Month: August 2021

Scientists in South Africa say they have detected a new variant of COVID-19.The country’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases announced Monday in a new study that the variant, which has been designated C.1.2, was first detected in South Africa in May of this year, and has since spread to seven other countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the southern Pacific region of Oceania.   The scientists say the C.1.2 variant appears to have the same characteristics as that of other mutations that are more transmissible and more able to overtake a person’s immune system.The study has not been published nor has it undergone the normal peer review process. The scientists say they are still monitoring the frequency of the C.1.2 variant, and that it has not evolved as either a “variant of interest” or “variant of concern” under the guidelines established by the World Health Organization. FILE – A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, Sept. 30, 2014.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently in use in the United States remain highly effective in preventing severe disease. Dr. Sara Oliver, a CDC scientist, told a vaccine advisory panel that the COVID-19 vaccine was 94% effective in preventing hospitalization for adults between the ages of 18 to 74 between April and July, when the delta variant became dominant. The vaccine’s effectiveness against hospitalization dropped among adults 75 and older, but was still above 80%.   Dr. Oliver told the panel the vaccines appear to be less effective in preventing infection or mild illness, which she said was due to the vaccine’s weakening over time and the more contagious delta variant.   A Dallas County Health and Human Services nurse completes paperwork after administering a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a county-run vaccination site in Dallas, Aug. 26, 2021.The advisory committee is considering whether to recommend authorizing booster shots of the Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines amid a surge of new COVID-19 infections across the United States. The Biden administration recently announced it will begin offering a third shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine sometime next month. Both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration have recently recommended a third shot of Pfizer or Moderna for some people with weakened immune systems.  The committee unanimously voted Monday to recommend the Pfizer vaccine for Americans 16 years old and older.  In a separate development Monday, the CDC added seven new destinations to its highest risk level of its COVID-19 travel advisory list. Azerbaijan, Estonia, Guam, North Macedonia, the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean island nation of Saint Lucia and Switzerland have been designated as Level 4, which signifies a “very high” risk of contracting COVID-19. The CDC says people should avoid travel to these destinations, and advises that anyone who must travel to these spots needs to be fully vaccinated. FILE – People cross nearly empty streets in the central business district of Auckland, New Zealand, Aug. 27, 2021.In New Zealand, health officials Tuesday reported another decline in new COVID-19 cases since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern placed the country under a strict lockdown earlier this month. The health ministry posted 49 new cases on Tuesday, after reporting 53 cases Monday and 83 new cases Sunday.   Ardern imposed the strict lockdown on August 17 after a 58-year-old man in Auckland became the first person to test positive for COVID-19 since February. About 612 new cases have since been posted, with Auckland posting 597 and 15 detected in the capital, Wellington, according to Reuters.Some information for this report came from Reuters.      
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Nigerian health officials say nearly 1,800 people have died from cholera this year, with cases found in more than 20 states around the country. To combat the bacterial disease that is spread by dirty water, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Environment is urging proper hygiene and organizing mass cleanups in affected areas. Timothy Obiezu reports from the capital, Abuja.Camera: Emeka Gibson
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Johnson & Johnson said on Tuesday its experimental vaccine failed to provide sufficient protection against HIV in sub-Saharan Africa to young women who accounted for a large number of infections last year.The results from the mid-stage study are the latest setback to efforts to develop a vaccine to prevent HIV or human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS that had infected over 37 million people globally as of 2020.”Although this is certainly not the study outcome for which we had hoped, we must apply the knowledge learned from the … trial and continue our efforts to find a vaccine that will be protective against HIV,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine Shown Less Effective Against VariantsPreliminary study at New York University suggests a second shot may help Despite the discovery of effective treatments that can put the virus in remission, experts say an HIV vaccine is critical to eradicating the virus.The mid-stage study testing the J&J vaccine included 2,600 women participants across five Southern African countries, where women and girls accounted for over 60% of all new HIV infections last year.Researchers found that 63 participants who received placebo and 51 who were administered the J&J vaccine got HIV infection, resulting in a vaccine efficacy of 25.2%.The vaccine was found to be safe with no serious side effects reported, but the study will not continue based on the efficacy data, J&J said.The trial of the vaccine was supported by the NIAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.J&J said it was studying the safety and efficacy of a different experimental HIV vaccine among men who have sex with men, and transgender persons. The trial, conducted in the Americas and Europe, is expected to be completed in March 2024.
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U.S. climate envoy John Kerry met in Tokyo on Tuesday with Japan’s top diplomat to push efforts to fight climate change ahead of a United Nations conference in November. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi highlighted what he said was the importance of getting other major carbon emitters, especially China, to cooperate. “China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter and the number two economy as well, and it is extremely important that we encourage China to firmly fulfill its responsibility to match its place,” Motegi told reporters after his meeting with Kerry. Motegi added that he hoped Japan and the United States would lead global decarbonizing efforts at the U.N. conference to be held in Glasgow in late November, known as COP26, and beyond. The United States is the second-largest carbon emitter. Japan is fifth. Kerry was also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, as well as Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshi Kajiyama. Kerry arrived in Japan on Monday and will fly out on Tuesday evening to China for more climate talks — his second trip to the country during the Biden administration. Kerry has called on global leaders to work together and accelerate actions needed to curb rising temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. He urged China to join the U.S. in urgently cutting carbon emissions. Many countries have pledged to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050. Japan has promised to strive to reduce its emissions by 46% from 2012 levels, up from an earlier target of 26%, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. China has also set a goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2060. Suga has said Japan will try to push the reduction as high as 50% to be in line with the European Union. In order to achieve that target, Japan’s Environment Ministry is seeking a significant budget increase to promote renewable energy and decarbonizing programs. The Trade and Industry Ministry plans to use large subsidies to promote electric vehicles and wind power generation, according to a draft budget proposal for 2022. The Trade and Industry Ministry, in its draft basic energy plan released in July, said the share of renewables should be raised to 36-38% of the power supply in 2030 from the current target of 22-24%. During his Sept. 1-3 China visit, Kerry is expected to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua. 
