More manatees have died already this year than in any other year in Florida’s recorded history, primarily from starvation due to the loss of seagrass beds, state officials said.The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that 841 manatee deaths were recorded between Jan. 1 and July 2, breaking the previous record of 830 that died in 2013 because of an outbreak of toxic red tide.The TCPalm website reports that more than half the deaths have died in the Indian River Lagoon and its surrounding areas in Volusia, Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie and Martin counties along Florida’s Atlantic coast. The overwhelming majority of deaths have been in Brevard, where 312 manatees have perished.Some biologists believe water pollution is killing the seagrass beds in the area.“Unprecedented manatee mortality due to starvation was documented on the Atlantic coast this past winter and spring,” Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute wrote as it announced the record Friday. “Most deaths occurred during the colder months when manatees migrated to and through the Indian River Lagoon, where the majority of seagrass has died off.”Boat strikes are also a major cause of manatee deaths, killing at least 63 this year.The manatee was once classified as endangered by the federal government, but it was reclassified as threatened in 2017. Environmentalists are asking that the animal again be considered endangered.The federal government says approximately 6,300 manatees live in Florida waters, up from about 1,300 in the early 1990s. 
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As the United Nations marks World Population Day on July 11, its experts say there is no perfect population number and that human innovation will continue to manage and outpace the growth in the number of humans living on the planet. VOA’s Laurel Bowman has more.
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Thrill-seeking billionaire Richard Branson strapped in and set off Sunday on his boldest adventure yet — a bid to reach space aboard his own winged rocket ship. A successful flight would vault the nearly 71-year-old Branson past fellow billionaire and rival Jeff Bezos, who is planning to fly to space in a craft of his own nine days from now. With a crowd of more than 500 people watching, a twin-fuselage aircraft with Branson’s space plane attached underneath took off in the first stage of the flight. Aboard were Branson and five crewmates from his Virgin Galactic space-tourism company. The plan was for the space plane to detach from the mother ship at an altitude of about 8 miles (13 kilometers), fire its rocket engine and then pierce the edge of space at about 55 miles (88 kilometers) up. After a few minutes of weightlessness for the crew, the space plane was supposed to glide to a runway landing. The flight was intended as a confidence-boosting plug for Virgin Galactic, which plans to start taking paying customers on joyrides next year. “It’s a beautiful day to go to space,” Branson tweeted in the morning, posting a photo of himself with fellow billionaire and space-tourism rival Elon Musk. Branson, the flamboyant, London-born founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, wasn’t supposed to fly until later this summer. But he assigned himself to an earlier flight after Bezos announced plans to ride his own rocket ship into space from Texas on July 20. More than 600 people have already made reservations for a ride into space with Virgin Galactic, founded in 2004. Bezos’ Blue Origin has yet to open ticket sales or even announce prices, but late last week boasted via Twitter that it would take clients higher and offer bigger windows. Unlike Blue Origin and Musk’s SpaceX both launch capsules atop rockets. Virgin Galactic made three previous test flights into space with a crew.  
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In Malawi, a survey by the Ministry of Health to help ascertain the efficacy of AstraZeneca vaccine has shown its effectiveness in fighting the coronavirus. The survey was based on current hospital admissions of COVID-19 patients across the country.The preliminary results of the findings released Saturday were based on COVID-19 admissions between June 26 and July 8 of this year.   Image of the preliminary findings of the survey by Malawi Ministry of Health. (Courtesy: Malawi Ministry of Health)These results show that over 80% of 227 COVID-19 patients admitted during the period were those not vaccinated.   And those who have only had one AstraZeneca jab were 12% while those fully vaccinated only accounted for 4%.   The secretary of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Charles Mwansambo, says it’s still too early to measure the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine based on these findings. “We are still vaccinating more and presently our vaccination status is still low. But what we have found out so far is that the majority of those that are coming in those that are not vaccinated,” he said. 
 
