A billionaire who led an all-private space crew into orbit last year has announced plans for up to three new missions in conjunction with SpaceX, including one with a spacewalk.

Jared Isaacman, who founded payment processing company Shift4, will lead the first of the new flights with a launch potentially coming by the end of this year. 

In addition to a mission featuring the first spacewalk attempted by non-professional astronauts, the planned flight also includes achieving a record altitude in Earth orbit.

As part of the partnership with SpaceX, the flights are set to utilize SpaceX spacecrafts.

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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As few as three major criminal groups are responsible for smuggling the vast majority of elephant ivory tusks out of Africa, according to a new study.

Researchers used analysis of DNA from seized elephant tusks and evidence such as phone records, license plates, financial records and shipping documents to map trafficking operations across the continent and better understand who was behind the crimes. The study was published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

“When you have the genetic analysis and other data, you can finally begin to understand the illicit supply chain — that’s absolutely key to countering these networks,” said Louise Shelley, who researches illegal trade at George Mason University and was not involved in the research.

Conservation biologist Samuel Wasser, a study co-author, hopes the findings will help law enforcement officials target the leaders of these networks instead of low-level poachers who are easily replaced by criminal organizations.

“If you can stop the trade where the ivory is being consolidated and exported out of the country, those are really the key players,” said Wasser, who co-directs the Center for Environmental Forensic Science at the University of Washington.

Africa’s elephant population is fast dwindling. From around 5 million elephants a century ago to 1.3 million in 1979, the total number of elephants in Africa is now estimated to be around 415,000.

A 1989 ban on international commercial ivory trade hasn’t stopped the decline. Each year, an estimated 1.1 million pounds (500 metric tons) of poached elephant tusks are shipped from Africa, mostly to Asia.

For the past two decades, Wasser has fixated on a few key questions: “Where is most of the ivory being poached, who is moving it, and how many people are they?”

He works with wildlife authorities in Kenya, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and elsewhere, who contact him after they intercept ivory shipments. He flies to the countries to take small samples of tusks to analyze the DNA. He has now amassed samples from the tusks of more than 4,300 elephants trafficked out of Africa between 1995 and today.

“That’s an amazing, remarkable data set,” said Princeton University biologist Robert Pringle, who was not involved in the study. With such data, “it becomes possible to spot connections and make strong inferences,” he said.

In 2004, Wasser demonstrated that DNA from elephant tusks and dung could be used to pinpoint their home location to within a few hundred miles. In 2018, he recognized that finding identical DNA in tusks from two different ivory seizures meant they were harvested from the same animal – and likely trafficked by the same poaching network.

The new research expands that approach to identify DNA belonging to elephant parents and offspring, as well as siblings — and led to the discovery that only a very few criminal groups are behind most of the ivory trafficking in Africa.

Because female elephants remain in the same family group their whole life, and most males don’t travel too far from their family herd, the researchers hypothesize that tusks from close family members are likely to have been poached at the same time, or by the same operators.

Such genetic links can provide a blueprint for wildlife authorities seeking other evidence — cell phone records, license plates, shipping documents and financial statements — to link different ivory shipments.

Previously when an ivory shipment was intercepted, the one seizure wouldn’t allow authorities to identify the organization behind the crime, said Special Agent John Brown III of the Office of Homeland Security Investigations, who has worked on environmental crimes for 25 years.

But the scientists’ work identifying DNA links can “alert us to the connections between individual seizures,” said Brown, who is also a co-author. “This collaborative effort has definitely been the backbone of multiple multinational investigations that are still ongoing,” he said.

They identified several poaching hotspots, including regions of Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana, Gabon and Republic of Congo. Tusks are often moved to warehouses in another location to be combined with other contraband in shipping containers, then moved to ports. Current trafficking hubs exist in Kampala, Uganda; Mombasa, Kenya; and Lome, Togo.

Two suspects were recently arrested as a result of one such investigation, said Wasser.

Traffickers that smuggle ivory also often move other contraband, the researchers found. A quarter of large seizures of pangolin scales – a heavily-poached anteater-like animal – are co-mingled with ivory, for instance.

“Confronting these networks is a great example of how genetics can be used for conservation purposes,” said Brian Arnold, a Princeton University evolutionary biologist who was not involved in the research.
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has begun a two-week meeting to consider a report that assesses the impact of the world’s changing climate and how humans might adapt.

Hundreds of scientists meeting virtually will lay out the latest evidence on how past and future changes to the Earth’s climate system are affecting the planet.

The report under review is the second of three installments that will comprise the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, which will be released later this year.

In August, the scientific body approved the first contribution of Working Group I, which dealt with the physical science basis of climate change.

The second part, currently under review, highlights the role of social justice and diverse forms of knowledge, such as indigenous and local knowledge, might play to strengthen climate change action and reduce the risks.

The chair of the IPCC, Hoesung Lee, said the report focuses on solutions and productive areas for action.

“It will be more strongly integrated, the natural, social and economic sciences. And it will provide policymakers with sound data and knowledge to help them shape policies and make decisions. The need for the Working Group II report has never been greater because the stakes have never been higher,” he said.

The United Nations-backed IPCC was established in 1988 to provide political leaders with periodic scientific assessments regarding climate change. The panel previously issued five assessment reports that spotlighted climate change as an issue of growing global importance.

The Paris Agreement on climate change calls for limiting human-induced global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius, above pre-industrial levels. The IPCC warns that mark will be exceeded this century, unless drastic action is taken.

Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, said weather-related disasters have been increasing dramatically over the past two decades.

He said vulnerable areas in tropical latitudes, especially in Africa, Southern Asia and the Pacific are suffering the worst impacts of climate-driven disasters.

He said he often uses a sports analogy to communicate the seriousness of climate change to humanity.

“We have at the moment Winter Olympics going on in China. We have high-performing athletes. And if you give them doping, then they perform even more expertly. So, that is what we have done with the atmosphere. We have been doping the atmosphere,” said Taalas.

The contribution by Working Group III, dealing with the mitigation of climate change, will be finalized in April. The concluding synthesis of IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report will be made in September.
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A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday began its review of Japan’s plan to begin releasing more than a million tons of treated radioactive water into the sea from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant — a review that Japan hopes will instill confidence in the plan.

The 15-member team is to visit the Fukushima plant on Tuesday and meet with government and utility officials during its five-day mission.

The government and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings announced plans last year to begin gradually releasing the still-contaminated water in spring 2023 after its further treatment and dilution.

The water is being stored in about 1,000 tanks at the damaged plant which officials say need to be removed so the reactors can be decommissioned. The tanks are expected to reach their capacity of 1.37 million tons later this year.

