The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Friday received the first batch of Ebola vaccine doses as it steps up efforts to contain the ongoing outbreak that has infected more than 5,000 people and killed over 2,500.
A total of 16,520 doses of the Ervebo vaccine arrived at the N'djili International Airport in the capital Kinshasa, according to the DRC health ministry.
A total of 50,120 doses are expected to arrive between Aug 21 and 24, the ministry said.
The World Health Organization and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that the International Coordinating Group on Vaccine Provision had approved an immediate initial release of 70,000 doses of Ervebo following a request from the DRC government.
Samuel Roger Kamba, Health Minister of the country, expressed his gratitude to all the partners who helped the DRC obtain these vaccines.
"Today we are receiving the first batch of more than 16,000 doses, knowing that we already had 2,000 doses that have already been sent to Tshopo. We are receiving 16,000 doses for a total of more than 400,000 doses that we have requested. We thank all the partners who helped us obtain these vaccine doses. We will indeed strengthen the response mechanism with these vaccines," said the minister.
Ervebo is licensed and recommended for outbreaks caused by Zaire ebolavirus, but its effectiveness against the Bundibugyo virus, which is responsible for the current outbreak, remains uncertain.
"As part of our planning and based on scientific advice, we have decided to use the Ervebo vaccine, a vaccine we are all familiar with and that has been used on several occasions, particularly on a very large scale during the 2018-2020 outbreak. We have decided, after consulting with all the scientists, to use these vaccines, knowing that there will be two phases: a research phase involving 20,000 doses and a compassionate use phase involving 50,000 doses," said Kamba.
As of Aug 19, the DRC had recorded 5,290 confirmed cases and 2,516 deaths, with a case fatality rate of 47.6 percent, according to the latest government situation report released on Friday.
The DRC declared the current Ebola outbreak on May 15. It has since become the country's largest and deadliest Ebola epidemic on record and the second-largest globally.
DR Congo receives 1st batch of Ebola vaccine doses as outbreak kills over 2,500
Chinese stock markets dropped on Monday, as AI and tech stocks continued to see-saw, according to China Global Television Network (CGTN) market analyst Timothy Pope.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed down 0.59 percent at 3,882.01 points, with the Shenzhen Component Index, which has more exposure to the tech sector, closing 2.13 percent lower at 13,794.29 points.
Trading volumes on the two indices rose with around 2.01 trillion yuan (about 296.28 billion U.S. dollars) traded on Monday, up from 1.88 trillion yuan (about 280 billion U.S. dollars) last Friday.
Traditional sectors such as precious metals, coal mining, and insurance led the gains, while bio-tech stocks were among the top decliners.
The ChiNext Index, tracking China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, lost 3.21 percent to close at 3,431.89 points on Monday.
The STAR Composite Index, which tracks the performance of stocks on China's sci-tech innovation board, closed 3.10 percent lower on Monday at 1,896.16 points.
"The A-share markets seem locked in this cycle of rally and rout for those growth stocks, particularly in the AI and adjacent sectors. Today was very much on the rout side so, while the Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.6 percent, we saw the Shenzhen Component down more than 2 percent, the ChiNext board was down 3.2 percent and the STAR 50 down 3.1 percent. Those last three are more exposed to the tech rally than the Shanghai Composite. The big losers as I said were AI hardware companies - Shenzhen Gongjin Electronics was down 10 percent, Zhongji Innolight fell more than 7 percent. But they weren't alone because the other big winning sector of the last few weeks - biotech - was in retreat today as well. Investors were rotating into gold and coal stocks as well, and agricultural stocks extended the food security trade rally that we saw at the end of last week. There were a number of stocks across those sectors, all of those were hitting the upper limits of trade today," said Pope.
Pope said the rest of the week will be dominated by earnings reports from some of China’s biggest companies.
"The rest of the week is going to be mostly about earnings. The end-of-August filing deadline is fast approaching. Friday will be a really big day on the earnings calendar. We've got BYD, PetroChina, Shenhua Energy and a lot of big banks as well. Earnings that we are going to see for ICBC, China Merchants Bank and others will give us an insight into how much pressure the big banks are under with their margins. BYD is also going to be an interesting one in light of the government's anti-involution campaign and its efforts to avert a bit of a race to the bottom in the EV sector. And before we get there, there are Nvidia results in the US on Wednesday which will doubtless impact every stock in the AI space," he said.
Chinese stock markets start week lower on AI volatility: analyst