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The mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana, is urging residents who evacuated ahead of Sunday’s arrival of now-Tropical Depression Ida not to return as the massive storm has left the city without electricity. Ida hit the Louisiana coastline as a Category 4 hurricane packing winds of 240 kilometers per hour, 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans when the flood barriers known as levees failed and left the city underwater, killing 1,800 people and trapping thousands of other residents for days.  Officials said the new $14.5 billion system of levees that were erected around New Orleans after the 2005 disaster withstood the onslaught of Ida and kept the waters of the Mississippi River from flooding the city again. However, more than one million residents in Louisiana, including New Orleans, and the neighboring southern U.S. state of Mississippi are without electricity.  Local utility company Entergy said all eight electric transmission lines that feed the city are out of service, with one tower falling into the Mississippi River. Authorities said it could be days, even weeks, before power is fully restored, raising further concerns over residents falling ill from the area’s searing late-summer heat, which forecasters say could go as high as 32 degrees Celsius later this week.People move in boat on flooded streets in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Lafitte, La.“Now is not the time for re-entry,” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Monday during a post-Ida press conference.  The situation was far worse in several surrounding areas, such as the town of LaPlace, located about 55 kilometers west of New Orleans. The heavy rain Ida dumped on the town left the streets flooded, trapping many residents in their homes Monday. A group of volunteers searched the flooded streets in motorboats in LaPlace and other small towns to rescue the trapped residents.  Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said at least two people have died as a result of Hurricane Ida, including a man who drowned in New Orleans and a person killed when a tree fell on a house outside of the city of Baton Rouge, the state capital. Governor Edwards said he expects the death toll to rise considerably due to the significant destruction caused by Ida.  U.S. President Joe Biden talked with officials from the hardest-hit regions Monday, voicing his confidence that people in “Louisiana and Mississippi are resilient,” while assuring them that “we can certainly see the power of government respond to the needs of the people.”   “We’re going to stand with you and the people in the Gulf (of Mexico), as long as it takes for you to recover,” Biden said during a virtual videoconference call at the White House. The National Hurricane Center downgraded Ida to a tropical depression late Monday afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 55 kilometers an hour on a path towards Jackson, Mississippi. Forecasters expect it to veer to the northeast through Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia before heading toward the nation’s capital, Washington D.C. by Wednesday.  Emergency management officials in Tennessee warned about the dangers of the storm in areas that are still recovering from flash flooding that killed at least 20 people earlier in August.  Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said Algeria stopped selling leaded gasoline in July, making it the last country to end its sale and marking an “official end” of leaded gasoline use in cars. Wealthy countries began phasing out leaded gasoline in the 1970s and 1980s due to health and environmental concerns, but some countries continued to sell it.  UNEP began a final push to ban leaded gasoline in 2002. “The successful enforcement of the ban on leaded petrol is a huge milestone for global health and our environment,” UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said in a statement. Lead was first added to gas nearly 100 years ago, ostensibly to improve engine performance. Leaded gas is still used on some small airplanes, according to The Associated Press. Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.  
 
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The World Health Organization says an aircraft provided by Pakistan Monday delivered the first shipment of much-needed medicine and health supplies to Afghanistan since the country came under control of the Taliban. The humanitarian assistance was loaded in Dubai and flown directly to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, said a WHO statement. The supplies will be immediately delivered to 40 health facilities in 29 provinces across Afghanistan.  The plane carrying Taliban fighters display their flag as they patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 19, 2021. The WHO said Monday that a reliable humanitarian air bridge is urgently required to scale up the collective humanitarian effort.“After days of non-stop work to find a solution, I am very pleased to say that we have now been able to partially replenish stocks of health facilities in Afghanistan and ensure that — for now – WHO-supported health services can continue,” said Dr. Ahmed Al Mandhari, WHO regional director for the eastern Mediterranean.The 12.5 metric ton supplies delivered consist of trauma kits and interagency emergency health kits, and are enough to cover the basic health needs of more than 200,000 people, as well as provide 3,500 surgical procedures and treat 6,500 trauma patients.The WHO noted that Monday’s flight was the first of three planned with Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to fill urgent shortages in medicine and medical supplies in Afghanistan.  First PIA Cargo flight with WHO medical supplies from Islamabad to Mazar Sharif today. A humanitarian air bridge for essential supplies to Afghanistan in coordination with international agencies. Thanx PIA. FILE – A US military aircraft takes off at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Aug. 28, 2021.The WHO called for the world to remain focused on meeting the needs of the people of Afghanistan at this critical time.“The world’s attention over the past two weeks has been focused on the air evacuation from Kabul airport. But the demanding humanitarian work of meeting the needs of tens of millions of vulnerable Afghans who remain in the country is now beginning,” the world body said.  
 FILE – Internally displaced Afghan families, who fled from the northern province due to battle between Taliban and Afghan security forces, sit in the courtyard of the Wazir Akbar Khan mosque in Kabul, Aug. 13, 2021.On Sunday, UNICEF said in a statement that children were particularly bearing the brunt of the increased conflict and insecurity in the past weeks. The agency noted that children are “at greater risk than ever” in the wake of a security crisis, skyrocketing food prices, a severe drought, the spread of the coronavirus, and upcoming harsh winter conditions.“If the current trend continues, UNICEF predicts that one million children under 5 in Afghanistan will suffer from severe acute malnutrition — a life-threatening disease.”More than 4 million children, including 2.2 million girls, are out of school while around 300,000 children have been forced out of their homes due to the conflict, according to UNICEF. The agency warned partners against cutting aid to Afghanistan. “The needs of the children of Afghanistan have never been greater. We cannot abandon them now.” 
