Global virus vaccine race heats up, but not without controversy
WASHINGTON, United States — Global tensions simmered over the race for a coronavirus vaccine Thursday, as the United States and China traded jabs, and France slammed pharmaceuticals giant Sanofi for suggesting the US would get any eventual vaccine first.
Scientists are working at breakneck speed to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, which has killed more than 300,000 people worldwide and pummelled economies.
From the US to Europe to Asia, national and local governments are easing up on lockdown orders to get people back to work — while fretting over a possible second wave of infections.
Increased freedom of movement means an increased risk of contracting the virus, and so national labs and private firms are laboring to find the right formula for a vaccine.
The European Union's medicines agency offered some hope when it said one could be ready in a year, based on data from clinical trials already underway.
But Marco Cavaleri, the EMA's head of vaccines strategy, acknowledged that timeline was a "best-case scenario," and cautioned that "there may be delays."
The race for a vaccine has exposed a raw nerve in relations between the United States and China, where the virus was first detected late last year in the central city of Wuhan.
Two US agencies warned Wednesday that Chinese hackers were trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine research — a claim Beijing rejected as "smearing" its reputation.
US President Donald Trump, who has ratcheted up the rhetoric against China, said he doesn't even want to engage with Chinese leader Xi Jinping — potentially imperiling a trade deal between the world's top two economies.
"I'm very disappointed in China. I will tell you that right now," he said in an interview with Fox Business.
"There are many things we could do. We could do things. We could cut off the whole relationship."
'Darkest winter'
On Capitol Hill, an ousted US health official told Congress that the Trump government had no strategy in place to find and distribute a vaccine to millions of Americans, warning of the "darkest winter" ahead.
"We don't have a single point of leadership right now for this response, and we don't have a master plan," said Rick Bright, who was removed last month as head of the US agency charged with developing a coronavirus vaccine.
The United States has registered more than 84,000 deaths linked to COVID-19 — the highest toll of any nation.
France miffed at Sanofi
World leaders were among 140 signatories to a letter published Thursday saying any vaccine should not be patented and that the science should be shared among nations.
"Governments and international partners must unite around a global guarantee which ensures that, when a safe and effective vaccine is developed, it is produced rapidly at scale and made available for all people, in all countries, free of charge," it said.
But a row erupted in France after drugmaker Sanofi said it would reserve first shipments of any vaccine it discovered to the United States.
The comments prompted a swift rebuke from the French government — President Emmanuel Macron's office said any vaccine should be treated as "a global public good, which is not submitted to market forces."
Sanofi chief executive Paul Hudson said the US had a risk-sharing model that allowed for manufacturing to start before a vaccine had been finally approved — while Europe did not.
"The US government has the right to the largest pre-order because it's invested in taking the risk," Hudson told Bloomberg News.
Macron's top officials are scheduled to meet with Sanofi executives about the issue next week.
The search for a vaccine became even more urgent after the World Health Organization said the disease many never go away and the world would have to learn to live with it for good.
"This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away," said Michael Ryan, the UN body's emergencies director.
US jobless claims rise
The prospect of the disease lingering leaves governments facing a delicate balancing act between suppressing the pathogen and getting their economies up and running.
In the US, more grim economic data emerged Thursday, with nearly three million more Americans applying for unemployment benefits.
That takes the overall total to 36.5 million — more than 10 percent of the US population.
Further signs of the damage to businesses emerged when Lloyd's of London forecast the pandemic will cost the global insurance industry about $203 billion.
European markets closed down, but Wall Street rallied despite the new jobless claims.
A move to reopen
The reopening of economies continued in earnest across Europe, where the EU has set out proposals for a phased restart of travel and the eventual lifting of border controls.
"Maybe it's a mistake, but we have no choice. Without tourists, we won't get by!" Enrico Facchetti, a 61-year-old former goldsmith, said of Venice's reopening.
And Japan — the world's third largest economy — lifted a state of emergency across most of the country except for Tokyo and Osaka.
New Zealanders mingled with friends and hit the shopping malls for the first time in seven weeks as a national lockdown ended.
And Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said national parks would partially reopen on June 1.
But in Latin America the virus continued to surge, with a 60 percent leap in cases in the Chilean capital of Santiago, prompting authorities to impose a total lockdown on the city.
South Sudan reported its first COVID-19 death. And in Bangladesh, the first case was confirmed in the teeming Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, which are home to nearly one million people. — with Danny Kemp in The Hague and AFP bureaus
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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