Day: October 15, 2020

Hunger and malnutrition are worsening in parts of the African continent because of the coronavirus pandemic, especially in low-income communities or those already stricken by continued conflict, according to a survey of 2,400 people in 10 African countries by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The survey, conducted from June to August, shows the pandemic has caused job losses and curtailed people’s ability to farm or access markets.
“The risk is that as food prices rise and people’s income plummets, we could see a rise in malnutrition because families can’t afford enough food, or that the foods they can afford are less nutrient-rich,” said ICRC’s economic security analyst for Africa, Pablo Lozano.
Since the start of the pandemic, 94% of respondents reported that prices for food and other essentials in their local markets had increased, while 82% said they had lost income or revenue. Only 7% said they had enough savings to cope with a prolonged crisis.
Lozano said the survey shows people are struggling financially “in the communities in which we work, especially true among those who relied on day labor to get by or small business owners, as well as communities that were already struggling with food insecurity due to conflict or violence.”Students of Rising Sun Children School wear face masks as a preventive measure to curb the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus in their classroom in Yaba, Lagos, on Oct. 12, 2020.
In Western Africa, in Nigeria’s conflict-stricken northeast, the number of children treated by the outpatient nutrition program grew by 20%, while the number of severe malnutrition cases grew by 10% compared with the same period last year.
The increase in patients was recorded even though ICRC’s community outreach program has been on hold due to COVID-19. The ICRC said it is worried about the increase and predicts even more patients once work resumes.
“We are very concerned by the trend, especially in Maiduguri,” said Thomas Ndambu, ICRC nutritionist, who is “certain that when Nigerian Red Cross volunteers resume their community outreach, the number of malnutrition cases will surge.”
In nearby Burkina Faso, unabated violence despite the pandemic has displaced about 2.8 million people. These forcibly displaced people are now estimated to face crisis levels of food insecurity or worse, representing an increase of more than 200% from the same period a year ago, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification System.Children sit in their classroom on the first day of the new school year, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on Oct.1, 2020.Mathew Kenyanjui, economic security coordinator of the ICRC in Burkina Faso, cautioned that the level of hunger is “rising dangerously due to violence, lack of access to arable land, fragile adaptation strategies, such as sales of household assets and livestock.” This situation has been compounded by the cyclical droughts and the flooding this year, he added.
UNICEF and the World Food Program reported that a survey conducted in August in 11 municipalities in Burkina Faso found 11% of children under the age of 5, and pregnant and breastfeeding women, to be suffering from moderate acute malnutrition, and 3% suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
The trend is no different in the easternmost part of the continent in Somalia. Seventeen-thousand malnourished children under the age of 5, and pregnant and breastfeeding women, were assisted in the first six months of 2020, compared with 11,900 in all of 2019. Here, too, the number is expected to climb by year-end because of a combination of violence, conflict, floods, locusts and COVID-19 complications.Sudanese refugees children pose for photographs, in the Treguine camp, in Hadjer Hadid, in the Ouaddaï region of eastern Chad, on March 24, 2019.In Chad, the situation has deteriorated dramatically in 2020 because of the highly volatile security situation in parts of the country that has forced people from their homes, often more than once. Exacerbating the situation is COVID-19 and climate shocks including droughts and floods. In the Lake Chad region, 65% of families in the country are estimated to live on just $2 a day.
Flooding also has compounded already staggering food insecurity and malnutrition levels in South Sudan, where more than half of the country’s 11 million people are estimated to face severe food insecurity. That is combined with protracted conflict and armed violence, which has affected livelihoods for decades and forced millions of people to flee their homes and abandon their crops. Additionally, markets often are destroyed in armed clashes, disrupting people’s access to food.
Additionally, the ICRC is concerned that if borders are closed due to COVID-19, South Sudan would face dramatic consequences and the level of food insecurity would rise significantly, given that much of the country’s food is imported.
