World Coronavirus Dispatch: Asia's travel bubbles burst even before takeoff

Pfizer shot halts severe illness, why vaccinated people are getting 'breakthrough' infections, and other pandemic-related news across the globe

Pfizer shot halts severe illness, allows infections in Israel

Pfizer Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine provided a strong shield against hospitalisation and more severe disease in cases caused by the contagious delta variant in Israel in recent weeks, even though it was just 39 per cent effective in preventing infections, according to the country’s health ministry. The vaccine, developed with BioNTech SE, provided 88 per cent protection against hospitalisation and 91.4 per cent against severe illness for an unspecified number of people studied between June 20 and July 17. These results contrast with an earlier study in the New England Journal of Medicine which found that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offer 88 per cent protection against symptomatic disease caused by the delta variant. Read here

Let's look at the global statistics

Global infections: 192,578,206

Global deaths: 4,135,859

Vaccine doses administered: 3,752,675,416

Nations with most cases: US (34,281,864), India (31,293,062), Brazil (19,523,711), France (5,996,060), Russia (5,979,027).

Source: John Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center

Delta surge pops Asia’s travel bubbles even before they begin

Fresh lockdowns and restrictions in Asia brought on by the faster-spreading delta coronavirus variant are making the region’s pursuit of travel bubbles look like an increasingly fruitless endeavor. Air-travel bubbles, corridors that allow movement between countries without the need for quarantine, have largely been a letdown as nations pull up the drawbridge again to contain outbreaks. A travel link between Singapore and Hong Kong, first mooted last year, has never actually gotten underway. Talks between Australia and Singapore are still ongoing while an arrangement between Australia and New Zealand has been stop-start at best. Read here

Why vaccinated people are getting ‘breakthrough’ infections

As worrying as they may seem, breakthrough infections — those occurring in vaccinated people — are still relatively uncommon, experts say, and those that cause serious illness, hospitalisation or death even more so. More than 97 percent of people hospitalised in US for Covid-19 are unvaccinated. Still, vaccinated people can come down with infections, overwhelmingly asymptomatic or mild. That may come as a surprise to many vaccinated, who often assume that they are completely shielded from the virus. And breakthrough infections raise the possibility, as yet unresolved, that vaccinated people may spread the virus to others. Read here

‘It’s too late’: US doctor says dying patients begging for Covid vaccine

What the US government is calling “the pandemic of the unvaccinated” is playing out in painful ways as some realise too late that they wish they had had the shot, while others hold out even as they suffer in hospital amid a national surge of new Covid-19 infections, primarily caused by the Delta variant. At least 99% of those in the US who died of coronavirus in the last six months had not been vaccinated, Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has said. “I’m admitting young, healthy people to the hospital with very serious Covid infections,” wrote a doctor in a Facebook post. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late,” she added, referring to patients who have to be put on a ventilator. Read here