The World Health Organization said on Monday it is tracking a few dozen cases of two new sub-variants of the highly transmissible omicron strain of the coronavirus to assess whether they are more infectious or dangerous.

It has added BA.4 and BA.5, sister variants of the original BA.1 omicron variant, to its list for monitoring. It is already tracking BA.1 and BA.2 — now globally dominant — as well as BA.1.1 and BA.3.

The WHO said it had begun tracking them because of their “additional mutations that need to be further studied to understand their impact on immune escape potential.”

Viruses mutate all the time but only some mutations affect their ability to spread or evade prior immunity from vaccination or infection, or the severity of disease they cause.

For instance, BA.2 now represents nearly 94% of all sequenced cases and is more transmissible than its siblings, but the evidence so far suggests it is no more likely to cause severe disease.

Only a few dozen cases of BA.4 and BA.5 have been reported to the global GISAID database, according to WHO.

The UK’s Health Security Agency said last week BA.4 had been found in South Africa, Denmark, Botswana, Scotland and England from Jan. 10 to March 30.

All the BA.5 cases were in South Africa as of last week, but on Monday Botswana’s health ministry said it had identified four cases of BA.4 and BA.5, all among people aged 30 to 50 who were fully vaccinated and experiencing mild symptoms.
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Facing an existential threat from climate change, Mumbai, India’s financial hub has embarked an ambitious climate action plan that aims to make the city carbon-neutral by 2050.

It is the first city to set a timeline to reach zero emissions in South Asia, one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to rising temperatures.

In recent years, the coastal city has witnessed more bursts of torrential rain, storm surges and cyclones, in addition to rising sea levels.

Built on a narrow strip along the Arabian Sea, the city’s low-lying areas where millions of poor people live in shanties, and the city’s southern tip, home to glitzy office towers, the stock exchange and legislature, are especially vulnerable, according to climate scientists.

“Mumbai will become a climate-resilient metropolis,” Maharashtra state Chief Minister, Uddhav Thackeray said last month, unveiling the plan. Mumbai is Maharashtra’s capital.

The goal is ambitious — Mumbai wants to achieve net zero emissions 20 years ahead of the goal set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the country. In this decade alone, authorities aim to reduce carbon emissions by 30%.

The target is not easy. Skyscrapers have mushroomed in recent decades as the city’s population has swelled to 20 million, its green spaces have shrunk, and urbanization is continuing at a relentless pace.

The city plans key changes in the way it manages energy, transport, water, waste, and green spaces.

A beginning has been made with the transport sector, which contributes about 20% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is twofold: a huge push for “green” vehicles and encouraging a switch from private to public transport that is being expanded with new metro projects and more buses.

So far 386 electric buses have replaced diesel buses and about 2,000 more will be added to make half the city’s fleet green by next year.

“Fares are super cheap, and a single card can be used in buses and metros to ease travel,” said Saurabh Punamiya, a policy adviser on the climate action plan.

“Hotels and industries will also be encouraged to switch to electric vehicles,” he said.

Experts say shifting to electric mobility has become feasible.

“The price gap between electric and petrol cars has narrowed significantly in India. The only thing authorities need to ensure is that they make enough charging stations,” Vaibhav Chaturvedi, a fellow at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a think tank, said.

However, persuading more people to use mass transit will be far more challenging, he said.

“The trend we are observing is that people are moving from public transport to buying two-wheelers and then cars as they move up the income ladder. Across states and cities, we have been super-unsuccessful in stopping this because people are aspirational,” Chaturvedi said.

In a city where much of the emissions come from air-conditioned glass and chrome skyscrapers, there will also be a move to shift to green buildings.

“We propose that all new structures constructed after 2030 need to become zero-emission buildings,” said Lubaina Rangwalla, with the World Resources Institute, which is the technical adviser on the city’s new plan.

“This can be done by putting up solar panels, using energy-efficient products such as LED bulbs, recycling wastewater, building percolation pits to conserve rainwater and having enough tree cover to reduce the need for cooling,” she said.

Officials also plan to protect trees and mangroves and rejuvenate urban forests that the city has lost in recent decades.

Climate scientists have in particular flagged the huge loss of mangroves that not only act as carbon sinks but are buffers against coastal erosion and flooding.

Skeptics point out that trees are still being felled to make way for coastal freeways and underground car tunnels are being built to cut congestion in the city, known for its slow-moving traffic. Authorities say that the losses are being compensated for by transplanting trees and point out that the new roads will cut emissions by speeding traffic flow.

The biggest challenge, however, will be to phase out the nearly 70% of emissions generated by the power sector. Much of the city’s electricity comes from coal-based power plants, and demand in coming decades is set to soar as Mumbai’s population expands. So far there is no clear plan on how do produce more electricity and reduce total emissions at the same time.

India has set a goal to meet half its energy from renewable sources by 2030, and while progress is being made, hurdles have emerged, such as finding enough land to put up solar parks in a densely populated country.

Proposals are being considered to put floating solar panels on lakes formed behind dams on the city’s outskirts.

