Chinese astronauts, known as taikonauts, and a ground crew are working to finish their country’s first permanent orbiting space station and the world’s second by year’s end, official media outlets say.

That milestone will boost China’s national pride and provide it with new channels for economic development and a possible new tool for military use on the ground, analysts say.

The space program advances China’s goal of being “strong and prosperous” by 2049, said Dexter Roberts, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Asia Security Initiative and author of “The Myth of Chinese Capitalism.” That year marks the 100th anniversary of Communist Party rule in China.

“Developing the economy, becoming wealthier and raising national prestige globally and becoming stronger geopolitically are all very, very clear goals of the party,” he said. 

A crew aboard the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft last month kicked off six months of work on the Tiangong space station, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. 

Personnel in space and on the ground will finish building the space station, expanding it from a single-module structure to triple-module national space laboratory, Xinhua said. 

The U.S. space agency, NASA, bars China from using the International Space Station on military security grounds, prompting China to embark on its own 10 years ago. China launched its broader space program in the 1960s. 

Pride and power projection 

China’s space station has been designed to be a “versatile space lab” that can hold 25 “cabinets” for experiments such as comparing the biological growth mechanism in varying at different gravitational levels, Xinhua said.

As conducted at the space station and on other space platforms, research into biology, life systems, medicine and materials is expected “to expand humanity’s understanding of basic science,” the State Council Information Office said in a January outlook for the program.

Other countries have already used China’s satellite services, including the BeiDou satellite navigation system, which was made available two years ago to Pakistan. Those systems can survey the aftermath of disasters and help launch satellites. 

Officials in Beijing have not said whether the space station will help the People’s Liberation Army. 

Space programs, including BeiDou, have a military and security side, said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington.  

“The Chinese will argue that while using (the) BeiDou system, you can navigate the weather, you can forecast the natural disasters, and you can also use the satellites to investigate and explore the terrains,” she said.  

“I think that’s one example of how Chinese space technology is having a real impact over countries on Earth,” Yun said. But, she said, “we all know that’s just one narrative.”

The People’s Liberation Army could technically dock military equipment systems in space or use satellites to survey the ground, experts have told VOA. China has the world’s third-strongest armed forces, a source of alarm for the West and smaller Asian countries.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will probably note the space station as an achievement during the national party congress expected before year’s end, Yun said. Experts say Xi is likely to seek appointment at the congress to a third five-year term as party general secretary.

 

“National prestige and security” are top concerns for Chinese leaders as they finish their space station, said the Roberts, of the Atlantic Council. 

The Chinese government is probably pushing the commercial side of its space program because it wants to catch up to the scale of NASA, he said. 

Chinese leaders may hope to develop their own aerospace technology through the space station, said Yan Liang, professor and chair of economics at Willamette University in the U.S. state of Oregon. Some of today’s components could be imports, she said.

“Definitely I do think that with the communication aspect that is about big data and all these other high-tech industries, it’s definitely in the interest for China to be able to do that and maybe later to export to other countries,” Liang said. 

Tiangong’s first module was christened last year. It operates 340 miles above the Earth’s surface, farther away than the International Space Station. 

After a Chinese Shenzhou-14 crew reaches gets to the space station, it will begin research projects and perform spacewalks from the lab module, Xinhua reported.
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The world was sadder and more stressed out in 2021 than ever before, according to a recent Gallup poll, which found that four in 10 adults worldwide said they experienced a lot of worry or stress.

Experts say the most obvious culprit, the pandemic — and the isolation and uncertainty that came with it — is a factor but not entirely to blame.

Carol Graham, a Gallup senior scientist, says the culprit for declining mental health includes the economic uncertainty faced by low-skilled workers.

“There are some structural negative changes that make some people in particular more vulnerable. And in the end, mental health just reflects that,” says Graham, who is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland.

“For young people who do not have good higher levels of education, what they’re going to do in the future is very unknown. What their stability will be like, what their workforce participation will be like. … Rising levels of inequality between skilled and unskilled workers is another part of it, having to do with technology-driven growth.”

