Year: 2020

The National Science Foundation announced Thursday that it would close the huge telescope at the renowned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in a blow to scientists worldwide who depend on it to search for planets, asteroids and extraterrestrial life. The independent, federally funded agency said it was too dangerous to keep operating the single-dish radio telescope — one of the world’s largest — given the significant damage it recently sustained. An auxiliary cable broke in August, tearing a 100-foot hole in the reflector dish and damaging the dome above it. Then on November 6, one of the telescope’s main steel cables snapped, leading officials to warn that the entire structure could collapse. NSF officials noted that even if crews were to repair all the damage, engineers found the structure would still be unstable in the long term. The main entrance of the Arecibo Observatory is seen in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Nov. 19, 2020.”This decision is not an easy one for NSF to make, but the safety of people is our No. 1 priority,” said Sean Jones, the agency’s assistant director for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate. “We understand how much Arecibo means to this community and to Puerto Rico.” He said the goal was to preserve the telescope without placing people at risk, but “we have found no path forward to allow us to do so safely.” The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. In its 57 years of operation, it endured hurricanes, endless …

Just as the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold, in February, four people set sail for one of the most remote places on Earth – a small camp on Kure Atoll, at the edge of the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.There, more than 1,400 miles from Honolulu, they lived in isolation for eight months while working to restore the island’s environment. Cut off from the rest of the planet, their world was limited to a tiny patch of sand halfway between the U.S. mainland and Asia. With no television or internet access, their only information came from satellite text messages and occasional emails.Now they are back, emerging into a changed society that might feel as foreign today as island isolation did in March. They must adjust to wearing face masks, staying indoors and seeing friends without giving hugs or hearty handshakes.”I’ve never seen anything like this, but I started reading the book The Stand by Stephen King, which is about a disease outbreak, and I was thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, is this what it’s going to be like to go home?’” said Charlie Thomas, one of the four island workers.The group was part of an effort by the state of Hawaii to maintain the fragile island ecosystem on Kure, which is part of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, the nation’s largest contiguous protected environment. The public is not allowed to land anywhere in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.Charlie Thomas, of Auckland, New Zealand, describes what her camp was like on Kure Atoll …

Thursday brought further good news from the global effort to produce a safe and effective vaccine against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.  A report published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet says that a potential vaccine developed by British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca in collaboration with the University of Oxford was safe and produced a strong immune response in both younger and older participants.  The two-dose vaccine was given to 560 healthy adult volunteers in a second-stage clinical trial, including 240 volunteers 70 years of age and older.  Dr. Maheshi Ramasamy, a  University of Oxford researcher and co-author of the study, described the antibody and T-cell responses in the older volunteers as “robust.”  Pfizer Says Its Coronavirus Vaccine is 95% EffectivePfizer to seek approval within days for emergency use of vaccine COVID-19 poses the greatest risk for older adults and people with preexisting health conditions.  “We hope that this means our vaccine will help protect some of the most vulnerable people in society,” Ramasamy said, but he noted that further research still needs to be conducted.  The vaccine is currently undergoing final late-stage global clinical trials to prove its ultimate safety and efficacy.  The data from the Oxford-AstraZeneca Phase 2 trial comes as two U.S.-based  pharmaceutical companies report their COVID-19 vaccines are more than 90% effective against the virus.  Pfizer announced Wednesday that it will seek emergency approval for the vaccine it has developed in collaboration with Germany’s BioNTech. Moderna announced earlier this week that its vaccine is nearly 95% effective after an …

As the deadly coronavirus continues to rage across the U.S. and around the world, people are turning to COVID-19-related apps to figure out their day-to-day risks. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. Producers: Julie Taboh, Adam Greenbaum …

India’s capital, New Delhi, is battling twin health emergencies, as it copes with deadly air pollution that spikes in winter months and a record surge in coronavirus cases. Doctors say the city’s fight against the pandemic has become harder as the toxic air makes the city more vulnerable to the virus. Anjana Pasricha reports.Videographer:  P Pallavi, Producer: Henry Hernandez …

