The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ((FDA)) Monday gave full approval to U.S. pharmaceutical company Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, which will be marketed under the name Spikevax.

The vaccine has been widely distributed in the United States and around the world under the FDA’s emergency use authorization since December of 2020. It is the second COVID-19 vaccine the agency has fully approved, after Pfizer’s vaccine received the designation in August of 2021.

In a statement, acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said full authorization of the vaccine is an important step in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. She said that while hundreds of millions of doses of the Moderna shot have been administered under the emergency use authorization, she understands “for some individuals, FDA approval of this vaccine may instill additional confidence in making the decision to get vaccinated.”

Woodcock said the public can be assured that the Moderna vaccine “meets the FDA’s high standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality required of any vaccine approved for use in the United States.”

The Moderna vaccine has been approved for use in more than 70 countries including Britain, Canada, Japan and those in the European Union.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press and Reuters.
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The Australian air force is preparing to deliver 20 tons of emergency supplies to remote communities cut off by flood waters. Traffic has been disrupted on the main highway and railway between Adelaide in South Australia and Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory.    

Heavy rain and storms in recent days have damaged freight routes in South Australia. 

A 14-day major emergency was declared Friday by state authorities. It gives the police special powers to ensure food reaches isolated communities. 

South Australia has a population of 1.7 million who are already under a major emergency declaration for COVID-19. The state was also badly impacted by the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20, although the floods have occurred away from the areas worst-hit by the fires. 

The area is expected to receive yet more rain, with up to 200 millimeters forecast in the coming days.  

A military plane is scheduled to land Monday in the outback settlement of Coober Pedy to deliver food and other essentials.  

The town is 850 kilometers north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway and is known as the “opal capital of the world” because of its mining resources. The impact on mining and farming might not be known for days. 

Tim Jackson, the administrator of the Coober Pedy Council, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the arrival of supplies would ease community concerns. 

“People are pretty relaxed generally speaking, I think, and particularly now that they know there is a significant food drop being made today. It is just a bit frustrating. It is just the unknown about when the highway is going to be opened again. (I) understand that it is the first time both the rail and road have been impacted simultaneously,” Jackson said.

Flooding in South Australia and the disruption to freight routes have led to shortages on supermarket shelves in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. 

Higher-than-average rainfall this summer is associated with a La Niña weather system, which can also produce a higher-than-normal number of tropical cyclones. 

The naturally occurring system develops when strong winds move the warm surface waters of the Pacific Ocean from South America towards Indonesia. 

In Australia, the La Niña system increases the likelihood of cooler daytime temperatures, reducing the risk of bushfires and heatwaves. 

Conservationists are warning that the impact of climate change will increase the incidence and intensity of “extreme rainfall events” in Australia. They have said that the risks of flooding are exacerbated when the atmosphere is “made warmer and wetter by climate change.” 
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Beijing officials said Sunday they sealed off several residential communities in the city’s northern district after two cases of COVID-19 were found.

Residents in the Anzhenli neighborhood in Chaoyang district were sealed off on Saturday, and will not be allowed to leave their compound.

Beijing is on high alert as it prepares to host the Olympic Games opening on Friday.

While the cases are low compared to other countries in the region, China has double down on its “zero-tolerance” policy, which includes breaking the chain of transmission as soon as it is found.

The city is also setting up 19 points in the area to test residents every day until Friday, officials said at a briefing on the pandemic, according to state-backed Beijing News.

The Chinese capital reported a total of 12 cases of COVID-19 between 4 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday, said Pang Xinghuo, the vice head of the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control. All those cases came from people who were already under some kind of pandemic control measures.

The city conducted multiple rounds of testing for millions of residents this past week in Fengtai district, where some residential compounds were locked down.
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New York authorities have arrested two Long Island nurses who officials say made more than $1.5 million by forging COVID-19 vaccination cards.

Julie DeVuono, the owner of Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare and her employee, Marissa Urraro, have been charged with felony forgery, authorities say. DeVuono was also charged with offering a false instrument for filing.

Officials say the two women entered the false information on the cards into New York’s immunization database.

The Suffolk County district attorney’s office said the women sold the fake cards for $220 for adults and $85 for children.

Officials say about $900,000 in cash was seized from DeVuono’s home.

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, is in self-isolation until Tuesday after a possible COVID exposure on a flight to Auckland, officials said Saturday.

“The prime minister is asymptomatic and is feeling well,” her office said. She is scheduled to be tested for the virus Sunday.

India’s health ministry said Sunday that 234,281 people had tested positive for COVID in the previous 24-hour period.

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 daily cases of the coronavirus were reported in Russia for the first time Saturday as the highly contagious omicron variant spreads throughout the country. The government’s coronavirus task force reported a record high 113,122 new cases, a sevenfold increase from earlier in January.

 

 
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Dozens of pet stores that sold hamsters in Hong Kong may resume business starting Sunday, Hong Kong’s government said, after being shuttered last week and culling thousands of hamsters over coronavirus fears.

