Angola News Wire

Luanda – Angola and the Seychelles Tuesday signed a General Cooperation Agreement, after the accreditation of Ambassador Sandro de Oliveira by the Indian Ocean island nation’s President Wavel Ramkalawan.

Ambassador Sandro de Oliveira and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Tourism, Sylvestre Radegonde, also signed the Agreement on the Creation of a Bilateral Commission, reads a press release from the Angolan Embassy in the United Republic of Tanzania, where the Angolan diplomat has his permanent residence.

During the ceremony, that served to present his credentials, Sandro de Oliveira discussed with the Head of State of the Seychelles the state of the existing relations between the two countries, characterized as “good”.

The communiqué, to which ANGOP had access, said there was agreement on the need to extend cooperation, aiming at obtaining reciprocal advantages, with the private sector playing an important role.

The Angolan diplomat’s agenda also included working meetings with the ministers of Transport, Antony Derjacques, and of Investment, Entrepreneurship and Industry, Devika Vidot.

During his week-long visit to the Indian Ocean island nation, Sandro de Oliveira is also scheduled to meet with the ministers of Fisheries and Blue Economy and Finance, Economic Planning and Trade.

Seychelles is an island nation, located northwest of Madagascar and 1,593 kilometres south of Kenya, with a population of about 99,500, 2019 estimates.

It is one of the 16 member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – The President of the Republic, João Lourenço, Tuesday said that Angola has made great advances in the strategy for child protection, but much remains to be done, mainly in terms of empowering families.

In a message on the International Children’s Day (1 June), the Angolan Head of State encouraged the official bodies responsible for this purpose to continue their efforts to strengthen the fight against paternity denial and early pregnancy.

He also called for more action to combat domestic violence, sexual aggression, obscurantist practices such as accusing children of witchcraft, exploitation of child labour and other negative situations that are at the root of many of the problems of children in Angola.

He highlighted the issue of empowering families, as it is the nucleus where the first attention should be paid to children and where the first values are transmitted to ensure their full development, besides preventing possible deviations of conduct.

The Angolan President also recalled that since the first years of National Independence, the rights of children “began to be enshrined in the famous slogan Give the child everything he or she deserves and were formalised in the 11 Commitments for Children, adopted by the Government in 2007, and in other documents of equal importance”.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

American corporations are offering a growing cornucopia of special?deals?and promotions to encourage?people?in the U.S. to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Vaccine activism among some of the nation’s best-known brands comes as daily totals for jabs in the arm have declined by roughly 50% since mid-April. U.S. health officials say convincing the hesitant to roll up their sleeves is critical for defeating the coronavirus, a message that appears to have been heard loud and clear in corporate boardrooms.

Ride-booking services, food retailers and even dating sites?have?teamed up with the White House to help push forward President Joe Biden’s goal of getting?at least one shot?into?70%?of adults by July.?

To encourage more people to get the shot,?America’s largest pharmacy chain, CVS, has started a sweepstakes?campaign for those who sign up.?More than?1,000 prizes?will be handed out?to?people who get,?or plan to?get,?vaccinated?through CVS?by July 10.?The winnings include?cash, cruises and?other?vacations.?

Dr.?Kyu Rhee,?senior vice president of CVS Health,?said the company has already dispensed?more than 17 million COVID?vaccinations.?

“Getting as much of the population fully vaccinated will bring us one step closer to all the things we’ve missed during the past 14 months and keep our country moving in the right direction,” he said in a statement.

As the pandemic appears to be winding down in the U.S., many people are eager to travel. United Airlines is helping some of them through its?”Your Shot to Fly”?sweepstakes that will give away free flights. Until June 22, immunized?frequent flyer passengers?can?upload their vaccination record to the airline’s mobile app?or?website?for a chance to win round-trip tickets or?free flights for a year to United’s destinations worldwide.?

In a statement, United CEO Scott Kirby said: “We’re excited to give people one more reason to get vaccinated so they can reunite with friends and family or take that long-awaited vacation which all could be just one shot away.”

