GUARDIAN (UK) Gibraltar has become one of the first places in the world to vaccinate the bulk of its adult population against Covid-19, allowing virus restrictions to be lifted and life to almost return to normal.
AFP report that since the end of March, masks are only required in enclosed public spaces, shops and on public transport. And a curfew between midnight and five am was also lifted, boosting business at bars and restaurants which only reopened on 1 March after months of restrictions.
Popular spots are once again buzzing with people enjoying a meal or a drink. Gino Jimenez, chairman of the Gibraltar Catering Association who also runs a popular eatery, said it was “especially gratifying” to see vulnerable seniors finally “out of their homes and safe”.
People walk without wearing face masks in Gibraltar. Photograph: Cristina Quicler/AFP/Getty Images
Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo announced Thursday that rules restricting gatherings to no more than 16 people will be eliminated as of 16 April 16. And as of Monday there will no longer be any limit on the numbers who can sit together at a bar or restaurant.
In Gibraltar, with a population of 34,000, the pandemic claimed 94 lives, most this January and February, and infected nearly 4,300 residents. But thanks to the vaccine drive, there have been no virus-related hospitalisations for more than two weeks
A British police officer talks on the phone without a protective face mask in Gibraltar. Photograph: Cristina Quicler/AFP/Getty Images
Since “Operation Freedom” began in January, Gibraltar has fully inoculated 85 percent of the population. “It is a huge relief,” Health Minister Samantha Sacramento told AFP at her office atop the only hospital. She credits the enclave’s small size and a steady supply of vaccines – Pfizer and AstraZeneca – for the swift rollout.
“During the first weeks, we were vaccinating seven days a week. It was literally a conveyer belt,” said Sacramento, the only woman in Gibraltar’s cabinet. Frontline hospital staff and elderly care home residents and workers were the first in line.
Those who receive both doses of the jab are issued with a vaccination card that can be used to attend mass events or to travel. Last week Gibraltar’s Victoria Stadium welcomed 600 fully-vaccinated people for the territory’s World Cup football qualifier against the Netherlands.
The crowd during the World Cup qualifying match between Gibraltar and the Netherlands. Photograph: Hollandse Hoogte/REX/Shutterstock
And on 27 March, 500 spectators watched a top heavyweight boxing match at Gibraltar’s Europa Sports Complex. In both cases, fans also had to test negative on the day of the event.
Rafael Cordon, a 63-year-old chef who commutes daily to work in the British territory from the Spanish town of San Roque said he was grateful to Gibraltar for being able to get fully vaccinated so quickly. He said there was now a big contrast between both places.
Being in Spain, where mask-wearing in public is compulsory and night curfews are in place, is “like being inside a fishbowl where your movements are limited,” he said. “Then you cross over to this side and it is like going from one world to another. This is an oasis right now.”
As the US aims to ramp up inoculations to win the race against Covid-19 variants, more than 1 in 4 adults are now fully vaccinated. Officials and experts hope to get Americans vaccinated quickly as lockdown fatigue takes its toll and many people are letting down their guard just as more transmissible, and perhaps more deadly, variants of the virus become dominant. In that effort, all 50 states have committed to opening vaccinations to all Americans 16 and up by 19 April.
The US is still averaging above 60,000 new cases a day – a level Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, said puts the US at risk for another surge. Experts are especially concerned about the spread of the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the UK and now the dominant strain in the US.
“I wish we had another three or four months before this B.1.1.7 variant surge started to occur,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, director for the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said this week.
As states including California and Vermont plan to fully reopen this summer, experts are warning that to truly declare victory against the variants, Americans need to get vaccinated and continue measures like social distancing and mask wearing.
Maria Kiselyova for Reuters reports that Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus shot is less effective against the South African variant – but the manufacturer is claiming that it still does better than other vaccines
The lead scientist behind it, Alexander Gintsburg, has been cited by the Interfax news agency as saying: “With regards to the ‘South African’ strain, the effictiveness of the antibodies produced by Sputnik V, like all other vaccines, against it declines.”
The Sputnik V shot has become embroiled in a controversy in Slovakia, where the health agency has claimed that the vaccines delivered to it are not the same as the Sputnik V vaccines that were tested in clinical trials.
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Australia Frustration
There is a lot of frustration in Australia about the distribution of vaccines not matching the efficiency with which the country initially tried to squash Covid. Christopher Knaus reports for us:
Australia could have been manufacturing vaccines like Pfizer already had it acted early on calls to develop onshore mRNA capability, experts say.
