Denmark Friday dropped proof-of-vaccination — or vaccine passports — requirements at nightclubs, the last of the European nation’s COVID-19 restrictions, after a successful vaccination program led to almost 87% of all adults being fully vaccinated.
The European Center for Disease Control says as of Friday, nearly 90% of adults in Denmark have at least one dose and nearly 70% of its entire population. 
 
Officials have been gradually lifting restrictions as vaccination levels increased, lifting mask requirements on public transportation August 14, and reopening nightclubs, lifting limits on public gatherings, and use of the vaccine passports at restaurants, sporting events and other venues September 1.  
Denmark’s health minister, Magnus Heunicke, said last month the epidemic appears to be under control but warned the government will act as needed if the situation deteriorates.
Face masks or shields are still mandatory at airports and people are advised to wear one when at the doctor’s, test centers or hospitals.
Distancing is still recommended, and strict entry restrictions still apply for non-citizens at the borders.
The outbreak is still considered “an ordinary dangerous illness” in Denmark.
 Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and AFP.
 
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The U.S. space agency on Friday will brief the media on the initial analysis of the first sample of a Martian rock collected by its Perseverance rover earlier this week. NASA confirmed the rover had collected the rock, releasing a picture of the sample inside a collection tube. The rover made a first attempt to collect a sample in early August, but the rock crumbled during the drilling and coring process. The rover moved to a different location earlier this month where the team selected a rock that held up better. Over the past week, scientists have been using Perseverance’s instruments to analyze the sample and they are expected to reveal what they have discovered at Friday’s briefing.  Former NASA research director Scott Hubbard — now a professor at Stanford University — told the Associated Press the collection “is a huge step forward in what the science community has wanted for more than 50 years, which is to bring samples back from the Red Planet.”  He said the sample appears to be one that could be dated, a main goal of collecting such rocks, along with looking for evidence of past or present biological life. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The plan is for subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with the European Space Agency, to send spacecraft to Mars to collect Perseverance’s sealed samples from the surface and bring them to Earth for in-depth analysis. Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater February 18, and the rover team kicked off the science phase of its mission June 1. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press. 
 
