World Coronavirus Dispatch: Pandemic is Merriam-Webster word of the year

Croatia PM and wife test positive, Zoom sales jump four-fold, Vietnam reports first case in nearly three months and other pandemic-related news across the globe

EU vaccinations unlikely to start before next year

Europeans are unlikely to get first vaccine shots this year as regulators pushed the formal assessments to next year. On the contrary, the US and UK regulators are likely to give emergency approvals within days. The European Medicines Agency said it plans to give an opinion on the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at a meeting on December 29. The regulator has also pushed back the assessment of the rival Moderna vaccine to January 12. The AstraZeneca-Oxford jab would not be scrutinised before January.  Read here

Let's look at the global statistics

Global infections: 63,894,184

Change over Yesterday: 657,293

Global deaths: 1,480,709

Nations with most cases: US (13,725,921), India (9,499,413), Brazil (6,386,787), Russia (2,302,062), France(2,275,429)

Source: John Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center

Prisons are Covid-19 hotspots. When should inmates get the vaccine?

As more vaccine candidates apply for emergency approval, Moderna being the latest one, health officals are scrambling to identify the priority groups for fair allocation of limited supplies. The pecking order is likely to be healthcare workers, the vulnerable, essential workers and so on. But with prisons being the incubators of Covid disease, many experts are arguing that inmates, employees at prisons, jails and detention centers, should be vaccinated on priority along with other vulnerable groups, citing the unique risks to people in confinement. There is also the argument of prison outbreaks which may spread to the sorrounding areas. Read here

Croatia’s prime minister, his wife test positive

The prime minister of Croatia Andrej Plenkovic tested positive for coronavirus and is feeling well at home. He entered self-isolation just days earlier after his wife tested positive for the disease. Croatia is currently enduring a new wave of infections since october. Croatia imposed some of the strict restrictions in Europe to contain the first wave, only to later relax them for Summer. This time, the curbs were generally lax and officials shied away from imposing tough measures and lockdowns like the ones in other european nations. Five ministers in the government have already contracted Covid in the second wave since late October. Read here

Zoom sales up four-fold

One of the biggest beneficiaries of pandemic, Video conferencing company Zoom revenue jumped over four-fold in the latest quarter ending October. As Covid-19 infections resurfaced across the world, people were restricted to learning and working from home. The San Francisco-based company said that demand for video conferencing drove its revenue to $777 million, up from $167 million a year ago. The chief financial officer is optimistic that some remote working habits would prove lasting and that many offices would operate in a hybrid style, creating enough demand for the company. However, the Wall Street is concerned on how the company would adapt once workplaces return to normal conditions. Read here

Lisbon turns 20,000 tourist flats into homes

Coronavirus has created an opportunity and a future for Lisbon's narrow antique streets as tourism came to a standstill. Stepping over uncertainities, the city decided to convert some of more than 20,000 tourist flats into affordable housing. Under the initiative, landlords can get up to €1,000 a month by renting their properties to the city for a minimum of five years. Lisbon’s efforts hint at how the pandemic has given governments around the world leverage to reshape their approach to the housing crisis. In England officials have promised to make 3,300 homes available to rough sleepers by next May, while Venice has struck an agreement that will see some tourist flats rented to university students. Read here

Vietnam reports first case in nearly three months

Vietnam confirmed its first locally transmitted case of the coronavirus in nearly three months, after the infection of a man related to a flight attendant who had tested positive after returning from Japan two weeks ago. The country’s health minister ordered provinces and state agencies to tighten screening and controls and contact tracing efforts were launched after the 32-year-old man was confirmed as the first reported domestic infection in 89 days. With its strict quarantine and tracking measures, Vietnam has managed to quickly contain its coronavirus outbreaks, allowing it to resume its economic activities earlier than much of Asia. Read here

Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com choose same word of the year: Pandemic

For the first time, two US dictionary companies declared the same word “pandemic” as their word of the year. The word "Pandemic" has its roots in Latin and Greek and is a combination of “pan”, for all, and “demos”, for people or population. On the day (March 11) the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus a global health emergency, searches at Merriam-Webster.com  for “pandemic” on March 11 were 115,806 per cent higher than spikes experienced on the same date last year. Searches for “pandemic” spiked more than 13,500% on the same date at Dictionary.com. The word “pandemic” dates to the mid-1600s, used broadly for “universal” and more specifically to disease in a medical text in the 1660s, after the plagues of the Middle Ages. Read here

Specials

The race to make vials for coronavirus vaccines

After many months in which the covid-19 pandemic has brought misery to much of the world, new vaccines will soon be ready for distribution. Getting them to people who need them will require more than a billion vials to be manufactured, filled, and shipped, at top speed and in some cases under extreme stress. Under any circumstances, putting medicine into glass is a tricky business. Standard medical vials --- made of borosilicate --- often break as they’re filled, and just one damaged vial can ruin a batch of doses and stop a production line. The story reveals an alternative to borosilicate, called Valor Glass, and its use in the effort to deliver covid-19 vaccines. Read here

The best and worst places to be in the Covid era

Where has the virus been handled most effectively with the least amount of disruption to business and society? New Zealand tops the Ranking as of November 23 thanks to decisive, swift action. The small island nation locked down on March 26 before a single Covid-related death had occurred, shutting its borders despite the economy’s heavy reliance on tourism. Japan, with effective contract tracing and Taiwan, with tech-focused approach, follow New Zealand in second and third places. Effective testing and tracing is a hallmark of almost all the top 10.  The under-performance of some of the world’s most prominent democracies including the US, UK and India contrasted with the success of authoritarian countries like China and Vietnam. Read here