An Israeli medic anministers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against the coronavirus to a man, at a Clalit Health Services station set up inside Cinema City complex in Jerusalem, on August 11, 2021.
(HAZEM BADER / AFP)
DHAKA / PHNOM PENH / NEW DELHI / JERUSALEM / VIENTIANE / BEIRUT / KUALA LUMPUR / ULAN BATOR / WELLINGTON / SEOUL / ISLAMABAD / BANGKOK / MANILA / ISTANBUL / HANOI / JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Thursday instructed health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to prepare to offer a third coronavirus vaccine booster for some age groups under 60 next week, according to a statement from Bennett's office.
Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz were briefed by CEOs of Israel's four HMOs on their vaccination efforts. The prime minister told the HMOs' directors that they need to "prepare to expand the range of ages for the third inoculation next week."
On Aug 1, Israel launched a campaign to administrate a third booster dose of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine to people aged over 60. The shot is being offered to 60-year-old people who have received the second shot at least five months ago
He reiterated the government's effort to halt the resurging coronavirus outbreak without imposing more economically and socially destructive lockdowns.
"Our goal has been and remains fighting the Delta strain without destructive harm to the economy to the extent possible," he said, adding that "in order to meet this task, the vaccination effort is the supreme tool."
Nachman Ash, director-general of the Health Ministry, told Ynet news site that the ministry is looking into lowering the age for the booster shot to people over 40.
On Aug 1, Israel launched a campaign to administrate a third booster dose of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine to people aged over 60. The shot is being offered to 60-year-old people who have received the second shot at least five months ago.
The roll out began although health regulatory authorities in the United States and the European Union have not yet approved the third booster dose.
About 58 percent of the country's 9 million population has been doubled-vaccinated, most of it with the Pfizer vaccine. According to the Health Ministry, new infections in Israel have reached 5,946 cases on Thursday, with 421 of them being in serious condition.
Malaysia
Malaysia reported 21,668 new COVID-19 infections in the highest daily spike since the outbreak, bringing the national total to 1,342,215, the Health Ministry said Thursday.
Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a press statement that 58 of the new cases are imported and 21,610 are local transmissions.
Another 318 deaths have been reported, pushing the death toll to 11,691.
A total of 17,687 more patients have been released after recovery, bringing the total cured and discharged to 1,093,503, or 81.5 percent of all cases.
Of the remaining 237,021 active cases, 1,059 are being held in intensive care and 543 of those are in need of assisted breathing.
Meanwhile, the Malaysian government has ordered an additional batch of COVID-19 vaccines from Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac, Malaysian pharmaceutical company Pharmaniaga said on Thursday.
Pharmaniaga's wholly-owned subsidiary Pharmaniaga LifeScience Sdn Bhd (PLS) had secured an acceptance letter from the health ministry for the additional doses of Sinovac CoronaVac vaccines, the company said in a statement.
Pharmaniaga group managing director Zulkarnain Md Eusope said the additional order attests to the trust by the government on the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Laos
Lao Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh said donated COVID-19 vaccines from China and other countries would enable more free vaccinations to be offered and speed up progress towards immunization targets.
Vaccinations have already been given in target areas, including places where cases have been identified, at-risk areas such as provinces bordering on virus outbreak countries, and provinces with large populations, local daily Vientiane Times reported on Thursday.
The fifth shipment of China's Sinopharm vaccine arrived in Lao capital Vientiane on Saturday, which will be given to people aged 18 to 60.
Speaking at an official handover of the vaccine on Wednesday, Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh said the new shipment would move the country closer to meeting the target to vaccinate 50 percent of the population by the end of 2021.
By the end of next year, it is hoped that 70 percent of the population will be inoculated, with more people to be vaccinated in the following years.
The prime minister expressed his gratitude to China and the Chinese people for assisting Laos in its fight against the coronavirus.
"This assistance is critical for the Lao government, as well as the Lao people, and motivates them to combat the virus. These vaccines will assist Laos in more effectively dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic," he said.
So far, some 1.38 million people have received their first jabs, while more than 1.23 million people have two doses, according to the National Taskforce Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control.
Laos' National Taskforce Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control on Thursday reported 202 COVID-19 cases and one new death over the past 24 hours, bringing the national tally to 9,363 cases and nine deaths.
The Philippines
The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 12,439 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 1,700,363.
The death toll climbed to 29,539 after 165 more patients died from the viral disease, the DOH added.
Individuals line up to receive cash aid from the national government during enhanced community quarantine at a basketball court in Manila on Aug 11, 2021. (JAM STA ROSA / AFP)
The DOH confirmed detecting 177 new Delta variant cases, bringing the total to 627, including 11 deaths. Of the additional Delta variant cases, 144 are local cases and 90 of them are from Metro Manila.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has placed Metro Manila and some areas under two-week hard lockdown since Aug. 6 to curb the Delta variant's spread and prevent crowding in hospitals.
