As the Australian state of Victoria enters its third day of a snap COVID-19 lockdown, the national medical association is calling for urgent changes to infection control in hotel quarantine.  Australian travelers returning from overseas must go into isolation for at least 14 days on arrival, but doctors are worried that the airborne transmission of the virus is not being taken seriously enough.   Biosecurity is a growing concern for Australia’s hotel quarantine system after new and highly contagious variants of COVID-19 were detected among returned travelers.   A five-day lockdown imposed in Victoria state Friday was in response to a cluster of infections at a hotel at Melbourne airport.  Infections were passed from passengers to staff, allowing the virus to spread into the community.  The lockdown was ordered to give contact tracers enough time to track known associates of those who have tested positive to the virus.    Doctors, however, believe that ventilation and personal protective equipment for hotel workers needs to be urgently reviewed.   Chris Moy, the federal vice president of the Australian Medical Association, says bio-security controls need to be tightened.   “Quarantine is our first and most important line of defense.  There have been holes punched in it, particularly with these new strains.  It is not just droplets’ spread, which is the big droplets which, you know, you just cough out.  It just stays quite local, to this airborne spread where essentially COVID can be taken up as a mist and stay in the air, and therefore be far more infectious for a long period of time,”  said Moy.  Victoria is in its third coronavirus lockdown since the pandemic began.     FILE – A business is chained and padlocked on the first day of a five-day lockdown implemented in the state of Victoria in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Melbourne, Australia, Feb. 13, 2021.More citizens are being allowed to return to New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, from Monday, but the Victorian government has suggested that repatriation flights be heavily restricted to curb the spread of new virus variants.  FILE – A mostly empty domestic terminal at Sydney Airport is seen after surrounding states shut their borders to New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 21, 2020.State premier Daniel Andrews said Australia had to have a “cold, hard discussion” about reducing international arrivals.   His comments have caused anger and dismay among thousands of Australians stranded overseas.   Foreign nationals were banned from Australia last March, but citizens and permanent residents can return.  They face mandatory quarantine on arrival and weekly quotas are limiting the number of travelers allowed home.   The government in Canberra has also announced it will stop quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders, after three COVID-19 cases were recorded in Auckland, which has been placed into a snap three-day lockdown.   Australia’s first shipment of the Pfizer vaccine has arrived, but federal authorities have conceded that its distribution across such a vast country would not be a flawless exercise.  A mass inoculation program is due to begin by the end of the month.   Australia has recorded just under 29,000 coronavirus cases since the pandemic began.  Across the Tasman Sea, New Zealand has detected about 2,200 infections.    
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Britain on Monday launched its quarantine program for travelers arriving from 33 “red list” countries determined to be a high risk for COVID-19, as part of its effort to keep variant strains of the coronavirus out of the country.  
 
Under the program, anyone legally entering the United Kingdom is required to spend 10 days quarantined in a hotel room. Arrivals from countries not on the red list are required to quarantine at home for 10 days and take two COVID-19 tests.  
 
Also Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would like to stick to his current plan to reopen schools in the country March 8, but said it will depend “on the data.” He noted infection rates were still very high in Britain, as is the death rate.    
 
Johnson said he wants to proceed cautiously with easing COVID-19 restrictions, so that once they are lifted, it will be “irreversible.”  
 
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe state media reported Monday the nation received its first doses of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine, donated from China. The report said Zimbabwe’s government has also purchased an additional 600,000 doses that are expected to arrive in the African nation next month. The amount is still far short of what it will need to inoculate the country’s population of 14 million.   
 
Israel has made great strides in inoculating its population against the coronavirus, but now that progress is being dramatically slowed by what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says is “the fake news and the superstitious and sometimes malicious beliefs that are planted in the public and on the internet.”  
 
The Associated Press reports Israel has increased its digital task force to counter the misinformation and the says Israel has also deployed DJs and offered free food to lure residents to vaccination venues.  
 
Researchers have found at least seven new coronavirus variants in the United States.  It is not immediately clear, however, if the U.S. variants are as highly contagious as the British and South African variants.   
 
The average number of confirmed, daily coronavirus cases in the U.S. has recently dropped below 100,000 for the first time in months.   However, the U.S. remains the country with the highest number of cases.   
 
