Here we go again: COVID-19 hospital admissions have inched upward in the United States since early July in a small-scale echo of the three previous summers.

With an updated vaccine still months away, this summer bump in new hospitalizations might be concerning, but the number of patients is far lower than before. A look at what we know:

How bad is the spike?

For the week ending July 29, COVID-19 hospital admissions were at 9,056. That’s an increase of about 12% from the previous week.

But it’s a far cry from past peaks, like the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions in early January, the nearly 45,000 in late July 2022, or the 150,000 admissions during the omicron surge of January 2022.

“It is ticking up a little bit, but it’s not something that we need to raise any alarm bells over,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

It’s likely that infections are rising too, but the data is scant. Federal authorities ended the public health emergency in May, so the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many states no longer track the number of positive test results.

What about deaths?

Since early June, about 500 to 600 people have died each week. The number of deaths appears to be stable this summer, although past increases in deaths have lagged behind hospitalizations.

How are we tracking the virus?

The amount of the COVID-19 virus in sewage water has been rising since late June across the nation. In the coming weeks, health officials say they’ll keep a close eye on wastewater levels as people return from summer travel and students go back to school.

Higher levels of COVID-19 in wastewater concentrations are being found in the Northeast and South, said Cristin Young, an epidemiologist at Biobot Analytics, the CDC’s wastewater surveillance contractor.

“It’s important to remember right now the concentrations are still fairly low,” Young said, adding it’s about 2.5 times lower than last summer.

And while one version of omicron — EG.5 — is appearing more frequently, no particular variant of the virus is dominant. The variant has been dubbed “eris” but it’s an unofficial nickname and scientists aren’t using it.

“There are a couple that we’re watching, but we’re not seeing anything like delta or omicron,” Young said, referencing variants that fueled previous surges.

And mutations in the virus don’t necessarily make it more dangerous.

“Just because we have a new subvariant doesn’t mean that we are destined to have an increase in bad outcomes,” Dowdy said.

When is the new vaccine coming?

This fall, officials expect to see updated COVID-19 vaccines that contain one version of the omicron strain, called XBB.1.5. It’s an important change from today’s combination shots, which mix the original coronavirus strain with last year’s most common omicron variants.

It’s not clear exactly when people can start rolling up their sleeves for what officials hope is an annual fall COVID-19 shot. Pfizer, Moderna and smaller manufacturer Novavax all are brewing doses of the XBB update but the Food and Drug Administration will have to sign off on each, and the CDC must then issue recommendations for their use.

Dr. Mandy Cohen, the new CDC director, said she expects people will get their COVID-19 shots where they get their flu shots — at pharmacies and at work — rather than at dedicated locations that were set up early in the pandemic as part of the emergency response.

“This is going to be our first fall and winter season coming out of the public health emergency, and I think we are all recognizing that we are living with COVID, flu, and RSV,” Cohen told The Associated Press last week. “But the good news is we have more tools than ever before.”
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Leaders of eight South American nations that share the Amazon rainforest convene a two-day summit in Brazil Tuesday to reach a broad agreement on preserving the critical region.

The meeting of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization in Belem, capital of the Amazon state of Para, takes place as more than ten percent of the rainforest has been lost in recent decades due to unregulated cattle ranching and farming, illegal mining and logging and oil drilling.  Much of the loss is in Brazil, which is home to two-thirds of the rainforest.  

The Amazon region has been described as a “carbon sink” that can easily absorb pollution from emissions, making it a vital resource in reducing the effects of climate change. Scientists say the loss of between 20% and 25% of the Amazon region would be a “tipping point” that would transform it into a source of carbon emissions.  

The ACTO member nations, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela and host, Brazil, are expected to announce a pledge Tuesday  

to end deforestation by 2030 and a joint effort to crack down on illegal mining and logging.

The summit – the first since 2009 for the 28-year-old organization – was part of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s campaign platform last year in which he pledged that “Brazil is back” in the fight against climate change after a period of surging destruction in the Amazon under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. 

