YCLOAK

With the world in a race between the spread of coronavirus variants and vaccinating millions, AstraZeneca announced Saturday that early data shows its vaccine provides limited protection against mild disease caused by the South African variant of the virus.The test group was small, about 2,000 people, and young, with a median age of 31. But none of the study’s participants were hospitalized or died, according to The Financial Times of London, the first to report the results.“We do believe our vaccine could protect against severe disease,” an AstraZeneca spokesperson said. He added that the company has not been able “to properly ascertain its effect against severe disease and hospitalization given that subjects were predominantly young healthy adults.”The pharmaceutical company will publish its study results Monday.AstraZeneca has begun adapting its vaccine against the South African variant, the spokesperson said.China approves second vaccineChina has conditionally approved the use by the general public of a second COVID-19 vaccine.The National Medical Products Administration said in a statement Saturday that regulators approved the use Friday of CoronaVac, developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd.It’s the second vaccine approved for public use in the southeast Asian country. The first, a vaccine developed by a Chinese institute affiliated with the state-owned China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), was approved two months ago.The Sinovac vaccine, which is being administered in at least five other countries, was given emergency approval last July for high-risk people, such as health care workers and employees of state-owned companies.Conditional approval of the vaccine allows its use for the general public, while research continues. The company must submit current data and reports of any adverse effects after the vaccine is sold on the market.A third candidate vaccine from Sinopharm has been administered to high-risk groups in China, while a fourth candidate from CanSino Biologics is being administered to military personnel.Developing countries buy vaccineSome poorer countries, alarmed at watching rich countries receiving millions of COVID-19 vaccines, are deciding not to wait for vaccines from the World Health Organization and other groups, and have, instead, started striking their own vaccine deals.Juan Carlos Sikaffy, president of the Honduran Private Business Council, told the Associated Press that Honduras “cannot wait on bureaucratic processes or misguided decisions” to give citizens “the peace of mind” offered by the COVID-19 vaccine.The Honduran Private Business Council participated in a vaccine-buying deal for the Central American country by providing a bank guarantee.Serbia has also gone to the vaccine market even though it has paid 4 million euros to WHO’s COVAX program, created to distribute the COVID-19 vaccines fairly.Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said he could not wait for COVAX after watching rich countries buy up so many of the precious shots.“It’s as if they intend to vaccinate all their cats and dogs,” he said.The head of the World Health Organization called Friday for pharmaceutical companies to share manufacturing facilities to increase the production of COVID-19 vaccines.Speaking at an online news briefing from Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said what is needed is “a massive scale-up in production.”He noted that France’s pharmaceutical company Sanofi announced it would make its manufacturing infrastructure available to support production of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and called on other companies to do the same.He also repeated his call for rich nations to share doses with poorer countries once they have vaccinated health workers and older people.Curfews and lockdownsGreece has announced stricter lockdown restrictions in the capital, Athens, as well as other parts of the country to stop the spread of the pandemic. The restrictions include a curfew that will start at 6 p.m. Saturday.Also Saturday, South Korea begins easing its restrictions on businesses outside of the capital, allowing them to stay open an additional hour to 10 p.m. Small-business owners and self-employed people have been calling for an easing of restrictions imposed as the country seeks to control the coronavirus outbreak. However, businesses in Seoul, the capital, will still close at 9 p.m.Cuba imposed a strict nightly curfew Friday in the capital of Havana, as the country struggles to contain a resurgence of the spread of the coronavirus. The Havana Province Defense Council said people and vehicles would be restricted from moving about between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. Cuba reopened its airports three months ago and eased lockdown measures after apparently bringing the outbreak under control. But the relaxed measures triggered a dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases last month.There are more than 105 million global COVID-19 cases and 2.3 million deaths from the coronavirus, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.The United States remains at the top of the list as the location with the most infections, with nearly 27 million cases, followed by India with 10.8 million and Brazil with 9.4 million.
…

