Over 4 mln children in U.S. infected with COVID-19
As of July 15, almost 4.09 million children have been infected with COVID-19 in the United States.
Over 4 million children in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to a latest report of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association.
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As of July 15, almost 4.09 million children have been infected with COVID-19. After decreases in weekly reported cases over the past couple of months, the country began to see increases in cases in July, according to the report.
Over 23,500 child cases were reported in the week ending July 15, according to the report. Children represented 14.2 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the country.
Children accounted for 1.3 percent to 3.6 percent of total reported hospitalizations, and 0 to 0.26 percent of all COVID-19 deaths, said the report.
“At this time, it still appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is rare among children. However, there is an urgent need to collect more data on longer-term impacts of the pandemic on children, including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects,” the AAP said in the report.
Taliban now control about half of Afghan district centers: U.S. general
“Strategic momentum appears to be sort of with the Taliban,” said General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Afghan Taliban militants now control about half of the war-torn country’s 419 district centers, a top U.S. general said on Wednesday.
“Strategic momentum appears to be sort of with the Taliban,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a press conference.
“There’s a possibility of a complete Taliban takeover, or the possibility of any number of other scenarios,” Milley said. “I don’t think the end game is yet written.”
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While the militants have yet to capture any of the country’s 34 provincial capitals, they are pressuring about half of them, said Milley.
Afghan security forces are consolidating their positions to protect those major urban centers including Kabul, he said.
The Afghan provinces have been the scene of heavy battles between Taliban and the government security forces since the start of withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces from Afghanistan early May.
U.S. President Joe Biden has set a formal end to the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan for Aug. 31, days ahead of his original Sept. 11 deadline.
U.S. Central Command said last week over 95 percent of the withdrawal had been completed.
More than 2,400 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan over the past two decades, with 20,000 wounded, according to the Pentagon. Estimates show that over 66,000 Afghan troops have been killed, and over 2.7 million people have had to leave their homes.
New restaurants in Singapore make the best of a stressful situation with dining in off the table again
SINGAPORE – New restaurants are feeling the heat from the changing rules for dining in.
Over the last two months, these went from no dining in to two people allowed to five vaccinated people to no dining in again. The latest rule will kick in from Thursday (July 22) to Aug 18 under Covid-19 phase two (heightened alert) of reopening.
Chef-partner Remy Lefebvre, who delayed the opening of Casa Restaurant by Remy Lefebvre at Chijmes until last month, said: “Opening a restaurant is difficult and requires projection and experience, but in this environment, we don’t even know what the projections are for next week.”
He added: “Moving from a lockdown into a strange one-month opening, and now to another lockdown, our finances are really affected and the mental health of our team has been really affected too.”
The restaurant is now banking on its upcoming online gourmet shop with pre-cooked dishes, brunch packages, gourmet pantry products, wine, cocktail pre-mixes and merchandise. The chef said he is reaching out to customers through generic channels like the media, newsletters and personal contacts.
Another new restaurant, Canchita Peruvian Cuisine, which opened in Dempsey Hill on May 15, one day before the previous no-dining-in rule was imposed, said it had been busy building up its customer database since then.
It will push its delivery and takeaway items using that and the restaurant’s social media pages. It had also offered takeaway and delivery in May and, said its manager Celvin Chiang, the response was “not bad for a restaurant that had only been open for one day”.
But he added: “The multiple changes in dine-in rules have been challenging on the operations front, as we’ve had to adjust the seating arrangements and call guests to verify their vaccination status.”
The 28-seat modern Korean restaurant Nae:um in Telok Ayer Street opened only last month and is experiencing the dining-in ban for the first time.
But its chef-founder Louis Han said: “There is a Korean saying, ‘If you cannot escape, just enjoy’, so we try to stay positive while we adapt to the changes. With takeaway and delivery, we can potentially reach out to more people even though the offering is a little different from the dine-in menu. This, for us, is the upside of the new rules.”
Food wastage will be minimal, he added, as the new dishes will use similar ingredients.
Firangi Superstar in Craig Road is also going through its first experience of having no diners on the premises. The modern Indian restaurant opened on June 25.
