Johns Hopkins University has updated its number of confirmed coronavirus cases, which have now passed the 93 million threshold.
According to the latest data, as of 01:20 GMT on Friday, the case count now stands at 93,018,040.
The number of deaths from the coronavirus exceeds 1.99 million, the university added.
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BUENOS AIRES (Sputnik) – The Brazilian pharmaceutical company Uniao Quimica has asked the national Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) to allow the emergency use of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus, media reported.
If such a permit is issued, Brazil may get 10 million doses of the Russian vaccine, the G1 news outlet reported on late Friday.
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, more than 93.7 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 2 million fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Brazil comes third in terms of the number of confirmed cases – about 8.4 million – after the United States and India, as well as second in terms of the deceased patients – over 208,000 – following the United States.
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) – Mexico has registered 21,366 new COVID-19 cases within the past 24 hours marking the largest daily increase since the start of the outbreak, the national Ministry of Health said.
The total number of coronavirus cases has reached 1,609,735, the ministry said on late Friday.
The death toll has risen by 1,106 to 139,022 people within the same period of time.
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, more than 93.7 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 2 million fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Mexico comes fourth in terms of the deceased people, following the United States, Brazil and India.
GENEVA (Sputnik) - The situation with COVID-19 in the Americas, Brazil in particular, is severe but is not driven by new virus variants, Michael Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) emergencies program, said on Friday.
"The situation is difficult. And, in this case, in the case of the Southern Cone and Central and South America it is not the new variants driving this transmission. New variants may have an impact down the line and they may have some impact now ... but again it's too easy to say it's the variant and say it is the virus that did it," Ryan said at a press conference.
The official urged the Latin American countries to intensify their efforts against the pandemic.
MADRID (Sputnik) - Spain has confirmed 40,197 new cases of the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, recording the highest single-day increase in infections since the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020, the Ministry of Health said on Friday.
The previous record was set earlier this week and amounted to 38,869. The update brings the country's total tally to 2,252,164, with about 160,000 new infections being recorded over the past week.
The death toll over the past week has grown by 828 to 53,314, the ministry added.
As of now, some 20,000 COVID-19 patients are receiving treatment in hospitals, with nearly 3,000 of them being in intensive care units.
In a bid to curb the third wave of the pandemic, the authorities have introduced a high-alert regime in Spain. A curfew is in effect and movement between autonomous communities is restricted.
ROME (Sputnik) - Italy has vaccinated one million of its citizens, becoming the leader among European Union members, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday.
The country aims to vaccinate 70 percent of the population — 42 million people — to reach so-called herd immunity. Italy is currently using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, although on Tuesday the country received the first shipment of the Moderna vaccine. Rome is also developing its own vaccine, which is expected to be ready by summer.
"A million Italians have received the vaccine against COVID-19 ... Italy is the number one in the EU in the number of vaccinated people. [It is] an encouraging fact that pushes us to stay the course, always remaining on guard," Conte wrote on Facebook.
According to the health ministry, most of those vaccinated, 750,000, are medical workers, while others include nursing home patients and staff.
The country has confirmed a total of over 2.3 million patients, including more than 81,000 fatalities.
The World Health Organization (WHO) does not rule out the introduction of immunisation passports for international travel if the situation with COVID-19 changes, Michael Ryan, director of the WHO health emergencies program, said on Friday.
"If you look at the recommendation made by the committee on vaccination for travellers, it says "at the present time." ... Not because that won't be a good idea in the future, but because we are lacking critical evidence regarding whether or not persons who are vaccinated could continue to transmit disease, and whether they can get sick again. ... Nobody in the world, beyond health workers and very vulnerable people have access to vaccines," Ryan said at a briefing.
He stressed that the emergency committee, therefore, does not currently consider it necessary to introduce additional barriers to the movement of people, at least until more data and more vaccines become available.
"That will change over time, and there may be different reasons in the future to do this [to introduce immunisation passports]," the expert added.
New York City will run out of COVID-19 vaccines by next week unless the federal government and others in the supply chain dramatically change their approach to meet demand, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday.
