Six months ago, Apple and Google introduced a new smartphone tool designed to notify people who might have been exposed to the coronavirus, without disclosing any personal information. But for the most part, Americans haven’t been all that interested.
Fewer than half of U.S. states and territories — 18 in total — have made such technology widely available. And according to a data analysis by The Associated Press, the vast majority of Americans in such locations haven’t activated the tool.
Data from 16 states, Guam and the District of Columbia shows that 8.1 million people had utilized the technology as of late November. That’s about one in 14 of the 110 million residents in those regions.
In theory, such apps could bolster one of the most difficult tasks in pandemic control: Tracing the contacts of people infected with the coronavirus in order to test and isolate them if necessary. In practice, however, widespread COVID-19 misinformation, the complexity of the technology, overwhelmed health workers needed to quickly confirm a diagnosis, and a general lack of awareness have all presented obstacles, experts and users say.
“There’s a lot of things working against it,” said Jessica Vitak, an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies. “Unfortunately, in the U.S., COVID has been politicized far more than in any other country. I think that’s affecting people’s willingness to use tools to track it.”
Charlotte, North Carolina, lawyer Evan Metaxatos was thrilled to learn in November about his state’s tracking app, called SlowCOVIDNC. He immediately downloaded it and got his parents and pregnant wife to follow suit.
But they’re still outliers in the state, which launched the app in September with little fanfare. Of roughly 10.5 million state residents, only 482,003 had installed it through the end of November.
“It won’t work great until everyone’s using it, but it’s better than nothing,” Metaxatos said.
Apple and Google co-created the primary technology behind such apps, which use Bluetooth wireless signals to anonymously detect when two phones have spent time in close proximity. If an app user tests positive for the virus, that person’s phone can trigger a notification to other people they’ve spent time near — without revealing names, locations, or any other identifying information.
In states such as Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and Washington, as well as Washington, D.C., iPhone users don’t even have to download an app. In fact, Apple prompts users via pop-ups to activate the notification system by adjusting their phone settings.
In these states, adoption rates are notably higher. But even in the most successful state, Connecticut, only about a fifth of all residents have opted into this tracking. On Friday, Washington said that more than 1 million state residents — roughly 13% of its population — had activated the technology in its first four days.
Virginia’s COVIDWISE app launched on Aug. 5 and was the first to go live. Since then, fewer than one in ten residents have downloaded it, though the state estimates almost 20% of Virginians between the ages of 18 and 65 with a smartphone have done so. Delaware’s app downloads account for about 7% of the state’s population.
All other U.S. states analyzed have much lower adoption rates.
New York launched its app on Oct. 1. It recently surpassed 1 million downloads, which amounts to about 5% of the population. New Jersey and Pennsylvania have seen less use, with a 4% download rate.
Adoption is even lower in Wyoming, North Dakota, Michigan, Nevada and Alabama, with users representing only 1% to 3% of their state populations. The apps, which are free, can be found in Apple’s app store and the Google Play store for Android devices; they’re also typically available on state health-department websites.
Irish app developer NearForm says more than one-quarter of Ireland’s population uses its COVID-19 app. It’s been harder to get such traction in the four U.S. states where it’s built similar apps: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
In Ireland, “all sides of the political divide came together with a consistent message on this is what we need to do,” said Larry Breen, NearForm’s chief commercial officer. “That debate continues to rage on your side of the pond.”
Elsewhere in Europe, the uptake has been mixed. Germany and Britain have penetration rates similar to Ireland’s; in Finland the figure is 45%, according to data compiled by MIT Technology Review. In France, however, less than 4% of the population is using the official COVID app, which shuns the Apple-Google approach for a more intrusive data collection system that raised privacy concerns and technical issues.
Security experts praise the Apple-Google system for protecting users’ anonymity, but it’s been a tough sell for many people. American users say partisanship, privacy concerns and stigma surrounding COVID-19 have kept participation low. A lack of state and federal efforts to boost awareness hasn’t helped.
Neither have technological and bureaucratic issues.
Lee McFarland, a loan officer from Grand Forks, North Dakota, was eager to download his state’s Care19 Alert app but said he couldn’t push a “Notify Others” button after getting the virus in late October.
“If you test positive, a public health official will call and verify your code,” said a message on McFarland’s app. “This ensures that only verified positive COVID-19 people can send notifications.”
McFarland said he forgot to tell the health worker he had the app installed on his phone. He was unsuccessful in following up with the worker to get the needed code, and has since deleted the app.
Even when that process works, however, many North Dakotans don’t actually push the button to notify others.
Tim Brookins, CEO of app developer ProudCrowd, said 91 of North Dakota’s 14,000 active users had their “Notify Others” button enabled after the state confirmed them as positive. Of the 91 users, only 29 pushed the button, which prompted 50 notifications.
Still, many users say they’ll keep the app in hopes others will see its potential benefits.
“You can say that about just about anything that not enough people are doing this or that, but everybody that does something is helping,” said David Waechter, a general contractor from Lenoir, North Carolina. “I think that the United States could use a good strong dose of E pluribus unum and stop thinking about self and start thinking about our countrymen.”
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Month: December 2020
Bob Dylan’s entire catalog of songs, which reaches back 60 years is being acquired by Universal Music Publishing Group. The catalog contains 600 song copyrights including “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” and “Tangled Up In Blue.”The influence of Dylan’s body of work may only be matched by that of the Beatles. Financial terms were not disclosed Monday, but the catalog may be the most prized in the music industry. Four years ago, when Michael Jackson’s estate sold the remaining half-share that it owned in the artist’s catalog, it fetched $750 million.”Brilliant and moving, inspiring and beautiful, insightful and provocative, his songs are timeless—whether they were written more than half a century ago or yesterday,” said Sir Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group, in a prepared statement. Dylan’s songs have been recorded more than 6,000 times, by various artists from dozens of countries, cultures and music genres, including the Jimi Hendrix version of “All Along The Watchtower.”The transaction’s announcement comes a few weeks after the singer-songwriter’s musings about anti-Semitism and unpublished song lyrics sold at auction for a total of $495,000.Dylan, first entered the public consciousness with New York City’s Greenwich Village folk scene during the early 1960s. When he brought an electric guitar on stage in 1965, he split the music community in what was considered a radical departure for an artist. Dylan then produced three albums back to back in just over a year that changed the course of rock ‘n’ roll that decade, starting with “Bringing It All Back Home.”Dylan has sold more than 125 million records globally. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, the first songwriter to receive such a distinction.
