Canadá blinda el centro de Ottawa tras sofocar las protestas de los camioneros contra las medidas anticovid | Internacional

El centro de Ottawa recuperó al menos en parte su estampa habitual este lunes tras permanecer desde el 28 de enero ocupado por cientos de camiones cuyos conductores protestaban así por las medidas de contención de la covid-19, especialmente contra la obligatoriedad de contar con el pasaporte covid para atravesar las fronteras del país. Tras concluir la operación de desalojo de los últimos manifestantes que comenzó el viernes, el corazón de la capital canadiense amaneció sin camiones ni otros vehículos aparcados en medio de sus calles, pero rodeado de un perímetro vallado, con una presencia policial reforzada y en pleno trabajo de los equipos de limpieza que trataban de borrar el rastro de desperdicios que dejaron atrás los transportistas y los miles de antivacunas que después se les unieron.

La policía canadiense ya había anunciado el domingo que trabajaba para garantizar que “nadie vuelva a ocupar las calles” de la ciudad, recalcó el jefe de la Policía de Ottawa, Steve Bell, en una rueda de prensa. Desde el viernes, cuando comenzó la operación policial de gran envergadura que logró desalojar a los últimos manifestantes, 76 vehículos han sido remolcados y 191 personas detenidas, de acuerdo con datos de ese cuerpo de seguridad canadiense. Los agentes han desmantelado también el almacén que surtía de alimentos y otros bienes básicos a una parte de los miles de personas que llegó a haber acampadas en el centro de la ciudad y que pusieron al Gobierno de Justin Trudeau contra las cuerdas, hasta el punto de obligar a su Ejecutivo a declarar el estado de emergencia en la capital el 6 de febrero.

En una actuación inusual para unas fuerzas de seguridad que hasta hace pocos días habían afrontado el bloqueo con una actitud de diálogo con los manifestantes, este sábado, la policía utilizó gas lacrimógeno y otro material antidisturbios contra quienes habían hecho caso omiso de las advertencias policiales y de los pasquines distribuidos por los agentes durante los días anteriores en los que los conminaban a abandonar la zona. La intervención policial logró así despejar la mayor parte de la zona frente al Parlamento, cuya Cámara de los Comunes (baja) se había visto obligada el viernes a suspender su sesión ordinaria para evitar incidentes mientras se desarrollaba la operación de desalojo. Las temperaturas gélidas —la sensación térmica era de 20 grados bajo cero— y los copos de nieve que empezaron a caer contribuyeron a que los manifestantes más reacios a despejar el centro de Ottawa abandonaran el lugar durante la noche.

Entre las personas detenidas, figuran varios líderes de la protesta. Por ejemplo, Pat King, una de las figuras más reconocidas de los manifestantes. Otros dos organizadores de la denominada caravana de la libertad de los transportistas, Chris Barber y Tamara Lich, ya habían sido detenidos el jueves. Los tres líderes se enfrentan a cargos por incitación a cometer daños, obstrucción a la justicia y desobediencia a una orden judicial.

En su comparecencia, Steve Bell precisó que la operación policial aún no ha acabado y que “durará meses” pues los agentes seguirán “tratando de identificar e inculpar con cargos penales y sanciones financieras” a los organizadores de la protesta.

A principios de la semana pasada, la situación se había hecho insostenible en Ottawa. El primer ministro de Canadá, Justin Trudeau, invocó poderes de emergencia no empleados desde 1970 para hacer frente a las protestas, mientras que el viernes Chrystia Freeland, ministra de Finanzas y viceprimera ministra, defendió el uso de la Ley de Emergencia para desalojar el centro de Ottawa, subrayando que la economía y la democracia del país estaban bajo amenaza.

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La policía canadiense ya había desalojado por completo el 13 de febrero el paso fronterizo del puente Ambassador, que une la provincia canadiense de Ontario con el estado de Michigan, en Estados Unidos, que llevaba bloqueado varios días después de que la protesta de los camioneros de Ottawa se extendiera al cruce que concentra el 25% del comercio bilateral de mercancías entre ambos países. Este bloqueo fronterizo añadió presión al Gobierno de Justin Trudeau, pues las autoridades del país vecino cuestionaron la estrategia canadiense de no recurrir inicialmente al uso de la fuerza contra los manifestantes.

