July 2021

Two astronauts made the first space walk on Sunday outside China’s new orbital station to work on setting up a 15-meter-long robotic arm.Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo were shown by state TV climbing out of the airlock as Earth rolled past below them. The third crew member, commander Nie Haisheng, stayed inside.The astronauts arrived June 17 for a three-month mission aboard China’s third orbital station, part of an ambitious space program that landed a robot rover on Mars in May. Their mission comes as the ruling Communist Party celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding.The station’s first module, Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, was launched April 29. That was followed by an automated spacecraft with food and fuel. Liu, Nie and Tang arrived June 17 aboard a Shenzhou capsule.On Sunday, Liu and Tang were completing installation of a robotic arm that will be used to assemble the rest of the station, according to state media. State TV said their space suits are designed to allow them to work in the vacuum of space for up to six hours if needed.The space agency plans a total of 11 launches through the end of next year to add two more modules to the 70-ton station.Liu is a veteran of the Shenzhou 7 mission in 2008, during which Zhai Zhigang made China’s first space walk. Nie is on his third trip into space while Liu is making his first. All are military pilots.  
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The German Standing Committee on Vaccination recommended this week that people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine as their first COVID shot should be inoculated with either the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine for their second shot in the battle against the delta variant of the coronavirus.The panel said the immune response to the mixed dose protocol is “clearly superior” to a double dose of the AstraZeneca shots. Medical experts began looking at the mixed-dose approach after young women reported side effects with the AstraZeneca shots.German Chancellor Angela Merkel has received mixed vaccines. While the German leader’s first vaccine was AstraZeneca, her second shot was a Moderna.The director-general of the World Health Organization warned Friday that the delta variant is “dangerous and is continuing to evolve and mutate, which requires constant evaluation and careful adjustment of the public health response.”Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “Delta has been detected in at least 98 countries and is spreading quickly in countries with low and high vaccination coverage.”He said, “Public health and social measures like strong surveillance, strategic testing, early case detection, isolation and clinical care remain critical. As well as masking, physical distance, avoiding crowded places and keeping indoor areas well ventilated are the basis for the response. And second, the world must equitably share protective gear, oxygen, tests, treatments and vaccines.”“I have urged leaders across the world to work together to ensure that by this time next year, 70% of all people in every country are vaccinated,” the WHO leader said. “This is the best way to slow the pandemic, save lives, drive a truly global economic recovery and along the way prevent further dangerous variants from getting the upper hand. By the end of this September, we’re calling on leaders to vaccinate at least 10% of people in all countries.”On Saturday, India’s health ministry reported 44,111 new COVID cases, the sixth straight day that the South Asian nation has reported fewer than 50,000 new cases. The ministry also reported 738 deaths.India has a total of 30.5 million COVID cases, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Only the U.S. has more cases, with 33.7 million.Early Saturday, Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported more than 183 million global COVID cases.   
