Germany is looking to ramp up the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine after authorities last week gave the green light for it to be administered to people 65 and over.
Hundreds of thousands of doses have been gathering dust in recent weeks due to the restrictions on who could get the vaccine and misgivings among some who were eligible.
According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Germany has received 2.1 million doses of the AstraZeneca shot so far but administered just 721,000.
Berlin is opening a sixth vaccine centre Monday at the former Tempelhof airport in the centre of the city that will administer only the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told public broadcaster ZDF that he expects Germany to be able to administer up to 10 million shots a week by the end of the month.
LISTEN | Are all COVID-19 vaccines created equal?
Front Burner21:55Are all COVID-19 vaccines created equal?
How solid is the science behind delaying second COVID-19 vaccine doses? Are the shots from AstraZeneca-Oxford and Johnson & Johnson effective enough? Infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch answers our most pressing questions about the latest vaccine news. 21:55
In Italy, the health ministry has now officially approved using the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for healthy people over age 65, citing limited vaccine supplies and the need to vaccinate people who might be vulnerable to complications.
The order was signed Monday. The European Medicines Agency had approved AstraZeneca for all age groups, but some nations like Italy and Germany initially limited it to under 65s due to what they called limited data.
Those limitations are one of the reasons why the 27-nation European Union has lagged so far behind Britain and the United States in vaccinating its people. Millions of doses of AstraZeneca have piled up across Europe, waiting to be given out.
Speeding up Italy’s vaccination campaign will enable the country to overcome the coronavirus crisis, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Monday, noting that his government would do whatever was necessary to protect lives.
“The pandemic is not yet over, but with the acceleration of the vaccine plan, a way out is not far off,” Draghi said in a speech to mark International Women’s Day, his first such public address since taking office last month.
Italy is approaching 100,000 COVID-19-related deaths and health officials have warned that the country faces a third wave of cases as a more contagious variant of the disease gains ground.
-From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 10:55 a.m. ET
What’s happening in Canada
WATCH | The community volunteers helping B.C. seniors get COVID-19 vaccines:
Several community and religious groups in British Columbia are armed with computers and phones, ready to help local seniors sign up for COVID-19 vaccinations. 2:03
As of 10:50 a.m. ET on Monday, Canada had reported 887,910 cases of COVID-19, with 30,594 cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 22,249.
Across the North, Nunavut reported no new cases on Monday but added two additional recoveries, bringing the number of active cases in the territory to 23. Health officials in Yukon and the Northwest Territories had not yet provided updated figures on Monday.
Ontario reported 1,631 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday and 10 additional deaths. Hospitalizations in the province stood at 626, with 282 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units.
A stay-at-home order in Toronto, Peel Region and North Bay is lifting Monday as the province loosens pandemic restrictions. The three regions were the last ones still under the order, and are transitioning back to the government’s colour-coded pandemic response framework.
Toronto and Peel will enter the “grey lockdown” category, something local public health officials asked for in both regions.
In an interview with CBC’s chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton, P.E.I. Premier Dennis King said the province has a “very robust” public health nursing system and is ready to go for the broader vaccine rollout. But the premier also noted that he is open to conversations about sharing some of the province’s allocated vaccine supply with provinces dealing with higher caseloads.
King also said Sunday that he believes the so-called Atlantic bubble will be back in action by early spring.
In Quebec, people in many parts of the province will be able to eat in restaurants and work out in gyms starting Monday as five regions are downgraded from red to orange on the province’s colour-coded pandemic alert level system.
The province on Sunday reported 707 new cases of COVID-19 and seven additional deaths. Hospitalizations stood at 592, with 107 COVID-19 patients in intensive care.
In the Prairie provinces, Manitoba reported 56 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday and two additional deaths. Saskatchewan health officials, meanwhile, reported 116 new cases of the illness caused by the novel coronavirus and two additional deaths. In Alberta, there wasn’t a formal update from health officials over the weekend because of a system upgrade.
In British Columbia, health officials will provide updated figures that cover the weekend later Monday.
WATCH | Vaccines won’t be the end of masks, physical distancing, Tam says:
Dr. Theresa Tam says that a year into the pandemic, with COVID-19 vaccines helping Canada gain an upper hand, masks, physical distancing and travel restrictions won’t disappear immediately because vigilance is needed to beat the evolving virus. 1:53
–From CBC News and The Canadian Press, last updated at 10:50 a.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
People in need wait to take a bag with free food at a non-profit association called ‘Pane Quotidiano’ in Milan, Italy, on Monday. The number of people in need has increased after the start of the pandemic. (Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images)
As of early Monday morning, more than 116.9 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 66.1 million listed on the Johns Hopkins University tracking database as recovered. The global death toll was approaching 2.6 million.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Vietnam administered its first COVID-19 doses Monday to the front-line workers who made the nation’s relative success in controlling the pandemic possible — health workers, contact tracers and security forces who handled quarantine duties.
