UNITED NATIONS -- British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab says he will urge the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution calling for cease-fires in conflict zones to allow the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines.
Britain holds the council presidency this month and Raab is chairing a virtual high-level meeting of the U.N.’s most powerful body on the problem of ensuring access to vaccines in conflict areas on Wednesday. Diplomats said 11 foreign ministers are expected to speak, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Britain says more than 160 million people are at risk of being excluded from coronavirus vaccinations because they live in countries engulfed in conflict and instability including Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia.
“Global vaccination coverage is essential to beating coronavirus,” Raab said ahead of the meeting. “That is why the U.K. is calling for a vaccination cease-fire to allow COVID-19 vaccines to reach people living in conflict zones and for a greater global team effort to deliver equitable access.”
British U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward stressed that it is in all countries’ interests to ensure that people in hostile areas and vulnerable situations are vaccinated because “no one is safe until everyone is safe.”
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Tuesday that Mexico will stress the importance of equal access for all countries to COVID-19 vaccines at the council meeting.
He was sharply critical that countries that produce the vaccine have high vaccination rates while Latin American countries have problems obtaining doses.
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THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:
— South African health care workers eagerly await Johnson & Johnson vaccine jabs
— Pandemic stresses take a huge toll on college students, who struggle to pay for food and housing as jobs and internships dry up
— U.S. hospitals still ration medical N95 masks even as stockpiles swell by millions
— Vaccine delays leave grocery workers feeling expendable
— India’s dramatic fall in virus cases leaves experts stumped
— Explaining the UN vaccine plan for poor countries as it nears rollout
— Follow all of AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:
TOKYO — Months after other major economies, Japan has begun giving its first coronavirus vaccines to front-line health workers. Many are wondering if the campaign will reach enough people, and in time, to save a Summer Olympics already delayed a year by the worst pandemic in a century.
Despite recent rising infections, Japan has largely dodged the kind of cataclysm that has battered other wealthy countries’ economies, social networks and healthcare systems. But the fate of the Olympics, and the billions of dollars at stake should the games fail, makes Japan’s vaccine campaign crucial. Japanese officials are also well aware that China, which has had success eradicating the virus, will host next year’s Winter Olympics, something that heightens the desire to make the Tokyo Games happen.
A big problem as the vaccines roll out — first to medical workers, then the elderly and then, possibly in late spring or early summer, to the rest of the population — are worries about shortages of the imported vaccines Japan relies on, and a long-time reluctance among many Japanese to take vaccines because of fears of relatively rare side effects that have been played up by the media in the past.
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A lockdown in the New Zealand city of Auckland will end at midnight, the government announced Wednesday after concluding a coronavirus outbreak had been contained.
“This is good news,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.
The nation’s largest city was put into lockdown on Sunday after three unexplained cases were found in the community. It was the first lockdown in six months in a nation which so far has managed to successfully stamp out the spread of the disease.
The move to end the lockdown came as health authorities said the outbreak had grown by three cases to six in total. But Ardern said the additional cases were to be expected because they involved close contacts.
Ramped-up testing indicates the outbreak hasn’t spread far. Laboratories processed more than 17,000 individual tests on Tuesday, authorities said, and they also tested wastewater samples, which came back negative.
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NEW DELHI — Health officials in India say cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa and Brazil have been found in India.
They said Tuesday that the variant was detected in four travelers last month. Over 150 cases of another variant first detected in the United Kingdom have previously been found in India.
Cases in India have been falling dramatically and uniformly across the country for months. But the detection of the more infectious variants comes amid some worrying but so far isolated outbreaks.
A cluster of over a 100 cases has been detected in the southern India city of Bengaluru at an apartment complex. Another spike was detected by health officials in several pockets of Maharashtra state, including in Mumbai, the country’s financial capital.
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SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — El Salvador’s government says the Central American nation will receive its first shipment of coronavirus vaccine from India on Wednesday.
The office of President Nayib Bukele says the shipment of AstraZeneca vaccine will arrive on a flight from an Indian plant where it is produced.
