health
Asia welcomes US vaccine donations amid cold storage worries
Health officials and experts in Asia have welcomed U.S. plans to share 500 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine with the developing world, but some say it would take more than donations alone to address huge vaccination gaps that threaten to prolong the pandemic.
President Joe Biden was set to make the announcement Thursday in a speech before the start of the Group of Seven summit in Britain. Two hundred million doses — enough to fully protect 100 million people — would be shared this year, with the balance to be donated in the first half of 2022, according to a source familiar with the matter who confirmed the news of the Pfizer sharing plan.
Jaehun Jung, a professor of preventive medicine at South Korea’s Gachon University College of Medicine, said the U.S. donations may proveto be a “huge turning point” in the global fight against COVID-19, but also lamented that the help couldn’t come earlier.
He said the extremely cold storage temperatures required for Pfizer shots would present challenges for countries with poor health systems and called for U.S. officials and the New York-based drug maker to explore the possibility of easing the requirements.
Read:AP source: US to buy 500M Pfizer vaccines to share globally
He said the delay in U.S. help was “understandable, because the United States initially had its own troubles with supplies while inoculating its own population. But for now, it’s critical to move up the timing of the vaccine provisions to the earliest possible point.”
According to the person who spoke to the AP, the Biden administration plans to provide the 500 million shots it purchases from Pfizer to 92 lower income countries and the African Union over the next year through the U.N.-backed COVAX program.
The United States has faced increasing pressure to outline its global vaccine sharing plan. Inequities in supplies around the world have become more pronounced while there’s increasing concern over newer virus variants emerging from areas with consistently high COVID-19 circulation.
The White House had earlier announced plans to share 80 million doses globally by the end of June, most through COVAX.
The additional donation of the Pfizer shots is crucial because the global disparity in vaccination has become a multidimensional threat: a human catastrophe, a $5 trillion economic loss for advanced economies, and a contributor to the generation of mutant viruses, said Jerome Kim, the head of the International Vaccine Institute, a non-profit dedicated to making vaccines available to developing countries.
Read: G7 must ensure vaccine access in developing countries: UN experts
Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of South Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency, said the success of Biden’s vaccine-sharing plan would depend mainly on how fast the shots could be manufactured and sent to countries in need amid global shortages.
She also echoed Jung’s concerns about Pfizer’s cold chain requirements and said the U.S. donations should be accompanied with efforts to improve infrastructure and educate health workers in receiving countries.
“It’s very important to manage international cooperation so that the whole world can be vaccinated quickly,” she said during a briefing.
The United States has yet to confirm the 92 lower-income countries that would be receiving the Pfizer shots.
In Asia, Jung said that India and Southeast Asia are in desperate need of donations. Vaccinating isolated North Korea could also prove to be a difficult challenge.
Some experts say donations alone wouldn’t be enough to close the huge gaps in supplies and call for a transition toward a distributed system of vaccine manufacturing where qualified companies around the world would produce their own shots without intellectual property constraints.
Read: WTO panel considers easing protections on COVID-19 vaccines
But Jung said many developing countries depending on COVAX donations don’t have the industrial resources to manufacture advanced vaccines like Pfizer’s mRNA shots.
As countries around the world struggled to access vaccines, unable to secure bilateral deals with companies like Pfizer, many have turned to China. China has exported 350 million doses of its vaccines to dozens of countries, according to its Foreign Ministry.
China has pledged 10 million doses to COVAX, and the Chinese drug maker Sinopharm said last week it had just finished a batch of vaccines for sharing with COVAX. The WHO had approved the vaccine for emergency use last month.
While Chinese vaccines have faced scrutiny because of a lack of transparency in sharing clinical trial data, many countries were desperate to take what was available and found the shots easier to use as they could be stored in normal refrigerators.
Biden to lay out vax donations, urge world leaders to join
One year ago, the U.S. was the deadliest hotspot of the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing the cancellation of the Group of Seven summit it was due to host. Now, the U.S. is emerging as a model for how to successfully emerge from more than 15 months of global crisis.
For President Joe Biden, who is meeting with leaders of the wealthy G-7 democracies on his first overseas trip since taking office, it’s a personal vindication of his pledge to turn around the U.S. virus, but also a call to action to enlist other countries in the global fight.
In a speech on the eve of the summit, Biden on Thursday will unveil plans for the U.S. to donate 500 million vaccine doses around the globe over the next year, on top of 80 million he has already pledged by the end of the month. U.S. officials say Biden will also include a direct request to his fellow G-7 leaders to do the same.
“We have to end COVID-19, not just at home — which we’re doing — but everywhere,” Biden told American servicemembers Wednesday on the first stop of his three-country, eight-day trip, adding that the effort “requires coordinated, multilateral action.”
Read:Biden opens overseas trip declaring ‘United States is back’
“There’s no wall high enough to keep us safe from this pandemic or the next biological threat we face — and there will be others,” he added.
