Several countries have imposed restrictions on travelers from Britain amid rising cases of the delta variant of the coronavirus. Scientists say the delta mutation is more infectious and now makes up around 95 percent of new cases in Britain. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Another major Australian city is under a coronavirus lockdown as local officials clash with the federal government over which age group should be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine. The city of Alice Springs entered a three-day lockdown effective Tuesday after an infected gold mine worker spent several hours in the city’s airport before flying from the Northern Territory state to his home in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia state, where he tested positive after his arrival.   A transit worker is seen wearing a face mask inside a mostly empty city center train station during a lockdown in Sydney, Australia, June 29, 2021.Alice Springs joins Sydney, Darwin, Brisbane and Perth on the list of cities who have imposed lockdowns to blunt the spread of the highly infectious delta variant of COVID-19.  The latest outbreak has been traced to a Sydney airport limousine driver who had been transporting international air crews.  Australia has been largely successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 due to aggressive lockdown efforts, posting just 30,602 total confirmed cases and 910 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.  But it has proved vulnerable to fresh outbreaks due to a slow rollout of its vaccination campaign and confusing requirements involving the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which is the dominant vaccine in its stockpile.  FILE – People wait in line outside a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination center at Sydney Olympic Park in Sydney, Australia, June 23, 2021.Health officials had limited AstraZeneca to all adults under 60 years old due to concerns of a rare blood clotting condition that has been blamed for the deaths of two people.  But Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Monday that AstraZeneca will be available for adults under 40 years of age who request it.  Queensland state Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young pushed back against the prime minister’s announcement Tuesday, saying it was not worth the risk for healthy young Australians, even though the chances of developing the blood clotting condition are rare.  “I don’t want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness who, if they got COVID, probably wouldn’t die,” Young said.Western Australian state Premier Mark McGowan also openly opposed Morrison’s announcement, citing advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunization, the government’s vaccine advisor, to recommend only the two-shot Pfizer vaccine for adults younger than 60 years old.  Pfizer is in far less supply in Australia than the AstraZeneca shot.  Delta variantThe Indonesian Red Cross is warning the delta variant has caused a surge of new infections that is pushing the nation towards “the edge of a COVID-19 catastrophe.” A health worker gives a jab of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine to a woman during a vaccination campaign at the Adam Malik Hospital in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, June 30, 2021.Indonesia has reported more than 20,000 new COVID-19 infections in recent days, including a record 21,342 new cases on Sunday, including more than 400 new deaths. The Red Cross says hospitals in the capital, Jakarta, are more than 90 percent occupied, while less than 5% of its 270 million citizens have been vaccinated.   Russia reported a single-day record 669 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, breaking the previous record set just the day before of 643 deaths. The fast-moving spread of the delta variant of COVID-19, which was first detected in India and has now been identified in more than 80 countries, has prompted the World Health Organization to urge people to continue wearing masks and taking other precautions, even if they are fully vaccinated. Officials in Los Angeles County, California said Monday they are strongly recommending residents wear a mask indoors because of the delta variant.  The COVID-19 pandemic has sickened nearly 182 million people around the globe since it was first detected in late 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, including nearly 4 million deaths.  A report issued Wednesday by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the U.N. World Tourism Organization said the pandemic caused as much as $2.4 trillion in losses to international tourism and other related sectors in 2020, a decline of 73% from pre-pandemic levels the year before.   The report predicts roughly the same amount of losses for 2021, with global tourism to fall anywhere between 63% and 75%, resulting in losses between $1.7-2.4 trillion dollars.     