The meeting will also serve as something of a dress rehearsal for the COP30 U.N. climate talks, which will be held in Belem in 2025. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse.
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Now that July’s sizzling numbers are all in, the European climate monitoring organization made it official: July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record by a wide margin.  

July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019, Copernicus Climate Change Service, a division of the European Union’s space program, announced Tuesday. Normally global temperature records are broken by hundredths or a tenth of a degree, so this margin is unusual.  

“These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess. There have been deadly heat waves in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, Europe and Asia. Scientific quick studies put the blame on human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.  

Days in July have been hotter than previously recorded from July 2 on. It’s been so extra warm that Copernicus and the World Meteorological Organization made the unusual early announcement that it was likely the hottest month days before it ended. Tuesday’s calculations made it official.  

The month was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times. In 2015, the nations of the world agreed to try to prevent long-term warming — not individual months or even years, but decades — that is 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times.  

Last month was so hot, it was .7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than the average July from 1991 to 2020, Copernicus said. The worlds oceans were half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous 30 years and the North Atlantic was 1.05 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than average. Antarctica set record lows for sea ice, 15% below average for this time of year.  

Copernicus’ records go back to 1940. That temperature would be hotter than any month the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recorded and their records go back to 1850. But scientists say it’s actually the hottest in a far longer time period.  

“It’s a stunning record and makes it quite clearly the warmest month on Earth in ten thousand years,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany. He wasn’t part of the Copernicus team.  

Rahmstorf cited studies that use tree rings and other proxies that show present times are the warmest since the beginning of the Holocene Epoch, about 10,000 years ago. And before the Holocene started there was an ice age, so it would be logical to even say this is the warmest record for 120,000 years, he said.  

“We should not care about July because it’s a record, but because it won’t be a record for long,” said Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto. “It’s an indicator of how much we have changed the climate. We are living in a very different world, one that our societies are not adapted to live in very well.”
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Indigenous leaders from across South America called Monday for bold steps to protect the Amazon and their ancestral lands, ahead of a summit on saving the world’s biggest rainforest.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will host fellow regional leaders Tuesday and Wednesday for the first summit in 14 years of the eight-nation Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, seeking a roadmap to stop the destruction of one of Earth’s crucial buffers against climate change.

Native leaders who took part in pre-summit talks last weekend in the host city, Belem, called on Lula and his counterparts to create new Indigenous reservations — one of the best ways to protect nature, according to experts — and rethink the way the world views the rainforest.

“The forest isn’t an oil well, it’s not a gold mine. It’s our temple,” said Nemo Guiquita, head of Ecuadoran Indigenous confederation CONFENIAE, which represents 1,500 Amazon communities.

“We hope our views will be included in the [summit’s] final statement,” she told Agence France-Press, saying politicians should not be the only ones deciding the future of the Amazon.

“We’re calling on world leaders to work hard to promote conservation. Our struggle isn’t just for Indigenous peoples, it’s for the entire world, so future generations can survive on this planet.”

Brazilian Indigenous Affairs Minister Sonia Guajajara called the summit a “historic moment” for Indigenous peoples.

“We’re not just thinking about the next four years, we’re thinking about the next 40,” she told AFP.

The participating countries — Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela — are due to discuss strategies to fight deforestation and organized crime in the Amazon and seek sustainable development for the region.

Colombian Indigenous leader Dario Mejia, a member of the Zenu people and representative on a United Nations panel on Indigenous issues, urged world leaders to fundamentally rethink the idea of “economic development.”

“There have been many different names for the market economy. First, ‘progress.’ Then. ‘development.’ Now, ‘the bioeconomy’ or ‘transition economy,'” he said.

“But if we don’t overcome the values of cut-throat competition, of permanent war on nature, it’s going to be very difficult to overcome the environmental crisis. … I want to hope [the summit] will prove an important step for us all.” 
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Raging waters that ate away at riverbanks, destroyed at least two buildings and undermined others were receding Monday in Alaska’s capital city after a glacial dam outburst last weekend, authorities said. 

