There could soon be “two Americas”, one where most people are vaccinated and another where there are low vaccination rates, top US health official Dr Anthony Fauci has warned.
The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief and the top medical advisor to the president told CNN he is “very concerned” about a disparity between places with low and high vaccination rates
When you have such a low level of vaccination superimposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, what you are going to see among under-vaccinated regions – be that states, cities or counties – you’re going to see these individual types of blips ... It’s almost like it’s going to be two Americas.
If you are vaccinated, you diminish dramatically your risk of getting infected and even more dramatically your risk of getting seriously ill. If you are not vaccinated, you are at considerable risk.
CNN reports that 29.7% of the population is fully vaccinated in Mississippi, and that unvaccinated people have accounted for more than 90% of Covid-19 cases and deaths in the past month, according to Dr. Thomas Dobbs, the state health officer for the Mississippi Department of Public Health.
Mississippi joins Alabama, Arkansas, Wyoming, and Louisiana in having less than 35% of residents fully vaccinated, with entrenched scepticism over vaccines in some communities and concerns that the jabs have not received full approval appearing to lead to significant resistance.
Members of the US military who were vaccinated against Covid showed higher-than-expected rates of heart inflammation, although the condition was still extremely rare, according to a new study.
Reuters reports that the study found that 23 previously healthy males with an average age of 25 complained of chest pain within four days of receiving a Covid-19 shot. The incident rate was higher than some previous estimates would have anticipated, it said.
All the patients, who at the time of the study’s publication had recovered or were recovering from myocarditis – an inflammation of the heart muscle – had received shots made by either Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna.
US health regulators last week added a warning to the literature that accompanies those mRNA vaccines to flag the rare risk of heart inflammation seen primarily in young males. But they said the benefit of the shots in preventing Covid-19 clearly continues to outweigh the risk.
The study, which was published in the JAMA Cardiology medical journal, said 19 of the patients were current military members who had received their second vaccine dose. The others had either received one dose or were retired from the military.
General population estimates would have predicted eight or fewer cases of myocarditis from the 436,000 male military members who received two Covid-19 shots, the study said.
Dozens of Italian prison guards beat unarmed inmates with truncheons and fists in the aftermath of a coronavirus-related protest last year, video footage captured on surveillance shows.
The video of the 6 April 2020 incident at the Santa Maria Capua Vetere prison north of Naples was published by Italian daily Domani today, prompting outrage.
Prosecutors launched an investigation last year following complaints by prisoners of retaliatory beatings carried out over four hours the day after an inmate protest prompted by news that an inmate had tested positive for Covid-19, AFP reports.
Fifty-two people working in the prison network faced arrest or legal action in the case this week, accused variously of torture, violence and abuse of office, with a total of over 110 people under investigation.
In the more than six minutes of footage compiled by Domani, dozens of prison guards, many of them in helmets and carrying shields, can be seen setting upon inmates.
Prisoners are seen covering their heads as they hurry through a human corridor of guards, receiving slaps on the head, kicks and beatings with truncheons as they pass. In other images, prisoners - some of them limping and in visible pain - can be seen climbing a stairway where guards on a landing slap them or beat them with their batons.
The images also show an inmate in a wheelchair being hit on the back, and at least three men who have fallen to the ground being beaten and kicked, according to AFP.
At least 150 inmates barricaded themselves inside their cells during the prison protest last year, according to news reports, nearly a month after a wave of riots in Italian prisons spurred by demands for Covid-19 tests and anger at the banning of family visits during the coronavirus lockdown.
Text messages between guards revealed that the operation, which involved over 280 penitentiary police, was planned and retaliatory in nature, prosecutors said.
The Australian home affairs minister has rejected calls to reduce caps on international arrivals amid outbreaks of the Delta variant, saying “we need to learn to live” with Covid.
Leaders in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia are calling on prime minister Scott Morrison to reduce passenger caps – of about 1,000 passengers entering Queensland and 3,000 coming to New South Wales, AAP reports.
Home affairs minster Karen Andrews said the caps were not large and that Australia should resist more draconian measures. “We need to learn to live and to work in the Covid environment in which we find ourselves,” she said. “The first response should not be to close down our borders.”
Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said further limiting international arrivals would ignore critical skill shortages. “This would be take us in precisely the wrong direction,” he said, according to AAP.
Outbreaks of the contagious Delta variant have led authorities to put more than 12 million Australians into lockdown.
WA premier Mark McGowan meanwhile believes the vast majority of people granted exemptions to travel overseas for work and study should not have been allowed to leave. “They should stay home while there is a pandemic running wild around the world,” he said, calling for a tougher approach to granting permission to leave
Between 25 March last year and 31 May this year, 156,507 Australian citizens and permanent residents were granted exemptions to leave Australia with 84,031 requests denied.
Earlier this month, an Australian court rejected a challenge to the federal government’s draconian power to prevent most citizens from leaving the country so that they don’t bring Covid-19 home.
Australia is alone among developed democracies in preventing its citizens and permanent residents from leaving the country except in “exceptional circumstances” where they can demonstrate a “compelling reason”. This has left most Australians stranded in their island nation since March 2020.
