Covid cases are on the rise in some 110 countries, driven by the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, amounting to a 20 percent spike overall, and a rise in the number of deaths across three of the six world regions monitored by the World Health Organization, the UN health agency chief has said. The global figure overall remains relatively stable, but nobody should be under any illusion that the coronavirus is on the way out, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday. "This pandemic is changing but it's not over. We have made progress but it's not over, he added. "Our ability to track the virus is under threat as reporting and genomic sequences are declining. The optimistic mid-year deadline for all countries to vaccinate at least 70 percent of their populations is looking unlikely, with the average rate in low-income countries, standing at 13 percent." However, in the past 18 months, more than 12 billion vaccines were distributed around the world, and 75 percent of the world's health workers and over-60s are now vaccinated. The influential Lancet medical journal estimates that 20 million lives were saved because of vaccines, Tedros said. Read: Bangladesh reports no death from Covid-19, new cases 56 Last year, it was the hoarding of vaccines by rich and manufacturing countries which proved to be the major barrier to access, but this year, it is what he described as the wavering "political commitment to getting vaccines out to people and challenges of disinformation," which is thwarting the pace of inoculations at the national level.

The Chandpur Civil Surgeon's Office has temporarily suspended the Covid vaccination drive at District Sadar Hospital due to an acute shortage of jabs. There is a vaccine crisis in the entire district as the number of registrations is more than the available stock, the chief medical officers of various upazila health complexes told UNB. Read: Dhaka receives 56 lakh Sinopharm vaccine doses People from different parts of Chandpur Sadar who came to the vaccination centre of the state-run hospital Tuesday, returned disappointed after a long wait. Among them were 70-year-old Afia Khatun, who came from the Laxmipur area of Sadar, Hasina Begum, 45, of the Mahamaya area of Sadar upazila, and Biplob Saha of Puran Bazar and his wife. Besides, the stock of vaccines has run out in Kachua, Faridganj, Hajiganj, Matlab South and Matlab North. And so the registration for jabs has been suspended at the upazila health complexes in these areas. Dr Belayet Hossain of Haimchar Upazila Health Complex, said that their stock of vaccines is also running out. The situation is the same in Shahrashti. He told UNB that due to the shortage of jabs, vaccination has been halted in the entire district. "Of course, it is temporary," the doctor added. Read:EPI staff suspended for pushing Covid vaccine at home Civil Surgeon Dr M Sakhawatullah said there is more registration for vaccines than the available stock of the Covid jabs, "and hence the shortage". "Hopefully we'll receive more vaccine doses by Saturday. Then the inoculation of the first and second doses will start again."

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. 

The government will procure six crore more doses of Sinopharm vaccine from China to ramp up the inoculation drive across Bangladesh, said Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Saturday. “We’ve signed a deal with China to receive 1.5 crore doses of Sinopharm vaccine. China has already started sending the vaccine doses. We’ll sign another agreement to collect six core more doses as the prime minister has approved it,” he said. The health minister came up with the disclosure while inaugurating a covid field hospital at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU).  Also read: Mega Covid inoculation drive begins in Bangladesh “Of the seven crore doses of Sinopharm vaccine, two crore doses will arrive in October and November each while some more vaccine jabs will come before the two months though those will be less in quantity,” he said.

The global Covid caseload surged past 117 million Tuesday amid worldwide mass inoculation efforts.

Sri Lanka on Friday began inoculating frontline health workers, military troops and police officers against COVID-19 amid warnings about infections among medical workers.