Year: 2022

The White House says President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing “very mild symptoms.” The president’s diagnosis comes amid another wave of the coronavirus in the United States, driven this time by the BA.5 variant.  VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports. …

New cases of COVID-19 have been sweeping across the United States in recent weeks. On Thursday, President Joe Biden tested positive. His symptoms of tiredness, a runny nose and dry cough are considered mild. The highly infectious and transmittable BA.5 subvariant of the coronavirus’s omicron variant is making up nearly 80% of new cases, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID Data Tracker. Although the initial vaccinations are effective at preventing hospitalization and death, their immunity weakens over time. “So, more people, even those who might have protection from past infection or vaccination, have gotten COVID-19,” according to the CDC. That’s why the CDC is recommending that immunized adults and children 5 years and older follow up with a vaccination booster in five months, and those 50 and older get a second booster shot for renewed protection. But so far, the CDC reports that only about half of adults have gotten a booster and just 28% of those age 50 and older have received a second dose, which provides even further protection from the illness. This leaves millions of people more vulnerable to the most recent variants of omicron.   “It’s very concerning that many individuals who are eligible for boosters are choosing not to get them,” David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, told VOA. “There’s really strong research suggesting the protective effects of these boosters against COVID.” The White House issued a warning this …

An unvaccinated young adult from New York recently contracted polio, the first U.S. case in nearly a decade, health officials said Thursday.  Officials said the patient, who lives in Rockland County, had developed paralysis. The person developed symptoms a month ago and did not recently travel outside the country, county health officials said.  It appears the patient had a vaccine-derived strain of the virus, perhaps from someone who got live vaccine — available in other countries, but not the U.S. — and spread it, officials said.  The person is no longer deemed contagious, but investigators are trying to figure out how the infection occurred and whether other people may have been exposed to the virus.  Most Americans are vaccinated against polio, but unvaccinated people may be at risk, said Rockland County Health Commissioner Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert. Health officials scheduled vaccination clinics nearby soon and encouraged anyone who has not been vaccinated to get the shots.  “We want shots in the arms of those who need it,” she said at a Thursday press conference announcing the case.  Feared disease Polio was once one of the nation’s most feared diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis, many of them in children.  Vaccines became available starting in 1955, and a national vaccination campaign cut the annual number of U.S. cases to fewer than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  In 1979, polio was declared …

A private spaceflight company launches its way into history. Plus, a look back at the start of what is now a tenuous stellar partnership, and we remember the first manned mission to the moon. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. …

Preparations are underway for the mass rollout of the world’s first malaria vaccine to protect millions of children in Africa. The rollout is being funded by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for nearly $160 million. The World Health Organization said Gavi’s multimillion-dollar funding marks a key advance in the fight against one of Africa’s most severe public health threats. It noted that countries in sub-Saharan Africa bear the brunt of the yearly toll of more than 240 million global cases of malaria, including more than 600,000 reported deaths. The main victims are children under age 5. WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said one child dies every minute in Africa, with catastrophic consequences for families, communities and national development. The vaccine was introduced in Africa in 2019. Since then, more than 1.3 million children have benefited from the lifesaving inoculations in three pilot countries — Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. Moeti said those countries have reported a 30 percent drop in hospitalizations of children with severe malaria and a 9% reduction in child deaths. “If delivered at scale, millions of new cases could be averted, and tens of thousands of lives saved every year,” Moeti said. “We were encouraged to see that demand for the vaccine is high, even in the context of COVID-19, with the first dose reaching between 73% to over 90% coverage.” Thabani Maphosa, managing director of country programs at Gavi, called the vaccine the most effective tool in the fight against malaria, one that will save children’s …