China has conditionally approved a second COVID-19 vaccine for public use.The National Medical Products Administration said in a statement Saturday that regulators approved the use of Sinovac Biotech Ltd.’s CoronaVac the day before.A vaccine developed by a Chinese institute affiliated with the state-owned China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) was approved for public use two months ago.The Sinovac vaccine, which is being administered in at least five other countries, was given emergency approval last July for people at high risk for infection, such as health care workers and employees of state-owned companies.Conditional approval of the vaccine allows its use for the general public while research continues. The company must submit current data and reports of any adverse effects after the vaccine is sold on the market.A third candidate vaccine from Sinopharm has already been administered to high-risk groups in China, while a fourth candidate from CanSino Biologics is being administered to military personnel.FILE – A security guard takes a woman’s temperature as a precaution against the new coronavirus, as she lines up to enter a bank in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, June 18, 2020.Developing countries buy vaccineSome poorer countries, alarmed at watching rich countries receive millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses, are deciding not to wait for vaccines from the World Health Organization and other groups, and have instead started striking their own vaccine deals.Juan Carlos Sikaffy, president of the Honduran Private Business Council, told The Associated Press that Honduras “cannot wait on bureaucratic processes or misguided decisions” to give citizens “the peace of mind” offered by COVID-19 vaccines.The Honduran Private Business Council participated in a vaccine-buying deal for the Central American country by providing a bank guarantee.Serbia has also gone to the vaccine market, even though it has already paid 4 million euros to WHO’s COVAX program, created to distribute the COVID vaccines fairly.FILE – Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic talks to reporters in Belgrade, June 21, 2020.Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said he could not wait for COVAX after watching rich countries buy up so many of the precious shots.“It’s as if they intend to vaccinate all their cats and dogs,” he said.The head of the World Health Organization called Friday for pharmaceutical companies to share manufacturing facilities to increase the production of COVID-19 vaccines.Speaking at an online news briefing from Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “a massive scale-up in production” was needed.He noted that France’s pharmaceutical company Sanofi announced it would make its manufacturing infrastructure available to support production of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and called on other companies to do the same.“We encourage all manufacturers to share their data and technology to ensure global, equitable access to vaccines,” Tedros said.He also repeated his call for rich nations to share doses with poorer countries once they have vaccinated health workers and older people.Tedros said 75% of all COVID-19 vaccinations worldwide have been given in just 10 countries, while nearly 130 nations have not given a single vaccination.“The longer it takes to vaccinate those most at risk everywhere, the more opportunity we give the virus to mutate and evade vaccines,” Tedros said, adding that unless the virus is suppressed everywhere, it could resurge globally.A health care worker prepares a dose of China’s Sinovac Biotech COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site in the Sambadrome, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Feb. 6, 2021.China’s Sinovac said Friday that late-stage trial data of its COVID-19 vaccine from Brazil and Turkey showed the vaccine prevented hospitalization and death in COVID-19 patients in 100% of participants. But the company said the vaccine was only 50.65% effective at keeping people from getting infected.The trial of Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine involved nearly 12,400 people and also found the vaccine was 83.7% effective in preventing COVID-19 cases that required any medical treatment.Biden sends in troopsIn the United States, President Joe Biden’s administration announced Friday that the Pentagon had approved the deployment of 1,100 active-duty troops to assist with COVID-19 vaccination efforts. It said that number would likely rise soon.The U.S. Supreme Court told the western state of California on Friday that it could not prohibit indoor worship services because of the pandemic, but that it could temporarily maintain a ban on singing and chanting indoors. The court’s orders came after two churches sued over the state’s lockdown measures. The court ruled that California could limit indoor services to 25% of a building’s capacity.FILE – People line up at a COVID-19 vaccination site at Yankee Stadium, Feb. 5, 2021, in the Bronx borough of New York.New York’s Yankee Stadium was transformed Friday into a COVID-19 vaccination hub.  The iconic stadium is located in the Bronx, a mostly Black and Hispanic borough that has experienced high infection and death rates from the coronavirus.Currently, only Bronx residents are eligible to receive the COVID shots at the stadium, where members of the National Guard have been deployed to assist in the vaccine campaign.Jacqueline Soto, 55, a school secretary from the Bronx, told Reuters on Friday “I was on a wait list for three weeks, desperate to get a vaccine. … I was unsuccessful. But today I’m here. I just went on the link yesterday and already I got the appointment today, and I’m happy to be here.”The U.S. supermarket chain Kroger said Friday that it would give $100 to workers who get a COVID-19 vaccination, joining a growing number of companies who are incentivizing employees to get vaccinated.Coronavirus cases in the United States have been decreasing in recent weeks. However, medical officials are urging U.S. residents to not turn Sunday’s Super Bowl, a yearly football game, into a superspreader event.  Fans usually gather at large home parties or in bars and restaurants to watch the game on television.  Medical authorities this year, however, are urging football fans to watch the game “with the people you live with.”Hundreds of people protested Saturday in the streets of Tunisia, which has yet to receive any vaccines. Frustrated Tunisians decried the lack of jobs, poor living conditions and the economic crisis worsened by the pandemic. They also demanded the release of those arrested during protests earlier this year. Demonstrators attend a protest to mark the anniversary of a prominent activist’s death and against allegations of police abuse, in Tunis, Tunisia, Feb. 6, 2021.Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi announced a government reorganization and promised that the new team would focus on deep reforms to improve conditions in the North African country.Greece announced stricter lockdown restrictions in the capital, Athens, as well as in other parts of the country to stop the spread of the pandemic. The restrictions included a curfew that began at 6 p.m. Saturday.FILE – A medical worker in a booth sprays disinfectant as she waits for people to come for tests at a coronavirus testing site in Seoul, South Korea, Feb. 5, 2021.Also Saturday, South Korea began easing its restrictions on businesses outside the capital, allowing them to stay open an additional hour, to 10 p.m.  Small-business owners and self-employed people have been calling for an easing of restrictions imposed as the country seeks to control the coronavirus outbreak. However, businesses in Seoul, the capital, will still close at 9 p.m.Cuba imposed a strict nightly curfew Friday in the capital, Havana, as the country struggles to contain a resurgence of the spread of the coronavirus. The Havana Province Defense Council said people and vehicles would be restricted from moving about between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. Cuba reopened its airports three months ago and eased lockdown measures after apparently bringing the outbreak under control. But the relaxed measures triggered a dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases last month.As of Saturday afternoon EST, there were more than 105.6 million global GOVID-19 cases and 2.3 million deaths from the coronavirus, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.The United States remained at the top of the list as the location with the most infections, with more than 26.8 million cases, followed by India with 10.8 million and Brazil with 9.4 million.   
…

Technology that can predict bushfires is being developed in Australia, one of the world’s most fire-prone countries. It will offer real-time visual displays of how fires are likely to spread. It comes as dozens of homes already have been destroyed this year by fires on the outskirts of the Western Australian state capital, Perth.Bushfires are a perennial menace in Australia. This week, Perth has confronted twin emergencies: raging flames and a coronavirus lockdown.“When I had to evacuate, I didn’t want to come to the evacuation center because I, obviously with the lockdown, I was so concerned that this was going to be like a COVID hot spot,” one resident said. “Yeah, grabbed my animals and just headed straight for the beach, actually. I ended up trying to sleep in my car,” she said.Firefighting in Australia is becoming increasingly sophisticated. A new simulator is being developed to predict well in advance how bushfires will move across the landscape.Currently, there are varying systems of modeling bushfires across Australian states and territories. The new technology could give emergency crews a critical advantage.Mahesh Prakash, a senior principal research scientist at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, is working in collaboration with other organizations.“We take real-time weather as well as satellite data feeds for being able to predict the bushfires,” the scientist said. “We also take fuel and vegetation inputs. We are also working with state-based emergency management agencies who are trialing it out as we speak on a monthly basis while we are developing new features in the system as well as making it more robust. In the Australian context, we are intending it to be a nationally operational system over the next two to three years. We are also engaging with agencies in the U.S. such as CAL FIRE as well as with a few organizations in Europe, especially ones based in Spain, Portugal and Italy.”During Australia’s unforgettable Black Summer disaster of 2019 and ’20, 24 million hectares of land were burned, 33 people died and more than 3,000 homes were destroyed. An official report into the tragedy warned that bushfires would become “more complex, more unpredictable, and more difficult to manage.”Authorities said Saturday that most of the huge fire that has been threatening parts of Perth had now been contained.
…

