SYDNEY: Getting vaccinated in Australia is like “the Hunger Games” a top health official admitted on Monday (Jul 5), as the country battles scarce supplies during a growing COVID-19 outbreak.

A vaccine shortage has led to panicked efforts by people looking to get jabbed, said Brad Hazzard, health minister for the country’s most populous state New South Wales.

“It is almost a sense now of the Hunger Games of people chasing vaccine,” he said of desperate residents turning up at mass vaccination centres or making regular calls to medical facilities in the hope of securing an appointment.

Set in a dystopian future, the wildly popular Hunger Games books and films saw a group of young people selected annually to participate in a televised battle to the death.

READ: Australia’s New South Wales says next 2 days ‘critical’ as COVID-19 outbreak grows

Just 7 per cent of Australia’s roughly 25 million residents have been fully vaccinated, one of the lowest proportions for any developed nation.

The country’s conservative government bet heavily on AstraZeneca, and developing a homegrown vaccine, which failed in trials.

Many Australians have shunned the available AstraZeneca offering – now only recommended for those aged over 60 – and tried to secure appointments to get the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.

But the odds have not been in their favour as efforts to get more doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and other vaccines remain hampered by late decisions on ordering and limited global supply.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is under growing pressure to increase the vaccination rate, as an outbreak in locked-down Sydney grew to more than 300.

Australia has seen 30,000 virus cases since the pandemic began, but several major cities imposed snap lockdowns to limit small outbreaks in recent weeks.

Hazzard said it was “easy to be critical” of the federal government’s efforts in hindsight, “but I think they did their best”.

But he warned that “until we get enough vaccine – and enough GPs actually at the frontline able to provide that vaccine into arms – we will continue to have effectively the Hunger Games going on here”.

Last week, Morrison revealed a four-stage plan to reopen Australia’s borders and end the cycle of snap lockdowns, a plan which depends on a large portion of the population being vaccinated.

SURFSIDE, Florida: Demolition crews set off explosives late on Sunday (Jul 4) to bring down the damaged remaining portion of a collapsed South Florida condominium building, a key step to resuming the search for victims as rescuers possibly gain access to new areas of the rubble.

Video footage showed the 12-story Champlain Towers South in Surfside, outside Miami, being demolished 10 days after most of the building collapsed in the early hours of Jun 24. The confirmed death toll from the disaster is 24, with 121 people missing.

Crews were to begin clearing some of the new debris so rescuers could start making their way into parts of the underground garage that is of particular interest.

Once there, rescuers are hoping that they will gain access for the first time to parts of the garage area that are a focus of interest, Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah has said.

That could give a clearer picture of voids that may exist in the rubble and could possibly harbour survivors.

No one has been rescued alive since the first hours after the Jun 24 collapse.

The precarious, still-standing portion of a collapsed South Florida condo building was rigged with explosive charges and set for demolition overnight, Miami-Dade County officials said late Sunday.

The search-and-rescue mission at the Surfside building was suspended on Saturday afternoon so workers could begin to drill holes for explosives.

Jadallah said the suspension was a necessary safety measure because the drilling could cause the structure to fail, but a family member could be heard calling that news “devastating”.

READ: Surfside pushes back on report on delayed building repairs

Rescuers will await the “all-clear” after the demolition and then immediately dive back into the task of trying to locate any survivors buried under the rubble, County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said. Officials had previously said that the search could resume from 15 minutes to an hour after the detonation.

“We are standing by. We are ready to go in, no matter the time of night,” Levine Cava told a news conference Sunday night.

Jadallah said earlier that up to 210 rescuers will be poised to restart the search as soon as the site is declared safe after the blast.

READ: Miami condo collapse: Most residents in sister building opt to stay put

Officials had evacuated residents around the site ahead of the demolition and warned others to stay indoors and close windows, doors and any other openings that could allow dust in.

“Once this building is down, it’s going to be a green light, full speed ahead, maximum effort to pull these victims out and reunite them with their family,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told CBS’ Face the Nation.

“There’s nobody in charge really talking about stopping this rescue effort … This rescue effort as far as I’m concerned will go on until everybody is pulled out of that debris.”

