The White House says President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing “very mild symptoms.” The president’s diagnosis comes amid another wave of the coronavirus in the United States, driven this time by the BA.5 variant.  VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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New cases of COVID-19 have been sweeping across the United States in recent weeks. On Thursday, President Joe Biden tested positive. His symptoms of tiredness, a runny nose and dry cough are considered mild.

The highly infectious and transmittable BA.5 subvariant of the coronavirus’s omicron variant is making up nearly 80% of new cases, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID Data Tracker.

Although the initial vaccinations are effective at preventing hospitalization and death, their immunity weakens over time.

“So, more people, even those who might have protection from past infection or vaccination, have gotten COVID-19,” according to the CDC.

That’s why the CDC is recommending that immunized adults and children 5 years and older follow up with a vaccination booster in five months, and those 50 and older get a second booster shot for renewed protection. But so far, the CDC reports that only about half of adults have gotten a booster and just 28% of those age 50 and older have received a second dose, which provides even further protection from the illness.

This leaves millions of people more vulnerable to the most recent variants of omicron.

 

“It’s very concerning that many individuals who are eligible for boosters are choosing not to get them,” David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, told VOA. “There’s really strong research suggesting the protective effects of these boosters against COVID.”

The White House issued a warning this week about the spike in BA.5 subvariant cases and urged Americans over the age of 50 to get the booster shots.

“It could save your life,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the administration’s COVID response coordinator.

Many health advocates are alarmed that public momentum over COVID-19 has waned.

Some people “don’t feel a sense of urgency to get booster shots even though they are available in most parts of the country,” Grabowski said.

Part of the reason may be a lack of communication by public health officials that is confusing to the public, said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

“Public health officials have not communicated clearly when you should get a booster and that it is an important step,” Grabowski told VOA.

Dr. David Aronoff, chair of the Department of Medicine at Indiana University’s School of Medicine, explained that in some instances, “people may have had a booster shot and not have realized they were eligible for another in several months.”

There is also the idea that since the symptoms from BA.5 are usually mild for people who are vaccinated, then why bother getting a booster, said Tina Runyan, a professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. With a highly contagious strain going around, some people think they will get COVID anyway, so getting a booster won’t protect them that much, she said.

But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said that’s not true.

“If you are not vaccinated to the fullest, namely, you have not gotten boosters according to what the recommendations are, then you’re putting yourself at an increased risk that you could mitigate against by getting vaccinated,” he said during a July 12 press briefing with the White House COVID-19 response team and public health officials.

Despite that warning, health experts say COVID-19 fatigue is causing a lack of response.

“People are ready to put COVID behind them and they just want to return to a more normal way of life,” explained Schaffner.

Going back to normal may be fleeting as new subvariants continue to pop up.

“We have to start thinking about the booster as something we might do annually to protect ourselves and others,” said Keri Althoff, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.

Meanwhile, new vaccines are in the works to target omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.

“Getting vaccinated now will not preclude you from getting a variant-specific vaccine later this fall or winter,” said Jha, the White House COVID response coordinator.

“We’re hoping we get new vaccines in the future that will target particular variants as they come up,” Aronoff said, but the currently available vaccines, which include boosters, “are keeping people out of hospitals and from dying from COVID.”
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An unvaccinated young adult from New York recently contracted polio, the first U.S. case in nearly a decade, health officials said Thursday. 

Officials said the patient, who lives in Rockland County, had developed paralysis. The person developed symptoms a month ago and did not recently travel outside the country, county health officials said. 

It appears the patient had a vaccine-derived strain of the virus, perhaps from someone who got live vaccine — available in other countries, but not the U.S. — and spread it, officials said. 

The person is no longer deemed contagious, but investigators are trying to figure out how the infection occurred and whether other people may have been exposed to the virus. 

Most Americans are vaccinated against polio, but unvaccinated people may be at risk, said Rockland County Health Commissioner Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert. Health officials scheduled vaccination clinics nearby soon and encouraged anyone who has not been vaccinated to get the shots. 

“We want shots in the arms of those who need it,” she said at a Thursday press conference announcing the case. 

Feared disease

Polio was once one of the nation’s most feared diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis, many of them in children. 

Vaccines became available starting in 1955, and a national vaccination campaign cut the annual number of U.S. cases to fewer than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In 1979, polio was declared eliminated in the U.S., meaning there was no longer routine spread. 

Rarely, travelers have brought polio infections into the U.S. The last such case was in 2013, when a 7-month-old who had recently moved to the U.S. from India was diagnosed in San Antonio, Texas, according to federal health officials. That child also had the type of polio found in the live form of vaccine used in other countries. 

There are two types of polio vaccines. The U.S. and many other countries use shots made with an inactivated version of the virus. But some countries where polio has been more of a recent threat use a weakened live virus that is given to children as drops in the mouth. In rare instances, the weakened virus can mutate into a form capable of sparking new outbreaks. 

U.S. children are still routinely vaccinated against polio with the inactivated vaccine. Federal officials recommend four doses: to be given at 2 months of age; 4 months; at 6 to 18 months; and at age 4 through 6 years. Some states require only three doses. 