As the Trump administration was nearing the end of an unprecedented string of executions, 70% of death row inmates were sick with COVID-19. Guards were ill. Traveling prisons staff on the execution team had the virus. So did media witnesses, who may have unknowingly infected others when they returned home because they were never told about the spreading cases.Records obtained by The Associated Press show employees at the Indiana prison complex where the 13 executions were carried out over six months had contact with inmates and other people infected with the coronavirus but were able to refuse testing and declined to participate in contact tracing efforts and were still permitted to return to their work assignments.Other staff members, including those brought in to help with executions, also spread tips to their colleagues about how they could avoid quarantines and skirt public health guidance from the federal government and Indiana health officials.The executions at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, completed in a short window over a few weeks, likely acted as a superspreader event, according to the records reviewed by AP. It was something health experts warned could happen when the Justice Department insisted on resuming executions during a pandemic.Active inmate cases spikeIt’s impossible to know precisely who introduced the infections and how they started to spread, in part because prisons officials didn’t consistently do contact tracing and haven’t been fully transparent about the number of cases. But medical experts say it’s likely the executioners and support staff, many of whom traveled from prisons in other states with their own virus outbreaks, triggered or contributed both in the Terre Haute penitentiary and beyond the prison walls.Of the 47 people on death row, 33 tested positive between Dec. 16 and Dec. 20, becoming infected soon after the executions of Alfred Bourgeois on Dec. 11 and Brandon Bernard on Dec. 10, according to Colorado-based attorney Madeline Cohen, who compiled the names of those who tested positive by reaching out to other federal death row lawyers. Other lawyers, as well as activists in contact with death row inmates, also told AP they were told a large numbers of death row inmates tested positive in mid-December.In addition, at least a dozen other people, including execution team members, media witnesses and a spiritual adviser, tested positive within the incubation period of the virus, meeting the criteria of a superspreader event, in which one or more individuals trigger an outbreak that spreads to many others outside their circle of acquaintances. The tally could be far higher, but without contact tracing it’s impossible to be sure.Active inmate cases at the Indiana penitentiary also spiked from just three on Nov. 19 — the day Orlando Cordia Hall was put to death — to 406 on Dec. 29, which was 18 days after Bourgeois’ execution, according to Bureau of Prisons data. The data includes the inmates at the high-security penitentiary, though the Bureau of Prisons has never said whether it included death row inmates in that count.In all, 726 of the approximately 1,200 inmates at the United States Penitentiary at Terre Haute have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to Bureau of Prisons data. Of them, 692 have recovered.Social distancing difficultiesAdvocates and lawyers for the inmates, a Zen Buddhist priest who was a spiritual adviser for one prisoner, and even the families of some of the victims fought to delay the executions until after the pandemic. Their requests were rebuffed repeatedly, and their litigation failed. And some got sick.Witnesses, who were required to wear masks, watched from behind glass in small rooms where it often wasn’t possible to stand 2 meters apart. They were taken to and from the death-chamber building in vans, where proper social distancing often wasn’t possible. Passengers frequently had to wait in the vans for an hour or more, with windows rolled up and little ventilation, before being permitted to enter the execution-chamber building. And in at least one case, the witnesses were locked inside the execution chamber for more than four hours with little ventilation and no social distancing.Prison staff told their colleagues they should first get on planes, go back to their homes and then they could take a test, according to two people familiar with the matter. If they were positive, they said, they could just quarantine and wouldn’t be stuck in Terre Haute for two weeks, said the people, who could not publicly discuss the private conversations and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.Following Hall’s execution in November, only six members of the execution team opted to get coronavirus tests before they left Terre Haute, the Justice Department said in a court filing. The agency said they all tested negative. But days later, eight members of the team tested positive for the virus. Five of the staff members who had tested positive were brought back to Terre Haute for more executions a few weeks later.Yusuf Ahmed Nur, the spiritual adviser for Hall, stood just feet away inside the execution chamber when Hall was executed on Nov. 19. He tested positive for the virus days later.Writing about the experience, Nur said he knew he would be putting himself at risk, but that Hall had asked him to be at his side when he was put to death. He, and Hall’s family, felt obliged to be there.“I could not say no to a man who would soon be killed,” Nur wrote. “That I contracted COVID-19 in the process was collateral damage” of executions during a pandemic.Later, two journalists tested positive for the virus after witnessing other executions in January, then had contact with activists and their own loved ones, who later tested positive as well. Despite being informed of the diagnoses, the Bureau of Prisons knowingly withheld the information from other media witnesses and decided not to initiate any contact tracing efforts.‘Clear to work’By mid-December, prison officials said that both Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs were sick. They were the last two prisoners to be executed, just days before President Joe Biden took office.Death row was put on lockdown after their results, inmates told Ashley Kincaid Eve, a lawyer and anti-death penalty activist. But even though they had also tested positive, she said Higgs and Johnson were still moved around the prison — potentially infecting guards accompanying them — so they could use phones and email to speak with their lawyers and families as their execution dates approached. Eve said prisons officials may have worried a court would delay the executions on constitutional ground if that access was denied.In response to questions from the AP, the Bureau of Prisons said staff members who don’t experience symptoms “are clear to work” and that they have their temperatures taken and are asked about symptoms before reporting for duty. (The AP has previously reported that staff members at other prisons were cleared with normal temperatures even when thermometers showed hypothermic readings.)The agency said it also conducts contact training in accordance with federal guidance and that “if staff are circumventing this guidance, we are not aware.”Officials said staff members were required to participate in contact tracing “if they met the criteria for it” and agency officials couldn’t compel employees to be tested.“We cannot force staff members to take tests, nor does the CDC recommend testing of asymptomatic individuals,” an agency spokesperson said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The union for Terre Haute employees declined to comment, saying it did not want to “get into the public fray of this whole issue.”Elsewhere, union officials have long complained about the spread of the coronavirus through the federal prison system, as well as a lack of personal protective equipment and room to isolate infected inmates. Some of those issues have been alleviated, but containing the virus continues to be a concern at many facilities.‘Extensive efforts’No more executions have yet been scheduled under Biden. The Bureau of Prisons has repeatedly refused to say how many other people have tested positive for the coronavirus after the last several executions. And the agency would not answer questions about the specific reasoning for withholding the information from the public, instead directing the AP to file a public records request.The Bureau of Prisons said it also “took extensive efforts to mitigate the transmission” of the virus, including limiting the number of media witnesses and adding an extra van for the witnesses to space them out.It has argued witnesses were informed social distancing may not be possible in the execution chamber and that witnesses and others were required to wear masks and were offered additional protective equipment, like gowns and face shields. The agency also refused to answer questions about whether Director Michael Carvajal or any other senior leaders raised concerns about executing 13 people during a worldwide pandemic that has killed more than 450,000 in the U.S.Still, it appears their own protocols weren’t followed. After a federal judge ordered the Bureau of Prisons to ensure masks were worn during executions in January, the executioner and U.S. marshal in the death chamber removed their masks during one of the executions, appearing to violate the judge’s order. The agency argued they needed to do so to communicate clearly and that they only removed their masks for a short time and disputes that it violated the order.Hundreds of staffers participatedIn a Nov. 24 court filing on the spread of COVID at Terre Haute, Joe Goldenson, a public health expert on the spread of disease behind bars, said hundreds of staff participated in one way or another at each execution, including around 40 people on execution teams and those on 50-person specialized security teams who traveled from other prisons nationwide. He said he had warned earlier that executions were likely to become a superspreader.Medical and public health experts repeatedly called on the Justice Department to delay executions, arguing the setup at prisons made them especially vulnerable to outbreaks, including because social distancing was impossible and health care substandard.“These are the type of high-risk superspreader events that the (American Medical Association) and (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) have been warning against throughout the pandemic,” James L. Madara, the executive vice president of the AMA, wrote to the Department of Justice on Jan. 11, just before the last three federal executions were carried out.
…

