Covid vaccine
India warns of tit-for-tat action against UK's Covid vaccine policy
India Tuesday warned of a tit-for-tat action if Britain did not recognise Covishield as a legitimate anti-corona vaccine for its nationals travelling to the UK.
Terming Britain's new Covid vaccine policy as "discriminatory", Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla made it clear that India could "take reciprocal measures" if the matter was not resolved at the earliest.
"The non-recogition of Covishield is a discriminating policy and impacts our citizens travelling to the UK," Shringla told the media in the Indian capital.
"The External Affairs Minister has raised the issue strongly with the new UK foreign secretary. I am told that certain assurances have been given that this issue will be resolved," the Foreign Secretary added.
His warning came on a day Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar tweeted about raising the issue with his British counterpart Liz Truss on the sidelines of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
"Pleased to meet new UK Foreign Secretary @trussliz... Urged early resolution of quarantine issue in mutual interest," Jaishankar tweeted earlier in the day.
As per the new vaccine rules, Indian nationals travelling to the UK will have to undergo self-isolation for 10 days even if they have received both doses of Covishield -- the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India.
2nd doses to be administered under mass vaccination on 3 days in cities, 1 day outside cities: PMO
The government will administer the 2nd doses of Covid-19 vaccine on three days in all the cities and one day outside the cities under the mass inoculation campaign.
The second doses will be given on September 7-9 in the city areas and only on September 7 outside the city areas.
The decision came from a videoconference held with PM’s Principal Secretary Dr Ahmad Kaikaus in the chair to discuss the countrywide Covid-19 mass vaccination campaign ahead of the administration of the second doses.
Ensuring global access to Covid vaccines EU’s priority: Teerink
Head of Delegation of the European Union to Bangladesh Ambassador Rensje Teerink has said ‘Team Europe’ will share with low- and middle-income countries at least 100 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines by the end of 2021, mainly via Covax.
"Ensuring access to safe and affordable Covid-19 vaccines around the world is a priority for the EU," she told UNB while giving an overview of what the EU is contributing under Covax.
The Ambassador said Team Europe (the EU, its institutions and all 27 member states) is on track to exceed this goal, with 200 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines foreseen to be shared with the countries that need them most, by the end of 2021.
Also read: EU looking closely at Bangladesh: Teerink
Teerink said Covax has so far delivered 122 million doses to 136 countries.
PM: Govt has arranged to bring one crore Covid vaccine doses a month
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday told Parliament that the government has taken steps to get over one crore coronavirus vaccine doses every month.
“Steps have been taken to ensure more than one crore vaccines every month,” she said.
She made the statement while answering a tabled question from ruling party MP Shahiduzzaman Sarker during PM’s question-answer session.
Sheikh Hasina said that as per the schedule Bangladesh will get two crore vaccine doses each month from Sinopharm from next October. Until December some six crore jabs will come from Sinopharm, she said.
She also said that so far (August 30) some 1,82,89,018 persons got first dose of vaccine while 78,40,169 persons got second shot. In total 2,61,29,187 doses of vaccines have been given.
Read: Decision on vaccinating school students soon: DGHS DG
“Collection of vaccines is on while providing the shots free to the people,” she said.
The prime minister said that the government has established contacts with all vaccine producing organisations.
Govt plans to provide Covid jabs to two crore people by September
The government aims at vaccinating two crore people against Covid by next month, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said on Tuesday.
The minister said this at a virtual programme on the occasion of the National Mourning Day, held at Manikganj Government Boys High School ground in Manikganj district.
“We have tried our best to keep people well during the pandemic,” he said.
READ: Vaccine sharing: Dhaka wants EU to be more generous
India’s COVID-19 vaccine supply jumps, raising export hopes
India’s rising output of COVID-19 vaccines and the inoculation of more than half its adult population with at least one dose are raising hopes the country will return as an exporter within months, ramping up from early next year, reported Gulf News.
After donating or selling 66 million doses to nearly 100 countries, India barred exports in the middle of April to focus on domestic immunisation as infections exploded, upsetting the inoculation plans of many African and South Asian countries.
India’s daily vaccinations surpassed 10 million doses on Friday, with national vaccine production more than doubling since April and set to rise again in the coming weeks. New production lines have been set up, a vaccine developed by Cadila Healthcare won recent approval, and commercial production of Russia’s Sputnik V is starting in India.
Also read: Covid-19: India entering 'endemecity', 26.8% of world fully vaccinated
The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest vaccine maker, is now producing about 150 million doses a month of its version of the AstraZeneca shot, more than twice its April output of about 65 million, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
“No fixed timeline on exports but the company hopes to restart in a few months,” said the source, who declined to be named without approval to talk on the matter.
