JAKARTA, Indonesia: As many Asian countries battle their worst surge of COVID-19 infections, the slow-flow of vaccine doses from around the world is finally picking up speed, giving hope that low inoculation rates can increase and help blunt the effect of the rapidly spreading delta variant.
With many vaccine pledges still unfulfilled and the rates of infection spiking across multiple countries, however, experts say more needs to be done to help nations struggling with the overflow of patients and shortages of oxygen and other critical supplies.
Some 1.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine were set to arrive Thursday afternoon in Indonesia, which has become a dominant hot spot with a record high infections and deaths.
The US shipment comes in addition to 3 million other American doses that arrived Sunday, and 11.7 million doses of AstraZeneca that have come in batches since March through the UN-backed COVAX mechanism, the last earlier this week.
“It’s quite encouraging,” said Sowmya Kadandale, health chief in Indonesia of UNICEF, which is in charge of the distribution of vaccines provided through COVAX. “It seems now to be, and not just in Indonesia, a race between the vaccines and the variants, and I hope we win that race.”
Many, including the World Health Organization, have been critical of the vaccine inequalities in the world, pointing out that many wealthy nations have more than half of their populations at least partially vaccinated, while the vast majority of people in lower-income countries are still waiting on a first dose.
The International Red Cross warned this week of a “widening global vaccine divide” and said wealthy countries needed to increase the pace of following through on their pledges.
“It’s a shame it didn’t happen earlier and can’t happen faster,” Alexander Matheou, the Asia-Pacific director of the Red Cross, said of the recent uptick in deliveries. “There’s no such thing as too late — vaccinating people is always worth doing — but the later the vaccines come, the more people will die.”
Vietnam, Thailand and South Korea have all imposed new lockdown restrictions over the past week as they struggle to contain rapidly rising infections amid sluggish vaccination campaigns.
In South Korea — widely praised for its initial response to the pandemic that included extensive testing and contact tracing — a shortage in vaccines has left 70 percent of the population still waiting for their first shot. Thailand, which only started its mass vaccination in early June, is seeing skyrocketing cases and record deaths, and only about 15 percent of people have had at least one shot. In Vietnam, only about 4 percent have.
“Parts of the world ... are talking about reclaiming lost freedoms such as going back to work, opening the cinemas and restaurants,” Matheou told The Associated Press. “This part of the world is far away from that.”
Indonesia started aggressively vaccinating earlier than many in the region, negotiating bilaterally with China for the Sinovac jabs. Now about 14 percent of its population — the fourth largest in the world — has at least one dose of a vaccine, primarily Sinovac. Several countries also have their own production capabilities, including South Korea, Japan and Thailand, but still need more doses to fill the needs of the region’s huge population.
“Both Moderna and AstraZeneca have been really critical in ramping up these numbers and ensuring that the supplies are available,” said UNICEF’s Kadandale, noting that Indonesia plans to have some additional 208.2 million people vaccinated by year’s end and is giving 1 million shots daily. “Every single dose does make a huge difference.”
Many other countries in the region have vaccination rates far below Indonesia’s for a variety of reasons, including production and distribution issues as well as an initial wait-and-see attitude from many early on when numbers were low and there was less of a sense of urgency.
Some were shocked into action after witnessing the devastation in India in April and May as the country’s health system collapsed under a severe spike in cases that caught the government unprepared and led to mass fatalities.
At the same time, India — a major regional producer of vaccines — stopped exporting doses so that it could focus on its own suffering population.
The US has sent tens of millions of vaccine doses to multiple countries in Asia recently, part of President Joe Biden’s pledge to provide 80 million doses, including Vietnam, Laos, South Korea and Bangladesh. The US plans to donate an additional 500 million vaccines globally in the next year, and 200 million by the end of 2021.
“Indonesia is a critical partner for US engagement in Southeast Asia and the vaccines come without strings attached,” said Scott Hartmann, a spokesman for the US Embassy in Jakarta. “We’re doing this with the object of saving lives and ending the global pandemic, and equitable global access to safe and effective vaccines is essential.”
Earlier in the week, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, whose country is one of the largest financial backers of COVAX, accused Russia and China of using their delivery of vaccines for policy leverage.
“We note, in particular with China, that the supply of vaccines was also used to make very clear political demands of various countries,” he said, without providing specific examples.
