Month: December 2022

New Year’s Eve in China prompted an outpouring of reflection online, some of it critical, about the strict zero-COVID policy the country adhered to for almost three years and the impact of its abrupt reversal this month. The sudden change to live with the virus has prompted a wave of infections across the country, a further drop in economic activity and international concern, with Britain and France the latest countries to impose curbs on travelers from China. Three years into the pandemic, China this month acted to align with a world that has largely reopened to live with COVID, after unprecedented protests that became a de facto referendum against the zero-COVID policy championed by President Xi Jinping.  The protests were the strongest show of public defiance in Xi’s decade-old presidency and coincided with grim growth figures for China’s $17 trillion economy. On Saturday, people in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic, expressed hope the new year would bring better fortune. Several people in Wuhan bemoaned how widely the virus has spread after lifting of all the pandemic curbs, with one, 45-year-old Chen Mei, saying she just hopes that in 2023 her teenage daughter can resume normal classes over the long term. “When she can’t go to the school and can only have classes online it’s definitely not an effective way of learning,” she said. “Kids don’t have such good self discipline. And then for us adults sometimes because of the epidemic controls we have been …

The World Health Organization met Chinese officials for talks on Friday about the surge in COVID-19 cases, urging them to share real-time data so other countries could respond effectively. The rise in infections in China has triggered concern around the globe and questions about its data reporting, with low official figures for cases and deaths despite some hospitals and morgues being overwhelmed. The talks came after WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged Beijing to be more forthcoming on the pandemic situation in the world’s most populous country. The U.N. health agency said the meeting was “to seek further information on the situation, and to offer WHO’s expertise and further support.” It said officials from China’s National Health Commission and National Disease Control and Prevention Administration briefed the WHO on China’s evolving strategy and actions on epidemiology, variant monitoring, vaccination, clinical care, communication and research and development. “WHO again asked for regular sharing of specific and real-time data on the epidemiological situation — including more genetic sequencing data, data on disease impact including hospitalizations, intensive care unit admissions and deaths,” it said. It asked for data on vaccinations delivered and vaccination status, especially in vulnerable people and those over age 60. ‘Timely publication of data’ “WHO reiterated the importance of vaccination and boosters to protect against severe disease and death for people at higher risk,” the Geneva-based organization said. “WHO called on China to strengthen viral sequencing, clinical management and impact assessment, and expressed willingness to provide support on these areas, …

In 2022, photographers with The Associated Press captured signs of a planet in distress as climate change reshaped many lives. That distress was seen in the scarred landscapes in places where the rains failed to come. It was felt in walloping storms, land-engulfing floods, suffocating heat and wildfires no longer confined to a single season. It could be tasted in altered crops or felt as hunger pangs when crops stopped growing. And taken together, millions of people were compelled to pick up and move as many habitats became uninhabitable. 2022 will be a year remembered for destruction brought on by a warming planet and, according to scientists, was a harbinger for even more extreme weather. Parched earth In June, two young men sat smoking in front of a boat that had previously been under water. The waterline in parts of Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada had dropped so much that the boat was now standing up in the mud. Such dramatic manifestations were seen in myriad places.  In Germany, drought combined with a bark beetle infestation left large swaths of Harz forest trees spindly, while in Kenya mothers struggled to keep their children nourished and animals died because of a lack of water. Along the Solimoes River in the Brazilian Amazon, houseboat dwellers found themselves living on mud instead of water, as parts dried up. In eastern France, normally lush sunflowers looked as if they had been fried, their leaves withered, and seeds blackened. Similar scars on the …

As COVID-19 infections surge in China, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering sampling wastewater taken from international aircraft to track any emerging new variants, the agency told Reuters. Such a policy would offer a better solution to tracking the virus and slowing its entry into the United States than new travel restrictions announced this week by the U.S. and other countries, which require mandatory negative COVID tests for travelers from China, three infectious disease experts told Reuters. Travel restrictions, such as mandatory testing, have so far failed to significantly curb the spread of COVID, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota. “They seem to be essential from a political standpoint. I think each government feels like they will be accused of not doing enough to protect their citizens if they don’t do these,” he said. The United States this week also expanded its voluntary genomic sequencing program at airports, adding Seattle and Los Angeles to the program. That brings the total number of airports gathering information from positive tests to seven. But experts said that may not provide a meaningful sample size. A better solution would be testing wastewater from airlines, which would offer a clearer picture of how the virus is mutating, given China’s lack of data transparency, said Dr. Eric Topol, a genomics expert and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California. Getting wastewater off planes from China “would be a very good tactic,” …

