Наука

Asian countries with some of the world’s largest yearly tropical forest losses have either not joined a new global pact to halt forest loss by the end of the decade or sparked doubts about their commitment after signing up.   

More than 120 countries joined the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use on November 2 at the United Nations’ COP26 climate conference in Scotland.   

The non-binding agreement commits them to “working collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation” — a major cause of global warming — by 2030, with some $19 billion in public and private financing in the works to help developing countries follow through. 

Collectively, Southeast Asia hosts nearly 15% of the world’s tropical forests, prized by climate activists for the volumes of world-warming carbon they can lock up. But most countries in the region have yet to join the COP26 pact, including Laos and Malaysia; both ranked among the top 10 countries in the world for primary tropical forest loss last year, according to the World Resources Institute, a U.S. research group. Cambodia, 11th on WRI’s list, has also not signed up. 

Malaysia signals 

After drawing rebuke from local opposition parties and rights groups for its absence from the pledge, Malaysia announced Friday it will be joining the deal, but did not say when.   

After the declaration was announced without Malaysia on November 3, a local lawmaker, Charles Santiago, called the country’s absence a “tragedy” in a Twitter post. Speaking with VOA, he said it was crucial that the government now make good on its promise to sign up, blaming the country’s mounting forest losses for amplifying the damage from recent floods and robbing endangered wildlife of their habitat.

Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia are the world’s two largest producers of palm oil, a cash crop that takes up vast tracts of land, often over cleared forest and peatland, another rich carbon sink. WRI data show they lost a combined 343,000 hectares in 2020, an area more than twice the size of greater London.   

Santiago said Malaysia’s powerful business interests were all but sure to block the country from meeting the declaration’s 2030 target, assuming it does join. But he argued that Malaysia should sign up regardless to give the country something to aim for and to tap into the international financing that could unlock. 

“As a country, we have to make a decision … whether we should continue with the way we are doing it or [whether] we need to really put some control over deforestation, especially in dealing with oil palm [and] construction,” he said. 

Indonesia wavers 

Environmental groups fear business interests may end up undermining the declaration in Indonesia as well.   

The sprawling archipelago also features on WRI’s top-10 list and cleared more primary tropical forest in 2020 than Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia combined.   

President Joko Widodo signed the country up to the COP26 pact in Glasgow on November 2. A day later, though, Indonesia’s environment minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, called a commitment to zero deforestation by 2030 “inappropriate and unfair,” casting doubt on the nation’s intentions to abide by the deal. 

“Forcing Indonesia to zero deforestation in 2030 is clearly inappropriate and unfair,” she said in a Facebook post.   

“The massive development of President Jokowi’s era must not stop in the name of carbon emissions or in the name of deforestation,” she added, referring to the president by his common nickname.   

In a statement the next day, conservation group Greenpeace called the minister’s remarks “profoundly disappointing.”   

“For Indonesia to have a minister for environment who supports large-scale developments with clear potential for environmental destruction is deplorable. Rather than ensuring we protect the planet for future generations, this is doing the opposite,” the head of the group’s Indonesian forest campaign, Kiki Taufik, said. 

On Friday, though, a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told The Guardian newspaper that Indonesia’s stated goal of net zero forest loss by 2030 — replacing yearly deforestation with just as much or more new forest — was actually consistent with the COP26 pact. 

Mahendra Siregar, Indonesia’s deputy foreign minister, explained the country’s net zero forest loss goal in statement Thursday.   

Mixed messages   

Arief Wijaya, a senior manager for WRI Indonesia, told VOA that all the back and forth was creating some confusion about what the declaration actually commits countries to.   

He said the Long-Term Climate Strategy that Indonesia submitted to the United Nations in July commits the country not to net zero forest loss, but to net zero emission from forest and land use by 2030. That will let it clear more forest and peatland than it replaces or restores by the end of the decade, so long as what it replaces and restores captures at least as much carbon as what it gives off.   

Arief said that will require Indonesia to make sharp cuts to its forest loss rates over the coming years and at least points the country “in the direction of the COP26 pledge” and puts it on a “trajectory toward zero deforestation.” 

Indonesia and Malaysia have been bringing their annual forest losses down for the past few years. That’s not the case for all of Southeast Asia. Cambodia’s losses stayed roughly steady in 2020 after rising the year before. Losses in Laos have been rising for the past two years and were at their highest yet in 2020 since WRI started keeping track in 2001. 

With research suggesting that Southeast Asia’s tropical forests on the whole are a major carbon source, Arief added, every country had a role to play. 

“If we believe that the continental Southeast Asia … is actually a tropical forest belt, and it’s important for the global climate, temperature and so forth, then any country should actually commit and contribute to reduce deforestation and to manage their forests sustainably,” he said.   

Laos’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment did not reply to VOA’s requests for comment. 
…

The World Food Program says it is seeking $65 million to ease food insecurity in Zimbabwe. The U.N. agency says its assessment shows that more than 5 million people in the southern African nation are looking at food shortages in coming months. 

Belinda Popovska, the WFP Zimbabwe spokeswoman, told VOA on Monday that the U.N. agency had started looking for funds to import food for those in need. 

“The latest 2021 rural Zimbabwe vulnerability assessment committee rural report indicates that 2.9 million people in rural areas – that’s 27% of rural households – continue to be food insecure during the peak lean season between January and March 2022. In urban areas up to 2.4 million people are expected to be food insecure according to the latest 2021 urban livelihoods assessment,” Popovska said.

The government says Zimbabwe experienced a bumper harvest this year, but the lack of food in rural areas indicates the harvest was in fact disappointing.  

Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa says Zimbabwe’s perennial food shortages will end with more production in the farms in the coming 2021/2022 season, which is expected to start anytime now.  

She says the government will make sure farmers have the supplies and money they need to meet national requirements for both human consumption and industrial use.   

“The strategy will result in more area being put to crop production as evidenced by the proposed increases of the following crops: maize, sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, soybeans and tobacco. The financing of the summer cropping and livestock will be through the private and public sector as well as development partners,” Mutsvangwa said.

Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of the region, has for years been facing food shortages, forcing it to rely on humanitarian organizations such as World Vision, USAID and the WFP to feed the people.  

The government blames the problems on recurring droughts, but its critics point to a chaotic land reform program which started in 2000 and displaced experienced white farmers from their land.   
…

More than 100,000 climate-action activists from across the world gathered in Glasgow Saturday to protest the agreements and promises made so far at the COP26 climate talks.

According to protesters, the new pledges made during the summit — to cut carbon and methane emissions, end deforestation, phase out coal and provide more financing for poorer countries most vulnerable to extreme weather — are just “eye candy,” falling far short of what’s needed to curb global warming. 

 

Teenage activist Greta Thunberg has described the two-week summit as more “blah blah blah” and called it a “failure.” She told clamorous youth protesters outside the venue that the conference has turned into “a global North Greenwash Festival.”  

Others worry, though, that in the rush to make climate-action pledges, Western governments may be going too fast with decarbonizing and risk losing the support of their own populations by failing to take into account the economic impact of the monumental shifts being envisaged.

Opinion polls suggest that across the globe, overwhelming majorities of people see climate change as an emergency requiring dramatic action. But some polls in recent weeks have also suggested that when people are told what the costs might be for them to help curb global warming, they are reluctant to shoulder the financial burden.