The release of the water into the sea has been fiercely opposed by fishermen, local residents and Japan’s neighbors, including China and South Korea. Fukushima residents worry the reputation of their agricultural and fishing products will be further damaged.

Japan sought IAEA’s assistance to ensure the release meets international safety standards.

Gustavo Caruso, director of the IAEA’s Office of Safety and Security Coordination, said on Monday that the mission “in an objective, credible and science-based manner will help send messages of transparency and confidence for the people in Japan and beyond.”

The team will review details of the water, safety of the discharge, sampling methods and the environmental impact, he said. The team includes experts from several countries, including South Korea and China.

Officials say all isotopes selected for treatment in the contaminated water can be reduced to low levels except for tritium, which is inseparable from the water but is harmless in small amounts. They say a gradual release of the water, diluted with seawater, into the ocean over decades is safe.

Keiichi Yumoto, who heads the Fukushima accident response at the industry ministry, noted concerns about the safety of the project and said it is “very important” to have reviews by the IAEA to “foster public understanding.”

Junichi Matsumoto, TEPCO’s chief officer in charge of the treated water management, said the utility is prioritizing safety and the impact on the region’s reputation.

“Ensuring transparency and objectivity is crucial to the project,” said Matsumoto, who attended a meeting Monday with IAEA and government officials. “We hope to further improve the objectivity and transparency of the process based on the review.”

A massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed the Fukushima plant’s cooling systems, triggering the meltdown of three reactors and the release of large amounts of radiation. Water used since the accident to cool the highly radioactive damaged reactor cores has since leaked extensively.

Japan and the IAEA have agreed to compile an interim report on the review later this year.
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A vault built on an Arctic mountainside to preserve the world’s crop seeds from war, disease and other catastrophes will receive new deposits on Monday, including one from the first organization that made a withdrawal from the facility.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, on Spitsbergen island halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, is only opened a few times a year to limit its seed banks’ exposure to the outside world.

On Monday, gene banks from Sudan, Uganda, New Zealand, Germany and Lebanon will deposit seeds, including millet, sorghum and wheat, as back-ups to their own collections.

The International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), which moved its headquarters to Beirut from Aleppo in 2012 because of the war in Syria, will deposit some 8,000 samples.

ICARDA made the first seed withdrawal from the vault in 2015 to replace a collection damaged by the war, and two further withdrawals in 2017 and 2019 to rebuild its own collections, now held in Lebanon and Morocco.

“The fact that the seed collection destroyed in Syria during the civil war has been systematically rebuilt shows that the vault functions as an insurance for current and future food supply and for local food security,” said Norwegian International Development Minister Anne Beathe Tvinnereim.

The vault, which holds over 1.1 million seed samples of nearly 6,000 plant species from 89 seed banks globally, also serves as a backup for plant breeders to develop new crop varieties.

The world used to cultivate more than 6,000 different plants but U.N. experts say we now get about 40% of our calories from three main crops — maize, wheat and rice — making food supplies vulnerable if climate change causes harvests to fail. 

 
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The World Health Organization warns a sharp rise in measles cases in Afghanistan is threatening the lives and well-being of millions of malnourished children. 

More than 35,300 suspected cases of measles and 156 deaths have been reported in Afghanistan from January 2021 through January of this year.  What is setting off alarm bells ringing is the sharp, rapid rise in cases last month.

The World Health Organization reports a 40% increase in the number of measles cases in the last week of January.  Although the number of deaths is relatively low, the WHO warns many children are likely to die from the disease in the coming weeks.

WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier says measles-related deaths are not always reported in Afghanistan, so the toll is likely to be much higher than the figures suggest.

“The rise in measles cases is especially concerning because of the extremely high levels of malnutrition in Afghanistan,” Lindmeier said. “Malnutrition weakens immunity, making people more vulnerable to illness and death from diseases like measles—especially children.  In addition, measles infections can cause immune system suppression and immunologic amnesia, which increases susceptibility to all pathogens.”   

The World Food Program says Afghanistan is facing the worst food crisis on record.  It says 1 in 3 people are going hungry and some 2 million children are malnourished.  The WFP warns 14 million children are expected to face potentially life-threatening levels of hunger, noting that malnutrition rates already are soaring.

Measles is an extremely contagious viral disease. Lindmeier says unvaccinated young children are at highest risk of getting sick and dying from it.

In December, he says, an immunization campaign was carried out in response to a measles outbreak.  He says the campaign reached 1.5 million children in some of the most-affected provinces.

“Now, WHO is helping to plan for a larger measles outbreak response immunization campaign, which will start in May, or earlier if possible, aiming to reach more than 3 million children nationwide,” Lindmeier said. “Support from WHO includes helping with the process needed to secure additional vaccines and devices, as well as the operational funds and the support for planning the campaign.”   

The WHO says strengthening routine immunization is the best way to protect people, especially children, from getting measles.  The agency urges governments to make sure at least 95 percent of their populations receive two doses of measles-containing vaccine.
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At the Tokyo Olympics, mental health was the breakout star. Amplified by some of the world’s top athletes, it shook up those Games and made everyone take notice.

Six months later, in Beijing, the conversation has evolved: The subject pops up regularly, but no one is shocked when it does.

Many athletes have spoken about their struggles, but often in a no-biggie, nothing-to-see-here way. A difficulty is mentioned, then the conversation moves on. After star gymnast Simone Biles pulled out of competition in Tokyo because she wasn’t in the right headspace, retired Olympic swimming phenom Michael Phelps memorably said that “It’s OK to not be OK.”

And now, thanks in part to people like Biles, it seems it’s OK to talk about it, too.

“I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned after the last Olympics is being as open as possible,” snowboarding sensation Chloe Kim told reporters after she took the gold medal Thursday in the halfpipe competition.

It was Kim’s second Olympic gold. She initially threw that first one, earned in Pyeongchang four years ago, in the trash — a story that epitomizes the dissonance between the cheery face many champions show the world and the torments they face behind the scenes.

“After my last Olympics, I put that pressure on myself to be perfect at all times, and that would cause a lot of issues at home. I would be really sad and depressed all the time when I was home,” Kim told reporters after easily securing the top spot on the podium — but also failing to land a new trick she is working on.

“I’m happy to talk about whatever I’ve been experiencing,” she said. “Honestly, it’s really healthy for me.”

It wasn’t just Kim who was talking about it. After snowboarder Jamie Anderson, who came to Beijing as the two-time defending slopestyle champion, finished ninth, she posted on Instagram that her “mental health and clarity just hasn’t been on par.”

