Month: March 2021

Facebook has frozen Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s page, according to a spokesperson for the social media giant, because the page contained misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.Maduro violated Facebook policy when he posted a video without any medical evidence, promoting Carvativir, a drink made with the herb thyme, as a cure for the coronavirus, a company spokesperson told Reuters. He described the drink as a “miracle” medication capable of neutralizing the coronavirus without any side effects.“We follow guidance from the WHO [World Health Organization] that says there is currently no medication to cure the virus,” Facebook’s spokesperson told Reuters.The company said it is taking action to limit use of Maduro’s Facebook page. “Due to repeated violations of our rules, we are also freezing the page for 30 days,” the company spokesperson said, “during which it will be read-only.”Brazil is averaging nearly 2,400 deaths a day from COVID-19, about one-fourth of the world’s daily tally, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.The South American nation is on pace to reach 4,000 deaths a day, six experts told The Associated Press, a level that would rival the worst seen in the U.S., which has about one-third more people. The U.S. set a record of 4,477 deaths on Jan. 12, according to Johns Hopkins data.“Four thousand deaths a day seems to be right around the corner,” Dr. José Antônio Curiati, a supervisor at Sao Paulo’s Hospital das Clinicas, the biggest hospital complex in Latin America, told the AP.President Jair Bolsonaro remains unconvinced that restrictions …

A New Hampshire woman who lost her 13-year-old daughter to a brain tumor in 2016 has now given birth to a son — at age 57.Barbara Higgins also had a brain tumor of her own while trying to get pregnant and had it removed.Higgins and her husband, Kenny Banzhoff, of Concord, have been grieving for their late daughter, Molly.In recent years, the couple, who also have an older daughter, thought about having another child. They found an in vitro fertilization clinic in Boston that worked with them.Higgins gave birth to a healthy boy named Jack on Saturday. He weighed 5 pounds, 13 ounces.”Yes, I’m scared and I’m anxious, but I’m so excited,” Higgins told the Concord Monitor for a story published Friday.Higgins, an avid runner who has been a high school track coach, said she did weight training until the day she went into labor.In addition to Higgins’ struggles with her brain tumor, Banzhoff, 65, had been living with kidney disease and underwent a transplant.According to Guinness World Records, the oldest woman to give birth was 66-year-old Maria del Carmen Bousada Lara, who had twins in Spain in 2006.   …

A year ago, Giordana Grego’s parents spent Passover at home in Israel, alone but grateful that they had escaped the worst of the pandemic in Italy. This year, the whole family will get together to mark the Jewish feast of liberation and deliverance from the pandemic.Israel has vaccinated over half its population of 9.3 million, and as coronavirus infections have plummeted, authorities have allowed restaurants, hotels, museums and theaters to reopen. Up to 20 people can now gather indoors.It’s a stark turnaround from last year, when Israel was in the first of three nationwide lockdowns, with businesses shuttered, checkpoints set up on empty roads and people confined to their homes. Many could only see their elderly relatives on video calls.”For us in Israel, really celebrating the festivity of freedom definitely has a whole different meaning this year after what we experienced,” said Grego, who immigrated to Israel from Italy. “It’s amazing that this year we’re able to celebrate together, also considering that in Italy, everybody is still under lockdown.”Passover is the Jewish holiday celebrating the biblical Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt after a series of divine plagues. The week-long springtime festival starts Saturday night with the highly ritualized Seder meal, when the Exodus story is retold. It’s a Thanksgiving-like atmosphere with family, friends, feasting and four cups of wine.An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man dips cooking utensils in boiling water to remove remains of leaven in preparation for the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover in Jerusalem, March 26, 2021.Throughout the week, …

Cities around the world were turning off their lights Saturday for Earth Hour, with this year’s event highlighting the link between the destruction of nature and increasing outbreaks of diseases such as COVID-19.In London, the Houses of Parliament, London Eye Ferris wheel, Shard skyscraper and neon signs of Piccadilly Circus were among the landmarks flicking the switches for one hour starting at 8:30 p.m. local time.“It’s fantastic news that Parliament once again is taking part in Earth Hour, joining landmarks across the country and the world to raise awareness of climate change,” said Lindsay Hoyle, speaker of the House of Commons.“It shows our commitment to improving sustainability … and that we’re playing our part in reducing energy consumption,” he said.In Paris, the three stages of the Eiffel Tower progressively went dark, but there were few people to watch with the whole country under a 7 p.m. COVID-19 curfew.The giant metal tower has been shut to the public since October 30 because of the pandemic.The ancient Parthenon is pictured just before the lights on the Acropolis hill shut down for Earth Hour in Athens, Greece, March 27, 2021.In Rome, the lights went out at Rome’s 2,000-year-old Colosseum, while police enforcing Italy’s coronavirus movement restrictions checked the papers of a small crowd of onlookers.Harmful human activityAsia kicked off the event after night fell with the skylines of metropolises from Singapore to Hong Kong going dark, as did landmarks including Sydney Opera House.The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and Moscow’s Kremlin on Red Square …

Pakistan is struggling to contain a third wave of coronavirus infections, reporting close to 4,500 new cases in the last 24 hours, the highest number of daily infections in nine months.Officials said Saturday that the rate of people testing positive for COVID-19 had alarmingly risen to more than 10% from a low of about 3% a couple weeks ago, suggesting the actual number of infections is likely much higher than the reported cases.The overall number of infections and deaths from COVID-19, however, remains under control in Pakistan, a country of about 220 million people.Since the pandemic hit the South Asian nation a year ago, officials have documented around 650,000 infections and about 14,200 deaths, including 67 fatalities recorded Friday.British variantAsad Umar, the minister who heads the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) overseeing the government’s COVID-19 response, insisted Saturday that a British variant of the virus, detected in Pakistan early last month, was likely behind the flare-up in infections.“This relatively more contagious and deadlier variant seems to be a major cause for the sudden and sharp increase in the spread of the disease,” Umar told reporters after chairing an emergency meeting of the NCOC in Islamabad.FILE – An elderly resident receives his first dose of the coronavirus disease vaccine, at a vaccination center in Karachi, Pakistan, March 10, 2021.He added that public “disregard” for safety guidelines outlined by the government was contributing to the spread.The minister said his office had already started receiving messages that hospitals across Pakistan were nearing …

After years of waiting tables, Danae De Vries is one step closer to achieving her lifetime dream of becoming a theater coach.Ironically, she owes that to the pandemic. It was after last year’s brutal lockdown that shut the Spanish economy down for weeks that the owners of a small restaurant chain in Madrid offered De Vries to cut her weekly work schedule by one day.Already struggling to make ends meet in a city that has seen rental prices spiral, the 28-year-old was hesitant at first — and then enthusiastic when she was told her wages would remain untouched.“Now I have time to work, to see my family and friends, and to find enough time to study,” she said. “It’s marvelous to have time, to not rush everywhere and find a bit of inner peace.”A happier and more motivated De Vries is also better for her boss María Álvarez, the entrepreneur who turned her two-restaurant business upside-down when she proposed rotational four-day week shifts. Álvarez, a mother of two toddlers, and her startup partner at La Francachela had both struggled to keep the business going with no childcare support.“There was a feeling that society had turned its back on families, that we had been betrayed,” explained Álvarez. “As business owners, we had to come up with some solutions for our businesses, our employees and also for our personal lives.”Experimenting with cutting back one workday per week is about to go nationwide in Spain — the first country in Europe to do …

The 9-year-old twins did not flinch as each received test doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine — and then a sparkly bandage to cover the spot.“Sparkles make everything better,” declared Marisol Gerardo as she hopped off an exam table at Duke University to make way for her sister Alejandra.Researchers in the U.S. and abroad are beginning to test younger and younger kids to make sure COVID-19 vaccines are safe and work for each age. The first shots are going to adults who are most at risk from the coronavirus but ending the pandemic will require vaccinating children too.“Kids should get the shot,” Marisol told The Associated Press this week after the sisters participated in Pfizer’s new study of children under 12. “So that everything might be a bit more normal.” She is looking forward to when she can have sleepovers with friends again.So far in the U.S., teen testing is furthest along: Pfizer and Moderna expect to release results soon showing how two doses of their vaccines performed in the 12 and older crowd. Pfizer is currently authorized for use starting at age 16; Moderna is for people 18 and older.But younger children may need different doses than teens and adults. Moderna recently began a study similar to Pfizer’s new trial, as both companies hunt the right dosage of each shot for each age group as they work toward eventually vaccinating babies as young as 6 months.Last month in Britain, AstraZeneca began a study of its vaccine among 6- to 17-year-olds. …

As cases of the coronavirus continue to rise in the United States, officials are racing to open up vaccine eligibility in the hope of staving off another wave of the pandemic.Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, expressed concern Friday about rising case numbers, noting the seven-day average daily case count was up 7% over the past week.“We have seen cases and hospital admission move from historic decline to stagnation to increases, and we know from prior surges that if we don’t control things now there is a real potential for the epidemic curve to soar again,” she said at a White House briefing.Walensky noted that about 1,000 Americans a day are dying of COVID-19 and said, “Please take this moment very seriously.”As of Friday evening, the U.S. led the world in the number of COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, with 30.2 million, and the number of deaths, with more than 548,000, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Globally, more than 126 million people have contracted COVID-19 and almost 2.8 million have died.Inflection pointNew U.S. cases peaked at nearly 260,000 a day in early January, and that month saw an average of more than 3,100 people dying every day. Case numbers and deaths began to fall later in January and continued to drop in February.New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham talks with National Guard members after receiving her Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination event held in the gym at Desert …

The head of the World Health Organization on Friday urged the global community to donate COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries, citing the urgent need for 10 million doses for a WHO-backed vaccine distribution program. “COVAX is ready to deliver but we can’t deliver vaccines we don’t have,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a virtual news conference in Geneva. “Bilateral deals, export bans and vaccine nationalism have caused distortions in the market with gross inequities in supply and demand,” Tedros said. “Ten million doses are not much and it’s not nearly enough.” FILE – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, speaks in Geneva, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2021.COVAX, an abbreviation for the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access initiative, aims to provide equitable access to vaccines worldwide. The WHO chief called on countries to donate spare doses of vaccines to COVAX because a rush to secure vaccines around the world delayed deliveries that COVAX had anticipated. Meanwhile, at the United Nations in New York, 181 nations signed on to a political declaration that calls for COVID-19 vaccinations to be treated as a global public good, ensuring affordable, equitable and fair access to vaccines for all. “We can see the end of the crisis, but to reach it, we need to work together with a deeper sense of collaboration,” part of the declaration states. Among the appeals are calls on nations to fully fund the COVAX facility to distribute vaccines to poor and developing countries, to scale up vaccine production through the distribution of technology and licenses, and …

Chinese officials briefed diplomats Friday on the ongoing research into the origin of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, ahead of the expected release of a long-awaited report from the World Health Organization.The briefing appeared to be an attempt by China to get out its view on the report, which has become enmeshed in a diplomatic spat. The U.S. and others have raised questions about Chinese influence and the independence of the findings, and China has accused critics of politicizing a scientific study.”Our purpose is to show our openness and transparency,” said Yang Tao, a Foreign Ministry official. “China fought the epidemic in a transparent manner and has nothing to hide.”WHO worked with Chinese in WuhanThe report, which has been delayed repeatedly, is based on a visit earlier this year by a WHO team of international experts to Wuhan, the city in central China where infections from a new coronavirus were first reported in late 2019.The experts worked with Chinese counterparts, and both sides have to agree on the final report. It’s unclear when it will come out.Feng Zijian, a Chinese team member and the deputy director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the experts examined four possible ways the virus got to Wuhan.They are: a bat carrying the virus infected a human, a bat infected an intermediate mammal that spread it to a human, shipments of cold or frozen food; and a laboratory that researches viruses in Wuhan.Over 50 countries representedThe experts voted on the hypotheses after in-depth …

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Friday there are more 125.5 million global COVID-19 infections.The U.S. has more cases than any other country, with over 30 million infections, followed by Brazil, with 12.3 million, and India, with 11.8 million.India said Friday it set a record with a tally of more than 59,000 new cases in the previous 24-hour period.On Thursday, Brazil said it had recorded its highest number of new coronavirus cases in 24 hours with 100,158 infections.UNESCO said a new study has found that the coronavirus pandemic has adversely affected the reading proficiency of more than 100 million children.“The number of children lacking basic reading skills was on a downward curve prior to the pandemic, and expected to fall from 483 million to 460 million in 2020,” UNESCO said in a statement Thursday. “Instead, as a result of the pandemic, the number of children in difficulty jumped to 584 million in 2020, increasing by more than 20% and wiping out gains made over the past two decades through education efforts.”UNESCO is convening a meeting Monday with education ministers from around the world to discuss ways to combat the troubling trend.Canada hit a small stumbling block in its vaccination program when U.S. vaccine manufacturer Moderna said it was delaying a shipment of nearly 600,000 shots expected to be delivered this weekend.Anita Anand, Canada’s federal procurement minister, said Moderna officials attributed the setback to a “backlog in its quality assurance process.” The vaccines, however, are expected to be shipped …

Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday the former U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director’s belief that the virus that causes COVID-19 escaped from a lab is his opinion, and not one shared by a majority of public health care experts.Fauci who spoke during a regular White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing, was responding to comments by former U.S. president Donald Trump-appointed CDC director Robert Redfield.FILE – Then-Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield speaks during a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing at the Department of Education building in Washington, July 8, 2020.In an interview, as part of a documentary on the U.S. news channel CNN, Redfield said it is his belief that the virus was created in a lab and escaped, not necessarily intentionally. He said it was his opinion, something he was allowed to have now that he is a private citizen.When asked about the comments, Fauci said he was familiar with the comments and he said it was one of several theories as to the origin of the virus. He said he believes it is based on the idea that when the virus was first identified in late December of 2019, it seemed well adapted to transmission among the human population, suggesting it was adapted in the lab.But Fauci said the explanation that most health professionals go by is that the virus had been circulating in China for several weeks, if not a month, before it was clinically recognized, …

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Friday there are more 125.5 million global COVID-19 infections.The U.S. has more cases than another country, with over 30 million infections, followed by Brazil, with 12.3 million, and India, with 11.8 million.India said Friday it set a record with a tally of more than 59,000 new cases in the previous 24-hour period.On Thursday, Brazil said it had recorded its highest number of new coronavirus cases in 24 hours with 100,158 infections.UNESCO said a new study has found that the coronavirus pandemic has adversely affected the reading proficiency of more than 100 million children.“The number of children lacking basic reading skills was on a downward curve prior to the pandemic, and expected to fall from 483 million to 460 million in 2020,” UNESCO said in a statement Thursday. “Instead, as a result of the pandemic, the number of children in difficulty jumped to 584 million in 2020, increasing by more than 20% and wiping out gains made over the past two decades through education efforts.”UNESCO is convening a meeting Monday with education ministers from around the world to discuss ways to combat the troubling trend.Canada hit a small stumbling block in its vaccination program when U.S. vaccine manufacturer Moderna said it was delaying a shipment of nearly 600,000 shots expected to be delivered this weekend.Anita Anand, Canada’s federal procurement minister, said Moderna officials attributed the setback to a “backlog in its quality assurance process.” The vaccines, however, are expected to be shipped out …

The first batch of COVID-19 vaccines arrived in South Sudan’s Juba International Airport on Thursday. The 132,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine will be offered first to health care workers, including doctors and nurses, along with other vulnerable groups.South Sudan Health Minister Elizabeth Achuil said 732,000 additional doses are scheduled to arrive over the next few months through the support of the COVAX facility, a global partnership made up of a coalition that includes the Vaccine Alliance, UNICEF and the World Health Organization. COVAX was established to ensure that all countries can equitably access COVID-19 vaccines.Achuil said the AstraZeneca shipment is a milestone for South Sudan.“The COVID-19 vaccine will help us to protect our population against the COVID infections and prepare for a return to a normal life. We are grateful to all partners for their support in facilitating the arrival of the vaccines in our country,” she told reporters at Juba International Airport.A COVID-19 vaccination campaign will kick off across the country next week, according to Hamida Lasseko, the UNICEF representative for South Sudan.“It is very important that the government has decided to start with the health workers, who are the front-line workers, because they are the ones to be safe so as to continue with delivering health services,” Lasseko said.German Ambassador to South Sudan Manuel Muller, who represented the donor community at Juba International Airport to receive the vaccine doses, said South Sudan is one of 140 countries that will benefit from the COVAX initiative by the end …

In the global race against emerging variants of COVID-19, experts say it’s imperative to reach herd immunity quickly by vaccinating as many people as possible. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports on the range of vaccines being used in the U.S. and elsewhere.    …

The World Health Organization reports the African continent is lagging in the race to vaccinate its people against the deadly coronavirus. WHO says Africa needs far greater access to COVID-19 vaccines to reach its goal of vaccinating 60 percent of the population by June 2022.Africa received its first delivery of vaccines from the COVAX vaccine-sharing facility a month ago. Health officials say this has kick-started robust vaccination campaigns throughout much of the continent.Richard Mihigo is an immunization and vaccine development program coordinator at the WHO regional office for Africa. He says 32 countries currently are vaccinating high-risk groups against COVID-19. So far, he notes, nearly 7.7 million doses have been administered.”This is, indeed, a good start, even if the continent has received only limited doses and much later than other regions of the world,” Mihigo said. “The momentum that has started must be kept up to widen the scope of COVID-19 vaccination beyond the high-risk groups that have been prioritized by many countries.” Mihigo warns this will not be possible unless vaccine equity becomes a reality. He says it is unfair for some high-income countries to vaccinate their entire populations, while ignoring the needs of poorer nations.WHO estimates Africa will need 1.5 billion vaccine doses to protect 60 percent of the continent’s 1.2 billion population by June 2022. Another challenge facing Africa is the new coronavirus mutant strains.Mihigo says at least 15 African countries have reported the presence of variant strains. He says it is important to monitor the evolution of …

U.S. President Joe Biden makes a guest appearance at the European Union’s monthly summit Thursday, which will also be dominated by tensions over COVID-19 vaccinations and the pandemic’s latest surge in parts of the 27-member bloc.Discussions with Biden might be one of the few upbeat moments during this EU summit, taking place by videoconference because of coronavirus lockdowns in several member states. Both sides want to repair transatlantic ties that frayed under former president Donald Trump.      U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made that clear in Brussels Wednesday after meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.     “As President Biden has said, the United States will work closely with our allies and our European Union partners across the continent to address our shared challenges and to meet our shared goal of a Europe whole, free and in peace,” Blinken said.   The last U.S. leader to join an EU summit was former president Barack Obama in 2009.   EU leaders are also discussing ways to boost their vaccine supplies, amid a resurging pandemic in some places. They’re facing mounting criticism from European voters over the bloc’s slow vaccine rollout, which sees it lagging well behind the U.S. and a number of other countries.   The EU’s executive arm has proposed temporarily curbing vaccine exports to ensure its citizens have greater access—and equal treatment by other exporting nations, starting with ex-member Britain.   “Just since the introduction of the export authorization system, some 10 million doses …

U.S. officials say Russian state media is citing false reports to undermine faith in Western COVID vaccines to promote Russia’s own Sputnik V vaccine.  Daria Dieguts has the story.Camera: Artyom Kokhan   …

The world’s most widely distributed COVID-19 vaccine is back in the news, and not for a good reason.AstraZeneca drew an unusual public rebuke from U.S. officials this week for overstating the results of a clinical trial.While those officials expressed confidence overall in the vaccine, it’s the latest in a series of missteps for a critical tool for ending the pandemic.>AstraZeneca’s vaccine is the backbone of the global effort to immunize lower-income countries. Experts are concerned that confidence in the shot has slipped unnecessarily following a string of self-inflicted wounds, unproven safety scares and discouraging but limited efficacy results.Red flagThe company announced Monday that the vaccine was COVID-19 vaccination in Dhaka, March 24, 2021.The company’s announcement “might in fact be misleading a bit,” NIAID Director Anthony Fauci said on the ABC News program “Good Morning America” on Tuesday.With more recent cases taken into account, the efficacy data slips to between 69% and 75%, according to The Washington Post, which obtained the letter from the oversight board.Those are still strong results, Fauci told reporters Wednesday.”At the end of the day, when you look at the data, this is going to turn out to be a good vaccine,” he said.But Fauci conceded that the lack of transparency is likely to undermine confidence in the vaccine.In demandThe vaccine was first developed by researchers at the University of Oxford. AstraZeneca signed on last April to shepherd it through clinical trials and do large-scale manufacturing.AstraZeneca has secured orders for more than 3 billion doses, according to …

The ongoing drama surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine developed jointly by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford took another turn late Wednesday when the drugmaker released updated information about its effectiveness.The new information, based on its late-stage clinical trial involving more than 30,000 participants in the United States, shows the two-dose regimen is 76% effective in preventing symptomatic coronavirus.The latest figures revised an announcement made by the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant on Monday that the vaccine was 79% effective against the virus. Those claims were thrown into doubt just hours later when a key U.S. government oversight agency, the Data and Safety Monitoring Board, said AstraZeneca “may have included outdated information” from the late-stage clinical trial, “which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.”The statement from the independent board of experts was just the latest setback for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which has had a troubled international rollout. Several European countries had recently stopped use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine because of reports that it was associated with blood clots in recipients. South Africa stopped using the shot due to concerns about its efficacy against a local variant of the virus. The country sold at least a million of its Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccines to the African Union.However, the European Medicines Agency, the European Union’s drug approval body, has said the vaccine is safe and does not raise the overall risk of blood clots. Canada’s federal health agency announced Wednesday that it is updating the label on vials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine …

Hong Kong’s sudden suspension of a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is another blow to a vaccination program already struggling against a wall of public distrust.Hong Kong on Wednesday suspended use of the Pfizer vaccine, distributed by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Fosun Pharma, after defective packaging such as loose vial lids and cracks on bottles were found in one of two batches of the vaccine.For now, Hong Kong residents can only get the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine, which is reported to have an efficacy rate of 62%, compared with Pfizer’s 97%. Wariness toward the Sinovac shot has grown after seven people who were vaccinated with it died, though authorities say the deaths were not linked to the vaccine.When the government launched the vaccination drive in February, 66-year-old Chan Yuet Lin was eager to get inoculated. A mainland Chinese immigrant in the semi-autonomous city, she hoped vaccination would help her eventually visit her family in the Chinese mainland, whom she had not seen since the pandemic began, without enduring onerous quarantines.But after seeing reports on television that several people with chronic illnesses had died days after having the Sinovac vaccine, Chan decided against getting inoculated.”I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood sugar. Right now with my health condition I don’t think I can get the shot, I will wait and see,” she said, adding that she planned to seek her doctor’s advice at her next appointment.Since vaccinations began on Feb. 26, about 5.7% of Hong Kong’s 7.2 million …

As expected, the European Union (EU) Wednesday announced it will tighten export controls to ensure that there are more COVID-19 shot supplies for its citizens as health officials say the pandemic is getting worse on the continent.At a news conference in Brussels, European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said the plan is designed to guarantee that more vaccines produced in the Europe are available for its own citizens before they can be shipped for exports.EU and Pfizer-BioNTech Sign Deal for 4 Million More DosesAdditional doses to be delivered before the end of MarchUnder the new policy, export licenses will be granted of based on reciprocity and “proportionality” — the epidemiological situation, vaccination rate and access to vaccines in the destination country.The move comes a week after European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen expressed frustration that the EU was exporting more vaccines than it was receiving from some countries — specifically Britain, which has received about ten million doses of European-made vaccines and sent nothing back.EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides insisted the new policy was not about punishing anyone but comes as the pandemic continues to worsen in Europe, with the numbers of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths on the rise.Meanwhile, Hong Kong has suspended use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine after it discovered some packaging defects in one shipment. Hong Kong authorities say they had received a letter from BioNTech, Pfizer’s German-based partner, about problems it discovered with the seal on a batch of individual vials.The neighboring gambling city of Macau …