Here is the enlarged photo of tests conducted by 31 selected countries in the world. As can be seen from the chart, United Kingdom did the most number of tests per 1 million citizen.
It goes to say that when more testing is done, more cases will be detected. However if less testing is done, less cases detected. Usually people only look at the number of cases but missed out on the number of test done according to the number of population. Well seems like rich countries may have more resources to conduct more tests. However poor countries may have difficulties to carry out more tests due to financial constraints.
What the professor has mentioned in the month of June that the Tokyo Olympics could help spread Covid 19 has finally come true. What he said is correct and right now the virus is spreading nonstop even though the Olympics has not started and will only start on 23rd July 2021. The professor has warned about the risks of having Tokyo Olympics during pandemic in June. Whatever he said is really happening now.
Japanese scientists warn that Tokyo Olympics could help spread COVID-19
A group of Japanese scientists, including some of the nation’s most senior advisers on the COVID-19 pandemic, is warning that allowing spectators at the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics will help the virus spread domestically and internationally. Their recommendation to bar or at least limit spectators, not yet formally published but described to ScienceInsider in general terms, represents an increasingly outspoken challenge from scientists to the government and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which remain adamant about going ahead with the games just 6 weeks before the 23 July opening ceremony.
Japan and IOC have already barred tourists from entering Japan to watch the games in person. But millions of people in Japan could attend competitions at more than 40 venues in and around Tokyo.
That would be a bad idea, says the informal group of 15 to 20 top public health experts, who have met virtually on Sundays since last year to discuss the pandemic. But they worry their warning will fall on deaf ears. Most of the group members likely favor canceling the games, says one member who did not want to be identified. But given the current stance of Japan’s government and IOC, “the discussion has shifted as to whether we should welcome a domestic audience or not,” this scientist says. But it may be too late “to consider any drastic changes in the way that the Tokyo Olympic Games are organized,” says another member, Hiroshi Nishiura, an epidemiologist at Kyoto University. He says the governmental coronavirus control headquarters, which is under the Cabinet Office, has never publicly discussed the risks of holding the games.
Shigeru Omi, chair of the government’s top COVID-19 advisory panel, which reports to the coronavirus headquarters, and leader of the informal group, has said he will unveil the recommendations before 20 June. It is unclear whether Omi will present the report as coming from the informal group of experts or get his official panel to endorse it. The precise timing of the release and whether it should go to the government or IOC is still under discussion, Nishiura says.
The Olympics, originally scheduled for summer 2020, were postponed 1 year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Tokyo and other major cities remain under a COVID-19 state of emergency, and a slow vaccination rollout has led to calls for further postponement or even outright cancellation of the games. Recent public opinion polls indicate 60% to 80% of the country favors cancellation. Yet IOC officials and Japanese politicians, mindful of the billions of dollars at stake, are pressing ahead. When asked at a 21 May virtual news conference whether the games would go forward even if Tokyo were under a COVID-19 state of emergency, John Coates, an IOC vice president, said: “The answer is absolutely yes.”
The fraught relationship between the experts and Japan’s politicians and IOC officials was on display last week when Omi appeared before two legislative committees. Holding the Olympic Games “is not normal under current circumstances,” he said at a 2 June appearance before a health committee of the lower legislative chamber, according to local press reports. The next day, he told the upper chamber’s health committee that Olympic organizers should impose “stringent preparations” to minimize the risk of spreading infection. He added that giving opinions was meaningless, “unless they reach the International Olympic Committee.” But Norihisa Tamura, Japan’s minister of health, labor and welfare, brushed off Omi’s remarks, calling them just a “voluntary report of research results” in comments to reporters.
Nishiura says one concern is that the games could help spread more contagious COVID-19 variants, particularly given the large numbers of athletes, coaches, officials, media, local volunteers, and domestic spectators. Guidelines from the Japanese Olympic Committee ask athletes and support staff to limit travel to official accommodations and venues; avoid public transportation, tourist attractions, restaurants, and bars; and leave the country within 2 days of the conclusion of their events. Although the guidelines say noncompliance could lead to being barred from competing, Nishiura says there is no indication of how these restrictions will be enforced. As yet, there are no contingency plans for handling clusters of cases that might overstretch health care facilities. Because of a shortage of hospital beds and oxygen supplies during the recent fourth wave of infections, “a substantial number of people died in their own homes,” Nishiura says. In a bit of lucky timing, however, Japan is coming off its fourth wave of infection. Daily new cases have dropped from a peak of more than 7000 on 12 May to just over 2000 on 6 June.
Japan’s late and slow-moving vaccination drive adds to these worries. Japan has administered more than 17 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines primarily to medical workers and those 65 and older, covering about 6.8% of the population. Vaccination will start for those younger than 65 in the middle of this month. But the slow pace of vaccination means the Olympics will be going on “when only elderly people are vaccinated,” Nishiura says.
The impact of any Olympic-related infections could spread throughout the country and even globally, says Hitoshi Oshitani, a public health specialist at Tohoku University who is an occasional member of the Sunday study group. Over the past year and a half, new cases rose nationwide after most long holiday periods, such as the New Year and the spring Golden Week when most workers can take a full week off. The Olympics will run into the August summer vacation period when many urban residents return to their hometowns to visit parents or grandparents. Last year, a public information campaign successfully convinced many to spend their vacations at home and new cases did not rise significantly, Oshitani says. But with the excitement surrounding the Olympics, he says, “I’m not sure people will listen to recommendations” to limit travel.