Gallup spoke to adults in 122 countries and areas for its latest Global Emotions Report. Afghanistan is the unhappiest country, with Afghans leading the world when it comes to negative experiences.

Overall, the survey results were not surprising to psychologist Josh Briley, a fellow at The American Institute of Stress.

“Things are moving faster. There’s so much information being thrown at us all the time,” he says. “And of course, media thrives on the bad stuff. So, we are constantly being bombarded with crisis after crisis in the news, on social media, on the radio and on our podcasts. And all that is drowning out the good things that are happening.”

Psychologist Mary Karapetian Alvord says being more connected online means people in one country can feel profoundly affected by what happens in another country, which wasn’t always the case in the past. For her U.S. clients, uncertainty is the biggest stressor.

“Uncertainty of life and how it’s going to impact them on a daily basis. Prices going up and gas going up. And then the supply chain issues that are impacting people in their daily lives,” Alvord says. “But I think the bigger issue is that uncertainty and so much suffering. Of course, the shootings have come up. A lot of people are really stressed out and feeling like, ‘Where is it safe?’”

There have been more than 300 shootings involving multiple victims in the United States so far in 2022.

Happiness worldwide has been trending downward for a decade, according to Gallup. All three psychologists who spoke with VOA point to social media and the flood of unfiltered information as contributors to declining mental health and happiness.

“We’ve seen this explosion worldwide, and I think that’s a big sort of tectonic shift in how humans interact and experience emotions and all sorts of things. And we’re seeing that there’s some real downsides to it,” Graham says.

Briley says part of the problem is that although people are more connected online, they’re often less connected in real life.

“The connection that we have with people, the physical connection has changed. We’re more connected than ever before with people all the way around the world, but we may not know our neighbors’ names anymore,” he says. “So, we don’t necessarily have that person where if my car breaks down, who do I call for a ride to work?”

More optimism, despite frowns

On the upside, the survey found that the percentage of people who reported laughing or smiling a lot was up two points in 2021, while the number of people who say they learned something interesting increased one point. Alvord says looking beyond the negative is critical to maintaining mental health.

“It’s important for people to also find moments of, if not joy, at least satisfaction in life,” she says. “I think sometimes we reach for happiness and that’s just not attainable … and so, our expectations need to be realistic.”

Minorities in the United States might already be doing that. The survey found that people from marginalized groups are among the most resilient.

“Their anxiety may have increased but their optimism, particularly for low-income African Americans, remains very high,” Graham says. “It was a finding I’ve seen for many years, but it surprised me that even during COVID, it held. I think that’s more due to the kind of community ties and other ties that minority communities have built, almost informal safety nets, that have been very protective many, many times in history.”
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More than 100,000 monkeypox vaccine doses are being sent to states in the next few days, and several million more are on order in the months ahead, U.S. health officials said Friday.

They also acknowledged that the vaccine supply hasn’t kept up with the demand seen in New York, California and other places.

Officials predicted that cases would keep rising for at least a few more weeks as the government tries to keep up with a surprising international outbreak accounting for hundreds of newly reported cases every day.

Some public health experts have begun to wonder if the outbreak is becoming widespread enough that monkeypox will become an entrenched sexually transmitted disease.

“All of our work right now is to prevent that from happening,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. It does not usually spread easily among people.

But this year more than 12,000 cases have been reported in countries that historically don’t see the disease. The infections emerged in men who had sex with men at gatherings in Europe, though health officials have stressed that anyone can catch the virus.

As of Friday, more than 1,800 U.S. cases had been reported, with hundreds of cases being added to the tally each day. Nearly all are men, and the vast majority had same-sex encounters, according to the CDC.

Experts believe the case numbers are undercounts.

Lag between infection, symptoms

Walensky said she expected cases to rise at least into August, in part because it can take three weeks from the time someone is infected until that person develops symptoms and is diagnosed.