The U.S. has faced mounting pressure to outline its global vaccine sharing plan, especially as inequities in supply around the world have become more pronounced, and the demand for shots in the U.S. has dropped precipitously in recent weeks.
The new U.S. commitment is to purchase and donate 500 million Pfizer doses for distribution through the global COVAX alliance to 92 lower-income countries and the African Union, bringing the first steady supply of mRNA vaccine to the countries that need it most. The U.S. is now set to be COVAX’s largest vaccine donor in addition to its single largest funder with a $4 billion commitment.
The global alliance has thus far distributed just 81 million doses, and parts of the world, particularly in Africa, remain vaccine deserts.
After leading the world in new cases and deaths over much of the last year, the rapid vaccination program in the U.S. now positions the country among the leaders of the global recovery. Nearly 64% of adults in the U.S. have received at least one vaccine dose and the average numbers of new positive cases and deaths in the U.S. are lower now than at any point since the earliest days of the pandemic.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last week projected that the U.S. economy would grow at a rate of 6.9% this year, making it one of the few nations for which forecasts are rosier now than before the pandemic.
U.S. officials are hopeful the summit will conclude with a communique showing a commitment from the G-7 countries and other invited nations to do more to help vaccinate the world and support public health globally.
“I don’t anticipate contention on the issue of vaccines. I anticipate convergence,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Wednesday. “Because we’re all converging around the idea that we need to boost vaccine supply in a number of ways: sharing more of our own doses — and we’ll have more to say on that; helping get more manufacturing capacity around the world — we’ll have more to say on that; and, of course, doing what’s necessary across the chain of custody from when the vaccine is produced to when it gets in someone’s arms in the rural developing world, and we’ll have more to say on that.”
Read:Biden to assure allies, meet Putin during 1st overseas trip
Last week, the White House unveiled plans to donate an initial allotment of 25 million doses of surplus vaccine overseas, mostly through the United Nations-backed COVAX program, promising infusions for South and Central America, Asia, Africa and others.
Officials say a quarter of that excess will be kept in reserve for emergencies and for the U.S. to share directly with allies and partners, including South Korea, Taiwan and Ukraine.
Sullivan noted that Biden has previously committed to turning the U.S. into a modern day “arsenal of democracies” for vaccines, but that the country also has health reasons for spreading vaccinations — preventing the rise of potentially dangerous variants — and geostrategic ones as well.
China and Russia have shared, with varying success, their domestically produced vaccines with some needy countries, often with hidden strings attached. Sullivan said Biden “does want to show — rallying the rest of the world’s democracies — that democracies are the countries that can best deliver solutions for people everywhere.”
The U.S.-produced mRNA vaccines have also proven to be more effective against both the original strain and more dangerous variants of COVID-19 than the more conventional vaccines produced by China and Russia. Some countries that have had success in deploying those conventional vaccines have nonetheless seen cases spike.
Biden’s decision to purchase the doses, officials said, was meant to keep them from getting locked up by richer nations that have the means to enter into purchasing agreements directly with manufacturers. Just last month, the European Commission signed an agreement to purchase as many as 1.8 billion Pfizer doses in the next two years, a significant share of the company’s upcoming production — though the bloc reserved the right to donate some of its doses to COVAX.
Global public health groups have been aiming to use this week’s G-7 meetings to press the nation’s wealthiest democracies to do more to share vaccines with the world, and Biden’s plans drew immediate praise toward that end.
Tom Hart, acting CEO at The ONE Campaign, a nonprofit that seeks to end poverty, said Biden’s announcement was “the kind of bold leadership that is needed to end this global pandemic.”
Read:US to swiftly boost global vaccine sharing, Biden announces
“We urge other G-7 countries to follow the U.S.’ example and donate more doses to COVAX,” he added. “If there was ever a time for global ambition and action to end the pandemic, it’s now.”
But others have called on the U.S. to do even more.
“Charity is not going to win the war against the coronavirus,” said Niko Lusiani, Oxfam America’s vaccine lead. “At the current rate of vaccinations, it would take low-income countries 57 years to reach the same level of protection as those in G-7 countries. That’s not only morally wrong, it’s self-defeating given the risk posed by coronavirus mutations.”
Biden last month broke with European allies to endorse waiving intellectual property rules at the World Trade Organization to promote vaccine production and equity. But many in his own administration acknowledge that the restrictions were not the driving cause of the global vaccine shortage, which has more to do with limited manufacturing capacity and shortages of delicate raw materials.
Billionaire philanthropist: vaccine hoarding hurts Africa
Billionaire philanthropist Mo Ibrahim is sharply criticizing the hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines by wealthy nations, urging the international community to “walk the talk” of equitable distribution as Africa desperately lags behind.
