Month: January 2021

Hundreds of members of Serbia's military lined up on Tuesday in their camouflage uniforms at an exhibition hall in Belgrade where nurses injected them with a Chinese-made vaccine against COVID-19. Last week Serbia received one million doses of Chinese Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine, becoming the first European country to start a mass inoculation program with it. Serbia is vaccinating essential workers such as police officers, teachers and soldiers after last month starting to treat the elderly in care homes and medical workers with its supplies of vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech , and Russia's Sputnik V vaccine. Belgrade maintains close ties with Beijing and Chinese companies have invested billions of euros in Serbia, mainly in infrastructure and energy projects. Defense minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said over 700 members of the military,…

California has become the first U.S state to post more than 3 million total coronavirus cases.  As of Tuesday, the western state, home to 40 million residents, has 3,015,644 confirmed infections, including 33,724 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. According to the Associated Press, it took California 292 days from the first confirmed infection on January 25 to November 11 of last year to reach 1 million infections.  The state has since undergone a dramatic surge of new infections that has pushed health care systems to the verge of collapse, recording 2 million cases by Christmas Eve — a space of 44 days — and reaching the 3 million mark in less than 30 days. The grim milestone comes as California’s mass vaccination efforts have hit a major roadblock.  A…

Australia has said it could keep its external borders closed for the rest of 2021 because of the coronavirus. 28,721 coronavirus cases have been reported in Australia since the pandemic began. 909 people have died, according to the Health Department.Australia closed its international borders to foreign travelers in March. It’s been a key part of the nation’s COVID-19 strategy, along with mass testing, sophisticated contact tracing and strict lockdowns.  FILE - Travelers wait in line at a Virgin Australia Airlines counter at Kingsford Smith International Airport, amid the coronavirus outbreak, in Sydney, Australia, March 18, 2020.The cautious response to the pandemic has been mostly successful. There are estimated to be 203 active coronavirus cases in Australia, and airlines had hoped overseas travel would resume as early as July. But that is…

Mexico expects to receive its last Pfizer--BioNTech vaccines against COVID-19 Tuesday for the next three weeks as it supports a United Nations' proposal to limit purchases in order to make vaccines available to poor countries. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Mexico will get 200,000 doses of the Pfizer- vaccine on Tuesday before its shipments are temporarily suspended. The Mexican leader says the temporary suspension of Pfizer shipments will not impact his efforts to get vaccines to all citizens. He said the government is already making deals so that the Chinese vaccine CanSino starts arriving, as well as the Sputnik V vaccine from a Russian laboratory and the AstraZeneca vaccine from the University of Oxford. Mexico expects to receive five million doses of the Pfizer vaccine once its shipments resume next month. So far, Mexico has confirmed 1, 649,502 coronavirus cases and 141,248 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.  ...

A powerful 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit San Juan Province in Argentina late Monday night, according to early reports from the U.S. Geological Survey.   The quake, which was felt as far away as Santiago, Chile, sent items flying off store shelves, damaged buildings and caused cracks in a highway in San Juan, based on videos posted on twitter.  There were also reports of power outages, but no immediate confirmation of casualties.   San Juan Governor Sergio Unac on Tuesday urged people to stay calm while they assess the impact from the quake, which was followed by a series of less powerful aftershocks.     The U.S. Tsunami Warning System said the earthquake in west central Argentina did not pose a tsunami threat and no warning was posted.     Initial reports indicate the quake, struck at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers beneath the epicenter near Pocito, Argentina.  ...

The head of the World Health Organization says the world is “on the brink of a moral catastrophic failure” for its unequal sharing of COVID-19 vaccinations. Addressing a WHO executive board meeting in Geneva on Monday, Executive Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it is “not right that younger, healthier adults in rich countries are vaccinated before health workers and older people in poorer countries.”  “More than 39 million doses of vaccine have now been administered in at least 49 higher-income countries. Just 25 doses have been given in one lowest-income country — not 25 million, not 25,000 — just 25,” he said.  Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, speaks during the 148th session of the Executive Board on the coronavirus disease outbreak in Geneva, Switzerland, January 18, 2021.…

Oil and gas companies are not doing enough to decrease the release of methane gases, a main source of planet-heating emissions, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a new report released Monday.  In 2020, the fuel industries emitted about 5% of all global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, the IEA report said. The energy sector is the second-largest emitter of methane worldwide, following agriculture, according to the IEA’s Methane Tracker. The agency noted that methane emissions have decreased by 10% in the past year, but added it is mostly because of a decrease in economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The IEA estimated that between 2020 and 2030, emissions will need to decrease by more than 70%, reaching levels of around 20 metric tons per year.  Driving down methane emissions would be among…

