More than 40 million children missed getting vaccinated against measles last year, prompting a significant setback in global efforts to eradicate the highly contagious disease worldwide, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a joint report Wednesday.

Vaccination campaigns were disrupted in several countries because of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, dropping global measles-containing vaccine (MCV) coverage from 86% in 2019 to 81% in 2021, the lowest coverage rate since 2008. 

Now, nearly all of the 40 million children who missed their first or second doses of the MCV are “dangerously susceptible to [a] growing measles threat,” the report warned.  

“The paradox of the pandemic is that while vaccines against COVID-19 were developed in record time and deployed in the largest vaccination campaign in history, routine immunization programs were badly disrupted, and millions of kids missed out on lifesaving vaccinations against deadly diseases like measles,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. 

“The record number of children underimmunized and susceptible to measles shows the profound damage immunization systems have sustained during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, CDC director.

Last year, about 9 million measles cases were reported around the world, with 128,000 deaths.  

Over the last two decades, successful MCV campaigns have helped prevent an estimated 56 million deaths globally, according to WHO.  

Ten countries in Asia and Africa – India, Somalia, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Liberia, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Congo – carry the highest numbers of measles cases and fatalities in the world. 

COVID-19 restrictions have also disrupted immunization campaigns for polio, which causes irreversible paralysis. Polio has been eradicated all over the world except in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where immunization drives have seen access restrictions because of insecurity and limited public awareness.
…

A 5.6 magnitude earthquake left more than 260 dead and hundreds injured as buildings crumbled and terrified residents ran for their lives on Indonesia’s main island of Java.

Bodies continued to be pulled from the debris on Tuesday morning in the hardest-hit city of Cianjur, located in the country’s most densely populated province of West Java and some 217 kilometers (135 miles) south of the capital, Jakarta. A number of people are still missing.

While the magnitude would typically be expected to cause light damage to buildings and other structures, experts say proximity to fault lines, the shallowness of the quake and inadequate infrastructure that cannot withstand earthquakes all contributed to the damage.

Here’s a closer look at the earthquake and some reasons why it caused so much devastation:

Was Monday’s earthquake considered “strong”?

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake late Monday afternoon measured 5.6 magnitude and struck at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles).

Quakes of this size usually don’t cause widespread damage to well-built infrastructure. But the agency points out, “There is not one magnitude above which damage will occur. It depends on other variables, such as the distance from the earthquake, what type of soil you are on, building construction” and other factors.

Dozens of buildings were damaged in Indonesia, including Islamic boarding schools, a hospital and other public facilities. Also damaged were roads and bridges, and parts of the region experienced power blackouts.

So why did the quake cause so much damage?

Experts said proximity to fault lines, the depth of the temblor and buildings not being constructed using earthquake-proof methods were factors in the devastation.

“Even though the earthquake was medium-sized, it (was) close to the surface … and located inland, close to where people live,” said Gayatri Marliyani, an assistant geology professor at Universitas Gadjah Mada, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. “The energy was still large enough to cause significant shaking that led to damage.”

The worst-affected area is close to several known faults, said Marliyani.

A fault is a place with a long break in the rock that forms the surface of the earth. When an earthquake occurs on one of these faults, the rock on one side of the fault slips with respect to the other.

“The area probably has the most inland faults compared to the other parts of Java,” said Marliyani.

She added that while some well-known faults are in the area, there are many other active faults that are not well studied.

Many buildings in the region are also not built with quake-proof designs, which further contributed to the damage, said Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, an earthquake geology expert at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences Geotechnology Research Center.

“This makes a quake of this size and depth even more destructive,” he said.

Does Indonesia usually have earthquakes like this?

The country of more than 270 million people is frequently struck by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis because of its location on the arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin known as the “Ring of Fire.” The area spans some 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) and is where a majority of the world’s earthquakes occur.

Many of Indonesia’s earthquakes are minor and cause little to no damage. But there have also been deadly earthquakes.

In February, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed at least 25 people and injured more than 460 in West Sumatra province. In January 2021, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed more than 100 people and injured nearly 6,500 in West Sulawesi province.

A powerful Indian Ocean quake and tsunami in 2004 killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia.
…

The White House brought out two of the nation’s top doctors Tuesday to urge all Americans to update their COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations in the next six weeks as the holiday season approaches.

The nearly $500 million effort will focus on reaching older Americans and communities hardest hit by the virus, which has killed more than 1 million and infected nearly 100 million in the U.S. since the pandemic began. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently reporting a “substantial” decrease in weekly deaths, which it attributes to two factors. The first is high levels of population immunity, which are a result of either vaccination or prior infection. The second is improvements in early treatment for high-risk patients.

