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Covid Vaccines: New Diplomacy Software for India and China

Covid Vaccines: New Diplomacy Tool for India and China

NEW DELHI – India, the unmatched vaccine producer, is dispensing millions of doses to friendly and estranged neighbors. It seeks to counter China, which has made the gun distribution a central point of its external relations. And the United Arab Emirates, which are drawing on their oil wealth, are buying pounds on behalf of their allies.

The coronavirus vaccine – one of the most sought-after products in the world – has become a new currency for international diplomacy.

Countries with the means or the know-how use the shots to find favor or to thaw frosty relationships. India sent them to Nepal, a country that has increasingly come under Chinese influence. Sri Lanka, in the midst of a diplomatic tug-of-war between New Delhi and Beijing, gets doses of both.

The strategy carries risks. India and China, both of which make vaccines for the rest of the world, have large populations of their own to vaccinate. While there is little evidence of grumbling in either country, this could change if the public watch boxes are sold or donated overseas.

“Indians are dying. Indians are still getting the disease, ”said Manoj Joshi, a distinguished contributor to the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. “I could understand if our needs were being met and you were giving the stuff away. But I think there is a false moral superiority that you are trying to convey where you say we give our things away even before we use them ourselves. “

Donor countries are making their offerings at a time when the United States and other wealthy nations are taking up the world’s supplies. The poorer countries are desperately trying to get their own. An inequality recently warned by the World Health Organization has brought the world “to the brink of catastrophic moral failure.”

With their health systems tested like never before, many countries are eager to take up the offer – and donors could reap good political will as a reward.

“Instead of securing a country by sending troops, you can secure the country by saving lives, saving the economy and helping with vaccination,” said Dania Thafer, executive director of the Gulf International Forum, a Washington-based think tank.

China was one of the first countries to undertake a diplomatic vaccine boost, pledging to help developing countries last year even before the nation mass-produced a vaccine that was proven effective. Just this week it was announced that it would donate 300,000 doses of vaccine to Egypt.

However, some of China’s efforts in vaccine diplomacy have stemmed from late shipments, lack of disclosure of the effectiveness of its vaccines, and other issues. Chinese government officials have cited unexpectedly strong needs at home in isolated outbreaks, a move that could mitigate any domestic backlash.

Even as Chinese-made vaccines spread, India saw an opportunity to bolster its own image.

The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine factory, produces the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine at a daily rate of approximately 2.5 million doses. This pace has allowed India to distribute free cans to its neighbors. Too much fanfare, plane loads have arrived in Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles and Afghanistan.

“Act eastward. Quick action ”, said the Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar on Twitter the arrival of 1.5 million cans in Myanmar.

Updated

Apr. 11, 2021 at 7:21 ET

The Indian government has tried to collect promotional points for cans that have been shipped to places like Brazil and Morocco despite those countries buying theirs. The Serum Institute has also pledged 200 million doses for a global WHO pool called Covax, which would go to poorer nations, while China recently pledged 10 million.

Currently, the Indian government has room to donate overseas, even after months when cases have skyrocketed and the economy has faltered, and despite vaccinating only a tiny percent of its 1.3 billion people. One reason for the lack of setbacks: The Serum Institute is producing faster than the Indias vaccination program can currently handle, leaving extras for donations and exports.

And some Indians are in no rush to get vaccinated because they are skeptical of a native vaccine called Covaxin. The Indian government approved its use in an emergency without disclosing much data on it, causing some people to doubt its effectiveness. While the AstraZeneca-Oxford shock was less skeptical, those who are vaccinated have no choice as to which vaccine to receive.

For India, it has received a rejoinder to China for its soft-power vaccine initiative after years of making political gains for the Chinese in their own backyard – in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal and elsewhere. Beijing offered deep pockets and quick answers when it came to large investments that India, with a complex bureaucracy and a slowing economy, was struggling to achieve.

“India’s neighborhood has become more crowded and competitive,” said Constantino Xavier, who studies India’s relations with its neighbors at the Center for Social and Economic Progress, a think tank in New Delhi. “The vaccine boost strengthens India’s credibility as a reliable crisis helper and solution provider for these neighboring countries.”

One of India’s largest donations went to Nepal, where India’s relationship was at an all-time low. The tiny land between India and China is of strategic importance to both.

