New Amnesty chief: ‘Our global system of governance has failed’ amid pandemic

Issued on: 08/04/2021 - 

By: Stuart Norval
10 min

"At this point in the Covid-19 pandemic, even the most deluded leaders would struggle to deny that our social, economic and political systems are broken." These were the words of Agnès Callamard, the new secretary general of Amnesty International, as she launched the human rights NGO's annual report on Wednesday.

Callamard, a French citizen, took up her new post at the end of March. She told FRANCE 24 that in responding to the pandemic, most governments have "failed the most vulnerable, the poorest and women".

Amnesty's annual report said the health crisis had exposed "broken" policies and that cooperation was the only way forward.

Since the coronavirus emerged in China in late 2019, the pandemic has claimed nearly 2.9 million lives and infected at least 130 million people worldwide.

Despite regular calls for global solidarity from international organisations, figures show widening inequality in access to vaccines.

Governments are ‘gender blind’ to 

Covid-19's greater impact on women, global studies say


Issued on: 07/04/2021 - 

Two women wearing face masks are seen on April 2, 2021 in Berlin's Kreuzberg district, amid the ongoing coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. © David Gannon, AFP

Text by: Nicole TRIAN

Governments are putting women and girls at greater risk of the health and socio-economic impacts posed by the coronavirus pandemic, two global studies released Wednesday show, calling on leaders to prioritise gender equity in their response to the health crisis.

Two studies, one from a global research partnership led by the Global Health 50/50 Project in London and another by the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington, were released Wednesday to coincide with World Health Day that highlight major failings by national governments to consider sex or gender in their Covid-19 policies.

Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, several studies have pointed to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women.

Many women have shouldered a heftier burden taking on more unpaid work such as carer responsibilities, while an overwhelming number occupy frontline healthcare roles and other jobs classed as "essential" like teaching, cleaning and domestic services, as well as consumer-facing jobs that potentially increase their risk of exposure to the virus.

“What we’ve got is a blanket disregard for inequity in these policy responses,” Professor Sarah Hawkes, co-director of the Global Health 50/50 Project, said of the way governments have managed the pandemic in respect of gender.

The Sex, Gender and Covid-19 Health Policy Portal, a global study collaboration between the Global Health 50/50 Project, the African Population and Health Research Center, and the International Centre for Research on Women in India, tracked 192 countries and reviewed the websites of ministries of health from 76 countries as part of their latest research into gender and Covid-19. They examined government health policies based on six key areas according to World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic response recommendations: vaccination, public health messaging, clinical management, protection of healthcare workers, disease surveillance and maintenance of essential health services. They found that 91 percent of Covid-19 health policies made no reference to gender.

This is despite the WHO repeatedly urging governments to ensure their Covid-19 health policies are gender-responsive. Only four countries – Canada, Bangladesh, South Sudan and India – passed muster, reporting policies for three out the six key areas. Scandinavian and northern European countries, which are known for considering gender across policy areas and were expected to do well, ranked relatively poorly.

Professor Hawkes says that, historically, health and medical systems have been gender-blind, but the pandemic has exacerbated inequities. Viewing the pandemic’s effect on gender could lead to a far better understanding of attitudes towards vaccination and to more effective public messaging on Covid-19.

“If you just have a policy that says everybody must get vaccinated but don’t take into consideration why women might have hesitation around vaccination, you’re going to see that reflected in data that, for example, women of a certain age are likely to be under-vaccinated,” Professor Hawkes said.

“If you put a vaccine out that has not been tested on pregnant women it’s not surprising to see these women might be hesitant about vaccination.”

Women and girls in lower-income countries have borne the brunt of the Covid-19 crisis, according to new research from the Center for Global Development. The CGD has analysed more than 400 global studies released since the pandemic began.

Unlike past crises where men’s employment was typically at risk, early evidence on the pandemic has shown an inordinate impact on women’s employment, working hours and wages relative to those of men. More women than men lost their jobs and businesses run by women were forced to shutter at higher rates.

Overall, the CGD data has shown that women have different experiences of the pandemic. Aside from the higher rates of domestic violence, which have been well-documented, more women have dealt with deteriorating mental health – higher rates of depression, anxiety, stress and fear – than men. And in some countries, access to sexual and reproductive health has declined.