A new study shines a light on the health risks, challenges, and barriers faced daily by millions of refugees and migrants who suffer from poor health because they lack access to the health care available to others in their host countries. The World Health Organization has just published its first world report on the health of refugees and migrants. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it a landmark report and an alarm bell. He said the report reveals the wide disparities between the health of refugees and migrants and the wider populations in their host countries.   “For example, many migrant workers are engaged in the so-called 3-D jobs—dirty, dangerous, and demanding—without adequate social and health protection or sufficient occupational health measures,” he said. “Refugees and migrants are virtually absent from global surveys and health data, making these vulnerable groups almost invisible in the design of health systems and services.”    Tedros noted that one billion people or one in every eight people on Earth is a refugee or migrant. He said the numbers were growing. Tedros added that more and more people will be on the move in response to burgeoning conflicts, climate change, rising inequality, and global emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the health needs of refugees and migrants often are neglected or unaddressed in the countries they pass through or settle in. “They face multiple barriers, including out of pocket costs, discrimination and fear of detention and deportation,” Tedros said. “Many countries do have …

Drought can slightly increase developing world children’s risk of diarrheal disease, researchers have found, adding that wetter regions seem to be affected differently than drier ones.  Diarrhea is the second-leading cause of death among children worldwide, and climate change is making droughts longer, more frequent and more severe, the new study published in the journal Nature Communications found.  The study, based on data from 51 low- and middle-income countries, found that children were more likely to recently have had diarrhea following six months to two years of drought conditions, although the effect of drought differed across dry, temperate and tropical climate zones.  Previous studies found links between diarrheal disease and rainfall, flooding and seasonality, but little was known before about the effects of drought.  The new study “fills that void of understanding the impacts associated with drought specifically, as opposed to flooding, extreme rains and seasonality,” said epidemiologist Joseph Eisenberg of the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study.  “Water plays an essential role both in helping address the problem as well as increasing the risk of being exposed,” he said.  Water essential  for good hygiene Water is central to the spread and prevention of diarrheal disease. Germs that cause diarrhea survive and spread in water, but water is also important for hygienic practices, such as hand-washing, that prevent infections.  Study author Pin Wang, an environmental epidemiologist at Yale University, and his colleagues thought drought could force families to prioritize scarce water for drinking rather than washing, …

The world is bracing for more intense heat waves fueled by climate change this summer, and urban centers across the world are unprepared to face these brutal natural disasters. …

Overdose deaths increased 44% for Blacks and 39% for Native Americans in 2020 compared with 2019, as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted access to care and exacerbated racial inequality, an official report showed Tuesday. “Racism, a root cause of health disparities, continues to be a serious public health threat that directly affects the well-being of millions of Americans,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acting Principal Deputy Director Debra Houry said in a briefing. “The disproportionate increase in overdose death rates among Black and American Indian/Alaskan Native people may partly be due to health inequities, like unequal access to substance use treatment and treatment biases.” Recent increases in deaths were largely driven by illegally manufactured fentanyl and fentanyl analogs, according to the report from the CDC. Before the pandemic, the overdose death rate was similar for Black, Native and white people, at 27, 26 and 25 per 100,000 people in 2019. But that changed dramatically in 2020, when the respective figures were 39, 36 and 31 per 100,000 people. Though the increase among white people was not as great as for Blacks and Native Americans, the new rate is still a historic high. Among key findings: The overdose death rate among Black males 65 years and older was nearly seven times that of their white counterparts. Black people 15-24 years old experienced the largest rate increase, 86%, compared with changes seen in other groups. “There was a substantially lower percentage of people in racial and ethnic minority groups showing …

Elon Musk lost a fight to delay Twitter’s lawsuit against him as a Delaware judge on Tuesday set an October trial, citing the “cloud of uncertainty” over the social media company after the billionaire backed out of a deal to buy it. “Delay threatens irreparable harm,” said Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the head judge of Delaware’s Court of Chancery, which handles many high-profile business disputes. “The longer the delay, the greater the risk.” Twitter had asked for an expedited trial in September, while Musk’s team called for waiting until early next year because of the complexity of the case. McCormick said Musk’s team underestimated the Delaware court’s ability to “quickly process complex litigation.” Twitter is trying to force the billionaire to make good on his April promise to buy the social media giant for $44 billion — and the company wants it to happen quickly because it says the ongoing dispute is harming its business. Musk, the world’s richest man, pledged to pay $54.20 a share for Twitter, but now wants to back out of the agreement. “It’s attempted sabotage. He’s doing his best to run Twitter down,” said attorney William Savitt, representing Twitter in Delaware’s Court of Chancery before the court’s Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick. The hearing was held virtually after McCormick said she tested positive for COVID-19. Musk has claimed the company has failed to provide adequate information about the number of fake, or “spam bot,” Twitter accounts, and that it has breached its obligations under …

