The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, urged the world to “be brave and get vaccinated,” Saturday after he was inoculated with the coronavirus vaccine in the northern Indian town of Dharmsala.
However, some countries are having trouble obtaining enough vaccines for their populations.
Fears of vaccine hoarding are beginning to emerge, following word that Italy has blocked a shipment of AstraZeneca vaccines to Australia.
An Associated Press report says the European Union is set to appeal to Washington to make sure that EU countries receive millions of AstraZeneca vaccine doses they still need, as well as ingredients needed to produce vaccines.
“We trust that we can work together with the U.S.,” the European Commission said in a statement, “to ensure that vaccines produced or bottled in the U.S. for the fulfilment of vaccine producers’ contractual obligations with the EU will be fully honored.”
Britan’s National Health Service may be facing staff loss after lawmakers proposed a 1% pay hike for beleaguered frontline workers. The public has been urged to join in a national protest Thursday.
The Washington Post reports that several people have threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement because a Mexican restaurant in Houston, Texas, decided to keep its mask requirement after the governor said he is rescinding the state’s mask mandate even though most Texans have not been vaccinated.
“People don’t understand unless you’re in our business what it felt like, how hard it was to go through everything we went through during COVID,” Picos co-owner Monica Richards told The Post. “For people to be negative toward us for trying to remain safe, so that this doesn’t continue to happen, just makes zero sense to us.”
India’s Health Ministry said Sunday six states have reported high daily COVID-19 cases, accounting for more than 84% of the 18,711 new cases.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday that there are more than 116 million global COVID cases. The U.S. has more cases than any place else with nearly 30 million infections. India and Brazil follow with 11.2 million cases and 10.9 million cases, respectively.
The coronavirus global death toll has reached 2.5 million, according to Hopkins.
