Month: December 2021

The World Health Organization and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a leading cancer center in the United States, are planning to provide cancer medication free-of-charge to children in developing countries. Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, killing about 10 million people a year.  The World Health Organization estimates 400,000 children globally develop cancer every year, with nearly 100,000 dying. The most common types of childhood cancers include leukemias, brain cancers, lymphomas, and solid tumors.  WHO reports nearly nine in 10 children with cancer live in low-and-middle income countries. Andre Ilbawi, who heads WHO’s cancer division in the department of noncommunicable diseases,  said about 80 percent of children who have cancer in high-income countries survive  — a major achievement and improvement over the past decades. “But that progress has not been achieved for children who are living in low-and middle-income countries, where 30 percent or less will survive a cancer diagnosis,” he said.  “One of the primary reasons is because of care that is simply not available or accessible, and medicines are a core part of the treatment of childhood cancer.” WHO and St. Jude’s hospital have formed a partnership to change this situation, establishing a platform that will dramatically increase access to childhood cancer medicines around the world. To kickstart this program, St. Jude is making a six-year investment by contributing $200 million.  Ilbawi said the money initially will provide medicines at no cost to 12 countries that will take part in a two-year pilot program, with governments …

The Western U.S. is bracing for the brunt of a major winter storm expected to hit Monday, bringing travel headaches, the threat of localized flooding and some relief in an abnormally warm fall.  Light rain and snow fell in Northern California on Sunday, giving residents a taste of what’s to come. The multi-day storm could drop more than 8 feet (2.4 meters) of snow on the highest peaks and drench other parts of California as it pushes south and east before moving out midweek.  “This is a pretty widespread event,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Anna Wanless in Sacramento. “Most of California, if not all, will see some sort of rain and snow.”  The precipitation will bring at least temporary relief to the broader region that’s been gripped by drought caused by climate change. The latest U.S. drought monitor shows parts of Montana, Oregon, California, Nevada and Utah in exceptional drought, which is the worst category.  Most reservoirs that deliver water to states, cities, tribes, farmers and utilities rely on melted snow in the springtime.  The storm this week is typical for this time of the year but notable because it’s the first big snow that is expected to significantly affect travel with ice and snow on the roads, strong wind and limited visibility, Wanless said. Drivers on some mountainous passes on Sunday had to wrap their tires in chains.  Officials urged people to delay travel and stay indoors. Rain could cause minor flooding and rockslides, especially in areas that have been …

The top U.S. infectious disease expert on Sunday urged eligible Americans to get booster coronavirus vaccinations to give them the best protection against the new omicron variant. Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, told ABC’s “This Week” show that omicron can evade the protection provided by the three vaccines available in the United States. Nearly 202 million Americans are considered fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, but only 53.8 million of them have received booster shots. “If you want to be optimally protected, absolutely get a booster,” he said. “The somewhat encouraging news is that preliminary data show that when you get a booster… it raises the level of protection high enough that it then does do well against the omicron,” Fauci said. Health experts say that early anecdotal evidence shows that those who contract the omicron variant experience a mild illness, but its long-term effects are unknown.  Omicron is highly transmissible, but the delta variant is still driving a sharp increase in the number of new cases in the U.S. The U.S. is now adding another 118,000 cases a day, a 42% increase in the last two weeks, but so far there are only 140 reported omicron cases.  The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus now stands at nearly 794,000, more than in any other country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. Fauci said 60 million eligible Americans have not been vaccinated and that about 100 million are eligible for boosters. …

More than 400 million South Asian children have been affected by school closures extending into a second year in some countries during the COVID-19 pandemic according to a new UNICEF report. The United Nations agency has urged the region’s countries to fully reopen schools, warning that the consequences of lost learning are huge and will be long-lasting in a region where access to remote learning is limited. “The remarkable achievements our region has made in advancing child rights over recent decades are now at risk,” said George Laryea-Adjei, UNICEF regional director for South Asia. “If we fail to act, the worst impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will be felt for decades to come,” he said. School closures in South Asia have lasted longer than in many other parts of the world with schools remaining fully closed on an average for nearly 32 weeks between March 2020 and August this year, according to the report. In Bangladesh, schools were shut for 18 months, until September, one of the longest closures in the world. In countries such as India and Nepal they have only partially reopened. The transition to remote learning has been difficult in a region where many houses do not have internet connectivity and where access to smartphones is limited – an earlier study showed that in India for example nearly half of the students between ages 6 and 13 reported not using any type of remote learning during school closures. Many teachers also found they lacked the training to …

