Tag: 100Day

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Health

UK PM Boris Johnson pronounces 100-day goal to develop new vaccines

UK PM Boris Johnson announces 100-day target to develop new vaccines

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a press conference on Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Downing Street on January 15, 2021 in London, England.

Dominic Lipinski | Getty Images

LONDON – UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will call on the leaders of the world’s largest economies to support efforts to accelerate the development of new vaccines.

Johnson, who will chair a virtual meeting with G-7 leaders on Friday, is expected to outline an ambition to cut the time it takes to develop new vaccines by two-thirds to 100 days.

A Downing Street statement said developing a coronavirus vaccine in around 300 days is a “great and unprecedented global achievement”.

“By further reducing the time it takes to develop new vaccines against emerging diseases, we can potentially prevent the disastrous health, economic and social effects of this crisis,” the government said.

The Coalition for Innovations to Prepare for Epidemics first proposed this 100-day goal earlier this year.

“The development of viable coronavirus vaccines offers the tempting prospect of a return to normal, but we must not rest on our laurels,” Johnson said ahead of the meeting.

“As leaders of the G7 today we have to say never again,” he added, calling on the coalition of leaders to use “collective ingenuity” to ensure that “vaccines, treatments and tests are ready to fight future health threats”. “”

Johnson has asked UK Government Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance to work with international partners including the World Health Organization and CEPI, along with industry and science experts, to help the G-7 accelerate the development of vaccines, treatments and tests to advise.

At Friday’s session, Johnson will also confirm the UK will share the majority of all future excess coronavirus vaccine doses with Covax. This is a global initiative jointly led by WHO and CEPI, among others, and aims to provide low-income countries with fair access to coronavirus vaccines.

On Friday, the EU announced that it would double its contribution to Covax to 1 billion euros (1.2 billion US dollars), while Germany pledged a further 900 million euros for the initiative, according to a statement by the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch.

Unequal guidelines for Covid vaccines

A Lancet paper released late last month highlighted that the 2 billion doses of vaccine allocated to low-income countries under the Covax Accelerator Program in 2021 represented only 20% of the vaccine needs of the countries participating in the program.

The paper followed a warning from the World Health Organization’s top official that the world was on the verge of “catastrophic moral failure” due to unequal Covid vaccine policies.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Jan. 18 condemned what he called the “first-me” approach from high-income countries, saying it was self-destructive and endangered the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

Almost all high-income countries have prioritized the distribution of vaccines to their own populations. The international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres has described what we are seeing today in terms of global access to vaccines as “far from an image of justice”.

The meeting on Friday will be the first in the UK’s “G-7 Presidency” in 2021. It will also be President Joe Biden’s first major multilateral engagement.

Johnson had drawn up a five-point plan to prevent future pandemics at the United Nations General Assembly last year. This will be the focus of the UK G7 Presidency on Friday.

Categories
Politics

Decide Blocks 100-Day Pause on Deportation, a Blow to Biden’s Immigration Agenda

Judge Blocks 100-Day Pause on Deportation, a Blow to Biden's Immigration Agenda

In the first legal challenge to the Biden government’s immigration agenda, a federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked a 100-day deportation break.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas on Tuesday issued a 14-day statewide injunction requested by the Attorney General to prevent the implementation of the policy enacted by the Department of Homeland Security within hours of President Biden’s inauguration . The order remains in effect until the judge has considered a more comprehensive application for an injunction.

Judge Drew B. Tipton, appointed by former President Donald J. Trump, said in his ruling that the suspension of deportations would violate a provision of the immigration law as well as another law requiring authorities to make a rational statement their political decisions.

Immigration law provides that individuals with final deportation orders must be deported from the United States within 90 days. The court ruled that the 100-day break violated this requirement and that the mandatory language of the immigration law should not be “neutered by the broad discretion of the federal government.”

The court also ruled that the agency’s memorandum violated a separate law that required agencies to provide a logical and rational reason for their policy changes. The judge found that the Department of Homeland Security had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to provide adequate justification for the temporary suspension of deportations.

Immediately after taking office, Mr. Biden began dismantling some of his predecessor’s initiatives to curb both legal and illegal immigration to the United States. The President has issued a number of implementing regulations, including one to lift travel bans for Muslim-majority countries.

The new Washington

Updated

Jan. 26, 2021, 5:10 p.m. ET

Immigration advocates challenged many of Mr Trump’s policies in federal court, and Judge Tipton’s ruling on Tuesday signaled that immigrant hawks may also sue to obstruct Mr Biden’s initiatives.

“The court order shows President Biden’s tough battle trying to lift the previous administration’s immigration restrictions,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration attorney and professor at Cornell Law School. “A single judge can stop a federal agency’s efforts to review and re-prioritize its immigration policy.”

Following the decision on Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Twitter it was a win over the left.

“Texas is the FIRST state in the nation to file a lawsuit against the Biden Admin. AND WE WON, ”wrote Republican Paxton, who is under investigation for bribery and abuse of power charges by former aides at the federal level.

“Within 6 days of Biden’s inauguration, Texas prevented its illegal deportation freeze,” Paxton wrote. “This was a seditious left-wing uprising. And my team and I stopped doing that. “

In a letter to Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, David Pekoske, last week, Mr. Paxton called the plan a “complete waiver of the Department of Homeland Security’s obligation to enforce federal immigration law,” which would make the state of Texas serious and irreparable would harm “and its citizens. “

Thousands of immigrants in detention centers have deportation orders that can be carried out once they have exhausted their remedies. Thousands more inland could be arrested for having pending deportation orders.

The Biden administration said the break should allow time for an internal review. The moratorium would cover most immigrants facing deportation unless they arrived in the United States after November 1, 2020, were suspected of having committed acts of terrorism or espionage, or posed a threat to the national Security.

“We are confident that as the process progresses, it will be clear that this was a reasonable move to order a temporary pause so the agency can carefully review its policies, procedures and enforcement priorities – while focusing more on public threats Security and national security, “a White House spokesman said Tuesday. “President Biden remains determined to take immediate action to reform our immigration system to ensure that American values ​​are preserved while protecting our communities.”