Home » Coronavirus, new records of infections in India, Iran and Brazil

Coronavirus, new records of infections in India, Iran and Brazil

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As vaccination campaigns continue unabated, there are new peaks in deaths from COVID-19 and new coronavirus infections around the world. The most worrying data comes from India, where 145,384 new cases are reported in 24 hours.

125 million people in lockdown

The epicenter of the Indian coronavirus, the state of Maharashtra with its capital Mumbai, has been put in lockdown all weekend as the country fights against a growing number of Covid-19 cases and reckons with the shortage of vaccines, drugs and hospital beds. After letting its guard down with mass religious rallies, political demonstrations and cricket matches with spectators at the stadium, India is experiencing a new wave of the epidemic with around a million new cases in the past week. The lockdown a year ago caused one of the sharpest downturns among the big economies and now the central government is desperately trying to avoid a second, which would be extremely unpopular. But many states are cracking down, most notably Maharashtra, where restaurants are closed and public gatherings of more than five people are banned. Every weekend until the end of April the state’s 125 million people are confined to their homes, unless they have to shop for food and medicine.

India, lockdown and new restrictions in Mumbai

Iran has also set a new record of infections for the third consecutive day: almost 22,600.

Japan is considering a new one-month “near-emergency” state in Tokyo to combat the rise in COVID-19 cases, just weeks after the latest emergency ended. The move also aims to reduce the dangers ahead of the upcoming Summer Olympics.

South Korea reported 700 cases yesterday, the highest daily increase since Jan. 5, and health authorities announced measures to strengthen social distance.

In Thailand, which only reported 95 deaths during the pandemic, health officials reported the country’s first local cases of the English variant of the coronavirus. The news comes at a time when only 1% of the population has been vaccinated and as Thais prepare to celebrate the traditional Songkran New Year celebration next week, typically a time of travel and commuting.

Investigation of Bolsonaro
In Brazil there was a record of deaths due to complications related to the coronavirus, 4,249 in the last 24 hours for a total of over 345 thousand victims since the beginning of the pandemic. An unsustainable situation also at the political level, so much so that the Senate has decided to open an investigation into President Jair Bolsonaro, who has always underestimated the effects of the pandemic and minimized the risk that hospitals could run out of drugs and beds available for the sick. Just two days ago Bolsonaro said to “not cry over spilled milk” and that “the pandemic is in part used politically not to defeat the virus but to bring down the president”. Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco said he will set up a special commission next week to investigate the government’s response to the pandemic. The decision was made by the Supreme Court of Brazil, the second country in the world most affected by Covid-19 after the United States.

Covaxin kicks off in Paraguay
Paraguay’s Minister of Health, Julio Borba, announced that the 100,000 doses of India’s Covaxin coronavirus vaccine are ready to be administered after the drug has been authorized for use by the Federal Commission for Protection Against Diseases. health risks (Cofepris) of Mexico, the first country in the world to have approved it. The news site Ultima Hora reports it. The doses donated by India had been placed in ‘quarantine’ by the Paraguayan health authorities in late March, pending their safety, following the refusal to approve the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) of Brazil. Following the authorization from Mexico, the vaccine has obtained the green light of the authorities in Paraguay and will begin to be distributed in different regions of the country. Minister Borba assured that with this number of doses the immunization of the more than 76 thousand health workers enrolled in the coronavirus vaccination will be completed. To date, 45,485 operators out of over 75 thousand have received the vaccine. In addition, on Monday it will be possible to start inoculation for 1,600 elderly people in healthcare residences. Paraguay is going through its worst moment of the coronavirus pandemic, with an increase in infections and hospitalizations and delays in the arrival of vaccines. The virus has caused 224,736 positives since the beginning of the emergency with 4,522 deaths. The country has so far received 163,000 coronavirus vaccines, including 4,000 doses of Sputnik V, 20,000 doses of CoronaVac vaccine donated by Chile, 3,000 doses of Sinopharm donated by the United Arab Emirates and 36,000 doses from AstraZeneca that arrived with the Covax mechanism. An additional 10,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine are expected this week.