Concerns had mounted that the damaged Champlain Towers South building in Surfside was at risk of falling on its own, endangering the crews below and preventing them from operating in some areas.

The approach of Tropical Storm Elsa added urgency to the demolition project. The latest forecasts have moved the storm westward, mostly sparing South Florida, but meteorologists have said the area could still feel effects starting Monday.

Investigators have not determined what caused the 40-year-old complex to collapse on Jun 24. A 2018 engineering report found structural deficiencies that are now the focus of inquiries that include a grand jury examination.

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden celebrated United States Independence Day on Sunday (Jul 4) with an upbeat assessment of a country he said is roaring back to post-pandemic life, even if COVID-19 has yet to be fully “vanquished”.

Speaking before a festive crowd of 1,000 guests on the White House South Lawn, Biden drew a comparison between the declaration of independence from the British Empire in 1776 and today’s rapid recovery from the coronavirus.

“Two hundred and forty five years ago, we declared our independence from a distant king. Today, we are closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus,” he told the crowd of invited military members and essential workers.

“We’ve gained the upper hand against this virus,” he said. But he added: “Don’t get me wrong: COVID-19 has not been vanquished. We all know powerful variants have emerged, like the Delta variant.”

READ: Americans’ July Fourth festivities sparkle after last year’s COVID-19 cancellations

Biden paid tribute to those who have lost their lives, with the staggering number of deaths in the US now at more than 600,000.

But he struck an overwhelmingly optimistic note, suggesting that under his leadership the country – bitterly and at times violently divided during the Donald Trump presidency – was “coming back together.”

“Over the last year, we have lived through some of our darkest days,” Biden said. “We are about to see our brightest future.”

VACCINATION CONCERNS

Large crowds packed the National Mall for a huge fireworks display in yet another sign that the US is looking to its July Fourth holiday as a moment to put the virus in the rear view mirror.

During last year’s holiday, with the pandemic near its summer peak and towns across America reeling from anti-racism and anti-police protests, Washington and other big cities held only muted celebrations.

Despite the atmosphere of Sunday’s victory party, the Biden administration says it is concerned about the large numbers of people who have still not got vaccinated.

READ: US administers 330.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines

The heavily promoted White House goal of getting seven in 10 adults their first shot by Independence Day has narrowly failed.

And when it comes to full vaccinations, only 46 per cent of Americans have taken the two doses.

That lag comes as the highly contagious Delta variant continues to spread.

Public health officials are eyeing swaths of rural America where hospitals are starting to fill up again, especially in Utah, Missouri, Arkansas and Wyoming.

Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, told NBC that unvaccinated people now account for 99.2 per cent of COVID-19 deaths.

SUMMER AGENDA

The fireworks smoke will have barely cleared before Biden has to return to a complex political fight for the survival of his legislative agenda this summer.

Negotiations continue on a bipartisan infrastructure deal, and fractious debate within his Democratic Party looms on a much broader spending package that has no support from Republicans.

The president visited a cherry farm in Michigan on Saturday to tout a positive June employment report hailed as a sign of America’s economic resurgence.

In his speech on the South Lawn, Biden said that the country was on the move again. “We’re seeing record job creation and record economic growth – the best in four decades and, I might add, the best in the world.”

READ: Progress on COVID-19 and economy under Biden, but disunion haunts US on its 245th birthday

“AMERICAN DREAM”

The administration also sent Cabinet secretaries and other officials to sports events, cookouts and festivals nationwide as part of its “America’s Back Together” celebration.

And the White House – at least outwardly – continues to brim with confidence. Six in 10 respondents in a new poll by the Washington Post and ABC News give Biden positive ratings for his handling of the pandemic.

Images of a crowded South Lawn were echoed in scenes of celebration across the country, with New York, Chicago, Las Vegas and other cities all putting on their own shows.

On the west coast, San Diego was readying to stage one of the largest July Fourth parties in the country, with fireworks discharged from four barges around the bay.

California Senator Alex Padilla called Independence Day “a reminder of the American dream”.

“The best way to celebrate Independence Day is by taking a moment to acknowledge all the hard work that it took to get here,” he said.

OTTAWA: Hong Kongers in Canada are banding together to help the latest wave of immigrants fleeing Beijing’s tightening grip on their city.