There are also growing questions about the effectiveness of China’s Sinovac vaccine against the delta variant of the virus.
Thai officials said that booster doses of AstraZeneca would be given to front-line medical personnel who earlier received two doses of Sinovac, after a nurse who received two doses of Sinovac died Saturday after contracting COVID-19.
Sinovac has been authorized by WHO for emergency use but Indonesia also said it was planning boosters for health workers, using some of the newly delivered Moderna doses, after reports that some of the health workers who had died since June had been fully vaccinated with the Chinese shot.
“We have still found people getting severe symptoms or dying even when they are vaccinated,” Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist with the University of Indonesia, said about the Sinovac shot. “It’s only proven that some vaccines are strong enough to face the delta variant — AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer seem capable.”
While the majority of recent deliveries have been American, Japan was sending 1 million doses of AstraZeneca on Thursday each to Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam as part of bilateral deals, and Vietnam said it was receiving 1.5 million more AstraZeneca doses from Australia.
The Philippines is expecting a total of 16 million doses in July, including 3.2 million from the US later this week, 1.1 million from Japan, 132,000 of Sputnik V from Russia, as well as others through COVAX.
Japan is also is sending 11 million through COVAX this month to Bangladesh, Cambodia, Iran, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and others. Canada this week committed an additional 17.7 million surplus doses to the 100 million already pledged through COVAX, which is coordinated by Gavi, a vaccine alliance.
In addition to distributing some donated vaccines, financial contributions to COVAX also help fund the purchase of doses to distribute for free to 92 low or moderate income nations.
Earlier this month, it took blistering criticism from the African Union for how long it was taking for vaccines to reach the continent, which noted that just 1 percent of Africans are fully vaccinated.
Gavi said the vaccine shortfall so far this year is because the major COVAX supplier, the Serum Institute of India, diverted production for domestic use.
In its latest supply forecast, however, Gavi shows deliveries just beginning a sharp uptick, and still on track to meet the goal of about 1.5 billion doses by year’s end, representing 23 percent coverage in lower and middle income nations, and more than 5 billion doses by the end of 2022.
“It’s better to focus on vaccinating the world and to avoid hoarding doses,” said Matheou, of the Red Cross. “Sharing vaccines makes everyone safer.”
Vaccine deliveries rising as delta virus variant slams Asia
https://arab.news/w6nct
Vaccine deliveries rising as delta virus variant slams Asia
- Vaccine deliveries rising as delta virus variant slams Asia
Dutch police end a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Amsterdam university
In messages posted overnight on social media X, police said they had to act to stop the event and dismantle tents that been set up by protesters, who used violence against police at the site.
“The police’s input was necessary to restore order. We see the footage on social media. We understand that those images may appear as intense,” police said.
Local media showed demonstrators shooting fireworks at police officers but there were no immediate reports of injuries on either side.
“All is now quiet ... police stay in the vicinity of the Roeterseiland campus,” police said later on X.
Outgoing Education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf said universities are a place for dialogue and debate and he was sad to see that police had to intervene.
Student protests over the war and academic ties with Israel have begun to spread across Europe but have remained much smaller in scale than those seen in the United States.
Last Friday, police in Paris entered France’s prestigious Sciences Po university and removed student activists who had occupied its buildings.
More than 100 students occupy the Ghent university, in Belgium, in both a climate and a Gaza protest that they want to prolong until Wednesday.
India election: Inside Modi and BJP’s plan to win a supermajority
- Hindu nationalist BJP party and its allies are targeting 400 of 543 seats in India’s lower house of parliament
- Only once has a party crossed 400 mark, when Congress won following assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984
BARPETA/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India: As India votes in a six-week general election, Narendra Modi’s image adorns everything from packs of rice handed out to the poor to large posters in cities and towns.
His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is relying on the prime minister’s popularity as it seeks a super-majority in India’s parliament. Its message: Modi has delivered economic growth, infrastructure upgrades and India’s improved standing in the world.
But as the Hindu nationalist party and its allies target 400 of the 543 seats in India’s lower house of parliament — up from 352 won in 2019 — they are also employing local tactics in some vital constituencies they hope to wrest from the opposition.
