Swedish teen Thunberg joins fight against vaccine inequity

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has urged governments, vaccine developers and the world to “step up their game” to fight vaccine inequity after the richest countries snatched up most COVID-19 vaccine doses and those in poorer nations have gone lacking.

Her comments on Monday came as the World Health Organization announced 5.2 million new confirmed virus cases over the latest week, the largest weekly count yet, according to the U.N. health agency.

The Swedish teen who inspired the “Fridays for Future” climate change movement chipped in 100,000 euros ($120,000) from her charitable foundation to the WHO Foundation to help purchase COVID-19 vaccines for countries where they are needed — especially in poor countries.

https://yelhakim.instructure.com/eportfolios/37425/Home/____Detective_Conan_The_Movie_The_Scarlet_Bullet_2021________1080p

https://yelhakim.instructure.com/eportfolios/37430/Home/_2021HD_____Detective_Conan_The_Movie_The_Scarlet_Bullet_______BluRay

https://yelhakim.instructure.com/eportfolios/37435/Home/_________Detective_Conan_The_Movie_The_Scarlet_Bullet___4k

https://yelhakim.instructure.com/eportfolios/37436/Home/_____2021_Detective_Conan_The_Movie_The_Scarlet_Bullet____KoSub

https://yelhakim.instructure.com/eportfolios/37442/Home/_Detective_Conan_The_Movie_The_Scarlet_Bullet____2021KO__HdQ

“It is completely unethical that high-income countries are now vaccinating young and healthy people if that happens at the expense of people in risk groups and on the front lines in low- and middle-income countries,” said Thunberg, who was invited as a guest for a regular WHO briefing.

While Thunberg hailed the development of COVID-19 vaccines in “record time,” she cited estimates that 1 in 4 people in high-income countries have received them so far, while only 1 in 500 in middle- and lower-income countries have.

“The international community, governments and vaccine developers must step up their game and address the tragedy that is vaccine inequity,” she said. “Just with the climate crisis, those who are the most vulnerable need to be prioritized and global problems require global solutions.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said new COVID-19 cases rose for an eighth straight week around the globe and deaths have risen for a fifth straight week.

He said infections among people 25 to 59 are “increasing at an alarming rate, possibly as a result of highly contagious variants and increased social mixing among younger adults.”

More than 3 million COVID-19 patients have died in the pandemic and over 141 million have been infected, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, but experts say both numbers understate the true toll of the pandemic.

Thunberg said people need to “step up for one another.”

“We young people may be the ones who are least affected ... by the virus in a direct way,” she said. “Of course, many young people fail to draw that connection.”

“Not all, but some,” she added.

Prosecutors have charged a Minnesota man with felony assault and allege that he attacked a home improvement store employee and a police officer after the store worker told him to wear a mask.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the incident began Wednesday afternoon when a cashier at a Menards in Hutchinson told 61-year-old Luke Oeltjenbruns that he couldn’t check out unless he put on a mask, according to a criminal complaint. Oeltjenbruns tried to leave with his merchandise, prompting the cashier to grab his cart.

The complaint alleges that Oeltjenbruns hit the cashier with a piece of lumber. Police later found Oeltjenbruns sitting in his pickup truck in another store’s parking lot.

After a slow-speed chase, officers surrounded his truck with their squad cars, but he refused to get out. Officer Steven Sickmann got up on the truck’s running board and reached through the window. The complaint says Oeltjenbruns closed the window on the officer’s arm, trapping him, and drove off, crashing into squad cars.

The complaint says Sickmann tried to use a rescue hammer to break the window, but Oeltjenbruns took it from him and hit him on the head with it.

Oeltjenbruns was eventually arrested. The complaint says the officer’s injuries included a head wound.

ntario Premier Doug Ford’s government announced Friday it was giving police authority to require anyone not at home to explain why they’re out and provide their address. Tickets can be written.

But at least a dozen forces throughout Ontario, including in the capital of Toronto, said there will be no random stops of people or cars.

“We are all going through a horrific year of COVID-19 and all associated with it together. The (department) will NOT be randomly stopping vehicles for no reason during the pandemic or afterwards,” Halton Police Chief Steve Tanner tweeted.

The new rules limit outdoor gatherings to those in the same household and close playgrounds and golf courses. The decisions sparked widespread criticism in a province already on lockdown. Restaurants and gyms are closed as is in-class schooling. Most nonessential workers are working from home.

___

ISLAMABAD — Authorities in Pakistan have decided to start vaccinating people aged 50 to 59 next week, hours after the country reported over 100 fatalities in a single day for the fifth consecutive day.

Saturday’s figures bring Pakistan’s death toll from the pandemic to 16,094, out of more than 750,000 total confirmed cases in the country of some 233 million people.

Federal authorities said 4,149 patients were in critical care hospital units.

Pakistan has largely relied on donated or imported Chinese vaccines, which had been offered only to health workers and elderly people. But they have not responded in overwhelming numbers to the vaccination campaign, prompting officials to offer the vaccines to a younger cohort.

Pakistan hopes to receive 15 million COVID-19 vaccine doses through the UN-backed COVAX program by next month.

___

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that will determine who is eligible to receive more than $530 million in federal virus relief funding set aside for tribes more than a year ago.

More than a dozen Native American tribes sued the U.S. Treasury Department to keep the money out of the hands of Alaska Native corporations, which provide services to Alaska Natives but do not have a government-to-government relationship with the United States.

The question raised in the case set for oral arguments Monday is whether the corporations are tribes for purposes of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, which defines “tribes” under a 1975 law meant to strengthen their abilities to govern themselves.

The case has practical impacts. Native Americans have been disproportionately sickened and killed by the pandemic — despite extreme precautions that included curfews, roadblocks, universal testing and business closures — and historically have had limited financial resources. About $530 million of the $8 billion set aside for tribes hasn’t been distributed.

___

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe has begun releasing about 3,000 prisoners under a presidential amnesty aimed at easing congestion to reduce the threat of COVID-19 in the country’s overcrowded jails.

About 400 prisoners were released from Chikurubi prison and other jails in the capital, Harare, on Saturday with more coming from other prisons countrywide.

Zimbabwe’s prisons have a capacity of 17,000 prisoners but held about 22,000 before the amnesty declared by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Those to be released had been convicted of nonviolent crimes.

The amnesty “will go a long way” to reduce expenditure and the threat of the spread of the virus in prisons, said Alvord Gapare, the commander for prisons in Harare. He said prisons in the capital had recorded 173 confirmed infections and one death.

Zimbabwe has recorded 37,534 cases of COVID-19, including 1,551 deaths by Apr. 17, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.