The AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine has been approved to be used in additional than 70 international locations, however the US will not be but certainly one of them. And as American officers anticipate outcomes from the corporate’s U.S. trial after which emergency clearance, tens of thousands and thousands of doses sit idly in American manufacturing services — at the same time as different international locations beg for entry.
The doses’ destiny is the topic of an intense debate amongst White Home and federal well being officers, with some arguing that the administration ought to allow them to go overseas the place they’re desperately wanted, whereas others aren’t able to relinquish them.
AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish firm, is concerned in these conversations.
In a speech to the nation on Thursday, President Biden mentioned the federal government had made main beneficial properties in securing vaccines for the US. By the top of Might, he mentioned, there might be sufficient for all adults within the nation, and by Might 1 each grownup might be eligible for one.
However different international locations are grappling with severe provide points, and a shortfall within the provide of the AstraZeneca vaccine has fueled tensions with European officers.
AstraZeneca has requested the Biden administration to let it ship the American doses to the European Union. The administration, for now, has denied the request, one official mentioned.
The corporate’s Covid-19 vaccine has in the meantime hit some headwinds this week after well being authorities in three European international locations suspended its use due to considerations that it’d enhance the danger of blood clots. The international locations — Denmark, Iceland and Norway — emphasised that they have been taking motion as a precaution and that there was no proof of any causal hyperlink.
Denmark acted after a 60-year-old girl who acquired a shot died after growing a blood clot. A number of different European international locations had stopped utilizing doses from the identical vaccine batch after some experiences of extreme blood clots, and European drug regulators are investigating.
Public well being consultants count on medical circumstances to show up by likelihood in some folks after receiving any vaccine. Within the overwhelming majority of instances, such sicknesses don’t have anything to do with the photographs. Most different international locations the place the AstraZeneca vaccine has been given to many thousands and thousands of individuals haven’t reported related pink flags.
The Biden administration’s hesitation in letting go of the vaccine doses is at the very least partly associated to uncertainties with provide earlier than a benchmark of late Might laid down by the president. Vaccine manufacturing is notoriously complicated and delicate, and issues like mould development can interrupt a plant’s progress.
The administration’s strikes to order extra provide of the three vaccines approved by the F.D.A. has additional sidelined AstraZeneca’s candidate. The USA could solely briefly, or by no means, want the AstraZeneca doses.
Hungary has agreed to pay about $36 a dose for the Covid-19 vaccine made by Sinopharm, a Chinese state-owned company, according to contracts made public by a senior Hungarian official on Thursday. That appears to make the Sinopharm shot among the most expensive in the world.
Hungary has agreed to buy five million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine, priced at 30 euros ($36) each, according to contracts that Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, uploaded to his Facebook page. The contract is between the Hungarian government and a third-party vendor, and that price far surpasses what the European Union has agreed to pay for vaccines from Western manufacturers.
The European Union has said it would pay €15.50 per dose for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to Reuters, which cited an internal E.U. document. For AstraZeneca, it agreed to pay $2.15 per dose, according to Belgium’s budget secretary.
The contracts that Mr. Gulyas published also show that Hungary, which has recorded nearly half a million coronavirus cases and more than 16,000 deaths, has agreed to pay $9.95 per dose for the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine.
Sinopharm, which underwent a change in ownership two months before the transaction, was awarded the contract after the government exempted it from having to take part in an open public procurement process, said Miklos Ligeti, legal director for Transparency International Hungary, an anticorruption group.
Such arrangements raise red flags for anticorruption watchdogs, who warn that the involvement of third parties increases the risk of price gouging. “We don’t know how much this company actually paid for this vaccine,” Mr. Ligeti said.
Given publicly available data on this company, Mr. Ligeti pointed to figures that he described as worrying. “The government of Hungary assigned a contract with a net value of 150 million euros” — $179 million — “to a company with registered capital of €9,000” ($10,700), he said.
Hungary is one of the few European countries to sign a deal with Sinopharm, which has promoted itself to developing countries at a time when many richer nations are hoarding doses by Western drugmakers like Pfizer and Moderna. A major selling point has been Sinopharm’s manufacturing capacity: It has said it can make up to three billion doses by the end of this year.
The Sinopharm price is extraordinary in part because the company, unlike the Western vaccine makers, has not published detailed data from Phase 3 trials.