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Mr Rohit Roopchand, chief executive officer of The Dandy Collection, which owns the eatery, said its menu does not translate well to delivery and in-home dining. The restaurant will instead introduce rolls and bowls. To keep waste to a minimum, it will come up with dishes using ingredients it has in stock.
Chinese restaurant Clan 7 by SF Group, which opened on May 17, launched immediately into takeaway and deliveries. The company also owns the Collin’s chain of Western eateries.
Fortunately, said chief executive officer Collin Ho, his team had enough experience in ingredient procurement, staff allocation and marketing initiatives to support the new restaurant. He said: “We are expecting a better response to deliveries this time, as the restaurant is now on delivery platforms such as GrabFood, foodpanda, Deliveroo and Oddle.”
The restaurant is also offering a 20 per cent discount until Aug 18, with a smaller menu of dishes suitable for takeaway.
The number of Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia crossed 6.35 million, with 77,915 new cases reported on Wednesday – lower than Tuesday’s tally of 78,379. There were 2,024 more deaths, increasing from Tuesday’s 1,818 and taking total Covid-19 deaths in Asean to 122,903 so far.
Indonesia reported 33,772 new infections and 1,383 deaths on Wednesday, bringing cumulative cases in that country to 2,983,830 and 77,583 deaths.
The president extended the lockdown on Java and Bali that has been in place since July 3 for at least five days or until July 25. He also promised that disease control measures would be gradually relaxed if the daily infections come down to a “stable” level.
Myanmar meanwhile reported 6,093 new cases and 247 deaths on Wednesday, bringing cumulative cases in the neighbouring country to 246,663 patients and 5,814 deaths.
Spreading infections at the community level is worsening due to poor public health services, a lack of quarantine facilities and a low vaccination rate.
Netizens in that country are sharing photos of people putting up a yellow flag in front of their homes to signify they have Covid-19 patients and require medical assistance as well as other necessities including food and water.
Pfizer partners with Biovac to boost Africas vaccine supply
Pfizer Inc. said it reached an agreement to start production of its Covid-19 vaccine at a facility in Cape Town in an effort to deliver more than 100 million doses annually to African nations.
Pfizer and its German vaccine partner, BioNTech, said Wednesday they signed a letter of intent with Biovac Institute, a company partially owned by the South African government, to manufacture the shots. The companies expect to bring Biovac’s Cape Town-based facility into the fold of their broader coronavirus vaccine supply chain by the end of 2021, and to begin producing finished doses in 2022.
At full capacity, Biovac is expected to produce more than 100 million doses per year, all of which would be distributed to the more than 50 member states of the African Union. The financial terms of the agreement, announced ahead of a World Trade Organization summit, weren’t disclosed.
With the addition of Biovac’s site, which will focus on filling the vaccine’s active ingredient into sterile vials, Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine supply chain now spans 20 facilities across three continents. To date, the companies have shipped more than 1 billion doses of the two-dose regimen to more than 100 countries or territories, including South Africa. Pfizer and BioNTech aim to deliver a total of 3 billion doses in 2021, and 4 billion doses in 2022.
Still, the global coronavirus immunization campaign has been plagued by unequal access to vaccines, spanning from the Pfizer-BioNTech shot to those made by Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and others from China and Russia.
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Africa remains the world’s least-vaccinated continent, and many of its nations are battling a third wave of infections with little access to shots. Before March, few African nations had received a single shipment. Even in South Africa, where Biovac is based, only 5.4% of the population has yet been fully vaccinated, according to Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker.
“This collaboration is another example of our commitment, from day one, to provide fair and equitable access to the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to everyone, everywhere,” Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in remarks prepared for the WTO meeting. “This commitment has been our North Star, and this agreement is just one example of the tireless work being done to expand access, in this instance to benefit Africa.”
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian-American economist and the director-general of the WTO, has repeatedly sounded the alarm on the concentration of coronavirus vaccine manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. She’s said supply gaps can be alleviated by bolstering more regional production centers.
To bridge the gap, the World Health Organization announced in late June it would establish a messenger RNA technology transfer hub in Cape Town with Afrigen Biologics & Vaccines Ltd. and Biovac. The WHO said at the time that it was in talks with potential partners that developed mRNA-based shots to work with the companies to produce them. Afrigen is also partially state-owned.
