Live updates: follow the latest news on Covid-19 variant Omicron
It has been two years since Covid-19 emerged in China. Since then, the world has faced upheaval of a kind that most people had never experienced before.
Travel bans, hospitals struggling to cope, boosters and mask-wearing – life has taken on myriad new elements, many of them unwelcome. But the effects of the virus have not been felt equally around the world.
Some regions have suffered higher death rates, in part because they have more elderly people, and levels of infection have varied widely. Although vaccine campaigns improved significantly in many developing nations in the second half of 2001 , and some countries are pressing ahead with boosters, coverage in Africa remains poor.
People have postulated that until 2023, it isn’t achievable, to vaccinate the world
Prof Beate Kampmann,
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Looking ahead to next year, the hope is that supply shortages will ease now that manufacturing capacity is stronger and initial campaigns have been carried out.
“The bottom line is more vaccines need to reach more people, and we’re now in a much better position than we were a year ago because the vaccine supplies have significantly increased,” said Prof Beate Kampmann, director of the vaccine centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“Supplies appear to be less of an issue now, but it’s the distribution of the supplies that is not resolved.
“There might also be a shortage in adjusted product [to cope with new variants] and there will have to be continued advocacy and commitment for countries to donate.”
The emergence of the Omicron variant increases uncertainty as to what will happen next year.
“People have postulated that until 2023, it isn’t achievable to vaccinate the world,” Prof Kampmann said.
“If we’re having new variants kicked out and vaccines having to be tweaked, then I worry that this will set back the whole trajectory of progress.”
Africa
Africa is by far the least vaccinated continent, with only 18 doses administered per 100 people and 12 per cent of the population having received at least one dose of vaccine.
Africa has recorded 225,000 deaths from Covid-19, according to official figures. But this is likely to be an underestimate. Vaccine supplies from Covax, the global vaccine alliance, have fallen below expectations, but increased in the second half of this year.
The continent has been able to use existing infrastructure for delivering childhood vaccinations to administer Covid-19 vaccines.
Prof Kampmann said vaccine hesitancy has been a concern, however, partly because the continent already has a high burden from infectious disease, so Covid-19 is seen as “one other virus coming along”.
“I don’t think people are quite as aware of the threat to their personal health posed by Sars-CoV-2, and they therefore don’t see the need to be vaccinated,” she said.
Vaccine supply is expected to increase significantly next year as squeezes on production capacity brought about by the initial launch of campaigns in many parts of the world lessen.
Asia-Pacific
China, which has recorded fewer than 6,000 deaths among its 1.4 billion people, according to official figures, has controlled the pandemic through international travel restrictions and local lockdowns.
The population is heavily vaccinated (83 per cent are fully immunised), although with locally developed vaccines that may be less effective, especially against newer variants.
Some analysts think the world’s most populous nation will continue with its eradication or elimination strategy until the middle or even the end of 2022, easing restrictions only when more people have received newer vaccines.
Many countries in South-East Asia, such as Laos, Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand, began administering vaccines in earnest only in the second half of this year, but now have significant coverage.
They will be aiming to achieve more consistent openings of their economies – and their tourism industries – in the year ahead.
India has administered about 1.32 billion vaccine doses but, because of its population size, only 38 per cent of citizens are fully vaccinated.
The world’s biggest vaccine producer is likely to complete its first round of inoculations in 2022, but keeping the pandemic under control – as the country has done following its devastating spike from April to June – may depend upon the behaviour of Omicron.
With their populations heavily vaccinated and with the Delta variant making a continued elimination strategy unrealistic, Australia and New Zealand are likely to open their borders to more people next year.
There have already been announcements about international students returning to Australia.
Europe
Europe is home to less than 10 per cent of the world’s population, but has suffered more than a quarter of known fatalities from Covid-19 – 1.54 million deaths – partly because of high infection rates and a large elderly population.
A study released in November said the continent could suffer a further 300,000 deaths if measures to control the virus were lifted.
Many European countries moved rapidly to vaccinate their populations, but high levels of vaccine scepticism in some places have placed an upper limit on coverage.
Recent severe outbreaks in nations including Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands have shown the pandemic’s potential to flare up again.
The UK, which was among the earliest to administer the first vaccines, and which has suffered a particularly high rate of infections and deaths, has had “very high, stable rates” in recent months, says Dr Andrew Freedman, an infectious disease specialist at Cardiff University in Wales.
