Year: 2022

Nearly 1 in 5 American adults who reported having COVID-19 in the past are still having symptoms of long COVID, according to survey data collected in the first two weeks of June, U.S. health officials said Wednesday.  Overall, 1 in 13 adults in the United States have long COVID symptoms that have lasted for three months or more after first contracting the disease and that they did not have before the infection, the data showed.  The data was collected June 1-13 by the U.S. Census Bureau and analyzed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Long COVID symptoms include fatigue, rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, cognitive difficulties, chronic pain, sensory abnormalities and muscle weakness. They can be debilitating and last for weeks or months after recovery from the initial infection.  The CDC analysis also found that younger adults were more likely to have persistent symptoms than older adults.  Women were also more likely to have long COVID than men, according to the study, with 9.4% of U.S. adult women reporting long COVID symptoms compared with 5.5% of men.  The survey found nearly 9% of Hispanic adults have long COVID, higher than non-Hispanic white and Black adults, and more than twice the percentage of non-Hispanic Asian adults.  There were also differences based on U.S. states, with Kentucky and Alabama reporting the highest percentage of adults with long COVID symptoms, while Hawaii, Maryland and Virginia reported the lowest, according to the survey.  …

The Black Death, a plague that killed up to 60% of people in western Eurasia from roughly 1346 to 1353, likely originated in the Tian Shan mountains of central Asia, new research shows. Scientists recovered two genomes of an ancient strain of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, from human remains buried in two 14th-century cemeteries in Kyrgyzstan. The strain is the ancestor of the microbes that caused the Black Death. “The origin of the Black Death has been one of the most widely debated topics not only in medieval history, but I perhaps will not exaggerate if I say that it has been one of the most debated topics in history, period,” said historian and study co-author Philip Slavin of the University of Stirling. There are many competing theories, he said, “but without ancient DNA, you wouldn’t be able actually to confirm one of those theories.” Researchers reconstructed an ancient Y. pestis genome for the first time in 2011 using samples from a burial ground in London. Since then, a handful of additional Black Death genomes from western Eurasia and many more from modern Y. pestis strains carried by rodents and their parasites — the natural reservoirs of plague — also were sequenced. But even with the new data, “it was still quite clear to us that this kind of research was not really telling us much about where it all started and when it all started,” said Maria Spyrou, a biologist at the Eberhard Karls University of …

Risk of infection from the disease, which causes paralysis in children in under 1% of cases, was low because of high vaccination rates …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is proposing a limit on the amount of nicotine allowed in cigarettes with an aim to make it easier for people to quit using them and to prevent young people who experiment with cigarettes from becoming addicted.  The proposed limit appeared Tuesday among a number of actions the Biden administration is considering.  The FDA said more than half of adults who smoke cigarettes make a serious attempt at quitting each year, but that most fail because of the addictiveness of cigarettes.  “The goal of the potential rule would be to reduce youth use, addiction and death,” the agency said.  “Nicotine is powerfully addictive,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in a statement. “Making cigarettes and other combusted tobacco products minimally addictive or non-addictive would help save lives.”  Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters …

A magnitude 6.0 earthquake shook Taiwan on Monday morning. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.  The quake struck at 9:05 a.m. at a depth of 6.8 kilometers (4.2 miles) in Hualien county, halfway down the east coast of the island, Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau said.  It was felt across most of the island of 24 million people including to the north in Taipei, the capital. It was also felt across the Taiwan Strait in mainland China’s Fujian province, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said. …

New York City is making a push to give city workers fired earlier this year for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine a chance to get their old jobs back — if they get fully vaccinated. In February, Mayor Eric Adams fired more than 1,400 workers who failed to comply with the vaccine mandate put in place by his predecessor, Bill de Blasio. Just short of 600 unvaccinated non-Department of Education workers are receiving a letter with details, and DOE employees are expected to receive a letter later in the summer, a city spokesperson said, adding that 97% of workers are vaccinated and that the goal has always been “vaccination rather than termination.” The development was first reported by the New York Post. It wasn’t clear how many workers would be affected and a timeline for returning to work was not disclosed. The mandate required vaccinations as a workplace safety rule. In March, Adams was the target of criticism for exempting athletes and performers not based in New York City from the city’s vaccine mandate, while keeping the rule in place for private and public workers.  …

