La proporcionalidad del uso del pasaporte COVID para permitir la apertura del interior de establecimientos abiertos al público: un breve comentario a la sentencia de 14 de septiembre de 2021 del Tribunal Supremo / The proportionality of the use of the COVID passport to allow the opening of the interior of establishments open to the public: a brief commentary on the judgment of 14 September 2021 of the Spanish Supreme Court

Recientemente, la Sala de lo Contencioso-administrativo del Tribunal Supremo se ha pronunciado sobre la obligatoriedad de la exhibición del pasaporte COVID como requisito de acceso a determinados establecimientos abiertos al público. Esta medida, postulada por distintas Administraciones públicas para controlar la expansión del virus, ha sido cuestionada por varios Tribunales Superiores de Justicia al entender que afectaba a derechos fundamentales. Si bien en las distintas decisiones se aduce que la limitación de los bienes jurídicos en juego no es de especial intensidad, los tribunales han entendido que las autoridades sanitarias han fallado en la justificación de la necesidad e idoneidad de la medida. De esta forma, Tribunales Superiores de Justicia como el de Canarias, Cantabria, Galicia y Andalucía, han denegado la ratificación de las medidas limitativas de derechos fundamentales que comportaban el uso del pasaporte Covid-19, habiendo sido la decisión este último tribunal ratificada por el Tribunal Supremo. En este nuevo pronunciamiento el Tribunal Supremo adopta una postura novedosa, casando el auto del Tribunal Superior de Justicia, en este caso el de Galicia y ratificando la decisión de la administración gallega. El objetivo de mi análisis será determinar qué circunstancias han hecho al Alto Tribunal apartarse del precedente, marcando una serie de criterios que afectaran a la forma que los Tribunales Superiores de Justicia se enfrenten a la ratificación de esta medida sanitaria.(AU)

Recently, the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court has ruled on the mandatory exhibition of the COVID passport as a requirement for access to certain establishments open to the public. This measure, postulated by different public administrations to control the spread of the virus, has been questioned by several Superior Courts of Justice on the understanding that it affected fundamental rights. Although the various decisions argue that the limitation of the legal assets at stake is not of particular intensity, the courts have understood that the health authorities have failed to justify the necessity and suitability of the measure. In this way, Superior Courts of justice such as the Canary Islands, Cantabria, Galicia and Andalusia, have denied the ratification of the measures limiting fundamental rights that entailed the use of the COVID passport, having been the decision of the Andalusia court ratified by the Supreme Court. In this new pronouncement the Supreme Court adopts a novel position, marrying the order of the Superior Court of Justice, in this case that of Galicia and ratifying the decision of the Galician administration. The aim of my analysis will be to determine what circumstances have caused the High Court to depart from the precedent, marking a series of criteria that will affect the way that the Superior Courts of Justice face the ratification of this sanitary measure.(AU)

Cuidado infantil, aislamiento y virtualización educativa durante la pandemia del COVID-19 en la Argentina

La pandemia de COVID-19 iniciada a finales de 2019 tuvo un impacto en la salud colectiva, aunque diferencial en función de la vulneración de derechos básicos de vastos sectores de la población y de las dificultades para el acceso a la atención en salud. Interpeló a los Estados y a las sociedades respecto de los obstáculos y las posibilidades de las políticas sanitarias integrales, las políticas del cuidado y la salud comunitaria. Asimismo, la complejidad socio-sistémica que evidenció la pandemia puso de manifiesto los límites del enfoque biomédico para afrontar la crisis sanitaria y la necesidad de considerar la perspectiva de la determinación social de la salud para la generación de respuestas adecuadas para garantizar los derechos de la población. Dentro de las poblaciones especialmente afectadas se encuentra la población infantil. En Argentina, INDEC determinó que, a fines del 2020, más de la mitad (57,7%) de las personas de 0 a 14 años eran pobres. Asimismo, durante la pandemia se profundizaron las brechas educativas, digitales y nutricionales y la exposición a situaciones de violencia. En este escenario, ante las recomendaciones de diversos organismos acerca del cuidado infantil en el período de cuarentena surgen interrogantes sobre las posibilidades y obstáculos para su desenvolvimiento. (AU)

Coletiva de imprensa: anúncios do Governo - 23/04/2021

O Vice-Governador Rodrigo Garcia anunciou nesta sexta-feira (23) o repasse de R$ 33,3 milhões do Governo do Estado para as Prefeituras de São Paulo visando auxiliar em ações de vacinação. “O Governo de São Paulo vai apoiar a vacinação dos municípios do Estado com a destinação de R$ 33,3 milhões, que serão aplicados na compra de insumos e no pagamento das equipes de atendimento de vacinação”, afirmou o Vice-Governador. “Quero aproveitar para agradecer o apoio dos prefeitos, das equipes municipais de vacinação que, junto ao Governo de São Paulo, têm feito a diferença na vacinação da população paulista. Já passamos de mais de dez milhões de doses aplicadas”, completou Rodrigo Garcia. Neste momento, os postos de saúde estão imunizando a população contra a COVID-19 e também contra a gripe, com campanhas simultâneas. Assim, o novo recurso visa auxiliar os municípios a adquirir insumos e reforçar as equipes que atuam no atendimento da população. O valor foi pactuado entre o Governo de São Paulo e os secretários de saúde municipais. “A vacinação da COVID-19 começou dia 17 de janeiro e os municípios, em nenhum momento, pararam de vacinar. Hoje temos uma concomitância, estamos fazendo a vacinação contra a COVID-19 e começamos a vacinação da influenza, o que requer dessas equipes um trabalho ainda maior”, disse Regiane de Paula, Coordenadora Geral do Programa Estadual de Imunização. O Governo de São Paulo anunciou também nesta sexta-feira (23) uma queda de 23,6% no número de mortes por COVID-19 no estado, após oito semanas consecutivas com indicadores em ascensão. A Secretaria de Saúde do Estado também confirmou que os números de internações e de casos confirmados de coronavírus vêm caindo semanalmente desde março. Atualmente, a média diária das mortes em decorrência de casos graves da COVID-19 é de 621 nesta semana epidemiológica, contra 813 no período anterior. “Pela primeira vez após dois meses de alta, o estado de São Paulo apresenta uma queda de 23% no número de óbitos. É a primeira vez que os indicadores de casos, internações e óbitos estão em queda neste período. Graças ao avanço da vacinação, às medidas restritivas do Plano SP e ao apoio da população, o nosso estado está colhendo resultados desse esforço coletivo”, declarou o Vice-Governador e Secretário de Governo Rodrigo Garcia. Desde meados de fevereiro, o número de mortes apontava crescimento semanal, com médias que saltavam em mais de cem óbitos a cada nova semana. Patamares abaixo dessa média começaram a ser constatados a partir da segunda quinzena de março, simultaneamente ao período de vigência da Fase Emergencial do Plano São Paulo. A média de casos também caiu desde a última semana, em 14,3%, passando de de 14.921 para 12.784 infectados. O auge de casos foi verificado três semanas atrás, com 16.453 casos na semana epidemiológica verificada entre os dias 4 e 10 de abril. Já as internações tiveram declínio de 4,5%, baixando de 2.411 para 2.303 nestas duas últimas semanas. Neste caso, a tendência de queda é sustentada desde a última semana de março, que chegou a atingir 3.381 hospitalizações por COVID-19. “Esses dados nos trazem alento, esperança e reforçam que as medidas tomadas pelo Plano São Paulo, fazendo o faseamento vermelho, passando para uma fase mais restritiva – a Fase Emergencial – e agora a Fase de Transição mostram a responsabilidade que o Governo do Estado tem com a saúde e a proteção da vida, assim como a vacinação que vem acontecendo de forma progressiva”, reforçou o Secretário de Saúde Jean Gorinchteyn.

Sesión informativa COVID-19 en las Américas - 21/04/2021

Coletiva de Imprensa OPAS COVID-19 - 04/22/2021 audio Español.

PAHO press briefing on COVID-19 in the Americas - 21/04/2021

PAHO Press Briefing on COVID-19 in the Americas - 04/22/2021 audio English.

Conferencia de prensa de la OPS sobre COVID-19 - 21/04/2021

Conferencia de prensa de la OPS sobre COVID-19/PAHO’s virtual press briefing on COVID-19 audio original.

Press briefing PAHO COVID-19 - 04/21/2021

Press briefing PAHO COVID-19 - 04/22/2021- 04/21/2021 audio French

Coletiva de Imprensa OPAS COVID-19 - 21/04/2021

Coletiva de Imprensa OPAS COVID-19 - 04/22/2021 áudio Português.

Media briefing on COVID-19 and climate change with Dr Tedros and Greta Thunberg - 19/04/2021

