Month: October 2020

The United Nations is warning that climate change is threatening the lives of millions of people throughout the world, and that demand for humanitarian aid could rise 50% by 2030. The U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization released a report Tuesday that found more weather-related disasters such as heat waves, storms and droughts are occurring each year. “While COVID-19 generated a large international health and economic crisis from which it will take years to recover, it is crucial to remember that climate change will continue to pose an ongoing and increasing threat to human lives, ecosystems, economies and societies for centuries to come,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.  The 2020 State of Climate Services Report said 11,000 disasters attributed to weather have taken place over the past 50 years, causing 2 million deaths and $3.6 trillion in economic damage.  The report also said 108 million people worldwide needed humanitarian help in 2018 because of natural disasters. Despite the increase in weather-related disasters over that period, the report noted that the average number of fatalities from each disaster per year fell by one-third. In addition to the U.N., the report was prepared by 15 other international agencies and financial institutions. They urge governments to invest more in early-warning systems that can help countries more effectively respond and mitigate the impact of natural disasters.   
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U.S. pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson paused its late-stage clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine after a participant was diagnosed with an unexplained illness. The pause was first reported Monday by the health care news website Stat, which obtained a document the company sent to outside researchers.  Johnson & Johnson had just launched its wide scale testing of its single-dose experimental vaccine. The trial involves 60,000 volunteers across more than 200 locations in the United States and internationally, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and South Africa.   The company said in a statement that so-called “adverse events” such as illnesses and accidents are an expected part of a clinical study, especially with such a large number of participants.  It also said the hold was a “study pause” and not a “clinical hold” which is imposed by a formal health regulatory agency.  Because it can be administered in a single dose, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine has significant advantages over the other three potential vaccines, which require two doses.   The single-dose vaccine would not have to be kept frozen in ultracold temperatures, making it easier to utilize in a mass immunization campaign.   The Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial is the second to be put on hold after a volunteer became ill after receiving the vaccine.  U.S.-based drugmaker AstraZeneca halted its late-stage trial of a vaccine developed with the University of Oxford early last month after a volunteer in Britain was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections.  FILE – A worker feeds vials for production of SARS CoV-2 Vaccine for COVID-19 at the SinoVac vaccine factory in Beijing.The late-stage testing of that vaccine has resumed in Britain, Brazil, India and South Africa, but remains on hold in the United States.  Meanwhile, a new study suggests that a person infected with COVID-19 is still vulnerable to the disease. A report published Monday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal revealed a 25-year-old man in (the western U.S. state of) Nevada first tested positive with COVID-19 back in April, then a second time in June with more severe symptoms that led to him being placed on oxygen.    Researchers say the man was infected with two distinct strains of the novel coronavirus, but could not be sure why the second infection was worse. He may have been exposed to a higher dose of the virus the second time, or the later version was more virulent than the first. This is the first confirmed case of COVID-19 reinfection in the United States, and just the fifth of its kind in the world, with one patient each in Belgium, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Ecuador. The researchers say the reinfections suggest that previous exposure to the coronavirus “does not necessarily translate to guaranteed total immunity.” The Lancet study appears to support a warning by the World Health Organization against a strategy of pursuing herd immunity to stop the coronavirus pandemic, calling the idea unethical.    At a news briefing in Geneva Monday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said health officials should only try to achieve immunity through vaccination, not through exposing people to the virus.     Herd immunity happens when a population is protected from a virus because a threshold immunity has been reached in that society.     “Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic. It’s scientifically and ethically problematic,” Dr. Tedros said.     The WHO estimates that about 10% of the world has contracted the coronavirus. It is not yet known what percentage rate of infection is needed to achieve herd immunity.   Tedros noted that to obtain herd immunity from measles, about 95% of the population must be vaccinated, while for polio, the threshold is about 80%. 