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With no masks in sight, buzzing offices and concerts drawing tens of thousands, Denmark on Friday ditches vaccine passports in nightclubs, ending its last COVID-19 curb.The vaccine passports were introduced in March 2021 when Copenhagen slowly started easing restrictions.They were abolished at all venues on Sept. 1, except in nightclubs, where they will be no longer necessary from Friday.”We are definitely at the forefront in Denmark as we have no restrictions, and we are now on the other side of the pandemic thanks to the vaccination rollout,” Ulrik Orum-Petersen, a promoter at event organizer Live Nation, told AFP.On Saturday, a sold-out concert in Copenhagen will welcome 50,000 people, a first in Europe.Already on Sept. 4, Live Nation organized a first open-air festival, aptly named “Back to Live,” which gathered 15,000 people in Copenhagen.”Being in the crowd, singing like before, it almost made me forget COVID and everything we’ve been through these past months,” said Emilie Bendix, 26, a concertgoer.Denmark’s vaccination campaign has gone swiftly, with 73% of the 5.8 million population fully vaccinated, and 96% of those 65 and older.’Aiming for free movement'”We’re aiming for free movement… What will happen now is that the virus will circulate, and it will find the ones who are not vaccinated,” epidemiologist Lone Simonsen told AFP.”Now the virus is no longer a societal threat, thanks to the vaccine,” said Simonsen, who works at the University of Roskilde.According to the World Health Organization, the Scandinavian country has benefitted from public compliance with government guidelines and the COVID-19 strategy adopted.”Like many countries, Denmark has, throughout the pandemic, implemented public health and social measures to reduce transmission. But at the same time it has greatly relied on individuals and communities to comply voluntarily,” said Catherine Smallwood, WHO Europe’s emergency officer.With around 500 daily COVID-19 cases and a reproduction rate of 0.7, Danish authorities say they have the virus under control.Health Minister Magnus Heunicke has however vowed that the government would not hesitate to swiftly reimpose restrictions if necessary.Authorities insist that the return to normal life must be coupled with strict hygiene measures and the isolation of sick people.The WHO still considers the global situation critical and has urged caution.”Every country needs to remain vigilant as and when the epidemiological situation changes,” Smallwood said.Denmark has said it will keep a close eye on the number of hospitalizations — just under 130 at the moment — and conduct meticulous sequencing to follow the virus.A third dose has also been available to risk groups since Thursday.Simonsen said the vaccines have so far provided immunity from variants “but if escape variants (resistant to the vaccine) were to appear, we will have to rethink our strategy.”Christian Nedergaard, who owns several restaurants and wine bars in Copenhagen, said that while everyone is happy about the return to normal life, “the situation is still complicated.””The memory of coronavirus will fade very quickly from some people’s minds but not for everyone, and for restaurants this period has for sure been a game-changer,” he said.”The industry needs to think about how to become more resilient.”Travelers entering Denmark must still present either a vaccine passport or a negative PCR test, and masks are mandatory in airports. 
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As the United States continues to deal with the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant, President Joe Biden announced new sweeping vaccine mandates as part of a multipronged push to end the pandemic. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
Producer: Mary Cieslak 
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Africa is slated to receive 25% fewer COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year than it was expecting, the director of the World Health Organization’s regional office for Africa said Thursday.The African continent, already struggling with a thin supply of vaccines while many wealthy nations initiate booster shot programs, has fully vaccinated just more than 3% of its residents.The global vaccine sharing initiative COVAX announced Wednesday that it expects to receive about 1.4 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year, as opposed to the projection of 1.9 billion doses it received in June.”Yesterday, #COVAX shipment forecasts for the rest of the year were revised downwards by 25%, in part because of the prioritization of bilateral deals over international solidarity.” – Dr @MoetiTshidi— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) September 9, 2021Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa director, said during a press conference Thursday that the United States has thrown away three times as many vaccine doses as COVAX has delivered to African countries since March.COVAX delivered more than 5 million doses to Africa in the past week, but the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention said that as of September 1, U.S. pharmacies have thrown away more than 15 million doses since March.The United States and other wealthy