Japan is likely to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19 through mass inoculations only months after the planned Tokyo Olympics, even though it has locked in the biggest quantity of vaccines in Asia, according to a London-based forecaster.
That would be a blow to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga who has pledged to have enough shots for the populace by the middle of 2021, as it trails most major economies in starting COVID-19 inoculations.
“Japan looks to be quite late in the game,” Rasmus Bech Hansen, the founder of British research firm Airfinity, told Reuters. “They’re dependent on importing many (vaccines) from the US And at the moment, it doesn’t seem very likely they will get very large quantities of for instance, the Pfizer vaccine.”
Hansen said Japan will not reach a 75% inoculation rate, a benchmark for herd immunity, until around October, about two months after the close of the Summer Games.
Japan has arranged to buy 314 million doses from Pfizer, Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc, and that would be more than enough for its population of 126 million.
But problems seen in vaccine rollouts elsewhere stir doubt that Japan will get those supplies on time.
Taro Kono, Japan’s vaccine program chief, said last week it would begin its first shots in February, starting with 10,000 medical workers, but he walked back on a goal to secure enough vaccine supplies by June.
Japan is particularly vulnerable because its initial inoculation plan is dependent on Pfizer doses, which are at risk of being taken back by US authorities to fight the pandemic there.
“There simply aren’t enough vaccines for all the countries that Pfizer made agreements with,” Hansen said.
“America needs 100 million more Pfizer vaccines to be on the safe side to reach their goals, and a lot of those 100 million would come from the Japan pile.”
Representatives from Pfizer and Japan’s health ministry did not immediately respond to Airfinity’s forecasts. Previously, Pfizer has stated that the company was working with Japanese regulators “to make COVID 19 vaccine doses available as quickly as possible to the people in Japan.”
Japan likely to hit COVID-19 herd immunity in October, months after Olympics: researcher
Japan likely to hit COVID-19 herd immunity in October, months after Olympics: researcher
Bangladesh mourns Khaleda Zia, its first woman prime minister
- Ousted ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, who imprisoned Zia in 2018, offers condolences on her death
- Zia’s rivalry with Hasina, both multiple-term PMs, shaped Bangladeshi politics for a generation
DHAKA: Bangladesh declared three days of state mourning on Tuesday for Khaleda Zia, its first female prime minister and one of the key figures on the county’s political scene over the past four decades.
Zia entered public life as Bangladesh’s first lady when her husband, Ziaur Rahman, a 1971 Liberation War hero, became president in 1977.
Four years later, when her husband was assassinated, she took over the helm of his Bangladesh Nationalist Party and, following the 1982 military coup led by Hussain Muhammad Ershad, was at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement.
Arrested several times during protests against Ershad’s rule, she first rose to power following the victory of the BNP in the 1991 general election, becoming the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation, after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto.
Zia also served as a prime minister of a short-lived government of 1996 and came to power again for a full five-year term in 2001.
She passed away at the age of 80 on Tuesday morning at a hospital in Dhaka after a long illness.
She was a “symbol of the democratic movement” and with her death “the nation has lost a great guardian,” Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus said in a condolence statement, as the government announced the mourning period.
“Khaleda Zia was the three-time prime minister of Bangladesh and the country’s first female prime minister. ... Her role against President Ershad, an army chief who assumed the presidency through a coup, also made her a significant figure in the country’s politics,” Prof. Amena Mohsin, a political scientist, told Arab News.
“She was a housewife when she came into politics. At that time, she just lost her husband, but it’s not that she began politics under the shadow of her husband, president Ziaur Rahman. She outgrew her husband and built her own position.”
For a generation, Bangladeshi politics was shaped by Zia’s rivalry with Sheikh Hasina, who has served as prime minister for four terms.
Both carried the legacy of the Liberation War — Zia through her husband, and Hasina through her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, widely known as the “Father of the Nation,” who served as the country’s first president until his assassination in 1975.
During Hasina’s rule, Zia was convicted in corruption cases and imprisoned in 2018. From 2020, she was placed under house arrest and freed only last year, after a mass student-led uprising, known as the July Revolution, ousted Hasina, who fled to India.
In November, Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia for her deadly crackdown on student protesters and remains in self-exile.
Unlike Hasina, Zia never left Bangladesh.
“She never left the country and countrymen, and she said that Bangladesh was her only address. Ultimately, it proved true,” Mohsin said.
“Many people admire Khaleda Zia for her uncompromising stance in politics. It’s true that she was uncompromising.”
On the social media of Hasina’s Awami League party, the ousted leader also offered condolences to Zia’s family, saying that her death has caused an “irreparable loss to the current politics of Bangladesh” and the BNP leadership.
The party’s chairmanship was assumed by Zia’s eldest son, Tarique Rahman, who returned to Dhaka just last week after more than 17 years in exile.
He had been living in London since 2008, when he faced multiple convictions, including an alleged plot to assassinate Hasina. Bangladeshi courts acquitted him only recently, following Hasina’s removal from office, making his return legally possible.
He is currently a leading contender for prime minister in February’s general elections.
“We knew it for many years that Tarique Rahman would assume his current position at some point,” Mohsin said.
“He should uphold the spirit of the July Revolution of 2024, including the right to freedom of expression, a free and fair environment for democratic practices, and more.”
