforcing a previous regional approach to try to reopen businesses in areas where infection rates are lower. Just over two weeks after Johnson introduced a national lockdown in England to try to tame a spiralling increase in new coronavirus cases, he said the measures had reduced COVID infection rates and would be eased on Dec. 2 as promised. Johnson has been under pressure to scrap the lockdown from lawmakers in his Conservative Party, where many have threatened to vote against any new restrictions without more evidence of their effect in stemming infections.
23rd Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

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Christmas in lockdown preferred by UK public over new restrictions in January

Most of the public would rather have a locked-down Christmas than have a new lockdown imposed in January, a new poll suggests. With the government considering the extent to which restrictions should be lifted to limit the impact on Christmas family gatherings, the latest Opinium poll for the Observer found that the public opted for a locked-down Christmas over new January restrictions by a margin of 54% to 33%. This split is almost identical across all party groups and demographics, with older voters in particular preferring to lock down over Christmas rather than in January. There was also strong support for banning people from posting conspiracy theories about the vaccine online, with 64% supporting the idea.
21st Nov 2020 - The Guardian

HSE deploying resources to reduce Covid-19 threat at Kerry nursing home 'in chaos'

The HSE is doing everything it can to minimise the impact of Covid-19 on a Kerry nursing home. The executive took control of the Oaklands nursing home in Listowel yesterday after a district court hearing was told it was 'a centre in chaos' where there was a 'serious risk to life.' The HSE is making alternative arrangements for its elderly residents on foot of an order sought at short notice in court. HSE director general Paul Reid has said that the HSE is doing everything that needs to be done at the Oaklands nursing home in Kerry, control of which was taken over by the executive on Thursday.
20th Nov 2020 - Irish Examiner

Britons could start to receive coronavirus vaccine next month

The NHS could start immunising Britons against coronavirus as soon as next month, if regulators approve a Covid-19 vaccine, health secretary Matt Hancock said on Friday. People are due to be vaccinated at special centres across the UK, and also by general practitioners, under the NHS plans. Mr Hancock’s statement came as new data suggested a levelling-off in the rate at which coronavirus is spreading across the country, raising hopes that families might be able to mix at Christmas if social restrictions are eased. The UK government will next week hold discussions with the devolved administrations to try to agree a unified approach to restrictions during the Christmas period.
20th Nov 2020 - Financial Times

NHS assembles army of staff for mass coronavirus vaccinations

The NHS is bringing together an army of retired doctors, health visitors and physiotherapists to embark on the country’s biggest ever mass vaccination programme, the Guardian has learned. The extraordinary effort in England will also include district nurses and high street chemists alongside GPs in the drive to immunise 22 million vulnerable adults, followed by the rest of the population. NHS documents seen by the Guardian show the rollout will rely in part on “inexperienced staff” who will have undergone two hours of online training before starting work. The slides also reveal codenames for two of the most promising vaccines in development: the Pfizer/BioNTech version is called “Courageous” and the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is known as “Talent”.
20th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Covid vaccine: US military ready to deliver 40 million doses once FDA approves

A US general said the military is prepared to deliver Pfizer and Moderna's coronavirus vaccines as soon as they receive emergency use authorisation from the government. US General Gustave Perna, chief operations officer for Operation Warp Speed, told ABC News Friday that the military is ready to deliver millions of vaccine doses once the US Food and Drug Administration grants them emergency use authorisation. Pfizer submitted its vaccine to the US FDA today. Moderna will submit its vaccine later this month. The companies said they expect to produce 50 million doses in 2020 and up to 1.3bn doses by the end of 2021.
20th Nov 2020 - The Independent

COVID-19: Vaccination site location revealed as council building identified

A council building in Leicestershire has been identified as a vaccination site, with the UK gearing up to roll out widespread coronavirus jabs if safety regulators give the go-ahead. Charnwood Borough Council has told Sky News that an area of its offices will be handed over to Ministry of Defence teams by mid-December "for at least nine months".
20th Nov 2020 - Sky News

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California orders nightly COVID-19 curfew on gatherings, non-essential activities

California’s governor on Thursday ordered a curfew placed on all indoor social gatherings and non-essential activities outside the home across most of the state in a major escalation of measures to curb an alarming surge in coronavirus infections. The limited stay-at-home restrictions will go into effect from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. each day, starting Saturday night and ending the morning of Dec. 21, covering 41 counties representing over 94% of the state’s population, Governor Gavin Newsom said. “The virus is spreading at a pace we haven’t seen since the start of this pandemic, and the next several days and weeks will be critical to stop the surge,” Newsom said in a statement announcing the measure.
20th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

The year of the pandemic: a view from South Korea

In the global coronavirus pandemic, South Koreans should be dropping like flies. But they aren’t. Perched on the edge of China, the country is small, about the size of Indiana, though given that 70% of the land is uninhabitable, the realistic comparison is West Virginia. Packed into that space are 51 million people, the populations of Texas and Florida combined. The country should have been decimated after the first infected passenger off the three-hour flight from Wuhan, China, sneezed.
19th Nov 2020 - STAT News

China expands its arsenal in COVID battle

Stringent monitoring of cold-chain food imports and the fine-tuning of lockdown and testing strategies are China's latest weapons in the battle against COVID-19 as the country braces for possible outbreaks this winter. While local transmission of the novel coronavirus has been under control for months, public health experts in China have highlighted the risk of new outbreaks linked to the virus hitching a ride on imports of frozen foods. As domestic life and production return to normal, experts have hailed local governments' efforts to replace blanket lockdowns and citywide tests with more targeted and economical measures to reduce disruption to socioeconomic development.
19th Nov 2020 - China Daily

Graduate international students locked out of New Zealand plead for exemption

Recent graduates who spent thousands on their education in New Zealand are questioning why they were left out of a border exemption to get them back to their homes and jobs. After months of being locked out of New Zealand, many say they feel abandoned by the government after years of living here and paying taxes. Protests have been held around India, including 150 people at a demonstration in Delhi this week bearing banners of #Migrantlivesmatter, and another is planned for Monday. In September, the government announced that immigrants holding work-to-residence, essential skills or entrepreneur visas would be allowed to travel to New Zealand.
19th Nov 2020 - RNZ

Covid could change our tolerance of flu deaths

Another, more lethal seasonal risk is the flu — in a bad year, as many as 25,000 people die from the virus in England alone. Yet this year, thanks in large part to lockdowns, flu cases are way down across the world and are likely to stay that way. That’s because the habits we’ve adopted to limit the spread of coronavirus — handwashing, mask-wearing and distancing — are effective for other respiratory pathogens too. “The measures we’re taking are enough to essentially eliminate flu,” says David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University. A study by the US Centers for Disease Control has found huge falls in flu activity both in the southern hemisphere’s winter and in the US summer season.
19th Nov 2020 - Financial Times

Europe is seeing one Covid death every 17 seconds, with 29,000 fatalities last week – an 18 per cent rise - WHO warns

Europe is once again the global epicentre for the coronavirus, the WHO warned WHO's European director said Europe accounts for 28 percent of global cases Hans Kluge said lockdowns were 'avoidable' and should be seen as a 'last resort' He said primary schools should stay open as they are in UK, France and Germany Glimmer of hope seen as cases fell this week for the first time in three months Dr Kluge emphasised the importance of mask wearing and social distancing
19th Nov 2020 - Daily Mail

Sweden finds coronavirus in mink industry workers

Sweden’s health agency said on Thursday a number of people who work in the mink industry had tested positive for the coronavirus. Authorities are analysing virus from the infected people and from infected minks to see if there is a link between the strains, the health agency said in a statement. It did not specify how many people had tested positive. Neighbouring Denmark earlier on Thursday said a new, mutated strain of the coronavirus stemming from mink farms in the country was “most likely” extinct.
19th Nov 2020 - Reuters India

UK will set up dozens of mass vaccination centres as soon as vaccines are available - the Telegraph

Britain will set up dozens of mass vaccination centres to immunize people against coronavirus as soon as vaccines are available, the Telegraph reported. One of the first locations for administering Pfizer Inc vaccine from mid-December has been confirmed as being in Derby, the newspaper added.
19th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

Coronavirus cases in Africa cross two million mark: AU tally

Total coronavirus cases in Africa have surpassed the two million mark despite a slow addition of reported infections compared with other regions around the world, the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said. With the African Union’s health body reporting 2,013,388 cases on Thursday, the continent now represents less than 4 percent of the world’s total cases, which many experts believe to be an undercount. They believe many COVID-19 infections and related deaths in Africa are likely being missed as testing rates in the continent of about 1.3 billion people are among the lowest in the world, and many deaths of all types go unrecorded. Africa has reported less than 48,000 coronavirus deaths so far.
19th Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

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Covid vaccines should not be seen as 'unicorn' solution, says WHO chief – video

Michael Ryan, the head of the World Health Organization’s emergencies programme, has said that while vaccines are effective tools, they are not the lone solution to ending the coronavirus pandemic. ‘Some people think that vaccines will be, in a sense, the solution, the unicorn we’ve all been chasing,’ he said during a virtual briefing in Geneva on Wednesday, warning other measures such as social distancing needed to be maintained. It comes after positive efficacy results from late-stage trials of two potential Covid-19 vaccines
19th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Covid 19 coronavirus: Three new cases in managed isolation

In New Zealand, there are three new cases of Covid-19 all detected in recent returnees in managed isolation. There are no new community cases today. Of the recent returnees who have tested positive for Covid-19: One person arrived from the United Kingdom via Dubai on November 14, two people arrived from Dubai on November 14. All three people tested positive during routine testing around day 3 of their time in managed isolation.
18th Nov 2020 - New Zealand Herald

'Where there's a will there's a way' as English doctors prepare COVID vaccine roll-out

English doctors are grappling with the prospect of seven-day service, -75 degree Celsius freezers and vaccines known as “Talent” and “Courageous” as they prepare for an unprecedented logistical challenge: the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations. Health minister Matt Hancock has set a target for England’s National Health Service that it should be ready to administer vaccines by Dec. 1, although he has said his central expectation is for the bulk of the roll-out to happen next year. Any distribution of vaccines would also require approval from the country’s medical watchdog, the MHRA. On Wednesday, NHS England medical director Stephen Powis confirmed that general practitioners (GPs), pharmacies and large-scale inoculation centres could all be involved in the vaccine roll-out, adding more details would be given in the coming days
18th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

England will need five days of lockdown for each day relaxed at Christmas: adviser

England will need five extra days of lockdown measures to stop COVID-19 infections spreading for each day they are relaxed over the Christmas period to allow people to see their families, a senior government health adviser has warned. Susan Hopkins, deputy director of the national infections service at Public Health England, told reporters on Wednesday that the advice from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies would mean two days of tighter restrictions.
18th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

Japan to monitor virus cases, hospitals before any emergency declaration decision

Japan will not immediately declare a health emergency following a record rise in coronavirus cases, and will continue to monitor infection rates and the capacity of hospitals to cope, the government’s chief spokesman said on Thursday. “We will respond appropriately based on conditions,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told a regular press briefing. Coronavirus infections in Japan hit a record daily high of 2,201 cases on Wednesday, public broadcaster NHK reported. Almost a quarter of those were in Tokyo, which is expected to raise its pandemic alert level on Thursday, according to local media reports.
18th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine deliveries could start 'before Christmas'

Pfizer Inc PFE.N and BioNTech 22UAy.DE could secure emergency U.S. and European authorization for their COVID-19 vaccine next month after final trial results showed it had a 95% success rate and no serious side effects, the drugmakers said on Wednesday. The vaccine’s efficacy was found to be consistent across different ages and ethnicities - a promising sign given the disease has disproportionately hurt the elderly and certain groups including Black people. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration could grant emergency-use by the middle of December, BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin told Reuters TV. Conditional approval in the European Union could be secured in the second half of December, he added.
18th Nov 2020 - Reuters

U.S. surpasses 250,000 coronavirus deaths as virus mortality rate surges

The United States has recorded a quarter-million Covid-19 deaths, the latest NBC News numbers showed Wednesday, and the death rate has been accelerating in recent weeks as cases have been surging across the country. The 250,000th death was logged Wednesday morning, the data revealed. In the last four weeks there has been a 42 percent increase in the number of fatalities, from a weekly average of 821 per day in early October to last week’s average of 1,167 per day, according to an NBC News analysis of the available data.
18th Nov 2020 - NBC News

Covid: Plaid Cymru calls for extra support for infection hotspots

People self-isolating in Covid hotspots should be given a "topped-up" grant of £800, Plaid Cymru has said. It wants a package of extra support for ex-industrial areas with high infection rates, such as Merthyr Tydfil, Blaenau Gwent and Rhondda Cynon Taf. These areas, the party said, should be prioritised for mass testing, with more resources for test and trace teams. Ministers said they had put national support measures in place and provided an extra £15.7m for contact tracing. Anyone in Wales is able to claim £500 if they have to stay off work due to coronavirus.
18th Nov 2020 - BBC

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China clamps down on frozen food over coronavirus fears

China is zeroing in on cold chain goods to prevent any outbreaks of Covid-19 after packaging of frozen Argentine beef, German pork and Indian cuttlefish tested positive for the virus. Cities across China, the world’s largest importer of beef and pork, have pledged to strengthen screening and sterilisation of imports. The latest campaign to safeguard China’s borders against any reintroduction of Covid-19 began after officials in the north-eastern city of Tianjin, one of the country’s largest ports, tied an infection of a worker in a warehouse to frozen pork imports from Germany last week. In the following days, food packaging tested positive for coronavirus in cities ranging from eastern Jining to southern Xiamen and central Zhengzhou.
17th Nov 2020 - Financial Times

Wash hands, use the app and avoid a Christmas lockdown

As 2020’s finishing post shuffles into view, a casual query among friends about what they fear the most in the lead up to Christmas elicits a unanimous, reflexive response. Lockdown. A regional or nationwide Level 3 or 4 plunge, right on the holiday doorstep, knocking the stuffing out of your Christmas turkey. Hopefully, the spectre of such bad tidings won’t play out, but it’s clear that we still have many months of maintaining our heightened defensive posture in repelling the menace of this pandemic from taking root in the community.
17th Nov 2020 - Stuff.co.nz

Insurers are trying to escape COVID-19 liability, watchdog tells UK Supreme Court

Insurers are trying to escape liability for pandemic-related business losses with counter-intuitive arguments that go against the essential purpose of insurance, Britain’s markets watchdog told the UK Supreme Court on Tuesday. A lawyer for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which brought a test case against insurers on behalf of policyholders, said insurers had reached an “extraordinary conclusion” that business losses were largely uncovered during the coronavirus pandemic because of the widespread havoc it has caused. “(Insurers) are saying: ‘We insure perils but not ones that are going to cost us a huge amount of money. We never contemplated that’. Well, that isn’t an answer,” Colin Edelman, the FCA’s lawyer, told the second day of a four-day appeal, watched by thousands of businesses brought to their knees during the pandemic.
17th Nov 2020 - Reuters

Watchdog criticises UK government for COVID procurement amid 'chumocracy' claims

The British government did not properly document key decisions nor was it open enough about billions of pounds of contracts handed out during the COVID-19 pandemic, its spending watchdog has said, as critics accuse ministers of running a “chumocracy”. The National Audit Office (NAO) said on Wednesday there had been a lack of transparency and a failure to explain why certain suppliers were chosen, or how any conflict of interest was dealt with, over 18 billion pounds in procurement deals made between March and the end of July, often with no competition. The report comes amid growing criticism some multi-million pound contracts were awarded during the coronavirus crisis to companies with links to ministers, lawmakers and officials. “While we recognise that these were exceptional circumstances, it remains essential that decisions are properly documented and made transparent if government is to maintain public trust that taxpayers’ money is being spent appropriately and fairly,” NAO head Gareth Davies said.
17th Nov 2020 - Reuters

How bad is Russia's Covid crisis? Packed morgues and excess deaths tell a darker story than official numbers suggest

The limbs of a lifeless body hang off a stretcher in a hospital ward as coronavirus patients battle for their lives just a few feet away. An elderly woman gasps for breath, her desperate panting a grim soundtrack to one of many disturbing cell-phone videos emerging from hospitals across Russia. "This is how our nights look: horrifying," says a male voice narrating the footage, given to CNN by a prominent opposition-linked Russian doctors' union, "Doctors' Alliance," which says it was recorded in mid-October by a hospital staff member in Ulyanovsk, a city around 500 miles east of Moscow. "Two more down in our ward," he says, while filming a corpse. "This is how Covid-19 is killing everybody."
17th Nov 2020 - CNN

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COVID-19 vaccine: UK orders five million doses of new Moderna jab by spring next year

Five million doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine have been ordered by the UK, the health secretary has announced. Matt Hancock said preliminary trials showing it to be 94.5% effective were "excellent news" and that, if it proves safe, the jabs can start to be rolled out across the country by spring 2021. "We can see the candle of hope," he declared, but cautioned that people must keep following COVID-19 restrictions.
17th Nov 2020 - Sky News

'There is no money left': southern Italy's poor pummelled by Covid

For the past 30 years, Grazia Santangelo has made a living selling books and jewellery from a stall at the Ballarò street market in Palermo. It is one of the oldest and liveliest markets in southern Italy — but now it is almost deserted. Because of the coronavirus crisis, 62-year-old Ms Santangelo has lost almost all of her clients and is struggling to pay for basic necessities such as food and medicine. Now that a second round of restrictions has come into force, she says she is lucky to earn €3 a day.
16th Nov 2020 - Financial Times

Morrison government looks at allowing extra flights home as Australians locked out due to COVID-19

Australians trying to flee coronavirus-riddled Europe struggling to secure flights Demand outstripping supply despite overseas arrival cap rising to 6,000 a week Government looking at more flights for citizens and then international students Education Minister Dan Tehan said country becoming 'victim of its own success' States and territories are asked to make a plan to allow in more overseas arrivals
16th Nov 2020 - Daily Mail

Using contact tracing app 'strongest form of defence' against another lockdown - Shaun Hendy

Speaking on TVNZ1's Breakfast the University of Auckland data modelling expert warned a potential two week period of new community cases of the coronavirus, which authorities can't get on top of, could put New Zealand into lockdown. Hendy said he believed Auckland particularly had become complacent before a woman who lives, studies and works in the central city was confirmed as having Covid-19 last week - a case of community transmission. The woman has been linked to the Defence Force cluster and one of her close contacts was confirmed as having contracted the virus yesterday.
16th Nov 2020 - 1News

Israel economy strikes back in third-quarter after first lockdown lifted

Israel’s economy put on a blistering burst of growth in the third quarter, expanding an annualised 37.9% as consumer spending, exports and investment took off after being hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic in the first half of the year. The preliminary gross domestic product (GDP) growth figure for July-September over the previous three months issued by the Central Bureau of Statistics was well above the 24% consensus forecast in a Reuters poll of economists. “The Israeli economy has been resilient due to strong hi-tech sectors and lack of flights, which pushed private spending up sharply,” said Leader Capital Markets Chief Economist Jonathan Katz, who expects a return to contraction in the fourth quarter.
16th Nov 2020 - Reuters

Packed crowds and euphoric leaders: Australia revels in Covid-free days

When the premier of Queensland held her regular Covid-19 update on Friday she couldn’t help letting a smile creep across her face. “Now, here’s a good one,” Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters. “I think all Queenslanders are going to be happy about it.” She went on to announce that Brisbane’s Suncorp stadium would host a capacity 52,500 crowd for the forthcoming State of Origin rugby league decider against New South Wales next week. “The cauldron can be filled to 100% capacity,” she said.
15th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Japan’s Economy Surges as Covid-19 Limits Ease

Japan became the latest major economy to bounce back from the devastation of the coronavirus, as lockdowns eased and pent-up demand led to surging domestic consumption and a rebound in exports. But the recovery is unlikely to be long-lived, analysts warn, as a surge in new virus cases has led to a second round of lockdowns in the United States and Europe and threatens to dampen sentiment at home. Japan’s economy, the world’s third largest, surged 5 percent during the July-to-September period, for an annualized growth rate of 21.4 percent, after three straight quarters of contraction.
15th Nov 2020 - The New York Times

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Covid-19: politicisation, “corruption,” and suppression of science

Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availability of diagnostics and treatments. They do so to support innovation, to bring products to market at unprecedented speed. Both of these reasons are partly plausible; the greatest deceptions are founded in a grain of truth. But the underlying behaviour is troubling. Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health.1 Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science. The UK’s pandemic response provides at least four examples of suppression of science or scientists. First, the membership, research, and deliberations of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) were initially secret until a press leak forced transparency.2 The leak revealed inappropriate involvement of government advisers in SAGE, while exposing under-representation from public health, clinical care, women, and ethnic minorities. Indeed, the government was also recently ordered to release a 2016 report on deficiencies in pandemic preparedness, Operation Cygnus, following a verdict from the Information Commissioner’s Office.
15th Nov 2020 - The BMJ

Shock new figures fuel fears of more lockdown domestic abuse killings in UK

Calls to the UK’s largest domestic abuse helpline are rising “week on week” as new figures reveal that almost 50 suspected killings may have occurred during the first lockdown. The charity Refuge, which runs the National Domestic Abuse helpline, said it was “very concerned” by the continuing upward trend in demand for its services, with England a little over a week into its second lockdown. Separate data from Counting Dead Women, a project that records the killing of women by men in the UK, identified 35 murders, with another 12 strongly suspected cases between 23 March and the start of July, when Covid restrictions were largely lifted. The rate of killings, conspicuously steep in the opening period of the first lockdown, gradually lowers to levels similar to those recorded in previous years.
15th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Fauci Says Pfizer Vaccine’s Trial Success May Boost Acceptance

The success of Pfizer Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine trial may help persuade more people to get inoculated amid a surge in new coronavirus cases, according to Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious-disease doctor. Pfizer’s vaccine, developed in collaboration with Germany’s BioNTech SE, has “an extraordinarily high degree of efficacy -- more than 90%, close to 95%,” Fauci said in an interview. That could be a key factor in overcoming reluctance to take pandemic vaccines that have been developed at top speed.
15th Nov 2020 - Bloomberg

Schoolcations Are All the Rage, Here's How to Take One

The pandemic has turned many parents into teachers, making remote learning challenging for the entire family. It’s especially tough for those who may still be going into their office and can’t be home to supervise, or if the homeschooling responsibility lies on the shoulders of one parent who may also be juggling working from home. The stress is tremendous. A new national poll of the U.S. workforce by Eagle Hill Research found that 65 percent of employees with children in remote learning situations are feeling burnout. Mom and dad need more than a “Calgon take me away” relaxing bath moment. Parents looking to exhale are finding relief with “schoolcations.” Families are loading up backpacks with school supplies, packing the laptop and hitting the road. Online learning can be done anywhere.
15th Nov 2020 - Daily Beast

Dame Sally Davies: obesity scourge led to 50000 Covid death toll

Thousands of coronavirus deaths could have been avoided if ministers had tackled the obesity crisis, England’s former chief medical officer says today. Professor Dame Sally Davies blames the country’s high death toll on “a structural environment” that enabled junk food makers to encourage consumption. The UK has one of the highest rates of obesity in the world and the second highest in Europe, with nearly one in three adults obese. Obesity, defined as a body mass index greater than 30, raises the risk of dying of Covid-19 by 48%. Last week Britain became the first country in Europe to pass a grim milestone, reaching more than 50,000 deaths from the coronavirus on official figures.
15th Nov 2020 - The Times

'Just hugging was amazing': joy and tears as Victorian families reunite after Melbourne lockdown

As Mel McNamara drove from the Victorian mainland over the Phillip Island bridge, her eyes filled with tears. “My daughter, she asked me why I was crying,” Mel says. “I had to tell her that these are happy tears – I was just so grateful to be by the sea and going to see my family.” It had been four months since Mel last saw her mother Julie and stepdad Damian, both residents on the island. Victoria’s “ring of steel” had kept them apart, with the threat of a $5,000 fine for any Melburnian who tried to escape the confines of the city. Mel burst into tears again when she finally saw her mum.
14th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Covid 19 coronavirus: Why has mandatory mask wearing taken so long?

The masks are coming. New Zealand's hard and early response to Covid-19 is finally adopting widespread mask use outside of lockdown. Justin Giovannetti writes about what changed in the halls of parliament to make it happen. Masks will become mandatory on Auckland transit and domestic flights next week following months of criticism by leading epidemiologists that New Zealand has been avoiding a simple measure to lessen the risk of new outbreaks. Chris Hipkins, the country's Covid-19 minister, was shying away from a mask mandate as recently as Thursday afternoon. The Government was relying on "goodwill" that people would follow suggestions and wear masks while also scanning QR codes diligently. Most people didn't heed the suggestion
14th Nov 2020 - New Zealand Herald

Australia may see first week of no local COVID-19 transmissions

Australia’s three most populous states on Saturday recorded at least a week with no local transmissions of the new coronavirus, boding well for the country’s recovery from the pandemic after a flare-up marred an impressive early response. Victoria, the epicentre of the resurgence of the virus in recent months, recorded its 15th consecutive day of no new infections and no related deaths, two weeks after the state emerged from one of the world’s longest and strictest lockdowns. The second-most populous state’s deputy chief health officer, Allen Cheng, told a news conference that the run of zero cases was “about as good as it can get”.
14th Nov 2020 - Reuters

How to reinvent cities for the post-pandemic world

The once mighty financial capitals of the world have been reduced to ghost towns as they suffer the effects of COVID-19. For more than a century, cities have been magnets for millions of people seeking work opportunities and the promise of a better life. But the COVID-19 pandemic is rewriting the way we live and work. City centres have been turned into ghost towns as people work from home. It could potentially leave lasting scars with shops, restaurants and services that cater to commuters being decimated.
14th Nov 2020 - Aljazeera

How Australia brought the coronavirus pandemic under control

Kim Laurie worked as a florist for a quarter of a century before opening her own shop in Melbourne in July, just before the city was engulfed by a second wave of Covid-19 cases. Within weeks, Australia’s second-biggest city was reporting 700 new cases a day and Victoria’s state government imposed a second lockdown. “It was really devastating as I had no choice but to close the doors of the business for several weeks,” said Ms Laurie. Her flower shop is one of thousands of businesses hit hard by home confinement and nightly curfews, which lasted 112-days and have become hallmarks of Australia’s hardline approach to combating the pandemic. Corporate leaders have criticised the measures as too strict and economically damaging. But the zero tolerance strategy worked: no new locally transmitted cases have been reported in Victoria since the lockdown was lifted two weeks ago.
13th Nov 2020 - Financial Times

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How China claimed victory over the coronavirus

Millions have been tested in response to recent outbreaks and Chinese infections are well below many other countries. Lockdowns and mass testing are China’s main weapons in the fight against the pandemic
12th Nov 2020 - South China Morning Post

Families make the dash across SA to be re-united with loved ones in Western Australia

Campers and caravans are on the move in South Australia as the WA hard border is set to come down early on Saturday morning. For some families, it's been an emotional trek to reunite with their loved ones. Newcastle couple Pete and Kim Mackie haven't seen their children and grandchildren in Perth for 11 months, and said they've skipped the sightseeing through South Australia to take the direct route to be with their family.
12th Nov 2020 - ABC News

England: 'shocking' decline in primary pupils' attainment after lockdown

There has been a “shocking” decline in primary school pupils’ levels of attainment in England after lockdown, testing has revealed, with younger children and those from disadvantaged backgrounds worst affected. The results provide the first detailed insight into the impact of the pandemic on academic attainment among young children and show an average decline in performance of between 5% and 15% on previous years. The biggest drop was in maths scores, and overall seven-year-olds were the most impacted. The data, shared exclusively with the Guardian, is based on standardised tests sat by a quarter of a million pupils earlier this term. Researchers said they expected attainment to drop after more than five months out of school for most pupils, but were surprised at the scale of decline.
11th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 12th Nov 2020

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Will Gen Z ever recover from the COVID-19 recession?

The global economy has been brought to its knees by COVID-19 and one generation may never fully bounce back from the beating: Generation Z. Born between 1997 and 2012, some Gen Zers – teens and college students – are entering the labour market for the first time during an unprecedented economic crisis caused by a once-in-a-century pandemic. United States unemployment for workers aged 16 to 24 tripled from 2019 to 2020, hitting 24.4 percent this spring, according to an October report by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive-leaning think-tank based in Washington, DC. Like every aspect of the coronavirus recession, it is affecting communities of colour more. Unemployment rates were higher for young workers of colour – including Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (29.7 percent), African Americans (29.6 percent) and Latinos (27.5 percent), EPI found. And that blow to their livelihoods may not be temporary. Gen Z workers could feel the effects of the pandemic-related recession for decades to come as the current situation affects everything from their ability to advance in careers, buy a house or afford to raise children.
12th Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

Road to recovery for rural India post-pandemic; how skilled migrant workers can boost hinterland’s growth

As a measure to contain the virus, India declared a lockdown on 24 March 2020 for 1.3 billion people with the prime minister calling for joint action by people, not-for-profits, corporates, and governments. The complete lockdown in the country significantly impacted the quality of life and livelihoods of people. Considering that there has been a historical divide between rural and urban India with regard to the essential infrastructure for Health, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), supply chains, and other important services, the impact of COVID-19 was far more alarming for the rural community.
11th Nov 2020 - The Financial Express

Melbourne counts economic cost of coronavirus lockdown, offering harsh lesson to other cities

The lockdown cost US$71 million a day and resulted in a daily average of 1,200 jobs being lost across the state in August and September. Business leaders say it may take years for Melbourne – which was last year ranked as the world’s second-most liveable city – to recover.
11th Nov 2020 - South China Morning Post

West Indies cricket squad stripped of training rights due to New Zealand COVID-19 protocol breach

The West Indies cricket squad has been stripped of the right to train while in managed isolation after players were found to have breached rules around their 14-day quarantine. New Zealand’s Ministry of Health said CCTV footage from the team’s Christchurch hotel showed players mingling in hallways and sharing food in violation of managed isolation regulations. The ministry said all incidents occurred within the hotel and there was no danger to the public. The West Indies squad, which has completed 12 of its scheduled 14 days of isolation under COVID-19 regulations, will not be able to train again until its full managed isolation period has been completed. The isolation period might be extended if any further concerns arise, the ministry said. West Indies Cricket chief executive Johnny Grave told New Zealand media it is “hugely disappointing that players that knew the protocol completely broke that.”
11th Nov 2020 - The West Australian

Digital misogyny: Online abuse of women surges during COVID

Women bear the brunt of increasing digital abuse – threatened with rape and exploited for porn – as the coronavirus pandemic drives ever more people online, media experts said on Wednesday. Through salacious claims and viral memes, Brazilian journalist Patricia Campos Mello said she has repeatedly faced attack online for reporting on the Brazil government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis. “Thousands of memes have circulated on the internet which my face appears in pornographic montages,” Mello told the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual event, Trust Conference, held online this year due to the pandemic. “[People] calling me a prostitute and saying that I offer sex in exchange for stories. I get messages from people saying I deserve to be raped.” Women’s rights campaigners worldwide have warned of an increase in online abuse, such as revenge porn, as COVID-19 has confined many people inside, in front of a screen. Girls as young as eight have also been subject to abuse, with one in five young women quitting or reducing their use of social media, according to a recent survey by girls’ rights group Plan International.
11th Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

Vanuatu records first COVID-19 case in man who returned from US

Vanuatu has officially recorded its first case of COVID-19, health officials announced on Wednesday, ending the Pacific nation’s status as one of the few countries in the world to remain virus-free. Len Tarivonda, the director of Vanuatu Public Health, said the 23-year-old man had recently returned from the United States and was confirmed to have the virus on Tuesday after being tested on the fifth day of his quarantine. “A case detected in quarantine is considered a border case and not an outbreak,” the department said in a statement, adding that health protocols were in place to contain the virus. It added that the asymptomatic man, had been isolated from other passengers during his flight to Vanuatu because he had been in a high-risk location. He had transited in Auckland, New Zealand.
11th Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

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CDC now says masks protect both the wearers and those around them from Covid-19

Wearing a mask can help protect you, not just those around you, from coronavirus transmission, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in new guidance Tuesday. The statement was an update to previous guidance suggesting the main benefit of mask wearing was to help prevent infected people from spreading the virus to others. Cloth masks act as "source control" to block virus particles exhaled by the wearer and provide "filtration for personal protection" by blocking incoming infectious droplets from others, the CDC said in its new guidance.
11th Nov 2020 - CNN

What will happen after lockdown in England?