Authorities enraged pet lovers with an order to cull more than 2,200 hamsters after tracing an outbreak to a worker in a shop where 11 hamsters tested positive. Imported hamsters from Holland into the Chinese territory had been cited as the source. All hamster imports remain banned.

The city’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said in a statement late Saturday that it collected 1,134 samples from animals other than hamsters including rabbits and chinchillas, which were all negative.

Five stores, including the Little Boss pet shop, where authorities traced the outbreak, remained closed until they pass “the virus test,” the government said.

“All the other concerned pet shops on the other hand have been thoroughly disinfected and cleaned and the environmental swabs collected from these shops have all passed the COVID-19 virus test,” it said.

The government said on Friday it would compensate pet shops trading in hamsters, offering a one-off payment of up to $3,850.

People who had in recent weeks bought hamsters, popular apartment pets in the congested city, were ordered to surrender them for testing and what the government described as “humane dispatch.”

Thousands of people offered to adopt unwanted hamsters amid a public outcry against the government and its pandemic advisers, which authorities called irrational.

A study published in The Lancet medical journal, which has not yet been peer reviewed, said Hong Kong researchers have found evidence that pet hamsters can spread COVID-19 and linked the animals to human infections in the city.

However, the economic and psychological tolls from Hong Kong’s hardline approach to curbing the virus are rapidly rising, residents say, with measures becoming more draconian than those first enforced in 2020.
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There has been a mixed response to Australia’s $700 million plan to combat water pollution on the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest reef system.

The nine-year Australian plan promises to fund projects that reduce erosion and pesticides and fertilizers running off farmland into the sea.  There will be other conservation efforts, including combating coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish and illegal fishing.

The Australian Marine Conservation Society has welcomed the initiative.  It said that curbing pollution was essential to build the reef’s “resilience to climate change.” 

Environment Minister Sussan Ley says the plan will help protect one of the country’s great natural treasures.  

“This is an extraordinary investment in a reef.  I don’t think there has ever been one as large anywhere in the world,” said Ley. “The reef economy is worth 6.4 billion [Australian] dollars, there are 64,000 jobs that depend on the reef and if you live anywhere along one of our reef communities in Queensland, you know how important it is.  So, it is also about COVID recovery because our tourism operators are waiting to show national and international tourists our beautiful Great Barrier Reef.”

However, other scientists have said that action to improve water quality will mean nothing if global carbon emissions are not reduced.  

They have identified climate change as the major threat to the 344,400-square-kilometer ecosystem that stretches down Australia’s northeast coast.  Warming ocean temperatures have caused widespread coral bleaching in recent years.  

Under stress, the corals expel symbiotic algae, which live in their tissues, and give the corals their color and supply them with nutrients.

The reef narrowly avoided being listed as “in danger” by UNESCO last year amid concerns over its long-term health.  

In October, a study by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, a United Nations-supported network of researchers, reported that about 14% of the world’s coral had been lost since 2009. 

It found that reefs were among the world’s “most vulnerable ecosystems” to man-made threats, including climate change, overfishing and pollution. 

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef spans an area about the size of Japan.
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A group of 300 scientists say wealthy nations’ failure to provide the rest of the world with access to COVID-19 vaccines is a “reckless approach to public health” that results in conditions that allow for variants, such as the highly contagious omicron variant, to emerge.

In a letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the scientists said Britain’s people and the National Health Service have been placed at risk because of the UK’s global vaccination policy, according to a report in The Telegraph.

Reuters reports that the letter urges Britain to support the waiver of intellectual property rights for COVID-17 vaccines, tests and treatments.

The scientists who signed the letter include a Nobel prize winner and a former National Health Service chief executive, The Telegraph reported.

Three billion people worldwide remain unvaccinated.

Nineteen COVID-19 cases were reported Friday among Winter Olympics athletes and officials in China, bringing their total number of cases to 36.

Pope Francis said Friday at the International Catholic Media Consortium on COVID-19 Vaccines, “To be properly informed, to be helped to understand situations based on scientific data and not fake news, is a human right.”

More than 370 million global COVID-19 infections have been recorded, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center and nearly 10 billion vaccine doses have been administered.
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Omicron, the highly contagious coronavirus variant sweeping across the country, is driving the daily American death toll higher than was the case during last fall’s delta wave, with deaths likely to keep rising for days or even weeks. 

The seven-day rolling average for daily new COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. has been climbing since mid-November, reaching 2,267 on Thursday and surpassing a September peak of 2,100 when delta was the dominant variant. 

Now omicron is estimated to account for nearly all the virus circulating in the nation. And even though it causes less severe disease for most people, the fact that it is more transmissible means more people are falling ill and dying. 

“Omicron will push us over a million deaths,” said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California-Irvine. “That will cause a lot of soul searching. There will be a lot of discussion about what we could have done differently, how many of the deaths were preventable.” 

The average daily death toll is now at the same level as last February, when the country was slowly coming off its all-time high of 3,300 a day. 

More Americans are taking precautionary measures against the virus than before the omicron surge, according to an AP-NORC poll this week. But many people, fatigued by crisis, are returning to some level of normality with hopes that vaccinations or prior infections will protect them. 

