Year: 2021

For the first time, wild camels have been sold on Australia's leading online livestock auction. Australia has the world’s largest herd of feral camels that were introduced in the 1840s. Auctioneers in Australia weren’t sure if the group of 93 Arabian camels would sell online, but they all sold for as much as $230 each.  Most were bought to keep prickly weeds under control on farms, and there was interest from domestic meat traders. The animals had been rounded up, or mustered, by helicopter on a remote property in Queensland.  Scott Taylor is a selling agent who helped arrange the auction. He says it took two days for all the wild camels to be caught. “They came in, I think it was probably about 60 kilometers back to the yards. They were mustered in over a two-day period. Yeah, they just came straight in out of the bush and…

Colombia is set to begin immunizations against COVID-19 after receiving its first shipment of vaccines on Monday. President Ivan Duque and his health minister accepted the first 50,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and said frontline health care workers and the elderly will be the first to get their shots. Colombia has a contract to buy 10 million doses from Pfizer and it expects to soon receive 1.6 million doses from other laboratories. The government says it intends to vaccinate 35 million people this year, including hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants and refugees. Colombia is one of the last countries in Latin America to start vaccinations, behind Ecuador, Panama and Chile. President Duque said his administration was hesitant to start immunizations until it had assurance of getting a steady supply of vaccine to battle the novel coronavirus.  The president also said the arrival of vaccines does not end the use of masks and social distancing. Colombia has more than 2,198,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 57,786 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University Covid…

The deaths of two Colorado men caught in avalanches and a third in Montana over the frigid Presidents Day weekend show how backcountry skiers and others in the Rocky Mountain wilderness risk triggering weak layers of snow that have created the most hazardous conditions in a decade, forecasters say. At least 25 people have been killed in avalanches in the United States this year — more than the 23 who died last winter. Typically, 27 people die in avalanches in the U.S. annually. Avalanche forecasters say they have rarely seen the danger as high as it is now — and it will grow as more snow moves into the Rockies, adding weight and stress on a weak, granular base layer of snow that’s susceptible to breaking apart and triggering especially wide slides…

College and university students are low on the list to receive COVID-19 vaccines, according to recent estimatesUnless students are classified as essential workers — such as medical, nursing, medtech or student teachers — or have a health condition — such as human immunodeficiency virus or cancer — they are not likely to receive the COVID-19 vaccine until at least April, Imani Bell, a senior at the University of Delaware. (Courtesy of Bell)“I hope that the rollout starts to pick up and that everyone has access,” said Bell. “It doesn’t make sense that we’ve been in this pandemic for a year and it’s still taking so long. It’s frustrating to me that there are [few] companies making the vaccine when it could go so much faster.” More Universities to Close After Thanksgiving Colleges…

Much of the United States was in the icy grip of an "unprecedented" winter storm on Monday as frigid Arctic air sent temperatures plunging, forcing hundreds of flight cancellations, making driving hazardous and leaving millions without power in Texas.Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for the southern state, and the National Weather Service (NWS) said more than 150 million Americans were under winter weather advisories."I urge all Texans to remain vigilant against the extremely harsh weather," Abbott said in a statement.The NWS described conditions as an "unprecedented and expansive area of hazardous winter weather" from coast-to-coast.More than 2.7 million people were without power in Texas, according to PowerOutage.us, and temperatures in the major metropolis of Houston dipped to 16 degrees Fahrenheit (minus nine Celsius).President Joe Biden issued an…

Crowds of seals lie on the sand, some wriggling towards the water, on the northern French coast where they are staging a comeback. Drone images show around 250 wild grey seals, adults and cubs, frolicking at low tide near the town of Marck. Seals started to disappear from the Cote d'Opale in the 1970s, under pressure from fishermen who saw them as rivals for their catch. Seals, which have no natural predators in the English Channel, have been a protected species in France since the 1980s and as a result they have begun to return to the coast. Rescued grey seal cubs wait for fish during their quarantine at LPA animal refuge in Calais, France, Feb. 13, 2021."At low tide, they settle here to get fat, to rest and to prepare for their upcoming…

