VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Mar. 15 - The Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG) is facing a fresh wave of COVID-19 infections around the capital Port Moresby, which neighbouring Australia and aid groups fear could overwhelm the country’s small and overstretched health system.

The Pacific Friends of Global Health warned if health services are overwhelmed by COVID-19 the treatment of malaria, HIV and tuberculosis would also collapse.

Half the COVID-19 tests from PNG processed by Australia have been positive, prompting calls for faster vaccine delivery.

“Out of the 500 tests that our health authorities have done for PNG, 250 have come back positive,” Australia’s Queensland state Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters on Monday.

PNG’s Western Province lies within a few kilometres of Australia’s northern border, and Queensland laboratories are assisting to investigate the worsening outbreak.

Palaszczuk said Papua New Guinea was “on the doorstep” and she held real concern about the rising infection rate there.

Ninety-seven new cases were recorded on Sunday, bringing the total to 2,269 and 26 deaths, PNG Prime Minister James Marape said on Monday. Almost a quarter of those cases were recorded in the past week, a WHO tally shows. COVID infections have been recorded in 19 provinces

The latest outbreak is centred on the National Capital District in Port Moresby, where more than 1,000 cases have been recorded, and comes after the nation mourned the death of its first prime minister, Sir Michael Somare.

“We were already at this absolute crisis point for the country,” Brendan Crabb, chairman of the Pacific Friends of Global Health, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“Added to that is the Grand Chief Michael Somare’s commemorations over the past week, which if ever there was a super-spreading event in the middle of an already big epidemic, clearly that’s it.”

Somare will be buried on Tuesday. Marape told reporters an isolation strategy would be announced on Wednesday.

The national and supreme courts shut on Monday for two weeks after four court staff including two judges tested positive, the court registrar said in a website statement.

The AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is not planned to be rolled out until late April, through the COVAX initiative which has allocated one million doses to the Pacific.

“We need Papua New Guinea’s 5,000 or so health care workers vaccinated in the next week or two,” said Crabb.

Australia has pledged to spend $407 million for regional vaccine access covering nine Pacific Island countries. (Reuters)

Mar. 15 - Afghan peace talks, now stalled in Qatar, should be rotated to other venues, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates said, indicating the Qatari hosts have not pushed hard enough for the Taliban to reduce violence.

Talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have been held in Qatar since last year, after the United States agreed to withdraw its troops. But violence has increased and the government accuses the militants of failing to meet obligations to reduce attacks.

Ambassador Javid Ahmad told Reuters peace talks should not be held in one fixed location, but rotate among venues in Europe, Asia, the Middle East or Afghanistan itself.

The Taliban, which opened an office in Qatar in 2013, were too “comfortable” there, he said. “We want the Taliban to get out of their comfort zone.”

“The Qataris could have used its role as a host to play a more active and decisive role in pushing the Taliban to reduce violence or declare a ceasefire,” Ahmad said.

“They have not properly used their leverage, as a host to the Taliban ..., to push the group’s leaders to declare a ceasefire or to visibly reduce violence.”

Qatar’s state communications office did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Qatar foreign ministry special envoy Mutlaq al-Qahtani told Reuters last month the Gulf state wanted to see a reduction in violence that could lead to continued peace and security.

Russia will hold a conference on Afghanistan this week, while Turkey hosts talks next month as the United States seeks to shake-up the process, proposing an interim administration.

Ahmad said Afghanistan’s “participatory government” had “the capacity to absorb the Taliban and ex-combatants” but added that the only way to achieve a transition of power was through elections.

The Taliban have said they are committed to the peace negotiations.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration signed a troop withdrawal deal with the Taliban in February 2020 under which all international forces were expected to leave the country by May 1.

However, violence has risen and NATO officials say some conditions of the deal, including the Taliban cutting ties with international militant groups, have not been met, which the Taliban disputes. (Reuters)

Mar. 15 - South Korea’s most populous province has ordered all of its foreign workers to be tested for COVID-19 by March 22, sparking complaints of long lines and logistical problems, as well as of implicit xenophobia in government messaging.

Last week, Gyeonggi province issued a sweeping administrative order mandating all international workers be tested after at least 275 foreigners tested positive, many in outbreaks at manufacturing plants.

The province says the order covers roughly 85,000 registered foreigners as well as an unknown number of potential undocumented workers, while those who don’t comply could face fines of up to 3 million won ($2,640).

Social media lit up with complaints from foreign residents: poor communication by the government, hours-long waits at testing centres where it was difficult to maintain distancing, and other challenges.

At one centre in the city of Ansan on Monday, hundreds of people were lined up in a queue that stretched for around 100 metres.