Los bloqueos de la protesta de la llamada caravana de la libertad han provocado también importantes pérdidas económicas. El Gobierno de Canadá ya ha anunciado ayudas por valor de 138 millones de euros (200 millones de dólares canadienses) para las empresas de Ottawa afectadas por las protestas. El Ejecutivo canadiense trabaja ahora para evitar nuevas manifestaciones, no solo blindando el centro de su capital, sino especialmente en el cruce fronterizo de Pacific Highway en Columbia Británica y en Prescott, Ontario. “El objetivo es poner fin de manera segura a estos bloqueos y ocupaciones ilegales y restaurar el orden lo antes posible para garantizar la seguridad de los canadienses y el fin de las perturbaciones económicas”, ha precisado el Gobierno canadiense en un comunicado.

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Six African countries receive RNA technology for their anticovid vaccines

Six African countries – Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia – will receive the technology to produce their own messenger RNA vaccines, a key step in ending the global inequality in COVID vaccination.

A person protests in Cape Town (South Africa) for equal access to vaccines against covid. EFE/EPA/NIC BOTHMA

The Director General of the World Health Organization (who), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesusannounced the names of the six beneficiary countries of this initiative on vaccines in the framework of the European Union (EU)-Africa summit held in Brussels, and in the presence of the presidents of those nations, in addition to the French Emmanuel Macron and the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

“They will be vaccines designed by Africa, owned by Africa, and with African leadership,” said Von der Leyen, who stressed that the EU, France and Germany have supported the project that has made this advance possible with an investment of 40 million euros. .

The initiative took its first steps last year with the creation of a research center on messenger RNA technology in Cape Town (South Africa), in which not only the EU, France and Germany have collaborated, but also Belgium, Norway and Canada.

Its goal was to develop its own mRNA technology, a new field for vaccine design that has achieved the most effective in the current COVID-19 pandemic: the drugs developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech were based on it, and showed the rates higher effectiveness against the coronavirus.

mRNA vaccines differ from traditional ones (normally based on weakened forms of the virus) in that they introduce ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules that by themselves contain instructions with which the human body can produce the virus and at the same time the antibody that neutralize.

First African anticovid vaccine

The Cape Town center, which Tedros visited last week, has already managed to develop an anticovid vaccine similar to Moderna’s in the laboratory, although there is still a long way to go: clinical trials will begin this year, and even if they are developed with success may have to wait until 2024 for it to be available.

The center is run by a consortium that includes the South African vaccine manufacturer Biovac, the firm Afrigen Biologics (which developed the necessary technology) and the South African Medical Research Council.

The necessary training to develop the vaccine production centers in the six selected countries will begin in March, and although the fight against COVID-19 will surely be its first priority, the longer-term objective is to combat other diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis or AIDS.

Von der Leyen highlighted in this regard that currently only 1% of the vaccines administered in Africa are produced on the continent, but that with initiatives such as the current one, it is hoped that by 2040 that percentage will rise to 60%.

“It is not acceptable that Africa is always at the bottom of access to vaccines. We appreciate the donations, but they are not sustainable solutions and we want to empower ourselves », she added at the ceremony South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Queue to get vaccinated in Johannesburg (South Africa). EFE/EPA/Kim Ludbrook

Vaccines in Africa: only 20% immunized

Although more than 10,000 million anticovid vaccines have already been administered in the world, with which more than 60% of the global population has received at least one dose, the distribution is very unequal.

While developed countries have very high vaccination rates and many of their citizens have even received booster injections, in Africa 80% of the population has not received a single dose.

“We have many tools to combat COVID-19, the great tragedy has been that millions of people have not yet benefited from them,” lamented Tedros, who recalled that 116 countries in the world are still far from achieving the great goal of achieving by mid-2022 that 70% of its population is vaccinated.