Omicron symptoms are often milder, and some infected people show none, researchers agree. But like the flu, it can be deadly, especially for people who are older, have other health problems or who are unvaccinated. 

“Importantly, ‘milder’ does not mean ‘mild,’ ” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said this week during a White House briefing. 

‘He just wasn’t sure’

Until recently, Chuck Culotta was a healthy middle-aged man who ran a power-washing business in Milford, Delaware. As the omicron wave was ravaging the Northeast, he felt the first symptoms before Christmas and tested positive on Christmas Day. He died less than a week later, on December 31, nine days short of his 51st birthday. 

He was unvaccinated, said his brother, Todd, because he had questions about the long-term effects of the vaccine. 

“He just wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do — yet,” said Todd Culotta, who got his shots during the summer. 

At one urban hospital in Kansas, 50 COVID-19 patients have died this month and more than 200 are being treated. University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, posted a video from its morgue showing bagged bodies in a refrigeration unit and a worker marking one white body bag with the word “COVID.” 

“This is real,” said Ciara Wright, the hospital’s decedent affairs coordinator. “Our concerns are, ‘Are the funeral homes going to come fast enough?’ We do have access to a refrigerated truck. We don’t want to use it if we don’t have to.” 

Dr. Katie Dennis, a pathologist who does autopsies for the health system, said the morgue has been at or above capacity almost every day in January, “which is definitely unusual.” 

With more than 882,000 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the United States has the largest COVID-19 toll of any nation. 

Faster increases ahead

During the coming week, almost every U.S. state will see a faster increase in deaths, although deaths have peaked in a few states, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Maryland, Alaska and Georgia, according to the COVID-19 Forecast Hub. 

New hospital admissions have started to fall for all age groups, according to CDC data, and a drop in deaths is expected to follow. 

“In a pre-pandemic world, during some flu seasons, we see 10,000 or 15,000 deaths. We see that in the course of a week sometimes with COVID,” said Nicholas Reich, who aggregates coronavirus projections for the hub in collaboration with the CDC. 

“The toll and the sadness and suffering is staggering and very humbling,” said Reich, a professor of biostatistics at University of Massachusetts-Amherst. 

In other developments: 

— The White House said Friday that about 60 million households had ordered 240 million home test kits under a new government program to expand testing opportunities. The government also said it has shipped tens of millions of masks to convenient locations across the country, including deliveries Friday to community centers in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

The national drugstore chain Walgreens is among pharmacies receiving the government-provided masks. The chain has started offering N95 masks for free at several stores, as long as supplies last. The company’s website lists locations in the Midwest for the initial wave of stores offering masks, but Walgreens said more stores would offer them soon. 

— The leading organization for state and local public health officials has called on governments to stop conducting widespread contact tracing, saying it’s no longer necessary. The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials urged governments to focus contact tracing efforts on high-risk, vulnerable populations such as people in homeless shelters and nursing homes.
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Billions of dollars have poured in from federal and local governments to help America’s homeless survive the coronavirus pandemic. And this spending is helping – for now. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias examines whether the strategies spurred by the pandemic could be a long-term solution to this chronic U.S. problem.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday a third primary shot of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for immunocompromised people could significantly reduce their need for hospitalization. 

The CDC said the recommendation of a third shot, not a booster, is the result of a study of immunocompromised people in which the third shot proved to be about 88% effective against hospitalization. The two-shot regime proved to be 69% effective in avoiding hospitalization among that group.

The government authorized the third shots of Pfizer or Moderna for people with compromised immune systems in August. 

Later, in October, regulators said the immunocompromised who had gotten their third shots would be eligible for boosters early this year for even more protection.  However, that information has not trickled down to all health facilities and people have reported that they have been turned away at some hospitals and pharmacies. 

More than a million-and-a-half doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine recently arrived in Ethiopia from the United States.  The shots were provided to the East African nation through COVAX, the international vaccine alliance that strives to offer the world’s poorest countries equitable access to the life-saving shots.   

The American Embassy in Ethiopia said the vaccines arrived in two shipments on January 24 and 26, bringing “the number of doses of vaccines provided to Ethiopia by the American people to over 6.1 million since July 17, 2021.”

The head of the hospital system in Paris has questioned whether the unvaccinated should pay a portion of their hospitalization costs.

“When free and efficient drugs are available, should people be able to renounce it without consequences … while we struggle to take care of other patients?” Martin Hirsch posed in a recent television interview. 

His proposal has been met with mixed reaction from politicians and citizens.

Paris Mayor Anne Hildalgo, who is a Socialist, said she is against the idea, while Olga Givernet, a lawmaker from President Emanuel Macron’s party, said, “the issue as raised by the medical community could not be ignored.”  

Meanwhile, a recent poll revealed that 51% of the French population believe the unvaccinated should pay a portion of their hospital costs. France has universal health care which pays the entire amount of COVID-19 hospitalization, which costs more than $3,000 per day. 

Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and a Republican vice-presidential nominee, has been spotted dining out in New York City, after having tested positive for COVID-19.  Her positive test forced the postponement of a trial in which she is suing The New York Times newspaper. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has advised anyone who has come in contact with Palin to get tested. 