Ghana’s Health Service says more than a third of the people quarantined after an outbreak of the Marburg virus, a relative of Ebola, have been cleared to leave isolation. Authorities quarantined 98 people this week following two deadly cases of the virus in Ghana. It is the first time ever the disease has been confirmed in the West African country, although nearby Guinea recorded a single case last year. The director-general of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Patrick Kumah-Aboagye, told VOA that 39 out of the 98 contacts have completed their quarantine. He said there is no cause for alarm. “We’ve had 98 contacts; health workers, mortuary workers, family members,” he said. “We’ve randomly tested 13 of them and they have all been negative so far. There is nothing to worry (about) except to know what to look out for and what to avoid.” Kumah-Aboagye said Ghana’s surveillance mechanism has been on red alert to catch suspected cases of Marburg. “We have general surveillance for all conditions including Marburg,” he said. “That’s why the system was able to pick it that early. If we didn’t pick it early, it would have spread to other places and it becomes difficult to contain it. “We have a response team in the regions who are responsible for all these. We also have community volunteers who have been trained to identify any strange disease and report it for immediate response.” The World Health Organizations said fatality rates for past Marburg outbreaks have ranged …

The James Webb telescope is giving the world the clearest ever images of our universe. For VOA News Antoni Belchi has the story.   …

The U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning the right to abortion has raised concerns among activists about a domino effect in developing countries, including in Africa. In Kenya, anti-abortion groups have welcomed the ruling while abortion rights supporters fear it could further restrict the reproductive health of girls and women. Juma Majanga reports from Nairobi. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo   …

The Indian government’s COVID-19 vaccinations hit 2 billion on Sunday, with booster doses underway for all adults, as daily infections hit four-month high, official data showed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi extolled the vaccination milestone, celebrating the world’s largest and longest-running inoculation campaign, which began last year.  “India creates history again!” Modi said in a tweet. The prime minister has faced allegations from the opposition of mishandling the pandemic that experts claim killed millions. The government rejects the claims. Health ministry data shows the COVID death toll at 525,709, with 49 deaths recorded overnight. New cases rose 20,528 over the past 24 hours, the highest since Feb. 20, according to data compiled by Reuters. The country of 1.35 billion people has lifted most COVID-related restrictions, and international travel has recovered robustly. Some 80% of the inoculations have been the AstraZeneca AZN.L vaccine made domestically, called Covishield. Others include domestically developed Covaxin and Corbevax, and Russia’s Sputnik V. The federal government has been accelerating its booster campaign to avert the spread of infections, edging higher in the eastern states of Assam, West Bengal and Karnataka in the south. …

Macao’s government will extend a lockdown of casinos and other businesses until Friday, as authorities work to stop the spread of COVID-19 in the world’s biggest gambling hub, according to a statement on its website. The lockdown in the Chinese special administrative region had been set to end  Monday. Macao imposed the shutdown last Monday, shuttering the city’s economic engine — its casinos — and forbidding residents from leaving their apartments, except for essential activities such as grocery shopping. Macao has recorded around 1,700 coronavirus infections since mid-June. More than 20,000 people are in mandatory quarantine as the government adheres to China’s zero-COVID policy, which aims to stamp out all outbreaks, running counter to a global trend of trying to coexist with the virus. More than 90% of Macao’s 600,000 residents are fully vaccinated against COVID but this is the first time the city has had to grapple with the fast-spreading omicron variant. The former Portuguese colony has only one public hospital for its more than 600,000 residents, and its medical system was stretched before the coronavirus outbreak. Authorities have set up a makeshift hospital in a sports dome near the city’s Las Vegas-style Cotai strip and have about 600 medical workers from the mainland assisting them. In neighboring Hong Kong, authorities are starting to loosen draconian coronavirus restrictions even as daily cases top 3,000, in a push to reboot the financial hub and its economy. …

