June 2021

Authorities in Australia’s southern state of Victoria have extended a one-week lockdown for its capital, Melbourne, to contain the spread of a new COVID-19 outbreak. The lockdown was initially imposed across the entire state last week after health officials detected a highly infectious variant of the coronavirus that was rapidly spreading across Victoria state.  The latest outbreak has been linked to an overseas traveler who became infected with a variant first detected in India during his mandatory hotel quarantine phase. FILE – A mostly-empty city street is seen on the first day of a seven-day lockdown as the state of Victoria looks to curb the spread of a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Melbourne, Australia, May 28, 2021.Health officials announced six new locally acquired COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 60.   “If we let this thing run its course, it will explode,” Victoria state Acting Premier James Merlino told reporters in Melbourne.  “We’ve got to run this to ground because if we don’t, people will die.”   Although Melbourne’s 5 million residents will remain under strict restrictions until June 10, the lockdown measures have been lifted for residents in regional Victoria, with limits on public and private gatherings and restaurant capacity.   The new lockdown is the fourth one imposed on Melbourne and Victoria state since the start of the pandemic.  The most severe period occurred in mid-2020, which lasted more than three months as Victoria was under the grip of a second wave of COVID-19 infections that killed more than 800 people. Moderna seeking full FDA authorization
In the United States, Moderna said Tuesday it is seeking full authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its COVID-19 vaccine for adults 18 years old and older. The Moderna two-shot vaccine is one of three coronavirus vaccines the FDA authorized for emergency use in the United States, playing a major role in the steadily declining number of new infections in the country.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say more than 150 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been distributed since the emergency use authorization was granted last December.   FILE – A nurse draws a Moderna coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine, in Los AngelesModerna announced last week that it will apply for emergency use authorization this month to administer the vaccine to young people after discovering it was safe and effective for children between 12 and 17 years old.  If approved, it will join the two-shot vaccine developed by Pfizer and Bio N Tech that was authorized for use in 12 to 15 years old last month.   Brazil to host soccer tournamentBrazil confirmed Tuesday that it will host the troubled Copa America soccer tournament despite warnings of an upcoming new wave of new infections.   President Jair Bolsonaro said the tournament, which will take place from June 13 to July 10, will be held in the capital Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Cuiaba and Goiania.   The tournament’s organizers, the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL), announced Monday it was moving the upcoming event to Brazil due to a surge of new COVID-19 infections in Argentina, which was co-hosting the tournament with Colombia, which is unable to stage the tournament because of massive anti-government street protests.   Scientists in Brazil are concerned about hosting a tournament in a nation with a more transmissible COVID-19 variant, with many predicting another wave of the disease to hit the country in a matter of weeks.  The opposition Workers Party has filed an injunction with the Brazilian Supreme Court to block the tournament.  FILE – Demonstrators shouts slogans during a protest against the government’s response in combating COVID-19, demanding the impeachment of President Jair Bolsonaro, in Rio de Janeiro, May 29, 2021.President Bolsonaro has come under heavy criticism for his apparently dismissive attitude toward the pandemic, and is the subject of a congressional investigation over his government’s management of the crisis.   Brazil trails only the United States and India in the total number of coronavirus cases with more than 16.6  million, and is second only to the U.S. in deaths at more than 465,199, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
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Australian scientists are leading an international consortium that is building one of the world’s most powerful ground-based telescopes. It promises to see further and clearer than the Hubble Space Telescope and unlock mysteries of the early Universe.The telescope is called MAVIS, or Multi-conjugate-adaptive-optics Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph. It’s a long name for a highly complex instrument that will be the first of its kind. It aims to remove blurring from conventional telescope images caused by turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere, which is why the stars appear to twinkle in the night sky. Scientists in Australia say the new technology will allow them to “peer back into the early Universe” and help them explore how the first stars formed 13 billion years ago, as well as monitoring changes in the weather on planets and moons in our solar system.  