Archives for February 2021

EU vows to speed vaccine roll out, presses drug makers

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders vowed Thursday to accelerate the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and pressed pharmaceutical companies to respect their delivery commitments, as concern mounts about the spread of new variants of the virus.

However, the leaders could offer no prospect of short-term respite for curfew-weary, mask-wearing citizens, many of whom have often worked from home over the last year — if they have not lost their jobs. The leaders also said that restrictions, including on travel, should remain in place in many parts of the 27-nation bloc.

COVID-19 has killed more than 531,000 people across the EU.

“Our top priority now is speeding up the production and delivery of vaccines and vaccinations,” EU Council President Charles Michel said, adding a warning for vaccine makers: “We want more predictability and transparency to ensure that pharmaceutical companies comply with their commitments.”

The European Commission has sealed deals with several companies for well over 2 billion vaccine shots — far more than the EU population of around 450 million — but only three have been authorized: jabs from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca. Officials say the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could be approved next month.

But some seniors officials at the big pharmaceutical companies, a few of whom were grilled by EU lawmakers not far from where Michel was chairing the videoconference summit in Brussels, said it’s no simple matter to build new vaccine production sites.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said production problems are inevitable as companies work around the clock to do in one year what normally takes 3-4 years. Most of the company chiefs said they expect an improvement in the second quarter.

“Every time there is a human error, equipment breaking down… or raw material from one of our suppliers late by a day, you cannot start making the product because it will not be safe, you will not have the right quality,” Bancel said, explaining the technological issues facing producers.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said a big challenge is to improve yield — the number of doses that can be extracted from a liter of vaccine. He also rejected the idea that companies can simply open new production sites to solve the problem, saying that engineers must spend a lot of time training staff.

“Our teams are absolutely stretched to the maximum. There’s no way they could train any more people,” he said. Soriot insisted that most companies developing vaccines probably face the same constraint.

Soriot came under fire after he confirmed that the company would deliver less than half the vaccines it had committed to in the first quarter. The EU has partly blamed supply delays for lagging far behind nations like Israel, the United States and Britain when it comes to vaccinations. By early this week, 6.5% of the adults living in the EU had been vaccinated, compared to more than 27% in the U.K.

Soriot said AstraZeneca would deliver 40 million doses to the EU in the first quarter, attributing the delay to complicated production issues, including “lower than expected output in our dedicated European supply chain.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen noted pointedly that in terms of companies honoring the delivery commitments in their contracts with Europe, “there is room for improvement” at AstraZeneca.

Still, despite the slow vaccine rollout in Europe, delayed by almost a month compared to former member the U.K., von der Leyen said the bloc still aims to inoculate 70% of all adults — around 255 million people — by September.

“This is a goal that we are confident we will reach,” she said.

Border checks remain a sore point. Divisions among EU member countries, including Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Czech Republic, on restrictions to stave off transmission has again raised the specter of travel delays and long traffic backups in a bloc that prides itself on being a seamless market.

Michel told reporters that “non-essential travel may still need to be restricted, but measures should be proportionate.”

The leaders were also updated on the movement of fast-spreading new variants of the virus within Europe, with the so-called U.K variant now present in 26 member countries. The variant first detected in South Africa has been identified in 14, while the Brazilian type is known to be in 7. This means that restrictions could well continue through coming months.

“There is a growing COVID fatigue among our citizens. It has been a very trying year, but we should not let up now,” said von der Leyen.

Also debated was the issue of “vaccine certificates,” which could help smooth a return to air travel and possibly avoid another disastrous summer holiday season, as the tourism industry and broader economies suffer from restrictions.

Southern European countries dependent on tourism, like Greece and Spain, support such a system, but their northern EU partners, like Germany, doubt whether the certificates would work.

Von der Leyen said it would be technically possible to develop a “green pass” using a minimum of data indicating whether a person has been vaccinated, tested negative, or is immune after contracting the disease, within about three months, but that many political issues must first be resolved.

French President Emmanuel Macron insisted the EU nations should move in lockstep.

“None of us will accept that to attract tourists, one country would have looser rules than another and would be taking risks by making people come from the other side of the world to fill up its hotels,” he said.

“The most important question remains whether you can still transmit the disease. It is a crucial question,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told reporters. He also raised concern about other issues, like the exclusion of those who have not been vaccinated, or cannot be.

Rutte also said Europeans should consider whether the discussion on vaccination certificates should involve other international institutions such as the World Health Organization, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Air Transport Association.