"Since a month ago when we got the vaccines, some 300,000 New Yorkers have been vaccinated and this number is going up very quickly," de Blasio told the WNYC radio station in an interview. "At the rate we’re going, there will not be any doses left in the city of New York by the end of next week. That would be insane after all the progress has been made setting up a system, so people could actually get appointments."
Mount Sinai Hospital and NYU Langone Health are at least two medical centers in New York City that have already stopped taking appointments for coronavirus vaccinations, de Blasio said.
"We've been getting resupply right now at a very paltry level of about a 100,000 doses a week. I am telling you that we went through a 125,000 in the first four days of this week. We will run out of vaccines by next week in New York City if there's not a very different approach from the federal government, Albany and the vaccine makers," he said.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the two coronavirus vaccine makers whose doses have so far been authorized by world health bodies for emergency distribution, have reported manufacturing challenges after initially promising hundreds of millions of shots in 2021. Both companies have COVID-19 vaccines that need deep-freeze storage conditions and require at least two doses per person to be effective.
Johnson & Johnson, which has developed a one-dose vaccine that does not need deep freezing conditions, says it was working on bringing less than 10 million doses to the market by the second-half of February.
The logistics for vaccine supply have so far been coordinated by the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed program, with each state capital — in New York state’s case, Albany — responsible for their own on-ground distribution.
Pfizer's announcement of a temporal reduction in the deliveries of its COVID-19 vaccine to European countries, including Estonia, is "bad news," Estonian Minister of Social Affairs Tanel Kiik said on Friday.
Earlier in the day, the US pharmaceutical company said that it would temporarily cut shipments of the vaccine in the next three to four weeks due to construction works at its key plant in Belgium, which aimed at ramping up its production capacity starting in mid-February.
"The decline in the supply of BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine to Estonia is bad news. Yesterday, there were rumors, today, official confirmation came. We have prepared a letter to EU Health Commissioner [Stella Kyriakides] from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark and Finland. It is important that the commission does the best to ensure a full supply of vaccines," Kiik said at a press conference.
The Estonian government initially reserved over 600,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, and later an additional 250,000 doses. Apart from that, it booked the supply of several other vaccines against coronavirus — from AstraZeneca (1.33 million doses), Jannsen Pharmaceutica NV (300,000 vaccine courses) and CureVac (659,300 doses).
China will provide a million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Cambodia to be used for inoculating 500,000 people, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Friday.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the world to act with greater solidarity as the confirmed death toll from the coronavirus pandemic rose above 2 million on Friday.
“Our world has reached a heart-wrenching milestone: the COVID-19 pandemic has now claimed 2 million lives,” Guterres said in a video message. “Sadly, the deadly impact of the pandemic has been made worse by the absence of a global coordinated effort. In the memory of those two million souls, the world must act with far greater solidarity.”
EU member states should coordinate the movement of citizens amid the pandemic, for example, by letting people cross internal borders with a negative PCR test rather than the earlier proposed vaccination passports, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday.
Earlier in the day, a European Commission spokesperson said that von der Leyen backed the initiative to introduce common EU vaccination passports that would facilitate cross-border movement of people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"First of all, plain and simply, it is absolutely necessary if you have been vaccinated to have a certificate — this is a medical necessity, therefore, this is the right way to go forward. Of course, it has to be mutually recognized — this is a WHO requirement, so in that we are very clear," von der Leyen said at a joint press conference with Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, whose country is taking up the bloc's presidency this year.
The commission chief reiterated what was said by the spokesperson earlier in the day, namely, that legal and political aspects, including movement rights, need to be discussed at the European level in order for member-states to work out common rules.
"But I think it is also indeed important always to find the right balance. For example, you can always combine either a certificate or a negative COVID-19 test if you did not have access to vaccination so far. So there are possibilities to find a fair and equal balance to those who have the certificate of vaccination and those who didn't have access so far," von der Leyen said.
Introducing a standardized EU COVID-19 vaccination certificate was a proposal put forward by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in a letter to von der Leyen this past Tuesday. Mitsotakis argued this could be a good way to help economic recovery and relaunch entire industries that got halted because of the pandemic.