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North Korea this week reported a mysterious “grave incident” that suggested a major lapse related to its coronavirus response.Its leader, Kim Jong Un, recently acknowledged food shortages, comparing the situation to a devastating 1990s famine.The North now acknowledges on a regular basis that it faces a worsening pandemic-related crisis, even as it continues to claim it is free of COVID-19.Just how severe a crisis is unknown because North Korea has shut itself off from the outside world in an all-encompassing 17-month coronavirus lockdown.What is increasingly clear, though, is that North Korea is dragging its feet on accepting the international vaccines that offer the best way out of its predicament.Talks stalledNorth Korea has done little to advance the process to receive vaccines from COVAX, the United Nations-backed program meant to ensure fair global vaccine distribution.Negotiations between North Korea and Gavi, a vaccine alliance that helps run COVAX, have stalled for months, with North Korea completing only two of the seven required administrative steps, according to a source familiar with the talks.“If the DPRK had been swift with the paperwork, they would have gotten some vaccines. It’s hard to say how much, but if they complied with the request from Gavi we would be well underway now,” said the source, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussion, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.In a statement, Gavi did not comment on the status of the negotiations.“Work is ongoing and discussions continue with DPRK,” a Gavi spokesperson said. “As we get closer to a potential delivery, we’ll be able to share more information on timetables.”Multiple obstaclesGavi announced in March that it planned to distribute 1.7 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to North Korea by May.Several barriers have delayed the shipment, though, including North Korean concerns about the safety and efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine, reluctance to sign a liability waiver in case of side effects, and refusal to allow international workers into the country to facilitate the shipment.Global supply shortages are also to blame. India, a major producer of the AstraZeneca vaccine, earlier this year suspended vaccine exports amid its own explosion in COVID-19 cases.North Korea appears to see the vaccine shortage as a main obstacle. In a May statement to the World Health Organization, North Korea accused countries of selfishly hoarding vaccine supplies, creating a “bottleneck” in global production.Refrigeration issuesA big hurdle is North Korea’s antiquated and uneven health care system, which limits its ability to handle many types of COVID-19 vaccines.The country does not have a consistent electricity supply, much less the network of ultra-cold refrigerators and specialized delivery trucks needed to handle vaccines such as those produced by Pfizer and Moderna, which utilize advanced mRNA technology.According to the source familiar with the talks, North Korea has not yet accepted international offers to help upgrade its cold supply chain network.That means Pyongyang may be forced to choose between the AstraZeneca vaccine, or those made in China or Russia, all of which can be stored at higher temperatures. It is not clear whether North Korea has considered the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which also does not require super cold storage.At a briefing last week, a Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson refused to say whether China has provided any vaccines to North Korea, saying only Beijing was prepared to help “should there be such a need.”China’s foreign ministry on whether it has provided any COVID-19 help to North Korea: pic.twitter.com/Re6F4K9jxP— William Gallo (@GalloVOA) June 30, 2021The Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, has also not been delivered to North Korea, according to an April report in the state-run TASS news agency, which quoted Russian Embassy officials in Pyongyang.No foreignersAnother problem is North Korea’s severe lockdown, which has prevented virtually any foreigners from entering the country.According to the source who spoke with VOA, North Korea is refusing to allow international aid workers into the country to help facilitate the shipment, ostensibly because of fears about outsiders bringing COVID-19 into the country.However, Gavi procedures require that international staff must be present, the source said. Gavi “won’t just ship it,” the source said.United Nations agencies’ employees, who might have been able to help with the vaccine shipment, have left North Korea amid worsening lockdown conditions.Will it change anytime soon?It does not seem that North Korea will retreat from its hunkered-down position anytime soon. Kim has repeatedly warned of a “prolonged” lockdown, saying his country must maintain “perfect” anti-epidemic measures.Many officials and diplomats in the region now privately concede that it may be years before North Korea reopens to many foreigners.However, some analysts speculate that North Korea may have been hinting at a different pandemic approach this week when it acknowledged a “grave incident” in its pandemic stance.Kim did not say what the lapse was, but he lambasted senior officials during a politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party, even replacing several of them, presumably over the situation.The move could amount to North Korea laying the groundwork for eventually accepting international help, said Ramon Pacheco-Pardo, a Korea expert at King’s College London.“The insistence on this being an international crisis, plus now admitting that this is affecting North Korea, as well, opens the door to international cooperation,” Pacheco-Pardo said.Rachel Minyoung Lee, a Seoul-based Korea specialist at the Stimson Center, though, questioned that conclusion.“If North Korea wants to accept vaccines it can just do so,” she said. “Convening a politburo meeting to do that seems unnecessarily convoluted,” she added.Meanwhile, North Korea appears to be managing expectations at home. In a May editorial, the state-run Rodong Sinmun warned of a long battle against the virus, adding the vaccines produced overseas were “no universal panacea.”  