Skier Mikaela Shiffrin was particularly honest after she failed to finish either of her first two races in events that are specialties of hers. She said that she had been feeling pressure, something every elite athlete feels and is distinct from the more complicated mental health challenges many have been talking about.

But Shiffrin also plumbed greater depths, acknowledging that she was angry with her dad, who died in 2020, for not being there to support her.

After finally managing to complete a race Friday — shockingly, even that had become an open question for the star — she posted on Instagram about the ups and downs of competition.

“There’s a lot of disappointment and heartbreak going around in the finish area,” she wrote.

As several elite athletes stumbled in Beijing, they were often quick to remind the world that they’re human, too. Shiffrin even has a paid post on Instagram, in which the tagline is: “Yeah, I am human.” A far cry from the usual vaunting of athletes as something much more than that.

This is what many hoped for after Tokyo — that as more athletes acknowledged what they face behind the scenes, the stigma around talking about mental health would recede and the issue would merely become one more challenge in the mix.

“I think that it really has become normalized with so many athletes talking about their mental health, and there has been such a push for parity with mental health and physical health,” said Jess Bartley, director of mental health services for Team USA.

“I think, in the experience I’ve had with a lot of these athletes, it’s really relieving to be able to talk about it, to have folks understand, to have the audience understand what may be coming up that might have impacted their performance,” she said. “Just in the same way that you hear about a sprained ankle.”

Bartley works with athletes to prepare how they’ll respond to questions about their mental health just as she works with them on preparing their performance. Some feel comfortable revealing those struggles; others don’t.

Louie Vito, a snowboarder who competed for Italy in Beijing, puts himself in the latter camp. He’s glad that mental health is being talked about more openly — he readily admits framing some of his struggles in that way was eye-opening for him — but he would prefer to keep much of that private.

“I think some people would rather deal with their mental battles in their inner circle,” he said. “To me, it’s not a right or a wrong on how you deal with it as long as you’re aware and it doesn’t become detrimental to you. I don’t think you have to talk about in public.”

And he acknowledged that many people are still embarrassed to talk about these issues.

Yet so many do keep talking — encouraged by a generation of younger athletes determined not only to be heard but to ensure that this subject is no longer something to be dramatically revealed, but simply addressed like anything else important.

Amanda Fialk, who is the chief clinical officer at The Dorm, a mental health treatment program for young people, is heartened by the increasingly open conversations happening. But she warns that true change will take much more time to take hold.

She underscores that there are vast cultural differences — across countries and between communities within any given country — that affect access to and the stigma around mental health care.

“I am also mindful that old habits die hard,” said Fialk, who was a competitive figure skater when she was younger. “It is going to take continued talking about these issues and continued efforts to normalize talking about all these issues for the change to not just be a change, but to become a new normal.” 

 
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NASA’s new space telescope has captured its first starlight and taken a selfie of its giant, gold mirror.  

All 18 segments of the primary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope seem to be working properly 1½ months into the mission, officials said Friday.  

The telescope’s first target was a bright star 258 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.  

“That was just a real wow moment,” said Marshall Perrin of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.  

Over the next few months, the hexagonal mirror segments — each the size of a coffee table — will be aligned and focused as one, allowing science observations to begin by the end of June. 

The $10 billion infrared observatory — considered the successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope — will seek light from the first stars and galaxies that formed in the universe nearly 14 billion years ago. It will also examine the atmospheres of alien worlds for any possible signs of life. 

NASA did not detect the crippling flaw in Hubble’s mirror until after its 1990 launch; more than three years passed before spacewalking astronauts were able to correct the telescope’s blurry vision.  

While everything is looking good so far with Webb, engineers should be able to rule out any major mirror flaws by next month, said Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager.  

Webb’s 21-foot (6.5-meter), gold-plated mirror is the largest ever launched into space. An infrared camera on the telescope snapped a picture of the mirror as one segment gazed upon the targeted star.  

“Pretty much the reaction was, ‘Holy cow!’ ” Feinberg said.  

NASA released the selfie, along with a mosaic of starlight from each of the mirror segments. The 18 points of starlight resemble bright fireflies flitting against a black night sky.  

After 20 years with the project, “it is just unbelievably satisfying” to see everything working so well so far, said the University of Arizona’s Marcia Rieke, principal scientist for the infrared camera. 

Webb lifted off from South America in December and reached its designated perch 1.6 million kilometers away last month. 
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The COVID-19 infection rate for Africa may be as much as seven times higher than reported, while death counts could be two to three times higher, according to the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa.

“We’re very much aware that our surveillance systems problems that we had on the continent, with access to testing supplies, for example,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said Thursday, “have led to an underestimation of the cases.”

Public health officials have warned for some time that Africa’s COVID infection and death tolls were likely undercounted.

India’s health ministry reported 58,077 new COVID cases on Friday. Like Africa, public health officials have also cautioned that India’s COVID figures are probably under-calculated, as well.

As many as 3,000 New York City municipal workers are facing termination Friday if they do not adhere to the city’s mandate requiring city workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Workers have staged protests, but Mayor Eric Adams has remained firm in upholding the policy imposed by his predecessor Bill de Blasio.

“We are not firing them. People are quitting,” Adams said recently.

Firefighters and police could be among those terminated.

Meanwhile, officials in Paris and Brussels have warned that they will not allow convoys, to enter the cities to stage anti-vaccine protests, similar to the one in Ottawa, Canada. Part of the French convoy is already en route to the capital for the weekend rally.  The Belgian protest is planned for Feb. 14.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Friday it has recorded more than 406 million global COVID infections and almost 6 million deaths. More than 10 billion COVID-19 vaccines have been administered, the center said.  
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Trucker-led protests against coronavirus restrictions in Canada shut down another U.S. border crossing Thursday, as copycat movements gathered steam overseas and Washington called on its northern neighbor to use federal powers to end the blockades.

The border obstructions have already impacted business, with the key Ambassador Bridge linking Ontario and Detroit out of service for several days — and major automakers forced to cut back production at several plants as a result.

A second crossing in the western province of Alberta has been blocked for days, and on Thursday protesters closed down a third — in central Manitoba.

Citing supply shortages, Ford said it was forced to slow down production at factories in Canada, while some Stellantis factories in the United States and Canada halted work Wednesday evening, General Motors canceled several shifts, and Toyota said its plants were also hit.

In the Canadian capital, police said Thursday they were bringing in reinforcements, issuing more arrests and tickets, and stepping up truck towing operations in a bid to break the impasse that has paralyzed the city.

