The World Health Organization reported a 43 percent spike in deaths from COVID-19 globally last week, while the number of cases continued to fall worldwide.

In its weekly epidemiological report, the WHO said 45,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 were reported in the week ending March 27, up from 33,000 the week before. That spike follows a week in which deaths declined by 23 percent.

The agency said the increase in deaths is likely driven by changes in the definition of COVID-19 deaths in nations in the Americas such as Chile and the United States, and by retrospective adjustments reported from India in Southeast Asia.

As an example, Chile had the highest number of new deaths, reporting 11,858, a leap of 1,710 percent from the previous week. The United States saw a smaller but still significant increase of 5,367 new deaths, an increase of 8 percent.

While India saw 4,525 of new deaths; it represented an increase of 619 percent. The WHO said those deaths included numbers from Maharashtra state, which initially were not included in last week’s COVID-19 death toll.

While the number of new cases overall fell globally, three European countries — Germany, Italy and France — all saw an increase in new cases from the previous week. While Germany and Italy reported increases of two and six percent respectively, France reported 845,119 new cases – a increase of 45 percent.

The WHO has said repeatedly that COVID-19 case counts are likely a vast underestimate of the coronavirus’ prevalence. The agency also expressed concern that many countries in recent weeks announced plans to drop their comprehensive testing programs and other surveillance measures. They said doing so will cripple efforts to accurately track the spread of the virus.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press.
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Botswana has become the first country in Africa to approve the use of the Texas-made COVID-19 vaccine Corbevax. Botswana’s president and California biotech company NantWorks made the announcement Monday as they began construction of a plant to produce COVID-vaccines and drugs to fight cancer.

CEO of biotech firm NantWorks Patrick Soon-Shiong announced on Monday that Botswana’s Medicines Regulatory Authority (BOMRA) had approved the Corbevax jab.

He made the announcement at a groundbreaking ceremony for a vaccine and cancer drug production facility, along with Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi.

“I am pleased to announce, Mr. President, with the incredibly hard work of both the Ministry of Health and BOMRA, today we announce Africa’s first approved vaccine for Africa by Botswana,” Soon-Shiong said.

Corbevax is a patent-free COVID vaccine developed by the Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital in the United States. It has been used in Bangladesh, India, and Indonesia.

Soon-Shiong said the first consignment would be delivered to Botswana for distribution across Africa.

“This vaccine has been tested and shown to be active in every variant including omicron. I got a commitment this morning that Botswana, effective immediately, will have access to 100 million of these vaccines that you can distribute,” Soon-Shiong said.

The plant, which is expected to be operational by 2026, plans to produce vaccines for COVID and other diseases, as well as cancer treatment drugs.

Masisi said the plant heralds a new dawn for the production of pharmaceuticals on the continent.

“This is particularly noteworthy in the Africa region, which bears a disproportionate disease burden exacerbated limitation of resources and capabilities to address these health challenges. We are determined to dictate a new legacy associated with access to medicines, vaccines and other health technologies,” he said.

Masisi said the facility would help address vaccine inequality in Africa, where less than 20% of the population is fully vaccinated against COVID – two years into the pandemic.

“Disparities in the distribution of vaccines across the world resulted in a lopsided vaccination drive that seriously hampered efforts to effectively contain the COVID-19 worldwide. This problem has been aptly defined as vaccine nationalism. It is therefore our intent, our conviction that the opening of this vaccine manufacturing facility, will go a long way in changing this narrative,” Masisi said.

Botswana’s Health Minister Edwin Dikoloti says the project would also help treat chronic diseases.

“This day marks a new level in our scientific development and advancement. It signifies a new technological breakthrough which will see us as not just a consumer but also a manufacturer of vaccines and other medication that will come out of this magnificent project,” Dikoloti said.

Botswana’s vaccine manufacturing facility will be the second in Africa being built by Soon-Shiong.

In January, the South African-born U.S. billionaire opened a similar facility in Cape Town.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized a fourth dose of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for people 50 and over.

Previously a fourth dose was only authorized for people 12 and up, who are badly immunocompromised.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control will not weigh in on how to implement the FDA’s authorization.

People wanting the fourth shot should only do so at least four months after the previous booster, the FDA said Tuesday.

The FDA’s authorization comes as COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are falling after a winter surge of the omicron variant. 

However, a new subvariant, BA.2, is spreading in Europe and the U.S.

Roughly two-thirds of Americans are fully vaccinated, meaning they’ve had two doses of Pfizer or Moderna or one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Only half of those eligible have gotten a first booster.

While the vaccines did not stop omicron from circulating widely, health officials say they did help those infected avoid serious illness or death.

The government is also considering authorizing a fourth dose for everyone in the Fall when cases could surge again.

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press.
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Southern Malawi has started recording a rise in cholera cases, which health authorities blame on flooding from a recent tropical storm and cyclone. More than 30 people have been infected and two have died. UNICEF is intervening to reduce the spread of the disease.

