A review issued Wednesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says a third dose of Pfizer’s two-dose COVID-19 vaccine boosts a person’s immunity against the virus, but said the current regimen still provides enough protection against severe illness.

The FDA is considering Pfizer’s request to offer a third shot of its vaccine, which the drugmaker says is needed as its effectiveness wears off between six to eight months after the second dose. Pfizer submitted a preliminary study to the FDA that suggested a third dose of the vaccine given to more than 300 people boosted their immunity levels three to five times higher than after the earlier shots.

Pfizer also cited a study from Israel, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, that showed infection rates were 11 times lower among people age 60 and older who received a third dose of the vaccine. About 1 million people took part in the study.

Pfizer has applied for permission to offer a third dose as the highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19 has triggered a dramatic new surge of infections, hospitalizations and deaths around the world.

But the FDA said in its review that recent studies “indicate that currently US-licensed or authorized COVID-19 vaccines still afford protection against severe COVID-19 disease and death in the United States.”

The U.S. government drug regulator’s vaccine advisory committee will meet Friday to discuss whether the agency should approve Pfizer’s request. The committee’s recommendation is non-binding, meaning the FDA could approve the third Pfizer dose even if the committee recommends against it.

Both the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month recommended a third shot of the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine for some people with weakened immune systems.

The FDA meeting will be held days after an international group of vaccine experts published an essay in The Lancet medical journal in opposition to providing booster shots of current vaccines to the general population.

Experts say recent studies show the current vaccines in use around the world continue to provide strong protection against the virus, including the delta variant, especially against severe illness and hospitalization.

The authors include two key officials in the FDA’s vaccine review office who are leaving their posts before the end of the year. The New York Times recently reported that Dr. Marian Gruber and Dr. Philip Krause are upset over the Biden administration’s recent announcement that booster shots would be offered for some Americans beginning next month, well before the FDA had time to properly review the data.

The authors suggest that modifying the vaccines to match the specific COVID-19 variants is a better approach than providing extra doses of the original vaccine.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, has called on wealthy nations to forgo COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for the rest of the year to ensure that low- and middle-income countries have more access to the vaccine.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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Scientists from multiple organizations that monitor and assess the state of the Earth’s climate system warn the world is not on track to meet the target of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050.

The United in Science 2021 report warns greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are continuing at record levels, committing the planet to dangerous future warming. It notes the last five-year period has been the warmest since record-keeping began in 1850. 

Scientists say rising temperatures due to human activity are causing higher than average temperatures in the Arctic, Europe and Asia. That is increasing the frequency and intensity of floods, droughts, wildfires, storms, and other extreme weather events throughout the world. 

Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization Petteri Taalas says weather events that used to happen every 100 years now are happening every 20 years because of climate change. He warns they will occur with even greater frequency in the future if the world does not limit warming to well below two degrees Celsius by mid-century. 

“Now we are heading towards three degrees warming instead of 1.5 to two degrees,” he said.”And it has been shown clearly that it would be beneficial for the welfare of us human beings and the welfare of the biosphere and the planet to reach the lower limit of the Paris Agreement of 1.5 degrees.”

The report notes that COVID-19 has had no impact on climate change. It says pandemic lockdowns and economic slowdowns reduced air pollution for a time, but was only temporary. Now that societies are opening again, it says carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are growing.

Taalas says mitigation measures can reduce the release of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and reduce climate change, but for this to happen, people must change their daily behavior. 

“If we fail with climate mitigation, we would have a permanent problem for at least hundreds or even thousands of years and both economic and human wellbeing events would be much more dramatic than this COVID pandemic, which has been hitting us all in a dramatic way,” he said.

In a forward to the United in Science report, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns time is running out. He says all countries must commit to net-zero emissions by 2050, backed up by concrete long-term strategies to prevent further irreversible damage.

He says these pledges must be made now for November’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow to be a turning point in the fight for the survival of the planet. 

 
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China tightened lockdowns and increased orders for mass testing in cities along its coast Wednesday amid the latest surge in COVID-19 cases.

Checks have been set up in toll stations around the city of Putian in Fujian province, with a dozen of them closed entirely. The nearby cities of Xiamen and Quanzhou have also restricted travel as the delta variant spreads through the region.

The National Health Commission on Wednesday said an additional 50 cases had been diagnosed in various parts of Fujian, most of them in the Putian region.

Since the start of the pandemic, first detected in late 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, China has imposed strict testing, lockdowns, quarantines and mask-wearing requirements.

Fujian has seen at least 152 new cases in recent days, prompting stay-at-home orders and the closure of entertainment, dining and fitness venues, along with the cancellation of group activities, including those for the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.

Long-distance bus service to other parts of the province has been suspended.

China has largely stopped the spread of COVID-19, but new outbreaks continue to occur in various parts of the country. A delta variant outbreak in July and August spread to several provinces, raising concern about new and more contagious variants.

The National Health Commission says it has administered more than 2 billion doses of vaccine, although the efficacy of domestically developed serums has been called into question, particularly in dealing with the delta variant.

While lockdowns and other stern measures have taken a toll on the economy and daily life, most of the country has overcome the impact of the initial outbreak.

Authorities are taking no chances, however. The discovery of a suspected case in Beijing’s eastern Chaoyang district prompted officials Wednesday to bar residents of a high-rise community from leaving their apartments, according to the newspaper Health Times, which is published by the ruling Communist Party.

Students and teachers have also been encouraged to avoid traveling during the upcoming three-day Mid-Autumn Festival, beginning Sunday, and the October 1-7 National Day vacation.

“Even with 91% of students and teachers vaccinated nationwide, it is still recommended students do not leave their home provinces and stay on guard,” Wang Dengfeng, head of the COVID-19 prevention office at the Ministry of Education, was quoted as saying by the official China Daily newspaper.
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India’s Cabinet on Wednesday approved an incentive plan for the automobile sector aimed at boosting production of electric and hydrogen fuel-powered vehicles and promoting the manufacture of drones.

The government will give about $3.5 billion in incentives to auto companies and drone manufacturers over a five-year period, Anurag Thakur, minister of information and broadcasting, told reporters.