Coronavirus deaths are rising in nearly two-thirds of American states as a winter surge pushes the overall toll toward 400,000 amid warnings that a new, highly contagious variant is taking hold.  As Americans observed a national holiday Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pleaded with federal authorities to curtail travel from countries where new variants are spreading. Referring to new versions detected in Britain, South Africa and Brazil, Cuomo said: "Stop those people from coming here. … Why are you allowing people to fly into this country and then it's too late?" The U.S. government has curbed travel from some of the places where the new variants are spreading — such as Britain and Brazil — and recently it announced that it would require proof of a negative COVID-19 test for anyone…

Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera has introduced new lockdown measures to contain a jump in confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19.  The restrictions include school closures, a night-time curfew, and no gatherings over 50 people.   The measure comes five days after Chakwera declared a state of national disaster in response to the recent spike in COVID-19 cases.   The new measures, he said, are being enacted because the situation is getting worse in the second wave of the pandemic.       “This year alone, a total of 5,091 people have tested positive for Covid-19 across the country. This means that of all the people confirmed to have contracted the virus since April last year, 43% have been found with the virus this year alone, showing a sharp rise in infections…

After almost a year of staring at each other’s living rooms or other spaces in virtual meetings due to the coronavirus pandemic, members of a Swiss startup have come up with a new idea: sending holographic emissaries to a virtual meeting space. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more. ...

The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warns the inequitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines between rich and poor countries will prolong the global pandemic.  Tedros delivered this stark warning Monday at the opening of a week-long meeting of the WHO Executive Board. WHO chief Tedros called the development and approval of safe, effective vaccines less than a year after the coronavirus emerged a stunning scientific achievement.However, he warned that hopes of quickly ending the pandemic are in danger.  This, because the richer countries are buying up and hoarding all the available vaccines, leaving none for the poorer countries.“More than 39 million doses of vaccine have now been administered in at least 49 higher-income countries.  Just 25 doses have been given in one lowest-income country.  Not 25 million;…

The head of the World Health Organization is calling for greater global equity in COVID-19 vaccinations, saying rich countries need to share vaccines with poor countries.   Addressing a WHO executive board meeting in Geneva Monday, executive director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it is “not right that younger, healthier adults in rich countries are vaccinated before health workers and older people in poorer countries.”   “More than 39 million doses of vaccine have now been administered in at least 49 higher-income countries.  Just 25 doses have been given in one lowest income country,” he said.   “I need to be blunt: the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure – and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s…

After almost a year of staring at each other’s living rooms or other spaces in virtual meetings due to the coronavirus pandemic, members of a Swiss startup have come up with a new idea: sending holographic emissaries to a virtual meeting space. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more. ...

Jordan has become one of the world's first countries to start coronavirus vaccinations for United Nations-registered refugees, according to the U.N. refugee agency and the royal palace. As part of the kingdom’s national vaccination drive that began last week, anyone living there, including refugees and asylum seekers, is entitled to receive the shot free of charge. Jordan hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees from the region’s conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya.  Some 80% of refugees sheltering from neighboring conflicts live in Jordan’s urban areas and will be vaccinated in these local health clinics. The U.N. refugee agency says it is working closely with Jordan’s Ministry of Health to administer the vaccination to those housed in the Zaatari and Azraq camps for Syrian refugees.   Last Thursday, 43 Iraqis and Syrians…

John Hopkins University reported early Sunday there are 94.5 million global COVID-19 cases. The United States leads the world in the number of cases with 23.7 million infections, followed by India with 10.5 million and Brazil with 8.4 million.Los Angeles County in California has become the first U.S. county to record 1 million COVID-19 cases. The news of the number of infections is compounded by the confirmation of the appearance in the county of the highly contagious British variant of the coronavirus.Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the county's public health director, said in a statement, “The presence of the U.K. variant in Los Angeles County is troubling, as our health care system is already severely strained with more than 7,500 people currently hospitalized.” She added that Los Angeles is also experiencing “hospitalizations…

China on Saturday finished building a 1,500-room hospital for COVID-19 patients to fight a surge in infections the government said are harder to contain and that it blamed on infected people or goods from abroad.The hospital is one of six with a total of 6,500 rooms being built in Nangong, south of Beijing in Hebei province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.About 650 people are being treated in Nangong and the Hebei provincial capital, Shijiazhuang, Xinhua said. A 3,000-room hospital is under construction in Shijiazhuang.Virus clusters also have been found in Beijing and the provinces of Heilongjiang and Liaoning in the northeast and Sichuan in the southwest.The latest infections spread unusually fast, the National Health Commission said."It is harder to handle," a commission statement said. "Community transmission already has happened…

