The United Nations Environment Assembly, meeting in Nairobi, has adopted a resolution detailing what to do about plastic pollution. It calls for two years of negotiations toward a comprehensive, international treaty on the full life cycle of plastics.

Delegates from 175 countries endorsed an agreement Wednesday that addresses plastic waste.

The United Nations says 400 million tons of plastic is produced every year, and that figure is set to double by 2040.

Rwanda is one of the countries that banned plastic in its territory and is pushing for a plastic-free world.

Rwanda’s environment minister, Jeanne Mujawamariya, said her country would benefit a great deal from global regulation of the use of plastics.

“If adopted, the creation of a legally binding instrument would be greatly significant for countries like Rwanda, where we have made good progress,” she said. “Systematic global change is needed if we are to clean up the current mess, develop sustainable alternatives and make them affordable.”

The debate surrounding plastic pollution has been on the U.N. agenda since 2012.

Recycling has remained one of the effective ways of reducing plastics. The Environmental Investigation Agency, an environmental nonprofit organization, said the existing method of managing plastic is not sustainable.

Less than 10% of plastic that has been produced is being recycled, 76% is discarded into landfills, and experts warn its production will triple by 2050.

Amina Mohammed, the United Nations deputy secretary-general, told the meeting attendees not to fear a future without plastic.

“While we have learned to recycle plastic, we need a far more robust approach to tackle this enormous problem and ensure systemic change through strong action upstream and downstream,” Mohammed said. “We must be ambitious and move faster to win this battle. This is going to require genuine collaborations and partnerships with a shared vision.

The fight against plastic pollution aims to reduce plastic going into the oceans by 80% by the end of the year 2040 and create 700,000 jobs by that time.

Jane Patton, the plastic and petrochemicals campaign manager at the Center for International Environmental Law, told VOA the agreement will mandate that companies producing plastics manage the waste being emitted.

“The resolution specifically calls for a legally binding instrument, which is good, as we have seen the companies that are producing this plastic waste and putting it into the environment, they don’t follow through commitments unless they are legally bound to do that,” she said. “And so, we are excited to see that the treaty will have both a mandatory and voluntary commitments by government, and that will affect companies to address this problem.”

The head of the U.N. Environment Program, Inger Andersen, said adopting the plastic treaty is the most important international environmental agreement since the 2016 Paris climate accord took effect. 
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After almost two years, Western Australia has lifted the nation’s toughest COVID-19 border controls. Double-vaccinated international and domestic travelers are now allowed in, as the so-called hermit state reconnects with the rest of the world.

For almost 700 days Western Australia was cut off from the rest of the country and the world.

Most international visitors were banned, as Australia’s largest state, which is 10 times the size of the United Kingdom, tried to isolate itself from the pandemic.

The state premier, Mark McGowan, said the tough policy had “avoided needless deaths,” but he acknowledged the pain felt by separated families and businesses.

The tough measures did keep infections low, but they were unable to stop a recent surge in omicron cases.

A total of 1,770 cases were reported Wednesday — a new record for Western Australia — but the number of hospitalizations remains relatively low.

With almost 99% of the eligible population double-vaccinated, authorities have insisted that the time is right to end border restrictions.

Dr. Mark Duncan-Smith, president of the Australian Medical Association (Western Australia), told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the tough border strategy appears to have worked.

“What is happening here in WA [Western Australia] right now, with omicron at 1,000 cases a day, is a social experiment that has never been done in the world, and so what we are hoping for is that we will get a very, very soft landing and hopefully our hospitalization numbers will stay very low and that will be testimony to the effectiveness of those borders over the last two years, buying us that time,” he said.

Western Australia’s tough stance on border closures led to it being dubbed a “hermit kingdom.”

McGowan was compared to the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un by Alan Joyce, the CEO of Australia’s national airline, Qantas, last month. Joyce later apologized for his comments.

Other Australian states and territories imposed internal border closures during the pandemic, but those restrictions ended last year. Australia reopened its international borders to all vaccinated international travelers on Feb. 21, but Western Australia maintained its restrictions.

Passengers on the first flights from Sydney and Melbourne into the Western Australian state capital, Perth, were welcomed with gifts of toy quokkas, a small marsupial said to be the “world’s happiest animal.”

Tourism officials in Western Australia have said the reopening of domestic and international travel into the state would bring “joy” to the industry.

Australia has recorded about 2.9 million coronavirus infections since the pandemic began. More than 5,200 people have died.
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The moon is about to get walloped by nearly 3 metric tons of space junk, a punch that will carve out a crater that could fit several semitrailer trucks.

The leftover chunk of a rocket will smash into the far side of the moon at 9,300 kph (5,800 mph) on Friday, away from telescopes’ prying eyes. It may take weeks, even months, to confirm the impact through satellite images.

It’s been tumbling haphazardly through space, experts believe, since China launched it nearly a decade ago. But Chinese officials are dubious it’s theirs.

No matter whose it is, scientists expect the object to carve out a hole 10 to 20 meters (33 to 66 feet) across and send moon dust flying hundreds of kilometers across the barren, pockmarked surface.

Not hard to follow

Low-orbiting space junk is relatively easy to track. Objects launching deeper into space are unlikely to hit anything, and these far-flung pieces are usually soon forgotten by everyone except a handful of observers who enjoy playing celestial detective on the side.

SpaceX originally took the rap for the upcoming lunar litter after asteroid tracker Bill Gray identified the collision course in January. He corrected himself a month later, saying the “mystery” object was not a SpaceX Falcon rocket upper stage from the 2015 launch of a deep space climate observatory for NASA.

Gray said it was likely the third stage of a Chinese rocket that sent a test sample capsule to the moon and back in 2014. But Chinese ministry officials said the upper stage had reentered Earth’s atmosphere and burned up

But there were two Chinese missions with similar designations — the test flight and 2020’s lunar sample return mission — and U.S. observers believe the two are getting mixed up.

The U.S. Space Command, which tracks lower space junk, confirmed Tuesday that the Chinese upper stage from the 2014 lunar mission never deorbited, as previously indicated in its database. But it could not confirm the country of origin for the object about to strike the moon.

“We focus on objects closer to the Earth,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Gray, a mathematician and physicist, said he’s confident now that it’s China’s rocket.

“I’ve become a little bit more cautious of such matters,” he said. “But I really just don’t see any way it could be anything else.”

Another crater

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics supported Gray’s revised assessment, but noted: “The effect will be the same. It’ll leave yet another small crater on the moon.”

The moon already bears countless craters, ranging up to 2,500 kilometers (1,600 miles). With little to no real atmosphere, the moon is defenseless against the constant barrage of meteors and asteroids, and the occasional incoming spacecraft, including a few intentionally crashed for science’s sake. With no weather, there’s no erosion, so impact craters last forever.

China has a lunar lander on the moon’s far side, but it will be too far away to detect Friday’s impact just north of the equator. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will also be out of range. It’s unlikely India’s moon-orbiting Chandrayaan-2 will be passing by then, either.

“I had been hoping for something [significant] to hit the moon for a long time. Ideally, it would have hit on the near side of the moon at some point where we could actually see it,” Gray said.

Reexamining the origins

After initially pinning the upcoming strike on Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Gray took another look after an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory questioned his claim. Now, he’s “pretty thoroughly persuaded” it’s a Chinese rocket part, based not only on orbital tracking back to its 2014 liftoff, but also data received from its short-lived ham radio experiment.

JPL’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies endorses Gray’s reassessment. A University of Arizona team also recently identified the Chinese Long March rocket segment from the light reflected off its paint during telescope observations of the careening cylinder.

It’s about 12 meters (40 feet) long and 3 meters (10 feet) in diameter. It does a somersault every two to three minutes.

