Year: 2021

Battling the coronavirus pandemic and climate change, as well as working together on trade and foreign affairs are on the agenda Tuesday as U.S. President Joe Biden and European Union leaders hold a summit in Brussels. In statements issued ahead of the talks, the two sides said they would reiterate support for the COVAX facility for ensuring equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, and to work together on ways to promote a global recovery from the economic impacts of the pandemic. They also planned to discuss efforts to reform the World Health Organization. After both were a major topic at G-7 and NATO meetings this week, Russia and China will again be on the agenda Tuesday.  Both the White House and European Union said the leaders would also express a commitment to supporting democracy and combatting corruption, and to upholding human rights around the world. They are also pledging to cooperate on issues involving cybersecurity and migration. The EU side is being represented in the summit by European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. On climate change, the United States and the EU said they would reaffirm commitments to upholding the 2015 Paris climate agreement and to become climate neutral economies by 2050. They also said they plan to urge other “major players” to take ambitious climate actions. Adopted by nearly 200 nations when it was initially signed, the Paris climate agreement’s goal is to slow down global warming.   …

Another highly effective vaccine is poised to join the fight against COVID-19.  But its impact may be blunted by supply issues. The manufacturer expected to produce the bulk of the doses is in India, where the government has banned vaccine exports.  FILE – A car drives past the sign for vaccine developer Novavax at the company’s headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Nov. 30, 2020.”Many of our first doses will go to … low- and middle-income countries, and that was the goal to begin with,” Novavax CEO Stanley Erck told The Associated Press. The vaccine does not have the special cold storage requirements of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines. That means low- and middle-income countries “can use the cold chain that they have already set up for routine childhood vaccines,” said William Moss, executive director of the Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center. “They don’t need to make modifications to handle the cold chain requirements” of the Pfizer and Moderna shots. Doses in limbo Novavax also has a deal with the Serum Institute of India (SII) to manufacture an additional 750 million doses of the vaccine.  SII is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer and the main supplier of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to COVAX. But the Indian government has barred the company from exporting those doses as the country suffers through a devastating wave of COVID-19 infections.  People register their names to receive a coronavirus vaccine at a free camp in Kolkata, India, June 14, 2021.”Considering the situation in India, there are still a lot of questions …

The World Health Organization said Monday that while the number of new COVID-19 cases has fallen steadily for seven straight weeks, the virus continues to spread and kill people in Africa, a region with little or no access to vaccines and treatments.Speaking from the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the overall decline in new cases, the longest since the pandemic began, was certainly welcome news. But he said deaths overall were not falling as quickly and declined only slightly last week.Tedros said the decline in cases also masks the fact that the virus continues to spread and kill in regions such as Africa, which has limited access to vaccines and treatments such as oxygen and diagnostic equipment.FILE – A medical team rolls a coronavirus patient from a bed onto a stretcher in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at Kenyatta National Hospital, in Nairobi, Kenya, April 14, 2021.He cited a recent study in the British medical journal The Lancet showing Africa with the highest global mortality rate among critically ill COVID-19 patients, despite it having fewer reported cases than most other regions. Tedros said that available evidence suggests new variants have substantially increased transmission globally, especially in areas with low vaccination rates. The risks have increased for people who are not protected, which is most of the world’s population, he said. “Right now, the virus is moving faster than the global distribution of vaccines.”The WHO chief expressed his gratitude to the leaders at the G-7 summit last …

Medical authorities in Cameroon marked World Blood Donor Day on Monday with continued pleas for blood donors, after a dramatic drop in donations over the past year. Donations fell by half in 2020, then by nearly half again so far this year, worsening the country’s blood shortage.Officials in Cameroon point to 32-year-old Alphonse Suh Chia as a good example of a determined, voluntary blood donor.  Chia says he became a blood donor in February, after he watched as a 6-year-old boy died of severe anemia in the Central Hospital in Yaounde. He says the medical staff members on duty told him that the blood bank was dry and there was no one to donate blood to save the child’s life. Chia says he was being treated for malaria at the hospital and could not donate blood at the time.But since then, he says, he has joined an association called Green Hearts that donate blood to people in need. Cameroon says it needs 400,000 pints of blood each year to meet the medical needs of its 25 million people. But in 2020, people donated just 48,000 units of blood, down from 103,000 units in 2019. The central African state says blood donations have fallen again so far this year. Dora Ngum Suh Mbanya, director general of Cameroon’s National Blood Transfusion Center, says COVID-19 scares people away from donating blood.”With the COVID pandemic in 2020, there was a deficit of 44 percent in blood donation,” Mbanya said. “What we gathered is that COVID had a huge …

