Coronavirus live news: US death toll nears 500,000; England roadmap out of
Japan will only receive limited doses of Covid vaccines for the first months of the inoculation rollout and shots for the elderly will be distributed gradually, the country’s inoculation chief said.
Reuters: Pfizer Inc, the maker of Japan’s only approved vaccine, is ramping up production in Europe, but those increased supplies are not likely to reach Japan until May, Administrative Reform Minister Taro Kono cautioned on Sunday in an interview with national broadcaster NHK.
“We would like to start vaccinations for the elderly in April, but unfortunately the number of doses allocated to them will be very limited at first, so we want to start slowly,” Kono said.
Japan has negotiated to receive more than 500 million doses of vaccines developed by Western drugmakers. But domestic regulators have only approved one vaccine so far, and the nation remains dependent on imported supplies that have been held up by production snags and export controls.
Since Kono, the minister for administrative reform, was tapped last month to lead Japan’s vaccination push, he has resisted giving firm timelines for when doses will arrive and be distributed. Even so, the government has stuck to a pledge to secure enough shots for the whole population of 126 million by June.
Japan has negotiated to receive 144 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine this year, and its second shipment of about 450,000 shots arrived on Sunday.
The inoculation campaign kicked off last week with doctors and nurses getting the first shots. The government is prioritising vaccinations for around 4.7 million medical workers, about 1 million more than initially estimated.
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UK homeless deaths rise by more than a third in a year, study finds
Deaths among homeless people have risen by more than a third in a year, according to an analysis by a social justice group that found that almost 1,000 unhoused people had died across the UK in 2020.
The Museum of Homelessness (MoH), a community-driven organisation which runs the Dying Homeless Project, called for action to prevent a repeat of such “terrible loss of life”. Among cases where a cause of death was confirmed, 36% were related to drug and alcohol use and 15% were suicide.
Jess Tuttle, the organisation’s co-founder, said the findings demonstrated how the pandemic had hit a system “already cut to the bone from 10 years of austerity”. The MoH is now calling for a national confidential inquiry into homeless deaths.
A total of 976 deaths were recorded across the four nations in 2020: 693 in England and Wales, 176 in Scotland, and 107 in Northern Ireland. There were 710 deaths registered in the 2019 study, the group said:
Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines and Emirates are among the airlines to trial a “digital travel pass” intended to ease international travel during the pandemic.
The Travel Pass app was developed by the International Air Transport Association and launched last year, allowing travellers to store and present Covid-19 test results and their vaccination status for verification on check-in.
Air NZ’s chief digital officer Jennifer Sepull described it as “a digital health certificate that can be easily and securely shared with airlines”, Stuff.NZ reports.
Air NZ’s three-week trial will start in April, with both aircrew and customers.Vaccinations began in New Zealand on Friday, with high-risk managed isolation, quarantine and border workers the first on the list.
The programme to vaccinate 12,000 workers gets under way in Wellington today and in Christchurch on Wednesday, and is expected to take a year to complete.
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