As she was treated for COVID-19 in a hospital isolation ward in Kuwait City, Amnah Ibraheem wanted to credit those caring for her. The nurses were all South Asian, the radiologist was African, another of her doctors was Egyptian. The only fellow Kuwaiti she saw, briefly, was a lone volunteer.
Ibraheem pointed this out on Twitter, in a rejoinder to some voices in Kuwait and other parts of the Gulf who have stoked fear and resentment of foreigners, blaming them for the spread of the coronavirus.
“We can’t decide right now to be racist and to say that expats are free-riders, because they’re not,” the 32-year-old political scientist and mother of two told The Associated Press. “They’re the ones working on our health right now, completely holding our health system together.”
The global pandemic has drawn attention to just how vital foreigners are to the Arab Gulf countries where they work, particularly as countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman expel foreigners from certain sectors to create jobs for their own citizens. The crisis has also shed a brief light on the systemic inequality in their home countries that drives so many to the region in the first place.
 
Across the Gulf countries, the workers on the front lines are uniquely almost entirely foreigners, whether it’s in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, an isolation ward in Kuwait or a grocery store in the United Arab Emirates. They carry out the essential work, risking exposure to the novel coronavirus, often with the added strain of being far from family.
Foreigners also make up the vast majority of the roughly 78,000 confirmed coronavirus cases overall in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain Oman and Saudi Arabia.
In the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, foreigners also make up the vast majority of the population. Most hail from India, Pakistan, Nepal, the Philippines and Egypt. They reside on temporary work visas with no path to citizenship, no matter how long they’ve lived or worked in the Gulf. Many work low-paying construction jobs and live in labor camps where up to 10 people share a room. These living conditions have made them vulnerable  to the fast-spreading disease known as COVID-19.  
That has made them a target for some. Popular Kuwaiti actress Hayat al-Fahad told a Kuwaiti broadcaster the root of the country’s coronavirus problem lies in South Asian and Egyptian migrant workers. She lamented that if their own countries won’t take them back, why should Kuwait fill its hospitals to treat them at the expense of its own citizens.
“Aren’t people supposed to leave during crises?” she said, before adding: “I swear by God, put them in the desert. I am not against humane treatment, but we have gotten to a point where we’re fed up already.”
Ibraheem said her tweet was in response to such rhetoric. Kuwait, she said, has always been a moderate, welcoming country built with help from expatriates.
“This is the not the time to become tribalistic,” Ibraheem said. “This is the time to work together with everybody because the virus doesn’t check your passport.”
From the same hospital, Najeeba Hayat used Instagram to take aim at Kuwaiti lawmaker Saffa al-Hashem after she called for the deportation of foreigners who’d overstayed their visas in order to “purify the country” of the virus they might transmit.  
“I take umbrage to that,” Hayat told the AP. “There’s no way we can survive if we continue to look down on the very people taking care of us, who have raised our children, who are part of the fabric of our community.”
Hayat spent more than 30 days in the hospital until she was cleared of COVID-19. On the day she left, she shared photos with her more than 25,000 followers of her Indian nurses, thanking them for being on the front line with her.  
While foreign doctors and nurses have received some praise in local media, farther from the spotlight are the delivery men, street cleaners, construction workers, butchers and cashiers who also risk exposure to the virus in their jobs.  
At the Carrefour supermarket in Dubai, plexiglass shields at the registers protect the cashiers, and everyone entering is required to wear gloves and a mask.  
One cashier, Valaney Fernandes, a 27-year-old from Goa, India, who’s been working in the UAE the past five years, said she felt she was contributing. “It’s like in hospitals and everywhere, they are serving there as much as they can.”
Fernandes said she was grateful to still be working. Her retired parents back home rely on her salary. “We have to earn for our daily needs,” she said. “I’m lucky enough to work now. I’m really lucky.”
Tens of thousands of migrant workers who’ve lost their jobs have demanded from their embassies in the Gulf to be flown back home amid the pandemic. In the UAE alone, local media reported that more than 197,000 Indians registered their details with the Indian government to return home.
When the UAE shuttered movie theaters in March, Ugandan Lukia Namitala came close to losing her job at Vox Cinema, but parent company  Majid Al Futtaim quickly redeployed  her and some 1,000 other employees to their Carrefour supermarket division to help with a surge in demand.  
“The majority of my friends, they are no longer working,” she said. Now she’s an essential worker, stocking shelves.  
To be so far from family has been hard, she said. Namitala had to postpone her annual leave last month due to the pandemic, and missed her daughter’s fifth birthday. As she thought about another missed milestone, her eyes welled up with tears.