Tokyo Olympics: South African cases raise fear of Covid-19 cluster at athletes villages
Organisers on Sunday reported 10 new cases connected to the Olympics including media, contractors and other personnel
Infection rates are climbing among the general population of the capital, topping 1,000 new cases for four consecutive days
Tokyo Olympics organisers on Sunday reported that two South African footballers and a video analyst had tested positive for Covid-19 in the Olympic Village, raising fears of a cluster just days before the opening ceremony.
Players Thabiso Monyane and Kamohelo Mahlatsi and analyst Mario Masha are in isolation after testing positive, Team South Africa said, adding that the whole delegation had been following anti-coronavirus rules.
“They have been tested on arrival, daily at the Olympic Village and complied with all the mandatory measures,” a statement said.
Athletes and delegations from around the world have begun arriving for the Games, amid mounting concerns that Japan’s Covid-19 cases, already experiencing an uptick, will rise even further.
Organisers reported 10 new cases in total connected to the Olympics on Sunday including media, contractors and other personnel. That compares with 15 new cases on Saturday, which included the first case of infection at the Olympic Village, a complex of flats and dining areas that will house 6,700 athletes and officials at its peak.
An International Olympic Committee member from South Korea tested positive for the coronavirus on landing in Tokyo. Ryu Seung-min, a former Olympic athlete, is vaccinated, reflecting the infection risk even from vaccinated attendees.
Tokyo 2020 Olympic Village opens to the media
Meanwhile, the Tokyo metropolitan government reported 1,008 daily coronavirus cases on Sunday, topping the 1,000 mark for the fifth straight day and adding to signs that the capital is seeing a fifth wave of the virus. The figure compares with 1,410 infections confirmed the previous day, the highest single-day spike since January 21.
The seven-day rolling average of new cases in Tokyo, which is currently under a fourth Covid-19 state of emergency, was up 45.6 per cent from the previous week at 1,068 per day.
With the opening ceremony set to take place on Friday, public concern remains high that the games could become a superspreader event amid the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, first detected in India.
The approval rating for Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s cabinet has fallen to 35.9 per cent, the lowest level since he took office last year, a Kyodo News poll showed on Sunday, adding to signs of public discontent with the government’s determination to hold the Tokyo Olympics despite the coronavirus pandemic.
The disapproval rating rose to 49.8 per cent, the highest on record for the Suga administration. In the previous survey conducted last month, the support rate stood at 44.0 per cent, while 42.2 per cent disapproved of the cabinet.
Covid-19 cases rise despite Games pledge of 85 per cent vaccination rate
On Saturday, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach appealed for Japanese fans to get behind the Games, saying he was “very well aware of the scepticism” surrounding the event.
Many worry that increased precautions such as mandatory apps, GPS tracking and “minders” for Olympic visitors will not be nearly enough to stop the introduction of fast-spreading variants to a largely unvaccinated population already struggling with mounting cases.
“It’s all based on the honour system, and it’s causing concern that media people and other participants may go out of their hotels to eat in Ginza,” Takeshi Saiki, an opposition lawmaker, said of what he called Japan’s lax border controls. So far, most Olympic athletes and other participants have been exempted from typical quarantine requirements.
But they are subject to a restrictive environment at the village, with daily testing, social distancing and no movement possible outside the Olympic “bubble”. They are under orders to leave Japan 48 hours after their event.
There have been regular breakdowns in security as the sheer enormity of trying to police so many visitors becomes clearer. Photos and social media posts show foreigners linked to the Games breaking mask rules and drinking in public, smoking in airports – even, if the bios are accurate, posting on dating apps.
“There are big holes in the bubbles,” said Ayaka Shiomura, another opposition lawmaker, speaking of the so-called “bubbles” that are supposed to separate the Olympics’ participants from the rest of the country.
But as the restrictions are tested by increasing numbers of visitors, officials have been blamed for doing too much, and too little.
The government and the Games’ organisers “are treating visitors as if they are potential criminals,” Chizuko Ueno, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Tokyo, said on YouTube.
There is also lingering resentment over a widespread sentiment that Japan is facing this balancing act because the International Olympic Committee needs to have the Games happen, regardless of the state of the virus, to get the billions of dollars in media revenue critical to its survival.
Will Tokyo Olympics with no fans affect how athletes perform?
“The Olympics are held as an IOC business. Not only the Japanese people, but others around the world, were turned off by the Olympics after all of us saw the true nature of the Olympics and the IOC through the pandemic,” mountaineer Ken Noguchi told the online edition of the Nikkan Gendai newspaper.
One of the highest-profile security problems came last month when a Ugandan team member arriving in Japan tested positive for what turned out to be the more contagious Delta variant. He was quarantined at the airport, but the rest of the nine-person team was allowed to travel more than 500km (300 miles) on a chartered bus to their pre-Olympics camp, where a second Ugandan tested positive, forcing the team and seven city officials and drivers who had close contact with them to self-isolate.