“You have to be careful that by adding more weight to it, the whole thing does not collapse onto itself,” he warned.

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Sylvie Corbet contributed from Paris, Frank Jordans from Berlin

Digital exchange Coinbase takes a step toward going public

Coinbase has filed papers with U.S. regulators to become a publicly traded company as digital currencies continue to march toward mainstream acceptance.

The digital currency exchange is seeking a direct listing, which would allow company insiders and early investors to convert their stakes in Coinbase into publicly traded stock.

In a Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Coinbase also revealed how interest in digital currency is gaining steam on the exchange.

Revenue more than doubled to $1.14 billion in 2020 and the company swung to a profit of $322.3 million after losing tens of millions the previous year.

There were 43 million verified Coinbase users in 2020, with 2.8 million making transactions monthly.

Coinbase is taking the step toward becoming public at at time when chatter about cryptocurrencies is everywhere, even at the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Tesla this month said that it was buying $1.5 billion in Bitcoin as part of a new investment strategy, and that it would soon be accepting Bitcoin as payment for its electric cars.

Also this month, BNY Mellon, the oldest bank in the U.S., said it would include digital currencies in the services it provides to clients. Mastercard said it would start supporting “select crypto currencies” on its network. And Blue Ridge Bank of Charlottesville, Virginia, said it would allow cardholders to purchase and redeem Bitcoin at 19 of its ATMs.

But volatility currently makes the use of digital currency for the exchange for goods and services untenable.

This month, the price of a single Bitcoin exceeded $50,000 for the first time. It’s value is up 450% over the past year, down 8% this week, and up 4% Thursday.

An early digital currency adopter, billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya, tweeted this month that he bought an empty lot in Lake Tahoe using $1.6 million in Bitcoin in 2014. He converted that pricetag to the equivalent of what he would have paid in February, or what he would have in his pocket if he had just held on to his Bitcoin: $27.5 million.

Coinbase Global Inc. is looking to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “COIN.” It won’t raise any proceeds from the listing.

AP PHOTOS: Migrants evade Libyan coast guard to reach Europe

ABOARD THE OPEN ARMS (AP) — The February storm is unforgiving, violently shaking the humanitarian rescuers’ vessel as they try to revive a faulty engine and save African migrants drifting in the Mediterranean Sea after fleeing Libya on unseaworthy boats.

Not only must they brave 70 kph (43 mph) winds and 4-meter (13-foot) waves, but also win the race against the Libyan coast guard, which has been trained and equipped by Europe to keep migrants away from its shores.

In recent days, the Libyans had already thwarted eight rescue attempts by the Open Arms, a Spanish NGO vessel, harassing and threatening its crew in the international waters of the central Mediterranean where 160 people have died so far this year.

The latest tragedy took place on Feb. 20, when a rubber boat carrying 120 people started taking in water and waited for hours until a commercial ship in the area arrived to help. Forty-one people drowned, including three children and four women, said the U.N.’s migration agency, the International Organization for Migration.

Those who are saved at sea are not necessarily safe. According to IOM, from Jan. 1 to Feb. 22 nearly 3,600 people, including dozens of women and children, have been intercepted and forcibly returned to Libya.

There, they are placed in squalid detention centers and are subject to abuse, torture, extortion and rape.

About 2,530 people have made it to Europe after departing Libya so far this year.

Among them is 3-month-old Moise, whose chubby cheeks barely stood out from underneath the oversized lifejacket that rescuers strapped on him as they transferred the baby and his Cameroonian mother to safety aboard the Open Arms rescue ship.

A day later, rescuers plucked 5-year-old Timi from a rubber dinghy under the intimidating gaze of the Libyan coast guard a few yards away. Together with her mother, she had embarked on the risky route to Europe through the Libyan desert six months ago to flee female genital mutilation in their native Ivory Coast, where the practice affects 55% of young girls, according to UNICEF.

Despite nausea and vomiting caused by the rough seas, the prospects of a safer future in Europe, together with warm blankets, helped Timi fall asleep on the overcrowded deck of the Open Arms ship.

It would take another three days of stormy navigation for the 146 people rescued by the group on its 80th mission in the central Mediterranean to reach a safe harbor in Sicily.

But before they can even begin the challenging process of starting a new life on European soil, they must board yet another ship and undergo a 14-day quarantine, a preventive measure imposed by the Italian government to curb the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic. Until then, they can still only dream of a better life.