EU leaders are expected to discuss the proposal at a summit on 21 January.
The New COVID-19 strain found in the United Kingdom is expected to become the dominant variant of the coronavirus in the United States by March, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a projection published on Friday.
“The modeled trajectory of this variant in the US exhibits rapid growth in early 2021, becoming the predominant variant in March,” the CDC said of the so-called B.1.1.7 strain that had already infected some 76 people in 10 US states by January 13.
The incoming US Chief of Staff Ron Klain said that he expects the coronavirus death toll in the US to hit 500,000 in February.
He made this comment in an online interview with the Washington Post on Friday.
The Lebanese parliament on Friday passed a special law that would allow emergency use of medicine against the coronavirus disease and the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines.
In November, the country's health ministry signed a deal with Pfizer/BioNTech, with the first shipments expected to arrive in mid-February. Among the deal's conditions was the law that would regulate the use of the COVID-19 vaccine.
"Lebanon, represented by the health ministry, allows emergency use of medicinal drugs as an exceptional measure before passing all stages of registration," according to the law's text.
Under the new law, exceptional cases include pandemics, as well as mass chemical and radiation poisonings that could harm citizens across the country.
"The following categories are exempt from liability and legal prosecution: medical services providers, including doctors, pharmacists, medical personnel, medical facilities and those employed in the health care industry. A well as drug manufacturers and those with the purchase and distribution rights," the law notes.
At the same time, manufacturers and distributors can be held liable in the case of manufacturing, storage and distribution violations.
The country has confirmed a total of 237,132 COVID-19 cases, including 1,781 fatalities.
More than 200 test systems for detecting coronavirus and antibodies have been developed and registered in Russia, and Russian developments on COVID-19 are now used in more than 50 countries, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said.
"More than 200 test systems for detecting coronavirus and antibodies to it have been developed and registered in Russia. I would like to note that Russian developments, and you know this well, are now used in more than 50 countries of the world," Golikova said at a meeting with epidemiologists.
Russia has samples of more than 600 coronavirus strains, over 400 of them have been deciphered, Golikova said.
The situation with the coronavirus can be kept under control, she said, noting that this is primarily due to the scientific potential of the country.
She attributed this to the fact that a scientific potential formed in Russia makes it possible to make timely and high-quality decisions on managing a new coronavirus infection.
"The most important thing is that this has been done from the very first days," the deputy prime minister stressed.
King Carl XVI Gustaf, 74, and Queen Silvia of Sweden, 77, have received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, the Royal Court confirmed on Friday.
"The great vaccination against Covid-19 is now under way across our country. It is my hope that everyone who has the opportunity to get vaccinated in the coming months chooses to do so, so that we can get through this difficult time together and as soon as possible," said the King in a statement, as quoted by thelocal.se.
Finland will receive 37,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses next week, which is 10,000 less than expected, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) said on Friday.
Finland was supposed to receive 50,000 doses per week in January and February.
"Shipments of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine against the coronavirus to Finland will be lower than expected starting from January 18. Due to difficulties in deliveries of the Pfizer [vaccine], 37,000 doses will be available, which is 10,000 less than expected," the THL said.
As a result, some Finnish regions will receive fewer vaccine doses than they were expecting.
The THL said that regions that ordered most vaccines will be affected, and a shortage in doses may slow down the vaccination campaign in these regions.
"This could cause changes in the vaccination schedule for the elderly population," the THL added.
Finland receives 1.23 percent of the vaccine doses ordered jointly by all European Union member states. The number of vaccines received by each country depends on its population size.
As many as 19 vaccination centres, where Parisians aged 75 years and older will be able to get shots against the coronavirus, will open in the French capital in the beginning of next week, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said on Friday.
"Nineteen centres for people over 75 will open on Monday, January 18," Hidalgo said, as quoted by the Parisien newspaper.
According to the Paris mayor, two vaccination centres in the 20th and the sixth arrondissements will open at a later date.
"Each district will have its own centre. The most densely populated ones, namely 13th, 15th and 19th districts, will have two centres each. Then, five more centres will open by the beginning of February. This will allow districts with large populations such as 17th, to also have two centres," Hidalgo explained.