On Friday, a Uganda team member went missing, raising more questions about the oversight of Olympic participants. On Saturday, organisers said the first resident of the Olympic Village had tested positive for Covid-19. Officials said it was not an athlete, but was a non-resident of Japan.
For the first 14 days in Japan, Olympic visitors outside the athletes’ village are banned from using public transport and from going to bars, tourist spots and most restaurants. They cannot visit anywhere that is not specifically mentioned in activity plans submitted in advance. There are some exceptions authorised by organisers: specifically designated convenience stores, takeaway places and, in rare cases, some restaurants that have private rooms.
Athletes, tested daily for the coronavirus, will be isolated in the athletes’ village and are expected to stay there, or in similarly locked-down bubbles at venues or training sites. Those who break the rules could be sent home or receive fines and lose the right to participate in the Games.
Everyone associated with the Olympics has to install two apps when entering Japan. One is an immigration and health reporting app, and the other is a contact tracing app that uses Bluetooth. They will also have to consent to allowing organisers to use GPS to monitor their movements and contacts through their smartphones if there’s an infection or violation of rules.
Like it or not Tokyo Olympics have become the place whereby covid cases have been spreading very fast by now although the Olympics have not started. Tokyo Olympics will only start on 23rd July 2021 with the Opening Ceremony.
However the unfortunate part is that there are some officials, athletes and coaches who have been detected as positive covid. However IOC refused to reveal the names and the status of the athletes, coaches and officials due to privacy reason.
So the question is simple. Should Olympics be held during pandemic time? Is it a wise thing to do? Yes it is alright to have Olympics as it is a grand and prestigious events. However to have Olympics during pandemic time will only encourage the widespread of the virus and endanger the athletes life.
Threat of Covid-19 spreading grows at Tokyo Olympics with three infections at athletes village. What happened to 85 per cent vaccination rate pledge?
More than a dozen Olympic-related positive tests have been recorded in Tokyo since visitors started arriving for the 2020 Games, including a first case at the Athletes Village
It started with a Ugandan coach testing positive for coronavirus on arrival in Tokyo on June 20. Three days later, an athlete in the same team returned a positive result.
A Serbian rower tested positive on arrival on July 4 and a Lithuanian was next five days later. On July 14, seven staff members at a hotel in Hamamatsu housing Brazilian athletes were shown to be infected.
On Friday, a member of the Nigerian delegation became the first Olympic visitor to be hospitalised, and the next day, organisers revealed that the coronavirus had finally penetrated the Athletes Village – set to accommodate 11,000 people over two weeks – where an unnamed person tested positive and was sent to a hotel for isolation. By Sunday morning, the cases of infection had risen to three. If that wasn’t enough, International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Ryu Seung-min, of South Korea, tested positive after arriving in Tokyo. Saturday’s official tally alone was 15 infections, before Ryu’s case was revealed.
The Japanese capital is still under a state of emergency amid a six-month-high surge in new Covid-19 cases but the IOC is standing firm in the face of widespread calls to cancel the Games, promising a safe and secure Olympics with at least 85 per cent of all athletes and officials to be fully vaccinated.
Covid-19 cases at the Olympics may, for now, be a trickle, but does the 85 per cent vaccination pledge offer adequate protection to prevent a flood and a potential catastrophe of Olympic proportions? It just about does, said Fabian Lim Chin Leong, associate professor of exercise physiology at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
“The ideal is always to strive for 100 per cent of vaccination rate, but this may not be possible for practical reasons,” Lim told the Post. “For example, people with health conditions that may not be suitable for vaccination, people who do not consent to the vaccination, and differences in availability of vaccines among countries taking part in the Olympic Games.
“In most public health settings, 70 to 80 per cent of a vaccination rate would be accepted as the level that achieves herd immunity.”
Around 11,000 athletes and 7,000 officials are expected to arrive for the Tokyo Games, which open on July 23 and runs until August 8. IOC President Thomas Bach said this month that 85 per cent of athletes and officials living in the Olympic Village would be fully vaccinated, rising from a June prediction of 75 per cent.
The IOC also said in March, when vaccines were not widely available, that 270 world championships and world cups held between September 2020 and March this year resulted in no outbreaks, despite involving more than 30,000 athletes.
It is not mandatory for participants to be vaccinated but Olympic advisers have said it hardly mattered because vaccination had never been the primary strategy against an outbreak in the first place. Medical and sports analysts have said the 85 per cent rate offered an acceptable coverage considering the herd immunity threshold of 75 to 80 per cent set by most countries.
Measures to prevent the spread of the virus – with the Olympics deemed a potential superspreader event by some doctors – remain paramount.
“Eighty-five per cent is what we’re working with. It is good enough because that’s what we have. It is better than 84 per cent. It will substantially reduce the risk even more,” said Brian McCloskey, a public health adviser to the IOC who chairs an independent expert panel that developed Covid-19 countermeasures for the Games.
“I would doubt whether you could calculate a statistically significant difference between the effect of 85 per cent and 90 per cent. It just wouldn’t make a huge difference. When [the IOC] started planning the kind of measures that we would use for the Games, we did not consider vaccination as part of that. So vaccination is a bonus on top of these measures.”
