Tag: pressures

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Health

Malaysia lockdown pressures authorities funds, says minister

Malaysia lockdown pressures government finances, says minister

Malaysia’s government finances are becoming “very constrained” as a surge in Covid-19 infections has once again forced the country into a lockdown, International Trade and Industry Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali told CNBC on Friday.

The Malaysian government has announced a new stimulus package worth 40 billion Malaysian ringgit (roughly $9.68 billion) to help businesses and households cope with another round of “total lockdown” that started on Tuesday.

That latest stimulus came on top of six prior packages worth a total 340 billion Malaysian ringgit (around $82.31 billion) rolled out over the past year. The government said the additional spending could push 2021’s fiscal deficit above its target of 6% of gross domestic product.

People wearing face masks walk in front of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Jan. 29, 2021.

Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

“Certainly this is (putting) a lot of pressure on our fiscal space, but again … we have no other options except to look at various options to support the industries, the SMEs and also the informal sectors so that they can continue with their economic activities,” Azmin told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”

During the June 1-14 “total lockdown,” businesses offering essential services will remain open while certain segments of the manufacturing sector can operate with reduced capacity.

Azmin and his ministry have been criticized by opposition politicians and the Malaysian public for allowing some nonessential businesses — such as a furniture firm and a brewery — to operate during the lockdown, according to media reports.  

In a Thursday statement, Azmin said his ministry is not the only one granting permissions to companies that applied to remain open during the lockdown. He added that only 128,150 businesses — involving 1.57 million workers — had obtained approvals to do so, out of 586,308 that applied for permission, according to the Malay language statement translated by CNBC.     

Malaysia’s Covid-19 outbreak has substantially worsened despite the government imposing lockdowns of varying degrees over the past year.

Last week, the Southeast Asian country reported five consecutive days of record infections and on Wednesday registered its largest daily death toll since the start of 2020. Overall, Malaysia has confirmed more than 595,000 Covid cases and 3,096 deaths, data from the health ministry showed on Thursday.

Malaysian director-general of health, Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah, has urged people to stay at home to break the chain of transmission. A leading figure in the country’s fight against Covid, Noor Hisham warned that the health system could be paralyzed if cases continue to surge.

Azmin said the government is accelerating its national vaccination drive. He explained that the strategy is to administer more than 200,000 doses a day by the end of this month, and double that amount next month.

“We expect to reach the 80% vaccination target as early as August 2021,” said the minister.

But Malaysia’s vaccination progress has been slow. Only 6.2% of the country’s roughly 32 million population have received at least one dose of the Covid vaccine, according to data compiled by statistics site Our World in Data.

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Health

EU steps up vaccine exports guidelines and pressures AstraZeneca over deliveries

EU steps up vaccine exports rules and pressures AstraZeneca over deliveries

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.

Thierry Monasse | Getty Images News | Getty Images

LONDON – The European Union has tightened strict rules on the export of Covid vaccines while putting pressure on AstraZeneca to deliver more shots to the area.

It is because the sluggish introduction of vaccines in the region is under scrutiny, even as the EU continues to export millions of coronavirus shots abroad.

In order to gain a stronger negotiating position with pharmaceutical companies that fail to meet delivery targets, the bloc has expanded its strict rules on vaccine exports.

Before approving the delivery of Covid-19 shots, the EU will check whether the recipient country has any restrictions on vaccines or raw materials and whether it is in a better epidemiological situation.

“We want to make sure that Europe gets its fair share of vaccines. Because we have to explain to our citizens that companies that export their vaccines around the world are fully committed to their commitments and are not taking any risks.” Security of supply in the European Union, “said the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on Thursday.

We all know we could have been a lot faster if all the pharmaceutical companies had fulfilled their contracts.

Ursula von der Leyen

President of the European Commission

The data released on Thursday showed that the EU has exported 77 million cans of Covid shots to 33 countries around the world since December. At the same time, 88 million were delivered to EU countries, of which 62 million were managed. As such, the EU has exported more shots than it has previously given its citizens.

However, some EU countries have raised concerns about stricter export regulations, with countries like Belgium and the Netherlands wanting supply chains to remain open. There is a risk that stopping vaccine exports will trigger a trade war and other parts of the world – which produce the raw materials needed to make vaccines – stop shipping to Europe.

Pressure on AstraZeneca

The EU has also quarreled with the Swedish-UK drug maker over not firing as many Covid shots as the bloc expected.

The 27 nations waited for 90 million doses of this vaccine in the first quarter and 180 million in the second quarter of 2021. However, AstraZeneca said that due to manufacturing issues, only 30 million doses can be dispensed by the end of March and 70 million between April and June.

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The reduced delivery targets are a problem for EU countries, some of which wanted more of this vaccine as it is cheaper and easier to store than others. Further delivery delays to Europe could affect the broader rollout plans.

“We all know we could have been much faster if all pharmaceutical companies had fulfilled their contracts,” said von der Leyen on Thursday.

During a press conference, she added that AstraZeneca “needs to catch up, respect the treaty with European member states, before it can export vaccines again”.

The introduction of vaccines in the EU has posed a number of challenges from the start and the Commission, which has negotiated with drug manufacturers, has been criticized for taking too long to sign vaccination contracts.

Italy’s former Prime Minister Mario Monti told CNBC on Friday: “We shouldn’t be surprised that Europe has reacted quite well in terms of the monetary and financial response to the pandemic and so far not quite (so) in terms of procurement and in terms of the pandemic industrial response. “

He argued that while the EU countries have integrated their monetary policy and part of their fiscal responses, “there has never been a health union”.

