Health News at Your Fingertips

Frustrations are boiling over in Canada’s capital as a protest by truckers against Covid-19 vaccine mandates has clogged downtown Ottawa for a week and shows no sign of ending, Reuters reports, with many residents angry at police for not breaking it up.

Dozens of trucks in the so-called “Freedom Convoy” have been blocking streets since Friday, forcing the closure of the main shopping mall in the area and local businesses, and disturbed residents with constant horn honking.

The city’s police force has stood by as protesters filled jugs of diesel to top up their rigs, which they keep running to provide heat in sub-zero temperatures, rather than cutting off the fuel supply.

“For six days and nights, residents living in downtown Ottawa continue to experience unprecedented violence on their local streets,” said city councillor Catherine McKenney in a letter to the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, on Thursday.

“They are being … harassed and terrorised,” McKenney said, citing complaints of air horns, erratic driving, open fires and “widespread public urination and defecation,” while asking for more police support.

Police chief Peter Sloly said his officers could neither deny the truckers their right to demonstrate, nor was he in a position to negotiate an end to the protest. I do not have a mandate under the Police Services Act to negotiate with the tens of thousands of people who come to Ottawa to exercise their charter of rights to free speech,” he said.

The protesters have said they will not leave Ottawa until the federal government lifts Covid-19 vaccine mandates and all pandemic restrictions, even though most of those restrictions are controlled by provincial governments.

The number of home care staff in England has dropped by more than 17,000 since the government launched its consultation on mandatory coronavirus vaccination, figures suggest.
There were 406,365 domiciliary care staff in registered settings reported by councils and providers as being in post in the week ending January 30, latest NHS England vaccination figures show. Analysis by the PA news agency shows this is down 17,664 staff from the week ending September 12, when 424,029 workers were recorded. There will be other types of home care workers, such as agency staff, that are not captured in the data.

Africa must boost the vaccination rate against Covid-19 “six times” to reach the target of 70 percent vaccine coverage set for the end of the first half of 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, AFP reports.
Africa has received “more than 587 million vaccine doses” but it “is still struggling to expand rollout, with only 11 percent of the population fully vaccinated”, explained the WHO regional office for Africa. “The world has finally heard our calls. Africa is now accessing the vaccines it has demanded for far too long. This is a dose of hope for this year,” said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. “However, a dependable pipeline must go hand in hand with operational funding to move doses out of depots and into people’s arms.”

People enrolled in the U.S. government’s Medicare program can get over-the-counter Covid-19 tests for free starting early spring, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said.
The Biden administration laid out plans last month that require private insurance companies to cover the cost of eight over-the-counter at-home tests per person each month, but said nothing about such coverage for Medicare beneficiaries. Under the new coverage plan, Medicare and Medicare Advantage beneficiaries will be able to access up to eight over-the-counter Covid-19 tests per month for free, Reuters reports. The latest announcement is a “positive” for those enrolled in Medicare plans with the federal government covering costs directly, Evercore ISI analyst Michael Newshel said. “The program is also a potential small positive for pharmacies to sell the tests to Medicare beneficiaries, though supply is limited and the window may be short depending when the public health emergency ends.”

Tensions in societies around the world over the current Covid situation are going to be very difficult to handle, one of Britain’s most senior scientific figures has warned.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust, who stepped down as a government scientific adviser in November last year, warned the idea of simply “exiting” a pandemic is not realisitc. “I just don’t think you wake up on Tuesday and it’s finished. It’s not going to happen like that,” he said in an online meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine. “The transition from [the] acute phase of the pandemic to something new, not yet defined, it’s really difficult – bumpy, different around the world, different within a single country, with the degree of inequity that’s happened globally, but also nationally.”

Here are some more details on South Africa’s Afrigen Biologics using the publicly available sequence of Moderna Inc’s mRNA Covid-19 vaccine to make its own version of the jab which could be tested in humans before the end of this year.
“If this project shows that Africa can take cutting edge technology and produce cutting-edge products, this will banish this idea that Africa can’t do it and change the global mindset … this can be a game-changer,” Charles Gore, executive director at MPP, told Reuters at Afrigen’s facility. “We haven’t copied Moderna, we’ve developed our own processes because Moderna didn’t give us any technology,” Petro Terblanche, managing director at Afrigen, told Reuters. “We started with the Moderna sequence because that gives, in our view, the best starting material. But this is not Moderna*s vaccine, it is the Afrigen mRNA hub vaccine.” Terblanche said Afrigen was also working on a next generation mRNA vaccine that did not require freezing temperatures for storage, required for the Pfizer and Moderna doses, and which would be better suited to Africa.

Italy reported 112,691 Covid related cases on Thursday, against 118,994 the day before, the health ministry said, while the number of deaths rose to 414 from 395.

Italy has registered 147,734 deaths linked to Covid since its outbreak emerged in February 2020, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the ninth highest in the world. The country has reported 11.35 million cases to date.

Patients in hospital with Covid – not including those in intensive care – stood at 19,324 on Thursday, down from 19,550 a day earlier.

There were 95 new admissions to intensive care units, down from 104 on Wednesday. The total number of intensive care patients fell to 1,457 from a previous 1,524.

Some 915,337 tests for Covid were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 964,521, the health ministry said.

Britain reported 88,171 new Covid cases on Thursday and 303 more deaths within 28 days of a positive test, official data showed.

The figures compared to 88,085 cases and 534 deaths reported on Wednesday, the highest daily number of fatalities since late February 2021.

Portugal will drop a requirement to present a negative Covid test for air passengers arriving with a valid digital European Union certificate or recognised proof of vaccination, the government said on Thursday.

The move, approved in a cabinet meeting, is aligned with European Union rules.

In a statement, the government said negative tests will no longer be required for “those who present the EU Covid Digital Certificate in any of its modalities or other proof of vaccination that has been recognised”.

It did not say when the decision would take effect, but the rules now in force were meant to last until 9 February.

People enrolled in the US government’s Medicare programme can get over-the-counter Covid tests for free starting in early spring, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said on Thursday.

The Biden administration laid out plans last month that require private insurance companies to cover the cost of eight over-the-counter at-home tests per person each month, following a surge in infections due to the Omicron variant.

However, the policy did not apply to Medicare beneficiaries.

Under the new coverage plan, Medicare and Medicare Advantage beneficiaries will be able to access up to eight over-the-counter tests per month for free.