NBA won’t mandate vaccine for players
The NBA will exempt its players from getting vaccinated while mandating that referees and most staff get vaccinated, ESPN reports.
The NBA and NBPA continue to negotiate other protocols for the upcoming season, but the vaccine mandate is a non-starter with the union, per the report. However, the league is putting forth strict protocols for players who are not vaccinated.
Those protocols, not agreed upon yet, could include eating and traveling apart from vaccinated teammates as well as being located in a different part of the locker room, per the report.
Roughly 85 percent of players are vaccinated, the league said.
The league informed teams last month that personnel who work within 15 feet of players or officials during games are required to get vaccinated by Oct. 1, per the report.
Most gorillas at Atlanta’s zoo test positive
At least 18 of the 20 gorillas at Atlanta’s zoo have now tested positive, an outbreak that began just days before the zoo had hoped to obtain a veterinary vaccine for the primates.
Zoo Atlanta had announced the first positive tests among the western lowland gorillas on Friday after employees noticed the gorillas had been coughing, had runny noses and showed changes in appetite. A veterinary lab at the University of Georgia returned positive tests for the respiratory illness.
Zoo Atlanta says the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa, confirms that at least four of the samples from the gorillas so far have tested positive for the delta variant of the virus.
The zoo says it is using monoclonal antibodies to treat the gorillas at risk of developing complications from the virus.
Officials say there’s no evidence that the gorillas can pass the virus back to humans and visitors are too far away to be infected by gorillas.
Because the gorillas live close together in four troops, zoo officials say it’s impossible to keep infected animals isolated.
Zoo officials say they believe an asymptomatic employee who cares for the gorillas passed on the virus.
Zimbabwe imposes vaccine on churchgoers
Zimbabwe’s parliament banned anyone not vaccinated from attending church services, the latest in a series of measure to boost uptake of the jab.
The southern African country had already made the vaccine mandatory for civil servants and teachers earlier this month.
Getting vaccinated is also a prerequisite for trading in markets, working out at gyms, frequenting restaurants and sitting university exams.
The country has so far relied on vaccine doses produced in China, India and Russia, but recently approved the emergency use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Just over 2.8 million of Zimbabwe’s 15 million inhabitants have so far received a first vaccine dose.
African Union slams vaccine manufacturers for restricting access
The African Union accused vaccine manufacturers of denying African countries a fair chance to buy them, and urged manufacturing countries, in particular India. to lift export restrictions on vaccines and their components.
“Those manufacturers know very well that they never gave us proper access,” Strive Masiyiwa, AU Special Envoy for COVID-19, told a World Health Organization briefing from Geneva.
“We could have handled this very differently.”
Out of 5.7 billion doses of vaccines administered around the world so far, only 2% have been in Africa.
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