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Ahead of World Tuberculosis Day Wednesday, doctors are warning that progress in the global fight against the disease has been set back more than a decade by the coronavirus pandemic. Henry Ridgwell reports.
Video editor: Rod James
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Ahead of World Tuberculosis (TB) Day on March 24, doctors are warning that progress in the global fight against the disease has been set back more than a decade by the coronavirus pandemic.In nine countries with a high prevalence of TB — including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, Tajikistan and Ukraine — diagnosis and treatment fell by an average of 23%, according to Health workers screen people for tuberculosis and leprosy in Dharavi, one of Asia’s biggest slums, in Mumbai, India, Dec. 1, 2020.Tuberculosis killed 1.4 million people worldwide in 2019. The report from the Stop TB Partnership says that in 2020, “COVID-19 overtook TB globally as the most common cause of death from an infectious disease, but in low- and middle-income countries, TB deaths remain far higher than those from COVID-19. As the number of people vaccinated against COVID-19 grows, the number of COVID-19 deaths decrease while TB will continue to kill roughly 4,000 people every day.”Like COVID-19, tuberculosis is a disease of the lungs, though it is caused by bacteria rather than a virus. “A lot of the people that are dealing with TB — doctors, nurses, health-care workers, providers — were shifted from TB to COVID,” explains Ditiu.Hospital wards used for TB patients were rapidly converted into emergency COVID-19 units. As countries imposed lockdowns to fight the pandemic, TB diagnosis and treatment were again hit hard.“Usually, people with TB are the ones that are most vulnerable and are the ones that have a lot of difficulties in reaching health care. And one of the reasons can be distance, can be money, poverty — and other barriers. These things were actually exacerbated by COVID,” Ditiu said.Many patients are badly infected by the time they reach any clinic or hospital. “A lot of the clinicians are saying that they are observing … very, very bad forms of tuberculosis that they didn’t see in many years. These bad forms of TB mean that mortality will be higher. It also means that transmission within the household will be bigger,” Ditiu told VOA in an interview Monday.Doctors say there is an opportunity to claw back lost progress. The coronavirus pandemic has forced healthcare providers and communities closer together. By combining testing, contact tracing and treatment for COVID and TB, both diseases can be tackled at the same time.Medical staff clad in protective gears prepare to administer the vaccine for tuberculosis and oral polio vaccine for babies at a community health center in Surabaya, Indonesia on June 30, 2020.The report from the Stop TB Partnership praises India’s efforts to identify and tackle the decline in diagnosis and treatment at an early stage.
“Bi-directional screening of TB and COVID-19 took place in people displaying influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory infections. Contact tracing systems and testing for TB linked to COVID-19 contact tracing were quickly set up. Private sector TB care facilities were reopened, and digital tools were rolled out to help people with TB stick to treatment regimens, among other measures,” the report notes.Scientists say urgent investment also is needed in new TB vaccines and treatments. 
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Campaigners against tuberculosis, a bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs, say the coronavirus pandemic has rolled back years of progress in treating TB.  But Nigeria — one of the countries hardest hit by the disease — has managed to maintain its progress, as Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
Camera: Emekas Gibson
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Just hours after AstraZeneca said the late-stage trials of its COVID-19 vaccine proves its “100% efficacy against severe or critical disease and hospitalization,” a key U.S. government oversight agency expressed concern about the information released by the drug maker.  The Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) issued a statement early Tuesday that the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant “may have included outdated information” from the late-stage clinical trial, “which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.” FILE – Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson receives the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered by nurse and Clinical Pod Lead, Lily Harrington at St.Thomas’ Hospital in London, March 19, 2021.AstraZeneca said Monday that its analysis of the safety and efficacy of its vaccine, developed jointly with Britain’s University of Oxford, was based on more than 30,000 participants in U.S. trials. Researchers at Oxford also said the vaccine is 79% effective against preventing symptomatic coronavirus. The DSMB urged AstraZeneca to work with it to review the data and “ensure the most accurate, up-to-date efficacy data be made public as quickly as possible.” The statement from the independent board of experts is just the latest setback for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which has had a troubled rollout across the world. Several European countries had recently stopped use of the AstraZeneca vaccine because of reports that it was associated with blood clots in recipients. And South Africa stopped using the shot due to concerns about its efficacy against a local variant of the virus. The country sold at least a million of its AstraZeneca COVID vaccines to the African Union.  But the European Medicines Agency, the drug approval body for the European Union, said the vaccine is safe and does not raise the overall risk of blood clots. The World Health Organization has subsequently recommended the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine against variants of the coronavirus, and that it considers its benefits outweighs its risks. FILE – Dr. Ngong Cyprian, left, is the first Nigerian to receive the first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine at the National Hospital Abuja, Nigeria, March 5, 2021.The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has been the leading choice among the developing world because of its low-cost and simple storage requirements. South Korean President Moon Jae-in was inoculated with the vaccine on Tuesday. Germany extend lockdownMeanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday the government is extending the country’s lockdown until April 18, citing the steady rise of new infections. The extended restrictions include a total lockdown between April 1-5 during the upcoming Easter holiday, with a request for all Germans to stay home during the period.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a news conference after a meeting with state leaders to discuss options beyond the end of the pandemic lockdown, amid the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Berlin, Germany, March 23, 2021.Merkel and all of the country’s 16 state governors had recently crafted a plan to gradually lift the coronavirus restrictions by March 28. But Germany has been plagued by a spike in new infections due to the more infectious B.1.1.7 variant, along with the slow pace of vaccinations, with only 9% of the population having received at least one shot of the vaccine.  “We basically have a new pandemic,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin Tuesday.  The B.1.1.7 variant was first detected in the United Kingdom and it is easily transmitted and more deadly, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned during a White House press conference on Friday. 
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Australian authorities said Tuesday that more evacuation orders may be issued as relentless rains pummeled the country’s east coast, with several regions in Sydney’s west facing the worst floods in half a century. The wild weather system pounding New South Wales (NSW) over the last three days was expected to gather more strength in the next 24 hours thanks to the combination of a tropical low over northern Western Australia and a coastal trough off the east. “Overnight, unfortunately, some weather conditions have worsened, and those weather conditions are likely to worsen during the day so many communities will experience increasing heavy rainfall,” NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters. Berejiklian said 15,000 more residents may need to be evacuated soon after authorities moved 18,000 to safe zones Monday.Severe flooding in Sydney, March 22, 2021.With 38 disaster areas declared in the state, authorities Tuesday described the next 24 hours as critical, as fast-moving flood waters overflowed riverbanks and inundated houses, farms and bridges across large swathes of the state. Though the weather system is likely to start easing starting late Wednesday, officials warned that residents may not be able to return to their homes immediately as incessant rains dump more water in river catchment areas. “Some of you may be wondering why you can’t go back home because it’s a sunny day. It’s because conditions are unsafe for that to occur,” Berejiklian said. Neighboring Queensland was also bracing for heavy showers Tuesday in the southern parts of the state, with the weather system expected to shift south to parts of Victoria and the island state of Tasmania over the next few days. About 10 million people in all states and territories except Western Australia will be affected by the extreme weather, the weather bureau said, with NSW and Queensland expected to bear the brunt of the system. 
