Month: June 2020

Don’t panic, but there is another virus out there that could cause a pandemic.  This one is an influenza strain circulating in pigs and their caretakers in China.  It is not currently causing widespread illness, and it may never do so. But it has “all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus,” according to the authors of a new study in the FILE – A patient receives a flu vaccination in Mesquite, Texas, January 23, 2020.‘Good news, bad news’ “There’s good news and bad here,” Pavia said. “I think the bad news is that once again, it looks as if we’re identifying strains of flu that are emerging in populations with the potential to jump to humans.”However, only a handful of serious cases have been reported.”The severity remains low. That’s good news,” Pavia said, adding, “there’s no guarantee that it’s going to stay that way.”Other factors also must change before alarm bells really go off, experts note.”What is really important for influenza pandemic emergence, as well as for any viral pandemic emergence, is sustained airborne transmission,” said University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine microbiologist and molecular geneticist Seema Lakdawala, who was not part of the research team.While a few people are getting infected, she said there is no sign now of sustained transmission.Food animals are a common source of new flu viruses. Birds, pigs and humans can all exchange flu strains. Pigs are especially welcoming environments for influenza viruses to reinvent themselves. Multiple strains can infect one animal, swap genes and emerge as a novel strain.Unpredictable There is no telling when the right combination of genes will fall into place and produce a virulent, transmissible virus.A lethal strain called H5N1 first appeared in poultry in Hong Kong in 1997 and resurfaced in 2003. It kills more than half the people it infects. But for reasons scientists do not understand, it has not gone pandemic.”It’s still a concern. It has caused hundreds of deaths,” said senior scholar Gigi Gronvall at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who was not involved with the research. “But for whatever reason, even though all eyes were on that, it was this other virus that took off in 2009.” FILE – Researchers of the Veterinary Institute under the Academy of Agricultural Research check on African Swine Flu at Ryongsong District in Pyongyang, North Korea, June 10, 2019.That year, H1N1 emerged from pigs and sparked a pandemic. Researchers estimate that nearly 300,000 people died from it in the first year. Since then, health officials have increased efforts to monitor livestock farms and markets for new viruses.”There’s been a big improvement, but it’s far from complete,” Pavia said. “The challenge is enormous. Influenza circulates among ducks, turkeys, swine – not to mention there are strains that infect everything from horses to dogs. And tracking all of these is an enormous task.”The effort is understaffed and underfunded, “like so many things in public health,” he said.And that’s dangerous. “We’ve seen the consequences of inadequate public health surveillance in the emergence and failure to control COVID-19,” Pavia noted. Flu tools Unlike COVID-19, health experts have tools against influenza that might help if the new strain were to launch a new pandemic.  “We know how to test for influenza viruses,” Lakdawala said. Flu antivirals are only partly effective, “but we do at least have antivirals that can limit the severity of disease. We have a number of them. We also have a vaccine platform that is already approved and safe.”  A vaccine could be available in a matter of months.  But there is no way to know whether the newly identified strain will spark a pandemic.”The more you study flu, the more you realize we just don’t know how to predict that,” Pavia said.  
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Something data crunchers have noticed during the coronavirus pandemic: countries with recent outbreaks of measles have fewer deaths and serious illnesses from the coronavirus. Is this a coincidence? Or is there something about the measles mumps and rubella vaccine that protects against the worst outcomes of the coronavirus? We learn more from VOA’s Carol Pearson.Produced by: Barry Unger
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The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has called for urgent action to stop female genital mutilation, child marriage and other harmful practices carried out against millions of women and girls around the world each year.UNFPA made that call as it presented its State of the World Population report from UN headquarters in Geneva Monday. The report was embargoed until Tuesday.UNFPA Director Mónica Ferro told journalists the report cites at lease 19 practice against girls and women girls that have been universally denounced as human rights violations – from breast ironing to virginity testing.  Ferro said the study was also groundbreaking in that it treats these practices as human rights violations. The study indicates that every day, hundreds of thousands of girls around the world are subjected to practices that harm them physically or psychologically – with the full knowledge and consent of their families and communities.Ferro said the three widespread practices that cause harm are genital mutilation, child marriage and preference for male children.  Genital mutilation is the removal or partial removal of all external female genitalia for non-medical reasons. Ferro said this year, 4.1 million girls around the world are at risk for genital mutilation.The report also estimates that some 33,000 girls under the age of 18 are forced into marriage, often to men much older than them. And report says, because of gender-bias towards males, extreme neglect of female children has led 140 million “missing” females world-wide.While Ferro reports the “tide is turning,” with more laws being pass to prevent these abuses and traditional practitioners are changing their ways, she says the COVID-19 pandemic could reverse some of that progress.  Ferro said pandemic-related lockdowns have separated woman from medical and domestic-issue-related caregivers, and cases of violence against women could surge. She said “We cannot slow down the pace.” of addressing these issues.
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Scientists in China have identified a new strain of a flu virus in pigs that has the potential to infect humans and lead to a new pandemic.
 
In a paper published in the U.S.-based journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists say the new “G4” strain was discovered during a surveillance program of pig farms and slaughterhouses across 10 provinces between 2011 and 2018.   
 
The new virus is a variation of the H1N1 swine flu virus that killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world in 2009.   
