Tag Archives: second wave

India orders unapproved COVID shots as it reels from devastating second wave

By Neha Arora and Sethuraman N R

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India signed its first order for an unapproved COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, a day after it faced criticism from the Supreme Court over its bungled vaccine rollout that has left millions of people vulnerable after almost 338,000 deaths.

So far, only about 4.7% of the 950 million adult population have been given two vaccine doses as the world’s second-most populous country reels from a devastating second wave of infections that killed around 170,000 people in April and May alone.

The government will buy 300 million vaccine doses from local firm Biological-E and has put down an advance of $205.6 million, the health ministry said, even though the vaccine is still going through Phase III clinical trials.

“The arrangement with Biological-E is part of the wider endeavor of Government of India to encourage indigenous vaccine manufacturers by providing them support in research & development and also financial support,” the ministry said in a statement.

India has been inoculating its people with AstraZeneca shots produced at the Serum Institute of India, Covaxin made by local firm Bharat Biotech and is set to commercially launch Russia’s Sputnik V in mid-June.

But supplies are running short after the government opened vaccinations to all adults last month. Some vaccination centers have had to close down, prompting criticism from the Supreme Court about a lack of planning.

While the federal government gave free vaccines to the elderly and frontline workers, it left state governments and private hospitals to administer doses to people in the 18 to 45 age group at a price.

“The policy of the central government of conducting free vaccination themselves for groups under the first two phases, and replacing it with paid vaccination … is, prima facie, arbitrary and irrational,” the Supreme Court said.

The government said this week it could have as many as 10 million doses each day in July and August, up from just under three million now.

Pressure is set to mount further on the government to speed up vaccinations, as several states prepare to ease lockdowns even amid high numbers of daily infections and deaths.

The western state of Maharashtra, home to financial hub Mumbai, is set to lift most restrictions across half its districts from Friday, based on the availability of oxygen beds and infection rates, officials said.

India on Thursday announced 134,154 new infections over the past 24 hours, down more than 65% from a peak of 414,188 reported on May 7. The official recorded case load since the start of the pandemic now stands at 28.4 million, the second-highest in the world after the United States.

India added 2,887 deaths overnight, pushing the overall toll to 337,989, the world’s third-highest toll after the United States and Brazil.

New Delhi’s high court said some federal officials should be charged with manslaughter for the poor vaccine rollout.

“Who are they referring to, you think? This effectively concludes the debate on that subject,” Sanjay Jha, a former Congress official and political commentator, said on Twitter.

“This government has failed. And failed its people miserably.”

($1 = 72.9500 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Neha Arora in New Delhi, Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Rajendra Jadhav, Bhargav Acharya, Rama Venkat and Tanvi Mehta; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Kim Coghill and Nick Macfie)

Villages in eastern India inundated as cyclone Yaas moves inland

By Jatindra Dash and Subrata NagChoudhury

BHUBANESWAR, India (Reuters) -Storm surges inundated dozens of villages in eastern India on Wednesday after a powerful cyclone moved inland from the Bay of Bengal, damaging thousands of mud homes in two coastal states and killing at least one person, officials said.

Cyclone Yaas was packing gusts of up to 140 kph (87 mph) as it made landfall, days after another storm tore up the western coast, triggering mass evacuations and piling pressure on authorities battling a deadly second wave of the coronavirus.

Authorities said more than a million inhabitants had been moved out of the storm’s path and the busiest regional airport, in the city of Kolkata, had been shut until Wednesday evening.

In the eastern state of Odisha’s Balasore district, where the storm struck early on Wednesday, authorities said 46 villages along the coast had been flooded.

“Most of the villages were empty. The total population would be around 10,000,” K. Sudarshan Chakravarthy, the district’s top government official, told Reuters.

In neighboring West Bengal state, rising waters breached river embankments in more than 100 locations and 20,000 traditional mud homes had been damaged, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told reporters.

“A large number of villages are under water,” she said.

At least one person had died in the state after a house collapsed, Banerjee said.

“I have not seen anything like this before,” said another state minister, Bankim Hazra, after seawater gushed into low-lying areas of Sagar island in the Bay of Bengal and the tourist town of Digha, where a police station was flooded.

