Reuters have this today, that the former head of Myanmar’s Covid-19 immunisation programme has been arrested and faces charges of high treason for colluding with opponents of the military authorities, state media reported.
Myanmar’s healthcare system and coronavirus prevention measures have collapsed since the army seized power on 1 February. The 373 new cases reported on Sunday was the highest since 3 February, just before testing collapsed in the wake of the coup.
On Sunday, reported cases surged to their highest since shortly after the coup.
Doctors and other medical workers have been at the forefront of a Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), leading strikes that have paralysed official and private business. Dozens have been arrested and hundreds more are wanted.
Protesters make the three-finger salute as they take part in a flash mob demonstration against the military coup in Myanmar this weekend. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The Global New Light of Myanmar said Htar Htar Lin had been arrested on 10 June and she was also accused of working with an underground National Unity Government (NUG).
“According to her confession, she not only joined the CDM and formed the CDM Core Group together with other CDM doctors and staff but also colluded with terrorist NUG,” it said. The paper said she and 11 other doctors would face charges that included high treason, incitement and colluding with an illegal organisation.
Reuters says it was unable to reach her or any lawyer representing her for comment.
The arrest of Htar Htar Lin and other doctors was condemned by US-based Physicians for Human Rights.
“Dr. Htar Htar Lin*s arbitrary arrest is yet another sign that the military junta will stop at nothing in its war against Myanmar’s health workers,” said Jennifer Leigh, an epidemiologist serving as the group’s Myanmar Researcher.
For those having to scratch things out of their diary, a four-week delay in England to lifting lockdown measures pushes it back from 21 June to 19 July.
The main impacts will be:
Pubs and hospitality remain restricted to table service and with social distancing measures in place.
People should still work from home, if they can.
Theatres and entertainment venues will have their capacity held at 50%.
Nightclubs have to remain closed.
The suggestion, however, is that there will be some change to the 30-person cap on attendees at weddings. Minister Edward Argar has said on Sky News this morning that “I know that weddings and people in that situation will be very much in the prime minister’s mind at the moment and it’s one of the things he’s been looking at carefully.
Thailand’s recently launched coronavirus vaccination campaign was hit by confusion after at least 20 hospitals in Bangkok postponed Covid-19 inoculation appointments set for this week, citing delays in vaccine deliveries.
The hospital announcements were made on their Facebook pages, while Bangkok’s vaccine booking app also sent messages saying appointments after Tuesday would be delayed, as officials sought to reassure the public over vaccine supplies.
“There may have been confusion because private hospitals did not check with the Bangkok administration,” health minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters including those from Reuters, adding that more doses were being delivered to Bangkok. “We are not slowing down vaccinations, but there should be a calculation of the doses received,” Anutin said.
In a separate briefing, Bangkok governor Aswin Kwanmuang said there had been some “technical errors” in delivery of vaccines and the city had notified those who registered between 15-21 June. “We will vaccinate as quickly as possible once we receive the vaccines,” said Aswin.
Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, has been pressing the scientific rationale for a delay on LBC this morning. PA Media reports that she said that a delay to lockdown easing is “proportionate” to prevent further lockdowns.
She told LBC: “We need to buy some more time to have more people receive a vaccine. We’ve just got about half of people with a second dose and we know that in the face of this Delta variant, that second dose is really important to provide the protection that is needed to avoid more people going into hospital.”
She added: “If we can provide more protection to the population through vaccines, then it means that we won’t have to take a step back again.
“If you look around the world, in Latin America, Chile, which has a great vaccination programme, they’ve had to lock down Santiago again with quite strict measures. And that’s really something we don’t want to have to do heading into, for example, later in the summer or the autumn.
“So this is why an additional four weeks, which is what we expect will be announced, I think is proportionate.”
The Labour opposition spokesperson for housing in the UK, Lucy Powell MP, has left no doubt that she blames the prime minister’s delay in putting India on England’s “red” international travel list for the predicament that Boris Johnson now finds himself in. She told Sky News:
Undoubtedly we were too late to put India on the “red list”, and that certainly had everything to do with the fact that the prime minister was supposed to be going out there himself. So there was a real political reluctance within government to do that. So I think that the four-week delay on India being on the list has undoubtedly seeded the Delta variant much more widely here in the UK than it than it might otherwise have done.
Sky News(@SkyNews)
Shadow secretary of state for housing, Lucy Powell tells #KayBurley the PM was “undoubtedly” too late in adding India to the travel red list, resulting in the Delta variant “seeded much more widely here in the UK than it might otherwise have done”
Richard Tice, leader of Reform UK and former Brexit party MEP, is taking it all well.