The U.S. on Saturday opened COVID-19 vaccines to infants, toddlers and preschoolers. The shots will become available next week, expanding the nation’s vaccination campaign to children as young as 6 months. Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the vaccines for the littlest children, and the final signoff came hours later from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s director. “We know millions of parents and caregivers are eager to get their young children vaccinated, and with today’s decision, they can,” Walensky said in a statement. While the Food and Drug Administration approves vaccines, it’s the CDC that decides who should get them. The shots offer young children protection from hospitalization, death and possible long-term complications that are still not clearly understood, the CDC’s advisory panel said. The government has already been gearing up for the vaccine expansion, with millions of doses ordered for distribution to doctors, hospitals and community health clinics around the country. Roughly 18 million kids will be eligible, but it remains to be seen how many will get the vaccines. Less than a third of children ages 5-11 have done so since vaccination opened to them last November. Here are some things to know: What kinds are available? Two brands — Pfizer and Moderna — got the green light Friday from the FDA and Saturday from the CDC. The vaccines use the same technology but are being offered at different dose sizes and number of shots for the youngest kids. Pfizer’s vaccine is for children …

The World Health Organization is calling for a radical change in the treatment of mental health disorders, saying existing care systems are largely ineffective and often abusive.  Nearly a billion people were living with a mental disorder in 2019. That number has grown, with new data showing conditions such as depression and anxiety increasing by more than 26 percent in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organization recently released its largest review of world mental health since the turn of the century. The report finds 14 percent, or one in seven adolescents, is suffering from a mental disorder. It says suicides account for one in 100 deaths, with 58 percent occurring before age 50. Head of the WHO’s mental health unit, Mark Van Ommeren, says mental disorders are the leading cause of disability. He says depression and anxiety alone cost the world economy nearly $1 trillion a year in lost productivity. Despite the enormous socio-economic consequences, he says many people with mental health problems do not seek help for a variety of reasons. “They fear the stigma of seeking help could be one reason. Another reason can be that they do not trust the services that are available because there has not been enough investment in it,” Van Ommeren said. “Third, it could be that they do not recognize the problem because their knowledge about mental health problems is limited.” The WHO says only a small fraction of people in need have access to effective, affordable …

Weather disasters that happen more often because of climate change create conditions in which gender-based violence often spikes, according to new research.     The study, published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health, reviewed research from five continents and found increased violence against women and girls in the aftermath of floods, droughts, hurricanes and other extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent as the planet warms. Humanitarian organizations that respond to weather disasters should be aware of this troubling trend when planning their operations, the study authors said.   “When we think of climate change effects, we think of some very drastic and very visual things, things like floods, disruptions of cities, supply chain disruptions — which are all very valid and very real risks of climate change,” said study author Sarah Savić Kallesøe, a public health researcher at Simon Fraser University in Canada. “But there are also some more veiled consequences that are not as easily visible or easily studied. And one of those things is gender-based violence.”   The researchers scoured online databases to find studies on rape, sexual assault, child marriage and other forms of gender-based violence following extreme weather events.   The initial search, based on broad keywords like “violence,” “women,” and “weather,” yielded more than 20,000 results, each of which Savić Kallesøe and her colleagues screened individually to determine whether they were relevant.   Only 41 studies that assessed links between gender-based violence and extreme weather made the cut. The researchers then graded the …

More than 1,600 confirmed monkeypox cases and almost 1,500 suspected cases have been reported this year from seven countries where monkeypox has been detected for years and 32 newly affected countries, according to the World Health Organization director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Europe remains the epicenter of this escalating outbreak,” Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, said, with “85% of the global total.” WHO is convening an emergency meeting next week to discuss the mounting outbreak and whether the name of the disease should be changed. A group of scientists said in a statement recently on virological.com, “In the context of the current global outbreak, continued reference to, and nomenclature of this virus being African is not only inaccurate but is also discriminatory and stigmatizing. The most obvious manifestation of this is the use of photos of African patients to depict the pox lesions in mainstream media in the global north. Recently, Foreign Press Association, Africa, issued a statement urging the global media to stop using images of African people to highlight the outbreak in Europe.” Monkeypox, according to a description on WHO’s website, “is a zoonosis: a disease that is transmitted from animals to humans.” Human-to-human transmission is limited, according to WHO, but can occur “through contact with bodily fluids, lesions on the skin or on internal mucosal surfaces, such as in the mouth or throat, respiratory droplets and contaminated objects.” …