“The best thing in this world is staying next to your family,” she said. “If I get my savings nicely, I’m ready to go back and stay with my family because my family is my everything.”
In a nod to how important foreigners are to the economy, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed said in a video he was moved to tears watching foreign residents on social media sing the UAE’s national anthem.  
“May God protect you, protect the country you’re in, which you are loyal to like its own citizens,” he said in late March. 
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A team of European astronomers has discovered a black hole 1,000 light years from Earth, the closest yet found to our solar system.According to the authors of a study, published Wednesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the black hole is close enough that two stars affected by it can be seen with the naked eye. Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other institutes found evidence for the invisible object by tracking the two companion stars using a 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. They were able to confirm that something about four or five times the mass of our sun was pulling on the inner star and concluded it could only be a black hole.They say finding a black hole this close could be just the tip of the iceberg, as many more similar black holes could be found in the future.The authors say that is valuable because “by finding and studying them, we can learn a lot about the formation and evolution of those rare stars that begin their lives with more than about 8 times the mass of the sun and end them in a supernova explosion that leaves behind a black hole.” 
 
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Britain’s health secretary said Wednesday that national lockdown rules were “for everyone,” after one of the government’s key scientific advisers quit for receiving secret visits from his girlfriend amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Imperial College epidemiologist Neil Ferguson developed models that predicted hundreds of thousands would die unless the U.K. imposed drastic restrictions to slow the spread of the coronavirus. His advice was key in triggering Britain’s lockdown in March. Under the rules, people are barred from visiting friends and family that they don’t live with.
Ferguson quit the government’s scientific advisory panel late Tuesday after the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that a woman he is in a relationship with had crossed London to visit him at his home.
Ferguson said in a statement that he had “made an error of judgment and took the wrong course of action.”
“I deeply regret any undermining of the clear messages around the continued need for social distancing to control this devastating epidemic,” he said.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Ferguson was “a very eminent and impressive scientist,” but “took the right decision to resign.”
He told Sky News that the social distancing rules “are there for everyone, they are incredibly important and they are deadly serious. They are the means by which we have managed to get control of this virus.”
Ferguson has become a well-known figure in Britain, making frequent media appearances during the outbreak. On March 18, he tweeted that he had a fever and cough, symptoms of COVID-19, and that there was a small risk he had infected others.  
Ferguson is the second scientific adviser in the U.K. to quit after failing to follow their own advice. Catherine Calderwood resigned as Scotland’s chief medical officer last month for twice traveling from Edinburgh to her second home.
As one of the founders of the MRC Centre for Global Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, Ferguson’s work has been instrumental in shaping public health responses to outbreaks including swine flu, Ebola and Zika. Ferguson has long advised authorities including the World Health Organization and national governments in Britain, Europe and the U.S.
On March 16, Ferguson and colleagues published a paper suggesting that even with some social distancing measures, the U.K. could see 250,000 coronavirus deaths and that the U.S. might have about 1 million deaths. In a worst-case scenario, Ferguson predicted those figures could more than double in both countries.  
The following day, Prime Minister Boris Johnson advised Britons to work from home if possible and to avoid all unnecessary social gatherings.
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British and Kenyan scientists have discovered a microbe that they say has “enormous potential” toward the possible eradication of one of the world’s most dreaded diseases — malaria.The study published in the journal Nature Communications says the microbe completely protects mosquitoes from being infected by malaria.The microbe is called Microsporidia MB, and scientists discovered it inside the guts and genitalia of mosquitoes living around Lake Victoria in Kenya. They report that they could not find a single mosquito with the microbe in its guts carrying the malaria bug. “The data we have so far suggest it is 100% blockage, it’s a very severe blockage of malaria,” insect expert Dr. Jeremy Herren told the BBC. “It will come as a quite a surprise. I think people will find that a real big breakthrough.”The experts say they don’t know exactly how the microbe works, but suspect it affects the mosquito’s immune system in a way to allow the insect to fight off the malaria parasite.The scientists estimate that about 5% of mosquitoes carry the microbe naturally. The experts’ next step is to study ways to release the microbe-infected mosquitoes into the wild.Malaria, which kills about 400,000 people every year, spreads through mosquito bites. The World Health Organization says most of the victims are children younger than five.Although measures including mosquito nets and insecticides have led to tremendous progress in combating malaria over the past 20 years, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, existing strategies are proving to be insufficient, as mosquitoes develop resistance to some insecticides.WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned last month that while the global medical community is focused on battling the coronavirus, some diseases, including malaria, “will come roaring back” if fewer people are vaccinated because of the lack of attention. The WHO forecasts the number of malaria deaths could surpass 769,000 this year. 