The ICRC survey was also conducted in countries where the ICRC continues to work, including Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 
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Senate Republicans said Thursday they will subpoena Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey over the decision to block a news report critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. “This is election interference and we’re 19 days out from an election,” Senator Ted Cruz said, a day after the social network blocked links to the article by the New York Post alleging corruption by Biden in Ukraine. Cruz said the Senate Judiciary Committee would vote next Tuesday to subpoena Dorsey to testify at the end of next week and “explain why Twitter is abusing their corporate power to silence the press.” “The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to know what the hell is going on,” he said. “Twitter and Facebook and big tech millionaires don’t get to censor political speech and actively interfere in the election. That’s what they are doing right now.” Republican Senator Josh Hawley announced separately that he had sent letters to Dorsey and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg asking them to appear before his Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism. The hearing will “consider potential campaign law violations” in support of Biden with the blocking of the article.  The Post’s story purported to expose corrupt dealings by Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine. The newspaper claimed that the former vice president, who was in charge of U.S. policy toward Ukraine, took actions to help his son, who in 2014-2017 sat on the board of controversial Ukraine energy company Burisma. But the newspaper’s source for the information raised questions. It cited records on a drive allegedly copied from a computer said to have been abandoned by Hunter Biden, that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani gave to the Post. The report also made claims about Joe Biden’s actions in Ukraine, which were contrary to the record.   Wary of “fake news” campaigns, both Facebook and Twitter said they took action out of caution over the article and its sourcing. “This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone. The role of Giuliani, who has repeatedly advanced unproven and poorly sourced conspiracy theories about the Bidens and Ukraine, also raised flags. The Biden campaign rejected the assertions of corruption in the report but has not denied the veracity of the underlying materials, mostly emails between Hunter Biden and business partners. Trump, who trails Biden in polls 19 days before the presidential election, blasted the two social media giants on Wednesday. “So terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of ‘Smoking Gun’ emails related to Sleepy Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the @NYPost,” Trump posted on Twitter. 
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The head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warns Sudan’s fragile political stability could be at risk if the desperate needs of hundreds of thousands of flood victims are not urgently addressed. Severe floods have affected nearly 900,000 Sudanese, reportedly killing more than 120, rendering thousands of families homeless, and destroying farmlands and livelihoods.International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Secretary General Jagan Chapagain attends a ceremony in Geneva on July 22, 2020.Secretary-General Jagan Chapagain has just returned from a four-day assessment mission to Sudan. He said the impact of the worst floods in three decades is far beyond anything he had expected.“I visited an area called Algamayer on the outskirts of Khartoum. Homes, infrastructure and crops have been destroyed,”  Chapagain said. “The conditions are simply appalling. It is boiling hot — more than 40 degrees, and there is no shade. The camp we visited is surrounded by stagnant water, and mosquitoes are rife.”Chapagain said the only access to clean water or sanitary toilets is at the neighboring school, which is closed at night. He said people also lack sufficient shelter, toilets and mosquito nets, which means malaria is rampant and the risk of cholera and other diseases is high.He said children comprise about half of the flood victims and are particularly vulnerable. This humanitarian crisis, he said, also is taking a heavy toll on pregnant and lactating women, the elderly and disabled.He told VOA he is very concerned by the level of anger and frustration he encountered and its potential impact on the country’s stability.“There was a locust infestation in the beginning of the year,” Chapagain said. “There has been, of course, impact of the COVID. And, of course, with the political change, the expectations of the population on the government are very, very high — actually extremely high … I do believe that the pressure on the government could be very significantly increasing in coming months if these desperate needs are not addressed.”Sudan’s transitional government, which took office last year after long-time leader Omar al-Bashir was ousted, is struggling to build a stable political system and end political violence in the impoverished country.The International Red Cross has received just 15% of the $13 million appeal it launched in September to provide health care, shelter, water and sanitation and other essential relief for 200,000 Sudanese flood victims.Secretary-General Chapagain says it is urgent to act now. He warns the failure of the international community to support this life-saving operation will have fearful consequences for many thousands of people. 
