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Geoffrey York

5 Feb, 8 tweets, 3 min read

Two days ago, we documented how Canada was the only G7 country to take vaccines from the COVAX program (mainly designed to help low and middle income countries). It had a legal right to do so, but many people are questioning the decision. (THREAD)
theglobeandmail.com/politics/artic…

Some of our Canadian readers say they are ashamed by the decision:
theglobeandmail.com/opinion/letter…

From Oxfam: “Canada should not be taking the COVAX vaccine from poor nations to alleviate political pressures at home. Receiving 1 or 2 million doses isn't going to solve Canada’s challenges & is going to cause harm elsewhere in the world for the poorest and most marginalized.”

https://twitter.com/ThiruGeneva/status/1357391778396196869?s=20

Reaction from South Africa yesterday during a WTO meeting where Canada is among the countries still unwilling to support a temporary waiver on vaccine patent during the pandemic:

https://twitter.com/ThiruGeneva/status/1357391778396196869?s=20

Reaction from Fatima Hassan of the Health Justice Initiative: “It shows that COVAX is not a sustainable solution for low-income and middle-income countries... It’s not based on global health needs, it’s based on how much money a country is able to put into COVAX.”

Reaction from Jason Nickerson of MSF: "Is this going to undermine COVAX’s ability to deliver vaccines to high-risk people in low and middle income countries who are largely dependent on this mechanism as their only source of vaccines? There’s a finite amount of vaccines today."

Seth Berkley, a key COVAX leader, did not specifically criticize Canada -- but he praised the countries that declined to take COVAX vaccines. “Of course it helps because that means there are more doses available for others.”

Reaction from Canada's Green Party: "“We’ve got enough vaccines to vaccinate our population many times over. We should not be double-dipping into this mechanism. It’s very bad for Canadians, it’s very bad for our image.”
huffingtonpost.ca/entry/canada-c…

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Geoffrey York

@geoffreyyork

7 Jan

South Africa will receive one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in January and 500,000 further doses in February, sufficient for all of its health workers, Health Minister Mkhize announced today. The vaccine doses will be provided by the Serum Institute of India.

The Serum Institute of India produces the AstraZeneca (Oxford) vaccine under license. It has already produced some 70 million doses. The vaccine still needs SAHPRA approval, which is being expedited.

South Africa’s estimated 1.25 million health workers, in the public and private sectors, will receive priority access to the vaccine doses as they arrive.

Read 10 tweets

Geoffrey York

@geoffreyyork

5 Jan

Canadian PM Trudeau says he spoke to SA President Ramaphosa today. He says they promised to "stand together" to "fight the virus" and "ensure no-one gets left behind as we rebuild".
No details on what that might mean. No mention of vaccine access. No statement from SA so far.

For background: Canada ordered more than 400 million doses of various vaccines -- more than 5 times what it needed. It has promised to redistribute the surplus to the COVAX program, but has not indicated when it might do so.

PM Trudeau's comments can be found here, beginning at the 4:58 mark of the video:
cpac.ca/en/direct/cpac…
(Unfortunately he seems unclear on the correct pronunciation of President Ramaphosa's name.)

Read 4 tweets

Geoffrey York

@geoffreyyork

24 Dec 20

@krisp_news

South African science was crucial in helping UK discover its new variants; but then the UK govt claimed (wrongly) that the SA variant is more transmissible. No evidence to support this, according to @krisp_news scientists.
thetimes.co.uk/article/new-co…

From the Times article: SA scientists "were the first to recognize the importance of a genetic change in the spike protein, something that allows the virus to attach more easily to human cells, making it more infectious than the original version."

The SA discovery was shared on Dec 4 over the WHO’s Covid-19 Evolution Working Group. “Our British colleagues were able to go back to their own databases and interrogate them as a result of the work we shared,” Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases specialist at Krisp, said.

Read 13 tweets

Geoffrey York

@geoffreyyork

22 Jul 20

Latest weekly report on excess deaths in South Africa: now estimated at 17,090 since early May.
Note: only a fraction of these deaths are directly due to COVID. Please read the caveats and explanations here:
samrc.ac.za/sites/default/…

From the report: "Although the bulk of these estimates of the ‘excess deaths’ are likely to be due to COVID-19 and related causes, an unknown proportion may be due other natural causes associated with a relaxing of lockdown."

Summary of trends: "Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal are experiencing an excess number of natural deaths. The sharp increase noted in the previous report in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape have continued."

Read 6 tweets

Geoffrey York

@geoffreyyork

6 Jun 20

Yesterday the DA Premier of Western Cape told people with symptoms to "take quarantine and isolation very seriously."
On the same day, the DA national leader said: "Fact 1: Covid does not pose a significant risk to healthy 0-65 year-olds."
Which DA are we to believe?

My question about DA messaging is this: when they are telling people that the virus is not a big risk, aren't they undermining their own Premier? And won't it complicate the task of persuading symptomatic people to voluntarily isolate? Why isolate if it's not a big risk?

The national DA continues to claim that COVID is no worse than the flu, for most people. (This was claimed repeatedly in the national leader's statement yesterday.) The Western Cape premier, in contrast, has never made this claim. And with good reason:

Read 7 tweets