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A month without deaths in Polynesia
First month without deaths from Covid 19 in French Polynesia, after six months of epidemic and 141 deaths related to the coronavirus. This was announced by the official health bulletin of the archipelago. By November, the incidence rate of infections in Polynesia had become one of the highest in the world with 989 cases per 100 thousand inhabitants. The closure of the borders and the quarantine imposed on the now rare travelers made it possible to neutralize the variants. The contagion rate has dropped to 9 for every 100,000 inhabitants in the last week. A serological study showed that about 25 percent of the inhabitants of the most inhabited islands have been affected by the virus, so much so that 13% of adults are now vaccinated. President Edouard Fritch said Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic, will allow the reopening of the Polynesian borders from May 1st.

Vaccines only for the rich
The director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that more than 87% of the more than 700 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine administered worldwide have been used in richer countries. On average, one in four people in rich countries has received at least one dose of a vaccine, compared to only one in 500 in low-income countries. “There remains a shocking imbalance in the global distribution of vaccines,” he said. He called Covax, the United Nations-backed initiative to distribute vaccines fairly, “a strong mechanism that can deliver vaccines faster and more efficiently than any other.” He also noted that Covax has so far delivered around 38 million doses worldwide, enough to cover around 0.25 percent of the world‘s population. He also criticized countries that intend to donate vaccines directly to other nations instead of going through Covax. “These bilateral agreements run the risk of fueling inequality,” he said.

Meanwhile, Pfizer and BioNTech have filed an application in the United States to extend the emergency use of their coronavirus vaccine to teenagers aged 12 to 15. The two companies plan to submit the same request also “to other regulators around the world, in the coming days”, they specified in a statement. On Wall Street, Pfizer earns 1.05%, BioNTech 5.34%.

Meanwhile, over ten million French have received at least the first dose of the anti-Covid vaccine, as reported yesterday by Prime Minister Jean Castex. A symbolic threshold crossed, even if the situation remains worrying, starting with the strong pressure on the resuscitation wards. “We continue to accelerate,” President Macron exults via Twitter. France intends to vaccinate at least 20 million people by mid-May, then 30 million by mid-June.

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The Venezuelan way
Venezuelan executive vice president Delcy Rodríguez announced an agreement with Cuba for the production in Venezuela of the vaccine against Covid-19 Abdala, which is in phase III of trials. The state TV Vtv reports it. For this reason Rodríguez visited the Espromed Bio laboratory in the university city of Caracas in order to verify the existence of suitable conditions for the production of the vaccine, one of the five developed so far by the Cuban health sector. The Venezuelan manager also announced that yesterday a delegation of doctors and researchers from Havana concluded a week of work at Espromed Bio, adding that the Ministry of Health has finalized Venezuela’s participation in the coming weeks in the final phase of the Abdala vaccine trial. Rodríguez therefore wanted to underline the humanitarian and supportive conduct of Cuba which makes available one of its five vaccines (in addition to Abdala, three of the Soberana and Mambisa series), “while the world is truly immersed in an abominable process of inequality and inequity in people’s access to coronavirus immunization drugs. “A handful of rich countries – he insisted – are concentrating and accumulating everything, leaving the rest of the countries and peoples of the world without vaccines“.

Hong Kong renounces AstraZeneca
Hong Kong announced that it has requested AstraZeneca to suspend delivery of its Covid-19 vaccine amid fears of serious side effects and concerns about its effectiveness against new coronavirus variants. “We believe there is no need for AstraZeneca to get there this year. We want to avoid waste because vaccines are in short supply globally,” said former British colony health chief Sophia Chan. Hong Kong has already secured a vaccine each for its 7.5 million residents by signing agreements with BioNTech / Pfizer and China’s Sinovac. However, the campaign is progressing slowly and only 529,000 people have been vaccinated so far. One of the first places in the world after China to be affected by the coronavirus, thanks to strict distancing measures and the use of masks in the former British colony there were only 11,000 cases and 205 deaths.

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