There have been more than 108 million coronavirus infections worldwide.  The U.S. has more than 27 million, followed by India with 10.9 million and Brazil with 9.8 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the virus. 
Mental health professionals are warning about a mental health crisis among young people brought on by the pandemic.  Mental health experts say young people are experiencing loneliness and despair and some are contemplating suicide with all the upheavals the virus has brought to their young lives.  
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What happens after you received both doses of the COVID vaccine? Lesia Bakalets looked into how much life changes, if at all. Anna Rice narrates her story. 
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The World Health Organization says debilitating post-COVID-19 symptoms in patients will have an impact on global health because of the magnitude of the pandemic.  
The World Health Organization is conducting research into  why many people who are infected with COVID-19 continue to suffer from various disabling conditions for up to six months after they have had the illness.    The team lead of WHO’s Health Care Readiness Division, Janet Diaz, says some people with post-COVID-19 conditions, also known as “long COVID” have not been able to go back to work.  She says their incapacitating symptoms prolong their recovery period.   “Some of the more common symptoms of the post-COVID-19 condition can be fatigue, exertional malaise, and cognitive dysfunction.  Sometimes you may be hearing patients describing that as ‘brain fog.’  These are real,”  she said.  Other complications include shortness of breath, cough, and mental health and neurological complications.  Diaz says it is not clear which patients are most at risk of long COVID.  She says they range from patients who have been hospitalized and required intensive care treatment to those with mild illnesses who were treated in ambulatory outpatient settings.   She says researchers do not know why this is happening and are working hard to get the answers to the many questions surrounding this disease, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.   FILE – Health care workers help a woman as she is discharged from the El Salvador Hospital after surviving the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in San Salvador, El Salvador, Jan. 19, 2021.“We are concerned, obviously, with the numbers of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus. … We do not know how common it is or how uncommon it is.  But the numbers, just by the magnitude of the pandemic will impact health systems.  Again, the main message from us is prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2. So, the public health measures are the No. 1 intervention right now that we know will prevent this,” she said.     These measures include observing physical distancing, wearing a mask and handwashing.     WHO is calling for a coordinated global research response and the collection of as much standardized clinical data as possible to better understand the condition and learn how to better treat those afflicted with this complication.      
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There are 108.5 million global COVID-19 infections, Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday. The U.S. has the most cases at 27.5 million, followed by India with 10.9 million and Brazil with 9.8 million.The Telegraph newspaper reports British scientists are developing a universal vaccine that would combat all the variants of the coronavirus and could be available within a year.The British newspaper says scientists at the University of Nottingham are working on a vaccine that would target the core of virus instead of the spike protein that current vaccines focus on.Targeting the core alleviates the need to frequently adjust existing vaccines as the virus mutates.The Telegraph said proteins found in the core of the virus are far less likely to mutate, meaning the vaccine would protect against all current variants and would theoretically have greater longevity.A 58-year-old man in France is reported to be the first person infected for a second time with the highly contagious South African variant of the coronavirus.The man’s reinfection is “rare albeit probably underestimated,” according to the authors of an article in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal.New Zealand’s largest city in going into a three-day lockdown, the country’s first in six months. The shuttering of Auckland comes after the discovery of three family members – a father, mother and daughter – with COVID.The rest of the country will be on heightened restrictions.New Zealand is known for having have stamped out the local transmission of the coronavirus, but it regularly detects the virus in travelers to New Zealand who are then placed in quarantine.The mother in the New Zealand family with COVID works at a catering company that does laundry for airlines. Authorities are investigating whether there is a link to an infected passenger.Not all U.S. states are happy about President Joe Biden’s plan to establish 100 COVID vaccine inoculation sites around the country by the end of the month, according to an Associated Press report.The wire service reports that some states have learned that the sites do not come with additional vaccines but would pull vaccines from the state’s existing allocation.A spokesperson for Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said, “Up until now, we’ve been under the impression that these sites do not come with their own supply of vaccine — which is the principal thing we need more of, rather than more ways to distribute what we already have.”Adding to the confusion, AP reported that some states have been told by federal officials that the new sites would come with their own supply of vaccines.
