Vaccine
One million AstraZeneca vaccine doses to reach Dhaka from India today
One million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine will reach Dhaka from India on Saturday, Indian High Commission in Dhaka has said.
The consignment is scheduled to arrive at 17:40pm on Saturday from the Serum Institute of India.
READ: Bangladesh to get 2 lakh AstraZeneca shots from Romania as gift
This is commercial supply against the Beximco order, it said.
Earlier, the Indian government announced resumption of Covid vaccine exports from October amid improvement of COVID situation.
The world's largest vaccine producer had halted exports in April to cater to domestic demand as infections shot up.
Bangladesh entered into a deal with the Serum Institute of India (SII) to purchase 30 million doses of a potential vaccine developed by AstraZeneca.
Bangladesh was supposed to get five million doses of vaccine per month as the SII and Bangladesh’s Beximco Pharma signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for priority delivery of the vaccine doses.
READ: 2 lakh AstraZeneca doses to reach Dhaka from Maldives Wednesday
Bangladesh has so far received only 7 million of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses produced by Serum Institute of India (SII) through its contract.
Bangladesh also received 3.3 million doses of vaccine as a bilateral partnership gift.
World could return to normal within a year: Pfizer CEO
There will be a return to normal life within a year, according to Pfizer CEO and Chairman Albert Bourla.
To make that happen, it is likely annual Covid vaccination shots will be needed, he added.
"Within a year I think we will be able to come back to normal life," Bourla said in an interview with ABC.
READ: Dhaka to receive another 25 lakh Pfizer vaccine doses Monday
"I do not think that this means that the variants will not continue coming, and I do not think that this means that we should be able to live our lives without having vaccinations. But that, again, remains to be seen," he added.
Earlier, when asked for his estimate of a return to normal life, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung: "As of today, in a year, I assume."
READ: Bangladesh to get 71 lakh Pfizer, 18 lakh Moderna jabs: Shahriar
Vaccine policy soon to control avian influenza: Minister
Fisheries and Livestock Minister SM Rezaul Karim on Saturday said a vaccine policy will be formulated soon to control avian influenza.
“A technical committee will be formed soon to formulate a vaccine policy to deal with avian influenza. The quality of vaccines being produced in Bangladesh will be improved further,” he said.
The minister said the production of vaccines for all other diseases will be increased on the basis of their growing demand. “We’ve the capacity to do that. If necessary, more laboratories will be set up in the country.”
He made the remarks while speaking at a seminar on the effectiveness of the avian influenza vaccine and strengthening the vaccination programmme at a city hotel.
The Department of Livestock, Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations jointly organised the seminar.
Read: Dhaka to receive 30 lakh more Sinopharm jabs this month
UNGA: WHO urges world leaders to focus on vaccine equity
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged the global leaders, attending the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), to guarantee equitable access to Covid vaccines and other life-saving tools.
It also called for ensuring that the world is better prepared to respond to future pandemics; renewing efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Covid-19 pandemic has already claimed nearly 5 million lives, and the virus continues to circulate actively across the globe.
Vaccines are the most critical tool to end the pandemic and save lives and livelihoods. More than 5.7 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally, but 73% of all doses have been administered in just 10 countries.
High-income countries have administered 61 times more doses per inhabitant than low-income ones.
The longer vaccine inequity persists, the more the virus will keep circulating and evolving, and the longer the social and economic disruption will continue.
So, the UN health agency targets to vaccinate at least 40% of the population of every country by the end of this year, and 70% by the middle of next year.
Read: Vaccine inequity undermining global economic recovery
These targets are achievable if countries and manufacturers make a genuine commitment to vaccine equity.
The WHO is calling on countries to fulfil their dose-sharing pledges immediately and to swap their near-term vaccine deliveries with COVAX and AVAT (African Covid-19 Vaccine Acquisition Task Team).
The UN agency is also calling on manufacturers to prioritise supplies to COVAX and partners, and for countries and manufacturers to facilitate the sharing of technology, know-how and intellectual property to support regional vaccine manufacturing.
COVAX, the global initiative for equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, is led by the WHO; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, Unicef and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
It is the only global initiative that is working with governments and manufacturers to ensure Covid-19 vaccines are available worldwide to both higher-income and lower-income countries.
So far, COVAX has shipped more than 260 million doses to 141 countries.
However, the WHO urged all countries to break the cycle of "panic and neglect" seen after previous health emergencies, and commit adequate financial resources, as well as political will, to strengthening health emergency preparedness across the globe.
