Under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of "One Earth One Health" and belief "Vasudaiva Kutumbakam," India supplied 'Made in India' Covid vaccines to 42 countries of the Africa continent, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Wednesday. Addressing the inaugural address at the 18th CII-EXIM Bank Conclave, Jaishankar said, "During the pandemic, India continued unabated its engagement with Africa. The 15th and 16th editions of the CII-Exim Bank Africa Conclave were actually held, though they were held virtually. To support our friends in Africa, India provided medical support to 32 countries." "From January 2021 till March 2023 we supplied 'Made in India' Covid vaccines to 42 countries of the continent. This was in line with our Prime Minister's vision of "One Earth One Health" and our civilizational belief in "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam". We are now encouraging Indian pharma manufacturers and vaccine manufacturers to explore joint manufacturing facilities in African countries. Equally important, we have battled in the WTO along with our African partners for enhancing the accessibility and affordability of vaccines," he added, according to the statement released by MEA. He also talked about virtual education and medical services. Jaishankar informed that India launched e-VidyaBharti and e-ArogyaBharti network in 2019 for tele-education and tele-medicine. Under this initiative, over 14,000 youth from 22 African countries have enrolled for various degrees and diploma courses. India has partnered with African countries in promoting digital transformation through the setting up of IT Centres, S&T Parks Entrepreneur Development Centres (EDC), etc. Where the digital domain is concerned, India's emphasis on trust and transparency makes it a natural partner for Africa. On the trade and economic front, India and Africa's bilateral trade reached USD 98 billion in 2022-23. "On the trade and economic front, India's bilateral trade with Africa has reached US$ 98 billion in 2022-23 compared to USD 89.6 billion of the previous year. I am confident that our bilateral trade will soon cross the USD 100 billion mark," Jaishankar said. "Through the Duty-Free Tariff Preference (DFTP) Scheme that extends duty-free access to 98.2 per cent of India's total tariff lines, India opened its market to African countries, and so far 33 LDC African nations are entitled to get the benefit," he added. The minister hoped that African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) which commenced in 2021 will be helpful for Indian companies to enhance their business footprint in Africa. With cumulative investments at USD 73.9 billion from 1996-2021, India is among the top five large investors in Africa, Jaishankar said adding that he is sure this will grow in the times to come.

The German biotech firm BioNTech is facing compensation claims for alleged side-effects from its Comirnaty vaccine. Millions of people in Germany received the jab, which authorities say saved many lives in the pandemic. The German biotechnology company BioNTech will go to court on Monday to defend itself against a lawsuit from a woman who alleges that its COVID vaccine caused her to suffer damaging side-effects. The trial at a Hamburg regional court is the first to deal with such allegations regarding a COVID vaccine. Several hundred damages lawsuits have been filed or are in preparation nationwide, according to figures from lawyers' offices.  BioNTech says more than 64 million people in Germany and some 1.5 billion across the world received its Comirnaty vaccine, the most commonly used in the Western world, during the coronavirus pandemic. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved it as safe.   Under German pharmaceutical law, makers of drugs or vaccines are liable for damages only if it is scientifically shown that their products cause harm that is disproportionate to their benefits or if the label information is wrong. The court has said no decision in the case is likely on Monday. What is the plaintiff claiming? The woman, who is not being publicly named under German privacy laws, alleges that the vaccine caused her to suffer upper-body pain, swollen extremities, fatigue and sleeping disorder. She is suing BioNTech for at least €150,000 ($161,500) in damages for bodily harm as well as compensation for unspecified material damage, according to the court. A lawyer representing her, Tobias Ulbrich, told Reuters news agency that he would challenge assessments made by EU and German health regulators that the Comirnaty jab had a positive risk-benefit profile. What have BioNTech and the EMA said? BioNTech said it has given the case careful consideration and concluded that it was without merit. "The positive benefit-risk profile of Comirnaty remains positive and the safety profile has been well-characterized," it said. The EMA reaffirmed last week the benefit of all COVID shots it approved, including Comirnaty. It said vaccines were estimated to have helped save almost 20 million lives across the world in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic alone. It conceded that there was a very small risk, mostly to young males, of two types of heart inflammation — myocarditis and pericarditis — following vaccination with the Comirnaty shot. The EMA says it registered almost 1.7 million spontaneous reports of suspected side-effects by May, which amounts to about 0.2 for every 100 administered doses. Many vaccinations against illnesses produce adverse side-effects, but these are normally temporary and limited to headache, fever, fatigue or muscle pain. The EMA monitors adverse events or illnesses after vaccination, also watching whether they are more frequent in the vaccinated than the non-vaccinated population.