___ Renata Brito reported from Barcelona, Spain.

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Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

EXPLAINER: Meet the vaccine appointment bots, and their foes

Having trouble scoring a COVID-19 vaccine appointment? You’re not alone. To cope, some people are turning to bots that scan overwhelmed websites and send alerts on social media when slots open up.

They’ve provided relief to families helping older relatives find scarce appointments. But not all public health officials think they’re a good idea.

In rural Buckland, Massachusetts, two hours west of Boston, a vaccine clinic canceled a day of appointments after learning that out-of-towners scooped up almost all of them in minutes thanks to a Twitter alert. In parts of New Jersey, health officials added steps to block bots, which they say favor the tech-savvy.

WHAT IS A VACCINE BOT?

Bots — basically autonomous programs on the web — have emerged amid widespread frustration with the online world of vaccine appointments.

Though the situations vary by state, people often have to check multiple provider sites for available appointments. Weeks after the rollout began, demand for vaccines continues to outweigh supply, complicating the search even for eligible people as they refresh appointment sites to score a slot. When a coveted opening does appear, many find it can vanish midway through the booking.

The most notable bots scan vaccine provider websites to detect changes, which could mean a clinic is adding new appointments. The bots are often overseen by humans, who then post alerts of the openings using Twitter or text notifications.

A second type that’s more worrisome to health officials are “scalper” bots that could automatically book appointments, potentially to offer them up for sale. So far, there’s little evidence scalper bots are taking appointments.

ARE VACCINE BOT ALERTS HELPING?

Yes, for the people who use them.

“THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I GOT MY DAD AN APPOINTMENT! THANK YOU SO MUCH!” tweeted Benjamin Shover, of Stratford, New Jersey, after securing a March 3 appointment for his 70-year-old father with the help of an alert from Twitter account @nj_vaccine.

The success came a month after signing up for New Jersey’s state online vaccine registry.

“He’s not really tech-savvy,” Shover said of his father in an interview. “He’s also physically disabled, and has arthritis, so it’s tough for him to find an appointment online.”

The creator of the bot, software engineer Kenneth Hsu, said his original motivation was to help get an appointment for his own parents-in-law. Now he and other volunteers have set a broader mission of assisting others locked out of New Jersey’s confusing online appointment system.

“These are people who just want to know they’re on a list somewhere and they are going to be helped,” Hsu said. “We want everyone vaccinated. We want to see our grandparents.”

WHAT DO HEALTH OFFICIALS THINK?

The bots have met resistance in some communities. A bot that alerted Massachusetts residents to a clinic this week in sparsely populated Franklin County led many people from the Boston area to sign up for the slots. Local officials canceled all of the appointments, switched to a private system and spread the word through senior centers and town officials.

“Our goal was to help our residents get their vaccination,” said Tracy Rogers, emergency preparedness manager for the Franklin Regional Council of Governments. “But 95% of the appointments we had were from outside Franklin County.”

New Jersey’s Union County put a CAPTCHA prompt in its scheduling system to confirm visitors are human, blocking efforts “to game” it with a bot, said Sebastian D’Elia, a county spokesperson.

“When you post on Twitter, only a certain segment of society is going to see that,” he said. Even if they’re trying to help someone else, D’Elia said others do not have the luxury of people who are advocating for them.

But the person who created a bot that’s now blocked in Union County, 24-year-old computer programmer Noah Marcus, said the current system isn’t fair, either.

“The system was already favoring the tech-savvy and the person who can just sit in front of their computer all day, hitting refresh,” Marcus said.

D’Elia said the county is also scheduling appointments by phone to help those who might have trouble online.

HOW DO THEY WORK?

Marcus used the Python coding language to create a program that sifts through a vaccine clinic website, looking for certain keywords and tables that would indicate new appointments. Other bots use different techniques, depending on how the target website is built.

This kind of information gathering, known as web scraping, remains a source of rancor. Essentially, scraping is collecting information from a website that its owner doesn’t want collected, said Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Some web services have taken web scrapers to court, saying scraping techniques violate the terms and conditions for accessing their sites. One case involving bots that scraped LinkedIn profiles is before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“There’s disagreement in the courts about the legality of web-scraping,” Kerr said. “It’s a murky area. It’s probably legal but it’s not something we have certainty about.”

WHAT ABOUT SCALPER BOTS?

The website for a mass vaccination site in Atlantic City, New Jersey says its online queue system — which keeps people waiting on the site as slots are allotted — is designed to prevent it from crashing and to stop bots from snapping up appointments “from real people.” But is that actually happening?