Malawi confirmed the first cholera case March 2 in the Machinga district.

Health authorities say the disease has so far hit the Nsanje and Machinga districts in southern Malawi with a cumulative number of cases now reaching 33. There have been two deaths as of Friday.

“Out of 33 cases, eight cases were still receiving treatment at the cholera treatment center, Ndamera treatment center specifically. We also have a cumulative number of two deaths. The rest were discharged,” said George Mbotwa, the spokesperson for the Nsanje District Health Office.

He says they have put in place measures to prevent and control the further spread of the disease such as surveillance and contact tracing.

“We are also doing health education; health talks in [evacuation] camps where there are a lot of people and of course in surrounding communities. We have also instituted health workers; HSAs (Health Surveillance Assistants) in all uncharted entry points where actually they are conducting health promotion in water treatment efforts, health talks and all that,” he said. 

Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection caused by ingesting food or water contaminated with bacteria. The disease affects both children and adults if untreated and it can kill within hours. Cholera is more common during the rainy season.

Health authorities in Malawi say the disease is largely a result of floods caused by Tropical Storm Ana and Cyclone Gombe, which hit Malawi in the past two months.

Estere Tsoka, an emergency specialist for the U.N.’s children agency, UNICEF, in Malawi, told VOA that UNICEF is making several interventions to control the further spread of the disease.

“UNICEF is supporting the disinfection of household water sources and also chlorination of water sources at community level that got affected by the floods. UNICEF is also supporting sanitation of the cholera treatment centers that have been established so that they should not become a source of infection,” she said.

Tsoka also says plans are underway to procure a cholera vaccine.

“Also there are plans to administer oral cholera vaccine in eight districts of the country. And UNICEF is providing support to bring in the vaccines in the country and also supporting planning processes for the vaccine’s national campaign.” 

Maziko Matemba, the national health ambassador in Malawi, says cholera can be prevented if community health structures are financially empowered to effectively perform their task of educating communities on matters of hygiene and sanitation particularly in flood-prone areas. 

“Because we already know that we normally have cholera and also floods more especially in that part of Malawi because it’s a low-lying area and our rivers do burst when the rains come more than expected,” Matemba said.

The Ministry of Health said in a statement this week that it is distributing chlorine to communities in affected areas for water treatment as well as sending cholera control information to all the people there through various channels of communication.
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An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change, concerned scientists said Friday.

The collapse, captured by satellite images, marked the first time in human history that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a freakish warm spell last week when temperatures soared more than 70 degrees (40 Celsius) warmer than normal in some spots of East Antarctica. Satellite photos show the area had been shrinking rapidly the last couple of years, and now scientists say they wonder if they have been overestimating East Antarctica’s stability and resistance to global warming that has been melting ice rapidly on the smaller western side and the vulnerable peninsula.

The ice shelf, about 460 square miles wide (1200 square kilometers) holding in the Conger and Glenzer glaciers from the warmer water, collapsed between March 14 and 16, said ice scientist Catherine Walker of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She said scientists have never seen this happen in this part of the continent and that makes it worrisome.

“The Glenzer Conger ice shelf presumably had been there for thousands of years and it’s not ever going to be there again,” said University of Minnesota ice scientist Peter Neff.

The issue isn’t the amount of ice lost in this collapse, Neff and Walker said. It’s negligible. But it’s more about the where it happened.

Neff said he worries that previous assumptions about East Antarctica’s stability may not be so right. And that’s important because the water frozen in East Antarctica if it melted — and that’s a millennia-long process if not longer — would raise seas across the globe more than 160 feet (50 meters). It’s more than five times the ice in the more vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet, where scientists have concentrated much of their research.

Scientists had been seeing the ice shelf shrink a bit since the 1970s, Neff said. Then in 2020, the shelf’s ice loss sped up to losing about half of itself every month or so, Walker said.

“We probably are seeing the result of a lot of long time increased ocean warming there,” Walker said. “it’s just been melting and melting.”

And then last week’s warming “probably is something like, you know, the last straw on the camel’s back.”
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On World Tuberculosis Day, Nigeria said cases of the disease increased by nearly 50 percent last year. At a summit Thursday to heighten awareness of the disease, health authorities said to tackle the epidemic, they need to close a huge funding gap.  

At least 200 people attended the ministerial briefing Thursday in Abuja, where health authorities said confirmed cases jumped from about 138,000 in 2020 to more than 207,000 cases last year.

Health minister Osagie Ehanire said the actual number of cases is probably higher.  

“There’s still a significant gap between the estimated and the notified cases,” he said. “The 207,000 which I spoke of represents only 45 percent of what we estimated.” 

Health authorities said the increase was as a result of heightened surveillance and that Nigeria was one of the few countries in the world to sustain its TB detection program despite COVID-19 disruptions. 

Authorities said there is still a huge funding shortage when it comes to tuberculosis interventions, as only 31% of funding needed for TB control in 2020 was achieved. 