More than 366.3 million global COVID-19 infections have been recorded, according to The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.  The center said early Friday 5.6 million people have died from COVID-19.   Almost 10 billion vaccine doses have been administered, according to Johns Hopkins.
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The world’s biggest and most powerful space telescope found a parking space. Plus, a lottery winner can’t claim his prize, and a volcanic eruption may offer clues on the formation of planets. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Six people who were children living in Fukushima at the time of the 2011 nuclear disaster and have since developed thyroid cancer filed a lawsuit Thursday demanding a utility pay compensation for their illnesses, which they say were triggered by massive radiation spewed from the Fukushima nuclear plant. 

The people, now aged 17-27 and living in and outside of Fukushima, demand the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings pay a total of 616 million yen ($5.4 million) in compensation. 

One of the plaintiffs, identified only as a woman in her 20s, said she has had to prioritize her health over her career and has seen prejudice against thyroid cancer patients. 

“But I decided to come forward and tell the truth in hopes of improving the situation for nearly 300 other people also suffering like us,” she said. 

Their lawyers said it is the first group lawsuit in Japan filed by Fukushima residents over health problems linked to the nuclear disaster 11 years ago. 

In a news conference after filing their lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court, a plaintiff and the mother of another plaintiff said they hoped the court would establish a correlation between the cancer and radiation leaked from the plant. An expert panel commissioned by the Fukushima prefectural government has so far ruled out the alleged cause. 

The plaintiffs, who were 6 to 16 years old at the time of the meltdown, were diagnosed with thyroid cancer between 2012 and 2018, their lawyers said. Four of them had their thyroid fully removed and need to take lifetime hormonal treatment. One of them says the cancer has since spread elsewhere. The other two had part of their thyroid removed. 

The plaintiffs are from different parts of Fukushima, including Aizu, about 120 kilometers (72 miles) west of the plant, and some of them have since moved to the Tokyo area. 

More than 290 people have been diagnosed with or are suspected of having thyroid cancer, including 266 found as part of the Fukushima prefectural panel’s survey of some 380,000 residents aged 18 or younger at the time of the disaster. 

The occurrence rate of 77 per 100,000 people is significantly higher than the usual 1-2 per million, their lawyers say. 

Prefectural officials and experts have said the high detection rate in Fukushima is due to overdiagnosis in many cases, which might have led to unnecessary treatment or surgery. Some also call for an end to the blanket surveys. 

Kenichi Ido, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, said his client’s cancer has progressed, that none of the cases involve overdiagnosis and that TEPCO should be held accountable for radiation exposure unless the company can prove otherwise. 

The government at the time of the accident was slow in its emergency response, and evacuation in many places was delayed due to a lack of disclosure about what was happening at the plant. Residents trying to flee in their cars clogged roads and were stranded for hours outside while radiation leaked from the damaged reactors. Some residents headed to evacuation centers in the direction of the radiation flow. 

In a trial seeking criminal responsibility of former TEPCO executives, the Tokyo District Court in 2019 found three top officials not guilty, saying they could not have foreseen the disaster. The case has been appealed to a high court. 
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Nigerian health authorities say the country’s life expectancy is among the worst in the world, with influenza and pneumonia leading causes of death. In southern Nigeria’s Cross River state, severe air pollution is increasing the cases of respiratory diseases.

Port Harcourt resident David Tolu-Adamu knows. Before leaving for work each day, he dons his face mask.

Tolu-Adamu says it’s a measure he has been taking since long before the coronavirus pandemic to filter out the sooty air.

“Constantly on a daily basis, year in year out, we have issues with black soot,” he says. “We breathe in this harmful substance in our day in, day out, in our sleep, while we work, when we exercise.”

Wearing a face mask is a common practice for many in the oil-rich city polluted by the activities of illegal oil refineries, flaring gas and the burning of garbage and tires. The pollution generated by soot escalated in 2016.

Health authorities say the soot is increasing respiratory ailments in the state and that some 23,000 people have been affected in the last five years.

This month, state authorities began addressing the problem in the affected areas by stopping and criminalizing the illegal refinery practices, says a local government head, Samuel Nwanosike.

“If the actions were not affecting our health, then we wouldn’t bother,” he says. “We are the ones here, we are the ones dying, we’re the ones feeling the pain. I am here every day in Ikwerre local government (area), sometimes I open my door, everywhere is turned dark; meanwhile there’s supposed to be sunshine.”

Health authorities say the country’s life expectancy of 54 years of age ranks among the five lowest in the world.

Respiratory illnesses such as influenza and pneumonia are leading causes of death. Globally, almost 300,000 people died from these ailments in 2018, according to World Health Organization estimates cited by the group World Life Expectancy.

Rivers State authorities blame soot pollution for making the problem worse. Since the start of this year, they have cracked down on illegal refinery operators, arresting more than 20 and shutting down many bases.

Critics accuse state authorities of not doing enough to curb pollution.