The head of the World Health Organization called Friday for pharmaceutical companies to share manufacturing facilities to increase the production of COVID-19 vaccines.Speaking at an online news briefing from Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said what is needed is “a massive scale-up in production.”He noted that France’s pharmaceutical company Sanofi announced it would make its manufacturing infrastructure available to support production of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and called on other companies to do the same.“We encourage all manufacturers to share their data and technology to ensure global, equitable access to vaccines.”He also repeated his call for rich nations to share doses with poorer countries once they have vaccinated health workers and older people.Tedros said 75% of all COVID-19 vaccinations worldwide have been given in just 10 countries, while nearly 130 nations have not given a single vaccination.“The longer it takes to vaccinate those most at risk everywhere, the more opportunity we give the virus to mutate and evade vaccines,” Tedros said, adding that unless the virus is suppressed everywhere, it could resurge globally.China’s Sinovac Biotech said Friday that late-stage trial data of its COVID-19 vaccine from Brazil and Turkey showed the vaccine prevented hospitalization and death in COVID-19 patients in 100% of participants but said it was only 50.65% effective at keeping people from getting infected.The trial of Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine involved nearly 12,400 people and also found the vaccine was 83.7% effective in preventing COVID-19 cases that required any medical treatment.A dog sits next to numbered crosses at the Iraja cemetery, where many COVID-19 victims are buried in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Feb. 5, 2021.In the United States, President Joe Biden’s administration announced Friday that the Pentagon had approved the deployment of 1,100 active-duty troops to assist with COVID-19 vaccination efforts. It said that number will likely rise soon.The U.S. supermarket chain Kroger said Friday it would give $100 to workers who get a COVID-19 vaccination, joining a growing number of companies incentivizing employees to get vaccinated.Coronavirus cases in the United States have been decreasing in recent weeks. However, medical officials are urging U.S. residents to not turn Sunday’s Super Bowl, a yearly football game, into a superspreader event. Fans usually gather at large home parties or in bars and restaurants to watch the game on television. Medical authorities this year, however, are urging football fans to watch the game “with the people you live with.”In France, coronavirus hospitalizations fell for a third day in a row. Officials said the number of people in the hospital with the virus fell by 194 to 27,614 and the number of people in intensive care fell by five to 3,245.Greece announced stricter lockdown restrictions in the capital, Athens, as well as other parts of the country to stop the spread of the pandemic. The restrictions include a curfew that will start at 6 p.m. Saturday.New Zealand said it is open to receiving refugees once again. The new measure comes almost a year after New Zealand closed its doors to foreigners in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.Fiona Whiteridge, the general manager of New Zealand’s refugee and migrant service, said in a statement, “With health protocols in place and safe travel routes, we are ready to welcome small groups of refugee families as New Zealand residents to this country, to begin their new lives.”Students wearing COVID-19 protective gear social distance during snack time on their first day back to in-person class since March 2020 at Liceo Lunita, a private school in Chia on the outskirts of Bogota, Colombia, Feb. 5, 2021.In another development Friday, Pfizer told Reuters in a statement that it has withdrawn its application in India for emergency-use authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine developed with Germany’s BioNTech.Pfizer did not conduct a trial with its vaccine in India, a measure India usually requires.Pfizer’s decision to withdraw came after its meeting earlier this week with India’s drug regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization.The drug regulator said Pfizer’s vaccine was not recommended because there were no data from an Indian trial and because of reported side effects from the vaccine in its use abroad.Pfizer said it will “re-submit its approval request with additional information as it becomes available in the near future.”India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reported 12,408 new coronavirus cases Friday.There are more than 105 million global GOVID-19 cases and nearly 2.3 million deaths from the coronavirus, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.The United States remains at the top of the list as the location with the most infections, with more than 26.8 million cases, followed by India with 10.8 million and Brazil with 9.4 million.
…

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday that 75% of all COVID-19 vaccinations worldwide have been given in just 10 countries, while nearly 130 nations have not given a single vaccination.At the agency’s regular briefing in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that, globally, the number of vaccinations has now overtaken the number of reported COVID-19 infections.He said that is basically good news and a remarkable achievement in such a short timeframe. But there are almost 130 countries with 2.5 billion people, that have not delivered a single dose of vaccine.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization speaks during a session of the Executive Board on the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Geneva, Jan. 21, 2021.Tedros said there are some wealthier nations that have already vaccinated large proportions of their population at lower risk of severe disease or death.The WHO chief said he recognizes that all governments have an obligation to protect their own people. But he said once wealthier nations have vaccinated their priority populations — frontline health workers and the elderly — the best way those nations can protect the rest of their population is to share surplus vaccines so other countries can do the same.“The longer it takes to vaccinate those most at risk everywhere, the more opportunity we give the virus to mutate and evade vaccines,” said Tedros said, adding that unless the virus is suppressed everywhere, it could resurge globally.One way to make poorer nations less dependent on the richer ones is to ramp up production of vaccines worldwide, he added, noting how the multi-national pharmaceutical company Sanofi announced it would make its manufacturing infrastructure available to support production of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.Tedros called on other companies to do the same.“We encourage all manufacturers to share their data and technology to ensure global, equitable access to vaccines.”
…

As more people get the COVID-19 vaccine, health care experts are tackling the issue of how someone can prove they’ve been vaccinated. Lesia Bakalets has more in this story narrated by Anna Rice. 
Camera: Sergii Dogotar     
 
