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March
Vaccine leader Chile wrestles with rising COVID-19 infection rate
Written by nuke
A soldier checks a checkpoint in the Chilean capital Santiago as the country imposes a Covid-19 lockdown -- despite encouraging vaccination rates AFP/MARTIN BERNETTI
Chile is a world leader in its coronavirus vaccination programme and has already given at least one dose to almost a third of its population.
By Thursday the narrow South American nation, hemmed in by the Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean, had given more than six million people a single dose and 3.1 million both doses, including most over-70s.
And yet that same day, the government put more than 80 per cent of the country's 19 million people in lockdown.
With new virus variants, believed to be more contagious, spreading across the continent, cases have been soaring in Chile despite its vaccination drive.
On Thursday it passed 7,000 new cases in the previous 24 hours: The second highest daily figure recorded.
"They are phenomena that run on totally different tracks," Darwin Acuna, the president of Chile's society of intensive medicine, told AFP about the seeming disconnect between high vaccination and contagion rates.
President Sebastian Pinera has urged the country to make "a last effort" and authorities expect the vaccination push to start bearing fruit next month.
Health Minister Enrique Paris said the lockdown "is tough but necessary", particularly in the Santiago metropolitan area - the most populous in Chile.
The country has recorded more than 950,000 infections and over 22,500 deaths from COVID-19.
Chile began vaccinating health care workers on Dec 24 and from Feb 3 it started with the general population, initially the over 90s.
But a general relaxation of attitudes in the country due to the vaccination campaign and summer holidays, as well as the arrival of new virus variants, pushed a new wave of infection.
"You cannot yet see the effect of the vaccine on the most at-risk people, because for the most at-risk people they have only just had the second dose," said Acuna.
He expects to see "a real effect on the requirement of ICU beds for the most at-risk people" in mid April.
Health care authorities say they have noticed a difference in the identity of those occupying ICU beds since the first wave of the pandemic: patients are younger and sicker.
The government's goal is to immunize 15 million people by Jun 30, achieving coveted "herd immunity," when a sufficiently large proportion of the population is resistant to a pathogen that it has nowhere to spread.
By Thursday, authorities had given almost 6.1 million people a first dose of either the Chinese CoronaVac or Pfizer shots//CNA
March
President Biden invites 40 world leaders to climate summit, including Singapore’s PM Lee
Written by nuke
US President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, Mar 25, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Joe Biden on Friday (Mar 26) invited 40 world leaders, including Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, to attend the Leaders Summit on Climate next month, the White House announced.
It will be held virtually Apr 22 and 23.
"The Leaders Summit on Climate will underscore the urgency – and the economic benefits – of stronger climate action. It will be a key milestone on the road to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) this November in Glasgow," the White House said in a press release.
President Joe Biden is including rivals Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China among the invitees to the first big climate talks of his administration, an event the US hopes will help shape, speed up and deepen global efforts to cut climate-wrecking fossil fuel pollution, administration officials told The Associated Press.
Other world leaders include Indonesia's President Joko Widodo, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand.
Biden is seeking to revive a US-convened forum of the world’s major economies on climate that George W Bush and Barack Obama both used and Donald Trump let languish. Leaders of some of the world’s top climate-change sufferers, do-gooders and backsliders round out some of the rest of the 40 invitations being delivered Friday.
Hosting the summit will fulfil a campaign pledge and executive order by Biden, and the administration is timing the event with its own upcoming announcement of what’s a much tougher US target for revamping the US economy to sharply cut emissions from coal, natural gas and oil.The session will test Biden’s pledge to make climate change a priority among competing political, economic, policy and pandemic problems. It also will pose a very public - and potentially embarrassing or empowering - test of whether US leaders, and Biden in particular, can still drive global decision-making after the Trump administration withdrew globally and shook up longstanding alliances.
The Biden administration intentionally looked beyond its international partners for the talks, an administration official said.
“It’s a list of the key players and it’s about having some of the tough conversations and the important conversations,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss US plans for the event. “Given how important … this issue is to the entire world, we have to be willing to talk about it and we have to be willing to talk about it at the high levels.”The Biden administration hopes the stage provided by next month’s Earth Day climate summit - planned to be all virtual because of COVID-19 and all publicly viewable on livestream, including breakout conversations - will encourage other international leaders to use it as a platform to announce their own countries’ tougher emission targets or other commitments, ahead of November’s UN global climate talks in Glasgow//CNA
March
Butantan seeks trials of Brazilian COVID-19 vaccine
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. Brazil’s Butantan biomedical institute will seek approval on Friday to begin human trials for a potential COVID-19 vaccine, officials said, making it the first shot developed in the country to reach clinical testing.
Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria said the goal was to begin inoculations with the vaccine in July, an aggressive timeline even by the standards of the recent race for new COVID-19 shots.
Butantan aims to produce 40 million doses of the new vaccine this year, called Butanvac, starting in May, officials said, aiming to help a sputtering national immunization program, which has done little to stop Brazil’s raging coronavirus outbreak.
Doria told a news conference that Butanvac production will not interfere with the the state-funded institute’s partnership to produce and distibute a COVID-19 shot developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd.
Butantan officials said the new vaccine had been designed to protect against the contagious P1 variant of the coronavirus, which emerged in the Amazon region last year and is fueling to a deadly second wave of cases overwhelming the country’s hospitals.
Butantan plans to test the vaccine on 1,800 volunteers over two phases, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters ahead of the official announcement. The Butanvac milestone was first reported by Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
Vietnam and Thailand are also part of the consortium developing the vaccine, Folha reported.
Butantan has already delivered 27.8 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine, called CoronaVac, to the Brazilian government, which is the current centerpiece of the national immunization plan. (Reuters)
March
Philippines marks daily record for COVID-19 cases, as vaccine hesitancy grows
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. The Philippines reported 9,838 coronavirus cases on Friday, the biggest daily jump since the pandemic began, as the World Bank called for vaccinations to be a priority to limit further deaths and support the country’s health system.
Complicating the government’s vaccination drive is the reluctance of most Filipinos to receive vaccines due to safety fears, an opinion poll showed, despite wide-scale worries about contracting the virus.
A recent spike in infections has forced authorities to widen tighter restrictions in the capital Manila to surrounding provinces, but once-a-day religious services with up to 10% of a church’s capacity will be allowed in the week ahead of Easter.
The Philippines, which is facing the second worst outbreak of COVID-19 in Southeast Asia after Indonesia, has seen record new cases in three of the past five days, while infections reported in the past 10 days accounted for a tenth of its total 702,856 cases.
The capital region, a congested urban sprawl of 16 cities home to at least 13 million people, accounted for more than two-fifths of the COVID-19 cases.
A University of the Philippines research team had warned that COVID-19 infections may hit 10,000 to 11,000 a day by late March because the virus reproduction rate, which measures the number of people infected by each case, had increased.
“Rapid vaccination is a priority to reduce high numbers of deaths and pressure on struggling health systems,” the World Bank said in a report on Friday.
But six of 10 Filipinos are unwilling to be vaccinated because of safety concerns, according to Pulse Asia’s survey of 2,400 respondents between Feb. 22 and March 3. In a similar poll in November, only 47% said they would refuse a vaccination.
Pulse Asia said 94% of respondents were worried about contracting the virus.
The Philippines started its inoculation drive on March 1, with officials acknowledging the uphill struggle to persuade many to take it.
More than 508,000 people have so far been inoculated, or less than 1% of the 70 million target this year.
Strict and lengthy lockdowns have taken a huge toll on the Philippine economy, which contracted by a record 9.5% last year.
The World Bank cut its economic growth forecast for the Philippines to 5.5% this year from 5.9% previously. (Reuters)
March
COVID-19 pandemic raises inequality, hinders poverty alleviation: WB
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. The general, protracted slowdown in economic activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic has mired poverty reduction and increased inequality, according to World Bank Vice President for East Asia and Pacific Victoria Kwakwa.
"When countries begin to recover in 2021, they must take immediate action to protect vulnerable populations and ensure an inclusive, environment-friendly, and resilient recovery," Kwakwa noted here on Friday.
Poverty rate in the East Asia and Pacific region in 2020 had stopped declining, with an estimated 32 million people driven into poverty due to the pandemic, with US$5.5 per-day poverty line.
The World Bank noted that the pandemic and restrictions on mobility had increased inequality, including in terms of access to various social services and digital technology.
