Tag Archives: caribbean

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Brazil to Send Humanitarian Earthquake Aid to Haiti

Brazil will send humanitarian aid to Haiti in the wake of last week’s devastating earthquake, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced.

“Brazilian government decided to send a multidisciplinary humanitarian mission to Haiti on board of a cargo aircraft KC-390 Millennium of the Brazilian Armed Forces. The departure is scheduled for the next weekend,” the statement read.

The humanitarian mission will include rescue teams, specializing in urban search and rescue operations. Kits of medical supplies will also be sent, the foreign ministry added.

On 14 August a deadly 7.2 magnitude earthquake swept Haiti, with death toll topping 2,000 people. Over 12,000 people sustained injuries of different degrees of severity, and over 300 people are still not accounted for. Many countries, including the United States, EU members, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela sent humanitarian missions to Haiti, but up to 600,000 Haitians still require emergency assistance, according to the country’s authorities.

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Cannabis Firms Catch a Whiff of Opportunity in Brazil

By
Agronomist Engineer Sergio Rocha, 36, Executive Director of the cannabis cultivation for research and cultivation project, poses for a picture in a greenhouse at the Federal University of Vicosa, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, August 18, 2021. Picture taken August 18, 2021. REUTERS/Washington Alves

SAO PAULO, Aug 20 (Reuters) – International cannabis companies are showing interest in Brazil, both its large consumer market for medicinal products and a proposal that could legalize planting of the crop.

Major producers like Colombia’s Clever Leaves (CLVR.O) and Canada’s Canopy Growth (WEED.TO) are developing and selling medicinal cannabis products to a Brazilian consumer segment estimated at 10 million to 13 million people. This results from a 2019 regulatory change allowing the import, sale and manufacturing of such products.

But permission for cultivation of hemp and cannabis in Brazil would be a bigger prize. If granted, the industry could blossom in four to five years, based on the experience of other countries such as Colombia.

“By 2025, I would like to be planting hemp in the interior of Pernambuco,” said José Bacellar, founder of Canada’s VerdeMed, referring to a northeastern state known for illegal marijuana growing.

A proposal that would legalize cultivation was approved in June by a congressional committee. Lawmakers are weighing if it could be fast-tracked to the Senate for approval. If passed there, President Jair Bolsonaro would have to sign it into law.

While Bolsonaro’s far-right positions may seem an unlikely match for the bill, the proposal has support from some members of the powerful farm sector, a key constituency that helped him win the 2018 election.

SILICON VALLEY OF CANNABIS

In the quiet town of Viçosa in southeastern Brazil – which some call the Silicon Valley of cannabis – researchers are developing a hemp variety better suited to the tropics.

If the law is changed and research is successful, Brazil could become a top grower of cannabis and hemp, experts said.

Sérgio Rocha, director of ag-tech startup Adwa which is developing the hemp strain for Brazil, said about 3 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) of land would potentially be suitable for cultivating the new variety.

Brazil could overtake China, the world’s largest hemp producer, which has about 670 square kilometers (259 square miles) planted.

“Using a part of Brazil’s agricultural land would be enough to give the country the title of world’s largest producer and exporter of hemp fibers, seeds and flowers for medicinal and industrial purposes,” said Dennys Zsolt, an agronomist specializing in the plant.

Brazil bans growing of Cannabis sativa L, the plant that produces hemp and marijuana. Hemp, which has less than 0.3% of the psychoactive compound THC, contains CBD or cannabidiol. This non-intoxicating ingredient has been touted as beneficial for many health conditions including childhood epilepsy.

Growing the plants in Brazil would lay the foundation for a vertically integrated industry. A stable source of the raw material would support manufacturing of medicinal cannabis products, growth of a retail market and exports. Recreational cannabis would remain illegal.

Gabriela Cezar, chief executive of New York-based Panarea Partners investment banking firm, sees Brazil playing a leading role in hemp in Latin America, a region she calls the “epicenter of world hemp production.”