Individual governments remain responsible for their own health policies, while areas such as international trade remain the primary responsibility of the European Commission.

A deal with the UK

The EU’s stricter export regulations could become a problem especially for the UK, which has received vaccines from the EU. The vaccination rate is higher than that of the block based on the number of first doses given.

European Commission figures show the UK has received 21 million doses of vaccine block-made – the highest share of EU exports yet. The UK has so far given its population 31 million doses of Covid-19 syringes, suggesting that around two-thirds of the vaccines used in the UK come from the EU.

“We discussed what else we can do to ensure a mutually beneficial relationship between the UK and the EU on Covid-19,” the two sides said in a joint statement on Wednesday.

“Given our interdependencies, we are working on specific steps that we can take in the short, medium and long term to create a win-win situation and expand the supply of vaccines to all of our citizens.”

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said at a press conference on Thursday that a vaccine deal between the EU and Great Britain could be announced on Saturday.

Categories
Politics

Trump pressures Georgia high election official to ‘discover’ votes and overturn Biden victory

Trump pressures Georgia top election official to 'find' votes and overturn Biden victory

In an exceptional phone call this weekend, President Donald Trump pressured Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state by finding votes to shift the number in his favor, as received by NBC News.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger resisted pressure from Trump to change Georgia’s election results, even as the president made veiled threats of possible prosecution if denied. The call was made on Saturday.

Trump, who refused to allow the election, said during the call that he wanted to “find 11,780 votes” to change the outcome in Georgia.

He told Raffensperger, a Republican, that Georgia’s vote had dropped hundreds of thousands of votes and suggested that the Secretary of State announce that he had recalculated the numbers to show a Trump victory.

“Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is the data you have is wrong,” Raffensberger replied, according to the record.

Raffensperger and the secretary’s general counsel, Attorney Ryan Germany, also pushed back on Trump’s claims that ballot papers had been destroyed or that Dominion had removed parts of voting machines in Georgia that were showing more Republican votes.

The contents of the phone call were first reported by the Washington Post.

Trump, referring to Saturday’s call in a tweet on Sunday morning, said Raffensperger could not answer his questions about alleged election fraud, saying, “He has no idea.” Raffensperger replied on Twitter, writing, “What you say is not true. The truth will come out.”

Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to President-elect Biden, slammed Trump’s actions in a statement on Sunday.

“We now have irrefutable evidence that a president is putting an official of his own party under pressure and threatening to induce him to overturn the legal, certified number of votes of one state and fabricate another in his place,” said Bauer. “It captures the whole, nefarious story of Donald Trump’s attack on American democracy.”

The Senate Minority Whip, Dick Durbin, D-IL, said in a statement that the call warranted a criminal investigation.

“President Trump’s taped conversation with Georgian Foreign Minister Raffensperger is more than a pathetic, rambling, delusional abuse. His shameful effort to intimidate an elected official into deliberately changing and misrepresenting the statutory votes in his state strikes in the heart of our democracy and deserves nothing less than a criminal investigation, “the statement said.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Condemned Trump’s actions as a “despicable abuse of power” that may be incontestable.

“If it is potentially criminal, it may be incontestable. And even if there is no crime, it may be punishable,” Schiff told reporters on Sunday.

Justin Levitt, an expert on suffrage and a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who was a former Justice Department official, believes Trump’s behavior in calling would be in violation of several laws if a prosecutor could prove the president did so white weren’t really thousands of countless ballots that would turn the election around.

These criminal violations could include a conspiracy to violate a federal electoral law that has been used in the past to prosecute electoral fraud and a violation of Georgian state law relating to incitement to electoral fraud, he said.

“It’s pretty appalling that the only question is whether the president is sufficiently detached from reality to believe he hasn’t committed a crime,” Levitt said.

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. During the call, President Raffensperger threatened possible legal ramifications if his demands were not met.

“You know what you did and you don’t report it,” Trump said during the call. “This is a criminal, this is a crime. And you cannot allow it. This is a great risk for you and for Ryan, your lawyer. This is a great risk.”

The call comes just days before two major Georgia Senate runoff elections, in which Democratic candidates’ victories in both races would turn control of the chamber, and less than a month before Biden’s inauguration. Trump is holding a rally for the Republican candidates on Monday.

Georgia is one of several states where the Trump campaign or the president’s supporters have fought unsuccessfully to change or invalidate the vote since Trump’s loss to Biden in the November election.

None of the lawsuits, recounts, or investigations in any state have identified the type of widespread electoral fraud or miscounts that would be required to reverse the election in Trump’s favor.

The number of votes in Georgia and other states since the November elections has already been confirmed, and the electoral college has confirmed Joe Biden’s victory.

Biden’s victory in Georgia was a big change in the Republican-controlled state as he was the first Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992. After the first count showed Biden as the winner of the state, Georgia carried out a recount that showed the same result. Raffensperger confirmed the result on November 20th.

The tight profit margin and the presence of Republicans in key positions have made it a target in the Trump team’s efforts to change the election results. Trump has also pressured Governor Brian Kemp to help reverse the outcome, but Kemp said it was not legal for him to call a special legislative session to appoint a new list of presidential voters.

Biden’s victory is due to be confirmed by a joint congressional session on Wednesday, but a group of 11 Republican senators and elected senators, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, want to delay the move, as do some members of the Republican House. Vice President Mike Pence “welcomed” the move to delay certification, according to his chief of staff, but others like Utah Senator Mitt Romney have been harshly critical of the plan.

Trump is expected to participate in anti-certification protests in Washington on Wednesday.