This inequality is apparent in some countries for children in the poorest two-fifths of households that have a 20 percent less chance of being involved in learning activities than kids in the richest fifth of households.
Moreover, women experience domestic violence more severely than before, with 35 percent of the respondents in Laos and 83 percent of the respondents in Indonesia hinting at a spike in the level of violence due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, several nations in the East Asia and Pacific whose assistance is still smaller than the loss of the people's income, the stimulus has failed to wholly address the lack of demand.
"We all require international cooperation now more than ever before to control the disease, support the economy, and boost the recovery process," World Bank Chief Economist for East Asia and Pacific Aaditya Mattoo emphasized. (Antaranews)
March
U.S. reviewing Myanmar 'genocide' determination: State Dept official
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. The United States has begun a review of whether to declare the Myanmar military’s campaign against the Rohingya minority a genocide and should have an answer “in the not-too-distant future,” a State Department official told U.S. senators on Thursday.
“The process has begun. I can’t get into more detail than that at this point... but the secretary (Secretary of State Antony Blinken) is very committed to the review and to this process and I think we will have an answer in the not-too-distant future,” Scott Busby, acting principal deputy assistant Secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, said.
Busby testified on Thursday at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee subcommittee hearing looking at the U.S. response to the coup in Myanmar.
Reuters reported on Thursday that in the last days of the Trump administration, some U.S. officials urged outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to formally declare that the Myanmar military’s campaign against the Rohingya minority was a genocide, but Pompeo never made that call. (Reuters)
March
U.N. sanctions committee to meet at U.S. request over North Korea missiles
Written by Nur YasminJakarta. The United Nations Security Council North Korea sanctions committee is due to meet on Friday, at the request of the United States, over Pyongyang’s launch of two suspected ballistic missiles into the sea near Japan, a spokesperson for the U.S. mission to the United Nations said.
The move suggests a measured response by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to North Korea’s first tests since he took office in January. Attempts by the Biden administration to reach out to North Korea have so far been rebuffed, according to U.S. officials.
Earlier on Thursday, Biden said the United States remained open to diplomacy with North Korea in spite of its missile tests this week, but warned there would be responses if North Korea escalates matters.
When North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles a year ago, Britain, Germany, France, Estonia and Belgium raised the issue behind closed-doors in the U.N. Security Council at ambassador level and then the European members condemned the tests as a provocative action in violation of U.N. resolutions.
In contrast, the United States asked for Friday’s meeting of the sanctions committee, comprised of lower-level diplomats from the 15 council members, to discuss the latest launches.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Pyongyang to renew its diplomatic engagement with all parties concerned and to work for peace and stability, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said on Thursday.
“Diplomatic engagement is the only pathway to sustainable peace and complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Haq said.
North Korea’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since 2006 North Korea has been subjected to U.N. sanctions, which the Security Council has strengthened over the years in an effort to target funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Typically, China and Russia - which along with the United States, Britain and France hold veto power on the Security Council - have viewed only a test of a long-range missile or a nuclear weapon as a trigger for further possible U.N. sanctions.
North Korea has not tested a nuclear weapon or its longest-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) since 2017, ahead of an historic meeting in Singapore between leader Kim Jong Un and former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018.
However it has maintained and developed its nuclear and ballistic missile programs throughout 2020, helping fund them with some $300 million stolen through cyber hacks, according to independent U.N. sanctions monitors. (Reuters)
March
Thailand approves Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. Thailand has granted emergency authorisation to Janssen, the single-dose coronavirus vaccine of Johnson & Johnson, the country’s health minister said on Thursday, the third vaccine to be cleared for local use.
Anutin Charnvirankul told reporters the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved the vaccine, in addition to those of AstraZeneca and Sinovac Biotech, which have already been administered in the country.
J&J’s vaccine is called COVID Vaccine Janssen after the J&J unit that developed it.
China’s Sinopharm and the makers of Russia’s Sputnik V and are preparing to submit requests for approval, Paisal Dunkhum head of Thailand’s FDA said.
Moderna has said it would submit an application for approval while India’s Bharat Biotech is in the process submitting documents for vaccine registration, Paisal said.
Thailand, which has recorded just over 28,000 coronavirus cases overall, has administered about 100,000 doses of vaccines among medical workers and high-risk groups so far.