Gray said SpaceX never contacted him to challenge his original claim. Neither have the Chinese.

“It’s not a SpaceX problem, nor is it a China problem. Nobody is particularly careful about what they do with junk at this sort of orbit,” Gray said.

Tracking deep space mission leftovers like this is hard, according to McDowell. The moon’s gravity can alter an object’s path during flybys, creating uncertainty. And there’s no readily available database, McDowell noted, aside from the ones he, Gray and a couple of others have “cobbled together.”

“We are now in an era where many countries and private companies are putting stuff in deep space, so it’s time to start to keep track of it,” McDowell said. “Right now there’s no one, just a few fans in their spare time.”
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A Texas judge on Wednesday blocked the state from investigating the parents of a transgender teenager over gender-confirmation treatments but stopped short of preventing the state from looking into other reports about children receiving similar care.

District Judge Amy Clark Meachum issued a temporary order halting the investigation by the Department of Family and Protective Services into the parents of the 16-year-old girl. The parents sued over the investigation and Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s order last week that officials look into reports of such treatments as abuse.

Meachum wrote that the parents and the teen “face the imminent and ongoing deprivation of their constitutional rights, the potential loss of necessary medical care, and the stigma attached to being the subject of an unfounded child abuse investigation.”

Meachum set a March 11 hearing on whether to issue a broader temporary order blocking enforcement of Abbott’s directive.

‘Unfathomably cruel’

The lawsuit marked the first report of parents being investigated following Abbott’s directive and an earlier nonbinding legal opinion by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton labeling certain gender-confirmation treatments as “child abuse.” The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal sued the state Tuesday on behalf of the teen.

“We appreciate the relief granted to our clients, but this should never have happened and is unfathomably cruel,” Brian Klosterboer, ACLU of Texas attorney, said in a statement. “Families should not have to fear being separated because they are providing the best possible health care for their children.”

Spokespersons for Abbott’s and Paxton’s offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday night. A spokesperson for DFPS said there would be “deliberate discussions” about next steps.

The ruling came as President Joe Biden’s administration announced new steps to protect transgender children and their families in response to Abbott’s order. Biden condemned state laws targeting transgender people in his State of the Union address Tuesday.

“Like so many anti-transgender attacks proliferating in states across the country, the governor’s actions callously threaten to harm children and their families just to score political points,” the president said in a statement Wednesday night. “These actions are terrifying many families in Texas and beyond. And they must stop.”

Meachum issued the order hours after attorneys for the state and for the parents appeared before her via Zoom in a brief hearing.

Paul Castillo, Lambda Legal’s senior counsel, told Meachum that allowing the order to be enforced would cause “irreparable” harm to the teen’s parents and other families.

“It is unconscionable for DFPS to still pursue any investigation or inflict more trauma and harm,” Castillo said in a statement after the judge’s ruling.

The groups also represent a clinical psychologist who has said the order will force her to choose between reporting her clients to the state or facing the loss of her license and other penalties.

Ryan Kercher, an attorney with Paxton’s office, told Meachum that the governor’s order and the earlier opinion don’t require the state to investigate every transgender child receiving gender-confirmation care.

Restrictions meet opposition

Abbott’s directive and the attorney general’s opinion go against the nation’s largest medical groups, including the American Medical Association, which have opposed Republican-backed restrictions filed in statehouses nationwide.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday encouraged anyone targeted by a child welfare investigation because of Abbott’s order to contact the agency’s civil rights office. The department also released guidance saying that despite the order in Texas, health care providers are not required to disclose private patient information regarding gender confirming care.

Arkansas last year became the first state to pass a law prohibiting gender confirming treatments for minors, and Tennessee approved a similar measure. A judge blocked Arkansas’ law, and the state is appealing.

The Texas lawsuit does not identify the family by name. The suit said the mother works for DFPS on the review of reports of abuse and neglect. The day of Abbott’s order, she asked her supervisor how it would affect the agency’s policy, according to the lawsuit.

The mother was placed on leave because she has a transgender daughter, and the following day, she was informed her family would be investigated in accordance with the governor’s directive, the suit said. The teen has received puberty-delaying medication and hormone therapy.

DFPS said Tuesday that it had received three reports since Abbott’s order and Paxton’s opinion but would not say whether any resulted in investigations.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Castillo said he was aware of at least two other families being investigated. He also said some medical providers have stopped providing prescriptions for gender confirming care because of the governor’s order.
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A leading cybersecurity firm says it has discovered a “highly sophisticated” piece of malware being used by Chinese hacking teams to attack government and critical infrastructure targets.

Symantec, a division of U.S.-based software designer and manufacturer Broadcom, said the earliest known sample of the malware, which has been dubbed Daxin, dates back to 2013, while Microsoft first documented the hacking tool in December 2013.

A report by the company’s Threat Hunter Team says Daxin is “without doubt” the most advanced piece of malware it has seen used “by a China-linked actor.” The unit says Daxin was discovered along with other hacking tools previously used by Chinese cyberattackers.

The hackers have deployed Daxin against “organizations and governments of strategic interest to China.” The malware permits the attackers to communicate directly with infected computers on highly secured networks where direct internet connectivity is not available, allowing them to extract data without raising suspicions.

Vikram Thakur, a technical director with Symantec, told Reuters that Daxin “can be controlled from anywhere in the world once a computer is actually infected.” Thakur said Daxin’s victims included high-level, non-Western government agencies in Asia and Africa, including justice ministries.
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An expert group of 270 climate scientists warns the dire impacts of climate change soon will be irreversible unless governments act decisively to tackle these imminent global threats.

Hoesung Lee, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, does not mince words. He said the stakes of our planet have never been higher.

“Human activities have warmed the planet at a rate not seen in at least the past 2,000 years. We are on course to reaching global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades and temperatures will continue to rise unless the world takes much bolder action,” said Lee.

He said the action governments take today will shape how people will be able to adapt to climate change and how nature will respond to increasing climate risks.

Debra Roberts is co-chair of the IPCC Working Group II, which produced the report. She said the scientific evidence that climate change is a threat to human well-being and the health of the planet is unequivocal.

“Climate change combines with unsustainable use of natural resources. Habitat destruction, deforestation, and growing urbanization as well as inequity and marginalization … 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in global hotspots of high vulnerability to climate change,” said Roberts.

These include parts of Africa, as well as South Asia, Central and South America, small islands, and the Arctic. The report warns that people living in these hotspots will likely experience severe food shortages, leading to malnutrition, should global temperatures rise by two degrees Celsius by 2050.

Despite these dire predictions, scientists say the report presents a reality check on what has been done to stem global warming and what remains to be done. They say the report offers solutions on how to adapt to climate change and mitigate their worst effects.

Scientists say some challenges can be addressed by creating a more equitable and sustainable world, by moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and by using indigenous knowledge to protect nature.

These steps, along with adaptation and mitigation projects, can help create change, but poorer countries will need wealthier countries to help finance them.
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Kenya has ramped up its efforts to control the twin challenges of the coronavirus and malaria by introducing locally made testing kits for the two diseases. Kenya’s Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) says the kits offer quicker detection and will soon be exported to the region. Brenda Mulinya reports from Nairobi. Videographer and producer: Amos Wangwa
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Archaeologists in Jordan’s southeast desert have discovered a 9,000-year-old ritualistic complex. It’s the earliest known large human-built structure involving Neolithic hunting communities. Experts say it points to civilization in the Middle East much earlier than originally thought.

Jordan’s antiquities ministry recently announced the discovery of huge human stone structures believed to be the oldest known to date from 9,000 years ago in its southeastern desert plateau area of Jabal Khashabiyeh. 