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Indonesian police threw up roadblocks and more than 400 checkpoints on the islands of Java and Bali to ensure hundreds of millions of people stayed home on Saturday, the first day of stricter curbs on movement to limit the spread of COVID-19.As it battles one of Asia’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, the world’s fourth-most-populous nation has seen record new infections on eight of the past 12 days, with Friday bringing 25,830 cases and a high of 539 deaths.”We are setting up (patrols) in 21 locations where typically there are crowds,” Istiono, the head of national traffic police, who goes by one name, told a news conference late on Friday. “Where there are street stalls and cafes, we will close those streets, maybe from around 6 p.m. until 4 a.m.”Saturday’s more stringent curbs, from tighter travel checks to a ban on restaurant dining and outdoor sports and the closure of non-essential workplaces, will run until July 20, but could be extended, if needed, to bring daily infections below 10,000.More than 21,000 police officers as well as military will fan out across Indonesia’s most populous island of Java and the tourist resort island of Bali to ensure compliance with the new curbs, a police spokesperson said.At the roadblocks and checkpoints on the islands, police will conduct random tests and enforce curfews. Vaccinated travelers with a negative swab test will be permitted to make long-distance journeys, however.The highly infectious delta variant first identified in India, where it caused a spike in infections, is spreading in Indonesia and pushing hospitals across Java to the brink.Indonesia is set to receive vaccines donated by foreign countries to help speed its vaccination drive, which has covered just 7.6% of a target of 181.5 million people by January.Until now, it has relied mainly on a vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech.Indonesia’s tally of infections stands at 2.2 million, with a death toll of more than 59,500.
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As the World Health Organization draws up plans for the next phase of its probe of how the coronavirus pandemic started, an increasing number of scientists say the U.N. agency it isn’t up to the task and shouldn’t be the one to investigate.Numerous experts, some with strong ties to WHO, say that political tensions between the U.S. and China make it impossible for an investigation by the agency to find credible answers.They say what’s needed is a broad, independent analysis closer to what happened in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.The first part of a joint WHO-China study of how COVID-19 started concluded in March that the virus probably jumped to humans from animals and that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely.” The next phase might try to examine the first human cases in more detail or pinpoint the animals responsible — possibly bats, perhaps by way of some intermediate creature.But the idea that the pandemic somehow started in a laboratory — and perhaps involved an engineered virus — has gained traction recently, with President Joe Biden ordering a review of U.S. intelligence within 90 days to assess the possibility.Earlier this month, WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr. Michael Ryan, said that the agency was working out the final details of the next phase of its probe and that because WHO works “by persuasion,” it lacks the power to compel China to cooperate.Some said that is precisely why a WHO-led examination is doomed to fail.“We will never find the origins relying on the World Health Organization,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights at Georgetown University. “For a year and a half, they have been stonewalled by China, and it’s very clear they won’t get to the bottom of it.”Women wait to receive the vaccine for COVID-19 in New Delhi, India, July 2, 2021.Gostin said the U.S. and other countries can either try to piece together what intelligence they have, revise international health laws to give WHO the powers it needs, or create some new entity to investigate.The first phase of WHO’s mission required getting China’s approval not only for the experts who traveled there but for their entire agenda and the report they ultimately produced.Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, called it a “farce” and said that determining whether the virus jumped from animals or escaped from a lab is more than a scientific question and has political dimensions beyond WHO’s expertise.The closest genetic relative to COVID-19 was previously discovered in a 2012 outbreak, after six miners fell sick with pneumonia after being exposed to infected bats in China’s Mojiang mine. In the past year, however, Chinese authorities sealed off the mine and confiscated samples from scientists while ordering locals not to talk to visiting journalists.Although China initially pushed hard to look for the coronavirus’s origins, it pulled back abruptly in early 2020 as the virus overtook the globe. An Associated Press investigation last December found Beijing imposed restrictions on the publication of COVID-19 research, including mandatory review by central government officials.Jamie Metzl, who sits on a WHO advisory group, has suggested along with colleagues the possibility of an alternative investigation set up by the Group of Seven industrialized nations.Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University, said the U.S. must be willing to subject its own scientists to a rigorous examination and recognize that they might be just as culpable as China.“The U.S. was deeply involved in research at the laboratories in Wuhan,” Sachs said, referring to U.S. funding of controversial experiments and the search for animal viruses capable of triggering outbreaks.“The idea that China was behaving badly is already the wrong premise for this investigation to start,” he said. “If lab work was somehow responsible (for the pandemic), the likelihood that it was both the U.S. and China working together on a scientific initiative is very high.”  
