A delivery of Covid vaccines has arrived in Antarctica to inoculate British researchers stationed in the polar wilderness, the UK foreign ministry said.
The shipment was delivered to the British Antarctic Survey's Rothera Research Station, making the outpost the furthest destination in the British Overseas Territories to be supplied with jabs.
The AstraZeneca shots were flown from a Royal Air Force base in Britain via Senegal and the Falklands Islands before reaching the 23-member staff at the facility in the British Antarctic Territory.
The 16,000km journey across four continents concluded the UK government's commitment to supply vaccines to all the inhabited UK Overseas Territories and was achieved in partnership with the international development organisation, Crown Agents.
Crown Agents' chief executive Fergus Drake said the organisation had supplied the vaccines to "literally the ends of the earth", including the Pitcairn Islands in the Pacific and Tristan da Cunha in the south Atlantic.
Throughout the journey to the planet's southernmost extremity, vaccines were transported at controlled temperatures to keep the doses at their required 2-8C.
The entire journey had to be carefully planned and executed to ensure the trip was completed in under 92 hours, to avoid spoilage of the vaccines.
Double doses of the vaccines will be available to the 23 members of the "overwintering" team at Rothera, which includes land and marine biologists, meteorologists, engineers, a dive officer, doctor, and chef.
Brazil probes use of unproven drugs on elderly patients
The Brazilian agency that regulates health insurance plans has opened an investigation into allegations that a hospital chain tested unproven drugs on elderly Covid-19 patients without their knowledge, the regulator's director told a Senate inquiry.
It was the first instance of a regulatory agency pledging to look into claims of wrongdoing at Prevent Senior, a major healthcare chain serving tens of thousands of patients in the Sao Paulo area.
Paulo Rebello Filho, head of the National Regulatory Agency for Private Health Insurance Plans (ANS), said his staff had detected "assistance abnormalities" at Prevent Senior and the health chain will be put under special technical supervision.
At least nine people died of Covid-19 during the trials at Prevent Senior from March to April 2020, but their charts were altered to hide the cause of death, the inquiry was told last week by a lawyer for ten whistleblowing doctors.
The senators were told the hospital chain sought to validate far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's policy of advocating the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients.
Prevent Senior has said the accusations, including the altering of patient charts and the firing of doctors who opposed the practice, are unfounded.
Mr Rebello said the ANS opened an administrative process to investigate irregularities at Prevent Senior and has sent officials to verify "indications of operational failures".
Closer monitoring is not aimed at removing the hospital chain from the market but seeks to guarantee maintenance of quality care, he said.
The regulator said he had no knowledge of the allegations made by the doctors until they presented to the Senate inquiry.
In a statement, Prevent Senior said it had not been officially notified of the ANS decision.
It said it had provided the regulator with documents that show it acted within ethical and regulatory norms.
Germany recommends booster shots for J&J vaccine recipients
Germany's vaccine advisory committee has recommended a booster mRNA Covid-19 vaccination shot for people who were inoculated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The committee, known as STIKO, said it had seen higher Covid-19 breakthrough infections and a comparatively low vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant among people who had had a single shot of the J&J vaccine.
The committee also recommended booster shots for people over 70, regardless of which vaccine they had received.
Sydney to exit Covid-19 lockdown next week after vaccination rate hits 70%
Covid-19 restrictions will be eased further in Sydney from Monday, authorities said, as Australia's largest city looks set to exit a nearly four-month lockdown after hitting its 70% full vaccination target.
Fully vaccinated people in New South Wales (NSW) state will be able to leave their homes for any reason including visiting pubs, retail stores, cinemas and gyms, which will reopen under strict social distancing rules.
The number of vaccinated visitors allowed to gather in a home will double to ten, while the limit on vaccinated people at weddings and funerals will be raised to 100.
Nightclubs can partially reopen to vaccinated people once inoculations reach 80%, earlier than previously planned, and masks will not be mandatory in offices.
