Author: Sellheal

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it is providing $600 million in funding to produce new at-home COVID-19 tests and is restarting a website allowing Americans to again order up to four free tests per household — aiming to prevent possible shortages during a rise in coronavirus cases that has typically come during colder months. The Department of Health and Human Services says orders can be placed at COVIDTests.gov starting September 25, and that no-cost tests will be delivered for free by the United States Postal Service. Twelve manufacturers that employ hundreds of people in seven states have been awarded funding and will produce 200 million over-the-counter tests to replenish federal stockpiles for government use, in addition to producing enough tests to meet demand for tests ordered online, the department said. Federal officials said that will help guard against supply chain issues that sparked some shortages of at-home COVID tests made overseas during past surges in coronavirus cases. Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, said the website will remain functional to receive orders through the holidays and “we reserve the right to keep it open even longer if we’re starting to see an increase in cases.” “If there is a demand for these tests, we want to make sure that they’re made available to the American people for free in this way,” O’Connell said. “But, at this point, our focus is getting through the holidays and making sure folks can take a test if they’re going …

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned a climate summit of world leaders on Wednesday there is not much time left to avert an environmental catastrophe. “We must make up for time lost to foot-dragging, arm-twisting and the naked greed of entrenched interests raking in billions from fossil fuels,” Guterres told world leaders at the start of the daylong General Assembly symposium at United Nations headquarters in New York. After Guterres’ opening remarks, heads of state representing 34 nations were set to speak on the importance of sustainability, including Brazil, Pakistan, South Africa, Canada, the European Union and Tuvalu, a Polynesian island nation imperiled by rising sea levels. Brazilian President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva withdrew after falling ill. His environment minister was expected to speak in his place. The two largest economies that also are the biggest polluters — the United States and China — were noticeably left off the speakers’ list. Only nations who planned to increase their pledges to slash emissions were invited to the podium. U.S. Special Envoy on Climate John Kerry was in attendance. Guterres said that the global shift from fossil fuels to renewables is underway, but that progress is decades overdue. The harms of climate change, he said, are hitting the developing world the hardest, and the Global North is mostly to blame. “Many of the poorest nations have every right to be angry, angry that they are suffering from a climate crisis they did nothing to create, angry that promised finance has not been …

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s brain-chip startup Neuralink said on Tuesday it has received approval from an independent review board to begin recruitment for the first human trial of its brain implant for paralysis patients.  Those with paralysis due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may qualify for the study, Neuralink said, but did not reveal how many participants would be enrolled in the trial, which will take about six years to complete.  The study will use a robot to surgically place a brain-computer interface implant in a region of the brain that controls the intention to move, Neuralink said, adding that its initial goal is to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone.  The company, which had earlier hoped to receive approval to implant its device in 10 patients, was negotiating a lower number of patients with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after the agency raised safety concerns, according to current and former employees. It is not known how many patients the FDA ultimately approved.  Musk has grand ambitions for Neuralink, saying it would facilitate speedy surgical insertions of its chip devices to treat conditions such as obesity, autism, depression and schizophrenia.   In May, the company said it had received clearance from the FDA for its first-in-human clinical trial, when it was already under federal scrutiny for its handling of animal testing.  Even if the BCI device proves to be safe for human use, it would still potentially take more …

The tiny Pacific island nation of Niue has come up with a novel plan to protect its vast and pristine territorial waters — it will get sponsors to pay. Under the plan, which was being launched by Niue’s Prime Minister Dalton Tagelagi on Tuesday in New York, individuals or companies can pay $148 to protect 1 square kilometer (about 250 acres) of ocean from threats such as illegal fishing and plastic waste for a period of 20 years. Niue hopes to raise more than $18 million from the scheme by selling 127,000 square-kilometer units, representing the 40% of its waters that form a no-take marine protected area. In an interview with The Associated Press before the launch, Tagelagi said his people have always had a close connection with the sea. “Niue is just one island in the middle of the big blue ocean,” Tagelagi said. “We are surrounded by the ocean, and we live off the ocean. That’s our livelihood.” He said Niueans inherited and learned about the ocean from their forefathers, and they want to be able to pass it on to the next generation in sustainable health. Most fishing in Niue is to sustain local people, although there are some small-scale commercial operations and occasional offshore industrial-scale fishing, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. “Because of all the illegal fishing and all the other activities at the moment, we thought that we should be taking the lead, to teach others that we’ve got to protect the …

