Astronomers have discovered the closest known black hole to Earth, just 1,600 light-years away.

Scientists reported Friday that this black hole is 10 times more massive than our sun. And it’s three times closer than the previous record-holder.

It was identified by observing the motion of its companion star, which orbits the black hole at about the same distance as Earth orbits the sun.

The black hole was initially identified using the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, said Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

El-Badry and his team followed up with the International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to confirm their findings, which were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The researchers are uncertain how the system formed in the Milky Way. Named Gaia BH1, it’s located in the constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer.
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The lone volunteer in a study involving a gene-editing technique has died, and those behind the trial are now trying to figure out what killed him.

Terry Horgan, a 27-year-old who had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last month, according to Cure Rare Disease, a Connecticut-based nonprofit founded by his brother, Rich, to try and save him from the fatal condition.

Although little is known about how he died, his death occurred during one of the first studies to test a gene editing treatment built for one person. It’s raising questions about the overall prospect of such therapies, which have buoyed hopes among many families facing rare and devastating diseases.

“This whole notion that we can do designer genetic therapies is, I would say, uncertain,” said Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University who is not involved in the study. “We are out on the far edge of experimentation.”

The early-stage safety study was sponsored by the nonprofit, led by Dr. Brenda Wong at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The hope was to use a gene-editing tool called CRISPR to treat Horgan’s form of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The rare, genetic muscle-wasting disease is caused by a mutation in the gene needed to produce a protein called dystrophin. Most people with Duchenne die from lung or heart issues caused by it.

At this point, it’s unclear whether Horgan received the treatment and whether CRISPR, other aspects of the study or the disease itself contributed to his death. Deaths are not unheard of in clinical trials, which test experimental treatments and sometimes involve very sick people.

But trials involving CRISPR are relatively new. And Fyodor Urnov, a CRISPR expert at the Innovative Genomics Institute at University of California, Berkeley, said any death during a gene therapy trial is an opportunity for the field to have a reckoning.

“Step one is to grieve for the passing of a brave human soul who agreed to be basically a participant in an experiment on a human being,” Urnov said. “But then, to the extent that we can, we must learn as much as we can to carve out a path forward.”

Few answers yet

A statement from Cure Rare Disease said multiple teams across the country are looking into the details of the trial and its outcome, and the company intends to share findings with the scientific community.

“It will probably be 3-4 months to come up with a full conclusion,” said spokesman Scott Bauman. “At this stage of the game, saying anything is pure speculation.”

The company, which is also working on 18 other therapeutics, said in its statement that the team’s work is essential not only to shed light on the study’s outcome but also “on the challenges of gene therapy broadly.” Meanwhile, it said, “we will continue to work with our researchers, collaborators, and partners to develop therapies for the neuromuscular diseases in our pipeline.”

Bauman said the company has filed a report on death the with the FDA as required. The FDA declined to release or confirm the report.

Sarah Willey, spokesperson for Chan Medical School, said scientists there provided data to the company for the report. She later emailed to say no one there would comment further; out of respect for the family’s wishes, all information would come from Cure Rare Disease.

A crucial question is whether CRISPR played a part in Horgan’s death.

The chemical tool can be used to “edit” genes by making cuts or substitutions in DNA. The tool has transformed genetic research and sparked the development of dozens of experimental therapies. The inventors of the tool won a Nobel Prize in 2020.

In this case, scientists used a modified form of CRISPR to increase the activity of a gene. The CRISPR therapeutic is inserted directly into the body and delivered to cells with a virus.

But CRISPR is not perfect.

“We know that CRISPR can miss its target. We know that CRISPR can be partially effective. And we also know that there may be issues with … viral vectors” that deliver the therapy into the body, Caplan said. “Red flags are flying here.”

Another difference? The recent trial involved just one person — a type of trial Caplan is skeptical about.

A ‘medical pioneer’

On the company’s website, Horgan was described as a “medical pioneer” who “will be remembered as a hero.”

