Just give us the vaccines

Rich countries are opening up societies and vaccinating young people who are not at great risk from Covid-19, while the poorest countries cruelly lack doses, the World Health Organization said on Friday, condemning a global failure. 

The situation in Africa, where new infections and deaths jumped by nearly 40% last week compared to the previous week, is "so dangerous" as the Delta variant spreads globally, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

"Our world is failing, as the global community we are failing," he told a news conference.

His comments came ahead of Australia's largest city Sydney entered a two-week lockdown yesterday to contain a sudden Covid surge, but several European nations lifted restrictions despite the global spread of a highly contagious form of the disease.

Tedros, who is Ethiopian, chastised unnamed countries for reluctance to share doses with low-income countries. He compared it to the HIV/AIDS crisis, when some argued that African nations were unable to use complicated treatments.

"I mean that attitude has to be a thing of the past," Tedros said. "The problem now is a supply problem, just give us the vaccines."

"The difference is between the haves and the have nots which is now completely exposing the unfairness of our world - the injustice, the inequality, let's face it," he said.

COVAX, run jointly by the GAVI vaccine alliance and the WHO, has delivered 90 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to 132 countries since February, but has faced major supply issues since India suspended vaccine exports.

"We have through COVAX this month zero doses of AstraZeneca vaccines, zero doses of SII vaccines (Serum Institute of India), zero doses of J & J (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine," said Bruce Aylward, WHO senior adviser.

"The situation right now is dire."

While vaccination drives have brought down infections in numerous -- mostly wealthy -- countries, the rise of the Delta variant which first emerged in India has stoked fears of new waves of a virus that has already killed nearly four million people.

Sydney's normally bustling harbourside centre was nearly deserted after its lockdown took effect, with officials bracing the public for a spiralling crisis.

"We do need to brace ourselves for a potentially large number of cases in the following days," said Gladys Berejiklian, the Premier of New South Wales state.

"When you have a contagious variant, like the Delta virus, a three-day lockdown doesn't work -- if we're going to do this we need to do it properly," she added.

The new restrictions apply to some five million people across Sydney, along with hundreds of thousands of others living in nearby population centres.

Many are reeling from the shock of the sudden onset of the outbreak in a city that had returned to relative normality after months with very few cases.

Globally, the pandemic is still slowing down, with the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting the lowest number of new cases worldwide since February and decreasing deaths attributed to the coronavirus.

But concerns over the Delta variant have prompted new restrictions in countries that had previously managed to control their own outbreaks. The virus has been identified in at least 85 countries and is spreading rapidly among unvaccinated populations, WHO said.

India, where the Delta variant originated, yesterday said its total active caseload of Covid-19 infections declined to 5,95,565, less than six lakhs for the first time in 86 days. The active cases now constitute 1.97 per cent of total cases, reflecting the declining wave of the devastating second wave of the disease.

In the last 24 hours, India reported 48,698 new cases, according to the data uploaded yesterday morning.  The daily positivity rate is now at 2.79 per cent, less than five per cent for 19 consecutive days.

Spain nonetheless brought an end to mandatory outdoor mask-wearing yesterday, a year after the rule was first introduced in the wake of the devastating first wave of the virus through Europe.

The Netherlands ended its rules on outdoor mask-wearing, also easing some restrictions on indoor dining and reopening discotheques to patrons who tested negative for Covid. Businesses were also allowed from Friday to broadcast the Euro 2020 football tournament, provided customers kept socially distanced.

And Switzerland scrapped most of its remaining coronavirus restrictions yesterday, after Health Minister Alain Berset said this week that the country's use of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines gave adequate protection against the Delta variant.

But Delta is so contagious that experts say more than 80 percent of a population would need to be jabbed in order to contain it -- a challenging target even for nations with significant vaccination programmes.

While several studies have shown that vaccines are slightly less effective against Delta, they are still highly effective -- but only after the second dose.