As Americans head into the holiday season, a rapidly intensifying flu season is straining hospitals already overburdened with patients sick from other respiratory infections. 

More than half the states have high or very high levels of flu, unusually high for this early in the season, the government reported Friday. Those 27 states are mostly in the South and Southwest but include a growing number in the Northeast, Midwest and West. 

This is happening when children’s hospitals already are dealing with a surge of illnesses from RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, a common cause of cold-like symptoms that can be serious for infants and the elderly. And COVID-19 is still contributing to more than 3,000 hospital admissions each day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In Atlanta, Dr. Mark Griffiths describes the mix as a “viral jambalaya.” He said the children’s hospitals in his area have at least 30% more patients than usual for this time of year, with many patients forced to wait in emergency rooms for beds to open up. 

“I tell parents that COVID was the ultimate bully. It bullied every other virus for two years,” said Griffiths, ER medical director of a Children’s Health Care of Atlanta downtown hospital. 

With COVID-19 rates going down, “they’re coming back full force,” he said. 

The winter flu season usually doesn’t get going until December or January. Hospitalization rates from flu haven’t been this high this early since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, CDC officials say. The highest rates are among those 65 and older and children under 5, the agency said. 

“It’s so important for people at higher risk to get vaccinated,” the CDC’s Lynnette Brammer said in a statement Friday. 

But flu vaccinations are down from other years, particularly among adults, possibly because the past two seasons have been mild. Flu shots are recommended for nearly all Americans who are at least 6 months old or older. 

Adults can get RSV too and that infection can be especially dangerous for older adults who are frail or have chronic illnesses, doctors say. There is not yet a vaccine against RSV although some are in development. 

One infectious-disease specialist urged Americans to take precautions before gathering for Thanksgiving, including avoiding public crowds, getting COVID-19 tests before they meet and wearing masks indoors — particularly if you are old or frail, or will be around someone who is. 

“Nobody wants to bring a virus to the table,” said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association this week urged the Biden administration to declare an emergency and mount a national response to “the alarming surge of pediatric respiratory illnesses.” An emergency declaration would allow waivers of Medicaid, Medicare or Children’s Health Insurance Program requirements so that doctors and hospitals could share resources and access emergency funding, the groups said in a letter. 
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NASA’s Webb Space Telescope is finding bright, early galaxies that until now were hidden from view, including one that may have formed a mere 350 million years after the cosmic-creating Big Bang.

Astronomers said Thursday that if the results are verified, this newly discovered throng of stars would beat the most distant galaxy identified by the Hubble Space Telescope, a record-holder that formed 400 million years after the universe began.

Launched last December as a successor to Hubble, the Webb telescope is indicating stars may have formed sooner than previously thought — perhaps within a couple million years of creation.

Webb’s latest discoveries were detailed in the Astrophysical Journal Letters by an international team led by Rohan Naidu of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The article elaborates on two exceptionally bright galaxies, the first thought to have formed 350 million years after the Big Bang and the other 450 million years after.

Naidu said more observations are needed in the infrared by Webb before claiming a new distance record-holder.

Although some researchers report having uncovered galaxies even closer to the creation of the universe 13.8 billion years ago, those candidates have yet to be verified, scientists stressed at a NASA news conference. Some of those could be later galaxies mimicking earlier ones, they noted.

“This is a very dynamic time,” said Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, a co-author of the article published Thursday. “There have been lots of preliminary announcements of even earlier galaxies, and we’re still trying to sort out as a community which ones of those are likely to be real.”

Tommaso Treu of the University of California, Los Angeles, a chief scientist for Webb’s early release science program, said the evidence presented so far “is as solid as it gets” for the galaxy believed to have formed 350 million years after the Big Bang.

If the findings are verified and more early galaxies are out there, Naidu and his team wrote that Webb “will prove highly successful in pushing the cosmic frontier all the way to the brink of the Big Bang.”

“When and how the first galaxies formed remains one of the most intriguing questions,” they said in their paper.

NASA’s Jane Rigby, a project scientist with Webb, noted that these galaxies “were hiding just under the limits of what Hubble could do.”

“They were right there waiting for us,” she told reporters. “So, that’s a happy surprise that there are lots of these galaxies to study.”

The $10 billion observatory — the world’s largest and most powerful telescope ever sent into space — is in a solar orbit that’s 1.6 million kilometers from Earth. Full science operations began over the summer, and NASA has since released a series of dazzling snapshots of the universe.
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A global wildlife summit in Panama took an important step Thursday toward upgrading protection for sharks, the ancient ocean vertebrates targeted for their fins used in a status-symbol soup. 

A committee voted to approve a proposal to include requiem and hammerhead sharks on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).   

The appendix lists species that may not yet be threatened with extinction but may become so unless their trade is closely controlled.   

The Wildlife Conservation Society, advocating for the sharks’ inclusion on the appendix, said the requiem shark family makes up at least 70% of the fin trade. 

According to Luke Warwick of the Wildlife Conservation Society, “we are in the middle of a very large shark extinction crisis.”  

He said sharks, which are vital to the ocean’s ecosystem, are “the second-most-threatened vertebrate group on the planet.”  

Shark fins — which represent a market of some $500 million per year — can sell for about $1,000 a kilogram in East Asia for use in shark fin soup, a delicacy.   

The requiem shark family includes species such as the tiger shark, silky shark and grey reef shark.   

Also before the CITES gathering underway in Panama City is the inclusion on Appendix II of freshwater stingrays and guitarfish, among other species.  

The conference is considering 52 proposals to amend protection levels for species that also include crocodiles, lizards, snakes, freshwater turtles and several species of plants and trees. 

A final decision will be taken at the closing meeting of the CITES conference of parties on November 25.   

CITES, in force since 1975, regulates trade in 36,000 species of plants and animals and provides mechanisms to help crack down on illegal commerce. It sanctions countries that break the rules. Its members include 183 countries and the European Union. 
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Malawi is struggling to contain one of the worst cholera outbreaks in years. It has spread nationwide, killing more than 250 people and infecting more than 8,000.  Authorities and aid groups have stepped up cholera vaccination and hygiene campaigns, as Lameck Masina reports from Blantyre, Malawi.
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Uganda’s tourism sector is once again being hit by effects from a deadly disease.  

In 2021, it was the COVID-19 pandemic. This time, it’s the Ebola outbreak, with 141 confirmed cases and 55 deaths.

President Yoweri Museveni said Tuesday in his address to Ugandans that he had been informed that tourists are canceling trips to the country and some had postponed hotel bookings. 

This comes as the outbreak has spread to a sixth district of Jinja in Eastern Uganda, a favorite destination for tourists. 

“This is most unfortunate and not necessary. As you have seen, Ebola, if you follow the guidelines, it will not get you. Uganda remains safe and we welcome international guests,” Museveni said. 

He also said lists of Ebola contacts are being provided to immigration officials to prevent the virus from spreading outside the country.  

December is usually one of the peak months for Uganda’s tourism industry. 

Scovia Kyarisima, executive director of Legends Gorilla Tours, a company that provides wildlife experiences for visitors, told VOA that several tourists have postponed their visits.  

“I’ve had so far five cancellations from online tourists,” she said. “And they have pushed it to June next year. They don’t say we are not going to come anymore. But they say, considering the situation that is on today, let’s push this to next year.” 

