PARIS: Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine was found to be 91.6 percent effective against symptomatic Covid-19 in trial results published on Tuesday, as the number of vaccinations administered worldwide passed 100 million.
But none of the world’s 29 poorest countries has formally started mass vaccination drives, while the richest nations — despite finger-pointing over delivery delays — have provided more than two-thirds of the jabs administered so far.
Misgivings over transparency issues around Sputnik V — rolled out in Russia and other countries before the Phase 3 trial results were published — could be set aside after number-crunching published by The Lancet journal placed the vaccine among top performers alongside those of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.
With the World Health Organisation lamenting that “rich countries are rolling out vaccines while least-developed countries watch and wait,” 101,317,005 jabs had been given in 77 mostly wealthy countries and territories.
However in the United States, a study found that black Americans’ access to jabs was disproportionately low, with vaccination centres located in predominantly white neighbourhoods in some areas and an imbalance caused by relatively less access to the internet for sign-ups.
Inoculation drives have yet to begin in some wealthy countries including Japan, South Korea and Australia, which have broadly managed to contain the pandemic with strict border controls and quarantines.
Japan, where the summer Olympics are set to begin in July, has yet to even approve any vaccines, and is not expected to start inoculating its population before late February at the earliest.
On Tuesday the Japanese government approved a one-month extension of its coronavirus state of emergency until March 7, with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga saying teleworking and 8pm bar and restaurant closures had helped curb the spread of Covid but more needed to be done.
But the Tokyo 2020 president Yoshiro Mori insisted on Tuesday that the Olympics will go ahead this summer “however the coronavirus evolves”.
Another July event — the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain — has already been cancelled, for a second year in a row.
New research meanwhile has provided reason for optimism over the handling of a disease that has killed at least 2,237,990 people, according to a tally.
A large-scale meta-analysis of overall mortality of Covid-19 patients in intensive care units (ICUs) around the world, published in the journal Anaesthesia, found that it had fallen to 36 percent by October.
The authors said that hospitals now have much more knowledge about what works -- and what does not.
In particular, medics now can use steroids like dexamethasone to improve the survival chances of seriously ill patients on oxygen support.
But with several new variants of the coronavirus emerging in the months since the end of their analysis, the authors said ICUs may come under further pressure.
Nigeria said it has detected six new cases of the British variant, which has been found in more than 60 nations since it first swept Britain.
As South Africa grapples with a new more contagious variant, Australia pulled out of their Test cricket tour to the country on Tuesday citing an “unacceptable” risk to players.
Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2021