“Thirty years down the line, a lot of teething troubles that the renewable energy sector is facing will smoothen out and a lot more renewable energy will be generated. Besides solar, there are also options of wind and nuclear energy. Mumbai has set a challenging goal but there are ways for the city to achieve this target by 2050,” Chaturvedi said.

Setting a goal, he said “pushes decision makers to think along those lines and make policies accordingly.”

 
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For many in the U.K., the pandemic may as well be over.

Mask requirements have been dropped. Free mass testing is a thing of the past. And for the first time since spring 2020, people can go abroad for holidays without ordering tests or filling out lengthy forms.

That sense of freedom is widespread even as infections soared in Britain in March, driven by the milder but more transmissible omicron BA.2 variant that’s rapidly spreading around Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere.

The situation in the U.K. may portend what lies ahead for other countries as they ease coronavirus restrictions.

France and Germany have seen similar spikes in infections in recent weeks, and the number of hospitalizations in the U.K. and France has again climbed — though the number of deaths per day remains well below levels seen earlier in the pandemic.

In the U.S., more and more Americans are testing at home, so official case numbers are likely a vast undercount. The roster of those newly infected includes actors and politicians, who are tested regularly. Cabinet members, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Broadway actors and the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut have all tested positive.

Britain stands out in Europe because it ditched all mitigation policies in February, including mandatory self-isolation for those infected. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s conservative government is determined to stick to its “living with COVID” plan, but experts disagree on whether the country is coping well.

Some scientists argue it’s the right time to accept that “living with COVID” means tolerating a certain level of disruption and deaths, much like we do for seasonal flu.

Others believe that Britain’s government lifted restrictions too quickly and too soon.

They warned that deaths and hospital admissions could keep rising because more people over 55 — those who are most likely to get seriously ill from COVID-19 — are now getting infected despite high levels of vaccination.

Hospitals are again under strain, both from patients with the virus and huge numbers of staff off sick, said National Health Service medical director Stephen Powis.

“Blinding ourselves to this level of harm does not constitute living with a virus infection — quite the opposite,” said Stephen Griffin, a professor in medicine at the University of Leeds. “Without sufficient vaccination, ventilation, masking, isolation and testing, we will continue to ‘live with’ disruption, disease and sadly, death, as a result.”

Others, like Paul Hunter, a medicine professor at the University of East Anglia, are more supportive of the government’s policies.

“We’re still not at the point where (COVID-19) is going to be least harmful … but we’re over the worst,” he said. Once a high vaccination rate is achieved there is little value in maintaining restrictions such as social distancing because “they never ultimately prevent infections, only delay them,” he argued.

Britain’s official statistics agency estimated that almost 5 million U.K. residents, or 1 in 13, had the virus in late March, the most it had reported. Separately, the REACT study from London’s Imperial College said its data showed that the country’s infection levels in March were 40% higher than the first omicron peak in January.

Infection rates are so high that airlines had to cancel flights during the busy two-week Easter break because too many workers were calling in sick.

France and Germany have seen similar surges as restrictions eased in most European countries. More than 100,000 people in France were testing positive every day despite a sharp dropoff in testing, and the number of virus patients in intensive care rose 22% over the past week.

President Emmanuel Macron’s government, keen to encourage voter turnout in April elections, is not talking about any new restrictions.

In Germany, infection levels have drifted down from a recent peak. But Health Minister Karl Lauterbach backed off a decision to end mandatory self-isolation for infected people just two days after it was announced. He said the plan would send a “completely wrong” signal that “either the pandemic is over or the virus has become significantly more harmless than was assumed in the past.”

In the U.S., outbreaks at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University are bringing back mask requirements to those campuses as officials seek out quarantine space.

Across Europe, only Spain and Switzerland have joined the U.K. in lifting self-isolation requirements for at least some infected people.

But many European countries have eased mass testing, which will make it much harder to know how prevalent the virus is. Britain stopped distributing free rapid home tests this month.

Julian Tang, a flu virologist at the University of Leicester, said that while it’s important to have a surveillance program to monitor for new variants and update the vaccine, countries cope with flu without mandatory restrictions or mass testing.

“Eventually, COVID-19 will settle down to become more endemic and seasonal, like flu,” Tang said. “Living with COVID, to me, should mimic living with flu.”

Cambridge University virologist Ravindra Gupta is more cautious. Mortality rates for COVID-19 are still far higher than seasonal flu and the virus causes more severe disease, he warned. He would have preferred “more gentle easing of restrictions.”

“There’s no reason to believe that a new variant would not be more transmissible or severe,” he added.
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In the days after a group of West Point cadets on spring break were sickened by fentanyl-laced cocaine at a South Florida house party, community activists sprang into action.

They blitzed beaches, warned spring breakers of a surge in recreational drugs cut with the dangerous synthetic opioid and offered an antidote for overdoses, which have risen nationally during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Street teams stood under the blistering sun, handing out beads, pamphlets and samples of naloxone, a drug known by the brand name Narcan, which can revive overdose victims.

