Middle East Experience

Lebanon may be under a strict pandemic lockdown to stem raging coronavirus rates, but father-of-six Omar Qarhani is still working, desperate to support his family..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: Growing poverty in Lebanon overtakes COVID-19 worries

Both Iranian and Taliban officials criticized the United States' role in Afghanistan during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, amid peace talks in Qatar.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: Iran hosts Taliban delegation to discuss US presence in Afghanistan

International air traffic has resumed at Aleppo International Airport, but it is believed to remain under the control of Iranian forces.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: As Syrian regime touts reopening, Iran continues to lurk at Aleppo airport

Iceland announced it will be easing its travel requirements for passengers from some countries if they can prove they have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to the country’s Directorate of Health.For more coronavirus news, visit our dedicated page.Travelers from the European Union (EU), Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland will not have to take a PCR test and quarantine once they arrive in the country.However, vaccinated passengers must show an approved digital or paper vaccination certificate in Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish or English to Border Control officials.The certificate must mention where, when, and what vaccine they received, a statement from the Icelandic Directorate of Health said.The vaccine’s manufacturer and batch lot must also be mentioned.Only passengers who have taken either the Pfizer-BioNTech or the Moderna vaccines – the only two currently authorized by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) – will be exempt from taking a PCR test and quarantining.Both doses of each vaccine must be taken for the exemption to be made, the health directorate said.“If a passenger presents a document that is deemed invalid, i.e. if any of the necessary requirements are missing, the passenger must, as other arrival passengers, undergo double testing with quarantine in between,” the directorate added.Read more:Delays in COVID-19 vaccine delivery threaten vaccine warsPfizer coronavirus vaccine slightly less effective against S.Africa variant: StudyCoronavirus: COVAX to supply 355 mln vaccine doses for Eastern Med, says WHO officialIceland requires unvaccinated passengers to take one test on arrival and a second five days later. All travelers who have not been vaccinated must quarantine while they await the results of their test.The quarantine is lifted once a passenger tests negative for COVID-19.Iceland’s new regulations come at a time of increased debate on whether vaccination passports should be a global travel requirement.However, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently stated that it opposes enforcing vaccine requirements for travel because of the uneven global distribution of the vaccines and the limited knowledge on the long-term efficacy of the doses.“At the present time, do not introduce requirements of proof of vaccination or immunity for international travel as a condition of entry as there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination in reducing transmission and limited availability of vaccines,” the WHO advised countries last week.
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Coronavirus: Iceland eases travel requirements for some vaccinated passengers

Oman’s Ministry of Labor announced a new fee structure that employers must follow when hiring expatriate workers in order to promote nationalization in the country, according to local media reports.For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.“Hiring an expatriate in a top position under the new structure will cost companies $5197.38 (OMR2,001), while the cost of the license fee for a non-Omani hired in a mid-level position is $2599.99 (OMR1,001),” daily newspaper Times of Oman reported on Wednesday.Fees have also been attached to other ministry procedures concerning expatriate workers, the Times of Oman said, adding that companies will also be required to pay a fee when their workers switch jobs, and when updating a workers employment status and designation.Oman announced Sunday it will bar expatriates from certain jobs in an effort to create more employment opportunities for its citizens amid an economic downturn due to the coronavirus pandemic.“A number of jobs in the private sector will be nationalized,” the Omani labor ministry announced on Twitter on Sunday.It added the work permits of foreigners in those professions will not be renewed after their expiry date.Various jobs in insurance companies, shops and car dealerships, including finance, commercial and administrative positions, will be “limited to Omanis only,” the ministry said.Read more:Oman bars expats from certain jobs amid economic downturn due to coronavirusCoronavirus: Oman extends land border closure to curb COVID-19 outbreakOman discusses plans for replacing expats with locals in government firms
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Oman makes recruitment of expat workers more costly, promotes nationalization

