World
Pfizer to seek OK for 3rd vaccine dose; shots still protect
Pfizer is about to seek U.S. authorization for a third dose of its COVID-19 vaccine, saying Thursday that another shot within 12 months could dramatically boost immunity and maybe help ward off the latest worrisome coronavirus mutant.
Research from multiple countries shows the Pfizer shot and other widely used COVID-19 vaccines offer strong protection against the highly contagious delta variant, which is spreading rapidly around the world and now accounts for most new U.S. infections.
Two doses of most vaccines are critical to develop high levels of virus-fighting antibodies against all versions of the coronavirus, not just the delta variant -- and most of the world still is desperate to get those initial protective doses as the pandemic continues to rage.
Also read: AstraZeneca, Pfizer vaccines effective against Delta Covid-19 variants: Study
But antibodies naturally wane over time, so studies also are underway to tell if and when boosters might be needed.
On Thursday, Pfizer’s Dr. Mikael Dolsten told The Associated Press that early data from the company’s booster study suggests people’s antibody levels jump five- to 10-fold after a third dose, compared to their second dose months earlier.
In August, Pfizer plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization of a third dose, he sai.
Why might that matter for fighting the delta variant? Dolsten pointed to data from Britain and Israel showing the Pfizer vaccine “neutralizes the delta variant very well.” The assumption, he said, is that when antibodies drop low enough, the delta virus eventually could cause a mild infection before the immune system kicks back in.
But FDA authorization would be just a first step -- it wouldn’t automatically mean Americans get offered boosters, cautioned Dr. William Schaffner, a vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Public health authorities would have to decide if they’re really needed, especially since millions of people have no protection.
Also read: Bangladesh rolls out Pfizer vaccine at 3 Dhaka centers
“The vaccines were designed to keep us out of the hospital” and continue to do so despite the more contagious delta variant, he said. Giving another dose would be “a huge effort while we are at the moment striving to get people the first dose.”
Hours after Pfizer’s announcement, U.S. health officials issued a statement saying fully vaccinated Americans don’t need a booster yet.
U.S. health agencies “are engaged in a science-based, rigorous process to consider whether or when a booster might be necessary,” the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a joint statement. That work will include data from the drug companies, “but does not rely on those data exclusively,” and any decision on booster shots would happen only when “the science demonstrates that they are needed,” the agencies said.
Currently only about 48% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated — and some parts of the country have far lower immunization rates, places where the delta variant is surging. On Thursday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, said that’s leading to “two truths” — highly immunized swaths of America are getting back to normal while hospitalizations are rising in other places.
“This rapid rise is troubling,” she said: A few weeks ago the delta variant accounted for just over a quarter of new U.S. cases, but it now accounts for just over 50% — and in some places, such as parts of the Midwest, as much as 80%.
Also read: European regulators OK Pfizer vaccine for children 12-15
Also Thursday, researchers from France’s Pasteur Institute reported new evidence that full vaccination is critical.
In laboratory tests, blood from several dozen people given their first dose of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines “barely inhibited” the delta variant, the team reported in the journal Nature. But weeks after getting their second dose, nearly all had what researchers deemed an immune boost strong enough to neutralize the delta variant — even if it was a little less potent than against earlier versions of the virus.
The French researchers also tested unvaccinated people who had survived a bout of the coronavirus, and found their antibodies were four-fold less potent against the new mutant. But a single vaccine dose dramatically boosted their antibody levels — sparking cross-protection against the delta variant and two other mutants, the study found. That supports public health recommendations that COVID-19 survivors get vaccinated rather than relying on natural immunity.
The lab experiments add to real-world data that the delta variant’s mutations aren’t evading the vaccines most widely used in Western countries, but underscore that it’s crucial to get more of the world immunized before the virus evolves even more.
Researchers in Britain found two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, for example, are 96% protective against hospitalization with the delta variant and 88% effective against symptomatic infection. That finding was echoed last weekend by Canadian researchers, while a report from Israel suggested protection against mild delta infection may have dipped lower, to 64%.
Whether the fully vaccinated still need to wear masks in places where the delta variant is surging is a growing question. In the U.S., the CDC maintains that fully vaccinated people don’t need to. Even before the delta variant came along, the vaccines weren’t perfect, but the best evidence suggests that if vaccinated people nonetheless get the coronavirus, they’ll have much milder cases.
“Let me emphasize, if you were vaccinated, you have a very high degree of protection,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, said Thursday.
In the U.S., case rates have been rising for weeks and the rate of hospitalizations has started to tick up, rising 7% from the previous seven-day average, Walensky told reporters Thursday. However, deaths remain down on average, which some experts believe is at least partly due to high vaccination rates in people 65 and older — who are among the most susceptible to severe disease.
2 Haitian Americans detained in slaying of Haiti president
Two men believed to be Haitian Americans — one of them purportedly a former bodyguard at the Canadian Embassy in Port au Prince — have been arrested in connection with the assassination of Haiti’s president, Haitian officials said Thursday.
James Solages and Joseph Vincent were among 17 suspects detained in the brazen killing of President Jovenel Moïse by gunmen at his home in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday. Fifteen of them are from Colombia, according to Léon Charles, chief of Haiti’s National Police. He added that three other suspects were killed by police and eight others are on the run. Charles had earlier said seven were killed.
“We are going to bring them to justice,” he said as the 17 suspects sat handcuffed on the floor during a press conference Thursday night.
Also read: Haiti President Jovenel Moïse assassinated at home
Late Thursday, Colombia’s government said six of the suspects in Haiti, including two of those killed, were retired member of Colombia’s army, though it didn’t release their identities.
