Month: September 2020

Germany’s health ministry Wednesday said its coronavirus smartphone app has been downloaded more than 18 million times and transmitted 1.2 million test results from labs to users during the first 100 days of use.Health Minister Jens Spahn told reporters in Berlin that while the “Corona Warn App” is far from perfect, it should be considered a success. He said almost 5,000 users have activated the app to warn their contacts and called it a key tool in the country’s effort to contain the spread of the virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease.He said, “This shows that the corona tracing app works, it is in demand…it helps to prevent infections and it is one of the most successful apps worldwide.”Spahn noted in particular the fact that most users can get their test results sent directly to their smartphones, without having to wait for their doctor to inform them.German Health Minister Jens Spahn attends a news conference to give an update on a smartphone app that allows users to evaluate their risk of being exposed to the coronavirus in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 23, 2020.Germany’s strict privacy rules mean that the app stores all data on phones and not on a central server. Observers, however, say there is no precise data on the number of people alerted about possible exposure.Should an app user get a positive test result, the app has a button the person can press to warn his or her contacts. Spahn says one problem is not everyone is doing that. “Only about half of the app users who get a positive result inform their contacts afterwards.”Spahn says the app is not a cure-all, but one of a number of important tools the government is using to control the spread of the virus.German tech company Deutsche Telekom, working with software company SAP, developed the app. Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Tim Hoettges said more than 90% of labs in Germany are now connected to it.Hoettges said efforts are under way to establish a European “gateway” that will allow the German app to communicate with those in 10 other European countries, including Italy, Poland and Spain, that use the same decentralized, Bluetooth-based system.
…

Rescuers are trying to save scores of whales beached in the Australian state of Tasmania. Earlier this week, a pod of 270 pilot whales were found washed ashore.  Two hundred more were discovered a short distance away Wednesday.  The stranding of about 470 pilot whales on the west coast of Tasmania is the largest ever recorded in the state’s history.   Two hundred seventy animals were found washed up on sandbars Monday, prompting a rescue operation involving wildlife experts, the police and volunteers. They have managed to return some of the whales into deeper water and coax them back out to sea. It is a challenging task. Pilot whales can grow up to seven meters long and weight three tons.  But dozens of the pod discovered Monday have died, and Australian wildlife experts believe that most of the 200 whales found beached 10 kilometers away Wednesday have not survived.    Yet rescue efforts continue. Wildlife biologist Kris Carlyon says they are focusing on those animals with a realistic chance of survival. “We are going to basically take the animals with the best chance to start with and the ones that we (are) able to deal with.  So, some animals may be simply too big or in an unsuitable location to actually deal with,” Carlyon said.The coastline near Macquarie Harbor, near the town of Strahan, Tasmania, is a known whale-stranding hotspot. In 2011, about 20 sperm whales were beached there, and most died.    Experts have yet to understand why the mammals become marooned.  There are various scientific suppositions.  The whales use echo location to navigate, and one theory is that the whales may have been drawn in too close to the coast in search of food. Other theories have asserted that the Moon’s gravitational pull or perhaps military sonar could be responsible.   There is no definitive answer, and some marine experts believe that mass strandings of whales and dolphins in different countries could all have different causes.  The rescue mission in Tasmania could take days.  Experts say cool and wet weather will help keep the surviving whales alive, but they concede it is a race against time.  
…

