COVID-19 Outbreak: Weekly Global Report for Friday, August 27, 2021
AdvaMed recognizes that its members, particularly those with global government affairs responsibilities, are tracking COVID-19 related developments around the world to assess the public health and economic impacts on their businesses. Knowing that companies are consuming information from a variety of sources, AdvaMed's global team would like to provide members with a weekly snapshot of the key statistics, policy developments and advocacy initiatives underway in our priority markets. If you have any suggestions, we welcome your feedback.
Global
- Weekly COVID-19 statistics: global cases reached a new milestone of 214 million cases. Deaths around the world have exceeded 4.46 million. The countries with the most reported cases continue to be the U.S. (38.2 million), India (32.5 million) and Brazil (20.6 million).
- U.S. cases exceeded 38.2 million with deaths increasing to 632,000.
- Staff Contact: Ralph Ives (rives@advamed.org).
China
- The latest: The highly transmissible Delta variant has posed the most severe test of Beijing’s “zero tolerance” policy to date. Confronted with its largest COVID outbreak since the initial outbreak in Wuhan beginning last month, Beijing credits the sharp decline in case counts in recent weeks to its “strict, scientific, and swift measures.” All travel into Beijing from hotspots remains cut off. Mass testing is still underway in a few Chinese cities. The world’s third largest container port, in Ningbo, fully re-opened this week after COVID cases were reported there a few weeks prior. Some observers outside and inside China worry that Beijing’s “zero tolerance” policy approach could have economic downsides. Economic data for July shows a modest economic slowdown in comparison to expectations. But, in a visit to Hebei this week, President Xi Jinping said China will strive to hit key economic and social development targets set for this year.
- Overview of China’s containment strategy: Despite a massively efficient vaccine roll-out since May, the Chinese government has given no indication it intends to change its current COVID playbook of closed borders, strict quarantine for foreign arrivals, and aggressive lockdowns and mass testing when flareups arise. Beijing remains ever cautious as the Delta variant circulates worldwide and the efficacy of China’s vaccines is questioned. Many businesses expect that China may retain stringent travel restrictions through February 2022, when Beijing will host the Winter Olympics.
- China reopens terminal at world’s third-busiest port: The Meishan terminal at Ningbo port reopened this Wednesday following a two-week shutdown that further snarled already stressed shipping routes in Asia. The terminal, representing a quarter of the Ningbo-Zhoushan port’s capacity, was shut from Aug. 11 after a worker was found to be infected with COVID-19. This was the second closure of part of a port in China this year due to a COVID outbreak, after the month-long shutdown of Yantian port in Guangdong from late May. With demand for vessels and containers rising this year and companies ramping up exports to Europe and the U.S. for the year-end holiday shopping season, even a limited closure of part of a port is costly for both shoppers and shippers.
- Chinese airports toughen up quarantine rules: Airports around China are lengthening the amount of time some international aircrews and ground staff must spend in quarantine, after containment breaches sparked community spread of the highly infectious delta variant in several regions. Some regional regimes will see airport workers judged to be a higher risk isolated for up to 28 days after two weeks of work. These represent far tougher restrictions than those currently mandated by the country’s national aviation authority.
- Status of vaccination campaign: Over one billion Chinese citizens have received at least one COVID vaccine dose to date, accounting for one-third of total global vaccinations. China’s CDC has revised upwards its threshold to reach herd immunity from 70% to 80-85%. According to Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a key government advisor, China will be able to reach herd immunity by the end of this year. Zhong noted the efficacy of China-developed vaccines is about 70 percent, meaning the country would need more than 80 percent of the population to be vaccinated before establishing herd immunity.” China is well on its way to reach that goal by the end of 2021, Zhong said.
- Debate within China on making vaccines mandatory: As countries weigh up making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory in certain circumstances, heated debate has erupted in China over orders issued by some cities to deny the unvaccinated entry to places such as shops and schools. Some say such hardline measures will persuade hesitant people to sign up for the shots, but more have argued that it is discriminatory and amounts to mismanagement by local governments. Public health experts have said such restrictions should be imposed with caution, or they could reduce public confidence in pandemic control measures. On Friday the National Health Commission finally weighed in to assure the public that Covid-19 vaccinations were still “consensual and voluntary”. It said it had noted restrictions in some areas and responded with “timely guidance and supervision”. The NHC’s statement came after some cities in 10 provinces announced various restrictions on unvaccinated people on entering public places, from hospitals to nursing homes and markets.