“This year’s world TB Day theme, ‘Invest to End TB, Save Lives,’ is a call to action that resonates with the most critical needs of Nigeria’s national TB program,” said Rachel Goldstein, officer for HIV and TB control for the U.S. Agency for International Development. “We know that the program currently has a significant funding gap, and that’s something we’ve got to work together to advocate for additional resources.”  

Every year, about 590,000 new cases of tuberculosis occur in Nigeria, and around 200,000 people die. 

Experts said apart from low awareness, stigmatization prevents early reporting of the disease.

Joyce Agerl was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 2019, but only began her treatment late last year. Now, she’s helping to warn others about the dangers of the disease. 

“For me, one way I’ll help to give more to the society is to talk to someone about TB,” she said, “and another way is to also do my own publicity on social media.” 

Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease that affects the lungs. Nigeria has the sixth-highest TB burden in the world, and has the most cases in Africa.  

 
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NASA says international space cooperation “hasn’t missed a beat” despite Russia’s war on Ukraine and punishing Western sanctions on Moscow. Meanwhile, Europe’s space agency cancels travel plans with Russia, and space station astronauts perform repairs. Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.]
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The World Health Organization warns the fight against tuberculosis is at a critical juncture. It says the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed gains made since 2000 in saving lives from the infectious disease. For the first time in over a decade, the WHO says TB deaths increased in 2020.

It says around 1.5 million people died of TB during that pandemic year because of disruptions in services and lack of resources. Most deaths have occurred in developing countries, with conflict affected countries across Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East at greatest risk.

The director of the WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Program, Tereza Kaseva, says an extra $1.1 billion a year is needed for the development of new tools, especially new vaccines, to achieve the goal of ending TB by 2030.

She says investing in the fight against tuberculosis is a no-brainer given the benefits gained for each dollar spent.

“For every one dollar invested to end TB, 43 is returned as the benefits of a healthier, functioning society…Ending TB by 2030 can lead to avoiding 23.8 million tuberculosis deaths and almost 13 trillion U.S. dollars in economic losses.”

The WHO says extra funding would allow the world to treat 50 million people with TB, including 3.7 million children and 2.2 million with drug-resistant TB. WHO officials say that would be particularly beneficial for children and young adults who lag adults in accessing TB prevention and care.

Team leader of vulnerable populations in the WHO’s global TB program, Kerri Viney, says 1.1 million children and young adolescents become ill with tuberculosis every year.
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Cameroon’s public health ministry says a cholera outbreak is sweeping across the towns of Limbe, Buea and Tiko, near the border with Nigeria.

The government says 12 of the 600 patients rushed to hospitals in those towns died within the past 72 hours.

Nyenti Annereke, director of the Limbe government hospital, said the facility, which has a capacity of 200 beds, has received more than 240 cholera patients.

“We built three tents in Limbe hospital yesterday because patients were at the veranda, in the corridors of the wards,” he said. “All the beds were full. The Tiko district hospital, the capacity also is overpowered. The hospital in Bota is another crisis zone.”

To cope with the overflow, humanitarian workers are helping to erect tents at the hospitals in Limbe and Buea.

Still, The government says many families are rushing their sick relatives to surrounding towns, including Mutengene and Douala, a commercial hub on the Atlantic coast.

Bernard Okalia Bilai, governor of the South West region where Limbe, Tiko and Buea are located, chaired at least three crisis meetings on Wednesday.

Bilai said the cholera outbreak is caused by a shortage of clean drinking water in western towns and villages provoked by the long dry season and civilians should desist from drinking open stream water. He said the disease is spreading fast because cattle and civilians defecate in the open and in rivers.

“Our structures, the hospitals are overloaded, but thank God that the medical officers in charge of those hospitals have been proactive and they have taken measures to receive various patients,” he said. “All the patients are under treatment.”

Bilai said the government will provide water to arid towns like Limbe, Buea and Tiko and surrounding villages but did not say when.

Meanwhile, health officials are moving from door to door encouraging civilians to boil water from wells and streams before drinking it.

The government says people should also eat only properly cooked food and wash their hands before and after meals, and after using the bathroom.

Another cholera outbreak in Cameroon in February affected 1,300 people and killed about three dozen.
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U.S. pharmaceutical company Moderna said Wednesday interim studies it has conducted indicated its COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective for very young children, and the company is submitting a request for its approval to U.S. and international drug regulators.

In a release published on its website, Moderna said interim data from its Phase 2/3 Study showed “a robust neutralizing antibody response” from a 25 microgram two-dose series of its vaccine among children ages 6 months to just under 2 years of age, and children from 2 years to just under 6.

Based on these results, the company said it will submit a request for approval for the two-dose series for children 6 months to just under 6 years old to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other global regulators in the coming weeks.

If approved, it would be the first vaccination available in the United States for children under the age of 5. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is currently available in smaller doses for children 5 to 12, and in full-size doses for those 12 and older.