The state will use a vaccination-passport system to ensure those who have not been fully inoculated remain under strict stay-home orders until 1 December.
"Vaccination is the key to our freedom and the sacrifices and the effort of people right across NSW have ensured that we can open up as quickly and safely as possible," state Premier Dominic Perrottet told reporters.
Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's largest cities, and the capital Canberra have been in lockdown for several weeks to suppress a Delta outbreak that has pushed Australia's economy to the brink of a second recession in as many years.
Authorities in those cities have ditched attempts to eliminate the virus and are now aiming to gradually lift restrictions as vaccination rates in the adult population push through 70%, 80% and 90%.
Australia had stayed largely virus-free for most of this year until a third wave of infections fuelled by the fast-moving Delta spread across its southeast.
Still, its coronavirus numbers are relatively low, with some 120,000 cases and 1,381 deaths.
Daily infections in New South Wales fell to the lowest in more than seven weeks at 587 today, while cases in Victoria rose to 1,638, its second-highest daily rise in infections.
States with very few cases say they will keep their borders closed to NSW and Victoria even after full vaccination levels reach 80%, amid concerns that a precipitous reopening will overwhelm their health systems.
Finland pauses use of Moderna vaccine in young males
Finland has paused the use of Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine for younger males due to reports of a rare cardiovascular side effect, joining Sweden and Denmark in limiting its use.
Mika Salminen, director of the Finnish health institute, said the country would instead give Pfizer's vaccine to men born in 1991 and later.
Finland offers jabs to people aged 12 and over.
"A Nordic study involving Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark found that men under the age of 30 who received Moderna Spikevax had a slightly higher risk than others of developing myocarditis," he said.
The Finnish institute said the Nordic study would be published within a couple of weeks and preliminary data had been sent to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for further assessment.
The EMA's safety committee concluded in July that such inflammatory heart conditions could occur in very rare cases following vaccination with Spikevax or the Pfizer/BioNTech Comirnaty jab, more often in younger men after the second dose.
The EMA, regulators in the United States and the World Health Organization stressed though that the benefits of jabs based on the mRNA technology used by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech in preventing Covid-19 continue to outweigh the risks.
Malaysia buys 150,000 courses of Merck's Covid-19 pill
Malaysia has struck a deal with US drugmaker Merck to buy 150,000 courses of its experimental antiviral pill, the health ministry said, joining other Asian countries in a rush to secure supplies.
Molnupiravir, which would be the first oral antiviral medication for Covid-19 if it gets regulatory approval, could halve the chances of dying or being hospitalised for those most at risk of contracting severe disease, clinical data has shown.
The data sparked large demand for the drug in Asia, with South Korea and Australia announcing similar deals to purchase the Merck pill this week.
Taiwan and Thailand are also in talks to buy it.
Malaysia has recorded nearly 2.3 million coronavirus infections, the third-highest in southeast Asia, but has gradually lifted movement restrictions in recent weeks as the number of new cases declined amid a ramped-up vaccination programme.
About 64% of Malaysia's 32 million population is now fully vaccinated, including 88% of adults.
India to re-open for tourists from 15 October
India will reopen for tourists from 15 October after being closed for more than a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the government has said.
"After considering various inputs, the MHA (home ministry) has decided to begin granting fresh Tourist Visas for foreigners coming to India through chartered flights with effect from October 15, 2021," the home ministry said in a statement.
"Foreign tourists entering into India by flights other than chartered aircraft would be able to do so only with effect from November 15, 2021 on fresh Tourist Visas," it added.
India suspended all visas for foreigners in March 2020 when the pandemic took off as the government imposed a strict lockdown.
Restrictions on some categories of foreigners such as diplomats and businesspeople were later lifted but tourists remained barred.
Earlier this year India was hit by a severe wave of coronavirus infections with about 400,000 cases and 4,000 deaths every day.
But cases in the country of 1.3 billion people have since slowed sharply to around 20,000 new daily infections and 200 to 300 deaths.
At the same time restrictions on most activities have been lifted.