Panarea plans to form a Brazilian cannabis company focused on pharmaceutical products for pets while seeking to broker more cannabis deals in Brazil.

TROPICAL ADVANTAGE

Among Brazil’s advantages are lower growing costs because its warm climate allows plants to grow outdoors compared to greenhouses in some countries. Stable hours of sunlight due to Brazil’s proximity to the equator are another plus.

Canopy Growth is “actively monitoring the advancement of hemp regulations in Brazil,” David Culver, the company’s vice president of global government relations, said.

But nothing is certain without the change to Brazil’s law, though some signs suggest the prospects are favorable. When Rocha spoke to a congressional committee about hemp in 2019, he was surprised that conservative lawmakers were not hostile.

“After I finished presenting the maps and hemp’s potential, I was applauded,” he said.

Although the farm caucus has not taken a formal position, members of the group said a majority in both houses of Congress back the proposal. The farm caucus controls slightly fewer than half the seats in the two chambers, and the law requires approval by a simple majority.

Center-right lawmaker Fausto Pinato, a member of the farm caucus, said he supports the bill. “If you are authorizing the sale, why not cultivation?,” he said.

Reporting by Ana Mano in São Paulo, Jimin Kang in Seul and Maximilian Heath in Buenos Aires; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

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World View: US Kabul Airlift, VP Harris to Asia, Haiti Oxygen Plant Destroyed, Florida COVID, More

Aug 20, 2021

Alternate text

The Associated Press

The Rundown

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is struggling to pick up the pace of American and Afghan evacuations at Kabul airport, constrained by obstacles ranging from armed Taliban checkpoints to paperwork problems….Read More

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has given new urgency to Vice President Kamala Harris’ tour of southeast Asia, where she will attempt to reassure allies of American resolve following the …Read More

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LES CAYES, Haiti (AP) — As if Haiti’s 7.2 magnitude earthquake, a tropical storm and the coronavirus pandemic weren’t enough, the temblor damaged the only medical oxygen plant in the southern part of the count…Read More

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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — As quickly as one COVID patient is discharged, another waits for a bed in northeast Florida, the hot zone of the state’s latest surge. But the patients at Baptist Health’s five hospit…Read More

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Time was running out for Mohammad Khalid Wardak, a high-profile Afghan national police officer who spent years working alongside the American military. Hunted by the Taliban, he was hiding with his family in K…Read More

OTHER TOP STORIES

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Harvey Sutton, or “Little Man,” as he is known on the Appalachian Trail, won’t have long to bask in the glory of hiking its full length. After all, he …Read More

WASHINGTON (AP) — A North Carolina man who claimed to have a bomb in a pickup truck near the U.S. Capitol surrendered to law enforcement after an hourslong standoff Thursday …Read More

BEIJING (AP) — China is tightening control over data gathered by companies about the public under a law approved Friday by its ceremonial legislature, expanding the ruling Co…Read More

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s space agency plans to bring soil samples back from the Mars region ahead of the U.S. and Chinese missions now operating on Mars, in hopes of finding clue…Read More

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Haiti Earthquake: The Forgotten Villages Cut Off from Help

 

By James Clayton and Stephane Vincent
BBC News, Les Cayes, Haiti

The prettily named village of Marceline is 30 minutes’ drive north of Les Cayes.

Before the earthquake hit it had two churches – Catholic and Baptist – a medical centre, a school and a voodoo community centre.

A tarmac road runs through the village, and off that tight paths cross banana trees, meandering by cinder block houses.

The town we arrive in is unrecognisable.

The drive up to Marceline is marked by landslides, and huge fissures in the road. The driver at times slows the car to a stop so he can negotiate the cracks.

The town of Les Cayes was badly affected by the magnitude 7.2 earthquake on 14 August. Perhaps one in six buildings collapsed.

Here it’s hard to find a house that is standing.