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Hurricane Ida has been downgraded to a tropical storm, but it is still packing a powerful punch to New Orleans and nearby regions. The National Hurricane Center says Ida is responsible for “dangerous storm surge, damaging winds, and flash flooding” over southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi. Entergy, the power company that provides electricity to New Orleans said in a statement Sunday: “As a result of Hurricane Ida’s catastrophic intensity, all eight transmission lines that deliver power into the New Orleans area are currently out of service. . . Power will not be restored this evening, but we will continue work to remedy.”New Orleans is “completely without power,” according to nola.com, and to fix the problem could take “days, but potentially longer” because one of the towers used in providing power to the city has fallen into the Mississippi River. The power outage has also affected portions of Mississippi. Between Louisiana and Mississippi, more than a million customers are in the dark. Early Monday, the New Orleans Emergency Communications Center posted on Twitter that the city’s 911 emergency response system was not working. “At this time, 9-1-1 is experiencing technical difficulties. If you find yourself in an emergency, please go to your nearest fire station or approach your nearest officer. We will update you once this issue has been resolved.”The first death from Ida has been reported, the result of a fallen tree. Tropical Storm Ida is moving with maximum sustained winds of 95 kilometers per hour, the hurricane center said Monday. A storm surge warning is in effect for Grand Isle, Louisiana, to the Alabama/Florida border.A tropical storm warning is in effect for Grand Isle, Louisiana, to the Alabama/Florida border, including Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Maurepas, and Metropolitan New Orleans.A storm surge warning means there is a danger of life-threatening inundation from rising water moving inland from the coastline. A tropical storm warning means that tropical storm conditions are expected somewhere within the warning area.Cars drive through flood waters along route 90 as outer bands of Hurricane Ida arrive on Aug. 29, 2021, in Gulfport, Miss.Sixteen years ago, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina came ashore in Louisiana as a Category 3 storm. Katrina was blamed for 1,800 deaths, levee breaches and devastating flooding in New Orleans. The city’s federal levee system has been improved since then, and Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards predicted the levees would hold.“Will it be tested? Yes. But it was built for this moment,” he said. Before Ida arrived, Edwards declared a state of emergency and said 5,000 National Guard troops were standing by along the coast for search and rescue efforts. In addition, 10,000 linemen were ready to respond to electrical outages once the storm passed. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey also declared a state of emergency for coastal and western counties in the state.New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell ordered people who live outside the city’s protective levee system to evacuate. And she urged those who remained in the city to hunker down.“As soon the storm passes, we’re going to put the country’s full might behind the rescue and recovery,” President Joe Biden said after a briefing at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington.The president said he had signed emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi and has been in touch with the governors of those two states and Alabama. The Gulf Coast region’s hospitals now face a natural disaster as they are struggling with a surge in patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, due to the highly contagious delta variant. “COVID has certainly added a challenge to this storm,” Mike Hulefeld, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Ochsner Health, told the Associated Press.Edwards said about 2,500 people are being treated for COVID-19 in the state’s hospitals as the hurricane passes through. Since the start of the pandemic, Louisiana has had 679,796 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 12,359 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Its vaccine tracker says just 41% of the state’s nearly 4.7 million population are vaccinated.“Once again we find ourselves dealing with a natural disaster in the midst of a pandemic,” Jennifer Avegno, the top health official for New Orleans, told the AP.Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The top U.S. infectious disease expert told CNN Sunday there could be up to 100,000 new COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. by the end of the year, but the situation while “entirely predictable” is also “entirely preventable.”   Dr. Anthony Fauci said the U.S. has the “wherewithal” to avoid the fulfillment of the prediction, but the problem is the 80 million people in the country who are not vaccinated. “We could turn this thing around and we can do it efficiently and quickly if we could just get those people vaccinated,” Fauci said. “It’s so important that people in this crisis put aside any ideological and political differences and just get vaccinated.” Meanwhile, last week, the U.S. reached a daily average of 100,000 hospitalizations for COVID-19, according to a New York Times report that said the surge in cases is rivaled only by a surge last winter when vaccines were not available.Memphis overwhelmed by COVID-19 emergency calls, prompting wait times for ambulances, Aug. 13, 2021.“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Dr. Shannon Byrd, a pulmonologist in Knoxville, Tennessee told The Times. “It’s bringing whole families down and tearing families apart. They’re dying in droves.”  Residents of Auckland, New Zealand are facing another two weeks of full lockdown, after 53 more cases of the highly contagious delta variant were detected in the region Monday. Eighty-three cases were detected Sunday.  New Zealand’s health ministry announced the country’s first death linked to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, a woman who died from myocarditis shortly after she was inoculated. Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle and has been identified as a side effect of the Pfizer two-dose vaccine.The health ministry said the woman had other medical issues which may have contributed to her death. Israel has opened its COVID vaccine booster program to all citizens 12 years of age and older, as the country is challenged with an increasing number of COVID delta variant cases.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center counted more than 216.4 million global infections early Monday and 4.5 million deaths. It cost nearly $15,000 for a U.S. football player to make the decision to get a COVID vaccine.  Isaiah McKenzie, a wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills, was fined $14,650 for not wearing a mask inside a team facility on several occasions, conduct contrary to the National Football League’s protocol for unvaccinated players. After the fine, McKenzie got his first shot. Some information for this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press. 
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In Thailand, a team of aerospace engineers is using the high-tech skills they honed programming planes and satellites to run a simple but effective mapping website helping everyday volunteers reach those with COVID-19 who are falling through the cracks of a struggling public health care system. Since going live in mid-July, jitasa.care has seen well over 10,000 households sign on, seeking assistance for everything from food to oxygen to an urgent ride to the hospital, most of them in the capital, Bangkok. About the same number of volunteers have signed up to help them. “Jitasa” ties together the Thai words for “mind” and “volunteer.” “In Thai it means … people who want to volunteer to do good deeds,” said Wasanchai Vongsantivanich, one of the lead developers. He was surprised by how quickly the site took off. It got a big boost after someone shared the link with a popular local Facebook influencer who passed it on to his millions of followers. “When it went widespread, people started to make use of this and a lot of volunteers subscribed by themselves [to] help each other, and that was fantastic and a wonderful thing that we see from the platform,” Wasanchai said. The engineers’ efforts are part of an outpouring of help from Thais of all stripes who are volunteering their time and singular skills to take some of the load off the public health care system. The medical services are strained by the worst wave of infections to hit the country since the pandemic began. Every day brings tens of thousands of new cases and hundreds of more deaths. Intensive care units in Bangkok are filling up, forcing some Thais to spend days hunting for a free hospital bed and the worst off to die at home before they find one. ‘People helping people’Volunteers have played a vital role in meeting some of the shortfalls, said Pichit Siriwan, deputy director of relief and community health at the Thai Red Cross Society. “They’re now very important. We need the volunteers’ help fighting against COVID-19 in Bangkok because of the rise in infections. Now the daily infection in the country is almost 20,000 cases … and almost half of them are in Bangkok,” he said, leaving hospitals in and around the city “overwhelmed.” Pichit said the Thai Red Cross Society relies on thousands of volunteers itself, and that some of them have been using jitasa.care to find people with COVID-19 in need. Wasanchai said the idea for site started with a backlog at crematoria