The White House said it would increase vaccination efforts over the next six weeks by investing $350 million into community health centers for vaccination events or activities that encourage vaccination. The federal Department of Health and Human Services will also award $125 million in grants to organizations that serve older adults and people with disabilities so they can support those communities.

Additionally, the federal agency that oversees the government-funded health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid now has expanded powers to enforce compliance from nursing homes, which are required to offer vaccines to residents.

The U.S. has donated 665.2 million vaccine doses to 116 countries, the White House said. And last week, the Biden administration asked Congress for $1 billion in supplemental funding for global COVID-19 efforts. That funding, the White House told VOA on Tuesday, would support ongoing vaccination campaigns and test-and-treat programs. The money would also go toward integrating COVID-19 vaccination into the schedule of routine vaccines, which is how the spread of the polio virus was neutralized. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative was largely responsible for a 99% reduction in global polio transmission as a direct result of the vaccination campaign. 

Dr. Fauci’s ‘final message’

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday made what may be his final appearance at the White House to emphasize that the vaccine is both safe and effective, but that immunity and protection diminish over time. Fauci, at 81, retires later this year after 38 years as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“My final message — it may be the final message I give you from this podium — is that please, for your own safety and for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible, to protect yourself, your family and your community,” he said.

Fauci acknowledged to VOA that misinformation and denialism — some of it coming from the White House during the early days of the pandemic — adversely affected the fight against the quickly changing virus. Critics of then-President Donald Trump say his mixed messages about the virus, his minimization of the situation and his unfounded medical pronouncements were detrimental.

“I contradicted those, which set off a whole series of things in my life,” Fauci said.

“People who have correct information, who take science seriously, who don’t have strange, way-out theories about things but base what they say on evidence and data need to speak up more,” Fauci said, “because the other side that just keeps putting out misinformation and disinformation seems to be tireless in that effort. And it’s going to be very difficult.”

Well-known figures, including several U.S. legislators, have spread what critics say is misinformation about the virus. That’s what led the social media site Twitter to suspend Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2021, though the site’s new owner, billionaire Elon Musk, reinstated her account this week.

Other legislators have opposed President Joe Biden’s vaccine policies and mandates, such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who said “the CDC continues to make recommendations that ignore science, erode public trust, and target Americans’ healthcare freedom” in response to a CDC vote to make COVID-19 a required vaccine for public schoolchildren.

Much misinformation has gained a wider audience on social media networks, White House officials said. As White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha put it: “You can decide to trust America’s physicians, or you can trust some random dude on Twitter. Like, those are your choices.”

As the doctors were speaking at the White House, a Twitter user replied, in real time, to VOA’s line of questioning, saying, “They ruined public trust. Most will never trust public health again. Myself included.”

 
…

A few weeks ago, Lebanon detected its first cases of cholera in 30 years. The highly contagious disease has since spread and officials in the cash-strapped country fear there is a high risk of it becoming endemic if they are unable to tackle the root causes of the outbreak. Jacob Russell reports from the town of Bebnine, in northern Lebanon.
…

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. health official celebrated and vilified as the face of the country’s COVID-19 pandemic response, used his final White House briefing on Tuesday to denounce division and promote vaccines.

Fauci, who plans to retire soon as President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser and top U.S. infectious disease official, has dealt with the thorny questions around health crises from HIV/AIDS to avian flu and Ebola.

But it was his handling of COVID — and his blunt assessments from the White House podium that Americans needed to change their behavior in light of the pandemic — that made him a hero to public health advocates while serving under President Donald Trump, a villain to some on the right and an unusual celebrity among bureaucratic officials used to toiling in obscurity. Fauci has regularly been subjected to death threats for his efforts.

True to form, Fauci used the final press briefing to strongly encourage Americans to get COVID vaccines and booster shots, and touted the effectiveness of masks, all of which became partisan totems in the United States.

The United States leads the world in recorded COVID-19 deaths with more than 1 million.

After 13 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines given worldwide, Fauci said, there is “clearly an extensive body of information” that indicates that they are safe.

“When I see people in this country because of the divisiveness in our country … not getting vaccinated for reasons that have nothing to do with public health, but have to do because of divisiveness and ideological differences, as a physician, it pains me,” Fauci said.

“I don’t want to see anybody hospitalized, and I don’t want to see anybody die from COVID. Whether you’re a far-right Republican or a far-left Democrat, doesn’t make any difference to me.”