Measles, diarrhea and malnutrition, among other preventable diseases, kill about 100 children every month in Sudan where armed conflicts have uprooted more than five million people from their homes, according to the United Nations. Between May 15 and September 14, at least 1,200 children under the age of five died from a deadly combination of a suspected measles outbreak and high malnutrition in nine camps for internally displaced people in Sudan’s White Nile state. There have also been reports of cholera, dengue, and malaria cases emerging in various parts of the country, sparking concerns about the looming threat of epidemics. “Children younger than five are worst impacted, accounting for nearly 70% of all cases and 76% of all deaths,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. The U.N. warning comes as Sudan’s health sector is teetering on the brink of collapse, crippled by a severe lack of funding and essential resources. “Health facilities are at breaking point, due to shortages of staff, life-saving medicine and critical equipment, exacerbating current outbreaks and causing unnecessary deaths,” the WHO said. Ongoing-armed hostilities between Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which started in April, have generated and exacerbated humanitarian crises in the African country. The conflict has taken an immense toll on Sudan’s civilian population, with the Health Ministry acknowledging over 1,500 civilian deaths since the conflict started. However, aid agencies contend that the actual death toll far exceeds the officially reported figures. Both warring factions, the SAF …

Climate change and conflict are hitting efforts to tackle three of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has warned. International initiatives to fight the diseases have largely recovered after being badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Fund’s 2023 results report released on Monday. But the increasing challenges of climate change and conflict mean the world is likely to miss the target of putting an end to AIDS, TB and malaria by 2030 without “extraordinary steps,” said Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund. For example, malaria is spreading to highland parts of Africa that were previously too cold for the mosquito carrying the disease-causing parasite. Extreme weather events like floods are overwhelming health services, displacing communities, causing upsurges in infection and interrupting treatment in many different places, the report said. In countries including Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Myanmar, simply reaching vulnerable communities has also been immensely challenging due to insecurity, it added. There are positives, Sands said. For example, in 2022, 6.7 million people were treated for TB in the countries where the Global Fund invests, 1.4 million more people than in the previous year. The Fund also helped provide 24.5 million people with antiretroviral therapy for HIV and distributed 220 million mosquito nets. Sands added that innovative prevention and diagnostic tools also provided hope. This week, there is a high-level meeting on TB at the U.N. General Assembly, and advocates hope for renewed focus …

Bystanders are less likely to give life-saving CPR to women having a cardiac arrest in public than men, leading to more women dying from the common health emergency, researchers said Monday. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation combines mouth-to-mouth breathing and chest compressions to pump blood to the brain of people whose hearts have stopped beating, potentially staving off death until medical help arrives. In research to be presented at a medical conference in Spain this week, but which has not yet been peer-reviewed, a team of Canadian doctors sought to understand how bystanders administer the procedure differently to men and women. They looked at records of cardiac arrests that took place outside of hospitals in the United States and Canada between 2005 and 2015, which included nearly 40,000 patients.  Overall, 54% of the patients received CPR from a bystander, the research said. For cardiac arrests in a public place, such as in the street, 61% of women were given CPR by a bystander — compared to 68% of men.  Alexis Cournoyer, an emergency physician at the Hopital du Sacre-Coeur de Montreal who conducted the research, told AFP that this gap “increases women’s mortality following a cardiac arrest — that’s for sure.” Cardiac arrests are a leading cause of death, with more than 350,000 occurring in the U.S. alone every year, according to the American Heart Association. Only around 10% of people who have a sudden cardiac arrest outside of a hospital survive, research has shown. The researchers sought to find a reason for …

Solar panels soak up blinding noontime rays that help power a water desalination facility in eastern Saudi Arabia, a step towards making the notoriously emissions-heavy process less environmentally taxing. The Jazlah plant in Jubail city applies the latest technological advances in a country that first turned to desalination more than a century ago, when Ottoman-era administrators enlisted filtration machines for hajj pilgrims menaced by drought and cholera. Lacking lakes, rivers and regular rainfall, Saudi Arabia today relies instead on dozens of facilities that transform water from the Gulf and Red Sea into something potable, supplying cities and towns that otherwise would not survive. But the kingdom’s growing desalination needs — fueled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s dreams of presiding over a global business and tourism hub — risk clashing with its sustainability goals, including achieving net-zero emissions by 2060. Projects like Jazlah, the first plant to integrate desalination with solar power on a large scale, are meant to ease that conflict: officials say the panels will help save around 60,000 tons of carbon emissions annually. It is the type of innovation that must be scaled up fast, with Prince Mohammed targeting a population of 100 million people by 2040, up from 32.2 million today. “Typically, the population grows, and then the quality of life of the population grows,” necessitating more and more water, said CEO Marco Arcelli of ACWA Power, which runs Jazlah. Using desalination to keep pace is a “do or die” challenge, said historian Michael Christopher Low …

