Nigerian authorities are stepping up efforts to vaccinate more people against COVID-19 after a slow rollout blamed on misinformation. Authorities aim to vaccinate over 80 million Nigerians by year’s end but are running far behind schedule. 
An Abuja vaccination center, which opened March 16, one week after Nigeria’s official vaccine rollout, vaccinates between 50 and 100 people daily. It is one of many vaccination locations in the Nigerian capital. Abuja resident Olu Agunbiade visited the center to get his first shot and says receiving the vaccine makes him feel safer.  “I can venture out into the world with a form of protection,” he told VOA. “I know that doesn’t mean I can’t still contract COVID, but at least I have antibodies, I can fight it.”  Nigeria received about 4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine early last month.  Authorities say they will vaccine around 80 million people by the end of the year, but so far, only about 1 million have received shots. Although authorities say more Nigerians are now getting vaccinated, Abuja Primary Healthcare Board Executive Secretary Ndeyo Iwot says vaccine hesitancy and misinformation about the coronavirus are to blame for the low numbers.  “There’s a very big problem. Now start from the beginning, how many people even believed that we have the pandemic here? And now you want to bring vaccine for what they did not believe in the first instance? We have a lot of work to do,” Iwot says.    Dr Ngong Cyprian receives his first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine from Dr Faisal Shuaib, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, in Abuja.As workaround, authorities are trying to increase vaccine awareness in communities, villages, and marketplaces.   Despite this, though, citizens like Richard Uka insist they will not get the vaccine. “To be sincere, I don’t think this is necessary, to me it’s not necessary,” Uka told VOA. “And I believe that in Nigeria nothing works. How do you think that that vaccine works or how do we know that it works?” Nigeria needs to vaccinate about 150 million citizens by next year to attain herd immunity.  Iwot, though, says getting adequate doses of vaccines may prove difficult.  “Looking at the pandemic situation in Europe, India and the U.S.A. and the U.K., some of them are experiencing the third and fourth spikes now and India that was giving us is also having spikes now. So many of the dosages they have will be consumed there,” Iwot told VOA.Very few African countries are able to manufacture the coronavirus vaccines, creating heavy dependence on foreign manufacturers.  The World Health Organization says the continent has so far received less than 2% of the global 690 million doses of the coronavirus vaccines. 
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The World Health Organization said Friday that COVID-19 cases are increasing globally at a worrying rate, with the number of new cases doubling each week, a pace approaching the highest rate of infection since the pandemic began.The WHO said Friday there were 541,960 new cases in the past week. On February 22 — the week new cases began to tick up after six weeks of decline – 194,469 new cases were reported.  At a virtual briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries that had avoided widespread infections are now seeing steep increases.  He pointed to Papua New Guinea, which, until the beginning of this year, had reported less than 900 cases and only nine deaths. The nation has now reported more than 9,300 cases and 82 deaths.  FILE – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, speaks in Geneva, Jan. 21, 2021.Tedros said that while that is a small number relative to other countries, the dramatic rate of new infections has the WHO very concerned about the potential for a larger epidemic in Papua New Guinea. He said the WHO began a vaccine rollout in the nation late last month and three emergency medical teams had arrived in the country this week from Australia, the United States and Germany.The WHO chief said Papua New Guinea is an excellent example of why vaccine equity is so important. The small south Pacific nation, just north of Australia, was able to keep the pandemic at bay for a long time, but eventually rising infections hit at a time of social restriction fatigue and low levels of immunity among the population and began to overwhelm a fragile health care system.Tedros said Papua New Guinea has relied on vaccine donations from Australia and the WHO-supported vaccine cooperative COVAX initiative for support.To date, COVAX has shipped about 40 million doses to more than 100 countries, or enough to protect about 0.25% of the world’s population.
 
