VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Mar. 11 - The United Nations human rights investigator on Myanmar said on Thursday the military junta had “murdered” at least 70 people since its Feb. 1 coup, committing killings, torture and persecution that may constitute crimes against humanity.

More than half of those killed were under the age of 25, Thomas Andrews told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

More than 2,000 people have been unlawfully detained since the military seized power and the violence against protesters is steadily increasing, he said.

“The country of Myanmar is being controlled by a murderous, illegal regime,” said Andrews.

“There is extensive video evidence of security forces viciously beating protesters, medics, and bystanders,” he said. “There is shocking video of the aftermath of attacks, including fatal gunshot wounds to the heads of protesters, and video of soldiers dragging or carrying away the dead bodies of their victims.”

Chan Aye, permanent secretary of Myanmar’s foreign affairs ministry, said that authorities have been focused on maintaining law and order.

“The authorities have been exercising utmost restraint to deal with violent protests,” he said.

In the debate, the United States urged all countries to “press the military to refrain from violence against peaceful protesters and restore power to the democratically-elected government”.

China and Russia - which have close ties to Myanmar’s military - called for steps toward reconciliation, while also upholding the principle of non-interference in internal affairs.

Andrews, a former member of the U.S. Congress, speaking by video message from Washington, D.C., said that basic rights to freedom of expression and assembly were being denied in Myanmar.

He called for imposing multilateral sanctions on the junta leaders and on the military-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, whose revenues from natural gas projects were set to reach $1 billion this year.

“Sanctions will only be truly effective if they are unified and coordinated,” Andrews said. (Reuters)

Mar. 11 - Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE will exceed their original global target for COVID-19 vaccines by as much as 20% this year, producing 2.3 billion to 2.4 billion doses, Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla said on Thursday.

The companies also released real-world data from Israel earlier on Thursday showing their vaccine was 94% effective in preventing asymptomatic infections, suggesting it could significantly reduce virus transmission.

“These are stunning numbers that are giving us a clear indication that liberation is coming,” Bourla said in an interview on the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a pandemic. “It is a testament to the power of science, and the power of human ingenuity.”

More than 2.7 million people around the world have died from COVID-19 so far.

Bourla said that by the fourth quarter of this year, Pfizer and BioNTech will reach a 3 billion dose a year production run rate, and should be able to produce that much next year.

The companies will clearly exceed their original target of 2 billion doses in 2021, he said.

Pfizer has said it expects revenue of at least $15 billion from its half of the vaccine sales this year.

Middle-income countries will pay around half the price as high income countries for their doses, and low income countries will get the vaccine at cost, Bourla said.

Pfizer expects to meet its commitment of supplying 120 million coronavirus vaccine doses to the U.S. government by the end of March. That would require them to deliver another 60 million doses over the next three weeks.

“Those have already been manufactured” and are currently being tested for quality, he said.

“Unless a batch (of vaccine) fails, we will be able to provide them. Our track record is that our batches don’t fail,” he said.

Pfizer’s German partner BioNTech began developing the vaccine last January and the U.S. drugmaker signed on in early March as the health crisis accelerated. Their vaccine received its first regulatory authorizations in December.

In the United States, the vaccine is authorized for use in people aged 16 or older. Bourla said the company plans to submit data for children aged 12 to 16 very soon.

He said his assumption was that the vaccine should be authorized for that age range by the fall, adding that data on children aged 5 to 11 can be expected by year-end. (Reuters)

Mar. 11 - The COVID-19 situation in greater Paris is “especially worrying” and the government will take extra restrictive measures there if the pandemic continues at its current pace, France’s health minister said on Thursday.

While new infections are not growing exponentially, the numbers taken into intensive care have reached a new 3-1/2-months high nationally, close to 4,000, as France faces more dangerous variants.

“At this moment we can say that the variants are more contagious and more dangerous and they now represent more than two thirds of infections in France”, Olivier Veran said.

He said a new patient went into intensive care in the greater Paris region every 12 minutes, adding he did not know when the current peak of the epidemic would be reached there.

France has imposed local weekend lockdowns, on top of a national 6 p.m. curfew, in northern and southern parts of the country. But the government has so far resisted such measures for greater Paris.

In the Paris region, the number of people in ICU units is now close to 1,100 and could reach 1,500 by the end of March if the current trend continues, Veran said, adding that level would be “critical” for the area’s hospital system.

NO ASTRAZENECA SUSPENSION

“We will take all necessary measures if the spread of the pandemic maintains its current rhythm”, he said.

France hopes its vaccination drive will enable it to avoid new restrictive measures. Reacting to some European countries suspending the AstraZeneca shot, Veran said France saw no reason to follow suit.

After the health ministry briefing ended, an official announced that foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian would self-isolate after coming into contact with a family member who had tested positive.

The number of new cases in France went up by 27,166 on Thursday, to 3.99 million, the world’s sixth highest total, versus 30,303 on Wednesday and 25,279 a week ago.

The seven-day moving average of daily new infections stands at 22,105, topping 22,000 for the first time since Nov. 22.

There were 265 new deaths over the past 24 hours, taking the total to 89,830, the seventh-highest in the world, versus a seven-day moving average of 285.

The health ministry also reported that 4.54 million people, or 8.7% of the adult population, had received a first vaccine and 2.16 million had also received a second shot, for a total of nearly 6.71 million injections.

The government aims to vaccinate 10 million people by mid-April, 20 million by mid-May and 30 million by the summer. (Reuters)

Mar. 11 - South Korea will authorise the use of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine for people aged 65 years and older, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on Thursday, a move that will allow the country to ramp up its immunisation drive.

The country has been rolling out the vaccine since the last week of February, beginning with the elderly and health workers, but had excluded more than 370,000 over-65s in nursing homes citing a lack of clinical trial data on the age group.

Real-world data from Britain has now shown AstraZeneca and Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccines are both more than 80% effective in preventing hospitalisations in over-80s after one shot.

“Vaccination had been postponed to those aged 65 and over due to lack of evidence to determine the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but recently, data to prove its efficacy for the elderly has been released in the UK,” Chung told a government meeting.

South Korea would begin inoculating 376,000 patients and staff aged 65 and older in nursing hospitals and other facilities this month, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) official Kwon Jun-wook said at a briefing.

Kwon said he expected that age group, which has seen the majority of reported deaths, to reach herd immunity levels by the end of September.

Health authorities had also included around 20,000 flight attendants in the list for second-quarter vaccine recipients, as they were vulnerable to more transmissible variants and were exempt from self-quarantine.

South Korea has so far reported a total of 257 new virus variants, including 154 cases of the variant first identified in Britain and 21 of the variant discovered in South Africa, according to the KDCA.

Another 7 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine would be rolled out from the last week of May, with 7 million of Pfizer’s product by June. The KDCA is in talks with Moderna and Johnson & Johnson to import their vaccines in the second quarter.

The KDCA said 500,635 people had received a first dose of AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines as of Wednesday. South Korea reported 465 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the total to 94,198 infections, with 1,652 deaths. (Reuters)