The rows of lettuce, microgreens and herbs that Himanshu Aggarwal and his mother grow in an enclosed room in a busy New Delhi market began flourishing six months ago, just when the COVID-19 pandemic was taking hold in India.Himanshu Aggarwal grows lettuce, microgreens and herbs in an 800-square-foot enclosed room in New Delhi. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)It was not the best of times. A day after the Aggarwals launched their hydroponic venture, 9Growers, India declared a stringent lockdown, making them nervous about how they would sell their freshly plucked greens amid the pandemic.Surprisingly, the situation helped grow their business. Worried about contracting the virus, people began to focus increasingly on healthful foods, and at the same time, shops became willing to stock their produce.Pratibha Aggarwal helped her son launch the venture 9Growers. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)”Vendors were open to having good produce, specially during lockdown. They were not even getting basic necessities, and we were giving them fresh produce harvested on the same day,” said Himanshu Aggarwal, 24, who was inspired to take up hydroponic farming after seeing the quality of fruits and vegetables during a trip to Europe. “Even our best produce could not match theirs. So I thought about how to achieve the same standards for a small community, and hydroponics seemed the answer.”Amid growing demand for fresh farm produce without pesticides, young entrepreneurs in Indian cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru are turning their attention to hydroponic farming, where plants grow without soil and are fed mineral nutrients through water. Using much less water than conventional procedures do, hydroponics has won attention as a sustainable farming method in several countries, such as the Netherlands.Some in Delhi have opted to put up their ventures in poly houses on the city’s outskirts. Others are doing it in the heart of the city, in residential or commercial areas, where the plants grow in laboratory-like conditions under artificial light that simulates sunlight. Most of the young entrepreneurs learned about it on the internet and through trials and experiments in their homes.The hydroponic farm is situated on the top floor of a building. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)Aggarwal’s plants thrive on the top floor of a small building in an 800-square-foot room. Accessed through an electronics store, the unlikely space transports a visitor from the honking cars and traffic snarls to the surreal sight of the 18 varieties of lettuce and other leafy greens thriving in vertical panels in one of Delhi’s most crowded markets.“We are giving them everything they want — temperature, air quality, humidity. We are monitoring all the aspects for them so that they give the best result,” Aggarwal said.The appeal of greens growing in a clean, germ-free environment has grown during the pandemic as people focus more on eating healthful foods, according to shop owners. While the higher cost is a barrier for some, high-income consumers in cities are increasingly willing to pay the price for fresh produce.Boxes of hydroponic greens are displayed among other vegetables. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)In an upscale neighborhood in New Delhi, Mohinder Pal Singh, who stocks the hydroponic greens, said he gets repeat orders from customers who try them out. “Due to COVID, a lot of people have switched to greens to boost immunity. People have also become very conscious of eating nutritious food,” he said. “So sale of such produce is increasing.”The owner of a fruit-and-vegetable shop in a Delhi market says hydroponic produce is selling amid rising demand for healthful food amid the pandemic. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)Optimistic about the growing demand for local produce in cities, some entrepreneurs are scaling up their businesses. Rohit Nagdewani, the founder of farmingV2, plans to expand to other cities — his seven farms in Delhi produce about 2,500 kilograms of hydroponic produce every month. “People are becoming increasingly aware of the source of the food and how many hands it is exchanging, so there is a big future in hydroponics, where supplies reach within a few hours of harvesting,” Nagdewani said. “All that is fueling demand. That is why I have put my entire savings into it,” he said with a laugh.For another Delhi-based entrepreneur, Raghav Varma, 30, the inspiration to turn to city farming came during a visit to the hill state of Uttarakhand, where he saw hydroponic produce being grown for export. Back home, his experiments showed that he was able to grow a 300-gram head of lettuce in a small ice cream container on his windowsill. “It was really fresh and crunchy because it is grown in water. So I thought this was an amazing way to produce food for urban dwellers,” said Varma, who has co-founded Farmstacks.A customer looks at a box of microgreens. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)However, the entrepreneurs admit that consumer awareness about hydroponics needs to be raised. To do that, Varma allows people to choose the greens they want to grow for their own use at a small community farm in Delhi.Most of the entrepreneurs do not have a farming background; Varma was a digital marketing executive, Aggarwal a corporate employee, and Nagdewani started his career as an automotive journalist.They are proud of their new calling. “ ‘Urban farmer’ is actually a very good tag. It’s a new profession, I would say, and it gives us a sense that we are back to our roots from where we started,” Aggarwal said with a smile.