“What was anecdotal is now increasingly backed up by rigorous data and evidence: Women have been disproportionately hurt by the Covid-19 pandemic – whether it’s the operation of their businesses, their earnings, or their own safety and security,” said Megan O’Donnell, who leads the Center for Global Development’s Covid-19 Gender and Development Initiative.

The CGD, like the GH 50/50 Project, also evaluated how well national governments had performed in response to the pandemic and found that, to date, less than 20 percent of economic relief and recovery policies were designed to address women’s needs.

The role of sex

As with past pandemics, there is evidence that the effects of Covid-19 have been exacerbated by social attitudes to gender but there is also the role of biological sex to consider and how biological differences have led to different health outcomes. Professor Hawkes said there are clear differences in male and female immune system responses to viruses that may explain higher ICU admissions for men than women generally but that in certain countries social attitudes to gender, and not biological sex, may account for the discrepancy.

“Patterns of who seeks health care are very gendered, and then when you’re inside the health system how you get treated depends on whether you’re a man or a woman,” Professor Hawkes said.

She cites data showing that the rate of ICU admission for men is double that of women in some countries.

“Some of that is possibly down to gender in countries where you have to pay for admission to an ICU,” she said. “Is it that families just don’t pay for women to be admitted to ICU? We just don’t know; the studies haven’t been done.”

Regardless of the reasons behind these differences, ignoring gender and sex could have huge implications for pandemic planning, recovery and ongoing vaccination programmes.

According to UN estimates, an additional 47 million women and girls will fall into extreme poverty due to the global health crisis and poverty rates will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2030.

To try to resolve some of the gender inequities, CGD researchers have made a number of recommendations including cash transfers; labour programmes to reduce and redistribute the unpaid care work women do; improving data collection; and monitoring the everyday realities of women and girls to tailor Covid-19 strategies and recovery measures. Last but not least, the CGD calls for more women to take on leadership and decision-making roles.

Researchers from both the CGD and GH 50/50 Project agree that the onus is on governments to do more to reverse “gender blindness”.

“Gender gaps will not disappear with the distribution of vaccines,” said the CGD’s lead researcher, Megan O’Donnell. “Covid-19 has exacerbated long-standing gender inequalities, and – if governments don’t act – could have far-reaching negative impacts on women’s health and economic standing for decades.”

COACHING IS CHILD ABUSE
Greek gymnasts allege decades of abuse by coaches

THE TOTAL AUTHORITARIAN POWER 

OF PATRIARCHY

Issued on: 07/04/2021 -

Greek gymnasts say they suffered decades of abuse and neglect 

KARIM JAAFAR AFP/File


Athens (AFP)

Nearly two dozen Greek gymnasts alleged they suffered decades of abuse and neglect "bordering on torture" at the hands of their coaches, in a letter published on Wednesday.

The letter was sent this week to Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis by 22 female and male athletes, revealed by Greek daily EfSyn.

It alleged "harsh and abusive" practices dating back to 1985 included forced fasting, psychological and physical punishment and sexual harassment

"For the first time, a cry of protest by a large number of gymnastics athletes about psychological and physical abuse is expressed en masse," the athletes' lawyer Alexandros Adamidis told the newspaper.

There was no immediate response to the allegations from the gymnastics federation, which in March elected a new chairman for the first time in 14 years.

The letter said coaches would slap, kick, shove and throw objects at athletes during training, even dragging some girls by the hair.

On occasion, coaches would remove protective mats, causing injuries. Some of the athletes were forced to train while injured, the letter says.

Disciplinary measures allegedly included forcing athletes to train in extreme temperatures and denying them toilet breaks.

Because of strict weight requirements, some athletes starved themselves to the point of fainting, and resorted to secretly eating toothpaste and food leftovers scavenged from hotel bins, it said.

Prominent Greek gymnasts have previously accused the federation of failing to ensure proper training facilities.

After the Greece's main gymnastics indoor hall at Agios Kosmas, Athens flooded last June, Olympic champion Lefteris Petrounias said the country's squad was forced to train at a disadvantage to other nations.

"Every time it rains we are forced to stop training. Our equipment is frequently destroyed," Petrounias said on Facebook, before emergency repairs were ordered.