Paris, as noted by the mayor, is expected to receive 10,000 doses of the vaccine.
"This is too few, as there are 170,000 people over 75 living in Paris. At this rate, [two-doze] vaccination will take 34 weeks. The process needs to be sped up so that, I hope, we move on to mass vaccination" Hidalgo added.
French Health Minister Olivier Verand recently said that 833 vaccination centres were scheduled to open across the country on Monday.
The vaccination campaign in France began on December 27. On January 8, France also approved use of a vaccine produced by the US company, Moderna, in addition to using a vaccine co-produced by the US company Pfizer and the German BioNTech.
Since the beginning of the pandemic in France, more than 2.8 million people have been infected with the coronavirus, and more than 69,000 died. By the end of January, the French authorities expect to vaccinate about a million people.
Russia may vaccinate 60 percent of the population against the coronavirus, this is a very serious achievement, the head of Russian consumer watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said on Friday.
"Several figures were announced today ... that we can inoculate 60 percent of the total population in the first year ... this is a very serious achievement," Anna Popova said at a meeting with epidemiologists.
She noted that immunization should be massive, but it should be organized so that people are immune by the beginning of the epidemic season, by fall.
A plane that will deliver additional doses of the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus disease to Argentina landed in Moscow on Friday, the country's flag carrier Aerolineas Argentinas said.
"Yes, the plane landed in Moscow at 18:23 [local time, 15:23 GMT]," the airliner's spokesman said.
The first 300,000 doses of Sputnik V arrived in Argentina in late December. The plane will pick up[ another 300,000 doses and return to Buenos Aires on Saturday. The vaccines will be given to medical and intensive care personnel.
Argentina started its mass vaccination campaign with the Russian Sputnik V vaccine earlier in the month.
The Sputnik V was the first COVID-19 vaccine registered in Russia and the world. Russia's Sputnik V is 92 percent effective, based on data from the first 16,000 trial participants who have received both shots of the two-dose vaccine.
Venezuela will send oxygen tanks for COVID-19 treatment to the northern Brazilian state of Amazonas, after the region has exhausted all resources, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said on Friday.
"On behalf of (Venezuelan) President Nicolas Maduro, we discussed with Wilson Lima, the governor of the Brazilian state of Amazonas Wilson, the possibility of urgent provision of the oxygen that is needed to for emergency medical assistance in Manaus. Latin American solidarity comes first," Arreaza said on Twitter.
Lima previously said that the state ran out of oxygen tanks, and number of patients were airlifted to hospitals in other Brazilian states.
Brazil's sharp rise in COVID-19 cases might have resulted from the new variant of the virus recently identified in the country.
Brazil is the world's third worst-hit country after the United States and India in terms of the number of coronavirus infections. It has confirmed more than 8.3 million cases, and over 207,964 virus-related deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza will sign a decree declaring most of the country's regions as COVID-19 orange zones, which means a medium-level risk of the virus’ spread, the Ansa news agency reported on Friday, citing sources.
Italy uses a regional tier system to impose targeted COVID-19 restrictions due to different levels of infection rates. Bars and restaurants are open until only 6 p.m. local time in yellow zones and closed in orange zones. Meanwhile, red zones, meaning high-risk areas, envision the closure of all non-essential shops in addition to bars and restaurants.
According to Ansa, most of the country will be declared orange zones, while Lombardy, which remains the hardest-hit region in Italy, and Sicily will be classified as red zones as of Sunday.
At the moment, most regions are classified as yellow zones except for five, including Sicily and Lombardy.
To date, Italy has confirmed over 2.3 million COVID-19 cases, including more than 80,000 deaths and nearly 1.7 million recoveries.
A 101-year-old woman became the first German to receive the second shot of the two-dose vaccine against the coronavirus on Friday, media reported.
Edith Kwoizalla, a resident of a care home in the German town of Halberstadt, led by example three weeks ago when she was administered the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, the local broadcaster MDR said.
The care home’s vaccination of some 40 senior citizens on 26 December, a day before the nationwide vaccine rollout began, was criticised by the federal health ministry as a "false start."