For the past five years, the government of CP Sharma Oli, the prime minister, has started to snuggle up to China after border disputes and what some in Nepal criticize as a master-servant relationship with India. Mr. Oli gave Xi Jinping Thought workshops based on the strategies of the Chinese leader and signed contracts for several projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s Infrastructure and Development Boost.

But the prime minister lost power last year. When both Chinese and Indian delegations arrived in Kathmandu to direct Nepal’s domestic jockeying, the Nepalese leader appears to have cut the temperature with India.

After Mr Oli sent his foreign minister to New Delhi for talks, India donated a million cans. China’s Sinopharm has also applied for approval of its vaccine from Nepal, but drug authorities there have not given it approval.

“The vaccine came as an opportunity to normalize relations between Nepal and India,” said Tanka Karki, a former Nepalese envoy to China.

Still, the strategy of winning hearts and minds with vaccines is not always successful.

The United Arab Emirates, which is importing vaccines faster than any other country besides Israel, has started donating Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccines to countries where it has strategic or commercial interests, including 50,000 doses each to Seychelles, the island nation in the US, Indian Ocean and Egypt, one of its Arab allies.

In Egypt, some doctors have resisted using them because they did not trust the data that the UAE and the Chinese manufacturer of the vaccine had published on studies. The government of Malaysia, one of the Emirates’ largest trading partners, declined an offer of 500,000 doses, saying regulators would need to independently approve the Sinopharm vaccine. After regulatory approval, Malaysia instead bought vaccines from Pfizer in the US, the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, and a vaccine from another Chinese company, Sinovac.

Even accepted goodwill can be short-lived. Experience Sri Lanka, where India and China battle for influence.

Since Gotabaya Rajapaksa took office as president in 2019, New Delhi has struggled to get its government to commit to a contract that its predecessor signed to complete a terminal project in the port of Colombo, part of which will be developed by India should. While large Chinese projects continued, Mr Rajapaksa opened the Indian deal for review.

Indian Foreign Minister visited Jaishankar last month hoping to highlight the importance of the project. In the same month, 500,000 doses of vaccine arrived from India. Mr. Rajapaksa was at the airport to meet them. Sri Lanka has also placed an order for 18 million doses from the Serum Institute, the Ministry of Health in Colombo confirmed.

The Indian media saw both as a diplomatic victory, and it seems clear that Sri Lanka will largely depend on India for vaccines. On January 27th, Mr. Rajapaksa received another gift from China: a promise to donate 300,000 cans.

The duel donations are only part of a much larger diplomatic dance. Just a week later, Mr Rajapaksa’s cabinet decided that Sri Lanka would develop the Colombo terminal itself and force India out of the project.

Mujib Mashal reported from New Delhi and Vivian Yee from Cairo. Bhadra Sharma, Elsie Chen, Aanya Piyari, Salman Masood and Zia ur-Rehman contributed to the coverage.

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Trump was sicker from Covid than the general public was instructed, report says

Trump was sicker from Covid than the public was told, report says

President Donald Trump takes off his face mask as he poses on the Truman Balcony of the White House after returning from Walter Reed Hospital to treat Covid-19 in Washington, United States, on October 5, 2020.

Erin Scott | Reuters

Former President Donald Trump was more ill with the coronavirus in October than the public said at the time, a new report said.

Trump had “at one point extremely low blood oxygen levels and a lung problem related to coronavirus-related pneumonia,” reported the New York Times, citing four people familiar with his condition after contracting Covid-19.

His condition was so poor that “officials believed he was on a ventilator” before he was taken from the White House to the Walter Reed National Military Center.

The Times noted that when Trump went to the hospital in early October – a month before the presidential election – his medical team tried to downplay the severity of his condition in comments to the public.

Trump left the hospital three days after experimental treatments.

He had attended a personal debate with then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden just two days before Covid was announced.

Biden beat Trump in the election that came after Trump downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic for months.

Read the full New York Times story here.

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‘Zero Covid’? We’re not at that stage but, WHO says

Pfizer to supply up to 40 million Covid vaccine doses to Covax global program

A nurse prepares the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on January 10, 2021 at a vaccination center in Sarcelles near Paris.

ALAIN JOCARD | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON – As coronavirus vaccines continue to roll out in major economies around the world, attention is again turning to current lockdown strategies to eradicate new cases of the virus.

