WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Between 1.5 and 2 million passport applications are in backlog as the US State Department is surging staff to decrease the processing times to pre-coronavirs pandemic levels, Bureau of Consular Affairs Deputy Assistant Secretary for Passport Services Rachel Arndt said on Wednesday.
"The pandemics disruptions continue to have a ripple effect on all steps of the passport process, including the amount of time it currently takes us to process a passport application. We are surging staff both adjudicators and contractors back into the office at agencies across the country as COVID-19 restrictions", Arendt said during a press briefing. "Our backlog currently is somewhere in the range of a million and a half to two million applications".
Arendt noted that it will take time for the current wait times of 12 to 18 weeks to fall to pre-pandemic levels, which means that citizens who submit new passport applications today will not get their new passport until late in the fall.
More than 150 passport services staffers will be returning this summer to 21 offices across the United States, Arendt said.
The processing times were greatly affected by the pandemic since passport specialists need to be physically in the office to process the passport and that was impossible dues to the COVID-19 restrictions that lasted more than a year, Arendt added.
PARIS (Sputnik) - The parade on the occasion of the Bastille day, France's national day, was held in Paris after last year’s cancellation due to COVID-19 restrictions, a Sputnik correspondent reported.
France's President Emmanuel Macron joined the celebrations at the square next to the Triumphal Arch, where he stood alongside Chief of General Staff of the French Armed Forces Francois Lecointre.
To get access to the parade, French citizens had to fulfill some pandemic-related restrictions such as providing a COVID-19 green pass, which is either a vaccination certificate or a negative PCR test. Checking the documents and belongings by law enforcement officials created long queues.
There will be traditional fireworks by the Eiffel tower tonight. To watch them from the Champ de Mars, Parisians will also need a mask and a green pass.
Bastille Day commemorates the storming of the Bastille, a fortress and political prison in Paris, a true symbol of the monarchy, which marked the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789.
WARSAW (Sputnik) - Poland plans to re-export tens of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Ukraine, Georgia and some Balkan countries, Mikhail Kuchmerovsky, the Chairman of the Material Reserves Agency, said on Wednesday.
"We have considered re-exporting vaccines for a long time. Under the European Commission agreements Poland ordered a total of 100 million doses by different vaccine producers", he said, as quoted by the Polish Press Agency.
Those vaccines are expected to arrive by the end of Q1 in 2022. Poland plans to resell the excess of this supply to other countries, including Ukraine and Georgia within the framework of the EU Eastern Partnership, a joint initiative, aimed at strengthening cooperation with six Eastern neighbors: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
The agreement with the European Commission enables Poland to re-export more than 4 million doses, with 5 million needed to be stored in Poland’s stocks. For this purpose, Poland considers the Johnson & Johnson vaccine a perfect option, since it is efficient and may be stored for up to two years, according to Kuchmerovsky.
Poland will primarily re-export AstraZeneca vaccines because Pfizer is in high demand in Poland. As of now, 15 million out of Poland’s 38 million population have been fully vaccinated with one of the four vaccines used in the country - Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson&Johnson, Kuchmerovsky added.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - A total of 242 cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome have been registered following vaccination with AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccines in the European Union and European Economic Area, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said Wednesday.
The agency said that 227 cases of the rare disease that causes the body’s immune system to attack the nervous system were registered following vaccination with AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine as of 27 June.
A further 15 cases were registered following vaccination with Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine.
The EMA said that there was not sufficient evidence at present to say if there was a direct link between the two vaccines and Guillain-Barre Syndrome.
"Reported cases concern suspected side effects, i.e. medical events that have been observed after vaccination, but which are not necessarily related to or caused by the vaccine. At this stage the available data neither confirm nor rule out a causal relationship with the vaccine", the EMA said.
In a separate press release, the EMA urged people to complete a full vaccine dosing regimen in order to ensure that they are protected against the Delta COVID-19 variant, which is set to account for 90% of all cases in the region by August.
Last week, the EMA issued an advisory recommending that Guillain-Barre Syndrome be added on the warning labels of both vaccines as a rare side effect.
In total, 51.4 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in the EU and EEA as of 20 June, according to EMA data.
Roughly 7 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Scientific studies confirm that vaccination against coronavirus infection does not affect fertility, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said in an interview with Sputnik.
"Scientific research confirms that vaccination against COVID-19 does not affect fertility", the minister said.
When studying the reproductive toxicity of the Sputnik V vaccine, there was no negative effect on the course of pregnancy and the development of babies, Murashko added.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Austria has witnessed a surge in coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, according to the data provided by the country's Crisis and Disaster Management on Wednesday.