All Olympic participants will observe a strict regimen of testing, masking and social distancing as outlined in the IOC’s “playbook” that provides safety guidelines for the Games. They must undergo daily coronavirus screening and will be sent to the Athletes Village’s fever clinic if they have a temperature of 37.5 degrees Celsius or higher or test positive. In Japan, their locations must remain traceable by GPS and they should stay within the village, competition venue or training grounds. No cheering, hugging and high-fives are permitted.
Winners will not have medals placed around their necks but must take them off a tray during the presentation ceremony. Organisers have threatened to fine or disqualify rule-breaking athletes, and even expel them from Japan.
While officials have come under fire for insisting on staging the Games amid a pandemic, other big events have been held this year such as grand slam tennis tournaments the French Open and Wimbledon.
The European Championship football tournament that ended in July had spectators returning to stadiums at reduced capacities. Fans were asked to mask up and keep a distance of at least 1.5 metres, while certain stadiums required proof of a negative coronavirus test. For the final, fans were asked to show proof of full vaccination or a negative coronavirus test with London’s Wembley Stadium allowing 60,000 spectators in to watch England lose on penalties to Italy.
Still, social-distancing measures were ignored as maskless supporters gathered after the match. The WHO warned that Euro 2020 crowds could become superspreader events and authorities in England, Scotland and Denmark reported an uptick in coronavirus cases because of those games.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended the decision of allowing more than 60,000 spectators to attend the final, as the vaccines had created “a considerable wall of immunity”.
Yet for the Olympic Games, organisers had always planned for a “bubble”. Striving for a 100 per cent vaccination rate minimises the risks but is not possible for multiple reasons, said Brett Toresdahl, a sports medicine doctor at New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery.
“A vaccination rate of over 80 per cent combined with the other prevention measures have lowered the risk of Covid-19 to a level that is acceptable to the vast majority of athletes and their medical teams,” Toresdahl said.
“The estimated vaccination rate of over 80 per cent within the Olympic and Paralympic Village is currently higher than in any other country,” he added.
As vaccines become more readily available, the IOC and manufacturers have worked to ensure national delegations have ready access to jabs. The Chinese Olympic Committee in March offered to provide China-made vaccines for athletes going to Tokyo 2020 and the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. Russia has also offered the Sputnik V vaccine to some African nations.
In May, the IOC struck a deal with German vaccine developer BioNTech and US pharmaceutical company Pfizer to provide their Covid-19 vaccine. Inoculation hubs were set up in the capitals of Rwanda and Qatar for delegations whose countries couldn’t provide injections locally.
Two out of five Afghan athletes were inoculated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, under the IOC’s agreement with the companies, in the Qatar vaccination hub, its National Olympic Committee told the Post.
Tracking down the vaccination rates of each nation’s delegations is also an uphill task. The IOC declined to reveal the number of vaccines provided to each country. Most Olympic committees did not respond to the Post’s requests for comment. The few that did decline to reveal the number of athletes who have already received jabs.
In Hong Kong, close to 100 per cent of its 46 athletes competing in the Olympics will be vaccinated. Yet, the exact figure remains undisclosed, deemed by the Hong Kong Sports Institute as “very personal and related to athletes’ privacy”.
The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee is also not tracking or mandating its 800-plus athletes to be vaccinated but replies from responsive Olympic committees offer a glimpse into the difficulties of getting athletes and staff inoculated.
Slovakia has around 90 per cent of its 41 athletes vaccinated, its Olympic committee said. “Just a few members were not interested in getting vaccinated. Some were infected by Sars-CoV-2 in February or March, so they were still within the 180 days period of natural immunisation,” its spokesman said, using the coronavirus’ scientific name.
As for Malawi, one out of its five taking part athletes is underage. The 15-year-old will attend the Games unvaccinated. The delegation was inoculated with the AstraZeneca jab under its country’s vaccine roll-out, and the WHO has not recommended it for those aged under 18.
Despite the risks, the IOC is absolving itself of any responsibility should an athlete contract the virus. All athletes must sign a waiver – said to be typical for major sports events – but with wording that releases organisers from any Covid-19 liability.
Certain sports could also be at a greater risk of Covid-19 infection, especially close-contact indoor sports such as fencing, boxing and wrestling, according to Lisa Brosseau, a respiratory-protection research consultant for the University of Minnesota’s Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.
Any sport that takes place outdoors with no close contact, such as archery, golf and surfing, are at low risk. Current safety measures also do not recognise the exposure to human-generated aerosols, or small particles, in indoor spaces, said Brosseau. In shared spaces and in proximity to others, Brosseau warned the current safety measures are not effective.
“Masks are not effective at limiting the emission or inhalation of small infectious particles generated during breathing or talking,” said Brosseau. “I believe transport will occur in small buses. I am concerned about the bus driver who will have the highest exposure – meeting many people in a day.”
Furthermore, not all staff, volunteers and members of the media would be fully vaccinated during the Games, said Toresdahl. The IOC said 70 to 80 per cent of the media representatives would be vaccinated while all 70,000 volunteers were expected to be inoculated.
“While the available vaccines are very effective, Covid-19 infections can still occur,” said Toresdahl.
Lim from Singapore said extra precautions athletes must take at the Games may also lower their protection levels. “Another risk is the impact that travelling, time zone differences and competition stress have on the immune system. That may lower the resistance to counter the effects of the Covid-19 virus,” said Lim, though he said there was insufficient data to fully understand its risks.
