The practical issues of fighting the pandemic is best summed up in the assertion that no-one if safe until everyone is safe.

The moral issues, equally plain, have been more problematic as rich nations grab more of the vaccine than they need to save their faltering economies.

The foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan  and the United States had a packed agenda preparing for next month’s G7 summit to be hosted in Britain.

In pre-meeting briefings they listed Russia, Myanmar and Iran ahead of COVID a.

Then members of the Indian delegation – invited as observers along with Australia, the Association of South East Asian Nations, the European Union, South Africa and South Korea- reported cases of COVID and were forced into self-isolation.

India and Brazil are responsible for the overwhelming majority of COVID cases as the pandemic goes into its third wave.

The media covering the deliberations at Lancaster House in London’s West End have eyes for nothing else.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown set the moral tone calling on the G7 to fund the global push for COVID vaccine.

Speaking as the UN Envoy for Global Education he called on the richest nations raise $60 billion over two years, saying inaction now would lead to greater global division.

“By our failure to extend vaccination more rapidly to every country, we are choosing who lives and who dies”, he warned. 

“And I say the world is already too deeply divided between rich and poor to allow a new unbridgeable divide to become entrenched between the world’s vaccinated who live, and the under-vaccinated who are at risk of dying.” 

Brown asserted that mass global vaccination is not an act of charity, but “the best insurance policy for the world”.  Though costing billions now, the result will be “trillions of additional economic output, made possible when trade resumes in a COVID-free world.” 

Brown will be remembered as the British premier who hosted the G20 summit in 2009, where the world’s major economies committed an additional $1.1 trillion to address the fallout from the global financial crisis,  

World Health Organization  chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus thanked Brown for his call to the world’s economic and political leaders. 

“The G7 are also home to many of the world’s vaccine producers. We will only solve the vaccine crisis with the leaders of these countries”, he said.

For those of a more cynical or dubious bent, a poll by the People’s Vaccine Alliance shows that70 percent of G7 citizens believe their governments should ensured pharmaceutical companies share the formulas and technology of their vaccines.

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Ambassador Aurelien Lechevallier, briefing the media yesterday, insisted the doctors view in no way reflect the position of the French 

French Ambassador Aurelien Lechevallier says the remarks by  two French doctors show they should be looking after patients rather than saying stupid things that they know nothing about.

There was a need to test vaccines. 

Currently a decades old  anti-tuberculosis medicine known as BCG is being tested on a limited number of COVID 19 patients in Australia, Netherland and France among other countries.

He says this could also be tested in Africa,

(Take in test clip here)

The medicine needs to be tested in different areas with different specificities.

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The flu-like virus has killed at least 56 people in China and cases have spread to at least 46 countries.

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Ivorean authorities believe the woman, whom they have not named, is suffering from pneumonia rather than coronavirus.

She’s been placed under isolation while tests are conducted for her coughing, sneezing and shortness of breath.

She displayed these symptoms before boarding the flight from China where she has lived for five years.

China’s in virtual lockdown to contain the virus that has sickened more than 2000 people.

Nevertheless it has spread to at least 46 countries including the United States, France and Australia.  

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There’s increasing anger at the richer countries failing to make concessions necessary for an agreed statement from meeting known as COP25.

The anger is directed at the United States, Brazil, Australia and China as the final session on Friday stretches on and on.

Protestors have dumped horse manure and staged a fake hanging outside the venue in Madrid.

They say the EU has come with new long-term goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but the rich countries have spend two week arguing about technical details like carbon trading.

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They will go to any country the United Nations decides is safe for them.

Compatriots in Cape Town of the demonstrating Congolese refugees has asked to be sent to a Australia, New Zealand or Canada.

In Pretoria, spokesman for the organization Women and Children in Crisis Alex Nkoy says they’re in no position to make any requests.

Asked if they would go to Rwanda, which is currently taking in African would-be migrants held in Libyan detention centers, Nkoy says they will go where the UNHCR decides to send them. 

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Britain, the European Union, India and Australia have joined the growing list of countries temporarily barring the plane from their airspace.

Some families of the 157 people who died in last Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines crash have 

visited the site near Addis Ababa to lay flowers.

Experts are coming the wreckage in an attempt establish the cause of the crash – and particuarly to learn if there are similarities with the Lion Air crash outside the Indonesia capital Jakarta last October.

The US Federal Aviation Authority insists the Boeing 737 Max is airworthy.

However US Senators and aviation workers are urging the government to keep the plane grounded until the investigations can confirm this.

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The action echoes that of Vietnam, South Korea and Singapore.

They’ve joined the list of countries that have barred the plane, waring for experts to examine the sound and data boxes from the Ethiopian Airways flight that crashed near Addis Ababa last Sunday and  see whether it is unsafe or just unlucky.

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Australia is not among the countries already using the 300 Boeing 737 Max.

With 5 000 on order, the plane’s become the biggest seller in aviation history.

The United States Federal Aviation Authority insists it is airworthy, despite the two crashes that cost 346 lives in the past five months.

A growing list of countries is simply not prepared to chance it.

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It’s  an advance that could fast-track efforts to eliminate the disease.

Missouri biologists have road-tested a technique that senses the malaria parasite in samples of ­infected people’s breath.

The ­results, outlined at a conference in Baltimore, are build on an Australian discovery that malaria sufferers exhale high levels of certain chemicals.

The test could accelerate ­diagnosis because the chemicals spike at very early stages of infection, when other techniques can fail to detect the parasite.

The new approach also offers a cheap alternative to lab-based DNA or blood analyses and to finger-prick tests which can ­diagnose malaria in the field, but lack sensitivity and are losing reliability as the parasites mutate.

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