Health News at Your Fingertips

Tanzania’s health ministry has said it has no plans in place to accept Covid-19 vaccines, just days after the president of the country of 60 million people expressed doubt about the vaccines without offering evidence, AP reports.

Health minister Dorothy Gwajima told a press conference in the capital, Dodoma, yesterday that “the ministry has no plans to receive vaccines for Covid-19.” Any vaccines must receive ministry approval. It is not clear when any vaccines might arrive, though Tanzania is eligible for the COVAX global effort aimed at delivering doses to low- and middle-income countries.

The health minister insisted Tanzania is safe. During a presentation in which she and others didn’t wear face masks, she encouraged the public to improve hygiene practices including the use of sanitisers but also steam inhalation — which has been dismissed by health experts elsewhere as a way to kill the coronavirus.

The World Health Organisation mission investigating the origins of Covid-19 in China was going “very well”, one of its members said, as the team visited an animal disease control centre in the city where the first cases were reported.

China has faced criticism for playing down the initial outbreak and concealing information when it first emerged in Wuhan in December 2019, raising doubts over the usefulness of the WHO trip.

The investigative team arrived at the Hubei province animal disease prevention centre in Wuhan Tuesday morning, where the group donned white hazmat suits for a tour of the facilities.

Team member Peter Daszak told journalists the mission was “excellent” and proceeding “very well” as the group was driven into the facility, while team lead Peter Ben Embarek nodded when asked if the experts were being given sufficient access in Wuhan.

The mission – delayed by China and weighed down by political baggage – has a remit to explore how the virus jumped from animal to human, but questions remain over what the experts can hope to find, one year on.

Beijing is keen to put the focus on its recovery from the outbreak. The team of scientists toured a propaganda exhibition celebrating China’s recovery from the pandemic in Wuhan on Saturday.

Daszak said after the tour that the team had held a “very informative meeting” and also tweeted that WHO experts had met with “key staff in charge of livestock surveillance” and had “in-depth discussion.”

The experts also received a visit at their hotel on Tuesday from officials of the Wuhan Blood Centre, which collected blood plasma last year from recovered Covid-19 patients.

On Sunday the team went to the market in Wuhan where one of the first reported clusters of infections emerged over a year ago, which Daszak tweeted was a “critical” stop.

The UN agency hit back at critics on Monday, telling a press conference in Geneva, “if you have the answers… please let us know.”

The coronavirus mutation “of most concern” has occurred spontaneously in the UK variant, a professor of outbreak medicine who is part of a panel that advises the British government said.

The E484K mutation, which occurs on the spike protein of the virus, is the same change as has been seen in the South African and Brazilian variants that have caused international concern.

“The mutation of most concern, which we call E484K, has also occurred spontaneously in the new Kent strain in parts of the country too,” said Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said on BBC radio.

He was referring to the UK variant, which scientists call B.1.1.7 and which was first detected in the southern English county of Kent.
The fact that the E484K mutation had occurred spontaneously in Britain had already been reported in a technical briefing published by Public Health England, but this had not been widely noticed outside of scientific circles.

“A limited number of B.1.1.7 VOC (a variant of concern) … genomes with E484K mutation have been detected,” said the summary of the briefing. Semple was speaking in the context of an interview about the issue of how to suppress the South African variant.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said six new cases of the British variant of coronavirus were found in the West African nation at the weekend.

NCDC Director-General Chikwe Iheakwazu said the variant was detected in samples collected by scientists at the Africa Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID) at a university in southwestern Osun state.

The variant, known as B.1.1.7, has swept Britain and been found in more than 60 nations. The British government last month said early data suggested the strain could be deadlier as well as more transmissible.

Iheakwazu said five cases had been detected in Osun state and one in Kwara state.

“This is the variant of concern that first emerged in the UK,” he said, during a Monday briefing.

“The five in Osun is most likely related to the fact that this is where ACEGID is and where they get a lot of samples from. In total, we have detected the B.1.1.7 variant in seven cases within Nigeria.”

He said Nigeria had begun sequencing positive samples among travellers from Britain and South Africa.

Singapore will only allow police to access personal data from its coronavirus contact-tracing app for “serious” criminal investigations, a move aimed at addressing privacy concerns among users and to safeguard against its unauthorised use.

An amendment to a Covid-19 bill – tabled in parliament this week – will only allow authorities to use data collected from contact tracing in investigations into seven types of crime, with strict penalties including jail for unauthorised use.