From travel to food, customers are getting rewards for being vaccinated, including sweet treats.

Krispy Kreme shops are giving away one free doughnut each day?until the end of the year?to?people who?show they?are?immunized.

At many Shake Shack fast food locations, customers with a vaccination card can get a free side of fries through June 12 with the purchase of a hamburger or chicken sandwich.

While not giving away food freebies,?McDonalds?has partnered with the Biden?administration to?promote vaccinations by printing information on some 50 million coffee cups?beginning in?July.?Featuring the slogan?”We Can Do This,”?the aim of the?campaign is to?encourage Americans who are hesitant to get vaccinated.?

In a statement, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra noted that customers will be able to get “trusted information about vaccines when they grab a cup of coffee or order a meal.”

Some people don’t have transportation to get to vaccination sites, so ride-sharing?firms Lyft and Uber are helping them by giving free rides for inoculations until July 4. Lyft is funding up to $15 each way, while Uber is covering up to $25 back and forth.

Both companies use their own apps to pick up customers.

“We’ve built a new easy-to-use in-app experience,”?Uber’s website says,?”where users will be able to find nearby available vaccines from tens of thousands of local providers.”?

Some stores are offering discounts for getting immunized on-site. At Target, a?merchandise retailer,?customers receive?$5 off any?in-store?purchase, while Albertsons?is?offering a 10% food discount for people who get vaccinated at its grocery stores.

For those seeking romance among the inoculated, online dating site OKCupid recently launched a profile badge that lets users sort other users by vaccination status.

“The (I’m Vaccinated) badge allows daters to signal to others that they’ve been vaccinated,” Ariel Charytan, the company’s CEO, said in a press release, “and will direct users who aren’t to a government-approved resource where they can find a vaccination site near them.”

Profiles of the daters who are immunized are given a “boost,” meaning they can be seen by more users.

There are also freebies for the practical-minded. For the tens of millions of people who got the jab and want to protect their vaccinated cards, office supply chains Office Depot and Office Max are running a promotion through July 25 where they will laminate them free of charge.

Source: Voice of America

Member nations of the World Health Organization have approved a plan to negotiate the terms of an international pandemic response treaty.

Attendees at the closing session of the World Health Assembly in Geneva voted Monday on resolution to create a special WHO assembly session in November aimed at reaching a treaty or convention that would help nations better prepare and respond to a potential pandemic similar to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The ongoing outbreak has sickened over 170 million people around the world and led to more than 3.5 million deaths since it was first detected in central China in late 2019.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told attendees “the time has come” for such a treaty, saying it would strengthen both the U.N. health agency and global health security as a whole. He said it will address “the lack of sharing of data, information, technologies and resources” that marked the sluggish response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The issue of a global pandemic response treaty was one of several reforms taken up during the weeklong event, although they will not be voted on until the World Health Assembly meets again next year.

Organizers of the Copa America soccer tournament announced Monday it was moving the upcoming event to Brazil due to a surge of new COVID-19 infections in Argentina, which was co-hosting with Colombia. The news was greeted with skepticism by some in Brazil, which trails only the United States and India in the total number of coronavirus cases more than 13.5 million, and is second only to the U.S. in deaths at over 462,000.

Scientists are concerned about hosting a tournament in a nation with a more transmissible COVID-19 variant, with many predicting another wave of the disease to hit the country in a matter of weeks. Some opposition politicians are threatening to file an injunction with the Brazilian Supreme Court to block the tournament.

President Jair Bolsonaro has come under heavy criticism for his apparently dismissive attitude toward the pandemic, and is the subject of a congressional investigation over his government’s management of the crisis.

Meanwhile, Australia’s women’s Olympic softball team on Monday became the first to arrive in Japan to begin preparations for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, which is also under a cloud due to a new wave of COVID-19 infections across the country and a slow rate of vaccinations, generating strong public opposition against going through with the Games.