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Nigerian authorities are stepping up efforts to vaccinate more people against COVID-19 after a slow rollout blamed on misinformation. Authorities aim to vaccinate over 80 million Nigerians by year’s end but are running far behind schedule. 
An Abuja vaccination center, which opened March 16, one week after Nigeria’s official vaccine rollout, vaccinates between 50 and 100 people daily. It is one of many vaccination locations in the Nigerian capital. Abuja resident Olu Agunbiade visited the center to get his first shot and says receiving the vaccine makes him feel safer.  “I can venture out into the world with a form of protection,” he told VOA. “I know that doesn’t mean I can’t still contract COVID, but at least I have antibodies, I can fight it.”  Nigeria received about 4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine early last month.  Authorities say they will vaccine around 80 million people by the end of the year, but so far, only about 1 million have received shots. Although authorities say more Nigerians are now getting vaccinated, Abuja Primary Healthcare Board Executive Secretary Ndeyo Iwot says vaccine hesitancy and misinformation about the coronavirus are to blame for the low numbers.  “There’s a very big problem. Now start from the beginning, how many people even believed that we have the pandemic here? And now you want to bring vaccine for what they did not believe in the first instance? We have a lot of work to do,” Iwot says.    Dr Ngong Cyprian receives his first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine from Dr Faisal Shuaib, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, in Abuja.As workaround, authorities are trying to increase vaccine awareness in communities, villages, and marketplaces.   Despite this, though, citizens like Richard Uka insist they will not get the vaccine. “To be sincere, I don’t think this is necessary, to me it’s not necessary,” Uka told VOA. “And I believe that in Nigeria nothing works. How do you think that that vaccine works or how do we know that it works?” Nigeria needs to vaccinate about 150 million citizens by next year to attain herd immunity.  Iwot, though, says getting adequate doses of vaccines may prove difficult.  “Looking at the pandemic situation in Europe, India and the U.S.A. and the U.K., some of them are experiencing the third and fourth spikes now and India that was giving us is also having spikes now. So many of the dosages they have will be consumed there,” Iwot told VOA.Very few African countries are able to manufacture the coronavirus vaccines, creating heavy dependence on foreign manufacturers.  The World Health Organization says the continent has so far received less than 2% of the global 690 million doses of the coronavirus vaccines. 
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One Tyrannosaurus rex seems scary enough. Now picture 2.5 billion of them. That’s how many of the fierce dinosaur king probably roamed Earth over the course of a couple million years, a new study finds.Using calculations based on body size, sexual maturity and the creatures’ energy needs, a team at the University of California, Berkeley figured out just how many T. rex lived over 127,000 generations, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science. It’s a first-of-its-kind number, but just an estimate with a margin of error that is the size of a T. rex.“That’s a lot of jaws,” said study lead author Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. “That’s a lot of teeth. That’s a lot of claws.”The species roamed North America for about 1.2 million to 3.6 million years, meaning the T. rex population density was small at any one moment. There would be about two in a place the size of the Washington, D.C., or 3,800 in California, the study said.“Probably like a lot of people, I literally did a double-take to make sure that my eyes hadn’t deceived me when I first read that 2.5 billion T. rexes have ever lived,” said Macalester College paleobiologist Kristi Curry Rogers, who wasn’t part of the study.Marshall said the estimate helps scientists figure the preservation rate of T. rex fossils and underscores how lucky the world is to know about them at all. About 100 or so T. rex fossils have been found — 32 of them with enough material to figure they are adults.If there were 2.5 million T. rex instead of 2.5 billion, we would probably have never known they existed, he said.Marshall’s team calculated the population by using a general biology rule of thumb that says the bigger the animal, the less dense its population. Then they added estimates of how much energy the carnivorous T. rex needed to stay alive — somewhere between a Komodo dragon and a lion. The more energy required, the less dense the population.They also factored in that the T. rex reached sexual maturity somewhere around 14 to 17 years old and lived at most 28 years.Given uncertainties in the creatures’ generation length, range and how long they roamed, the Berkeley team said the total population could be as little as 140 million or as much as 42 billion with 2.4 billion as the middle value.The science about the biggest land-living carnivores of all time is important, “but the truth, as I see it, is that this kind of thing is just very cool,” said Purdue University geology professor James Farlow.