Opinion polls indicate Modi will win a rare third term when voting ends on June 1. But only once in Indian history has a party crossed the 400 mark — when the center-left Congress party romped to victory following the assassination of its leader Indira Gandhi in 1984.
To examine how the right-wing National Democratic Alliance (NDA) aims to achieve that feat — and the obstacles it faces — Reuters spoke to nine NDA officials, three opposition leaders and two political analysts, as well as voters in six opposition-held seats the alliance is targeting.
They identified three of the BJP’s key tactics: enlisting celebrity candidates to unseat veteran opposition lawmakers; making an assault on the opposition’s southern strongholds by appealing to minorities such as Christians; and exploiting redrawn political boundaries that bolster the Hindu electorate in some opposition-controlled areas in the north.
“A combination of strategies, organizational commitment and tactical flexibility will help make inroads in seats never held by the party ever before,” BJP President J. P. Nadda, who oversees the party’s election strategy, told Reuters in April.
Some critics have warned the BJP would use a large majority to push through a more radical agenda in a third term. While the BJP’s manifesto focuses heavily on economic growth, it has also pledged to scrap separate legal codes for religious and tribal groups in areas such as marriage and inheritance.
Many Muslims and tribal groups oppose the plan, which would require a constitutional amendment to be passed by at least two-thirds of parliament.
“Modi wants a landslide majority only to be able to end the debate and deliberation on any policy matter in the parliament,” Congress party president Mallikarjun Kharge told Reuters.
Following low turnout in early voting, some BJP campaign officials have in recent days appeared less confident of securing a huge majority, though the party still expects to form the next government.
SOUTHERN STRATEGY
Modi’s party has criticized the dynastic politics that it says afflicts Congress, long dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi family. But in Pathanamthitta, a seat in the southern state of Kerala, it is fielding a political scion in Anil Antony — son of a veteran Congress leader.
The constituency, home to a sizeable Christian minority, has been held by Congress since its creation in 2009.
Anil’s father, former defense minister A.K. Antony, supports the incumbent and has denounced his son, a fellow Christian, for representing the Hindu nationalist party.
But Anil has another supporter: Modi, who came to Pathanamthitta in March and praised the BJP candidate for his “fresh vision and leadership.” The prime minister has visited the five states of southern India at least 16 times since December.
Nadda, the BJP president, acknowledged that winning a supermajority would require performing well in the five southern states, which are home to about 20 percent of India’s population but have not traditionally voted for his party.
In 2019, the NDA won just 31 of 130 seats across Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, all of which are linguistically diverse and have many Muslim and Christian voters.
Jiji Joseph, general secretary of the BJP’s minority wing in Kerala, said the party has made a concerted push for the 18 percent of voters there who are Christians. The BJP did not win a single seat in Kerala at the last general election.
“The BJP launched active contact with the Church and we started interacting with clergies directly,” he said, adding that the party now has 11,000 active Christian members. “There is a change. Christians now want to believe that BJP stands for them.”
In April, Anil became the first BJP candidate in Kerala to be endorsed by Christian leaders. He told Reuters his selection indicated the party offered opportunities to members from minority groups. He declined to comment on relations with his father.
Jayant Joseph, a Keralan Christian voter, said he backed the BJP because he had read media reports about Muslim men marrying Christian women and converting them to Islam. Most moderate Hindus consider allegations of large-scale forced conversions to be a conspiracy theory.
“Kerala is a secular state,” he said. “But for it to continue to be a secular state, the Muslim population and their conversion strategy must be kept under check.”
A Modi political aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media, said the NDA expects to win about 50 seats in the south.
K. Anil Kumar, a senior leader of Kerala’s ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), said he did not believe BJP would do well in his state, which he said has a strong tradition of secularism.
“The BJP might try to side with the Christians on some issues but they are fundamentally a party of the Hindus and for the Hindus,” he said.
STAR CANDIDATES
In the Mandi constituency of the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, the BJP has recruited Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut to break the Congress party’s grip on power. Congress is fielding as its candidate Vikramaditya Singh, whose mother currently represents the constituency. His father was the state’s long-time chief minister.
Ranaut, a political novice who calls herself a “glorious right-wing” personality, has starred in popular movies with nationalistic themes. She is known for her criticism of Bollywood executives who she said favored the relatives of famous actors for opportunities.