Fauci is stepping down in December after 54 years of public service. The 81-year-old has headed the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, since 1984.

The veteran immunologist has served as an adviser to seven U.S. presidents beginning with Republican Ronald Reagan. He made his first appearance at the White House press briefing in 2001.

Republican lawmakers including fierce critic Senator Rand Paul, with whom Fauci tangled during Senate hearings, have vowed to investigate him when they take control of the House of Representatives following November’s congressional elections.

On Tuesday, Fauci said he “will absolutely cooperate fully” in any congressional oversight hearings launched by Republicans next year.
…

Botswana has approved the use of injectable anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs to improve adherence to HIV treatment. Minister of Health Edwin Dikoloti says the injections, given every two months, are more convenient than daily pills, which patients sometimes skip. 

Health Minister Edwin Dikoloti said the use of injectable ARV medication will start next year, after the recent approval of the drug.

“(The) government is working on introducing the injectable anti-retroviral medication soon. Botswana has, through the professional guidance of the clinical guidelines committee, adopted the use of injectable antiretroviral medicines given every two months, for both prevention and treatment,” said Dikoloti.

Minister Dikoloti said the move will help alleviate concerns that patients are skipping their daily oral dose.

“The injectable ARVs, for both prevention and treatment, will no doubt improve adherence to the HIV treatment in our country. The injectable ARV medication formula comprises cabotegravir and rilpivirine. The cabotegravir injection has already been registered by the Botswana Medicines Regulatory Authority while rilpivirine is still undergoing the registration process,” said Dikoloti.

HIV activist Bonosi Bino Segadimo said the introduction of injectable medication will not only help with compliance but could reduce the stigma associated with the virus that causes AIDS.

“I believe the injectable ARVs will help a lot of people in terms of adherence because a lot of defaulting is caused by taking a pill every day. Some say the bottles (for oral pills) cause a lot of attention when they are in public from their appointments (at health facilities). It’s not that everyone on (ARV) treatment has accepted their status. It is a relief for those who find it hard going around a bottle of medication.”

In 2019, the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute conducted clinical trials to determine the efficacy of the injectable drug.

The study proved the drug is safe and highly effective for HIV prevention.

Kennedy Mupeli is a programs officer at Center of Youth for Hope, a non-governmental organization that targets young people living with HIV in Botswana.    

“We are so excited as activists that HIV medication has actually evolved to this level. Who knows, in the near future this will be taken twice a year. This could also encourage people to test because people have this phobia for daily pills,” said Mupeli.

With the world’s fourth largest prevalence of HIV infections, Botswana becomes the second country in Africa, after South Africa, to adopt the use of the injectable ARV drug.   

 
…

Five months after Thailand became the first country in Asia to legalize cannabis, boosters of the hot-button herb are fighting to keep it that way amid mounting calls to re-list the plant as a narcotic.

Cannabis sellers, growers and smokers rallied outside the national government’s headquarters in the capital, Bangkok, Tuesday to discourage authorities from placing the plant back on the country’s controlled narcotics list, with stiff penalties for possession and distribution.

“There is a very high chance that cannabis may end up being illegal again, so it’s quite a very high stake right now,” said Chokwan Chopaka of the People’s Network for Cannabis Legislation in Thailand, which organized the event.

The government’s Narcotics Control Board was meeting Tuesday to discuss concerns about the reported spike in the recreational use of cannabis among adolescents since the plant was legalized in June.

Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam told reporters Monday that the board would not, and actually could not, re-list cannabis, as some feared.

But threats to the plant’s legal status remain.

Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who championed and approved the delisting, has stood by the move. On November 10, however, a group of physicians and lawmakers petitioned the Administrative Court, which can rule on government decrees, to reverse Anutin’s original order and in effect recriminalize cannabis.

Anutin pushed for legalization by touting the plant’s health benefits and promising to pull struggling farmers out of poverty by turning it into Thailand’s next big cash crop. Cannabis-laced products from cosmetics to ice cream from local producers now line supermarket shelves, and dozens of new dispensaries in Bangkok alone sell pot by the gram from farmers across the country.

Chokwan, who owns a Bangkok dispensary herself and showed up to Tuesday’s rally with free samples for the crowd, said recriminalizing cannabis now would reverse the gains the budding industry has made.

“So many people have come out of poverty because of it, and it’s not because they got a new job or anything like that; it’s because they had ownership [of] the things that they do,” she said.