“The government is only interested in the proceeds of oil and gas, but they are not interested in the people; they’re not interested in the environment,” says Ibiosiya Sukubo, a local chief in Port Harcourt. “It has put our youths into the creeks, to the breaking of pipes and creating artisanal refineries, forgetting the additional health hazards and implications. We are just victims of circumstance.”

For now, Rivers State authorities say they will continue their crackdown on illegal refineries while looking for other ways to keep residents safe from the soot. 

 

 
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Bathed in crisp morning light, Sidra Hussain grips a cooler stacked with glistening vials of polio vaccine in northwest Pakistan. 

Watching over Hussain and her partner, a policeman unslings his rifle and eyes the horizon. 

In concert they begin their task — going door-to-door on the outskirts of Mardan city, dripping bitter doses of rose-colored medicine into infants’ mouths on the eve of a major milestone for the nation’s anti-polio drive. 

The last infection of the wild poliovirus was recorded on January 27, 2021, according to officials, and Friday marks the first time in Pakistan’s history that a year has passed with no new cases. 

To formally eradicate the disease, a nation must be polio-free for three consecutive years — but even 12 months is a long time in a country where vaccination teams are in the crosshairs of a simmering insurgency. 

Since the Taliban takeover of neighboring Afghanistan, the Pakistan version of the movement has become emboldened and its fighters frequently target polio teams. 

“Life or death is in God’s hands,” Hussain told AFP this week, amid a patchwork of high-walled compounds in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. 

“We have to come,” she said defiantly. “We can’t just turn back because it’s difficult.” 

Thriving in uncertainty  

Nigeria officially eradicated wild polio in 2020, leaving Pakistan and Afghanistan as the only countries where the disease — which causes crippling paralysis — is still endemic. 

Spread through faeces and saliva, the virus has historically thrived in the blurred borderlands between the South Asian nations, where state infrastructure is weak, and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have carved out a home. 

A separate group sharing common heritage with the Afghan Taliban, the TTP was founded in 2007 and once held sway over large swathes of the restive tribal tracts of Pakistan. 

In 2014 it was largely ousted by an army offensive, its fighters retreating across the porous border with Afghanistan. 

But last year overall militant attacks surged by 56 per cent according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, reversing a six-year downward trend. 

The largest number of assaults came in August, coinciding with the Taliban takeover of Kabul. 

Pakistan’s newspapers are regularly peppered with stories of police slain as they guard polio teams — and just this week a constable was gunned down in Kohat — 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Mardan. 

Pakistani media has reported as many as 70 polio workers killed in militant attacks since 2012 — mostly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. 

Still, a TTP spokesman told AFP it “never attacked any polio workers,” and that security forces were their target. 

“They will be targeted wherever they perform their duties,” he said Mardan deputy commissioner Habib Ullah Arif admits polio teams are “a very soft target” but says the fight to eradicate the disease is entwined with the security threat. 

“There is only one concept: we are going to defeat polio, we are going to defeat militancy,” he pledged. 

Vaccine skepticism  

Pakistan anti-polio drives have been running since 1994, with up to 260,000 vaccinators staging regular waves of regional inoculation campaigns. 

But on the fringes of the country, the teams often face skepticism. 

“In certain areas of Pakistan, it was considered as a Western conspiracy,” explained Shahzad Baig — head of the national polio eradication program.  

The theories ranged wildly: polio teams are spies, the vaccines cause infertility, or contain pig fat forbidden by Islam. 

The spy theory gained currency with the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, whose hideaway in Abbottabad was revealed to the United States — unwittingly or otherwise — by a vaccine program run by a Pakistani doctor. 

“It’s a complex situation,” said Baig. “It’s socio-economical, it’s political.” 

The porous border with Afghanistan — a strategic crutch for the TTP — can also keep polio circulating. 

“For the virus, Pakistan and Afghanistan were one country,” said Baig.  

In Mardan, 10 teams — each comprising two women and an armed police guard — fan out across the city’s suburbs as morning turns to afternoon. 

The teams chalk dates on the homes they visit and smear children’s fingers with indelible ink to mark those already inoculated. 

On Monday they delivered dozens more doses to add to the nationwide tally. 

“We have the fear in mind, but we have to be active to serve our nation,” said polio worker Zeb-un-Nissa. 

“We have to eradicate this disease.” 
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The Atlanta-based Carter Center is making dramatic progress in the eradication of Guinea worm disease. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports that if the remaining endemic countries in Africa – Chad, South Sudan, Mali, Ethiopia and border areas of Cameroon – rid the parasite completely, it would become the first disease in human history eradicated through prevention and not vaccination
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The installation of a solar-powered medical oxygen system at a hospital in central Somalia is proving effective in saving lives, Somali and World Health Organization doctors said. 

The innovative solar oxygen system, the first of its kind in Somalia, was installed at Hanaano hospital, in the central town of Dhusamareb a year ago. Doctors say the system is having an impact and helping save the lives of very young patients.    

“This innovation is giving us promise and hopes,” says Dr. Mamunur Rahman Malik, WHO Somalia Representative.  