The actress is one of five actors running for the BJP this year, up from four in 2019.
No opinion polling on the Mandi race is publicly available.
Anjana Negia, an elementary school teacher who plans to vote for Ranaut, acknowledged that her preferred candidate had no political experience. But she said that she valued a new face and that a Modi-backed candidate would help “bring a fresh wave of development.”
Fielding celebrities and seeking the endorsement of entertainment personalities is relatively new for the BJP, which “long resisted such tactics because of its cadre-based nature” that prized grassroots efforts, said Milan Vaishnav, an expert on South Asian politics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank.
Ranaut declined an interview request. Federal BJP spokesman Shahzad Poonawala said she “has been successful in exposing dynastic culture and nepotism in Bollywood and now she is doing the same in politics.”
Singh, a state minister responsible for urban development, told Reuters that his family’s experiences gave him a better understanding of politics. Charges of nepotism were “shallow,” he said.
REDISTRICTING BENEFITS
The NDA is hoping for gains in the northeastern state of Assam, where it won nine of 14 seats in 2019. Assam’s BJP chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, said in March he was confident of winning 13 seats.
The NDA’s confidence is rooted in a 2023 redistricting exercise in the state. India’s non-partisan Election Commission routinely redraws seat boundaries to reflect population changes; it is tasked with ensuring that no political party gains undue advantage from the changes.
But exercises since the last federal election in Assam and far-northern Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only majority Muslim region, diluted the Muslim vote in seats that the NDA is targeting, according to three BJP and four opposition officials.
The Election Commission declined to comment on the two exercises, citing the ongoing election.
In Assam, the NDA has high hopes for Congress-held Barpeta, which alliance candidate Phani Bhushan Choudhury said newly includes dozens of villages and some towns with large Hindu populations.
“Earlier (Barpeta) had a Muslim majority but now it is a Hindu majority,” said Choudhury. “That change has worked in my favor.”
He estimates that there are now 1.2 million Hindu voters in Barpeta, where he is campaigning on development and protecting the rights of what the NDA calls “indigenous Assamese” voters, who are mostly Hindu.
Choudhury’s Congress opponent Deep Bayan said the percentage of Hindus in Barpeta went from 30 percent to 70 percent. “Instead focusing on real issues affecting the people...(the BJP does) the politics of polarization,” he said.
Three of Jammu and Kashmir’s five seats are majority Muslim and held by the opposition. But the NDA hopes to swing one of them, Anantnag-Rajouri, after its voter rolls swelled by more than 50 percent to over 2 million, according to government data.
Many of the new voters are Hindus or from regional tribes — which benefited from new BJP policies awarding them education and employment privileges — according to regional BJP chief Ravinder Raina.
Raina said the BJP would support an NDA partner that it believed could win Anantnag-Rajouri and focus on retaining the two Hindu-majority seats it holds.
The two redistricting exercises presages a broader remapping of constituencies due after the election.
Vaishnav, of the Carnegie Endowment, said the remapping would distribute seats to the BJP-dominated north, which has much higher population growth rates, to the detriment of wealthier south India.
Indian PM Modi says he does not oppose Islam, Muslims as election campaign heats up
- Modi’s critics accuse him and his party of targeting India’s minority Muslims for electoral gains
- Allegations grew after Modi referred to Muslims recently as “infiltrators” who have “more children”
NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he does not oppose Islam or Muslims and wants the community to think about their future growth as they vote in an ongoing general election that completes its third phase on Tuesday.
Modi’s critics accuse him and his party of targeting minority Muslims for electoral gains and the allegations grew after Modi referred to Muslims in a recent speech as “infiltrators” who have “more children.”
He denied discriminating against Muslims and has linked his recent comment to what he described as the opposition Congress party’s election plan to redistribute the wealth of majority Hindus among Muslims. The Congress denies making any such promise.
“We are not opposed to Islam and Muslims,” Modi told broadcaster Times Now in an interview aired on Monday. “The opposition is looking after its own benefit. Muslim community is intelligent... the opposition is worried that their lies have been caught.”
Modi is seeking a rare third straight term in the seven-phase election that started on April 19 and ends on June 1. Eleven states and territories will vote in the third phase on Tuesday and surveys suggest Modi will win comfortably when results are declared on June 4.
