EU approves single-dose J&J vaccine for use – latest updates

March 11, 2021:

EU drugs regulator clears J&J's single-shot vaccine

The European Union's drugs regulator has approved Johnson & Johnson's single dose vaccine, as the bloc seeks to speed up a stuttering inoculation campaign and boost its supplies.

The shot is the fourth to be endorsed for use in the EU after vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-Oxford University and Moderna, and is recommended for those over 18 years of age, the European Medicines agency (EMA) said on Thursday. 

It's the first single-dose shot.

The United States, Canada and Bahrain have also approved the shot. South Africa is carrying out an expedited review.

Africans slam rich nations for blocking access to generic vaccines

Charities in Africa slammed rich nations for blocking efforts to waive patents for vaccines, saying this would prolong the pandemic for years in poorer nations and push millions across the continent deeper into poverty.

More than 40 charities, including Amnesty International and Christian Aid, said Wednesday's move by Western nations to prevent generic or other manufacturers making more vaccines in poorer nations was "an affront on people's right to healthcare."

Italy reports 373 deaths, 25,673 new cases

Italy reported 373 coronavirus-related deaths against 332 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 25,673 from 22,409 the day before.

Some 372,217 tests were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 361,040, the health ministry said.

England investigating new variant linked to Antigua travel

Public Health England (PHE) said a new coronavirus had been identified in the UK in two people who had recently been in Antigua, adding that it shared some traits of other variants but would not be categorised as concerning for now.

The health authority said the variant, know as VUI-202103/01 (lineage B.1.324.1) was designated a variant under investigation on March 4 after two cases were found in the South East of England in individuals who had recently travelled to Antigua.

Italy bans AstraZeneca batch following two deaths in Sicily

Italian health authorities have ordered the withdrawal of a batch of AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine following the deaths of two men in Sicily who had recently been inoculated, a source close to the matter said.

Italy's medicines authority Aifa confirmed that it was halting the use of a batch of doses as a "precautionary" measure, adding that no link had been established between the vaccine and subsequent "serious adverse events".

It did not specify what incidents it was referring to.

Turkey plans to vaccinate 50M people before autumn

Turkey plans to vaccinate 50 million people by autumn in order to combat the spread of coronavirus, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said, after the number of daily cases surged to their highest level this year.

Turkey, with a population of 83 million, has carried out 10.56 million inoculations since January 14 when it began the nationwide rollout of shots developed by China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd.

Turkey on Thursday reported 14,046 more coronavirus cases, including 821 symptomatic patients, according to the Health Ministry. 

The country's case tally stands at 2.835 million, while the nationwide death toll reached 29,290, with 63 fatalities over the past day. 

Poland to reintroduce curbs in more regions as cases surge

Poland will reintroduce restrictions in two more regions suffering from the highest coronavirus infection rates, including the one where the capital Warsaw is located, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said.

Starting from Monday, the Mazowieckie region in central Poland and Lubuskie in the west will have to close hotels, cinemas, swimming pools and shopping malls while children in the first three school grades will partly switch to online learning.

Tokyo Olympics gets IOC-funded Chinese jab

Competitors at this year's Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games will be offered vaccines purchased from China, Olympic chief Thomas Bach, in a significant move for the holding of the Covid-delayed Tokyo Games.

The Chinese Olympic Committee have made "an offer to make additional vaccine doses available to participants for Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022", Bach said.

Sweden registers 5,300 new cases, 23 deaths

Sweden, which has shunned lockdowns throughout the pandemic, registered 5,300 new coronavirus cases, health agency statistics showed.

The country of 10 million inhabitants registered 23 new deaths, taking the total to 13,111. The deaths registered have occurred over several days and sometimes weeks.

Cambodia reports first ever virus death

Cambodia has confirmed its first death since the pandemic began more than a year ago as it battles a new local outbreak that has infected hundreds of people.

The 50-year-old man was confirmed infected last month while working as a driver for a Chinese company in coastal Sihanoukville and died at the Khmer-Soviet friendship hospital Thursday morning, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

Cambodia has confirmed only 1,163 cases of infection with the coronavirus since the pandemic began, but it is battling a new local outbreak that has infected several hundred people.

