Shi has denied these accusations, and now finds herself defending the reputation of her lab and, by extension, that of her country. Reached on her cellphone two weeks ago, Dr Shi said at first that she preferred not to speak directly with reporters, citing her institute’s policies. Yet she could barely contain her frustration.
“How on earth can I offer up evidence for something where there is no evidence?” she said, her voice rising in anger during the brief, unscheduled conversation. “I don’t know how the world has come to this, constantly pouring filth on an innocent scientist,” she wrote in a text message.
In a rare interview over email, she denounced the suspicions as baseless, including the allegations that several of her colleagues may have been ill before the outbreak emerged.
The speculation boils down to one central question: Did Dr. Shi’s lab hold any source of the new coronavirus before the pandemic erupted? Dr. Shi’s answer is an emphatic no.
A 2017 photo of Shi Zhengli working with other researchers in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Photograph: AP
Israel told its citizens they could stop wearing masks indoors, ending one of its last main restrictions as new Covid-19 infections continued to wane even as vaccinations tapered off after a record rollout.
Children headed to school and adults to work without masks for the first time in more than a year. Israelis have not had to wear masks outdoors since April.
About 55% of Israel’s 9.3 million population are fully vaccinated – a turnout largely unchanged by this month’s expansion of eligibility to include 12- to 15-year-olds.
Dan Williams reports from Jerusalem for Reuters that Israel has this month logged either zero or one daily Covid deaths, Health Ministry data shows. New infections have been in a steady but gentle decline after a steep drop-off in February and March.
The ministry said masks would still be required of unvaccinated patients or staff in medical facilities, of people en route to quarantine and of passengers on commercial flights.
Michael Gove is on the UK media round this morning, and pretty much saying the same thing everywhere. He’s been pushing this line that 19 July is the new “terminus date” for ending restrictions in England, although with the events of the last couple of days, you’d be forgiven for thinking that roadmap had been as final_FINAL_revised_v2.doc.
Alan McGuinness(@Alan_McGuinness)
Gove on 19 July: “That will be the terminus date.
“What we said is we won’t lift those restrictions before the 21 June – in there in the roadmap it says not before – and the whole point about the roadmap was to build in an element of flexibility and caution…
“It is regrettable that we do have this pause before moving to step four, but what we want to do is make sure that when we do make that move that we don’t go back…
“Because the worst thing for business, the worst thing for any of us, would be to open up again and then to very quickly find that we had to reimpose restrictions.”
Uganda has all but run out of Covid-19 vaccines and oxygen as the country grapples with another wave of the pandemic.
Both private and public medical facilities in the capital, Kampala and in towns across the country – including regional hubs in Entebbe, Jinja, Soroti, Gulu and Masaka – have reported running out or having acute shortages of AstraZeneca vaccines and oxygen. Hospitals report they are no longer able to admit patients to intensive care.
Several vaccination centres and hospitals across the country have suspended programmes, throwing into doubt efforts to vaccinate 21.9 million high-risk people.
Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, the World Health Organization’s representative to Uganda, confirmed that as of Monday, the National Medical Stores, Uganda’s central distribution hub for all public health facilities, had run out of vaccines.
The Uganda Medical Association (UMA) said the situation was dire, as the country records week-on-week increases in new cases. The WHO reported 1,735 confirmed cases on Sunday 13 June, compared with 60 cases on 13 May– an increase of nearly 2,800%. As of Monday, the total number of confirmed cases stood at 60,250 with 423 deaths.
Last week, the WHO warned of a third wave of the pandemic across Africa, with 90% of countries likely to miss a vaccination target of at least 10% of their populations by September.
The UK’s unemployment rate has fallen again as more people returned to work as pandemic restrictions were eased.
New figures released by the Office for National Statistics this morning show that 197,000 people joined company payrolls in May, the sixth monthly increase in a row.
That follows the reopening of non-essential shops, leisure and hospitality venues in April, and the resumption of indoor services in pubs and restaurants in May.
The latest figures “suggest that the jobs market is showing signs of recovery”, the ONS says – although there are still more than half a million fewer people on payrolls than before the pandemic.
But the delay to the final easing of Covid-19 restrictions in England was announced yesterday could lead to job losses, businesses fear, unless the government provides more support.
The UK’s largest trade bodies joined hospitality businesses and trade unions in urging the government to change its mind and come up with new support measures, warning that businesses will be driven to the wall otherwise.
