But questions persist as to how much protection Chinese-developed coronavirus vaccines offer. Both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which have relied on China’s Sinopharm vaccine, recently made third doses available for large groups of people. (The United States has said Americans will probably need a booster shot of its three U.S.-developed coronavirus vaccines, although the timing of such a dose remains unclear.)
China has also shown little sign of relaxing its strict border controls even as other nations with quick inoculation programs start to open up to international travel.
Here are some significant developments:
Israel says probable link between Pfizer shot and mild heart inflammation in young men
Most of the cases were mild and seen in young men, according to a panel commissioned by the ministry to study the issue.
The disease, known as myocarditis, causes inflammation of the heart muscle and usually results from a viral infection, such as covid-19. It can also occur in reaction to a drug or part of a more general inflammatory condition, according to the Mayo Clinic.
In Israel, researchers tracked 275 reported cases of myocarditis among more than 5 million vaccinated individuals between Dec. 2020 and May 2021. More than 100 of those cases occurred in the month after patients were inoculated with two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the lead researcher told Science magazine.
“I am convinced there is a relationship” between the condition and the vaccine, said Dror Mevorach, head of internal medicine at the Hadassah University Medical Center.
More than 70 percent of Israeli adults have received two vaccine doses, leading to a dramatic decline in cases and deaths. Most Israelis were immunized with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
UAE hopes to roll out vaccines for children soon
DUBAI — After approving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines for minors between the ages of 12 and 15, the United Arab Emirates announced that doses for even younger children would be coming soon.
In a news conference late Tuesday, Farida al-Hosani, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health, said that final year exams for secondary school students would also go forward and the UAE was one of the first countries to begin vaccinating children as young as 12.
“In the interest of the safety of our children, it is expected that more vaccines will be provided for children” once necessary trials have been completed, Hosani said.
The government also announced that 81.9 percent of people over 16 have been vaccinated so far, with the number rising to 92 percent for those above 60.
The UAE has administered nearly 13 million vaccine doses, indicating that around 66 percent of the total population has been inoculated.
The daily number of cases across the country, however, has remained stubbornly high. The UAE registers nearly 2,000 new infections a day, nearly double the rate in neighboring Saudi Arabia, which has three times the population.
Most coronavirus restrictions in the country have been lifted, especially in the commercial capital of Dubai, which makes its living from international travel, tourism, finance, real estate and other businesses based on globalization and travel.
Gavi alliance in talks to include Sinovac vaccine in Covax initiative
The global vaccine alliance, Gavi, is now in discussions with China’s Sinovac to include its coronavirus shot in a growing vaccine portfolio for distribution to poorer nations, a spokeswoman told Reuters Wednesday.
“The world desperately needs multiple COVID-19 vaccines to address the huge access inequity across the globe,” Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director general for access to health products, said in a statement accompanying CoronaVac’s approval Tuesday.
Gavi’s dose-sharing initiative, in partnership with the WHO-backed Covax facility, has struggled to secure doses amid global supply shortages and funding shortfalls. According to the alliance, Covax has shipped just 77 million doses to 127 participating countries and territories.
“Gavi, on behalf of the COVAX Facility, is in dialogue with several manufacturers, including Sinovac, to expand and diversify the portfolio further and secure access to additional doses for Facility participants,” the spokeswoman said, Reuters reported.
CoronaVac has been authorized in 25 countries, including in Brazil, Egypt, Mexico and Turkey.
The WHO said in its emergency use listing that CoronaVac, which includes a two-dose regimen, prevents symptomatic disease in 51 percent of those vaccinated. It prevents severe covid-19 and hospitalization in “100% of the studied population,” the WHO said.
China’s vaccinates 20-plus million daily but that world-beating success comes with caveats
China could be nearing herd immunity from covid-19 after a state body said Tuesday that it had administered 22.3 million doses of coronavirus vaccines on Monday, Reuters reported, bringing the total number of shots given on its mainland to over 660 million.
Beijing’s vaccination program got off to a slow start but has rapidly picked up pace: It is now inoculating people more than six times faster than the United States did at its mid-April peak. Public health campaigns fronted by celebrities like Yao Ming have helped, as have incentives like cash handouts and free laundry detergent.
The country’s vaccine diplomacy efforts received a major boost Tuesday when the World Health Organization authorized the Chinese-developed Sinovac shot for emergency use. It is the second Chinese-made vaccine for an infectious disease to receive emergency-use approval from the global health body.
But questions persist as to how much protection Chinese-developed vaccines offer. Both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which have relied on the Sinopharm vaccine, recently made third doses available for large groups of people. (Anthony S. Fauci, the top infectious-disease expert in the United States, has said Americans will probably need a booster shot, though the timing of such a dose remains unclear.)
China has also shown little sign of relaxing its strict border controls even as other nations with quick inoculation programs start to open up to international travel.
Although the coronavirus was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, Beijing has since successfully controlled the virus. The country has documented just over 91,000 infections and around 4,600 deaths, most of which were from early in the pandemic.