SII, which has previously indicated exports could resume by year-end, did not respond to a request for comment.
Global vaccine sharing platform COVAX hopes India will restart foreign sales sooner than later.
“With successful national vaccination and the arrival of more products, we are hoping that Indian supply to COVAX will resume as quickly as possible,” a spokesperson for the platform’s co-lead GAVI told Reuters in an email.
Also read: Manipal Hospitals launches the first Radixact System with Synchrony technology in India
India, a major international producer of many other vaccines, could play a “similarly transformative role in the global response to COVID-19,” the spokesperson said.
India’s health ministry and the foreign ministry, which coordinates vaccine exports, did not respond to a request for comment.
Bharat Biotech, the maker of India’s first domestically developed COVID-19 shot, on Sunday inaugurated a new factory with a production capacity of 10 million doses a month. It said it was “marching towards” a goal of a total annual capacity of about 1 billion doses of the drug, Covaxin.
Infections, meanwhile, are again rising in India after an explosive outbreak in April and May. But the country has administered more than 633 million vaccine doses, with at least one dose to 52% of its 944 million adults and two doses to more than 15%.
A government source told Reuters in June the U.S. experience showed that vaccinations tend to slow down after a big majority of people get their shots. That might give SII a chance to export excess output, said the source.
The chief of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party said this month India could produce as many as 1.1 billion vaccine doses between September and December, enough to fully immunise all adults in the country this year.
India has so far given emergency authorisation to six COVID-19 shots, four of which are being produced locally. One more domestic vaccine is expected to be approved soon while many more are going through mid-stage trials.
Cumilla councillor gives Covid shots, sparks row
A controversy has erupted after photos of a ward councillor in
Cumilla city administering Covid jabs have gone viral on social media.
Nadia Nasrin, the councillor representing wards 4, 5 & 6, has been accused of giving Moderna vaccine doses to 125 people on Thursday, without any authorisation from the health authorities.
Also read: Madrasa teacher arrested after video of beating student goes viral
Sources told UNB the health authorities, on August 9, suspended the vaccination drive at Harun Government Primary School in ward number 6 owing to some issues.
That very day, mayor Monirul Haque Sakku told the media that the remaining 125 Covid vaccine doses were kept in his custody. Three days later, the viral photos triggered the "illegal vaccine drive" controversy.
When contacted, Cumilla district civil surgeon Mir Mobarok Hossain said that a councillor can’t administer vaccine doses to people. "The city corporation authorities will need to respond to the allegations."
Also read: Khulna man gets 2 doses of vaccine in one minute
However, Nadia claimed that she's a certified vaccine pusher.
Global Covid cases top 203 million
The global Covid-19 caseload has now surpassed 203 million, as the ferocious second wave of the corona pandemic continues to wreak havoc across the world amid mass inoculation efforts.
The total caseload and fatalities stand at 203,351,847 and 4,302,493, respectively, as of Tuesday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
Read: Global Covid cases return to mid-May levels
So far, 4,447,184,520 vaccine doses have been administered across the globe.
The situation in North America has worsened noticeably in the past weeks. The US, which is the world's worst-hit country in terms of both cases and deaths, has so far logged 35,947,913 cases. Besides, 617,318 people have lost their lives in the US to date, as per the JHU data.
Brazil has registered 411 more Covid-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, raising its national death toll to 563,562, the health ministry said on Monday.
Meanwhile, the total caseload rose to 20,177,757 after 12,085 new cases were detected during the period.
Brazil currently has the world's second-highest pandemic death toll after the United States and the third-largest caseload after the United States and India.
India's Covid-19 tally rose to 31,969,954 on Monday as 35,499 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, according to the federal health ministry.
Besides, as many as 447 deaths due to the pandemic were reported since Sunday morning, taking the total death toll to 428,309.
Read: Covid vaccine: Temporary waiver sought on TRIPS
The number of Covid-19 cases confirmed worldwide in the past seven days increased to 4.3 million from 4.1 million of the previous week. The global case count rose to levels observed in mid-May 2021.
However, the geography of the disease differs. This spring, South America accounted for the majority of all cases. Now, North America and several Asian nations are bearing the brunt.
At the same time, Europe managed to contain the Covid-19 outbreak. Mortality in Europe remains at a minimal level despite a new wave of the pandemic.
Situation in Bangladesh
Teetering on the edge of a brutal Covid-19 infection wave, Bangladesh reported 245 more deaths and 11,463 new cases in 24 hours till Monday morning.