Germany saw the overall number of coronavirus cases pass 2 million on Friday, according to the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases. The country plans to vaccinate up to 70 percent of the population by September.
The authorities of Japan's Ibaraki prefecture have decided to independently declare a state of emergency on its territory amid a surge in COVID-19 cases over the past two weeks, following suit of other prefectures, Kazuhiko Oigawa, the governor of Ibaraki, said on Friday.
Earlier this week, Japanese media reported that the state of emergency declared in Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba last week was going to be expanded to three more prefectures — Osaka, Kyoto and Hyogo. The Japanese prefectures of Aichi, Gifu and Mie also followed suit.
"In connection with the current situation, the Ibaraki prefecture intends to independently declare a state of emergency for the period from Monday [January 18] to 7 February", Oigawa said at a press conference.
Japan is in the midst of an unprecedented wave of COVID-19 transmissions, having registered over 5,000 new cases daily since January 7. The current nationwide tally exceeds 302,000 cases, including 4,233 deaths.
In a bid to contain the spread of the virus, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare on Friday held a meeting to discuss introducing harsher punishments, including a prison term of up to one year, for violators of coronavirus restrictions.
Italy began vaccinating seniors aged 80 and older who do not live in residential care facilities, planning to administer 460,000 doses, according to the authorities.
Italy's mass vaccination campaign began on 27 December, first covering the priority groups which include medical workers and seniors in residential care facilities.
Sputnik has learned from the San Camillo pneumonia hospital in Rome that first 90 seniors with no residency in care facilities were vaccinated there on Thursday. The campaign is expected to continue on Friday and beyond in several other vaccination centers in the Lazio region, where Rome is located, the regional authorities said.
This marks the beginning of the Italian vaccination campaign's phase where non-primary groups get inoculated, although high-risk groups like seniors and people with compromised health will still get priority assistance. The vaccination is voluntary and free of charge.
The entire campaign is scheduled to run until late August and cover approximately 70 percent of the population. According to the milestones set by Domenico Arcuri, Italy's chief authority for the COVID-19 emergency, 5.9 million people will be vaccinated by the end of March, 13.7 million in April and another 21.5 million by the end of May.
Italy, which itself does not produce coronavirus vaccines, expects to receive 202 million doses from the stockpile procured by the European Union. According to Arcuri, 27 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 11 million doses of the Moderna vaccine will be supplied by the end of March, which is enough for 19 million people. Italy also expects to receive 40 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, conditional upon it getting the authorization of the EU regulator.
With a population of roughly 60 million people, Italy has so far vaccinated just over 972,000 people, according to the Ministry of Health.
Seychelles has reopened its borders to all tourists who received both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, Seychelles News Agency reported, citing Tourism Minister Sylvestre Radegonde.
According to Radegonde, a traveler is also required to show a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours before entry. After showing a vaccination certificate, a visitor will not need to go into quarantine upon arrival to the island nation.
"We hope that this will open up the tourism industry for the locals primarily for the small hotels who are struggling on La Digue, Praslin and also on Mahe. And also provide the kick that our economy desperately needs", the minister said at a press conference on Thursday, as quoted by the media outlet.
According to the news outlet, by mid-March travelers will only need to have a negative PCR test as the country would have vaccinated 70 percent of the local population, achieving herd immunity.
On Sunday, Seychelles became the first state in Africa to start vaccination against coronavirus. The country uses the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, a day after receiving coronavirus vaccination, that he was feeling well and would receive a second dose in 28 days.
"I have no side effects after vaccination, I feel great, I am going to get the second dose in 28 days", Erdogan told reporters.
On Wednesday, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca kicked off the country's vaccination campaign live, when he was vaccinated against COVID-19 with CoronaVac, developed by Chinese company SinoVac. There will be four stages of vaccination in Turkey. At the first stage, medical personnel and those at risk will receive the vaccine. It will cover about 9 million people. In the first two days, about 500,000 people received the vaccine in Turkey.
One of the coronavirus strains associated with Brazil has been detected in the United Kingdom, virologist Wendy Barclay said on Friday, the same day the UK government ban on travels from South America came into force.