Jordanian archaeologist Wael Abu Aziza told reporters that “they’re the oldest huge human structures known to date.” He said Neolithic hunters living 9,000 years ago used huge stone enclosures to trap wild animals en masse. Also, one structure, thought to be a shrine, contained objects the experts believe to be related to ancient rituals. 

Commenting on the discovery, archeologist Pearce Paul Creasman of the American Center of Research in Amman said it was likely older than other similar structures, also found in Jordan, known as the Ain Ghazal statues.  

“Absolutely, no question that this is a significant find. The Ain Ghazal statues have been traditionally considered some of the oldest and the most significant of human occupation and so this could possibly be pushing that back, a little bit older,” Creasman said.  

A team of international archaeologists—including those from the United States—say the discoveries show how hunting communities in Neolithic times, predating Iraq’s sophisticated Assyrians by several thousand years and who were far less developed, displayed early signs of civilization. At the site were also found children’s toys made by these hunters who etched human faces in stone between hunting trips in the Arabian Desert.  

“This is absolutely evidence of complex activity from a date doing a level organization that we don’t see all over the place at that time and is kind of a predecessor to what we would generally think of as civilization today,” Creasman.   

Archaeologists said this major find could change perceptions of early human civilization in the Middle East.
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Some medical experts have expressed concern that COVID-19 preventative measures, like masking and remote schooling, are potentially weakening children’s immune systems by shielding them from the usual childhood illnesses.

“There’s a lot of reasons to believe that kids need to be exposed to things to keep their immunity complex, so that should they encounter something very dangerous, they have aspects of their immunity that might cross over and help protect them against those things,” says Sara Sawyer, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Colorado Boulder.

At birth, vulnerable infants get antibodies from their mother’s breast milk, which helps protect them until they can build their own immunity. It’s no accident that babies start putting things in their mouths as soon as they gain enough dexterity to pick things up.

“They’re doing that because they’re sampling the environment and building their immunity. That’s an evolutionary trait,” Sawyer says. “They’re exposing their body to germs in a certain, level way to build their immunity. So, some people would argue that childhood illnesses, like colds and stomach bugs, build our immunity so that when more dangerous things come along, we’re prepared and we don’t get as sick from those more dangerous things.”

Even before the pandemic, epidemiological evidence suggested that children in more developed countries, where handwashing and the use of sanitizer are more prevalent, might have less-developed immune systems compared to kids in developing nations who are routinely exposed to more bacteria, viruses and allergens. This makes kids in more industrialized countries more vulnerable to developing autoimmune diseases, according to what’s known as the “hygiene hypothesis.”

“The hygiene hypothesis is actually quite controversial because it’s thought that our exposure to microbes isn’t the only factor,” says Cody Warren, a virologist and immunologist who is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder. “A lot of this could also be dictated by genetics, diet, and the environment that we live in. That also shapes our immune system… it’s a real multifactorial thing that we can’t fully account for just by wearing masks. There are other things that go into that equation.”

Warren, the father of three young children, says spending lots of time outdoors is one way to balance the negatives of isolation.

“Just exploring microbes in the environment also is benefiting [and] training our immune system,” Warren says. “Our immune systems get trained through the foods that we eat, which also have microorganisms on them. And so, despite the fact that we’ve kind of been hunkered down a little bit, I do feel that our immune systems will catch up.”

There are other things parents can do, he says, to boost their children’s immune systems during pandemic times.

“One of the most important things you can do is just to stay up to date on vaccines. That’s one of the best ways that we have to train our immune systems,” Warren says. “But also, equally important is making sure our children have a good diet and they regulate stress. It’s been well documented that both of those — having a good diet, a less stressful environment — can have a positive impact on our immune system.”

Once public health officials say masks are no longer necessary, Sawyer thinks pointing out the positives of putting our masks away could reassure hesitant parents who worry about their children getting sick.

“Maybe we should have a public conversation about the possible reasons to take that mask off, if they are in school, and get back to the normal repertoire of relatively safe childhood illnesses,” she says. “The plus side of childhood illnesses is that they can build up that hornet’s nest of immunity that could protect kids against new things that then come along.”
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Hong Kong’s fifth wave of coronavirus could see thousands of deaths, a new study said.

Slammed by the city’s fifth wave of COVID-19, Hong Kong is facing its worst health period since the pandemic began two years ago. It has forced the city’s government to implement strict measures, including compulsory tests for all Hong Kong residents.

February has seen thousands of new cases, mostly from the omicron variant. A new daily high of 10,010 infections was recorded Friday.

A study by the University of Hong Kong considered the potential outcomes from the current wave of coronavirus cases. One of the worst scenarios outlined that if the hospitals were to be overburdened, Hong Kong could see 7,000 COVID-19-related deaths by the end of June.

“The infection fatality risk may increase by 50% when the health care system becomes overburdened, in which case the cumulative number of deaths could further increase to 4,231 – 6,993,” the study said.

But it also said deaths could be half that number, about 3,200 by mid-May, if health measures remained.

‘Zero-COVID’ plan

Hong Kong had adopted a “zero-COVID” strategy, aligned with Beijing’s effort to control the pandemic across China. It had some success, with authorities quickly clamping down on rare outbreaks by contact tracing, social restrictions, mass testing and quarantine.

Fan Hung-ling, chairman of the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, told the Chinese state’s Global Times that the strategy was “our country’s basic policy” and “won’t change.”

Earlier this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the city’s authorities to get the fifth wave under control. Xi is due to visit Hong Kong July 1, marking the 25th anniversary of the city’s return to China from Britain.

Last week, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam unveiled new measures for the city, including a requirement that residents have proof of vaccination against COVID-19 to enter various premises.

On Wednesday, Lam also announced compulsory testing for all residents by March, with a goal of boosting the city’s vaccination rate to 90%.

Dr. David Owens, an honorary assistant clinical professor at Hong Kong University, had hoped for a different plan of action.

“I would have preferred we would have shifted all of our energies that would effectively [be focused on] things that would save lives,” Owens told VOA. “That would be mitigation, to roll out vaccinations to the elderly and vulnerable. I have also argued we should move to rapid testing so we can break the transmission chains quickly.”

Need for home isolation

Dr. Karen Grepin, associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health, responded to the mass strategy campaign.

“It is likely it will happen at a time very close to the peak of the outbreak and thus it will likely identify literally hundreds of thousands of cases, including likely many who are no longer infectious. It is unlikely that we will be able to isolate even a fraction of these cases, so unless it is coupled with a comprehensive home isolation strategy, it will have little impact on transmission,” Grepin told VOA.

According to data from the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, public hospitals are averaging an occupancy rate of 89%.

One health worker at Hong Kong’s United Christian Hospital, who chose to remain anonymous, admitted she was “afraid” of the pending testing program.

“Patients were crying,” she said. “A male patient said he had not eaten for 12 hours. And another patient said he wanted to commit suicide. And I started to cry. I cannot offer any more for them.

“I am so afraid of the universal testing program. We don’t have enough manpower for that. The government is so keen on a zero-COVID strategy. To me, it is a zero-medical staff strategy. The morale is worsened every day in the frontline.”

She described her job’s current conditions as like “working in a market.”

“It was so difficult to pass through the waiting hall,” she said. “We have to shout out to search the patients.”

Patients in beds outdoors

Last week, Hong Kong’s Caritas Hospital saw dozens of patients lying in hospital beds outside in cold weather, waiting to be admitted. But occupancy is was at 102%, the Hospital Authority said.

A nurse working at the hospital, who also chose to remain anonymous, said elderly patients “have nowhere to turn.”

“Patients are not severely sick from my ward, but [have a] lack of self-care ability. The virus is widely breaking out in elderly care homes and homes for disabilities. They cannot do self-isolation, as they are from the same care center. The staff [are] probably infected. Therefore, the patients literally have nowhere to go even if they turn negative,” she told VOA.

