Year: 2020

U.S. pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson has begun late-stage human trials of a single-dose COVID-19 vaccine in the United States. Dr. Paul Stoffels, Johnson & Johnson’s chief scientific officer, told reporters Wednesday that 60,000 participants have begun receiving the vaccine across 215 locations in the United States, as well as internationally in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and South Africa. Dr. Stoffels said Johnson & Johnson moved into the late-stage trial after seeing positive results from its combined Phase 1 and 2 trials in the U.S. and Belgium.   The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is the fourth potential coronavirus vaccine undergoing large-scale Phase 3 testing in the United States, joining Moderna, AstraZeneca and a joint effort by Pfizer and German-based BioNTech. All four efforts are being developed under the Trump administration’s President Donald Trump…

The United Nations and Britain will co-host a global climate summit on December 12, the fifth anniversary of the landmark Paris Agreement, the world body said Wednesday.The announcement came days after Chinese President Xi Jinping told the U.N. that the world's largest greenhouse gas polluter would peak emissions in 2030 and attempt to go carbon neutral by 2060, a move hailed by environmentalists."We have champions and solutions all around us, in every city, corporation and country," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said."But the climate emergency is fully upon us, and we have no time to waste. The answer to our existential crisis is swift, decisive, scaled-up action and solidarity among nations."The world remains off-track to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, which scientists…

A weakened Beta continued its slow trek across several Southern states on Wednesday, bringing rainfall to parts of Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi after having flooded homes and roadways in Texas. Houston began drying out on Wednesday after some parts of the metro area got nearly 14 inches (35.6 centimeters) of rain over the last three days, according to the National Weather Service. Flooding from heavy rain prompted around 100 water rescues on city roadways. Preliminary reports showed at least 11 structures were flooded in the city limits. "It's not nearly as bad as it could have been," said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.  By Wednesday morning, Beta was 60 miles (97 kilometers) west of Lake Charles, Louisiana, with maximum sustained winds of 30 mph (48 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The…

The rows of lettuce, microgreens and herbs that Himanshu Aggarwal and his mother grow in an enclosed room in a busy New Delhi market began flourishing six months ago, just when the COVID-19 pandemic was taking hold in India.Himanshu Aggarwal grows lettuce, microgreens and herbs in an 800-square-foot enclosed room in New Delhi. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)It was not the best of times. A day after the Aggarwals launched their hydroponic venture, 9Growers, India declared a stringent lockdown, making them nervous about how they would sell their freshly plucked greens amid the pandemic.Surprisingly, the situation helped grow their business. Worried about contracting the virus, people began to focus increasingly on healthful foods, and at the same time, shops became willing to stock their produce.Pratibha Aggarwal helped her son launch the venture 9Growers.…

Pope Francis once again used his weekly general audience Wednesday at the Vatican to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and urged the world's leaders to remember all segments of society as they fight the coronavirus and work to rebuild world economies. Speaking before a limited group of masked faithful in a Vatican courtyard, Francis said everyone has something to contribute as the world attempts to emerge from this crisis But, he said, society's leaders must respect and promote "the intermediate or lower levels" of society.    People attend Pope Francis' weekly general audience at the San Damaso courtyard, at the Vatican, Sept. 23, 2020.He added that multinationals and pharmaceutical companies do not have all the answers.  "The largest financial companies are listened to rather than the people or the ones who really…

The head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday “science will guide our decisions” as the agency decides whether to give full or emergency authorization to a coronavirus vaccine.Speaking to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Dr. Stephen Hahn said those decisions will be made by career FDA scientists following the agency’s “rigorous expectations for safety and effectiveness.”Hahn pledged that the approval process will be “transparent and independent” and that the FDA will not authorize a vaccine that its staff would not feel comfortable giving to their families.Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Hearing on the federal government response to COVID-19.Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci,…

