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Hong Kong health experts on Friday said the city needs to change its pandemic strategies to cope with the rapidly increasing number of COVID-19 cases. 

In recent weeks Hong Kong has been hit hard by a fifth wave of cases caused by the omicron variant, which is increasing pressure on the city’s already overburdened health system. 

Since the pandemic began, the Hong Kong government has remained defiant, directing all positive cases to hospitals regardless of symptomatic severity. Omicron’s sharp rise in recent weeks, however, has triggered a deluge of cases, flooding the city’s hospitals. 

Some health experts say a new direction is needed. 

“We need to immediately pivot to a strategy that promotes home isolation for mild and asymptomatic cases,” said Dr. Karen Grepin, associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health. “The strategy should be risk-based to determine who is and who is not a good candidate for home isolation.”   

But determining who can safely choose to do home isolation with mild symptoms must include careful vetting, Grepin told VOA.  

“It will need to be accompanied by dedicated facilities for people who are not good candidates or who are unable to isolate at home,” she said.   

Data show the omicron variant has an incubation period of about five days, is highly transmissible and causes less severe symptoms than some other coronavirus variants. But Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with a population of 7.5 million, adding to concerns about how quickly it can spread. 

“Most people who catch COVID in the next few weeks will likely catch it at home, but this is mainly because this is where they spend most of the time,” Grepin said. “We may not be able to prevent all of it, but there is a lot we can do to reduce it, including mask-wearing at home, increasing ventilation, isolation of infected patients in rooms,” Grepin added. 

Hong Kong is seeing daily COVID-19 records, with 6,116 cases on Thursday, surpassing the city’s previous high of 4,285 on Wednesday.  

Friday saw 3,629 new infections, with 7,600 preliminary positive cases, and 10 new deaths.  

The city’s current quarantine facilities are full and over 95% of hospital beds are occupied. But the government announced on Friday it has identified 20,000 new quarantine beds, Reuters reported.

In worrying scenes, hundreds of sick patients, including some elderly, were lying in beds outside Hong Kong’s hospitals in recent days, waiting to be admitted for treatment. 

One health worker at Hong Kong’s Ruttonjee Hospital, who chose to remain anonymous, told VOA that the hospital is very busy but says there aren’t that many severe cases of COVID-19. 

“I think there is [less than] 10 people who need to receive incubation care unit,” said the healthcare provider. “But not much confirmed cases are in respiratory distress. Most of them have light symptoms.” 

In efforts to free up space, authorities say hospitalized patients may now leave quarantine and isolate at home seven days after a positive test if they test negative on a rapid antigen test.  

David Chan, chairman of the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance, criticized health officials for inadequate planning.  

“The hospital authority doesn’t have a precautionary plan to handle such a large amount of patients,” he told Bloomberg. “With all their time, they didn’t come up with a comprehensive plan, didn’t communicate other government departments to come up with a plan for us to follow.”   

Hong Kong’s hospital authority is a statutory body managing all government hospitals and health institutes in the city. 

‘Zero Covid’ 

Up until January, everyday life in Hong Kong was relatively normal, with the city recording a low number of cases. 

Hong Kong’s “zero-COVID” strategy, which is aligned with Beijing’s effort to control the pandemic across China, has seen authorities quickly clamp down on rare outbreaks in the city, with methods including contact tracing, social restrictions, mass testing and quarantine. The policy has had some success, while other parts of the world move toward ways of living with the virus.   

But amid the omicron surge, Hong Kong has seen nearly 17,000 cases since the beginning of 2022, greater than the total number of infections in 2020 and 2021 combined. 

New Measures 

The escalating crisis has even seen a rare call from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has ordered the city’s authorities to take control of the situation. 

 Earlier this week, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam ruled out a citywide lockdown but did unveil new measures. Residents must have proof of a COVID-19 vaccination to enter various premises starting from next week, mask wearing is a requirement in public, and fines for breaking social distancing regulations have doubled to $1,283. 