Before the pandemic, Uganda was getting a little over 600,000 tourists each year. That number nosedived to about 200,000 when COVID-19 hit in 2020, costing many Ugandans their jobs. 

Gessa Simplicious, public relations officer for the Uganda Tourism Board, said that in between the pandemic and the Ebola outbreak, the tourism industry was slowly climbing out of its downturn.  

He said industry operators, some of whom borrowed heavily to revamp their facilities, are now facing a crunch as tourism dries up again, while other wildlife destinations like Kenya and Tanzania remain unaffected by the Ebola outbreak.  

“And you see this Ebola is only isolating us as a country. So, it means, tourists can go elsewhere for the same thing and omit Uganda,” Simplicious said. 

The government has tightened measures in two of the most Ebola-hit districts of Mubende and Kasanda by extending a lockdown for another 21 days. It is also banning citizens from seeking treatment from traditional healers and trying to limit individuals’ movement in and out of the districts. 

 
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Heavy rains behind floods that killed more than 600 people in Nigeria this year were about 80 times likelier because of human-induced climate change, scientists reported Wednesday.

The floods mainly struck Nigeria but also Niger, Chad and neighboring countries, displacing more than 1.4 million people and devastating homes and farmland in a region already vulnerable to food insecurity.

Researchers from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium said in a study that the floods, among the deadliest on record in the region, were directly linked to human activity that is exacerbating climate change.

They matched long-term data on climate, which shows the planet has warmed by about 1.2 degrees Celsius since 1800 as carbon emissions have risen, against weather events.

The heavy rainfall that sparked the floods was 80 times more likely because of “human-caused climate change,” according to their findings.

In addition, “this year’s rainy season was 20% wetter than it would have been without the influence of climate change,” they said.

“The influence of climate change means the prolonged rain that led to the floods is no longer a rare event,” the study found.

“The above-average rain over the wet season now has approximately a 1 in 10 chance of happening each year; without human activities it would have been an extremely rare event.”

More than 600 people were killed in Nigeria alone because of the floods from June to October this year, and nearly 200 in Niger and 22 in Chad.

The report comes as COP27 climate talks are under way in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, where developing nations are demanding rich polluters pay for climate-change linked calamities.

Africa is home to some of the countries least responsible for carbon emissions but hardest hit by an onslaught of weather extremes, with the Horn of Africa currently in the grips of a severe drought.

“This is a real and present problem, and it’s particularly the poorest countries that are getting hit very hard. So it’s clear that solutions are needed,” Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said at a WWA press conference.

The WWA publishes rapid-response reports following extreme climate events.

Their studies are not peer-reviewed, a process that can take months, but are widely backed by scientists.
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After mechanical issues and inclement weather forced a series of delays, NASA’s Artemis 1 mission to the moon finally took off from Kennedy Space Center early Wednesday morning. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Florida. Camera: Adam Greenbaum
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NASA’s new Artemis moon rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard early Wednesday.

The launch brings the United States a big step closer to putting astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program 50 years ago.

The moonshot follows nearly three months of vexing fuel leaks that kept the rocket bouncing between its hangar and the launch pad.

If all goes well with the three-week flight, the rocket will propel an empty crew capsule into a wide orbit around the moon.

The capsule will return to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific in December.  

NASA hopes to send four astronauts around the moon on the next flight, in 2024, and land humans there as early as 2025.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press.
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Chinese authorities locked down a major university in Beijing on Wednesday after finding one COVID-19 case as they stick to a “zero-COVID” approach despite growing public discontent.

Peking University students and faculty were not allowed to leave the grounds unless necessary and classes on the main campus — where the case was found — were moved online through Friday, a university notice said. Still, some people could be seen entering and leaving the main campus Wednesday in the Chinese capital’s Haidian district.

Beijing reported more than 350 new cases in the latest 24-hour period, a small fraction of its 21-million population but enough to trigger localized lockdowns and quarantines under China’s “zero-COVID” strategy. Nationwide, China reported about 20,000 cases, up from about 8,000 a week ago.

Authorities are steering away from citywide lockdowns to try to minimize the impact on freedom of movement and a sagging economy. They want to avoid a repeat of the Shanghai lockdown earlier this year that paralyzed shipping and prompted neighborhood protests. Revised national guidelines issued last week called on local governments to follow a targeted and scientific approach that avoids unnecessary measures.

Peking University has more than 40,000 students on multiple campuses, most in Beijing. It was unclear how many were affected by the lockdown. The 124-year-old institution is one of China’s top universities and was a center of student protest in earlier decades. Its graduates include leading intellectuals, writers, politicians and businesspeople.

Lockdowns elsewhere have sparked scattered protests. Earlier this week, videos posted online showed crowds pulling down barriers in the southern city of Guangzhou in a densely built area that is home to migrant workers in the clothing industry.

Guangzhou, an industrial export hub near Hong Kong, reported more than 6,000 new cases in what is the nation’s largest ongoing outbreak. The pandemic led the Badminton World Federation to move next month’s HSBC World Tour Finals from Guangzhou to Bangkok, the federation announced this week.

Other cities with major outbreaks include Chongqing in the southwest, Zhengzhou in Henan province and Hohhot, the capital of the Inner Mongolia region in the north.

In Zhengzhou late last month, workers fled their dormitories at a sprawling iPhone factory, some climbing over fences to get out. Apple subsequently warned that customers would face delays in deliveries of iPhone14 Pro models.

Chinese officials and state media have stressed that the government is fine-tuning but not abandoning what it calls a “dynamic” zero-COVID policy, after rumors of an easing sparked a stock market rally earlier this month.
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Cholera cases are overwhelming Haiti, and experts warn the situation could worsen now that the country is bustling following the end of a paralyzing fuel blockade that lasted two months.

Dr. Jeanty Fils, a spokesman for Haiti’s Ministry of Health, told The Associated Press that people are back on the streets and likely spreading cholera as the government struggles to find life-saving equipment, including IV supplies, amid an ongoing discussion on whether to request cholera vaccines.

“We need more resources,” he said. “Cholera cases continue to climb in Haiti.”

At least 161 people have died and more than 7,600 are hospitalized, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and Haiti’s government, although officials believe the numbers are much higher as a result of underreporting. Cholera is caused by a bacteria found in contaminated food or water that leads to vomiting and diarrhea. If not treated in time, it can cause fatal dehydration.

The worsening situation led the United Nations to announce Tuesday that it, along with Haiti’s government and other partners, was seeking $146 million to help fight cholera. At least half a million people in Haiti are at risk of contracting the disease, according to PAHO and the World Health Organization.

“The surge in cases in recent weeks and the rapid spread of cholera in the country is worrying,” said Ulrika Richardson, U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator.

Fils noted that cholera cases were likely contained during the fuel blockade as gas stations were closed and many in the country of more than 11 million people remained at home.

“Now people are going to move around more,” he said. “It could start spreading.”

Stephanie Mayronne, medical operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, agreed.

She said if people sickened with cholera start traveling to areas with poor sanitation and a lack of drinking water, the number of cases will likely rise.

“It’s a match that can light a fire,” she said.

The number of patients seeking help at Doctors Without Borders hospitals in the capital of Port-au-Prince has spiked in recent weeks, with more than 6,500 admitted so far. Beds filled up so quickly that the aid group was forced to open a fifth center two weeks ago, said Alexandre Marcou, Haiti’s field communication manager.

