VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

China is stealing a march on Western drugmakers in the COVID-19 vaccine race in developing nations, with Indonesia and Turkey rolling out huge campaigns with a Chinese shot this week, Brazil due to follow soon, and even EU member Hungary signing up.

Scientists in some Western countries say China has been too slow to publish trial data. Public reports so far about how well its vaccines work have been inconsistent, which the Chinese firms attribute to variations in methodology.

Still, countries with hundreds of millions of people desperate for a vaccine think China’s shots are good enough.

As Western drugmakers struggle to meet demand at home, Beijing has sent millions of doses round the world of CoronaVac, made by Sinovac Biotech, and is also marketing a separate vaccine made by another company, Sinopharm.

The exports come even as China battles its own flare-up in infections, which has put more than 28 million people in lockdown. China has administered 10 million vaccine doses at home.

Though some studies on the Sinovac shot have reported lower effectiveness rates than some Western products, the countries buying them say they appear effective at preventing the most serious, deadly form of COVID-19.

Perhaps most importantly, they are also easy to administer, allowing the quick launch of large-scale programs to save lives and prevent health systems from being overwhelmed.

Turkey launched its program on Thursday with the Sinovac shot, and by late afternoon said it had already vaccinated more than 200,000 people - more in a few hours than France has managed in three weeks. Health workers went first.

“We spent around 10 months in white overalls, supporting people as they struggle for life. Health workers know very well that this situation cannot be taken lightly and that the vaccine is needed,” Surgeon General Nurettin Yiyit said.

Hungary, which has complained about the “scandalously” slow rollout of vaccines bought by the European Union on behalf of its 27 member states, reached a deal on Thursday to buy the Sinopharm vaccine. If approved, it would become the first EU country to authorize a Chinese vaccine. (reuters)

On this day in 2011, WHO South-East Asia Region reported its last case of wild poliovirus from West Bengal in India. A decade later, countries in the Region are gearing up for massive vaccination campaigns, taking lessons from polio program, but surpassing its scale and size in a bid to end COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are witnessing unprecedented efforts by Member countries to protect their vulnerable population against COVID-19 with vaccines,” said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia.

Indonesia rolled out COVID-19 vaccination today, while preparations are in full swing in India for one of the world’s biggest vaccination programme beginning 16 January, and in other countries for their campaign in the coming months.

Safe and effective vaccines can be a gamechanger if accessible across the world and to all vulnerable population within the countries.

Vaccines will help to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic. However, they won't solve everything by themselves as initially they are bound to be in limited supplies. As the COVID-19 crisis continues, we still need to continue to take all necessary measures - COVID appropriate behavior by one and all  - masks, hand hygiene, cough etiquette, physical distancing -   and core public health measures by the authorities – detect, test, trace, isolate and treat - to prevent the virus from spreading and causing more disease and deaths.

Community engagement and participation – both for continued COVID-19 appropriate behavior and vaccination – will be critical to curtail the virus transmission.

WHO continues to work with all countries for COVID-19 vaccination planning and roll out, to have a robust National Deployment and Vaccination Plan covering all elements of planning and management needed to deliver a vaccine.

The network of surveillance officers in countries such as Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Nepal, which was the backbone of polio eradication programme, is now also in the forefront supporting coordination, preparedness and roll out of COVID-19 vaccination down to the district level.

Bringing in best practices from polio eradication, WHO has supported countries in the Region with development of operational guidelines and plans for COVID-19 vaccination; training of vaccinators; planning vaccine and logistics management; and monitoring key preparatory activities.

At the global level, the ACT-Accelerator partnership launched by WHO and partners, has supported the fastest, most coordinated, and successful global effort in history to develop tools to fight COVID-19. The vaccine pillar - COVAX - co-led by WHO, Gavi and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, aims to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines, and to guarantee fair and equitable access. (WHO)

An international team of scientists led by the World Health Organization arrived on Thursday in China’s central city of Wuhan to investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus that sparked the pandemic, state television said.