But health experts say authorities must continue to focus on boosting the city’s unvaccinated groups. According to government data, the number of vaccinated residents age 80 and older stands at just 41.16%, while those from 70-79 is 70% 

“It is never too late to vaccinate high priority groups to reduce mortality,” Dr. Grepin told VOA. 

Dr. David Owens, an honorary assistant clinical professor at the University of Hong Kong, previously told VOA that vaccinating high priority groups should be the “primary focus.” 

Owens also argued that implementing a rapid testing strategy would also help break transmission cycles. 

“When people get symptoms, they would be encouraged to test themselves. They could isolate at home for a minimum of five days or until they had a negative test, whichever was the latest,” he said.

Lam, Hong Kong’s top administrator, recently vowed to procure millions of rapid antigen testing kits to improve detection, providing each resident one test kit. 

The Hong Kong leader announced on Friday the upcoming chief executive elections will be postponed until May, citing the health crisis in the city. The elections were scheduled to be held in March. 
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Health authorities in Malawi say a 3-year-old girl is paralyzed after contracting polio, the first known case in Africa in more than five years and the first in Malawi in three decades. Authorities say the child was infected by a strain of poliovirus that matches a strain found in Pakistan.

Until this week, Malawi had last reported a polio case in 1992. The southern African country was declared polio-free in 2005 — 15 years before the whole continent achieved the same status.

Dr. Charles Mwansambo, secretary for health in Malawi, told local radio Friday that the poliovirus strain detected in Malawi came from abroad.

“This patient is Malawian but the strain of poliovirus she has is not Malawian. It was first identified in Pakistan. So, this is an imported strain.”

So far, the girl, who lives in the capital, Lilongwe, is the only identified case of polio in the country. Mwansambo said all those who came into contact with the girl have tested negative for the poliovirus.

However, the Ministry of Health said in a statement Thursday evening that it has intensified surveillance for the disease, especially among children up to fifteen years of age. President Lazarus Chakwera has declared a national health emergency.

Polio is a contagious and life-threatening disease. The poliovirus can infect a person’s spinal cord, leaving them partially or fully paralyzed.

Dr. Janet Kayita, the country representative for the World Health Organization in Malawi, says the alarm is justified.

“Because as long as there is polio in Lilongwe, it is a threat not just in Malawi, it’s a threat in the region and it’s a public health event of international concern.”

She says the WHO is deploying a team to Malawi to enhance disease surveillance, detect and identify cases and strengthen routine immunization.

“The nature of having identified a child with polio, highlights the need to make sure that vaccination campaign is mounted, making that every last child under five years of age is reached with polio vaccine,”  Kavita said.

Malawi health expert Maziko Matemba says the government should consider increasing budget allocations of the health sector.

“So that some of these shocks are minimized or they are contained before they occur because they also have an effect on the economy of the country, as we have seen with COVID,” Matemba said.

President Chakwera said in a statement Thursday that after experiencing various natural disasters like Cyclone Idai, COVID-19 and Tropical Storm Ana early this year, a polio outbreak is the last thing any Malawian would want to hit the country.
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Lam Foon, 98, sits propped up and swaddled in soggy woolen blankets in a hospital bed just outside the entrance to Hong Kong’s Caritas Medical Centre, waiting for tests to confirm her preliminary positive result for COVID-19.

“I don’t feel so good,” she told Reuters through a surgical mask, next to a similarly wrapped patient wearing a mask and face shield.

Lam was one of dozens of patients lying in the parking lot of Caritas on Thursday, after there was no more room inside the hospital that serves 400,000 people in the working-class district of Cheung Sha Wan on the Kowloon peninsula.

Temperatures dipped to 15 degrees Celsius amid some rain.

Medical staff were unable to say how long Lam would have to wait. People who test preliminarily positive for COVID have to take further tests before treatment.

This and similar scenes across the global financial hub are signs of a public healthcare system under severe strain as COVID-19 cases surge, with more than 95% of all hospital beds full.

