Day: January 5, 2021

The World Health Organization (WHO) expressed disappointment Tuesday with the failure of Chinese officials to grant final permission to an international team of researchers to enter the country to investigate the origins of the coronavirus.At the agency’s regular COVID-19 briefing at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “very disappointed” that China had not authorized entry of the team, some of whom had begun their travels to Wuhan. The news forced other members of the team to cancel their travel at the last minute.Tedros said plans for the trip had been arranged jointly among WHO officials, the Chinese government and the countries for which the team was meant to travel through on their way to Wuhan. He said the agency just learned Tuesday “that Chinese officials have not yet finalized the necessary permissions for the team’s arrival in China.”Tedros said he had been in contact with senior Chinese officials. “And I have once again made it clear that the mission is a priority for WHO and the international team. I have been assured that China is speeding up the internal procedures for the earliest possible deployment. We are eager to get the mission under way as soon as possible.”FILE – Medical workers move a person who died from COVID-19 at a hospital in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province, Feb. 16, 2020.China reported the first cases of a pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan to the WHO on Dec. 31, 2019, and closed a market where the novel coronavirus was believed to have emerged.Health ministers called on the WHO in May to identify the source of the virus and how it crossed the species barrier.The United States, which has accused China of having hidden the outbreak’s extent, has called for a “transparent” WHO-led investigation and criticized its terms, which allowed Chinese scientists to do the first phase of preliminary research. U.S. President Donald Trump has accused the agency of being a puppet for China during the pandemic. The coronavirus causes the COVID-19 illness. 
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French Health Minister Olivier Veran said Tuesday the nation was going to “amplify, accelerate and simplify” its COVID-19 vaccination program after coming under fire for the initial slow roll out of the program.In an interview with French radio, Veran said more than 2,000 doctors, nurses and other health care workers have received vaccinations. He also announced that firefighters and home aid workers age 50 and older would also be prioritized “because they are also professionals who are in contact with fragile people and who may have to work with the sick.”The faster-paced vaccination campaign comes after the government was criticized for its slow rollout of the vaccine, delivering just over 500 inoculations in the first week, compared to hundreds of thousands delivered by Germany in the same period.The criticism prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to call a meeting with Veran, Prime Minister Jean Castex and other leaders late Tuesday to discuss how to speed up the process.Veran vowed to increase vaccinations exponentially in the next few days, promising the pace of the program “will be on par with that of our neighbors” by the end of the week.He said France is prepared to deliver 500,000 doses per week of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and once it is approved by the European Medicines regulatory agency, (EMA) they will be prepared to deliver 500,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine per month. The EMA is expected to consider the Moderna vaccine Wednesday.
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As millions of people await their turn to get a COVID-19 vaccine that could be months away, scammers online, in emails and on messaging apps are luring victims with claims they can deliver shots within days for as little as $150.
 
COVID-19 vaccine scams are on the rise, according to European and U.S. government officials who are warning the public of fraudsters out for money and personal data.
 
A Reuters search online, in dark web forums and on messaging app Telegram found seven different offers for alleged COVID-19 vaccines.
 
Scams include emails promising entry to supposedly secret lists for early vaccine access and robocallers impersonating government agencies. Message boards on the so-called dark web have added COVID-19 vaccines to more traditional illicit goods for sale.
 
The U.S. FBI and Interpol, among others, have warned of emerging pandemic-related fraud schemes, saying false cures and vaccines advertised on fake websites could pose cyber threats and a significant risk to peoples’ health, or even lives.
 
Website domains containing the word vaccine in combination with COVID-19 or coronavirus more than doubled since October to roughly 2,500 in November, when the first legitimate vaccines were nearing regulatory approval, according to cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, which is tracking COVID-19 fraud online.
 
“So far a lot of these domains just appear to be opportunistic registrations, but some are going to be used for phishing attempts to have people click on (malicious) links,” said Lindsay Kaye, director of operational outcomes at Recorded Future.
 
Kaye said her team, which also scours the dark web, so far has not come across any legitimate vaccine diverted from healthcare facilities or national stockpiles.
 
The scams are preying on concerns about the far slower-than-promised rollout of vaccines to protect against the virus that has claimed more than 1.8 million lives worldwide so far. Most people will likely have to wait well into the spring, or even summer, to get their shot.
 
In the United States, only about 4.5 million people had received their first shot as of Monday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. That is a fraction of the 20 million who were supposed to have been vaccinated by the end of 2020, according to earlier government forecasts.
  Vaccines, Guns and Money
 
On dark web forum Agartha, fake COVID-19 vaccines were offered next to cocaine, opioid medication, “super high quality fake money,” hand guns and gift cards. Posts showed stock photos of vaccines and offered vials for $500 and $1,000, or the equivalent in Bitcoin.
 
On another dark web site, a seller claiming to be from the “Wuhan Institute of Science” offered COVID-19 vaccines in exchange for a donation, and asked buyers to provide their medical history.
 
On Telegram, several channels claimed to offer COVID-19 vaccines, accompanied by stock images. One user offered supposed Moderna Inc vaccines for $180, and claimed the vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE could be had for $150 and AstraZeneca’s for $110 per vial.
 