The virus mainly spreads through skin-on-skin contact, but it can also be transmitted through touching linens used by someone with monkeypox.

People with monkeypox may experience fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. Many in the outbreak have developed pimple-like bumps on many parts of the body.

No one has died, and the illness has been relatively mild in many men. But for some, the lesions can be “exquisitely painful” and there is a risk of scarring, said Dr. Mary Foote, medical director of the New York City health department’s Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response.

When the outbreak was first identified in May, U.S. officials had only about 2,000 doses of a new two-dose monkeypox vaccine available.

Officials have recommended the shots be given to people who know or suspect they were exposed to monkeypox in the previous two weeks, and vaccination clinics in some cities have been overwhelmed by demand. The government distributed 156,000 doses nationally as of Thursday, including 100,000 this week. And it expects to start delivering 131,000 more doses by Monday, said Dawn O’Connell of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

There also are about 800,000 doses in Denmark that will come to the U.S. soon. And the government this month announced orders of 5 million more doses, though most of those are not expected to arrive until next year.

The vaccine, Jynneos, has never been widely used in response to an outbreak like this, and the government will track how well it’s working, Walensky said.
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The World Meteorological Organization says scorching heat waves and wildfires raging in Portugal, Spain and France are forecast to worsen and spread to other parts of Europe in coming days.

The United Kingdom already is wilting under record high temperatures. The UK weather service has issued an amber extreme heat warning for much of England and Wales. It forecasts exceptionally high temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius Sunday and Monday.

In Portugal, where temperatures have reached highs of 46 degrees Celsius, red heat alerts, which warn people of life-threatening conditions, are in effect. Similar warnings are being issued in Spain and France. More than 20 wildfires have been reported in Portugal, western Spain, and southwest France.

Lorenzo Labrador is a scientific officer in the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Atmosphere Watch Program. He says the journal Nature Geoscience published a recent modeling study of the likely impact of the expansion of a high-pressure system over the Atlantic. He says the system, known as the Azores high, is leading to the driest conditions on the Iberian Peninsula in the last 1,000 years.

“It is worth pointing [out] that the high temperatures is not the only adverse consequence of heat waves. The stable and stagnant atmosphere acts as a lid to trap atmospheric pollutants, including particulate matter, increasing their concentration closer to the surface. These result in a degradation of air quality and adverse health effects, particularly for vulnerable people.”

He notes more heat, abundant sunshine, and concentrations of certain atmospheric pollutants can lead to an increase of ozone near the Earth’s surface. That, he says, has detrimental effects on people and plants.

The World Health Organization reports air pollution is a major cause of premature death and disease and the single largest environmental health risk in Europe. It notes more than 300,000 people die prematurely from air pollution in Europe every year, with that number jumping to seven million premature deaths globally.

Labrador says heat waves are a natural phenomenon. As such, he says it is not easy to attribute any single high-pressure condition and heat wave event directly to climate change. “However, what we know and what we have seen is that heat waves are becoming more frequent, more prevalent, and their temperatures are becoming more extreme as well. So, that kind of link over an extended period of time—years—we can attribute to climate change,” he points out.

Labrador says scientists cannot say the current heat waves are a product of climate change. But, he adds, the evidence points toward scorching, record-busting temperatures becoming more frequent and more devastating in the coming years.
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In Venezuela, a health crisis and the inability of many pregnant women to pay for medical exams and appointments is forcing a growing number of them to give birth outside a hospital. For VOA News, Adriana Núñez Rabascall in Caracas has the story. Video Editor: Cristina Caicedo Smit
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The lawyer for an Indiana doctor at the center of a political firestorm after speaking out about a 10-year-old child abuse victim who traveled from Ohio for an abortion said Thursday that her client provided proper treatment and did not violate any patient privacy laws in discussing the unidentified girl’s case.

Attorney Kathleen DeLaney issued the statement on behalf of Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist Caitlin Bernard the same day Republican Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said his office was investigating Bernard’s actions. He offered no specific allegations of wrongdoing.