nations have been under increasing pressure to donate their surplus of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries as the pandemic wreaks havoc across the globe with the emergence of new and more contagious variants of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, on Wednesday implored wealthy nations to forgo COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for the rest of the year to ensure that poorer countries have more access to the vaccine. Tedros had previously asked rich countries not to provide boosters until September.Also on Thursday, Turkey’s health minister said the country is soon likely to approve a locally made vaccine, which began late-stage trials in June, for emergency use. Ankara expects it will start mass producing “Turkovac” this October.Italy sent teams to the island of Lampedusa to inoculate newly arrived immigrants. Lampedusa is one of the main arrival points for African migrants from Libya and Tunisia. Roughly 40,000 migrants from North Africa have arrived in Italy so far this year, twice as many as in 2020.In Los AngelesMeanwhile, the Los Angeles Board of Education approved a measure Thursday that would mandate vaccinations against COVID-19 for all students 12 years and older. Students would be required to receive their first dose by November 21 followed by a second dose by December 19 in order to be fully vaccinated by the next semester.The measure also requires students participating in in-person extracurricular activities to receive both shots by the end of October. The district will allow medical or religious exemptions.Los Angeles is the largest school district in the U.S. to impose a mandatory vaccination policy. The district is the nation’s second-largest, with just more than 600,000 students.In JapanSeparately, Japan announced Thursday that it would extend its current coronavirus state of emergency for Tokyo and 18 other areas until Sept. 30. Two prefectures will be shifted from full emergency status to more targeted restrictions.The state of emergency was first imposed for the city and a handful of other prefectures just weeks before the start of the Tokyo Olympics as Japan struggled under the surge of new infections sparked by the delta variant and a sluggish vaccination campaign.Japan currently has more than 1.6 million confirmed infections, including 16,600 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, with nearly 50% of its population fully vaccinated.Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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A series of spacewalks is underway outside the International Space Station. Plus, a fire scare occurs in the Russian section of the ISS, and amateur stargazers have set up camp at an ancient Mesopotamian site in modern-day Iraq. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space.
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The U.S. government sued the southwestern state of Texas on Thursday to try to block its new law that bans abortions in the state after about six weeks of pregnancy, the most restrictive anti-abortion statute in the country. Attorney General Merrick Garland, at a Washington news conference, said the Texas law “is clearly unconstitutional under long-term Supreme Court precedents” granting women in the U.S. the constitutional right to have an abortion. He said the Department of Justice, in bringing the lawsuit against the country’s second-largest state, “has a duty to uphold the rule of law.” He said “all provisions” of the law concerned him.  The U.S. Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote last week, allowed the law to take effect, a decision praised by anti-abortion advocates looking to eventually overturn the court’s landmark 1973 decision declaring that women in the U.S. hold a constitutional right to have an abortion. Those supporting U.S. abortion rights, including President Joe Biden, derided the court’s late-night decision, which has stopped most abortions in the state. Biden warned that the law would cause “unconstitutional chaos” because it gives private citizens, rather than government officials, the right to enforce it by filing civil lawsuits against people who help a woman obtain an abortion after six weeks, whether it be a doctor who performs the procedure or someone who drives a woman to a clinic. The law allows people winning such lawsuits to collect at least $10,000 and makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. FILE – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks in the House Chamber in Austin, Texas, Feb. 5, 2019.Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott said this week that the state would strive to “eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas” by arresting and prosecuting them. He defended the law, saying women who were raped would still have six weeks to end their pregnancy. Many women do not realize they are pregnant at six weeks. Those supporting abortion rights in the U.S. fear the high court’s ruling allowing the Texas law to take effect presages an erosion or reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing abortion rights. In its new term starting next month, the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy that the southern state of Mississippi adopted. 
 