U.S.-based biotech company Novavax announced Monday that Phase 3 clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine show it to be more than 90 percent effective at preventing the disease and provide good protection against variants. A release from the company said the study enrolled 29,960 participants across 119 sites in the United States and Mexico with an emphasis on recruiting a representative population of communities and demographic groups most impacted by the disease. While demand for COVID-19 shots in the U.S. has dropped off dramatically, the need for more vaccines around the world remains critical as many developing nations are just getting vaccine programs going or have yet to start. The Novavax vaccine, which is easy to store and transport, is expected to play an important role in boosting vaccine supplies in the developing world. In an interview with the Associated Press news agency, Novavax Chief Executive Stanley Erck said, “Many of our first doses will go to … low-and middle-income countries, and that was the goal to begin with.”   The White House’s top adviser on the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told The Washington Post the vaccine is “really very impressive,” saying it is on par with the most effective shots developed during the pandemic. “It’s very important for the world’s population to have, yet again, another highly efficacious vaccine that looks in its trial to have a good safety profile.” The company intends to file for regulatory authorizations in the third quarter, upon completion of the final phases of …

Elizabeth Sherr had always had a passion for the ocean since she was young so trying to clean up the trash that litters beaches and the sea seemed a natural move. When she moved to live next to the sea in Barcelona, the native New Yorker posted some videos on TikTok encouraging others to help rid the beach of cigarette butts and plastic bottles but did not hold out much hope it would catch on. This undated handout photograph released on Jan. 14, 2021 by the University of Barcelona shows an underwater view of a Posidonia Oceanica seagrass meadow in the Mediterranean Sea. (AFP photo / University of Barcelona / Jordi Regas)To her surprise, after one video went viral, Sherr became the face of a global cleanup operation that removed almost 800,000 pieces from public spaces worldwide in ten days. The FILE – Two Belgian fans, wearing the Belgian colors, walk through plastic cups and other garbage after taking part in a celebration in Antwerp, Belgium, June 18, 2016.Single-use plastics are responsible for 49% of all marine pollution, while 27% is caused by plastics linked to fishing, according to data from the European Parliament. The 24-year-old campaigner said people from 33 countries from Peru to Honduras and Jordan to Cyprus joined in. “Many people got in touch to tell me that their attitude to sea pollution has completely changed since taking part in this challenge,” she said.  Sherr, who grew up in Manhattan, revealed the success of the challenge was due, in part, to a literary …

Scientists who have been challenging the theory that the coronavirus emerged naturally and couldn’t have leaked from a Chinese lab are calling for an inquiry into the role played during the pandemic by leading Western science and medical journals, including Nature and The Lancet. They say the editors of the influential journals rebuffed dozens of critical articles which raised at least the possibility of the coronavirus being engineered and that it might have subsequently leaked from a lab in Chinese city of Wuhan.  “The managers of these journals may have wanted to appease the Chinese Communist Party, as China is where an increasing proportion of their revenue comes from, and China has made it clear that those journals it supports must agree to adhere to its policy agendas,” Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor of medicine at Australia’s Flinders University, told VOA. “So many papers questioning the origins were quickly rejected by the journal editors at Nature and Lancet, etc. without even being sent for review. This early rejection was therefore presumably largely not on scientific grounds but on political or other grounds determined at a high level within those journals,” he says.  The editors of The Lancet and Nature reject the complaints, saying scientific merit determines the submissions they pick to publish and not politics. FILE – Workers in PPE spray the ground with desinfectant in Baishazhou market during a visit of World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, in WuhanA World Health Organization-led team earlier this year ruled …

A report published in The New England Journal of Medicine shows the potentially lifesaving results of lab-grown mosquitos. Infected with bacteria, the insects may no longer have the ability to transmit dengue. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.  …