Germany is set to abandon the mandatory wearing of face masks on long-distance trains and buses in early February. The requirement is among the last remaining coronavirus pandemic measures to be kept in place. German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach announced on Friday that, from February 2, travelers will no longer need to wear face masks on long-distance public transport in Germany. The minister said the government had taken the decision to scrap the mask mandate several months ahead of schedule because of a reduction in the risk posed by the coronavirus. Why is the rule being scrapped now? "The pandemic situation has stabilized,'' said Lauterbach, who has been under mounting pressure to drop the mandate. The number of known or suspected infections is evening out or even falling, and the number of people hospitalized continues to decline, he explained. "The population has built up high immunity, and the experts who advise us no longer believe there will be another big, serious winter wave." "At this point, we also don't foresee particularly dangerous variants reaching us in the coming weeks and months.'' Lauterbach, himself a trained epidemiologist, nevertheless appealed to people to voluntarily wear masks indoors and also on trains. "We just need to put more emphasis on personal responsibility and voluntariness."  Some rules still in place The requirement to wear FFP2 or medical face masks on long-distance public trains and buses was one of the last remaining measures in place as part of the Infection Protection Act. The law was due to expire on April 7, and the mask mandate with it. The legislation also includes a stipulation for masks to be worn in health care settings such as medical practices, with additional testing requirements for access to hospitals and care facilities. Lauterbach has faced mounting calls from inside and outside the governing coalition to do away with remaining rules, particularly from the neoliberal Free Democrats who form part of Germany's ruling coalition government. The calls grew even louder after famed German virologist Christian Drosten said he believed the pandemic could be considered to be over. Most European countries scrapped mask mandates in 2022, and Germany alongside Spain was one of the few states to keep the rule in place. The Spanish government has announced that the rule will apply until at least March 2023. Although the long-distance transport requirement was nationwide, states make their own decisions about public transport. Three states have already dropped the requirement on regional and local trains, trams and buses, while six more planning to do so by the beginning of next month.

The Chinese protesters who demonstrated against the zero-Covid policy were subjected to intense surveillance measures and aggressive interrogations in police custody, reported Cate Cadell and Christian Shepherd in The Washington Post. Even though China revoked its Zero Covid Policy following the protests, China unleashed its police equipped with the latest technology to go after people who had participated in the protests. Dozens of people who took part in the protests have paid heavily for the dissent. Some protesters from Beijing and Shanghai had mentioned that they had to face heightened digital surveillance, strip searches, threats to their families and physical duress during these interrogations by the Chinese police for participating in the protests, said Cadell and Shepherd. It is not exactly clear how the exact tracing of the protestors was possible for the protests but insights from lawyers, analysts, protesters and police purchasing documents offer some hints at the types of tools used. The Washington Post report mentions one theory although it is difficult to prove that the police used cell signal towers to pull all phone numbers from locations where crowds gathered and then deployed officers en masse to work through the list. "[The police] seem to have used some modern technology, network technology, and they have collected a data pool of phone numbers of all the people involved in the incident," the Washing Post quoted a lawyer having direct knowledge of protestors' case. In the same report Washington Post claims A month before the protests began in Beijing, the city's Ministry of Public Security issued a procurement for a 580,000-yuan (USD 84,000) data surveillance project combining human analysts and automated scraping tools to undertake 24-hour screening of domestic and overseas news and social media accounts discussing issues that could snowball into dissent in China. Doa, a 28-year-old tech worker from Beijing, detained after a protest against Zero covid said, "The virus is no longer the enemy, the health officials and quarantine are not the enemy ... now only the people who protest are the enemy." The Washington Post report further mentions that the people who had offered their statements about the police interactions used nicknames or spoke on the clause of anonymity because of the sensitive matter. In the Washington Post report by Cadell and Shepherd Doa said that she and a friend were at a protest held on November 28 at midnight near a Liangmahe bridge in Chaoyang district for just half an hour keeping a low profile and avoiding being filed and any interactions with the police. Two days later, her mother was contacted, telling her that Doa had participated in "illegal riots" and would soon be detained. Further, the police called Doa summoning them to a police station in Northern Beijing. She was further exposed to a nine-hour interrogation. There is no official figure on the number of people detained following the protests, and the Chinese government has not directly acknowledged arrests even occurred, according to the Cadell and Shepherd report. The report further mentions about a 2018 policy that was designed by the administration requiring internet companies to make regular detailed reports on trends that "mobilize" public sentiment or cause "major changes in public opinion." Under the rule, companies must provide detailed information on individual users, including their real names, location and chat logs. Supporting such a technology-influenced system of tracing is a system of cities filled with hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras under an ambitious program called Sharp Eyes that set a goal of covering the entire population by 2020. It includes facial recognition cameras designed to automatically identify pedestrians and drivers and compare them against national ID registries and blacklists. In a different incident related six people were similarly arrested and exposed to stressful and physically demanding interrogations. "We were only allowed to stand and could not talk to each other. They didn't let us sleep, and if I did, they would knock on the door to wake me up," said one Shanghai man, 25, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of further repercussions. The man said he saw others detained who were handcuffed and forced into a squatting position for around an hour after failing to comply. He said officers punished them in the station by making them do squat exercises and copy hand pages of political documents from the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. "The purpose [of questioning] was to find out who planned it; they thought it was the separatists or foreign forces," he said. The officers taunted men in the group with long hair, calling them gay, he added. "They would also call us traitors and running dogs and tell us to get the hell out of China.".