“The incentive scheme has been designed to help India become a global player in the automobile sector,” Thakur said, adding it would also boost local manufacturing.

The proposal comes at a time when annual car sales in India have fallen to their lowest in a decade due to the pandemic, which followed an economic slowdown in 2019. Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) make up a fraction of the total.

Several years ago, India was tipped to become the world’s third-largest car market by 2020, after China and the United States, with sales of 5 million a year. Instead, car sales stagnated at around 3 million a year even before the pandemic.

Ford Motor Co. last week joined General Motors and Harley Davidson in retreating from India, where it has accumulated losses of $2 billion. The U.S. automaker said it would stop making cars in India, taking a further $2 billion hit.

The government said in a statement the incentive plan was expected to help attract new investment of about $5.8 billion in the auto sector.

The incentives will range from 8% to 18% of the sales value of the vehicles or components and will be given to companies if they meet certain conditions such as a minimum investment over five years and 10% growth in sales each year.

Carmakers, for instance, would need to invest $272 million over the period, while auto parts companies must invest $34 million, the government said.

The original plan was to spend $8 billion to incentivize auto and auto part makers to build mainly gasoline vehicles and their components for domestic sale and export, with some added benefit for EVs.

However, the scheme’s focus was redrawn to incentivize clean fuel vehicles as Tesla Inc. gears up to enter India.

Auto parts makers will get incentives to produce components for clean cars as well as for investing in advanced technologies like sensors and radars used in connected cars, automatic transmission, cruise control and other electronics.

Sunjay Kapur, president of the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA), said that with global economies de-risking their supply chains, the scheme will help develop the country into “an attractive alternative source of high-end auto components.”

India sees clean auto technology as central to its strategy to reduce oil dependence and cut debilitating air pollution in its major cities, while also meeting its emissions commitment under the Paris Climate Accord.

Domestic automaker Tata Motors is the largest seller of electric cars in India, with rival Mahindra & Mahindra and motor-bike maker TVS Motor firming up their EV plans. India’s biggest carmaker Maruti Suzuki, however, has no near-term plan to launch EVs.

Girish Wagh, executive director at Tata Motors, said in a statement the scheme would accelerate “the country’s progress toward green mobility” and help attract foreign investment. 
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One of California’s most famous groves of giant sequoias is threatened by a small but intense wildfire burning in Sequoia National Park, officials said Wednesday. The roughly 7,000-acre KNP fire complex is burning about a mile away from the Giant Forest, home to the largest tree on earth by volume, dubbed General Sherman, said Rebecca Paterson, a public information officer for the National Park Service in Three Rivers, near where the fire is burning. About 115 employees have been evacuated from the park, along with residents of the eastern part of the town, Paterson said. The park was closed Tuesday as the fire began to threaten the Giant Forest, one of about 30 such groves and most visited, she said. FILE – A tourist stands next to the General Sherman giant sequoia at Sequoia National Park in California, March 9, 2014.The fires making up the complex grew significantly on Tuesday with zero containment, the federal InciWeb fire information system said Wednesday. The complex, made of two blazes that are burning near each other, was started by lightning strikes on September 10. It is burning in steep canyons, fueled by dry timber and chaparral. Dry conditions and winds of up to 40 kilometers per hour (25 mph) may help the fire expand in coming days, the InciWeb system said. Air quality in the area is poor, and parts of Three Rivers where people have not been ordered to leave have been warned to be ready to evacuate, Paterson said. The National Park Service has been conducting prescribed burns in the area, which officials hope will ameliorate the impact on the giant sequoias if the complex does reach them, she said. Sequoias depend on fire as part of their life cycle, but some massive, intense fires fueled by climate change may do more damage than in the past. “Even if fire does reach the Giant Forest, that does not mean it will be devastating once it gets there,” Paterson said. Three Rivers is near the Ash Mountain Main Entrance to Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to the town’s website. It is home to about 2,400 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 
 
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The latest in a recent line of billionaire space enthusiasts prepared for liftoff Wednesday along with three other private citizens aboard a SpaceX rocket ship, aiming to become the first all-civilian crew launched into Earth’s orbit.The quartet of amateur space travelers, led by Jared Isaacman, the American founder and chief executive of e-commerce firm Shift4 Payments, were due for blastoff as early as 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.The flight, with no professional astronauts accompanying SpaceX’s paying customers, is expected to last about three days from liftoff to splashdown in the Atlantic.”Everything is go for launch,” SpaceX principal integration engineer John Insprucker declared about 3½ hours before launch time in a SpaceX webcast of pre-liftoff activities.Trip from hangarA short time earlier, Isaacman, 38, and his crewmates — Sian Proctor, 51, Hayley Arceneaux, 29, and Chris Sembroski, 42 — strolled out of a SpaceX hangar waiving to cheering crowds of family, friends and well-wishers.From there, they were driven in two automobiles across the space center complex to a support building, where they donned the black-and-white spacesuits they will wear for liftoff.They then headed to the launch pad to board a gleaming white SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, perched atop one of the company’s reusable Falcon 9 rockets and fitted with a special observation dome in place of the usual docking hatch.This marks the debut flight of SpaceX owner Elon Musk’s new orbital tourism business, and a leap ahead of competitors likewise offering rides on rocket ships to customers willing to pay a small fortune for the exhilaration — and bragging rights — of spaceflight.Isaacman has paid an undisclosed sum to fellow billionaire Musk to send himself and his three crewmates aloft. Time magazine has put the ticket price for all four seats at $200 million.The mission, called Inspiration4, was conceived by Isaacman mainly to raise awareness and support for one of his favorite causes, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a leading pediatric cancer center in Memphis, Tennessee.The Inspiration4 crew of Chris Sembroski, Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux are seen in a picture obtained by Reuters, Sept. 15, 2021.Inspiration4 is aiming for an orbital altitude of 575 kilometers (360 miles) above Earth, higher than the International Space Station or Hubble Space Telescope. At that height, the Crew Dragon will circle the globe once every 90 minutes at a speed of 27,360 kilometers per hour (17,000 mph), or roughly 22 times the speed of sound.Rival companies Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin inaugurated their own private-astronaut services this summer, with their respective founding executives, billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, each going along for the ride.Those suborbital flights, lasting a matter of minutes, were short hops compared with Inspiration4’s spaceflight profile.SpaceX experienceSpaceX already ranks as the most well-established player in the burgeoning constellation of commercial rocket ventures, having launched numerous cargo payloads and astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA. Two of its Dragon capsules are already docked there.The Inspiration4 crew will have no part to play in flying the spacecraft, which will be operated by ground-based flight teams and onboard guidance systems, even though two crew members are licensed pilots.Isaacman, who is rated to fly commercial and military jets, has assumed the role of mission “commander,” while Proctor, a geoscientist and former NASA astronaut candidate, has been designated as the mission “pilot.”Rounding out the crew are “chief medical officer” Arceneaux, a bone cancer survivor-turned St. Jude physician assistant, and mission “specialist” Sembroski, a U.S. Air Force veteran and aerospace data engineer.The four crewmates have spent five months in rigorous preparations, including altitude fitness, centrifuge (G-force), microgravity and simulator training, emergency drills, classroom work and medical exams.Inspiration4 officials have said the mission is more than a joyride. Once in orbit, the crew will perform a series of medical experiments with “potential applications for human health on Earth and during future spaceflights,” the group said in media materials. Biomedical data and biological samples, including ultrasound scans, will also be collected from crew members before, during and after the flight.”The crew of Inspiration4 is eager to use our mission to help make a better future for those who will launch in the years and decades to come,” Isaacman said in a statement.
 
