1 Billion Covid vaccine doses administered globally
More than one billion doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered worldwide, less than five months after the first mass inoculation programmes began to be rolled out, according to an AFP tally on Saturday.
The one billion doses have been administered in 207 countries and territories, according to the tally compiled from official sources. More than half, or 58 percent, have been given in three countries: the United States with 225.6 million doses, China with 216.1 million doses and India with 138.4 million. (Starvision News 3D Pro)
US lifts pause on using J&J’s coronavirus vaccine
The United States can immediately resume use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, top health regulators said on Friday, ending a 10-day pause to investigate its link to extremely rare but potentially deadly blood clots.
CDC and FDA said the risks of experiencing the syndrome involving severe blood clots and low platelets as a result of the vaccine was very low. They found 15 cases in the 8 million shots given.
In an analysis presented at the meeting, CDC staff said that the cases of the syndrome that they had found occurred at a rate of seven per one million doses in women under age 50, with the highest risk occurring among women ages 30 to 39.
For women over age 50 and for all men, the clots appeared at a rate of one per one million doses, the analysis showed.
“But we should keep it in perspective. I mean the risk of dying from a car accident in your life is something like one in 100, the risk of being struck by lightning is something like one in 15,000,” Dr. Jesse Goodman said. (Starvision News 3D Pro)
Half million people completely vaccinated in Bahrain
Over half a million people – nearly one-third of the population – have completely vaccinated against COVID-19 in Bahrain. A total of 646,919 people have taken the first jab, while 509,887 individuals have taken two jabs as of Friday. Bahrain had approved a total of 4 vaccines (Astrazeneca, Pfizer, Sinopharm and Sputnik). (Starvision News 3D Pro)
Biden officially says 1915 massacres of Armenians constitute genocide
U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday said the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide, a historic declaration that infuriated Turkey and is set to further strain frayed ties between the two NATO allies.
The largely symbolic move, breaking away from decades of carefully calibrated language from the White House, will likely to be celebrated by the Armenian diaspora in the United States, but comes at a time when Ankara and Washington have deep policy disagreements over a host of issues.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey “entirely rejects” the U.S. decision which he said was based “solely on populism”. Biden’s message was met with “great enthusiasm” by the people of Armenia and Armenians worldwide, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan wrote in a letter to the U.S. president.
In his statement, Biden said the American people honor “all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.” “Over the decades Armenian immigrants have enriched the United States in countless ways, but they have never forgotten the tragic history … We honor their story. We see that pain. We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated,” Biden said.
In comments that sought to soften the blow, a senior administration official told reporters that Washington encouraged Armenia and Turkey to pursue reconciliation and continues to view Ankara as a critical NATO ally.
For decades, measures recognizing the Armenian genocide stalled in the U.S. Congress and U.S. presidents have refrained from calling it that, stymied by concerns about relations with Turkey and intense lobbying by Ankara.
Turkey accepts that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War One, but contests the figures and denies the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute a genocide. (Reuters) (Starvision News 3D Pro)
Astronauts dock at ISS aboard SpaceX Endeavour
A four-astronaut team arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour, NASA said, after becoming the first crew ever to be propelled into orbit by a rocket booster recycled from a previous spaceflight.
The Endeavour capsule, also making its second flight, was launched into space on Friday atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX is the Elon Musk’s commercial rocket company.
The Endeavour docked to the space station complex at 5:08 a.m. EDT (0908 GMT) while the spacecraft were flying 264 miles (425 km) above the Indian Ocean, NASA said in an update on the mission.
On board were two NASA astronauts – mission commander Shane Kimbrough, 53, and pilot Megan McArthur, 49 – along with Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, 52, and fellow mission specialist Thomas Pesquet, 43, a French engineer from the European Space Agency. (Starvision News 3D Pro)
Saudi Arabia sets rules for air travellers
Saudi civil aviation authorities have directed all airlines operating in the country to limit the issuance of boarding passes to travellers who are immunised or have not been infected by COVID-19, local media reported.
To determine the traveller’s health condition, the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) has requested in a circular the airline companies and the Saudi Data and Artificial Authority (SDAIA) to urgently link data of flights to the COVID-19 smartphone app “Tawakkalna”. The GACA said that “Tawakklana” is mandatory for entering airports and boarding flights in the kingdom. Travellers do not have to show documents to prove their health situation as the app is used to prove that the passenger is free of coronavirus. (Starvision News 3D Pro)
China eyes asteroid defence system, comet mission
China will hold discussions on building a defence system against near-Earth asteroids, a senior space agency official said on Saturday, as the country steps up its longer term space ambitions.
Zhang Kejian, head of the China National Space Administration, did not provide further detail in his opening remarks at a ceremony for China’s space day in the eastern city of Nanjing.
China has made space exploration a top priority in recent years, aiming to establish a programme operating thousands of space flights a year and carrying tens of thousands of tonnes of cargo and passengers by 2045.
The European Space Agency last year signed a deal worth 129 million euros ($156 million) to build a spacecraft for a joint project with NASA examining how to deflect an asteroid heading for Earth.
China is pushing forward a mission where one space probe will land on a near-Earth asteroid to collect samples, fly back toward Earth to release a capsule containing the samples, and then orbit another comet, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing Ye Peijian, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The mission could take about a decade to complete, Ye said. (Reuters) (Starvision News 3D Pro)
