Today we look at the local elections in South Africa, renewed protests against the lese majeste laws in Thailand, and more

G7 countries will have 1.2 billion vaccines available for donation by the end of 2021 even after maintaining booster shot campaigns for all adults

Public outcry in South Africa helped force Johnson & Johnson to retain the vaccines produced in the country for domestic use instead of being shipped to Europe. The Indian civil society has initiated a similar effort as the Global South looks for alternatives

The Narendra Modi government in India chose to believe that it had defeated the pandemic, and therefore the slow pace of its vaccination program posed no problems

The Russian laboratory has provided scientific studies and affirms that the vaccine is safe

Newsclick’s Prabir Purkayastha talks about the controversy over the US restrictions on sending raw materials for vaccines to India. He also analyzes what went wrong with India’s vaccine strategy

Iran, one of the worst COVID-19 affected countries in the world, has been facing difficulties in getting supplies of vaccines and other medical requirements due to US sanctions

China and India are the only two major countries that have been willing to export vaccines while also vaccinating their own people. Meanwhile, to rich countries, the billions of dollars of vaccine market for Big Pharma far outweigh the benefits of saving millions of lives

Besides China, the Palestinian Authority has also received vaccines from other sources, including doses from the United Nations COVAX initiative and Russian Sputnik V

The COVID-19 pandemic demands that all nations cooperate to vaccinate the entire global population. The usual rules of which countries win and which ones lose do not operate in this civilizational crisis

Despite the harsh economic sanctions and commercial blockade against Venezuela imposed by the US and supported by the EU, the government of President Nicolás Maduro is making every possible effort to secure anti-COVID-19 vaccines

The Palestinian Authority claims that Israel has refused to allow the delivery of 2,000 vaccine doses intended for health workers deployed in COVID-19-related emergency services in Gaza