Some of the most egregious moves to silence journalists reporting on the pandemic took place in Brazil, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, the group said.
Greta Thunberg joins WHO in condemning vaccine nationalism, urges help for lower-income nations
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg appeared at a World Health Organization news conference to condemn vaccine nationalism, saying vaccines should go to lower-income countries before the young and healthy in developed nations.
Thunberg, 18, who made her name denouncing the lack of government action on climate change, weighed in on a topic repeatedly touched on by the U.N. organization as some countries, including Israel, Britain and the United States, vaccinate younger and healthier people.
WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned in January of the “moral failure” of wealthier countries snapping up available vaccines first and has urged them to share their vaccines with poorer nations once their own most vulnerable are vaccinated.
Thunberg, who donated $120,000 to the WHO’s global vaccine initiative, called it “completely unethical” that wealthier countries were vaccinating young people “if that happens at the expense of people in risk groups and on the front lines in low and middle-income countries.”
“The international community, governments and vaccine developers must step up their game and address the tragedy that is vaccine inequity,” she added.
Experts have long argued that if the virus is left to rage unchecked through much of the world it could mutate into more powerful variants and prolong the pandemic.
Thunberg also linked the pandemic to the need to treat the environment better, citing theories that the pandemics have grown out of human exploitation of natural resources and encroachment on animal habitats.
“We can no longer separate the health crisis from the ecological crisis, and we cannot separate the ecological crisis from the climate crisis. It’s all interlinked in many ways.”
In remarks this week, Tedros noted that 5.2 million new coronavirus infections were reported in the last week, the most since the pandemic began. He added that infections and hospitalizations of younger groups under 60 were growing at an “alarming” rate.
India’s ferocious coronavirus surge makes up a third of all global new cases
NEW DELHI — More than a year after the pandemic began, infections worldwide have surpassed their previous peak. The average number of coronavirus cases reported each day is now higher than it has ever been.
“Cases and deaths are continuing to increase at worrying rates,” said World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday.
A major reason for the increase: the ferocity of India’s second wave. The country accounts for about one in three of all new cases.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Earlier this year, India appeared to be weathering the pandemic. The number of daily cases dropped below 10,000 and the government launched a vaccination drive powered by locally made vaccines.
But experts say that changes in behavior and the influence of new variants have combined to produce a tidal wave of new cases.
Governments used covid-19 to crack down on press, Reporters Without Borders says
Governments around the world have used the pandemic as a pretext to clamp down on press freedoms, Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday, contributing to a “dramatic deterioration” in people’s access to information globally.
The Paris-based group highlighted coronavirus-related restrictions in its annual World Press Freedom Index for 2020, which ranked 180 nations on media freedom and independence worldwide.
Last year, as outbreaks worsened and lockdowns ensued, authorities moved to block coverage, pass draconian media laws and arrest and intimidate journalists investigating official responses to the crisis.
The group, which is known by its French acronym RSF, said that the virus affected press freedoms in every region, including places such as Europe and North America.
“The Covid-19 crisis demonstrated that no nation is immune to the viral threat of disinformation,” RSF said. “Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than in the US, where falsehoods about the virus were picked up by some media and debunked by others as infection rates soared into the tens of millions.”
In South America, the report said, leaders such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolas Maduro, promoted medically unproven covid-19 remedies, forcing investigative journalists to debunk their claims.
In Egypt, the government “simply banned the publication of any pandemic statistics that didn’t come from the Ministry of Health,” the report said. Elsewhere, Zimbabwean reporter Hopewell Chin’ono was arrested shortly after helping expose the overbilling practices of a medical equipment supply company.
New Zealand’s leader says travel bubble unlikely to pop as new case emerges
SYDNEY — New Zealand’s leader has expressed confidence that a quarantine-free travel bubble with neighboring Australia won’t be popped a day after it began, as an Auckland border worker tested positive for coronavirus.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said early investigations suggested the person was a cleaner on a plane that had arrived carrying passengers with the virus from a country in which domestic transmission is still rife.
The person was fully vaccinated, and subject to regular testing, she said.
“When we opened [the border] … we knew we would continue to have cases,” Ardern told reporters. “We accept that it is going to be part of our journey together. On both sides, we’re looking for clear connections to the border, and in this case, there was.”
Under a bubble arrangement that began Monday, travelers from Australia — where local transmission is rare — don’t mix with passengers from high-risk destinations. They travel on different flights and are separated at the airport terminal into so-called green and red zones to indicate the level of risk. Passengers from other destinations are required to undertake a two-week quarantine in government-managed facilities.
Travel bubbles have been under discussion around the world since early in the pandemic, but logistics and shifting patterns of virus spread have complicated such plans. The bubble between Australia and New Zealand is one of the first of its kind.
The Pacific nation of Palau welcomed back tourists this month from Taiwan. Singapore and Hong Kong were scheduled to launch an air travel bubble in November. However, the plan was delayed after Hong Kong saw an increase in cases.
China says it recognizes Western shots for its vaccine passports
China has quietly begun accepting U.S. coronavirus vaccination records in travel applications to the country, as it seeks to negotiate mutual recognition of vaccine passports with other nations.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said in an online notice late last week that Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccine records can be submitted as part of an application for a coronavirus QR “health code” — China’s version of a vaccine passport and a requirement to enter the country.
Greece to reopen for tourists — including Americans
Greece on Monday took a significant step in trying to jump-start its tourist economy, becoming one of the first European Union countries to reopen for leisure travelers from the United States. The changes also open the doors to travelers from some 30 other nations, including E.U. member states.
Americans, as well as travelers from those other nations, can enter without quarantine, whether vaccinated or not. Those who are unvaccinated need a negative PCR test.
International flights will also be allowed to resume in several major Greek tourist destinations.
Other smaller, Mediterranean countries, like Cyprus and Croatia, have already loosened the rules for tourism as well. But most E.U. countries have followed the recommendation from Brussels in maintaining a ban on nonessential travel from outside the bloc, particularly as the continent contends with a variant-driven third wave.
Greece, though, is going its own route, fearful of losing out another summer tourism season. Tourism accounts for roughly one-quarter of the country’s GDP. Greece is also planning to prioritize tourism employees for vaccines, after it finishes providing doses to the elderly and vulnerable. The country, which is dealing with a surge of infections, has been under lockdown for months, with restaurants closed and a curfew coming into force at 9 p.m.
Greek officials say a sampling of tourists will be tested at the border, based on an algorithm that takes into account the spread of the virus in a traveler’s originating country.
“We know the demand is going to be there,” Greece’s tourism minister, Harry Theocharis, said. “We need to be prepared now.”
Johnson & Johnson suffers another setback as FDA tells Md. vaccine maker to suspend production
Emergent BioSolutions has shut down new manufacturing of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine at its Baltimore plant at the request of the Food and Drug Administration after an inspection of the troubled facility last week, Emergent said Monday.
The halt in production is another setback for Johnson & Johnson as it attempts to meet its promise to deliver nearly 100 million doses of vaccine to the U.S. government by the end of May.
Emergent’s brief statement Monday said the FDA began a new inspection of its Bayview facility on April 12. On Friday, at the FDA’s request, “Emergent agreed not to initiate the manufacturing of any new material at its Bayview facility and to quarantine existing material manufactured at the Bayview facility pending completion of the inspection and remediation of any resulting findings,’’ the company said.
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