Inside that new center, mothers hovered over their children on a recent morning. One rearranged the tangle of intravenous cables surrounding her baby while another pumped the little cheeks of her young daughter to force her mouth open and give her an oral supplement. Nearby, adult patients sat in silence in plastic chairs with large white buckets between their legs, holding their head to one side with their arm. Some ate rice and red beans out of small containers that nurses later collected.

Marcou noted that people can survive cholera if treated in time, but the recent lack of fuel and ongoing violence between gangs that has worsened since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse has prevented Haitians from reaching hospitals and medical clinics.

“There’s a huge security crisis. And we are tremendously lacking resources,” said Ralph Ternier, chief medical officer in Haiti for the nonprofit Partners in Health. “The epidemic is spreading so quickly that vaccines are really the tool that we need.”

PAHO told the AP that it is supporting Haiti’s government in preparing a request for vaccines as well as to plan and implement vaccination campaigns. But it wasn’t clear if and when that might happen.

In October, the World Health Organization announced a worldwide cholera vaccine shortage that has forced it to suspend the usual double-dose strategy “at a time of unprecedented rise in cholera outbreaks worldwide.” At least 29 countries have reported cholera cases this year, compared with fewer than 20 on average for the past five years, the agency said.

Mayronne said cholera vaccines can be a useful tool but noted that a single dose can lower one’s risk by only 40%.

“In and of itself, a vaccine is not a be-all and end-all,” she said.

Amid the lack of vaccines in Haiti, crushing poverty made worse by a spiraling economic crisis and double-digit inflation is contributing to the spread of cholera because many are unable to access or afford potable water or food that isn’t contaminated.

Lovena Shelove, 30, lost her 2-year-old son to cholera despite a kind neighbor who brought drinking water to try to revive the toddler after severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhea.

“I don’t have anything in the house,” she said in a soft voice. “I could not afford anything to provide for the kids.”

Her other child, a 7-month-old daughter, is still hospitalized.

Cholera is easily transmitted, especially in crowded and unhygienic conditions. Sanitation further worsened during the fuel blockade because companies that supplied drinking water were forced to suspend operations.

Haiti’s first outbreak occurred in 2010 after U.N. peacekeepers introduced the bacteria into the country’s largest river by sewage runoff from their base. Nearly 10,000 people died, and thousands of others were sickened.

The number of cases eventually dwindled, and the World Health Organization was preparing to declare Haiti cholera-free until the government announced in early October that at least three people had died — the first deaths reported in three years.

Patrick Joseph, 40, was among the thousands recently hospitalized after he became severely dehydrated.

“I don’t know where I got cholera from,” he said, although he suspects it’s from the water he buys from a seller who claims it’s treated. “I feared that I would die if I did not go to the doctor.”

It’s a feeling familiar to street vendor Lucna Francois, who had been relying on well water because the fuel blockade prevented her from accessing potable water. The 24-year-old got so sick on a recent evening that she called a relative to take her to the hospital.

“I am dying,” she recalled telling them. “I was very, very weak.”

Fils, with Haiti’s health ministry, said another big challenge the government faces is that many people don’t believe cholera exists and are not taking measures to avoid becoming sick.

“Prevention, it’s a must,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of drinking (clean) water.”
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The world’s population is projected to hit an estimated 8 billion people on Tuesday, according to a United Nations projection, with much of the growth coming from developing nations in Africa.

Among them is Nigeria, where resources are already stretched to the limit. More than 15 million people in Lagos compete for everything from electricity to light their homes to spots on crowded buses, often for two-hour commutes each way in this sprawling megacity. Some Nigerian children set off for school as early as 5 a.m.

And over the next three decades, the West African nation’s population is expected to soar even more: from 216 million this year to 375 million, the U.N. says. That will make Nigeria the fourth-most populous country in the world after India, China and the United States.

“We are already overstretching what we have — the housing, roads, the hospitals, schools. Everything is overstretched,” said Gyang Dalyop, an urban planning and development consultant in Nigeria.

The U.N.’s Day of 8 Billion milestone Tuesday is more symbolic than precise, officials are careful to note in a wide-ranging report released over the summer that makes some staggering projections.

The upward trend threatens to leave even more people in developing countries further behind, as governments struggle to provide enough classrooms and jobs for a rapidly growing number of youth, and food insecurity becomes an even more urgent problem.

Nigeria is among eight countries the U.N says will account for more than half the world’s population growth between now and 2050 — along with fellow African nations Congo, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

“The population in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double between 2022 and 2050, putting additional pressure on already strained resources and challenging policies aimed to reduce poverty and inequalities,” the U.N. report said.

It projected the world’s population will reach around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100.

Other countries rounding out the list with the fastest growing populations are Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines and India, which is set to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation next year.

In Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, where more than 12 million people live, many families struggle to find affordable housing and pay school fees. While elementary pupils attend for free, older children’s chances depend on their parents’ incomes.

“My children took turns” going to school, said Luc Kyungu, a Kinshasa truck driver who has six children. “Two studied while others waited because of money. If I didn’t have so many children, they would have finished their studies on time.”

Rapid population growth also means more people vying for scarce water resources and leaves more families facing hunger as climate change increasingly impacts crop production in many parts of the world.

“There is also a greater pressure on the environment, increasing the challenges to food security that is also compounded by climate change,” said Dr. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. “Reducing inequality while focusing on adapting and mitigating climate change should be where our policy makers’ focus should be.”

Still, experts say the bigger threat to the environment is consumption, which is highest in developed countries not undergoing big population increases.

“Global evidence shows that a small portion of the world’s people use most of the Earth’s resources and produce most of its greenhouse gas emissions,” said Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the Population Foundation of India. “Over the past 25 years, the richest 10% of the global population has been responsible for more than half of all carbon emissions.”

According to the U.N., the population in sub-Saharan Africa is growing at 2.5% per year — more than three times the global average. Some of that can be attributed to people living longer, but family size remains the driving factor. Women in sub-Saharan Africa on average have 4.6 births, twice the current global average of 2.3.

Families become larger when women start having children early, and 4 out of 10 girls in Africa marry before they turn 18, according to U.N. figures. The rate of teen pregnancy on the continent is the highest in the world — about half of the children born last year to mothers under 20 worldwide were in sub-Saharan Africa.

Still, any effort to reduce family size now would come too late to significantly slow the 2050 growth projections, the U.N. said. About two-thirds of it “will be driven by the momentum of past growth.”

“Such growth would occur even if childbearing in today’s high-fertility countries were to fall immediately to around two births per woman,” the report found.

There are also important cultural reasons for large families. In sub-Saharan Africa, children are seen as a blessing and as a source of support for their elders — the more sons and daughters, the greater comfort in retirement.

Still, some large families “may not have what it takes to actually feed them,” says Eunice Azimi, an insurance broker in Lagos and mother of three.

“In Nigeria, we believe that it is God that gives children,” she said. “They see it as the more children you have, the more benefits. And you are actually overtaking your peers who cannot have as many children. It looks like a competition in villages.”

Politics also have played a role in Tanzania, where former President John Magufuli, who ruled the East African country from 2015 until his death in 2021, discouraged birth control, saying that a large population was good for the economy.