Tony Danker, the director general of Britain’s most powerful business lobby group, the CBI, said the government “must urgently revisit the support available”, including the tapering of business rates relief and a moratorium on landlords’ right to collect commercial rent.
Speaking of Michael Gove, it looks like he is up front and centre today in the UK government’s media operation to justify the way they have handled the delay to lifting restrictions in England.
On Sky News, asked by presenter Kay Burley about the Labour claim that the UK government “should have moved at lightning speed” to close the borders with India, as was done with Pakistan and Bangladesh, and that the delay was caused by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s desire for a “trade deal photo op”, Gove denied this.
It’s not true. No. We closed our borders, we put India on the “red list”, at the earliest, appropriate opportunity on the basis of all the evidence that we had. In fact we put India on the “red list” before we knew that this Delta variant was a variant of concern.
It is worth noting that on 9 April Pakistan had a seven-day average of 21 cases per million people, Bangladesh had twice as many and India had four times as many. Pakistan and Bangladesh were put on the red list at that point. India was not added until 23 April, after Johnson’s planned trip to India was cancelled on 19 April.
Sky News(@SkyNews)
Michael Gove denies Jonathan Ashworth’s claim that the government failed to close the border between the UK and India because of a ‘trade deal photo opportunity’.
He tells #KayBurley ‘we closed our borders at the earliest appropriate opportunity’
There’s also these couple of bits on Twitter from this Michael Gove appearance.
Tamara Cohen(@tamcohen)
Gove reiterates that July 19 is “terminus date” and only an “unprecedented and remarkable” change can derail it…
Clearly the goal, but Jeremy Hunt last night warned ministers to stop using word “irreversible” as likely we will be living with Covid for the rest of our lives.
I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from him through the rest of the morning.
By the way, with the way the 21 June date has been dominating the news, you’d be forgiven for thinking this had been a UK-wide change of plan, rather than just one affecting England. My colleague Peter Walker noted yesterday evening what the situation is in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland:
Public health is a devolved matter, and so varies in each of the UK nations – although Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, has discussed the latest plans with the leaders of the other UK nations. Scotland has varying restrictions, from level 0 to level 2, and does not have a 21 June-style date to consider further reopening. In Wales, restrictions eased on 7 June to allow more people to meet indoors and outdoors, and to permit some mass outdoor gatherings, but some unlocking measures were delayed. Northern Ireland has similar unlocking measures to the rest of the UK, with a review under way into, for example, allowing outdoor events beyond the current cap of 500 people.
The total death toll in the US from Covid has reached 599,945, according to the tally by Johns Hopkins University, which is the source that the Guardian has been throughout the pandemic.
Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, said at the weekend that “We have the tools to control this and defeat it,” Gottlieb said. “We just need to use those tools.”
The vaccination tracker at the Washington Post states that 174.2 million people in the US have received at least one vaccine dose, with 144.9 million people fully vaccinated.
Good morning. It’s Martin Belam here in London picking up the live blog baton. Fifteen months can be a long time in a pandemic. In March 2020, British prime minister Boris Johnson was telling the public that the UK could turn the tide of coronavirus in 12 weeks and “send coronavirus packing in this country”. It is June 2021 and he’s just had to push back his cherished reopening date from 21 June to 19 July.
You can expect the morning media round in the UK to be dominated by this decision, with questions about the timing of the announcement, the risk posed to the entertainment and hospitality sectors by an extra four weeks having to operate under onerous conditions or remain shut, and why the announcement was leaked to the press at the weekend, rather than being addressed in parliament first.
There will also be a steady hum of discontent. I noted last night Covid sceptic Allison Pearson saying that the presentation used percentages rather than raw numbers because the caseload and numbers of people are actually very low. It’s still a wilful decision to pretend not to understand that a small number doubling every couple of days gets you to a large number very, very quickly.
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro on Monday asked Pfizer to bring forward planned delivery of Covid-19 vaccines, a government source said, aiming to speed up a slow national inoculation programme, Reuters reports.
The request is a turnaround for Bolsonaro who last year ignored offers of vaccines from Pfizer, according to testimony to a Senate commission investigating delays in vaccinating the country with the world’s second-deadliest outbreak.
Bolsonaro, his chief of staff and ministers of health and foreign affairs, held a conference call with Pfizer Brasil chief executive Marta Diez and Pfizer Latin America chief executive Carlos Murillo, the president’s office said on social media.
Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro, a vaccine skeptic who opposed lockdown and social distancing, asked the Pfizer executives if deliveries for later this year could be brought forward to June, from the fourth quarter, a government official with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Pfizer Brasil declined to comment on the meeting.