Networks across the country, some descended from groups set up after the Tiananmen Square incident in China in 1989, are offering new arrivals everything from jobs and accommodation to legal and mental health services and even car rides to the grocery store.

“We are in a battle. These are my comrades, people who share the same values,” one 38-year-old who asked to be identified only as Ho told Reuters. “Who is going to provide that helping hand if I’m not going to?”

Ho runs a cooking school near Toronto, and said he hired a former aide to a Hong Kong democratic politician to promote his business online, and recently took on a new kitchen assistant who took part in the city’s 2019 protests.

Ho, who came to Canada as a teenager before Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, is just one person helping the network of support groups that have been formed in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton in the past two years.

Immigrants looking after each other is not unique. But people in Canada, which has one of the world’s biggest overseas concentrations of people from Hong Kong, told Reuters the situation is urgent because many of the people they are seeking to help fear they will be arrested for taking part in past protests and may not be able to afford professional help to resettle overseas.

“It’s my natural duty,” said Ho, who asked not to be identified by his full name, and did not name his new employees, for fear of problems with Hong Kong authorities. “If I was in Hong Kong, I would be in a desperate position. If there was a helping hand, I would hold onto it.”

Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong a year ago, outlawing a wide range of political activities and effectively putting an end to public protests. Many pro-democracy activists and politicians, including prominent Beijing critics Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai, have been arrested under the new law or for protest-related offences. Many people have already left the territory.

READ: Hong Kong court denies bail to democracy activist

The Hong Kong government and China say the law was necessary to restore stability after the sometimes violent protests of 2019, and that it preserves freedoms guaranteed by Beijing after Britain handed Hong Kong back to China.

“The Hong Kong national security law upholds the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong people,” said a spokesperson for Hong Kong’s Security Bureau. “Any law enforcement actions taken by Hong Kong law enforcement agencies are based on evidence, strictly according to the law, for the acts of the persons or entities concerned.”

CANADIAN ‘PARENTS’

Britain and Canada are two of the most popular destinations for people leaving Hong Kong after the imposition of the national security law.

About 34,000 people applied to live in Britain in the first two months after the country introduced a new fast-track to residency for Hong Kongers earlier this year, according to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, citing government data.

About a fifth of that number applied for temporary and permanent residency in Canada in the first four months of this year, according to the government. The total number of Hong Kongers going to Canada is likely larger but hard to track as many already hold Canadian passports from earlier waves of emigration.

Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers moved there in the 1980s and 1990s for fear they would lose wealth and property, or much of their freedom, after China took back control of the city.

But the city prospered and retained freedoms unavailable in mainland China, so many Hong Kongers returned home, with some keeping a foot in Canada. The latest wave of emigration looks more likely to be permanent, as China stamps its authority on Hong Kong.

Canada loosened its restrictions on admitting Hong Kongers after the imposition of the national security law last year. It set up a new work visa programme aimed chiefly at young Hong Kongers with a degree or diploma from a post-secondary institution in the last five years, along with two pathways to permanent residency for Hong Kongers in Canada who have recently worked or completed post-secondary studies in the country.

The new coronavirus has complicated matters for new arrivals. Under Canada’s latest travel restrictions, even those who have obtained permission to live and work in Canada through the new programme are only allowed to enter the country if they have a job offer.

READ: Hong Kong silenced as China celebrates Chinese Communist Party centenary

That is where the support network comes in. The Toronto Hong Kong Parent Group has so far assisted 40 people, half of whom have already received three-year permits, according to Eric Li, co-founder of the group and former president of the Canada-Hong Kong Link, a rights advocacy organisation established in 1997.

Li said the group has encouraged 20 employers to offer jobs to people arriving from Hong Kong, including Ho’s cooking school, restaurants, a construction company, a travel agency, and a family who hired a Cantonese tutor for their children.

The Toronto group also has interpreters, lawyers and psychotherapists on hand to help new arrivals and has 10 rooms it can provide as free, temporary accommodation. The rooms are in the members’ or their friends’ homes.

Volunteers in Calgary said they have helped at least 29 asylum seekers, picking many up from the airport and driving them to doctors’ offices, grocery stores and banks.