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COVAX, the World Health Organization initiative for the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, is urging countries to recognize as fully vaccinated all people who have received COVID-19 vaccines that COVAX has recognized as safe and effective.“Any measure that only allows people protected by a subset of WHO-approved vaccines to benefit from the re-opening of travel,” COVAX said, would only serve to further widen “the global vaccine divide.”  Such a move would also intensify “the inequities we have already seen in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines,” the COVAX statement said.India said Friday it has sent teams to six states to contain high COVID infection rates.  The states receiving the teams are Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Manipur.India’s health ministry said Friday it had recorded 46,617 new cases and 853 deaths in the previous 24-hour period.On Thursday, Washington announced it is dispatching “surge response” teams to U.S. areas hard hit by the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, recently said the variant first identified in India poses the “greatest threat” to bringing an end to the COVID outbreak in the U.S.Also Thursday, Johnson & Johnson announced that “its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine generated strong, persistent activity against the rapidly spreading delta variant and other highly prevalent SARS-CoV-2 viral variants. In addition, the data showed that the durability of the immune response lasted through at least eight months, the length of time evaluated to date.”The World Health Organization’s African region is facing a serious third wave of COVID-19 cases, driven by variants throughout the continent.In a virtual briefing with reporters Thursday, WHO Africa Regional Director Matshidiso Moeti said new cases have increased in Africa by an average of 25% for six straight weeks to almost 202,000 in the week ending June 27, with deaths rising by 15% across 38 African countries to nearly 3,000 in the same period.“The speed and scale of Africa’s third wave is like nothing we’ve seen before,” Moeti said. “The rampant spread of more contagious variants pushes the threat to Africa up to a whole new level.”Meanwhile, WHO European Regional Director Hans Kluge said Thursday that region’s streak of 10 straight weeks of declining COVID-19 cases has come to end. During his weekly briefing in Copenhagen, he said cases in the region’s 53 countries increased 10% last week.Kluge attributed the rise to “increased mixing, travel, gatherings and easing of social restrictions,” which he said is taking place amid “a rapidly evolving situation” – the emergence of the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, a situation aggravated by the region’s slow rate of vaccinations.Women stand in a line to get tested for COVID-19 in New Delhi, India, July 2, 2021.Elsewhere in Europe, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer called the decision by the organizers of the Euro Cup 2020 soccer championships “utterly irresponsible” for holding their tournament during a pandemic.Seehofer said the decision by the Union of European Football Associations to hold games in stadiums around Europe with largely unmasked crowds of up to 60,000 people was clearly more about commerce than protection. He said that while some localities put restrictions on the crowds, the organization should have made those decisions itself.Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced Thursday that new emergency measures will go into effect Saturday for the islands of Java and Bali to blunt the rise of new cases in the world’s fourth most-populous country.The measures, which include tighter restrictions on movement and air travel, a ban on restaurant dining and the closure of nonessential offices, will last through July 20, a period that includes the Muslim holiday of Eid.Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said Friday that it has recorded 129.6 million global COVID cases and nearly 4 million deaths.The United States has remains the world leader in COVID cases with 33.7 million cases, followed by India with 30.4 million and Brazil with 18.6 million.Johns Hopkins says more than 3 billion vaccines have been administered. 