Richard Tice(@TiceRichard)
SELFISH govt scientists, led by their very own Communist, prof @SusanMichie of BBC R4 fame, have convinced PM to cancel Freedom Day = more cancer deaths, more pain in non covid patients as NHS wait lists explode, more grief for less well off, more job losses, more bust firms
Early evidence suggested that women – many of whom work in badly affected, low-paying sectors such as retail – were significantly more likely than men to lose their jobs. However, while the situation for working mothers has been difficult, a different picture has emerged for women as a whole over the past year.
The employment rate among men has fallen by 2.4% since the start of the crisis, driven by a big drop in self-employment. This is a much sharper drop than the 0.8% decline for women. Full-time female employment has actually increased over the course of the crisis.
And while working hours have fallen overall during the pandemic, the average woman without children was working more than her pre-crisis hours by the start of 2021, with an average increase of 5% since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
Overall, the fall in women’s total hours worked has been around a third smaller than the decline in men’s hours. The thinktank said this was partly because of women’s dominance in the public sector, including education and health, where they account for 70% of the workforce, and where employment has been relatively steady.
Here’s a couple of clips of minister Edward Argar on Sky News. He said that the government was not aiming for a so-called “zero Covid” approach – but wanted to delay to get more vaccine shots in arms. He also hinted that the prime minister’s address tonight will include details of whether furlough and support schemes are to be extended.
Sky News(@SkyNews)
“We do have to live with this disease.”
Minister for Health Edward Argar tells #KayBurley “you cannot got for a zero COVID approach, you have to live with it” and the public will “see more ease” once “we’ve got those second doses in peoples’ arms.”https://t.co/W1rdwPiCfPpic.twitter.com/UFwxpAYh6Y
Edward Argar tells #KayBurley while he could not speculate on whether Boris Johnson will extend furlough, the PM is “very mindful of the need for businesses and others to get the support they need if they continue to be locked down or unable to reopen”.https://t.co/W1rdwPiCfPpic.twitter.com/xW5FEy9OqD
A series of coronavirus outbreaks in Thai factories is raising concerns that the export sector could be hit hard, threatening to further undermine an economy as it struggles to recover from the pandemic’s crippling blow to the crucial tourism industry.
The virus has swept through over 130 factories, including those supplying international brands, with more than 7,100 cases across 11 provinces, making manufacturing one of the top sources of infections along with prisons and construction camps.
The affected plants are just a fraction of about 63,000 factories in Thailand that employ 3.4 million, government data shows, but officials worry about the impact on exports that have kept the struggling economy moving as income from tourism has collapsed.
Electronics, rubber gloves, and food are among the export sectors hit by infections, Federation of Thai Industries vice chairman Kriengkrai Thiennukul told Reuters, but he said it was too early to assess the overall impact.
“If it continues the damage will increase so factories have to be fully vaccinated,” he said. Already, some of the manufacturers affected by the outbreak have had to curtail production.
The government has been trying to contain the outbreak with a “bubble and seal” policy, which takes effect when 10% of factory workers are infected. The confirmed cases are then sent for treatment while the remainder are kept at the factory for 28 days.
Workers at factories and in construction camps who live on site – many of them low-wage migrant workers – have been unable to leave their workplace, even if they are not infected. The policy differs from other workplaces affected by the coronavirus.
“It’s not appropriate,” said Suthasinee Kaewleklai, Migrant Workers Rights Network coordinator in Thailand, adding that authorities should be doing more tests.
Chayut Setboonsarng and Panarat Thepgumpanat report for Reuters that Thailand has recorded a total of 199,264 Covid-19 infections and 1,466 deaths so far, with over 80% of the new cases and 90% of the fatalities reported after April. As of now, only 1.6 million people out of a population of over 66 million have been fully vaccinated.
Long-serving contrarian Conservative MP Peter Bone has had his tuppence on the radio this morning. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme a delay to the lifting of restrictions should not happen “without really good reason” and that he “can’t see the evidence why we should be postponing our freedom”.
Asked if he would vote against a delay if put to a vote in parliament, PA Media reports he said: “What I would do is listen to what the prime minister says, listen to the arguments, and if I’m not convinced that these restrictions are necessary then I would of course vote against it and I hope every member of the House of Commons will listen to the argument and make their minds up.
“There has to be a vote in the House of Commons. This can’t be decided by a few ministers sitting behind closed doors. It has to be an open and transparent decision.”
He said there should only be restrictions “if there is a very clear danger to society”.
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