Once largely insulated from the coronavirus pandemic, Hong Kong is facing a citywide outbreak, with businesses buckling and some losing patience with the government’s “zero COVID” policies.

In the cluster of working-class districts in nearby Sham Shui Po, some residential blocks and public housing estates have been sealed off, crowds in malls and street markets have thinned, and once teeming diners known as dai pai dongs and stalls selling knickknacks are quieter after dark.

Trevor Chung, 29, a medic at Caritas, blamed the government in part for inadequate planning, a shortage of beds and other medical equipment, and chronic manpower shortages.

“The government underestimated the situation,” said Chung, clad in a full-face visor and blue hazmat suit. “I expect things to get a lot worse … There are many elderly people in this district, and many aren’t vaccinated.”

Hong Kong authorities on Thursday apologized for the dire situation at hospitals serving the city of 7.4 million.

The city’s zero-COVID policy has meant even asymptomatic people and those with mild conditions have been sent to hospitals or quarantine centers, although the government is now adjusting its strategy as the health care system is overwhelmed.

Lam under pressure

The outbreak has piled further pressure on Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, whose five-year term is due to end in June.

While Lam says surrendering to the virus “is not an option” and Chinese President Xi Jinping has said the “overriding mission” for Hong Kong is to rein in the virus, some are skeptical.

“You can see I’m wearing two masks. I need to protect myself because the government won’t protect me,” said Lo Kai-wai, a 59-year-old logistics worker queuing at a mobile testing center that had already reached its daily quota of 3,000 people.

“I don’t want to see her (Lam) get a second term.”

Some business owners impacted by government-imposed restrictions also question the sustainability of current policies.

“The government needs to find a better balance to both control the virus, but also to allow people to better get on with their lives,” said Timothy Poon, 23, the manager of a café close to the hospital, whose business has dropped by up to 60% amid the outbreak.

“The zero-COVID policy is a mission impossible.”

Others, however, are more upbeat.

“If everyone is willing to get vaccinated, the situation will improve,” said Lung Mei-chu, 78, at a testing center in another district.

 
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A Chinese rocket, according to astronomers, is expected to crash into the moon on March 4. It is the latest example of China’s presence in space. News of the predicted crash comes after Beijing released a development blueprint for satellite improvements, deep-space exploration and putting more people in orbit.

Analysts expect Beijing to reach many of the goals outlined in its five-year plan for the development of outer space despite the odd mishap, according to experts.

China’s space program stands to rival those of Russia and the United States, especially in terms of commercializing space technology, they add.

“China is something to look at seriously in terms of increasing competitiveness,” said Marco Caceres, director of space studies at the Teal Group market analysis firm. “Part of that is that the U.S. was ahead by so much that countries like China, where their economies are growing faster, they’re simply catching up.”

Past meets future

China launched its first satellite in 1970 and put its first human in space in 2003, becoming the world’s third nation, after Russia and the United States, to reach that milestone. In 2019, China’s spacecraft made a historic landing on the far side of the moon. Beijing is in the process of adding onto its Tiangong space station later this year.

China is excluded from the International Space Station, a cooperative operation among Europe, the United States, Russia, Canada and Japan, due to U.S. national security concerns.

Over the next five years, Beijing’s space program will place people in space on “long-term assignments” for scientific research, complete findings on Mars and explore the Jupiter system, according to China’s Space Program: A 2021 Perspective.

The coming half-decade will see improvements as well in the capacity of space transport systems, and China will “continue to improve its space infrastructure” through integration of remote sensing, communications, navigation and satellite positioning technologies, the document says.

China will probably realize its five-year goals because it has been working on them for a decade or more, with plenty of government funding, analysts say.

The January report effectively “bundles” together what’s already taking shape, said Richard Bitzinger, defense analyst with the Defense Budget Project, a research nonprofit in Washington. It’s technically possible that China could mine ore on an asteroid, Bitzinger said, though the job would require complex anchoring and drilling work.

