Bermuda has recorded 108 new COVID-19 cases for the second time inside a week with 18 people now in hospital, four of them in critical care, health officials announced.
Saturday’s total, taking the island’s number of cases to 1,400, came from two days of testing. There are now 630 active cases. More than 200,000 tests have been carried out.
Of those in the hospital, the mean age of all cases is 60 with the youngest in the 20-29-year-old age group and the oldest being over 80.
None of the people in the hospital is fully immunized, officials said. Bermuda Health Minister Kim Wilson said: “Our hospitalized COVID-19 patients are rising, and that is very disturbing.
“We need to all make sure that we are doing our best to stop the spread and stay in our bubbles.
“There are quite a number of clusters of cases identified by the case management team. This very much reflects the contagious nature of the UK variant.”
The latest results are from testing that took place on Wednesday, with 70 positive out of 1,865 test results received, and testing on Thursday when there were 38 positive out of 1,474.
Twenty-two of the new cases are classified as local transmission with known contact as they are associated with known cases.
The additional 86 new cases are classified as under investigation. These cases are among residents with no currently identified link to other known cases or history of travel in the past 14 days.
Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has divested itself of its Eastern Caribbean banking operations, having gotten clearance by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank to move ahead with the sale.
The sale of those operations in Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines closed last Thursday.
“This sale has RBC selling its Eastern Caribbean banking operations to a consortium of regional banks comprised of 1st National Bank of St. Lucia, Antigua Commercial Bank, Bank of Dominica, Bank of Montserrat, and The Bank of Nevis,” the RBC revealed in a statement last week.
RBC’s Head of Caribbean Banking Rob Johnston said in the statement that the sale of this portfolio of business will allow the company to streamline its investments and resources in other jurisdictions in the Caribbean.
“This transaction will allow RBC to align investments and resources into markets where our vision for being the Caribbean’s digitally-enabled relationship bank can be executed most successfully,” said Johnston.
“The sale of our Eastern Caribbean banking operations to indigenous banks is also a critical step forward in strengthening the domestic financial services sectors in each of the countries and territories involved. This will help create a stronger climate for further growth, development and prosperity.”
According to RBC, its regional presence now comprises 3,000 employees across 41 branches and offices in Aruba, The Bahamas, Barbados, Bonaire, the Cayman Islands, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
RBC executives have time and again expressed that they remain committed to continuing banking services in The Bahamas, while more and more, Canadian banks are lessening their footprint in the Caribbean.
Canadian bank CIBC announced two years ago its interest in selling a majority stake in its Caribbean arm, CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank Limited, to GNB Financial Group Limited. However, that transaction was not approved by regulators.
Both Scotiabank and RBC have shrunk their operations in The Bahamas over time, especially their operations in the Family Islands.
In the Bahamas, March was the busiest month for visitor arrivals since the start of COVID-19 travel restrictions, with early indications showing that approximately 60,000 tourists visiting based on the number of health visas sold.
Minister of Tourism and Aviation Dionisio D’Aguilar confirmed yesterday that the number of visas required to enter the country has nearly doubled since the peak in December.
“If I go back and look at the health visas that were purchased by visitors, when we first started in November, there were about 14,000 visitors that came in and then in December when Christmas came along, there were about 32,000. Then in January, it obviously dipped back down to 21,000 but it was more than November. Then in February, it was 28,000 – February was 28 days, it was probably as good as December was. Then in March, we jumped to 60,000 visitors. March was a bump. I think a lot of persons were on Spring Break,” D’Aguilar told Guardian Business.
“You know, I always said that as more and more Americans get the vaccine, they will become more emboldened to travel. March is always traditionally a good month for us anyway. It still is probably well below 50 percent of what we used to get.”
D’Aguilar said the upcoming second week in April could be equally as busy, as the residual effects of the Easter and Spring Break travel period linger.
Vice President of Marketing & Commercial Development for Nassau Airport Development Company (NAD) Jan Knowles said initial indications from travel through Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) last month show the largest uptick in foot traffic.
“The month of March has been the busiest month since the pandemic began and this Easter weekend has been busy. While the numbers do not compare to Easter of 2019, we are grateful for the strong start to April and hope that the current positive trend will continue,” she told Guardian Business yesterday.