Levels along the Mendenhall River had started falling by Sunday, but the city said the riverbanks remained unstable. Onlookers gathered on a bridge over the river and along the banks of the swollen Mendenhall Lake to take photos and videos Sunday. A home was propped precariously along the eroded riverbank as milky-colored water whisked past. 

There were no reports of any injuries or deaths. The city said it was working to assess the damage. 

Such floods occur when glaciers melt and pour massive amounts of water into nearby lakes. A study released earlier this year found such floods pose a risk to about 15 million people worldwide, more than half of them in India, Pakistan, Peru and China. 

Suicide Basin — a side basin of the Mendenhall Glacier — has released water that has caused sporadic flooding along the Mendenhall Lake and Mendenhall River since 2011, according to the National Weather Service. However, the maximum water level in the lake Saturday night exceeded the previous record flood stage set in July 2016, the weather service reported. 

Nicole Ferrin, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said that while it’s not uncommon for these types of floods to happen, this one was extreme. 

“The amount of erosion that happened from the fast-moving water was unprecedented,” she said. 

Water levels crested late Saturday night. Video posted on social media showed a home teetering at the edge of the riverbank collapsing into the river. 

The Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, but the awe-inspiring glacier continues to recede amid global warming. 
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U.S. scientists have achieved net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the second time since December, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said on Sunday.

Scientists at the California-based lab repeated the fusion ignition breakthrough in an experiment in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) on July 30 that produced a higher energy yield than in December, a Lawrence Livermore spokesperson said.

Final results are still being analyzed, the spokesperson added.

Lawrence Livermore achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment using lasers on Dec. 5, 2022. The scientists focused a laser on a target of fuel to fuse two light atoms into a denser one, releasing the energy.

That experiment briefly achieved what’s known as fusion ignition by generating 3.15 megajoules of energy output after the laser delivered 2.05 megajoules to the target, the Energy Department said.

In other words, it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it, the department said.

The Energy Department called it “a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power.”

Scientists have known for about a century that fusion powers the sun and have pursued developing fusion on Earth for decades. Such a breakthrough could one day help curb climate change if companies can scale up the technology to a commercial level in the coming decades.
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Nigeria’s unreliable power grid is not only slowing down the country’s economic growth, but health workers say it can lead to unwanted hospital shutdowns at night. But one startup is giving hospitals hope. Alhassan Bala has this report, narrated by Haruna Shehu.
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During Europe’s heat wave last month, Floriana Peroni’s vintage clothing store had to close for a week. A truck of rented generators blocked her door as they fed power to the central Roman neighborhood hit by a blackout as temperatures surged. The main culprit: air conditioning. 

The period — in which temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) — coincided with peak electricity use that came close to Italy’s all-time high, hitting a peak load of more than 59 gigawatts on July 19. That neared a July 2015 record. 

Intensive electricity use knocked out the network not only near the central Campo de Fiori neighborhood, where Peroni operates her shop, but elsewhere in the Italian capital. Demand in that second July week surged 30%, correlating to a heat wave that had persisted already for weeks, according to the capital’s electricity company ARETI. 

Like many Romans, Peroni herself does not have AC either in her home or her shop. Rome once could count on a Mediterranean breeze to bring down nighttime temperatures, but that has become an intermittent relief at best. 

“At most, we turn on fans,” Peroni said. “We think that is enough. We tolerate the heat, as it has always been tolerated.” 

In Europe, though, that is starting to change. 

Air conditioning is less a part of the culture in Europe 

Despite holdouts like Peroni, rising global temperatures are dropping air conditioning from luxury to a necessity in many parts of Europe, which long has had a conflicted relationship with energy-sucking cooling systems deemed by many to be an American indulgence. 

Europeans look with disdain at overcooled U.S. buildings, kept to near meat-locker temperatures, where a blast of cold air can shoot across city sidewalks as people come and go, and where extended indoor appointments necessitate a sweater even in the height of summer. 

