The World Health Organization (WHO) Friday said more COVID-19 cases have been reported worldwide in the last four weeks than in the first six months of the pandemic. In his regular news briefing from WHO headquarters in Geneva, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said hospitals and intensive care units are filling up or full across Europe and the United States. Tedros said it was good news this week that at least two vaccine candidates have shown to be effective in tests and one is near emergency approval and provides hope. But he stressed that people must continue to use the tools currently available to interrupt the chains of transmission and save lives. Medical staff members wait for citizens to be tested for coronavirus at a school gym that was set up as a testing facility in Bolzano, northern Italy, Nov. 20, 2020.The WHO director-general also introduced a new report published by the U.N. agency on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the world and ways to better control it. Antimicrobials include antibiotics and antivirals used in humans and animals, and pesticides used in agriculture. The WHO said their misuse or overuse can lead to bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites developing a resistance to them over time, making medicines ineffective and infections harder to treat, and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death. Microorganisms that develop AMR are sometimes referred to as “superbugs.” Tedros said the COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of the intimate relationship between humans, animals and the environment.He said AMR may not seem as urgent as a pandemic, but it is just as dangerous, and threatens to unwind a century of medical progress, leaving people defenseless against infections that can be treated easily.
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Day: November 20, 2020
The World Health Organization says the antiviral drug remdesivir is not beneficial and should not be used in treating patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
A WHO panel of international experts who reviewed the results of clinical trials have concluded there currently is no evidence that remdesivir improves survival of COVID-19 patients, no matter how severely ill they are.
Janet Diaz, head of Clinical Care at the World Health Organization, says the panel conditionally recommends against the use of remdesivir in hospitalized COVID-19 patients regardless of the severity of their illness. The panel says the evidence shows the drug has possibly no effect on mortality.
“Now, this does not prove that remdesivir does not have a benefit at all. That is why it is a conditional recommendation. There can still be potential small benefit maybe in a health sub-group, which is why the panel also recommended continued trials, continued enrollment into clinical trials,” Diaz said.
She suggested it might perhaps be better to focus on sub-groups, such as severe patients versus critical patients in future clinical trials.
The WHO panel’s recommendation is based on new evidence, which compared the effects of several drug treatments for COVID-19. It includes data from four international randomized trials involving more than 7,000 patients hospitalized for COVID-19.
Bram Rochwerg, a practicing ICU doctor in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and co-chair of the WHO panel, told VOA there is still ongoing uncertainty about the impact of remdesivir on survivability and mortality.
“We are not saying that there is evidence that remdesivir does not work but there is not good evidence that it does work. And there is not good evidence that harm is off the table. And so, it was these considerations that the panel looked at and they felt that the majority of people would not ascribe to a new therapy when the benefit was not there and that there was still a potential for worsening outcome and … leading to increasing death,” said Rockwerg.
At the same time, the WHO panel noted alternative treatments exist that are cheap and widely available, such as corticosteroid dexamethasone, which have been shown to reduce death among severely ill COVID-19 patients.
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The U.S. space agency, NASA, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), is set to launch a satellite Saturday designed to monitor rising sea levels, the latest in a series of orbiting spacecraft monitoring the status of the world’s oceans.
NASA says the satellite, called the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California early Saturday. Named after former NASA Earth Science Division Director Michael Freilich, the U.S.-European satellite will be carried into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The Sentinel-6 is about the size of a small pickup truck, and it will measure sea-surface height, wave-height and windspeed, allowing scientists to monitor changes in sea levels caused by climate change.
The data that it collects on sea level variations near coastlines will provide information to support coastal management and with planning for floods, while its atmospheric measurements will enhance weather and hurricane forecasts.
NASA Sentinel 6 mission scientist Craig Donlon says the data gathered by the craft will be used alongside information provided by previous Sentinel satellites to build a more complete a picture of the oceans.
“Sentinel-3 is providing the sea surface temperature and the ocean biology measurements. Sentinel-1 is providing radar imaging measurements of ocean swell waves, of sea ice. Sentinel-2 provides high resolution measurements in the coastal zone,” Donlon said.
Unlike previous Earth observation missions, the Sentinel-6 observatory will collect measurements at a much higher resolution and be able to measure smaller sea level variations near coastlines.
The satellite will be followed in 2025 by its twin, Sentinel-6B. Together, the pair is tasked with extending a nearly 30-year-long record of global sea surface height measurements.