The world is getting warmer, winters included. The United States, however, has experienced severe winter storms in recent years, and experts are taking a closer look at the link between these extreme cold events and climate change. While the link between global warming and heat waves is very direct, the behavior of winter storms is governed by complex atmospheric dynamics that are more difficult to study. Even so, “there are certain aspects of winter storms … where the climate change linkages are fairly strong and robust,” Michael Mann, a climatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told AFP. For example, the warming of bodies of water — lakes or oceans — influences the amount of snowfall. In the United States, a mechanism called “lake-effect snow” occurs around the Great Lakes region on the Canadian border. The city of Buffalo, which sits on the shores of one of the Great Lakes, was hit hard by a lethal snowstorm over Christmas weekend. The collision between cold air from the north with the warmer water of these lakes causes convection, which leads to snowfall. “The warmer those lake temperatures, the more moisture (is) in the air, and the greater potential for lake-effect snows,” Michael Mann wrote in a 2018 paper. “Not surprisingly, we see a long-term increase in lake effect snowfalls as temperatures have warmed during the last century.” Polar vortex There is, however, no consensus on other mechanisms, such as the effect of climate change on the polar vortex and jet stream air …

The U.S. Justice Department is suing one of the largest U.S. drug distributors for failing to report suspicious orders of prescription opioids, saying the company’s “years of repeated violations” contributed to the deadly U.S. opioid epidemic.  In a civil lawsuit filed Thursday, the department alleges that AmerisourceBergen and two subsidiaries violated the Controlled Substances Act by failing to report “at least hundreds of thousands” of suspicious orders for prescription painkillers to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The department is seeking potentially billions of dollars in penalties. “For years, AmerisourceBergen prioritized profits over its legal obligations and over Americans’ well-being,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said during a press call. Under the Controlled Substances Act, distributors of controlled drugs are required to monitor and report suspicious orders to the drug agency. The lawsuit alleges that AmerisourceBergen failed to report “numerous orders from pharmacies that AmerisourceBergen knew were likely facilitating diversion of prescription opioids.” The complaint cites five such pharmacies. A Florida pharmacy and a West Virginia pharmacy received opioids from AmerisourceBergen that the company allegedly knew “were likely being sold in parking lots for cash,” according to the complaint. In Colorado, AmerisourceBergen distributed prescription painkillers to a pharmacy it allegedly knew was its largest purchaser of oxycodone 30mg tablets in the state. AmerisourceBergen identified 11 patients at the pharmacy as potential “drug addicts.” Two of those patients later died of overdoses, according to the lawsuit. In New Jersey, an online pharmacy that received opioids from AmerisourceBergen has pleaded guilty to illegally selling …

For many outside China, this was the year that the term “surveillance state” became something they understood. Western media reported in April on what were thought to be government-operated drones whirring through a locked-down Shanghai, China’s most populous city, where authorities reported a record 22,000 new cases of COVID-19 on a single day. In an unverified viral video, one drone trumpeted, “Control your soul’s desire for freedom” as it hovered over a housing compound at night. Citizens were expected to download a “health code” app for smartphones that dictated their activities. Designed to curtail the spread of the virus, a green QR code meant freedom to move around. A red code barred movement. In the city of Zhengzhou, authorities in June allegedly issued red codes, usually sent to people deemed by authorities to be at high risk of infection or already infected, to people heading to town to protest a local bank that was freezing their assets. At the end of November, when unprecedented protests against the “zero-COVID” policy erupted nationwide, Western media reported that authorities began checking the smartphones of people near the demonstrations, looking for VPN software that allowed them access to sites and social platforms like Twitter beyond China’s “Great Firewall.” By mid-December, the U.S. Congress had passed legislation to restrict the use of the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok. Wildly effective for spreading dancing baby videos and political messaging both real and fake, the lawmakers had security concerns about the data Beijing might be collecting from …

The United States earlier this month announced a contract worth up to $29 million to clean up dioxin contamination at the Bien Hoa Air Base in southern Vietnam, near Ho Chi Minh City, a consequence of U.S. use of the herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. The move is the most recent attempt to demonstrate cooperation between the two countries despite a still complicated relationship.  The nations now work together on trade issues, climate change, and legacies of the war, such as the dioxin spraying or the so-called Christmas bombings, 50 years ago this month, when America dropped 20,000 tons of bombs on Hanoi and Haiphong.  “This announcement represents the United States’ commitment to our partnership with Vietnam,” Aler Grubbs, the Hanoi-based Vietnam mission director for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said. “This contract will complete critical preparatory work, paving the way for the treatment phase of the project.”  Some differences still remain between the United States and Vietnam, ranging from human rights to Bien Hoa itself, where the two have not been able to come to an agreement on a cemetery for former soldiers of South Vietnam, with which the U.S. was allied against communist North Vietnam in the war that ended in 1975 with a North Vietnamese victory. USAID said it finished a similar project in 2018 to clean up Agent Orange and other chemicals that it sprayed around Da Nang in central Vietnam to defoliate the jungle used by communist forces to hide during the …