“Successive high tides battered the coastline,” he added. “It is inundation all around and villages are cut off.”

Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal are common at this time of year, and often roar ashore, bringing death and destruction to the coastal areas of both India and neighboring Bangladesh.

The devastating wave of virus infections complicated storm preparations. Odisha officials said they had suspended testing, vaccination and a door-to-door health survey in the three districts in the storm’s path.

Weather officials in Bangladesh said the storm was likely to swamp low-lying areas of 14 coastal districts, bringing tides three to four feet (0.91-1.22 meters) higher than normal. They advised fishing boats and trawlers to stay in shelter.

(Additional reporting by Ruma Paul in Dhaka; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani and Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mark Heinrich)

Exclusive: Oxford study indicates AstraZeneca effective against Brazil variant, source says

By Rodrigo Viga Gaier

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Preliminary data from a study conducted at the University of Oxford indicates that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca PLC is effective against the P1, or Brazilian, variant, a source with knowledge of the study told Reuters on Friday.

The data indicates that the vaccine will not need to be modified in order to protect against the variant, which is believed to have originated in the Amazonian city of Manaus, said the source, who requested anonymity as the results have not yet been made public.

The source did not provide the exact efficacy of the vaccine against the variant. They said the full results of the study should be released soon, possibly in March.

Early results indicated the AstraZeneca vaccine was less effective against the South African variant, which is similar to P1. South Africa subsequently paused the use of the vaccine in the country.

The information comes as a small-sample study suggested the COVID-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac may not work effectively against the Brazilian variant.

Responding to a request for comment, Fiocruz, which sent the samples that formed the basis of the study, told Reuters it did not have any information on the study, as it was being led by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

Representatives for AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Brazil is currently confronting a brutal and long-lasting second wave of the coronavirus, hitting a daily record of 1,910 deaths on Wednesday.

The P1 variant is among the factors that epidemiologists believe is contributing to a rise in cases and deaths, and there has been concern in the scientific community about the variant’s resistance to vaccines.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier; Writing by Gram Slattery; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Exclusive: Canada deporting thousands even as pandemic rages

By Anna Mehler Paperny

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada deported thousands of people even as COVID-19 raged last year, data seen by Reuters shows, and lawyers say deportations are ramping up, putting people needlessly at risk in the midst of a global health emergency.

Like many other countries, Canada is struggling to stop a second wave from spiraling out of control, and its political leaders are begging residents to stay home to prevent the spread.

Lawyers and human rights advocates are decrying Canada’s November decision to resume deportations. Until now, the extent of the country’s pandemic deportations was not known, but recent interviews with immigration lawyers and scrutiny of government numbers has shed light on the situation.

Canada counted 12,122 people as removed in 2020 – 875 more than the previous year and the highest number since at least 2015, according to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) data seen by Reuters. The government says this was necessary and done safely.

The CBSA says the high number last year is because it includes people who decided to leave on their own, termed “administrative removals.” In 2019 there were 1,657 administrative removals, compared with 8,215 last year.

Even subtracting those numbers, that leaves thousands of people deported as the pandemic raged and governments cautioned against travel of any kind for safety reasons.

Even as Canada continues to deport non-citizens during a health crisis, U.S. President Joe Biden paused deportations for 100 days within hours of being sworn in on Wednesday.

Canada officially imposed a moratorium on deportations in March that it lifted at the end of November.

“As much as a human rights concern it’s a common sense concern,” said Bill Frelick, director of Human Rights Watch’s Refugee Rights Program.

Countries’ deportation practices have varied over the course of the pandemic. Several, including the United Kingdom, suspended deportations before resuming them. Others, like Ireland, have kept suspensions in place.

The CBSA said it has been prioritizing deportations for reasons of “serious admissibility,” including criminality.

The vast majority of people deported in 2020 were for reasons of “noncompliance.” Even taking into account administrative removals, more than 1,000 people were deported during the suspension, the data shows.

‘IT’S UNBELIEVABLE’

Public health experts have warned that travel of any kind can spread COVID-19 from one place to another, a risk that grows with the advent of more highly transmissible COVID variants.