Chinese astronauts, known as taikonauts, and a ground crew are working to finish their country’s first permanent orbiting space station and the world’s second by year’s end, official media outlets say. That milestone will boost China’s national pride and provide it with new channels for economic development and a possible new tool for military use on the ground, analysts say. The space program advances China’s goal of being “strong and prosperous” by 2049, said Dexter Roberts, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Asia Security Initiative and author of “The Myth of Chinese Capitalism.” That year marks the 100th anniversary of Communist Party rule in China. “Developing the economy, becoming wealthier and raising national prestige globally and becoming stronger geopolitically are all very, very clear goals of the party,” he said.  A crew aboard the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft last month kicked off six months of work on the Tiangong space station, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.  Personnel in space and on the ground will finish building the space station, expanding it from a single-module structure to triple-module national space laboratory, Xinhua said.  The U.S. space agency, NASA, bars China from using the International Space Station on military security grounds, prompting China to embark on its own 10 years ago. China launched its broader space program in the 1960s.  Pride and power projection  China’s space station has been designed to be a “versatile space lab” that can hold 25 “cabinets” for experiments such as comparing the biological growth mechanism in varying …

The world was sadder and more stressed out in 2021 than ever before, according to a recent Gallup poll, which found that four in 10 adults worldwide said they experienced a lot of worry or stress. Experts say the most obvious culprit, the pandemic — and the isolation and uncertainty that came with it — is a factor but not entirely to blame. Carol Graham, a Gallup senior scientist, says the culprit for declining mental health includes the economic uncertainty faced by low-skilled workers. “There are some structural negative changes that make some people in particular more vulnerable. And in the end, mental health just reflects that,” says Graham, who is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland. “For young people who do not have good higher levels of education, what they’re going to do in the future is very unknown. What their stability will be like, what their workforce participation will be like. … Rising levels of inequality between skilled and unskilled workers is another part of it, having to do with technology-driven growth.” Gallup spoke to adults in 122 countries and areas for its latest Global Emotions Report. Afghanistan is the unhappiest country, with Afghans leading the world when it comes to negative experiences. Overall, the survey results were not surprising to psychologist Josh Briley, a fellow at The American Institute of Stress. “Things are moving faster. There’s so much information being thrown at us all …

More than 100,000 monkeypox vaccine doses are being sent to states in the next few days, and several million more are on order in the months ahead, U.S. health officials said Friday. They also acknowledged that the vaccine supply hasn’t kept up with the demand seen in New York, California and other places. Officials predicted that cases would keep rising for at least a few more weeks as the government tries to keep up with a surprising international outbreak accounting for hundreds of newly reported cases every day. Some public health experts have begun to wonder if the outbreak is becoming widespread enough that monkeypox will become an entrenched sexually transmitted disease. “All of our work right now is to prevent that from happening,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. It does not usually spread easily among people. But this year more than 12,000 cases have been reported in countries that historically don’t see the disease. The infections emerged in men who had sex with men at gatherings in Europe, though health officials have stressed that anyone can catch the virus. As of Friday, more than 1,800 U.S. cases had been reported, with hundreds of cases being added to the tally each day. Nearly all are men, and the vast majority had same-sex encounters, according to the CDC. Experts believe the case numbers are …