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A late-stage study of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate has been paused while the company investigates whether a study participant’s “unexplained illness” is related to the shot. The company said in a statement Monday evening that illnesses, accidents and other so-called adverse events “are an expected part of any clinical study, especially large studies,” but that its physicians and a safety monitoring panel would try to determine what might have caused the illness. The pause is at least the second such hold to occur among several vaccines that have reached large-scale final tests in the U.S. The company declined to reveal any more details about the illness, citing the participant’s privacy. Temporary stoppages of large medical studies are relatively common. Few are made public in typical drug trials, but the work to make a coronavirus vaccine has raised the stakes on these kinds of complications. Companies are required to investigate any serious or unexpected reaction that occurs during drug testing. Given that such tests are done on tens of thousands of people, some medical problems are a coincidence. In fact, one of the first steps the company said it will take is to determine if the person received the vaccine or a placebo.FILE – A worker feeds vials for production of SARS CoV-2 Vaccine for COVID-19 at the SinoVac vaccine factory in Beijing.The halt was first reported by the health news site STAT. Final-stage testing of a vaccine made by AstraZeneca and Oxford University remains on hold in the U.S. as officials examine whether an illness in its trial poses a safety risk. That trial was stopped when a woman developed severe neurological symptoms consistent with transverse myelitis, a rare inflammation of the spinal cord, the company has said. That company’s testing has restarted elsewhere. Johnson & Johnson was aiming to enroll 60,000 volunteers to prove if its single-dose approach is safe and protects against the coronavirus. Other vaccine candidates in the U.S. require two shots. 
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Microsoft announced legal action Monday seeking to disrupt a major cybercrime digital network that uses more than 1 million zombie computers to loot bank accounts and spread ransomware, which experts consider a major threat to the U.S. presidential election. The operation to knock offline command-and-control servers for a global botnet that uses an infrastructure known as Trickbot to infect computers with malware was initiated with an order that Microsoft obtained in Virginia federal court on Oct. 6.  Microsoft argued that the crime network is abusing its trademark. “It is very hard to tell how effective it will be, but we are confident it will have a very long-lasting effect,” said Jean-Ian Boutin, head of threat research at ESET, one of several cybersecurity firms that partnered with Microsoft to map the command-and-control servers. “We’re sure that they are going to notice and it will be hard for them to get back to the state that the botnet was in.” Cybersecurity experts said that Microsoft’s use of a U.S. court order to persuade internet providers to take down the botnet servers is laudable. But they add that it’s not apt to be successful because too many won’t comply and because Trickbot’s operators have a decentralized fall-back system and employ encrypted routing. Paul Vixie of Farsight Security said via email “experience tells me it won’t scale — there are too many IP’s behind uncooperative national borders.” And the cybersecurity firm Intel 471 reported no significant hit on Trickbot operations Monday and predicted “little medium- to long-term impact” in a report shared with The Associated Press.  But ransomware expert Brett Callow of the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft said that a temporary Trickbot disruption could, at least during the election, limit attacks and prevent the activation of ransomware on systems already infected.  The announcement follows a Washington Post report Friday of a major — but ultimately unsuccessful — effort by the U.S. military’s Cyber Command to dismantle Trickbot beginning last month with direct attacks rather than asking providers to deny hosting to domains used by command-and-control servers.  A U.S. policy called “persistent engagement” authorizes U.S. cyberwarriors to engage hostile hackers in cyberspace and disrupt their operations with code, something Cybercom did against Russian misinformation jockeys during U.S. midterm elections in 2018. Created in 2016 and used by a loose consortium of Russian-speaking cybercriminals, Trickbot is a digital superstructure for sowing malware in the computers of unwitting individuals and websites. In recent months, its operators have been increasingly renting it out to other criminals who have used it to sow ransomware, which encrypts data on target networks, crippling them until the victims pay up. One of the biggest reported victims of a ransomware variety sowed by Trickbot called Ryuk was the hospital chain Universal Health Services, which said all 250 of its U.S. facilities were hobbled in an attack last month that forced doctors and nurses to resort to paper and pencil.  U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials list ransomware as a major threat to the Nov. 3 presidential election. They fear an attack could freeze up state or local voter registration systems, disrupting voting, or knock out result-reporting websites.  While cybersecurity experts say the operators of Trickbot and affiliated digital crime syndicates are Russian speakers mostly based in eastern Europe, they caution that they are motivated by profit, not politics. They do, however, operate with impunity with no Kremlin interference as long as their targets are abroad.  “In today’s world, Trickbot is a type of a plague,” said Alex Holden, founder of Milwaukee-based Hold Security, which tracks its activity closely on the dark web, “and a government that ignores a global plague is more than complacent.” Trickbot is “malware-as-a-service,” its modular architecture lets it be used as a delivery mechanism for a wide array of criminal activity. It began mostly as a so-called banking Trojan that attempts to steal credentials from online bank account so criminals can fraudulently transfer cash. But recently, researchers have noted a rise in Trickbot’s use in ransomware attacks targeting everything from municipal and state governments to school districts and hospitals. Ryuk and another type of ransomware called Conti — also distributed via Trickbot — dominated attacks on the U.S. public sector in September, said Callow of Emsisoft.  