Volunteers planted 20,000 miniature U.S. flags on the grounds of the Washington Monument in the nation’s capital Tuesday, the day the nation reached 200,000 COVID-19 deaths. Each flag represented 10 victims who have perished since the virus first arrived in the U.S. earlier this year.   During an interfaith religious service held at the Monument to mark the grim occasion, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the high death toll was “preventable” and urged the nation to embrace science to prevent any future losses.   In April, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the death toll would be “more like 60,000,” while U.S. President Donald Trump, who early on minimized the coronavirus as something akin to seasonal flus, in May said the toll could be anywhere from 75,000 to 100,000.     Now, health analysts at the University of Washington say the death toll could reach 410,000 by the end of the year.  The United States has the highest death toll among all nations, but some countries in Europe and Latin America have recorded more deaths per capita.A “promotora” (health promoter) from CASA, a Hispanic advocacy group, tries to enroll Latinos as volunteers to test a potential COVID-19 vaccine, at a farmers market in Takoma Park, Md., on Sept. 9, 2020.In late April, more than 2,000 deaths a day were being recorded in the U.S. Now the figure is close to 800 deaths daily. Medical researchers are trying to develop a coronavirus vaccine and could have approval for a preventative in the coming months. Without one yet, though, and with seasonal colder weather arriving, experts say the daily death toll could increase again.   News outlets say the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering a set of stricter new guidelines for the emergency authorization of a potential COVID-19 vaccine.  The proposed new rules would require drug makers to observe participants in late-stage clinical trials for at least two months after they receive a second and final dose of an experimental vaccine.  The guidelines would also look for at least five severe cases of COVID-19 in volunteers who received a neutral version of the vaccine, known as a placebo.   Two pharmaceutical companies that are developing a coronavirus vaccine, Moderna and Pfizer, have only begun administering second doses to their volunteers. If the new rules are adopted, an authorization for a new vaccine would come well after the November 3 presidential election. President Donald Trump has been saying for several weeks that a coronavirus vaccine would be available either in October or right before Election Day.   The FDA and other federal scientific and regulatory agencies have seen their credibility diminished by constant administration efforts to revise their reports and guidelines to maintain Trump’s views about the nature of the pandemic. The United States is experiencing a surge of new coronavirus cases across more than 20 states, with many outbreaks reported at colleges and universities due to returning students failing to observe social distancing guidelines.  The outbreak has also caused chaos for local school districts across the country, with administrators and teachers struggling with either online learning or a combination of online and in-person instruction.  Members of the school board in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the fourth-largest school district in the United States, voted Tuesday to bring back students to the classroom in mid-October. The decision was reached after a non-stop 29-hour meeting that included 18 hours of public testimony from more than 750 people.   Under the plan laid out by Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, students in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade, plus those with special needs, would return to school on October 14, with the rest of the district’s students coming back on October 21. Miami-Dade’s online-only instruction has been plagued with problems since it began in August, including network outages, software glitches and a cyberattack carried out by a high school student. 
…

The 75th U.N. General Assembly is breaking new ground by going virtual this year due to the coronavirus. Along with that comes a whole new set of challenges and security risks. Aaron Fedor reports for VOA from New York City.
…

Scientists with the U.S. space agency NASA say satellite data show Arctic sea ice cover this year shrank to the second-lowest level since modern record keeping began in the late 1970s.  NASA scientists and researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported Monday that analysis of satellite data shows the 2020 minimum extent of ocean covered in ice, 3.74 million square kilometers, was likely reached Sept. 15. The data shows the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice in the summer has dropped markedly in the last two decades. The lowest extent on record was set in 2012. Last year’s extent was tied for second — until this year. NASA sea ice scientist Nathan Kurtz said 2020 was “a really warm year in the Arctic.” A Siberian heat wave in spring 2020 began this year’s Arctic sea ice melt season early. With Arctic temperatures being 8 to 10 degrees Celsius warmer than average, the ice extent kept declining. Kurtz said the earlier the melt starts, the more that is generally lost. In addition, NASA says a recent study showed that warmer water from the Atlantic Ocean, which is typically deep below the colder Arctic waters, is creeping closer to the bottom of the sea ice and warming it from below. NSIDC Director Mark Serreze said the amount of summer sea ice in the Arctic can impact local ecosystems, regional and global weather patterns, and ocean circulation. Warmer ocean temperatures eat away at the thicker multiyear ice, and also result in thinner ice to start the spring melt season.  Melt early in the season results in more open water, which absorbs heat from the sun and increases water temperatures. Serreze said this second-lowest extent of sea ice on record is just one of many signs of a warming climate in the north. He also noted that signs of a warming climate include the Siberian heat waves, forest fires, hotter-than-average temperatures over the Central Arctic, and the thawing permafrost that led to a Russian fuel spill earlier this year. 
 