A mystery bidder paid $28 million at auction Saturday for a seat alongside Jeff Bezos on board the first crewed spaceflight of the billionaire’s company Blue Origin next month.The Amazon founder revealed this week that both he and his brother Mark would take seats on board the company’s New Shepard launch vehicle on July 20, to fly to the edge of space and back.The Bezos brothers will be joined by the winner of Saturday’s charity auction, whose identity remains unknown, and by a fourth, as yet unnamed space tourist.”The name of the auction winner will be released in the weeks following the auction’s conclusion,” tweeted Blue Origin following the sale.”Then, the fourth and final crew member will be announced — stay tuned.”Saturday’s successful bidder beat out some 20 rivals in an auction launched on May 19 and wrapped up with a 10-minute, livecast frenzy.Bidding had reached $4.8 million by Thursday, but shot up spectacularly in the final live auction, rising by million-dollar increments.The proceeds — aside from a 6% auctioneer’s commission — will go to Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future, which aims to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.Taking off from a desert in western Texas, the New Shepard trip will last 10 minutes, four of which passengers will spend above the Karman line that marks the recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.After lift-off, the capsule separates from its booster, then spends four minutes at an altitude exceeding 100 …

Saudi Arabia announced Saturday this year’s Hajj pilgrimage will be limited to no more than 60,000 people, all of them from within the kingdom, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.The announcement by the kingdom comes after it ran an incredibly pared-down pilgrimage last year over the virus, but still allowed a small number of the faithful to take part in the annual ceremony.A statement on the state-run Saudi Press Agency quoted the kingdom’s Hajj and Umrah Ministry making the announcement. It said this year’s Hajj, which will begin in mid-July, will be limited to those ages 18 to 65.Those taking part must be vaccinated as well, the ministry said.”The kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is honored to host pilgrims every year, confirms that this arrangement comes out of its constant concern for the health, safety and security of pilgrims as well as the safety of their countries,” the statement said.In last year’s Hajj, as few as 1,000 people already residing in Saudi Arabia were selected to take part. Two-thirds were foreign residents from among the 160 different nationalities that would have normally been represented at the Hajj. One-third were Saudi security personnel and medical staff.Each year, up to 2 million Muslims perform the Hajj, a physically demanding and often costly pilgrimage that draws the faithful from around the world. The Hajj, required of all able-bodied Muslims to perform once in their lifetime, is seen as a chance to wipe clean past sins and bring about greater humility and unity among …

The recent breakup of an Antarctic ice shelf is speeding up the ocean-bound descent of a glacier holding back at least a meter of sea level rise, Ice front of the ice shelf in front of Pine Island Glacier, a major glacier system of West Antarctica.”The real question is, how fast is that going to happen, and how much time do we have to adapt?” said Pierre Dutrieux, an oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey and a co-author of the study. When ice from the ice sheet enters the ocean, it raises sea levels, which will eventually make coastal cities unlivable.The worrying activity prompted researchers at the University of Washington and British Antarctic Survey to study the reasons behind the glacier’s accelerated movement. They shared their results June 11 in Science Advances.”We naively thought that the ocean was going to be the main driver of the retreat and the acceleration,” Dutrieux said. “And maybe at some point the atmosphere, if it continues to warm up, was going to play a role.”The authors first used satellite images to observe changes in how fast the ice was moving. When they ran a computer model to simulate ice flow, the results suggested that the loss of the ice shelves could better explain the glacier’s speedup than warming ocean temperatures.”Ice shelves tend to hold back the flow of ice into the ocean. So if you remove an ice shelf, the glaciers will move faster,” said Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington’s …

An auction for a ride into space next month alongside Jeff Bezos and his brother ended Saturday with a winning $28 million bid.The Amazon founder’s rocket company, Blue Origin, did not disclose the winner’s name following the live online auction. The identity will be revealed in a couple weeks — closer to the brief up-and-down flight from West Texas on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing.It will be the first launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket with people on board, kicking off the company’s space tourism business. Fifteen previous test flights of the reusable rocket and capsule since 2015 — short hops lasting about 10 minutes — were all successful.Saturday’s auction followed more than a month of online bidding that had reached $4.8 million by Friday. More than 7,500 people from 159 countries registered to bid, according to Blue Origin. More than 20 bidders — the high rollers — took part in Saturday’s auction.Bezos announced Monday that he and his younger brother, Mark, would be on board New Shepard’s first crew flight; the news quickly boosted bidding. The winning amount is being donated to Blue Origin’s Club for the Future, an educational effort to promote science and tech among young people.The completely automated capsule can carry up to six passengers, each of whom gets a big window. Blue Origin’s top sales director, Ariane Cornell, said following the auction that the fourth and final seat on the debut crew flight would be announced …