The team arrived late in the morning on a budget airline from Singapore and was expected to head into two weeks of quarantine. They had been set to arrive earlier this month, and China’s delay of their visit drew rare public criticism from the agency’s chief.

The United States, which has accused China of hiding the extent of its initial outbreak a year ago, has called for a “transparent” WHO-led investigation and criticised the terms of the visit, under which Chinese experts have done the first phase of research.

The team arrived as China battles a resurgence of cases in its northeast after managing for months to nearly stamp out domestic infections.

Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO’s top expert on animal diseases that cross to other species, who went to China on a preliminary mission last July, is leading the 10 independent experts, a WHO spokesman said.

Hung Nguyen, a Vietnamese biologist who is part of the 10-member team, told Reuters that he did not expect any restrictions on the group’s work in China, but cautioned against finding firm answers.

After completing quarantine, the team will spend two weeks interviewing people from research institutes, hospitals and the seafood market in Wuhan where the new pathogen is believed to have emerged, Hung added.

The team would mainly stay in Wuhan, he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday during a stopover in Singapore.

Last week, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Gheybreyesus said he was “very disappointed” that China had still not authorised the team’s entry for the long-awaited mission, but on Monday, he welcomed its announcement of their planned arrival.

“What we would like to do with the international team and counterparts in China is to go back in the Wuhan environment, re-interview in-depth the initial cases, try to find other cases that were not detected at that time and try to see if we can push back the history of the first cases,” Ben Embarek said in November.

China has been pushing a narrative via state media that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered in Wuhan, citing the presence of the virus on imported frozen food packaging and scientific papers claiming it had been circulating in Europe in 2019.

“We are looking for the answers here that may save us in future - not culprits and not people to blame,” the WHO’s top emergency expert, Mike Ryan, told reporters this week, adding that the WHO was willing to go “anywhere and everywhere” to find out how the virus emerged.

Team member Marion Koopmans, a virologist at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, said last month it was too soon to say whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus had jumped directly from bats to humans or had an intermediate animal host.

“At this stage what I think we need is a very open mind when trying to step back into the events that led eventually to this pandemic,” she told reporters. (reuters)

South Korea’s top court upheld on Thursday a 20-year jail sentence for former President Park Geun-hye on graft charges that led to her downfall, bringing an end to the legal process and so for the first time raising the possibility of a pardon.

Park became South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be thrown out of office when, in 2017, the Constitutional Court upheld a parliament vote to impeach her over a scandal that also landed the heads of two conglomerates in jail.

The daughter of a military dictator, Park took office in 2013 as South Korea’s first woman president. She was brought down after being found guilty of colluding with a confidante to receive tens of billions of won from major conglomerates to help her family and fund non-profit foundations she owned.

Her case has been heard in different courts, including a retrial in July last year, but the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday to uphold a 20-year jail term and fine of 18 billion won ($16.38 million) exhausts her legal avenues.

Park, 68, who has been in jail since March 31, 2017, has denied wrongdoing. She was not present in court.

The end of the legal process clears the way for a presidential pardon, which her supporters called for.

“President Park Geun-hye is innocent,” the right-wing Our Republican Party said in a statement.

“The members of Our Republican Party want President Park to be freed as soon as possible.”

The chief of the ruling Democratic party, Lee Nak-yon, has floated the idea of a pardon for Park and another ex-president, Lee Myung-bak, also in jail on corruption charges, in the name of national unity.

Park is a divisive figure in a country where old Cold War fault lines between right and left can still define political rivalry.

A top aide to President Moon Jae-in, who is a liberal, said the president would make a decision on the question of a pardon for Park that reflects the will of the people.

Society appears split down the middle.

A survey by the pollster Realmeter last week found 47.7% of respondents in favour of a pardon and 48% against.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee faces a final court ruling on Monday on whether he returns to jail on charges he bribed an associate of Park. (reuters)