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Reuters reports:
France will bring forward the date from which all people over 18 can get vaccinated against Covid-19 from the originally planned date of 15 June, a government source said on Thursday.
The source said that French prime minister, Jean Castex, will announce the new date during a visit to a vaccination centre later on Thursday.
The government has recently relaxed conditions and age limits for getting the vaccine in order to remain on track to meeting its vaccination targets.
Nicaragua has approved Russia’s single-dose Sputnik Light Covid vaccine, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), responsible for marketing Russian vaccines abroad, has said.
Developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, the slimmed-down vaccine, which the RDIF said is 79.4% effective against Covid-19 and costs less than $10 a dose, has been earmarked for export.
It has been billed as a way to help vaccine supplies go further in countries with high infection rates, Reuters notes.
Japanese regulators recommended the approval of Covid vaccines developed by Moderna Inc and AstraZeneca PLC on Thursday, Reuters reports.
The recommendations by a health ministry panel precede official approval by the government as early as Friday, said Japan’s health minister, Norihisa Tamura.
Tamura likened the approval of the new vaccines to building extra railway tracks, telling reporters: “It means that the vaccination roll-out will be smoother.”
Supplies of the Moderna doses have already been imported and are planned for use at mass vaccination centres in Tokyo and Osaka from next week.
A district of northern Thailand has launched a raffle campaign for its vaccinated residents to win a live cow each week for the rest of the year, in an attempt to boost the local vaccination drive.
From next month, one lucky vaccinated villager in the Mae Chaem district of Chiang Mai province will be randomly chosen every week to win a young cow worth about 10,000 baht ($318.78), Reuters reports.
The campaign, set to run for 24 weeks, has been met with enthusiasm in the town of 43,000 since it was announced earlier this week.
Reuters reports:
India’s output of Covid-19 shots for August-December is likely to be lower than the government’s public estimate, according to internal projections shared with Reuters by two sources.
Lower-than-expected production could delay India’s plans to vaccinate all its adults this year, amid fears the country will face another surge of coronavirus infections in the winter.
India’s ongoing second wave, the world’s worst since the pandemic began, has overwhelmed its health system.
The government last week publicly estimated 1.46bn doses of its three approved shots – AstraZeneca, Sputnik V and Covaxin – would be made between August and December.
Production of the AstraZeneca vaccine, of which the Serum Institute of India is the biggest maker in the world, is expected to reach 100-110m doses a month from July, and stay at that level for the foreseeable future, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
That would be at least 200m doses less than the government’s public forecast of 750m AstraZeneca doses for the last five months of the year, a 27% shortfall.
Almost 80,000 Olympic officials, journalists and support staff will descend on Tokyo in July, according to media reports in Japan, as organisers press ahead with plans to hold the Games despite overwhelming public opposition in the host country.
An estimated 79,000 people will arrive from overseas to attend Tokyo 2020, the Kyodo news agency and Nikkei business newspaper said on Thursday, citing unnamed sources.
That is about half the number expected before the coronavirus pandemic forced the Games’ postponement last year, and comes after organisers asked national Olympic committees and sports federations to reduce the size of their delegations.
Justin McCurry, the Guardian’s Tokyo correspondent, has the full story here:
According to Reuters, the EU health commissioner has said she is looking towards the summer with optimism, as vaccinations in the bloc gather pace.
Following a video conference of EU health ministers, Stella Kyriakides told a news conference:
Over 20 million vaccinations are taking place every week in the EU, compared to a few hundred thousand per week in January.
“We can now look ahead with more confidence and also look towards the summer with cautious optimism,” she added, noting that 40% of the EU’s adult population had received at least one dose of vaccine, and 17% were fully vaccinated.
Sweden registered 3,411 new Covid cases on Thursday, health agency statistics indicated, continuing a downward trend in new infections evident in recent weeks.
The country of 10 million people registered 2 new deaths, taking the total to 14,351, Reuters reports.
Waiving intellectual property rights for Covid vaccines will not be enough to close the huge supply gap between rich and poor countries, the head of the World Trade Organization has warned.
South Africa and India have urged fellow WTO members to waive IP rights on vaccines to boost production, Reuters reports.
Poorer countries that make up half the world’s population have received just 17% of doses, a situation the World Health Organization head has labelled “vaccine apartheid”.
Last week, US President Joe Biden said he supported the waiver idea, but the EU was among opponents who said it will not increase output.
Speaking to the European parliament on Thursday, WTO director-general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said it was clear that an IP waiver alone would not be enough.
“To have solved the unacceptable problem of inequity of access to vaccines, we have to be holistic. It’s not one or the other,” she said, adding this could not drag out for years.