"There are two different types of Brazilian variants and one of them has been detected in the UK", Barclay said, as quoted by Sky News.
According to the expert, who is the head of the G2P-UK National Virology Consortium, the variant was probably introduced into the UK some time ago, but she did not clarify if it is the same strain that prompted UK authorities to ban arrivals from 14 South American nations, Panama, Portugal and Cape Verde starting Friday.
Earlier on Friday, UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps denied claims that the government had been too slow to react to the Brazilian variant, claiming that the authorities had only heard about it on Sunday.
"We acted extremely quickly given there are 12,000 different variants of coronavirus", Shapps told Sky News, stressing that it takes a "huge amount of time in science" to sequence the genome of any virus variant.
He also said that there has not been any flight coming from Brazil in the last week.
Hospitals across New Delhi are getting ready to administer COVID-19 vaccine shots as India is set to launch its mass vaccination campaign on Saturday, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Friday.
Delhi residents will be able to receive a shot of the Covishield vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca/Oxford University and produced by Serum Institute of India, in 75 hospitals.
Delhi health centers, including Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital, have prepared space for vaccination registration areas and vaccination rooms, Sputnik correspondent reported. A photo ID for the registration is required to be eligible for the vaccination.
"We received this message today a little before 10am (0900 GMT). We had expected 43,875 vaccines doses from Pfizer in week 3 (next week). Now it appears that we will get 36,075 doses", the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) said in a statement.
According to the FHI, this temporary reduction will affect all European countries.
"It is as yet not precisely clear how long time it will take before Pfizer is up to maximum production capacity again", the institute concluded.
The Israeli embassy in Moscow on Friday denied claims that it is currently possible to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at the Skolkovo branch of Israel's Hadassah medical chain.
"In light of the publications in Russian media about the vaccination at Hadassah Medical Moscow with Pfizer vaccine, the Israeli embassy in Russia carried out a thorough check of this information. According to our information, these statements are not true ... Hadassah branch in Moscow, according to our information, does not carry out such activities and does not have a vaccine that has not passed state registration in Russia", the embassy's spokesperson said.
Tatiana Solomatina, a member of the Russian lower house's health protection committee, told the Echo of Moscow radio broadcaster on Tuesday that it was possible to receive Pfizer/BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine at the Skolkovo branch of Hadassah.
Earlier this week, Anna Karabash, a spokeswoman for Hadassah Medical Moscow, told the same broadcaster that the medical institution will be able to vaccinate people with Pfizer before the registration of the drug in Russia. According to her, it is possible to use drugs and technologies that are not registered in Russia but registered in the OECD countries on the territory of the international medical cluster in Skolkovo.
She stressed, however, that contracts for Pfizer vaccine deliveries have not yet been concluded, so the vaccination launch date and service prices are still unknown.
The likelihood of COVID-19 becoming an endemic disease means the Chilean government cannot rule out future procurement of vaccines from Russian developers, Chile’s Under-Secretary for International Economic Relations Rodrigo Yanez told Sputnik.
"Chile has already procured vaccines for the population for the near future, but it is clear that vaccines from prestigious laboratories such as the Gamaleya Institute look very attractive given that this is an endemic disease", Yanez said to Sputnik.
The diplomat confirmed that Chile is engaged in an exchange of technical and scientific information between the Russian institute, Chilean health authorities and regulators to obtain test results and vaccine research.
"Having this information, we will be able to further discuss the possibility of supplies or costs, but at the moment, negotiations are being conducted at a general level", he added.
Chile's authorities have reserved more than 30 million doses of vaccines to citizens from Pfizer, Sinovac, Johnson&Johnson and AstraZeneca laboratories, covering much of the country’s population. In addition, Chile is part of the international Covax mechanism.
"By order of President Sebastian Pinera, we must consider all the alternatives that the country may need, including Sputnik V", Yanez said.
About 100 people in the Netherlands reported developing side effects after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, the NOS broadcaster reported on Friday, citing pharmacovigilance centre Lareb.