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday is planning to order 2.5 million federal workers and contractors to get vaccinated against the coronavirus as part of a new effort to control the infectious disease. 
 
The new order, which eliminates an option he previously gave the workers to get regularly tested for the virus in lieu of being inoculated, is part of a six-point plan Biden is laying out in a White House address to combat the surge in recent weeks of delta variant coronavirus cases and deaths. 
 
Aides said the U.S. leader will spell out new efforts to convince the unvaccinated to get inoculated, protecting those already vaccinated with booster shots in coming weeks, keeping schools open, increasing testing and requiring face masks in some situations, advancing the economic recovery and improving care for those who have contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. 
 
With the mandate for federal worker vaccinations, the White House is hoping businesses across the U.S. will follow suit. Some major companies are already requiring their workers to get vaccinated or be fired. 
 
It was not immediately clear if Biden’s order covering federal workers and contractors would allow for exceptions for those seeking religious or medical exemptions from vaccination. 
 
The latest surge in U.S. coronavirus cases and deaths is mostly among the unvaccinated, although there have been some breakthrough infections among those who were vaccinated months ago. FILE – In this Aug. 17, 2021, photo, an ICU nurse moves electrical cords for medical machines outside the room of a COVID-19 patient in an intensive care unit at the Willis-Knighton Medical Center in Shreveport, La. 
More than 177 million people out of the country’s population of 332 million have been vaccinated, but vaccines have yet to be approved by federal health regulators for children under 12 years old.  
 
More than 62% of the population 12 and older has been vaccinated, but about 150,000 new cases are being recorded each day in recent weeks and about 1,000 people a day are dying.  
 
For a variety of reasons — such as a belief they won’t catch the virus or a contention that no one should be able to demand they get inoculated — millions of Americans remain unvaccinated. 
 
