Month: March 2022

    Malawi Sunday launched a polio vaccination campaign after the country in February confirmed its first case, 30 years after it eradicated the disease. UNICEF, the World Health Organization and other partners of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative are leading the campaign, which targets over 20 million children in Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania by July.  The vaccine rollout comes after it was confirmed last month that a 3-year-old girl was paralyzed by wild poliovirus in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe.     Until February, Malawi had last reported a polio case in 1992. The southern African country was declared polio-free in 2005 — 15 years before the whole continent achieved the same status. UNICEF says over 9 million children are to be vaccinated in the first round of the mass…

Botswana will allow unvaccinated travelers into the country, provided they produce a negative COVID-19 test result. That’s a reversal from last month, when the nation started denying entry to travelers who were partially vaccinated or unvaccinated and not willing to get a free shot. Botswana Ministry of Health spokesperson Christopher Nyanga said in a statement the decision to allow the unvaccinated into the country was meant to ensure smooth entry for travelers. “I wish to indicate that these changes now allow partially vaccinated or unvaccinated people to enter the country, if they comply with the required testing requirements,” he said. “It is only when one is not fully vaccinated and is also not willing to undergo COVID-19 testing at the port of entry, that they will be charged and fined…

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Sunday she plans to review COVID-19 restrictions on Monday, just days after acknowledging that many financial institutions were "losing patience" with coronavirus policies in the financial hub. The Chinese-ruled city has some of the most stringent COVID-19 rules in the world, with a ban on flights from nine countries including Australia and Britain, and hotel quarantine of up to two weeks for incoming travelers. The city has also imposed a ban on gatherings of more than two people, while most public venues are closed, including beaches and playgrounds, face masks are compulsory and there is no face-to-face learning for students. Saturday, authorities reported a three-week low of 16,597 new COVID-19 cases, down from more than 20,000 a day earlier. The coronavirus outbreak has…

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw more Americans drinking heavily or using illicit drugs — but apparently not smoking. U.S. cigarette smoking dropped to a new all-time low in 2020, with 1 in 8 adults saying they were current smokers, according to survey data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adult e-cigarette use also dropped, the CDC reported. CDC officials credited public health campaigns and policies for the decline, but outside experts said tobacco company price hikes and pandemic lifestyle changes likely played roles. "People who were mainly social smokers just didn't have that going on any more,” said Megan Roberts, an Ohio State University researcher focused on tobacco product use among young adults and adolescents. What's more, parents who suddenly were home with…

The world is at a 'dangerous moment' in the fight against diseases like polio, a senior World Health Organization official said, as efforts begin to immunize 23 million children across five African countries after an outbreak in Malawi. In February, Malawi declared its first case of wild poliovirus in 30 years, when a 3-year old girl in the Lilongwe district was paralyzed as a result of her infection. The case raised alarm because Africa was declared free of wild polio in 2020 and there are only two countries in the world where it is endemic: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan marked a year without cases in January 2022. "This is a dangerous moment," Modjirom Ndoutabe, polio coordinator for WHO Africa, told Reuters in a phone interview from Brazzaville, the Republic of…

The Biden administration is in danger of cutting short its efforts to help vaccinate the world because U.S. lawmakers had slashed global pandemic response funds from the omnibus spending bill that President Joe Biden signed into law earlier this week. The $1.5 trillion spending bill did not include $15.6 billion requested for COVID-19 response, of which $5 billion had been marked by the White House to fight the coronavirus around the world. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA during a briefing Friday that the administration did not have an alternative plan for delivering the 700 million doses of vaccines remaining from the 1.2 billion doses it had pledged. "We need additional funding to continue to be the arsenal of vaccines," she said. "There is not a secret fund that…

A trio of Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, the first new faces in space since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine. Russian space corporation Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov blasted off successfully from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan in their Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft at 8:55 p.m. Friday (11:55 a.m. EDT). They smoothly docked at the station just over three hours later, joining two Russians, four Americans and a German on the orbiting outpost. The blastoff marked the first space crew launch since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. The war has resulted in canceled spacecraft launches and broken contracts. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin has warned that the U.S. would have to use “broomsticks” to fly into space…

As COVID-19 infection and death rates begin to increase in some countries that have begun to relax their COVID-related restrictions, the director-general of the World Health Organization issued a reminder of what the pandemic has taught the world so far. Speaking Thursday at the Thailand International Health Expo, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “The COVID-19 pandemic is a powerful demonstration that health is not a luxury, but a human right; not a cost, but an investment; not simply an outcome of development, but the foundation of social, economic and political stability and security.” Tedros called on “all countries, manufacturers and partners to work with” the United Nations agency “on enhancing vaccine manufacturing, knowledge sharing and technology transfer.” And the WHO leader said that “Although several countries have lifted restrictions, the pandemic…

Conservative Republican lawmakers on Thursday revived a proposal to weaken Kansas' vaccination requirements for children enrolling in school and day care and to make it easier for people to get potentially dangerous treatments for COVID-19. The Senate health committee approved a bill that would allow parents to get a no-questions-asked religious exemption from requirements to vaccinate their children against more than a dozen diseases, including measles, whooping cough, polio and chickenpox. The measure also would limit pharmacists' ability to refuse to fill prescriptions for the anti-worm treatment ivermectin and other drugs for off-label uses as COVID-19 treatments. The bill goes next to the full Senate for debate. The Republican majority there also is considering a proposal to greatly limit the power of the state's public health administrator to deal with…

Moderna Inc sought emergency use authorization with U.S. health regulators for a second COVID-19 booster shot late Thursday, as a surge in cases in some parts of the world fuels fears of another wave of the pandemic. The U.S. biotechnology company said its request covered all adults over the age of 18 so that the appropriate use of an additional booster dose of its vaccine, including for those at higher risk of COVID-19 due to age or comorbidities, could be determined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and health care providers. Moderna's request is significantly broader than Pfizer Inc and its German partner BioNTech SE's application that was filed earlier this week with U.S. regulators for a second booster shot for people aged 65 and older.…

NASA’s new eye in the sky snapped a pic of a star and its ancient galactic buddies.  Plus, a spacewalk amid another week of heightened global tensions, and rolling out the next lunar rover.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. ...