According to the CDC’s most recent childhood vaccination data, about 93% of 2-year-olds had received at least three doses of polio vaccine. 

How it spreads

Polio spreads mostly from person to person or through contaminated water. It can infect a person’s spinal cord, causing paralysis and possibly permanent disability and death. The disease mostly affects children. 

Polio is endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although numerous countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia have also reported cases in recent years. 

Rockland County, in New York City’s northern suburbs, has been a center of vaccine resistance in recent years. A 2018-19 measles outbreak there infected 312 people. 

Last month, health officials in Britain warned parents to make sure children have been vaccinated because the polio virus had been found in London sewage samples. No cases of paralysis were reported. 
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Preparations are underway for the mass rollout of the world’s first malaria vaccine to protect millions of children in Africa.

The rollout is being funded by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for nearly $160 million.

The World Health Organization said Gavi’s multimillion-dollar funding marks a key advance in the fight against one of Africa’s most severe public health threats. It noted that countries in sub-Saharan Africa bear the brunt of the yearly toll of more than 240 million global cases of malaria, including more than 600,000 reported deaths. The main victims are children under age 5.

WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said one child dies every minute in Africa, with catastrophic consequences for families, communities and national development.

The vaccine was introduced in Africa in 2019. Since then, more than 1.3 million children have benefited from the lifesaving inoculations in three pilot countries — Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. Moeti said those countries have reported a 30 percent drop in hospitalizations of children with severe malaria and a 9% reduction in child deaths.

“If delivered at scale, millions of new cases could be averted, and tens of thousands of lives saved every year,” Moeti said. “We were encouraged to see that demand for the vaccine is high, even in the context of COVID-19, with the first dose reaching between 73% to over 90% coverage.”

Thabani Maphosa, managing director of country programs at Gavi, called the vaccine the most effective tool in the fight against malaria, one that will save children’s lives. However, he said, demand for the lifesaving product will outstrip supply.

“Our challenge during this critical phase is to ensure the doses we have available are used as effectively and equitably as possible,” Maphosa said. “With this is mind, Gavi today is opening an application window for malaria support.”

He said the three pilot countries, which already have experience in rolling out the vaccine, will get first crack at applying for and receiving funding. So, practically speaking, Maphosa said, they will require little help in setting up their systems to get the operation underway.

Maphosa said a second round of funding will take place at the end of the year. At that time, he said other countries with moderate to high cases of severe malaria can submit applications for support.
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A new study shines a light on the health risks, challenges, and barriers faced daily by millions of refugees and migrants who suffer from poor health because they lack access to the health care available to others in their host countries.

The World Health Organization has just published its first world report on the health of refugees and migrants. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it a landmark report and an alarm bell.

He said the report reveals the wide disparities between the health of refugees and migrants and the wider populations in their host countries.  

“For example, many migrant workers are engaged in the so-called 3-D jobs—dirty, dangerous, and demanding—without adequate social and health protection or sufficient occupational health measures,” he said. “Refugees and migrants are virtually absent from global surveys and health data, making these vulnerable groups almost invisible in the design of health systems and services.”   

Tedros noted that one billion people or one in every eight people on Earth is a refugee or migrant. He said the numbers were growing. Tedros added that more and more people will be on the move in response to burgeoning conflicts, climate change, rising inequality, and global emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the health needs of refugees and migrants often are neglected or unaddressed in the countries they pass through or settle in.

“They face multiple barriers, including out of pocket costs, discrimination and fear of detention and deportation,” Tedros said. “Many countries do have health policies that include health services for refugees and migrants. But too many are either ineffective or are yet to be implemented effectively.”

Waheed Arian, an Afghan refugee and a medical doctor in Britain, recalls the conditions under which he and his family lived in a refugee camp in Pakistan during the late 1980s. He said they were exposed to many diseases, including malaria and tuberculosis. 

“The conditions that we see in refugee camps now in various parts of the world – they are not too dissimilar to the conditions that I experienced firsthand,” he said. “Although we were safe from bombs, we were not physically safe. We were not socially safe, and we were not mentally safe.”   

WHO chief Tedros is calling on governments and organizations that work with refugees and migrants to come together to protect and promote the health of people on the move. He said the report sets forth strategies for achieving more equitable, inclusive health systems that prioritize the well-being of all people.
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Drought can slightly increase developing world children’s risk of diarrheal disease, researchers have found, adding that wetter regions seem to be affected differently than drier ones. 

Diarrhea is the second-leading cause of death among children worldwide, and climate change is making droughts longer, more frequent and more severe, the new study published in the journal Nature Communications found. 

The study, based on data from 51 low- and middle-income countries, found that children were more likely to recently have had diarrhea following six months to two years of drought conditions, although the effect of drought differed across dry, temperate and tropical climate zones. 

Previous studies found links between diarrheal disease and rainfall, flooding and seasonality, but little was known before about the effects of drought. 

The new study “fills that void of understanding the impacts associated with drought specifically, as opposed to flooding, extreme rains and seasonality,” said epidemiologist Joseph Eisenberg of the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study. 

