WHO: 9 in 10 African countries to miss virus vaccine goal – latest updates

Thursday, June 10:

WHO: 9 in 10 African countries to miss vaccination goal

About 90 percent of African countries will miss a September target to vaccinate at least 10 percent of their populations as a third wave of the pandemic looms on the continent, a World Health Organization (WHO) official has said.

Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, said the continent required an extra 225 million doses to be able to vaccinate a tenth of its people by September this year.

Africa has hit 5 million cases, with the southern Africa region the worst affected, accounting for 37 percent of total cases, according to a Reuters tally.

Virus outbreak closes hotel hosting G7 summit delegation 

A hotel being used by members of the German delegation to a G7 summit in England has closed because several members of staff tested positive for the virus, Sky News reported.

Sky cited the owners of the hotel as saying, "We can confirm that a number of our team at the Pedn Olva, St Ives, have tested positive.

"Following extensive discussions over the last few days with PHE (Public Health England) and Cornwall Council, we have taken the decision to fully close the hotel."

EU to agree on easier travel, more safer places to visit

The European Union is likely to agree on Friday to let people who are fully vaccinated travel freely within the bloc this summer and also to categorise more EU regions as safer to visit.

The EU is set to introduce by July 1 certificates that will indicate whether a person is vaccinated, has immunity because they were previously infected or has had a recent negative test.

UK records over 7,300 new cases

Britain has reported 7,393 new daily cases, government figures showed, down slightly from the 7,540 reported for the day before, which was the highest daily total since late February.

Britain also reported seven further deaths within 28 days of a positive test, up from 6 on Wednesday and taking the total death toll on this measure to 127,867.

Some 54.8 percent of the British adult population have received two doses of a vaccine and 77.6 percent have received at least one dose.

Italy reports over 2,000 new cases

Italy has reported 88 deaths against 77 the day before, the Health Ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections was down to 2,079 from 2,199.

Italy has registered 126,855 deaths since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eight-highest in the world. 

The country has reported 4.24 million cases to date.

Turkey reports over 6,400 new cases

Turkey has registered a total of 6,408 cases, including 563 symptomatic patients, across the country in the past 24 hours, the country's Health Ministry announced.

Turkey's overall case tally is now over 5.31 million, while the nationwide death toll reached 48,524, with 96 more fatalities over the past day.

US approves shelf-life extension for J&J vaccine

Johnson & Johnson has said the US Food and Drug Administration extended the shelf life of its single-shot vaccine from three months to four-and-a-half months, as millions of unused doses nationwide near expiration.

Safety concerns about J&J's shot and flagging demand for vaccinations have left close to half of the 21 million doses the company has produced for the United States sitting unused.

German panel gives limited approval for shot for adolescents

Germany's vaccine advisory committee, known as STIKO, has recommended that only children and adolescents with pre-existing conditions should be given the vaccine produced by Pfizer and partner BioNTech.

STIKO said in a statement that it recommends a vaccination only for those youngsters with an illness that raises their risk of a serious case.

Heart inflammation cases in young men higher than expected after mRNA vaccines

Preliminary findings from two vaccine safety monitoring systems have suggested a higher-than-expected number of cases of heart inflammation after the second dose of mRNA vaccines in young men, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

More than half of the myocarditis or pericarditis cases reported to the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System after patients had received either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccines were in people between the ages of 12 and 24, the CDC said.

WHO warns spread of highly infectious delta variant in Europe

The World Health Organization’s Europe director has warned that the highly transmissible Covid-19 variant first identified in India is “poised to take hold in the region,” as many countries prepare to ease restrictions and allow more social gatherings and travel across borders.

During a press briefing, WHO’s Dr. Hans Kluge said the variant also known as the delta variant, has shown signs of being able to evade some vaccines and warned that many vulnerable populations, particularly those over age 60, remain unprotected.

Kluge didn’t say people shouldn’t travel, but urged any travelers to do so wisely. He also called for vaccination and other public health measures to be stepped up across the continent, saying even immunization coverage “is far from sufficient to protect the region.”

