The initial round of mass testing for the coronavirus has been completed in Shijiazhuang, a city of 11 million that was locked down Wednesday after 39 new cases of the virus surfaced, the city’s mayor said Saturday.Mayor Ma Yujun said at a news conference that a second round of testing would begin soon in the capital of Hebei province, which was sealed off as travel restrictions were imposed in the rest of the region of 76 million people that encircles Beijing.On Tuesday, Hebei authorities put the province into “wartime mode,” enabling authorities to launch a collaborative campaign involving contact tracing and distribution of medical supplies.The aggressive approach taken by Chinese authorities is being adopted in other parts of the Asia-Pacific region, in sharp contrast to the more deliberate virus containment efforts under way in the U.S. and Europe.The United States had more cases Saturday than anyplace else, with more than 22 million of the world’s nearly 90 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University. India was second with more than 10.4 million cases.The U.S. reported more than 300,000 new COVID cases Friday, close to its January 2 record.FILE – People arrive at Jackson Memorial Hospital to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in Miami, Jan. 6, 2021.Vaccine releaseWith the virus surging in some U.S. states, President-elect Joe Biden said he backed the rapid release of COVID vaccines so that whoever wants it will have access to it. Biden’s office said Friday that it would limit the Trump administration’s practice of increasing inventories of vaccine doses to guarantee that people get the booster shot several weeks after the first inoculation.Infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci said earlier this week he was hopeful that when Biden is in office, the U.S. will be able to deliver to the public “1 million vaccinations per day, as the president-elect has mentioned.”A surprising development, however, has emerged in some implausible locations. The Associated Press reports that some health care workers in hospitals and nursing homes are hesitant about being vaccinated. The AP said its investigation uncovered that in some places as much as 80% of the medical staff has declined the vaccinations.One doctor told the wire service he wanted to wait a few months to “see what the data show.” He said, “I don’t think anyone wants to be a guinea pig.”A nurse said she was delaying her vaccination because of the vaccine’s “unknown side effects.”Some medical personnel, however, are reversing their hesitancy. One medical director told AP that “the biggest thing that helped us to gain confidence in our staff was watching other staff members get vaccinated, be OK, walk out of the room, you know, not grow a third ear, and so that really is like an avalanche,” causing staff members to rethink how they view the inoculations.People line up to enter a grocery store before an impending lockdown due to an outbreak of the coronavirus disease in Brisbane, Australia, Jan. 8, 2021.Using cautionSome countries are also taking a wait-and-see attitude toward vaccines. The British newspaper The Guardian said Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea were among the countries that had decided to see what is happening in the rest of the world with the inoculations.Jennifer Martin, an Australian physician who is also on the advisory committee of the sole purchaser for pharmaceuticals in New Zealand, said, “Why would you put people at risk when if you wait a bit longer, you can get more information?”The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Friday urged the manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines and the wealthier countries to make them available to poorer countries. He said most of the 42 countries rolling out coronavirus vaccines were high-income nations and a few were middle-income countries.Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has banned imports of COVID-19 vaccines from America’s Pfizer-BioNTech and Britain’s AstraZeneca, citing a mistrust of Western countries.“I really do not trust them,” Khamenei said Friday in a televised speech. “Sometimes they seek to try out their vaccines on other nations to see if it works or not,” he said. “I am not optimistic [about] France, either.”Khamenei said he continued to allow the import of vaccines from other “safe” places and still supported his country’s efforts to produce its own vaccine.Iran began human trials with its vaccines in December and officials hope they will be available in the country in a few months.Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz gets a dose of a coronavirus disease vaccine in Neom, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 8, 2021.Saudi king vaccinatedIn Saudi Arabia, the country’s 82-year-old monarch, King Salman, received a coronavirus vaccination, according to video published by state media Friday. Saudi health officials recorded just 97 new cases of the virus Friday and four deaths as infections in the country continued to decline.Israel’s health ministry said Saturday that four people had tested positive for the novel coronavirus strain first detected in South Africa. The British variant had already been reported in the country.Health experts say both strains are potentially more infectious than other variants.Persistently high caseloads forced Israel to tighten lockdown measures Friday after imposing a nationwide lockdown last month.Under Israel’s national vaccination program, 70% of its population older than 60 received initial vaccinations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that he’d reached an agreement with Pfizer-BioNTech to provide enough vaccine to have all citizens older than 16 be vaccinated by the end of March.India said Saturday that it had recorded 18,222 new COVID cases in the past 24 hours. The health ministry also said it had recorded 90 cases of the British variant of the virus.
