Archives for February 2021

S. Korea injects first shots in public vaccination campaign

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea on Friday administered its first available shots of coronavirus vaccines to people at long-term care facilities, launching a mass immunization campaign that health authorities hope will restore some level of normalcy by the end of the year.

The rollout of vaccines come at a critical time for the country, which has seen its hard-won gains against the virus get wiped out by a winter surge and is struggling to mitigate the pandemic’s economic shock that decimated service sector jobs. The vaccinations began shortly before the country reported another new 406 cases of the coronavirus, brining its caseload to 88,922, including 1,585 deaths.

More than 5,260 residents and workers at 213 nursing homes, mental institutions and rehab centers who are under the age of 65 will receive their first shots of a two-dose vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University on Friday.

An unspecified number of patients and workers at 292 long-term care hospitals in the same age group will also get the vaccine, according to officials at the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

Health authorities plan to complete injecting the first doses to some 344,000 residents and workers at long-term care settings and 55,000 frontline medical workers by the end of March.

Long-term care facilities, where elders or people with serious health problems often live in crowded settings, have endured the worst of South Korea’s outbreak. About 35% of the country’s COVID-19 deaths at the end of 2020 were linked to these facilities, said Jaehun Jung, a professor of preventive medicine at the Gachon University College of Medicine in Incheon.

But there’s criticism over the government’s decision to delay the approval of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines for people over 65 until the developers provide more data that suggests the shots would be effective in that age group.

Some experts, including Jung, say the decision risks the safety of people who are most vulnerable to COVID-19 when the country will be chiefly dependent on locally produced Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines during the early part of its vaccination campaign.

Despite what the government sees as a lack of laboratory data on its efficacy in older adults, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is still showing real-world effectiveness in preventing serious illnesses and lowering death rates in the countries where it was used, the experts say. People over 80 account for just 5% of the country’s coronavirus cases, but 56% of its virus-related deaths, Jung said.

Using refrigerated trucks escorted by police and military vehicles, South Korea transported 1.57 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines across the country from Wednesday to Thursday. These shots were among the global supplies produced in the southern city of Andong, where local pharmaceutical company SK Bioscience manufactures the vaccines under a contract with AstraZeneca.

Separately, doctors, nurses and other health professionals treating COVID-19 patients will begin receiving the shots developed by Pfizer and BioNTech from Saturday. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which South Korea obtained through the WHO-backed COVAX program, are expected to arrive at Incheon International Airport on Friday afternoon to be transported to five major COVID-19 treatment hospitals.

South Korea plans to complete injecting the first doses to some 344,000 residents and workers at long-term care facilities, which also include mental institutions and rehab centers, and 55,000 frontline medical workers within March.

The next available vaccines are likely to go to workers at general hospitals, paramedics, quarantine workers and people over 65 years in age before broader groups of adults begin receiving shots in summer.

South Korea plans to secure enough doses to vaccinate 79 million people this year, well over its population of 51 million, through bilateral negotiations with pharmaceutical companies and COVAX, which was established to promote global access to vaccines.

While there has been disappointment the shots haven’t come sooner, officials have insisted South Korea could afford a wait-and-see approach as its outbreak isn’t as dire as in America or Europe.

Officials aim to vaccinate more than 70% of the population by November, which they hope would meaningfully slow the virus and reduce risks of economic and social activity.

However, experts say a safe return to life without masks would be highly unlikely this year, considering the need to monitor the vaccines’ real-world effectiveness and the growing spread of virus variants that are feared to be more contagious.

“Even if we achieve the government target by November, we probably won’t be able to (immediately) go back to the pre-COVID-19 days,” said Choi Won Suk, an infectious disease professor at the Korea University Ansan Hospital, west of Seoul.

“But if we maintain a certain level of social distancing and mask wearing as the vaccinations proceed, there will be a point where we would no longer be seriously worrying about a massive wave of the virus,” allowing for a certain level of social and economic activity, he said.

Ohio is first state to sue Census Bureau over delay in data

Ohio on Thursday became the first state to challenge the U.S. Census Bureau’s decision to push back the release of 2020 census figures so more time can be spent on fixing any inaccuracies in the data.

The lawsuit filed by Ohio asks a federal judge in Dayton to restore a March 31 deadline for the Census Bureau to turn over 2020 census figures used for redrawing congressional and legislative districts, instead of a Sept. 30 deadline announced by the statistical agency earlier this month. The lawsuit claims the delay will undermine Ohio’s process of redrawing districts.

Census Bureau officials blamed the need for extra time on operational delays during the 2020 census caused by the pandemic. The dates for releasing the 2020 census data have bounced all over the calendar because of court fights and changes made to adjust to hurdles posed by the pandemic and efforts to comply with federally mandated deadlines.