Ibrahim, a British mobile phone magnate who was born in Sudan, is hailed as a voice of moral authority across Africa. The 75-year-old earned his fortune by establishing the Celtel mobile phone network across Africa in the 1990s.
He is now using that fortune to promote democracy and political accountability on the continent, including through his sponsorship of the $5 million Ibrahim Prize for African leaders who govern responsibly and who give up their power peacefully.
He lamented the global “competition” for vaccines in an interview with The Associated Press. He said he views the the pandemic-era phrase “nobody is safe until everybody is safe” as a meaningless slogan until there is an equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines around the world.
Read:‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
“They say that while they are hoarding the vaccine. Can you walk the talk? Stop just talking like parrots, you know, and do you really mean what you said?” Ibrahim said late Tuesday in a Zoom call from London, where he is based.
He argued that “at least a reasonable portion” of the vaccines should go to frontline workers in Africa.
The World Health Organization reported last week that COVID-19 vaccine shipments have ground to “a near halt” in Africa at a time when some countries face a spike in cases.
Africa has administered vaccine doses to 31 million of its 1.3 billion people. But only 7 million people are fully vaccinated, according to World Health Organization Africa director Matshidiso Moeti.
Read:UN: Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region
Sub-Saharan Africa has on average administered only one vaccine dose per 100 people, compared to a global average of 23 doses per 100 people, she said, reiterating Africa’s ongoing plea for richer countries with significant vaccination coverage to share some of their remaining doses.
President Joe Biden has said the United States would share some of its vaccines.
Ibrahim warned also that Africa cannot afford to sit back, citing a need for greater accountability by governments which pledged in 2001 to spend at least 15% of their national budgets on public health. Economic integration that widens trade among nations is key, he said.
While support from abroad is welcome, he said, “we should rely much more on ourselves. I always thought self-reliance is something important in Africa.”
“We really need to build resilient health service in our countries,” he said.
Read:South Africa returns to stricter lockdown, virus 'surging'
Citing Tanzania under former leader John Magufuli, who died in March, Ibrahim said he was disappointed that some presidents appeared to dismiss the threat from COVID-19.
“We need to hold our leaders accountable,” he said. “You deny and you pay the price... Unfortunately, your people also pay the price. So we need to hold our people accountable for their behavior, for the way they allocate resources. And it is for us in civil society to keep raising this issue.”
Africa has confirmed more than 4.9 million COVID-19 cases, including 132,000 deaths, representing a tiny fraction of the global caseload. But some experts worry that the continent will suffer greatly in the long term if more of its people are not vaccinated in efforts to achieve herd immunity, when enough people are protected through infection or vaccination to make it difficult for a virus to continue to spread.
Achieving that goal will require about 1.5 billion vaccine doses for Africa if there is widespread use of the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, often the main shot available under the donor-backed COVAX program to ensure access for developing countries.
Haiti fights large COVID-19 spike as it awaits vaccines
Ever since the pandemic began, Haiti had perplexed experts with seemingly low infection and death rates from COVID-19 despite its rickety public health system, a total lack of vaccines and a widespread disdain for safety measures like masks and distancing.
That is no longer the case.
The few Haitian hospitals treating COVID cases have been so swamped in recent days that they report turning away patients, while plans to open another hospital to treat the infected have been delayed.
Official figures remain relatively low for a nation of more than 11 million people: Just 2,271 cases and 62 deaths have been recorded over the past month in government data collected by Johns Hopkins University. A total of 15,700 cases and more than 330 deaths have been reported since early last year.
Read:Sinovac vaccine restores a Brazilian city to near normal
But experts are united in saying those figures miss the true scale of what they say is the largest spike in cases since the new coronavirus first landed.
The government declared a health emergency on May 24 and imposed a curfew and safety measures — though few Haitians appear to be following them. Most shun, or can’t afford, face masks and it’s nearly impossible to keep a distance while shopping in bustling marketplaces or riding the crowded, colorful buses known as tap taps that most Haitians rely on to get around.
“There is no time to waste,” said Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, which is working with the government to scale up testing to identify and isolate infected people — a difficult task in a place where few think they can afford to be sick.
Sanorah Valcourt, a 27-year-old mother and hairstylist, said she felt sick for for two weeks last month with a fever and symptoms including loss of taste. But she didn’t get tested, or even take measures such as wearing face masks she finds uncomfortable.
“I didn’t feel well enough to hop on a tap tap and spend hours at a hospital to get tested,” she said.
The lack of cases early this year had led authorities to reduce the number of beds available for COVID patients to about 200 — more than half of those at the nonprofit St. Luke Foundation for Haiti in the capital of Port-au-Prince.
But by early this month, that clinic was at capacity and announced it was turning away patients.
“Many people are dying on arrival in ambulances,” the foundation said. “We have received many nuns as patients, a sure sign (COVID-19) is in the poorest areas.”