England is currently in its second lockdown of the year as a second wave of coronavirus continues to grip the country. It came into force last Thursday, with non-essential retail once again forced to close, along with businesses such as hair salons and gyms – while pubs and restaurants can only provide a takeaway and delivery service. The lockdown, which replaced the tier system of restrictions in England, is intended to last for four weeks, ending on December 2 – but what will happen after that? And is there a possibility it could be extended if it fails to impact on the current infection rate?
10th Nov 2020 - Metro.co.uk

‘Naked in the face of this crisis’: Spain’s Latin American workers suffer

José, a 40-year-old former graphic designer from Colombia, is on the front line of Europe’s coronavirus-driven economic crisis: as an immigrant in Spain, he is one of the most vulnerable group of people in the EU’s worst-affected major economy. In March he fell ill with Covid-19, like thousands of others in Madrid; in April he was admitted to hospital; in May he lost his job as a doorman. Now, months later, he is still looking for a job. “Initially my boss did not believe I was infected and I had to keep working,” said José, who did not want his full name to be published. “But then my symptoms got worse and I was replaced by someone else. I was on a temporary contract, so that was it for that job.” His is a story that is all too common.
10th Nov 2020 - The Financial Times

Swaths of European firms risk collapse despite subsidies, ECB warns

One in seven Spanish workers are in businesses at risk of collapse, according to new research by the European Central Bank, excluding those who work for financial companies. This is the highest rate of all large eurozone economies, and comes despite the country’s national furlough scheme. It compares with about 8 per cent of employees in Germany and France and 10 per cent in Italy, also taking into account the use of subsidies to keep people in work, the ECB found. Companies at risk of collapse are defined as having negative working capital and high debt levels.
10th Nov 2020 - Financial Times

From schoolboy to tea seller: Covid poverty forces India’s children into work

The pandemic has pushed millions of urban poor into crisis – and left children struggling to help their families survive. Subhan Shaikh used to start the day with a cup of cinnamon-flavoured tea, brought to him by his mother, Sitara, before he got ready for school. But the lockdown in March brought her salary as a school bus attendant to an end, and providing food – never mind tea – for Subhan, 14, and his two younger sisters, became a challenge. Today, life for Subhan revolves around tea, which has become a lifeline for his family. After seeing his mother struggle, Subhan decided to do something and became a tea seller on the streets of Mumbai.
10th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Coronavirus doctor's diary: 'We are first-hand witnesses of this devastation'

The second coronavirus wave has already put many hospitals under great pressure, and it's nurses and physios who bear the brunt of it, writes Dr John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI). Here he introduces four nurses, who describe the strain they are now under. Work. Sleep. Repeat. Our doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and support staff have settled in to a weary routine. The hospital is nearly full. The patients we admit were infected a fortnight beforehand. The patients who are dying were infected a month ago - when the government's scientific advisory group, Sage, was recommending a circuit break. The virus has used this time to great effect. In Yorkshire, one in 37 people tested positive in the last week of October - almost 3% of the population. This is a prevalence figure beyond our comprehension.
10th Nov 2020 - BBC

Covid-19: 'Lockdown' declared Collins Dictionary word of the year

"Lockdown" has been declared the word of the year for 2020 by Collins Dictionary, after a sharp rise in its usage during the pandemic. It "encapsulates the shared experience of billions of people", Collins said. Lexicographers registered more than 250,000 usages of "lockdown" during 2020, up from just 4,000 last year. Other pandemic-linked terms on the 10-strong list include "furlough", "key worker", "self-isolate" and "social distancing" as well as "coronavirus". According to the dictionary, lockdown is defined as "the imposition of stringent restrictions on travel, social interaction, and access to public spaces".
10th Nov 2020 - BBC

Collins Dictionary names ‘lockdown’ its word of the year for 2020

10th Nov 2020 - ITV News

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 10th Nov 2020

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Covid 'raises new psychiatric disorders risk'

One in every 17 people who have had Covid-19 could be diagnosed with anxiety, depression or insomnia for the first time, a study of millions of US patient health records suggests. That is about double the risk from other illnesses, the researchers say. Unexpectedly, they also found existing psychiatric patients were 65% more likely to be diagnosed with Covid-19. This could be linked to their physical health or drugs prescribed to treat disorders, the researchers speculated. They should be given appropriate care, the Oxford team said. But they stopped short of asking psychiatric patients to shield or think of themselves as extremely vulnerable.
10th Nov 2020 - BBC

Israelis may be infected with new coronavirus strain from Denmark minks

Three Israelis who returned from Denmark and were confirmed as infected with the novel coronavirus may have been infected with the new strain discovered among minks in the country recently, according to KAN news. The new strain may have decreased sensitivity to antibodies, which could impact future vaccines, although studies are still being conducted to verify this.
10th Nov 2020 - The Jerusalem Post

Colombia implemented a six-month lockdown to control coronavirus but there was a steep price to pay

With her beaming smile, jovial manner and contagious air of enthusiasm, it's difficult to imagine Gloria Zuluaga ever losing her optimism. Yet in May, as COVID-19 cases began to surge in Colombia, the 52-year-old restaurant owner found herself helpless and fearing the worst. Standing outside a hospital in Bogota under one of the capital's infamous tropical downpours, she pleaded with hospital staff for help. She felt faint, her airways closed up and she choked for breath. "I was sweating, choking and I started shaking like I had epilepsy," Zuluaga recalls. "I felt so vulnerable." As she suspected, the symptoms were diagnosed as having been caused by the novel coronavirus — though not directly.
9th Nov 2020 - ABC News

Coronavirus: Should New Zealand copy Taiwan's leading COVID-19 response?

The Detail is a daily news podcast produced for RNZ by Newsroom and is published on Newshub with permission. Click on this link to subscribe to the podcast. Taiwan is held up as best in class when it comes to controlling coronavirus and calls are getting louder for New Zealand to follow its lead and end the disruptive lockdowns that are so damaging to the economy. Today The Detail's Sharon Brettkelly looks at how this country of nearly 24 million people on an island a third the size of the South Island, tops the world with around 568 cases and just seven deaths compared with New Zealand's 1973-odd cases and 25 deaths. Taiwan-based New Zealander Ron Hanson talks to Sharon Brettkelly about the similarities and differences between the two countries' strategies
9th Nov 2020 - Newshub

World is running out of time on climate, experts warn

World leaders are running out of time to forge a green recovery from the Covid-19 crisis, with only a year to go before a crunch UN summit that will decide the future of the global climate, leading experts have warned. Progress on a green recovery, which would reduce emissions while repairing the damage from the pandemic, has been hampered by the need for an emergency rescue of stricken economies around the world and the resurgence of the coronavirus in Europe, the US and some other countries. But with global heating showing no sign of slowing, and the danger signals of climate breakdown increasingly evident – from the Arctic ice to American wildfires – the race is on to build the global economy back better.
9th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Behind Pfizer's vaccine, an understated husband-and-wife 'dream team'

Positive data on BioNTech and U.S. partner Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine is an unlikely success for the married couple behind the German biotech firm, who have devoted their lives to harnessing the immune system against cancer.Pfizer said on Monday said its experimental vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 based on initial data from a large study
9th Nov 2020 - Reuters

COVID-19 cases top 10 million in US as Biden sets up task force

President-elect Biden set to announce a 12-member task force to deal with pandemic as US becomes first country to cross 10 million cases. The development on Sunday came as global coronavirus cases exceeded 50 million.
9th Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

Lockdown in paradise: Antigua’s plea for visitors

Osmilta Prince sits on a rock beneath a palm tree, her homemade mask covering her face. By her feet, is a basket of handmade shell bracelets and calabash bowls. Close by, a laminated sign reads: “Stay Apart 6 feet – or 9½ coconuts”. By this time of day, the 48-year-old single mother will have ordinarily sold enough curios to put food on the table to feed her four sons. But today, the sun-loungers on this usually popular beach are mostly empty. “It’s scary to realise that this could go on for another year,” she says, taking in the quiet beach. “This is my income, and the modest savings I have won’t last. I don’t want to go and beg. Everything I earn now goes on food because there hasn’t been a chance to save since we reopened.”
8th Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 9th Nov 2020

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Covid: Lack of medical supplies 'hits' disabled people

A hospital trust has declared a major incident as demand for oxygen surges among coronavirus patients. Grimsby and Scunthorpe hospital Trust has seen a surge in coronavirus patients admitted as one of the worst affected areas in the country. As of this morning, there were 106 Covid-positive patients being treated in the Trust's three hospitals - 56 at Grimsby's Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital, 47 at Scunthorpe General Hospital and three at Goole. There are six people in ICU in each of the Grimsby and Scunthorpe hospitals, reports the Grimsby Telegraph. Additional nursing staff have been called in to work extra shifts as the virus continues to take its toll on staff.
9th Nov 2020 - BBC

UK and others look for lessons from Slovakia's Covid mass-testing project

Authorities in Slovakia say they hope a nationwide programme in which two-thirds of the country’s population were tested for Covid-19 in just two days last weekend will halve the number of cases of the virus in the country. The Slovak testing programme has drawn interest from across Europe, as debates continue about whether or not blanket testing is the best way to fight coronavirus. A Downing Street team travelled to Slovakia last weekend to witness the testing, keen to draw lessons before a mass testing programme due to be launched in Liverpool this weekend. Slovak officials said the team included two Downing Street advisers and two people responsible for arranging the UK’s large-scale testing programme in Liverpool.
8th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

How Biden navigated pandemic politics to win the White House

Joe Biden was fresh off winning the Michigan primary and effectively capturing the Democratic presidential nomination, a prize he’d sought for the better part of three decades. Instead of plotting a strategy to build momentum, he was contemplating an abrupt halt. He gathered his senior team in a conference room on the 19th floor of his campaign’s Philadelphia headquarters, the type of in-person meeting that would soon be deemed a public health risk. A former surgeon general and Food and Drug Administration commissioner joined on speakerphone.
8th Nov 2020 - The Associated Press

NHS England suspends one-to-one nursing for critically ill Covid patients

Nurses will be allowed to look after two critically ill Covid-19 patients at the same time after NHS bosses relaxed the rule requiring one-to-one treatment in intensive care as hospitals come under intense strain. NHS England has decided to temporarily suspend the 1:1 rule as the number of people who are in hospital very sick with Covid has soared to 11,514, of whom 986 are on a ventilator. The move comes amid concern that intensive care units, which went into the pandemic already short of nurses, are being hit by staff being off sick or isolating as a result of Covid. It follows a warning last week by Prof Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, that the Covid resurgence could overwhelm the NHS.
8th Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Coronavirus: Parents hit hardest by lockdown energy costs in UK

UK families are the hardest hit by coronavirus lockdown energy costs, according to new research from Credit Karma. School closures during lockdown cost parents a total of £368m ($481m) a month in extra energy costs, with each family facing an average £68 spike in inflated energy bills since the UK went into lockdown. This is more than double the rise in energy bills suffered by the average UK household, as the extra energy used by the average household due to lockdown equated to an additional monthly cost of £32.31, according to a Populus poll. As England goes into a second national lockdown set to last until at least 2 December, families are bracing themselves for rising energy bills, with many unsure on how they’ll afford them.
7th Nov 2020 - YAHOO!

Coronavirus: Greece reintroduce SMS authorisation for movement as country enters second lockdown

Residents in Greece will need to obtain permission before leaving their homes as the country's second lockdown comes into force. Similar to measures adopted during the first lockdown, people will be required to send a text message to a five-digit number, providing their name, address and the reason why they need to leave their house. The country's digital governance minister announced the permissible reasons on Thursday.
7th Nov 2020 - Sky News

New Zealand Inc reaps benefit of hard and fast Covid lockdown

When Covid-19 struck New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern’s government quickly closed the nation’s borders and imposed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns in a bid to eliminate the spread of the virus. The decision in late March plunged businesses into crisis, with many forced to implement radical strategic changes to survive. Air New Zealand was an early casualty, requiring a NZ$900m ($610.4m) bailout from Wellington. But with most restrictions now removed and the virus apparently under control, business confidence is coming back. Many corporate leaders — in industries from tourism to agriculture — hope that Wellington’s decision to prioritise health over keeping its economy open will prove fruitful in the long term.
6th Nov 2020 - Financial Times

Coronavirus lockdown England: Internet usage surges on night one

Lockdown 2.0 yesterday came into force with shops and bars closed As a result people were stayed at home and many streamed and went online At 9:10pm internet usage surged to a peak of 6.46 Terabytes per second
6th Nov 2020 - Daily Mail

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 6th Nov 2020

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Sweden and Germany removed from England's travel corridors

Britain said on Thursday it was removing Germany and Sweden from its list of countries where travellers would not have to quarantine on arrival in England. “From 4 a.m. Saturday 7th November, if you arrive into the UK from these destinations you will need to self-isolate,” transport minister Grant Shapps said on Twitter. He added no countries were being added to the list of travel corridors. England entered a second countrywide lockdown on Thursday meaning people must stay at home, barring a limited number of exceptions.
6th Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

How lockdown is killing restaurants, cafes and bars a second time

Hospitality industry suffering a staff shortage due to lack of international visitors Catering Australia CEO Wes Lambert said issue was pronounced in Melbourne He said backpackers or international students filled most jobs prior to COVID-19
5th Nov 2020 - Daily Mail

New South Wales to open border to Victoria, New Zealand

After months of remaining closed to Victorian residents, NSW will drop its border restrictions in just three weeks. On Wednesday NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian revealed the border would open on November 23. That is about a month after her Victorian counterpart Daniel Andrews put an end to Melbourne’s tough stage 4 lockdown. The southern state has since recorded five consecutive days of zero cases while NSW announced three new local cases on Wednesday. “As long as a state can demonstrate it can get on top of cases, we are OK with that,” Ms Berejiklian told reporters. “I’m confident other states will have that capacity … they’ve certainly had enough time to prepare for this.”
5th Nov 2020 - Newstalk ZB

Australia has almost eliminated the coronavirus — by putting faith in science

The Sydney Opera House has reopened. Almost 40,000 spectators attended the city's rugby league grand final. Workers are being urged to return to their offices. Australia has become a pandemic success story. The nation of 26 million is close to eliminating community transmission of the coronavirus, having defeated a second wave just as infections surge again in Europe and the United States. No new cases were reported on the island continent Thursday, and only seven since Saturday, besides travelers in hotel quarantine. Eighteen patients are hospitalized with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. One is in an intensive care unit. Melbourne, the main hotbed of Australia's outbreak that recently emerged from lockdown, has not reported a case since Oct. 30.
5th Nov 2020 - The Washington Post

Mexico's health ministry confirms 544 new coronavirus deaths

Mexico’s health ministry reported on Thursday 5,567 additional coronavirus cases and 544 more deaths, bringing the official number of cases to 949,197 and the death toll to 93,772. Health officials have said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the confirmed cases.
5th Nov 2020 - Reuters

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When COVID Hit: America’s Nursing Home Nightmare

We report on how an elder care system already in crisis imploded under the weight of the coronavirus pandemic. When the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States, nursing homes became ground zero. By November, more than 60,000 nursing home residents had died of COVID-19, accounting for roughly a quarter of all fatalities nationwide.
5th Nov 2020 - AlJazeera

Australia's Victoria reports no COVID-19 cases for fifth straight day

Australia's coronavirus hot spot of Victoria state on Wednesday reported zero COVID-19 cases for the fifth straight day as states began easing regional border restrictions, raising prospects of a faster return to normal. South Australia on Tuesday said it would reopen its border with Victoria in two weeks, while the country's most populous state of New South Wales is expected to take a decision on border restrictions later in the day. Victoria last week ago allowed restaurants and cafes in state capital Melbourne - home to 5 million people - to reopen after more than three months under a stringent lockdown but gatherings remain under tight control.
4th Nov 2020 - YAHOO!

Will Melbourne ever be the same again post COVID lockdown?

Will Melbourne bounce back once it has conquered the coronavirus pandemic, or will COVID-19 leave lasting scars on the city, just as the virus appears to do on many of the people who survive it? On Wednesday, Victoria recorded its fifth straight day of no new cases of coronavirus and no deaths after Melburnians spent their first weekend out of lockdown. The pressure is now on for economic recovery, with businesses and the city hoping that people will now be confident to head back into the CBD.
4th Nov 2020 - ABC News

Corporate New Zealand's quick to return to air travel providing massive boost to travel industry

Zoom may have been one of the buzzwords of 2020, but more and more New Zealand businesses are returning to a different kind of zooming: flying. Research from travel management company FCM Travel Solutions - which is part of the Flight Centre Travel Group - shows a staggering 56 percent of New Zealand businesses have employees and executives flying as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on internationally. That puts Aotearoa's rate six percent above the global average. Nick Queale, General Manager Flight Centre Corporate says FCM bookings show that after the first period of national lockdown and compared to the same time last year, travel bookings returned to 11 percent within one week, and 24 percent within five weeks.
4th Nov 2020 - Newshub

Australia records one local COVID-19 case, New Zealand quarantine worker tests positive

Australia reported on Tuesday one locally acquired case of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, while New Zealand registered its first community transmissions in more than two weeks, after two workers at a quarantine facility tested positive. Australia's most populous state of New South Wales reported the single case, although it and northeastern Queensland state said there were six infections among people returning from overseas and in quarantine. The result means that the southeastern state of Victoria, the epicentre of Australia's outbreak, has now gone four days without any new infections detected. With infections curtailed, South Australia said it would reopen the border with Victoria in two weeks. Anyone travelling from Victoria will have to quarantine for two weeks after arrival, said South Australian Premier Steven Marshall.
4th Nov 2020 - Reuters on MSN.com

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 4th Nov 2020

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China changes school curriculum to reflect Beijing's positive Covid narrative

Chinese government-endorsed content about the pandemic and the “fighting spirit” of the country’s response will be added to school curriculum, the country’s ministry of education has said, in a move to enshrine the country’s narrative of success against the virus. The content will be added to elementary and middle school classes in biology, health and physical education, history, and literature, and will “help students understand the basic fact that the Party and the state always put the life and safety of its people first”, the ministry said on Wednesday. “Students will learn about key figures and deeds which emerged during the epidemic prevention and control efforts. They will learn to foster public awareness and dedication, to enrich knowledge about the advantages of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics,” the ministry said.
3rd Nov 2020 - The Guardian

Covid-19: The country's response to community cases hasn't relaxed, the system is just 'more sophisticated'

The official response to new Covid-19 community cases might appear more relaxed than previous outbreaks. But the lack of intensity is simply a reflection of the strides made to improve the public health system, one expert says. Two new community cases – both workers stationed at the Sudima Hotel isolation facility in Christchurch – have not prompted localised lockdowns, as happened in Auckland after the August cluster emerged. “This is another example of the system working well to protect our border,” Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said at Tuesday’s Covid-19 update.
3rd Nov 2020 - Stuff.co.nz

Coronavirus: Christchurch not facing lockdown after new community case - Jacinda Ardern

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed Christchurch isn't facing an imminent alert level move after a community COVID-19 case was detected in the Garden City on Monday. On Monday night, the Ministry of Health released a statement saying a staff member at a Christchurch managed isolation facility had contracted COVID-19. While they had tested negative during routine testing on Thursday, they became unwell over the weekend and sought out another test, which came back positive. While the individual is now in isolation, they did visit a Countdown supermarket on Colombo St in the Christchurch suburb of Sydenham on Sunday. That store has now been deep-cleaned and will reopen on Tuesday.
3rd Nov 2020 - Newshub

Halloween parade in Wuhan draws huge crowd as city continues to recover from Covid-19 lockdown

Halloween revellers in the central Chinese city of Wuhan flocked to the Happy Valley amusement park to watch a parade on October 29, 2020. The celebrations took place months after the city that was the initial epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to recover from a strict lockdown to fight the spread of the coronavirus that causes the disease.
2nd Nov 2020 - South China Morning Post

Europe is locking down a second time. But what is its long-term plan?

Shortly before 11 p.m. yesterday, a waitress passed out paper cups to the customers crowded around the tables outside Luzia, a bar in the lively Kreuzberg district here. “I’m sorry, but you all have to leave,” she said. “God, in 2 minutes it’s going to be lockdown,” a woman at one table said, as guests poured the remainder of their cocktails into the cups. The fun was over: For the second time this year, Luzia had to close on the German government’s orders. All restaurants, bars, gyms, and theaters in Europe’s largest economy will remain shut until at least the end of the month in a new bid to halt the spread of COVID-19. Hotels are no longer allowed to host tourists. Residents have been asked to meet people from only one other household. Florent, the manager at Luzia, took some hope from the fact that Germany was locking down while cases were still lower than in neighboring countries. “Hopefully we’ll reopen in a month,” he said.
2nd Nov 2020 - Science Magazine

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 3rd Nov 2020

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Manchester ambulance service declares 'major incident' over volume of calls

The ambulance service in northwest England, one of the areas worst-hit by COVID-19, declared a major incident on Monday over an exceptionally high volume of calls, especially in the Greater Manchester area. The service said it had received 2,266 emergency calls in eight hours, an increase of 36% compared with the same time on the previous Monday. It said COVID-19 accounted for approximately 15% of the activity. Declaring a major incident is a formal step allowing managers to take measures such as calling in extra staff. The North West Ambulance Service declared the incident over after about 2-1/2 hours.
2nd Nov 2020 - Reuters UK

'Summer's first line of defence': new rules, fines for cafes, restaurants, bars and pubs

The NSW government is finalising plans to mandate QR check-in codes in all hospitality venues ahead of summer, including on-the-spot fines for businesses that fail to use the technology. QR codes will be the state's first line of defence over summer, with the government working to enforce electronic customer sign-in systems in all cafes, restaurants, bars and pubs.
2nd Nov 2020 - The Sydney Morning Herald

Covid-19: New community case in Christchurch connected to foreign fishermen

There is a new community case of Covid-19 in Christchurch, the Ministry of Health has confirmed. The case, reported to the ministry on Monday afternoon, is a staff member working in a facility in Christchurch where international mariners are in managed isolation and quarantine – understood to be the Sudima Hotel, near Christchurch Airport. In a statement on Monday night, the ministry said the person was tested as part of the routine testing for staff in the facility and returned a negative test on Thursday, October 29.
2nd Nov 2020 - Stuff.co.nz

Australia records zero new COVID-19 cases

Australia’s health Minister Greg Hunt said on Sunday that the country has recorded no new daily coronavirus infections for the first time in nearly five months. “Thank you to all of our amazing health & public health workers & above all else the Australian people,
2nd Nov 2020 - New Europe

Australia records zero Covid-19 cases for first time in five months

Australia has recorded its first day of no local cases of Covid-19 in almost five months. Zero cases were reported in the 24 hours between 20:00 on Friday and 20:00 on Saturday - the first time this has happened since 9 June. The state of Victoria - epicentre of Australia's second wave - recorded zero cases for the second day in a row after a 112-day lockdown. Health officials say more restrictions may be eased in the coming days. "Thank you to all of our amazing health & public health workers & above all else the Australian people," Health Minister Greg Hunt said on his Twitter account.
2nd Nov 2020 - BBC

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 2nd Nov 2020

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Trump rallies may have led 700 coronavirus deaths and 30,000 new infections, report claims

A Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research report released Friday says Donald Trump's rallies may have led to 700 COVID-19 deaths. A study of 18 of Trump's massive rallies held between June 20 to September 22 found the events increased subsequent cases of COVID-19. Researchers say the rallies may have led to 30,000 new virus infections. 'The communities in which Trump rallies took place paid a high price in terms of disease and death,' the study said. However, the paper has not yet undergone peer review and has not been vetted by experts in public health or epidemiology
1st Nov 2020 - Daily Mail

WHO chief in quarantine after Covid contact

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), has gone into self-quarantine, he announced late on Sunday, after coming into contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19. “I have been identified as a contact of someone who has tested positive for #COVID19. I am well and without symptoms but will self-quarantine over the coming days, in line with WHO protocols, and work from home,” he wrote on Twitter.
2nd Nov 2020 - South China Morning Post

Coronavirus: Spain's funeral homes strike as cases rise

Staff at funeral homes in Spain have gone on strike to demand more workers as coronavirus deaths continue to rise. Unions say more staff are needed to prevent the delay in burials that was seen during the first wave of the pandemic in March. Europe is grappling with a second wave as cases and deaths continue to rise. A number of countries have introduced new measures such as curfews and lockdowns to try and bring infection rates down. On Saturday, Austria and Portugal became the latest countries to announce new restrictions.
2nd Nov 2020 - BBC

Slovakia begins mass virus testing, in world first

Slovakia on Saturday begins a programme to screen its entire population for coronavirus with antigen tests in what would be a global first, but critics have said the plan is poorly thought out. Some 45,000 medical workers, army and police are being deployed to carry out the tests in the EU member state of 5.4 million people, collecting swabs at around 5,000 testing points. "The world will be watching," Prime Minister Igor Matovic said earlier this week, adding that the measure would save "hundreds of lives". Antigen tests give quick results - sometimes within minutes - but are not seen as being as reliable as the PCR test for which nasal swabs have to be sent to a lab for analysis.
30th Oct 2020 - Times of Malta

Covid: Wales firebreak to end regardless of England lockdown

A two-week firebreak in Wales will still end on 9 November, regardless of a lockdown in England, the Welsh Government has said. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a second lockdown for England starting on Thursday, lasting a month. He also said the furlough scheme due to end on Saturday will be extended and it will include Wales. But First Minister Mark Drakeford is unhappy it was not extended when they asked for it for the firebreak. "Rishi Sunak said he wouldn't extend it in Wales when we asked," Mr Drakeford tweeted. "It's now clear he could have said yes," he added.
1st Nov 2020 - BBC

Coronavirus: Wales won't return to local lockdowns after 17-day 'fire break' ends

Wales will not return to a series of localised coronavirus restrictions once its current 17-day "fire break" lockdown ends, the country's first minister has announced. Mark Drakeford said a "simpler set of national restrictions" would instead replace the current measures rather than the local lockdowns that were previously imposed during the autumn. The current fire break period in Wales - which has seen controversy over what supermarkets are allowed to sell under the rules - is due to last until 9 November.
30th Oct 2020 - Sky News

As Covid-19 Closes U.S. Classrooms, Families Turn to India for Homework Help

Sheri Akerele has been struggling to keep her sons in third and seventh grade focused on online classes as coronavirus fears shut down in-person classes in their school in Atlanta for months. Like many parents, she found her children weren’t absorbing their lessons completely, but she could spend only so much of her busy day walking them through their lessons. Luckily, she has online backup: an experienced teacher who lives in a small town in central India. “We get that one-on-one attention they need and it’s affordable,” she said. “It’s so hard learning from home.”
30th Oct 2020 - The Wall Street Journal

Pakistan's early exit from COVID-19 lockdown helps it win big on exports orders

Pakistan's decision to loosen pandemic restrictions early has helped the nation's exports emerge stronger than its South Asian peers. Outbound shipments have grown at a faster pace than Bangladesh and India as textiles, which account for half of the total export, led the recovery. Islamabad saw total shipments grow 7 per cent in September, compared with New Delhi's 6 per cent and Dhaka's 3.5 per cent. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's administration was the first in the region to ease pandemic restrictions, allowing export units to reopen in April, a month after locking them down to stem the spread of COVID-19. That's helped draw companies from Guess? Inc., Hugo Boss AG, Target Corp. and Hanesbrands Inc. to the South Asian nation.
30th Oct 2020 - Gulf News

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Coronavirus: Europe is 'epicentre of pandemic once again', WHO chief warns after deaths rise by 35%

Paris has seen hundreds of miles of traffic jams as people tried to leave the city ahead of France's new national lockdown. Crowded scenes on the roads and railways came as the World Health Organisation warned that Europe has become the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic once again. The region accounted for nearly half of the 2.8 million new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide last week, WHO said.
30th Oct 2020 - Sky News

Australia's COVID-19 hotspot state reports one case after four month city lockdown lifted

Australia's COVID-19 hotspot state Victoria reported only one new infection on Thursday, a day after it lifted a four month lockdown in the city of Melbourne. Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said that while there were three positive cases of COVID-19 detected in the past 24 hours, two may be old infections. "This is another good day," Andrews told reporters in Melbourne. Victoria, which accounts for more than 90% of the 905 deaths nationally, did not record any new deaths from the virus in the past 24 hours. Melbourne, a city of some five million people, on Wednesday emerged from a stringent lockdown credited with ending a COVID second wave, allowing restaurants, cafes and shops to reopen.
29th Oct 2020 - YAHOO!