Hong Kong residents have also spoken to VOA about pandemic fatigue, venting their frustrations at the government’s new health measures.

And some expatriates are also looking to leave the city altogether. A Facebook group aimed at helping expatriates leave Hong Kong has already gained over 3,000 members, only days after being created.

Singapore for some

British citizen Niall Trimble, a job recruitment director at Ethos BeathChapman, an executive recruitment firm in Hong Kong, has decided to move elsewhere in Asia.

“I would say the reason for leaving is the lack of flexibility compared to other places on the COVID situation,” he told VOA. “As a recruiter across technology and financial services I am already seeing a huge influx of candidates looking to move to Singapore and also clients looking to move operations to Singapore.”

Hong Kong’s economy fell into a two-year recession in 2019 and 2020. But last year the city saw growth of 6.4% as coronavirus cases remained low.

But Hong Kong has now recorded at least 84,000 cases, with 2022 alone seeing more infections than the last two years combined.

Hong Kong’s finance chief unveiled a budget of over $20 billion to cope with the outbreak, which will include an electronic spending voucher for each resident.

Hong Kong authorities are set to loosen the strategy on rapid testing and allow home isolation for positive cases, the South China Morning Post reported Friday.
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Most Americans live in places where healthy people, including students in schools, can safely take a break from wearing masks under new U.S. guidelines released Friday. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlined the new set of measures for communities where COVID-19 is easing its grip, with less of a focus on positive test results and more on what’s happening at hospitals. 

The new system greatly changes the look of the CDC’s risk map and puts more than 70% of the U.S. population in counties where the coronavirus is posing a low or medium threat to hospitals. Those are the people who can stop wearing masks, the agency said. 

The agency is still advising that people, including schoolchildren, wear masks where the risk of COVID-19 is high. That’s the situation in about 37% of U.S. counties, where about 28% of Americans reside.  

The new recommendations do not change the requirement to wear masks on public transportation and indoors in airports, train stations and bus stations.  

The CDC guidelines for other indoor spaces aren’t binding, meaning cities and institutions even in areas of low risk may set their own rules. And the agency says people with COVID-19 symptoms or who test positive should wear masks.

Risk is generally lower 

But with protection from immunity rising — both from vaccination and infection — the overall risk of severe disease is now generally lower, the CDC said. 

“Anybody is certainly welcome to wear a mask at any time if they feel safer wearing a mask,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a news briefing. “We want to make sure our hospitals are OK and people are not coming in with severe disease. … Anyone can go to the CDC website, find out the volume of disease in their community and make that decision.” 

Since July, CDC’s transmission-prevention guidance to communities has focused on two measures: the rate of new COVID-19 cases and the percentage of positive test results over the previous week.  

Based on those measures, agency officials advised people to wear masks indoors in counties where the spread of the virus was deemed substantial or high. This week, more than 3,000 of the nation’s more than 3,200 counties — greater than 95% — were listed as having substantial or high transmission.  

That guidance has increasingly been ignored, however, with states, cities, counties and school districts across the U.S. announcing plans to drop mask mandates amid declining COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths. 

With many Americans already taking off their masks, the CDC’s shift won’t make much practical difference for now, said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California-Irvine. But it will help when the next wave of infection — a likelihood in the fall or winter — starts threatening hospital capacity again, he said. 

“There will be more waves of COVID. And so I think it makes sense to give people a break from masking,” Noymer said. “If we have continual masking orders, they might become a total joke by the time we really need them again.” 

Color-coded information

The CDC is also offering a color-coded map — with counties designated as orange, yellow or green — to help guide local officials and residents. In green counties, local officials can drop any indoor masking rules. Yellow means people at high risk for severe disease should be cautious. Orange designates places where the CDC suggests masking should be universal. 

How a county comes to be designated green, yellow or orange will depend on its rate of new COVID-19 hospital admissions, the share of staffed hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients and the rate of new cases in the community. 

Mask requirements have ended in most of the U.S. in recent weeks. Los Angeles on Friday began allowing people to remove their masks while indoors if they are vaccinated, and indoor mask mandates in Washington state and Oregon will be lifted in March. 

State health officials are generally pleased with the new guidance and “excited with how this is being rolled out,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. 

“This is the way we need to go. I think this is taking us forward with a new direction going on in the pandemic,” Plescia said. “But we’re still focusing on safety. We’re still focusing on preventing death and illness.” 

The CDC said the new system will be useful in predicting future surges and urged communities with wastewater surveillance systems to use that data, too.
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Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and three major distributors finalized nationwide settlements over their role in the opioid addiction crisis Friday, an announcement that clears the way for $26 billion to flow to nearly every state and local government in the U.S.

Taken together, the settlements are the largest to date among the many opioid-related cases that have been playing out across the country. They’re expected to provide a significant boost to efforts aimed at reversing the crisis in places that have been devastated by it, including many parts of rural America.

Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson announced the settlement plan last year, but the deal was contingent on getting participation from a critical mass of state and local governments.

Friday was the deadline for the companies to announce whether they felt enough governments had committed to participate in the settlement and relinquish the right to sue. The four companies notified lawyers for the governments in the case that their thresholds were met, meaning money could start flowing to communities by April.

“We’re never going to have enough money to immediately cure this problem,” said Joe Rice, one of the lead lawyers who represented local governments in the litigation that led to the settlement. “What we’re trying to do is give a lot of small communities a chance to try to change some of their problems.”

While none of the settlement money will go directly to victims of opioid addiction or their survivors, the vast majority of it is required to be used to deal with the epidemic. The need for the funding runs deep.

Kathleen Noonan, CEO of the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, said a portion of the settlement money should be used to provide housing to people with addictions who are homeless.

“We have clients who have a hard time staying clean to make it in a shelter,” she said. “We would like to stabilize them so we can help them recover.”

Dan Keashen, a spokesman for Camden County government, said officials are thinking about using settlement money for a public education campaign to warn about the dangers of fentanyl. They also want to send more drug counselors into the streets, put additional social workers in municipal courts and pay for anti-addiction medications in the county jail.

Officials across the country are considering pumping the money into similar priorities.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget calls for using $50 million of the state’s expected $86 million share this year for youth opioid education and to train treatment providers, improve data collection and distribute naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses.

In Florida’s Broward County, home to Fort Lauderdale, the number of beds in a county-run detoxification facility could be expanded from 50 to 70 or 75, said Danielle Wang French, a lawyer for the county.

“It’s not enough, but it’s a good start,” she said of the settlement.

With fatal overdoses continuing to rage across the U.S., largely because of the spread of fentanyl and other illicitly produced synthetic opioids, public health experts are urging governments to use the money to ensure access to drug treatment for people with addictions. They also emphasize the need to fund programs that are proven to work, collect data on their efforts and launch prevention efforts aimed at young people, all while focusing on racial equity.

“It shouldn’t be: ready, set spend,” said Joshua Sharfstein, a former secretary of the Maryland Department of Health who is now a vice dean of public health at Johns Hopkins University. “It should be: think, strategize, spend.”

In a separate deal that also is included in the $26 billion, the four companies reached a $590 million settlement with the nation’s federally recognized Native American tribes. About $2 billion is being set aside for fees and expenses for the lawyers who have spent years working on the case.

New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson has nine years to pay its $5 billion share. The distributors — Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based AmerisourceBergen; Columbus, Ohio-based Cardinal Health; and Irving, Texas-based McKesson — agreed to pay their combined $21 billion over 18 years. To reach the maximum amounts, states have to get local governments to sign on.