burning the bodies of the newly dead, as per Buddhist tradition. A local volunteer group asked him and his colleagues to brainstorm ways to help families find available time slots. By early July, so many people were dying of COVID-19 in the greater Bangkok area that the Buddhist temples with crematoria equipped to handle infected bodies safely were struggling to keep up. A colleague of Wasanchai’s who had just lost his grandmother to the virus had to call 19 temples before finding one that could take her. Once the team came up with the idea of an interactive map of Thailand drawing on crowdsourced data to show people which temples had spare capacity, it was an easily leap to add community isolation centers with free beds, shops ready to fill oxygen tanks and more. Just as helpful is the site’s ability to quickly connect the sick with people who want to help others. Anyone suffering from COVID-19 can sign in with a phone number, pin their location to the map, and post a note explaining their symptoms and what they need. Anyone who wants to help can sign on with their own phone number and contact them directly. Those asking for assistance show up on the map as a bright red circle that grows bigger the longer they’ve been waiting. Their circle turns green when they start getting help, goes to gray once their needs have been met, then vanishes after a few days. “Everyone can see the map, and they see their community and the area around them. Anyone around them who needs help, they just volunteer. If they think they can help [those] people, that household, they just contact and help,” Wasanchai said. “That is the simple idea — people helping people.” Turning red to green Sonskuln Thaomohr, who handles company registration records for the Commerce Ministry by day, has taken to jitasa.care with a passion. Since coming across the site last month, he says he has responded to dozens of posts asking for help — taking blood oxygen level readings, dropping off food bundles to those self-isolating or helping seniors tap into public services by guiding them through online registration forms. Lately he has seen an increase in posts requesting anti-viral medicine. “If I could do something to help the situation, I really want to do it,” said Sonskuln, whose close friend lost his mother to COVID-19 and blamed himself for having accidentally passed the virus on to her. “I’m so sad for him, and that affects me personally because I don’t want any other of my friends or others to tell the sad story and blame themselves like that again,” he said. Sonskuln likes that the site also lets volunteers communicate with one another and coordinate their efforts. But even then, they can sometimes be too late. “We call it super red, which is the triage level,” he said. “That means they are in emergency state [and] need paramedic attention and … transfer to hospital ASAP. Those people are waiting inside their house and, to be honest, they are not in good shape at all. We have seen people dying — me too — laying on the floor.” With other volunteer groups and even some government agencies signing in to jitasa.care to respond to posts for help, Wasanchai said, most of Bangkok’s red circles are turning green. Most of those on the site still waiting for help are now to the south and southeast of the capital. After climbing steadily for more than four months, new daily infection numbers for the country have also started to level off and dip a bit in the past two weeks, convincing the government to start easing lockdown rules that have crippled the economy. But Pichit, at Thai Red Cross Society, warned that the latest trend could be an artifact of less testing and said infection numbers were still rising in some provinces in the south and northeast of Thailand, so that health care professionals and volunteers alike would have to stay vigilant. “The more you test, the more you find, so we still need to be aware that this decrease in number may be due to decreased tests,” he said. “So, we should keep an eye on it.” 
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Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in the U.S. Gulf Coast state of Louisiana as a dangerous Category 4 storm, had weakened to a Category 2 storm by Sunday night.  The storm remains strong, however, and the National Hurricane Center said late Sunday that Ida was responsible for “catastrophic storm surge, extreme winds, and flash flooding…in portions of southeastern Louisiana.”   Ida has knocked out the electrical power in portions of Louisiana and Mississippi, leaving more than a million people in the dark, including the entire city of New Orleans.  The first death from Ida has been reported, the result of a fallen tree. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 165 kph Sunday night.  The NHC said residents should expect heavy rainfall along the southeast Louisiana coast, spreading northeast into the Lower Mississippi Valley Monday. Rainfall totals of 25 to 45 centimeters are possible across southeast Louisiana into far southern Mississippi, with as much as isolated maximum amounts of 61 centimeters possible.   “This is likely to result in life- threatening flash and urban flooding and significant river flooding impacts,” the weather forecasters said. Cars drive through flood waters along route 90 as outer bands of Hurricane Ida arrive on Aug. 29, 2021, in Gulfport, Miss.Hurricane warnings are in effect for Morgan City, Louisiana to the mouth of the Pearl River, Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Maurepas, and metropolitan New Orleans Sixteen years ago, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina came ashore in Louisiana as a Category 3 storm. Katrina was blamed for 1,800 deaths, levee breaches and devastating flooding in New Orleans. The city’s federal levee system has been improved since then, and Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards predicted the levees would hold. “Will it be tested? Yes. But it was built for this moment,” he said.  Before Ida arrived, Edwards declared a state of emergency and said 5,000 National Guard troops were standing by along the coast for search and rescue efforts. In addition, 10,000 linemen were ready to respond to electrical outages once the storm passed.  Alabama Governor Kay Ivey also declared a state of emergency for coastal and western counties in the state. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell ordered people who live outside the city’s protective levee system to evacuate. And she urged those who remained in the city to hunker down. “As soon the storm passes, we’re going to put the country’s full might behind the rescue and recovery,” President Joe Biden said after a briefing at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington. The president said he had signed emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi and has been in touch with the governors of those two states and Alabama.  The Gulf Coast region’s hospitals now face a natural disaster as they are struggling with a surge in patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, due to the highly contagious delta variant.  “COVID has certainly added a challenge to this storm,” Mike Hulefeld, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Ochsner Health, told the Associated Press. Edwards said about 2,500 people are being treated for COVID-19 in the state’s hospitals as the hurricane passes through.  Since the start of the pandemic, Louisiana has had 679,796 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 12,359 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Its vaccine tracker says just 41% of the state’s nearly 4.7 million population are vaccinated.   “Once again we find ourselves dealing with a natural disaster in the midst of a pandemic,” Jennifer Avegno, the top health official for New Orleans, told the AP.  Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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A U.S. teacher who read aloud to her students while not wearing a mask is serving as a cautionary tale as schools across the country begin to open for the new school year.In May, an unvaccinated teacher in an elementary school in California’s Marin County read aloud to her students after removing her mask, despite a school mandate requiring everyone to wear a mask while indoors.The teacher became symptomatic on May 19, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.  She continued to work for two days before taking a COVID-19 test on May 21. The teacher tested positive for the delta variant.On May 23, the school began receiving reports of COVID-19 cases from students, parents, teachers and staff associated with the school. Marin County Public Health conducted contact tracing that included whole genome sequencing.The CDC report says 26 cases were found to be connected with the teacher, including 12 of her students. In her classroom, “the attack rate” in the two rows of students closest to her was 80%, the report said, and 28% in the three back rows.Students in another classroom also tested positive for the coronavirus. All the students in both classes were too young to be eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations.Meanwhile, England’s Office for National Statistics says coronavirus infections in the country are 26 times higher this year than they were last year at this time. Officials are warning that the imminent opening of schools and universities could cause the caseload to grow.On Sunday, India’s health ministry reported 45,083 new COVID-19 cases in the previous 24 hours.India has more than 32 million COVID cases, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Only the U.S. has more, with 38.7 million, Johns Hopkins reports, and the U.S. reported 49,712 new cases in the past 24 hours.