Some state governors, mostly conservative Republicans, have urged their citizens to get vaccinated, but they balked at mandating the inoculations or requiring face masks in schools or at workplaces. That has led to numerous political and legal disputes, with some courts siding with local officials wanting to impose coronavirus rules opposed by governors in their states. Nicole Tschabourian, 8, (L) and Leah Yousefi, 8, arrive with printed barcodes for the first day of school and return to full-time in-person learning after the COVID-19 break in Glendale, Los Angeles, California, Aug. 18, 2021. 
The spike in Americans who have not been vaccinated includes an increasing number of young children who are not yet eligible to receive a vaccine.   
 
The American Academy of Pediatrics said cases among children soared to 750,000 between August 5 and September 2.  
 
The latest surge has pushed hospitals and health care workers across the U.S. to a breaking point, with some intensive care units filled to capacity with COVID-19 patients.  
The U.S. economy, the world’s largest, has advanced sharply since the worst of the pandemic 18 months ago, but the number of new jobs in the country slowed markedly in August, which Biden blamed on the surge in new coronavirus cases. 
 Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.  
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U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to call for a summit on boosting the global supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, according to U.S. news outlets. The summit will be held during the United Nations General Assembly later this month.  The Washington Post reports the topics will include coordination among world leaders to collectively tackle the health crisis and address inequities, including the slow rate of vaccinations in the developing world.The United States and other wealthy nations have been under increasing pressure to donate their surplus of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries as the pandemic wreaks havoc across the globe with the emergence of new and more contagious variants of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19. FILE – Workers unload 1.5 million doses of Moderna vaccine donated by the U.S. through the COVAX program, at the Armando Escalon aerial base, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, June 27, 2021, in this handout picture released by the Honduran presidency.Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Board of Education is expected to approve a measure Thursday that would mandate vaccinations against COVID-19 for all students 12 years old and older.  Students would be required to receive their first dose by November 21 followed by a second dose by December 19 in order to be fully vaccinated by the next semester.  The measure would also require students participating in in-person extracurricular activities to receive both shots by the end of October.  If the measure passes, Los Angeles would be the largest school district in the U.S. to impose a mandatory vaccination policy. The district is the nation’s second-largest with just over 600,000 students. Separately, Japan announced Thursday that it will extend its current coronavirus state of emergency for Tokyo and 18 other areas until September 30. Two prefectures will be shifted from full emergency status to more targeted restrictions.The state of emergency was first imposed for the city and a handful of other prefectures just weeks before the start of the Tokyo Olympics as Japan struggled under the surge of new infections sparked by the delta variant and a sluggish vaccination campaign.  Japan currently has more than 1.6 million confirmed infections, including 16,600 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, with nearly 50% of its population fully vaccinated. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden will unveil a new strategy to combat the dramatic surge of COVID-19 cases across the nation during a major White House speech Thursday afternoon.White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday that Biden will spell out six methods designed to encourage more Americans to get inoculated against the virus, including involvement of the private sector.Biden’s speech comes as the U.S. is experiencing a growing number of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths sparked by the highly contagious delta variant, which has completely upended the administration’s aggressive vaccination efforts during its first months in office.The majority of new infections have been among Americans who have not been vaccinated, including a spike in the number of young children who are not yet eligible to receive a vaccine.The American Academy of Pediatrics said cases among children soared to 750,000 between Aug. 5 and Sept. 2.The latest surge has pushed hospitals and health care workers across the U.S. to a breaking point, with intensive care units filled to capacity with COVID-19 patients, and stalled the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic, a key goal of Biden’s first year in office.
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It’s been 20 years since terrorists rammed passenger planes into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. The wars that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq were wars in which medical advances saved more lives than in any other war. VOA’s Carol Pearson tells us about one of those advances.
Camera: Mike Burke
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The Texas anti-abortion law, which was allowed to go into effect last week despite being in clear conflict with decades-old precedents set by the United States Supreme Court in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, is a complex piece of legal engineering. It was intentionally built to avoid initial judicial review and structured to compel people to comply with it, even if they believe it violates their constitutional rights, through fear of being bombarded with excessive legal fees that could bankrupt them. Attorney General Merrick Garland this week ordered the Justice Department to explore “all options” to challenge Texas’s highly restrictive abortion law and to protect abortion clinics that are under attack. Many Democrats and abortion rights proponents caution, however, that while they believe the law is unconstitutional, it was crafted in a way that makes legal challenges difficult.  FILE – U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland attends a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, June 25, 2021.Senate Bill 8, as the legislation is called, makes it illegal in Texas for a doctor to perform an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy — before most women are even aware that they are pregnant. Crucially, however, the law explicitly bans state officials from acting to enforce the law, delegating that responsibility instead to private citizens, who are eligible to recover a $10,000 judgment, plus attorney’s fees, from anyone who they can prove aided or abetted a woman seeking an abortion. The law casts a broad net, meaning that not only doctors, but clinicians and clinic workers, and even relatives who help pay for an abortion are liable. However, the plain language of the law states that only people who “knowingly” assist someone seeking an abortion are liable, meaning that the commonly cited example of an Uber driver being exposed to a lawsuit under the bill is incorrect, experts say. The Supreme Court last week, in a 5-4 decision, declined to block the law from coming into effect on procedural grounds, arguing that because there is no specific individual charged with enforcing the law, there is nobody who can be sued over it, and therefore, nobody the court can enjoin from enforcing it.  