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Iceland is now the home of the world’s largest direct air capture and storage plant of carbon dioxide. The plant aims to remove 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide – one of the main contributors to global warming – from the air each year, as VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.Producer: Rob Raffaele.
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High-level African officials met virtually this week to discuss the challenges Africa faces in trying to manage a growing population amid climate change. The conference was aimed at identifying ways African governments can manage these pressures to minimize or avoid conflict.Africa generates about 3% percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the lowest of any continent. But it’s more vulnerable than any other region in the world, since Africans depend so heavily on their natural environment for food, water and medicine.Speaking at a virtual conference Tuesday on climate, conflict and demographics in Africa, Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said African governments need to keep the climate in mind as they try to boost their economies.“Our first obligation for us and for African countries must always be to ensure the well-being of our people through access to development services, including electricity, health care, education, safe jobs and a safe environment, including access to clean cooking fuels. We must prioritize solutions that align the development and climate agenda, and that is absolutely important,” said Osinbajo.The Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, based in Brussels, says that in 2019, Africa recorded 56 extreme weather events compared to 45 in the previous year.The extreme weather patterns affected the lives of 16.6 million people in 29 countries. At least 13 million of them were from five countries: Kenya, Mozambique, Somalia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.West Africa had fewer weather-related catastrophes but is feeling the effects of global warming just the same.Ghana environment minister Kwaku Afriyie explains how climate change has impacted agricultural lands in the country.”The harsh and deteriorating climate conditions in northern Ghana undoubtedly energized region-growing food insecurity and seasonal north-to-south migration. And besides, increasing of floods and protracted drought lead to displacement of people.  Statistics show that over the last few years, there has been a new internal displacement which has occurred in Ghana due to climate-induced disasters and even beyond our borders,” he said.The U.N. special representative to the African Union, Hannah Tetteh, said the continent needs to improve cross-border information-sharing and cooperation to handle climate-related crises.“The challenge has not been that we haven’t developed yet these structures. The challenge has been we have not utilized them yet effectively, and that goes to issues of national sovereignty and the unwillingness of member states to have others, as it were, take an active interest and maybe recommend the things that need to be done in order to respond to a particular crisis. And if we recognize we are all in this together, then that certainly has to change,” she said. As for specific suggestions, Osinbajo suggested governments encourage greater use of natural gas and plant more trees to maintain forests that can soak up carbon dioxide and prevent it from warming the atmosphere.
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The European Union is pledging to donate 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to low-income countries by mid-2022. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the pledge Wednesday in Strasbourg, France during her annual State of the European Union speech before the European Parliament. Von der Leyen said the 200 million doses the EU plans to contribute is in addition to an earlier promise of 250 million doses, which she described as “an investment in solidarity, and it is an investment in global health.” Von der Leyen said “the scale of injustice and the level of urgency is obvious” with less than 1% of all global doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in low- and middle-income countries.  “Let’s do everything possible so that it does not turn into a pandemic of the non-vaccinated,” she told the EU lawmakers. US Army requirementMeanwhile, U.S. Army officials issued a mandatory vaccination order for all uniformed personnel.  Officials said Tuesday that the Army expects all active-duty soldiers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by December 15, while imposing a deadline of June 30, 2022 for all Reserve and National Guard soldiers.The statement said soldiers who refuses the vaccine will “be first counseled by their chain of command and medical providers,” but warns that if they continue to refuse and have not been exempted from the vaccine, they will be suspended from their duties or even dismissed from the service.   Alaska situation
In the United States, the largest hospital in the remote northwest state of Alaska announced Tuesday that it has begun rationing care due to a raging outbreak of new COVID-19 infections. Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, said Tuesday it is now operating under a policy of “crisis standard of care,” meaning the hospital is unable to provide an equal quality of medical care to all patients. The hospital said in a statement that an overflow of COVID-19 patients in its emergency room has left other patients waiting in their cars for hours before they are seen by a doctor for urgent care.   Providence Alaska Medical Center joins a growing number of hospitals across the U.S. who have been forced to ration or even deny medical care to their communities as COVID-19 patients fill their halls beyond capacity. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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U.S. President Joe Biden says extreme weather caused by climate change is putting America in a “code red” situation. He’s pushing two massive bills in Congress, totaling in the trillions of dollars, to reverse the damage. From Washington, VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell looks at what’s at stake.  Produced by: Jesusemen Oni 
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President Joe Biden tried to advance his domestic spending plans in Colorado on Tuesday by warning about the dangers of climate change while highlighting how his clean-energy proposals would also create well-paying jobs.The trip to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Flatirons Campus outside Denver capped the president’s two-day swing to the West, and it offered Biden the chance to continue linking the need to pass his spending package to the urgent threat posed by climate change.”Here’s the good news: Something that is caused by humans can be solved by humans,” Biden said. He deemed the need for a clean-energy future an “economic imperative and a national security imperative” and said that there was no time to waste as the impact of climate change seems to grow more severe by the year.