The head of the Colombian national police, Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas Valencia, said President Iván Duque had instructed the high command of Colombia’s army and police to cooperate in the investigation.
“A team was formed with the best investigators ... they are going to send dates, flight times, financial information that is already being collected to be sent to Port-au-Prince,” Vargas said.
The oldest suspect is 55 and the youngest, Solages, is 35, according to a document shared by Mathias Pierre, Haiti’s minister of elections.
He would not provide additional details about Solages’ background, nor provide the name of the second Haitian American. The U.S. State Department said it was aware of reports that Haitian Americans were in custody but could not confirm or comment.
Also read: Haiti’s future uncertain after brazen slaying of president
Solages described himself as a “certified diplomatic agent,” an advocate for children and budding politician on a website for a charity he established in 2019 in south Florida to assist residents.
On his bio page for the charity, Solages said he previously worked as a bodyguard at the Canadian Embassy in Haiti. The Canadian Embassy didn’t immediately comment; calls to the foundation and Solages’ associates at the charity either did not go through or weren’t answered.
Witnesses said two suspects were discovered Thursday hiding in bushes in Port-au-Prince by a crowd, some of whom grabbed the men by their shirts and pants, pushing them and occasionally slapping them.
Police arrested the men, who were sweating heavily and wearing clothes that seemed to be smeared with mud, an Associated Press journalist said. Officers put them in the back of a pickup truck and drove away as the crowd ran after them to the nearby police station.
Once there, some in the crowd chanted: “They killed the president! Give them to us. We’re going to burn them!”
One man was overheard saying that it was unacceptable for foreigners to come to Haiti to kill the country’s leader, referring to reports from Haitian officials that the perpetrators spoke Spanish or English.
The crowd later set fire to several abandoned cars riddled with bullet holes that they believed belonged to the suspects, who were white men. The cars didn’t have license plates, and inside one of them was an empty box of bullets and some water.
At a news conference Thursday, Charles, the police chief, urged people to stay calm and let police do their work as he warned that authorities needed evidence they were destroying, including the burned cars.
Officials did not address a motive for the slaying, saying only that the attack, condemned by Haiti’s main opposition parties and the international community, was carried out by “a highly trained and heavily armed group.”
Not everyone was buying the government’s description of the attack. When Haitian journalist Robenson Geffrard, who writes for a local newspaper and has a radio show, tweeted a report on the police chief’s comments, he drew a flood of responses expressing skepticism. Many wondered how the sophisticated attackers described by police could penetrate Moïse’s home, security detail and panic room and then escape unharmed but were then caught without planning a successful getaway.
Meanwhile, a Haitian judge involved in the investigation said that Moïse was shot a dozen times and his office and bedroom were ransacked, according to the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste. It quoted Judge Carl Henry Destin as saying investigators found 5.56 and 7.62 mm cartridges between the gatehouse and inside the house.
Moïse’s daughter, Jomarlie Jovenel, hid in her brother’s bedroom during the attack, he said, and a maid and another worker were tied up by the attackers.
Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who assumed leadership of Haiti with the backing of police and the military, asked people to reopen businesses and go back to work as he ordered the reopening of the international airport.
On Wednesday, Joseph decreed a two-week state of siege following Moïse’s killing, which stunned a nation grappling with some of the Western Hemisphere’s highest poverty, violence and political instability.
Inflation and gang violence have spiraled upward as food and fuel grew scarcer in a country where 60% of Haitians earn less than $2 a day. The increasingly dire situation comes as Haiti is still trying to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016 following a history of dictatorship and political upheaval.
“There is this void now, and they are scared about what will happen to their loved ones,” said Marlene Bastien, executive director of Family Action Network Movement, a group that helps people in Miami’s Little Haiti community.
She called on the Biden administration to take a much more active role in supporting attempts at national dialogue in Haiti with the aim of holding free, fair and credible elections.
Meanwhile, the Security Council met Thursday to talk about the situation in Haiti, and U.N. special envoy Helen La Lime, speaking to reporters at U.N. headquarters from Port-Au-Prince, said Haiti made a request for additional security assistance.
Haiti had grown increasingly unstable under Moïse, who had been ruling by decree for more than a year and faced violent protests as critics accused him of trying to amass more power while the opposition demanded he step down.
Moïse had faced large protests in recent months that turned violent as opposition leaders and their supporters rejected his plans to hold a constitutional referendum with proposals that would strengthen the presidency.
According to Haiti’s constitution, Moïse should be replaced by the president of Haiti’s Supreme Court, but the chief justice died in recent days from COVID-19, leaving open the question of who might rightfully succeed to the office.
Joseph, meanwhile, was supposed to be replaced by Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon who had been named prime minister by Moïse a day before the assassination.
Henry told the AP that he is the prime minister, calling it an exceptional and confusing situation. “I am the prime minister in office,” he said.
On Thursday, public transportation and street vendors remained scarce, an unusual sight for the normally bustling streets of Port-au-Prince.
Marco Destin, 39, was walking to see his family since no buses, known as tap-taps, were available. He was carrying a loaf of bread for them because they had not left their house since the president’s killing out of fear for their lives.
“Every one at home is sleeping with one eye open and one eye closed,” he said. “If the head of state is not protected, I don’t have any protection whatsoever.”
Gunfire rang out intermittently across the city hours after the killing, a grim reminder of the growing power of gangs that displaced more than 14,700 people last month alone as they torched and ransacked homes in a fight over territory.
Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia, said gangs were a force to contend with and it isn’t certain Haiti’s security forces can enforce a state of siege.
