News & Announcements

CanSino vaccine has become the second Chinese COVID-19 vaccine to be approved by the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan for emergency use in the country.

Special Assistant to the Pakistani Prime Minister on Health Faisal Sultan and the CanSino Biologics Inc. confirmed it to Xinhua on Friday.

On Monday, Sultan said that the third phase trials of the CanSino vaccine show that it is 74.8 per cent efficient in preventing symptomatic cases of COVID-19 in the country.

Sharing results of the trials in Pakistan on Twitter, Sultan said the COVID-19 vaccine proved 100 per cent efficient at preventing severe disease in Pakistan.

The trials were conducted at five different sites in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, the major cities of Pakistan, and the volunteers belonged to different social circles.

Sultan further said that the interim analysis by an independent data monitoring committee also said that the vaccine showed 65.7 per cent efficacy at preventing symptomatic cases.

Also, it reports 90.98 percent at preventing severe disease in multi-country analysis, adding that the committee did not report any serious safety concerns regarding the vaccine.

Earlier in January, Pakistan approved China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use after evaluating its safety and quality.

Pakistan officially launched its vaccination drive on Feb. 3, after receiving China-gifted COVID-19 vaccines.

Pakistan has so far reported 560,363 confirmed cases with 12,218 deaths due to the disease, according to the data released by the country’s health ministry on Friday.

The production of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine has not been perfect but the shot will have a big impact on the pandemic, its chief executive said on Thursday, as the drugmaker pledged to double output by April and the African Union gave its backing for the shot.

The two-dose inoculation, developed with Oxford University, has been hailed as a “vaccine for the world” because it is cheaper and easier to distribute than some rivals.

But its rapid approval in Europe and elsewhere has been clouded by doubts over its most effective dosage and the interval between doses.

According to Reuters, data at the weekend also showed it was less effective against a fast-spreading variant of the virus in South Africa, prompting the government to pause the rollout of the shot. 

The company has also been embroiled in a row with the European Union oversupply delays but Soriot said AstraZeneca was working to ramp up output as fast as possible.

“Is it perfect? No, it’s not perfect, but it’s great. Who else is making 100 million doses in February?” CEO Pascal Soriot said on a conference call about the vaccine.

“We’re going to save thousands of lives and that’s why we come to work every day.”

The company said it aimed to produce more than 200 million doses per month by April, double this month’s level as the world tries to tame a pandemic that has killed 2.35 million.

Head of operations Pam Cheng said on the call that the group was working to further expand global capacity and productivity.

AstraZeneca has set a target to produce 3 billion doses this year, with India’s Serum Institute making much of that aimed at poorer nations.

On Wednesday, the company enlisted Germany’s IDT Biologika as a contract manufacturer, but the bulk of IDT’s contribution will only come on stream late next year.

AstraZeneca said it expected much-anticipated data from the US trial of the vaccine before the end of March, and that it was confident the shot offered relatively good protection against severe disease and death for the South African variant. Its disappointing results were against milder cases.

However, after rising to become Britain’s most valuable company last summer, the company has now slipped to sixth, in a move, some analysts attribute to doubts over the vaccine.

“In a year or two we will look back and everybody will realise we made a big impact,” Soriot said.

AstraZeneca’s shares were up 0.95% in afternoon trade, paring some earlier gains after the company forecast a pick up in earnings growth this year on strong demand for its cancer and other new therapies.

It has pledged not to make any money from its Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic.

It has been a tumultuous week for the drugmaker after South Africa put on hold giving the shot to its citizens, choosing one developed by its US rival Johnson & Johnson instead.

That came after the trial data raised concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness on mild symptoms from the more infectious 501Y.V2 variant of the virus dominant in South Africa, which has spread to 41 nations around the world.

Despite that blow, the World Health Organization endorsed the British vaccine on Wednesday and the African Union said it would target its use in countries that have not reported cases of the variant.

Kenya and Morocco are also planning to administer it.

AstraZeneca said it expected 2021 revenues to rise by a low teens percentage and core earnings of $4.75 to $5.00 per share, as it beat expectations for fourth-quarter sales.

The earnings guidance equates to 18-24% growth, after 15% in 2020, but was a little lower than the $5.10 per share analysts were expecting, as the company flagged more spending this year.

The Covid-19 vaccine is not included in the guidance and the company said its sales would be reported separately from the first quarter of 2021.

While public interest is focused on the vaccine, AstraZeneca’s core business of diabetes, heart, kidney, and cancer medicines has been steadily growing, helping the company to turn around years of decline.

“The company is arguably the poster child for big pharma turnarounds,” said Third Bridge senior analyst Sebastian Skeet.