The AstraZeneca announcement on Thursday has left the vaccine rollout in a state of disarray, and heavily reliant on securing more imports of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which has already achieved provisional approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
Unlike the AstraZeneca vaccine, which can be produced at CSL’s Melbourne facilities, there is no current capability to produce mRNA vaccines in Australia.
For months, the Australian Academy of Science and mRNA experts have urged the Australian government to help develop a domestic mRNA manufacturing capability. That capability has not been developed.
In February, the academy used a pre-budget submission to warn Australia and the region would be vulnerable to supply limitations without the ability to produce mRNA vaccines.
Associate professor Archa Fox, a leading mRNA expert with the University of Western Australia, said it was frustrating that the country was yet to develop mRNA manufacturing capability.
But she said it was not too late.
Fox said it was difficult to be too critical of government, given the uncertainty around the various vaccine candidates – particularly the relatively new RNA vaccine technologies – in the early stages of the pandemic.
“It is a little frustrating because even if lots of people jumped in now, it still would take at least probably a year, even with plenty of investment,” she told the Guardian. “But that’s not too late for boosters against variants and all that sort of stuff.”
Even with manufacturing capability, the government still would have needed to achieve a licensing agreement with pharmaceutical companies to produce local versions of their mRNA vaccines.
The Serum Institute of India (SII) is legally compelled to ship coronavirus vaccine to global vaccine sharing facility COVAX, its co-lead Gavi has told Reuters, a provision that could complicate the SII’s efforts to boost domestic supplies. Gavi is a public–private global health partnership which says it has the goal of increasing access to immunisation in poor countries.
India, where infections have surged to 13.06 million, suspended all major exports of vaccines last month to fill demand at home, forcing the world’s biggest vaccine maker to divert nearly all its production to the domestic market, and meaning reduced supplies for nations expecting vaccine shipments.
“The agreement is legally binding and served as a basis for the first-round allocation document, which has been communicated to all participating economies,” a Gavi spokeswoman said in an email to Reuters.
The pact specified Gavi would receive from SII 1.1 billion doses of either the AstraZeneca vaccine or that of Novavax , with 200 million committed, and the rest on option. SII partner AstraZeneca has already issued it a legal notice over delays to other shipments, even as many Indian states have complained of a shortage facing priority recipients.
From an initial August target of vaccine coverage for 300 million of its highest-risk people, or just over a fifth of its population of 1.35 billion, India has upped the figure by about 100 million, adding pressure on SII to crank up supplies.
India could resume vaccine exports by June, the firm’s chief executive, Adar Poonawalla, told the media this week. However he also said that the Indian government needed to provide the SII with financial assistance, as the revenue lost from being unable to export was hampering efforts to ramp up production.
On Thursday, the foreign ministry said domestic demand would determine the extent of India’s exports. It has already shipped 64.5 million doses and given out 92 million at home.
Hong Kong has confirmed this morning that it has requested AstraZeneca suspend delivery of its Covid-19 vaccine amid fears of side effects and concerns over its efficacy against new variants of the coronavirus.
Hong Kong’s health chief Sophia Chan said the city has asked AstraZeneca not to deliver as planned later this year. “We think it is not necessary for AstraZeneca to deliver the vaccines to the city within this year,” she said, adding Hong Kong wanted “to avoid any waste as vaccines are in short supply globally”.
Hong Kong’s Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan. Photograph: Isaac Lawrence/AFP/Getty Images
Hong Kong has already secured a decent supply of vaccines for its 7.5 million residents, with deals for 7.5 million shots each with BioNTech/Pfizer and China’s Sinovac, both of which have begun deliveries.
Chan said Hong Kong was also keen to look at other vaccines that may have stronger results against newer strains of the coronavirus.
Earlier this week David Hui, a leading public health expert and government adviser, called for Hong Kong to replace AstraZeneca with a new single dose vaccine made by Johnson and Johnson.
People queue up outside a vaccination center for BioNTech in Hong Kong earlier this week. Photograph: Vincent Yu/AP
While it has a steady supply of vaccines, take up has been slow amid swirling distrust of the government. So far just 529,000 people have had their first dose. There has also been public concern that China’s Sinovac vaccine received fast-track approval despite not publishing its clinical trial data in a peer reviewed journal.
Worries over the AstraZeneca shot have spread worldwide after Europe’s medicines regulator said this week it could cause very rare blood clots in some recipients, prompting some countries to stop giving it to people under a certain age.