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Health officials in India said they counted more than 200,000 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, an all-time daily high for the South Asian nation.The surge in cases has India scrambling to find hospital beds and oxygen. The escalating tally has also forced India, a major vaccine producer, to delay global shipments of COVID vaccines and instead redirect them for use at home.New Delhi health official S.K. Sarin, told the Associated Press that the case surge is “alarming.”Some public health officials also say they believe a Hindu festival at which hundreds of worshippers bathed in the Ganges, as well as recent political rallies, may have contributed to the landmark surge.More than 30% of U.S. adults, about 78.5 million, are fully vaccinated for COVID-19, according to new data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The CDC said 48% of adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, as have 80% of seniors, who are the most vulnerable to the harmful effects of the virus. Sixty-four percent of seniors are fully vaccinated.The CDC also reported about 5,800 so-called breakthrough cases of people who have been vaccinated but still contracted the virus.”All of the available vaccines have been proven effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalizations and deaths,” the agency said in a statement. “However, [as] with other vaccines, we expect thousands of vaccine breakthrough cases will occur, even though the vaccine is working as expected.”The CDC data come amid a temporary halt in administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.An independent panel of U.S. health experts is delaying a final decision about Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine as they get more information about the vaccine and possible links to a rare but dangerous blood clot.The CDC’s immunization advisory committee held an emergency meeting Wednesday, one day after the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration issued a joint statement recommending a pause after six women between 18 and 48 years of age developed blood clots known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis within six to 13 days after being inoculated. One of the women died, while another has been hospitalized in critical condition.The six cases are among more than 7 million Johnson & Johnson inoculations nationwide.Dr. Beth Bell, a global health expert at the University of Washington, was one of the members who argued in favor of gaining more information. But Bell called the blood-clotting incidents “a very rare event” and insisted she didn’t want to send a message “that there is something fundamentally wrong with this vaccine.”But the reports prompted the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Tuesday to announce it was delaying rollout of the vaccine in Europe, where vaccination efforts have been plagued by a shortage of vaccines and logistical problems, as well as the troubled rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has also been linked to cases of rare blood clots.Both the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were developed by using so-called adenoviruses to carry DNA into human cells that generates the body’s immune system to ward off the coronavirus.The issues with the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines led the European Union to announce Wednesday that 50 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine that it was initially slated to receive by the end of the year will be delivered by June, adding to the 200 million doses it was already expecting to receive by then.Despite the problems, there was some good news in Europe.COVID-19 cases are declining among Europeans 80 and older, and death rates in the age group are at the lowest level since the pandemic began, according to a World Health Organization official.Speaking Thursday during a virtual news briefing in Athens, WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge credited the improving trend to vaccination programs across the continent, which prioritized the elderly.But Kluge said that was the only silver lining to the otherwise serious COVID-19 situation facing Europe. He said the region is averaging 1.6 million new cases a week and more than 9,500 new cases per hour. Last week, Europe surpassed 1 million deaths since the pandemic began.The world is nearing 3 million deaths from COVID-19 out of 138.8 million confirmed total cases, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Many nations are seeing a new surge of the virus, which is throwing doubt and confusion over numerous planned events, including the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.Toshihiro Nikai, secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Thursday during a televised interview the Olympics should be canceled if the current wave of new infections grows out of control. His remarks came 99 days before the July 23 opening ceremony.With Tokyo and other parts of Japan under a state of emergency to quell a surge of new infections, public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Japanese believe the games should be postponed again or canceled.
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Zimbabwe’s government this month reported a major increase in teenage pregnancies in January and February.  Advocates are blaming the rise from previous years on coronavirus lockdowns and poverty. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare, Zimbabwe.Zimbabwe’s government says nearly 5,000 teenage girls became pregnant in January and February and about 1,800 entered early marriages during the same period.According to a government report, most of the girls live in poor suburbs such as Epworth, about 30 kilometers southeast of Harare.Here, since 2018, 17-year-old Natsiraishe Maritsa, founder of the Vulnerable Underaged People’s Auditorium Initiative, has been teaching her peers about the dangers of early pregnancy and early marriage.“I have realized that child marriages deprive the girl child of her rights,” she said. “And I have seen young girls diagnosed with fistula, I have seen young girls sink deep into poverty, I have seen young girls being abused because of child marriages. So, I realized that I had to stand up and fight for this noble cause.”She thinks karate lessons, among other activities, keep girls in this poor suburb occupied, including during the lockdowns.Sibusisiwe Bhuda-Masara, deputy chairperson of the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, in Zimbabwe in April 2021. (Columbus  Mavhunga/VOA)Sibusisiwe Bhuda-Masara, deputy chairperson of the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, said her group was “hurt” by the report, which was released by Sithembiso Nyoni, women’s affairs minister in Zimbabwe.Bhuda-Masara said stigma prevents young pregnant girls from going to school. She said preventing access to contraceptives by schoolchildren has not worked.“The only way for it is to allow those contraceptives to be distributed in schools,” she said. “Even the safe abortions, because we are trying to hide behind a finger. Our children are engaging in sex activities as early as 10 years. And why are we still not doing what other SADC [Southern African Development Community] countries have done? [In] South Africa it’s done legally. Those who can afford cross to South Africa and have their pregnancies terminated lawfully.”Maritsa disagrees, arguing Zimbabwe’s poverty rates and lack of education are fueling the sharp rise in the rates of teenage pregnancy and early marriage.
