Year: 2021

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…

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…

More than 150,000 people from 154 countries are at the U.S. Consumer Electronics Show – all online - this week. Michelle Quinn reports. Contributors: Elizabeth Lee, Julie Taboh Video editor: Matt Dibble ...

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has promised to provide Myanmar with 300,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine, according to the website of State Counselor and de facto head of state Aung San Suu Kyi.The site said Wang also pledged during a visit to Naypyitaw this week that China will maintain momentum on a number of bilateral projects.Wang's visit Monday came as part of a Southeast Asia tour extending through Saturday that includes Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines. This was Myanmar’s first diplomatic visit since last year’s election, in which Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party secured a majority of seats in the legislature.It was Wang’s fifth visit to Myanmar since the NLD first won elections in 2015.  He participated in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit here a year ago, when…

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden is set to unveil Thursday a coronavirus response plan that includes boosting the rate of vaccinations and helping counter the economic effects of the pandemic. Biden is scheduled to detail the program in an evening address. He has already set a goal of administering 100 million vaccine shots in the first 100 days after he takes office on January 20, and his plan is expected to include funding to expand the vaccination campaign. FILE - Florida Department of Health medical workers prepare to administer a COVID-19 vaccine to seniors in the parking lot of the Gulf View Square Mall in New Port Richey near Tampa, Florida, Dec. 31, 2020.The U.S. government has approved two different vaccines for emergency use.  Both require a two-shot regimen, and so far, more than 10 million people have received…

After months of negotiations and accusations that China was obstructing an independent investigation, a team of World Health Organization experts has landed in Wuhan, China, where they will try to uncover the origin of the coronavirus that has killed nearly 2 million people globally.Chinese state media on Thursday reported the arrival of the WHO team, composed of researchers from top universities around the world, including experts in animal science and epidemiology. The 15-member team will spend about a month in China. At the insistence of Chinese authorities, the scientists will spend their first two weeks in quarantine.Its goals are to discover how the virus emerged, how it transferred to humans, and how such outbreaks can be prevented in the future. Those tasks won’t be easy; it has been more than…

A team of experts from the World Health Organization arrived in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on Thursday to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.The 10-member international team flew into Wuhan after a direct flight from Singapore and immediately entered a 14-day quarantine period. Two other members of the WHO team remained in Singapore after testing positive for COVID-19 antibodies, according to a series of tweets from the agency.They were tested again in #Singapore and were all negative for PCR. But two members tested positive for IgM antibodies. They are being retested for both IgM and IgG antibodies.https://t.co/3Yg9UoZ1mx— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 14, 2021The virus was first detected in Wuhan in late 2019, and eventually spread to nearly every corner of the globe, leading to more…

Some 1,200 tennis players and officials from around the world will face strict COVID-19 controls as they start to arrive in Melbourne ahead of the Australian Open. They must spend 14 days in hotel quarantine, like any other international traveler arriving in Australia, but will be allowed to train. Australia’s had 28,650 coronavirus cases been reported since the pandemic began, and more than 900 people have died.All players taking part in next month’s delayed Australian Open must be tested for COVID-19 before they travel. They will arrive in Melbourne on 15 charter flights and will stay in three dedicated quarantine hotels.Players and their support staff will be allowed to leave their rooms for a few hours to train at secure venues. Fines up to $15,000 could apply to anyone who…