It’s main vaccine drive is expected to start in June, using locally-produced AstraZeneca shots and it plans to inoculate half of its adult population by the end of the year. (Reuters)
March
Climate change set to drive more deadly heat in South Asia
Written by Nur YasminJakarta. Deadly heatwaves in South Asia are likely to become more common in the future, with the region’s exposure to lethal heat stress potentially nearly tripling if global warming isn’t curbed, researchers said.
But the threat could be halved if the world meets a goal set under the Paris Agreement on climate change to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, researchers said in a study published this week by the American Geophysical Union, an international scientific association.
“The future looks bad for South Asia, but the worst can be avoided by containing warming to as low as possible,” Moetasim Ashfaq, a climate scientist at the U.S.-based Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said in a statement.
Still, with global temperatures already having risen more than 1C, “the need for adaptation over South Asia is today, not in the future. It’s not a choice anymore,” said Ashfaq, the study’s author.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said global climate-heating emissions must fall by about 45% by 2030, compared to 2010 levels, to limit warming to below 2C, the higher temperature goal in the Paris Agreement.
But updated plans to reduce emissions, submitted by at least 75 nations ahead of planned COP26 U.N. climate talks in November, barely made a dent in the huge cuts needed to meet the global climate goals a U.N. report said last month.
The new study used climate simulations and projected population growth to estimate the number of people who could experience dangerous levels of heat stress at warming levels of 1.5C and 2C.
It looked at the predicted “wet bulb temperature”, which accounts for humidity and temperature and aims to more accurately reflects what people experience on a hot day.
Health experts and scientists say that at a wet bulb temperature of 32C labour becomes unsafe and at 35C the body can no longer cool itself.
If warming hits 2C, the number of South Asians exposed to unsafe temperatures could rise two-fold, and nearly three times as many people could face lethal heat, the study said.
In a region home to a quarter of the world’s population that could have a big impact on the ability of workers to produce crops in breadbasket regions such as West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh in India and Punjab and Sindh in Pakistan, study authors said.
Workers in increasingly steamy cities such as Karachi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Peshawar could also be affected, particularly as many do not have access to air conditioning, the study noted.
Pakistan and India already experience deadly heatwaves, with one in 2015 causing about 3,500 deaths, the study noted.
As temperatures rise as a result of climate change, “a policy framework is...needed to fight against heat stress and heat wave-related problems,” said T.V. Lakshmi Kumar, an atmospheric scientist at India’s SRM Institute of Science and Technology, who was not involved in the study. (Reuters)
March
Philippines, Vietnam press China over vessels massing in South China Sea
Written by Nur Yasmin
Jakarta. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte expressed concern to China’s ambassador about Chinese vessels massing in the South China Sea, his spokesman said, as Vietnam urged Beijing to respect its maritime sovereignty.
International concern has grown in recent days over what the Philippines has described as a “swarming and threatening presence” of more than 200 Chinese vessels that it believes were manned by maritime militia.
The boats were moored at the Whitsun Reef within Manila’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone.
“The president said we are really concerned. Any country will be concerned with that number of ships,” Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, told a regular news conference.
Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, China and Vietnam have competing territorial claims in the South China Sea, through which at least $3.4 trillion of annual trade passes.
Roque said Duterte reaffirmed to China’s ambassador, Huang Xilian, that the Philippines had won a landmark arbitration case in 2016, which made clear its sovereign entitlements amid rival claims by China.
China’s maritime assertiveness has put Duterte in an awkward spot throughout his presidency due to his controversial embrace of Beijing and reluctance to speak out against it.
He has instead accused close ally the United States of creating conflict in the South China Sea.
China’s embassy in Manila did not respond to a request for comment on Duterte’s meeting.
On Wednesday it said the vessels at Whitsun Reef were fishing boats taking refuge from rough seas. A Philippine military spokesman said China’s defence attache had denied there were militia aboard.
Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang on Thursday said the Chinese vessels at the reef, which Hanoi calls Da Ba Dau, had infringed on its sovereignty.
“Vietnam requests that China stop this violation and respect Vietnam’s sovereignty,” Hang told a regular briefing.
A Vietnamese coastguard vessel could be seen moored near the disputed area on Thursday, according to ship tracking data published by the Marine Traffic website.
Hang said Vietnam’s coastguard was “exercising its duties as regulated by laws”, including international law. (Reuters)