McCloskey, the independent health adviser to the IOC, however, said there was little evidence to suggest the coronavirus could be spread at a sporting event. “We had positive cases at the tennis and football tournaments, but those happened from people being infected at home, not during the field of play,” he said.
Even before vaccines were widely available, many indoor contact sporting events were held with minimal Covid-19 transmission when testing and prevention measures were implemented, said Toresdahl.
“As the pandemic continues and sporting events resume, event organisers and medical staff are learning more about how to minimise the risk of Covid-19 to an acceptable level,” said Toresdahl.
The world’s largest vaccine producer is struggling to overcome its latest COVID-19 surge—and that’s everyone’s problem.
India considered itself to be “in the endgame” of the pandemic just a few weeks ago. Now it is the global epicenter. The country recently surpassed the devastating milestone of more than 345,000 new COVID-19 cases in a single day, the biggest total recorded globally since the pandemic began.
What is taking place in India isn’t so much a wave as it is a wall: Charts showing the country’s infection rate and death toll, which has also reached record numbers in the country, depict curves that have shot up into vertical lines. Public-health experts aren’t optimistic that they will slope down anytime soon.
India’s outbreak is an enormous tragedy for its own people, but it’s also a catastrophe for the rest of the world. Ninety-two developing nations rely on India, home to the Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine maker, for the doses to protect their own populations, a supply now constrained by India’s domestic obligations. Meanwhile, the coronavirus is mutating. Reports of double- and even triple-mutant strains of the virus, which experts fear could be driving the country’s latest surge, have prompted concerns that what has started in India won’t end there. Despite efforts to restrict the spread of India’s new COVID-19 variant, called B.1.617, it has already been identified in at least 10 countries, including the United States and Britain.
If ever there were a time for intervention, it would be now. But world leaders, who have so far only paid lip service to the need for global cooperation, have mostly been preoccupied by their own internal situations. Although this approach may have served vaccine-rich countries such as the U.S. so far, India could prove its limits.
How did India, which merely a month ago thought it had seen the worst of the pandemic, get to this point? Michael Kugelman, the deputy director of the Asia program at the Washington, D.C.–based Wilson Center, told me the answer comes down to a “perfect storm” of factors that includes new and existing variants (and a lack of robust genomic sequencing to track them), a continuous stream of widely attended political rallies and religious gatherings (with no social distancing or mask wearing), and a general complacency on the part of the Indian government, which was slow to respond to a crisis in which it had prematurely claimed victory.
The result has been overwhelmed hospitals, depleted oxygen supplies, morgues that have run out of space, and crematoria that are melting from near-constant use. The country surpassed 2,000 deaths a day last week—and those are just the cases that have been recorded. This time next month, that figure could rise to as high as 4,500 daily deaths, Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatician and epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who is tracking the situation in India, told me. Others warn that it could get as high as 5,500. Though the projections vary, the conclusions are largely the same. “All the arrows are pointing to real darkness,” Mukherjee said.
The situation has become so dire that the Pune-based Serum Institute, the manufacturer of the AstraZeneca vaccine and a major contributor to the COVAX initiative to provide doses to low- and middle-income countries, said it will not be able to meet its international commitments amid India’s domestic shortage. Once considered the pharmacy of the world, India is now being forced to import doses.
None of the Indian government’s missteps absolve the world from caring about what happens to the country, nor should they. Beyond the obvious moral reasons are practical ones too. As I have repeatedly written before, uncontrolled outbreaks anywhere pose a threat everywhere, including vaccine-rich countries such as the United States. Perhaps the biggest concern right now, in India and elsewhere, is the threat posed by more transmissible variants and their potential ability to overcome vaccine immunity. Though virtually every known variant, including those from Britain, Brazil, and South Africa, has been identified in India, in some states the Indian strain has become the most prevalent.
“It’s very similar to what we saw in Manaus,” Christina Pagel, the director of clinical operational research at University College London, told me, referring to the badly hit Brazilian city. She noted that “it’s not a coincidence that these variants are arising in populations that have developed immunity through infection.”
Read: The Brazil variant is exposing the world’s vulnerability
Then there’s the issue of vaccine supply. India’s role as a major pharmaceutical producer has been spotlighted during the pandemic; it has provided 20 percent of the world’s generic drugs as well as more than 60 percent of the world’s vaccines, despite having inoculated just 1 percent of its own population against COVID-19.* The country has the capacity to manufacture 70 million doses a month, but even with all of those doses directed toward its domestic needs, they’re not enough to meet the overwhelming demand. At present, India is administering some 3 million doses a day. To protect its population of 1.4 billion, Mukherjee said that rate would need to increase threefold.
Donating doses directly to countries that need them, including India, is a nonstarter for many countries. Most of those that have vaccines don’t have enough of them, and those with an immense surplus, such as the United States, aren’t yet confident enough in their supply to part with the excess.
But these countries can help in other ways. The first is by lifting export controls on the raw materials that are used to produce vaccines. This is what the CEO of the Serum Institute asked of the Biden administration weeks ago. On Sunday, the U.S. government heeded the request, announcing that it would look to immediately provide the raw materials necessary to help India produce the AstraZeneca vaccine, locally known as Covishield, as well as other medical supplies. The British and German governments also pledged their support.
