The US will reach a milestone of 200 million Americans vaccinated with at least one shot against the coronavirus once today’s data is published, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients said on Wednesday.
“Once the numbers from today are reported, we will have reached two hundred million Americans with at least their first shot. That's a major milestone,” Zients said at a press briefing.
Zients added that over the last two weeks nearly 7 million Americans got their first vaccine shot making it the highest two-week total since the beginning of June.
The past month has also seen a 75 percent increase in the average daily number of 12-15 year-olds vaccinated, Zients said.
The US started to report higher vaccination rates after the highly transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19 became the predominant strain across the country in July resulting in the number of cases reaching over 100,000 cases per day in August.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) on Wednesday called on affluent states to increase vaccine sharing with Southeast Asia, which has recently been suffering the world's highest mortality rates from the coronavirus, caused by the spread of the highly transmissible Delta strain.
Over the past two weeks, Southeastern Asia has confirmed a total of 38,552 COVID-19 fatalities, which is twice more than in North America, according to John Hopkins University.
While certain Western countries have fully vaccinated over half of their populations — 60% in the UK and 64% in Canada and Spain — Southeast Asian states are falling significantly behind behind. Malaysia has fully vaccinated 34% of its citizens, Indonesia and Philippines around 11%, and Vietnam less than 2%, the organization said.
“In the short-term, we need much greater efforts by richer countries to urgently share their millions of excess vaccine doses with countries in Southeast Asia. We also need vaccine companies and governments to share technology and scale up production,” Alexander Matheou, IFRC Asia Pacific Director, was quoted as saying by the statement.
The coming weeks will be crucial in the fight with coronavirus variants, which can only be won by scaling up vaccinations, treatment and testing, the organization said, adding that at least 70% people should be vaccinated in the region to curb the surge.
US Forces Korea (USFK) said on Wednesday that it would provide shots of coronavirus vaccines approved in the United States to South Korean security personnel who have access to local American military bases.
"Effective immediately, USFK will be offering an FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] authorized COVID-19 vaccine, on a voluntary basis, to Korean national contractors and subcontractors with access to USFK installations as a result of an active contract and/or subcontract," the army wrote on Facebook.
Previously approved groups are also eligible for vaccine shots, USFK noted, strongly advising all those eligible to use the opportunity protect the entire community.
The US Department of Defense approved the vaccination of USFK-associated Korean civilians and soldiers in December 2020.
Russia's single-shot Sputnik Light vaccine against the coronavirus showed a high safety profile and a 93.5% efficacy in Paraguay's ongoing vaccination campaign, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said on Wednesday.
"RDIF ... announces the data from Paraguay’s Ministry of Health on the one shot Russian Sputnik Light vaccine (the first component of the Sputnik V vaccine) demonstrating high safety profile and a 93.5% efficacy, as reported during the ongoing vaccination campaign in the country. The one shot Sputnik Light vaccine has proven to be highly effective against COVID among more than 320,000 subjects who had received the vaccine based on the data collected by July 30, 2021," the fund said in a statement.
No serious adverse events; deaths related to the vaccination; cerebral vein thrombosis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, capillary leak syndrome, myocarditis and pericarditis cases were recorded.
"The one shot Sputnik Light vaccine enables authorities of Paraguay to speed up the vaccination of the population and accelerate the creation of herd immunity. As demonstrated by data from the Ministry of Health of Paraguay, as well as and a number of other countries around the world, Sputnik Light has a high safety profile and one of the highest efficacy numbers as compared to many two-shot vaccines," RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev said, as quoted in the press release.
New Zealand police have arrested eight people who went out to protest after the lockdown entered into force, with former Public Party leader Billy Te Kahika detained at a rally in Auckland, New Zealand’s RNZ radio reported on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the country’s health ministry introduced a three-day total lockdown after detecting one case of COVID-19 caused by the Delta variant.
About 100 people without masks took to the streets to protest against the COVID-19 restrictions next to the national broadcaster TVNZ buildings in Auckland. Protests were also registered in the cities of Nelson and Tauranga.
The police have not commented on Te Kahika’s arrest, but he was described as a conspiracy theorist during the RNZ broadcast.
The protesters were dispersed, with four arrested in Auckland and four more in Tauranga after they refused to comply with restrictions following repeated verbal warnings by the police. A decision on charges has not yet been made.
The police also had to turn back people traveling out of town to holiday homes and urged everyone to stay home, saying that "the restrictions are there for a reason."
To date, New Zealand has confirmed a total of 2,570 COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, and 26 related fatalities.
Russia registered 20,914 COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, down from 20,958 the day before, taking the overall tally to 6,663,473, the federal response centre said on Wednesday.
"Over the past day, 20,914 COVID-19 cases were confirmed across 85 Russian regions, including 1,704 cases (8.1%) without clinical symptoms," the centre said, adding that the rate of increase fell to 0.31%.
St. Petersburg has the highest number of new cases with 1,636 daily infections, up from 1,328 the day before. It was followed by Moscow with 1,590 new cases, down from 2,006, and the Moscow region with 1,240 cases, up from 1,156.
The response centre reported 799 new deaths linked to the coronavirus, down from 805 the day before, raising the country's total death toll to 172,909.
In the same 24 hours, 20,713 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals across the country, up from 18,407 the day before, bringing the total to 5,939,037.
The Formula 1 racing championship confirmed on Wednesday the cancellation of the 2021 Grand Prix in Japan, citing the coronavirus pandemic in the country.
The racing championship is not the only athletic event in the Asian country affected by an alarming rise in COVID-19 cases as earlier in the week spectators were banned from the upcoming 2020 Summer Paralympic Games.
"Following ongoing discussions with the promoter and authorities in Japan, the decision has been taken by the Japanese government to cancel the race this season due to ongoing complexities of the pandemic in the country," Formula 1 said in a statement.
Tokyo and five other Japanese prefectures — Okinawa, Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa and Osaka — have been under a COVID-19 state of emergency since July due to the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant. Starting Friday, they will be joined by Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Hyogo, and Fukuoka.
Ecuador is holding talks on production of Russia's coronavirus vaccine, Health Minister Ximena Garzon said.
"We are in the process of drafting a road map... Talks with Russia on the organization of vaccine production in our country are progressing well," Garzon said at a press conference broadcast by Correo on Twitter.
