Month: February 2021

A British scientist says the coronavirus variant first discovered in that country late last year has “swept the country” and will “sweep the world in all probability.” Sharon Peacock, the head of the COVID-19 Genomics U.K. consortium, made the prediction Wednesday during an interview with the BBC.     The more transmissible strain was first detected in the southern British county of Kent back in September, and has since been identified in more than 50 countries, including the United States.      The COVID-19 Genomics U.K. consortium tracks the genetic mutations of the novel coronavirus.  Peacock said the newly developed vaccines are effective against the current mutations, but she warned that scientists will be tracking new mutations at least for the next decade until the virus “mutates itself out of being virulent.”   A new study suggests an inhaled steroid commonly used to treat asthma symptoms appears to reduce the need to hospitalize someone infected with COVID-19.      Scientists at Britain’s Oxford University conducted a month-long study of 146 patients with early symptoms of the novel coronavirus.  Half of the patients were administered an inhaler containing budesonide, while the other patients received the usual care.   The scientists discovered the majority of patients given budesonide not only avoided hospitalization, but also recovered faster and had fewer lingering symptoms. The study, which has not been peer reviewed, was launched after researchers discovered that patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, were significantly underrepresented among hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the …

A World Health Organization panel of immunization experts Wednesday recommended the use of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for all ages and in regions where variant strains of the virus are prevalent.The WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on immunization made the recommendation from agency headquarters in Geneva. The panel reviewed the vaccine this week after South Africa halted its use Sunday in response to a study by a university there that indicated the drug provided only minimal protection from the variant that was first discovered in that country.FILE – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization speaks in Geneva, Jan. 21, 2021.The panel made the evaluation at the request of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and for the benefit of health care workers around the world who already are administering the vaccine. But the panel recommendation does not signify official WHO approval of the drug for emergency use, which is expected in about a week.So far, the WHO has given emergency use authorization only to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, though other countries and regions individually have authorized other vaccines.WHO, UNICEF Say 130 Countries Yet to Administer Any COVID-19 Vaccine Top UN officials say of 128 million doses administered, more than three-quarters are in 10 rich countries, leaving much of the world at riskWHO chief scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said, nonetheless, the panel’s decision represents an “important milestone” because the AstraZeneca vaccine requires storage at refrigerator temperatures — not the far colder temperatures required for the Pfizer vaccines, …

Chinese state media reported Wednesday a spacecraft known as Tianwen-1 has successfully entered orbit around Mars, the first step in an ambitious mission that includes landing a rover on the surface of the planet. In a statement, China’s National Space Administration said the spacecraft conducted a 15-minute burn of its thrusters, slowing it down enough to be pulled into Mars’ gravity, making it the country’s first artificial satellite orbiting the planet. The space agency says that in May or June, the Tianwen-1 will attempt to land a capsule carrying a 240-kilogram rover onto the surface of Mars, in a massive plain in the northern hemisphere known as Utopia Planitia. If all goes as planned, the rover will conduct a 90-day mission studying soil, looking for indications of water, and searching for signs of ancient life. The Chinese probe arrived after one from the United Arab Emirates swung into orbit around the red planet to study its atmosphere and weather, and just more than a week before a spacecraft from the U.S. space agency, NASA, carrying its own rover — and a small helicopter — is scheduled to arrive.   The missions were planned for this time to take advantage of a unique alignment of Earth and Mars. The two newest probes join six other active orbiting spacecraft above Mars launched by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and India.    …

