Brazil has vaccinated more than a million people but it is still less than 1 percent of the population, as the country is struggling to control a coronavirus case surge.
Hospitals are swamped with COVID-19 patients, with the city of Manaus, the gateway to the Amazon rain forest, still facing a shortage of oxygen in hospitals.
A fast-spreader COVID-19 strain detected in cities such as Manaus and Sao Paulo have thrown new challenges before authorities who have been accused of slow response.
On Friday, Novavax, a US-based company, announced that its coronavirus vaccine appears to be 89 percent effective based on early findings from a British study, and that it also seems to work – though not as well – against new mutated versions of the virus circulating in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Africa can expect that at least 30 percent of its population will be immunised by the end of 2021, said the World Health Organization as vaccines begin trickling into the continent.
Worldwide, the pandemic has killed more than two million people and infected nearly 101 million, according to data from the Johns Hopkins University.
Hello, this is Virginia Pietromarchi in Rome, Italy, giving you the latest updates on the coronavirus pandemic:
Dengvaxia controversy haunts Duterte’s vaccine roll out
Gene Nisperos is an associate professor at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Medicine in the country’s capital, Manila. As a medical frontliner, he is on the priority list for vaccination against the coronavirus when the government releases its promised first vaccines next month.
But Nisperos has grave doubts about President Rodrigo Duterte’s plan. The medic is particularly critical of the government’s decision to disallow Filipinos from choosing the type of coronavirus vaccine they receive.
To get to know more, read the full story here.
Malaysia’s latest figures
Malaysia reported 5,725 new coronavirus cases, the highest daily increase since the start of the pandemic a year ago.
The new cases took the cumulative total of infections past the 200,000 mark. Health authorities also reported 16 deaths, raising total fatalities to 733.
A family member of a victim of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) prays after a burial at a cemetery, in Batu Caves, Malaysia [Lim Huey Teng/Reuters]WHO team visits hospital in Wuhan amid ongoing probe
A WHO-led team of experts investigating the origins of COVID-19 visited a hospital in the Chinese city of Wuhan that was one of the first to treat patients in the early days of the outbreak.
The team went to the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine where Zhang Jixian, director of the hospital’s department of respiratory and critical care, has been cited by state media as the first to report the novel coronavirus, after treating an elderly couple in late 2019 whose CT scans showed differences from typical pneumonia.
“Extremely important 1st site visit. We are in the hospital that treated some of the first known cases of COVID-19, meeting with the actual clinicians & staff who did this work, having open discussion about the details of their work,” Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO-led team, wrote on Twitter.
Extremely important 1st site visit. We are in the hospital that treated some of the first known cases of COVID-19, meeting with the actual clinicians & staff who did this work, having open discussion about the details of their work. https://t.co/yDEPedtC11
— Peter Daszak (@PeterDaszak) January 29, 2021
The team was released from two weeks of quarantine on Thursday. It plans to visit labs, markets and hospitals during its remaining two weeks in Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first identified in late 2019.
Germany expects ‘limits’ on EMA AstraZeneca approval
Germany expects EU regulator EMA to impose restrictions when it authorises the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the bloc as efficacy data for older people are insufficient, said Health Minister Jens Spahn.
“We’re not expecting an authorisation without limits,” he told a press conference.
The EMA is on Friday due to approve the vaccine developed with the University of Oxford. However, questions remain about how well the AstraZeneca vaccine protects older people. Only 12 percent of the participants in its research were over 55 and they were enrolled later, so there hasn’t been enough time to get results.
Germany’s vaccine commission said on Thursday it could not recommend the use of the jabs on people aged 65 years and older because efficacy data for the group were lacking. Britain’s medicines regulatory agency also acknowledged the limited data in older people but still cleared the shot last month for all adults, with some caution for pregnant women.
EU chief wants to publish AstraZeneca contract
The European Commission plans to publish a redacted copy of its contract with drugs giant AstraZeneca, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said, amid a dispute over delays to vaccine deliveries.
“We want to publish it today. We are talking to the company about which parts have to be blacked out,” she told German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.
Vietnam to begin mass testing
Vietnam will conduct mass testing for COVID-19 in the northern province of Hai Duong, the epicentre of a new outbreak of the coronavirus, and other affected areas, according to deputy health minister Nguyen Truong Son.
Vietnam has reported 93 locally transmitted infections since the outbreak emerged on Thursday, most linked to an electronics factory in the province. In a statement on the government’s website, Son said most of the remaining 2,340 workers at the factory had subsequently tested negative for the virus.
A health worker takes a swab sample from a resident, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Hai Duong province, Vietnam [Manh Minh/VNA/Handout via Reuters]UK to not disclose vaccine contract due to national security risk: junior minister
Britain will not publish the vaccine contract it has with AstraZeneca because it would risk national security, said a junior minister.
“Where it is appropriate for the public to be informed we have done so but if that risks national security for any reason, of course, we should not, ” British prisons minister Lucy Frazer said when asked why the government was worried about the publication of the contract.
Pressed further on the risk to national security, she said: “Well, that is my understanding,” he told LBC Radio.
UK bans UAE flights
Britain is banning direct passenger flights to and from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from Friday, shutting down the world’s busiest international airline route from Dubai to London.
Britain said it was adding the UAE, Burundi and Rwanda to its coronavirus travel ban list because of worries over the spread of a more contagious and potentially vaccine-resistant COVID-19 variant first identified in South Africa.
Read the full story here.
Novavax says vaccine 89 percent effective in UK trial
Biotech company Novavax has said its coronavirus vaccine was 89.3 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 in a trial conducted in the United Kingdom, and was nearly as effective in protecting against the more highly contagious variant first discovered in the UK, according to a preliminary analysis.
A mid-stage trial of the vaccine in South Africa, where a troubling new variant of the virus is common, showed 60 percent effectiveness among people who did not have HIV.
Novavax shares surged 34 percent in after-hours trading following the release of the trial results on the same day the United States reported its first cases of the South African variant.
Read the full story here.
Brazil struggles to contain the outbreak
Brazil has vaccinated more than a million people, but that is less than 1 percent of the population. The country is struggling to contain the coronavirus and the situation seems far from resolving as a fast-spreader variant of the virus has already been detected in large cities such as Sao Paulo.
The Amazonas state’s capital, Manaus, is facing a shortage of oxygen with healthcare workers working around the clock to prevent patients from suffocating to death.
“You ask a nurse to help you and she says she can’t do anything because she is dealing with another patient who is dying in front of you,” said mourner Valceny Ferreira. “There aren’t enough healthcare workers to deal with this, but we wouldn’t be in this state if the Amazonas state would have invested in the healthcare,” she added.
Researches say the variant of the coronavirus detected in Japan originating in the Brazilian state of Amazonas is already dominant in its capital Manaus, reinforcing initial suspicions that it may be more contagious [Marcio James/AFP]https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiYGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFsamF6ZWVyYS5jb20vbmV3cy8yMDIxLzEvMjkvYnJhemlscy1jb3ZpZC1jYXNlcy1zdXJwYXNzZXMtbmluZS1taWxsaW9uLWxpdmUtdXBkYXRlc9IBZGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFsamF6ZWVyYS5jb20vYW1wL25ld3MvMjAyMS8xLzI5L2JyYXppbHMtY292aWQtY2FzZXMtc3VycGFzc2VzLW5pbmUtbWlsbGlvbi1saXZlLXVwZGF0ZXM?oc=5
2021-01-29 09:12:27Z
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