PM: Australia to bar foreign tourists until at least ’22 amid virus
CANBERRA, Australia — Foreign tourists won’t be welcomed back to Australia until at least next year, the prime minister said Tuesday as he outlined plans for lifting some of the toughest and longest COVID-19 travel restrictions imposed by any democracy.
The country will instead prioritize the return of skilled migrants and students after it hits Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s benchmark for reopening its external borders: the full vaccination of 80% of the population aged 16 and older. It was expected to reach that point Tuesday.
The news comes days after Morrison announced plans to allow vaccinated citizens and permanent residents to fly overseas starting in November for the first time since March 2020.
The severe travel restrictions, which have trapped most Australians at home and kept most foreigners out, have led to the lowest level of immigration since World War II. Australian universities, which rely heavily on fees paid by international students, have been particularly hard hit, and many fear students will go elsewhere if they are not allowed in soon.
While many countries imposed strict lockdowns that shut down large portions of the economies, Australia’s travel restrictions have kept life fairly normal for much of the pandemic — though it is now experiencing shutdowns in the biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, as well as the capital Canberra.
After lifting restrictions on Australians, Morrison said the next priority would be skilled migrants and international students — before tourists. He did not specify when those groups would be allowed in.
AstraZeneca antibody treatment: AstraZeneca, the drugmaker that developed one of the first COVID-19 vaccines, has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize the emergency use of a first-ofa-kind antibody treatment to prevent the disease.
The Anglo-Swedish company said Tuesday that the treatment, known as AZD7442, would be the first long-acting antibody combination to receive an emergency authorization for COVID-19 prevention. If authorized, the drug would likely be limited to people with compromised immune systems who don’t get sufficient protection from vaccination.
“First and foremost, we want to protect those vulnerable populations that haven’t been adequately protected by the vaccine,” said Menelas Pangalos, AstraZeneca’s head of research and development. “But ultimately it will be up to health authorities to work out who they choose to immunize.”
Pangalos said the company’s long-acting formulation is designed to boost immunity for up to one year, compared with existing drugs that offer a month or two of protection.
The FDA has authorized three other antibody drugs, including two that can be given after a possible COVID-19 exposure to head off symptoms. AstraZeneca’s drug would instead be given as a preventive measure in people who have increased vulnerability to the virus.
Coronavirus home test recalled:
Ellume, an Australian company that makes a widely available at-home coronavirus test, has recalled nearly 200,000 test kits because of concerns about a higher-than-expected rate of false positives. That represents about 5.6% of the approximately 3.5 million test kits Ellume has shipped to the United States.
The company, which detected the problem in mid-September, traced the issue to variations in the quality of one of the raw materials used in the test kit, Dr. Sean Parsons, Ellume’s CEO, said. He declined to specify the material in question, citing a desire not to publicly disclose precisely how the test kits work.
Approximately 427,000 test kits, including some provided to the U.S. Department of Defense, were affected by the problem, Parsons said. Roughly half have already been used, he said, yielding about 42,000 positive results.
As many as one-quarter of those positives may have been inaccurate, Parsons said, although he stressed that it would be difficult to determine exactly how many.
The issue did not affect all Ellume test kits or the reliability of negative results, the company said.
The company has asked retailers to remove the tests from shelves and is in the process of notifying consumers, Parsons said.
Israeli president visits Ukraine:
Israel’s president arrived in Ukraine on Tuesday to honor the victims of the Babi Yar massacre eight decades after one of the most infamous Nazi mass slaughters of World War II.
Nearly 34,000 Jews were killed within 48 hours in Babi Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital, when Kyiv was under Nazi occupation in 1941. SS troops carried out the massacre with local collaborators.
“It is imperative to keep speaking about this horrific event and learn its lessons,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said before arriving for the first state visit of his presidency.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy said after meeting with Herzog, “The memory of these victims is sacred for us, for each Ukrainian.”
France’s Catholic Church sex abuse:
Victims of abuse within France’s Catholic Church welcomed a historic turning point Tuesday after a new report estimated that 330,000 children in France were sexually abused over the past 70 years, providing the country’s first accounting of the worldwide phenomenon.
The figure includes abuses committed by some 3,000 priests and an unknown number of other people involved in the church — wrongdoing that Catholic authorities covered up over decades in a “systemic manner,” according to the president of the commission that issued the report, Jean-Marc Sauve.
The 2,500-page document was issued as the Catholic Church in
France, like in other countries, seeks to face up to shameful secrets that were long covered up. Victims welcomed the report as long overdue, and the head of the French bishops’ conference asked for their forgiveness.
Volvo recall: Volvo is recalling nearly 260,000 older cars in the U.S. because the front driver’s air bag can explode and send shrapnel into the cabin.
The recall is in addition to one from November 2020, which was started after an unidentified U.S. driver was killed.
The latest recall covers S80 sedans from 2001 to 2006 and S60s from 2001 through 2009.
The Volvo inflators, made by ZF/TRW, use a propellant that can deteriorate when exposed to high heat and humidity, according to documents posted Tuesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.