 
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If life on Earth has become tedious with coronavirus restrictions, celestial activity this week promises some excitement. In addition to an ongoing meteor shower, the year’s last supermoon is out and will be seen at its best Thursday.The annual Halley’s Comet meteor shower peaked Monday, but the meteor streaks will still be visible in the sky by the end of the week. The world’s best-known comet produces a meteor shower, officially known as Eta Aquariids, which can be seen once a year in the spring when the Earth crosses the comet’s path.Halley’s Comet is the best known because it can be seen with the naked eye as it passes by periodically. It was first noticed more than 2,000 years ago. Astronomers have observed and documented its appearances, which has helped them understand comets in general. The comet was named after 17th-century British astronomer Edmond Halley, who computed the rate of its movement from his 1682 observations and predicted that it would reappear in 1758, long after his death.Halley’s Comet shower is the most spectacular for viewers in the southern hemisphere. It is best seen from Australia, New Zealand, Africa and South America, where gazers may see as many as 40 “falling stars” in the sky. But northern viewers can admire the radiant show above the horizon in predawn hours, away from city lights or moonlight.SupermoonThis year the comet shower coincides with the last supermoon of the year 2020. A supermoon is a full moon that appears bigger and brighter when it gets closest to the Earth in its orbit. The May supermoon will be seen at its fullest and brightest Thursday, but it will be bright enough Tuesday to outshine the comet’s performance.FILE – The supermoon rises behind a downtown office building in Kansas City, Mo., April 7, 2020.A full moon appears approximately once a month. When it gets closest to the Earth in its orbit, it can look up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than a regular monthly full moon and so it is called supermoon.Most years have 12 full moons, but this year has 13, three of them supermoons. The May supermoon, known in the United States as the Flower Supermoon, follows the Pink Supermoon from April and another one in March.The names Pink and Flower were given to moons by Native Americans after the abundance of field flowers that grow at the time they appear.The year 2020 will also have a rare blue moon. A blue moon is the second full moon in the same month — something that happens only every 2½ or three years. English-language speakers are familiar with the phrase “once in a blue moon,” referring to something that happens rarely. This year’s blue moon will fall on Halloween, October 31, something that happens once in two decades, so that makes it even more special.Halley’s Comet appears once in about 75 years. The last time it could be seen from the Earth was in 1986 and it won’t be seen again until at least 2061. 
 
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A government scientist was ousted after the Trump administration ignored his dire warnings about COVID-19 and a malaria drug President Donald Trump was pushing for the coronavirus  despite scant evidence it helped, according to a whistleblower complaint Tuesday.Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, filed the complaint Tuesday with the Office of Special Counsel, a government agency responsible for whistleblower complaints.He alleges he was reassigned to a lesser role because he resisted political pressure to allow widespread use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug favored by Trump. He said the Trump administration wanted to “flood” hot spots in New York and New Jersey with the drug.Bright’s complaint comes as the Trump administration faces criticism over its response to the pandemic, including testing and supplies of ventilators, masks and other equipment to try to stem the spread. To date, there have been nearly 1.2 million confirmed cases in the United States and more than 70,000 deaths.Bright also said the Trump administration rejected his warnings on COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. He said he “acted with urgency” to address the growing spread of COVID-19 after the World Health Organization issued a warning in January.But he said he “encountered resistance from HHS leadership, including Health and Human Services Secretary (Alex) Azar, who appeared intent on downplaying this catastrophic event.”Bright alleges in the complaint that political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services tried to promote hydroxychloroquine “as a panacea.” The officials also “demanded that New York and New Jersey be ‘flooded’ with these drugs, which were imported from factories in Pakistan and India that had not been inspected by the FDA,” the complaint says.But Bright opposed broad use of the drug, arguing the scientific evidence wasn’t there to back up its use in coronavirus patients. He felt an urgent need to tell the public there wasn’t enough scientific evidence to support using the drugs for COVID-19 patients, the complaint states.Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned doctors against prescribing the drug  except in hospitals and research studies. In an alert, regulators flagged reports of sometimes fatal heart side effects among coronavirus patients taking hydroxychloroquine or the related drug chloroquine.The decades-old drugs, also prescribed for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, can cause a number of side effects, including heart rhythm problems, severely low blood pressure and muscle or nerve damage.In late January, Bright said he made an effort to ramp up federal procurement of N95 respirator masks, after having heard warnings that a global shortage could imperil first-responders.But he said his boss, Assistant Secretary for Planning and Preparedness Robert Kadlec, gave short shrift to the warnings during a meeting Jan. 23.At another meeting that day, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Kadlec “responded with surprise at (Bright’s) dire predictions and urgency, and asserted that the United States would be able to contain the virus and keep it out,” the whistleblower complaint said.Publicly, HHS was saying it had all the masks that would be needed.Bright found an ally in White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who was also urgently concerned about the virus.The complaint described a series of contacts with Navarro’s office that led to a meeting between Bright and the trade official on at the White House on a Saturday early in February. Bright said his boss, Kadlec was not pleased.”Navarro clearly shared (Bright’s) concerns about the potential devastation the United States would face from the coronavirus and asked (Bright) to identify the supply chain and medical countermeasures most critical to address at that time in order to save lives.”Navarro’s memos to top White House officials raised alarms even as Trump was publicly assuring Americans that the outbreak was under control.Bright felt officials had “refused to listen or take appropriate action to accurately inform the public” and spoke to a reporter who was working on a story about the drug.He said he had to tell the public about the lack of science backing up its use, despite the drug being pushed by the president as press briefings, to protect people from what he believed “constituted a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety,” the complaint says.”As the death toll mounted exponentially each day, Dr. Bright concluded that he had a moral obligation to the American public, including those vulnerable as a result of illness from COVID-19, to protect it from drugs which he believed constituted a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety,” the complaint says.On Jan. 20, according to the complaint, the WHO held an emergency call to discuss the novel coronavirus. It was attended by many HHS officials, and which WHO officials advised that “the outbreak is a big problem.”Trump has accused the U.N. agency of mismanaging and covering up the spread of the virus after it emerged in China and said he would cut funding.Bright’s agency works to guard against pandemics and emergent infectious diseases, and is working to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.Top officials also pressured him to steer contracts to a client of a lobbyist, he reported.Bright said he repeatedly clashed with leadership about the role played by pharmacy industry lobbyist John Clerici in drug contracts. As he tried to push a contract extension of a contract for one of his clients Aeolus Pharmaceuticals, Clerici said the company’s CEO was a friend of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.In the complaint, Bright says he wants to returned to his position as the director and a full investigation.When Bright’s plans to file a complaint surfaced last month, HHS confirmed that Bright is no longer at the BARDA agency, but did not address his allegations of political interference in the COVID-19 response. 
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A new study led by the U.S. government has found that a new strain of the novel coronavirus that is prevailing worldwide is spreading faster than earlier versions.The study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory said the new strain, a mutated form of the original coronavirus, was detected three months ago in Europe. It traveled quickly to eastern U.S. states before becoming the world’s most dominant strain since mid-March.The scientists who wrote the report said their findings have prompted an “urgent need for an early warning” to vaccine and drug developers to produce solutions that will be effective against the new strain.The new strain has rapidly infected many more people than the earlier iterations that spread beyond the city of Wuhan, China, the report said. Within weeks, it was the only strain in countries affected by the coronavirus.The study found the new strain to be more infectious, although the reasons have yet to be determined. The new version does not appear to be more lethal than the original, though people with the mutated strain seem to have higher viral loads.The study warns if the pandemic does not diminish as the weather gets warmer, the virus could continue to mutate as work continues to develop vaccines and other medical treatments.The study’s authors said the effectiveness of new medical treatments could be limited if the global scientific community does not get ahead of the risk posed by the new strain.Los Alamos National Laboratory, based in the southwestern U.S. state of New Mexico, is part of the U.S. Energy Department.
 
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How close are we to getting a coronavirus vaccine? Trials are underway right now. Here’s a breakdown of the top 8 contenders and the countries working to make it happen.
