The United States, India, and Brazil are in the lead in terms of the number of registered coronavirus infections, while the highest number of COVID-19-related deaths has been observed in the three aforementioned nations, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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PARIS (Sputnik) - French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged that all French residents who wish to be vaccinated against COVID-19 will be able to do so by the end of the summer.
“By the end of the summer, we will offer vaccination to all French adults who want to be vaccinated,” Macron said in an interview with TF1.
He said the vaccination campaign in France was proceeding as planned.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Netherlands has decided to extend the COVID-19 lockdown in the country until March 2, Dutch News reported citing Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
Rutte said during a press conference that while incidence rates were declining, a third wave of incidence growth was approaching due to the spread of the "UK" strain of coronavirus.
“That's why we have no choice but to extend the lockdown until March 2, otherwise we will have to pay the bill for being too optimistic... It is our responsibility to make decisions based on constantly updated information,” Rutte said.
The decision to extend the lockdown may be reviewed on February 23.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US lawmakers in a letter urged President Biden to lift a freeze on payments from the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) to American farmers, who have been forced by pandemic-related bottlenecks to cull livestock and dump milk they were unable to move to market.
“While we understand the desire of a new administration to review rulemakings underway before continuing, we do not see fit to suspend such an important and timely program – necessary for stabilizing infrastructures,” the letter signed by 15 House lawmakers said Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US Veterans Administration (VA) reached a COVID-19 vaccination milestone with the inoculation of 1 million former service members and staff, the department said on Tuesday.
"As of Feb. 2, VA has dispensed at least one dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine to more than 582,000 Veterans and has fully vaccinated over 44,000, totaling more than 626,000 doses. This is in addition to administering more than 401,000 doses to VA employees, and more than 1,200 vaccine doses to federal partners," the VA said in a press release.
The VA said it is providing vaccines at more than 215 sites nationally with plans to expand to additional sites as vaccine supplies increase.
However, the agency also said it faces a limited supply, as with individual states, in which many of its sites run out of vaccines for short periods of time.
CAIRO (Sputnik) - Algeria is ready to launch production of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine in two months provided there are raw materials, Pharmaceutics Industry Minister Lotfi Benbahmed said Tuesday.
Last week, Russia's Ambassador to Algeria Igor Belyaev said that Russian experts will visit Algeria to prepare for localization of production of the vaccine in the Arab country, adding that it would take six to nine months to produce the vaccine in Algeria.
"Algeria is ready to begin producing the vaccine within two months if there are raw materials," Benbahmed said in a commentary for the Chaine 1 radio station.
According to the minister, the national drug authority has registered the manufacturing plan for the production and that Russian specialists will visit Algeria and vice versa.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Saudi Arabia will temporarily suspend all arrivals of foreigners, including diplomats and medical workers, from 20 countries beginning on Wednesday over coronavirus-related precautions, state media reported, citing the Ministry of the Interior.
"In accordance with the preventive and precautionary measures recommended by the health authorities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and as a part of its relentless efforts to control and prevent the spread of the COVID-19 as well as due to the importance of maintaining the epidemiological situation and public health in the country, the Ministry of Interior announced that a temporary suspension for entry to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been enforced," the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Countries listed in the statement included Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.
"The temporary suspension includes whoever comes from other countries if he/she passed through any of the aforementioned countries during the 14 days preceding the request to enter the Kingdom," the report read.
Saudi citizens, including diplomats and health practitioners, as well as their family members, will be able to travel back but will have to implement the country's coronavirus-related health protocols, according to the report.
The restrictions will take effect on Wednesday 9 p.m. local time (18:00).
TORONTO (Sputnik) - The Canadian government signed an agreement with Novavax to produce its COVID-19 vaccine in Montreal, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday.
Should the preliminary agreement be finalized, Novavax would become the first drugmaker to produce their COVID-19 vaccine in Canada. The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine candidate has not received regulatory approval in Canada yet.
"We’ve signed a memorandum of understanding with Novavax to produce their COVID-19 vaccines at the new [National Research Council] Royalmount facility in Montreal," Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa.
Production will not begin at least until July, when the NRC’s Royalmount facility is slated to open, and will come at the tail end of Canada’s vaccination strategy. Trudeau has promised that all Canadians who wish to be immunized against the disease will be able to do so by September.
The prime minister said the Novavax vaccine will prove to be useful in dealing with possible future outbreaks or different strains.
UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) - UN General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir skipped his Tuesday appointment to receive the first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine due to a heavy snowstorm that struck New York City the day before, Bozkir’s spokesperson Brendan Varma said during a press briefing.
“The President was supposed to get the first dose of his COVID-19 vaccine to the New York State Department of Health this morning, but because of snowy conditions the Javits Center’s vaccination site is closed today,” Varma said on Tuesday afternoon.
Coronavirus vaccinations as well as other services in New York were canceled on Monday as the storm advanced and covered the city with almost 18 inches of snow, prompting the authorities to issue a state of emergency declaration.
Varma said that Bozkir’s appointment was rescheduled and he will be vaccinated on Sunday.
Around two-thirds of the COVID-19 cases registered in the Netherlands over the past seven days are linked to the new coronavirus strain originating in the UK, the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) said on Tuesday.
According to RIVM, the Netherlands reported 28,628 new cases from January 27 to February 2, a 20 percent decrease from the week before. Despite the decline in the number of new cases and hospitalizations, new coronavirus variants are spreading fast in the country. The Netherlands has identified the UK strain, the South African strain and two new coronavirus variants linked to Brazil on its soil.
"Of these four new variants, the SARS-CoV-2 variant that was discovered in the United Kingdom is spreading fastest … It has been estimated based on modelling that about two-thirds of the people infected last week (27 January to 2 February) have the UK variant," the institute said in a press release.
Overall, the Netherlands has confirmed over 980,000 COVID-19 cases, including more than 14,000 related deaths.
UK public health officials in December announced the emergence of the new coronavirus strain that is believed to be up to 70 percent more transmissible. The new strain was first discovered in southeast England in September and subsequently spread rapidly throughout the United Kingdom and continental Europe.
The Serbian government hopes to set up joint production of the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine against the novel coronavirus, the health ministry's State Secretary Mirsad Djerlek said on Tuesday.
In late December, Serbian minister without portfolio Nenad Popovic met with the general director of vaccine manufacturer Generium, Daniil Taliansky, who confirmed the readiness of the Russian side to make a technology transfer and help train Serbian specialists for the production of Sputnik V in Serbia.
"I am very pleased that Russia and Serbia started discussing joint production of the Sputnik V vaccine in Serbia and hope that this project will succeed," Djerlek said.
The official confirmed that on February 11, a group of Russian experts will arrive in Serbia to learn about the country's human and technological resources, specifically at the Torlak Institute of Virology in Belgrade.
Sputnik V is the world's first registered vaccine against COVID-19. It is 91.6 percent effective, based on the data from the first 19,866 trial participants who have received both shots of the two-dose vaccine or placebo.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Production of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine in China will be launched at the end of February, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev said at a briefing on Tuesday.
“The vaccine is being produced or will be produced in India, [South Korea], Brazil, and China. Respectively, in China the production will be launched at the end of the month. We will be also producing the vaccine in Kazakhstan, and develop in Belarus, Turkey, and perhaps even Iran”, Dmitriev said.
As the Sputnik V vaccine has proved its efficacy, the interest of producers across the world is high, the executive noted.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - India will become one of the key production centres for Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus and may even end up producing as many doses as Russia, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev said Tuesday.
"India is a key partner for us, because India will, de facto, produce as much of the vaccine as Russia. It will be one of the main manufacturing centres of Sputnik V vaccine in the world. We expect to submit [paperwork] for registration of the vaccine either this month or the next, our [Indian] partner Dr Reddy's is working on it”, Dmitriev told a briefing.
"So, after that we will be able to start shipments to India. We could even say that Sputnik V is a Russian-Indian vaccine because we have five partners for manufacturing there”, Dmitriev said.
More than 80 members of a criminal group have been detained by Chinese police on suspicions of manufacturing and selling fake coronavirus vaccines in Beijing and the provinces of Jiangsu and Shandong, Xinhua reported on Tuesday.
Russia's single-day increase in COVID-19 cases fell below 17,000 for the first time since October 28, as 16,643 new cases were confirmed in the past 24 hours (down from 17,648 the day before), the response centre said on Tuesday.
"Over the past day, 16,643 coronavirus cases were confirmed across 85 regions, including 1,597 cases (9.6 percent) that were detected actively, with people showing no clinical symptoms," the centre said, adding that the cumulative case count has now reached 3,884,730 with the rate of increase at 0.43 percent.
Moscow confirmed 1,701 new coronavirus cases over the given period, down from 2,037 the day before. The Russian capital was followed by St. Petersburg with 1,484 cases, down from 1,842 the day before, and the Moscow Region with 1,053 new cases, down from 1,068 on Monday.