Pfizer and Biovac were a natural fit, as the companies have partnered in the past. Since 2015, New York-based Pfizer has worked with Biovac to make its blockbuster Prevnar 13 vaccine, a shot given to children to protect against 13 types of pneumococcal bacteria that most commonly cause serious infections. Biovac has formulated, packaged and distributed it.
Now, Pfizer and BioNTech will help get the South African biopharmaceutical company ready to make their Covid-19 vaccine. The technical transfer, on-site development and equipment installation will begin immediately, they said in a statement.
Biovac won’t produce the vaccine’s main ingredient but instead will acquire it from facilities in Europe. It will begin placing the vaccine in sterile vials in 2022.
“To Dr. Ngozi and others who have expressed concern that Africa is being left behind in part due to lack of vaccine manufacturing, I want to say that we hear you,” Bourla said in his prepared remarks, noting that Pfizer will pursue additional partnerships to build out its supply chain. The CEO added that the WTO can support the company’s efforts to expand global manufacturing by maintaining open trade and preserving intellectual property rules.
Published : July 22, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Riley Griffin
Delta variant drives surge in coronavirus cases worldwide, WHO warns
The global number of new coronavirus cases grew by at least 12 percent over the past week with almost all regions reporting a rise in infections, according to the the World Health Organization.
Nearly half a million new cases were reported each day in the seven days ending July 18, the agency said said late Tuesday in a weekly epidemiological update, warning against the relaxation of public health restrictions while vaccination coverage lags.
The agency blamed the global surge in part on the meteoric rise of the more transmissible delta variant, which has now spread to 124 countries and is on track to become the dominant coronavirus strain worldwide.
He also urged the officials, at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee, to make sure that any virus cases linked to the Games “are identified, isolated, traced and cared for as quickly as possible.”
Some global and Japanese health experts have cautioned that the Games could become a “super-spreader” event. Tokyo on Wednesday reported its highest number of daily new cases since mid-January, the Kyodo news agency reported.
“The pandemic is a test. And the world is failing,” Tedros said in his address.
“The global failure to share vaccines, tests and treatments. . . is fueling a two-track pandemic,” he said. “The more transmission, the more variants will emerge with the potential to be even more dangerous than the delta variant that is causing such devastation now.”
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The WHO said in its weekly update that in many countries, the delta variant now accounts for more than 75 percent of sequenced virus samples, citing data from the open-access GISAID database headquartered in Germany. Those countries include Australia, Britain, China, Denmark, Israel, Russia and South Africa.
Also, top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony S. Fauci said Tuesday that the delta variant is now the cause of more than 80 percent of new infections in the United States.
BONN, Germany – The German government approved $470 million in immediate aid for flood victims on Wednesday as it assessed the mammoth task of rebuilding infrastructure torn apart by floodwaters last week.
The initial assistance to help people rebuild their homes and businesses after the flooding that killed at least 171 people in Germany will be expanded as needed, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said. At least 200 people died across Europe, with neighboring Belgium also hit by the surging waters.
“If it becomes the case that more is needed, then we will make more funds available,” he said, adding that efforts would be made so the funding, the cost of which will be split between Berlin and the federal states, reaches people as quickly as possible.
For longer-term reconstruction efforts of roads, railways, hospitals, water and electricity networks the government is still working out how high the bill will run. The Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure has estimated the damage to the rail networks alone to be $1.6 billion.
A week after the worst flooding in living memory ripped through parts of western Germany, entire villages are still without power or the most basic of services. Highways are ripped to pieces, railway bridges lie twisted across rivers clogged with mounds of detritus including cars and caravans. Sewage, water and telecommunications networks have been obliterated.
Touring the town of Bad Münstereifel on Tuesday, one of the worst hit areas in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the scale of the damage was “terrifying.”
“We have seen people who have lost everything,” she said. “We will work together to do everything we can to ensure that funds quickly reach those who have been left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They are counting on our support.”
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The reconstruction effort comes as Germany approaches elections in September, with some victims expressing hope that this will speed up the aid in the country’s notoriously bureaucratic system.
Merkel even assured people that the aid would be administered “unbureaucratically.”
The longer term reconstruction efforts will be funded by the government in Berlin and state funds, Merkel said. Germany is also considering applying for E.U. assistance, Scholz said.