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Wikipedia and W.H.O. Join to Combat Covid-19 Misinformation

As part of efforts to stop the spread of false information about the coronavirus pandemic, Wikipedia and the World Health Organization announced a collaboration on Thursday: The health agency will grant the online encyclopedia free use of its published information, graphics and videos. The collaboration is the first between Wikipedia and a health agency. “We all consult just a few apps in our daily life, and this puts W.H.O. content right there in your language, in your town, in a way that relates to your geography,” said Andrew Pattison, a digital content manager for the health agency who helped negotiate the contract. “Getting good content out quickly disarms the misinformation.” Since its start in 2001, Wikipedia has become one of the world’s 10 most consulted sites; it is frequently viewed for health information.
22nd Oct 2020 - The New York Times

The Lockdown That Felt Like It Might Last Forever Has Finally Ended

As if from hibernation, Australia’s second-largest city emerged from one of the world’s longest and most severe lockdowns on Wednesday, feeling both traumatized and euphoric after weeks of shared sacrifice that brought a deadly second wave of the coronavirus to heel. It took 111 days, but Melbourne and the surrounding state of Victoria recorded no new infections on Monday, and on Wednesday thousands of stores, cafes, restaurants and beauty salons opened their doors for the first time in months. “That is an achievement that every single Victorian should be proud of,” said the state’s top official, Daniel Andrews. The collective exit for a city of five million came suddenly and none too soon — Mr. Andrews had insisted on a very low threshold of cases before lifting the lockdown. It ended a dizzying and lonely experience that many in Melbourne described as an emotional roller coaster with effects on the economy, education and mental health that will linger.
28th Oct 2020 - The New York Times

Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, ends its 111-day coronavirus lockdown

Coffee business owner Darren Silverman pulled his van over and wept when he heard on the radio that Melbourne’s coronavirus lockdown would be largely lifted Wednesday after 111 days. Silverman was making a home delivery Monday when the announcement was made that restrictions in Australia’s second-largest city would be relaxed. He was overwhelmed with emotion and a sense of relief. “The difficulty over the journey, when you’ve put 30 years of your life into something that’s suddenly taken away with the prospect of not returning through no fault of your own — I felt like I could be forgiven for pulling over and having a bit of a sob to myself,” he said.
28th Oct 2020 - Los Angeles Times

Australia's second-largest city ends 111-day virus lockdown

Coffee business owner Darren Silverman pulled his van over and wept when he heard on the radio that Melbourne’s pandemic lockdown would be largely lifted on Wednesday after 111 days. Silverman was making a home delivery Monday when the announcement was made that restrictions in Australia’s second-largest city would be relaxed. He was overwhelmed with emotions and a sense of relief. "The difficulty over the journey, when you’ve put 30 years of your life into something that’s suddenly taken away with the prospect of not returning through no fault of your own — I felt like I could be forgiven for pulling over and having a bit of a sob to myself,” he said.
28th Oct 2020 - The Independent

Melbourne cheers end of Australia's strictest lockdown

Melbourne was at the heart of Australia's second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, and went into a second lockdown for nearly four months - the strictest the country had seen. On Wednesday, the city eased restrictions and people were able to go to bars, restaurants and shops again for the first time in months.
28th Oct 2020 - BBC

Midnight revelry in Melbourne as lockdown ends, eager diners say it 'feels like New Year's Eve'

Melburnians have flocked to bars and restaurants and even Kmart in a celebration of the four-month coronavirus lockdown lifting at midnight. With restrictions still on how many people are allowed in certain venues, bookings were made hours in advance by those eager to finally "get on the beers". And over 10,000 people ahd been through the doors at Kmart since 6am this morning, the group's managing director Ian Bailey told 3AW. "I now officially declare Melbourne restaurants open for business," Angus and Bon steakhouse owner Liam Ganley said as he cut a ribbon to cheers, confetti and applause.
28th Oct 2020 - 9News

Australian, NZ dlrs outperform as economies escape lockdown

The Australian and New Zealand dollars gained on the euro on Wednesday as the risk of lockdowns in Europe contrasted with open economies at home, while soft Australian inflation figures supported expectations of near-term policy easing. The euro dipped to a one-week low of A$1.6531, a long way from its recent top at A$1.6827. The Aussie held steady on its U.S. counterpart at $0.7129, just short of chart resistance at $0.7158. The kiwi dollar was firm at $0.6700, having touched a five-week high of $0.6724 overnight.
28th Oct 2020 - Reuters

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How New Zealand beat Covid: Why early lockdown and stringent quarantine kept cases down to fewer than 2,000

New Zealand has been held up as an example by the World Health Organisation of how to effectively tackle the coronavirus pandemic. The remote Pacific island has less than 2,000 Covid-19 cases and 25 deaths, from a population of about five million. That is roughly the same size as Scotland, which for comparison has recorded more than 59,000 cases and above 2,700 deaths. So what is New Zealand’s secret to success? In short, locking down early and keeping the virus stamped out.
27th Oct 2020 - iNews

Long COVID-19 Lockdown Ends In Australia’s Second Most Populous City

SYDNEY - One of the world's longest COVID-19 lockdowns is coming to an end in the Australian city of Melbourne. Beginning Tuesday, all shops, cafes and restaurants can re-open, and strict-stay-at home orders will be lifted. The lockdown was imposed in ...
27th Oct 2020 - Voice of America

Covid-19 lockdown lifts for Melbourne

Melbourne's five million citizens will be able to leave their homes from midnight and all cafes, restaurants, bars, shops and hotels will be allowed to reopen. Australia's second largest city has been under strict Covid-19 restrictions for the past 15 weeks, but after the state recorded its first 24 hour period without any new coronavirus infections since 9 June, authorities say its time for the city to open up.
27th Oct 2020 - RNZ

Covid 19 coronavirus: One new case in managed isolation - health chief Ashley Bloomfield

There is one new Covid-19 case in managed isolation, director general of health Ashley Bloomfield says. The new case, a young boy aged between 1-4, arrived in New Zealand from the UK. There have been no new community cases for six days in a row and the cluster connected to the Sofrana Surville ship and a marine engineer who worked on it has so far been contained to three people. Seven more cases have now recovered so the active cases are 68, Bloomfield said today
27th Oct 2020 - New Zealand Herald

Covid: Melbourne's hard-won success after a marathon lockdown

Melbourne's grinding second coronavirus lockdown began in the chill of winter. In early July, the nights were long and dark, and Australia's cultural capital was confronting the terrifying reality of another deadly wave of infections. More than 110 days later, experts say it is emerging as a world leader in disease suppression alongside places including Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Raina McIntyre, a biosecurity professor at the University of New South Wales' Kirby Institute, told the BBC that Australia's response had been "light years ahead" of the US and the UK. "It is just thoroughly shocking. When we think of pandemics we don't think that well-resourced, high-income countries are going to fall apart at the seams, but that is exactly what we have seen," she said.
27th Oct 2020 - BBC

End of Melbourne lockdown paves way for crowds at cricket, tennis

Melbourne’s liberation from its COVID-19 lockdown has boosted hopes of crowds attending some of Australia’s major sporting events in the country’s second-biggest city. The Australian men’s cricket team is slated to host India in the traditional Boxing Day test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground from Dec. 26, while the world’s top tennis players are due to play the Australian Open, 2021’s first Grand Slam, in January. Restaurants, pubs and retail businesses in Melbourne, home to 5 million people, will reopen from Wednesday after more than three months under a stringent lockdown. Authorities will also allow limited social visits to houses.
27th Oct 2020 - Reuters UK

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Coronavirus: Officials address 'leaked' lockdown plans after social media rumours speculate an alert level move 'planned' for November

Rumours that New Zealand will enter a "planned" lockdown in early November have been squashed by All-of-Government COVID-19 response group after the "leaked" proposal circulated social media. One person claiming to work in education said their superior was at the Ministry of Education during the school holidays and was told: "The Ministry of Health is preparing for a third wave that they have predicted will hit November 6 or 8". "They used the word 'preparing'. I'm cynical when it comes to COVID and the government and what info they pass out," they said in a Facebook message.
26th Oct 2020 - Newshub

Duterte wants government-to-government deal for COVID-19 vaccines

President Rodrigo Duterte said that he would favour a government-to-government deal for the purchase of coronavirus vaccines in the Philippines to prevent the risk of corruption. Duterte made his latest pronouncement even as his Science and Technology Department secretary admitted that in the “most optimistic” scenario, a vaccine would not be available until mid-2021. “Let me tell everybody that we will not beg, we will pay,” Duterte said in a prerecorded address that aired on Tuesday morning. “To the Chinese government, you need not look for partners, we can make it government to government,” added Duterte, who repeatedly said that he received assurance from Beijing that the Philippines would be a priority when a vaccine is available.
26th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Can Fashion Photography Survive the Pandemic?

Now Covid-19 has led to an “acceleration of what was going on before the pandemic,” said Sølve Sundsbø, the Norwegian photographer whose work has appeared in Love magazine and international editions of Vogue. Namely that even established magazines expect photographers to contribute editorial work for free. Glen Luchford, who recently shot campaigns for Gucci and Rag & Bone, and whose 1990s campaigns for Prada are beloved by the art world, agreed. He recalled looking around the set at Gucci — the rare client with a big photography budget — and saying to his crew: “This is the last hurrah. This is the end. There is not going to be another period where we get to take over Universal Studios and build these massive sound stages and do these incredible things. “I’m not even sure that quality is required anymore,” he continued. “Those kids out there, looking at TikTok, are way more interested in someone appearing in 10 or 20 seconds and doing something really interesting on their telephone than in something that is really beautifully lit.”
26th Oct 2020 - The New York Times

Sri Lanka shuts parliament after coronavirus case detected

Sri Lanka’s parliament has been closed after a police officer at the complex tested positive for the coronavirus amid a new surge of cases in the country. Parliament will be closed for two days as a precautionary measure so the premises can be disinfected, said Narendra Fernando, the parliament’s sergeant at arms.
26th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Guatemala health workers face retaliation over COVID-19 concerns

Paty Chavez has had a rough few weeks. A nurse at a regional hospital in the Indigenous highlands of Guatemala, she tested positive for COVID-19, recovered, protested against the hospital’s response to the virus, and then was fired – all in the span of 15 days. “My colleagues are all scared. They say, ‘look what happened to the person who most spoke out’,” said Chavez, an Indigenous Maya K’iche mother of three who worked for four years at the El Quiche Regional Hospital, 137km (85 miles) northwest of the capital. But as is the case with so many public health workers in Guatemala, basic labour rights eluded Chavez because she works on a contract basis, a problem that has been exacerbated by COVID-19.
26th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

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The Trump Administration Shut a Vaccine Safety Office Last Year. What’s the Plan Now?

As the first coronavirus vaccines arrive in the coming year, government researchers will face a monumental challenge: monitoring the health of hundreds of millions of Americans to ensure the vaccines don’t cause harm. Purely by chance, thousands of vaccinated people will have heart attacks, strokes and other illnesses shortly after the injections. Sorting out whether the vaccines had anything to do with their ailments will be a thorny problem, requiring a vast, coordinated effort by state and federal agencies, hospitals, drug makers and insurers to discern patterns in a flood of data. Findings will need to be clearly communicated to a distrustful public swamped with disinformation.
23rd Oct 2020 - The New York Times

Trudeau announces $214M for Canadian coronavirus vaccine research

The federal government says it’s spending $214 million to support “made in Canada” coronavirus vaccine research. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday that $173 million would go to Quebec-based Medicago, while Vancouver’s Precision NanoSystems would receive $18.2 million for development and testing. “This is about securing potential vaccines for Canadians while supporting good jobs in research,” he told reporters at a press conference in Ottawa.
23rd Oct 2020 - Global News

UK sees record third quarter retail sales growth in post-lockdown rebound

British retail sales beat expectations in September to cap a record quarter of growth that took total sales volumes further above their pre-pandemic level, but rising COVID cases risk crimping demand going forward. Retail sales volumes expanded by 1.5% in September alone and are 4.7% higher than a year earlier, the largest annual rise since April 2019 and above all forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists. Strong household demand has been the mainstay of Britain’s recovery from the initial shock of the coronavirus lockdown, when output contracted by 20%, more than in any other major advanced economy.
24th Oct 2020 - Reuters UK

Colombia surpasses 1 million COVID-19 cases

Colombia has surpassed one million confirmed coronavirus cases, becoming the second country in Latin America to report that number in less than a week. The last 24 hours saw 8,769 new infections, bringing the total to 1,007,711 since the first case was detected on March 6, the country’s health ministry said on Saturday. Deaths rose to 30,000 after authorities added 198 fatalities from the last 10 days.
25th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

In the restaurant where I work, Covid has brought out the worst in customers

Waitressing can be a difficult job at the best of times. The hours are long, the work is exhaustingly physical and the customers have a tendency to take out on you whatever frustrations have been building in them all week.
25th Oct 2020 - The Guardian

'Generation Covid' hit hard by the pandemic, research reveals

Young people, particularly those from deprived backgrounds, have had their earnings and job prospects hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, adding to fears for the long-term impact on their futures. BBC Panorama found people aged 16-25 were more than twice as likely as older workers to have lost their job, while six in 10 saw their earnings fall, according to new research. It also highlighted the impact of school closures on young people and added to growing evidence that students from poorer backgrounds have fallen behind their more privileged peers. A quarter of pupils - some 2.5 million children - had no schooling or tutoring during lockdown, the survey by the London School of Economics (LSE) suggests. But, the study adds, nearly three quarters of private school pupils had full days of teaching (74%) - almost twice the proportion of state school pupils (38%).
26th Oct 2020 - BBC

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Bars and restaurants account for less than 3% of COVID-19 outbreaks in Spain since end of lockdown

In Spain, bars and restaurants are responsible for less than 3% of coronavirus outbreaks, a new report has found. A study released by the Ministry of Health which analysed data from the end of lockdown to October 15 said family reunions accounted for almost 40% of outbreaks. The report also warns of the high number of outbreaks with mixed origins, where transmission shifts from the family environment to other areas such as work
22nd Oct 2020 - Olive Press

Ardern urged to review New Zealand Covid measures after election landslide

Jacinda Ardern won New Zealand’s election with a commanding majority, in part attributed to her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in her country. But a veteran epidemiologist is exhorting the prime minister to use the political capital gained in her decisive victory to scrutinise the coronavirus response by her government and officials, and adopt strategies proposed by her opponents before Saturday’s vote. “New Zealand has shown it can be quite smart and flexible, but we can see we’ve got these blind spots and we need to have no blind spots,” said Nick Wilson, a University of Otago epidemiologist. “This is such an unforgiving disease and very few countries are doing it right so we need to smarten up our act quite substantially.”
22nd Oct 2020 - The Guardian

China beats the virus, eclipses India in growth

To keep local transmission at negligible levels, China has been extensively tracking its population through their phones and going in for testing. Perhaps the most draconian step has been the imposition of lockdowns for weeks on end. India has also gone in for extensive lockdowns, but the results have not come remotely close to those in China. Economies across the world contracted sharply when the pandemic arrived but thereafter climbed out of the downturn. In this return to growth, China has shown the greatest robustness. Right now, it is significantly better off than where it was at this time last year. The reason for this is that despite being hit by the coronavirus first, it has been globally among the foremost in successfully tackling it.
22nd Oct 2020 - The Tribune India

Dying of loneliness: How COVID-19 is killing dementia patients

Teresa Palmer is sitting on the back porch of her home in San Francisco when the mobile phone in her hand starts to buzz. A kind, raspy voice inquires from the other end of the line: “Did I wake you?” If the question surprises Palmer, she does not show it. Her reply is plain and swift. “No,” she says: It is past one in the afternoon. She has been awake for hours.
22nd Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

COVID-19 crisis to speed up depletion of Social Security

The economic crisis caused by the coronavirus will dramatically speed up the depletion of the United States’ Social Security programme, a bipartisan think-tank warned on Thursday, outlining how quickly retirement and disability trust funds could run dry depending on the depth and length of the pandemic-induced recession. The Bipartisan Policy Center modelled four scenarios for the current recession, ranging in severity from “50 percent worse than the Great Recession” to “surprisingly quick economic rebound”. What it found was that every scenario showed Social Security retirement fund reserves depleting earlier than predicted – between 2029 and 2033. The centre presented its findings in a brief entitled How Will COVID-19 Affect the Social Security Trust Funds? (PDF), which was published Thursday.
22nd Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Britain tightens COVID restrictions in more areas of England

Britain tightened COVID-19 restrictions in three more areas of England on Thursday, putting them in the “high” category of the UK’s three-tier system, meaning people will not be able to mix outside their households. “We’re seeing rising rates of infection in Stoke-on-Trent, in Coventry and in Slough. In all of these areas, there are over 100 positive cases per 100,000 people, cases are doubling around every fortnight and we’re seeing a concerning increase of cases among the over-60s,” health minister Matt Hancock told parliament. Several cities in northern England are in the top “very high” category, which requires the closure of hospitality.
22nd Oct 2020 - Reuters UK

France extends curfew as COVID second wave surges in Europe

France extended curfews to around two thirds of its population on Thursday and Belgium’s foreign minister was taken into intensive care with COVID-19, as the second wave of the pandemic surged across Europe. French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced a curfew imposed last week on Paris and eight other cities would be extended to 38 more departments, confining 46 million out of the country’s 67 million population to their homes from 9 pm to 6 am. “A second wave of the coronavirus epidemic is now under way in France and Europe. The situation is very serious,” Castex said at a news conference. Shortly after the measures were announced, French health authorities reported a record 41,622 new confirmed cases, bringing the cumulative total to 999,043.
22nd Oct 2020 - Reuters

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Jacinda Ardern landslide is a vote for COVID-19 competence

For governments facing a growing wave of coronavirus cases as fall turns to winter, there’s a stark lesson in Saturday’s stunning election victory for New Zealand’s incumbent Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: Voters really want their governments to suppress the pandemic. A landslide victory means Ardern could govern with the first outright majority since her country adopted proportional representation in the 1990s, with her Labour party on track to win the largest share of the vote in 70 years. “The argument is strong for countries adopting a so-called zero-COVID strategy” like that in New Zealand, a team of authors in Singapore, Hong Kong, the U.K. and Norway argued in medical journal The Lancet last month.
21st Oct 2020 - The Japan Times

Friendly skies: App would help travellers comply with COVID tests

A public-interest foundation is testing a smartphone app that could make it easier for international airline passengers to securely show they have complied with COVID-19 testing requirements. It is an attempt to help get people back to flying after the pandemic sent global air travel down by 92 percent. The Switzerland-based Commons Project Foundation was conducting a test Wednesday of its CommonPass digital health pass on United Airlines Flight 15 from London’s Heathrow to Newark Liberty International Airport, using volunteers carrying the app on their smartphones. Officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Customs and Border Protection were observing the test.
21st Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Socioeconomic factors drive COVID risks for minorities - UK govt report

The increased risk to ethnic minorities from COVID-19 is largely driven by factors such as living circumstances and profession and not the genetics of different groups or structural racism, a report into racial disparities from the pandemic has found. Several studies have shown a disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minorities, and the British government in June promised further work to look into the causes of the disparities. But the dynamics of whether certain groups are more likely to contract the virus to start with due to external factors, or are more susceptible to it once exposed, have been unclear.
21st Oct 2020 - Reuters UK

Cyberattacks on coronavirus vaccine projects confirmed in Japan

Some Japanese research institutions developing coronavirus vaccines have been hit by cyberattacks, apparently from China, in what are believed to be the first cases of their kind in the country, a U.S. information security firm said Monday. Amid an intensifying race to develop vaccines against COVID-19, those bodies have been targeted by attacks since April but no reports of information leaks have been made, according to CrowdStrike. The government’s National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity has urged drugmakers and research organizations to raise alert levels against such attempts to steal confidential information. The U.S. firm did not disclose the names of the targeted institutions, but said it suspects the attacks have been made by a Chinese hacker group, based on the techniques employed.
21st Oct 2020 - Kyodo News on MSN.com

Coronavirus survives on skin five times longer than flu, Japan study finds

The coronavirus remains active on human skin for nine hours, Japanese researchers have found, in a discovery they said showed the need for frequent hand washing to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The pathogen that causes the flu survives on human skin for about 1.8 hours by comparison, said the study published this month in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal. “The nine-hour survival of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus strain that causes COVID-19) on human skin may increase the risk of contact transmission in comparison with IAV (influenza A virus), thus accelerating the pandemic,” it said. The research team tested skin collected from autopsy specimens, about one day after death. Both the coronavirus and the flu virus are inactivated within 15 seconds by applying ethanol, which is used in hand sanitizers
18th Oct 2020 - The Japan Times

Japanese research team develops COVID-19 breath testing system

Tohoku University and precision equipment maker Shimadzu Corp. have jointly developed a system that checks exhaled breath to detect novel coronavirus infections. The testing accuracy of the system is about the same as the levels achieved by widely used polymerase chain reaction tests, according to a joint announcement by the university and Shimadzu on Friday. They aim to put the system into practical use within a few years after conducting clinical research for about six months. The system collects exhaled breath from testing subjects for five to 10 minutes to examine the water vapor contained in it.
17th Oct 2020 - The Japan Times

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 21st Oct 2020

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India Covid-19: From losing loved ones to volunteering for a vaccine

In September, a close friend of Anil Hebbar died of Covid-19 in India's western city of Mumbai after being ferried around three hospitals over five days. Mr Hebbar, who runs a medical equipment firm, had visited his 62-year-old friend, a well-known social worker, in the intensive care unit, hours before his life ended. The social worker was not the only friend Mr Hebbar lost during the pandemic. Since March, 10 people he knew well have succumbed to the virus in Mumbai, which quickly emerged as a hotspot. The city has reported more than 230,000 cases so far. "It was all very overwhelming. I felt this had to stop. That's one reason I decided to volunteer for the Covid-19 vaccine trial," Mr Hebbar, 56, told me. Earlier this month, he signed himself up for the clinical trials for a vaccine being developed by pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
21st Oct 2020 - BBC

China Moving On From Pandemic As Europe, Parts Of U.S. Brace For More

The SARS 2 pandemic is still raging on in Europe. Parts of the U.S. are seeing hospitals under duress. But China, where all this began, is moving along. China’s GDP grew 4.9% year-on-year in the third quarter, accelerating from 3.2% growth in the previous quarter, official data showed yesterday. Market consensus had it growing a little stronger than that — at 5.5% — but it’s better than the rest of the world’s economic progress as the pandemic continues. The latest encouraging data from China gives us an insight into the recovery in store once a vaccine is released and the outbreak is contained.
20th Oct 2020 - Forbes

China's Covid success compared to Europe shows lockdowns are the first step, not a solution

As much of Europe stares down the barrel of renewed coronavirus lockdowns, and a potentially miserable -- and deadly -- winter to come, China is going from strength to strength. On Monday, the country posted positive economic growth for the second quarter in a row, underlining how speedily the world's second-largest economy has recovered. That comes in the wake of an apparently successful experiment with allowing mass domestic travel, as millions of people criss-crossed China for the Golden Week national holiday. China's ability to track and trace cases across the country whenever there is the suggestion of a new cluster of infections has enabled the government to respond quickly and bring local epidemics under control.
20th Oct 2020 - CNN

Remember concerts? In covid-free New Zealand, it’s a reality and not just a memory.

New Zealand is one of a handful of countries to have successfully curtailed community spread of covid-19, having been widely praised for its “go hard, go early” approach. With a population around 5 million, New Zealand has to date registered fewer than 2,000 cases of covid-19 and 25 deaths. New Zealand also boasts an embarrassment of music talent. That ranges from small, scrappy, critically adored bands like the Beths to festival headliners like drum and bass act Shapeshifter, pop A-lister Lorde, arena rock unit Six60, and TikTok-fueled starlet Benee. The latter has just wrapped a tour during which she live-streamed a concert from the 12,000-person capacity Spark Arena. “That’ll be one of the only live streams [that’s not] someone alone in their living room,” Campbell Smith, who co-manages Benee, said a few days before the event. “You can see, in New Zealand, thousands of people jammed together at a concert, legitimately.”
20th Oct 2020 - The Washington Post

COVID, tech advances could disrupt 85 million jobs by 2025: WEF

The coronavirus pandemic has deepened inequalities across labour markets and accelerated the urgency with which the public and private sectors must act to ensure millions of people remain employable in a changing jobs market, the World Economic Forum (WEF) stressed on Tuesday. Within the next five years, automation and a new division of labour between humans and machines will disrupt 85 million jobs around the world, WEF’s Future of Jobs Report 2020 found. Remote work is here to stay and going forward, workers should expect to change careers and hone skills multiple times throughout their careers to adapt to new labour trends.
20th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

India’s Modi urges coronavirus caution ahead of festival season

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the government is working rapidly to ensure the supply of COVID-19 vaccines to all citizens once they are available. In a televised address to the nation on Tuesday, Modi urged Indians to continue wearing masks and uphold physical distancing rules to prevent further spread of the epidemic ahead of the upcoming festival season.
20th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

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Covid-19: First UK airport coronavirus testing begins

The test will cost £80 and a result can take a mere 20 minutes. The aim is to help people travelling to destinations where proof of a negative result is required on arrival. A growing number of countries have classified the UK as being "at risk", meaning travellers from the UK face more restrictions. The authorities in Hong Kong now require people to show they have a negative test result, taken within 72 hours of a flight from London. The rapid saliva swab, which is now available at Heathrow Terminals 2 and 5, is known as a Lamp (Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification) test.
20th Oct 2020 - BBC

China’s economy on way back up after heavy hit from Covid-19 pandemic

There are questions over the veracity of official data but China is likely to end the year with an even bigger economy than it had at the start. Economists at the International Monetary Fund are pencilling in annual growth of 1.9 per cent, which puts the country miles ahead of its rivals. The US, Germany and the UK are expected to shrink by 4.3 per cent, 6 per cent and 9.8 per cent, respectively. After relaxing their lockdowns over the summer, western rivals are struggling to protect their economies from a second wave of the virus. However, China deployed a severe lockdown and a robust testing regime to contain the virus the first time round. Although its economy shrank at a record pace at the beginning of the year, the subsequent recovery has not yet come under threat. At the same time growth has powered ahead thanks to a state-backed boom in new infrastructure projects, including roads and high-speed train lines. This has fuelled the strong rebound in industrial production, which beat economists’ forecasts to grow by 6.9 per cent in the year to September. This was up from 5.6 per cent in August.
19th Oct 2020 - The Times

China's economy is the envy of the world

China's economy expanded by 4.9% in the third quarter compared to the previous year, according to government data published Monday, showing the rest of the world what's possible when Covid-19 is brought under control. The pace of growth was a tad slower than economists had expected. But there were plenty of signs of strength, with the services and construction sectors performing especially well. China's economy has now recovered from its historically bad first quarter, when the coronavirus forced the country to shut down. GDP grew a cumulative 0.7% through the first nine months of 2020, the data show. "China's economy continued its rapid rebound last quarter, with the recovery broadening out and becoming less reliant on investment-led stimulus," said Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist for Capital Economics.
19th Oct 2020 - CNN

China's Economy Bounces Back As Pandemic Is Brought Under Control

China posted 4.9% economic growth in its third quarter compared to the same period last year, keeping it on track to be the only major global economy to record an economic expansion this year in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Economists estimate China's yearly GDP growth could be north of 2.5% this year — even as the rest of the world economy is expected to shrink by at least 4%. That differential will give Chinese companies in sectors ranging from electronics to steel more global market share and greater economic influence. "What you're seeing now is basically China's stability premium kicking back in, in the sense that companies now are dealing with a global pandemic, and many of the places that they would move production to aren't looking so rosy right now," says Michael Hirson, China and Northeast Asia practice head at the consultancy Eurasia Group.
19th Oct 2020 - NPR

China's economic recovery quickens in Q3 but misses forecasts

Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.9% in July-September from a year earlier, official data showed on Monday, slower than the median 5.2% forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll and following 3.2% growth in the second quarter.
19th Oct 2020 - Reuters UK

Surf lifeguards 'expecting huge crowds' at beaches during post-lockdown summer

Ahead of the patrol season starting this long weekend, there are concerns resources will be tested more than ever with many beachgoers eager to hit the water. “The fact that we're not travelling overseas, we are expecting huge crowds on the beaches,” Surf Lifesaving New Zealand’s search and rescue manager Allan Mundy told 1 NEWS. Complicating things further, international lifeguards who often bring experience to patrols on the country’s busiest coastlines won’t be allowed in due to Covid-19 restrictions. However, officials have been working with their international counterparts in Britain, the United States and Australia to learn how they’re keeping beaches under control during the pandemic. “Their public were choosing to swim on beaches that people had never swum on before and that was a real risk because they didn't have any lifeguard cover,” Mundy said.
19th Oct 2020 - 1News

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People sent to nonexistent Covid test centre in Sevenoaks

People with suspected Covid-19 symptoms were on Sunday sent to a nonexistent site in Kent, in what was seen as a further blow to England’s failing test-and-trace system. Council officials in Sevenoaks said the address had been listed on the government website for people to arrange appointments on the national booking portal. However, the mobile testing unit, which was meant to be introduced in response to a local rise in coronavirus rates, was not deployed to start on site today for “an unknown reason”, according to a spokesperson. This led to reports of some people driving around the facility for up to an hour before realising it was not operational.
19th Oct 2020 - The Guardian

China Will Likely Show Covid-19 Recovery Can Be Real: Eco Week

China is about to show the world that its economy is pulling further out of the chasm created by the coronavirus, setting it apart from other nations struggling to avoid renewed lockdowns. “Right now, China has basically put Covid-19 under control,” People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang said on Sunday in a webinar organized by the Group of 30. “In general, the Chinese economy remains resilient with great potential. Continued recovery is anticipated which will benefit the global economy.” Yet even amid the strengthening domestic recovery, the prospect of renewed closures amid spiking infection rates in Europe and elsewhere comes with uncertain prospects for China, which has relied on exports and manufacturing to help spur its rebound.
18th Oct 2020 - Bloomberg Quint

Covid: Greater Manchester running out of hospital beds, leak reveals

Greater Manchester is set to run out of beds to treat people left seriously ill by Covid-19, and some of the region’s 12 hospitals are already full, a leaked NHS document has revealed. It showed that by last Friday the resurgence of the disease had left hospitals in Salford, Stockport and Bolton at maximum capacity, with no spare beds to help with the growing influx. The picture it paints ratchets up the pressure on ministers to reach a deal with local leaders over the region’s planned move to the top level of coronavirus restrictions.
18th Oct 2020 - The Guardian

We must ensure all children return to school after lockdown

Anton Leschen is the general manager, Victoria, at children’s education charity The Smith Family. He writes about the importance of ensuring all children can return to school after lockdown. "For thousands of Victorian families, lockdown 2.0 isn’t just a tough time to be endured, it has come to represent a compounding moment when thousands of young people stand at a critical crossroads. Before our second lockdown, the Grattan Institute estimated students from disadvantaged backgrounds may be learning less than 50 per cent of what they would in the classroom, due to school closures. That was in June. Since then, the majority of Victorian students continued with home learning, and the challenges, especially for vulnerable students, have been exacerbated. And students living in poverty were behind in their learning even before COVID-19."
18th Oct 2020 - The Age

Australian expats in Sweden share what life is like under the country's unconventional pandemic approach

When the pandemic hit, Sweden made the unconventional decision to not impose any lockdowns, unlike most of its European neighbours. Instead, its strategy relied heavily on people taking personal responsibility for protecting themselves and those around them from the virus. Its decision to go its own way made it a popular topic of debate for international health professionals, news organisations and political pundits alike. Those against lockdowns point to it as an example other nations should follow, but others who favour stringent public health measures highlight the country's coronavirus death toll, which is significantly higher than its Nordic neighbours. So what's it been like living through Sweden's great coronavirus experiment? The ABC spoke with several Australian expats living across the country to get their thoughts.
18th Oct 2020 - abc.net.au

New Zealand reports first locally acquired Covid case in three weeks

New Zealand has reported its first locally acquired case of Covid-19 in more than three weeks on the heels of a sweeping electoral victory for Jacinda Ardern’s Labour party, dealing a blow to hopes the country had eliminated transmission of the virus within its shores. The positive test was recorded on Saturday — election day in New Zealand — by a person who worked on ships docked at ports in Auckland and Taranaki. Authorities said the case had been caught early and the risk is contained, while close contacts of the man are undergoing testing and hotels where he stayed are deep cleaned.
18th Oct 2020 - The Financial Times

New Zealand's Ardern wins 'historic' re-election for crushing COVID-19

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivered the biggest election victory for her centre-left Labour Party in half a century on Saturday as voters rewarded her for a decisive response to COVID-19. National leaders were decimated in their strongholds by young Labour candidates who appealed to voters with progressive, democratic messages, and highlighted the party’s success in beating coronavirus. Life is back to normal in New Zealand, but its borders are still shut, its tourism sector is bleeding and economists predict a lasting recession after the harsh lockdowns
18th Oct 2020 - Reuters

As new wave of COVID-19 cases hits, remote work becomes the norm

Gina DeRosa was thrilled when her year-long internship at the Department of Education in Pennsylvania in the United States turned into her first full-time job out of college. But two months into her role, DeRosa has never met her colleagues in person. Trained entirely online by her supervisor, who she had met prior to Philadelphia’s COVID-19 lockdown, DeRosa interacts with her coworkers exclusively over Zoom.
18th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Coronavirus test results must come in 24 hours, says Sage scientist

A massive expansion of testing will still leave Britain struggling to keep Covid-19 infections under control unless the system can inform people they are positive within 24 hours, one of the government’s most senior scientific advisers has warned. Ministers have insisted that they are on course to hit a target of 500,000 tests a day by the end of the month, with suggestions this weekend that capability of a million tests a day could be reached by Christmas. However, Graham Medley, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and chair of its subcommittee on modelling, said that returning test results “ideally within 24 hours” was as critical as capacity in a successful test-and-trace system. He said if necessary, capacity should be curbed in favour of speed
18th Oct 2020 - The Guardian

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Finnish expert answers 7 questions about coronavirus vaccines

According to a survey by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) last spring, around 70 percent of respondents said they would take a vaccine if authorities recommended it. However, many still remember more than a decade ago the serious side effects of the H1N1 "swine flu" vaccine, Pandemrix, which was found to have multiplied the risk of narcolepsy, particularly among young people, a situation that damaged the public's confidence in vaccines as well as health authorities. The director of the Vaccine Research Center at Tampere University, Mika Rämet, said the centre advises decision makers about new vaccines, but does not participate in policy-making. He noted that the centre is not currently conducting its own coronavirus vaccine study.
16th Oct 2020 - Yle

Coronavirus: Boris Johnson losing grip on strategy as top medical adviser tells local leaders it will not work

Boris Johnson’s coronavirus strategy was unravelling after one of the prime minister’s top medical advisers told regional leaders it would not work and a national lockdown was needed. More than half of the population of England will soon be subjected to heightened restrictions under the prime minister’s three-tier regional system, after areas including London, Essex and York were told to move to “high” alert status from Saturday. But Mr Johnson was forced to back down on plans to put Greater Manchester and Lancashire into the toughest curbs alongside Merseyside after civic leaders demanded more financial support for the thousands of workers whose employers would be forced to shut down. And councils in the northeast united to say that they too would reject tier 3 status.
16th Oct 2020 - The Independent

WHO fears more tuberculosis deaths as COVID-19 pandemic continues

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of a “dramatic increase” in tuberculosis (TB) deaths in the coming years, as a result of the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic and a continuing shortage of funds in its annual report on global efforts to combat the disease. The WHO said there were “significant reductions” in the reporting and monitoring of new TB cases in the first half of 2020, as countries imposed lockdowns to curb the spread of COVID-19. Professor Achilles Kapanidis, from Oxford's Department of Physics, said the test would be "simple, extremely rapid, and cost-effective".
15th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Indian cinemas reopen amid fewest coronavirus deaths in 11 weeks

After seven months of total blackout, cinemas have reopened in several parts of India as the country reported its lowest daily increase in coronavirus deaths in 11 weeks. The reopening of movie theatres on Thursday came as India’s health ministry reported 680 deaths in the past 24 hours, the lowest number in nearly three months, raising the country’s death toll since the pandemic began to 111,266.
15th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Coronavirus: France reports more than 30,000 new infections

France has reported a large jump in new Covid-19 cases ahead of a night-time curfew being imposed on Paris and eight other cities on Saturday. A further 30,621 infections were confirmed on Thursday, up from 22,591 the day before. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that tough restrictions are "absolutely necessary" to save lives. Millions in Europe have been told they must live under strict new measures as governments battle a second wave. From Saturday, socialising indoors will be banned in London, as the UK capital and other areas of England will be put under a higher Covid alert.
15th Oct 2020 - BBC

Coronavirus testing lab 'chaotic and dangerous', scientist claims

A scientist who processed coronavirus swab samples at one of the UK's largest labs has alleged working practices were "chaotic and dangerous". He highlighted overcrowded biosecure workspaces, poor safety protocols and a lack of suitable PPE. The Health and Safety Executive has uncovered safety breaches at the lighthouse lab in Milton Keynes. The UK Biocentre, which runs the lab, said strict safety measures were in place and improvements were being made.
15th Oct 2020 - BBC

Fauci warns Americans to rethink Thanksgiving amid coronavirus surge

Anthony Fauci warned on Thursday that Americans should rethink their usual plans for traditional Thanksgiving gatherings, citing increased coronavirus infections and hospitalizations. Fauci, the most senior public health official on the White House coronavirus taskforce, told ABC News that given the rise in cases in almost three dozen US states, “we’ve really got to double down on fundamental public health measures that we talk about every day, because they can make a difference”.
15th Oct 2020 - The Guardian

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Will Zambia be first African nation to default during pandemic?