Several weeks after reporting its first Covid-19 case in a kitten, South Korea will start testing pets that show symptoms such as fever or breathing difficulties.

According to media reports, the coronavirus can also spread from people to animals.

South Gyeongsang Province reported its first animal infection in January.

The infected kitten was found at a religious facility during a tracking process in which 29 people tested positive.

“Dogs and cats that came into contact with confirmed patients can apply for testing,” Song In-jun, an Animal Protection Division official, told South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Friday.

“If you determine that there are symptoms, you can contact the animal department and explain the situation, and the team of health workers from the Seoul city government will visit your home to collect the sample,” he said.

The country’s capital city, Seoul, is now offering tests for animals. Animals that test positive will need to be quarantined for 14 days.

“Please keep your dogs at least two metres away from people and other pets when walking them, and strictly follow antivirus measures, such as wearing masks and washing hands,” said disease control official in Seoul Park Yoo-mi.

According to the BBC, the coronavirus in animals has been reported in more than 22 countries, with a pet cat in the UK have tested positive for the coronavirus in July last year.

Scientists have recommended that people have their pets vaccinated in order to stop the spread of the virus.

South Korea’s latest coronavirus infection count has increased by 403 to take the total case count to 82,837 and 72,936 recoveries.

And, while millions are celebrating the Lunar New Year today, officials have called on residents to stay at home and remain vigilant.

The Centre for Africa Culture, Rights and Citizens Protection (CACRP) has expressed concern over U.S President Joe Biden’s “belligerent attitude” towards Nigeria and other nations opposed to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQI).

According to the centre, Biden’s threat of sanction to Nigeria and these countries is a disregard for their democratic institutions and sovereignty.

The centre made its displeasure known at a press conference on Thursday in Abuja.

In a memorandum on Tuesday, Biden instructed the U.S embassy in Nigeria and other nations to push for legislation of homosexuality in their respective countries of residence.

Nigeria, one of the nations against LGBTQ, signed a Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act into law in 2014.

But speaking on behalf of the group, Executive Director, Comrade Adamu Kabir Matazu noted that the U.S must realise that nations across the world have the responsibility to enforce the laws that govern them internally.

Matazu said if the U.S could take measures to save its democracy from pro-Trump protesters who stormed its Capitol, then every other nation should be allowed to do likewise.

The centre, however, called on the Federal Government to immediately articulate areas of counter-sanctions that would be deployed against the United States if it presses ahead with its threat.

It equally urged the FG to build and lead a “coalition of the righteous” made up of countries opposed to the degradation of human values through LGBTQI.

The group also warned that the EndSARS protests would be used to provoke security response that will then be leveraged on to launch another campaign in support of LGBTQI in Nigeria.

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island Wednesday, the US Geological Survey said, but there was no tsunami warning or immediate reports of damage.

The strong offshore quake hit about 217 kilometres south-southwest of the city of Bengkulu at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres at 7:52 pm local time (1252 GMT).

Shallow quakes tend to cause more damage than deep ones.

The Southeast Asian archipelago experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.

More than 100 people were killed when a 6.2-magnitude quake rocked the small city of Mamuju on Sulawesi island last month.

In 2018, a 7.5-magnitude quake and subsequent tsunami on Sulawesi island left more than 4,300 people dead or missing.

A devastating 9.1-magnitude quake struck off the coast of Sumatra in 2004, triggering a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including around 170,000 in Indonesia — one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.

North Korea has stolen more than $300 million worth of cryptocurrencies through cyberattacks in recent months to support its banned nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, a confidential UN report said.

Compiled by a panel of experts monitoring sanctions on Pyongyang, the report said the country’s “total theft of virtual assets from 2019 to November 2020 is valued at approximately $316.4 million”, citing a UN member state.

Financial institutions and exchanges were hacked to generate revenue for Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile development, said the report, which was seen by AFP.

The vast majority of the proceeds came from two thefts late last year.

The North is known to operate an army of thousands of well-trained hackers who have attacked firms, institutions and researchers in South Korea and elsewhere.

It has also been accused of exploiting its cyber capabilities for financial gain.

The North is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, which have made rapid progress under leader Kim Jong Un.

A summit between Kim and then-US President Donald Trump in Hanoi in February 2019 broke down over sanctions relief and what Pyongyang would be willing to give up in return.

Nuclear talks have been stalled ever since, while the North showed off several new missiles at military parades in October and last month, when Kim pledged to strengthen his nuclear arsenal.

The UN panel said it was investigating a September 2020 hack against a cryptocurrency exchange that resulted in $281 million worth of cryptocurrencies being stolen.