Germany's health minister said Berlin would be following an EU recommendation that member states demand travelers from China provide proof of a recent negative rapid COVID test. Germany will require compulsory coronavirus testing for people entering from China because of the wave of infections there, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Thursday.  Lauterbach said that Germany would require "at least a rapid test" taken shortly before departure. He said spot tests would also be carried out at random on some arrivals, "to recognize virus variants."  This follows an EU recommendation on Wednesday that member states consider this course of action if they see fit. Although such decisions ultimately rest with national governments, the EU often provides recommendations, partly in a bid to ensure more uniform actions from EU members. Lauterbach, who is also a doctor, called the EU's recommendation a "good decision."  "On this basis we are now also changing German entry rules at short notice," Lauterbach said.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has offered China help to deal with the recent rise in coronavirus infections. Her offer comes despite persistent intrusions by Chinese warplanes in Taiwan's air defense identification zone. Extending an olive branch, Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen on Sunday offered to provide Beijing with "necessary assistance" as China continues to grapple with surging COVID-19 cases following its abrupt lifting of virus curbs. In her traditional New Year's Day speech, Tsai said that everyone had seen the rise in cases in China.  "As long as there is a need, based on the position of humanitarian care, we are willing to provide the necessary assistance to help more people get out of the pandemic and have a healthy and safe new year," she said in the address from her office. Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory as part of its "one China" policy, while Taiwan remains self-governing and democratic. What did Tsai say in her address? In Sunday's message, Tsai added that the Chinese military activities around Taiwan were "unhelpful" in maintaining relations between the two. "War has never been an option to solve problems. Only dialogue, cooperation, and the common goal of promoting regional stability and development can make more people feel safe and happy," she said. The ties between Taiwan and China have worsened with Beijing stepping up military, diplomatic and economic pressure on the self-ruled island. Why is China experiencing a spike in COVID cases now? China is witnessing an explosive spike in coronavirus infections after dropping its strict "zero-Covid" policy — deemed the world's most stringent pandemic regime of lockdowns and testing —  last month, three years after the virus first emerged in Wuhan. Taipei and Beijing have been at loggerheads over their respective policies to reign in the spread of COVID-19. Taiwan has accused China of a lack of transparency and of trying to interfere with vaccine supplies to the island, which Beijing has denied. China has denounced Taiwan for ineffective management of the pandemic after increasing domestic cases last year. What has been Beijing's reaction? Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned Taiwan only briefly in his New Year speech on Saturday evening. Xi said that people on either side of the Taiwan Strait "are members of one and the same family." Xi's address had no mention of seeking to bring the island under Chinese control. While talking to journalists after her Sunday address, Tsai said she had noted the Chinese President's "gentler" remarks. "But I want to remind people - the military activities of the People's Liberation Army near Taiwan are not at all conducive to cross-strait relations nor regional peace and stability," she stressed. Restrictions for Chinese travelers as cases rise Meanwhile, Australia and Canada have become the latest countries to add COVID restrictions on travelers from China amid the Asian nation's rising cases. From January 5, Australia will require visitors from China to submit a negative COVID-19 test, health minister Mark Butler announced on Sunday. On Saturday, Canada said that travelers from China must test negative for the virus no more than two days before departure.