His campaign began by showcasing economic achievements of the past 10 years but changed tack after the first phase of voting and focused more on firing up his Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindu base by attacking rivals as pro-Muslim.
“I want to say to the Muslim community: introspect, think. The country’s progressing, if you feel any shortcomings in your community, what is the reason behind it? Why didn’t you get government benefits in the time when Congress was in power?“
Analysts say Modi and his Hindu nationalist party have made controversial remarks to invigorate their hard-line base as the election sees comparatively low voter turnout from previous years. Surveys say jobs and inflation are the main concerns of voters.
“Think of your children and your own future,” Modi said, referring to Muslims and the elections. “I don’t want any community to live like laborers because someone is scaring them.”
PM Modi votes as India’s marathon election heats up
- Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is expected to win India’s election convincingly
- Indian PM has stepped up rhetoric on India’s main religious divide in bid to rally voters
AHMEDABAD, India: Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi cast his ballot Tuesday in India’s ongoing general election after giving several inflammatory campaign speeches accused of targeting minority Muslims.
Turnout so far has dropped significantly compared with the last national poll in 2019, with analysts blaming widespread expectations that Modi will easily win a third term and hotter-than-average temperatures heading into the summer.
Modi walked out of a polling booth early morning in the city of Ahmedabad while holding up a finger marked with indelible ink, flanked by security personnel and cheered by supporters.
“Voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections,” Modi said on social media platform X, referring to India’s lower house of parliament.
“Urging everyone to do so as well and strengthen our democracy.”
The premier’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to win the election convincingly, but since the vote began on April 19, Modi has stepped up his rhetoric on India’s main religious divide in a bid to rally voters.
He has used public speeches to refer to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children,” prompting condemnation from opposition politicians, who have complained to election authorities.
Modi has also accused Congress, the main party in the disparate opposition alliance competing against him, of planning to reallocate the nation’s wealth to Muslim households.
“This is the first time in a long time that he is so direct,” said Hartosh Singh Bal, executive editor at news magazine The Caravan.
“I haven’t seen him be this directly bigoted, usually he alludes to bigotry,” he added.
“The comments on wealth redistribution are targeting something from the Congress manifesto that just does not exist and that is frankly quite unfortunate.”
Modi remains widely popular a decade after coming to power, in large part due to his government’s positioning the nation’s majority faith at the center of its politics, despite India’s officially secular constitution.
In January, the prime minister presided over the inauguration of a grand temple to the deity Ram, built on the site of a centuries-old mosque razed by Hindu zealots decades earlier.
Construction of the temple fulfilled a long-standing demand of Hindu activists and was widely celebrated across India, with extensive television coverage and street parties.
Modi’s brand of Hindu-nationalist politics has in turn made India’s 220-million-plus Muslim population increasingly anxious about their future in the country.
The election commission has not sanctioned Modi for his remarks despite its code of conduct prohibiting campaigning on “communal feelings” such as religion.
India’s election is conducted in seven phases over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging the democratic exercise in the world’s most populous country.
Much of southern Asia was hit by a heatwave last week that saw several constituencies vote in searing temperatures.
In the city of Mathura, not far from the Taj Mahal, temperatures crossed 41 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit) on polling day, and election commission figures showed turnout dropping nearly nine points to 52 percent from five years earlier.
An analysis of turnout data published by The Hindu newspaper concluded it was too early to determine whether hot weather was impacting voter participation.
But India’s weather bureau has forecast more heatwave spells to come in May and the election commission formed a taskforce last month to review the impact of heat and humidity before each round of voting.
High temperatures were forecast for several locations voting on Tuesday including the states of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.
Years of scientific research have found climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.
More than 968 million people are eligible to vote in the Indian election, with the final round of polling on June 1 and results expected three days later.
Ground invasion of Rafah would be ‘intolerable,’ UN chief warns
- Israel has killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them children and women, according to Gaza health officials
UNITED NATIONS, United States: A ground invasion of Rafah would be “intolerable,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday, calling on Israel and Hamas “to go an extra mile” to reach a ceasefire deal.
“This is an opportunity that cannot be missed, and a ground invasion in Rafah would be intolerable because of its devastating humanitarian consequences, and because of its destabilizing impact in the region,” Guterres said as he received Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
