Day: June 14, 2021

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has delayed plans to lift coronavirus restrictions by a month because of the highly contagious Delta variant, first identified in India.

Johnson said on Monday that restrictions will now be lifted on July 19 instead of June 21.

“I think it is sensible to wait just a little longer,” he told a news conference in London.

Johnson said he is confident that the country will be able to reopen on July 19, noting that by then two-thirds of the British population are expected to be fully vaccinated.

“It’s unmistakably clear the vaccines are working, and the sheer scale of the vaccine rollout has made our position incomparably better than in previous waves,” he said.

On Monday, the British government reported 7,742 new confirmed coronavirus cases, and Johnson said cases are growing by about 64% per week.

The Delta variant of the coronavirus now accounts for 90% of new cases in Britain.

In other countries

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe is reintroducing a lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of a COVID-19 outbreak.

Vice President Constantino Chiwenga said in a televised speech this weekend that complacency has resulted in a spike in COVID-19 cases.

In India, a number of states eased coronavirus restrictions on Monday, including the capital Delhi, as the number of new infections dropped to the lowest level in 74 days. The country reported 70,421 new COVID-19 cases in the previous 24-hour period, the lowest since March 31.

Public health officials have cautioned that India’s tolls may be undercounted.

Novavax trials

Also Monday, U.S.-based biotech company Novavax announced that Phase 3 clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine show it more than 90% effective at preventing the disease and providing good protection against variants.

The Novavax vaccine, which is easy to store and transport, is expected to play an important role in boosting vaccine supplies in the developing world.

The White House’s top adviser on the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told The Washington Post the vaccine is “really very impressive,” saying it is on par with the most effective shots developed during the pandemic.

Vaccination requirement lawsuit

A federal judge in the U.S. state of Texas on Saturday dismissed a lawsuit challenging a hospital’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement for its employees.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes in the Southern District of Texas wrote that the employees of Houston Methodist Hospital “are not participants in a human trial.” He said, “Methodist is trying to do their business of saving lives without giving them the Covid-19 virus.”

According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the United States has had the highest number of coronavirus cases, at 33.5 million, followed by India, with 29.5 million coronavirus infections, and Brazil, with 17.4 million COVID-19 cases.

Source: Voice of America

Medical authorities in Cameroon marked World Blood Donor Day on Monday with continued pleas for blood donors, after a dramatic drop in donations over the past year. Donations fell by half in 2020, then by nearly half again so far this year, worsening the country’s blood shortage.

Officials in Cameroon point to 32-year-old Alphonse Suh Chia as a good example of a determined, voluntary blood donor.

Chia says he became a blood donor in February, after he watched as a 6-year-old boy died of severe anemia in the Central Hospital in Yaounde. He says the medical staff members on duty told him that the blood bank was dry and there was no one to donate blood to save the child’s life.

Chia says he was being treated for malaria at the hospital and could not donate blood at the time.

But since then, he says, he has joined an association called Green Hearts that donate blood to people in need.

Cameroon says it needs 400,000 pints of blood each year to meet the medical needs of its 25 million people. But in 2020, people donated just 48,000 units of blood, down from 103,000 units in 2019.

The central African state says blood donations have fallen again so far this year.

Dora Ngum Suh Mbanya, director general of Cameroon’s National Blood Transfusion Center, says COVID-19 scares people away from donating blood.

“With the COVID pandemic in 2020, there was a deficit of 44 percent in blood donation,” Mbanya said. “What we gathered is that COVID had a huge impact on blood donation. WHO set out criteria whereby, if you are a recovered person from COVID-19, you are allowed a month or so after recovery before you could be eligible to donate.”

Mbyana says popular myths surrounding blood donation and transfusion are also an obstacle.

“There are those who think that you take their blood and do witchcraft with it and so they cannot donate their blood. There are those with religious beliefs that you cannot take blood from one person and give to the next person. Those kinds of people will not want to donate blood since they would not even receive it. And so, we want to encourage our young people to step forward and take leadership roles in promoting health in our nation through blood donation,” Mbyana said.

With Cameroon battling a separatist crisis in two western regions, Boko Haram attacks in the north and occasional spillover of violence from the Central African Republic, the government says the need for blood to treat wounded civilians and fighters is higher than ever.

Source: Voice of America