COVID-19 Update: March 10, 2021

According to a recent Economic Impact Analysis presented by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) last year the world passenger traffic fell by 2.7 billion passengers, or by 60% compared to 2019, causing a $ 371 billion loss of gross passenger operating revenues of airlines.
 
Travel restrictions are also having a direct impact on the lives and livelihoods of transport workers, most notably in the maritime sector. According to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), around 400,000 seafarers have incessantly been working on board commercial vessels, long past the expiry of their contracts but unable to be repatriated due to many countries’ restrictions.

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) most recent epidemiology update reported that over 2.6 million new cases were detected in the last 7 days, a 7% increase compared to the previous week, following six consecutive weeks of declining numbers. The global case increase was driven by increases in the Eastern Mediterranean (14%), South-East Asia (9%), Europe (9%) and the Americas (6%). The U.S., Brazil, France, Italy and India were the countries that reported the highest number of cases.
 
As the global rollout of COVAX vaccines accelerates, the first COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in Africa started on March 1. The African states of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire received deliveries of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, with Ghana taking delivery of 600,000 doses on February 24 and Côte d’Ivoire 504,000 doses two days later. The vaccine, branded COVISHIELD, was granted Emergency Use Listing (EUL) by the World Health Organization on February 15.

Schools for more than 168 million children worldwide have been completely closed for almost an entire year due to COVID-19 lockdowns, according to new data released on March 2 by UNICEF. Furthermore, around 214 million children globally have missed more than three-quarters of their in-person learning.
 
The report notes that 14 countries worldwide have remained largely closed from March 2020 to February 2021. Two-thirds of those countries are in Latin America and the Caribbean, affecting nearly 98 million schoolchildren.
 
“As we approach the one-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are again reminded of the catastrophic education emergency worldwide lockdowns have created. With every day that goes by, children unable to access in-person schooling fall further and further behind, with the most marginalized paying the heaviest price,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.

Australia's rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine began on March 5. According to the Australian news agency ABC News, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said 300,000 doses of the vaccine, which arrived in Sydney on Sunday, have now been "batch-tested" and approved for use. Mr. Morrison said the first overseas-manufactured doses of the jab would be followed by 50 million doses made in Melbourne.
 
AstraZeneca is the second COVID-19 vaccine to be approved for use in Australia, after the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) gave the green light to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in January 2021.

Since the beginning of the pandemic Brazil’s death toll has surpassed 260,000, which constitutes the world’s second-worst after the United States. Daily new COVID-19 cases are currently around 60,000. Coupled with a spike in deaths, the numbers prompted Sao Paulo state Governor João Doria to announce a partial lockdown in Brazil’s most-populous state on March 3. Sao Paulo’s bars and restaurants will operate only via delivery, while malls and non-essential businesses being shut. The restriction measures are due to last two weeks.
 
On the same day, Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello said he was close to an agreement with Pfizer to buy 100 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as doses from Janssen, the pharmaceutical subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

With COVID-19 outbreaks largely contained, China was reported to have set the annual economic growth target at above 6%, and pledged to create more jobs in cities compared to last year.
 
According to Reuters, China’s conservative growth target reflects a public effort to demonstrate a return to economic stability after last year’s COVID-19 upheaval, while also trying to contain the government’s budget deficit.

On March 4, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) published its latest weekly situation report, indicating that 21 countries in the EU/EEA observed increasing COVID-19 cases. Moreover, nine countries reported increasing hospital pressure and five countries reported increasing death rates. The report points out that the overall indicators of the pandemic suggest that the transmission is still widespread. The 14-day case notification rate for the EU/EEA was found to be 311 per 100,000 population.
 
On March 3, the European Commission has adopted a communication providing Member States with broad guidance on the conduct of fiscal policy adopted in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The Communication provides guidelines for the setting of fiscal measures, including the implications of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) for fiscal policy.
 
The RRF will make €312.5 billion available in grants and up to €360 billion available in loans to Member States to support the implementation of reforms and investments. According to the Commission, the RRF will provide an important fiscal stimulus aimed to promote investments, especially in the most affected EU countries.

As reported by the German newspaper Deutsche Welle, Austria will be given an additional 100,000 BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine doses as part of an EU initiative to curb an outbreak of coronavirus, particularly affecting the Tyrol region.
 
The Alpine region of Tyrol, with a total population of about 80,000, has one of Europe's highest incidences of the South African COVID-19 strain, which is deemed to be more contagious. Every adult resident of the province will be offered the vaccination, with the process due to start this week.

As of March 1, the Czech Republic’s Ministry of Health has placed Spain, Portugal, and Madeira on the red list of countries where the Coronavirus pandemic is widely spread. All persons returning from the COVID-19 red list will be obliged to fill a form and present negative result of an Antigen or PCR test, not older than 24 hours for the Antigen test, or 72 hours for the PCR, prior to entering the country.

On March 1, the news network Euronews reported that the French Health Minister, Olivier Véran, said that the AstraZeneca jab has now been approved for people aged 65-74 with "co-morbidities". However, people over 75 will continue to receive either the Pfizer/BioNTech or the Moderna vaccines.
 
Also, according to the same news agency, the government endorsed a recommendation from France’s High Authority for Health (HAS) for people who have previously contracted COVID-19 to receive a single dose of the vaccine, aimed to boost the immune system’s response against potential coronavirus reinfections.

On March 3, the news agency Reuters reported that Chancellor Angela Merkel and German state leaders agreed to a five-stages plan aimed to ease the country’s coronavirus restrictions, along with an “emergency brake” to let authorities reimpose restrictions if COVID-19 cases rapidly surge again.
 