Kelly Phildor was a 15-year-old boy who was preparing for a new school term.

He was cheeky and full of life. His nickname was Kelly Forever, and he had scrawled that moniker on to his shirt.

“I didn’t realise his life would be so short,” his mother, Marie Rose, says.

Marie Rose
image captionMarie Rose says she has her son’s shirt wrapped around her waist “to give me strength”

Kelly had woken up early, and had left his home on Saturday morning. But his phone needed charging so he decided to return.

When the quake hit, a wall made of chunks of heavy cement and rock fell on top of him. It broke both of his legs and his skull. He didn’t stand a chance.

“I don’t know what to do. I have his shirt wrapped around my waist to give me strength,” Marie Rose says.

The level of destruction here is hard to comprehend. Both churches were obliterated.

In the voodoo community centre, people were getting ready for a dance in the chapel. They were waiting for the priestess to start proceedings when the quake struck.

The building caved in on itself.

A neighbour tells us that they managed pull out the body of the priestess, but there could be more than 25 people still under the rubble.

What everyone asks is why there is no help – no medicine, no search and rescue teams, no food and water – nothing.

Margaret Maurice and her eight children managed to survive their house collapsing with only minor injuries.

However, they are now left to fend for themselves, squatting on the rubble of their former homes.

“Do I have to scream to get the government’s attention,” she says, “or are we being left to die?”

She says she has little food and water, and the few aid trucks she’s seen have passed them by.

The government, aid agencies and the international community have all promised help.

But those promises mean little to people here.

The medical centre – a place where people could perhaps have sorted supplies – was also flattened.

Destroyed voodoo community centre in Les Cayes, Haiti
image captionThe voodoo community centre was obliterated by the powerful quake

Here in the mountains it can get cold and wet at night. Some people have flimsy tarpaulins, and some don’t even have that.

Occasionally there are short jolts, aftershocks, that add to the stress.

People here aren’t thinking about their long-term future – they’re focused on surviving.

But with all the village’s infrastructure utterly destroyed it’s hard to see how Marciline will recover.

Haiti is currently in political turmoil. The former president was assassinated last month. The country simply isn’t able to give villages like Marciline the assistance they need.

Everyone here has multiple friends and family members lost to this earthquake, which killed more than 2,000 Haitians.

But now, there are worries that more could die – not from the earthquake – but because basic supplies that were needed, never came.

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Vietnam Residents Confined to Homes, Corona Summary, World Stats

17m ago 08:12

Vietnam’s business hub Ho Chi Minh City has announced that its residents will be prohibited from leaving their homes, as the country’s biggest city turns to drastic measures to slow a spiralling rate of coronavirus deaths.

Vietnam’s toughest order yet comes amid a spike in fatalities and infections, despite weeks of lockdown measures aimed at limiting movement in the city of 9 million people, the epicentre of the country’s outbreak.

“We are asking people to stay where you are, not to go outside. Each home, company, factory should be an anti-virus fort,” Pham Duc Hai, deputy head of the city’s coronavirus authority, said on Friday.

