Author: lwadmin

Brazil has placed a 90-day suspension on the use of more than 12 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine because they were made in a plant that had not been authorized by Anvisa, Brazil’s federal health regulator, Reuters reported.

“The manufacturing unit … was not inspected and was not approved by Anvisa in the authorization of emergency use of the mentioned vaccine,” the regulator said Saturday in a statement.

Brazil’s Butantan Institute, a biomedical center that has partnered with China’s Sinovac Biotech to locally finish the vaccines, alerted Anvisa on Friday about the doses, but neither disclosed the location of the plant. Anvisa said it would seek to inspect the plant during the 90-day ban.

Butantan said 9 million more doses made at the same plant were on their way to Brazil.

Concerns spur boosters

Several cities in Brazil have begun providing vaccine booster shots even though most citizens have yet to receive their second jabs. The booster shots were prompted by concerns older Brazilians have about the efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine, The Associated Press reported.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s delta variant epicenter and home to one of its largest elderly populations, began administering the boosters Wednesday. Northeastern cities Salvador and Sao Luis started on Monday, and the most populous city, Sao Paulo, will begin Monday. The rest of the nation is expected to follow the next week.

France, Israel, China and Chile are among those countries giving boosters to some of their older citizens, and a U.S. plan to start delivering booster shots for most Americans by September 20 is facing complications that could delay third doses for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday.

Japan and South Korea, both of which wrestled with slow vaccine rollouts, are planning booster shots in the fourth quarter of this year. Malaysia also is considering boosters, but Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said those who had yet to receive their first shots were being prioritized.

Thailand began giving booster shots this week, but only for health and frontline workers.

Russia, Hungary and Serbia also are giving boosters, although there has been a lack of demand in those countries for the initial shots amid abundant supplies.

According to AP, France’s worst coronavirus outbreak is unfolding 12 time zones away from Paris, devastating Tahiti and other idyllic islands of French Polynesia.

Regional health officials say the South Pacific archipelagos lack enough oxygen, ICU beds and morgue space — and that the vaccination rate is just half the national average.

France’s highest rate

With more than 2,800 COVID cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the region now holds France’s record for the highest infection rate. The majority of the region’s 463 documented COVID-19 deaths have taken place in the past 30 days.

New Zealand officials on Saturday reported the country’s first COVID-related fatality in more than 200 days. Doctors said the nonagenarian had several underlying health problems in addition to COVID-19.

American boxer Oscar de la Hoya was hospitalized with COVID-19 late on Friday, forcing him to drop out of a comeback fight scheduled for next month. The Hall of Fame fighter said on Twitter that he was fully vaccinated earlier this year.

German news agency dpa on Saturday reported that a man attacked two members of a vaccination team operating a shopping mall medical kiosk in the east German town of Gera after he demanded a vaccination certificate without being vaccinated. The man, who was not identified, injured a nurse and a medical assistant after they refused to comply with his demands.

Police later arrested the man, who was also injured in the attack, at a nearby parking garage.

Fifth variant

World Health Organization officials earlier this week designated the coronavirus variant known as mu or “B.1.621” as a “variant of interest,” becoming the fifth variant to be monitored by the global health body. Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday said U.S. public health officials were “keeping a very close eye” on a new variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 that was first detected in Colombia.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said Saturday evening that it had recorded nearly 220.2 million global COVID-19 infections and 4.6 million deaths. The center said 5.4 billion vaccines had been administered.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA – The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, is calling on the United States and other nations to end COVID-19 border restrictions that keep Central American refugees from seeking asylum.

Forced displacement within Central America and Mexico has been soaring over the last five years. The United Nations refugee agency says factors, including chronic violence and insecurity, climate change and natural disasters have forced people to flee their homes in growing numbers.

UNHCR spokeswoman Aikaterini Kitidi told VOA the effects of COVID-19 and Hurricanes Eta and Iota, which struck the region with devastating force last year, have triggered further large-scale displacement.

In particular, she said these disasters have created great economic hardship for women and children who have lost their source of income and have difficulty obtaining basic services.

“As a result, such people are forcibly displaced, and they are compelled many times to embark to even further dangerous onward journeys. What they are exposed to are smugglers, traffickers, and to other risks like, for example, sexual exploitation, abuse, or even murder,” she said.

Kitidi said a staggering 1 million people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have been forced to flee their homes, creating an unprecedented displacement crisis in the region.

Due to public health COVID-19 travel restrictions, she said Central American refugees face extreme difficulties in obtaining protections they need in countries of asylum. She said the UNHCR has appealed to the U.S. government to end the Title 42 public health-related asylum restrictions.

“Under which we see the ports of entry to the United States remaining closed to most asylum seekers with exemptions for some categories of populations with vulnerabilities. And we have asked for the expulsions that are occurring of these people to stop and for the right to claim asylum in the United States to be restored,” she said.

Kitidi said all countries in the region have agreed to share the responsibility to provide protection for those fleeing danger and persecution. She added that discussions are continuing with regional authorities in the hopes they will live up to their agreement.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA – In the first report of its kind, the World Meteorological Organization examines the close link between air quality and climate change and how measures stemming from COVID-19 influenced air quality patterns in 2020.

Government-imposed lockdown measures and travel restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 resulted in a marked improvement in air quality in many parts of the world. For example, the WMO said Southeast Asia experienced a 40% reduction in air particles in 2020.