A survey in Britain published Sunday suggested that less than half of the British population are willing to pay thousands of pounds to make their homes greener to help meet net-zero emission goals outlined by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Those polled were asked their opinions on green policies to slash emissions before and after hearing about the estimated upfront costs to insulate their homes and switch from natural gas boilers for heating to heat pumps. In the survey conducted for British think tank Onward by pollster J.L. Partners, 50% backed the idea of better insulation for homes, double glazing and switching to heat pumps. But when they were provided with the estimated cost of $11,000 per household, support trailed away, with just 26% agreeing.

“Millions of voters, broadly supportive of the ‘cleaner earth’ agenda, are wondering how much of the burden of transitioning to a low-carbon, low-emission economy will fall on them, when they’re already struggling to make ends meet,” economist and newspaper columnist Liam Halligan wrote Monday in The Telegraph. 

How to green the planet and fund the transition away from fossil fuel dependency to renewable, sustainable energy, and how to finance projects to make countries more resilient to extreme weather, have been key themes at the summit. The discussion of costs and how to share them between governments (via taxation), consumers, households and the private sector have also been featured.

Last week, major banks, investors and insurers pledged trillions in green funding in a coordinated commitment to incorporate carbon emissions into their investment and lending decisions.

The United Nations’ Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, made up of more than 450 financial institutions across 45 countries and managing assets valued at $130 trillion, have committed to its program to cut carbon emissions and fund investments needed for new greener technologies.

Unveiled last week by U.N. climate envoy Mark Carney, the funding can take the form of bank loans and investments by venture capitalists, private-equity firms, mutual funds, endowments and other big investors that buy stocks and bonds. They would still earn profits while shifting funds toward investments that help reduce carbon emissions.

“These seemingly arcane but essential changes to the plumbing of finance can move and are moving climate changes from the fringes to the forefront and transforming the financial system in the process,” said Carney, a former head of the central banks of England and Canada. “The architecture of the global financial system has been transformed to deliver net zero,” Carney said.

“The gap between what governments have and what the world needs is large,” in order to finance a global energy transition and reach the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in Glasgow after the announcement of the finance measures. “And the private sector needs to play a bigger role.”

Climate activists have decried the pledge, saying it is just another big promise that won’t be observed.

“Global leaders can no longer trust financial institutions to regulate themselves,” Veronica Oakeshott of Global Witness, an international nongovernmental organization, said in a statement.

Some industry analysts and economists say the private sector plans are far from concrete, and significant problems remain on how to measure the carbon footprint of investment portfolios and align those measurements across international financial markets. Who will verify the accuracy of what banks and investors report?

Others worry that financial firms are there to maximize profits for clients and shareholders and risk losing customers or breaching their fiduciary obligations if they fail to maintain good returns. It remains unclear at this stage how profitable green investments will be.

There are also worries that the fossil fuel sector will see further divestments by lenders and investors eager to reduce their carbon footprint, which will boost energy costs for consumers as global demand for natural gas and oil continues to rise. Fossil fuel investments are already insufficient to meet future energy demands.

That, in turn, has contributed to the current global energy crunch and record-high energy prices for households and businesses, say industry commentators. 
…

Former U.S. President Barack Obama told the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on Monday that most nations failed to meet their commitments made in the 2015 Paris Climate Conference agreement and the world is nowhere near where it needs to be in confronting climate change.

Speaking during the second full week of the talks — known as COP26 — Obama said that while the Paris conference and subsequent agreement showed what is possible and created a framework from which to address the challenges of the climate crisis, most nations failed to be as ambitious as they needed to be.

“The escalation, the ratcheting up of ambition that we anticipated in Paris six years ago has not been uniformly realized,” Obama said. He called it “particularly discouraging” that the leaders of China and Russia — two of the largest emitters — declined to even attend the conference, and both nations have demonstrated what he said “appears to be a dangerous lack of urgency” on climate change.

China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter. Its president, Xi Jinping, last week called on other nations to “step up cooperation” and act on climate targets. Xi, however, offered no new commitments. The comments came in a statement to the conference.

Obama said advanced economies like the United States and Europe need to be leading on this issue, but so do China, Russia and India. He said, “We can’t afford anybody on the sidelines.”

Addressing young people, Obama encouraged them to “vote like your life depends on it, because it does.” Obama said he understood their cynicism about politics, but that governments around the world will not act unless they feel pressure from voters.

The 26th U.N. climate conference — or Conference of the Parties, or COP — is Obama’s first since he helped deliver the 2015 Paris climate accord, when nations committed to cutting fossil fuel and agricultural emissions fast enough to keep the Earth’s warming below catastrophic levels.

Climate summits since then have been less conclusive, especially as the U.S. under President Donald Trump dropped out of the Paris accord. President Joe Biden has since rejoined. Last week, Biden announced ambitious change commitments as he attended the Glasgow conference. The U.S. is the second biggest greenhouse gas emitter after China.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse. 

 
…

At least 89 people, including 17 children, have tested positive for the Zika virus in a surge of cases in the Indian city of Kanpur, its health department said on Monday.

First discovered in 1947, the mosquito-borne virus Zika virus reached epidemic proportions in Brazil in 2015, when thousands of babies were born with microcephaly, a disorder that causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains.

“There has been a surge in cases of the Zika virus and the health department has formed several teams to contain the spread,” Dr. Nepal Singh, chief medical officer of Kanpur district in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, told Reuters.

“There is one woman who is pregnant, and we are paying special attention towards her.”

Cases have been reported in several Indian states in recent years, though Amit Mohan Prasad, Uttar Pradesh’s top government bureaucrat for health and family welfare, told Reuters this was the first outbreak in the state.

The first Zika case in the industrial city of Kanpur was detected on Oct. 23 and the number of cases has increased over the past week.

“People are testing positive because we are doing very aggressive contact tracing,” said Prasad. Authorities were increasing their surveillance of the outbreak and eliminating breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that transmit the virus, Singh said.
…

Wang Yaping has become the first Chinese woman to conduct a spacewalk as part of a six-month mission to the country’s space station.  

Wang and fellow astronaut Zhai Zhigang left the station’s main module on Sunday evening, spending more than six hours outside installing equipment and carrying out tests alongside the station’s robotic service arm, according to the China Manned Space agency.  

The third member of the crew, Ye Guangfu, assisted from inside the station, CMS said on its website.  

Wang, 41, and Zhai, 55, had both traveled to China’s now-retired experimental space stations, and Zhai conducted China’s first spacewalk 13 years ago.  

The three are the second crew on the permanent station, and the mission that began with their arrival Oct. 16 is scheduled to be the longest stretch of time in space yet for Chinese astronauts.  

The Tianhe module of the station will be connected next year to two more sections named Mengtian and Wentian. The completed station will weigh about 66 tons, much smaller than the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and weighs around 450 tons. 

Three spacewalks are planned to install equipment in preparation for the station’s expansion, while the crew will also assess living conditions in the Tianhe module and conduct experiments in space medicine and other fields.      

China’s military-run space program plans to send multiple crews to the station over the next two years to make it fully functional. 
…

A study by Monash University researchers in Australia has found that moderate drinking of alcohol is associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and a lowering of death from all causes — when compared to zero alcohol consumption.

More than 18,000 people over the age of 70 in the United States and Australia took part in the research. It is the first study to investigate the heart health implications of drinking alcohol. 

It found that the consumption of modest amounts of alcohol was associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. Robyn Woods is an associate professor in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University.    

