Japan to provide millions more vaccine doses to neighbours
Japan will make additional donations of the AstraZeneca Plc COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan and other Asian neighbours this week, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said on Tuesday. Japan will ship out 1 million doses each to Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam on Thursday as part of bilateral deals with those governments, Motegi told reporters.
An additional 11 million doses donated through the COVAX sharing scheme will be sent this month to Bangladesh, Cambodia, Iran, Laos, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, as well as various Pacific Island states, he said.
Taiwan's Foreign Ministry expressed thanks for the gesture, particularly at a serious stage in Japan's own coronavirus battle. Japan has donated about 3.4 million doses to Taiwan in a show of support for the Chinese-claimed island.
"The friendship between Taiwan and Japan is unwavering," the Taiwan ministry said in a statement. "The Foreign Ministry once again thanks our partners in freedom and democracy for their warm assistance and strong support." In a statement, Vietnam said it would receive a million doses from Japan on Friday in the southern business hub of Ho Chi Minh City, where it is fighting its largest outbreak yet after months of successful containment.
"It is encouraging that a number of richer countries have made generous pledges and donations of vaccines to countries in Asia in recent weeks," said Alexander Matheou of aid group the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
"We need to speed up the delivery of these lifesaving doses so that we can get them into people's arms, giving us a genuine shot at containing this pandemic once and for all."
Taiwan has complained that Chinese interference blocked its deal this year to secure vaccines from Germany's BioNTech SE, charges Beijing has denied. Since then, vaccine donations have rolled in to Taiwan.
Taiwan's relatively small domestic COVID-19 outbreak has generally been brought under control, except for a few sporadic community infections.
Japan has pledged $1 billion and 30 million doses to COVAX. Motegi said on Tuesday the AstraZeneca doses made in Japan were approved by the World Health Organization on July 9 for use in COVAX.
Meanwhile, a third of the population in England is still susceptible to being infected with the Delta variant of Covid-19, according to a scientific adviser. Professor Matt Keeling, from the University of Warwick and a member of Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SpiM), which informs ministers, said by July 19, there will have been 15.3 million symptomatic and asymptomatic infections in the country.
This means that 27.4 per cent of the English population will have been infected and therefore have natural immunity, leaving the rest either vaccinated or unvaccinated.
When taking account of vaccines, which do not work perfectly, the modellers at Warwick calculated that 33 per cent of the population remains susceptible to the Delta variant, which was first identified in India.
Prof Keeling told a briefing: "There's still a large number of susceptibles out there and we expect infection, cases and hospital admissions to keep increasing between now and July 19th." Keeping hospital admissions low "and below what we saw in January" really does rely on individual behaviour, he added, as he backed calls for people to take it slowly when restrictions are released. Mark Davyd, founder and chief executive of the Music Venue Trust charity, which represents more than 270 small and medium-sized venues in the UK, said each one was taking precautions for next week when concerts resume on July 19.
Some measures being taken include staff at the venues wearing face masks, improving ventilation inside, plastic screens being installed on bars and workers urging people not to attend a gig if they are feeling unwell. But Mr Davyd stressed that a one-size-fits-all approach would not work as every venue is different, commenting: "Each individual venue is looking at its processes and what they can do to manage risk.