A lot of the blueprint goals are meant to exude peaceful intent and a positive international image, he added. “Most manned space programs are symbolic,” Bitzinger said. “From an economic sense, they’re a loss leader, but from a sense of demonstrating power, they’re perfect for that.”

The blueprint says future Chinese space missions will remain “peaceful,” despite suspicion in Washington that the Chinese space program will be directed toward military purposes.

Commercial momentum

Progress in the Chinese space program has allowed China to become what Caceres describes as more “aggressive” than the United States in marketing satellites and modern launch services. Its budget probably grows faster than NASA’s, he added. Chinese space-related gear can be found in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the analyst said.

Countries such as Australia and Japan already use Chinese space-based remote sensing data after natural disasters. Russia and China tentatively agreed in September to open a joint lunar research base.

“China calls on all countries to work together to build a global community of (a) shared future and carry out in-depth exchanges and cooperation in outer space on the basis of equality, mutual benefit, peaceful utilization, and inclusive development,” the Chinese Embassy in Washington told VOA on Wednesday.

Some of the countries closest to China geographically may still hold out for U.S. space technology despite China’s willingness to engage, said Alan Chong, associate professor at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

The government of Myanmar, for example, resents China over infrastructure debt and projects that people see as irrelevant to their lives, the U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies has found.

“I think the situation is fluid, and I wouldn’t say that Southeast Asia will be comfortably in the Chinese orbit yet,” Chong said. “It has of course never been friendlier with China, over the past 15 years or so, but I think the game is not over for the United States.”
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Hundreds of truckers clogging Canada’s capital stood their ground and defiantly blasted their horns Thursday, even as police arrested two protest leaders and threatened to break up the nearly three-week protest against the country’s COVID-19 restrictions.

Busloads of police arrived near Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, and workers put up extra fences around government buildings. Police also essentially began sealing off much of the downtown area to outsiders to prevent them from coming to the aid of the protesters.

“The action is imminent,” said interim Ottawa Police Chief Steve Bell. “We absolutely are committed to end this unlawful demonstration.”

Police arrested organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber around Parliament Hill, but officers were not moving in force on the demonstrators. Police took Lich into custody late Thursday.

Police continued negotiating with the protesters and trying to persuade them to go home, Bell said. “We want this demonstration to end peacefully,” he said, but added: “If they do not peacefully leave, we have plans.”

Many of the truckers in the self-styled Freedom Convoy appeared unmoved by days of warnings from police and the government that they were risking arrest and could see their rigs seized and bank accounts frozen.

“I’m prepared to sit on my ass and watch them hit me with pepper spray,” said one of their leaders, Pat King. As for the trucks parked bumper-to-bumper, he said: “There’s no tow trucks in Canada that will touch them.”

King later told truckers to lock their doors.

Amid the rising tensions, truckers outside Parliament blared their horns in defiance of a court injunction against honking, issued for the benefit of neighborhood residents.

Ottawa represented the movement’s last stronghold after weeks of demonstrations and blockades that shut down border crossings into the U.S., inflicted economic damage on both countries and created a political crisis for Trudeau.

The protests have shaken Canada’s reputation for civility and rule-following and inspired similar convoys in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

“It’s high time that these illegal and dangerous activities stop,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared in Parliament, not far from where the more than 300 trucks were parked.

“They are a threat to our economy and our relationship with trading partners,” he said. “They are a threat to public safety.”

Ottawa police began locking down a wide swath of the downtown area, allowing in only those who live or work there after they pass through one of more than 100 checkpoints, the interim chief said.

Police were especially worried about the children among the protesters. Bell said police were working with child-welfare agencies to determine how to safely remove the youngsters before authorities move in.

Early this week, the prime minister invoked Canada’s Emergencies Act, empowering law enforcement authorities to declare the blockades illegal, tow away trucks, arrest the drivers, suspend their licenses and take other measures.

