Month: February 2021

Scientists are concerned about the rate of vaccination in poorer countries.

LONDON — The first shipments of COVID-19 vaccine arrived in South Africa on Monday amidst concerns that new coronavirus variants and “vaccine nationalism” are hindering efforts to control the pandemic.

One million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in partnership with the University of Oxford and manufactured at the Serum Institute of India, were expected to be delivered. To date, South Africa has been the hardest hit nation on the African continent, with 1,453,761 cases and 44,164 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, welcomed the news of the vaccine shipment as a “major milestone.”

“Today marks a major milestone in our fight against the #coronavirus pandemic as we receive our first consignment of the vaccine,” he posted on Twitter. “This batch will benefit our healthcare workers who have been at the forefront of keeping us all safe.”

“We thank all South Africans and all the researchers who have contributed toward ensuring the successful development of the vaccine,” he added.

According to South African media reports, the government has secured over 42 million COVID-19 vaccine doses. Several million of those doses are expected to come through the WHO-backed COVAX scheme, designed to ensure that lower and lower-middle income countries have access to enough doses to inoculate their populations.

In recent weeks, however, the WHO has warned that may not be enough.

“The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, said in January. “The price for this failure will be paid for with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries.”

Salim Abdool Karim, one of South Africa’s top infectious diseases experts, told ABC News the lack of access to vaccines so far was “most distressing.”

“That simply is a recipe for disaster,” he said. “We have to think about that. We’ve got to suppress viral replication across the world and we’ve got to do so. In order to do so. We’ve got to make vaccines equitably available.”

Viral replication is one of the ways in which new variants of the virus can emerge, he said.

A “variant of concern” originally detected in South Africa can now be found in several other countries, including the U.S. Experts warn this variant may have an impact on the efficacy of the current vaccines available. Karim said the variant could be up to 50% more transmissible than pre-existing variants.

The new variant has 23 mutations, a deeply concerning number and a reason for countries to improve their genomic testing, he said.

“It’s really worrying because if this virus can do that here, it can do it everywhere,” he explained. “And that’s the change we’re seeing now. We don’t know what the next set of changes are going to be or even if they are going to be another set of changes. So, this has created a lot of uncertainty and it tells us that we have to be much better prepared.”

Additional reporting came from ABC News’ James Longman, Angus Hines and Liezl Thom.

Aditya Singh, 36, allegedly lived at the airport for three months.

A man alleged to have lived in plain sight at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for three months was wearing a bright-yellow safety vest and striped sweatpants when he was arrested, according to newly released video of his capture.

Security footage showing the Jan. 16 arrest of 36-year-old Aditya Singh, released by the Chicago Department of Aviation, has raised new questions about how Singh managed to go undetected for so long at the nation’s busiest airport.

The soundless video shows uniformed airport police officers questioning Singh outside a men’s restroom at the airport before apparently instructing him to hold out his arms to be searched.

Singh was allegedly posing as an airport worker when he was taken into custody. He was found in possession of an airport operations manager’s security credential that was reported misplaced around the time Singh began living at the airport, authorities said.

Singh reportedly told authorities he became so frightened to fly back to his home in Orange County, California, due to the COVID-19 pandemic that he decided to hunker down in the airport. It remains unclear how long Singh intended to stay at the facility, where he lived off food provided by strangers, authorities said.

The man’s airport-squatting stint ended when two United Airlines employees became suspicious and confronted Singh, who allegedly showed them the misplaced airport identification badge, according to the Chicago Tribune. Singh told officials that he had been living at the airport since Oct. 19.

“While this incident remains under investigation, we have been able to determine that this gentleman did not pose a security risk to the airport or to the traveling public,” the Chicago Department of Aviation said in a statement. “We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners on a thorough investigation of this matter.”

Singh was charged with impersonating an airport employee in a restricted area of the airport and theft of less than $500, according to police.

He remained locked up at the Cook County Jail on Sunday without bond, according to online jail records.