Six years ago today, nearly 200 nations signed the Paris Climate Accord, where they agreed to keep the rise in global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Scientists say that threshold is an absolute minimum to avoid catastrophic climate change. “Our fragile planet is hanging by a thread,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “We are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe.” As he wound up the recent COP26 in Glasgow, Guterres had that harsh warning for the 200 countries who had gathered to talk climate change — and how to slow it down. Hanging over the summit was the deadline of 2030 for a drastic reduction of greenhouse emissions that was set six years ago at COP21 in Paris. Former executive secretary of the U.N. Climate Convention, Christiana Figueres, remembers it as a historic event. “It was a real breakthrough for the United Nations to have a completely unanimous, legally binding pathway for decarbonizing the global economy,” Figueres said. Secretary of state at the time, John Kerry signed that agreement for the U.S. “It really was an exciting moment when 195,196 countries come together simultaneously, all wanting to move in the same direction, understanding the stakes,” Kerry said.  2015 was the hottest year on record. Scientists pointed to that as sure proof that global warming was real and serious. But that record keeps on getting broken as the planet gets hotter year by year. The World Meteorological Organization says the planet has been propelled into …

Italy’s La Scala has postponed its ballet season premiere after a coronavirus outbreak in its ranks, just days after the famed Milan theater staged its high-profile opera season opener with a full-capacity audience. At least one of the four ballerinas who tested positive for COVID-19 also appeared in the Dec. 7 premiere of the opera Macbeth. Ten other people linked to the outbreak tested positive for the virus, all of them theater support personnel, including someone who worked in the hairdressing department, the theater said in a statement. Italian health authorities placed several other people in quarantine because they were in close contact with those confirmed infected, La Scala said. La Scala Theatre Ballet was scheduled to perform La Bayadere to open its season on Dec. 15. The performance has been pushed back until Dec. 21. The 19th century ballet is based on a score by Ludwig Minkus and choreography that Rudolf Nureyev debuted with the Paris Opera ballet in 1992. La Scala’s performance of the ballet marks the first time the Nureyev Foundation has allowed another company to perform it. The opening of La Scala’s opera season is considered a highlight of Italy’s cultural calendar and took on added glitter this year after the 2020 edition was televised due to the pandemic. While the Dec. 7 performance officially launched La Scala’s opera season, the theater staged pre-season operas, ballets and other events for several months, one of the few European houses to resume regular, full-capacity performances. Italy, like other …

On a moonless summer night in Hawaii, krill, fish and crabs swirl through a beam of light as two researchers peer into the water above a vibrant reef. Minutes later, like clockwork, they see eggs and sperm from spawning coral drifting past their boat. They scoop up the fishy-smelling blobs and put them into test tubes. In this Darwinian experiment, the scientists are trying to speed up coral’s evolutionary clock to breed “super corals” that can better withstand the impacts of global warming. For the past five years, the researchers have been conducting experiments to prove their theories would work. Now, they’re getting ready to plant laboratory-raised corals in the ocean to see how they survive in nature. “Assisted evolution started out as this kind of crazy idea that you could actually help something change and allow that to survive better because it is changing,” said Kira Hughes, a University of Hawaii researcher and the project’s manager. Speeding up nature Researchers tested three methods of making corals more resilient: Selective breeding that carries on desirable traits from parents. Acclimation that conditions corals to tolerate heat by exposing them to increasing temperatures. And modifying the algae that give corals essential nutrients.Hughes said the methods all have proved successful in the lab.   And while some other scientists worried this is meddling with nature, Hughes said the rapidly warming planet leaves no other options. “We have to intervene in order to make a change for coral reefs to survive into the future,” …

