SYDNEY: Sydney will enter a hard two-week lockdown on Saturday (Jun 26) night as authorities try to contain a fast-spreading outbreak of the highly infectious Delta coronavirus variant in Australia’s largest city, the state premier said. More than a million people in downtown Sydney and the city’s eastern suburbs were […]
Healthcare
NSW officials have so far resisted calls for a hard lockdown although Australia has a good record of successfully suppressing past outbreaks through snap lockdowns, tough social distancing rules and swift contact tracing. Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), reported a double digit rise in new locally acquired […]
A Senate panel probing the government’s handling of the pandemic on Wednesday formally called the logistics department official, Luís Ricardo Miranda, to testify. A Brazilian Health Ministry official alerted President Jair Bolsonaro to internal pressure he was facing to buy a COVID-19 vaccine developed by India’s Bharat Biotech, a Congressman […]
JERUSALEM: An Israeli health official on Monday (Jun 21) urged more 12- to 15-year-olds to be vaccinated against COVID-19, citing new outbreaks that he attributed to the more infectious Delta variant. Israel expanded vaccine eligibility to include adolescents last month. Infections have fallen off sharply in recent weeks. Vaccination turnout […]
JAKARTA: More than 350 Indonesian doctors have contracted Covid-19 despite being vaccinated with Sinovac and dozens have been hospitalised, officials said, as concerns rise about the efficacy of some vaccines against more virulent virus strains. Most of the doctors were asymptomatic and self-isolating at home, said Badai Ismoyo, head of […]
SAN FRANCISCO: California, the first state in America to put in place a coronavirus lockdown, is now turning a page on the pandemic. At the stroke of midnight, California is lifting most of its COVID-19 restrictions and ushering in what has been billed as the state’s “Grand Reopening”. Starting Tuesday […]
BEIJING: China’s government said today that it welcomed Taiwanese to come and get vaccinated against Covid-19 and called on Taiwan to remove obstacles and allow its people to receive the “highly effective” Chinese shots. China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory and has repeatedly offered to send vaccines […]
ST IVES: US President Joe Biden will announce plans on Thursday to buy and donate 500 million doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine to more than 90 countries, while calling on the world’s democracies to do their part to help end the deadly pandemic, the White House said. Biden will […]
BENGALURU: An Indian state has raised its Covid-19 death toll sharply higher after the discovery of thousands of unreported cases, lending weight to suspicion that India’s overall death tally is significantly more than the official figure. Indian hospitals ran out of beds and life-saving oxygen during a devastating second wave […]
GENEVA: The WHO on Monday (Jun 7) called for COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers to give COVAX first refusal on new doses, or commit half of their volumes to the global jab equity scheme. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said manufacturers should turn their attention to the COVAX facility, which […]