Tag: Vaccination and Immunization

Beijing Olympics: China to Ease Rules for Athletes in Bubble

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Athletes traveling to Beijing for the Winter Olympics will be able to skip quarantine if they are fully vaccinated, a signal that China is willing to ease some restrictions to ensure that teams make it to the Games in February. But athletes will still face strict rules, and punishment for violating them, including expulsion, the Beijing Olympics’ organizing committee said on Wednesday. The committee members did not specify what offenses would merit expulsion. But the Beijing Olympics are already shaping up to be the most extraordinarily regulated, large-scale sporting event…

China Locks Down City of 4 Million to Subdue Covid Outbreak

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The Chinese government ordered the northwestern city of Lanzhou locked down on Tuesday as officials carried out widespread testing to quash a small Covid-19 outbreak. Lanzhou, a city of about four million people, reported six new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, and a total of 39 over the past week. China, where the coronavirus first emerged in late 2019, has been battling a recent flare-up of new cases largely in the northwest of the country that were spread by domestic travel. The country enforces a strict “zero Covid” policy, carrying out…

Tourists in Asia Navigate a Patchwork of Policies

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While fully vaccinated Americans can fly to hundreds of cities and towns across the country and 27 European capitals, border rules across Asia remain far stricter than in any other region in the world. Governments in Asia have promised to reopen their borders because of the improved Covid situation and progress on vaccinations. But they are falling behind the rest of the world. Air travel in August across the region was still 10 percent of what it was two years ago, lagging the rebound in the United States. Travelers must…

How Asia, Once a Vaccination Laggard, Is Revving Up Inoculations

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Then came the Delta variant. Despite keeping their countries largely sealed off, the virus found its way in. And when it did, it spread quickly. In the summer, South Korea battled its worst wave of infections; hospitals in Indonesia ran out of oxygen and beds; and in Thailand, health care workers had to turn away patients. With cases surging, countries quickly shifted their vaccination approach. Sydney, Australia, announced a lockdown in June after an unvaccinated limousine driver caught the Delta variant from an American aircrew. Then, Prime Minister Scott Morrison,…

China Says It Has Vaccinated 1 Billion People

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China said on Thursday that it had fully inoculated 1 billion people, a milestone for the world’s most populous country that brings it closer to its goal of vaccinating 80 percent of its population by the end of the year. It was a significant accomplishment, representing 71 percent of China’s population of 1.4 billion. China has administered 2.16 billion doses, nearly triple that of India, which is ranked second for shots given and has doled out 752.7 million doses, according to Our World in Data, which tracks vaccination figures. More…

The Delta Variant and China’s Need to Change Its Covid-19 Policy

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“How lucky I was born in China,” a young Chinese scholar declared last month in his WeChat. He was proud: Following the worst domestic Covid-19 outbreak since Wuhan, China had brought daily new case counts down to a few dozen. The case numbers — when contrasted with the United States, which has less than a quarter of China’s population yet daily average cases above 130,000 — might not seem too concerning on their own. But they illustrate that China’s zero-infections policy is no longer working as designed. At the outset…

Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today

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Inconclusive origins It’s been more than 18 months since the first cases of a mysterious “pneumonialike illness” were reported in Wuhan, China. The world still isn’t any closer to understanding how the pandemic started. The director of national intelligence delivered a preliminary report to President Biden on Tuesday about the pandemic’s origin. But officials have yet to answer the biggest question: whether the coronavirus was the result of an accidental leak from a Wuhan lab or whether it emerged naturally in a spillover from animals to humans. Officials have repeatedly…

More Vaccine Mandates

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Fully endorsed The F.D.A. granted full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus shots for people 16 and older yesterday, the fastest vaccine approval in the agency’s history. (Although, perhaps, not fast enough.) President Biden seized on the moment. “If you’re a business leader, a nonprofit leader, a state or local leader, who has been waiting for full F.D.A. approval to require vaccinations, I call on you now to do that,” he said. “Require it.” It gives companies more cover to impose vaccine mandates and industry groups more ground to lobby local…

China’s Vaccine Diplomacy Stumbles in Southeast Asia

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China, eager to build good will, stepped in, promising to provide more than 255 million doses, according to Bridge Consulting, a Beijing-based research company. Half a year in, however, that campaign has lost some of its luster. Officials in several countries have raised doubts about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines, especially against the more transmissible Delta variant. Indonesia, which was early to accept Chinese shots, was recently the epicenter of the virus. Others have complained about the conditions that accompanied Chinese donations or sales. The setback to China’s vaccine campaign…