“Both domestic and international travel were busy. We were very pleased to welcome an encouraging number of visitors.”
Ahead of the four-day holiday weekend, NAD stated it was anticipating an uptick in foot traffic through the airport after seeing incremental monthly increases in domestic traffic since November 2020, when the tourism sector fully reopened.
While there was a lull in travelers during the month of February compared to January, Knowles said there has been month-over-month growth in travelers through the main gateway, which airport and tourism officials hope will continue during the rest of the year.
“During March, NAD had nonstop flights from 21 markets. Nine of those 21 markets had daily or near-daily service for the month. It is anticipated that April will have nonstop flights from 23 markets, with American Airlines adding flights from Washington, DC; JetBlue adding flights from New Jersey and United Airlines reintroducing its Denver flight,” Knowles said in a press release issued before the Easter holiday weekend.
The most recent data available showed that total visitor arrivals to The Bahamas during the month of February totaled 23,619 – the majority of which came via air.
The number is significantly lower than the 687,200 arrivals in the same period last year. Still, Knowles said, The Bahamas is gaining momentum.
“There has also been month-over-month increases in international travelers for November, December and January. The airport experienced a slight downturn in international passengers during February compared to January, however March has shown the type of positive upward trend that we hope can continue throughout 2021,” she said.
There were just below 350,000 visitors that traveled through LPIA for the entire first quarter of 2020 – just before the country’s borders were closed to commercial flights, compared to the approximate 482,000 during the same period a year prior.
The Minneapolis police chief has said that a former officer charged in the death of George Floyd violated department policy when he pinned Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.
The AP explains that the issue of neck restraints is key to the trial of former officer Derek Chauvin.
President Joe Biden is promoting his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan directly to Americans.
Also this morning:
North Korea says it won’t send athletes to the Tokyo Olympics.
Baylor beats Gonzaga to take NCAA title.
In Myanmar, online markets raise funds for protests.
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The Executive Director of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena says a “Concerted international action and solidarity are the only means to confront and overcome the COVID-19 crisis.”
“A truly multilateral and global response to the pandemic must extend the benefits of this initiative to all developing countries, irrespective of their level of income, including to middle-income countries (MICs).”
She was commenting after praising US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, for a new issue of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), which the G-20 recently approved, and the re-allocation of excess SDRs to low-income countries (LICs), such as those in the Caribbean.
She said MICs represent 75 per cent of the world’s population, and roughly 30 percent of global aggregate demand.
More importantly, Bárcena said MICs account for 96 per cent of developing country public debt, excluding China and India.
“Their success in confronting COVID-19 is central for global recovery and financial stability,” she said. “Developing countries have, without doubt, borne the brunt of the social and economic impact of the current crisis.
“The increases in poverty and extreme poverty rates, the number job losses and declines in per capital income have been unprecedented,” she added. “These impacts are not only concentrated in LICs, but also affect MICs.”
Bárcena said Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has been the most impacted region in the world in terms of real gross domestic product (GDP) contraction (-7.7 percent for 2020).
She said this has been accompanied by the closure of more than 2.7 million firms, and the rise in number of jobless persons to 44.1 million, and in the number of people living in poverty from 185.5 to 209 million people, reaching 33.7 percent of the total population.
The ECLAC chief said that extreme poverty has increased by 8 million to 78 million people, and that, by the end of 2020, the level of per capita GDP equalled that of 2010, stating that it is “another ‘lost decade’ by any measure.”
She said the effects of the pandemic and the policies implemented in response have increased the liquidity needs of developing countries, including those of LAC.
At the same time, she said fiscal emergency measures to contain the decline in output have led to rising debt levels, “which -if not carefully monitored- may jeopardize the recovery and countries’ capacity to build forward better.”
Bárcena said LAC is the most indebted region in the developing world, stating that the debt of the general government in 2020 reached 79.3 per cent of GDP.
She said the external debt service stood at 57 per cent relative to exports of goods and services, according to IMF 2020 data.
In contrast to developed economies, Bárcena said: “LAC – as the rest of developing economies – face enormous obstacle to create the policy space to substantially increase their debt levels without jeopardizing their credit ratings, exchange rate stability, or even their international reserve positions.”