0:00:34 CL Hello, good day and welcome to... wherever you are listening to us today from [sic]. It's Monday 19th April 2021. My name is Christian Lindmeier and I'm welcoming you to today's global COVID-19 press conference. The press conference today is on COVID updates with a special focus on the linkages between the climate and the COVID-19 crisis and the role of youth in the response ahead of Earth Day, which is 22nd April, and the first Global Youth Summit organised as part of the global youth mobilisation, which is 23rd to 25th April. Today's press conference will include three special guests and I'm happy to welcome Greta Thunberg, Climate and Environmental Activist, Elahi Rawshan from Bangladesh, volunteer in the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, supporting young people in Bangladesh, and Daisy Moran from the USA, Global Youth Mobilisation Youth Board Member and World YMCA Representative. Welcome to the three of you. We will have simultaneous interpretation as usual provided in the six official UN languages, Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Spanish and Russian, plus Portuguese and Hindi. Now let me introduce the participants here in the room. Present in the room are Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead on COVID-19, Dr Bruce Aylward, Special Advisor to the Director-General and the Lead on the ACT Accelerator. We have Mr Anil Suni, Chief Executive Officer from the WHO Foundation and we have Dr Maria Nera, Director for Health and Environment. We also have joining us remotely today Dr Mike Ryan, Executive Director for the Health Emergencies Programme of WHO, and Dr Mariangela Simao, Assistant Director-General for Access to Medicines and Health Products. With this let me hand over to the Director-General for the introductory remarks. Dr Tedros, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you, Christian. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Last week new cases of COVID-19 increased for the eighth week in a row with more than 5.2 million cases reported, the most in a single week so far. Deaths rose for the fifth straight week and more than three million deaths have now been reported to WHO. It took nine months to reach one million deaths, four months to reach two million and three months to reach three million deaths. Big numbers can make us numb but each one of these deaths is a tragedy for families, communities and nations. Infections and hospitalisations among people aged 25 to 59 are increasing at an alarming rate, possibly as a result of highly transmissible variants and increased social mixing among younger adults. 00:04:28 Today the emergency committee gave me its advice on vaccines, variants, international travel and other issues. Its full statement is available on our website. We have the tools to bring this pandemic under control in a matter of months if we apply them consistently and equitably. On Friday WHO issued an expression of interest for establishing a COVID-19 technology transfer hub for MRNA vaccines to increase production of those vaccines in low and middle-income countries. We're calling for the original manufacturers of MRNA vaccines to contribute their technology and know-how and for manufacturers in low and middle-income countries to express interest in receiving that technology. We have seen incredible innovation in science. Now we need innovation to ensure as many people as possible benefit from that science. The pandemic will recede but we will still be left with all the other challenges that we had before including the climate crisis. 00:05:58 This week marks Earth Day on 22nd April, a reminder that human health depends on the health of the planet that sustains us. COVID-19 has now killed more than three million people. Air pollution kills more than double that number, seven million people every single year. Despite temporary improvements in air quality last year as a result of so-called lock-downs by September air pollution had returned to pre-pandemic levels. Globally CO2 emissions only decreased by less than 6% last year but by December they had rebounded to their previous levels. The health argument for climate action is crystal-clear. The same unsustainable choices that are killing our planet are killing people. There is no vaccine for climate change but we do have solutions. Last year WHO published our manifesto for a healthy and green recovery, calling on all governments to protect nature, support clean energy sources, develop sustainable food systems and healthier cities and reduce polluting activities. 00:07:36 Together the six prescriptions of the WHO manifesto can not only restore resilient economies; they are a linchpin and essential prerequisite for healthy societies. At the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow this year WHO will deliver a special report with recommendations on how to maximise the health benefits of tackling climate change while avoiding the worst health impacts of the climate crisis. WHO is also spearheading an initiative on promoting climate-resistant health systems in collaboration with the Government of the United Kingdom. Today it's my honour to welcome someone who needs no introduction. Over the past few years Greta Thunberg has become the powerful voice of a young generation demanding climate action. Greta's mobilisation of communities, particularly young people, has been truly inspirational and has brought into sharp focus the impact of the climate crisis on people's lives and the urgent need for transformative action. The awareness she has raised on the links between climate, the environment and health has supported WHO's agenda in these areas, demonstrated the threats all of us face and the role young people can play in building a more sustainable, safer, healthier world. 00:09:33 More recently she has become a powerful advocate for vaccine equity. Tack så mycket, Greta. Today Greta has announced a donation of €100,000 from the Greta Thunberg Foundation to the WHO Foundation in support of COVAX to provide vaccines to people in need. Greta, thank you, tack så mycket for your superb advocacy for climate action and now for vaccine equity. Your contribution makes you the youngest person to contribute to COVAX. Welcome and you have the floor. GT Thank you so much for having me. It is an honour to participate in this event and I will talk briefly now. Science shows that in the future we will most likely experience more frequent and more devastating pandemics unless we drastically change our ways and the way we treat nature. Today up to 75% of all emerging diseases come from animals and as we are cutting down forests and destroying habitats we are creating the ideal conditions for diseases to spill over from one animal to another and then to us. 00:11:08 We can no longer separate the health crisis from the ecological crisis and we cannot separate the ecological crisis from the climate crisis. It's all interlinked in many ways. During this pandemic we have seen what we can achieve when we put resources into science. Vaccines were developed in record time but so far on average one in four people in high-income countries have received a coronavirus vaccine compared with just one in over 500 in low and middle-income countries. The international community, governments and vaccine developers must step up their game and address the tragedy that is vaccine inequity. We have the tools we need to correct this great imbalance that exists around the world today in the fight against COVID-19. Just as with the climate crisis those who are the most vulnerable need to be prioritised and global problems require global solutions. 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. This is a moral test. We talk today about showing solidarity and yet vaccine nationalism is what's running the vaccine distribution. It is only when it really comes down to it that we show our true face and that is why I and many others are supporting WHO, GAVI and all involved in the COVAX initiative, which I believe offers the best path forward to ensure a more equitable global vaccine distribution and a way out of this pandemic. Thank you. 00:13:04 TAG Thank you. Thank you so much, Greta, and thank you for your generosity in donating to the WHO Foundation in support of COVAX. These funds will help us save lives. Around the world young people have been affected by the pandemic in many ways from disruptions in education, loss of employment opportunities, mental health challenges and increased domestic and gender-based violence. WHO is committed to ensuring that the global recovery from COVID-19 includes the voices, energy and ideas of young people. To do that we have partnered with an alliance of the six largest youth development organisations in the world to form the Global Youth Mobilisation, to empower young people to respond to the challenges created by the pandemic in their local communities. 00:14:08 The Global Youth Mobilisation has established a grant mechanism with funds from the Solidarity Response Fund to support innovative local solutions to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. From today young people around the world will be able to apply for grants of between 500 and US$5,000 through the Global Youth Mobilisation. These local solutions will be judged and decided on by young people for young people. To mark the starting point for young people to get involved in the Global Youth Mobilisation a Global Youth Summit will be held virtually from this Friday to Sunday, 23rd to 25th April. Over three days thousands of young people, leaders, policymakers and change-makers will come together in one space to discuss the issues facing young people across the world. On behalf of the Big Six youth organisations, the United Nations Foundation and WHO I invite everyone to join us at the Global Youth Summit. Today I'm delighted to be joined by representatives from two of the Big Six organisations. First it's my honour to welcome Elahi Rawshan, a volunteer with the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Bangladesh. Elahi, thank you for joining us today. You have the floor. 00:16:05 ER Thank you, Dr Tedros, for inviting me here today. I'm really honoured to be here. My name is Elahi Rawshan. I'm a Red Cross/Red Crescent youth volunteer living in Bangladesh. There are about three million young people around the world how have been taking action to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, driving the response efforts and supporting their local communities. I'd like to share with you my story to help explain why recognising, championing and investing in young people through the Global Youth Mobilisation is important. I led the very first disinfection team of Bangladesh Red Crescent Society in different hospitals for two consecutive months. At the beginning of the pandemic here the hospitals needed more supporting hands and we wanted to make sure the hospital environment was safe for everyone and we did to a great extent. One day when the very first COVID patient died in a hospital and everyone was so frightened to go near him, even his own son was reluctant to take his father's body. We went in, we disinfected the room and made sure the body was safe for carrying. 00:17:31 Another day I carried a critical COVID patient on a wheelchair and put an oxygen mask on her when there was no-one around for the support of that person. But I was not the only one; there are thousands of young people in Bangladesh fighting this battle in many different forms. About 4,500 young volunteers of the Red Crescent Society are supporting the vaccination programme every day in Bangladesh. It's mostly the young people here who are making a difference and again it's the young people here who are mostly infected by the pandemic. Many of my friends, colleagues from the different youth organisations and networks have lost their jobs. Almost everyone here is suffering from mental health issues. The data shows that from March 2020 to February 2021 more than 14,000 have committed suicide, which is 45% higher than the previous year and the majority of them are young people. 00:18:44 My dear friends, I have seen localised action making a positive impact on people's lives during this pandemic. I have been trying to collaborate with the Red Crescent Society with my workplace [unclear] who have been offering an online skills programme for the young people. Now as both parties have agreed the Red Crescent youth volunteers will receive a three-month online skills training on different trades like graphics designing, web development, etc. I believe drives like this will help young people individually and at the same time will contribute to the national economy. There are plenty of organisations and individuals out there who are making many more new initiatives to combat this COVID crisis and I would like to invite them all to collaborate with the Global Youth Mobilisation and it will support, promote and invest in your initiatives for improving more lives and communities. Thank you. TAG Thank you. Thank you so much, Elahi. Next it's my pleasure to introduce Daisy Moran, a representative of the World YMCA and a board member of the Global Youth Mobilisation. Daisy, thank you for joining us and you have the floor. 00:20:16 DM Thank you for giving me this opportunity, Dr Tedros, and greetings to you all. I'm Daisy Moran, proud to be with the YMCA in Illinois, USA and proud to be one of the six youth board representatives of the Global Youth Mobilisation. Here's what youth mobilisation has meant for me as the COVID pandemic has significantly increased the inequities in all of our societies. As a young leader I saw a need in my community to offer relief to essential workers who are undocumented immigrants. Through collaboration with fellow young change-makers and organisations we were able to disburse almost $17,000 in relief funds for 38 families. This is just one of thousands of stories that illustrate the simple and powerful fact; when given access and opportunities young people can make a significant difference. In the YMCA and right across the Big Six youth organisations young people have stepped up during the pandemic by delivering supplies to vulnerable people, looking after each other's mental health, making masks, helping share vital public information and now actively facilitating the COVID vaccine campaign. 00:21:35 As the global pandemic enters the recovery and relief period it is crystal-clear that young people are disproportionately impacted by the immediate and long-term implications of disruption in education, employment opportunities, physical and mental health/well-being, to name a few. These two reasons - young people bearing the brunt of the impact of COVID and young people offering so many of the solutions - are what has inspired the Big Six organisations, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Foundation to support young people around the would in delivering and developing youth-led community solutions through the Global Youth mobilisation. I am so excited and I want young people all over the world to be excited and get involved. They can start by attending the Global Youth Summit, which will be held virtually from 23rd to 25th April. At the summit they will hear about the role of young people in the immediate and long-term COVID recovery. It's a great forum where we can share our thoughts, passions, ideas that will influence policies and decisions that impact all of our lives. 00:22:47 This is a critical time for my generation, for our generation to bring policymakers, change-makers, advocate together to address the major challenges confronting young people by solutions and put them into action in our communities. No matter how big or how small I encourage you to have the confidence to apply for funding. If you have an idea to a challenge created by the pandemic you can apply for funding from $500 to $5,000. It is young people like you and me who will evaluate and agree who gets support for these local solutions. So please visit our website, www.globalyouthmobilisation.org We are the movement by youth, for youth and young people really are the answer. We are not the challenge. We are truly being the change that we want to see in the world. Thank you. TAG Thank you. Thank you so much, Daisy - by youth, for youth - and thank you to both of you for your leadership and vision. I look forward to joining both of you at the World Youth Summit and I look forward to seeing what ideas we can help take forward through the Global Youth Mobilisation. This is a reminder that although we're all living through a dark time there are also many reasons for hope and optimism about the future. Christian, back to you. 00:24:24 CL Thank you very much, all, and thank you very much, Dr Tedros. We will start the round of questions and answers. To remind you, if you want to get into the queue for questions please press the raise your hand icon on your screen. We'll start with the first question from Carlos from El Mundo. Carlos, please unmute yourself. CA Hi. CL Go ahead, please. CA It's a question specifically for Greta. Isn't there a risk that the COP26 will lose its momentum? What should we change in the next three months for example to turn the tide and to put the two goals of climate change and vaccination equality on the same level? CL Thank you very much, Carlos. Yes, Greta Thunberg, please. 