“Taking or consuming five to ten alcoholic beverages a week, which is quite modest gave better outcomes than those who were completely teetotal. It seemed to be associated with a reduced cardiovascular disease risk and also of all-cause mortality,” Woods said.

Researchers have said their findings should be interpreted with caution because participants in the study were healthy with no previous heart or other severe diseases.They could also have been more physically and socially active than the wider ageing population.  

Exactly how modest alcohol consumption can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and other causes of death is unknown.   

Associate professor Woods says more research is needed. 

“There is some evidence that modest alcohol intake has vascular properties that could be beneficial. But there is also the potential for social benefits. So, you know, consuming alcohol with friends, family, etcetera may well have a benefit,” Woods said.

The Monash University, Melbourne, research is published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.   

Guidelines from the Australian Drug and Alcohol Foundation, a leading public health organization, advise that both men and women should consumer no more than 10 standard drinks per week. A standard drink in Australia contains 10 grams of alcohol. 
…

Medically assisted dying is now legal in New Zealand. The End of Life Choice Act has come into effect one year after almost two-thirds of New Zealanders voted in favor of it. 

Supporters believe the assisted dying laws will give New Zealanders who are “suffering terribly at the end of their lives” choice, compassion and dignity.    

To be eligible, a person must have a terminal illness that is likely to end their life within six months. They must also be able to make an informed decision.  

The legislation came into force Sunday, a year after a binding referendum.   

Brooke van Velden is the deputy leader of the small ACT New Zealand party, which promoted the voluntary euthanasia law. 

She told Radio New Zealand the measures will benefit the South Pacific country of 5 million people.  

“This weekend New Zealand became a kinder, more compassionate and humane society for allowing people who are struggling and suffering in those last few days with their terminal illness choice and compassion on how and when they go,” Velden said.

However, some critics insist that patients with chronic conditions might feel obliged to use euthanasia to avoid being a burden on their families.  

They also believe that “inadequate palliative care services” need to be better resourced, so that terminally ill patients receive better care.  

Some senior Church leaders have said that while they oppose the “deliberate taking of human life,” they would still offer care and advice to those who choose “assisted dying” under the new laws. 

The government has appointed three experts, including a medical ethicist, to monitor the legislation. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she voted “yes” in the referendum last year on voluntary euthanasia and the legalization of recreational cannabis. 

New Zealand joins a small group of countries, including the Netherlands and Canada, which allow euthanasia.  
…

Workplace mandates requiring vaccination against COVID-19 continue to be controversial in the U.S. The Biden administration is expected to respond this week to a recent federal court decision to temporarily halt federal vaccine mandate rules for large employers. Michelle Quinn reports.
…

The U.N.’s food agency said Monday the number of people on the edge of famine in 43 countries had risen to 45 million, as acute hunger spikes around the world. 

The jump from 42 million people earlier in the year was largely down to a food security assessment that found another 3 million people facing famine in Afghanistan, the World Food Program (WFP) said.    

“Tens of millions of people are staring into an abyss. We’ve got conflict, climate change and COVID-19 driving up the numbers of the acutely hungry,” WFP Executive Director David Beasley was quoted as saying.   

“And the latest data show there are now more than 45 million people marching towards the brink of starvation,” he said after a trip to Afghanistan, where WFP is upping support for almost 23 million people.   

“Fuel costs are up, food prices are soaring, fertilizer is more expensive, and all of this feeds into new crises like the one unfolding now in Afghanistan, as well as long-standing emergencies like Yemen and Syria,” he added.    

WFP said the cost of averting famine globally now stands at $7 billion, up from $6.6 billion earlier in the year, but warned that traditional funding streams were overstretched.    

Families facing acute food insecurity are being “forced to make devastating choices,” marrying off children early, pulling them out of school or feeding them locusts, wild leaves or cactus.    

“Meanwhile, media reports from Afghanistan point to families reportedly being forced to sell their children in a desperate attempt to survive,” it said.  

Multiple droughts in Afghanistan were combining with an economic meltdown to push families to the edge, while some 12.4 million people in Syria do not know where their next meal will come from — more than any time during the decade-long conflict, it said. 

Increases in acute hunger are also being seen in Ethiopia, Haiti, Somalia, Angola, Kenya and Burundi, the Rome-based agency said. 
…

The Taliban-run Afghan public health ministry announced Sunday the start of a four-day nationwide polio vaccination campaign aimed at inoculating children younger than 5.

For the past three years before taking control of Afghanistan, the Taliban had barred U.N.-organized vaccination teams from doing door-to-door campaigns in parts of the country under their control. The group apparently was suspicious the team members could be spies for the previous government or the West.

Because of the ban and ongoing fighting, some 3.3 million children over the past three years have not been vaccinated.

“Without any doubt polio is a disease that without treatment will either kill our children or cause them with permanent disability, so in this case the only way is to implement the vaccination,” said Dr. Qalandar Ebad, the Taliban’s acting public health minister.

Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan are the only countries in the world where polio remains endemic, and the disease can cause partial paralysis in children. Since 2010, the country has been carrying out regular inoculation campaigns in which workers go door to door, giving the vaccine to children. Most of the workers are women, since they can get better access to mothers and children.

The four-day campaign will start Monday and take place countrywide, Ebad said. The estimated target population is Afghanistan’s 10 million children younger than 5, including the more than 3.3 million who could not be reached since 2018.

“Vaccination of [children] less than five years of age in the country during the national immunization days is a gigantic task. It is not possible for the ministry of public health alone to complete this task successfully, so we need the support of all lined departments,” said Nek Wali Shah Momin, a health ministry official in the polio eradication department.

The Taliban’s reported endorsement of the campaign appeared aimed at showing the international community they are willing to cooperate with international agencies. The longtime militant insurgent force has been trying to win the world’s recognition of its new government and reopen the door for international aid to rescue the crumbling economy.

The World Health Organization and the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF in a joint statement last month said they welcomed the decision by the Taliban leadership supporting the resumption of house-to-house polio vaccinations across the country.

Large sections of the country have been out of reach for vaccinations in recent years. In parts of the south, particularly, the ban by the Taliban was in effect. In other areas, door-to-door campaigns were impossible because of fighting between the government and insurgents, or because of fears of kidnappings or roadside bombs. In some places, hardline clerics spoke out against vaccinations, calling them un-Islamic or claiming they were part of a Western plot. 
…

High wind off the Florida coast have prompted SpaceX to delay the return of four space station astronauts who have been in orbit since spring.

The U.S., French and Japanese astronauts were supposed to leave the International Space Station on Sunday, with their capsule splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday morning. But with gusts exceeding safety limits, SpaceX bumped the departure to Monday afternoon, with a nighttime return to conclude their six-month mission. 

The good news is that their trip home will now last eight hours, less than half as long as before. The toilet in their capsule is broken, and so the four will need to rely on diapers while flying home. 

SpaceX still is aiming for a Wednesday night launch, at the earliest, of their replacements. This flight also has been delayed by bad weather, as well as an astronaut’s undisclosed medical issue. The issue, described as minor, should be resolved by launch time, officials said. 

Last week, SpaceX and NASA flipped the order of the launch and landing because of the deteriorating weather and the looming deadline to get the capsule back from the space station. SpaceX capsules are certified for a maximum 210 days in orbit, and the one there now is approaching 200 days. 
…

Poland’s Health Ministry issued instructions Sunday to doctors confirming that it is legal to terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s health or life is in danger, a directive that comes amid apparent confusion over a new restriction to the country’s abortion law. 