She said the bulk of the global counter-cyclical monetary and fiscal measures to combat the pandemic – amounting US$12 and US$7 trillion dollars in 2020 (24 percent of world GDP)- were implemented by developed countries.
“A new and significant issue and reallocation of SDRs is the most effective and expedient manner to guarantee enough liquidity for developing economies, and provide the required policy space to confront the effects of the pandemic,” Bárcena said.
“Linking the creation of new international resources with financial transfers to developing countries to attend their development requirements is a long-standing demand,” she added. “Now it is more relevant than ever – indispensable for placing the Sustainable Development Goals, within developing countries’ reach.”
Bárcena said Access to SDRs is an “indefeasible right of all IMF members,” stating that “SDRs do not generate additional debt nor do they require conditionalities.
“Also, they are not subject to the fastidious negotiations of quota increases or borrowing arrangements,” she said. “A new SDR issue would strengthen the IMF’s ‘fire power’ (currently at roughly US$ 800 billion dollars, a third of the estimated financing needs of developing countries) and provide greater incentive for all countries to participate in this initiative.”
Bárcena said the IMF’s financial support for COVID-19 represents barely 12 per cent of its lending capacity.
“A new issue of 500 billion SDR, requiring the approval of 85 per cent of the voting power of IMF board of governors, would generate que equivalent of US$56 billion dollars in additional reserves for Latin American and Caribbean countries,” she said. “This would benefit some of the most indebted economies in the region.
“Since any new issue of SDRs would be allocated mainly to developed countries, roughly 60 percent of the total, a mechanism must be put in place for the voluntary reallocation of excess SDRs from developed to developing countries,” she urged.
“A mechanism to pool SDRs within the existing multilateral facilities and their reallocation to strengthen the financial capacity of Regional Financial Arrangements (RFAs) and other regional financial institutions should receive serious consideration as a means to increase liquidity and put SDRs at the service of economic and social development,” Bárcena adde
Bogota, Colombia (CNN) More than 100 days since the first Covid-19 vaccinations in Latin America, the pandemic is still dangerously resurging in some areas.
The region’s recent battle with the coronavirus remains marked by disparities, with some countries boasting of positive vaccination trends while hospitals in neighboring nations collapse under waves of new cases.
Particularly worrying are high Covid-1 mortality rates in Brazil, Peru, Chile and Paraguay — a likely sign that local health systems are being stretched beyond their capacity.
“Mortality increases when this happens because patients have difficulty finding the care they need, and health workers are overburdened by tending to too many people at once,” said Dr. Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization, last week.
Even in countries with robust vaccine rollouts, equal access to the life-saving shots is far from the norm, and health officials here worry that a new wave of the pandemic is gaining momentum from contagious new variants and too often a relaxed governmental approach towards imposing social distancing.
A race between vaccines and fast-spreading variants
Brazil is, by far, the most affected country in the region at the moment.
The locally identified P.1 variant is believed to be more contagious than the original coronavirus, and March alone saw over 66,000 new Covid-related deaths — more than double the toll of any other month since the beginning of the pandemic.
Brazil is breaking Covid-19 records. See what some hospitals look like 01:08
Meanwhile, despite solid vaccination infrastructure, Brazil’s coronavirus vaccination campaign is proceeding at a slow rate with little over 10% of the total population having received the first vaccine dose, according to data from each state health departments.
Intensive care units in 25 of 27 Brazilian states are over 80% capacity, yet some states, like Rio de Janeiro, have decided to reopen schools anyway, urged on the country’s anti-lockdown President Jair Bolsonaro.
Several Latin American countries have shut their borders with Brazil to try to curb the spread of the virus. Neighboring Uruguay has even prioritized vaccinations in the areas bordering Brazil, in hopes of creating a “vaccine wall” that the virus cannot penetrate.
For some, winter is coming
Until this week, Chile had been a vaccination fairytale in South America.
The Andean country begun vaccination comparatively early, in December, and rapidly gained steam thanks to copious supplies of vaccines from Chinese manufacturers.
At the moment, Chile is third in the world for percentage of vaccinated population — ahead of the United States.
But despite this success, Chile recorded new record increases of cases for two days in a row last week — an ominous development that has prompted authorities to close the borders to both foreigners and Chilean nationals to try to limit the contagion.