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Dozens of European cities have been forced into lockdown amid a surge in coronavirus infections. Hospital intensive care units in the affected regions are filling up fast and doctors are warning that health systems could become overwhelmed as winter approaches.Europe is now reporting more daily infections than the three countries worst hit by the pandemic — the United States, Brazil, and India.Paris, along with eight other French cities, including Rouen, Lille, St. Etienne, Lyon, Grenoble, Montpellier, Marseille and Toulouse, have been put under night-time curfew. All restaurants, bars and shops will be forced to close, and people have been told to stay at home between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. for four weeks beginning Oct. 17.Announcing the measures in a televised address Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron warned of tough times ahead. “Testing, alerting, protecting, this is the key to the strategy that we have to ramp up throughout November and December, because we are going to have to deal with this virus until at least the summer of 2021, all the scientists are clear,” Macron said.Some residents of the French capital expressed alarm at the return of a partial lockdown. “My first reaction was that it’s going to be hell,” said 25-year-old Mathilde Weiss, a product manager. “I’m absolutely not going to have a social life anymore. So, I’m a little apprehensive, I admit.”A woman wearing a face mask to protect against the spread of coronavirus walks beneath the metal Puerta de la Ilustracion urban sculpture designed by Andreu Alfaro in Madrid, Spain, Oct. 15, 2020.Coronavirus infections are rising exponentially in several European countries. Spain has put Madrid and eight nearby municipalities under a state of emergency, with strict limits on traveling outside the region. In Barcelona, the local government has ordered bars and restaurants to close for 15 days, with similar restrictions in force across the Netherlands.Business owners are anxious about the impact of the new restrictions. “Who is going to take care of the wages for these 15 days? Who is going to take charge of the rent?” asked Julio Rodriguez, owner of the Pizza Sur restaurant on Barcelona’s seafront.The Spanish government has extended emergency financial support for businesses. But the economic cost across Europe is growing.The Czech Republic is among the worst-hit countries with the number of hospitalized Covid-19 patients this week reaching six times the peak seen during the first wave of the virus in the spring. The country has Europe’s highest number of new coronavirus infections relative to population size.Doctor Sterghios Moschos, a molecular biologist at Britain’s University of Northumbria, says the surge in infections in Europe likely was driven by young people returning to schools and universities in September.“As soon as this virus is outside of those settings — meaning the family settings and therefore, by extension, the work settings as well — we’ll end up having the burden brought back onto those who are elderly, infirm or vulnerable,” Moschos told VOA. “As a result of that we will see increasing hospitalizations in a matter of days.”Britain has imposed a three-tiered system of lockdowns, with the city of Liverpool in the highest tier. Doctors say more than 95 percent of intensive care beds in the city are full.A man wearing a face mask walks past a statue of the Beatles, as new measures across the region are set to come into force in Liverpool, England, Oct. 14, 2020.Jerry MacNally, a 61-year-old Liverpool resident, said he supports the new measures. “If we just carry on and carry on, it’ll spread and spread and spread. It’ll be like the TB [tuberculosis] from years ago, when everyone was dying — years ago when I was a young lad,” MacNally said.London and several other English regions have been put on Tier 2 lockdown, restricting household mixing. The government has stopped short of calling for a so-called “circuit-breaker” two-week national lockdown, however, which some of its own scientific advisers have called for.British Health Secretary Matt Hancock walks through Downing Street on his way into number 10, in London, Sept. 23, 2020.British Health Secretary Matt Hancock told lawmakers Thursday that the new system has to be given time to work. “We must act to suppress it, and suppressing it through local action, in the first instance, is the best tool that we have whilst we work, of course, with the scientists and technology that can help us to do that better,” Hancock told MPs.“It is also best for economic outcomes,” Hancock added. “Because even though the restrictions, of course, have their impact, and I understand that, and I feel that, it is better than the consequences of action that would have to be taken to ensure that we keep the virus under control were it to get out of hand once again.”Doctor Sterghios Moschos told VOA the localized lockdowns won’t be enough to contain the pandemic.“The borders between the Liverpool region and the Manchester region and London, [because of] modern transportation, are porous,” Moschos said. “Unless people are literally stuck at home and not allowed to get out, so that any transmission is restricted to the homeplace, these measures are going to be half measures.”“Time will show that we will end up in a situation that lockdown at Tier 2 is going to be inadequate and Tier 3 is not going to be adequate, and we will need to get into a lockdown like the one in March,” he said. “The longer we leave it, the longer we’re going to need stronger measures to last for to contain the transmission.”With hospitals filling up and the number of deaths increasing across Europe, scientists say the continent faces a difficult winter ahead.