The head of Germany’s disease control agency said Thursday that while the coronavirus infection rate in the country remains serious, there are signs a partial lockdown is working.Germany implemented restrictive measures in early November to curb a nationwide surge in cases, closing bars, restaurants and other leisure venues but keeping schools and shops open.Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Robert Koch Institute chief Lothar Wieler said the number of new infections has since plateaued, with 22,609 reported on Thursday – roughly the same number as a week ago. He said the fact they are not rising is good news but cautioned that it was too early to say if this is a trend.Wieler said the overall number of cases is still too high, and there is a risk that hospitals may become overwhelmed. Wieler, however, also expressed optimism the numbers will start to go down now that they have stabilized.Wieler also said the news this week that at least two potential vaccines are showing better than 90 percent effectiveness was “extremely encouraging.” He said, “I know if the vaccines have an efficacy of more than 90% then they would be great weapons. That’s great.”Wieler said it was unclear how long the restrictions would remain in place. When they were implemented, Chancellor Angela Merkel said the plan was for them to run through November, in hopes the nation would be able to lift some of them in time for the Christmas holiday in December.The Robert Koch Institute reports Germany now has seen …

COVID-19 cases are surging to record highs in India’s capital, New Delhi, even as they drop sharply in the rest of the country.Moreover, doctors say the pandemic is extracting a heavier toll in the city as air pollution levels spike dangerously, making its 20 million residents more vulnerable to the virus.  Large numbers of people, many without masks, packing markets and celebratory gatherings during the recent Hindu festive season have also raised concerns about the spread of the infection.Authorities are flying in doctors and paramedics, increasing the number of intensive care beds, and ramping up testing and tracing as the twin health emergencies overwhelm hospitals.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can People walk near India Gate on a smoggy afternoon in New Delhi, India, Nov. 15, 2020.Authorities acknowledge that the city’s hazardous air poses a risk to the city during the pandemic.“Pollution is coming. The sky is filled with smoke and this is worsening the situation with coronavirus,” Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, said this month as he launched a campaign to control pollution levels that included measures such as spraying water to control dust levels.Delhi has now counted over half a million cases out of the nearly 9 million in India, the world’s second-worst affected nation.As the city witnesses its worst phase of the pandemic, authorities have lowered the number of people allowed at marriage ceremonies from 200 to 50,and are considering shutting down markets in areas that are emerging as COVID-19 hotspots.“The …

Thursday brought further good news from the global effort to produce a safe and effective vaccine against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.  A report published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet says that a potential vaccine developed by British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca in collaboration with the University of Oxford was safe and produced a strong immune response in both younger and older participants.  The two-dose vaccine was given to 560 healthy adult volunteers in a second-stage clinical trial, including 240 volunteers 70 years of age and older.  Dr. Maheshi Ramasamy, a  University of Oxford researcher and co-author of the study, described the antibody and T-cell responses in the older volunteers as “robust.”  Pfizer Says Its Coronavirus Vaccine is 95% EffectivePfizer to seek approval within days for emergency use of vaccine COVID-19 poses the greatest risk for older adults and people with preexisting health conditions.  “We hope that this means our vaccine will help protect some of the most vulnerable people in society,” Ramasamy said, but he noted that further research still needs to be conducted.  The vaccine is currently undergoing final late-stage global clinical trials to prove its ultimate safety and efficacy.  The data from the Oxford-AstraZeneca Phase 2 trial comes as two U.S.-based  pharmaceutical companies report their COVID-19 vaccines are more than 90% effective against the virus.  Pfizer announced Wednesday that it will seek emergency approval for the vaccine it has developed in collaboration with Germany’s BioNTech. Moderna announced earlier this week that its vaccine is nearly 95% effective after an …

As the deadly coronavirus continues to rage across the U.S. and around the world, people are turning to COVID-19-related apps to figure out their day-to-day risks. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. Producers: Julie Taboh, Adam Greenbaum …

The United States has surpassed 250,000 coronavirus deaths as new cases surge in many parts of the country.New York City on Wednesday announced the closure of its school system, the nation’s largest, with the city recording a seventh consecutive day with a COVID-19 positivity rate above 3%.“Public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out [of] an abundance of caution. We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote on Twitter.New York City has reached the 3% testing positivity 7-day average threshold. Unfortunately, this means public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out an abundance of caution. We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19.— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) November 18, 2020In-person school resumed for New York children between late September and early October, when the seven-day positivity rate was under 2%.Other major cities, including Boston and Detroit, have made recent moves to halt in-person classes for their schools.Across the United States there have been more than 11.5 million confirmed cases since the pandemic began.The current wave of infections is adding to that number at an increased rate with an average of nearly 160,000 new cases each day during the past week. That is about triple the number of new daily cases in the United States one month ago. More than 1,100 people are dying per day.Health care workers are dealing with the strain of a record number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.The …