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Azhoni Marina had witnessed the havoc wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic up close as she nursed patients in a COVID ward for seven months at New Delhi’s Indraprastha Apollo Hospital. As she waited after her night shift to get her first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, however, she was apprehensive.“I heard from so many people that there is lot of side effect, so actually I was a bit worried before I received the vaccine,” Marina said.However, a sense of relief washed over her when she did not suffer any aftereffects during the half-hour mandatory wait after she got the shot.“I am now waiting for my second dose,” she said, heading home.Unlike most countries, for India the challenge is not availability of vaccines as it rolls out a nationwide inoculation drive – there are millions of doses ready in the world’s largest vaccine-producing country.Since launching the program in mid-January, though, health officials have been battling to overcome “vaccine hesitancy” as people scheduled to take shots failed to show up at inoculation centers.The waning pandemic in India, health officials warn, has led to a sense of complacency about the need to get vaccines, while initial reports about possible side effects have raised doubts among some. That includes some of the country’s 30 million health and front-line workers, who are first in line to get the shots.At the Apollo Hospital, doctors ramped up the numbers of inoculations by stepping forward to take the vaccine to allay doubts — the daily numbers of inoculations have grown nearly threefold here.Nurse Azhino Marina is apprehensive as she waits for her COVID-19 vaccine shot at New Delhi’s Indraprastha Apollo Hospital. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)“People were a bit scared, they asked a lot of questions, we kept on answering their questions and then when they saw that vaccine is quite safe, this helped us in building confidence in vaccines,” said Sanjeev Sharma, a hospital clinical pharmacologist.From talks by senior doctors, to individual counseling sessions, to selfie points where those who get vaccinated take photos and upload them on social media, the Indian capital has launched several initiatives to persuade people to take the shots.For Rajesh Kumar Kohli, who worked in the COVID section of the Apollo Hospital for several weeks, getting the vaccine’s first dose brought huge relief.“Even if something happened to me, I will now be safe,” he said.However, the decreased sense of urgency about getting inoculated as India’s case numbers dip dramatically is posing a challenge. India is reporting about 12,000 infections a day, compared to about 90,000 at its peak in September.Indian cities such as New Delhi that were hot spots for the pandemic are fully open. Markets are buzzing, movie theaters and restaurants have opened, the streets are again crammed with vehicles.The government’s decision to administer a homegrown vaccine, Covaxin, before final trial results become available has also created doubts among some, even though health experts have been reiterating that it is both effective and safe, and leading doctors in the city have taken the shot to instill confidence. This is one of the two vaccines being used at inoculation centers.A health care worker in New Delhi gets a photo taken at a selfie point set up to encourage people to come forward to get inoculated. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)Several big Indian states, such as Tamil Nadu and Punjab, have vaccinated fewer than half of their health care workers who are due to be given shots.Health officials have been constantly reinforcing the message that only vaccinations will end the pandemic, saying the lower numbers present India a with window of opportunity to make sure it is not hit by a second wave, as many Western countries have been.“Where the footfall is not so good, we are organizing talks by senior consultants, we are involving local people and mobilizers to ask them to come to the centers,” said Dr. Pareejat Saurabh, an immunization officer in Delhi. Those steps have boosted numbers.India is expected to move to the next phase of its program next month, inoculating those over 50. This may pose greater challenges, though. Even in this vulnerable group, opinion on taking the vaccine is divided, with some saying they are anxiously awaiting their turn and others preferring to “wait and watch.”“Whenever my turn comes, I will take the vaccine,” said Veena Sawhney, shopping at a New Delhi market.A shop owner, Rajesh Mehta, however, was more cautious.“The old should take it. I want my mother to get it. But I am in no rush, my immunity is OK,” he told VOA.So far, more than 8 million people have been vaccinated – India says it has been the fastest to administer this many shots and plans to accelerate the drive in coming weeks.Given the massive scale of the task, though, the country with the second-highest number of infections after the United States could fall short of its target of reaching 300 million people, nearly one quarter of its population, by August.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered more than 50 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and delivered about 69.9 million doses.The tally of vaccine doses is for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET Saturday, the agency said.According to the tally posted on Friday, the agency had administered 48.4 million doses of the vaccines, and delivered about 69 million doses.The agency said about 37.1 million people had received one or more doses while more than 13 million people have got the second dose as of Saturday.About 5.7 million vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.   
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Four people have died of Ebola in Guinea in the first resurgence of the disease in five years, the country’s health minister said Saturday.Remy Lamah told AFP that officials were “really concerned” about the deaths, the first since a 2013-16 epidemic — which began in Guinea — left 11,300 dead across the region.One of the latest victims in Guinea was a nurse who fell ill in late January and was buried on February 1, National Health Security Agency head Sakoba Keita told local media.”Among those who took part in the burial, eight people showed symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding,” he said. Three died and four were in a hospital, he added.The four deaths from Ebola hemorrhagic fever occurred in the southeast region of Nzerekore, he said.Keita also told local media that one patient had “escaped” but had been found and hospitalized in the capital, Conakry. He confirmed the comments to AFP without giving further detail.The World Health Organization has eyed each new outbreak since 2016 with great concern, treating the most