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Monday it will be upgrading its Global Forecast System, one of the primary computer models used to predict weather across North America and the world.The update went live early Monday and is designed to predict more accurate forecasts as far out as two weeks into the future. NOAA says the update will lead to better predictions of hurricanes and other extreme weather events, ocean waves, and weather systems up high in the atmosphere.“This substantial upgrade to the GFS, along with ongoing upgrades to our supercomputing capacity, demonstrates our commitment to advancing weather forecasting to fulfill our mission of protecting life and property,” said Louis Uccellini, director of NOAA’s National Wether Service, in a media teleconference Monday.The upgrade focuses on underlying physics and adjusts how current weather information is inputted and processed by the model while integrating other sources of data from satellites and ordinary aircraft.The Global Forecasting System will now be combined with a global wave model called WaveWatch III, which will extend current wave forecasts to 16 days and improve predictions of ocean waves forced by the atmosphere.“These upgrades are part of the Next Generation Global Prediction System within the Unified Forecast System (UFS) framework, which is an ongoing effort to leverage the expertise of the broader weather community and expedite the research to operations pathway,” said Vijay Tallapragada, chief of the Modeling and Data Assimilation Branch at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center (EMC). 
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The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday she is concerned the United States could be headed for an avoidable surge in coronavirus cases as more states relax prevention measures and more people travel around the country. During a virtual White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing, Rochelle Walensky said the U.S. saw the seven-day average of new daily cases climb to 53,800 over the past week, while the two-week average has wavered between 50,000 to 60,000 cases per day.  FILE – Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 18, 2021.Meanwhile, the CDC director said U.S. states are seeing an increasing number of new cases attributed to variant strains of the virus, particularly in California — the nation’s most populous state — where a new variant accounts for 52 percent of new infections. Walensky said, taken together, these statistics should be a warning sign to all Americans that the pandemic is not over.  “I get it. We all want to return to our everyday activities and spend time with our family, friends and loved ones,” she said. Walensky said the U.S. is at a critical point in the pandemic and is worried if the nation does not take the correct actions, it is headed for an “avoidable surge, just as we are seeing in Europe right now, and just as we are so aggressively scaling up vaccinations.” The coronavirus causes the COVID-19 disease. The White House task force reported 81 million people in the United States — nearly 25 percent — have received at least one vaccination and another 41 million people, about 13 percent, are fully vaccinated. Walensky said among those over 65 years of age, 69 percent have received at least one shot, while 42 percent are fully vaccinated.  FILE – A woman receives a coronavirus vaccination at Jordan Downs in Los Angeles, California, March 10, 2021.She said the statistics are showing the vaccines are working, as, for the first time since early in the pandemic began, a higher percentage of people under the age of 65 are showing up at emergency rooms. Also at the briefing, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said he viewed the recent U.S. trials of the AstraZeneca vaccine as good news. Those trials showed the vaccine to be at least 79 percent effective among all adults, with no test subjects developing any serious side effects or any of the health effects reported elsewhere.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine for use in the U.S. The company says it plans to seek clearance in the United States “in the coming weeks.” 
 
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AstraZeneca said Monday that the results of its COVID-19 vaccine trials provide evidence that its shot provides “100% efficacy against severe or critical disease and hospitalization.”  AstraZeneca said in a statement that the safety and efficacy analysis was based on 32,449 participants in U.S. trials. “Vaccine efficacy was consistent across ethnicity and age. Notably, in participants aged 65 years and over, vaccine efficacy was 80%,” the statement said.  “The vaccine was well tolerated, and the independent data safety monitoring board (DSMB) identified no safety concerns related to the vaccine,” AstraZeneca said.  The U.S. trials also show the AstraZeneca COVID shot is safe and 79% effective against preventing symptomatic coronavirus, according to Britain’s University of Oxford, the developers of the pharmaceutical company’s vaccine.  Several European countries had recently stopped use of the AstraZeneca vaccine because of reports that it was associated with blood clots in recipients. The European Medicines Agency (EMA), however, said the vaccine is safe and does not raise the overall risk of blood clots.Last week, France, Germany and Italy resumed use of the vaccine.FILE – A member of the medical staff holds a vial of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine at the South Ile-de-France Hospital Group in Melun, in the outskirts of Paris, Feb. 8, 2021.The World Health Organization (WHO) has subsequently recommended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine against variants of the coronavirus. It has also said it considers that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh its risks.South Africa stopped using the shot due to concerns about its efficacy against a local variant of the virus. The country sold at least a million of its AstraZeneca COVID vaccines to the African Union.   The doses sold to the AU will be distributed among 14 African countries. South Africa is now using the Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson products.The AstraZeneca vaccine has been the leading choice for the developing world.According to the Associated Press, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been authorized in more than 50 countries. In the United States, vaccines by Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson are in use.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center has recorded more than 123.2 million worldwide coronavirus infections and 2.7 million deaths. The U.S. has the most infections with more than 29 million confirmed cases and 542,000 deaths.