The Southeast Asian nation of 96 million people has a goal to inoculate at least half of the population by the end of the year. Thousands of doctors, nurses and technicians working at hospitals designated to treat COVID-19 patients lined up in the morning and received the first jabs of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“I have been waiting for this day for a long time,” nurse Nguyen Thi Huyen said after she got her injection. Huyen has been caring for COVID-19 patients at a tropical disease hospital in Hanoi the past year. Health protocols have limited her time with family, among other challenges.
A health worker prepares a dose of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi on Monday. Vietnam has started the vaccination campaign with a hope to inoculate half of the population against COVID-19 by the end of the year. (Hau Dinh/The Associated Press)
The first batch of over 100,000 AstraZeneca doses in a 30 million order arrived two weeks ago. Separately, Vietnam expects to secure another 30 million doses of the same vaccine through the UN-backed COVAX program for vaccine equality.
The UN children’s agency said Afghanistan has received nearly half a million coronavirus vaccine doses via the global COVAX initiative. War-torn Afghanistan received 468,000 AstraZeneca vaccines on Monday, the first shipment through COVAX, UNICEF said in a statement.
The vaccines were made by the Serum Institute of India, and arrived in the capital of Kabul aboard an Emirates flight, UNICEF said. More vaccines will arrive in the coming weeks and months. India previously donated 500,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines to Afghanistan.
Thailand will reduce mandatory quarantine from 14 to seven days starting in April for foreigners arriving in the country who have been vaccinated.
In the Americas, Dr. Anthony Fauci is projecting that U.S. high school students will be able to get vaccinated early in the next school year and that elementary school students should be in line for vaccinations in early 2022.
Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical officer and director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CBS News’ Face the Nation that vaccines for teens will be available “maybe not the first day but certainly in the early part of the fall.”
Currently, three vaccines are approved for use in the United States. The single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the two-shot Moderna vaccine are approved for individuals 18 and older. Pfizer’s vaccine is approved for 16 and up.
Trials are underway to determine the safety of vaccines on younger people. Teenagers contract the coronavirus almost twice as often as younger children, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
Ecuador and Paraguay have both received some 20,000 doses of the Sinovac vaccine from Chile.
In the Middle East, Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife have tested positive for the coronavirus, the president’s office said Monday, with both having only mild symptoms of the illness.
In a statement, Assad’s office said the couple did PCR tests after they experienced minor symptoms consistent with the COVID-19 illness. It said that Assad, 55, and his wife Asma, who is 10 years younger, will continue to work from home, where they will isolate for between two and three weeks.
Both were in “good health and in stable condition,” the statement said.
Syria, which marks 10 years of war next week, has recorded nearly 16,000 virus cases in government-held parts of the country, including 1,063 deaths. But the numbers are believed to be much higher with limited amounts of PCR tests being done, particularly in areas of northern Syria outside government control.
The pandemic, which has severely tested even developed countries, has been a major challenge for Syria’s health-care sector, already depleted by years of conflict. A decade of fighting has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions.
Syria began a vaccination campaign last week, but no details have been given about the process, nor have local journalists been allowed to witness the rollout. The health minister said the government procured the vaccines from a friendly country, which he declined to name.
After delays, Israel started vaccinating Palestinians who work inside the country and its West Bank settlements on Monday, more than two months after launching an immunization blitz of its own population.
Palestinian labourers who crossed into Israel at several West Bank checkpoints received their first doses of the Moderna vaccine from Magen David Adom paramedics. The vaccination drive orchestrated by COGAT, Israel’s military agency co-ordinating government operations in the West Bank, had been beset by postponements.
Some 100,000 Palestinian labourers from the West Bank work in Israel and its settlements, which are widely seen internationally as illegal and an obstacle to peace.
Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rukun, the head of COGAT, said in a statement in Arabic that Israelis and Palestinians, “live in the same epidemiological space” and that it was a shared interest to vaccinate Palestinians.
Israel has administered over 8.7 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to its population of 9.3 million. Over 3.7 million Israelis — more than 40 per cent — have received two doses of the vaccine. But until Monday, Israel had provided few vaccines for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a move that has underscored global disparities and drawn international criticism.
Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005, but still maintains control over airspace, the seafront and a large amount of the movement in and out of the area.
Human rights groups and many Palestinians say that as an occupying power, Israel is responsible for providing vaccines to the Palestinians. Israel says that under interim peace accords reached in the 1990s, it does not have any such obligation.
Israeli officials have said the priority is vaccinating Israel’s own population first, while the Palestinian Authority has said it will obtain its own vaccines through a World Health Organization partnership with humanitarian organizations known as COVAX.