Moscow’s mayor on Saturday ordered a week off for some workplaces and imposed restrictions on many businesses to fight coronavirus infections that have more than doubled in the past week.The national coronavirus task force reported 6,701 new confirmed cases in Moscow, compared with 2,936 on June 6. Nationally, the daily tally has spiked by nearly half over the past week, to 13,510.After several weeks of lockdown as the pandemic spread in the spring of 2020, the Russian capital eased restrictions and did not reimpose any during subsequent case increases. But because of the recent sharp rise, “it is impossible not to react to such a situation,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.He ordered enterprises that do not normally work on weekends to remain closed for the next week while continuing to pay employees. Food courts and children’s play areas in shopping centers also are to close for a week beginning Sunday, and restaurants and bars must limit their service.People wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus ride a subway car in Moscow, Russia, June 10, 2021.Mask, glove enforcementEarlier in the week, city authorities said enforcement of mask- and glove-wearing requirements on mass transit, in stores and in other public places would be strengthened and that violators could face fines of up to 5,000 rubles ($70).Although Russia was the first country to deploy a coronavirus vaccine, its use has been relatively low; many Russians are reluctant to get vaccinated.President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said 18 million Russians had …

Concerns about the safety of the COVID vaccine are common especially when it comes to inoculating very young children. A new study suggests that some moms may be passing along antibodies to their infants. VOA’s Dilge Timocin has more.  Camera: Tezcan Taskiran …

Top U.S. and Chinese diplomats appear to have had another sharply worded exchange, with Beijing saying it told the U.S. to cease interfering in its internal affairs and accusing Washington of politicizing the search for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.Senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi and Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a phone call Friday that revealed wide divisions in several contentious areas, including the curtailing of freedoms in Hong Kong and the mass detention of Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region.Calls for a more thorough investigation into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 are particularly sensitive for China because of suggestions that it might have have escaped from a laboratory in the central city of Wuhan, where cases were first discovered.Yang said China was “gravely concerned” over what he called “absurd” stories that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab.China “firmly opposes any despicable acts that use the epidemic as an excuse to slander China and to shift blames,” Yang was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.“Some people in the United States have fabricated and peddled absurd stories claiming Wuhan lab leak, which China is gravely concerned about,” Yang said. “China urges the United States to respect facts and science, refrain from politicizing COVID-19 origin tracing and concentrate on international anti-pandemic cooperation.”The State Department said Blinken “stressed the importance of cooperation and transparency regarding the origin of the virus, including the need for (World Health Organization) Phase 2 expert-led studies …

COVID-19 vaccines for children are moving closer to availability, but access remains limited.Moderna announced late this week that it was submitting its vaccine to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization in children age 12 and older.The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has already received the go-ahead for this age group.The companies are testing their vaccines on younger age groups, down to 6 months. Results are expected in the fall.The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are moving into pediatric populations ahead of those from Johnson & Johnson and the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca partnership.The AstraZeneca vaccine makes up the bulk of the doses delivered through COVAX, the WHO-backed program delivering shots to low- and middle-income countries.Rare but serious blood clotting issues have slowed down the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. A study this week in the journal Nature Medicine found a rate of about one case per every 100,000 people who received the AstraZeneca shot.The vaccine’s benefits still far outweigh the risks, according to regulators in the United States and Europe and the World Health Organization. These kinds of blood clots can also be a complication of COVID-19, the Scottish study noted. They are also a rare side effect of other common vaccines, including those for influenza, hepatitis B and measles, mumps and rubella.As to whether this side effect will affect children, “we don’t yet know the answer to that,” said William Moss, head of the Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center. “It’s possible either way. The risk could be …

The G-7 nations announced Friday that they will donate a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to low- and medium-income nations.  The U.S., as previously announced, will donate 500 million shots, while Britain will donate 100 million.  “I hope my fellow @G7 leaders will make similar pledges so that, together, we can vaccinate the world by the end of next year,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson posted on Twitter Friday.  G-7 Will Donate 1 Billion COVID Vaccines to WorldUS shots will begin shipment in August President Biden says; Britain will donate 100 million jabsChildhood vaccinations A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday, focusing on 10 jurisdictions, found that between March and May of 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak resulted in a marked decline in routine childhood vaccinations compared to the same period in 2018 and 2019.   The study said the decline placed “U.S. children and adolescents at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases,” such as measles and polio.The CDC study also found the vaccination rate increased from June to September 2020, but “this increase was not sufficient to achieve catch-up coverage.”The CDC recommended health care providers “assess the vaccination status of all pediatric patients, including adolescents, and contact those who are behind schedule to ensure that all children and adolescents are fully vaccinated” to avoid disease outbreaks.   Caribbean cruise infections Meanwhile, two passengers who shared a room on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship tested positive for COVID-19 during required end-of-cruise testing on the Celebrity Millenium ship.  The two are asymptomatic, in …