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Delmonico’s, America’s very first restaurant, is also one of its most influential, according to Yale University history professor Paul Freedman. “It defined what elegant food was in the 19th century United States, and that has influenced, to some extent, the food that is eaten today,” Freedman says. Founded in 1830, Delmonico’s invented lobster Newberg and baked Alaska, and continues to serve those and other dishes at its New York City location. “America’s first real successful restaurant … Delmonico’s is kind of a no-brainer because it’s the first restaurant, but it’s also very enduring,” Freedman says. “It’s created in the 1830s, but in 1890, it’s still considered the best restaurant in the U.S. A lot of restaurants elsewhere called themselves, like, the Delmonico’s of Indianapolis, and it becomes a shorthand term for fancy.” Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City in an undated photo. (Courtesy Delmonico’s)In his book, “Ten Restaurants That Changed America,” Freedman names nine other restaurants that have had a far-reaching influence on what Americans eat. Yale University Professor Paul Freedman, author of “Ten Restaurants That Changed America.” (Courtesy Yale University)“I chose them both for just the delight of restaurants as places, but also as a way of talking about American history,” he says. “Because you can’t talk about restaurants without talking about ethnicity, immigration, variety and different social settings. … So, this was intended not as a kind of history of a bunch of dishes, but as a history of American society seen through its restaurants.” Howard Johnson’s, the orange-roofed restaurant that once dotted American highways, makes the list. “It was roadside food. It was chain food. It pioneered the franchise as a way of expansion, where you give the person running it a stake,” Freedman says. “He also pioneered logos and identity. Howard Deering Johnson, the founder, located his restaurants strategically on roads where the driver going 60 could see the restaurant in time safely and easily to break and pull up, and for that you need, you know, big and instantly recognizable features.” In this April 8, 2015 photo, customers walk into Howard Johnson’s Restaurant in Lake George, New York.Howard Johnson’s did not survive the competition it helped spawn, like McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants, but it left its mark as the first restaurant chain to guarantee patrons the same food and menu, no matter which franchise they visited. Also on the list is the Mandarin, a Chinese restaurant opened in San Francisco in 1961 by Cecilia Chang. “Cecilia Chang didn’t invent high-end Chinese food — but almost,” Freedman says. “She really is the first person to successfully retail that.” The staff of Sylvia’s in Harlem in 1980. (Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress)Other women-run restaurants Freedman highlights include Sylvia’s in Harlem. Born in South Carolina, Sylvia Woods brought Southern cooking and the idea of a neighborhood restaurant as a community gathering place to New York. “Sylvia’s in Harlem does not invent what is sometimes called down-home food or soul food, but it exemplifies that kind of cuisine and is also an example of the story of African American migration from the South to the North,” Freedman says. Mamma Leone’s, also in New York, helped bring Italian cuisine to the American masses. Luisa Leone opened her eatery in 1906 and was able to expand her clientele beyond Italian American diners, creating a model for other immigrant business owners to follow. “Mamma Leone’s not only served something like 3,000 people a day, and many of them tourists, and so a lot of people got their idea of what Italian food ought to be,” Freedman says. “And a lot of people opened restaurants in small towns that imitated Mamma Leone’s.” Menu from Mamma Leone’s restaurant in New York City, which closed in 1994. (Courtesy New York Public Library)Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, in 1971. She pioneered a trend in American cooking with local and in-season ingredients that continues today. Although these female restaurateurs served up vastly different foods, they shared some attributes. “Flair. Inventiveness. Doing something that was not completely unfamiliar … but was familiar but better,” Freedman says. “Better than the competition. And that better was because of an emphasis on quality, an introduction of dishes that expanded people’s horizons, or reminding people of home.” Waiter Austin Murray brings plated dishes from the kitchen to the dining room at Antoine’s Restaurant in New Orleans, Sept. 11, 2015.The other restaurants on Freedman’s list include The Four Seasons in New York, (which opened in 1959 and pioneered fine American cuisine at a time when French food dominated that space), and Le Pavillon in New York, Antoine’s in New Orleans, and Schrafft’s in Boston. Most of Freedman’s picks are on the East or West Coast. “I think it has to do with New York and San Francisco being ports, and so, the first place where immigrants opened up restaurants, and also fashion leaders,” he says. “So, all these places are on the coast, including New Orleans, and they’re just places where immigrants came and polyglot places where new things were first tried out.” Six of the restaurants on Freedman’s list are still open, or in the case of the Four Seasons, planning to reopen. The others are closed, but their influence on what Americans eat has endured.