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Pope Francis once again used his weekly general audience Wednesday at the Vatican to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and urged the world’s leaders to remember all segments of society as they fight the coronavirus and work to rebuild world economies. Speaking before a limited group of masked faithful in a Vatican courtyard, Francis said everyone has something to contribute as the world attempts to emerge from this crisis But, he said, society’s leaders must respect and promote “the intermediate or lower levels” of society.    People attend Pope Francis’ weekly general audience at the San Damaso courtyard, at the Vatican, Sept. 23, 2020.He added that multinationals and pharmaceutical companies do not have all the answers.  “The largest financial companies are listened to rather than the people or the ones who really move the economy,” Pope Francis said Wednesday. “Multinational companies are listened to more than social movements. Putting it in everyday language, they listen more to the powerful than to the weak.” The pope called for an inclusive rethink of the economic, social and political structures of the global economy that he says have showed weakness during the health crisis. Francis has long insisted on the need to involve society’s most marginal groups — the indigenous, the poor and the elderly — in making decisions about their own future. “Let’s think about the cure for the virus; the large pharmaceutical companies are listened to more than the health care workers employed on the front lines in hospitals or in refugee camps. This is not a good path,” said Pope Francis.The pope next week is expected to release an encyclical on fraternity and solidarity in the post-COVID world. 
 
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The head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday “science will guide our decisions” as the agency decides whether to give full or emergency authorization to a coronavirus vaccine.Speaking to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Dr. Stephen Hahn said those decisions will be made by career FDA scientists following the agency’s “rigorous expectations for safety and effectiveness.”Hahn pledged that the approval process will be “transparent and independent” and that the FDA will not authorize a vaccine that its staff would not feel comfortable giving to their families.Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Hearing on the federal government response to COVID-19.Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking at the same hearing, said that as several potential coronavirus vaccines undergo widescale trials, officials are predicting that by November or December they will know whether there is a vaccine that is safe and effective.Fauci cautioned that while there is optimism about the vaccine candidates, “there is never a guarantee” of finding one that works.He also signaled the need to couple any vaccine program with existing advice to stop the spread of the virus, such as wearing masks and social distancing.“We feel strongly that if we have a combination of adherence to the public health measures, together with a vaccine that will be distributed to people in this country and worldwide, we may be able to turn around this terrible pandemic which we have been experiencing,” Fauci said.The United States is proceeding with a plan to manufacture doses of some of the vaccine candidates currently undergoing trials so that if and when they are approved, the doses can be made available to the public quickly.Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the lawmakers that the country has experienced an average of about 40,000 new daily infections and 800 deaths during the past week, and that the population of those new cases has shifted younger.Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at a Hearing on the federal government response to COVID-19, Capitol Hill, Washington, Sept. 23, 2020.Redfield said those between the ages of 18 and 25 make up 26% of new infections in the U.S., more than any other group.Redfield also said his agency has been carrying out widescale serology testing across the country with preliminary results showing more than 90% of Americans have not been infected with the coronavirus and thus remain susceptible. Redfield said he expects the results to be finalized and published in the next week or so.The U.S. has recorded the most coronavirus cases in the world with about 6.9 million along with more than 200,000 deaths.India has the second highest number, with 5.6 million, according to Johns Hopkins University data, and has for weeks been adding the newest cases of any place in the world.The country had seen a drop Tuesday, but that quickly reversed with more than 83,000 new cases reported by Indian health officials on Wednesday.Elsewhere, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged Wednesday to help companies work to keep jobs that have been put at risk by the pandemic.”These are indeed tough times, and I have no doubt that many businesses, many employees are feeling a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty, and we will do our level best to protect them throughout this period,” he said while addressing parliament.Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was due to unveil his own economic recovery plans Wednesday in an effort to balance boosting economic activity while also keeping in place necessary measures to stop the spread of the virus.Officials said Trudeau’s proposals included addressing child care and expanding employment insurance.Canada reported 1,200 new cases Tuesday with officials saying the country is at a “crossroads” in dealing with the outbreak.And in Japan, organizers of the delayed Tokyo Olympics said that when the event takes place next year, the plan now is for athletes arriving from other countries to undergo coronavirus testing, but not be subject to a two-week quarantine period.Officials told reporters Wednesday the guidelines are still under discussion and that they hope to have them finalized by December.
