The U.S National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports global temperatures for the month of May 2020 are tied with May 2016 as the warmest on record.In its monthly Global Climate Report released this week, NOAA said the 10 warmest Mays – in terms of land and ocean surface temperatures – in the 141 years since records have been kept, have occurred since 1998. The report also says the last seven Mays, dating back to 2014, have been the warmest on record.  NOAA says last month marked the 44th consecutive May, and the 425th consecutive month in which temperatures were higher than at this time a century ago.The agency reports the areas with the biggest departures from average temperatures included northern and southeastern Asia, northern Africa, Alaska, the southwest contiguous United States, and the northern Pacific Ocean, where readings were at least 1.5°C above the 1981-2010 average.NOAA says May 2020 was also the warmest on record for global land-only surface temperatures at 1.39°C above the 20th century average of 11.1°C (52.0°F).  The 10 highest May global land-only surface temperature departures have occurred since 2010.
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Survivors of COVID-19 are donating their blood plasma in droves in hopes it helps other patients recover from the coronavirus. And while the jury’s still out, now scientists are testing if the donations might also prevent infection in the first place.  
Thousands of coronavirus patients in hospitals around the world have been treated with so-called convalescent plasma  — including more than 20,000 in the U.S. — with little solid evidence so far that it makes a difference. One recent study from China was unclear while another from New York offered a hint of benefit.
“We have glimmers of hope,” said Dr. Shmuel Shoham of Johns Hopkins University.
With more rigorous testing of plasma treatment underway, Shoham is launching a nationwide study asking the next logical question: Could giving survivors plasma right after a high-risk exposure to the virus stave off illness?
To tell, researchers at Hopkins and 15 other sites will recruit health workers, spouses of the sick and residents of nursing homes where someone just fell ill and “they’re trying to nip it in the bud,” Shoham said.  
It’s a strict study: The 150 volunteers will be randomly assigned to get either plasma from COVID-19 survivors that contains coronavirus-fighting antibodies or regular plasma, like is used daily in hospitals, that was frozen prior to the pandemic. Scientists will track if there’s a difference in who gets sick.
It if works, survivor plasma could have important ramifications until a vaccine arrives — raising the prospect of possibly protecting high-risk people with temporary immune-boosting infusions every so often.
“They’re a paramedic, they’re a police officer, they’re a poultry industry worker, they’re a submarine naval officer,” Shoham ticked off. “Can we blanket protect them?”Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 7 MB480p | 10 MB540p | 13 MB720p | 22 MB1080p | 44 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioThe new coronavirus has infected more than 7 million people worldwide and killed more than 400,000, according to official tallies believed to be an underestimate. With no good treatments yet, researchers are frantically studying everything from drugs that tackle other viruses to survivor plasma — a century-old remedy used to fight infection before modern medicines came along.
The historical evidence is sketchy, but convalescent plasma’s most famous use was during the 1918 flu pandemic, and reports suggest that recipients were less likely to die. Doctors still dust off the approach to tackle surprise outbreaks, like SARS, a cousin of COVID-19, in 2002 and the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, but even those recent uses lacked rigorous research.
When the body encounters a new germ, it makes proteins called antibodies that are specially targeted to fight the infection. The antibodies float in plasma — the yellowish, liquid part of blood.  
Because it takes a few weeks for antibodies to form, the hope is that transfusing someone else’s antibodies could help patients fight the virus before their own immune system kicks in. One donation is typically divided into two or three treatments.  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 3 MB480p | 5 MB540p | 4 MB1080p | 9 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioAnd as more people survive COVID-19, there are increasing calls for them to donate plasma so there’s enough of a stockpile if it pans out. In addition to traditional infusions, donations can be combined into a high-dose product. Manufacturer Grifols is producing doses of that “hyperimmune globulin” for a study expected to start next month.
Convalescent plasma seems safe to use, Dr. Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic reported last month. His team tracked the first 5,000 plasma recipients in a Food and Drug Administration-sponsored program that helps hospitals use the experimental treatment, and found few serious side effects.
