JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa says it will import 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to inoculate the country’s health workers. This is South Africa’s first announcement of the purchase of a COVID-19 vaccine as its cases soar.
Canada will require passengers seeking to board international flights into the country to show their airline proof of a negative coronavirus test, in addition to entering an already existing, mandatory 14-day quarantine on arrival.
The new rule, which the government announced on Thursday, will take effect on Jan. 7 and will require proof of a negative PCR test taken in the previous 72 hours. PCR tests must be sent to a lab and can take several days to process, unlike the rapid antigen test, which gives a result in about 30 minutes.
CAPE TOWN — A few months from now, a factory in South Africa is expected to begin churning out a million doses of Covid-19 vaccine each day in the African country hardest-hit by the pandemic.
But those vials will probably be shipped to a distribution center in Europe and then rushed to Western countries that have pre-ordered them by the hundreds of millions. None have been set aside for South Africa.
The country, which will help manufacture the vaccine and whose citizens have enrolled in clinical trials, does not expect to see the first trickle of doses until around the middle of next year. By then, the United States, Britain and Canada may already have vaccinated more than 100 million people.
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea has confirmed its first cases of a more contagious variant of COVID-19 that was first identified in the United Kingdom.
The United States has had a less than successful handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. From the government response to individual protests, the American response has abounded with politics and failures that have led to unfortunately high fatalities.