A second cyberattack siphoned off $23 million a month later.

“Preliminary analysis, based on the attack vectors and subsequent efforts to launder the illicit proceeds strongly suggests links to the DPRK,” the report said, using the initials for the North’s official name.

Pyongyang’s cyberwarfare abilities first came to global prominence in 2014 when it was accused of hacking into Sony Pictures Entertainment as revenge for “The Interview”, a satirical film that mocked leader Kim.

The attack resulted in the posting of several unreleased movies as well as a vast trove of confidential documents online.

The North is also blamed for a huge, $81 million cyber-heist from the Bangladesh Central Bank, as well as the theft of $60 million from Taiwan’s Far Eastern International Bank.

The North’s hackers have allegedly stepped up campaigns to raise funds by attacking cryptocurrency exchanges as the value of bitcoin and other cybercurrencies soared.

They were blamed for the 2017 WannaCry global ransomware cyberattack, which infected some 300,000 computers in 150 nations encrypting user files and demanding hundreds of dollars from their owners for the keys to get them back.

Pyongyang has denied the accusations, saying it has “nothing to do with cyber-attacks”.

United States (US) Democratic lawmakers prosecuting Donald Trump are set to detail their case against him Wednesday, in a longshot bid to convince sceptical Republican senators they should impeach the former president.

Trump’s second impeachment trial opened Tuesday with Democrats showing harrowing video footage of his supporters’ January 6 assault on the US Capitol, where they smashed down doors, broke into the Senate chamber and led riots that left five people dead.

Trump faces a single charge of inciting the insurrection after he told enraged Republican supporters near the White House to “fight like hell.”

Securing a conviction is highly unlikely, as the Democrats would need 17 Republican senators to vote with them to make a two-thirds majority.

So far, only six Republicans have agreed that the trial is even constitutional in the first place.

Following Tuesday’s opening statements from Democratic “impeachment managers” and Trump’s lawyers, both sides will flesh out their cases starting Wednesday, with the Democrats going first.

Under impeachment rules, each side is allowed up to 16 hours over two days to present their case, starting at noon (1700 GMT).

Senators will also be given a total of four hours for questioning.

On Tuesday, senators voted 56-44 in favour of the constitutionality of the historic trial, rejecting a bid by Trump’s lawyers to throw it out on grounds that a former president cannot be tried by lawmakers.

Earlier, both sides presented their opening cases, with Democrats arguing that Trump broke his oath in a naked bid to retain power after losing the November election to Joe Biden.

Refusing to accept his defeat, Trump spread lies about vote-rigging and repeatedly pressured officials, including then vice president Mike Pence, to try and stop the transfer of power.

“If Congress were to just stand completely aside in the face of such an extraordinary crime against the Republic, it would invite future presidents to use their power without any fear of accountability,” Democratic impeachment manager Joe Neguse said.

Video from the mayhem played back inside the ornate Senate packed Tuesday’s biggest punch.

Senators — who witnessed the events firsthand when they had to be rushed to safety — watched raw footage of Trump’s speech and the crowd’s ensuing assault on the Capitol.

The video montage showed the mob chanting pro-Trump slogans as it smashed through doors, swarmed police, and managed for the first time in history to disrupt the Congressional vote certifying the election.

“If that’s not an impeachable offence, then there is no such thing,” lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin said.

Trump lawyer David Schoen, however, said the Senate had no jurisdiction to try Trump once he had left office and warned that the impeachment threatened to “tear this country apart.”

It will leave the United States “far more divided and our standing around the world will be badly broken,” he argued.

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to allow the trial to proceed, tweeted that the Democrats had “much stronger constitutional arguments” than Trump’s lawyers.

Trump is the first president ever to face two impeachment trials — he was already acquitted in 2020 of abuse of power — as well as the first in history to be tried after leaving the White House.

His team is basing its case largely on the procedural argument that a former president cannot be tried, calling the Senate trial “absurd.”

They also argue that whatever Trump said during his January 6 rally is protected by the constitutional right to free speech and did not amount to ordering the assault on Congress.

A second acquittal is all but certain for Trump, who is holed up in his luxury Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Amped up on four years of Trump’s populist claims to be fighting for ordinary people against the elites, huge numbers of Republican voters continue to support the ex-president, pushing their party ever further to the right.

eSwatini will no longer use AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, its health minister said on Tuesday, after a trial showed it gave minimal protection against mild-to-moderate Covid-19 caused by the dominant variant in South Africa.

eSwatini, a tiny kingdom formerly known as Swaziland that borders South Africa, was due to receive AstraZeneca doses from the Covax Facility, the global vaccine distribution scheme co-led by the World Health Organization (WHO).