Countries are imposing or considering imposing curbs on travelers from China amid a COVID-19 surge there after authorities relaxed “zero-COVID” rules. They cite a lack of information from China on variants and are concerned about a wave of infections. China has rejected criticism of its COVID data and said it expects future mutations to be potentially more transmissible but less severe. Below is a list of new regulations for travelers from China. Countries Imposing Curbs United States The U.S. will impose mandatory COVID-19 tests on travelers from China beginning Jan. 5. All air passengers 2 and older will require a negative result from a test no more than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macau. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said Americans should also reconsider travel to China, Hong Kong and Macau. India The country has mandated a COVID-19 negative test report for travelers arriving from China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand, the health minister said. Passengers from those countries will be quarantined if they show symptoms or test positive. Japan Japan will require a negative COVID-19 test upon arrival for travelers from mainland China. Those who test positive will be required to quarantine for seven days. New border measures for China will go into effect at midnight Friday. The government will also limit requests from airlines to increase flights to China. Italy Italy has ordered COVID-19 antigen swabs and virus sequencing for all travelers coming from China. Milan’s main airport, Malpensa, …

NASA is exploring whether SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft can potentially offer an alternative ride home for some crew members of the International Space Station after a Russian capsule sprang a coolant leak while docked to the orbital lab. NASA and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, are investigating the cause of a punctured coolant line on an external radiator of Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which is supposed to return its crew of two cosmonauts and one U.S. astronaut to Earth early next year. But the December 14 leak, which emptied the Soyuz of a vital fluid used to regulate crew cabin temperatures, has derailed Russia’s space station routines, with engineers in Moscow examining whether to launch another Soyuz to retrieve the three-man team that flew to ISS aboard the crippled MS-22 craft. If Russia cannot launch another Soyuz ship, or decides for some reason that doing so would be too risky, NASA is weighing another option. “We have asked SpaceX a few questions on their capability to return additional crew members on Dragon if necessary, but that is not our prime focus at this time,” NASA spokeswoman Sandra Jones said in a statement to Reuters. SpaceX did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. It was unclear what NASA specifically asked of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capabilities, such as whether the company can find a way to increase the crew capacity of the Dragon currently docked to the station, or launch an empty capsule for the crew’s rescue. But the company’s potential …

Italy is making coronavirus tests for visitors from China mandatory following an explosion in cases in China, the health minister said Wednesday. “I have ordered mandatory COVID-19 antigenic swabs, and related virus sequencing, for all passengers coming from China and transiting through Italy,” minister Orazio Schillaci said. The measure was “essential to ensure the surveillance and identification of any variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population”, he said. Coronavirus infections have surged in China as it unwinds hardline controls that had torpedoed the economy and sparked nationwide protests. The Italian northern region of Lombardy introduced screening from Tuesday, a day before the measure was brought in nationwide. Lombardy, the first region to impose a lockdown when coronavirus hit Europe in early 2020, is testing arrivals from China at Milan’s Malpensa airport at least until January 30, the foreign ministry said. Swabs collected at Malpensa in recent days are already being analyzed by the national health ministry, to help identify any new variants.   …

Chinese and international airlines are reviewing schedules and coping with a flood of inquiries about travel to China following this week’s announcement that strict quarantine requirements for arriving travelers will be dropped early next month. According to the Chinese state-run media the Beijing News and Cailian Press, data from the Chinese travel website “Ctrip” shows that searches for popular cross-border destinations, including Macau, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, South Korea and the United States, increased tenfold within a half-hour after Monday’s announcement. Searches related to outbound and group tours during the Spring Festival have increased sixfold. According to Bloomberg, Hong Kong residents also rushed to the internet to search for flights to key mainland cities, with Shanghai, Beijing and Hangzhou being the most searched cities. The decision to drop quarantine rules for inbound travelers comes after three years of strict international travel control as part of the country’s signature zero-COVID campaign. The Chinese National Health Commission announced that the new measures will start on January 8. “Those who come to China should undergo a nucleic acid test 48 hours before their departure, and those with a negative result can come to China without applying for a health code from our embassy or consulate abroad,” according to a document from the NHC. Arrivals into China with negative nucleic acid tests will be able to “enter society.” The new order also requires all localities to “orderly resume Chinese citizens’ outbound tourism.” In response, U.S. carrier United Airlines; European airlines company Lufthansa Group, which …