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  • Israel’s health minister said on Thursday that people over 40 and teachers would be eligible for a third dose of Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine, expanding its booster campaign to fend off the coronavirus Delta variant.
  • In the UK, the House of Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, is facing calls to urge MPs to wear masks in the chamber, after cabinet ministers and many Tory backbenchers shunned the advice during a packed eight-hour debate on Afghanistan.
  • Brazil has now registered 20,494,212 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 572,641, according to ministry data, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the US and India and its second-deadliest after the US.
  • Police in Kenya used teargas and fired shots in the air to break up protests in Nairobi after a man was allegedly killed by officers for violating the country’s Covid curfew. Shops were looted as unrest grew after John Kiiru’s death, which came just two days after six police officers appeared in court over the death of two brothers this month after they also allegedly broke the curfew.
  • A plan to start offering Covid booster vaccinations in the UK from early September is extremely unlikely to happen, it is understood, given the concerns of the government’s vaccines watchdog about the clinical benefits and potential wider risks to vaccine confidence. Immunologist Prof Peter Openshaw also said that the results of ongoing studies to determine their effectiveness “should not be prejudged”.
  • The mass rollout of Covid-19 booster vaccines in Britain to residents over 50 this autumn could be shelved, with government scientists considering limiting third doses only to the most vulnerable, The Telegraph reported on Thursday.
  • An online open-source intelligence group last year identified that a virus studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology taken from an abandoned copper mine in Yunnan province was the closest known relative to Sars-CoV-2, the Economist reports in a piece which also considers the case for a zoonotic origin to Covid.
  • A Spanish court has lifted a coronavirus curfew imposed on most of Catalonia, including the capital Barcelona, leaving it in place in just a fraction of the northeastern region. The high court of justice of Catalonia said the measure was “not justified” because infection rates had improved.
  • Joe Biden said he and his wife, Jill, would receive a third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to boost their immunity, as his administration announced booster shots would be offered to Americans in September. He also announced that nursing home staff would need to be vaccinated against Covid-19 as a condition for those facilities to continue receiving federal Medicare and Medicaid funding.
  • Hospitalisations of people under the age of 50 with Covid-19 are now at the highest levels seen in the US since the start of the pandemic, the latest government data shows. The largest increases in hospitalisations was among those in their 30s and the under-18s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  • The hoarding of Covid jabs by rich countries which are also rolling out booster shots “makes a mockery of vaccine equity” pledges, the Africa director for the World Health Organization said. But she noted that cases across Africa are levelling off and more vaccine doses are finally arriving on the continent
  • The French scientist who promoted the discredited hydroxychloroquine treatment for Covid-19 backed by Donald Trump faces being pushed out of the infectious diseases institute he founded amid concerns from key members over its role in feeding conspiracy theories and an investigation by regulators into its clinical studies.
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WORLD STATS

Coronavirus Cases:

210,873,693

Deaths:

4,417,858

Recovered:

188,809,859
Highlighted in green
= all cases have recovered from the infection
Highlighted in grey
= all cases have had an outcome (there are no active cases)

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Latest News

August 20 (GMT)

Updates

  • 23,006 new cases and 850 new deaths in Mexico [source]

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Prime Minister Harris hails three female 2021 New Year Honours’ recipients

BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, August 19, 2021 (MMS-SKN) — Governor General His Excellency Sir S.W. Tapley Seaton GCMG, CVO, QC, JP, LL.D presided over the Investiture Ceremony held on Thursday August 19 at Government House in Springfield, Basseterre, where eight nationals were officially invested with Her Majesty the Queen’s 2021 New Year Honours for their outstanding and meritorious service to the continued development of the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis.

In delivering congratulatory remarks after the eight honourees were invested with their Her Majesty the Queen’s 2021 New Year’s Honours, Prime Minister Dr the Hon Timothy Harris said that the honours served as a powerful example for others in the community that they can hope for a better future, and that anyone of them has the power to make that future happen.

  • Governor General His Excellency Sir Tapley Seaton (3rd right) and Prime Minister Dr the Hon Timothy Harris (4th right) pictured with Honouree Mrs Josephine Huggins CMG (2nd left) with some of her family members.
  • Deputy Governor General for Nevis Her Honour Mrs Hyleeta Liburd MH, OBE, receiving her insignia from Governor General His Excellency Sir S.W. Tapley Seaton GCMG, CVO, QC, JP, LL.D.
  • Businesswoman Mrs Venetta Laws MBE, receiving her insignia from Governor General His Excellency Sir S.W. Tapley Seaton GCMG, CVO, QC, JP, LL.D.
  • Prime Minister Dr the Hon Timothy Harris posed with the honourees before the Investiture Ceremony: Her Honour Mrs Hyleeta Liburd MH (left), Mrs Josephine Huggins (2nd right), and Mrs Venetta Laws (right).