On Thursday, Trudeau and some of his top ministers took turns warning the protesters to leave, in an apparent move by the government to avert a clash, or at least show it had gone the extra mile to avoid one.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government began freezing truckers’ accounts as threatened. “It is happening. I do have the numbers in front of me,” she said.

Ottawa police likewise handed out leaflets for the second straight day demanding the truckers end the siege, and also helpfully placed notices on vehicles informing owners how and where to pick up their trucks if they are towed.

The occupation has infuriated many Ottawa residents.

“We’ve seen people intimidated, harassed and threatened. We’ve seen apartment buildings that have been chained up. We have seen fires set in the corridors. Residents are terrorized,” said Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.

The protests by demonstrators in trucks, tractors and motor homes initially focused on Canada’s vaccine requirement for truckers entering the country but soon morphed into a broader attack on COVID-19 precautions and Trudeau’s government.

The biggest, most damaging of the blockades at the border took place at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit. Before authorities arrested dozens of protesters last weekend and lifted the siege, it disrupted the flow of auto parts between the two countries and forced the industry to curtail production.

The final blockade, in Manitoba, ended peacefully Wednesday.

The movement has drawn support from right-wing extremists and veterans, some of them armed — one reason authorities have hesitated to move against them.

Fox News personalities and U.S. conservatives such as Donald Trump have egged on the protests. Trudeau complained on Thursday that “roughly half of the funding to the barricaders here is coming from the United States.”

Some security experts said that dispersing the protest in Ottawa could be tricky and dangerous, with the potential for violence, and that a heavy-handed law enforcement response could be used as propaganda by antigovernment extremists.

Trucks were parked shoulder-to-shoulder downtown, some with tires removed to hamper towing.

“There is not really a playbook,” said David Carter, a professor at Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice and a former police officer. “I know there are police chiefs in the U.S. looking at this and developing strategic plans and partnerships to manage a protest like this if it should occur in their cities.”

The presence of children also complicated the planning. As a showdown seemed to draw near, Canadian Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said: “To those who have children with them, this is no place for children. Take them home immediately.” 
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California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced the first shift by a state to an endemic approach to the coronavirus pandemic. He said it emphasizes prevention and quick reactions to outbreaks over mandates, a milestone nearly two years in the making that harkens to a return to a more normal existence. 

Newsom said the approach, which includes pushing back against false claims and other misinformation, means maintaining a wary watchfulness attuned to warning signs of the next deadly new surge or variant. 

“This disease is not going away,” he told The Associated Press in advance of his formal announcement. “It’s not the end of the ‘war.’ ” 

A disease reaches the endemic stage when the virus still exists in a community but becomes manageable as immunity builds. But there will be no definitive turn of the switch, the Democratic governor said, unlike the case with Wednesday’s lifting of the state’s indoor masking requirements or an announcement coming February 28 of when the school mask-wearing mandate will end. 

And there will be no immediate lifting of the dozens of remaining executive emergency orders that have helped run the state since Newsom imposed the nation’s first statewide stay-home order in March 2020. 

The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020, and with omicron fading in many parts of the world some countries have begun planning for the endemic stage.

Newsom’s administration came up with a shorthand acronym to capsulize key elements of its new approach: SMARTER. The letters stand for Shots, Masks, Awareness, Readiness, Testing, Education and Rx, a common abbreviation for prescriptions and a reference to improving treatments for COVID-19.

Greater watchfulness 

Living with COVID-19 under Newsom’s plan means boosting the state’s surveillance, including increased monitoring of virus remnants in wastewater to watch for the first signs of a surge. Masks won’t be required but will be encouraged in many settings. 

If a higher level of the virus is detected, health officials will analyze its genotype to determine if it is a new variant. If so, state and federal officials have a goal to determine within 30 days if it responds to existing tests, treatments, and immunities from vaccines or prior infections. 

Testing and staffing in the affected area will be increased, including temporary medical workers to assist strained hospitals. 