Does it help recovery? A clue comes from the first 39 patients treated at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital. Researchers compared each plasma recipient to four other COVID-19 patients who didn’t get plasma but were the same age, just as sick and being given the same amount of oxygen. People who received plasma before needing a ventilator were less likely to die than non-plasma recipients, said Dr. Sean Liu, the study’s lead author.  
“We really tried to target patients who were early in their course, preferably within the first one to two weeks of their disease,” Liu said.
“Being a doctor during this time, you just feel helpless,” Liu added, stressing that more rigorous study was needed but he was glad to have tried this first-step research. “Watching people die is, it’s heartbreaking. It’s scary and it’s heartbreaking.”
But results of the first strictly controlled study were disappointing. Hospitals in the hard-hit Chinese city of Wuhan were comparing severely ill patients randomly assigned to receive plasma or regular care, but ran out of new patients when the virus waned.  
With only half of the 200 planned patients enrolled, more plasma recipients survived but researchers couldn’t tell if it was a real difference or coincidence, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association last week.
The real proof will come from ongoing, strict studies that compare patients assigned to get either survivor plasma or a dummy treatment.
Further complicating the search for answers, COVID-19 survivors harbor widely varying levels of antibodies. And while researchers want to use what Hopkins’ Shoham calls “the high-octane stuff,” no one knows the best dose to test.
“About 20% of recovered patients and donors have very strong immunity,” estimated Dr. Michele Donato of Hackensack University Medical Center, who is studying how long they retain that level of protection.
Those are the people researchers want to become repeat donors.
“It’s, I think, our job as humans to step forward and help in society,” said Aubrie Cresswell, 24, of Bear, Delaware, who has donated three times and counting.  
One donation was shipped to a hospitalized friend of a friend, and “it brought me to tears. I was like, overwhelmed with it just because the family was really thankful.”
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The ongoing separatist conflict in Cameroon’s western regions has created a growing humanitarian emergency that has affected close to two million people.  Humanitarian experts say those displaced by the fighting need help resettling, but also psychological support.  A clinic in Cameroon’s capital provides rare trauma therapy for those affected, as Moki Edwin Kindzeka narrates in this report by Anne Nzouankeu in Yaoundé.
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India reported nearly 11,000 new cases of COVID-19 in a 24-hour period Friday. The surge of 10,956 new coronavirus infections puts the massive South Asian nation in fourth place, surpassed only by the U.S., Brazil and Russia in the number of cases. India’s has 297,535 of the world’s total 7.5 million COVID-19 cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. is leading the world count of infections with more than two million, Brazil has more than 800,00 and Russia has more than 510,000. Vaccine prospects
A U.S. biotechnology company says it will make the first widespread tests of a possible coronavirus vaccine next month.Moderna is working with the U.S. National Institutes of Health in developing a COVID-19 vaccine. The company said Thursday the vaccine trial will begin with 30,000 volunteers. Some will get the actual vaccine, and others will get a placebo.A Chinese biotech firm, Sinovac, also plans to test its vaccine next month, on 9,000 volunteers in Brazil. Brazil will also be the testing ground for a vaccine being developed by Britain’s Oxford University. The Trump administration is working with private labs in what it calls “Operation Warp Speed,” which hopes to have 300 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine ready to go by January.But experts say there’s never any guarantee a vaccine will work or, if it does, will offer more than a few months of protection.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 15 MB720p | 27 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioEconomic hit
Another major study forecasts millions sinking into extreme poverty because of the coronavirus pandemic.A report by the United Nations University says the economic fallout could plunge 395 million people into conditions in which they are forced to live on $1.90 a day or less – the definition of extreme poverty.A separate World Bank report this week put that number between 70 million and 100 million people. “The outlook for the world’s poorest looks grim unless governments do more and do it quickly and make up the daily loss of income the poor face,” one of the U.N. report’s authors, Andy Sumner, said. “The result is progress on poverty reduction could be set back 20-30 years and making the UN goal of ending poverty look like a pipe dream.”  The U.N. report says South Asia – India in particular – will see the largest number of people sinking into extreme poverty, followed by sub-Saharan Africa. Experts are appealing to economically powerful nations, such as the United States, to forgive the debts of developing countries that would take a stong hit from the pandemic. FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, May 18, 2020.We need WHO, Fauci says