But protesters were hunkering down and taking pride in how their two-week protest has mushroomed into an international movement.

“You know it’s really bad if Canadians are coming out full force,” said protester Naomi Gilman, noting how her fellow citizens had largely remained quiet “for two long years” of COVID-19 restrictions.

“So I think that resonates around the world for sure,” she told AFP.

France, New Zealand, US

Addressing reporters outside the House of Commons, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once again called the blockades “unacceptable” and said he was working with authorities across the country to bring them to an end.

“This is hurting communities across the country,” Trudeau said.

Washington stepped up its pressure too, with the White House saying that U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas “called his Canadian counterparts, urging them to use federal powers to resolve this situation at our joint border.”

Despite Trudeau and Washington warning the protests pose an economic threat, rallies inspired by the trucker movement have sprung up elsewhere, from New Zealand to France and Belgium.

An anti-vaccine protest turned ugly Thursday in Wellington, with police clashing with demonstrators on the grounds of parliament and more than 120 people arrested.

In France, thousands inspired by the Canadian truckers planned to converge Friday evening on Paris, with some aiming to move onwards to Brussels.

Paris police sought to prevent the demonstration, saying they would ban so-called “Freedom Convoys” and would stop roads from being blocked, threatening hefty fines or jail — while Belgian authorities vowed similar action.

And in the United States, supporters took to social media announcing a “People’s Convoy” of truckers and “all freedom-loving Americans” to gather east of Los Angeles for a two-day rally beginning March 4 before hitting the road, possibly towards the capital Washington.

Canada’s self-styled “Freedom Convoy” began last month in the country’s west — launched in anger at requirements that truckers either be vaccinated, or test and isolate, when crossing the U.S.-Canada border.

For two weeks they have occupied the capital, Ottawa, with loud protests marked by music, honking and banner waving.

They have caused significant economic disruption by shutting down the Ambassador suspension bridge — a trade corridor used daily by more than 40,000 commuters and tourists, and trucks carrying $323 million worth of goods on average.

Even Trudeau’s political rival, Tory party interim leader Candice Bergen, who earlier expressed support for the protesters, urged them Thursday to end their siege.

“I believe the time has come for you to take down the barricades, stop the disruptive action, and come together,” she said from the House of Commons.

‘Canadian pride’

With blockades dragging on, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined a chorus of industry voices warning of the economic impact — saying it was “imperative” that Canadian officials rapidly de-escalate the situation.

Presumably eager to stop the movement spreading further domestically, several provinces including Alberta, Quebec and Saskatchewan this week announced a gradual lifting or loosening of COVID-19 restrictions.

A court has already ordered the truckers to stop the incessant honking that has upset residents in Ottawa and made sleep difficult.

But the atmosphere on the streets of the capital remained one of defiance and celebration. Some 400 vehicles remain camped on Parliament Hill below Trudeau’s offices, against a backdrop of barbecues, campfires and music.

Dennis Elgie, a curling ice technician who came from Toronto to join the protest, called the movement “fantastic.”

“I’ve never seen Canadian pride like this,” he told AFP. “This is history.” 

  

 
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Facing growing pressure from impatient state governors, the Biden administration acknowledged for the first time that it is developing plans to guide the country away from the pandemic’s emergency phase toward a more relaxed national response, including ending the federal recommendation for wearing masks in most indoor settings.

“We are internally discussing, of course, what it looks like to be in the phase of the fight against the COVID pandemic where it is not disrupting everyone’s daily lives,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday. “We recognize people are tired of the pandemic. They’re tired of wearing masks.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently recommends “universal indoor masking,” including in businesses and schools, “regardless of vaccination status and regardless of what states require.”

While some states follow the CDC guidance, pandemic health protocols have always varied by state with different requirements for masks, vaccines and testing.

Now more states are relaxing coronavirus health protocols, including New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Rhode Island and Washington. The rule changes, implemented by both Republican and Democratic governors, include lifting indoor mask requirements in certain settings, such as schools and businesses, as well as rescinding vaccine mandates.

Psaki insisted that while administration officials understand the need to be flexible, they are following the advice of medical experts who rely on scientific evidence.

“That doesn’t move at the speed of politics; it moves at the speed of data,” she said.

The CDC said it is working on new guidance.

“We are working on following the trends for the moment,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday.

Democrats joining Republicans

In the first two years of the pandemic, Democrats were more in favor of strict public health restrictions while Republicans largely rejected them.

But now, with vaccination rates higher than 70% in some states and polls showing public pandemic fatigue, Democratic governors and state officials are also relaxing measures to avoid a backlash.

“Public health is made up of two words. The health part we focus on a lot of science and the data, but we need to understand the public part as well,” Dr. Anand Parekh, chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said to VOA.

Over the past week, an average of more than 227,000 new coronavirus cases has been reported each day in the United States, a decrease of 63% from the national pandemic peak of more than 806,000 cases in mid-January, according to data tracked by The New York Times. Hospitalizations are also declining significantly across the country.

“For the next few weeks, we should see a decrease in epidemic activity. All of the indicators seem to go down,” Alessandro Vespignani said to VOA. Vespignani is the director of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University and leads a team of infectious-disease modelers who have been developing COVID-19 projections since the pandemic began.

Governors are seeing this trend, recognizing that their citizens are weary, and in the absence of CDC guidance, taking steps to relax restrictions.

“The CDC and the administration are trying to play catch-up to that reality,” Parekh said, underscoring that the federal response must focus not only on the moment but what it would look like a month from now.

“We see time and time again, federal agencies being late. We saw that with respect to omicron and testing just a couple of months ago,” he said.

Many public health experts are still advising caution.

The downward trend needs to be sustained over a period of several weeks and reduced even further before the nation can transition from pandemic to endemic response, said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of medicine in the Infectious Diseases Division at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

“Endemic is where we kind of have a truce with the virus,” Schaffner said, and the strain on the health care system will be “substantially diminished.”

“At the moment I stand with the CDC,” Schaffner told VOA. “Let’s keep wearing our masks. Let’s allow the cases to really come down. Let’s do this for another month or two, to be absolutely sure, not only that we’re heading down but that we’ll stay down.”

Vespignani added, “We could see bumps in the road due to omicron-2, a mutated version of the omicron variant that has begun to circulate in some places.”

He said the easing of mitigations should be done in a way that makes sure we keep facilitating the quick decreasing trends in infections.

“It is more and more important to increase the number of vaccinated and boosted individuals,” he said. “This is the wall that we want to be as high as possible to protect us in case of any future wave of the pandemic.”

