Day: July 9, 2021

WHITE HOUSE – As Indonesia deals with a surge in COVID-19 cases, the Biden administration on Friday is sending the nation 3 million doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine.

“In addition to the vaccines we’re also sending, we’re moving forward on plans to increase assistance for Indonesia’s broader COVID-19 response efforts,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki during a briefing to reporters Friday.

“We recognize the difficult situation Indonesia currently finds itself in with a surge of COVID cases. And our thoughts are with those affected by this surge.”

Indonesia is battling a record-breaking surge in new cases and deaths due to the highly contagious delta variant.

A senior administration official told VOA the shipment was one of the largest batches the U.S. had donated. In total, the U.S. has allocated 4 million doses for Indonesia, with the remaining 1 million doses to be shipped “soon.”

The administration is also sending 500,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Moldova, the first batch of U.S. vaccine shared with Europe. In addition, 1.5 million Johnson & Johnson doses will be sent to Nepal, and 500,000 Moderna doses to Bhutan.

Indonesia surge

During a Friday press conference, Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi confirmed the shipment.

“This is the first shipment through the COVAX mechanism,” Marsudi said, referring to the United Nations vaccine-sharing mechanism.

Indonesia, with only about 5% of its population fully vaccinated, relies heavily on Chinese vaccines. The country has procured 108.5 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine but is seeing rising infection rates among medical workers fully vaccinated with it.

After several fully inoculated medical personnel had died from COVID-19, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said on Friday the government would give 1.47 million health workers a shot of the Moderna vaccine.

“The third jab will only be given to health workers, because health workers are the ones who are exposed to high levels of virus every day,” he told a press conference. “They must be protected at all costs.”

The Indonesian government authorized the Moderna vaccine for emergency use last week.

Broader COVID-19 response efforts

The senior White House official said that in addition to providing vaccines, the administration is moving forward on plans to increase assistance for Indonesia’s broader COVID-19 response efforts.

“To date, we have provided more than $14.5 million in direct COVID-19 relief to Indonesia, including $3.5 million to help vaccinate Indonesians quickly and safely,” the official said.

The official added that support from the U.S. Agency for International Development had also provided Jakarta with public health education, training for thousands of health workers, funding for a national COVID-19 information website that has reached more than 36 million people, COVID-19 testing equipment, 1,000 ventilators and nearly 2,000 hand-washing stations.

The 4 million-dose vaccine shipment to Indonesia is part of the 80 million doses the U.S. has allocated to help countries in need, on top of the 500 million doses it has committed to COVAX.

Activists say it is not enough.

“We need far more from the United States and other countries that have surpluses to share,” said Tom Hart, acting CEO of the ONE Campaign, a nonprofit group that fights global poverty and disease.

According to CDC data, most U.S. states have administered at least 75% of the first vaccine doses allocated to them.

Hart pointed out that in some countries, less than 1% of people have received a COVID-19 vaccine.

“We have locked up in the United States and the G-7 and other EU countries the global supply of the very thing to end this pandemic,” Hart said. “And so far, not sharing at nearly the pace or scale that we need to reach what’s the global herd immunity that will make all of us safe.”

Responding to a question from VOA about plans to donate more doses, White House press secretary Psaki said the U.S. is already the largest contributor. Of the 1 billion doses pledged by wealthy nations of the G-7, some 580 billion are from the U.S.

“The president has made clear that we will continue to build from here, and we’re working on manufacturing capacity around the world and in the United States and we will continue to contribute even beyond the billion doses,” Psaki said.

Source: Voice Of America

The United States and Russia reached a last-minute compromise Friday to keep humanitarian aid flowing for another year from Turkey to millions of people in northwestern Syria.

In a unanimous vote, the U.N. Security Council?approved a draft resolution extending the cross-border aid operation. In a rare twist, the U.S. and Russia came together to put forward the compromise resolution, supported by Ireland and Norway, which hold the file on Syria’s humanitarian situation in the council and have guided months of negotiations.

The resolution reauthorizes the use of the Bab al-Hawa crossing point for another six months. It had been due to expire Saturday. It will then automatically be renewed for six more months – until July 2022. The U.N. secretary-general also is instructed to report to the council on the aid operation in January.

“Thanks to this resolution, millions of Syrians can breathe a sigh of relief tonight, knowing that vital humanitarian aid will continue to flow into Idlib through the Bab al-Hawa?border crossing after tomorrow,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council. “And parents can sleep tonight knowing that for the next 12 months their children will be fed. The?humanitarian?agreement we’ve reached here will literally save lives.”

More than 3.4 million people live in the area outside government control serviced by the 1,000 aid trucks that cross through Bab al-Hawa each month.

Western countries also had sought to reopen the al-Yarubiyah crossing from Iraq to Syria, which had been used to bring medical supplies to 1.4 million people in the northeast, but that was lost in negotiations.

“Of course, like every political agreement, we continue to believe we could have done more, that more should be done, and we will continue work to make sure that humanitarian needs in Syria remain in focus,” Ireland’s Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason told reporters after the vote.

Al-Yarubiyah and two other crossing points have been closed over the past two years under pressure from Moscow, which would like to see the entire cross-border aid operation shut down and all supplies flow through Damascus across conflict frontlines.?The United Nations and aid groups say crossline operations are plagued with problems and cannot meet the soaring demand.

Turning point?

Syria’s decadelong war has deepened divisions among the Security Council’s five permanent powers. Russia and China have sought to protect the regime of Bashar al-Assad, while Britain, France and the United States have tried to rally council action to hold the regime accountable for chemical weapons attacks on civilians, military sieges and other atrocities.

Those divisions have spilled over into the humanitarian dossier, making it one of the council’s most contentious. The seven-year-old aid operation regularly faces nail-biting questions of whether the humanitarian lifeline will be severed by a veto. So, it was all the more surprising to see the U.S. and Russia come together Friday to hammer out a compromise minutes before the vote.

“It’s important?that the United States and Russia were able to come together on a humanitarian initiative that serves the interests of the Syrian people,” Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield said. “And it’s an important moment for the U.N. and the Security Council?–?which today showed we can do more than just talk. We can work together to find solutions and deliver actions on the world’s most?pressing challenges.”

Friday’s vote was the first time since 2016 that the council was able to unanimously reach a decision on extending the cross-border aid operation.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said he was grateful to his American colleagues, who he said “worked in the spirit of the Geneva summit” between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden.

“Today, we are witnessing a historical moment,” Nebenzia said. “For the first time, Russia and the United States not only managed to find an agreement, but to present a joint text supported by all our colleagues in the council. We expect that this kind of day would become a turning point, that not only Syria will win from this, but the whole Middle Eastern region and the world as a whole.”

The White House has said that Biden raised the issue of the cross-border aid operation with Putin when they met on June 16, and Biden told him he sees it as an important issue. The two leaders spoke Friday by telephone and the White House said they commended the joint work of their teams following the summit, which led to the unanimous renewal of the Syrian aid operation.

The U.N. secretary-general’s spokesman said Antonio Guterres welcomed the council’s extension but noted that “needs continue to outstrip the response,” and that with additional crossings and more funding, the United Nations could do more to assist the rising number of Syrians in need.

Source: Voice Of America