Earlier this week, after an asymmetric bars frame collapsed during training at the Agios Kosmas facility, Petrounias' coach Dimitris Raftis told Kathimerini daily that no federation official had inspected the hall's gymnastics equipment in years.

"We have been saying this for years...but they did not take us seriously because they know how much we love (the sport)," Raftis told the daily.

- 'Medieval' management -

He also noted that rodent droppings had been found in the gymnastics foam pit, calling the previous management "medieval".

Petrounias won gold on the rings in Rio in 2016 and Greece also won artistic gymnastics medals in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics.

Greece in recent months has been rocked by a wave of allegations of sexual abuse in the fields of arts, sport and education.

More than three years after the #MeToo movement surfaced in the United States, the code of silence in Greece was broken in December by a two-time Olympic sailing medallist, Sofia Bekatorou.

Bekatorou said that when she was 21 she was subjected to "sexual harassment and abuse" by a senior federation member in his hotel room, shortly after trials for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The man she accused, who was asked to resign his position in the Greek sailing federation, has denied any wrongdoing.

Another prominent case involves Dimitris Lignadis, the former artistic director of Greece's national theatre, who has been accused of raping minors.

Lignadis, who was placed in pre-trial detention in February, denies the charges.

© 2021 AFP

Cuba erects giant concrete flag in front of US embassy

Issued on: 01/04/2021 

The 12-meter tall concrete flag has been installed in front of the US embassy in Havana YAMIL LAGE AFP


Havana (AFP)

Cuba has erected a giant concrete flag in front of the US embassy in the capital Havana as hopes of an improvement in bilateral relations under the Joe Biden administration fade on the island nation.

The 12-meter (40-foot) high flag is on a square that has been the site of many pro-government rallies, including some targeting the United States.

Neither the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, Granma, nor the official state news website Cubadebate, which usually makes such announcements to great fanfare, mentioned the flag.

State construction and maintenance company ECOM was the first official body to mention the flag on its Facebook page.

"This monumental construction is now up on our anti-imperialist stage: our flag, which has never been mercenary and on which shines a star that is brighter for being alone," the company wrote.

The stage was built in 2000 during a legal and political battle between Cuba and the United States over the fate of a six-year-old boy, Elian Gonzalez.

His mother had died while the pair crossed the Straits of Florida from Cuba to Miami and the island nation's authorities wanted to repatriate him to be with his father in Cuba.

In 2006, authorities planted 138 Cuban flags on the stage as a "monument against terrorism" that was inaugurated by the late Fidel Castro, Cuba's revolutionary hero who was then president.

"Frankly I don't know what it is. A monument, a sculpture, a parasol, a giant pulpit?" Maikel Jose Rodriguez, the editor of Artecubano, the official publication of the national plastic arts council, wrote on Facebook.

"What can this eyesore offer to Cuban monumental art? Very little. In fact, nothing, except mockery."

Cubans seem less than enamored by the monument.

"If you look at it from behind it's a guillotine," wrote Whigman Montoya on Facebook, while Aristides Pestana described it as "embedded in asphalt, rigid, grey and dead."

Relations between Havana and Washington were increasingly strained under the Donald Trump administration, which ramped up sanctions against Cuba.

But hopes that things would improve under President Biden have so far proven unfounded.

Biden has made no overtures to the island nation while remaining steadfast on the subject of human rights abuses by the Havana government.

© 2021 AFP

CHECK THE DATE ON THIS STORY AS I CANNOT DECIDE IF THIS IS REAL OR.....

APRIL FOOLS

OK I HOPE IT'S REAL

THEY WON THE SPACE RACE ON DAY ONE

Soyuz crew to blast off and mark 60 years of spaceflight

The anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic flight on April 12, 1961 is celebrated every year in Russia as Cosmonautics Day Natalia KOLESNIKOVA AFP

Almaty (Kazakhstan) (AFP)

A three-man crew will blast off to the International Space Station on Friday in a capsule honouring the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space.

Reminders of Gagarin's achievement were everywhere at the Russia-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei prepared for their half-year mission aboard the orbital lab.

