Covid-19 has infected more than 420M people and killed over 5.8M worldwide. Here are some of the latest coronavirus-related developments:
Friday, February 18, 2022
Six African countries selected for mRNA jab production
Six African countries have been chosen to establish their own mRNA vaccine production, the World Health Organization said, with the continent largely shut out of access to jabs.
Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia were selected as the first recipients of technology from the WHO’s global mRNA vaccine hub, in a push to ensure Africa can make its own jabs to fight Covid-19 and other diseases.
“No other event like the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that reliance on a few companies to supply global public goods is limiting, and dangerous,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Tedros has continually called for equitable access to vaccines in order to beat the pandemic, and rails against the way wealthy nations have hogged doses, leaving Africa lagging behind other continents in the global vaccination effort.
Germany to get 1.4M shots of Novavax vaccine
Germany still expects to receive 1.4 million doses of Novavax NVAX.O vaccine Nuvaxovid on Februrary 21, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said.
“The company has attracted attention several times in the past with indications that deliveries cannot be made on time. But I want to assume now that … we will be supplied next week,” Lauterbach told a news conference.
Meanwhile, Germany’s health minister said that he thinks the country has passed a peak in new daily infections with the Omicron variant.
Lauterbach said government measures taken to curb the number of cases had been effective, but he warned against relaxing the public health rules too hastily.
South Korea eases restrictions despite record high cases
South Korea has said it would ease pandemic restrictions, even as the country’s daily caseload crossed 100,000 for the first time, with officials citing economic concerns over social distancing measures.
“Considering the deepening difficulties of the people’s livelihood and economy, we have concluded that the minimum adjustment was inevitable,” Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said on Friday.
Despite the spike in cases, the country will also drop its requirement that businesses including restaurants and cafes maintain handwritten visitor logs to allow for contact tracing, Seoul officials said.
Japan’s record deaths hit in surge estimated to last till April
Japan set a new record for daily deaths in a wave of Omicron-fuelled fatalities that a government-affiliated researcher estimated may stretch into April.
Newly recorded fatalities rose to 271 on Thursday, according to a tally by national broadcaster NHK, the third straight day over 200.
There have been 2,446 deaths so far in February, already the second-deadliest month in the two-year pandemic.
Beijing Olympics detects one new case
The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Organizing Committee has said that one new case was detected among games-related personnel on February 17.
The one case was found among new airport arrivals, according to a notice on the Beijing 2022 official website.
Brazil reports over 1,100 Covid deaths
Brazil has recorded 131,049 new coronavirus cases and 1,128 Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours, the Health Ministry said.
Brazil has registered 27,937,835 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 641,902, according to ministry data.
South Korea cases top 100,000 for the first time
South Korea’s new daily Covid-19 cases have topped 100,000 for the first time amid an Omicron outbreak, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said, though deaths have remained relatively low in the highly vaccinated country.
The KDCA said 109,831 new Covid-19 cases had been reported as of midnight.
Mexico reports 470 more coronavirus fatalities
Mexica has reported 470 coronavirus fatalities, bringing the total death toll to 314,598 since the pandemic started.
EU official says Covid-19 has shown fragility of societies
An EU official has said that Covid-19 has exposed the unpreparedness and fragilities of societies and also that the pandemic does not know borders.
Participating in a discussion through video link on the future relations of EU and Türkiye, the Acting Deputy Director-General of the European Commission Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety, John Ryan said health and pandemics are areas of common concern for both the partners.
Ryan said the EU has supplied 400 million doses of vaccines to countries under the Vaccines Global Access for Covid-19 (COVAX).
Stating that the EU hopes to increase this figure to 700 million doses by the middle of this year, Ryan said, the pandemic was entering a different phase and added that accelerating global vaccination is a high priority.
Source: Reuters
Six African countries to make their own mRNA vaccines – latest updates
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