The eldest daughter of pioneering U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard blasted off aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin commercial space tourism rocket on Saturday, 60 years after her late father’s famed suborbital NASA flight at the dawn of the Space Age.   Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, who was a schoolgirl when her father first streaked into space, was one of six passengers buckled into the cabin of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft as it lifted off from a launch site outside the west Texas town of Van Horn.   The crew capsule at the top of the fully autonomous, six-story-tall spaceship is designed to soar to an altitude of about 350,000 feet (106 km) before falling back to Earth, descending under a canopy of parachutes to the desert floor for a gentle landing.   The entire flight, from liftoff to touchdown, was expected to last a little more than 10 minutes, with the crew experiencing a few minutes of weightlessness at the very apex of the suborbital flight.   The spacecraft itself is named for Alan Shepard, who in 1961 made history as the second person, and the first American, to travel into space—a 15-minute suborbital flight as one of NASA’s original “Mercury Seven” astronauts. A decade later, Shepard walked on the moon as commander of the Apollo 14 mission, famously hitting two golf galls on the lunar surface.   Churchley was one of two honorary, non-paying guest passengers chosen by Blue Origin for Saturday’s flight. The other is Michael Strahan, 50, …

There’s no clear-cut definition for when a pandemic starts and ends, and how much of a threat a global outbreak is posing can vary by country. “It’s somewhat a subjective judgment because it’s not just about the number of cases. It’s about severity and it’s about impact,” says Dr. Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergencies chief. In January 2020, WHO designated the virus a global health crisis “of international concern.” A couple months later in March, the United Nations health agency described the outbreak as a “pandemic,” reflecting the fact that the virus had spread to nearly every continent and numerous other health officials were saying it could be described as such. The pandemic may be widely considered over when WHO decides the virus is no longer an emergency of international concern, a designation its expert committee has been reassessing every three months. But when the most acute phases of the crisis ease within countries could vary. “There is not going to be one day when someone says, ‘OK, the pandemic is over,’” says Dr. Chris Woods, an infectious disease expert at Duke University. Although there’s no universally agreed-upon criteria, he said countries will likely look for sustained reduction in cases over time. Scientists expect COVID-19 will eventually settle into becoming a more predictable virus like the flu, meaning it will cause seasonal outbreaks but not the huge surges we’re seeing right now. But even then, Woods says some habits, such as wearing masks in public places, might continue. “Even after …

As the omicron variant sweeps through South Africa, Dr. Unben Pillay is seeing dozens of sick patients a day. Yet he hasn’t had to send anyone to the hospital. That’s one of the reasons why he, along with other doctors and medical experts, suspect that the omicron version really is causing milder COVID-19 than delta, even if it seems to be spreading faster. “They are able to manage the disease at home,” Pillay said of his patients. “Most have recovered within the 10- to 14-day isolation period.” said Pillay. And that includes older patients and those with health problems that can make them more vulnerable to becoming severely ill from a coronavirus infection, he said. In the two weeks since omicron first was reported in Southern Africa, other doctors have shared similar stories. All caution that it will take many more weeks to collect enough data to be sure, their observations and the early evidence offer some clues. According to South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases: Only about 30% of those hospitalized with COVID-19 in recent weeks have been seriously ill, less than half the rate as during the first weeks of previous pandemic waves. Average hospital stays for COVID-19 have been shorter this time — about 2.8 days compared to eight days. Just 3% of patients hospitalized recently with COVID-19 have died, versus about 20% in the country’s earlier outbreaks. “At the moment, virtually everything points toward it being milder disease,” Willem Hanekom, director of the Africa Health …