“Cannabis is one of those things … where you can actually help minimize disparity,” she added. “It gives people like me that extra leg up because I know a bit more than someone who has a lot of money. So, going back illegal again, all this money that has been made legally — I’ve been paying my taxes, everything is all on point — all of that money is going to disappear.”

Natasha Schmahl, an ethnic Thai and cannabis advocate who showed up at the rally with her own sign, said she and her German husband were building what will be the country’s first house made almost entirely of hemp in hopes of inspiring others to do the same. She said recriminalizing the plant would once again rob much of the country of the plant’s health and environmental bounty.

‘Gift from Mother Nature’

“This plant needs to stop being criminalized because it’s a plant and it’s a gift from Mother Nature,” she said. “Of course there need to be rules and regulations around legalization, but to keep it criminalized … and not being able to use the benefits of nature giving us all these medicines is just not helping humanity, and that’s not the way we should move forward.”

It’s the current lack of strict rules and regulations that has critics worried.

The Health Ministry took cannabis off Thailand’s narcotics list before parliament could pass comprehensive legislation clearly defining its legal use, production, sale and import-export. The House of Representatives voted in September to withdraw a bill proposed by Anutin’s Bhumjaithai party so that an ad-hoc committee could keep working on the fine print. Critics of the draft complained that it failed to emphasize medical over recreational use and lacked guardrails to keep cannabis out of the hands of children and adolescents.

Smith Srisont is president of the Forensic Physicians Association of Thailand, which helped spearhead the petition urging the courts to recriminalizing cannabis. He said Thai social media include many videos of students lighting up, and that cases of youngsters being hospitalized for consuming too much have been rising since June.

“Because in Thailand it’s freely to use, the children can use it very easy; this is the problem,” he told VOA by phone. “It can cause psychiatric problems, it can cause depression problem in children, and it can change the brain of children, and it can cause lower IQ in the children … if they use early.”

Srisont also accused the Health Ministry of being disingenuous in its claims to be promoting cannabis for its health benefits alone, a charge the ministry has denied.

“They promote to mix with food, mix with everything. This is recreational, but they lie, they lie that this is medical,” he said. “This is another problem.”

Chokwan, of the People’s Network, believes the reports of adolescents abusing cannabis are being blown out of proportion, especially in the context of underage smoking or drinking rates. As her group’s full name declares, she supports legislation but says recriminalizing cannabis would only drive most users and sellers underground, making the industry harder to control.

Rather than hitting reverse, Chokwan said the government should be doing more to educate the public — adults and adolescents alike — about cannabis, as she does with her own children.

“Cannabis is my business, cannabis is all around my house. My kids does not access it,” she said. “We discuss it, we talk about it, we have conversation around it, and I explain how it’s used, why it’s used, and they don’t want to go anywhere near it because it’s not something that they care for.”

Another vote on the cannabis bill is set for December 7.
…

Bacterial infections are the second leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for one in eight of all deaths in 2019, the first global study of their lethality revealed on Tuesday.

The massive new study, published in The Lancet journal, looked at deaths from 33 common bacterial pathogens and 11 types of infection across 204 countries and territories.

The pathogens were associated with 7.7 million deaths — 13.6% of the global total — in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic took off.

That made them the second-leading cause of death after ischemic heart disease, which includes heart attacks, the study said.

Just five of the 33 bacteria were responsible for half of those deaths: Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

S. aureus is a bacterium common in human skin and nostrils but behind a range of illnesses, while E. coli commonly causes food poisoning. 

The study was conducted under the framework of the Global Burden of Disease, a vast research program funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation involving thousands of researchers across the world. 

“These new data for the first time reveal the full extent of the global public health challenge posed by bacterial infections,” said study co-author Christopher Murray, the director of the U.S.-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

“It is of utmost importance to put these results on the radar of global health initiatives so that a deeper dive into these deadly pathogens can be conducted and proper investments are made to slash the number of deaths and infections.”

The research points to stark differences between poor and wealthy regions. 

In Sub-Saharan Africa, there were 230 deaths per 100,000 population from the bacterial infections.

That number fell to 52 per 100,000 in what the study called the “high-income super-region” which included countries in Western Europe, North America and Australasia.

The authors called for increased funding, including for new vaccines, to lessen the number of deaths, also warning against “unwarranted antibiotic use.”

Hand washing is among the measures advised to prevent infection.
…

The World Health Organization said Monday it was thrashing out a new list of priority pathogens that risk sparking pandemics or outbreaks and should be kept under close observation. 

The WHO said the aim was to update a list used to guide global research and development (R&D) and investment, especially in vaccines, tests and treatments. 