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Efforts are taking place around the world to vaccinate as many people as possible to protect against COVID-19.  Officials are tracking the safety and effectiveness of those efforts, but some medical experts say they aren’t getting the information they need on Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. Anush Avetisyan has the story.Camera: David Gogokhia      
Produced by:  Henry Hernandez  
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“Better than nothing.” That’s one infectious disease expert’s assessment of Sinovac Biotech’s COVID-19 vaccine, following reports that hundreds of Indonesian health care workers who had received the vaccine caught the disease anyway.  At least 10 doctors have died after getting both doses of Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine, according to the Indonesian Medical Association. It’s unclear how widespread these “breakthrough” infections are. It’s also not clear how severe most of the infections are. Little peer-reviewed data on the vaccine are available. What information is available suggests that the vaccine is less potent than others, especially against the highly contagious delta variant that was first detected in India.  However, access to more effective vaccines is limited in much of the world, experts note. Indonesia is one of dozens of countries where the Chinese company’s vaccine makes up a substantial part of the available doses.  While the shortage of published peer-reviewed data makes it hard to evaluate the vaccine, a few available studies provide a glimpse.  The government of Uruguay FILE – Empty vials to be filled with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are seen at a production facility in Reinbek, near Hamburg, Germany, April 30, 2021.Pfizer-BioNTech
The Pfizer-BioNTech shot performed better against infections in general in the study, lowering rates by 78%. But hospitalizations and deaths were about the same.  It’s not clear what the dominant variant was during the study, however.  A key measure of vaccine potency is the level of neutralizing antibodies — the proteins the immune system produces that prevent the virus from infecting cells.  The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines produce very high levels of these antibodies, which help maintain protection against variants, said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine. “Yes, you’re getting some breakthrough infections with the delta variant, but they tend not to be serious infections,” he said. “People aren’t being hospitalized or losing their lives because of COVID-19.” “When you look at some of the data on the Sinovac vaccine,” he added, “the levels of virus-neutralizing antibody, even after two doses, can still be quite low.” The Sinovac vaccine produced lower levels of these antibodies than seven other vaccines, including those from Pfizer, Moderna, University of Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, according to a study in the journal Nature Medicine.The antibody response is even less effective against the delta variant, which has exploded in Indonesia and many parts of the world.  It’s not clear, however, exactly what that decline means for patients. The vaccine still offers protection against the most serious forms of the disease, a Chinese official told state media. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 4 MB480p | 5 MB540p | 7 MB720p | 13 MB1080p | 22 MBOriginal | 263 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioIn China’s first delta outbreak, in Guangdong province earlier this month, “none of those vaccinated infections became severe cases, and none of the severe cases were vaccinated,” said Feng Zijian, former deputy director at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  Meanwhile, supplies of other vaccines are arriving slowly in much of the world.   “Sometimes, that’s all people have access to,” Hotez said. “It’s better than nothing.” 
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The World Health Organization has certified China, the most populous country in the world, as malaria-free. It has taken China seven decades to reach this milestone. The country has gone from 30 million cases of malaria in the 1940s to zero cases today. Director of the World Health Organization’s Global Malaria Program Pedro Alonso tells VOA the achievement should act as an inspiration to other malaria endemic countries around the world. “China, that at one point had 30 million cases of malaria every year and I would place that country among the top two burdened countries in the world can actually drive down malaria and get rid of this scourge of mankind,” Alonso said.China is the first country in the WHO Western Pacific Region to be awarded a malaria-free certification in more than three decades. Other countries in the region that have achieved that status include Australia, Singapore, and Brunei. Globally, 40 countries and territories have been declared malaria-free. The most recent include El Salvador, Algeria, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uzbekistan. Eliminating malaria is a long, complex process involving many factors. Alonso says economic development, improvement in peoples’ living conditions and the implementation of measures aimed at preventing, controlling, and treating malaria are critical for success. “Vector control mostly through insecticide-treated bed nets will for the years to come remain the backbone of our prevention efforts. Artemisinin combination therapies will remain the backbone of our treatment efforts,” Alonso said.The WHO estimates there are still 229 million new cases of malaria annually, leading to more than 400,000 deaths. Africa is home to 94 percent of those cases and deaths. Alonso says the mosquito in Africa is very effective in the transmission of malaria. This he says is one of the many reasons why it is particularly challenging to rid the continent of the disease. “And of course, all of this is compounded by lack of economic and social development, difficulties in communication, poverty, housing, lack of electricity. So, it is a compounded effect. It is where China was 60 years ago…and, we are having a lot of difficulty, even to maintain the gains achieved over the last 20 years,” Alonso said.While substantial progress in the prevention and control of malaria is possible with today’s available tools, Alonso says only a highly effective vaccine can eradicate the disease. The WHO malaria chief says he is cautiously optimistic that such a vaccine is on the horizon. He notes a pilot project to develop the world’s first malaria vaccine, RTS,S, in three countries in sub-Saharan Africa, has been shown to provide partial protection against malaria in young children. He says the vaccine, which was introduced in 2019, is likely not to be the hoped-for game changer everyone seeks. But he adds it is a very good start.
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U.S. President Joe Biden is holding talks Wednesday with a group of governors from eight Western states about wildfire preparedness as much of the region deals with drought. Biden and other administration officials will be speaking from the White House with the governors joining by video. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last week the meeting will “focus on how the federal government can improve wildfire preparedness and response efforts, protect public safety, and deliver assistance to our people in times of urgent need.” Those attending include Democratic governors Gavin Newsom of California, Jared Polis of Colorado, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Steve Sisolak of Nevada, Kate Brown of Oregon and Jay Inslee of Washington, along with Republican governors Spencer Cox of Utah and Mark Gordon of Wyoming. Not among the group are three other Republican governors from the region: Doug Ducey of Arizona, Brad Little of Idaho and Greg Gianforte of Montana. Gianforte tweeted Friday that he was “disappointed to learn in news stories” that the president “didn’t offer a seat at the table to Montana and other states facing a severe wildfire season.” The National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates the mobilization of resources to battle wildfires in the United States, has warned that many Western states are facing a greater than usual likelihood that significant wildfires will occur in the next few months. The U.S. Drought Monitor reports wide areas of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah are experiencing extreme or exceptional drought. 
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