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The World Health Organization says only a few days of medical supplies are left in Afghanistan to treat the health needs of millions of people in the fractured country.Trauma kits are especially in demand following Thursday’s suicide bombing by Islamic State militants at Kabul airport, killing more than 100 people and injuring scores of others.The WHO says emergency health kits containing essential supplies and medicine for hospitals and clinics, nutritional food for acutely malnourished children and items for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic also are in short supply.The WHO’s emergency director for the Eastern Mediterranean region, Rick Brennan, says commercial aircraft are blocked from flying into Kabul airport because of security concerns. Therefore, he says, the WHO is exploring other ways of bringing medicine into the country.“There are multiple security and logistics constraints to doing so but we hope and expect that we will be able to bring in more supplies in the coming days, with the support of the Pakistan government. Kabul airport is not an option for bringing in supplies at this stage and so we are likely to use Mazar-i-Sharif airport, with our first flight hopefully going in the next few days,” Brennan said.The situation in Afghanistan is volatile and fluid. Humanitarian needs across the country are enormous and growing. The United Nations says some 18 million people require international support. They include an estimated 3.5 million internally displaced people, among them more than half-a-million newly displaced this year.Brennan says the WHO is committed to staying in Afghanistan and meeting the needs of the displaced and other vulnerable people. He says the welfare of women and children are of particular concern.“Already we are hearing that some female health workers are not attending work and that there has been a decline in the attendance of women and children at some facilities. This again highlights the need to ensure the availability of medical supplies, to support female health workers in their work, and to encourage families to bring their mothers…and children to seek health care when they need it,” he said.Brennan says the WHO has staff in all 34 provinces across the country monitoring the health situation. He says that fortunately, most of the 2,200 health facilities the WHO are monitoring remain open and functioning.However, he warns an increasing number of people will get sick and die unless the medical supplies that are rapidly running out can be replenished in a timely manner.
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According to a new report published in a leading medical journal, the symptoms that linger after a person has survived the novel coronavirus are little understood by the medical community.The medical journal The Lancet says the syndrome must be studied and understood by the medical community in order to launch an appropriate response for what the journal calls “a modern medical challenge of the first order.”The syndrome has become known as “long COVID,” and The Lancet said recovery can take more than a year.The lingering symptoms include “persistent fatigue, breathlessness, brain fog, and depression.”Finding answers to the mystery of long COVID “while providing compassionate and multidisciplinary care,” The Lancet said, “will require the full breadth of scientific and medical ingenuity.”Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people in the United States who have not been able to pay their rent during the pandemic are facing evictions after the Supreme Court decided not the extend the nationwide ban on evictions that had been imposed during the pandemic.Three of the justices dissented.Jen Psaki, U.S. President Joe Biden’s press secretary, said in a statement, “As a result of this ruling, families will face the painful impact of evictions, and communities across the country will face greater risk of exposure to COVID-19.”Earlier this week World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, continued to warn about the consequences of inequitable vaccination.Some regions and countries continue to see steep increases in cases and deaths, while others are declining,” the WHO chief said.  “As long as this virus is circulating anywhere, it’s a threat everywhere.”On Friday, India’s health ministry reported 44,658 new COVID cases in the previous 24-hour period.New Zealand is extending its national lockdown until Tuesday midnight after 70 new COVID cases were discovered.Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported more than 214 million global COVID cases and 4.5 million deaths. The center said more than 5 billion vaccines have been administered.
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When Hong Gang-chul, a North Korean border guard, decided to escape his homeland in 2013, he knew his relationship with his family would never be the same.Hong, who had helped other North Koreans escape, left the country in a hurry, believing he was wanted by North Korean authorities.In doing so, he left two young daughters with their mother in North Korea. When he later began to arrange for them to defect, they refused.A stocky, soft-spoken 48-year-old, Hong now lives in a simple apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, where he looks after his elderly mother, who also fled the North.Like many defectors, Hong at times struggles to adjust to his new life in South Korea.In North Korea, he manned a guard post along the demilitarized zone; now, he hosts a YouTube channel and works as a writer and commentator on North Korea issues.When punditry doesn’t provide enough income, he takes work as a low-skilled laborer at construction sites — anything to scrape together enough to send his daughters money at least once a year.“It’s impossible now for me to do the things a typical father would do for his children,” he told VOA in a matter-of-fact tone that only partly hides his distress. “The only thing I can do to look after them at this point is to send money.”North Korean escapees have long sent funds to relatives back home using a network of brokers who smuggle cash and goods across what used to be a relatively porous border with China. The remittances can be a major source of income in North Korea, where the economy is tightly regulated.Such money transfers have become trickier and much more expensive during the coronavirus pandemic. Many North Korean officials who used to look the other way, or who even accepted bribes to assist with smuggling, now report brokers to authorities, amid a wider crackdown on cross-border activity.The increased risk has driven prices way up. Before the pandemic, remittance brokers would typically charge a commission of around 30%, but that figure is now closer to 50%, according to several Seoul-based defectors and activists.“The money I send to North Korea has basically been cut in half,” said Hong, who also cited unstable foreign currency exchange rates in the North.Some brokers charge as much as 70% commission, he added.Links severedThe remittance crackdown is one of many ways the coronavirus pandemic is severing the already fragile links between North Korean defectors and their families back home.Since the pandemic began, North Korea has imposed one of the world’s toughest lockdowns, not only sealing its external borders but also expanding domestic travel restrictions.As a result, many defectors, including Hong, haven’t heard from their families in months.That is partly because brokers often help pass messages between separated family members, according to Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea, a group that helps North Korean defectors settle in the South.Even for North Koreans who talk with the outside world via smuggled Chinese cellphones, communication has become much harder.“Most of the time people are not making calls from inside their house. They are moving around to other places close to the border,” either to get a better signal or avoid state surveillance, Park said.However, any movement is now difficult, especially near the border, he added.‘Worse than ever’The crackdown on money brokers seems to have become especially intense in the last several months.The Daily NK, a Seoul-based website that relies on a network of anonymous sources inside North Korea, reported a “massive campaign” of broker arrests beginning in May.Whereas brokers who were caught used to receive three to five years of reeducation as punishment, North Korean authorities have now tripled those sentences to 10 to 15 years, the Daily NK reported.“The punishment is worse than ever,” said Ju Chan-yang, another Seoul-based defector, who told VOA she has stopped trying to send money to North Korea altogether.Even when offered a 70% commission, a broker refused to send money from one of her friends to a family member in Pyongyang who has cancer and needed money for treatment, Ju said.No escapeNorth Korea’s lockdown is also preventing defections, which have plummeted to historic lows.In 2019, 1,047 defectors arrived in South Korea, according to data from Seoul’s Unification Ministry. In 2020, only 229 defectors arrived in South Korea.During the second quarter of 2021, only two North Koreans reached the South. That is the smallest quarterly figure since Seoul began counting in 2003.Lee Se-jun, a South Korea-based defection broker, told VOA he has not helped facilitate an escape from North Korea in over a year, due to the intense security buildup on the North Korean side of the border.Another factor is the skyrocketing cost of defections.Hong, the former North Korean border guard, said it now costs up to $21,000 for North Koreans to defect, compared to a previous rate of about $13,000.No end in sightThe North Korean pandemic restrictions may not be relaxed anytime soon.North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has repeatedly warned of “prolonged” anti-epidemic measures, even as his government continues to insist it has detected no coronavirus cases.Many of those who have escaped North Korea now acknowledge it may be a long time before they will hear from family.“It’s a real double whammy,” said Park. “Along with everything else, so much of the contact is being shut off at the time when North Korean people face their biggest challenges in 20 years.”