However, the chief of the WMO’s Atmospheric Environment Research Division, Oksana Tarasova, said the dramatic fall in emissions of key air pollutants was short-lived. She said city dwellers who reveled in seeing blue skies during periods of lockdown inactivity, had to again endure living under a pollution cloud once the cars started rolling again.

“As soon as mobility has increased, we are back to business as usual,” Tarasova said. “So, those improvements were not very long lasting. And that is why we always stress that the extreme measures which were taken under lockdown is not a substitute for long term policies.”

During this same period, the WMO said extreme weather events fueled by climate and environmental change triggered unprecedented sand and dust storms and wildfires that affected air quality.

In parallel with the human-induced experiment on lockdowns and travel restrictions, Tarasova said those, and other natural phenomena also were controlling air quality around the world.

“There were several very strong events that happened in 2020 related to bio-mass burning where the smoke pollution from this burning bio-mass impacted air quality in large parts of Siberia, the United States,” Tarasova said. “Early in the year, there was an episode in Australia that caused dramatic deterioration of air quality in those parts of the world.”

The episode Tarasova refers is to Australian wildfires.

The WMO says changes in climate can influence pollution levels directly. It says the increased frequency and intensity of heatwaves may lead to greater accumulation of pollutants close to the surface. It notes the intense wildfires breaking out in many parts of the world and huge dust and sandstorms also worsen air pollution.

The weather agency warns air pollution has significant impacts on human health. That is borne out by estimates from the latest Global Burden of Disease assessment. The data show global mortality from pollution nearly doubled from 2.3 million in 1990 to 4.5 million in 2019 — most due to particulate matter.

Source: Voice of America

WASHINGTON – Top U.S. health officials have told the White House they will not have enough data for a broad COVID-19 booster rollout as President Joe Biden had anticipated, a source familiar with the discussions said Friday.

The source told Reuters that there was only sufficient data to weigh a booster dose from Pfizer Inc. and German partner BioNTech SE.

Data submitted by rival Moderna Inc. fell short of what was needed, putting it several weeks behind the September 20 rollout the Biden administration has targeted, if regulators approve the use of boosters, the source said.

Earlier, The New York Times reported that the officials told the White House on Thursday to scale back a plan to offer the booster shots to the general public later this month.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told White House COVID coordinator Jeffrey Zientz their agencies might be able recommend boosters by late September only for certain recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the source familiar with the discussions confirmed.

“These things happen and are part of the process. … The booster plan and timeline was pulled together by the government doctors, including Janet and Rochelle,” the source said.

U.S. health officials had said in August that a third shot of the COVID-19 vaccine would be made widely available on September 20 to Americans who received two doses of either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine at least eight months earlier. They cited data showing diminishing protection from the initial vaccinations as infections rose from the Delta variant.

Biden said the government expected to give out 100 million booster shots for no out-of-pocket cost at around 80,000 locations nationwide. The administration has described its booster plan as an effort to get ahead of the virus, based on concerns that breakthrough infections can occur among people who are fully vaccinated.

The U.S. booster plan is dependent on the Food and Drug Administration determining that a third dose of the two-dose vaccines is safe and effective, and a favorable recommendation from CDC advisers.

Source: Voice of America

HANOI – Vietnam’s coronavirus epicenter Ho Chi Minh City, which has kept residents confined at home under lockdown, is considering reopening economic activity from September 15, shifting from a “zero COVID-19” strategy to a policy of living with the virus.

The city of 9 million people is targeting a phased reopening and the full vaccination of its citizens by the end of this year, according to the draft seen by Reuters, which has yet to be endorsed.

Ho Chi Minh City last month deployed troops to enforce its lockdown and prohibited residents from leaving their homes to slow a spiraling rate of deaths. Just 3% of Vietnam’s 98 million population has been fully vaccinated.

Vietnam’s biggest city, a business hub flanked by industrialized provinces, aims to “promote economic recovery … and move towards living with COVID-19,” the draft proposal said.

The reopening would be gradual, and low-interest loans and tax cuts would be offered to affected firms, it said.

Ho Chi Minh City alone has recorded 241,110 coronavirus infections and 9,974 deaths, representing half of the country’s cases and 80% of its fatalities.

The vast majority of those have come in recent months, ending hopes that Vietnam could continue to achieve success it showed in 2020, when aggressive contact tracing and quaratining led to one of the world’s best COVID-19 containment records.

The ministry of health on Friday reported 14,922 coronavirus infections, a record daily increase, raising its caseload to 501,649 with 12,476 deaths.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Wednesday warned Vietnam could be facing a lengthy coronavirus battle and cannot rely on lockdown and quarantines indefinitely.

During a visit to a smartphone factory of Samsung Electronics in the northern province of Thai Nguyen on Friday, Chinh urged the company to help Vietnam procure vaccines from South Korea and to maintain its long-term investment in Vietnam.

Foreign firms operating in the country, including Samsung “can put their trust in Vietnam’s efforts in tackling the pandemic,” Chinh said.

The health ministry on Friday called on recovered COVID-19 patients to help the city battle the epidemic.

In capital Hanoi, where dozens of new cases per day have been recorded in recent weeks, authorities will extend strict lockdown in most parts of the city beyond September 6 and will conduct 1 million tests from now through the end of Sunday.

Source: Voice of America