President Joe Biden sharply criticized the Supreme Court ruling and instructed Garland to explore ways to challenge the Texas law.Thus far, abortion clinics in Texas have been careful to observe the new law — which makes no exceptions for rape or incest — and avoid drawing fire from self-appointed citizens or groups claiming violations of the new abortion restrictions. However, it is likely that eventually someone will defy the six-week limit on pregnancies before a procedure, leading to a constitutional test case. Opponents furious FILE – Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks in Lubbock, Texas, March 2, 2021.Opponents of the legislation have been scathing in their criticism of the Texas legislature and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott who signed the legislation. “Texas politicians have succeeded for the moment in making a mockery of the rule of law, upending abortion care in Texas, and forcing patients to leave the state — if they have the means — to get constitutionally protected health care,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “This should send chills down the spine of everyone in this country who cares about the Constitution. We will keep fighting this ban until abortion access is restored in Texas.” Others aimed their anger at the Supreme Court for choosing not to block enforcement of the statute. “The Supreme Court has ignored 50 years of precedent and set back the hands of time, essentially allowing Texas to be a pre-Roe [v. Wade] state,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. “This is a travesty for the nearly seven million women of reproductive age, and everyone who supports access to safe, legal abortion.” FILE – Texas state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, center, speaks against a bill that would ban abortions as early as six weeks and allow private citizens to enforce it through civil lawsuits, in the House Chamber in Austin, Texas, May 5, 2021.Supporters claim victory Supporters of the law, however, see it as a victory over a court system that they believe is rigged against them. The anti-abortion movement had two main goals in advancing the legislation, said John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, a group closely involved in drafting the legislation.  “The first one was, how do we have a pro-life policy actually be enforced, when we have lawless district attorneys who are not enforcing pro-life laws,” Seago said. “The second one is these activist federal judges — how do you get around them? [They are] looking for excuses to hold up laws, even though we can win ultimately.” Genesis of the law The roots of S.B. 8 can be traced back to an article by a former solicitor general of the state of Texas, Jonathan F. Mitchell, which was published in the Virginia Law Review in 2018. Called The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy, the article argued that when federal courts block enforcement of state laws, those laws are not, as popularly believed, “struck down.” Rather, they remain on the books and are simply not enforced.  That leaves room for future, and even retroactive, enforcement, if a later Supreme Court overrules a previous opinion enjoining enforcement. And, critically for this case, Mitchell theorized that a bill that provided a private cause of action in state court could continue to be enforced by private citizens, even if a federal court has enjoined state officials from enforcing it. That would remain the case unless a person sued under the law pursued an appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, and won. “Unless and until the Supreme Court of the United States declares a statute unconstitutional, the States remain free to authorize and entertain private enforcement actions in their own courts — even after a federal district or circuit court has disapproved the statute and enjoined the State’s executive from enforcing it,” Mitchell wrote. Mitchell was closely involved in the drafting of S.B. 8. Private cause of action It may not be clear to a layperson how a private individual with no connection to a person who gets an abortion — and no way to show that they have suffered personal harm because of it — can have the standing to sue in the first place.  If this were a federal law, that objection would have force. But under state law in Texas, the legislature is allowed to specifically confer standing on private individuals in certain kinds of cases if it chooses to do so. In S.B. 8, that is precisely what state legislators did.  Most states have similar rules allowing the legislature to confer standing on private citizens, which is one reason why governors and legislators in at least seven states across the country have said that they are preparing legislation similar to S.B. 8 in their states. FILE – A security guard opens the door to the Whole Women’s Health Clinic in Fort Worth, Texas, Sept. 1, 2021.Fear of legal fees The law is structured to compel compliance — even if a defendant in a potential case believes that their rights are being violated and that they would be vindicated in court — through fear of legal bills.The law itself does not allow someone sued under it to recover legal fees from their accuser, even if they are able to demonstrate their innocence. However, it does allow the accuser to recover legal fees from the defendant in the case of a guilty verdict.  But the burden of legal fees is potentially even heavier than it seems. If Mitchell’s theory is correct, and enforcement of the law could only ever be truly blocked by a Supreme Court ruling that it is unconstitutional, that means someone who wants to challenge it is going to face years of lawsuits involving huge legal fees. But in the United States, a defendant in a federal lawsuit who is asserting his or her constitutional rights are being violated is generally not eligible to recover legal fees.  In the law review article, Mitchell lays out the implications plainly.”Of course, the defendants in these private enforcement actions can reassert the constitutional objections to the statute — and perhaps they will persuade the court to follow the reasoning of the courts that have disapproved the statute,” he wrote. “But a defendant has no entitlement to attorneys’ fees when he asserts his constitutional rights defensively in a private enforcement action, and the need to foot one’s own legal bills may induce statutory compliance even for those who expect to prevail on their constitutional objections.” Boomerang effect There has been much speculation that the unique legal structure of the Texas law might just as easily be applied to other areas in which lawmakers want to curtail specific rights that have been guaranteed by court rulings.  For example, some have suggested that states where a majority of residents disagree with the Supreme Court’s rulings on handgun bans might create a private right of action against gun dealers who sell them. The point would not be to win an argument over the constitutionality of the statute, but to compel compliance with it anyway. Seago, of Texas Right to Life, said that the “narrow focus” of his organization is such that the broader implications of the use of this novel legal structure are not a great concern, but that the group welcomes the opportunity to resolve any issues in court.  “The question kind of assumes you are headed towards a collision in our federalist principles. But that’s an important legal question that should be answered, not avoided just because it’s a new question,” he said. 
 