Another option is for countries to support the appeal, put forward by India and South Africa, for the World Trade Organization to temporarily relax patent rights related to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments so that they can be manufactured, without fear of being sued, by countries that are still struggling to inoculate their populations. More than 70 former world leaders and 100 Nobel Prize laureates have appealed to the Biden administration to back the waiver, as have several U.S. lawmakers. “If we want to restore America’s global leadership in the post-Trump era, we should help other countries access the technical know-how they need to manufacture their own vaccines to fight COVID-19,” Senator Chris Murphy, one of the 10 Democratic senators who have called on the Biden administration to back the effort, told me in a statement. “It’s an easy, effective way for the United States to help.”
There is a host of other ways for countries to help, irrespective of their resources. Assisting India with its sequencing is one option. Donating the oxygen the country so desperately needs is another.
Though mass vaccination has provided an off-ramp from the pandemic for some countries, India is a stark reminder that, for many others, a long road lies ahead. The world is on track to record more COVID-19 deaths this year than it did in 2020. The risks of allowing current outbreaks to ravage places such as India aren’t limited to those countries alone. Emerging variants and further delays to more equitable vaccine distribution stand to affect everyone, including vaccinated populations. India’s problem is the world’s problem.
The danger is always there. Once an athletes have been tested as positive covid they must not be allowed to continue playing in tournaments. At the same time players from the same country and team in the tournament are all also very dangerous despite tested negative because this virus have an incubation period of 14 days. They may not be showing the symptoms now but in within 14 days they could be positive covid. By allowing players from the team with positive covid players is just like asking for more trouble because virus could spread on to other players from other countries. So it is very dangerous here. So if coaches or players from the team have been found to be positive covid, the rest of the other players from the same team must not be allowed to play on for the safety of the players from other countries. Yes of course during tournament time it is certainly not nice to see so many walkovers and players not playing.
Question:
1. Should players who have close contacts with positive covid team mates be allowed to play on in order to avoid walkover?
2. Should we allow players who are positive covid to play on and ignore the safely of the other players?
No one knows how safe it is to still have sports events on going during the time of pandemic. As we all know cases are rising on daily basis and yet tournamets are all still on going.
Referring to this news we have players who are positive covid yet still allowed to play on in tournaments.
Badminton World Federation (BWF) and Badminton Association of Thailand (BAT) can confirm three of the four players who tested positive for COVID-19 earlier today at the Asian Leg of the HSBC BWF World Tour have been cleared to take their place in the YONEX Thailand Open.
They are confirmed as Saina Nehwal (India), HS Prannoy (India), and Jones Ralfy Jansen (Germany).
The fourth player, Adham Hatem Elgamal from Egypt, has been withdrawn.
Only 1 player withdrawn from the tournament while the other 3 players allowed to play as usual.
Strange part here is all the other players within the same team are close contacts of those players during the tournament and all the players within the same team are allowed to play as normal which is definitely risking the life of other players from other countries.
The outcome of this is the opponent who had to play with Saina Nehwal in the first round of the tournament wear face mask all the time while playing. So horrible.
Within the same week this is what happened after that.
Badminton World Federation (BWF) can confirm that one German coach and a team entourage member from France who are participating in the YONEX Thailand Open as part of the Asian Leg of the HSBC BWF World Tour in Bangkok, Thailand are positive for COVID-19.
Both produced a positive result to a mandatory PCR test conducted on Tuesday.
Coaches from German and France found to be positive covid. Yet all the players from German and France allowed to play in the tournament just as usual. So horrible. They forgot that the coaches are always together with the players and all the players might have been infected from their coaches.
This resulted in the withdrawal of the Mixed Doubles player from Hong Kong in the second round. Tang Chun Man / Tze Ying Suet withdrawn staged a walkover and refused to play in the second round because they need to play versus the German XD player who is close contacts to their coach who is positive covid.
Badminton World Federation (BWF) can confirm India player Sai Praneeth B. has tested positive for COVID-19 and has been withdrawn from the TOYOTA Thailand Open.
The player produced a positive result to a mandatory PCR test conducted on Monday. It is confirmed positive.
The player has been taken to hospital for further observation and testing, and is required to stay in hospital for a minimum of 10 days.
BWF can also confirm Sai Praneeth B. had been rooming with teammate Kidambi Srikanth at the official hotel. In line with BWF protocols, Kidambi has been withdrawn from the TOYOTA Thailand Open and is in strict self-quarantine. However, Kidambi tested negative on Monday’s test and has returned negative results since arriving in Thailand.
As a result of this Sai Praneeth is no longer allowed to play but his room mate Srikanth has been told to go for self quarantine. Then this week Srikanth is allowed to play in BWF World Tour Finals. So here is the main issue now. Srikanth may have probably been infected with the virus without himself knowing it since he is staying in the same room with someone who is positive covid. Yet he is allowed to play on.
Conclusion:
To have tournaments during pandemic time is really like a joke as it is risking the life of all the athletes from various different countries. Players who are found to be positive covid or have close contacts to positive covid players and coaches are still allowed to play on. By right all the players from India, German, France and Egypt should be banned and not allowed to play but this is not happening. Looks like the tournament organizer is a failure here to allow the players from the country with positive covid cases in the tournament to continue playing. In the end it risks the life of so many players from other countries.