 
The scientists discovered the G4 virus has already infected workers at various farms and slaughterhouses throughout China.  The new H1N1 strain can grow and quickly multiply in the cells that line the airways of humans, although there is no current evidence the illness can spread through human-to-human contact.   
 
But the researchers also found that although G4 is derived from H1N1, current flu vaccines do not provide any immunity from the new virus.
 
The research paper said that G4 have all the “essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus.”  The scientists urged pig farmers to control the spread of the virus among pigs, and to closely monitor people who work with the animals.   
 
The study’s release comes as the world is in the grips of COVID-19 pandemic which has sickened over 10.2 million people worldwide and killed over 500,000 since it was first detected late last year in the central city of Wuhan.   
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Researchers in China have discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering a pandemic, according to a study published Monday in the U.S. science journal PNAS. Named G4, it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009. It possesses “all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans,” say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  From 2011 to 2018, researchers took 30,000 nasal swabs from pigs in slaughterhouses in 10 Chinese provinces and in a veterinary hospital, allowing them to isolate 179 swine flu viruses.   The majority were of a new kind, which has been dominant among pigs since 2016. The researchers then carried out various experiments including on ferrets, which are widely used in flu studies because they experience similar symptoms to humans, principally fever, coughing and sneezing.   G4 was observed to be highly infectious, replicating in human cells and causing more serious symptoms in ferrets than other viruses. Tests also showed that any immunity humans gain from exposure to seasonal flu does not provide protection from G4. According to blood tests, which showed antibodies created by exposure to the virus, 10.4% of swine workers had already been infected. The tests showed that as many as 4.4% of the general population also appeared to have been exposed.  The virus has therefore already passed from animals to humans but there is no evidence yet that it can be passed from human to human, the scientists’ main worry. “It is of concern that human infection of G4 virus will further human adaptation and increase the risk of a human pandemic,” the researchers wrote. The authors called for urgent measures to monitor people working with pigs.  “The work comes as a salutary reminder that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of zoonotic pathogens and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses,” said James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at Cambridge University. A zoonotic infection is caused by a pathogen that has jumped from a non-human animal into a human. 
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The Trump administration says it has locked down nearly the entire supply of one of the only available anti-COVID-19 drugs from the manufacturer for the next several months. That raises questions about access to one of the few treatments available for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, for much of the rest of the world. Remdesivir is the first drug shown to help patients with COVID-19, though its impact is modest. Hospitalized patients given the drug recovered four days faster than those given a placebo. FILE – Vials of the drug remdesivir are seen at a hospital in Germany, April 8, 2020.FILE – Gilead Sciences pharmaceutical company is seen during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in La Verne, California.The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, the drug pricing watchdog, said Gilead’s price is “reasonable,” provided the drug ultimately shows it can save lives.Gilead donated the first 1.5 million doses worldwide. The United States received more than 900,000, according to health news website Stat. “The U.S. was certainly at the front of the line for the donated remdesivir,” said Brook Baker, professor of law at Northeastern University and a senior policy analyst for Health Global Access Project. “Now, we find out that the U.S. is wholly at the front of the line for all the additional half-million doses to be produced between now and basically the end of September.” “There’s no way to explain this than to say, well, somehow between the U.S. government and Gilead, they have collusively agreed that for whatever reason, Americans come first,” he added. Gilead says it is ramping up production and aims to have 2 million treatment courses available by December, up from 190,000 at the end of June.   “We are doing everything we can to accelerate manufacturing timelines and quantities of remdesivir to meet the growing demand for emergency use of the medicine from around the world,” the company said in a statement. The company said it has “multiple manufacturing partners in North America, Europe and Asia” that are “capable of producing large volumes of remdesivir at the fastest pace feasible,” but did not provide details or answer requests for comment.The global pandemic so far has claimed more than 500,000 lives and infected more than 10 million people worldwide, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.  The World Health Organization and a number of public-private partnerships are aiming to make access to COVID-19 countermeasures equitable around the world.The U.S. government has put billions of dollars into research and development of COVID-19 treatments, vaccines and diagnostics.  “Rich countries have more money to spend on research and development,” Baker said. “Does that mean that only rich people get medicine? That’s highly problematic in a moral, ethical sense.”  