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 14 MB540p | 18 MB720p | 35 MB1080p | 69 MBOriginal | 222 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioBiden said that extreme weather events will cost more than $100 billion in damages this year, and he underscored his goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 while using solely carbon pollution-free power by 2035.”We can do that. We can do all of this in a way that creates good jobs, lowers costs to consumers and businesses, and makes us global leaders,” the president said.Biden spoke about “more jobs for the economy” on an earlier tour as he checked out a giant windmill blade on the ground outside the lab and got a demonstration of wind turbine technology.And, keenly aware of the delicate work under way back in Washington to craft details of his infrastructure-plus spending package, he gestured at Democratic legislators along for the tour and said, “They’re the ones getting it all through Congress.”‘A crisis with … opportunity’Biden had spent Monday in Boise, Idaho, and Sacramento, California, receiving briefings on the devastating wildfire season and viewing the damage by the Caldor Fire to communities around Lake Tahoe.”We can’t ignore the reality that these wildfires are being supercharged by climate change,” Biden said, noting that catastrophic weather doesn’t strike based on partisan ideology. “It isn’t about red or blue states. It’s about fires. Just fires.”Throughout his trip, Biden held out the wildfires across the region as an argument for his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and additional $3.5 trillion package of spending. The president said every dollar spent on “resilience” would save $6 in future costs. And he made the case that the rebuilding must go beyond simply restoring damaged systems and instead ensure communities can withstand such crises.”In the end, it’s not about red states or blue states. A drought or a fire doesn’t see a property line,” Biden said. “It doesn’t care, give a damn for what party you belong to. … Yes, we face a crisis, but we face a crisis with unprecedented opportunity.”The climate provisions in Biden’s plans include tax incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles, investments to transition the economy away from fossil fuels and toward renewable sources such as wind and solar power, and creation of a civilian climate corps.Biden has set a goal of eliminating pollution from fossil fuel in the power sector by 2035 and from the U.S. economy overall by 2050.’We have to think big’The president’s two-day Western swing comes at a critical juncture for a central plank of his legislative agenda. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working to assemble details of the infrastructure-plus plan — and how to pay for it, a concern not just for Republicans.With unified Republican opposition in Congress, Biden needs to overcome the skepticism of two key centrist Democrats in the closely divided Senate. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have expressed concerns about the size of the $3.5 trillion spending package.In California, Biden appeared to respond to those concerned about the plan’s size, saying the cost “may be” as much as $3.5 trillion and would be spread out over 10 years, a period during which the economy is expected to grow. He also insisted that when it comes to addressing climate change, “we have to think big.””Thinking small is a prescription for disaster,” he said.The 100-member Senate is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Given solid GOP opposition, Biden’s plan cannot pass the Senate without Manchin’s or Sinema’s support. The legislative push comes at a crucial time for Biden, who had seen his poll numbers tumble after the United States’ tumultuous exit from Afghanistan and a rise in COVID-19 cases due to the highly contagious delta variant. 
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A robot called Moxi is helping nurses and hospital staff focus more on patients by taking care of menial tasks. The VOA’s Deana Mitchell has the story.   
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An international group of vaccine experts have come out in opposition of providing booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines to the general population, an opinion that pushes back against increasing efforts in the United States and other nations battling a surge of new cases.In an essay published Monday in The Lancet medical journal, the experts say recent studies show the current vaccines in use around the world continue to provide strong protection against the virus despite the presence of the more contagious delta variant, especially against severe illness and hospitalization. The trend to provide booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines began after studies out of Israel suggested the two-dose Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness had significantly decreased among elderly people who were inoculated at the beginning of this year. The data prompted Israel to begin administering booster shots to people 50 years of age or older.   The authors suggest that modifying the vaccines to match the specific COVID-19 variants is a better approach than providing extra doses of the original vaccine.   The authors include two leading scientists with the World Health Organization, Ana-Maria Henao-Restrepo and Soumya Swaminathan, and Dr. Marian Gruber and Dr. Philip Krause, two key officials in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine review office who are leaving their posts before the end of the year. The New York Times recently reported that Gruber and Krause are upset over the Biden administration’s recent announcement that booster shots would be offered for some Americans beginning next month, well before the FDA had time to properly review the data. The FDA is nearing a decision on whether to recommend COVID-19 vaccines for children under 12 years of age and booster shots of the current vaccines already approved for adult Americans. Both the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month recommended a third shot of Pfizer or Moderna for some people with weakened immune systems.  FILE – World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a news conference in Geneva.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, recently implored wealthy nations to forgo COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for the rest of the year to ensure that low- and lower-middle-income countries have more access to the vaccine. Tedros had previously asked high and upper-middle income nations not to provide boosters until September.  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to announce Wednesday that the government will provide COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for citizens 50 years of age and older in time for the upcoming winter months. Putin self-isolatingMeanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin is self-isolating after several members of his entourage tested positive for COVID-19, according to a statement by the Kremlin.   President Putin has tested negative for the virus, but has decided not to  travel to Tajikistan for upcoming security conferences, the statement added. He met Monday with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and held a separate public event with several members of Russia’s Paralympic team.   Putin has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 with the domestically-developed two-dose Sputnik V vaccine.  Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