STEPPING STONE

Canada has long had one of the largest populations of overseas Hong Kongers, some of whom came together in 2019 to hold rallies in solidarity with the protests back home.

Many of the new groups can trace their roots to activist organisations that formed in response to Beijing’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989, or the 1997 handover. The groups already have contacts with social agencies, such as Community Family Services of Ontario or the York Support Services Network, or with churches and professionals willing to help.

READ: Hong Kong security law ‘a human rights emergency’: Amnesty

The Vancouver Parent Group, supported by the Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement that formed in 1989, has raised more than C$80,000 (US$65,963) to help Hong Kong protesters settling in Canada with living costs and legal fees.

Vancouver “parents” show new arrivals how to navigate public transport or get a library card, and organise donations of winter clothing or kitchenware, according to Ken Tung, one of the volunteers.

Tung said their aim is to “give them a stepping stone to move on.”

Alison, a protester who left Hong Kong last year after many of her friends there were arrested for taking part in protests, was one of those helped by the Calgary group.

Along with a few other new arrivals, she launched the Soteria Institute, named after the Greek goddess of safety and salvation, to offer free, weekly, online English lessons, resume-writing workshops and emotional support.

“We understand what they’re experiencing,” said Alison, who asked to be identified by only one name. “We try to use our experience to help out more Hong Kong exiles.”

MELBOURNE: Australia’s New South Wales state recorded its biggest daily rise in COVID-19 infections this year, even as residents in several major cities across the country were released from snap lockdowns on Saturday (Jul 3).

Sydney, the New South Wales state capital and home to a fifth of Australia’s 25 million population, has been hit hardest in a flurry of outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant around the country over the past two weeks.

State Premier Gladys Berejiklian reported 35 new cases, 29 of which were linked to previous cases. That eclipsed the 31 cases reported a day earlier, taking total infections under the current outbreak to more than 250.

READ: Australia national cabinet to meet amid COVID-19 vaccine turmoil

“While the number of cases are going up, we are seeing a greater proportion of those in isolation which is what we want to see,” Berejiklian told a press conference.

“We haven’t seen a huge surge in cases … (but) we know the next few days are critical.”

Sydney is halfway through a two-week lockdown. Berejiklian said it was still too early to make a decision on whether to extend the lockdown.

“Health experts are giving myself and my colleagues advice on a daily basis,” she said. “I anticipate that obviously some time next week we’ll be in a position to tell the community where things are at.”

READ: After early COVID-19 response, Australia stuck in vaccine slow lane

Elsewhere in the country, residents enjoyed a taste of freedom as the weekend got underway after lockdowns in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and some areas of Queensland state were lifted on Friday night.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk confirmed that a lockdown in Brisbane would be lifted later on Saturday as she reported five new COVID-19 cases in the state.

Lockdowns, swift contact tracing and tough social distancing rules have helped Australia to suppress prior outbreaks, but the fast-moving Delta strain has alarmed authorities amid a sluggish nationwide vaccination drive.

“I can’t help but think that burning down churches is actually depriving people who are in need of grieving and healing and mourning from places where they can grieve and reflect and look for support.”

On Thursday, statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth on the grounds of the Manitoba legislature were tied with ropes and pulled down by a crowd.

The statue of Queen Victoria was covered in red paint and its base had red handprints on it. On the steps behind the statue were hundreds of tiny shoes, placed there to recognise the children who went to residential schools.

Arlen Dumas, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, was at a separate event at the time but said he was shocked at what happened.

“I personally wouldn’t have participated in that,” he said, though he added, “Mind you, it has been a very triggering time over the past few weeks.”

“It’s unfortunate that they chose to express themselves the way that they did. But it’s actually a symbol of the fact that there is a lot of hurt and that there’s a lot of frustration and anger with just how things have happened,” Dumas said.

Premier Brian Pallister called the vandalism “a major setback for those who are working toward real reconciliation.”

“Those who commit acts of violence will be pursued actively in the courts. All leaders in Manitoba must strongly condemn acts of violence and vandalism, and at the same time, we must come together to meaningfully advance reconciliation,” he said in a statement.