“Our recipients today heard the call to service and they answered it and they served extremely well,” said the Prime Minister. He went ahead and detailed the areas the eight honourers had served their country so well.

“In the era of gender sensitivity, we certainly do appreciate that three of our eight awardees are outstanding females,” he added. “I want to thank them all – give them a special hand.”

He added: “They have reached to the zenith of national recognition.”

These were Cabinet Secretary Mrs Josephine Huggins, the first on Her Majesty the Queen’s 2021 New Year Honours list, who was invested with the Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (CMG) for her contribution to public Service.

“So henceforth when we call their names, we shall say Mrs Josephine Huggins CMG, and we know that is for recognition of outstanding service in the public service,” said Prime Minister Harris. “And interestingly her career path took her to high positions not just in her ‘borning land’ (land of her birth), but in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. In some respects she is truly a Caribbean person, but a patriot of St. Kitts and Nevis by heart.”

The second on the Her Majesty the Queen’s 2021 New Year Honours list was Deputy Governor General for Nevis, Her Honour Mrs Hyleeta Liburd MH, who was invested with Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her contribution to public service.

“Her Honour Mrs Hyleeta Liburd MH, OBE for outstanding contribution to public service,” said Prime Minister Harris. “And the class and the dignity and humility that always abound in everything you do, Madam Liburd, we say thank you. Sometimes in her quiet way, as I see her from time to time, at church, at official occasions, she will come and gently say to me in a soothing way, ‘so nice to see you’, and she shares her love.”

Added the Honourable Prime Minister: “So I want to say thank you for making me feel very special not only when I am in my father’s land on Nevis, but on each occasion that we meet.”

The third female honouree and the fourth persons on Her Majesty the Queen’s 2021 New Year Honours list was prominent businesswoman, Mrs Venetta Laws, who was invested with Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her contribution to community service and business entrepreneurship.

“Mrs Venetta Laws MBE for her contribution to community service, and for business entrepreneurship,” said Dr Harris. “Thank you very much for being my friend and thank you very much for the pioneering service you and your family brought in dry cleaning and other services and preventing us from having to send abroad our trophies, etc. etc. We thank you, and we commend you for all that you have done and will continue to do for our country.”

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Billions in US Weaponry, Aircaft Seized by Taliban

By Rebecca Kheel                  
The Hill

Billions of dollars of U.S. weapons are now in the hands of the Taliban following the quick collapse of Afghan security forces that were trained to use the military equipment.

Among the items seized by the Taliban are Black Hawk helicopters and A-29 Super Tucano attack aircraft.

Photos have also circulated of Taliban fighters clutching U.S.-made M4 carbines and M16 rifles instead of their iconic AK-47s. And the militants have been spotted with U.S. humvees and mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles.

While it’s virtually impossible to operate advanced aircraft without training, seizing the hardware gives the militants a propaganda boost and underscores the amount of wasted funds on U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan over the last 20 years.

“When an armed group gets their hands on American-made weaponry, it’s sort of a status symbol. It’s a psychological win,” said Elias Yousif, deputy director of the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor.

“Clearly, this is an indictment of the U.S. security cooperation enterprise broadly,” he added. “It really should raise a lot of concerns about what is the wider enterprise that is going on every single day, whether that’s in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia.”

The United States spent an estimated $83 billion training and equipping Afghan security forces over the last two decades.

Between 2003 and 2016, the United States transferred 75,898 vehicles, 599,690 weapons, 162,643 pieces of communications equipment, 208 aircraft, and 16,191 pieces of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment to the Afghan forces, according to a 2017 Government Accountability Office report.

From 2017 to 2019, the United States also gave Afghan forces 7,035 machine guns, 4,702 Humvees, 20,040 hand grenades, 2,520 bombs and 1,394 grenade launchers, among other equipment, according to a report last year from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

As of June 30, Afghan forces had 211 U.S.-supplied aircraft in their inventory, a separate SIGAR report said.