As part of that process, which started Friday, the United Nations’ health agency is convening more than 300 scientists to consider evidence on more than 25 virus families and bacteria. 

They will also consider the so-called Disease X, an unknown pathogen that could cause a serious international epidemic. 

“Targeting priority pathogens and virus families for research and development of countermeasures is essential for a fast and effective epidemic and pandemic response,” said WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan. 

“Without significant R&D investments prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it would not have been possible to have safe and effective vaccines developed in record time.” 

The list was first published in 2017. 

It currently includes COVID-19, Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease, Lassa fever, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Nipah, Zika and Disease X. 

For each pathogen identified as a priority, experts will pinpoint knowledge gaps and research priorities. 

Desired specifications for vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests can then be drawn up. 

Efforts are also made to facilitate clinical trials to develop such tools, while efforts to strengthen regulatory and ethics oversight are also considered. 

The revised list is expected to be published before April 2023. 

Pandemic treaty 

The pathogen threat sessions come as the WHO prepares for the next round of talks toward a pandemic treaty. 

An intergovernmental negotiating body is paving the way toward a global agreement that could eventually regulate how nations prepare for and respond to future pandemic threats. 

They are due to meet in Geneva from December 5 to 7 for a third meeting to draft and negotiate a WHO convention or other kind of international agreement on pandemic preparedness and response. 

A progress report will be presented to WHO member states next year, with the final outcome presented for their consideration in 2024. 

An initial draft text for the December meeting emerged last week. 

The Panel for a Global Public Health Convention, an independent coalition of statespersons and health leaders, said the draft did not go far enough, despite its bright spots. 

The panel said Monday that more should be done to establish accountability and clear timelines for alert and response to avoid damaging consequences when an outbreak emerges. 

“Once an outbreak is detected, there are often a few critical hours to report, assess and act to stop the spread of a disease before it becomes virtually unstoppable,” the panel said in a statement. 

“The current draft does not go far enough to call out the urgency needed to either prepare for disease X or known pathogens, or to respond at the early stage,” it said. 

“From December 2019 when information about the new coronavirus was suppressed, to multiple countries taking a ‘wait and see’ approach when Covid-19 cases were first reported … we’ve seen the damaging consequences of inaction at the onset.” 

 
…

NASA’s Orion capsule reached the moon Monday, whipping around the back side and passing within 80 miles (128 kilometers) on its way to a record-breaking lunar orbit. 

The close approach occurred as the crew capsule and its three test dummies were on the far side of the moon. Because of the half-hour communication blackout, flight controllers in Houston did not know if the critical engine firing went well until the capsule emerged from behind the moon, more than 232,000 miles (375,000 kilometers) from Earth. 

It’s the first time a capsule has visited the moon since NASA’s Apollo program 50 years ago, and represented a huge milestone in the $4.1 billion test flight that began last Wednesday. Orion’s flight path took it over the landing sites of Apollo 11, 12 and 14 — humanity’s first three lunar touchdowns. 

The moon loomed ever larger in the video beamed back earlier in the morning, as the capsule closed the final few thousand miles since blasting off last Wednesday from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, atop the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA. 

“This is one of those days that you’ve been thinking about and talking about for a long, long time,” flight director Zeb Scoville said while awaiting to resume contact. 

As the capsule swung out from behind the moon, onboard cameras sent back a picture of Earth — a blue dot surrounded by blackness. 

Orion needed to slingshot around the moon to pick up enough speed to enter the sweeping, lopsided lunar orbit. If all continues to go well, another engine firing will place the capsule in that orbit Friday. 

Next weekend, Orion will shatter NASA’s distance record for a spacecraft designed for astronauts — nearly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth, set by Apollo 13 in 1970. And it will keep going, reaching a maximum distance from Earth next Monday at nearly 270,000 miles (433,000 kilometers). 

The capsule will spend close to a week in lunar orbit, before heading home. A Pacific splashdown is planned for Dec. 11. 

Orion has no lunar lander; a touchdown won’t come until NASA astronauts attempt a lunar landing in 2025 with SpaceX’s Starship. Before then, however, astronauts will strap into Orion for a ride around the moon as early as 2024. 

NASA managers were delighted with the progress of the mission. The Space Launch System rocket performed exceedingly well in its debut, they told reporters late last week. 

The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket caused more damage than expected, however, at the Kennedy Space Center launch pad. The force from the 8.8 million pounds (4 million kilograms) of liftoff thrust was so great that it tore off the blast doors of the elevator.
…

Beijing’s most populous district urged residents to stay at home Monday, extending a request from the weekend as the city’s COVID-19 case numbers rose, with many businesses shut and schools in the area shifting classes online.