A new type of Covid-19 sub-variant BF.7 has been detected in Bangladesh.  Professor Dr. Tahmina Shirin, Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control And Research (IEDCR) Director confirmed this matter on Sunday, January 1. BF.7 is a new sub-variant of omicron type of Coronavirus. This new type of corona is detected in the body of chinese nationals. They brought a Covid negative certificate from China.  However, rapid antigen test in Bangladesh detected the presence of coronavirus in their bodies. 'Many others on that flight had symptoms. However, they did not any symptoms.  They were sent to Dhaka DNCC Covid-19 Hospital as they were diagnosed with Corona, said Shahriar Sajjad, Health Officer of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport. The new strain is much more contagious. Earlier, the Department of Health informed that 18 people can be infected from one person infected with BF.7 subtype.

What is going on in China at present has stoked fears about the repetition of the horrific Covid-19 outbreak that killed millions of people across the globe. And like what Beijing did in 2019, this time too Chinese authorities are hiding information about the corona virus infections from their own people and the world outside. Had China disseminated true information of the Covid in 2019, the world could have been saved from the unprecedented disaster. The world is still recovering from the losses of livelihoods, damages to businesses and national economies, and healthcare disruptions. In such a scenario, the new, deadly variant of corona virus from China can create havoc across the globe if its spread is not checked in time. This demands Beijing must take its citizens and the international community into confidence and share the ground realities with them. Millions of new cases are reported from China daily. Major cities including Shanghai and Beijing are reeling under rapidly increasing infections. Hospitals and funerals are crowded, and streets are empty. People are not getting beds in the hospitals. They are forced to stay and sleep on benches and floors of hospitals. Even students are disallowed from attending school. Teachers and school staff are falling ill.  It is said to be the biggest wave since the Wuhan outbreak three years ago. Chinese authorities appear helpless and struggling to cope with the growing problem.  ″The hospital is just overwhelmed from top to bottom. The biggest challenge, honestly, is I think we were just unprepared for this,”Beijing-based doctor Howard Bernstein said.  There are chances that half of Shanghai’s 25 million population can be infected by the end of 2022.  China’s government however has stopped giving out information about new cases and the current Covid patients. It did not furnish any reason. On other hand, the state-run newspaper Global Times blamed western media for showing negative views about the ongoing crisis in China. It claimed that Chinese authorities were handling the pandemic smoothly. The leaked government documents however revealed that the situation in China has turned grimmer. World Health Organization (WHO) emergencies director Mike Ryan said “In China, what’s been reported is relatively low numbers of cases in ICUs, but anecdotally ICUs are filling up.” Around 250 million people in China are feared to have been infected in the first three weeks of December. This means about 18 per cent of China’s 1.4 billion populations has caught covid. In early December, many suspected China was hiding ground realities and under reporting the infection numbers. After China’s National Health Commission stopped releasing information, it cleared the air and raised concerns over Chinese intentions.  Health expert Lawrence Gostin called it “highly suspicious”. In the wake of the absence of true and real-time data, other countries are grappling with the fear of the repetition of the 2020 disaster. 12Epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding said the global fallout of the expected 2022-2023 wave would not be small. “What happens in China doesn’t stay in China,” he said.13Nations like the US, India and European Union have begun taking measures to face a possible covid tsunami. People are masking up, buying ration stocks and medicines. The mystery revolving around the health crisis and the disruptions in industrial and manufacturing in China have stoked fears across the world.  Implications for the global economy with China being shut down because of COVID,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.14Kerry Brown, an associate fellow in the Asia-Pacific program at Chatham House, said the uncertainty in China is going to have a “massive impact” on the rest of the world. There however is going to be a harsher impact on small nations. Dane Chamorro, head of global risks and intelligence at Control Risks, said when the Chinese economy shrinks by 1 per cent, the global economy does by a half per cent. However, it is almost a full percentage point for countries like Indonesia, Chile, which are China’s major trading partners and suppliers, he said.16The slowdown in the Chinese economy and now fears of a new wave of Covid from China have dampened the global spirit and are likely to have a wider negative impact on all aspects of life. Source: thehongkongpost.com