The document addressed to obstetricians comes in reaction to the hospital death of a 30-year-old mother whose pregnancy was in its 22nd week. The woman died in September but her death became widely known this month. Doctors at the hospital in Pszczyna, in southern Poland, held off terminating her pregnancy despite the fact that her fetus lacked enough amniotic fluid to survive, her family and a lawyer say.

The doctors have been suspended and prosecutors are investigating. 

Angered Poles held massive nationwide protests over the weekend, blaming the woman’s death on Poland’s restrictive abortion law. Women’s rights activists say it has a chilling effect on doctors in this predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

The ministry stressed it is in line with the law to terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s health is in danger, even more so in case of threat to her life. It included guidance in case of premature loss of the amniotic fluid.

“It should be clearly stressed that doctors must not be afraid to take evident decisions. stemming from their experience and the available medical knowledge,” the ministry said.

Until a year ago, women in Poland could have abortions in three cases: if the pregnancy resulted from a crime like rape, if the woman’s health or life was at risk, or in the case of irreparable defects of the fetus. That last possibility was eliminated a year ago, when the Constitutional Tribunal ruled it went against Poland’s law. 
…

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said Sunday it has recorded 249.5 million global COVID cases and more than 5 million deaths. The center said 7.2 billion COVID vaccines have been administered.

A northern California town’s city council has declared itself a “constitutional republic” as a way to express its displeasure with what it considers state and federal overreach in the issuing of mandates, such as for mask wearing, designed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Legal experts say Oroville’s city council’s move, however, does not allow Oroville to opt out of the mandates.

The fully vaccinated in Australia’s New South Wales state are on the verge of having a number of COVID restrictions eased Monday, including elimination of limits on the number of home visitors.

Health professionals in India are bracing for a surge in coronavirus cases following Diwali, the annual festival of lights, that began Thursday.

Dr. Prakash Singh, a virologist, told The New York Times, “For this Diwali, people almost forgot the virus is still here and killing people.”

Johns Hopkins reports that India has 34.4 million COVID infections, but public health experts say the tally is likely undercounted. Only the United States has more COVID cases, with 46.5 million.

Fire swept through a newly built hospital ward for coronavirus patients in western India Saturday, killing at least 10 coronavirus patients.

Officials said about two dozen patients were in the intensive care unit of the hospital in the western city of Ahmednagar when the fire broke out.

It was the latest in a string of deadly fires at COVID-19 hospital wards in India since the country’s underfunded public health care system was overwhelmed by a coronavirus surge between April and May.

Maharashtra state’s chief minister, Uddhav Thackeray, ordered an investigation into Saturday’s fire and the safety conditions at the hospital.

Sixteen COVID-19 patients and two nurses were killed in May in a fire at a hospital in India’s Gujarat state. In April, about 35 patients were killed in separate fires at two health facilities in Mumbai.

In Russia on Saturday, the government’s coronavirus task force reported 41,335 new infections over a 24-hour period, the country’s highest one-day total since the beginning of the pandemic. It also reported 1,188 coronavirus-related deaths.

Officials say Russia’s low vaccination rate is largely to blame for a surge in cases that began in mid-September. Less than 40% of the country’s 146 million people are fully vaccinated.

A record high number of coronavirus-related deaths were reported in Ukraine on Saturday. The health ministry reported 793 deaths over the previous 24 hours, topping the country’s previous high of 734 on Oct. 26.

Unvaccinated people in Greece, about 40% of the country’s population, are facing more stringent government restrictions as the country grapples with a surge in coronavirus infections.

The restrictions, imposed on Saturday, require the unvaccinated to show proof of a negative test to enter indoor public facilities such as banks, government buildings and most shops.

They must also show proof in order to eat at outdoor restaurants and cafes. 

 

 
…

Jesse Readlynn, a father of two from Rochester, New York, breathed a huge sigh of relief this week. “My children getting coronavirus was one of my biggest fears,” he told VOA.“Finally, this worry and uncertainty I’ve been living with can begin to relax.”

Readlynn’s relief comes after last week’s U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendation that children 5-11 years old be vaccinated with a pediatric version of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine. The guidance makes 28 million American children eligible for a vaccine that has proved overwhelmingly effective in slowing the spread of coronavirus.

For many parents like Readlynn, the development is highly welcome news. When his 7-year-old receives his first dose of the vaccine next week, and his 4-year-old receives a version of the vaccine in a clinical study, Readlynn is hopeful life can return closer to what it was in the years before the coronavirus pandemic.

“Playdates, having real birthday parties, eating inside restaurants, going to museums,” he listed as things he’s looking forward to doing once his children are vaccinated.“Visiting family we have to fly to and just exploring the big, wide, exciting world again! It’s going to bring a normalcy to our lives that we haven’t had in two years.”

Uncertainty for some

According to an October survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly three in 10 parents (27%) are eager to get a vaccine for their child, 5-11 years old. A slightly higher number (30%) said they will definitely not get the vaccine for their child, while a full third of respondents said they will wait a while to see how the vaccine is working.

“It’s honestly the most difficult decision I’ve had to make for my child,” said Kerri Paino of Hauppauge, New York, mother of a 7-year-old now eligible for the vaccine and a 4-year-old who is not.

Like so many parents over the last two years, Paino said she and her husband, both vaccinated, have had to make seemingly constant and uncomfortable decisions about what is and isn’t safe for their unvaccinated children. Everything from an afternoon trip to the mall to a full family vacation caused uncertainty and second-guessing.

“We took a trip to Mexico this summer and we had to take a COVID test to get back home,” Paino said. “My 7-year-old daughter wailed so loud in the lobby, it was embarrassing. But I also feel bad because this all must be so uncomfortable and strange for her. I just want it to be over.”

Still, Paino said she is worried about the long-term effects of the vaccine and isn’t ready for her daughter to get hers yet.

“We’re still on the fence,” she said. “I don’t want to make a decision that could negatively affect her future without her being able to make a conscious choice along with me.”

 

Other parents trust the safety of the vaccine but are still in no hurry to have their children vaccinated. As the number of coronavirus cases drops throughout the country, many don’t feel the same urgency they might have felt earlier in the year.

Hillary Sardinas of Albany, California, said her eldest child is eligible for the vaccine. While she’s confident in the science behind the vaccine, she doesn’t feel pressured to have her son get vaccinated immediately.

“Maybe it’s a luxury, but we feel comfortable with the protocols at his school and live in an area with high vaccination rates,” Sardinas told VOA. “My son has a fear of shots, and so I thought knowing his friends got it, and waiting to do it in our pediatrician’s office where he’ll feel more comfortable, is a good thing for him.”

While Sardinas is sure she’ll have her son get the vaccine before the end of the year, Paino isn’t nearly as confident.

“I feel like the debate around the vaccine has become so political,” she said, “and it has made me lose trust in where I’m getting my information from. I want to trust science, but I feel like I don’t know what the truth is. You have doctors arguing both sides.”

To trust or not to trust

“The only ‘experts’ arguing against vaccines right now are rogue doctors, rogue scientists, and conspiracy theorists,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and one of the most notable vaccine experts in the United States.

COVID-19 cases have been less widespread among children than adults, though the number of children and adolescents admitted to the hospital with the virus increased nearly fivefold this summer as the delta variant surged.

