Day: September 5, 2020

The World Health Organization says it is unlikely a safe, effective vaccine
against COVID-19 will be available for widespread use before the middle of next year.  Urging people to lower their expectations, health officials say the development of a safe, efficacious vaccine takes time and cannot be rushed.  As it is, the WHO reports remarkable progress is being made toward this end. It notes at least six to nine candidate vaccines have begun Phase 3 clinical trials.
 
WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris says many thousands of people participate in these carefully crafted trials. She says a vaccine must be proven to be safe and seen to provide protection against the coronavirus in at least 50% of subjects before it can be approved for public use.   
 
Harris says the safety of the vaccine has to be monitored at all stages of the research, making this a lengthy process.
    
“The good news is the manufacturers are already putting bets on which one is likely to be the vaccine.  And, they are all working on how they can scale-up production of vaccines, once we know which ones are the ones we will roll out.… But, in terms of realistic timelines, we are really not expecting to see widespread vaccination until the middle of next year,” she said.FILE – A poster advertises a hunt for volunteers for a study of a possible COVID-19 vaccine, in Binghamton, New York, July 27, 2020.Harris told VOA that the WHO does not tell governments when a vaccine should be made available for emergency or general use. She said that is a decision for countries to make for themselves.  However, she cautioned against raising false hopes about the prospect of an imminent vaccine that would vanquish the pandemic.
 
“What we have been saying over and over is nobody should be sitting there waiting for the magic bullet. You know, thinking that the vaccine is going to solve all this or that there will be a wonder drug. What we have to do now is do the things we know suppress this virus…. And those are the basics—the hand-washing, the social distancing that we are doing, the mask-wearing,” she said.   
    
According to Harris, the WHO believes all nations must work together in the search for a vaccine. She said sharing and comparing data is important and will result in a vaccine that protects everybody.
 
Harris called this a global public good. She said a vaccine not only is essential but must be provided in all parts of the world, adding that unless everybody is protected, nobody is protected.
 
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Wildfires in the Arctic have already released more planet-warming carbon dioxide this year than all of last year, with smoke plumes from the fires covering an area more than one-third the size of Canada, according to new data from the FILE – In this July 10, 2020 file image taken from video provided by Russian Emergency Ministry, a Russian aircraft releases water in the Trans-Baikal National Park in Buryatia, southern Siberia.Previous studies show that climate change is warming Arctic regions around two times the rate of other parts of the planet.  According to Hoy, as cold and wet regions become dry and flammable, fires burn more readily. The fires can be started by human activity, lightning strikes, or “zombie fires” — fires that smolder beneath the ground over winter.Satellite measurements from CAMS show that most of the Arctic wildfires are in Russia’s Sakha Republic region. But the smoke can travel thousands of miles from the blazes. Wildfire smoke contains pollutants that degrade air quality and affect human health. And dark-colored soot that settles on ice and snow absorbs more heat, accelerating melting of Arctic sea ice and sea level rise.“We like to say that what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic,” Hoy said. “So it’s not just the people that are living in the Arctic that are affected by these fires. When the permafrost starts to thaw and carbon is emitted into the atmosphere, that’s not just affecting people locally, that’s affecting all of us. So, we’re all going to experience warming temperatures because we’re losing so much carbon in the Arctic region.”The increasingly intense fires in the Arctic are concerning because they burn deeper into the ground, melting permafrost and releasing “legacy” carbon that has accumulated over hundreds or thousands of years, said Douglas Morton, chief of the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who was not involved with the research.According to Morton, the report from CAMS matches what his own team has been finding.“We too have noticed the uptick in fire activity and fire emissions. There’s some very clear evidence that 2019 and 2020 stand out as really anomalous years for burning in Eastern Siberia and above the Arctic Circle in particular,” he said.CAMS uses satellites to monitor the intensity of wildfires around the planet based on their heat signals. The service also measures the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere to detect changes in greenhouse gases and air quality. According to Parrington, these different measurements help to build a complete picture of global wildfires and the emissions they produce.Above average intensity wildfires have also been observed this summer in the U.S. states of California and Colorado. 
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