Johnson & Johnson said Wednesday it has launched the final stage of a single-shot COVID-19 vaccine trial the company hopes will determine if the vaccine is safe and effective by the end of the year or early next year.The company said 60,000 volunteers are participating in the trial in the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and South Africa.A number of other coronavirus vaccines in the U.S. and other countries already are in final-stage testing, including those developed by Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc.Many vaccine specialists question whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will cut corners to get final approval from President Donald Trump, who has consistently presented a testing timeline that is shorter than experts say is acceptable to fully test the candidates.President Trump, who has predicted…

Rescuers are trying to save scores of whales beached in the Australian state of Tasmania. Earlier this week, a pod of 270 pilot whales were found washed ashore.  Two hundred more were discovered a short distance away Wednesday.  The stranding of about 470 pilot whales on the west coast of Tasmania is the largest ever recorded in the state's history.   Two hundred seventy animals were found washed up on sandbars Monday, prompting a rescue operation involving wildlife experts, the police and volunteers. They have managed to return some of the whales into deeper water and coax them back out to sea. It is a challenging task. Pilot whales can grow up to seven meters long and weight three tons.  But dozens of the pod discovered Monday have died, and Australian wildlife experts believe that most of the 200 whales found beached…

Volunteers planted 20,000 miniature U.S. flags on the grounds of the Washington Monument in the nation’s capital Tuesday, the day the nation reached 200,000 COVID-19 deaths. Each flag represented 10 victims who have perished since the virus first arrived in the U.S. earlier this year.   During an interfaith religious service held at the Monument to mark the grim occasion, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the high death toll was “preventable” and urged the nation to embrace science to prevent any future losses.   In April, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the death toll would be “more like 60,000,” while U.S. President Donald Trump, who early on minimized the coronavirus as something akin to seasonal flus, in May said the toll could be anywhere from 75,000 to 100,000.     Now, health analysts…

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has unveiled a plan to land the first woman on the moon in 2024.NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the $28 billion plan aims to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.“We’re going back to the moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers,” Bridenstine said in a statement Monday. “As we build up a sustainable presence, we’re also building momentum toward those first human steps on the Red Planet,” referring to Mars.NASA’s moon mission is part of its Artemis plan. Astronauts will be propelled to the moon by NASA’s new rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), and the Orion spacecraft. Bridenstine told reporters that “political risks” have frequently threatened NASA’s work, especially…

Scientists with the U.S. space agency NASA say satellite data show Arctic sea ice cover this year shrank to the second-lowest level since modern record keeping began in the late 1970s.  NASA scientists and researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported Monday that analysis of satellite data shows the 2020 minimum extent of ocean covered in ice, 3.74 million square kilometers, was likely reached Sept. 15. The data shows the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice in the summer has dropped markedly in the last two decades. The lowest extent on record was set in 2012. Last year’s extent was tied for second — until this year. NASA sea ice scientist Nathan Kurtz said 2020 was “a really warm year in the Arctic.” A…

The U.S. National Hurricane Center says the storm system known as Beta has been downgraded to a tropical depression but still threatens to dump heavy rain as it moves inland over Texas. In its latest report Tuesday, the hurricane center says Beta was centered about 177 kilometers south, southwest of the city of Houston and its winds had diminished to about 55 kilometers per hour. It was moving to the northeast at about four kilometers per hour. While tropical storm and surge warnings have been discontinued, forecasters say the system is still likely to drop 10 to 25 centimeters of rain over parts of Texas with isolated areas seeing as much as 50 centimeters. The cities of Houston and Galveston have reported flooding in streets and along coastal areas. The hurricane center says…

Doctors and public health experts are telling people in the Northern Hemisphere to prepare for the worst in the coming months, when both the coronavirus and the flu virus will be circulating at the same time. It's a one-two punch that could cause even more deaths and has the potential to overwhelm health care systems. More from VOA's Carol Pearson.PRODUCER: Jon Spier  ...