By contrast, event organizers in Europe may offer hand fans if events are expected to overheat. Shoppers can expect to sweat in under-cooled grocery stores, and movie theaters are not guaranteed to be climate-controlled. Evening diners have typically opted for outside tables to avoid stuffy restaurants, which rarely offer AC. 

To deal with the heat, Italy and Spain typically shut down for several hours after lunch, for a riposo or siesta, and most vacation in August, when many businesses shut down completely so families can enjoy a holiday at the seaside or in the mountains. Italians in particular are happy to abandon overheated art cities to foreign tourists, which reduces the urgency for a home AC investment. 

Still, European AC penetration has picked up from 10% in 2000 to 19% last year, according to the International Energy Agency. That is still well shy of the United States, at around 90%. Many in Europe resist due to cost, concern about environmental impact and even suspicions of adverse health impacts from cold air currents, including colds, a stiff neck, or worse. 

Cooling systems remain rare in Nordic countries and even Germany, where temperatures can nudge above 30 degrees (into the 90s Fahrenheit) for extended periods. 

But even those temperate climates may cross the threshold of discomfort if temperatures increase beyond 1.5 degrees C to 2 degrees C, according to a new study by the University of Cambridge. In that scenario, people living in northern climes like Britain, Norway, Finland and Switzerland will face the greatest relative increase in uncomfortably hot days. 

Nicole Miranda, one of the study’s authors, said their estimate, which would mean surpassing the international goal of limiting future warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, are conservative. 

“They don’t take into account the urban island effects,” she said, when cities are unable to cool at night and surfaces become radiators. “From a scientific point of view, if we all run to the go-to solution, which is air conditioning, we are going to get into a different type of problem, because there is high energy consumption and high carbon emissions related to air conditioning.” 

Cities should consider less intensive solutions, like shading buildings, and incorporating cooling bodies of water, she said. She also advocated a trend toward cooling individuals, instead of spaces, using personal devices like ice packs in jackets or high-tech textiles that dissipate body heat more efficiently. 

Growing — if reluctant — demand 

In Italy, sales of air conditioning units grew from 865,000 a year in 2012 to 1.92 million in 2022, mostly for business and not residential use, with growth reported in the first quarter of this year, according to the industry association Assoclima. Most are split heat air pump systems, which can heat spaces in the winter, which Assoclima said can reduce gas consumption as prices spike during the war in Ukraine. That dual use attracts consumers. 

France, with a slightly larger population, is showing more resistance, selling 1 million units a year. Air conditioning was rare in France until a 2003 heat wave killed thousands, mainly among the elderly. Still, most private homes and apartments there aren’t air conditioned, and many restaurants and other businesses aren’t either. Businesses with AC will often advertise to attract customers on hot days. 

AC aversion persists, both among French conservatives who see it as a frivolous American import and French people on the left who see it as environmentally irresponsible. 

Cécile de Munck and Aude Lemonsu, meteorologists at France’s national weather service, warned this summer that if the number of AC units doubles in Paris by 2030, the city temperature would rise by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) because of heat released by the pump systems. 

Despite the concerns over energy costs, air conditioning is rapidly conquering homes in Spain, a country that traditionally bent towards the use of fans and drawing heavy blinds, a very Spanish fixture. A study by Ca’ Foscari University projects that half of Spanish households will have AC by 2040, up from just 5% in 1990. 

With the cooler indoor air come disputes as neighbors complain about noise from external units. That means problems for Spain’s real estate managers. “Some people can’t open a window because they get a puff of fire,” said Pablo Abascal, president of Spain’s council of real estate managers. “With the increase of AC systems in homes, many buildings will soon have nowhere to place the devices.” 

Air conditioning and cooling was found to be key for older populations in extreme heat, reducing strain on cardiovascular functions in a heat wave of 37 degrees Celsius (99 degrees Fahrenheit), according to a study at the University of Ottawa in Canada. But even in countries like Cyprus, where heat waves of 40 degree Celsius have become the norm, the sustained use of AC isn’t an affordable option for many elderly people living on fixed incomes. 