He opposed family planning programs promoted by outside groups, and in a 2019 speech urged women not to “block ovaries.” He even described users of contraceptives as “lazy” in a country he said was awash with cheap food. Under Magufuli, pregnant schoolgirls were even banned from returning to classrooms.

But his successor, Samia Suluhu Hassan, appeared to reverse government policy in comments last month when she said birth control was necessary in order not to overwhelm the country’s public infrastructure.

Even as populations soar in some countries, the U.N. says rates are expected to drop by 1% or more in 61 nations.

The U.S. population is now around 333 million, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The population growth rate in 2021 was just 0.1%, the lowest since the country was founded.

“Going forward, we’re going to have slower growth — the question is, how slow?” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “The real wild card for the U.S. and many other developed countries is immigration.”

Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, says environmental concerns surrounding the 8 billion mark should focus on consumption, particularly in developed countries.

“Population is not the problem, the way we consume is the problem — let’s change our consumption patterns,” he said.
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Malaria exploded this year in the Ethiopian city of Dire Dawa, which saw more than 10 times as many cases between January and May as it did in all of 2019.

What made this spike in cases unusual is that it happened outside the rainy season, when malaria typically surges across Africa, and in an urban area — malaria is more of a rural problem on the continent. Cities are not immune, but they typically don’t see these kinds of outbreaks.

Something new and insidious has arrived in the Horn of Africa. An invasive species of mosquito called Anopheles stephensi threatens to unravel two decades of gains in malaria control. And it may bring the deadly disease to more of the continent’s rapidly growing cities.

“There is real fear that it could start more transmission in these areas that traditionally don’t have as much malaria,” said Arran Hamlet, a disease modeling expert with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “And they don’t have infection control strategies implemented to the same levels.”

The new mosquito arrives at a bad time in the fight against malaria.

Africa’s native mosquitoes have become increasingly resistant to insecticides. (Anopheles stephensi is already resistant.) In addition, the malaria parasite is getting not only tougher to kill, but tougher to spot. Malaria strains that don’t show up on rapid diagnostic tests are becoming more common.

“We don’t want the three to meet — the drug resistance, the diagnostic resistance and the highly efficient vector [Anopheles stephensi],” said Fitsum Girma Tadesse, a molecular biologist at Ethiopia’s Armauer Hansen Research Institute.

“What happens if they coexist? We don’t know,” he said. “It’s really dangerous. You can’t detect the parasite. You can’t kill it with a drug. And the mosquito is wise enough to evade your [control] mechanisms.”

Fitsum and his colleagues linked Anopheles stephensi to the Dire Dawa outbreak in a study presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Seattle this month. It is the strongest evidence yet that the mosquito is increasing malaria rates in Ethiopia.

A different mosquito

Malaria fighters started the millennium strong.

With insecticide-treated bed nets, indoor insecticide spraying campaigns and new artemisinin-based drugs, deaths from malaria plunged from nearly 900,000 in 2000 to around 560,000 in 2015. But since then, progress has stalled.

And the tools that have worked up until recently won’t help much against Anopheles stephensi.

“This [mosquito] is different and more insidious than some of the other mosquitoes that transmit malaria that we’re used to seeing in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs epidemiologist April Monroe.

Africa’s native malaria mosquitoes prefer to bite people inside their homes late at night. That’s why bed nets and indoor spraying have been so effective.

But Anopheles stephensi bites earlier in the evening. When it goes searching for a meal, “people aren’t actually in bed yet, and so they don’t get the same protection” from bed nets, Hamlet said.

It also prefers to take its blood meal outdoors. Or if it does bite indoors, it doesn’t rest there, thereby avoiding indoor insecticides.

The new mosquito’s habitat is different, too. Most malaria mosquitoes live in rural Africa. But Anopheles stephensi is “really highly adapted to urban areas, which isn’t what we typically see,” Monroe said.

It likes to lay its eggs in water storage containers, which are especially common in Africa’s fast-growing unplanned urban areas that lack piped water, Fitsum noted.

Newcomer

Originally from South Asia, Anopheles stephensi was first spotted on the African continent in Djibouti in 2012.

The small nation was on the verge of eliminating malaria at the time. It recorded just 27 cases that year. In 2020, there were more than 73,000.

Besides Djibouti and Ethiopia, the mosquito has turned up in Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria.

One study estimates the mosquito may put an additional 126 million people at risk of malaria in cities across Africa.

In Ethiopia alone, Hamlet and colleagues estimate that Anopheles stephensi could increase malaria cases by 50% and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to control.

“This is very much possibly a cheap option compared to letting Anopheles stephensi spread around the country,” Hamlet said. “There is a lot of economic burden on both individuals and the wider economy in this level of malaria increase.”

The last thing African countries need, however, is new disease vector that is expensive to control.

“Most of the countries affected by malaria have limited resources to deal with already existing prevalent diseases,” Fitsum said.

One bit of relatively good news is that since Anopheles stephensi breeds in the same places as the mosquitoes that carry yellow fever, chikungunya and dengue, efforts that target one would also control the others.

Fitsum says covering water containers with polystyrene beads can help prevent the mosquitoes from laying eggs. He advises people to cover water containers tightly and get rid of any they don’t need.

And keep using bed nets and indoor sprays, he added. Native mosquitoes are still out there.
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Several Chinese cities began cutting routine community COVID-19 testing on Monday, days after China announced an easing of some of its heavy-handed coronavirus measures, sparking worry in some communities as nationwide cases continued to rise.

In the northern city of Shijiazhuang, some families expressed concern about exposing their children to the virus at school, giving excuses such as toothaches or earaches for their children’s absence, according to social media posts following a state media report that testing in the city would end.

Other cities, including Yanji in the northeast and Hefei in the east, also said they will stop routine community COVID testing, according to official notices, halting a practice that has become a major fiscal burden for communities across China.

On Friday, the National Health Commission updated its COVID rules in the most significant easing of curbs yet, describing the changes as an “optimization” of its measures to soften the impact on people’s lives, even as China sticks to its zero-COVID policy nearly three years into the pandemic.

The move, which cut quarantine times for close contacts of cases and inbound travelers by two days, to eight days total, was applauded by investors, even though many experts don’t expect China to begin significant easing until March or April at the earliest.

The changes come even as several major cities including Beijing logged record infections on Monday, posing a challenge for authorities scrambling to quell outbreaks quickly while trying to minimize the impact on people’s lives and the economy.

Some areas of Beijing are requiring daily tests.

The concern and confusion in Shijiazhuang was a top-five trending topic on the Twitter-like Weibo.

The city’s Communist Party chief, Zhang Chaochao, said its “optimization” of prevention measures should not be seen as authorities “lying flat” – an expression for inaction – nor is Shijiazhuang moving towards “full liberation” from COVID curbs.

The city, about 295 kms (183 miles) southwest of Beijing, reported 544 infections for Sunday, only three of which it categorized as symptomatic.

“I’m a little scared. In the future, public places will not look at nucleic acid tests, and nucleic acid test points will also be closed, everyone needs to pay for the tests,” one Weibo user wrote, referring to Shijiazhuang.

Gavekal Research said in a Monday note that it was “curious timing” for China to relax its COVID policies: “The combination of an intensifying outbreak and loosening central requirements has led to debate over whether China is now gradually moving to a de facto policy of tolerating Covid,” it said.