The bill from extreme flooding in 2013 that largely hit eastern and southern states stretched to more than $7 billion, Scholz said. “It will still be more. That’s how long it drags on,” he said.
Thousands of homes remain without power, and electricity supplier Westnetz, has said that some areas are still cordoned off and inaccessible to their engineers. Substations and supply lines need to be completely rebuilt.
Trucks have distributed plastic containers of water to some areas where water pipes have been washed away.
“We don’t know at this point what the actual damage will ultimately look like,” said Hartmut Hoevel, a hydraulic engineer with Erft Water Authority, which monitors water and rainfall levels in the region along the Erft river, a tributary of the Rhine.
Published : July 22, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Loveday Morris, Austin Davis
Biden splits from Trudeau, extending travel curbs at U.S.-Canada land border
TORONTO – The United States on Wednesday renewed its pandemic curbs on nonessential travel at the U.S.-Canada land border for at least a month, marking a split with its northern neighbor and close ally on the restrictions, and fueling rancor on both sides of the frontier.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a tweet that the extension of the measures, which also apply at the U.S.-Mexico land border – set to expire Aug. 21 – was motivated in part by a desire to decrease the spread of the highly transmissible delta coronavirus variant.
“DHS is in constant contact with Canadian and Mexican counterparts to identify the conditions under which restrictions may be eased safely and sustainably,” the agency said.
The announcement comes several days after Canada said it would begin to open up its borders to some foreigners for discretionary travel, beginning with fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents living in the United States on Aug. 9; and fully vaccinated people from elsewhere on Sept. 7.
Canada and the United States agreed to impose the curbs on nonessential travel at their 5,500-mile land border at the pandemic’s onset in March 2020, renewing them in one-month increments since.
The measures have had limited effects on trade and the movement of some cross-border workers, but they have kept families apart, battered the tourism industry and altered life in close-knit border communities in ways big and small – and that some analysts fear could be more permanent.
Canadian officials have often pointed to their work with U.S. counterparts on the restrictions as evidence of robust cooperation between the traditionally close allies, even as those bonds were tested when Donald Trump was president.
There has always been some asymmetry to the border measures. Canadians have been able to fly to the United States for nonessential purposes, while Canada has kept its air, land and marine borders shut to tourists.
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In recent months, lawmakers, business groups, cross-border mayors and some travelers have prevailed upon Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to ease the restrictions, arguing that he was taking a far-too-cautious approach. Some had called on President Biden to act unilaterally and lift the measures.
Now, it’s Canada that is going one way, acting unilaterally to roll back some of the curbs, while the United States is keeping them in place.
The Biden administration’s move drew criticism from several U.S. lawmakers who represent border communities.
Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., a co-chair of the congressional Northern Border Caucus, said he was “infuriated” by the administration’s decision, which he described as “illogical given the success of vaccines and counterproductive.”
Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., said the extension of the measures was “shortsighted” and left her “deeply disappointed.”
“Right now, Canadians can fly from Vancouver to Seattle but residents in the border town of White Rock cannot drive the short distance south across the border to Blaine,” she said. “Instead of helping them build back better, we’re putting our border communities at a significant disadvantage.”
On the opposite side of the border, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce expressed exasperation. Perrin Beatty, the group’s chief executive, said Canada’s higher vaccination rates and lower infection rates make it hard to argue that fully vaccinated Canadians pose a public health threat to the United States.
Seventy percent of people in Canada have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine and 52% are fully vaccinated, compared with 56% and 48% in the United States, respectively, according to Oxford University’s Our World in Data.
Beatty also pointed to a road map for a renewed U.S.-Canada relationship from February that said Trudeau and Biden “agreed to take a coordinated approach” when considering whether to ease border restrictions going forward.
“Less than five months later, Washington appears to have lost its copy,” he said.
Protests over water shortages in Iran turn deadly in a summer of drought and rolling blackouts
ISTANBUL – Residents in southwestern Iran have held large protests for nearly a week, denouncing the countrys leadership amid severe water shortages in the region, according to activists and video footage. At least two people have been killed in the unrest.
The protests, in oil-rich Khuzestan province along the border with Iraq, appear to have rattled the government, which has been accused of responding with a heavy hand as it looks to prevent the demonstrations from spreading to other parts of the country.