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European Union solidarity is breaking down amid a vaccine debacle that analysts say may have long-lasting repercussions for the future of European political integration.Member states are divided over the wisdom of imposing a vaccine export ban threatened by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The ban is mainly focused on Britain, a bid to secure more vaccines for the EU, but critics warn it could backfire on the bloc and tarnish its much vaunted commitment to free trade and internationalism.And there is also an emerging dispute on whether the vaccines the bloc is receiving are being distributed fairly by the European Commission among the EU’s 27 member states.Five central European and Baltic countries, led by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, have complained of unequal treatment and plan to raise more forcefully their objections over the apportionment at a summit Thursday of EU heads of state and government.“The last few weeks have shown that deliveries are currently not being made according to population keys and that this is set to intensify in the coming months,” reads a complaint signed by Kurz and four other national leaders.The disgruntled national leaders added: “This approach clearly contradicts the political goal of the European Union — the equal distribution of vaccine doses to all member states. If the distribution were to continue in this way, it would result in significant unequal treatment — which we must prevent.”Cases and frustration growingThe mood in European capitals is turning sour. Locals complain they can’t see the light at then of the pandemic tunnel. Coronavirus infections are rising rapidly across the continent, in contrast to Britain and America, where much quicker and nimbler vaccine rollouts are seeing a significant falloff in the rate of confirmed cases.Much of the frustration among member states is being directed at von der Leyen, who was the driving force behind persuading member states to sign on to a vaccine procurement and distribution program managed by the authorities in Brussels.Medical workers prepare doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Antwerp, Belgium, March 18, 2021.She and EC commissioners argued a bloc-wide approach would alleviate the risk of vaccine rivalry between member states as they scrambled to place procurement orders and would advertise the strengths of the EU, which in turn would help garner more public support for greater political integration.But it hasn’t turned out that way and Europe is lagging behind on inoculation as a third wave of the pandemic hits the continent. EU countries are short overall on vaccines — but are also sitting at the same time on millions of doses of the British-developed AstraZeneca vaccine because of public doubts about its safety.Seventeen states, including France and Germany, paused administering Astra jabs last week because of worries that the vaccine caused blood-clots, but then reversed the halt, leaving behind however residual public fear about Astra and increasing incidents of Europeans refusing Astra jabs.Vaccine fightVon der Leyen on Sunday raised the vaccine war stakes with London, threatening again to block AstraZeneca from exporting jabs manufactured in the EU to Britain if the Anglo-Swedish company doesn’t first meet its supply obligations to EU countries. Brussels says Britain has grabbed more than its “fair share” of vaccines and hasn’t been sending to Europe any Astra vaccines produced in Britain. The British argue their contract pre-dates the EU’s by several months and because the EU was late in ordering, it is suffering the consequences.“We have the possibility to forbid planned exports,” Von der Leyen told German newspapers. “That is the message to AstraZeneca, ‘You fulfill your contract with Europe before you start delivering to other countries.’” An export ban would likely target not just the Astra vaccines manufactured in the EU but also the export of Pfizer-BioNTech doses, which are produced in Belgium.Privately, British officials say they would consider retaliating if a ban is imposed by blocking crucial ingredients shipped from Yorkshire needed for the manufacture in Belgium of the Pfizer vaccine. The U.S. drug maker has warned Brussels that production at its main vaccine plant in Belgium would “grind to a halt,” if Britain opted to retaliate.The threat of an export ban is causing alarm among several member states, with Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden all against the proposal to block vaccine exports. They have warned it would tarnish the bloc’s reputation as a champion of free trade and the rule of law. Belgian officials say they’re worried that export bans would impair supply chains that rely on international trade.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke with Alexander De Croo, the Belgian Prime Minister. “We discussed our efforts to tackle COVID-19. We also touched on the importance of global supply chains and on common efforts to speed up vaccine production,” De Croo said after the conversation. British officials say they are hopeful about shaping an alliance against Brussels on the issue of an export ban and remain confident German Chancellor Angela Merkel would also oppose such a drastic step.EC commissioners place some of the blame for the slow pace of inoculations largely on member states. EU countries have vaccinated barely 10% of the bloc’s population compared to Britain which has inoculated more than 50%. EU officials say they are being scapegoated by member states.But major EU powers, including Germany and Italy, are pointing the finger at Brussels, and their leaders are tiring of what they say are severe shortages in EU supplies. A German official told VOA the EU commissioners are proving to be “the gang that can’t shoot straight.”The Sputnik optionJens Spahn, the German health minister, told reporters “there is not yet enough vaccine in Europe to stop the third wave through vaccination alone. Even if the deliveries from EU orders now come reliably, it will still take several weeks until the risk groups are fully vaccinated.” He has warned Germany might decide to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine even before the EU medicines regulator has authorized it. “I am very much in favor of us doing it nationally, if the EU does not do something,” he said Saturday.German Chancellor Angela Merkel, center, looks on as Health Minister Jens Spahn, left, and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer talk prior to the weekly cabinet meeting in Berlin, March 17, 2021.Mario Draghi, the Italian Prime Minister and a former head of the European Central Bank, has also raised the prospects of ignoring the EU and purchasing the Russian vaccine. With case numbers spiraling out of control in Italy, there are fears that the third wave could be as deadly as the first wave, and Draghi says his priority is “giving the greatest number of vaccinations in the shortest time possible.”“If European coordination works, fine,” the Italian leader said at a press conference when asked about buying Sputnik “Otherwise on health, you have to be ready to do it yourself. This is what Merkel said and this is what I am saying here,” he added.Hungary and Slovakia have already purchased Sputnik doses.Frustrations over the vaccine program and the reimposition of lockdown restrictions in many European countries is boiling over in parts of the continent. Thousands of anti-lockdown protesters took to the street in Germany and Switzerland in protests organized by activists by both far-left and far-right groups.Police officers remove demonstrators from a square during a protest against the government’s COVID-19 restrictions in Kassel, Germany, March 20, 2021.There are also signs voters mean to make their feelings clear in upcoming elections about their frustrations with the vaccine rollout as well as re-tightened lockdowns. German Chancellor Angela Merkel Christian Democrats suffered last week historic defeats in state elections, seen as a test of voter opinion before September’s nationwide German federal ballot. French President Emmanuel Macron has also seen his polls numbers drop.Guy Verhofstadt, an EU lawmaker and the former Belgium prime minister, admits the vaccine campaign has been “ a fiasco,” but says, “in these troubled times, European integration is the only sensible way forward for our continent.” He maintains it proves the EU needs a proper “health union.”However, voters might not see it that way. Some analysts question whether the EU will come out of the pandemic stronger than it went into it with some suggesting that Brussels’ handling of the pandemic will undermine the appetite for further political integration.“With its disastrous vaccine procurement policy, the EU committed the ultimate mistake: it has given people a rational reason to oppose European integration,” argues Wolfgang Münchau, director of Eurointelligence, a specialist news service. 
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Trials in the United States show the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine is safe and 79% effective against the coronavirus, according to Britain’s Oxford University, the developers of the pharmaceutical company’s vaccine.  Oxford said in a press release Monday that the AstraZeneca vaccine is “safe and highly effective, adding to previous trial data from the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa, as well as real-world impact data from the United Kingdom.” AstraZeneca said in a statement that the safety and efficacy analysis was based on 32,449 participants in the U.S. trials. “Vaccine efficacy was consistent across ethnicity and age. Notably, in participants aged 65 years and over, vaccine efficacy was 80%,” the statement said.  “The vaccine was well tolerated, and the independent data safety monitoring board (DSMB) identified no safety concerns related to the vaccine,” AstraZeneca said.  Several European countries had recently stopped using the AstraZeneca because of reports that the vaccine was associated with blood clots in vaccine recipients. The European Medicines Agency (EMA), however, had recently found that the vaccine was safe and effective in the battle against the coronavirus.  The European Union is now moving to block exports of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Britain from a plant in the Netherlands.FILE – A member of the medical staff holds a vial of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine at the South Ile-de-France Hospital Group in Melun, in the outskirts of Paris, Feb. 8, 2021.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center has recorded 123.2 million worldwide COVID-19 infections. The U.S. has more infections than any place else with 123.2 million cases, followed by Brazil with almost 12 million and India with 11.6 million.  Germany will likely institute another lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus, which would make it the latest European country enacting fresh restrictions. A draft of recommendations to be presented to German Chancellor Angela Merkel will push for lockdowns to be extended until April 18, Reuters reported Sunday. In Poland, which is seeing the highest number of daily cases since November, new measures have forced nonessential shops and other facilities to close for three weeks. Poland recorded more than 26,000 new cases Sunday and more than 350 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.  Nonessential stores have also been closed in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv, where only food markets are allowed to stay open. It recorded more than 15,000 new cases Sunday and nearly 270 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. About one-third of France’s population is under lockdown after measures were imposed Friday in Paris and several regions in northern and southern parts of the country. More than 4,300 people were in intensive care units in France Saturday, the health ministry said, the most this year. About 6.1 million people in France have received their first COVID-19 shot, or just less than 12% of the adult population. But in Marseille, in the south of France, thousands of people took to the streets Sunday to celebrate carnival in defiance of pandemic restrictions.  In the United States, officials in the popular Florida tourist destination of Miami Beach extended an emergency curfew of 8 p.m. for up to three weeks after dozens were arrested Saturday. Officials say 1,000 people have been arrested in the beach town since March 1.  On Saturday, crowds of Spring Break partiers were met with pepper spray balls and SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams in the beachfront city as they defied the highly unusual 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. On February 26, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said the state is an “oasis of freedom” from coronavirus restrictions.  South Africa has sold at least a million of its AstraZeneca COVID vaccines to the African Union. The African country stopped using the AstraZeneca shots due to concerns about its efficacy against a local variant of the coronavirus.  The World Health Organization (WHO) has subsequently recommended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine against variants.  The doses sold to the African Union will be distributed among 14 African countries.  Brazil is in talks with the United States to import excess doses of coronavirus vaccines, its Foreign Ministry tweeted Saturday. On Sunday, Brazil reversed a decision that required local authorities to save half their COVID-19 vaccine stockpiles for second doses, instead opting to get the first shots in as many Brazilians as possible. The U.S. has millions of doses of vaccine developed by Britain’s University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical giant that have been approved by the WHO and the EMA but not for use in the U.S. yet. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who famously told his country to “stop whining” about the country’s death from “a little flu,” has signed three measures to speed the purchase of vaccines, including those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson. 