The plan sets specific goals, such as stockpiling 75 million masks, ramping up to delivering 200,000 vaccinations and 500,000 tests a day, and adding 3,000 medical workers within three weeks in surge areas through ongoing contracts with national registry companies. 

Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist and infectious-disease control expert at the University of California-San Francisco, has urged a cautious approach to lifting mandates. He saw drafts of Newsom’s plan and likes it. 

“They have a long-term plan that’s trying to capture these events as they occur and has the supply chain stuff you need to have pre-positioned so that we can move forward in a thoughtful but rapid way to control new outbreaks,” he said. 

Avoiding business closures

California’s health secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, said one of the goals is to avoid business closures and other far-reaching mandates. However, he said, the state’s requirement that schoolchildren be vaccinated against coronavirus by fall remains in effect. 

The plan calls for a continued emphasis on efforts in vulnerable and underserved populations that have experienced disproportionately high death rates. And it includes new education, including “myth-buster videos” to fight misinformation and disinformation and help interpret ever-evolving precautions for a confused public whiplashed by safeguards that seemingly shift by the day and vary across county lines. 

It relies on continued testing sites including in schools; more over-the-counter virus tests; and building and tracking strategic stockpiles of testing kits, surgical and K95 masks, hospital gowns and gloves, and ventilators. In coordination with the federal government, it calls for a first-in-the-nation study of the pandemic’s direct and indirect long-term impacts on both people and communities. 

Newsom and Ghaly said constant monitoring will be useful in spotting other similar respiratory airborne diseases, while leading to improvements in California’s overall public health system. 

All this will cost billions, much of it already outlined in the $3.2 billion pandemic response package Newsom sought as part of his budget last month. That includes $1.9 million that lawmakers already approved to boost staffing at hospitals and increase coronavirus testing and vaccine distribution, as well as existing money and anticipated federal funds. 

His proposed budget also includes $1.7 billion to beef up the state’s health care workforce, with more investment in increased laboratory testing capacity, data collection and outbreak investigation. 

Emergency orders

Newsom defended keeping in place some of his executive emergency orders, which he said most recently have allowed the state to quickly bring in temporary medical workers and to quickly distribute more than 13 million home test kits to schools. 

The omicron surge is ebbing as quickly as it spiked in December, with new cases falling back to near pre-surge levels. Hospitalizations and intensive care cases were also falling, and the state’s forecasting models predict a continued gradual easing over the next month.
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Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates met with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday in Pakistan to acknowledge the country’s progress against polio.

During the trip, his first to Pakistan, Gates also stressed the need to curb virus transmissions in neighboring Afghanistan and preserve global gains.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries where wild polio virus continues to paralyze children, although not a single infection has been reported in Pakistan for more than a year.

Gates told reporters in Islamabad at the end of his visit that the South Asian nation, where the disease crippled approximately 20,000 Pakistani children a year in the early 1990s, has an opportunity to eliminate polio.

“We’re not done, but we’re certainly in by far the best situation we have ever been in. We’ve never had a year without zero cases,” he said.

But Gates cautioned that the polio virus was detected as recently as December in sewage samples in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan, stressing the need for Pakistan to keep up the momentum and stay vigilant.

“I think that the steps taken in Pakistan during 2022 will probably set us up to finish polio eradication,” Gates said while speaking alongside Faisal Sultan, the special assistant to Khan on health affairs.

Gates co-chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is part of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative project between governments and international organizations.

In a televised ceremony, Pakistani President Arif Alvi conferred the Hilal-e-Pakistan, the country’s second-highest civilian award, on Gates for his work to fight poverty and diseases, including polio.

Gates and Sultan said polio transmissions in Afghanistan continue to pose a challenge to Pakistan’s eradication program and global gains against the disease. Gates noted, however, that Afghan vaccination rates have gone up in recent months after dropping off for more than three years.

“There is more vaccination taking place in Afghanistan now than for the last three years. … But it’s still not as high as it should be, and so there’s work to be done in terms of understanding how we support them,” Gates said when asked for his comments on the eradication efforts since the Taliban takeover of the country in August.