Almost half a million Brazilians have died from Covid, yet only 10.3% of the country’s 210 million people have received a first vaccine dose, and just 25% have been fully vaccinated, mainly with vaccines developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd and AstraZeneca Plc.
More on the WHO’s comments, from AFP: While people in many wealthy nations are enjoying a return to a sense of normalcy thanks to high vaccination rates, the shots remain scarce in less well-off parts of the world. In terms of doses administered, the imbalance between the G7 and low-income countries, as defined by the World Bank, is 73 to one.
Many of the donated G7 doses will be filtered through Covax, a global body charged with ensuring equitable vaccine distribution.
Run by the WHO, the Gavi vaccine alliance and CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, it has to date shipped more than 87 million vaccine doses to 131 countries – far fewer than anticipated.
The WHO wants at least 70% of the world’s population vaccinated by the next G7 meeting in Germany next year.
“To do that, we need 11bn doses. The G7 and G20 can make this happen,” said Tedros
The WHO warned Monday that Covid-19 was moving faster than the vaccines, and said the G7’s vow to share a billion doses with poorer nations was simply not enough, AFP reports.
Global health leaders also warned the pledge was too little, too late, with more than 11bn shots needed.
Faced with outrage over disparities in jab access, the Group of Seven industrialised powers pledged during a weekend summit in Britain to take their total dose donations to more than 1bn, up from 130 million promised in February.
“I welcome the announcement that G7 countries will donate 870 million (new) vaccine doses, primarily through Covax,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists.
“This is a big help, but we need more, and we need them faster. Right now, the virus is moving faster than the global distribution of vaccines.
“More than 10,000 people are dying every day … these communities need vaccines, and they need them now, not next year.”
Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.
The WHO warned on Monday that Covid-19 was moving faster than the vaccines, and said the G7’s vow to share a billion doses with poorer nations was simply not enough. Global health leaders also warned the pledge was too little, too late, with more than 11bn shots needed.
Meanwhile, the US is poised to pass the dark milestone of 600,000 deaths over the course of the pandemic, with 599,945 fatalities confirmed currently on the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
Here are the other key recent developments:
Boris Johnson announced a four-week delay to the lifting of coronavirus restrictions in England. He said the extra delay could prevent thousands of deaths by allowing more vaccinations. No 10 said data indicated two doses of a vaccine were needed for protection against the Delta variant causing a rise in cases.
The main impacts of that delay in England will be pubs and hospitality remain restricted to table service and with social distancing measures in place, people should still work from home where possible, theatres and entertainment venues will have their capacity held at 50% and nightclubs will have to remain closed. The limit of 30 people at weddings and receptions has been lifted though, and also for wakes – although there are still some restrictions in place on what you can do.
The Delta variant has been detected in 74 countries and is continuing to spread, prompting fears it will become the most dominant strain globally. There is also concern that while data is being shared, countries with weaker monitoring systems may not have detected the strain’s presence.
Indonesia said it fears rising cases will not peak until July, despite hospitals in the capital Jakarta and other parts of Java already coming close to full capacity. The country is trying to increase hospital capacity and turn hotels into isolation centres.
Russia reported 13,721 new coronavirus cases, including 6,590 in the capital, Moscow. Authorities in St Petersburg, which is hosting a series of Euro 2020 matches, said on Monday they were tightening anti-coronavirus restrictions in an effort to curb a new spike in infections. Food courts and children’s play areas in shopping malls in Russia’s second city will be closed, and no food will be sold at Euro 2020 fan zones.
South Africa has had to bin 2m Johnson and Johnson doses because of a potential contamination of ingredients traced back to the US. It is another setback for the country’s vaccination campaign with the doses planned for health workers and over-60s.
A WHO official said Africa will get priority treatment for the 870m vaccine doses pledged by the G7 because it has emerged as one of “the most vulnerable, under-served (areas)”.
The two main hospitals in Afghanistan dealing with Covid-19 have had to turn away patients, saying they have no more beds and are short on oxygen and medical supplies.
Thailand’s recently launched coronavirus vaccination campaign was hit by confusion after at least 20 hospitals in Bangkok postponed Covid-19 inoculation appointments set for this week, citing delays in vaccine deliveries. A series of coronavirus outbreaks in Thai factories is also raising concerns that the export sector could be hit hard, threatening to further undermine an economy as it struggles to recover from the pandemic’s crippling blow to the crucial tourism industry.
No comments:
Post a Comment