Foreign spectators are barred from attending the Olympics, which begin July 23, and a Japanese newspaper reported Monday the government may require potential spectators to either have to show proof they received a COVID-19 vaccine or tested negative for the virus.

Source: Voice of America

To fight a rise in cases caused by the coronavirus variants, France and England moved Monday to increase vaccinations.

France is now allowing all adults to receive COVID-19 vaccinations. President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, were vaccinated Monday.

“Like Brigitte and I, like 25 million French people have already done, let’s get vaccinated! To protect ourselves, to protect our loved ones,” Macron, who contracted the disease caused by the coronavirus in December, tweeted.

As of Monday, France had confirmed more than 5.7 million cases of COVID-19 and 109,690 deaths caused by the disease, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

In Britain, health officials opened London’s Twickenham rugby station as a mass vaccination site. No appointments were required. The country, which is experiencing a rise in coronavirus cases, is trying to contain a fast-spreading virus variant that was first identified in India and accounts for most of its new cases.

The United Kingdom had confirmed 4.5 million COVID-19 cases on Monday, and 128,044 deaths.

Beginning June 7, Germany plans to make the coronavirus vaccine available to all people older than 16.

As of Monday, Germany had nearly 3.7 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 88,469 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

Variants renamed

The World Health Organization, responding to criticisms that the scientific names of the various coronavirus variants were too complicated or stigmatized certain countries, on Monday assigned the variants letters of the Greek alphabet.

The four main variants are generally referred to as the Brazil, India, South Africa and U.K. variants. Critics have told the WHO the scientific names were too complicated. For example, the so-called South African coronavirus variant goes by several names, such as B.1.351, 501Y.V2 and 20H/501Y.V2.

The variants’ scientific names will remain the same, the WHO said. The change affects the names given the variants when being discussed with the public. The U.K., South Africa, Brazil and India variants have now been given the letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, respectively, according to the order in which they were detected, the WHO said.

“No country should be stigmatized for detecting and reporting variants,” WHO COVID-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove tweeted.

The WHO has listed all the variants and their corresponding Greek alphabet designation on its website.

Historically, viruses have often been associated with the locations from which they are thought to have emerged, such as Ebola named after the eponymous Congolese river, according to Reuters. However, the naming can be inaccurate or damaging, as with the so-called Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the origins of which are unknown.

Peru toll revised

Also Monday, Peru Health Minister Oscar Ugarte revised the coronavirus death toll for the country, from 69,342 to 180,764.

“What is being said is that a significant number of deaths were not classified as caused by COVID-19,” Ugarte said, adding that the criteria for assigning COVID-19 as the cause of death was changed. Previously, only patients who “had a positive diagnostic test” were considered to have died from the coronavirus, he said.

The criteria were broadened beyond people who tested positive for the virus to include probable cases with “an epidemiological link to a confirmed case,” according to a panel composed of experts from public and private health entities in Peru and from the World Health Organization, the Agence France-Presse reported.

The country’s death toll had been questioned since early last year, and experts warned the death toll was being undercounted.

Vietnam ramps up testing

Because of a recent surge in coronavirus cases, all 9 million residents in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s largest city, will be tested for the coronavirus, city officials said.

The state newspaper, Vietnam News, said the city has a testing capacity of 100,000 samples a day, according to The Associated Press.

The country has been battling a surge in the coronavirus since the end of April, tallying more than 4,000 cases. Since early last year, Vietnam has had only 7,321 confirmed cases of the virus and 47 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.

China restricts travel

Meanwhile, China reimposed on Monday travel controls on Guangdong province after the region recorded 20 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the 24-hour period ending at midnight Sunday.

Provincial officials said that anyone leaving the province, which has a population of 113.4 million people, must provide the results of a nucleic acid test within the previous 72 hours.

As of Monday, China had recorded 102,991 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 4,846 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.

Source: Voice of America

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan reported Monday that the national coronavirus positivity rate had remained well below 5% over the past week, with the country’s top health official attributing the declining trend to “effective” government policies, including restrictions on public movement and effective screening of international travelers.