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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden named his top health care officials on Monday, tapping former Congressman Xavier Becerra as his Health and Human Services chief to lead the country’s fight to curb the surging coronavirus pandemic and oversee millions of vaccinations against it in the coming months.
FILE – California Attorney General Xavier Becerra speaks during a news conference in Sacramento, California, March 5, 2019.Becerra currently is attorney general for the western state of California who led the defense last month in the U.S. Supreme Court against a conservative bid to overturn the country’s Affordable Care Act, in a case yet to be decided. During his 24 years as a congressman in the House of Representatives, Becerra worked to win approval for the national health care law that has provided insurance coverage to millions of Americans.
In addition, Biden picked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, as his chief medical adviser on COVID-19. Biden also asked Fauci to continue in his longtime role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Fauci, 79, has served as a medical adviser to six U.S. presidents and for months has been the face of the U.S. government’s response to the pandemic.
In the months before the presidential election, President Donald Trump grew increasingly peeved at Fauci’s grim assessments of the spread of the virus and sidelined him in favor of more upbeat commentary.
FILE – Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases arrives to participate in a roundtable at the American Red Cross national headquarters in Washington.Biden has said he will pay close attention to scientific findings about the virus from Fauci and other medical experts and get vaccinated as soon as Fauci says the preventative is safe.
U.S. health regulators are about to review two proposed vaccines that have proved effective in clinical tests. Millions of doses of the vaccines could be available later this month, with millions more in early 2021.
Biden named Dr. Vivek Murthy as surgeon general, a position he held from 2014 to 2017 during the administration of former President Barack Obama, when Biden was second in command.
The president-elect picked Dr. Rochelle Walensky, a top expert on virus testing, prevention and treatment in the eastern state of Massachusetts, as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Biden chose Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, an expert on health care disparities among racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., as chair of his COVID-19 equity task force. She is an associate professor of medicine, public health and management at the Yale School of Medicine.
The president-elect picked business executive Jeffrey Zients, a former director of the National Economic Council under Obama, as a coordinator of his COVID-19 response team and a counselor to him. Biden named former White House and Pentagon senior adviser Natalie Quillian as deputy coordinator of the government’s response to the pandemic.
The Biden transition team said the health officials “will help fulfill the president-elect’s vision of making health care a right, not a privilege, for all Americans — building on the Affordable Care Act to lower health care costs and tackle prescription drug costs.”
In a statement, Biden said, “This trusted and accomplished team of leaders will bring the highest level of integrity, scientific rigor, and crisis-management experience to one of the toughest challenges America has ever faced — getting the pandemic under control so that the American people can get back to work, back to their lives, and back to their loved ones.”
He said that after his inauguration on January 20, the government would “expand testing and masking, (and) oversee the safe, equitable and free distribution of treatments and vaccines.”
He said his administration would “rally the country and restore the belief that there is nothing beyond America’s capacity if we do it together.”
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Authorities in Pakistan suspended seven senior officers at a government hospital Monday after an inquiry found their “criminal negligence” resulted in the disruption of oxygen supply to the facility, killing six coronavirus patients.
The deaths occurred the previous day in Peshawar, capital of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, as the country of about 220 million people battles a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The incident took place due to system failure” said the inquiry report, noting that patient care “badly suffered” in Khyber Teaching Hospital, the city’s largest. The report found that at the time of incident 90 patients were admitted in the coronavirus isolation ward who were left for hours without sufficient oxygen.
The depletion of oxygen supply “went unnoticed, unsupervised and unchecked” and there had been no backup supply system put in place. Provincial Health Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra told reporters that the government will hold a second inquiry over the next five days.
The hospital director was among those suspended.
Pakistan has reported more than 420,000 COVID-19 infections, with about 8,400 deaths since the pandemic hit the country in late February. The number of cases dropped dramatically in mid-July to several hundred a day.
But the number of people contracting the virus has rapidly increased in the past two months. Officials said they had documented nearly 3,800 new cases in the last 24 hours across Pakistan, with 37 deaths. The national positivity rate stood at almost 10 percent, which had dropped to around one percent in July.
Intensive care units across Pakistan are said to be almost full, with federal and provincial governments struggling to deal with the health emergency and urging people to strictly comply with safety guidelines and wear masks to help contain the spread of the pandemic.
The National Command and Operation Center, which oversees the pandemic-related actions, warned Monday that more than 2,500 “COVID patients are in critical condition across Pakistan and the number of critical patients is rising fast.”
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A plea from Dr. Anthony Fauci for people to “wear a mask” to slow the spread of the coronavirus tops a Yale Law School librarian’s list of the most notable quotes of 2020.
The list assembled by Fred Shapiro, an associate director at the library, is an annual update to “The Yale Book of Quotations,” which was first published in 2006.
Also on the list is “I can’t breathe,” the plea George Floyd made repeatedly to police officers holding him down on a Minneapolis street corner. Several quotes from the presidential campaign appear including Joe Biden telling a student: “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
Shapiro said he picks quotes that are not necessarily admirable or eloquent, but rather because they are famous or particularly revealing of the spirit of the times.The List
1. “Wear a mask.” — Dr. Anthony Fauci, CNN interview, May 21.