An initial trial of the Pfizer vaccine for 2- to 4-year-olds showed a weaker immune response than in adults, forcing the trial to be extended to test a third dose. Results are expected in April.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Companies would be required to disclose the greenhouse gas emissions they produce and how climate risk affects their business under new rules proposed Monday by the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a drive across the government to address climate change. 

Under the proposals adopted on a 3-1 SEC vote, public companies would have to report on their climate risks, including the costs of moving away from fossil fuels, as well as risks related to the physical impact of storms, drought and higher temperatures caused by global warming. They would be required to lay out their transition plans for managing climate risk, how they intend to meet climate goals and progress made, and the impact of severe weather events on their finances. 

The number of investors seeking more information on risk related to global warming has grown dramatically in recent years. Many companies already provide climate-risk information voluntarily. The idea is that, with uniform required information, investors would be able to compare companies within industries and sectors. 

“Companies and investors alike would benefit from the clear rules of the road” in the proposal, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said. 

The required disclosures would include greenhouse gas emissions produced by companies directly or indirectly — such as from consumption of the company’s products, vehicles used to transport products, employee business travel and energy used to grow raw materials. 

The SEC issued voluntary guidance in 2010, but this is the first-time mandatory disclosure rules were put forward. The rules were opened to a public comment period of around 60 days and they could be modified before any final adoption. 

Climate activists and investor groups have clamored for mandatory disclosure of information that would be uniformly required of all companies. The advocates estimate that excluding companies’ indirect emissions would leave out some 75% of greenhouse gas emissions. 

“Investors can only assess risks if they know they exist,” Mike Litt, consumer campaigns director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said in a prepared statement. “Americans’ retirement accounts and other savings could be endangered if we don’t acknowledge potential liabilities caused by climate change and take them seriously.” 

“Climate risks and harms are growing across our communities with threats to our economy,” said Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. “Investors, pension fund managers and the public need better information about the physical and transition-related risks that climate change poses to hard-earned investments,” 

On the other hand, major business interests and Republican officials — reaching down to the state level — began mobilizing against the climate disclosures long before the SEC unveiled the proposed rules Monday, exposing the sharply divided political dynamic of the climate issue. 

Hester Peirce, the sole Republican among the four SEC commissioners, voted against the proposal. “We cannot make such fundamental changes without harming” companies, investors and the SEC, she said. “The results won’t be reliable, let alone comparable.” 

The SEC action is part of a government-wide effort to identify climate risks, with new regulations planned from various agencies touching on the financial industry, housing and agriculture, among other areas. President Joe Biden issued an executive order last May calling for concrete steps to blunt climate risks, while spurring job creation and helping the U.S. reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. 

Biden has made slowing climate change a top priority and has set a target to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 52% below 2005 levels by 2030. He also has said he expects to adopt a clean-energy standard that would make electric power carbon-free by 2035, along with the wider goal of net-zero carbon emissions through the economy by 2050. 

“This is a huge step forward to protect our economy and boost transparency for investors and the public,” White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy tweeted as the SEC acted. 

The premier business lobby, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s top trade group, expressed objections in letters to the SEC last year. 

Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs at API, said Monday the group is concerned that the SEC’s proposal could require disclosure of information that isn’t significant for investors’ decisions, “and create confusion for investors and capital markets.” 

“As the (SEC) pursues a final rule, we encourage them to collaborate with our industry and build on private-sector efforts that are already underway to improve consistency and comparability of climate-related reporting,” Macchiarola said in a statement. 

The threat that opponents could take the SEC to court over the regulations has loomed. 

Last June, a group of 16 Republican state attorneys general, led by Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia, raised objections in a letter to SEC Chairman Gensler. “Companies are well positioned to decide whether and how to satisfy the market’s evolving demands, for both customers and investors,” they said. “If the (SEC) were to move forward in this area, however, it would be delving into an inherently political morass for which it is ill-suited.” 

Morrisey previously threatened to sue the SEC over expanded disclosures from companies of environmental, social and governance information. 

 
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The European Commission is set to delay the publication of proposals on sustainable farming and nature that were expected this week, with the impact of the war in Ukraine on food supply leading some countries to question the European Union’s environmental push. 

The EU’s “Green Deal” is overhauling all sectors, including agriculture, which produces roughly 10% of EU greenhouse gas emissions. Brussels has targets that include halving chemical pesticide use by 2030 and is drafting laws to make them a reality. 

The EC was due to have made public on Wednesday two new proposals — binding targets to restore nature and a more sustainable pesticides law. 

However, EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski on Monday said that the EU would not discuss pesticides at its meeting this week, meaning that the proposal’s publication would be pushed back. He did not comment on the nature restoration plan. 

Earlier, EU Health and Food Safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakides told national agriculture ministers in Brussels that the bloc had to shift to sustainable pesticide use but that the Ukraine crisis did not give the “political space” for a proper discussion now. 

The EC will put forward measures to deal with the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has driven up prices of wheat and barley, and raised fears of shortages. 