However, he says the findings would help end fears and doubts some Malawians had over the vaccine, which prevented them from getting vaccinated. Malawi has currently vaccinated about 400,000 people of the 11 million needed to reach herd immunity.   “So we encourage more people to come for vaccination because obviously this is strongly putting a case for vaccination. So I encourage citizens to make sure that they come for vaccination,” said Mwansambo.  In May, Malawi destroyed about 20,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine which had expired. The incineration was largely because many Malawians were reluctant to be vaccinated over concerns on the vaccine’s safety and efficacy. Lydia Kamwana, a baker in Blantyre, said the survey is a wake-up call to her. “I haven’t been vaccinated,” she said. “I really wanted to go for the jab but then I was so scared. And when I saw those findings, the results are making sense and I am convinced I will get the jab once the vaccine is in stock.” Maziko Matemba is the national community ambassador for health in Malawi. He welcomes the survey findings but he says the government is now responsible to ensure it has enough vaccine for its people. “As you know, this is one or less than one percent of the population which has been vaccinated. So the bigger population is not well vaccinated,” he said.However, Mwansambo said Malawi is expected to receive a donation of 192,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines Thursday to restock its vaccination centers, which ran out of vaccine mid-June.   
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British billionaire Richard Branson was due on Sunday to climb into his Virgin Galactic passenger rocket plane and soar more than 50 miles above the New Mexico desert in the vehicle’s first fully crewed test flight to the edge of space. Branson, one of six Virgin Galactic Holding Inc. employees strapping in for the ride, has touted the flight as a precursor to a new era of space tourism, with the company he founded poised to begin commercial operations next year. A discount travel service it is not. But demand is apparently strong, with several hundred wealthy would-be citizen astronauts already having booked reservations, priced at around $250,000 per ticket.   The Swiss-based investment bank UBS has estimated the potential value of the space tourism market reaching $3 billion annually by 2030. Proving rocket travel safe for the general public is key, given the inherent dangers of spaceflight. An earlier prototype of the Virgin Galactic rocket plane crashed during a test flight over California’s Mojave Desert in 2014, killing one pilot and seriously injuring another. Branson’s participation in Sunday’s flight, announced just over a week ago, is in keeping with his persona as the daredevil executive whose Virgin brands — from airlines to music companies — have long been associated with ocean-crossing exploits in sailboats and hot-air balloons. His ride-along also upstages rival astro-tourism venture Blue Origin and its founder, Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos, in what has been popularized as the “billionaire space race.” Bezos has been planning to fly aboard his own suborbital rocket ship, the New Shepard, later this month.   Branson, a week away from his 71st birthday, has insisted he and Bezos are friendly rivals and not engaged in a personal contest to beat one another into space. A third player, fellow billionaire proprietor Elon Musk’s SpaceX, plans to send its first all-civilian crew (without Musk) into orbit in September, after having already launched numerous cargo payloads and astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA. The launch of Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity rocket plane on Sunday will mark the company’s 22nd test flight of its SpaceShipTwo system, and its fourth crewed mission beyond Earth’s atmosphere. But it will be the first to carry a full compliment of space travelers – two pilots and four “mission specialists,” Branson among them. Weather permitting, the gleaming white spaceplane will take off at around 0900 ET (1300 GMT) on Sunday attached to the underside of the twin-fuselage carrier jet VMS Eve — named for Branson’s mother — from Spaceport America near the aptly named New Mexico town of Truth or Consequences. Virgin Galactic occupies a large section of that facility, about 75 miles (120 km) north of Las Cruces. Separating from the carrier jet at an altitude of 50,000 feet, Unity’s pilots will ignite its rocket engine to send the spaceplane streaking in a near-vertical climb to the blackness of space some 55 miles high, where the crew will experience about 4 minutes of microgravity. The vehicle’s engine will then be shut down, and the craft will be shifted into re-entry mode and make a gliding descent to a runway at the spaceport. The entire flight, from takeoff to landing, should take about 90 minutes.   