Fresh records

Nationwide, 16,072 new locally transmitted cases were reported by the National Health Commission, up from 14,761 on Sunday and the most in China since April 25, when Shanghai was battling an outbreak that locked down the city for two months.

Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Zhengzhou all recorded their worst days so far, though in the capital city the tally was a few hundred cases, while the other cities were counting in thousands.

Case numbers are small compared with infection levels in other countries, but China’s insistence on clearing outbreaks as soon as they emerge under its zero-COVID policy has been widely disruptive to daily life and the economy.

Under the new rules unveiled on Friday, individuals, neighborhoods and public spaces can still be subject to lockdowns, but the health commission relaxed some measures.

In addition to shortening quarantines, secondary close contacts are no longer identified and put into isolation – removing what had been a major inconvenience for people caught up in contact-tracing efforts when a case is found.

Despite the loosening of curbs, many experts described the measures as incremental, with some predicting that China is unlikely to begin reopening until after the March session of parliament, at the earliest.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs said on Monday that rising cases in cities including Guangzhou and Chongqing and the continuation of the zero-COVID policy pose downside near-term economic risks. 

 
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An unmanned U.S. military space plane landed early Saturday after spending a record 908 days in orbit for its sixth mission and conducting science experiments.

The solar-powered vehicle, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Its previous mission lasted 780 days.

“Since the X-37B’s first launch in 2010, it has shattered records and provided our nation with an unrivaled capability to rapidly test and integrate new space technologies,” said Jim Chilton, a senior vice president for Boeing, its developer.

For the first time, the space plane hosted a service module that carried experiments for the Naval Research Laboratory, U.S. Air Force Academy and others. The module separated from the vehicle before de-orbiting to ensure a safe landing.

Among the experiments was a satellite dubbed the FalconSat-8 that was designed and built by academy cadets in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory. It was deployed in October 2021 and still remains in orbit.

Another experiment evaluated the effects of long-duration space exposure on seeds.

“This mission highlights the Space Force’s focus on collaboration in space exploration and expanding low-cost access to space for our partners, within and outside of the Department of the Air Force,” said Gen. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations.

The X-37Be has now flown over 1.3 billion miles and spent a total of 3,774 days in space.
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Australian researchers have identified 1,500 additional locations across the country that could be used as pumped storage hydropower facilities. They have said it should reduce Australia’s reliance on fossil fuels.

Academics at the Australian National University have said pumped storage hydropower is a “low-cost, mass storage option” that could help Australia reach its emissions reduction targets.

Emeritus Professor Andrew Blakers at the university’s College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics told VOA the process involves transferring water between two reservoirs or lakes at different elevations.

He said water is pumped to the higher reservoir when there are plentiful supplies of wind and solar energy. The water is then released at night, or at other times when it is not windy or sunny, maximizing the use of the stored energy in the reservoirs.

“We have two reservoirs; one at the top of a hill and the other down in a valley connected with a pipe or tunnel,” he said. “On sunny and windy days, the pump turbine pumps water uphill to the upper reservoir and then in the middle of the night the water is allowed to come back down through the turbine to recover the energy that was stored. So, the same water goes up and down between the two reservoirs for 100 years. So, if you want large-scale storage, you go to pumped hydro.”

Researchers studied the area near every reservoir in Australia looking for a potential site for another reservoir that could be used as pumped storage hydropower.

They identified 1,500 locations that could help Australia store the energy it generates from wind and solar projects.

Blakers says Australia is becoming a world leader in the field.

“All Australian governments and companies are focused on very rapid construction of solar and wind, and equally rapid construction of new transmission to bring the new power to the cities, and pumped hydro and battery storage to balance the variable solar and wind. Australia is the global pathfinder. We are leading in every department,” he said.

Australia has a target of producing 82% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

Because of the country’s heavy reliance on coal and natural gas, it has been one of the world’s worst emitters of greenhouse gases, per capita.

Those fossil fuels continue to generate much of Australia’s electricity, but researchers believe that the country’s path toward a cleaner energy future is well underway.

The Australian National University study released Friday follows the team’s identification of 530,000 potential pumped-storage hydro sites across the world.
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The 10 women gathered on yoga mats in a New Orleans suburb, the lights dimmed.

“I’d like to invite you to close your eyes,” instructor Stephanie Osborne said in a soothing voice from the front of the room. The only other noises were the hum of the air conditioner and the distant sounds of children playing in a nearby field.

For the next hour the women focused on various mindfulness exercises designed to help them deal with the stress of everyday life.

The six-week mindfulness program in Slidell, Louisiana, is the brainchild of Kentrell Jones, the executive director of East St. Tammany Habitat for Humanity, who was concerned about the health of her colleagues and others affected by Hurricane Ida, which ripped through this region east of New Orleans last year.

Participants meet for an hour once a week for six weeks beginning with the inaugural session this fall and plans for future sessions next year.

Prospective participants, who had to be living in the parish during Hurricane Ida, filled out a survey asking them questions such as whether they had struggled with lack of sleep or had problems paying bills or having to relocate since the hurricane. They don’t have to be clients of Habitat for Humanity’s housing programs, although some are.

Jones said the organization’s clients have struggled with being displaced from their homes, trying to complete repairs while dealing with insurance and living through another hurricane season in which the calendar is filled with anniversaries of previous storms and everyone keeps an eye glued to the television for weather alerts.

One family she works with had to move to Mississippi in the aftermath of Ida while their tree-damaged home was repaired. Just as the repairs were completed, the husband died of a heart attack.

“You have people that are stressed,” she emphasized.

The program hits on a growing concern — the long-term stress that extreme weather events such as hurricanes can take on the people who live through them. People who work in hurricane-affected areas often talk about the stress the long rebuilding process can take on people and the anxiety stirred up during hurricane season.

In late August, with anniversaries of Hurricanes Katrina and Ida looming, the New Orleans emergency preparedness social media feed reminded residents of something called the “anniversary effect,” which might trigger feelings of depression or PTSD. After Hurricane Ian hit Florida in September, two men in their 70s took their own lives after seeing their losses.

In the north shore region of Louisiana, local mental health officials note that hurricanes are often followed by increased suicides in ensuing years. Nick Richard, who heads the local branch of the National Alliance on Mental Health, said that following 2005’s Hurricane Katrina suicides climbed by 46% in 2007. Other events such as 2008’s Hurricane Gustav or the 2016 floods have shown similar jumps.

Research also suggests extreme weather events such as hurricanes can have long-term health effects on survivors. A Tulane University study found hospital admissions for heart attacks were three times higher after Katrina than before the storm.

Another study published earlier this year looked at mortality rates for counties that experienced a tropical cyclone over a 30-year period, from 1988 to 2018. The research found there were increases for certain types of deaths, including cardiovascular and respiratory disease in the six months after landfall — suggesting death tolls often tabulated in the initial weeks after a storm might be undercounted.

The study’s lead author, Robbie Parks, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, said while major hurricanes such as this year’s Ian get a lot of attention, his research suggested repeated strikes with weaker cyclones also take a toll. He’s concerned that the full extent of events like hurricanes aren’t being captured. It’s an “incredible challenge” just counting the dead after a hurricane, he said.