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Widespread flooding is disrupting the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations in Australia as thousands of people are forced to leave their homes.Emergency crews in eastern Australia have responded to thousands of calls for help.  The rain in many areas has been unrelenting. For the first time in years, Sydney’s main reservoir is overflowing, putting suburbs at risk of flooding. Authorities are reporting once-in-a-century downpours north of Sydney, and thousands of people have been told to leave their homes.     Near the town of Taree, a house occupied by a young couple was washed away down a river by floodwaters on what was supposed to have been their wedding day.    The bride, Sarah Soars, told Australian television the property was swept away within minutes.  “I am lost for words. I do not know even what to say, like, everything that we owned, everything that we worked hard for (has) gone within ten minutes and it was out of our sight,” Soars said.Campaign group Greenpeace has linked the severe storms in eastern Australia to climate change, and the burning of coal, oil and gas.   The wild weather is disrupting Australia’s mass coronavirus inoculation program. More than six million Australians are now eligible for an injection in the next phase of the vaccination rollout. Australia’s medical regulator has approved domestic production of the AstraZeneca vaccine.   Federal health minister Greg Hunt says the drug is safe.    “This is a fundamental decision which locks in for Australia access to 50 million units of domestically produced vaccines. It means that the manufacturing process has been approved. It is safe, effective (and) meets all of the requirements from one of the toughest regulators in the world,” Hunt said.Vaccines made by AstraZeneca and Pfizer are approved for use in Australia. One of Australia’s most senior medical officials, Federal Health Department secretary Brendan Murphy, has said international travel into and out of Australia would be severely restricted for the rest of the year until global COVID-19 vaccinations are more widely administered.   Australia closed its international borders a year ago to foreign travelers because of the pandemic.   Murphy said life in Australia would get back to normal, but it would take time and patience was needed. Australia has recorded 29,196 coronavirus cases since the pandemic began. 909 people have died, according to the Health Department. 
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Australian authorities are planning to evacuate thousands of more people Monday from Sydney’s flooded western suburbs, in the worst flooding the city has seen in 60 years with another day of drenching rain expected. Unrelenting rains over the past three days swelled rivers in Australia’s most populous state of New South Wales (NSW), causing widespread damage and triggering calls for mass evacuations. “Flooding is likely to be higher than any floods since Nov 1961,” NSW emergency services said in a tweet late Sunday. Authorities expect the wild weather to continue until Wednesday. The fast-moving flood waters detached houses, swept away vehicles and farm animals, and submerged roads, bridges, houses and farms, television and social media footage showed. Nearly 2,000 people have been evacuated from low lying areas, NSW emergency services said. Large parts of the country’s east coast will receive more heavy rains from Monday thanks to the combination of a tropical low over northern Western Australia and a coastal trough off NSW, the weather bureau said. “These two moisture feeds are merging and will create a multistate rain and storm band from Monday,” the Bureau of Meteorology said in a statement. A severe flood warning has been issued for large parts of NSW as well as neighboring Queensland. “These are very, very serious and very severe storms and floods, and it’s a very complex weather system, too. … So, this is a very testing time,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told radio station 2GB on Monday. Sydney on Sunday recorded the wettest day of the year with almost 111 mm (4.4 inches) of rain, while some regions in NSW’s north coast received nearly 900 mm (35 inches) of rain in the last six days, more than three times the March average, government data showed. 
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Carrie Brady was 40 and single when she decided to adopt a baby. Because of the US opioid crisis, her chances of finding a match were better if she agreed to accept the child of someone addicted to drugs and that’s what she did. Maxim Moskalkov has the story.Casmera: Artyom Kokhan
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In marking the International Day of Forests, environmentalists are calling for the restoration of forests and their life-giving biodiversity systems which, they say, are under increasing threat from illegal exploitation. Forests are the lungs of the earth. They help provide the air we breathe and play a major role in providing clean water. The United Nations reports more than a billion people depend on forest foods and 2.4 billion people use fuel wood and charcoal to cook their daily meals.Additionally, the health of the world is largely dependent on the forests’ so-called green pharmacies. The U.N. reports up to 25 percent of medicinal drugs in developed countries and 80 percent in developing countries are plant-based.Unfortunately, the oxygen that sustains 80 percent of all known terrestrial plants and animal species on the planet is under threat. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s director of forestry, Mette Wilkie, said the forests and biodiversity they contain are at risk from actions to convert the land to agriculture and other exploitative usage.“Each year, the world loses more than 10 million hectares of forest. That is an area of about twice the size of Costa Rica. This is having negative impacts on the climate, biodiversity and people. We know that deforestation and land degradation are affecting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people across the world and costing more than 10 percent of annual global GDP in lost ecosystem services,” she said.Wilkie said one in three outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases is directly linked to land use changes, such as deforestation and fragmentation of forests. She warns the risks of new pandemics will continue to increase if the world continues business as usual.“The reason for that is that we are disturbing the habitat for some of the wildlife species that are carrying these zoonotic diseases, which means that we are increasing the risk of a spiral from wildlife to—either directly to people or to domestic animals and then to people. So, altering the nature of the forest and reducing their habitats, we are increasing the risk,” she said. Wilkie said this situation can be reversed by reducing the levels of deforestation and investing the money needed to restore the forests to health. She said such actions could contribute to economic recovery in the post COVID-19 stage and help nations mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. 