At least 46 of those aircraft are now in Uzbekistan after more than 500 Afghan troops used them to flee as the government in Kabul collapsed over the weekend.

It is unclear exactly how many weapons have fallen into the hands of the Taliban, but the Biden administration has acknowledged it’s a “fair amount.”

“We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday. “And obviously, we don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.”

Still, Sullivan defended President Biden’s decision-making in leaving the Afghan forces with high-end equipment.

Even as the U.S. military was withdrawing from Afghanistan, the United States kept aircraft flowing to the Afghans, in July touting plans to send 35 Black Hawk helicopters and three A-29s.

“Those Black Hawks were not given to the Taliban. They were given to the Afghan National Security Forces to be able to defend themselves at the specific request of [Afghan] President [Ashraf] Ghani, who came to the Oval Office and asked for additional air capability, among other things,” Sullivan said.

“So, the president had a choice. He could not give it to them with the risk that it would fall into the Taliban’s hands eventually, or he could give it to them with the hope that they could deploy it in service of defending their country,” Sullivan continued. “Both of those options had risks. He had to choose. And he made a choice.”

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby on Wednesday also held there was a “very deliberate” process as U.S. forces withdrew in deciding what equipment to destroy, give to Afghan forces or redeploy elsewhere in the Middle East.

While the Taliban may be “keen” to use some of the more advanced U.S. weaponry, including the aircraft, the militants likely would not be able to keep them in the air for long even if they could coax former Afghans pilot into flying for them, said Yousif of the Center for International Policy.

“They may be able to manage a flight or two or to operate them in some really limited capacity in the short term, but without long term sustainment, maintenance, servicing, that sort of thing, it wouldn’t turn into a robust or useful military capability,” he said. “It took the Afghans and the United States a long time to develop an indigenous air capability, and even then, they were reliant on the United States to keep those planes in the sky.”

A more immediate concern, Yousif said, is that so many small arms were left behind.

“They are easy to maintain, easy to learn how to use, easy to transport,” he said. “The concern for all small arms is that they are durable goods and they can be transferred, sold. We’ve seen this before where a conflict ends and the arms that stay there make their way to all parts of the world.”

On Wednesday, more than two dozen Republican senators demanded a “full accounting” of U.S. military equipment given to Afghan forces over the past 12 months, what’s been seized by the Taliban and what plans there are to either recapture or destroy the equipment.

“As we watched the images coming out of Afghanistan as the Taliban retook the country, we were horrified to see U.S. equipment – including UH-60 Black Hawks – in the hands of the Taliban,” the 25 senators, led by Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

“It is unconscionable that high-tech military equipment paid for by U.S. taxpayers has fallen into the hands of the Taliban and their terrorist allies,” they added. “Securing U.S. assets should have been among the top priorities for the U.S. Department of Defense prior to announcing the withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley on Wednesday declined to comment on the possibility of destroying equipment, saying the military’s focus right now is on evacuation operations. Still, Milley told reporters that “we obviously have capabilities.”

“We don’t obviously want to see our equipment in the hands of those who would act against our interest or the interest of the Afghan people and increase violence and insecurity inside Afghanistan,” Kirby said in his own briefing. “There are numerous policy choices that can be made, up to and including destruction, and what I would tell you at this point is those decisions about disposition of that level of equipment in Afghanistan haven’t been made yet.”

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SKN Reports Confirmed Delta Variant Case

The highly contagious COVID-19 Delta variant has been confirmed in St. Kitts and Nevis by medical officials..

The announcement was made by Medical Chief of Staff at the Joseph N. France General Hospital Dr Cameron Wilkinson who said it was expected that the variant would enter the federation at some point.

“Samples were sent off to CARPHA for genomic sequencing on July 28. The results returned over the last 24 to 48 hours confirmed the presence of the delta variant in one of the samples tested.”