“Water plays an essential role both in helping address the problem as well as increasing the risk of being exposed,” he said. 

Water essential  for good hygiene

Water is central to the spread and prevention of diarrheal disease. Germs that cause diarrhea survive and spread in water, but water is also important for hygienic practices, such as hand-washing, that prevent infections. 

Study author Pin Wang, an environmental epidemiologist at Yale University, and his colleagues thought drought could force families to prioritize scarce water for drinking rather than washing, leaving children more vulnerable to diarrhea. 

“Drought can directly impact the WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) practices,” Wang said. “Because of the insufficient water supply, people might prioritize the water for other necessary uses, such as drinking, but not for washing hands and also flushing [the] toilet.” 

Wang and his colleagues combined weather records with data on diarrhea in over 1.3 million children under the age of 5 from the Demographic and Health Surveys Program, which surveys representative families to collect data on health and demographics in the developing world. The Demographic and Health Surveys data also included information on each child, household wealth and WASH practices. 

Using this data, the researchers then determined whether the children in the dataset had experienced drought, how long the drought had lasted, and how severe it had been relative to normal conditions. 

Correcting for differences among households and individual children, the researchers found that exposure to a six-month drought slightly increased the risk of diarrhea in children under age 5. Risk was 5% higher after mild drought and 8% higher after severe drought, though the strength of drought’s effect on diarrhea depended on other factors, such as local climate, hygiene and water access. 

In dry regions, droughts lasting six months did not affect diarrhea rates significantly, but droughts lasting two years did. 

The authors speculate that it may be because these dry regions are already prepared for short periods of water scarcity but can’t cope with very long droughts. On the other hand, tropical and temperate regions saw worse effects in six-month droughts than in longer ones, perhaps because they are less prepared for water shortages in the short term but have more water available in general to help adapt in the long term. 

The researchers found that families in a drought washed their hands and performed other WASH practices less often than those who were not experiencing drought. That accounted for about 10% of the increase in diarrhea rates in mild drought and about 20% in severe conditions. 

Children whose families need to walk more than 30 minutes to collect water also had a higher risk of diarrhea associated with severe drought than those whose families had water nearby. 

More studies needed

Eisenberg said that the study was a good first step, but that more studies would be needed to confirm the results. 

“I think the biggest implication … as a hypothesis-generating result is that it will promote and motivate people to conduct some more sophisticated studies to sort of back up the findings,” he said. 

Wang also said that future studies would be needed to back up his findings. And as climate change is expected to shake up rainfall patterns around the world, he said he hopes his result will translate into policy that would protect children from diarrheal disease brought on by drought. 

“We obviously think that with climate change, there will be higher incidence of drought events in the future, particularly … in the places where it’s already having less rainfall right now,” Wang said. “We need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, that’s the first thing. The second is that the WASH variables should be emphasized or prioritized — particularly in these low- and middle-income countries. People need better WASH practices to reduce their diarrhea risks.”
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The world is bracing for more intense heat waves fueled by climate change this summer, and urban centers across the world are unprepared to face these brutal natural disasters.
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Overdose deaths increased 44% for Blacks and 39% for Native Americans in 2020 compared with 2019, as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted access to care and exacerbated racial inequality, an official report showed Tuesday.

“Racism, a root cause of health disparities, continues to be a serious public health threat that directly affects the well-being of millions of Americans,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acting Principal Deputy Director Debra Houry said in a briefing.

“The disproportionate increase in overdose death rates among Black and American Indian/Alaskan Native people may partly be due to health inequities, like unequal access to substance use treatment and treatment biases.”

Recent increases in deaths were largely driven by illegally manufactured fentanyl and fentanyl analogs, according to the report from the CDC.

Before the pandemic, the overdose death rate was similar for Black, Native and white people, at 27, 26 and 25 per 100,000 people in 2019.

But that changed dramatically in 2020, when the respective figures were 39, 36 and 31 per 100,000 people.

Though the increase among white people was not as great as for Blacks and Native Americans, the new rate is still a historic high.

Among key findings: The overdose death rate among Black males 65 years and older was nearly seven times that of their white counterparts.

Black people 15-24 years old experienced the largest rate increase, 86%, compared with changes seen in other groups.

“There was a substantially lower percentage of people in racial and ethnic minority groups showing evidence of ever receiving treatment for substance use, compared to white people,” CDC health scientist Mbabazi Kariisa said during the briefing.

In fact, most people who died by overdose had no evidence of getting prior substance use treatment before their death.

Areas with a wider income gap between rich and poor had the highest death rates.

Being impoverished “can lead to lack of stable housing, reliable transportation and health insurance, making it even more difficult for people to access treatment and other support services,” Kariisa said.

In terms of recommendations, Houry said it was vital to raise awareness about the lethality of the illicit drug supply, particularly fentanyl, and encourage people to carry the life-saving treatment Naloxone.

Improving access to treatment and offering structural support, such as transport assistance and child care, can improve care access.

“Combining culturally appropriate traditional practices, spirituality and religion with evidence-based substance use disorder treatment also helps raise awareness and reduce stigma,” she said.