Zambia moved closer to becoming the first African nation to default on its dollar bonds since the onset of the coronavirus, making it a test case for nations worldwide battling to meet obligations to a range of lenders from bondholders to Chinese state banks. Holders of Zambia’s $3 billion of Eurobonds will vote next week on the country’s request for a six-month interest-payment holiday. A core croup of creditors have already rejected the proposal, prompting Zambia to say Tuesday it won’t be able to service its $3 billion of Eurobonds unless it gets the relief.
14th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

World Bank approves $12bn to increase COVID vaccine accessibility

The World Bank has approved $12bn in financing to help developing countries buy and distribute coronavirus vaccines, tests and treatments. The $12bn “envelope” is part of a wider World Bank Group package of up to $160bn to help developing countries fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the bank said in a statement late on Tuesday. Its implementation will be in support of efforts being led by the World Health Organization and COVAX, and will offer recipient countries a number of options with regards to acquiring and delivering vaccines. The World Bank said its new funding would help “signal to the research and pharmaceutical industry that citizens in developing countries also need access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines”.
14th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Scientists Are Slamming The Great Barrington Declaration’s Call For “Herd Immunity”

As the Trump administration signals a willingness to build “herd immunity” by purposely allowing the coronavirus to spread, major scientific organizations are denouncing a plan they say would be life-threatening and practically impossible. That plan, laid out by three scientists in a controversial document called the "Great Barrington Declaration," calls for only protecting “vulnerable” people and letting everyone else get infected with COVID-19. The authors discussed the strategy in a meeting with two top White House officials last week. This week, the head of the World Health Organization and more than a dozen groups representing thousands of infectious disease and public health experts fiercely pushed back in a series of formal denouncements. “Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic. It is scientifically and ethically problematic,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday.
14th Oct 2020 - BuzzFeed News

G20 agrees to additional 6-month debt suspension for poor nations

The Group of 20 nations, representing the world’s biggest economies, have agreed to extend the suspension of debt payments by an additional six months to support the most vulnerable countries in their fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The G-20 says the extension will provide ongoing relief for the $14bn in debt payments that would have come due at the end of the year otherwise. Wednesday’s decision gives developing nations until the end of June 2021 to focus spending on health care and emergency stimulus programs rather than debt repayments.
14th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Global Covid report: young and healthy may not get vaccine until 2022, WHO says

Healthy, young people may have to wait until 2022 to be vaccinated against coronavirus, according to the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, who says health workers and those at highest risks be prioritised. It comes as Germany recorded its highest daily number of infections since the start of the pandemic. Soumya Swaminathan indicated that, despite the many vaccine trials being undertaken, speedy, mass shots were unlikely, and organising who would given access first in the event of a safe vaccine being discovered was still being worked on. “Most people agree, it’s starting with healthcare workers, and frontline workers, but even there, you need to define which of them are at highest risk, and then the elderly, and so on,” Swaminathan said.
15th Oct 2020 - The Guardian

Countries Rush to Hoard Food as Prices Rise and Covid Worsens

Jordan has built up record wheat reserves while Egypt, the world’s top buyer of the grain, took the unusual step of tapping international markets during its local harvest and has boosted purchases by more than 50% since April. Taiwan said it will boost strategic food stockpiles and China has been buying to feed its growing hog herd. The early purchases underscore how nations are trying to protect themselves on concerns the coronavirus will disrupt port operations and wreak havoc on global trade. The pandemic has already upset domestic farm-to-fork supply chains that provided just enough inventory to meet demand, with empty store shelves across the world leading consumers to change their shopping habits. “Covid-19 has forced consumers to shift from just-in-time inventory management to a more conservative approach which was labeled just-in-case,” said Bank of America Corp. analysts led by Francsico Blanch, head of global commodities. “The result is that consumers are holding more inventory as a precaution against future supply disruptions.”
14th Oct 2020 - Bloomberg

Qatar extends quarantine rules for travellers to December 31

Qatar has extended strict quarantine rules requiring travellers to isolate for up to 14 days upon their arrival in the country, local media reported on Tuesday. “For all arrivals – including nationals, residents and visa holders – quarantine requirements are now extended for all arrival dates up to 31 December 2020,” The Peninsula newspaper reported, quoting the Discover Qatar website.
15th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

‘We have to act’: France’s Macron orders curfews to contain COVID

President Emmanuel Macron has ordered a nighttime curfew for Paris and eight other French cities to contain the rising spread of the coronavirus in the country. In a televised interview on Wednesday, Macron said residents of those cities would not be allowed outdoors between 9pm (19:00 GMT) and 6am (04:00 GMT) from Saturday, for at least four weeks, except for essential reasons.
14th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

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A Dose of Optimism, as the Pandemic Rages On

On March 16, back when White House news conferences were still deemed safe to attend, President Trump stood before reporters and announced that drastic nationwide restrictions — in schools, work places, our social lives — were needed to halt the coronavirus. The guidelines, “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” were accompanied by a grim chart. Based on a prominent model by London’s Imperial College, the chart illustrated with a sinuous blue line how many Americans might die if nothing were done to protect the public’s health. The line rose sharply as the estimated deaths went up, then drifted slowly down until finally, at the far right end of the graph, the number of new cases reached zero. Our national nightmare would end by October 2020 — that is, right about now. Along the way, if no action was taken, about 2.2 million Americans would die. Dr. Deborah Birx, one of Mr. Trump’s science advisers, referred to the graph as “the blue mountain of deaths.”
12th Oct 2020 - The New York Times

San Francisco apartment rents fall up to 31%, the biggest drop in the US

New data released on Tuesday shows apartment rental trends across the US. San Francisco saw the biggest drop, with studio rents down 31% from last year. Detroit, New York, and Seattle were also among the cities dropping fastest. Meanwhile, parts of Florida, Oklahoma, Arizona and Texas saw rents rise. It comes as mass exodus from major cities continues amid the pandemic
13th Oct 2020 - Daily Mail

South Korea mandates mask-wearing to fight Covid-19 as face coverings remain controversial in the US

South Korea is mandating the wearing of masks at all crowded facilities, on public transport and at demonstrations, even as the country eases up on coronavirus restrictions as the number of local infections shrinks. Anyone who violates the new face-mask policy, which kicks in next month, faces a fine of 100,000 won, or around $87, and facilities which fail to follow preventative measures could face closure, health authorities said Monday. The East Asian nation is only the latest in the region to introduce a mask mandate, a sign of how vital face coverings have been found to be in controlling infections and preventing future outbreaks. In many cases, such as in Hong Kong, such orders are largely inconsequential, as almost everyone has been wearing a mask for months now, without being told to by the government, something which has been credited for keeping cases low.
13th Oct 2020 - CNN

India sees fewest new coronavirus cases in nearly two months

India has registered 55,342 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, its lowest single-day tally since the middle of August. The health ministry on Tuesday raised India’s confirmed total to more than 7.18 million cases but said the country was showing a trend of declining daily cases over the last five weeks.
13th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Lessons from China’s ‘golden week’ lustre even amid Covid-19

So far in China, the mass movement of people for 'Golden Week' does not seem to have resulted in renewed Covid-19 outbreaks. How is this possible in the middle of a global pandemic? Having eradicated domestic transmission of Covid-19, mainland China is now the world’s largest “Covid-19 safe” bubble. Both travellers and the government have behaved responsibly. People wear masks on planes and trains, although adherence is less stern at restaurants, shops and tourist spots, particularly outdoors. Mobile apps are mandated by provinces and cities to check that travellers have not been to high-risk locations, including overseas, in the last 14 days
13th Oct 2020 - South China Morning Post

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Covid-19: China's Qingdao to test nine million in five days

The Chinese city of Qingdao is testing its entire population of nine million people for Covid-19 over a period of five days. The mass testing comes after the discovery of a dozen cases linked to a hospital treating coronavirus patients arriving from abroad. In May, China tested the entire city of Wuhan - home to 11 million people and the epicentre of the global pandemic. The country has largely brought the virus under control. That is in stark contrast to other parts of the world, where there are still high case numbers and lockdown restrictions of varying severity.
12th Oct 2020 - BBC

Slovakia imposes new COVID-19 restrictions following surge in daily cases

Amid a huge surge in COVID-19 cases, Slovakia announced imposing new restrictions on Sunday, October 11. According to the reports, from Thursday, it will be mandatory to wear masks in the outdoors in all cities, towns, and villages. In addition, the Slovakia government has banned all public events including religious services in churches. Only weddings, funerals, and baptisms with a limited number of attendees have been exempted, as per reports.
12th Oct 2020 - Republic World

It Looks Like The SARS 2 Pandemic Is Over In China

To hundreds of millions of Chinese, though, the pandemic is in the rearview mirror now. The virus itself is still alive and kicking (along with millions of others), but whatever China is doing to keep its hospitals safe and its death toll next to nothing at this point, it is working in spades. Life looks a lot better there than it does in the U.S. and the increasingly panicked U.K. The defamed Imperial College epidemiologist, Neil Ferguson, who forecasted a million deaths and favored strict lockdowns while he broke the rules to visit his girlfriend, recently warned of an “uptick” in cases and an “uptick in deaths”.
12th Oct 2020 - Forbes

Some U.S. doctors flee to New Zealand where the coronavirus outbreak is under control and science is respected

Some U.S.-based doctors and nurses are fleeing the country because the lack of PPE and coordinated U.S. response made them feel unsafe during the coronavirus pandemic. Some have been feeling burned out for years due to the complex U.S. health system. New Zealand, which led with science, has declared victory over Covid-19 yet again and hasn’t reported a positive case in more than a week.
12th Oct 2020 - CNBC

Coronavirus will cost the US $16 TRILLION - 90% of the GDP - study predicts

Researchers predict that the coronavirus pandemic will cost the US an estimated $16 trillion, or about 90% of the annual GDP. About $4.4 trillion will be due to the economic cost of 625,000 premature deaths. An estimated $2.6 trillion will be spent treating those who survived COVID-19 but have long-term complications and damage. Mental health treatment, for those dealing with the loss of a loved one or feelings of isolation, will cost $1.6 trillion. The remaining $7.6 trillion will be due to the economic toll of lost jobs and those filing new unemployment claims
12th Oct 2020 - Daily Mail

Herd immunity as coronavirus solution ‘simply unethical’: WHO

The head of the World Health Organization warned against the idea that herd immunity might be a realistic strategy to stop the coronavirus pandemic, dismissing such proposals as “simply unethical.” At a media briefing on Monday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said health officials typically aim to achieve herd immunity by vaccination. Tedros noted that to obtain herd immunity from a highly infectious disease such as measles, for example, about 95% of the population must be immunized.
12th Oct 2020 - Global News

Coronavirus pandemic has exposed global leadership deficit, says report

Over 70 per cent of citizens around the globe say they are experiencing the lowest point in their nation's history, while nearly two-thirds say their leaders are out of touch
12th Oct 2020 - Business Standard

Coronavirus: 10 countries responsible for 70 per cent of global COVID-19 cases, WHO says

The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Monday that almost 70 per cent of COVID cases reported to WHO in the last week came from 10 countries, including the U.S. and India. He added that the last four days has seen the largest number of cases reported to WHO so far.
12th Oct 2020 - Globalnews.ca

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Australia Warns COVID-19 Border Closures Could Last Into Late 2021

In a further blow to the travel industry, Australia is warning its international borders are likely to stay closed because of COVID-19 restrictions until “late next year.” Foreign nationals were banned in March to help curb the spread of the coronavirus, and Australian citizens must get official permission to leave the country. Last year, about 9 million overseas travelers arrived in Australia. The largest groups came from China, New Zealand and the United States. The pandemic has seen those numbers collapse.
8th Oct 2020 - VOA Asia

Australia – Workplace mental health and wellbeing in decline amid Covid-19, Hays finds

Approximately 42% Australia’s workforce rate their current mental health & wellbeing as positive, down from 63% pre-Covid-19, according to a survey from Hays. The survey was based on a polling of 4,000 people, released in advance of World Mental Health Day on 10 October. According to the survey, 87% of professionals in industry, resources & mining rate their current mental health & wellbeing as either positive or neutral, down 7% since before the outbreak. At the other end of the scale, 55% of sales professionals rate their current mental health & wellbeing as positive or neutral, down from 90% pre-pandemic. The fall of workers’ mental health & wellbeing fell despite 72% of employers increasing their organisation’s focus on this area during the pandemic.
8th Oct 2020 - Staffing Industry Analysts

What South Africa's teachers brought to the virtual classroom during COVID-19

The decision by the Ministry of Basic Education to shut down schools in response to the pandemic forced teachers to adapt and innovate to ensure that learning continued despite the challenges faced. South African schools are clustered into quintiles ranging from one to five. This was done to ensure an equal and fair distribution of resources across schools. Schools in the lower quintiles are often based in under-served communities where resources are limited, while quintile five schools are well resourced. This approach was introduced to address past inequities which affected schools. Regional variances, therefore, exist in terms of access to computer labs and related computing resources. Although many rural and peri-urban schools have some form of computing or information technology resources, some have none at all.
5th Oct 2020 - The Conversation CA

‘There are no words’: As coronavirus kills Indigenous elders, endangered languages face extinction

The old man knew he was dying. The disease he'd been warning of for weeks had taken hold, and it wouldn't be long now. He looked to his son, who would soon be the leader of what remained of their people. The old man was fluent in five languages, but the one he chose to speak now was one that virtually no one else in the world could understand. “Awiri nuhã,” Aritana Yawalapiti, 71, said in the language of the Yawalapiti, an Indigenous tribe in the Amazon rainforest. “Take care of the people. Take care of the land. Take care of the forest.”
9th Oct 2020 - The Washington Post

Hotspots of resurgent Covid erode faith in ‘herd immunity’

For a short time the Brazilian city of Manaus, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, offered a glimmer of hope in the search for herd immunity from Covid-19. After a devastating wave in May killed about 3,400 people and infected many more, the prevalence of the virus subsided rapidly, leading some scientists to theorise that the city of 2m had reached a form of collective immunity. That hypothesis is now in doubt as a resurgence in cases in Manaus poses fresh challenges to the authorities and difficult questions for the scientists and policymakers worldwide who have been edging towards herd immunity policies as an alternative to harsh lockdowns.
9th Oct 2020 - Financial Times

Young people will 'carry the burden' of coronavirus into the future. How are they coping?

Experts say one in five workers aged between 15 and 24 lost their jobs during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Young people will also "carry the burden" of the pandemic into the future. But amid job losses and cancelled plans, many young people are still optimistic about their futures
9th Oct 2020 - ABC News

UK travellers may soon need mandatory coronavirus tests to enter Italy

People travelling from the UK to Italy may soon be required to take a mandatory coronavirus test in order to enter the country. At the moment, Italy only requires mandatory testing for travellers from countries it considers high risk, including Spain, Greece and certain regions of France. But the existing guidelines are expiring on 15 October and the government is currently debating a new decree to replace it. The list of high risk countries is expected to be reviewed as part of this new decree, local media reported. Drafts show that, following a recent spike in cases, the UK will be added to Italy’s list of high risk countries alongside the Netherlands and Belgium, il Fatto Quotidiano reported.
9th Oct 2020 - The Independent

How effective ‘traffic-light’ systems have been in managing the coronavirus outbreak in other countries

The coronavirus pandemic has reached a second wave, as infection rates continue to ramp up all over Europe. In England, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is one of the leading figures to criticise the Government’s approach to local lockdowns informed by its “traffic light system” – placing the majority of the north and midlands under a raft of fresh lockdown restrictions. While the system has been met with contempt by some local leaders, it is not just the UK who have employed a traffic light-style guide to provide the public with clear messaging on the social distancing measures in place in different areas. Similar systems have been employed in France, the Canadian province of Quebec, New Zealand and Spain to name a few countries, although with varied effect.
9th Oct 2020 - iNews

Nurses suffer burn-out, psychological distress in COVID fight - association

Many nurses caring for COVID-19 patients are suffering burn-out or psychological distress, and many have faced abuse or discrimination outside of work, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) said. Supplies of personal protective equipment for nurses and other health workers in some care homes remain insufficient, it said, marking World Mental Health Day on Saturday. “We are extremely concerned about the mental health impact on nurses,” Howard Catton, a British nurse who is the ICN’s chief executive, told Reuters Television at the association’s headquarters in Geneva.
10th Oct 2020 - Reuters

LGBT Australians at higher risk of depression, suicide and poor access to health services during coronavirus pandemic

As his home town of Newcastle grappled with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, Taryn Dorrough was having a personal battle with his mental health. "I struggled to get out of bed and would then struggle to have a shower and get ready. I found myself tired a lot of the time, and just lacking motivation to get anything done," he said. The recent university graduate said his job prospects and social life evaporated. His existing disordered eating worsened, and he found it difficult, as a trans man, to access critical health services.
10th Oct 2020 - ABC News

Is COVID-19 being used as a weapon against Indigenous Peoples in Brazil?

Today, according to the Brazil's Indigenous People Articulation, more than 27 000 Indigenous people have been infected with COVID-19, of which 806 have died from the disease (situation as of Sept 15, 2020), giving a mortality rate of 3%. This pan­demic already affects 146 different Indigenous groups across the country.3 On Aug 5, 2020, the Supreme Federal Court recognised the failure of the government of President Bolsonaro to deal with the effects of the epidemic on Indigenous communities.3 The latter was ordered to put in place an emergency plan for the benefit of the Indigenous populations, as well as to adopt the necessary measures to remove invaders from their territories (illegal miners and loggers are not only vectors of diseases, but also cause environmental destruction, in particular through mercury pollution).4 Faced with inaction from the Brazilian Government, some nations, such as the Paiter Suruí and Parque Indigena do Xingu peoples, have placed themselves in voluntary isolation since March, 2020.
10th Oct 2020 - The Lancet

COVID-19 halting crucial mental health services in Africa, WHO survey - World

Critical funding gaps are halting and disrupting crucial mental health services in Africa, as demand for these services rise amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a new World Health Organization (WHO) survey shows. The survey of 28 African countries was undertaken as part of the first global examination of the devastating impact of COVID-19 on access to mental health services. It underscores the urgent need for increased funding. Of the countries responding in the African region, 37% reported that their COVID-19 mental health response plans are partially funded and a further 37% reported having no funds at all. This comes as the COVID-19 pandemic increases demand for mental health services. “Isolation, loss of income, the deaths of loved ones and a barrage of information on the dangers of this new virus can stir up stress levels and trigger mental health conditions or exacerbate existing ones,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. “The COVID-19 pandemic has shown, more than ever, how mental health is integral to health and well-being and must be an essential part of health services during outbreaks and emergencies.”
10th Oct 2020 - ReliefWeb

Brazil’s coronavirus deaths pass 150,000 as infection rate slows

Experts say number of new cases falling but rate it still slow compared with countries in Europe and Asia, suggesting it may still be in its first wave. Brazil’s has surpassed 150,000 deaths from coronavirus, according to the country’s health ministry, but there were signs that the rate of infections continued to slow in the South American country. The toll came as Latin America and the Caribbean marked 10 million cases on Saturday and more than 360,000 deaths. The region is the worst hit in terms of fatalities, according to official figures.
11th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Vacancy: Prices at NY hotels down $200 with more pain to come

The Midtown Hilton has been closed since March. Same for The Edition, a brand new Times Square boutique. You can get a room at the Pierre, just don’t expect the full-suite of white-glove services that have made the hotel a Manhattan landmark since 1930. Autumn in New York, a season so inviting that it inspired a jazz standard, is grim this year, with the city’s tourism market among the worst in the U.S. The pandemic has canceled live events like Fashion Week and the New York City Marathon, repelled business travelers and international visitors and blown gaping holes in a tourism market that generates $70 billion in economic activity in a typical year.
11th Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

Australia in travel talks with Japan, Korea as coronavirus cases ease

Australia is in talks with Japan, South Korea, Singapore and South Pacific nations on reopening travel as coronavirus infections ease, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday. Australia shut its borders in March to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and is looking to revive tourism to help pull the country out of its first recession in nearly three decades. While Australia has managed to contain the outbreak better than others, it is facing a second wave in the state of Victoria, where Melbourne remains under a tight lockdown. But infections there have been falling since early August.
11th Oct 2020 - Reuters Australia

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New Zealand's Covid-19 response the best in the world, say global business leaders

New Zealand’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been the best in the world and is the country that gives business leaders the most confidence for future investment, according to a Bloomberg Media survey. New Zealand ranked strongly for political stability, the economic recovery, virus control and social resilience in Bloomberg’s market crisis management index. The index scores New Zealand at 238, above second-placed Japan at 204 and Taiwan in third on 198. Australia was sixth with 151, while the UK and US – despite their high case numbers and fatalities from Covid-19 – were ninth and 10th. In a boost for Jacinda Ardern’s chances of winning a second term in the election on 17 October, New Zealand scored the highest ranking in each of the categories.
8th Oct 2020 - The Guardian

New Zealand’s ‘go hard, go early’ strategy seems to have worked.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who is facing re-election, called the country’s reopening a validation of its “go hard, go early” response.
7th Oct 2020 - New York Times

New Zealand whole again as Auckland lockdown ends

New Zealand is again a country united in its response to coronavirus, with Auckland joining the rest of the nation on the lowest alert level. Auckland was freed from restrictions on gatherings and social distancing requirements in restaurants and bars at midnight on Wednesday. That day three new cases were announced, bringing the total of active cases to 37. Key to lowering the alert level was the absence of active cases in the community, meaning all current cases are in quarantine facilities or managed isolation at home. Twenty-five people have died of Covid-19 in New Zealand, including three since Auckland was put back into level 3 lockdown after a family of four tested positive for the virus on 11 August.
8th Oct 2020 - The Guardian

Auckland businesses hope level 1 will bring back shoppers

With restrictions on social gatherings, physical distancing and face coverings now relaxed, firms hope the much-anticipated normality will bring a rush of customers. Māngere in south Auckland was one of the neighbourhoods most affected by the second Covid-19 outbreak. The owner of local clothing store Pacific Fashions, Vinod Kumar, said it was the worst trade he's seen in 29 years. "Since we opened up the lockdown, things were moving very slowly because most of the communities, big communities, the churches, they've not been operating, and that really hurts our business."
8th Oct 2020 - RNZ

Why These Coronavirus Vaccine Stocks Crashed in September

None of them are considered top-tier contenders to be the first to market with a coronavirus vaccine; top contenders like AstraZeneca and Moderna have already begun phase 3 trials of their vaccines. But each of the vaccines in the chart has some advantages and drawbacks that investors should be aware of. Single-dose vaccines like Altimmune's and VBI's could be more desirable than standard two-dose vaccines. Additionally, Altimmune's intranasal vaccine could be easier and cheaper to administer than a standard injection. On the other hand, neither company's vaccines have even begun phase 1 trials yet. CureVac, a Dutch company, has received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the German government, but its only other vaccine in clinical trials is a rabies vaccine in early-stage trials, which means if its COVID vaccine isn't viable, there aren't any drugs in development to fall back on. VBI, on the other hand, has a hepatitis B vaccine that's completed phase 3 trials, while Altimmune has several intranasal drugs and therapies in various trial stages.
8th Oct 2020 - The Motley Fool

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New Zealand Flattens Curve for a Second Time as New Domestic Covid Cases Fall to Zero

o new community cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed in New Zealand except for those in hotel quarantine, the country's health ministry has announced, providing a boost to prime minister Jacinda Ardern ahead of a general election this month that she is expected to win. Those entering New Zealand have to stay in isolation in a hotel for 14 days. On Wednesday, three people who had arrived from overseas and were already in managed isolation, tested positive for COVID-19 but all patients with the virus in the community have now recovered, The New Zealand Herald reported.
7th Oct 2020 - Newsweek

New Zealand eliminates COVID-19 for a 2nd time; cases surge in Europe

New Zealand on Wednesday announced it has eliminated local transmission of the coronavirus for a second time as cases surge in Europe. New Zealand's Health Minister Chris Hipkins said there were no more active community cases of COVID-19 in the country after the last patients had recovered from a recent outbreak of the virus.
7th Oct 2020 - UPI.com

'We've squashed the virus': New Zealand celebrates as it officially eliminates COVID-19 for the SECOND time and Auckland lowers restrictions from midnight

Auckland has gone ten days without any new cases recorded in the community. NZ declared they were COVID-free in April before a second wave in August. Auckland will ease restrictions to alert level 1 as of midnight on Wednesday
7th Oct 2020 - Daily Mail

What pandemic? Crowds swarm the Great Wall of China as travel surges during holiday week

The scene at the Great Wall of China this past week would have been unthinkable just months ago. Photos of the tourist attraction in Beijing last weekend show massive crowds crammed along the winding wall, pressed together in close quarters and squeezing past each other through narrow doorways. Most are wearing face masks -- but a number of people, including young children, pulled their masks down to their chin, and a few seem to have foregone masks entirely. It's Golden Week -- an eight-day national holiday, one of China's busiest annual travel periods, and a major test for the country as it emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.
7th Oct 2020 - CNN

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Half a billion travelers show China's economy moving past COVID-19

With the COVID-19 pandemic largely under control in China, the Golden Week holiday is putting on display the country’s confidence in its economic rebound and its public health measures. Through the first four days of the weeklong holiday that started Oct. 1, some 425 million people traveled domestically, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, nearly 80 percent of last year’s throngs. The surge of activity stands in stark contrast to the rest of the world — the global tourism industry is expected to lose at least $1.2 trillion in 2020 — and underscores the relative strength of China’s economic recovery.
6th Oct 2020 - The Japan Times

Wuhan sports centre that was a makeshift coronavirus hospital reopens

A Wuhan sports centre which was converted into a 1,100-bed makeshift coronavirus hospital at the height of China's COVID-19 outbreak has held its first game since life in the city returned to normal. As many as 7,500 spectators swarmed into the Wuhan Sports Centre last night to watch a basketball game organised by retired NBA star Yao Ming, according to Chinese state media.
6th Oct 2020 - Daily Mail

Coronavirus vaccine may be ready by end of 2020, WHO says: ‘There is hope’

A vaccine against Covid-19 may be ready by the end of 2020, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said. “There is hope,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a meeting of WHO executives gathered to examine the global response to the pandemic. “We will need vaccines and there is hope that by the end of this year we may have a vaccine.” There are currently nine experimental vaccines in the pipeline of the WHO-led Covax global vaccine facility, which aims to distribute two billion doses by the end of 2021.
6th Oct 2020 - The Independent

Coronavirus cases in Arizona declined by 75% during the summer after mask mandate, CDC report finds

In Arizona, coronavirus cases remained stable from early March to mid-May while stay-at-home orders were in effect and businesses were closed. After the stay-at-home order was lifted, cases rose by 151% from around 800 per day to more than 2,000 daily. On June 17, Gov Doug Ducey updated guidelines and allowed counties to implement mask policies. Cases briefly increased before declining by 75% from 3,506 cases per day on July 13 to 867 cases daily on August 7
6th Oct 2020 - Daily Mail

How do pandemics end?