Read:'Only Together' campaign to support global vaccine equity call
Universal health coverage (UHC) is a keystone of global health security. Despite progress in UHC in recent years, 90% of countries have reported disruptions in essential health services due to the pandemic, with the consequences reverberating beyond the health sector.
Serious investment in UHC and pandemic preparedness is critical not only to bolster global health security but also to getting the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda back on track.
The pandemic has reversed progress towards the SDGs, including gains that had been made on eradicating poverty, eliminating gender inequality, vaccinating children against communicable diseases and girls' and boys' education.
However, it is also providing the world with new opportunities to do things differently and to truly collaborate on building back better – towards a healthier, fairer, more inclusive and sustainable world.
Bangladesh receives 2.70 lakh AstraZeneca doses from Bulgaria
Bangladesh has received 2.70 lakh doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine as donation from the Bulgarian government.
The vaccine consignment landed at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport by a cargo flight of the Turkish Airlines on Wednesday.
READ: Another batch of 634,920 AstraZeneca doses from Japan to arrive Saturday evening
A representative of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) received the vaccine consignment.
This indicates the joint efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
READ: Bangladesh to get 2.70 lakh AstraZeneca does from Bulgaria
University students must complete vaccine registration by Sept 27: Dipu Moni
All the university students must complete vaccine registration by September 27 so that syndicate and academic councils can decide to reopen their universities, said Education Minister Dipu Moni on Tuesday.
The minister said this after a virtual meeting on reopening universities with Vice-Chancellors, representatives of University Grants Commission (UGC), secretary for Secondary and Higher Education division, president of the national technical committee on Covid-19 and officials concerned.
Deputy Minister for Education Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury also attended the meeting.
According to a decision of the meeting, the teachers, students and officials of all the universities of the country will have to register for vaccination against Covid-19 by September 27.
UK OKs vaccines for 12 year olds, aims to avoid lockdowns
Britain’s chief medical officers said Monday that children aged 12 to 15 should be vaccinated against coronavirus, despite a ruling by the government’s vaccine advisors that the step would have only marginal health benefits.
England Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and his counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland said Monday that the age group should be given a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. They have yet to decide on whether to give the students a second dose.
The government has said it’s highly likely to follow the recommendation. Expanded vaccinations are expected to be part of a “tool kit” to control COVID-19 infections this fall and winter that Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to announce Tuesday at a news conference.
Johnson’s Conservative government is hoping that widespread vaccinations, rather than restrictions, will keep COVID-19 infections in check.
Other countries — including the United States, Canada, France and Italy — already offer coronavirus vaccines to children 12 and up, but Britain has held off. It is currently inoculating people 16 and up, and almost 90% of those eligible have had at least one vaccine dose.
Earlier this month, Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization said vaccines should be given to 12- to 15-year-olds with underlying health conditions. But it did not back a rollout to healthy children, who are at low risk of serious illness from the virus, saying the direct health benefits were marginal.
However, it said there might be wider societal factors to consider, such as on education or children acting as sources of transmission to more vulnerable groups.
READ: UK commits £3.1 mn aid to minimise impact of disasters in Bangladesh, other countries
The chief medical officers said it was “likely vaccination will help reduce transmission of COVID-19 in schools” and they were recommending the vaccines on public health grounds.
In his road map speech, Johnson is likely to announce that the government will relinquish some of the emergency powers Parliament gave it after the pandemic began last year, including the authority to shut down businesses and schools, restrict gatherings and detain infectious people.
The announcement of a new virus road map comes a year after Johnson resisted scientific advice to put the country into lockdown — only to perform a U-turn within weeks as coronavirus cases soared.
Virus cases now are 10 times the rate of a year ago, but vaccines are protecting many Britons from serious illness. Still, the U.K. is recording more than 100 coronavirus deaths a day, and about 8,000 people are hospitalized with COVID-19. That is less than a quarter of the wintertime peak, but the number is climbing.
Johnson is expected to say that mask-wearing, work-from-home advice and social distancing rules that were lifted in July could return if cases climb further.
But his Conservative government is resisting tougher measures, unexpectedly shelving a plan to introduce vaccine passports for nightclubs and other crowded venues.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said Sunday that the vaccine passes, which have been introduced in many European countries and were due to start in England at the end of September, were a “huge intrusion into people’s lives.” He said the government would keep the plan “in reserve” but would not proceed with it right now.
Johnson’s spokesman, Max Blain, said nightclubs hadn’t been linked to “significant cases or hospitalizations” since they reopened in July after more than a year of closure.
“We are not seeing the exponential increases that some had expected,” he said.