A recent Monmouth University poll found that 70% of Americans surveyed agree with the sentiment that “it’s time we accept that COVID is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.”

“Americans’ worries about COVID haven’t gone away. It seems more to be a realization that we are not going to get this virus under control in a way that we thought was possible just last year,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Just 52% supported face mask and distancing guidelines in their home state, down from a peak of 63% last September during the delta variant surge, the Monmouth poll found.

Countries changing restrictions

Some other countries are making similar moves. Spain and Italy – two European countries with high vaccination rates, declining infection numbers and lower hospitalization figures, are loosening measures this week to coexist with the coronavirus.

England, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and several Nordic countries, including Denmark and Sweden, have also taken steps to end or relax their restrictions.

China, meanwhile, is maintaining its most stringent protocols. During the Winter Olympics, Beijing is keeping its “zero-COVID” policy of testing, mass lockdowns and strict social restrictions as authorities worry about the ability of the Chinese health care system to cope and adapt to new strains.

Besides China, India, Canada, Germany, Angola and Indonesia are some of the countries with the strictest government COVID policies, according to the Government Stringency Index put together by researchers at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.

Nine metrics are used to calculate this index – school closures, workplace closures, cancellation of public events, restrictions on public gatherings, closures of public transport, stay-at-home requirements, public information campaigns, restrictions on internal movements and international travel controls.

While some European leaders have said that COVID-19 should be treated as an endemic, like influenza, the World Health Organization says that’s premature.

“We are now starting to see a very worrying increase in deaths, in most regions of the world,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in remarks to media earlier this month.

“It’s premature for any country either to surrender, or to declare victory,” he said.

American public health experts said the debate in the U.S. to lift restrictions must take into account the steps being taken to prevent new variants.

“Only 10% of people in low-income countries around the world have been vaccinated,” Parekh said. “Until we can vaccinate the rest of the world, the threat of variants and the threat to the United States will still be there.”

Vanderbilt’s Schaffner said helping countries vaccinate their population is necessary not only for humanitarian reasons, but also self-interest.

“Those variants can come from abroad and be here in no time,” he said.

The U.S. remains the largest donor of vaccines. At least 414 million doses of vaccines have been shipped, about 34% of the 1.3 billion doses pledged by the administration. 
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French researcher Luc Montagnier, who won a Nobel Prize in 2008 for discovering HIV and more recently spread false claims about the coronavirus, has died at age 89, local government officials in France said. 

Montagnier died Tuesday at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a western suburb of the capital, the area’s city hall said. No other details were released. 

Montagnier, a virologist, led the team that in 1983 identified the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, leading him to share the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine with colleague Francoise Barré-Sinoussi.

The French minister for higher education and research, Frédérique Vidal, praised Montagnier’s work on HIV in a written statement Thursday and expressed her condolences to his family.

Inspired by discoveries

Montagnier was born in 1932 in the village of Chabris in central France.

According to his autobiography on the Nobel Prize website, Montagnier studied medicine in Poitiers and Paris. He said recent scientific discoveries in 1957 inspired him to become a virologist in the rapidly advancing field of molecular biology.

He joined the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 1960 and became head of the Pasteur Institute’s virology department in 1972.

“My involvement in AIDS began in 1982, when the information circulated that a transmissible agent — possibly a virus — could be at the origin of this new, mysterious disease,” Montagnier said in his autobiography.

In 1983, a working group led by him and Barré-Sinoussi at the Pasteur Institute isolated the virus that would later become known as HIV and was able to explain how it caused AIDS.

American scientist Robert Gallo claimed to have found the same virus at almost exactly the same time, sparking a disagreement over who should get the credit. The United States and France settled a dispute over the patent for an AIDS test in 1987. Montagnier was later credited as the discoverer of the virus, Gallo as the creator of the first test.

Shunned for recent views

Since the end of the 2000s, Montagnier started expressing views devoid of a scientific basis. His opinions led him to be shunned by much of the international scientific community.

As COVID-19 spread across the globe and conspiracy theories flourished, Montagnier was among those behind some of the misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus.

During a 2020 interview with French news broadcaster CNews, he claimed that the coronavirus did not originate in nature and had been manipulated. Experts who have looked at the genome sequence of the virus have said Montagnier’s statement was incorrect.

At the time, AP made multiple unsuccessful attempts to contact Montagnier.

Last year, he claimed in a French documentary that COVID-19 vaccines led to the creation of coronavirus variants.

Experts contacted by The Associated Press explained that variants found across the globe began emerging long before vaccines were widely available. They said the evidence suggests new variants evolved as a result of prolonged viral infections in the population and not vaccines, which are designed to prevent such infections.

Earlier this year, Montagnier delivered a speech at a protest against vaccine certificates in Milan, Italy.

Montagnier was emeritus professor at the Pasteur Institute and emeritus research director at the CNRS. He received multiple awards, including France’s highest decoration, the Legion of Honor.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Thursday issued a draft of revised guidelines for prescribing opioid painkillers, urging doctors to be flexible and individualize their use of the drugs to the needs of the patient.  
The CDC’s current guidelines were issued in 2016, largely in response to the over-prescribing of opioids in the United States from 2007 to 2012. The agency reports in 2012, 259 million prescriptions were written for the highly addictive painkillers, enough for every person in the country to have their own bottle.

The result was one of the worst drug-abuse epidemics in the U.S., with addiction and deaths related to the drugs skyrocketing. The CDC reports that from 1999 to 2014, more than 165,000 people in the United States died from overdoses related to opioid pain medication.  

But CDC officials said that while 2016 guidelines helped end the over-prescribing of the drugs, they also may have pushed doctors too far in the other direction.  

Co-author of the new guidelines, acting director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Christopher Jones, said some doctors were too quick to cut off patients taking prescription painkillers and too strict in keeping the drugs from patients who might benefit.

The 229-page draft of the updated guidelines removes some of the suggested limits the original guidelines placed on administering opioids and proposes individualized patient care. It also offers more options for treating the kind of short-term, acute pain that follows surgeries or injuries.

The CDC published the draft of the new guidelines in the U.S. Federal Register, where the public can view and comment on them for the next 60 days. The CDC will consider comments before finalizing the updated guidance.

CDC guidelines are voluntary, though they are widely followed by U.S. healthcare providers.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
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France will build at least six new nuclear reactors in the decades to come, President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday, placing nuclear power at the heart of his country’s drive for carbon neutrality by 2050.

Macron said the new plants would be built and operated by state-controlled energy provider EDF and that tens of billions of euros in public financing would be mobilized to finance the projects and safeguard EDF’s finances.