“While we have made so much progress in treating substance use disorders as chronic conditions, rather than moral failings, there is still so much more work to do, including making sure that all people who need these services can get them,” Houry concluded.
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Elon Musk lost a fight to delay Twitter’s lawsuit against him as a Delaware judge on Tuesday set an October trial, citing the “cloud of uncertainty” over the social media company after the billionaire backed out of a deal to buy it.

“Delay threatens irreparable harm,” said Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the head judge of Delaware’s Court of Chancery, which handles many high-profile business disputes. “The longer the delay, the greater the risk.”

Twitter had asked for an expedited trial in September, while Musk’s team called for waiting until early next year because of the complexity of the case. McCormick said Musk’s team underestimated the Delaware court’s ability to “quickly process complex litigation.”

Twitter is trying to force the billionaire to make good on his April promise to buy the social media giant for $44 billion — and the company wants it to happen quickly because it says the ongoing dispute is harming its business.

Musk, the world’s richest man, pledged to pay $54.20 a share for Twitter, but now wants to back out of the agreement.

“It’s attempted sabotage. He’s doing his best to run Twitter down,” said attorney William Savitt, representing Twitter in Delaware’s Court of Chancery before the court’s Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick. The hearing was held virtually after McCormick said she tested positive for COVID-19.

Musk has claimed the company has failed to provide adequate information about the number of fake, or “spam bot,” Twitter accounts, and that it has breached its obligations under the deal by firing top managers and laying off a significant number of employees.

But the idea the Tesla CEO is trying to damage Twitter is “preposterous. He has no interest in damaging the company,” said Musk’s attorney Andrew Rossman, noting he is Twitter’s second largest shareholder with a far larger stake than the entire board.

Savitt emphasized the importance of an expedited trial starting in September for Twitter to be able to make important business decisions affecting everything from employee retention to relationships with suppliers and customers.

Rossman said more time is needed because it is “one of the largest take-private deals in history” involving a “company that has a massive amount of data that has to be analyzed. Billions of actions on their platform have to be analyzed.”
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The James Webb telescope is giving the world the clearest ever images of our universe. For VOA News Antoni Belchi has the story.

 
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The U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning the right to abortion has raised concerns among activists about a domino effect in developing countries, including in Africa. In Kenya, anti-abortion groups have welcomed the ruling while abortion rights supporters fear it could further restrict the reproductive health of girls and women. Juma Majanga reports from Nairobi. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo  
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The Indian government’s COVID-19 vaccinations hit 2 billion on Sunday, with booster doses underway for all adults, as daily infections hit four-month high, official data showed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi extolled the vaccination milestone, celebrating the world’s largest and longest-running inoculation campaign, which began last year. 

“India creates history again!” Modi said in a tweet. The prime minister has faced allegations from the opposition of mishandling the pandemic that experts claim killed millions. The government rejects the claims.

Health ministry data shows the COVID death toll at 525,709, with 49 deaths recorded overnight.

New cases rose 20,528 over the past 24 hours, the highest since Feb. 20, according to data compiled by Reuters.

The country of 1.35 billion people has lifted most COVID-related restrictions, and international travel has recovered robustly.

Some 80% of the inoculations have been the AstraZeneca AZN.L vaccine made domestically, called Covishield. Others include domestically developed Covaxin and Corbevax, and Russia’s Sputnik V.

The federal government has been accelerating its booster campaign to avert the spread of infections, edging higher in the eastern states of Assam, West Bengal and Karnataka in the south.
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Macao’s government will extend a lockdown of casinos and other businesses until Friday, as authorities work to stop the spread of COVID-19 in the world’s biggest gambling hub, according to a statement on its website.

The lockdown in the Chinese special administrative region had been set to end  Monday.

Macao imposed the shutdown last Monday, shuttering the city’s economic engine — its casinos — and forbidding residents from leaving their apartments, except for essential activities such as grocery shopping.

Macao has recorded around 1,700 coronavirus infections since mid-June. More than 20,000 people are in mandatory quarantine as the government adheres to China’s zero-COVID policy, which aims to stamp out all outbreaks, running counter to a global trend of trying to coexist with the virus.

More than 90% of Macao’s 600,000 residents are fully vaccinated against COVID but this is the first time the city has had to grapple with the fast-spreading omicron variant.

The former Portuguese colony has only one public hospital for its more than 600,000 residents, and its medical system was stretched before the coronavirus outbreak.

Authorities have set up a makeshift hospital in a sports dome near the city’s Las Vegas-style Cotai strip and have about 600 medical workers from the mainland assisting them.

In neighboring Hong Kong, authorities are starting to loosen draconian coronavirus restrictions even as daily cases top 3,000, in a push to reboot the financial hub and its economy.
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Chinese astronauts, known as taikonauts, and a ground crew are working to finish their country’s first permanent orbiting space station and the world’s second by year’s end, official media outlets say.

That milestone will boost China’s national pride and provide it with new channels for economic development and a possible new tool for military use on the ground, analysts say.

The space program advances China’s goal of being “strong and prosperous” by 2049, said Dexter Roberts, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Asia Security Initiative and author of “The Myth of Chinese Capitalism.” That year marks the 100th anniversary of Communist Party rule in China.

