World Coronavirus Dispatch: Singapore now the best place to be during Covid

Biden pledges to ship millions of vaccine doses, Brazil's health authority rejected importing Russia's Sputnik V vaccine and other pandemic-related news across the globe

Biden pledges to ship millions of vaccine doses as virus rages worldwide

Under fire for not doing much to help global community in the fight against the coronavirus after vowing to be a world leader in public health, Biden has pledged 60 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine doses to countries struggling to inoculate people. However, global health groups said the commitment was not nearly big enough. Given the scope of the crisis and the devastation that has been unfolding in many countries, liberals and global health advocacy organisations say the president has a moral obligation to do more. Read here

Let's look at the global statistics

Global infections: 147,888,539

Global deaths: 3,120,991

Nations with most cases: US (32,125,099), India (17,636,186), Brazil (14,369,423), France (5,565,080), Russia (4,717,321).

Source: John Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center

Brazil’s health authority rejected importing Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine

Brazil’s health authority said that it would not recommend importing Sputnik V, the coronavirus vaccine developed by Russia. Brazil’s need for vaccines is urgent: it has been battered by one of the world’s worst outbreaks, driven by the highly contagious virus variant. But the authority said that important safety tests had not been performed on Sputnik V, and that questions remained about the vaccine’s development, safety and manufacturing. The official Sputnik V Twitter account pushed back in a series of tweets, saying that the vaccine’s developers had shared “all the necessary information and documentation with the health authorities.” Read here

Singapore pips New Zealand to grab top spot for best place to be during Covid

New Zealand has lost for the first time as the best place to be during the pandemic, as a result of its slower vaccine rollout. The country was bumped from the top spot by Singapore, according to a Bloomberg’s Covid resilience ranking. While both countries have near-zero community cases, Singapore’s vaccine rollout is much further advanced. So while life was relatively normal in several countries thanks to strong control of the virus, “Singapore has already administered vaccines equivalent to cover a 17 per cent of its population, an aspect of pandemic control that other virus eliminators like New Zealand, Australia and Taiwan are lagging on,” the report said. Read here

Vaccination persuasion teams reap rewards in Turkey

A coronavirus “vaccination persuasion” initiative targeting elderly people who have declined to get vaccinated is gearing up to be rolled out across Turkey after proving a resounding success in a small district in the country’s south-east. The theory is that a face-to-face conversation will help change people’s minds. Since February, doctors and healthcare workers in the mainly Kurdish city of Adiyaman have been calling people in age groups already eligible for the vaccine to ask why they have not come to clinics for appointments. It is working, boosting the vaccine take-up rate among the 250,000 strong population scattered across the province’s central district by nearly 30 per cent. Read here