We are in the grip of a pandemic like none other in living memory. While people are pinning their hopes on a vaccine to wipe it out, the fact is most of the infections faced by our ancestors are still with us.
4th Oct 2020 - BBC

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New Zealand ‘Beat The Virus Again’ Prime Minister Declares, As Nation Lifts Second Wave Restrictions

New Zealand, the first country hit by Covid-19 to declare it was free of the virus before going into lockdown again, is set to declare that it has overcome a second wave of the illness, cementing its position as one of the countries with the most successful response to the virus. Most of the country, with a population of 4.8 million, is at an alert level of 1, the lowest level that indicates the virus is contained, while capital Auckland will move down from level 2 to level 1 by Wednesday. The changes mean that the 100-person cap on gatherings will be lifted, and social distancing will be done away with in bars and restaurants
5th Oct 2020 - Forbes

New Zealand declares it 'beat the virus again' as Auckland comes out of second lockdown

5th Oct 2020 - Irish Independent

Auckland coronavirus restrictions to be lifted from Wednesday night

5th Oct 2020 - The Guardian

New Zealand's Ardern lifts coronavirus restrictions in Auckland

5th Oct 2020 - Reuters

Mumbai restaurants, bars to open today after months of lockdown

Restaurants, bars and cafes to reopen in Mumbai from Monday after over six months of lockdown restrictions because of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic. The dine-in facility will be reopened at 50% capacity and will adhere to several restrictions by following guidelines of the Maharashtra government that were issued last week. However, because of an acute crunch in staff several restaurant owners have asked their workers to return to Mumbai at the earliest and many are booking their flights in a bid to ensure employees could resume their duties at the earliest
5th Oct 2020 - Hindustan Times

'Enormous' planning to distribute coronavirus vaccine in UK

An "enormous amount of planning" is currently going into distributing a coronavirus vaccine, Downing Street has said. A spokesman said that a huge amount of planning and preparation is in place to make sure an eventual vaccine could be sent across the country. “The priority will be the most vulnerable groups and we take advice from the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) on which groups should get the vaccine, based on these factors and we keep it under review,” the prime minister’s official spokesman said.
5th Oct 2020 - South Wales Argus

Coronavirus vaccine will be given to less than half the UK population, taskforce chief says

The head of the UK's vaccine taskforce has warned that less than half of the British population should expect to receive a coronavirus vaccine. Kate Bingham said it is "misguided" to expect that every UK citizen will get a Covid-19 vaccine injection when it is widely released, as they will initially be reserved for at-risk groups only. The priority groups top of the list for the vaccine will include the over-50s and health and social care workers.
5th Oct 2020 - Evening Standard

Coronavirus: The entire nation is going to Level 3 - here's what that means

Taoiseach Michael Martin has announced that the whole country is to go under Level 3 restrictions as cases of Covid-19 continue to increase. Despite a recommendation from the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) to move the country into Level 5, the Government rejected the advice today and instead opted to bring the rest of the counties in line with Donegal and Dublin. Martin said it is “important to understand that we are in a very different situation to last March”. “The virus is spreading because people are allowing it to spread,” he said.
5th Oct 2020 - thejournal.ie

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Booming Wuhan is full of smiles again

The Wuhan Sports Centre, which served as an emergency quarantine hospital at the height of the pandemic, reopened this week with a 10km run by 2,000 people dressed in patriotic red. The Chinese city that was the epicentre of the outbreak is booming again, with airlines adding flights to accommodate a surge of travellers for the first extended public holiday since January 23, when it was shut down as the outbreak raged among its 11 million people. Six months after the city lifted its shutdown, Wuhan is throbbing with life again. Streets are decked in Chinese flags to mark National Day and to show pride at having prevailed over the virus.
3rd Oct 2020 - The Times

The way Italy handled its second wave is a lesson for us all

Now, while cases have spiked in other European countries, Italy is a picture of relative stability. The country reported just 40.4 infections per 100,000 people in the last 14 days. This is far less than Spain (325.9), France (241.8) and the UK (117.9), and even compares well with Germany (32.1), one of the nations that has best dealt with the pandemic. Italy’s death rate is low, too, at 0.4 Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 over the last 14 days, compared, for instance, to Spain’s 3.3 deaths. While the UK, France and Spain have have all had to implement local lockdowns of varying degrees, similar measures haven't been necessary in Italy at all.
3rd Oct 2020 - Wired

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Brazil reports another 728 coronavirus deaths on Thursday

Brazil registered 728 additional coronavirus deaths and 36,157 new cases over the last 24 hours, the nation’s health ministry said on Thursday evening. The South American country has now registered 144,680 total coronavirus deaths and 4,847,092 total confirmed cases. Brazil has the second worst coronavirus death toll in the world outside the United States. Daily deaths and cases have declined significantly in recent weeks, however health professionals are monitoring certain cities for potential second waves.
1st Oct 2020 - Reuters UK

India's coronavirus infections rise to 6.31 million

India’s coronavirus case tally increased by 86,821 in the last 24 hours to 6.31 million by Thursday morning, data from the health ministry showed, as the country eased more restrictions to combat the economic hit from the pandemic. Deaths from coronavirus infections rose by 1,181 to 98,678, the ministry said. The South Asian nation on Wednesday permitted states to open schools and movie theatres. The country’s richest state Maharashtra, home to financial hub Mumbai, said it would also allow bars and restaurants to operate fully.
1st Oct 2020 - Reuters UK

No clear link between school opening and COVID surge, study finds

Widespread reopening of schools after lockdowns and vacations is generally not linked to rising COVID-19 rates, a study of 191 countries has found, but lockdown closures will leave a 2020 “pandemic learning debt” of 300 billion missed school days. The analysis, by the Zurich-based independent educational foundation Insights for Education, said 84% of those 300 billion days would be lost by children in poorer countries, and warned that 711 million pupils were still out of school. “It’s been assumed that opening schools will drive infections, and that closing schools will reduce transmission, but the reality is much more complex,” said IfE’s founder and chief executive Randa Grob-Zakhary.
1st Oct 2020 - Reuters

Influx of returning New Zealanders due to Covid-19 'a myth', says experts

Leaving for overseas has been a rite of passage for young New Zealanders for decades, but Covid-19 has prompted thousands of migratory Kiwis to return. However, beyond the raw numbers, little is known about who exactly is coming back and how long they are staying for. At least one economist says claims that there's a big influx of long-term returnees is a myth. Mark is in managed isolation at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland with his partner and their two children.
1st Oct 2020 - Stuff.co.nz

China contained Covid-19. Now, hundreds of millions of people there are about to go on vacation at the same time

China is on the move again. As October 1 arrives, hundreds of millions of people are expected to pack highways, trains and planes for the National Day holiday, one of the busiest times for travel in the world's most populous country. The eight-day Mid-Autumn Festival break is China's first major holiday since it emerged from the coronavirus outbreak. While life has largely returned to normal in recent months, the upcoming "Golden Week" holiday will be an ambitious test of China's success in taming the virus -- and a much-awaited boost to its economic recovery.
1st Oct 2020 - CNN

China promotes 'revenge travel' to boost economy after Covid lockdowns

Millions of Chinese people are travelling across the country in a bout of “revenge tourism” after almost a year of quarantines, lockdowns and restrictions on their movement. China’s ministry of culture and tourism expects around 550 million people will make trips within the country during an eight-day public holiday marking the mid-autumn festival and China’s national day. Photos posted on social media on Tuesday, the first day of the national holiday, showed tourist spots crowded with visitors, and train stations busy with harried passengers. People complained on online forums that hotels and tickets for tourist sites were sold out or that traffic had made it impossible to move. “Congestion is unavoidable,” one commentator said on Weibo. “It’s best to stay home.”
1st Oct 2020 - The Guardian

Factories Cut Jobs Despite Bounce From Post-Covid Lockdown

U.S. manufacturing activity continues to rebound from the sharp downturn last spring, when factories closed to contain the spread of the coronavirus. A pair of new manufacturing surveys released Thursday shows firms saw solid demand domestically and from abroad in September, leading to backlogs of new orders. The Institute for Supply Management said its purchasing-managers index of manufacturing activity registered 55.4 in September, indicating the fourth straight month of expansion. A reading above 50 indicates that activity is increasing, while a reading below points to a decline in activity. Despite the gains, manufacturing activity in August remained 7.3% below its February level, according to Federal Reserve data released last month.
1st Oct 2020 - The Wall Street Journal

Exclusive: U.S. traffic deaths fell after coronavirus lockdown, but drivers got riskier

U.S. traffic deaths fell during the coronavirus lockdowns but drivers engaged in riskier behavior as the fatality rate spiked to its highest level in 15 years, according to preliminary data released Thursday. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported the fatality rate jumped to 1.42 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in the three months ending June 30, or about 30%, the highest since 2005. At the same time, overall traffic deaths fell by 3.3% to 8,870 while U.S. driving fell by about 26%, or 302 fewer deaths over the same period in 2019, according to the report first reported by Reuters.
2nd Oct 2020 - Reuters UK

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How we need to change global supply chains after COVID-19

COVID-19 blindsided us. Doctors, nurses and other frontline medical workers were forced to wear garbage bags for lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). Grocery store shelves were left barren around the world while surplus elsewhere led to 3.7 million gallons of milk and 750,000 eggs being dumped and destroyed per day, according to the Dairy Farmers of America. Seemingly overnight, the pandemic plunged nearly every industry into crisis. Goods production stalled. Supply chains were crippled. The virus was fast-spreading and unforeseen; there was only so much even the best logistics experts in the world could do. As a global society, we must learn from this moment. It’s urgent that we do, as many top health experts predict that this virus could likely reemerge in varying waves across different geographies for the foreseeable future. As HP’s Chief Commercial Officer, I recognize that the perfect, fully pandemic-proof supply chain will never exist. Every business, including those in the tech industry, have had to contend with the disruption wrought by this pandemic, but I do believe that we can make our current models better.
30th Sep 2020 - World Economic Forum

COVID-19: How to make indoor spaces safer

Ventilation is the introduction of fresh air into an indoor space while the stale air is pushed outside. Whether at home or in public buildings, such as schools and offices, ventilation can be improved by simply opening windows and doors whenever possible. Luca Fontana, a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) specialist consultant at the WHO, told Al Jazeera ventilation is “one part of the big package of infection prevention and control measures” along with physical distancing, hand hygiene and face masks.
1st Oct 2020 - AlJazeera

COVID-19 cases rising among US children as schools reopen after lockdown

After preying heavily on the elderly in the spring, the coronavirus is increasingly infecting American children and teens in a trend authorities say appears fueled by school reopenings and the resumption of sports, playdates and other activities. Children of all ages now make up 10% of all US cases, up from 2% in April, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported Tuesday. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the incidence of COVID-19 in school-age children began rising in early September as many youngsters returned to their classrooms.
30th Sep 2020 - The New Indian Express

Post lockdown Mediterranean cruise vessel docks in Greece with coronavirus cases

The first cruise ship to sail to Greece since the coronavirus lockdown docked at the port of Piraeus early on Tuesday after a dozen crew members were reported positive for the virus, state news agency ANA said. The Maltese-flagged Mein Schiff 6, operated by German travel giant TUI, is carrying 922 passengers and 666 crew . Nobody will be allowed to disembark as testers from Greece's public health agency embarked for inspection. The Greek coastguard said on Monday that 12 crew members had tested positive, although TUI Cruises said that they were asymptomatic.
30th Sep 2020 - MercoPress

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In Wuhan, once Covid-19 ‘Ground Zero’, a new battle has began

Since Covid-19 first emerged at a Wuhan wet market nearly ten months ago, more than 1 million people have died and life has been irrevocably changed the world over. Healthcare services have been pushed to the brink, global unemployment has soared, and families torn apart. But back in Wuhan, once the “ground zero” of the pandemic, a new fight has emerged. A group of citizens are now suing the government for what they say was the fatal decision to hide the true danger of the virus in its earliest days.
29th Sep 2020 - The Independent

Millions in Chile capital emerge from lockdown

Chile on Monday lifted strict coronavirus lockdown measures for millions of people in the capital Santiago, a month ahead of a key referendum to amend the dictatorship-era constitution. Most of the capital's seven million population moved to phase three of a five-step deconfinement plan, allowing the reopening of bars and restaurants as well as regional transport links. However, fears are widespread that a new outbreak in infections could drive parts of the capital back into confinement.
29th Sep 2020 - FRANCE 24

First cruise ship to sail to Greek islands since coronavirus lockdown is forced to dock after 12 crew members test positive for Covid-19

The German-operated Mein Schiff 6 has docked with 1,588 passengers and crew Nobody can leave the ship in Piraeus as testers board the ship for screening 12 crew members tested positive although follow-up tests have been negative
29th Sep 2020 - Daily Mail

New York City to impose mask fines as COVID-19 cases climb

New York City will impose fines on people who refuse to wear a face-covering as the rate of positive tests for the novel coronavirus climbed above 3 percent for the first time in months, Mayor Bill de Blasio has said. Officials will first offer free masks to those caught not wearing one. If the person refuses, they will face an unspecified fine, de Blasio told reporters on Tuesday.
29th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

With no end in sight to the crisis – where do we go from here?

After coronavirus emerged in a market in Wuhan, China, it has affected every single part of the planet. In efforts to stem the spread, economies have been crippled. This is a global crisis – but it is deeply personal for those affected. With the World Health Organisation warning it could be the middle of next year before a vaccine is ready, how many more lives will be lost?
29th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

Scientist behind Sputnik V vaccine defends Russian strategy

Russia plans to share preliminary results of its COVID-19 vaccine trial based on the first six weeks of monitoring participants, raising the tempo in an already frenzied global race to end the pandemic. Alexander Gintsburg, head of the Gamaleya Institute that produced the Sputnik V vaccine, told Reuters that the pace of its development was necessary under the “wartime” conditions of a pandemic but no corners were being cut. Russia has pushed ahead with its potential COVID-19 vaccine at top speed, with mass public vaccinations alongside the main human trial, raising concerns among some observers that it was prioritising national prestige over solid science and safety. “People are dying just like during a war,” said Gintsburg, holding a crystal model of a coronavirus in his hand. “But this fast-tracked pace is not synonymous, as some media have suggested, with corners being cut. No way.” Sitting in his wood-panelled office at the institute in Moscow, Gintsburg said his team had been set a tight deadline to produce a vaccine but that all guidelines for testing Sputnik V’s safety and efficacy had been followed. The plan to publish interim results based on the first 42 days of monitoring volunteers means Russia has a high chance of becoming the first worldwide to announce any data from a final-stage, or phase-three, trial.
29th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

Stretched to the limit, Spanish medics demand better conditions

Dressed in white lab coats, medical scrubs and face masks, hundreds of junior Spanish doctors took to the streets of Barcelona on Tuesday to demand better working conditions as they struggle against a second wave of coronavirus infections. “We’re working up to 80 hours a week and clocking shifts of 24 hours,” protester Clara Boter, a 28-year-old medical resident intern, told Reuters. “Our contract is for 40 hours a week and we’re on a basic salary.” Doctors in her position earn around 960 euros a month, she said. Between chants, the young doctors put down blankets around Barcelona’s busy Plaza de Espana roundabout to stage a sleep-in, highlighting the long hours they have to work. One protester lay next to a sign that read: “I haven’t slept in 24 hours. Can I take care of you?”
29th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Denmark's COVID-19 reproduction rate falls despite spike in new infections

Denmark said on Tuesday that coronavirus is still on the rise in Denmark albeit at a slower pace after the country imposed new restrictions to curb the spread of the virus. The reproduction rate, which indicates how many people one infected person on average transmits the virus to, fell to 1.1 on Tuesday, down from 1.3 a week ago and 1.5 two weeks ago, the country’s health minister said on Tuesday. The lower infection rate came despite the number of new daily infections rising more nine-fold in the past month to a reach a daily record of 652 on Sept. 23.
29th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

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Africa has held off the worst of the coronavirus. Researchers are working to figure out how.

When the coronavirus first began spreading around the world, there was near-universal concern among experts that countries in Africa could be hit particularly hard, with high rates of transmission that could quickly overwhelm health care systems. But roughly nine months into the pandemic, which has sickened over 31 million people and caused more than 950,000 deaths around the world, most African countries have fared significantly better than other parts of the world. The reasons are still something of a mystery — more research is needed, and some studies that aim to answer the questions are only just beginning — but scientists said the success of many African countries so far offers crucial lessons for the rest of the world and shine a light on how inherent biases can distort scientific research.
25th Sep 2020 - NBC News

Second Covid-19 wave could turn cracks in the hospital system into 'earthquakes'

When Dr. Shereef Elnahal walked through his New Jersey hospital in April, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. There were 300 patients being treated for Covid-19, filling hospital rooms and spilling out into the halls of the emergency room. The trauma center, once used for gunshot wounds and car crash victims, was now filled with people on ventilators. “It was really like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Elnahal, president and CEO of University Hospital in Newark. “I have memories of walking around and I would look inside the rooms where that was possible. Almost every person was a person of color,” he told NBC News.
26th Sep 2020 - NBC News

Covid cases climbing again in U.S. while Fauci warns 'we're not in a good place'

Juror in Breonna Taylor case files suit for release of grand jury… Los Angeles Clippers coaching candidates: Ty Lue, Jeff Van Gundy… NBC News logo Covid cases climbing again in U.S. while Fauci warns 'we're not in a good place' Covid-19 cases are on the rise again across the United States as more and more states have loosened restrictions put into place to slow the spread of the killer virus, NBC News figures showed Monday.
28th Sep 2020 - NBC News on MSN.com

Covid: Adults without A-levels to be offered free college courses

Adults in England without an A-level or equivalent qualification will be offered a fully funded college course, the government has announced. The offer will be available from April and applies to courses offering "skills valued by employers". In a speech on Tuesday, the PM will say that, amid the coronavirus pandemic, the government cannot "save every job" but wants to help people find new work. Labour said the plans would not reverse the impact of "a decade of cuts". The government decision comes amid fears that unemployment is set to grow sharply.
28th Sep 2020 - BBC

Covid-19 twice as likely in teens than in younger kids

Teenagers are twice as likely to be diagnosed with Covid-19 than younger kids, according to a report released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings could have implications for educators as they wrestle with how to reopen schools safely, as well as for public health officials charged with figuring out how to prioritize Covid-19 vaccine distribution.
28th Sep 2020 - NBC News

Global coronavirus death toll exceeds one million

The US has reported a fifth of all deaths from COVID-19, which first emerged in China late last year. The global death toll from COVID-19 has crossed one million, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, but the World Health Organization (WHO) says that number is probably an underestimate and the actual toll is likely to be much higher. Some 1,000,555 people across the world have now died from the virus, data from JHU showed on Tuesday.
28th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

WHO COVID Debrief on kids going back to school

Is it safe to send your children back to school? WHO’s Dr Abdi Mahamud explains. The role of children in transmitting the disease is not yet fully understood and scientists are working to understand more, says WHO’s Dr Abdi Mahamud in this episode of the WHO COVID Debrief. To date, few outbreaks have been reported in children in schools. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 190 countries have closed their schools, affecting some 1.6 billion students as per data released by UNESCO after surveying 94 percent of the world’s students.
28th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

Burials surge as COVID-19 cases spike in Indonesia’s capital

Gravediggers at a cemetery in Jakarta say they’re burying three times as many bodies as they did before coronavirus. Jakarta has been the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in Indonesia, where authorities have struggled for months to contain the virus. The country has reported more than 275,000 cases and at least 10,380 deaths, the highest levels in southeast Asia. Jakarta alone has buried some 5,000 bodies under COVID-19 protocols since the virus was detected in Indonesia in March, the city administration has reported. The city now averages between 26 and 28 COVID-19 burials a day, a significant surge since the beginning of August.
28th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

Why India should worry about post-Covid-19 care

When 60-year-old Milind Ketkar returned home after spending nearly a month in hospital battling Covid-19, he thought the worst was over. People had to carry him to his third-floor flat as his building didn't have a lift. He spent the next few days feeling constantly breathless and weak. When he didn't start to feel better, he contacted Dr Lancelot Pinto at Mumbai's PD Hinduja hospital, where he had been treated. Mr Ketkar, who thought he had recovered from the virus, was in for a shock. Dr Pinto told him inflammation in the lungs, caused by Covid-19, had given him deep vein thrombosis, which occurs when blood clots form in the body, often in the legs.
28th Sep 2020 - BBC

Back-to-School Season in Italy

As an American pediatrician who has spent a lot of time in Italy, where the pandemic began in February and the whole country was in lockdown by early March, I’m interested in how children and families in Italy are responding to the current phase of reopening schools. While the back-to-school situation varies across the United States, with many districts still offering remote lessons, in Italy, where I am right now, most children are going back to their classrooms in person this fall.
28th Sep 2020 - The New York Times

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 28th Sep 2020

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Every 250th person on Earth now infected with coronavirus

The number of Covid-19 cases have surged to more than 32.4 million or 0.4 per cent of the Earth's total population - meaning nearly every 250th person has already contracted coronavirus. The current world population is 7.8 billion (as of September 2020), according to the most recent United Nations estimates elaborated by Worldometer. The number of active cases continues to rise rapidly, increasing by about 5 lakh this week. Active cases now account for 23.3 per cent of the overall case count.
27th Sep 2020 - Daijiworld.com

India offers Covid vaccine production facilities to the world

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged at the United Nations on Saturday that his country's vaccine production capacity would be made available globally to fight the Covid-19 crisis. "As the largest vaccine-producing country of the world, I want to give one more assurance to the global community today," Mr Modi said in a pre-recorded speech to the UN General Assembly. "India's vaccine production and delivery capacity will be used to help all humanity in fighting this crisis." Mr Modi said India was moving ahead with Phase 3 clinical trials – the large-scale trials considered the gold standard for determining safety and efficacy – and would help all countries enhance their cold chain and storage capacities for the delivery of vaccines.
26th Sep 2020 - The National

Minnesota marks 2,000 COVID-19 deaths, hits daily case high

Minnesota recorded a grim milestone on Saturday as health officials reported that over 2,000 people have died from COVID-19. The state also posted an all-time high for cases reported in a day with 1,478 people testing positive for the virus. The Minnesota Department of Health recorded 10 new deaths, sending the statewide tally of COVID-19 deaths to 2,004 people. Despite the worrisome marker, the rate of deaths has slowed in recent months after spikes in May and June. Roughly 72% of deaths in the state have been among residents of long-term care or assisted-living facilities.
26th Sep 2020 - Houston Chronicle

Coronavirus: Boris Johnson urges world to unite against COVID-19 and stop comparing death rates

Boris Johnson has urged the world to unite against coronavirus, suggesting it had made nations seem "selfish" and apparently warning against the comparison of countries' death rates. In a pre-recorded speech to the United Nations General Assembly, the prime minister said "the very notion of the international community looks tattered" nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic. "Unless we unite and turn our fire against our common foe, we know that everyone will lose," he said. "The inevitable outcome will be to prolong this calamity and increase the risk of another."
26th Sep 2020 - Sky News

After The Covid-19 Deluge, A Bankruptcy Tidal Wave?

The number of people filing for bankruptcy could set records next year. And, while bankruptcy reform artificially spurred the 2005 record of nearly 2.1 million cases filed, this peak will be all about the reality of a Covid-19-blasted economy. That’s a bankruptcy tidal wave of a different color. So far, 2020 has avoided a surge of personal bankruptcies. In fact, total bankruptcy filings year to date trail the 2019 figures.
26th Sep 2020 - Forbes

Perth campaigner says lack of clarity over Covid-19 measures is leaving blind people unable to shop safely

A Perth disability campaigner fears a lack of clarity over coronavirus restrictions in shops are making it extremely difficult for blind people to visit stores safely. Jon Attenborough, who can only see shapes and colours, feels he in no longer able to go shopping on the high street by himself due to the visual nature of the majority of restrictions implemented by stores. The campaigner has called for shops to adopt a uniform approach to the guidelines to help people with impaired visibility safely navigate stores on their own. “Going into shops was difficult before the restrictions were put in place but with some shops there’s now queues you don’t know about or a one-way system and it’s very difficult to know which way to go.
26th Sep 2020 - The Courier

New CSP Covid-19 rehabilitation standards launched

They apply to anyone with rehabilitation needs– aged 18 or over - who has or has had Covid-19, and are relevant to people at all stages of their Covid-19 recovery, their families and carers. This is whether their care is managed in community settings throughout or if they were admitted to hospital at any stage. There are seven quality standards: Needs assessment, rehabilitation planning and review - Personalised rehabilitation - Self-management - Communication and information - Coordinated rehabilitation and care pathways - Evaluation, audit and research - Personal protective equipment and infection control
26th Sep 2020 - Chartered Society of Physiotherapy

Coronavirus: World leaders must overcome differences to fight COVID-19, PM to warn

Boris Johnson will warn the coronavirus pandemic has divided the international community, as he pledges hundreds of millions of pounds to the World Health Organisation to fight future viruses. In a speech at the UN General Assembly later, the prime minister will warn that countries must work together and overcome the divisions created by the global health crisis or risk it spiralling out of control. Mr Johnson will also make a large financial commitment to the WHO, making the UK the largest country-donor to the organisation just months after Donald Trump froze US funding.
26th Sep 2020 - Sky News

China delivers more COVID-19 preventive supplies to Zambia

China delivered more COVID-19 preventative materials to Zambia. Li Jie, Chinese Ambassador to Zambia, said on Friday the international community still needs to support Zambia as the country has continued to see a rise in both new cases and deaths. He said the two countries have been all-weather friends for a long time and that the two sides have been united in fighting the pandemic since it broke out in the southern African nation. “These supplies have just arrived in Zambia by air. I am handing over them to the Ministry of Health. I believe they will play a positive role in the treatment of critically ill patients and the protection of medical staff,” he said.
25th Sep 2020 - cgtn.com

Coronavirus: Two million deaths 'very likely' even with vaccine, WHO warns

The global coronavirus death toll could hit two million before an effective vaccine is widely used, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned. Dr Mike Ryan, the WHO's emergencies head, said the figure could be higher without concerted international action. Almost one million people have died with Covid-19 worldwide since the disease first emerged in China late last year. Virus infections continue to rise, with 32 million cases confirmed globally. The start of a second surge of coronavirus infections has been seen in many countries in the northern hemisphere as winter approaches.
25th Sep 2020 - BBC

Ranking countries' likelihood to secure a future coronavirus vaccine

As soon as drugmakers began testing their coronavirus vaccine candidates, rich countries moved aggressively to lock in deals guaranteeing millions doses for their populations. A global coalition of international organizations is trying to ensure that doesn’t leave poor countries out in the cold. We’ve mapped where 15 countries, plus the European Union, stand when it comes to their likelihood of having access to a vaccine once it proves safe and effective against the virus. Their position is based on the money they have invested in vaccine research and development, the deals secured with pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines and their participation in the COVAX scheme, ran by Gavi, the vaccine alliance; the World Health Organization; and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a partnership that provides early-stage investment in multiple vaccines candidates.
24th Sep 2020 - POLITICO

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 25th Sep 2020

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Asia Pacific hardest hit by COVID-19, climate-related disasters

At least 51.6 million people worldwide have been doubly hit by COVID-19 and climate-related disasters, including floods, droughts or storms, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). In a new analysis published on Thursday, the IFRC said the Asia Pacific was the region hardest hit by the “double jeopardy” of disasters and the coronavirus pandemic.
24th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

Iran anticipates ‘third wave’ as COVID-19 deaths pass 25,000

The death toll from COVID-19 in Iran has surpassed 25,000, the highest total in the Middle East, as cases continue to surge. The healthy ministry reported 175 deaths on Thursday and 3,521 new cases in the last 24 hours, taking the country’s total confirmed cases to 436,319. In the past 30 days, 5,000 people infected with the coronavirus have died and 80,000 new infections have been registered, resulting in a total of 25,015 deaths and 436,319 recorded cases, health ministry spokeswoman Sima Lari told state television. The ministry said it was only a matter of time before a “third wave” of infections would hit Iran, which according to health experts could be worse than the first two, with bottlenecks in medical care for those infected. Iran has been battling a resurgence of COVID-19, with figures showing a rise in new infections and deaths since a two-month low in May.
24th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

France to raise Covid-19 alert to highest level in Paris and other big cities

Health Minister Olivier Véran will announce new measures later on Wednesday as he holds his weekly press conference to chart the outbreak's progression, the source said. France has reported a surge in daily cases, prompting officials to urge people to limit social gatherings and wear masks in public at all times. In the larger Paris Ile-de-France area, the incidence rate of infection has risen to 204 per 100,000 inhabitants, higher than in other hard-hit cities such as Lyon and Marseille, which have already tightened measures to curb virus transmission.
24th Sep 2020 - FRANCE 24 English

100 N.Y.C. School Buildings Have Already Reported a Positive Case

At least one coronavirus case had been reported in more than 100 school buildings and early childhood centers in the New York City school system by the first day of in-person instruction on Monday, according to the Department of Education. Nearly all the buildings remained open, though six were closed temporarily, in accordance with city guidelines that only those schools that report at least two cases in different classrooms will be shut.
24th Sep 2020 - The New York Times

How Is Italy Avoiding a Second Pandemic Wave?

Italy was a symbol of the first wave of the pandemic. It was the first country in the world to go into a national lockdown, as its hospitals — especially in cities such as Bergamo and Cremona in the north — struggled to cope with the spike of cases and there was a sharp increase in deaths. As fear of a second wave grips Europe, Italy appears to be coping much better than other countries such as France, Spain and the U.K. This is hardly a time for complacency; as Britain can attest, this virus can return with a vengeance. But over the last two weeks, Italy recorded slightly fewer than 35 cases per 100,000 inhabitants — compared to nearly 315 in Spain, almost 200 in France and 76.5 in the U.K. The number of average deaths stood at 0.3 per 100,000, a third of the French rate and nearly a tenth of Spain’s. Italy’s figures are only marginally worse than Germany’s, which has been praised as a model of sound pandemic management.
24th Sep 2020 - Bloomberg

Trump says safety checks for coronavirus vaccine will cost lives

President Trump has attacked a plan to impose tough new standards on approval of a coronavirus vaccine, saying it “sounds like a political move”. Mr Trump, who has repeatedly raised hopes that a vaccine might be approved before election day on November 3, said he had “tremendous trust in these massive companies” developing vaccines, and said they were best-placed to decide when they were ready, rather than regulators. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is introducing higher hurdles than usual for emergency authorisation of a vaccine, which would allow it to be released to the public rapidly.
25th Sep 2020 - The Times

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 24th Sep 2020

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France preparing fresh measures to stem spread of COVID-19

France is preparing to announce stricter measures in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus as cases skyrocketed since a nationwide lockdown was ended, AFP news agency reported. Ministers will hold two meetings on Wednesday to analyse the latest surge, which has seen more than 10,000 cases and 78 deaths recorded as of Tuesday.
24th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

Britain finally launches COVID-19 app in England and Wales

The government had said the app would arrive in May, but early trials were dogged by problems, and developers abandoned home-grown technology in favour of Apple and Google’s model in June. The embarrassing U-turn followed warnings from tech experts that it would be less effective and that it should have switched to the Apple-Google software earlier. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the reworked tool was “an important step forward in our fight against this invisible killer”.
24th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

Are Parisians really fleeing to the countryside since lockdown?