…

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Friday that there are more than 104 million global GOVID-19 cases and 2.2 million deaths from the virus. The United States remains at the top of the list as the location with the most infections, with more than 26 million cases, followed by India with 10.8 million and Brazil with 9.3 million. Medical officials are urging U.S. residents to not turn Sunday’s Super Bowl, a yearly football game, into a superspreader event.  Fans usually gather at large home parties or in bars and restaurants to watch the game on television.  Medical authorities this year, however, are urging football fans to watch the game “with the people you live with.” Some areas in the United States are running into difficulty ensuring that their residents are being inoculated equitably. The nation’s capital is no exception.  Residents in some of the Washington’s poorest neighborhoods have been underrepresented in the city’s vaccination drive.  Now, however, representatives from the mayor’s office have begun knocking on the front doors of senior citizens’ homes in Washington’s poorest neighborhoods in an effort to get them to sign up for the vaccines. Johnson & Johnson Seeks US Vaccine Approval for Emergency UseDrugmaker’s application for its single-dose vaccine to US Food and Drug Administration follows January report that found the vaccine had a 66% rate of efficacy in preventing infections Washington residents aged 65 and older are eligible for the free vaccinations.  In other areas around the country, local governments have begun their vaccine programs with senior citizens 75 and up.City Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt told The Washington Post  the life expectancy for some of Washington’s poorest neighborhoods is as low as 68 while it is as high as 89 for richer neighborhoods. “If we would have begun vaccinating individuals at 75 years of age or older, we would have missed the opportunity to have an impact in the neighborhoods with the highest burdens of disease,” Nesbitt told the Post.New Zealand reopens borders
New Zealand says it is open to receiving refugees once again, The new measure comes almost a year after New Zealand closed its doors to foreigners in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fiona Whiteridge, the general manager of New Zealand’s refugee and migrant service, said in a statement, “With health protocols in place and safe travel routes, we are ready to welcome small groups of refugee families as New Zealand residents to this country, to begin their new lives.”According to Hopkins, New Zealand has 2,315 COVID cases, while it has suffered only 25 deaths.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 13 MB540p | 16 MB720p | 32 MB1080p | 65 MBOriginal | 197 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioThumbnailThu, 02/04/2021 – 22:17Rick ShacklettMedia Duration00:02:43Rights RestrictedOffUS Will Support Program to Share COVID Vaccine with Poor Countries, But Offers Few DetailsBiden administration reiterates support for global initiative to ensure lower-income countries have access to the coronavirus vaccine but has not provided further detailsUS Will Support Program to Share COVID Vaccine with Poor Countries, But Offers Few DetailsIndia vaccinations
Pfizer told Reuters in a statement  Friday that it has withdrawn its application in India for emergency-use authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine developed with Germany’s BioNTech. Pfizer did not conduct a trial with its vaccine in India, a measure India usually requires.  Pfizer’s decision to withdraw came after its meeting earlier this week with India’s drug regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization.The drug regulator said Pfizer’s vaccine was not recommended because there were no data from an Indian trial and because of reported side effects from the vaccine in its use abroad.  Pfizer said it will “re-submit its approval request with additional information as it becomes available in the near future.” India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reported 12,408 new coronavirus cases Friday. The British vaccines minister recently told lawmakers there are about 4,000 variants of the coronavirus worldwide.  Nadhim Zahawi said, however, that a vaccine to combat a “a variant that we are really concerned about” could be developed  in 30 to 40 days, that would then be mass produced,  according to a report in The Guardian. 
…

Despite its world-class medical system and its vaunted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. fell behind in the race to detect dangerous coronavirus mutations. And it’s only now beginning to catch up.The problem has not been a shortage of technology or expertise. Rather, scientists say, it’s an absence of national leadership and coordination, plus a lack of funding and supplies for overburdened laboratories trying to juggle diagnostic testing with the hunt for genetic changes.“We have the brains. We have the tools. We have the instruments,” said Ilhem Messaoudi, director of a virus research center at University of California, Irvine. “It’s just a matter of supporting that effort.”Viruses mutate constantly. To stay ahead of the threat, scientists analyze samples, watching closely for mutations that might make the coronavirus more infectious or more deadly.But such testing has been scattershot.Less than 1% of positive specimens in the U.S. are being sequenced to determine whether they have worrisome mutations. Other countries do better — Britain sequences about 10% — meaning they can more quickly see threats coming at them. That gives them greater opportunity to slow or stop the problem, whether through more targeted contact tracing, possible adjustments to the vaccine, or public warnings.CDC officials say variants have not driven recent surges in overall U.S. cases. But experts worry that what’s happening with variants is not clear and say the nation should have been more aggressive about sequencing earlier in the epidemic that has now killed over 450,000 Americans.“If we had evidence it was changing,” said Ohio State molecular biologist Dan Jones, “maybe people would’ve acted differently.”U.S. scientists have detected more than 500 cases of a variant first identified in Britain and expect it to become the cause of most of this country’s new infections in a matter of weeks. Another troubling variant tied to Brazil and a third discovered in South Africa were detected last week in the U.S. and also are expected to spread.The British variant is more contagious and is believed to be more deadly than the original, while the South Africa one may render the vaccines somewhat less effective. The ultimate fear is that a variant resistant to existing vaccines and treatments could eventually emerge.Potentially worrisome versions may form inside the U.S., too. “This virus is mutating, and it doesn’t care of it’s in Idaho or South Africa,” Messaoudi said.But the true dimensions of the problem in the U.S. are not clear because of the relatively low level of sequencing.“You only see what’s under the lamppost,” said Kenny Beckman, director of the University of Minnesota Genomics Center, which started analyzing the virus’s genetics last spring.Medics take a patient out of an ambulance outside the Royal London Hospital in east London, Feb. 4, 2021.After the slow start, public health labs in at least 33 states are now doing genetic analysis to identify emerging coronavirus variants. Other states have formed partnerships with university or private labs to do the work. North Dakota, which began sequencing last week, was the most recent to start that work, according to the Association of Public Health Laboratories.The CDC believes a minimum of 5,000 to 10,000 samples should be analyzed weekly in the U.S. to adequately monitor variants, said Gregory Armstrong, who oversees the agency’s advanced molecular detection work. And it’s only now that the nation is hitting that level, he acknowledged.Still, it is a jumble of approaches: Some public health labs sequence every positive virus specimen. Some focus on samples from certain outbreaks or certain patients. Others randomly select samples to analyze.On top of that, labs continue to have trouble getting needed supplies — like pipette tips and chemicals — used in both gene sequencing and diagnostic testing.President Joe Biden, who inherited the setup from the Trump administration, is proposing a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that calls for boosting federal spending on sequencing of the virus, though the amount has not been detailed and other specifics have yet to be worked out.“We’re 43rd in the world in genomic sequencing. Totally unacceptable,” White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said.For more than five years, U.S. public health labs have been building up their ability to do genomic sequencing, thanks largely to a federal push to zero in on the sources of food poisoning outbreaks.At the pandemic’s outset, some labs began sequencing the coronavirus right away. The Minnesota Department of Health, for example, started doing so within weeks of its first COVID-19 cases in March, said Sara Vetter, an assistant lab director. “That put us a step ahead,” she said.The CDC likewise worked with certain states to sequence close to 500 samples in April, and over a thousand samples in May and June.But many labs didn’t do the same — especially those overburdened with ramping up coronavirus diagnostic testing. The CDC’s Armstrong said that at the time, he couldn’t justify telling labs to do more sequencing when they already had their hands full and there wasn’t any evidence such analysis was needed.“Up until a month ago, it wasn’t on the list of things that are urgently necessary. It was nice to have,” said Trevor Bedford, a scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “There was definitely lack of federal resources assigned to doing exactly this.”At the same time, because of stay-at-home orders imposed during the outbreak, researchers at some labs were told not to go in to work, Messaoudi said.“Instead of having a call to arms,” she said, “they sent everyone home.”Over the summer, though, a group of scientists sounded the alarm about the state of genomic surveillance in the U.S. and began pushing for something more systematic.In November, the CDC began to roll out a national program to more methodically pull and check specimens to better determine what strains are circulating. Then in December, the U.S. got a wake-up call when British researchers announced they had identified a variant that seems to spread more easily.The CDC reacted by announcing its surveillance program would scale up to process 750 samples nationally per week. The agency also contracted with three companies — LabCorp, Quest Diagnostics and Illumina — to sequence thousands more each week. State labs are doing thousands of their own.Meanwhile, the outbreak is almost certainly seeding more COVID-19 mutations.“Where it has free rein of the place, there’s going to be significant variants that evolve,” Scripps Research Institute scientist Dr. Eric Topol said. “The more genomic sequencing, the more we can stay ahead of the virus.”
…