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Malawi health authorities fear vaccine hesitancy could lead to tens of thousands of COVID-19 jabs expiring early next month.  With just 2% of Malawi’s population vaccinated, authorities hope to increase uptake by deploying mobile vaccination clinics to bring the vaccine closer to people.Malawi has so far received just over 1.2 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines under the COVAX facility.But vaccine hesitancy in Malawi is widespread largely because of misperceptions of the jabs’ efficacy and safety.   Dr. Gift Kawalazira, who heads Health and Social Services at the Blantyre Health Office, says there’s yet another reason for the low vaccination rate.   “We have noticed that with the coming of summer, the number of cases has drastically reduced, and also the number of people coming for vaccination have reduced from having over 2,000 people per day to having just about 400 people per day now,” he said.Kawalazira said deploying mobile vaccination centers will help increase vaccine uptake, noting that when the initiative was launched Saturday over 600 people were vaccinated – and six companies booked the mobile clinic to come and vaccinate their workers.He predicted the initiative will help Malawi meet its vaccination target of 60% by 2022 and allay fears that more vaccines will expire.“Johnson & Johnson is actually expiring after December and AstraZeneca has got two different batches, one of which is expiring next month, and the other one is going up until December,” he said.In May, Malawi incinerated about 20,000 AstraZeneca doses that had expired after many people refused the jab due to concerns about its safety and efficacy.Malawi health ministry statistics show that currently only about 700,000 people have had one jab, while about 400,000 are fully vaccinated, representing 2.1% of the country’s 18 million population.Simeon Phiri gets vaccinated at a mobile vaccination clinic at Limbe Market in Blantyre. Health authorities say the initiative will increase vaccine uptake among Malawians. (Lameck Masina/VOA)Simeon Phiri got his jab Wednesday at a mobile COVID-19 vaccination clinic at Limbe market in Blantyre. He said the convenience with which he could get the jab played an important role for him.  “This has helped me a lot because it has provided me easy access to the vaccine instead of walking a long distance. For example, I came here to Limbe to do some errands, but I also have found an opportunity to get vaccinated,” Phiri said.  To increase uptake in rural areas, the government is currently working with traditional leaders to mobilize and tell their communities about the need to be vaccinated when the mobile clinics visit their villages. 
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A new report released Wednesday says the COVID-19 pandemic had a “devastating” impact in the fight against HIV and tuberculosis last year.The Global Fund, an alliance of governments, civil society groups and private sector entities, says the number of people reached with HIV prevention programs and services declined 11 percent in 2020 compared with the year before, while testing for HIV dropped 22 percent last year.The number of people treated for drug-resistant tuberculosis fell by 19 percent in countries where the Fund invests — a figure the Geneva-based group described as “staggering” — while those being treated for “extensively” drug-resistant tuberculosis plummeted by 37 percent.Peter Sands, the executive director of The Global Fund, told the Reuters news agency that about one million fewer people were treated for tuberculosis in 2020 than the year before, a fact he says will “inevitably mean that hundreds of thousands of people will die.”The Fund said programs to fight malaria appear to have been “less badly affected” by COVID-19 than HIV or tuberculosis.Meanwhile, the Bloomberg news service says a study conducted in South Africa found that Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot COVID-19 vaccine reduces the risk of contracting the disease by about half. The study, which involved nearly half a million health workers in the country, found that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was about 70 percent effective against hospitalization and as much as 96 percent effective against death.Glenda Gray, the study’s co-leader, tells Bloomberg the final results from the study will be submitted for publication in days.While the European Union is boasting an average vaccination rate of 70 percent, the rates are much lower among eastern European nations compared to those in western Europe. Only 20 percent of all citizens in Bulgaria have been vaccinated against COVID-19, the lowest rate among all 27-member EU nations, while deaths have surged in recent weeks. The New York Times says similar circumstances have also been found in countries like Poland, Romania and Slovakia.Observers blame the discrepancies on doubts about the vaccines due to misinformation, along with deep mistrust of authorities and institutions.More than 222 million people around the globe have tested positive for COVID-19, including 4.5 million deaths, since the outbreak was first detected in late 2019 in central China, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The United States has now surpassed 40 million confirmed COVID-19 infections, including more than 650,690 deaths, leading the world in both categories. COVID-19 is caused by the coronavirus.(Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France Presse.) 