In the U.S., more than 8,300 children aged 5-11 have been hospitalized with serious illness caused by the coronavirus. An additional 5,200 children and teens have developed multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a condition linked to COVID-19 that often leads to hospitalization.

The CDC trial found the Pfizer-BioNTech pediatric vaccine is effective in protecting children from the worst effects of the disease.

“The science on this is very clear,” Offit said. “The CDC-approved vaccine is effective in keeping children safe from coronavirus.”

Despite consensus among scientists, nearly one in three parents remain opposed to having their child receive the vaccine.

“I’m not against vaccinations,” said Janelle Witten of Gastonia, North Carolina. Witten has a son who is eligible for the pediatric vaccine, and she also is pregnant. “But I’m not willing to risk the health of my children on a vaccine that doesn’t have data on its long-term health effects.”

Alberto Perez of Blairsville, Georgia, has similar concerns for his children.

“If this was a virus killing 3% to 5% of children, I would have my kids get the vaccine immediately,” he said, “but that’s not what this is. I don’t feel coronavirus is as big a threat as the unknown odds of long-term side effects caused by the vaccine — fertility issues, for example.”

The concern over future fertility issues was repeated by several parents interviewed, but Offit said it should not be a reason for concern.

“It’s a false notion that science can disprove,” Offit said. “Clinical trials included pregnant women with no issue. This is an example of those against the vaccine throwing things against a wall to see what will make people scared. Because when people are scared it’s difficult to unscare them.”

Offit said those who get the vaccine should feel confident that long-term side effects will not surface.

“When you get a vaccine, you have what is called ‘immune response’ almost immediately,” he said. “It doesn’t crop up years from now, it peaks within 7-10 days. That’s the response, and we know that because we’ve seen how other similar vaccines work.”

Some parents will likely wait additional weeks or months, making sure their kids’ classmates are vaccinated without issue, before letting their own children get the COVID-19 vaccine.

However, Jesse Readlynn said he’s done waiting.

“The chance of a child getting seriously sick from coronavirus is low,” he acknowledged. “But they’re still much more likely to get sick from COVID than from the vaccine. I’m hopeful this turns out to be the light at the end of the tunnel for my children as we exit this uncertainty and get back to a normal life.” 
…

When a rotten egg smell rises from the mangrove swamps of southeast Mexico, something is going well. It means that this key coastal habitat for blunting hurricane impacts has recovered and is capturing carbon dioxide — the main ingredient of global warming.

While world leaders seek ways to stop the climate crisis at a United Nations conference in Scotland this month, one front in the battle to save the planet’s mangroves is thousands of kilometers away on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Decades ago, mangroves lined these shores, but today there are only thin green bands of trees beside the sea, interrupted by urbanized areas and reddish segments killed by too much salt and by dead branches poking from the water.

A few dozen fishermen and women villagers have made building on what’s left of the mangroves part of their lives. Their work is supported by academics and donations to environmental groups, and government funds help train villagers to organize their efforts. 

The first time they came to the swamp for seasonal restoration work was more than a decade ago with Jorge Alfredo Herrera, a researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the Mexican Polytechnic Institute in Yucatan. He told them the mangroves needed a network of interlaced canals where fresh and salt water would mingle.

To dig them was a hard work and paid only $4 a day. Men from Chelem, a fishing village of Progreso, turned down the job but a group of women took it on, believing they could accomplish a lot with little money.

Recently, after an intense rainy season, the women worked to finish the second part of the restoration process: planting young mangroves in a swamp near this port city. Under the sun, they chuckled, remembering the time they encountered a crocodile and barely managed to run away.

Then they placed 20-inch mangrove seedlings into mounds of mud held together by mesh, creating tiny islands about a yard (meter) square.

“The happiest day is when our plants take,” said 41-year-old Keila Vázquez, leader of the women who now are paid $15 a day and take pride in putting their “grain of sand” into the planet’s well-being. “They are like our children.”

GLOBAL THREAT TO MANGROVES

This mangrove restoration effort is similar to others around the globe, as scientists and community groups increasingly recognize the need to protect and bring back the forests to store carbon and buffer coastlines from climate-driven extreme weather, including more intense hurricanes and storm surges. Other restorations are underway in Indonesia, which contains the world’s largest tracts of mangrove habitat, Colombia and elsewhere.

“Mangroves represent a very important ecosystem to fight climate change,” said Octavio Aburto, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California.

While the tropical trees only grow on less than 1% of the Earth’s land, he said, “on a per-hectare basis, mangroves are the ecosystem that sequesters the most carbon … They can bury around five times more carbon in the sediment than a tropical rain forest.”

Yet around the globe, mangroves are threatened.

From 1980 to 2005, 20% to 35% of the world’s mangrove forests were lost, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

From 2000 to 2016, the rate of loss declined as governments and environmental groups spotlighted the problem, but destruction continued — and about 2% of the world’s remaining mangrove forests disappeared, according to NASA satellite imagery.

In Mexico, as in much of the world, the largest threat to mangroves is development. The region near Cancun lost most of its historic mangroves to highways and hotels starting in the 1980s.

Tracts of mangroves on the country’s southern Pacific coast also have been cleared to make room for shrimp farming, while oil exploration and drilling in shallow waters off the Gulf of Mexico threatens mangroves there, said Aburto.

Mexico began to protect some of its mangroves only after the excessive tourism development of the 1980s. And although Mexico took steps to establish a climate action plan in 1998 and was one of the first developing countries to make voluntary commitments under the Paris Climate Accord, its commitment to the environment began to backslide in 2015, said Julia Carabias, a professor on the science faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

In the past six years, Mexico has cut resources for environmental conservation by 60%, according to Carabias.

And that, combined with increasing government support of fossil fuel energy and ongoing infrastructure and tourist projects in the region, is sounding alarms.

Despite the country’s monitoring system, local researchers say that for every hectare (2.5 acres) of mangrove restored in southeast Mexico, 10 hectares are degraded or lost.

EFFORTS TO SAVE SWAMPS

The halting efforts in Mexico to protect and restore mangroves, even as more are lost, mirror situations elsewhere. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency estimated in 2007 that 40% of Indonesia’s mangroves had been cut down for aquaculture projects and coastal development in the previous three decades.

But there have been restoration efforts as well.

In 2020, the Indonesia government set an ambitious target of planting mangroves on 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of degrading coastline by 2024. Key ministries are involved in restoration efforts that include community outreach and education.

Yet there have been some setbacks. Precise mapping and data on mangroves is hard to come by, making it difficult for agencies to know where to concentrate. Newly planted mangroves have been swept out to sea by strong tides and waves. Community outreach and education have been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Mexico, successes exist, even if they are slow in coming.

Manuel González, a 57-year-old fisherman known as Bechá, proudly shows off recovering mangroves in the seaside community of Dzilam de Bravo, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) east of Progreso. He walks through mud, avoiding the interlaced mangrove roots that burrow into it. Some trees are already 30 feet (9 meters) tall.

In 2002, Hurricane Isidoro devastated this area, but after a decade of work, 297 acres have been restored. The fisherman says that now storms don’t hit the community as hard. And the fish, migratory birds, deer, crocodiles and even jaguars have returned. 

But the mangroves face a new risk, as stumps scattered among the trees attest.

“In 10 years, you have a very nice mangrove for someone with a chainsaw to come and take it,” González said. “That’s something that hurts me a lot.”

Cutting mangroves has been a crime since 2005, but González says authorities shut down and fine projects, only to have them later reopen.