In 2020, the Montour Falls, New York resident blogged that he was diagnosed with Duchenne at age 3. As a kid, he said, he loved computers — once building his own — and would play catch in the driveway with his family when he could still walk. Later in his life, he used a motorized wheelchair. He studied information science at Cornell University and went on to work at the school in the information science department.

“As I grew up and began to understand what it meant to have DMD, my fears about this disease began to grow as it began to manifest,” Horgan wrote. “There weren’t many, or any, trials available to me through the years” — until this one brought the prospect of a customized drug.

The plan was to suppress Horgan’s immune system to prep his body for a one-time, gene-editing therapy delivered by IV at UMass medical school, followed by monitoring in the hospital. The therapy is designed to increase the level of an alternate form of the dystrophin protein using CRISPR, with the goal of stabilizing or potentially reversing the progression of symptoms.

Urnov, scientific director for technology and translation at the Berkeley genomics institute, said no other trial targeted this disease using this kind of virus to deliver this particular payload with its modified form of CRISPR.
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The U.S. flu season is off to an unusually fast start, adding to an autumn mix of viruses that have been filling hospitals and doctors’ waiting rooms.

Reports of flu are already high in 17 states, and the hospitalization rate hasn’t been this high this early since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, there have been an estimated 730 flu deaths, including at least two children.

The winter flu season usually ramps up in December or January.

“We are seeing more cases than we would expect at this time,” the CDC’s Dr. José Romero said Friday.

A busy flu season is not unexpected. The nation saw two mild seasons during the COVID-19 pandemic, and experts have worried that flu might come back strong as a COVID-weary public has moved away from masks and other measures that tamp the spread of respiratory viruses.

Community Montessori school in New Albany, Indiana, switched to virtual teaching at the end of the week because so many students were out sick with the flu. Beginning Monday, the school’s 500 students will go back to wearing masks.

“Everybody just wants kids on campus, that is for sure,” said the school’s director, Burke Fondren. “We will do what we need to do.”

There may be some good news: COVID-19 cases have been trending downward and leveled off in the past three weeks, Romero said.

And in a few parts of the country, health officials think they may be seeing early signs that a wave of another respiratory virus may be starting to wane. RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, is a common cause in kids of cold-like symptoms such as runny nose, cough and fever. While RSV continues to rise nationally, preliminary data suggest a decline in the Southeast, Southwest and in an area that includes Rocky Mountain states and the Dakotas, CDC officials said.

Experts think infections from RSV increased recently because children are more vulnerable now, no longer sheltered from common bugs as they were during pandemic lockdowns. Also, the virus, which usually affects children ages 1 and 2, is now sickening more kids up to age 5.

At the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital, beds have been full for 54 days straight.

“The curves are all going up for RSV and influenza,” said Dr. John Cunningham, Comer’s physician-in-chief.

RSV illnesses seem to be unusually severe, he added.

Comer has had to turn down transfer requests from other hospitals because there was no room. Chicago-area hospitals had been able to transfer kids to Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin, but that’s stopped.

“They have no more beds, either,” Cunningham said.

There’s not yet a vaccine against RSV, but there are shots for flu and COVID-19. Health officials say flu vaccinations are down in both kids and adults compared with before the pandemic, although they are up in children from last year.

So far this season, there have been an estimated 1.6 million flu illnesses and 13,000 hospitalizations. Flu activity is most intense in some of the areas where RSV is fading, including the Southeast, according to CDC data.
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U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said Friday a new study indicates their COVID-19 booster vaccination provides significant antibody protection against the omicron variant and its subvariants among adults.

The companies introduced a new booster targeting the omicron variant in September, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved it for use last month, along with a similar vaccine produced by U.S. drug company Moderna, as have several other countries.

In their statement, the companies said the new data show the COVID-19 booster, adapted to target the omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, generated four times the neutralizing antibodies against the omicron variants among adults ages 55 and older than their original vaccine.

The study also showed after one month, the booster dose generated more than 13 times the number of neutralizing antibodies against the variants in patients older than 55 than patients who received the original vaccine; 9.5 times the antibodies in patients 18 to 55 years old.