The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft that the trio take off in at 0742 GMT has been named after the legendary cosmonaut and Gagarin's portrait has been added to its exterior


Gagarin also came up more than once in the traditional pre-flight press conference, where the crew was asked how they planned to mark Monday's anniversary once in space.

"We'll celebrate it together," said 43-year-old Dubrov, who is flying to space for the first time. "And we'll work hard!"

The anniversary of Gagarin's historic flight on April 12, 1961 is celebrated every year in Russia as Cosmonautics Day.

Friday's blast-off will be from a different launchpad than the one used for Gagarin's one and only mission, which saw him spend 108 minutes in orbit.

The fiery chief of Russia's troubled space programme

He had recently joked that Russia would send a mission to the moon to "verify" whether or not NASA lunar landings ever took place.

Issued on: 09/04/2021 -

Dmitry Rogozin has struggled to return Moscow's space programme to the glory days of 1961 when the Soviet Union launched the first man -- Yuri Gagarin -- into space 

Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV AFP/File


Moscow (AFP)

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's troubled space agency Roscosmos, is hardly your typical bureaucrat.

Brash and brazen, the former diplomat has made his name with provocative tweets and boisterous claims.

But he is equally well-known for leading the once-prized Soviet space programme during years of corruption scandals and technological stagnation.

In 2014, Rogozin, then a deputy prime minister in charge of space, responded to Western sanctions on Russia with a tweet suggesting the United States could send its astronauts to space "using a trampoline".

Russia at the time was the only country capable of delivering crews to the International Space Station (ISS), with a seat on its Soyuz rockets costing tens of millions of dollars.

The tweet didn't age well.

"The trampoline is working," US billionaire Elon Musk laughed at a May 2020 news conference after his company SpaceX successfully launched a crew to the ISS.

The launch was a gamechanger and dealt a major blow to Roscosmos and Russia, which had leaned on its ageing but reliable Soyuz launchers to stay essential in the space industry.

Now "the fig leaf has fallen off," Andrei Ionin of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics in Moscow told AFP.

Rogozin's problems don't end there. Russia is also losing its market share in satellite launches.

Its new Vostochny Cosmodrome, purpose built for dispatching satellites to space, is underused, and its ongoing construction has been scandalised by corruption.

Appointed in 2018 as the head of Roscosmos after working as a deputy prime minister -- and before that Russia's ambassador to NATO -- Rogozin is not solely responsible for the setbacks, with many problems dating back long before his arrival.

But the 57-year-old has struggled to return the space programme to the glory days of 1961 when the Soviet Union launched the first man into space -- Yuri Gagarin.

The 60th anniversary of Gagarin's flight is on Monday.

- Nationalist roots -

After suffering humiliations at the hands of NASA and Space X, Rogozin has begun boasting of Russia's grand plans to catch up, including a mission to Venus and a rocket capable of 100 round-trip flights to space.

But many observers are sceptical.

"Russia doesn't have any new spacecraft," a former Roscosmos official said on condition of anonymity. "There is only a model."

As for the mission to Venus, "given the complexity of the task, Russian scientists aren't even thinking about it", independent space expert Vitaly Yegorov said.

Experts believe the real goal of Rogozin's grand pronouncements is to convince the Kremlin to inject larger sums of money into the Roscosmos budget.

But space is not a priority for President Vladimir Putin, who is more focused on cementing Russia's military might.

Before taking over Roscosmos, Rogozin was a nationalist politician whose career took off in 2003 when his Motherland party won seats in parliament.

His party's deputies were known to lash out at Jews and the LGBT community, and Rogozin once appeared in a video featuring migrants from the Caucasus calling for a "clean up" of Moscow.

He is deeply loyal to Putin and opponents have speculated that his party was a Kremlin project aimed at channelling the nationalist vote.

His loyalty was rewarded in 2008 when Rogozin, who is fluent in English, French, Spanish and Italian, became Russia's ambassador to NATO -- a post he held until 2011.

He continued to be provocative, hanging a poster of Stalin in his Brussels office and fiercely opposing efforts by Russia's ex-Soviet neighbours Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO.

He was blacklisted and sanctioned by the United States in 2014 over Russia's annexation of Crimea and in 2019, NASA put off a planned visit by Rogozin to the US after protests from lawmakers.

