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News in brief
ITALY
Getting a COVID-19 jab is an “act of love” says Pope Francis
The pontiff has urged people to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The pope’s appeal appears in a video, which also features Catholic bishops from the United States and Central and South America. “Thanks to God and to the work of many, we now have vaccines to protect us from COVID-19,” the pope says in the video. “Vaccines bring hope to end the pandemic, but only if they are available to all and if we collaborate with one another.” Pope Francis says being inoculated with vaccines authorised by competent authorities was “an act of love”. “Vaccination is a simple but profound way of promoting the common good and caring for each other, especially the most vulnerable,” he said. The pope has previously spoken about the importance of vaccines, while emphasising that they must be distributed equally, especially to poor countries. Not all senior Catholic clergy, however, have been singing from the same hymn sheet. American cardinal Raymond Leo Burke has been an outspoken critic of vaccines and even of social distancing. Burke said that the coronavirus “has been used by certain forces, inimical to families and to the freedom of nations to advance their evil agenda”. Later, after a visit to Wisconsin, he tested positive for COVID-19, was admitted to hospital and was on a ventilator. ‘Vaccination is a simple but profound way of promoting the common good and caring for each other, especially the most
vulnerable.’ — Pope Francis
FRANCE
No jab, no fun says Macron
The French government’s decision to only allow the fully vaccinated to enter restaurants, bars, trains and other spaces has led to a spike in inoculations. The French have a well-deserved reputation for being vaccine-sceptic. A poll carried out last December found a remarkable 61 per cent of French citizens would not get vaccinated against COVID-19, compared with 30 per cent in America. In another poll in 2018, a third of respondents told the Wellcome Trust that they did not think vaccines were safe – more than in any other country out of 144 nations surveyed. On 12 July, faced with such hesitancy, France’s president Emmanuel Macron gave a serious incentive to encourage more people to get jabbed, reports The Economist. During a televised address watched by more than 22 million people, he said that from August, people who were not fully vaccinated would not be allowed into restaurants, bars, shopping centres, or travel on long-distance trains and flights. In the hours following his announcement, nearly one million people flocked to book vaccination appointments via Doctolib, the most popular online platform. More appointments were arranged via the website in the following 48 hours than had been over the previous 18 days. Three-fifths of the bookings were for people aged between 18 and 39 years. Macron also said that vaccination will be compulsory for all health workers, and enforced from September. Children aged 12 to 17 have been eligible for vaccination since 15 June. ‘In the hours following President Macron’s announcement, nearly one million people flocked to book vaccination appointments.’
UNITED STATES
Shots for the unvaccinated more important than boosters, says WHO
The rush by wealthy nations to provide a third vaccine booster has been condemned as immoral by the World Health Organization. World Health Organization (WHO) experts insist there is not enough scientific evidence to support the additional shot, reports The Guardian. And providing them while so many people are still waiting to be immunised is immoral, they argue. “We’re planning to hand out extra lifejackets to people who already have lifejackets, while we’re leaving other people to drown without a single lifejacket,” said Dr Mike Ryan, director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme. “The fundamental, ethical reality is we’re leaving millions and millions of people without anything to protect them.” The WHO called for a moratorium on COVID-19 vaccine booster shots, to help ease the drastic inequity in dose distribution between wealthy and poor countries. Some countries like the United States and Israel already have plans to add a third jab to try to contain the Delta variant. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, said: “What is clear is that it’s critical to get first shots into arms and protect the most vulnerable before boosters are rolled out. “The divide between the haves and have nots will only grow larger if manufacturers and leaders prioritise booster shots over supply to low- and middleincome countries.”
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AUSTRALIA
Opening borders early is the “gambler’s option”
Grattan Institute modelling shows it would be dangerous for Australia to open up its international borders before at least 80 per cent of the population is vaccinated.