Pfizer Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in the statement that as the United States heads into the holiday season, the new data should encourage people who have not done so to seek out a booster shot as soon as they are eligible to receive it — six months after their last vaccination.

Pfizer and BioNTech said they have shared the data with the FDA and plan to share it with the European Medicines Agency and other global health authorities as soon as possible.

A booster dose of the omicron-targeting vaccine has been authorized by the FDA for emergency use for ages 5 years and older and has also been granted marketing authorization in the EU by the European Commission.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Australia can expect another wave of COVID-19 infections in coming weeks, according to experts, as new variants circulate. Coronavirus cases are rising quickly in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia’s most populous states.

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. The declaration is still active.

In Australia, life is resembling what it was before the virus. Most disease-control measures, such as mandatory mask-wearing on public transport and self-isolation for people testing positive to COVID-19, have been scrapped. Some restrictions, however, still apply to health, disability and aged-care facilities.

Public health authorities in the states of New South Wales and Victoria have warned that another surge in infections is approaching. Official data has shown that in the last week of October, coronavirus case numbers increased in all Australian states and territories except Queensland.

There were 9,707 positive diagnoses in the week ending Oct. 29 in New South Wales, an 11% increase from the previous week.

Government data has shown that more than 95% of Australians over 16 have had at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

In a video posted on Twitter on Thursday, New South Wales Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant warned of a spike in infections.

“By looking at all the local information we have and what is happening overseas we believe COVID cases will rise in the coming weeks,” Chant said. “The protection the New South Wales community has from vaccination and previous infection continues to reduce the risk of severe illness. However, the elderly and those with underlying health conditions will continue to be at higher risk.”

COVID-19 continues to spread in other countries.

China’s COVID-19 cases hit their highest in 2½ months Thursday, according to health authorities. The world’s most populous nation is following President Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy, which has seen millions of people locked down in major cities. The WHO has said China has had more than 9 million confirmed coronavirus cases since the pandemic began.

In the United States, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday that new omicron variants were gaining ground across the country as winter approaches.

Researchers at University College London say Britain could be relatively free of COVID-19 this Christmas but potentially faces another wave of cases in January.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has said COVID-19 variants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 are likely to drive up cases in the months ahead in Europe.

As of Thursday, there have been more 628 million confirmed COVID-19 cases globally, including about 6.5 million deaths reported to the WHO.

Isolation has helped to protect some communities from the virus. The WHO said that Niue, a small island in the South Pacific Ocean with a population of 2,000, has recorded 85 COVID-19 cases and no fatalities during the pandemic.
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Tanzania’s Ministry of Tourism released a census this week showing the country’s elephant population has stabilized.

Tanzania’s elephants were among the hardest hit by poaching in Africa, with numbers dropping 60 percent between 2009 and 2014. But authorities say joint efforts with conservation groups and local communities have drastically reduced poaching and helped to attract tourist dollars.

Just under 20,000 elephants were recorded in a survey that covered about 90,000 square kilometers of the Katavi-Rukwa and Ruaha-Rungwa landscapes in western Tanzania, including parks, game reserves and other protected areas.

The government said the results confirm that the landscape remains the most important in East Africa in terms of elephant numbers and contains the largest population on the continent outside Zimbabwe and Botswana.

Ernest Mjingo, a managing director of the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, a department of the Ministry of Tourism, said the world would now see Tanzania as very serious about conservation and doing well at it. And if the world does see that, he said, it would be a credit to the government and would also increase revenue, because Tanzania will become a prime destination for tourists because of the animal population. He added that it could also become a U.N. World Heritage Site, since it would have species that would not be available in other places.

The report said poaching had dramatically decreased over the last few years.

In the last report, conducted in 2018, the ratio of elephant carcasses to live animals was 14 percent. Now, it’s just 1.4 percent, thanks to government and stakeholders’ efforts in strengthening wildlife protection.

Tourism experts such as Makubi Mabula see the results of the census as a good sign for Tanzania’s economic prospects.

“Honestly, the results show a green light toward the future of tourism in our country,” he said through a translator. ” … Many tourists come to see animals like elephants, lions, rhinos and others. So, with the elephant population stabilizing, the national income will increase. It really gives us the peace we tourist stakeholders need to believe that the tourism industry will grow fast.”