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French officials said police have conducted early-morning searches of the homes of the current and former top government officials after a special French court ordered an investigation of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.France’s Health Ministry confirmed the dawn searches, which include the offices of the current health minister, Olivier Veran. Officials whose homes were searched include former prime minister Edouard Philippe, Veran, his predecessor, Agnes Buzyn, current Public Health Director Jerome Salomon, and former government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye.The investigation was opened earlier this year after France’s Court of Justice received complaints from COVID-19 patients, doctors, police and others about the government’s slow response to the pandemic, shortages of protective equipment, and a poor plan for testing.  When he announced the investigation earlier this year, Paris chief prosecutor Remy Heitz said the investigation would have limited scope and would focus on public officials. Heitz said possible offenses could include the alleged failure to implement workplace anti-virus protection, failure to provide face masks to reduce infection, and failure to roll out a workable testing plan.The home searches came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron announced curfews in the Paris region and eight other French metropolitan areas to deal with the rising toll of new infections.French opposition member of parliament Jean-Luc Reitzer, who was hospitalized with COVID-19 earlier this year, told French television he was shocked by the searches. “Do our citizens seriously believe that the shortages, which were real, were voluntary,” he said.
 
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Wildfires churning out dense plumes of smoke as they scorch huge swaths of the U.S. West Coast have exposed millions of people to hazardous pollution levels, causing emergency room visits to spike and potentially thousands of deaths among the elderly and infirm, according to an Associated Press analysis of pollution data and interviews with physicians, health authorities and researchers.
Smoke at concentrations that topped the government’s charts for health risks and lasted at least a day enshrouded counties inhabited by more than 8 million people across five states in recent weeks, AP’s analysis shows.
Major cities in Oregon, which has been especially hard hit,  last month suffered the highest pollution levels they’ve ever recorded when powerful winds supercharged fires that had been burning in remote areas and sent them hurtling to the edge of densely populated Portland.
Medical complications began arising while communities were still enveloped in smoke, including hundreds of additional emergency room visits daily in Oregon, according to state health officials.
“It’s been brutal for me,” said Barb Trout, a 64-year-old retiree living south of Portland in the Willamette Valley. She was twice taken to the emergency room by ambulance following severe asthmatic reactions, something that had never happened to her before.
Trout had sheltered inside as soon as smoke rolled into the valley just after Labor Day but within days had an asthma attack that left her gasping for air and landed her in the ER. Two weeks later, when smoke from fires in California drifted into the valley, she had an even more violent reaction that Trout described as a near-death experience.
“It hit me quick and hard – more so than the first one. I wasn’t hardly even breathing,” she recalled. After getting stabilized with drugs, Trout was sent home but the specter of a third attack now haunts her. She and her husband installed an alarm system so she can press a panic button when in distress to call for help.
“It’s put a whole new level on my life,” she said. “I’m trying not to live in fear, but I’ve got to be really really cautious.”
In nearby Salem, Trout’s pulmonologist Martin Johnson said people with existing respiratory issues started showing up at his hospital or calling his office almost immediately after the smoke arrived, many struggling to breathe. Salem is in Marion county, which experienced eight days of pollution at hazardous levels during a short period, some of the worst conditions seen the West over the past two decades, according to AP’s analysis.
Most of Johnson’s patients are expected to recover but he said some could have permanent loss of lung function. Then there are the “hidden” victims who Johnson suspects died from heart attacks or other problems triggered by the poor air quality but whose cause of death will be chalked up to something else.
“Many won’t show up at the hospital or they’ll die at home or they’ll show up at hospice for other reasons, such as pneumonia or other complications,” Johnson said.
Based on prior studies of pollution-related deaths and the number of people exposed to recent fires, researchers at Stanford University estimated that as many as 3,000 people over 65 in California alone died prematurely after being exposed to smoke during a six-week period beginning Aug. 1. Hundreds more deaths could have occurred in Washington over several weeks of poor air caused by the fires, according to University of Washington researchers.
The findings for both states have not been published in peer-reviewed journals. No such estimate was available for Oregon.
Wildfires are a regular occurrence in Western states but they’ve grown more intense and dangerous as a changing climate dries out forests thick with trees and underbrush from decades of fire suppression. What makes the smoke from these fires dangerous  are particles too small for the naked eye to see that can be breathed in and cause respiratory problems.
On any given day, western fires can produce 10 times more particles than are produced by all other pollution sources including vehicle emissions and industrial facilities, said Shawn Urbanski, a U.S. Forest Service smoke scientist.