“It’s a really explosive situation,” he said, adding that foreign intervention with a U.N.-type military presence is a possibility.
“Whether Claude Joseph manages to stay in power is a huge question. It will be very difficult to do so if he doesn’t create a government of national unity.”
China dinosaur footprint fossil named after Doraemon's "Nobita"
A footprint fossil of a new species of dinosaur discovered in China last year has been named "Eubrontes nobitai" in tribute to "Nobita," a pivotal character in the popular Japanese cartoon and animation Doraemon.
Xing Lida, 38, associate professor at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, named the fossil that somewhat resembles swimming goldfish. He told Kyodo News that Doraemon's movies featuring dinosaurs are "very excellent."
The films, "Nobita's Dinosaur" in 1980 and "Nobita's New Dinosaur" in 2020, have also made "many children come to like dinosaurs," Xing said, adding Doraemon is "one of the common memories of childhood for those who were born in China in the 1980s."
Also read: Scientists find possible evidence of chromosomes, DNA preserved in dinosaur fossils
The fossil was found in July 2020 in China's southwestern province of Sichuan. Three chubby digits are closely lined up, and the distance between four footprints is around 50 centimeters.
The length of the sole is about 30 cm, and the body length is estimated to be nearly 4 meters. The fossil has been recognized as being related to a new species of carnivorous dinosaur Eubrontes in the Cretaceous. The treatise was published on Monday.
Xing said he sent replicas of the fossil to the Tokyo National Museum and the production company Fujiko Pro Co. The late Fujiko F. Fujio (1933-1996) was one of the two major Japanese cartoonists who created Doraemon.
Also read: New dinosaur species "dancing dragon" identified in China
One of the replicas is scheduled to be made public at the museum in Tokyo's Ueno district from Nov. 30.
Doraemon, a beloved blue robotic cat who travels from the 22nd century to the present day to help clumsy elementary schoolboy Nobita, first appeared in manga format in 1969 and has been spun off into movies and video games as well as an animated series.
Tropical storm kills 1 in Florida, hurts 10 at Georgia base
A weakened but resilient Tropical Storm Elsa killed at least one person in Florida on Wednesday and injured several others when a possible tornado struck a campground at a Navy base in southeast Georgia.
The National Hurricane Center said Elsa still packed 45 mph (72 kph) winds more than nine hours after making landfall along Florida’s northern Gulf Coast. The storm’s center was sweeping over eastern Georgia by 2 a.m. Thursday. Elsa will move over Georgia Thursday morning, over South Carolina and North Carolina later in the day, pass near the eastern mid-Atlantic states by Thursday night and move near or over the northeastern United States on Friday.
Elsa seemed to spare Florida from significant damage, though it still threatened flooding downpours and caused several tornado warnings. The coasts of Georgia and South Carolina were under a tropical storm warning. Forecasters predicted Elsa would remain a tropical storm into Friday, and issued a tropical storm watch from North Carolina to Massachusetts.
Authorities in Jacksonville, Florida, said one person was killed Wednesday when a tree fell and struck two cars. The National Weather Service reported 50 mph (80 kph) wind gusts in the city. The tree fell during heavy rains and no one else was injured, according to Capt. Eric Prosswimmer of the Jacksonville Fire Rescue Department.
“Now is a time to remember ... that weather is unpredictable,” Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry said during a news conference Wednesday evening as he urged drivers to stay off the road. “This is really early in the (hurricane) season. We’re just outside of the July 4th holiday, we’ve had our first storm and, unfortunately, we’ve had a fatality.”
Read:Elsa weakens to a tropical storm as it takes aim at Florida
In nearby Camden County, Georgia, a possible tornado struck a park for recreational vehicles at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. About 10 people were injured and taken to hospitals by ambulance, said base spokesman Scott Bassett. The extent of their injuries was not immediately clear. He said some buildings on the base appeared to have been damaged as well.
Sergio Rodriguez, who lives near the RV park, said he raced to the scene fearing friends staying at the park might be hurt. The area was under a tornado warning Wednesday evening.
“There were just RVs flipped over on their sides, pickup trucks flipped over, a couple of trailers had been shifted and a couple of trailers were in the water” of a pond on the site, Rodriguez said in a phone interview.
Cellphone video he filmed at the scene showed trees bent low among scattered debris. He said ambulances arrived and began treating dazed people trying to understand what had happened.
“A bunch of folks had lacerations and were just banged around,” Rodriguez said. “A majority of folks were in their trailers when it happened.”
Earlier in the day, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told a news conference that no major structural damage had been reported as Elsa came ashore.
“Clearly, this could have been worse,” the Republican governor said, though he cautioned that many storm-related deaths happen after the system passes.
The hurricane center said parts of Florida could see up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) of total rain accumulation from the storm. There was also a risk of flooding in Georgia and South Carolina, which were predicted to get 3 to 5 inches (8 to 13 centimeters) of rainfall. A couple of tornadoes are possible Thursday morning from southeastern Georgia into the coastal plain of South Carolina.
Read:Officials: Storm lashing Florida strengthens into hurricane
Valdosta, Georgia, and surrounding Lowndes County came under a flash flood warning as Elsa’s center passed nearby. Some roads and yards flooded, and nearby Moody Air Force Base a reported wind gust of 41 mph (66 kph), said county spokeswoman Meghan Barwick.
Scattered power outages were being reported along Elsa’s path Wednesday evening, with about 35,000 homes and businesses on either side of the Georgia-Florida state line without electricity, according to the website poweroutages.us.