High rates of vaccination and previous infection are thought by some analysts to be preventing further growth in the number of cases in the UK, although case rates remain high, averaging more than 40,000 a day.
Dr Freedman suggests more parts of Europe could see the same pattern next year.
“Once it peaks it may well do something similar to the UK,” he said, although this was conditional on new variants not changing the dynamic.
Recent modelling of how the Omicron variant might affect the UK suggested it could cause between 25,000 and 75,000 deaths by the end of April.
The Americas
After suffering a devastating toll of more than 600,000 deaths, Brazil has brought infection and death rates down significantly, as have some of its neighbours, including Argentina.
Latin American nations, including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Ecuador, are now in the upper reaches of the global league tables of vaccination rates.
About 70 per cent of people in Latin America have now had at least one vaccine dose, putting the region behind only the US and Canada, where the figure is 73 per cent. The outlook for 2022 appears significantly improved over that of this year.
Cuba, which has well-developed healthcare and research institutions, stands out for producing its own vaccines. These have helped the country to fully immunise more than four out of every five people and give at least one dose to 90 per cent of its population.
“Cuba has three vaccines that seem to be working,” said Prof John Oxford, emeritus professor of virology at Queen Mary University of London.
While the US and Canada, together, represent the most vaccinated region of the world, the picture in the US is variable because of high rates of vaccine scepticism in some states.
For the past two months, the country has recorded between 5,000 and 11,000 deaths per week and a significant number could continue to occur next year, owing to inconsistent vaccination rates and new variants.
Middle East
The region has the country that was the fastest to get going with vaccination, Israel, and the country in which the highest proportion of its population has had at least one shot, the UAE.
Israel will offer lessons for the world next year in the effectiveness of boosters. The country has already administered them to about 46 per cent of its citizens, one of the highest figures in the world.
With high vaccination rates, Israel and the Gulf states will be able to keep economic disruption caused by the pandemic to a minimum in 2022, subject to the Omicron variant not forcing them to reinstate lockdowns.
While many of the Middle East’s nations are heavily vaccinated, when taken as a whole only 49 per cent of the population has had at least one dose. This is the second-lowest figure for any world region, ahead only of Africa.
War and poor healthcare infrastructure have slowed campaigns in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.
In Syria, only 5.2 per cent of the population has had at least one dose, while in Yemen the figure is only 1.9 per cent.
Next year, continued civil war could heavily complicate vaccination programmes in these two nations.
RACECARD
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Inas%20Halabi%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ENijmeh%20Hamdan%2C%20Kamal%20Kayouf%2C%20Sheikh%20Najib%20Alou%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%204%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The Vile
Starring: Bdoor Mohammad, Jasem Alkharraz, Iman Tarik, Sarah Taibah
Director: Majid Al Ansari
Rating: 4/5
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
Key figures in the life of the fort
Sheikh Dhiyab bin Isa (ruled 1761-1793) Built Qasr Al Hosn as a watchtower to guard over the only freshwater well on Abu Dhabi island.
Sheikh Shakhbut bin Dhiyab (ruled 1793-1816) Expanded the tower into a small fort and transferred his ruling place of residence from Liwa Oasis to the fort on the island.
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Shakhbut (ruled 1818-1833) Expanded Qasr Al Hosn further as Abu Dhabi grew from a small village of palm huts to a town of more than 5,000 inhabitants.
Sheikh Khalifa bin Shakhbut (ruled 1833-1845) Repaired and fortified the fort.
Sheikh Saeed bin Tahnoon (ruled 1845-1855) Turned Qasr Al Hosn into a strong two-storied structure.
Sheikh Zayed bin Khalifa (ruled 1855-1909) Expanded Qasr Al Hosn further to reflect the emirate's increasing prominence.
Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan (ruled 1928-1966) Renovated and enlarged Qasr Al Hosn, adding a decorative arch and two new villas.
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan (ruled 1966-2004) Moved the royal residence to Al Manhal palace and kept his diwan at Qasr Al Hosn.
Sources: Jayanti Maitra, www.adach.ae
Who was Alfred Nobel?
The Nobel Prize was created by wealthy Swedish chemist and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel.
- In his will he dictated that the bulk of his estate should be used to fund "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind".
- Nobel is best known as the inventor of dynamite, but also wrote poetry and drama and could speak Russian, French, English and German by the age of 17. The five original prize categories reflect the interests closest to his heart.