2. “I can’t breathe.” — George Floyd, plea to police officer, Minneapolis, May 25.
3. “One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear,” President Donald Trump, referring to the coronavirus in remarks at an African American History Month reception at the White House, Feb. 27.
4. “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning?” — Trump, in remarks at a White House Coronavirus Task Force news briefing, April 23.
5. “I will never lie to you. You have my word on that.” — White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, at her first press briefing, May 1.
6. “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, statement dictated to granddaughter Clara Spera, September.
7. “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.” — Joe Biden, in an interview with “The Breakfast Club” radio program, May 22.
8. “The science should not stand in the way of this.” — McEnany, referring to school reopenings in a news briefing, July 16.
9. “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.” — Biden, in a remark to student at campaign event, Hampton, N.H., Feb. 9.
10. “We are all Lakers today.” — Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers, in a remark to reporters after the death of Kobe Bryant, Orlando, Fla., Jan. 26.
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Britain is on the eve of launching a COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Staffers with the nation’s National Health Service, nursing home residents and their caregivers on Tuesday will begin to receive the first of two doses of a vaccine jointly developed by U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech. The initiative will start nearly a week after the government’s medical regulatory agency granted emergency approval for the vaccine, making Britain the first western nation ready to begin mass inoculations. The approval came weeks after Pfizer announced the vaccine had been shown to be over 90% effective after its final, widespread clinical trial. The entrance to the Pfizer UK headquarters is seen in Tadworth, Britain, Dec. 2, 2020.Britain received 800,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine Sunday, the first of a total of 40 million it has purchased. Delivery of the vaccine is complicated by the fact that it must be stored in super-cold refrigerators at temperatures below 70 degrees Celsius. British news outlets reported Sunday that 94-year-old Queen Elizabeth II and her 99-year-old husband, Prince Philip, will announce when they are to receive the vaccine, hoping to reassure the British public of its safety. FILE – A research scientist works inside a laboratory of India’s Serum Institute, the world’s largest maker of vaccines, which is working on vaccines against COVID-19 in Pune, India, May 18, 2020.In a separate development, the Serum Institute of India has applied for emergency use of a COVID-19 vaccine under development by British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca in collaboration with the University of Oxford. Serum, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, is leaning heavily towards the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine because it can be stored at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius, as opposed to the super-cold requirements of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. And Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced Sunday the country has received a shipment of a coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac biotechnology company. The vaccine is still undergoing testing in Indonesia, where the government is making final preparations for an initiative to inoculate as many as 270 million people. United Statesthe United States, health regulators will meet Thursday to consider whether to authorize emergency use of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, followed by a second meeting a week later to discuss another vaccine under development by U.S.-based biotechnology company Moderna. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Fox News Sunday that if a panel of experts at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the Pfizer vaccine, “within hours [health workers] can be vaccinating” patients. FILE – Medical personnel check on a COVID-19 patient at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Los Angeles, Nov. 19, 2020.U.S. authorities have decided that medical and emergency workers as well as employees and residents of nursing homes are at the highest risk of contracting the infection and will be first in line to be inoculated. Azar said that 30 million to 40 million doses of the vaccine will be available by the end of the year, with millions more doses to be manufactured in the first half of 2021. President-elect Joe Biden has said his transition team has seen “no detailed plan” for distribution of the vaccines. But Azar said, “With all due respect, that’s just nonsense. This is being micromanaged” by the outgoing Trump administration. FILE – A volunteer is injected with a vaccine as he participates in a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination study at the Research Centers of America, in Hollywood, Florida, Sept. 24, 2020.In one national poll, about four in 10 people say they will refuse to get the shot, either because they are wary of vaccinations in general or the coronavirus inoculation specifically. Some Americans Worry About Safety of Coronavirus VaccineA significant number of Americans express concern over accelerated timeline in developing COVID inoculationsBut Azar said that “positive experiences” of people being inoculated “will drive more people” to get the necessary two shots a month apart to become vaccinated. Biden said last week that when he is inaugurated January 20, he will ask that Americans wear a mask for 100 days to try to curb the spread of the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease. The world has more than 67.1 million total COVID-19 cases, including more than 1.5 million deaths. The United States leads the world in both categories, with 14.7 million total cases and 282,312 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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President-elect Joe Biden has picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary, putting a defender of the Affordable Care Act in a leading role to oversee his administration’s coronavirus response. Separately, Biden picked a Harvard infectious disease expert, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra, 62, will be the first Latino to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a $1-trillion-plus agency with 80,000 employees and a portfolio that includes drugs and vaccines, leading-edge medical research and health insurance programs covering more than 130 million Americans. Biden’s selection of Becerra was confirmed by two people familiar with the decision, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement anticipated Tuesday. Two people also anonymously confirmed the choice of Walensky. The post of CDC director does not require Senate confirmation. Becerra, as the state of California’s top lawyer, has led the coalition of Democratic states defending Obamacare, as the Affordable Care Act is often called, from the Trump administration’s latest effort to overturn it, a legal case awaiting a Supreme Court decision next year. A former senior House