The new numbers again raised the case fatality rate to 1.68% from Sunday’s 1.67%, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
With the fresh deaths, the country’s total death tally reached 22,897 while the total cases mounted to 1,365,158.
The new cases were detected after the test of 47,207 samples, slightly lowering the case positivity rate to 24.28% from Sunday’s 24.52%, the DGHS said.
Read: Shattered by Covid, Bangladesh now awaits a dengue blow
Overwhelmed by the Delta variant of Covid surge, Bangladesh has been seeing around 250 deaths and 13,000 cases daily on an average for a week.
Besides, the recovery rate rose to 89.36% in Bangladesh from Sunday’s 89.05% with 14,412 new patients recovering from Covid during this time.
Covid vaccine: Temporary waiver sought on TRIPS
A temporary waiver of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement for the COVID-19 vaccine is essential to meet the number of doses of vaccinations required to achieve global herd immunity, according to a joint article.
Parsa Erfani, Agnes Binagwaho, Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh, Prof Muhammad Yunus, Paul Farmer, and Vanessa Kerry have written the article published in the British Medical Journal recently.
The titled of the article is "Intellectual property waiver for covid-19 vaccines will advance global health equity" thst focused on the importance of a temporary IP waiver to reach global needs, said the Yunus Centre on Monday.
Also read: Bangladesh seeks TRIPS waiver to ramp up Covid vaccine production
The article stated the current vaccination figures show that the percentages of people in high income countries who have been vaccinated is 46% while 20% in middle income countries and 0.9% in low income countries.
This is largely due to acquisition of doses by high income countries in large quantities as well as production being restricted to a small number of manufacturers, it reads.
The article states that a clear scarcity of supply exists, and this exists due to intellectual property (IP) protection which currently restricts production and access to the vaccines.
Donor based models have not worked in reaching the highest risk population, due to underfunding and vaccine scarcity, said the Yunus Centre quoting the article.
To meet the current global needs it is necessary to also have production of vaccines in LMICs, it said.
A temporary waiver, will enable more manufacturers and result in yielding doses faster, according to the article.
Also read: Next 2 weeks crucial to ensure TRIPS waiver for pharma beyond LDC graduation
The arguments against the waiver include, that LMICs have limited capacity to produce such complex vaccines, that a move like this could stifle further biomedical innovation and funding into such research, as there would be no return on investment and cause bottlenecks in the supply chain. However, data does not support this.
Sharing of the technology and the technical know how is crucial in helping to expand production to meet global needs, according to the article.
There are LMICs who have production capacity for complex COVID-19 vaccine production. With the IP waiver, and sharing of all vaccine related knowledge and technology as well as planning, bottlenecks in raw materials can be avoided.
The waiver would be temporary thus only affecting the COVID-19 vaccine, and many of the costs of research and development have been recouped.
There has also been publicly funded research which laid the ground work for the vaccine. Keeping all things in mind, this seems to be the best way forward in meeting global needs.
Now, it is important that countries need to agree on a temporary IP waiver, in order to ensure the world's population can receive the vaccinations, achieving global herd immunity and facilitating global health equity.
Kushtia man ends up 'fully vaccinated' in ten minutes
A man received two consecutive jabs of Covid vaccine in Khoksa Upazila Health Complex in Kushtia just within 10 minutes Thursday.
Basharuzzaman, 38, resident of Bujruk Mirzapur village went to the designated room of the health complex at noon with his vaccination card to receive the first jab of the Covid vaccine.
After receiving the first jab he mistakenly entered the room again and the nurse on duty gave him another shot of the vaccine.
Read: Covid-19: Bangladesh lowers vaccination age to 25
Later when he asked the nurse if he was supposed to receive back-to-back two shots of the vaccine like that, the matter got the attention of everyone present there.
Currently all the Covid-19 vaccines being distributed in Bangladesh are all two-shot vaccines. Timeline for receiving the second dose after the first one is between 3-6 weeks.
Vaccine recipient Basaruzzaman said he didn’t know the system and stood again in line after receiving the first shot.
Upazila Health officer Dr Md Kamruzzaman said it’s Basaruzzaman’s mistake as he didn’t inform the nurse about having received the shot once already.
Read: Covid in Bangladesh: Daily toll remains above 200; 15,271 more infected
However, It should not cause any health issues in him, the doctor said.
Meanwhile Civil Surgeon of the district Dr HM Anwarul Islam said there is no scope for the authority to deny their negligence in this incident, as many illiterate general villagers may come to receive vaccines in the centers.
The involved officials have already been warned to not repeat such mistakes, he said.