A number of counties have shared data on the side effects of Pfizer’s vaccine. the Norwegian Medicines Agency said on Thursday that specialists are investigating the deaths of 23 people, who died after being vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. Moreover, the Israeli Health Ministry said in late December that one in 1,000 vaccinated Israelis developed mild side effects from the vaccine, while Bulgaria reported four side effect cases after inoculating nearly 5,000 people.
Lareb director Agnes Kant told NOS that severe allergic reactions to the Pfizer shot were identified in two cases in the Netherlands.
"These people had symptoms such as rashes and swelling around the eyes. They received treatment and recovered quickly", Kant said.
The health expert added that other cases of side effects are more usual for the post-vaccination period and include headache, fatigue and pain at the injection spot. According to Kant, such side effects are logical consequences of the vaccination as shots activate the immune system.
"We thought that 20 to 25 reports [of side effects] would occur for every 10,000 vaccinations, so this is in line with our assumptions. But not all cases of side effects are reported to us", Kant added.
The Netherlands launched its vaccination campaign on 6 January with medical workers being the priority group to receive the vaccine. According to the latest data, approximately 47,000 people have received the shots.
China has allowed a UK expert with the World Health Organization (WHO) team en route to Wuhan to enter the country after the person tested negative for COVID-19 antibodies, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
"To support the WHO's work, China has agreed to conduct a second round IgM test for the related experts. The results showed that the British expert tested negative, but test results from the expert from Qatar continued to be positive. We have agreed to allow the British expert to enter China", Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Jilian said during a regular press briefing.
Zhao explained that international travelers arriving from Singapore were required to represent negative COVID-19 test results, for both polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test and antibody test, not older than the 48 hours before their flights.
A group of 15 scientists representing the WHO was scheduled to arrive in Wuhan on Thursday on a mission to investigate the origins of COVID-19. But two experts of the WHO team tested positive for IgM antibodies when they were transiting through Singapore.
As a result, those two WHO experts were tested again for COVID-19 antibodies, while the rest of the team arrived in Wuhan and were placed under a 2-week quarantine in accordance with local containment measures.
UK Transport Minister Grant Shapps said Friday that British haulers were exempt from France’s new coronavirus test rule that requires arrivals to get a negative PCR test before going to the country.
British media warned of an impending Channel port chaos in the morning after French Prime Minister Jean Castex questioned the efficacy of much quicker lateral flow tests. Speaking on Sky News, Shapps said the reports were "erroneous."
"I’m in a very close contact with the French, with my opposite number. What the French prime minister actually said was that border workers will be included and hauliers are excluded in that… That programme's ongoing and for the time being it’s lateral flow testing", he said.
The UK has tested 66,000 haulers, Shapps estimated. The results show that only 0.3 percent of truck drivers have the virus, much lower than the national average in the UK or France. He attributed this to the long-haul drivers’ "solitary" lifestyle.
Roughly 100 people in Austria are believed to be infected with a new strain of COVID-19 that was first identified in the United Kingdom, Minister of Health Rudolf Anschober said on Friday.
"We are proceeding from the fact that we now have roughly 100 cases of suspected infection with this strain, spread across Austria. They were reported in numerous regions", Anschober said at a press conference.
The health minister said he would be "surprised" if many of the tests of the suspected individuals return negative results.
EU member states are alarmed by the spread of the new strain, which is thought to be up to 70 percent more transmissible, and are working together to formulate a joint response, the health minister said.
Austria has imposed a ban on flights from the United Kingdom and South Africa in connection with the spread of new COVID-19 variants that originated in both countries. The ban was most recently extended to 24 January.
A strict lockdown, the third since the start of the pandemic, was imposed in Austria on 26 December. The European country has reported more than 390,700 positive tests for COVID-19, including the 1,528 new cases reported over the past day.
The eastern German state of Saxony plans to put repeat quarantine offenders and coronavirus dissidents in a former migrant processing center in Dresden, media said.
Police have been guarding the $36 million fenced-off facility ever since its canteen was rebuilt as city courthouse, the Bild tabloid reported.
The center will house quarantine offenders from across the state. It is not clear what the cost of the reconstruction and accommodation per night will be.
The regional social protection ministry confirmed the plan to the daily but said that offenders will be warned off first and fined later before the court even considers incarceration.