“What our country needs, and the conditions are there, is the rebirth of France’s nuclear industry,” Macron said, unveiling his new nuclear strategy in the eastern industrial town of Belfort.

Promising to accelerate the development of solar and offshore wind power in France, Macron also announced he wanted to extend the lifespan of older nuclear plants to 50 years or more from 40 years currently, provided it was safe.

The announcement comes at a difficult time for debt-laden EDF, which is facing delays and budget over-runs on new nuclear plants in France and Britain, and corrosion problems in some of its aging reactors.

The nuclear blueprint cements France’s commitment to nuclear power, a mainstay of the country’s postwar industrial prowess but whose future was uncertain after Macron and his predecessor had promised to reduce its weight in the country’s energy mix.

Macron’s thinking has been reshaped by the European Union’s ambitious goals for carbon neutrality within three decades, which put renewed focus on energy forms that emit fewer, or zero, greenhouse gases than fossil fuels, including nuclear.

Surging energy prices and concerns about Europe’s reliance on imported Russian gas have also persuaded French officials of the region’s need for more energy independence.

EDF estimates the cost of six new EPR reactors at about 50 billion euros, depending on financing conditions.

The first new reactor, an evolution of the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), would come online by 2035, Macron said. Studies for a further eight reactors beyond the initial half-dozen new plants would be launched, he added.

France will also increase its solar power capacity tenfold by 2050 to more than 100 gigawatts (GW) and target building 50 offshore wind farms with a combined capacity of at least 40 GW. Capacity from land-based wind turbines, which face strong public resistance, would only be doubled by 2050, he said.

Energy U-turn

Macron’s decision to extend the lifespan of existing plants marked a U-turn on an earlier pledge to close more than a dozen of EDF’s 56 reactors by 2035.

Nuclear safety still divides Europe after Japan’s Fukushima disaster. France lobbied hard for nuclear to be labeled as sustainable under new European Commission rules on green financing.

If the new EU taxonomy rules are approved, it should reduce the cost of financing nuclear energy projects.

Macron said the state would assume its responsibilities in securing EDF’s finances, indicating that the government may inject fresh capital into the 84% state-owned firm.

The State will assume its responsibilities in securing EDF’s finances and its short- and medium-term financing capacity,” Macron said.

EDF’s EPR reactors have suffered a troubled history. EPR projects at Flamanville in France and Hinkley Point in Britain are running years behind schedule and billions over budget, while EPR reactors in China and Finland have been hit by technical issues.

Separately EDF this week revised lower its output forecast for its nuclear fleet to 295-315 TWh compared to 361 TWh last year, in part due to extended reactor shutdowns due to corrosion problems in several reactors. If the level drops below 300 TWh, it would be at its lowest since 1990.

Compounding EDF’s difficulties, Macron, who faces a re-election battle in two months and is striving to head off public anger over rising energy bills, has ordered the utility to sell more cheap power to rivals – a move that will knock about 8 billion euros off EDF’s 2022 core earnings.

EDF’s share price is down 18% so far in 2022.

EDF confirmed on Thursday it would buy a France-based nuclear turbine unit from General Electric as the utility looks to bundle nuclear activities deemed to be strategic.
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Cameroonian health authorities say at least 1,300 cholera cases have been detected, with nearly three dozen people dying as a result of the outbreak within the past two weeks. Cameroon’s Public Health Ministry says water shortages and poor hygiene have spread the bacterial disease throughout half the country.

Cameroon says the lives of thousands of its citizens are at risk. Manaouda Malachie, the state minister of public health, said five of the country’s 10 regions have been affected by an ongoing cholera outbreak in a press release published Wednesday. 

The statement says Bakassi, a southwestern peninsula near the Nigerian border, Cameroon’s commercial hub and coastal city Douala, and Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, are the worst hit by the outbreak. Other locations affected are Buea,Tiko and Mutengene, southwestern commercial towns, as well as Maroua and Garoua on the northern border with Nigeria.

Kelvin Fosong, a community health worker, said he was sent from Buea to Mutengene this week to help civilians affected by the outbreak.

“Since the outbreak, we have engaged ourselves into community sensitization, most especially in the quarters where deaths were reported. We have been there visiting homes, disinfecting toilets, public taps and water points. We teach them (civilians) how to take care of their environment with the help of some doctors (health workers),” Fosong said, speaking from Mutengene.

Cameroon’s public health minister said 32 of the 1,300 people affected by the outbreak have died within two weeks, and added that the figures may be higher. The government reports that about 70% of the country’s 26 million people visit African traditional healers and go to hospitals only when their health conditions get worse. The government says it is difficult to gather statistics from African traditional healers in the country’s towns and villages.

Linda Esso, director of epidemics and pandemics at Cameroon’s Public Health Ministry, said after the first cases were reported, the government started telling people to go to the nearest hospitals if they experience watery diarrhea, vomiting or dehydration. She said civilians should follow basic hygiene practices such as washing their hands with soap, and using and cleaning latrines after defecation.

Esso warned against eating uncooked raw food and unwashed fruits or drinking water that has not been boiled. She said keeping latrines dirty increases the risk of cholera.

Mathias Ngund, the most senior government health official in Buea, an English-speaking southwestern town where 30 cholera cases have been reported with three deaths, said the lack of clean drinking water is exacerbating the spread of cholera in Buea. He said he has informed the government that the provision of water is an emergency need.

“We went to all the houses of suspected cases, we disinfected them and also we have had coordination meetings with the administrative authorities to respond to the outbreak,” Ngund said.

The central government in Yaounde said it will provide clean drinking water to arid towns and villages in Cameroon but did not say when. Authorities are encouraging civilians to boil water from wells and streams before drinking it.

Cameroon said a cholera outbreak in November claimed 13 lives, with several hundred people infected, as it prepared to host the African Football Cup of Nations, or AFCON. Cameroon hosted AFCON from January 9 to February 6. The government had promised to stop its spread before the continental football event that brought several thousand football fans, players and match officials tio the country.
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A new study says 1 in 10 Australian health care workers has had thoughts of suicide or self-harm during the pandemic.

The authors of the Australian Frontline Health Workers survey believe it is the world’s largest study of suicidal thoughts among health care workers. It canvassed the opinions of 8,000 staff, in a range of positions and professions, including support staff, cleaners, doctors and nurses.

The survey finds 10% of respondents have had thoughts of self-harm or suicide during the pandemic, but fewer than half had sought help from a mental health professional.

Even before the emergence of COVID-19, Australian health workers had higher rates of suicide than those in other occupations.