Hong Kong opens vaccine drive to children aged 12 and older

Hong Kong will allow children age 12 and above to receive the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine as it seeks to boost immunization rates in the city.

Government officials said they will offer the vaccine to about 240,000 children from 12 to 15 years old starting Friday, joining other countries that have started vaccinating children.

The move comes as Hong Kong is urging its 7.5 million population to get inoculated. Since its vaccination drive began in late February, just over 15 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.

Dire situation in Uganda hospitals

Ugandan hospitals are saying they are overwhelmed with patients as a second wave of the coronavirus sweeps through the country.

Through late May and early June, Uganda has regularly been reporting some of its highest daily case totals since the beginning of the pandemic.

Bahrain protest after death of vaccinated prisoner

Hundreds of people have held a rare protest in Bahrain over the death of a vaccinated prisoner from the coronavirus held by the island kingdom.

The demonstration saw protesters march in the streets of Diah, a village in the Persian Gulf kingdom, over the death earlier in the day of Husain Barakat.

An Interior Ministry statement said Barakat, 48, had been on a respirator in recent days and died at a hospital. The ministry said Barakat had received a two-shot vaccination for the virus, without identifying which shot he received.

The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy said Barakat had received the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm.

Russia's new cases hit fresh three-month high

Russia has reported 11,699 new cases in the last 24 hours, its highest number of daily infections since late February, taking the national tally to 5,167,949 since the pandemic began.

The government's coronavirus task force said that 383 people had died, pushing the national death toll to 125,278. The federal statistics agency has kept a separate toll and has said that Russia recorded around 270,000 deaths related to the virus between April 2020 and April 2021. 

Indonesia sees 8,892 new infections

Indonesia has reported 8,892 new daily infections, the highest since February 23, taking its overall number of cases to 1,885,942.

Data from its coronavirus taskforce also showed 211 deaths reported, taking total fatalities to 52,373.

Taiwan activists slam 'discriminatory' virus migrant curbs

Taiwanese rights activists have urged authorities to revoke a "discriminatory" ban on migrant workers going outside after a coronavirus outbreak spread to the island's lucrative tech sector.

The local government in central Miaoli county this week imposed a stay indoors order on all migrant workers unless they were explicitly commuting to work.

The order came after four electronics companies reported clusters among their workforce, which includes many low paid migrants from nearby countries like Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Iran's cases pass three-million mark

Iran's confirmed cases have surpassed the three-million mark while daily cases and deaths continued a downward trend ahead of a presidential poll.

The Islamic republic, battling the Middle East's deadliest outbreak, is preparing to hold its presidential election on June 18.

The country has been struggling since late March to contain its "fourth wave" of Covid-19 blamed on a surge in trips made during Persian New Year holidays.

Tehran has pinned hopes on vaccinations to help combat the health crisis, but the rollout of its inoculation campaign that started in early February has progressed more slowly than authorities had wanted.

In the past 24 hours, the country officially recorded 12,398 new cases of infection, the Health Ministry announced.

Iran also recorded an additional 153 coronavirus-related deaths, it said, bringing the total to 81,672.

Pfizer to provide US with 500M vaccines

Pfizer and German partner BioNTech have said they have agreed to supply the US government with 500 million doses of their Covid-19 vaccine to donate to countries in need over the next two years.

The two drugmakers will provide 200 million doses in 2021 and 300 million doses in the first half of 2022, which the United States will then distribute to 92 lower-income countries and the African Union, they said.

The shots, which will be produced at Pfizer’s US production sites, will be provided at a not-for-profit price.

“Our partnership with the US government will help bring hundreds of millions of doses of our vaccine to the poorest countries around the world as quickly as possible,” said Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla.

India records world's highest single-day death toll 

India has reported the highest single-day death toll from the virus in the world, at 6,148, after a big eastern state revised its figures to account for people who succumbed to the disease at home or in private hospitals.

The health department of Bihar, one of India's poorest states, revised its total death toll on Wednesday to more than 9,400 from about 5,400.

The United States had recorded 5,444 deaths on February 12.