Russia and Ukraine make up more than 30% of global trade in wheat and more than 50% for sunflower oils, seeds and meals. 

One proposal would be to allow cultivation on land lying fallow, a practice that allows the environment to recover between farming cycles. 

The measures are also set to include help for pig farmers, given pork exports to Ukraine are now cut off, and greater freedom to provide state aid. 

A group of 400 scientists and food sector experts on Friday said abandoning sustainable farming practices would be counterproductive. 

“These measures would not move us toward but further away from a reliable food system that is resilient to future shocks, and delivers healthy and sustainable diets,” their statement said. 

They called instead for a shift to crops less reliant on fertilizers produced using Russian gas, and to more plant-based diets to cut the amount of grain needed for animal feed. 

 
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Tuesday, March 22, marks the 29th annual World Water Day. This year’s focus is groundwater, which provides freshwater to much of the world. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports.
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Malawi Sunday launched a polio vaccination campaign after the country in February confirmed its first case, 30 years after it eradicated the disease.

UNICEF, the World Health Organization and other partners of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative are leading the campaign, which targets over 20 million children in Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania by July. 

The vaccine rollout comes after it was confirmed last month that a 3-year-old girl was paralyzed by wild poliovirus in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe.

 

 

Until February, Malawi had last reported a polio case in 1992. The southern African country was declared polio-free in 2005 — 15 years before the whole continent achieved the same status.

UNICEF says over 9 million children are to be vaccinated in the first round of the mass campaign in Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi.

UNICEF said the mass immunization will also target children previously vaccinated.

“We need to vaccinate children who have been vaccinated before because it takes multiple doses of the polio doses to get fully immunized as regards to polio and every additional dose gives children extra protection,” says Rudolf Schwenk, UNICEF’s representative in Malawi. 

Schwenk says if some children are not immunized during the campaign, starting Monday the risk of polio will remain not only in Malawi but in neighboring countries as well.

So far, UNICEF has procured over 36 million doses of polio vaccine for the first two rounds of immunizations of children in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia.

In Malawi, the U.N. children’s agency is set to administer 6.8 million doses of the polio vaccine to be used in the first two rounds of vaccination in March and April, targeting 2.9 million children.

Three more rounds of vaccination will follow in the coming months, covering a total of more than 20 million children from the targeted four African countries.

However, in Malawi some health experts fear the immunization campaign would meet with vaccine resistance, as has been the case with COVID-19 vaccine in Malawi.

But UNICEF says efforts were made already to increase acceptance and demand for the polio vaccine among parents and communities.

“So we have worked with faith leaders, with high-level government officials, we have spoken to community leaders and with our partners we have done sensitization discussion to help the understand the importance of vaccinating the children,” said Schwenk.

He also says they have distributed information, education and communication materials across Malawi and aired radio messages about the advantages of the polio vaccine.

Dr. Mike Chisema, the manager for the Expanded Program on Immunization in the Ministry of Health in Malawi, told journalists Thursday that the government was ready for the polio vaccination campaign despite shortage of health care workers.

“Issue of human resource remains a challenge,” he said. “It’s not just about this particular program of outbreak response alone. But what is most important to note is that we have the teams that are available; our health surveillance assistants who do this work all the time. But it’s a question of adding the numbers over time. But we will work to manage with available human resource on the ground.”

In a statement released Sunday, UNICEF said in partnership with the World Health Organization they have trained health care workers in all the countries where they are administering the polio vaccine.

In Malawi they have trained 13,500 health workers and volunteers, 34 district health promotion officers. While in Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia they have trained a combined total of about 3,000 health care workers.
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Botswana will allow unvaccinated travelers into the country, provided they produce a negative COVID-19 test result. That’s a reversal from last month, when the nation started denying entry to travelers who were partially vaccinated or unvaccinated and not willing to get a free shot.

Botswana Ministry of Health spokesperson Christopher Nyanga said in a statement the decision to allow the unvaccinated into the country was meant to ensure smooth entry for travelers.

“I wish to indicate that these changes now allow partially vaccinated or unvaccinated people to enter the country, if they comply with the required testing requirements,” he said. “It is only when one is not fully vaccinated and is also not willing to undergo COVID-19 testing at the port of entry, that they will be charged and fined or taken to a court of law.”

There was confusion over what determined a fully vaccinated person. In Botswana, the vaccine validity period is 180 days, while Europe gives the same vaccines a 270-day validity period.

Nyanga says the vaccine validity discord was taken into consideration when dropping the vaccine mandate.

“Due to discordant periods for taking booster shots between Botswana and other countries, and for purposes of smoothening international travel, the definition of being fully vaccinated in Botswana will no longer include a booster shot,” he said. “Having completed the primary vaccine series will be considered sufficient for one to be allowed entry, without the need to present a negative PCR test result.”

Cindy Kelemi , director of the human rights organization Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and HIV-AIDS, welcomed the government’s move.