Democrat, Becerra was involved in steering the Obama health law through Congress in 2009 and 2010. At the time he would tell reporters that one of his primary motivations was having tens of thousands of uninsured people in his Southern California district. Becerra has a lawyer’s precise approach to analyzing problems and a calm demeanor. But overseeing the coronavirus response likely will be the most complicated task he has ever taken on. By next year, the U.S. will be engaged in a mass vaccination campaign, the groundwork for which has been laid under the Trump administration. Although the vaccines appear very promising, and no effort has been spared to plan for their distribution, it’s impossible to tell yet how well things will go when it’s time to get shots in the arms of millions of Americans. Becerra won’t be going it alone. Biden, who is expected to announce key health care picks as early as Tuesday, is taking a team approach to his administration’s virus response. Businessman Jeff Zients is expected to be named as Biden’s White House coronavirus coordinator. An economic adviser to former President Barack Obama, Zients also led the rescue of the HealthCare.gov website after its disastrous launch in 2013. And former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a co-chair of Biden’s coronavirus task force, is expected to return in a new role akin to the top medical adviser. But the core components of HHS are the boots on the ground of the government’s coronavirus response. The Food and Drug Administration oversees vaccines and treatments, while much of the underlying scientific and medical research comes from NIH. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention takes the lead in detecting and containing the spread of diseases. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services provides insurance coverage for more than 1 in 3 Americans, including vulnerable seniors, as well as many children and low-income people. Under President Donald Trump, CDC was relegated to a lesser role after agency scientists issued a stark early warning that contradicted Trump’s assurances the virus was under control, rattling financial markets. The FDA was the target of repeated attacks from a president who suspected its scientists were politically motivated and who also wanted them to rubber-stamp unproven treatments. As CDC director, Walensky would replace Dr. Robert Redfield, who accurately told the public coronavirus vaccines would not be available for most people until next year, only to be disparaged by Trump as “confused.” Walensky is a leading infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital and has devoted her career to combatting HIV/AIDS. Becerra’s experience running the bureaucratic apparatus of the California attorney general’s office, as well as his success working with Republicans, helped seal the pick for Biden, said a person familiar with the process but not authorized to comment publicly. Becerra had worked with Louisiana’s Republican attorney general to increase the availability of the COVID-19 drug treatment Remdesivir in their states. He’s also worked closely with other Republican attorneys general on legal challenges against opioid manufacturers. Early in California’s coronavirus response, Becerra defended broad shutdowns Gov. Gavin Newsom had put in place to curtail the pandemic, including limits on religious gatherings. Three churches in Southern California had sued Newsom, Becerra and other state officials because in-person church services had been halted. Biden’s offer was extended to Becerra on Friday. The president-elect has been under pressure from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to appoint Latinos to the Cabinet. Becerra has been jokingly known in Democratic legal circles as the man who sued Trump more than anyone else. Beyond health care, the California attorney general’s lawsuits centered on issues from immigration to environmental policies. Previously Becerra had served for more than a decade in Congress, representing parts of Los Angeles County. He had also served in the California state assembly after attending law school at Stanford. His mother was born in Jalisco, Mexico, and emigrated to the U.S. after marrying his father, a native of Sacramento, California, who had grown up in Mexico. Becerra often cites his parents as his inspiration, saying they instilled in him a strong work ethic and a desire for advancement. His father worked road construction jobs, while his mother was a clerical employee. Becerra is married to Dr. Carolina Reyes, a physician who specializes in maternal and fetal health. In an AP profile published last year, a lifelong friend of Becerra’s said he learned to stay calm and self-controlled in high school as a varsity golfer and an exceptional poker player. Becerra studied the advice of famous golfers while practicing with a set of used clubs costing less than $100.
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Wood and charcoal burning account for 50% of household energy consumption in Senegal, contributing to air pollution and deforestation. To reduce ecological damage, an association called Nebeday, which means “tree” in Wolof, the predominant local language in Senegal, hires villagers to produce biochar. Estelle Ndjandjo reports from Dakar.Camera: Estelle Ndjandjo
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The Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine against the coronavirus must be stored at extremely cold temperatures, raising some concerns about the difficult task of moving it across the United States for inoculations. But dry ice companies across the U.S. say they’re up for the challenge. Esha Sarai spoke with one such company in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Against the backdrop of a pandemic’s blight and wounds from an acrimonious election, a group of acclaimed actors on Sunday will gather online for a reading of a religious text with remarkable relevance to the current moment: the Book of Job.Audience members may be drawn to the production by the casting of Bill Murray as Job, the righteous man tested by the loss of his health, home and children, but the real star is the format. Staged on Zoom, it’s aimed at Republican-leaning Knox County, Ohio, with participation from locals including people of faith, and designed to spark meaningful conversations across spiritual and political divides.After the performance, a half-dozen people from the area will be asked to share their perspective on the ancient story in a virtual discussion. It’s then thrown open to others, and ultimately to some of the tens of thousands of people signed in, no matter their location. The structure of a dramatic reading followed by open-ended dialogue is a fixture of Theater of War Productions, the company behind the event. Artistic director Bryan Doerries is an alumnus of Kenyon College in Knox County and chose the area to focus on bridging rifts opened by the election and sharing the pain of a pandemic that’s tied to more than 281,000 U.S. deaths.By using Job’s story “as a vocabulary for a conversation, the hope is that we can actually engender connection, healing,” Doerries said. “People can hear each other’s truths even if they don’t agree with them.”The performance is headlined by Murray and features other noted actors such as Frankie Faison and David Strathairn. The cast includes Matthew