Many of the deportation trips involve transfers at multiple airports and flights during which people are placed in enclosed space in close quarters with other people for hours at a time, a situation ripe for transmission.

Since August Canada has been conducting deportations with CBSA escorts, so Canadians are also making thousands of these round-trip flights for deportation purposes.

Organizations including the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers spoke out against Canada’s decision to resume deportations.

“As everybody is putting in place more restrictions in an effort to flatten the curve … CBSA made a shocking decision to simply go back to business as usual,” said Maureen Silcoff, president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers.

“Canada has taken the position that nonessential travel is barred yet people are now being removed and there’s no indication that those removals are essential.”

The CBSA said in a statement it lifted the moratorium on deportations because foreign government offices and borders had reopened, airlines restarted their routes and public-health protocols “have contributed to a high degree of safety for persons being removed by air.”

“Canada continues to uphold both its human rights and public safety obligations in relation to the removal of inadmissible foreign nationals,” the statement said. “The removal process includes many checks and balances to ensure that the removal is conducted in a fair and just manner.”

But these deportations are endangering not only the people being deported but the government officers tasked with accompanying them to their destination, lawyers say.

Immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman’s Toronto office went from getting no removal cases to getting three or four in the space of a week, he said. He is now fighting for a failed refugee claimant with two young Canadian children who faces deportation to Egypt Monday.

“They’re ramping it up as if there was no pandemic,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.”

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto; Editing by Denny Thomas and Matthew Lewis)

As coronavirus stalks Brazil’s Amazon, many die untreated at home

By Bruno Kelly and Gabriel Araujo

MANAUS (Reuters) – Shirlene Morais Costa died at her home in the northern Brazilian city of Manaus on Monday, likely the latest victim of a devastating new wave of COVID-19 that has returned to this isolated city deep in the Amazon rainforest.

The 53-year-old went to hospital with a cough and a fever, both symptoms of the coronavirus, but was sent home, according to her stepfather, Esteliano Lopes Filho, 74.

“Her death was swift… We called the ambulance, but it only arrived after she was dead,” he said. “We’re seeing death after death… It really is a terrible calamity.”

Brazil is home to the world’s second deadliest coronavirus outbreak after the United States, and Manaus was one of the first Brazilian cities to creak under a spiraling death and caseload from the first wave of the pandemic last year.

So many were infected that some scientists thought the city of 2 million people might have been approaching herd immunity. But that projection has proved well wide of the mark.

The state of Amazonas, where nearly 6,000 people have died from COVID-19, is now suffering a devastating second wave that is pushing emergency services to breaking point. Many people, like Morais Costa, are dying at home.

Beds for COVID-19 patients in the state reached an occupancy rate of over 98% this week, according to data from the Amazonas state health department. Occupancy in temporary facilities that provide assistance to critical patients for later referral to other points of the health network was at 131%.

There are currently 1,391 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the state, in addition to a further 603 people hospitalized with suspected cases, the data shows.

Last week, refrigerated containers were placed outside the main hospitals in Manaus for the first time since the pandemic’s April peak. The containers are used to store bodies as the city’s healthcare and burial services again become overwhelmed.

(Editing by Gabriel Stargardter and Rosalba O’Brien)

Chinese city of Langfang goes into lockdown amid new COVID-19 threat

BEIJING (Reuters) – The Chinese city of Langfang near Beijing went into lockdown on Tuesday as new coronavirus infections raised worries about a second wave in a country that has mostly contained COVID-19.

The number of new cases in mainland China reported on Tuesday remained a small fraction of those seen at the height of the outbreak in early 2020. However, authorities are implementing strict curbs whenever new cases emerge.

The National Health Commission reported 55 new cases on Tuesday, down from 103 on Monday. Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, accounted for 40 of the 42 locally transmitted infections.

In a village in the south of Beijing that shares a border with Hebei, residents were stopping vehicles and asking to see health-tracking codes on mobile phones.

“We have to be careful as we’re near Guan, where COVID cases were reported today,” said a volunteer security officer surnamed Wang.

At a highway checkpoint, police in protective gowns ordered a car entering Beijing to return to Hebei after the driver was unable to show proof of a negative coronavirus test.

