Spring allergy season has begun. Where is it worse in Canada?
The spring allergy season has started early in many parts of Canada, with high levels of pollen in some cities already. Experts weigh in on which areas have it worse so far this season.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has opened a new vaccine manufacturing facility that he says will boost the country's capacity to make its own inoculations for diseases including COVID-19.
The plant in Cape Town -- a partnership between a U.S.-based biotechnology firm, the government and South African universities -- will help improve Africa's ability to produce vaccines, Ramaphosa said Wednesday.
"The pandemic has revealed the huge disparities that exist within and between countries in access to quality healthcare, medicines, diagnostics and vaccines," said Ramaphosa. Africa is responding to COVID-19 with a "depth of scientific knowledge, expertise and capacity," to make its own vaccines, he said.
The factory was also launched by Patrick Soon-Shiong, the South African-born founder of NantWorks, a multinational biotechnology firm based in the United States that has invested about $200 million to start the facility, according to local reports.
The new plant aims to reach a goal of producing 1 billion vaccines annually by 2025, Soon-Shiong said.
South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare already assembles the J&J COVID-19 vaccine in a factory in Gqeberha, formerly known as Port Elizabeth. The Aspen facility blends the imported components of the vaccine and puts it in vials and packages the doses, a process known as fill-and-finish. That facility has a capacity of 220 million vaccines per year and is selling them in South Africa and to other African countries.
Another vaccine production plant in South Africa is operated by the Biovac Institute in Cape Town in a partnership with Pfizer-BioNTech to produce 100 million of its vaccine doses annually.
Ramaphosa said Africa has secured 500 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines through the African Union's vaccine acquisition task team, but the continent needs more.
"These doses represent only around half of what the continent needs to vaccinate 900 million people in order to achieve the 70% target set by the World Health Organization," said Ramaphosa.
In addition to producing vaccines for COVID-19, the new facility will focus on developing products to fight HIV, different types of cancer and other diseases that may not be a huge problem in other parts of the world but are major health problems in Africa.
The new facility will help address public health challenges confronting the continent, according to John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who spoke on a video call.
"This pandemic caught the continent off guard in terms of access to health security commodities, which are diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics," he said. "The continent has embraced a new public health order, that speaks to the need for us to manufacture vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics."
The spring allergy season has started early in many parts of Canada, with high levels of pollen in some cities already. Experts weigh in on which areas have it worse so far this season.
Premier Doug Ford says that lawsuits launched by four Ontario school boards against a trio of social media platforms are “nonsense” and risk becoming a distraction to the work that really matters.
Multiple flight attendants from Pakistan International Airlines have abandoned their jobs and are believed to have sought asylum in Canada in the past year and a half, a spokesperson for the government-owned airline says.
A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.
Calgary police have shut down a number of bridges into and out of the downtown core as officers deal with a distraught individual.
King Charles III gave public remarks for Maundy Thursday, addressing the importance of acts of friendship, following his and Catherine, Princess of Wales’ cancer diagnoses.
Crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for a massive fraud that unravelled with the collapse of FTX, once one of the world's most popular platforms for exchanging digital currency.
Peggy is a stout and muscular Staffordshire bull terrier, and Molly is a magpie, an Australian bird best known for swooping on humans during breeding season, not for befriending dogs. But in an emotional video posted online, Peggy’s owners announced that the animals had been separated.
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.
B.C. conservation officers recently seized a nine-foot-long Burmese python from a home in Chilliwack.
A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.
The Ontario government is introducing changes to auto-insurance, but some experts say the move is ill-advised.
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.
Newfoundland’s unique version of the Pine Marten has grown out of its threatened designation.
A Toronto man is out $12,000 after falling victim to a deepfake cryptocurrency scam that appeared to involve Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
It started small with a little pop tab collection to simply raise some money for charity and help someone — but it didn’t take long for word to get out that 10-year-old Jace Weber from Mildmay, Ont. was quickly building up a large supply of aluminum pop tabs.
There’s a group of people in Saskatoon that proudly call themselves dumpster divers, and they’re turning the city’s trash into treasure.
Ontario is facing a larger than anticipated deficit but the Doug Ford government still plans to balance its books before the next provincial election.