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It has been 30 years or so since residents in New Mexico’s largest city last saw their stretch of the Rio Grande go dry. There’s a possibility it could happen again this summer. Federal water managers released their annual operating plan for the Rio Grande on Thursday, and it doesn’t look good. Flows have been meager so far this year because of below-average snowpack in the mountains along the Colorado-New Mexico border that feed the river. Spring precipitation has done little to fill the void. Reservoirs are at a fraction of their capacity and continue to shrink. There is no opportunity to replenish them because the provisions of a water-sharing agreement with Texas prevent New Mexico from storing water upstream. That means the drought-stricken state has no extra water in the bank to fall back on, as it has had in previous years. Matters are further complicated because of extremely low soil moisture levels. That, along with warm temperatures, means much of the melting snow will be absorbed or evaporate before it reaches the river. The Rio Grande flows just south of Bernalillo, N.M., April 13, 2021.”Just low dismal numbers all around,” Ed Kandl, a hydrologist with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, said during a virtual meeting that included representatives from municipalities, tribal governments, irrigation districts, state agencies and a rafting company.  The Rio Grande is one of North America’s longest rivers and a major water source for millions of people and thousands of square miles of farmland in New Mexico, Texas and Mexico. The Bureau of Reclamation warned Thursday that a stellar monsoon season would be the only saving grace, but the odds of that happening are slim.  The Pecos River, which delivers water to parts of eastern New Mexico and West Texas, is in a similar situation, and federal officials recently issued a report indicating that releases on the Colorado River — which feeds several Western states — will continue to be limited because of the lack of water flowing into Lake Powell. So aside from residents in Albuquerque seeing sandbars take over the Rio Grande, farmers in central and southern New Mexico will have a shorter growing season with less water for crops.  It also means less water for the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow. Plans already are being made for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rescue fish from drying portions of the river. The rescue missions have become a regular practice in recent years. Near the small agricultural community of San Acacia, officials predicted that river drying would start in June and likely last through November, barring any relief from summer rains.  Last year was also tough, but officials said 2021 will likely mark one of the worst since the 1950s. They said the state’s largest reservoir — Elephant Butte in southern New Mexico — could drop to just 3% of capacity. Carolyn Donnelly, the bureau’s water operations supervisor for the area, said contractors will be monitoring the river for drying as far north as Albuquerque, and managers will try to stretch what little water they have as far as it can go. 
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Nigerian authorities are stepping up efforts to vaccinate more people against COVID-19 after a slow rollout blamed on misinformation. Authorities aim to vaccinate over 80 million Nigerians by year’s end but are running far behind schedule. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
Camera: Emekas Gibson
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An independent panel of U.S. health experts is delaying a final decision about Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine as they get more information about it and possible links to a very rare but dangerous blood clot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s immunization advisory committee held an emergency meeting Wednesday, one day after the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration issued a joint statement recommending a pause in the use of the one-dose vaccine after six women between 18 and 48 years old developed blood clots known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) within six to 13 days after being inoculated.  One of the women died, while another has been hospitalized in critical condition.    The six cases were among the more than 7 million people in the United States who have been inoculated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. FILE – A member of the Philadelphia Fire Department administers a COVID-19 vaccine, March 26, 2021.Dr. Beth Bell, a global health expert at the University of Washington, was one of the members who argued in favor of gaining more information.  But Bell called the blood clotting incidents “a very rare event” and insisted she didn’t want to send a message “that there is something fundamentally wrong with this vaccine.” Delays in EuropeBut the reports prompted the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Tuesday to announce it was delaying rollout in Europe, where vaccination efforts have been plagued by a shortage of vaccines and logistical problems, as well as the troubled rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has also been linked to cases of rare blood clots. Both the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were developed by using so-called adenoviruses to carry DNA into human cells that generates the body’s immune system to ward off the coronavirus.    