The United Nations says that in November and December 2021, health workers were able to deliver polio vaccinations to 2.6 million Afghan children who had been inaccessible since 2018 because of the conflict.

Sultan said Pakistan was closely working with Taliban authorities to stem polio transmissions through a joint effort on both sides of their common border.

Afghan authorities reported four cases of wild polio in 2021, down from 56 cases a year before.

“We have directly engaged with them and have ongoing conversations to make sure that a synchronized campaign for eradication of polio can continue because we look at our two countries adjacent to each other as, epidemiologically speaking, tightly linked to the eradication of polio,” Sultan explained.
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Experts from nine countries are planning to collect and combine aquatic animal sounds for a global library. Scientists in Australia believe an undersea chorus of mammals, fish and some invertebrates will help them gauge the health of marine ecosystems.

Songs by bearded seals and the “boing” of a minke whale are part of a global collection being put together for the first time by a team of international researchers.

The samples are stored in the individual libraries of various institutions, but never before have they been curated in a single collection.

All marine mammals, including the humpback whale, are thought to emit sounds, along with many fish and invertebrates. A new data bank aims to use these recordings to measure biodiversity and the health of ecosystems.

Miles Parsons, a researcher at the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the lead author of a report on the databank, says animal sounds can indicate the health of an ecosystem.

“When you are talking about things like soundscapes, there is a lot of work recently that has been done to tease out the acoustic characteristics of a soundscape to be able to identify the type of habitat that it is and even start to look at the quality of the habitat. There has been some work recently where they have looked at the difference between degraded coral reefs and healthy coral reefs and the differences in the soundscapes that you have between those. There’s lots of different applications that you can get from this, from passive acoustic monitoring.”

The mulloway is one of the loudest fish in the world. Of the 34,000 known species of fish, only 1,000 have had their sounds documented.

Researchers use highly sophisticated ocean hydrophones, or underwater microphones, to record sounds. Amateur divers have used underwater cameras to record the squeaks and groans of marine life, and they submit their findings to academics.

And some birds reportedly make underwater noises.

Scientists believe that pollution and warming temperatures are changing underwater acoustics.

The research paper “Sounding the Call for a Global Library of Biological Underwater Sounds” was published in the journal “Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.”

It is a collaboration between experts from various countries, including Britain, China, New Zealand and the United States.
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NASA celebrates an anniversary on the Martian surface while a space-travel startup tumbles back to Earth. Russia helps refuel the International Space Station, and how a recent volcanic eruption could lead to faster tsunami warnings in the future. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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After two years, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be taking a toll on Americans’ mental health, with a growing number of people suffering from a wide array of issues, from anxiety to depression. Lesia Bakalets has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
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A study released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that infants are less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 if their mothers are vaccinated during their pregnancy.

The study found that babies whose mothers received two doses of an mRNA vaccine while pregnant were about 60% less likely to be hospitalized for the virus during their first six months of life. The odds are strengthened if the mother is vaccinated after the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.  

The agency has urged all women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or planning to get pregnant to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, which it says increases the risk of a variety of complications, including premature birth and stillbirth.

The CDC researchers based their conclusions from monitoring 379 infants who had been hospitalized at 20 pediatric hospitals across the U.S. between last July and January of this year, including 176 who tested positive for COVID-19.

In another vaccine-related development, Britain’s Health Security Agency says the results of several studies suggests a COVID-19 vaccine reduces the chances of someone suffering from the lingering effects of a COVID-19 infection, a condition commonly known as “long COVID,” according to The Guardian newspaper.

The agency came to its conclusion after examining data from 15 studies conducted at home and abroad, half of which looked at whether the vaccine could protect someone from developing long COVID if they had not been infected, with the others focusing on the effect of vaccination among people who were already suffering from long COVID.