The storm complicated the search for potential survivors and victims in the collapse of a Miami-area condominium on June 24. Regardless, crews continued the search in the rubble of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, on the state’s southeast coast.
The storm also temporarily halted demolition Wednesday on the remainder of an overturned cargo ship off the coast of Georgia. The South Korean freighter Golden Ray capsized in September 2019 off St. Simons Island, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Savannah. Crews have removed more than half the ship since November.
Most salvage workers were sheltering indoors Wednesday, said Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Himes, a spokesperson for the multiagency command overseeing the demolition.
Himes said crews would be watching to see if Elsa’s winds scatter any debris from the ship into the surrounding water. The vessel’s remains are open at both ends, like a giant tube on its side, and its cargo decks still contain hundreds of bashed and mangled cars.
At the Hillbilly Fish Camp and R.V. Park in the south Georgia town of Waycross, Margie Freitag hunkered down Wednesday after pulling boats out of the water and picking up loose items ahead of the storm. Freitag said she had plenty of supplies after stocking up for the coronavirus pandemic.
In Edisto Beach, South Carolina, Wednesday started muggy and overcast.
Read:Tropical Storm Elsa moving across west Cuba, then to Florida
“The kind of day you can just feel the weather wanting to move in,” Mayor Jane Darby said.
The forecast for the barrier island 30 miles (48 kilometers) down the coast from Charleston was similar to a heavy summer thunderstorm – an inch or two (2.5 to 5 centimeters) of rain, winds gusting up to about 40 mph (64 kph) and maybe a little beach erosion. Other South Carolina beaches expected similar conditions, coming mostly overnight to be less of a bother to visitors during an extremely busy summer.
“Businesses are struggling with workers in short supply a lot more than they are going to be bothered by this storm,” Darby said. “That’s where the stress is now.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard said 13 people were rescued from a boat that had left Cuba with 22 people aboard late Monday. Nine people remained missing. Elsa was also blamed for three deaths in the Caribbean before it reached Florida.
Elsa is the earliest fifth-named storm on record, said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.
As global COVID-19 deaths top 4 million, a suicide in Peru
On the last day of Javier Vilca’s life, his wife stood outside a hospital window with a teddy bear, red balloons and a box of chocolates to celebrate his birthday, and held up a giant, hand-scrawled sign that read: “Don’t give up. You’re the best man in the world.”
Minutes later, Vilca, a 43-year-old struggling radio journalist who had battled depression, jumped four stories to his death — the fifth suicide by a COVID-19 patient at Peru’s overwhelmed Honorio Delgado hospital since the pandemic began.
Vilca became yet another symbol of the despair caused by the coronavirus and the stark and seemingly growing inequities exposed by COVID-19 on its way to a worldwide death toll of 4 million, a milestone recorded Wednesday by Johns Hopkins University.
At the hospital where Vilca died on June 24, a single doctor and three nurses were frantically rushing to treat 80 patients in an overcrowded, makeshift ward while Vilca gasped for breath because of an acute shortage of bottled oxygen.
“He promised me he would make it,” said Nohemí Huanacchire, weeping over her husband’s casket in their half-built home with no electricity on the outskirts of Arequipa, Peru’s second-largest city. “But I never saw him again.”
Read:13 die in Peru disco stampede during police raid amid coronavirus lockdown
The number of lives lost around the world over the past year and a half is about equal to the population of Los Angeles or the nation of Georgia. It is three times the number of victims killed in traffic accidents around the globe per year. By some estimates, it is roughly the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982.
Even then, the toll is widely believed to be an undercount because of overlooked cases or deliberate concealment.
More than six months after vaccines became available, reported COVID-19 deaths worldwide have dropped to around 7,900 a day, after topping out at over 18,000 a day in January. The World Health Organization recorded just under 54,000 deaths last week, the lowest weekly total since last October.
While vaccination campaigns in the U.S. and parts of Europe are ushering in a period of post-lockdown euphoria, and children there are being inoculated so that they can go back to summer camp and school, infection rates are still stubbornly high in many parts of South America and Southeast Asia. And multitudes in Africa remain unprotected because of severe vaccine shortages.
Also, the highly contagious delta variant is spreading rapidly, setting off alarms, driving up case counts in places and turning the crisis increasingly into a race between the vaccine and the mutant version.
The variant has been detected in at least 96 countries. Australia, Israel, Malaysia, Hong Kong and other places have reimposed restrictions to try to suppress it.
The variants, uneven access to vaccines and the relaxation of precautions in some wealthier countries are “a toxic combination that is very dangerous,” warned Ann Lindstrand, a top immunization official at WHO.
Instead of treating the crisis as a “me-and-myself-and-my-country” problem, she said, “we need to get serious that this is a worldwide problem that needs worldwide solutions.”
While the U.S. missed President Joe Biden’s goal of getting at least one shot into 70% of American adults by the Fourth of July, deaths nationwide are down sharply to around 200 per day, from a peak of over 3,400 per day in January.
And the U.S. economy has been roaring back, with growth this year forecast to be the fastest in almost seven decades. Even cruise ships, an early vector for the virus’s spread, are resuming voyages after a hiatus of more than a year.
In Britain, despite persistent fears about the delta variant, Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to lift all remaining restrictions this month. Britain this week recorded a one-day total of more than 30,000 new infections for the first time since January.
Read: Citing pandemic, judge agrees to free ex-Peru leader on bail
Elsewhere in Europe, tens of thousands of soccer fans in several cities were able to watch in person their national teams compete in the European Championship a year after the tournament was postponed, though attendance in some stadiums was severely restricted.
