Month: December 2020

More than 100 world leaders and high-ranking government officials will convene a two-day virtual special session of the United Nations General Assembly Thursday to discuss the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to craft a recovery strategy.Brendan Varma, a spokesman for General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir, said the special session is aimed at creating a multilateral strategy among the countries, U.N. actors, the private sector and vaccine developers to craft a recovery strategy.UN Appeals for Record $35 Billion as COVID-19 Wreaks HavocWorld body says it must provide a humanitarian lifeline to 165 million of the world’s most vulnerable needy people in 56 countries in crisisThe Associated Press says Friday’s second and final day will include three virtual panels:  the global body’s response to the pandemic, the current progress toward a coronavirus vaccine, and the global economic recovery from the pandemic.   The U.N. Development Program has released a study predicting the COVID-19 pandemic could push another 207 million people into extreme poverty, bringing the total number to more than 1 billion by 2030.  A separate report released Thursday by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said nearly 50 so-called least developed countries will experience their worst economic performance in three decades, pushing as many as 32 million people into extreme poverty this year alone.Thursday’s meeting comes as the world nears 1.5 million deaths worldwide from COVID-19, out of a total of 64.5 million total cases.  Among the latest to succumb from the disease is former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who died Wednesday at his home in central France at the age of 94.  Giscard was first diagnosed with the novel coronavirus in September with respiratory complications.In the United States, which leads the world with more than 13.9 million total COVID-19 cases and more than 273, 836 deaths, the situation is worsening with each passing day.  The nation topped 100,000 hospitalizations for the virus for the first time since the pandemic began Wednesday, according to the COVID Tracking Project, and nearly 200,000 new cases.Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned Wednesday of a bleak winter ahead as the country continues to see nationwide surges of COVID-19 cases. “The reality is that December, January and February are going to be rough times,” Redfield said in a livestream presentation hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. “I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation.”  Mass COVID-19 Immunization Plans Raise Huge ChallengesEuropean governments scramble to come up with COVID-19 vaccine distribution plans and need to answer key logistical and epidemiological questions as they try to counter anti-vaccine agitation   Redfield said the current surge in cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is worse than previous ones, noting the geographic scope and steeper trajectory of infection rates and deaths, as the U.S. is recording roughly 2,000 deaths from the virus daily.  Redfield also warned of the strain on hospitals across the country, which are running low on beds and have overworked staff.  Former U.S. President Barack Obama said he will take a COVID-19 vaccine when the drug has been considered safe and effective. In an interview scheduled to be aired Thursday on satellite radio provider SiriusXM, Obama said he is even considering taking the vaccine on television as part of a public campaign to convince Americans who may be skeptical about being inoculated, especially among Black Americans.CNN is also reporting that Obama’s predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, are also considering taking an eventual approved vaccine on television. 
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Twitter has enacted stricter content rules, adding to its list of prohibited conduct any language that “dehumanizes people on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin.”The social media company announced the update to its policy on Wednesday.Twitter said it would remove any offending posts that users report and would also work to detect content that violates its policies. Violators could have their accounts suspended.”Research shows that dehumanizing speech can lead to real-world harm, and we want to ensure that more people — globally — are protected,” the company said.The new rules are Twitter’s latest attempt to respond to abusive posters on its platform. In March, it prohibited tweets targeting people based on age, disability or disease, and in 2019 banned posts targeting a person’s religion or caste.
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VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren interviewed the National Institute of Health Director Frances Collins. Among the issues discussed are the COVID-19 vaccine and its development.Here is a transcript of that interview:Greta Van Susteren: Nice to talk to you, sir.Francis Collins: Nice to talk to you, Greta.Van Susteren: Well, we Americans know what NIH is and we’re very proud of it but what is NIH?Collins: The National Institutes of Health, it’s the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world. Basically, everything that the U.S. is doing in terms of research and academic institutions Institute’s and our own intramural program is funded by the taxpayers through this budget, and I’m the director that’s supposed to make sure it gets spent wisely everything from basic science to clinical trials. Diabetes, rare diseases, cancer, and of course right now, COVID-19, and that’s what we are all about $42 billion a year.Van Susteren: For you the research you do a lot, a lot of research, all research. What does the FDA do the Food & Drug Administration we hear so much about in terms of the vaccine?Collins: So, FDA is a sister agency we’re both in the Department of Health and Human Services. FDA’s job is to be the regulator and it’s to look at some proposed new approach maybe it’s a diagnostic test. Maybe it’s a therapeutic, maybe it’s a vaccine and to get all the data together and look at it and decide if it’s going to be safe and effective, so we generally do the research trying to stimulate this kind of progress to happen and FDA decides whether it’s safe for the public to start to use it in general way.Van Susteren: All right, so we’re waiting breathlessly for these vaccines and some are farther along like Moderna and Pfizer than others, but once it gets the green light from the FDA, who decides who will get it first?Collins: Well, this is a big day for that, basically the CDC has an Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, ACIP, and it’s their job to look at a circumstance where you have a vaccine that FDA has decided is safe and effective at least for emergency use, but there aren’t enough doses for everybody to receive them on day one. So, who gets first in line. That’s a big decision, it will include health care providers because we want them to be safe in their frontline experience and it will include people at high risk, particularly the elderly people with chronic illnesses. And that will get played out over the course of the coming months as more and more doses become available, but of course trying to protect the most vulnerable people first.Van Susteren: I’m old enough to know to remember polio vaccine when it first came out, am is the distance was, how was that distribution decision made? Do you know?Collins: I don’t know the total details — initially there was a big trial to see whether it worked just as we have been doing with COVID-19 with these vaccine trials involving tens of thousands of people. Once it was decided that it was working, then there was an issue about how many doses can be made available and it didn’t happen overnight. In fact, it took quite a long time, a year or two. In this instance, Operation Warp Speed has invested in doing the manufacturing of vaccine doses, even before we know whether it’s one of these six or more