The 2020 census data include state population counts used for determining the distribution of congressional seats and Electoral College votes among the states, as well as redistricting data used for redrawing congressional and legislative districts.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators recently announced plans to introduce legislation that would push back the deadline for the state population counts from the end of last year to the end of April and the due date for the redistricting data from the statutorily required March 31 date to Sept. 30.

The redistricting data includes counts of population by race, Hispanic origin, voting age and housing occupancy status at geographic levels as small as neighborhoods, and they are used for drawing voting districts for Congress and state legislatures. Unlike past decades when the data were released to states on a flow basis, the 2020 redistricting data will be made available to the states all at once, according to the Census Bureau.

The delay in releasing the redistricting data has sent states scrambling to come up with alternative plans because many will not get the data until after their legal deadlines for drawing new districts, requiring them to either rewrite laws or ask courts to allow them a free pass because of the delay. Candidates may not know yet whether they will live in the district they want to run in by the filing deadline. In some cases, if fights over new maps drag into the new year, primaries may have to be delayed.

Ohio law requires a newly formed commission to finalize state legislative districts by Sept. 1 and to hold three public meetings before doing so. Ohio’s General Assembly is required adopt a map for congressional districts by Sept. 30.

Ohio won’t be able to use the 2020 census data to redraw districts if the figures aren’t released until the end of September. That will force the state to use alternative figures, setting off a fight over which data to use and “fanning partisan flames when one data source is eventually chosen, no matter how precise and reliable,” the lawsuit said.

“The many people who voted for redistricting reform deserve better than to have their efforts thwarted by a federal government that refuses to do its job,” the lawsuit said. “No doubt, the pandemic has greatly complicated the Census Bureau’s task. But the pandemic has complicated the jobs of firefighters, police officers, and judges too. All those public servants found ways to continue fulfilling their obligations to the public, recognizing that government officials may not shelter in place while their duties go unfulfilled.”

The Census Bureau said in a statement that it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

Meanwhile, a coalition of municipalities and civil rights groups that had sued the Census Bureau over concerns about data quality and deadlines said in a court filing Wednesday that they were working toward a potential agreement to their lawsuit with the statistical agency.

A hearing on the lawsuit in federal court in San Jose, California, had been scheduled for Friday, but both sides in a court filing asked for a delay until next month to continue “good-faith discussions concerning the potential resolution of this case.”

___

This story has been corrected to reflect that the commission must finalize state legislative districts by Sept. 1, not Sept. 30.

___

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP

UN sanctions top Houthi police official in Yemen’s capital

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions Thursday on a top police security official in Yemen’s capital, which is controlled by Houthi rebels, citing his prominent role in intimidations, systematic arrests, detentions, torture, sexual violence “and rape against politically active women.”

A resolution adopted by a vote of 14-0 with Russia abstaining said Sultan Saleh Aida Aida Zabin, director of the Criminal Investigation Department in the capital Sanaa, is directly or by virtue of his authority responsible for using multiple places of detention including police stations, prisons and detention centers for human rights abuses.

“In these sites, women, including at least one minor, were forcibly disappeared, repeatedly interrogated, raped, tortured, denied timely medical treatment and subjected to forced labor,” the council said. “Zabin himself directly inflicted torture in some cases.”

The council said in imposing a travel ban and arms embargo on Zabin that he “engaged in acts that threaten the peace, security and stability of Yemen, including violations of applicable international humanitarian law and human rights abuses in Yemen.”

The resolution extended the mandate of the panel of experts monitoring the implementation of sanctions in Yemen until March 28, 2022.

The devastating conflict in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, erupted in 2014 when Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized Sanaa and much of the country’s north. That prompted a U.S.-backed Arab military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to intervene months later in a bid to restore the government of Yemeni President Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi to power.

The conflict has killed some 130,000 people and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

The Security Council strongly condemned the ongoing escalation of violence in Yemen’s oil-rich central province of Marib between Houthi and government forces, and the continuation of Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia.

The resolution stressed the need “for de-escalation across Yemen and a nationwide cease-fire.”

It expressed “serious concern at the devastating humanitarian situation in Yemen, including the growing risk of large-scale famine and the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock warned the council Wednesday that Yemen “is falling off a cliff” and will face the worst famine the world has seen for decades unless donors, and especially its Gulf neighbors, contribute generously to this year’s U.N. humanitarian appeal for $3.85 billion.

India introduces new rules to regulate online content

NEW DELHI (AP) — India on Thursday rolled out new regulations for social media companies and digital streaming websites to make them more accountable for the online content shared on their platforms, giving the government more power to police it.

The Information Technology Ministry said the new regulations would require social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to swiftly erase content authorities deem unlawful. The regulations include a strict oversight mechanism that would allow the government to ban content affecting “the sovereignty and integrity of India.”