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The world’s largest vaccine producer has told at least three countries that their COVID-19 vaccine shipments will be delayed.The Serum Institute of India has informed Brazil, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia that India’s overwhelming need for the vaccine is the cause of the delay.India is experiencing a surge in infections. The South Asian nation has the third-highest number of coronavirus cases, with 11.6 million. Only the United States and Brazil have more, at 29.7 million and 11.9 million, respectively.India’s Serum Institute has come under criticism for selling or donating more vaccines than inoculations put in arms in India.Meanwhile, Brazil is in talks with the United States to import excess doses of coronavirus vaccines, its Foreign Ministry tweeted Saturday.The South American nation recorded 79,069 new cases of coronavirus infections in a 24-hour period, its Health Ministry said Saturday, and reported more than 2,400 COVID-19 deaths.The talks between the U.S. and Brazil began March 13. On Friday, the U.S. said it was lending 4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Canada and Mexico but did not mention Brazil.The U.S. has millions of doses of vaccine developed by Britain’s University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical giant that have been approved by the World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency but not for use in the U.S. yet.Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who famously told his country to “stop whining” about the country’s deaths from “a little flu,” has signed three measures to speed the purchase of vaccines, including those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson.Several European countries were under new coronavirus restrictions Saturday to combat new waves of infections.About one-third of France’s population is under lockdown after measures were imposed Friday in Paris and several regions in northern and southern parts of the country. More than 4,300 people are in intensive care units in France, the most this year, the health ministry said Saturday.About 6.1 million people in France have received their first COVID-19 shot, or just less than 12% of the adult population.In Poland, which is seeing the highest number of daily cases since November, new measures have forced nonessential shops and other facilities to close for three weeks.Nonessential stores have also been closed in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv, where only food markets are allowed to stay open.France, Germany and Italy resumed use Friday of the coronavirus vaccine made by AstraZeneca after health officials sought to allay concerns it may cause blood clots.The European nations resumed inoculations after the EMA, which regulates medicine, said the AstraZeneca-University of Oxford vaccine was “safe and effective” and the WHO, the United Nations body responsible for public health, said “available data do not suggest any overall increase in clotting conditions” among those who have been vaccinated.However, French Health Minister Olivier Veran said the country’s health advisory body is recommending AstraZeneca vaccinations only for people 55 or older.French officials cited an assessment by the EMA that it could not rule out a possible link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and a small number of blood clots, particularly in younger women. The EMA said that overall, the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks of side effects.The WHO repeated its recommendation Friday for countries worldwide to continue to administer shots of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. The agency’s expert committee on coronavirus vaccines said the AstraZeneca vaccine has “tremendous potential to prevent infections and reduce deaths” and said “it is not certain” the blood clot cases have been caused by the vaccine.Officials in Miami Beach in the southern U.S. state of Florida have imposed an emergency curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. It was not immediately clear how long the lockdown would be in place.“Officials blamed overwhelming and out-of-control spring break crowds for the curfew, which was taking effect Saturday night in South Beach, one of the nation’s top party spots,” the Associated Press reported.Global spectators will be barred from entering Japan for the summer Olympic games because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic organizing committee said Saturday.The committee said tickets bought by overseas residents would be refunded.The pandemic forced the postponement of the Olympic games last year, but organizers have said they are committed to hosting the games this year, despite warnings.
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Throngs of revelers flocking to Miami Beach, Florida, for spring break have become so uncontrollable that authorities imposed a curfew Saturday that they hope will spoil the party.For the next 72 hours, visitors will have to leave the streets and restaurants will close their doors at 8 p.m. in the main tourist areas of South Beach, the epicenter of the city’s party scene, authorities announced.In addition, the three bridges that connect the island with mainland Miami will be closed to traffic after 10 p.m.Only residents, workers and hotel guests will have access.”This is all about the public safety, folks,” said acting City Manager Raul Aguila.Referring to photos of huge crowds gathering on the main Ocean Drive strip, he added: “It looked like a rock concert. You couldn’t see pavement and you couldn’t see grass.”The move followed weeks of wild partying in Miami Beach, which is no stranger to uncontrollable spring break crowds.But this year the volume is clearly higher than in previous years, said Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber.”I think it is in part due to the fact that there are very few places open elsewhere in the country, or they’re too cold, or they’re not open and they’re too cold,” he said.Over the last several days viral videos have emerged showing fights in restaurants that caused serious damage in addition to prompting diners to flee without paying expensive bills, according to local press reports.Miami Beach Police Chief Richard Clements said he is concerned the situation will become unmanageable.On Thursday night “we had an issue where hundreds of people ran at one particular time. Tables and chairs were thrown and used as weapons,” he said.He added that police had hoped it was a one-time event but “last night we had three of those situations and we had a young lady that got hurt as a result of trying to run away from a crowd.””We can’t continue to be fortunate. We have to do some things that are going to mitigate those circumstances,” he said.
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Ahead of World Water Day Monday, the World Meteorological Organization warns climate change is intensifying water-related disasters, threatening the lives and livelihoods of billions of people worldwide.
 
Climate-related hazards include increased flooding and longer-lasting droughts. Climate change also is altering rainfall patterns, affecting water availability and worsening the damage floods and drought cause worldwide.
 
The WMO says increased flooding threatens to destroy water points and sanitation facilities and contaminate water sources. As a consequence, WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis says billions of people have limited or no access to clean water and sanitation.
 
“So, 39 percent of the global population does not have access to safe drinking water. We expect this problem to be exacerbated because of socio-economic changes, of population growth, and obviously, changes in sources of water, such as glaciers,” Nullis said.The WMO calls glaciers the water towers of the world. It warns the melting of ice cover and glaciers is leading to more hazards and threatening the long-term water security of hundreds of millions of people.
 
Nullis said one of the most dramatic examples of how this is playing out can be seen in Tajikistan, a country that had more than 14,500 glaciers in the 20th century.
 
“Today, more than a thousand of these have completely melted and the total volume of the mass has decreased by one-third. This in the short term leads to more hazards like avalanches, mud flows, flooding—what we call glacial outbursts,” Nullis said.
 
Glaciers are a key source of water. In the long-term, Nullis warned glacier melting will lead to increased water stress for many millions of people. She said the same phenomenon is being repeated throughout the world.
 
The WMO says more than half of countries worldwide have no quality management systems for water. The agency is calling for more concerted action on safeguarding the world’s diminishing water sources and on mitigating climate change.