00:25:27 GT Of course there's a risk that COP will lose momentum but the most important thing is that everyone is safe and of course safety and health come first in these kinds of situations. Of course there's not just one thing that needs to change in order to break this trend that we are seeing now, there's not just one single thing that we can do to - so-called - solve the climate crisis and the vaccine inequity crisis. Of course it's a bit more complicated than that and I think I may not be the best person to answer that. I think there are lots of experts who are more suited for that question but we do need to change our mindsets, we do need to think globally and not only think about ourselves. That's what these crises come down to, that we only think about ourselves, that we don't think about others. They come down to the way we treat others, the way we treat other human beings, the way we treat other animals and nature itself so we need to change our mindsets, if you want one single thing; it's more complicated than but just one thing. CL Thank you very much, Greta. I'll ask Dr Maria Neira from WHO to add, possibly. 00:26:56 MN Thank you, Christian, and thank you very much, Greta. It's really a pleasure to have you with us. You are an inspiration. You have been driving an incredible movement and many people are behind so certainly the COP26 has to be something very successful. In response to your question, Carlos - hola - I think what will change the mindset and what might have an incredible impact is what the Director-General was saying at the beginning, the health argument of climate change. If we are able to explain to people that climate change is about our health, it is affecting our health and if we stop burning fossil fuels the benefits will be enormous in terms of reducing the process of climate change but as well on reducing air pollution. Air pollution, as mentioned again by the Director-General, is responsible for more than seven million premature deaths every year due to exposure to air pollution and in addition to that it creates an environment that makes our health more vulnerable and creates the perfect conditions for more emerging infectious diseases to occur. 00:28:12 So I think we have a perfect case here for creating more action at the COP26, giving the health benefits that can be obtained in an incredible way. If we tackle the causes of air pollution, if we tackle the causes of climate change that will be an enormous health agenda and talking about health is what can make this change that we all need in terms of ambition to go for more at [?] the COP and in convincing people. If we tell people that this is connected to human health I think this will be the final argument that will create much more motivation and engagement and probably a stronger movement to put political pressure on those who will take decisions and hopefully going for much more. Thank you. CL Thank you very much. This was Dr Maria Neira, Director for Environment, Climate Change and Health. The next question goes to Shoko Koyama from NHK. Shoko, please unmute yourself. SH Hello. Can you hear me? CL Go ahead, please. SH Thank you for taking my question. Regarding COVAX, UNICEF is trying to buy one billion syringes by the end of this year in order to distribute to countries together with vaccines. 00:29:37 One billion syringes in addition to the six to 800 million syringes they procure annually seems to be a large quantity. Is COVAX able to procure this huge number of syringes by the end of this year and what challenges are there regarding the procurement of syringes? Thank you. CL Thank you very much, Shoko. I'll give it to Dr Bruce Aylward. BA Thank you very much, Shoko, for the question and thanks for highlighting that it takes more to get the world vaccinated than simply to make and procure the vaccines because there are all the additional pieces that have to go into this including additional supplies like not just syringes, which you mentioned, but also the vaccination cold chains and other supplies that are necessary to keep them in the right conditions before we get them to the actual people who need to be vaccinated. 00:30:38 In terms of the syringes, just like the cold chain equipment the COVAX facility began working with countries way back in October or even earlier last year to look at what numbers of syringes would be required and to start working with manufactures to ensure that pipeline would be there. You might remember some months ago the Director-General invited Henrietta Fore, who is the Executive Director of UNICEF, to join one of these press conferences and at that time she explained what they were already doing to try and make sure that the necessary syringes would be in place. This will continue to be a challenge, just like all of the supplies necessary to get the world vaccinated, these extraordinary numbers but for the moment the pipelines are there and the producers are doing their part. But it all comes back again also to the COVAX facility having the resources it needs so that it can put the contracts in place up-front to make sure the supplies are there, not just the supplies in terms of the vaccines but, exactly as you highlight, the syringes and the other supplies including, as I mentioned, the cold chain equipment and sometimes very specialised cold chain equipment to get these products to people. 00:31:57 CL Thank you very much, Dr Aylward. We'll move on to Robin Mia from AFP. Robin, please unmute yourself. RO Thank you. A question for Greta, if I may. If vaccine inequity carries on and young people start being offered a vaccine in wealthy countries whilst at the same time elderly and wealthy people remain completely unprotected in poor countries, would you advocate a vaccine strike amongst younger people in rich countries until their governments start sharing more vaccines? Thank you. CL Thank you very much, Robin. Of course, Greta, the floor is yours. GT We must not forget that this is not a problem that is caused by individuals. This is a problem that needs to be addressed by the international community, governments and the vaccine developers. It is wrong; if we should start focusing on individuals and urging individuals not to take the vaccine that would send a very wrong message. 00:33:00 Of course everyone who is offered a vaccine should take it but we need to see the bigger picture here and be able to focus on several things at once. So no, I would not advocate for people not to take the vaccine. CL Thank you so much for that. We'll move to Jamil Chad from O Estado de Sao Paulo. Jamil, please unmute yourself. Jamil, do you hear us? Please unmute yourself. JA Can you hear me, Christian? CL Please go ahead. JA Can you hear me? CL Yes. JA Thank you. This is Jamil Chad, a journalist from Brazil. Ms Greta Thunberg, my question is about vaccines but also on climate change. What is your message to President Bolsonaro at this time when both the pandemic is hitting Brazil hard but also climate change is an issue? You'll note very well what is the position of President Bolsonaro. What is the message you can send him today? Thank you. CL Thank you so much, Jamil. Over to Greta. 00:34:24 GT Of course I don't think we should be focusing on talking about individuals since this is a much larger problem but of course Jair Bolsonaro has a huge responsibility both when it comes to the climate, environment and of course we can see the response that Brazil has had during the corona pandemic. I can only speak for myself but I can safely say that he has failed to take the responsibility that is necessary in order to safeguard present and future living conditions for humanity. CL Thank you very much, Greta. We'll move on to Navas Shah from Xinhua. Navas, please unmute yourself. Navas Shah, do you hear us? Please unmute yourself. It looks as if we're not getting to you so we will continue with Gunila Van Hal from Svenska Dagbladet. Gunila, please unmute yourself. GU Can you hear me? CL Wonderful. Go ahead. GU Thanks for taking my question. It is to Greta Thunberg and I'd like to know your view on the proposal from WHO and many governments, among those your own, the Swedish Government, that richer countries should donate remaining vaccine doses to poorer countries once their own risk groups have been vaccinated and before they vaccinate the rest of the population. 00:36:06 What do you think about this and what do you respond to people questioning this, saying, why should we sacrifice our own populations in order to save the world? Thank you. CL Thank you, Gunila. Over to Greta, please. GT I think that is a very reasonable thing to do. We need to protect and prioritise the most vulnerable people in risk groups and working on the front lines, no matter which countries they come from; at least that's my opinion. Of course I understand that people will be frustrated by that. Of course I also want to return to everyday life and everyone I know wants to do that as well but we need to act in solidarity and we need to use common sense when it comes to these issues. As I said, the only sensible thing to do, the only morally right thing to do is to prioritise the people who are the most vulnerable no matter whether they live in a high-income country or a low-income country. 00:37:23 CL Thank you very much, Ms Thunberg. We'll move ahead to Jamie Keaton from AP. Jamie, please unmute yourself. JM Thank you, Christian. My question is both for Ms Thunberg and Ms Moran. What is your message to young people who have become a major driver of COVID-19 infection? We heard the Director-General, Dr Tedros, just mention that increased social mixing among younger adults is possibly one of the reasons for the increase in infections and hospitalisations among people aged 25 to 59. If I could just sneak in a another question to Ms Thunberg, ahead of President Biden's climate summit what do you hope it will achieve? Thank you. CL No small questions today. Thank you very much, Jamie. Let's move to Greta Thunberg first and then on. Thank you. GT Yes, of course it's absolutely crucial that everyone takes our personal responsibility in this crisis. We young people may be the ones who are in general least affected by the virus in a direct way but of course, as I said, we need to act in solidarity with the people in risk groups. 00:38:57 Of course many young people fail to draw that connection maybe; of course not everyone but of course there will always be some. My message to those is that during crises like these we need to take a few steps back and act for the greater good of society and in order to protect our fellow citizens and of course especially people in risk groups because that is the thing you do during crises; you step up for one another. My hopes for the Biden summit; I hope that we will soon in one way or another start treating this crisis like a crisis - the climate crisis, that is - because if we are to be blunt, we can have as many summits as we want, we can have as many meetings and conferences as we want and make nice speeches and nice pledges like next year or 2050 and so on. But as long as those things contain so many loopholes as they do and as long as we are not actually treating the crisis as a crisis of course we won't be able to achieve any major changes. As I mentioned earlier, we need to change our mindsets and we need to change or view of the world. We cannot try to solve this crisis with the same approach that got us into it in the first place so we need to start treating the crisis like a crisis. 00:40:40 Without an increased level of awareness among people in general of course there will be no pressure on world leaders to actually start making the changes that are necessary to safeguard humanity so my hope is that we will start treating the crisis like a crisis. CL Thank you so much, Greta. Let me first give the floor to Daisy Moran from the global youth organisation [unclear]. Daisy. DM Thank you and thank you for your question. I believe my generation, our generation that we are representing is a generation of allyship because we understand our privilege and how to use our privileges to uplift those in the most vulnerable situations. The Global Youth Summit is a platform and a forum for all of youth and stakeholders and supporters to come together to really listen to what are the policy changes that need to be made so that we can have more equitable societies and systems in place. So I hope that you can join us this weekend while we discuss the important issues and challenges facing our generation and how our youth leaders are in a position to create the most innovative solutions to tackle these big issues. Thank you. 00:41:59 CL Thanks so much, Daisy. Now we'll move to Dr Maria Van Kerkhove. MK Thanks, Christian. Those were excellent answers but I did want to clarify something here with regard to increased transmission. We are seeing increased rates of infection across all age groups. Last week there were 5.2 million cases reported to WHO globally, the largest in a single week since this pandemic began, 16 months into the pandemic. That is the largest increase in a week that we have seen to date. We've seen an increase across all age groups. We need to take the blame away and in the question it was meant to blame and we can't do that. Everyone has a role to play in this pandemic. We all have a role to play in keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe. What we are seeing is a slight age shift in some countries driven by social mixing and social mixing doesn't necessarily mean going out and having a party. It means individuals who have to leave their home to go to work, it means individuals have to feed their families and if you increase social mixing for a variety of reasons, whether this is for work or for religious reasons or indeed socialising itself the virus will take advantage of that. 00:43:18 If you add on top of it these variants of concern, variants that are circulating around the world, particularly the B117 variant which is circulating in a large number of countries across the globe that have increased transmissibility; if you add variants that have increased transmissibility with increased mixing this virus will take off and case numbers will increase. In a number of countries we've seen a very, very steep incline due to this. In addition to that we are seeing some countries not able to implement the public health and social measures that are needed to allow for physical distancing and in many parts of the world physical distancing is really not possible but in other parts of the world it is. So we need to do what we can to avoid those crowded settings, avoid those settings where social mixing - particularly indoor, crowded settings where there's poor ventilation, where the virus really likes to spread efficiently between individuals. 00:44:18 We need governments to enable people to carry out those measures; very easy for us to say stay home if you can but we need governments to support individuals to work from home, to stay home if necessary so that we can reduce the possibility for the virus to spread. All of us really have a role to play. Youth, young people, children, young adults are showing us ways in which to be innovative, to remain socially connected yet physically distant. I think what we are seeing with the youth and this youth mobilisation is really energetic. There's a spirit, there's an energy here that is holding leaders accountable and saying, help us help the situation and I'm really inspired to see that. I was really happy to hear the by youth, for youth as you pointed out and showing us that young people, young adults, children can make a significant difference every day. So please let's stop the blame in terms of who is spreading. All of us have a role to play, all of us need to be supported in taking those individual-level measures as well as measures at the family, at the community, at the sub-national, at the international level. 00:45:30 CL Thanks so much, Dr Van Kerkhove. We have Dr Mike Ryan, WHO Health Emergencies Executive Director, to add. MR Thanks, Christian. I just want to reflect on one thing that Daisy said. She said youths are not the problem, youths are the solution and I fundamentally believe in that and thank you, Daisy, for saying that and the energy from everyone today is fantastic. Reflecting on something that Greta said, she spoke about mindset and mindset is everything and Tedros reminds of that every day, I think; it's one of his most common pronouncements about mindset and it doesn't matter what problem you're trying to solve. There's no amount of announcement, there's no amount of recommendations, there's no amount of anything that changes anything until we change our mindset and that can be the mindset about protecting ourselves and our families from COVID and taking precautions. It can be the mindset on government's response to COVID. It can be the mindset driving climate action and reducing climate change. 