Officials recorded 43 deaths and detected more than 2,100 new cases in the last 24 hours, raising the national tally of deaths to nearly 21,000 and infections to more than 921,000 since the pandemic hit the South Asian nation early last year.

The national positivity ratio decreased to just over 4% from more than 11% a couple of weeks ago.

Last week, health authorities reported the detection of the first case of a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus which has caused record infections and deaths in neighboring India, threatening Pakistan’s gains against the disease.

But Faisal Sultan, an infectious disease physician who is also special assistant to the prime minister on national health services, told VOA that an “effective” screening system for international travelers and other measures to deal with the health crisis have so far enabled the country to keep the situation under control in a country of about 220 million.

“I would say we are not out of the woods yet, but it seems at this point that I don’t foresee an India-like situation,” Sultan, who is directing all health-related interventions and measures against the pandemic, told VOA in a detailed interview at his office in Islamabad.

He noted that while his team has also detected a few cases of the variants prevalent in South African and Brazil, Pakistan is one of nearly 100 countries where a variant first detected in Britain, known as B117, is currently predominant.

“A large part of this wave that they [India] are going through, at least as best as I am aware, it was B117, and it was not necessarily the Indian variant that was doing it,” he said.

Vaccination drive

The Pakistani government announced Monday that later this week it would begin scheduling vaccinations for citizens 18 years old and above. The free national drive has so far inoculated more than seven million people, with officials reporting the number of daily vaccinations growing to fewer than 400,000.

Sultan said more than 70% of about 900,000 health care workers across Pakistan have been vaccinated so far. He added that the government intends to vaccinate 70% of the 100 million eligible population by the end of this year.

“We really do think that to reach our targets, we need to go over the 500,000 a day mark, perhaps the 600,000 a day mark. So, I think that we really need to ramp up our vaccinations.”

Sultan said government surveys have found that “at least two-thirds” of the Pakistani population is willing to get vaccinated.

“So, the vaccine centers will have to go close to their homes. It will have to be easy and accessible. It will have to be so easy that in the United States, even normal retail pharmacies were allowed to do the vaccination,” he said.

Sultan said the government really needed “to get at least a quarter of its population” in dense urban areas vaccinated before Pakistan “can even talk about any relaxation” in coronavirus-related restrictions, including asking those inoculated against the disease to remove their masks.

Health care system

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government, which took office in August 2018, has from the outset focused on the country’s underfunded and largely neglected national health care system.

The focus, Sultan noted, enabled the government to timely position itself to combat the pandemic, despite critical economic challenges facing Pakistan.

“We added over 7,000 oxygenated beds into the health care system across Pakistan. The second expansion that was done is even more important — a 66% increase in the medical oxygen capacity was done. Had we not done that, we would have faced a crisis. We came to about 90% capacity in the ongoing third wave,” Sultan explained.

Pakistan initially received vaccine donations from close ally China to launch the national vaccination drive in early March before purchasing large quantities of vaccine doses to ensure supplies for the national campaign.

“They came out, gifted us the first lot, although we had told them we can pay for it. But they insisted. I think it speaks volumes about the level of trust and cooperation between China and Pakistan,” Sultan said.

The Pakistani government is using the Chinese-made Sinovac, Sinopharm and CanSino vaccines. It has also received just over a million doses of AstraZeneca under a United Nations-backed program for poor nations, known as COVAX.

Pakistani officials say they are in conversations with several suppliers, and the government will have procured about 20 million additional vaccine doses by end of July.

“The only challenge is, in an environment where everybody wants the vaccine, to have a steady supply so that you don’t run out of it. This is a challenge that will stay for the rest of the world,” Sultan said, noting that Pakistan was in talks with several suppliers to secure enough doses to sustain domestic supplies.

Beijing has also trained Pakistani staff and established a facility at Islamabad’s National Health Institute, where the one-dose CanSino vaccine is being filled from the concentrate provided by China. Sultan noted that the rare facility has the capacity to roll out about 3 million doses of CanSino a month to help boost the vaccination drive.