The World Health Organization’s emergencies program director said Wednesday that vaccines alone would not end the COVID-19 pandemic and would do nothing to stop the current global surge in coronavirus infections.Mike Ryan made the comments during a virtual question-and-answer session from the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.His comments came the same day that pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced that final results from the late-stage trial of their COVID-19 vaccine showed it was 95% effective.The companies said they had the required two months of safety data and would apply for emergency U.S. authorization within days.On Monday, Moderna released preliminary data for its vaccine, showing similar effectiveness.Ryan said the world would have to get through this current wave of COVID-19 infections without vaccines, which he said were not the total answer.”Some people think that vaccines will be, in a sense, the solution, the unicorn we’ve all been chasing. It’s not,” he said.He said the most important thing people could do now to keep hospitals and intensive care units from overflowing was to stop the spread of the disease through physical distancing measures. Once a viable vaccine is widely available, he said, it will be another tool that can be used.”Adding vaccines is going to give us a huge chance. But if we add vaccines and forget the other things, COVID does not go to zero,” Ryan said. “We need to add vaccination to the existing physical measures” to taking care and practicing good hygiene.  “And if we add that …

Thousands of demonstrators rallied Wednesday in central Berlin to protest the parliamentary vote that would give Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government powers to enforce restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.Germany’s lower and upper houses of parliament are due to vote and pass laws Wednesday that could allow the government to impose restrictions on social contact, rules on mask-wearing, drinking alcohol in public, shutting shops and stopping sports events.   Although most Germans accept the latest limited lockdown to tackle a second wave of the virus, a minority of right-wing critics say the law gives the government too much power. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has even compared the measures to the Enabling Act of 1933 that paved the way Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship.  Germany Sees Signs for Cautious Optimism in COVID-19 Cases Infectious-disease expert says while new numbers are still high, the infection rate is down Berlin police, bolstered by forces from around the country, cordoned off a wide perimeter around the capital’s government center, and a series of protests planned outside of Germany’s Bundestag parliament building were banned due to security concerns.   At one point, security officers used a water cannon to subdue protesters and keep them away from the parliament building.     One protester wore a face mask with the words “Merkel-Muzzle,” others held banners with slogans such as “For Enlightenment. Peace and Freedom.” But most protesters were neither wearing masks nor socially distanced.     Germany, Europe’s largest economy, was widely praised for keeping …

The World Health Organization has officially declared an end to the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Equateur Province, nearly six months after the first cases were reported. Health officials are hailing the end of this outbreak as a milestone and cause for celebration.  Combating Ebola in the remote, heavily forested region posed numerous logistical challenges, not least of which was reaching communities scattered across this geographically vast area and then gaining their trust.Bob Ghosn is head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Ebola Response Operation in the DRC   Speaking on a telephone line from Goma, he tells VOA tackling Ebola in itself is difficult enough.   But tackling two epidemics, Ebola and COVID-19, at the same time has proven to be a nightmare.“It also made the supply chain for Ebola response much more difficult because everything slowed down, borders have closed,” Ghosn said.  “There obviously were requests from all countries in the world for PPE equipment that was needed here.  So, that made things more difficult and last, but not least, the economic impact of COVID-19 is mind boggling in a country like DRC.” Equateur province, DRCThis was the third Ebola outbreak in DRC in the last three years.   It came just as another more serious epidemic in North Kivu province was winding down.  That epidemic, which lasted nearly two years, infected more than 3,400 people, killing nearly 2,300.  By comparison, the final toll in Equateur Province was 119 cases, including 55 deaths.  Ghosn says everyone in …