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Researchers in Australia have developed new microscopic lasers that have a range of potential medical, surgical, industrial and military uses.   Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) say “nanolasers” promise to be even more powerful than conventional technology. The technology uses laser light instead of electronics and is an approach called photonics. Nanolasers, they say, need only a small amount of energy to start shining. Instead of using mirrors that reflect light, the team has created a device that traps energy and prevents it from escaping. That power is harnessed and builds into a “strong, well-shaped” beam. Researchers say this overcomes a well-known challenge of nanolasers — “energy leakage.”   The project is a collaboration with academics at Korea University, and is published in the journal Nature Communications. The lead researcher is professor Yuri Kivshar, who says the beams would act like a torch, or flashlight, to guide a surgeon.   “Why do we need [it] smaller? Imagine you are doing [a] kind of operation inside of body [sic] and you are using optical fiber. So, optical fibers introduced inside of body will see only light, which inside there is basically nothing, so you need a kind of torch. This torch will lighten the place which you need to work on and that will be a kind of real torch effect,”  he said.Academics have said that while their nanolasers are not the smallest ever developed, they are among the most efficient and powerful.   According to the ANU study, the energy threshold at which the laser starts to work is about 50 times lower than any previously documented nanolaser.    The physicists believe the technology could have a range of applications in small devices, including hair removal, laser printing, night-time surveillance and the illumination of delicate surgery inside the body.   
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Four people are set to become the world’s first all-civilian crew to fly into Earth orbit when they blast off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Wednesday as space tourism takes its biggest leap yet.  Weather conditions are 70% favorable for Wednesday night’s scheduled launch of Americans Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Chris Sembroski and Sian Proctor from the U.S. spaceport’s historic Launch Pad 39A, which was used for the Apollo moon missions during the 1960s and 70s.  The four-member crew will fly into space aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft built by SpaceX, the privately-run company which has begun sending astronauts to the International Space Station. The fully automated Crew Dragon spacecraft will take the crew to an altitude of 575 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, just above the current positions of both the ISS and the Hubble Space Telescope.   SpaceX said the four space tourists will “conduct scientific research designed to advance human health on Earth and during future long-duration spaceflights” before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean near the Florida coast three days later.   The mission, dubbed Inspiration4, will be led by the 38-year-old Isaacman, a billionaire technology entrepreneur and founder of an online payment-processing company who is said to have paid SpaceX several million dollars for the flight. The 29-year-old Arceneaux is a childhood bone cancer survivor who has a titanium rod in her leg, which makes her the first person to fly in space with a prosthesis. Sembroski is a 42-year-old retired U.S. Air Force ballistic missile maintenance engineer who now works in the aviation industry, while 51-year-old Proctor is a geoscientist and community college professor who was a NASA astronaut finalist in 2009.  Sembroski and Proctor were selected through a nationwide search contest, while Arceneaux is flying as a representative of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where she was treated during her battle with cancer and now works as a physician’s assistant. Isaacman is using the flight to raise $100 million for St. Jude, and has pledged $100 million of his own money to the hospital. Isaacman’s flight will far exceed those of fellow billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, who each took brief non-orbital flights to the edge of space aboard their own self-financed vehicles — Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, respectively — earlier this year.      Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France Presse. 
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The Atlantic storm dubbed Nicholas has been upgraded from a tropical storm to a hurricane as it heads towards the southeastern coast of Texas. The National Hurricane Center says Nicholas is about 30 kilometers southeast of Matagorda, Texas, carrying maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers an hour, making it a Category 1 storm on the five-level scale that measures a storm’s maximum sustained wind speed and destructive potential. It is the sixth named hurricane of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season. Nicholas, which has already begun to produce heavy rains and strong winds along parts of Texas and neighboring Louisiana, is expected to make landfall along the Texas coast before daybreak Tuesday morning. Forecasters expect the hurricane to travel along a northeastern path outside of the city of Houston before moving into Louisiana during the day. Forecasters have issued hurricane watches and warnings and storm surge warnings for several communities along the Texas coast, with the likelihood of life-threatening situations such as flash flooding. Nicholas is expected to produce between 15 and 30 centimeters of rain along the region into Wednesday. The National Hurricane Center also says there is a chance of “a tornado or two” along the upper Texas and southwest Louisiana coast through Tuesday morning. The flood-prone city of Houston was swamped by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which dropped 152 centimeters of rain (60 inches) on the city over four days. “Listen to local weather alerts and heed local advisories about the right and safe thing to do, and you’ll make it through this storm just like you’ve had many other storms,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said during a news conference in Houston Monday. Forecasters say Nicholas is likely to gradually weaken over the next two or three days. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press. 
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A World Bank report released Monday suggests climate change could force 216 million people across six regions to migrate within their countries in the next 30 years, with “hotspots” emerging within the next nine years unless urgent steps are taken. 
The “Groundswell Part 2” report examines how climate change is a powerful driver of migration within a nation because of its impact on people’s livelihoods through droughts, rising sea levels, crop failures and other climate-related conditions.  
The original Groundswell climate report was published in 2018 and detailed projections and analysis for three world regions: sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. “Groundswell 2” conducted similar studies on East Asia and the Pacific, North Africa, and eastern Europe and Central Asia. 
Both studies established different scenarios to explore potential future outcomes and identify internal climate in- and out- migration hotspots in each region — that is, the areas from which people are expected to move, and the areas to which they might go. 
The study suggests that by 2050, sub-Saharan Africa could see as many as 86 million internal climate migrants; East Asia and the Pacific, 49 million; South Asia, 40 million; North Africa, 19 million; Latin America, 17 million; and eastern Europe and Central Asia, 5 million. 
