The new variant of COVID-19 was on Tuesday detected for the first time in the US as US president-elect Joe Biden vowed to significantly ramp up the vaccination drive in the US, while a COVID-19 vaccine developed by drugmaker AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford had been approved for use, the British government said yesterday.
The British government has come under pressure to tighten restrictions, as it announced a record 24-hour high of new infections.
The vaccine can be stored, transported and handled at normal refrigerated conditions, and is therefore cheaper and easier to administer than the jabs that require freezing.
Photo: AFP
Britain would become the first nation to roll out the jab on Monday, British Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock said, amid mounting concerns that another dangerous spike in infections threatens to overwhelm the British National Health System.
“Brilliant to end 2020 with such a moment of hope,” Hancock wrote on Twitter. “The #coronavirus vaccine is our way out of the pandemic — now we need to hold our nerve while we get through this together.”
Meanwhile, Colorado recorded what is believed to be the first case of the new variant of COVID-19 in the US.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis said that a man in his 20s near Denver was infected with the variant known as B.1.1.7 and is isolating.
Biden, after a briefing from experts, said that the dire COVID-19 situation might not ease up until “well into March.”
“The next few weeks and months are going to be very tough — a very tough period for our nation, maybe the toughest during this entire pandemic,” he said.
Hospitalizations are back at an all-time high in the US.
In Los Angeles, ambulances waited all day to unload COVID-19 patients, with more than 95 percent of hospitals forced to divert new cases away, and one reportedly treating patients in its gift shop and chapel.
Southern California on Tuesday extended a three-week lockdown indefinitely.
Biden called mass vaccination the “greatest operational challenge we’ve ever faced as a nation” — and promised that the US would do better after he replaces US President Donald Trump on Jan. 20.
“The Trump administration’s plan to distribute vaccines is falling far behind,” Biden said. “I’m going to move heaven and earth to get us going in the right direction.”
The Trump administration had predicted that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated by the end of this month.
With days left, about 2.1 million have received the first shot of the vaccine, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Biden renewed his promise to administer 100 million vaccine doses in his first 100 days in office and confirmed he would invoke a Korean War-era law to force private industry to step up production.
“We’re planning a whole-of-government effort, and we’re going to work to set up vaccination sites and send mobile units to hard-to-reach communities,” Biden said.
With healthcare workers desperately waiting, politicians have been among the first to be vaccinated in a stated goal of setting an example, with US vice president-elect Kamala Harris taking her first dose on Tuesday before cameras in Washington.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and