The U.S. top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the World Health Organization isn’t perfect, but the world needs it.“It certainly has made some missteps, but it has also done a lot of good,” Fauci told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Thursday. “I would hope that we could continue to benefit from what the WHO can do at the same time that they continue to improve themselves. I’ve had good relationships with the WHO, and the world needs the WHO.”President Donald Trump announced last month that he is pulling the United States out of the WHO, accusing it of being dominated by China and letting China “mislead the world” on the coronavirus. The U.S. is by far the largest donor to the WHO.Fauci told the CBC that when the outbreak began in December in Wuhan, some Chinese scientists were “not able to express” their concerns about human-to-human transmission in a clear way, leading the WHO to downplay the risks. Fauci did not elaborate on what he meant by the inability express those concerns. “There may have been things that would have been done sooner both in China and outside China,” Fauci said. “The original reports were that this was a dominant animal-to-human spread.”With the number of U.S. cases surpassing the 2 million mark, according to Johns Hopkins University, and the number of new cases appearing to rise, Fauci said it is still possible for the U.S. To avoid a second wave through mass testing.WATCH: VOA Interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 40 MB480p | 57 MB540p | 59 MB720p | 116 MB Embed” />Copy Download Audio
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NASA continues marking milestones more than a week after the first manned launch from U.S. soil in nearly a decade.  An astronaut made a historic visit to the depths of the ocean floor, while the space agency unveiled this year’s roster of Hall of Fame inductees.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us This Week in Space.
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The U.S. space agency, NASA, has announced it has awarded a $199 million contract to a city of Pittsburgh company to launch its robot lunar rover to the moon in 2023. The agency made the announcement in an online release Thursday.In a statement posted on its website, Astrobotic Technology, a space robotics company, says it will deliver NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the moon’s south pole on board the company’s Griffin lunar lander.The contract was awarded under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS)  and is the second CLPS contract Astrobotic has received. The company’s Peregrine lander is scheduled for a NASA mission in in 2021. Astrobotic’s MoonRanger rover was selected by NASA for delivery to the moon in 2022 on the lander of another CLPS contract company.NASA says the VIPER is designed for a 100-Earth-day mission searching for signs of water on the moon’s surface. The rover will travel several kilometers and use its four onboard science instruments to sample soil environments. The rover also will have a drill to bore approximately one meter into the lunar surface.The space agency says VIPER will collect data – including the location and concentration of ice – that will be used to create the first global water resource maps of the moon.NASA says the VIPER’s data will also help determine landing sites for manned missions to the moon beginning in 2024 and will bring the agency a step closer to developing a sustainable, long-term presence there. 
 
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Neil Sullivan was angry, frustrated and crushed with guilt. His brother Joe had been rushed by ambulance from his home for the developmentally disabled to the emergency room with a possible case of the coronavirus.
Neil had known the people at the Elisabeth Ludeman Developmental Center near Chicago were at risk. Regulators had flagged the facility over the years for violations such as neglect of residents and not keeping restrooms stocked with soap and paper towels. And now, in the middle of a pandemic, a staffer told Neil they were still short of life-saving equipment like surgical masks, gowns, hand sanitizers and even wipes.
He watched helplessly as COVID-19 tore through Ludeman, infecting 220 residents — more than half the people living there — and 125 workers. Six residents and four staff members would die. Neil was overcome with dread that his 52-year-old brother would be among them.
“You start thinking to yourself, is there something I should have done better?” he said.
 
The outbreak in Ludeman shows the threat of the pandemic to a highly vulnerable population that is flying almost completely under the radar: The developmentally and intellectually disabled. While nursing homes have come under the spotlight, little attention has gone toward facilities nationwide that experts have estimated house more than 275,000 people with conditions such as Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and autism. Many residents have severe underlying medical issues that leave them vulnerable to the coronavirus.
At least 5,800 residents in such facilities nationwide have already contracted COVID-19, and more than 680 have died, The Associated Press found in a survey of every state. The true number is almost certainly much higher because about a dozen states did not respond or disclose comprehensive information, including two of the biggest, California and Texas.  
Many of these places have been at risk for infectious diseases for years, AP found.  