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday it is reviewing the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in light of a South African study indicating the drug offers minimal protection against the new South Africa variant of the virus. The study, conducted by the University of the Witwatersrand, prompted the South African government to temporarily halt its use of the vaccine.  At WHO’s usual Monday briefing at its headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the news concerning but noted what he called “some important caveats” to that development. FILE – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, speaks in Geneva, Jan. 21, 2021.He said given the limited sample size of the Witwatersrand trial and the younger, healthier profile of the participants, it is important to determine whether the vaccine remains effective in preventing more severe illness. Tedros said it is becoming increasingly clear that manufacturers will have to adjust to the evolution of the virus and consider altering their vaccines to address the variants, as is done with flu shots each year.  He said WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) met Monday to review the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. He said he would be meeting with them to discuss their recommendations. Ebola deathMeanwhile, Tedros also said a new case of Ebola was reported Sunday near the city of Butembo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Butembo is in North Kivu province, where a previous outbreak last June was declared over. He said the female victim, the wife of an …

Public opinion is mixed on how well Western governments have handled the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center, which also questioned people on their attitudes regarding compulsory vaccinations.Seventy-seven percent of Germans thought their government did a good job in handling the outbreak, while 58% of Americans say the U.S. government is doing a bad job.More than 4,000 adults were questioned in the United States, Britain, France and Germany.The survey was conducted in November and December 2020, before U.S. President Joe Biden took office in mid-January and just as vaccination programs were beginning to roll out in the United States and Britain.The European Union has been far slower in getting its vaccination programs under way, leading to some criticism of the bloc’s vaccine approval and procurement policy among EU citizens.An elderly visitor receives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Cent Quatre cultural center in Paris, France, Feb. 1, 2021.France and other EU states have argued the process must not be rushed, fearing a loss of public trust. France has one of the highest levels of so-called “vaccine skepticism” in the world.A recent newspaper poll suggested that just over 40% of the adult population intend to get the coronavirus vaccine. French President Emmanuel Macron recently rejected calls for mandatory vaccines.The Pew survey questioned respondents on their attitudes to compulsory vaccinations.“In three of the countries where we asked that question, most people do not find that an acceptable idea,” report co-author Kat Devlin told …

More than 800,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine should be delivered to South Sudan by the end of the month according to a South Sudanese health ministry official.     Doctor John Rumunu, director-general for preventive health services at the national health ministry said the vaccine will first be administered to the country’s most vulnerable populations.   Rumunu told reporters in Juba Sunday that South Sudan met all of the requirements necessary to acquire the vaccine.   “I’m happy to let you know that the 864,000 doses are from AstraZeneca, and AstraZeneca is using the same chain like we are using for the routine vaccination, meaning you need fridges that can keep vaccines in conditions of two to eight degrees centigrade. We have that all over the country,” he said.   Rumunu said COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) assessed all vaccines and determined that AstraZeneca was best suited to South Sudan’s capacity to preserve the vaccine.   Concerns have been raised over the safety and efficacy of preserving COVID-19 vaccines in hot climate countries like South Sudan, concerns triggered primarily by misinformation circulating on social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook.   Dr. Guyo Guracha, the World Health Organization’s emergency coordinator in the South Sudan capital Juba, said AstraZeneca is safe to use in South Sudan.   “There should be no worry about safety and efficacy because we have an elaborate mechanism in place as WHO and the country also has its own. Many countries also will be …

Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera says the country will go ahead with acquiring the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, despite concerns about its efficacy.  Chakwera on Sunday evening announced Malawi has acquired 1.5 million doses and that additional ones were on the way to vaccinate a total of about four and a half million people.  Chakwera said Malawi, one of Africa’s poorest countries, settled for the AstraZeneca vaccine because it is cheaper.  In a televised address on the fight against COVID-19, President Chakwera said the vaccine type coming to Malawi has an average of 60 to 70 percent efficacy. FILE – Malawi’s newly elected President Lazarus Chakwera takes the oath of office in Lilongwe, Malawi, June 28, 2020.He said although the efficacy is lower that than other vaccine types, the AstraZeneca vaccine has one great advantage over the other vaccines: its cost. “At four dollars a dose, it costs two and a half times less than the two other vaccine types, almost four times less than a third type, five times less than a fourth type, and eight times less than a fifth type,” he said. However South Africa has decided to put a hold on the AstraZeneca vaccine jabs after studies showed that it gives minimal protection against the COVID-19 variant that is currently circulating in the country. Prior to widespread circulation of the more contagious variant, the vaccine was showing efficacy of around 75%, but health officials say in a later analysis of its strength against the new variant, shows a 22% efficacy rate. A woman walks past …