Along with elephants, the survey also confirmed that the populations of 25 other key mammal species in Tanzania have stabilized, including buffaloes, zebras, hartebeests, impalas and giraffes.
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A private spaceflight giant has a busy week sending satellites into orbit. Plus, massive meteor strikes on Mars, and the Pillars of Creation get an eerie makeover. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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A landmark deal to allow grain exports from Ukraine, which was back on track Wednesday after being briefly suspended, has played a crucial role in easing a global food crisis sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Brokered by the United Nations and Turkey and signed by Moscow and Kyiv on July 22, the agreement established a protected sea corridor to allow grain shipments to resume for the first time since the fighting began in February

Here is what we know about the deal, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative:

Why was it needed?

When Russian troops attacked in late February, Moscow imposed a blockade on Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, halting all agricultural exports from one of the world’s breadbaskets.

The move left 20 million metric tons of grain stranded in Ukraine’s ports, causing food prices to surge worldwide.

Before the war, up to 90% of Ukraine’s wheat, corn and sunflower exports were transported by sea, mostly from Odesa, with many developing countries relying heavily on Kyiv for grain.

Agricultural commodity prices were high before the war because of the post-COVID-19 economic recovery, but the conflict pushed the price of grains such as wheat and corn to levels unsustainable for countries dependent on their import, such as Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia.

What does the deal cover?

The deal ensures the safe export of grain, foodstuffs and fertilizers, including ammonia, from three Black Sea ports in southwestern Ukraine: Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi.

The first grain ship to leave under the U.N.-backed deal set sail on August 1.

According to U.N. figures as of November 1, a total of 9.7 million metric tons of grain and other agricultural products have been transported in the first three months of the initiative, the vast majority involving wheat and corn.

Valid for 120 days, the agreement is up for renewal on November 19 in a process that can be done automatically without further negotiations.

The U.N. says extending the deal is crucial for global food security and is pushing for it to be renewed for one year.

Although the initiative is working well, shipments are about 40-50% lower than what they were before Russia’s invasion, the U.N. says.

How does it work?

According to the U.N.’s website, the agreement establishes a safe corridor between the three Ukrainian ports and an area in Turkish waters where the vessels are inspected before being allowed to continue their journey.

To monitor the agreement, a joint command and control center was set up in Istanbul to oversee smooth operations and resolve disputes.

Known as the Joint Coordination Center (JCC), the JCC has four teams of eight inspectors — two each from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the U.N.

These teams inspect outbound vessels carrying grain at the Turkish inspection area to ensure all merchandise is approved.

The teams also examine empty ships returning to Ukraine to ensure they are not carrying any weapons or other unauthorized goods or people.

Safe passage

The deal establishes a buffer zone of 10 nautical miles around each vessel traveling along the corridor with no military ships, equipment or drones allowed within that radius.

All ship movements logged by the JCC are transmitted to the relevant military authorities to prevent any incidents, with any violations or threats to be handled by the JCC.

At the start of the war, Ukraine mined its main Black Sea ports to head off threats of a Russian attack from the sea, but experts said it would take too long to de-mine all these areas.

The deal allows Ukrainians to guide the ships along safe routes that avoid known mine fields and into and out of its territorial waters.

Deal briefly suspended

On October 29, Russia said it was suspending its participation in the deal, accusing Ukraine of using the shipping corridor to launch a drone attack on its Black Sea fleet in Crimea’s Sevastopol port.

After a call between the Russian and Turkish defense ministers, the deal resumed operation at 0900 GMT on November 2 with Moscow saying it had received written guarantees from Kyiv ensuring the corridor would not be used for attacking Russian forces.
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Europe has warmed more than twice as much as the rest of the world over the past three decades and has experienced the greatest temperature increase of any continent, according to a report by the World Meteorological Organization. 

The report on the state of the climate in Europe follows a summer of extremes. A record-breaking heat wave scorched Britain, Alpine glaciers vanished at an unprecedented rate and a long-lasting marine heat wave cooked the waters of the Mediterranean.  