When the coronavirus pandemic is over, the government will stop using the contact tracing systems, and public agencies must stop collecting data and delete all personal information collected, according to the bill.

The changes to the law relating to the use of data from the app
– developed to curb the spread of the virus and used by nearly 80% of Singapore’s 5.7 million population – are expected to be enacted this month.

Human Rights Watch on Tuesday urged support for aid groups to ensure “equitable” distribution of coronavirus vaccines across all of war-torn Syria, warning against any discriminatory approach by Damascus.

“Those supplying vaccines for Syria should do everything in their power to ensure that … (they) reach those most vulnerable no matter where they are in the country,” HRW researcher Sara Kayyali said.

“The Syrian government has never been shy about withholding healthcare as a weapon of war, but playing this game with the vaccine undermines the global effort to control the pandemic.”

“International aid groups should have support to secure the widest and most equitable distribution … including (in) all areas controlled by different groups,” the rights organisation said.

The New York-based group made the call following restrictions to aid deliveries to the country’s rebel-held northwest and Kurdish-held northeast Syria in recent years, under pressure from Damascus’ ally Moscow at the UN security council.

Aid can only enter north-west Syria from a single border crossing from Turkey, which backs rebels in that area, while aid to north-east Syria now needs to transit through Damascus, where HRW says authorities often withhold or delay permission.

More than 100m Covid-19 vaccines have been given around the world, according to an AFP tally from official sources.

But none of the world’s 29 poorest countries has formally started mass vaccination drives, while the richest nations have given more than two-thirds of jabs administered.

Israel leads the race by far, with 37% of its population having received at least one dose, while more than a fifth have already got their second. Yet more than a third of humanity (35%) live in countries where vaccination has yet to begin.

After Israel, the countries that have given the most doses are in North America, Europe and the Persian Gulf.

The UK heads this group in per capita terms with shots given to 13.7% of its people, ahead of the US (32.2m shots, or 7.9%).

The European Union has been clashing bitterly with AstraZeneca over access to supplies of its vaccine, with only 12.7m shots given to 2.3% of its people.

China, by contrast, has given 24m shots, while India – where many of the vaccines are made – has given only 4m shots to a tiny percentage of its vast population.

The EU’s best-performing countries are tiny Malta (5.4%), Denmark (3.2%) and Poland (3.1%).

The UK’s nearest competitor in Europe is Serbia, which is also outside the bloc.

Zimbabwe will have access to a Chinese Covid-19 vaccine soon, China’s ambassador in Harare said, as Beijing ramps up its availability to developing nations.

Last week, Zimbabwe health officials said Russia and China had approached it about supplying coronavirus vaccines. Coronavirus infections have risen in Zimbabwe this year, with about 60% of its 33,548 cases and more than two-thirds of its 1,234 deaths recorded since New Year’s Day.

Only a handful of African nations have begun giving doses as the continent scrambles to obtain supplies for its 1.3 billion people – at a time when many richer nations are racing ahead with mass immunisation campaigns.

Australia’s three-test cricket tour of South Africa has been postponed due to Covid-19 and concern around a second wave and new variant of the virus.

Cricket Australia released a statement on Twitter, saying the decision had not been made “lightly” but that the risks were too great to health and safety.

“We have a duty of care to our people and safety cannot be compromised,” the statement continued.

They said the new date would be confirmed in due course.

European Union curbs on exports of novel coronavirus vaccines could delay Japan’s inoculation drive, the minister in charge of the campaign said on Tuesday, while the government is expected to extend a state of emergency in a bid to rein in the epidemic.

Japan is set to begin its vaccination campaign this month, later than most major economies, and any delay could sow doubts about a government aim to secure enough doses for everyone before the Tokyo Olympics this summer.

“The EU has enacted this export transparency mechanism, and it is affecting Japan’s supply schedule,” Taro Kono, the minister in charge of the vaccine effort, told reporters. Kono did not elaborate on the length of any possible delay.

The EU has not imposed any curbs on vaccine exports yet but it reserves the right to do so if overseas shipments undermine the bloc’s own supplies.

Kono later told a briefing that negotiations with the EU were going on and there was no change to the plan to start inoculations in the latter half of February.

Japan is relying on foreign vaccine manufacturers and Kono warned last week that growing nationalism over the shots could lead to retaliation and disruptions to global supplies.

Japan has secured rights to more than 500 million vaccine doses from several western developers, more than enough for its 126 million population.