Starr, mayor of the Knox County town of Mount Vernon, who will play Job’s accuser. He said the timing is perfect for the moment the country is going through, given the pandemic, the heated election and racial justice protests. His hope is that the event and the dialogue afterward lead to less shouting and more listening. And a good story like that of Job can do so more effectively than a new law or a new directive, by changing people’s hearts, said Starr, a Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump who founded an independent film company before going into politics.”God does not say that bad things aren’t going to happen, but He does tell us, when they do, we’re not alone,” Starr said. “That’s the hope, for me, is that we get a chance to lean into our faith, we get a chance to lean into our neighbors, we get a chance to lean into each other, our family, a little bit more.”Knox County, a largely rural community of about 62,000 residents including a medium-size Amish population, lies about an hour east of the state capital, Columbus. Despite its numerous farms, most people in the county work blue-collar manufacturing jobs at several local factories.The county, which is 97% white, is a conservative stronghold that voted for Trump by a nearly 3-1 margin in November and went overwhelmingly for him in 2016.An exception is Kenyon College, a small liberal arts school perched on a hill a few miles outside of Mount Vernon. Voters in the precincts comprising the college and the village of Gambier voted 8-1 for President-elect Joe Biden.To help prompt more locals to engage in the post-reading conversation, Doerries worked with leaders from multiple faith traditions. Among them is Marc Bragin, Jewish chaplain at Kenyon, who said he hopes the experience can help people who share bigger values look beyond their differences.Bragin, administrator of a project backed by the nonprofit Interfaith Youth Core that partners Kenyon students with counterparts at nearby Mount Vernon Nazarene University, said he’s hopeful they will attend the discussion and take away an important lesson: “Surround yourself with people who aren’t like you,” he said, “and you can have such a bigger impact on your community, your world.”Pastor LJ Harry, who has also been recruiting people for the virtual conversation, does not believe Knox County is as divided as other places in the country. The police chaplain and pastor at the Apostolic Christian Church in Mount Vernon said most in the area are united in their support for Trump and for law enforcement, with protests after the death of George Floyd spirited but peaceful.Harry said the community’s biggest point of contention is over mask-wearing, with many resisting Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s statewide mandate. He likened Knox County’s need for healing to that of a hospital patient who has left intensive care but remains in a step-down unit, and said he hopes the performance will drive home God’s central role in Job’s story.”That’s the message I’m hoping our church family, our community, hears,” Harry said. “God has this in control, even though it feels like it’s out of control.”In the biblical tale, God allows for Job’s massive losses as a means to share broader truths about suffering. The story ends with the restoration of what was taken from him, plus more.Theater of War held its first Job reading in Joplin, Missouri, a year after a tornado killed more than 160 people there in 2011. The company has performed more than 1,700 readings worldwide, harnessing Greek drama and other resonant texts to evoke deeper dialogues about an array of issues.Doerries acknowledged that his company’s readings always have the potential to fall flat if a genuine back-and-forth doesn’t develop. Still, he’s betting that Sunday’s event will create space for people from different backgrounds, in Ohio and beyond, to engage with each other. “Our hope is not that there’s going to be a group hug at the end of the thing, or that we’re going to resolve all our political differences, but that we can remind people of our basic humanity…what it requires to live up to basic values such as treating our neighbor as ourselves,” Doerries said.
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Wood and charcoal burning account for 50% of household energy consumption in Senegal, contributing to air pollution and deforestation. To reduce ecological damage, an association called Nebeday, which means “tree” in Wolof, the predominant local language in Senegal , hires villagers to produce biochar. Estelle Ndjandjo reports from Dakar.Camera: Estelle Ndjandjo
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Wood and charcoal burning account for 50% of Senegal’s household energy consumption, contributing to air pollution and deforestation. To reduce ecological damage, an association called Nebeday, which means “tree” in Wolof, the predominant local language in Senegal, hires villagers to produce an innovative energy alternative.
Half of Senegal’s households rely on wood or wood charcoal. To combat air pollution and deforestation, a cooperative of women produce biochar, an energy source made from straw. They burn it and mix the charred straw with clay and water. The end result is a carbon-neutral organic charcoal that does not involve chopping down trees. The mixture is pressed and stored, resulting in about 150 pallets of biochar per day. The initiative is diversifying the economy of a rural region where many eke out a living from livestock and fishing. Mariama Camara is head of the local women’s cooperative. She used to chop trees in the forest, but now biochar production provides her a sustainable job. She says that first of all, this biochar protects the forest, it protects their homes, it protects their supplies, it protects women, it protects the forest that no longer burns, it protects their lives. “It is healthy, and thanks God for this,” she said. Biochar production has been launched in 18 villages in the region by the Nebeday ecological association, a name that means “tree” in the Wolof language. To fight deforestation, the group also plants trees in big cities and small villages alike. Since the beginning of the year, they have planted more than a million trees throughout the country. Nebeday director Jean Geopp says that putting straw to good use has an added advantage. “Straw, which is the raw material of our biochar, in fact creates thousands of bushfires across the country in the dry season. So reducing this straw reduces bush fires and, therefore, saves young trees in the forests,” he said. “By consuming one kilogram of straw charcoal, we save the forest twice.” The benefits can be seen in Senegal’s Djilor Forest, patrolled by ranger Biram Gning, who was born nearby. Gning cannot arrest those he catches cutting down trees, rather, he reports infractions to a local village chief. Gning says rising delta waters have salted the land, posing an additional environmental challenge. “Deforestation is caused by, one, the harmful cutting down of trees, illegal cutting by the population,” he said. “Two, there are bush fires, which can ravage miles of forest. Three, the advance of salt from the sea to the forests.” The African Union’s Great Green Wall initiative is focusing on the Sahel among other regions to prevent desertification. The biochar project and efforts to combat deforestation are a vital piece of the puzzle.