The settlements go beyond money. J&J, which has stopped selling prescription opioids, agrees not to resume. The distributors agree to send data to a clearinghouse intended to help flag when prescription drugs are diverted to the black market.

The companies are not admitting wrongdoing and are continuing to defend themselves against claims that they helped cause the opioid crisis that were brought by entities that are not involved in the settlements.

In a joint statement, the distributors called the implementation of the settlement “a key milestone toward achieving broad resolution of governmental opioid claims and delivering meaningful relief to communities across the United States.”

The requirement that most of the money be used to address the opioid crisis contrasts with a series of public health settlements in the 1990s with tobacco companies. In those cases, states used big chunks of the settlement money to fill budget gaps and fund other priorities.

The amount sent to each state under the opioid settlement depends on a formula that takes into account the severity of the crisis and the population. County and local governments also get shares of the money. A handful of states — Alabama, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Washington and West Virginia — have not joined all or part of the settlement, mostly because they have their own deals or are preparing for trial.

In Camden, Lisa Davey, a recovery specialist for Maryville Addiction treatment Center, was at a needle exchange this week handing out naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses, and asking people if they wanted to start treatment.

Davey said she wants to see detoxification and treatment programs receive more funding to keep people in them for longer. As it is, she said, users can detox and be back out on the streets in search of drugs within days.

“They need more time to work their recovery,” she said.

A man picking up clean needles who asked to be identified only as Anthony P. said he was 46 and had struggled with addiction since he was a teenager. He said he’d like to see an effort to cut off fentanyl and related synthetic opioids that are driving overdose death rates from the drug supply.

“Fentanyl’s got to go,” he said.

Martha Chavis, president and CEO of Camden Area Health Education Center, which runs the needle exchange, said one need is offering services like hers in more places. Now, users from far-flung suburbs travel into Camden to get clean needles and kits to test their drugs for fentanyl.

The settlement with J&J and the three distributors marks a major step toward resolving the vast constellation of lawsuits in the U.S. over liability for an epidemic that has been linked to the deaths of more than 500,000 Americans over the past two decades.

Other companies, including business consultant McKinsey and drugmakers Endo, Mallinckrodt and Teva, have reached national settlements or a series of local ones. OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and a group of states are in mediation through U.S. Bankruptcy Court to try to reach a nationwide settlement.

The crisis has deepened during the coronavirus pandemic, with U.S. opioid-related deaths reaching a high of more than 76,000 in the 12 months that ended in April 2021, largely because of the spread of fentanyl and other lab-made drugs. A recent report from a commission by The Lancet medical journal projected that 1.2 million Americans could die of opioid overdose between 2020 and 2029 without policy changes.

John F. Kelly, a professor of psychiatry in addiction medicine at Harvard Medical School, said he wants to see money from the settlements go not just for treatment, recovery and support efforts but also to build systems designed to prevent this sort of epidemic from happening again.

“Some kind of national board or organization could be set up … to prevent this kind of lack of oversight from happening again — where industry is allowed to create a public health hazard,” he said.
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Over 100-thousand people died in the U.S. from drug overdoses in the 12 months between June 2020 to May 2021, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That figure is more than COVID, and more than twice the number of those killed by guns and traffic accidents. Liliya Anisimova has details on this epidemic of drug use in this report narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by David Gogokhia.
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Thailand’s economy has seen growth in its recovery amid the global pandemic, but rising COVID-19 cases concern health experts.

Heavily reliant on international tourism to boost its economy, Thailand dropped its quarantine requirement for fully vaccinated visitors in November, with thousands of arrivals flocking to the country since.

But along with the renewal of tourism in Thailand, new COVID-19 infections have also begun to accelerate throughout the country.

Dr. Anan Jongkaewwattana, a virologist and researcher at the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Thailand, has said the country is at a “crossroads” over what to do next.

“We are experiencing rising in omicron cases — a very rapid one.  The question should be how long we can expect it to slow down … it can be days or weeks or even months,” he told VOA.

“In my opinion, we are at the crossroads at the moment.  The number of cases are rising but, to many doctors, the majority of them are still considered mild when compared to the delta wave,” he added.

Data show that the omicron variant is highly transmissible, has an incubation period of about five days and causes less severe symptoms than earlier variants.

Thailand saw a new daily record high on Friday, with 24,932 cases.

Last year saw strict curfews and social restrictions enforced throughout the country for months. However, after a speedy vaccination rollout – sometimes reaching one million doses administered per day – measures were eventually relaxed toward the end of the year. 

Officials said on Monday that the economy rebounded in the fourth quarter of 2021, with rising exports and the return of tourists. Year on year, Thailand saw a 1.9% increase in its economy, aided by the late wave of tourism. Nearly 500,000 people have visited since November.

With rapidly rising infection in the country, though, foreign tourists may think twice about entering, according to Stuart McDonald, founder of travel guide Travelfish.org.

“Should that be concerning for tourists? I would say yes. It is a rapidly changing situation and the Thai administration has a history of chopping and changing rules in an ad hoc, short notice, manner, and not always in a manner clearly informed by concerns for public health,” McDonald told VOA.

Thai authorities have changed entry requirements for tourists several times in recent months, including pausing its Test & Go plan in December following a rise in omicron cases.

The Thai government made further changes Wednesday to the plan, allowing fully vaccinated visitors to skip the quarantine period that is required by unvaccinated air arrivals.

As of March 1, fully vaccinated arrivals are now only required to take one PCR test instead of two when entering the country. Travelers must then wait for their results for up to 24 hours in a health-approved hotel before being allowed to travel elsewhere. Visitors must also take a self-administered rapid antigen test on the fifth day.

Tourism is crucial to the Thai economy. In 2019, tourism accounted for approximately 11% of Thailand’s gross domestic product, and around 20% of Thais  were employed in tourism, according to the Bank of Thailand.

Tourism businesses had previously asked the government to relax entry restrictions.

Authorities have recently ruled out any imminent new restrictions, including lockdown, despite recently raising the country’s COVID-19 alert to Level 4, the second-highest level. Masks are still required in public, while people are encouraged to work from home, cancel nonessential travel and avoid large gatherings.

Thailand now must focus on a plan to live with the virus, according to Pravit Rojanaphruk of Thai news site Khaosad English.

“The government can ill afford to impose another semi-lockdown as it has spent a lot of money over the past two years to remedy and contain COVID-19. It is hesitant because further restrictions would adversely affect the latest Test & Go scheme for arrivals from abroad and further harm the tourism and related industries.

“Increasing vaccination is the way ahead as the government has enough vaccines now for a booster shot. Children will be a particular target group in the weeks ahead but some parents are still reluctant. It’s time to focus on normalising coexistence with COVID-19,” he told VOA.

Last month health officials began vaccinating 5- to 11-year-olds. According to Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health, this age group includes 5 million children in Thailand.

But Jongkaewwattana raised his concerns still, “I’m quite worried in the increasing number of children who are infected and getting sick.  Those kids are not vaccinated and they are more likely afflicted by the Omicron infection compared to the fully vaccinated adults.”

The head of Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University’s Centre of Excellence in Clinical Virology, Dr Yong Poovorawan, warned that Thailand could soon see 100,000 people test positive per day.

Jongkaewwattana believes more can be done to mitigate the risks of infection.

“I believe in the use of technology to help the vaccine to slow down the spread of the virus.  I suggest the government provide test kits to people so that they can monitor their risk. The use of masks in public must be emphasized and the activities that promote virus spreading should be prohibited.”

An increase in the daily death rate could force the government into further action, he said. Thursday and Friday also saw 38 and 41 COVID-19 deaths respectively.