A British health official Monday downplayed a study suggesting the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine was minimally effective against a variant of the virus and suggested the vaccine could be modified to address such strains.     South Africa halted its rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine after researchers from the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Oxford said the vaccine provided minimal protection against mild or moderate infection from the so-called South African variant among young people.   But in an interview Monday, Britain’s Minister of State for Health Edward Argar and other health experts looking at the study suggested there was no evidence that the vaccine would not be effective in preventing hospitalization and severe illness and death from the South African strain.   Argar also suggested the vaccine could be modified the way flu vaccines are each year to address a variety of strains.  He said the German pharmaceutical company CurVac – with which the British government has a contract – is already working on this.     Argar said just 147 people are known to have been infected with the South African variant in Britain.   The country has the world’s fifth worst COVID-19 death toll with more than 110,000.  So far, a little more than 12 million Britons have received first doses of COVID-19 vaccines.  …

The Democratic Republic of Congo reported Sunday that a woman has died of Ebola, three months after the country declared the end of the previous outbreak.   The woman’s husband had contracted the disease and survived in the previous outbreak in 2020. Samples from the hospital in Butembo, in the northeastern part of the country, were being sent to the capital, Kinshasa, to determine whether her illness is linked to the previous outbreak or constitutes a new one.   The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the previous outbreak in the northwestern state of Equateur over in November of last year, after 55 people in the state died of the disease.   More than 2,200 people died of Ebola in the region between 2018 and 2020.   “It is not unusual for sporadic cases to occur following a major outbreak,” the WHO said Sunday.The patient was the wife of an #Ebola survivor. Samples have been sent to the National Institute of Biomedical Research in Kinshasa, #DRC for genome sequencing to determine link to the previous outbreak. It is not unusual for sporadic cases to occur following a major outbreak. pic.twitter.com/YVAMuOmvFn— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) February 7, 2021Still, extensive contact tracing in connection with the victim is already under way, according to the WHO.   The news comes as the country, like much of the world, battles the coronavirus pandemic.   The Ebola virus, formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, is a rare but severe and often fatal illness that spreads through …

After hurtling hundreds of millions of kilometers through space since last summer, three robotic explorers are ready to hit the brakes at Mars.  The stakes — and anxiety — are sky high.  The United Arab Emirates’ orbiter reaches Mars on Tuesday, followed less than 24 hours later by China’s orbiter-rover combo. NASA’s rover, the cosmic caboose, will arrive on the scene a week later, on February 18, to collect rocks for return to Earth — a key step in determining whether life ever existed at Mars.Both the UAE and China are newcomers at Mars, where more than half of Earth’s emissaries have failed. China’s first Mars mission, a joint effort with Russia in 2011, never made it past Earth’s orbit.”We are quite excited as engineers and scientists, at the same time quite stressed and happy, worried, scared,” said Omran Sharaf, project manager for the UAE.All three spacecraft rocketed away within days of one another last July, during an Earth-to-Mars launch window that occurs only every two years. That’s why their arrivals are also close together.Called Amal, or Hope in Arabic, the Gulf nation’s spacecraft is seeking an especially high orbit — 22,000 kilometers by 44,000 kilometers (13,500 by 27,000 miles) high — all the better to monitor the Martian weather.  China’s duo — called Tianwen-1, or “Quest for Heavenly Truth” — will remain paired in orbit until May, when the rover separates to descend to the dusty, ruddy surface. If all goes well, it will be only the second country …

