The Vatican has moved to clarify a decree that implied employees could lose their jobs if they refuse to get a Covid vaccination without legitimate health reasons (see 3.15pm), following criticism, Reuters reports.
An 8 February decree by Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, the governor of Vatican City, said getting a vaccine was “the responsible choice” because of the risk of harming other people.
Vatican City, at 108 acres the world’s smallest state, has several thousand employees, most of whom live in Italy. Its vaccination programme began last month and Pope Francis, 84, was among the first to get the vaccine.
The decree said that those who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons may be given another position, presumably where they would have contact with fewer people, but would receive the same pay even if the new post is a demotion.
But the decree also said those who refuse to get a vaccination without sufficient reason would be subject to a specific provision in a 2011 law on employee rights and duties. The article in the 2011 law says employees who refuse “preventive measures” could be subjected to “varying degrees of consequences that could lead to dismissal”.
After news stories about the decree, many Italians took to Twitter to criticise it, with some saying it was contrary to Pope Francis’s general call for mercy.
Tonight, Bertello’s office issued a statement saying that “alternative solutions” would be found for those who do not want to get the vaccine. It said the reference to the article in the 2011 law which specifically mentioned the possibility of dismissal should not be seen as “sanctioning or punitive” and that “freedom of individual choice” would be respected.
Pope Francis is a big supporter of vaccines to stem the spread of the coronavirus and the Vatican has made a Covid-19 vaccination obligatory for journalists accompanying the pope on his trip to Iraq next month. There have been fewer than 30 cases of coronavirus in the Vatican City, most of them among the Swiss Guard, who live in a communal barracks.
Both Pope Francis and his predecessor, former pope Benedict XVI, have received the coronavirus vaccine. Photograph: Vatican Media/AFP/Getty
Marriages are becoming increasingly rare in Italy, all the more so during the pandemic, official data shows.
In the first quarter of 2020 – when the country was struck by the virus – the number of Italians who tied the knot was down by about 20% year on year, the national statistics office Istat said.
In the second quarter of last year, when a strict lockdown was in place for most of the time, marriages dropped by 80% and separations and divorces by around 60%, AFP reports. Lockdown restrictions included a ban on wedding parties.
But marriages have long been decreasing in Italy. In 2019, Istat registered about 184,000 weddings, down 6% from 2018 and about 25% fewer than in 2008.
On the contrary, divorces have become more common, mainly thanks to changes in legislation that sped up procedures, Istat said, noting they went up from about 54,300 in 2008 to more than 85,000 in 2019. Italy has long had a falling birth rate and an ageing population.
The World Health Organization has urged nations producing Covid vaccines not to distribute them unilaterally but to donate them to the global Covax scheme to ensure fairness, Reuters reports.
The WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, made the plea as China makes agreements across Africa, Russia distributes shots in Latin America and the EU eyes giving vaccines to poorer countries, all outside of the Covax facility.
Tedros said nations striking one-on-one deals undermine Covax’s goal of equitable access, adding the WHO’s scheme could accommodate requests from governments that “prefer to give their donations to certain countries, because they are their neighbours or because they have some relationship”.
What we can do, if that comes through Covax, is the earmarked donation can go to those countries and the Covax stocks can go to other countries. So we can strike a balance.
Covid infections worldwide fall to lowest point since mid-October
Reported daily coronavirus infections have been falling across the world for a month and on Tuesday hit their lowest since mid-October, figures that suggest the seasonality of the virus show.
But optimism over a way out of the crisis has been tempered by new variants of the virus, raising fears about the efficacy of vaccines, Reuters reports.
“Now is not the time to let your guard down,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead on Covid-19, told a briefing in Geneva. “We cannot let ourselves get into a situation where we have cases rise again.”
There were 351,335 new infections reported worldwide on Tuesday on a seven-day average, the figure falling from 863,737 on 7 January. There were 17,649 deaths on 26 January, falling to 10,957 on 16 February.
Covid infections are decreasing in the US, with 77,883 new infections reported on average each day. That’s 31% of the highest daily average reported on 8 January.
So far, 85 countries have begun vaccinating people for the coronavirus and have administered at least 187,892,000 doses, according to the Reuters figures.
Airbus plummeted to a loss of more than €1bn last year and will continue to withhold shareholder payouts after deliveries of its aircraft fell by a third. The European aerospace giant warned aircraft would remain under pressure in the year ahead amid a “volatile environment” created by the coronavirus pandemic.
