China introduced the first “virus passports” on Tuesday in a bid to boost international travel as the United States and the European Union consider similar programmes. The EU has said it plans to propose an EU-wide digital vaccination passport sometime this month.

From digital certificates to “health passports”, countries and airlines across the globe are hoping to relaunch travel by letting people prove their Covid-free status.

But with patchy vaccine access around the world and mounting concerns over data privacy, questions are swirling about how the measures will work in practice.

There’s an app for that?

Most programmes under development are geared towards facilitating travel and come in the form of smartphone apps with varying criteria for a clean bill of health.

Vaccine passports, for example, are a popular way to approach proof of immunity with jab rollouts underway across the globe.

There are also apps that accept positive antibody tests as proof of immunity for those who have had the virus and recovered.

But the World Health Organization has warned that there is no evidence to show that recovered Covid sufferers with antibodies are protected from a second infection.

French President Emmanuel Macron recently suggested yet another, more localised form of Covid-free permission slip: the so-called “health pass”.

This certification would only be valid within France’s borders but would allow a fully vaccinated person to, for example, eat in restaurants and attend certain events.

Where can I sign up?

This week China launched a digital health certificate for its 1.3 billion citizens that shows the holder’s vaccine status and virus test results.

Greece and Cyprus have vaccination passports specifically for travel to and from Israel, which has fully vaccinated 44 percent of its population.

Denmark and Sweden are also looking to launch health passports soon, with the European Union promising to propose a “green pass” to ease movement within the entire Union despite resistance from France and Germany.

Is it an official travel document?

No, and there is currently no effort underway to establish a required document to travel between countries.

The Chinese health passport is an attempt to make it easier for its citizens to travel abroad, but without recognition from other countries it is of little use.

For the moment, the applications are meant to facilitate various health checks still in place at different borders, with airlines among major proponents.

Through several of its member carriers, the International Air Transport Association has been offering a digital pass allowing passengers to easily prove their health status before boarding.

Can we make it official?

Making health passports stricter or requiring them for travel could invite legal challenges.

A major worry is that banning unvaccinated people from travelling would exacerbate inequality since access to jabs is far from universal.

There are also concerns over how applications would access users’ personal data.

In France, there is already an official database of citizens who have been vaccinated against Covid-19, approved by the country’s privacy watchdog.

However, the body has warned it will re-examine the issue should the database be put to use in the context of a health passport.

(AFP)

The Senate on Saturday passed President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan in a party-line vote after an all-night session that saw Democrats battling among themselves over jobless aid and the Republican minority failing in attempts to push through some three dozen amendments.

The final bill includes $400 billion in one-time payments of $1,400 to most Americans, $300 a week in extended jobless benefits for the 9.5 million people thrown out of work in the crisis, and $350 billion in aid to state and local governments that have seen the pandemic blow a hole in their budgets.

The Senate voted 50-49, with no Republicans voting in favor, on what would be one of the largest stimulus packages in U.S. history.

Several Republicans left the chamber immediately after the vote, while Senator Bernie Sanders fist-bumped Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The fight is not over as the bill needs to return to the House of Representatives, which approved a slightly different version a week earlier.

The standoff within the Democratic party over the jobless benefits and the all-night effort by Republicans to amend a bill that polls show is popular with voters illustrated the difficulty that Biden will face in pushing other policies through a Congress that Democrats control by the narrowest of majorities. The bill is a priority for Biden as the country battles a pandemic that has killed more than 520,000 Americans.

The chamber set a record in its longest single vote in the modern era — 11 hours and 50 minutes — as Democrats negotiated a compromise on unemployment benefits to satisfy centrists like Senator Joe Manchin, who often walks a delicate tightrope as a Democrat representing a state, West Virginia, that overwhelmingly supported Republican former President Donald Trump in the November election.

The extended unemployment payments, which are to be paid out on top of state jobless benefits, proved to be the most contentious part of the bill. The House bill had set the supplemental benefit at $400 a week, but Senate Democrats finally agreed to knock that down to $300.

The House bill also featured a measure to more than double the minimum wage to $15 per hour, which the Senate also rejected.

Moderate Democrats feared that the higher jobless benefits and minimum wage hike would overheat the economy and hurt businesses in rural states.

Senate Democrats used a process called reconciliation to pass the measure with a simple majority rather than the 60 of 100 votes normally required under the chamber’s rules.

It was unclear whether Democrats will try to use that manoeuvre on other policy goals such as legislation dealing with climate change and immigration.

One Republican, Daniel Sullivan of Alaska, left Washington on Friday night for a family funeral, meaning that Democrats did not need Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote in the normally 50-50 chamber.