To date, the PA has acquired enough vaccine doses for only 6,000 people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which are home to nearly five million Palestinians. It received 2,000 doses from Israel and acquired another 10,000 doses of a Russian-made vaccine. Each is given in two doses.
Israel had also announced plans to share surplus vaccines with far-flung allies in Africa, Europe and Latin America, but the decision was frozen by legal questions. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with leaders of Denmark and Austria and said the three nations would join forces in the fight against COVID-19 with an investment in research and rollout of vaccines.
In Europe, British children returned to school on Monday after a two-month closure, part of what Prime Minister Boris Johnson said was a plan to get the country to “start moving closer to a sense of normality.”
As part of the plan, millions of high school and college students coming back to U.K. classrooms will be tested for the first few weeks. Authorities want to quickly detect and isolate asymptomatic cases in order to avoid sending entire schools home.
“We are being cautious in our approach so that we do not undo the progress we have made so far,” Johnson said as he urged people to get vaccinated. High schools and colleges can reopen in phases to allow for testing.
France could approve Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine by the end of this week, in line with the timetable for its broader European Union approval, the president of the country’s health regulator said.
Hungarians on Monday awoke to a new round of strict lockdown measures aimed at slowing a record-breaking wave of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths powered by virus variants.
In Africa, Ethiopian Airlines is set to take a lead role in ferrying COVID-19 vaccines around the world and expects demand for the service to last for up to three years.
The deputy chief executive of South African bank ABSA died on Sunday due to COVID-19 complications, his family said.
–From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 9:55 a.m. ET
Have questions about this story? We’re answering as many as we can in the comments.
TOKYO (AP) — Shohei Ohtani’s feat of becoming the first major leaguer with at least 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a season was met with extra editions of newspapers for fans to read on their way to work on Friday morning in Japan.
Ohtani raced past the 50-50 milestone as he hit three homes and stole two bases in a game during the 20-4 rout of the Miami Marlins on Thursday, securing a playoff berth for the Dodgers.
The news topped morning headlines, and “Ohtani-san” was the No. 1 trending topic of social media platform X.
There was also praise from the Japanese government.
“We would like to express our heartfelt congratulations on his achievement of this giant record,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said as he responded to the first question at his regular news conference Friday. “We look forward to seeing more successes from Ohtani, who has already achieve numerous feats and pioneered new grounds.”
Ohtani, who debuted in Major League Baseball in 2018 with the Los Angeles Angels, has become Japan’s national icon and pride.
Yu Tachibana, a 44-year-old office worker, was a lucky one to get a copy of the special newspaper edition for her 18-year-old son who plays baseball. She says nobody had thought a Japanese player would so well a decade ago. “It is very encouraging,” she said, as she noted a saying where there is a will, there is a way.
A wave of congratulatory messages were posted on social media.
“Japan’s record-making machine has done it again,” U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said in his message on X. “Congratulations to Shohei Ohtani on an incredible baseball achievement. A true global ambassador of the game.”
CALGARY – It will be the last show for longtime children’s TV star Ron (Buck Shot) Barge as a memorial is held Friday in Calgary.
For 30 years, Buck Shot and his sidekick Benny the Bear entertained Calgarians with songs, puppets, the birthday book and his nifty battered cowboy hat.
Barge died at home last month just 10 days short of his 88th birthday.
The memorial is set for noon at the Centre Street Church.
“It’s like the last show. That’s why we did it at noon,” said his son Ken.
“It’s at noon because that’s when ‘The Buck Shot Show’ would start … 12 o’clock every day,” added his daughter Brenda.
“We’re looking forward to it. It’s going to be nice to have the memorial because Dad would love it.”
“Buck Shot” was one of the longest-running children’s shows in Canada, surpassing “Mr. Dressup,” which ran for 29 years, and “The Friendly Giant,” which aired for 27.
Barge was asked to develop the show when he was a cameraman and floor director at CFCN in Calgary. He had a knack for interviewing kids in the audience and getting actual responses.
The show ran from 1967 to 1997, but Barge continued in his role making special appearances at events.
“It’s just for people who want to celebrate him. We’ve had so many beautiful things said online,” Brenda Barge said.
“It’s been such a reawakening of who my dad was because it’s been a lot of years since he was Buck Shot.”
A musician most of his life, Barge played in bands from the time he was 16. He played piano and sang with the Stardells for more than 20 years in Calgary.
His family said he loved the show and the character he created. Since the show was done live, it led to a number of pranks being played by people working on it.
“The birthday book was the primary target and the hired hands would put either a bad joke or a bad picture or something that was not appropriate for children’s television and my dad would have to keep a straight face while he was holding that stupid book,” said Ken.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 20, 2024.