Some experts have argued for vaccine passports as a way to encourage young people to get vaccinated, though others say compelling vaccination, rather than encouraging it, could increase hesitancy. The measure was opposed as a burdensome imposition by many in the entertainment industry, and met political resistance on civil liberties grounds from some Conservative lawmakers and the opposition Liberal Democrats.
READ: Indo-Pacific: UK sees Bangladesh as "critical stability provider"
The government’s decision applies in England. Scotland, which sets its own health policy, plans to introduce vaccine passports for crowded venues next month.
54 lakh Sinopharm doses arrive in Dhaka
Around 54 lakh more doses of the Sinopharm vaccine arrived in Dhaka from China in the small hours of Saturday.
A regular flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines landed at Dhaka's Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 12.44 am with the vaccine consignment, Dr Shahriar Sazzad, in-charge of the airport health camp, said.
"Md Shamsul Haque, a line director at the Directorate General of Health Services, received the consignment at the airport," he told UNB.
The consignment is actually part of the commercial purchase from China, said Deputy Chief of Mission at the Chinese Embassy in Dhaka, Hualong Yan.
This is so far the second-largest batch of vaccine doses commercially purchased by Bangladesh from China.
READ: Dhaka receives 56 lakh Sinopharm vaccine doses
"As a strategic partner of Bangladesh, China will always remain the most reliable supplier whatever and whenever the country needs," Hualong said.
With the new doses, China will have supplied over two crore doses of Sinopharm to Bangladesh commercially.
Another 2.4 million doses have also been received from China as bilateral assistance.
Bangladesh has so far received Sinopharm vaccine doses from China as a gift, under COVAX facility, and commercial purchase.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina recently told Parliament that the government had made arrangements to get more than one crore Covid-19 jabs every month.
According to the schedule received from the company producing Sinopharm, two crore shots will be available every month from October and six crore from December, she added.
On August 16, Bangladesh, China and Incepta Vaccine Limited signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the co-production of the Sinopharm vaccine in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh is now administering vaccines developed by four companies -- AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sinopharm.
The government has administered at least 33,699,773 doses of the four Covid vaccines – enough to have immunized around 10% of the country's population, assuming every person needs two doses.
Bangladesh has administered 10,990,721 shots of Sinopharm as the first dose and 5,784,265 as the second dose so far.
Since the start of the Covid pandemic, the country has recorded 1,527,215 infections and 26,832 deaths, according to the Directorate General of Health Services.
The Covid vaccines cannot offer 100% protection but when more people are jabbed there is less opportunity for the virus to infect and spread, say experts.
READ: 20 lakh more Sinopharm doses to reach Dhaka soon
Getting vaccinated prevents severe illness, hospitalisations, and death; and with the Delta variant, this is more urgent than ever, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Biden’s vaccine rules ignite instant, hot GOP opposition
President Joe Biden’s aggressive push to require millions of U.S. workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus is running into a wall of resistance from Republican leaders threatening everything from lawsuits to civil disobedience, plunging the country deeper into culture wars that have festered since the onset of the pandemic.
In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster says he will fight “to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian.” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, says she is preparing a lawsuit. And J.D. Vance, a conservative running for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, is calling on businesses to ignore mandates he describes as Washington’s “attempt to bully and coerce citizens.”
“Only mass civil disobedience will save us from Joe Biden’s naked authoritarianism,” Vance says.
Biden is hardly backing down. In a visit to a school Friday, he accused the governors of being “cavalier” with the health of young Americans, and when asked about foes who would file legal challenges, he retorted, “Have at it.”
The opposition follows Biden’s announcement Thursday of a major plan to tame the coronavirus as the highly contagious Delta variant drives 1,500 deaths and 150,000 cases a day. Biden is mandating that all employers with more than 100 workers require their employees to be vaccinated or test for the virus weekly, affecting about 80 million Americans. Another 17 million workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid also will have to be vaccinated, as will all employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government.
The move brought Republican outrage from state capitals, Congress and the campaign trail, including from many who have supported vaccinations and have urged their constituents to take the shots.
READ: As flights resume, plight of Afghan allies tests Biden’s vow
“The vaccine itself is life-saving, but this unconstitutional move is terrifying,” tweeted Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves.
Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who has promoted the vaccines’ safety to his constituents, said, “The right path is built upon explaining, educating and building trust, including explaining the risks/benefits/pros/cons in an honest way so a person can make their own decision.”