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The three women were enjoying their time together, having lunch near the beach at Capalbio on the Southern Tuscan coast just over an hour’s drive from Rome. A long winter and spring of lockdowns and restrictions in their northern alpine town of Bolzano had kept grandmother, mother and daughter apart for months on end.“Can I tell them how you are the brightest in your class, the most beautiful and the kindest?” the grandmother asked her 17-year-old granddaughter.“The lockdowns were hard — I didn’t see them for months on end. At least I have a beautiful view of the mountains from my apartment, but it was hard. I live alone,” she added. Now reunited, the three generations of women were delighted to be sharing each other’s company once again on a vacation they hope will exorcise the ghost of the pandemic past.Italy’s coastal beaches are now packed again — so too are the lake shores — with vacationers breathing a sigh of relief at their escape from pandemic confinement.There is a sense of normality now, boosted by the Italian government’s decision last month to drop most coronavirus-related rules and to lift rules on mask-wearing outside, although masks are still required on public transport and indoors in stores. A nighttime curfew has been phased out; and al fresco dining is allowed with few restrictions at restaurants.With more than 30% of Italians fully vaccinated, confidence has returned. The seven-day average of new cases is below 700 a day. Twenty-four Italians died Thursday because of COVID-19, the illness triggered by the coronavirus.That is a far cry from the daily death toll at the height of the pandemic, when Italy became the first Western country to be hit with the full impact of the coronavirus.Youngsters are partying again — possibly too much. Across the country, from small towns to large, complaints have risen about the after-dark carousing by young and drunk post-pandemic revelers. Newspapers have nicknamed the phenomena malamovida, or bad nightlife.“Old people complain, but they don’t understand, we have been locked up for months and now we want coming-out parties,” Ricardo, a 19-year-old, from Viterbo, a town on the outskirts of Rome, told VOA. Older people say they do understand, but that they need undisturbed sleep.Two women take a selfie at the Spanish Steps in Rome, June 28, 2021.Behind the vacationing and partying, though, there are fears that the feel-good narrative could be undermined by the delta variant, a coronavirus strain first identified in India.Speaking in Rome on Thursday, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi issued the latest in a string of cautions, saying, “After months of isolation and separation, we have resumed much of our social interactions. The economy and education have restarted. We must be realistic, however. The pandemic is not over.”Like his counterparts in neighboring European countries Draghi, is watching a ‘delta’ wave of infections, fearful that numbers will rise exponentially, much as they have in Britain, which has seen a remorseless increase in new cases. The number of daily and weekly cases in England has hit its highest level since January, and Thursday saw another 27,989 new coronavirus cases across Britain, according to health authorities.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson still plans to drop most remaining pandemic restrictions on July 19, having delayed a planned full reopening by more than two weeks. Because so many Britons have been vaccinated, the relationship, ministers say, between cases and worse-case outcomes and deaths has improved dramatically. So far, more than 44.8 million Britons have had a first vaccine dose — about 85% of the adult population — and more than 33 million have had both doses.While infections in the U.K. now match the tally of January, deaths do not. COVID-19-related deaths in January were running at more than 1,000 daily, but in Britain on Thursday there were just 22 deaths. Nonetheless, there remains nervousness, and the government’s scientific advisers are urging caution.Visitors ride a roller coaster at Cinecitta World amusement park in the outskirts of Rome in the day of its reopening, June 17, 2021.Johnson said Thursday he was still aiming to remove nearly all lockdown restrictions. On July 19, “we’ll be wanting to go back to a world that is as close to the status quo, ante-COVID, as possible. Try to get back to life as close to it was before COVID,” he said. “But there may be some things we have to do, extra precautions that we have to take.”The government is likely next week to announce more countries Britons will be allowed to travel to without having to quarantine on their return. However, several of the countries already on Britain’s green list of “safe” countries to visit aren’t enthusiastic about admitting British travelers, with even some tourist-dependent southern European countries insisting only those double-vaccinated will be allowed in.German Chancellor Angela Merkel Merkel has been calling for European Union member states, which are far behind Britain in terms of their vaccination campaigns, to agree to a ban on travelers from Britain entering the bloc regardless of their vaccination status. Merkel has blamed British tourists for the jump in delta variant infections in Portugal.The World Health Organization has also highlighted the danger of a delta wave engulfing Europe.On Thursday, Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, warned in a press briefing that a decline in the number of infections in the region is coming to an end.“A 10-week decline in the number of COVID-19 cases in the 53 countries in the WHO European region has come to an end. Last week the number of cases rose by 10%, driven by increased mixing, travel, gatherings and an easing of social restrictions,” he said.Kluge warned that millions of unvaccinated Europeans remain highly vulnerable to the delta variant, which data suggests is far more transmissible than other strains. He said by August the delta variant will be the dominant strain in Europe, where 63% of people are still waiting for their first shot.