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The U.S. is projected to see nearly 100,000 more COVID-19 deaths between now and Dec. 1, according to the nation’s most closely watched forecasting model. But health experts say that toll could be cut in half if nearly everyone wore a mask in public spaces.In other words, what the coronavirus has in store this fall depends on human behavior.”Behavior is really going to determine if, when and how sustainably the current wave subsides,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. “We cannot stop delta in its tracks, but we can change our behavior overnight.”That means doubling down again on masks, limiting social gatherings, staying home when sick and getting vaccinated.”Those things are within our control,” Meyers said.The U.S. is in the grip of a fourth wave of infection this summer, powered by the highly contagious delta variant, which has sent cases, hospitalizations and deaths soaring again, swamped medical centers, burned out nurses and erased months of progress against the virus.Deaths are running at more than 1,100 a day on average, turning the clock back to mid-March. One influential model, from the University of Washington, projects an additional 98,000 Americans will die by the start of December, for an overall death toll of nearly 730,000.The projection says deaths will rise to nearly 1,400 a day by mid-September, then decline slowly.But the model also says many of those deaths can be averted if Americans change their ways.”We can save 50,000 lives simply by wearing masks. That’s how important behaviors are,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle who is involved in the making of the projections.Already there are signs that Americans are taking the threat more seriously.Amid the alarm over the delta variant in the past several weeks, the slump in demand for COVID-19 shots reversed course. The number of vaccinations dispensed per day has climbed around 80% over the past month to an average of about 900,000.White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Tuesday that in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, “more people got their first shots in the past month than in the prior two months combined.”Shahir Sanchez, 5, grimaces as Dr. Neal Schwartz collects a nasal swab sample for COVID-19 testing at Families Together of Orange County Aug. 26, 2021, in Tustin, Calif.Also, millions of students are required to wear masks. A growing number of employers are demanding their workers get the vaccine after the federal government gave Pfizer’s shot full approval earlier this week. And cities like New York and New Orleans are insisting people get vaccinated if they want to eat at a restaurant.Half of American workers are in favor of vaccine requirements at their workplaces, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Early signs suggest behavior changes may be flattening the curve in a few places where the virus raged this summer.An Associated Press analysis shows the rate of new cases is slowing in Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana and Arkansas, some of the same states where first shots are on the rise. In Florida, pleas from hospitals and a furor over masks in schools may have nudged some to take more precautions.However, the troubling trends persist in Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming, where new infections continue to rise steadily.Mokdad said he is frustrated that Americans “aren’t doing what it takes to control this virus.””I don’t get it,” he said. “We have a fire, and nobody wants to deploy a firetruck.”A woman is injected with her second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a Dallas County Health and Human Services vaccination site in Dallas, Aug. 26, 2021.One explanation: The good news in the spring — vaccinations rising, cases declining — gave people a glimpse of the way things used to be, said Elizabeth Stuart of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and that made it tough for them to resume the precautions they thought they left behind.”We don’t need to fully hunker down,” she said, “but we can make some choices that reduce risk.”Even vaccinated people should stay vigilant, said Dr. Gaby Sauza, 30, of Seattle, who was inoculated over the winter but tested positive for COVID-19 along with other guests days after an Aug. 14 Vermont wedding, even though the festivities were mostly outdoors and those attending had to submit photos of their vaccination cards.”In retrospect, absolutely, I do wish I had worn a mask,” she said.Sauza credits the vaccine with keeping her infection manageable, though she suffered several days of body aches, fevers, night sweats, fatigue, coughing and chest pain.”If we behave, we can contain this virus. If we don’t behave, this virus is waiting for us,” Mokdad said. “It’s going to find the weak among us.”