People infected with the earliest version of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, first identified in South Africa in November, may be vulnerable to reinfection with later versions of omicron even if they have been vaccinated and boosted, new findings suggest. Vaccinated patients with omicron BA.1 breakthrough infections developed antibodies that could neutralize that virus plus the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, but the omicron sublineages circulating now have mutations that allow them to evade those antibodies, researchers from China reported on Friday in Nature. Omicron BA.2.12.1, which is now causing most of the infections in the United States, and omicron BA.5 and BA.4, which account for more than 21% of new U.S. cases, contain mutations not present in the BA.1 and BA.2 versions of omicron. Those newer sublineages “notably evade the neutralizing antibodies elicited by SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination,” the researchers found in test-tube experiments. The monoclonal antibody drugs bebtelovimab from Eli Lilly and cilgavimab, a component of AstraZeneca’s Evusheld, can still effectively neutralize BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/BA.5, the experiments also showed. But vaccine boosters based on the BA.1 virus, such as those in development by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, “may not achieve broad-spectrum protection against new omicron variants,” the researchers warned. Previous research that has not yet undergone peer review has suggested that unvaccinated people infected with omicron are unlikely to develop immune responses that will protect them against other variants of the coronavirus. “My personal bias is that while there may be some advantage to having an omicron-specific vaccine, I think …

Many people are trying to live more eco-friendly lives. But what about more eco-friendly deaths? For VOA, Svitlana Prystynska introduces us to the business of corpse composting. First, a caution: Some may find the subject matter disturbing. …

In marking the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, the United Nations is calling for better land management and regreening initiatives to tackle the twin disasters.  Europe is struggling with an unusually early and intense heat wave, which has spread from North Africa. That has been preceded by a prolonged heat wave in India and Pakistan in March and April.  Spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization, Clare Nullis, said European countries are experiencing scorching temperatures in mid-June that are more typical of those in July or August. She added that temperatures more than 10 degrees higher than average are combined with drought in many parts of Europe.  “As a result of climate change, heat waves are starting earlier. They are becoming more frequent and more severe because of concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which are at record level,” Nullis said. “What we are witnessing today is, unfortunately, a foretaste of the future.”  Heat waves can exacerbate drought and wildfires, and trigger desertification. Droughts are increasing in frequency and severity, the WMO says, adding that they have gone up by 29 percent since 2000, affecting 55 million people a year.  The World Health Organization calls drought an urgent, global issue. It says droughts are getting more frequent and fiercer in all regions, affecting the health and well-being of millions of people. WHO spokeswoman Carla Drysdale said a particularly hard-hit region is the greater Horn of Africa.  “In the past 10 years, the region has endured three severe droughts,” …

Abortion providers in some places where the procedure could be banned if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade are bracing for a ruling by halting scheduling for the procedure, transitioning staff to help patients travel to other states and creating networks of clinics that will span across regions of the country. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, which operates three clinics that provide abortions in the state, is not scheduling the procedure beyond June 25 as it anticipates a late June decision reversing the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion rights nationwide. The organization in recent weeks has dedicated two staff members to help patients book appointments and figure out how to get to clinics. Whether clinics in Wisconsin will be able to provide abortions, though, has turned into a day-to-day question. “One of the hardest aspects of this is not knowing what day this decision will come down and what it will be,” said Michelle Velasquez, the director of legal advocacy and services at Planned Parenthood Wisconsin. “The unknown has been difficult.” It’s a window into what abortion providers and access funds are planning in more than a dozen other states across the South and Midwest. In South Dakota this week, the state’s only abortion clinic, also operated by Planned Parenthood, announced it had “paused” scheduling abortions beyond the end of the month. In Oklahoma, providers already stopped the procedure after a law was enacted to ban it. In Wisconsin, a law banning abortion has been on the books …

Data from a European space observatory tells the history of our galaxy and may even predict its future. Plus, the full moon was as close to Earth as it will be this year, and a look back at a true space pioneer. VOA’s Arash  Arabasadi  brings us The Week in Space. …