Nationally, new case numbers held steady on Sunday near April peaks as China battles outbreaks in cities across the country, from Zhengzhou in central Henan province to Guangzhou in the south and Chongqing in the southwest.

In the capital, two COVID-19 deaths were reported Sunday. Authorities earlier reported the death of an 87-year-old Beijing man, the country’s first official COVID-19 fatality since May 26, raising China’s coronavirus death toll to 5,227. It is unclear if his death is one of the two reported Sunday.

In addition to the deaths, the city reported 154 symptomatic new locally transmitted COVID-19 infections and 808 asymptomatic cases, local government authorities said Monday. 

This compared with 69 symptomatic cases and 552 asymptomatic cases the day before. Authorities also found 266 cases on Sunday outside quarantined areas.

On Sunday, Beijing city officials urged residents of the sprawling Chaoyang district, home to nearly 3.5 million people as well as embassies and office towers, to stay home Monday.

“The number of cases discovered outside quarantine is increasing rapidly at present, and there are hidden transmission risks from multiple places,” Liu Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control, told a media briefing.

“The pressure on Beijing has further increased,” he said.

Many Beijing residents stocked up on food during the weekend, with some delivery services experiencing delays. 

Hairdressers in the neighboring Dongcheng district were also told to close.

On Sunday, China reported 24,435 new COVID-19 infections for November 19, down slightly from 24,473 a day earlier but near highs clocked in April when Shanghai, China’s largest city, was in the middle of an outbreak and a grinding two-month lockdown.

China is trying to ease the impact of containment measures that drag on the economy and frustrate residents fed up with lockdowns, quarantine and other disruptions, even as it reiterates its commitment to its zero-COVID approach. 

While official infection tallies are low by global standards, China tries to stamp out every infection chain, making it an outlier nearly three years into the pandemic.

Under a series of measures unveiled this month, Chinese health authorities have sought more targeted COVID-19 curbs, sparking investor hopes of a more significant easing even as China faces its first winter battling the highly transmissible omicron variant. 

Many analysts expect such a shift to begin only in March or April, however, with the government arguing that President Xi Jinping’s signature zero-COVID policy saves lives. 

Experts warn that full reopening requires a massive vaccination booster effort and a change in messaging in a country where the disease remains widely feared.

The People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper, warned Sunday that the pandemic may expand because of mutations and seasonal factors.

“The situation of pandemic control is severe. We must maintain confidence that we will win, resolutely overcome issues such as insufficient understanding and insufficient preparation,” it said in an editorial.
…

U.S. Army veteran Matt Schermerhorn couldn’t give blood for years because he was stationed in Europe during a deadly mad cow disease scare there. Now, he’s proud to be back in the donor’s chair.

Schermerhorn, 58, is among thousands of people, including current and former military members, who have returned to blood donation centers across the country after federal health officials lifted a ban that stood for more than two decades.

“It’s a responsibility. It’s a civic duty,” said Schermerhorn, who donated on Veterans Day at the ImpactLife center in Davenport, Iowa. “You really don’t have to go out of your way too much to help your fellow man.”

Blood collectors nationwide are tracking down people like Schermerhorn, U.S. citizens who lived, worked or vacationed in the United Kingdom, France, Ireland or served at military bases in Europe during various periods between 1980 and 2001, as well as anyone who received blood transfusions in those three countries anytime since 1980.

Since 1999, those people have been banned from giving blood in the U.S. for fear that they’d been exposed to mad cow disease. Outbreaks of the cattle-borne infection swept through Europe, eventually killing at least 232 people, mostly in the U.K. Four cases have been reported in the U.S., all in people who likely acquired the infections abroad, health officials said.

The rare disease is caused by an abnormal form of a protein called a prion, which triggers damaging changes to the brain and central nervous system. It’s spread from sick cattle to people who eat contaminated beef, but it can also be transmitted through blood transfusions. But after decades of research and reassessment, the federal Food and Drug Administration has determined that the risk of the disease has abated, thanks in large part to changes in the way cattle are raised and the treatment of donated blood. The agency eased the restrictions over the past two years and fully lifted them in May.

That means hundreds of thousands of former donors can once again roll up their sleeves, perhaps bolstering U.S. blood collections, which lagged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The most important thing is for individuals that believe they may now be eligible to call their local blood center,” said Kate Fry, chief executive of America’s Blood Centers, which represents more than 600 blood collection sites providing nearly 60% of the U.S. blood supply.

