Tag Archives: Pandemic

Ireland to reopen all shops in May, hospitality in early June

By Padraic Halpin

DUBLIN (Reuters) -Ireland will press ahead with plans to reopen all retail stores, personal services and non-residential construction in May with hotels, restaurants and bars to follow sooner than expected in early June, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Thursday.

The government committed a month ago to reopening all shops for the first time this year in May and hotels in June if it could avoid a fourth wave of COVID-19 disease and speed up its vaccine program – criteria that it has met.

Coveney said the plan to be signed off by ministers later on Thursday would permit hotels to open their doors again on June 2 with restaurants and pubs – not mentioned a month ago – allowed to serve guests outdoors from June 7.

Ireland has one of the lowest COVID-19 infection rates in Europe but is opting for a slower reopening of its economy than most of its European peers after a relaxation of measures in December triggered a huge spike in cases.

Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told parliament that in May alone, as many as 15,000 business could reopen with up to 200,000 people being offered their jobs back.

The number of people claiming temporary coronavirus-related jobless benefits stood at 403,000 this week. The total fell as low as 206,000 last September before restrictions began to be reimposed.

Including those claiming regular jobless benefits, Ireland’s unemployment rate stood at 24.2% at the end of March.

Ireland has also put in place the EU’s toughest restrictions on international travel and Varadkar said that a plan for a phased return to international travel this summer should be agreed by the end of May.

Welcoming the reopening plan, the incoming chief executive of Ireland’s largest hotel operator told Reuters that the Dalata Hotel Group expects very strong occupancy levels outside Dublin this summer and a recovery in the capital from September with the hoped-for return of international travel.

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Andrew Cawthorne)

India infections top 18 million as gravediggers work round the clock

By Alasdair Pal and Francis Mascarenhas

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) -India’s total COVID-19 cases passed 18 million on Thursday after another world record number of daily infections, as gravediggers worked around the clock to bury victims and hundreds more were cremated in makeshift pyres in parks and parking lots.

India reported 379,257 new infections and 3,645 new deaths on Thursday, health ministry data showed, the highest number of fatalities in a single day since the start of the pandemic.

The world’s second most populous nation is in deep crisis, with hospitals and morgues overwhelmed.

Mumbai gravedigger Sayyed Munir Kamruddin, 52, said he and his colleagues were working non-stop to bury victims.

“I’m not scared of COVID, I’ve worked with courage. It’s all about courage, not about fear,” he said. “This is our only job. Getting the body, removing it from the ambulance, and then burying it.”

Each day, thousands of Indians search frantically for hospital beds and life-saving oxygen for sick relatives, using social media apps and personal contacts. Hospital beds that become available, especially in intensive care units (ICUs), are snapped up in minutes.

“The ferocity of the second wave took everyone by surprise,” K. Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific adviser to the government, was quoted as saying in the Indian Express newspaper.

“While we were all aware of second waves in other countries, we had vaccines at hand, and no indications from modelling exercises suggested the scale of the surge.”

India’s military has begun moving key supplies, such as oxygen, across the nation and will open its healthcare facilities to civilians.

Hotels and railway coaches have been converted into critical care facilities to make up for the shortage of hospital beds.

India’s best hope is to vaccinate its vast population, experts say, and on Wednesday it opened registration for all above the age of 18 to receive shots from Saturday.

But although it is the world’s biggest producer of vaccines, India does not have the stocks for the estimated 800 million now eligible.

Many who tried to sign up for vaccination said they failed, complaining on social media of being unable to get a slot or even to simply get on the website, as it repeatedly crashed.

“Statistics indicate that far from crashing or performing slowly, the system is performing without any glitches,” the government said on Wednesday.

More than 8 million people had registered, it said, but it was not immediately clear how many had got slots.

A local official in Mumbai said the city had paused its vaccination drive for three days as supplies were running short, while officials said the worst-hit state of Maharashtra was likely to extend strict coronavirus curbs by another two weeks.

DEATHS LIKELY UNDER-REPORTED

Only about 9% of India’s population of about 1.4 billion has received a dose since the vaccination campaign began in January.