African health groups have warned that the COVID pandemic has led to a rise in drug and alcohol abuse on the continent, but a gap in data is making it hard to monitor. In South Africa, a Soweto-based nonprofit is scrambling to help youth to stay clean and sober. Substance abuse — particularly alcohol consumption — has been on the rise in Africa for years, according to the World Health Organization. The coronavirus pandemic that resulted in job losses and school closures has now amplified the problem. The Ikageng children’s charity in Soweto says as many as 10 young people contact them daily suffering from addiction. Lydia Motloung, the acting program manager says that “during the lockdowns, they used to go and drink and some they were left in the…

Until recently, fans of NFTs have lacked ways to show off their digital collections. Matt Dibble looks at a company bringing NFTs into the physical world.        ...

A week-long measles vaccination campaign is underway in Afghanistan where the World Health Organization (WHO) says the extremely contagious viral disease has killed 142 children and infected 18,000 since the start of the year. “This measles immunization campaign is part of the national response measure to stop the spread of the outbreak, save lives of the young children and reduce the burden on health systems,” a WHO statement quoted its representative in Afghanistan, Luo Dapeng, as saying on Monday. The WHO-funded campaign, kicked off Saturday, is supporting the de facto Taliban health authorities in the management of the vaccination. Thousands of health workers have been tasked to inoculate more than 1.2 million children under five against the disease across 49 Afghan districts in 24 provinces. Afghanistan has experienced measles resurgence…

Chinese health authorities reported nearly 3,400 COVID-19 cases on Sunday, double the previous day, forcing lockdowns on virus hotspots as the country contends with its gravest outbreak in two years. A nationwide surge in cases has seen authorities close schools in Shanghai and lock down several northeastern cities, as almost 19 provinces battle clusters of the omicron and delta variants. The city of Jilin has been partially locked down, with hundreds of neighborhoods sealed up, an official announced Sunday, while Yanji, an urban area of nearly 700,000 bordering North Korea, was fully closed off. China, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, has maintained a strict 'zero-COVID' policy enforced by swift lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass testing when clusters have emerged. But the latest flare-up, driven by the…

Western sanctions against Russia could cause the International Space Station to crash, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos warned Saturday, calling for the punitive measures to be lifted. According to Dmitry Rogozin, the sanctions, some of which predate Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, could disrupt the operation of Russian spacecraft servicing the ISS. As a result, the Russian segment of the station -- which helps correct its orbit -- could be affected, causing the 500-ton structure to "fall down into the sea or onto land," the Roscosmos chief wrote on Telegram. "The Russian segment ensures that the station's orbit is corrected (on average 11 times a year), including to avoid space debris," said Rogozin, who regularly expresses his support for the Russian army in Ukraine on social networks. Publishing a…

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday dealt essentially a final blow to abortion clinics' best hopes of stopping a restrictive law that has sharply curtailed the number of abortions in the state since September and will now fully stay in place for the foreseeable future. The ruling by the all-Republican court was not unexpected, but it slammed the door on what little path forward the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed Texas clinics after having twice declined to stop a ban on abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy. It spells the coming end to a federal lawsuit that abortion clinics filed even before the restrictions took effect in September — and were then rejected at nearly every turn, and in nearly every court, for six months. "There is nothing left,…

Thousands of refugees in Indonesia are finding themselves shut out of public services including travel and shopping because of a bureaucratic glitch that prevents them from proving they have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Indonesia is a transit country for 13,175 refugees, more than half of whom are from Afghanistan. Unlike some countries where refugees are kept In camps, refugees in Indonesia can roam freely and use public facilities. Most live around the Jakarta greater metropolitan area. In 2020, the country launched “Peduli Lindungi,” a digital COVID-19 contact-tracing app giving vaccinated residents access to public facilities and mass transit. The program, however, requires people to upload their 16-digit government-issued civil registry number before they are vaccinated. Only citizens, permanent residents and foreigners with work visas have the number; refugees – more…

An American private spaceflight company mocks the head of Russia’s space program following a war or words on Twitter. Plus, teams find an early explorer’s ship at the bottom of the sea, and NASA’s photos from the moon command cash at an auction. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. ...

Researchers have discovered the remarkably well-preserved wreck of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's ship, Endurance, in 10,000 feet of icy water, a century after it was swallowed up by Antarctic ice during what proved to be one of the most heroic expeditions in history. A team of marine archaeologists, engineers and other scientists used an icebreaker ship and underwater drones to locate the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, near the Antarctica Peninsula. The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust's search expedition Endurance22 announced the discovery on Wednesday. Images and video of the wreck show the three-masted wooden ship in pristine condition, with gold-leaf letters reading "Endurance" still affixed to the stern and the ship's lacquered wooden helm still standing upright, as if the captain may return to steer it at…