- Weekly COVID-19 statistics: China’s total COVID cases now stand at 106,873, an increase of 206 cases over the previous week. The number of reported deaths remained unchanged over the previous week, at 4,848.
- China’s vaccines and approval date: Sinopharm (approved Dec. 31, 2020); Sinovac’s CoronaVac (approved on Feb. 5); CanSino Biologics and a second Sinopharm vaccine (both approved in April). Three other vaccines have been approved in May and June.
- Post-COVID healthcare system upgrade: China will provide funding to build new institutions and infrastructure to fight infectious diseases and improve healthcare, the state planning body said in a "five-year plan" for the sector. The central government will subsidize the construction of new "prevention bases" for infectious disease and new grassroots medical facilities across the country, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in the plan, published this Thursday. It said China was facing difficult healthcare challenges, including new emerging infectious diseases, the increasingly heavy burden of chronic illnesses as well as the growing need for mental health services. "The public health system is in urgent need of improvement, and the ability to prevent, control and treat major epidemics is not strong," it warned. High-quality medical resources are also insufficient and not evenly distributed, and there are also gaps when it comes to treating women and children, it added.
- BioNTech vaccine: Chinese regulators completed an expert review of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine developed by Germany's BioNTech and Fosun Pharma and the shot is now in the administration review stage, Caixin reported. China hasn't approved any COVID-19 vaccine developed overseas but has greenlighted several domestic brands. Chinese authorities plan to use the vaccine, which goes by the brand name Comirnaty, as a booster shot for people who have received inactivated-virus vaccines, people close to regulators told Caixin. Most people in China have received inactivated-virus vaccines made by Sinovac and state-owned Sinopharm Group that have demonstrated lower efficacy than mRNA vaccines.
- China’s own mRNA vaccine: China’s first messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccine, is expected to start phase three tests in many overseas countries soon, the chief executive officer of Suzhou Abogen Biosciences, the vaccine’s developer, said this week. Together with Chinese clinical contract research organization Tigermed, Abogen is preparing to conduct overseas Phase III clinical trials using 28,000 volunteers in countries including Mexico, Columbia and Pakistan. The vaccine can be stored at temperatures of between two and eight degrees centigrade for at least seven months, making it convenient for mass distribution. The clinical trials will not select specific variants, and will also not reject any strains, Ying told Yicai Global. The Suzhou, eastern Jiangsu province-based firm is also developing a separate mRNA vaccine candidate that will target the variants that were first found in South Africa and India.
- Vaccine diplomacy: CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping pledged to provide two billion doses of COVD-19 vaccines to the world by the end of this year. Xi also declared that the COVAX global vaccine distribution initiative would receive a donation from China of $100mln. China has already supplied over 770 million vaccine doses to other countries, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
- Revised U.S. intelligence agency community report on COVID’s origins: U.S. President Joe Biden received a copy of the updated findings and was briefed on the classified report on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday. The intelligence community has been "working expeditiously" to prepare an unclassified version for the public, Psaki said without giving a timeline for its release. U.S. officials say they do not expect the review to lead to firm conclusions after China stymied earlier international efforts to gather key information on the ground. The U.S. report is intended to resolve disputes among intelligence agencies considering different theories about how the coronavirus emerged, including a once-dismissed theory about a Chinese laboratory accident.
- As China continues to push its own lab-leak theory: The South China Morning Post reports that Beijing, in seeking to counter the hypothesis that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is pushing its own hypothesis that the virus originated from Fort Detrick, about an hour’s drive from Washington and the original home of the US biological weapons program. While most Americans may be unfamiliar with Fort Detrick, hundreds of millions of Chinese netizens are familiar with the Detrick name and its supposed links to COVID-19, mostly thanks to China’s so-called Wolf Warrior diplomats. They have said dozens of times in social media posts and press conferences that Fort Detrick, half a world away from China in the state of Maryland, needs to be investigated as a potential source of the virus.