00:46:37 So I think really we all need to reflect on that. It is our mindsets that drive our behaviour, both positive and negative and they're having a huge impact on the planet and obviously our behaviour's having a huge impact on the trajectory of this pandemic. Thank you. CL Thank you very much, Dr Ryan. The next question in line comes from Isabel Sacco from EFE. Isabel, please unmute yourself. IS Good afternoon, thank you, Christian. I would like to know if you can give us an overview of the proportion of the people under 40 years old who are in ICUs globally or by region. Connected to that, what do we know about mortality among babies? I saw figures from Brazil that indicate that 1,300 babies have died there from COVID. Thank you. CL Thank you very much, Isabel; very detailed questions. Let me give to Dr Maria Van Kerkhove first. MK Thanks for these very important questions. I cannot give you a specific answer of the proportion of those under 40 in ICU but what I can say is that there is an increasing number of hospitalisations among younger individuals and this is driven by what I answered in the last part of the question. 00:48:01 When you have increased transmissibility across all age groups you will see increased rates of hospitalisation, you will see an increased proportion of ICU and you will see increases in death. We are seeing unfortunately a little bit of a shift in the age structure in terms of the median age of individuals who are infected but that is driven by changes in social mixing patterns. If you remember, last spring, in the northern hemisphere's spring we saw a similar situation where as societies were opening up across Europe for example there was an age shift in the median age; it went from an older age group to a slightly younger age group. Again this is driven by people who are leaving their homes to go back to work and if there is the virus that is spreading, if you have virus variants this is a dangerous combination. We are seeing increases in hospitalisation among younger age groups and increased ICU and increased deaths. 00:48:55 With regard to children I did see that report that you mentioned about Brazil. Overall if we look at infection among children, if we look at severity among children still around the world there is a lower proportion of children that experience disease, that experience severe disease and some children do die. If there is a lot of virus that is circulating, if you have millions of cases being reported - and you know so far we've had 140 million cases reported worldwide - we will see deaths in all age groups. With regard to the youngest children, overall they tend to be more mild but again this is not universal. We do see that children, particularly children with underlying conditions but children in general, have died from COVID. So everyone is at risk from this virus. People are at risk of getting infected, at risk of getting severe disease so we do need to do what we can where we can as much as we can to first and foremost prevent infections but also making sure that we use the systems that are in place to get tested, to be able to carry out the public health actions that do prevent the spread from an adult to a child, from a child to an adult; everything that we can to really prevent that level of infection and care for as many people as we can, getting them early into that clinical care pathway to receive the care based on the symptoms that they have. 00:50:28 CL Thank you so much. The next question goes to Akwazi Sarpong from BBC News Africa. Akwazi, please unmute yourself. Akwazi, do you hear us? Yes, please go ahead. AK [Inaudible]. CL Akwazi, the sound is really bad. Please try one more time. AK Yes, [inaudible] in Ghana so [inaudible]. I have two questions. I would like [sound slip] many young people living with disability, particularly visual impairment, have been affected by this virus in Africa and at the global level. The second question is, what programmes are in place to support families with children and young persons with disability and special needs to help us combat this? Thank you. CL Thank you very much, Akwazi; very important questions. I'll hand to Dr Van Kerkhove for a start. 00:51:35 MK I can start. In fact we have departments that are working particularly on persons with disabilities to ensure that persons with disabilities, who are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in a variety of ways, whether this is about getting the right care, receiving information appropriately so that they know how to keep themselves safe, making sure that they have the ability to receive the materials they need, testing, etc. We have some guidance that is coming out, I hope, today - it was approved yesterday - looking specifically at the more than one billion people worldwide who are living with disabilities, making sure that they have access to vaccination for example. We have seen some innovation in terms of personal protective equipment; if you've noticed, some of the masks for example will have a clear panel so that you can see lips moving for people who have a hearing impairment so there are a number of innovations that are coming online to support individuals with disabilities but also families with disabilities as well because even individuals with disabilities; their caretakers have to be able to care for them. So we need to make sure that those caregivers are protected against the virus as well so there're a number of activities that are underway to ensure those living with disabilities as well as those caring for those with disabilities have the appropriate care and information that they need. 00:53:05 CL Thank you very much, Dr Van Kerkhove. The next question goes to Priti Padnaik from Geneva Health Files. Priti, please unmute yourself. No, Priti lowered her hand apparently in the meantime or we don't find you any more. The next question goes to John Zaracostas from The Lancet. John, please unmute yourself. JO Good afternoon. Can you hear me there? CL Very well. Go ahead. JO I was wondering if you could give me up-to-date estimates on how many vaccine facilities worldwide with excess capacity could be enabled to produce vaccines and secondly, if possible, if Dr Tedros could give us his perspective on what's going on in his homeland where right now they're facing an existential threat. CL Thank you very much. We'll take the first question and I guess we'll see if Mariangela Simao is online... or then... SS I could start. CL Dr Swaminathan; exactly. Please go ahead. SS Thank you. Thank you very much, John, for that question. This is exactly the work that we've started now as part of the COVID vaccine manufacturing taskforce with our COVAX partners, CEPI, GAVI, UNICEF as well as the private sector and regional bodies like the African Union but also other regional organisations. The idea really is to take a short-to-medium-term and a longer-term approach. The short-term and the immediate need is to increase vaccine supplies within the next weeks and months and that can be done by unblocking roadblocks and obstacles that have been identified by the manufacturers and by working with suppliers of those critical ingredients and raw materials so that we can link suppliers and manufacturers as well as work with member states to make sure that export bans and things like that don't interfere with the process of vaccine manufacturing. That's our immediate short-term priority which hopefully will be able to put more doses for COVAX in the coming weeks. The second, more medium-term, is to look at fill and finish capacity to link... 00:55:43 We know that there's a lot of unused fill and finish capacity globally and therefore we need manufacturers who have the capacity to make bulk product and link them with these existing fill and finish capacities in facilities around the world. CEPI already has done a mapping of that and it exists. Then the third, more medium to longer-term, is really to develop new facilities that would build on existing facilities, particularly in low and middle-income countries and get technology transfer, encourage companies. As the DG mentioned, the WHO put out a call on Friday both for owners of technology, particularly MRNA technology to begin with, to come forward to work with us to share that technology, share the know-how and experience with recipient companies that will be selected according to a set of criteria that we are developing. 00:56:40 This will ensure not only supplies for this pandemic - though it may take a few months to get up and running if we start with existing facilities with some expertise - but also will help the future regional health security of regions which currently do not have any manufacturing capacity. This obviously can be extended to vaccines for many other infectious diseases. So that's what the taskforce is looking at and over the coming days we will provide much more detail. Thank you. CL Thank you so much, Dr Swaminathan. I'm calling on Dr Mike Ryan to take the other part. MR Thank you, John; important question. The situation in Tigray in Ethiopia remains very, very dire at the moment. The situation is not improving. We have unpredictable access, increasing humanitarian needs, increasing sexual violence. The response has been hindered by armed clashes throughout the region and many areas are still not receiving food or other assistance. We've got 4.5 million people affected by this crisis. 2.5 million of them have no access to services whatsoever. Half a million people have no access to food. We have a million internally displaced people in 178 sites scattered across the region being served by IOM and UNHCR. 00:58:18 We've had over 800 cases of sexual and gender-based violence reported from just five hospitals alone; that many cases. We've over 62,000 refugees who have crossed into Sudan. That safety valve is very, very difficult to manage and very difficult for us to have access from that side and to support people in the affected area. So, as I said, unpredictable access, displacement, tremendous humanitarian needs but we have 20 health partners working with us who are operational on the ground but they're only accessing about half of the... where aid is concerned. When we look at health facilities, we've done a health facilities survey throughout the region in 264 health facilities. As of now only 72 of those facilities are operational and 40 of those are only partially accessible. 19 hospitals have been completely damaged or destroyed; 15 more with major damage. There're inadequate supply chains across the board. 00:59:23 So the situation in Tigray could not be more dire, the people there could not be in more need of support and help. The situation is deteriorating. The situation is very much a massive concern on a purely humanitarian basis here. There is a health crisis on top of a humanitarian crisis. We're very concerned about malnutrition, about malaria, about cholera, measles, COVID-19 - positivity rates have been rising - and other diseases like meningitis and other diseases that will exploit malnutrition, they will exploit stress and they will exploit all of what's happening in that population. We have resumed surveillance activities but only covering about 30% of the population and again severe, acute malnutrition is a major, major issue. It is very hard to overstate the extent of the humanitarian crisis and the health crisis currently unfolding in Tigray and the WHO and the other UN agencies and NGOs are calling for unfettered humanitarian access and for military conflict and those perpetrating the conflict to remove themselves from civilian areas and those who should not be there should not be there. Thank you. CL Thank you very much. This was Dr Mike Ryan, Executive Director for WHO's Health Emergencies Programme and Dr Bruce Aylward wanted to come in too. 01:00:51 BA Thanks, Christian. I just want to come back to the important point you raised, John, about how much capacity is unused around the world right now because there was huge attention last week at the conference of the African Union on the consultation that was called by the World Trade Organization to try to expand vaccine production globally. But we need to remember that the challenge is how we're actually using the doses that are being made because last week while those conferences were taking place 100 million more doses of vaccine were administered around the world. The issue, John, is where they're being administered because 1% of that 100 million went to low-income countries so 99 million doses of vaccine last week went into high, upper-middle-income and some low-middle-income countries but only 1% of that went to the lowest-income countries. 01:01:48 So every time we bring new capacities online, when we bring new deals online, etc, that you're hearing about we need to ask the question of where those doses are going because those doses are not going to the places that have got the least vaccine today. So we need to be careful in thinking that we can simply build additional capacity because that capacity is still going to the wrong places, quite frankly. While we are giving great attention to how we expand capacity it's going to take weeks and months for that to come online and in the meantime we've got to take some urgent and important decisions about how we are going to use the vaccines that exist today because if we have a lot more weeks where 100, 99% of the vaccine goes to a set of countries that already have most of the vaccine we are not going to get out of this crisis as rapidly and efficiently and with the least lives lost possible. CL Thank you very much for all your answers. With this we're coming to the end of our question-and-answer session. I was very glad to have you all online today and our special guests and I will ask our special guests to start the closing round and we'll go in reverse order. We'll start with Daisy Moran, the Global Youth Mobilisation, Youth [Unclear] and Worldwide YMCA representative. Daisy, please go ahead. 01:03:20 DM Thank you for the opportunity once again and as a reminder, please join us this weekend on April 23rd to 25th to have your voice heard. You have the solutions; please come to the table. We want you to be involved in your local communities and we have the funds to support you. With any questions please visit our website at www.youthglobalmobilisation.org Thank you. CL Fantastic. Thanks so much. Now we go to Elahi Rawshan, volunteer from the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, supporting young people in Bangladesh. Elahi, please go ahead. ER Thank you. I would like to thank everyone for inviting me here and I would like to echo the last voice; young people are the solution and I would like to invite all the localised solutions to collaborate with the Global Youth Mobilisation, who have been supporting these local actions and promoting them. 01:04:22 So I would also like to invite everyone to join the Global Youth Summit coming up this week from 23rd to 25th. Thank you once again. CL Thank you so much, Elahi, to you. Last but not least we go to Greta Thunberg, Climate and Environmental Activist. Greta, the floor is yours. GT To be honest I don't really have anything more to add. Just take care, everyone. But also while we have media here, I really urge you to really bring awareness to this issue of vaccine inequity because you have the power to raise awareness about this. When we talk about countries like, for example, the UK and the US - just as a few examples - that they are mass-vaccinating large groups of their populations, even healthier young people, we see it from a different perspective, that we don't always see it from our Western, privileged point of view but rather that we think globally and we need to prioritise those most vulnerable first. Thank you. Take care, everyone. CL Thank you so much, Greta, for these words. Yes, there's hardly anything to add; I agree. From my side let me thank everyone and remind you that the sound files of this press briefing will be shared right afterwards today and the transcript will be available as of tomorrow. Dr Tedros. TAG Thank you. Thank you, Christian. I would like to thank our guests today, Greta, Elahi and Daisy. You have been wonderful. Thank you so much indeed. I would also like to join you in inviting everybody to join on the 23rd to 25th the Global Youth Summit, from Friday to Sunday so I look forward to seeing you there. I would also like to thank our media colleagues who have joined and see you in our upcoming presser. That will be on Friday. Thank you so much. 01:06:54

