US plans to share more vaccines with other countries, Cambodia vaccinates children under 12 years old

Details of the plan remain unclear. Response coordinatorCovid-19White House spokesman Jeff Zients declined to confirm or provide further details when asked about the report during a press briefing held on September 17.

According to the US newspaper The Hill, the information was released in the context of the United Nations General Assembly meeting next week, when the issue of promoting access to Covid-19 vaccines in lower-income countries will be the focus of discussion. The White House will also host an online summit on global vaccination next week, at the same time as the meeting.

The Hill newspaper commented that the administration of US President Joe Biden has been under pressure from experts and vaccine donation advocates to do more to help expand vaccinations around the world. US officials said that about 140 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines that the country has donated, as well as more than 500 million doses of vaccines announced to have been purchased, will be shared with many countries this year and next.

Advocates for vaccine donations say that amount falls short of global demand. In addition to funding, health experts have called for increased global vaccine manufacturing capacity to help lower-income countries get more doses.

Cambodia vaccinates children under 12 years old

Cambodian health officials have recently started vaccinating students aged 6-11, in a bid to help children continue to go to school after their studies were interrupted for months.

“Protecting the health and lives of children is our duty, because we want to ensure that when children return to school, they and their teachers will be safe from Covid-19. I have also asked health officials to find out whether it is possible to vaccinate children aged 3-5 against Covid-19,” the AP news agency quoted Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen as saying.

According to figures released by Cambodian health officials, nearly 72% of the country's total population, or more than 12 million people, have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine since the nationwide vaccination campaign was launched.

“Cambodia’s priority in recovering from the pandemic is to reopen the education sector, followed by allowing services, including domestic tourism. We are also considering opening tourism to fully vaccinated foreign visitors in the near future. Tourism is very important to the Cambodian economy,” Prime Minister Hun Sen added.

Some other developments about the epidemic

Updated at 6am on September 19 by the global statistics site Worldometers shows that the Covid-19 epidemic is raging in 220 countries and territories, infecting more than 228.7 million people and claiming the lives of nearly 4.7 million patients. The number of recoveries reached more than 205.3 million cases.

According to the AP news agency, a total of 25 people living in the state of Oregon, USA, have recently been hospitalized due to poisoning after arbitrarily using the antiparasitic drug Ivermectin to treat Covid-19.

“COVID-19 is a terrible disease and can be very scary, but people should not be using dangerous and unproven drugs to treat it,” said Robert Hendrickson, director of the Oregon Poison Center.