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Home / News / Coronavirus weekly round-up: Elon Musk causes bitcoin furore, UK economy strengthens and US inflation spooks stocks
Coronavirus weekly round-up: Elon Musk causes bitcoin furore, UK economy strengthens and US inflation spooks stocks
Four investors mull the events shaping portfolios over the past week
Boris Johnson started the week by outlining plans for the UK economy to reopen. From 17 May pubs and restaurants will be allowed to serve indoors while museums, theatres and cinemas will open their doors once again.
The UK economy showed signs of a bounce back as Q1 GDP contracted by just 1.5%, with March’s figure showing a 2.1% expansion.
Ramaphosa calls on South Africans to support TRIPS waiver proposal
Activists outside Pfizer headquarters in Manhattan, New York demand that US President Joe Biden support the TRIPS waiver, which would lift the intellectual property protection for Covid-19 vaccines.
(Photo: Steven Francis Kong)
In his weekly letter, President Cyril Ramaphosa called on “all South Africans” – particularly civil society organisations – to support the country’s call for a temporary waiver of aspects of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. This would allow all countries to access the technology and know-how to produce Covid-19 vaccines and medicines. Read the letter in full here.
Express News Service
BENGALURU: Covid-19 remains a global disaster. “Worse, it was a preventable disaster,” an independent global panel stated in its just-released report while slamming the World Health Organisation (WHO) for failing to issue a timely declaration that the pandemic was a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) its highest level of alarm on January 22, 2020.
“Instead, it took eight more days before doing so. The world needs a new international system for pandemic preparedness and response,” stated the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) in its report ‘Covid-19: Make it the Last Pandemic’ which was released on Wednesday.
Former prime minister of New Zealand Helen Clark.
Photo: 2018 Anadolu Agency
In its review, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response identified a systematic failing to protect people from Covid-19 - on both national and international levels.
New Zealand was named as one of the countries ordering up large on Covid-19 in a section warning of vaccine nationalism , in which some richer countries had secured more vaccine courses than they had people. But the report also said New Zealand and other Asia-Pacific countries had an aggressive response to combating the virus, and lessons could be learned from them.
The panel recommended essential measures it believed would mitigate future pandemics.