Perhaps the best-known government-funded homes for the disabled are called Intermediate Care Facilities, which range from large state-run institutions to homes for a handful of people. Before the coronavirus hit, regulators concluded that about 40 percent of these facilities — at least 2,300 — had failed to meet safety standards for preventing and controlling the spread of infections and communicable diseases, according to inspection reports obtained by AP. The failures, from 2013 to early 2019, ranged from not taking precautionary steps to limit the spread of infections to unsanitary conditions and missed signs that illnesses were passing between residents and employees. 
No such data exists for thousands of other group homes for the disabled because they are less regulated. But AP found those homes have also been hit hard by the virus.
“These people are marginalized across the spectrum,” said Christopher Rodriguez, executive director at Disability Rights Louisiana, which monitors the state’s homes for the disabled. “If you have developmental disabilities, you are seen as less than human. You can see it in education, civil rights, employment. And now, you can see it by how they are being treated during the pandemic.”
 
Advocates are urging the federal government to do more to protect the disabled in congregate settings. They noted that as the virus spread, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ordered states to provide information to the federal government about COVID-19 infections and deaths in nursing homes. CMS also increased fines and made data about infections in nursing homes available to the public.  
But the requirements did not extend to homes for the developmentally disabled, where the overall population is smaller but the virus is still taking a heavy toll.  
“The lives of people with disabilities in these settings are equally as at risk — and equally as worth protecting — as people in nursing homes,” the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities said in a May 5 letter to Alex Azar, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CMS.
Some states had outdated plans and policies to face a pandemic, said Curt Decker, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network. In Georgia, for example, he said the state’s policy provided for protective equipment for nursing homes, but not homes for the disabled. He said staffing levels and training were already “a crisis” across the country even before the coronavirus.
“It was clearly a disaster waiting to happen,” he said.  
CMS did not respond to the AP’s questions within two weeks and did not say why requirements are different for nursing homes. For days, the agency said it was working on a statement, but did not provide one.
As the outbreak spread through Ludeman, Neil felt as helpless as on the day his family dropped Joe off at the facility decades ago.
His parents believed they couldn’t have children, so they adopted Joe. But shortly after, his mother discovered she was pregnant with Neil.
As children, Neil and Joe shared the same room. When Joe developed severe behavioral problems, their parents turned to Ludeman.
To this day, the images of leaving his brother behind at the institution are seared into Neil’s memory. He looked back and glimpsed his brother, staring out a window, wailing.  
“It was the most desperate cry you could ever imagine,” he said. “It was a child that knows it’s being left behind by its parents.”
Over the years, Neil looked out for his brother. As his parents got older, he became Joe’s legal guardian, driven by “survivor’s guilt” from that day so long ago when they left Joe behind.
When COVID-19 began spreading across the country, Neil prayed it wouldn’t hit Ludeman — where some 340 people live in 40 ranch-style homes spread across a campus that resembles an apartment complex.  
About 66,000 people nationwide live in Intermediate Care Facilities like Ludeman. Even more people live in other types of group homes, which operate under less scrutiny. Nobody, not even the federal government, seems to know exactly how many people live in these homes, which advocates say is another sign of a highly marginalized population.
More than 2,100 homes for the disabled have seen COVID-19 infections among residents or staff, according to the AP survey — an undercount because not all states provided specific information.  
The virus poses an especially big risk for the disabled. Some are bedridden or prone to seizures.
Others have visual or hearing impairments and are non-verbal, so they can’t articulate when they don’t feel well. And social distancing — one of the key preventive measures for COVID-19 — is nearly impossible because many residents have roommates, share common living areas and need full-time assistance for basic tasks like brushing their teeth.
“You’re dealing with a community that needs constant 24-hour, one-on-one supervision,” said Joe Montemayor, whose union represents employees at homes for the disabled in Texas. “Their reasoning isn’t quite there, so you do your best to teach them about the spread of germs and things like that.”  
It’s gotten so bad that some staffers are afraid to report to work, Montemayor said.  
Advocates also worry that the special needs and fragile medical condition of the developmentally and intellectually disabled will make them a low priority if hospitals — especially in rural areas — are overrun with COVID-19 patients. Disability rights groups have filed federal civil rights complaints against several states to stop ventilator-rationing proposals, fearing that the disabled will end up last in the line because they may not be able to adhere to protocols after an operation or procedure.