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed abortion-rights advocates a victory, striking down a restrictive abortion law in Louisiana that would have left the southern state with only one abortion clinic.The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the court’s four-member liberal contingent. The decision struck down a law that would have required doctors performing abortions to gain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, even though abortion-rights activists say patients rarely need to be hospitalized after the procedure.The White House deplored the ruling. Spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said it “devalued both the health of mothers and lives of unborn children. Instead of valuing fundamental democratic principles, unelected justices have intruded on the sovereign prerogatives of state governments by imposing their own policy preference in favor of abortion to override legitimate abortion safety regulations.”  In their first abortion case rulings, conservative justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s appointments, were in the minority, voting to uphold the Louisiana law that would have overturned a 2016 ruling by a different group of court justices that struck down an almost identical restrictive abortion law in Texas.In concurring with the court’s liberal wing, Roberts said respect for court precedent in previous decisions “requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike. The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore, Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.”Roberts’s alignment with the court’s four liberals was striking because he declared that he continues to believe that the 2016 Texas case was “wrongly decided,” but that it nonetheless should be adhered to in the Louisiana case. The decision was a significant win for U.S. abortion-rights advocates and a setback for abortion foes who had hoped that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh would lead the court to impose more abortion restrictions and eventually overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing abortion rights in the U.S.Abortion-rights advocates contended that the Louisiana law was a veiled attempt to chip away at the legality of abortion in the U.S. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that the majority “consequently hold that the Louisiana statute is unconstitutional.” He said the evidence in the Louisiana dispute “also shows that opposition to abortion played a significant role in some hospitals’ decisions to deny admitting privileges” to abortion practitioners.Health experts estimate that more than 800,000 abortions a year are performed in the U.S., although the figure is down substantially from the 1978 to 1997 period when the annual figures topped a million abortions and peaked at more than 1.4 million.The question before the court in Monday’s ruling was whether Louisiana’s 2014 law requiring doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals would unduly burden women seeking an abortion.Abortion practitioners have said it had been all but impossible for a variety of reasons for them to obtain hospital admitting privileges, which would have left Louisiana with a single abortion clinic, in the state’s biggest city, New Orleans.However, the law’s supporters said it would protect the health and safety of women seeking abortions and would help ensure the competence of doctors.But abortion-rights supporters cited the rarity of the need for hospitalization after an abortion and said women could, if needed, be hospitalized whether their abortion practitioner had admitting privileges or not.The Texas law struck down in 2016 said the admitting privilege provision did not have a medical benefit.In that decision, now-retired justice Anthony Kennedy joined the court’s four liberals to form a majority. At that time before Trump assumed the presidency, the Department of Justice argued that the Texas law should be struck down. But under Trump, the department backed the Louisiana law.The court’s 2016 decision said the admitting-privileges requirement “provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions, and constitutes an ‘undue burden’ on their constitutional right to do so.”
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The maker of a drug shown to shorten recovery time for severely ill COVID-19 patients says it will charge $2,340 for a typical treatment course for people covered by government health programs in the United States and other developed countries.
Gilead Sciences announced the price Monday for remdesivir, and said the price would be $3,120 for patients with private insurance. The amount that patients pay out of pocket depends on insurance, income and other factors.
“We’re in uncharted territory with pricing a new medicine, a novel medicine, in a pandemic,” Gilead’s chief executive, Dan O’Day, told The Associated Press.
“We believe that we had to really deviate from the normal circumstances” and price the drug to ensure wide access rather than based solely on value to patients, he said.
However, the price was swiftly criticized; a consumer group called it “an outrage” because of the amount taxpayers invested toward the drug’s development.  
The treatment courses that the company has donated to the U.S. and other countries will run out in about a week, and the prices will apply to the drug after that, O’Day said.  
In the U.S., federal health officials have allocated the limited supply to states, but that agreement with Gilead will end after September. They said Monday that the government has secured more than 500,000 additional courses that Gilead will produce starting in July to supply to hospitals through September, and stressed that that does not mean the government actually was acquiring that much, just ensuring the availability.
“We should have sufficient supply … but we have to make sure it’s in the right place at the right time,” O’Day said  
In 127 poor or middle-income countries, Gilead is allowing generic makers to supply the drug; two countries are doing that for around $600 per treatment course.
Remdesivir’s price has been highly anticipated since it became the first medicine to show benefit in the pandemic, which has killed more than half a million people globally in six months.  
The drug interferes with the coronavirus’s ability to copy its genetic material. In a U.S.
government-led study,  remdesivir shortened recovery time by 31% — 11 days on average versus 15 days for those given just usual care. It had not improved survival according to preliminary results after two weeks of followup; results after four weeks are expected soon.
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit group that analyzes drug prices, said remdesivir would be cost-effective in a range of $4,580 to $5,080 if it saved lives. But recent news that a cheap steroid called dexamethasone improves survival means remdesivir should be priced between $2,520 and $2,800, the group said.  
“This is a high price for a drug that has not been shown to reduce mortality,” Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic said in an email. “Given the serious nature of the pandemic, I would prefer that the government take over production and distribute the drug for free. It was developed using significant taxpayer funding.”  
Peter Maybarduk, a lawyer at the consumer group Public Citizen, called the price “an outrage.”
“Remdesivir should be in the public domain” because the drug received at least $70 million in public funding toward its development, he said.  
“The price puts to rest any notion that drug companies will ‘do the right thing’ because it is a pandemic,” Dr. Peter Bach, a health policy expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York said in an email. “The price might have been fine if the company had demonstrated that the treatment saved lives. It didn’t.”  
While it may be a sticker shock for many, “from the health system perspective, if remdesivir can shorten duration of hospitalization by four days, then the medicine provides a reasonable value,” Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota, said in an email.  
O’Day said that shortening hospitalization saves about $12,000 per patient. Gilead says it will have spent $1 billion on developing and making the drug by the end of this year.  
The drug has emergency use authorization in the U.S. and Gilead has applied for full approval.