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Rescuers are trying to save scores of whales beached in the Australian state of Tasmania. Earlier this week, a pod of 270 pilot whales were found washed ashore.  Two hundred more were discovered a short distance away Wednesday.  The stranding of about 470 pilot whales on the west coast of Tasmania is the largest ever recorded in the state’s history.   Two hundred seventy animals were found washed up on sandbars Monday, prompting a rescue operation involving wildlife experts, the police and volunteers. They have managed to return some of the whales into deeper water and coax them back out to sea. It is a challenging task. Pilot whales can grow up to seven meters long and weight three tons.  But dozens of the pod discovered Monday have died, and Australian wildlife experts believe that most of the 200 whales found beached 10 kilometers away Wednesday have not survived.    Yet rescue efforts continue. Wildlife biologist Kris Carlyon says they are focusing on those animals with a realistic chance of survival. “We are going to basically take the animals with the best chance to start with and the ones that we (are) able to deal with.  So, some animals may be simply too big or in an unsuitable location to actually deal with,” Carlyon said.The coastline near Macquarie Harbor, near the town of Strahan, Tasmania, is a known whale-stranding hotspot. In 2011, about 20 sperm whales were beached there, and most died.    Experts have yet to understand why the mammals become marooned.  There are various scientific suppositions.  The whales use echo location to navigate, and one theory is that the whales may have been drawn in too close to the coast in search of food. Other theories have asserted that the Moon’s gravitational pull or perhaps military sonar could be responsible.   There is no definitive answer, and some marine experts believe that mass strandings of whales and dolphins in different countries could all have different causes.  The rescue mission in Tasmania could take days.  Experts say cool and wet weather will help keep the surviving whales alive, but they concede it is a race against time.  
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Volunteers planted 20,000 miniature U.S. flags on the grounds of the Washington Monument in the nation’s capital Tuesday, the day the nation reached 200,000 COVID-19 deaths. Each flag represented 10 victims who have perished since the virus first arrived in the U.S. earlier this year.   During an interfaith religious service held at the Monument to mark the grim occasion, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the high death toll was “preventable” and urged the nation to embrace science to prevent any future losses.   In April, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the death toll would be “more like 60,000,” while U.S. President Donald Trump, who early on minimized the coronavirus as something akin to seasonal flus, in May said the toll could be anywhere from 75,000 to 100,000.     Now, health analysts at the University of Washington say the death toll could reach 410,000 by the end of the year.  The United States has the highest death toll among all nations, but some countries in Europe and Latin America have recorded more deaths per capita.A “promotora” (health promoter) from CASA, a Hispanic advocacy group, tries to enroll Latinos as volunteers to test a potential COVID-19 vaccine, at a farmers market in Takoma Park, Md., on Sept. 9, 2020.In late April, more than 2,000 deaths a day were being recorded in the U.S. Now the figure is close to 800 deaths daily. Medical researchers are trying to develop a coronavirus vaccine and could have approval for a preventative in the coming months. Without one yet, though, and with seasonal colder weather arriving, experts say the daily death toll could increase again.   News outlets say the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering a set of stricter new guidelines for the emergency authorization of a potential COVID-19 vaccine.  The proposed new rules would require drug makers to observe participants in late-stage clinical trials for at least two months after they receive a second and final dose of an experimental vaccine.  The guidelines would also look for at least five severe cases of COVID-19 in volunteers who received a neutral version of the vaccine, known as a placebo.   Two pharmaceutical companies that are developing a coronavirus vaccine, Moderna and Pfizer, have only begun administering second doses to their volunteers. If the new rules are adopted, an authorization for a new vaccine would come well after the November 3 presidential election. President Donald Trump has been saying for several weeks that a coronavirus vaccine would be available either in October or right before Election Day.   The FDA and other federal scientific and regulatory agencies have seen their credibility diminished by constant administration efforts to revise their reports and guidelines to maintain Trump’s views about the nature of the pandemic. The United States is experiencing a surge of new coronavirus cases across more than 20 states, with many outbreaks reported at colleges and universities due to returning students failing to observe social distancing guidelines.  The outbreak has also caused chaos for local school districts across the country, with administrators and teachers struggling with either online learning or a combination of online and in-person instruction.  Members of the school board in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the fourth-largest school district in the United States, voted Tuesday to bring back students to the classroom in mid-October. The decision was reached after a non-stop 29-hour meeting that included 18 hours of public testimony from more than 750 people.   Under the plan laid out by Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, students in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade, plus those with special needs, would return to school on October 14, with the rest of the district’s students coming back on October 21. Miami-Dade’s online-only instruction has been plagued with problems since it began in August, including network outages, software glitches and a cyberattack carried out by a high school student. 