A  27-year-old man was charged in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday with raping the girl, confirming the existence of a case initially met with skepticism by some media outlets and Republican politicians. The pushback grew after Democratic President Joe Biden expressed empathy for the girl during the signing of an executive order last week aimed at protecting some abortion access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the constitutional protection for abortion.

Bernard’s attorney said the physician “took every appropriate and proper action in accordance with the law and both her medical and ethical training as a physician.”

“She followed all relevant policies, procedures, and regulations in this case, just as she does every day to provide the best possible care for her patients,” DeLaney said in a statement. “She has not violated any law, including patient privacy laws, and she has not been disciplined by her employer.”

Bernard reported a June 30 medication abortion for a 10-year-old patient to the state health department on July 2, within the three-day requirement set in state law for a girl younger than 16, according to a report obtained by The Indianapolis Star and WXIN-TV of Indianapolis under public records requests. The report indicated the girl seeking the abortion had been abused.

DeLaney said they are considering taking legal action against “those who have smeared my client,” including Rokita, who had said he would investigate whether Bernard violated child abuse notification or abortion reporting laws. He also said his office would look into whether anything Bernard said to the Star about the case violated federal medical privacy laws. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would not say whether any privacy law complaints had been filed against Bernard, nor would Indiana University Health, where Bernard is an obstetrician. But the HIPAA Privacy Rule only protects most “individually identifiable health information,” the department’s website said.

The prosecutor for Indianapolis, where the abortion took place, said his office alone has the authority to pursue any criminal charges in such situations and that Bernard was being “subjected to intimidation and bullying.”

“I think it’s really dangerous when people in law enforcement start trying to launch a criminal investigation based on rumors on the internet,” Democratic Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said.

Some Republicans who have backed stringent abortion restrictions imposed in Ohio after the Supreme Court ruling, including Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, initially questioned whether the story relayed by Bernard to the newspaper was real. After telling Fox News on Monday that there was not “a whisper” of evidence supporting the case’s existence, Yost said his “heart aches for the pain suffered by this young child” and his investigative unit stands ready to support police in the case.

On Thursday, Yost faced intense backlash for his public statements, including a claim that medical exceptions in the Ohio “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban would have allowed the girl to receive her abortion in the state.

Apparently in response, he released a “legal explainer” detailing the law’s medical exceptions. Abortion rights advocates and attorneys said the law’s medical exceptions – for the life of the mother, dire risks of bodily harm and ectopic pregnancies – would not have protected an Ohio doctor who performed an abortion for the girl from prosecution.

Bernard did not reply to email and text messages from The Associated Press seeking comment.
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Now that the United States has a patchwork of different abortion laws, women who can afford to travel are going to states where abortion is still legal. Others rely on employers to provide money for transportation. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti explains how that happens and what crimes that could introduce in some states. VOA footage by Saqib Ul Islam. Video editor: Bakhtiyar Zamanov.
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About 25 million children worldwide have missed out on routine immunizations against common diseases like diphtheria, largely because the coronavirus pandemic disrupted regular health services or triggered misinformation about vaccines, according to the U.N. 

In a new report published Friday, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said their figures showed 25 million children last year failed to get vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, a marker for childhood immunization coverage, continuing a downward trend that began in 2019. 

“This is a red alert for child health,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF’s executive director. 

“We are witnessing the largest sustained drop in childhood immunization in a generation,” she said, adding that the consequences would be measured in lives lost. 

While vaccine coverage fell in every world region, data showed the vast majority of the children who failed to get immunized were living in developing countries, including Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and the Philippines.

Problem compounded by malnutrition 

Experts said this “historic backsliding” in vaccination coverage was especially disturbing since it was occurring as rates of severe malnutrition were rising. Malnourished children typically have weaker immune systems, and infections like measles can often prove fatal to them. 

“The convergence of a hunger crisis with a growing immunization gap threatens to create the conditions for a child survival crisis,” the U.N. said. 