“What if someone has a heart attack in the week after a hurricane?” he said. “Then you’re getting into subjective territory.”

One of the women taking part in the inaugural meditation course is Louise Mace of Slidell. She had just opened her shop selling home decor goods when Katrina wiped it out in 2005. Then, last year, Hurricane Ida’s winds and a tornado damaged her roof; she’s been battling with her insurance carrier ever since as she lives in a camper.

The stress has taken a toll on Mace’s health with her blood pressure jumping up and down. Her doctor recommended meditation and then she ran into Jones, who recruited her for the course. Mace said it has helped her learn techniques to deal with the stress and to know she’s not alone.

“You think you’re dealing. You think you’re fine. You’re not. Listening to other people made it better,” Mace said.

The program is funded by the Northshore Community Foundation. Susan Bonnett, the foundation’s president and CEO, says in the immediate aftermath of events like hurricanes the foundation would receive funding requests around traditional post-disaster needs — tarps for damaged roofs, for example.

But the foundation also noticed funding requests for mental health services months after the storm. At the same time, there was a dearth of mental health services in the region so the organization started looking for creative ways like Kentrell’s mindfulness proposal to address the problems they knew would build after events like Ida.

The mindfulness classes are designed to build skills that the participants can use to address any stresses in their lives, whether those are weather-related or something else like a conflict with a family member.

Instructor Stephanie Osborne says people don’t always realize the mental strain that extreme weather can cause.

Take the lead-up to Hurricane Ian, for example, when it wasn’t yet clear the storm was going to hit Florida and not Louisiana. Some of the women gathered outside the community room after the class and talked about whether they needed to book a hotel room in Baton Rouge or get gas for the generator. All of that buildup takes a toll, Osborne said.

“There is an anxiety, a stress around that, especially for folks who are struggling financially,” she said. And if people aren’t aware of how much anxiety they’re holding inside, it can affect things like their health or their jobs: “It starts spilling out in other ways.” 

 
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As Ugandan farmer Bonaventura Senyonga prepares to bury his grandson, age-old traditions are forgotten and fear hangs in the air while a government medical team prepares the body for the funeral — the latest victim of Ebola in the East African nation.

Bidding the dead goodbye is rarely a quiet affair in Uganda, where the bereaved seek solace in the embrace of community members who converge on their homes to mourn the loss together.

Not this time.

Instead, 80-year-old Senyonga is accompanied by just a handful of relatives as he digs a grave on the family’s ancestral land, surrounded by banana trees.

“At first we thought it was a joke or witchcraft but when we started seeing bodies, we realized this is real, and that Ebola can kill,” Senyonga told AFP.

His 30-year-old grandson Ibrahim Kyeyune was a father of two girls and worked as a motorcycle mechanic in central Kassanda district, which together with neighboring Mubende is at the epicenter of Uganda’s Ebola crisis.

Both districts have been under a lockdown since mid-October, with a dawn-to-dusk curfew, a ban on personal travel and public places shuttered.

The reappearance of the virus after three years has sparked fear in Uganda, with cases now reported in the capital, Kampala, as the highly contagious disease makes its way through the country of 47 million people.

In all, 53 people have died, including children, out of more than 135 cases, according to the latest Ugandan health ministry figures.

‘Ebola has shocked us’

In Kassanda’s impoverished Kasazi B village, everyone is afraid, says Yoronemu Nakumanyanga, Kyeyune’s uncle.

“Ebola has shocked us beyond what we imagined. We see and feel death every day,” he told AFP at his nephew’s gravesite.

“I know when the body finally arrives, people in the neighborhood will start running away, thinking Ebola virus spreads through the air,” he said.

Ebola is not airborne — it spreads through bodily fluids, with common symptoms being fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhea.

But misinformation remains rife and poses a major challenge.

In some cases, victims’ relatives have exhumed their bodies after medically supervised burials to perform traditional rituals, triggering a spike in infections.

In other instances, patients have sought traditional healers for help instead of going to a health facility — a worrying trend that prompted President Yoweri Museveni last month to order traditional healers to stop treating sick people.

“We have embraced the fight against Ebola and complied with President Museveni’s directive to close our shrines for the time being,” said Wilson Akulirewo Kyeya, a leader of the traditional herbalists in Kassanda.

‘I saw them die’

The authorities are trying to expand rural health facilities, installing isolation and treatment tents inside villages so communities can access medical attention quickly.

But fear of Ebola runs deep.

Brian Bright Ndawula, a 42-year-old trader from Mubende, was the sole survivor among four family members who were diagnosed with the disease, losing his wife, his aunt and his 4-year-old son.

“When we were advised to go to hospital to have an Ebola test, we feared going into isolation … and being detained,” he told AFP.

But when their condition worsened and the doctor treating them at the private clinic also began showing symptoms, he realized they had contracted the dreaded virus.

“I saw them die and knew I was next, but God intervened and saved my life,” he said, consumed by regret over his decision to delay getting tested.

“My wife, child and aunt would be alive, had we approached the Ebola team early enough.”

‘Greatest hour of need’

Today, survivors like Ndawula have emerged as a powerful weapon in Uganda’s fight against Ebola, sharing their experiences as a cautionary tale but also as a reminder that patients can survive if they receive early treatment.

Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng urged recovered patients in Mubende to spread the message that “whoever shows signs of Ebola should not run away from medical workers but instead run towards them, because if you run away with Ebola, it will kill you.”

It is an undertaking many in this community have taken to heart.

Dr. Hadson Kunsa, who contracted the disease while treating Ebola patients, told AFP he was terrified when he received his diagnosis.

“I pleaded to God to give me a second chance and told God I will leave Mubende after recovery,” he said.

But he explained he could not bring himself to do it.

“I will not leave Mubende and betray these people at the greatest hour of need.”
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The U.N. climate talks in Egypt have reached the halfway mark, with negotiators still working on draft agreements before ministers arrive next week to push for a substantial deal to fight climate change.

The two-week meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh started with strong appeals from world leaders for greater efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and help poor nations cope with global warming.

Scientists say the amount of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere needs to be halved by 2030 to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord. The 2015 pact set a target of ideally limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century but left it up to countries to decide how they want to do so.

Here is a look at the main issues on the table at the COP27 talks:

What about the U.S. and China?

The top U.S. negotiator suggested that a planned meeting Monday between U.S. President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping of China on the sideline of the Group of 20 meeting in Bali could also provide an important signal for the climate talks as they go into the home stretch.

With impacts from climate change being felt across the globe, there’s been a push for rich polluters to donate more cash to help developing countries shift to clean energy and adapt to global warming; increasingly there are also calls for compensation to pay for climate-related losses.

China is the biggest polluter by far right now, but the U.S. has the most historical pollution over time.

Keeping cool

A group of major emerging countries that includes oil-and-gas exporting nations has pushed back against explicit references to keeping the target of limiting global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius. Egypt, which is chairing the talks, convened a three-hour meeting Saturday in which the issue was raised several times.

“1.5 is a substantive issue,” said Wael Aboulmagd, a senior Egyptian negotiator, adding it was “not just China” which had raised questions about the language used to refer to the target. Still, he was hopeful of finding a way of securing a “maximum possible advance” on reducing emissions by the meeting’s close.