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The Pentagon has confirmed that acting Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Anthony Tata has COVID-19.
Tata and several other people were exposed to the virus, the Pentagon said, after meeting with a Lithuanian delegation, including Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis, who has tested positive for COVID.”Mr. Tata was tested today and has tested positive for COVID-19 on two successive tests. He will isolate at home for the next 14 days in accordance with Center for Disease Control protocols,” a Pentagon statement said.
Further contact tracing is being done of Defense Department officials who may have had contact with Tata and the Lithuanian delegation, the statement said.
FILE – Travelers wait in the boarding area for trains during the Thanksgiving holiday travel rush at Pennsylvania Station in New York, Nov. 27, 2019.CDC discourages Thanksgiving travel
Coronavirus infections is the United States are exploding toward the 12 million mark. At 11.7 million cases, the U.S. has more COVID-19 cases than anyplace else. The U.S. also has the world’s largest coronavirus death toll, with more than a quarter of a million fatalities.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an alliance of three professional medical groups released separate statements Thursday urging Americans to stay home for next week’s Thanksgiving celebrations and to rethink their observations of the holiday. They are afraid coronavirus cases and deaths could jump higher if Americans do not scale back their traditional Thanksgiving plans.“Positive cases spiked after Memorial Day, after the Fourth of July, after Labor Day, and now – two weeks after Halloween,” the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Nurses Association said in a joint open letter. “The record-shattering surge underway is resulting in uncontrolled community spread and infection that has already overburdened health systems in some areas and will ultimately consume capacity of our health care system and may reduce the availability of care in many places in our country.”The statement from the CDC urged Americans not to travel to see their loved ones but instead “celebrate at home with the people you live with.”The CDC statement came just a week before Thanksgiving and after many Americans had already made travel arrangements for the holiday. “Postponing travel and staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others this year,” the CDC statement said. New York school closures
The New York City public school system, the largest in the U.S. and the first big-city school system to reopen in the coronavirus pandemic, was shut down again Thursday because of a rising number of COVID-19 cases in the city. “We got to fight back the second wave. Our schools have been safe, extraordinarily safe. We got to keep it that way. We can’t just stand pat with a strategy that worked before when conditions are changing, we need to reset the equation,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “We need to come up with even more stringent rules to make schools work and testing is going to be absolutely crucial.”De Blasio also said it is likely that within a couple of weeks indoor dining at restaurants in New York City will end, and gyms and other businesses will have to close. New state curfews
The U.S. states of Ohio and California have imposed 10 p.m.-5 a.m. curfews in an effort to control coronavirus surges. Ohio began its curfew Thursday. It will be in effect for 21 days. California’s curfew begins Saturday night for 41 of the massive state’s 58 counties, ending December 21. Pandemic causes drop in US greenhouse gases
A BloombergNEF study has revealed that greenhouse gases generated by the U.S. economy are set to drop 9.2% this year, bringing them to a level that would be their lowest in 30 years. The new levels put the U.S. on track to meet its commitments to the Paris climate agreement that the U.S. made during the Obama administration. President Donald Trump, however, withdrew the U.S. from the agreement.