than one of these six vaccines is going to work with the expectation that if one of them didn’t, you’d have to throw those doses away happily now we have two that look as if they’re very likely to win FDA approval in the next couple of weeks. And there are others just a little bit behind that may get approved in January, ideally, we may even have multiple different vaccines, each of which have 10s of millions of doses, and we could really start to reach out and get immunization to happen to lots of us, not just the most vulnerable people.Van Susteren: Well, the vaccines, as I understand, talking to experts, is coming, very quickly. What has been the role of the U.S. government to sort of fast track this have gotten rid of some of the red tape or is it provided more funds or what’s the role of the U.S. government?Collins: It is astounding what’s been done here, Greta, because traditionally it takes eight to 10 years to develop a vaccine against a new pathogen, this has been done in less than a year. The U.S. government pulled all of the resources together to make sure that coordination was happening. operation warp speed made it possible also to get rid of some of those long delays that oftentimes vex the process where you go to phase one and then you have to wait many months before you go to phase two, all of those things were synchronized in an unprecedented way, but not by doing any compromising at all on safety these will probably be amongst the most highly tested vaccines ever in terms of their safety and efficacy and the good news is, the first two that are going to get looked at by FDA. In the coming weeks, look extremely good with efficacy over 90% which is better than most of us had dared to hope and safety record that also looks extremely good so we are in a good place to begin to see how we might get COVID-19 behind us but it’s going to take a lot of months to get there for everybody.Van Susteren: I don’t want to hope or expect as we another virus coming down the road, but I assume that it’s inevitable so –has the U.S. learned something new as government learn something like stripped away some of the red tape so that we can look forward in future times and that will take a shorter time to get a vaccine than eight or nine years?Collins: Absolutely. We’ve learned a lot, and we’ve documented all along the way ways that things can be done more efficiently and this. Our accomplishment of having vaccines that are ready to go into individuals in less than a year is certainly going to be the norm in the future and maybe we could even do it a little faster, although it would be pretty hard to go faster than this you just still have to run the trials and wait and see whether the vaccine works and you can only speed that up so much, but I do hope and I’m part of this decision and discussion that’s going on right now that we don’t slip back into complacency. Once we get past COVID-19 because there’s another pandemic out there. I don’t know whether it’s five years from now or 10 years from now or next year, and it probably could be another coronavirus or it might be an influenza virus. And this is just the nature of our world and anybody who thinks over over that look at history, we’re not likely to be.Van Susteren: All right, Moderna, and Pfizer as I understand it, both have something called the sort of a science behind is something called messenger RNA, are they very different vaccines are very similar?Collins: They’re quite similar basically messenger RNA is the part of a nucleic acid that codes for protein. And this is a very clever way to make a vaccine where you basically synthesize that messenger RNA that has the right information in it, inject that into Muscle, Muscle goes, Oh I know what to do with messenger RNA I’ll make a protein. And so it does, and it makes the spike protein, which is the stuff that decorates the coronavirus and those spike proteins, the immune system says oh no you don’t and makes an antibody to them. And it’s very quick. That’s why Pfizer and Moderna are the first two out of the gate because the messenger RNA approach can be started almost immediately upon the time the viruses isolated. So it is a new approach, it looks extremely promising, it is going to be transformational I think for vaccines for all kinds of things because it looks like it’s really worked, and this is the first time it’s been taken all the way through to these Phase Three trials and FDA approval.Van Susteren: One of the issues is gonna be distribution and the Pfizer requires that the vaccine be kept so called which refrigeration incredible refrigeration. What, why is it if they’re so similar the Moderna and the Pfizer one needs to be kept so much colder which is going to inhibit some of its distribution?Collins: Yeah, it’s a great question and all our people puzzled if it’s so similar. Moderna can just be kept in a regular freezer and can even be in a refrigerator for a week and it’ll be fine there too. But the Pfizer one, it’s wrapped in a different kind of envelope, it’s not just the messenger RNA by itself it’s sort of put into an envelope of lipids and the Pfizer liquid envelope is very tense sensitive to warming up, which is why it has to be kept at this minus-94-degrees freezer, which isn’t available a lot of places. Moderna’s envelope is less concerned about temperature issues and so it can be stable in a more forgiving way. Coming along I should say the next set of viruses next set of vaccines bay by Johnson and Johnson, and by AstraZeneca. Those are going to be also much more forgiving as far as the temperature requirements. The so-called cold chain will not be nearly as demanding for those which will be great, especially for places that don’t have a lot of freezer capacity like some of the low- and middle-income countries that are also going to need these vaccines.Van Susteren: Do Astra Zeneca and the Johnson & Johnson have the same messenger RNA approach to a vaccine are they different vaccines?Collins: They’re using a different approach one that has been tried and true and other situations takes a little longer it basically captures the energy of a different virus and adeno virus just as a carrier a delivery truck and uses that also to deliver the coating for this spike protein so it’s making the same kind of response happen in the immune system, but it’s getting it in in a different way. And this is something that’s been done successfully for Ebola so we know this vector system is likely to be safe and effective. The Johnson and Johnson one also is a single dose which will be very much easier to manage whereas Pfizer and Moderna requires two doses one on day one and other one three or four weeks later, it’s a little more complicated to set that up, we’d love it if we had at least one of these that was just one dose and you’re done.Van Susteren: You know I read early on, I’ve been following this virus like everybody else is that there was a possibility or some discussion about six months ago about a bridge vaccine which would be polio or TB, that if you got that vaccine the live vaccine that it would rev up your immune system, essentially, and fight out fight off COVID. Was there ever any sort of thought or did NIH look at that was that just a bridge it’s like health care workers in the short run?Collins: We did look at that, we have a group called active ACTA IV accelerating coronavirus therapeutic interventions and vaccines and they surveyed the entire landscape of opportunities for therapeutics and vaccines and they looked at this, they thought if we had nothing else, there might be a little enhancement of your immune response sort of in a general way by one of these other vaccines, but compared to the specific vaccine that we now see in front of us, the effect would probably not be nearly as powerful so we decided to focus on what really was needed something that would be 95% effective as opposed to a general benefit that might give you a few percentages of improvement but wasn’t really going to change the course of this pandemic in such a big way as what we need right now.Van