Coletiva de imprensa: anúncios do Governo 16/04/2021

O Vice-Governador Rodrigo Garcia anunciou nesta sexta-feira (16) a atualização do Plano São Paulo, com início da fase de transição para todo Estado até o dia 2 de maio. Nas últimas semanas, os indicadores da saúde apresentaram uma redução progressiva, com queda nas internações e diminuição da ocupação hospitalar, o que permitiu o avanço para retomada gradativa e consciente das atividades não essenciais. As medidas mais rígidas de restrição da fase vermelha, o avanço na vacinação e a expansão de leitos hospitalares resultaram em decréscimo de 1,4% ao dia em novas internações e de 0,8% ao dia em UTIs para pacientes moderados e graves com coronavírus. “A fase de transição é necessária para que possamos dar passos seguros adiante sem o risco de retroceder. O apoio da população nesse novo momento da pandemia continua sendo fundamental. Não é hora de baixarmos a guarda”, afirmou o Vice-Governador e Secretário de Governo Rodrigo Garcia. A nova fase inicia no próximo domingo (18) e está dividida em dois períodos. Na primeira semana, de 18 a 23 de abril, a flexibilização acontecerá para o setor do comércio, incluindo lojas de shopping, com funcionamento permitido das 11h às 19h. Nesse período, também será permitida a realização de cerimônias e cultos religiosos com restrições, desde que seguidos rigorosamente todos os protocolos de higiene e distanciamento social. No período de 24 a 30 de abril, além dos estabelecimentos comerciais, poderão voltar a funcionar as atividades ligadas ao setor de serviços como restaurantes e similares (lanchonetes, casas de sucos, bares com função de restaurante), salões de beleza e barbearias, atividades culturais, parques, clubes e academias. O horário de funcionamento será das 11h às 19h, com exceção das academias, que poderão abrir das 7h às 11h e das 15h às 19h. A fim de evitar aglomerações, a capacidade de ocupação permitida nos estabelecimentos na fase de transição será de 25%. O toque de recolher continua em vigência em todo o Estado, das 20h às 5h, assim como a orientação para o teletrabalho para as atividades administrativas não essenciais e escalonamento de horário na entrada e saída das atividades do comércio, serviços e indústrias. A próxima atualização do Plano SP acontecerá a partir do dia 1 de maio. O resumo com as medidas anunciadas pelo Governo do Estado está disponível na página https://issuu.com/governosp/docs/.

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Media briefing on COVID-19 - 12/04/2021