Branson’s official role is to “evaluate the private astronaut experience,” and his observations will be used to “enhance the journey for all future astronaut customers,” according to Virgin’s press materials. The spaceplane’s two pilots, Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, will control the ignition and shutoff of the ship’s rocket engine, and activate the vehicle’s “feathered” tail maneuver for re-entry. The three other mission specialists are Beth Moses, the company’s chief astronaut instructor; Virgin Galactic’s lead operations engineer Colin Bennett; and Sirisha Bandla, a research operations and government affairs vice president.   Assuming the mission goes well, Virgin has plans for two further test flights of the spaceplane before beginning commercial service in 2022. 
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A Northern California wildfire exploding through bone-dry timber prompted Nevada authorities to evacuate a border-area community as flames leapt on ridgetops of nearby mountains.The Beckwourth Complex — a merging of two lightning-caused fires — headed into Saturday showing no sign of slowing its rush northeast from the Sierra Nevada forest region after doubling in size only a few days earlier.The fire was one of several threatening homes across Western states that are expected to see triple-digit heat through the weekend as a high-pressure zone blankets the region.On Friday, Death Valley National Park in California recorded a staggering high of 54.4 Celsius. If verified, it would be the hottest high recorded there since July 1913, when the same Furnace Creek desert area hit 56.6 degrees Celsius, considered the highest reliably measured temperature on Earth.California’s northern mountain areas already have seen several large fires that have destroyed more than a dozen homes. Although there are no confirmed reports of building damage, the fire prompted evacuation orders or warnings for hundreds of homes and several campgrounds in California along with the closure of nearly 518 square kilometers of Plumas National Forest.Firefighters work to stop the Sugar Fire, part of the Beckwourth Complex Fire, from spreading near Frenchman Lake in Plumas National Forest, Calif., on July 8, 2021.On Friday, ridgetop winds up to 32.2 kph combined with ferocious heat as the fire raged through bone-dry pine, fir and chaparral. As the fire’s northeastern flank raged near the border, the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office asked people to evacuate some areas in the rural communities of Ranch Haven and Flanagan Flats, north of Reno.”Evacuate now,” a sheriff’s Office tweet said.Hot rising air formed a gigantic, smoky pyrocumulus cloud that reached thousands of feet high and created its own lightning, fire information officer Lisa Cox said Friday evening.Spot fires caused by embers leapt up to 1.6 kilometers ahead of the northeastern flank — too far for firefighters to safely battle, and winds funneled the fire up draws and canyons full of dry fuel, where “it can actually pick up speed,” Cox said.Nearly 1,000 firefighters were aided by aircraft but the blaze was expected to continue forging ahead because of the heat and low humidity that dried out vegetation. The air was so dry that some of the water dropped by aircraft evaporated before reaching the ground, Cox said.”We’re expecting more of the same the day after and the day after and the day after,” Cox said.The blaze, which was only 11% contained, officially had blackened more than 98 square kilometers but that figure was expected to increase dramatically when fire officials were able to make better observations.Meanwhile, other fires were burning in Oregon, Arizona and Idaho.Firefighter Kyle Jacobson monitors the Sugar Fire, part of the Beckwourth Complex Fire, burning in Plumas National Forest, Calif., on July 9, 2021.In Oregon, pushed by strong winds, a wildfire in Klamath County grew from nearly 67 square kilometers Thursday to nearly 158 square kilometers on Friday in the Fremont-Winema National Forest and on private land. An evacuation order was issued for people in certain areas north of Beatty and near Sprague River.That fire was threatening transmission lines that send electricity to California, which along with expected heat-related demand prompted California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday to issue an emergency proclamation suspending some rules to allow for more power capacity.The state’s electrical grid operator also issued a statewide Flex Alert from 4-9 p.m. Saturday, calling for consumers to voluntarily conserve electricity