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Japanese space officials said they are excited about the return of a capsule that safely landed in Australian Outback on Sunday while carrying soil samples from a distant asteroid so they can start analyzing what they say are treasures inside.The capsule’s delivery by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft completes its six-year sample-return mission and opens the door for research into finding clues to the origin of the solar system and life on Earth.”We were able to land the treasure box” onto the sparsely populated Australian desert of Woomera as planned, said Yuichi Tsuda, Hayabusa2 project manager at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, adding that the capsule was in perfect shape. “I really look forward to opening it and looking inside.”The capsule will be packed in a container as soon as its preliminary treatment at an Australian lab is finished and brought back to Japan this week, Satoru Nakazawa, a project sub-manager, said during an online news conference from Woomera.Hayabusa2 left the asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million kilometers (180 million miles) from Earth, a year ago. After it released the capsule on Saturday, it set off on a new expedition to another distant asteroid.Scientists say they believe the samples, especially ones taken from under the asteroid’s surface, contain valuable data unaffected by space radiation and other environmental factors. They are particularly interested in organic materials in the samples to find out how the materials are distributed in the solar system and related to life on Earth.”We have high expectations that the sample analysis will lead to further research into the origin of the solar system and how water was transported to Earth,” said JAXA president Hiroshi Yamakawa.The return of the capsule with the world’s first asteroid subsurface samples comes weeks after NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a successful touch-and-go grab of surface samples from the asteroid Bennu. China, meanwhile, announced recently that its lunar lander collected underground samples and sealed them within the spacecraft for return to Earth, as space developing nations compete in their missions.JAXA officials said the Ryugu samples will be handled in clean chambers to avoid any impact on the samples. Initial research is planned in the first six months, and the samples will be distributed to NASA and other key international research groups, with about 40% stored for future technological advancement to resolve unanswered questions.More than 70 JAXA staff had been working in Woomera to prepare for the sample return. They set up satellite dishes at several locations in the target area inside the Australian Air Force test field to receive the signals.The pan-shaped capsule, about 40 centimeters (15 inches) in diameter, was found inside the planned landing area and retrieved by a helicopter team from JAXA.Hayabusa2 released the capsule on Saturday from 220,000 kilometers (136,700 miles) away in space, sending it toward Earth. About 12 hours after the release, the capsule reentered the atmosphere at 120 kilometers (75 miles) away from Earth, seen as a fireball cutting across the night sky.For Hayabusa2, it’s not the end of the mission. It is now heading to a small asteroid called 1998KY26 on a journey slated to take 11 years one way, for possible research into planetary defense, such as finding ways to prevent meteorites from hitting Earth.Since its Dec. 3, 2014, launch, the Hayabusa2 mission has been fully successful. It touched down twice on Ryugu despite the asteroid’s extremely rocky surface, and successfully collected data and samples during the 1½ years it spent near Ryugu after arriving there in June 2018.In its first touchdown in February 2019, it collected surface dust samples. In a more challenging mission in July that year, it collected underground samples from the asteroid for the first time in space history after landing in a crater that it created earlier by blasting the asteroid’s surface.Asteroids, which orbit the sun but are much smaller than planets, are among the oldest objects in the solar system and therefore may help explain how Earth evolved.Ryugu in Japanese means “Dragon Palace,” the name of a sea-bottom castle in a Japanese folk tale.
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When children and teens are overwhelmed with anxiety, depression or thoughts of self-harm, they often wait days in emergency rooms because there aren’t enough psychiatric beds in the U.S.The problem has only grown worse during the pandemic, reports from parents and professionals suggest.With schools closed, routines disrupted and parents anxious over lost income or uncertain futures, children are shouldering new burdens many are unequipped to bear.And with surging numbers of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, bed space is even scarcer.By early fall, many ERs in the northeastern state of Massachusetts were seeing about four times more children and teens in psychiatric crisis than usual, said Ralph Buonopane, a mental health program director at Franciscan Hospital for Children in Boston.”I’ve been director of this program for 21 years and worked in child psychiatric services since the 1980s, and it is very much unprecedented,” Buonopane said. His hospital receives ER transfers from around the state.While ER visits for many health reasons other than COVID-19 declined early in the pandemic as people avoided hospitals, the share that were for kids’ mental health-related visits climbed steadily from mid-April through October, according to a recent federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. Of the kids who showed up, more were for mental health than in the same period last year, although that might reflect that others stayed away, the authors cautioned.Claire Brennan Tillberg’s 11-year-old daughter was one of those kids who sought care. The Massachusetts girl has autism, depression and anxiety, and has been hospitalized twice in recent months after revealing that she’d had suicidal thoughts. The second time, in September, she waited a week in an ER before being transferred to a different hospital. The first time, in July, the wait was four days.She’d been hospitalized before, but Tillberg said things worsened when the pandemic hit and her new school and therapy sessions went online. Suddenly the structure and rituals that many children with autism thrive on were gone.“She’d never met the teacher, never met the kids,” said Tillberg, a psychotherapist. “She felt more isolated, more and more like things aren’t getting better. Without the distraction of getting up and going to school or to camp … sitting at home with her own thoughts all day with a computer has allowed that to worsen.’’’You can’t give up, because it’s your kid’Studies and surveys in Asia, Australia, the U.S., Canada, China and Europe have shown overall worsening mental health in children and teens since the pandemic began. In a World Health Organization survey of 130 countries published in October, more than 60% reported disruptions to mental health services for vulnerable people including children and teens.Emergency rooms are often the first place kids facing a mental health breakdown go for help. Some are stabilized there and sent home. Some need inpatient care, but many hospitals don’t offer psychiatric treatment for kids and transfer these children elsewhere.Some treatment centers won’t take kids without proof they don’t have COVID-19, “which is hard because you can’t always find a rapid test,” said Ellie Rounds Bloom. Her 12-year-old son has “significant mental health issues,” including trauma, and has experienced several crises since the pandemic began. The Boston-area boy has been hospitalized since October, after spending 17 days in ER.Many mental health advocates consider these waits unacceptable. For parents and their kids, they are that, and more.“There have been moments of frustration and moments of sheer pulling your hair out,” Rounds Bloom said.State health insurance covers her son’s treatment but not all providers accept it. Deficiencies in the U.S. health care system can leave families feeling helpless, she said.“You can’t give up, because it’s your kid,” Rounds Bloom said.There are no national studies on kids’ ER waits for mental health treatment, a practice called “boarding,” according to a recent review published in the journal Pediatrics. The review included small studies showing that between 23% and almost 60% of U.S. kids who need inpatient care have to wait in ERs to receive it. They are kept stable but often receive little or no mental health care during those waits.Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital in the northeastern state of Connecticut has started offering teletherapy to kids waiting in its emergency room for mental health care, said Dr. Marc Auerbach, a pediatric ER physician.One in 6 U.S. children have a diagnosed mental, behavioral or developmental disorder, according to the CDC. Data show problems like depression become more prevalent in teen years; 1 in 13 high school students have attempted suicide and at least half of kids with mental illness don’t get treatment.