People wait to receive a dose of AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine in Fasano, Italy, Apr. 13, 2020.The issues with the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines led the European Union to announce Wednesday that 50 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine that it was initially slated to receive by the end of the year will be delivered by June, adding to the 200 million doses it was already expecting to receive by then.  In a related matter, Denmark became the first country in the world on Wednesday to permanently stop administering the AstraZeneca vaccine because of the suspected blood clots, just a month after health officials suspended use of the two-shot regimen.   Tokyo Olympic Games   The world is nearing 3 million deaths from COVID-19 out of 138.2 million confirmed total cases, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.  Many nations are undergoing a new surge of the virus, which is throwing doubt and confusion over numerous planned events, including the upcoming Tokyo Olympic Games.   Passersby walk past a screen showing a countdown to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games that have been postponed to 2021 due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Tokyo, Japan, Apr. 4, 2021.Toshihiro Nikai, the secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Thursday during a televised interview the Olympics should be cancelled if the current wave of new infections grows out of control.  Nikai’s remarks came a day after Japan hit the milestone of  100 days before the July 23 official ceremony.   The Tokyo Olympics were scheduled for last July and August, but organizers and then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to postpone the event for a year as the novel coronavirus pandemic began spreading across the globe.  However, with Tokyo and other parts of Japan under a state of emergency to quell a surge of new infections, public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Japanese believe the games should be postponed again or canceled.   
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An independent panel of U.S. health experts is delaying a final decision about Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine as they get more information about it and possible links to a very rare but dangerous blood clot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s immunization advisory committee held an emergency meeting Wednesday, one day after the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration issued a joint statement recommending a pause in the use of the one-dose vaccine after six women between 18 and 48 years old developed blood clots known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) within six to 13 days after being inoculated.  One of the women died, while another has been hospitalized in critical condition.    The six cases were among the more than 7 million people in the United States who have been inoculated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. FILE – A member of the Philadelphia Fire Department administers a COVID-19 vaccine, March 26, 2021.Dr. Beth Bell, a global health expert at the University of Washington, was one of the members who argued in favor of gaining more information.  But Bell called the blood clotting incidents “a very rare event” and insisted she didn’t want to send a message “that there is something fundamentally wrong with this vaccine.” Delays in EuropeBut the reports prompted the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Tuesday to announce it was delaying rollout in Europe, where vaccination efforts have been plagued by a shortage of vaccines and logistical problems, as well as the troubled rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has also been linked to cases of rare blood clots. Both the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were developed by using so-called adenoviruses to carry DNA into human cells that generates the body’s immune system to ward off the coronavirus.    People wait to receive a dose of AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine in Fasano, Italy, Apr. 13, 2020.The issues with the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines led the European Union to announce Wednesday that 50 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine that it was initially slated to receive by the end of the year will be delivered by June, adding to the 200 million doses it was already expecting to receive by then.  In a related matter, Denmark became the first country in the world on Wednesday to permanently stop administering the AstraZeneca vaccine because of the suspected blood clots, just a month after health officials suspended use of the two-shot regimen.   Tokyo Olympic Games   The world is nearing 3 million deaths from COVID-19 out of 138.2 million confirmed total cases, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.  Many nations are undergoing a new surge of the virus, which is throwing doubt and confusion over numerous planned events, including the upcoming Tokyo Olympic Games.   Passersby walk past a screen showing a countdown to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games that have been postponed to 2021 due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Tokyo, Japan, Apr. 4, 2021.Toshihiro Nikai, the secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Thursday during a televised interview the Olympics should be cancelled if the current wave of new infections grows out of control.  Nikai’s remarks came a day after Japan hit the milestone of  100 days before the July 23 official ceremony.   The Tokyo Olympics were scheduled for last July and August, but organizers and then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to postpone the event for a year as the novel coronavirus pandemic began spreading across the globe.  However, with Tokyo and other parts of Japan under a state of emergency to quell a surge of new infections, public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Japanese believe the games should be postponed again or canceled.   