Marc Edson Augustin, medical director of the St. Luke hospital, said he’s especially worried about the deaths he has seen among those aged 17 to 22, and that groups of up to seven people are showing up at the same time seeking treatment for COVID.
Read:In Argentina, doctors adapt as COVID-19 strains hospitals
“The situation is real, and we want to tell people that the situation is getting worse,” he said. “We’re working to keep people alive as much as possible.”
Haiti’s Health Ministry had planned to have another 150 beds elsewhere for COVID-19 patients, but that effort was delayed. Meanwhile, Bruno Maes, representative in Haiti for UNICEF, said the children’s agency is working to help hospitals get oxygen and fuel.
“It’s not enough, for sure,” he said. “We have to be ready for a bigger influx of cases. ...It could get out of control.”
So far, Haiti hasn’t received a single vaccine, though officials say they expect to get 130,000 AstraZeneca doses this month.
The U.S. government also said it would donate a portion of six million doses for Haiti, though officials haven’t specified how many or when they will arrive.
Some 756,000 doses of AstraZeneca shots had been slated to arrive in May via the United Nations’ COVAX program for low-income countries, but they were delayed due to the government’s concern over possible clotting as a side effect and a lack of infrastructure to keep the vaccines properly refrigerated.
PAHO said it would help Haiti’s Health Ministry solve those problems, and is prioritizing vaccinating health workers.
The medical system also has been struggling with other problems, including unpaid wages for some workers. President Jovenel Moïse recently asked the Ministry of Economy and Finance to ensure they get paid.
Even when vaccines arrive, experts worry many people may not get a jab — some for fear of venturing through crime-wracked neighborhoods to reach a clinic.
Read:Why are so many babies dying of Covid-19 in Brazil?
Valcourt mentioned such dangers as one reason why she avoided getting tested. Like many Haitians, she turned to a home remedy — in her case, a tea made with parsley, garlic, lime, thyme and cloves.
Manoucheka Louis, a 35-year-old street merchant who sells plantains and potatoes, said she got sick earlier this year but didn’t have the roughly $20 needed to see a private doctor, who she trusts more than public institutions.
“Health care is not something I can afford,” she said, adding that she was coughing a lot and was fighting a fever, loss of taste and an aching body and head. Her two children had the same symptoms, and they all relied on homemade teas and regular cold medicine.
She said she still can’t afford to always wear a mask. They can cost about 50 cents each in a country where many people make less than a dollar or two a day.
US deaths from heart disease and diabetes climbed amid COVID
The U.S. saw remarkable increases in the death rates for heart disease, diabetes and some other common killers in 2020, and experts believe a big reason may be that many people with dangerous symptoms made the lethal mistake of staying away from the hospital for fear of catching the coronavirus.
The death rates — posted online this week by federal health authorities — add to the growing body of evidence that the number of lives lost directly or indirectly to the coronavirus in the U.S. is far greater than the officially reported COVID-19 death toll of nearly 600,000 in 2020-21.
For months now, researchers have known that 2020 was the deadliest year in U.S. history, primarily because of COVID-19. But the data released this week showed the biggest increases in the death rates for heart disease and diabetes in at least 20 years.
“I would probably use the word `alarming,’” said Dr. Tannaz Moin, a diabetes expert at UCLA, said of the trends.
Read:AP source: US to buy 500M Pfizer vaccines to share globally
Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that nearly 3.4 million Americans died in 2020, an all-time record. Of those deaths, more than 345,000 were directly attributed to COVID-19. The CDC also provided the numbers of deaths for some of the leading causes of mortality, including the nation’s top two killers, heart disease and cancer.
But the data released this week contains the death rates — that is, fatalities relative to the population — which is considered a better way to see the impact from year to year, since the population fluctuates.
Of the causes of death for which the CDC had full-year provisional data, nine registered increases. Those included Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, chronic liver disease, stroke and high blood pressure.
Some of the increases were relatively small, but some were dramatic. The heart disease death rate — which has been falling over the long term — rose to 167 deaths per 100,000 population from 161.5 the year before. It was only the second time in 20 years that the rate had ticked up. This jump, of more than 3%, surpassed the less than 1% increase seen in 2015.
In raw numbers, there were about 32,000 more heart disease deaths than the year before.
Diabetes deaths rose to 24.6 per 100,000 last year, from 21.6 in 2019. That translated to 13,000 more diabetes deaths than in 2019. The 14% increase was the largest rise in the diabetes death rate in decades.
The death rate from Alzheimer’s was up 8%, Parkinson’s 11%, high blood pressure 12% and stroke 4%.
Read:EXPLAINER: The US investigation into COVID-19 origins
The CDC offered only the statistics, not explanations. The agency also did not say how many of the fatalities were people who had been infected with — and weakened by — the coronavirus but whose deaths were attributed primarily to heart disease, diabetes or other conditions.
Some experts believe a larger reason is that many patients did not seek treatment in an emergency because they feared becoming infected with the virus.