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Coronavirus infections across the U.S. continue to rise as the country moves deeper into a holiday season when eagerly anticipated gatherings of family and friends could push the numbers even higher and overwhelm hospitals.Vast swaths of southern and inland California imposed new restrictions on businesses and activities Saturday as hospitals in the nation’s most populous state face a dire shortage of beds. Restaurants must stop onsite dining, and theaters, hair salons and many other businesses must close in the sprawling reaches of San Diego and Los Angeles, along with part of the Central Valley.Five counties in the San Francisco Bay Area were set to impose their own lockdowns Sunday.A new daily high of nearly 228,000 additional confirmed COVID-19 cases was reported nationwide Friday, eclipsing the previous high mark of 217,000 cases set the day before, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.The seven-day rolling average of deaths attributable to COVID-19 in the U.S. passed 2,000 for the first time since spring, rising to 2,011. Two weeks ago, the seven-day average was 1,448. There were 2,607 deaths reported in the U.S. on Friday, according to Johns Hopkins.Johns Hopkins had previously reported Wednesday daily COVID-19 deaths at 3,157. That was later updated to 2,804 because of a change in numbers from Nevada, a spokesperson said Saturday.The U.S. set a new record Thursday with 2,879 COVID-19 deaths, according to the university’s coronavirus resource center.Much of the nation saw surging numbers in the week after Thanksgiving, when millions of Americans disregarded warnings to stay home and celebrate only with members of their household.Arizona’s top public health official took on a blunt tone as she reported the state’s latest case numbers, a near-record of nearly 6,800 new infections, telling people to wear masks around anyone outside their household, “even those you know and trust.”Volunteers from the Baltimore Hunger Project pass out food to people in need outside of Padonia International Elementary school on Dec. 4, 2020, in Cockeysville, Maryland. More children are going hungry in the US as it weathers the coronavirus.”We must act as though anyone we are around may be infected,” Dr. Cara Christ, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, wrote on Twitter. Arizona’s intensive care units are experiencing caseloads not seen since the summer, when the state had one of the worst outbreaks in the world. Just 8% of ICU beds and 10% of all inpatient beds were unoccupied Friday, according to state data.Hospital officials issued bleak warnings about the potential for severe overcrowding, fearing that Thanksgiving gatherings seeded new outbreaks that are not yet showing in daily case counts. It takes several days after someone is exposed to develop symptoms, and several more to get test results. Eventually, more severe cases will require hospitalization.”In less than a week, we went from exceeding 5,000 new cases reported in one day to exceeding 6,000,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, North Carolina’s health secretary. “This is very worrisome.”In St. Louis, two children’s hospitals opened their doors to adult patients without COVID-19 as medical centers in the region fill up, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Mayor Lyda Krewson said the city has reopened a temporary morgue. Area hospitals are at 82% capacity for in-patient beds and 81% capacity for ICU beds.In Idaho, the National Guard helped direct people and traffic at a Boise urgent care and family practice clinic converted to a facility for people with coronavirus symptoms. Health officials say Idaho’s attempt to hold the coronavirus in check is failing.Hospitals are struggling not only with the increase in patients but with their own staff as health workers contract COVID-19 themselves or quit under the pressure of caring for so many infectious patients.”We continue to be concerned about the potential implications of the travel we have seen in the past week with Thanksgiving, as well as social gathering related to the holidays,” said Dr. Adnan Munkarah, executive vice president and chief clinical officer for Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.The health system currently has 576 employees out because they have tested positive, have pending tests or are quarantined because of close contact, up from 378 a week ago, Munkarah said.
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The Trump administration has chosen not to extend again an order requiring ByteDance, a Chinese company, to divest TikTok’s U.S. assets, but talks will continue over the video-sharing app’s fate, two sources briefed on the matter said.A Treasury Department representative said late Friday that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) was “engaging with ByteDance to complete the divestment and other steps necessary to resolve the national security risks.”Last week, CFIUS granted TikTok parent ByteDance a one-week extension until Friday to shed TikTok’s U.S. assets.President Donald Trump’s August order gave the Justice Department the power to enforce the divestiture order once the deadline expired, but it was unclear when or how the government might seek to compel divestiture.Trump’s decisionTrump personally decided not to approve any additional extensions at a meeting of senior U.S. officials, according to a person briefed on the meeting. The government had previously issued a 15-day and seven-day extension of the initial 90-day deadline, which was November 12, on Trump’s order.The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while the White House did not comment. TikTok declined to comment.The Trump administration contends TikTok poses national security concerns because the personal data of U.S. users could be obtained by China’s government. TikTok, which has more than 100 million U.S. users, denies the allegation.FILE – Women wearing masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus chat as they pass by the headquarters of ByteDance, owners of TikTok, in Beijing, China, Aug. 7, 2020.Under pressure from the U.S. government, ByteDance has been in talks for months to finalize a deal with Walmart Inc. and Oracle Corp. to shift TikTok’s U.S. assets into a new entity aimed to satisfy the divestiture order.ByteDance made a new proposal aimed at addressing the U.S. government’s concerns, Reuters reported last week.ByteDance made the proposal after disclosing on November 10 that it submitted four prior proposals, including one in November, that sought to address U.S. concerns by “creating a new entity, wholly owned by Oracle, Walmart and existing U.S. investors in ByteDance, that would be responsible for handling TikTok’s U.S. user data and content moderation.”Preliminary dealIn September, TikTok announced it had a preliminary deal for Walmart and Oracle to take stakes in a new company to oversee U.S. operations. Trump said the deal had his blessing.On November 11, ByteDance filed a petition with a U.S. appeals court challenging the divestiture order and said it planned to file a request “to stay enforcement of the divestment order only if discussions reach an impasse and the government indicates an intent to take action to enforce the order.”ByteDance said the Trump order seeks “to compel the wholesale divestment of TikTok, a multibillion-dollar business built on technology developed by” ByteDance, “based on the government’s purported national security review of a 3-year-old transaction that involved a different business.”The Trump administration has been stymied in its efforts to restrict TikTok in the United States.A federal judge in Washington on September 27 blocked a ban on Apple Inc. and Alphabet’s Google offering TikTok for download in U.S. app stores, while another judge on October 30 blocked government restrictions scheduled to take effect November 12 that ByteDance said would have effectively barred TikTok from operating in the United States.A U.S. appeals court will hear arguments on the app store ban on December 14.