Despite its world-class medical system and its vaunted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. fell behind in the race to detect dangerous coronavirus mutations. And it’s only now beginning to catch up.The problem has not been a shortage of technology or expertise. Rather, scientists say, it’s an absence of national leadership and coordination, plus a lack of funding and supplies for overburdened laboratories trying to juggle diagnostic testing with the hunt for genetic changes.“We have the brains. We have the tools. We have the instruments,” said Ilhem Messaoudi, director of a virus research center at University of California, Irvine. “It’s just a matter of supporting that effort.”Viruses mutate constantly. To stay ahead of the threat, scientists analyze samples, watching closely for mutations that might make the coronavirus more infectious or more deadly.But such testing has been scattershot.Less than 1% of positive specimens in the U.S. are being sequenced to determine whether they have worrisome mutations. Other countries do better — Britain sequences about 10% — meaning they can more quickly see threats coming at them. That gives them greater opportunity to slow or stop the problem, whether through more targeted contact tracing, possible adjustments to the vaccine, or public warnings.CDC officials say variants have not driven recent surges in overall U.S. cases. But experts worry that what’s happening with variants is not clear and say the nation should have been more aggressive about sequencing earlier in the epidemic that has now killed over 450,000 Americans.“If we had evidence it was changing,” said Ohio State molecular biologist Dan Jones, “maybe people would’ve acted differently.”U.S. scientists have detected more than 500 cases of a variant first identified in Britain and expect it to become the cause of most of this country’s new infections in a matter of weeks. Another troubling variant tied to Brazil and a third discovered in South Africa were detected last week in the U.S. and also are expected to spread.The British variant is more contagious and is believed to be more deadly than the original, while the South Africa one may render the vaccines somewhat less effective. The ultimate fear is that a variant resistant to existing vaccines and treatments could eventually emerge.Potentially worrisome versions may form inside the U.S., too. “This virus is mutating, and it doesn’t care of it’s in Idaho or South Africa,” Messaoudi said.But the true dimensions of the problem in the U.S. are not clear because of the relatively low level of sequencing.“You only see what’s under the lamppost,” said Kenny Beckman, director of the University of Minnesota Genomics Center, which started analyzing the virus’s genetics last spring.Medics take a patient out of an ambulance outside the Royal London Hospital in east London, Feb. 4, 2021.After the slow start, public health labs in at least 33 states are now doing genetic analysis to identify emerging coronavirus variants. Other states have formed partnerships with university or private labs to do the work. North Dakota, which began sequencing last week, was the most recent to start that work, according to the Association of Public Health Laboratories.The CDC believes a minimum of 5,000 to 10,000 samples should be analyzed weekly in the U.S. to adequately monitor variants, said Gregory Armstrong, who oversees the agency’s advanced molecular detection work. And it’s only now that the nation is hitting that level, he acknowledged.Still, it is a jumble of approaches: Some public health labs sequence every positive virus specimen. Some focus on samples from certain outbreaks or certain patients. Others randomly select samples to analyze.On top of that, labs continue to have trouble getting needed supplies — like pipette tips and chemicals — used in both gene sequencing and diagnostic testing.President Joe Biden, who inherited the setup from the Trump administration, is proposing a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that calls for boosting federal spending on sequencing of the virus, though the amount has not been detailed and other specifics have yet to be worked out.“We’re 43rd in the world in genomic sequencing. Totally unacceptable,” White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said.For more than five years, U.S. public health labs have been building up their ability to do genomic sequencing, thanks largely to a federal push to zero in on the sources of food poisoning outbreaks.At the pandemic’s outset, some labs began sequencing the coronavirus right away. The Minnesota Department of Health, for example, started doing so within weeks of its first COVID-19 cases in March, said Sara Vetter, an assistant lab director. “That put us a step ahead,” she said.The CDC likewise worked with certain states to sequence close to 500 samples in April, and over a thousand samples in May and June.But many labs didn’t do the same — especially those overburdened with ramping up coronavirus diagnostic testing. The CDC’s Armstrong said that at the time, he couldn’t justify telling labs to do more sequencing when they already had their hands full and there wasn’t any evidence such analysis was needed.“Up until a month ago, it wasn’t on the list of things that are urgently necessary. It was nice to have,” said Trevor Bedford, a scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “There was definitely lack of federal resources assigned to doing exactly this.”At the same time, because of stay-at-home orders imposed during the outbreak, researchers at some labs were told not to go in to work, Messaoudi said.“Instead of having a call to arms,” she said, “they sent everyone home.”Over the summer, though, a group of scientists sounded the alarm about the state of genomic surveillance in the U.S. and began pushing for something more systematic.In November, the CDC began to roll out a national program to more methodically pull and check specimens to better determine what strains are circulating. Then in December, the U.S. got a wake-up call when British researchers announced they had identified a variant that seems to spread more easily.The CDC reacted by announcing its surveillance program would scale up to process 750 samples nationally per week. The agency also contracted with three companies — LabCorp, Quest Diagnostics and Illumina — to sequence thousands more each week. State labs are doing thousands of their own.Meanwhile, the outbreak is almost certainly seeding more COVID-19 mutations.“Where it has free rein of the place, there’s going to be significant variants that evolve,” Scripps Research Institute scientist Dr. Eric Topol said. “The more genomic sequencing, the more we can stay ahead of the virus.”
…