Cutting emissions

Negotiators are trying to put together a mitigation program that would capture the different measures countries have committed to in order to reduce emissions, including for specific sectors like energy and transport. Many of these pledges are not formally part of the U.N. process, meaning they cannot easily be scrutinized at the annual meeting. A draft agreement circulated early Saturday showed large sections were still unresolved. Some countries want the plan to be valid only for one year, while others say a longer-term roadmap is needed. Expect fireworks in the days ahead.

US-China relations

While all countries are equal at the U.N. meeting, in practice little gets done without the approval of the world’s two biggest emitters, China and the United States. Beijing canceled formal dialogue on climate following Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, and relations have been frosty since. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Saturday that he had held only informal discussions with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua lately.

“I think we’re both waiting to see how things go with the G-20 and hopefully we can return,” he told reporters.

Shunning fossil fuels

Last year’s meeting almost collapsed over a demand for the final agreement to state that coal should be phased out. In the end, countries agreed on several loopholes, and there are concerns among climate activists that negotiators from nations that are heavily dependent on fossil fuels might try to roll back previous commitments.

Money matters

Rich countries have fallen short on a pledge to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 in climate financing for poor nations. This has opened a rift of distrust that negotiators are hoping to close with fresh pledges. But needs are growing, and a new, higher target needs to be set from 2025 onward.

Aminath Shauna, the environment minister of the Maldives, said her island nation conservatively estimates that it will need $8 billion for coastal adaptation. And even that may not be enough, if sea levels rise too much.

“It is very disheartening to see that it may be too late for the Maldives, but we still need to address (the issue of finance),” she said.

Compensation

The subject of climate compensation was once considered taboo because of concerns from rich countries that they might be on the hook for vast sums. But intense pressure from developing countries forced the issue of “loss and damage” onto the formal agenda at the talks for the first time this year. Whether there will be a deal to promote further technical work or the creation of an actual fund remains to be seen.

John Kerry said the United States is hopeful of getting an agreement “before 2024” but suggested this might not come to pass in Egypt. But he made it clear where the U.S. red line lies for Washington: “The United States and many other countries will not establish some … legal structure that is a tied to compensation or liability.” That doesn’t mean money won’t flow, eventually. But it might be branded as aid, tied into existing funds and require contributions from all major emitters if it’s to pass.

More donors

One way to raise additional cash and resolve the thorny issue of polluter payment would be for those countries that have seen an economic boom in the past three decades to step up. The focus is chiefly on China, the world’s biggest emitter, but others could be asked to open their purses too.

Side deals

Last year’s meeting saw the signing of a raft of agreements that weren’t formally part of the talks. Some have also been unveiled in Egypt, though hopes for a series of announcements on Just Transition Partnerships — where developed countries help poorer nations wean themselves off fossil fuels — aren’t likely to bear fruit until after COP27.

Hope until the end

Jennifer Morgan, a former head of Greenpeace who recently became Germany’s climate envoy, called the talks this year challenging.

“But I can promise you we will be working until the very last second to ensure that we can reach an ambitious and equitable outcome,” she said. “We are reaching for the stars while keeping our feet on the ground.” 
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As Uganda struggled to control the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, Health Ministry officials said Friday the cases are gradually stabilizing. This comes after media reports that some leaked documents show the disease could claim 500 lives by next April. The country has recorded 137 Ebola cases and 54 deaths since the outbreak began in September.

Ugandan Health Ministry officials have gone on the defense in the face of reports that the deadly Ebola Sudan virus disease is spiraling out of control.

Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, Uganda’s health minister, told reporters Friday that the country’s cases are gradually stabilizing, as shown by trends in the last week.

An article in the British daily newspaper, The Telegraph, this week reported that leaked donor documents said the ministry had projected 250 deaths by the end of this year and 500 Ebola deaths by next April.

Aceng said the outbreak is being monitored closely and cases are being followed. She said cases in Kampala and other areas are under quarantine, apart from Kasanda district, which has made it easy for authorities to control the epidemic.

The government has placed the two districts most affected by the Ebola outbreak — Kasanda and Mubende — under quarantine for another 21 days, although Mubende is not reporting new cases. The government also is ordering an early closure of primary schools countrywide.

“We have never done any modeling for this Ebola outbreak. Not Ministry of Health, not the scientific advisory committee, not the National Planning Authority. So that modeling was done by them., said Aceng, referring to the newspaper. “In addition, the two districts of Mubende and Kasanda are under quarantine. It does not mean that we are 100 percent sure that no case will pop up anywhere.”

During the press conference, WHO Country Representative Yonas Tegen described the projected Ebola death case numbers as”dramatic.”

Tegen said in the last week there have been five confirmed cases and a sharp decrease in the last three weeks. Tegen said he was surprised to see some wrong details claimed to have been taken from the WHO.

“That’s not telling us a doomsday scenario. Even in normal cases,” said Tegen. “For example, WHO puts the viral hemorrhagic kits in various places. We keep supplies enough to manage 300, 400, 500 patients. Does that mean that the disease is there? No, it is getting prepared. I would assure you that also WHO didn’t do modeling. I was surprised to see a graph; our graphs are not done like that.”

Local reports also indicate there is a conflict brewing between the minister and donors over how funds to fight Ebola are being managed.

At a press conference last week, U.S. Ambassador Natali Brown said since the outbreak was declared in Uganda on September 20, the United States had channeled more than $22.3 million through implementing partners to support the government of Uganda-led Ebola response with $6 million available to the Health Ministry. She was quick to urge the proper use of the funds.

 

“We also, you know, appeal to everyone in government and everyone involved to really do what they can, and to clamp down on corruption,” said Brown. “This costs everyone when these funds are leaking out and ending up in someone’s pockets instead of reaching the communities that need the support and resources.”

There is still no proof from scientists on the actual cause of the current Ebola Sudan virus disease outbreak. Last month, the Health Ministry indicated it had caught 189 bats and obtained 320 samples to ascertain the actual cause of the Ebola virus. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention country director, Dr Lisa Nelson, said at the press conference that tests are ongoing.

“We are interested in understanding the source of this outbreak. Why Mubende and Kassanda?” asked Nelson. “This will help us in terms of preventing future outbreaks and understanding who is at risk based on the environment and based on the reservoir. What is the source of this very deadly infection? We do know and there have been studies in the past that there are bats who harbor filoviruses including the Marburg virus.”

Uganda acknowledged the disease had started claiming lives in August.

Health officials report 16 admitted cases, 65 recoveries reported, and 4,147 contacts listed for follow-up — all part of the 137 cumulative cases.
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On a beach in Senegal with so much plastic trash that much of the sand is covered, one man is trying to raise awareness about the dangers of plastics — by wearing many of the bags, cups and other junk that might just as soon be part of trash piles. 

Environmental activist Modou Fall, who many simply call “Plastic Man,” wears his uniform — “it’s not a costume,” he emphasizes — while telling anybody who will listen about the problems of plastics. As he walks, strands and chunks of plastic dangle from his arms and legs, rustling in the wind while some drags on the ground. On Fall’s chest, poking out from the plastics, is a sign in French that says, “No to plastic bags.” 

A former soldier, the 49-year-old father of three children says that plastic pollution, often excessive from people who chuck things wherever without a second thought, is an ecological disaster. 

“It’s a poison for health, for the ocean, for the population,” he said. 