Some experts have called for a “zero-covid” strategy that advocates very strict lockdowns, social restrictions and travel bans to eradicate all cases of the virus before public and business life can be reopened.

Countries like New Zealand and Australia have adopted this approach, closing their countries early in the pandemic to prevent new cases. Citing their success in containing the pandemic, some experts in Ireland are also advocating a “zero-covid” approach, although given Northern Ireland’s open border with the rest of the UK, there is disagreement on whether such a policy would work there

On Thursday, World Health Organization experts said it was too early and difficult in practice to consider a “zero-covid” approach.

“Elimination is basically something we want for every disease, for every pathogen, and it can be a very powerful incentive to work. But whether we’re at the stage now – setting goals for a zero-covid strategy – is still open another ball game, “said Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, at a press conference on Thursday.

“First and foremost, we need to see how people’s behavior, how they adhere to non-pharmaceutical interventions, adds up to the timing of policy decisions when vaccination is introduced, and how the pandemic is brought under control.”

Zero Covid strategies were based on banning inbound travel, but some countries were easier to restrict or “isolate from international travel” than others, Kluge said. Many countries in Europe have banned all but essential travel during the lockdown. Forced hotel quarantines for travelers to the UK are now on the horizon, despite critics saying the move is too little and too late.

The introduction of vaccinations is creating a silver lining for lockdowns and, along with restrictions on public life, has slowly seen a decline in new cases and hospital admissions.

Kluge said the European region, which includes 53 countries for WHO, has seen a decrease in new cases in the past four weeks and deaths in the past fourteen days. Still, more than 1 million cases have been reported in the European region every week, Kluge said, and the spread of new variants remains a major problem.

Vaccine manufacturers are already working on second generation footage to target variants of the virus. Concern and caution about mutations are causing governments to be on the alert when it comes to lifting bans.

On the one hand, Germany extended its lockdown until the beginning of March amid concerns about the spread of a variant first discovered in Great Britain. With this variant, which according to the WHO has now been reported in more than 80 countries, a leading British scientist said it was on the right track, “most likely to sweep the world”.

Unlocking “must be gradual and safe,” said Kluge, adding, “the biggest mistake is lowering our guard (too early).”

Dr. Catherine Smallwood, chief emergency officer on WHO’s Europe team, said the virus would take advantage of easing restrictions too early.

“This virus is going to take every chance we give it to spread quickly, and it’s going to spread much faster than we think. … Every time we lift a restriction, every time we do, it will open a part of our society that balance towards the favor of the virus. “

She warned that transmission rates would remain high and that lowering the transmission rates would aid vaccination programs.

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Nursing properties with extra minority residents had extra Covid deaths: Examine

Nursing homes with more minority residents had more Covid deaths: Study

Derede McAlpin is holding a photo of her mother, Sara McAlpin, 92, who was diagnosed with Covid-19 in Rockville, MD.

Katherine Frey | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Nursing homes with more minority residents reported more than three times as many deaths in Covid as those with more white residents, a large study published on Wednesday found.

The University of Chicago researchers examined 13,312 U.S. nursing homes and analyzed Covid data reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from May through December. They found that nursing homes where more than 40% of their residents were black or Spanish reported 3.3 times as many deaths and cases in Covid as nursing homes with more white residents.

Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are hardest hit by the pandemic. Less than 1% of Americans live in such facilities, according to the CDC, but they have caused nearly 40% of all deaths in the United States, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

It is well documented that the pandemic has disproportionately affected the ethnic and racial minorities in the United States. President Joe Biden and his administration have vowed to ensure justice throughout the vaccine distribution process and to prioritize color communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

The new study, published on JAMA Network Open, shows how these differences affect nursing homes and has policy implications for vaccine distribution.

The differences were due to some historical factors, the researchers said. For example, minority residents in nursing homes are more likely to live in large facilities that are for-profit, rely more on Medicaid, and “have shortcomings in care,” the researchers said. They added that “Nursing homes in the US are very segregated”

An Empress EMS paramedic loads a suspected COVID-19 patient into an ambulance on April 7, 2020 in Yonkers, New York.

John Moore | Getty Images

“Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, racial differences in the quality of home care were known to be common,” the authors wrote. “Compared to whites, blacks are more likely to be admitted to the lowest quality nursing homes that have lower nursing staffing rates, more serious regulatory deficiencies, and a higher likelihood of being excluded from the Medicaid program.”