“The death case is now slowly rising and if the number reaches 50 or more the government may start something to bring the number down. If the number of COVID patients in the hospitals nationwide are at a certain limit, they will implement some restrictions. But I don’t see a complete lock down or curfews coming very soon.”

Thailand’s health authorities have administered approximately 122 million doses, including first, second and booster doses. The country has recorded nearly 2.8 million COVID-19 cases with nearly 23,000 deaths since the pandemic began. 
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More than half of U.S. abortions are now done with pills rather than surgery, an upward trend that spiked during the pandemic with the increase in telemedicine, a report released Thursday said.  

In 2020, pills accounted for 54% of all U.S. abortions, up from roughly 44% in 2019.  

The preliminary numbers come from the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. The group, by contacting providers, collects more comprehensive abortion data than the U.S. government.  

Use of abortion pills has been rising since 2000 when the Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone, the main drug used in medication abortions.  

The new increase “is not surprising, especially during COVID,” said Dr. Marji Gold, a family physician and abortion provider in New York City. She said patients seeking abortions at her clinic have long chosen the pills over the medical procedure. 

The pandemic prompted a rise in telemedicine and FDA action that allowed abortion pills to be mailed so patients could skip in-person visits to get them. Those changes could have contributed to the increase in use, said Guttmacher researcher Rachel Jones. 

The FDA made the change permanent last December, meaning millions of women can get prescriptions via online consultations and receive the pills through the mail. That move led to stepped-up efforts by abortion opponents to seek additional restrictions on medication abortions through state legislatures. 

How it works

The procedure includes mifepristone, which blocks a hormone needed for pregnancy to continue, followed one or two days later by misoprostol, a drug that causes cramping that empties the womb. The combination is approved for use within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, although some health care providers offer it in the second trimester, a practice called off-label use. 

So far this year, 16 state legislatures have proposed bans or restrictions on medication abortion, according to the Guttmacher report. 

It notes that in 32 states, medication abortions must be prescribed by physicians even though other health care providers including physician assistants can prescribe other medicines. And mailing abortion pills to patients is banned in Arizona, Arkansas and Texas, the report said. 

According to the World Health Organization, about 73 million abortions are performed each year. About 630,000 abortions were reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2019, although information from some states is missing. Guttmacher’s last comprehensive abortion report dates to 2017; the data provided Thursday came from an update due out later this year. 

Global numbers on the rates of medication versus surgical abortions are limited. Data from England and Wales show that medication abortions have outpaced surgical abortions for about 10 years.
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A space policy expert says that despite the unfolding Russian invasion in Ukraine, the International Space Station should remain at peace. Plus, a delivery of science experiments to the ISS, and a piece of Earth art bound for the moon. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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With the global vaccine supply exceeding distribution capacity, the Biden administration is acknowledging a need to adjust its pandemic response strategy to address hurdles faced by lower-income countries to vaccinate their citizens.

“It is clear that supply is outstripping demand and the area of focus really needs to be that ‘shots in arms’ work,” said Hilary Marston, White House senior policy adviser for global COVID, to VOA. “That’s something that we are laser-focused on for 2022.”

Marston said that the administration has helped boost global vaccine supply through donations, expanding global manufacturing capacity and support for COVAX, the international vaccine-sharing mechanism supported by the United Nations and health organizations Gavi and CEPI.

Following supply setbacks in 2021, COVAX’s supply is no longer a limiting factor, a Gavi spokesperson told VOA. He said COVAX now has the flexibility to “focus on supporting the nuances of countries’ strategies, capacity, and demand.”

However, the pivot from boosting vaccine supply to increasing delivery capacity depends on whether the administration can secure funding from Congress, including funds for the U.S. government’s Initiative for Global Vaccine Access, or Global VAX, a program launched in December by USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Global VAX is billed as a whole-of-government effort to turn vaccines in vials into vaccinations in arms around the world. It includes bolstering cold chain supply and logistics, service delivery, vaccine confidence and demand, human resources, data and analytics, local planning, and vaccine safety and effectiveness.

Four-hundred-million dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act has been put aside for this initiative, on top of the $1.3 billion for global vaccine readiness the administration has committed. Activists say this is not nearly enough, but USAID says it’s a good first step.

“The U.S. government will surge support for an initial subset of countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have demonstrated the potential for rapid acceleration of vaccine uptake with intensive financial, technical, and diplomatic support,” a USAID spokesperson told VOA.

Those countries include Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Eswatini, Ghana, Lesotho, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

Critical bottleneck

In January, COVAX had 436 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to allocate to lower-income countries, according to a document published in mid-February. Those countries, however, only asked for 100 million doses to be distributed by the end of May – the first time in 14 allocation rounds that supply has outstripped demand, the document from the COVAX Independent Allocation of Vaccines Group said.

“We’ve seen now 11 billion plus doses of vaccine being manufactured,” said Krishna Udayakumar to VOA. “We’re estimating 14- to 16- plus billion doses of vaccine being available in 2022,” added Udayakumar, who is founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center and leads a team that tracks global vaccine production and distribution.

But rather than fulfilment of vaccination targets, the oversupply highlights a weakness in global distribution capacity, which Udayakumar said is becoming “the critical bottlenecks.”

Only 12% percent of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, according to country data compiled by Our World in Data. Many countries still face massive hurdles to get those shots in arms, including gaps in cold-chain storage, and lack of funding to support distribution networks.

Global COVID funding

As the administration prepares to pivot its global pandemic response, humanitarian organizations are criticizing it for requesting insufficient funding from Congress.

“After two devastating years of this pandemic, U.S. leaders are dropping the ball on fighting COVID-19. Today we learned the Biden administration briefed Congress on the need for $5 billion in funding from Congress to fight COVID-19,” said Tom Hart, president of the ONE Campaign, in a statement to VOA last week. “What the world needs, though, is a formal request for $17 billion.”

Hart argued the $5 billion funding would be insufficient to provide critical resources needed to deliver vaccines, tests, and life-saving treatments to low-income countries, and achieve the administration’s goal of 70% global vaccination by September – a goal that is already far below pace.

The White House said the number is not final. “I don’t have any specific numbers; we’re still in conversation with the Hill (Congress) at this point about funding and funding needs, both domestically and internationally,” press secretary Jen Psaki told VOA on Wednesday.

In a statement to VOA, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Rosa DeLauro, said they are still reviewing the funding request. “I will work with my colleagues to meet these important public health needs at home and around the world,” she said.

Meanwhile, Gavi, a COVAX co-sponsor, said it has only raised $195 million out of the $5.2 billion it asked for this quarter. The Gavi spokesperson told VOA the call to donors only went out in January and typically campaigns such as this require extensive rounds of consultation.

“The reason we launched a campaign to raise US $5.2 billion in additional funding is to ensure countries are able to roll out vaccines rapidly and at scale and have the resources on hand to be able to immediately step in as and when countries’ needs change,” the spokesperson said. “We need resources available now to prevent lower income countries once again finding themselves at the back of the queue. This is the only way we will break this pandemic.”­

TRIPS waiver

Humanitarian organization Oxfam also argues that $5 billion dollars is not enough.

“We need to do much more to vaccinate the world, including investing in local manufacturing and most importantly, sharing the vaccine recipe,” Robbie Silverman, Oxfam’s senior advocacy manager told VOA.

Sharing vaccine recipes essentially means implementing a temporary TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) waiver at the World Trade Organization to allow the generic production of current vaccines, as proposed by South Africa and India in October 2021. The proposal is supported by the Biden administration but rejected by the European Union.

Following a summit between European Union and African Union leaders last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered a compromise and said that the EU and AU will work together to deliver a solution within the next few months.

The U.S. is by far the biggest vaccine donor. The administration is sending 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Angola, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Zambia and Uganda this week, bringing the total shipped globally to 470 million doses out of 1.2 billion doses pledged.