The pharmaceutical company Pfizer said Wednesday that its coronavirus vaccine is 95% effective and caused no serious side effects as it plans to seek federal approval for the vaccine’s emergency use.Pfizer disclosed the results after a final analysis of the vaccine’s Phase 3 trial, which also revealed it protects older people most at risk of dying from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.The American pharmaceutical giant’s announcement came a week after it first revealed promising preliminary findings, and days before it plans to formally ask the federal government to approve the vaccine for emergency use.5 Things to Know About Pfizer’s Coronavirus Vaccine Early results look great, but questions remain Pfizer has not yet released detailed information about the trial and the results have not been scrutinized by independent experts.Pfizer and BioNTech, a German biotechnology company that partnered with Pfizer on the vaccine’s development, said they plan to produce up to 50 million doses worldwide this year and up to 1.3 billion in 2021. Pfizer also said it would submit the results of the trial to other regulatory agencies around the world.The biotechnology company Moderna, Inc., said earlier this week that an interim analysis of its late-stage study revealed its experimental vaccine appears to be 94.5% effective.The U.S. government has said it hopes Moderna and Pfizer will produce some 20 million doses for distribution in December, with the first doses offered to vulnerable people like health care workers and those with serious health conditions. …

An agreement announced Tuesday paves the way for the largest dam demolition in U.S. history, a project that promises to reopen hundreds of miles of waterway along the Oregon-California border to salmon that are critical to tribes but have dwindled to almost nothing in recent years. If approved, the deal would revive plans to remove four massive hydroelectric dams on the lower Klamath River, creating the foundation for the most ambitious salmon restoration effort in history. The project on California’s second-largest river would be at the vanguard of a trend toward dam demolitions in the U.S. as the structures age and become less economically viable amid growing environmental concerns about the health of native fish. Previous efforts to address problems in the Klamath Basin have fallen apart amid years of legal sparring that generated distrust among tribes, fishing groups, farmers and environmentalists. Opponents of dam removal worry about their property values and the loss of a water source for fighting wildfires. Lawsuits challenging the agreement are possible. “This dam removal is more than just a concrete project coming down. It’s a new day and a new era,” Yurok Tribe chairman Joseph James said. “To me, this is who we are, to have a free-flowing river just as those who have come before us. … Our way of life will thrive with these dams being out.” FILE – The Iron Gate Dam, powerhouse and spillway are on the lower Klamath River near Hornbrook, Calif., March 3, 2020.A half-dozen tribes across Oregon and California, fishing groups …

Iota continues to pound Nicaragua with strong winds and heavy rains even after weakening from a hurricane to a tropical storm. As of late Tuesday night, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Iota was carrying maximum sustained winds of 65 kilometers an hour on a path towards Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  Forecasters say Tropical Storm Iota will dump between 7 to 20 kilometers of rain on a stretch of Central America from southern Nicaragua to southern Belize overnight, leading to “significant, life-threatening flash flooding and river flooding,” along with mudslides in higher areas. The storm is expected to weaken to a tropical depression through the night before dissipating sometime Wednesday.A woman sits near her house damaged the passing of Hurricane Iota, in Puerto Cabezas, Nov. 18, 2020.Iota made landfall Monday on the northeastern coast of Nicaragua Monday carrying maximum winds of 210 kilometers an hour, then grew in speed to 250 kilometers an hour, becoming a Category 5 storm — the top level on the five-level scale that measures a storm’s potential destructiveness.   The storm left scores of communities cut off from the outside world and forced thousands of residents to evacuate their homes.  At least eight people across the region have been killed, including two children who reportedly drowned while trying to cross a flooded river in Nicaragua. At least one person died in Providencia island, located in Colombia’s Caribbean archipelago, while another person was killed in Panama’s western Ngabe Bugle indigenous community.Iota is the 30th named storm of this year’s record-setting Atlantic hurricane season.  It …

A group of major U.S. utilities, Tesla, Uber and others said on Tuesday they are launching a new group to lobby for national policies to boost electric vehicle sales. The new Zero Emission Transportation Association wants to boost consumer electric vehicle (EV) incentives and encourage the retirement of gasoline-powered vehicles. It also advocates for tougher emissions and performance standards that will potentially enable full electrification by 2030. Under President Donald Trump, the White House rejected new tax credits for electric vehicles as it proposed to kill existing credits and made it easier to sell gas-guzzling vehicles. President-elect Joe Biden promises new tax incentives, including new rebates to buy EVs and a dramatic expansion of charging stations for electric vehicles – policy measures automakers have long advocated. “We can own the electric vehicle market – building 550,000 charging stations – and creating over a million good jobs here at home – with the federal government investing more in clean energy research,” Biden said Monday. Biden’s measures are in line with the group’s call for “strong federal charging infrastructure investments” and its goal to reach 100% electric vehicle sales by 2030. Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said the group will support “Uber’s work to move 100% of rides to EVs in (the United States), Canadian and European cities by 2030 and go fully zero-emissions by 2040. It will take all of us working together to address the urgent crisis of climate change.” Automakers in the United States sold 326,000 EVs in 2019, accounting for about 2% of total U.S. …

