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April
Vietnam asks for foreign support in procuring COVID-19 vaccines
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. Vietnam has appealed to diplomats from the United States, European Union and Japan to help it secure supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, as part of efforts to acquire the 150 million doses needed to cover its adult population.
Vietnam has received about 930,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine so far but wants to procure doses from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, China’s Sinovac, and Russia’s Sputnik V shot.
Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long on Thursday asked Japan’s embassy for help with technology transfer for vaccine production and testing in Vietnam, the ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Long also asked the U.S. ambassador for help with accelerating Vietnam’s inoculation programme and securing access to vaccines from U.S. drugmakers, and told EU representatives he hoped European pharmaceutical firms would consider more investment in Vietnam, the statement said
The meetings came a day after Long on Wednesday met with Chinese, Indian and Russian diplomats to discuss vaccines.
Vietnam has been praised for its record in containing coronavirus outbreaks through mass testing, tracing and strict quarantine, with the country recording just 2,620 cases and 35 deaths.
It aims to immunise 70% of its population and has so far inoculated 51,200 people. The request for help come as some countries express concern about vaccine shortages.
The Ministry of Health said separately that Vietnam aims to vaccinate a fifth of its 98 million people against COVID-19 by the end of the year.
It said the country would receive 4.1 million vaccine doses via the COVAX global vaccine sharing facility by the end of May.
Four Vietnamese companies are engaged in vaccine research and production and two are at the human trial stage. Its first domestic shot called Nanocovax is expected to be put into use in 2022. (Reuters)
April
EU urges China to ensure freedom of speech after BBC journalist leaves country
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. The European Union on Friday called on China to ensure freedom of speech and the press after a British Broadcasting Corporation journalist in China relocated to Taiwan saying he had suffered threats and obstruction.
The journalist, John Sudworth, told BBC radio he moved with his family because it had become increasingly difficult to remain in the country.
Beijing denied making any threats.
The EU said it was the latest case of foreign journalists being driven out of China as a result of harassment and obstruction to their work, with at least 18 expelled last year. It said it had repeatedly expressed its concerns to Chinese authorities.
“Professionalism and objectivity of foreign correspondents is increasingly put into question. Foreign correspondents play an important role in imparting information across frontiers and contributing to strengthening mutual understanding between the EU and China,” a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement.
“The EU calls upon China to abide by its obligations under national and international law and ensure the freedom of speech and press, as enshrined in the PRC’s Constitution and the Universal declaration of human rights.” (Reuters)
April
G7 countries urge independent probe into alleged rights abuses in Ethiopia's Tigray
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. The United States, Germany, France and other G7 countries called on Friday for an independent and transparent investigation into alleged human rights abuses during the conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
Ethiopia’s federal army ousted the former regional ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), from the capital Mekelle in November.
Thousands of people died, hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes and there are shortages of food, water and medicine in the region. The government says most fighting has ceased but there are still isolated incidents of shooting.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said last week Eritrea has agreed to withdraw troops it had sent during the fighting into Ethiopian territory along their mutual border, amid mounting reports of human rights abuses. Eritrea has denied its forces joined the conflict.
The G7 foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed their concerns in a joint statement.
“All parties must exercise utmost restraint, ensure the protection of civilians and respect human rights and international law,” they said.
“It is essential that there is an independent, transparent and impartial investigation into the crimes reported and that those responsible for these human rights abuses are held to account,” the ministers said.
They said the withdrawal of Eritrean forces from Tigray must be swift, unconditional and verifiable and that a political process acceptable to all Ethiopians should be set up that leads to credible elections and a national reconciliation process.
Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said in March it was ready to work with international human rights experts to conduct investigations on allegations of abuses. (Reuters)
April
Australia probes if blood clot case linked to AstraZeneca vaccine
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. Australia is investigating whether a blood clotting case recorded on Friday is related to the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, a health official said, raising concern in a nation where most people are expected to receive the drugmaker’s shot. A 44-year-old man was admitted to a Melbourne hospital with clotting days after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine, suffering serious thrombosis and a low count of platelets, or blood cells that stop bleeding.
“Investigators have not at this time confirmed a causal link with the COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccine, but investigations are ongoing,” the deputy chief medical officer, Michael Kidd, told a televised briefing.
More was expected to be known on Saturday, he added.