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Scientists with the U.S. space agency NASA say satellite data show Arctic sea ice cover this year shrank to the second-lowest level since modern record keeping began in the late 1970s.  NASA scientists and researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported Monday that analysis of satellite data shows the 2020 minimum extent of ocean covered in ice, 3.74 million square kilometers, was likely reached Sept. 15. The data shows the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice in the summer has dropped markedly in the last two decades. The lowest extent on record was set in 2012. Last year’s extent was tied for second — until this year. NASA sea ice scientist Nathan Kurtz said 2020 was “a really warm year in the Arctic.” A Siberian heat wave in spring 2020 began this year’s Arctic sea ice melt season early. With Arctic temperatures being 8 to 10 degrees Celsius warmer than average, the ice extent kept declining. Kurtz said the earlier the melt starts, the more that is generally lost. In addition, NASA says a recent study showed that warmer water from the Atlantic Ocean, which is typically deep below the colder Arctic waters, is creeping closer to the bottom of the sea ice and warming it from below. NSIDC Director Mark Serreze said the amount of summer sea ice in the Arctic can impact local ecosystems, regional and global weather patterns, and ocean circulation. Warmer ocean temperatures eat away at the thicker multiyear ice, and also result in thinner ice to start the spring melt season.  Melt early in the season results in more open water, which absorbs heat from the sun and increases water temperatures. Serreze said this second-lowest extent of sea ice on record is just one of many signs of a warming climate in the north. He also noted that signs of a warming climate include the Siberian heat waves, forest fires, hotter-than-average temperatures over the Central Arctic, and the thawing permafrost that led to a Russian fuel spill earlier this year. 
 
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The U.S. National Hurricane Center says the storm system known as Beta has been downgraded to a tropical depression but still threatens to dump heavy rain as it moves inland over Texas. In its latest report Tuesday, the hurricane center says Beta was centered about 177 kilometers south, southwest of the city of Houston and its winds had diminished to about 55 kilometers per hour. It was moving to the northeast at about four kilometers per hour. While tropical storm and surge warnings have been discontinued, forecasters say the system is still likely to drop 10 to 25 centimeters of rain over parts of Texas with isolated areas seeing as much as 50 centimeters. The cities of Houston and Galveston have reported flooding in streets and along coastal areas. The hurricane center says the remnants of the storm are likely to pick up speed as it moves inland over southeastern Texas through Wednesday and then over Louisiana and Mississippi from Wednesday night through Friday. Beta made landfall late Monday just north of Port O’Connor, Texas, becoming the ninth named storm that made landfall in the continental United States this year. That tied a record set in 1916.  Beta was named for the second letter in the Greek alphabet because the hurricane center had run out of conventional names for storms — the first time that has happened in 15 years, and only the second time since the 1950s. 
 
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At a lecture to peers this month, John Nkengasong showed images that once dogged Africa, with a magazine cover declaring it “The Hopeless Continent.” Then he quoted Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah: “It is clear that we must find an African solution to our problems, and that this can only be found in African unity.”
The coronavirus pandemic has fractured global relationships. But as director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nkengasong has helped to steer Africa’s 54 countries into an alliance praised as responding better than some richer countries, including the United States.
A former U.S. CDC official, he modeled Africa’s version after his ex-employer. Nkengasong is pained to see the U.S. agency struggle. In an interview with The Associated Press, he didn’t name U.S President Donald Trump but cited “factors we all know.”
While the U.S. nears 200,000 COVID-19 deaths and the world approaches 1 million, Africa’s surge  has been leveling off. Its 1.4 million confirmed cases are far from the horrors predicted. Antibody testing is expected to show many more infections, but most cases are asymptomatic. Just over 34,000 deaths are confirmed on the continent of 1.3 billion people.