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson said Thursday it is seeking approval for its single-dose COVID-19 vaccine from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.The FDA said it has scheduled a Feb. 26 meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee to discuss an emergency use authorization for the company.In January, Johnson & Johnson released a report that said its vaccine had a 66% rate of preventing the coronavirus infection in a large global trial. However, the vaccine was found in trials not to protect as well against the South Africa virus variant, which is highly transmissible and spreading around the globe, officials said.After previous such meetings of the FDA committee, vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna received authorization within a day.The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which each require two doses to be fully inoculated, are 95% effective, studies show.Johnson & Johnson, which said it will also apply for European authorization within weeks, has a single-dose vaccine that does not need to be frozen during shipping, which the two other approved vaccines do.In January, Paul Stoffels, the company’s chief scientific officer, said the drugmaker would have vaccine ready to ship by March.”Upon authorization of our investigational COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, we are ready to begin shipping,” Stoffels said in a statement.The news of a possible new vaccine to fight the coronavirus pandemic comes as global confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, neared 105 million and deaths totaled nearly 2.3 million.The United States leads the world with more than 26.6 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and by late Thursday had recorded 455,657 deaths.However, the number of daily deaths is falling, from a record high of 4,466 on Jan. 12, to 3,912 Wednesday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said COVID-19 deaths could fall even further by next week. But she also worried that the upcoming Super Bowl game on Sunday could lead to people relaxing coronavirus protocols to gather and watch the major football event.
…

Far beneath the ocean surface, a cacophony of industrial noise is disrupting marine animals’ ability to mate, feed and even evade predators, scientists warn. With rumbling ships, hammering oil drills and booming seismic survey blasts, humans have drastically altered the underwater soundscape – in some cases deafening or disorienting whales, dolphins and other marine mammals that rely on sound to navigate, researchers report in a metastudy published online Thursday and in the Friday edition of the journal FILE – A large crevasse forms near the calving front of the Helheim glacier near Tasiilaq, Greenland, June 22, 2018.”It’s a chronic problem that certainly weakens the animals all the way from individuals to populations,” Duarte said in an interview. “This is a growing problem, one that is global in scope.” These noises and their impacts need more attention from scientists and policymakers, particularly the effects on sea turtles and other reptiles, seabirds, seals, walruses and plant-eating mammals such as manatees, the study says. The international team of researchers called for a global regulatory framework for measuring and managing ocean noise. Much of the human-caused noise should be easy to reduce, Duarte said. For example, measures such as building quieter ship propellers and hulls and using drilling techniques that do not cause bubbles and water vibrations could cut noise pollution in half, he said. Having the world use more renewable energy would lessen the need to drill for oil and gas. The benefits to marine life could be dramatic, he said, noting a resurgence in marine activity during April 2020 when shipping noise, typically loudest near coastlines, died down as countries went into lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. But humans have not only added noise to the ocean, they have also eliminated natural sounds, the study found. Whaling in the 1900s, for example, removed millions of whales from the world’s oceans – along with much of their whale song. And the chirp and chatter around coral reefs is growing quieter as more corals die from ocean warming, acidification and pollution. Climate change has also changed the soundscape in parts of the ocean that are warming by altering the mix of animals living there, along with the noises they make. Oceanographer Kate Stafford at the University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory praised the timing of the metastudy, as the United Nations calls on governments to set aside 30% of the world’s land and sea areas for conservation. “The review makes it clear that, to actually reduce anthrophony [human noise] and aim for a well-managed future … we will need global cooperation among governments,” Stafford said. 
…

As African nations wait for hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses to arrive, health officials are concerned about a general rise in coronavirus cases and deaths, especially in Southern Africa.
 
The stories, reported in local media and highlighted by aid groups, are chilling. In the tiny kingdom of eSwatini, medical aid group Doctors Without Borders says health facilities are seeing 200 new cases per day and a death rate four times higher than they saw in the first wave.  
 
In the coastal nation of Mozambique, case numbers are nearly seven times higher than they were at the peak of the first wave in 2020.  
 
And in the landlocked nation of Malawi, the poorest country in Southern Africa, new cases are doubling every four to five days, and the nation’s main COVID-19 facility is nearly full.
 
Dr. John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tried to break down the continent’s trajectory as many nations enter a second wave without enough vaccine supplies.  
 
He said one indicator worth noting is that for about a third of the continent’s countries, the death rate has risen above the global average.  
 
“It used to be the reverse,” he told reporters via teleconference on Thursday. “During the first wave, the case fatality rate was about 2.2%, and now we are seeing 2.6%. In terms of the number of countries experiencing the second wave, 41 of them are currently experiencing the second wave on the continent. That is 41 of the 55 member states. Five countries accounted for about 70%.”
 
Those countries are South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Ethiopia.Workers load South Africa’s first COVID-19 vaccine shipments as they arrive at OR Tambo airport in Johannesburg, Feb. 1, 2021. (Credit: Elmond Jiyane for GCIS/Handout)Africa escaped the worst of the pandemic last year. But health experts point out the continent now has many factors complicating the situation. Testing has lagged behind the rest of the world. Vaccine rollout has been slower, with just a handful of countries only recently launching vaccination campaigns.  
 
And the continent’s chronic problems with infrastructure and capacity mean that health systems, social safety nets, transportation networks and economies are struggling to meet the challenge posed by this pandemic.   
 
This, said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional director for Africa, is exactly what African health officials have been talking about when they warned against letting vaccine acquisition play out in the open market, a situation that gives wealthier nations advantages like having more power to negotiate for cheaper vaccines in larger quantities.  
 
Moeti told journalists Thursday she was still optimistic.
 
“Clearly, global solidarity is still a work in progress,” she said. “It was our ambition. It was our hope. It has not delivered to the extent that we had hoped, but it is still a work in progress. We are still doing our advocacy for donations from countries that have secured more vaccine to cover the entire population.”
 
Moeti said once African nations secure vaccine doses, they face another challenge: convincing people to take them. She emphasized that the vaccines approved by WHO are safe and effective, and said the organization is being proactive about dispelling the growing tide of false information about vaccines.   
 
