Coronavirus latest: Hoarded vaccines must reach poor before they expire, says former UK leader

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown said on Sunday that millions of Covid-19 vaccines currently stored in rich countries must be distributed to poorer nations before they expire.

Brown said data from scientific research group Airfinity revealed that 100m Covid-19 vaccines stockpiled in wealthy countries in the northern hemisphere would become unusable after December this year, and then “thrown away”.

His call to action came in the run-up to a virtual Covid-19 summit due to be hosted by US President Joe Biden on Wednesday, timed to coincide with the annual UN General Assembly meeting this week.

“We need a plan to distribute vaccines quickly,” Brown said in a statement. “It will be a profound and collective political tragedy if this summit misses the opportunity to act with doses transferred immediately to poorer countries.”

Brown said he had sent the Airfinity data to Biden and other world leaders.

“It is unthinkable and unconscionable that 100m vaccines will have to be thrown away from the stockpiles of the rich countries whilst the populations of the world’s poorest countries will pay for our vaccine waste in lives lost,” said Brown, who was the UK’s chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007 in the government of Tony Blair, before serving as prime minister from 2007 to 2010.

“No one is safe anywhere until everyone is safe everywhere. It is in everyone’s interest everywhere that President Biden and his fellow G7 leaders do what it takes … to eradicate Covid in every corner of our globe,” Brown said.

Lufthansa is to raise more than €2.1bn by offering new shares to investors, the German carrier said on Sunday, and use the proceeds to repay the multibillion-euro bailout it received from Berlin in the summer of 2020.

The long-anticipated capital raising, underwritten by 14 banks and due to be completed in early October, will help the Frankfurt-based airline refund the full €2.5bn it has drawn from its home country’s Economic Stabilisation Fund (ESF) by the end of the year, the group added.

Germany’s ESF participated in a €9bn rescue package for Lufthansa last summer, which included support from the Austrian, Swiss, Italian and Belgian governments. Berlin also spent €300m on shares in the company, and now owns almost 16 per cent of the group.

Lufthansa has repaid much of what it drew from the package, including a €1bn loan from the German development bank KfW. Once the ESF tranche is fully repaid, the airline will cancel the facility in its entirety, before repaying the €1.2bn it owes to the remaining governments, a spokesperson said.

Read more here

Vietnam’s health ministry has approved Cuba’s Abdala Covid-19 vaccine, the government said at the weekend, as Delta-driven cases continue to rise in the south-east Asian country.

Abdala is the eighth Covid-19 vaccine to be approved for use in Vietnam, which has one of the lowest jab rates in the region, with only 6.3 per cent of its 96m people being fully vaccinated.

“The ministry of health has approved Abdala vaccine, based on the country’s urgent need for its Covid-19 fight,” the government said in a statement released just hours after President Nguyen Xuan Phuc left the capital Hanoi for an official visit to Havana.

Vietnam’s health ministry said last month that Cuba would supply large quantities of Abdala vaccines to the country and transfer the production technology by the end of the year. Cuba has claimed its three-shot vaccine solution to be 92.28 per cent effective.

Vietnam has reported close to 678,000 Covid-19 cases and over 16,000 virus-related deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Developing countries are at risk of sliding into instability under the weight of the pandemic without more financial support from richer nations and the IMF, Costa Rica’s president has warned. Costa Rica, which has a population of just over 5m people, is known for eco-tourism. It has suffered an increase in its own debt-to-GDP ratio in recent years.

President Carlos Alvarado said that lower income and higher social spending caused by the pandemic were squeezing governments in the developing world and pushing society to its limit.

“It’s put a lot of economies that were already indebted under a lot more pressure,” he told the Financial Times. “There’s also a lot of social demands, there’s a big risk of economic, political and social instability in developing economies.”

The UN has warned of a global debt sustainability crisis in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which pushed an estimated 100m more people into poverty in 2020, according to the World Bank. The IMF has offered new support by issuing special drawing rights or SDRs and debt service relief.

Read more here

The multibillion-pound business of buying and selling commercial aircraft was put on hold during the Covid-19 pandemic. But a rare public spat between Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary and Boeing over the Irish airline’s latest order of 737 Max 10 jets shows the high stakes game is sputtering back to life.

It is also a sign that the aircraft market is reviving as airlines return to the negotiating table to place orders for passenger jets in anticipation of the return of more passengers.

The pandemic has hit aviation hard, with Boeing saying the virus has cost the industry two years of growth. The breakdown of talks with O’Leary over a new batch of Max 10 jets shows a more confident approach from the US manufacturer, according to industry watchers.

“It is good for the industry that Boeing is showing some price discipline. The Max is a good aircraft. They shouldn’t be pressured by O’Leary into giving it away,” John Leahy, former commercial director at Airbus, told the Financial Times.

Read more here