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As Israel expands its third COVID booster shot campaign, analysts are pointing to wide disparities between Jews and Arabs when it comes to getting vaccinations. While 80% of eligible Jewish Israelis have been vaccinated, about one-third of Arab citizens of Israel have yet to get their shots. As Linda Gradstein reports from Jerusalem, some root causes are poverty and distrust.Camera:  Ricki Rosen 
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African countries have committed to ending all forms of polio after cases of vaccine-derived polio increased last year, partly because of disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Africa had been declared free of the wild poliovirus, after four years without a single case. But a variant has since returned in communities where not enough children have received the vaccine against it.Addressing a session of the World Health Organization’s regional committee for Africa, the director of Uganda’s Health Ministry, Henry Mwebesa, said his country would carry out a national campaign to vaccinate children against polio before the end of the year.“The challenges we anticipate is vaccine hesitancy, which has been common even with the COVID vaccines, and we expect to continue during this period. But we will try our best to mobilize the whole country, cultural leaders, the political leadership and professional associations to assist us to mobilize the communities to address the challenge, the hesitance, to make sure that all our children below five years have received this novel OPV,” Mwebesa said.The novel Oral Polio Vaccine is key to stopping polio outbreaks. Last year, Africa was declared free of wild poliovirus.In the last three years, however, 23 African states have experienced outbreaks of vaccine-derived poliovirus 2. That’s a strain of weakened poliovirus that was included in the oral virus but mutated over time and now behaves like the wild or naturally occurring virus. WHO regional director Matshidiso Moeti said the continent needs to do more to eradicate that form of the poliovirus.“Our shared objective is to stop all polioviruses by 2023 and to integrate a polio infrastructure to strengthen border disease surveillance and outbreak response systems, as well as immunization policies,” Moeti said.Ethiopia has recorded seven cases of poliovirus type 2 in 2021. The country’s health minister, Lia Tadesse, says her government is trying to address the current outbreaks.  “We all agree that the quality of any campaign is as good as our preparedness. We follow our preparedness to the national foundation mechanisms using electronic data tools and self-assessment at the different levels up to the district and then validate those assessments,” Tadesse said.More than 100 million African children have been vaccinated against the poliovirus since July 2020. But many others missed the vaccinations due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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A Taiwanese company, TiSPACE, plans to launch Australia’s first commercial rocket later this year.The rocket is called Hapith, which means “flying squirrel” in a Taiwanese Indigenous language.So far, no specific date for the rocket’s launch has been given. However, officials say an experimental flight is planned this year from a private facility on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. Official approval was granted by the Australian government this week.Developers hope the vehicle will reach outer space, at least 100 kilometers above sea level, before falling back to Earth, over the sea. The rocket’s data, navigation and propulsion systems will be scrutinized.James Brown, the chief executive of the Space Industry Association of Australia, said it will be a significant mission.“This is the first, sort of, major rocket launch in about 40 years for Australia,” he said. “So, this is a rocket that is about 10 meters high, it’s got two stages, it’ll be launched from South Australia out over the ocean and it will get to about 100 kilometers high. It is basically testing this Taiwanese technology, which is a rocket built around a hybrid engine, and if that works well, if it is all safe, if it’s all reliable, then the plan is for this company to come back and launch a bigger rocket that is about 20 meters high that can carry up to 400 kilograms worth of satellite payload into space, so it is a really exciting development for the industry.”TiSPACE is Taiwan’s first private space company, which reportedly chose a launch site in Australia because of regulatory problems back home. The Taipei Times reported concerns over the legality of proposed launch sites in Taiwan.Researchers have said the project is potentially significant for both Australia’s and Taiwan’s space industries, which have lagged behind other space programs. Australia only established a domestic space agency in 2018.Alice Gorman, an associate professor at Flinders University and space exploration expert, says Australia is well-positioned to benefit from the global space sector.“At the top of the country, in the north, we are relatively close to the equator and that is a huge advantage for launching satellites into geostationary orbit because you get the assistance of the Earth’s rotation,” she said. “In the south, where Southern Launch is developing its launch sites, we are perfectly located to launch things into polar orbit, and this is where a lot of our earth observation satellites are, a lot of scientific satellites, and we are not looking at, you know, monumentally massive, big rockets here. We are looking at small rockets, small satellites and with both ends of the country able to specialize in different kinds of launch, we really do have a geographic advantage.”Australia’s rocket-launching heritage goes back decades. For years, launches were taking place regularly at the Woomera range in South Australia, including missile experiments for the military. The site remains a major Australian defense and research facility.TiSPACE has said it plans further “suborbital launches and several orbital launches” after this year’s test flight. 
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Vietnam is facing challenges in its COVID-19 vaccination efforts from global shortages and anti-Chinese vaccine sentiment as it tries to reach herd immunity by the end of next year’s first quarter.“Shot or no shot?” Chau Nguyen asked her sister after spending nights thinking about whether to get vaccinated and whether to accept the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine. While not a vaccine skeptic, the restaurant owner in the city’s Go Vap District worried about her health after she ultimately got the vaccination.Her reluctance is understandable given the anti-Chinese vaccine sentiment circulating on social media; many Vietnamese worry about Chinese vaccines’ safety and efficiency.Chau’s dilemma came as Ho Chi Minh City entered the vaccination campaign, targeting at least one shot for 70% of its population in August. The month kicked off with controversy as authorities announced a plan to purchase and use 5 million doses of Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.On Aug. 25, Vietnam reported 12,096 new COVID-19 cases and 335 deaths, marking the seventh day in a row the country recorded more than 10,000 cases a day.The latest number brings the total number of cases in the fourth COVID-19 wave to 377,245. The COVID-19 death tally was at 9,349.Ho Chi Minh City continued to see spikes in COVID-19 cases. As of Aug. 25, the city reported 5,294 new cases and 266 deaths.From March to mid-August, Ho Chi Minh City, with a population of about 10 million, vaccinated more than 4.3 million people, more than 100,000 of whom received the full two shots, Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Duong Anh Duc told reporters Aug. 13.That group included 456,000 people over 65, a priority group getting vaccines that are still scarce in Vietnam, such as the Moderna and Pfizer shots. During that period daily vaccinations ranged up to more than 318,000.High demandVietnamese people tend to accept vaccinations — a June UNICEF survey said 67% of Vietnamese are eager to be vaccinated.There are many reasons why people in Ho Chi Minh City are encouraged to get shots, even though they acknowledge that vaccines provide only partial protection from COVID-19.The government seems to have convinced people of the severity of COVID-19. Most of those speaking with VOA judged the current pandemic situation in Ho Chi Minh City as “dangerous.” Van Anh, 26, disagreed with the notion that the economic costs of dealing with the pandemic are worse than those of the pandemic.Chau, the Go Vap District restaurant owner, who ended up having an AstraZeneca dose Aug. 2, told VOA local authorities called her to get a shot. She had asked whether she could refuse vaccination and was told she could, but if she became infected and spread the virus to others, she risked being fined millions of dong.Unlike Chau, some others say being vaccinated is better than continuing under the country’s strict social distancing measures under Directive 16, which was extended for a month, starting Aug. 15.Asked about the argument that lost jobs, closed businesses and other consequences of pandemic measures are more of a risk than dying from the pandemic, Bich Nguyen, a 30-year-old who works in the media industry, told VOA, “I 70% agree with this opinion.”He said he has been desperate to start a probationary period for work since June 1 because the city has been locked down since May 31.