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Thursday, August 11, 2022, 10:45
Australia opens national vaccine lab amid COVID-19 winter wave
By Agencies
Thursday, August 11, 2022, 10:45 By Agencies

Medical staff transport a patient from the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Melbourne on Oct 9, 2021. (WILLIAM WEST / AFP)

SEOUL / NEW DELHI / TOKYO / WELLINGTON / KUALA LUMPUR /CANBERRA - Australia's national science agency has established a new lab to boost the ability to produce vaccines as the country continues to battle against the wave of Omicron sub-variant infections in winter.

On Thursday, Australia reported more than 15,000 new COVID-19 cases and more than 40 deaths

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation  and Ed Husic, the federal Minister for Industry and Science, on Thursday opened the National Vaccine and Therapeutics Lab.

The 23.1 million Australian dollars (US$16.3 million) lab, based in Melbourne, will turn drug and vaccine candidates into products that can be manufactured for clinical trials.

READ MORE: ROK regrets DPRK's 'groundless claim' over COVID, threats

It comes after the CSIRO scaled up the COVID-19 vaccine candidates in the early stages of the pandemic.

Larry Marshall, chief executive of the CSIRO, described the new facility as the missing link in Australia's ability to produce vaccines and drugs.

"The problem facing our biomedical industry has been that most vaccine and drug candidates needed to be sent overseas to be produced in large quantities for clinical trials, adding burdensome costs that have crushed many Australian businesses and researchers as the invention languishes on the lab bench," he said in a media release.

The lab will be open to private companies to produce a range of biologics including peptides, viral products and recombinant proteins.

"Our team at the lab will produce drugs in partnership with local industry and enable our partners to progress to both phase one and phase two clinical trials in Australia, and also has the necessary accreditation for Australian companies to participate in clinical trials globally," Susie Nilsson, Research Director for Biomedical Manufacturing, said.

READ MORE: Australian state to hand out free masks to curb COVID-19 spread

The announcement came when the wave of Omicron sub-variant infections continued in the current winter months.

As of Wednesday afternoon, a total of 9,711,908 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Australia, including 12,568 deaths, and approximately 257,107 active cases, according to the latest data from the Department of Health.

There were 4,343 cases being treated in Australian hospitals on Wednesday, including 125 in intensive care units.

On Thursday, Australia reported more than 15,000 new COVID-19 cases and more than 40 deaths. 

In this photo provided by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea government, a worker in protective gear stands on an empty sidewalk in Pyongyang, the DPRK on May 17, 2022. (KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY / KOREA NEWS SERVICE VIA AP)

DPRK

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea's Kim Jong-un declared victory in the battle against COVID-19 on Thursday.

Kim ordered a lifting of maximum anti-epidemic measures imposed in May, adding that the DPRK must maintain a "steel-strong anti-epidemic barrier and intensifying the anti-epidemic work until the end of the global health crisis," according to a report by state news agency KCNA.

A health worker administers Covishield vaccine for COVID-19 at a vaccination center in Hyderabad, India on July 15, 2022. (MAHESH KUMAR A. / AP)

India

India said on Wednesday that Biological E's COVID-19 vaccine Corbevax can be administered as a booster dose in people who have taken the country's other two main shots, Covaxin and AstraZeneca's Covishield, from Friday.

Corbevax will be available to over 18s as precautionary booster six months after a second dose, the health ministry said in an Aug 8 letter to state authorities and shared with reporters on Wednesday.

Covishield is produced for the Indian market by the Serum Institute of India under licence from AstraZeneca, while Bharat Biotech makes Covaxin.

India has so far administered more than 2 billion COVID-19 vaccine shots, including 113 million boosters, all of which have so far been of the same vaccine as the recipient's first two doses. The government says about 89 percent of Indians above the age of 12 have had two doses.

The country of nearly 1.4 billion people has documented more than 44 million coronavirus infections and 526,826 related deaths. The actual numbers are believed to be many times higher.

People wearing protective masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus walk near a landmark lion statue of a department store that also wears a mask in the Ginza shipping area of Tokyo on July 28, 2022. (SHUJI KAJIYAMA / AP)

Japan

Japan logged 250,403 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, a daily record high, amid concerns over a strain on the medical system due to a new wave of the pandemic.

Fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron BA.5 subvariant, the daily tally surpassed the previous record of 249,830 on Aug 3. A total of 251 new fatalities linked to COVID-19 were confirmed nationwide.

The health ministry said that the number of infected people hospitalized with severe symptoms went up by 16 from Tuesday to 597, much less than last summer's peak when serious cases exceeded 2,000 for weeks.

Twenty of Japan's 47 prefectures saw record daily counts of new infections. The Tokyo metropolitan government on Wednesday reported 34,243 new coronavirus cases, while Osaka and Aichi prefectures logged 23,730 and 18,862 cases respectively. 

Malaysia

Malaysia reported 4,896 new COVID-19 infections as of midnight Wednesday, bringing the national total to 4,719,394, according to the Health Ministry.

There are two new imported cases, with 4,894 cases being local transmissions, data released on the ministry's website showed.

Another 12 deaths have been reported, pushing the death toll to 36,056.

New Zealand

New Zealand recorded 4,818 new community cases of COVID-19 and 24 more deaths from the pandemic, the Ministry of Health said on Thursday.

New Zealand has reported 1,662,645 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,726 confirmed deaths attributable to the disease since the pandemic hit the country in early 2020, the health ministry said.

A medical worker wearing protective gear in a booth, takes sample from a woman during a COVID-19 testing at a coronavirus testing site in Seoul, the Republic of Korea, Aug 12, 2021. (LEE JIN-MAN / AP)

ROK

The Republic of Korea reported 137,241 new COVID-19 cases as of midnight Wednesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 20,983,169, the health authorities said Thursday.

The daily caseload was down from 151,792 the previous day, but it was higher than 107,859 tallied a week earlier, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

For the past week, the daily average number of confirmed cases was 117,591.


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