Sinopharm is mass-producing two vaccines. It says that the first, made in conjunction with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products, has an efficacy rate of 79 percent, and that the second, made with the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, is 72.5 percent effective.
Adam Liptak contributed reporting.
Four former U.S. presidents and their first ladies appear in a new public service campaign with one single plea to Americans: Get vaccinated.
The ads feature former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, getting vaccine jabs. Their wives — Rosalynn Carter, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama — also appear.
The ads urge all Americans to get their shots when the opportunity arrives.
“This vaccine means hope,” Mr. Obama says. “It will protect you and those you love from this dangerous and deadly disease.”
“In order to get rid of this pandemic it’s important for our fellow citizens to get vaccinated,” says Mr. Bush.
They spoke of the longing so many feel to get back to normal.
“I want to be able to go back to work and to move around,” says Mr. Clinton.
“To visit with Michelle’s mom,” says Mr. Obama. “To hug her, and see her on her birthday.”
Mr. Bush says he is “really looking forward to going to opening day in Texas Ranger Stadium with a full stadium.”
Mr. Carter says, “I’m getting vaccinated because we want this pandemic to end as soon as possible.”
The only ex-presidential couple not in the ad campaign is Donald and Melania Trump.
Mr. and Mrs. Trump quietly received their vaccines in January before leaving the White House. Later that month, Mr. Trump appeared at the CPAC political conference in Orlando, Fla., where he encouraged people to go get vaccinated.
Mr. Trump’s private approach came as a number of his supporters have expressed resistance to the vaccine. Many other prominent figures have tried setting an example by getting the shot in public.
The two ads are part of a broad promotional effort to combat Covid-19 vaccine skepticism that launched in February, backed by the nonprofit adverting group Ad Council and a coalition of experts known as the Covid Collaborative. Public service announcements will appear in English and Spanish on television, social media and other platforms.
More than 300 companies, community groups and public figures contributed to the $52 million push, as did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We urge you to get vaccinated when it’s available to you,” says Mr. Obama.
“So roll up your sleeve and do your part,” says Mr. Bush.
“This is our shot,” says Mr. Clinton.
“Now it’s up to you,” concludes Mr. Carter.
China imposed some of the world’s toughest lockdowns to stop the coronavirus. One city sealed apartment doors, leaving residents with dwindling food and medicine. One village tied a local man to a tree after he left home to buy cigarettes.
Few officials spoke up against the measures, given the central government’s obsession with its anti-coronavirus campaign. That hasn’t stopped Dr. Zhang Wenhong.
Dr. Zhang, an infectious-disease specialist and perhaps China’s most trusted voice on Covid-19, has spoken out publicly against the strictest lockdowns. Fighting the pandemic, he likes to say, is like “catching mice in a china shop.”
He may be China’s closest analogue to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the American infectious-disease specialist who became the public face of the response to the virus in the United States.
A consummate technocrat, Dr. Zhang comes across as neither political nor ideological. Yet by offering his expert opinions straight, he pushes back against the authoritarian instinct in a system that often turns to draconian measures.
A top academic at Fudan University in Shanghai and a member of the Communist Party, Dr. Zhang led Shanghai’s expert panel on Covid-19, giving him considerable authority over the city’s response.
But unlike Dr. Fauci, who urged the Trump administration to do more, Dr. Zhang championed a more strategic approach for a country that didn’t take coronavirus half-measures. In doing so, he spoke to the Chinese public with respect, a refreshing change from the way others in authority often carry themselves.
Dr. Zhang is especially popular among professionals and technocrats who admire him for his sincerity in a society plagued by propaganda, conspiracy theories and crude nationalism.
“At this moment, rumors are more terrifying than the virus,” he said at the beginning of the outbreak. “We need to explain the epidemic to the public with rational data and professional knowledge.”
In today’s China, getting ahead often means speaking in the language of the Communist Party. Those who refuse to ride the ideological tide keep their independence by keeping quiet.
By contrast, Dr. Zhang has earned an ability to speak freely. Shanghai, a city of 24 million people, has had only 371 local infections and seven deaths.
His forecasts have been on the mark. He predicted early on that the pandemic could last at least one to two years. A year ago this month, when China was still virtually shut down, he said China had left its toughest hours behind.