- China’s economy facing headwinds: China's factory output and retail sales growth slowed sharply and missed expectations in July, as new COVID-19 outbreaks and floods disrupted business operations, adding to signs the economic recovery is losing momentum. Industrial production in the world's second largest economy increased 6.4% year-on-year in July, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Monday. Analysts had expected output to rise 7.8% after growing 8.3% in June. Retail sales increased 8.5% in July from a year ago, far lower than the forecast 11.5% rise and June's 12.1% uptick. China's economy has rebounded to its pre-pandemic growth levels, but the expansion is losing steam as businesses grapple with higher costs and supply bottlenecks. New COVID-19 infections in July also led to fresh restrictions, disrupting the country's factory output already hit by severe weather this summer. Data earlier this month also showed export growth, which has been a key driver of China's impressive rebound from the COVID-19 slump in early 2020, unexpectedly slowed in July.
- US will limit some Chinese passenger air carriers to 40% capacity: The US Transportation Department on Wednesday said it will limit some flights from Chinese carriers to 40% passenger capacity for four weeks after China imposed similar limits on four United Airlines flights. China told United on August 6 it was imposing sanctions after it alleged five passengers who traveled from San Francisco to Shanghai tested positive for COVID-19 on July 21. The US order said the department will limit over a four-week period each of four Chinese carriers to 40% capacity on a single China-US flight. United Airlines said it was "pleased to see this action by the (Transportation Department) in pursuit of fairness in this important market." The US government says China's "circuit breaker" policy violates the nations' air services agreement and "places undue culpability on carriers with respect to travelers that test positive for COVID-19 after their arrival in China." The limits come as many Chinese students are headed to the US for the start of fall classes.
- S.-China relations: The prospect of Xi Jinping holding a face-to-face meeting with Joe Biden on the sidelines of the Group of 20 Summit in Italy this autumn have dimmed. While Beijing is yet to reach a final decision, the leadership leans towards China’s president attending via a video link rather than flying to Rome for the summit on October 30-31. Virtual attendance would mean there would be no opportunity at the summit for the Chinese and US leaders to hold their first face-to-face meeting since Biden became US president on January 20. While any decision for Xi to not go to Rome for the summit would be partly because of safety concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, it also reflects the lack of progress made to restart the stalled China-US relationship.
- Staff Contact: Kyle Churchman (kchurchman@advamed.org)
India
- Weekly COVID-19 statistics – 32,512,366 total cases, 333,725 active cases/436,365 deaths/ discharged 31,788,440 (John Hopkins & MoHFW) as compared to 32,249,900 total cases, 364,129 active cases/433,049 deaths/ discharged 31,525,080 (John Hopkins & MoHFW) last week. 603,846,475 people have been vaccinated.
- As pointed by several experts, If a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic is round the corner in India, the weekly count of cases is certainly not showing any signs of it. Thirty-two of the country's 36 states and Union Territories registered a fall in cases last week. Even in the four states/UTs where cases rose in the week gone by (August 16-22) — Haryana, Goa, Dadra, Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu, and Andaman & Nicobar Islands — the total tallies were too low for the rise to be significant.
- India's cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage exceeded 58-crore landmark, said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Sunday, August 22. "With the administration of 52,23,612 vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India's COVID-19 vaccination coverage has surpassed the cumulative figure of 58.14 crore (58,14,89,377) as per provisional reports. This has been achieved through 64,39,411 sessions," read the Union Health Ministry's release.
- India needs to average almost one crore doses per day starting August 26, till the end of the year to reach the target of fully vaccinating the entire adult population. To do this, it will have to nearly double the daily average it achieved in the best week so far, just under 59 lakh per day from June 19-25. The burden will be heavier on states such as West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra where the average needed for the rest of the year is about double what was achieved in the best week or even more. Worryingly, that’s a list that includes the four most populous states in the country.