However, while the second wave overwhelms the health system, the official death rate is below that of Brazil and the United States.

India has reported 147.2 deaths per million, the Reuters global COVID-19 tracker shows, while Brazil and the United States reported figures of 1,800 and 1,700 respectively.

However, medical experts believe India’s true COVID-19 numbers may be five to 10 times greater than the official tally.

At Delhi’s Holy Family Hospital, patients arrived in ambulances and private vehicles, some gasping for air as their oxygen cylinders ran out. In the ICU, patients lay on trolleys between beds.

“Someone that should be in the ICU is being treated in the wards,” Dr. Sumit Ray, head of the unit, told Reuters.

“We are completely full. The doctors and nurses are demoralized, they know they can do better, but they just don’t have the time. No one takes a break.”

The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory on Wednesday against travel to India because of the pandemic and advised its citizens to leave the country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been criticized for allowing massive political rallies and religious festivals which have been super-spreader events in recent weeks.

“The people of this country are entitled to a full and honest account of what led more than a billion people into a catastrophe,” Vikram Patel, a global health expert at Harvard Medical School, said in the Hindu newspaper.

AID STARTS ARRIVING

India expects close to 550 oxygen generating facilities from around the world as medical aid starts pouring in, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said on Thursday.

Two planes from Russia, carrying 20 oxygen concentrators, 75 ventilators, 150 bedside monitors, and 22 tonnes of medicine, have arrived in Delhi.

The United States is sending supplies worth more than $100 million, including 1,000 oxygen cylinders, 15 million N95 masks and 1 million rapid diagnostic tests, the White House said on Wednesday.

The supplies will begin arriving on Thursday, it added.

The United States also has redirected its own order of AstraZeneca manufacturing supplies to India, to allow it to make more than 20 million doses, the White House said.

India will receive a first batch of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine on May 1. Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund, which markets Sputnik V globally, has signed deals with five Indian manufacturers for more than 850 million vaccine doses a year.

Bangladesh said it would send about 10,000 vials of anti-viral medicines, 30,000 PPE kits, and several thousand mineral and vitamin tablets.

Germany will send 120 ventilators on Saturday, and a mobile oxygen production facility next week, its defense ministry said.

(Additional reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai, Anuron Kumar Mitra in Bengaluru, Neha Arora and Tanvi Mehta in Delhi, Ruma Paul in Dhaka, Subrata Nag Choudhury in Kolkata; Writing by Michael Perry and Giles Elgood; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Gareth Jones)

COVID pandemic accelerating, WHO Americas office warns

MEXICO CITY/BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) -The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating, which is why equitable access to vaccines and effective preventive measures are crucial to helping turn the tide, the head of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Wednesday.

“Our region is still under the grip of this pandemic … in several countries of South America the pandemic in the first four months of this year was worse than what we faced in 2020,” PAHO Director Carissa Etienne said in a briefing.

“This shows that we will only overcome this pandemic with a combination of rapid and equitable vaccine access and effective preventive measures. This pandemic is not only not over, it is accelerating,” she added.

Over the past week more than 1.4 million people became infected with COVID-19 in the region and over 36,000 died from complications related to the disease, meaning that one in four coronavirus deaths reported worldwide last week were in the Americas.

Etienne pointed to Canada’s infection rates, which surpassed U.S. figures for the first time since the start of the pandemic; surging cases across the Caribbean and Central America, underscoring the expectation of more hospitalizations in Costa Rica as the country reported a 50% jump in cases in the last week; and spiking infections across South America.

The PAHO director urged countries with extra vaccine doses to consider donating them to counties in need in the Americas, saying that considering the increased incidence of COVID-19 variants of concern, time was of the essence.

PAHO serves as the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization.

(Reporting by Anthony Esposito in Mexico City and Lucila Sigal in Buenos Aires Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Russia, China sow disinformation to undermine trust in Western vaccines, EU report says

By Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Russian and Chinese media are systematically seeking to sow mistrust in Western COVID-19 vaccines in their latest disinformation campaigns aimed at dividing the West, a European Union report said on Wednesday.