More than 208 million Americans have received at least one vaccine dose, but some 80 million remain unvaccinated, driving infections. There are now about 300% more new daily COVID-19 infections, about two-and-a-half times the hospitalizations and nearly twice the number of deaths as at the same time last year.
While breakthrough infections do happen among the vaccinated, those cases tend to be far less severe, with the vast majority of deaths and serious illnesses occurring among those who have not received shots.
The pandemic is worsening in many of the states where governors are most loudly protesting the president’s actions. South Carolina, for example, is averaging more than 5,000 new cases per day and has the nation’s second-highest infection rate. A hospital system there started canceling elective surgeries this week to free staff to help with a crush of COVID-19 patients.
In a section of Idaho, overwhelmed hospitals have implemented new crisis standards to ration care for patients. And in Georgia, hospitals have been turning away ambulances bringing emergency or ICU patients.
“I am so disappointed that particularly some Republican governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids, so cavalier with the health of their communities,” Biden said during his school visit. “This isn’t a game.”
But Republicans and some union officials say the president is overreaching his constitutional authority. They take issue, in particular, with the idea that millions could lose their jobs if they refuse to take the shots.
“That’s a ridiculous choice,” said Mississippi Gov. Reeves.
Biden, however, says he’s doing what needs to be done to fight resistance that has continued despite months of encouragement and incentives. In his White House speech announcing the new measures, he was visibly frustrated, criticizing the remaining holdouts and accusing some elected officials of “actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19.”
“Instead of encouraging people to get vaccinated and mask up, they’re ordering mobile morgues for the unvaccinated dying from COVID in their communities,” he said.
Court fights are sure to follow in a number of states.
Vaccine mandates are supported by a small majority of Americans. An August poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found majorities support requiring vaccinations for health care workers, teachers at K-12 schools and public-facing workers like those who work in restaurants and stores. Overall, 55% back vaccine mandates for government workers. And about half of working adults favor vaccine mandates at their own workplaces.
But the numbers are deeply polarized, with Democrats far more likely to support mandates than Republicans, who have also been less supportive when it comes to getting shots themselves.
READ: Jill Biden heads back to classroom as a working first lady
While demand for vaccinations has risen over the summer, a persistent number of Americans have said they have no intention of ever receiving them.
GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who has held focus groups and worked with the Biden administration to try to combat vaccine hesitance, says that, without further measures, Biden is likely to see vaccinations top out at about 75% of the population.
“The only way to exceed that, which he needs to for herd immunity, is to mandate it,” Luntz said. “It will make a lot of people angry and even more resistant, but those who are simply hesitant will act now. He’s done the best he can under the circumstances.”
Still, many Republicans are unmoving and unforgiving, especially those who are running for office and see the issue as one that could motivate Republican voters to turn out in next year’s midterm elections.
Mike Gibbons, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, accused “Joe Biden and his Big Brother administration” of having “crossed into authoritarian territory.”
“The American people have a right to assess the risks and benefits of the vaccine and make the decision on what is best for themselves and their families,” he said. “That decision should be made by doctors and the individual, not the government.”
With the midterms coming, Drew McKissick, South Carolina’s GOP chairman, says he imagines Democrats in his state being tied to their party’s “radical liberal” policies.
“South Carolinians don’t take kindly to mandates. They never have,” McKissick said, arguing the national political tenor is “going to put (Democrats) more in a corner.”
But Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist who leads the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country, which has also done polling showing support for mandates, said he’s not especially concerned about potential political backlash. He argued those who are most likely to be angered by the move are probably already Biden critics.
“Of all the things I worry about in the midterms,” he said, “that doesn’t scare me.”
White House spokesperson Jen Psaki also dismissed the blowback.
“Yes, we do see some loud vocal opponents of what the president announced yesterday. That’s not a surprise. It’s unfortunate, it’s disappointing, it’s sad because, ultimately, these steps will save lives,” she said, “but we remain confident in our ability to move the agenda forward.”
54 lakh more Sinopharm doses to arrive Saturday
Fifty-seven lakh more doses of the Sinophamrm vaccine are scheduled to reach Dhaka from China early Saturday.
The consignment of vaccine doses is part of the commercial purchase from China, said Deputy Chief of Mission at the Chinese Embassy in Dhaka Hualong Yan.
This is so far the second-largest batch of vaccine doses commercially purchased by Bangladesh from China.
As a strategic partner of Bangladesh, China will always remain the most reliable supplier whatever and whenever the country needs, Hualong said.
With the new doses, China will have supplied over 2 crore doses of Sinophamrm to Bangladesh commercially.
Another 2.4 million doses have also been received from China as bilateral assistance.