Airbus delivered 566 commercial aircraft in 2020, down sharply from 863 the year before, and expects to deliver the same number in 2021.
The company warned last summer that it would face the “gravest crisis” in its history due to the pandemic, and planned to cut as many as 15,000 jobs, including 1,700 in the UK.
Fifth of Australians unlikely to get jab; most more afraid of climate change
More than one in five Australians say they will “probably” or “definitely” not be vaccinated against coronavirus, with the spike in vaccine hesitancy potentially spelling trouble for the rollout.
A longitudinal study of almost 4,000 people conducted by the Australian National University found a “significant and substantial” increase in hesitancy since the same people were asked about getting the jab in August 2020.
Another new survey has found Australians are more afraid of climate change than catching Covid-19 – and they want government to do something about it. The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer asked 1,350 Australians questions on a range of topics between October and November 2020.
As Britain prepares to host the G7 club of wealthy nations tomorrow under the chairmanship of Boris Johnson, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has proposed that 5% of its vaccines are sent to poorer countries, especially in Africa.
Johnson is expected to advance a parallel plan to cut the amount of time it takes to create vaccines, and may be unimpressed it has been upstaged by Macron.
The French proposal comes as G7 leaders face accusations they have collectively preordered more than 1.5bn vaccines above the amount their populations require and are being outmanoeuvred by the Russians and Chinese, who are already providing vaccines direct to poor countries while the wealthy west stores up a vast surplus.
Macron’s initiative acknowledges the perception that the west is ignoring the plight of the poor when, in fact, it is funding a complex plan to provide vaccines – but mainly at the turn of the year.
Many of the vaccines that the international system is funding have yet to meet World Health Organization approval, and may not be suitable for distribution in remote rural areas.
Italy has reported 347 coronavirus-related deaths against 369 yesterday, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 13,762 from 12,074 the day before.
Some 288,458 tests for Covid were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 294,411, the health ministry said, according to Reuters.
Doctors plead with Germans to take AstraZeneca jab as public resistance also starts in Italy, Austria and Bulgaria
Doctors and public health officials have pleaded with Germans to take up AstraZeneca Covid vaccines, AFP reports. German healthcare facilities have reported several hundred thousand vials sitting unused and rampant no-shows at scheduled appointments.
Officials in Italy, Austria and Bulgaria were also starting to signal some public resistance to the British vaccine, and France’s health minister, Olivier Véran, got the jab live on television to drum up support.
“If you are given the choice between AstraZeneca now or another vaccine in a few months, you should definitely take AstraZeneca now,” implored Carsten Watzl, general secretary of the German Society for Immunology.
The health minister, Jens Spahn, echoed the message, calling all three vaccines approved in the EU – AstraZeneca, BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna – “safe and effective” despite varying levels of efficacy.
AstraZeneca has been shown to be about 60% effective in trials, while studies point to about 95% efficacy for the latter two products. However the British jab has the advantage of not requiring deep-freeze storage, with a regular refrigerator sufficing.
As of yesterday, only 3.6% of the population had received the first of the necessary two jabs of any vaccine.
Governments worldwide are using the pandemic to push through destructive development projects and roll back protections of indigenous groups, according to a global report on deforestation and rule of law.
AFP reports that an assessment by the Forest People’s Programme of post-pandemic stimulus plans in Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia and Peru found that projects such as mines, industrial agriculture plantations and dams were fuelling a rise in rights abuses. Those five countries contain the majority of the world’s tropical forests.
Myrna Cunningham, president of the Filac indigenous rights group, said:
During the pandemic, governments have not only failed to stop land grabs and human rights violations by corporate actors, but have rewritten and reversed hard-won policies that are vital at protecting human rights.
In Brazil, where deforestation of the Amazon last year reached the highest level in more than a decade, the government had instigated a “campaign to roll back protections of indigenous people’s rights,” according to Sofea Dil, a researcher at Yale law school who worked on the report.
In Colombia, deforestation of the Amazon has accelerated by 80% during the Covid lockdown, as the government pushed through measures to weaken protections for people living in the forest.
In DRC, the authors said the government had used the pandemic as a pretext for new policies that “circumvent longstanding moratoriums on resource extraction” on indigenous lands.
In Indonesia, a new law, ostensibly aimed at job creation, “weakens environmental protection laws” and protections for indigenous peoples’ rights, according to the report.
Meanwhile, in Peru, the government has declared that the economy would reopen starting with the forestry, mining and oil sectors. It is deferring environmental fines and suspending environmental and social monitoring reports to kickstart its recovery.