India's total caseload now stands at 29.2 million after rising by 94,052 in the past 24 hours, while total fatalities are at 359,676, according to data from the Health Ministry.

Taiwan reports 263 new infections

Taiwan has reported 263 new domestic cases of Covid-19, down from the previous day's figure of 274.

Indonesian palm plantations urged to tighten curbs

The Indonesian palm oil association (GAPKI) is urging palm oil plantations to tighten virus protocols in the country's top-producing province of Riau after a surge in infections in the area.

The Southeast Asian country is the world’s top producer of palm oil used in everything from soap to ice cream and fuel with exports in 2020 estimated at about $23 billion.

Riau is located on Sumatra island and accounts for 3.38 million hectares (8.35 million acres), or about a fifth of the country's 16.38 million hectares of palm oil plantations.

The province has seen a surge in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, reporting an average of around 522 cases per day since May 16, and ranking among the worst-hit provinces.

Germany reports 3,187 more cases

The number of confirmed cases in Germany increased by 3,187 to 3,709,129.

The reported death toll rose by 94 to 89,585, the data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.

Asia's synthetic drug trade expanded amid pandemic

Drug traffickers in East and Southeast Asia found ways to evade curbs to boost trade and diversify production, with Cambodia emerging as a large scale source for methamphetamine.

The trafficking of methamphetamine or meth, by far the region's most popular drug, suffered a short-lived disruption during the height of the pandemic but rebounded to a higher level than a year before, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a report.

Authorities in Asia seized a record of almost 170 tonnes of meth last year, up 19 percent from 2019, the report said.

Two Australian states on alert after infected woman's interstate travel

Two Australian states are on alert after an infected woman and her husband traveled from Victoria, the epicentre of the country's latest outbreak, through the states of New South Wales and into Queensland, visiting dozens of sites enroute.

Authorities in New South Wales and Queensland are rushing to trace close contacts and locate virus hotspots.

The couple may face criminal charges for breaching border restrictions.

The 44-year-old woman tested positive for the virus once in Queensland, authorities said and her husband has since tested positive.

Queensland state Health Minister Yvette D'Ath told reporters in Brisbane that the couple's tests suggested they were likely at the end of their infectious period.

China reports 21 new cases

China has reported 21 new cases in the mainland , up from 16 cases a day earlier.

Of the new cases, six were local transmissions from the southern province of Guangdong, the National Health Commission said.

China also reported 27 new asymptomatic infections, compared with nine a day earlier. China does not classify symptomless infections as confirmed cases.

China has a total of 91,337 confirmed infections. Its death toll stood unchanged at 4,636. 

Child labour swells for first time in two decades: UN

The world has marked the first rise in child labour in two decades and the coronavirus crisis threatens to push millions more youngsters toward the same fate, the United Nations said.

In a joint report, the International Labour Organization and the UN children's agency UNICEF said the number locked in child labour stood at 160 million at the start of 2020 –– an increase of 8.4 million in just four years.

South Korea considers vaccinating workers at major companies 

South Korea is considering plans to vaccinate workers at key businesses including chip and electronics firms to prevent disruptions to production, the Maeil Business Newspaper reported, citing government and industry sources.

The Labour Ministry has sent letters to companies including Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, SK Hynix Inc and LG Electronics Inc seeking information on their Covid-19 vaccination needs, the report said.

The government had no immediate comment on the report.

Australia's Victoria state records slight rise in Covid-19 cases

Australia's Victoria state has said new locally acquired cases of Covid-19 rose slightly as state capital, Melbourne, prepares to come out of a two-week hard lockdown to contain its latest virus outbreak.

Melbourne will exit the lockdown as planned on Thursday night, although some restrictions on travel and gatherings would likely remain for another week.

Four new locally acquired cases were reported on Thursday, versus one case a day earlier, taking the total infections in the latest outbreak to 90.

Mexico reports 3,855 new coronavirus cases, 253 more deaths

Mexico has reported 3,855 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the country and 253 more fatalities, bringing total infections to 2,441,866 and the death toll to 229,353, according to Health Ministry data.

Separate government data recently published suggested the real death toll may be at least 60% above the confirmed figure.