Authorities in Kenya are taking steps to eradicate trachoma, an infectious disease that is a leading cause of blindness in Africa. About 7 million people in central Kenya are at risk for the disease, as Brenda Mulinya reports from Nairobi. Camera: Amos Wangwa …

On Thursday, before the opening Friday of the G-7 Summit in Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the group is set to donate a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to low- and middle-income countries.Johnson’s announcement came after U.S. President Joe Biden said earlier in the day that his administration is donating 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, half of the G-7 vaccine trove.”We’re going to help lead the world out of this pandemic working alongside our global partners,” Biden said.Britain will donate 100 million shots.“As a result of the success of the U.K.’s vaccine program, we are now in a position to share some of our surplus doses with those who need them,” Johnson said. “In doing so, we will take a massive step towards beating this pandemic for good.”The U.S. shots will begin shipment in August “as quickly as they roll off the manufacturing line,” Biden said in Cornwall on Thursday, adding that 200 million doses will be delivered by the end of this year and 300 million in the first half of 2022.Biden said the donation will be made with no strings attached.“Our vaccine donations don’t include pressure for favors or potential concessions. We’re doing this to save lives, to end this pandemic,” he said.Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, joined Biden for the announcement.“We are testing our vaccines response to newly arising variants,” Bourla said, noting that so far not a single variant has escaped the protection provided by the vaccine.With the pledge, the U.S. also aims …

Kenyan authorities are working to eradicate trachoma, an infectious disease that is a leading cause of blindness in Africa.  About 7 million people in central Kenya are at risk for the disease.As Elizabeth Partoti, sits outside a clinic in Kajiado county in Kenya, she stares, unseeingly, into the dry and brittle spaces outside the health facility. In a few minutes a surgeon will carry out a corrective eye operation and allow the more than 70-year-old woman to see clearly for the first time in over a decade.She is one of thousands of people in Kenya who have either lost or are gradually losing their sight due to trachoma.“My eyes have been bothering me because I have grown old,” she said. “The eyelashes are always getting into my eyes, causing me a lot of pain, my granddaughter has been helping, removing them physically with her fingers, but it is very painful.’’Trachoma is caused by bacteria that attack the inner surfaces of the eyelids.Dr. Peter Ekwum, an eye surgeon who has been carrying out trachoma surgeries in Kajiado county, says sight loss from trachoma is preventable but irreversible if not treated in time.“Every time you blink, the eyelashes rub on the cornea and with time they peel off the first layer of the cornea, which results in an ulcer,” he explained. “The ulcer is very painful, but at the end of the day, the ulcer will heal and leaves a scar.”That repeated scarring of the eye’s cornea eventually impairs vision and often …

South Africa has been gripped by the mystery of whether a woman has, as has been claimed, actually given birth to 10 babies, in what would then be the world’s first recorded case of decuplets.Gosiame Thamara Sithole from the Tembisa township near Johannesburg gave birth to the babies on Monday, according to the Pretoria News newspaper which quoted the parents. The babies — seven boys and three girls — have not made a public appearance or been captured on camera, although they were born prematurely, the newspaper reported.The South African government said it is still trying to verify the claim.That’s led to South Africans obsessing on social media over whether the story of the “Tembisa 10″ is indeed true.The father, Teboho Tsotetsi, told the paper his wife had given birth in a hospital in the capital Pretoria. He said it was a big surprise for the parents after doctors only detected eight babies in prenatal scans.”It’s seven boys and three girls. She was seven months and seven days pregnant. I am happy. I am emotional,” the newspaper quoted Tsotetsi as saying.The couple already have 6-year-old twins, which would make the total an even dozen kids, if the claim is true.South Africans are eagerly waiting for proof of what would be a world record. Relatives and neighbors of the couple have insisted the news is true.”For her to receive 10 blessings at one given time, we thank God for that,” Wilson Machaya, a neighbor of the family in Tembisa, told The …