Five weeks after California erupted in deadly wildfires supercharged by record heat and howling winds, crews battling flames pushed Monday to consolidate their gains before the return of the blistering, gusty weather. California has lost far more landscape to wildfires this summer than during any previous entire year, with scores of conflagrations, many sparked by catastrophic lightning storms, scorching about 3.4 million acres since mid-August. The previous record was just less than 2 million acres burned in 2018. As of Monday, more than 19,000 firefighters continued to wage war on 27 major blazes across the state, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire). FILE - A firefighter with the San Bernardino County Fire Department hoses down hot spots from the Bobcat Fire in Valyermo, Calif., Sept. 19, 2020.The fires, stoked…

The United States is approaching the milestone of 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus, experts monitoring the outbreak day.The U.S. has more than 6.8 million infections, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, with 199,636 deaths — the most of any nation in either category.A recent rise in cases in southwestern and midwestern U.S. is being attributed to the reopening of schools and colleges there.In Europe, countries across the continent are imposing new restrictions as cases of the coronavirus grow.Britain reported 4,368 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, as the country nears a total of 400,000 cases.Commuters walk across the London Bridge during the morning rush hour, amid an outbreak of theCOVID-19 in London, Sept. 21, 2020.Chris Witty, Britain’s chief medical officer, and Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser, announced…

The World Health Organization's director-general said Monday no crisis since World War II demonstrates more clearly the need for the United Nations than the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 is the illness caused by the coronavirus.Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged the 75th anniversary of the United Nations as well as the start of the U.N. General Assembly this week, as he opened his regular briefing from WHO headquarters in Geneva.Tedros said WHO, as "a proud member of the U.N. family," had three key messages for the U.N. members."First, the pandemic must motivate us to redouble our efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, not become an excuse for missing them; Second, we must prepare for the next pandemic now. And third, we must move heaven and Earth to ensure equitable access to diagnostics,…

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday withdrew its statement from three days ago on how COVID-19 can spread through aerosolized droplets, saying it was posted "in error." On Friday, the CDC posted an update to its website saying the virus can be transmitted through tiny, aerosolized droplets that are "produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, talks, or breathes."  Such passage of the virus would entail a distance greater than the 2-meter space generally accepted as medically proper social distancing between people to avoid transmitting the disease. It is a view that outside health experts have been advancing. CDC Adds Breathing to Ways Coronavirus SpreadsThe CDC has updated its website to add another way to protect yourselfBut on Monday the CDC dropped any mention of airborne transmission,…

U.S.-based retail giant Walmart has unveiled new initiatives to reduce its global carbon footprint while preserving the world’s natural land and sea habitats. The company announced Monday that it is aiming for zero carbon emissions by 2040 in all of its global operations by utilizing 100% renewable energy in all of its facilities, switching to an all-electric vehicle fleet, and transitioning to low-impact refrigerants for cooling and electrified equipment for heating in all of its stores and other facilities. The so-called “big box” retailer is also pledging to preserve at least 20 million hectares of land and 171 million square kilometers of ocean by 2030, including the preservation of at least one acre of natural habitat for every acre of land it develops in the United States, and adopt natural preservation techniques…

The United States is approaching the milestone of 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus, say experts monitoring the outbreak.The U.S. has more than 6.8 million infections, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, with 199,513 deaths, the most of any nation in either category. Recent growth in U.S. cases in the Southwest and Midwest is being attributed to the reopening of schools and colleges.The race to produce a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine has sustained another setback. Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reported Sunday that late-stage human trials of an experimental vaccine in the United States have been paused due to concerns over a possible adverse side effect.AZD1222, developed through a joint initiative by AstraZeneca and Britain’s University of Oxford, has been undergoing large-scale Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials in…

As the United States nears 200,000 deaths from COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidelines to add breathing to the most common ways the coronavirus is spread by an infected person.The U.S. has nearly 6.8 million cases of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University data late Sunday.An update Friday to the CDC website says there is growing evidence that small airborne coronavirus particles are produced when someone coughs, sneezes, sings, talks or breathes and can remain in the air to be breathed in by others, allowing an infection.“These particles can be inhaled into the nose, mouth, airways, and lungs and cause infection. This is thought to be the main way the virus spreads,” the CDC website says.They can also travel farther than 6 feet, for example…