On Thursday, Britain identified 30 cases of rare blood clot events following use of the vaccine, and several nations, including Canada, France, Germany and Spain, limited its use after similar reports.
Australian regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has said previously the AstraZeneca vaccine was not tied to an increase in overall risk of blood clots, however.
In a statement on Friday, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation said, “There is not a higher overall rate of relatively common types of blood clots (...) reported after COVID-19 vaccination.”
Australia launched mass vaccinations for its 25 million people in February, with most expected to receive the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. In late March, CSL Ltd began domestic production of 50 million doses.
Australia has been highly successful in curbing the virus with snap lockdowns, border closures and swift tracking, reporting just under 29,300 infections and 909 deaths. It has had troubles rolling out its vaccination program, however, missing a March target by about 3.3 million doses as states and the federal government bickered over the blame.
Vaccination supplies in the northeastern state of Queensland will end within days, health officials said on Friday, adding that they were uncertain about the next delivery. [L1N2LV033] (Reuters)
April
Russian diplomats complain of acute shortages in North Korea causing foreign exodus
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. Russia’s diplomatic mission to North Korea complained on Thursday of acute shortages of essential goods such as medicine, problems getting healthcare and pandemic restrictions that it said were unprecedented in their severity.
Foreign diplomats have been leaving North Korea in droves, it said in a statement on Facebook, describing it as an exodus that had left behind fewer than 290 foreign nationals in the country.
“Those leaving the Korean capital can be understood,” it said.
“Far from everyone can endure the total restrictions that are unprecedented in their severity, the acute shortage of essential goods, including medicine, the lack of opportunities to resolve health problems,” it said.
North Korea has imposed crippling border closures to combat the pandemic, banned most international travel, and severely restricted movement inside the country.
Only nine foreign ambassadors and four charges d’affaires were still representing their nations, with most embassies having cut staff to a minimum, Russia’s diplomatic mission said.
Britain, Brazil, Germany and several other countries have already locked up the gates to their missions, while all foreign staff at international humanitarian organisations have left, it said.
“One thing is clear - unfortunately (the latest group to leave) will not be the last; the exodus of foreigners will continue,” it said.
Last month, a group of Russian diplomats and family members used a hand-pushed rail trolley to leave North Korea amid tough restrictions including the blocking of most forms of passenger transport across the border.
Photos and video released by Russia’s foreign ministry at the time showed the trolley, laden with brightly coloured bags and suitcases, being pushed across a wintry landscape. (Reuters)
April
S.Korea pays price for reliance on COVAX, scrambles for vaccines
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. South Korean authorities are facing a backlash for relying on global vaccine-sharing scheme COVAX for a bulk of its COVID-19 shots as shipment delays threaten to slow the country’s inoculation programme.
Once praised by the World Health Organization for its decision to procure vaccines through the global scheme, South Korea is now facing criticism at home as the government scrambles to meet the supply shortfall.
South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are among countries to be hit by shipment delays to vaccines they have been promised following export curbs by manufacturer India.
In February, South Korea slashed its first quarter vaccination target from 1.3 million people to just 750,000 due to adjustments in the supply timetable of the 2.6 million doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine from COVAX.
The latest COVAX shipment disruption announced earlier this week - that it would only receive 432,000 doses instead of 690,000 and delivery would be delayed to around the third week of April - is the second time that South Korea’s vaccine rollout has been hit by delayed supply from the scheme.
“The government should no longer cause public anxiety with the vaccines,” Lee Yong-ho, an independent lawmaker who sits on parliament’s health and welfare committee, said.
“It should either impose export curbs on the locally produced vaccines until the supply uncertainties are resolved, or come up with a special vaccine procurement strategy and bring the originally contracted quantity as planned.”
South Korean health authorities said they were not considering restricting exports of locally produced vaccines, but instead, holding talks with vaccine makers and distributors to advance delivery timelines.
The efforts appear to be bearing fruit with the government announcing on Thursday that delivery of the 432,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines from COVAX would be brought forward to Saturday from the third week of April.
“(We) have accelerated administrative process and were able to bring forward the schedule from what COVAX had initially informed us,” the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said.
The fluctuating shipment schedules have raised concerns about the country’s aim to immunise 12 million people by June, reaching herd immunity by November, but government officials have assured the goal is achievable.