Families and a pediatrician are challenging North Dakota’s law criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors, the latest lawsuit in many states with similar bans.  Gender Justice on Thursday announced the state district court lawsuit in a news conference at the state Capitol in Bismarck. The lawsuit against the state attorney general and state’s attorneys of three counties seeks to immediately block the ban, which took effect in April, and to have a judge find it unconstitutional and stop the state from enforcing it.  State lawmakers “have outlawed essential health care for these kids simply and exclusively because they are transgender,” Gender Justice attorney and North Dakota state director Christina Sambor told reporters. “They have stripped parents of their right to decide for themselves what’s best for their own children. They have made it a criminal offense for doctors to provide health care that can literally save children’s lives.”  The bill that enacted the ban passed overwhelmingly earlier this year in North Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature. Republican Gov. Doug Burgum, who is running for president, signed the ban into law in April. It took effect immediately.  “Going forward, thoughtful debate around these complex medical policies should demonstrate compassion and understanding for all North Dakota youth and their families,” Burgum said at the time.  Tate Dolney, a plaintiff and 12-year-old transgender boy from Fargo, said gender-affirming care helped his confidence, happiness, schoolwork and relationships with others.  “I was finally able to just be who I truly am,” the seventh-grader told reporters. “It has hurt …

Farmers say extreme temperatures caused a huge drop in the output of olive oil in Spain, the world’s largest producer, triggering a big jump in world olive oil prices. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report from Alfonso Beato in Barcelona, who says Europe’s leadership is blaming climate change. …

For decades, preventing dengue fever in Honduras has meant teaching people to fear mosquitoes and avoid their bites. Now, Hondurans are being educated about a potentially more effective way to control the disease — and it goes against everything they’ve learned. Which explains why a dozen people cheered last month as Tegucigalpa resident Hector Enriquez held a glass jar filled with mosquitoes above his head, and then freed the buzzing insects into the air. Enriquez, a 52-year-old mason, had volunteered to help publicize a plan to suppress dengue by releasing millions of special mosquitoes in the Honduran capital. The mosquitoes Enriquez unleashed in his El Manchen neighborhood — an area rife with dengue — were bred by scientists to carry bacteria called Wolbachia that interrupt transmission of the disease. When these mosquitoes reproduce, they pass the bacteria to their offspring, reducing future outbreaks. This emerging strategy for battling dengue was pioneered over the last decade by the nonprofit World Mosquito Program, and it is being tested in more than a dozen countries. With more than half the world’s population at risk of contracting dengue, the World Health Organization is paying close attention to the mosquito releases in Honduras, and elsewhere, and it is poised to promote the strategy globally. In Honduras, where 10,000 people are known to be sickened by dengue each year, Doctors Without Borders is partnering with the mosquito program over the next six months to release close to 9 million mosquitoes carrying the Wolbachia bacteria. “There is …

A global hunger crisis has left more than 700 million people not knowing when or if they will eat again, and demand for food is rising relentlessly while humanitarian funding is drying up, the head of the United Nations food agency said Thursday. World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain told the U.N. Security Council that because of the lack of funding, the agency has been forced to cut food rations for millions of people, and “more cuts are on the way.” “We are now living with a series of concurrent and long-term crises that will continue to fuel global humanitarian needs,” she said. “This is the humanitarian community’s new reality — our new normal — and we will be dealing with the fallout for years to come.” The WFP chief, the widow of the late U.S. senator John McCain, said the agency estimates that nearly 47 million people in over 50 countries are just one step from famine — and a staggering 45 million children younger than 5 are now estimated to suffer from acute malnutrition. According to WFP estimates from 79 countries where the Rome-based agency operates, up to 783 million people — one in 10 of the world’s population — still go to bed hungry every night. More than 345 million people are facing high levels of food insecurity this year, an increase of almost 200 million people from early 2021 before the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency said. At the root of the soaring numbers, WFP said, …