Images produced by MAVIS will be three times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope that was launched into Earth’s low orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. Associate Professor Richard McDermid, a scientist based at Sydney’s Macquarie University, says the new telescope will change the way we explore space. “The clarity gives us two things,” he said. “It helps us see a sharper image, but it also helps us gain in sensitivity, so we can see fainter things and we can see them more clearly. That allows us to push into a new frontier of the furthest and faintest things we can see. So, for example the first stars in formation, inside the first galaxies because when we look far away in astronomy we are also looking far back in time because it takes time for the light to reach us. And so, yes, we are really building on the legacy of Hubble but we are going to go deeper and even sharper.”  The ground-based telescope will be installed at a facility in Chile run by the European Southern Observatory, a research organization based in Germany. It will take seven years to build at a cost of $44 million.  The MAVIS consortium is led by The Australian National University, and involves Macquarie University, Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics and France’s Laboratoire d’Astrophysique.   
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US President Joe Biden’s administration announced Tuesday it was halting petroleum development activity in the Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a move by former president Donald Trump to allow drilling. The Interior Department said it was notifying firms of the freeze, pending a comprehensive environmental review that will determine whether leases in the area known as ANWR should be “reaffirmed, voided or subject to additional mitigation measures,” the agency said in a statement. The announcement deals a blow to the long-contested quest of oil companies to drill in the sensitive territory. The push for development picked up momentum after Trump announced the leasing plan last November shortly after losing reelection to Biden. At a lease sale in January over some 1.6 million acres, US officials auctioned off 11 oil tracts. Major oil companies sat out the bidding, and nine of the leases went to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state agency, while two went to small companies. Biden had promised to protect ANWR during the presidential campaign. White House climate advisor Gina McCarthy noted Biden’s promise and said the move reflected his belief that “national treasures are cultural and economic cornerstones of our country,” according to a White House statement. Biden “is grateful for the prompt action by the Department of the Interior to suspend all leasing pending a review of decisions made in the last administration’s final days that could have changed the character of this special place forever,” McCarthy added. Environmentalists have long argued that safeguarding ANWR is critical to protect polar bears and other vulnerable wildlife and for indigenous populations that hunt caribou in the region.  But the oil industry has long sought to drill in the area, which is thought to potentially hold billions of barrels in oil. Key Alaska lawmakers such as Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, have strongly backed development. The Alaska Wilderness League, which had joined other environmental groups in litigation against the Trump administration’s development efforts, applauded the Biden administration’s action. “Suspending these leases is a step in the right direction,” said Kristen Miller, acting executive director for the Alaska Wilderness League. Continued threat”There is still more to be done. Until the leases are canceled, they will remain a threat to one of the wildest places left in America,” Miller said. “Now we look to the administration and Congress to prioritize legislatively repealing the oil leasing mandate and restore protections to the Arctic Refuge coastal plain.” But the American Petroleum Institute said the oil industry knows how to develop responsibly and that the decision will cost Alaska jobs and tax revenue. “Policies aimed at slowing or stopping oil and natural gas production on federal lands and waters will ultimately prove harmful to our national security, environmental progress and economic strength,” API official Kevin O’Scannlain said. “At a time of economic recovery, this action only serves to withhold the good-paying jobs and economic revenue that safe and responsible oil and gas development would provide to local Alaskan communities.” The Biden administration’s move on ANWR comes only days after it sanctioned another Trump administration plan on oil development in Alaska, involving a ConocoPhillips project in Alaska’s North Slope in the former Naval Petroleum Reserve. 
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The World Health Organization has granted emergency approval for the use of a Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccine for adults 18 and older.
 