The researchers, health economists Rebecca Gorges and Tamara Konetzka, added that the pandemic is a “perfect storm” for residents of nursing homes.

“With minority communities having the highest COVID-19 infection rates and nursing homes in these communities generally being of lower quality, non-white nursing home residents are in the eye of this perfect storm,” they wrote.

The study finds that the death toll of Covid in U.S. nursing homes is likely to decline soon with the introduction of the vaccine. The CDC recommends that states give the vaccine to residents and long-term care workers as a priority before moving on to other segments of the population.

The Federal Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care program allowed states to tap into pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens to help distribute the vaccine. As part of that program, more than 5 million doses have been given to residents and long-term care workers since Tuesday, according to the CDC.

“As vaccination progresses, it will be important for policy makers to consider existing inequalities to ensure that the vaccine distribution process includes a special effort to reach color communities,” the researchers wrote in the study.

They noted some limitations to their study. Institution-level data is publicly available through the CDC, but comprehensive individual-level data is not available. Such data “is needed to understand whether there are intra-facility differences in addition to differences between facilities,” they said.

They added that as of May, the data they analyzed were reported by nursing homes themselves, omitting many of the cases and deaths that had previously occurred. And they said the federal data “didn’t allow any racial classifications other than white, black, and Hispanic.” More detailed data would have enabled further analysis of the data across different racial groups.

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How Merck’s Vaccine Misplaced the Covid Race

How Merck's Vaccine Lost the Covid Race

Founded in 1891, Merck has been in the vaccines business for more than 100 years and has developed some of the world’s most famous vaccines, including mumps, hepatitis A and chickenpox. In 2019, it became the first company to receive approval for an Ebola vaccine from the Food and Drug Administration.

However, as the coronavirus spread around the world, Merck was slow to announce plans for a vaccine. By the time details of two vaccine candidates became known in late May, most of the main competitors had already announced contracts, and Pfizer and Moderna had begun early clinical trials.

But Merck didn’t have to be the first to win. Executives decided to pursue two projects that they believed had advantages over competitors. A vaccine developed in partnership with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative uses the same technology that is based on a harmless animal virus that led to their successful Ebola vaccine. The other, acquired through the purchase of Themis Bioscience, was based on an existing measles vaccine.

Both experimental Covid vaccines, the company said, would be tested with a single dose, and Merck was also looking to see if whoever used the cattle virus could be given orally – two big advantages over potential competitors, especially in developing countries.

In July, Kenneth C. Frazier, CEO of Merck, warned against acting too quickly. “I think if people tell the public that there will be a vaccine by the end of 2020, for example, they are doing the public a serious disadvantage,” Frazier said in an interview with a professor at Harvard Business School. Mr Frazier recently announced that he will be retiring as managing director later this year, a decision that has long been planned.

In an interview in August, Dr. Nicholas Kartsonis, Merck’s senior vice president of clinical research for vaccines and infectious diseases, said the company’s position as the leading vaccine manufacturer has given him the luxury of time. “We are a much bigger company. We’re not so obliged to be the first, ”he said.

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Biden $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus has Primary Road’s assist

Biden $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus has Main Street's support

Vice President Kamala Harris from left, United States President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wear protective masks as they meet with Democrats in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Wednesday, February 3 Senators meet, 2021, to discuss Covid-19 stimulus relief.

Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images

America’s small business owners have been hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, and despite two rounds of federal loan programs aimed at helping smaller employers, a majority on Main Street are still calling for more help.

Sixty-three percent of small business owners support the $ 1.9 trillion Covid aid package currently being promoted by President Joe Biden’s administration and debated in Congress. This comes from the most recent quarterly CNBC | SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey.

These include 46% of Republican small business owners who support the new Democratic government’s first major legislative proposal. In fact, Biden’s aid package has far more Republican support than Biden himself. Only 14% of Republican small business owners say they are okay with the way Biden does his job as president.

The support for more relief comes from the fact that small business owners’ confidence has fallen to a new all-time low since the quarterly tracking survey began in 2017. The Small Business Confidence Index fell from 48 out of a possible 100 in the fourth quarter of last year to 43 quarters. In addition, the number of small business owners who said they could continue to operate for more than a year under current terms and conditions fell from 67% in the fourth quarter to 55%.