Authorities in India are scrambling to contain a rare outbreak of Nipah, a virus spread from animals to humans that causes deadly fever and has a high mortality rate. Here is a look at what is known so far: What is the Nipah virus?  The first Nipah outbreak was recorded in 1998 after the virus spread among pig farmers in Malaysia. The virus is named after the village where it was discovered.  Outbreaks are rare but Nipah has been listed by the World Health Organization — alongside Ebola, Zika and COVID-19 — as one of several diseases deserving of priority research because of their potential to cause a global epidemic.  Nipah usually spreads to humans from animals or through contaminated food, but it can also be transmitted directly between people.   Fruit bats are the natural carriers of the virus and have been identified as the most likely cause of subsequent outbreaks.  Symptoms include intense fever, vomiting and a respiratory infection, but severe cases can involve seizures and brain inflammation that results in a coma.  Patients have a mortality rate of between 40% and 75% depending on the public health response to the virus, the WHO says. There is no vaccine for Nipah. What has happened during previous outbreaks?  The first Nipah outbreak killed more than 100 people in Malaysia and prompted the culling of 1 million pigs to try to contain the virus.   It also spread to Singapore, with 11 cases and one death among slaughterhouse workers who had come …

One American and two Russian space crew members blasted off Friday aboard a Russian spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a mission to the International Space Station. NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub lifted off on the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft at 8:44 p.m. local time. O’Hara will spend six months on the ISS while Kononenko and Chub will spend a year there. Neither O’Hara nor Chub has ever flown to space before, but they will be flying with veteran cosmonaut and mission commander Kononenko, who has made the trip four times already. The trio should arrive at the ISS after a three-hour flight. When they get to the ISS, their module will dock and when the hatches open they will be met by seven astronauts and cosmonauts from the U.S., Russia, Denmark and Japan. Later in September, three of the ISS crew will depart, including NASA astronaut Frank Rubio who will have been there for more than a year. According to NASA, when mission commander Kononenko finishes his tour to space in a year’s time, he will hold the record for the person who has spent the longest amount of time — more than a thousand days — in space. …

Bangladesh is struggling with a record outbreak of dengue fever, with experts saying a lack of a coordinated response is causing more deaths from the mosquito-transmitted disease.  The World Health Organization recently warned that diseases such as dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever caused by mosquito-borne viruses are spreading faster and further because of climate change.  So far this year, 778 people in Bangladesh have died and 157,172 have been infected, according to the government’s Directorate General Health Services. The U.N. children’s agency says the actual numbers are higher because many cases are not reported.  The previous highest number of deaths was in 2022, when 281 people are reported to have died during the entire year.  Dengue is common in tropical areas and causes high fevers, headaches, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain and, in the most serious cases, internal bleeding that leads to death.  Mohammed Niatuzzaman, director of the state-run Mugda Medical College and Hospital in Dhaka, said Thursday that Bangladesh is struggling to cope with the outbreak because of a lack of a “sustainable policy” and because many do not know how to treat it.  Outside Dhaka and other big cities, medical professionals including nurses need better training in handling dengue cases, he said.  He said authorities should include groups like city corporations and local governments in the fight against dengue, and researchers should study how to prepare for future outbreaks.  Some residents of Dhaka are unhappy with the authorities.  “Our house is in an area which is at risk …

NASA said on Thursday it has selected a research director to investigate UFO sightings on the recommendation of an independent panel of experts.  Administrator Bill Nelson, who made the announcement, has yet to identify the appointee.  The unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, is the official term for what most call UFOs — unidentified flying objects. The panel, which included physicists, astronomers and biologists, wouldn’t say whether eyewitness accounts of UAP prove the existence of life beyond our horizons.  That’s still an open question, according to Nelson. “If you ask me do I believe there’s life in a universe that’s so vast that it’s hard for me to comprehend how big it is, my personal answer is, ‘Yes,’” he said.  In his statement, Nelson conceded that “[NASA scientists] don’t know what these UAP are.”  In 2021, the national intelligence director published a comprehensive report, sharing never-before-seen scientific data and military observations on coastal sightings of UAP. Some of the high-flying objects are said to outpace and outmaneuver even the best fighter jets, without any apparent thrust or flight control systems.  UAP have mystified Americans since June 1947, when newspapers first reported that a metallic “flying saucer” appeared in the sky over mountain ranges in Washington state. Sensational accounts of UAP sightings have cropped up all over the world since, including the debunked Roswell, New Mexico incident that made headlines that same year. For the better part of a century, conspiracy theorists have accused the government of withholding facts or even lying …