While the pandemic has shaken the entire world, lockdown was an opportunity for some to reflect on their way of life and to decide they wanted a new one out of the capital. The nationwide lockdown in the spring meant two months confined at home - and for many people in Paris that meant small apartments with no outdoor space. An exceptional situation that led many to reconsider their lives and even some to conclude they wanted to leave the French capital. Leaving Paris as soon as lockdown ended is what Félicitée and her husband Maxime decided to do - after being confined with their three boys in their 67 square metres appartement in the 10th arrondissement. “It was the quickest but also the best decision we have ever taken,” 36-year-old Félicitée told The Local.
23rd Sep 2020 - The Local France

Fourth-Largest U.S. School District to Allow Students Back in Classrooms

Students in Miami-Dade County, the fourth-largest district in the United States and the biggest school system in Florida, will be able to choose to return to their classrooms next month under a plan approved by the school board on Tuesday after a marathon two-day meeting. Students would attend classes five days a week, but families who prefer virtual learning could stick with that option. About half of the district’s families chose remote learning when selecting an option this summer
23rd Sep 2020 - The New York Times

Social gatherings in Ecuador spike following end of lockdown

Crowds and gatherings in Ecuador have increased by 15 percent in the first week following the end of lockdown restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), an official source said on Tuesday. "The latent concern we continue to have is the issue of crowds, they are on the rise. At the national level we are growing by 15 percent and in (the capital) Quito, by 12 percent," Juan Zapata, director of the country's emergency service, ECU 911, told a local TV network. Since a state of emergency was lifted on Sept. 14 after some six months, authorities have reported 57,726 crowds or social gatherings, mainly in the three largest cities: Cuenca, Guayaquil and Quito. The impact of these social gatherings will be seen in 14 days, said Zapata, calling for continued social distancing.
23rd Sep 2020 - China.org.cn

Argentina: Provincial healthcare strained as COVID cases spread

From the capital city and into the provinces – the coronavirus makes its way relentlessly across Argentina. Even though Argentina was one of the first countries to impose a lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, infections continue to rise. Recorded cases have passed 630,000 as COVID-19 spreads from the capital Buenos Aires into the provinces. Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reports from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
23rd Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 23rd Sep 2020

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COVID-19: US reaches ‘unfathomable’ 200,000 death toll

The US death toll from the coronavirus topped 200,000 on Tuesday, a figure unimaginable eight months ago when the scourge first reached the world’s richest nation with its sparkling laboratories, top-flight scientists and stockpiles of medicines and emergency supplies. “It is completely unfathomable that we’ve reached this point,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins University public health researcher.
22nd Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

'Bring it on': New Zealand tourist hotspots bank on holidays to ease Covid pressures

Covid-19 restrictions have been dropped and school’s almost out for a fortnight – to the delight of mayors in New Zealand’s tourism hotspots, where there are hopes the holidays will boost coffers in the struggling tourism sector. “Bring it on, bring it on,” said David Trewavas, the mayor of Taupō district – an area in the central North Island that is home to some of the country’s most famed skiing and hiking. “You can even have a mass gathering down here.” He added: “Hopefully the [Ministry of] Health boys have got it all under control, which I’m sure they have.” The removal of restrictions in New Zealand highlights the dilemma for governments trying to balance exhortations from struggling businesses to allow them more freedom, with the views of health experts, many of whom have urged more caution.
22nd Sep 2020 - The Guardian

Filipinos return to work in Australia as lockdown eases

With the easing up of lockdowns, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) on Tuesday reported that most Filipino workers in Australia have returned to their respective jobs. The labor department cited the report of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Canberra to Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III saying, “workers have now resumed their employment which gives hope to OFWs in Australia to continue holding on to their aspirations for a better life here.” POLO Canberra launched a series of online consultations with OFWs all over Australia since last month to reach out to Filipino workers whose employment were affected by the pandemic
22nd Sep 2020 - Manila Bulletin

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 22nd Sep 2020

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U.S. faces a smoldering COVID-19 pandemic nationwide as flu season starts

As the United States approaches the miserable mark of 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus, the pandemic is no longer focused on one or two epicenters. Instead it is smoldering across all states, raising fears that when colder weather forces more people inside, it could surpass the surge seen in the summer. The United States is losing on average over 800 people a day to the virus - compared with fewer than 15 a day on average in Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy and the United Kingdom. Although new cases are down about 50% from the peak in July, the United States is still reporting on average nearly 40,000 new infections a day - the highest number in the developed world.
21st Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Coronavirus: cautious Italians return to football stadiums | News

A thousand fans will be allowed into Italian football stadiums for top-flight games this month, marking a cautious return to normality in Europe’s first coronavirus hotspot. The move is significant, given that a Champions League match hosted by Atalanta in Bergamo in February was blamed for helping to trigger northern Italy’s devastating outbreak.
21st Sep 2020 - The Times

Spain’s Andalucia sees second-deadliest COVID-19 figures since end of lockdown

ANDALUCIA has registered 812 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours and 14 deaths. It is the second-deadliest 24 hours in the post-lockdown period after last Thursday, which counted 25 deaths. According to the Junta, the majority of the deaths have been in Malaga, where nine were counted on Monday, then Cordoba with two and Almeria, Cadiz and Sevilla registering one each
21st Sep 2020 - Olive Press

Coronavirus: No crowds as Taj Mahal reopens despite surge in cases across India

India reopened the Taj Mahal after six months on Monday, with the first visitors trickling into the famous monument as authorities reported 86,961 new coronavirus infections across the country, with no signs of a peak yet. The white marble tomb in the city of Agra, built by a 17th-century Mughal emperor for his wife, was opened to the public at sunrise, and a Chinese national and a visitor from Delhi were among the first to enter. Daily visitor numbers have been capped at 5,000, versus an average of 20,000 before the pandemic. Tickets are only being sold online, with fewer than 300 bought on the first day. Visitors will have their temperatures taken and must adhere to advice to keep a safe distance from each other.
21st Sep 2020 - The Independent

Seoul schools resume in-person classes as South Korea coronavirus cases dip

Schools in the South Korean capital Seoul and nearby areas resumed in-person classes for the first time in almost a month on Monday after daily coronavirus cases dropped to the lowest levels since mid-August. Students returned to schools under a hybrid schedule of in-person and online classes to limit the number of people at schools at any given time. Students will attend in-person classes once or twice a week.
21st Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Relief as much of New Zealand eases out of coronavirus restrictions

Ardern eases NZ coronavirus lockdown as new mystery case investigatedSydney Morning HeraldNew Zealand lockdown: Jacinda Ardern announces lifting of all restrictions outside AucklandThe IndependentJacinda Ardern announces New Zealand to ease coronavirus restrictions againABC News‘Mystery’ COVID cases have New Zealand contact tracers stumpedThe New DailyView Full coverage on Google News
21st Sep 2020 - The Guardian

India's Taj Mahal gets first visitors even as coronavirus infections climb

India reopened its famed monument to love, the Taj Mahal, with the first visitors trickling in on Monday, as authorities reported 86,961 new coronavirus infections, with no signs of a peak yet. A Chinese national and a visitor from Delhi were among the first to step into the white marble tomb built by a 17th-century Mughal emperor for his wife when it opened at sunrise, ending six months of closure. Daily visitor numbers have been capped at 5,000, versus an average of 20,000 before the pandemic. Tickets are only being sold online, with fewer than 300 bought on the first day.
21st Sep 2020 - swissinfo.ch

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 21st Sep 2020

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Australia heads for lowest virus count in three months

Australia looked set to record its lowest daily increase in new coronavirus cases in three months on Sunday as a hard lockdown in the city of Melbourne brought the country’s virus epicentre down sharply. The second-most populous state Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital, reported 14 new infections in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, down from 21 new cases the day prior and its lowest since June 19. That put Victoria, which has spent months under lockdown to slow a second wave of infections, on track to meet a target of keeping average daily increases below 50 by Sept. 28 when the authorities have said they may lift restrictions.
20th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Russia Is Slow to Administer Virus Vaccine Despite Kremlin’s Approval

In one example of the limited scope of distribution, the company financing the vaccine pointed to a shipment sent this past week to the Crimean Peninsula. The delivery contained doses for 21 people in a region with two million. The Russian Ministry of Health has not said how many people have been vaccinated in all of Russia. The minister, Mikhail Murashko, said last weekend that the first small shipments was being delivered this past week to the Russian provinces.
20th Sep 2020 - The New York Times

India's coronavirus infections surge to 5.4 million

India’s coronavirus case tally surged to 5.4 million as it added 92,605 new infections in the last 24 hours, data from the federal health ministry showed on Sunday. The country has posted the highest single-day caseload in the world since early August, and lags behind only the United States, which has 6.7 million cases in terms of total infections.
20th Sep 2020 - Reuters on MSN.com

Coronavirus: Could smaller nations lose out in global vaccine programme?

Hailed as a project to help the world tackle coronavirus as one, the global vaccine alliance has now secured the commitments of more than 170 countries. But behind the scenes, some smaller nations are concerned by the initiative’s shortfalls and lack of clarity, fearing that they could be left behind as world powers take precedence. Co-led by the Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi) and the World Health Organisation, the Covax Facility was established in April “to secure access to safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines” through a portfolio of candidates.
19th Sep 2020 - The Independent

EU to finance 88M coronavirus vaccine doses for poor countries

The EU is willing to invest in some 88 million doses of coronavirus vaccines for poor countries as part of its participation in a global effort to secure and equitably distribute immunizations, the Commission said Friday. The Commission and the EU 27, under the banner of “Team Europe,” will contribute to the COVAX Facility with an initial €230 million in cash through a loan from the European Investment Bank. That sum amounts to reserves or options to buy 88 million doses, and the EU “would transfer these” to eligible low-and middle income countries, a press release said.
19th Sep 2020 - POLITICO

Coronavirus: PM does not want another lockdown but says second wave 'is coming'

Boris Johnson has said he does not want to put the country in another national lockdown but warned the government may need to "intensify things to help bring the rate of infections down". He added: "We're now seeing a second wave coming in... clearly we are going to keep everything under review." Calling the second wave "inevitable", he said: "I don't want to get to a second national lockdown at all." But he also said: "As the disease progresses, of course we're going to have to take further measures."
19th Sep 2020 - Sky News

A&E boss fears being overwhelmed by second coronavirus wave & effects of lockdown

A hospital A&E chief has said she fears being overwhelmed not just by a second wave of coronavirus — but also by the knock-on effects of the first. Dr Ann-Marie Morris, of the Royal Stoke University Hospital, said she was seeing a rise in patients with alcohol-related conditions as well as more victims of violent crime.
19th Sep 2020 - The Sun

Mexico reports 5,167 new coronavirus cases, 455 new deaths

Mexico’s health ministry on Saturday reported 5,167 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the country, bringing the total to 694,121 cases, and 455 new deaths, for a cumulative death toll of 73,258. Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell has said the real number of cases in the country is significantly higher.
19th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Football: Italy to allow 1000 fans at Serie A games from Sunday

Italy will allow up to 1,000 supporters to attend top flight Serie A soccer matches from Sunday (Sep 20) following an agreement between the regions and various government departments, sports minister Vincenzo Spadafora said on Saturday. The regions of Emilia Romagna - home to Parma, Sassuolo and Bologna - and Veneto - where Verona are based - had already announced that fans could watch matches in their jurisdiction but Spadafora said the measure had been extended to nationwide. Spectators have been barred from Serie A matches since March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
19th Sep 2020 - CNA

Lockdown Exit - COVID-19 Lockdown Exit Analysis - 18th Sep 2020

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One in 7 reported COVID-19 infections is among health workers, WHO says

One in seven cases of COVID-19 reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) is a health worker and in some countries that figure rises to one in three, the agency said on Thursday. The WHO called for frontline medical workers to be provided with protective equipment to prevent them from being infected with the novel coronavirus, and potentially spreading it to their patients and families. “Globally around 14% of COVID cases reported to the WHO are among health workers and in some countries it’s as much as 35%,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
18th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Latin Americans seek more time to join COVAX vaccine facility

Several Latin American countries have informed the World Health Organization (WHO) they intend to request more time to sign up for its global COVID-19 vaccine facility known as COVAX, an official at the WHO's regional branch said on Thursday. Countries have until midnight on Friday to formalize legally-binding commitments to COVAX, a mechanism for pooled procurement and equitable distribution of eventual vaccines. The requests for an extension to the deadline will be sent directly to the GAVI Alliance, the COVAX secretariat, the official at the Pan-American Health Organization said. A representative for GAVI said by email that details of which nations joined COVAX will only be made public after the deadline.
18th Sep 2020 - Thomson Reuters Foundation News

Canada could lose ability to manage COVID-19 cases, says chief medical officer

Canada could lose its ability to manage the coronavirus pandemic due to a worrying recent spike in new COVID-19 cases, the country's top medical officer said on Thursday. The warning from Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam is the clearest indication yet of how worried authorities are about the potential for the outbreak to spiral out of control. An average of 779 new cases had been reported daily during the most recent week, more than double the level in July, Tam said. Officials in major provinces blame social gatherings for the spike. "The ongoing increase in new cases being reported daily continues to give cause for concern," Tam said in a statement. "With continued circulation of the virus, the situation could change quickly and we could lose the ability to keep COVID-19 cases at manageable levels."
18th Sep 2020 - YAHOO!

School closures are inevitable if teachers and pupils cannot get Covid-19 tests

As executive head of an alternative provision school and two social, emotional and mental health schools (SEMH), I know from experience that the start of a new academic year brings its challenges. Pupils can take time to settle back into school life after the summer break and routines can take time to be established as well as welcoming many new children and all the issues that come with that. But in my 24-year teaching career, never before have I experienced such a difficult and frankly chaotic start to the school year on a national scale. Our teaching teams have worked tirelessly over the summer to make sure our schools are as safe as they possibly can be, meeting all government “Covid-safe" guidelines. We have introduced meticulous handwashing, created one-way systems, re-arranged classrooms, and ensured social distancing in some form or other where we can.
17th Sep 2020 - The Independent

Business daily - How the French economy is faring six months after the lockdown order

It's been six months since France went into lockdown over the coronvirus pandemic, tipping the economy into its worst recession since World War II. How bad was the damage, and what hopes are there for a recovery? Also today, we look at the divisions within the French government over a proposed increase in environmental taxes on flying.
17th Sep 2020 - FRANCE 24

‘You could see it was really serious’: France’s lockdown, six months on

On March 17, 2020, the day after Emmanuel Macron’s famous address to the nation, lockdown measures to fight the spread of Covid-19 came into force in France. Six months on, people remember the surprise and anguish they felt during this unprecedented historical moment. By mid-March the French government needed to act to prevent coronavirus infections spiraling out of control. Consequently, the president addressed the country on March 16, telling the French people that “from noon tomorrow, for 15 days at least, trips outside the home will be reduced greatly”. The lockdown came into force the subsequent day. The aim was to reduce French people’s interactions as much as possible: “The message is clear – stay home!” the then Interior Minister Christophe Castaner declared after Macron’s speech. Everyone lived through this moment in his or her own way – without knowing that these “15 days at least” would in fact last for 55 days, ending on May 11.
17th Sep 2020 - FRANCE 24 English

Why India’s Covid problem could be bigger than we think

India is approaching the ninth month of the coronavirus pandemic with more than five million confirmed cases - the second-highest in the world after the US - and more than 80,000 reported deaths. Infection is surging through the country in a "step-ladder spiral", a government scientist told me. The only "consolation" is a death rate - currently 1.63% - that's lower than many countries with a high caseload. The increase in reported cases has partly to do with increased testing - but the speed at which the virus is spreading is worrying experts. Here's why. It took 170 days for India to reach the first million cases. The last million cases took only 11 days. Average daily cases have shot up from 62 in April to more than 87,000 in September. In the past week, India has recorded more than 90,000 cases and 1,000 deaths every day. Seven states are worst affected - accounting for about 48% of India's population.
17th Sep 2020 - BBC

New Zealand officially in recession as second-quarter GDP posts record decline

New Zealand fell into its deepest economic slump on record in the second quarter as its battle against the coronavirus pandemic paralysed business activity, official data showed on Thursday.
17th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

A shark and mermaid love affair: surreal Burberry show kicks off London Fashion Week

London Fashion Week kicked off on Thursday in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic with Britain’s Burberry putting on a live virtual display of its latest collection which broke with the traditional catwalk show.
17th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

France to implement extra COVID measures in two new cities

France is to implement extra measures to curb the COVID-19 epidemic in the cities of Lyon and Nice, the health minister said, adding to the three other regions deemed as virus “red zones” where additional measures are already in place. The minister, Olivier Veran, did not say what those measures would be, but that local officials in Lyon and Nice would have until the weekend to submit their plans for extra measures to the government in Paris. France has this month seen a resurgence in the number of virus cases, surpassing the daily record reached earlier this year. Numbers in hospital and intensive care with COVID-19 are climbing too, though they are still a long way short of the peak reached in the spring.
17th Sep 2020 - Reuters

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Coronavirus in Scotland: Almost half of over-50s ‘less confident about going to shops due to Covid-19’

Some 35% of respondents said they are not comfortable visiting friends, 62% are less confident to eat out and 63% are worried about using public transport. There has also been an increase in the number of people experiencing loneliness, the charity said. Three in ten (30%) respondents who live alone said they have spent too long on their own and just over one in five (22%) said they feel lonely and isolated – more than three times the figure for those living with others.
16th Sep 2020 - The Scotsman

Spain’s economy faces long-lasting pandemic drag, warns central bank

Spain’s economy will struggle to recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic to such an extent that it will still be as much as 6 per cent smaller at the end of 2022 than it was before the crisis hit, according to the Bank of Spain. In a grim set of economic projections released on Wednesday, the central bank highlighted the destructive impact of both the initial coronavirus outbreak and of the resurgence in infection rates following the end of the country’s lockdown in June. Spain’s economy contracted a record 18.5 per cent in the second quarter of this year compared with the previous three months, following a 5.2 per cent first-quarter contraction.
16th Sep 2020 - The Financial Times

Australian industry still caught in a post-lockdown slump

Excess capacity, weak investment and low profit expectations continue to hurt Australia’s manufacturing sector as a result of pandemic-related restrictions, a survey of industrial trends has found. The Australian Chamber-Westpac Survey of Industrial Trends indicates that business conditions remained weak in the September quarter; with investment, profit and employment expectations low and production lower than capacity.
16th Sep 2020 - Australian Times

As Covid-19 Cases Rise, Europe Enters ‘Living-With-the-Virus Phase’

Europe’s leaders choose targeted measures over nationwide lockdowns, even as cases rise. In the early days of the pandemic, President Emmanuel Macron exhorted the French to wage “war” against an invisible enemy. Today, his message is to “learn how to live with the virus.’’
16th Sep 2020 - New York Times

'Eat Out to Help Out' scheme pushes UK inflation to near five-year low

A hefty drop in meal prices, spurred by Britain’s scheme to support the hospitality sector through the COVID-19 pandemic, helped to push inflation down last month to its lowest rate in almost five years. Consumer prices rose by 0.2% in annual terms in August, the smallest increase since December 2015 and a sharp slowdown from July’s 1.0% increase, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Wednesday. A Reuters poll of economists had pointed to a reading of 0.0%. Discounts for more than 100 million meals were claimed Last month through the government’s “Eat Out to Help Out” programme, which offered diners a state-funded price reduction of up to 10 pounds ($12.89).
16th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Top medical expert says Ontario needs smaller classes as COVID-19 cases accelerate

Classes in Canada’s high risk schools should ideally have 20 or fewer students so children can maintain safe distance from each other, a top doctor who advised the government of Ontario on school reopening said, as sometimes crowded classes resumed in the midst of a spike in COVID-19 cases. Dr Ronald Cohn, president of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, is one author of two reports that Canada’s most populous province cited repeatedly in drafting back to school plans. Cohn said much depends on the size of classrooms - some can accommodate only 15, while others may be large enough to teach 18 or 20 children, but likely not many more than that.
16th Sep 2020 - Reuters

US outlines sweeping plan to provide free COVID-19 vaccines

The federal government outlined a sweeping plan Wednesday to make vaccines for COVID-19 available for free to all Americans, even as polls show a strong undercurrent of scepticism rippling across the land. In a report to Congress and an accompanying "playbook" for states and localities, federal health agencies and the Defense Department sketched out complex plans for a vaccination campaign to begin gradually in January or possibly later this year, eventually ramping up to reach any American who wants a shot. The Pentagon is involved with the distribution of vaccines, but civilian health workers will be the ones giving shots.
16th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

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Decision time for Europe as virus surges, WHO warns

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that Europe was facing decision time about tackling Covid-19 as case numbers hit record highs, children return to school and summer recedes. WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said it was time to “stop looking for unicorns” and instead take hard decisions to protect those most vulnerable and keep youngsters in education — but inevitably see others lose out. “Europe is facing that moment as Europe enters into a season in which people will begin to come back indoors. The pressure of infection will grow, no question,” Ryan told a virtual press conference.
16th Sep 2020 - Manila Bulletin

U.K. unemployment rose in July despite lockdown lifting, with more job losses likely

Unemployment in the U.K. has risen in the three months to July, the latest official data published Tuesday showed, despite this period marking the beginning of looser restrictions. The headline unemployment rate for May to July stood at 4.1%, up from the 3.9% figure seen in the previous three month period, which covered the start of the U.K.‘s lockdown that began in late March, the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. Estimates indicated that 32.98 million people aged 16 years and over were in employment between May and July, 202,000 more than a year earlier, but down 12,000 from the previous quarter. The annual increase was mainly driven by more women in employment, the ONS noted.
15th Sep 2020 - CNBC

ANALYSIS: Has crime in France spiralled out of control since lockdown?

As a ferocious debate over whether French society has descended towards "savagery" and gang culture has dominated headlines in France the past weeks, we look at whether crime rates really are on the rise since lockdown ended. The word ensauvagement has dominated news headlines in France the past weeks. The term, which could be translated as "a descent into savagery", is not new. It has been a favourite of France’s far-right for years and in 2002, then Front National (now Rassemblement National) party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen used it repeatedly during his presidential campaign. This time it was not a far-right party member, but Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin who brought it back into public discourse. “We need to stop the ensauvagement (descent into savagery) of a certain part of society," Darmanin told Le Figaro in late July.
15th Sep 2020 - The Local France

Relief and fear as Portuguese students go back to school

Wearing masks and trying to keep a safe distance, more than a million pupils returned to schools across Portugal on Monday, a long-awaited moment for many after students were forced in March to learn remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the Maria Amalia high school in Lisbon teenagers were called into the classroom one by one and asked to disinfect their hands, while windows were left open. Standing next to her son as they waited outside, Alexandra Borges said she feared there would be new infections at school but going back to in-person classes was essential for pupils of all ages, including her son Pedro, who brought hand sanitizer inside his backpack.
15th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

UPDATE 1-Fuel demand rises as schools open, commuters shun public transport

Traffic picked up in cities across the globe as the summer season ended and schools opened, giving a boost to fuel demand, but the prospect of recovery remained weak as many commuters still worked from home and vehicle sales were down. The reliance on isolated forms of travel including private cars seemed to be the main factor boosting demand, analysts and traders said, as most people avoided public transport for fear of the coronavirus. Road traffic in New York, London and Paris was on a slow but steady recovery, data provided to Reuters by location technology company TomTom showed.
15th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

UK jobless rate rises for first time since COVID-19 lockdown

Britain’s unemployment rate rose for the first time since the coronavirus lockdown began in March, prompting fresh calls for finance minister Rishi Sunak to extend a job subsidy programme which is due to expire next month. The unemployment rate increased to 4.1% in the three months to July from the 3.9% level it had clung to since early 2020, in line with the average forecast in a Reuters poll of economists. Sunak’s coronavirus job subsidy scheme has shielded millions of workers, and the number of people in employment fell less than feared in the figures published on Tuesday.
15th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Greece tightens restrictions in Athens as COVID-19 spreads

Greek authorities on Tuesday tightened restrictions to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the greater Athens area, saying the pandemic was showing “worrying signs of resilience”. Health authorities reported 310 new confirmed COVID-19 infections on Tuesday and three deaths, bringing the total number since the first coronavirus case was detected on Feb. 25 to 13,730 and deaths to 313. “The prefecture of Attica is now between a moderate to high epidemiological risk. There is an increase in the occupancy of intensive care beds,” Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Hardalias told reporters
15th Sep 2020 - Reuters on MSN.com

U.S. COVID-19 death analysis shows greater toll on Black, Hispanic youth: CDC

A disproportionate percentage of U.S. COVID-19 deaths have been recorded among Black and Hispanic people younger than 21, according to a U.S. study, a reflection of the racial and ethnic make-up of essential workers who have more exposure to COVID-19. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that from Feb. 12 through July 31, there were 121 deaths among people younger than the age of 21 in 27 states. Hispanic, Black, and non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaskan Native people accounted for about 75% of the deaths in that age group, even though they represent 41% of the U.S. population aged under 21.
15th Sep 2020 - Reuters

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UK's autumn Covid-19 redundancies could exceed 700,000

Close to half a million redundancies are likely to be announced in the autumn, although the number could end up exceeding 700,000, according to a study that lays bare the scale of the Covid-19 jobs crisis facing the UK. These job cuts are on top of 240,000 redundancies officially recorded by the government up until June. That means the total redundancy figure for 2020 could top one million.
14th Sep 2020 - The Guardian

Older teachers in Italy fear Covid-19 risks as schools return

Older Italian teachers and those with underlying illnesses fear the reopening of schools in Italy this week could pose a serious threat to their health. Millions of children will return to classrooms across 14 Italian regions on Monday, more than six months after schools were closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. While teachers in other countries have had similar concerns over the risks, Italy stands out for having the oldest teaching workforce in the EU. A report by the OECD published on Tuesday showed that more than half of primary and secondary school teachers are over the age of 50, and 17% are over 60. At the same time, about 13,000 teaching and non-teaching staff will not immediately return to school after testing positive for Covid-19 antibodies as part of a blanket screening carried out last week, leaving many schools understaffed.
14th Sep 2020 - The Guardian

Wetherspoons says 66 staff have tested positive for Covid-19

JD Wetherspoon has said 66 employees out of its workforce of more than 41,000 have tested positive for Covid-19 as it maintained that its pubs are safe for drinkers and diners. The firm’s announcement came after concerns were raised last month that the chain was failing to prevent overcrowding in its pubs, which are popular with young people due to their comparatively low prices for alcohol and food. The company said it had 32m customer visits to its 861 pubs open in the 10 weeks since 4 July. During this period, 66 of its 41,564 staff tested positive for coronavirus. It said 811 pubs had reported no positive tests. Most of the reported cases have been mild or asymptomatic and 28 of the 66 employees have returned to work, after self-isolating in accordance with medical guidelines.
14th Sep 2020 - The Guardian

Italy's initial virus hotspot back to school after 7 months

The morning bell Monday marked the first entrance to the classroom for the children of Codogno since Feb. 21, when panicked parents were sent to pick up their children after the northern Italian town gained notoriety as the first in the West to record local transmission of the coronavirus. While all of Italy’s 8 million school students endured Italy’s strict 2½-month lockdown, few suffered the trauma of the children of Codogno, whose days were punctuated by the sirens of passing ambulances. “Many lost grandparents,” said Cecilia Cugini, the principal of Codogno’s nursery, elementary and middle schools.
14th Sep 2020 - The Associated Press

France’s Economic Rebound Is Stronger Than Initially Thought

France’s economic recovery from the coronavirus lockdown is stronger than previously expected, the Bank of France said Monday as it revised up its growth and inflation forecasts for this year and next. The slump in the euro area’s second-largest economy during state-ordered confinement wasn’t as deep as initially reported, and recent activity has been better than business leaders had forecast,
14th Sep 2020 - Bloomberg Quint

India’s parliament reopens with unprecedented Covid safety measures

An 18-day monsoon session of India's parliament has gotten underway with extraordinary safety measures to protect against the coronavirus, including staggered sittings of both Houses and social distancing between MPs. With 200 of the 785 members of parliament over 65 years of age, and at least seven ministers and two dozen lawmakers recovering from Covid-19 infection, the pandemic has cast a shadow over the session, which takes place at the end of the monsoon season. The session, which usually starts in mid-July, had to be deferred due to the pandemic, which enforced a sweeping federal lockdown from 25 March. When proceedings began on Monday, the sitting was adjourned for an hour to mark the demise of former president Pranab Mukherjee.
14th Sep 2020 - YAHOO!