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The desperately awaited vaccination drive against the coronavirus in the U.S. is running into resistance from an unlikely quarter: Surprising numbers of health care workers who have seen firsthand the death and misery inflicted by COVID-19 are refusing shots.It is happening in nursing homes and, to a lesser degree, in hospitals, with employees expressing what experts say are unfounded fears of side effects from vaccines that were developed at record speed. More than three weeks into the campaign, some places are seeing as much as 80% of the staff holding back.“I don’t think anyone wants to be a guinea pig,” said Dr. Stephen Noble, a 42-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon in Portland, Oregon, who is postponing getting vaccinated. “At the end of the day, as a man of science, I just want to see what the data show. And give me the full data.”Alarmed by the phenomenon, some administrators have dangled everything from free breakfasts at Waffle House to a raffle for a car to get employees to roll up their sleeves.Some states have threatened to let other people cut ahead of health care workers in the line for shots.“It’s far too low. It’s alarmingly low,” said Neil Pruitt, CEO of PruittHealth, which runs about 100 long-term care homes in the South, where fewer than 3 in 10 workers offered the vaccine so far have accepted it.Workers at Queen Anne Healthcare, a skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility in Seattle, Washington, wait in a hallway to receive shots of the Pfizer vaccination for COVID-19, Jan. 8, 2021.Many medical facilities from Florida to Washington state have boasted of near-universal acceptance of the shots, and workers have proudly plastered pictures of themselves on social media receiving the vaccine. Elsewhere, though, the drive has stumbled.While the federal government has released no data on how many people offered the vaccines have taken them, glimpses of resistance have emerged around the country.In Illinois, a big divide has opened at state-run veterans homes between residents and staff. The discrepancy was worst at the veterans home in Manteno, where 90% of residents were vaccinated but only 18% of the staff members.In rural Ashland, Alabama, about 90 of some 200 workers at Clay County Hospital have yet to agree to get vaccinated, even with the place so overrun with COVID-19 patients that oxygen is running low and beds have been added to the intensive care unit, divided by plastic sheeting.The pushback comes amid the most lethal phase in the outbreak yet, with the death toll at more than 350,000, and it could hinder the government’s effort to vaccinate somewhere between 70% and 85% of the U.S. population to achieve “herd immunity.”Administrators and public health officials have expressed hope that more health workers will opt to be vaccinated as they see their colleagues take the shots without problems.Oregon doctor Noble said he will wait until April or May to get the shots. He said it is vital for public health authorities not to overstate what they know about the vaccines.That is particularly important, he said, for Black people like him who are distrustful of government medical guidance because of past failures and abuses, such as the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which medical treatment was withheld from Black syphilis patients in the U.S. so that researchers could track the progression of the disease.Medical journals have published extensive data on the vaccines, and the Food and Drug Administration has made its analysis public. But misinformation about the shots has spread wildly online, including falsehoods that they cause fertility problems.A worker at Queen Anne Healthcare, a skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility in Seattle, Washington, wears a celebratory sticker after receiving the Pfizer vaccination for COVID-19, Jan. 8, 2021.Stormy Tatom, 30, a hospital ICU nurse in Beaumont, Texas, said she decided against getting vaccinated for now “because of the unknown long-term side effects.”“I would say at least half of my coworkers feel the same way,” Tatom said.There have been no signs of widespread severe side effects from the vaccines, and scientists say the drugs have been rigorously tested on tens of thousands and vetted by independent experts.States have begun turning up the pressure. South Carolina’s governor gave health care workers until Jan. 15 to get a shot or “move to the back of the line.” Georgia’s top health official has allowed some vaccines to be diverted to other front-line workers, including firefighters and police, out of frustration with the slow uptake.“There’s vaccine available but it’s literally sitting in freezers,” said Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey. “That’s unacceptable. We have lives to save.”Nursing homes were among the institutions given priority for the shots because the virus has cut a terrible swath through them. Long-term care residents and staff account for about 38% of the nation’s COVID-19 fatalities.In West Virginia, only about 55% of nursing home workers agreed to the shots when they were first offered last month, according to Martin Wright, who leads the West Virginia Health Care Association.“It’s a race against social media,” Wright said of battling falsehoods about the vaccines.Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said only 40% of the state’s nursing home workers have gotten shots. North Carolina’s top public health official estimated more than half were refusing the vaccine there.SavaSeniorCare has offered cash to the 169 long-term care homes in its 20-state network to pay for gift cards, socially distanced parties or other incentives. But so far, data from about a third of its homes shows that 55% of workers have refused the vaccine.Chain pharmacies CVS and Walgreens, which have been contracted by a majority of U.S. nursing homes to administer COVID-19 vaccinations, have not released specifics on the acceptance rate. CVS said that residents have agreed to be immunized at an “encouragingly high” rate but that “initial uptake among staff is low,” partly because of efforts to stagger when employees receive their shots.Some facilities have vaccinated workers in stages so that the staff is not sidelined all at once if they suffer minor side effects, which can include fever and aches.The hesitation isn’t surprising, given the mixed message from political leaders and misinformation online, said Dr. Wilbur Chen, a professor at the University of Maryland who specializes in the science of vaccines.He noted that health care workers represent a broad range of jobs and backgrounds and said they are not necessarily more informed than the general public.“They don’t know what to believe either,” Chen said. But he said he expects the hesitancy to subside as more people are vaccinated and public health officials get their message across.Some places have already seen turnarounds, such as Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.“The biggest thing that helped us to gain confidence in our staff was watching other staff members get vaccinated, be OK, walk out of the room, you know, not grow a third ear, and so that really is like an avalanche,” said Dr. Catherine O’Neal, chief medical officer.“The first few hundred that we had created another 300 that wanted the vaccine.”
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The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Saturday that there are nearly 90 million global COVID-19 cases.The United States has more cases than anyplace else with almost 22 million infections. India comes in second with about half the infections of the U.S. — nearly 10.5 million cases.The U.S. reported more than 300,000 new COVID-19 cases Friday, a record-breaking number.With the virus surging in some U.S. states, President-elect Joe Biden says he believes in the rapid release of the COVID-19 vaccines so whoever wants it will have access to it. The second dose of the vaccine is given weeks later.Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said earlier this week he is hopeful that when Biden is in office, the U.S. will be able to deliver to the U.S. public “1 million vaccinations per day, as the president-elect has mentioned.”A surprising development, however, has emerged in some implausible locations. The Associated Press reports that some health care workers in hospitals and nursing homes are hesitant about being vaccinated. The AP said its investigation uncovered that in some places as much as 80% of the medical staff has declined the vaccinations.One doctor told the wire service he wanted to wait a few months to “see what the data show.” He said, “I don’t think anyone wants to be a guinea pig.”A nurse said she was delaying her vaccination because of the vaccine’s “unknown side effects.”A pedestrian wearing a face mask as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus walks through a road in New Delhi on Jan. 9, 2021.Some medical personnel, however, are reversing their hesitancy. One medical director told AP that “The biggest thing that helped us to gain confidence in our staff was watching other staff members get vaccinated, be OK, walk out of the room, you know, not grow a third ear, and so that really is like an avalanche,” causing staff members to rethink how they view the inoculations.Some countries are also taking a wait-and-see attitude when it comes to vaccines. The British newspaper The Guardian reported that Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are among the countries that have decided to see what is happening in the rest of the world with the inoculations.Jennifer Martin, an Australian physician who is also on the advisory committee of the sole purchaser for pharmaceuticals in New Zealand, said, “Why would you put people at risk when if you wait a bit longer, you can get more information?”The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Friday urged the manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines and the wealthier countries to make them available to poorer countries. He said of the 42 countries that are rolling out coronavirus vaccines, most of them are high-income nations and a few are middle-income countries.Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has banned imports of COVID-19 vaccines from America’s Pfizer-BioNTech and Britain’s AstraZeneca, citing a mistrust of Western countries.“I really do not trust them,” Khamenei said Friday in a televised speech. “Sometimes they seek to try out their vaccines on other nations to see if it works or not,” he said. “I am not optimistic [about] France, either.”Khamenei said he continues to allow the import of vaccines from other “safe” places and still supports his country’s efforts to produce its own vaccine.Iran began human trials with its vaccines in December and officials hope they will be available in the country in a few months.In Saudi Arabia, the country’s 82-year-old monarch, King Salman, received the coronavirus vaccination, according to video published by state media Friday. Saudi health officials recorded just 97 new cases of the virus Friday and four deaths as infections in the country continue to decline.India said Saturday it has recorded 18,222 new COVID cases in the past 24 hours. The health ministry also said it has now recorded 90 cases of the British variant of the virus.
