World leaders called for cooperation in the quest for a coronavirus vaccine, pledging $8.1 billion to this end in a fundraising telethon, AFP reported.
The videoconference was hosted by Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission. Covid-19 has killed nearly a quarter of a million people around the world, 140 000 of them in Europe.
The fund-raising drive was hailed by World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as a powerful show of ‘global solidarity’.
While major European powers, along with Japan and Canada, made the biggest pledges from among some 40 countries, the United States was conspicuously absent, which AFP said weakened the event and raised the prospect of an uncoordinated competition to develop and produce a vaccine.
The global vaccine initiative comes as positive cases in South Africa rose by 437 to 7 220. Seven more deaths – six in the Western Cape – were reported, bringing the toll to 138.
Controversy continues to rage over the government’s determination to sustain the ban on cigarettes. In court papers filed at the Pretoria High Court yesterday, the Fair Trade Independent Tobacco Association said the government had not shown how the banning of the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products would be instrumental in reducing the spread of Covid-19.
The urgent application was filed against President Cyril Ramaphosa and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. The Presidency had not indicated by last evening if the application would be opposed.
Fin24 reported that British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA) was seeking clarity on the government’s decision-making process in retaining the ban. The financial news site had previously reported that BATSA had a 78% share in South Africa’s legal cigarette market, and, in 2019 alone, its share of taxes amounted to R13 billion (including excise duties, corporate and other taxes).
President Cyril Ramaphosa said yesterday the decision to retain the ban under the level 4 lockdown was a collective decision and was not a question of ministers ‘doing and saying whatever they want’.
In a column on News24, editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson – who noted that South Africans were becoming increasingly ‘agitated, annoyed and downright gatvol with each other, the government and the regulations governing our lives’ – urged a rethink on alcohol and cigarettes.
‘Very few countries in the world have completely banned the sale of alcohol and cigarettes during lockdown. You cannot sensibly continue this ban while our hospitals are quiet and the fiscus bleeds dry. There has to be a smart way to open up the limited sale of alcohol and tobacco under Level 4. It is not fair to ask people to wait for Level 3, when we know that our infections and deaths will only increase from here.’
The SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) ran into trouble with accidental double payments in some areas, and no payments in others, because of glitches in the system arising from changing dates for payments as a way of reducing crowding at pay points.
In other virus-related news
- The British government is launching a pilot track-and-trace strategy, with human contact tracing and an app, on the Isle of Wright this week, according to the BBC. It will allow people to log coronavirus symptoms and inform those who may have been exposed to the virus that they need to isolate. The government aims to have the entire track-and-trace network, including an initial 18 000 contact tracing workers, set up by the middle of the month;
- Global confirmed cases exceeded 3.5 million, with a death toll of almost 250 000;
- Italy – the first country in the world to order a nationwide lockdown – joined other European countries in easing some restrictions. Covid-19 deaths in Italy have reached their lowest level since just after its lockdown began two months ago; and
- President Donald Trump said he was confident of a vaccine by year’s end, but admitted that this might be optimistic.