VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Mar. 8 - Indonesia's state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma said that 1.1 million doses of vaccine produced by AstraZeneca under the global vaccine-sharing COVAX facility would arrive on Monday.

The Southeast Asian country has said that it would receive 13.7 million to 23.1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through COVAX. President Joko Widodo last week said 4.6 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine would arrive this month. (Reuters)

Mar. 8 - The tiny Southeast Asian nation of East Timor will put its capital city on a coronavirus lockdown for the first time, its government said on Monday, amid fears it could be facing its first local outbreak.

A “sanitary fence and mandatory confinement” will be imposed in Dili for seven days from midnight Monday with residents asked to stay home unless necessary to leave, the country’s council of ministers said in statement.

It said the measure was because of a “high probability of community transmission”, but did not elaborate.

“It is forbidden to travel, by land, sea or air, out of this municipality, except in duly justified cases for reasons of safety, public health, humanitarian or other that are necessary for the accomplishment of the public interest,” it said.

A former Portuguese colony with a population of 1.2 million, East Timor has detected just 122 cases of the coronavirus, most of which were imported.

But its porous border with Indonesia, which has recorded close to 1.38 million COVID-19 cases and more than 37,000 deaths, has raised concern the virus could spread and wreak havoc on East Timor’s poorly equipped healthcare system.

All social, cultural, sporting or religious events that involve gatherings are also temporarily banned during the lockdown, which could be extended on March 15, it said.

The council of ministers also approved a national vaccination plan, with 33,000 doses expected to arrive in the country at the end of March. (Reuters)

Mar. 8 - South Korea said on Monday it had found no link between the coronavirus vaccine and several recent deaths, as it ordered nearly 100,000 foreign workers to be tested after clusters emerged in dormitories.

Health officials had been investigating the deaths of eight people with underlying conditions who had adverse reactions after receiving AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, but said they found no evidence that the shots played a role.

“We’ve tentatively concluded that it was difficult to establish any link between their adverse reaction after being vaccinated, and their deaths,” Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) Director Jeong Eun-kyeong told a briefing.

South Korea began vaccinating residents and workers at nursing homes and other at-risk individuals at the end of February, with 316,865 people having received their first shots as of Sunday.

South Koreans aged 65 or older were not being given AstraZeneca’s vaccine after health regulators concluded that more data was needed to confirm its efficacy among that age group.

But on Monday, Jeong said an expert panel had now recommended that the shot be given to older people, and that the KDCA would soon make a final decision.

COMMUNAL HOUSING

Several outbreaks in manufacturing and other industrial workplaces prompted authorities to begin inspecting 12,000 work sites with international workers, while multiple local governments ordered foreign workers to be tested in coming days.

“Their work environment and communal housing raise the danger of infection but it is difficult to find patients early because of their limited access to medical resources and testing, and the issue of illegal stay,” Jeong said.

Gyeonggi Province ordered about 85,000 foreign workers to get tested in the next two weeks, Vice Governor for Administrative Affairs Lee Yong-chul told a briefing.

At least 151 foreign residents in the Gyeonggi city of Dongducheon have recently tested positive, though what caused the outbreak is still unclear.

In Namyangju, another city in Gyeonggi, at least 124 foreigners had tested positive after an outbreak at a plastic manufacturing plant.

In another central province, the industrial cities of Eumseong and Jincheon also ordered about 4,500 and 5,000 foreign residents respectively to be tested after group infections emerged from a glass factory and a food processing company.

Working conditions for migrant workers in South Korea received new scrutiny after a woman from Cambodia was found dead living in a greenhouse in freezing winter temperatures late last year.

The deaths of hundreds of mainly undocumented Thai migrant workers in South Korea prompted the United Nations last year to call for an inquiry into the fate of migrants.

The number of Thai worker deaths hit a record annual high in 2020 - 122 as of mid-December - according to a report by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. (Reuters)

Mar. 8 - New Zealand will buy additional COVID-19 vaccines, developed by Pfizer Inc and Germany’s BioNTech, which will be enough to vaccinate the whole country, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday.

The government has signed an agreement to buy an extra 8.5 million doses, enough to vaccinate over 4 million people, Ardern said, adding the vaccines were expected to reach the country in the second half of the year.

“This brings our total Pfizer order to 10 million doses or enough for 5 million people to get the two shots needed to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19,” Ardern said in a statement.

The government’s original agreement with Pfizer was for 1.5 million doses, enough to vaccinate 750,000 people.

Ardern said the decision to make Pfizer the country’s primary vaccine provider was taken after it was shown to be about 95% effective at preventing symptomatic infection.

New Zealand started its national rollout of the Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine last month and expects to inoculate its entire population by the end of the year.

With just over 2,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 26 deaths, New Zealand largely contained the pandemic compared with other developed countries, helped by speedy tracking systems, border closures and snap lockdowns.

Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, emerged on Sunday from a strict week long lockdown imposed after a community cluster of the more contagious British coronavirus variant.

It reported no new cases on Monday. (Reuters)