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Wanda Johnson’s son was shot and killed by a police officer in Oakland, California, 11 years ago, she has watched video after video of similar encounters between Black people and police.  Each time, she finds herself reliving the trauma of losing her son, Oscar Grant, who was shot to death by a transit police officer. Most recently, Johnson couldn’t escape the video of George Floyd, pinned to the ground under a Minneapolis officer’s knee as he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe.  “I began to shake. I was up for two days, just crying,” she said. “Just looking at that video opened such a wound in me that has not completely closed.”  Johnson’s loss was extreme, but, for many Black Americans, her grief and pain feels familiar. Psychologists call it racial trauma — the distress experienced because of the accumulation of racial discrimination, racial violence or institutional racism. While it can affect anyone who faces repeated prejudice, in this moment, its impact on Black people is drawing particular attention.  The unfortunate irony is that the very tool that may be helping to make more people aware of the racism and violence that Black and other people of color face is also helping to fuel their trauma. In the weeks following Floyd’s death, the spread of the video that captured it has been a major catalyst for protests demanding a reckoning with racism — attended by people of all races, many of whom never before participated in such activism. And in a few weeks, the national conversation has shifted dramatically: The term “Black Lives Matter” has been adopted widely, including in corporate America, monuments of Confederate figures have come down, and calls for criminal justice reform have yielded new laws.  “It’s really frustrating that that’s what it takes for a lot of people in this country to actually start caring,” said Alasia Destine-DeFreece, 20. “It takes showing something that’s  actively harming those of us who are Black and then having it spread on social media.”  Destine-DeFreece, who remembers often being the only Black person in many situations growing up in Rhode Island, notes that such images have been used to great effect before. She learned in school about Emmett Till, a Black 14-year-old who was abducted, beaten and killed in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Her class saw photos of Till’s brutally beaten face — images, in part, that had helped spur the civil rights movement. “Seeing that type of imagery being spread further and faster now has taken a toll on me. You’re seeing somebody who looks like you die,” she said. Symptoms of racial trauma can include anxiety and depression and be similar to those of post-traumatic stress disorder. The triggering event could be a shouted slur on the street or poor treatment because of one’s race or creed. The profusion on social media of graphic images of harm to people of color means they are often inescapable. “If you are in a situation where the danger seems ever-present, whether you’re seeing a bird watcher in Central Park being harassed, or someone falling asleep in their car in a parking lot … there is that constant physical presence of danger and the psychological awareness that danger is just around the corner,” said Dr. Altha Stewart, past president of the American Psychiatric Association and currently a senior associate dean at the University of Tennessee Science Health Center. That “constant bathing of our organs” in stress hormones can lead to a state of “near dysfunction,” she said. The video of Floyd’s killing is one in a litany. Before it, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery’s fatal shooting was also captured on camera, and no one was charged until public pressure mounted after the video made the rounds. Since then, many have watched an officer fatally shoot 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks in the back following a struggle.  “It feels like it’s just been an endless cascade of hashtags of Black people dying,” said Christine Ohenzuwa, 19, who recently protested outside the Minnesota state Capitol. “I feel like for me and a lot of other Black people, it reaches a point where it’s just very traumatic to constantly see Black people being killed.” When video of Floyd’s graphic death began to circulate online last month, Joi Lewis refused to watch it. “I know what it looks like. I’ve seen Black death,” the life coach and self-care expert said. Lewis, who is Black, had watched the death of Philando Castile in real time four years ago, after the 32-year-old Black man was shot by a Minneapolis police officer and video of the immediate aftermath streamed on Facebook. But to inspire those who have been pushed into action in new ways in recent weeks, Lewis conceded: “The video had to be played.” Anyone might be upset by seeing such graphic images — and many are — but Resmaa Menakem, a Minneapolis-based racial trauma specialist, says, for many Black people, that pain is amplified.  “When something like this happens, it is not just the grief of watching that brother be destroyed, it is the 400 years of grief that was never addressed,” said Menakem. Aaron Requena periodically takes breaks from Twitter to avoid such images. The 25-year-old photographer in Los Angeles says he’s struggled to balance keeping up with what is happening with not torturing himself at the same time.  “It hits close to home for me because I’ve had interactions with the police where I was just minding my business and had to wonder, ‘Is this going to end for me the way that a lot of these situations end?’” asked Requena, who is Black. “It hits close to home because you know that it could be you next.”  