Hurricane Iota made landfall along the northeastern coast of Nicaragua late Monday night and flash flooding and landslides are expected across Central America. The National Hurricane Center said Iota struck Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm, with winds of 210 kilometers per hour. Many people hunkered down in shelters while the Nicaraguan government evacuated thousands of residents in low lying coastal areas ahead of the storm. One resident in the seaside town of Bilwi, business owner Business owner Adán Artola Schultz, described the sound of metal structures banging and buckling in the wind as “like bullets” to the Associated Press.  Jason Bermúdez, a university student from Bilwi, told AP a lot of houses have lost their roofs, fences and fruit trees that got knocked down. Bermúdez said “(W)e will never forget this year.” “The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Iota is making landfall in almost the exact same location that category 4 Hurricane Eta did a little less than two weeks ago,” the Hurricane Center said in a statement. Iota came ashore south of where Hurricane Eta made landfall Nov. 3, also as a Category 4 storm. Hurricane Eta killed more than 130 people as the heavy rains caused flash flooding and landslides over parts of Central America.  …

The World Health Organization’s 194 member states have agreed to push for the global elimination of cervical cancer, a disease that every year affects 570,000 women and kills more than 300,000. A new strategy to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer was adopted at this year’s World Health Assembly.Cervical cancer is a vaccine-preventable disease and curable if detected early and adequately treated. Health officials say the tools are available to eliminate this disease, the fourth most common cancer among women globally.   WHO’s three-point strategy calls for all girls to be vaccinated for HPV or human papillomavirus before age 15. It says women should be screened twice between the ages of 35 and 45 and those found to have the cancer should receive treatment. WHO’s assistant director-general, Princess Nothemba Simelela, says new technology based on artificial intelligence can be used to screen women for cervical cancer.    “If these technologies are used, we would be able to get a diagnosis of cervical cancer within 15 to 20 minutes,” she said. “At this point in time, turnaround from the laboratories can be anything up to a month or longer and women do not get their results because most of them do not stay or live near a facility.”   Simelela says the rapid diagnosis will be a lifesaver for many women in developing countries. She says they will be able to be treated immediately on site for a pre-cancerous condition without having to return.    FILE – Women sign up for free breast and …

The Trump administration is moving to finalize the sale of controversial oil drilling leases in a wildlife refuge in Alaska.A notice from the Bureau of Land Management posted on the federal register is listed as “unpublished” as of Monday, but it calls for nominations on the lease tracts considered for the oil sale. Oil drilling in the sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) was banned for decades before a 2017 reversal by the Trump administration.In an executive order signed in April 2017, Trump reversed the Obama administration’s decision to prohibit oil and gas drilling in the Arctic waters off Alaska.The White House said 90 billion barrels of oil and 327 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are buried off the U.S. coastline but that 94% of the area is off limits. President-elect Joe Biden opposes drilling in ANWR. Conservationists have fought against drilling since the 2017 executive order. In recent months, several U.S. banks said they would not help finance the project.The 19-million-acre refuge is home to numerous Indigenous tribes and wildlife, including polar bears and caribou.Thirty days after the call for nominations is published on Tuesday, the Trump administration would have to issue a notice for an impending sale of leases. The sale would take place 30 days after that, according to Reuters, which would be just before Biden’s inauguration on January 20. …

The high-pitched whine of a mosquito is annoying, but scientists have developed an app that uses that sound to detect dangerous mosquitoes.Mosquitoes kill hundreds of thousands of people each year by spreading microbes that cause diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever. But researcher Haripriya Vaidehi Narayanan says anyone with a cellphone can help tackle these diseases by using the Abuzz app to identify mosquitoes. “If they see a mosquito around us, they just open the phone, open up the app, point their phone towards the mosquito and hit the record button,” said Narayanan, who started working on the project as a graduate student at Stanford University. She’s now in the Department of Immunology at the University of California Los Angeles. “So then, when the mosquito flaps its wings and starts flying around, it makes that noise, that annoying buzzing noise … that noise is what gets recorded by the Abuzz app,” she added. Many mosquito-borne diseases don’t have cures or vaccines, so targeting mosquitoes is the best approach to controlling these diseases. “If we’re going to tackle diseases caused by mosquitoes like malaria or dengue, the most important step is to know where the mosquitoes are,” Narayanan said.Listening for answersTraditional mosquito monitoring can be time-consuming and expensive because it requires labor-intensive trapping and trained scientists to identify the tiny insects. There are around 3,500 different mosquito species, but only about 40 are dangerous to humans, according to Manu Prakash, professor of bioengineering at Stanford University and principal investigator of the project. “In your …