“When hospitalization rates for COVID would go up, we would see dramatic declines in patients presenting to the emergency room with heart attacks, stroke or heart failure,” Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, a Northwestern University researcher who is president-elect of the American Heart Association.
Other possible explanations also point indirectly to the coronavirus.
Many patients stopped taking care of themselves during the crisis, gaining weight or cutting back on taking high blood pressure medications, he said. Experts said the stress of the crisis, the lockdown-related disappearance of exercise options, and the loss of jobs and the accompanying health insurance were all factors, too.
Increases in Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, and West Virginia pushed the four into the group of states with the highest rates of death from heart disease, the CDC data showed. For diabetes, similar changes happened in Indiana, New Mexico, West Virginia and some other Southern and Plains states.
The death rate from the nation’s No. 2 killer, cancer, continued its decline during the year of COVID-19. It fell about 2% in 2020, similar to the drop seen from 2018 to 2019, even though cancer screenings and cancer care declined or were often postponed last year.
Read:FDA approves much-debated Alzheimer’s drug panned by experts
Lloyd-Jones’ theory for the decline: Many of the virus’s victims were fighting cancer, “but COVID intervened and became the primary cause of death.”
Earlier research done by demographer Kenneth Johnson at the University of New Hampshire found that an unprecedented 25 states saw more deaths than births overall last year.
The states were Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Traditionally the vast majority of states have more births than deaths.
Covid-19 in Bangladesh: Daily cases cross 2,500-mark; 36 more die
As the Covid-19 situation started worsening again, Bangladesh recorded 2,537 new cases in 24 hours until Wednesday morning, taking the total caseload to 8,17,819.
The virus claimed 36 more lives during the period that pushed up the number of fatalities to 12,949, said a handout of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The number of infections and deaths is on the rise in different frontier districts amid fear expressed by experts that these districts will face a serious healthcare crisis as their hospitals are not equipped enough to face any worsening situation.
Health authorities detected the new cases after testing 20,584 samples during the period.
The daily infection rate increased to 12. 33 percent from Tuesday’s 12.12 percent while the mortality rate remained static at 1.58 percent.
Read: 7 Covid patients die at Khulna hospital
So far, 7,57,569 people have recovered from the disease with 2,267 new ones.
Among the deceased, the highest 10 people died in Khulna division.
The deadly virus claimed nine lives in Rajshahi division, six in Dhaka, six in Chattogram, six in Khulna, four in Rangpur and one in Sylhet divisions.
Among these deaths, 17 were men and 19 women.
Read: In Khulna, a scramble for Covid hospital beds
Of the deceased, one belonged to the age group of 21-30 years old, two between 31-40 years old, four between 41-50, eight between 51-60, and 21 were above 60 years’ old.
According to the DGHS handout, Khulna is the hardest hit district in Bangladesh in terms of fatality as 10 people died in the division in 24 hours.
So far, 295 people have died of Covid-related complications at Khulna Corona Dedicated Hospital, according to an official.
Besides, authorities have recorded 81 new cases on Tuesday, after testing 279 samples, reports UNB’s Khulna correspondent.
Of the new cases, 39 people are from Khulna, 26 from Bagerhat, two each from Jashore and Pirojpur, and one each from Gopalganj and Jhenidah districts, officials said.
Read: TIB: Private hospitals too expensive for Covid-19 treatment
Dr Suhash Ranjan Haldar, Resident Medical Officer of Khulna Medical College, said 129 people are currently undergoing treatment at its dedicated Covid facility.
Of them, 63 have been kept in the red zone, 28 in the yellow zone, 20 in the intensive care unit (ICU) and 19 in the high dependency unit (HDU).
UN urges action to end AIDS, saying COVID-19 hurt progress
The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a declaration Tuesday calling for urgent action to end AIDS by 2030, noting “with alarm” that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities and pushed access to AIDS medicines, treatments and diagnosis further off track.
The declaration commits the assembly’s 193 member nations to implement the 18-page document, including reducing annual new HIV infections to under 370,000 and annual AIDS-related deaths to under 250,000 by 2025. It also calls for progress toward eliminating all forms of HIV-related stigma and discrimination and for urgent work toward an HIV vaccine and a cure for AIDS.
Without a huge increase in resources and coverage for those vulnerable and infected, “we will not end the AIDS epidemic by 2030,” the assembly warned.
It said the coronavirus pandemic has created setbacks in combating AIDS, “widening fault lines within a deeply unequal world and exposing the dangers of under-investment in public health, health systems and other essential public services for all and pandemic preparedness.”
Read: EXPLAINER: The US investigation into COVID-19 origins
While the international investment response to the pandemic is inadequate, it is nonetheless unprecedented, the assembly said.
The response to the coronavirus by many nations has demonstrated “the potential and urgency for greater investment” in responding to pandemics, underscoring “the imperative of increasing investments for public health systems, including responses to HIV and other diseases moving forward,” it said.