The response centre reported 539 coronavirus fatalities, up from 437 the day before, raising the country's death toll to 74,158.
Total recoveries count 3,340,545 after 22,372 people were discharged from hospitals over the past day, up from 18,169 the day before.
The European Union's new COVID-19 vaccine transparency mechanism, which requires manufacturers to receive authorization for exporting vaccines produced in the bloc, may delay deliveries to Japan, Taro Kono, the cabinet minister in charge of Japan's vaccination efforts, said Tuesday.
"Supply in Japan cannot be confirmed [due to the controls]," Kono said at a press conference, as quoted by the Kyodo News agency.
The European Union introduced its new export authorization scheme last week, in response to a dispute with AstraZeneca. The UK-Swedish pharmaceutical giant is expected to fall short on its vaccine deliveries to the bloc by 60 percent in Q1 2021 due to production issues at its plants in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Commenting on the possibility of delays, Kono said that Japan expects to receive all its contracted doses on time.
"We want to request prompt export of the amount that has already been contracted," the minister said, as quoted by the agency.
Japan is scheduled to launch its mass COVID-19 immunization program in February, beginning with health workers. In total, Japan has more than 500 million vaccine doses on order from several Western manufacturers.
The Japanese government is expected on Tuesday to extend a coronavirus-related state of emergency in Tokyo and other disease hotspots for another month to March 7, according to the agency.
More than 389,000 cases of the coronavirus disease have been confirmed in Japan since the start of the pandemic. The country experienced a surge in new cases in early January, which prompted the government to bring in tougher social distancing measures.
US President Joe Biden held a lengthy meeting with 10 Senate Republicans on Monday to discuss the size of a proposed COVID-19 economic relief package, with both sides failing to come to an agreement on the amount that should be allocated to prop up the country's economy, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion economic package that would include $1,400 stimulus checks for citizens. In response, Republican senators have called for reducing the plan to just $600 billion.
"He [Biden] felt it was, you know, an effort to engage, and engage on a bipartisan basis, and that’s why he invited them to the White House today. But his view is that the size of the package needs to be commensurate with the crisis — crises we’re facing — the dual crises we’re facing, hence why he proposed a package that’s $1.9 trillion," Psaki said at a White House press briefing.
In a later statement, Psaki noted that the president would "not slow down work" on the economic stimulus package in order to receive votes from the Republicans in Congress. The Democrats currently hold a majority in both the House and the Senate.
Those who oppose Biden's stimulus package have welcomed new figures published by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Monday. The CBO predicts that US GDP will grow 4.6 percent this year, after a 3.5 percent drop in 2020, even without a new bailout program.
Chinese police have detained over 80 people and confiscated more than 3,000 doses of a fake coronavirus vaccine in a crackdown on a ring that operated since the fall, state media reported.
According to the Xinhua news agency, the police have also eliminated the ring’s clandestine manufacturing facilities and distribution chains in Beijing, the provinces of Jiangsu and Shandong.
Investigation found that the main suspect together with his accomplices began to produce fake vaccines in September, selling filled syringes with saline at inflated prices.
Following the crackdown, the ministry of public security has called on Chinese to be more vigilant, get vaccinated only at licensed centers, and report fraud cases to law enforcement agencies in a timely fashion.
Having launched a coronavirus vaccination campaign on 15 December, the country has inoculated almost 23 million people as of 26 January. By Chinese New Year, 12 February, the number of those vaccinated is planned to hit 50 million.
As part of the first stage of the vaccination in China, customs officers, health care workers, as well as employees whose work is related to imported frozen products, sea and air transportation, seafood markets and public transport are the first in line to receive shots. Individuals who are set to go to work or study in virus-hit countries will also promptly receive an opportunity to get vaccinated.
At the second stage, when a vaccine enters the market or production volumes increase, more population groups will get access to shots.
Phase 2 of Abdala COVID-19 vaccine candidate trials started in Cuba, the country's Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) said.
"Phase 2 [of clinical trials of the vaccine] CIGB66 Abdala began today. It involves healthy volunteers or those with justifiable pathologies," the center said on Twitter.
According to the center's director, whose speech was broadcast by the Caribe channel, 132 volunteers took part in the first phase of the research. Immunization with three doses of the drug at different intervals showed a strong dependence of the amount of antibodies on the number of doses administered and did not entail serious complications.
The next phase of the Abdala trials, which takes place in Santiago de Cuba, will involve about 800 people.