He had recently joked that Russia would send a mission to the moon to "verify" whether or not NASA lunar landings ever took place.

© 2021 AFP

French MPs divided over 'existential' euthanasia bill

Issued on: 08/04/2021 - 

The current law in France allows only deep sedation of patients suffering from incurable illnesses but no help for people to end their life 

SEBASTIEN BOZON AFP

Paris (AFP)

A bill to legalise euthanasia went before a deeply divided French parliament on Thursday, with right-wingers planning to torpedo any vote with thousands of amendments and the government not taking sides.

If the draft law were to pass, France would become the fifth European Union country to decriminalise assisted suicide, after the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Spain.

The bill was brought by Olivier Falorni from a centrist group of MPs called Freedom and Territories who planned to use Thursday's National Assembly time allotted to his party to fight for a proposal that he says raises "existential questions".

He says it would end the national "hypocrisy" of French residents travelling to Belgium or Switzerland for assistance in suicide, while he claims French doctors already secretly perform between 2,000 to 4,000 acts of euthanasia every year.

The current law allows only deep sedation of patients suffering from incurable illnesses but no help for people to end their life.

Most deputies in President Emmanuel Macron's party, the LREM, support euthanasia but the government has not weighed in on the debate.

French public opinion "has been strongly demanding a law on this question for the past 20 or 25 years", said Philippe Bataille, a sociologist, adding that "parliament has remained deaf".

Macron said in 2017: "I myself wish to choose the end of my life."

- 'We want debate' -

Deputies hostile to euthanasia have filed 3,000 amendments ahead of the debate to slow down Thursday's proceedings and make it impossible to vote.

Some 2,300 amendments were brought by deputies from The Republicans (LR), an opposition party.

Falorni told AFP that the filings amounted to "obstruction" while his former party colleague Matthieu Orphelin called the amendments "shameful" as they made sure there could be no vote by midnight on Thursday when the debate must end.

"We want to debate. We want to vote. Parliamentary time is here. Let us respect it," 270 deputies from across the political spectrum said in an article published in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

Line Renaud, a much-loved singer, actress and activist, published an open letter on Saturday calling on parliament to give "every woman and every man the possibility to choose the end of their life".

As in Spain, whose parliament last month became the latest in the EU to approve euthanasia, the Catholic Church in France is strongly opposed to euthanasia.

"The solution when a person faces suffering is not to kill them, but ease their pain and accompany them," the archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, told France Inter radio.

- 'Murder' -

Jean Leonetti, one of the deputies behind the current law, said euthanasia was "a major transgression" amounting to "murder".

Writer Michel Houellebecq said a euthanasia law would cause France to "lose every right to be respected".

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said it was "indecent" to open the debate while France was "trying to save lives" during the Covid crisis.

While some parliamentarians are opposed to euthanasia on ethical or religious grounds, others have said the subject is too important to be handled in just one day of National Assembly proceedings.

If, as is expected, time runs out before any vote Thursday, another time slot will have to be found in parliament's busy legislative schedule.

- 'Agony to end' -

The issue was given new momentum last year by Alain Cocq, a terminally ill Frenchman who planned to refuse all food and medicine and stream his death on social media.

He abandoned his initial bid after saying the suffering became too intense.

Cocq had written to Macron in September asking to be given a drug that would allow him to die in peace, but the president told him that was not possible under French law.

On Wednesday, Cocq called on the deputies to vote in favour of the bill.

"I want this agony to end," he told AFP, adding that some 10,000 people in France wanted their lives to be ended but were stopped by "these doctors" who he said claimed "the right to decide who lives and who dies".

burs-jh/j

Global network to eavesdrop on oceans quieted by Covid


Issued on: 08/04/2021 -

Travel and economic downturns due to Covid-19 has seen falls in maritime traffic, sea floor exploration and other human interference, creating "a unique moment" to gather data on the oceans' sonic landscape 

CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

Scientists will take advantage of an unprecedented fall in shipping activity to listen in to the world's oceans and study how manmade noise affects marine ecosystems, the project organisers said Thursday.

Travel and economic downturns due to Covid-19 have seen falls in maritime traffic, sea floor exploration and other human interference, creating "a unique moment" to gather data on the oceans' sonic landscape, they said.