Although today’s announcement is important, Ramaphosa recalled that there are other ways to fight inequality in the pandemic, such as the suspension of vaccine and treatment patents that his country and India have been defending since 2020 before the World Trade Organization (WTO). .

Dozens of countries have joined the Indo-South African request, but an agreement has not yet been reached due to the reluctance of countries that are the headquarters of large pharmaceutical companies, as is the case of many in the European Union, Japan or Switzerland.

“With today’s initiative we limit the benefits of companies but at the same time we protect the precious asset that is intellectual property, we have to find a bridge between both things,” said Von der Leyen

MSF values ​​the decision but asks for greater involvement of Moderna

Doctors Without Borders appreciates the WHO’s decision but urges Moderna to help the Cape Town center to shorten production times and recalls that its vaccine was financed with public funds.

According Kate Stegeman, MSF Access Campaign Advocacy Coordinator For the Africa region, “This announcement marks a positive milestone on the path to expanding vaccine manufacturing capacity in low- and middle-income countries.”

In a statement, MSF highlights that the center’s research and development partner, the South African company Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, has recently succeeded in producing microliter batches of an mRNA vaccine based on the publicly available sequence of the vaccine from the American pharmaceutical corporation Moderna. .

“And it has succeeded despite the lack of help from Moderna even though its vaccine has been financed, to a large extent, with public funds. The timeframe for the center to produce a final mRNA vaccine and eventual technology transfer to manufacturers is considerable, but could be shortened significantly if Moderna were to provide technical assistance to the center.”

The medical organization believes that many more advances are needed, such as developing a more heat-stable version, conducting clinical trials, and developing a large-scale manufacturing process. Thus, MSF urges Modernawhose vaccine is the most similar to the one designed by Afigen, to provide technical assistance to the center to shorten production lead timesNo of the vaccine.

“Although the hub is certainly an important initiative now and for future pandemic responses, the fastest way to start vaccine production in African countries and other regions with limited vaccine production remains the full and transparent transfer of vaccine know-how from already approved mRNA technologies to companies with existing capacity that can be retrofitted to produce mRNA vaccines,’ he says.

The nocebo effect of the symptoms of anticovid vaccines

Sometimes, placebo effects can also be harmful, it is what is known as the nocebo effect. According to a large analysis using volunteer data from 12 clinical trials, more than two-thirds of adverse symptoms from covid-19 vaccines were due to them.

The symptoms of covid vaccines can also be due to the nocebo effect, according to a study. EFE/Jeffrey Arguedas

The nocebo effect of the symptoms of anticovid vaccines

The placebo effect is the supposed improvement in a person’s physical or mental health after a treatment with no pharmacological therapeutic benefit, a sugar pill or a syringe filled with serum, and it has an opposite version, the nocebo, which occurs when an individual experiences unpleasant side effects after also receiving this “lie treatment”.

The exact biological, psychological and genetic underpinnings of why they occur -placebo/nocebo effect- are not well understood, although there are theories that point to expectations as the main cause and others maintain that unconscious factors embedded in the doctor-patient relationship automatically lower the volume of symptoms.

To verify its role in covid-19 vaccines, the team from the BIDMC center, associated with the medical school of Harvard (EE.UU.), conducted a meta-analysis of 12 clinical trials.

The objective was to compare the rates of adverse events reported by the participants who received the vaccines with the rates of those who received a placebo injection – without any vaccine. The results are published in JAMA Network Open.

The 12 trials included reports of adverse events from 22,578 placebo recipients and 22,802 vaccine recipients.

nocebo effect, placebo effect

Although the scientists found that significantly more participants who received the vaccine reported adverse events, almost a third of the participants who received the placebo also reported at least one, with headache and fatigue being the most common.

Specifically, Julia W. Haas and her colleagues at the BIDMC found that after the first injection, more than 35% of placebo recipients experienced systemic adverse effects -symptoms that affect the entire body, such as fever-, the pain being headache and fatigue the most common, with 19.6% and 16.7%, respectively, the center reports in a statement.