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—People on six continents already are getting jabs in the arm as the race for a COVID-19 vaccine enters a defining summer, with even bigger studies poised to prove if any shot really works — and maybe offer a reality check.Already British and Chinese researchers are chasing the coronavirus beyond their borders, testing potential vaccines in Brazil and the United Arab Emirates because there are too few new infections at home to get clear answers.The U.S. is set to open the largest trials  30,000 people to test a government-created shot starting in July, followed about a month later with another 30,000 expected to test a British one.Those likely will be divided among Americans and volunteers in other countries such as Brazil or South Africa, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health told The Associated Press.While he’s optimistic, “we’ve been burned before,” Fauci cautioned.Multiple successes, in multiple parts of the world, are vital.“This isn’t a race of who gets there first. This is, get as many approved, safe and effective vaccines as you possibly can,” Fauci said.Vaccine experts say it’s time to set public expectations. Many scientists don’t expect a coronavirus vaccine to be nearly as protective as the measles shot.If the best COVID-19 vaccine is only 50% effective, “that’s still to me a great vaccine,” said Dr. Drew Weissman of the University of Pennsylvania.“We need to start having this conversation now,” so people won’t be surprised, he added.And for all the government promises of stockpiling doses in hopes of starting vaccinations by year’s end, here’s the catch: Even if a shot pans out — and it’s one that your country stockpiled — only some high-risk people, such as essential workers, go to the front of a very long line.“Will you and I get vaccinated this year? No way,” said Duke University health economist David Ridley.The home stretchVaccines train the body to rapidly recognize and fend off an invading germ. About 15 experimental COVID-19 vaccines are in various stages of human studies worldwide.And while there’s no guarantee any will pan out, moving three different kinds into final testing offers better odds — especially since scientists don’t yet know just how strong an immune reaction the shots must spark to protect.Measuring that with the first proven vaccine will “really help us understand for all the other vaccines in development, do they also have a chance?” said Oxford University lead researcher Sarah Gilbert.Only China is pushing out “inactivated” vaccines, made by growing the new coronavirus and killing it. Vaccines by Sinovac Biotech and SinoPharm use that old-fashioned technology, which requires high-security labs to produce but is dependable, the way polio shots and some flu vaccines are made.Most other vaccines in the pipeline target not the whole germ but a key piece — the “spike” protein that studs the surface of the coronavirus and helps it invade human cells. Leading candidates use new technologies that make shots faster to produce but haven’t yet been proven in people.Oxford’s method: Genetically engineer a chimpanzee cold virus so it won’t spread but can carry the gene for that spike protein into just enough cells to trick the immune system that an infection’s brewing.Another vaccine made by the NIH and Moderna Inc. simply injects a piece of the coronavirus genetic code that instructs the body to produce harmless spike copies that the immune system learns to recognize. Chasing the virusResearchers must test thousands of people not where COVID-19 is surging Vbecause then it’s too late — but where it’s smoldering, Fauci said.Only if the virus starts spreading through a community several weeks after volunteers receive either a vaccine or a dummy shot — time enough for the immune system to rev up — do scientists have the best chance at comparing which group had more illness.Lacking a crystal ball, the NIH has vaccine testing networks in the U.S., South America and South Africa on standby while finalizing decisions on the summer tests.“We’re going to be doing it in multiple sites with a degree of flexibility” so researchers can rapidly shift as the virus moves, Fauci said. “Nothing is going to be easy.”The Oxford shot, with a 10,000-person study underway in England, already encountered that hurdle. Gilbert told a Parliament committee last week that there’s “little chance, frankly” of proving the vaccine’s effectiveness in Britain after infections plummeted with the lockdown.So her team looked abroad. In addition to the planned U.S.-run study, Brazil last week began a last-stage test of the Oxford shot in 5,000 health workers, the first experimental COVID-19 vaccinations in South America. In another first, South Africa opened a smaller safety study of the Oxford shot.With few new infections in China, Sinovac next month will begin final tests in 9,000 Brazilian volunteers. And SinoPharm just signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirates; that study’s size isn’t clear. Expect imperfect protectionAnimal research suggests COVID-19 vaccines could prevent serious disease but may not completely block infection. One study that dripped the coronavirus into monkeys showed vaccinated animals avoided pneumonia but had some virus lurking in their noses and throats. Whether it was enough to spread to the unvaccinated isn’t known.Still, that would be a big win.“My expectations have always been that we’ll get rid of symptomatic disease. From what we’ve seen of the vaccines so far, that’s what they do,” said Penn’s Weissman.The initial vaccines might be replaced with later, better arrivals, as historically happens in medicine, noted Duke’s Ridley.And while shots in the arm are the fastest to make, those for respiratory diseases require virus-fighting antibodies to make their way into the lungs. Gilbert said Oxford eventually will explore nasal delivery.Warning against shortcutsSome U.S. lawmakers worry about pressure from the Trump administration to push out an unproven shot during the fall election season.“We want a vaccine, not a headline,” Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said at a recent Senate committee hearing.Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, pledged to a House committee last week that any decision would be based on science.Different countries have different rules about when to release a vaccine. For the U.S., Fauci insisted there will be no safety shortcuts, a key reason NIH is investing in such huge studies.Regardless of how and when a vaccine arrives, each country also will prioritize who’s first in line as doses become available. Presumably they’ll start with health workers and those most vulnerable to severe disease — as long as each shot is proven to work in at-risk groups such as older adults. Because each vaccine works differently, “which population group it will protect, we don’t know yet,” said Dr. Mariangela Simao of the World Health Organization, which is advising countries on how to choose.  