The scientific community has already identified more than 200 non-military hydrophones -- aquatic listening devices capable of picking up low-frequency signals from hundreds of kilometres away -- worldwide, and aim to link up a total of 500 to capture signals from whales and other marine life.

Sea animals use sound and natural sonar to navigate and communicate across vast swathes of ocean.

While numerous previous studies have identified a link between manmade marine noise and changes in species behaviour, the precise links remain poorly understood.

"Assessing the risks of underwater sound for marine life requires understanding what sound levels cause harmful effects and where in the ocean vulnerable animals may be exposed to sound exceeding these levels," said Peter Tyack, professor of Marine Mammal Biology at the University of St Andrews.

Researchers hope to create a global, open source data repository with information gathered from hydrophones across the planet to measure and document the effects of noise on the behaviour of sea life.

Software under development led by the University of New Hampshire (MANTA) will allow collaborators to compare and visualise ocean audio data.

In addition, the Open Portal to Underwater Sound (OPUS) is being tested by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, to promote the use of the data.

- 'Year of quiet ocean' -

The team said that the pandemic had presented a window of opportunity for maritime study equivalent to the period of above ground nuclear testing between 1945 and 1980.

Those tests created traces of elements that spread widely and provided major insights into ocean biology.

"The oceans are unlikely to be as quiet during April 2020 for many decades to come," said project originator Jesse Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University.

"The Covid-19 pandemic provided an unanticipated event that reduced sound levels more than we dreamed possible based on voluntary sound reductions."

Following the launch in 2015 of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE), the number of civilian hydrophones operating in North America and Europe has increased dramatically.

That project also designated 2022 as "the Year of the Quiet Ocean".

While the researchers said the levels and scope of monitoring equipment had ramped up in recent years, they called for more acoustic instrumentation across the Southern Hemisphere.

"The shocking global effect of Covid-19 on human additions of noise to the oceans can spur maturation of regular monitoring of the soundscape of our seas," said Ausubel.

© 2021 AF

Covax backs AstraZeneca as vaccines reach 100 territories



Issued on: 08/04/2021 

The first Covax shipment landed in Ghana on February 24

 Nipah Dennis AFP/File

Geneva (AFP)

Covax backed the AstraZeneca jab on Thursday as the scheme celebrated shipping coronavirus vaccine doses to 100 different territories around the world, despite delays dogging deliveries.

AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine accounts for almost the entire first wave of doses being distributed via the facility, which ensures the 92 poorest participating economies can access jabs for free.

But the programme has been hit by delays after New Delhi put the brake on exports from the Serum Institute of India plant to deal with a rampant second wave of Covid-19 infections.

The SII is one of two sites producing AstraZeneca doses for Covax. The other is in South Korea.

Covax's first wave intended to distribute some 238.2 million doses to 142 participating economies by May 31.

Of those, 237 million are AstraZeneca doses and 1.2 million are Pfizer/BioNTech.

A number of nations have suspended the use of AstraZeneca's vaccine for younger populations after it was earlier banned outright in several countries over blood clot scares.

The EU's medicines regulator said Wednesday that blood clots should be listed as a rare side effect of the AstraZeneca jab, stressing benefits continue to outweigh risks.

And the World Health Organization's immunisation experts said a causal link was "considered plausible but is not confirmed", adding that reported occurrences were "very rare".

The risk-benefit balance remains "very much in favour of the vaccine" the WHO told AFP.

Covax is co-led by the WHO, the Gavi vaccine alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

Gavi said safety and efficacy was the "top priority for Covax".

The scheme follows WHO guidance on vaccine products, which "remains unchanged" for the AstraZeneca jab, a Gavi spokeswoman told AFP.

"The AstraZeneca vaccine remains an important public health tool against the Covid-19 pandemic and is effective at preventing severe cases, hospitalisation and death."

- St. Lucia 100th country -

The 100th country milestone was reached with a delivery to the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

It came 42 days after the first shipment landed in Ghana on February 24, with Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo publicly taking the first shot.

So far, nearly 38.4 million doses have been delivered to 102 territories, including 61 of the 92 poorest participating economies for which funding is covered by donors.