The CNBC | SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey for the First Quarter of 2021 was conducted January 25-31 using the SurveyMonkey platform and received responses from 2,111 small business owners across the country.

The debate about more federal aid has become more partisan among small business owners after the departure of former President Donald Trump. In the fourth quarter, a whopping 83% of small business owners expressed their support for a $ 900 billion package that was passed by Congress and signed by Trump in late December.

“There are more Republicans than Democrats who own small businesses,” said Laura Wronski, research science manager at SurveyMonkey. “When we did the last poll, it was after the election, but it was still in the meantime that … maybe there was still a bit of doubt on people’s minds [about the outcome]. I think people’s perceptions may have hardened while they were a little more up for grabs in December. Since this is the opening speech from the Biden administration, it will be easier to say yes or no. “

Support for the latest package may also have waned, Wronski says, as the federal minimum wage may have been raised, a measure that is typically unpopular with business owners. The survey found that 54% of small business owners oppose raising the federal minimum wage to $ 15 / hour, while 44% support the increase.

Main Street business outlook declines sharply

Overall, small business confidence was hurt by a sharp drop in the number of small business owners who said terms and conditions were “good” (from 39% in Q4 2020 to 29% this quarter), as well as a sharp rise in The Number the small business owners who expect possible changes in tax, trade, regulatory, and even immigration policies to negatively impact their businesses in the coming year – all due in large part to a “loss of confidence” by Republican small business owners.

Vronsky noted that a year ago, only 17% of Republicans expected government regulations to negatively affect their business. This quarter, that number is 82%, which is essentially more than quadrupling from last year. In the first quarter of 2020, 40% of Democrats said changes in regulation would have a negative impact on their businesses, and this quarter that number dropped to 12%. “This is a good example of how increasing confidence in the Democrats cannot offset the loss of confidence in the Republicans. The extent is so different between the two groups in terms of how their perceptions change from year to year,” she said.

Republican small business owners’ confidence has completely collapsed since Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden. The small business confidence index for Republicans is 32, 25 points lower than in the third quarter of 2020, the last poll before the elections. It’s also 9 points lower than the lowest confidence level for any Democratic small business owner during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Conversely, the confidence of small business owners who identify as Democrats rose to 63, up 17 points from the pre-election poll.

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Widespread Covid vaccines will likely be accessible within the spring, says Walgreens exec

Widespread Covid vaccines will be available in the spring, says Walgreens exec

Walgreens pharmacist Jessica Sahni is preparing a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at The New Jewish Home long-term care facility on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in New York on December 21, 2020.

Bryan R. Smith | AFP | Getty Images

Covid vaccines are still hard to come by, but that should change by spring, said Rick Gates, senior vice president of pharmacy and healthcare at Walgreens.

“I would say the end of March and the beginning of April will be the schedule for you to have more general use of it in all of our branches across the country of pharmacies and other places where you can start vaccinations,” he said Tuesday at CNBC’s “Healthy Return” virtual event.

Walgreens is part of a federal pharmacy program that is delivering cans direct to drug stores this week. The pharmacy chain plans to start vaccinations in some of its stores in 15 states, as well as Chicago and New York City, on Friday. However, all of these pharmacies will have limited supplies and vaccines will only be available to Americans who are high priority due to factors like age or health.

On Tuesday, the Biden government announced it would also begin shipping vaccines to community health centers next week – part of their strategy to reach out to black and low-income families who may or may not have a grocery or drug store nearby other barriers have access, such as a lack of transportation.

Around 43.2 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine were administered across the country on Tuesday morning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only 9.8 million people received two doses of the shot. Both vaccines currently under emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration – Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines – require two doses.

Gates said he was confident that a vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson could increase supply. The drug company filed for emergency approval with the FDA last week after data was released showing its vaccine was about 66% effective against the virus. It’s a one-shot vaccine and can be stored in the refrigerator for months.

“It’s just good news for all of us that there will be more vaccines,” he said.

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Lengthy-haul Covid signs ought to be a ‘wake-up name’ for younger folks, Texas Youngsters’s physician says

Long-haul Covid symptoms should be a 'wake-up call' for young people, Texas Children's doctor says

Around 10 to 30% of all Covid patients suffer from long-distance symptoms. Sinais Center for Aftercare. These numbers should be a “wake up call” for young people and motivate them to avoid infection, said Dr. Peter Hotez of Texas Children’s Hospital on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith”.