The model simulates the spread of COVID-19 within a partially vaccinated population using hospitalisation and intensive care unit (ICU) admission rates from more than a year of COVID-19 data from Australian ICU units. It found the only scenario out of 12 where the virus is managed, with hospitalisations and deaths kept down to reasonable levels, is when at least 80 per cent of the population is vaccinated. The authors of the study describe scenarios with a 70 or 75 per cent vaccination rate as the “optimist’s and gambler’s scenarios”. “Opening the borders is a one-shot gamble: if you make the wrong call, the virus will quickly spread and all the good work and hard yards of living through lockdowns over the previous two years will have been wasted,” said Stephen Duckett, Director of the Grattan Institute’s Health and Aged Care Program. “The difference in virus spread, hospitalisations and deaths between opening at 75 per cent and at 80 per cent are big, but the wait between the two thresholds may only be a month or two. This is why we recommend an 80 per cent vaccination rate as the threshold for opening up.” ‘The difference in virus spread, hospitalisations and deaths between opening at 75 per cent and at 80 per cent are big, but the wait between the two thresholds may only be a month or two.’
Download the report
UNITED STATES
It’s the unvaccinated who are filling US hospitals
Almost all COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths in the United States have occurred among people who are unvaccinated or not yet fully vaccinated, according to a new study by the Kaiser Foundation.
The researchers reviewed data from all 50 US states on “breakthrough cases” – fully vaccinated individuals who become infected, hospitalised or who have died. These cases are to be expected and are historically known to occur with other vaccines, as none are 100 per cent effective. The study found: • the rate of breakthrough cases reported among those fully vaccinated is below 1 per cent in all reporting states, ranging from 0.01 per cent in Connecticut to 0.54 per cent in Arkansas • the hospitalisation rate among fully vaccinated people with COVID-19 ranged from effectively zero (0.00 per cent) in California, Delaware, Washington
DC, Indiana, New Jersey, New Mexico,
Vermont, and Virginia to 0.06 per cent in
Arkansas • the rates of death among fully vaccinated people with COVID-19 were even lower, effectively zero (0.00 per cent) in all but two reporting states, Arkansas and
Michigan, where they were 0.01 per cent. “This data indicates the vast majority of reported COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths in US are among those who are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated. These findings echo the abundance of data demonstrating the effectiveness of currently authorised COVID-19 vaccines,” the report concluded.
Read the report
COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Cases: Data from the States https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/ covid-19-vaccine-breakthroughcases-data-from-the-states/
AUSTRALIA
ACTU calls for vaccine leave for all Australian workers
The ACTU has called on the Morrison Government to provide paid leave for every Australian worker, including casual workers, to get the jab and to recover from any routine side effects. The new leave would be a new universal entitlement through the National Employment Standards (NES). Unions have already been winning paid vaccination leave workplace by workplace, and 1.6 million people are already covered by a new entitlement to leave. But to ensure that all of Australia’s 13 million working people can access the new shipments of vaccines arriving there is a need to remove all the barriers people may have to getting vaccinated. ACTU Secretary Sally McManus says workers should not have to choose between getting the vaccine and getting paid. “Casual workers and anyone without leave will risk paying a price to get the vaccine due to routine
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$18.95 from Newsagents, Woolworths, Participating Post Offi ces & womenshealthdiary.com.au side effects, which means lost income because they have no paid leave. “This can be rectified with the federal government taking action to guarantee paid vaccination leave. This will give all working people an equal choice. “From September, the Morrison Government expects to vaccinate two million workers per week. We will not get the job done by Christmas if we expect working people to get the jab on lunch breaks and weekends.” ‘Unions have already been winning paid vaccination leave workplace by work place, and 1.6 million people are already covered by a new entitlement to leave.’
UNITED STATES
Spending on health, not guns, would have made Afghanistan a better place
The United States could and should have fostered a more stable and prosperous Afghanistan by investing in health, schools, safe water, nutrition, and other social services, says prominent US economist Jeffrey Sachs.
Afghanistan has only 172 hospitals and around a third of the 37 million population has no access to a functional health centre within two hours of their home, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). This is despite the fact the US invested roughly US$946 billion in the country between 2001 and 2021, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. “Of that $946 billion, fully $816 billion, or 86 per cent, went to military outlays for US troops. And the Afghan people saw little of the remaining $130 billion, with $83 billion going to the Afghan Security Forces. Another $10 billion or so was spent on drug interdiction operations, while $15 billion was for US agencies operating in Afghanistan,” Sachs wrote in the online magazine Project Syndicate. “That left a meagre $21 billion in ‘economic support’ funding. In short, less than 2 per cent of the US spending on Afghanistan reached the Afghan people in the form of basic infrastructure or poverty-reducing services.” .