To slow the factors driving climate migration and avoid these worst-case outcomes, the report recommends a series of steps world leaders can take, including reducing global emissions in line with the goals established by the Paris 2015 climate agreement, and taking steps to better understand the drivers of internal climate migration, so appropriate policies to address them can be developed. 
 Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press. 
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Britain’s chief medical officer (CMO), Professor Chris Whitty, recommended Monday that children between the ages of 12 and 15 be offered the COVID-19 vaccine, saying they would benefit from reduced disruption to their education. More than a week ago, Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, the panel that advises British health departments on immunization policies, issued a statement saying the “margin of benefit” to inoculating children of those ages was too small for them to recommend the government do so. Britain’s Chief Medical Officer for England Chris Whitty attends a remote press conference to update the nation on the COVID-19 pandemic, inside 10 Downing Street in central London on June 10, 2020.But Monday, Whitty, along with his counterparts from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, told reporters they are recommending to their respective health ministers that the age group be given a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. They have yet to decide on whether to give the students a second dose. Whitty stressed the vaccinations should be “an offer,” not a mandate, adding, “We do not think this is a panacea. This is not a silver bullet … but we think it is an important and potentially useful additional tool to help reduce the public health impacts that come through educational disruption.” Whitty said the CMOs have shared their recommendations with their ministers, and it is now up to the ministers to decide how to respond.  The United States, Israel and some European countries have rolled out vaccinations to children more broadly, putting pressure on the British government to follow suit. Britain has experienced more than 134,000 deaths from COVID-19, and a rapid start to its immunization rollout has slowed, with 81% of those over 16 receiving two vaccine doses. Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
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SpaceX is set to launch four people into space Wednesday on a three-day mission that is the first to orbit the Earth with exclusively private citizens on board, as Elon Musk’s company enters the space tourism fray.    The “Inspiration4” mission caps a summer that saw billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos cross the final frontier, on Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin spaceships respectively, a few days apart in July. The SpaceX flight has been chartered by American billionaire Jared Isaacman, the 38-year-old founder and CEO of payment processing company Shift4 Payment. He is also a seasoned pilot. The exact price he paid SpaceX hasn’t been disclosed, but it runs into the tens of millions of dollars.   The mission itself is far more ambitious in scope than the few weightless minutes Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin customers can buy. The SpaceX Crew Dragon will be flying further than the orbit of the International Space Station.   “The risk is not zero,” said Isaacman in an episode of a Netflix documentary about the mission. “You’re riding a rocket at 17,500 miles (28,000 kilometers) per hour around the Earth. In that kind of environment there’s risks.” SpaceX has already given no fewer than ten astronauts rides to the ISS on behalf of NASA — but this will be the first time taking non-professional astronauts. Lift-off is scheduled for Wednesday from 8:00 pm Eastern Time (0000 GMT) from launch pad 39A, at NASA’s Kennedy Center in Florida, from where the Apollo missions to the Moon took off. ‘Are we going to the Moon?’In addition to Isaacman, who is the mission commander, three non-public figures were selected for the voyage via a process that was first advertised at the Super Bowl in February.    Each crew member was picked to represent a pillar of the mission.   The youngest, Hayley Arceneaux, is a childhood bone cancer survivor, who represents “hope.”  She will become the first person with a prosthetic to go to space. “Are we going to the Moon?” she asked, when she was offered her spot.   “Apparently people haven’t gone there in decades. I learned that,” she laughed, in the documentary.   The 29-year-old was picked because she works as a Physician Assistant in Memphis for St. Jude’s Hospital, the charitable beneficiary of Inspiration4.   One of the donors secured the seat of “generosity”: Chris Sembroski, 42, is a former US Air Force veteran who now works in the aviation industry.  The last seat represents “prosperity” and was offered to Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old earth science professor who, in 2009, narrowly missed out on becoming a NASA astronaut. She will be only the fourth African American woman to go to space. Months of trainingThe crew’s training has lasted months and has included experiencing high G force on a centrifuge — a giant arm that rotates rapidly.    They have also gone on parabolic flights to experience weightlessness for a few seconds and completed a high altitude, snowy trek on Mount Rainier in the northwestern United States. They spent time at the SpaceX base, though the flight itself will be fully autonomous.   Over the three days of orbit, their sleep, heart rate, blood and cognitive abilities will be analyzed.  Tests will be carried out before and after the flight to study the effect of the trip on their body.  The idea is to accumulate data for future missions with private passengers.     The stated goal of the mission is to make space accessible for more people, although space travel remains for the moment only partially open to a privileged few.   “In all of human history, fewer than 600 humans have reached space,” said Isaacman.  “We are proud that our flight will help influence all those who will travel after us.” 
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New Zealand’s prime minister has announced Monday that the country’s largest city, with a population of 1.7 million, will remain in a strict lockdown in an effort to curb small outbreaks of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus.“It’s clear there is no widespread transmission of the virus in Auckland,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, “but so long as we have new cases emerging, there are risks,” she added speaking at a news conference.Auckland’s lockdown has been extended to September 21, with 33 new cases recorded Monday, following weekend reports of 23 and 20 cases.New Zealand went into a countrywide snap lockdown on August 17. Some restrictions, allowing people to go back to offices and schools, were lifted elsewhere in New Zealand last week.Israel was warned that Israeli travelers who went to the Ukrainian city of Uman for Rosh Hashanah celebrations and re-entered Israel with fake negative COVID test results will face full criminal charges.“The Israeli government views the matter of patients fraudulently entering Israel by falsifying documents very seriously,” the office of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement.Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, reported that by Friday 17,000 of the travelers had returned home and 1,600 had tested positive for COVID. Israel says 25,000 Israelis made the pilgrimage to Uman. More than150 Israelis are suspected of using fake negative coronavirus test results to return home, according to The New York Times.Britain’s Health Ministry announced Sunday that it would reverse its decision to require ‘vaccine passports’ for Britons entering nightclubs and bars.Health Minister Sajid Javid said that the idea, which faced pushback from conservative lawmakers, had been shelved but would be reconsidered if rates of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, increased substantially.Britain is expected to announce this week its plans for inoculating 12- to 15-year-old youngsters in the battle against the virus. The vaccine campaign will likely start later this month.Students apply hand sanitizer in a class at the Viqarunnisa Noon School College after the government has withdrawn restrictions on educational institutions following a decrease in the number of cases of COVID-19 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sept. 12, 2021.Elsewhere, Bangladesh reopened schools after over 500 days of closure Sunday, as the government reported that 97% of teachers throughout the country have been fully vaccinated.Children were still required to wear masks in schools and the government warned against being lax on safety measures. For now, students in each class will attend school once a week.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Monday that it has recorded 224.7 million COVID cases worldwide. The center said 5.7 million vaccines have been administered.(Some information for this report came from Reuters.) 
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Authorities in Shanghai and neighboring coastal regions canceled flights, and suspended schools, subways and trains as Typhoon Chanthu approached China after drenching Taiwan though causing little damage there. The storm, with winds of more than 170 kilometers per hour near its eye, had been downgraded from a super typhoon to a strong typhoon on Sunday evening and was expected to gradually weaken, Shanghai city authorities said in a post on their official WeChat account. But it was still expected to bring strong winds and heavy rain to coastal regions. The province of Zhejiang near Shanghai raised its emergency response to the highest level on Sunday, closing schools and suspending flights and rail services in some cities, the official Xinhua news service reported. Zhejiang also issued red alerts for flash floods in nine districts. Ningbo port, China’s second-biggest container transporting hub after Shanghai, had suspended operations since Sunday noon. The port just resumed from a weeks-long port congestion, following typhoon In-Fa in late-July and a COVID-19-related terminal closure in mid-August. In Shanghai, home to about 26 million people, all flights at the city’s larger Pudong International Airport were to be canceled from 11 a.m. local time (0300 GMT), while flights from the smaller Hongqiao airport in the west of the city were to be canceled from 3 p.m., the Shanghai government announced on WeChat. Port terminals in Shanghai regions suspended containers import and export services from Monday till further notice. The city also suspended subway services on some lines serving the city’s southern districts, and said parks, outdoor tourist attractions and playgrounds would be closed on Monday and Tuesday. Classes were also due to be suspended on Monday afternoon and Tuesday. Official forecasts called for rainfall of 250-280 millimeters in some areas of southeastern Jiangsu province, Shanghai and northeastern Zhejiang. The typhoon passed by Taiwan’s east coast over the weekend, disrupting transport and causing some power outages, but otherwise little damage.  
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Children in Bangladesh flooded back into classrooms on Sunday as schools reopened after 18 months, one of the world’s longest coronavirus shutdowns.The resumption came after UNICEF warned that prolonged school closures during the COVID-19 crisis were worsening inequities for millions of children across South Asia.In the capital Dhaka, students at one school were welcomed with flowers and sweets, and told to wear masks and sanitize their hands. Some hugged each other in excitement.”We are really excited to be back at school,” 15-year-old Muntasir Ahmed told AFP as he entered the campus.”I am hoping to physically see all of my friends and teachers, not through a laptop window today.”At the gate, school officials checked the body temperatures of students before allowing them to enter.The school’s vice principal, Dewan Tamziduzzaman, said he “didn’t expect such a big number to be turning up on the first day.”Only 41% of Bangladesh’s 169 million population have smartphones, according to the country’s telecom operators’ association, which means millions of children cannot access online classes.Even with smartphones, students in many of Bangladesh’s rural districts do not have the high-speed internet access usually required for e-learning.’Enormous setbacks’UNICEF warned in a report released Thursday that the pandemic has accentuated “alarming inequities” for more than 430 million children in the region.”School closures in South Asia have forced hundreds of millions of children and their teachers to transition to remote learning in a region with low connectivity and device affordability,” UNICEF’s regional director, George Laryea-Adjei, said in a statement.”As a result, children have suffered enormous setbacks in their learning journey.”In India, 80% of children aged 14-18 years said they learnt less than when they were in a physical classroom, according to UNICEF.Among children aged between six and 13 years, 42% said they had no access to remote learning.”Their future is at stake,” Deepu Singh, a farmer in India’s Jharkhand state, said last week of his children ages 9 and 10.The pair have not been to school in a year and have no internet access at home, Singh told AFP, adding: “I do not know English. I cannot help him (my son), even if I want to.”Students in the rest of the region were similarly impacted, UNICEF reported.In Pakistan, 23% of young children had no access to any device for remote learning.Some towns in Nepal have been broadcasting radio lessons due to the lack of internet access.”We are (in) a dangerous situation,” Nepalese schoolteacher Rajani K.C. told AFP last week.”If the pandemic continues and the academic sector loses more years, what kind of human resource will the country have in the future?” 
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Chilean scientists have announced the discovery of the first-ever southern hemisphere remains of a type of Jurassic-era “winged lizard” known as a pterosaur.Fossils of the dinosaur which lived some 160 million years ago in what is today the Atacama desert, were unearthed in 2009.They have now been confirmed to be of a rhamphorhynchine pterosaur — the first such creature to be found in Gondwana, the prehistoric supercontinent that later formed the southern hemisphere landmasses.Researcher Jhonatan Alarcon of the University of Chile said the creatures had a wingspan of up to 2 meters, a long tail, and pointed snout.”We show that the distribution of animals in this group was wider than known to date,” he added.The discovery was also “the oldest known pterosaur found in Chile,” the scientists reported in the scientific journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.      
 