State Health Minister Petra Koepping suggested in spring placing quarantine breakers in psychiatric wards. This proposal was rejected, as were plans to accommodate offenders in hospitals or hotels.
SUKHUMI (Sputnik) - Five hundred doses of the two-dose Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine have been delivered to a Russian military base in Abkhazia, the press service of the Russian Armed Forces' Southern Military District said on Friday.
"The first batch of 500 doses of Russia's Gam-COVID-Vac (Sputnik V) two-dose vaccine was delivered to the Russian military base", the statement said.
In accordance with the vaccination schedule, the first doses of the vaccine was received by military personnel on alert, medical personnel and command personnel of the military base. All servicemen underwent the necessary medical examination before the procedure.
The statement from the Military District said that vaccination was carried out voluntarily and on the basis of a written consent of the military and civilian personnel. There were no cases of vaccine intolerance or adverse effects recorded and all vaccinated military personnel are under constant medical control, the statement added.
The UK government ban on travels from South America, Portugal and Cape Verde over concerns about a new coronavirus variant recently identified in Brazil became effective on Friday, with UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps denying claims that the government had been too slow to act.
"We acted extremely quickly given there are 12,000 different variants of coronavirus", Shapps told Sky News broadcaster, after insisting that the government heard about the Brazilian new strain only on Sunday, stressing that it takes a "huge amount of time in science" to sequence the genome of any virus variant.
He also said that there has not been any flight coming from Brazil in the last week.
"Even if there were, people were required in any case legally to quarantine [after coming] from Brazil", he stressed.
The travel ban includes Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guayana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.
It also applies to Panama, Portugal - because of the European nation’s strong travel links with Brazil – and the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde in West Africa.
Hauliers transporting essential goods from Portugal, as well as British and Irish nationals and foreigners with residence rights in the UK will be exempted, although they must self-isolate for 10 days along with members of their households.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare on Friday held a meeting to discuss introducing harsher punishments for violators of coronavirus rules as the country sees a surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths, media reported.
According to the Kyodo news agency, the government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga earlier floated a revision of infectious disease law to crack down on flouters of restrictions measures. The ministry held the discussion before the revisions are set to be forwarded to the country’s legislature, the National Diet, next week.
The health officials largely approved the rules proposed by the Suga government: those refusing to be hospitalised would face a maximum fine of 1 million yen ($9,600) or a prison sentence of up to one year while people who hamper contact tracing effort can expect a maximum fine of 500,000 yen or jail time of up to six months, the agency reported.
Businesses that refuse to abide by government-mandated opening hours can also be slapped with hefty fines, as reviewed at the meeting.
Some officials voiced concern that the measures may infringe on personal freedoms and can increase the workload for health care workers.
Japan is in the midst of an unprecedented wave of COVID-19 transmissions, having posted over 5,000 new infections daily since 7 January. The current nationwide tally stands over 302,000 cases and 4,233 deaths.
Russia registered 24,715 COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, down from 24,763 the day before, taking the tally to 3,520,531, the coronavirus response centre said on Friday.
"Over the past day, 24,715 coronavirus cases were confirmed across 85 Russian regions, including 3,258 cases (13.2 percent) that were detected actively, with people showing no clinical symptoms", the centre said, adding that the cumulative case count has now reached 3,520,531, with the rate of increase at 0.7 percent.
Moscow confirmed 5,534 new coronavirus cases over the given period, down from 5,893 the day before. The Russian capital was followed by St. Petersburg with 3,094 cases, up from 3,041 the day before, and the Moscow Region with 1,361 new cases, up from 1,263 the day before.
The response centre reported 555 coronavirus fatalities, down from 570 the day before, raising the country's death toll to 64,495.
Total recoveries count 2,909,680 after 27,636 people were discharged from hospitals over the past day, down from 27,956 the day before.
Germany has confirmed 22,368 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, with the total count reaching 2,000,958, the Robert Koch Institute said on Friday.
The death toll has grown by 1,113 to 44,994 people within the same period of time. More than 1.64 million patients have recovered from the disease.