Rights groups in Cameroon marked the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation Saturday by protesting the resurgence of the practice, also known as FGM. The government says COVID-19, the country’s separatist crisis and Boko Haram terrorism have stopped campaigns on the dangers of the practice and made providers return to FGM, which was being abandoned.  Rights groups and FGM victims are pushing for an end to the practice. At least 100 women Saturday visited the Briqueterie and Tsinga neighborhoods in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, where they say female genital mutilation, or FGM, is resurging. The visit was part of activities marking the 14th International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation. The government said there is a resurgence of FGM in the neighborhood because some practitioners have relocated from Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria to Yaoundé. This year’s theme for the day in Cameroon was “No excuse for inaction even in a COVID-19 context, unite, fund and act to end FGM.” Among the women was Comfort Mvoto of the NGO Action Against FGM. Mvoto says people her association had convinced three years ago to stop FGM are again circumcising girls. She says her association is again telling women who stopped female circumcision and are now resuming the practice that it is illegal and unhealthy to cut a girl’s clitoris. She says her association wants all men and women who circumcise girls to know that the practice is dangerous. She says FGM promoters should be aware that many uncircumcised girls grow up, …

Deep in the deciduous tropical forests on the Srepok River banks, Bun Tropin has a routine as he stations himself at the Mereuch Base for the armed forest rangers of Cambodia’s Ministry of the Environment.The base has a long history of combat dating to the pivotal A red muntjac. (World Wildlife Fund)But Bun Tropin, 27, a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) biodiversity research assistant, knows his way around the restricted sanctuaries in Mondulkiri province because he manages more than 200 camera traps as part of the conservation group’s effort to capture evidence of the presence of wildlife. Bun Tropin asked that his real name not be used to protect his family from threats by poachers.Bun Tropin and his team guided the journalists through chest-high grasses to check the cameras installed through the areas.“When you trek like this, you hardly see any of those bantengs, elephants, tigers and others,” the soft-spoken Bun Tropin told VOA Khmer. “But each time I spot them on camera, I am always wowed. Each time, I just could not take my eyes off them.”Drastic declinesWWF Cambodia released a report on Jan. 15 saying the ungulate populations in two sanctuaries –- Srepok and the neighboring Phnom Prich –- had An Eld’s deer. (World Wildlife Fund)Between the late 1960s and the early 1990s, Cambodia’s total banteng population fell by 95%, according to the WWF.In the neighboring Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), another conservation group, also documented a dramatic drop in ungulate population over the past 10 years.”Five …

With the world in a race between the spread of coronavirus variants and vaccinating millions, AstraZeneca announced Saturday that early data shows its vaccine provides limited protection against mild disease caused by the South African variant of the virus.The test group was small, about 2,000 people, and young, with a median age of 31. But none of the study’s participants were hospitalized or died, according to The Financial Times of London, the first to report the results.“We do believe our vaccine could protect against severe disease,” an AstraZeneca spokesperson said. He added that the company has not been able “to properly ascertain its effect against severe disease and hospitalization given that subjects were predominantly young healthy adults.”The pharmaceutical company will publish its study results Monday.AstraZeneca has begun adapting its vaccine against the South African variant, the spokesperson said.China approves second vaccineChina has conditionally approved the use by the general public of a second COVID-19 vaccine.The National Medical Products Administration said in a statement Saturday that regulators approved the use Friday of CoronaVac, developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd.It’s the second vaccine approved for public use in the southeast Asian country. The first, a vaccine developed by a Chinese institute affiliated with the state-owned China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), was approved two months ago.The Sinovac vaccine, which is being administered in at least five other countries, was given emergency approval last July for high-risk people, such as health care workers and employees of state-owned companies.Conditional approval of the vaccine allows its use …

