Don’t waste the hope of vaccines
GENEVA, March 6, (AFP) - Covax will distribute 14.4 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to 31 more countries next week, the WHO said Friday as it warned people not to waste, through complacency, the hope that vaccines bring.
The Covax global vaccine- sharing facility shipped more than 20 million doses to 20 countries as the scheme aimed at ensuring poorer nations get access to jabs took off this week.
But the World Health Organization voiced fears that further waves of the coronavirus pandemic could be on the way if people think the roll-out of vaccines around the globe means the crisis is over.
“I really am very concerned that... we think we're through this. We're not,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a press conference.
“And countries are going to lurch back into third and fourth surges if we're not careful.
“We should not waste the hope that vaccines bring... by dropping our guard in other areas.” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised the first full week of the Covax roll-out, but said wealthy countries were nonetheless still leaving others behind in the vaccination rush.
Within Africa, Angola, the DR
Congo, The Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan and Uganda have now received their first doses through Covax.
Elsewhere, Cambodia, Colombia, India, Moldova, the Philippines and South Korea have also taken deliveries.
“In the next week, Covax will deliver 14.4 million doses to a further 31 countries. That brings the total number of countries to 51,” said Tedros.
“This is encouraging progress, but the volume of doses being distributed through Covax is still relatively small.” He said the first round of allocations, running until the end of May, only covered between two and three percent of the population in recipient states, “even as other countries make rapid progress towards vaccinating their entire population within the next few months”.
He called for vaccine production to be urgently ramped up, including through linking manufacturers with rival companies that have spare capacity.
Tedros also said the planet would be feeling the mental scars from the pandemic for years to come and said the scale of its impact would be worse than during the recovery from World War II.
“The whole world is affected. Each and every individual. That means mass trauma which is beyond proportion. Even bigger than what the world experienced after the Second World War,” he said.
“And when there is mass trauma it affects communities for many years to come.” “Countries have to see it as such and prepare for that.
“Mass, mass trauma.”
LONDON, ( AFP) - Meghan Markle has accused the British royal family of peddling lies against herself and her husband Prince Harry, in an escalating transatlantic war of words before a tell-all interview with US chat show host Oprah Winfrey.
The explosive claim is the latest salvo in an increasingly heated public relations battle between the British institution and the US-based couple.
Harry and Meghan, who married in a fairytale wedding in 2018, stepped down from frontline royal duties last year, in part blaming media intrusion for their decision to move to North America. But a steady drip of stories in Britain about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as they are formally known -- and tit-for-tat responses -- is becoming a torrent.
The new clip released by US broadcaster CBS came just after Buckingham Palace said it was probing claims that Meghan had bullied royal household staff during her time in Britain. “I don't know how they could expect that after all of this time we would still just be silent if there's an active role that 'The Firm' (royal family) is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us,” she told Winfrey.
Buckingham Palace said it would not respond to Meghan's latest comments, and instead focused on publicising the 94-year-old Queen Elizabeth II's daily engagements. But there was a predictable frenzy in the British media.
Veteran royal commentator Richard Kay likened the row to the “War of the Waleses” in the 1990s when the marriage of Harry's parents crumbled. Heirto- the- throne Charles, the Prince of Wales, and Diana, princess of Wales, gave unprecedented television interviews that lifted the lid on their trou
bled relationship -- and extra-marital affairs. Their “bitter and acrimonious battle for public sympathy” was similar to that of Harry and Meghan.
Royal expert Victoria Murphy told AFP the interview put the popularity of the monarchy on the line. But she said the row had gone beyond criticism of the institution -- and could burn any personal bridges Harry and Meghan still have.
But Omid Scobie of Harper's Bazaar US, and co-author of a sympathetic biography of Harry and Meghan, “Finding Freedom”, said it was merely a chance for them to tell their side of the story. Meghan, a mixedrace former television actress, was likely to address her claims that she faced racism in the British press and on social media, as well as their “troubles” in the monarchy itself.
There have been calls for the couple's interview, due to be broadcast in the United States on Sunday, and in Britain early Monday, to be rescheduled.
Harry's grandfather, the queen's husband Prince Philip, 99, has been in hospital for more than two weeks, and on Wednesday underwent a procedure on a pre-existing heart condition.
Others called it “inappropriate” but British media quoted a
source close to Harry and Meghan as saying the broadcast would still go ahead.
Harry and Meghan's acrimonious split from the royal family was made permanent last month, when the queen removed their honorary titles and patronages. That followed nearly 12 months in which both sides have tried to control the narrative of their departure, which has polarised opinion on both sides of the Atlantic.
Harry, 36, said in a clip of the Winfrey interview released earlier this week that he feared “history repeating itself ” had they stayed, in a reference to the press hounding of his mother. Diana died in a high-speed car crash while being chased by paparazzi photographers in Paris in August 1997.
The bullying allegations, however, step up the war of words, with some commentators likening it to the constitutional crisis of 1936. Then, king Edward VIII abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, who like Meghan was an American divorcee.
Meghan, who is 39 and pregnant with the couple's second child, said the latest claims against her were a character assassination, and an attempt to “peddle a wholly false narrative” before the Winfrey interview is broadcast.