Australia
The delta-variant virus outbreak roiling Sydney is worsening as it spreads into regional areas of Australia, with several media outlets reporting Thursday that national capital Canberra is set to announce a snap lockdown after detecting at least one case.
New South Wales, Australia’s biggest state economy, recorded 345 new cases Thursday. Daily case numbers have generally been on a steady incline since the outbreak started in Australia’s largest city in mid-June; Sydney has been in lockdown for almost seven weeks, with Melbourne also enforcing stay-at-home orders.
Two more people in Sydney have died. Both were men in their 90s and had received at least one vaccine dose.
Three more local government areas of Sydney will face tighter social-distancing and movement restrictions, while the lockdown in the Hunter Valley region of the state — including the city of Newcastle — will be extended for at least another week, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters on Thursday.
With the nation’s two largest cities in lockdown as well as an increasing number of regional areas, the delta variant of the coronavirus is placing increased pressure on Australia’s so-called “COVID Zero” strategy, which has relied on closed international borders and rigorous testing to eliminate community transmission of the virus.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is aiming to ramp up a tardy vaccine rollout in a bid to start reopening international borders next year, that have only been tightened over the course of the past year.
People wearing face masks walk through the quiet streets of the Strathfield suburb of Sydney on Aug 11, 2021, as the city's more than five million people are enduring their seventh week under stay-at-home orders. (SAEED KHAN / AFP)
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Bangladesh
The Bangladeshi government has approved the purchase of a batch of COVID-19 vaccines from China.
Bangladesh's Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase (CCGP) Affairs at a meeting approved the purchase on Wednesday.
Shamsul Arefin, a senior Cabinet Division official, told journalists after the meeting that Bangladesh will buy the vaccines from China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm).
The Bangladeshi government has recently launched countrywide a mass vaccination drive following the surging COVID-19 positivity rate in parts of Bangladesh since June.
Bangladesh reported 10,420 new COVID-19 cases and 237 more deaths on Wednesday, making the case tally at 13,86,742 and death toll at 23,398, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said.
Cambodia
A new batch of 3 million doses of China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia on Thursday, giving another boost to the kingdom's vaccination drive.
Speaking to reporters while receiving the vaccines at the airport, health ministry's secretary of state Yok Sambath said the vaccines were purchased from Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech.
She expressed gratitude to China for providing vaccines to Cambodia, saying that the Southeast Asian nation now has enough vaccines to sustain the immunization campaign.
The kingdom reported 455 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, pushing the national caseload to 83,839, the health ministry said, adding that 20 more fatalities were recorded, taking the death toll to 1,634.
India
India's COVID-19 tally rose to 32,077,706 on Thursday, as 41,195 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the federal health ministry's latest data.
Besides, as many as 490 deaths due to the pandemic since Wednesday morning took the total death toll to 429,669.
Customers eat and drink at a bar after 8pm in Tokyo on Aug 7, 2021. (PHOTO / BLOOMBERG)
Japan
A member of a Tokyo Metropolitan Government coronavirus advisory panel of experts said it was now impossible to control the spread of COVID-19 in the capital.
The comments on behalf of the panel by Norio Omagari at a Thursday meeting with Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike came as the city and national governments consider whether to extend a state of emergency in Tokyo, which is experiencing its worst-ever wave of virus cases. The emergency is currently set to be lifted at the end of August.
The imposition of successive states of emergency has become less effective over time, with many bars and restaurants ignoring instructions to close early and stop serving alcohol. An advisory panel to the national government has called for stronger measures, aimed at reducing the frequency of people’s outings in Tokyo by half compared with early July, public broadcaster NHK reported.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and other senior government officials have rejected the idea of European-style lockdowns to contain the virus, instead saying they are relying on the vaccine rollout, and tightening restrictions on who can be hospitalized.
Tokyo found 4,200 new cases of COVID-19 Wednesday after hitting a record 5,042 last Thursday, with the pace of infections appearing to level off. However, the number of patients in hospitals is continuing to hit records, putting the capital’s health care system under strain.
Japan’s central government is considering extending the state of emergency into September, and expanding it to more regions, the Sankei newspaper reported earlier Thursday.
Lebanon
Lebanon registered on Wednesday 2,591 new COVID-19 cases, the highest number of daily infections since April, the Health Ministry reported.
This raises the total number of infections to 576,550.
Meanwhile, death toll from the virus went up by six cases to 7,958.
Mongolia
The COVID-19 cases in Mongolia rose 1,443 in the last 24 hours to 178,436, with the death toll rising six to 896, said the country's health ministry on Thursday.
The latest confirmed cases were all local infections, the ministry said in a statement.
In this March 24, 2021 photo, syringes with doses of the Moderna Inc COVID-19 vaccine at a mobile drive-thru vaccination site in Novato, California, US. (DAVID PAUL MORRIS / BLOOMBERG)
New Zealand
New Zealand laid out a plan for easing some of the world’s toughest border curbs, which have kept out the highly contagious delta variant and seen the island nation effectively COVID-19-free for much of the pandemic.