“I said a couple of weeks ago that it was only a matter of time before the Delta variant arrived at our shores. It was not a matter of if, but when, it was going to arrive and that we all needed to prepare for this eventuality.”

Dr Wilkinson informed that the person who tested positive with the Delta variant was an inbound passenger that has since recovered.

He said: “It is comforting to know that the Delta variant was found in someone who was in quarantine and has since recovered and was not found at large in the community.”

Further samples of positive cases will be sent to CARPHA for genomic sequencing.

 

Situation Report for St. Kitts and Nevis

  • 708 confirmed cases: 590 recoveries, 115 active cases,  6 hospitalized, 3 deaths
  • 683 confirmed cases in St.Kitts
  • 25 confirmed cases in Nevis
  • 27 confirmed cases in the last 24 hours
  • Daily reported cases continue to climb: 13 new cases on Saturday, 24 on Monday, and 27 on Tuesday after recording daily single-digit positives since the lockdown in July.
  • The majority of the recent cases were picked up through contact tracing from recent social gatherings and the early childhood school sector.
  • Analysis of the data from the current wave from May 19 to August 3 indicates that of 558 positive cases during that period, 81.5 per cent were in persons under the age of 50 with 23.8 per cent in the 0 to 19 age range, and 42.9 per cent in the 20 to 39 age group.
  • 248 cases or 44.4% were unvaccinated adults, 113 cases or 20.3% were children who could not be vaccinated and 101 cases or 18% were persons who were partially vaccinated. Only 70 cases or 12.8% were fully vaccinated.

The Roll Up to Roll Out Vaccination Campaign continues in St. Kitts and Nevis. To date, 72.9 % of adults covered with one shot of the vaccine and 61.6% are fully vaccinated.

Recently Dr Wilkinson announced that due to the transmissibility of the Delta variant, the federation’s 70% goal for herd immunity is subject to change.

In the coming weeks, children between the ages of 12 to 18 will be offered the opportunity to take the vaccine following receipt of a donation of over 11 thousand doses of the Pfizer Biontech vaccine from the United States government.

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Haiti: UK Sending Aid and Naval Vessel for Earthquake Relief Effort

The UK Government has today announced a package of up to £1 million of initial support to Haiti, as the country recovers from the recent devastating earthquake.

This is in addition to significant UK contributions to the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, the Red Cross Disaster Relief Emergency Fund and the Start Fund, which have allocated funding of £5.8 million, £600,000, and £250,000 respectively.

The Royal Navy ship RFA WAVE KNIGHT will also support the US contribution to the international humanitarian response.

The Wave-class fast fleet tanker – part of the Royal Navy’s Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) – will serve as a landing pad for US military helicopters responding to the crisis in Haiti.

Following a request for international assistance from the Haitian Government, the UK will send a team of medical experts and a UK humanitarian expert is deploying from the UN to provide support.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said:

Communities in the Caribbean can rely on the Royal Navy to come to their aid when disaster strikes. The Royal Navy has a proud history of supporting British Overseas Territories and other partners in the Caribbean during hurricane season. I’m proud that the UK can now play a part in the US effort to respond to the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
Experts from the UK’s Emergency Medical Team (UK EMT) will be deployed to Haiti this week to assess requirements for medical assistance and identify additional support.
The team of 4 medical experts from the UK, Italy and France specialise in emergency medicine, rehabilitation, and logistics, as well as humanitarian healthcare. They are expected to deploy for up to 2 weeks.
UK Minister for the Caribbean Lord (Tariq) Ahmad of Wimbledon said:

It is at times like this that the international community must come together to help those in crisis. The UK’s support will add to Haiti’s efforts to provide emergency disaster relief to those most vulnerable, including access to vital healthcare and sanitation.

On top of this, a UK humanitarian expert will arrive in Haiti as part of a UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) mission, to help assess damage and humanitarian needs resulting from the earthquake.
The UK will also support the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) who will aid the Protection General Directorate (DGPC) with operations and co-ordination.

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