The HSA researchers found that those who have received one or two doses of a vaccine are less likely to develop long COVID symptoms, such as fatigue, headaches, hair loss, shortness of breath or loss of smell, compared with those who are unvaccinated. The review also said there was evidence that unvaccinated people suffering from long COVID had fewer or reduced symptoms once they were vaccinated, compared to those who remained unvaccinated.

Meanwhile, South Korea says its daily number of new COVID-19 cases has risen above 90,000 for the first time Wednesday. The 90,443 new infections reported by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency was a dramatic increase from the 57,164 new cases from Tuesday.

Despite the increasing number of new cases driven by the highly-contagious omicron variant, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said the government may soon ease current coronavirus restrictions, including lifting a 9 p.m. curfew on restaurants, cafes and bars, and ending the cap on the number of people allowed for private gatherings at six.

In the United States, the administration of President Joe Biden has told key lawmakers that it needs an additional $30 billion to fund its COVID-19 response efforts.

The extra spending requested by President Biden comes nearly a year after passage of the massive $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan aimed at helping the U.S. economy recover from the pandemic. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that while the administration continues to have “sufficient funds” to respond to the current omicron-driven surge, “our goal has always been to ensure that we are well prepared to stay ahead of the virus.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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A U.S. government report warns that sea levels along America’s coasts will rise about an average of 30.5 centimeters over the next 30 years, about equal to water level increases recorded in the past 100 years.

The report released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and six other federal agencies predicted the Gulf Coast, especially Texas and Louisiana, will get hit hardest. The Atlantic coast will also see higher than average sea level rise, while it will be less on the Pacific coast, the report said.

Scientists say the higher sea levels are the result of climate change and will spark more coastal floods on sunny days when it isn’t storming.

The study’s lead author, William Sweet, an oceanographer for NOAA’s National Ocean Service, said the worst of the long-term effects of the sea level increases from melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland probably won’t begin to be felt until after 2100.

U.S. cities such as Annapolis, Maryland; Miami Beach, Florida; and Norfolk, Virginia, already get a few minor floods a year during high tides, but the researchers said that by 2050, those will be replaced by several “moderate” yearly floods that cause property damage.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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Pollution by states and companies is contributing to more deaths globally than COVID-19, a U.N. environmental report published on Tuesday said, calling for “immediate and ambitious action” to ban some toxic chemicals.

The report said pollution from pesticides, plastics and electronic waste is causing widespread human rights violations and at least 9 million premature deaths a year, and that the issue is largely being overlooked.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused close to 5.9 million deaths, according to data aggregator Worldometer.

“Current approaches to managing the risks posed by pollution and toxic substances are clearly failing, resulting in widespread violations of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment,” the report’s author, U.N. Special Rapporteur David Boyd, concluded.

“I think we have an ethical and now a legal obligation to do better by these people,” he told Reuters later in an interview.

Due to be presented next month to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which has declared a clean environment a human right, the document was posted on the Council’s website on Tuesday.

It urges a ban on polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl, man-made substances used in household products such as non-stick cookware that have been linked to cancer and dubbed “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily.

It also seeks the clean-up of polluted sites and, in extreme cases, the possible relocations of affected communities – many of them poor, marginalized and indigenous – from so-called “sacrifice zones”.

That term, originally used to describe nuclear test zones, was expanded in the report to include any heavily contaminated site or place rendered uninhabitable by climate change.

“What I hope to do by telling these stories of sacrifice zones is to really put a human face on these otherwise inexplicable, incomprehensible statistics (of pollution death tolls),” Boyd said.

Boyd considers the report, his latest in a series, to be his most hard-hitting yet and told Reuters he expects “push back” when he presents it to the Council in Geneva.

U.N. rights chief Michelle Bachelet has called environmental threats the biggest global rights challenge, and a growing number of climate and environmental justice cases are invoking human rights with success.

Chemical waste is set to be part of negotiations at a U.N. environment conference in Nairobi, Kenya, starting on Feb. 28, including a proposal to establish a devoted panel, similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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