The World Meteorological Organization says scorching heat waves and wildfires raging in Portugal, Spain and France are forecast to worsen and spread to other parts of Europe in coming days. The United Kingdom already is wilting under record high temperatures. The UK weather service has issued an amber extreme heat warning for much of England and Wales. It forecasts exceptionally high temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius Sunday and Monday. In Portugal, where temperatures have reached highs of 46 degrees Celsius, red heat alerts, which warn people of life-threatening conditions, are in effect. Similar warnings are being issued in Spain and France. More than 20 wildfires have been reported in Portugal, western Spain, and southwest France. Lorenzo Labrador is a scientific officer in the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Atmosphere Watch Program. He says the journal Nature Geoscience published a recent modeling study of the likely impact of the expansion of a high-pressure system over the Atlantic. He says the system, known as the Azores high, is leading to the driest conditions on the Iberian Peninsula in the last 1,000 years. “It is worth pointing [out] that the high temperatures is not the only adverse consequence of heat waves. The stable and stagnant atmosphere acts as a lid to trap atmospheric pollutants, including particulate matter, increasing their concentration closer to the surface. These result in a degradation of air quality and adverse health effects, particularly for vulnerable people.” He notes more heat, abundant sunshine, and concentrations of certain atmospheric pollutants can lead …

In Venezuela, a health crisis and the inability of many pregnant women to pay for medical exams and appointments is forcing a growing number of them to give birth outside a hospital. For VOA News, Adriana Núñez Rabascall in Caracas has the story. Video Editor: Cristina Caicedo Smit …

The lawyer for an Indiana doctor at the center of a political firestorm after speaking out about a 10-year-old child abuse victim who traveled from Ohio for an abortion said Thursday that her client provided proper treatment and did not violate any patient privacy laws in discussing the unidentified girl’s case. Attorney Kathleen DeLaney issued the statement on behalf of Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist Caitlin Bernard the same day Republican Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said his office was investigating Bernard’s actions. He offered no specific allegations of wrongdoing. A  27-year-old man was charged in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday with raping the girl, confirming the existence of a case initially met with skepticism by some media outlets and Republican politicians. The pushback grew after Democratic President Joe Biden expressed empathy for the girl during the signing of an executive order last week aimed at protecting some abortion access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the constitutional protection for abortion. Bernard’s attorney said the physician “took every appropriate and proper action in accordance with the law and both her medical and ethical training as a physician.” “She followed all relevant policies, procedures, and regulations in this case, just as she does every day to provide the best possible care for her patients,” DeLaney said in a statement. “She has not violated any law, including patient privacy laws, and she has not been disciplined by her employer.” Bernard reported a June 30 medication abortion for a 10-year-old patient to the …

Now that the United States has a patchwork of different abortion laws, women who can afford to travel are going to states where abortion is still legal. Others rely on employers to provide money for transportation. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti explains how that happens and what crimes that could introduce in some states. VOA footage by Saqib Ul Islam. Video editor: Bakhtiyar Zamanov. …

About 25 million children worldwide have missed out on routine immunizations against common diseases like diphtheria, largely because the coronavirus pandemic disrupted regular health services or triggered misinformation about vaccines, according to the U.N.  In a new report published Friday, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said their figures showed 25 million children last year failed to get vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, a marker for childhood immunization coverage, continuing a downward trend that began in 2019.  “This is a red alert for child health,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF’s executive director.  “We are witnessing the largest sustained drop in childhood immunization in a generation,” she said, adding that the consequences would be measured in lives lost.  While vaccine coverage fell in every world region, data showed the vast majority of the children who failed to get immunized were living in developing countries, including Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and the Philippines. Problem compounded by malnutrition  Experts said this “historic backsliding” in vaccination coverage was especially disturbing since it was occurring as rates of severe malnutrition were rising. Malnourished children typically have weaker immune systems, and infections like measles can often prove fatal to them.  “The convergence of a hunger crisis with a growing immunization gap threatens to create the conditions for a child survival crisis,” the U.N. said.  Scientists said low vaccine coverage rates have resulted in preventable outbreaks of diseases like measles and polio. In March 2020, WHO and partners asked countries to suspend their polio eradication efforts amid …