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A nightly gathering of thousands of birds called a “murmuration” has captured the attention of entertainment-starved people in Northern California. Matt Dibble has a look.
Camera: Matt Dibble                   Producer: Matt Dibble
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President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team said Friday the incoming administration will more quickly release coronavirus vaccines once it assumes power on January 20.Biden’s office said it would limit the Trump administration’s practice of increasing inventories of vaccine doses to guarantee that people get the booster shot several weeks after the first inoculation.Expectations were high when the vaccines were approved last month, but the vaccination campaign got off to a sluggish start. Only 5.9 million of the 29.4 million available doses in the U.S. have been distributed, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.In this file photo, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci speaks during an unscheduled briefing after a Coronavirus Task Force meeting at the White House on April 5, 2020, in Washington.Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci told National Public Radio in an interview Thursday that he believes “things will get worse as we get into January.” This is a result, he said, of “the holiday season travel and the congregate settings that usually take place socially during that period of time.”Fauci also said that he believed that tide could be turned “if we really accelerate our public health measures during that period of time, we’ll be able to blunt that acceleration. But that’s going to really require people concentrating very, very intensively on doing the kinds of public health measures that we talk about all the time,” such as wearing masks, social distancing and being inoculated with the coronavirus vaccine.Fauci said he is hopeful that when Biden is in office, the U.S. will be able to deliver to the U.S. public “1 million vaccinations per day, as the president-elect has mentioned.”A supporter of President Donald Trump confronts police as Trump supporters demonstrate on the second floor of the U.S. Capitol near the entrance to the Senate after breaching security defenses, in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.Health professionals and other scientists are concerned that Wednesday’s assault on the U.S. Capitol may have been a COVID-19 superspreader event.The shouting rioters that invaded the building were largely unmasked and not observing social distancing as they went through the halls of Congress and entered some lawmakers’ offices.Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told The New York Times that, “People yelling and screaming, chanting, exerting themselves — all of those things provide opportunity for the virus to spread, and this virus takes those opportunities.”Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said late Thursday the virus killed a record 4,085 people in the U.S. Thursday.The U.S. has more COVID-19 cases than anyplace else in the world – 21.5 million of the globe’s more than 88 million infections, roughly one-fourth of the world’s cases.The U.S. has also suffered more COVID-19 deaths than any other country – more than 366,000 of the world’s nearly 2 million COVID-19 deaths.A woman receives an injection during the first trial phase of a locally-made Iranian vaccine for COVID-19 coronavirus disease in Iran’s capital Tehran on Dec. 29, 2020.Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has banned imports of COVID-19 vaccines from America’s Pfizer-BioNTech and Britain’s AstraZeneca, citing a mistrust of Western countries.“I really do not trust them,” Khamenei said Friday in a televised speech. “Sometimes they seek to try out their vaccines on other nations to see if it works or not,” he said. “I am not optimistic (about) France, either.”Khamenei said he continues to allow the import of vaccines from other “safe” places and still supports his country’s efforts to produce its own vaccine.Iran began human trials with its vaccines in December and hopes they will be available in the country this spring.Britain announced mandatory COVID-19 tests Thursday for all international arrivals to the country.Brazil surpassed 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Thursday, making it the country with the second-highest death toll in the world.A Brisbane City Council worker wears a mask along the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane on Jan. 8, 2021, as Australia’s third-largest city headed into lockdown.The Australian city of Brisbane began a three-day lockdown Friday night after a member of a hotel’s quarantine cleaning staff was found to have the highly contagious British mutation of the coronavirus.”Doing three days now could avoid doing 30 days in the future,” Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said Friday morning when she announced the move.The Sydney Morning Herald reports authorities are tracing the woman’s movements around the city. She is reported to be the first local person to have contracted the virus variant that has been reported in several people in hotel quarantine.Johns Hopkins reports that Australia has more than 28,500 COVID cases.Canada moved Thursday to keep elementary schools in the province of Ontario closed until at least January 25. Ontario officials said that the positivity rate among children under 13 was as high as 20%.Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has declared a state of emergency for Tokyo and three surrounding prefectures in response to a surge of new coronavirus cases in the capital city.The decree lasts until February 7. Residents in Tokyo, China, Kanagawa and Saitama prefectures are encouraged to stay home after 8 p.m., and restaurants and bars are also encouraged to close at the same time.  
