Coronavirus live news: fewer than 4% of Africans vaccinated; WHO backs Regeneron for high-risk patients

Tanzanian president Samia Suluhu Hassan has told the UN General Assembly: “No one is safe unless we are all safe.”

As of mid-September, fewer than 4% of people in Africa have been fully immunised and most of the 5.7bn vaccine doses administered around the world have been given in just 10 rich countries, AP reports.

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The struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic has featured prominently in leaders’ speeches over the past few days — many of them delivered remotely exactly because of the virus. Country after country acknowledged the wide disparity in accessing the vaccine, painting a picture so bleak that a solution has at times seemed impossibly out of reach.

South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa pointed to vaccines as “the greatest defense that humanity has against the ravages of this pandemic.”

“It is therefore a great concern that the global community has not sustained the principles of solidarity and cooperation in securing equitable access to Covid vaccines,” he said.

“It is an indictment on humanity that more than 82% of the world’s vaccine doses have been acquired by wealthy countries, while less than 1% has gone to low-income countries.”

He and others urged UN member states to support a proposal to temporarily waive certain intellectual property rights established by the World Trade Organization to allow more countries, particularly low- and middle-income countries, to produce Covid vaccines.

Earlier this year, US President Joe Biden broke with European allies to embrace the waivers, but there has been no movement toward the necessary global consensus on the issue required under WTO rules.

While some nongovernmental organisations have called the waivers vital to boosting global production of the shots, US officials concede it is not the most constricting factor in the inequitable vaccine distribution — and some privately doubt the waivers for the highly complex shots would lead to enhanced production.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

Tanzanian president Samia Suluhu Hassan has told the UN General Assembly: “No one is safe unless we are all safe.”

As of mid-September, fewer than 4% of people in Africa have been fully immunised and most of the 5.7bn vaccine doses administered around the world have been given in just 10 rich countries.

Meanwhile the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday recommended the synthetic antibody treatment Regeneron for Covid-19, but only in patients with specific health profiles.

Persons with non-severe Covid-19 who are nonetheless at high risk of hospitalisation can take the antibody combo, as should critically ill patients unable to mount an adequate immune response, according to a WHO finding published in BMJ.

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• The number of people testing positive for Covid-19 in England has dropped to its lowest level since the end of June.
• Novavax has announced that it has applied to the World Health Organization for an emergency-use listing of its Covid-19 vaccine. The listing is a prerequisite for export to several countries participating in the Covax vaccine-sharing facility
• Covid-19 could resemble the common cold by spring next year as people’s immunity to the virus is boosted by vaccines and exposure, a leading British expert has said. Prof Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said the UK was “over the worst”.
• Portugal will lift almost all remaining Covid-19 restrictions, allowing full occupancy in restaurants and cultural venues from 1 October, the prime minister, Antonio Costa, said on Thursday.
• Thailand is considering cutting hotel isolation requirements for vaccinated tourists in half to one week in a bid to attract foreign visitors again. It comes amid delays to plans to waive quarantine and reopen Bangkok and other tourist destinations from next month after the pandemic caused a collapse in the country’s tourism industry
• Covid deaths in Russia, where 820 people died from the virus in the last 24 hours, matched the all-time one-day high reached in August. Since the start of the pandemic, Russia has recorded 7,354,995 coronavirus cases.
• The US Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for those ages 65 and older and some high-risk Americans, paving the way for a quick rollout of the shots, Reuters reports.