Chile’s much-lauded vaccination campaign has not been able to stop a rise in new cases
Particularly worrying is the fact that, Chile and its neighbors Argentina and Uruguay are heading towards colder temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere. Covid-19 thrives in winter conditions both because the virus itself is more stable and contagious in lower temperatures, and because people tend to spend more time indoor in winter months.
Chilean and Argentinian authorities are preparing for new virus outbreaks in the coming weeks.
Politics and public health
Meanwhile, Peru called for a total lockdown last week, allowing only one person per household to leave home for essential business, to limit the impact of a third wave of the virus.
Fellow Andean nation Ecuador is in dire straits too, last week declaring a state of emergency in eight different provinces due to a surge of Covid hospitalizations. And nearby Bolivia, like Uruguay, is closing its borders with Brazil.
In Peru, the third wave of the virus is in full swing and numbers for new cases are growing fast: In March, the country recorded more cases than in any other month since the beginning of the pandemic, with the exception of August 2020 — the peak of the first wave.
According to an analysis by John Hopkins University, Peru has the second highest mortality rate in the world, only behind Mexico. Meanwhile, its vaccine rollout has been glacial, with only a few thousand doses administered each day. At current rates, it would take Peru more than a decade to reach herd immunity through vaccination.
Yet despite efforts to keep people at home, both Peru and Ecuador are hoping to put the past year’s political upsets behind them with new presidential elections this week — which means mass gatherings across the country. Despite the resurgent virus, neither government has called to postpone the vote.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president said Monday he won’t get a COVID-19 vaccine because his doctors told him he still has a high level of antibodies from when he was infected in January.
“I have sufficient levels of antibodies and right now it isn’t indispensable for me to get vaccinated for now,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
López Obrador would have gotten a shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine last week, based on his address in a borough in the city’s center, where he lives in an apartment at the National Palace.
The president had repeatedly said he would wait his turn in line to get vaccinated, and didn’t want it to become a “spectacle.”
In late March, López Obrador had said he would be vaccinated when people over 60 in Mexico City’s central boroughs got their first shots.
But he said a second group of doctors he consulted told him it wasn’t necessary, though he did not rule out getting what for most elders will be their second dose in June.
So far, Mexico has received 14.7 million doses of several brands of vaccines, and administered almost 9 million shots so far. That is still a small amount, considering the country’s population of 126 million.
The 67-year-old leader was criticized early in the pandemic for not conveying the gravity of the situation. He has consistently refused to push for more drastic lockdowns used in other countries, calling such tactics “authoritarian.”
The country has tallied more than 204,000 test-confirmed COVID-19 deaths, though the government puts the real COVID toll at almost 324,000.
PM says pubs, hairdressers, shops and gyms can open, but resumption of foreign travel next month remains in doubt
1:32
Boris Johnson: no reason to alter course out of lockdown for England – video
Life will start returning to “some semblance of normality” in June, Boris Johnson has pledged, as he gave the green light for pubs, shops, hairdressers and gyms to reopen across England from next Monday – but he refused to be drawn on when foreign holidays could resume.
The prime minister said moving to the next stage of the government’s roadmap out of lockdown was “fully justified” by the success of the vaccine rollout and the drop in cases and hospitalisations, allowing a raft of venues to operate for the first time in three months.
But he suggested that Covid status certificates and mass weekly testing could be key to further restrictions being eased, raising the prospect of such interventions remaining in place for months to come.
Hopes that foreign holidays may be allowed from 17 May were dampened, as Johnson said he did “not wish to give hostages to fortune” and was nervous about “the virus being reimported” from abroad given the surge in cases across Europe.
Before the Downing Street press conference, scientists from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) said next week’s reopening of venues, with outdoor service only at pubs and restaurants, was “highly unlikely” to overwhelm the NHS. But they warned that further easing in May and beyond could unleash a third UK wave as deadly as the one seen during the winter, when more than half of the country’s total of Covid deaths occurred.
Work by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, based on pessimistic but realistic assumptions about the effectiveness of the vaccines, forecast that a third wave could peak at the end of July or early August, with hospitalisations on the same scale as in January. Most other modelled scenarios showed a smaller potential third wave peak.
Speaking alongside Prof Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, Johnson confirmed that hospitality venues will be able to operate outdoors-only from Monday 12 April, as hoped, with no curfew or requirements for customers to eat a “substantial meal” when drinking alcohol.