But China hasn’t completely eradicated covid. Officials in the highly industrialized southern province of Guangzhou recently tightened social distancing measures after two cities there reported 41 new infections between May 21 and June 1.
U.N. vaccine shipment for North Korea delayed again
A planned delivery of about 2 million coronavirus vaccines to North Korea through the United Nations-backed Covax initiative has been postponed again, Reuters quoted a South Korean official as saying this week.
An initial batch of Oxford-AstraZeneca doses was previously expected to arrive in the North Korean capital Pyongyang in late May. But “prolonged” discussions between North Korea and Covax, which is partnered with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has hampered the shipment, the official said.
“Countries that want COVAX support are required to hold various consultations and submit some documents including an inoculation plan,” the official said, according to Reuters.
Covax seeks the equitable distribution of coronavirus vaccines worldwide.
“But in North Korea’s case, such consultations have been prolonged and it appears that the shipment will be made later than initially planned,” the official said.
One of the obstacles is Pyongyang’s lack of “technical preparedness” to receive the vaccines, according to Gavi. Another is a global supply crunch spurred by a devastating coronavirus outbreak in India, where many of the Covax vaccine doses were supposed to be produced.
North Korea sealed its borders at the beginning of the pandemic last year, even blocking the import of foreign goods and food. The government claims that no cases have been reported, but South Korean officials say that an outbreak cannot be ruled out.
Thailand moves to reopen island beach resort for foreign tourists as cases continue climb
Despite surging cases and a lagging vaccination program, Thailand is moving forward with opening its resort island of Phuket to tourists without quarantine amid widespread popular dissatisfaction with its handling of the pandemic.
The country reported 3,440 new coronavirus infections and 38 deaths on Wednesday with over 1,000 new cases in the country’s detention centers, which have become a hot spot for the virus. Hopes that those clusters were petering out had been raised after just 77 prisoner infections were registered on Tuesday, down from nearly 2,000 the day before.
Thailand had kept the coronavirus under tight control until April, when cases began to increase rapidly. The military-backed government has received fierce criticism for the slow pace of its inoculation program: only about 1.2 million people in the kingdom, which has a population of about 69 million, have been fully vaccinated.
A recent poll found that just 12.2 percent of Thais were “very satisfied” with how Bangkok has managed the health crisis, and a sister of Thailand’s king last week bypassed the government to approve the import of Chinese-developed vaccine doses by royal decree.
On Tuesday, Thailand’s tourism body reiterated that the country was moving ahead with plans to open the resort island of Phuket without quarantine to vaccinated international travelers from July 1.
At least 22 percent of Phuket’s residents have been inoculated after it was deemed a priority region, Bloomberg News reported. International travelers will have to stay on the island for at least seven days before they can leave for other parts of the country.
Foreign tourists spent about $65 billion in Thailand in 2019, but it isn’t clear how many will participate in the so-called “Phuket sandbox” program. Thailand is particularly popular with travelers from China, who face strict quarantine measures when they return home, and Malaysia, where permission is needed to leave the country.
Guangdong cities under partial lockdown as China fights Delta variant
Two cities in China’s southern manufacturing region of Guangdong have put more than 40 neighborhoods under lockdown and limited outbound travel as health workers fight a fast-spreading variant of coronavirus first detected in India and classified as Delta by the World Health Organization.
Officials on Wednesday reported 10 new cases in Guangzhou and three in the city of Foshan, adding to one of the country’s worst local outbreaks since containing the pandemic last year. Local health officials have said that the outbreak, which has infected more than 60 people since late May, is worrying because of its speed of transmission.
Zhang Zhoubin, deputy director of the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control told state broadcaster CCTV in an interview Tuesday that all Chinese cities must stay alert because this variant “transmits faster than many of us can possibly imagine.”
Guangzhou, the provincial capital of 15 million people, this week ordered residents in 38 areas of the city to stay home. Movie theaters, museums, libraries, schools, wholesale markets and other public venues in those districts were closed. The city suspended its vaccination program to focus on high-priority groups.
Travelers leaving Guangzhou by plane, train or bus must now show a “green” health code on one of two government-approved health apps, indicating their lack of exposure to the virus, as well as a negative result for a nucleic acid test taken in the last 72 hours. Within the city, residents must show the health code before entering the subway, a measure that had previously been relaxed.
The nearby city of Foshan, home to 7 million people, implemented similar travel restrictions on people leaving the city and put five areas under lockdown. A separate cluster has also emerged in the technology hub of Shenzhen, with 15 asymptomatic carriers carrying the variant of the virus discovered in Britain and known as Alpha.
The lockdowns recall images from the beginning of the pandemic in China when people in Wuhan, shut in for days, took to shouting from their windows for encouragement. A video posted online on Tuesday by Nanfang Daily purported to show residents in Liwan singing along to a patriotic song and yelling, “Guangzhou, add oil!”
Perspective: D.C. students wrote essays about challenges faced during the pandemic. There was loss, but also hope.
I was a judge in a recent essay contest for D.C. public and charter school students in fourth through ninth grades. The theme was about the challenges they faced during the pandemic, and I was reminded that the past year has put adult-size problems on the minds and bodies of the young.