The head of the UN’s World Food Programme has warned there could be “unprecedented famine of biblical proportions” in dozens of countries without further action to address food shortages.
Speaking at a G20 event on humanitarian aid in Brindisi, Italy, WFP chief David Beasley said world leaders had stepped up last year with funds to help those already struggling when the coronavirus pandemic hit - but must now do so again.
“We thought Covid would be in our rearview mirror by the end of 2020, only to see it recycled, with Delta and other variants taking place, devastating particularly and especially low-income and developing nations around the world who have been catastrophically smited by this perfect storm,” he said.
“These are not just numbers, these are not just statistics, these are people with real names, real lives, fragile and literally on the brink of starvation. If we don’t address their needs, over the next six to nine months you could have unprecedented famine of biblical proportions, destabilisation of nations and mass migration. The simple solution is we need more support.”
Aid agencies say food shortages driven by conflict, climate change and economic shocks has been exacerbated by the crisis of the pandemic, AFP reports.
Switzerland donates 4m AstraZeneca doses to Covax, with shot unapproved by regulator
Switzerland is to give 4m doses of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine that it has reserved to the vaccine-sharing programme Covax, the government has said.
Switzerland originally reserved 5.4m doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, but the country’s medical regulator, Swissmedic, has yet to approve the shot, on grounds it has not received all necessary data from clinical trials, Reuters reports.
It is the latest example in a seemingly emerging trend of some countries seeking to offload jabs from the British-Swedish pharma giant.
“Through the unequal distribution of vaccines we can expect that the pandemic will continue for a long time to come,” the government said in a statement, seeking to play a small part in remedying the issue.
Switzerland has ordered significantly more mRNA vaccines from Moderna and from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech. “The Swiss federal government is concentrating on mRNA vaccines,” it said. “These have proven themselves to be highly effective and tolerable.”
Thailand is to import nearly 4m doses of Moderna’s mRNA coronavirus vaccine towards the end of this year and a further million in early 2022, for use by private hospitals.
Reuters reports that Thailand’s vaccinations strategy so far has relied heavily on the viral vector vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca and Sinovac Biotech’s inactivated Covid-19 vaccine.
The government pharmaceutical organization in a statement said 3.9m doses of the Moderna vaccine would be delivered in the fourth quarter and 1.1m doses in the first quarter of 2022.
The announcement comes as the Infectious Disease Association of Thailand (IDAT) urged prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha to secure more mRNA vaccines to better contain the outbreak.
“The vaccine procurement plan of 150m doses has a high proportion of Sinovac,” the association said in a letter to Prayuth, citing that mRNA vaccines had a higher efficacy rate than that of Sinovac.
Thailand has also ordered five million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccines and 20m doses of the mRNA vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. The south-east Asian country today reported a new daily record of 53 coronavirus deaths, and 4,786 new infections.
In related news, AFP reports that the wearable gadgets market has been booming as the pandemic led to greater interest in health monitoring amid working from home.
While worldwide sales of smartphones slumped last year, a record 527 million wearables were sold in 2020, up from 384 million in 2019, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.
It was the first time that global wearable sales topped half a billion and analysts expect the trend to continue, with the firm forecasting the devices will overtake smartphone sales by the end of the decade.
Ear-worn devices such as earbuds, which can be used to make calls and listen to music, accounted for nearly two-thirds of global wearable sales last year as people working from home upgraded their headphones for video calling.
Wristwear such as fitness trackers and smartwatches, which can monitor steps, the heart rate and even oxygen levels, accounted for 36% of worldwide wearable sales, as people paid more attention to their health during the pandemic and exercise moved outdoors since gyms were closed in many places.
“Everybody is becoming much more health focused and wearables are a good device to assist with that,” said Neil Mawston, an executive director at Strategy Analytics.
British households built up their savings to the second highest level on record at the start of the year as the Covid-19 lockdown limited opportunities to spend, according to official figures.
France has today ended most capacity limits imposed in April on restaurants, cinemas, stores and other public venues, although the measures were extended in parts of the southwest over the spread of the coronavirus Delta variant.
The move came as the doctor who heads president Emmanuel Macron’s coronavirus advisory panel said a “fourth wave” of cases was likely this autumn.
In the southwestern Landes department, officials said the capacity limits would be extended to 6 July because of “weak collective immunity” in the area.
Around 45% of new cases are being caused by the Delta variant, which was first detected in India and has been blamed for an increase in daily Covid deaths in Britain, AFP reports.
Seven virus clusters have been discovered in businesses or retirement homes, Didier Couteaud of the regional health service in western France said during a video press conference.
Elsewhere across France, events will no longer be limited to 1,000 people, whether indoors or outdoors, though participants will have to show proof of their Covid inoculation, a negative test or a recent infection.
Professional sporting matches will no longer be limited to 5,000 people, though capacity limits may still be applied to the summer music festivals that traditionally attract huge crowds. The next stage in the lifting of restrictions will see nightclubs reopen on 9 July. Face masks remain required in public indoor spaces and in crowds outdoors.
Dense crowds at the annual Gay Pride march in Paris, Saturday, 26 June 2021. Photograph: Lewis Joly/AP