Scientists said low vaccine coverage rates have resulted in preventable outbreaks of diseases like measles and polio. In March 2020, WHO and partners asked countries to suspend their polio eradication efforts amid the accelerating COVID-19 pandemic. There have since been dozens of polio epidemics in more than 30 countries. 

“This is particularly tragic as tremendous progress was made in the two decades before the COVID pandemic to improve childhood vaccination rates globally,” said Helen Bedford, a professor of children’s health at University College London, who was not connected to the U.N. report. She said the news was shocking but not surprising, noting that immunization services are frequently an “early casualty” of major social or economic disasters. 

Dr. David Elliman, a consultant pediatrician at Britain’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, said it was critical to reverse the declining vaccination trend among children. 

“The effects of what happens in one part of the world can ripple out to affect the whole globe,” he said in a statement, noting the rapid spread of COVID-19 and, more recently, monkeypox. “Whether we act on the basis of ethics or ‘enlightened self-interest,’ ” he said, children must be at the “top of our list of priorities.” 
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Nick Barragan is used to wearing a mask because his job in the Hollywood film industry has long required it. So he won’t be fazed if the county that’s home to Tinseltown soon becomes the first major population center this summer to reinstate rules requiring face coverings indoors because of another spike in coronavirus cases. 

“I feel fine about it because I’ve worn one pretty much constantly for the last few years. It’s become a habit,” said Barragan, masked up while out running errands Wednesday. 

Los Angeles is the most populous county, home to 10 million residents. It faces a return to a broad indoor mask mandate on July 29 if current trends in hospital admissions continue, county health Director Barbara Ferrer said this week. 

Requiring masks again “helps us to reduce risk,” Ferrer told Los Angeles County supervisors. 

“I do recognize,” she added, “that when we return to universal indoor masking to reduce high spread, for many this will feel like a step backwards.”

Variants tough to stop 

Nationwide, the latest COVID-19 surge is driven by the highly transmissible BA.5 variant, which now accounts for 65% of cases, with its cousin BA.4 contributing another 16%. The variants have shown a remarkable ability to get around the protection offered by vaccination. 

With the new omicron variants again pushing hospitalizations and deaths higher in recent weeks, states and cities are rethinking their responses and the White House is stepping up efforts to alert the public. 

Some experts said the warnings are too little, too late. 

“It’s well past the time when the warning could have been put out there,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, who has called BA.5 “the worst variant yet.” 

Global trends for the two mutants have been apparent for weeks, experts said — they quickly outcompete older variants and push cases higher wherever they appear. Yet Americans have tossed off their masks and jumped back into travel and social gatherings. 

And they have largely ignored booster shots, which protect against COVID-19’s worst outcomes. Courts have blocked federal mask and vaccine mandates, tying the hands of U.S. officials. 

For months, the White House has encouraged Americans to make use of free or cheap at-home rapid tests to detect the virus, as well as the free and effective antiviral treatment Paxlovid that protects against serious illness and death.  

On Tuesday, the White House response team urgently called on all adults 50 and older to get boosters if they haven’t yet this year and dissuaded people from waiting for the next generation of shots expected in the fall. 

For most of the pandemic, Los Angeles County has required masks in some indoor spaces, including health care facilities, metro trains and buses, airports, jails and homeless shelters. The new mandate would expand the requirement to all indoor public spaces, including shared offices, manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retail stores, restaurants and bars, theaters and schools. 

It’s unclear what enforcement might look like. Under past mandates, officials favored educating people over issuing citations and fines. 

Troubling trends

While hospitalizations and deaths have remained well below earlier spikes nationally, the current trends are troubling. Last month, daily deaths were falling, though they never matched last year’s low, and deaths are now heading up again. 

The seven-day average for daily deaths in the U.S. rose 26% over the past two weeks, to 489 on July 12. The coronavirus is not killing nearly as many as it was last fall and winter, and experts do not expect deaths to reach those levels again soon. 