“Developing the economy, becoming wealthier and raising national prestige globally and becoming stronger geopolitically are all very, very clear goals of the party,” he said. 

A crew aboard the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft last month kicked off six months of work on the Tiangong space station, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. 

Personnel in space and on the ground will finish building the space station, expanding it from a single-module structure to triple-module national space laboratory, Xinhua said. 

The U.S. space agency, NASA, bars China from using the International Space Station on military security grounds, prompting China to embark on its own 10 years ago. China launched its broader space program in the 1960s. 

Pride and power projection 

China’s space station has been designed to be a “versatile space lab” that can hold 25 “cabinets” for experiments such as comparing the biological growth mechanism in varying at different gravitational levels, Xinhua said.

As conducted at the space station and on other space platforms, research into biology, life systems, medicine and materials is expected “to expand humanity’s understanding of basic science,” the State Council Information Office said in a January outlook for the program.

Other countries have already used China’s satellite services, including the BeiDou satellite navigation system, which was made available two years ago to Pakistan. Those systems can survey the aftermath of disasters and help launch satellites. 

Officials in Beijing have not said whether the space station will help the People’s Liberation Army. 

Space programs, including BeiDou, have a military and security side, said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington.  

“The Chinese will argue that while using (the) BeiDou system, you can navigate the weather, you can forecast the natural disasters, and you can also use the satellites to investigate and explore the terrains,” she said.  

“I think that’s one example of how Chinese space technology is having a real impact over countries on Earth,” Yun said. But, she said, “we all know that’s just one narrative.”

The People’s Liberation Army could technically dock military equipment systems in space or use satellites to survey the ground, experts have told VOA. China has the world’s third-strongest armed forces, a source of alarm for the West and smaller Asian countries.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will probably note the space station as an achievement during the national party congress expected before year’s end, Yun said. Experts say Xi is likely to seek appointment at the congress to a third five-year term as party general secretary.

 

“National prestige and security” are top concerns for Chinese leaders as they finish their space station, said the Roberts, of the Atlantic Council. 

The Chinese government is probably pushing the commercial side of its space program because it wants to catch up to the scale of NASA, he said. 

Chinese leaders may hope to develop their own aerospace technology through the space station, said Yan Liang, professor and chair of economics at Willamette University in the U.S. state of Oregon. Some of today’s components could be imports, she said.

“Definitely I do think that with the communication aspect that is about big data and all these other high-tech industries, it’s definitely in the interest for China to be able to do that and maybe later to export to other countries,” Liang said. 

Tiangong’s first module was christened last year. It operates 340 miles above the Earth’s surface, farther away than the International Space Station. 

After a Chinese Shenzhou-14 crew reaches gets to the space station, it will begin research projects and perform spacewalks from the lab module, Xinhua reported.
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The world was sadder and more stressed out in 2021 than ever before, according to a recent Gallup poll, which found that four in 10 adults worldwide said they experienced a lot of worry or stress.

Experts say the most obvious culprit, the pandemic — and the isolation and uncertainty that came with it — is a factor but not entirely to blame.

Carol Graham, a Gallup senior scientist, says the culprit for declining mental health includes the economic uncertainty faced by low-skilled workers.

“There are some structural negative changes that make some people in particular more vulnerable. And in the end, mental health just reflects that,” says Graham, who is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland.

“For young people who do not have good higher levels of education, what they’re going to do in the future is very unknown. What their stability will be like, what their workforce participation will be like. … Rising levels of inequality between skilled and unskilled workers is another part of it, having to do with technology-driven growth.”

Gallup spoke to adults in 122 countries and areas for its latest Global Emotions Report. Afghanistan is the unhappiest country, with Afghans leading the world when it comes to negative experiences.

Overall, the survey results were not surprising to psychologist Josh Briley, a fellow at The American Institute of Stress.

“Things are moving faster. There’s so much information being thrown at us all the time,” he says. “And of course, media thrives on the bad stuff. So, we are constantly being bombarded with crisis after crisis in the news, on social media, on the radio and on our podcasts. And all that is drowning out the good things that are happening.”

Psychologist Mary Karapetian Alvord says being more connected online means people in one country can feel profoundly affected by what happens in another country, which wasn’t always the case in the past. For her U.S. clients, uncertainty is the biggest stressor.

“Uncertainty of life and how it’s going to impact them on a daily basis. Prices going up and gas going up. And then the supply chain issues that are impacting people in their daily lives,” Alvord says. “But I think the bigger issue is that uncertainty and so much suffering. Of course, the shootings have come up. A lot of people are really stressed out and feeling like, ‘Where is it safe?’”

There have been more than 300 shootings involving multiple victims in the United States so far in 2022.

Happiness worldwide has been trending downward for a decade, according to Gallup. All three psychologists who spoke with VOA point to social media and the flood of unfiltered information as contributors to declining mental health and happiness.

“We’ve seen this explosion worldwide, and I think that’s a big sort of tectonic shift in how humans interact and experience emotions and all sorts of things. And we’re seeing that there’s some real downsides to it,” Graham says.