“I will be going to the pub myself and cautiously but irreversibly raising a pint of beer to my lips,” he declared.
Johnson said Covid status certificates, for people to prove they have had either a vaccine, a recent negative Covid polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or rapid test, or antibodies from a coronavirus infection within the last six months, remain under review for use within the UK, and would come into use no earlier than May or June.
He gave no concrete assurance that the scheme would be voted on in parliament, after dozens of Tory and Labour backbenchers vowed to oppose it, but said: “If there’s something to put to parliament, I’m sure we’ll be doing that.”
Johnson was more supportive of such documents being used for international travel, saying it was “something that all countries are looking at”, and added that he thought that was going to be “part of the way people deal” with the continued threat posed by Covid-19 and new variants.
After criticism from Labour that the government’s hotel quarantine policy for people arriving in the UK was not strict enough, Whitty said that cases of the South Africa variant, which is believed to be more transmissible, were stable, and confirmed that there was “no evidence that this is increasing”.
But the chief medical officer for England added that measures to prevent another wave of the pandemic in the UK would last for some time, warning: “We will have significant problems with Covid for the foreseeable future and I don’t think we should pretend otherwise.”
Alongside the press conference, No 10 published a report on four ongoing reviews looking at social distancing, restarting mass events, foreign holidays and the Covid status certificates, also known as Covid passports.
The report said banning the certificates would be an “unjustified intrusion on how businesses choose to make their premises safe” in most cases, and left open the possibility of them being used in pubs and bars as well as theatres, nightclubs and at mass events like football matches and festivals.
It stated that they would not be required in essential shops, public service buildings or on public transport, and revealed that the NHS was looking at how to offer both digital and non-digital versions.
Boris Johnson confirmed that the roadmap will be going ahead as planned next week. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
In an update on restarting international travel, the document said the government “hopes people will be able to travel to and from the UK to take a summer holiday this year”.
Johnson’s roadmap out of lockdown, published on 22 February, had said that from 17 May, international travel would be permitted again “subject to review”. But in the latest review, while a traffic light system was confirmed for overseas travel, no endorsement of the date was given and no countries were named. “We are not yet in a position to confirm that non-essential international travel can resume from that point,” the document said.
The travel industry was left frustrated. Heathrow airport’s chief executive, John Holland-Kaye, said it was “disappointing that the opportunity has been missed” and “a clearer timeline” for the return to international travel was needed.
Johnson said that his February roadmap “continues to be one we are sticking to like glue” – but his unwillingness to move any faster, and the threat of Covid status certificates, provoked the ire of Tory backbencher Mark Harper, who chairs the Covid Recovery Group of MPs pushing for a quicker unlocking.
Harper said it was disappointing that the prime minister’s plan was “driven by dates, not data” when “the data suggests it could safely go faster rather than being tied rigidly”. He also warned that it wouldn’t be acceptable for the government to introduce Covid status certificates “by the back door” and said it was crucial for MPs to be allowed a vote on a system that would create “a two-tier Britain”.
More changes coming into force next Monday include allowing beauty and nail salons and spas to open – although not saunas and steam rooms. Overnight stays away from home in England will be permitted and self-contained accommodation can reopen, but only for use by members of the same household or support bubble.
Libraries and community centres will be allowed to open again, along with zoos, theme parks and drive-in cinemas.
The number of nominated people allowed to visit a care home will increase to two for each resident, and all children will be able to attend any indoor children’s activity, including sport, regardless of circumstance.
For those planning weddings, outdoor receptions will be able to take place with up to 15 attendees. People will still be encouraged to work from home where possible, and to minimise domestic travel.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti does not have a single vaccine to offer its more than 11 million people over a year after the pandemic began, raising concerns among health experts that the well-being of Haitians is being pushed aside as violence and political instability across the country deepen.
So far, Haiti is slated to receive only 756,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through a United Nations program aimed at ensuring the neediest countries get COVID-19 shots. The free doses were scheduled to arrive in May at the latest, but delays are expected because Haiti missed a deadline and the key Indian manufacturer is now prioritizing an increase in domestic demand.