00:01:55 CL Hello and good day to wherever you are listening to us today. It is Monday 12th April 2021. My name is Christian Lindmeier and I'm welcoming you to today's global COVID-19 press conference. Simultaneous interpretation is provided in the six official UN languages, Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Spanish and Russian as well as in Portuguese and Hindi. Now let me introduce the participants in the room; Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General; Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead on COVID-19, Dr Bruce Aylward, Special Advisor to the Director-General and the Lead on the ACT Accelerator and Dr Kate O'Brien, Director for Immunisation, Vaccines and Biologicals. We're also joined remotely by Dr Mike Ryan, Executive Director for the Health Emergencies Programme and by Dr Soumya Swaminathan, the Chief Scientist. Let me hand over to the Director-General for the opening remarks. The floor is yours. TAG Thank you. Thank you, Christian. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. In January and February the world saw six consecutive weeks of declining cases. We have now seen seven consecutive weeks of increasing cases and four weeks of increasing deaths. 00:03:22 Last week was the fourth-highest number of cases in a single week so far. Several countries in Asia and the Middle East have seen large increases in case. This is despite the fact that more than 780 million doses of vaccine have now been administered globally. Make no mistake; vaccines are a vital and powerful tool but they're not the only tool. We say this day after day, week after week and we will keep saying it; physical distancing works, masks work, hand hygiene works, ventilation works, surveillance, testing, contact tracing, isolation, supported quarantine and compassionate care; they all work to stop infections and save lives. But confusion, complacency and inconsistency in public health measures and their application are driving transmission and costing lives. It takes a consistent, co-ordinated and comprehensive approach. So many countries around the world have shown that this virus can be stopped and contained with proven public health measures and strong systems that respond rapidly and consistently. 00:05:04 As a result many of those countries have gained control over COVID-19 and their people are now able to enjoy sporting events, concerts, restaurants and seeing their family and friends safely. WHO does not want endless lock-downs. The countries that have done best have taken a tailored, measured, agile and evidence-based combination of measures. We too want to see societies and economies reopening and travel and trade resuming but right now intensive care units in many countries are overflowing and people are dying and it is totally avoidable. In some countries despite continued transmission restaurants and nightclubs are full, markets are open and crowded with few people taking precautions. Some people appear to be taking the approach that if they are relatively young it doesn't matter if they get COVID-19. This disease is not flu. Young, healthy people have died and we still don't fully understand the long-term consequences of infection for those who survive. Many people who have suffered even mild disease report long-term symptoms including fatigue, weakness, brain fog, dizziness, tremors, insomnia, depression, anxiety, joint pain, chest tightness and more, which are symptoms of long COVID. 00:07:15 This pandemic is a long way from over but we have many reasons for optimism. The decline in cases and deaths during the first two months of the year shows that this virus and its variants can be stopped. With a concerted effort to apply public health measures along side equitable vaccination we could bring this pandemic under control in a matter of months. Whether we do or not comes down to the decision and the actions that governments and individuals make every day. The choice is ours. Christian, back to you. CL Thank you very much, Dr Tedros. Let me now open the floor to questions from the media. To get into the queue to ask questions you need to raise your hand using the raise your hand icon and please do not forget to unmute yourself. We have a long list already so let's see how far we get. We'll start with Agnes Pedrero from AFP. Agnes, please unmute yourself. 00:08:38 AG Hi, good evening, everybody. Thank you. Dr Tedros has participated in a summit on manufacturing vaccine in Africa today while there is another high-level meeting with WHO and WTO and manufacturers of vaccines this week. We wanted to know if there is any progress on that front and if you can share some details with us about that and if we should expect a boost, an increase in production in the near future of the vaccines that have been already authorised. Thank you. CL Thank you very much, Agnes. Let me start with Dr Aylward, please. BA Thank you very much, Agnes. Yes, the meeting today was particularly important and it was a summit called by a number of heads of state of Africa and the African Union to discuss steps that could be taken concretely and rapidly to establish production capacity on the continent and then to use that obviously to expand in the near term and longer term the production capacity for Africa in particular but even to serve beyond that potentially. In that meeting I think what we saw was extraordinary seriousness and commitments from the very heads of state as well as the expert agencies in Africa such as the Africa CDC to move very, very quickly on this agenda. 00:10:20 As everyone knows, it takes time to build those capacities, to get the regulatory capacities in place but when you have that kind of political will to put the necessary resources behind it and support behind it I anticipate that this is going to move much more quickly than people will have anticipated. But the meeting is still going on and will be for some time so I think we have to wait to see where the final decisions and next steps land. CL Thank you very much. SS Christian, maybe I could add. CL Sure, Soumya. This is Soumya Swaminathan, our Chief Advisor. Please add. SS Thank you. Just to add to what Dr Aylward said, the WHO along with the partners in COVAX - that's CEPI, GAVI, UNICEF but also others like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank - have now been working on a proposal to really expand manufacturing capacity for vaccines and eventually other health products, drugs as well, in areas of the world where there is little or no capacity just now. 00:11:33 Because what we've seen in this pandemic is that there is a massive imbalance in the global supply chains, especially in manufacturing capacity in some parts of the world and not in others. The African Union, as we've just heard, is very keen to invest in building that infrastructure and capacity. This is something that will take some time because we'll have to build not only physical infrastructure - that's the easier part - but it's the trained human resources that you need that have the expertise because a vaccine development is a fairly complex endeavour and so there would be a process of having to train those staff. And then very importantly there will need to be technology transfer from institutes, academics and companies that have technologies for vaccine development, tried and tested technologies now. As we know, the MRNA, the viral vector vaccines; these are now tried and tested and can be very easily also changed to accommodate a new pathogen, either a new variant or a completely new pathogen. So the goal is over the next few weeks and months that we will launch a programme to try to do this in partnership with the African Union but also in other regions of the world where there is interest. Thank you. 00:13:01 CL Thank you very much, Dr Swaminathan. We come now to the next question and that's Donato Mancini from the Financial Times. Donato, please unmute yourself. DO Thanks for taking my question. Do you have any more comment on the planned mixing and matching of vaccines, most recently in China but also in France and Germany? I know you said there was not enough data to support the use but I'm wondering if you have any more colour on that. The other question that I have for you is, what is the current status of the four Chinese-made shots in terms of WHO appraisal? Are you looking at them, will you be looking at them? Thank you so much. CL Thank you very much, Donato. Dr Aylward, please. 00:13:55 BA Thank you very much, Donato. I'll take the second part of the question and then I think Kate will speak to the first part of it. In terms of the Chinese products, as we talked about last week, WHO has since the beginning, since late last year actually, 2020 we've gone out with a call for expressions of interest for any company that is engaged in advance-stage trials and production of COVID-19 vaccines to work with the WHO on the early and ongoing what we call a rolling review of those products, similar to what the European Medicines Agency is doing, so that we might as rapidly as possible be able to ensure that they meet WHO's emergency listing requirements and that they could be then recommended by WHO for use. At this point two of the Chinese vaccines are in advanced stages of assessment in that process, the Sinopharm and Sinovac products. As you know, we had teams in China for nearly a month through January and the beginning of February to assess the facilities, the manufacturing practices, etc. With that part done there're a number of additional stages and steps which are happening now with the expectation that at least one of these products will be looked at by the technical advisory group that advises on the emergency use listing for products for WHO as early as late this month and then a second product hopefully very soon after. Then with respect to the mix and match perhaps Kate would like to speak to that. 00:15:37 Yes, on this question of what we refer to as mix and match where a second dose would be of a product different than the first dose, there are no data at this point on any mix and match regimens although certainly there probably are individuals around the world who have had a different product for their second dose than the product that they had for their first dose. We really welcome studies that would look at mix and match regimens because clearly from a supply perspective and also from a programmatic perspective where many countries have more than one and some countries up to three, four, five products in a country it would be very valuable to have these kinds of data to inform how best to use the vaccines. So we really encourage studies to look at mixing and matching vaccines but that really does have to be done in a way that provides evidence that can be acted upon both by the regulators and by the policy advisors and policymakers. 00:16:40 We are aware of a clinical trial in the UK looking at a mix and match regimen with the AstraZeneca and the Pfizer products and again we look forward to additional studies looking at combinations of different products in a single regimen and in an individual. Thank you. SS I'd like to add very quickly, Christian, to what's been said and that is about the standardisation of the assays. As you just heard, there's a study going on in the UK that's looking at mix and match of AstraZeneca with one of the MRNA vaccines; I think they're using both Pfizer and Moderna. The endpoint there is going to be immunogeneicity so it's not a clinical efficacy trial but it's basically going to look at comparable immunogeneicity. As you know, we still don't have a definite correlate of protection to use for vaccine trials or for that matter to test people to see if they have antibodies that will protect them from infection or disease. So we really need to define that cut-off and that can be done essentially if the different studies around the world try to use the same standard because otherwise you cannot compare the results of the antibody assays, both neutralisation antibody assays and binding antibody assays. 00:18:05 So what WHO has done is we of course have this expert committee on biological standards that sets the standards for many, many tests and it does so every year. They work very rapidly to establish the standards both for neutralising and binding antibody assays. We've worked with the National Institute of Biological Standards in the UK, NIBS, where now the WHO international standard is available for any group, a vaccine developer, a company or an academic lab that's doing these assays to use. We encourage everyone to use the WHO international standard and to report their assay results in international units that have been defined. That will then enable us to compare the different studies and ultimately hopefully define the correlate of protection, which would really help in the kind of studies we're talking about, the mix and match studies but also to test the new vaccines which are being developed for variants as well as other potential new vaccines that are coming down the pipeline. So I wanted to alert everyone to the fact that we do have the WHO international standards and we encourage everyone to use those. Thank you. 00:19:23 CL Thank you very much. This was Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist for WHO. We'll continue with Simon Ateba from Today News Africa. Simon, please unmute yourself. SI Thank you for taking my question. This is Simon Ateba with Today News Africa in Washington DC. With doses of AstraZeneca vaccine drying up across the world can you give us an update on the COVAX vaccine roll-out across Africa? How many doses have been sent to Africa now? How will this vaccine freeze affect roll-out in Africa? How does it affect those who have received only their first doses? Thank you. CL Thank you very much, Simon. I'll hand to Dr Bruce Aylward. BA Hi, Simon. Thank you very much for the question. As I think most people are aware, one of the priorities of the COVAX facility has been to ensure that all countries can get access to vaccine in an equitable manner. At this point, as again most of you are aware, the COVAX, facility has as of today distributed just over 38.7 million doses and we expect to get past 40 million doses later this week. 00:20:46 33 countries of the African Union have received doses so far from COVAX; another five or six - so we should go over 40 countries on the African continent that will have received doses by the end of this week and nearly half of the doses from COVAX will have gone to countries on the African continent. As of today, Simon, that stands at almost exactly 17 million doses and it'll go to about 18, nearly 19 million doses by the end of this week. In terms of the bigger question you raise about the overall vaccine supply this continues to be a real challenge. As most of the journalists on the call are aware the demands of the escalating outbreak and pandemic in India have made tremendous demands on the supply out of India, the SII producer in particular which is one of the main producers that supplies the COVAX facility. We do know that India's working hard to ensure that as it meets the needs of its own citizens it can also ensure that SII doses can continue to flow through COVAX as well. So there's certainly the commitment on that side to ensure that that happens. 00:22:02 At the same time we have supplies from AstraZeneca directly through the COVAX facility and over the last two weeks we've seen a real scale-up in the speed and roll-out of those products. Now if we look at the country supply from the AstraZeneca side that now is getting up in the double digits as well. So, Simon, one of the things we'll be looking at is how best then to distribute the doses that are coming out of SII, out of AG, etc, to make sure that all countries and especially and including the countries on the African continent can be covered as well. But the reality is the whole vaccine supply situation remains precarious and the challenge still because of such competing demands for these doses remains a very difficult one to manage. The good news is, as we spoke about previously, that the interval between the AstraZeneca doses can be extended out to 12 weeks and probably if necessary a bit longer so we do have a bit of time, to the second question that you asked about ensuring people get their second doses. But obviously we'd like to make sure that that interval doesn't go longer than that so we're doing everything possible to ensure the supply of doses of AstraZeneca product in particular - because that's what's gone out already through COVAX - continues. 00:23:33 CL Thank you. Dr Kate O'Brien, please. KOB Let me add a couple of things to what Bruce shared in terms of the doses going to different parts of the world. We've provided guidance to countries about using the supply that has been provided to immunise as many people as possible with the expectation that additional supply will be coming in order to provide the second dose. But it really provides an emphasis that I think many people in these press conferences - Maria especially - have just emphasised over and over; that as vaccines are being deployed this is exactly the time when we need to double down on the non-pharmaceutical interventions; on masking and reducing transmission. Because we give the vaccines their best chance of providing protection across the whole of the community when in addition to scaling up immunity through vaccination we reduce transmission, which also reduces the likelihood of having emergence of variants that could escape from vaccine-induced immunity. 00:24:54 This is just again a reinforcement that we have so much hope and desire to get on with more regular life as people become vaccinated but it's actually the opposite; it's the very time when we should be as diligent as ever and ensure that we're not releasing too early those non-pharmaceutical interventions; hand washing, masking, not gathering in large crowds. So I just really want to emphasise that again and in particular around this issue of supply of second doses and the interval between giving a first dose and then getting that second dose. CL Thank you. Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, please. MK Thanks, Kate. I wanted to come in on that as well. I think we really need to emphasise and we need your help; those of you who are writing articles following our press conference today, we need headlines around these public health and social measures, we need headlines around the tools that we have right now that can prevent infections and save lives. We are in a critical point of the pandemic right now. The trajectory of this pandemic is growing. For the seventh week in a row we've had more than 4.4 million new cases reported in the last week. 00:26:12 If you compare that to a year ago we had about 500,000 cases being reported per week. Last week we had 4.4 million cases. If you look on our website and you actually look at the epi curve and the trajectory of the pandemic right now it is growing exponentially. This is not the situation we want to be in 16 months into a pandemic, where we have proven control measures. It is time right now when everyone has to take stock and have a reality check about what we need to be doing. The Director-General's speech today outlined what we need to be doing. You hear us every day saying what we need to be doing. Vaccines and vaccinations are coming online but they're not here yet in every part of the world where they need to be. There are a lot of concrete steps that are being made to increase vaccine capacities, vaccine production and rolling vaccines out. But right now there are tools that we have; we have to be using them right now. Take a look at your social media feed, take a look at what people are doing and how you are mixing, make sure that you are doing the right steps that you can to keep yourself safe, keep your loved ones safe. 00:27:20 We need governments to support individuals so that the control measures that are in place are applied consistently, are applied in a coherent manner across state lines, province lines, canton lines, whatever that subnational level is because it's confusing. The messages and the application of these interventions is not being applied consistently. About a year ago we outlined guidance about adjusting public health and social measures and the six things that we mentioned to have in place were about having a system in place to know where your virus is. Do you have good surveillance in place to know where the virus is circulating, do you have health system capacities in place to detect cases quickly, to carry out contact tracing, to provide supported quarantine, to get individuals into a clinical care pathway so that they can receive the care that they need? Do you have the outbreak risk minimised in specific settings like long-term living facilities or settings where we know that the virus transmission can be amplified, indoor settings for example? 