Last week the World Health Organization hosted its annual summit known as the World Health Assembly to outline new policies and priorities, but a controversy involving Taiwan ended up also drawing renewed attention on how Beijing’s politics continue to influence the WHO.During the summit, which was hosted on the WHO official Facebook page, WHO moderators appeared to censor comments that contained words related to Taiwan or that implied the coronavirus originated in China. Several Taiwanese media reported that the WHO Facebook page blocked any Taiwan-related comments that included “Taiwan” or “Taiwan can help.”After coming under criticism, the WHO said it was facing an “onslaught” of cyberattacks during the summit by activists using words including “Taiwan” and “China.” The group said it applied content filters to improve moderators’ ability to monitor conversations. The measures were later removed after the Taiwanese government complained.The censorship goes beyond Taiwan. Since the incident, internet users have found that phrases such as “Winnie the Pooh,” “Wuhan Virus” and “China Virus” were also blocked. Winnie the Pooh has become a sensitive character in China because people use it to mock Chinese leader Xi Jinping.Several members of Congress have raised concerns about the WHO’s actions.In this image from video, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, speaks on the floor of the House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, April 23, 2020.Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in response to a VOA email last Thursday that he was concerned about the WHO’s approach.“I …

Experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) say the news Monday of another COVID-19 vaccine candidate is encouraging but more information is needed and, as new virus cases surge around the world, it is no time to be complacent.At their regular COVID-19 news briefing in Geneva, WHO officials reacted to the news from U.S. pharmaceutical company Moderna that its vaccine candidate tested at better than 90% efficacy.WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that level of efficacy in this vaccine, as well as the Phizer/BinNTech vaccine candidate announced last week, is very encouraging.WHO Head ‘Extremely Concerned’ by Increase in Coronavirus CasesTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tells reporters at regular briefing in Geneva that the case increases are pushing health workers to ‘breaking point’But, she said, there are many questions remaining about the duration of protection they provide, the impact on severe cases of the virus, the impact on different subpopulations, especially the elderly, as well as the adverse events beyond a certain period. Swaminathan said she hoped the clinical trials would continue to collect data to answer these questions.WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that while the vaccine news is cause for “cautious optimism,” this is no time for complacency. He said the agency is currently “extremely concerned” by the surge in cases they are seeing in some countries, “particularly in Europe and the Americas.”Echoing comments he made earlier in the day to the WHO executive board, Tedros said a vaccine alone will not end the pandemic. Rather, it will be a valuable …

U.S. forecasters says Hurricane Iota has strengthened to a “catastrophic” Category 5 storm — the latest in the year such a storm has formed — and is likely to bring catastrophic winds, life-threatening storm surges and torrential rainfall to Central America, still trying to recover from Hurricane Eta. In its latest report, the National Hurricane Center says Iota is about 160 kilometers east-southeast of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, with maximum sustained winds of 260 kilometers per hour, making it the strongest storm of the 2020 season. It is moving to the west at about 15 kilometers per hour.  Forecasters say on its current track, the core of Iota will make landfall within the hurricane warning area in northeastern Nicaragua Monday night, in almost the exact location Hurricane Eta came ashore two weeks ago.  Workers of banana fields evacuate the area in El Progreso, Yoro department, Honduras, on November 14, 2020, before the arrival of tropical storm Iota.That storm killed at least 50 people, destroyed buildings, knocked out power, and led to flooding and landslides. Iota is the record-breaking 30th named storm of the 2020 season and, along with Eta, marks the first time two major hurricanes have formed in the month of November.  It is also the tenth named storm to “rapidly” intensify — that is, strengthen by more than 55.5 kph in a 24-hour period. Meteorologists attribute the effect to warm waters in the southern Caribbean. …