Tag Archives: poor countries

Unwanted vaccines needed to help poor countries catch up, international health officials say

By Stephanie Nebehay and Douglas Busvine

(Reuters) – Doses of vaccines rejected as countries fine-tune their inoculation campaigns will go to poor countries where possible to counter a “shocking imbalance” in distribution, international health officials said on Friday.

Authorities in Australia and Greece became the latest to recommend alternatives to the AstraZeneca vaccine for younger people over fears of possible very rare blood clots, while Hong Kong delayed deliveries.

The city said it had enough alternatives and did not want to waste these shots while global supplies were short.

Australia’s decision effectively put paid to plans to have its population vaccinated by the end of October, highlighting the delicate public health balancing act the issue has created.

Giving alternative vaccines to younger recipients will delay inoculation campaigns by around a month in Australia, France and Britain, science information and analytics company Airfinity forecast after crunching the numbers for those countries.

Millions of doses of the AstraZeneca shot have been safely administered around the world but some governments have limited its use to older age groups as a precaution while cases of clotting are investigated.

The World Health Organization said most countries did not have anywhere near enough shots of any vaccine to cover health workers and others at high risk from exposure to the virus, which has killed almost 3 million people around the world.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said high income countries had on average vaccinated one in four people while in low income countries it was one in more than 500.

“There remains a shocking imbalance in the distribution of vaccines,” he told a press briefing on Friday.

The WHO and GAVI vaccine alliance’s COVAX mechanism aims to ensure vaccines reach poorer states. Asked whether COVAX was negotiating for doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that had been shunned, GAVI alliance head Seth Berkley said the Anglo-Swedish company’s supply chain had “picked up”.

“As countries decide they are going to priorities one vaccine or another, that may free up doses, and in so doing we will try to make sure those doses are made available without delay, if countries are willing to make that happen,” he said.

DIFFERING AGE LIMITS

Australia said it had doubled its order of the Pfizer shot after health authorities recommended those under 50 take it instead of AstraZeneca. Greece followed Britain in recommending people under 30 get an alternative shot.

AstraZeneca said it was working with regulators “to understand the individual cases, epidemiology and possible mechanisms that could explain these extremely rare events”.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) received reports of 169 cases of the rare brain blood clot by early April, after 34 million doses had been administered, Sabine Straus, chair of the EMA’s safety committee, said this week.

Most of the cases reported had occurred in women under 60.

On Friday, the EMA said that if a causal relationship is confirmed or considered likely, regulatory action will be needed to minimize risk.

It also said it was looking into Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) shot over reports of blood clots. U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said there was nothing on reports on the J&J vaccine that is a red flag.

The AstraZeneca shot is by far the cheapest and most high-volume vaccine launched so far to curb the pandemic and avert damaging lockdowns, but supplies have been beset by delays.

However, new data in the EU, where vaccinations lag those in the United States, showed overall deliveries of vaccines were gathering momentum. Germany said it was accelerating inoculations but needed a new lockdown as well.

“Every day in which we don’t act, we lose lives,” Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute, said.

GLOBAL SUPPLY

Hong Kong Health Secretary Sophia Chan said the city would delay its ordered shipments of the AstraZeneca vaccine this year “so as not to cause a waste when the vaccine is still in short supply globally”.

The government was considering buying a new type of vaccine that may offer better protection, she added.

All the countries recommending age limits for the AstraZeneca shot have emphasized that its benefits far outweigh the risks of catching COVID-19 for older people.

But some people have been put off. Madrid said less than half of over 60s due to have the AstraZeneca shot on Thursday turned up, a day after Spain recommended younger people get a different shot.

The top health body in France, where vaccine hesitancy is high, recommended that those over 55 who had received a first dose of the AstraZeneca shot get a new-style messenger-RNA vaccine for the second one.

Two messenger RNA vaccines have been approved for use in France, one from Pfizer and BioNTech and another from Moderna.

(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux worldwide; writing by Philippa Fletcher; editing by Nick Macfie and Mark Heinrich)

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now 5-21-20

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

“A long way to go”

The World Health Organization is starting to raise the alarm bell about the rising number of new coronavirus cases in poor countries, even as many rich nations emerge from lockdowns.

The global health body said on Wednesday 106,000 new cases had been recorded in the previous 24 hours, the most in a single day since the outbreak began.

“We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

Global coronavirus cases have surpassed 5 million, with Latin America overtaking the United States and Europe in the past week to report the largest portion of new daily cases.

Vaccine: high hopes and a reality-check

The United States said it will pump up to $1.2 billion into developing AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine and confirmed that it would order 300 million doses.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he hoped the first doses of the vaccine, which is being developed with the University of Oxford, would be available by October.

AstraZeneca meanwhile stressed it was still awaiting results from an early-stage trial to know if the vaccine worked at all.

China fur and traditional medicine trade to continue?

China’s parliament is preparing new laws to ban the trade and consumption of wildlife, following on from a temporary move in January after exotic animals traded in a Wuhan market were identified as the most likely source of COVID-19.

However, local action plans published this week suggest the country’s fur trade and lucrative traditional medicine sectors will continue as usual.

That means practices that lead to cross-species virus transmission could continue, said Peter Li, China policy specialist with Humane Society International, an animal rights group. China’s annual national session of parliament, delayed from March, starts on Friday.

Sports and sleepwear over suits and ties

The new bestsellers at Marks & Spencer are sportswear, sleepwear and bras, while sales of suits and ties are down to “a dribble”, as the lockdown transforms shoppers’ priorities, Britain’s biggest clothing retailer said on Wednesday.

What customers are buying is “completely different from what it would have been a year ago,” M&S chairman Archie Norman told reporters, after the 136-year-old group published annual results and its response to the pandemic.

Along with surging sales of jogging pants, hoodies and leggings, an emphasis on home comforts and family needs has boosted bedding sales by 150%.

(Compiled by Karishma Singh and Mark John; editing by Nick Macfie)