Malawi is extending the maximum age of children eligible for the polio vaccination from 5 to 15. Since the discovery last year of its first polio case 30 years after the country eradicated the disease, the number of cases has increased to five this year — the latest victim being 14 years old.   Malawi health authorities made the announcement Tuesday at the launch of the nationwide polio vaccination campaign that is targeting about 9.7 million children.      Beston Chisamile, the secretary of health in Malawi, said the children will be vaccinated on their doorsteps.   “Our health workers will be visiting parents’ homes and vaccinating [children],” said Chisamile. “We are aware that some of them were skipped in the previous vaccination phase, and we want to try and reach the majority.”  Chisamile said the maximum age of children to be vaccinated was extended from 5 to 15 years of age after the discovery of another case this year of a 14-year-old.  Polio resurfaces  Polio is a viral disease that causes irreversible paralysis and has no cure. The disease can be prevented, however, by the administration of effective vaccines.  Thirty years after it eradicated the disease, Malawi confirmed its first polio case in February 2022. Since then, the number of confirmed cases has increased to five.  Malawi is among several countries in Africa that have registered confirmed cases of polio in recent years.   The World Health Organization said in a statement released on August 30 that 187 confirmed cases of …

A government watchdog agency in France has ordered Apple to withdraw the iPhone 12 from the French market, saying it emits levels of electromagnetic radiation that are too high. The National Frequency Agency, which oversees radio-electric frequencies as well as public exposure to electromagnetic radiation, called on Apple in a statement Tuesday to “implement all available means to rapidly fix this malfunction” for phones already being used. Corrective updates to the iPhone 12 will be monitored by the agency, and if they don’t work, “Apple will have to recall” phones that have already been sold, according to the French regulator’s statement. Apple disputed the findings and said the device complies with all regulations governing radiation. The agency, which is known by the French acronym ANFR, said it recently checked 141 cellphones, including the iPhone 12, for electromagnetic waves capable of being absorbed by the body. It said it found a level of electromagnetic energy absorption of 5.74 watts per kilogram during tests of a phone in a hand or a pocket, higher than the European Union standard of 4 watts per kilogram. The agency said the iPhone 12 met the threshold when radiation levels were assessed for a phone kept in a jacket or in a bag. Apple said the iPhone 12, which was released in late 2020, has been certified by multiple international bodies and complies with all applicable regulations and standards for radiation around the world. The U.S. tech company said it has provided the French agency with …

In Indian cities, most electric vehicles seen on the roads are not cars, but three- and two-wheel vehicles that deliver goods and ferry passengers in cities. Anjana Pasricha reports on how the exponential growth in these electric vehicles in New Delhi and surrounding towns could contribute to cleaning up the air in one of the world’s most polluted cities. Video: Darshan Singh …

Most Americans should get an updated COVID-19 vaccine, health officials said Tuesday. Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorsed the new shots for everyone 6 months and older and the agency’s director quickly signed off Tuesday on the panel’s recommendation. That means doses should be available this week, some as early as Wednesday. The severity of the COVID-19 pandemic has faded, but there are still thousands of hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths in the U.S. each week. Hospitalizations have been increasing since late summer, though the latest data indicate infections may be starting to level off, particularly in the South. Still, experts worry that immunity from previous vaccinations and infections is fading in many people, and a new shot would save many lives. According to a survey last month that the CDC cited, about 42% said they would definitely or probably get the new vaccine. Yet only about 20% of adults got an updated booster when it was offered a year ago. Doctors hope enough people get vaccinated to help avert another “tripledemic” like last year when hospitals were overwhelmed with an early flu season, an onslaught of RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, and yet another winter coronavirus surge. Here is what you need to know about the new COVID-19 shots: Who should get the updated vaccine? The Food and Drug Administration approved the updated shots from Pfizer and Moderna for adults and children as young as 6 months. FDA said starting at age 5, most people …