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Call it a space race for billionaires: British mogul Richard Branson one-upped rival Jeff Bezos on Thursday, announcing that he too will blast beyond Earth’s atmosphere — as many as nine days ahead of the Amazon founder.With both tycoons having created space tourism companies and positioned themselves as leaders in the suborbital-flights-for-the-wealthy sector, the move signaled clear if not fierce competition.The announcement follows Bezos’ proclamation in early June that he and his brother would be part of the crew on the first manned flight aboard his company Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch vehicle.The move stole the thunder from Branson, who had long vowed to participate in a Virgin Galactic test flight before the launch of regular commercial operations slated for 2022.The tables were turned on Thursday however: while Bezos may have thought he could dominate the day’s space news with a morning announcement that barrier-breaking 82-year-old female aviator Wally Funk would join him on his New Shepard flight, it was Branson who had the last laugh.Virgin Galactic announced Branson would be a “mission specialist” aboard the SpaceShipTwo Unity, which will go to space as early as July 11, “pending weather and technical checks.””I truly believe that space belongs to all of us,” Branson said, adding that “Virgin Galactic stands at the vanguard of a new commercial space industry, which is set to open space to humankind and change the world for good.”If the schedule holds, Branson will make it to the cosmos before Bezos, who said he would travel to space on July 20.Better than ‘the guys’Branson “will evaluate the private astronaut experience and will undergo the same training, preparation and flight as Virgin Galactic’s future astronauts,” the company said.While Branson’s trip has been several years in the making, Funk’s is 60 years overdue: she was one of the Mercury 13 — the first women trained to fly to space from 1960-61, but excluded because of their gender.When she blasts off with the Bezos brothers, Funk will become the oldest person ever to go to space, taking part in the journey not only with the siblings but also one other traveler who paid $28 million at auction for the seat.”I can hardly wait,” Funk said in a video posted on Bezos’ Instagram account, where she is seen hugging the Amazon founder in an explosion of joy.The oldest person to have travelled in space so far is U.S. astronaut John Glenn, who flew in 1998 at the age of 77 on the space shuttle Discovery.A seasoned pilot, Funk has accumulated 19,600 flight hours, and was also the National Transportation Safety Board’s first female air safety inspector.Funk recalled her time in the Mercury 13 program, stating that “they told me that I had done better and completed the work faster than any of the guys.””So I got ahold of NASA, four times. I said I want to become an astronaut, but nobody would take me. I didn’t think that I would ever get to go up.”Writing on Instagram, Bezos said, “It’s time. Welcome to the crew, Wally.”Ironically, Funk had also purchased a ticket years ago to fly into space with Virgin Galactic.Apples and orangesThe spacecraft developed by Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are very different, even if the passengers will ultimately have more or less the same experience: a few minutes of weightlessness.In the case of Virgin Galactic, the spacecraft is not a classic rocket, but rather a carrier airplane that reaches a high altitude and releases a smaller spacecraft, the VSS Unity, that fires its engines and reaches suborbital space, then glides back to Earth.Blue Origin, meanwhile, is more of a classic rocket experience, with a vertical launch after which a capsule will separate from its booster, then spend four minutes at an altitude exceeding 100 kilometers, during which time those on board experience weightlessness and can observe the curvature of Earth.The booster lands autonomously on a pad 3.2 kilometers from the launch site, and the capsule floats back to the surface with three large parachutes that slow it down to about 1.6 kph when it lands. 
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