Under the proposed plan, up to five people from two households will be allowed to meet from March 8. Later stages will see the opening of restaurants and entertainment venues for people who can present a recent negative test result. Finally, open-air events with up to 50 people will be allowed, as well as contact sports indoors.
 
Moreover, the government accepted a recommendation from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to extend the interval between the injection of first and second doses of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccines three weeks apart, and AstraZeneca’s up to 12 weeks apart.
 
According to a recent news press, Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for disease control has now classified France’s Moselle region as an area “at particularly high risk of infection due to widespread occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 virus variants”.
 
Since March 2, travelers coming from Moselle will need to show a negative coronavirus test that is less than 48 hours old. Similar border controls have already been introduced at the country’s land borders with the Czech Republic and Austria’s Tyrol region.

The Italian Health Ministry has recently published a situation report indicating that the COVID-19 7-day incidence is currently at 195 cases per 100,000. The increased caseload has prompted the Italian Health Minister to approve an ordinance, which came into force on March 8, strengthening the current restriction measures currently in place in many Italian regions.
 
The northern regions of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Veneto and Emilia Romagna have been placed in the second highest degree of alert with increased restrictions on movements, thus joining most of Italy’s 20 regions, while the region of Campania is now classified as “red zone”, where full lockdown rules apply. 

With a coronavirus reproduction number above 1, Netherlands has seen the total COVID-19 cases increasing in the past weeks, albeit at a slower pace.
 
Since March 3, the government has begun relaxing its lockdown restrictions, such as reopening of non-essential shops and allowing outdoor sports activities. The general lockdown rules like curfews and travel bans will remain in place for the time being.

The Health Ministry’s latest data on the ongoing coronavirus crisis shows that the 14-day cumulative number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants has fallen to 127. This incidence level was last seen in August 2020. Daily coronavirus-related deaths have also been dropping below 200 for the first time in 2021.
 
Moreover, a recent report from Spain’s Health Ministry showed that more than 1.3 million people have been fully vaccinated so far. According to the Spanish newspaper El País, the data in the ministry report leads to the conclusion that more than 85% of Spain’s care home residents have now been fully vaccinated.

India began its vaccination campaign on January 16, starting with healthcare workers and frontline staff. Now, people over 60, as well as those who are between 45 and 59 but with co-morbidities will start receiving COVID-19 vaccines. On March 1, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is 70, received the first dose of the locally produced Covaxin.
 
Since the pandemic began, India has confirmed more than 11 million cases and over 157,000 deaths. India has seen a steady decrease in daily infections to less than 20,000 from a peak of over 90,000 back to September 2020, although some states have recently reported a new increase in the number of cases.

According to the Iranian newspaper Teheran Times, Mohammad Hassan Zibakhsh, the spokesman of Iran's Civil Aviation Organization (CAO), announced on February 28 that all flights to and from 32 countries have been suspended due to the latest decision of the National Headquarters for Coronavirus Control.
 
Earlier in February, the Iranian Government reduced the validity of negative COVID-19 PCR test results from 96 hours to 72 hours for all passengers transiting the country’s airports. Due to the travel restrictions, foreign travelers to Iran will need to quarantine upon arrival in government-designated areas, while Iranian citizens will need to self-isolate for 14 days.

According to a press release published by the Japan Times on March 3, Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga extended the country’s state of emergency by around two weeks for the greater Tokyo metropolitan area.
 
Despite a steady decline in cases since last January, the decision came after the governors of the prefectures of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama voiced their concerns that new cases are not declining fast enough to safely lift the country’s state of emergency.

Turkey’s coronavirus cases passed 2.7 million, with a death toll of more than 28,000 fatalities since the beginning of the pandemic. However, since last month new contagions have been slowing down. On March 1, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly said that weekend curfews, in place since last December, will be lifted in low- and medium-risk provinces, while restrictions will continue “for a while” in provinces classified as high or very high risk.
 
According to the WHO, Turkey has so far administered more than 9 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, with nearly 1 in 10 people vaccinated.

On March 1, Public Health England (PHE) submitted a pre-print of a real-world study that shows that both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines are highly effective in reducing COVID-19 infections among older people aged 70 years and over. According to the research, protection against symptomatic manifestations of the illness, 4 weeks after the first dose, ranged between 57 and 61% for one dose of Pfizer and between 60 and 73% for the AstraZeneca vaccine.
 
In a press release from the UK government, authorized COVID-19 vaccines that are modified in response to new variants will receive a “fast-track” approval. The decision follows the publication of a new guidance from the ACCESS Consortium –a coalition of regulatory authorities from the UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore and Switzerland.  The guidance, developed by the UK Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and its ACCESS partners, lays out what information regulators would need to approve any modifications to authorized COVID-19 vaccines, should virus mutations make them less effective at preventing the disease.  

According to a recent article published by Associated Press, President Joe Biden said the US expects to receive enough coronavirus vaccine doses for all adults by the end of May. The US President is also pushing for a swift vaccination campaign aiming to vaccinate the majority of teachers, so to quickly reopen the country’s schools.
 
COVID-19 cases in the US have been steadily decreasing in the past six weeks, while more than 82 million vaccine doses have been administered. However, the active cases are still much higher than what was seen during the first peak in the pandemic back in March 2020.
 
On March 6, the U.S. Senate passed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill recently proposed by the US President. The legislation includes funding for vaccines and medical supplies, extends jobless assistance and provides a new round of emergency financial aid to households, small businesses and state and local governments.
 
 
The information above is a review of actions the INC has compiled from government sources, international organizations and press media. This news article is not intended to be exhaustive and it does not reflect the opinions of the INC. While the publishers believe that all information contained in this publication was correct at the time of publishing, they can accept no liability for any inaccuracies that may appear or loss suffered directly or indirectly by any reader as a result of any advertisement, editorial, photographs or other materials published in this news article.