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A United Nations global survey reveals a world of unprecedented division, polarization and discord. The report, a year-long consultation to mark the U.N.’s 75th anniversary, surveyed more than 1.5 million people in 193 countries about their hopes, fears, and expectations for the future.The survey paints a picture of a generally fragmented world, but it also finds much of the world united in regard to post-COVID recovery priorities.Assistant Secretary-General Fabrizio Hochschild said most people surveyed are united in wanting much better access to affordable health care, education and access to water and sanitation.“And second, and related is the world seeks much greater solidarity, much greater solidarity with the hardest-hit communities, much greater solidarity with the hardest-hit places,” Hochschild said.  “And, related to that, an economic model that it does not just boost inequalities, which is the scourge of our time … People are calling for an economy, an economic model that is more inclusive.”On longer term priorities, Hochschild said environmental degradation and climate change were flagged by respondents as their biggest concerns for the future. Other concerns, he said, include conflict and violence, as well as corruption linked to poverty and employment.He said he was struck by differences in levels of optimism among survey respondents.“Perhaps paradoxically, in countries that are the poorest, sub-Saharan Africa, in countries that are the hardest hit by conflict, levels of optimism about the future are the highest,” Hochschild said. “And, in the most developed countries, levels of optimism of what the future will look like are lower.”The report finds 97% of respondents believe international cooperation is important for addressing global challenges. Many respondents, the survey said, look to the United Nations to lead in addressing immediate and longer-term global challenges in a more inclusive, accountable and effective way.
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2020 has tied 2016 as the hottest year on record, the European Union’s climate monitoring service said Friday, keeping Earth on a global warming fast track that could devastate large swathes of humanity.The six years since 2015 are the six warmest ever registered, as are 20 of the last 21, evidence of a persistent and deepening trend, the Copernicus Climate Change Service reported.”2020 stands out for its exceptional warmth,” said C3S director Carlo Buontempo, of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.”This is yet another reminder of the urgency of ambitious emissions reductions to prevent adverse climate impacts in the future.”   
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Health professionals and other scientists are concerned that the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday may also have been a COVID-19 superspreader event.The shouting mob that invaded the building was largely unmasked and not observing social distancing as they went through the halls of Congress and entered some lawmakers’ offices.Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told The New York Times that, “People yelling and screaming, chanting, exerting themselves — all of those things provide opportunity for the virus to spread, and this virus takes those opportunities.”John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said the virus killed a record 4,085 people in the U.S. on Thursday.Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci told National Public Radio in an interview Thursday that he believes “things will get worse as we get into January.”  A result, he said, of “the holiday season travel and the congregate settings that usually take place socially during that period of time.”Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 10 MB480p | 14 MB540p | 18 MB720p | 41 MB1080p | 79 MBOriginal | 234 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioFauci also said that he believed that tide could be turned “if we really accelerate our public health measures during that period of time, we’ll be able to blunt that acceleration. But that’s going to really require people concentrating very, very intensively on doing the kinds of public health measures that we talk about all the time,” such as wearing masks, social distancing and being inoculated with the coronavirus vaccine.Fauci said he is hopeful that when President-elect Joe Biden is in office, the U.S. will be able to deliver to the U.S. public  “1 million vaccinations per day, as the president-elect has mentioned.”The U.S. has more COVID-19  cases than anyplace else in the world —  21.5 million of the globe’s more than 88 million infections, roughly one-fourth of the world’s cases.The figures come as nearly 6 million Americans have been vaccinated against the disease.The U.S. has also suffered more COVID-19 deaths than any other country – more than 365,208 of the world’s nearly 2 million COVID-19 deaths.Britain announced mandatory COVID-19 tests Thursday for all international arrivals to the country.Brazil surpassed 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Thursday, making it the country with the second-highest death toll in the world.Canada moved Thursday to keep elementary schools in the province of Ontario closed until at least Jan. 25. Ontario officials said that the positivity rate among children under 13 was as high as 20%.Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has declared a state of emergency for Tokyo and three surrounding prefectures in response to a surge of new coronavirus cases in the capital city.The decree lasts until Feb. 7. Residents in Tokyo, China, Kanagawa and Saitama prefectures are encouraged to stay home after 8 p.m., and restaurants and bars are also encouraged to close at the same time.     