With demand for COVID-19 vaccines outpacing the world’s supplies, a frustrated public and policymakers want to know: How can we get more? A lot more. Right away.The problem: “It’s not like adding more water to the soup,” said vaccine specialist Maria Elena Bottazzi of Baylor College of Medicine.For more coronavirus news, visit our dedicated page.Makers of COVID-19 vaccines need everything to go right as they scale up production to hundreds of millions of doses — and any little hiccup could cause a delay. Some of their ingredients have never before been produced at the sheer volume needed.Just this week, French drugmaker Sanofi took the unusual step of announcing it would help bottle and package some vaccine produced by competitor Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech. But those doses won’t start arriving until summer — and Sanofi has the space in a factory in Germany only because its own vaccine is delayed, bad news for the world’s overall supply.“We think, well, OK, it’s like men’s shirts, right, I’ll just have another place to make it,” said Dr. Paul Offit of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a vaccine adviser to the US government. “It’s just not that easy.” Different vaccines, different recipes The multiple types of COVID-19 vaccines being used in different countries all train the body to recognize the new coronavirus, mostly the spike protein that coats it. But they require different technologies, raw materials, equipment and expertise to do so.The two vaccines authorized in the US so far, from Pfizer and Moderna, are made by putting a piece of genetic code called mRNA — the instructions for that spike protein — inside a little ball of fat.Making small amounts of mRNA in a research lab is easy but “prior to this, nobody made a billion doses or 100 million or even a million doses of mRNA,” said Dr. Drew Weissman of the University of Pennsylvania, who helped pioneer mRNA technology.Scaling up doesn’t just mean multiplying ingredients to fit a bigger vat. Creating mRNA involves a chemical reaction between genetic building blocks and enzymes, and Weissman said the enzymes don’t work as efficiently in larger volumes.AstraZeneca’s vaccine, already used in Britain and several other countries, and one expected soon from Johnson & Johnson, are made with a cold virus that sneaks the spike protein gene into the body. It’s a very different form of manufacturing: living cells in giant bioreactors grow that cold virus, which is extracted and purified.“If the cells get old or tired or start changing, you might get less,” Weissman said. “There’s a lot more variability and a lot more things you have to check.”An old-fashioned variety — “inactivated” vaccines like one made by China’s Sinovac — require even more steps and stiffer biosecurity because they’re made with killed coronavirus.All vaccines must be made under strict rules that require specially inspected facilities and frequent testing of each step, a time-consuming necessity to be confident in the quality of each batch.What about the supply chain? Production depends on enough raw materials. Pfizer and Moderna insist they have reliable suppliers.Even so, a US government spokesman said logistics experts are working directly with vaccine makers to anticipate and solve any bottlenecks that arise.Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel acknowledges that challenges remain.With shifts running 24/7, if on any given day “there’s one raw material missing, we cannot start making products and that capacity will be lost forever because we cannot make it up,” he recently told investors.Pfizer has temporarily slowed deliveries in Europe for several weeks, so it could upgrade its factory in Belgium to handle more production.And sometimes the batches fall short. AstraZeneca told an outraged European Union that it, too, will deliver fewer doses than originally promised right away. The reason cited: Lower than expected “yields,” or output, at some European manufacturing sites.More than in other industries, when brewing with biological ingredients, “there are things that can go wrong and will go wrong,” said Norman Baylor, a former Food and Drug Administration vaccine chief who called yield variability common.How much is on the way? That varies by country. Moderna and Pfizer each are on track to deliver 100 million doses to the US by the end of March and another 100 million in the second quarter of the year. Looking even further ahead, President Joe Biden has announced plans to buy still more over the summer, reaching enough to eventually vaccinate 300 million Americans.Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told a Bloomberg conference this week that his company will actually wind up providing 120 million doses by the end of March — not by speedier production but because health workers now are allowed to squeeze an extra dose out of every vial.But getting six doses instead of five requires using specialized syringes, and there are questions about the global supply. A Health and Human Services spokesman said the US is sending kits that include the special syringes with each Pfizer shipment.For all the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the appPfizer is also upgrading its factory in Belgium, aiming to produce 2 billion doses this year instead of the originally anticipated 1.3 billion.The easiest way to get more doses is if other vaccines in the pipeline are proven to work. US data on whether Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose shot protects is expected soon, and another company, Novavax, also is in final-stage testing.Read more:China warns US against ‘politicizing’ WHO COVID-19 origins probePfizer-BioNTech say vaccine effective against UK, South Africa variantsIceland eases travel requirements for some vaccinated passengers
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Coronavirus: Why is it so hard to make COVID-19 vaccines and boost supplies?

