Coronavirus: Asian countries review AstraZeneca vaccine; Thai cabinet quarantines amid fears of new wave
- After the EU regulator found possible links between the vaccine and rare blood clots, Australia ordered an urgent inquiry and the Philippines has suspended doses for those under 60
- Thailand has confirmed its first local cases of the British variant, while India reported over 126,000 new infections and New Zealand banned travellers from India
The European Medicines Agency on Wednesday said it found rare cases of blood clots among some adult vaccine recipients, although it said the vaccine’s advantages still outweighed the risks.
EU watchdog finds possible link between AstraZeneca jab and rare blood clots
“Those two recommendations will be brought to the table today and looked at in the Australian context,” Australia chief medical officer Paul Kelly told the Australian Broadcasting Corp television. But Kelly said the unusual blood clots among some vaccine recipients were “extremely rare”, and that the AstraZeneca doses were safe and effective for most people.
Australia Health Minister Greg Hunt said the country’s medicine regulator has the freedom to “fearlessly and frankly” take their decision, including if the vaccine should be paused for people under 30. “If they provide age restrictions or other variations, we will do it, we will adopt it,” Hunt said.
The EU decision could further complicate Australia’s immunisation programme, which is more than 80 per cent behind its original schedule, as it relies heavily on the AstraZeneca shots to vaccinate its near 26 million population.
“At this point, there is no advice to suggest there would be any change to the roll-out of the vaccine,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.
Australian authorities had pledged to administer at least 4 million first doses by the end of March, but could only deliver 670,000. The government blamed supply issues from Europe for the delay. It is looking to ramp up the immunisation programme from locally produced AstraZeneca vaccines, with 50 million doses set to be produced in Australia by CSL Ltd.
On Thursday, it was reported that hundreds of thousands of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine had been flown to Australia from the United Kingdom but the source of the shipments was kept quiet to avoid any controversy in the UK.
The first 300,000 UK-made doses landed at Sydney Airport on February 28 – one month after the European Commission introduced new curbs limiting the export of vaccines produced on the continent, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Another large batch arrived on an Emirates passenger plane in March, well after Italy and the European Commission formally blocked an application by AstraZeneca to ship 250,000 doses to Australia.
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Meanwhile, Indonesia is in talks with China on getting as many as 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to plug a gap in deliveries after delays in the arrivals of AstraZeneca shots, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said on Wednesday.
He told a parliamentary hearing that Indonesia would receive 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine via a bilateral deal in 2021, instead of 50 million doses initially agreed. The remaining 30 million doses were due to be shipped by the second quarter of 2022, he said.
Budi said the government had “embarked on a discussion with the Chinese government to ask for an additional 90-100 million [doses]”.
“We’re also asking for vaccines from the US when they’re done with their own vaccinations and sell their vaccines overseas,” he said.
Besides AstraZeneca, Indonesia relies heavily on vaccines produced by China’s Sinovac Biotech for coronavirus inoculations which began in January. It aims to reach 181.5 million people within a year in a bid to reach herd immunity.
Thailand braces for new wave
This came as six of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s cabinet ministers announced this week they are quarantining for 14 days after having contact with infected people. Transport Minister Saksayam Chidchob is the only one who announced he has tested positive for the disease.
All 61 lawmakers belonging to Saksayam’s Bhumjai Thai Party also went into quarantine because they met with him at a recent party meeting.
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The variant was found in blood samples from 24 people in a new cluster of cases involving customers of nightlife venues in the capital, Bangkok, said Dr Yong Pooworavan, a virologist from the Faculty of Medicine at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.
Speaking at a health ministry news conference, Yong described the variant as 1.7 times more contagious than the original coronavirus, still more common in Thailand.
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Bangkok city officials on Monday ordered the closing for two weeks of almost 200 bars and other nightspots in three areas linked to the new cases. Many international schools in the city cancelled classes for the week, in some cases substituting remote learning.
The new virus threat comes at a particularly vulnerable time for Thailand. Next week Thais celebrate the traditional Songkran New Year’s holiday, which usually sees an exodus of people from cities to visit relatives in other provinces and is generally celebrated for an entire week.