Republicans have broadly supported previous stimulus packages to fight the virus and revive the economy. But with Democrats in charge of the White House and both chambers ofCongress, they criticized  this bill as too expensive.

The country has yet to replace 9.5 million jobs lost since last year and the White House says it could take years to do so.

Washington got unexpected good news on Friday after data showed that U.S. employment surged in February, adding 379,000 jobs, significantly higher than many economists had expected.

Source: REUTERS

Cameroon, one of the countries in Africa worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic, is set to receive “very shortly” more than one million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute said on Friday.

Pointing to “a deterioration in the epidemiological situation” in the country, Dion Ngute told state radio that “more than one million vaccine doses will be available very shortly”.

He did not specify which vaccines they were.

Dion Ngute called on the population to get inoculated, but said the vaccination programme would be on a voluntary basis.

“In the space of one week, more than 3,000 new cases have been recorded, bringing the total number of people who have tested positive to Covid-19 to 38,988,” he said.

Cameroon, with a population of 26 million, has registered 588 deaths from coronavirus so far.

Source: Urdupoint

President Joe Biden said Tuesday the United States would have sufficient vaccine supply by the end of May to inoculate the entire US adult population.

“We’re now on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May,” said Biden — who had previously forecast it would take until the end of July to amass that many doses.

“That’s progress. Important progress. But it is not enough to have the vaccine supply,” Biden said, stressing the work still ahead to administer the vaccines once acquired.

“We need vaccinators, people who put the shots in people’s arms, millions of Americans’ arms.”

“Great news, but stay vigilant,” Biden said. “It’s not over yet.”

Biden made the announcement during a short speech in which he confirmed a deal for pharma giant Merck to produce rival Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine to boost supply nationwide.

“This is the type of collaboration between companies we saw in World War II,” Biden said.

The US leader said that Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine manufacturing facilities “will now begin to operate 24/7.”

The J&J vaccine is the third to receive US regulatory approval for emergency use.

Unlike the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the J&J vaccine requires just one dose, and is stored at fridge temperatures, offering logistical and practical advantages.

Johnson & Johnson has so far said it aims to deliver 100 million doses to the United States by June.

(AFP)

The death toll from Covid-19 in the US surpassed 500,000 on Monday with President Joe Biden set to memorialise the staggering number of lives lost despite a recent decline in coronavirus cases.

It has been nearly a year since the pandemic upended the country with dueling public health and economic crises.

“It’s nothing like we’ve ever been through in the last 102 years since the 1918 influenza pandemic … It really is a terrible situation that we’ve been through – and that we’re still going through,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Covid-19 medical adviser and the nation’s top infectious disease official, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday.

The White House said on Sunday it planned a memorial event in which Biden would deliver remarks.

A White House spokesman said the president along with first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff would hold a moment of silence on Monday and there would be a candle-lighting ceremony at sundown.

Biden last month observed America’s Covid-19 deaths on the eve of his inauguration with a sundown ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool.

Biden will use “his own voice and platform to take a moment to remember the people whose lives have been lost, the families who are still suffering … at what is still a very difficult moment in this country”, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday.

Still at ‘very high’ level

More than 28 million Covid-19 cases have rocked the United States and 497,862 have died, even as daily average deaths and hospitalisations have fallen to the lowest levels since before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. The virus took a full year off the average life expectancy in the United States, the biggest decline since World War Two.

While the decline “is really terrific … we are still at a level that’s very high,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We want to get that baseline really, really, really low before we start thinking that we’re out of the woods.”

Fauci told CNN that Americans may still need masks in 2022 even as other measures to stop the virus’ spread become increasingly relaxed and more vaccines are administered, and they may also need a booster shot depending on how variants emerge.

Less than 15% of the US population has received at least one vaccine dose, with nearly 43 million getting at least one shot and nearly 18 million getting a second shot, US statistics show.

More localities are easing some restrictions, such as on indoor dining, and moving to reopen schools even as millions await their shots, sparking debate over the safety of teachers, students and others.

Financial pressures also continue to weigh even as economists express optimism for the year ahead. Congress is weighing Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, with the House of Representatives expected to vote on it this week and the Senate seeking to pass it before March 14.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

The coronavirus will probably continue to circulate long-term despite the roll-out of vaccines, the head of the EU’s ECDC health agency told AFP on Friday, urging Europe to keep its restrictions in place for now.

“It seems more likely that it would stay” than disappear, Andrea Ammon, the head of the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said in an interview.

“It seems very well adapted to humans. So we should be prepared that it will remain with us,” she added.

“It wouldn’t be the first virus that is with us forever, so it’s not an unusual feature for a virus.”