Holden said the reported Cybercom disruption — involving efforts to confuse its configuration through code injections — succeeded in temporarily breaking down communications between command-and-control servers and most of the bots. “But that’s hardly a decisive victory,” he said, adding that the botnet rebounded with new victims and ransomware. The disruption — in two waves that began Sept. 22 — was first reported by cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs. The AP could not immediately confirm the reported Cybercom involvement. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s doctor says the president has tested negative for COVID-19 on “consecutive days” as Trump traveled to Florida for his first campaign rally since being diagnosed with the disease earlier this month.In a memo released Monday by the White House, Dr. Sean Conley said Trump was tested using a newer rapid coronavirus test from Abbott Laboratories. He did not say when Trump was tested.Conley said the negative tests, along with other clinical and laboratory data, “indicate a lack of detectable viral replication.” He also repeated an assessment that he gave over the weekend that Trump is no longer infectious to others.Trump returned to the campaign trail Monday for a busy week that includes stops in Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina and Wisconsin, his first campaign travel since his positive test for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, on Oct 2. Trump spent several days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and completed his COVID-19 treatment at the White House.Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus crisis hearing, July 31, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington.Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking on CNN before Trump left the White House for Florida, questioned the wisdom of holding an event like this. Test positivity rates, he noted, are climbing in parts of the Sun Belt.“We know that that is asking for trouble when you do that,” Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said on CNN.Trump described himself Sunday as being “in very good shape” and said he was no longer taking any medication.FILE – President Donald Trump walks out of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after receiving treatment as a COVID-19 patient, in Bethesda, Maryland, Oct. 5, 2020.“I beat this crazy, horrible China virus,” Trump said in a telephone interview on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” show. “It seems like I’m immune, maybe a long time, a short time, maybe a lifetime.”Those who recover from COVID-19 are likely to be immune for some period of time, Fauci told CNN on Monday, but there are cases emerging in which patients are reinfected weeks or months later, he added.Trump said he had a “protective glow” after being treated with several medications during his hospital stay and after returning to the White House last week.A short time after the television interview, Trump said of the coronavirus on Twitter, “I can’t get it (immune), and can’t give it. Very nice to know!!!”Twitter disabled some sharing options on the tweet and labeled it for violating “Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”Facebook did nothing to the same post by Trump on its platform.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided limited information about immunity and reinfection. A person who has recovered from COVID-19 may have low levels of the virus in their bodies for up to three months after diagnosis and not be infectious to others.“This science does not imply a person is immune to reinfection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the three months following infection,” the CDC said. The coronavirus has killed nearly 215,000 people in the United States and infected more than 7.8 million Americans, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The U.S. leads the world in the number of confirmed cases and deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.Some medical experts have also voiced skepticism that Trump could be declared contagion-free so soon, according to the Associated Press.It also was unclear what — if any — added precautions and safety measures the campaign planned to take to prevent the trips from further spreading a virus that has already infected many of the president’s closest aides and allies, including his campaign manager and the head of the Republican Party, according to the AP.CDC guidelines for limiting exposure to the coronavirus is washing your hands, wearing a face mask that covers your mouth and nose when around others, and socially distancing by keeping at least 2 meters between you and others. 
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A scientist from the U.S. space agency says what was thought to be a small asteroid heading towards Earth may actually be a 54-year-old section from a rocket coming back home. The head of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), Paul Chodas, told the Associated Press the object was first spotted by a telescope in Hawaii last month as part of the ongoing effort to monitor space objects that may pass close to Earth and possibly pose a threat. Chodas said further observations of the object, named Asteroid 2020 SO, indicated it had that a near-circular orbit around the sun, similar to Earth’s, an unusual characteristic for an asteroid, and a first clue that it might have originated from here. Chodas said the object is also in the same orbital plane as Earth, not tilted above or below, while asteroids that originate in deep space the sun orbit at odd angles. Finally, its speed approaching Earth is about 2,400 kilometers per hour, slow by asteroid standards. The NASA scientist speculates 2020 SO is actually the upper stage of a Centaur rocket that successfully propelled NASA’s Surveyor 2 unmanned lunar probe to the moon in 1966 before it was discarded.  The lander had been designed to land on the moon but crashed there after one of its thrusters failed.  The rocket, meanwhile, swept past the moon and into orbit around the sun as it was designed to do. Asteroid 2020 SO is estimated to be roughly eight meters long, based on its brightness, which would be roughly the size of the Centaur rocket section, which would be less than ten meters long and three meters in diameter.  Chodas has made a personal hobby of trying find such discarded pieces of NASA history, and is excited about confirming his speculation as the object gets closer. He predicts once it gets close enough next month, Asteroid 2020 SO will be captured in Earth’s orbit and spend about four months circling Earth before shooting back out into its own orbit around the sun.   