The government will speed up its vaccine rollout this year and begin a phased reopening of the border in early 2022, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Thursday in Wellington. Vaccinated travelers from low-risk countries will eventually be able to enter New Zealand without going into quarantine, she said.
“Getting vaccinated is the number one thing everyone can do to be protected against COVID-19, help accelerate our economic recovery, reduce the risk of lockdowns, and safely allow New Zealand’s borders to begin re-opening next year,” Ardern said. “The first step in our plan is speeding up the vaccination process to ensure everyone is at least partially vaccinated as soon as possible to reduce the risk and impact of delta entering the country.”
Since the outset of the pandemic over a year ago, New Zealand’s border has been closed to foreigners and all returning residents have been required to enter a managed isolation facility for two weeks. The system has caught imported cases, but there have been no delta infections in the community so far. A quarantine-free travel bubble with neighbor Australia was suspended last month due to delta-driven outbreaks there.
New Zealand reported eight new cases of COVID-19 in recent returnees in managed isolation facilities, and no cases in the community on Thursday.
The eight newly imported cases came from Malaysia, India, Japan and Britain and have remained in managed isolation and quarantine facilities in Auckland and Rotorua, according to the Ministry of Health.
Pakistan
Pakistan on Wednesday confirmed 4,934 new COVID-19 cases and 102 more deaths, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) said on Thursday.
The NCOC, a department leading Pakistan's campaign against the pandemic, said that the country's total cases have risen to 1,085,294, including 975,474 recoveries.
The number of active cases has risen to 85,633, including 4,584 critical patients.
According to the NCOC, the pandemic killed 102 people on Wednesday, increasing the overall death toll to 24,187.
South Korea
South Korea is considering mandating its largest hospitals provide at least 1.5 percent of their intensive care beds for severe COVID-19 patients as such cases rise along with record new infections, two sources familiar with the plan told Reuters.
While the country has a relatively low mortality rate – 0.98 percent as of Wednesday – the more contagious Delta variant and a rise in domestic travel here over summer have contributed to a spike in severe coronavirus patients, many of them young and unvaccinated.
Severe COVID-19 cases jumped from 145 as of July 10 to 372 on Wednesday, official data showed. Of the severely ill patients, 62.1 percent were between aged 20 to 59.
Health authorities convened a meeting with directors of the top 31 hospitals on Tuesday where they revealed plans to issue an administrative order to mandate hospitals to designate 1.5 percent of their ICU beds for severe and critical COVID-19 patients, two sources who were present at the video conference told Reuters. They declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
South Korea reported 1,987 more cases of the COVID-19 as of midnight Wednesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 218,192.
The daily caseload was down from 2,222 in the previous day, but it hovered above 1,000 for 37 straight days. The daily average tally for the past week was 1,785.
Forty cases were imported from overseas, lifting the combined figure to 12,592.
Three more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 2,138. The total fatality rate stood at 0.98 percent.
Thailand
Thailand on Thursday reported a record 22,782 new COVID-19 cases and 147 more fatalities over the past 24 hours, according to the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA).
The new infections and deaths have brought the country's total number of infections to 839,771 and the death toll to 6,942, according to the CCSA.
Over the past 24 hours, 23,649 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals, the highest daily recoveries in a single day since the pandemic hit Thailand.
The situation in Bangkok remained worrisome with 4,854 new cases and 70 fatalities reported.
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Turkey
Turkey will start face-to-face education as scheduled, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Wednesday, and unvaccinated adults will have to be tested regularly against COVID-19.
"It is not possible for us to compromise face-to-face education … We will take necessary measures to protect students and their families," Koca said in a speech following the coronavirus science council meeting.
Vaccination is a duty that cannot be left up to choice anymore Koca said adding that the teachers, instructors and families of the students should be vaccinated.
"Vaccine should be a must for business and education to continue, the people who are not vaccinated should present negative PCR test results regularly," Koca said.
Turkey on Wednesday registered 27,356 new COVID-19 cases, raising its tally of infections to 5,996,224, according to its Health Ministry.
The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 128 to 52,565, while 16,363 more people recovered in the last 24 hours.
Vietnam
Police in northern Vietnam have arrested a businessman for making and selling hundreds of fake negative COVID-19 test certificates, as the Southeast Asian country battles its worst outbreak yet.
A new wave of infections since late April has forced the country to impose movement restrictions in a third of its cities and provinces, many of which require people to have negative certificates to move around.
Tran Tuan Duong, who runs a printing business in Bac Ninh province, was arrested on Wednesday while selling six certificates to a client for 1 million dong (US$43.86), the provincial police department said.
Duong, 34, confessed to police that he had sold around 150 such documents, including ones for swab-based Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests, according to a police statement on Thursday, which said further investigation was underway.
Vietnam has recorded more than 241,000 coronavirus infections and at least 4,487 deaths overall, with the vast majority of those in recent months, which followed a year of successful containment.