Journalists began to seek him out, and some of his responses became internet memes. A few examples:
“Influenza is not a cold, just like a tiger is not a cat.”
“You’re bored to death at home, so the virus will be bored to death, too.”
The drug company Novavax said on Thursday that its coronavirus vaccine candidate had an efficacy rate of 96.4 percent in a Phase 3 trial in Britain, a clinical result on par with that of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech shots.
But the Novavax candidate was only 48.6 percent effective in a Phase 2 trial in South Africa, where most cases are linked to an emerging variant, the company said.
The 96.4 percent rate measured the drug’s efficacy in Britain against mild, moderate and severe disease caused by the “original” strain of the coronavirus, Novavax said in a statement. The rate declined to 86.3 percent in cases caused by the B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant, which was first detected in Britain.
The 48.6 percent rate in the South Africa trial applied to “predominantly variant strains” of the virus, Novavax said, although it noted that the vaccine still offered 100 percent protection against severe disease and death in both trials.
Most of the cases circulating in South Africa are linked to the B.1.351 variant. Scientists are concerned, because clinical trials tend to show that vaccines offer less protection against it than other variants.
The findings released on Thursday are not a huge departure from interim results, released by Novavax in January, that showed an efficacy rate of nearly 90 percent in Britain and just under 50 percent in South Africa.
Novavax, a little-known company based in Maryland, has never brought a vaccine to market. It is working on one of six vaccine candidates supported by the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed and has been running trials in Britain, Mexico, South Africa and the United States.
The company said in January that it had started working on a new version of the vaccine to address the more contagious variants.
Global roundup
NEW DELHI — India has recorded one of its worst single-day increases in coronavirus cases since late December, owing largely to a resurgence in the western state of Maharashtra. More than 60 percent of the country’s 23,285 cases on Thursday were reported from the state, according to data from the health ministry.
This month the government of Maharashtra, where the country’s financial capital, Mumbai, is located, imposed a lockdown in some areas after cases surged to over 8,000 in a single day. On Friday, officials announced fresh restrictions in other parts of the state.
A strict lockdown was imposed for a week in the city of Nagpur beginning on Monday, the central and state governments said.
Until last month, India had been experiencing somewhat of a breather in its outbreak. During the peak of its outbreak last fall, the country was registering more than 90,000 cases a day, but cases fell rapidly over the next few months to just about 9,000 a day, according to a New York Times database.
“We are very worried about Maharashtra,” Vinod K. Paul, one of the country’s top health officials, said at a news conference on Thursday. “In all the states where the virus is seemingly on the rise in a significant way, the vaccination eligibility in those areas should be intensified,” he said.
As of Friday morning, India had vaccinated 26 million people against the coronavirus. The government has set a target of 300 million inoculations by July.
In other news from around the world:
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Thailand on Friday suspended its plans to roll out the AstraZeneca vaccine over concerns that the shot might increase the risk of blood clots. The announcement came hours before Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha was scheduled to be the first person in the country to be inoculated with it, and does not affect Thailand’s rollout of the Sinovac vaccine. Dr. Yong Poovorawan, a virologist at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, told reporters that the country’s delay would probably last a week or two. “We’re not saying the vaccine is bad,” he said. “We’re postponing it to see if the deaths are related to the vaccine or not.”
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Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun of South Korea said on Friday that coronavirus restrictions would remain in effect until March 28, the Yonhap news agency reported. The rules, which vary by region but include a nationwide ban on most private gatherings, was set to expire on Sunday. South Korea reported 488 cases on Friday, a three-week high. The government has said it aims to achieve herd immunity by November, but only about 1 percent of the country’s 51 million people have been vaccinated.
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After months in lockdown, Wales will ease its restrictions starting Saturday, the country’s leader announced. The nation’s stay-at-home order might be changed by steerage to remain native, and the brand new guidelines will allow as much as 4 folks from two households to fulfill collectively outside, and outside sport and visits to care properties to restart. “The journey out of lockdown begins in earnest in Wales this weekend,” First Minister Mark Drakeford mentioned on Friday. The gradual method to reopening will enable haircut appointments from Monday, and outlets will be capable to welcome prospects again on April 12, the identical date as they’re set to reopen in England.