Susteren: When I get, when I’ve got a tetanus vaccine I’ve since then. Over the years had to get boosters. Do you anticipate that with or can’t you tell now whether if you get this vaccine that at some period, sometime in the future you need a booster.Collins: I wish we knew more about that, because this is a new virus, we really don’t know how durable, your immunity is going to be, we don’t know for people who got the COVID-19 infection naturally, could they get it again if we knew more about that we have some sense about whether the vaccine would last for years and years. It’s going to take some time to tell. it might be that the virus also mutates over time and ultimately new version appears that the vaccine and your natural immunity don’t quite work anymore. So we might have to have not just a booster but a slightly redesigned the vaccine to cover whatever this coronavirus is trying to do to us. Those are all uncertainties in the best of all worlds. This will last a very long time, I’m guessing boosters are probably going to be needed. I just hope they aren’t too frequent tetanus we could live with a 10-year timeline if that’s what it takes, but we just don’t know.Van Susteren: I spoke to Dr. Fauci who works at NIH, several times and very early on and we were talking about vaccines and he said he would be very hopeful with a with a protection of 50, and that he was thrilled with 70. Now we’re reading you know 94,95 ish, is that you know the flu isn’t that good the flu vaccine doesn’t do that well- with this with this new approach messenger RNA can we expect that we’ll relook at like flu vaccines or is it just a completely different category, and that we can sort of up the protection there?Collins: I think it’s not so much the technology for the vaccine. it’s the nature of the actual virus. influenza has this nasty ability to change its coat, every year in a very substantial way. And no matter how clever your vaccine is if the virus is like completely changed its appearance the vaccine won’t give you immunity anymore so I don’t think we’ll be able, through this approach to solve the influence issue there may be other ways to do that by a Universal influenza vaccine. We just seem to be fortunate though that coronavirus is particularly susceptible to the vaccine. I didn’t dare to hope that we’d end up with efficacy over 70%, and to see these first two coming through at 95% is incredibly exciting and provides a great deal of hope that we will be able to get through the next few months and be able to put this in the rearview mirror, but we’ve got a long way to go.Van Susteren: With the influence of changing its code so to speak so often, in looking at the coronavirus with the virus that you saw last February, March is at the same virus you were looking at now or is it likewise trying to change its code.Collins: It’s pretty much the same. It’s an RNA virus, it does change its spelling when it gets copied and there’s lots of bad virus out there that has the chance to change its spelling and we’ve seen two or three instances where there’s a new version that maybe has a little bit of an advantage maybe it’s a bit more infectious and so that new version starts to rise up in its frequency so far nothing that we’re alarmed about in terms of affecting the likelihood that the vaccine is going to work, but we have to watch that closely and again over the course of many years it’s possible, a new a new version might arise that the vaccine doesn’t work very well for and then we’d have to redesign the vaccine.Van Susteren: You know I’m old enough to remember landed on the moon that was such a huge game changer, you know, for the United States, I likewise see this I mean moving so quickly in a vaccine something that is, you know, that is terrorizing the world I mean it really is quite extraordinary isn’t it.Collins: It is, Greta, and you know 2020 has been just a terrible year for so many people with the suffering and death of this terrible pandemic with economic distress it’s caused. And I must say, for science, it has been a challenge like one we’ve really not quite had to deal with before for life science, and it is really wonderful to see the way science has come forward. All of the partners in industry and academia and government, working together in an unprecedented way not worrying too much about who’s going to get the credit to make these things happen at a scale and a timetable that was unimaginable before and I hope that’s being noticed and I hope a lot of young people watching that might have the same reaction they did when we went to the moon saying, That looks like fun. I want to be part of that too because we have a lot more science to do in the future.Van Susteren: Well I guess we could use more help from the people who are watching the science I think it stopped congregating in huge, you know, huge herds of people, because you know this is all hands on deck, sort of, so to speak.Collins: Yeah. And that is something to really keep in mind even though we are seeing this promise of a vaccine that’s going to get us through this, it will be many months before we have enough people in the community immunized that we could stop worrying about transmission. So for the coming months. People need to double down on those careful measures — wearing your mask watching your distance washing your hands those three W’s more important than ever, and nobody should imagine that this is about somebody else and not about them even a young person who imagines that they’re pretty immortal and even if they get this virus, they’re going to be fine and they could be the next super spreader. and if you care about the people around you, your neighbors your parents, your grandparents, then it’s got to be up to you to all of us to take that responsibility seriously. We have holidays coming where the risks are going to go up, if people relax their guard. I’m not going to have Christmas with my family this year first time didn’t have Thanksgiving with my family this year either first time, but it’s the way that we all have to wrap our arms around responsibility for 2020, as a year of, we got to get through this. And we got to get through it together.Van Susteren: And I suspect that NIH is also working on treatments, new therapies to to fight this to the for the person who does get COVID.Collins: We are indeed and that’s an intense part of how I’m spending my time and we’ve made some real progress there. We have the drug remdesivir, which is an antiviral that helps people who are quite sick in the hospital. We have dexamethasone a steroid that also helps people who are the sickest of the sick in the ICU. And we have monoclonal antibodies developed from people who’ve survived COVID-19 basically purifying their antibodies that help them recover and giving them to other people, showing real promises, especially if you give those early to high risk individuals, and we have other trials that are going on right now that may very well yield up other immunosuppressives or antivirals that can add to this compared to where we were back in February and March where we didn’t have much of anything we’ve now got quite a menu of therapeutics and survival has certainly improved for people who get very sick with this but it’s still a very serious disease we’ve lost 275,000 people. And this is a scary few months that we’re looking at with wintertime, and with the vaccine not yet as widely available as it will be by the summer.Van Susteren: you talked about Remdesivir the other antiviral is to reduce the viral load, you get those when you get to the hospital, and you’re very sick. When I get the flu. I call the doctor calls in a prescription for something called Tamiflu and I get a pill and could just go to the drugstore sir I headed off at the past before I get so sick to the hospital is are there efforts being made to make these antivirals, not when you get real sick and end up in hospital but to back it up when you first get sick?Collins: Yes, there are efforts of that sort, so far, none of those antivirals have yet been approved for