Briley says part of the problem is that although people are more connected online, they’re often less connected in real life.

“The connection that we have with people, the physical connection has changed. We’re more connected than ever before with people all the way around the world, but we may not know our neighbors’ names anymore,” he says. “So, we don’t necessarily have that person where if my car breaks down, who do I call for a ride to work?”

More optimism, despite frowns

On the upside, the survey found that the percentage of people who reported laughing or smiling a lot was up two points in 2021, while the number of people who say they learned something interesting increased one point. Alvord says looking beyond the negative is critical to maintaining mental health.

“It’s important for people to also find moments of, if not joy, at least satisfaction in life,” she says. “I think sometimes we reach for happiness and that’s just not attainable … and so, our expectations need to be realistic.”

Minorities in the United States might already be doing that. The survey found that people from marginalized groups are among the most resilient.

“Their anxiety may have increased but their optimism, particularly for low-income African Americans, remains very high,” Graham says. “It was a finding I’ve seen for many years, but it surprised me that even during COVID, it held. I think that’s more due to the kind of community ties and other ties that minority communities have built, almost informal safety nets, that have been very protective many, many times in history.”
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More than 100,000 monkeypox vaccine doses are being sent to states in the next few days, and several million more are on order in the months ahead, U.S. health officials said Friday.

They also acknowledged that the vaccine supply hasn’t kept up with the demand seen in New York, California and other places.

Officials predicted that cases would keep rising for at least a few more weeks as the government tries to keep up with a surprising international outbreak accounting for hundreds of newly reported cases every day.

Some public health experts have begun to wonder if the outbreak is becoming widespread enough that monkeypox will become an entrenched sexually transmitted disease.

“All of our work right now is to prevent that from happening,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. It does not usually spread easily among people.

But this year more than 12,000 cases have been reported in countries that historically don’t see the disease. The infections emerged in men who had sex with men at gatherings in Europe, though health officials have stressed that anyone can catch the virus.

As of Friday, more than 1,800 U.S. cases had been reported, with hundreds of cases being added to the tally each day. Nearly all are men, and the vast majority had same-sex encounters, according to the CDC.

Experts believe the case numbers are undercounts.

Lag between infection, symptoms

Walensky said she expected cases to rise at least into August, in part because it can take three weeks from the time someone is infected until that person develops symptoms and is diagnosed.

The virus mainly spreads through skin-on-skin contact, but it can also be transmitted through touching linens used by someone with monkeypox.

People with monkeypox may experience fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. Many in the outbreak have developed pimple-like bumps on many parts of the body.

No one has died, and the illness has been relatively mild in many men. But for some, the lesions can be “exquisitely painful” and there is a risk of scarring, said Dr. Mary Foote, medical director of the New York City health department’s Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response.

When the outbreak was first identified in May, U.S. officials had only about 2,000 doses of a new two-dose monkeypox vaccine available.

Officials have recommended the shots be given to people who know or suspect they were exposed to monkeypox in the previous two weeks, and vaccination clinics in some cities have been overwhelmed by demand. The government distributed 156,000 doses nationally as of Thursday, including 100,000 this week. And it expects to start delivering 131,000 more doses by Monday, said Dawn O’Connell of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

There also are about 800,000 doses in Denmark that will come to the U.S. soon. And the government this month announced orders of 5 million more doses, though most of those are not expected to arrive until next year.

The vaccine, Jynneos, has never been widely used in response to an outbreak like this, and the government will track how well it’s working, Walensky said.
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The World Meteorological Organization says scorching heat waves and wildfires raging in Portugal, Spain and France are forecast to worsen and spread to other parts of Europe in coming days.

The United Kingdom already is wilting under record high temperatures. The UK weather service has issued an amber extreme heat warning for much of England and Wales. It forecasts exceptionally high temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius Sunday and Monday.

In Portugal, where temperatures have reached highs of 46 degrees Celsius, red heat alerts, which warn people of life-threatening conditions, are in effect. Similar warnings are being issued in Spain and France. More than 20 wildfires have been reported in Portugal, western Spain, and southwest France.

Lorenzo Labrador is a scientific officer in the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Atmosphere Watch Program. He says the journal Nature Geoscience published a recent modeling study of the likely impact of the expansion of a high-pressure system over the Atlantic. He says the system, known as the Azores high, is leading to the driest conditions on the Iberian Peninsula in the last 1,000 years.

“It is worth pointing [out] that the high temperatures is not the only adverse consequence of heat waves. The stable and stagnant atmosphere acts as a lid to trap atmospheric pollutants, including particulate matter, increasing their concentration closer to the surface. These result in a degradation of air quality and adverse health effects, particularly for vulnerable people.”

He notes more heat, abundant sunshine, and concentrations of certain atmospheric pollutants can lead to an increase of ozone near the Earth’s surface. That, he says, has detrimental effects on people and plants.

The World Health Organization reports air pollution is a major cause of premature death and disease and the single largest environmental health risk in Europe. It notes more than 300,000 people die prematurely from air pollution in Europe every year, with that number jumping to seven million premature deaths globally.