 
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The coughing among the western lowland gorillas at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in January was the first warning sign. Soon the fears were confirmed: A troop of gorillas became the first apes known to test positive for the coronavirus.Around the world, many scientists and veterinarians are now racing to protect animals from the coronavirus, often using the same playbook for minimizing disease spread among people: That includes social distancing, health checks and, for some zoo animals, a vaccine.Karen, a 28-year-old orangutan, became the first ape in the world to get a coronavirus vaccine on Jan. 26 at the San Diego Zoo.Two shots for KarenKaren has received two shots of a vaccine from Zoetis, a veterinary pharmaceutical company in New Jersey, and has shown no adverse reactions. Since then, nine other primates at the San Diego Zoo have been fully vaccinated: five bonobos and four orangutans. Four more animals — one bonobo and three gorillas — got their first shot this month and will get a second one in April.“I was really convinced that we wanted to get that to protect our other great apes,” said the zoo’s wildlife health officer Nadine Lamberski, who explained she felt urgency to act after the eight gorillas fell sick.That virus outbreak was linked to a zookeeper who was infected but had no symptoms. Seven gorillas recovered after a mild cases of the sniffles, but one elderly silverback had pneumonia, likely caused by the virus, as well as heart disease. He was put on antibiotics and heart medication, and he received an antibody treatment to block the virus from infecting cells.Zoetis vaccine of choiceAbout three dozen zoos across the United States and abroad have put in orders for the Zoetis vaccine, which is formulated to elicit a strong immune response in particular animal species.“We will jump at the opportunity to get the Zoetis vaccine for our own great apes,” said Oakland Zoo’s veterinary director Alex Herman, who is ordering 100 doses.Zoetis got a permit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide the doses on an experimental basis to the San Diego Zoo. The company will need to apply for the same permission to provide vaccine to additional zoos.Scientists believe the coronavirus likely originated in wild horseshoe bats, before jumping — perhaps through an intermediary species — to humans. Now many researchers worry that humans may unwittingly infect other susceptible species.
“Right now, humans are the main vectors of SARS-CoV-2, with consequences for many animal species,” said Arinjay Banerjee, a disease researcher at McMaster University in Canada.Great apes such as gorillas, which share 98% of their DNA with humans, are especially susceptible, as are felines. So far, confirmed coronavirus cases include gorillas, tigers and lions at zoos; domestic cats and dogs; farmed mink, and at least one wild mink in Utah.Cattle, pigs are safeScientists have also experimentally shown that ferrets, racoon dogs and white-tailed deer are susceptible, although pigs and cattle are not.“This could be a conservation concern, especially if the virus began to spread in a wild species with extremely reduced populations, like the black-footed ferret,” which is endangered, said Kate Langwig, an infectious disease ecologist at Virginia Tech.Another worry is that virus spread among other species could produce new variants, complicating health authorities’ efforts to curb the pandemic.In Denmark, workers at a mink farm accidentally infected the animals. As the coronavirus spread among the mink, it mutated — and human handlers contracted the new variant. In response, the government ordered millions of mink to be killed.“Mutations happen when there’s a lot of disease transfer going on between animals,” said Scott Weese, a veterinary microbiologist at the Ontario Veterinary College.Many recommended steps to minimize disease spread to animals are familiar: wearing masks and sanitizing shared equipment, regular health checks, and maintaining physical distance.Since the outbreak, the San Diego Zoo and its safari park north of San Diego have installed more fans at its indoor primate areas to increase air circulation. The staff wears double masks and face shields and limits their time indoors with animals.’Wake-up call’ for care of apesScientists and conservationists who monitor wild primates have also adapted their daily routines.“COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for the world about the fact that these viruses can go from wild animals to people, and from people to great apes,” said Kirsten Gilardi, executive director of Gorilla Doctors, a conservation group that includes field veterinarians who treat wild gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.There are only about 1,000 wild mountain gorillas, so the threat of coronavirus infection “has changed the way we do our work,” said Felix Ndagijimana, the Rwanda country director for Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, a conservation group.For the past year, field trackers who check on gorillas daily in the rainforest first get a coronavirus test, then stay with other trackers in an encampment for work stints of several weeks. This is to ensure that they don’t pick up the bug by returning to their villages at night.“It was really a big ask of our team, especially during the pandemic. People want to be close to their families, but also keep the gorillas safe,” said Ndagijimana. To date, he said, there have been no coronavirus cases among wild gorillas.No plan to use vaccine on wild gorillasWhile some wild gorillas were vaccinated against measles in the 1980s, there are currently no plans to vaccinate them against the coronavirus. With wild apes, the first choice is always to be as hands-off as possible, said Jean Bosco Noheli, a field veterinarian for Gorilla Doctors in Rwanda. “Let’s focus on other measures we can take first to protect wild gorillas,” he said.But more zoo animals could soon be getting virus shots.“There’s a lot of interest,” said Sharon Deem, a veterinary epidemiologist at the St. Louis Zoo who is also part of a hazard preparedness group of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums that represents 240 zoos.“I think given how horrible this particular pathogen has been to humans, and that we know it can be transmitted between humans and animals, that there is great interest to use an animal vaccine as soon as it is available,” she said.
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France, Germany and Italy resumed use Friday of a coronavirus vaccine made by AstraZeneca after health officials sought to allay concerns it might cause blood clots.The European nations resumed inoculations after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said the AstraZeneca-University of Oxford vaccine was “safe and effective” and the World Health Organization said “available data do not suggest any overall increase in clotting conditions” among those who had been vaccinated.From left, German public health expert Karl Lauterbach, RKI health institute deputy director Lars Schaade and German Health Minister Jens Spahn speak at a news conference, March 19, 2021, in Berlin, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.Germany and Italy are trying to avoid a third wave of coronavirus infections while France is experiencing its highest caseload in four months.Beginning Friday, several French regions, including Paris, will be under new lockdown orders to contain increasing coronavirus cases.France had 40,000 new cases Wednesday.The EMA approved the continued use of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine Thursday in the battle to contain the pandemic. Spain had also stopped using the vaccine.The agency said in a statement that “the benefits of the vaccine in combating the still widespread threat of COVID-19 (which itself results in clotting problems and may be fatal) continue to outweigh the risk of side effects.”“A causal link with the vaccine is not proven but is possible and deserves further analysis,” the agency added.FILE – A member of the medical staff holds a vial of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine at the South Ile-de-France Hospital Group in Melun, in the outskirts of Paris, Feb. 8, 2021.Meanwhile, the White House announced Thursday that it was sending millions of stockpiled doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico and Canada. Mexico is slated to receive 2.5 million doses from the U.S., with Canada receiving 1.5 million.U.S. regulators have not yet approved use of the vaccine, but Mexican and Canadian officials have.White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the vaccine would be loans to the two U.S. neighbors, with the U.S. eventually being reimbursed with vaccine from the bordering countries.The announcement came as the Biden administration sought Mexico’s help in stemming the tide of migrants trying to enter the U.S.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control announced new distance guidelines for schools Friday, saying three feet of distance for masked students was adequate instead of the previously recommended six-foot span.“These updated recommendations provide the evidence-based road map to help schools reopen safely, and remain open, for in-person instruction,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement.On Friday, India’s Union Health Ministry reported an increase in coronavirus infections for the ninth day in a row, with 40,000 new cases in the previous 24 hours. India has reported 11.5 million COVID-19 cases. As of early Friday afternoon EDT, only two countries had more — the U.S., with 29.7 million, and Brazil, with 11.8 million, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.Hopkins reported a global total of 122.1 million infections. 