by reducing the use of appliances and keeping the thermostat higher during evening hours when solar energy is diminished or no longer available.In north-central Arizona, increased humidity slowed a big wildfire that posed a threat to the rural community of Crown King. The 63.5-square-kilometer lightning-caused fire in Yavapai County was 29% contained. Recent rains allowed five national forests and state land managers to lift public-access closures.In Idaho, Gov. Brad Little declared a wildfire emergency Friday and mobilized the state’s National Guard to help fight fires sparked after lightning storms swept across the drought-stricken region.Fire crews in north-central Idaho were facing extreme conditions and gusts as they fought two wildfires covering a combined 50.5 square kilometers. The blazes threatened homes and forced evacuations in the tiny, remote community of Dixie about 64 kilometers southeast of Grangeville.
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A new type of malaria vaccine is showing promise in FILE – A worker sprays insecticide for mosquitoes at a village in Bangkok, Thailand, Dec. 12, 2017.”Malaria has been a really tricky infection to make a vaccine against,” said Alexis Kaushansky, a malaria researcher at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Research Institute who was not involved in the new study. “I think this vaccine is really exciting and promising.” ‘A game changer’ Earlier studies have shown that people can develop immunity to malaria, but it requires exposure to many more parasites than mosquito bites deliver. The new vaccine, developed by biotechnology company Sanaria, involves directly injecting large doses of parasites and administering antimalarial drugs to prevent patients from getting sick. Mass producing enough parasites for a vaccine is a challenge, however. Over many years, Sanaria developed a process to grow, feed and extract parasites from large numbers of mosquitoes at its facility. Sanaria’s manufacturing process has made it possible to test this type of vaccine made of live, purified parasites, said Patrick Duffy, an internal medicine physician at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a co-author of the study. “That’s been a game changer.” FILE – A woman carrying a baby holds a treated mosquito net during a malaria prevention action at Ajah in Eti Osa East district of Lagos, Nigeria, April 21, 2016.In the latest clinical trial on a small number of volunteers, at least 77.8% of the participants who received the vaccine with chloroquine or pyrimethamine were protected against infections three months later. “We were pretty amazed at the protection,” Duffy said. The vaccine also protected participants from both the African strain of the parasite used to make the vaccine and a different South American strain. These results mean that the vaccine could potentially provide broad protection beyond just a single strain or even similar strains of malaria parasites, according to the authors. “That’s really different than what previous trials have shown, so that’s super encouraging,” added Kaushansky. Other vaccines Another malaria vaccine known as RTS,S, or Mosquirix, is undergoing a large-scale pilot program in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. Previous clinical trials showed that RTS,S prevented about 39% of cases of malaria in young children in several sub-Saharan African countries over four years.  Another vaccine by the University of Oxford, R21, is also starting larger-scale trials after early studies showed the vaccine to be up to 77% effective. Both RTS,S and R21 rely on administering a protein that’s part of the parasite to build up a person’s immunity rather than the whole, live parasites that the Sanaria vaccine in this study uses. The Sanaria vaccine has started the second of three stages of clinical trials in Mali, where malaria is the leading cause of disease and death. While she is hopeful, Kaushansky said that the process of harvesting parasites from mosquitoes may encounter hurdles when scaling up manufacturing. Malaria vaccines also often run into challenges when switching from early, carefully controlled trials with participants who have never had malaria before to populations that have already experienced high rates of malaria.  “I think we’re all excited to see how the next round of trials play out and to see if it will protect people who are highest at risk,” Kaushansky said. 