…

The U.S. National Hurricane Center says the storm system known as Beta has been downgraded to a tropical depression but still threatens to dump heavy rain as it moves inland over Texas. In its latest report Tuesday, the hurricane center says Beta was centered about 177 kilometers south, southwest of the city of Houston and its winds had diminished to about 55 kilometers per hour. It was moving to the northeast at about four kilometers per hour. While tropical storm and surge warnings have been discontinued, forecasters say the system is still likely to drop 10 to 25 centimeters of rain over parts of Texas with isolated areas seeing as much as 50 centimeters. The cities of Houston and Galveston have reported flooding in streets and along coastal areas. The hurricane center says the remnants of the storm are likely to pick up speed as it moves inland over southeastern Texas through Wednesday and then over Louisiana and Mississippi from Wednesday night through Friday. Beta made landfall late Monday just north of Port O’Connor, Texas, becoming the ninth named storm that made landfall in the continental United States this year. That tied a record set in 1916.  Beta was named for the second letter in the Greek alphabet because the hurricane center had run out of conventional names for storms — the first time that has happened in 15 years, and only the second time since the 1950s. 
 
…

Doctors and public health experts are telling people in the Northern Hemisphere to prepare for the worst in the coming months, when both the coronavirus and the flu virus will be circulating at the same time. It’s a one-two punch that could cause even more deaths and has the potential to overwhelm health care systems. More from VOA’s Carol Pearson.PRODUCER: Jon Spier 
…

Five weeks after California erupted in deadly wildfires supercharged by record heat and howling winds, crews battling flames pushed Monday to consolidate their gains before the return of the blistering, gusty weather. California has lost far more landscape to wildfires this summer than during any previous entire year, with scores of conflagrations, many sparked by catastrophic lightning storms, scorching about 3.4 million acres since mid-August. The previous record was just less than 2 million acres burned in 2018. As of Monday, more than 19,000 firefighters continued to wage war on 27 major blazes across the state, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire). FILE – A firefighter with the San Bernardino County Fire Department hoses down hot spots from the Bobcat Fire in Valyermo, Calif., Sept. 19, 2020.The fires, stoked by extreme weather conditions that scientists have pointed to as signs of climate change, have destroyed an estimated 6,100 homes and other structures and killed 26 people, three of them firefighters, CalFire reported. Another 2 million acres have gone up in flames in Oregon and Washington state during an overlapping outbreak of wildfires that started earlier this month, destroying more than 4,400 structures in all and claiming 10 lives. But a weekend of intermittently heavy showers across the western Cascade mountain range helped fire crews in the Pacific Northwest tamp down blazes in those two states. FILE – A sign advertising new homes stands in a neighborhood severely damaged by wildfire in Medford, Oregon, Sept. 20, 2020.Although California has seen little or no rain in recent days, bouts of extreme heat and gale-force winds that had produced incendiary conditions for weeks have given way to lower temperatures and lighter breezes, enabling firefighters to gain ground around most fires. “They’re going to take advantage of this cool weather while they can,” CalFire spokeswoman Lynne Tolmachoff told Reuters. The break in the weather is not expected to last much longer. Tolmachoff said forecasts call for rising temperatures, lower humidity and a return of strong, erratic winds around midweek in Southern California and by the weekend across the state’s northern half. Bobcat Fire proves stubborn  Some fires have proved more stubborn than others. One in particular, dubbed the Bobcat Fire, grew to more than 100,000 acres Monday in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles, with containment levels achieved by firefighters holding steady at just 15%, CalFire said. The Bobcat last week spread perilously close to a famed astronomical observatory and complex of vital communications towers at the summit of Mount Wilson, while forcing evacuations of communities in the foothills below. FILE – Winds blow flying embers from a burning tree at the Bobcat Fire in Juniper Hills, California, Sept. 19, 2020.Several more areas, including Pasadena, a city of 140,000 people, remained under an evacuation warning, advising residents to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. At the opposite end of the sprawling mountain range to the north, the fire was reported to have destroyed some homes and other structures in the high desert of the Antelope Valley. Across the Bobcat Fire zone and others, ground crews with axes, shovels and bulldozers clambered through rugged canyons and mountain slopes, hacking away tinder-dry brush and scrub before it could burn, creating containment lines around the perimeter of advancing flames. They were assisted by squadrons of water-dropping helicopters and airplane tankers dumping flame retardant on the blazes. Regardless of the progress they make this week, California’s record fire season remains far from over. The height of wildfire activity historically has run through October. Five of the state’s 20 largest blazes on record have occurred this year. 
 
…