Labrador says heat waves are a natural phenomenon. As such, he says it is not easy to attribute any single high-pressure condition and heat wave event directly to climate change. “However, what we know and what we have seen is that heat waves are becoming more frequent, more prevalent, and their temperatures are becoming more extreme as well. So, that kind of link over an extended period of time—years—we can attribute to climate change,” he points out.

Labrador says scientists cannot say the current heat waves are a product of climate change. But, he adds, the evidence points toward scorching, record-busting temperatures becoming more frequent and more devastating in the coming years.
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In Venezuela, a health crisis and the inability of many pregnant women to pay for medical exams and appointments is forcing a growing number of them to give birth outside a hospital. For VOA News, Adriana Núñez Rabascall in Caracas has the story. Video Editor: Cristina Caicedo Smit
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The lawyer for an Indiana doctor at the center of a political firestorm after speaking out about a 10-year-old child abuse victim who traveled from Ohio for an abortion said Thursday that her client provided proper treatment and did not violate any patient privacy laws in discussing the unidentified girl’s case.

Attorney Kathleen DeLaney issued the statement on behalf of Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist Caitlin Bernard the same day Republican Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said his office was investigating Bernard’s actions. He offered no specific allegations of wrongdoing.

A  27-year-old man was charged in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday with raping the girl, confirming the existence of a case initially met with skepticism by some media outlets and Republican politicians. The pushback grew after Democratic President Joe Biden expressed empathy for the girl during the signing of an executive order last week aimed at protecting some abortion access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the constitutional protection for abortion.

Bernard’s attorney said the physician “took every appropriate and proper action in accordance with the law and both her medical and ethical training as a physician.”

“She followed all relevant policies, procedures, and regulations in this case, just as she does every day to provide the best possible care for her patients,” DeLaney said in a statement. “She has not violated any law, including patient privacy laws, and she has not been disciplined by her employer.”

Bernard reported a June 30 medication abortion for a 10-year-old patient to the state health department on July 2, within the three-day requirement set in state law for a girl younger than 16, according to a report obtained by The Indianapolis Star and WXIN-TV of Indianapolis under public records requests. The report indicated the girl seeking the abortion had been abused.

DeLaney said they are considering taking legal action against “those who have smeared my client,” including Rokita, who had said he would investigate whether Bernard violated child abuse notification or abortion reporting laws. He also said his office would look into whether anything Bernard said to the Star about the case violated federal medical privacy laws. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would not say whether any privacy law complaints had been filed against Bernard, nor would Indiana University Health, where Bernard is an obstetrician. But the HIPAA Privacy Rule only protects most “individually identifiable health information,” the department’s website said.

The prosecutor for Indianapolis, where the abortion took place, said his office alone has the authority to pursue any criminal charges in such situations and that Bernard was being “subjected to intimidation and bullying.”

“I think it’s really dangerous when people in law enforcement start trying to launch a criminal investigation based on rumors on the internet,” Democratic Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said.

Some Republicans who have backed stringent abortion restrictions imposed in Ohio after the Supreme Court ruling, including Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, initially questioned whether the story relayed by Bernard to the newspaper was real. After telling Fox News on Monday that there was not “a whisper” of evidence supporting the case’s existence, Yost said his “heart aches for the pain suffered by this young child” and his investigative unit stands ready to support police in the case.

On Thursday, Yost faced intense backlash for his public statements, including a claim that medical exceptions in the Ohio “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban would have allowed the girl to receive her abortion in the state.

Apparently in response, he released a “legal explainer” detailing the law’s medical exceptions. Abortion rights advocates and attorneys said the law’s medical exceptions – for the life of the mother, dire risks of bodily harm and ectopic pregnancies – would not have protected an Ohio doctor who performed an abortion for the girl from prosecution.

Bernard did not reply to email and text messages from The Associated Press seeking comment.
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Now that the United States has a patchwork of different abortion laws, women who can afford to travel are going to states where abortion is still legal. Others rely on employers to provide money for transportation. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti explains how that happens and what crimes that could introduce in some states. VOA footage by Saqib Ul Islam. Video editor: Bakhtiyar Zamanov.
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About 25 million children worldwide have missed out on routine immunizations against common diseases like diphtheria, largely because the coronavirus pandemic disrupted regular health services or triggered misinformation about vaccines, according to the U.N. 

In a new report published Friday, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said their figures showed 25 million children last year failed to get vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, a marker for childhood immunization coverage, continuing a downward trend that began in 2019. 

“This is a red alert for child health,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF’s executive director. 

“We are witnessing the largest sustained drop in childhood immunization in a generation,” she said, adding that the consequences would be measured in lives lost. 

While vaccine coverage fell in every world region, data showed the vast majority of the children who failed to get immunized were living in developing countries, including Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and the Philippines.

Problem compounded by malnutrition 

Experts said this “historic backsliding” in vaccination coverage was especially disturbing since it was occurring as rates of severe malnutrition were rising. Malnourished children typically have weaker immune systems, and infections like measles can often prove fatal to them. 

