- UK figures come after bank holiday weekend where there is usually a lag in case reporting; nationwide booster campaign to begin in French care homes on 12 Sep.
- Native American tribes enforce mask mandates regardless of state bans
- Vaccine passports will make hesitant people ‘even more reluctant to get jabbed’
- Covid’s toxic divides could shape Europe for years, study says
Egypt to manufacture 1bn doses of Sinovac vaccine
Egypt has set out its ambitions to manufacture 1bn doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine annually, claiming it will become the Middle East and Africa’s “biggest vaccine producer”.
AFP reports that a factory in Cairo will produce more than 200m doses per year to cover “national needs” after reaching a deal with the Chinese pharma giant, health minister Hala Zayed told a press conference. Another plant will produce 3m doses daily, “or around 1bn a year”, to be exported around Africa, Zayed added.
The Egyptian drug authority has given the project the green light, and 1m doses have already been distributed in Egypt, Heba Wali, the doctor in charge of the project, said,
Some 7.5 million of Egypt’s more than 100 million people have had at least one vaccine dose so far.
UK offers third doses
More details on the UK offering third doses to immunosuppressed people here, by the Guardian’s science editor Ian Sample and political correspondent Peter Walker.
Read More: Britons with severely weakened immune system to receive third Covid jab
About half a million severely immunosuppressed people in the UK will be offered a third vaccine dose.
People with conditions such as leukaemia, advanced HIV and recent organ transplants who are over the age of 12 will be given a third jab following a recommendation from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), according to PA Media. The offer is separate from any broader booster vaccine programme.
The JCVI said on Wednesday that severely immunosuppressed people may not have been able to mount a full response to vaccination, meaning they could be less protected than the wider population.
Surging COVID-19 rates among children
Just as young Americans are starting a new school year, Covid-19 rates among children and teens are rising to rates that have not been seen since the pandemic’s winter surge, before vaccines were made widely available.
On a state level, local leaders have noticed a sharp uptick in cases among children. In Maricopa county, Arizona, home to Phoenix, children under 12 make up one-sixth of the county’s Covid cases, and 6% of hospitalizations are children.
In Tennessee, children under 18 are making up nearly 40% of cases in the state, with over 14,000 cases among children. Texas has reported 20,256 positive cases in the new school year, along with 7,488 cases among staff.
Read More: Covid rates among US children and teens rise as new school year begins
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Source: The Guardian