Malik says 171 patients received oxygen at the hospital from the solar-powered system from February to October last year. Of these 163 patients (95.3%) fully recovered and were discharged from the hospital. Only three patients died, and five other patients were referred to other hospitals.  

Malik said every year some 15,000 to 20,000 deaths occur in Somalia among children under five years of age due to pneumonia. He says pneumonia is the deadliest disease among children under the age of five in the country. Until now, health authorities had not had access to an intervention that could reduce deaths from childhood pneumonia.  

Dr. Mohamed Abdi, the director of Hanaano hospital, said the innovation is making a difference.    

“It has helped a lot, it has saved more than a hundred people who received the service,” he told VOA Somali.    

“It was a problem for the children under one year and the children who are born six months to get enough oxygen. Now we are not worried about oxygen availability if the electricity goes out because there are the oxygen concentrators.”

Abdi said it was difficult for doctors to save the lives of children born prematurely at the hospital before the installation of the system. The new system helps maintain high oxygen saturation levels of patients.  

Abdiaziz Omar Abdi was a child admitted to the hospital on January 16 with severe pneumonia and was struggling to breathe normally. The oxygen rate in his body had dropped to 60%, Abdi said.    

Doctors immediately put him on oxygen along with ampicillin and dexamethasone medications. When discharged three days later, he was breathing normally. His oxygen was up to 90%.  

“I came because my child was unwell, he was not breathing properly, he was not breastfeeding,” says relieved mother Fadumo Ahmed Ali.    

“Now he is breastfeeding. He is feeling well.”  

Abdiaziz received the treatment at no cost to his family.    

Malik said the oxygen is being used to treat a wide range of medical conditions — asphyxia, pneumonia, injuries, trauma, and road traffic accidents.

“We have seen in other countries that use of solar-powered medical oxygen (if applied in a timely manner) can save up to 35% of deaths from childhood pneumonia,” he said.    

Malik said if this innovation is used widely in Somalia, it can save the lives of at least 7,000 children who die “needlessly” due to pneumonia.    

The initiative to install bio-medical equipment that uses solar energy at Hanaano hospital emerged during the height of COVID-19 in 2020, at a time when people were dying due to respiratory problems. Hospitals were unable to keep up with the amount of patients and the cost of a cylinder of oxygen rose to between $400 to $600. 

“At the beginning of this pandemic we have seen that only 20% of hospitals or health facilities in Somalia had access to limited, very limited supply of oxygen,” Malik said.    

“If you look at the current situation, as of today Somalia needs close to 3,000 or 4000 cubic meters of oxygen per day. So, oxygen was the biggest need in all the hospitals.”  

Doctors said the solar system can also provide electricity to hospitals that need it. Solar power can also help provide energy for refrigeration needed to store vaccines or drugs at a low temperature, doctors said.  

This report originated in VOA Somali Service’s “Investigative Dossier” program. 
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Scientists and health officials around the world are keeping their eyes on a descendant of the omicron variant that has been found in at least 40 countries, including the United States. 

This version of the coronavirus, which scientists call BA.2, is widely considered stealthier than the original version of omicron because certain genetic traits make it somewhat harder to detect. Some scientists worry it could also be more contagious.

But they say there’s a lot they still don’t know about it, including whether it evades vaccines better or causes more severe disease. 

Where has it spread? 

Since mid-November, more than three dozen countries have uploaded nearly 15,000 genetic sequences of BA.2 to GISAID, a global platform for sharing coronavirus data. As of Tuesday morning, 96 of those sequenced cases came from the U.S. 

“Thus far, we haven’t seen it start to gain ground” in the U.S., said Dr. Wesley Long, a pathologist at Houston Methodist in Texas, which has identified three cases of BA.2.

The mutant appears much more common in Asia and Europe. In Denmark, it made up 45% of all COVID-19 cases in mid-January, up from 20% two weeks earlier, according to Statens Serum Institut, which falls under the Danish Ministry of Health. 

What’s known about this version of the virus? 

BA.2 has lots of mutations. About 20 of them in the spike protein that studs the outside of the virus are shared with the original omicron. But it also has additional genetic changes not seen in the initial version.

It’s unclear how significant those mutations are, especially in a population that has encountered the original omicron, said Dr. Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

For now, the original version, known as BA.1, and BA.2 are considered subsets of omicron. But global health leaders could give it its own Greek letter name if it is deemed a globally significant “variant of concern.” 

The quick spread of BA.2 in some places raises concerns it could take off. 

“We have some indications that it just may be as contagious or perhaps slightly more contagious than (original) omicron since it’s able to compete with it in some areas,” Long said. “But we don’t necessarily know why that is.” 

An initial analysis by scientists in Denmark shows no differences in hospitalizations for BA.2 compared with the original omicron. Scientists there are still looking into this version’s infectiousness and how well current vaccines work against it. It’s also unclear how well treatments will work against it. 

Doctors also don’t yet know for sure if someone who’s already had COVID-19 caused by omicron can be sickened again by BA.2. But they’re hopeful, especially that a prior omicron infection might lessen the severity of disease if someone later contracts BA.2.