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Christmas tradition won out over the coronavirus in Prague on Saturday with a COVID-19-compliant, socially distanced St. Nicholas giving out presents to excited children.Under normal circumstances, St. Nicholas, a bearded man accompanied by the devil and an angel, would give children in the Czech Republic presents in exchange for a song or a poem.But with coronavirus measures around the world throwing up obstacles to festive celebrations, Prague-based circus company Cirk La Putyka opted for a drive-through solution.”Over the past nine months we have been looking for different ways to approach the audience,” company director Rosta Novak told AFP.”This is just another way to do that at a time when theaters can’t play and bands cannot perform,” he added.Members of circus company Cirk La Putyka dressed as devils entertain people during their drive-through performance, Dec. 5, 2020, in Prague.In line with tradition, cars first drove through “hell,” with devils performing acrobatic tricks and fire shows.Then they proceeded to “heaven” with angels and finally to St. Nicholas himself.The children received presents at the final stop, many of them sticking their heads out of windows to relish the experience.Driving a van full of children, Ondrej Prachar said they had all been thrilled.”It was absolutely perfect,” he said, adding that it had also been a tad less frightening than the traditional version, when children are sometimes scared by the idea of the devil carrying a bag in which he puts naughty kids.The St. Nicholas tradition dates to the Middle Ages, and St. Nicholas Day is celebrated in many countries.Born in Turkey around 280, St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors, tradesmen, pilgrims and children, handed out a sizable portion of his wealthy parents’ property to the poor after their death.
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Scientists are seeing promising early results from the first studies testing gene editing for painful, inherited blood disorders that plague millions worldwide, especially Black people.Doctors hope the one-time treatment, which involves permanently altering DNA in blood cells with a tool called CRISPR, may treat and possibly cure sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia.Partial results were presented Saturday at an American Society of Hematology conference and some were published by The New England Journal of Medicine.Doctors described 10 patients who were at least several months removed from their treatment. All no longer needed regular blood transfusions and were free from the pain that plagued their lives before.Victoria Gray, the first patient in the sickle cell study, had long suffered bouts of severe pain that often sent her to the hospital.”I had aching pains, sharp pains, burning pains, you name it. That’s all I’ve known my entire life,” said Gray, 35, of Forest, Mississippi. “I was hurting everywhere my blood flowed.”Since her treatment a year ago, Gray has weaned herself from pain medications she depended on to manage her symptoms.”It’s something I prayed for my whole life,” she said. “I pray everyone has the same results I did.”Who’s affectedSickle cell affects millions, mostly Black people. Beta thalassemia strikes about one in 100,000 people. The only cure now is a bone marrow transplant from a closely matched donor without the disease, like a sibling, which most people don’t have.Both diseases involve mutations in a gene for hemoglobin, the substance in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body.In sickle cell, defective hemoglobin leads to deformed, crescent-shaped blood cells that don’t carry oxygen well. They can stick together and clog small vessels, causing pain, organ damage and strokes.Those with beta thalassemia don’t have enough normal hemoglobin and suffer anemia, fatigue, shortness of breath and other symptoms. Severe cases require transfusions every two to five weeks.The treatment studied attacks the problem at its genetic roots.In the womb, fetuses make a special type of hemoglobin. After birth, when babies breathe on their own, a gene is activated that instructs cells to switch and make an adult form of hemoglobin instead. The adult hemoglobin is what’s defective in people with one of these diseases. The CRISPR editing aims to cut out the switching gene.”What we are doing is turning that switch back off and making the cells think they are back in utero, basically,” so they make fetal hemoglobin again, said one study leader, Dr. Haydar Frangoul of the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville.Switching gene targetedThe treatment involves removing stem cells from the patient’s blood, then using CRISPR in a lab to knock out the switching gene. Patients are given strong medicines to kill off their other, flawed blood-producing cells. Then they are given back their own lab-altered stem cells.Saturday’s results were those for the first 10 patients, seven with beta thalassemia and three with sickle cell. The two studies in Europe and the United States are ongoing and will enroll 45 patients each.Tests so far suggest the gene editing is working as desired with no unintended effects, Frangoul said.”The preliminary results are extremely encouraging,” he said.The study was sponsored by the therapy’s makers — CRISPR Therapeutics, with headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, and Massachusetts-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Some study leaders consult for the companies.Separately, Dr. David Williams of Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital gave partial results from a study testing a novel type of gene therapy that also seeks to restore fetal hemoglobin production for those with sickle cell.Six patients including one as young as 7 were given the treatment, in which some of their blood stem cells were removed and altered in the lab to muffle the hemoglobin switching gene. None have had pain crises, five of the six no longer need transfusions and all have near-normal hemoglobin, he reported at the conference and in the medical journal.Government grants paid for the work. Williams is named on a patent for the therapy, which Boston Children’s has licensed to Bluebird Bio Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company provided the therapy for the study, which will enroll 10 people in all to establish safety. A larger study to test effectiveness is planned.Williams, who was not involved in Frangoul’s study, said it “validates this approach” of targeting the hemoglobin switching gene to tackle sickle cell.
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