From December to April, the two countries’ state media outlets pushed fake news online in multiple languages sensationalizing vaccine safety concerns, making unfounded links between jabs and deaths in Europe and promoting Russian and Chinese vaccines as superior, the EU study said.

The Kremlin and Beijing deny all disinformation allegations by the EU, which produces regular reports and seeks to work with Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft to limit the spread of fake news.

Russian and Chinese vaccine diplomacy “follows a zero-sum game logic and is combined with disinformation and manipulation efforts to undermine trust in Western-made vaccines,” said the EU study released by the bloc’s disinformation unit, part of its EEAS foreign policy arm.

“Both Russia and China are using state-controlled media, networks of proxy media outlets and social media, including official diplomatic social media accounts, to achieve these goals,” the report said, citing 100 Russian examples this year.

The EU and NATO regularly accuse Russia of covert action, including disinformation, to try to destabilize the West by exploiting divisions in society.

Vaccine supply issues with AstraZeneca, as well as very rare side effects with Astra and the Johnson & Johnson vaccines have been seized upon, the report said.

“Both Chinese official channels and pro-Kremlin media have amplified content on alleged side-effects of the Western vaccines, misrepresenting and sensationalizing international media reports and associating deaths to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in Norway, Spain and elsewhere,” the report said.

“VACCINE CHAOS”

Russia denies any such tactics and President Vladimir Putin has accused foreign foes of targeting Russia by spreading fake news about coronavirus.

Last year, China sought to block an EU report alleging that Beijing was spreading disinformation about the coronavirus outbreak, according to a Reuters investigation.

While the EU has not vaccinated its 450 million citizens as fast as Britain, which is no longer a member of the bloc, shots are now gaining speed, led by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer’s shots and its German partner BioNTech.

But Russian media reported that “Brexit saved the UK from the ‘vaccine chaos’ engulfing the EU,” the EU said. “Such narratives indicate an effort to sow division within the EU,” it added.

In the report, released online, the EU said Russia’s official Sputnik V Twitter account sought to undermine public trust in the European Medicines Agency.

China meanwhile promoted its vaccines as a “global public good” and “presenting them as more suitable for developing countries and also the Western Balkans,” the report found. Western Balkan countries are seen as future EU members.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

Pakistan sees record COVID-19 deaths as officials consider stricter lockdowns

By Umar Farooq

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan recorded more than two hundred COVID-19 deaths in a day for the first time since the start of the pandemic on Tuesday, as the government said it was considering stricter lockdowns.

A total of 201 new deaths were recorded on Tuesday, bringing the country’s overall death toll from the virus to 17,530, according to the National Command Operation Center (NCOC), which oversees the government’s pandemic response. The previous highest daily death count was 157 recorded on April 23.

A total of 5,292 new cases were reported on Tuesday, bringing the total cases to 810,231 in the country of more than 220 million people.

The national positivity ratio, the number of infections among those tested, was 10.8%. The death rate, the number of infections resulting in fatalaties, hit the highest point since the start of the pandemic, reaching around 2.2%.

Only around two million vaccinations have been administered in Pakistan, and the country has struggled to procure supplies to cover enough of its population.

Officials have said health care facilities are at risk of being overwhelmed. Pakistan has very limited health resources, with ventilators and oxygen in short supply.

Around 6,286 COVID-19 patients were being treated in 631 hospitals on Tuesday, and more than 70% of ventilators and oxygenated beds were occupied in hospitals in many major cities, according to the NCOC.

On Monday, Pakistani army troops were deployed in 16 major cities with high positivity rates, to assist civilian law enforcement in enforcing measures meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus, including the wearing of masks in public and the closing of non-essential businesses after 6pm.

Stricter measures were taken in a handful of cities with the highest positivity rates this week, and on Tuesday Health Minister Faisal Sultan warned such steps could be extended to other areas if the public did not heed advice on social distancing, wearing masks, and other precautionary measures, especially during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan with the upcoming Eid holiday next month.