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The number of people who have been infected with COVID-19 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus was first identified, could be around three times the official figure, according to a study by Chinese researchers based in the city.The paper, published by the PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases journal on Thursday, analyzed blood samples from more than 60,000 healthy individuals taken from locations across China from March to May 2020.It found that 1.68% of those from Wuhan contained antibodies for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, compared to 0.59% in surrounding Hubei province and 0.38% in the rest of China.With the city’s total population at more than 10 million, the researchers estimated that as many as 168,000 Wuhan residents were infected with the virus, compared to the official number of 50,340 hospitalized cases.The study suggested at least two thirds of the total number were asymptomatic, and thousands could have been infected after the “elimination” of clinical cases, raising the possibility the virus could exist in a community for a long period without causing hospitalizations.A separate study published by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) late last month put the “seroprevalence” rate in Wuhan, the percentage of the population with antibodies, even higher at 4.43%, implying that around half a million people in the city could have been infected.COVID-19 was identified in Wuhan at the end of 2019, with the first outbreak associated with a seafood market in the city.China finally locked down Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province on Jan. 23, 2020, but critics say it should have acted sooner.China has dismissed criticism of its early handling of the virus, and officials now point to overseas studies suggesting it was circulating in Europe several months before the Wuhan outbreak.A 10-strong team from the World Health Organization was due to arrive in China this week to investigate the origins of COVID-19, but they have yet to be been given authorization to enter the country.Total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases to date in mainland China now stands at 87,331, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634. 
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A ray of hope emerged Thursday for the Rainbow Nation, which has seen a massive spike in confirmed COVID-19 cases, as South Africa’s health minister announced a large shipment of vaccines is coming this month.   
 
Zweli Mkhize said the country will receive one million vaccine doses by the end of January, and another half million in February, both from the Serum Institute of India. The first doses, he says, will go to health workers.   
Mkhize acknowledged that South Africa’s vaccine acquisition was delayed because the nation was unable to pay for vaccines that were still in development — a barrier wealthier nations haven’t faced. But, he vowed, it will catch up. South Africa’s limited budget also led officials to choose the cheapest vaccine option, offered by AstraZeneca.   
   
“We will be making sure that we bring the vaccines as quickly as possible into South Africa,” he said. “By the time we start the vaccination program, we won’t be very far different from many countries. We would actually be all in line with most of the countries. So, we would like to assure the public that, in fact, we are all on course.”  
   
That heartening news came after South Africa, which is the continent’s viral hotspot, reported what Mkhize described as a “grim milestone” — surpassing 20,000 new cases in a 24-hour period. And, he said the situation gets worse from there, as the nation enters a second wave that features a new variant of the virus that appears to be spreading much faster.   
 
“Deaths are already higher than what we ever experienced before,” the health minister said. “Admissions are already higher than what we experienced before. The new cases on the seven day average are also higher than what we experienced before.”  
 
South Africa has now seen more than 1.1 million cases since the virus first arrived in March. The National Institute for Communicable Diseases says that 31,368 people have died in South Africa.   
 
Once South Africa’s health workers are vaccinated, a second round of vaccinations will target 17 million people, including essential workers, teachers, the elderly and those with other health conditions that put them at higher risk. In the end, Mkhize said, the nation hopes to vaccinate about 40 million people within the year, about 67 percent of the population. That figure is close to what health experts say is the threshold for herd immunity.  
 
As for the rest of the vast continent, Dr. Kate O’Brien, the WHO’s director of immunization, vaccines and biologicals, described the process by which 92 of the world’s poorest nations can get access to the vaccine, through the COVAX Facility, a global initiative of 192 countries that is trying to ensure equitable access.   