“I agree that everyone should get tested for COVID, but it is so exhausting to wait for hours,” Jin Dianshun, a 65-year-old restaurant worker from China who said she had been standing in line for four hours, after already having stood in line for hours on Saturday before being turned away.

“I am sure Koreans would have protested if this was done the same way for them.”

One health worker at the site, who asked not to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said the temporary centre usually handled about 100 people per day, but surged to an average of 1,400 people after the order.

“The problem is that already by 7 a.m. there can be more than 2,000 people waiting in line,” the worker said.

As of Sunday, 120,310 foreigners had been tested, with 120 testing positive, a provincial official told Reuters.

Derval Mambou, a car parts maker from Cameroon, said he welcomed the testing regime.

“They want people living here in Korea to be safe from the coronavirus, even foreigners,” he said as he stood in line.

Some people took the order itself as an invasion of human rights, however.

“I’ve lived in Korea for years, pay a mortgage, run a business, have a family, pay tax,” John, a graphic designer from the United Kingdom who owns his own business and has lived in South Korea for 10 years, told Reuters by online messenger, asking to be identified only by his first name. “Yet they are treating us like we are the problem because of coronavirus. Feels xenophobic and racist.”

Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) Director Jeong Eun-kyeong said on Monday that the rate of infections among foreign workers was a high-risk situation.

“We don’t think this is to discriminate or stigmatise foreign workers, and it shouldn’t be accepted that way,” she said.

Jeong said the KDCA would work with local governments to improve testing capabilities to resolve the long waits.

One American university professor who has worked in South Korea for 15 years said it made no sense to test people like her - who have been teaching online for almost a year and rarely go out - rather than fixing the workplace safety at factories that had outbreaks.

“There is no reasoning behind forcing foreign workers to take this test,” she said in an email.

In Ansan, some locals denied that there was any racial animosity, but admitted they were reassured by the campaign.

“Since there are a lot of foreigners here, every time a foreigner comes in, it would worry me,” said Hwang Mi-sun, a clothes shop owner. “Now that they are filtering out everyone, it gives me a sense of assurance.” (Reuters)

Mar. 15 - Ireland became the latest country to stop using AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday, temporarily suspending the shot “out of an abundance of caution” after reports from Norway of serious blood clotting in some recipients there.

Three health workers in Norway who had recently received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine were being treated in hospital for bleeding, blood clots and a low count of blood platelets, its health authorities said on Saturday.

Ireland’s National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) recommended the temporary deferral pending the receipt of more information from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in the coming days.

AstraZeneca on Sunday said it had conducted a review covering more than 17 million people vaccinated in the European Union and the UK which had shown no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.

Denmark, Norway and Iceland have suspended the use of the vaccine over clotting issues, while Thailand became the first country outside of Europe to do so on Friday, delaying its AstraZeneca rollout over the safety concerns in Europe.

Italy’s northern region of Piedmont on Sunday said it would stop using a batch of AstraZeneca vaccines after a teacher died following his vaccination on Saturday. Austria also stopped using a particular batch last week.

The EMA said on Friday that there is no indication that the events were caused by the vaccination, a view that was echoed by the World Health Organisation.

‘WE MAY BE OVERREACTING’

Irish authorities received some reports of clotting similar to those seen in Europe last week but nothing as serious as the cases in Norway, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Ronan Glynn said.

Glynn said the fact that the Norwegian cases related to a cluster of four unusual clotting events involving the brain in 30 to 40 year-olds raised the higher level of concern.

He said that one of the reasons Ireland acted now was that it was due to administer the AstraZeneca vaccine to people of a similar age with serious underlying conditions next week.

“It may be nothing, we may be overreacting and I sincerely hope that in a week’s time that we will have been accused of being overly-cautious,” Glynn told national broadcaster RTE.

“Hopefully we will have data to reassure us in a few short days and we will be back up and running with this.”

AstraZeneca vaccinations make up 20% of the 590,000 shots administered among Ireland’s 4.9 million population, mainly to healthcare workers after its use was not initially recommended for those over 70 and the company supplied far fewer vaccines to the EU than agreed.

There have been 4,534 COVID-19-related deaths in Ireland. The number of cases per 100,000 people in the past 14 days fell to 151 from a high of over 1,500 in January, although officials are concerned over a slight rise in new cases in recent days.

Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill also raised concerns over the suspension of AstraZeneca elsewhere. In response to Ireland’s decision, the UK’s medicine regulator said that while it was closely reviewing the reports, the available evidence does not suggest the vaccine is the cause of the clots.

Like the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland is much further ahead in its programme and has inoculated more than 40% of the adult population, relying heavily on AstraZeneca’s vaccine. (Reuters)