India’s health ministry reported Saturday more than 250,000 new COVID-19 cases and more than 4,100 deaths in the previous 24-hour period.
An Associated Press report Saturday said “India always was expected to play a pivotal role in global efforts to immunize against COVID-19. But a mixture of overconfidence, poor planning and bad luck has prevented that from happening.”
In January, India seemed to “bask” in its early success when it initiated its domestic inoculation program, while reassuring the country that its vaccine exports “were calibrated according to the needs of the domestic immunization program,” according to AP.
The South Asian nation, however, was caught off guard by “the speed at which vaccines were approved for use around the world, as well as the massive “eventual demand” for the vaccines at home and abroad, according to AP.
In addition, India’s two main vaccine manufacturers – the Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech, had trouble scaling up production of the vaccines.
The Serum Institute had a fire in its facility earlier this year and a U.S. embargo on exporting raw materials needed for the shots forced the company to look elsewhere for supplies.
In addition, Bharat Biotech had initially said its goal was to make 700 million doses of the vaccine this year, but Indian officials said recently that Bharat Biotech was making just 10 million shots a month.
Taiwan’s health minister is urging the island’s residents to stay calm, following a report of a crop of new coronavirus cases. Chen Shih-chung said Saturday there were 321 new infections. In addition, the minister said there were another 400 new cases over a six-day period whose positive results had not been included in previous reports.
“There’s no explosion in the pandemic development,” he said. The new infections are reported to be concentrated in the northern part of the island in and around Taipei. The government has urged people to stay home.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s deputy interior minister warned Saturday that China, which claims the island, is spreading misinformation about Taiwan’s COVID-19 outbreak. Chen Tsung-yen said, ““The reason we are continuing to explain the contents of the fake information to everyone is to call attention to it. We must immediately intercept this, and not let cognitive warfare affect Taiwan’s society.”
U.S. and German vaccine partners Pfizer and BioNTech on Friday pledged to deliver 2 billion doses of their vaccine to low- and middle-income nations as part of a global effort to close the vaccine gap between rich and poor nations.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, speaking in Rome at the Global Health Summit, said the first billion doses of their vaccine will be delivered this year, and the second in 2022.
U.S. pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Johnson & Johnson also pledged donations of 200,000 and 100,000 doses respectively.
The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Saturday there are 166.1 million global COVID-19 infections. The U.S. had 33 million, while India has 26 million. Brazil is in third place with 15 million.
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