“Europe presents a live picture of a warming world and reminds us that even well-prepared societies are not safe from impacts of extreme weather events,” WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said in a statement.  

From 1991 to 2021, temperatures over Europe warmed at an average of 0.5 degree Celsius per decade, the report said, while the global average was just 0.2 degree C. 

Last year, extreme weather events made worse by climate change — chiefly floods and storms — caused more than $50 billion worth of damage in Europe. 

The reason Europe is warming faster than other continents has to do with the fact that a large part of the continent is in the sub-Arctic and Arctic — the fastest-warming region on Earth — as well as changes in climate feedbacks, scientists said. 

For example, fewer clouds over Europe during the summer has meant that more sunlight and heat now reaches the continent, said Freja Vamborg, senior scientist with the Copernicus Climate Change Service. 

Some scientists have called Europe a “heat wave hot spot” as the number of heat waves on the continent has increased faster than in other regions because of changes in atmospheric circulation.  

Although temperatures are rising, the European Union has cut greenhouse gas emissions by 31% between 1990 and 2020, the report said, and it aims to slash emissions by 55% by 2030.  

On November 6, delegates will arrive in Egypt for COP27, the annual U.N. climate summit. 

French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are expected to attend. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision not to attend the COP27 climate summit is being kept under review, his spokesman said Monday.
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The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that Ebola’s arrival in the Ugandan capital highlighted the high risk of further spread of the deadly virus, calling on neighboring countries to boost their preparedness. 

Since Uganda’s health ministry first declared the outbreak on September 20, the country has registered more than 150 confirmed and probable cases, including 64 deaths, WHO said. 

And since the deadly disease spread to Kampala last week, 17 cases have been confirmed there, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters. 

“Although these cases are linked to known clusters, the very fact that there are cases in a densely populated city underscores the very real risk of further transmission,” he said, speaking from WHO headquarters in Geneva. 

There is a “very urgent need for increased readiness in districts and surrounding countries,” he warned. 

Ebola is spread through bodily fluids, with common symptoms being fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhea. It is fought through tracing, containing and quarantining.

Outbreaks are difficult to contain, especially in urban environments. 

“Ebola in a complex, urban city like Kampala is not easy, and we have to do everything possible to pull every chain of transmission,” WHO incident manager Abdi Mahamud told reporters. 

Tedros said the U.N. health agency had on Tuesday released an additional $5.7 million from its contingency fund for emergencies, in addition to the $5 million previously released to address the Uganda crisis. 

WHO, he said, was working closely with the Ugandan government and partners to respond to the outbreak and was calling for “a strengthened global response and increased donor investment.”  

Uganda’s last recorded fatality from a previous Ebola outbreak was in 2019. 

The strain now circulating in Uganda is known as the Sudan Ebola virus, for which there is currently no vaccine, although there are several candidate vaccines heading toward clinical trials. 
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Ahead of the COP27 climate talks in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh next week, there are concerns that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reversed progress on tackling climate change. But as Henry Ridgwell reports, some say the war could have a positive impact in the longer term
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Three of the largest U.S. pharmacy chains — CVS, Walgreens and Walmart — are reported to have tentatively agreed to pay more than $13 billion to settle more than 3,000 state and local lawsuits involving the dispensing of opioid painkillers. 

Sources close to the negotiations report CVS will pay $5 billion over 10 years, Walgreens will pay $5.7 billion over 15 years and Walmart will pay $3.1 billion, mostly up front. The sources remained anonymous as they were not authorized to speak publicly about the agreement. 

In a statement released Wednesday, CVS Health said it has agreed it will pay approximately $5 billion — with $4.9 billion to states and political subdivisions and approximately $130 million to Native American tribes — over the next 10 years beginning in 2023. 

In the statement, CVS Health Chief Policy Officer and General Counsel Thomas Moriarty said, “We are committed to working with states, municipalities and tribes, and will continue our own important initiatives to help reduce the illegitimate use of prescription opioids.”  

The CVS statement included a list of initiatives it has undertaken to fight opioid abuse.  