While vaccines dramatically reduce the risk of contracting the illness caused by Covid-19, scientists have not yet established with certainty whether they also reduce transmission of the virus.

So when will we know if they do?

“It will still take a few months. You need a certain amount of vaccinated people that you follow. Special studies are now being set up,” Ammon said.

There is particular concern that the vaccines may not be as effective against some variants of the virus, especially the South African and Brazilian ones.

– Running the last kilometres –

Ammon pointed out that vaccines for the seasonal flu have to be adapted annually as the virus that causes it changes.

“It might turn out that (the coronavirus) goes the same way, or that at one point it remains stable and we can use one vaccine for a longer period,” she told AFP.

Ammon called on EU countries to maintain their restrictions despite a decline in cases across much of Europe.

“It’s still a mixed picture… We are really not out of the woods,” she said, noting that all EU members, with the exception of Finland, were still in “an epidemiological situation of serious concern”, according to the ECDC’s criteria.

“Everybody’s fed up with the measures, but when you’re running a long distance course… (you) have to run the last kilometres,” she stressed.

The number of daily cases across Europe is currently around 150,000, compared to around 250,000 a month ago, according to official data compiled by AFP.

Any relaxing of measures has to be done gradually, one measure at a time, “and only when you observe that it’s either stable or further decreasing then you go to the next one.”

The European Union’s vaccination campaign, which began in late December, has gotten off to a rocky start, hampered by a lack of vaccines and delivery delays.

According to official data on Friday, only three percent of people in the EU had received at least one vaccine dose, and 1.4 percent two doses, with a total of 20 million doses administered.

“Everybody’s aiming for that, all the efforts are in that direction,” Ammon said when asked if the goal seemed realistic.

Source: AFP

Cameroon is seeing a resurgence of leprosy, the bacterial infectious disease that causes severe, disfiguring skin sores and nerve damage.  Cameroon health authorities, on Sunday’s World Leprosy Day, said infections have jumped by about 50% since 2018.  Leprosy patients say,  just as in ancient times, they are shunned and neglected. 

Cameroon two decades ago announced that it had eliminated leprosy, but around 200 cases continued to be reported each year. 

In 2019, cases of the bacterial disease, which damages skin and nerves, increased to 270 and last year jumped to over 300.   

Ernest Nji Tabah, the permanent secretary of Cameroon’s National Committee for Leprosy, says a number of Cameroon’s health districts have been reporting outbreaks of the chronic but curable condition. 

“About 70 new cases have been reported in the southwest.  We have hot spots in regions like the North, the Adamawa, the Southwest, the Northwest,” he said. “People think that leprosy is a spell, it is divine punishment, it is caused by witchcraft, it is hereditary and so on.  Leprosy is none of these.” 

Tabah was attending an event organized by the aid group Circle of Friends Cameroon for Sunday’s World Leprosy Day. 

Aid groups handed out small gifts of food, soap, and toiletries to 30 leprosy patients at the Jamot’s Hospital in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé.  

Patrice Essolla, 51, says they never received such attention as most families abandoned relatives with leprosy. 

He says they need more assistance because they have been rendered helpless by leprosy.  Essolla says communities should stop thinking that leprosy patients are witches and wizards and instead give care, support and comfort the patients need to recover from it.  He says they are poor and need help — not the mental torture some families inflict on them. 

The Cameroon Baptist Convention’s Center for Hope helps care for leprosy patients in the northwestern town of Mbingo.   

The head of the center’s leprosy department Fomban Oliver says Cameroon was too quick to declare the disease eradicated.   

Speaking via a messaging application, he says Cameroon shouldn’t have closed some treatment centers and stopped education on the disease. 

“If it is possible for the government to reinstate the treatment centers, that will be wonderful.  If we do not do that, something alarming is going to happen,” he said. “In the field, there are no longer leprosy inspectors or supervisors or those controlling leprosy.  Even the new nurses and the new doctors that are up now, they know nothing about leprosy and if something is not done in the nearest future, the increase will be alarming.” 

The Health Ministry official in charge of leprosy in Yaoundé, Dian Ndjock, says they are encouraging all suspected cases to be taken to hospitals.  

She says the government will never neglect the suffering of leprosy patients.  

Ndjock says patients are treated and given food free of charge in four specialized centers and that people with the disease can be rushed to any of the 380 district hospitals in Cameroon.  She says civilians should stop stigma and social exclusion of leprosy patients. 

The U.N. reports every year over 200,000 new leprosy cases are detected globally with India, Brazil, and Indonesia accounting for more than three quarters of infections.   

The World Health Organization says in the Africa region case numbers have dropped by 42% since the year 2000 but about one million people have leprosy induced disabilities. 

Source: VOA