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As the world waits for a COVID-19 vaccine, scientists are testing whether shots already in use for other diseases might provide some protection from the worst impacts of the disease caused by the coronavirus. Vaccines containing living but weakened organisms, including those against tuberculosis, polio and measles, may provide a boost to the immune system that would help fight the coronavirus.  While they probably wouldn’t provide protection as good as a purpose-built vaccine, research has already shown that these immunizations help ward off diseases other than the ones for which they were designed.  Plus, these shots have a proven safety record stretching back decades.  “And not only that, it’s something we can put out almost immediately,” said Jeffrey Cirillo, director of the Texas A&M University Center for Airborne Pathogen Research and Imaging. The manufacturing facilities are already up and running, delivering hundreds of millions of doses every year, he noted. Vaccine bonus Cirillo and his colleagues are FILE – Children, their faces covered with masks, wait to get vaccinated against measles at a health clinic in Apia, Samoa, November 18, 2019.More than 100 million children around the world receive the vaccine each year to prevent tuberculosis. But as it happens, the vaccine does much more. When it was introduced early in the 20th century, researchers noticed steep drops in infant deaths. Some places saw up to a 50% decline, and not just from tuberculosis. Deaths from other diseases fell, too, especially respiratory diseases.  Researchers saw the FILE – A medical staff member prepares a syringe at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, Johannesburg, June 24, 2020.Experts disagree on how these cells are different. Noverr and Cirillo say these “educated” cells tamp down inflammation. If that’s the case, that could help COVID-19 patients who are dying from overactive inflammation.  Others say live vaccines produce stronger innate immune responses generally, which help to protect against a broad range of infections.  Noverr is hoping to get funding to test whether the live measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) could provide some protection against COVID-19. Others suggest testing the polio vaccine. In addition to Cirillo’s, studies of BCG are under way in Australia and the Netherlands.  Given the safety record of these vaccines, “It’s almost one of those things, ‘Well, why wouldn’t you just give it to everybody?'” Noverr said. “But you won’t know (if it works) unless we do (a) double-blinded, controlled study.”  That is why the World Health Organization is not recommending any of these vaccines for COVID-19 yet. Supplies are limited, WHO officials note. While tests are under way, diverting vaccines from their intended use without evidence that they help prevent COVID-19 could end up doing more harm than good.   
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A spacewalking astronaut on Friday added a small mirror to the millions of pieces of junk orbiting the Earth, as he lost the small object from his space suit, while stepping out of the International Space Station. U.S. Commander Chris Cassidy said the mirror floated away at about 0.3 meters per second. Mission Control said the mirror somehow became detached from Cassidy’s spacesuit. Spacewalking astronauts wear a wrist mirror on each sleeve to get better views while working.  The mirror is just 12 centimeters by roughly 8 centimeters and came loose as the ISS was in darkness. Once he was in sunlight, Cassidy inspected his sleeve for clues that might explain how the mirror came off but told Mission Control he found no evidence of thread damage. Cassidy and fellow astronaut Bob Behnken have conducted the first of at least four spacewalks to replace the last in series of old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new, more efficient lithium-ion batteries. The batteries store energy collected by the station’s solar panel arrays. Their spacewalks are expected to continue through July before Behnken returns to Earth in August aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Behnken and Doug Hurley made history at the end of May with SpaceX’s first astronaut launch. This was the seventh spacewalk for both men. Each has spent more than 30 hours out in the vacuum of space. 
 
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The U.N.’s weather agency, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), says it has verified two “megaflashes” of lightning in South America that set records for longest distance and longest duration.The WMO says on its website Friday its Committee on Weather and Climate Extremes used new satellite lightning technology to verify that an October 31, 2018 lightning bolt that started in southern Brazil traveled just over 709 kilometers.   The WMO says the longest recorded duration for a lightning flash was 16.73 seconds set on March 4, 2019 by a flash that developed over northern Argentina.The agency notes both records are more than double the previous records for distance and duration, set in the U.S state of Oklahoma and in France.The committee maintains official records on global, hemispheric and regional extremes. The committee’s Professor Randall Cerveny called the records “extraordinary” for single lightning flashes, and just examples of what nature can do. He said they will be valuable baselines for future lightning studies.The WMO published the lightning records this week, ahead of International Lightning Awareness Day, June 28. It notes lightning is a major hazard that claims many lives every year and the findings highlight important public lightning safety concerns. As a safety tip, the WMO suggests if the time between the flash and thunder is less than 30 seconds, go inside! And wait 30 minutes after the last observed flash to resume outdoor activities. 
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In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act.The administration’s latest high court filing came the same day the government reported that close to half a million people who lost their health insurance amid the economic shutdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus have gotten coverage through HealthCare.gov.The administration’s legal brief makes no mention of the virus.Some 20 million Americans could lose their health coverage and protections for people with preexisting health conditions also would be put at risk if the court agrees with the administration in a case that won’t be heard before the fall.In the case before the Supreme Court, Texas and other conservative-led states argue that the ACA was essentially rendered unconstitutional after Congress passed tax legislation in 2017 that eliminated the law’s unpopular fines for not having health insurance, but left in place its requirement that virtually all Americans have coverage.After failing to repeal “Obamacare” in 2017 when Republicans fully controlled Congress, President Donald Trump has put the weight of his administration behind the legal challenge.If the health insurance requirement is invalidated, “then it necessarily follows that the rest of the ACA must also fall,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote Thursday.The Trump administration’s views on what parts of the ACA might be kept or replaced if the law is overturned have shifted over time. But in legal arguments, it has always supported getting rid of “Obamacare” provisions that prohibit insurance companies from discriminating against people on account of their medical history.Nonetheless, Trump has repeatedly assured Americans that people with preexisting conditions would still be protected. Neither the White House nor congressional Republicans have specified how.The new sign-ups for health coverage come from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The figures are partial because they don’t include sign-ups from states that run their own health insurance marketplaces. Major states like California and New York are not counted in the federal statistics.An estimated 27 million people may have lost job-based coverage due to layoffs, and it’s unclear what — if anything — they’re turning to as a fallback. People who lose employer health care are eligible for a special sign-up period for subsidized plans under the Obama-era law. Many may also qualify for Medicaid.The Trump administration has been criticized for not doing as much as states like California to publicize these readily available backups. In response, administration officials say they have updated the HealthCare.gov website to make it easier for consumers to find information on special sign-up periods.Thursday’s report from the government showed that about 487,000 people signed up with HealthCare.gov after losing their workplace coverage this year. That’s an increase of 46 percent from the same time period last year.  