“We weren’t sure how people would react,” said Thomas Smith, director of behavioral health services for The Special Purpose Outreach Team, a local mobile medical program. “But the spring breakers have been great. Some say, ‘I don’t do drugs, but my buddy sometimes does something stupid.’ They are happy to get Narcan.”

Smith’s team pulls up to Fort Lauderdale beach in a brightly colored mobile clinic van. They walk the sidewalks that run parallel to the beach, across the main drag from the bustling oceanfront clubs and restaurants.

“Have you heard of Narcan?” Huston Ochoa, a clinical counselor for The SPOT, asked Tristan Gentles on a recent afternoon as music blared from the Elbo Room, a bar at the heart of Fort Lauderdale Beach.

Gentles, who worked as a bartender and bouncer in New York City before moving to Fort Lauderdale, said he appreciates their efforts.

“There’s only so much you can do when you see someone on the floor,” he said, adding that he had witnessed numerous overdoses during his days in New York.

Fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, which can be 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin or prescription opioids, are what make the overdoes so dangerous, said David Scharf, who oversees community programs for the Broward Sheriff’s Office and is the chairman of the county’s Opioid Community Response Team.

Last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that for the first time more than 100,000 Americans had died of drug overdoses over a 12-month period. About two-thirds of the deaths were linked to fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. Stress from the coronavirus pandemic and the use of fentanyl are considered factors in the increase in deaths, according to preliminary reports by the CDC.

Broward County led the state in fentanyl deaths in 2020, the latest year for which statistics are available from the Florida Medical Examiners Commission. In the vast majority of the deaths, fentanyl was combined with another drug, the sheriff’s office said.

“One snort, one swallow, one shot can kill,” said Jim Hall, a retired epidemiologist from Nova Southeastern University, who has worked with the county’s opioid response team. “It is not just in Florida but anywhere in North America.”

For the first three months of 2022, Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue responded to 373 calls involving a possible overdose, where Narcan was administered, Battalion Chief Stephen Gollan said. That’s an average of more than four per day.

The reaction in Broward was swift after the five U.S. Military Academy cadets overdosed in Wilton Manors on March 10, just as thousands of college students were heading to Fort Lauderdale for spring break.

The following Monday, more than 100 people representing agencies from law enforcement to social service organizations and hospitals met via Zoom to devise a plan to keep spring breakers safe.

Groups such as The SPOT and the South Florida Wellness Network, which partner with the United Way of Broward County, agreed to hit the beaches to talk with people about the dangers associated with fentanyl-laced drugs. They also talked to restaurant and bar owners who could distribute Narcan if “someone went down,” Scharf said.

The groups have so far distributed more than 2,000 doses of Narcan supplied by state grants. The SPOT volunteers handed out packages with two doses of the nasal spray plus instructions.

“It was kind of a blitz operation to get out there as quickly as possible, and to get as much information and Narcan out on the streets,” Scharf said.

The volunteer groups and sheriff’s office don’t have figures on how many of the distributed doses were actually used but believe the program has succeeded in raising awareness.

The region isn’t yet out of the spring break period, which runs until mid-April, but Scharf said organizers have been heartened to see a couple of weekends pass without any overdoses that resulted in emergency calls.
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The first all-private team of astronauts ever launched to the International Space Station (ISS) arrived safely at the orbiting research platform Saturday to begin a weeklong science mission hailed as a milestone in commercial spaceflight.

The rendezvous came about 21 hours after the four-man team representing Houston-based startup company Axiom Space, Inc. lifted off Friday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, riding atop a SpaceX-launched Falcon 9 rocket.

The Crew Dragon capsule lofted to orbit by the rocket docked with the ISS at about 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) Saturday as the two space vehicles were flying roughly 250 miles (420 km) above the central Atlantic Ocean, a live NASA webcast of the coupling showed.

The final approach was delayed by a technical glitch that disrupted a video feed used to monitor the capsule’s rendezvous with ISS. The snafu forced the Crew Dragon to pause and hold its position 20 meters away from the station for about 45 minutes while mission control repaired the issue.

With docking achieved, it was expected to take about two hours more for the sealed passageway between the space station and crew capsule to be pressurized and checked for leaks before hatches can be opened, allowing the newly arrived astronauts to come aboard ISS.

The multinational Axiom team, planning to spend eight days in orbit, was led by retired Spanish-born NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, 63, the company’s vice president for business development.

His second-in-command was Larry Connor, a real estate and technology entrepreneur and aerobatics aviator from Ohio designated as the mission pilot. Connor is in his 70s but the company did not provide his precise age.

Rounding out the Ax-1 crew were investor-philanthropist and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian business owner and philanthropist Mark Pathy, 52, both serving as mission specialists.

Stibbe became the second Israeli to fly to space, after Ilan Ramon, who perished with six NASA crewmates in the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster.

They will be joining the existing ISS occupants of seven regular, government-paid space station crew members – three American astronauts, a German astronaut from the European Space Agency and three Russian cosmonauts.