“People with disabilities have just the same right to extend their lives for as long as possible as any other human,” said Elizabeth Priaulx, a legal specialist with the National Disability Rights Network.
For the families, the fear of the virus is compounded by the fact that they can’t visit their loved ones.  
Stephanie Kirby’s voice breaks when she talks about her son Petre, who has lived in the Denton State Supported Living Center in Texas for three years. More than 60 of the 443 residents at the large, state-run ICF contracted the virus, according to the local health department. AP found the facility has been flagged seven times for poor infection control practices since 2013.
Petre is 28, but functions on the level of a 4-year-old. Kirby hasn’t seen him since March, when the governor banned visitors to prevent the spread of the disease. It’s the longest they’ve been apart since she adopted Petre from a Romanian orphanage.  
Now, Kirby worries not only about Petre’s health, but about the emotional impact the separation might have on him. She doesn’t want him to feel like she has abandoned him — like his family did in Romania. But she fears it’s too late.  
Kirby said she’s asked Texas officials all the way up to the governor’s office why they won’t allow her to see her son, and she’s gotten the runaround. On Mother’s Day, Kirby drove to Denton, parked her car outside the front gate and sat there for three hours, crying.  
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said.  
Christine Mann, a spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, said the agency is working closely with the facility to prevent the spread of disease. Mann said that infection control violations were “minor incidences” immediately corrected, and that the facility has increased video conferencing and added phone lines to help families.
But for Kirby, that’s not enough. “When will a mom be considered an essential person in the life and health and well-being of her children?” she asked.
For Neil, the coronavirus is only the latest of a string of challenges with Joe at Ludeman.
Many staff members have been kind, and Neil praised those who have worked with his brother in recent years. But some of Joe’s teeth were knocked out in the 1990s with no good explanation, Neil said. At other times, Neil suspected Joe didn’t receive the attention he needs.
“There were people there, especially in the past, that really treated them like zoo animals,” Neil said.
Neil tried to move his brother into another institution with more activities, but Joe was turned down because that facility considered him too aggressive. For people like Joe, options are scarce.
 
Ludeman has been cited dozens of times since 2013, most often for safety violations but also for more serious issues, including mistreatment of residents. While Ludeman was not cited specifically in the infection control category, inspectors noted that staff didn’t always encourage practices like proper hand washing.  
Meghan Powers, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Human Services, which oversees the facility, said the high numbers are driven in part by the fact that all residents have been tested.
“It is also sometimes challenging for our residents to adhere to all of the protective measures we are taking,” Powers said.
The agency implemented “many new protocols” at Ludeman and other facilities across the state on March 12 that included creating an infectious disease team, restricting visitors and checking the temperatures for all staff and residents at shift changes, Powers said. She acknowledged that Ludeman had challenges in the past with maintaining soap and paper towels, but she said that problem was solved by improving its supply distribution. And while shortages of personal protection equipment were an issue across the state, staff working directly with sick residents “have never run out or been severely short to date,” Powers said.  
Like Ludeman, many other homes for the disabled have struggled to contain outbreaks, AP found.  
Nearly half of the 2,300 Intermediate Care Facilities with past problems controlling infections were cited multiple times — some chronically so, over the course of multiple inspections. In dozens of instances, the problems weren’t corrected by the time regulators showed up for a follow-up visit. At least seven times, the safety lapses were so serious that they placed residents’ health in “immediate jeopardy,” a finding that requires make prompt corrections under the threat of a losing government funding.
Inspection reports show that regulators repeatedly found examples of:
_Staff not washing hands while caring for multiple residents or re-using protective gear like gloves and masks.
_Unclean environments, such as soiled diapers or linens left out, insect infestations, dried body fluids and feces on surfaces of common areas.  
_Outbreaks of influenza, staph/MRSA and scabies in a small number of cases.
Other types of group homes aren’t included in the data, but it’s clear that many were also poorly prepared to stop the spread of the virus, the AP found. For example, hundreds of group homes in Massachusetts reported positive cases, as well as the state’s two Intermediate Care Facilities, according to the AP and advocacy groups. Advocates say low pay and difficult working conditions have led to high staff turnover and inadequate training, exacerbated by the pandemic.  