“We have always maintained that the response to COVID-19 does not necessarily require for criminalization to be used as a strategy,” she said. “And not allowing entry to those who are not vaccinated is actually a violation of people’s rights. Therefore, it was only reasonable for the government to retract its previous guidelines and remove the barring of people who are not vaccinated, into Botswana.”

Since the introduction of vaccine mandates on Feb. 14, Botswana’s tourism industry says, it has suffered huge losses, with canceled bookings worth $10 million.

A tour guide in the Okavango Delta, Keletso Sedume, said he expects the situation to improve now that COVID-19 entry requirements have been eased.

“It is good news as there was a drop of tourists coming to the delta in the last few weeks,” he said. “We heard it is because some were reluctant to vaccinate and had canceled their bookings. We hope to see them come in now.”

Botswana authorities say they have vaccinated more than 71% of the adult population, which is one of the highest vaccination rates on the continent. 
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Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Sunday she plans to review COVID-19 restrictions on Monday, just days after acknowledging that many financial institutions were “losing patience” with coronavirus policies in the financial hub.

The Chinese-ruled city has some of the most stringent COVID-19 rules in the world, with a ban on flights from nine countries including Australia and Britain, and hotel quarantine of up to two weeks for incoming travelers.

The city has also imposed a ban on gatherings of more than two people, while most public venues are closed, including beaches and playgrounds, face masks are compulsory and there is no face-to-face learning for students.

Saturday, authorities reported a three-week low of 16,597 new COVID-19 cases, down from more than 20,000 a day earlier.

The coronavirus outbreak has swept through elderly care homes and paralyzed many parts of the city.

In recent weeks, streets in the heart of Hong Kong’s financial center have been eerily quiet, restaurants and bars shuttered or empty, and supermarket shelves bare as people snapped up groceries amid fears of a city-wide lockdown.

Many businesses across the city have been forced to shut, including gyms, restaurants, and bars, while others say they are living on borrowed time and need restrictions to ease immediately in order to survive.

Hong Kong has seen a net outflow of around 50,000 people so far this month, compared with more than 71,000 in February and nearly 17,000 in December before the fifth wave hit.

While Hong Kong is officially clinging to a “zero-COVD” strategy that aims to curb all outbreaks, recent actions and policy tweaks suggest it is pivoting away from that at a time when most other major global cities are learning to live with the virus.

The official policy mirrors that of mainland China which is also facing a huge challenge as a jump in cases restricts the movement of millions of people and affects some of the country’s industrial hubs.
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The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw more Americans drinking heavily or using illicit drugs — but apparently not smoking.

U.S. cigarette smoking dropped to a new all-time low in 2020, with 1 in 8 adults saying they were current smokers, according to survey data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adult e-cigarette use also dropped, the CDC reported.

CDC officials credited public health campaigns and policies for the decline, but outside experts said tobacco company price hikes and pandemic lifestyle changes likely played roles.

“People who were mainly social smokers just didn’t have that going on any more,” said Megan Roberts, an Ohio State University researcher focused on tobacco product use among young adults and adolescents.

What’s more, parents who suddenly were home with their kids full-time may have cut back. And some people may have quit following reports that smokers were more likely to develop severe illness after a coronavirus infection, Roberts added.

The CDC report, based on a survey of more than 31,000 U.S. adults, found that 19% of Americans used at least one tobacco product in 2020, down from about 21% in 2019.

Use of cigars, smokeless tobacco and pipes was flat. Current use of electronic cigarettes dropped to 3.7%, down from 4.5% the year before.

Cigarettes were the most commonly used tobacco product, with 12.5% of adults using them, down from 14%.

Health officials have long considered cigarette smoking — a risk factor for lung cancer, heart disease and stroke — to be the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.

In 1965, 42% of U.S. adults were smokers.

The rate has been gradually dropping for decades for a number of reasons, including taxes and smoking bans in workplaces and restaurants. But a big part of the recent decline has to be recent price hikes, some experts said.

For example, British American Tobacco — the company that makes brands including Camel, Lucky Strike and Newport — increased prices four times in 2020, by a total of about 50 cents a pack.

Interestingly, the number of cigarettes sold in the U.S. actually went up in 2020 — the first such increase in two decades, the Federal Trade Commission reported last year.

It’s possible that fewer people smoked, but those who did were consuming more cigarettes.

“That’s a viable hypothesis — that you had people with more smoking opportunities because they weren’t going to work,” said University of Ottawa’s David Sweanor, a global tobacco policy expert at the University of Ottawa.

It’s also possible that the CDC survey underestimated how many people are smoking, either because some respondents weren’t honest or because the survey missed too many smokers, he said.

Other surveys have suggested that for many people, alcohol consumption and illicit drug use increased in the first year of the pandemic.
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The world is at a ‘dangerous moment’ in the fight against diseases like polio, a senior World Health Organization official said, as efforts begin to immunize 23 million children across five African countries after an outbreak in Malawi.