The Yucatan state government said it is aware of complaints of illegal logging yet the harvest has only grown.

While more funds are needed for protection and restoration, some communities prefer to think about how to make conservation a profitable activity.

José Inés Loría, head of operations at San Crisanto, an old salt harvesting community of about 500 between Progreso and Dzilam, thinks the way to make the local mangrove part “of the community’s business model” is using the new financial tools such as blue carbon credits.

Those instruments, already in use in Colombia and other countries, allow polluting businesses to compensate for emissions by paying others to store or sequester greenhouse gases.

Some in Mexico say credits are still not well regulated in the country and could invite fraud and scams. But Loria defends them. “If conservation doesn’t mean improving the quality of life of a community, it doesn’t work.”
…

The astronauts who will depart the International Space Station on Sunday will be stuck using diapers on the way home because of their capsule’s broken toilet.

NASA astronaut Megan McArthur described the situation Friday as “suboptimal” but manageable. She and her three crewmates will spend 20 hours in their SpaceX capsule, from the time the hatches are closed until Monday morning’s planned splashdown.

“Spaceflight is full of lots of little challenges,” she said during a news conference from orbit. “This is just one more that we’ll encounter and take care of in our mission. So we’re not too worried about it.”

After a series of meetings Friday, mission managers decided to bring McArthur and the rest of her crew home before launching their replacements. That SpaceX launch already had been delayed more than a week by bad weather and an undisclosed medical issue involving one of the crew.

SpaceX is now targeting liftoff for Wednesday night at the earliest.

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who will return with McArthur, told reporters that the past six months have been intense up there. The astronauts conducted a series of spacewalks to upgrade the station’s power grid, endured inadvertent thruster firings by docked Russian vehicles that sent the station into brief spins, and hosted a private Russian film crew — a space station first.

They also had to deal with the toilet leak, pulling up panels in their SpaceX capsule and discovering pools of urine. The problem was first noted during SpaceX’s private flight in September, when a tube came unglued and spilled urine beneath the floorboards. SpaceX fixed the toilet on the capsule awaiting liftoff but deemed the one in orbit unusable.

Engineers determined that the capsule had not been structurally compromised by the urine and was safe for the ride back. The astronauts will have to rely on what NASA describes as absorbent “undergarments.”

On the culinary side, the astronauts grew the first chili peppers in space — “a nice morale boost,” according to McArthur. They got to sample their harvest in the past week, adding pieces of the green and red peppers to tacos.

“They have a nice spiciness to them, a little bit of a lingering burn,” she said. “Some found that more troublesome than others.”

Also returning with McArthur and Pesquet: NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. SpaceX launched them to the space station on April 23. Their capsule is certified for a maximum 210 days in space, and with Friday marking their 196th day aloft, NASA is eager to get them back as soon as possible.

One American and two Russians will remain on the space station following their departure. While it would be better if their replacements arrived first — in order to share tips on living in space — Kimbrough said the remaining NASA astronaut will fill in the newcomers. 

 
…

Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, called Friday for COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for anyone who was fully vaccinated at least six months ago, as the nation faces a fourth wave of coronavirus infections. 

Speaking to reporters following a two-day summit in Bavaria with health ministers from the 16 German states, Spahn said Germany’s COVID-19 situation is entering a very difficult period, as the country’s Robert Koch Institute reported a record 37,120 new daily cases Friday. 

Spahn said the “fourth wave” is not only here, but it has “been here for a long time,” and is gaining strength “and has clearly accelerated.”

The minister said some German state leaders have warned the country may need a new lockdown if urgent action is not taken. 

The surge in Germany is part of a rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths in Europe that have made the region the new epicenter of the pandemic, Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Europe regional director, said Thursday.

At a regular COVID-19 briefing at the agency headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and other experts discussed the surge in Europe, where cases have risen 55% in the past four weeks, despite an ample supply of vaccines. 

“Let me be very clear: This should not be happening. We have all the tools to prevent COVID-19 transmission and save lives, and we continue to call on all countries to use those tools,” Tedros said. 

The WHO chief also decried the fact that the world’s low-income nations have received only 0.4% of the world’s vaccines. He said those nations rely almost exclusively on vaccines distributed through the WHO-managed global vaccine cooperative, COVAX.

Tedros said no more vaccines should go to nations that have vaccinated more than 40% of their populations and no more boosters should be administered, except to patients who are immunocompromised, until COVAX gets the vaccines it needs to inoculate low-income nations to the 40% level.

Separately, in the United States, the Biden administration says it has severed ties with a U.S. company that was awarded a $628 million deal by the Trump administration to produce COVID-19 vaccines. 

Earlier this year, Emergent BioSolutions was found to have contaminated 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine with ingredients designated for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The Food and Drug Administration later threw out at least 60 million more Johnson & Johnson shots produced at the Baltimore plant.

Americans who work for companies with at least 100 employees must be fully vaccinated by January 4 or undergo weekly testing for COVID-19, the Biden administration said Thursday. The new rule affects about 84 million workers, but it is not immediately clear how many of those workers are unvaccinated.

WHO has issued an alert about fake AstraZeneca vaccines in Iran. WHO said the “difficult to detect products” are “illicitly refilled vials of used and discarded genuine COVID-19 VACCINE AstraZeneca” and pose a risk for being “illicitly or accidentally inserted into the regulated supply chain or authorized immunization program.” 

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Friday that it has recorded 248.7 million global COVID-19 cases and more than 5 million deaths. The center said 7.1 billion vaccine doses have been administered.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence-France Presse. 

 
…

Editor’s note: Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch.

Leaders talk global warming in Glasgow 

— World leaders met in Glasgow, Scotland, this week to try to halt global warming. But with some of the world’s biggest emitters like China and Russia skipping the conference, known as COP26, hopes dimmed that leaders will find a way to keep the world from warming more than the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius this century.

Hope Eroding as COP26 Climate Pledges Fall Short

— Burning coal is the single biggest contributor to climate change. Phasing out its use between 2030 and 2040 is one of the United Nation’s most ambitious appeals. More than 40 countries made coal-related pledges on Thursday at COP26.

COP26: Britain Hails Global Deals to End Coal but Plans New Mine

— The world’s youth have the most at stake as the planet warms, and they have been vocal advocates for change. On Friday, they took center stage during Youth and Public Empowerment Day at COP26.

‘It’s Our Lives on the Line’, Young Marchers Tell UN Climate Talks 

War crimes committed in northern Ethiopia

— The conflict between the Ethiopian federal army and Tigrayan fighters in northern Ethiopia reached the one-year milestone this week. A report written by a joint investigative team from the United Nations and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission was published Wednesday, saying all belligerents have committed atrocities during the year-long conflict.

UN Report Says Ethiopia’s War Marked by ‘Extreme Brutality’

— The U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Jeffery Feltman, traveled to Ethiopia on Thursday, as the internal armed conflict intensified. On Tuesday, the Ethiopian federal government declared a state of emergency, saying Tigrayan fighters were advancing toward the capital, Addis Ababa.

US Envoy to Visit Ethiopia After Government Declares State of Emergency

News in brief

World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley has for months been trying to attract the attention of some of the world’s richest men on Twitter, seeking $6 billion to assist 42 million people who are “marching toward starvation” due to conflict, climate change and COVID-19. On Monday, he finally caught the attention of the world’s richest man, Tesla founder Elon Musk.

Quote of note

“We are not drowning, we are fighting. This is our warrior cry to the world.”