In other incidents on Canada Day, a statue of Queen Victoria in Kitchener, Ontario, was doused in red paint.

In Victoria, British Columbia, a statue of Captain James Cook was dismantled and thrown into the harbor. The statue was replaced with a wooden cutout of a red dress – a symbol representing murdered and missing Indigenous women – and its base was smeared with red handprints.

In St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, two prominent buildings and a statue dedicated to the local police force were vandalised with bright red paint.

Earlier this week, a First Nations group in British Columbia said it had used ground-penetrating radar to find 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site close to a former residential near Cranbrook, 845km east of Vancouver.

That followed reports of similar massive findings at two other such church-run schools, one of more than 600 unmarked graves in southern Saskatchewan and another of 215 bodies in British Columbia.

About 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools, which operated for more than 120 years in Canada. More than 60per cent of the schools were run by the Catholic Church.

OTTAWA: Ottawa prepared on Friday (Jul 2) to send military aircraft and other help to evacuate towns and fight more than 100 wildfires in western Canada fueled by a record-smashing heat wave.

According to wildfire officials, at least 143 fires were active in British Columbia, 77 of them sparked in the last two days. Most were caused by lightning strikes.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would convene an incident response group later in the day to address the emergency needs of the province, adding that he already spoke with British Columbia’s premier, as well as local mayors and indigenous chiefs in communities under threat.

“We will be there to help,” he told a news conference.

That will include military helicopters and possibly Hercules turboprop transport planes, Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan earlier told public broadcaster CBC.

“Canadian Forces are ready to support residents,” he said in a Twitter message.

About 1,000 people have already fled the wildfires in British Columbia, and authorities are searching for many who have gone missing.

The village of Lytton, 250km northeast of Vancouver, was evacuated Wednesday night because of a fire that flared up suddenly and spread quickly.

The fire came a day after the village set a Canadian record-high temperature on Tuesday of 49.6 degrees Celsius.

Fatalities have been reported in Canada’s westernmost province, but an official toll has yet to be released, as members of the British Columbia coroner service headed into hotspots on Friday to begin investigating.

“Today our thoughts are mostly with families that are grieving, that are facing terrible loss,” said Trudeau.

“But of course, we also have to reflect on the fact that extreme weather events are getting more frequent and climate change has a significant role to play in that.”

Lytton resident Jeff Chapman told the CBC he witnessed his parents die in the fire that engulfed the town.

With only minutes to react, the elderly couple sought shelter from the smoke and flames in a trench in their backyard, as Chapman ran for safety at nearby rail tracks.

From that vantage, he said he saw the fires sweep across and destroy most of the town.

His distressed voice could be heard pleading for help over the crackling flames in a video on CBC. The ground, he said, was too hot to go back for his parents.

Meanwhile, a heat wave that stretched at the beginning of the week from the US state of Oregon to Canada’s Arctic territories has started moving eastward, late Thursday touching parts of Ontario in central Canada.

British Columbia also warned Friday of flooding from melting mountain snow caps and glaciers under the heat dome, which occurs when hot air is trapped by high pressure fronts, heating the ground.

MIAMI: The death toll rose to 22 on Friday (Jul 2) from the collapse of a Florida condominium tower after the remains of four more victims were found in the rubble, and local officials ordered a second residential complex evacuated after deeming it unsafe.

All residents of the second building, Crestview Towers, were told to leave immediately after engineers found serious concrete and electrical problems, said Arthur Sorey, city manager for North Miami Beach.

The move was considered urgent due to the approach of Hurricane Isla, which is forecast to hit Florida as early as Monday. The building’s owners had not yet begun a mandatory safety recertification process required 40 years after it was built, he said.

“It’s definitely not an easy decision,” Sorey said. “It’s just the right thing to do during these times. It’s uncertain what’s going to happen with the storm.”

READ: Biden mourns with families as search of collapsed Florida condo resumes

The latest remains recovered from the rubble left behind by the 12-story Champlain Towers South in nearby Surfside left 126 people listed as still missing and feared dead. No survivors have been pulled alive from the ruins since the first few hours after the tower partially caved in on itself early on Jun 24.