Bukele’s office says the first doses will be used to vaccinate health care workers. The office did not say how many doses will be in the shipment, but says it will be used to vaccinate “thousands” of health care professionals.
The country has recorded about 58,000 coronavirus infections and 1,758 deaths from COVID-19 so far in the pandemic.
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MEXICO CITY — Mexico has topped 2 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 175,000 deaths, though officials concede that the country’s extremely low rate of testing means the real figures are much higher.
The Health Department said Tuesday that 8,683 more cases and 1,329 more deaths had been confirmed in the previous 24 hours.
Mexico’s 175,986 test-confirmed deaths so far is the third-highest toll in the world, behind the U.S. and Brazil. But estimates of the country’s excess deaths for 2020 suggest the real death toll from the pandemic is more than 220,000.
And excess death figures for January and early February — when the highest wave of cases came — have not yet been posted.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea is reporting 621 new coronavirus cases. It’s the country’s biggest daily jump in more than a month and is causing worries about a viral resurgence amid relaxed distancing rules.
Earlier this week, South Korea slightly eased its stringent distancing rules after the caseload showed a gradual decline for weeks. Restaurants, bars and coffee shops in the greater Seoul area are now allowed to stay open an hour longer, while dining curfews elsewhere are lifted.
Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun is urging people not to lower their guard. He says the rules were relaxed to help struggling small business owners, not to ease the fight against the virus.
The numbers reported Wednesday raised South Korea’s total caseload for the pandemic to 84,946, with 1,538 deaths.
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia’s second-largest city will relax its third pandemic lockdown, with authorities saying they have contained the spread of a coronavirus cluster centered on a hotel.
Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews says most of the pandemic restrictions in Melbourne will be lifted at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday after no new infections were detected in the latest 24-hours period.
The Victoria state government has yet to say whether spectators will be allowed to return to the Australian Open tennis tournament under the same conditions as before the five-day lockdown.
The lockdown has been enforced across Victoria to prevent the virus spreading from Melbourne, which is the state capital.
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BOGOTA, Colombia — A shortage of hospital beds during the coronavirus pandemic has led architects in Colombia to design portable, inflatable chambers for coronavirus patients that can be placed in gyms or parking lots.
The domes — each 5 meters (16-feet) wide — can house two patients and are connected by inflatable hallways. Tubes help circulate air, which can cycle through 16 times an hour, according to the architects.
Developers around the world have devised other inflatable or pop-up structures to cope with the wave of COVID-19 patients, some for small wards, others for a few patients and some for individuals.
The version at Bogota’s La Salle University includes eight, interconnected domes that can house 16 patients, and costs around $15,000, according to researchers. Units can be added or subtracted as needed.
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NEW ORLEANS — Mardi Gras joy is muted this year in New Orleans as authorities seek to stifle the spread of the coronavirus.
Bars were forced to close during the final weekend of the season, parades that generally start 12 days before the big day have been stilled, and Mayor LaToya Cantrell is promising a crackdown on large crowds.
Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is the annual pre-Lenten bash celebrated along much of the Gulf Coast, with the biggest bashes in heavily Catholic New Orleans. Last year’s revelry is now believed to have contributed to an early surge that made Louisiana a southern COVID-19 hot spot.
Tourism officials are stressing safety for those who do come to this year’s celebration, while showcasing the house floats and online attractions to keep the city on the mind of future post-pandemic tourists.
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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s administration is increasing coronavirus vaccine supplies sent to states to 13.5 million doses per week.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki says that represents a 57% increase from when Biden took office nearly a month ago on Jan. 20.
Psaki also says the administration is doubling, to 2 million doses per week, the amount of vaccine being sent to pharmacies across the country as part of a program to extend access into neighborhoods.
Jeff Zients, Biden’s coronavirus coordinator, made the announcements during a regular White House call with governors on Tuesday.
Psaki says the administration is monitoring severe weather across parts of the country that has forced some vaccination centers to close temporarily, and that could jeopardize the viability of the vaccines.