Videos shared on social media show hundreds of people marching in Ahvaz, the provincial capital, and other cities. The videos could not be independently verified. They show riot police using tear gas to break up demonstrations, and in at least one video there are sounds of gunfire and a witness saying that security forces were firing on protesters.
The unrest comes during a delicate political transition in Iran and at a moment when the government is wrestling with overlapping crises: an unrelenting coronavirus outbreak, economic woes compounded by U.S. sanctions and widespread power outages that have set off other protests. In recent weeks, there have also been waves of labor unrest, including strikes by oil workers.
The challenges will test Iran’s incoming president, Ebrahim Raisi, who will assume office next month. Raisi was the winner of an election marked by voter apathy and allegations that the ruling clergy stacked the contest in favor of the hard-line cleric and former judiciary head.
Authorities have blamed the outages on soaring temperatures, unusually high consumer consumption of water and electricity, and Iran’s worst drought in decades, which the government says has halted hydroelectric power generation. Rolling blackouts, frequent in the summer, have also hit the capital, Tehran.
Outgoing president Hassan Rouhani issued a rare apology this month for the outages. Officials have said they are providing emergency aid to Khuzestan, including water tankers.
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Earlier this week, Rouhani said Iran was facing its worst drought in 50 years, an “unprecedented” event due to a 52 percent decline in rainfall this year, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
About 90 percent of Iran’s overall water resources go toward the agriculture sector, which is beset by draining groundwater after the depletion of surface-level sources. Adding to the pressures, regional increases in temperatures attributed to global warming have led to more-extreme droughts, dust storms and other climate-related crises.
The water shortages have been especially severe in southwestern Iran, an agricultural area where more than 80 percent of the country’s oil reserves are held but where poverty is widespread and long-standing complaints of discrimination and official neglect have sparked frequents bouts of unrest. Most of Iran’s ethnic Arab minority lives in the region. Major protests took place in Khuzestan during weeks of anti-government unrest in November 2019 that security forces violently suppressed.
The water shortages, blamed on climate change, dam-building that has dried out rivers and government mismanagement, have worsened in recent years. Protests over shortages in Khuzestan also broke out in 2017 and 2018.
Some Iranian environmental scientists have criticized officials’ emphasis on climate change, saying it is a way for the country’s leadership to deflect responsibility.
“If you are a policymaker in the developing world, or like in the Middle East, it is best to blame everything on climate change because then you can say: ‘This was caused by climate change. I had no role in it. I could not have done anything to help it,’ ” Kaveh Madani, an environmental scientist and former deputy head of Iran’s Department of Environment who lives in exile, said in a lecture at Utah State University in 2019.
Madani cited Iran’s population growth, inefficient agriculture and government mismanagement, alongside such trends as global climate change, as major drivers of the water shortages.
“Climate change is definitely a catalyst,” he said. “Extreme events would be catalysts. We also have this situation of political instability, sanctions and all these things. They definitely contribute to the problem.”
“The damage is already irreversible,” he added, accusing Iranian policymakers of trying to mitigate the issue rather than initiating adaptive measures.
The most recent wave of demonstrations began July 15 and spread to other parts of Khuzestan, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, or HRANA, which tracks the protests. Another group, the Center for Human Rights in Iran, said that at least three protesters had been killed, in circumstances that remained unclear.
The government has acknowledged two deaths, saying a “passerby” and a police officer were killed by “rioters,” according to state media outlets. There were reports that authorities had blocked internet access through cellphone networks in some parts of Khuzestan, including Ahvaz, possibly to prevent the organizing of protests and dissemination of videos showing the unrest, according to HRANA. But word had already spread.
In Tehran on Tuesday, a small group of activists and mothers of people killed in previous protests held a gathering in solidarity with the Khuzestan demonstrators in front of the Interior Ministry, according to videos posted by the activists. Several were arrested and later released, including leading human rights advocate Narges Mohammadi.
Two former presidents – reformist Mohammad Khatami and hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – have criticized the state’s heavy-handed response to the protests.
“No political, security, military or law enforcement organization has the right to confront the people’s protests with violence, weapons or bullets with the excuse of countering chaos,” Khatami said on Twitter.
Published : July 22, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Kareem Fahim, Miriam Berger
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