But hundreds of daily deaths for a summertime respiratory illness would normally be jaw-dropping, said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California-Irvine. He noted that in Orange County, California, 46 people died of COVID-19 in June. 

“That would be all hands on deck,” Noymer said. “People would be like, ‘There’s this crazy new flu that’s killing people in June.’ ” 

Instead, simple, proven precautions are not being taken. Vaccinations, including booster shots for those eligible, lower the risk of hospitalization and death — even against the latest variants. But less than half of all eligible U.S. adults have gotten a single booster shot, and only about 1 in 4 Americans age 50 and older who are eligible for a second booster has received one. 

“This has been a botched booster campaign,” Topol said, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still uses the term “fully vaccinated” for people with two shots of Moderna or Pfizer. “They haven’t gotten across that two shots is totally inadequate,” he said. 

Noymer said if he were in charge of the nation’s COVID response he would level with the American people in an effort to get their attention in this third year of the pandemic. He would tell Americans to take it seriously, mask indoors and “until we get better vaccines, there’s going to be a new normal of a disease that kills more than 100,000 Americans a year and impacts life expectancy.”
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Texas sued the federal government on Thursday over new guidance from the Biden administration directing hospitals to provide emergency abortions regardless of state bans on the procedure that came into effect in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the lawsuit argued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was trying to “use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”

The lawsuit focused on guidance issued Monday advising that a federal law protecting patients’ access to emergency treatment requires performing abortions when doctors believe a pregnant woman’s life or health is threatened.

The guidance came after President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed an executive order on Friday seeking to ease access to services to terminate pregnancies after the June 24 overturning of Roe v. Wade, which recognized a nationwide right of women to obtain abortions.

Abortion services ceased July 2 in Texas after the state’s highest court, at Paxton’s urging, cleared the way for a nearly century-old abortion ban to take effect.

HHS said the guidance from its U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services agency did not constitute new policy but merely reminded doctors of their obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

But in the lawsuit filed in Lubbock, the Republican-led state of Texas argued that federal law has never authorized the federal government to compel doctors and hospitals to perform abortions and that the guidance was unlawful.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called it “unthinkable that this public official would sue to block women from receiving lifesaving care in emergency rooms, a right protected under U.S. law.”

About half the states are expected to move to restrict or ban abortions. Thirteen states, including Texas, had “trigger” laws on the books designed to snap into effect if Roe v. Wade was overturned.
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The World Health Organization is calling for action to stem the growing spread of deadly infections such as monkeypox and Ebola between animals and humans in Africa.

A new WHO analysis finds zoonotic outbreaks on the African continent have increased by 63% from 2012 to 2022 compared to the previous decade.

Globally, the WHO says more than 60% of human infectious diseases, and more than 75% of emerging infectious diseases, are caused by pathogens found in wild or domestic animals. It says those diseases sicken about one billion people and kill millions every year.

WHO’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said zoonotic diseases pose a severe threat in Africa. In the past decade, she said outbreaks of the animal-transmitted illnesses accounted for one in three confirmed public health events in the region.

“A deeper dive reveals that Ebola and similar hemorrhagic fevers constitute nearly 70% of these outbreaks,” she said. “The remainder include, among others, monkeypox, dengue fever, anthrax, and plague. Although there has been a notable increase in monkeypox cases since April this year, compared to the same period in 2021, the positive news is the numbers are still lower than for the 2020 outbreak peak.”

That year, the WHO recorded its highest ever monthly cases in the region. So far this year, the health agency has reported more than 2,000 suspected cases of monkeypox. Of those, only 203 have been confirmed. Most cases and deaths are among males, with an average age of 17.

Moeti noted infections originating in animals have been jumping to humans for centuries, but the risk of mass infections and deaths has been relatively limited in Africa.

“As rising urbanization encroaches on the natural habitats of the continent’s wildlife, and the demand for food from an especially fast-growing population burgeons, the risk is heighted,” she said. “The addition of improved road, rail, and airlinks, which remove the natural barrier that poor transportation infrastructure provided, opens the way for the spread of zoonotic disease outbreaks from remote to urban areas.”