 

 

 

 

 
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Hong Kong rolled out vaccine passports on Thursday requiring people aged 12 and above to have at least one COVID-19 jab, and paved the way for mainland China manpower to help bring a worsening outbreak under control.

Residents will have to show their vaccine record to access venues including supermarkets, shopping malls and restaurants, a major inconvenience in a city where malls link train stations to residences and office buildings.

Separately, city leader Carrie Lam used emergency powers granted under British colonial-era laws to exempt mainland Chinese staff and projects from any licensing or other legal requirements to operate in Hong Kong.

City authorities have asked their mainland Chinese counterparts for help to build additional isolation, treatment and testing facilities, and boost the workforce as Hong Kong’s health system is increasingly overwhelmed.

“Hong Kong’s healthcare system, manpower, anti-epidemic facilities and resources … will soon be insufficient to handle the huge number of newly confirmed cases detected every day,” the government said in a statement.

On Wednesday, Hong Kong reported a record 8,674 new COVID-19 infections as the global financial hub prepares for compulsory testing of its 7.4 million people – part of its “dynamic zero COVID” strategy similar to mainland China.

Allowing mainland doctors to practice in Hong Kong has been a controversial issue in the global financial hub, which for decades had some of the toughest licensing standards as a way to preserve excellence in its public health system.

The city last year passed a law allowing overseas-trained doctors to practice without taking a local licensing exam, in a move contested by many local doctors.

Hong Kong’s medical front lines have been weakened sharply by the latest outbreak, with some 1,200 medical staff infected as of Wednesday.

Authorities also tightened restrictions from Thursday in a city that already has some of the most stringent rules in the world. Residents will have to wear masks for all outdoor  exercise and will not be allowed to remove them to eat or drink on public transport.

With bars, gyms and other businesses already closed and shopping malls deserted while many residents work from home, the government said on Tuesday schools would break early for summer and resume the new year in August.

Many in the city are growing fatigued with the situation, as most other major cities learn to live with the virus.

As the urgency grows, construction work has started on a facility on Lantau Island to build about 10,000 isolation units, while private hospitals will take in patients from public hospitals.

With the city’s testing, treatment and isolation capacity already stretched to the maximum, University of Hong Kong researchers predicted new infections could peak at 180,000 a day next month.
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Tensions in eastern Ukraine and heightened Western fears of a Russian invasion should not have a significant impact on the International Space Station or U.S.-Russia cooperation in space, the former head of the National Space Council told The Associated Press.

Four NASA astronauts, two Russian cosmonauts and one European astronaut are currently on the space station.

Scott Pace, who served as executive secretary of the space council under President Donald Trump and is now the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said the space station “has been largely isolated” from political events.

“It’s possible to imagine a break with Russia that would endanger the space station, but that would be at the level of a dropping diplomatic relations,” said Pace. “That would be something that would be an utterly last resort so I don’t really see that happening unless there is a wider military confrontation.”

The space station, an international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries, including Canada, several countries in Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States, launched in 1998 and morphed into a complex that’s almost as long as a football field, with eight miles of electrical wiring, an acre of solar panels and three high-tech labs.

It marked two decades of people continuously living and working in orbit in 2020.

The first crew — American Bill Shepherd and Russians Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko — blasted off from Kazakhstan on Oct. 31, 2000. Two days later, they swung open the space station doors, and clasped their hands in unity.

The three astronauts got along fine but tension sometimes bubbled up with the two mission controls, in Houston and outside Moscow.

Shepherd, during a NASA panel discussion with his crewmates, said he got so frustrated with the “conflicting marching orders” that he insisted they come up with a single plan.

Russia kept station crews coming and going after NASA’s Columbia disaster in 2003 and after the space shuttles retired in 2011.

In 2020, SpaceX ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA and became the first private company to launch Americans to the space station.

“It is a way of undertaking common endeavors, but that power is not infinite and terrestrial conflicts on Earth can still get in the way,” said Pace. “Space is ever more critical to our daily life and it’s something everybody should be aware of.”

Earlier this year, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who chaired a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels, said he was keen to discuss ways to prevent dangerous military incidents or accidents involving Russia and the Western allies, reducing space and cyber threats, as well as setting limits on missile deployments and other arms control initiatives.

There have been concerns raised in Congress about the impact that conflict over Ukraine could have on the International Space Station.

Lawmakers have specifically exempted space cooperation from previous sanctions and can be expected to make similar arguments against targeting it as the administration considers its next steps over Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Russia began evacuating its embassy in Kyiv, and Ukraine urged its citizens to leave Russia.

Russian lawmakers authorized President Vladimir Putin to use military force outside his country and President Joe Biden and European leaders responded by slapping sanctions on Russian oligarchs and banks.

Both leaders signaled that an even bigger confrontation could lie ahead.

Putin has yet to unleash the force of the 150,000 troops massed on three sides of Ukraine, while Biden held back on the toughest sanctions that could cause economic turmoil for Russia but said they would go ahead if there is further aggression.

The sanctions underscored the urgency felt by Western nations to blunt the conflict.  
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The use of wind to generate electricity for the United States was thrust forward Wednesday with the largest-ever offering by the federal government of offshore development rights.

Bidding for the 197,000 hectares of the New York Bight — an area of shallow waters between the coasts of Long Island (in New York state) and the state of New Jersey — attracted record-setting prices, according to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

“This auction today is a testament to how attractive the U.S. market is,” said Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance.

Europe is much further along than North America in developing lease areas for offshore wind farms.

There are two small offshore wind facilities in the United States off the coasts of the states of Rhode Island and Virginia. Two more commercial-scale projects were recently approved for development.

“We’re really just at the beginning of a process here. We hope to apply the lessons learned from Europe and take advantage of the cost savings achieved in Europe,” Zalcman told VOA.

Officials say turbines erected in the set of six leases that went up for bidding Wednesday, the first auction conducted during the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, could eventually provide power for nearly 2 million residences.

Wednesday’s top bids totaled more than $1.5 billion. The largest single lease area offered — totaling nearly 51,000 hectares and located about 50 kilometers off the New Jersey coast — had attracted a record-busting $410 million, with bidding to resume Thursday morning.

The previous auction was held in 2018 during the administration of former President Donald Trump. It was considered a success, with three leases off the coast of the state of Massachusetts bringing in a collective record-breaking $405 million for rights to develop 158,000 hectares south of Martha’s Vineyard, with a potential generating capacity of more than 4.1 gigawatts, enough to supply power to about 1.5 million homes.

Trump, a Republican, repeatedly expressed, at best, skepticism toward wind as a viable renewable source to supply America’s energy needs. He derided “windmills,” saying he had been told the noise from their blades “causes cancer” and “it’s like a graveyard for birds.”

Biden, a Democrat, has veered in a different direction, embracing wind as part of his clean energy ambitions and setting a goal of 30 gigawatts of capacity in the United States by the year 2030.

In his first week in office in 2021, Biden signed an executive order to expand opportunities for the offshore wind industry, predicting, according to the White House, the projects “will create good-paying union jobs” and “spawn new supply chains that stretch into America’s heartland.”

The area included in the ongoing auction, which began with 25 qualified bidders, was cut back by about one-fourth from what was initially proposed last year due to concerns about the potential impact on commercial fishing and military interests.

State and federal officials, according to Zalcman, have been addressing concerns of other ocean users, including recreational and commercial fishers, navigators and the shipping industry, and taking into consideration visual impacts to coastal communities, and concerns of environmental groups about migratory species, such as the North Atlantic right whale.

A group of residents of the New Jersey summer colony of Long Beach last month sued BOEM over the New York Bight leasing plans, contending the massive wind farm would permanently mar their beautiful view from the beach, hurt the area’s tourism economy and harm property values.