Iran receives 150,000 doses of India's Covid jab

Iran has received a shipment of 150,000 doses of an Indian vaccine, Covaxin, local media reported, as the Islamic republic combats the Middle East's deadliest outbreak of the illness.

"The coronavirus vaccine shipment from India arrived at (Tehran's) Imam Khomeini airport containing 150,000 doses," deputy customs chief Mehrdad Jamal Arvanaghi told ISNA news agency.

Iran, which is in its second month of a vaccination campaign, is to receive another 375,000 doses from India next week, the health ministry's public relations head Kianoush Jahanpour announced on Twitter.

EU regulator meets to evaluate J&J's one-shot vaccine

The European Medicines Agency has been meeting to discuss whether Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose coronavirus vaccine should be authorised, a move that would give the European Union a fourth licensed vaccine to try to curb the pandemic amid a stalled inoculation drive.

The Amsterdam-based EU regulator is scheduled to convene its expert committee in the morning to assess the J&J vaccine data. A decision on whether the agency recommends that the shot be licensed across the 27-nation bloc could come in the afternoon.

The EMA has already approved vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

Poland reports over 21,000 cases

Poland has reported 21,045 daily cases, health ministry data showed, the highest tally since November as the country faces a surge in infections driven by a highly contagious variant of the virus first identified in Britain.

In total, the country has reported 1,849,424 cases of the coronavirus and 46,373 deaths.

Denmark halts use of AstraZeneca vaccine

Danish health authorities have said they were temporarily suspending the use of AstraZeneca's vaccine after some patients developed blood clots since receiving the jab.

The move comes "following reports of serious cases of blood clots among people vaccinated with AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine," the Danish Health Authority said in a statement.

But it cautiously added that "it has not been determined, at the time being, that there is a link between the vaccine and the blood clots."

China will continue to work with WHO to seek virus origins

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has said the country would continue to work with the World Health Organization (WHO) in trying to find the origins of the virus, in response to a question on US criticism that it was not transparent in sharing data on early cases with a WHO investigation earlier this year.

Li, speaking on Thursday at a media briefing at the end of China's annual session of parliament, said China had "acted in a fact-based manner and with an open, transparent and cooperative approach."

Russia reports over 9,000 new cases

Russia has reported 9,270 new cases, including 1,281 in Moscow, taking its total case tally to 4,360,823 since the pandemic began.

The government task force also said that 459 people had died in the last 24 hours, pushing its death toll to 90,734.

Hungary reports record 8,312 infections 

Hungary has reported a record 8,312 new infections in a worsening third wave of the pandemic, with tighter lockdown measures and a vaccination campaign not yet sufficient to reverse a dismal trend.

Hungary imposed tough new lockdown measures on Monday to curb a rise in infections and has accelerated its vaccination campaign using Chinese Sinopharm's vaccine as well as Russia's Sputnik V.

Germany's confirmed cases rise by 14,356

The number of confirmed cases in Germany has increased by 14,356 to 2,532,947 data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed. 

The reported death toll rose by 321 to 72,810, the tally showed.

Exodus looms as thousands of nurses die since WHO declared coronavirus a pandemic

At least 3,000 nurses have died from Covid-19, the global nurses' federation has said as it warned of a looming exodus of health workers traumatised by the pandemic.

The World Health Organisation first described the virus as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. 

Now, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) said burn-out and stress had led millions of nurses to consider quitting the profession.

And once the pandemic is over, a dwindling number of experienced nurses could be left to handle the giant backlog of regular hospital care that had been postponed due to the crisis, the ICN warned.

The known death toll of nurses killed by the disease — compiled from just 60 countries — is likely to be a gross underestimate of the full total, the federation said.

READ MORE: 2020 rewind – Timeline of Covid-19 pandemic

Australia unveils $928M package for tourism industry

The Australian government has unveiled a $928 million tourism support package, aimed at boosting local travel while international routes remain closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The basket of airline ticket subsidies for travellers, cheap loans to small tour companies and financial aid for the country's two largest airlines is designed to keep the critical sector ticking over until foreign tourists return.

"This package will take more tourists to our hotels and cafes, taking tours and exploring our backyard," Morrison told reporters in Sydney.

"That means more jobs and investment for the tourism and aviation sectors as Australia heads towards winning our fight against Covid-19 and the restrictions that have hurt so many businesses."