Science-focused

The new arrivals brought with them two dozen science and biomedical experiments to conduct aboard the ISS, including research on brain health, cardiac stem cells, cancer and aging, as well as a technology demonstration to produce optics using the surface tension of fluids in microgravity.

The mission, a collaboration among Axiom, Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX and NASA, has been touted by all three as a major step in the expansion of space-based commercial activities collectively referred to by insiders as the low-Earth orbit economy, or “LEO economy” for short.

NASA officials say the trend will help the U.S. space agency focus more of its resources on big-science exploration, including its Artemis program to send humans back to the moon and ultimately to Mars.

While the space station has hosted civilian visitors from time to time, the Ax-1 mission marks the first all-commercial team of astronauts sent to the ISS for its intended purpose as an orbiting research laboratory.

The Axiom mission also stands as SpaceX’s sixth human space flight in nearly two years, following four NASA astronaut missions to the space station and the “Inspiration 4” launch in September that sent an all-civilian crew to orbit for the first time. That flight did not dock with the ISS.

Axiom executives say their astronaut ventures and plans to build a private space station in Earth orbit go far beyond the astro-tourism services offered to wealthy thrill-seekers by such companies as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, owned respectively by billionaire entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson.
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Shanghai is China’s most populous city, a place marked by its expansive worldview and keen sense of its own identity. But now it is chafing at Beijing’s rigid containment methods designed in accordance with the national zero-COVID policy.

Since a wave of infections struck the metropolis of some 25 million people last month, Shanghai officials have imposed a temporary lockdown (March 28), designed a policy separating infected children from their parents (April 2), extended the lockdown indefinitely (April 5), buckled before a public outcry to ease the child-parent separation policy and seen the daily count of new cases hit a record 22,000 (April 8).

Viral videos appear to show residents tackling health workers in hazmat suits and charging through a barricaded street shouting “We want to eat cheap vegetables,” according to France24. Some residents face the mandatory tests “in very Shanghainese style” tweeted one.

What are thought to be government drones whir through residential areas urging people against the temptation to break out from lockdown.

And local authorities have reported more than 73,000 cases in the current wave, virtually all originating with the omicron BA.2 variant, which is more infectious but less lethal than the previous delta strain as evidenced by the lack of any reported deaths in the city.

Shanghai Lingang Fangcai Hospital officially opened on April 5 with nearly 14,000 beds, half of which are already available. Authorities are converting the National Exhibition and Convention Center into a temporary hospital with more than 40,000 beds.

The Global Times, a state-controlled media outlet, reported April 6 that more than 38,000 medical personnel from more than 10 provinces in China had been dispatched to Shanghai to help along with more than 2,000 from the People’s Liberation Army.

Zero-COVID policy

When Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan visited the city on April 2, she stressed “unswerving adherence” to Beijing’s zero-COVID policy, a control measure China has put in place throughout the country since 2020 to curb the spread of the virus.

“It is an arduous task and huge challenge to combat the omicron variant while maintaining the normal operation of core functions in a megacity with a population of 25 million,” Sun said, according to Chinese state-controlled media outlet, Xinhua.

According to Ren Ruihong, the former head of the medical relief department of the Red Cross Foundation of China, the probability of China achieving “zero infection goal” is almost zero judging from the movement of the omicron variant through the nation.

“You can’t test everyone in the entire country every day. When you can’t do that, a lot of asymptomatic or late-infected people have already spread the virus,” Ren told VOA Mandarin.

On Thursday, Human Rights Watch said on its website that Beijing’s insistence on draconian lockdown measures has significantly impeded people’s access to health care, food and other life necessities in Shanghai.

“The Chinese government’s ‘Zero-COVID’ approach to pandemic control by imposing stringent citywide lockdowns has resulted in the systematic denial of medical needs of people with serious but non-COVID related illnesses,” said Yaqiu Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch.

According to HRW’s statement, an unknown number of people have died after being denied medical treatment for their non-COVID related illnesses.

‘Completely chaotic’ response

Shanghai officials also expressed their disappointment in the implementation of Beijing’s zero-COVID measures in Shanghai.

“Shanghai’s epidemic-prevention policy is completely chaotic,” said a community management committee secretary in a nine-minute recorded conversation circulated on Chinese social media, adding that the prevention work she has been assigned is “killing” her.

In another recording of a conversation between a Shanghai citizen and a frontline epidemic-prevention official, the official urged the resident not to go to a hospital and said that mild and asymptomatic patients should be isolated at home.

“When I went to the Fangcang shelter hospital, even the professionals were going crazy because no one listened to what they said,” according to the official speaking to the resident in an audio since deleted from Chinese social media. “Now we all feel complete despair.”

Lin Baohua, a former professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai who now lives in Taiwan, told VOA Mandarin that recent signs indicate that grassroots officials in Shanghai are becoming sympathetic to Shanghai residents’ dissatisfaction.

The last thing the Beijing government wants to see is the collective action of the people, he added.

Xiao Shan, a Chinese news analyst in Beijing, said Shanghai officials are unlikely to oppose the zero-COVID policy, as they have used it to consolidate their power.

“Suddenly they could become managers overnight, wearing red armbands shouting to hundreds of thousands of people in the community.”