TORONTO – In the middle of the small crowd — near the tents, the lineup of kids awaiting face painting, the snack table — stood a jubilant Chiara Padovani.
“When I say ‘tenant, you say ‘power,'” she commanded to several dozen tenants, who chanted back with gusto.
What looked like a summer block party in front of two north-end Toronto apartment buildings last month was a celebration of what renters who withheld payments for months called a “huge victory.”
The Landlord and Tenant Board had issued an interim order requiring Barney River Investments, which managed the properties at 1440 and 1442 Lawrence Ave. West, to do immediate maintenance work on long-needed repairs.
The decision, which the tenants’ lawyer said might be the first of its kind, came after a 10-month rent strike.
“When tenants just like you come together — organize together, celebrate together, eat together and work together — we win,” Padovani declared at the gathering.
Other tenants are taking the same gamble: since May 2023, Toronto has seen a wave of such strikes in which hundreds of renters have withheld rent across the city.
First, the residents of 71, 75 and 79 Thorncliffe Park Dr. in the city’s east end stopped paying their rent. Then, tenants at 33 King St. and 22 John St. on the west side of the city did the same.
Last October, more than 100 tenants of the Lawrence Avenue buildings followed suit, seeking urgent repairs in dozens of units and the withdrawal of applications the landlord filed with the board to increase rent above provincial guidelines.
The north-enders were the first to see results, as tenants in the other buildings still await hearings at the Landlord and Tenant Board.
The Lawrence Avenue tenants said they had done everything they could to resolve the issue before withholding rent, from sending petitions, trying to meet the landlord, speaking with local politicians and making calls to the city — all to no avail. The problems went unfixed, they said: broken tiles, mould on ceilings, holes in the walls that gave cockroaches and mice free rein.
“This rent strike started really as a last resort,” said Padovani, the founder of the York South-Weston Tenants Union that represents tenants on Lawrence Avenue and at two other buildings.
During an Aug. 1 hearing, Patrick Shea, an adjudicator at the Landlord and Tenant Board, handed down the temporary order for repairs to be made.
“I am satisfied that the tenants have made out a strong prima facie case that they will be entitled to an order to rectify those issues,” he said of the disrepair, according to a recording of the hearing obtained by The Canadian Press.
He also ordered tenants to resume paying their rent as of Aug. 1.
A final decision in the case – on proposed above-guideline rent increases and maintenance in common areas – has not yet been made, but “issues that can be addressed in the interim should be addressed in the interim,” said Shea.
The Canadian Press made several unsuccessful attempts to reach Barney River Investments for comment, including phone calls, emails and an in-person visit to the corporation’s office in downtown Toronto.
Tenant Yogesh Khatri said the landlord started inspecting units in need of repair less than a week after the board’s order came.
“They have to check all the units. They have to fix all the problems,” he said.
Rashid Limbada, who has lived in his building for more than three decades, welcomed the news: “Everybody is happy.”
But another dispute still persists, Limbada said, referring to the landlord’s attempt to have tenants pay above-guideline rent increases.
In Ontario, landlords are permitted to increase rent without approval of the Landlord and Tenant Board up to a threshold set by the province each year. The rent increase guideline for 2024 was set at 2.5 per cent, the same rate as the year before. The guidelines do not apply to new buildings occupied for the first time as residences after Nov. 15, 2018.
The board’s interim order could inspire more tenants to mobilize for their rights, argued Ricardo Tranjan, a political economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
“Every victory, every win of a tenant group is a win for the tenants’ class,” said Tranjan.
Now is an important moment, he said, when groups are clearly getting stronger — and bolder.
People are protesting outside of landlords’ offices, advocating with local politicians and submitting group petitions more than ever in cities such as Ottawa, Vancouver and Montreal, Tranjan said, though rent strikes have not been as common historically.
That could be on the verge of changing, he said.
Tenants currently withholding rent at 22 John St. are before the Landlord and Tenant Board this week. A hearing over 33 King St. is expected in October.
Those at the Thorncliffe Park Drive buildings are still waiting for a hearing date.
One tenant there, Sameer Beyan, explained that the central issue is over applications for above-guideline rent increases. Tenants tried to tell the landlord that many families are living on a fixed income and cannot afford the extra rent, but the effort failed, he said.
“They don’t want to talk to us. They do not want to respond to us. So we have escalated our actions to do rent striking,” Beyan said.
For those celebrating on the Lawrence Avenue lawn last month, the process isn’t over yet, but the board’s interim decision has given them a boost.
“If they don’t do these repairs, there will be consequences,” Aliah El-houni, a lawyer representing the tenants, told the gathering.
“We don’t know of any other interim orders like this ever having been granted by the board,” said El-houni, the co-director at the non-profit Community Justice Collective.
“And it is not because we killed it in court. It is because you killed it on the ground.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 20, 2024.