India’s pharmaceuticals regulator has begun inspecting some drug factories across the country, the health ministry said on Tuesday, as it tries to ensure high standards after an Indian company’s cough and cold syrups were linked to deaths in Gambia. India is known as the “pharmacy of the world” and its pharmaceuticals exports have more than doubled over the past decade to $24.5 billion in the past fiscal year. The deaths of at least 70 children in Gambia has dented the industry’s image, though India says the drugs made by New Delhi-based Maiden Pharmaceuticals Ltd were not at fault. “Joint inspections are being conducted all over the country as per standard operating procedures,” the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said in a statement. “This will ensure high standards of quality compliance with respect to drugs manufactured in the country.” The ministry said it was inspecting “drug manufacturing units” that were at risk of making non-standard, adulterated, or spurious drugs but did not name any company. Some health experts say India’s drug regulations are lax, especially at the level of states where thousands of factories operate. The government in October suspended all of Maiden’s production, based in the state of Haryana, for violation of manufacturing standards. But India’s main drugs officer told the World Health Organization this month that tests of samples from the same batches of syrups that Maiden sent to Gambia were compliant with government specifications. Maiden too said its drugs were fine. The WHO said labs contracted by …

Artificial intelligence technology has tripled the number of U.K. stroke patients recovering to a point where they can perform daily activities, according to new research released Tuesday. Early-stage analysis of over 111,000 suspected stroke patients whose care included use of the technology found it reduced the time between being seen by a doctor and treatment beginning by more than 60 minutes, leading to improved results. The proportion who were able to resume day-to-day activities increased from 16 to 48 percent, the analysis of the Brainomix e-Stroke imaging platform found. The technology, developed by the UK’s med-tech solution firm Brainomix, is being used across 11 stroke treatment networks in the UK’s state-funded National Health Service (NHS) to diagnose strokes and determine the best treatment. The platform helps doctors in the interpretation of brain scans and allows them to share the images with specialists worldwide who can access them remotely. “AI has the potential to transform our NHS — delivering faster, more accurate diagnoses and making sure patients can get the treatment they need, when they need it,” the U.K.’s health secretary Steve Barclay said in a statement. “Brainomix is an incredible example of how this can be achieved, using the power of AI to shave lifesaving minutes off one of the most time-sensitive diagnoses in medicine.” Patient Carol Wilson, a teaching assistant, said the prompt diagnosis and treatment she received as a result of the technology meant she was sitting up and texting her family later the same day. The grandmother …

A British historian, an Italian archaeologist and an American preschool teacher have never met in person, but they share a prominent pandemic bond. Plagued by eerily similar symptoms, the three women are credited with describing, naming and helping bring long COVID into the public’s consciousness in early 2020. Rachel Pope, of Liverpool, took to Twitter in late March 2020 to describe her bedeviling symptoms, then unnamed, after a coronavirus infection. Elisa Perego in Italy first used the term “long COVID,” in a May tweet that year. Amy Watson in Portland, Oregon, got inspiration in naming her Facebook support group from the trucker cap she’d been wearing, and “long hauler” soon became part of the pandemic lexicon. Nearly three years into the pandemic, scientists are still trying to figure out why some people get long COVID and why a small portion — including the three women — have lasting symptoms. Millions of people worldwide have had long COVID, reporting various symptoms including fatigue, lung problems, and brain fog and other neurological symptoms. Evidence suggests most recover substantially within a year, but recent data show that it has contributed to more than 3,500 U.S. deaths. Here’s some of the latest evidence: Women more at risk? Many studies and anecdotal evidence suggest that women are more likely than men to develop long COVID. There could be biological reasons. Women’s immune systems generally mount stronger reactions to viruses, bacteria, parasites and other germs, noted Sabra Klein, a Johns Hopkins professor who studies immunity. Women …

China said Monday it would scrap mandatory quarantine on arrival, further unwinding years of strict virus controls as the country battles a surge in cases. Having mostly cut itself off from the rest of the world during the pandemic, China is now experiencing an unprecedented surge in infections after abruptly lifting restrictions that torpedoed the economy and sparked nationwide protests. And in a sudden end to nearly three years of strict border controls, Beijing said late Monday it would scrap mandatory quarantines for overseas travelers. Since March 2020, all passengers arriving in China have had to undergo mandatory centralized quarantine. This decreased from three weeks to one week this summer, and to five days last month. But under new rules that will take effect January 8, when COVID-19 will be downgraded to a Class B infectious disease from Class A, they will no longer need to. “According to the national health quarantine law, infectious disease quarantine measures will no longer be taken against inbound travelers and goods,” the National Health Commission (NHC) said. The move is likely to be greeted with joy from Chinese citizens and diaspora unable to return and see relatives for much of the pandemic. But it comes as China faces a wave of cases that studies have estimated could kill around one million people over the next few months. Many are now grappling with shortages of medicine, while emergency medical facilities are strained by an influx of undervaccinated elderly patients. “At present, COVID-19 prevention and control …