Fan Shihping, a Taiwan Normal University professor, told VOA Mandarin that China’s enforcement will have a great impact on Shanghai residents because they did not expect that they, citizens of a Tier 1 city, would be treated in the same way under the zero-COVID policy as residents of second- and third-tier cities.

Tier 1 cities, like Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, are the most modern, the most populous and have the best infrastructure and locations, according to Investor Insights Asia. Tier 2 cities are relatively economically developed but less so than new first-tier cities. Tier 3 cities have large populations but little economic or political significance.

Some Shanghai residents have refused to hide their dissatisfaction with the government’s strict COVID measures.

“This is worse than the Cultural Revolution,” said an old man in a video circulated on social media.

Mao, the first leader of the People’s Republic of China from 1949-76, launched the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1966. By the time its turmoil ended a decade later, between 500,000 and 2 million people had died.

“Parks are not open. Shops are not open. We haven’t experienced a horror like this even when the Red Sun, Mao Zedong, died in 1976,” the man continued. “Now I don’t go out and I’m stuck in prison all day.”
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Saudi Arabia said Saturday it will permit 1 million Muslims from inside and outside the country to participate in this year’s hajj, a sharp uptick after pandemic restrictions forced two years of drastically pared-down pilgrimages.

The hajj ministry “has authorized 1 million pilgrims, both foreign and domestic, to perform the hajj this year,” it said in a statement.

One of the five pillars of Islam, the hajj must be undertaken by all Muslims with the means at least once in their lives. Usually one of the world’s largest religious gatherings, about 2.5 million people took part in 2019.

But after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Saudi authorities allowed only 1,000 pilgrims to participate.

The following year, they upped the total to 60,000 fully vaccinated citizens and residents chosen through a lottery.

This year’s hajj, which will take place in July, will be limited to vaccinated pilgrims under age 65, Saturday’s announcement said.

Those coming from outside Saudi Arabia will be required to submit a negative COVID-19 PCR result from a test taken within 72 hours of travel.

The government wants to promote pilgrims’ safety “while ensuring that the maximum number of Muslims worldwide can perform the hajj,” Saturday’s statement said.

Easing restrictions

The hajj consists of a series of religious rites that are completed over five days in Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, and surrounding areas of western Saudi Arabia.

Hosting the hajj is a matter of prestige for Saudi rulers, as the custodianship of Islam’s holiest sites is the most powerful source of their political legitimacy.

Before the pandemic, Muslim pilgrimages were key revenue earners for the kingdom, bringing in some $12 billion annually.

The restrictions in 2020 and 2021 stoked resentment among Muslims abroad who were barred.

The kingdom of approximately 34 million people has so far recorded more than 751,000 coronavirus cases, including 9,055 deaths, according to health ministry data.

In early March it announced the lifting of most COVID restrictions including social distancing in public spaces and quarantine for vaccinated arrivals, moves that were expected to facilitate the arrival of Muslim pilgrims.

The decision included suspending “social distancing measures in all open and closed places” including mosques, while masks are now only required in closed spaces.
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An international donor conference on Friday raised $4.8 billion for the U.N.-backed COVAX plan to deliver coronavirus jabs to poorer countries, organizers said.

“The pandemic is not over, far from it. Until we beat COVID-19 everywhere, we beat it nowhere. That is a fact, and a responsibility for all of us,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, co-host of the online conference.

Scholz, whose bid to make COVID jabs mandatory for over-60s in Germany failed in parliament this week, warned that the ongoing pandemic risked creating new variants that could be “more dangerous” than previous ones.

The conference, hosted by Germany, Ghana, Senegal and Indonesia, sought to address a yawning gap in vaccination rates between the world’s richest and poorest countries.

The COVAX program, co-led by vaccine-sharing alliance Gavi, the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, has so far delivered 1.4 billion doses to 145 countries — far short of the planned 2 billion doses by the end of 2021.

Governments from developed nations pledged $3.8 billion Friday to bring the vaccine to 92 low- and middle-income countries.

Development banks including the World Bank and the European Investment Bank contributed $1 billion Friday.

COVAX had said in January that it needed $5.2 billion to fund jabs for the world in 2022.

The WHO wants 70% of every country’s population vaccinated by July.

But records are uneven.

Nearly 80% of France’s population, for example, has received two doses. But only 15% of the population on the continent of Africa is fully vaccinated, according to Oxford University data.

COVAX says it currently has enough doses to vaccinate about 45% of the population in the 92 low- and middle-income countries receiving donations. But 25 of those countries lack the infrastructure for an effective immunization campaign.

Making matters worse, many developing countries are slated to receive doses too close to their expiration date.

“Vaccine inequity is the biggest moral failure of our times, and people and countries are paying the price,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said earlier this year.
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The United Nations warned Friday that an old, neglected oil tanker carrying more than a million barrels of oil is a ticking “time bomb” at “imminent risk” of a major spill off the coast of Yemen that could cost $20 billion to clean up.