“The convergence of a hunger crisis with a growing immunization gap threatens to create the conditions for a child survival crisis,” the U.N. said. 

Scientists said low vaccine coverage rates have resulted in preventable outbreaks of diseases like measles and polio. In March 2020, WHO and partners asked countries to suspend their polio eradication efforts amid the accelerating COVID-19 pandemic. There have since been dozens of polio epidemics in more than 30 countries. 

“This is particularly tragic as tremendous progress was made in the two decades before the COVID pandemic to improve childhood vaccination rates globally,” said Helen Bedford, a professor of children’s health at University College London, who was not connected to the U.N. report. She said the news was shocking but not surprising, noting that immunization services are frequently an “early casualty” of major social or economic disasters. 

Dr. David Elliman, a consultant pediatrician at Britain’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, said it was critical to reverse the declining vaccination trend among children. 

“The effects of what happens in one part of the world can ripple out to affect the whole globe,” he said in a statement, noting the rapid spread of COVID-19 and, more recently, monkeypox. “Whether we act on the basis of ethics or ‘enlightened self-interest,’ ” he said, children must be at the “top of our list of priorities.” 
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Nick Barragan is used to wearing a mask because his job in the Hollywood film industry has long required it. So he won’t be fazed if the county that’s home to Tinseltown soon becomes the first major population center this summer to reinstate rules requiring face coverings indoors because of another spike in coronavirus cases. 

“I feel fine about it because I’ve worn one pretty much constantly for the last few years. It’s become a habit,” said Barragan, masked up while out running errands Wednesday. 

Los Angeles is the most populous county, home to 10 million residents. It faces a return to a broad indoor mask mandate on July 29 if current trends in hospital admissions continue, county health Director Barbara Ferrer said this week. 

Requiring masks again “helps us to reduce risk,” Ferrer told Los Angeles County supervisors. 

“I do recognize,” she added, “that when we return to universal indoor masking to reduce high spread, for many this will feel like a step backwards.”

Variants tough to stop 

Nationwide, the latest COVID-19 surge is driven by the highly transmissible BA.5 variant, which now accounts for 65% of cases, with its cousin BA.4 contributing another 16%. The variants have shown a remarkable ability to get around the protection offered by vaccination. 

With the new omicron variants again pushing hospitalizations and deaths higher in recent weeks, states and cities are rethinking their responses and the White House is stepping up efforts to alert the public. 

Some experts said the warnings are too little, too late. 

“It’s well past the time when the warning could have been put out there,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, who has called BA.5 “the worst variant yet.” 

Global trends for the two mutants have been apparent for weeks, experts said — they quickly outcompete older variants and push cases higher wherever they appear. Yet Americans have tossed off their masks and jumped back into travel and social gatherings. 

And they have largely ignored booster shots, which protect against COVID-19’s worst outcomes. Courts have blocked federal mask and vaccine mandates, tying the hands of U.S. officials. 

For months, the White House has encouraged Americans to make use of free or cheap at-home rapid tests to detect the virus, as well as the free and effective antiviral treatment Paxlovid that protects against serious illness and death.  

On Tuesday, the White House response team urgently called on all adults 50 and older to get boosters if they haven’t yet this year and dissuaded people from waiting for the next generation of shots expected in the fall. 

For most of the pandemic, Los Angeles County has required masks in some indoor spaces, including health care facilities, metro trains and buses, airports, jails and homeless shelters. The new mandate would expand the requirement to all indoor public spaces, including shared offices, manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retail stores, restaurants and bars, theaters and schools. 

It’s unclear what enforcement might look like. Under past mandates, officials favored educating people over issuing citations and fines. 

Troubling trends

While hospitalizations and deaths have remained well below earlier spikes nationally, the current trends are troubling. Last month, daily deaths were falling, though they never matched last year’s low, and deaths are now heading up again. 

The seven-day average for daily deaths in the U.S. rose 26% over the past two weeks, to 489 on July 12. The coronavirus is not killing nearly as many as it was last fall and winter, and experts do not expect deaths to reach those levels again soon. 

But hundreds of daily deaths for a summertime respiratory illness would normally be jaw-dropping, said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California-Irvine. He noted that in Orange County, California, 46 people died of COVID-19 in June. 

“That would be all hands on deck,” Noymer said. “People would be like, ‘There’s this crazy new flu that’s killing people in June.’ ” 

Instead, simple, proven precautions are not being taken. Vaccinations, including booster shots for those eligible, lower the risk of hospitalization and death — even against the latest variants. But less than half of all eligible U.S. adults have gotten a single booster shot, and only about 1 in 4 Americans age 50 and older who are eligible for a second booster has received one. 

“This has been a botched booster campaign,” Topol said, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still uses the term “fully vaccinated” for people with two shots of Moderna or Pfizer. “They haven’t gotten across that two shots is totally inadequate,” he said. 

Noymer said if he were in charge of the nation’s COVID response he would level with the American people in an effort to get their attention in this third year of the pandemic. He would tell Americans to take it seriously, mask indoors and “until we get better vaccines, there’s going to be a new normal of a disease that kills more than 100,000 Americans a year and impacts life expectancy.”
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