"Covax expects to deliver doses to all participating economies that have requested vaccines in the first half of the year," Gavi insisted in a statement.

This comes "despite reduced supply availability in March and April" due to manufacturers tweaking production processes, plus "increased demand for Covid-19 vaccines in India", it said.

Some of the biggest countries in the world have received vaccines so far, including India, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Philippines, Egypt, Vietnam, DR Congo and Iran.

The smallest to have taken deliveries are the Pacific islands of Tuvalu, Nauru and Tonga, along with Dominica in the Caribbean, and European microstate Andorra.

Six G20 countries have received doses: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

Deliveries have also reached Yemen, which the United Nations says is in the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and Afghanistan.

- $2bn needed in 2021 -

"We still face a daunting challenge as we seek to end the acute stage of the pandemic," said Gavi chief executive Seth Berkley.

"As we continue with the largest and most rapid global vaccine rollout in history, this is no time for complacency."

The scheme is aiming to distribute enough doses to vaccinate up to 27 percent of the population in the 92 poorest participating economies by the end of the year.

An additional $2 billion is required in 2021 to finance and secure up to a total of 1.8 billion donor-funded vaccine doses for those territories.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned that while the St. Lucia milestone "gives us hope, ... access to vaccines, medicines and tests must not become a geopolitical pawn".

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has regularly blasted rich countries for hogging vaccine batches while poorer countries await their first doses.

Worldwide, more than 710 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in at least 195 territories around the world, according to an AFP count.

But WHO Africa regional director Matshidiso Moeti noted just two percent of those doses had been administered on the African continent.

"More than one billion Africans remain on the margins of this historic march to end this pandemic," she said.

© 2021 AFP

Smog caused by French winemakers' frost-fighting



Issued on: 08/04/2021 

Protecting the vines from sub-zero temperatures 

JEFF PACHOUD AFP

Lyon (AFP)

Thousands of small fires lit by French winemakers to ward off frost in their vineyards have caused a layer of smog in the southeast of the country, local authorities reported Thursday.

The practice of lighting fires or candles near vines or fruit trees to prevent the formation of frost is a long-standing technique used in early spring when the first green shoots are vulnerable to the cold.

Whole hillsides look as if they are ablaze, creating a striking visual effect, with winemakers scrambling this week as temperatures plunged to below freezing, particularly in the fertile Rhone valley in southeast France.

Regional air quality monitoring body Atmo Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes issued a warning about fine-particle pollution in the region which includes the city of Lyon where a layer of smog was visible on Thursday.

"It happens almost every year when there is a frost, but this time it's massive," director Marie-Blanche Personnaz told AFP of the pollution.

She said farmers were "entirely within their rights" to light fires to save their livelihoods, "but we perhaps need to work on the problem and find other solutions when the (frost) phenomenon is significant."

Some winegrowers use wind machines to keep frost from setting in.

Others use water sprinklers, allowing a fine coating of ice to form on vines which keeps them from freezing through because the ice acts like a mini-igloo.

- Lost harvests -

This year's two-night cold snap could be particularly damaging for winemakers and other fruit farmers because the freezing temperatures came after a week of unseasonably warm weather.

Christophe Gratadour, an industry specialist, said that the central Loire area and the Rhone region had been affected.

"All sectors have been hit but it's still too early to measure the effects," he told AFP.

In the wine heartland around Bordeaux, producers' body CIVB warned that it was "certain the spring frost will severely affect the harvesting volumes in 2021."

The Bordeaux region was badly hit by an even later April frost in 2017 which resulted in one in five producers losing more than 70 percent of their harvest.

Winegrowers and farmers told AFP of their desperation as they inspected the damage on Thursday morning after a second night of trying to keep ice at bay.

"We worked on the main hillside and burned straw bales and piles of wood to try to save what we could," winemaker Remy Nodin from Saint-Peray in the Ardeche region of southeast France told AFP.

"The aim was to create a blanket of smoke so that when the sun came up it didn't burn the vines because of the humidity," he added.

"We watered, we heated, nothing worked," said Stephane Leyronas, a kiwi grower, in the nearby Aubenas area.

"I used a flamethrower and lit more than 700 small fires which didn't even last the night," he added.

"It's a catastrophe," he said.

© 2021 AFP