In parts of the developing world, it is a story of desperation.
In Latin America, just 1 in 10 people have been fully vaccinated, contributing to a rise in cases in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay. Meanwhile, the virus is penetrating remote areas of Africa that were previously spared, contributing to a sharp rise in cases.
Peru has been one of the hardest hit by the virus, with the highest mortality of any country in the world as a percentage of its population.
In Arequipa, Vilca’s suicide was splashed across the front pages of the tabloids in the city of 1 million. His widow said his death was a protest against the deteriorating conditions faced by COVID-19 patients.
Nationwide, Peru has just 2,678 intensive care beds for a population of 32 million — a trifling number even by the low standards of Latin America. Nor was Vilca among the lucky 14% of Peruvians who have received a single dose of the vaccine.
Across the country, a new routine has emerged as people spend their days scrambling to fill heavy, green oxygen tanks bought on the black market that are a lifeline for sick loved ones. Some businesses have tripled the price for oxygen, forcing many people to plunder their savings or sell belongings.
From the hospital where Vilca took his life, “he’d call and say they were all abandoned. Nobody was paying attention,” his widow said, showing on her cellphone a photo her husband sent of himself in one of the rare moments he was lucky enough to have an oxygen mask.
Along with South America, which accounts for around 40% of the daily deaths from COVID-19, India has emerged as the other main driver of mortality. Even then, experts believe the roughly 1,000 deaths recorded daily in India are almost certainly an undercount.
In the state of Madhya Pradesh, with over 73 million people, one journalist found that that the spike in registered deaths from all causes in May alone was five times pre-pandemic levels and 67 times the official death toll from the virus for the month, which was 2,451.
Rich countries including Britain, the U.S. and France have promised to donate about 1 billion COVID-19 shots to help close the inequality gap. But experts say 11 billion are needed to immunize the world. Of the 3 billion doses that have been administered globally, less than 2% have been in the developing world.
Read:Eight Barcelona de Guayaquil fans die in bus crash in Peru
“Pledging to provide 1 billion doses is a drop in the ocean,” said Agnes Callemard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general. She slammed politicians for opting for “more of the same paltry half-measures and insufficient gestures.”
The U.N.-backed effort to distribute vaccines to poor countries, known as COVAX, has also faltered badly. Its biggest supplier, the Serum Institute of India, stopped exporting vaccines in March to deal with the epidemic on the subcontinent.
Meanwhile, countries including Seychelles, Chile and Bahrain, relying on Chinese-made vaccines, have seen outbreaks even after reaching relatively high levels of coverage, raising questions about the shots’ effectiveness.
Dora Curry, an Atlanta-based director of health equity at the charity CARE, said she is deeply worried that while children in Germany, France and the U.S. are getting immunized, relief is slow to arrive for people far more vulnerable in poor countries.
“If there were a way I could give that dose to somebody in Uganda, I would,” said Curry, who acknowledged she will probably have her 11-year-old daughter immunized when she is eligible. “But this just speaks to the problems with the distribution system we have.”
Japan to declare virus emergency lasting through Olympics
Japan is set to place Tokyo under a state of emergency that would last through the Olympics, fearing an ongoing COVID-19 surge will multiply during the Games.
At a meeting with experts Thursday morning, government officials proposed a plan to issue a state of emergency in Tokyo from next Monday to Aug. 22. The Summer Olympics, already delayed a year by the pandemic, begin July 23 and close Aug. 8.
The Games already will take place without foreign spectators, but the planned six-week state of emergency likely ends chances of a local audience. A decision about fans is expected later Thursday when local organizers meet with the International Olympic Committee and other representatives.
Read:As Tokyo Olympics approach, virus worries rise in Japan
Tokyo is currently under less-stringent measures that focus on shortened hours for bars and restaurants but have proven less effective at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is to formally announce the emergency plans later Thursday, hours after IOC President Thomas Bach was to land in Tokyo. Bach must self-isolate for three days in the IOC’s five-star hotel in the Japanese capital before heading to Hiroshima, where heavy rain is threatening flooding.
The upcoming emergency will be the fourth for Tokyo since the pandemic began and is a last-minute change of plan made late Wednesday after a meeting with experts who warned strongly against the government’s soft approach.
A main focus of the emergency is a request for bars, restaurants and karaoke parlors serving alcohol to close. A ban on serving alcohol is a key step to tone down Olympic-related festivities and keep people from drinking and partying. Tokyo residents are expected to face stay-home requests and watch the Games on TV from home.
“How to stop people enjoying the Olympics from going out for drinks is a main issue,” Health Minister Norihisa Tamura said.
Read: It’s Olympic month for Japan
Tokyo reported 920 new cases on Wednesday, up from 714 last week and its highest since 1,010 on May 13. The figure is in line with experts’ earlier estimate that daily cases in Tokyo could hit 1,000 before the Games and could spike into thousands in August.
Kazuhiro Tateta, a Toho University infectious diseases expert, noted an earlier state of emergency in the spring came too late to prevent hospitals in Osaka from overflowing with patients and said another delay should not be allowed.
Ryuji Wakita, director-general of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, noted that two-thirds of Japan’s cases are from the Tokyo region and “our concern is the spread of the infections to neighboring areas.”
Experts also noted cases among younger, unvaccinated people are rising as Japan’s inoculation drive loses steam due to supply uncertainty.
Read:Tokyo shapes up to be No-Fun Olympics with many rules, tests
Just 15% of Japanese are fully vaccinated, low compared to 47.4% in the United States and almost 50% in Britain. Nationwide, Japan has had about 810,000 infections and nearly 14,900 deaths.