Many on the Mediterranean island nation restrict usage to the hottest times of day, sometimes confining themselves to a single room. 

“Undoubtedly, this scenario significantly impacts their mental well-being as well,” said Demos Antoniou, director of the Cyprus Third Age Observatory, a seniors-rights group. “The prevailing fear is that refraining from using air conditioners could potentially lead to heat stroke.” 

At 83, Angeliki Vassiliou thinks both about her energy bill and future generations before she hits the “on” button. 

“There’s no sense in wasting energy. Waste is unfair,” Vassiliou said. “Waste of any resource is wrong, because what would happen to our planet because of all this waste?” 
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India’s latest space mission entered the moon’s orbit on Saturday ahead of the country’s second attempted lunar landing, as its space program seeks to reach new heights.

The world’s most populous nation has a comparatively low-budget aerospace program that is rapidly closing in on the milestones set by global space powers.

Only Russia, the United States and China have previously achieved a controlled landing on the lunar surface.

The Indian Space Research Organization confirmed that Chandrayaan-3, which means moon craft in Sanskrit, had been “successfully inserted into the lunar orbit,” more than three weeks after its launch.

If the rest of the current mission goes to plan, the mission will safely touch down near the moon’s little-explored south pole between Aug. 23 and 24.

India’s last attempt to do so ended in failure four years ago, when ground control lost contact moments before landing.

Developed by ISRO, Chandrayaan-3 includes a lander module named Vikram, which means valor in Sanskrit, and a rover named Pragyan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom.

The mission comes with a price tag of $74.6 million, far smaller than those of other countries, and a testament to India’s frugal space engineering.

Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing space technology. It also has an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts’ wages.

The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has taken much longer to reach the moon than the manned Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in a matter of days.

The Indian rocket used is much less powerful than the United States’ Saturn V. Instead, the probe orbited Earth five or six times elliptically to gain speed, before being sent on a monthlong lunar trajectory.

If the landing is successful, the rover will roll off Vikram and explore the nearby lunar area, gathering images to be sent back to Earth for analysis.

The rover has a mission life of one lunar day or 14 Earth days.

ISRO chief S. Somanath has said his engineers carefully studied data from the last failed mission and have worked to fix the glitches.

India’s space program has grown considerably in size and momentum since it first sent a probe to orbit the moon in 2008.

In 2014, it became the first Asian nation to put a satellite into orbit around Mars, and three years later, the ISRO launched 104 satellites in a single mission.

The ISRO’s Gaganyaan (“Skycraft”) program is slated to launch a three-day manned mission into Earth’s orbit by next year.

India is also working to boost its 2% share of the global commercial space market by sending private payloads into orbit for a fraction of the cost of competitors. 
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The World Bank is aiming to help fund construction of 1,000 mini solar power grids in Africa’s biggest economy Nigeria in partnership with the government and private sector, the lender’s president Ajay Banga said Saturday.

Nigeria, with a population of more than 200 million people, has installed power generation capacity of 12,500 megawatts, or MW, but it produces a fraction of that, leaving millions of households and businesses reliant on petrol and diesel generators.

Mini grids, made up of small-scale electricity generating units, typically range in size from a few kilowatts to up to 10 MW, enough to power about 200 households.

Speaking during a visit to a mini grid site on the outskirts of the capital Abuja, Banga told reporters that nearly 150 mini grids had been built, partly funded by the World Bank, to bring power to communities without access to electricity.

“We are putting another 300 in, but our ambition with the government is to go all the way to 1,000. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that are being invested,” said Banga, without giving a timeline.

“Now the idea is not for the World Bank to be the only person putting the money. We put part of the money like a subsidy.”

World Bank data shows that in sub-Saharan Africa, 568 million people still lack access to electricity. Globally, nearly 8 out of 10 people without electricity live in Africa.
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