Oxfam tells Davos: Time to tax growing billionaire club

DAVOS, Switzerland - The Covid pandemic has created a new billionaire every 30 hours and now one million people could fall into extreme poverty at the same pace, Oxfam said Monday as the Davos summit returns.

The international charity said it was time to tax the rich to support the less fortunate as the global elite gathered at the Swiss mountain haven for the World Economic Forum after a two-year Covid-induced absence.

Oxfam said it expects 263 million people to sink into extreme poverty this year, at a rate of one million every 33 hours, as soaring inflation has added a cost-of-living crisis on top of Covid.

By comparison, 573 people became billionaires during the pandemic, or one every 30 hours.

"Billionaires are arriving in Davos to celebrate an incredible surge in their fortunes," Oxfam executive director Gabriela Bucher said in a statement.

"The pandemic and now the steep increases in food and energy prices have, simply put, been a bonanza for them," Bucher said.

"Meanwhile, decades of progress on extreme poverty are now in reverse and millions of people are facing impossible rises in the cost of simply staying alive," she said.

Oxfam called for a one-off "solidarity tax" on billionaires' pandemic windfall to support people facing soaring prices as well as fund a "fair and sustainable recovery" from the pandemic.

It also said it was time to "end crisis profiteering" by rolling out a "temporary excess profit tax" of 90 percent on windfall profits of big corporations.

Oxfam added that an annual wealth tax on millionaires of two percent, and five percent for billionaires, could generate $2.52 trillion a year.

Such a wealth tax would help lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty, make enough vaccines for the world and pay for universal health care for people in poorer countries, it said.

Oxfam based its calculations on the Forbes list of billionaires and World Bank data.

Agence France-Presse

US intelligence community acknowledges 2 theories of COVID-19 origin

WASHINGTON—The US intelligence community on Thursday acknowledged its agencies had two theories on where COVID-19 originated, with two agencies believing it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals and a third embracing a possible laboratory accident as the source of the global pandemic.

"The US Intelligence Community does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus was transmitted initially but has coalesced around two likely scenarios," the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said, adding that the majority believes there is not "sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other."

The ODNI statement did not identify which two of the 17 agencies constituting the U.S. intelligence community believed that the virus had originated with infected animals and which agency believed it originated with a laboratory accident.

In both cases, however, ODNI said the agencies which did lean to one or the other explanation did so with "low or moderate confidence" - which in spy jargon means they believe the evidence supporting their view is far from conclusive.

Officials declined to discuss which agencies had voiced tentative views on the virus' origin, but stressed that a large majority of U.S. agencies believe information is insufficient to determine that one scenario for the virus' origin was more likely than the other. (Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Richard Chang)

-reuters

WHO: COVID-19 variant in India classified as being ‘of concern’

But WHO clarifies vaccines remain an effective prevention

A COVID-19 variant spreading in India, which is facing an explosive outbreak, appears to be more contagious and has been classified as being "of concern", the World Health Organization said Monday.

The UN health agency said the B.1.617 variant of COVID-19 first found in India last October seemed to be transmitting more easily.

"There is some available information to suggest increased transmissibility of the B.1.617," Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's lead on COVID-19, told reporters.

"As such, we are classifying this as a variant of concern at the global level," she said. 

She also pointed to early studies "suggesting that there is some reduced neutralization", meaning that antibodies appeared to have less impact on the variant in small-sample lab studies.

The WHO insisted though that it was far too early to interpret this to mean that the variant might have more resistance to vaccine protections.

"Based on current data, the COVID-19 vaccines remain effective at preventing disease and death in people infected with this variant," it said in a statement.

More details would be provided in the WHO's weekly epidemiological update on Tuesday, Van Kerkhove added.

India, suffering from one of the worst outbreaks in the world, reported nearly 370,000 fresh infections and more than 3,700 new deaths on Monday.

The devastating wave has overwhelmed India's healthcare system, and experts have said the official figures for cases and fatalities are much lower than the actual numbers.

It has for some time been feared that B.1.617 -- which counts several sub-lineages with slightly different mutations and characteristics -- might be contributing to the alarming spread.

But until now, WHO has listed it merely as a "variant of interest".

- 'Balanced approach' -

Now it will be added to the list containing three other variants of COVID-19 -- those first detected in Britain, Brazil and South Africa -- which the WHO has classified as being "of concern".

They are seen as more dangerous than the original version of the virus by being more transmissible, deadly or able to get past some vaccine protections.

Even if vaccine efficacy may be diminished against some variants of COVID-19, the jabs can still provide protection against serious illness and death.

And Van Kerkhove stressed that when it comes to the B.1.617 variant, for the time being "we don't have anything to suggest that our diagnostics or therapeutics and our vaccines don't work".

The WHO's chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan agreed, urging a "balanced approach."

"What we know now is that the vaccines work, the diagnostics work, the same treatments that are used for the regular virus work," she told journalists.

"So there's really no need to change any of those, and in fact... people should go ahead and get whatever vaccine is available to them and that they are eligible for."

Experts highlight that the more the virus spreads, the bigger the risk it will find ideal conditions to mutate in concerning ways, stressing that everything must be done to rein in transmission.

"We will continue to see variants of concern around the world, and we must do everything that we can to really limit the spread," Van Kerkhove said.

Agence France-Presse

Cambodia uses wedding halls for COVID patients as cases surge

PHNOM PENH—Cambodia began setting up thousands of hospital beds in two wedding party halls on Sunday to cope with an influx of COVID-19 patients in a country that up until recently had largely managed to contain infections.

Cambodia also reported a daily record 618 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, its health ministry said, in a spike in infections following an outbreak first detected in late February.

The new numbers took the overall tally to 6,389. Cambodia until recently had one of the world's lowest numbers of infections. It has reported 43 deaths, all in the past two months.

"The Ministry of Health has decided to use the Premiere Centre Sen Sok to prepare for the Covid-19 treatment centre which can accommodate more than 1,500 Covid-19 patients," Cambodia national television TVK said on Sunday, citing a health official.

Or Vandine, secretary of state and health ministry spokeswoman said she was busy in a meeting and had no immediate comment to a Reuters query. Health Minister Mam Bunheng couldn't be reached for comment.

Images in local media showed Mam Bunheng visiting one of the wedding venues Vimean Piphob Thmey Sensok as police set up hospital beds. A Reuters photographer was denied entry and told to come back next week.

Earlier this week, the government also turned another weddig venue Koh Pich Convention & Exhibition Centre into a field hospital housing about 1,800 beds.

Phnom Penh and a satellite district of the capital went into lockdown on Thursday in an attempt to curb the spread of infections.

Under the lockdown, most people are banned from leaving home for two weeks except to go to work, buy food or for medical treatment. (Reporting by Prak Chan Thul; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

-reuters