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Matchbox is launching a new series of toy cars based on real-life electric and hybrid vehicles, in a bid to make its miniatures more sustainable and to raise awareness among children of the environmental impact of motoring.The first model off the production line is a scaled-down version of the Tesla Roadster, which will be joined by toys based on cars made by Nissan, Toyota and BMW. Electric charging stations will also go on sale this year.”We are unveiling a concept car, just like the real car industry does,” said Nuria Alonso, head of Matchbox marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa.She added that it would be the first die-cast model made of 99% recycled materials.”We wanted to work with Tesla to inspire kids as the future drivers of tomorrow. We think their parents will love to see how their kids play with cars that encourage environmental consciousness, like electric cars.”The launch is part of an overhaul in Britain and Europe at Matchbox, which is owned by toymaker Mattel.The Matchbox brand was created nearly 70 years ago and sells more than 40 million die-cast vehicles each year. 
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Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege warned Wednesday that the scourge of sexual violence and rape in all conflicts is now “a real pandemic” and without sanctions and justice for the victims these horrific acts won’t stop.The Congolese doctor told the U.N. Security Council in a video briefing that “we are still far away from being able to draw a red line against the use of rape and sexual violence as a strategy of war domination and terror.”Mukwege appealed to the international community “to draw a red line against the use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war.” And he stressed that the “red line” must mean “blacklists with economic, financial and political sanctions as well as judicial prosecutions against the perpetrators and instigators of these egregious crimes.”Mukwege founded the Panzi Hospital in the eastern Congo city of Bukavu, and for more than 20 years has treated countless women who were raped amid fighting between armed groups seeking control of some the central African nation’s vast mineral wealth. He lamented that sexual violence and impunity continue.He shared the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize with activist Nadia Murad, who was kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery by Islamic State militants in 2014 along with an estimated 3,000 Yazidi girls and women.Mukwege said there has been progress in international law, and the greatest challenge today is to transform commitments into obligations, and Security Council resolutions into results. Accountability and justice “are the best tools of prevention,” he said, and without punishment and sanctions, rapes and sexual violence in conflicts will continue.Mukwege spoke at a council meeting on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ latest report on sexual violence in conflict that said the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in gender-based violence last year. It focused on 18 countries where the U.N. said it has verified information that 52 warring parties are “credibly suspected” of patterns of “rape and other forms of sexual violence” in conflicts on the council agenda. The majority of the parties are opposition, rebel and terrorist groups — so-called “non-state actors” — and over 70% “are persistent perpetrators.”In the latest example, Pramila Patten, the U.N. special representative on conflict-related sexual violence, told the council that right now in Ethiopia’s remote, mountainous regions of north and central Tigray, where fighting continues between the government and the region’s fugitive leaders, “women and girls are being subjected to sexual violence with a level of cruelty beyond comprehension.””Health care workers are documenting new cases of rape and gang-rape daily, despite their fear of reprisals and attacks on the limited shelters and clinics in operation,” Patten said, noting that the report records allegations of over 100 rape cases since fighting began in November but it may take months to determine the full scale and magnitude of the atrocities.She said the report documents “over 2,500 U.N.-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence committed in the course of 2020,” including in Congo, Central African Republic, Libya and South Sudan’s western Darfur region.”Each of these cases cries out for justice,” Patten said. “It is time to write a new social contract in which no military or political leader is above the law, and no woman or girl is beneath the scope of its protection.”Caroline Atim, director of the South Sudan Women with Disabilities Network who represented non-governmental organizations focused on women, peace and security, became the first deaf person to brief the Security Council. She used sign language for her remarks, which were voiced by an interpreter.Despite a 2018 peace deal, Atim said, “South Sudan remains engulfed by intercommunal, ethnic, political and armed conflicts where gender-based violence is deliberately used as a tool of humiliation against women and girls.””More than 65% of South Sudanese women have experienced sexual or physical violence, a figure that is double the global average and among the highest in the world,” she said, echoing calls for a halt to sexual violence, a survivor-centered approach for victims, and accountability for perpetrators.
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Kurdish officials in northeast Syria are expressing concerns over a sharp increase in coronavirus cases in their region, calling on international health organizations to intervene to prevent a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
 
