Norway has lent all 216,000 of its AstraZeneca COVID-19 jabs to neighbouring Sweden and Iceland.
Norway s Health Ministry said the doses would be loaned only if the country continues to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca jab (Vaxzevria).
On March 11, Norway followed Denmark in deciding to pause the rollout of the jabs by the British-Swedish company after reports of extremely rare blood clots and continued to innoculate citizens with other jabs developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. Sweden and Iceland want to borrow Norwegian doses of vaccines from AstraZeneca that are in stock at the National Institute of Public Health, the ministry said in a statement.
Chief epidemiologist quits Covid-19 advisory team again
21. April, 2021
Ljubljana – Mario Fafangel, the head of the centre for communicable diseases at the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ), has resigned from the team advising the government on measures to contain coronavirus, saying decisions taken are often in disagreement with the epidemiologists’ opinion and protocols.
Fafangel, who had already resigned from the previous line-up of the advisory group under the leadership of Bojana Beović, joined the new team appointed by Health Minister Janez Poklukar and headed by Mateja Logar. Both Logar and Beović are experts on infectious diseases.
“When I received your invitation to rejoin the expert team I honestly believed things would be different this time around. They are different indeed, worse,” Fafangel said in his resignation letter to Poklukar, stating his decision is irrevocable.
Slovenia Times
21. April, 2021
Ljubljana – Slovenia’s curve of coronavirus infections keeps on its downward trajectory; 718 people tested positive on Monday to push the rolling 7-day average down further by 48 to 737, data released by the government show. Five patients with Covid-19 died.
Marking the sixth day that the daily increase in infections declined from the same day a week ago, the latest cases were confirmed from 3,537 PCR tests, for a positivity rate of 20.3%. In addition, 39,436 rapid antigen tests were performed.
Covid-19 hospitalisations dropped by three to 649 after 71 patients were admitted and 69 were discharged yesterday. The number of patients in intensive care dropped by one to 156, Maja Bratuša, the government’s Covid-19 spokesperson, told the daily press briefing on Tuesday.
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Health workers register Doeurm Kor market vendors to have their samples taken for Covid-19 testing on April 17. TYDA PAGE
South Korea offers further assistance in Covid-19 battle
Tue, 20 April 2021
The South Korean government has provided further assistance worth $350,000 to help the Cambodian Ministry of Health in the ongoing fight against Covid-19.
According to a press release on April 19, the donation is made through the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA).
The items include 18,750 test kits of RNA Extraction Kits; 14,400 kits of SD Biosensor; 42,000 swabs for specimen collection; and other accessories for PCR testing machine.
These items will be used in the National Laboratory under the National Institute of Public Health to detect the coronavirus.