Bob Stern, the president of Save Long Beach Island, told VOA on Wednesday that the organization “is not opposed to offshore wind energy but believes that the federal government’s process of selecting ocean areas for turbine placement is flawed.”

Stern explained that the group’s lawsuit challenges the federal government agency’s selection of “wind energy areas” for offshore wind turbines which “should have been preceded and supported by a structured regional environmental impact statement process with full disclosure of impacts and public input.”

The Sierra Club is terming the New York Bight auction a historic major stride forward for clean energy.

“This lease sale is the first to include stipulations setting out responsibilities for project developers to report on their engagement with stakeholders to minimize conflicting uses, negotiation of project labor agreements, and the development of offshore wind-related manufacturing and supply chain services,” said Allison Considine, a senior campaign representative of the national environmental organization.

A preeminent concern is ensuring that these projects are done responsibly, said Zalcman of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, of which the Sierra Club is a member.

How developers configure the wind farms will be subject to another rigorous round of environmental review before they are able to erect the huge structures.
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Experts are calling for increased investment in Africa’s health care infrastructure to support data collection, research and development related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent impact on African economies.

In a recent discussion on VOA’s Straight Talk Africa program titled COVID-19 in Africa: Virus, Variants and Vaccines, experts pointed out that the global health crisis exposed poor health infrastructure on the continent.

Mo Ibrahim, the billionaire founder and chair of the London-based foundation that bears his name, spoke about inequality in vaccine distribution at the height of the pandemic.

“The vaccine apartheid did not help the situation for Africa,” Ibrahim said. However, he said he remains “quite optimistic that the pandemic in a strange way will help us move forward.”

“Going forward, we need to manufacture our own vaccines,” he said. “We should not rely on the goodwill or the sensible behavior of others.”

Last Friday, the World Health Organization announced that six African nations would be the first on the continent to receive the technology necessary to produce mRNA vaccines. The countries are Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.

Health experts around the world have raised concerns over the unequal distribution of vaccines. More than 80% of the African continent’s population has yet to receive a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to WHO.

“Much of this inequity has been driven by the fact that globally, vaccine production is concentrated in a few mostly high-income countries,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a European Union-African Union summit last week.

On the panel, Ibrahim highlighted Africa’s weak and overstretched health care system while stressing the lack of adequate investments and the effects of brain drain on health care.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, more affluent countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development have lured migrant doctors and nurses with measures such as higher pay, temporary licensing and eased entry, the OECD has reported.

WHO recommends at least one physician for every thousand people. Some African countries, such as Ghana and Chad, had as few as 0.1 medical doctors per thousand in 2019, according to World Bank data.

Panelist Aloysius Uche Ordu dispelled the assumption that infectious diseases always come from poor countries.

“We tend to look at Africa as the place where infectious diseases start. Well, that did not happen with COVID,” said Ordu, who directs the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. “COVID started with a rich country and spread to other rich countries. In fact, Africa came into the picture later on.”

An official with the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the continent has done a laudable job of dealing with the virus.

“We have kept the numbers low. We have mobilized our political leadership from the very top all the way down to our technical teams,” said Dr. Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, deputy director of the Africa CDC. “We have mobilized the public, and Africa has largely addressed this pandemic as a group. And this is unprecedented, and I will give us a very, very good mark.”

But the dean of health sciences at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa disagrees.

Professor Sabir Madhi noted that his country’s disproportionately high COVID-19 death toll is largely due to “much more robust” contact tracing and data collation tools than other African nations.

South Africans “constitute less than 5% of the African population yet have contributed 45% of all (COVID-19-related) deaths on the African continent,” he said.

The country of nearly 60 million people has Africa’s highest number of recorded infections and deaths — a total of 3.6 million cases and nearly 99,000 deaths as of this week, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center. The center has recorded more than 420 million COVID-19 cases globally and nearly 6 million deaths.

South Africa is emerging from a fourth wave of the pandemic, largely driven by the omicron variant. According to local scientists, the variant no longer leads to high hospitalization rates and deaths in the country, a huge relief for a population reeling under lockdown fatigue.

Madhi told VOA the continent has failed to learn from experiences with the 2009 swine flu, which emphasized the need for good data collection.

He added that “the impact of the pandemic on Africa will, unfortunately, be realized only after the pandemic has passed.”

US support

The United States has committed to helping the world combat the virus. President Joe Biden pledged to donate over 1.2 billion doses through COVAX, the international vaccine-sharing initiative supported by the U.N. and the health organizations Gavi and CEPI. The initiative aims to ensure the equitable distribution of vaccines to developing countries.

So far, the U.S. has donated more than 450 million doses globally, with more than 120 million doses going to 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the State Department.

Ordu said it has become imperative to strengthen STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in Africa. This, he contended, would be a sure way to overcome any future health crisis.

“Because of the growing youthful population in Africa, it is important that STEM education is an area of focus, particularly for women and girls,” he said.

This report originated in VOA’s English to Africa service.
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Aid groups warned Wednesday that a spike in COVID-19 infections and an alarming measles outbreak have compounded the health emergencies in Afghanistan, stretching the impoverished, war-torn country’s fragile health care system.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said in a statement that urgent global support, including health and testing services, as well as vaccinations, was needed to slow the spread of the coronavirus that is surging across Afghanistan.

“A new wave is hitting Afghanistan hard. Testing is inadequate, and the World Health Organization reports that almost half of tested samples are coming back positive, indicating an alarming spread of the virus,” the statement added.

It said the underfunded and understaffed national health system was struggling to cope with the surge in cases. Dozens of COVID-19 health facilities have closed because they didn’t have enough medicines, essential medical supplies and funds to pay the utilities and health workers’ salaries.

The aid group said that fewer than 10 of the country’s 37 public COVID-19 health facilities remained functional, and that they were unable to keep up with demand. Only 10% of the country’s estimated population of 40 million is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Mawlawi Mutiul Haq Khales, the acting president of Afghan Red Crescent, stressed the need for increasing the number of functional health facilities so that pressure can be eased on the few functioning hospitals.

“As the number of COVID-19 infections increases from cities to remote corners of the country, the international community needs to open up the doors to support critical health care, testing and other essential services before it’s too late for the people of Afghanistan,” Khales said.

The Taliban takeover of the country in August prompted international donors to suspend foreign aid, impose financial sanctions and freeze billions of dollars in Afghan foreign cash reserves, mostly held in the United States. The restrictions triggered economic upheavals, worsening an already bad humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan that stems from years of war and a persistent drought.

The U.N. World Food Program estimates nearly 23 million people, or 55% of the country’s population, suffer from severe hunger, saying around 9 million of them are a step away from famine. More than 3 million children suffer from severe malnutrition.

The IFRC noted in its statement that the measles outbreak has infected thousands and killed dozens of people in the last month in Afghanistan.

“The measles outbreak is alarming since Afghanistan is in the middle of one of the worst droughts and food crises in decades, leaving children malnourished and far more vulnerable to the highly contagious disease,” said Necephor Mghendi, IFRC’s country head.

Doctors Without Borders, an international charity known by its French acronym MSF, said in a separate statement that most of its programs, including those in southern Helmand and western Herat provinces, have seen high numbers of patients. It described the malnutrition rates as concerning.

“MSF is treating a high number of patients with measles in our projects in Helmand and Herat. Our teams are concerned about how the situation will progress unless more children are vaccinated against the disease,” the charity said.

The ripple effect of long-running sanctions on the Taliban and the financial measures against the new rulers in Afghanistan are being felt nationwide, according to MSF.

“The country faces near economic and institutional collapse, and tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs and are struggling to find work,” it said.
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