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U.S. regulators Monday pulled back a decision that allowed scores of coronavirus blood tests to hit the market without first providing proof that they worked.The Food and Drug Administration said it took the action because some sellers have made false claims about the tests and their accuracy. Companies will now have to show their tests work or risk having them pulled from the market.Under pressure to increase testing options, the FDA in March essentially allowed companies to begin selling tests as long as they notified the agency of their plans and provided disclaimers, including that they were not FDA approved. The policy was intended to allow “flexibility” needed to quickly ramp up production, officials said.”However, flexibility never meant we would allow fraud,” Dr. Anand Shah, an FDA deputy commissioner, said in a statement. “We unfortunately see unscrupulous actors marketing fraudulent test kits and using the pandemic as an opportunity to take advantage of Americans.”Blood tests are different from the nasal swab tests currently used to diagnose active COVID-19 infections. Instead, the tests look for blood proteins called antibodies, which the body produces days or weeks after fighting an infection. Most use a finger-prick of blood on a test strip.The revised policy follows weeks of criticism from doctors, lab specialists and members of Congress who said the FDA’s lack of oversight created a Wild West of unregulated tests.The agency acknowledged Monday that there have been problems with deceptive, false marketing among the 160 tests that have been launched in the U.S. Some companies have claimed their tests can be used at home, although FDA has not allowed that use. Others make unsubstantiated claims about their accuracy. Some U.S. hospitals and local governments have reported buying tests that turned out to be inaccurate or frauds.So far, the FDA has granted authorization to 12 antibody tests, meaning their methods, materials and accuracy passed muster with agency regulators. Companies with test kits currently on the market without FDA authorization will now be required to submit formal applications to regulators within 10 business days. Companies that launch at a later date will have 10 days to turn over their applications after validating their tests.Health officials in the U.S. and around the world have suggested the tests could be helpful in identifying people who have previously had the virus — with or without getting sick — and developed some immunity to it. But researchers haven’t yet been able to answer key questions that are essential to their practical use: what level of antibodies does it take to be immune and how long does that protection last?”We’re spending a lot of time and resources on something that is not really a panacea for reopening,” said Kamran Kadkhoda, a lab director at the Cleveland Clinic.For now, the tests are mainly a research tool for scientists trying to determine how widely the coronavirus has spread among the U.S. population. Those studies are underway but have produced widely different preliminary results, in part, due to variations between tests. Even high-performing tests can produce skewed results when used in a large population where few people have had the virus.The National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies are also reviewing tests and conducting research into whether they can successfully predict immunity.FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn told reporters Monday that his agency’s “careful balancing of risks and benefits shifted to the approach we’ve outlined today,” based on new data from FDA and NIH reviews. Hahn said more than 200 companies are in the process of submitting testing data to the FDA.Experts who criticized the government’s previous policy welcomed the new evidence requirement.”We want to make sure that testing in the U.S. is of high quality and that those using the tests understand how the results should or should not be used,” said Dr. Robin Patel of the Mayo Clinic.Monday’s move is the latest in the Trump administration’s fitful attempt to roll out an effective, comprehensive testing strategy. While testing has ramped up since the outset of the outbreak, state and local governments continue to report shortages of testing supplies needed to screen for the virus and safely ease social distancing measures. A “testing blueprint” released last week by the White House emphasized that states are responsible for developing their own testing plans. 
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In just 50 years, 2 billion to 3.5 billion people, mostly the poor who can’t afford air conditioning, will be living in a climate that historically has been too hot to handle, a new study says. With every 1 degree increase in global average annual temperature from man-made climate change, about a billion or so people will end up in areas too warm, day-in, day-out, to be habitable without cooling technology, according to ecologist Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, co-author of the study. How many people end up at risk depends on how much heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions are reduced and how fast the world population grows.  Under the worst-case scenarios for population growth and carbon pollution — which many climate scientists say is looking less likely these days — the study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicts about 3.5 billion people will live in extremely hot areas. That’s a third of the projected 2070 population. But even scenarios considered more likely and less severe project that in 50 years a couple of billion people will be living in places too hot without air conditioning, the study said. FILE – A youth walks on the parched bed of a temple tank during a hot day in Chennai, India, April 24, 2020.”It’s a huge amount and it’s a short time. This is why we’re worried,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the study. She and other outside scientists said the new study makes sense and conveys the urgency of the man-made climate change differently than past research. In an unusual way to look at climate change, a team of international scientists studied humans like they do bears, birds and bees to find the “climate niche” where people and civilizations flourish. They looked back 6,000 years to come up with a sweet spot of temperatures for humanity: Average annual temperatures between 11 to 15 degrees.  We can — and do — live in warmer and colder places than that, but the farther from the sweet spot, the harder it gets. The scientists looked at places projected to get uncomfortably and considerably hotter than the sweet spot and calculated at least 2 billion people will be living in those conditions by 2070.  Currently about 20 million people live in places with an annual average temperature greater than 29 degrees — far beyond the temperature sweet spot. That area is less than 1% of the Earth’s land, and it is mostly near the Sahara Desert and includes Mecca, Saudi Arabia.  But as the world gets more crowded and warmer, the study concluded large swaths of Africa, Asia, South America and Australia will likely be in this same temperature range. Well over 1 billion people, and up to 3.5 billion people, will be affected depending on the climate-altering choices humanity makes over the next half century, according to lead author Chi Xu of Nanjing University in China. With enough money, “you can actually live on the moon,” Scheffer said. But these projections are “unlivable for the ordinary, for poor people, for the average world citizen.” Places like impoverished Nigeria — with a population expected to triple by the end of he century — would be less able to cope, said study co-author Tim Lenton, a climate scientist and director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter in England.  
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