China reports 11 new cases vs 5 day earlier

China has reported 11 new cases on the mainland on March 10, up from five cases a day earlier, the country's national health authority said.

All of the new cases were imported infections originating from overseas, the National Health Commission said in a statement. The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, fell to 10 from 16 cases a day earlier.

The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China now stands at 90,018, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,636.

S. Korea extends use of AstraZeneca vaccine to people over 65

South Korea will extend vaccination for people aged 65 years and older with AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine to ramp up its immunisation drive, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun has told a government meeting.

The country has been rolling out the vaccine since the last week of February, beginning with the elderly and health workers, but had excluded more than 370,000 over-65s in nursing homes citing a lack of clinical trial data on the age group.

Real-world data from Britain has now shown AstraZeneca and Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccines are both more than 80 percent effective in preventing hospitalisations in over-80s after one shot.

Vir, GSK plan to seek emergency use nod for antibody therapy

Vir Biotechnology and Britain's GSK have said they planned to seek emergency use authorisation (EUA) for their experimental antibody therapy after interim data from a study showed 85 percent reduction in hospitalisation and deaths among patients.

An independent panel recommended stopping further enrolment for the late-stage trial due to evidence of "profound efficacy" of the therapy, Vir and GSK said in a joint statement.

Antibody treatments are designed to decrease the severity among patients diagnosed with the infection.

Additionally, the companies said a new laboratory study showed the therapy, VIR-7831, was equally effective against the UK, South African and Brazilian variants of the coronavirus.

Vir and GSK announced a partnership last year to research treatments. 

New antibody treatment reduces risk of hospitalisation 

A combination of two monoclonal antibody drugs, bamlanivimab and etesevimab, from US drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co, reduced the risk of hospitalisation and death by 87% in a study of 769 non-hospitalised infected patients with risk factors for developing severe illness.

The results come from a Phase 3 clinical trial of people aged 12 and over with mild-to-moderate symptoms, who were considered high-risk because of their age or underlying conditions.

Among them, 511 received the combination treatment, which is authorized for emergency use in the US, and 258 received a placebo.

There were four hospitalisations and no deaths in the treatment group, while four people died in the placebo group and 11 were hospitalised.

This represented a statistically significant risk reduction of 87 percent.

Brazil registers new daily record for virus deaths

Brazil has registered a new record for daily virus deaths, with 2,286 people dead from the virus in the last 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry.

The country recorded 79,876 new cases, with more than11.2 million total cases of the virus since the pandemic began, according to the official Health Ministry tally.

Mexico's death toll closes in on 200,000

Mexico's Health Ministry reported 6,674 new confirmed cases of in the country and 699 additional fatalities, bringing the total tally of infections to 2,144,558 and 192,488 deaths.

Health officials have said the actual number of infected people and deaths in Mexico is likely significantly higher than the official count because of a lack of wide-scale testing.

Higher pollen levels linked to increased virus rates

Higher pollen concentrations in the air have coincided with increases in infection rates, a large study shows, suggesting a possible link. 

Using data from 130 sites in 31 countries, researchers found that airborne pollen levels, sometimes in combination with humidity and temperature, accounted for up to 44% of the variability of infection rates during the spring of 2020.

The effect was not connected with pollen allergies, the researchers said. 

In a report by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, they explained that in everyone, exposure to pollen reduces the ability of the respiratory tract lining to defend itself against viruses by diminishing the release of the antiviral protein interferon. 

The study also reports that under similar pollen concentrations, infection rates were halved when lockdown measures were in place, because the lockdowns limited exposure to both the virus and the pollen that diminishes the immune response.

New lockdown measures for Malta

The Maltese government ordered non-essential shops and schools to close amid a surge in cases on the Mediterranean island.

Prime Minister Robert Abela imposed the measures after Malta saw a daily record of 510 new cases in the country of 500,000 people.

As well as schools and shops, he suspended all organised sport and closed theatres, museums, gyms and religious activities. 

Gatherings of more than four people are prohibited.

Other restrictions introduced over recent weeks, including the closure of all bars and restaurants and the mandatory wearing of masks in public areas, remain in place.

Health Minister Chris Fearne said Malta was far ahead of other EU countries in its vaccination campaign against the virus, having given 18% of the population at least one jab.

Herd immunity is expected to be achieved by mid-summer, he said.