China has conditionally approved a second COVID-19 vaccine for public use.The National Medical Products Administration said in a statement Saturday that regulators approved the use of Sinovac Biotech Ltd.’s CoronaVac the day before.A vaccine developed by a Chinese institute affiliated with the state-owned China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) was approved for public use two months ago.The Sinovac vaccine, which is being administered in at least five other countries, was given emergency approval last July for people at high risk for infection, such as health care workers and employees of state-owned companies.Conditional approval of the vaccine allows its use for the general public while research continues. The company must submit current data and reports of any adverse effects after the vaccine is sold on the market.A third candidate vaccine from Sinopharm has already been administered to high-risk groups in China, while a fourth candidate from CanSino Biologics is being administered to military personnel.FILE – A security guard takes a woman’s temperature as a precaution against the new coronavirus, as she lines up to enter a bank in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, June 18, 2020.Developing countries buy vaccineSome poorer countries, alarmed at watching rich countries receive millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses, are deciding not to wait for vaccines from the World Health Organization and other groups, and have instead started striking their own vaccine deals.Juan Carlos Sikaffy, president of the Honduran Private Business Council, told The Associated Press that Honduras “cannot wait on bureaucratic processes or misguided decisions” to give citizens “the peace of …

Technology that can predict bushfires is being developed in Australia, one of the world’s most fire-prone countries. It will offer real-time visual displays of how fires are likely to spread. It comes as dozens of homes already have been destroyed this year by fires on the outskirts of the Western Australian state capital, Perth.Bushfires are a perennial menace in Australia. This week, Perth has confronted twin emergencies: raging flames and a coronavirus lockdown.“When I had to evacuate, I didn’t want to come to the evacuation center because I, obviously with the lockdown, I was so concerned that this was going to be like a COVID hot spot,” one resident said. “Yeah, grabbed my animals and just headed straight for the beach, actually. I ended up trying to sleep in my car,” she said.Firefighting in Australia is becoming increasingly sophisticated. A new simulator is being developed to predict well in advance how bushfires will move across the landscape.Currently, there are varying systems of modeling bushfires across Australian states and territories. The new technology could give emergency crews a critical advantage.Mahesh Prakash, a senior principal research scientist at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, is working in collaboration with other organizations.“We take real-time weather as well as satellite data feeds for being able to predict the bushfires,” the scientist said. “We also take fuel and vegetation inputs. We are also working with state-based emergency management agencies who are trialing it out as we speak on a monthly basis while we are developing new …

As the Trump administration was nearing the end of an unprecedented string of executions, 70% of death row inmates were sick with COVID-19. Guards were ill. Traveling prisons staff on the execution team had the virus. So did media witnesses, who may have unknowingly infected others when they returned home because they were never told about the spreading cases.Records obtained by The Associated Press show employees at the Indiana prison complex where the 13 executions were carried out over six months had contact with inmates and other people infected with the coronavirus but were able to refuse testing and declined to participate in contact tracing efforts and were still permitted to return to their work assignments.Other staff members, including those brought in to help with executions, also spread tips to their colleagues about how they could avoid quarantines and skirt public health guidance from the federal government and Indiana health officials.The executions at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, completed in a short window over a few weeks, likely acted as a superspreader event, according to the records reviewed by AP. It was something health experts warned could happen when the Justice Department insisted on resuming executions during a pandemic.Active inmate cases spikeIt’s impossible to know precisely who introduced the infections and how they started to spread, in part because prisons officials didn’t consistently do contact tracing and haven’t been fully transparent about the number of cases. But medical experts say it’s likely the executioners and support staff, many of …

The head of the World Health Organization called Friday for pharmaceutical companies to share manufacturing facilities to increase the production of COVID-19 vaccines.Speaking at an online news briefing from Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said what is needed is “a massive scale-up in production.”He noted that France’s pharmaceutical company Sanofi announced it would make its manufacturing infrastructure available to support production of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and called on other companies to do the same.“We encourage all manufacturers to share their data and technology to ensure global, equitable access to vaccines.”He also repeated his call for rich nations to share doses with poorer countries once they have vaccinated health workers and older people.Tedros said 75% of all COVID-19 vaccinations worldwide have been given in just 10 countries, while nearly 130 nations have not given a single vaccination.“The longer it takes to vaccinate those most at risk everywhere, the more opportunity we give the virus to mutate and evade vaccines,” Tedros said, adding that unless the virus is suppressed everywhere, it could resurge globally.China’s Sinovac Biotech said Friday that late-stage trial data of its COVID-19 vaccine from Brazil and Turkey showed the vaccine prevented hospitalization and death in COVID-19 patients in 100% of participants but said it was only 50.65% effective at keeping people from getting infected.The trial of Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine involved nearly 12,400 people and also found the vaccine was 83.7% effective in preventing COVID-19 cases that required any medical treatment.A dog sits next to numbered crosses at the Iraja cemetery, …