The United Arab Emirates on Thursday recorded 3,966 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the highest single-day increase of COVID-19 infections in the country so far, according to the Ministry of Health and Prevention.For more coronavirus news, visit our dedicated page.The total number of confirmed cases in the UAE is now 293,052.Infections in the Gulf country have been rapidly rising in the past few weeks, with officials reporting more than 3,000 new cases per day.The virus-related death toll rose by eight on Thursday, which brings the total number of deaths caused by COVID-19 to 819.Meanwhile, the total number of recoveries across the country climbed to 267,024 after 3,294 people recovered from the coronavirus.The tourist-hub Dubai on Wednesday announced new updates to its travel requirements. UAE residents, GCC citizens, and visitors are now required to do a PCR test prior to their arrival in Dubai irrespective of the country they are coming from.The city recently introduced limits to social gatherings and suspended elective medical procedures, as well as ordered stricter measures to be imposed in restaurants and gyms.Read more:Updated rules: Dubai ramps up coronavirus restrictions amid rising cases in UAECoronavirus: Dubai changes travel protocols for inbound passengers from Jan. 31Unvaccinated UAE govt workers required to isolate must take annual leave: WAM
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Coronavirus: UAE reports staggering 3,966 new COVID-19 cases, highest daily toll yet

According to estimates, $1 billion in investments between Israel and the United Arab Emirates were made in the last two months of 2020.
Source: Al Monitor
Full Article: Emirati investors highly interested in Israeli high-tech, agro-tech

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman revealed a plan for the Kingdom’s capital, Riyadh, to be one of the largest city economies in the world at the second day of the Future Investment Initiative Summit.“We are therefore aiming to make Riyadh one of the ten largest city economies in the world - today it stands at number 40, the fortieth largest city economy worldwide,” the Crown Prince said during a conversation with Senator Matteo Renzi, Former Prime Minister of Italy and member of the Board of Trustees.“We also aim to increase its residents from 7.5 million residents today to around 15-20 million residents in 2030,” the Crown Prince added.The Crown Prince noted that Riyadh was uniquely situated for expansion given its advantages in several key areas.For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.“Today Riyadh represents about 50 percent of the non-oil economy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The cost of job creation in Riyadh is 30 percent less than the other cities in Saudi Arabia. The cost of infrastructure and real estate development is 29 percent less than the other cities in Saudi Arabia,” the Crown Prince said.“The infrastructure in Riyadh is already quite outstanding because of the work done by King Salman over a period of more than 55 years during which he managed and planned the city to grow form a city of 150,000 residents into a metropolis of 7.5 million people. Therefore, Riyadh is a huge opportunity to create tremendous economic growth in Saudi Arabia, and to develop industry, tourism, and great progress,” the Crown prince explained.This growth in population in Riyadh is set to continue, with the Crown Prince envisioning the city expanding to 15-20 million people.“We also aim to have Riyadh become among the world’s most prominent cities in terms of quality of life, tourism, and services in one way or another,” the Crown Prince said.The importance of developing cities was previously noted by the Crown Prince during an announcement earlier this month of THE LINE in the futuristic city of NEOM, a new 170-kilometer (km) belt of hyper-connected communities designed without cars or roads and in concert with nature. The communities will be powered by artificial intelligence technology designed to learn and improve the lives of residents and businesses.“There is no doubt that the world economies are not based on countries but rather on cities: 85 percent of the world economy comes from cities and in the next few years this number will increase to 95 percent,” the Crown Prince said.“Therefore, true growth begins in the city, whether in terms of industry, innovation, education, services, tourism or other sectors. This is why in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia we must concentrate on the cities that have the potential for growth so they can achieve economic progress and growth in jobs and more services,” the Crown Prince added.The FII summit has brought over 150 speakers together, some which will be attending from hubs in Paris, Mumbai, Beijing, and New York, while others attend in person in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The event had previously been postponed from December last year due to the pandemic and has adopted a hybrid in-person-virtual format.FII takes place from January 27-28 and will be attended by tech pioneers, investors, executives, and policymakers to maximize the potential of this impact-oriented conference.The speakers, of whom 60 will be attending in-person and 90 virtually, will discuss how the new rebirth of the global economy could be shaped despite the barriers imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.Read more:COVID-19 crisis ‘requires fundamental rethink’ in how world functions: PIF GovernorNEOM’s THE LINE infrastructure spending to hit $100-150 billion, says PIF GovernorFII highlights shift to human-centric, technology-driven economy post-coronavirus
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Saudi Crown Prince reveals plan for Riyadh to be top 10 largest city economy in world

The Health Ministry said that 40% of new coronavirus cases are in youth under the age of 18.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Coronavirus: Should you vaccinate your child?