The eldest daughter of pioneering U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard is set for a ride to the edge of space aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin commercial rocket ship on Saturday, 60 years after her late father’s famed suborbital NASA flight at the dawn of the Space Age. Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, who was a schoolgirl when her father first streaked into space, is one of six individuals due for liftoff at 8:45 a.m. Central time (1445 GMT) from Blue Origin’s launch site outside the rural west Texas town of Van Horn. They will be flying aboard the crew capsule of a fully autonomous, 6-story-tall spacecraft dubbed New Shepard, designed to soar to an altitude of about 106 kilometers before falling back to Earth for a parachute landing on the desert floor. The entire flight, from liftoff to touchdown, is expected to last a little over 10 minutes, with the crew experiencing a few minutes of weightlessness at the very apex of the suborbital flight. The spacecraft itself is named for Alan Shepard, who in 1961 made history as the second person, and the first American, to travel into space — a 15-minute suborbital flight as one of NASA’s original ‘Mercury Seven’ astronauts. A decade later, Shepard walked on the moon as commander of the Apollo 14 mission, famously hitting two golf galls on the lunar surface. Churchley is one of two honorary, non-paying guest passengers chosen by Blue Origin for Saturday’s flight. The other is Michael Strahan, 50, a retired National …

More U.S. states desperate to fight COVID-19 are calling on the National Guard and other military personnel to assist virus-weary medical staffs at hospitals and other care centers. Unvaccinated people are overwhelming hospitals in certain states, especially in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest. New York, meanwhile, announced a statewide indoor mask order, effective Monday and lasting five weeks through the holiday season. “We’re entering a time of uncertainty, and we could either plateau here or our cases could get out of control,” Governor Kathy Hochul warned Friday. In Michigan, health director Elizabeth Hertel was equally blunt: “I want to be absolutely clear: You are risking serious illness, hospitalization and even death” without a vaccination. The seven-day rolling average for daily new cases in the U.S. rose over the past two weeks to 117,677 by Thursday, compared to 84,756 on Nov. 25, Thanksgiving Day, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has soared to about 54,000 on average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, the country is approaching a new milestone of 800,000 COVID-19 deaths. More than 200 million Americans, or about 60% of the population, are now fully vaccinated. In Maine, which hit a pandemic high this week with nearly 400 COVID-19 patients in hospitals, as many as 75 members of the National Guard were being summoned to try to keep people out of critical care with monoclonal antibodies and to perform other non-clinical tasks. Maine has one of the …

South Korea, widely seen as a global model of coronavirus containment, faces its biggest pandemic challenge yet, as COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to rise after the country began removing pandemic related restrictions. Daily caseloads surpassed 7,000 Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. That is quadruple the daily numbers reported at the beginning of November, when South Korea pivoted toward its living with COVID-19 plan. In the Seoul metropolitan area, where more than half the country’s population resides, intensive care hospital beds are full. The country has also hit new daily highs for the number of severely ill COVID-19 patients, which stood at 857 Thursday. Although South Korea has tallied only a fraction of the cases and deaths of other developed countries such as the United States and Britain, its fatality rate rose to 1.4% over the past week. That is the ninth highest among 38 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations. South Korea’s deteriorating situation demonstrates the challenges of returning to life as normal, complicated by the delta variant that undermined government projections, even in a country that had until now been spared the worst of the pandemic. Grim warnings Government officials, who have been careful not to raise unnecessary alarms as they sought to keep businesses open, are now sounding a grimmer tone. At a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters on Friday, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, who oversees the pandemic response, judged that the country’s medical response capability was quickly burning out, warning that stricter social distancing measures may need to be enforced if the “risky situation” does not soon turn …

Lung cancer is the deadliest form of the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. But it doesn’t get nearly the same amount of research dollars as breast or prostate cancer. That may be changing, thanks to one man’s efforts and new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. VOA’s Saba Shah Khan reports. …