outpatients. remdesivir is an intravenous drug which makes it not so convenient for people who are not in the hospital, what is approved for outpatients what I mentioned a minute ago. these monoclonal antibodies from Lilly and from regeneron, which while they’re in somewhat limited supply can absolutely greatly help people who are at high risk, just got diagnosed get the monoclonal in the first three days after symptoms, and you can greatly reduce the likelihood that person ends up in the hospital.Van Susteren: Is dexamethasone so the last question I have is dexamethasone, which is the steroid, which is what you get in the hospital and when when you’ve really been when you’ve got a huge problem -would prednisone which is a steroid that is prescribed by pill. Would that be at all helpful in in minimizing the risk of how sick you get or not?Collins: It’s all about timing, Greta, and these steroids are basically keeping your immune system from overreacting and causing more damage than help and that is often what seems to happen with the sickest people in the ICU, who’ve developed really bad lung disease and other systemic problems. At that point the virus is almost gone but the immune system is going crazy. And by dialing it back sort of turning down the thermostat for your immune system you can help people survive. On the other hand, you need your immune system early in the course of a viral infection you want it to be out there cracking down that virus and taking care of it so it’s probably a bad idea to give prednisone or dexamethasone to somebody who’s early in the course save that for the people who are laid in the course and are still really sick, and you may help them.Van Susteren: Because under the theory that your immune system you don’t want to tell your immune system not to work. What you want to do is what, when you get to the point where the virus is gone is you don’t want your immune system to overwork and give you another problem and that’s when the steroid comes in to tell your immune system stop. Right?Collins: Exactly, exactly. And we’re looking at some other immune suppressive that might be even more specific than dexamethasone, which is a pretty broad acting anti-inflammatory drug. Maybe there’s a more subtle directed way to do this that would even be better and that’s under study right now, several trials. Also, one more thing here in that space. We know that those people who are really sick also developed a problem with too many blood clots in the lungs, clots in small vessels. And so using an anticoagulant to actually thin the blood may also help people survive and that’s another big study that’s underway right now it looks pretty promising.Van Susteren: Which is so interesting because older people tend to be on those types of drugs for heart, you know, medication so that they some of them are already on that.Collins: That’s right, they may be somewhat protected ironically against the worst aspects of COVID-19 if they’re already in the blood thinner, but a lot of people aren’t, and those folks may need one if they’re in that very serious circumstance where blood clotting is starting to be part of the problem.Van Susteren: Well, as Dr. Birx told me is you can’t get the virus if you don’t go near it. So, you know, keep your hands clean masks and stay out of groups, you know, that’s, you know, stay away from people.Collins: Absolutely, especially indoors where we know the spread is so easy and unfortunately that means a lot of family gatherings which tend to be indoors with people eating and not wearing masks and I’m fearful that with this holiday season upon us. People will be too careless about that. We are not out of the woods here, we have a very challenging few months ahead, and the best things we can do while cheering for the science and waiting for our turn to get the vaccine is to practice those three W’s absolutely wear your mask, watch your distance wash your hands.Van Susteren: What about surfaces boxes that come to the house, you know people who come into your house and we may not be near, but they touch the surface.Collins: You know, we worried more about that early on, I am there is some possibility of viral spread there, but it does not seem to be a major effect so at my house we stopped wiping off all the boxes that came to the front door. After seeing some of the data that’s probably a very low risk, compared to all of the other things which is basically these droplets, that are being expressed by all of us when we speak. Certainly, when we sing. All of those things where that’s the most likely place to catch this illness.Van Susteren: Doctor thank you very much and thanks to NIH and you know for, you know, I think the world’s very grateful for all the work that all of you do.Collins: Well, it’s a privilege to be able to be the guy trying to manage this effort with such an amazing team of dedicated scientists and we are going to get through this and science is going to be a big reason why.Van Susteren: Thank you, sir.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned Wednesday of a bleak winter ahead as the country continues to see nationwide surges of COVID-19 cases.”The reality is that December, January and February are going to be rough times,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in a livestream presentation hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. “I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation.”Redfield said the current surge in cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is worse than previous ones, noting the geographic scope and steeper trajectory of infection rates and deaths, as the U.S. is recording roughly 2,000 deaths from the virus daily.Redfield also warned of the strain on hospitals across the country, which are running low on beds and overworked staff.The U.S. topped 100,000 hospitalizations for the virus for the first time since the pandemic began Wednesday, according to the COVID Tracking project.Our daily update is published. States reported 1.4 million tests, 196k cases, and 2,733 deaths. There are 100,226 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the US —the first time hospitalizations have exceeded 100k. pic.twitter.com/8QSKujBGao— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) December 3, 2020While many Americans face “fatigue” following social-distancing and mask-wearing guidelines, Redfield urged people to adhere to these practices in the coming months.Millions of Americans traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday last week, despite advice from health experts against flying and gathering in large groups indoors.Also on Wednesday, the CDC said Americans should quarantine for 10 days after potential exposure to the virus, shortening the previous guideline of a 14-day quarantine.The United States has recorded more than 273,000 deaths and more than 13.9 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus this year, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.
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A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday.Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery in September. But NASA’s top asteroid expert, Paul Chodas, quickly suspected it was the Centaur upper rocket stage from Surveyor 2, a failed 1966 moon-landing mission. Size estimates had put it in the range of the old Centaur, which was about 10 meters long and 3 meters in diameter.Chodas was proved right after a team led by the University of Arizona’s Vishnu Reddy used an infrared telescope in Hawaii to observe not only the mystery object, but — just on Tuesday — a Centaur from 1971 still orbiting Earth. The data from the images matched.”Today’s news was super gratifying!” Chodas said via email. “It was teamwork that wrapped up this puzzle.”The object formally known as 2020 SO entered a wide, lopsided orbit around Earth last month and, on Tuesday, made its closest approach at just over 50,476 kilometers. It will depart the neighborhood in March, shooting back into its own orbit around the sun. Its next return: 2036.