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The acting head of the Food and Drug Administration on Friday called for a government investigation into highly unusual contacts between her agency’s drug reviewers and the maker of a controversial new Alzheimer’s drug. Dr. Janet Woodcock announced the extraordinary step via Twitter. It’s the latest fallout over last month’s approval of Aduhelm, an expensive and unproven therapy that the agency OK’d against the advice of its own outside experts. Woodcock made the request to the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general, the watchdog agency that oversees the FDA and other federal health agencies. The move comes after numerous calls for a probe into the approval from medical experts, consumer advocates and members of Congress. Two congressional committees have already launched their own review. The FDA’s Janet Woodcock speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration building on June 14, 2011.”We believe an independent assessment is the best manner in which to determine whether any interactions that occurred between the manufacturer and the agency’s review staff were inconsistent with FDA’s policies and procedures,” Woodcock wrote on Twitter. Biogen pledged to cooperate with the inquiry. Last month, the health news site Stat reported on the unusually close collaboration between Aduhelm drugmaker Biogen and FDA staff. In particular, the site reported an “off-the-books” meeting in May 2019 between a top Biogen executive and the FDA’s lead reviewer for Alzheimer’s drugs. The meeting came after Biogen stopped two studies because the drug didn’t seem to slow the disease as intended. Biogen and the FDA began reanalyzing the data together, concluding the drug may actually work. The collaboration ultimately led to the drug’s conditional approval two years later, on the basis that it reduced a buildup of sticky plaque in the brain that is thought to play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. FDA interactions with drug industry staff are tightly controlled and almost always carefully documented. It’s unclear if the May 2019 meeting violated agency rules. When Biogen and FDA brought the drug before the FDA’s panel of outside advisers in November, the group was nearly unanimous in urging its rejection.  The FDA isn’t required to follow the group’s advice. And the FDA lead staff reviewer — who had been working with Biogen for months on the drug’s data — called it “exceptionally persuasive,” “strongly positive” and “robust.” Backlash from decisionThe consumer advocacy group Public Citizen called for an investigation into the collaboration after the November advisory meeting. The group’s health director, Dr. Michael Carome, welcomed Woodcock’s request for an inquiry. “We’re pleased to see that belatedly she has made this request that should have been made months ago,” Carome said. “The signs of an inappropriate collaboration have been clear to us since November.” The FDA has faced intense backlash since approving the drug, which costs $56,000 a year and requires monthly IVs.  Three of the FDA advisers who opposed the drug resigned over the decision. Among other issues, they protested that the agency did not disclose that it was considering approving the drug on a conditional basis, based on its effect on brain plaque, rather than any actual benefit to patients. Aduhelm is the first Alzheimer’s drug approved in that manner. “I think all the different parts of the decision are worthwhile for an independent investigation,” said Harvard University researcher Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, one of the three advisers who resigned. “The trust that we have in FDA’s ability to make independent decisions is very important.” New labelOn Thursday, the FDA took the unusual step of vastly scaling back prescribing information on the drug. The agency and Biogen announced the new label would recommend that it only be given to patients with mild or early-stage Alzheimer’s. That came after many doctors criticized the original label as too broad, because it said the drug could be given to anyone with Alzheimer’s. Aduhelm hasn’t been shown to reverse or significantly slow the disease. But the FDA said that its ability to reduce clumps of plaque in the brain is likely to slow dementia. More than two dozen other drugs have previously tried that approach without yielding positive results. Biogen is required to conduct a follow-up study to definitively answer whether it really works. Other Alzheimer’s drugs only temporarily ease symptoms. Woodcock has been serving as the agency’s acting commissioner since January. Previously she spent more than 25 years directing the agency’s drug center. While widely respected among government and drug industry circles, she has also been criticized for often pushing aggressively to approve new therapies, even when their benefits aren’t certain.  
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Authorities in India’s southern Kerala region have issued a statewide alert after a case of the Zika virus was confirmed, officials said Friday.
 