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A 14-year-old South Sudanese girl who could not control her urine or bowel movements for two years is lying on a bed at the Lutheran Medical Center in Juba, recovering from an operation to repair a fistula – a medical condition in which a hole develops in the birth canal that is caused by prolonged obstructed labor.The girl, who VOA is not identifying for privacy reasons, said a doctor friend called her last month from Juba when she was in Rumbek to inform her about a two-week camp being run by the Barbara May Foundation, an Australian organization that helps women suffering from fistula in the South Sudanese capital.The girl told South Sudan in Focus that in 2019 an old man found her by the roadside, kidnapped her, and forced her into marriage. She said she later became pregnant and developed fistula while delivering her first-born child as a child herself.”I delivered a baby at home in the village. It’s not a town where I could be taken to the hospital. I delivered alone. There was a woman who was helping me so that the baby could come in her hands, but she put her hands in and it cut the urinary tube and urine started flowing by itself. The relatives of my husband said they don’t want me, that I am smelling, so I went to my father’s home,” said the girl.Australian surgeon Dr. Andrew Browning, who started the foundation and conducted the operations, said he and his team have operated on more than 100 women and girls in three different camps in South Sudan.“About 30 ladies per camp and [in] this camp, we have 34 ladies to operate on so it’s now about 120 ladies we have treated in South Sudan but that’s just a small part of the problem; there are many thousands of women in South Sudan with this problem, so we need to train more doctors how to do this operation,” Browning told South Sudan in Focus.The obstetrician and gynecologist became involved with helping women suffering from fistula 17 years ago after visiting his aunt Valerie Browning in rural Ethiopia, who assisted women with terrible childbirth injuries.Dr. Browning trained a few South Sudanese surgeons in Ethiopia.  He said those surgeons could now be working in Juba, Wau and Aweil, but far more doctors are needed to perform fistula operations.“There are some people doing it but not enough, and the patients that come here are usually patients who have been operated on in other places and they failed,” Browning said.  “We pray they succeeded this time,” he added.People believe all kinds of misconceptions about fistula, says Browning.“Some people say it’s a bad spirit, or a curse or maybe the woman was unfaithful in her marriage, but that’s not true.  It’s just that the baby was too big for the mother to deliver and that’s how she got stuck, so she was stuck in labor for five days, it’s not her fault, it’s an awful condition to live with, she is leaking all the time, she is very ashamed,” Browning said.Dr. John Sebit, medical director at the Lutheran Medical Center, where the operations have been conducted, said the center started the project to support mothers who are often rejected by their loved ones due to their condition.“This camp we started in 2018 after realizing there are so many mothers outside living with fistula or obstetric fistula and again the specialists who do these surgeries are not so common, there are so few,” Sebit told South Sudan in Focus.The Lutheran Medical Center helps identify women and girls suffering from fistula and transports them “to where they can be operated on,” he said.Obstetric fistula “will continue in South Sudan until mothers start delivering from hospitals” so that if a baby becomes stuck, doctors can carry out a caesarean section, said Browning.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson received his first dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine Friday and urged the public to do the same, saying “he did not feel a thing.”
Johnson, 56, received his vaccine at the same hospital where almost a year ago he was put in an intensive care unit and given oxygen via a tube in his nose after he contracted the virus and fell seriously ill. He later said he was so sick that plans were drawn up on how to announce his death.
“I literally did not feel a thing. It was very good, very quick,” Johnson said after receiving the injection at St Thomas’ Hospital in London.
“I cannot recommend it too highly, everybody when you do get your notification to go for a jab, please go and get it, it is the best thing for you, best thing for your family and for everyone else.”
Pictures showed the prime minister wearing a black mask, and a shirt and tie with his sleeve rolled up, while a nurse gives him the vaccine.Record day for Britain
Britain broke its record for the most coronavirus shots given out in one day Friday and almost half of all adults have received one dose, making it one of the fastest countries in the world to roll out a vaccine program.
This success has helped the ruling Conservatives regain the lead over the main opposition Labour Party in opinion polls after the prime minister last year was accused of acting too slowly to stop the spread of the virus.
Johnson received his vaccine as European countries Friday resumed using the AstraZeneca shot after regulators said its benefits outweighed any risks following recent reports of blood clots.
Countries including Germany and France reversed their decision to temporarily pause its use after reports of about 30 cases of rare brain blood clots sent scientists and governments scrambling to determine any link.
The AstraZeneca vaccine, developed by scientists at the University of Oxford, also has been at the center of tensions between Britain and the European Union, after Brussels expressed anger over the lack of deliveries of the shot coming from Britain.
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U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are traveling to the southern U.S. state of Georgia on Friday, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and the massage parlor shootings near Atlanta on Tuesday.The U.S. leaders will meet with Asian American leaders to discuss the shootings and the targeting of people of Asian descent in the U.S. in apparent hate crimes.Georgia officials, however, have not yet labeled the massage parlor shootings as hate crimes because the suspect said the shooting spree was a result of his sexual issues.The president and the vice president will also meet with officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention while in Georgia to get an update on the U.S.  handling the COVID-19 pandemic.They were originally also planning to participate in a “Help Is Here” rally to promote the trillion-dollar COVID relief package.The rally has been postponed in the wake of the shootings that killed eight people, six of Asian descent. Biden is, however, slated to meet with former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams whose organizing is widely viewed as being responsible for the Democratic presidential win in Georgia in November, the first Democratic presidential victory in the southern state since 1992.Meanwhile, U.S. and Mexican officials deny Washington is attaching any strings to a likely shipment of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses to America’s southern neighbor at a time of heightened migration passing through Mexico en route to the United States.“[P]reventing the spread of a global pandemic is part of one of our diplomatic objectives. Another one of our diplomatic objectives is working to address the challenges at the border. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that those conversations are both ongoing and happening,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki replied when asked about a link between lending vaccine supplies and commitments from Mexico to tighten the flow of migrants heading north.“These are two separate issues, as we look for a more humane migratory system and enhanced cooperation against COVID-19, for the benefit of our two countries and the region,” said a statement from Roberto Velasco, director general for the North America region at Mexico’s foreign ministry.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 10 MB480p | 14 MB540p | 19 MB720p | 37 MB1080p | 74 MBOriginal | 224 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioPsaki confirmed Thursday that there are discussions to send 2.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico and 1.5 million to Canada.“We are assessing how we can lend doses,” the press secretary said. “That is our aim. It’s not fully finalized yet.”Mexican officials say an agreement among the United States, Canada and Mexico is to be announced Friday.Tens of millions of doses of the Astra Zeneca-University of Oxford vaccine are in U.S. manufacturing sites. That company’s vaccine has been authorized in numerous countries, but not yet in the United States.The AstraZeneca vaccine has received some negative publicity and there is speculation some Americans will hesitate to take that vaccine after it receives expected approval in the United States.Several countries in Europe this week suspended use of the AstraZeneca doses after reports that a few people who received it later developed blot clots and severe bleeding.Europe’s drug regulator Thursday declared the AstraZeneca vaccine safe, adding that a review of the 17 million people who received it found they were actually less likely to develop dangerous clots than others who hadn’t received the vaccine.“It makes sense for the United States to loan its surplus of millions of doses to neighbors where it can be put to good use right away,” said Joshua Busby, assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Texas-Austin.The pending deals with Canada and Mexico, Busby told VOA, do not go far enough because “more countries in the Americas and beyond will need vaccines. But I’m confident that the Biden team is aware of this.”Busby, author of the book Moral Movements and Foreign Policy, said he expects in the coming months the Biden administration will make a major effort to increase global vaccine access “because the longer the epidemic persists globally, the greater the risk of variants that could emerge for which the current vaccines are ineffective.”Asked on Thursday about requests from other countries to make U.S. coronavirus vaccine stock available to them, Psaki replied: “Certainly we’ll have those conversations, and we are open to receiving those requests and obviously making considerations.””Various countries including China have been engaged in so called vaccine diplomacy,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Japanese reporters on Wednesday. “We shouldn’t tie the distribution or access to vaccines to politics or to geopolitics.”Concerns have been raised that the United States and the rest of the West are losing a public relations battle with China and Russia which, at minimum, are using such vaccine distribution to improve their influence and image in developing countries.“Even as nations understandably prioritize their own citizens for vaccines, including their own most vulnerable, we cannot forget that those with the means should also help other countries in need,” said Curtis Chin, former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank.Vaccine diplomacy competition between nations to help other countries can be a good thing, but “where it falls apart is when that competition overrides necessary cooperation and coordination,” Chin told VOA.
