Day: June 26, 2021

BERLIN – The United Nations said 12 German troops and a Belgian soldier serving in the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali were wounded Friday in an attack in the country’s restive north.

The U.N. mission in the country, MINUSMA, had earlier said that 15 peacekeepers were wounded when a temporary operational base in the Gao region was targeted with a vehicle bomb. Later, it corrected the numbers.

German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said three of the soldiers were seriously wounded. She told reporters in Bonn, Germany, that two soldiers were in a stable condition while the third was still undergoing surgery.

All of the wounded soldiers were flown by helicopter to Gao, where they were being treated at German, French and Chinese medical facilities, the minister said.

“The military operations on site aren’t completed yet,” she said.

A German medevac plane will fly to Gao overnight to bring the wounded soldiers back to Germany on Saturday, said Kramp-Karrenbauer.

Germany has hundreds of troops taking part in U.N. stabilization and European Union training missions in the West African nation.

Mali has been trying to contain an Islamic extremist insurgency since 2012.

Islamic extremist rebels were forced from power in Mali’s northern cities with the help of a French-led military operation in 2013. However, the insurgents quickly regrouped in the desert and began launching frequent attacks on the Malian army and its allies fighting the insurgency.

The extremists have expanded their reach well into central Mali, where their presence has inflamed tensions between ethnic groups in the area.

Source: Voice of America

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday that the delta variant of the novel coronavirus has been identified in at least 85 countries and “is the most transmissible of the variants identified so far . . . and is spreading rapidly among unvaccinated populations.” He also said, “As some countries ease public health and social measures, we are starting to see increases in transmission around the world.”

“It’s quite simple: more transmission, more variants. Less transmission, less variants,” the WHO chief said. “That makes it even more urgent that we use all the tools at our disposal to prevent transmission: the tailored and consistent use of public health and social measures, in combination with equitable vaccination.

Meanwhile, health officials say a new strain of the delta variant of the coronavirus, first identified in India, has emerged in almost a dozen countries, including India, the United States, and the U.K. The new variant has been dubbed Delta Plus. Authorities fear Delta Plus may be even more contagious the delta variant. Scientists are just beginning to study the new strain.

Australia’s biggest city has been ordered into a two-week lockdown because of a growing number of COVID-19 cases. Health authorities in Sydney are fighting to contain an outbreak of the highly infectious delta variant. Stay-at-home orders will also apply to other areas in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state. It is the first lockdown in Sydney since December. Australia has consistently maintained very low rates of coronavirus transmission. The latest outbreak is linked to a limousine driver at Sydney airport.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Saturday that the global count of COVID-19 cases has reached more than 180 million. The U.S. continues to have the most infections with 33.6 million, followed closely by India with 30.1 million and Brazil with 18.3 million.

Johns Hopkins said 2.8 billion vaccines have been administered.

Source: Voice of America

HARARE, ZIMABABWE – Zimbabwe on Saturday received a half-million Sinopharm shots against COVID-19 it bought from China, a development officials said would put its vaccination program back on track.

After the plane with the Sinopharm shots landed, Zimbabwe Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said his government would ensure that the country has no vaccine shortages in the future.

“We are receiving 2 million vaccines by end of next week, and after that we will order 1.5 million vaccines, and in the month of August will order another 3.5 million vaccines,” Ncube said. “So you can see we are very focused in terms of our vaccine acquisition agenda. We will not have a shortage at all. We are headed for herd immunity and we will get there.”

Zimbabwe is one of the African countries seeing recent increases in COVID-19 cases. On Saturday, Dr. John Mangwiro, Zimbabwe’s deputy health minister, said the government intensified its vaccination program to contain the spike in cases.

“COVID-19 disease is back via a third wave,” he said. “As a government, we are going

to target border towns for vaccination so that we make sure that if things are getting worse, our border areas are protected, because you find that most of these [new cases] are coming via our borders. We are going to target areas that are very risky and that the disease can come through. … These are tobacco-auction floors, markets, cotton sales floors. All those will be targeted.”

On Thursday, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who doubles as Zimbabwe’s health minister, said he wanted everyone vaccinated, starting with vendors. On Saturday, Samuel Wadzai, executive director of the Zimbabwe Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation, said his organization understood the importance of vaccination.

“But we expect the government to urge citizens to embrace the vaccination program,” Wadzai said. “That should be done through information dissemination on its importance to the country and economy. We know the pandemic has decimated economies, lives and livelihoods. But we disagree [about] forcing citizens to get vaccinated. When the program started, we were told that people would not be forced. It should remain that way.”

So far, fewer than 738,000 Zimbabweans have received their first shots, and nearly 485,000 have received their second shots since the program started in February.

Zimbabwe has had 45,217 confirmed coronavirus infections and 1,721 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center in the United States, which tracks the global outbreak.

Source: Voice of America