“This is a very achievable target as we have factored supply schedule and our inoculation capability into the calculation,” Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun told a news conference on Thursday.
Assuming no further delays, South Korea is scheduled to receive 13.7 million doses in the second quarter -- 6 million from Pfizer Inc, 7 million from AstraZeneca and 729,000 from COVAX.
Oh Se-hoon, opposition candidate for Seoul’s mayoral by-election, attacked the government this week for its slow vaccine rollout, which he said was the world’s 105th to kick off.
The slow rollout was partly due to the country’s early strategy to focus more on containing the virus through aggressive testing and contact tracing than striking bilateral vaccine deals.
While most wealthy nations had shunned joint purchases through COVAX, raising concerns over vaccine inequity, South Korea committed to procure vaccines from the scheme which earned praise from the WHO.
“The Republic of Korea despite being a high-income country that could easily afford to buy vaccines through bilateral deals has waited its turn for vaccines through COVAX,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on March 22.
Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergency expert, also lauded South Korea’s overall efforts to contain the COVID-19 disease.
He said the country not only developed a very successful surveillance and testing regime but exported those tests around the world, kept the disease under control in a very significant way, and have numbers of disease that are “the envy of the world.”
South Korea reported 551 new cases on Wednesday, bringing the country’s total infections to 103,639, with 1,735 deaths.
Despite international plaudits, some like lawmaker Lee said the slow rollout raises doubts about the government’s plan to reach herd immunity this year.
“With just 1.5% of the total 52 million population vaccinated, it is questionable with current supply when we will ever reach the herd immunity.” (Reuters)
April
China's TopRidge Pharma to produce Sputnik V vaccine, Russia's RDIF says
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. China’s TopRidge Pharma has agreed to produce more than 100 million doses of Russia’s two-shot Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19, Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund said on Thursday.
The fund, which markets Sputnik V globally, said the two sides planned to cooperate on clinical trials in China and to promote its use there.
TopRidge Pharma will be able to distribute the vaccine in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, RDIF said in a statement. (Reuters)
April
India AstraZeneca shot delay could be 'catastrophic' for Africa: health official
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. India’s temporary hold on major exports of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 shot will undermine Africa’s vaccination plans, and could have a “catastrophic” impact if extended, the head of the continent’s disease control body said on Thursday.
India decided to delay big exports of the shots made in its territory by the Serum Institute of India (SII) to make sure it could meet local demand, two sources told Reuters last week.
The hold “will definitely impact our ability to continuously vaccinate people,” the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, John Nkengasong, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
The African Union had planned to vaccinate 30-35% of the continent’s population by the end of the year he said. “If the vaccines are delayed we are unlikely to meet our target,” he added.
That AU target primarily relies on supplies from the global COVAX vaccine-sharing facility, through which 64 poorer countries including many in Africa are supposed to get doses from the SII. COVAX aims to provide enough shots for African countries to inoculate at least 20% of their populations.
“If the delay continues, I hope it’s a delay and not a ban, that would be catastrophic for meeting our vaccinations schedule,” Nkengasong said.
African countries have reported 4.25 million coronavirus infections and 112,000 related deaths, though experts have said the actual numbers could be higher.
The AU has also been negotiating with manufacturers to help member states secure the additional doses they will need to achieve 60% coverage.
On Monday, Johnson & Johnson announced it would supply the AU with up to 400 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine. Delivery of those doses is due to begin in the third quarter of this year and will continue through 2022.
Those doses are separate from the GAVI/WHO-backed global COVAX facility.
Nkengasong said on Thursday the AU has “pivoted” towards the J&J shot in part as a result of the delay in the delivery of AstraZeneca shots, and also because it is a single-dose shot.
The J&J doses will begin to arrive in June or July, which will ease any shortage caused by the delay in the AstraZeneca doses, Nkengasong said. The gap until the arrival of the J&J doses is a concern, he added. (Reuters)
April
Iran adds advanced machines enriching underground at Natanz: IAEA
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. Iran has begun enriching uranium with a fourth cascade, or cluster, of advanced IR-2m machines at its underground Natanz plant, a report by the U.N. atomic watchdog showed, in a further breach of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
It was the latest of many steps by Iran raising pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden with the two sides in a standoff over who should move first to salvage a deal that was meant to curb Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear bomb, if it so intended.