Patients with post-acute Covid syndrome typically suffer from severe fatigue, shortness of breath, digestive problems, “brain fog” and a racing heart. Some may even develop type 1 diabetes after contracting Covid, said Dr. Hotez. Endocrinologists are still trying to understand exactly why this is happening.

Another question that researchers still cannot answer is whether long-distance symptoms will remain in Covid patients for the rest of their lives. Millions of Americans are already infected, according to Hotez, and those who experienced mild symptoms and were able to stay home to recover are most likely to have problems with post-acute Covid syndrome later, according to later research.

Of all the lingering effects of Covid, Hotez said to Smith, “The ones that worry me most are the cognitive deficits. We call it ‘brain fog’ which makes it sound like it’s not that serious, but it is. You know people have it. ” terrible difficulty concentrating and that’s why it was so devastating because it’s difficult for people to get back to work. “

The post-acute Covid syndrome will have a significant impact on the economy and the health system, said Hotez. Covid has a “severe psychiatric burden”, even for people who were not infected. They can suffer from “post-traumatic stress” from losing a loved one, earning a living, or simply dealing with pandemic living conditions.

“As horrific as the deaths are and as heartbreaking as the deaths, this will be just one of many pieces of Covid-19 that will be with us. It’s also a wake-up call for young people,” Hotez said.

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Biden administration to start transport Covid vaccine doses to group well being facilities

Biden administration to begin shipping Covid vaccine doses to community health centers

People wait outside a COVID-19 vaccine distribution center at the Kedren Community Health Center on January 28, 2021 in Los Angeles, California.

Mario Tama | Getty Images

The White House will begin delivering doses of Covid-19 vaccine doses directly to state-qualified community health centers next week in an effort to extend reach to traditionally underserved communities, Jeff Zients, White House Response Coordinator for Covid-19, announced Tuesday .

Along with other initiatives such as government-sponsored mass vaccination centers and mobile clinics, the new program aims to ensure fair adoption of the vaccine, said Zients.

“Justice is at the core of our strategy to move out of this pandemic, and justice means reaching out to everyone, especially those in underserved and rural communities,” Zients said. “But we cannot do this effectively at the federal level without our partners at the state and local levels sharing the same commitment to justice.”

Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, Chair of the White House’s Covid-19 Health Equity Task Force, noted that there are more than 1,300 community health centers across the country serving nearly 30 million people.

“Two-thirds of their patients live at or below the federal poverty line, and 60% of patients in community health centers identify as racial or ethnic minorities,” she noted. “Justice is our north star here. These efforts, which focus on direct referral to community health centers, are really about connecting with hard-to-reach populations across the country.”

When the program launches, the White House plans to send cans to at least one center in each state, with 1 million split between 250 centers over the coming weeks, Nunez-Smith said. She noted that the government is also working to increase public confidence in vaccines, “which we know are lower than the national average in underserved communities”.

The community health center program will be announced after the launch of the retail pharmacy program, where the federal government will begin shipping cans directly to a few hundred pharmacies across the country. Nunez-Smith said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working with participating pharmacy companies to ensure they reach “socially vulnerable areas”.

The government also announced that it will again increase the number of doses it sends to states each week. The federal government will now ship 11 million cans to states every week, up from the 8.6 million it sent three weeks ago, Zients said.

“That’s a 28% increase in vaccine delivery in the first three weeks,” he said.

When asked whether there is an inevitable trade-off between equity and speed of vaccine distribution, Zients said, “I do not accept that premise at all.”

“I think we can do this in a fair, equitable and efficient way,” he said. “So efficiency and equity are at the heart of everything we do, and I don’t see any compromise between the two that I think go hand in hand.”

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WHO outlines Wuhan findings on origins of Covid pandemic

WHO outlines Wuhan findings on origins of Covid pandemic

Peter Ben Embarek and Marion Koopmans (R) come to a press conference on February 9, 2021 to conclude a visit by an international team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the city of Wuhan in the Chinese province of Hefei.

HECTOR RETAMAL | AFP | Getty Images

An international team of scientists led by the World Health Organization said Tuesday that the search for the introduction of the coronavirus was still in progress. Further research is needed to investigate how and whether the disease circulated in animals prior to human infection.

Scientists have been working in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the disease was first identified, for four weeks, looking for clues to the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The research team has visited hospitals, laboratories, and markets including the Huanan Seafood Market, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the laboratory of the Wuhan Center for Disease Control.