“Please keep your Ramadan and Eid simple this year, so we can fight this disease and get through this difficult situation,” Sultan said.

The southern province of Sindh announced intercity transportation will be halted starting April 30, and remain in place through May 17, just after the Eid holiday.

(Reporting by Umar Farooq; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Fully vaccinated people can unmask outdoors in some cases: U.S. CDC

(Reuters) – Fully vaccinated people can safely engage in outdoor activities like walking and hiking without wearing masks but should continue to use face-coverings in public spaces where they are required, U.S. health regulators said on Tuesday.

The updated health advice comes as more than half of all adults in the United States have now received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“The release of these new guidelines is a first step at helping fully vaccinated Americans resume activities they had stopped doing because of the pandemic, while being mindful of the potential risk of transmitting the virus to others,” the CDC said.

Wearing face masks has been considered by experts as one of the most effective ways of controlling virus transmission. With most COVID-19 transmission occurring indoors, and vaccinations on the rise, the use of masks outdoors has been under public debate for weeks in the United States as Americans look to enjoy the benefits of being fully vaccinated.

New COVID-19 cases have dropped 16% in the last week as the U.S. surpassed 140 million people having received at least one shot of authorized vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose vaccine.

This was the biggest percentage drop in weekly new cases since February, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county data.

SMALL OUTDOOR GATHERINGS

The agency said fully-vaccinated Americans can safely dine outdoors with friends from multiple households at restaurants and attend small outdoor gatherings with a mixture of fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

CDC continues to recommend masking for crowded outdoor events such as parades and sporting events and indoor visits to the hair salon, shopping malls, movie theaters and houses of worship.

The agency classified activities as “red,” “yellow” and “green” based on level of safety for unvaccinated people.

It said unvaccinated people can also walk and run unmasked with household members outdoors safely and attend small outdoor gatherings with fully vaccinated family and friends.

Data on whether vaccinated people can spread infection to those who did not receive their shots is limited and the CDC warned that people should evaluate risk to friends and family before going out without masks.

This is an update to the CDC’s guidance, which in March said people who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can meet without masks indoors in small groups with others who also have been inoculated.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)

U.S. administers 230.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines – CDC

(Reuters) – The United States has administered 230,768,454 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Monday morning, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday.

The figure is up from the 228,661,408 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Sunday out of 290,692,005 doses delivered.

The agency said 140,969,663 people had received at least one dose while 95,888,088 people are fully vaccinated as of Monday.

The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, as well as Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Monday.

A total of 7,791,592 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.

The number of vaccine doses delivered remained at 290,692,005, as of Monday morning as shipments are not always sent on Sundays, according to the CDC.

(Reporting by Trisha Roy in Bengaluru)

Turkey announces “full lockdown” from April 29 to curb COVID spread

ANKARA (Reuters) -Turks will be required to stay mostly at home under a nationwide “full lockdown” starting on Thursday and lasting until May 17 to curb a surge in coronavirus infections and deaths, President Tayyip Erdogan announced on Monday.

Turkey logged 37,312 new COVID-19 infections and 353 deaths in the last 24 hours, health ministry data showed, sharply down from mid-April but still the world’s fourth highest number of cases and the worst on a per-capita basis among major nations.

Announcing the new measures after a cabinet meeting, Erdogan said all intercity travel would require official approval, all schools would shut and move lessons online, and a strict capacity limit would be imposed for users of public transport.

Turks will have to stay indoors except for essential shopping trips and urgent medical treatment. Certain groups including emergency service workers and employees in the food and manufacturing sectors will be exempt.

The new restrictions take effect from 1600 GMT on Thursday and will end at 0200 GMT on May 17.

“At a time when Europe is entering a phase of reopening, we need to rapidly cut our case numbers to below 5,000 not to be left behind. Otherwise we will inevitably face heavy costs in every area, from tourism to trade and education,” Erdogan said.

The measures will be implemented “in the strictest manner to ensure they yield the results we seek”, he said.

Two weeks ago Turkey announced a night-time curfew from 7 p.m. till 5 a.m. on weekdays, as well as full weekend lockdowns, after cases surged to record levels, but the measures proved insufficient to bring the pandemic under control.