 
“For countries, 92 countries, that are less able to actually purchase these vaccines on their own from their own domestic funds, there are donor funds that have been provided,” she said. “We need about $7 billion in order to deliver enough vaccine to these countries through the end of 2021. And the facility has already raised about $6 billion of the $7 billion.”
 
O’Brien said the facility “has access to over two billion doses of vaccine” and will start to deliver those vaccines by mid-February.  
 
“That’s how countries in Africa and South Asia, and other countries around the world of these 92 that are less able to afford vaccines, are actually going to get vaccine,” she said.  
 
O’Brien emphasized that people with HIV — South Africa carries the world’s highest burden of that virus — should be vaccinated. But pregnant and breastfeeding women should discuss the vaccine with health care providers before making a decision.   
 
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The World Health Organization warns the European region is probably in the most acute phase of COVID-19 transmission and drastic measures must be taken to control the spread of the pandemic.  
More than 26 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in the European region, including over 580,000 deaths.  The World Health Organization reports levels of transmission remain extremely high.  As a consequence, it notes countries and territories across the region are enacting full lockdown measures, affecting more than 230 million people. FILE – Medical personnel attend patients at Casalpalocco Covid 3 hospital in the outskirts of Rome, Jan. 1, 2021.WHO regional director for Europe Hans Kluge says the year ahead offers new opportunities and tools, such as vaccines for controlling the pandemic.  At the same time, he notes new challenges posed by the virus itself are of great concern.   He says the COVID-19 virus has changed.  He says it is normal for viruses that circulate to mutate over time.  While little is known about the impact of the new variant, he says the new strain appears to spread more quickly and be more contagious. FILE – The World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, speaks during a news conference about the coronavirus disease at Eigtveds Pakhus, in Copenhagen, Denmark, March 27, 2020.”Twenty-two countries in the WHO European region have detected this new variant.  This variant is of concern and it has increased transmissibility.  So far, we understand there is no significant change to the disease this variant produces — meaning the COVID-19 is not more nor less severe,” he said.  Kluge says the new viral strain spreads across all age groups and children do not appear to be at higher risk.  Over time, he says the variant may replace other lineages, as seen in Britain and Denmark. Senior Emergency Officer in WHO’s European Region Catherine Smallwood says new variants are assessed for any public health impact.  She says the strain identified in Britain has been studied for its transmissibility and impact on COVID-19 vaccines that have been developed. FILE – A man receives the Oxford University/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, Britain, Jan. 4, 2021.”There is probably quite promising evidence that the vaccines will work.  At the moment, there is no evidence for any of the variants that have emerged that there will be any decreased effectiveness of the vaccine.  But studies are still going on and we expect to hear more after the studies are confirmed,” she said.   The vaccine rollout will have little immediate effect on the control of transmission and spread of COVID-19.   WHO officials say that will be achieved by following public health measures, such as wearing masks and social distancing.   However, vaccines will protect the most vulnerable people from becoming severely ill and dying in hospital.  Vaccines also hold the promise of one day bringing this devastating pandemic to an end. 
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Vaccine inoculations have begun in Italy for medical staff and the most vulnerable, but the country’s daily death toll continues to be well over 500. All Italian primary school students and most middle school students returned to face-to-face lessons on Thursday. But not all regions in the country have agreed to re-open their schools to younger students due to very high numbers of COVID infections in some places.In at least four regions the return of middle school students has been delayed. Regions also adopted different decisions for high school students, but most were being allowed to return to face-to-face classes next Monday, as Education Minister Lucia Azzolina explained on Italian national television.The minister said five million younger students would be returning to school on Thursday. These are the same students, she said, who were already attending classes during the second wave. The government, Azzolina added, has also authorized 50 percent of high school students to return to in-person classes next Monday and the other 50 percent will continue with distance learning.The relief group Save the Children this week warned that the pandemic has had severe effects on the lives of millions of youngsters who have faced difficulties with distance learning due to lack of technology and possibilities to study online.Protests broke out Thursday throughout Italy against the failure to reopen schools to all students.Italy continues to enforce COVID restrictions in spite of the tight measures taken over the Christmas season. More than 20,000 new infections were reported on Wednesday and the daily death toll stands as well over 500.Meanwhile, Covid vaccine inoculations began before the end of the year, first with medical staff and the most vulnerable.A resident receives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Villa Verde elderly care home, as part of the coronavirus vaccination campaign in Rome, Italy, Jan. 7, 2021.More than 320,000 Italians have been inoculated so far with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that have been distributed across Italy. The regions of Lazio, Tuscany and Veneto in particular, have managed to quickly use most of the doses available to them. The Moderna vaccine will also soon start to be used in Italy after it received approval and up to 1.3 million doses will be available in Italy in the first quarter of this year.The Italian government aims to vaccinate six million people by the end of March, 14 million by the end of April and the remainder of all those who accept to be vaccinated by the end of August. Vaccination is voluntary. 