A 10-day curfew went into effect Tuesday in an attempt to curb the spread of the deadly virus in the semiautonomous region, which is home to nearly 5 million people, including thousands of internally displaced people, refugees and prisoners of the Islamic State (IS) terror group, also known as ISIS or its Arabic acronym, Daesh.
 
“The situation is getting out of control,” said Jowan Mustafa, co-chair of the Health Department at the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES), a governing body affiliated with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
 
“In the past few weeks, we have witnessed a growing rate of COVID-19 cases in our region,” he told VOA by phone. “We need immediate assistance from international health organizations to stop a potential humanitarian catastrophe.”
 
On Wednesday alone, 248 new cases and five deaths were reported, bringing the total number of coronavirus infections in northeast Syria to 13,004, including 437 deaths.
 
Local health officials said the actual number of those infected with the virus could be much higher.
 
“Our testing capacity is very limited, and our hospitals and health facilities are overwhelmed,” said Mustafa, adding that “many people carrying the virus are staying at home without reporting to us.”
 Al-Hol camp
 
One in four COVID-19-related deaths confirmed on Tuesday occurred in al-Hol camp, where over 60,000 people reside, including thousands of families of IS foreign fighters.
 
Sheikhmous Ahmed, head of the Refugee Affairs Office at the AANES, said overpopulation and poor health infrastructure make camp residents more susceptible to the coronavirus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, the viral strain that causes COVID-19.  
 
“Given the current high number of COVID cases outside the camp, its spread could be much more rapid inside the camp,” Ahmed told VOA.
 
He said medical teams at al-Hol don’t have enough resources to contain a sudden outbreak of the virus.FILE – A member of Kurdish internal security stands guard at the Kurdish-run al-Hol camp, in northeastern Syria, Jan. 28, 2021.Philippe Nassif, Middle East and North Africa advocacy director at Amnesty International, said “in Syria, where over half the population has been displaced and tens of thousands remain in IDP camps in the northeast, the pandemic has taken a particularly heavy toll.”
 
“This includes prisons holding ISIS fighters, their families and other detainees creating a crisis within a crisis,” he said.
 
In addition to those held in al-Hol and other detention camps, the SDF says it holds more than 10,000 IS fighters, including about 2,000 foreign nationals.
 
“Amnesty International has profound concerns for the well-being of those held in detention, and for the hundreds of thousands of refugees and IDPs scattered across Syria and the region,” Nassif told VOA. “The world needs an urgent plan to help these vulnerable populations get vaccinated immediately.”
 Call for help  
 
Mustafa of AANES said the organization has reached out to international health bodies, including the World Health Organization, to take immediate action in this part of the war-ravaged country.  
 
“The WHO has said it would deliver a small number of vaccines to northeast Syria in April, but even that hasn’t happened yet,” he said, noting that “if we don’t receive immediate assistance from the WHO, then other non-governmental health groups should step in to help us stop this crisis.”  
 
 WHO said last month it will run a coronavirus vaccination campaign in Syria, with the goal of inoculating 20% of the country’s population by the end of 2021.  
 
WHO representative to Syria Akjemal Magtymova recently said only one of 16 public hospitals in the region is fully functioning, and three are partially functioning.
 