“It may be a small step for us that we have started filling the vaccine from concentrate. But it is a vital step toward actually manufacturing the vaccine in Pakistan, and I think it may take a few months,” he said.

Source: Voice of America

South Korean officials announced Sunday that a million doses of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines would arrive in the country this week from the United States, doubling its earlier pledge.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said the shipment includes vaccines for 550,000 South Korean soldiers, as promised by U.S. President Joe Biden at his summit with President Moon Jae-in.

Authorities in India also said Sunday the country will have almost 120 million COVID-19 vaccine doses for domestic use next month, a significant increase from the 79.4 million available for the month of May.

India has inoculated with two shots only about 3% of its 1.35 billion people.

Meanwhile, Indian health officials reported Sunday the lowest daily rise of infections in 46 days.

In Malaysia, government announced it is planning to open more so-called mega vaccination centers, as the country marked a new daily record of COVID-19 infections.

Science Minister Khairy Jamaluddin told reporters in a virtual press conference Sunday that the government will set up five other centers around the capital, Kuala Lumpur, and possibly two in the northern state of Penang and in the southern state of Johor.

In Malaysia, a country of 32 million people, almost 6% of the population have been vaccinated, according to the data published by the governmental Special Committee for Ensuring Access to COVID-19 Vaccine Supply on its website.

In Brazil, tens of thousands of people took again to the streets in the capital, Brasilia, and other major cities to protest President Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Some protesters in Rio de Janeiro marched through the streets, chanting “Bolsonaro genocide” or “Go away Bolsovirus.”

According to the Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center, Brazil has the world’s second-highest death toll after the U.S., with over 461,000 and 594,300 respectively.

In Europe, France reported that Saturday the number of people in intensive care suffering from COVID-19 fell by 76 to 3,028 and the overall number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 decreased by 425 to 16,847.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use in children as young as 12, widening the pool of those eligible to be inoculated, following similar approvals in the United States and Canada.

Germany and Italy have already said they are preparing to extend their vaccination campaign to youths ages 12 to 15.

Britain has approved a single-shot COVID-19 vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson. It is the fourth COVID-19 vaccine approved in the country, after inoculations made by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna.?

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA – The World Health Organization is asking for 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine for African countries to administer second doses to those who have received their first shot.

After three weeks of declining rates of COVID-19 infections in Africa, the World Health Organization is reporting an increase in cases. It says its latest figures of more than 4.7 million cases, including 128,000 deaths indicate a 17% rise over the previous week.

WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti says she is concerned, but that it is too soon to tell whether Africa is on the cusp of a third wave.

“While it is too soon to say if Africa is seeing a resurgence, however, we are seeing increases in a number of countries, we are monitoring the situation very closely. And we see that we are balancing on a knife’s edge,” she said. “So this makes the rapid rollout of COVID-19 vaccines all the more important.”

Moeti says South Africa accounts for nearly one-third of the 65,000 new cases reported by WHO. She says she fears new variants of the virus circulating in South Africa may be spreading into neighboring countries. She notes Namibia and Zambia are among 11 African countries experiencing more cases.

So far, 28 million COVID-19 doses of different vaccines have been administered in Africa, a continent of 1.4 billion people. Moeti says Africa needs at least 20 million second doses of the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine by mid-July to give everyone who has received the first dose full immunity.

“Africa needs vaccines now. Any pause in our vaccination campaigns will lead to lost lives and lost hope,” she said. “Another 200 million doses are needed so that the continent can vaccinate 10% of its population by September this year.”

Moeti appeals to countries that have vaccinated their high-risk groups to share their excess doses with Africa. She notes France is the first country to donate tens of thousands of doses to Africa from its domestic supply.

WHO says the European Union has pledged more than 100 million doses for low-income countries and the United States has promised to share 80 million doses with lower-income countries. Other wealthy countries have said they will follow suit.

Source: Voice of America