In February, Malawi declared its first case of wild poliovirus in 30 years, when a 3-year old girl in the Lilongwe district was paralyzed as a result of her infection.

The case raised alarm because Africa was declared free of wild polio in 2020 and there are only two countries in the world where it is endemic: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan marked a year without cases in January 2022.

“This is a dangerous moment,” Modjirom Ndoutabe, polio coordinator for WHO Africa, told Reuters in a phone interview from Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo.

“Even if there is one country in the world with polio, all the other countries are in big trouble.”

Ndoutabe said the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns had slowed efforts to vaccinate children against other diseases such as polio, and also hit surveillance.

According to the Gavi vaccine alliance, childhood immunization services in the 68 countries it supports dropped by 4% in 2020, representing 3.1 million more “zero-dose” children likely unprotected from childhood diseases like polio, diphtheria and measles, and 3 million more under-immunized children than in 2019.

“This is a tragedy,” Seth Berkley, chief executive of Gavi, said in an interview with Reuters. “The challenge is getting that back up.”

In Malawi, where polio vaccine coverage is high – above 90% in most districts – rates during the pandemic fell by 2%, according to Janet Kayita, WHO Malawi head. She said the child who was paralyzed had one dose of the polio vaccine at birth, but not the other doses needed for full protection.

Kayita said surveillance had been more significantly impacted. The case is linked to a strain circulating in Pakistan’s Sindh province in 2019, which means it does not impact Africa’s polio-free status. But teams are now scrambling to answer how it arrived in Malawi, and how long it spread undetected.

Polio, a highly infectious disease spread mainly through contamination by fecal matter, used to kill and paralyze thousands of children annually. There is no cure, but vaccination brought the world close to ending the wild form of the disease.

Mass rollout

In a bid to prevent renewed spread in Africa, almost 70,000 vaccinators will go door-to-door in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, to give all children under 5 the oral polio vaccine in a $15.7 million campaign funded by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the WHO said in a statement on Friday.

The first round, beginning Monday, will target more than 9 million children, followed by three further rounds aiming to reach all under-5-year-olds, regardless of their vaccination status, to boost immunity, Kayita said.

Efforts have also been stepped up to track any cases linked to the Malawi outbreak and to monitor transmission in wastewater. So far, no other linked cases have been found.

Vaccine-derived polio, a form of the disease stemming from incomplete vaccination coverage, is more widespread globally, and recent outbreaks have sparked concerns about how the coronavirus pandemic may have hit vaccination coverage.

Israel is battling an outbreak of vaccine-derived polio, its first since the 1980s, after a case was discovered in Jerusalem last week. Almost 12,000 children have since been vaccinated.

Ukraine reported its first vaccine-derived polio case in five years last year, but urgent efforts to curb the outbreak were halted after the Russian invasion on Feb. 24.

Complete vaccination protects against both forms of the disease, and a focus on that will halt both the outbreak in Malawi in months and all forms of polio in Africa by 2023, said Ndoutabe, who described his sorrow when he first heard of the Malawi case setback.

“But we did not stay in this sadness. We had to act quickly,” he said.
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A trio of Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, the first new faces in space since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine.

Russian space corporation Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov blasted off successfully from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan in their Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft at 8:55 p.m. Friday (11:55 a.m. EDT). They smoothly docked at the station just over three hours later, joining two Russians, four Americans and a German on the orbiting outpost.

The blastoff marked the first space crew launch since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The war has resulted in canceled spacecraft launches and broken contracts. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin has warned that the U.S. would have to use “broomsticks” to fly into space after Russia said it would stop supplying rocket engines to U.S. companies. Many worry, however, that Rogozin is putting decades of a peaceful off-planet partnership at risk, most notably at the International Space Station.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson played down Rogozin’s comments, telling The Associated Press: “That’s just Dmitry Rogozin. He spouts off every now and then. But at the end of the day, he’s worked with us,”

“The other people that work in the Russian civilian space program, they’re professional,” Nelson told the AP on Friday. “They don’t miss a beat with us, American astronauts and American mission control. Despite all of that, up in space, we can have a cooperation with our Russian friends, our colleagues.”

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei — who on Tuesday broke the U.S. single spaceflight record of 340 days — is due to leave the International Space Station with two Russians aboard a Soyuz capsule for a touchdown in Kazakhstan on March 30.

In April, another three NASA and one Italian astronaut are set to blast off for the space station.

 
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As COVID-19 infection and death rates begin to increase in some countries that have begun to relax their COVID-related restrictions, the director-general of the World Health Organization issued a reminder of what the pandemic has taught the world so far.

Speaking Thursday at the Thailand International Health Expo, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “The COVID-19 pandemic is a powerful demonstration that health is not a luxury, but a human right; not a cost, but an investment; not simply an outcome of development, but the foundation of social, economic and political stability and security.”

Tedros called on “all countries, manufacturers and partners to work with” the United Nations agency “on enhancing vaccine manufacturing, knowledge sharing and technology transfer.”