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The head of the World Health Organization is warning against a strategy of pursuing herd immunity to stop the coronavirus pandemic, calling the idea unethical.At a news briefing Monday in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said health officials should only try to achieve immunity through vaccination, not through exposing people to the virus.Herd immunity happens when a population is protected from a virus because a threshold immunity has been reached in that society.“Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic. It’s scientifically and ethically problematic,” Tedros said.The WHO estimates that about 10% of the world has contracted the coronavirus. It is not yet known what percentage rate of infection is needed to achieve herd immunity.Tedros noted that to obtain herd immunity from measles, about 95% of the population must be vaccinated, while for polio, the threshold is about 80%.Virus can survive 28 daysIn another development Monday, scientists in Australia discovered that the coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 disease, can survive on solid common surfaces for as long as 28 days.In a study published in Virology Journal, researchers at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization), Australia’s national science agency, found the SARS-CoV-2 virus was “extremely robust,” surviving on smooth surfaces at 20 degrees Celsius, compared to the flu virus, which lasts for 17 days in the same circumstances. The scientists at CSIRO also found the SARS-CoV-2 virus stopped being infectious after about 24 hours at 40 degrees Celsius.The scientists at CSIRO found the novel coronavirus can survive on such common surfaces as paper banknotes, glass and stainless steel.In EuropeIn Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled a new coronavirus alert system for the country during a speech in Parliament. Instead of a blanket nationwide lockdown, the government’s new system designates areas as medium, high and very high risk.Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a coronavirus briefing in Downing Street, London, Oct. 12, 2020.Under the first tier, areas with relatively low infection rates will have limited restrictions on restaurants and bars, with the restrictions gradually tightening up to the third tier, when restaurants and bars will be forced to close. Lawmakers will vote on the move on Tuesday.The new system is being implemented as Britain reaches what a spokesman for Johnson described as “a critical juncture.” The nation is experiencing a dramatic surge of new cases, especially in the northern cities of Liverpool, Merseyside, Manchester and Newcastle. Britain has nearly 43,000 coronavirus deaths, one of the highest numbers in Europe.At the Vatican, four Swiss Guards, the corps that protects the pope, tested positive. The Vatican said the men have been isolated, and officials are tracing and notifying anyone with whom the men had contact.Pope Francis recently drew criticism on social media for his decision not to wear a mask during a Wednesday audience.In Spain, supporters of the far-right Vox Party held protests by car across the country against coronavirus restrictions. Protesters honked horns and waved Spanish flags out of their car windows.People wave Spanish flags during a drive-in protest organized by Spain’s far-right Vox party against the government’s handling of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak in Madrid, Oct. 12, 2020.French Prime Minister Jean Castex refused to rule out further lockdowns on Monday after health officials reported about 43,000 new infections over the weekend.“Nothing should be ruled out when we see the situation in our hospitals,” Castex told broadcaster France Info. Government officials are set to review health data on Wednesday and consider further restrictions in some areas.In Belgium, organizers of the Brussels auto show canceled the January event which typically draws 500,000 visitors to the capital city.ElsewhereMore than 37.6 million people around the world have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, and more than 1 million people have died, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. India officially topped 7 million total infections on Sunday, second only to the United States, which has more than 7.7 million confirmed cases.Medical workers in protective suits collect swabs for nucleic acid tests during a city-wide testing following COVID-19 cases in Qingdao, Shandong province, China, Oct. 12, 2020.Health authorities in the eastern Chinese coastal city of Qingdao will test all 9 million of its citizens after reporting nine new coronavirus cases on Sunday, all of them linked to a hospital that treats infected travelers from overseas. The new cases include four confirmed infections and five asymptomatic cases, making them the first recorded locally transmitted asymptomatic infections in China since Sept. 24, according to the Bloomberg news service. 
