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 When coronavirus and protests collide
Australian authorities are taking legal action to try and stop a
Black Lives Matter protest scheduled for Saturday in Sydney, citing
the risk of an outbreak of COVID-19 given the thousands expected to
attend. State police had originally approved the protest on the
understanding that there would be fewer than 500 participants.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison had earlier on Friday told people not
to attend the gathering and similar rallies in Melbourne and other
cities.
His warnings joined those of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Robert Redfield,
who urged participants in protests sweeping the United States since
the death of George Floyd to get tested for coronavirus.
Hydroxychloroquine or not?
Scientists are resuming COVID-19 trials of the now world-famous drug
hydroxychloroquine, as confusion persists about the anti-malarial
hailed by U.S. President Donald Trump as a potential "game-changer"
in fighting the pandemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO), which last week paused trials
when the Lancet in a study showed the drug was tied to an increased
risk of death in hospitalised patients, said on Wednesday it was
ready to resume trials.
But the jury is still out, according to Martin Landray, co-lead
scientist on the Recovery trial, the world's largest research
project into existing drugs that might be repurposed to treat
COVID-19 patients. "People can quote data, people can quote experts,
but there is continuing huge uncertainty," he said.
Breakthrough generosity
The GAVI vaccines alliance said it had raised $567 million towards
an initial goal of $2 billion from international donors for an
Advanced Market Commitment to buy future COVID-19 vaccines for poor
countries.
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The deal would help secure enough COVID-19 vaccine doses - when the shots have
been developed - for poor countries to immunise healthcare workers and those at
high risk, it said, as well as creating a "buffer of doses" for use when needed.
"To beat the COVID-19 pandemic, the world needs more than breakthrough science.
It needs breakthrough generosity," Bill Gates, co-chair of the philanthropic
Gates Foundation, told the summit.
GAVI is a public-private partnership backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, the WHO, the World Bank, UNICEF and others.
Contact-tracing wearable
Singapore plans to soon launch a wearable device for novel coronavirus contact
tracing that, if successful, it will distribute to all of its 5.7 million
residents, the government said on Friday.
The city-state has already developed the first-of-its-kind smartphone app to
identify and alert people who have interacted with novel coronavirus carriers,
but the bluetooth technology has been beset with glitches and the app is not
widely used.
The device being developed can be worn on a lanyard or kept in a handbag and
will be battery-operated, foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan said last month
in an interview with Sky News Australia.
(Compiled by Karishma Singh; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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