“The infections are in their expansion phase and everyone in this country must firmly understand the seriousness of it,” Dr. Shigeru Omi, a top government medical adviser, told reporters.
He urged authorities to quickly take tough measures ahead of the Olympics with summer vacations approaching. “The period from July to September is the most critical time for Japan’s COVID-19 measures,” Omi said.
Haiti’s future uncertain after brazen slaying of president
An already struggling and chaotic Haiti stumbled into an uncertain future Thursday, reeling from the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse followed by a reported gunbattle in which authorities said police killed four suspects in the murder, detained two others and freed three officers being held hostage.
Officials pledged to find all those responsible for the predawn raid on Moïse’s house early Wednesday that left the president shot to death and his wife, Martine Moïse, critically wounded. She was flown to Miami for treatment.
“The pursuit of the mercenaries continues,” Léon Charles, director of Haiti’s National Police, said Wednesday night in announcing the arrests of suspects. “Their fate is fixed: They will fall in the fighting or will be arrested.”
Officials did not provide any details on the suspects, including their ages, names or nationalities, nor did they address a motive or what led police to the suspects. They said only that the attack condemned by Haiti’s main opposition parties and the international community was carried out by “a highly trained and heavily armed group” whose members spoke Spanish or English.
Read: Haiti in upheaval: President Moïse assassinated at home
Prime Minister Claude Joseph assumed leadership of Haiti with help of police and the military and decreed a two-week state of siege following Moïse’s killing, which stunned a nation grappling with some of the Western Hemisphere’s highest poverty, violence and political instability.
Inflation and gang violence are spiraling upward as food and fuel becomes scarcer, while 60% of Haitian workers earn less than $2 a day. The increasingly dire situation comes as Haiti is still trying to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016 following a history of dictatorship and political upheaval.
Those in Haiti and family and friends living abroad wondered what is next.
“There is this void now, and they are scared about what will happen to their loved ones,” said Marlene Bastien, executive director of Family Action Network Movement, a group that helps people in Miami’s Little Haiti community.
She said it was important for the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to take a much more active role in supporting attempts at national dialogue in Haiti with the aim of holding free, fair and credible elections.
Bastien said she also wants to see participation of the extensive Haitian diaspora: “No more band-aids. The Haitian people have been crying and suffering for too long.”
Read:Haiti President Jovenel Moïse assassinated at home
Haiti had grown increasingly unstable under Moïse, who had been ruling by decree for more than a year and faced violent protests as critics accused him of trying to amass more power while the opposition demanded he step down.
According to Haiti’s constitution, Moïse should be replaced by the president of Haiti’s Supreme Court, but the chief justice died in recent days from COVID-19, leaving open the question of who might rightfully succeed to the office.
Joseph, meanwhile, was supposed to be replaced by Ariel Henry, who had been named prime minister by Moïse a day before the assassination.
Henry told The Associated Press in a brief interview that he is the prime minister, calling it an exceptional and confusing situation. In another interview with Radio Zenith, he said there was no fight between him and Joseph: “I only disagree with the fact that people have taken hasty decisions ... when the moment demands a little more serenity and maturity.”
Moïse had faced large protests in recent months that turned violent as opposition leaders and their supporters rejected his plans to hold a constitutional referendum with proposals that would strengthen the presidency.
Hours after the assassination, public transportation and street vendors remained largely scarce, an unusual sight for the normally bustling streets of Port-au-Prince. Gunfire rang out intermittently across the city, a grim reminder of the growing power of gangs that displaced more than 14,700 people last month alone as they torched and ransacked homes in a fight over territory.
Read:Haiti fights large COVID-19 spike as it awaits vaccines
Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia, said gangs were a force to contend with and it isn’t certain Haiti’s security forces can enforce a state of siege.
“It’s a really explosive situation,” he said, adding that foreign intervention with a U.N.-type military presence is a possibility. “Whether Claude Joseph manages to stay in power is a huge question. It will be very difficult to do so if he doesn’t create a government of national unity.”
Joseph told The Associated Press that he supports an international investigation into the assassination and believes elections scheduled for later this year should be held as he promised to work with Moïse’s allies and opponents alike.
“Everything is under control,” he said.
Haiti in upheaval: President Moïse assassinated at home
A squad of gunmen assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and wounded his wife in an overnight raid on their home Wednesday, with police killing four suspects and arresting two others hours later amid growing chaos in a country already enduring gang violence and protests of his increasingly authoritarian rule.
Three police officers held hostage by the suspected gunmen were freed late Wednesday after police surrounded a house where some of the suspects were hiding, said Léon Charles, chief of Haiti’s National Police.
Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph said the police and military were in control of security in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas where a history of dictatorship and political upheaval have long stymied the consolidation of democratic rule.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Joseph called for an international investigation into the assassination, said that elections scheduled for later this year should be held and pledged to work with Moïse’s allies and opponents alike.
Read:Haiti President Jovenel Moïse assassinated at home
“We need every single one to move the country forward,” Joseph said. He alluded to enemies of the president, describing him as ’’a man of courage″ who had opposed ’’some oligarchs in the country, and we believe those things are not without consequences.″
Despite Joseph’s assurances that order would prevail, there was confusion about who should take control and widespread anxiety among Haitians. Authorities declared a “state of siege” in the country and closed the international airport.
The normally bustling streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, were empty Wednesday. Sporadic gunshots were heard in the distance, public transportation was scarce, and some people searched for businesses that were open for food and water.