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Facebook announced Monday that it is updating its hate speech policy and will ban all posts that deny or distort the Jewish Holocaust.Today we’re updating our hate speech policy to ban Holocaust denial.

We’ve long taken down posts that praise hate…Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, October 12, 2020“We’ve long taken down posts that praise hate crimes or mass murder, including the Holocaust,” Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. Zuckerberg said that with rising anti-Semitism, the company was expanding its policy to prohibit such content. He added, “If people search for the Holocaust on Facebook, we’ll start directing you to authoritative sources to get accurate information.”The announcement follows a #NoDenyingIt campaign by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.The non-profit Anti-Defamation League said on Facebook that it was pleased the social media giant “has finally taken the step we have been asking for nearly a decade: Remove Holocaust denial from their platform.” The ADL also said, “They now need to be transparent and document the steps being taken to keep this hate off the platform.”World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder also welcomed the move, saying that by taking this “critical step,” Facebook is showing it recognizes Holocaust denial for what it truly is – a form of anti-Semitism “and therefore hate speech.”The American Jewish Committee made similar comments, with its CEO, David Harris, calling the decision “profoundly significant.” He said, “There shouldn’t be a sliver of doubt about what the Nazi German regime did, nor should such a mega-platform as Facebook be used by antisemites to peddle their grotesque manipulation of history.”An estimated six million Jews died in the Holocaust.Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, came under fire in 2018 for saying in an interview that while he found Holocaust-denying content deeply offensive, he did not think it should be deleted.“I’ve struggled with the tension between standing for free expression and the harm caused by minimizing or denying the horror of the Holocaust. My own thinking has evolved as I’ve seen data showing an increase in anti-Semitic violence, as have our wider policies on hate speech,” Zuckerberg wrote Monday.The move is the latest in a series of measures taken by Facebook to delete or ban offensive or false information, particularly ahead of the November 3 presidential election in the United States.
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An icebreaker belonging to Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) returned to Germany Monday with what the scientists on board say is proof of a dying Arctic Ocean and warnings of ice-free summers, after a more than yearlong expedition that included time at the North Pole. Expedition leader Markus Rex said the team collected a wealth of data that will be used to improve scientific models of global warming to predict climate change in the decades to come, especially in the Arctic, where changes have come faster than elsewhere on Earth. Rex, an atmospheric scientist at AWI for Polar and Ocean Research that organized the expedition, said that scientists witnessed firsthand the dramatic effects of global warming on ice in the Arctic Circle, considered “the epicenter of climate change.” The RV Polarstern arrived in the North Sea port of Bremerhaven, 389 days after it set off on its mission. More than 300 scientists from 20 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China participated in the $177-million expedition. 
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Scientists in Australia have discovered that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 can survive on solid common surfaces for as long as 28 days. In a study published Monday in Virology Journal, researchers at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization), Australia’s national science agency, found the SARS-COV-2 virus was “extremely robust,” surviving on smooth surfaces at 20 degrees Celsius, compared to the flu virus, which lasts for 17 days in the same circumstances. The scientists at CSIRO also found the SARS-COV-2 virus stopped being infectious after about 24 hours at 40 degrees Celsius.  The scientists at CSIRO found the novel coronavirus can survive on such common surfaces as paper banknotes, glass and stainless steel.   In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to unveil a new coronavirus alert system for the country during a speech in Parliament Monday. Instead of a blanket nationwide lockdown, the government’s new system designates areas as medium, high and very high risk. Under the first tier, areas with relatively low infection rates will have limited restrictions on restaurants and bars, with the restrictions gradually tightening up to the third tier, when restaurants and bars will be forced to close.Commuters walk across London Bridge during the morning rush hour towards the offices in the financial district of the City of London in London, Monday, Oct. 12, 2020.The new system is being implemented as Britain reaches what a spokesman for Prime Minister Johnson described as “a critical juncture.”  The nation is experiencing a dramatic surge of new COVID-19 cases, especially in the northern cities of Liverpool, Merseyside, Manchester and Newcastle. Britain has 42,825 COVID-19 deaths, one of the highest numbers in Europe, including 65 on Sunday. More than 37.4 million people around the world have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, including 1,075,942 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracking project.  India officially topped 7 million total COVID-19 infections on Sunday, second only to the United States, which has 7.7 million confirmed cases.  India’s health ministry also reported 918 new COVID-19 deaths, bringing the country’s total fatality rate to 108,334.   Health authorities in the eastern Chinese coastal city of Qingdao will test all nine million of its citizens after reporting nine new coronavirus cases on Sunday, all of them linked to a hospital that treats infected travelers from overseas.  The new cases include four confirmed infections and five asymptomatic cases, making them the first recorded locally transmitted asymptomatic infections in China since September 24, according to Bloomberg news service. 