The outbreak at Ludeman was so bad that the National Guard was called in to help. A family association asking for supplies said Chicago’s Major League Baseball teams donated 2,200 rain ponchos that the staff could use “until disposable gowns are available.”
When Neil got the call that his brother was infected with COVID-19, all the years of frustration spilled over.  
“It was just rage,” he said. “I was so upset that I was afraid to talk because I didn’t know what was going to come out of my mouth.”
It didn’t help that he was on his own. His father has Alzheimer’s and is in a nursing home fighting its own outbreak; his mother has chronic lung disease.
After finding out his brother was being rushed to the emergency room. Neil called Ludeman’s staff and talked to other families. He was told that the facility was running low on critical items like protective masks, gowns, disinfectant — even anti-bacterial soap.  
So he began a drive to collect goods, calling friends and family and reaching out to people on social media. After he had enough supplies, he decided to make a trip to Ludeman. He didn’t even know if they’d let him onto the campus — the facility was on lockdown. But he was going to try.
As he pulled up to the red and brown brick building with white trim, he didn’t know what to expect.
No one stopped him. He jumped out of the car and began unloading the goods. And then he got a surprise. There he was, Joe, sitting in a room with a staff member. Sullivan’s heart raced. He smiled, then waved to his brother through the window.  
“I can tell you it made a world of difference because I really, genuinely believed he was going to die until I saw him,” he said. “Once I put my eyes on him, he still didn’t look good. But I believed he was going to pull through.”
In the end, Joe would beat the virus. Others wouldn’t be so fortunate. 
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The United States has officially gone over the 2 million mark in total cases of novel coronavirus infections.According to figures published Thursday on the website of Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus resource center, the U.S. now has 2,000,464 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 112,924 deaths, maintaining its position as the leading country with the total number of cases and deaths.Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, predicted Wednesday night during an interview on CNN the nation’s death toll will nearly double by September.“Most Americans are not ready to lock back down, and I completely understand that.” Dr. Jha said. “I understand people are willing to live alongside this virus. It means that between 800 and 1,000 Americans are going to die every single day.”As many as 21 states have recorded their highest number of COVID-19 cases this week, with many concentrated across the western and southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Utah.  The increases come amid a loosening of coronavirus restrictions in recent weeks, including the annual Memorial Day holiday that signals the start of the traditional summer vacation season.People gather on the beach for the Memorial Day weekend in Port Aransas, Texas, May 23, 2020.The newest surge of infections has prompted local health officials in California to cancel the popular annual Coachella music and arts festival and the Stagecoach country music festival scheduled for October.  Both outdoor festivals were originally scheduled to be held in April, but were postponed as the outbreak began spreading.Experts also fear the ongoing nationwide protests sparked by the death of an African-American man in Minneapolis while in police custody will lead to another spike in COVID-19 infections.  Protesters have been captured on video walking shoulder-to-shoulder, although many of them were wearing masks.   However, officials at the popular Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California, announced Wednesday they plan to begin a phased reopening of Disneyland and its sister theme park, Disney California Adventure, on July 17, the 65th anniversary of Disneyland’s opening.  The entertainment giant also announced a phased reopening of its Orlando, Florida, theme parks, anchored by Walt Disney World, in mid-July.The World Health Organization said Thursday the African continent now has more than 200,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 5,600 deaths.  Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa regional director, told reporters during a briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva the pandemic is “accelerating” and will continue to climb until an effective vaccine is developed.  South Africa accounts for a quarter of all coronavirus cases with over 55,421 and 1,210 deaths.COVID-19 patients lie on beds in a field hospital built inside a gym in Santo Andre, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil, June 9, 2020.WHO has already determined Latin America to be the world’s new hotspot for the coronavirus pandemic, with the latest figures raising the total number of cases in the region to well over 1 million, with over 70,000 deaths.  With 772,416 confirmed cases, Brazil is the most-affected country in the region, and ranks only behind the United States on the overall global list of confirmed cases.Following Brazil is Peru with more than 207,000 overall cases. Chile is in third place with 148,456 cases and Mexico is close behind with 129,184.As of Thursday, there are a total of 7,394,801 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, with 417,022 deaths. 
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