16% of placebo recipients reported at least one local effect, such as injection site pain, redness, or swelling.

Haas reminds that adverse events after placebo treatment are common in randomized controlled trials.

“Gathering systematic evidence regarding these nocebo responses in vaccine trials is important for COVID-19 vaccination worldwide, especially as concerns about side effects are reported to be a reason for vaccine hesitation.” .

Compared to the placebo group, after the first injection, 46% of vaccine recipients experienced at least one systemic adverse event and two-thirds of them reported at least one local one.

Although this group received a pharmacologically active treatment, some of their adverse events are attributable to the placebo effect – or in this case, nocebo – since many of these effects also occurred in the placebo group, the researchers say.

The analysis suggests that nocebo accounted for 76% of all adverse events in the vaccine group and nearly a quarter of all reported local effects.

After the second dose, adverse effects in the placebo group decreased to 32% for systemic cases and 12% for local effects.

In contrast, participants who received the vaccine reported more side effects, with 61% systemic adverse events and 73% local adverse events.

The researchers calculated that nocebo accounted for nearly 52% of reported side effects after the second dose.

Ted J. Kaptchuk, another of the signatories, explains that “non-specific symptoms such as headache and fatigue – which we have shown to be especially sensitive to nocebo – are among the most common adverse reactions after vaccination in many information leaflets” .

Evidence suggests that this type of information may cause people to mistakenly attribute common everyday sensations as being from the vaccine, or cause anxiety and worry that make people hyper-alert to the bodily sensations of adverse events.

“Medicine is built on trust,” Kaptchuk stresses: “Our findings lead us to suggest that informing the public about the potential for nocebo responses could help reduce concerns about covid vaccination, which could decrease hesitancy.”

ventas condones EE.UU. aumentan medida país relaja medidas anticovid - Deutsche Welle

Tanto los analistas, como los representantes de diferentes empresas fabricantes de preservativos, han notado un aumento en las ventas en los últimos meses, especialmente luego de que el país relajara sus restricciones.

Deutsche Welle

30.04.2021

Las ventas de preservativos en EE.UU. están subiendo en los últimos meses a medida que el país está relajando las medidas de distanciamiento social impuestas durante la pandemia, gracias al gran aumento de personas vacunadas.

Según las últimas cifras de IRI, una compañía que analiza los datos en los puntos de venta, la compra de preservativos masculinos en EE. UU. subió un 23,4 % desde el pasado 21 de marzo al 18 de abril comparado con ese mismo periodo del año pasado.

Además, Reckitt Benckiser, el fabricante de condones Durex, aseguró que la marca registra un aumento de ventas de doble dígito durante el último trimestre en comparación con las del mismo cuarto del año pasado y, aunque no han revelado una cifra concreta, atribuyen la subida a la relajación de las normas de distanciamiento social.

La empresa ve «mejoras para Durex en los mercados en los que las restricciones sociales se están reduciendo», apuntó el director ejecutivo de Rockitt Benckier, Laxman Narasimhan.

Mientras, dos de las cadenas de farmacias más grandes de EE. UU., Walgreens y CVS, también aseguran que la venta de preservativos ha crecido «sustancialmente» en las últimas semanas en relación con el mismo periodo de 2020, sin proveer cifras concretas.

Un negocio que venía en declive

La mejora de las ventas del preservativo se producen después de varios años de declive, ya que en 2017 ya bajaron un 2,4 % y en 2018 un 3,4 %, solo subiendo ligeramente en 2019 un 1,2 %, según las cifras de IRI.

Kevin Grundy, analista de la compañía Jeffries, apuntó que el mercado de los condones ha perdido terreno en los últimos años por el avance de otros tipos de métodos anticonceptivos, incluyendo la píldora del día después.

Además, según un estudio de la Universidad de Indiana y del instituto sueco Karolinska, la inactividad sexual en adultos estadounidenses incrementó entre 2000 y 2018, algo que atribuyeron a varios factores, entre ellos el aumento de la presencia de la tecnología y redes sociales.

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