Fires across the West emitted more than a million tons of the particles in 2012, 2015 and 2017, and almost as much in 2018 — the year a blaze in Paradise, California killed 85 people and burned 14,000 houses, generating a thick plume that blanketed portions of Northern California for weeks. Figures for 2017 and 2018 are preliminary.
A confluence of meteorological events made the smoke especially bad this year: first, fierce winds up and down the coast whipped fires into a fury, followed in Oregon by a weather inversion that trapped smoke close to the ground and made it inescapable for days. Hundreds of miles to the south in San Francisco, smoke turned day into night, casting an eerie orange pall over a city where even before the pandemic facemasks had become common at times to protect against smoke.
AP’s analysis of smoke exposure was based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data compiled from hundreds of air quality monitoring stations. Census data was used to determine the numbers of people living in affected areas of Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and Montana.
At least 38 million people live in counties subjected to pollution considered unhealthy for the general population for five days, according to AP’s analysis. That included more than 25 million people in California, 7.2 million in Washington, 3.5 million in Oregon, 1 million in Idaho and 299,000 people in Montana.
The state totals for the number of people exposed to unhealthy air on a given day were derived from counties where at least one monitoring site registered unhealthy air.
Scientists studying long-term health problems have found correlations between smoke exposure and decreased lung function, weakened immune systems and higher rates of flu. That includes studies from northwestern Montana communities blanketed with smoke for weeks in 2017.
“Particulate matter enters your lungs, it gets way down deep, it irrigates the lining and it possibly enters your bloodstream,” said University of Montana professor Erin Landguth. “We’re seeing the effects.”
The coronavirus raises a compounding set of worries: An emerging body of research connects increased air pollution with greater rates of infection and severity of symptoms, said Gabriela Goldfarb, manager of environmental health for the Oregon Health Authority.
Climate experts say residents of the West Coast and Northern Rockies should brace for more frequent major smoke events, as warming temperatures and drought fuel bigger, more intense fires.
Their message is that climate change isn’t going to bring worse conditions: they are already here. The scale of this year’s fires is pushing the envelope” of wildfire severity modeled out to 2050, said Harvard university climate researcher Loretta Mickley.
“The bad years will increase. The smoke will increase,” said Jeffrey Pierce an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University. “It’s not unreasonable that we could be getting a 2020-type year every other year.”
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U.S. regulators Wednesday approved the first drug for the treatment of Ebola.The Food and Drug Administration OK’d the drug developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for treating adults and children with the Zaire Ebola virus strain, the most deadly of six known types. It typically kills 60% to 90% of patients.The drug was one of four tested during an outbreak in Congo that killed nearly 2,300 people before it ended in June. Survival was significantly better in study participants given Regeneron’s Inmazeb or a second experimental drug.The study was ended ahead of schedule last year so all patients could get access to those drugs.Regeneron’s treatment is a combination of three antibodies that work by killing the virus. It’s given once by IV.”When you have three drugs that bind to the (virus), there’s a low probability that the virus can evade all of them,” said Leah Lipsich, who heads Regeneron’s global program for infectious diseases.She said that should help prevent the virus from becoming resistant to the drug.Seeking U.S. approval first is a common strategy for drugmakers developing treatments for diseases mainly found in the tropics and in developing countries. The FDA’s action will make it easier for Regeneron to get approval or allow emergency use during outbreaks in African countries, where the approval process is not straightforward, Lipsich said.The study in Congo involved 681 people, who were give one of four treatments. After four weeks, about a third of those who got Regeneron’s drug had died. Results were about the same for a second drug. But about half had died among the groups given one of the other two drugs, ZMapp or remdesivir.Gilead Science’s remdesivir is now being used as a treatment for coronavirus.Ebola is very contagious and is spread mainly through contact with body fluids from infected people. Symptoms include fever, muscle pain, vomiting, kidney and liver damage, and sometimes internal and external bleeding.The FDA approved the first vaccine for Ebola in December.The U.S. government, which helped fund the approved drug’s development, will buy thousands of doses over the next six years to go into the Strategic National Stockpile. Ebola cases are rare in the U.S. but occasionally are diagnosed in travelers returning from areas with an outbreak.
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