“If it were to happen, the spill would unleash a massive ecological and humanitarian catastrophe centered on a country already decimated by more than seven years of war,” U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen David Gressly told reporters. “The environmental damage could affect states across the Red Sea. The economic impact of disrupted shipping would be felt across the region.”

The FSO Safer is one more casualty in the war between the Saudi-backed government of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and Iranian-supported Houthi rebels.

U.N. officials have been seeking access to the vessel for more than three years to assess its safety, do light repairs and eventually tow it to a safe port to remove the oil. But Houthi rebels controlling the area have repeatedly reneged on promises to allow that to happen.

The tanker has had no maintenance since 2015 because of the war and only a skeleton crew is aboard the vessel. Gressly says the vessel is now beyond repair.

“In March, a U.N.-led mission to the Ras Isa peninsula, near to where the Safer is anchored, confirmed that the 45-year-old supertanker is rapidly decaying,” Gressly said. “It is at imminent risk of spilling a massive amount of oil due to leakages or an explosion.”

The ensuing environmental and ecological catastrophe would devastate Yemen’s fishing industry, fill the air with toxins and could also impact neighboring Saudi Arabia and the Horn of Africa.

Mitigation plan

Gressly said the U.N. has a plan to address the threat posed by the tanker, which the government of Yemen supports. Houthi rebels signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.N. last month establishing a framework for cooperation.

The U.N. plans to get a replacement vessel to offload the 1.1 million barrels of oil contained in the Safer – that is four times more oil than the Exxon Valdez carried when it caused a catastrophic spill in Alaska in 1989. After all the oil is transferred to the temporary vessel, the Safer would be towed to a shipyard and sold for recycling.

But the U.N. faces two significant obstacles: a lack of funding and time.

Gressly said the entire mission would cost about $80 million.

“This includes the salvage operation, the lease of a very large crude carrier to hold the oil and crew, and maintenance for 18 months,” he said.

That would be dramatically less than the $20 billion that could be needed to clean up a spill, but difficult to raise in a donor-fatigued environment.

The Netherlands, which has been very active on the Safer situation, is planning to co-host a conference in May to raise funds to complete the mission. Gressly is also embarking on a tour of Gulf countries to encourage them to step up to mitigate a potential catastrophe on their doorstep.

The work needs to get under way by mid-May so it can be completed by the end of September, when the regional weather patterns shift and the sea will become rougher and winds will increase. Such conditions multiply the risk of the ship breaking apart, Gressly said.

If they cannot start on time, Gressly warned that could mean delaying for several months, “leaving the time bomb ticking.”
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As the U.S. tries to emerge from the hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic, health experts and law enforcement officials are concerned about another health crisis: a sharp rise in the number of drug related overdoses attributed to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a bulletin earlier this week to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies warning of a nationwide spike in fentanyl-related mass-overdose events.

Already this year, numerous mass overdose events have resulted in dozens of overdoses and deaths,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram in an email statement to VOA.

Fentanyl-related mass overdose events are characterized as three or more overdoses occurring close in time and at the same location.

In February, five people died in an apartment outside Denver from overdoses of fentanyl mixed with cocaine. In another case, five West Point Military Academy cadets survived after overdosing on fentanyl-laced cocaine while on spring break in Florida last month. At least seven American cities have seen an increase in drug-related overdoses resulting in 29 deaths, according to the DEA.

“Drug traffickers are driving addiction, and increasing their profits, by mixing fentanyl with other illicit drugs. Tragically, many overdose victims have no idea they are ingesting deadly fentanyl, until it’s too late,” said Milgram.

Law enforcement officials believe the problem has grown worse since the government released figures last year indicating more than 105,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending in October 2021. Sixty-six percent of those deaths were related to synthetic opioids like fentanyl according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is a very historic time. We have never had the amount of death and destruction than we are seeing now,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House office of National Drug Control Policy, last month.

Health officials say powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl can be up to 100 times more potent than morphine. Researchers say taking just two milligrams of fentanyl can kill a person.

U.S. law enforcement agencies seized nearly 10 million fentanyl pills last year, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. There have also been numerous news reports of large seizures by state and local police in the last two months.

“Fentanyl has flooded the market across the country,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, speaking on CNBC. “It has contaminated other drugs such as heroin, many illicit drugs including illicit prescription medication.

Overdose deaths were already increasing in the months preceding the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. But the latest data show a sharp rise during the pandemic. Last year, the United States suffered more fentanyl-related deaths than gun- and automobile-related deaths combined.

Minority drug overdoses soar

The rise in opioid related overdoses has impacted many communities. Opioid deaths among African Americans and other minority groups continue to rise. U.S. researchers found overdose deaths jumped nearly 49% among Black people in the United States from 2019 to 2020, compared with a 26% increase among white people. Overdose deaths among Native Americans and Alaska Natives were 31% higher than among white adults, according to research from UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.

Law enforcement groups note that, compared to other drugs, fentanyl is inexpensive, with one pill costing just a few dollars. The price makes it a popular drug among low-income minority groups.