The U.N. health agency approved a vaccine Tuesday made by Sinovac Biotech, a Chinese biopharmaceutical company. It was the second time the WHO approved a vaccine made by a Chinese company on an emergency basis.  
 
The WHO said data submitted by Sinovac indicated that two doses of the vaccine prevented symptoms from developing in just over half of those who received vaccinations. The agency also said it could not estimate the efficacy of the vaccine in people over 60 because few people in that age group participated in trials.
 
The WHO’s decision makes another vaccine available for use in poorer countries through COVAX, an international program that distributes vaccines to developing nations, many of them impoverished.
 
But COVAX’s distribution efforts have been slowed after its largest vaccine supplier in India said it was forced to stop supplying vaccines until the end of the year because of sharp rises in infections in the country.
 
Last month, the agency approved for emergency use a vaccine made by Sinopharm, a Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical company. Other vaccines approved on an emergency basis by the WHO were manufactured by AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer-BioNTech.
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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns the United States and countries in the Caribbean and Central America to be prepared for what is expected to be another above-normal Atlantic hurricane season.The outlook for this year’s hurricane season, which began Tuesday, is grim. Last year’s record-breaking season had 30 named tropical storms, including 19 hurricanes, six of them major.The WMO says the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season is likely to be less active, with between 13 and 20 named storms, of which six to 10 could become hurricanes.WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis says the coming season is likely to be particularly difficult for countries, such as those in Central America, that are still recovering from last year’s devastating storms.“Emergency managers are obviously very concerned that if another tropical storm or hurricane does impact, this will have serious consequences. It only takes one hurricane to make landfall in a season to wipe out years of social and economic development.” she said.Nullis says climate change has an influence on seasonal storms, which are increasing in intensity and frequency. She says carbon dioxide concentrations remain at record high levels and will continue to drive global warming.“All naturally occurring climate events now take place in the context of climate change, which is increasing global temperatures. As we know, it is exacerbating extreme weather and it is impacting seasonal rainfall patterns,” Nullis said.While 2021 got off to a relatively cool start, Nullis cautioned against believing that there is a pause in climate change. She noted that the WMO predicts a 90% likelihood of at least one year between 2021-2025 becoming the warmest on record, dislodging 2016 from its top ranking. Globally averaged temperatures in 2016 were 0.99 degrees Celsius warmer than the mid-20th century mean.The Atlantic hurricane season ends November 30. 
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Member nations of the World Health Organization have approved a plan to negotiate the terms of an international pandemic response treaty.Attendees at the closing session of the World Health Assembly in Geneva voted Monday on resolution to create a special WHO assembly session in November aimed at reaching a treaty or convention that would help nations better prepare and respond to a potential pandemic similar to the COVID-19 outbreak.The ongoing outbreak has sickened over 170 million people around the world and led to more than 3.5 million deaths since it was first detected in central China in late 2019.   WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told attendees “the time has come” for such a treaty, saying it would strengthen both the U.N. health agency and global health security as a whole.  He said it will address “the lack of sharing of data,  information, technologies and resources” that marked the sluggish response to the COVID-19 pandemic.   WHO Calls for 20 Million COVID Vaccine Doses for Africa Agency cites 17% jump in infections The issue of a global pandemic response treaty was one of several reforms taken up during the weeklong event, although they will not be voted on until the World Health Assembly meets again next year.Organizers of the Copa America soccer tournament announced Monday it was moving the upcoming event to Brazil due to a surge of new COVID-19 infections in Argentina, which was co-hosting with Colombia.  The news was greeted with skepticism by some in Brazil, which trails only the United States and India in the total number of coronavirus cases more than 13.5 million, and is second only to the U.S. in deaths at over 462,000. Scientists are concerned about hosting a tournament in a nation with a more transmissible COVID-19 variant, with many predicting another wave of the disease to hit the country in a matter of weeks.  Some opposition politicians are threatening to file an injunction with the Brazilian Supreme Court to block the tournament.  President Jair Bolsonaro has come under heavy criticism for his apparently dismissive attitude toward the pandemic, and is the subject of a congressional investigation over his government’s management of the crisis.Meanwhile, Australia’s women’s Olympic softball team on Monday became the first to arrive in Japan to begin preparations for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, which is also under a cloud due to a new wave of COVID-19 infections across the country and a slow rate of vaccinations, generating strong public opposition against going through with the Games.  Foreign spectators are barred from attending the Olympics, which begin July 23, and a Japanese newspaper reported Monday the government may require potential spectators to either have to show proof they received a COVID-19 vaccine or tested negative for the virus.
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