The assembly adopted the resolution at the opening session of a three-day high-level meeting on AIDS by a vote of 165-4, with Russia, Belarus, Syria and Nicaragua voting “no.”
Before the vote, the assembly overwhelmingly rejected three amendments proposed by Russia.
They would have eliminated references to human rights violations that perpetuate the global AIDS epidemic and a “rights-based” collaborative approach by UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the global effort to end the AIDS pandemic They would also have dropped references to reforming discriminatory laws, including on the age of consent, on interventions to treat HIV among intravenous drug users including “opioid substitution therapy,” and on “expanding harm reduction programs.”
UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima welcomed the declaration’s adoption and told the assembly it “will be the basis of our work to end this pandemic that has ravaged communities for 40 years.”
Read: ‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
Calling AIDS “one of the deadliest pandemics of modern times,” she said 77.5 million people have been infected with HIV since the first case was reported in 1981 and nearly 35 million have died from AIDS.
“HIV rates are not following the trajectory that we together promised,” she said. “Indeed, amidst the fallout from the COVID crisis, we could even see a resurgent pandemic.”
Byanyima said COVID-19 showed that science moves “at the speed of political will” and urged speeded up spending on innovations for AIDS treatment, prevention, care and vaccines “as global public goods.”
On the plus side, the assembly’s declaration said that since 2001 there has been a 54% reduction in AIDS-related deaths and a 37% reduction in HIV infections globally, but it warned that “overall progress has slowed dangerously since 2016.”
The assembly expressed “deep concern” that in 2019 there were 1.7 million new infections compared to the 2020 global target of fewer than 500,000 infections and that new HIV infections have increased in at least 33 countries since 2016.
Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, has demonstrated the most progress in tackling the AIDS epidemic but it also remains the worst-affected region, the assembly said. It called for “urgent and exceptional action” to curb the infection’s devastating effects, especially on women, adolescent girls and children.
Read: WTO panel considers easing protections on COVID-19 vaccines
Assembly members welcomed progress in reducing HIV-infections and AIDS-related deaths in Asia and the Pacific, the Caribbean, Western and Central Europe and North America. But they noted that despite progress, “the Caribbean continues to have the highest prevalence outside sub-Saharan Africa,” while the number of new HIV infections is increasing in eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa.
Byanyima stressed the importance of ending inequalities in the availability of drugs, and ensuring that medicines that can prevent deaths of people living with HIV are manufactured by multiple producers at affordable prices, “especially in the global south, where the disease is concentrated.”
“This moment calls for us to work together across sectors, across countries,” she said. “Populism’s false promises are proving no match to biology: As COVID reminds us, we’re not just interconnected, we’re inseparable.”
“We cannot end AIDS in one country or one continent. We can only end AIDS everywhere,” Byanyima said.
EXPLAINER: The US investigation into COVID-19 origins
Once dismissed by most public health experts and government officials, the hypothesis that COVID-19 leaked accidentally from a Chinese lab is now receiving scrutiny under a new U.S. investigation.
Experts say the 90-day review ordered on May 26 by President Joe Biden will push American intelligence agencies to collect more information and review what they already have. Former State Department officials under President Donald Trump have publicly pushed for further investigation into virus origins, as have scientists and the World Health Organization.
Many scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, say they still believe the virus most likely occurred in nature and jumped from animals to humans. Virus researchers have not publicly identified any key new scientific evidence that might make the lab-leak hypothesis more likely.
Virologists also say it is unlikely that any definitive answer about virus origins will be possible in 90 days. The work to fully confirm origins and pathways of past viruses — such as the first SARS or HIV/AIDS — has taken years or decades.
Read: ‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
A look at what is known about the U.S. investigation of the virus.
WHAT ARE INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES REVIEWING?
Biden ordered a review of what the White House said was an initial finding leading to “two likely scenarios,” an animal-to-human transmission or a lab leak. The White House statement says two agencies in the 18-member intelligence community lean toward the hypothesis of a transmission in nature; another agency leans toward a lab leak.
One document drawing new attention is a State Department fact sheet published in the last days of Trump’s administration. The memo notes that the U.S. believes three researchers at a Wuhan, China, lab sought medical treatment for a respiratory illness in November 2019. However, the report is not conclusive: The origin and severity of the staffers’ illness is not known — and most people in China regularly go to hospitals, not primary-care physicians, for routine care.
The memo also pointed to “gain of function” studies — which in theory could enhance the lethality or transmissibility of a virus — allegedly done at the Wuhan lab with U.S. backing. However, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins has since adamantly denied that the U.S. supported any “gain-of-function” research on coronaviruses in Wuhan.
David Feith, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs under Trump, said he supported Biden’s call for an enhanced review. “Implicit in the president’s statement is that there is more to analyze and more to collect than has been analyzed or collected to date,” Feith said.
The Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
IS CHINA HAMPERING INVESTIGATIONS?
The White House statement criticized China for a lack of transparency, echoing previous criticisms by Democrats and Republicans. “The failure to get our inspectors on the ground in those early months will always hamper any investigation into the origin of COVID-19,” the White House said.
The Associated Press has reported on China’s interference in the World Health Organization’s probes of the virus and its fanning of conspiracy theories online. China has also forced journalists to leave the country in recent years and silenced or jailed whistleblowers from Wuhan and elsewhere.
The lack of transparency in China is a significant and familiar challenge. But that does not in itself signal that something in particular is being hidden.
“The problem is when you make that announcement (Biden’s call for investigation) in a highly politicized environment, it makes it even less likely that China will cooperate with efforts to find the origins of the virus,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Read: WTO panel considers easing protections on COVID-19 vaccines
WHAT DO SCIENTISTS BELIEVE ABOUT VIRUS ORIGINS?
The most compelling argument for investigating the possibility of a lab leak is not any new hard evidence, but rather the fact that another pathway for virus spread has not been 100% confirmed.
“The great probability is still that this virus came from a wildlife reservoir,” said Arinjay Banerjee, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in Saskatchewan, Canada. He pointed to the fact that spillover events – when viruses jump from animals to humans – are common in nature, and that scientists already know of two similar beta coronaviruses that evolved in bats and caused epidemics when humans were infected, SARS1 and MERS.
However, the case is not completely closed. “There are probabilities, and there are possibilities,” said Banerjee. “Because nobody has identified a virus that’s 100% identical to SARS-CoV-2 in any animal, there is still room for researchers to ask about other possibilities.”
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO CONFIRM THE ORIGIN OF A VIRUS?
Confirming with 100% certainty the origin of a virus is often not fast, easy, or always even possible.
For example, scientists never confirmed the origin of smallpox before the disease was eradicated through a global vaccination program.
In the case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) – a disease caused by a beta coronavirus, like the current coronavirus – researchers first identified the virus in February 2003. Later that year, scientists discovered the likely intermediary hosts: Himalayan palm civets found at live-animal markets in Guangdong, China. But it wasn’t until 2017 that researchers traced the likely original source of the virus to bat caves in China’s Yunnan province.
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO UNDERSTAND THE ORIGIN?
From a scientific perspective, researchers are always keen to better understand how diseases evolve. From a public health perspective, if a virus has transitioned to being spread mostly by human-to-human contact, discovering its origins is not as essential to strategies for containing the disease.
“Questions of origins and questions of disease control are not the same thing once human-to-human transmission has become common,” said Deborah Seligsohn, an expert in environment and public health at Villanova University.
Republicans have pressed for more inquiries into a possible lab leak as part of a broader effort to blame China and vindicate Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Nearly 600,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19, the highest toll of any country.
Read:US to swiftly boost global vaccine sharing, Biden announces
WHAY HAPPENS AFTER THE 90 DAYS?
Many scientists caution that it’s unlikely a 90-day investigation will yield definitive new answers.
“We rarely get a ‘smoking gun,’” said Stephen Morse, a disease researcher at Columbia University. “Even under the best of circumstances we rarely get certainty, just degrees of likelihood.”
Any findings will likely be politically explosive, especially if new evidence comes to light supporting or dismissing the zoonotic transfer or lab-leak theory. And a failure to reach definitive conclusions, almost inevitable after a 90-day review, could provide grist for Trump supporters and opponents alike, as well as embolden conspiracy theorists.
Meanwhile experts like the Council on Foreign Relations’ Huang suspect China may simply clamp down more, adding another complication to already tense relations. “This will likely make it even more challenging to extract concessions from China to allow another team to visit Wuhan, or have unfettered access to investigate there,” he said.
‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
In the global race to vaccinate people against COVID-19, Africa is tragically at the back of the pack.
In fact, it has barely gotten out of the starting blocks.
In South Africa, which has the continent’s most robust economy and its biggest coronavirus caseload, just 0.8% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to a worldwide tracker kept by Johns Hopkins University. And hundreds of thousands of the country’s health workers, many of whom come face-to-face with the virus every day, are still waiting for their shots.
In Nigeria, Africa’s biggest country with more than 200 million people, only 0.1% are fully protected. Kenya, with 50 million people, is even lower. Uganda has recalled doses from rural areas because it doesn’t have nearly enough to fight outbreaks in big cities.
Read:UN: Famine is imminent in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region
Chad didn’t administer its first vaccine shots until this past weekend. And there are at least five other countries in Africa where not one dose has been put into an arm, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The World Health Organization says the continent of 1.3 billion people is facing a severe shortage of vaccine at the same time a new wave of infections is rising across Africa. Vaccine shipments into Africa have ground to a “near halt,” WHO said last week.