Moeti said Africa cannot be allowed to become a hotspot for emerging infectious diseases. She said an “all-hands-on-deck” approach is needed to counter the threat.

She said experts in human, animal, and environmental health must work together with communities to prevent and control zoonotic outbreaks from spreading across the continent.
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The U.S. is getting another COVID-19 vaccine choice as the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday cleared Novavax shots for adults. 

Novavax makes a more traditional type of shot than the three other COVID-19 vaccines available for use in the U.S. — and one that’s already available in Europe and multiple other countries. 

Nearly a quarter of American adults still haven’t gotten their primary vaccinations even this late in the pandemic, and experts expect at least some of them to roll up their sleeves for a more conventional option — a protein-based vaccine. 

The Maryland company also hopes its shots can become a top booster choice in the U.S. and beyond. Tens of millions of Americans still need boosters that experts call critical for the best possible protection as the coronavirus continues to mutate. 

For now, the FDA authorized Novavax’s initial two-dose series for people 18 and older. 

“I encourage anyone who is eligible for, but has not yet received, a COVID-19 vaccine to consider doing so,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in a statement. 

Before shots begin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must recommend how they should be used, a decision expected next week. 

Novavax CEO Stanley Erck told The Associated Press he expected the U.S. to expand use of the vaccine beyond unvaccinated adults fairly quickly. 

Already, the FDA is evaluating it for those as young as 12, Erck said. Novavax also has submitted data on booster doses, including “mix-and-match” use in people who’d earlier received Pfizer or Moderna vaccinations. 

The Biden administration has bought 3.2 million Novavax doses so far, and Erck said vaccinations should begin later this month. 

Skeptic convinced

Sharon Bentley of Argyle, Texas, is one of the holdouts. Bentley was hesitant about the first COVID-19 vaccines, but then her husband volunteered for a Novavax trial, getting two doses and later a booster. 

Her husband’s positive experience with a more tried-and-true technology “convinced me,” Bentley said, adding that she planned to tell some unvaccinated friends about the option. 

The Novavax vaccine is made of copies of the spike protein that coats the coronavirus, packaged into nanoparticles that to the immune system resemble a virus. Then an immune-boosting ingredient, or adjuvant, that’s made from the bark of a South American tree is added and acts as a red flag to ensure those particles look suspicious enough to spark a strong immune response. 

Protein vaccines have been used for years to prevent hepatitis B, shingles and other diseases. It’s a very different technology than the dominant Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines that deliver genetic instructions for the body to produce its own copies of the spike protein. The lesser-used Johnson & Johnson option uses a harmless cold virus to deliver spike-making instructions. 

Like the other vaccines used in the U.S., the Novavax shots have proved highly effective at preventing COVID-19’s most severe outcomes. Typical vaccine reactions were mild, including arm pain and fatigue. But the FDA did warn about the possibility of a rare risk — heart inflammation — that also has been seen with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. 

The Novavax vaccine was tested long before the omicron variant struck. But last month, the company released data showing a booster dose promised a strong immune response even against omicron’s newest relatives — preliminary evidence that several of the FDA’s scientific advisers called compelling. 

Still, U.S. regulators are planning for a fall booster campaign using Pfizer and Moderna shots that better target omicron subtypes, and Novavax also has begun testing updated shots. Erck said the company could have updated doses available late in the year. 

European regulators recently cleared the Novavax vaccine to be used as young as age 12, and several countries have authorized booster doses of its original vaccine. 

Earlier manufacturing difficulties held up the vaccine, although Erck said those have been solved, and Novavax can meet global demand. Much of the company’s vaccine, including doses for the U.S., are being produced by the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer.
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More than 1.8 billion people worldwide are at risk of severe floods, new research shows. Most reside in low- and middle-income countries in Asia, and four out of 10 live in poverty.

The figures are substantially larger than previous estimates. They show that the risk is concentrated among those least able to withstand and recover from flooding.