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New strains of the coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic have evolved, raising alarms with public health experts. The viruses appear to be more infectious, making them harder to control. But experts say the new vaccines against them should still work. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more. 
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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday that the city aims to vaccinate 10,000 police officers against the coronavirus by Sunday.At his daily briefing, De Blasio said police officers and jail guards were now eligible to receive vaccines under guidance provided by state officials. The guidelines released by the state do not explicitly say that police officers can now be vaccinated, but a de Blasio spokesperson said city officials were told they could count police and corrections officers as frontline workers eligible for the shots.De Blasio said the city wanted to make sure “all these frontline workers, folks who work directly with everyday New Yorkers, folks who do things like having to perform CPR or working in very close proximity, that they’re going to get the opportunity to be vaccinated starting right now.”In a statement, the president of the city’s police union, Patrick Lynch, applauded the move, saying it cleared the way to protect “both police and the New Yorkers” they help every day.In a tweet, Lynch said the pandemic had strengthened the bond between police and other first responders who have been prioritized for vaccination, calling them a “frontline family.”New York City has about 35,000 uniformed police, of whom about 25,000 regularly deal with the general public.De Blasio said the expanded vaccine eligibility guidelines included home health aides.
 
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Malawi has introduced a mandatory quarantine on returnees from South Africa to control rising cases of COVID-19.  Thousands of Malawians have returned from South Africa in recent weeks, and officials fear they could import the new, more contagious form of coronavirus.Malawi has seen a rapid increase of COVID-19 cases since the middle of December.    The Public Health Institute of Malawi reports confirmed cases jumped from 116 on December 18 to 946 on January 5.   Health authorities say they believe the rise is largely driven by Malawians who traveled to South Africa to look for work and escape poverty triggered by the pandemic. According to Malawi’s immigration department, about 10,000 Malawians have returned from South Africa since the start of the pandemic, with others expected to return soon.   Immigration officers at Mwanza border wellcoming buses carrying Malawi returnees. (Courtesy: Pasqually Zulu/Immigration Department)“Forty percent of our cases have come from especially our returnees and indeed our deportees. So we have no option but to put this mandatory institutionalized quarantine,”  said Malawi’s minister of health Khumbize Kandodo-Chiponda.The new policy, announced Tuesday, says returnees will be taken to a quarantine facility for coronavirus testing.  Those found to have the virus will not be allowed to return home until they test negative.   John Phuka, the chairperson of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, says the measure will help contain the more deadly new strain of the coronavirus known as 501.V2 which has hit South Africa. “For the past two weeks the number of cases had doubled almost twice,” he said. “We were 210; we should have doubled to 400. We have now doubled again to over 800 active cases. So the rate at which this is rising is pointing towards that.”   Phuka notes that more young people are getting infected, compared to the first wave of the pandemic. “In the current wave, amongst those we have lost to death, three are less than 30 years. As we speak we have two children who are admitted for example at Queens [Central Hospital]. And then last week we also discharged one child, six months old, so there are indications that we may have this variant,” he said.This is not the first time Malawi has put returnees in quarantine. In May last year, more than 400 Malawian migrant workers who returned from South Africa escaped from a coronavirus screening camp at Kamuzu Stadium in the economic capital, Blantyre.   This came two days after eight people who tested positive for coronavirus escaped from Kameza Isolation center in Blantyre.   This time Health Minister Kandodo-Chiponda says there will ‘very tight security’ in the quarantine facilities. 
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