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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory is known historically as an important nuclear research center. But as VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, a critical present-day mission at the suburban Chicago facility is using some of the world’s most sophisticated technology to combat COVID-19.
Video editor: Barry Unger
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Eastern Congo marked an official end Thursday to the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, which killed 2,280 people over nearly two years, as armed rebels and community mistrust undermined the promise of new vaccines.Thursday’s milestone was overshadowed, though, by the enormous health challenges still facing Congo: the world’s largest measles epidemic, the rising threat of COVID-19 and another new Ebola outbreak in the north.”We are extremely proud to have been able to be victorious over an epidemic that lasted such a long time,” said Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, who coordinated the national Ebola response and whose team also developed a new treatment for the once incurable hemorrhagic disease.The announcement initially was set for April but another case emerged just three days before the Ebola-free declaration was expected. That restarted the 42-day waiting period required before such a proclamation can be made.The epidemic, which began in August 2018, presented an unprecedented challenge for the World Health Organization, Congo’s Health Ministry and international aid groups because it was the first Ebola epidemic in a conflict zone. Armed groups posed such a risk that vaccinations sometimes could only be carried out by small teams arriving by helicopter.But much of the risk to hospitals and health workers came from the communities, often angered by the presence of outsiders and the amount of money being spent on Ebola as far more people died of perennial killers like malaria. Some suspected the epidemic was a political scheme, a theory that grew after then President Joseph Kabila canceled the national elections in Ebola-affected areas.Only a few years earlier, West Africa’s Ebola epidemic killed more than 11,000, as at that time there was no licensed vaccine or treatment. By the time of the eastern Congo outbreak there was not one but two new experimental vaccines to ward off the disease that kills about half its victims.After more than a quarter century of conflict, though, distrust of government health workers and other outsiders was exceptionally high in eastern Congo. Many residents initially outright refused the vaccine, fearing it would harm them.New treatment options also offered promise, and the aid group ALIMA even developed a way for patients to feel less isolated. A transparent enclosure for individual patients allowed visitors to still see their loved ones who were undergoing treatment. Yet fear of dying alone still kept many people from going to medical facilities until it was too late.Ultimately two different experimental vaccines were made available in eastern Congo on a compassionate use basis — one manufactured by Merck, the other by Johnson & Johnson. Those vaccines later received regulatory approval and now are expected to be used again in Congo’s northern Equateur province where a new outbreak already has claimed 11 lives. That area also had an outbreak in 2018 that killed 33 people before it was brought under control within months.And with the arrival of COVID-19, health teams in eastern Congo are once again trying to persuade people that a virus they’ve never heard of before could still kill them. The COVID-19 outbreak in the region has been minimal so far, but the challenges of Ebola underscore how fraught it could be to test and treat those in areas under the control of armed rebels.Some, though, are hopeful the region can weather coronavirus — people here already know how to social distance. Schools, churches and mosques are already armed with hand-washing kits.  “Ebola has changed our culture,” said Esaie Ngalya, whose grandmother died from the virus. “Now I go to see my uncle but we don’t shake hands. In our culture that is considered disrespectful but now we have no choice because health comes first.” 
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Germany-based Bayer will pay nearly $11 billion to settle thousands of current and future lawsuits over claims its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, the company announced Wednesday. Bayer CEO Werner Baumann called it “the right action at the right time.” Along with the cancer lawsuits, Bayer will also pay a billion-dollar settlement over separate lawsuits involving a second weedkiller suspected of killing farmers’ healthy crops, and toxic chemicals dumped in various water supplies in the United States.FILE – A ship passes the main chemical plant of German Bayer AG in Leverkusen, Germany, August 9, 2019. The company has agreed to settlements in cases involving its glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup.Roundup is used in more than 160 countries and will continue to be sold. Bayer’s subsidiary, Monsanto, developed Roundup’s key ingredient, glyphosate, more than 40 years ago.  A World Health Organization office declared glyphosate a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it is safe as long as people follow the directions for its proper use. A California jury’s decision last August to award nearly $87 million to a couple who claimed Roundup caused their cancers was not part of Wednesday’s announced settlement. Bayer is appealing that decision along with two other jury awards.  