After three Ebola cases were confirmed in Guinea, local health authorities declared an outbreak in the rural area of Gouéké in N’Zerekore on January 14.In response to the newly reported cases, Doctors Without Borders (MSF, for its French acronym) announced it is putting together a mission to address the outbreak in Guinea.“We know from past experience that the speed of the response is important, both in order to contain transmission and to provide treatment for people who have caught the disease,” said Frederik van der Schrieck, MSF’s head of mission in Guinea. “We also know that community engagement is vital.”“We will try to get the right balance between responding quickly and taking steps to make sure the community is a willing and active participant in both prevention and response,” Van…

The World Health Organization announced Monday that it has approved two versions of the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, a move that will boost global supplies in the coming weeks. AstraZeneca-SKBio in South Korea and the Serum Institute of India produce the vaccines, which the WHO says are safe for all persons above 18 years old. It took the global health body less than a month to assess data on the quality, safety and efficacy of the drugs and grant the emergency use approval. The World Health Organization will now distribute doses through its COVAX Facility to mid- and low-income countries. The approval also allows countries to speed up domestic regulatory approval to import and administer the vaccines. “Countries with no access to vaccines to date will finally be able to start…

As the Australian state of Victoria enters its third day of a snap COVID-19 lockdown, the national medical association is calling for urgent changes to infection control in hotel quarantine.  Australian travelers returning from overseas must go into isolation for at least 14 days on arrival, but doctors are worried that the airborne transmission of the virus is not being taken seriously enough.   Biosecurity is a growing concern for Australia’s hotel quarantine system after new and highly contagious variants of COVID-19 were detected among returned travelers.   A five-day lockdown imposed in Victoria state Friday was in response to a cluster of infections at a hotel at Melbourne airport.  Infections were passed from passengers to staff, allowing the virus to spread into the community.  The lockdown was ordered to give contact tracers…

What happens after you received both doses of the COVID vaccine? Lesia Bakalets looked into how much life changes, if at all. Anna Rice narrates her story.  ...

The World Health Organization says debilitating post-COVID-19 symptoms in patients will have an impact on global health because of the magnitude of the pandemic.   The World Health Organization is conducting research into  why many people who are infected with COVID-19 continue to suffer from various disabling conditions for up to six months after they have had the illness.    The team lead of WHO’s Health Care Readiness Division, Janet Diaz, says some people with post-COVID-19 conditions, also known as “long COVID” have not been able to go back to work.  She says their incapacitating symptoms prolong their recovery period.   “Some of the more common symptoms of the post-COVID-19 condition can be fatigue, exertional malaise, and cognitive dysfunction.  Sometimes you may be hearing patients describing that as ‘brain fog.’  These are real,” …

There are 108.5 million global COVID-19 infections, Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday. The U.S. has the most cases at 27.5 million, followed by India with 10.9 million and Brazil with 9.8 million.The Telegraph newspaper reports British scientists are developing a universal vaccine that would combat all the variants of the coronavirus and could be available within a year.The British newspaper says scientists at the University of Nottingham are working on a vaccine that would target the core of virus instead of the spike protein that current vaccines focus on.Targeting the core alleviates the need to frequently adjust existing vaccines as the virus mutates.The Telegraph said proteins found in the core of the virus are far less likely to mutate, meaning the vaccine would protect against all current…

Azhoni Marina had witnessed the havoc wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic up close as she nursed patients in a COVID ward for seven months at New Delhi’s Indraprastha Apollo Hospital. As she waited after her night shift to get her first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, however, she was apprehensive.“I heard from so many people that there is lot of side effect, so actually I was a bit worried before I received the vaccine,” Marina said.However, a sense of relief washed over her when she did not suffer any aftereffects during the half-hour mandatory wait after she got the shot.“I am now waiting for my second dose,” she said, heading home.Unlike most countries, for India the challenge is not availability of vaccines as it rolls out a nationwide inoculation drive…

What’s Valentine’s Day without flowers? This year, as Angelina Bagdasaryan reports, some California residents might just find out, in this story narrated by Anna Rice.  Camera: Vazgen Varzhabetian ...

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered more than 50 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and delivered about 69.9 million doses.The tally of vaccine doses is for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET Saturday, the agency said.According to the tally posted on Friday, the agency had administered 48.4 million doses of the vaccines, and delivered about 69 million doses.The agency said about 37.1 million people had received one or more doses while more than 13 million people have got the second dose as of Saturday.About 5.7 million vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.    ...

