COVID: Two dead in Japan after getting tainted shots

Two people in Japan have died after receiving shots of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine, the country’s health ministry said on Saturday.

The shots were among the lots that were suspended after the discovery of contaminants. 

Both men, in their 30s, died within days of receiving their second shot this month.

The cause of death is still under investigation. 

The shots administered were from one of three manufacturing lots that were suspended on Thursday. Japan stopped the use of 1.63 million Moderna doses shipped to 863 vaccination centers across the country, over a week after the domestic distributor Takeda Pharmaceutical received reports that some vials had contaminants.

Both Moderna and the Japanese government had said no safety or efficacy issues were identified at the time.

Here are the latest developments on coronavirus from around the world.

Asia-Pacific

India has recorded 46,759 new coronavirus infections, the highest in nearly two months. The spike was recorded on the same day that India administered 10 million COVID-19 vaccine shots for the first time. 

Authorities said 10 million shots were given on Friday, surpassing the country’s earlier best of 9.2 million shots.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it was a "momentous feat" for the large nation.

"Kudos to those getting vaccinated and those making the vaccination drive a success." he wrote on Twitter.

Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte has extended COVID restrictions in the capital region and some provinces as the country registered 19,441 new coronavirus cases, a new daily record of infections. 

China’s embassy in Washington DC accused the United States of "political manipulation" after a report said Beijing was withholding key informationabout the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. 

"The report by the US intelligence community shows that the US is bent on going down the wrong path of political manipulation," the embassy said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, US President Joe Biden said Washington and allies would continue to press the Chinese government for answers about the origin of the coronavirus.

The comments came after US intelligence agencies published an inconclusive report about the source of the virus.

Europe

Germany is set to remove Spain  from its list of high-risk COVID-19 areas from Sunday, the foreign ministry said. Incoming travelers, who are not fully vaccinated, will not have to quarantine upon entry to Germany. 

The country has reported 10,303 new cases of the virus, according to the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases (RKI). This takes Germany’s total number of confirmed infections to 3,924,131. Twenty-two new deaths were reported. 

More than 60% of people in Germany have now been fully vaccinated. Some 50 million people (60.1% of the population) have now received their second injection, the Health Ministry announced on Saturday. 

The United Kingdom is preparing to vaccinate children of aged between 12 and 15-years-old even before the campaign gets the green light from health advisors.

Department of Health officials said they want "to be ready to hit the ground running" when full approval comes through to get children vaccinated before the academic year starts in September.

People infected with the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus face double the risk of hospitalization when compared with earlier variants, a new study from England has found. 

The study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, confirms past research that suggested the Delta variant could lead to a greater risk of hospitalization.

Local news reports in Russia said three COVID-19 patients died after a fire broke out at a hospital in Yaroslavl, about 250 kilometers (150 miles) north of Moscow.

All three patients were on ventilators. The cause of the fire remained unclear.

Oceania

Australia has reported a record 1,126 new infections propelled in part by the number of cases reported in New South Wales. More than half the country’s population remains under a weeks-long lockdown.

New Zealand has reported 82 new local infections, taking the total number of cases from the current community outbreak to 429. The country, which remained COVID-free for six months, remains under a lockdown to quell an outbreak linked to the highly infectious Delta variant.

Africa 

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s former health minister Eteni Longondo has been detained over the alleged misappropriation of funds allocated to fight the pandemic, official sources said.

Longondo, who ran the Heath Ministry from September 2019, has been accused of "embezzlement of public funds allocated to the response" against the coronavirus, the Congolese Association for Access to Justice (ACAJ) said on Twitter.

Americas

Jamaica’s public hospitals will only treat emergency cases as the country struggles to contain the spread of the virus.

Most hospitals had exceeded their quota of beds for COVID-19 patients, the health ministry said. Oxygen supplies were also running low. 

see/mm (Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa)