Live coronavirus news: Canada guaranteed almost 10 doses of vaccine per person; US deaths exceed 450,000 | World News

The United States – the most affected country worldwide in terms of the number of coronavirus cases and people who died in the pandemic, has exceeded the death toll of 450,000, according to Johns Hopkins University, as it approaches the half a million lives lost.

The Biden government has warned that the number of victims in the United States could exceed 600,000 before the virus is under control.

Canada has the right to receive vaccines under the Covax scheme, in which advance purchases by wealthy nations are used to finance vaccine development and subsidize doses for the poorest countries. He contributed about $ 345 million, half of which to pay for his own doses.

But global health officials have criticized countries for making private deals – of which Canada has done enough to guarantee 9.6 doses per person – which, they say, raise vaccine prices and represent a form of “double dip” – taking supplies from Covax at the same time, they sign private agreements that make it more difficult for the facility to guarantee doses that would be shared equitably.

Other countries that have booked significant supplies through parallel agreements with pharmaceutical companies, including Australia, Israel and the United Kingdom, have opted out of or received no vaccine from the first batch of allocations announced on Wednesday.

More from this Guardian’s report Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco:

Canada is expected to receive a significant amount of vaccines in the coming months, through a platform designed to maximize supply to poor countries, according to a new forecast, despite reserving the highest amount of doses per person in the world through agreements with pharmaceutical companies.

Chile and New Zealand, which also made controversial side deals to secure their own vaccine supplies, will also receive an above-average number of doses, according to the provisional allocation schedule released by Covax on Wednesday.

Covax, a mechanism for distributing doses of Covid-19 fairly worldwide, aims to deliver around 330 million doses of the Oxford / AstraZeneca and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines to 145 countries by June, volumes that they say are sufficient to cover a an average of 3.3% of the population of each country.

Ottawa led the world in direct negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to secure its own supply, reserving enough to cover approximately 9.6 doses per person, according to the Guardian’s analysis.

Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco report from The Guardian:

Hello, welcome to live coronavirus coverage with me, Helen Sullivan.

As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

Canada is expected to receive a significant amount of vaccines in the coming months, through a platform designed to maximize supply to poor countries, according to a new forecast, despite reserving the highest amount of doses per person in the world through agreements with pharmaceutical companies.

Globe and Mail reports that Canada will be the only G7 country in the world to accept vaccines from the scheme.

My colleagues Michael Safi and Leyland Cecco report that Canada has the right to receive vaccines under the Covax scheme, in which advance purchases by wealthy nations are used to finance vaccine development and subsidize doses for poorer countries.

But Ottawa also led the world in direct business with pharmaceutical companies to secure its own supply, reserving enough to cover approximately 9.6 doses per person, according to the Guardian’s analysis.

More on that soon. For now, here are the other important recent developments:

• Belgian regulators are the latest in Europe to advise against giving the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine to the elderly due to the lack of data on its effectiveness.
• Switzerland denied approval for the Oxford / AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, your drug regulator said today.
• Leaders in Europe are recklessly risking their own public health by using autonomous punctuation to attack the UK’s coronavirus vaccine launch UK health experts warned. “The views of Europe’s politicians contrast with the scientific view reached by the European regulator,” said a former chief regulator of medicines.
• New coronavirus infections in Greece increased by over 1,000 for the second consecutive day, with health officials adding 1,151 to the country’s count after a month of the daily number remaining in the three-digit range.
• Veterinarians in Germany trained sniffer dogs to detect coronavirus in human saliva samples with 94% accuracy.
• The Covax installation scheme aims to distribute at least 330m of doses in the first half of 2021, its co-leaders announced on Wednesday. It also struck a deal with the Serum Institute of India for up to 1.1 billion doses of AstraZeneca and Novavax vaccines for $ 3 per dose for low- and middle-income countries.
• AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford intend to develop a state-of-the-art vaccine to combat new variants as early as autumn, a senior executive at the manufacturer told Reuters.