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Britain has approved the use of the coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer – and plans to begin inoculations in the coming days. As Henry Ridgwell reports, it represents a significant milestone in the battle against the pandemic – but challenges remain.Camera: Henry Ridgwell   Producer: Bakhtiyar Zamanov
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China’s space program celebrated a major accomplishment this week when its Chang’e 5 lunar probe mission safely landed on the moon. The landing Tuesday brought Beijing a step closer to becoming the third country in the world to retrieve geological samples from the moon, but more important, analysts say, is that China is accruing experience for more ambitious plans.The goal of this mission is to extract 2 kilograms of sample from the moon’s northern Mons Rümker region and bring it back to the Earth. If the mission succeeds, China will join the U.S. and the former Soviet Union as the only countries to have collected lunar samples.Analysts say the complexity of Chang’e 5’s unmanned exploration mission shows the great progress of China’s space capabilities, and, if successful, will likely help Beijing realize future plans for manned moon landings and the construction of bases.Namrata Goswami, an Indian defense expert and now a space policy and geopolitical scholar living in the U.S., told VOA that Chang’e 5 would allow China to advance “their understanding of rendezvous and docking, especially when they are planning on human landing.”While reaching the moon remains a significant accomplishment for any space program, Beijing’s space program is still in its early stages and is still building experience.“They’re catching up to where the United States was in the 1960s,” said Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis and space security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “The United States has already sent not just probes to the moon but humans and returned to the Earth and brought back samples of lunar rocks. So China is catching up in that respect, but they’re still not where the United States is in terms of space technology. But it is nevertheless a competition for science.”Between 1969 and 1972, the U.S. brought back a total of 382 kilograms of lunar soil through seven Apollo manned spacecraft missions, six of which succeeded. The former Soviet Union used unmanned probes to take 301 grams of moon soil samples between 1970 and 1976.An image taken by the Chang’e 5 spacecraft after its landing on the moon is seen in this handout provided by China National Space Administration.Lunar missions’ importanceThe early detection results of lunar resources have given people a lot of hope. For example, the current director of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, said last July that collecting rare-earth metals from the moon would be possible this century.”There could be tons and tons of platinum group metals on the moon, rare-earth metals, which are tremendously valuable on the Earth,” Bridenstine told CNBC in an interview.Harrison said some of the metal resources that exist on the moon could become materials for future human space bases, “either structures on the moon itself for habitation or for other science missions,” as well as “structures in space around the Earth.”Some rare-earth metals are considered strategically important because they are an integral part of the manufacturing of electronic devices, electric vehicle batteries and military equipment. Currently, more than 80% of U.S. rare-earth imports come from China.Analysts say moon mining is not feasible in the near future, but recent observations confirming the presence of water on the moon may help promote further exploration of space.“Probably the most important material to look for on the lunar surface initially is going to be water ice,” Harrison said, “because you can turn that water into rocket fuel to power missions back to the Earth or to other places in space, and also use it to support life on the lunar surface.”With very low gravity levels, launching rockets from the moon will be more energy-efficient than from the Earth.FILE – An image of Chinese President Xi Jinping is seen inside a building at the Wenchang Space Launch Center, in Hainan province, China, Nov. 23, 2020.Another lunar resource of potential development value is helium-3, which can be used for nuclear fusion fuel. Helium-3 is scarce on the Earth. Early lunar exploration estimates put the moon’s shallow helium-3 content at millions of tons.Goswami said, “The fusion is the future because if you want to travel from the Earth to Mars in a very limited time, the helium-3 that is there on the moon is going to form a part of that extracted mineral that is going to be turned to support nuclear fusion.”Although China is still behind the U.S. in the space competition, experts believe that China’s lunar exploration project is making steady progress and could evolve into a space force with strategic military uses.Goswami said that if a country acquires the capability to use space weapons in lunar orbit, it will provide a superior military strategic advantage.“If you are in lunar orbit from a military scenario perspective, you can look down on the geosynchronous orbit satellite and even at times blind or disable them,” she said.Return to moonPresident Donald Trump said last year that he hoped NASA would send U.S. astronauts to the moon again by 2024. It is unclear whether President-elect Joe Biden will continue to support a moon landing.American space analysts suggest that the Biden administration could redirect NASA’s research to Earth observations, to focus on issues such as climate change, and that it isn’t a question of whether a U.S. return to the will be delayed, but how long.“If it’s more than just a few years of delay, that could handicap the program in the long run by causing it to stall, lose support and lead to cascading delays for years to come, in which case China very well could have time to press forward with its crew mission to the moon and put humans on the moon before the United States is able to return,” Harrison said. “But if the Biden administration sticks to the program and only proposes a delay of one or two years, then I think that the program is likely to build up momentum and be more likely to succeed.”China has drawn up an initial plan for landing on the moon and building a lunar base. It is making 2030 a goal for manned moon landings and planning to build a basic lunar research station between 2021 and 2030, as well as an integrated, human-friendly lunar base between 2036 and 2045.Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that Americans potentially exposed to COVID-19 could quarantine for 10 days, shortening the previous recommendation of 14 days. The CDC also said that a seven-day quarantine was acceptable with a negative test result, but cautioned that everyone should monitor themselves for potential coronavirus symptoms for 14 days. “Reducing the length of quarantine may make it easier for people to follow critical public health action by reducing the economic hardship associated with a longer period, especially if they cannot work during that time,” CDC official Henry Walke told reporters on a conference call. Last week, a top U.S. health official said people might be more likely to comply with a shorter quarantine period, even if it meant some infections might be missed. Studies show that most people develop symptoms around five days after being exposed to the virus. The CDC said its new guidelines are based on new analysis of data and research. The World Health Organization still recommends a 14-day quarantine period after potential exposure to COVID-19. Esha Grover contributed to this report.