“During the pandemic, what has been most challenging for me was when my parents, my uncle and I all got Covid, and then my uncle died,” wrote Brayan Rubio, a fifth-grader at Bruce-Monroe Elementary School at Park View. “Since then, I have learned a lot about myself and others, and what is important in life.”
Nile Grant Williams, a fifth-grader at Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School in the Fort Totten neighborhood, wrote: “Dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic is hard enough in itself. However, the injustice to black people has continued to be its own pandemic...”
Melbourne extends lockdown as more cases of virulent strain detected
SYDNEY — A lockdown in Melbourne, the capital of Australia’s second most populous state of Victoria, will be extended by at least a week as authorities try to get on top of a fast-spreading outbreak.
Six new cases were reported Wednesday, bringing the total number of active cases in the state to 67. Authorities said the dominant strain was another variant first detected in India, the variant the World Health Organization is now calling Kappa.
“If we let this thing run its course, it will explode,” acting state premier James Merlino said. “We’ve got to run this to ground because if we don’t, people will die.”
The number of exposure sites across Melbourne is now well over 350, with thousands of people isolating or quarantining.
Under the lockdown, which originally was set to run until June 3, people are only allowed to leave their homes for essential work, health care, grocery shopping, exercise or to get a coronavirus vaccination.
If no cases are recorded in other parts of the state in the next 24 hours, restrictions will be eased slightly outside the city, authorities said.
Long lines formed at testing centers in the New South Wales coastal town of Huskisson on Wednesday, after a man who traveled there last month from Melbourne tested positive for the virus. The man, who was traveling with his wife and children, spent several days in the region before driving back to Melbourne on May 24.
Public health authorities in Australia’s most populous state, home to Sydney, issued an alert for five places the man visited, including a campground.
Strict border policies and lockdowns have helped Australia sidestep the worst of the pandemic. Most of the country’s citizens are barred from traveling abroad, except to neighboring New Zealand. Canberra may begin a trial allowing some vaccinated Australians to travel overseas within six weeks, local media reported.
The pandemic seems like it’s getting better, but it’s not
In the United States, life is returning to normal. Restaurants and bars are filling up again, vacations are being booked and flights are selling out. At sporting events, maskless fans are hugging and cheering. Memorial Day weekend, the country’s unofficial start to the summer, was celebrated with much more gusto and many more family barbecues than it was a year ago.
That’s all for good reason: A majority of Americans have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and daily new infections and deaths are at their lowest levels in almost a year.
But the pandemic is hardly in retreat elsewhere. The emergence of more virulent variants of the virus in countries like Brazil and India and the slowness of vaccination efforts in many places outside the West have contributed to deadly new waves. Coronavirus case counts worldwide are already higher in 2021 than they were in 2020. The death toll almost certainly will be.
Hogan to end enhanced federal unemployment benefits in Maryland on July 3
Maryland will end enhanced federal unemployment benefits next month, Gov. Larry Hogan said, and require people getting unemployment checks to prove they are looking for new jobs.
Hogan (R) cited the widespread availability of coronavirus vaccines and a tight labor market in explaining his decision, which, according to the most recent unemployment filings, would affect about 15,000 people.
He said the benefits, which add $300 a week, provided “important temporary relief” during the coronavirus pandemic but are no longer necessary.
The American Rescue Plan provides funding for the benefits through Sept. 6, with Democratic leaders stressing the importance of fully reopening schools and child-care centers — and more people being vaccinated — before many adults can resume full-time work. But at least 24 other states — which also have Republican governors — are similarly taking steps to end the funding early.
Analysis: Anti-vaxxers are claiming centuries of Jewish suffering to look like martyrs
In mid-May, Southern supermarket chainFood City announced that employees who chose to get the coronavirus vaccine would be allowed to go maskless while working in the store. A logo on the employees’ nametags would indicate that they were maskless because they had chosen to get the vaccine.
Anti-vaccination activists were swift to decry the announcement. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)on May 25 compared the logo to the gold Star of David patches that Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust. Hers is a hyperbolic analogy familiar to many who espouse the conspiracies of QAnon, which traffics inantisemitic tropes andmemes.
Greene was ready for this moment. Days earlier, in aninterview on the Christian Broadcasting Network, she had derided House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call for masks in the House as akin to the type of Nazi abuse that assigned “people” to wear a “gold star.”
Blinken says U.S. will soon distribute coronavirus vaccines, but details are slim
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that the United States would soon distribute millions of doses of coronavirus vaccines around the world, including in Latin America, which is struggling to obtain them for its citizens amid rising hospitalization rates.
But the question on the minds of many — which countries will receive doses first and how quickly will they be delivered — remained unanswered as Blinken began his first official visit to the region.
“Sometime in the next week to two weeks, we will be announcing the process by which we will distribute those vaccines,” Blinken said at a news conference.
President Biden promised to provide 80 million doses to other countries by the end of June. But his administration has not provided further details amid a global competition for vaccines that has left many developing countries far behind the industrialized West.
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