An extremely quick snap from Reuters here, that Finland plans to gradually ease the country’s Covid-19 restrictions towards the summer.
Prime minister Sanna Marin added a note of caution at a news conference this morning though, saying that the spread of the virus is still severe and that the restrictions should not be lifted prematurely.
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UK transport secretary: public could now ‘start to think’ about foreign holidays
The UK’s transport secretary Grant Shapps has said that the public could now “start to think” about foreign holidays this summer.
Asked if people could start to book foreign holidays now, he told Sky News: “I’m not telling people that they shouldn’t book summer holidays now, it’s the first time that I’ve been able to say that for many months.
“But I think everybody doing it understands there are risks with coronavirus and of course actually, I think people would want to be clear about which countries are going to be in the different traffic light system.
“So there is only two or three weeks to wait before we publish that list itself. But yes, tentative progress, for the first time, people can start to think about visiting loved ones abroad, or perhaps a summer holiday.
“But we’re doing it very, very cautiously, because we don’t want to see any return of coronavirus in this country”, PA report him saying.
There’s a grim despatch from Agence France-Presse about the situation in the Philippines this morning. In a bid to slow the spread of the virus and decongest hospitals, authorities in the Philippines last month ordered more than 24 million people in the capital and four neighbouring provinces to stay home unless they are essential workers.
A week after lockdown was imposed, 70-80 percent of hospital beds for Covid-19 patients were full, while ICU beds were “almost 100 percent” occupied in most of the capital, Health Undersecretary Maria Vergeire said.
“It’s a dire situation – it is the worst nightmare of a hospital manager happening in reality,” said Jaime Almora, president of the Philippine Hospital Association.
Leland Ustare, an anaesthesiologist at St Luke’s Medical Center, said some patients were spending days in the emergency room waiting for an intensive care bed. “This time is even worse than last year,” Ustare said, referring to the first few months of the pandemic. The numbers are really worse.”
AFP report that the government is distributing modular tents to struggling hospitals and re-deploying health workers from regions where virus transmission rates are low. Isolation facilities were being expanded to include schools and hotel rooms for mild cases in an effort to ease the burden and stop the virus spreading in crowded households.
Almora said the problem in hospitals was a lack of health workers, not beds. “The hospitals have the capacity, they have the beds, but they cannot expand their capability because of the manpower problem,” he said.
Some nurses have resigned out of fear of catching the virus or gone abroad to work in hospitals where the risks were the same but the pay higher, he said. Government insurance restrictions on copayments was also deterring smaller facilities from accepting Covid-19 patients, Almora added.
The country’s caseload of more than 828,000 – the second highest in Southeast Asia – is expected to top a million before the end of April. President Rodrigo Duterte, whose government has been under fire over its handling of the pandemic and vaccine rollout, warned last week of “bleak months” ahead.
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Australians left in lurch as AstraZeneca Covid vaccine advice changes
States and territories have been left scrambling to respond to government advice recommending against vaccinating anyone under 50 with the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, leaving tens of thousands of people in the lurch.
On Friday, New South Wales halted its AstraZeneca rollout entirely for several hours while patient consent forms with the latest information about the rare risk of severe clotting associated with the vaccine were added. The state’s rollout for people aged 50 and over has since resumed.
“As with all other vaccines, informed consent is required before administering Covid-19 vaccines, ensuring recipients make decisions based on an understanding of the risks and benefits,” a NSW health spokesman said. “AstraZeneca vaccinations for those aged 50 years and over will recommence later today.”
Meanwhile Western Australia has barred anyone under the age of 50 from getting the AstraZeneca vaccine. The chief health officer, Andrew Robertson, said effective from Friday: “People under 50 who are booked in to receive their AstraZeneca vaccine will have their appointments cancelled.”
People in the 1a and 1b vaccination program cohorts – including health workers – who are under 50 and have already received their first AstraZeneca vaccine, should “not be alarmed” and proceed to get their second jab, he said. “You should not cancel your second vaccination booking,” he said.
The Tasmanian government put an immediate hold on any first dose AstraZeneca vaccinations for people aged under 50, with the premier, Peter Gutwein, saying the state government was working through what the latest advice would mean for the ongoing rollout.
The advice to the federal government from the Australian Technical Advisory Group for Immunisation (Atagi) does not say all people under 50 should not receive the vaccine, but rather says the alternative Pfizer vaccine is “preferred”. The difficulty is Australia has low supply of the Pfizer vaccine, and GPs can not readily offer it to everyone as an alternative.