“Haiti has only recently completed some of the essential documentation that are prerequisites for processing of a shipping order,” said Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a Geneva-based public-private partnership that is co-managing the U.N.-backed COVAX effort.
The country also didn’t apply for a pilot program in which it would have received some of its allotted doses early, according to the Pan American Health Organization. However, a spokeswoman commended its other pandemic efforts, including reinforcing hospital preparedness.
Meanwhile, a human rights research center cited in a new U.S. State Department report found Haiti’s government misappropriated more than $1 million worth of coronavirus aid. The report also accused government officials of spending $34 million in the “greatest opacity,” bypassing an agency charged with approving state contracts.
Lauré Adrien, general director of Haiti’s Health Ministry, blamed the vaccine delay on scrutiny of the AstraZeneca shots and concerns that the country lacks the necessary infrastructure to ensure proper vaccine storage, adding that his agency prefers a single-dose vaccine. AstraZeneca requires two doses.
“It’s no secret that we don’t have excellent conservation facilities,” he said. “We wanted to be sure that we had all the parameters under control before we received vaccine stocks.”
Adrien also noted all the money his agency received has been properly spent, but said he could not speak for other agencies. A presidential spokesman did not return calls for comment.
Many poorer countries have experienced long waits in getting COVAX vaccines as richer countries snapped up supplies, though most have received at least an initial shipment. Some took matters into their own hands, securing shots through donations and private deals.
Haiti’s lack of vaccines comes as it reports more than 12,700 cases and 250 deaths, numbers that experts believe are underreported.
Perceptions also remain a big challenge.
While face masks remain mandatory at Haiti businesses, airport closures and curfews have long since been lifted, and other precautions are rare.
“People don’t really believe in the coronavirus,” said Esther Racine, a 26-year-old mother of two boys whose father died in the catastrophic 2010 earthquake.
Racine once worked as a maid but began selling face masks at the beginning of the pandemic, making brisk business with some 800 sales a month. Now, she barely sells 200.
“Look around,” she said, waving at a maskless crowd bustling around her in downtown Port-au-Prince. The only customers nowadays are those who need a mask to enter a nearby grocery store, she said, adding that Haitians have other problems on their mind: “People worry more about violence than the virus.”
Ongoing protests and a spike in kidnappings and gang-related killings have some wondering how any vaccine will be administered given the lack of stability coupled with a growing number of people afraid to leave their homes.
Many also fear being inoculated, despite educational campaigns. In addition, some officials have raised concern about the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has recently come under scrutiny in Europe after a very small number of people who received it developed unusual blood clots.
“We can receive the vaccine and then discover with a heavy heart that the stocks expired a couple of months later because no one wanted to be vaccinated,” Adrien said.
Among those in Haiti who say they will not be vaccinated is Dorcelus Perkin, a brick factory owner. On a recent morning, the 60-year-old supervised more than a dozen employees working outdoors. No one was wearing any personal protective equipment.
“We can’t wear masks in the sun. We would be suffocating,” he said, adding that the sun kills the virus, something scientists have not proven.
Perkin also credited drinking a traditional green tea mixed with salt every day for his good health: “I believe more in these remedies than the vaccines. I don’t know what’s in the inside of these vaccines.”
International groups are behind most of the resources and educational campaigns related to COVID-19 in Haiti, with the Pan American Health Organization providing the government 500 test kits, along with instruction on lab diagnosis and virus detection. It also supplied thermometers, PPE and other items including megaphones and batteries as workers fanned out into rural areas. In addition, PAHO trained more than 2,800 health workers in Haiti and met with community leaders including Voodoo priests and traditional birth attendants to share information about protective measures and treatment centers.
In May 2020, the organization’s director said she was particularly concerned about the effects of a potential large-scale outbreak given Haiti’s frail health care system and the fact that many live in overcrowded households and lack access to clean water. But perplexed experts say that anticipated outbreak has not happened.
“It’s a surprise to a lot of people,” said Aline Serin, head of mission in Haiti for the international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres. “For the moment, there is not enough research and documentation to explain why some countries were less affected by severe COVID-19 cases.”
Meanwhile, it’s unclear exactly when the country’s first vaccines, via COVAX, will arrive.
Haiti is among 92 low-income countries expected to receive them. It’s also among dozens that will be affected by last week’s announcement of a suspension of deliveries in March and April of doses made for the program by the Serum Institute of India – the world’s largest vaccine maker – amid a spike of coronavirus cases in India.