The American Red Cross, which provides about 40% of the U.S. supply, last month began accepting donors previously deferred because of the risk of mad cow disease, formally known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or vCJD.

Invariably fatal, with an incubation period that can last years or even decades, the emergence of vCJD in humans in the late 1990s alarmed officials responsible for the safety of the blood supply, said Dr. Rita Reik, chief medical officer for OneBlood, a collection center in Florida.

“It was a scary new disease,” Reik said. “Which is why it required such a length of time to study this disease to get a level of comfort to get to the deferral.”

In the U.K., five cases of vCJD were transmitted by blood transfusions, according to the National Health Service. Today, the risk of being infected via blood transfusion is “essentially negligible,” Reik said.

Tracking down lost donors has been a challenge, said Dr. John Armitage, chief executive of the Oklahoma Blood Institute. His staff has used emails, postcards and phones to contact more than 6,300 donors who had been turned away since 1999. So far, about 350 have returned to donate.

“We feel good about that as a first effort,” Armitage said. “We know there are folks that we haven’t reached yet.”

Bans remain in place for people who are suspected of having vCJD or related diseases, those who have a blood relative with a related disease and those who received pituitary human growth hormone or a certain type of brain tissue transplant from cadavers.

The now-lifted military ban included Schermerhorn, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was stationed in Germany from 1988 to 1992.

Schermerhorn stayed away for years — until he saw a local news story about the recent change. He’s donated his rare type O-negative blood eight times since last year.

For Schermerhorn, giving blood is one way to repay past donors who stepped up when his older brother was badly injured in a boating accident.

“My brother had taken nine pints of blood from complete strangers,” he said. “They were part of the lifeline that kept him alive.” 
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Negotiators early Sunday approved a historic deal that would create a fund for compensating poor nations that are victims of extreme weather worsened by rich countries’ carbon pollution, but an overall larger agreement still was up in the air because of a fight over emission reduction efforts.

After the decision on the fund was approved, talks were put on hold for 30 minutes so delegates could read texts of other measures they were to vote on.

The decision establishes a fund for what negotiators call loss and damage. It is a big win for poorer nations which have long called for cash — sometimes viewed as reparations — because they are often the victims of climate worsened floods, droughts, heat waves, famines and storms despite having contributed little to the pollution that heats up the globe.

It has also long been called an issue of climate justice.

“This is how a 30-year-old journey of ours has finally, we hope, found fruition today,” said Pakistan Climate Minister Sherry Rehman, who often took the lead for the world’s poorest nations. One-third of her nation was submerged this summer by a devastating flood and she and other officials used the motto: “What went on in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan.”

Maldives Environment Minister Aminath Shauna told The AP on Saturday “that means for countries like ours we will have the mosaic of solutions that we have been advocating for.”

Outside experts hailed the decision as historic.

“This loss and damage fund will be a lifeline for poor families whose houses are destroyed, farmers whose fields are ruined, and islanders forced from their ancestral homes,” said Ani Dasgupta, president of the environmental think tank World Resources Institute, minutes after the early morning approval. “This positive outcome from COP27 is an important step toward rebuilding trust with vulnerable countries.”

It’s a reflection of what can be done when the poorest nations remain unified, said Alex Scott, a climate diplomacy expert at the think tank E3G.

“I think this is huge to have governments coming together to actually work out at least the first step of … how to deal with the issue of loss and damage,” Scott said. But like all climate financials, it is one thing to create a fund, it’s another to get money flowing in and out, she said. The developed world still has not kept its 2009 pledge to spend $100 billion a year in other climate aid — designed to help poor nations develop green energy and adapt to future warming.

The agreement “offers hope to the vulnerable people that they will get help to recover from climate disasters and rebuild their lives,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International.

“Loss and damage is a way of both recognizing past harm and compensating for that past harm,” said Dartmouth climate scientist Justin Mankin, who calculated dollar amounts for each country’s warming. “These harms are scientifically identifiable.”

“In many ways we’re talking about reparations,” said University of Maryland environmental health and justice professor Sacoby Wilson. “It’s an appropriate term to use” he said, because the rich northern countries got the benefits of fossil fuels, while the poorer global south gets the damage in floods, droughts, climate refugees and hunger.

The Egyptian presidency, which had been under criticism by all sides, proposed a new loss and damage deal Saturday afternoon and within a couple hours an agreement was struck, but Norway’s negotiator said it was not so much the Egyptians but countries working together.