China’s state planning agency said it expected travel during next month’s Lunar New Year period to be markedly down on normal years, with a bigger share of people choosing cars over other transport. Many provinces have urged migrant workers to stay put for the festival.

HOME QUARANTINE

Langfang, southeast of Beijing, said its 4.9 million residents would be put under home quarantine for seven days and tested for the virus.

The government in Beijing said a World Health Organization team investigating the origin of the coronavirus would arrive on Thursday in the city of Wuhan, where the virus emerged in late 2019, after a delay that Beijing has called a “misunderstanding”.

Shijiazhuang, Hebei’s capital, has been hardest hit in the latest surge and has already placed its 11 million people under lockdown. The province has shut sections of highway and is ordering vehicles to turn back.

A new guideline from the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control recommended that taxi and ride-hailing operators suspend car-pooling services, and that drivers should get weekly DNA tests and be vaccinated in order to work, the ruling Communist Party-backed Beijing Daily reported.

As of Jan. 9, China had administered more than 9 million vaccine doses.

Across the country, the number of new asymptomatic cases rose to 81 from 76 the previous day. China does not classify asymptomatic cases as confirmed coronavirus infections.

The total number of confirmed cases reported in mainland China stands at 87,591, with an official death toll of 4,634.

(Reporting by Jing Wang and Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai and Sophie Yu, Roxanne Liu and Lusha Zhang in Beijing; writing by Se Young Lee and Ryan Woo; Editing by Sam Holmes and Kevin Liffey)

Germany introduces tougher restrictions in pandemic battle

By Andreas Rinke and Holger Hansen

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany is extending its nationwide lockdown until the end of the month and introducing tougher new restrictions in an effort to curb surging coronavirus infections, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday.

“We need to restrict contact more strictly… We ask all citizens to restrict contact to the absolute minimum,” Merkel told reporters after a meeting with the leaders of Germany’s 16 federal states.

The new rules restrict for the first time non-essential travel for residents of hard-hit areas all over Germany.

They limit movement to a 15-kilometre (nine-mile) radius in towns and districts where the number of new coronavirus cases is above 200 per 100,000 residents over seven days.

Members of any one household will be allowed to meet only one other person in public. That compares with a current rule under which public gatherings are limited to five people from two households.

Like many other European countries, Germany is struggling to contain a second wave of the virus. Britain began its third COVID-19 lockdown on Tuesday with citizens under orders to stay at home.

Concern is growing that hospitals in Germany will struggle to cope, and Merkel said a new mutation of the coronavirus first detected in Britain increased the need to be more cautious.

SHOPS, SCHOOLS TO STAY SHUT

Shops and restaurants will remain shut until the end of January. Schools are also to remain closed, with classes to be held online, until at least the end of the month.

“We believe these measures are justified, even if they are hard,” Merkel said.

The chancellor said she and the state leaders would review the new measures on Jan. 25.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany rose by 11,897 to 1.787 million in the last day, the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases said on Tuesday. The death toll rose by 944 to 35,518.

Germany had imposed a partial lockdown in November but was forced to close schools, shops and restaurants in mid-December after the initial steps failed to have the desired impact.

Germany is rolling out a vaccine against COVID-19 but the media and some officials have criticized the government for a slow start and for ordering too few doses. By Tuesday, around 317,000 people had received a shot.

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers, Joseph Nasr and Sabine Siebold; writing by Madeline Chambers and Maria Sheahan, Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Gareth Jones)

New York City public schools to close on Thursday as COVID-19 cases rise: mayor

(Reuters) – New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday that the city’s public school district, the largest in the U.S., would be closed for in-person learning starting on Thursday to ward off the increasing spread of COVID-19.

“New York City has reached the 3% testing positivity 7-day average threshold. Unfortunately, this means public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out (of) an abundance of caution. We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19,” the mayor said on Twitter.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Fears of COVID-19 resurgence spread to East Coast as grim U.S. records mount

By Maria Caspani and Anurag Maan

NEW YORK (Reuters) – As COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths surge across the United States, more signs emerged that a second wave could engulf areas of the Northeast, which managed to bring the pandemic under control after being battered last spring.