Bocchit Edmond, the Haitian ambassador to the United States, said the attack on the 53-year-old Moïse “was carried out by foreign mercenaries and professional killers — well-orchestrated,” and that they were masquerading as agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA has an office in the Haitian capital to assist the government in counternarcotics programs, according to the U.S. Embassy.
Joseph said the heavily armed gunmen spoke Spanish or English, but gave no further details.
Moïse’s wife, Martine, was in stable but critical condition and was being moved to Miami for treatment, Edmond said in Washington.
Haiti has asked the U.S. government for assistance with the investigation, he said, adding that the assassins could have escaped over the land border to the Dominican Republic or by sea.
The Dominican Republic said it was closing the border and reinforcing security in the area, describing the frontier as ″completely calm.″
Haiti appeared to be heading for fresh volatility ahead of general elections later this year. Moïse had been ruling by decree for more than a year after failing to hold elections, and the opposition demanded he step down in recent months, saying he was leading it toward yet another grim period of authoritarianism.
It was a testament to Haiti’s fragile political situation that Joseph, a protege of Moïse who was only supposed to be prime minster temporarily, found himself in charge.
But Haiti appears to have few other options. The Supreme Court’s chief justice, who might be expected to help provide stability in a crisis, died recently of COVID-19.
The main opposition parties said they were greatly dismayed about the killing.
“In this painful circumstance, the political forces of the opposition condemn with utmost rigor this heinous crime that is at odds with democratic principles,” their statement said.
The parties added that they hope the National Police will take all necessary measures to protect lives and property, and they called on Haitians to be “extremely vigilant.”
Joseph is likely to lead Haiti for now, though that could change in a nation where constitutional provisions have been erratically observed, said Alex Dupuy, a Haiti-born sociologist at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
The best scenario would be for the acting prime minister and opposition parties to come together and hold elections, Dupuy said.
“But, in Haiti, nothing can be taken for granted. It depends how the current balance of forces in Haiti plays out,” he said, describing the situation as dangerous and volatile. Haiti’s police force is already grappling with a recent spike in violence in Port-au-Prince that has displaced more than 14,700 people, he said.
Read:Hurricane Elsa races toward Haiti amid fears of landslides
Former President Michel Martelly, whom Moïse succeeded, called the assassination “a hard blow for our country and for Haitian democracy, which is struggling to find its way.”
U.S. President Joe Biden said he was “shocked and saddened to hear of the horrific assassination,” and condemned “this heinous act.”
“The United States offers condolences to the people of Haiti, and we stand ready to assist as we continue to work for a safe and secure Haiti,” Biden said in a statement.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also condemned the assassination and stressed that “the perpetrators of this crime must be brought to justice,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The Security Council scheduled an emergency closed meeting on Haiti for Thursday.
Governments in Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and elsewhere also expressed their concern at Haiti’s plight.
A resident who lives near the president’s home said she heard the attack.
“I thought there was an earthquake, there was so much shooting,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she fears for her life. “The president had problems with many people, but this is not how we expected him to die.”
The U.S. Embassy in Haiti said it was restricting U.S. staff to its compounds and closed the embassy Wednesday.
It’s too early to know exactly what will happen next, said Jonathan Katz, who previously covered Haiti for the AP and wrote a book about the country’s devastating earthquake.
“We don’t know who did this, what their end game is, what else they have planned,” he said, noting that Moïse had a long list of enemies. “There were a lot of people who wanted him gone. And there were a lot of people whom he wanted gone.”
“It seems to be a pretty well-financed operation,” he said, adding it could take days to piece together what happened. “That’s the question: Who’s behind it and what do they want?”
Moïse was killed a day after he nominated Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon, as the new prime minister. Joseph took over the job of interim prime minister in April following the resignation of the previous premier, Joseph Jouthe — the latest in a revolving door of prime ministers.
In the AP interview, Joseph said he had spoken three times with Henry and that there was agreement he was in charge for now.
“He was actually designated but never took office,” Joseph said of Henry. “I was the one who was a prime minister, who was in office. This is what the law and the constitution says.”
However, in a separate AP interview, Henry appeared to contradict Joseph. “It’s an exceptional situation. There is a bit of confusion,” he said. “I am the prime minister in office.”
Haiti’s economic, political and social woes have deepened recently, with gang violence spiking in Port-au-Prince, inflation spiraling, and food and fuel becoming scarcer in a country where 60% of the population makes less than $2 a day. These troubles come as Haiti is still trying to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
Opposition leaders accused Moïse of seeking to increase his power, including by approving a decree that limited the powers of a court that audits government contracts and another that created an intelligence agency that answers only to the president.
Read:Haiti fights large COVID-19 spike as it awaits vaccines
He had faced large protests in recent months that turned violent as opposition leaders and their supporters rejected his plans to hold a constitutional referendum with proposals that would strengthen the presidency.
In recent months, opposition leaders demanded he step down, arguing that his term legally ended in February 2021. Moïse and supporters maintained that his term began when he took office in early 2017, following a chaotic election that forced the appointment of a provisional president to serve during a year-long gap.
In May, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced an 18-month extension of temporary legal status for Haitians living in the U.S., citing “serious security concerns (in Haiti), social unrest, an increase in human rights abuses, crippling poverty, and lack of basic resources, which are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The reprieve benefited an estimated 100,000 people who came after the devastating 2010 earthquake and are eligible for Temporary Protected Status, which gives haven to people fleeing countries struggling with civil strife or natural disasters.