The government’s Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration announced on Wednesday that it had confirmed 334 new coronavirus cases, bringing Thailand’s total to 29,905 including 95 deaths. Most of the new cases originated in the Bangkok entertainment venue cluster, with related cases showing up in the north, south and northeast of the country.
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South Korea reports surge in infections
The tally compares with an average of 477 cases last week, according to data from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, and will fuel fears that the country may be facing a fourth wave of infections.
Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun told a government meeting a new wave of infections could disrupt South Korea’s vaccination programme which has been suffering delays as the international vaccine-sharing scheme Covax Facility struggles to provide promised doses on time.
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South Korea also said on Wednesday it will temporarily suspend providing AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine to people below 60 as it undergoes reviews in Europe.
It also approved a Johnson & Johnson shot in a bid to speed up its inoculation roll-out.
Officials have said that a new round of restrictions are likely to be announced as soon as Friday. South Korea currently limits private gatherings of more than four people. South Korea has to date reported 107,598 infections in total, with 1,758 deaths.
02:14
India’s daily coronavirus cases surpass 100,000 for first time
India hits record, virus epicentre short of vaccine stocks
The new cases reported by the Health Ministry overtook Wednesday’s 115,736 infections with dozens of cities and towns imposing night curfews to try to contain infections. Fatalities rose by 685 in the past 24 hours, the highest since November, raising the nation’s toll to 166,862 dead since the pandemic began.
The western state of Maharashtra, the worst hit in the country, accounted for nearly 47 per cent of new infections. But it only has three days worth of vaccines in stock, Health Minister Rajesh Tope said. Other states, including southern Andhra Pradesh is also running low on shots, according to The Economic Times.
The steep jump in infections from early February, when the country reported around 11,000 daily infections, has forced states to reinstate movement curbs and other restrictions. Maharashtra has halted all non-essential services, ordered private companies to work from home, and shut malls and restaurants through April.
India’s federal Health Minister Harsh Vardhan released a statement on Wednesday in which he deflected blame for the shortages and said some states, including Maharashtra were “trying to divert attention from their poor vaccination efforts by just continuously shifting the goalposts”.
India could resume vaccine exports by June if local coronavirus cases subside
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose party is fighting five state elections, the unfolding health crisis may continue to dent his international image after India curbed vaccine exports this month as the second Covid-19 wave mounted. The renewed restrictions are also spurring public anger at the government’s failure to get ahead of the virus despite a months-long lull.
After the country shipped or donated more than 60 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, India last month said it would slow down exports to focus on its own requirements. The world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India, is a key supplier to the Covax Facility, a programme through which 2 billion vaccine doses are supposed to be distributed to middle and low-income countries, many of which cannot afford to sign procurement contracts on their own. But domestic demand is expected to outrun supply despite those export curbs.
Amid the shortages, Modi announced on Thursday he had received his second vaccine shot in New Delhi and urged citizens to register for the country’s immunisation programme.
The nation’s tally of cases now stands at 12.9 million – behind Brazil and the US – with the new virus wave threatening nascent growth in Asia’s third-largest economy, which had slumped into a historic recession last year after Modi’s strict nationwide lockdown.
New Zealand suspends travel from India
New Zealand on Thursday temporarily suspended entry for all travellers from India, including its own citizens, for about two weeks following a high number of positive coronavirus cases arriving from the country.
The move comes after New Zealand recorded 23 new positive coronavirus cases at its border on Thursday, of which 17 were from India. The suspension applies to anyone who has been in India during the past 14 days. It is the first time that the country has extended any bar on entry to its own citizens and residents.
“We are temporarily suspending entry into New Zealand for travellers from India,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a news conference in Auckland. “I want to emphasise that while arrivals of Covid from India has prompted this measure, we are looking at how we manage high risk points of departure generally. This is not a country specific risk assessment.”
New Zealand has virtually eliminated the virus within its borders, and has not reported any community transmission locally for about 40 days. But it reported one new locally infected case in a security guard who was employed at a coronavirus managed isolation facility.
Reporting by Reuters, Associated Press, Bloomberg
