Day: September 9, 2021

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Joe Biden will unveil a new strategy to combat the dramatic surge of COVID-19 cases across the nation during a major White House speech Thursday afternoon.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday that Biden will spell out six methods designed to encourage more Americans to get inoculated against the virus, including involvement of the private sector.

Biden’s speech comes as the U.S. is experiencing a growing number of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths sparked by the highly contagious delta variant, which has completely upended the administration’s aggressive vaccination efforts during its first months in office.

The majority of new infections have been among Americans who have not been vaccinated, including a spike in the number of young children who are not yet eligible to receive a vaccine.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said cases among children soared to 750,000 between Aug. 5 and Sept. 2.

The latest surge has pushed hospitals and health care workers across the U.S. to a breaking point, with intensive care units filled to capacity with COVID-19 patients, and stalled the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic, a key goal of Biden’s first year in office.

Source: Voice of America

The World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa said Thursday the number of new COVID-19 cases on the continent fell by 23 percent last week, the steepest drop in eight weeks since a peak in July.

During her weekly COVID-19 briefing, though, WHO Africa chief Matshidiso Moeti said that while those figures are good news and an indication the third wave of infections is on a “downward slide,” variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, particularly the Delta variant, have sparked flare-ups, prolonging the “acute phase” of the third wave for longer than expected.

At the same time, she said, Africa has passed the sad milestone of 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

Moeti said scientists also are tracking a new variant, C.1.2, a variant found in 130 cases in 10 countries globally, including five African countries with over 90 percent of the cases. But she said so far there is no evidence that C.1.2 is more transmissible or that that it affects the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

On the subject of vaccines, Moeti said shipments to the continent continue to grow, with about 5.5 million doses received through the WHO-managed vaccine cooperative COVAX in the first week of September.

However, Africa’s Center for Disease Control says just over 3 percent of the continent’s population is fully vaccinated. And Moeti said COVAX Wednesday revised downward its vaccine shipment forecast for the rest of the year, for a number of reasons, which means the continent can expect 25 percent fewer vaccine doses.

She blamed the reduced shipments, at least partly on “the prioritization of bilateral deals” between wealthy nations and pharmaceutical companies “over international solidarity.”

Moeti said that high-income nations have pledged to share 1 billion doses globally, but so far, only 120 million have been released. She said, “Every dose is precious. If companies and countries prioritize vaccine equity, this pandemic would be over quickly.”

She said to ultimately tip the scales against the pandemic, efforts to reduce transmission through public health measures like mask-wearing must be accompanied by a significant increase in vaccine supplies and vaccinations.

Source: Voice of America

U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to call for a summit on boosting the global supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, according to U.S. news outlets.

The summit will be held during the U.N. General Assembly later this month. The Washington Post reports the topics will include coordination among world leaders to collectively tackle the health crisis and address inequities, including the slow rate of vaccinations in the developing world.

The United States and other wealthy nations have been under increasing pressure to donate their surplus of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries as the pandemic wreaks havoc across the globe with the emergence of new and more contagious variants of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, on Wednesday implored wealthy nations to forgo COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for the rest of the year to ensure that poorer countries have more access to the vaccine. Tedros had previously asked rich countries not to provide boosters until September.

The global vaccine sharing initiative COVAX also announced Wednesday that it expects to receive about 1.4 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year, as opposed to the projection of 1.9 billion doses it made in June.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Board of Education is expected to approve a measure Thursday that would mandate vaccinations against COVID-19 for all students 12 years old and older. Students would be required to receive their first dose by November 21 followed by a second dose by December 19 in order to be fully vaccinated by the next semester.

The measure would also require students participating in in-person extracurricular activities to receive both shots by the end of October.

If the measure passes, Los Angeles would be the largest school district in the U.S. to impose a mandatory vaccination policy. The district is the nation’s second-largest with just over 600,000 students.

Separately, Japan announced Thursday that it will extend its current coronavirus state of emergency for Tokyo and 18 other areas until September 30. Two prefectures will be shifted from full emergency status to more targeted restrictions.

The state of emergency was first imposed for the city and a handful of other prefectures just weeks before the start of the Tokyo Olympics as Japan struggled under the surge of new infections sparked by the delta variant and a sluggish vaccination campaign.

Japan currently has more than 1.6 million confirmed infections, including 16,600 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, with nearly 50% of its population fully vaccinated.

Source: Voice of America