During the early months of the pandemic, the Chinese government developed a color-coded smartphone app to track the movement of people in its effort to control the spread of COVID-19 and implement its zero-COVID policy. This week, however, media reports surfaced that authorities in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, were now using the required codes to restrict the movement of people upset because local banks had frozen their deposits. Hundreds of depositors who had lost access to their funds had planned to travel to Zhengzhou on Monday, only to find their health codes had suddenly turned red. This meant they couldn’t travel, and the protests fizzled. The red code seemed to target only depositors, according to CNN. VOA Mandarin asked China’s Foreign Ministry for comment on the government’s alleged new use for the app but received no comment. The state-run Global Times ran an editorial on Tuesday saying, “The health code is a technical means designed to make the public compromise some personal information rights to comply with the needs of society’s public health security. It can only be used for epidemic prevention purposes. It is the responsibility of the relevant authorities to protect the privacy of citizens to the greatest extent during the epidemic prevention process.” Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of Global Times, posted on his Weibo microblog that the “red code issue is very disturbing,” and that any non-COVID-related use would be a “clear violation” of virus prevention measures. Ever since China began promoting the portable and personalized …

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday released new warnings about synthetic pollutants in drinking water known as “forever chemicals,” saying the toxins can still be harmful even at levels so low they are not detectable.  The family of toxic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have been used for decades in household products such as nonstick cookware, stain- and water-resistant textiles and in firefighting foam and industrial products.  Scientists have linked some PFAS to cancers, liver damage, low birth weight and other health problems. But the chemicals, which do not break down easily, are not yet regulated.  The agency is set to issue proposed rules in coming months to regulate PFAS. Until the regulations come into effect, the advisories are meant to provide information to states, tribes and water systems to address PFAS contamination.  The EPA also said it would roll out the first $1 billion to tackle PFAS in drinking water, from a total of $5 billion in funding in last year’s infrastructure law. The funds would provide states technical assistance, water quality testing and installation of centralized treatment systems.  The updated drinking water health advisories for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) replace those the EPA issued in 2016. The advisory levels, based on new science that considers lifetime exposure, indicate that some health problems may still occur with concentrations of PFOA or PFOS in water that are near zero and below EPA’s ability to detect.  “Today’s actions highlight EPA’s commitment to …

COVID-19 shots for U.S. infants, toddlers and preschoolers moved a step closer Wednesday.  The Food and Drug Administration’s outside vaccine advisers gave a thumbs-up to Moderna’s two shots for the littlest kids. The panel is set to vote later Wednesday on whether to also recommend Pfizer’s three-shot series for those youngsters.  The outside experts voted unanimously that the benefits of Moderna’s shots outweigh any risks for children under 5 — that’s roughly 18 million youngsters.  They are the last remaining group in the U.S. to get vaccinated, and many parents have been anxious to protect their little children. If all the regulatory steps are cleared, shots should be available next week.  “This is a long-awaited vaccine,” said panel member Dr. Jay Portnoy of Children’s Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. “There are so many parents who are absolutely desperate to get this vaccine, and I think we owe it to them to give them a choice to have the vaccine if they want to.”  Dr. Peter Marks, FDA’s vaccine chief, opened the meeting with data showing a “quite troubling surge” in young children’s hospitalizations during the omicron wave, and noted that 442 children under 4 have died during the pandemic. That’s far fewer than adult deaths but should not be dismissed in considering the need for vaccinating the youngest kids, he said.  “Each child that’s lost essentially fractures a family,” Marks said.  FDA reviewers said both brands appear to be safe and effective for children as young as 6 months old …

South Africans are well known for their love of barbecuing meat, called “braaing” in Afrikaans. But in a bid to cut down on the harm livestock farming does to the environment, one South African company has become the first on the continent to produce lab-grown meat.  The Mzansi Meat Company started up about two years ago. Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Tasneem Karodia, 31, said they have been funded by South African and overseas investors, most of whom have an interest in the environment, animal welfare and/or health.  Growing meat in a lab begins with a fairly simple procedure, Karodia explained.  “We take a biopsy from an animal and the biopsy’s really kind of the size of a peppercorn. Usually take it from the shoulder with some muscle and fat. And it’s really quite a small process. And it takes five minutes and the animal is up and running within an hour,” she said. “And from there we process it currently in a lab. We do a few things to make sure that it works and continues to grow.”  She said the company replicates the same conditions that are in a cow, just outside of the cow. So, for instance, the meat is put at 37 degrees because it’s a mammal, and it is given sugars and amino acids.  “When we’re at a large scale, what this looks like is not really a lab but it looks like a brewery,” Karodia said. “So, cells will grow in steel vats like …