Four people have died of Ebola in Guinea in the first resurgence of the disease in five years, the country's health minister said Saturday.Remy Lamah told AFP that officials were "really concerned" about the deaths, the first since a 2013-16 epidemic — which began in Guinea — left 11,300 dead across the region.One of the latest victims in Guinea was a nurse who fell ill in late January and was buried on February 1, National Health Security Agency head Sakoba Keita told local media."Among those who took part in the burial, eight people showed symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding," he said. Three died and four were in a hospital, he added.The four deaths from Ebola hemorrhagic fever occurred in the southeast region of Nzerekore, he said.Keita also told local media…

New research has shown that Australia is the “last stronghold on Earth” for four out of five threatened species of sawfish. With their serrated snouts, these predatory fish are one of the ocean’s most unusual and endangered animals.They have a snout, or rostrum, that looks like a hedge-trimmer or a chainsaw. Small electromagnetic sensors help the sawfish detect the heartbeat and movement of buried prey. They are generally unassuming creatures, but when threatened, the saw also serves as a weapon. They can grow up to 7 meters in length and move easily between fresh and salt water. In Australia, they’re found in Queensland, the Northern Territory and on the west coast.Around the world, they are hunted for their fins and other body parts, which are used in traditional medicines or…

The top public health agency in the U.S. said Friday that in-person schooling could resume safely with masks, social distancing and other strategies but that vaccination of teachers, while important, was not a prerequisite for reopening.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its long-awaited road map for getting students back to classrooms in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. But its guidance is just that — the agency cannot force schools to reopen, and agency officials were careful to say they were not calling for a mandate that all U.S. schools be reopened.Officials said there was strong evidence now that schools could reopen, especially at lower grade levels.The new guidance included many of the same measures previously backed by the CDC, but it suggested them more forcefully. It emphasized…

In Malawi, health care workers have come under attack several times recently while trying to bury victims of COVID-19 without spreading the coronavirus.Health care workers now want a review of guidelines that say they should handle the burials.The incident happened Tuesday in Mchinji district in central Malawi where villagers threw stones at an ambulance carrying the dead body, in an effort to force the heath care workers to release the body for viewing.The pandemonium forced the heath care workers to return the body to the mortuary.This came a week after villagers in Zomba district in southern Malawi chased away health care workers who had come to bury a COVID-19 victim.They too claimed that their loved one died of other illnesses, not COVID-19, and demanded to bury the body themselves.Shouts Simeza…

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is calling on the world community to make sure Africa gets a fair share of COVID-19 vaccines.     Ahead of a visit to the Central African Republic, one year after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was reported there, ICRC President Peter Maurer said in a statement Friday that “[i]t is a moral imperative that Africa’s access to needed vaccines is drastically improved, but also that COVID vaccination campaigns do not come at the cost of other key health concerns.”     He said as new COVID-19 variants start to spread, “[n]o one is safe until everyone is safe,” adding that “equitable access to its vaccine today is a critical step towards more equitable access to vaccines more generally.”   The…

The Australian Open in Melbourne is underway, but without any spectators. Instead of enjoying the tournament, tennis fans and the millions of people who live in Victoria state are under a five-day snap shutdown, following a coronavirus outbreak at a quarantine hotel in Melbourne, Victoria’s capital. Tennis players have been classified as essential workers. Germany is banning travel from its Czech border regions and Austria’s Tyrol because of an alarming COVID surge in the two locations.  The restrictions go into effect Sunday.Missionaries in some remote areas of Brazil have convinced some Indigenous people that the COVID-19 vaccine is not good for them. The residents of one Amazon village picked up bows and arrows to fight off healthcare workers set on inoculating the region’s residents. Brazil has 9.7 million COVID-19 cases, coming in third place in the world’s infections, behind only India with 10. 8 million and the U.S. with 27.3 million cases. There are more than 107 million global infections. FILE - Packages of protective face…

A warning by the World Health Organization that the COVID-19 pandemic could harm efforts to eradicate malaria appears to be coming true in Nigeria. Nigerian officials say people are refusing to get treatment for fear of catching the virus at a clinic.Fatima Mohammed is in her home at a camp for displaced people in Abuja, tending to her two sons who are currently down with malaria.She says she's can't afford huge hospital bills and is afraid that taking them to the hospital could potentially expose them to COVID-19 or result in a misdiagnosis."I don't have money to take them to the hospital — and, again, at the hospital, they'll easily call it coronavirus,” she said. “I don't have money for that.”Malaria and COVID-19 present similar symptoms, but fear and stigma…