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday that 75% of all COVID-19 vaccinations worldwide have been given in just 10 countries, while nearly 130 nations have not given a single vaccination.At the agency’s regular briefing in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that, globally, the number of vaccinations has now overtaken the number of reported COVID-19 infections.He said that is basically good news and a remarkable achievement in such a short timeframe. But there are almost 130 countries with 2.5 billion people, that have not delivered a single dose of vaccine.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization speaks during a session of the Executive Board on the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Geneva, Jan. 21, 2021.Tedros said there are some wealthier nations that have already vaccinated large proportions of their population at lower risk of severe disease or death.The WHO chief said he recognizes that all governments have an obligation to protect their own people. But he said once wealthier nations have vaccinated their priority populations — frontline health workers and the elderly — the best way those nations can protect the rest of their population is to share surplus vaccines so other countries can do the same.“The longer it takes to vaccinate those most at risk everywhere, the more opportunity we give the virus to mutate and evade vaccines,” said Tedros said, adding that unless the virus is suppressed everywhere, it could resurge globally.One way to make poorer nations less dependent on the richer …

As more people get the COVID-19 vaccine, health care experts are tackling the issue of how someone can prove they’ve been vaccinated. Lesia Bakalets has more in this story narrated by Anna Rice.  Camera: Sergii Dogotar        …

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Friday that there are more than 104 million global GOVID-19 cases and 2.2 million deaths from the virus. The United States remains at the top of the list as the location with the most infections, with more than 26 million cases, followed by India with 10.8 million and Brazil with 9.3 million. Medical officials are urging U.S. residents to not turn Sunday’s Super Bowl, a yearly football game, into a superspreader event.  Fans usually gather at large home parties or in bars and restaurants to watch the game on television.  Medical authorities this year, however, are urging football fans to watch the game “with the people you live with.” Some areas in the United States are running into difficulty ensuring that their residents are being inoculated equitably. The nation’s capital is no exception.  Residents in some of the Washington’s poorest neighborhoods have been underrepresented in the city’s vaccination drive.  Now, however, representatives from the mayor’s office have begun knocking on the front doors of senior citizens’ homes in Washington’s poorest neighborhoods in an effort to get them to sign up for the vaccines. Johnson & Johnson Seeks US Vaccine Approval for Emergency UseDrugmaker’s application for its single-dose vaccine to US Food and Drug Administration follows January report that found the vaccine had a 66% rate of efficacy in preventing infections Washington residents aged 65 and older are eligible for the free vaccinations.  In other areas around the country, local governments have begun their vaccine programs with …

Despite its world-class medical system and its vaunted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. fell behind in the race to detect dangerous coronavirus mutations. And it’s only now beginning to catch up.The problem has not been a shortage of technology or expertise. Rather, scientists say, it’s an absence of national leadership and coordination, plus a lack of funding and supplies for overburdened laboratories trying to juggle diagnostic testing with the hunt for genetic changes.“We have the brains. We have the tools. We have the instruments,” said Ilhem Messaoudi, director of a virus research center at University of California, Irvine. “It’s just a matter of supporting that effort.”Viruses mutate constantly. To stay ahead of the threat, scientists analyze samples, watching closely for mutations that might make the coronavirus more infectious or more deadly.But such testing has been scattershot.Less than 1% of positive specimens in the U.S. are being sequenced to determine whether they have worrisome mutations. Other countries do better — Britain sequences about 10% — meaning they can more quickly see threats coming at them. That gives them greater opportunity to slow or stop the problem, whether through more targeted contact tracing, possible adjustments to the vaccine, or public warnings.CDC officials say variants have not driven recent surges in overall U.S. cases. But experts worry that what’s happening with variants is not clear and say the nation should have been more aggressive about sequencing earlier in the epidemic that has now killed over 450,000 Americans.“If we had evidence …