China’s Zhejiang, a big industrial province near Shanghai, is battling around a million new daily COVID-19 infections, a number expected to double in the days ahead, the provincial government said Sunday. Despite a record surge of cases nationwide, China reported no COVID deaths on the mainland for the five days through Saturday, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday. Citizens and experts have called for more accurate data as infections surged after Beijing made sweeping changes to a zero-COVID policy that had put hundreds of millions of its citizens under relentless lockdowns and battered the world’s second-largest economy. Nationwide figures from China had become incomplete as the National Health Commission stopped reporting asymptomatic infections, making it harder to track cases. On Sunday the commission stopped reporting daily figures, which the China CDC then published. Zhejiang is among the few areas to estimate their recent spikes in infections including asymptomatic cases. “The infection peak is estimated to arrive earlier in Zhejiang and to enter a period of elevated level around New Year’s Day, during which the daily new infection number will be up to two million,” the Zhejiang government said in a statement. Zhejiang, with a population of 65.4 million, said that among the 13,583 infections being treated in the province’s hospitals, one patient had severe symptoms caused by COVID, while 242 infections of severe and critical conditions were caused by underlying diseases. China narrowed its definition for reporting COVID deaths, counting only those from COVID-caused pneumonia or …

Three years ago, scientists in Wuhan, China first reported infections from a novel coronavirus. Since then, the world has developed and delivered 13 billion shots against COVID-19. It is an unprecedented achievement, but it has been tarnished by unequal access. The global program aimed at improving vaccine equity has announced it will narrow its focus to the poorest countries. VOA’s Steve Baragona has a look at the global COVID vaccine drive as a pandemic blamed for more than 6.5 million deaths enters its fourth year. Video editor: Steve Baragona …

World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus gave a grim assessment of the many health challenges and threats people around the world have faced this year. Topping the list was the COVID-19 pandemic that has sickened and killed millions of people for a third year. He noted a global outbreak of monkeypox, now known as mpox, an Ebola outbreak in Uganda, and cholera outbreaks in multiple countries as other health crises. He said these emergencies were compounded by wars in Ethiopia and Ukraine, as well as climate disasters, including drought and flooding in the greater Horn of Africa and the Sahel, and flooding in Pakistan. And yet, as 2022 draws to a close, he said there were many reasons for hope. “The COVID-19 pandemic has declined significantly this year, the global monkeypox outbreak is waning, and there have been no cases of Ebola in Uganda for more than three weeks,” he said. “We are hopeful that each of these emergencies will be declared over at different points next year.” While the pandemic is not over, Tedros said great progress has been made in containing its spread. He noted that one year ago, COVID-19 was killing 50,000 people a week. This now has dropped to fewer than 10,000 deaths a week. Despite the significant decline, he cautioned the virus is here to stay and people have to learn how to manage the disease. He urged vigilance, masking, social distancing and, above all else, vaccinating. 2023 Looking ahead to next year, he …

An arctic blast has brought extreme cold, heavy snow and intense wind across much of the U.S. — just in time for the holidays.  The weather system, dubbed a “bomb cyclone,” is disrupting travel and causing hazardous winter conditions. Where is this winter weather coming from, and what’s in store for the coming days?  What’s happening?  A front of cold air is moving down from the Arctic, sending temperatures plunging.  Much of the U.S. will see below-average temperatures, said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.  Temperatures may drop by more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius) in just a few hours, the National Weather Service predicts.  Wind chill temperatures could drop to dangerous lows far below zero — enough to cause frostbite within minutes. In parts of the Plains, the wind chill could dip as low as minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 57 Celsius).  Those in the Plains, the Upper Midwest and the Great Lakes were cautioned to expect blizzard conditions as heavy winds whip up the snow, according to the National Weather Service.  Who will be affected?  Pretty much everyone east of the Rockies — around two-thirds of the country — will see extreme weather, said Ryan Maue, a private meteorologist in the Atlanta area.  Though much of the West Coast will be shielded from the cold, the Arctic front is expected to pass east and south all the way through Florida.  Heavy snowfall and intense winds could be bad news …