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Several hundred people line up every morning, starting before dawn, on a grassy area outside Nairobi’s largest hospital hoping to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Sometimes the line moves smoothly, while on other days, the staff tells them there’s nothing available and they should come back tomorrow.Halfway around the world, at a church in Atlanta in the U.S. state of Georgia, two workers with plenty of vaccine doses waited hours Wednesday for anyone to show up, whiling away the time by listening to music from a laptop. In six hours, one person came through the door.The dramatic contrast highlights the vast disparity around the world. In richer countries, people can often pick and choose from multiple available vaccines, walk into a site near their homes and get a shot in minutes. Pop-up clinics, such as the one in Atlanta, bring vaccines into rural areas and urban neighborhoods, but it is common for them to get very few takers.In the developing world, supply is limited and uncertain. Just more than 3% of people across Africa have been fully vaccinated, and health officials and citizens often have little idea what will be available from one day to the next. More vaccines have been flowing in recent weeks, but the World Health Organization’s director in Africa said Thursday that the continent will get 25% fewer doses than anticipated by the end of the year, in part because of the rollout of booster shots in wealthier counties such as the United States.Bidian Okoth said he spent more than three hours in line at a Nairobi hospital, only to be told to go home because there weren’t enough doses. But a friend who traveled to the U.S. got a shot almost immediately after his arrival there with a vaccine of his choice, “like candy,” he said.”We’re struggling with what time in the morning we need to wake up to get the first shot. Then you hear people choosing their vaccines. That’s super, super excessive,” he said.Okoth said his uncle died from COVID-19 in June and had given up twice on getting vaccinated because of the length of the lines, even though he was eligible because of his age. The death jolted Okoth, a health advocate, into seeking a dose for himself.He stopped at one hospital so often on his way to work that a doctor “got tired of seeing me” and told Okoth he would call him when doses were available. Late last month, after a new donation of vaccines arrived from Britain, he got his shot.The disparity comes as the U.S. is moving closer to offering booster shots to large segments of the population even as it struggles to persuade Americans to get vaccinated in the first place. President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered sweeping new federal vaccine requirements for as many as 100 million Americans, including private-sector employees, as the country faces the surging COVID-19 delta variant.Riley Erickson poses for a photo at Springfield Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta on Sept. 8, 2021, where the disaster relief group CORE was offering COVID-19 vaccinations. The one person who showed up was a college student.About 53% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and the country is averaging about 145,000 new cases of COVID-19 a day, along with about 1,600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Africa has had more than 7.9 million confirmed cases, including more than 200,000 deaths, and the highly infectious delta variant recently drove a surge in new cases as well.John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters Thursday that “we have not seen enough science” to drive decisions on when to administer booster shots.”Without that, we are gambling,” he said, and urged countries to send doses to countries facing “vaccine famine” instead.In the U.S., vaccines are easy to find, but some people are hesitant to get them.At the church in northwest Atlanta, a nonprofit group offered the Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccines for free without an appointment from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. But site manager Riley Erickson spent much of the day waiting in an air-conditioned room full of empty chairs, though the group had reached out to neighbors and the church had advertised the location to its large congregation.Erickson, with the disaster relief organization CORE, said the vaccination rate in the area was low and he wasn’t surprised by the small turnout. The one person who showed up was a college student.FILE – In this Aug. 20, 2021, photo, medical workers prepare to remove the body of a coronavirus victim in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Machakos, Kenya.”When you put the effort into going into areas where there’s less interest, that’s kind of the result,” he said. His takeaway, however, was that CORE needed to spend more time in the community.Margaret Herro, CORE’s Georgia director, said the group has seen an uptick in vaccinations at its pop-up sites in recent weeks amid a COVID-19 surge fueled by the delta variant and the FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine. It also has gone to meatpacking plants and other work locations, where turnout is better, and it plans to focus more on those places, Herro said.In Nairobi, Okoth believes there should be a global commitment to equity in the administration of vaccines so everyone has a basic level of immunity as quickly as possible.”If everyone at least gets a first shot, I don’t think anyone will care if others get even six booster shots,” he said.
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At a taxi stand by a bustling market in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, traders simply cross a road or two, get a shot in the arm and rush back to their work.Until this week, vaccination centers were based mostly in hospitals in this East African country that faced a brutal COVID-19 surge earlier this year.Now, more than a dozen tented sites have been set up in busy areas to make it easier to get inoculated in Kampala as health authorities team up with the Red Cross to administer more than 120,000 doses that will expire at the end of September.“All of this we could have done earlier, but we were not assured of availability of vaccines,” said Dr. Misaki Wayengera, who leads a team of scientists advising authorities on the pandemic response, speaking of vaccination spots in downtown areas. “Right now, we are receiving more vaccines and we have to deploy them as much as possible.”In addition to the 128,000 AstraZeneca doses donated by Norway at the end of August, the United Kingdom last month donated nearly 300,000 doses. China recently donated 300,000 doses of its Sinovac vaccine, and on Monday a batch of 647,000 Moderna doses donated by the United States arrived in Uganda.Suddenly Uganda must accelerate its vaccination drive. The country has sometimes struggled with hesitancy as some question the safety of the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine, which is no longer in use in Norway because of concerns over unusual blood clots in a small number of people who received it.Africa has fully vaccinated just 3.1% of its 1.3 billion people, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Public health officials across Africa have complained loudly of vaccine inequality and what they see as hoarding in some rich countries. Soon hundreds of millions of vaccine doses will be delivered to Africa through donations of excess doses by wealthy nations or purchases by the African Union.Africa is aiming to vaccinate 60% of the continent’s population by the end of 2022, a steep target given the global demand for doses. The African Union, representing the continent’s 54 countries, has ordered 400 million Johnson & Johnson doses, but the distribution of those doses will be spread out over 12 months because there simply isn’t enough supply.A nurse administers a coronavirus vaccination at Kisenyi Health Center in downtown Kampala, Uganda, Sept. 8, 2021.COVAX, the U.N.-backed program which aims to get vaccines to the neediest people in the world, said this week that its efforts continue “to be hampered by export bans, the prioritization of bilateral deals by manufacturers and countries, ongoing challenges in scaling up production by some key producers, and delays in filing for regulatory approval.”Uganda, a country of more than 44 million people, has recorded more than 120,000 cases of COVID-19, including just over 3,000 deaths, according to official figures. The country has given 1.65 million shots, but only about 400,000 people have received two doses, according to Wayengera. Uganda’s target is to fully vaccinate up to 5 million of the most vulnerable, including nurses and teachers, as soon as possible.At the Red Cross tent in downtown Kampala, demand for the jabs was high. By late afternoon only 30 of 150 doses remained, and some who arrived later were told to come back the next day.“I came here on a sure deal, but it hasn’t happened,” said trader Sulaiman Mivule after a nurse told him he was too late for a shot that day. “I will come back tomorrow. It’s easy for me here because I work in this area.”Asked why he was so eager to get his first shot, he said, “They are telling us that there could be a third wave. If it comes when we are very vaccinated, maybe it will not hurt us so much. Prevention is better than cure.”Mivule and others who spoke to the AP said they didn’t want to go to vaccination sites at hospitals because of they expected to find crowds there.Bernard Ssembatya said he had been driving by when he spotted the Red Cross’s white tent and went in for a jab on the spur of the moment. Afterward, he texted his friends about the opportunity.“I was getting demoralized by going to health centers,” he said. “You see a lot of people there and you don’t even want to try to enter.”Yet, despite enthusiasm among many, some still walked away without getting a shot when they were told their preferred vaccine was not yet available.The one-shot J&J vaccine, still unavailable in Uganda, is frequently asked for, said Jacinta Twinomujuni, a nurse with the Kampala Capital City Authority who monitored the scene.“I tell them, of course, that we don’t have it,” she said. “And they say, ‘OK, let’s wait for it.’” 
 
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