Germany climate envoy Jennifer Morgan and Chilean Environment Minister Maisa Rojas, who shepherded the deal on to the agenda and to the finish line, hugged each other after passage, posed for a photo and said “yeah, we made it!”

According to the agreement, the fund would initially draw on contributions from developed countries and other private and public sources such as international financial institutions. While major emerging economies such as China would not initially be required to contribute, that option remains on the table and will be negotiated over the coming years. This is a key demand by the European Union and the United States, who argue that China and other large polluters currently classified as developing countries have the financial clout and responsibility to pay their way.

The fund would be largely aimed at the most vulnerable nations, though there would be room for middle-income countries that are severely battered by climate disasters to get aid.

Bleary-eyed rumpled delegations began to fill the plenary room 4 a.m. local time Sunday without seeing the overarching cover decision.

Going into the final session, battle lines were drawn over India’s request to change last year’s agreement that called for a phase down of “unabated coal” to include a phase down of oil and natural gas, two other fossil fuels that produce heat-trapping gases.

While European nations and others keep pushing for that language, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Nigeria have been insistent on keeping it out.

“We are extremely on overtime. There were some good spirits earlier today. I think more people are more frustrated about the lack of progress,” Norwegian climate change minister Espen Barth Eide told The Associated Press. He said it came down to getting tougher on fossil fuel emissions and retaining the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times as was agreed in last year’s climate summit in Glasgow.

“Some of us are trying to say that we actually have to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees and that requires some action. We have to reduce our use of fossil fuels, for instance,” Eide said. “But there’s a very strong fossil fuel lobby … trying to block any language that we produce. So that’s quite clear.”

There was strong concern among both developed and developing countries about proposals on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, known as mitigation. Officials said the language put forward by Egypt backtracked on some of the commitments made at last year’s U.N. climate conference in Glasgow aimed at keeping alive the target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius since the mid 19th century.

Some of the Egyptian language on mitigation seemingly reverted to the 2015 Paris agreement, which was before scientists knew how crucial the 1.5 degree threshold was and heavily mentioned a weaker 2-degree Celsius goal, which is why scientists and Europeans are afraid of backtracking, said climate scientist Maarten van Aalst of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

Ireland’s Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan said: “We need to get a deal on 1.5 degrees. We need strong wording on mitigation and that’s what we’re going to push.”
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What is bigger: A ronna or a quetta?

Scientists meeting outside of Paris on Friday — who have expanded the world’s measuring unit systems for the first time this century as the global population surges past 8 billion — have the answer.

Rapid scientific advances and vast worldwide data storage on the web, in smartphones and in the cloud, mean that the very terms used to measure things in weight and size need extending too. And one British scientist led the push to incorporate bold new, tongue-twisting prefixes on the gigantic and even the minuscule scale.

“Most people are familiar with prefixes like milli- as in milligram. But these are prefixes for the biggest and smallest levels ever measured,” Richard Brown, head of Metrology at the U.K.’s National Physical Laboratory who proposed the four new prefixes, told The Associated Press.

“In the last 30 years, the datasphere has increased exponentially, and data scientists have realized they will no longer have words to describe the levels of storage. These terms are upcoming, the future,” he explained.

There’s the gargantuan “ronna” (that’s 27 zeros after the one) and its big brother the “quetta” – (that’s 30 zeros).

Their ant-sized counterparts are the “ronto” (27 zeros after the decimal point), and the “quecto” (with 30 zeros after the decimal point) — representing the smaller numbers needed for quantum science and particle physics.

Brown presented the new prefixes to officials from 64 nations attending the General Conference on Weights and Measures in Versailles, outside of Paris — who approved them Friday.

The conference, which takes place every four years in France, is the supreme authority of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. The new terms take effect immediately, marking the first time since 1991 that any new additions have been made.

Brown said the new terms also make it easier to describe things scientists already know about — reeling off a list of the smallest and biggest things discovered by humankind.

Did you know that the mass of an electron is one rontogram? And that a byte of data on a mobile increases the phone’s mass by one quectogram?

Further from home, the planet Jupiter is two just quettagrams in mass. While, incredibly, “the diameter of the entire observable universe is just one ronnameter,” Brown said.

He explained how the new names were not chosen at random: The first letter of the new prefixes had to be one not used in other prefixes and units.

“There were only the letters ‘r’ and ‘q’ that weren’t already taken. Following that, there’s a precedent that they sound similar to Greek letters and that big number prefixes end with an ‘a’ and smaller numbers with an ‘o,’” he added.

“It was high time. (We) need new words as things expand,” Brown said. “In just a few decades, the world has become a very different place.”  
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