Total daily cases in Turkey peaked above 63,000 on April 16 before dropping sharply to below 39,000 on Sunday.

The total death toll in Turkey, a nation of 84 million, stood at 38,711 on Monday, the health ministry data showed.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Ezgi Erkoyun; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Gareth Jones)

U.S. to share up to 60 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses globally: White House

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will start to share up to 60 million doses of AstraZeneca Plc’s coronavirus vaccine with other countries as soon as the next few weeks, the White House said on Monday.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the United States would release the doses to other countries as they become available.

She said there could be 10 million doses cleared for export “in coming weeks.” About 50 million more doses are currently being produced and could ship in May and June.

“Right now we have zero doses available of AstraZeneca,” Psaki said, noting that U.S. regulators still need to review the quality of those already produced.

Psaki said the Biden administration is still deciding what the process will be to determine where and how it will share the vaccine.

“We will consider a range of options from our partner countries and, of course, much of that will be through direct relationships,” she said.

The AstraZeneca vaccine has not yet been authorized for U.S. use by the Food and Drug Administration.

The Biden administration in March said it would send roughly 4 million doses of the British drugmaker’s vaccine to Canada and Mexico, and is under growing pressure now to expand sharing of its stockpile with India and other countries.

India has become the latest epicenter of the pandemic, threatening to overwhelm its healthcare system.

An AstraZeneca spokeswoman could not comment on specifics of the arrangement, but said the doses were part of its supply commitments to the U.S. government. “Decisions to send U.S. supply to other countries are made by the U.S. government,” she said.

The Associated Press earlier on Monday reported the doses would be shared in coming months following their clearance by the FDA.

The AP reported that the doses were made at the Emergent BioSolutions facility in Baltimore, which came under harsh criticism for a long list of cleanliness and manufacturing problems found during an FDA inspection.

AstraZeneca is no longer making vaccine at that plant after a batch of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was ruined by contamination with ingredients from the AstraZeneca shot.

J&J is now overseeing production of its vaccine at the Emergent plant.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Caroline Humer and Michael Erman; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Bill Berkrot)

Lawmakers urge Biden to back ‘moral’ patent waiver to speed vaccine access

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers and nonprofit groups on Friday heaped pressure on the Biden administration to back a temporary patent waiver for COVID-19 vaccines to help poor countries contain the pandemic.

The groups delivered a petition signed by two million people, adding to separate letters already sent to U.S. President Joe Biden by a group of senators, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, nearly 100 members of the House and 60 former heads of state and 100 Nobel Prize winners.

Senator Bernie Sanders said it was also in the United States’ own interest to ensure as many people were vaccinated as quickly as possible, to limit the chance of virus mutations that could prompt further U.S. lockdowns. But he also appealed to Biden’s desire to rebuild U.S. credibility in the world.

“On this enormously important health issue, this moral issue, the United States has got to do the right thing,” he told a news conference.

The United States and a handful of other big countries have blocked negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) involving a proposal spearheaded by India and South Africa that now has the support of 100 WTO members. The proposal would temporarily waive the intellectual property (IP) rights of pharmaceutical companies to allow developing countries to produce vaccines.

Proponents are pushing Washington to change course ahead of the next formal WTO meeting on the issue on May 5.

‘COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE’

One source briefed on the issue told Reuters U.S. trade officials realized “that something needs to be done, whether it’s the TRIPS waiver or some other solution,” a reference to the WTO’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property agreement.

A second source said the administration was concerned that worsening COVID-19 outbreaks in India and other low-income countries could undermine progress made in the United States.

The office of U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai had no immediate comment on the petitions or the latest comments.

Tai last week likened the huge gap in access to medicines to the AIDS crisis and called it “completely unacceptable,” but stopped short of backing the waiver, which is opposed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.

Critics argue that waiving IP rights could reduce the safety of vaccines worldwide, and say other issues – such as improving distribution networks – are far more urgent priorities.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Aurora Ellis)