As of Wednesday morning, 332 fresh COVID-19 infections were identified, bringing the total to over 652,000. In comparison, the Tuesday daily number stood at 218 while the entire preceding month posted under 200 new cases daily.
Besides, the death toll from the disease increased by two fatalities and now stands at 10,726, the authority reported. In addition, 114 people are hospitalized with coronavirus-related complications, 33 of them are in intensive care.
ROME (Sputnik) - Italian Deputy Health Minister Pierpaolo Sileri on Wednesday called for the introduction of COVID-19 vaccine passports for access to transport and some public venues, following the example of France.
"We should introduce this measure in Italy and don't ask me why we haven't done it yet, I have talked about it several times to [Health Minister Roberto] Speranza", Sileri told the Il Messaggero newspaper.
He believes that introducing COVID-19 passports would allow for keeping nightclubs open and, therefore, increase the immunization rate among those aged from 18-40. Yet, the COVID-19 certificates will not be needed to enter cafes and bars, unless the infection rates reach the United Kingdom's level, the official was cited as saying.
BERLIN (Sputnik) - Frank-Walter Steinmeier called on fellow citizens in a special video message to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
"I ask everyone who is not yet sure: get vaccinated! Don't give up! The overall goal will only be achieved if more people in our country are fully protected by vaccination. Only in this case, variants of the virus, such as the current variant ‘delta’, will not force the introduction of new restrictions. Only in this way will we be protected from serious and fatal infections with a high degree of safety", the head of state said.
Currently, 43% of the adult population in Germany is fully vaccinated, while almost 59% received at least one dose of the two-component vaccine. Experts from the Robert Koch Institute recommend vaccinating 85% of the population aged 12-59 and 90% of those over 60.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Thomas Bach on Wednesday said that 85% of athletes and officials taking part in the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo are either vaccinated or immune to the coronavirus.
“Eighty-five per cent of the athletes and officials who will live in the Olympic Village, and almost 100 per cent of the IOC Members and IOC staff, are either vaccinated or immune. The percentage of vaccinated international media representatives is between 70 per cent and 80 per cent," Bach was quoted as saying in a statement.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia and China are cooperating on the mutual recognition of COVID-19 vaccines, which is a "rather time-consuming process," Russian Ambassador to China Andrey Denisov said in an interview with Sputnik.
The process of a mutual recognition of vaccines includes two aspects — the state registration of COVID-19 vaccines and the mutual recognition of vaccination certificates of some sort, the diplomat said.
"As for the state registration of vaccines, this is a rather serious, multidimensional and time-consuming process. Here we also cooperate with our Chinese colleagues and have quite advanced in this cooperation", Denisov noted.
Russia has found partners in China who could potentially manufacture its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, and the negotiations to launch the vaccine production in China are currently underway, the ambassador said.
"But even the launch of vaccine production does not mean [its] registration", Denisov said, adding that the registration requires "large-scale trials" that China is not able to conduct at the moment due to extremely low virus incidence.
LONDON (Sputnik) – London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced on Wednesday that wearing face mask in the city's public transport will remain compulsory after 19 July, when the UK central government is set to lift all remaining COVID-19 restrictions in England.
"If you want to use public transport in London, the rules are you'll wear a face mask", Khan said during an interview with ITV's Good Morning Britain program.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - More than 4,300 new coronavirus cases and 53 related deaths were recorded in Kazakhstan in the past 24 hours, which is the highest numbers for both metrics since the start of the pandemic, the Kazakh COVID-19 task force said on Wednesday.
"In the past day, 4,375 cases of the coronavirus infection were detected in Kazakhstan though positive PCR tests," the news release read.
The queue for vaccinations took a violent turn as a large number of people turned out for vaccinations in Bihar's Gopalganj. Videos purportedly emerging from the site show hundreds of people pushing and shoving each other while in the queue to get their vaccination dose.
The situation has remained same in the area since yesterday and the latest videos show the crowd conditions worsening.
SHOCKING Scenes at a vaccination centre in Bihar’s Gopalganj. Social distancing, Covid protocols go for a toss. What’s happening in Bihar?? pic.twitter.com/gf79A5aNdB
— Prashant Kumar (@scribe_prashant) July 13, 2021
TOKYO (Sputnik) - The first charter flight with Japanese employees of construction company Shimizu and their family members has departed from Jakarta amid a spike in COVID-19 cases, the Kyodo news agency reported on Wednesday.
The company has decided to evacuate its Japanese personnel and their families due to the current epidemiological situation in the country as well as the Indonesian health system allegedly being incapable of providing timely treatment to all COVID-19 patients.
According to the news agency, 50 Shimizu employees left Indonesia on that flight.