The United States rushed millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses for children ages 5-11 across the nation, but demand for inoculations for younger kids has been low, more than a dozen state public health officials and physicians said. Of the 28 million eligible U.S. children in that age group, around 5 million have received at least one dose, according to federal data, likely satisfying initial pent-up demand from parents who were waiting to vaccinate their kids. At the current pace, fewer than half of U.S. children ages 5-11 are expected to be fully vaccinated in the coming months, state officials told Reuters. Some states, including Mississippi, said thousands of vaccine doses are sitting idle. “We are concerned that the demand is not going to be as quick and as great as it was for the adult population,” said Karyl Rattay, director of Delaware’s division of public health. A smaller dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 5-11 received U.S. authorization last month, with the first shots going into young arms on Nov. 3. Vaccine hesitancy among adult caregivers has affected the vaccination rate for this age group more than other groups, physicians told Reuters. “I think parents are nervous. There’s probably a cohort of parents who felt comfortable vaccinating themselves… but are hesitant to vaccinate their children,” said Dr. Matthew Harris, a pediatrician leading COVID-19 vaccinations for the Northwell Health hospital system in New York. The push to vaccinate children has taken on fresh urgency amid concerns that the …

Health officials in the United States, Israel and other nations have for months been pushing for COVID-19 booster shots among older populations, and those calls are now growing worldwide.  The issue was discussed at an extraordinary meeting at World Health Organization in Geneva convened by SAGE, the 15-member Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on vaccination. Current data show that vaccines against COVID-19 provide a robust level of protection against severe forms of disease. However, emerging evidence indicates vaccines begin to lose their effectiveness about six months after they have been administered. This puts older adults and people with underlying conditions at particular risk.  Chair of SAGE, Alejandro Cravioto, says the group of experts agrees a booster shot would provide a greater level of protection for people at risk.  However, he notes vaccines are in short supply in many parts of the world.  He says the wide administration of booster doses risks exacerbating inequities in vaccine access. He notes most current infections are among unvaccinated people, the majority of whom live in poor, developing countries.  He says SAGE believes they should receive these life-saving vaccines instead of further doses being provided to people who already are fully inoculated against the coronavirus. “For the time being, we continue to support — one, the need for equity in the distribution and allocation of vaccines and, two, the use of third doses only on those that we have previously recommended.  Those that have received inactivated vaccines and those that are immuno-compromised, which are the …

As cases of COVID-19 caused by the omicron variant soar in South Africa, hospital officials monitoring the outbreak say patient reports offer compelling evidence the variant causes illness that is less severe than previous forms of the disease. “Most of the people we’re seeing are having mild or moderate form of COVID-19, and not the severe form that requires hospitalization and may lead to death,” said Dr. Richard Friedland, the chief executive of Netcare, one of South Africa’s largest private hospital groups, based in Johannesburg. “Patients present with mild to moderate flu-like symptoms, a scratchy or sore throat, a headache, or a runny or blocked nose,” he said.   Similar symptoms are being reported nationwide as hospitals monitor patients. World health authorities caution that the patient information is preliminary, and they say it is not known how omicron will behave as it spreads more widely. The World Health Organization says the variant has been found in more than 50 countries. Anecdotal information from countries including the United States so far indicates less severe symptoms than exhibited in previous variants, echoing findings in South Africa hospitals. “We certainly have information from South Africa that many of the patients that are identified with omicron have a milder course of disease, but it does take time for people to go through the full course of their infection,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19. South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases reported 20,000 new COVID-19 cases and 36 COVID-19 related deaths Wednesday, …

South Africa recorded more than 20,000 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, nearly double the number from one week earlier. The government is making a renewed push for people to get vaccinated, but so far is avoiding new lockdown measures, in an effort to protect the economy. Coronavirus cases are rising dramatically in South Africa with over 113,000 people currently infected. Experts say the omicron variant discovered in South Africa last month is most likely driving the latest wave. But Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele told reporters today that the government is trying to avoid stricter lockdown measures. “The damage the restrictions caused last year, level five and so on, thousands of business that stopped and the number of jobs that have been lost. The attitude the government is adopting is find the best possible way of navigating whilst ensuring that… the economy moves,” said Gungubele. The South African government is championing vaccinations in order to protect more people from severe illness. The efforts appear to be working, with more than 133,000 people receiving a shot Wednesday. It means 43 percent of adults have at least had one dose. Gungubele said vaccinations are key to protecting lives as the government tries to protect both public health and the economy. “You need to find a balance between the livelihood and lives, because these are two side of the same coin and that coin is life. When one of them collapse, the life collapse,” said Gungubele. Still, hospitalizations are increasing, with over 300 …