Auckland positive test
New Zealand’s Health ministry confirmed the positive COVID-19 test result of an airport worker at Auckland on the second day of the Australia-New Zealand travel bubble. A statement was released by the ministry: “The usual protocol of isolating the case, interviewing them and tracing their contacts is under way.”
On Monday, there were 15 flight arrivals and 17 departures from Auckland Airport.
Greece suspends J&J Jab
Greece suspended inoculations with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to begin Monday, Greece’s National Vaccination Committee chief Maria Theodoridou told a regular live briefing.
“We should wait for the conclusions of both the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA),” she said, adding that health authorities in the US are looking into six cases of thrombosis out of a total of seven million vaccinations carried out in the country with the Johnson & Johnson vaccιne. The people affected were women aged 18 to 48, she noted, while also pointing to data according to which nine in 10 deaths in Greece involved people who had not been vaccinated, while only a small number of fatalities concerned patients who had been vaccinated with both doses of a vaccine.
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EU, Australia and AstraZeneca
Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal markets commissioner, hinted that the EU bloc might decide not to order the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine again following delays in delivering the first batches of the vaccine. “We’re pragmatic. My priority, as far as the vaccines are concerned is to ensure that the firms we have contracts with deliver them punctually,” he told BFMTV television, however added that the “benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh the disease”.
In Australia Pfizer will be the “preferred” vaccine over AstraZeneca following concerns over “rare but serious” blood clots were found in a small number of recipients.
READ MORE: Olympics under threat as Japan faces a fourth COVID wave and sluggish vaccine rollout
Death tallies
The COVID-19 death toll surpassed three million on Saturday since it was first detected in China in December 2019, with an average of 12,000 deaths recorded globally every day.
On Friday, there were 829,596 new infections reported worldwide, breaking all records according to the AFP’s tally. The USA holds the world record of fatalaties with 581,542 COVID-related deaths.
According to the World-o-meter stats, there have been 316,879 coronavirus cases in Greece, 9,540 deaths (78 in the last 24 hours) and 275,553 recoveries.
In Cyprus, there have been 294 deaths recorded from 57,081 cases.
Australia has had 910 deaths from a total of 29,550 coronavirus cases.