In the lawsuits, governments said pharmacies were filling prescriptions they should have flagged as inappropriate. 

If the settlement is finalized, it would be the first nationwide deal with retail pharmacy companies and follows nationwide opioid settlements with drugmakers and distributors totaling more than $33 billion. 

Opioids are natural, synthetic, or semi-synthetic chemicals used to reduce the intensity of pain signals and feelings of pain. The class of drugs includes the illegal drug heroin, synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, and pain medications available legally by prescription, such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, morphine, and many others. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that from 1999 to 2020, more than 564,000 people in the U.S. died from an overdose involving an opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids. They report 187 people in the U.S. continue to die from an opioid overdose every day. 

The Associated Press and Reuters provided some information for this report. 

 
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New research shows vaccinating pregnant women helped protect their newborns from the common but scary respiratory virus called RSV that fills hospitals with wheezing babies each fall.

The preliminary results buoy hope that after decades of failure and frustration, vaccines against RSV may finally be getting close.

Pfizer announced Tuesday that a large international study found that vaccinating moms-to-be was nearly 82% effective at preventing severe cases of RSV in their babies’ most vulnerable first 90 days of life. At age 6 months, the vaccine still was proving 69% effective against serious illness — and there were no signs of safety problems in mothers or babies.

“Moms are always giving their antibodies to their baby,” said virologist Kena Swanson, Pfizer’s vice president of viral vaccines. “The vaccine just puts them in that much better position” to form and pass on RSV-fighting antibodies.

The vaccine quest isn’t just to protect infants. RSV is dangerous for older adults, too, and both Pfizer and rival GSK recently announced that their competing shots also proved protective for seniors.

None of the findings will help this year when an early RSV surge already is crowding children’s hospitals. But they raise the prospect that one or more vaccines might become available before next fall’s RSV season.

“My fingers are crossed,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. “We’re making inroads.”

Tuesday’s data was reported in a press release and hasn’t been vetted by independent experts.

Here’s a look at the long quest for RSV vaccines.

What is RSV?

For most healthy people, RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, is a cold-like nuisance. But for the very young, the elderly and people with certain health problems, it can be serious, even life-threatening. The virus can infect deep in the lungs, causing pneumonia, and in babies, it can impede breathing by inflaming tiny airways.

In the U.S., about 58,000 children younger than 5 are hospitalized for RSV each year, and several hundred die. Among adults 65 and older, about 177,000 are hospitalized with RSV and 14,000 die annually.

Worldwide, RSV kills about 100,000 children a year, mostly in poor countries.

Why is there no vaccine?

A tragedy in the 1960s set back the whole field. Using the approach that led to the first polio vaccine, scientists made an experimental RSV vaccine by growing the virus in a lab and killing it. But testing in children found not only was the vaccine not protective, youngsters who caught RSV after vaccination fared worse. Two died.

“For a period of 20 years, even though science was advancing, nobody wanted to go near development of an RSV vaccine,” Schaffner said.

Even today’s modern RSV vaccine candidates were tested first in older adults, not children, he noted.

How did development get back on track?

Modern vaccines tend to target the outer surface of a virus — what the immune system sees when a germ invades. For RSV, that target is the so-called F protein that helps the virus latch onto human cells. Again, there was a hurdle: That protein is a shape-shifter, rearranging its form before and after it “fuses” to cells.

It turns out that the immune system only forms effective RSV-fighting antibodies when it spots what’s called the pre-fusion version of that protein, explained structural biologist Jason McLellan of the University of Texas at Austin.

In 2013, McLellan and virologist Barney Graham were working at the National Institutes of Health when they homed in on the correct shape and figured out how to freeze it in that form. That finding opened the way to today’s development of a variety of experimental RSV vaccine candidates.

(That same discovery was key to the hugely successful COVID-19 vaccines, as the coronavirus also is cloaked in a shape-shifting surface protein.)

What’s in the pipeline?