Making a bot that can actually book appointments — not just detect them — would be a lot harder. And sites usually ask for information such as a person’s date of birth to make sure they are eligible.

Pharmacy giants Walgreens and CVS, which are increasingly giving people shots across the U.S., have already said they’ve been working to prevent such activity.

Walgreens said it is using cybersecurity techniques to detect and prevent bots so that “only authorized and eligible patients will have access to schedule a vaccine appointment.” CVS Health said it’s encountered various types of automated activities and has designed its appointment-making system to validate legitimate users.

Hunger-striking Ethiopia politicians ‘deteriorating’ in jail

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Lawyers representing jailed Ethiopian opposition politicians say they are concerned for the lives of their clients, whose hunger strike has gone on for nearly a month and drawn international attention as they protest their treatment by the government.

“Four of them have continued with their hunger strike and their health is deteriorating quickly,” lawyer Tokuma Daba told The Associated Press, saying he last visited them on Monday. “Our concern now is for their lives. We are told by medics that they need a sophisticated medical treatment, which is lacking now. It is really concerning.”

The jailed politicians include media mogul-turned-politician Jawar Mohammed, Bekele Gerba, Hamza Adane and Dejene Tafa. They were arrested along with at least 16 others following the killing of a renowned singer, Hachalu Hundessa, in June 2020. Amid outrage over the killing, violence targeting ethnic minorities claimed the lives of several dozen people, mainly in the Oromia region.

Some ethnic Oromos feel their quest for more democratic space and the freedom to choose their leaders has not been fulfilled since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. They accuse him of defaulting on some of his promises by arresting some politicians who returned to Ethiopia from abroad, including Jawar, after he assumed power.

The jailed politicians face charges including conspiring to dismantle the constitution by force and other terror-related offenses. They have rejected the charges as politically motivated.

The prisoners’ “treatment by the Ethiopian government is exacerbating a serious crisis, especially as their health deteriorates,” former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and current Biden administration nominee for foreign aid chief Samantha Power tweeted last week, calling it critical for the government to “change course before it is too late.”

The prisoners assert that their arrests were meant to deny them the chance to take part in Ethiopia’s upcoming national election in June. On Tuesday, Ethiopia’s election board made it clear that politicians behind bars will not be able to present themselves as candidates.

Tokuma said his clients are conducting a hunger strike for several reasons including protesting the harassment and arrests of their supporters and family members. His clients also seek the release of all political prisoners.

The striking prisoners have rejected being treated in government-owned hospitals, preferring a private hospital. Last week Ethiopia’s ambassador to the U.S., Fitsum Arega, tweeted that the offer to treat them at the “Ethiopian equivalent of Walter Reed” National Military Medical Center still stands.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of Ethiopia ruled that the prisoners shall receive medical treatment from a private hospital but that the treatment should take place inside the Kaliti prison where they are held.

“Imagine physicians carrying X-rays, oxygen tanks and ICU equipment and conducting treatment inside a prison cell or in an open field,” said another lawyer for the defendants, Tuli Bayissa. “This decision amounts to a death penalty. It’s no less harsh than that.”

Earlier this month, the head of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, Daniel Bekele, said of the striking prisoners that “very close supervision is required to prevent any grave threat to their health and life and that reasonably justified demands of the prisoners must be addressed.”

Quoting Kaliti prison officials, the commission said “most of the demands listed as reasons for the hunger strike are beyond the remit of the administration. And the prison administration does not mistreat the prisoners’ visitors.”

On Thursday, the commission called on authorities to immediately release Mohammed Deksiso, a graduate student who shouted “Release Jawar Mohammed” and “Justice for Hachalu Hundessa” during a graduation ceremony on Feb. 13 at Jimma University in the Oromia region. He has been in detention despite a local court’s ruling that he should be released on bail.

“The increasing tendency to disregard court decisions within the Oromia region is deeply concerning and needs a solution,” Bekele said in an email sent to journalists.

Henok Gabissa, a former president of the Oromo Studies Association and an observer of Ethiopian politics, said the situation in the Oromia region is “terrible” and asserted that Abiy’s administration is deterring Oromo politicians.

“Oromo opposition parties have more legitimacy than Abiy’s administration. The public in the region widely support the prisoners and their demands,” he said.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Abiy stated the “clear role of government is to ensure that peaceful, free and fair elections take place in this highly anticipated round.” He added “we established a defining line to not mix government and party work.”

Some opposition parties in Ethiopia are already alleging difficulties in preparing for the election such as harassment, arrests and even the killing of some of their members.

Archives for February 2021

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