 
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The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed a $102 million contract with a Swiss start-up company to purchase a unique service: the first-ever removal of an item of space debris from orbit.
 
The company, ClearSpace SA, will capture part of a used rocket using what is described as a “tentacle,” and then dragging it down for reentry. The object to be removed from orbit is a so-called Vespa payload adapter that was used in 2013 to hold and then release a satellite. It weighs about 112 kilograms.
 
Experts have long warned that hundreds of thousands of pieces of space debris circling the planet — including an astronaut’s lost mirror — pose a threat to functioning satellites and even the International Space Station (ISS).
 
During a remote news conference regarding the contract late Tuesday, ESA Director General Jan Woerner said there are more than a million pieces of space debris orbiting the Earth. He said there have already been cases in which satellites and spacecraft have been hit by the debris.
 
The ESA says the deal with ClearSpace SA will lead to the “first active debris removal mission” in 2025, in which a custom-made spacecraft, known as the ClearSpace-1, will rendezvous with, capture and take down the Vespa payload adapter for reentry.
 
ClearSpace SA CEO Luc Piguet says the company hopes to expand such operations in the future to include multiple object removal, and even servicing and refueling spacecraft.  
 
“When we look toward the future, what we can see already today is that there’s more than 5,000 nonfunctional objects in orbit, which essentially are, if you want, clients that need some sort of service. And every year, we add 74 new objects to this list,” Piguet says.
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Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, has likened the scientists who have developed coronavirus vaccines to the cavalry arriving just in the nick of time. “The toot of the bugle is louder,” he reassured Britons during a recent news conference.   But like his European counterparts, Johnson’s government is scrambling to come up with a vaccine distribution plan and is having to answer key logistical and epidemiological questions, including who should be in the early waves to receive inoculations and how to ramp up a mass immunization program able to vaccinate millions as soon as possible.   On Tuesday, British regulators approved the use of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, saying a rollout will begin next week. Health minister Matt Hancock said the approval of the vaccine is “fantastic news.”   Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves Downing Street in London, Britain, Dec. 2, 2020.And at a Wednesday press conference, Johnson admitted that it would be an “immense logistical challenge” just to get the vulnerable inoculated.  “It will inevitably take some months before all the most vulnerable are protected — long, cold months. So it’s all the more vital that as we celebrate this scientific achievement we are not carried away with over-optimism or fall into the naive belief that the struggle is over,” he said.  Most countries say they will focus early inoculations on medical professionals and care workers and vulnerable groups, the elderly and those with chronic underlying health conditions.   Thereafter it gets more complicated.   Vaccine skepticismAnd another crucial question is how to persuade enough people to accept vaccinations so that the virus can be suppressed.  Even before the emergence of the coronavirus, Europeans were among the most skeptical about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, according to a pre-pandemic survey of 140,000 people across more than 140 countries.   The survey conducted for the Wellcome Trust, a medical research charity based in London, found that in France, Austria, Switzerland, Russia and Belgium up to a third of the population distrusts vaccines.   FILE – Anti-vaccination activists protest the decision of the Health Ministry and Education Ministry to not allow children without vaccination to go to school, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Aug. 22, 2019.And in Ukraine only about half of the population agreed that modern vaccines are safe.   European governments fear vaccine skepticism is only increasing because of social media agitation by extreme critics of vaccinations, or anti-vaxxers. Recent surveys have found that Britons are becoming increasingly questioning about the coronavirus vaccine. A majority in France, Germany, Italy and Britain say they are “likely” to get inoculated, but only a minority say they will definitely get vaccinated. And hesitancy is growing, according to a French Prime Minister Jean Castex, wearing a protective face mask, attends the questions to the government session at the National Assembly in Paris, France, Dec. 1, 2020.The chairman of the French Senate, Gérard Larcher, has called for mandatory inoculations, saying, “It’s not just for yourself, it’s a form of solidarity and protection for the whole of society.” But so far Macron has rebuffed the idea of compulsion, fearing it will prompt greater resistance. Fifty-nine percent of the French say they will refuse to be vaccinated, according to an opinion poll conducted for Journal du Dimanche.  Germany’s science minister, Anja Karliczek, said Tuesday vaccinations would be voluntary and that the same safety standards are being applied in the approval process for coronavirus vaccines as for other drugs. Emphasizing how standards have been maintained would likely gain the widest possible public acceptance for coronavirus immunization, she added.   Logistical challenges  Aside from the problem posed by vaccine refusal, European governments say they’re also trying to solve logistical challenges, from securing sufficient vaccines before the northern hemisphere summer ends, to having enough cold storage facilities for the vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna, when they start arriving after European regulators have approved them.  An employee of Cryonomic, a Belgium company producing dry ice machines and containers which will be used for COVID-19 vaccine transportation, pushes a medical dry ice container in Ghent, Dec. 2, 2020.The vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer needs to be stored and shipped at minus 75 degrees Celsius. Germany has already started gearing up to solve the storage challenge, with large freezers already rolling off production lines. Wales’ health minister, Vaughan Gething, warned Tuesday that the Welsh government doesn’t have any storage facilities as yet and will be unable to receive or store any vaccines allocated by the British government.  Other challenges include having sufficient staff available to administer vaccines, setting up data systems able to track the progress of immunizations and notifying people when to receive vaccinations and then when to return for a second booster shot. Germany is planning to set up inoculation centers that will be overseen by the governments of the country’s 16 regional states.   In France, immunizations will likely be left to family doctors and local pharmacists. In Britain, the national health service will be in charge, but it has been overstretched with rolling out tests and tracing the contacts of the infected, earning sharp criticism from lawmakers.  Government officials across Europe say they hope that they have learned lessons from the less than smooth supply lines and production shortages they experienced earlier in the year for ventilators, drugs and personal protective gear. Huge global demand led to bottlenecks, delays and transportation shortfalls. 
 
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It might look like chicken. It might taste like chicken. But it doesn’t come from a chicken, it comes from a lab. For chicken lovers in Singapore, this lab-grown chicken will soon be available in nugget form as the country has given the OK for San Francisco-based startup Eat Just to sell the meat. It is the first regulatory approval for so-called clean meat, according to Reuters. “I would imagine what will happen is the U.S., Western Europe and others will see what Singapore has been able to do, the rigors of the framework that they put together. And I would imagine that they will try to use it as a template to put their own framework together,” said CEO Josh Tetrick in an interview with Reuters. FILE – CEO and founder of Eat Just Josh Tetrick sits on bags of plant protein at the Eat Just facility in Appleton, Minnesota, December 2019. (Eat Just, Inc./Handout via REUTERS)Cultured meat uses fat or muscle cells from an animal which are placed into a culture that nourishes the cells, causing them to grow, according to NBC News. The next step involves putting the cells into a bioreactor that further supports growth.  The industry is still in its early stages, and the products come with a big price tag. For example, in 2013, a cultured hamburger made by a Dutch startup cost $280,000 per patty, according to NBC News. Eat Just’s chicken is not nearly as expensive, with a price comparable to premium chicken, Tetrick told NBC. But for Singapore, which only produces about 10% of its own food, the investment in lab-grown meat could pay off in the long term. According to Reuters, there are more than 20 firms around the world exploring the lab-grown meat market, which Barclays bank says could be worth $140 million by 2029. It is unclear if Eat Just’s meat could be approved for sale in the U.S. For now, Eat Just is aiming small. The company told NBC News that when its chicken does finally go to market in Singapore, it will be at just one restaurant. 
 
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A Chinese spacecraft took samples of the moon’s surface Wednesday as part of a mission to bring lunar rocks back to Earth for the first time since the 1970s, the government said, adding to a string of successes for Beijing’s increasingly ambitious space program.
The Chang’e 5 probe touched down Tuesday on the Sea of Storms on the moon’s near side after descending from an orbiter, the China National Space Administration said. It released images of the barren landing site showing the lander’s shadow.
“Chang’e has collected moon samples,” the agency said in a statement.
The probe, launched Nov. 24 from the tropical island of Hainan, is the latest venture by a space program that sent China’s first astronaut into orbit in 2003. Beijing also has a spacecraft en route to Mars and aims eventually to land a human on the moon.
This week’s landing is “a historic step in China’s cooperation with the international community in the peaceful use of outer space,” said a foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying.
“China will continue to promote international cooperation and the exploration and use of outer space in the spirit of working for the benefit of all mankind,” Hua said.
Plans call for the lander to spend two days drilling into the lunar surface and collecting 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of rocks and debris. The top stage of the probe will be launched back into lunar orbit to transfer the samples to a capsule to take back to Earth, where it is to land in China’s northern grasslands in mid-December.
If it succeeds, it will be the first time scientists have obtained fresh samples of lunar rocks since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 probe in 1976.
The samples are expected to be made available to scientists from other nations, although it is unclear how much access NASA will have due to U.S. government restrictions on cooperation with China’s military-linked program.
From the rocks and debris, scientists hope to learn more about the moon, including its precise age, as well as increased knowledge about other bodies in our solar system. Collecting samples, including from asteroids, is an increasing focus of many space programs.
American and Russian space officials congratulated the Chinese program.
“Congratulations to China on the successful landing of Chang’e 5. This is no easy task,” NASA’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, wrote on Twitter.
“When the samples collected on the Moon are returned to Earth, we hope everyone will benefit from being able to study this precious cargo that could advance the international science community.”
U.S. astronauts brought back 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of lunar samples from 1969 to 1972, some of which is still being analyzed and experimented on.
The Chang’e 5 flight is China’s third successful lunar landing. Its predecessor, Chang’e 4, was the first probe to land on the moon’s little-explored far side.
Chinese space program officials have said they envision future crewed missions along with robotic ones, including possibly a permanent research base. No timeline or other details have been announced.
The latest flight includes collaboration with the European Space Agency, which is helping to monitor the mission from Earth.
China’s space program has proceeded more cautiously than the U.S.-Soviet space race of the 1960s, which was marked by fatalities and launch failures.
In 2003, China became the third country to send an astronaut into orbit on its own after the Soviet Union and the United States. It launched a temporary crewed space station in 2011 and a second in 2016.
China, along with neighbors Japan and India, also has joined the growing race to explore Mars. The Tianwen 1 probe launched in July is on its way to the red planet carrying a lander and a rover to search for water.
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Healthcare workers and nursing home residents should be among the first Americans to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, members of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee determined Tuesday. The panel voted 13-1 to give a vaccine, as soon as it’s approved, to the some 24 million Americans who are healthcare workers or nursing home residents, while supplies are still limited as production ramps up. The decision from the CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices comes as the U.S. records record numbers of coronavirus cases across the country. The U.S. recorded 4.36 million cases of COVID-19 in November — roughly double the number from a month earlier. The state of Florida surpassed 1 million cases Tuesday. The Trump administration has said that 20 million people could be inoculated by the end of this year. The FDA is considering an emergency request from Pfizer to authorize the use of its vaccine. Moderna said Monday it also would apply for emergency use authorization of its vaccine.  FILE – A nurse prepares a shot that is part of a possible COVID-19 vaccine developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., in Binghamton, New York, July 27, 2020.Hours after Moderna’s announcement, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the agency would announce its decision up to a week after it decides on Pfizer’s application. Dr. Larry Corey of the University of Washington, who leads vaccine clinical trials in the U.S., has said once Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are approved, they could make 50 million doses in January. The advisory committee met one day after nearly 139,000 new coronavirus cases and 826 deaths were reported in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University. As it has for months, the U.S continues to lead the world in coronavirus infections, with nearly 13.7 million of the world’s 63.6 million cases. Over 270,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S., more than any other country, according to Johns Hopkins, which reports over 1.4 million deaths worldwide. In Europe, which is also experiencing surges in coronavirus infections and related deaths, BioNTech and Moderna have applied to the European Union for approval of their vaccines, the EU said on Tuesday. EU officials are expected to decide on at least one of the vaccines by the end of December. BioNTech has already filed a similar application with the FDA. Its vaccine is under review in Australia, Canada, Japan and other countries. Since it began nearly a year ago, the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically increased the number of people who are experiencing extreme poverty, according to the United Nations. The U.N. said in its annual humanitarian report that 235 million people, or one in 33 people, will require basic needs like food, water and sanitation in 2021, a 40% increase from this year. The report said the greatest need for humanitarian assistance next year is in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. The U.N. contributed a record $17 billion in 2020 for humanitarian response worldwide, the report said.  