- The National Medical Commission (NMC) has issued an advisory to all medical colleges institutions to strengthen infrastructure for COVID training and nomination of competent trainers. The NMC has asked the medical colleges to establish a robust training framework across the country, to enable training on COVID-19 related topics, to mitigate any further surge of COVID. “More than 120 lessons across 22 modules have been identified and several of these modules are clinical in nature and need onsite training,” the NMC said.
- As many states gear up to open physical schools, more than two crore additional doses of Covid vaccine will be made available to them this month, the Centre said, urging states to vaccinate all school teachers on priority before Teachers’ Day on September 5. Overall, more than 60 crore doses have been administered so far, with nearly 50% of the 94 crore adult population receiving at least the first dose.
- People who have recovered from Covid-19 may require a closer and long-term follow-up for heart-related complications, doctors at GB Pant Hospital have suggested. The Delhi hospital recently conducted a study wherein 134 patients who had fully recovered from Covid-19 underwent imaging test — speckle tracking echocardiography — to assess heart function. It was found that nearly one in every three patients had a subclinical left ventricle dysfunction while 11% had right ventricle dysfunction.
- India’s first mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine candidate HGCO19 by Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Ltd has been granted approval for phase 2/3 clinical trails, the department of biotechnology (DBT) said on Tuesday. The Pune-based biotechnology company had submitted the interim clinical data of the vaccine’s phase 1 study to the central drugs standard control organization, it said. The vaccine subject expert committee reviewed the interim phase 1 data and found that the HGCO19 vaccine was safe, tolerable, and immunogenic in the participants of the study.
- An expert panel, set up by an institute under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has predicted a third wave of COVID-19 hitting the country anytime between September and October and suggested significantly ramping up vaccination pace. The committee of experts, constituted by the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM), also said that children will have a similar risk as adults since paediatric facilities, doctors and equipment like ventilators, ambulances, etc. are nowhere close to what may be required in case a large number of children become infected.
- Covid-19 in India may be entering some kind of stage of endemicity where there is low or moderate level of transmission going on, Chief Scientist of the World Health Organization Dr Soumya Swaminathan said. The endemic stage is when a population learns to live with a virus. It's very different from the epidemic stage when the virus overwhelms a population. On clearance to Covaxin, she said she is fairly confident that the WHO's technical group will be satisfied to give Covaxin clearance to be one of its authorised vaccines and that could happen by mid-September.
- The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) on Friday, August 20 approved Zydus Cadila's DNA vaccine for emergency use in adults and children aged 12 years and above. It is considered a timely move amid warnings of an upcoming third wave in the country. Recently, a committee of experts under the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) warned of the third COVID-19 wave that could peak around October and sought better preparedness for children.
- The existing good bacteria in the nasal environment of a Covid-positive person can influence the severity of the infection, a study by the city-based National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS) and B J Medical College has revealed. Scientists say this could also explain why certain individuals infected with SARS-COV-2 are asymptomatic - the concept being somewhat like the presence of good bacteria in the gut helping one's immunity to fight infections.
- A committee of experts constituted under the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) has warned of an imminent third wave of Covid that could peak around October and sought better medical preparedness for children who might be at similar risk as adults. The report of the committee, set up on the directions of the home ministry, has noted that “paediatric facilities — doctors, staff, equipment like ventilators, ambulances, etc. are nowhere close to what may be required in case a large number of children become infected”.
- Johnson & Johnson (J&J) on Friday, August 20 said it has submitted an application to the Indian drug regulator to conduct a study of its Covid-19 vaccine in adolescents aged 12-17 years. The US-based pharmaceutical company noted that it is committed to facilitating global equitable access to its Covid-19 vaccine and recognise the unmet needs of children.
- AIIMS Trauma Centre is planning to resume non-Covid services in a phased manner. It was declared a Covid-19 facility in March last year and all non-Covid emergencies were shifted to the main institute.Recently, resident doctors’ association (RDA) of AIIMS wrote to the institute director seeking the commencement of trauma services at the centre. Sources said a meeting was held recently on the issue where head of the centre, Dr Rajesh Malhotra, proposed that non-trauma services can be resumed in a phased manner.
- Staff Contact: Abby Pratt (apratt@advamed.org).
Japan (No updates this week)
Korea (No Updates this week)
ASEAN (No updates this week)
Europe (No updates this week)
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