Question:
Is it safe to have tournaments during pandemic time?
Melania Trump’s ex-aide pens scathing op-ed in wake of Capitol siege
An ex-aide of Melania Trump — and once a good friend — has penned a scathing op-ed about the first lady, accusing her of just standing by while the president destroyed America.
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff wrote her piece for the Daily Beast, prompted by the rioting at the Capitol. Five people were killed, including a Trump supporter who was fatally shot and a Capitol Police officer who died of head injuries after he was bashed in the head with a fire extinguisher.
Wolkoff calls the violence “shocking, awful, disheartening and shameful.”
“It was an assault on human life and our great democracy. Unfortunately, our president and first lady have little, if any, regard for either.”
She labels herself as “Melania’s enabler,” just one in the first couple’s orbit who “stoked and massaged their egos and wittingly agreed to the falsehoods and poisonous lies, veiled as truths, that built this house of mirrors.”
Wolkoff speaks of how the president’s role in the Capitol attack doesn’t surprise her, but how the first lady’s silence does — even though she is at her best reading from a teleprompter.
The Trumps, writes Wolkoff, “lack character, and have no moral compass. Although my intentions to support the first lady in the rollout of her initiatives were always pure, I’m disheartened and ashamed to have worked with Melania.”
Wolkoff, who once pulled off Anna Wintour’s parties, and the first lady became friends almost 20 years ago. She was there when Melania married Donald and was at Barron’s baby shower, The New York Times reported.
She went to work for the first lady shortly after the president’s inauguration, which she helped plan, but resigned after only a year when the Times reported the inaugural committee paid millions of dollars to the company she started.
Then, Wolkoff laid out everything on paper, writing a tell-all titled “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady.” The book came out in September. Melania lashed out, calling her ex-friend a “dishonest opportunist.”
In her op-ed, Wolkoff talks about how the first lady will leave behind “no legacy or profile to be proud.”
“Melania is no better than Donald is in terms of needing attention. She wasted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a platform to make a difference in the lives of so many children and didn’t provide any of that. …. In her free time she took up ‘albuming’ and made scrapbooks filled with photographs of herself.
Melania is simply an extension of her husband, just as hypocritical, speaking out of both sides of her mouth, when it suits her best.”
She goes on: “What does a mother do when a father is an abuser? Many still believe that Melania is powerless, but don’t be fooled; she is an abuser too, of the worst kind. The kind that speaks kindly to children. The sickness is under the skin. Melania knows and supports Donald and his viewpoints. If you hit him, he’ll hit you back harder. He’s the brass knuckles, aggressive guy, and she elects to grin and bear it. She turns a blind eye. The truth is she’s actually encouraging him to go for it. Be aggressive. She’s his biggest cheerleader.”
Who is Jack Ma? Where the Alibaba co-founder came from and disappeared to
Jack Ma, a member of China's Communist Party who famously started out as an English teacher, hasn't been seen in two months.
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For years, nobody flew higher in China than Jack Ma, the pixie-faced founder of the $500 billion powerhouse e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba, the Amazon of Asia.
Now he’s vanished and no one knows where he is.
Ma, a member of the Communist Party who famously started out as an English teacher, symbolized the high-tech “China Dream” until he ran afoul of the political leaders who once lionized him. He hasn’t been seen in public for two months.
“China used Jack Ma and Alibaba as well as some of the other big fintech companies to show the world what great leaders they were,” Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told The Post.
“But these private sector companies were operating without government controls and Jack got a little too far out ahead of his skis. You only have to step out of line once and they’ll get you. He’s probably been smacked pretty hard.”
Insiders told The Post it’s highly unlikely that Ma, 56, has been permanently disappeared to one of China’s feared “black sites” reserved for the country’s dissidents. Nor is he in Singapore, per some rumors.
Instead he’s probably cooling his heels either at home or in a “very cushy location” where one expert said he may be reviewing “Marxist lessons” with party officials, a process called “embracing supervision.”
While building his company into a behemoth almost bigger than China itself, the free-spirited Ma, who’s married with three children, traveled the world. He hobnobbed with stars like Tom Cruise, Daniel Craig, Kevin Spacey and Nicole Kidman, lunched with President Obama and former UK Prime Minister David Cameron and swanned around Davos — all while speaking the fluent English he learned as a kid.
He even dressed up like Elton John or Michael Jackson and performed their songs onstage while cracking jokes before thousands of adoring Alibaba employees at company functions.
He acted more like an American billionaire than even the dour, low-key Jeff Bezos — and that was his mistake, say China analysts. In keeping with his outspoken ways, Ma mouthed off at a conference in Shanghai in October about how backward the country’s state-owned banks and regulators were — just days before Ma’s financial tech firm ANT Group was readying what would have been the world’s biggest IPO.
“Today’s financial system is the legacy of the Industrial Age,” Ma declared in the now infamous speech. “We must set up a new one for the next generation and young people. We must reform the current system.”
Among other things, Ma blasted the country’s bankers for having a “pawnshop mentality.”