“We know the COVID-19 pandemic hit Black Americans especially hard, and that the risk of a drug overdose is strongly linked to many of the damaging financial, health and social effects of the pandemic that were disproportionately borne by Black people,” said Linda Richter, vice president for prevention research at the Partnership to End Addiction.

“Even before the pandemic, Black Americans had less access to the resources and support that prevent and treat addiction, and reverse a drug overdose,” Richter said in an interview with HealthDay News.

Causes of the drug crisis

A variety of factors have contributed to America’s growing opioid crisis. Law enforcement agencies point to an increasing flow of illicit drugs and fentanyl smuggled through the southern border with Mexico.

The chemicals used to make the synthetic opioid are being shipped largely from China to Mexico, where huge quantities of illicit fentanyl are produced in labs before being smuggled into the U.S.

Strong law enforcement efforts to crack down on the abuse of prescription opioids like oxycodone are believed to have shifted demand to heroin and fentanyl. The growing availability of those drugs helped fuel higher usage — and addiction — rates among Americans.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed about 2,700 cases in 2021 involving crimes related to the distribution of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, up nearly tenfold from 2017.

“Fentanyl poisonings are at an all-time high,” said Sheriff Mike Milstead of Minnehaha County, South Dakota. “These are not isolated incidents. These are happening in every state and every county in America, leaving behind grieving families. Let us be clear, these poisonings are part of a strategic maneuver by drug cartels, and it must be stopped.”

Some Republican officials have been critical of the federal government’s efforts to stop fentanyl from entering the country through the porous U.S.-Mexico border.

In Texas, National Guard units were deployed to the border region with a mission that includes stopping the flow of fentanyl from Mexico. State leaders are also calling for tougher penalties for convicted drug dealers. “This is not a fentanyl overdose, this is poisoning by fentanyl, which we want to make a murder crime in the state of Texas,” said Governor Greg Abbott at a news conference last month.

More government funding

The Biden administration has stressed treatment and prevention and proposed $42.5 billion in federal spending to address the ongoing opioid crisis.

The proposal released last month includes $21.1 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services to support prevention and treatment efforts. It would increase funding for interdiction efforts as well as addiction treatment centers in rural areas.

If approved by Congress, $80 million would be set aside for helping children impacted by the opioid crisis.

“This budget supports the Biden administration’s ongoing work to expand access to evidence-based treatment,” said Dr. Gupta, the White House official. “We want to further reduce the flow of illicit drugs like fentanyl from entering our communities and prevent overdoses.”
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Without a single dollar of the $5 billion it requested for its global COVID-19 response approved, the Biden administration’s key program to help vaccinate the world is in danger of grinding to a halt.

Even as the administration marked World Health Day on Thursday with a commitment to build a safer, healthier and more equitable future around the globe, without additional funding from Congress, by September the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will no longer be able to finance Global Vax. The U.S. launched the international initiative in December to deliver shots in arms in 11 countries: Angola, Ivory Coast, Eswatini, Ghana, Lesotho, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

“Without additional funding to support getting shots into arms, USAID will have to curtail our growing efforts to turn vaccines into vaccinations — just as countries are finally gaining access to the vaccine supplies needed to protect their citizens,” a USAID spokesperson told VOA. USAID had initially requested $19 billion for its global vaccination initiatives.

USAID had planned to expand Global Vax to 20 additional countries, but those plans are now on hold.

Without additional funding, the U.S. will also be unable to provide oxygen and other lifesaving supplies around the world, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters earlier this week.

“And our global genomic sequencing capabilities will fall off and undermine our ability to detect any emerging variants around the world,” Zients added.

On Monday, the U.S. Senate agreed to provide $10 billion in supplemental funding for COVID-19 response domestically but did not approve the $5 billion requested by the White House for its global pandemic efforts.

With Senate Republicans insisting that any new COVID-19 spending be paid for with unspent funds from the nearly $6 trillion in COVID-19 legislation that had already been passed, Senate Democrats dropped the international funding request to get the domestic package approved first.

“While we were unable to reach an agreement on international aid in this new agreement, many Democrats and Republicans are committed to pursuing a second supplemental later this spring,” Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who had been leading negotiations with Schumer on the $10 billion COVID-19 domestic response package, said he is willing to explore a fiscally responsible solution to support global pandemic efforts in the weeks ahead.

Airports to arms

Globally, the issue now is not the lack of vaccine doses but the ability of getting them “from airports to arms,” said Krishna Udayakumar, who leads a Duke University team that tracks global vaccine production, distribution and donation.

“How do we make sure that the trained vaccinators are there, the data system, the cold chain, that’s where a lot more money is needed,” Udayakumar told VOA.

The administration has already purchased all of the 1.2 billion doses of vaccines it has pledged to donate around the world. However, without the additional funding, some of them are in danger of expiring in warehouses in the U.S., said global health advocate Tom Hart.

Hart, president of the ONE Campaign, an advocacy organization that fights preventable diseases, said that in his decadeslong career in global health, he has never seen the U.S. reneging on its commitment.