When the shots do become available, experts acknowledge it will be a struggle to get them into arms.
They would have to convince Haitians like Duperval Germain, a 55-year-old carpenter who said neither he nor his children will be getting a vaccine. He worries about falling ill from it and not being able to receive proper medical care.
“All these heads of state who have been here, any time they get sick, they all fly out of here,” he said. “If we get sick, where would we go? They can keep (the vaccines) to themselves. Use it in places that need it. Haiti doesn’t need the vaccine.”
Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
(CNN) Ian Haydon helped test Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine last year. Now, he’s helping test the tweaked version of that vaccine designed to fight a new, more contagious variant.
“A year ago I tried the Moderna vaccine to see if it was safe. (Spoiler: It is!) Now, on my #COVIDvaccine anniversary, I’m happy to share that I just got a 3rd dose. This booster experiment will reveal (1) if strain-adapted vaccines boost immunity & (2) whether they are safe,” Haydon, a communications specialist at the University of Washington, said via Twitter last Saturday.
Photo: Sputnik. Russia is upping its vaccine production. Argentina is scheduled to start distributing the Russian Covid-19 vaccine before the New Year.
“It’s unclear whether this new tweaked version is even going to be necessary,” Haydon told CNN in a telephone interview.
“But it’s being developed and tested now so that we have it in hand.”
Doctors are worried that coronavirus may end up being like influenza, which requires a new vaccine every year both because the circulating strains mutate fast and because immunity from the vaccine wears off quickly.
Although initial evidence suggests immunity from vaccination against coronavirus provides long-lasting protection, vaccine makers have begun making and testing versions of their vaccines that protect against worrying variants of the virus. That includes the B.1.351 version first seen in South Africa, which carries a mutation that, in lab experiments, appears to allow it to evade the human immune response a little.
The latest report from vaccine maker Pfizer shows people in South Africa who got its coronavirus vaccine after B.1.351 became the dominant circulating virus were still very strongly protected from infection — something that backs up laboratory experiments that have shown the vaccine causes such a strong and broad immune response that it provides a cushion against any effects of mutant viruses.
“It is still matched enough that we have good protection,” said Scott Hensley, an immunologist and vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania.
But vaccine makers are not taking chances. The trial Haydon is taking part in is testing not only a third dose of Moderna vaccine tweaked to protect specifically against B.1.351 — that’s what he got — but a third dose of original vaccine in some volunteers, too, to see if the boosted immune response is both safe and provides an advantage.
A report out last month from Pfizer suggests people who get both doses keep strong immunity for at least six months. Experts have been at pains to point out that doesn’t mean immunity stops at six months. It means that’s the longest volunteers in the trials have been followed to see what their immunity is. It’s likely to last much longer, Hensley said.
“I would not be surprised if we learned a year from now that these vaccines are still producing a strong immune response,” Hensley told CNN.
“I would not be surprised if this is a vaccine that we only get once.”
That would make the vaccine more akin to vaccines against measles than flu vaccines. Vaccination against measles protects against infection for life in 96% of people.
Protection from Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine remains above 91% even at six months, according to the company. It has released the details in a statement, not a formal scientific publication, and the data covers only a few thousand people. But if it holds up, that’s an indication that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines elicit a long-lasting immune response, experts say.
Hensley says the technology used by both vaccines — delivery of genetic material known as messenger RNA of mRNA — is especially potent.
“The antibody responses elicited by these mRNA vaccines are incredibly high. What we know in animal models with other mRNA vaccines that have been tested previously — we know that those antibody responses are incredibly long-lived and they don’t drop over time,” said Hensley, whose lab has been testing experimental mRNA vaccines for years.
While the coronavirus vaccines are of course new — the virus has only been around since the end of 2019 — the mRNA technology has been studied for many years and used to make vaccines against influenza, Ebola and Zika virus.
Several studies have indicated this with coronavirus vaccine.
In January, a team led by Dr. Alicia Widge at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases wrote the New England Journal of Medicine to say their research showed two doses of Moderna’s vaccine produced plenty of antibodies that declined only very slightly over time. The vaccine also caused the body to produce immune cells known as T cells and B cells that can keep defenses going for years. The vaccine-induced immune response was stronger and less variable than the immune response that follows a natural infection, they found.