The deal imposed limits on Iran’s nuclear activities that it started breaching in 2019 in response to a U.S. withdrawal from the accord under Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, as well as the reimposition of U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic that had been lifted under the agreement.
The deal only lets Iran enrich with relatively antiquated first-generation IR-1 centrifuges at the underground Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz, a commercial-scale enrichment facility. Last year Tehran began adding more advanced centrifuges there able to enrich much faster than the IR-1.
“On 31 March 2021, the Agency verified at FEP that: Iran had begun feeding natural UF6 into a fourth cascade of 174 IR-2m centrifuges,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in its confidential report dated Wednesday and obtained by Reuters on Thursday. By UF6, it was referring to uranium hexafluoride, the form in which uranium is fed into centrifuges for enrichment.
Iran has informed the IAEA that it plans to use six cascades of IR-2m machines at the FEP to refine uranium up to 5% fissile purity. The report said the remaining two cascades were installed but not yet enriching. Installation of a planned second cascade of IR-4 machines had not yet begun, it added.
“In summary, as of 31 March 2021, the Agency verified that Iran was using 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges installed in 30 cascades, 696 IR-2m centrifuges installed in four cascades and 174 IR-4 centrifuges installed in one cascade to enrich natural UF6 up to 5% U-235 at FEP,” said the report, sent to IAEA member states. (Reuters)
April
Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 shot 91% effective in updated data, protective against South African variant
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. Pfizer Inc and BioNTech said on Thursday their vaccine is around 91% effective at preventing COVID-19, citing updated trial data that included participants inoculated for up to six months.
The shot also showed early signs of preventing disease in a small subset of study volunteers in South Africa, where a concerning new variant called B.1.351 is circulating.
Although lower than the stunning 95% efficacy result reported from its 44,000-person clinical trial in November, overall efficacy of 91.3% shows the vaccine to be a powerful tool against an evolving virus. The virus now has more transmissible forms and those that have been shown to evade antibody protection in lab studies and real-world clinical trials.
“These data reinforce our view that we have some really potent vaccines,” said Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Britain’s Imperial College London, who was not involved in the Pfizer trial.
Pfizer’s Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said the updated result, which includes data on more than 12,000 people fully inoculated for at least six months, positions the drugmakers to submit for full U.S. regulatory approval.
The vaccine is currently authorized on an emergency basis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The trial data “provide the first clinical results that a vaccine can effectively protect against currently circulating variants, a critical factor to reach herd immunity and end this pandemic for the global population,” Ugur Sahin, chief executive officer at BioNTech, said in a statement.
Experts fear new variants of COVID-19 from South Africa and Brazil may be resistant to existing vaccines and treatment. More than 300 cases of the South African variant have been detected in more than 25 U.S. states and jurisdictions, according to federal data.
Lab tests have previously indicated that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was less potent but still offered a robust defense against the B.1.351 variant that first emerged in South Africa.
The data released on Thursday offered the first look at how the vaccine might work in people against the South African variant. Among a group of 800 study volunteers in South Africa, where the variant is widespread, there were nine cases of COVID-19, all of which occurred among participants who got the placebo. Of those nine cases, six were among individuals infected with the South African variant.
“The Pfizer data are a big deal,” said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in San Diego, noting that the results offer the first data in humans about how so-called mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer’s will perform against the South African variant.
“Six infections versus zero is something,” he said in an email, but noted the sample size is still “not enough to make conclusions about protection.”
Although the B.1.1.7 variant that originated in Britain has quickly spread across Europe and is gaining a foothold in the United States, the B.1.351 variant and similar variants are more concerning because they have shown to reduce the efficacy of three different COVID-19 vaccines in clinical trials in South Africa.
BioNTech reiterated this week there would likely be a future need for booster shots that specifically address new variants and that the group was preparing to upgrade its vaccine when needed. A spokeswoman said on Thursday its strategy remains in place.
The vaccine was 95.3% effective in preventing severe disease as defined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
There were also no serious safety concerns observed in trial participants up to six months after the second dose, the companies said.
The trial reviewed more than 900 confirmed cases of COVID-19, most of which were among participants who received a placebo.
The results follow separate data that showed the vaccine is safe and effective in 12- to 15-year olds, paving the way for the drugmakers to seek U.S. and European approvals for this group. (Reuters)