“It is a massive challenge to ensure the adequate number of hospital beds in intensive care units, in the wake of the third wave of COVID-19 in Syria,” she said in a statement, noting that “access to COVID-19 vaccines to reduce ongoing transmission is yet another mammoth task for Syria.” 
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South Africa’s health minister says the nation will still hit its COVID-19 vaccination targets, even as it pauses the use of the Johnson & Johnson shot amid concerns over blood clots. South Africa’s mass-inoculation campaign was dealt the setback following word that six women in the United States developed a blood clotting disorder after receiving the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. One person died. Nearly 7 million doses have been administered in the United States.    This is now the second time that South Africa has had to shift gears in its vaccination campaign. In February, just days after receiving its first shipment of vaccines, authorities jettisoned plans to use the AstraZeneca product amid reports that it did not protect against the variant of the coronavirus that is most prevalent in South Africa. The coronavirus causes the COVID-19 respiratory disease.    And now this, said Dr. Zweli Mkhize, the nation’s health minister. So far, he said, more than 290,000 South African health workers have been given the vaccine, with no reported blood clots. Nevertheless, he told officials, South Africa will pause the program until everyone is sure the vaccine is safe.       As COVID-19 Epicenter, South Africa to Receive 41 Million Vaccine DosesSouth Africa lauds arrival of tens of millions of doses; announces alcohol ban over major holiday weekend “Based on their advice, we’ve determined to voluntarily suspend our rollout until the causal relationship between the development of clots and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is sufficiently interrogated,” he said to parliamentarians via webinar on Wednesday. “… I call for calm and patience as we ensure that we continue to be properly guided by science and ensuring the safety of our people as we roll out the vaccine campaign.”     Mkhize says he hopes deliberations on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine’s safety will last only a few days and will not lead to complete withdrawal of the product.   He says the news about the vaccine is disappointing as mortality rates from the coronavirus appear to be declining, and South Africa will soon receive a total of 30 million doses of the two-shot Pfizer vaccine. South Africa has more than 1.5 million confirmed cases, giving it the highest burden on the continent.    But, he said, the bigger battle — the one he hasn’t been able to discuss until now — is the behind-the-scenes fight South African officials have waged with pharmaceutical giants. Both Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, he said, have asked for what he described as “difficult and unreasonable” guarantees from South Africa and other nations.    “I can also assure you that we have not been sleeping on the job,” he said. “The fact that we previously did not disclose before parliament the blow-by-blow details of the intense negotiations is because we’re prioritizing the closing of those agreements in order to secure the vaccines we require for us to reach population immunity.” 
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European Commission President Urusula Von der Leyen Wednesday announced the European Union has reached a deal with pharmaceutical partners Pfizer-BioNTech for 50 million additional doses of COVID-19 vaccine, to be delivered in the coming months.
At a news briefing in Brussels, Von der Leyen said the new deal means the EU will have obtained 250 million doses. She said the bloc is negotiating a third contract with the partners for 1.8 billion doses to be delivered in 2022 and 2023.  
She said the deal will “not only include the production of vaccines, but also the essential components. All of that will be based in the European Union.”
Von der Leyen said 100 million doses have been administered in the 27-nation EU bloc already, saying this is “a milestone we can be proud of.”   
But, noting issues with AstraZeneca, and this week, the Johnson & Johnson shots, the European Commission president said many factors can disrupt the planned delivery schedules of vaccines.
 
She said, “It is therefore important to act swiftly, anticipate, and adjust whenever it is possible, and we are doing everything in our power to support Europe’s vaccination rollout.”
Several European nations suspended administering the AstraZeneca vaccine after reports of rare cases of blood clots. Tuesday, U.S. health regulators recommended pausing inoculations with Johnson & Johnson’s product because of similar reports.
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Health care workers in Cameroon say they are reluctant to take the coronavirus vaccines donated by China because they doubt the drug’s efficacy. On Sunday, 200,000 Sinopharm doses arrived in Cameroon’s capital. Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute accepted the vaccine donation on behalf of President Paul Biya at Yaounde’s international airport, in a ceremony that was broadcast live on state radio and television.  However, the same day in Beijing, a Chinese official said Chinese vaccines provide low protection against the coronavirus and officials are looking for ways to boost the efficacy by mixing them, according to the Associated Press.  FILE – Empty vials of China’s Sinopharm vaccine sit in a cup at a public hospital in Lima, Peru, Feb. 10, 2021.In Cameroon, some health care workers are skeptical the Sinopharm vaccine is effective. “The government should have given more time for trials to be made to see if the side effects on Cameroonians are bearable or not,” said Honorine Aza, a nurse at the Messassi government hospital in Yaounde. “What is the need rushing with a vaccine to Cameroon on Sunday and asking health workers to be vaccinated immediately? I prefer other preventive methods like washing of hands with soap and water, wearing face masks, social distancing and avoiding overcrowded places.” Clementine Ndjock, 34, is the leader of the Association of Female Traders in Douala. She says several local news organizations like Cameroon state broadcaster CRTV, Canal 2 and Star FM have reported cases outside Cameroon of potentially serious side effects after taking the vaccine. She wants Cameroon and China to prove that the vaccine is safe. Cameroon Health Minister Manaouda Malachie was the first to get injected with the vaccine. He says the vaccine is safe and is encouraging everyone to get it voluntarily. While he says he understands that some people are scared because of reports that fake vaccines were discovered in China, he stressed that the vaccines in Cameroon were taken directly from the factory making them in China. Malachie says although there may be side effects, there is no scientific evidence of a death being causally linked with the coronavirus vaccine.  On Monday, Cameroon’s Medical Council said about 400 people — including 90 health workers — had received the Sinopharm vaccine.  The government had projected at least 1,000 to be vaccinated 24 hours after the doses arrived. 
 
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