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Mounted on rooftops, utility poles and streetlights throughout China since last year are hundreds of thousands of high-tech wireless towers for 5G, a powerful sign of the country’s ambition to lead in new technology. Yet many of them are operational for only half the day.China Unicom, one of three telecommunication operators, announced in August that its Luoyang branch in Henan province would automatically switch its 5G transmitter stations to sleep mode from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. because there were few people using them. The other two carriers quickly followed suit and since then have rolled out the same policies in other cities across the country.”Shutting down base stations is not a manual shutdown, but an automatic adjustment made at a certain time,” Wang Xiaochu, chairman of China Unicom, said at the company’s midyear earnings conference.5G is one of the biggest technology investments in China’s recent history. Touted as the next big leap forward in digital communication, the 5th generation mobile network technology is supposed to change the world and spur a new digital revolution.China officially launched its commercial 5G networks in September 2019 with the promise of delivering unprecedented digital speed to support new applications from autonomous driving to virtual surgery. More than a year later, the biggest 5G market is now facing widespread complaints about network speed and skyrocketing costs of deployments.Signals are hitting wallsTo handle more data at higher speeds, 5G uses higher frequencies than current networks. However, the signals travel shorter distances and encounter more interference.”5G uses ultra-high frequency signals, which are about two to three times higher than the existing 4G signal frequency, so the signal coverage will be limited,” Wang Xiaofei, a communication expert at Tianjin University told Xinhua, the official state-run press agency, last year as the country’s state telecoms started to make 5G networks available to the public.Wang said since the coverage radius of its base station is only about 100 meters to 300 meters, China must build a station every 200 to 300 meters in urban areas. Because the penetration of 5G signals is so weak, even indoor stations will have to be built in densely distributed office buildings, residential areas, and commercial districts.And to reach the same coverage that 4G currently has, the carriers eventually need to install as many as 10 million stations across the country, according to a report by Xinhua.”For the next three years starting this year, 1 million 5G base stations may need to be built every year,” Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Information Consumption Alliance, a telecom industry association, told the state media last year.In the first half of this year, China only built 257,000 new 5G base stations. The total number of the stations installed across China so far was only about 410,000 by the end of June, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).Big costs, small benefits?The cost of the energy needed to power 5G has proved to be one of the biggest headaches for Chinese telecommunication companies.”The 5G base station equipment consumes about three times more energy than 4G because of the way the technology works,” Soumya Sen, associate professor of information and decision sciences at the University of Minnesota, told VOA in an email.  “5G uses multiple antennas to make use of reflected signals from buildings to provide gains in channel robustness and throughput.”If 5G is to reach the same level of coverage as 4G networks, the base station’s annual electricity bill will approach $29 billion, according to a report by the China Post and Telecommunications News, a media outlet directly under MIIT. That amount represents about 10 times the 2019 profit of China Telecom, one of the three state-owned telecommunication companies in China.In the early days, there were efforts to make 5G more power-efficient than its predecessors, but the ambitions were quickly dashed as realities settled in.Two months after the official rollout of 5G services, a top executive from a Chinese carrier admitted that operators had made little progress in reducing 5G power consumption and cost. Speaking at a GSMA (Groupe Speciale Mobile Association) seminar in Beijing last week, Li Zhengmao, executive vice president of China Mobile called on the government to subsidize electricity costs for telecoms.”This might require government to support extended periods for subsidized monthly fees or subsidized handsets at the B2C [business to consumer] level, or tax breaks and other incentives,” said Ross Feingold, a lawyer and political risk analyst.The total investment could top $220 billion in the next few years, said Li Yizhong, former minister of Industry and Information Technology early this year during a forum.Another former official warned in a recent speech that China’s 5G push could become a failed investment.”The existing 5G technology is very immature, hundreds of billions of investment have been deployed, and the operating cost is extremely high, no application scenarios can be found, and it is difficult to digest the cost in the future,” former finance minister Lou Jiwei reportedly warned in a recent speech last month.”It is difficult for ordinary consumers and industry users to see the long-term benefits and rewards of 5G,” a white paper titled “The 2020 China 5G Economic Report” released by China Academy of Information and Communications Technology said.Based on a recent survey of Chinese consumers, 73.3% of the people polled said they believe that there is no need for the public to buy 5G mobile phones. The study released last month by iiMedia, a market research group, also found that the main reason for not buying 5G mobile phones is because there is no such need.With all the expectations and the investment, 5G is “actually exaggerated,” and it is not something that the societies need anyway, according to the man who leads a company that dominates the technology.”In fact, human societies do not have an urgent need for 5G,” said Huawei’s founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei, “What people need now is broadband, and the main content of 5G is not broadband.”
