2-26 | The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will meet tomorrow to discuss emergency use authorization of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine candidate. If the vaccine is approved, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) calls on J&J to send its first shipments to COVAX for low- and middle-income countries, rather than high-income countries.
2-24 | Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says the decision by the Malaysian Government to deport 1,086 Myanmar nationals from Malaysia, despite a court order to temporarily halting the deportation, sets a dangerous precedent.MSF’s Head of Mission Dirk van der Tak says: “This deportation takes place only weeks after the military coup in Myanmar. The recent unlawful arrests and detainment of healthcare workers, and people from the wider general public in Myanmar, are a clear indication that the safety of the deportees cannot be guaranteed upon return.”
2-24 | The COVAX Facility today announced the delivery of its first COVID-19 vaccine doses to Ghana. This first delivery from the COVAX Facility comes over two months after the first people started receiving COVID-19 vaccines in wealthy countries. As World Health Organization head Dr. Tedros Adhanom recently pointed out, 10 countries have currently administered 75 percent of all vaccinations worldwide, while 130 countries hadn’t yet received a single dose.
2-19 | Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) welcomes the Malaysian government’s reassurances that undocumented migrants who come forward for free COVID-19 vaccinations will not be arrested but urges this must also be reflected in its official health policy.
2-15 | After being relatively spared by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Malawi is being swept by a new, fast-spreading wave of the disease that is quickly overwhelming the health care system. In the first few weeks of January, the number of positive cases has doubled every four to five days, and while the local capacity is already saturated, access to vaccines is likely a few months away. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) responded to a call by the health authorities in Blantyre and launched an emergency intervention to tackle the exponential increase in the number of severe patients in the area.