The number of people on the missing list dropped by 17 from Thursday, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters, saying that the totals were “fluid” and sometimes revised through work by investigators.

Levine Cava said she had signed a demolition order for a remaining section of the tower over worries that it was dangerously unstable halted search and rescue efforts at the scene for much of Thursday.

“It’s important to note that we’re still evaluating all possible impacts and determining the best timeline to actually begin the demolition,” she said.

The operation was scaled back on Friday to three of the nine grids mapped out across the debris field.

HURRICANE ISLA THREATENS

Crews also sought to make progress before the expected arrival of Elsa, which strengthened into the first hurricane of the 2021 season on Friday as it churned in the Caribbean Sea.

The storm could approach South Florida as early as Monday, National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Molleda told reporters, with tropical storm-force winds possible on Sunday. Elsa’s forecast path remains uncertain.

Among the dead found in Surfside on Friday was the daughter of a firefighter, the third child fatality to be recovered so far. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez told the Miami Herald that the firefighter was at the recovery site at the time, though not digging through the rubble.

READ: Before Florida building collapse, more than US$9 million in repairs needed

The man and his brother, also a firefighter, have kept a vigil at the site since last week, the Herald said. About 200 officers saluted as her body was carried away, according to the paper.

“Every victim we remove is very difficult,” said Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky. “Last night was even more, when we were removing a fellow firefighter’s daughter. As firefighters, we do what we do – it’s kind of a calling. But it still takes a toll.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wrote on Twitter that more than 400 members of the US Army Reserve from Indiana, New Jersey, Ohio and Virginia had arrived in Surfside to assist in the effort.

Investigators have not determined what caused the 40-year-old condo complex to crumble abruptly into a heap in what may ultimately be one of the deadliest building collapses in US history.

A 2018 engineering report prepared for the 40-year recertification process found structural deficiencies that are now the focus of inquiries that include a grand jury examination.

USA Today, citing a 2020 document obtained from a victim’s family member, reported that the firm noted “curious results” after testing the depth of a concrete slab below the pool. The document did not elaborate, the newspaper said.

As recently as April, a condo association president wrote to residents warning them that major concrete damage identified by the engineer around the base of the building had grown significantly worse.

Several lawsuits have already been filed on behalf of survivors and victims against the association’s board.

In a statement on Friday, the board – some of whose members remain missing – said it would appoint an independent receiver to “oversee the legal and claims process”.

WASHINGTON: The United States will ship 4 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine to Indonesia as it battles a coronavirus outbreak, the US national security adviser told the Indonesian foreign minister on Friday (Jul 2).

In a call with Retno Marsudi, Jake Sullivan said the doses would be shipped via the COVAX global vaccine sharing program “as soon as possible”, a White House statement said.

Sullivan said the donation “underscored the United States’ support for the people of Indonesia as they fight a surge in COVID-19 cases”.

The two officials also discussed US plans to increase assistance for Indonesia’s broader COVID-19 response efforts, the statement said.

READ: Indonesia to boost social, health spending amid COVID-19 battle

“Sullivan highlighted the importance the Biden-Harris administration places on Indonesia, Southeast Asia and ending the pandemic more broadly and pledged continued support and high-level engagement,” the statement said.

Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country and has been battling one of the Asia’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. The nation has recorded record new infections on eight of the past 12 days, including 25,830 cases on Friday, and a record 539 deaths.

Indonesia has relied mainly on the vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech, but has been looking to diversify supply sources.

Penny K Lukito, the chief of Indonesia’s food and drug agency, said earlier on Friday it authorised the Moderna vaccine for emergency use.

READ: Indonesia ’emergency’ COVID-19 curbs to take effect on Jul 3

Washington has been competing with Beijing to deepen geopolitical clout through so-called vaccine diplomacy, although it has said it is not sharing vaccines to secure favors or extract concessions, but to save lives and end the pandemic.

The Biden administration pledged last month to share an initial 80 million US-made vaccines globally amid concern about the disparity in vaccination rates between advanced and developing countries.

It has already announced plans to provide vaccines to other Southeast Asian countries – the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Papua New Guinea, and Cambodia.

It has also said it will purchase 500 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to distribute to the African Union and 92 low and lower middle-income countries.