The two versions of omicron have enough in common that it’s possible that infection with the original mutant “will give you cross-protection against BA.2,” said Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, an infectious diseases expert at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Scientists will be conducting tests to see if antibodies from an infection with the original omicron “are able to neutralize BA.2 in the laboratory and then extrapolate from there,” he said. 

How concerned are health agencies? 

The World Health Organization classifies omicron overall as a variant of concern, its most serious designation of a coronavirus mutant, but it doesn’t single out BA.2 with a designation of its own. Given its rise in some countries, however, the agency says investigations of BA.2 “should be prioritized.” 

The U.K. Health Security Agency, meanwhile, has designated BA.2 a “variant under investigation,” citing the rising numbers found in the U.K. and internationally. Still, the original version of omicron remains dominant in the U.K.

Why is it harder to detect? 

The original version of omicron had specific genetic features that allowed health officials to rapidly differentiate it from delta using a certain PCR test because of what’s known as “S gene target failure.” 

BA.2 doesn’t have this same genetic quirk. So on the test, Long said, BA.2 looks like delta. 

“It’s not that the test doesn’t detect it; it’s just that it doesn’t look like omicron,” he said. “Don’t get the impression that ‘stealth omicron’ means we can’t detect it. All of our PCR tests can still detect it.” 

What should you do to protect yourself? 

Doctors advise the same precautions they have all along: Get vaccinated and follow public health guidance about wearing masks, avoiding crowds and staying home when you’re sick. 

“The vaccines are still providing good defense against severe disease, hospitalization and death,” Long said. “Even if you’ve had COVID-19 before — you’ve had a natural infection — the protection from the vaccine is still stronger, longer lasting and actually … does well for people who’ve been previously infected.” 

The latest version is another reminder that the pandemic hasn’t ended. 

“We all wish that it was over,” Long said, “but until we get the world vaccinated, we’re going to be at risk of having new variants emerge.” 

 
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A devil-horned newt, drought-resilient bamboo and a monkey named after a volcano were among 224 new species discovered in the Greater Mekong region in 2020, a conservation group said on Wednesday, despite the “intense threat” of habitat loss. 

The discoveries listed in a report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) include a new rock gecko found in Thailand, a mulberry tree species in Vietnam, and a big-headed frog in Vietnam and Cambodia that is already threatened by deforestation. 

The 224 discoveries underlined the rich biodiversity of the Mekong region, which encompasses Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, and was testament to the resilience of nature in surviving in fragmented and degraded natural habitats, WWF said. 

“These species are extraordinary, beautiful products of millions of years of evolution, but are under intense threat, with many species going extinct even before they are described,” said K. Yoganand, WWF-Greater Mekong’s regional lead for wildlife and wildlife crime. 

The area is home to some of the world’s most endangered species, at risk of habitat destruction, diseases from human activities and the illegal wildlife trade. 

A United Nations report last year said wildlife trafficking in Southeast Asia was creeping back after a temporary disruption from coronavirus restrictions, which saw countries shut borders and tighten surveillance. 

 
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Uganda on Monday lifted its two-year COVID-19 curfew, allowing bars and nightspots to re-open. Excited revelers celebrated the end of one of the world’s longest lockdowns.

A reveler who only identified herself as Peace said she has been drinking every night of the lockdown. 

Uganda imposed the nighttime curfew in March 2020 in a bid to limit the spread of the coronavirus, which has led to about 3,500 deaths in the country. 

Every night, businesses had to shut down at 7, and no cars were allowed on the streets. 

Peace tells VOA that during the lockdown, she ventured into bars owned by government employees that continued to operate in secret but charged high prices for beer. 

Excited, she said she is happy she can now drink at her favorite local bar. 

“But I’m glad that they opened,” Peace said. “I can manage to go out. I can freely move with a boda. Or I can drive. Like here, three beers at ten thousand. So, if I move out with fifty thousand, I can spend the whole night.” 

The government lifted the curfew on Monday, but some restrictions remain.Anyone wandering into a bar or restaurant must wear a mask and show their COVID vaccination card.

Fred Enanga, the Uganda Police spokesperson, cautioned the public to adhere to the health and safety protocols if they do not want to return to curfew. 

“Therefore, it is important that all proprietors and managers in night life and the night economy carefully manage the reopening of their business in the safest possible way,” Enanga said. “Where possible they can have ventilation systems in all venues, Sanitation stations throughout the venues.” 

Chris, a manager at the High Five bar in Kampala, is hoping to recover the losses he has incurred in the last two years. Monday’s business was disappointing, he said – he didn’t get as many customers as he wished.

The real challenge, he said, could be implementing the safety measures. 

“It has been two long years without operating. It is difficult to really tell everybody, show me your vaccination card or certificate,” Chris said. “Nonetheless, we have sanitizer, all the waitresses are vaccinated and we believe we are ready.” 

As Uganda attempts to return to normalcy, including the night life, statistics from the Ministry of Health show that as of Sunday, the country had recorded about 160,000 cases of COVID-19.

About 12,5 million people have been vaccinated, well short of the government’s target of 20 million.
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The U.S. health regulator on Monday revised the emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 antibody treatments from Regeneron and Eli Lilly to limit their use, as the drugs are unlikely to work against the omicron variant. 