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A huge, already damaged radio telescope in Puerto Rico that has played a key role in astronomical discoveries for more than half a century completely collapsed on Tuesday. The telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform and its Gregorian dome — a structure as tall as a four-story building that houses secondary reflectors — fell onto the northern portion of the vast reflector dish more than 400 feet below. The U.S. National Science Foundation had earlier announced it would close the radio telescope. An auxiliary cable snapped in August, causing a 30-meter (100-foot) gash on the 305-meter-wide (1,000-foot-wide) dish and damaged the receiver platform that hung above it. Then a main cable broke in early November. The collapse stunned many scientists who had relied on what was until recently the largest radio telescope in the world.  The Arecibo Observatory space telescope was damaged from broken cables like the one pictured, as seen in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, November 7, 2020. (UCF/Handout via REUTERS)”It sounded like a rumble. I knew exactly what it was,” said Jonathan Friedman, who worked for 26 years as a senior research associate at the observatory and still lives near it. “I was screaming. Personally, I was out of control. … I don’t have words to express it. It’s a very deep, terrible feeling.” Friedman ran up a small hill near his home and confirmed his suspicions: A cloud of dust hung in the air where the structure once stood, demolishing hopes held by some scientists that the telescope could somehow be repaired.The collapse at 7:56 a.m. on Tuesday wasn’t a surprise because many of the wires in the thick cables holding the structure snapped over the weekend, Ángel Vázquez, the telescope’s director of operations, told The Associated Press. “It was a snowball effect,” he said. “There was no way to stop it. … It was too much for the old girl to take.” He said that it was extremely difficult to say whether anything could have been done to prevent the damage that occurred after the first cable snapped in August.  “The maintenance was kept up as best as we could,” he said. “(The National Science Foundation) did the best that they could with what they have.” Director of Arecibo Observatory Francisco Cordova gives a news conference following the collapse of the observatory’s telescope facilities in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, December 1, 2020.However, observatory director Francisco Córdova said that while the NSF decided it was too risky to repair the damaged cables before Tuesday’s collapse, he believes there had been options, such as relieving tension in certain cables or using helicopters to help redistribute weight. Meanwhile, installing a new telescope would cost up to $350 million, money the NSF doesn’t have, Vázquez said, adding it would have to come from the U.S. Congress.  “It’s a huge loss,” said Carmen Pantoja, an astronomer and professor at the University of Puerto Rico who used the telescope for her doctorate. “It was a chapter of my life.” Scientists worldwide had been petitioning U.S. officials and others to reverse the NSF’s decision to close the observatory. The NSF said at the time that it intended to eventually reopen the visitor center and restore operations at the observatory’s remaining assets, including its two LIDAR facilities used for upper atmospheric and ionospheric research, including analyzing cloud cover and precipitation data. The LIDAR facilities are still operational, along with a 12-meter telescope and a photometer used to study photons in the atmosphere, Vázquez said. “We are saddened by this situation but thankful that no one was hurt,” NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said in a statement. “When engineers advised NSF that the structure was unstable and presented a danger to work teams and Arecibo staff, we took their warnings seriously.” The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. It had endured hurricanes, tropical humidity and a recent string of earthquakes in its 57 years of operation. A view of the structure of the telescope at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory following its collapse in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, December 1, 2020.The telescope has been used to track asteroids on a path to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is potentially habitable. It also served as a training ground for graduate students and drew about 90,000 visitors a year. “I am one of those students who visited it when young and got inspired,” said Abel Méndez, a physics and astrobiology professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo who has used the telescope for research. “The world without the observatory loses, but Puerto Rico loses even more.”  He last used the telescope on August 6, just days before a socket holding the auxiliary cable that snapped failed in what experts believe could be a manufacturing error. The National Science Foundation, which owns the observatory that is managed by the University of Central Florida, said crews who evaluated the structure after the first incident determined that the remaining cables could handle the additional weight. But on November 6, another cable broke. Scientists had used the telescope to study pulsars to detect gravitational waves as well as search for neutral hydrogen, which can reveal how certain cosmic structures are formed. About 250 scientists worldwide had been using the observatory when it closed in August, including Méndez, who was studying stars to detect habitable planets. “I’m trying to recover,” he said. “I am still very much affected.” 
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The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has announced its Chang’e-5 spacecraft, designed to collect lunar samples and return them to Earth, successfully landed on the near side of the moon. China state media report the spacecraft arrived at the preselected landing area Tuesday and sent back images to the CNSA.  The spacecraft – composed of orbiter, lander, ascender and returner components – was launched a week ago.  The CNSA said the lander-ascender combination of the Chang’e-5 probe began a powered descent from about 15 kilometers above the lunar surface. They say the probe touched down on the north of the region known as Mons Rumker in Oceanus Procellarum, also called the Ocean of Storms, on the near side of the moon. Under ground control, the lander carried out a series of status checks and settings, preparing for about 48 hours of work on the lunar surface. The space agency said about 2 kilograms of samples are expected to be collected and sealed in a container. Then the ascender will take off and dock with the orbiter-returner combination in orbit. After the samples are transferred to the returner, the ascender will separate from the orbiter-returner. The orbiter is expected to carry the returner back to Earth. The returner is scheduled to reenter the atmosphere and land at Siziwang Banner in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. 
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