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Mexico’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Tuesday that penalizing abortion is unconstitutional, a major victory for advocates of women’s health and human rights, just as parts of the United States enact tougher laws against the practice.The decision in the world’s second-biggest Roman Catholic country means that courts can no longer prosecute abortion cases, and follows the historic legalization of the right in Argentina, which took effect earlier this year.Arturo Zaldivar, president of the Mexican Supreme Court, hailed the decision as “a watershed moment” for all women, especially the most vulnerable.The court’s ruling stemmed from a 2018 case challenging a criminal law on abortion in Coahuila, a northern Mexican state which borders Texas, which has just tightened its laws.It also comes as a growing feminist movement has taken to the streets in Mexico to press for change, including calls to end anti-abortion laws on the books in much of the country.At a demonstration in Coahuila state capital Saltillo, women wearing green bandanas to symbolize the pro-choice movement embraced and shouted “abortion is no longer a crime!””We’re very happy that abortion has been decriminalized, and now we want it to be legal,” said 26-year-old Karla Cihuatl, one of the demonstrators, who belongs to the feminist organization Frente Feminista in Saltillo.”This step has broken the stigma a little. But I believe that we still have to change the social aspect.”With some 100 million Catholics, Mexico is the largest predominantly Catholic country after Brazil. The Catholic Church opposes all forms of abortion procedures.Hundreds of mostly poor Mexican women have been prosecuted for abortion, while at least several dozen remain jailed.Tuesday’s vote establishes a mandatory criteria for all judges in the country, making it no longer possible to prosecute any woman who has an abortion without violating the criteria of the court and the constitution, Zaldivar said.Coahuila’s state government issued a statement saying the ruling would have retroactive effects and that anyone woman imprisoned for abortion should be released “immediately.”A number of U.S. states have moved to restrict access to abortion, particularly Texas, which last week enacted a sweeping ban on the procedure after the first six weeks of pregnancy when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene.The Mexican ruling may lead to U.S. women in states such as Texas deciding to travel south of the border to terminate their pregnancies.In July, the state of Veracruz became just the fourth of Mexico’s 32 regions to decriminalize abortion.Mexico’s leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has carefully avoided taking a stand on the matter, as he did again on Tuesday morning in the run-up to the ruling.When asked at a news conference for his opinion on abortion, he sidestepped the question, saying it was up to the court.”Due my presidential office, I can’t expose myself to wear and tear, so I have to look after myself, and this is quite a controversial issue,” he said.During his winning 2018 election campaign, he forged an alliance with a small political party founded by Christian conservatives known for their strong opposition to abortion. 
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Coronavirus vaccines offer protection not only against infection and serious illness but may also help prevent so-called “Long COVID,” where symptoms can last for several weeks or months, according to new research from scientists at Kings College London.  There are no official figures, but it’s thought millions of people worldwide who contracted the coronavirus have suffered from so-called “Long COVID,” with reported symptoms including muscle pain, fatigue, shortness of breath and brain fog lasting longer than four weeks. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 8 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 15 MB720p | 32 MB1080p | 62 MBOriginal | 463 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioThe condition remains poorly understood, says British campaigner Ondine Sherwood, who founded the ‘Long Covid SOS’ campaign group after suffering from the disease caused by the coronavirus. “Amongst medical practitioners, there is a bit of variation in terms of recognition. I think people are still getting told that it’s due to anxiety. Some doctors don’t fully understand this condition,” Sherwood told VOA. “It is a case of treating symptoms. Research is ongoing as to the mechanisms of Long COVID and it’s not fully understood. There are quite a lot of theories, many of which have been backed up with research. But we haven’t reached the stage where we have targeted treatments,” Sherwood added. The research from Kings College London suggests that coronavirus vaccines halve the risk of suffering from long COVID, for the very low number of people who become infected after vaccination. The scientists based their research on Britain’s “Zoe” COVID study app, which tracked the self-reported symptoms of 1.2 million people between December 2020 and July of this year. Zero-point-two percent of vaccinated respondents reported being infected with the coronavirus. Of those, 5% reported suffering from long COVID, compared to 11% of unvaccinated people. “So, the vaccine will protect you from becoming ill from the virus. It will also protect you if you do get symptoms from becoming long-term ill from this virus,” said Sterghios Moschos, a virologist at the University of Northumbria, who was not involved in the research.  “This means that if you get exposed to the virus and you’ve been vaccinated, the vast chances are that you are not even going to be able to tell if you’ve been infected. That’s how good the vaccines are,” he added. The findings will fuel the debate over whether to offer vaccines to children, as schools start to reopen. Another recent study in Britain found that one in seven children suffers from Long COVID three months after infection, with headaches and fatigue listed as the most common symptoms.  Britain has yet to approve vaccines for healthy children. In the meantime, measures such as improved ventilation, social distancing and face masks should continue, argues Moschos. “We need to continue preventing transmission. We must not rely only on vaccines,” he told VOA.  Several countries, including the United States, have already begun vaccination programs for those 12 and older. 
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