“It cost me nearly 100 million dong [about $4,400] from a purely financial aspect, but when it comes to the mental aspect, the stress, fatigue, loss of will … are immeasurable,” he said.Thao Vu, 31, whose husband’s company has been closed since the start of the lockdown period, said that she is willing to get a shot because it is the only way to open the economy and restore social activities.“It is necessary to realize that the pandemic will not stop just because we are in lockdown. Once we open the society and economy, there is a complete risk of an outbreak again, so we need to learn how to live with it. Long-term lockdowns only push manual workers into poverty and businesses to close, leading to social evils that will increase when people are unemployed. The consequences on the economy and social security may be more serious than the pandemic itself,” she said.Vaccine shortages, anti-Chinese vaccine sentimentWhile citizens are willing to get vaccinated, Ho Chi Minh City faces challenges that could result in interruption.As of Aug. 12, the city had administered most of the roughly 4.3 million doses allocated by the national Health Ministry. Municipal leaders said that Ho Chi Minh City’s current vaccine strategy is to reach high coverage as soon as possible.Regarding plans for the future, the city said it would continue to search for vaccines. It is in talks to buy 5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine and aims to get 2 million doses in October. In addition, it has said it has international commitments for another 750,000 doses.The Vietnamese government established a working group on COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy Aug. 13. The working group is expected to mobilize donated vaccines, drugs for treatment and medical supplies, as well as technology transfer for vaccine and drug production from other countries.In its first meeting on Aug. 16, group members said countries, especially developing countries, will face difficulties obtaining vaccines through the end of the year, given complexities of the global pandemic situation.The assessment is worrisome for Ho Chi Minh City. While the city faces vaccine shortages, the local government finds it hard to take advantage of available Sinopharm vaccines because of anti-Chinese sentiment.Van Anh, who works in the media industry, said she approves of government social distancing measures and stressed the importance of vaccines for public health purposes but said she will not accept Chinese vaccines.Similarly, Binh Tran, a 20-year-old student who is in his second year of medical school in Ho Chi Minh City, argued that vaccines will protect people from COVID-19 but said that he would not accept Chinese vaccines because of “low immune efficiency and unreliable data.”Anti-Chinese vaccine sentiment has prompted Vietnamese government and Ho Chi Minh City officials to repeatedly affirm that “the best vaccine is the first one,” emphasizing that vaccination is good for everyone and contributes to the pandemic fight. They have also called on people to be aware of the importance of vaccinations and ready to receive the vaccine.Since Aug. 13, having used up the doses allocated by the Health Ministry, Ho Chi Minh City has officially administered Sinopharm vaccines while promoting access to other vaccine supplies and making use of available sources.Earlier, on Aug. 12, the city allocated Sinopharm vaccines to its localities. Specifically, the Center for Disease Control of Ho Chi Minh City issued an order to provide 1,000-7,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccine, also known as Vero Cell, per city region, a total of 44,000 doses.Meanwhile, Ho Chi Minh City Party chief Nguyen Van Nen said local authorities should tell people what type of vaccine they were getting before vaccinations. After inspecting a local COVID-19 vaccination location Aug. 13, Nen noted an instance of people expressing disappointment after receiving Chinese vaccinations.“We should use our experience and tell people the type of vaccine in advance, so only those who accept the vaccine will go to get the shots,” he said.Meanwhile, though, he stressed that the city has no choice regarding what vaccine to provide, saying that while the city has tried various sources, “supplies are extremely limited.”
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A Spanish judge in a decision cheered by environmentalists has put a halt to backup plans for the construction of a giant telescope in the Canary Islands — eliminating at least for now the primary alternative location to the preferred spot in Hawaii, where there have been protests against the telescope.  Construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT, on Hawaii’s tallest mountain, Mauna Kea, has been stalled by opponents who say the project will desecrate land held sacred to some Native Hawaiians.Telescope officials had selected the alternate location near an existing scientific research facility on the highest mountain of La Palma, one of the Spanish islands off the western African coast, in the Atlantic Ocean. But an administrative court in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital of the Spanish archipelago, ruled last month that the 2017 concession by local authorities of public land for the tentative project was invalid. The ruling was dated on July 29, but only became public this week after local media reported about the decision.  In the ruling obtained by The Associated Press, Judge Roi López Encinas wrote that the telescope land allocation was subject to an agreement between the Canary Astrophysics Institute, or IAC, and the telescope’s promoter, the TMT International Observatory (TIO) consortium.  But the judge ruled that the agreement was not valid because TIO had not expressed an intention to build on the La Palma site instead of at the Hawaii site. The judge also sided with the plaintiff, the environmental group Ben Magec-Ecologistas en Acción, in rejecting arguments by TIO’s legal team and the island’s government that the land concession was covered by an international treaty on scientific research. An official for the Canary Islands High Court said questions about the ruling could not be answered because other court officials in a position to answer the questions were on vacation. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to be named in media reports. The island’s local elected government chief, Mariano Zapata, said it was “sad” that advocacy groups “are so occupied by administrative matters instead of environmental issues.” “I wish we were all in the same boat with the intent of creating jobs in the La Palma island so it can keep being an international reference on scientific research,” Zapata said. His government estimated last year that the telescope would generate 500 permanent jobs and at least 400 million euros ($470 million) in investment. Scott Ishikawa, a spokesperson for the consortium hoping to build the telescope, said that the consortium plans to appeal the ruling. “While we respect the court’s ruling in La Palma, we will pursue the legal process to retain La Palma as our alternative site. Hawaii remains our preferred location for TMT, and we have renewed our efforts to better connect with the Hawaii community in a meaningful and appropriate way,” he said in an email to The Associated Press. Pablo Batista, a spokesman of the Ben Magec-Ecologistas en Acción group, hailed the decision as a big setback for what he called a “fraudulent” project that he said made “fake promises” of new jobs for the island. “The whole idea of offering the island as a back-up was nothing else but as a strategy to put pressure on the Hawaii plans,” Batista said. In a statement, the group also said that “the five years that the TIO consortium has lost on La Palma should make it reflect on the arrogant and disrespectful strategy that they have carried out both in Hawaii and in the Canary Islands, emboldened by institutional support and despising the arguments of the opposition to the TMT.” The group’s concerns echo some of the concerns expressed by those fighting the telescope in Hawaii, said Kealoha Pisciotta, one of the leaders seeking to keep the project off Mauna Kea.  “I’m glad that they challenged it, because like here, the challenge helps bring awareness to TMT’s not only lack of following the process, but caring for the environment and Hawaiians’ sacred site,” she said. 
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