Ma’s wings were abruptly clipped. He vanished from the public eye, ANT’s IPO was cancelled reportedly at the behest of Chinese president Xi Jinping — and China has launched an antitrust probe into Ma’s enormous company.
“This is Icarus, a classic case of hubris,” Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” told The Post. “In Jack Ma’s mind he was a rock star, maybe not more powerful than Xi Jinping but bigger than the Central Bank. So the Party decided to take him down.
They ran over Jack Ma and hope it sends a message.”
It’s a hard fall for the man born Ma Yun to parents who were traditional musicians in Hangzhou, in the southeastern part of China, about two hours from Shanghai. Ma was a scrappy boy in a poor family who taught himself English at a young age by befriending Western tourists, as described in “Alibaba: The House that Jack Built,” by former Morgan Stanley employee Duncan Clark, who met Ma in 1999 in the small apartment where he founded Alibaba.
Ma met Ken Morley, a tourist from Australia, and his family when he was 14 and it led to a lifelong friendship. The Morleys took Ma to Australia in 1985 for a visit and Ma said the trip “changed his life. I learned to think for myself.”
Ma’s new worldliness and ambition didn’t help him in school, however. He failed China’s notoriously difficult college entrance exams twice. He finally made it on his third try and went to Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute, from which he graduated in 1988 with a degree in English.
Ma met his future wife, Cathy, at college, and they married in 1988. They live with their three children in their hometown of Hangzhou.
He encountered more obstacles after college, reportedly being turned down for more than 12 job openings, even one at KFC.
He was eventually hired as an English teacher at $12 an hour. He also started up a translation company, but it was on a visit to the US in 1995 that he discovered the Internet and began trying online startup companies when he returned to China.
After several misfires, he formed Alibaba out of his small apartment in Hangzhou in 1999 with 17 friends. The initial concept — online shopping for small businesses — attracted $25 million from investors in its first year.
Alibaba today is by most estimates the world’s largest online commerce company. Besides shopping, it also includes banking, technology and cloud computing.
Ma’s played up how different he is than most egghead Internet billionaires who are math, science or coding geniuses. He prefers the kind of wild publicity stunts associated with Richard Branson, which is why, insiders say, he began to take to the Alibaba stage at corporate celebrations. He put on a blond wig and headdress to sing along to “The Lion King” in 2009. In 2017, he preened atop a motorcycle in a mask and a Michael Jackson outfit while dancing to “Billie Jean” and then joined a “formation-style” performance with backup dancers.
Today, Ma isn’t an executive or board member at either Alibaba or ANT but he’s the largest Alibaba shareholder with shares worth at least $25 billion.
Alibaba lost more than $110 billion in market value Dec. 24 when China officially launched the probe. China’s government also told state media to censor reporting on the investigation into Alibaba back in December, the Financial Times reported Thursday.
It’s not unusual for China to yank some of their most prized tycoons and celebrities from public view for some infraction, and to show them who’s boss. The country’s biggest movie star, Fan Bingbing, disappeared in 2018 for alleged tax evasion and was out of sight for months. She eventually wrote a fawning apology to the Communist Party on her social media pages and reportedly paid a tax bill of at least $70 million.
No one knows where Bingbing disappeared to but one source told Vulture that she had been kept under “residential surveillance at a designated location” described as a holiday resort in the coastal province of Jiangsu.
In Ma’s case, he was a no-show as a judge in the finale of a game show for entrepreneurs called “Africa’s Business Heroes” which is sponsored by his philanthropic organization in Africa.
Alibaba spokesmen said there was a “scheduling conflict” that kept Ma off his show. While some reports out of China say Ma’s just keeping a low profile while Chinese regulators parse Alibaba’s vast books and order a restructuring of ANT, the situation appears serious, if not sinister.
Some say the West opened young Ma’s eyes up too much and now he’s gotten what he deserved.
“Jack Ma is a gangster,” Peter Navarro, the White House director of trade and manufacturing policy and the author of the 2011 book “Death By China: Confronting the Dragon,” told The Post. “He runs a company called Alibaba. Finish the thought: Forty thieves. He set up an enterprise with stolen goods, using our eBay business model. He stole all the e-commerce technology from us.”
But for all his shrewdness, Ma failed to see what should have been obvious to him and everyone around him, Navarro said. “Xi’s been consolidating power for the last four to five years.”
“He’s doing the same thing to Chinese oligarchs as Putin did to Russian oligarchs. They get money and fall in love with the West and forget where they come from. Then they get slapped down. There’s a Chinese expression called ‘kill the chicken, scare the monkey’ which means to make an example of someone. That’s what they’re doing to him. They’ll probably let him come back but his marching orders will be to just shut up and make money.”
Singleton agreed.
“He will re-surface and will have to publicly repent but not on his terms,” Singleton said. “But I bet Jack Ma will comply because he doesn’t want to see this massive thing he built blew up. He’s a strategic thinker and he’s still someone to be reckoned with.”
Except Delhi no state has experienced a second peak. Colleges and schools are opening across the country. Its 1 week to go for my college. All students and teachers have to submit covid 19 negative report before attending.
Some colleges have gone with a successful biosecure bubble format where they are not allowed to leave the campus after test nor anyone can enter. Even teachers and non teaching staff are required to stay in campuses.
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