Largest batch of vaccines arrives in Japan
The largest-ever batch of coronavirus vaccines has arrived in Japan ahead of the start of inoculations for senior citizens next week.
The shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived on Monday at Narita Airport near Tokyo from Belgium, where the drug maker has a production base. This is the firm s 11th delivery to Japan.
Pfizer says the latest batch is enough for almost 2 million doses, assuming that six will be obtained from one vial.
Vaccinations of medical personnel have been underway since February. The inoculation program for roughly 36 million people aged 65 and older will start on April 12.
Russia: North Korea faces acute shortages
The Russian embassy in Pyongyang says foreign nationals are leaving North Korea as essential items are in short supply under severe coronavirus restrictions.
The embassy posted photos on Facebook on Thursday. The post says 38 foreign nationals left the North Korean capital on March 18.
It says the gates of the missions of Britain and some other nations were locked, and fewer than 290 foreign people remain in North Korea.
The photos show empty buildings of international organizations and diplomatic missions from countries such as the Czech Republic and Pakistan. They also show withered plants at a parking lot left untouched.
Weather Anchor / Meteorologist
My early days as a weather reporter in South Africa were marked by long periods of mundane sunny and dry forecasts. I could only watch with envy the storm chasers in America dashing after hurricanes with a mic in hand and an excited camera operator behind. I longed for the drama of the weather events I had studied at university.
Since there were no major storms in my student days, I would stare at old satellite images of ones that had hit South Africa in the past. One such picture was of Tropical Cyclone Domoina, which struck the east coast in January, 1984. Domoina brought devastating rains to South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique. It took 16 years for anything like that to hit the region again.
NHK World Special Affairs Commentator
Two out of three people in Japan use the communication app Line, originally created by a Japanese subsidiary of a South Korean firm. But the Japanese government has decided to halt its use of the app after it was revealed that engineers in China were allowed access to some users personal information, including names and phone numbers.
Line has about 86 million users in Japan. Both national and local governments have been relying heavily on the app. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has been using it to report the daily number of COVID-19 patients, while local governments have been using it to receive vaccine applications.
The head of the Japanese government's advisory panel on the coronavirus response has said its top priority is preventing a rebound in new infections until around June, when local governments will likely have received enough vaccine doses for their elderly citizens.