The study’s authors said that emotional exhaustion and burnout were common among many respondents. What is unclear is the impact stress, which could cause more medical errors, has had on the quality of patient care.

Georgina Lonergan, a nuclear medicine technologist in Victoria state, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that her job was extremely stressful.

“There is an undercurrent of anxiety, I think, for everyone working in health care,” she said. “I have definitely had an undercurrent of anxiety increasing over the last couple of years. Some days you just really do not want to come. There has been a couple of days where I have been close to tears on the way in just from anxiety and just being tired of it all.”

The survey was published Wednesday in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.

Much of Australia continues to battle a wave of omicron variant infections. Government data has shown that more than 3,500 people are in the hospital with the virus.

Since the pandemic began, Australia has detected 2.4 million coronavirus cases; 4,366 people have died, according to the Health Department. 

 

 
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The COVID pandemic exposed stark vaccine inequities between high- and low-income nations and underscored Africa’s dependence on outside countries for jabs. However, a new initiative in Senegal hopes to reduce that inequity Annika Hammerschlag reports from Dakar, Senegal.
Camera: Annika Hammerschlag
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Health care workers in Somalia suffer from high rates of anxiety, depression and stress because of their work with COVID-19 cases, a new study finds.

The study was presented at a health research conference in the Somali town of Garowe last week. Initial findings recorded a high prevalence of anxiety in the workforce at 69.3%, 46.5% for depression and 15.2% for stress.

The study used the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales (DASS), widely used in scientific circles to measure the three emotional states. Researchers interviewed 186 health care workers in three hospitals in Mogadishu between May and August 2021.

Dr. Abdirazak Yusuf Ahmed, the study’s lead author and director of the De Martino Hospital, the main COVID-19 medical facility in Mogadishu, said several factors played a role in the prevalence of these traumatic experiences in the health care workforce.

“The first one is that this disease is associated with deaths,” Ahmed said. “They (workers) were afraid they could take the virus to their homes and pass on to their loved ones.”

He also mentioned low motivation among the COVID-19 workers.

Doctors working in Somalia are not surprised that the multiplier effects from COVID-19 contributed to the workers’ ill health.

Since March 16, 2020, when the first case was detected, Somalia has recorded 1,340 COVID-19 deaths and 26,203 positive cases, at a fatality rate of 5.1%. But independent studies and press reports argued that COVID-19 deaths in Somalia have been enormously undercounted. Somalia has administered more than 1.6 million COVID-19 vaccine doses so far, with only 5.6% of the population fully vaccinated.

The discovery of personal health challenges among frontline workers comes at a time when the country lacks enough health care workforce to provide services.

Last week’s conference, which was attended by federal and regional health officials, local doctors and international health workers, including representatives from the World Health Organization, recognized the severity of the lack of enough health care workers.

A statement issued at the end of the conference stated that the low workforce density in the country stands at 5.4 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 10,000 population. WHO recommends a ratio of 44.5 per 10,000.

The statement further said that according to WHO’s health workforce guidelines, there is a gap of 55,000 skilled health professionals in the country.

It said the gap affects all components of the health system, ranging from service delivery, health workforce, health information systems, access to essential medicines, financing and leadership, policy and governance.

This shortage is attributed to the migration of health workers from Somalia because of war and crisis, according to Dr. Mamunur Rahman Malik, WHO’s Somalia representative.

“This shortage means that the country doesn’t have adequate health workers who are required to run and manage primary health centers or hospitals,” he said. “So, services are below optimal or of poor quality as the services are provided by lay health workers.”

Good news for child mortality

The conference predicted progress in reducing child mortality and maternal mortality in Somalia in coming years.

With investment and implementation of basic health services, the maternal mortality ratio is expected to decline to 332 deaths per 100,000 live births by the year 2030, signifying a 50% reduction from the present level, the statement said.

Similarly, the mortality rates for neonatal, infant and children younger than 5 are expected to decline from 122, 77 and 38 per 1,000 live births in 2020 to 63, 42 and 20 deaths per 1,000 live births, respectively, by the year 2030.

Child mortality in Somalia is believed to be the highest in the world, according to a report published by Amnesty International in August 2021, with an estimated 15% of people having access to medical care in rural areas.

This report originated in VOA Somali service’s “Investigative Dossier” program.
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The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that even though she was encouraged by dropping COVID-19 hospitalizations and case rates, the pandemic was still not at the point at which the agency could recommend dropping nationwide indoor mask requirements.

During a White House COVID-19 response team briefing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters the team was very encouraged by current trends that have shown overall cases dropping more than 44% in the past week and hospitalizations down nearly 25%.

But Walensky said that while hospitalizations were down, U.S. deaths from COVID-19 rose by 3% in the past week, and that both indicators were too high to change the CDC guidance on indoor masking in areas of high transmission. 

“We aren’t there yet,” she said. 

More state and local governments are announcing plans to begin lifting their mask requirements. Wednesday, New York state became the latest, with Governor Kathy Hochul saying infection rates had declined to a level at which it was safe to rescind the broad masking order. 

Hochul said masks would still be required in schools, health care facilities, certain types of shelters and public transit. Private businesses will be free to set their own masking rules for staff and patrons. 

Walensky said that many states like New York were lifting their mandates in phases, and that she recognized the need for local governments to be flexible. But she said the CDC was basing its guidance on nationwide surveillance and data, with hospitals, in particular, being a barometer.  

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said that, in terms of the pandemic, January was a difficult month, but data showed the nation was moving toward a time when COIVD-19 would no longer disrupt our daily lives.  

He said 210 million people had been fully vaccinated, and, in the last three weeks, nationwide, daily cases were down 65% and hospitalizations were down 40%.
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SpaceX says a geomagnetic storm brought down 40 satellites launched last Thursday as part of its Starlink satellite internet service.

In a release posted to the company’s website, the private space company said the satellites were among 49 Starlink satellites launched from the Kennedy Space Center, and that they were deployed to their intended orbit 210 kilometers above Earth.  

The company explained it deploys its satellites into lower orbits so that, in the event they do not pass initial system checkouts, it can quickly and safely bring them out of orbit by atmospheric drag.  

But SpaceX says the satellites were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ((NOAA)) Space Weather Prediction Center had posted a watch late last week for minor to moderate geomagnetic storm activity.

The company said the storms cause the atmosphere to warm and increase its density at altitudes where the satellites are deployed. SpaceX reports GPS readings on the satellites suggests the storm increased atmospheric drag 50 percent higher than normal.  

The SpaceX ground control team set the satellites into a “safe-mode,” changing their flight attitude to minimize drag to effectively “take cover from the storm.”