A further 13 suspected cases were being investigated, state health minister Veena George said.
 
A 24-year-old pregnant woman was found to be infected with the mosquito-borne disease and was undergoing treatment at a hospital in Thiruvananthapuram city.
 
Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable and can transmit the infection to their newborns, which can result in life-altering conditions such as Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare auto-immune disease.
 
Samples from the 13 suspected cases have been sent for further investigation to a lab in Pune, the minister added.
 
Zika is mostly spread through the bite of the Aedes mosquito but can also be sexually transmitted, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
 
The virus was first discovered in monkeys in Uganda’s Zika forest in 1947 and has caused several outbreaks across the world in recent decades.
 
No vaccines or anti-viral drugs are available as prevention or cure.
 
Symptoms include fever, skin rashes, conjunctivitis and muscle and joint pain, but fatalities are rare.
 
Officials said the infected woman had showed symptoms including fever, headache and rashes before being admitted to a hospital, where she safely delivered a baby on Wednesday.
 
Health teams have been assigned to the area to monitor for any further cases.
 
India also saw Zika outbreaks in 2017 and 2018, with hundreds of cases reported in western Gujarat and Rajasthan as well as central Madhya Pradesh state, but the latest infection is the first in Kerala.
 
The state is currently a battling a surge in COVID-19 cases, with more than 13,000 infections recorded on Friday, the highest number of any Indian state.
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As Indonesia deals with a surge in COVID-19 cases, the Biden administration is sending three million doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine to the country on July 9, a senior administration official tells VOA. The shipment is one of the largest batches the U.S. has donated, the official said. In total, the U.S. has allocated four million doses for Indonesia, with the remaining one million doses to be shipped “soon.”The administration is also sending 500,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Moldova, the first batch of U.S. vaccine shared with Europe. A woman receives a shot of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine during a mass vaccination at Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia, June 26, 2021.Indonesia surge Indonesia is battling a record-breaking surge in new cases and deaths, due to the highly contagious delta variant. “We recognize the difficult situation Indonesia currently finds itself in with a surge of COVID-19 cases,” said the Biden administration official. “Our thoughts are with all those in Indonesia affected by this surge. We support the Indonesian people as they fight this surge and are doing everything we can to help them in this time of need.” During a Friday press conference, Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi confirmed the shipment.“This is the first shipment through the COVAX mechanism,” Marsudi said, referring to the United Nations vaccine sharing mechanism.Indonesia relies heavily on Chinese vaccines, with only about 5% of its population fully vaccinated. The country has procured 108.5 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine but is seeing rising infections among medical workers fully vaccinated with it.After several fully inoculated medical personnel died from COVID-19, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said on Friday the government would give 1.47 million health workers an extra shot using the Moderna vaccine.”The third jab will only be given to health workers, because health workers are the ones who are exposed to high levels of virus every day,” he told a press conference. “They must be protected at all costs.”The Indonesian government authorized the Moderna vaccine for emergency use last week.People line up to get vaccinated with the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine during a mass vaccination at Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia, June 26, 2021.Broader COVID-19 response efforts The senior White House official said that in addition to vaccines, the administration is moving forward on plans to increase assistance for Indonesia’s broader COVID-19 response efforts. “To date, we have provided more than $14.5 million in direct COVID-19 relief to Indonesia, including $3.5 million to help vaccinate Indonesians quickly and safely,” the official said.  The official added that support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, has also provided Jakarta with public health education, trained thousands of health workers, funded a national COVID-19 information website that has reached more than 36 million people, and donated COVID-19 testing equipment, 1,000 ventilators, and nearly 2,000 handwashing stations.The four-million-dose vaccine shipment to Indonesia is part of the 80 million doses the U.S. has allocated to help countries in need, on top of the 500 million doses it has committed to COVAX. Activists say it is not enough. “We need far more from the United States and other countries that have surpluses to share,” said Tom Hart, acting CEO of the ONE Campaign, a nonprofit group that fights global poverty and disease. According to CDC data, most U.S. states have administered at least 75 percent of their first vaccine dose.  Hart pointed out that in some countries, less than one percent of people have received a COVID-19 vaccine. “We have locked up in the United States and the G-7 and other EU countries, the global supply of the very thing to end this pandemic,” said Hart. “And so far, not sharing at nearly the pace or scale that we need to reach what’s the global herd immunity that will make all of us safe.”Eva Mazrieva contributed to this report, which includes some information from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Vietnam enacted on Friday a two-week lockdown on movement in Ho Chi Minh City to battle a growing outbreak of the coronavirus.Hanoi also announced plans to vaccinate 50% of the population age 18 and older by the end of the year and set a goal of 70% of its population vaccinated by next March.”Vaccination against COVID-19 is a necessary and important measure to contain the disease and ensure socio-economic development,” the Health Ministry said in a statement, according to Agence France-Presse.The country of 100 million had registered fewer than 3,000 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, as of April. As of Friday, Vietnam had 24,810 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 104 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center.Vietnam has administered about 4 million vaccine doses, with about 240,000 people fully vaccinated – 0.25% of the population, according