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson said Thursday it is seeking approval for its single-dose COVID-19 vaccine from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.The FDA said it has scheduled a Feb. 26 meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee to discuss an emergency use authorization for the company.In January, Johnson & Johnson released a report that said its vaccine had a 66% rate of preventing the coronavirus infection in a large global trial. However, the vaccine was found in trials not to protect as well against the South Africa virus variant, which is highly transmissible and spreading around the globe, officials said.After previous such meetings of the FDA committee, vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna received authorization within a day.The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which each require two doses to be fully inoculated, are 95% effective, studies show.Johnson & Johnson, which said it will also apply for European authorization within weeks, has a single-dose vaccine that does not need to be frozen during shipping, which the two other approved vaccines do.In January, Paul Stoffels, the company’s chief scientific officer, said the drugmaker would have vaccine ready to ship by March.”Upon authorization of our investigational COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, we are ready to begin shipping,” Stoffels said in a statement.The news of a possible new vaccine to fight the coronavirus pandemic comes as global confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, neared 105 million and deaths totaled nearly 2.3 million.The United States leads the world with more …

The Biden administration on Thursday underscored the importance of supporting COVAX, the global mechanism that aims to deliver coronavirus vaccines to poor countries, but it acknowledged it has not increased funding beyond the $4 billion approved in December for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, one of the co-leaders of COVAX.“We have reiterated our commitment to COVAX, and I don’t have any additional funding note to announce today,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in response to a question from VOA.On Jan. 21, the day after President Joe Biden was inaugurated, the U.S. announced it would join COVAX and rejoin the World Health Organization. In July 2020, then-President Donald Trump formally withdrew from the world body, accusing it of being a puppet of China during the pandemic.Biden highlighted the message of working together with the international community in his foreign policy speech Thursday.”We’ve also reengaged with the World Health Organization,” Biden said. “That way we can build better global preparedness to counter COVID-19, as well as detect and prevent future pandemics, because there will be more.”Still, the administration has provided little detail on the scope and scale of U.S. commitment to COVAX beyond an initial National Security Directive released on Jan. 21 addressing U.S. global leadership to strengthen the international pandemic response.The directive instructs officials to come up with a framework for donating surplus vaccines, once there is sufficient supply domestically, to countries in need including through the COVAX facility.What is COVAX?COVAX is a global initiative co-led by the World Health …

Far beneath the ocean surface, a cacophony of industrial noise is disrupting marine animals’ ability to mate, feed and even evade predators, scientists warn. With rumbling ships, hammering oil drills and booming seismic survey blasts, humans have drastically altered the underwater soundscape – in some cases deafening or disorienting whales, dolphins and other marine mammals that rely on sound to navigate, researchers report in a metastudy published online Thursday and in the Friday edition of the journal FILE – A large crevasse forms near the calving front of the Helheim glacier near Tasiilaq, Greenland, June 22, 2018.”It’s a chronic problem that certainly weakens the animals all the way from individuals to populations,” Duarte said in an interview. “This is a growing problem, one that is global in scope.” These noises and their impacts need more attention from scientists and policymakers, particularly the effects on sea turtles and other reptiles, seabirds, seals, walruses and plant-eating mammals such as manatees, the study says. The international team of researchers called for a global regulatory framework for measuring and managing ocean noise. Much of the human-caused noise should be easy to reduce, Duarte said. For example, measures such as building quieter ship propellers and hulls and using drilling techniques that do not cause bubbles and water vibrations could cut noise pollution in half, he said. Having the world use more renewable energy would lessen the need to drill for oil and gas. The benefits to marine life could be dramatic, he said, noting a resurgence in marine activity …