“It is extremely concerning and at times frustrating,” said Africa CDC Director Dr. John Nkengasong, a Cameroonian virologist who is trying to ensure some of the world’s poorest nations get a fair share of vaccines in a marketplace where they can’t possibly compete.
The United States and Britain, in contrast, have fully vaccinated more than 40% of their populations, with higher rates for adults and high-risk people. Countries in Europe are near or past 20% coverage, and their citizens are starting to think about where their vaccine certificates might take them on their summer vacations. The U.S., France and Germany are even offering shots to youngsters, who are at very low risk of serious illness from COVID-19.
Poorer countries had warned as far back as last year of this impending vaccine inequality, fearful that rich nations would hoard doses.
In an interview, Nkengasong called on the leaders of wealthy nations meeting this week at the G-7 summit to share spare vaccines — something the United States has already agreed to do — and avert a “moral catastrophe.”
“I’d like to believe that the G-7 countries, most of them having kept excess doses of vaccines, want to be on the right side of history,” Nkengasong said. “Distribute those vaccines. We need to actually see these vaccines, not just ... promises and goodwill.”
Others are not so patient, nor so diplomatic.
“People are dying. Time is against us. This IS INSANE,” South African human rights lawyer Fatima Hasan, an activist for equal access to health care, wrote in a series of text messages.
The Biden administration made its first major move to ease the crisis last week, announcing it would share an initial batch of 25 million spare doses with desperate countries in South and Central America, Asia and Africa.
Read:Burkina Faso says at least 100 civilians killed in attack
Nkengasong and his team were in contact with White House officials a day later, he said, with a list of countries where the 5 million doses earmarked for Africa could go to immediately.
Still, the U.S. offer is only a “trickle” of what’s needed, Hasan wrote.
Africa alone is facing a shortfall of around 700 million doses, even after taking into account those secured through WHO’s vaccine program for poorer countries, COVAX, and a deal with Johnson & Johnson, which comes through in August, two long months away.
Uganda just released a batch of 3,000 vaccine doses in the capital, Kampala — a minuscule amount for a city of 2 million — to keep its program barely alive.
There and elsewhere, the fear is that the luck that somehow enabled parts of Africa to escape the worst of previous waves of COVID-19 infections and deaths might not hold this time.
“The first COVID was a joke, but this one is for real. It kills,” said Danstan Nsamba, a taxi driver in Uganda who has lost numerous people he knew to the virus.
In Zimbabwe, Chipo Dzimba embarked on a quest for a vaccine after witnessing COVID-19 deaths in her community. She walked miles to a church mission hospital, where there were none, and miles again to a district hospital, where nurses also had nothing and told her to go to the region’s main government hospital. That was too far away.
“I am giving up,” Dzimba said. “I don’t have the bus fare.”
South African health workers faced similar disappointment when they crowded into a parking garage last month, hoping for vaccinations and ignoring in their desperation the social distancing protocols. Many came away without a shot.
Read:South Africa returns to stricter lockdown, virus 'surging'
Femada Shamam, who is in charge of a group of old-age homes in the South African city of Durban, has seen only around half of the 1,600 elderly and frail people she looks after vaccinated. It is six months, almost to the day, since Britain began the global vaccination drive.
“They do feel very despondent and they do feel let down,” Shamam said of her unvaccinated residents, who are experiencing “huge anxiety” as they hunker down in their sealed-off homes 18 months into the outbreak. Twenty-two of her residents have died of COVID-19.
“It really highlights the biggest problem ... the haves and the have-nots,” Shamam said.
As for whether wealthy countries with a surplus of vaccine have gotten the message, Nkengasong said: “I am hopeful, but not necessarily confident.”
Covid-19: Bangladesh logs 2,322 new cases, 44 deaths
Bangladesh registered 44 more Coronavirus-related deaths and 2,322 fresh cases in 24 hours till Tuesday morning as the situation continues to worsen with the detection of its Delta variant in different parts of the country.
Although district administrations have imposed lockdowns or partial restrictions in most of the frontier districts to bring the situation under control, the rates of infections and deaths are on the rise.
The latest death toll pushed up the fatalities to 12,913. The Covid-19 death toll crossed 12,000-mark in Bangladesh on May 11.
With the new cases, the total caseload rose to 8,15,282, said a handout of the Directorate General of Health.
The health authorities detected the new cases after testing 19,165 samples during the period.
The daily infection rate increased to 12.12 percent from Monday’s 11.47 percent while the mortality rate remained static at 1.58 percent.
So far, 7,55,302 people have recovered from the disease with 2,062 new ones. Putting the recent recovery rate at 92.64%.
Read: In Khulna, a scramble for Covid hospital beds
The deadly virus claimed 11 lives in Dhaka and Rajshahi each, seven in Chattogram, six in Khulna, five in Rangpur, two in Mymensigh and Sylhet each during the period.
Vaccination drive
Around 5,563 people have received the second dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the last 24 hours.