Another study in the New England Journal of Medicine in February showed blood taken from people who got Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine continued to produce an immune response against B.1.351.
“Although we do not yet know exactly what level of neutralization is required for protection against Covid-19 disease or infection, our experience with other vaccines tells us that it is likely that the Pfizer vaccine offers relatively good protection against this new variant,” Scott Weaver, director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at University of Texas Medical Branch, told CNN at the time.
Nonetheless, last month, South African virologists argued that there’s growing evidence the vaccines being developed do not work as well against B.1.351 and urged vaccine makes to start tweaking their formulas now.
Although he’s taking part in clinical trials that require regular blood draws to check his immunity, Haydon has no idea how well protected he is from the virus.
“I know that early on in the trial, myself and all the participants did develop neutralizing antibodies — the kind that you are looking for. That was clear many, many months ago,” Haydon said. “But the level of those antibodies, and how the levels have changed over time, is not something that I’m told. That is one of the main things that is being evaluated over the study.”
He had a strong reaction to the first round of vaccination and said the third dose he just received caused some effects, too.
“Flulike is the right way to describe my symptoms,” he said. “I ended up with a fever, chills, a little bit of nausea, headache,” he added.
Immunologists say that’s a sign the immune system is responding to the vaccine, although people who report no symptoms also develop an immune response, so the symptoms do not appear to suggest someone’s having a better response than someone who doesn’t develop a fever.
Haydon doesn’t know whether his response this time around says anything about what level of immunity he still had from the first dose he was given a year ago.
What he does know is that he cannot behave as if he is completely immune. So he still wears a mask whenever he goes out and has avoided almost all travel.
“We’re living in a world where most people aren’t vaccinated. The fact that you yourself are vaccinated doesn’t change everything for you,” Haydon said.
“We still have to take a lot of the same precautions as an unvaccinated person,” he added. Although your risk of going to the hospital is greatly diminished, spreading the virus is a major concern. It’s not until recently that we started to collect data (showing) that vaccinated people also spread the virus a lot less. So that’s a recent discovery and a very good sign.”
President Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said in a Monday podcast that the federal government will not mandate passports that show proof of COVID-19 vaccinations.
But the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told the “Politico Dispatch” podcast that he expects certain businesses and educational institutions may require them.
“I doubt that the federal government will be the main mover of a vaccine passport concept,” he said. “They may be involved in making sure things are done fairly and equitably, but I doubt if the federal government is gonna be the leading element of that.”
Fauci said “individual entities,” such as theaters and universities, might take the lead on vaccine requirements and implement their own policies.
“I’m not saying that they should or that they would, but I’m saying you could foresee how an independent entity might say, ‘Well, we can’t be dealing with you unless we know you’re vaccinated,’ ” Fauci said. “But it’s not going to be mandated from the federal government.”
The debate over digital or physical vaccine passports has been growing in recent weeks as the U.S. starts to transition into post-pandemic life.
Fauci’s comments are in line with what other administration officials have said recently, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki saying last week that there will be “no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed an executive order last week banning government entities from giving out vaccine passports to residents and prohibiting businesses from mandating customers provide proof of vaccination to receive services.
New York, on the other hand, launched the Excelsior Pass last month, which uses a QR code on a phone app to verify proof of vaccination. The European Union also released a proposal for vaccine passports that would allow travelers to cross country borders without having to quarantine.
Republican strategists and operatives told The Hill that they plan to highlight the vaccine passport debate in an effort to win over midterm voters who are concerned about government overreach.
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A little less disinfecting is fine: CDC finds low risk of COVID-19 transmission on surfaces
More than a year into the pandemic, and establishments continue to tout their cleaning protocols as a way to prove how safe it is to, say, eat in a restaurant, go to the store, or ride the subway. New guidance released by the CDC Monday ought to put that so-called “hygiene theater” to rest.
According to the guidance, the risk of getting a COVID-19 infection from contaminated surfaces is extremely low.
The principal mode by which people are infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus is through exposure to respiratory droplets, the CDC said.
How low? While not impossible, the agency said the risk of infection through fomites is “generally less than 1 in 10,000.”
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