In New Jersey, one of the early U.S. hotspots, a spike in cases in Newark, the state’s largest city, prompted Mayor Ras Baraka to implement aggressive measures, including a mandatory curfew for certain areas, to contain the spread of the virus.

New York state and city officials also reported a worrying rise in the seven-day average infection rate that raised the specter of stricter mitigation measures adopted at the height of the pandemic.

“This is our LAST chance to stop a second wave,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote on Twitter on Wednesday as he announced the seven-day average positivity rate citywide was 2.52%. The city’s public school system, the largest in the country, would have to shut down if that figure reached 3%.

“We can do it, but we have to act NOW,” he said.

The United States as a whole reported more than 1,450 deaths on Tuesday, the highest single-day count since mid-August, according to a Reuters analysis.

U.S. COVID-19 cases climbed for seven days straight to reach more than 136,000 as of late Tuesday while hospitalizations, a key metric of the pandemic, crossed 60,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.

In Newark, the positivity rate hovered at 19%, more than double the state’s 7.74% seven-day average, Baraka said in a statement released on Tuesday.

“Stricter measures are required in the city’s hotspots in order to contain the virus and limit the spread,” he said.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced some restrictions on Monday in response to a rise in COVID-19 cases in the state, and outbreaks among bartenders.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a press release on Tuesday that New York’s positivity rate had climbed above 3% for the first time in weeks.

In Maryland, where the positivity rate stood at 5.6% on Wednesday, officials warned about rising COVID-19 hospitalizations. More than 800 people were being treated for the coronavirus at state hospitals as of Wednesday, according to Mike Ricci, the communications director of Governor Larry Hogan, the highest daily count since April, a Reuters tally showed.

A record number of people died of coronavirus in several Midwest and western states on Tuesday, including in Alaska, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Officials in states hardest-hit by the virus pleaded with residents to stay home as much as possible and heed the advice of experts by wearing masks, washing their hands and social distancing.

“It’s not safe to go out, it’s not safe to have others over — it’s just not safe. And it might not be safe for a while yet,” Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said during a primetime address on Tuesday. “So, please, cancel the happy hours, dinner parties, sleepovers and playdates at your home.”

(Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York and Anurag Maan in Bengaluru, Editing by Nick Macfie)

Germany’s COVID-19 monitoring app shows second wave unbroken

By Douglas Busvine

BERLIN (Reuters) – A fitness tracker app launched this spring in Germany to monitor the spread of COVID-19 indicates that recently imposed social-distancing measures have yet to slow a second wave of infection, the scientist leading the project told Reuters.

Over half a million people have connected their smartwatches and fitness trackers to the Corona-Datenspende (Corona Data Donation) app, making it possible to construct a ‘fever curve’ based on readings such as pulse or steps taken.

An elevated pulse can reveal that a person is running a high temperature, while they would take fewer steps if they feel unwell. Taking the readings together can serve as a basis for estimating COVID-19 infection trends.

Crunching that raw data requires adjustments and, after tweaks to the app’s algorithm to take into account that people tend to exercise more in good weather, that fever curve now serves as a reliable leading indicator of COVID-19 trends.

“At the moment we can see that the fever curve seems to precede the case count by between three days and a week,” said Dirk Brockmann, of the Institute for Theoretical Biology at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that extensive social restrictions announced last week and imposed across Germany from Monday – including shutting restaurants, gyms and theatres – have yet to have a decisive impact.

“The curve is still heading upwards – it looks more linear but we don’t see a bending of the fever curve,” added Brockmann, who also leads a project group at the Robert Koch Institute that models how infectious diseases spread.

Brockmann emphasized that the fever curve does not provide an accurate forecast of infections – but it can flag important shifts in trend or turning points.

The Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s center for disease control, reported a record daily COVID-19 caseload on Friday of 21,506, bringing the total since the outbreak of the pandemic to 619,089. The death toll rose by 166 to 11,096.

The Corona Data Donation app, developed with healthtech startup Thryve, works on wearable devices such as Apple Watches or Fitbit fitness trackers.

(Reporting by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Keith Weir)