— Samoan climate activist Brianna Fruean, 23, of her Pacific Island peers to world leaders at the opening of COP26 on Monday. 

What we are watching next week

An international conference on Libya will be held in Paris on November 12. Libya is set to hold elections on December 24, but concerns are growing that it may not be on track to carry out a free and fair election on time.

Did you know?

The 15 members of the U.N. Security Council take turns being council president for a month at a time. Rotation is in alphabetical order. Kenya was president in October, Mexico took over Monday for November, and Niger will finish out the year in December.

To mark their presidency, Mexico donated a new sculpture now on display at U.N. headquarters in New York City.

 
…

Activists will take over the UN climate summit in Scotland on Friday, capping off a week of dizzying government speeches and pledges with a student march, youth-led presentations, and a giant iceberg shipped from Greenland to Glasgow’s River Clyde to dramatize the plight of the Arctic.

UK organizers decided to hand the day over to civic groups in an acknowledgement of how young campaigners like Vanessa Nakate of Uganda and Greta Thunberg of Sweden have raised public understanding of climate change, and a nod to their stance that today’s youth must live with consequences of state decisions.

“We’re expecting lots of people to come and join us in the streets and not only youth but also adults supporting youth, and adults that want climate action,” said Isabelle Axelsson, 20, an activist with Thunberg’s climate movement Fridays For Future, which is organizing the march.

The COP26 talks in Glasgow aimed to secure enough national promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions – mainly from fossil fuels – to keep the rise in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Crossing that threshold could trigger a cascading climate crisis, scientists say.

The COP26 summit has so far yielded deals to phase out coal, reduce deforestation and curb methane, but a clear picture has yet to emerge on what these voluntary initiatives would add up to in terms of moderating temperature rises.

The head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, said on Thursday that emissions cut pledges made so far – if all implemented – could potentially hold warming to 1.8 C. But some U.N. negotiators said that assessment was too rosy.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and UK COP26 President Alok Sharma will sit down Friday with civil society leaders to discuss the progress made so far and what remains to be done over the next week of negotiations.

Professor Gail Whiteman, founder of the climate activist group Arctic Basecamp, said she hoped to bring a sense of urgency to discussions on Friday by using an iceberg as a giant prop.

She said her group had the iceberg shipped from Greenland via Iceland to the east coast of England, and then onward on a truck to the River Clyde.

“Studies are showing that if we lose the snow and ice in the Arctic we will amplify global warming by 25 to 40%,” she said. “We felt that negotiators here had to actually come face to face with the Arctic, so we brought the iceberg.”
…

U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced Friday its new COVID-19 pill showed an 89% reduction in risk of COVID-19-related hospitalization or death in clinical trials and they plan to submit the drug to U.S. regulators for emergency use approval.

In a release Friday, Pfizer said the latest clinical trials of its pill, Paxlovid, featured a randomized, double-blind study of non-hospitalized adult patients with COVID-19 who are at high risk of progressing to severe illness. 

The company said interim analysis of the oral antiviral showed an 89% reduction in risk compared to a placebo in patients treated within three days of symptom onset. 

Pfizer said it has received an independent data monitoring committee recommendation to pause enrollment in the Phase 3 trial due to the overwhelming efficacy demonstrated in the latest results. 

The company plans to submit the data as part of its ongoing application to the FDA for Emergency Use Authorization as soon as possible. 

Pfizer is now the second drug manufacturer to develop an oral treatment for COVID-19. U.S. company Merck last month introduced its COVID-19 pill, which clinical studies showed to provide a 50% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19. It has been submitted to the FDA, and the federal agency is scheduled to rule on it late this month. 

Currently, all COVID-19 treatments approved in the United States require injection or intravenous drip. Pills have the advantage of being distributed by pharmacies and taken at home. 

Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved Merck’s pill, known as Molnupiravir, Thursday. The European Union’s drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said it would speed up its review of the Merck pill, and is prepared to give advice to individual EU member states so they can make the pill available for emergency use ahead of the EMA authorization. 

 

When Merck’s pill was submitted for approval last month, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said the U.S. government had already arranged to buy 1.7 million doses of the pill, with an option to acquire more if needed.

 
…

Seats are once again packed at professional baseball games in South Korea. Just as in pre-pandemic times, fans can drink beer and eat fried chicken. They can clap their hands, stomp their feet, and wave inflatable noisemakers to support their team.

What they are not allowed to do, though, at least not yet, is shout or sing fight songs, a key feature of Korean baseball crowds.

“If you shout a lot, the virus will leak through your mask,” Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum pleaded with fans on a radio show this week, after crowds were seen as being too vocally supportive of their teams during tense playoff games.

It is a microcosm of how life is going in South Korea: basically, things are returning to normal, but they are not quite there yet.

Although South Korea never locked down during the coronavirus pandemic, it was never fully open either, especially as the country has battled a fourth wave of infections since July.

However, starting this week, the government rolled out the first step of its “living with COVID-19” plan. Bigger crowds can now gather in Seoul. Restaurants and cafes, including those that serve alcohol, are no longer subject to a nighttime curfew. Sports fans have returned to stadiums and arenas.

Barring setbacks, South Korea will phase out all social distancing rules by the end of February, two years after the country experienced one of the world’s first COVID-19 outbreaks.

South Korea’s COVID-19 approach has unquestionably been a success so far. It is one of very few countries to avoid both mass lockdowns and mass deaths.

Now, after outperforming its global peers at nearly every stage of the pandemic, South Korea hopes it can demonstrate how to live with COVID-19.

A cautious opening

For starters, few in South Korea are declaring victory. That is in contrast to countries such as the United States and Britain, where leaders announced independence from the virus and quickly eased social distancing, only to see the delta variant sweep through their populations, killing tens of thousands more in each country.

“The goal here is to set up a system where the government can relax the restrictions, but at the same time has criteria for moving back,” said Jerome Kim, director-general of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul.

There are good reasons for caution. Although over 75% of South Koreans are vaccinated, the number of daily confirmed COVID-19 cases has not fallen since the fourth wave began.

“We do, I think at this point, have a realization that the vaccines are doing what they’re supposed to do, which is preventing severe disease, hospitalization, and death. But they don’t necessarily prevent infection,” Kim said.

Officials have repeatedly warned the opening up could be reversed. And they say some precautions, such as mandatory facemasks, may be around for the foreseeable future.

South Koreans seem receptive. According to a recent poll by Seoul National University, about 49% of South Koreans have mixed feelings about the loosened restrictions. Twenty-seven percent think it will be impossible to ever stop wearing masks, according to a survey by Gallup Korea.

Getting public support

Unlike many countries, South Korea has seen almost no domestic backlash to its pandemic approach.

Businesses largely complied with mandatory curfews. There has been no successful anti-vaccine movement. Virtually everyone wears masks, even when running alone outside on empty paths.

That public buy-in has been at the heart of South Korea’s COVID-19 success, according to public health experts. Not only has it given authorities more anti-pandemic tools, those tools are less coercive and more precise.

For instance, no vaccine mandates have been necessary; about 90% of adults have received the COVID-19 vaccine. Mass lockdowns, too, are unheard of; during the pandemic it has always been possible to go shopping or eat at a restaurant.

Perhaps the most invasive tool is South Korea’s system of contact tracing.

Using cellphone, credit card, and other personal data, authorities can quickly determine where those infected with COVID-19 have gone and who they may have contacted.