 
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A Trump administration official leading the response to the coronavirus pandemic says the U.S. can expect delivery of a vaccine starting in January 2021, despite statements from the president that inoculations could begin this month.And a growing, bipartisan chorus of lawmakers, experts and public health officials says the country is ill prepared for a projected winter surge of COVID-19.Dr. Robert Kadlec said in an email Friday that the administration “is accelerating production of safe and effective vaccines … to ensure delivery starting January 2021.” Kadlec is the Department of Health and Human Services’ assistant secretary of preparedness and response.Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, testifies at a hearing with the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, on Capitol Hill Sept. 16, 2020.Vaccine ‘within weeks’President Donald Trump has said at rallies, debates and press conferences that a vaccine could arrive within weeks. “We think we can start sometime in October,” Trump said at a White House press briefing last month.Kadlec wasn’t the first health official to counter the president’s optimistic timeline. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday that there could be 100 million vaccine doses available by the end of the year “pending FDA authorizations.” And Dr. Moncef Slaoui, who is leading the government’s vaccine effort, told Marketwatch on Friday that researchers could know “by late October, or November, or in December” whether one of the vaccines in development is effective, but that it would then take weeks to get emergency authorization to administer it.When asked about the disparity, the White House was not specific on a date but said Trump’s priority is to distribute a vaccine “as soon as possible.” Kadlec said, without elaborating, that it wasn’t correct to conclude that this meant the country couldn’t see a vaccine sooner than January.Kadlec was responding to a series of questions from The Associated Press and Frontline shortages of critical medical supplies.FILE – In this April 10, 2020, file photo, ground crew at the Los Angeles International airport unload pallets of supplies of medical personal protective equipment from a China Southern Cargo plane upon its arrival.Breakdown in supply chainThe AP and Frontline reported earlier this week that a breakdown in the supply chain for critical medical equipment including masks, gloves, gowns and ventilators hobbled the U.S. response to COVID-19 and was likely a factor in the country’s death rate, which is higher per capita than almost every other country in the world.Experts say those shortages could now extend to the syringes, needles and glass vials that are vital to a future nationwide vaccination program.Kadlec agrees that supply chain disruptions led to shortages. He said the administration needs more, consistent, flexible funding from Congress to shore up the Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies and drugs and expand domestic manufacturing.Lack of federal leadershipHealth experts have called for the same changes but say there’s a vacuum of federal leadership to implement them right now.”Having a single national coordinated strategy would help ensure that states, hospitals, physician offices and other facilities have a single, centralized authority to work through to acquire essential personal protective equipment,” American Medical Association President Dr. Susan Bailey told the AP and Frontline on Thursday. “The burn rate of personal protective equipment and medical supplies has been far greater than anything that we have experienced and for a far longer time, and the need for PPE and testing supplies will continue for the foreseeable future.”The collapse of the medical supply chain wasn’t unexpected: For decades, politicians and corporate officials ignored warnings about the risks associated with America’s overdependence on foreign manufacturing and a lack of adequate preparation at home.COVID-19 related billsOf the hundreds of COVID-19 related bills introduced in Congress this year, only a handful seek to resolve supply chain issues; none of those has reached the president.”We need to claw back our medical supply chain back to the U.S.,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who has sponsored bills to bolster the U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturing base.Roughly nine months into the pandemic, health care workers and even the Government Accountability Office report there still isn’t enough protective equipment for frontline workers or adequate coordination from the federal government. And although there are emergency preparedness and response plans in place, implementation has been inconsistent.U.S. President Barack Obama, left, talks to the media next to Admiral Boris Lushniak in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Sept. 24, 2015.”We went into this pandemic unprepared, and we remain so months later,” said Boris Lushniak, former acting surgeon general in the Obama administration. “It is time to reevaluate the complete medical supply chain in the U.S. The federal government needs to take on the leadership role here.”Coming months a concernAcross the country, public health leaders are warning about the coming months.”A cohesive national plan for equitably distributing PPE has still not been proposed, let alone implemented,” said Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Andrew T. Chan, who found Black, Hispanic and Asian health care workers had the highest risk of contracting COVID-19. “Thus, we will continue to fly by the seat of our pants with our fingers crossed for the foreseeable future.”Michael Lu, dean of University of California, Berkeley’s school of public health, said one important part of the solution lies in a bipartisan bill fast tracked in the Senate that would rebuild the Strategic National Stockpile and strengthen U.S. manufacturing of medical masks, gowns and other protective gear.”We weren’t ready for the pandemic,” Lu said. “And we are still not ready.”