- Nobel died in 1896 but it took until 1901, following a legal battle over his will, before the first prizes were awarded.
COMPANY%20PROFILE%20
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Groom and Two Brides
Director: Elie Semaan
Starring: Abdullah Boushehri, Laila Abdallah, Lulwa Almulla
Rating: 3/5
Greatest of All Time
Starring: Vijay, Sneha, Prashanth, Prabhu Deva, Mohan
Globalization and its Discontents Revisited
Joseph E. Stiglitz
W. W. Norton & Company
The%20specs
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Who's who in Yemen conflict
Houthis: Iran-backed rebels who occupy Sanaa and run unrecognised government
Yemeni government: Exiled government in Aden led by eight-member Presidential Leadership Council
Southern Transitional Council: Faction in Yemeni government that seeks autonomy for the south
Habrish 'rebels': Tribal-backed forces feuding with STC over control of oil in government territory
Players Selected for La Liga Trials
U18 Age Group
Name: Ahmed Salam (Malaga)
Position: Right Wing
Nationality: Jordanian
Name: Yahia Iraqi (Malaga)
Position: Left Wing
Nationality: Morocco
Name: Mohammed Bouherrafa (Almeria)
Position: Centre-Midfield
Nationality: French
Name: Mohammed Rajeh (Cadiz)
Position: Striker
Nationality: Jordanian
U16 Age Group
Name: Mehdi Elkhamlichi (Malaga)
Position: Lead Striker
Nationality: Morocco
The burning issue
The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
Read part four: an affection for classic cars lives on
Read part three: the age of the electric vehicle begins
Read part one: how cars came to the UAE
HIV on the rise in the region
A 2019 United Nations special analysis on Aids reveals 37 per cent of new HIV infections in the Mena region are from people injecting drugs.
New HIV infections have also risen by 29 per cent in western Europe and Asia, and by 7 per cent in Latin America, but declined elsewhere.
Egypt has shown the highest increase in recorded cases of HIV since 2010, up by 196 per cent.
Access to HIV testing, treatment and care in the region is well below the global average.
Few statistics have been published on the number of cases in the UAE, although a UNAIDS report said 1.5 per cent of the prison population has the virus.
Email sent to Uber team from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi
From: Dara
To: Team@
Date: March 25, 2019 at 11:45pm PT
Subj: Accelerating in the Middle East
Five years ago, Uber launched in the Middle East. It was the start of an incredible journey, with millions of riders and drivers finding new ways to move and work in a dynamic region that’s become so important to Uber. Now Pakistan is one of our fastest-growing markets in the world, women are driving with Uber across Saudi Arabia, and we chose Cairo to launch our first Uber Bus product late last year.
Today we are taking the next step in this journey—well, it’s more like a leap, and a big one: in a few minutes, we’ll announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Careem. Importantly, we intend to operate Careem independently, under the leadership of co-founder and current CEO Mudassir Sheikha. I’ve gotten to know both co-founders, Mudassir and Magnus Olsson, and what they have built is truly extraordinary. They are first-class entrepreneurs who share our platform vision and, like us, have launched a wide range of products—from digital payments to food delivery—to serve consumers.
I expect many of you will ask how we arrived at this structure, meaning allowing Careem to maintain an independent brand and operate separately. After careful consideration, we decided that this framework has the advantage of letting us build new products and try new ideas across not one, but two, strong brands, with strong operators within each. Over time, by integrating parts of our networks, we can operate more efficiently, achieve even lower wait times, expand new products like high-capacity vehicles and payments, and quicken the already remarkable pace of innovation in the region.
This acquisition is subject to regulatory approval in various countries, which we don’t expect before Q1 2020. Until then, nothing changes. And since both companies will continue to largely operate separately after the acquisition, very little will change in either teams’ day-to-day operations post-close. Today’s news is a testament to the incredible business our team has worked so hard to build.
It’s a great day for the Middle East, for the region’s thriving tech sector, for Careem, and for Uber.
Uber on,
Dara
The specs
Engine: 3.8-litre twin-turbo flat-six
Power: 650hp at 6,750rpm
Torque: 800Nm from 2,500-4,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch auto
Fuel consumption: 11.12L/100km
Price: From Dh796,600
On sale: now
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Paatal Lok season two
Directors: Avinash Arun, Prosit Roy
Stars: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Lc Sekhose, Merenla Imsong
Rating: 4.5/5