00:28:22 Do we have preventative measures in place in workplaces, in schools, all of the measures that are outlined for physical distancing, disinfection, good ventilation, good communication for staff, for people who are visiting these essential locations? Have you managed the risk of importation as travel is opening up and do we have communities fully engaged? All of those six measures that are outlined still need to be applied as we look at adjusting our measures. If you look at your trajectory within your borders, reassess the situation and see what can be done. We all need to be playing our part at an individual level but we need governments to support us in being able to do so. There was a 9% increase in transmission last week - seventh consecutive week where we see an increase in transmission - and a 5% increase in deaths. This is not the direction we need to be going and we really need to be serious about this. It is vaccines but it's not vaccines only; it's vaccines and; what can you be doing every day, what can you be doing to keep yourself safe and your loved ones safe? 00:29:29 CL Thank you all so much for these clarifications. Now we'll move to Priti Putnak from, I guess, the New Humanitarian. Priti, please unmute yourself. Priti Putnak, do you hear us? Please unmute yourself. PR This is Priti from Geneva Health Files. Last week it was mentioned that a vaccine manufacturing taskforce was set up under COVAX. Can you tell us a little more about this and if this taskforce will only look at bilateral technology transfer to boost production of vaccines and if yes will this undermine the COVID-19 technology access pool that seeks to encourage non-exclusive licensing agreements? Thank you. CL Thank you very much, Priti. I'm virtually looking at Dr Soumya Swaminathan; please. SS Thank you for that question, Priti. It's really important and I think just to build on what was discussed a little bit earlier in response to another question, we will come up with more details on the vaccine manufacturing taskforce in the next few days but what we're doing right now is working with the key partners, particularly with CEPI, also with GAVI and UNICEF to outline what the key actions are going to be. 00:31:06 The goal of course is to increase vaccine supplies so that we can scale up the vaccination programmes globally and do it as quickly as possible. For that we need some actions which are very immediate and short-term and that will result in immediate removal of any obstacles. That is things like looking at the raw materials and ingredients and the tubings and the plastic which are getting into short supply now because there are limited suppliers of these products and the demand is clearly outstripping the supply. There are also export restrictions that have been put in place by some countries on some of these products, which is creating a problem for some manufacturers. So the first step is really to identify what those critical needs are, where there is a global shortage and try to address them, find either new manufacturers for those products... but also work with governments to make sure that there are no export restrictions on these products. That's where the WTO and the trade rules would come in. 00:32:17 The second would be really to look at expanding the manufacturing of currently available and approved vaccines. We've seen a number of manufacturers have gone out and made their own arrangements; AstraZeneca for example has partnered with over eight companies around the world. But not all have done that and so we want to try to encourage companies to do more of this type of voluntary licensing of their technologies and this is where the CTAP comes in so there is a link very much with the COVID technology access pool, who will work closely with the medicines patent pool. They have the knowledge and experience through doing these kind of licensing agreements which are fair, which are transparent. Most important, we must ensure that the additional doses will go through COVAX to the countries that need them so there has to be an equitable distribution of the additional doses that are produced. That's why working with an intermediary like the medicines patent pool and CTAP is going to be very important. 00:33:35 The third stream of work in this taskforce is really going to be expanding the basic manufacturing capacity of parts of the world - the African continent for example - that currently have very, very limited capacity. That will involve a number of different activities. It's going to require investment, it's going to require a business plan for sustainability and it's going to need of course technology transfer, a lot of training and so on. So that will probably take six to 12 months to get into place gut some of the other actions that we can take now could make a different in the next two to three months. So it's going to be an integrated approach with immediate, short-term and medium-term as well as long-term goals and objectives but all with the goal of increasing vaccine supplies for COVID but also for other diseases. Africa has a huge need for vaccines that are still quite common on the continent; yellow fever, lassa fever and others; Ebola. So there is a huge potential for manufacturing vaccines on the continent for other diseases and ultimately being self-sufficient. 00:34:52 That really is the goal and I think you'll be hearing more about it in the coming weeks. Thank you. CL Thank you very much, Dr Swaminathan. With this we move to Ankit Kumar from India Today. Ankit, please unmute yourself. AN Thank you. I wanted to ask about remdesivir. Where does the WHO stand on the use of remdesivir.? Is there any clinical trial to show that it's useful as far as COVID is concerned? Because in India there is a huge queue of patients to get remdesivir. who cannot get it. Could you please comment on this? Thank you. CL Thank you very much, Ankit. Please, Dr Swaminathan. SS Yes, I can start and I don't know if Janet Diaz is on the call but essentially the guideline development group of WHO did put out guidance. As you know, we have these living guidelines now where every time there is enough evidence on a particular drug we update the guideline. This was done for remdesivir. several months ago based on the available evidence. There were about five trials that were available at that time, of which the Solidarity trial was the largest multi-country trial in more than 30 countries which essentially showed that remdesivir. given to hospitalised patients did not reduce mortality, it did not reduce the duration of hospitalisation and it did not affect the progression of disease from being, say, off oxygen to patients progressing onto oxygen or the need for mechanical ventilation. Those were the endpoints that were looked at. 00:36:48 There are smaller studies that have shown in some subgroups of patients perhaps some marginal benefit, like patients who need low-flow oxygen. The NIH trial showed that perhaps there was a marginal mortality benefit but it was in a very small sub-group of patients. The Solidarity trial, as you know, has been going on now for almost a year and the final data on remdesivir. is now being analysed. This is going to be looking at more than 4,500 patients in remdesivir. compared to the same number in placebo so this is really a huge number. 00:37:25 The data analysis is currently ongoing and we should be updating those results in the next few weeks but I refer you to the guidelines that were put out by WHO that clearly summarise all the evidence on remdesivir. Basically the recommendation was that there wasn't enough strong evidence of its benefit in hospitalised patients but obviously we're looking at any emerging data that is coming out, which will be then used to update those guidelines. Thanks, Christian. CL Thank you very much. We don't have Dr Diaz online but Dr Van Kerkhove could add. MK Yes, only very briefly to add about the guidelines that Soumya mentioned. We do have living guidelines published on remdesivir.; they were published in November. We currently have made a conditional recommendation against the use of remdesivir. in hospitalised COVID-19 patients regardless of their disease severity because of a lack of evidence showing that it improved survival and other outcomes in these patients. But as Soumya has said and as we have said for other therapeutics. We are constantly looking at the clinical trials that are underway and these are living guidelines so these will be updated as more data from those clinical trials becomes available. 00:38:45 CL Thank you very much. For the next question in line we come to Gabriela Sotomayor from Progreso. Gabriela, please unmute yourself. GA Hola. Thank you for taking my question, Christian. On question and one quick clarification. The Head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said that their vaccines don't have very high rates of protection. So my question is, many countries in Latin America are using the Chinese vaccines so what is your assessment on this situation? And a very quick clarification if I may after my question last week because I think your message has not been understood. Doctors who are in the first line with COVID patients have the priority to be vaccinated regardless whether they work in the private sector or the public sector. Because in Mexico those who work in private hospitals with COVID patients have been relegated, they have not been taken into account so just a quick clarification on that. Thank you so much. 00:39:59 CL Dr Kate O'Brien, please. KOB Thank you for the question. As you know, there are quite a number of vaccines that are being used around the world now in different programmes and all of those vaccines are under emergency use licensure with an evolving evidence base around their efficacy, their performance and of course those are from randomised-control trials. Then we're also looking at evidence from the routine use of vaccines and there is a range in the randomised-control trials of the efficacy of the vaccines but what's really important to recognise is that the vaccines have all met the benchmark of what WHO established as the minimum criteria for vaccines that would be effective for use to control the pandemic. The second thing to recognise is that when you compare the results of one vaccine against another in spite of some standardised case definitions that doesn't necessarily mean that the case definitions were used in a standardised way from one trial to the next so it is quite difficult to compare the specific quantitative results from one product to the next. 00:41:26 Thirdly the results for just about every one of the vaccines have shown that there's much higher efficacy the more severe end of the spectrum of disease that is looked at. So each of the vaccines has had very high efficacy against hospitalisation, severe disease and then as you go down into more mild disease and frankly as we go down just to asymptomatic infection for most of the vaccines the efficacy value goes down. So what I think is most critical here is that we are in a phase of constraint of supply of vaccines around the world. We're learning about the best use of each of the vaccines as we go forward. In particular I think you're referring to some recent results that have come out in the past four or five days and over the weekend on the Sinovac product and some trial results both in routine use and from clinical trials. Again a range of values have been reported for that product going from mild and moderate disease to more severe disease with again that gradient of efficacy as you go to more and more severe disease. 00:42:54 In this phase where we're really focusing on reducing hospitalisation and deaths and serious disease it really is the performance against the serious end of the spectrum of disease that is most critical. So I think those are some of the main points around caution about comparing across products; the fact that we're really looking at products that meet those benchmarks that WHO set for the performance of the vaccines that would be useful in public health programmes and ongoing learning about how best to use the products that are at hand with prioritisation of the products for healthcare workers and those at highest risk of serious disease, which is really the target for protecting healthcare systems and reducing to the maximum degree possible serious disease and death. CL Thank you very much for these clarifications. We'll come to the last question, as I see it, from a guest we haven't had online here with us so far and that's Konstantinos Davanis from Greek public TV, ERT. Konstantinos, please unmute yourself. KO Thank you, Christian. Greece, like other European countries, has rightly started conducing self-diagnostic tests in schools and society so that the coronavirus transmission chains can be broken in a very difficult situation with increasing numbers of cases. 00:44:39 My question; how useful are the self-tests in the strategies to reduce cases? One question that has arisen in many countries is the management of test waste that has been done so far in test centres. Are there guidelines from the WHO on the management of this waste, are the tests dangerous if they are positive and someone comes in contact with them? Thank you very much. CL Thank you very much, Konstantinos. I'll ask Dr Van Kerkhove, please. MK Thank you. Bruce was just mentioning also we didn't answer the second part of the last question, which was about health workers. Just to emphasise that our recommendation for health workers is for all health workers regardless where they are working to receive the vaccination and make sure that we reach all health workers in all countries before we reach all of the populations in some countries. Thanks for just giving me a chance to clarify that; that was for Gabriela. 00:45:45 With regard to self-testing I think your point about waste is an important one but let me highlight something before that. I think what is really interesting in this pandemic is that we've had really interesting innovation as it relates to testing and this is a very exciting time in terms of the advancement in our ability to detect the virus, to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus. So there's a lot of really exciting innovation that is out there on testing that's easier to use, that could be done by an untrained individual, by you or I at home, outside of a healthcare facility. But what we have to do is make sure that these self-tests are accurate, that they're reliable, that they're quality-assured, that they're easy to use and that they perform well. There're a lot of tests on the market and not all of them perform well. Many of them are under evaluation in individual countries. We will be assessing those as well into the future because testing needs to be strategic in countries. The use of tests as part of controlling COVID needs to be linked to public health action. Testing for testing's sake really isn't useful. What we need is to know who has the virus so that they can receive clinical care and appropriate care so they can be isolated and so that contact tracing can be carried out and so it's really important that it's reliable. 00:47:09 Given that we have some self-tests that are coming on the market we need to make sure that they're assessed but this is really important. In terms of waste, the viral load that's used as part of the tests are considered to be quite low. It's important to follow the manufacturers' recommendations in terms of disposal of this. As a precaution we recommend putting it in a sealed bag before you dispose of it but it is possible that a combination of testing can be used. I think you heard the Director-General talk a lot about testing and how important that is but I do want to emphasise that testing needs to be strategic and we need to use all of the tools at hand but these tools need to be reliable, they need to be accurate and they need to be linked to public health action. CL Thank you very much for these clarifications; also the add-on for the question before. With this we're coming to the end of our question-and-answer session. Thank you all for your participation online and in the room. We will be sending the audio files and Dr Tedros' remarks right after the press conference. The full transcript will be posted on the WHO website tomorrow morning. For any follow-up questions please contact mediaenquiries@ who.int. Now over to Dr Tedros for closing remarks. TAG Thank you. Thank you, Christian. In closing I'd like to say a few things. The COVID-19 pandemic. has shown that global manufacturing capacity is not sufficient to deliver vaccines and other essential health products quickly and equitably to where they're needed most. Earlier today I joined several leaders from Africa for a discussion about how to increase local vaccine production. It was very encouraging to hear the Presidents of Rwanda, South Africa and also Senegal speak about the concrete steps they have so far taken to start local production. As you know, early in the pandemic African countries came together to agree on a co-ordinated continental approach to the pandemic and now they're coming together for a co-ordinated approach to scaling up manufacturing. 00:49:34 Investing in sustainable and secure domestic manufacturing capacity and national regulatory authorities is critical for providing essential immunisation programmes and for building strong, resilient health systems against the inevitable health emergencies of the future. To address this challenge WHO and our partners have established a COVAX manufacturing taskforce, as has been explained by Soumya, to increase supply in the short term but also to build a platform for sustainable vaccine manufacturing to support regional health security in the long term. What should be done today should be done today. WHO is also ready to provide immediate technical support to assist countries in assessing the feasibility of local production and in accessing technology and know-how. I also want to express my solidarity with the people on the Caribbean island of St Vincent, who have been evacuating their homes due to volcanic activity over the weekend. According to experts there are likely to be further eruptions and WHO stands ready to support the Government and people of St Vincent in any way we can. Finally I would like to wish all Muslims Ramadan Mubarak, Ramadan Karim. Thank you. 00:51:08