The contact tracing only became possible after South Korea’s National Assembly loosened privacy laws following a public outcry over the government’s handling of a deadly 2015 outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS.

“I think there are a number of choices that people here have made in order to have freedom, which is really what it is,” Kim said.

Moving ahead

As South Korea makes the transition toward living with the virus, it will continue to use many of those same tools, which have become a part of daily life.

Customers at every restaurant in Seoul are required to check in either via their phones or on a sign-up sheet at the counter. Temperature checks remain at the entrance of almost every business. Soon, electronic vaccine passes will be required to enter sporting events, concerts, and other large venues.

Some health experts caution that new standards may be necessary for defining COVID-19 success, though.

While many news outlets continue to focus on the number of confirmed daily cases, it will soon be important to pay attention to more meaningful measurements, such as the number of intensive care unit beds available or the number of serious illnesses.

“Even if there are 10,000 confirmed cases, it will still be more important to know the number of serious cases or what the fatality rate is,” said Chun Eun-mi, a respiratory disease specialist at Ewha Womans University Medical Center in Seoul.

Experts also warn inconsistencies may need to be addressed as authorities figure out the best path to follow.

During a previous round of social distancing, many South Korean newspapers mocked the strangely specific guidelines for Seoul fitness centers, which were prohibited from playing music with a tempo higher than 120 beats per minute. Joggers were also prevented from running faster than 6 kph on the treadmill.

More recently, Korean baseball fans are the ones questioning the rules against cheering. Why are they allowed to attend baseball games, they ask, but remain forbidden to vocally support their team?

South Korean officials insist that cheering may be allowed during future rounds of opening up.

For now, South Korea’s prime minister asked fans, “please reduce your shouts by just a little.”

Lee Juhyun contributed to this report.

 

 
…

The “end of coal” is in sight, according to Britain — the host of the COP26 climate summit — after dozens of countries pledged to stop using coal and end the financing of fossil fuels. But as Henry Ridgwell reports from the Glasgow summit, weaning economies off coal won’t be easy — even for Britain itself.

Camera: Henry Ridgwell
…

Congressional Democrats this week proposed an addition to U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate and social spending legislation that would allow Medicare, the federal government’s health care program for older Americans, to negotiate with drugmakers over the cost of certain prescription medications.

U.S. consumers pay higher prices for prescription medications than almost any of their peers in the developed world, a fact that generations of politicians and advocates have struggled in vain to change. If passed, the proposal working its way through Congress would make a dent, though a relatively small one, in that long-standing problem.

The plan being discussed would give Medicare officials the ability to negotiate pricing on a sliver of the thousands of prescription medications on the market in the United States, beginning with about 10 drugs and capped at 20. Liberal members of Congress at first had hoped to grant Medicare authority to negotiate the prices of up to 250 costly drugs every year.

Though small, the number of drugs that would be covered by the proposal represents a disproportionate amount of the annual “spend” on drugs by Medicare patients.

A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation released this year determined that the 10 top-selling drugs covered under Medicare Part D accounted for 16% of net total spending in 2019. The top 50 drugs — representing just 8.5% of all drugs covered under the program — accounted for 80% of spending.

The top 10 drugs, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation include “three cancer medications, four diabetes medications, two anticoagulants and one rheumatoid arthritis treatment.”

Confusing system 

Unlike many countries outside the U.S., where the government is able to negotiate drug prices and bring down the cost for a single national health care system, the landscape in the U.S. is highly fragmented. Most Americans with health insurance are covered by policies issued by for-profit companies in the private sector.

Americans 65 years and older are eligible for Medicare, which takes the place of a private insurer, but with some critical differences. For many years, Medicare did not offer prescription drug coverage, forcing Medicare patients to pay for medications out of pocket or seek third-party insurance coverage for their medications.

In 2003, Congress created Medicare Part D, under which private insurers offered medication coverage that met minimum requirements established by the federal government. While that program reduced costs for many seniors, cost-sharing provisions and design flaws mean that many recipients continue to face financially crippling bills for medication. A key reason is that each insurance provider must negotiate prices with drug companies individually, rather than using the bargaining power of the entire Medicare population to insist on lower costs.

‘Subsidizing R&D for the world’ 

For years, advocates for change have pointed out that drug companies set prices in the U.S. far above those in other countries in which they sell the same drugs. A study by the Rand Corporation this year comparing the U.S. with 32 other countries found that drugs cost on average 256% more in the U.S.

“American consumers are subsidizing the R&D for the world,” said Lovisa Gustafsson, vice president of the Controlling Health Care Costs program at the Commonwealth Fund, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Compounding the problem is that Americans also shoulder a much greater share of the cost for their prescription medications.

“Patients in the U.S. face far higher cost-sharing than in a lot of other countries. So, just because they have insurance doesn’t mean that patients can actually afford the drugs that they need currently,” Gustafsson said. “There’s survey after survey showing that 20% to 25% of Americans can’t afford the drugs they’re prescribed by their physician, or split pills, or don’t get the prescription filled, because they just can’t afford it. And that’s even when they have insurance.”

Putting a lid on costs

An important element of the proposal before Congress is that it would place an annual cap of $2,000 on the co-payments that Medicare patients can be charged for their medications.

The prospect of a cap on out-of-pocket costs was well-received by many calling for reforms, such as AARP, a large advocacy group for older Americans.

“There’s no greater issue affecting the pocketbooks of seniors on Medicare than the ever-increasing costs of prescription drugs,” AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins said in a statement. “For decades, seniors have been at the mercy of Big Pharma. Allowing Medicare to finally negotiate drug prices is a big win for seniors. Preventing prices from rising faster than inflation and adding a hard out-of-pocket cap to Part D will provide real relief for seniors with the highest drug costs.”

Drug firms unhappy

PhRMA, a powerful trade group representing the pharmaceuticals industry, reacted unhappily to news of the proposal.

“If passed, it will upend the same innovative ecosystem that brought us lifesaving vaccines and therapies to combat COVID-19,” PhRMA President and CEO Stephen J. Ubl said in a statement. “Under the guise of ‘negotiation,’ it gives the government the power to dictate how much a medicine is worth and leaves many patients facing a future with less access to medicines and fewer new treatments.”

“While we’re pleased to see changes to Medicare that cap what seniors pay out of pocket for prescription drugs, the proposal lets insurers and middlemen like pharmacy benefit managers off the hook when it comes to lowering costs for patients at the pharmacy counter,” Ubl continued. “It threatens innovation and makes a broken health care system even worse.”

Industry claims exaggerated?

Numerous supporters of allowing the government to negotiate on drug prices claim that the industry’s insistence that it will stymie innovation is exaggerated.

One piece of evidence they point to is a study released by the Congressional Budget Office in August. The CBO created a model in which pharmaceutical companies were faced with the following scenario: A policy is put in place that reduces the return on their most profitable drugs by 15% to 25%.

The agency estimated that the impact would be a reduction of the number of new drugs coming onto the market by only one-half of 1% over the first 10 years of the new policy. That would increase to as much as an 8% reduction in the first three decades of the program.
…

A documentary about the impact of climate change in Africa is a highlight of the annual French film festival in Los Angeles this year. The festival, “City of Light, City of Angels,” draws filmmakers from Paris and fans from Los Angeles. Mike O’Sullivan reports on the documentary “Marcher sur L’eau” (released in English as “Above Water”), which is causing a buzz.
…