Crews give up hope of finding survivors at collapse site
Emergency workers gave up Wednesday on any hope of finding survivors in the collapsed Florida condo building, telling sobbing families that there was “no chance of life” in the rubble as crews shifted their efforts to recovering more remains.
The announcement followed increasingly somber reports from emergency officials, who said they sought to prepare families for the worst.
“At this point, we have truly exhausted every option available to us in the search-and-rescue mission,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a news conference.
“We have all asked God for a miracle, so the decision to transition from rescue to recovery is an extremely difficult one,” she said.
Read:8 more dead pulled from rubble of collapsed Florida condo
Eight more bodies were recovered Wednesday, bringing the death toll to 54, the mayor said. Thirty-three of the dead have been identified, and 86 people are still unaccounted for.
Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah told families at a private briefing that crews would stop using rescue dogs and listening devices but would continue to search for their loved ones.
“Our sole responsibility at this point is to bring closure,” he said as relatives cried in the background.
Unlike some collapses that create W-shaped spaces where people can survive, a “pancake collapse” like the one in Surfside tends not to leave livable spaces, Jadallah said.
“Where a pancake collapses, unfortunately it is a floor or a wall on top of a floor on top of a floor on top of a floor,” he said. “Typically, an individual has a specific amount of time in regards to lack of food, water and air. This collapse just doesn’t provide any of that sort.”
Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said he expected the recovery operation to take several more weeks.
The formal transition was to take place at midnight. Hours before the official change of mission, rescue workers, their helmets held to their hearts and their boots covered in dust, joined local officials, rabbis and chaplains in a moment of silence. The rabbis and chaplains walked down a line of officials, many of them sobbing, and hugged them one by one.
Read:Searchers at collapse site ‘not seeing anything positive’
A Miami-Dade fire helicopter flew over the site. As the ceremony neared its end, an accordion player unseen on a nearby tennis court played Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” which was followed by a piccolo playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Firefighters from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the federal government and elsewhere were also present.
On a tall nearby fence, families and well-wishers had posted photos of the victims, supportive messages and flowers. Firefighters hung a banner atop the fence that read “Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Mourns With You.”
Hope of finding survivors was briefly rekindled after workers demolished the remainder of the building on Sunday, allowing rescuers access to new areas of debris they hoped would contain “voids,” or open pockets with enough room for a person.
Some of those voids did exist, mostly in the basement and the parking garage, but no survivors emerged. Instead, teams recovered more than a dozen additional victims. Because the building fell in the early morning hours, many residents were found dead in their beds.
No one has been pulled out alive since the first hours after the 12-story Champlain Towers South building fell on June 24.
Twice during the search, rescuers had to suspend the mission because of the instability of the remaining structure and the preparation for demolition.
After initially hoping for miraculous rescues, families slowly braced themselves for the news that their relatives did not survive.
“For some, what they’re telling us, it’s almost a sense of relief when they already know (that someone has died), and they can just start to put an end to that chapter and start to move on,” said Miami-Dade firefighter and paramedic Maggie Castro, who has updated families daily.
Read:Florida condo collapse: Death toll climbs to 28, 117 still missing
Authorities launched a grand jury investigation into the collapse, and at least six lawsuits have been filed by Champlain Towers families.
The president of the neighboring Champlain Towers North condo association said engineers hired by the city arrived Tuesday to conduct three days of tests at the building, which has a similar design and was built around the same time as Champlain Towers South.
“They are checking from one end of the building to the other, and everything is fine,” Naum Lusky told The Associated Press.
Since the south building collapsed, he has insisted his tower is safe because his association kept up the maintenance and did not allow problems to fester.
Global COVID-19 deaths hit 4 million amid rush to vaccinate
The global death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 4 million Wednesday as the crisis increasingly becomes a race between the vaccine and the highly contagious delta variant.
The tally of lives lost over the past year and a half, as compiled from official sources by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
Read: Global Covid-19 incidence rises 3% over week: WHO
The toll is three times the number of people killed in traffic accidents around the globe every year. It is about equal to the population of Los Angeles or the nation of Georgia. It is equivalent to more than half of Hong Kong or close to 50% of New York City.
Even then, it is widely believed to be an undercount because of overlooked cases or deliberate concealment.
With the advent of the vaccine, deaths per day have plummeted to around 7,900, after topping out at over 18,000 a day in January.
But in recent weeks, the mutant delta version of the virus first identified in India has set off alarms around the world, spreading rapidly even in vaccination success stories like the U.S., Britain and Israel.
Read:Covid nightmare in Bangladesh: Daily-death toll crosses 200
Britain, in fact, recorded a one-day total this week of more than 30,000 new infections for the first time since January, even as the government prepares to lift all remaining lockdown restrictions in England later this month.
Other countries have reimposed preventive measures, and authorities are rushing to step up the campaign to dispense shots.
At the same time, the disaster has exposed the gap between the haves and the have-nots, with vaccination drives barely getting started in Africa and other desperately poor corners of the world because of extreme shortages of shots.
The U.S. and other wealthy countries have agreed to share at least 1 billion doses with struggling countries.
The U.S. has the world’s highest reported death toll, at over 600,000, or nearly 1 in 7 deaths, followed by Brazil at more than 520,000, though the real numbers are believed to be much higher in Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right government has long downplayed the virus.
Read:Global Covid cases top 184.5 million
The variants, uneven access to vaccines and the relaxation of precautions in wealthier countries are “a toxic combination that is very dangerous,” warned Ann Lindstrand, a top immunization official at the World Health Organization.
Instead of treating the crisis as a “me-and-myself-and-my-country” problem, she said, “we need to get serious that this is a worldwide problem that needs worldwide solutions.”