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Hannah Gjerde starts her day at her hot-mat yoga class on the front lawn of her parent’s home, right before settling onto the couch for the rest of the day. “Being home makes it hard because my dad will be in the kitchen working, or it’s too crowded in my room to do it,” says Gjerde.   Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many gyms have been deemed non-essential businesses and are not allowed to open. Closing fitness centers has created a sedentary lifestyle for many people.  So more people are moving their fitness routines online.  Gjerde, a Californian, also uses the backyard for her workout space, completing workouts online with an instructor at her usual yoga studio. Gyms and gym-goers alike are finding innovative ways to keep moving while practicing social distancing to thwart the spread of the coronavirus.Photo of Hannah Gjerde working out. (Courtesy of photo/Hannah Gjerde)In a pre-pandemic world, Yo Dinh, who works in investments in Australia, found that the most effective way to get himself to work out was to invest in a personal trainer.  YouTube videos just weren’t enough, he says.  “I didn’t really push myself. You know, it’s that barrier,” he says. That’s when the idea behind his website Avatar PT was born. It started as a private project where he and his personal trainers had a platform to connect and virtually work out together.  “I actually started with one person from the Philippines, and then now I’ve actually gotten a guy from Bulgaria and another guy from Serbia as well,” Dinh says.  From all over the world, they could still connect.  After the coronavirus outbreak, Australia restricted public gatherings of more than two people. The thought occurred that “maybe other people might be interested in working at home as well. And then that’s when I shared it to other people,” he says.  “And now I’ve got my brother and my brother’s friends, my housemates, other people doing it with me as well.” For Dinh, it’s not about the profit.  “It’s free at the moment. I just said it’s free until the end of April to see if anyone’s interested,” says Dinh.  On the other side of the globe, Mark Harrington, the president of the four Healthwork Fitness centers in the Greater Boston area, is taking advantage rather than lamenting COVID closures in the U.S. He says Healthworks corporate team is “launching stuff and iterating hourly,” he says, to help customers adapt to exercising remotely. The fitness centers offer free and paid programs through their Instagram Live.  “I think a lot of people want to try it before they buy it,” he says.  To stay motivated, he said, “the best thing to do is get one of your friends to do it, too. Even though you’re not together, you’re both holding each other accountable to doing it.” Jeanette Thong, also a private trainer based in Singapore, first got into fitness when she started experiencing back pain and weight gain from sitting at a desk all day at her office job.  But since the outbreak, her standards for her workout achievements have decreased.  “Right now, it’s more of maintenance of what I have,” she says. Singapore was one of the first countries to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak and maintains a lockdown lite compared to other countries.  Although restrictions have been easing up in the city-state, she says that Singapore has experienced a “mini lockdown” for a while. “It has been more mentally draining than anything else,” says Thong. She acknowledges that working out from home can be a challenge now, but a sedentary lifestyle should be far from acceptable.  “It’s really important for people to remember to move and try to keep active the best they can. It will also help mentally. It is okay to also not want to do anything, but it’s important to at least try.”  In California, Gjerde continues to do yoga on her front lawn. A high school English teacher in Rancho Cucamonga who has played soccer since she was 4, she says she keeps up with her yoga.  “That’s all I do. I teach and I work out,” she says. Since the quarantine, Gjerde, too, has found it difficult to find the motivation to work out.  “I’m not doing as much as I was, but I’m trying. […] I’m way less likely to stick it out. Usually I’m competing with the girl next to me, in my head,” she says. Now, “there’s no one to hold me accountable.” One of the biggest ways Gjerde manages to complete her workout is to keep in mind her goals.  “When this is over, I do want to look super good when I go to the beach […]. Set your intention, and when you hit the hard spot in class, go back to that intention.” 
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A massive cloud of Saharan dust darkened much of Cuba on Wednesday and began to affect air quality in Florida, sparking warnings to people with respiratory illnesses to stay home.The dust cloud swept across the Atlantic from Africa over the past week, covering the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico since Sunday and hitting south Florida in the United States on Wednesday, authorities there said.Conditions over the Cuban capital, Havana, are expected to worsen on Thursday, specialists on the Communist-run island reported.Francisco Duran, head of Epidemiology at the Ministry of Health, said the cloud is likely to “increase respiratory and allergic conditions.”Air quality in Miami is currently “moderate,” the city’s health department said, asking people with respiratory problems to stay home.Powered by strong winds, dust from the Sahara travels across the Atlantic Ocean from West Africa during the boreal spring.But the density of the current dust cloud over Cuba “is well above normal levels,” said Cuban meteorologist Jose Rubiera.”The highest concentration over the capital will occur (Thursday),” he said.In Havana, scientist Eugenio Mojena said the phenomenon “causes an appreciable deterioration in air quality.”Mojena said the dust clouds are loaded with material that is “highly harmful to human health.”Mojena listed “minerals such as iron, calcium, phosphorous, silicon and mercury” in the dust, and said the clouds also carried “viruses, bacteria, fungi, pathogenic mites, staphylococci and organic pollutants.”According to the Institute of Meteorolgy, temperatures in Cuba’s eastern province of Guantanamo reached a record for the time of year of 37.4 degrees Celsius on Wednesday.Duran ruled out any link with the coronavirus pandemic.The government said its epidemic is under control and last week began to relax quarantine measures, with Havana the only area where restrictions remain because it continues to register infections.The island reported a single new case on Wednesday, bringing the total number of infections to 2,318, with 85 fatalities from COVID-19. 
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Germany is banning the sale of single-use plastic straws, cotton buds and food containers, bringing it in line with a European Union directive intended to reduce the amount of plastic garbage that pollutes the environment.The Cabinet agreed Wednesday to end the sale of plastics including single-use cutlery, plates, stirring sticks and balloon holders, as well as polystyrene cups and boxes by July 3, 2021.Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said the move was part of an effort to move away from “throw-away culture.” Up to 20% of garbage collected in parks and other public places consists of single-use plastic, mainly polystyrene containers.Plastic takes decades to degrade and microscopic particles have been found inside the bodies of fish, birds and other animals.
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