recent one in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an international health emergency.’Testing underway’Early Sunday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted that the U.N. health agency had been informed of two suspected cases of the deadly disease in Guinea.”Confirmatory testing underway,” the tweet said, adding that WHO’s regional and country offices were “supporting readiness and response efforts.”The DRC has faced several outbreaks of the illness, with the WHO on Thursday confirming a resurgence three months after authorities declared the end of the country’s latest outbreak.The country had declared the six-month epidemic over in November. It was the country’s 11th Ebola outbreak, claiming 55 lives out of 130 cases.The widespread use of vaccinations, which were administered to more than 40,000 people, helped curb the disease.The 2013-16 outbreak sped up the development of a vaccine against Ebola, with a global emergency stockpile of 500,000 doses planned to respond quickly to future outbreaks, the vaccine alliance Gavi said in January.  
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New research has shown that Australia is the “last stronghold on Earth” for four out of five threatened species of sawfish. With their serrated snouts, these predatory fish are one of the ocean’s most unusual and endangered animals.They have a snout, or rostrum, that looks like a hedge-trimmer or a chainsaw. Small electromagnetic sensors help the sawfish detect the heartbeat and movement of buried prey. They are generally unassuming creatures, but when threatened, the saw also serves as a weapon. They can grow up to 7 meters in length and move easily between fresh and salt water. In Australia, they’re found in Queensland, the Northern Territory and on the west coast.Around the world, they are hunted for their fins and other body parts, which are used in traditional medicines or sold as souvenirs. Habitat loss is a significant threat. So is entanglement in fishing nets as their serrated snout is easily caught up in the mesh.An international study published in the journal Science Advances, including research from Charles Darwin University in Australia’s Northern Territory, has found that sawfish are now extinct in more than 50 nations.Leonardo Guida is a shark scientist from the Australian Marine Conservation Society. He says sawfish have disappeared in many parts of the world.“Sawfish are facing the very real threat of global extinction because of overfishing and habitat destruction across the world,” he said. “So we know that in more than half of the countries that they live in, they are no longer found. That equates to about 55 out of 90 countries, and Australia is the lifeboat. It is the last place on Earth where we have chance to really save these species from global extinction.”New research has identified eight nations, including Tanzania, Brazil and Sri Lanka, where urgent action could help to save this unique species.Trade in sawfish is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, but deliberate and accidental killings still take place.
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The top public health agency in the U.S. said Friday that in-person schooling could resume safely with masks, social distancing and other strategies but that vaccination of teachers, while important, was not a prerequisite for reopening.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its long-awaited road map for getting students back to classrooms in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. But its guidance is just that — the agency cannot force schools to reopen, and agency officials were careful to say they were not calling for a mandate that all U.S. schools be reopened.Officials said there was strong evidence now that schools could reopen, especially at lower grade levels.The new guidance included many of the same measures previously backed by the CDC, but it suggested them more forcefully. It emphasized that all of the recommendations must be implemented strictly and consistently to keep schools safe. It also provided more detailed suggestions about what type of schooling should be offered given different levels of virus transmission, with differing advice for elementary, middle and high schools.Recommended measures included handwashing, disinfection of school facilities, diagnostic testing, and contact tracing to find new infections and separate infected people from others in a school. It was also more emphatic than past guidance about the need to wear masks in school.”We know that most clusters in the school setting have occurred when there are breaches in mask wearing,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, said in a call with reporters.FILE – Pre-kindergarten teacher Sarah McCarthy works with a student at Dawes Elementary in Chicago, Jan. 11, 2021.Extra ‘layer of protection’Although the guidance said vaccinating teachers should not be seen as a condition to reopen, Walensky said it could provide “an additional layer of protection.”The guidance was issued as President Joe Biden faces increasing pressure to deliver on his promise to get the majority of schools back to in-person teaching by the end of his first 100 days in office. The White House said this week that a national strategy would be guided by science.”This is free from political meddling,” Walensky said.There’s wide agreement that learning in the classroom is more effective and that students can face isolation and learning setbacks at home. But teachers unions in some areas say schools have failed to make buildings safe enough to return.CDC officials emphasized that in-person learning has not been identified as a substantial driver of coronavirus spread in U.S. communities, and that transmission among students is now considered relatively rare.The CDC also stressed that the safest way to open schools is by making sure there is as little disease in a community as possible. The agency urged local officials to assess whether a bad outbreak is occurring in a community when making decisions about sending adults and children in to schools.FILE – Students wear masks as they work in a fourth-grade classroom at Elk Ridge Elementary School in Buckley, Wash., Feb. 2, 2021.Chart offers guidanceThe guidance included a color-coded chart, from blue to red, on assessing community spread, including rates of new