Word: surplus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2010-2019
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...months later, Chan's admonitions seem prescient. Rich countries' hoards have become massive surpluses, and many nations are now trying frantically to cancel pending orders of vaccines or transfer them to poorer nations. France, which had ordered enough of the vaccine to inoculate its entire population of 60 million, has so far used only 5 million doses and now wants to cancel 50 million doses and sell millions more. Similarly, the Netherlands has a 19 million-dose order for sale to other countries, while Germany is in talks with drug manufacturers to halve its order of 50 million doses...
...excess in many countries occurred partly because health officials initially thought the vaccine would require two doses instead of one, and many countries signed contracts with manufacturers under that assumption; it turned out that a single dose was enough to build immunity. But the main reason for the surplus is simply that demand for the vaccine fell far short of what was originally expected. Now, after governments have spent billions of dollars on vaccines that were not needed - France alone spent $1.25 billion - some politicians and health professionals are looking to hold someone accountable...
Still, Pennington says there are lessons to be learned. He says the vaccine surplus in many cases can be ascribed in part to countries' own pre-existing pandemic-preparedness plans. Many such plans, which were put in place in the mid-2000s, were based on the worst-case-scenario assumption that the next pandemic virus would be some variation of the highly lethal H5N1 bird-flu virus, which has so far killed 263 people. The U.K.'s plan, for example, which was automatically enacted when the WHO declared the H1N1 pandemic, predicted between 50,000 and 750,000 deaths from...
...Denial was a problem too. Shortly before Bobb took over, Detroit's school board okayed a budget that it claimed had an $8 million surplus. Bobb's assessment showed a budget deficit of $303.5 million. He's since reduced the deficit partly by trimming the system's job rolls from about 14,000 to about 13,000. He's closed 29 of the district's 194 schools and hired outside firms to restructure 17 others. And in what may be his most inspired move, Bobb has asked some 2,600 volunteers to donate 360,000 hours to helping kids read...
...Fish and water are very auspicious words in Chinese," says Yap, smiling. "Water means wealth and fish means surplus. Keeping fish is a very good omen for those Chinese who want to get wealthy." Yap is bound to keep growing wealthy from his fish too, as long as he swims alone and steers clear of fearsome Chinese predators...