Profits at industrial firms in China declined in the first 11 months of the year, as production slowed and factory-gate prices fell amid Covid disruptions. Industrial profits in the January-November period fell 3.6% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday. That compared with a decline of 3% in the first 10 months of the year. “Industrial production slowed down and business operation pressure increased in November due to factors such as a resurgence in Covid cases and insufficient demand,” NBS senior statistician Zhu Hong said in an accompanying statement. The oil, coal and other fuel processing industry saw profits plummet 74.9% on year in January-November, while the ferrous metals smelting and pressing sector suffered a 94.5% slump, according to NBS data. China’s weakening demand for steel amid Covid outbreaks and a persisting property crisis has forced mills to cut output, Bloomberg reported previously. The NBS did not release single-month data for November. Bloomberg calculations based on NBS data show industrial profits dropped 8.9% last month from a year ago. The figures provided yet another sign of the weakness in China’s economy last month when strict movement restrictions were still in place to contain Covid outbreaks. Growth in industrial output slowed to the weakest since May in November, while factory-gate prices continued to contract. The economy is bracing for increasing strain after the government abruptly dropped its Covid Zero policy. Soaring infections across the country are keeping people home, causing a slump in travel and economic activity. Looking ahead, Covid case spikes will curb the recovery of industrial profits in the short term and the sector remains to be pressured by contracting demand, supply chain shocks and weakening expectations, Zhu said. “We must better coordinate Covid controls and economic and social development, ensure industrial and supply chain smoothness and take effort to expand domestic demand,” Zhu said. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg project expansion of the world’s second-largest economy will moderate to just 3% this year, the slowest rate since the 1970s barring 2020’s pandemic plunge, before picking up to 4.9% in 2023. Profits at foreign firms declined 7.8% in the first 11 months of the year, worsening from a 7.6% decrease in the first 10 months of 2022. Private firms, meanwhile, saw their profits sink 7.9%, while those of state-owned enterprises were up 0.5%

Several renowned artists, actors, opera singers, film directors, and writers have lost their lives amid a recent surge in Omicron infections in China, according to a report of NTD, a New York-based, global television network. Several actors like Actor Zhang Mu, Ren Jun, Chu Lanlan, Cheng Jinghua, Yu Yuheng, Xiong Yingzheng, Hou Menglan, and Zhao Zhiyuan who shared ties with the Xi Jinping-led Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also lost their lives due to the covid infections in the Chinese mainland. Actor Zhang Mu, 92, who portrayed Mao Zedong in numerous CCP films, passed away. Zhang was a calligrapher and the director of the China Opera and Dance Drama Theatre Opera troupe. Zhang was born in 1930 and joined the CCP revolutionary force in northeastern China at the age of 16. When he was 21, he joined the CCP's southern art troop as an opera singer, according to NTD news. As per the NTD report, Song Changrong, commonly known as Song Baoguang, was a Peking opera performer who passed away on December 16 at the age of 87. Song served as the deputy director of the Jiangsu provincial Association of Stage Performers and was a member of the Jiangsu provincial rubber-stamp legislature. Ren Jun, a Peking opera artist who was acclaimed by early CCP leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, passed away in Beijing on December 17 at the age of 103. Yang Lin, a 60-year-old screenwriter, passed away on December 21 in Henan Province. In the 1960s, Yang composed the propaganda play "Red Flag Canal." Nevertheless, on December 21, film director Wang Jingguang passed away at the age of 54. It depicts the tale of how Chinese people, inspired by Mao Zedong thinking, engaged in a battle with nature. Ni Zhen, a screenwriter and professor at the Beijing Film University, passed away on December 22 at the age of 84. Amongst actors, Fu Zucheng passed away on December 20 at the age of 82. The Little Flower, a 1979 CCP propaganda film, included Fu in the cast. Actor, Liuzi-style opera singer, and CCP member Li Yanzhen passed away on December 21 in Jinan at the age of 80, NTD reported. In November, China saw a record increase in local COVID-19 outbreaks. Due to the deterioration of the epidemiological situation, the authorities introduced partial lockdowns in some areas while also forcing their residents to undergo PCR testing on a daily basis. In particular, starting from November 24, restrictive measures were tightened in a number of China's major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. Against this background, some Chinese cities -- Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and others -- were hit by mass protests. The rioters demanded the immediate lifting of lockdowns, the abolition of regular PCR testing, and the easing of COVID-19 restrictions. On Friday, media reported that about 37 million people in China could have contracted COVID-19 on a single day last week, making the country's outbreak the largest in the world. It was noted that up to 248 million people, or nearly 18 per cent of the population, were likely to have contracted the coronavirus in the first 20 days of December. Meanwhile, there is a shortage of medicine, as Covid rips through parts of China, millions are struggling to find treatment -- from the most basic cold remedies to take at home to more powerful antivirals for patients in hospitals. Gripped with grief and anxiety, many in China want a national reckoning over the hard-line Covid policy. Holding the government accountable may be a quixotic quest, reported NYT.