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the treatments are currently not cleared for use in any U.S. states or territories but may be authorized in certain regions if they work against potential new variants. 

The agency highlighted other therapies that are expected to be effective against omicron, including a rival antibody drug from GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology as well as recently authorized antiviral pills from Pfizer and Merck & Co. 

The U.S. government in December had paused distribution of Regeneron and Lilly’s treatments and said the halt would continue until new data emerges on their efficacy against omicron. 

The highly contagious new variant was estimated to account for more than 99% of cases in the United States as of Jan. 15. 

GSK and Vir Biotech are boosting production of their drug sotrovimab to help meet soaring demand in the United States. The FDA has also expanded its approval for the use of Gilead Sciences’ antiviral COVID-19 drug remdesivir to treat non-hospitalized patients aged 12 years and above. 

The Washington Post earlier in the day reported that the FDA was expected to revise authorizations for Regeneron and Lilly’s treatments. 

A Regeneron spokesperson had said the regulator would provide any potential communication on the topic. 

Lilly had no immediate comment but pointed to its statement from December saying its antibody candidate, bebtelovimab, maintains neutralization activity against all known variants of concern, including omicron. 
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The head of the World Health Organization warned Monday that COVID-19 will be around for the foreseeable future, and everyone will have to learn to live with it. The WHO chief issued the warning at the opening of the agency’s weeklong executive board meeting.

Two years ago, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern. Then there were fewer than 100 cases and no deaths reported outside China. Those numbers now stand at nearly 350 million cases and more than 5.5 million deaths.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it is hard to know when the pandemic will end. However, while the coronavirus is circulating, he said it will continue to mutate in unpredictable and dangerous ways. 

“It is dangerous to assume that omicron will be the last variant, or that we are in the endgame. On the contrary, globally the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge,” he said.

Tedros said countries must learn to manage this deadly disease and use the knowledge gained to prepare for future pandemics. To change the course of the pandemic, he said the conditions driving it must change.

He said the acute phase of the pandemic can be ended this year if countries use all the strategies and tools available to combat COVID-19. He adds this will work only if all countries, rich and poor alike, have equitable access to vaccines, treatments, and other tools.

“Vaccines alone are not the golden ticket out of this pandemic. But there is no path out unless we achieve our shared target of vaccinating 70 percent of the population of every country by the middle of this year. We have a long way to go,” he said.

The WHO chief notes 86 countries have not been able to reach last year’s target of vaccinating 40 percent of their populations.

He warned the emergency phase of the pandemic will not end until the gap between the have and have-not countries is bridged. 
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The coast of Ghana is home to five of the world’s endangered sea turtles, which are threatened by fishing nets and poachers who sell their meat and eggs. To help revive the turtle populations, a group of young footballers have taken it upon themselves to guard turtle nests and rescue turtles captured by fishermen.  

Empty sea turtle shells are commonly found on the beach along Ghana’s coastal Gomoa Fetteh community.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says six out of the seven species of sea turtles are endangered.

Peter Kusaana of the Environmental Justice Foundation says five of those species used to nest in Ghana, but the numbers have reduced.

“Over the years, we are only now recording about four or three of these species nesting in Ghana, meaning that we have already lost two of these turtle species in Ghana,” he said. 

Fishermen here say about 50 turtles are killed every year along the eight-kilometer shoreline, drowned in fishing nets or poached for their meat and eggs. 

Ama Akorfa, a turtle processor, explains why the locals poach turtles. 

She says the meat is a delicacy. She makes stew with the turtle’s entrails and sells the remaining meat.   

Saving the remaining turtles is a team effort.

The Fetteh Youngsters Football Club since 2019 has taken it upon themselves to protect the turtles.

The team’s coach, Daniel Kwesi Botchwey, says they leverage the community’s support for the team to help save the endangered sea turtles.

“There has been the need for us to educate the community about it. And since the football team is for the community, because I always say, ‘Fetteh Youngsters is a community-based team, it is for the community.’ And the chief of the town, he is the live patron of the club, so everyone in the community supports Fetteh Youngsters. So, we have taken it as a means, as a tool, to educate the community,” said coach Botchwey.

During nesting season, the football team patrols the beaches from dusk until dawn to ward off poachers and other predators that would harm nesting turtles or their eggs.   

The players also engage the turtle meat sellers and fishing community to educate them on the importance of protecting marine life.  

Peter Kusaana of Ghana’s Environmental Justice Foundation says their efforts are paying off.

He explains that turtle poaching reduced from 47 killed in the 2019-2020 nesting season to 26 in the last one, while more nests have been found along the coast.

“The number of nesting events recorded, meaning that the data points that have been captured by our patrollers, has increased,” he said. “In 2019-2020, we had around 50 cases that were recorded in our data sheets. In 2020-2021, we have over 145.” 

They’re team numbers that the Fetteh Youngsters Football Club is proud of.

But eliminating the demand for endangered sea turtles — that’s their top goal, and one they’re playing overtime to score.
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