The Australian Open will go ahead as planned, despite the discovery of three coronavirus cases that have put 47 players into quarantine for two weeks, the tennis tournament’s director, Craig Tiley, said Saturday.Australia’s international borders are closed, but there are exceptions.For the international tennis tournament, players and their coaches flew into the country on 17 charter flights from seven nations. All of the estimated 1,200 players, coaches, staff members and officials were required to receive negative coronavirus tests before boarding their planes, which were kept at 25% capacity.However, two positive cases were detected on a flight from Los Angeles and a third case was found on a flight from Abu Dhabi. Sylvain Bruneau, who coaches Canadian star Bianca Andreescu, said he tested positive after arriving from Abu Dhabi, but the…

All four engines of the core stage of NASA's deep space exploration rocket built by Boeing were ignited for the first time Saturday, but only briefly.Mounted in a test facility at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, the Space Launch System’s (SLS) 212-foot-tall core stage roared to life at 4:27 p.m. local time (2227 GMT) for just more than a minute — well short of the roughly four minutes engineers needed to stay on track for the rocket's first launch this November.The engine test, the last leg of NASA’s nearly yearlong “Green Run” test campaign, was a vital step for the space agency and its top SLS contractor Boeing before a debut unmanned launch later this year under NASA’s Artemis program, the Trump administration’s push to return U.S. astronauts to the…

Two years ago, in January 2019, the World Health Organization said vaccine hesitancy was among the top 10 threats to global health. That was before COVID-19 spread around the globe. VOA's Carol Pearson tells us how doctors are working to overcome that hesitancy. ...

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden named pioneering geneticist Eric Lander as the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy on Friday, elevating the post to Cabinet-level status for first time.Lander, a Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who helped lead the Human Genome Project, will also serve in the role of presidential science adviser, Biden's team said."Science will always be at the forefront of my administration — and these world-renowned scientists will ensure everything we do is grounded in science, facts and the truth," Biden said in a statement, which announced several personnel appointments to the White House science team."Their trusted guidance will be essential as we come together to end this pandemic, bring our economy back and pursue new breakthroughs to improve the quality of life of all Americans,"…

World Health Organization officials said Friday that they would like to see vaccination programs under way in every country in the world within the next 100 days, with frontline health workers and high-risk groups prioritized.Speaking at the agency’s regular briefing at its headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO emergency committee met this week and stressed the need for equitable access to vaccines around the world.FILE - Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director- general of the World Health Organization, attends a session on the coronavirus, in Geneva, Switzerland, Oct. 5, 2020.Tedros said the committee recommended use of the WHO-organized COVAX vaccine cooperative to ensure this is happening. The WHO's European division Thursday noted 95% of the vaccines that have been administered in the world so far have gone…

The numbers for the coronavirus pandemic continue upward, with more than 93 million global infections and nearly 2 million worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.The U.S. remains at the top of the list with the most cases and deaths. Johns Hopkins reports more than 23 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S., with a death toll rapidly approaching 400,000.Some states, having vaccinated their frontline workers, have opened vaccinations to older people, but have been overrun with requests. Medical facilities are on the verge of running out of vaccines. In many instances, the technology used to take the requests has crashed.President-elect Joe Biden announced a nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan for the pandemic and the U.S. economic crisis Thursday, with $400 billion of the package slated…

The European Space Agency previews a big 2021 starting with a new boss.  Data show last year’s temperatures tied the hottest on record, and French wines return to Earth after a year aboard the International Space Station.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space. Producer: Arash Arabasadi.  ...

The World Health Organization's (WHO) European chief says 95% of the 23.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines that have been administered around the world so far have been given out in just 10 countries. At a Copenhagen news briefing Thursday, WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge voiced perhaps the health agency’s most recurring theme of the COVID-19 pandemic:  To effectively stop the virus, the world’s vaccines must be shared equitably, with low-income nations as well as poor ones. In the global effort to end the pandemic, Kluge said, “collectively, we simply cannot afford to leave any country, any community behind.” The WHO and its partners in the COVAX cooperative, he added, are making “huge efforts to get the vaccines into every country; we need every country capable of contributing, donating and…

The numbers for the coronavirus pandemic continue upward, with more than 93 million global infections and nearly 2 million worldwide deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.The U.S. remains at the top of the list with the most cases and deaths. Johns Hopkins reports more than 23 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S., with a death toll rapidly approaching 400,000.Some states, having vaccinated their frontline workers, have opened vaccinations to older people, but have been overrun with requests. Medical facilities are on the verge of running out of vaccines. In many instances, the technology used to take the requests has crashed.President-elect Joe Biden announced a nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan for the pandemic and the U.S. economic crisis Thursday, with $400 billion of the package slated…