And the WHO leader said that “Although several countries have lifted restrictions, the pandemic is far from over – and it will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere.”

Meanwhile, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency, President Xi Jinping has urged the Politburo Standing Committee, the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party to, “Strive to achieve the greatest prevention and control effect with the smallest cost and minimize the impact of the pandemic on economic and social development.”

China is currently experiencing its biggest wave of COVID-19 infections since the outbreak in Wuhan, where the pandemic is reported to have begun in late 2019.

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Friday that there are more than 465 million global COVID cases and more than 6 million global COVID deaths.

Johns Hopkins said that nearly 11 billion vaccine doses have been administered.   
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Conservative Republican lawmakers on Thursday revived a proposal to weaken Kansas’ vaccination requirements for children enrolling in school and day care and to make it easier for people to get potentially dangerous treatments for COVID-19.

The Senate health committee approved a bill that would allow parents to get a no-questions-asked religious exemption from requirements to vaccinate their children against more than a dozen diseases, including measles, whooping cough, polio and chickenpox.

The measure also would limit pharmacists’ ability to refuse to fill prescriptions for the anti-worm treatment ivermectin and other drugs for off-label uses as COVID-19 treatments.

The bill goes next to the full Senate for debate. The Republican majority there also is considering a proposal to greatly limit the power of the state’s public health administrator to deal with infectious diseases and another to ban all mask mandates during future pandemics.

“When you put them all together, it’s a lot of negative bills,” said Democratic Sen. Cindy Holscher, of Overland Park.

The measure approved Thursday would require schools to grant an exemption to parents who say vaccinations violate their religious or strongly held moral or ethical beliefs without investigating those beliefs.

A law enacted in November granted a similar, broad exemption to workers seeking to avoid COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

“It allows the day care-aged kids’ parents and school-aged kids’ parents to enjoy the same freedom of religion that everyone else would,” said Sen. Mark Steffen, a Hutchinson Republican.

But Sen. Kristen O’Shea, of Topeka, broke with fellow Republicans in opposing the measure and noted Thursday that the committee didn’t have a hearing on weakening childhood vaccination requirements.

She said during a meeting earlier this month: “It’s really scary to think that we’re in a society that’s going to bring back measles and polio and whooping cough, et cetera.”

The committee approved a version of the bill early last month, but it became tangled in a dispute over congressional redistricting that involved Steffen. Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, sent it back to the committee for what a spokesperson called “some tweaks.”

The measure also is shadowed by a state medical board investigation of Steffen, an anesthesiologist and pain-management specialist from Hutchinson. While Steffen disclosed the investigation and acknowledged trying to prescribe ivermectin, he has said the probe deals with his public statements about COVID-19 and not patient care.

Steffen pushed the previous version of the bill, which would have required pharmacists to fill all prescriptions of drugs for off-label uses in treating COVID-19. Kansas law allows pharmacists not to fill prescriptions they deem inappropriate or potentially harmful.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved ivermectin to treat infections of lice, roundworms and other tiny parasites in humans. The FDA has tried to debunk claims that animal-strength versions of the drug can help fight COVID-19, warning that large doses can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, seizures, delirium and even death.

The new version of the bill says pharmacists still can refuse to fill drugs for off-label COVID-19 treatments, unless they object only because it’s for treating the novel coronavirus.

The measure prohibits the state medical board from disciplining doctors over such prescriptions, but the committee dropped a provision that would have made that ban apply at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.

Steffen said Thursday that he believes doctors who prescribe ivermectin and other drugs to treat COVID-19 can show that they’re doing what other reasonable physicians would do in similar circumstances. That’s the standard the state medical board uses to determine whether a doctor is providing adequate care.
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Moderna Inc sought emergency use authorization with U.S. health regulators for a second COVID-19 booster shot late Thursday, as a surge in cases in some parts of the world fuels fears of another wave of the pandemic.

The U.S. biotechnology company said its request covered all adults over the age of 18 so that the appropriate use of an additional booster dose of its vaccine, including for those at higher risk of COVID-19 due to age or comorbidities, could be determined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and health care providers.

Moderna’s request is significantly broader than Pfizer Inc and its German partner BioNTech SE’s application that was filed earlier this week with U.S. regulators for a second booster shot for people aged 65 and older.

Moderna, without specifically commenting on the effectiveness of a fourth shot, said its submission was partly based on data recently published in the United States and Israel following the emergence of the omicron variant.

FDA did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

U.S. health officials, including top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, have raised the prospect of a fourth shot, especially for older people and to prepare for the possibility of another surge in cases.

CDC data has shown that vaccine efficacy wanes over time and a third shot helps restore it. It, however, has not released comprehensive data based on age or health status to back the case.

The news was first reported by The New York Times.

While COVID-19 cases are falling in the United States and much of the world, infections are rising in China. In the UK and Europe, there has been a reversal in the downward trend of COVID cases as economies have opened up and a second variant of  omicron circulates.
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