to Johns Hopkins’ Vaccine Tracker.The 9 million residents of Ho Chi Minh City, the country’s economic hub, are barred from gathering in groups larger than two people and are allowed to leave their homes for the next two weeks only in cases of emergency or to buy food or medicine.Meanwhile, Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said the South Pacific nation would make it compulsory for residents to become vaccinated against the coronavirus.”No jabs, no job — that is what the science tells us is safest and that is now the policy of the government and enforced through law,” Bainimarama said in a national address late Thursday, according to an AFP report.Fiji, which has a population of about 900,000, has been battling an outbreak of the delta variant of the coronavirus since April.Until April, Fiji had recorded no confirmed cases of the virus in a year, AFP reported. As of Friday, the country had recorded 8,661 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 48 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.The prime minister said all public servants would be forced to take leave if they failed to receive their first vaccination by Aug. 15 and would be dismissed if they failed to receive their second dose by Nov. 1. Private sector employees would need to have a first vaccination by Aug. 1 or face hefty fines and companies were threatened with being shuttered, the AFP report said.People wearing face masks as a precaution against the coronavirus wait to receive the second dose of the vaccine as an elderly woman pleads with a policeman to let her ahead of others at a public health center in Hyderabad, India, July 9, 2021.So far, the nation has administered nearly 380,000 vaccinations, according to Johns Hopkins’ Vaccine Tracker.On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced the Olympic Games would continue under a coronavirus state of emergency that bans spectators from all Tokyo-based venues. The arenas in surrounding Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba would also be inaccessible to fans.“Taking into consideration the impact of the delta strain, and in order to prevent the resurgence of infections from spreading across the country, we need to step up virus prevention measures,” Suga said.The Olympics run from July 23 to Aug. 8, and the capital’s state of emergency is scheduled for July 23 to Aug. 22, lifting before the Paralympic Games open on August 24. Olympic and Tokyo officials said spectator capacity for the Paralympics would depend on future nationwide infection rates.This ban deals a significant blow to Olympic organizers expecting $800 million in ticket sales, and to the Japanese government, which spent $15.4 billion on the games.Meanwhile, the SEA Games Federation announced Thursday this year’s Southeast Asian Games has been postponed due to an increase of new infections in Vietnam, the host country. The regional games were scheduled to be held in the capital, Hanoi, and 11 other locations from Nov. 21 to Dec. 2.As the world surpassed 4 million coronavirus-related deaths earlier this week, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that millions more remain at risk “if the virus is allowed to spread like wildfire.”The head of the global body said in a written statement that most of the world is “still in the shadows” due to the inequitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccine between the world’s richest and poorest nations and the rapid global spread of the more contagious delta variant of COVID-19.Guterres called for the creation of an emergency task force, composed of vaccine-producing nations, the World Health Organization and global financial institutions, to implement a global vaccine plan that will at least double production of COVID-19 shots and ensure equitable distribution through the COVAX global vaccine sharing initiative.“Vaccine equity is the greatest immediate moral test of our times,” Guterres said, which he also called a “practical necessity.”“Until everyone is vaccinated, everyone is under threat,” he added.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center on Thursday reported 4,005,889 COVID-19 deaths out of 185.3 million total confirmed cases.The World Health Organization is urging nations to proceed with “extreme caution” as they ease or altogether end lockdowns and other restrictions in the face of a steady rise of new infections due to the delta variant.This report includes information from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Coronavirus infections are rising in Australia, despite a two-week-old lockdown intended to stop their spread. Officials are now focusing on how to enforce compliance with COVID-19 lockdown rules, particularly where such restrictions appear to be mostly ignored.Authorities have said that strict stay-at-home orders in some of Australia’s most ethnically diverse areas in Sydney have been widely flouted, although charities have said community health messages for some migrant groups have been inadequate.A major police operation is underway in parts of Sydney to ensure the rules are followed. Officers on horseback are expected to patrol main shopping areas.Senior commanders have denied the crackdown is targeting multicultural areas.Australian Prime Minister Prime Minister Scott Morrison said too many people have broken the rules.“We haven’t seen the compliance that has been necessary. It is important to get that compliance in place,” he said. “The virus does not move on its own. It moves by people moving the virus around, and that is why it is so important that the restrictions that have been put in place that are appropriate just need to be complied with.”Under Sydney’s lockdown, which is due to end on July 16, residents can only leave home to work, study, buy groceries, care for a relative or other dependent, or receive a COVID-19 vaccination.Starting Friday, people will only be able to exercise in groups of two and do so within 10 kilometers of their homes.The New South Wales chief health officer, Dr. Kerry Chant, urged residents to stay home.“People are looking at countries overseas where they are seeing people going about their work and pleasure in a sort of seminormal way, and I think that is really important to highlight. That is because those countries have got vaccination coverages for their adult population, and in some cases down in the childhood population, that is very different from our situation. We have only got 9% vaccination coverage.”Health officials have estimated there are 513 active coronavirus infections in Australia. Ninety–two patients are in the hospital.New South Wales, including the state capital, Sydney, recorded another 44 new infections Friday.Australia has recorded almost 31,000 COVID-19 cases and 910 deaths since the pandemic began.Its international borders remain closed to most foreign nationals. 
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