The choice is ours

"Intensive care units in many countries are overflowing and people are dying – and it’s totally avoidable. With a concerted effort to apply public health measures alongside vaccine equity, we could bring this pandemic under control in a matter of months. The choice is ours."

Coletiva de imprensa: anúncios do Governo - 09/04/2021

O Vice-Governador Rodrigo Garcia anunciou, nesta sexta-feira (9), a antecipação da primeira etapa do plano de imunização dos trabalhadores da educação. O início da vacinação, inicialmente previsto para segunda-feira (12), poderá ocorrer já neste sábado (10) em todo estado. Nesta primeira fase, serão disponibilizadas 350 mil doses para os profissionais do setor. “Nós havíamos anunciado a vacinação dos profissionais da Educação a partir de segunda-feira e estamos, portanto, antecipando para este sábado, no dia 10 de abril”, anunciou Rodrigo Garcia. Poderão ser vacinados os profissionais que atuam nas escolas das redes públicas (municipal, estadual e federal) e privada com idade a partir de 47 anos. Serão imunizados funcionários que atuam em diversas funções, como secretários, auxiliares de serviços gerais, faxineiras, mediadores, merendeiras, monitores, cuidadores, diretores, vice-diretores, professores de todos os ciclos da educação básica, professores coordenadores pedagógicos, além de professores temporários. “Educação é essencial em SP, por decreto do Governo do Estado. O início desta vacinação dos profissionais da Educação é um marco histórico”, destaca o secretário de Estado da Educação de SP, Rossieli Soares. Para receber a vacina, os profissionais devem fazer o cadastro na plataforma VacinaJá Educação (https://vacinaja.sp.gov.br/educacao). Até esta sexta-feira já foram cadastrados mais de 465 mil profissionais, sendo que 163 mil cadastros já estão validados e aptos a receber a primeira dose. No momento do preenchimento do cadastro na plataforma VacinaJá Educação, os profissionais deverão informar número do CPF, nome completo e e-mail. Em seguida, eles receberão um link no e-mail indicado para validação e continuidade do cadastro. É importante verificar se o e-mail não foi deslocado para a caixa de spam. No passo seguinte, o profissional deve confirmar dados pessoais completos e apontar nome da escola, rede de ensino, município e cargo ocupado. Para as redes municipais, particulares e federal também é necessário anexar os holerites dos meses de janeiro e fevereiro. Na sequência, o cadastro passará por um processo de análise e, se validado, o profissional receberá, por e-mail, o comprovante VacinaJá Educação. O documento contém um QRCode para verificação de autenticidade. No momento da vacinação, o profissional da educação deverá apresentar o comprovante VacinaJá Educação, RG e CPF para conferência dos dados pelo profissional de saúde. Caso o usuário não apresente o comprovante, ele não poderá ser imunizado. O cadastro é o primeiro passo para imunização, porém, não significa o agendamento. A aplicação das doses ocorrerá em parceria com as prefeituras, por meios das Secretarias de Saúde. Depois da confirmação do cadastro, o profissional deve ficar atento às regras do município em que atua para se informar sobre datas e postos de vacinação. O Governo do Estado anunciou nesta sexta-feira (9) o fim da fase emergencial de enfrentamento à pandemia a partir da próxima segunda (12). Com a queda de internações por COVID-19, todas as 645 cidades retornam para a fase vermelha até o próximo dia 18. Porém, algumas restrições serão mantidas, como o toque de recolher das 20h às 5h e veto a cerimônias religiosas coletivas. “A partir de segunda, avançamos para a fase vermelha do Plano São Paulo. Essa medida mostra claramente que o esforço feito pela população e pelo Governo de São Paulo nas últimas semanas começa a dar resultados”, afirmou o Vice-Governador e Secretário de Governo Rodrigo Garcia. A fase emergencial está em vigor desde o dia 15 de março para frear o aumento de casos e mortes por COVID-19 e reduzir a sobrecarga em hospitais públicos e particulares. O recrudescimento da pandemia exigiu prorrogação na medida no dia 26 de março, com término previsto para 11 de abril. As medidas mais rígidas de restrição, o avanço na vacinação e a expansão de leitos hospitalares resultaram em decréscimo de 17,7% em novas internações e de 0,5% ao dia em UTIs para pacientes moderados e graves com coronavírus. Com o retorno à fase vermelha, São Paulo volta a permitir a retirada de produtos pelo consumidor diretamente nos locais de venda, como comércios, restaurantes e outras atividades, Porém, o atendimento presencial e venda no local continuam proibidos em todos os estabelecimentos. As lojas de construção, que são serviços essenciais, podem voltar a contar com atendimento nas lojas segundo protocolos sanitários e de segurança. Também estão liberados os campeonatos esportivos profissionais a partir desta sexta (9), mas apenas após as 20h, reforço na testagem e normas mais rigorosas de controle para atletas e integrantes de comissões técnicas e arbitragem. Outras proibições da fase emergencial acabaram incorporadas à etapa vermelha e continuam em vigor a partir da próxima segunda. Além do toque de recolher noturno e do veto a celebrações religiosas coletivas, o Governo de São Paulo manteve a recomendação de escalonamento de horários de entrada e saída para trabalhadores da indústria, serviços e comércio. Os horários indicados são das 5h às 7h para entrada e das 14h às 16h para saída de profissionais da indústria; entrada das 7h às 9h e saída das 16h às 18h para os de serviços; e entrada das 9h às 11h e saída das 18h às 20h para os do comércio. A recomendação de teletrabalho também continua para todas as atividades administrativas do setor público e da iniciativa privada. Todas as medidas visam a redução de circulação urbana e a queda no fluxo de passageiros do transporte público. A fiscalização contra aglomerações e eventos clandestinos continua com ações intensificadas mesmo com o encerramento da fase emergencial. O Governo do Estado vai manter a atuação em conjunto com as Prefeituras para instalação de barreiras sanitárias em acessos a cidades turísticas, blitz contra eventos ilegais e fiscalização de protocolos sanitários nas atividades liberadas.

Sharing COVID-19 experiences: the El Salvador response

El Salvador responded rapidly and effectively to the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the country. In line with WHO advice, El Salvador stepped up preparedness of its health system in mid-January and announced a national emergency on 30 January, the same day that WHO declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern. El Salvador’s strong response has been built on equipping hospitals, community level care and training health workers, plus preparing for vaccine rollout, which commenced 17 February 2021.

Coletiva de imprensa OPAS COVID-19 - 31/03/2021

Coletiva de Imprensa OPAS COVID-19 31 de março de 2021 - áudio em Português.

Sesión informativa para la prensa sobre la COVID-19 en las Américas - 31/03/2021

Sesión informativa para la prensa sobre la COVID-19 en las Américas - audio Español.

PAHO press briefing on COVID-19 in the Americas - 03/31/2021

PAHO press briefing on COVID-19 in the Americas - 03/31/2021 - audio em English.

Conferencia de prensa de la OPS sobre COVID-19 - 31/03/2021

Conferencia de prensa de la OPS sobre COVID-19 / PAHO’s virtual press briefing on COVID-19 - audio original.

PAHO press briefing on COVID-19 - 03/31/2021

PAHO press briefing on COVID-19 - 03/31/2021 - audio French