During the secret visit, researchers were also supposed to speak to early responders and some of the early patients. The team completed two weeks of quarantine before starting visiting local locations.

Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, WHO food safety and animal diseases specialist and chairman of the investigation team, told a press conference that the “most likely” path for Covid is to transition from an intermediate species in humans. That hypothesis will “require more study and more specific (and) targeted research,” he said.

The first results of the investigation found no evidence of major Covid outbreaks in Wuhan or anywhere else before December 2019. However, researchers found evidence of wider Covid spread outside the Huanan seafood market in the same month, Ben Embarek said.

He added that it was not yet possible to determine the intermediate animal host for the coronavirus and described the results as “in the works” after nearly a month of meetings and site visits.

“To understand what happened in the early days of December 2019, we dramatically changed the image we had before? I don’t think so,” said Ben Embarek.

“Have we improved our understanding? Have we added details to this story? Absolutely,” he said.

WHO has tried to meet expectations for a definitive conclusion on the origins of the Covid pandemic. To put the mission in a broader context, it took more than a decade to find the origins of SARS, while the origins of Ebola – first identified in the 1970s – are not yet known.

It is hoped that information on the earliest known cases of the coronavirus, first discovered in Wuhan in late 2019, can help pinpoint the start of the outbreak and prevent similar pandemics in the future.

After concerns about access and delays in issuing visas, the team led by the World Health Organization arrived in Wuhan on January 14 to work with Chinese scientists to investigate the origin of the coronavirus.

Laboratory leak “extremely unlikely”

A theory that the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been discredited by the research team. The hypothesis had been upheld by former President Donald Trump’s administration without any burden of proof and was strictly denied by Chinese officials.

“The hypothesis of a laboratory incident is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus into the human population,” said Ben Embarek. “Hence, it is not in the hypotheses that we will propose for future studies.”

Liang Wannian, head of the Covid expert panel at the Chinese National Health Commission, said on Tuesday, alongside Ben Embarek of the WHO from the Hilton Optics Valley Hotel in Wuhan, he agreed with this assessment.

The team had concluded that a laboratory leak should be considered extremely unlikely “on the basis of serious discussion and very careful research,” he added.

Mink are seen on a farm in Gjol, Northern Denmark on October 9, 2020.

HENNING BAGGER | Ritzau Scanpix | AFP via Getty Images

Liang said ongoing research into the origins of the virus needs to focus on how the virus circulated in animals before humans were infected.

Animal hosts have yet to be identified, but bats and pangolins are both potential candidates for transmission, Liang said, but samples from these species have not been found “sufficiently similar” to the Covid virus.

The high susceptibility of minks and cats to the Covid virus suggests that there may be other animals that act as reservoirs, Liang continued, but research is currently insufficient.

China’s national health commission spokesman said there could have been an unreported spread of the coronavirus before it was first discovered in Wuhan. However, Liang said there was no evidence of significant spread of Covid in Wuhan prior to the outbreak in late 2019.

International concern

The WHO previously cited genetic sequencing that showed the coronavirus had started in bats and likely jumped to another animal before infecting the human.

Many of the people who contracted the new virus in Wuhan, a city of around 11 million people, are said to have had connections to the Huanan fish market.

Scientists initially suspected the virus came from wildlife sold in the fish market, which prompted China to swiftly restrict public access to the market early last year.

China’s CDC has since said samples from the fish market suggest that the virus has spread from where the outbreak first occurred.

Additionally, China’s Liang said Tuesday that the Huanan Fish Market was one of the places where the coronavirus first appeared. However, he added that with current evidence it is impossible to determine how the virus was first introduced to the fish market.

Security guards stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus visit the institute in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, on February 3, 2021.

HECTOR RETAMAL | AFP | Getty Images

The origins of the coronavirus remain important as the virus is constantly evolving, as demonstrated by highly infectious mutant strains in the UK and South Africa.

To date, more than 106 million people worldwide have contracted the coronavirus and it has caused at least 2.32 million deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The US has by far reported the highest number of confirmed Covid cases and deaths, with more than 27 million reported infections and 465,072 deaths.

China has released little information about its research into the origins of the coronavirus, and there has been widespread international concern about what researchers in Wuhan are allowed to see and do as part of their research.

– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.