The long-delayed 2020 edition of the Tokyo summer Olympics opened Friday against the sober backdrop of soaring COVID infection rates, but with plenty of pomp and ceremony nonetheless –  including a massive fireworks display and an aerial show of drones resembling planet earth hovering above Olympic Stadium, while John Lennon’s “Imagine” echoed across the night […] Continue reading ->
Chinese officials have rejected WHO’s proposal for a more rigorous Phase II investigation of the origins of the SARS-CoV2 virus, including renewed consideration that the virus may have escaped from a laboratory, describing the new plan as “impossible” at a press conference.    “We will not accept such an origin-tracing plan as it, in some aspects, […] Continue reading ->
IBADAN – Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, has officially exhausted all the doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine it received in March from COVAX, according to Dr Faisal Shuaib, CEO of Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA). Twenty-one African countries have seen COVID-19 cases rise by over 20% for at least two weeks running, […] Continue reading ->
Biodiversity sits at the heart of the simultaneous fight against both COVID-19 and the climate crisis, said experts during a Wednesday event hosted by the Society for International Development (SID).  At the event, ‘The Vaccine for Biodiversity’, panelists discussed re-focusing attention on the current health and climate crisis, and how new pandemics should and can […] Continue reading ->
The World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) remains deadlocked on the “fundamental question” of whether a waiver on intellectual property rights of COVID-related products is the best way to address equitable vaccine access during the pandemic. This is according to a draft oral status report adopted at Tuesday’s […] Continue reading ->
In a milestone deal for Africa, Pfizer/BioNTech announced Wednesday that it would partner with the Cape Town-based pharma firm Biovac to produce over 100 million doses annually of it’s cutting edge mRNA vaccine – for distribution within the African Union.   The deal was quickly hailed as a major breakthrough on a continent that is desperately […] Continue reading ->
As an official partner of the COVAX Facility, UNICEF is responsible for procurement, logistics and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines. PRITI PATNAIK spoke with Gian Gandhi, who coordinates COVAX operations for UNICEF, to get a sense of the challenges faced by the organization during the pandemic in the context of production shortages and realities at the […] Continue reading ->