The company says its preliminary analysis shows the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe mode and they failed to return to their intended orbits. It said 40 will reenter or already have reentered Earth’s atmosphere.  

The company says the satellites pose no collision risk with other ones and are designed to disintegrate upon re-entering the atmosphere with no orbital debris expected to hit the ground.   

SpaceX has launched nearly 2,000 satellites as part of a network to provide high-speed internet service to users anywhere in the world. Service in the northern United States and Canada is expected to start later this year.
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World Health Organization officials say insecurity and bureaucratic difficulties continue to prevent medical supplies and other crucial relief from reaching millions of beleaguered civilians in conflict-ridden northern Ethiopia.

An estimated 9.4 million people in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray, Amhara, and Afar regions are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Millions are suffering from severe food shortages, acute malnutrition is rising, disease and chronic illnesses are going untreated.

The World Health Organization reports dozens of mobile health and nutrition teams are operating across the three regions. However, treating those in need remains challenging. It says essential medical equipment and medical supplies, vaccines and basic medicines are not reaching the people in need.

WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier says the situation is particularly critical in Tigray. He says the number of people needing health assistance has risen from 2.3 million during the first half of December to an estimated 3.9 million.

However, he says there is, what he calls, light on the horizon. He notes a shipment of medical supplies reached Mekelle, the capital of Tigray at the end of January. And, he adds the Ethiopian government has announced it would facilitate daily relief flights to augment the transportation of crucial goods by land.

“WHO is preparing to airlift critically needed medicines, medical supplies and equipment to Tigray,” he said. “The first shipment of this is expected to be dispatched this Friday,11 February when 10 metric tons of the total 33 metric tons of supplies will be airlifted. Most clearances for this have been secured and the remaining permits will be processed over the next few days.”

Nevertheless, he says humanitarian agencies are being forced to downsize their operations because they are running out of supplies, fuel, and cash. He warns these operations may have to shut down in the coming weeks if the situation does not improve.

He says an integrated measles campaign at the end of January highlights some of the difficulties aid agencies run into. The campaign, he says targeted nearly 800,000 children under age five using vaccines provided by the Ethiopia Ministry of Health.

“During this phase, 145,000 children of the targeted population were reached because the campaign faced challenges, including cash, lack of fuel, and cold chain capacity,” he said.

Lindmeier says WHO continues to negotiate with the authorities for access to the regions. Despite ongoing difficulties, he says some things are moving and that is a good development.

 
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An international collaboration led by researchers in Canada and Brazil is applying innovative funding and testing methods to determine whether existing medications can provide cheaper and more effective treatments for COVID-19 and is encouraged by its initial results.

Calling it the “TOGETHER Trial,” researchers predominantly in Brazil and Canada refer to their method as “adaptive platform clinical trial,” which permits several potential treatments to be tested simultaneously, reducing costs and the number of people who need to be tested.

The researchers have also speeded up the search for effective COVID treatments by relying on financing and support from private foundations, universities and the private sector, rather than the time-consuming process of seeking government funding.

One such trial conducted in Brazil beginning in June 2020 found fluvoxamine, a common anti-depressant, helped reduce hospitalization and death of COVID-19 patients by 32%.

Ed Mills, a clinical epidemiologist who teaches at Ontario’s McMaster University, is helping to coordinate the project from offices in Vancouver, Canada. He explained the “adaptive platform” model in which more than one drug is tested at the same time.

“Typically, in a clinical trial, you expect to see a drug versus placebo,” Mills told VOA. “Well, in our circumstance, we’re doing five drugs versus placebo, six drugs versus placebo.”

While uncovering promising data on fluvoxamine, discovering what does not work has been equally important. Mills said the group’s trials showed that hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir, metformin, doxazosin and ivermectin do not help prevent hospitalization from COVID-19.

Two of those drugs, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, gained notoriety in the United States as some COVID-19 patients have insisted on taking them despite warnings by U.S. health officials that the drugs are ineffective at best for treating a coronavirus infection.

Amid a global wave of infections driven by the omicron variant, the project is recruiting about 100 participants a day, with trials now underway in South Africa, Pakistan and Brazil. About 5,000 people have participated to date in the trials, which currently involve about 2,500 people.

Mills said the researchers are studying several other existing drugs, and combinations of those drugs, to gauge their effectiveness.

“One would be a drug called peginterferon lambda, which is a single subcutaneous injection, single-dose drug to treat COVID. I’m extremely optimistic about that. We’re also now evaluating combination strategies,” he said.

“So, we know that fluvoxamine works. We also know that budesonide works — an inhaled steroid. What would happen if you put them together? So, I think that’s going to be a really great, cheap intervention that can be applied,” he said. Both drugs are widely available and — in some countries — economical.

Mills said he expects further results within the next few weeks.

Dr. Brian Conway, the medical director of the Vancouver Infectious Diseases Centre, sees the work being conducted by the TOGETHER Trial as a model for some future medical research.

New medications require rigorous and time-consuming clinical trials before they can be approved for use, he noted. But progress can be quicker “if a medicine’s been around for a while, it’s been licensed, it’s available for sale, and you’re trying to decide if there’s a new indication for it.”

Conway, who is not involved with the TOGETHER Trial, was also impressed with the researchers’ methodology.

“I think that going forward, they’re quick. They are rigorous. They generate the kind of information that we need to help guide clinical practice,” he said. “These adaptive platforms are, to my mind, a very appropriate way of figuring out if they work against something for which they have not yet been tested or approved.”

Conway also sees the program as a good way to counter unsubstantiated rumors about unproven medications.

“And it avoids us from getting into a situation where someone says, ‘I gave this treatment to eight or 10 people and it saved their lives. So you should do this, too,’” he said.

“That’s not how we should do science. That’s not how we should practice medicine, especially in the era of COVID,” he said. “And it helps us be rigorous, responsive, and as helpful to our patients as we can be.”

Among the takeaways from the studies, according to Mills, is that the “Global South” — developing countries in the Southern Hemisphere — has a lot to teach the so-called “Global North,” or more developed nations.

“Although we are the ones that tend to come up with the rules on epidemiology, they’re the ones that apply those rules on epidemiology and have practical experience,” he said.

“If you think about a country like Rwanda, for example, where I’ve spent a long time, they deal with Ebola monitoring all the time, they deal with malaria, deal with HIV all the time. They’re very, very experienced at infectious diseases,” Mills said.

This is not the first time Vancouver has played a role in advancing epidemiology. MRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna rely on lipid nanoparticles to enter human cells. That technology was first researched at the University of British Columbia in the late 1970s.
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