The regulations would also require social media companies to assist investigations by India’s law enforcement agencies. They were announced as debate swirls over free speech and the suspension by Twitter of some Indian accounts linked to farmers’ protests after regulators ordered them to be blocked.

Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the new regulations were a “soft touch progressive institutional mechanism” required for the “security and sovereignty of India, public order, and rape or any other sexually explicit material.”

They will require social media companies to remove illegal content as quickly as possible, but within no more than 36 hours after they receive a government or legal order.

The new rules also require social media platforms to appoint what the government calls chief compliance and grievance officers to handle complaints from law enforcement agencies. These officers should be Indian citizens and must send monthly compliance reports to the government.

“The government welcomes criticism of the government and the right to dissent, but it is very important that the users must be given a forum to raise their grievances against the abuse and misuse of social media,” Prasad said during a televised news conference.

Social media messaging sites must also disclose to the government the original source of any “mischievous information.” It was not immediately clear if this would mean messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Signal and others would have to break end-to-end encryption in India in order to comply.

Apar Gupta, executive director of India Freedom Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, said the government asking social media platforms to give details about originators of information “undermines user rights and can lead to self-censorship if users fear that their conversations are no longer private.”

The new regulations are to take effect within three months. They also will apply to digital streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime, which will have to set a “classification rating” to describe the content on their platforms.

Twitter found itself in a standoff with the government earlier this month when it refused to fully comply with a government order to remove some accounts, including those of news organizations, journalists, activists and politicians, citing its “principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression.”

The government said the accounts — unspecified in number — were using provocative hashtags to spread misinformation about massive farmer protests that have rattled Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Twitter’s actions appeared to irk Modi’s government, which over the years has sought to tighten its grip over social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook. It served Twitter a non-compliance notice and threatened its officials with a fine and imprisonment of up to seven years for violating the order.

Modi himself has an active Twitter account, @narendramodi, with more than 66 million followers.

___

Associated Press writer Krutika Pathi contributed to this report.

Airbnb reports huge loss in first time out as public company

Home-sharing site Airbnb posted a $3.9 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2020 as it suffered from the pandemic downturn in travel and recorded one-time costs for becoming a public company.

In results released Thursday — Airbnb’s first as a publicly traded entity — the company took a charge of $2.8 billion for stock compensation related to the IPO. A year earlier, Airbnb lost $352 million.

Revenue fell 22% to $859 million in the quarter that ended Dec. 31. That was still more than analysts expected, according to a FactSet survey, and a far smaller percentage decline than reported by rivals Expedia, Tripadvisor and Bookings Holdings.

Airbnb declined to offer a forecast for 2021 profit and revenue. Company executives said they are upbeat about a recovery, but they said the unknown pace of vaccinations make it difficult to know how quickly people will be willing to travel. The company did say revenue will not decline as much in the current quarter as it did in the fourth quarter of last year.

In late January, Airbnb said a survey it commissioned showed that just over half of Americans have already booked a trip or plan to travel this year.

Since the start of the pandemic, Airbnb has shifted its focus to beach towns and mountain destinations — outdoorsy places where the risk of contracting the coronavirus is perceived to be lower. The company expects rentals in big cities to come back last.

It has also slashed costs and jobs to ride out the pandemic, much like airlines and others in the travel industry.

CEO Brian Chesky said his company will benefit from changes in travel and jobs as many people work from somewhere other than the office — maybe a rental far from home.

“When travel comes back, we believe it will look different than before,” Chesky said on a call with analysts. “People are living more nomadically. Some people are taking longer-term stays, one or two months at a time in Airbnb.”

The company is counting on adding hosts. It believes that people who book long-term rentals will also turn to Airbnb to rent their empty homes.

For all of 2020, Airbnb lost nearly $4.6 billion including the charge for stock-based compensation and a separate charge of $827 million for stock warrants tied to a loan. That compared with a 2019 loss of $674 million. Even as revenue increased, the company also lost money in 2017 and 2018 as it spent heavily on marketing and technology and added new lines to the business.

Despite the years of losses, Airbnb generated sky-high expectations from investors, which led to a winning debut on the stock market in December, when its shares more than doubled the San Francisco-based company’s target price and gave it a valuation of just over $100 billion. At $3.7 billion, it was the biggest U.S. IPO in 2020, according to Renaissance Capital.

Airbnb faces challenges, including opposition from hotels. Some cities have stepped up restrictions on short-term rentals. Critics say Airbnb contributes to higher rents and home prices in some markets. Some of the company’s hosts aren’t just sharing their homes, they are turning them into businesses catering to tourists, reducing the supply of housing for local residents, according to some researchers.

Before the release of financial results, the company’s shares fell 9.1% to close at $182.06. They rose less than 1% in after-hours trading.

___

David Koenig can be reached at twitter.com/airlinewriter

Archives for February 2021

Footer