“In the 20 years I’ve been doing this, every time we have pledged to deliver something, the United States has been able to keep that pledge, and it has created enormous goodwill around the world,” Hart told VOA.

But now, U.S. credibility is on the line. “We’ve said with great fanfare that we have these incredibly effective doses. And they are sitting here in America, ready to go to those who need them, and we can’t get them to them,” he said.

The White House said it will continue to work with lawmakers to push for additional international funding.

“We’re not quite there yet,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said when asked by VOA about the fate of those undelivered doses. “And our hope is that we will be able to turn … vaccines into vaccinations.”

Other multilateral programs may have to step in to pick up the U.S. slack, including the COVID Vaccine Delivery Partnership mechanism established earlier this year as the next phase of COVAX, the international vaccine-sharing facility supported by the World Health Organization and health organizations Gavi and CEPI.

“The aim of the partnership is to focus on providing bespoke support for those countries furthest behind in coverage: coordinating efforts around delivery funding, technical assistance, demand planning and political engagement, led by countries themselves,” a Gavi spokesperson told VOA.

The administration would not say whether it is pushing for a separate global pandemic funding package, or one that is attached to potential additional funding for Ukraine and the global food crisis, which could come in weeks or months.

It is also not providing details on when President Joe Biden will host the second global COVID-19 summit, originally scheduled for March. Biden hosted the first summit in September 2021 when he sought to galvanize a robust response from wealthy nations to help vaccinate the world.

VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
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Disease caused by the omicron variant is on average around two days shorter than the delta variant, a large study of vaccinated Britons who kept a smartphone log of their COVID-19 symptoms after breakthrough infections found.

“The shorter presentation of symptoms suggests — pending confirmation from viral load studies — that the period of infectiousness might be shorter, which would in turn impact workplace health policies and public health guidance,” the study authors wrote.

Based on the Zoe COVID app, which collects data on self-reported symptoms, the study also found that a symptomatic omicron infection was 25% less likely to result in hospital admission than in a case of delta.

While omicron’s lesser severity has been known, the study is unique in its detailed analysis and in that it corrected for any distortions caused by differences in vaccination status by looking at vaccinated volunteers only.

The researchers at King’s College London analyzed two sets of data from June 1 to Nov. 27, 2021, when the delta variant accounted for more than 70% of cases, and from Dec. 20, 2021, to Jan. 17, 2022, when omicron was more than 70% prevalent.

The patients, close to 5,000 in each group, were matched and compared 1:1 with a person of the same age, sex, and vaccination dose in the other group.

Omicron’s shorter symptom duration relative to delta was more pronounced in those with three vaccine doses. Symptoms lasted 7.7 days on average during the delta-dominated period, and only 4.4 days, or 3.3 days less, during the omicron period.

Among those with only two vaccine doses, symptoms from delta lasted for 9.6 days and 8.3 days from omicron, a difference of just 1.3 days.

The Zoe COVID Study application, previously known as the COVID Symptoms Study App, collects data on self-reported symptoms.

The company ZOE Ltd was initially founded to offer customized nutritional advice based on test kits. Its app is a not-for-profit initiative in collaboration with King’s College London and funded by the Department of Health and Social Care.

The study was published in the medical journal The Lancet on Thursday and will be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases later this month.
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The first-ever married couple to fly on a commercial spacecraft speaks with VOA. Plus, an all-amateur flight crew prepares for a trip to the International Space Station, and a milestone in space-based racial equality. Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Lithium is a key component in electric vehicle batteries and energy storage systems, and California officials hope their state will become a major producer. Governor Gavin Newsom has said he wants California to become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.” But residents of one community want some assurances first. Mike O’Sullivan reports from Lithium Valley in the California desert. Camera: Mike O’Sullivan, Roy Kim
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The World Health Organization ((WHO)) says, following a surge of new cases in early March, the number of new worldwide COVID-19 cases and deaths has fallen for a second consecutive week.

In its weekly update released late Tuesday, the WHO reports the number of new cases overall fell by 16 percent during the week ending April 3, compared to the previous week.

As of 3 April 2022, just over 489 million cases and over 6 million deaths had been reported globally.

The agency said global deaths from COVID-19 fell sharply – by 43 percent – in the past week. The WHO attributed a sharp rise in death numbers the previous week to a change in the way deaths were counted and the addition of death numbers not previously reported in the Americas.

At the country level, the highest number of new weekly cases was reported in

South Korea, with more than 2,058,000 new cases, Germany, with more than 1, 371,000 and France, with nearly one million new cases.

South Korea’s cases declined 16% and Germany’s declined 13 percent. In France, case numbers were up 13 percent.

Across the six WHO regions, over nine million new cases and over 26,000 new deaths were reported. All the regions show decreasing trends both in the number of new weekly cases and new weekly deaths.

The WHO continues to caution, however, several countries are progressively changing their COVID-19 testing strategies, resulting in lower overall numbers of tests performed and consequently lower numbers of cases being detected.
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced plans to expand access to health care by proposing changes to the Affordable Care Act to allow millions of additional families to purchase health insurance and obtain tax credits to offset the cost. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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