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Vietnam has threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if it does not bow to government pressure to censor more local political content on its platform, a senior official at the U.S. social media giant told Reuters.Facebook complied with a government request in April to significantly increase its censorship of “anti-state” posts for local users, but Vietnam asked the company again in August to step up its restrictions of critical posts, the official said.”We made an agreement in April. Facebook has upheld our end of the agreement, and we expected the government of Vietnam to do the same,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing the sensitivity of the subject.”They have come back to us and sought to get us to increase the volume of content that we’re restricting in Vietnam. We’ve told them no. That request came with some threats about what might happen if we didn’t.”The official said the threats included shutting down Facebook altogether in Vietnam, a major market for the social media company where it earns revenue of nearly $1 billion, according to two sources familiar with the numbers.Facebook has faced mounting pressure from governments over its content policies, including threats of new regulations and fines. But it has avoided a ban in all but the few places where it has never been allowed to operate, such as China.In Vietnam, despite sweeping economic reform and increasing openness to social change, the ruling Communist Party retains tight control of media and tolerates little opposition. The country ranks fifth from bottom in a global ranking of press freedom compiled by Reporters Without Borders.Vietnam’s foreign ministry said in response to questions from Reuters that Facebook should abide by local laws and cease “spreading information that violates traditional Vietnamese customs and infringes upon state interests.”A spokeswoman for Facebook said it had faced additional pressure from Vietnam to censor more content in recent months.In its biannual transparency report released on Friday, Facebook said it had restricted access to 834 items in Vietnam in the first six months of this year, following requests from the government of Vietnam to remove anti-state content.‘Clear responsibility’Facebook, which serves about 60 million users in Vietnam as the main platform for both e-commerce and expressions of political dissent is under constant government scrutiny.Reuters exclusively reported in April that Facebook’s local servers in Vietnam were taken offline early this year until it complied with the government’s demands.Facebook has long faced criticism from rights group for being too compliant with government censorship requests.”However, we will do everything we can to ensure that our services remain available so people can continue to express themselves,” the spokesperson said.Vietnam has tried to launch home-grown social media networks to compete with Facebook, but none has reached any meaningful level of popularity. The Facebook official said the company had not seen an exodus of Vietnamese users to the local platforms.The official said Facebook had been subject to a “14-month-long negative media campaign” in state-controlled Vietnamese press before arriving at the current impasse.Asked about Vietnam’s threat to shut down Facebook, rights group Amnesty International said the fact it had not yet been banned after defying the Vietnamese government’s threats showed that the company could do more to resist Hanoi’s demands.”Facebook has a clear responsibility to respect human rights wherever they operate in the world and Vietnam is no exception,” Ming Yu Hah, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for campaigns, said. “Facebook are prioritizing profits in Vietnam, and failing to respect human rights.”
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Activists in Cameroon held events and marches for Thursday’s World Toilet Day, calling on authorities to provide more public bathrooms. Cameroonian authorities say 60% of its 25 million people lack toilets, fueling the spread of diseases such as cholera and dysentery.School authorities at Yaoundé’s Government Primary School Efoulan say they have close to 2,000 children and teachers but only five toilets, which are often unusable as they run short of water and toilet paper.The Cameroon Association to Improve Hygiene organized this and similar events in 30 schools in the capital to mark this year’s World Toilet Day.The group’s head, Edmond Kimbi, said hundreds of their members also marched in Yaoundé and coastal cities to demand more and better public toilets.”It is actually too regrettable that schools and universities have very few toilets, which lack water and are always dirty,” he said. “It is worse when you visit markets, where thousands of people visit the markets each day. The consequences of this is that nearby bushes and dark corners are being transformed into toilets, thereby making our towns always dirty.”Public toilets in Douala, Cameroon, Nov. 19, 2020. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)Authorities say a September outbreak of cholera, a bacterial disease spread through dirty water, in the port cities of Douala and Kribi killed at least 90 people.Dr. Sintieh Ngek, a medical officer with the Cameroon Baptist Convention, said the lack of toilets is spreading disease.”Waterborne and water-based diseases like cholera, like diarrheal diseases, will be more present, and it is worth noting that these diarrheal diseases are among the leading causes of mortality for children under 5 years of age,” the doctor said. “Secondly, if persons do not have toilets, they turn to use bushes, they turn to use streams. When this happens, bacteria from these feces are easily collected into water.”Yaoundé hygiene official Gabriel Minou said the city council is partnering with private companies to construct more public bathrooms. Meanwhile, he said, anyone caught defecating or urinating in the street or in rivers will pay fines of up to $20.Minou said the inability of the Yaoundé City Council to efficiently manage toilets is due to the fact that many users do not want to pay before using the public bathrooms. He said the Yaoundé City Council has ordered its hygiene services to repair public toilets and make sure people pay before using them. Minou said the council has also ordered intercity bus agencies to make sure toilets are provided free of charge to all passengers.The United Nations’ World Toilet Day seeks to raise awareness of more than half the world’s population living without access to safe sanitation and the deadly costs.The U.N. says globally more than 800 children under 5 die every day from diarrheal diseases due to poor sanitation.
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Ellen Wong is a Cambodian-Canadian actress well known in Hollywood. But as VOA’s Chetra Chap reports, her latest role hits very close to home.
Camera: Chetra Chap
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