Several companies are creating RSV vaccines, but Pfizer and GSK are furthest along. Both companies recently reported final-stage testing in older adults. The competing vaccines are made somewhat differently but each proved strongly effective, especially against serious disease. Both companies plan to seek regulatory approval in the U.S. by the end of the year, as well as in other countries.

The older-adult data “looks fantastic,” said McLellan, who has closely followed the vaccine development. “I think we’re on the right track.”

And if vaccinating pregnant women pans out, it could be “a win for two individuals instead of just one,” by offering protection to both mom-to-be and baby, said Dr. Wilbur Chen of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Pfizer’s maternal vaccine is the same recipe that it tested successfully in older adults — and it also plans to seek Food and Drug Administration approval for those vaccinations by year’s end.

The new study included 7,400 pregnant women in 18 countries, including the U.S., and spanned multiple RSV seasons. Preliminary results reported Tuesday show the vaccine was most effective against severe disease. For milder illness, effectiveness was 51% to 57% — short of the study’s statistical requirements but a result that Pfizer still called clinically meaningful because it could mean fewer trips to the doctor’s office.
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Lebanon received a first batch of vaccines Monday to combat a worsening cholera outbreak – together with sharply worded criticism of its crumbling public health infrastructure from France, which facilitated the donation of the doses.

By Sunday, cases of cholera – a disease typically spread through contaminated water, food or sewage – stood at 1,447, with 17 deaths, since the first were recorded in the country a month ago, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

Lebanon had been cholera-free since 1993, but its public services are suffering under a brutal economic crisis now in its fourth year, while infighting among the country’s faction-riven elite has paralyzed its political institutions.

The outbreak has reached Beirut, but authorities say most cases remain concentrated where it started in the northern town of Bebnine, where health authorities have set up an emergency field hospital.

The vaccines would play “an essential role” in limiting the disease’s spread, Health Minister Firass Abiad told reporters in the capital as he announced the first batch.

Standing next to Abiad, French ambassador Anne Grillo said the delivery comprised more than 13,000 doses. They had been donated by the philanthropic arm of French health care company Sanofi and the French government had facilitated their arrival to Lebanon.

“The origins of this epidemic, in which public health is at stake, must also be treated,” Grillo told reporters. The outbreak was “a new and worrying illustration of the critical decline in public provision of access to water and sanitary services in Lebanon.”

In the Bebnine field hospital, two young boys sat next to each other on one hospital bed, while a mother waited anxiously to confirm if her son, lying limp on another bed and being treated by a doctor and a nurse, had also caught the disease.

Nearby, Syrian children in a makeshift refugee camp played in dirty water chocked with rubbish and medical waste and fed by an outflow from an open pipe.

The World Health Organization has linked cholera’s comeback in Lebanon to an outbreak in neighboring Syria, to where it had spread from Afghanistan via Iran and Iraq.
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On Tuesday, Nov. 1, Australia’s most populous state is banning a range of single-use plastic, including straws, cutlery and bowls.

Polystyrene foam food containers are also banned under the new rules in New South Wales, along with some face, body and hair products that contain plastic micro beads.   

Businesses that breach the regulations could face fines of tens of thousands of dollars.  

Minister for Environment and Heritage James Griffin said in a statement in September that the ban was just the start of a “massive shift away from single-use plastic.”  

He has predicted the ban would stop 2.7 billion items of plastic ending up as litter over the next 20 years. 

The laws in New South Wales are part of a nationwide push to curb waste. State authorities in Queensland and Victoria will bring in similar bans next year.  

Environmental campaigners have welcomed the laws but insist much more needs to be done. Australia currently recycles 16% of its plastic packaging, below the national target of 70%.   

Shane Cucow of the Australian Marine Conservation Society told VOA that recycling needs to be improved, because “Every wrap, pack and snack at a supermarket these days is covered in plastic.”

He added that, “We can get rid of some of those single-use plastics that are highly littered and regularly ending up in our oceans like cups and straws and take-away containers and plastic bags, and that is really important, but at the same time there is just so much plastic packaging on everything that is not able to be recycled properly and so it has got nowhere to go except being buried in landfill or washing out into our oceans.”

In June, New South Wales also banned lightweight plastic bags.
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