An American researcher was “doing well” at a Turkish hospital, officials said Tuesday, after rescuers pulled him out of a cave where he fell seriously ill and became trapped 1,000 meters (more than 3,000 feet) below its entrance for over a week. Rescuers from Turkey and across Europe cheered and clapped as Mark Dickey, a 40-year-old experienced caver, emerged from Morca Cave in southern Turkey’s Taurus Mountains strapped to a stretcher at 12:37 a.m. local time Tuesday. He was whisked to the hospital in the nearby city of Mersin in a helicopter. Dickey fell ill on Sept. 2 with stomach bleeding. What caused his condition remained unclear. Lying on the stretcher surrounded by reporters shortly after his rescue, he described his nine-day ordeal as a “crazy, crazy adventure.” “It is amazing to be above ground again,” he said. A well-known cave researcher and a cave rescuer who had participated in many international expeditions, Dickey thanked the international caving community, Turkish cavers and Hungarian Cave Rescue, among others. Dickey, who is from Croton-on-Hudson, New York, was part of an expedition to map the Morca Cave, Turkey’s third deepest, when he became sick. As he was too frail to climb out himself, cave rescue teams from Europe scrambled to help save him, mounting a challenging operation that involved pulling him up the cave’s steep vertical sections and navigating through mud and water at low temperatures in the horizontal sections. Rescuers had to widen some of the cave’s narrow passages, install ropes to …

British scientist Ian Wilmut, whose research was central to the creation of the cloned animal, Dolly the Sheep, has died at the age of 79, the University of Edinburgh said on Monday.   His death on Sunday, years after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, was announced by the University of Edinburgh, where he worked.  Wilmut, along with Keith Campbell from the Roslin animal sciences research institute in Scotland, generated news headlines and heated ethical debates in 1996 when they created Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.  “He led efforts to develop cloning, or nuclear transfer, techniques that could be used to make genetically modified sheep. It was these efforts which led to the births of Megan and Morag in 1995 and Dolly in 1996,” the university said in a statement.  Dolly, named after country singer Dolly Parton, was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, using a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).  This involved taking a sheep egg, removing its DNA and replacing it with DNA from a frozen udder cell of a sheep that died years before. The egg was then zapped with electricity to make it grow like a fertilized embryo. No sperm were involved.  Dolly’s creation triggered fears of human reproductive cloning, or producing genetic copies of living or dead people, but mainstream scientists have ruled this out as far too dangerous.  Wilmut, who was born near Stratford-upon-Avon, attended the University of Nottingham, initially to study agriculture, …

The U.S. approved updated COVID-19 vaccines Monday, hoping to rev up protection against the latest coronavirus strains and blunt any surge this fall and winter. The Food and Drug Administration decision opens the newest shots from Moderna and Pfizer and its partner BioNTech to most Americans even if they’ve never had a coronavirus vaccination. It’s part of a shift to treat fall updates of the COVID-19 vaccine much like getting a yearly flu shot. There’s still another step: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must sign off. A CDC advisory panel is set to issue recommendations Tuesday on who most needs the updated shots. Vaccinations could begin later this week, and both the COVID-19 and flu shot can be given at the same visit. COVID-19 hospitalizations have been rising since late summer although – thanks to some lasting immunity from prior vaccinations and infections – not nearly as much as this time last year. But protection wanes over time and the coronavirus continually churns out new variants that can dodge prior immunity. It’s been a year since the last time the vaccines were tweaked. Just like earlier vaccinations, the fall round is cleared for adults and children as young as age 6 months. FDA said starting at age 5, most people can get a single dose even if they’ve never had a prior COVID-19 shot. Younger children might need additional doses depending on their history of COVID-19 infections and vaccinations. The newest shots target an omicron variant named XBB.1.5. …

It’s lunchtime at the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District and a colony of sabethes cyaneus — also known as the paddle-legged beauty for its feathery appendages and iridescent coloring — find their way to Ella Branham. “They’re not very aggressive and they’re kind of picky eaters,” said Branham, a technician, as she exhaled into a glass tank to attract the insects to the carbon dioxide in her breath. “So I’ll be feeding them with my arm.” Branham had volunteered to let the South American mosquitoes feed on her blood so they can produce eggs and maintain the colony for education and research at the lab in the Salt Lake City district. It’s one of the many mosquito control districts around the United States that seek to hold in check one of the world’s deadliest animals — one well-positioned to thrive as climate change fosters a warmer and wetter environment. Mosquitoes can carry viruses including dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika. They are especially threatening to public health in Asia and Africa but are also closely monitored in the United States. Local agencies reported more than 1,100 cases of West Nile virus in 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most humans who contract West Nile show no symptoms. But for some, it can cause vomiting, fever and in rare cases seizures or meningitis. Over roughly the last 25 years, nearly 3,000 deaths and more than 25,000 hospitalizations linked to West Nile were reported throughout the …