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German health officials Friday said coronavirus cases in the country are rising at “an exponential rate,” forcing the government to reconsider lifting COVID-19 restrictions. At a news conference in Berlin, Robert Koch Institute ((RKI)) for infectious Diseases Vice President Lars Schaade told reporters highly contagious virus variants were getting the upper hand in the nation, wiping out progress seen last month in containing the pandemic.Shaade, appearing with German Health Minister Jens Spahn, reported 17,482 new infections in the previous 24 hours and 226 deaths in Germany, with the seven-day incidence rate soaring to about 96 per 100,000 people, despite a months-long lockdown in much of the country.Shaade said increased infections were notably among younger people. “The incidence increases are clearly in the groups under 60 years old, especially in the group 15 to 49 years old.”Spahn told reporters the numbers mean plans to re-open the country will need to be put on hold. “On the contrary, we may even have to take steps backwards.”Earlier this month, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced plans to gradually lift COVID-19 restrictions, she said she and regional leaders agreed to impose new restrictions in areas where the seven-day incidence rate surpassed 100. At least two regions have already reached that threshold.Meanwhile, Spahn said he has been negotiating with Russia regarding its Sputnik V vaccine, and indicated he is very close to completing a deal. He said the government had been in close contact with the Russians, “and I can also well imagine that we [will] conclude contracts — and conclude them quickly.”He said, however, Germany needs more details on how many doses could be delivered and when. The vaccine has yet to be approved by German or European Union regulators.Germany resumed administering AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine Thursday after the EU regulator Europe Medincines Agency ((EMA)) concluded once again that it was safe and effective. The agency had conducted a study of the vaccine and cases of blood clots reported in several patients after receiving the vaccine.
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As the Northern Hemisphere enters a second spring of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts are saying the higher temperatures and sunnier days are unlikely to do much on their own to curtail the spread of the virus.Travel restrictions and mask mandates, along with people’s behavior, have a much bigger impact than the weather, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The report highlights that the steps people can take “far outweigh any external factors, and that’s a really positive thing to know,” said Dev Niyogi, geosciences professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved in the report but wrote a study published in November with similar findings. “We saw waves of infection rise in warm seasons and warm regions in the first year of the pandemic, and there is no evidence that this couldn’t happen again in the coming year,” Ben Zaitchik, a climate scientist at Johns Hopkins University, said in a statement. Panel to review informationZaitchik chaired an interdisciplinary panel set up by the WMO to make sense of the deluge of research on the issue.When the pandemic began in early 2020, the virus now called SARS-CoV-2 was known simply as the “novel coronavirus.” Scientists could only look to other coronaviruses to guess how this one would behave.Some coronaviruses cause common colds, which rise and fall with the seasons.Scientists do not know exactly why that is, however, the report noted.Some respiratory viruses do not survive as long in a warmer, more humid atmosphere compared with cold, dry winter air. Stronger summer sunlight may zap viruses more with ultraviolet (UV) radiation than on dimmer winter days.In lab studies, SARS-CoV-2 did survive longer in cold, dry conditions with low UV light. But these studies did not show whether those conditions “have a meaningful influence on transmission rates under real-world conditions,” the report said.Affect of weather an unknownOne way the weather could affect how well the virus spreads is by affecting how people behave. Cold weather drives people indoors, where the virus is known to spread more easily. But hot weather and rain can also prompt people to go inside, the report noted.The report also considered how air pollution affected COVID-19, but could not draw firm conclusions on the subject. Some early studies show higher death rates in more polluted air, but they have not been confirmed.While the role of many of these environmental factors are still open questions, the report says the benefit of policies such as travel restrictions and mask mandates “has been clearly established.”Weather and air pollution levels are not a good basis for relaxing these measures, it added.By highlighting how masks and social distancing are more powerful than the weather, the report shows that “for a change, our ability to be exposed or not (to a disease) is in our hands,” Niyogi of the University of Texas said.
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The European Medicines Agency has approved the continued use of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in the battle to contain the pandemic. The European regulator’s seal of approval comes after several European countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, stopped using the vaccine following reports that the shots caused blood clots in some vaccine recipients.The agency said in a statement Thursday “the benefits of the vaccine in combating the still widespread threat of COVID-19 (which itself results in clotting problems and may be fatal) continue to outweigh the risk of side effects.”The agency added, “A causal link with the vaccine is not proven but is possible and deserves further analysis.”Meanwhile, the White House announced Thursday that it is sending millions of stockpiled doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico and Canada.The vaccine has not yet been approved for use by U.S. regulators, but it has been approved for use by Mexico and Canada.The announcement comes as the Biden administration wants Mexico’s help in stemming the tide of migrants who are attempting to come into the U.S.Mexico is slated to receive 2.5 million vaccines from the U.S., with Canada receiving 1.5 million.White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the vaccines would be loans to the two U.S. neighbors, with the U.S. eventually being reimbursed with vaccines from the bordering countries.Beginning Friday, several French regions, including Paris, will be under new lockdown orders to contain increasing coronavirus cases.France had 40,000 new cases Wednesday.Prime Minister Jean Castex said Thursday the outbreak in France is “worsening,” adding, “Our responsibility now is that it not get out of control.”On Friday, India’s Union Health Ministry reported an increase in coronavirus infections for a ninth day in a row, with 40,000 new cases in the previous 24-hour period. India has 11.5 million COVID-19 cases.Only two countries have more infections than India — the U.S., with 29.6 million cases, and Brazil, with 11.7 million, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.Johns Hopkins reports there are 121.7 million global coronavirus infections.
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