Pacific Rim leaders to push vaccine sharing

WELLINGTON: Pacific Rim leaders vowed to ramp up the production and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines on Friday at an emergency virtual meeting to develop an action plan that will contain the pandemic.

The unprecedented talks brought together heads of state from the 21-nation Asia-pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group, including US President Joe Biden and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who convened Friday’s online summit at short notice, described discussions as “rich”, saying they set a strong agenda for the APEC’S major leaders’ meeting in November.

In Spain, Barcelona and other cities in the northeast will reimpose a night-time curfew starting this weekend to fight a surge in coronavirus cases after the measure won court approval on Friday.

Also on Friday, the UK recorded more than 50,000 new coronavirus cases for the first time in six months amid a dire warning from the British government’s top medical officials that the number of people hospitalised with Covid-19 in Britain could hit “quite scary” levels within weeks.

U.S. CDC fears ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the Covid-19 outbreak in the United States is quickly becoming “a pandemic of the unvaccinated”.

Speaking during a White House briefing, Rochelle Walensky says cases in the US are up about 70% over the last week, hospital admissions are up 36% and deaths rose by 26%. Nearly all hospital admissions and deaths, she said, are among the unvaccinated.

China reviews WHO’S probe cooperation plan

China said it was reviewing plans for further inquiry into the origin of the coronavirus, after the World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Ghebreyesus urged Beijing to cooperate in the next phase of the probe.

The EU’S disease agency said on Friday it was predicting a sharp increase in Covid-19 numbers with nearly five times as many new cases by August 1, compared to last week’s level.

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