“Africa is doing a lot of things right the rest of the world isn’t,” said Gayle Smith, a former administrator with the U.S. Agency for International Development. She’s watched in astonishment as Washington looks inward instead of leading the world. But Africa “is a great story and one that needs to be told.”
Nkengasong, whom the Gates Foundation honors Tuesday with its Global Goalkeeper Award as a “relentless proponent of global collaboration,” is the continent’s most visible narrator. The Cameroon-born virologist insists that Africa can stand up to COVID-19 if given a fighting chance.
Early modeling assumed “a large number of Africans would just die,” Nkengasong said. The Africa CDC decided not to issue projections. “When I looked at the data and the assumptions, I wasn’t convinced,” he said.
Health experts point to Africa’s youthful population as a factor in why COVID-19 hasn’t taken a larger toll, along with swift lockdowns and the later arrival of the virus.  
“Be patient,” Nkengasong said. “There’s a lot we still don’t know.”  
He warns against complacency, saying a single case can spark a new surge.
As Africa’s top public health official, leading an agency launched only three years ago, he plunged into the race for medical supplies and now a vaccine. At first, it was a shock.
“The collapse of global cooperation and a failure of international solidarity have shoved Africa out of the diagnostics market,” Nkengasong wrote in the journal Nature in April. “If Africa loses, the world loses.”
Supplies slowly improved, and African countries have conducted 13 million tests, enough to cover 1% of the continent’s population. But the ideal is 13 million tests per month, Nkengasong said.
He and other African leaders are haunted by the memories of 12 million Africans dying during the decade it took for affordable HIV drugs to reach the continent. That must not happen again, he said.
This week, more world leaders than ever are gathering online for the biggest global endeavor since COVID-19 appeared, the United Nations General Assembly. If Nkengasong could address them, he would say this: “We should be very careful that history doesn’t record us on the wrong side of it.”
African leaders are expected to say much the same. “The COVID-19 pandemic has shown we have no option but to depend on each other,” Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, told the gathering on Monday.
Nkengasong urges African countries not to wait for help and rejects the image of the continent holding a begging bowl. The money is there, he said.
Acting on that idea, Africa’s public and private sectors created an online purchasing platform to focus their negotiating power, launched by the African Union to buy directly from manufacturers. Governments can browse and buy rapid testing kits, N95 masks and ventilators, some now manufactured in Africa in another campaign endorsed by heads of state.
Impressed, Caribbean countries have signed on.
“It’s the only part of the world I’m aware of that actually built a supply chain,” said Smith, the former USAID chief.
When the pandemic began, just two African countries could test for the coronavirus. Now all can. Nkengasong was struck by how much information “doesn’t get translated” to member states, so the Africa CDC holds online training on everything from safely handling bodies to genomic surveillance.
“I look at Africa and I look at the U.S., and I’m more optimistic about Africa, to be honest, because of the leadership there and doing their best despite limited resources,” said Sema Sgaier, director of the Surgo Foundation, which produced a COVID-19 vulnerability index for each region. She spoke even as Africa’s cases were surging weeks ago.
With COVID-19 vaccines the next urgent issue, African countries held a conference to insist on equitable access and explore manufacturing to end their almost complete reliance on the outside world. They began securing the late-stage clinical trials that long have been held outside the continent, aiming to land 10 as soon as possible.
Nkengasong said Africa needs at least 1.5 billion vaccine doses, enough to cover 60% of the population for “herd immunity” with the two likely required doses. That will cost about $10 billion.
The World Health Organization says Africa should receive at least 220 million doses through an international effort to develop and distribute a vaccine known as COVAX.  
That’s welcome but not enough, Nkengasong said.
His next hurdle is how to deliver doses throughout the vast continent with the world’s worst infrastructure. Less than half of Africa’s countries have access to modern health care facilities, he said.
COVID-19’s effects are “devastating” for Africa, from education  to economies  to the fight against other diseases. Nkengasong plans a major conference next year to press countries to significantly increase health spending ahead of the next pandemic.
“If we do not,” he said, “something is terribly wrong with us.”
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Doctors and public health experts are telling people in the Northern Hemisphere to prepare for the worst in the coming months, when both the coronavirus and the flu virus will be circulating at the same time. It’s a one-two punch that could cause even more deaths and has the potential to overwhelm health care systems. More from VOA’s Carol Pearson.PRODUCER: Jon Spier 
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