More women than men left jobless post-lockdown

The adverse impact of the pandemic-induced lockdowns and restrictions on the livelihood of women is reflected in the responses of 3,221 women workers from the informal sector in a new survey report covering 20 Indian states.
14th Sep 2020 - The Times of India

Europe will see a rise in Covid-19 deaths, WHO says

WHO's Europe director Hans Kluge is expecting an autumn rise in daily fatalities. Deaths have so far remained relatively stable despite summer surge in infections. Kluge also warned that delivering vaccine could present a 'logistical nightmare'
14th Sep 2020 - Daily Mail

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Pfizer CEO says company will know if vaccine works by end of October

Albert Bourla, the head of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which is among the companies developing a coronavirus vaccine, said Sunday there is a "good chance" the company will know whether its vaccine works by the end of October. In an interview with "Face the Nation," Bourla said it's not yet known whether Americans will be able to receive a coronavirus vaccine before 2021, as issuance of a license depends on federal regulators. But studies from Pfizer indicate "we have a good chance that we will know if the product works by the end of October."
13th Sep 2020 - CBS News

Coronavirus: 'UK at a turning point' as sharp COVID rise sees eight million Britons facing tougher lockdown

Nearly eight million people in Britain will be living under stricter lockdown rules, including a large part of the West Midlands, ahead of a widespread ban on gatherings of more than six people. From Monday, social gatherings of more than six people will be banned across England, Wales and Scotland. Households will be banned from meeting each other in Birmingham, Sandwell and Solihull from Tuesday after a rise in coronavirus cases
12th Sep 2020 - Sky News

Covid vaccine: 8,000 jumbo jets needed to deliver doses globally, says IATA

Shipping a coronavirus vaccine around the world will be the "largest transport challenge ever" according to the airline industry. The equivalent of 8,000 Boeing 747s will be needed, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said. There is no Covid-19 vaccine yet, but IATA is already working with airlines, airports, global health bodies and drug firms on a global airlift plan. The distribution programme assumes only one dose per person is needed. "Safely delivering Covid-19 vaccines will be the mission of the century for the global air cargo industry. But it won't happen without careful advance planning. And the time for that is now," said IATA's chief executive Alexandre de Juniac.
10th Sep 2020 - BBC

Scarcity of key material squeezes medical mask manufacturing

“N95s are still in a shortage,” said Mike Schiller, the American Hospital Association’s senior director for supply chains. “It’s certainly not anywhere near pre-COVID levels.” Early in the pandemic the White House failed to heed stark warnings, specifically about N95s, from high-level administration officials. The Associated Press has found the administration took months to sign contracts with companies that make the crucial component inside these masks: meltblown textile. Meltblowing is the manufacturing process that turns plastic into the dense mesh that makes N95 masks effective at blocking vanishingly small particles, including viruses. Even today, manufacturers say the Trump administration hasn’t made the long-term investments they need in order to ramp up to full capacity. Meanwhile, the administration allowed meltblown exports to slip out of the country as the pandemic, and the demand for masks, soared.
10th Sep 2020 - Associated Press

Ethiopia opens facility to make coronavirus test kits

With increasing cases of COVID-19, Ethiopia has opened a facility to produce kits to test for the coronavirus and says its researchers are working to develop and test a vaccine. The company producing the testing kits is a joint venture with a Chinese company, called BGI Health Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 has risen to nearly 64,000 causing almost 1,000 deaths, according to government figures. On Sunday, Ethiopia also opened a field hospital to hold up to 200 severely affected Covid-19 patients, which will start admitting patients immediately
13th Sep 2020 - The Washington Post

Coronavirus: France reports highest number of daily COVID cases since pandemic began

More than 10,000 new coronavirus cases have been confirmed in France in a single day - the country's highest daily number since the pandemic began. A total of 10,561 new COVID-19 infections were recorded on Saturday, the first time they have topped 10,000 over 24 hours in France. The total surpasses the previous record of 9,843 new cases reported on Thursday.
12th Sep 2020 - Sky News

'It's not too late' to prevent major COVID-19 resurgence in Canada, Hajdu says

Parts of Canada have experienced a sudden spike in COVID-19 cases and, as the weather gets colder, there are worries about a resurgence of infections. "[The increase in cases] quite possibly could be a resurgence," Minister of Health Patty Hajdu told The Current's Matt Galloway. "It's not too late to bring those numbers down.… Governments are working really hard and in many different ways, and individuals really need to maintain those measures that are so difficult to maintain." Ontario reported 213 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, marking the first single-day increase of over 200 cases in over a month. British Columbia reported 139 new cases on Thursday, setting a new record for new cases in a single day.
12th Sep 2020 - CBC.ca

How Liverpool ended up on the brink of coronavirus lockdown

There was actually more of a concern for Wirral, where infections were rising rapidly. But a week is a long time in the world of covid-19. And at the end of that week, the city finds itself on a government danger list and facing the very real prospect of new lockdown restrictions being brought in to restrict people's lives. On Monday we started to get the feeling that things were rapidly heading in the wrong direction. Cases had started to increase very quickly and the city's Director of Public Health Matt Ashton raised the alarm bells, stating that he was "deeply concerned" by how many new infections were being found in the city. Monday was also the day we saw hundreds of school pupils sent home as positive cases wreaked havoc on the city's education system.
13th Sep 2020 - Liverpool Echo

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France extends programme to protect workers from further Covid-19 related job losses

Labour Minister Elisabeth Borne said that the government would continue paying up to 84 percent of salaries for employees in struggling companies. “I confirm we will maintain the same level, so the cost for the employer will be limited to 15 percent [of net salary], until next summer,” Borne told BFM television on Thursday. Currently, the scheme to help the most exposed sectors - hotels, cafes, events - was in place until the end of the year. The idea, Borne said, is that “companies can keep jobs and skills” while they restructure or retrain people.
10th Sep 2020 - RFI English

German firms spared insolvency spike despite pandemic

The number of firms declaring insolvency in Germany was 6.2% lower in the first half of last year despite the coronavirus crisis, the Statistics Office said, partly because of a rule designed to keep firms afloat in the pandemic
10th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Employment recovering: Urban unemployment at lowest since lockdown, even as salaried jobs get cut

The high unemployment rate in urban India subsided in the week ending 6 September 2020, falling to the lowest level since the lockdown began. The urban unemployment rate fell to 8.32 per cent in the week, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. Interestingly, the employment situation in urban India has improved despite a severe loss of salaried jobs. An estimated 21 million salaried employees have lost their jobs by the end of August. There were 86 million salaried jobs in India during 2019-20, which fell to 65 million in August 2020. The loss in salaried jobs was the biggest among all types of employment.
10th Sep 2020 - The Financial Express

New Zealand mental health crisis as Covid stretches a struggling system

New Zealanders are experiencing more depression and anxiety since the coronavirus lockdown, doctors say, despite the country leading the world in its battle against the pandemic. New Zealand has been lauded for its effective management of the virus, with most Kiwis returning to their normal routines following a strict seven-week lockdown in April and May. A recent outbreak in Auckland has now largely been contained. But GPs working on the front line say “generalised anxiety” is proliferating in the community, and putting a strain on mental health services that are already overburdened.
10th Sep 2020 - The Guardian

Italy July industry output rises more than expected as post-lockdown rebound continues

Italian industrial output rose a stronger-than-expected 7.4% in July from the month before, data showed on Thursday, a third consecutive increase following the end of the country's coronavirus lockdown
10th Sep 2020 - Reuters India

UK house prices jump as buyers seek gardens after lockdown - RICS

The post-lockdown surge in Britain's housing market intensified in August, and prices hit a four year high, as buyers sought properties with gardens, according to a RICS survey that also sent a warning signal that the recovery could run out of steam
10th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Portugal toughens virus rules as schools return

Ministers decided on new rules to come into force from Tuesday, including limiting gatherings to 10 people rather than 20 previously—a cap already in force in the capital Lisbon since late June. Also extending a measure from the capital, sales of alcohol will be barred from 8 pm as will drinking in public spaces. Meanwhile sporting venues will remain closed to fans ahead of the football championship kicking off next week. "We've been seeing a sustained rise in the number of new cases since the beginning of August," Prime Minister Antonio Costa said, after Portugal saw 646 new infections in the 24 hours to Wednesday—its highest since April 20.
10th Sep 2020 - Medical Xpress

UAE sounds warning after virus cases jump five-fold

The United Arab Emirates said Thursday that daily coronavirus cases had jumped five-fold compared with a month ago, and warned residents and citizens to abide by measures designed to curb the disease. The daily tally of cases hit 930 on Thursday, said Farida al-Hosani, spokeswoman for the Emirates' health sector, compared with 179 on August 10. "This is the highest number recorded in four months," she said during a televised conference. "Those who violate the preventive measures in place, whether an individual, shops, or restaurants, will be held accountable." Hosani said 12 percent of cases were among residents or citizens returning to the UAE from abroad, even though they received negative tests from their destination countries -- which are a requirement for entry.
10th Sep 2020 - The Daily Star (Bangladesh)

India inches closer to 100,000 daily Covid-19 case mark

The latest numbers put total cases at 4.46 million and 1,152 new casualties recorded over the past 24 hours took the death toll to 75,062. In terms of infections, India is second only to the United States’s 6.5 million. In terms of deaths, India is third with the US having recorded over 194,000 fatalities and Brazil over 128,000.
10th Sep 2020 - Hindustan Times

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Outbreaks of infections including Covid-19 in England's care homes at lowest levels for six MONTHS

Between August 24 and August 30 outbreaks dropped to just 58 in England. This is below the highs of 1,010 a week recorded at the height of the pandemic. Outbreaks are when two or more people have the same symptoms, like a cough. They may not mark a coronavirus infection as the figure includes other diseases
9th Sep 2020 - Daily Mail

France's economy set to bounce back despite impact of coronavirus

France's economy, which like those of other countries was pushed into a bruising recession by the coronavirus, will bounce back now that lockdown measures are lifted but will still contract over the year as a whole, official data showed Tuesday. France's gross domestic product, which had shrunk by a record 13.8 percent in the second quarter, is forecast to grow by 17 percent in the subsequent three months, the national statistics office Insee calculated. Nevertheless, the rebound was not quite as strong as expected and Insee said it was sticking to its forecast for an overall economic contraction of 9.0 percent for the year as a whole.
9th Sep 2020 - YAHOO!

New Zealand economy faring better than expected

A cluster of numbers suggests the economy may be faring better than expected despite a resurgence of Covid-19 and reimposition of some travel restrictions. ANZ Bank's preliminary look at business confidence for September showed an improvement in sentiment, with companies markedly less pessimistic about the broad outlook for the economy, falling to a net negative 26 percent from 41.8 percent in August. The more closely followed measure of firms' view on their own future improved 8 points, with a net 10 percent expecting conditions to get worse in the next year.
9th Sep 2020 - RNZ

Rural Communities Needlessly Risk Covid-19 From Prisons

In May, two West Virginia prisons, FCI Gilmer (in central WV) and FCI Hazelton were designated to be quarantine sites for the entire Bureau of Prisons (BOP) system. A number of prisoners were to be transferred from overcrowded DC jails before being sent yet again to another facility after 14 days of quarantine. Part of the objection to the initial transfer was that the BOP screening of prisoners for Covid-19 included a temperature check and questions, but no actual testing for Covid-19. Gilmer received 124 inmates and promptly had an outbreak affecting at least 83 prisoners and additional staff.
9th Sep 2020 - Forbes

Positive Covid tests in no-lockdown Sweden hit lowest rate since pandemic began

Sweden carried out a record number of new coronavirus tests last week with only 1.2% coming back positive, the health agency said on Tuesday, the lowest rate since the pandemic began at a time when countries across Europe are seeing surges in infections.
9th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

One in three central London venues haven't reopened since lockdown

One in three central London hospitality venues yet to reopen from lockdown won’t do so until footfall drastically improves, it was estimated today as pub giants called for more government support. Trade association UKHospitality, which represents hotel, pub, restaurant and club owners, made the reopening forecast at a time when numerous people are yet to return to offices and travel restrictions keep tourists away. Some firms have also struggled with making certain smaller sites financially viable due to social distancing rules.
9th Sep 2020 - Evening Standard

COVID-19: Angola to reopen schools in October

Angolan authorities have decided to reopen schools in the country next month after months of closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to media reports. “Classes will resume in phases and on alternating days. Grades 9, 10, 11 and 12 will resume on October 5,” nation.africa news website quoted Education Minister Luísa Grilo as saying. Classes for the grades 7 and 8 will resume on Oct. 19, she added. The class sessions are expected to be divided into two and will go for two-and-half hours for primary schools and three-and-half hours for secondary schools, according to the website. Meanwhile, Adao de Almeida, the head of the presidential palace, announced that the government will continue observing certain COVID-19 guidelines until Oct. 9 when schools will resume, according to the website.
9th Sep 2020 - Anadolu Agency

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Risking jail, some parents in Spain resist sending kids back to school

Ángela López hardly fits the profile of a rule breaker. But López, the mother of a 7-year-old girl with respiratory problems, has found herself among parents ready to challenge Spanish authorities on a blanket order for their kids to return to school. They are wary of safety measures they see as ill funded as a new wave of coronavirus infections sweeps the country. They fear sick students could infect older relatives who are at higher risk of falling ill from the virus. And they say that they have invested in computers and better network connections to prepare for online lessons, even preparing to homeschool their children if necessary.
8th Sep 2020 - Los Angeles Times

Coronavirus: Spanish children return to school amid fears over surge in cases

Wearing colourful masks, the pupils of the Mariano Jose de Larra primary school in Madrid laughed and played on Tuesday morning before their teachers made them form two lines at the gates to take their temperature. It was the first day back at school for millions of Spanish children after a six-month break, bringing parents feelings of both relief and worry about a possible rise in coronavirus infections. "I'm a teacher and I still haven't brought my children back to school because it's not safe yet," said Maria Varas, who teaches music.
8th Sep 2020 - The Independent

Teachers and pupils missing classes due to lack of Covid-19 tests

One teacher near Birmingham told the PA news agency she and her son were missing school because they were unable to get a home test. The nearest drive-in centres were Oldham in Greater Manchester or Romford in Essex. “I think any school is going to have difficulty eventually unless things change. I should have been able to walk in today and get a test and be back at my desk in 24 hours,” said the teacher, who asked not to be named. “In my opinion the testing system is not fit for purpose and is preventing me from doing my job.”
8th Sep 2020 - Aberdeen Evening Express

Tech companies ramp up hiring as London moves past lockdown

Tech companies in the UK’s capital have accelerated their hiring plans over the summer as businesses get ready to go back to work, with digital roles jumping by more than a third. Advertising for vacancies in the digital tech sector rose 36 per cent in the last two months, according to data collated by Tech Nation for the government’s Digital Economy Council. Technology companies now employ around a fifth of all Londoners at almost 3m people, thanks to major expansions in the city by the likes of Apple, Amazon and Google. Meanwhile digital tech roles account for nine per cent of the UK’s overall workforce.
8th Sep 2020 - City A.M.

London NHS staff join trial to see if 'super sniffer' dogs can detect coronavirus

London NHS workers have been recruited to a trial that aims to determine whether dogs can sniff out Covid-19. A team of 25 volunteers from University College Hospital (UCLH) in Euston are allowing trained “bio-detection dogs” to smell their socks and T-shirts to see if they can detect whether a person has the virus. They are among 3,500 NHS staff nationwide signed up in the trial. The £500,000 government-sponsored project is being led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), charity Medical Detection Dogs and Durham University.
8th Sep 2020 - Evening Standard

French economy bouncing back after Covid-19 lockdown measures lifted

France's economy, which like those of other countries was pushed into a bruising recession by the coronavirus, will bounce back now that lockdown measures are lifted but will still contract over the year as a whole, official data showed Tuesday.
8th Sep 2020 - FRANCE 24 English

French economy bouncing back after Covid-19 lockdown measures lifted

France's economy, which like those of other countries was pushed into a bruising recession by the coronavirus, will bounce back now that lockdown measures are lifted but will still contract over the year as a whole, official data showed Tuesday. France's gross domestic product, which had shrunk by a record 13.8 percent in the second quarter, is forecast to grow by 17 percent in the subsequent three months, the national statistics office Insee calculated. Nevertheless, the rebound was not quite as strong as expected and Insee said it was sticking to its forecast for an overall economic contraction of 9.0 percent for the year as a whole. French economic activity should run at 95 percent of pre-epidemic levels in the third quarter and at 96 percent of pre-outbreak levels in the fourth, INSEE said. Economic activity ran at 81 percent of pre-outbreak levels in the second quarter, data showed.
8th Sep 2020 - Yahoo! News

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Covid-19 vaccine developers prepare joint safety pledge: Wall Street Journal

Several Covid-19 vaccine developers, including Pfizer Inc, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna Inc, plan to issue a public pledge not to seek government approval until their vaccine candidates are proven to be safe and effective, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday (Sept 4). The companies would pledge to adhere to high scientific and ethical standards in the conduct of clinical studies and in their manufacturing processes, the Journal report said, citing the draft of a joint statement that is still being finalised. The companies might issue the pledge as soon as early next week, the report added, citing two people familiar with the matter
7th Sep 2020 - The Straits Times

Coronavirus: Schools face disruption over positive Covid-19 cases

Pupils and teachers have been asked to self isolate with schools across Wales affected by positive Covid-19 cases. Areas affected include Bridgend, Cardiff, Caerphilly, Carmarthen, Gwynedd, Neath, Rhondda, and Wrexham. Thirty pupils in Year 7 class at Ysgol Bro Edern, Llanedeyrn, Cardiff, have been asked to self-isolate for 14 days after a confirmed case. Head teacher Iwan Pritchard said the school had acted "as quickly as possible" to contact those affected. They were identified as close contacts of a confirmed case at the school.
7th Sep 2020 - BBC

Coronavirus: Train services increase amid evidence of 'modest' return to work

Train services are ramping up from today amid evidence of growing demand as schools reopen in England and Wales and workers are urged to return to offices. Timetables are increasing to around 90% of pre-lockdown levels - meaning additional trains and longer carriages on many routes - according to industry body the Rail Delivery Group. The changes coincide with figures suggesting a "modest" rise in demand since the August Bank Holiday weekend following the government's plea for staff to go back to the office over fears the coronavirus crisis will leave a permanent scar on city centres.
7th Sep 2020 - Sky News

Russia reports 5,185 new coronavirus cases, 51 deaths

Rusian reported 5,185 new coronavirus cases on Monday, pushing its national tally to 1,030,690, the fourth largest in the world. Authorities confirmed 51 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the official toll to 17,871
7th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Coronavirus: India overtakes Brazil with second-worst number of cases in world

India has overtaken Brazil to become the country with the second highest total number of coronavirus infections after the United States. Some 90,802 new cases were reported in the last 24 hours on Monday, pushing India’s total to 4,204,614, surpassing Brazil, which has more than 4.1 million cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 6.2 million people in the US have been infected. India has recorded the world’s largest daily increases in cases for almost a month. However, India has a relatively low per capita death rate, which some observers have speculated could be due to the younger average age of the population.
7th Sep 2020 - The Independent

India now has the second highest number of Covid-19 cases behind the US as number of infections surges

Another 90,082 cases were recorded on Monday, with 1,016 new fatalities. Rising number of daily infections in the cities and is spreading into rural areas. India has recorded 4.2 million cases; the US, 6.2 million; and Brazil 4.1 million. India's death toll stands at 71,642 compared to 193k in the US and 126k in Brazil
7th Sep 2020 - Daily Mail

PR blitz: China tries to flip the pandemic script, starring a 'reborn' Wuhan

China is recasting Wuhan as a heroic coronavirus victim and trying to throw doubt on the pandemic's origin story as it aims to seize the narrative at a time of growing global distrust of Beijing. China is recasting Wuhan as a heroic coronavirus victim and trying to throw doubt on the pandemic's origin story as it aims to seize the narrative at a time of growing global distrust of Beijing. The PR blitz plays out daily in comments by Chinese officials and lavish state media coverage of a "reborn" Wuhan that trumpets China's epidemic-control efforts and economic recovery while the United States struggles. The drive peaked in the past week as Chinese primary schools welcomed back students with considerable fanfare and Wuhan hosted executives from dozens of multinationals, from Panasonic to Dow and Nokia, on a highly choreographed tour of the central Chinese city
7th Sep 2020 - RTL Today

S.Africa consumer confidence improves in third quarter as lockdown eases

South African consumers regained some confidence in the economy in the third quarter after consumer confidence hit a 35-year low in the previous quarter, a survey showed on Monday, as the country reopened its borders and businesses from the lockdown.
7th Sep 2020 - Reuters

Primark sales rise as shoppers return to UK high streets after lockdown

The group may have been boosted by a trend that has seen more people baking since lockdown began. Increased demand for yeast and bakery ingredients helped ABF's ingredients arm, and profits from sugar sales are expected to increase this year.
7th Sep 2020 - The Independent

India's coronavirus infections overtake Brazil as some rail services resume

India overtook Brazil in coronavirus infection numbers on Monday, making it second only to the United States after a record jump, but the government resumed underground train services and announced plans to re-open the Taj Mahal this month
7th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

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Tiny village offers window into India's surging COVID-19 caseload

The quaint, sugarcane growing village of Rajewadi in India's west did not have a single case of confirmed coronavirus until mid-August. Now one in every four people there is positive for the virus, with police blaming a local religious event for the spread.
5th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

COVID-19 outbreak is worsening malnutrition in India

There are warnings the world is on the brink of a "hunger pandemic". Charity Oxfam says up to 12,000 people could starve to death each day because of coronavirus-related restrictions. In India, malnutrition is already a threat to life - and the United Nations says the pandemic is making that worse.
5th Sep 2020 - AlJazeera

Under the cloak of Covid, the government is rushing ill-considered changes to Australia's environment laws

It seems our leaders don’t want tricky environmental matters elevated to them, so they plan to flick responsibility to the states
5th Sep 2020 - The Guardian

Brazil's coronavirus cases pass the four million mark: ministry

Brazil has recorded more than 4 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 43,773 new cases and 834 deaths from the disease caused by the virus reported in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Thursday.
5th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

India crosses four million coronavirus cases with record surge

India's total coronavirus cases surged beyond 4 million with a record rise on Saturday, making it the third country in the world to surpass that mark, following the United States and Brazil. India added 86,432 cases of the new virus on Saturday, a global daily record, according to data from the federal health ministry.
5th Sep 2020 - Reuters

Hundreds of students in quarantine after university in U.S. finds COVID-19 in wastewater

While schools and universities across the U.S. monitor coronavirus outbreaks with human testing, Utah State University officials announced they've discovered evidence of the virus a different way. The school found elevated amounts of COVID-19 in wastewater samples collected from four residence halls on campus. Officials issued a safety alert on Sunday calling for mandatory testing and quarantine of all 287 students living in Rich, Jones, Morgan and Davis on-campus residence halls.
5th Sep 2020 - CTV News

Indiana University sees 'alarming' spike in COVID-19 at frat, sorority houses

Indiana University at Bloomington on Thursday urged students living in fraternity and sorority houses to move out, citing an alaraming rate of positive Covid-19 tests that marked the latest outbreak in the U.S. Midwest and at college campus.
5th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

The bleak Covid winter? America still not on course to beat back the virus

The US is closed for many outside its borders, and many within are too scared to fly as Covid continues its deadly sweep across the country. The rate of infection has eased in Florida and elsewhere and Pesquera, president of the marketing group Discover the Palm Beaches, is hopeful business is improving. But it comes in a year of catastrophic collapse for Florida’s tourism. “Nobody has seen anything like this in a couple of generations,” said Pesquera. As the US enters its first coronavirus winter, economists and epidemiologists see a pivotal moment – a hinge whose swing will determine the direction of the economy and the course of the disease into 2021 and for years – potentially generations – to come
5th Sep 2020 - The Guardian

US university workers fight a return to campus as COVID-19 cases grow

A wave of activism is sweeping US campuses that have reopened after their summer break amid the COVID-19 crisis. Across the country, university workers — including faculty members and staff who teach in classrooms and laboratories, and housekeeping staff who clean dormitories — are pushing back against requirements that they show up on campus alongside undergraduates, thereby, they say, risking their own health. One group has filed a lawsuit against the University of North Carolina (UNC) system, which includes 16 institutions across the state, claiming that the system has not provided a safe workplace for its staff. Others have staged protests — including ‘die-ins’, in which demonstrators have simulated coronavirus deaths — to demand remote classes and more COVID-19 testing. In one case, university faculty members passed a ‘no confidence’ vote to indicate that their chancellor had neglected their concerns and botched the institution’s reopening.
5th Sep 2020 - Nature.com

U.S. CDC reports 186,173 deaths from coronavirus

The CDC on Friday said the number of deaths die to the cornoavirus has risen by 1,081 to 186, 173 and there were 6,132, 074 reported cases, an increase of 44,671 cases from the previous count.
5th Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

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117 children have tested positive for Covid-19 since return to school

A total of 117 children have tested positive for coronavirus since Scotland’s schools reopened last month, the Education Secretary has revealed. John Swinney announced the number of positive tests for the virus as teachers’ unions spoke out about their ongoing fears over safety inside schools. Since pupils returned to school in August, a total of 77 youngsters aged between 12 and 17 have been found to have Covid-19, along with 40 children aged between five and 11. The Education Secretary told MSPs at Holyrood the evidence he had seen suggested most cases were “coming within households”, describing this as the “predominant explanation” for how youngsters had contracted the disease. But he added that overseas travel was also “resulting in quite a number of the cases”.
2nd Sep 2020 - Wales Online

Coronavirus: How it feels to be back at school

As millions of pupils in England return to school after lockdown, the BBC went to two primary schools in Luton, Whitefield Primary Academy and Southfield Primary School, to find out how parents and children felt.
2nd Sep 2020 - BBC

Spain, France and Greece report fresh surges in Covid-19 cases as schools reopen in Europe

The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, said he was particularly worried about the surge in coronavirus cases in Madrid. One of the countries in Europe hit hardest by Covid-19, Spain has reported a surge in infections in the capital and other regions since lockdown was lifted in June. “We are worried about the state of public health and evolution of the virus in Madrid,” Mr Sánchez said.
2nd Sep 2020 - iNews

India's coronavirus case tally nears 3.8 million as country reopens

India said on Wednesday it would allow metro services to reopen nationwide, despite the number of novel coronavirus infections there reaching almost 3.8 million. The country reported 78,357 new cases in the last 24 hours, federal health data showed, taking total infections to 3,769,523. Some 66,333 people have died. India’s total cases lag only the United States and Brazil, which it will overtake in days based on current trends. A dozen metro services including in the capital New Delhi would be allowed to reopen from Sept. 7, India’s urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Wednesday
2nd Sep 2020 - Reuters

Months after lockdown, children in Wuhan return to school

Children returned to school Tuesday in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the original epicentre of the coronavirus epidemic that underwent months of lockdown but which has not seen new cases of local transmission for weeks. State media reported 1.4 million children in the city reported to 2,842 kindergartens, primary and secondary schools as part of a nationwide return to classes. Life has largely returned to normal in Wuhan, where the novel coronavirus was first detected late last year. After what critics called an attempt to ignore the outbreak, the city underwent a 76-day lockdown during which residents were confined to their homes and field hospitals opened to assist an overwhelmed medical system.
2nd Sep 2020 - The New Indian Express

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'Madness': Parents wait in huge queues as UK schools return after lockdown

A long queue of parents has been filmed outside a London school uniform shop as children prepare to return to school for the first time since the coronavirus lockdown. In the video filmed on Monday, the line of shoppers waiting to get into school uniform store Hewitts of Croydon, snakes down the street and around the corner in London. Schools in the UK have been closed since March 18 due to the coronavirus pandemic but Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced all children will return to school after summer holidays in September.
1st Sep 2020 - Yahoo News Australia

Coronavirus: Which parts of the UK are recovering fastest after lockdown?

The UK's major city centres are still significantly less busy and Britons are, for the most part, continuing to shun public transport, data shows. Despite a government drive to get people back in shops, restaurants, bars and workplaces, some parts of the country are recovering far more slowly than others from the coronavirus lockdown. Coastal towns are busier, but cities are still quiet
1st Sep 2020 - Sky News

Venice Reclaims Spotlight as 1st COVID-Era Film Fest Opens

Venice is reclaiming its place as a top cultural destination with the opening of the Venice Film Festival — the first major in-person cinema showcase of the coronavirus era after Cannes canceled and other international festivals opted to go mostly online this year. But don’t be fooled. The 77th edition of the world’s oldest film festival will look nothing like its predecessors. The public will be barred from the red carpet, Hollywood stars and films will be largely absent and face masks will be required indoors and out as the festival opens Wednesday.
1st Sep 2020 - The New York Times

Russia Passes 1 Million Covid-19 Cases as Epidemic Simmers

Russia became the fourth country to pass 1 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, joining the U.S., India and Brazil, on the day schools across the country reopened for the new academic year. The Russian government’s virus response center reported 4,729 new coronavirus infections Tuesday, bringing the total to 1,000,048. The number of new daily cases has gradually declined from a peak of more than 11,000 in May. The death toll increased by 123 to 17,299, a mortality rate that remains much lower than that of many other large nations. The number of fatalities is also significantly lower than those reported by the Federal Statistics Service, which said there were nearly 25,000 Covid-19 related deaths in May and June alone, the most recent data available. While a strict nationwide lockdown in the spring helped tame the initial surge, new infections have remained stubbornly high and averaged more than 5,000 per day in August. Several countries in Europe are now facing a second wave of the epidemic, raising concerns that Russia could see a spike in infections as schools reopen.
1st Sep 2020 - bnnbloomberg

Russia's Virus Cases Exceed 1 Million, Globally 4th Highest

Russia's tally of confirmed coronavirus cases surpassed 1 million on Tuesday as authorities reported 4,729 new cases. With a total of 1,000,048 reported cases, Russia has the fourth largest caseload in the world after the U.S., Brazil and India. Over 815,000 people have so far recovered, authorities said, and more than 17,000 have died. Experts say the true toll of the pandemic is much higher than all reported figures, due to limited testing, missed mild cases and concealment of cases by some governments, among other factors. As of Tuesday, Russia has lifted most lockdown restrictions in the majority of the country’s regions.
1st Sep 2020 - The New York Times

Asia's factories shaking off COVID gloom, China shines

Factories across Europe and Asia continued to shake off the coronavirus gloom in August as the global economy gradually emerges from a downturn triggered by the health crisis, thanks in part to massive fiscal and monetary stimulus programmes. Surveys showing an expansion in manufacturing activity may reduce pressure on policymakers to take bolder steps to avert a deeper recession. Many analysts expect recovery to be feeble, however, as renewed waves of infections curb business activity and prevent some nations from fully reopening their economies. Fears of a resurgence in infections in some economies may discourage firms from boosting capital expenditure and delay a sustained rebound, some analysts say.
1st Sep 2020 - Reuters

Texts books and face masks, Europe's children return to school

Tens of millions of pupils returned to school in France, Poland and Russia on Tuesday, their rucksacks loaded with exercise books, geometry sets and, for many, face masks to protect them from a resurgent coronavirus pandemic. Hand cleansing stations, social distancing and staggered play time will become the new normal as countries across Europe seek ways to get children back into the classroom safely and their economies functioning once again. But they do so at a time when infections rates are spiraling upwards across the continent and there are widespread concerns that the return to schools and offices, the autumn flu season and excess mortality in winter could drive a second wave.
1st Sep 2020 - Reuters UK

Face mask sales soar as Swedes eye potential guideline change

Sweden is seeing a spike in demand for face masks, several drug stores said, ahead of a possible U-turn by the authorities, who have so far doubted their effectiveness in fighting the spread of the new coronavirus. Unlike most other European countries, Sweden has kept many businesses, restaurants and most schools open, while not recommending the use of face masks, which remain a rare sight unlike in neighbouring Denmark, Norway and Finland. But after the public health agency (FHM) said two weeks ago that it may issue new recommendations, Swedes appear to be stockpiling. Face mask sales at online pharmacist Apotea have increased to around 400,000 units a week in the past two to three weeks from 150,000 in previous weeks, CEO Par Svardson said.
31st Aug 2020 - Reuters

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Capita plans to shut offices as staff work from home

One of Britain’s leading government contractors is planning to close more than a third of its 250 offices after concluding that staff are working just as effectively from home. Almost 100 sites are set to be closed as Capita, which has 45,000 staff in the UK, prepares to transform its operations permanently.
31st Aug 2020 - The Times

Spain reports more than 23,000 new COVID-19 cases since Friday

Spain has registered more than 23,000 new COVID-19 cases since Friday, health emergency chief Fernando Simon told a news conference on Monday, suggesting the infection rate had declined slightly from an Aug. 21 peak. Health ministry data showed 2,489 new cases were diagnosed in the past 24 hours, bringing the total since the onset of the pandemic to 462,858. “Of course we are worried because we have to stabilize and bring down the infection chain,” Health Minister Salvador Illa told Catalonia’s regional TV channel 324 late on Monday, adding that the goal is to avoid pressuring hospitals. Illa said that the situation is not comparable to the pandemic’s first peak in March and April, noting hospitals now have greater capacity. He said that nothing can be ruled out but it would be unlikely Spain would need to close schools again or impose a new state of emergency to try to tackle the virus.
31st Aug 2020 - Reuters

Pakistan records lowest daily count of COVID-19 in four months

Pakistan on Sunday reported 213 new coronavirus cases, its lowest daily count in more than four months. The country reported its first case of the deadly virus on February 26 and went into a three-week lockdown in late March. In the subsequent months, the caseload kept climbing, peaking at 6,825 new cases in a single day on June 13. While it recorded 153 deaths, its highest to date, on June 19. However, in the last month, Pakistan's daily infections and fatalities have dropped significantly. On August 30, it recorded only 213 new cases in a day, and six deaths across the country, while it sampled 18,017 tests.
31st Aug 2020 - Geo News

Coronavirus 'super-spreader' has 'infected at least 140 people' at Brit hotspot

A coronavirus "super-spreader" could be responsible for at least 140 positive cases on the holiday island of Gran Canaria, which is facing the threat of a new lockdown. Health experts believe the virus was introduced via the nightlife scene in the Guanarteme district of the popular Playa de las Canteras resort. While mainland Spain struggles with a second wave, Gran Canaria is battling escalating outbreaks of coronavirus which have put the island on the brink of a new lockdown unlesss the situation drastically improves in the next 14 days. The Canary government says it is watching the evolution of the virus very carefully and monitoring what action to take on a day to day basis.
31st Aug 2020 - Mirror Online

France Covid-19: Paris compulsory face-mask rule comes into force

Wearing a face mask in public has become mandatory across Paris and several surrounding areas, amid a surge in Covid-19 cases in France. On Friday the country recorded 7,379 new infections - its highest number since early May. The number of "red zones" where the virus is in active circulation has risen from two to 21. Announcing new local curbs on Thursday, PM Jean Castex said he wanted to avoid another general lockdown. He said the coronavirus was "gaining ground" across France, and that if the government did not act fast infection growth could become "exponential". Despite a sharp rise in cases in recent weeks, daily death tolls have remained low. Overall, more than 3
31st Aug 2020 - BBC

Coronavirus: It would be a miracle if Tour de France finishes, UCI president admits

It would be a "miracle" if this year's Tour de France finishes, the head of the world governing body for competitive cycling has warned, after a surge in coronavirus cases prompted a rule change. There was an unusually subdued atmosphere as the race began in Nice on Saturday amid fears the 176 riders may not make it to the finishing line in Paris. Union Cycliste Internationale president David Lappartient said it was "a first miracle that we are able to start this race".
31st Aug 2020 - Sky News

France Tightens Mask Protocols Amid Gain in Virus Infections

The French government isn’t taking any chances. From Tuesday, masks will be mandatory for companies with groups working in enclosed spaces, Labor Minister Elisabeth Borne said Sunday on BFM TV. While opera singers are among those who can be granted exemptions, mask-wearing is becoming entrenched in daily life. Cities from Paris to Marseilles are making masks compulsory, even outside, while students over 11 years old will have to cover their faces when returning to school next month.
31st Aug 2020 - Bloomberg

Island paradise off Brazil reopens to welcome tourists, but only if they’ve had Covid-19

Fernando de Noronha has reopened for visitors after a five-month shutdown, but with one stipulation. Tourists have to have contracted and recovered from Covid-19 before being allowed on the island
31st Aug 2020 - South China Morning Post

Merkel Calls on Germans to Avoid Virus-Hit Areas Like U.S.

Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Germans to refrain from non-essential travel to areas with severe coronavirus outbreaks, including the U.S. Merkel’s warning to people in Europe’s biggest economy reflects growing concern among European leaders faced with a summer surge of Covid-19. Paris is expanding its mask-wearing mandate to public spaces citywide, Spain reported the most new infections since late April and Italy had the most since early May.
27th Aug 2020 - Bloomberg

Coronavirus Australia: Free mental health and wellbeing support during the COVID-19 pandemic

When we’re not coping, it’s not always possible to see a psychologist for help. Sometimes there are barriers to professional support services – cost, distance, availability and, more recently, coronavirus lockdowns. If you’re struggling during COVID-19, there are a number of free and accessible tools available.
31st Aug 2020 - News.com.au

'The reversal of gentrification': how Covid-19 could remake Australia's cities

Office buildings in Australian CBDs could be converted into residential living spaces, as a tanking commercial property market leads to a potential reversal of gentrification. The prediction of drastically different city centres, made by property experts and architects, follows the Covid-19 shift in work habits that have forced employers to allow staff to work from home, with expectations the flexibility afforded to them as a result of coronavirus will remain in some capacity into the post-pandemic future. Urban planning thinktanks believe that as businesses require less floor space and less commercial property is used, state and local governments will have to do more to draw people into the city centres in which they have already invested heavily.
29th Aug 2020 - The Guardian

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Falling care home demand since Covid poses threat to UK

There is a graph circulating in the care home industry that should send chills down the spine of the health and social care secretary, Matt Hancock. It predicts, under a worst-case scenario, a plunge in the demand for care homes by the end of 2021 that would leave 180,000 beds empty. The forecast by consultants Knight Frank is not good news based on a healthier aged population, but rather is based on fresh waves of coronavirus killing thousands more people in the community and in care homes, creating a flight from the sector. It is pessimistic, but for care home bosses reeling from the first wave of the pandemic – which killed more than 17,000 of their customers – it does not seem impossible. Short-term, it could have a serious impact on an NHS left to look after the infirm. Longer-term, it could seriously erode the UK’s capacity to look after its most vulnerable.
27th Aug 2020 - The Guardian

UK reports highest daily COVID case total since June 12

The United Kingdom recorded 1,522 new cases of COVID-19 in the latest daily government statistics published on Thursday, the highest number since June 12 and up from 1,048 cases a day earlier. A further 12 people were recorded as having died within 28 days of their first positive test for COVID-19, taking the United Kingdom’s cumulative death toll on this measure to 41,477.
27th Aug 2020 - Reuters UK

French Business Morale Rebounds in August Despite Surging COVID-19 Cases

French business confidence rebounded in August to its highest since France went into a coronavirus lockdown despite a resurgence of new infections, a survey showed on Thursday. INSEE, the official statistics agency, said its monthly business sentiment index rose to 91 from 84, reaching its highest since March, when midway through the month the government put France under one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe. Business confidence has rebounded since the government began lifting the lockdown on May 11 as companies struggled to respond to pent-up demand from clients.
27th Aug 2020 - The New York Times

Brits must return to offices to stop city centres becoming 'ghost towns', CBI boss warns

City centres risk becoming permanent "ghost towns" if staff do not return to offices, a senior business leader has warned. Carolyn Fairbairn, the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), said getting staff back into offices and workplaces is as important as pupils returning to school in September. Boris Johnson signalled an end to stay at home guidance in July as he gave employers the green light to get staff back to work, but Dame Carolyn called for the Prime Minister to do more to get office workers back at their desks. "The UK’s offices are vital drivers of our economy," she wrote in the Daily Mail. "They support thousands of local firms, from dry cleaners to sandwich bars. They help train and develop young people. And they foster better work and productivity for many kinds of business.
27th Aug 2020 - Evening Standard

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Thailand delays human testing for coronavirus vaccine

Thailand will delay human trials of its coronavirus vaccine due to limited production capacity at overseas facilities, a senior official said on Wednesday, but it hopes to resume trials by the end of the year. Thai health authorities had planned human testing of the vaccine by October, but must delay that by several months as factories abroad are at full capacity, said Kiat Ruxrungtham, director of the Chulalongkorn University vaccine development programme. The delay will be a setback for Thailand’s push to quickly create its own vaccine and comes as developers worldwide race to complete trials and secure regulatory approval. A race is on among countries to guarantee a supply amid concern about competition for access, with Britain and the United States in the lead in securing six vaccine deals with drugmakers each.
26th Aug 2020 - Reuters UK

Myanmar shuts schools after biggest daily climb in coronavirus cases

Myanmar ordered all schools to close after reporting 70 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday, its biggest daily rise, as authorities try to tackle a resurgence of the virus following weeks without confirmed domestic transmission.
26th Aug 2020 - Reuters

India: Health workers alarmed over 'black holes' in COVID-19 apps

Health officials and lawyers have expressed worry about unclear terms on issues like data retention and sharing. "People were just hostile," said Kaur, who is one of more than one million Accredited Social Health Activists, or ASHA workers, on the front lines of India's battle to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. "We didn't want to download the app, but our concerns were ignored," Kaur said in a phone interview. "There is so much information the app wants from every individual, including pictures. Many are just scared to give it now and threaten us if we persist." Considered key tools in stemming the pandemic, the rollout of Punjab's Corona Virus Alert (COVA) app and the dozens of tracing apps being used by different Indian states has been mired in concerns over privacy issues.
26th Aug 2020 - AlJazeera

Is Boris Johnson following the science – or following the Scots?

Boris Johnson and his ministers are well known for their mantra that they are “following the science”. On the evidence of recent weeks it might be said that they are also “following the Scots”. The recent Westminster/English policy U-turn on masks follows other such examples, where UK ministers now responsible only for policy in England have followed the Scottish precedent, reversing a previously decided approach, as on the wearing of face coverings on public transport, in shops and indeed on abandoning plans to send pupils back to school towards the end of the last term. Most recently, the UK’s secretary of state for education, Gavin Williamson, has pleaded to be allowed to keep his job on the grounds that his counterparts in Belfast (DUP/Sinn Fein), Edinburgh (SNP) and Cardiff (Labour/Lib Dem) have been doing much the same as he has, and if they’re not being sacked neither should he be dismissed from his role. There is also some suggestion that the Scottish government (as well as the devolved administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland) earlier in the year urged the English authorities to proceed more slowly in relaxing the lockdown from May onwards, and to retain more of the social distancing conventions and business support for longer. So far as their devolved powers allowed them to, this is indeed what transpired in the three mostly self-governing parts of the UK. Arguably their greater caution has resulted in better health outcomes and fewer local lockdowns.
26th Aug 2020 - The Independent

People on low incomes in UK Covid hotspots to be paid if self-isolating

People on low incomes in areas with high coronavirus infection rates will be eligible for a payment of up to £182 if they have to self-isolate, the government has announced. Under the scheme, being trialled from Tuesday in Blackburn with Darwen, Oldham and Pendle, low-paid people who test positive for Covid-19 will receive £130 for their 10-day isolation period. This rises to £182 – or £13 a day – for people they have been in close contact with, including members of their household, who have to isolate for 14 days. The move follows weeks of campaigning by regional mayors, councils and trade unions who said millions of people across the country could not afford to isolate without pay for a fortnight.
26th Aug 2020 - The Guardian

COVID-19 -- Scenarios for the post-lockdown period in Italy

Infection has been reduced up to 70% as of May 1st. Thanks to developed model, scenarios can be drawn regarding future containment measures. While the pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 is still ravaging most countries of the world and containment measures are implemented worldwide, a debate is emerging on whether these measures might be partially alleviated, and in case how and when. This discussion requires appropriate models that guide decision-makers through alternative actions via scenarios of the related trajectories of the epidemic. This is the subject of a research whose results are published today in the journal Nature Communications by a team of Italian scientists from Università Ca' Foscari (Venice), Politecnico di Milano (Milan), Università di Padova (Padua), and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Lausanne, Switzerland).
26th Aug 2020 - EurekAlert!

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Tourism Industry Faces $1 Trillion Loss, 100 Million Jobs At Risk From Covid-19, UN Reports

A new policy brief from the United Nations outlining Covid-19’s impact on the tourism industry projects the pandemic will cost the tourism industry approximately $1 trillion in losses and threaten more than 100 million jobs worldwide, underlining how the ongoing global crisis has devastated one of the world’s largest industries. Tourism “allows people to experience some of the world’s cultural and natural riches and brings people closer to each other, highlighting our common humanity. Indeed, one might say that tourism is itself one of the wonders of the world,” Guterres said Tuesday. “That is why it has been so painful to see how tourism has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
25th Aug 2020 - Forbes

How India's Silicon Valley saw its COVID-19 success come undone

On June 9, an Indian health education minister posted an infographic on Twitter showing COVID-19 infections and deaths in the city of Bengaluru were running about half the rate in New Zealand, a country acclaimed globally for reining in the disease. The city — which has more than double the population of New Zealand — “stumps the Kiwis,” said the caption to the image posted by Sudhakar K., who is responsible for medical education in the southern state of Karnataka. Bengaluru, known to many as Bangalore, is the capital of the state. His tweet was liked and retweeted by thousands. But the celebration was short-lived. At the time, only about 450 cases of the novel coronavirus had been recorded among Bangalore’s population of more than 12.5 million, compared with more than 260,000 cases across India and about 1,150 in New Zealand.
25th Aug 2020 - Reuters

Second lockdown ‘not necessary’ as 91% of England has zero cases in four weeks

A second lockdown is not necessary because the majority of people in England live in neighbourhoods with no new coronavirus cases for four weeks, an expert has claimed. Professor John Clancy, from Birmingham City University, fears ‘dodgy data’ is being used to justify local lockdowns. He says 91% of the country – 51 million people – live in areas without new infections for nearly a month. He said the UK’s testing system was in ‘total chaos’ as new restrictions were enforced in Oldham and parts of Blackburn and Pendle as part of a strict ‘semi-lockdown’. And Birmingham could face fresh measures after rapidly rising infections saw the city added to the Government’s coronavirus watch list.
24th Aug 2020 - Metro

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India hits grim milestone of 3,000,000 coronavirus cases

The number of coronavirus cases in India has crossed the 3 million mark. More than 10,000 new cases and 912 deaths were reported today, bringing the total to 3,044,940. India is the third country in the world hardest-hit by the pandemic, after the United States and Brazil. Health officials are hoping scientists will be able to develop a vaccine by the end of the year, with clinical trials said to be underway.
23rd Aug 2020 - Metro

Care homes 'ordered not to resuscitate' at height of pandemic, report claims

Care homes were told to introduce “do not resuscitate” orders for residents at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, a report has claimed. The Queen's Nursing Institute (QNI) report also found that care home residents were regularly refused treatment in April and May. One carer reported being told to change the status of all the home’s residents to “do not resuscitate” but said staff had refused to comply. Homes were told hospitals had a blanket “no admissions” policy at the height of the Covid-19 crisis. The survey of nurses and managers in 163 care homes across England, Wales and Northern Ireland found 56 per cent said their physical and mental health had suffered due to the stress of the pandemic.
25th Aug 2020 - Evening Standard

People acting like Covid-19 isn't out there, says West Midlands police chief

A police chief has warned that people are acting like “the virus isn’t out there” after a weekend of illegal gatherings in the West Midlands, despite Birmingham edging closer to a local lockdown. Waheed Saleem, the deputy police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands, welcomed new police powers that allow fines of up to £10,000 for organisers of unlawful raves from Friday. Police forces across the country have been dealing with a rise in unlicensed music events as the weather has improved. The increased fine comes into force ahead of the August bank holiday weekend, when senior officers expect many illegal gatherings to take place.
24th Aug 2020 - The Guardian

India coronavirus cases cross 3 million mark as economy opens up

The number of coronavirus infections in India crossed the 3 million mark with 69,239 new cases reported on Sunday even as the country opened up various sectors from a lockdown that ground businesses to a halt and hurt economic growth. With the fifth straight day of more than 60,000 new cases, India's tally stands at 3.04 million, federal health ministry data showed, behind only the United States and Brazil. Deaths in India from COVID-19 rose by 912 to 56,706. India on Sunday issued guidelines to open up its media production industry with norms for social distancing, crowd management and sanitisation. "The general principles behind the SOP will help create a safe working environment for cast and crew in the industry," Prakash Javadekar, India's union minister for information and broadcasting said in a tweet. Top producers, distributors and actors from Bollywood, the movie industry in India's financial capital of Mumbai, had said in May it would take at least two years for them to recover financially from the pandemic, putting at risk tens of thousands of jobs.
24th Aug 2020 - YAHOO!

No10 urges workers to tell bosses if they want to come back to the office amid home working surge

No10 said businesses had a obligation to offer staff 'Covid-secure workplaces' NatWest is among banks telling staff they will not return to offices this year The rise in home working sparked fears for ancillary service industries
24th Aug 2020 - Daily Mail

Coronavirus home test kits 'run out' in England and Scotland

England and Scotland appeared to run out of coronavirus home testing kits within hours on Monday, amid a backlog in laboratories. People were advised to travel long distances to test centres after being told that the daily allowance of home tests had run out. Callers to the NHS 119 number for Covid-19 were told: “We’re very sorry – the available allocation has already been issued at this time.” The reason behind the apparent shortage is unclear, but laboratories have been struggling to clear a backlog of tests since the end of July. The health and social care secretary, Matt Hancock, announced on 28 April that his department was increasing the number of home testing kits available from 5,000 a day to 25,000 a day by the end of that week.
24th Aug 2020 - The Guardian

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Germany COVID concerts: Experiment to study virus transmission

Restart-19 is studying the movement of people and flight of the tiny airborne particles that can carry viruses. Scientists in Germany have held three pop concerts to study the risk of virus transmission during large events. The mass experiment, staged with nearly 2,000 people in the city of Leipzig, comes at a time the country has banned all such gatherings until at least the end of October. Al Jazeera’s Um-e-Kulsoom reports.
23rd Aug 2020 - AlJazeera

Tour de France: teams will be expelled if two members test positive for Covid

Teams will be withdrawn from the Tour de France if two riders or staff show symptoms or test positive for Covid-19 under strict protocols from race organisers. However the race, which starts in Nice on 29 August, will continue even if there is a confirmed case of coronavirus in the peloton according to an 18-page document shared with teams this week. “If two persons or more from the same team present strongly suspect symptoms or have tested positive for Covid-19 the team in question will be expelled from the Tour de France,” states the document, which has been obtained by the VeloNews website. “Its riders will not be authorised to start the Tour de France (or the next stage) and the team’s personnel will have their accreditation withdrawn.” All team members will have to enter a “bubble” three days before the race by passing two Covid-19 tests – and everyone in the Tour entourage will be tested again on both rest days, 7 and 14 September.
22nd Aug 2020 - The Guardian

In China, Where the Coronavirus Pandemic Began, Life Is Starting to Look Normal

Markets, bars and restaurants are crowded again. Local virus transmissions are near zero. But some worry that people are letting their guard down too soon.
22nd Aug 2020 - The New York Times

Scale of pandemic in Mexico 'under-recognised', says WHO

The scale of the coronavirus pandemic in Mexico is “under-represented” and “under-recognised” and testing is limited, the World Health Organization’s Dr Mike Ryan said on Friday. He told a Geneva briefing that testing in Mexico worked out at about three people per 100,000, compared with about 150 tests per 100,000 people in the United States. More than 22.78 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 792,837​ have died, according to a Reuters tally.
22nd Aug 2020 - Reuters UK

Thailand tops the list of the world’s safest destinations during COVID-19

Thailand was considered the world’s safest travel destination during the COVID-19 pandemic based on various criteria including the 14-day notification rate of new COVID-19 cases and deaths per the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)
22nd Aug 2020 - Thailand Business News

Beijing says residents can go mask-free as China COVID cases hit new lows

Health authorities in China’s capital Beijing have removed a requirement for people to wear masks outdoors, further relaxing rules aimed at preventing the spread the novel coronavirus after the city reported 13 consecutive days without new cases. Despite the relaxed guidelines, a large proportion of people continued to wear masks in Beijing on Friday. Some said the mask made them feel safe, while others said social pressures to wear the masks were also a factor. “I think I can take off my mask anytime, but I’ll need to see if others accept it. Because I’m afraid that people would be scared if they see me not wearing mask,” one 24-year old Beijing woman surnamed Cao told Reuters.
22nd Aug 2020 - Reuters UK

Pope Francis prays for victims of Covid-19

Pope Francis turns his thoughts and prayers to the victims of the novel coronavirus, and recalls the 4th anniversary of a deadly earthquake in central Italy.
22nd Aug 2020 - Vatican News

COVID-19 response: How Italy went from ‘well-prepared’ to worst-hit in a few weeks

While there are many things that need to be fixed in Italy's health system, a comprehensive, integrated health information system could make the overall health system upgradation process seamless and cost-effective as it will improve the monitoring and evaluation process.
22nd Aug 2020 - Devdiscourse

The Masked Singer production shut down after coronavirus outbreak on Melbourne set

The Melbourne set of The Masked Singer has been shut down after several crew members tested positive for the coronavirus. “The entire production team, including the masked singers, the host and panellists are now in self-isolation,” the Network 10 program posted on Twitter late on Saturday night. “They are all being monitored closely and are in constant contact with medical authorities.”
22nd Aug 2020 - The Guardian

India, Brazil, and South Africa will face the 'harshest' economic impact from the coronavirus in major na..

India, Brazil, and South Africa will face the 'harshest' economic impact from the coronavirus in major nations as they're corrupt and badly run, a report says
22nd Aug 2020 - Business Insider

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World Bank chief warns extreme poverty could surge by 100 million - The Jakarta Post

David Malpass, the president of the World Bank, warned that the coronavirus pandemic may drive as many as 100 million people back into extreme poverty. The Washington-based development lender previously estimated that 60 million people would fall into extreme poverty due to COVID-19, but the new estimate puts the deterioration at 70 to 100 million, and Malpass told the AFP news agency "that number could go higher" if the pandemic worsens or drags on. The situation makes it "imperative" that creditors reduce the amount of debt held by poor countries at risk, going beyond the commitment to suspend debt payments, he added.
21st Aug 2020 - The Jakarta Post

New Zealand defers lockdown decision as it reports new COVID-19 cases

New Zealand on Friday reported 11 new cases of coronavirus, and put off a decision about easing restrictions in its biggest city of Auckland to next week. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she would announce on Monday whether the government would ease alert level 3 restrictions enforced in Auckland, and level 2 measures in the rest of the country. Of the new COVID-19 cases, nine were in the community while two were imported.
21st Aug 2020 - Reuters UK

Lockdown-free Sweden records its highest number of deaths in a six-month period for 150 years

Lockdown-free Sweden has recorded its highest death toll in a six-month period for 150 years - with 4,500 of its 51,405 fatalities being Covid-19 related. Its the highest tally from January to the end of June since 1869 when 55,431 people died, largely because of a famine. The population of Sweden then was just 4.1million, compared to 10.3million today. It should also be noted that Sweden remained neutral during the two world wars, whereas most European countries were experiencing the equivalent of a six-month coronavirus death toll in the course of a single battle 75 years ago.
20th Aug 2020 - Daily Mail

'Distanced aperitivo and no hugs: How we're hosting house guests in Italy after lockdown'

But it has been a relief to be able to invite people to our house again. This has, however, required adopting some measures to keep everyone safe. There have been no decrees or lists made available to guide this accommodation, so we have had to cobble together our own. In some ways, we have learned from what we have experienced with lodging and restaurants. But then have added a domestic twist. One event that got our attention early-on was the covid-caused death of the village pharmacist and the infection of several members of his family. It seems the family had a large get-together and a few weeks later, the effects were dramatic. Given that he was a kind of town patriarch and friend of everyone, Patrizio’s sudden passing got everyone’s attention. One week he was his affable self, standing by the entrance to his shop and chatting people up; the next week he was gone. Thereafter, people diligently wore masks and maintained proper separation.
20th Aug 2020 - The Local Italy

How the Pandemic Is Reshaping India

With a white handkerchief covering his mouth and nose, only Rajkumar Prajapati’s tired eyes were visible as he stood in line. It was before sunrise on Aug. 5, but there were already hundreds of others waiting with him under fluorescent lights at the main railway station in Pune, an industrial city not far from Mumbai, where they had just disembarked from a train. Each person carried something: a cloth bundle, a backpack, a sack of grain. Every face was obscured by a mask, a towel or the edge of a sari. Like Prajapati, most in the line were workers returning to Pune from their families’ villages, where they had fled during the lockdown. Now, with mounting debts, they were back to look for work. When Prajapati got to the front of the line, officials took his details and stamped his hand with ink, signaling the need to self-isolate for seven days.
20th Aug 2020 - YAHOO!

China state papers back Wuhan park after viral pool party

Chinese state newspapers threw their support behind an amusement park in the central city of Wuhan on Thursday after pictures of a densely packed pool party at the park went viral overseas amid concerns about the spread of COVID-19.
20th Aug 2020 - Reuters

Chinese state media dismisses attacks on Wuhan's huge pool party as 'sour grapes'

Chinese state media has defended Wuhan residents after photos and video of a huge pool party went viral this week, saying complaints by foreigners were “sour grapes” . Thousands of people celebrated at a water park music festival in Wuhan this week, crowded in front of the stage, shoulder to shoulder. An AFP photo of the dance party drew some negative responses at Wuhan’s apparent return to normal life. A newspaper front page in Australia headlined the story as “China’s big party”, and “life’s a beach in Wuhan as world pays virus price”. Chinese authorities have faced persistent criticisms over early attempts to cover up the coronavirus outbreak, with some world leaders saying they could have stopped its spread to other countries.
20th Aug 2020 - The Guardian

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Inside the French Riviera's pandemic party problem

From Saint-Tropez to Marseille and Nice, parties across the French Riviera this summer have been making international headlines. In conversations with Business Insider, several French residents described a scene of non-stop partying and minimal mask-wearing. In recent weeks, restaurants and night clubs across Saint-Tropez have been forced to close down.
19th Aug 2020 - Business Insider

Notre Dame becomes latest university to suspend in-person classes

The University of Notre Dame on Tuesday suspended in-person classes and moved them online for at least two weeks after seeing a surge in coronavirus cases, the latest university to roll back campus reopenings. Notre Dame University President John Jenkins announced the decision after the prestigious Catholic university near South Bend, Indiana, reported a spike of 80 positive test results on Monday, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 147 since Aug. 3, according to the university’s website. The results from 418 tests represented a positivity rate of 19 percent at the school with overall positivity at around 16 percent since Aug. 3.
19th Aug 2020 - Reuters UK

Why China’s economic recovery from coronavirus is widening the wealth gap

Amanda Wang’s family businesses — a call centre and two restaurants in Beijing — are grappling with a plunge in revenue following the coronavirus outbreak. She imposed a company-wide 30 per cent pay cut on about 120 workers in July even after receiving tax cuts and employment subsidies from the government designed to help companies survive the pandemic. “My biggest challenge is a lack of business and policy support [from the government] isn’t helpful [on this],” says Ms Wang, referring to her decision to cut workers’ salaries. “I have to make savings where I can.” Yet Ms Wang had no qualms about renewing her annual Rmb150,000 ($21,000) membership at a downtown beauty salon in the Chinese capital. “I am not going to cut corners on my basic needs,” says the 41-year-old, who in July sold one of her six apartments in Beijing for a profit of Rmb3m. “There are ways to make up for the income loss.”
19th Aug 2020 - The Financial Times

Wuhan pool parties bring post-lockdown relief in China

Night-time pool parties are proving popular in the Chinese city hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak as residents in Wuhan seek relief from lockdown. For more than two months, 11 million residents endured a strict lockdown as coronavirus raced around the city in central China. Now, some are letting loose en masse at night-time pool parties at a popular amusement park chain. The Wuhan Maya Beach Water Park reopened in late June and the crowds have picked up this month.
19th Aug 2020 - Belfast Telegraph

Millions in India face eviction amid coronavirus recovery push

Thousands of people were evicted across India during lockdowns to contain the coronavirus pandemic, with millions more at risk of being uprooted as authorities push infrastructure projects to spur economic growth, housing rights campaigners said. At least 20,000 people were evicted from their homes between March 16 and July 31, despite court orders that banned such actions during lockdowns, according to a report published by the Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) in Delhi on Tuesday. In the last three years for which HLRN has records, at least 568,000 were forcibly removed from their homes across India, or 22 people every hour. Last year alone, more than 107,600 people were evicted. “India’s grave housing crisis has been exacerbated by the forced eviction and home demolition of marginalised, low-income communities - even during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Shivani Chaudhry, HLRN’s executive director.
19th Aug 2020 - Reuters

Millions return to schools lacking handwashing facilities: UN

A joint report (PDF) published last week by the WHO and UNICEF, the UN children's fund, revealed that 43 percent of schools worldwide lacked facilities for basic handwashing with soap and water in 2019, affecting 818 million children - more than a third of them in sub-Saharan Africa. In the least-developed countries, seven out of 10 schools lack basic handwashing facilities, and half of all schools lack basic sanitation and water services, the agencies said.
19th Aug 2020 - AlJazeera

COVID-19 pandemic causes mental health crisis in Americas, says WHO official

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing a mental health crisis in the Americas due to heightened stress and use of drugs and alcohol during six months of lockdowns and stay-at-home measures, the World Health Organization’s regional director said on Tuesday. The pandemic also has brought a related problem in a surge in domestic violence against women, Carissa Etienne said in a virtual briefing from the Pan American Health Organization in Washington. “The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a mental health crisis in our region at a scale we’ve never seen before,” she said. “It is urgent that mental health support is considered a critical component of the pandemic response.”
19th Aug 2020 - Reuters UK

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Coronavirus: Australia signs deal for potential vaccine and says it will be free for all its citizens

Australia‘s prime minister Scott Morrison says the country has signed a deal with drugmaker AstraZeneca to secure and manufacture a potential coronavirus vaccine, and that it will be made available for free to all citizens if successful. The University of Oxford jab is considered a leader in the global race to deliver an effective vaccine against Covid-19. With several countries moving to secure supplies that some fear may lead to a global shortage, Australia said it had signed a letter of intent with AstraZeneca to produce and distribute enough doses of the Oxford vaccine for its population. “Under this deal we have secured early access for every Australian,” Mr Morrison said in a statement. ”If this vaccine proves successful we will manufacture and supply vaccines straight away under our own steam and make it free for 25 million Australians.”
18th Aug 2020 - The Independent

Chinese-built lab eases strain in Iraq's virus battle

Iraqi lab staff are busy each day shuffling piles of swab samples that await COVID-19 testing in a Chinese-built facility that has transformed the way they do their vital work. From boosting testing capacities to setting a high standard of testing protocols, the laboratory has played a critical role in helping the Iraqi Ministry of Health battle the disease since its inauguration in Baghdad's Medical City on March 25, lab director Mohammed Ghanim Mahdi said. "The lab was equipped and established by a donation from the Chinese government at a critical time," Mahdi said. "When this lab was established, Iraq had only one working lab fighting COVID-19." Mahdi said the lab has facilitated the Iraqi campaign against the coronavirus, especially in the first few weeks of the outbreak in Iraq.
19th Aug 2020 - ChinaDaily USA

Wuhan coronavirus: From silent streets to packed pools

Thousands of people packed shoulder-to-shoulder with no face masks in sight, frolicking on rubber floats and cheering along to a music festival. It's not a very 2020 image, but it was the scene this weekend in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 first emerged late last year. Pictures of partygoers at the Wuhan Maya Beach Water Park - looking very much removed from the outbreak that the rest of the world continues to battle - have now gone, well, viral. It's worlds apart from the images that came out of Wuhan when it had the world's first Covid-19 lockdown in January - a ghost town devoid of residents and vehicles. The lockdown was lifted in April and there have been no domestically transmitted cases in Wuhan or Hubei province since mid-May.
18th Aug 2020 - BBC

Wuhan pool party sees thousands of people gather at water park as lockdown is eased

Thousands of people have been pictured crammed into a water park in Wuhan — the Chinese city where the coronavirus first emerged — as lockdown restrictions ease. The Wuhan Maya Beach Water Park was filled with partygoers over the weekend as it hosted an electronic music festival. Photos shared widely online show thousands of revellers in swimming costumes and goggles, floating in inflatable rings whilst enjoying the DJs and performers on stage.
18th Aug 2020 - Evening Standard

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Migrants return to Delhi as India's COVID-19 deaths top 50,000

India’s COVID-19 deaths topped 50,000 on Monday, five months after the country reported its first such fatality, as migrant workers poured back into major cities in hopes of regaining work after the easing of anti-virus restrictions. Hundreds of migrant workers from the countryside who had left the capital New Delhi in droves after losing their jobs in a nationwide lockdown in March returned in buses on Monday and were made to wait in lines for rapid COVID-19 tests. Those who tested positive were sent to quarantine centres while the rest were allowed to leave the city’s busy inter-state bus terminus with their luggage. Almost all of them wore masks or covered their nose and mouth with scarves or handkerchiefs, though in the countryside such virus-fighting measures have become tough to enforce and the infection rate has surged.
17th Aug 2020 - Reuters

Nicola Sturgeon announces 26 new Covid-19 cases but no deaths recorded

There were 26 new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours in Scotland, the First Minister has announced today. But there have now been zero deaths related to the killer virus since July. The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases across the country now stands at 19,358. Patients currently being treated in hospital with the deadly virus stands at 248 with three currently in intensive care. The total number of Covid-19 deaths in Scotland remains at 2,491. Early estimates show 13 of the new cases are from the Grampian area, with a new cluster emerging in Coupar Angus.
17th Aug 2020 - Daily Record

Fears overcrowding in Wetherspoon pubs may lead to Covid spike

Fears that relaxed summer socialising will lead to a surge in Covid-19 cases around the UK have been heightened after concerns that JD Wetherspoon is failing to prevent overcrowding in pubs in its 900-strong chain. Concerns about poor social distancing by customers in Wetherspoon pubs followed a surge in visitors during recent hot weather and after the publication of A-level results last Thursday. Customers in a south London pub run by the company said they had not been asked to provide personal details, including mobile phone numbers that can be used in the government’s track and trace system. The Guardian found that in one of south London’s most popular pubs with young people, customers were allowed to buy drinks directly from the bar and stood within 1 metre of others without any intervention by the staff
17th Aug 2020 - The Guardian

India travel demand high, says Lufthansa as air bubble flights to Germany resume

The Lufthansa Group on Monday expressed confidence that air travel demand to and from India remains high despite the COVID-19 lockdown disruption, as it welcomed the bilateral air bubble agreement which allowed Germany’s largest airline to resume flights from India last week. George Ettiyil, Lufthansa Group’s Senior Director for South Asia Sales, said the airline is offering more than 40 flights from Frankfurt and Munich to Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore until the end of August, beyond which it hopes to formally apply for inbound flights to India in consultation with Indian authorities.
17th Aug 2020 - The Financial Express

Italy’s businesses enjoy ‘better than expected’ virus rebound

In the southern Italian town of Avellino, Salvatore Amitrano has been rushing to dispatch a backlog of deliveries since the country emerged from its strict coronavirus lockdown. Mr Amitrano and his two brothers run a multinational business producing components for household appliances with annual revenues of about €25m. His company Pasell Group, which has plants in Italy, Turkey, Slovakia and Poland, registered year-on-year sales drops of up to 50 per cent in March, April and May as Rome imposed some of the most stringent antivirus measures so far seen in a western democracy.
17th Aug 2020 - Financial Times

Japan’s GDP drop less severe than US and Europe

Japa