cases per 100,000 people and the percentage of positive tests.That said, high community transmission does not necessarily mean schools cannot be open — especially those at the elementary level. If school mitigation measures are strictly followed, the risk of spread in the schools should still be low, the guidance suggested.The document suggested that when things get risky, elementary schools could go hybrid, providing in-person instruction at least on some days, but that middle and high schools might go virtual.Biden has been caught between competing interests as he works to get students into classrooms without spurning the powerful teachers unions that helped get him elected. Critics say he has bowed to unions instead of taking more aggressive action on reopening.Unlike former President Donald Trump, who pressured schools to open and blasted the CDC for issuing guidance that he said was impractical, Biden has kept his distance from the CDC as it works on recommendations. Even after the CDC’s director recently said that vaccinations were not a prerequisite for reopening, the White House declined to take a firm stance on the question.No White House inputWhite House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that “no one on our senior staff” had seen the CDC guidelines ahead of their release. “I can assure you that the White House is not directing the CDC.”FILE – Paul Adamus, 7, waits at the bus stop for the first day of school in Dallas, Ga., Aug. 3, 2020.Getting students back into classrooms is seen as a key to getting parents back to work. As part of Biden’s coronavirus relief package, he’s calling for $130 billion to help schools update buildings, buy protective gear and enact other recommended safety measures.Biden’s national strategy says the administration “will also work with states and local school districts to support screening testing in schools, including working with states to ensure an adequate supply of test kits.”But the CDC guidance stops short of recommending testing, saying, “Some schools may also elect to use screening testing as a strategy to identify cases and prevent secondary transmission.”Some education leaders complained that CDC guidance provided under Trump did not go far enough and that information issued to schools was inconsistent. On masks, for example, it said face coverings were recommended if students could not be spaced 2 meters apart, but with social distancing, it said masks “may be considered.”Early concernsIn the early days of the U.S. epidemic, some health experts worried that schools might become cauldrons of coronavirus infection, with kids infecting each other and then spreading it to family members — as seems to be the case during cold and flu season.Those concerns were stoked by reports of an explosive outbreak in May at a high school in Israel, shortly after schools in that country reopened after a lockdown.But with the economy reeling after lockdowns of schools and businesses last spring, the Trump administration pushed hard for schools to reopen.In July, Trump accused the CDC of “asking schools to do very impractical things” in order to reopen. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos incorrectly said research showed there was no danger “in any way” if kids were in school, and Vice President Mike Pence promised that the CDC would issue new guidance.The CDC did post revised documents late that month that kept many of its earlier recommendations. But in response to reporters’ questions, CDC officials said that the decision on whether to send kids back to school really rested with parents. The agency also posted an introductory document — written by government officials outside the CDC — that stressed the potential risks of children not attending school.   
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In Malawi, health care workers have come under attack several times recently while trying to bury victims of COVID-19 without spreading the coronavirus.Health care workers now want a review of guidelines that say they should handle the burials.The incident happened Tuesday in Mchinji district in central Malawi where villagers threw stones at an ambulance carrying the dead body, in an effort to force the heath care workers to release the body for viewing.The pandemonium forced the heath care workers to return the body to the mortuary.This came a week after villagers in Zomba district in southern Malawi chased away health care workers who had come to bury a COVID-19 victim.They too claimed that their loved one died of other illnesses, not COVID-19, and demanded to bury the body themselves.Shouts Simeza is chairperson for the Human Resources for Health Coalition.He says if the attacks continue, the health care workers will refuse to bury any more bodies.“Because of harassment and abuse, we always leave in fear,” Simeza said. “If the situation continues, all of us heath care workers, we will withdraw ourselves from the service of escorting the remains of our brothers and sisters in the communities.”Families have argued they see no reason they can’t bury COVID-19 victims after health care workers disinfect the bodies. They say they believe the body is safe from coronavirus after disinfection.But Simeza says the health care workers are only following guidelines on how to bury the victims of COVID-19.“The guidelines still demand that the health workers should support in escorting and burying of remains for safety of the public,” Simeza said, “So, the direction now is to work on the guidelines, what we have at hand; review them. For that to be carried out, we will need to involve community so that they can appreciate the scourge.”In the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts warned that dead bodies were infectious, like bodies of those killed by the Ebola virus.More recently, however, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued a burial guide that said, “it is believed there is little risk of getting COVID-19 from a dead body.”The guide said the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, spreads mainly through droplets produced when a person coughs, sneezes or talks.Malawi has seen a surge in COVID-19 cases since November.Health authorities put the current average number of daily infections at 300 cases compared to 10 during the first wave of the pandemic.   
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