Covid-19 infections in South Asia cross 15 million mark
Former Bangladesh prime minister Khaleda Zia tests positive for the virus
BENGALURU/ JERUSALEM: Coronavirus infections in the South Asia sub-region surpassed the grim milestone of 15 million on Saturday, a Reuters tally shows, led by India’s record daily infections and vaccine shortages.
South Asia - India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, and Sri Lanka - accounts for 11% of global cases and almost 6% of deaths. The region accounts for 23% of the world’s population of 7.59 billion people.
India, the country with the third-highest coronavirus total, accounts for over 84% of South Asia’s cases and deaths. India is accounting for one in every six reported infections in its surge.
India’s western neighbour Pakistan, the second-hardest hit in the region, is in its third wave, recording more than 700,000 cases and 15,000 related deaths.
It has seen a sharp rise in cases in the past 10 days. Officials say there are now more people in intensive care than at any other point during the pandemic.
Bangladesh is reporting about 7,000 cases a day, totalling some 678,937 cases. Former Bangladesh prime minister Khaleda Zia tested positive for Covid-19 on Sunday, a year after she was released from jail temporarily amid the pandemic, the Dhaka Tribune newspaper reported.
“It came back as positive today [Sunday], which has been updated on the database of the Directorate of Health Services,” health ministry official Maidul Islam Prodhan told the newspaper.
At least 94.1 million people had received their first Covid-19 vaccine dose in southern Asia by Friday, according to figures from Our World in Data.
‘S Africa strain may break through Pfizer vaccine‘
The coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa may be more likely than other strains to “break through” and reinfect people who had two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, according to an Israeli study released on Saturday.
The study compared infected Israelis who had not been vaccinated with those who had either one or two doses of the vaccine.
It found the prevalence of the South African strain was eight times higher in those who had two doses of the vaccine compared with those who had not been vaccinated - suggesting a reduced effectiveness against the strain.
The study, by Tel Aviv University and the nation’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit, cautioned that the variant’s presence in Israel is very low. The study has not been peer reviewed.
Effectiveness of Chinese vaccines low: Official
In a rare admission of the weakness of Chinese coronavirus vaccines, the country’s top disease control official says their effectiveness is low and the government is considering mixing them to give them a boost.
Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” said the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, at a conference on Saturday in the southwestern city of Chengdu.
Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses in other countries while also trying to promote doubt about the effectiveness of Western vaccines. “It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunisation process,” Gao said.
The effectiveness rate of a coronavirus vaccine from Sinovac, a Chinese developer, at preventing symptomatic infections has been found to be as low as 50.4% by researchers in Brazil. Beijing has yet to approve any foreign vaccines for use in China, where the coronavirus emerged in late 2019.