South Africa on Sunday put on hold the rollout of AstraZeneca’s shots after researchers published preliminary data showing the vaccine had significantly reduced efficacy against the more contagious 501Y.V2 variant first identified late last year.

The researchers did not assess whether the AstraZeneca vaccine protects against severe Covid-19, and the South African government is consulting experts on how to proceed with the 1 million doses it already has received.

“The country has considered its close proximity with South Africa. We felt that the variant could be in the country already. We will no longer be using the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine,” Minister Lizzie Nkosi said in an interview on local television.

“The change will mean that the government will be in talks with other suppliers,” she added, saying eSwatini would consider doses from Pfizer or any other shot endorsed by the WHO.

Professor Salim Abdool Karim, an adviser to the South Africa government, said on Monday that South Africa will start its immunization campaign with Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine after data showed AstraZeneca’s shot offered minimal protection against mild-to-moderate illness from the dominant local virus variant.

AstraZeneca’s chief executive said on Tuesday that his company believed its vaccine should still protect against severe Covid-19. The British-Swedish firm said earlier that it was adapting its vaccine to the 501Y.V2 variant.

eSwatini had hoped to receive enough vaccines for 20% of its 1.3 million population via the Covax facility free of charge and wanted to buy additional doses for the rest of its people either via Covax or other sources.

A Zimbabwean teacher based in the United Kingdom, Martin William Chinyanga, is set to be tried by a British court after he was charged with encouraging terrorism through his Facebook posts.

The outspoken Chinyanga, 50, a resident of North London, was charged in January with four counts of encouraging terrorism, in line with the UK’s Terrorism Act.

Referred to by state media in Zimbabwe as an activist of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change – Alliance, Chinyanga was arrested on February 25 last year by officers from the London Metropolitan Counter Terrorism Command and appeared in court last month.

UK media reported that last week Chinyanga appeared at the Old Bailey before Justice Sweeney. His preparatory hearing is set for May 28, while January 10, 2022, is the provisional trial date.

During last week’s preliminary hearing, Chinyanga only confirmed his name, address and date of birth.

The online videos were posted on Facebook in December 2019. The videos encouraged viewers to burn down petrol stations and businesses in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare to put “pressure” on the government led by Zanu-PF’s Emmerson Mnangagwa. The video was reported to the UK authorities, resulting in Chinyanga’s arrest.

In Zimbabwe, The Herald reported that Chinyanga had previous brushes with the law.

In 2015, he was arrested and detained at London’s Charing Cross police station for being part of a group that conducted an illegal demonstration at the Zimbabwean embassy.

According to media reports at the time, Chinyanga was questioned about trespassing and illegally entering the Zimbabwean embassy three times in less than three months. Chinyanga was also detained for resisting arrest when he was picked up at the time.

The head of the World Health Organization-led team in the central Chinese city of Wuhan probing the origins of Covid-19 said on Tuesday that cold chain transmission of the virus is a possibility and warrants further investigation.

‘Cold chain’ refers to the transport and trade of frozen food. China has pushed the idea that the virus can be transmitted by frozen food and has repeatedly announced findings of coronavirus traces on imported food packaging.

However, Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO specialist in animal diseases who leads the independent group of experts, also said the team’s nearly month-long investigation in Wuhan had not dramatically changed the picture of the outbreak.

“We know the virus can survive in conditions that are found in these cold, frozen environments, but we don’t really understand if the virus can transmit to humans” or under which conditions, he told the briefing.

Embarek said it would be worthwhile to explore whether a frozen wild animal in a market setting with the right conditions could be conducive to the rapid spread of the virus.

He said that work to identify the origins of the coronavirus points to a natural reservoir in bats, but it is unlikely that they were in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak was first identified in late 2019.

He also said investigators were looking at whether the virus was circulating earlier than first thought, and that blood samples needed to be found to conduct further research.

The possibility that the virus leaked from a lab – another hypothesis – was extremely unlikely and did not require further study, Embarek told the briefing.

The team arrived in Wuhan on January 14 and after two weeks of quarantine, visited key sites including the Huanan seafood market, the location of the first known cluster of infections, as well as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been involved in coronavirus research.

Members of the team have sought to rein in expectations about the mission, with zoologist Peter Daszak telling Reuters last week that one of their aims was to “identify the next steps to fill in the gaps”.

Another team member, infectious disease expert Dominic Dwyer, said it would probably take years to fully understand the origins of Covid-19.

The United States said China needed to be more open when it comes to sharing data and samples as well as allowing access to patients, medical staff and lab workers. Beijing subsequently accused Washington of politicizing a scientific mission.