WHO: Africa in ‘urgent need’ of 20 million second vaccine doses within six weeks
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Office for Africa called on Thursday for at least 20 million second COVID-19 vaccine doses to be sent to the continent within six weeks, saying people are in “urgent need.”
The regional office’s request for millions of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine shots comes as African officials are struggling to collect enough doses to give people their second shots within the eight to 12 week period after the first dose.
WHO’s regional office also requested an additional 200 million doses of any WHO-approved COVID-19 vaccine to help the continent achieve the WHO director-general’s goal of vaccinating 10 percent of its population by September.
“Africa needs vaccines now,” WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said. “Any pause in our vaccination campaigns will lead to lost lives and lost hope.”
Current status: Africa has administered about 28 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, amounting to less than two doses per 100 people living on the continent. Comparatively, 1.5 billion vaccines have been given worldwide, including almost 290 million in the U.S.
Earlier this week, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pointed out that more than 75 percent of all vaccines have been given out in only 10 countries, saying “a small group of countries that make and buy the majority of the world’s vaccines control the fate of the rest of the world.”
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Intel community: Competing COVID-19 origin theories not ‘more likely than the other’
The U.S. intelligence community said Thursday that it is unsure whether the coronavirus was more likely to have come from a lab or through human contact with infected animals.
A statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) describes an intelligence community split over competing theories for the origin of the virus.
Director of National Intelligence for Strategic Communications Amanda Schoch said in a statement that “the U.S. Intelligence Community does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus was transmitted initially but has coalesced around two likely scenarios: either it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals or it was a laboratory accident.”
“While two elements of the IC lean toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter — each with low or moderate confidence — the majority of elements within the IC do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other,” she added.
The statement did not identify which of the three agencies thought a lab scenario was more likely than zoonotic transmission, but it comes as the White House has backed efforts to reopen discussions around the lab scenario, which was initially dismissed as unlikely.
Follows: President Biden called on the intelligence community to “redouble their efforts” looking into COVID-19’s origins and report back in 90 days.
The Senate passed a bill mandating the ODNI to declassify information about the virus’s origins on Wednesday night.
The increased interest in how the pandemic began comes after The Wall Street Journal reported on a U.S. intelligence report earlier this week that said researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill with flu-like symptoms in November 2019.
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Three-quarters of new UK Covid cases could be India variant, says Hancock
Reported cases of variant reach almost 7,000, as it becomes dominant in Britain
Three-quarters of new UK Covid cases could be India variant, says Hancock – video
Up to three-quarters of new UK Covid cases are now thought to be caused by the variant first detected in India, the health secretary has said.
The variant of concern, known as B.1.617.2, has been linked toa rise in cases in hotspots around the country. Data released on Thursday by Public Health England (PHE) shows 6,959 cases have been confirmed so far in the UK, up from 3,424 the week before.
Announcing the figures, PHE said hospitalisations were rising in some affected areas. “Hospital attendances and admissions are predominantly in unvaccinated individuals, highlighting how crucial it is that people in these areas come forward to receive vaccination,” it added.
Earlier, Boris Johnson said “we may need to wait” for the lifting of all Covid restrictions in England, planned for 21 June. The PM said he saw nothing “currently in the data” to suggest the government would have to delay unlocking but noted the signs of an increase in cases of the variant.
Dr Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, told a Downing Street press briefing the rise in cases of the variant could, in part, be down to increased testing in affected areas. She added that in some areas outbreaks had been squashed, while efforts continue in the north-west.
“I think it is really, really just on the cusp at the moment, if we see cases rise we are not clear yet quite whether that is a rise in the variant cases taking off or whether it is actually a rise because we are actively, quite rightly, detecting them and then challenging these chains of transmission,” she said.
On Thursday a total of 3,542 people were reported as testing positive for Covid in the UK – the highest figure since 12 April.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, said on Thursday evening that the vaccine was “severing the link between cases and hospitalisations”.
But experts warned the link was not yet broken because only 44% of adults had received both Covid jabs and the vaccines do not offer 100% protection against hospitalisation. “You can see that in Bolton, but you can see [it] most clearly in Scotland,” said Prof Christina Pagel, the director of University College London’s clinical operational research unit.
Scotland, where there have been outbreaks of the India variant in areas including Glasgow, had 98 patients in hospital with Covid on 26 May, up from 58 on 6 May.
Meanwhile, Bolton NHS foundation trust, which serves an area also hard-hit by the India variant, has seen the number of patients in hospital rise from 11 on 9 May to 41 on 25 May – the latest date for which figures are available.
Earlier in the day Hancock said about one in 10 people in hospital in current Covid hotspots had received both jabs, noting this suggested a “high degree of confidence” that the vaccines are very effective.
While experts have said two doses offer good protection against the India variant, it is somewhat weakened compared with the Kent variant, particularly after the first dose.