“I thought it was a valuable paper, indeed. Because this link between poverty and flood risk is kind of overlooked,” said hydrologist Bruno Merz, of the German Research Center for Geosciences, who was not involved in the study.

Flood risk assessments typically consider risk in monetary terms, which is highest in rich countries where more wealth is at stake. The new study focused on how flood exposure and poverty overlap.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, the study combined a global flood risk database with information on population density and poverty. The research focused on places where floods 15 centimeters deep or deeper happen at least once every 100 years on average.

The study found that nearly 90% of people at risk of severe flooding live in poor countries, not rich ones. More than 780 million flood-exposed people live on less than $5.50 per day.

The substantial overlap between high flood risk and poverty feeds into a vicious cycle that further concentrates flood protections in rich countries that have more resources to deal with floods in the first place, said flood risk researcher Jeroen Aerts of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Aerts was not involved in the study.

“It’s doing a cost-benefit analysis,” Aerts said. “Less money is going to poorer countries, because, of course, if the country is poorer, there are less dollars exposed.” Aerts said that this also happens within countries, which tend to invest in pricey flood protections for wealthy urban centers rather than for poorer rural areas.

The new estimate for global flood exposure is higher than some earlier ones. For instance, one previous study predicted that 1.3 billion people would be exposed to severe floods by 2050 — 500 million fewer than are exposed today, according to the new estimate. The authors attribute their higher number to their use of better data covering more regions at higher resolution and combining the risks from coastal, river and surface water floods.

The study did not consider protections, such as levees or dikes, in its assessment of flood exposure. This “distorts the picture,” Merz said, since some flood-prone populations are well-protected, such as those in the Netherlands.

Rather than undermining the study’s findings, Merz thought that this could mean that an even greater proportion of the people threatened by floods lives in poor regions.

“In many low-income countries, there is no flood protection, so people will be flooded by a small flood … that occurs on average every five years. On the other hand, in Europe, in North America, many of the areas are protected (from floods that happen once every) 100 years, 200 years or even higher. And so, this is not included,” he said.

Unprotected, poorer regions could thus shoulder an even greater share of the actual risks from flood exposure than the paper suggests.

The new result offers a snapshot of flood risk around the world as it is today, not a projection of how it will develop in the future. Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and intensity of floods in much of the world. And although early warning systems have decreased flood fatalities, including in resource-poor regions, population growth in flood-prone areas will also put more people at risk in the future, Aerts said.

“The exposure to natural hazards, exposure to flooding — it’s larger than previously investigated. And the majority of those exposed people live in a vulnerable, poor region,” Aerts said. “I think that’s the takeaway, I think, and maybe one sentence more: This means that investments in … flood adaptation should be targeted at those areas.”
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Citing the fast-spreading omicron BA.5 coronavirus subvariant that now makes up a majority of U.S. cases, the White House on Tuesday said it will ensure the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, boosters, treatments and testing to combat the disease.

“Currently, many Americans are under-vaccinated, meaning they are not up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a news briefing Tuesday. “Staying up to date on your COVID-19 vaccines provides the best protection against severe outcomes.”

The subvariant, which the CDC says accounts for 65% of the variants circulating in the United States as of last week, reportedly could spread more easily despite vaccination or natural immunity.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking at the same briefing, said the subvariant does not cause a more severe illness or hospitalizations compared to other subvariants.

“Variants will continue to emerge. The virus circulates globally and in this country. We should not let it disrupt our lives, but we cannot deny that it is a reality that we need to deal with,” Fauci said.

The White House says it will focus on boosters, at-home testing, making good masks available and supporting people who are immunocompromised.

“We can prevent serious illness; we can keep people out of the hospital and especially out of the ICU. We can save lives, and we can minimize the disruptions caused by COVID-19. Even in the face of BA.5, the tools we have continue to work,” said Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator.

“We are at a point in the pandemic where most COVID-19 deaths are preventable,” he said.

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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