“What encourages me is that we know in the African region that in general, people have been positive about having their children vaccinated,” she said. “It is only lately that some of the anti-vaccine sentiments, messaging, initiatives and campaigns have started to land here. We need to build on African people’s belief in vaccines for their children to help them to understand that something extraordinary was done to develop these vaccines. And of course, to be very factual about the fact that we are learning about the vaccines as we go along, but we know enough about their efficaciousness.”
 
Moeti advised people who can take a WHO-approved vaccine to do it. She and other experts reiterated their best advice on containing the coronavirus — stay at home, if possible, wear a mask, wash hands and keep a safe distance.
 
…

In a report marking World Cancer Day, the World Health Organization says COVID-19 is having a negative impact on cancer control efforts at a time when cases and deaths from this deadly disease are rising significantly. New statistics show the number of people diagnosed with cancer globally last year reached 19.3 million, with the number of people dying increasing to 10 million.  The World Health Organization reports cancer now is the second leading cause of death, with 70 percent of deaths occurring in low-and-middle income countries. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 7 MB480p | 10 MB540p | 13 MB720p | 23 MB1080p | 46 MBOriginal | 66 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioBreast cancer
WHO reports breast cancer has replaced lung cancer as the world’s most commonly occurring cancer.  It warns the number of new cancer cases are expected to grow significantly reaching 30 million new cases by 2040.Andre Ilbawi of WHO’s Department of Noncommunicable Diseases says the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer control efforts have been profound.“WHO surveys have found that 50 percent of governments have had cancer services partially or completely disrupted because of the pandemic,” said Ilbawi. “We have also gathered data from the scientific community to understand the severity and the impact on cancer patients.  Delays in diagnosis are common.  Interruptions in therapy and/or abandonment have increased significantly.”  Ilbawi notes people suffering from noncommunicable diseases, including cancer, are at higher risk of severe COVID-19-related illness and death.WHO reports many cancers can be cured if they are diagnosed early and treated appropriately.  It says significant advances have been made in these areas.  For example, it notes cervical cancer kills some four-point-five million people yearly.  These deaths, it says, can be eliminated if girls are fully vaccinated against the sexually transmitted Human Papilloma Virus with the HPV vaccine by age 15.Health officials say individuals can do much to reduce the risk of getting cancer.  A number of preventative measures have to do with lifestyle choices.  Since tobacco use accounts for about 22 percent of cancer deaths, WHO says people should stop smoking.  It recommends regular exercise, healthy diets and the avoidance of the harmful use of alcohol.  It says reducing exposure to strong sunlight for prolonged periods will protect people from the harmful ultraviolet radiation that can cause skin cancer.
…

Strict COVID-19 measures are being reintroduced in the state of Victoria after a 26-year-old Australian Open hotel worker tested positive.Up to 600 tennis players, officials and support staff have been told to isolate and be screened, while warm-up matches for next week’s Grand Slam in Melbourne have been canceled. They must return a negative coronavirus test before they can resume their preparations for next week’s tournament.“About five [to] 600 people that are either players or officials and others who are casual contacts, they will be isolating until they get a negative test,” said Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews. “So, it may have an impact on the lead-up event, but at this stage there is no impact to the tournament proper.”Andrews added that there was “no need for people to panic” because Victoria was adept at containing coronavirus outbreaks following a marathon four-month lockdown last year.Warm-up matches at Melbourne Park were suspended Thursday as a precaution.Australian player Nick Kyrgios says while he supports the decision, he believes some of his colleagues won’t.“I am not going to complain,” he said. “You know, it is not about me. My mum is incredibly sick. You know, [if] she gets COVID, then do you know what I mean, there is too much risk in all this. I do not understand why it is so hard for tennis players to understand, like, you are just a tennis player. It is not life and death like this is.”Restrictions also apply to the broader community in the state of Victoria. Masks are mandatory, and private gatherings in homes are limited to 15 people.Western Australia continues to face twin emergencies — a coronavirus lockdown and devastating bushfires — as residents in the state capital, Perth, enter their fourth day of a five-day lockdown. It was ordered after a worker at a quarantine hotel for Australians returning from overseas tested positive to coronavirus.State authorities in New South Wales said Thursday they had recorded no new community COVID-19 cases for the 18th consecutive day.Australia has recorded 28,829 COVID-19 cases and 909 deaths since the pandemic began, according to official government figures.
…

Testing began in Britain on Thursday to determine if different COVID-19 vaccines can be used together in a two-shot regimen.Researchers are aiming to inoculate more than 800 volunteers with one shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, followed either four or 12 weeks later with a booster shot of the vaccine developed jointly by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, or vice versa.The vaccines were developed with different technology — the Pfizer vaccine through messenger RNA (mRNA), while the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is adenovirus viral vector, or common cold virus.Health officials say if two vaccines developed with different technology are able to be used interchangeably, it could allow greater flexibility in immunization campaigns around the world.In a related development, The Guardian newspaper says an analysis of Israel’s mass vaccination program has found that a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine provides 90% protection against the novel coronavirus by 21 days. Researchers at Britain’s University of East Anglia contradict an earlier study from Israel that suggested one dose may not give adequate protection.Meanwhile, Oxford University says its COVID-19 vaccine is 76% effective at preventing infection for three months after a single dose. The findings were part of the same study released Wednesday that found the vaccine cut transmission of the virus by two-thirds.The study has not been peer-reviewed, but Britain’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the BBC the findings are “good news.””It does show the world that the Oxford jab works, it works well,” Hancock said.The vaccine has come under criticism from other nations in Europe in recent days with officials expressing concerns about the lack of data regarding its effectiveness in older people.Preparations for the Australian Open, the first major tennis tournament of 2021, have been thrown into disarray after a worker at a quarantine hotel in Melbourne tested positive for COVID-19. The positive case prompted tournament organizers and local health authorities to order more than 500 players and support staff to isolate in their rooms until they are tested, and several warm-up tournaments that were scheduled for Thursday were canceled.The tournament was already off to a rough start after more than 70 players were placed in a strict 14-day lockdown after at least six people who arrived in Melbourne last month tested positive for COVID-19. The cases were linked to three of 17 charter flights that arrived in the southern city carrying more than 1,000 players and their entourages, plus tournament officials and media.The new COVID-19 case in Melbourne is the first confirmed infection in Victoria state in 28 days. City officials have reimposed an order for masks in indoor public places, as well as limits on the number of people who can gather indoors.Victoria state Premier David Andrews said in spite of the new positive case, the Grand Slam tournament will still begin next Monday as scheduled, but added there were “no guarantees.”
…