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China said on Friday that it had joined a global COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan backed by the World Health Organization, becoming the biggest economy to date to pledge support to distribute the shots fairly.Meanwhile, the country is holding separate talks with the WHO to have its COVID-19 vaccines assessed, a step toward making them available for international use.Public health experts welcome the Chinese move, yet caution potential safety concerns.They are calling on China to publish all its clinical trial data to ensure transparency and gain public trust, saying rushing out a vaccine without adequate efficacy and safety testing is a recipe for disaster.Zheng Zhongwei, from China’s National Health Commission, holds a chart showing priority groups for a coronavirus vaccine as he speaks during a press conference to discuss COVID-19 vaccine-related issues on Sept. 25, 2020, in Beijing.Clinical trial dataSocorro Escalate, WHO’s coordinator for essential medicines and health technologies in the Western Pacific region, indicated this week that China had held preliminary discussions with the organization to have its vaccines included in a list for emergency use.Beijing currently has at least four experimental vaccines in the final stage of clinical trials. The country has been giving hundreds of thousands of essential workers considered at high risk these experimental vaccines before the conclusion of phase III trials.Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told VOA that it’s important for the WHO to evaluate the Chinese vaccines, yet also called on China to publish its data to ensure transparency.“It is also important that we see the data from the clinical trials and the vaccinations that are already taking place. The world is going to need a lot of vaccines, and if China has developed a safe and effective vaccine, it’s a good thing. We just need to see the data,” he said.One of the vaccines currently in the final stage of a clinical trial is Ad5-nCoV. Produced by Chinese pharmaceutical company CanSino Biologics, the vaccine has been tested among Chinese military members. Beijing said it had obtained data supporting the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness. But since China hasn’t published that data, international infectious disease experts cannot verify its claim.“This is why it is essential that the Chinese companies release their trial data as well as the data from their experience vaccinating people in the military so that we can all understand how safe and efficacious this vaccine may be,” Adalja told VOA.Dr. Laura Kahn, a scholar at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, agrees.“Rushing out a vaccine without adequate efficacy and safety testing is a recipe for disaster,” she told VOA, “The public must trust a vaccine in order to be willing to get themselves or their loved ones vaccinated,” she said.When scientists raced to develop a polio vaccine in the 1950s before adequate testing, the result was some 40,000 inoculated children contracting the disease from the vaccine, according to Kahn.”In an era of public mistrust, a vaccine rush job is not the way to go. For the time being, until a vaccine is fully tested, wearing a mask is the way to go,” she continued.A worker inspects vials of SARS CoV-2 Vaccine for COVID-19 produced by SinoVac at its factory in Beijing, Sept. 24, 2020.Joining COVAXOn Friday, China joins some 168 countries that have already announced their participation in COVAX, including 76 wealthy, self-financing ones. Neither the United States nor Russia has joined the program.Yet Beijing did not give details on the level of support it will provide to the initiative co-led by the GAVI vaccines alliance, the WHO, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).The COVAX initiative aims to deliver at least two billion doses of vaccines by the end of 2021. It is designed to discourage national governments from hoarding COVID-19 vaccines and focusing on first vaccinating the most high-risk people in every country.Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement Friday that China has ample Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing capabilities and will prioritize supplying developing countries when vaccines are ready.
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