On this recent day, Fall traverses Yarakh Beach in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. But it could have been any number of other places: Fall has taken his message national, visiting cities across the west African country for years. In 2011, during World Environment Day, he started as Plastic Man. 

He founded an environmental association, called Clean Senegal, that raises awareness via education campaigns and encourages reuse and recycling. 

As he walks, kids on the beach shout: “Kankurang! Kankurang is coming!” 

Part of the cultural heritage of Senegal and Gambia, the Kankurang symbolizes the spirit that provides order and justice, and is considered a protector against evil. 

On this day, this Kankurang is telling the kids about plastic pollution and urging them to respect the environment. 

“Climate change is real, so we have to try to change our way of life, to change our behavior to better adapt to it,” he told them. 

Moudou says some people see him as a crazy, but often those people don’t know the extent of the plastics problem and can change their views when he is given a chance to explain. 

These days, he says his wife and children, who sometimes watch him appear on local television to share his message, understand and respect his work, support he didn’t have in the beginning. 

In 2020, Senegal passed a law that banned some plastic products. But if the mountains of plastic garbage on this beach are any indication, the country is struggling with enforcement. 

Senegal is far from alone. Each year, the world produces a staggering amount of plastics, which sometimes end up clogging waterways, hurting land and sea animals that may ingest the materials and creating myriad eyesores. That pollution is in addition to all the greenhouse gas emissions, the primary cause of global warming, that are the result of producing plastics. And things don’t appear to be moving in the right direction: Global plastic production is expected to more than quadruple by 2050, according to the United Nations Environment Programme and GRID-Arendal in Norway. 

So, as world leaders gather this week in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the U.N. climate summit known as COP27, Fall hopes his message about plastics resonates. 

“Leaders of Africa need to wake up and work together to fight against this phenomenon,” he said. 
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Heavy rain from the remnants of Hurricane Nicole covered the eastern United States from Georgia to the Canadian border Friday while hundreds of people on a hard-hit stretch of Florida’s coast wondered when, or if, they could return to their homes.

As Nicole’s leftovers pushed northward, forecasters issued multiple tornado warnings in the Carolinas and Virginia, although no touchdowns were reported immediately.

Downgraded to a depression, Nicole could dump as much as 20 centimeters of rain over the Blue Ridge Mountains, forecasters said. Plus, there was a chance of flash and urban flooding as far north as New England.

Wrecks added to the notoriously bad traffic in Atlanta as rain from Nicole fell across the metro area during rush hour, and a few school systems in mountainous north Georgia canceled classes.

The situation was a lot worse in eastern Florida. One roughly 24-kilometer-long area of the coast was severely eroded, with multiple seawalls destroyed. Much of the destruction was blamed on unrepaired seawalls bashed during Ian, which killed more than 130 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

In Wilbur-by-the-Sea, workers tried to stabilize remaining sections of land with rocks and dirt as waves washed over pieces of lumber and concrete blocks that once were part of homes.

Parts of otherwise intact buildings hung over cliffs of sand created by pounding waves that covered the normally wide beach. Dozens of hotel and condominium towers as tall as 22 stories were declared uninhabitable in Daytona Beach Shores and New Smyrna Beach after seawater undercut their foundations. Just six weeks ago, Hurricane Ian caused an initial round of damage that contributed to problems from Nicole.

Retired health care worker Cindy Tyler, who lived in a seven-story condominium tower that was closed because of the storm, had a hard time coping with the idea of never being able to return to her building.

“I think right now I’m just in a state of hanging in there,” said Tyler, who was forced to evacuate with her husband and a few belongings. “I’m not believing I’m not going to be able to get back into my place. I’m trying to be very hopeful and very optimistic.”

Tenants in Tyler’s building spent $240,000 replacing a protective barrier that was battered by Ian, but the new fortification was no match for Nicole.

“Temporary seawall? Mother Nature said, ‘Hold my beer,’ ” she said.

Restoring Daytona Beach — famous for its drivable beach — and surrounding beaches will likely require a major, multimillion-dollar sand renourishment project and improved seawalls to protect property, said Stephen Leatherman, director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University.

“It was known worldwide for driving on the beach,” said Leatherman. “They don’t even have a beach to think about right now.”

Fewer than 15,000 homes and businesses were without power across Florida by late Friday afternoon, down from a high of more than 330,000. No major disruptions were reported up the Eastern Seaboard, according to a tracking website.

The late-season hurricane hit the Bahamas first, the first to do so since Category 5 Hurricane Dorian devastated the archipelago in 2019. For storm-weary Floridians, it was the first November hurricane to hit their shores since 1985 and only the third since record-keeping began in 1853.

Even minimal hurricanes and storms have become more destructive because seas are rising as the planet’s ice melts due to climate change, increasing coastal flooding, said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. “It’s going to happen all across the world,” he said.
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The United States will keep in place the public health emergency status of the coronavirus pandemic, allowing millions of Americans to still receive free tests, vaccines and treatments until at least April of next year, two Biden administration officials said Friday.

The possibility of a winter surge in COVID-19 cases and the need for more time to transition out of the public health emergency (PHE) to a private market were two factors that contributed to the decision not to end the emergency status in January, one of the officials said.

The public health emergency was initially declared in January 2020, when the pandemic began, and has been renewed each quarter since. But in August, the government began signaling it planned to let it expire in January.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has promised to give states 60 days’ notice before letting the emergency expire, which would have been on Friday if it did not plan on renewing it again in January. The agency did not provide such notice, the second official said.

Health experts believe a surge in COVID-19 infections in the United States is likely this winter, one official said.

“We may be in the middle of one in January,” he said. “That is not the moment you want to pull down the public health emergency.”

Hundreds still dying every day

Daily U.S. cases were down to an average of nearly 41,300 as of Wednesday, but an average of 335 people a day are still dying from COVID, according to the latest U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Daily U.S. cases are projected to rise slowly to nearly 70,000 by February, driven by students returning to schools and cold weather-related indoor gatherings, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said in an October 21 analysis. Deaths are forecast to remain at current levels.

Transitioning out of emergency phase

The officials said a lot of work remained to be done for the transition out of the public health emergency.

The government has been paying for COVID vaccines, some tests and certain treatments, as well as other care, under the public health emergency declaration. When the emergency expires, the government will begin to transfer COVID health care to private insurance and government health plans.

Health officials held large meetings with insurers and drugmakers about moving sales and distribution of COVID vaccines and treatments to the private sector in August and October, but none have been publicly announced since.

“The biggest motivation from a policy perspective is ensuring a smooth transition to the commercial market and the challenge of unraveling the multiple protections that have been put in place,” said Dr. Jen Kates, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Extending the PHE provides more time to manage that.”

The biggest challenge is uninsured people, she said. Most Americans have government-backed or private health insurance and are expected to pay nothing for COVID vaccines and boosters, though they will likely incur some out-of-pocket costs for tests and treatments.

Uninsured children will also continue to get free vaccines, but it is unclear how they and some 25 million uninsured adults will avoid paying the full cost of tests and treatments, and how those adults will get vaccines.

Their number is set to grow with the emergency expiring. HHS estimates that as many as 15 million people will lose health coverage after a requirement by Congress that state Medicaid programs keep people continuously enrolled expires and states return to normal patterns for enrollment.
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