Asked how the vaccines would be shipped, the account creator said they were transported in “regulated temperature packs” and ice packs within a few days, or overnight for an additional charge.
 
Actual COVID-19 vaccines, particularly the Pfizer/BioNTech offering, must be temperature controlled to remain effective, with drugmakers equipping shipments with temperature trackers to ensure the cold chain. Vaccine shipments and distribution are also tightly controlled by officials and will be administered at no cost.
 
The United States has so far authorized two COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use – the ones from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. The European Union to date has authorized the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and is expected to clear the Moderna vaccine this week.
 
 The UK has already authorized those two and just added the vaccine developed by Oxford University with AstraZeneca.
 
Asked about vaccine scams, Pfizer said it had taken meticulous steps to reduce the risk of counterfeiting and tracked trends very carefully.
 
“Patients should never try to secure a vaccine online – no legitimate vaccine is sold online – and only get vaccinated at certified vaccination centers or by certified healthcare providers,” a Pfizer spokesman said in a statement.
 
Moderna referred a request for comment to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which did not respond. AstraZeneca did not respond to a request for comment.
 
The HHS, FBI and U.S. Department of Justice have urged the public to report any COVID-19 vaccine scams, including people asking for out-of-pocket payments for the vaccine and online vaccine advertisements.
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In France, public frustration with the government is growing as the nation’s coronavirus immunization campaign gets off to a slow start. In response, officials say they will speed up and widen the vaccine rollout.As of Monday, only 2,500 people had received the vaccine against COVID-19 in France — most of them nursing home residents and their nurses.  It is too small a number, critics say,  for a rollout that began, as in other EU countries, on December 27. A doctor administers a dose of Pfizer-BioNtech coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine to an old woman on Jan. 4, 2020 at the Antonin Balmes gerontology center in Montpellier in the south of France.Critics describe the pace as ridiculously low compared with neighboring Germany, where at least 264,000 people have been vaccinated so far. French President Emmanuel Macron and his government are under pressure to do better, especially considering the relative success of other nations in Europe.    One of the main critics is Jean Rottner, the president of France’s Grand Est region. Rottner says the immunization strategy in France is a scandal, and he says the government keeps failing like it did for the masks and the tests. He says he is devastated since his region is heavily hit by the pandemic. FILE – A woman is tested for COVID-19 at a mobile testing center in Marseille, France, Sept. 24, 2020.French officials claim they are still on track to reach their goal to have one million people vaccinated by the end of January. To make it, authorities say they will set up 600 immunization centers across the territory by the end of this month. Olivier Veran, France’s health minister, addressed concerns Tuesday, and he vowed to catch up with the other EU countries.  Veran says the French government will now amplify, accelerate and simplify the immunization strategy. Firefighters and in-home care workers above 50 years of age, will now receive the vaccine. The minister, who oversees the fight against the virus, says it is a permanent race to save lives. Although the immunization response is coordinated at the European level, each of the 27 members is responsible for setting its own strategy. The Netherlands will only start its immunization campaign on January 8. FILE – Healthcare workers assist a COVID-19 patient in the intensive care unit at the Joseph Imbert Hospital Center in Arles, southern France, April 5, 2020.As of Monday, more than 65,000 people had died from COVID-19 in France according data from Johns Hopkins University.  
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The amount of baked-in global warming, from carbon pollution already in the air, is enough to blow past internationally agreed upon goals to limit climate change, a new study finds. But it’s not game over because, while that amount of warming may be inevitable, it can be delayed for centuries if the world quickly stops emitting extra greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, the study’s authors say. For decades, scientists have talked about so-called “committed warming,” or the increase in future temperature based on past carbon dioxide emissions that stay in the atmosphere for well over a century. It’s like the distance a speeding car travels after the brakes are applied.  But Monday’s study in the journal Nature Climate Change calculates that a bit differently and now figures the carbon pollution already put in the air will push global temperatures to about 2.3 degrees Celsius (4.1 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times.  Previous estimates, including those accepted by international science panels, were about a degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) less than that amount of committed warming. International climate agreements set goals of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, with the more ambitious goal of limiting it to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) added in Paris in 2015. The world has already warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).  “You’ve got some … global warming inertia that’s going to cause the climate system to keep warming, and that’s essentially what we’re calculating,” said study co-author Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. “Think about the climate system like the Titanic. It’s hard to turn the ship when you see the icebergs.” Factoring in cooler spotsDessler and colleagues at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Nanjing University in China calculated committed warming to take into account that the world has warmed at different rates in different places and that places that haven’t warmed as fast are destined to catch up.  Places such as the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica are a bit cooler, and that difference creates low-lying clouds that reflect more sun away from Earth, keeping these places cooler. But this situation can’t keep going indefinitely because physics dictates that cooler locations will warm up and when they do, the clouds will dwindle and more heating will occur, Dessler said.  Previous studies were based on the cooler spots staying that way, but Dessler and colleagues say that’s not likely. Outside experts said the work is based on compelling reasoning but want more research to show that it’s true. Breakthrough Institute climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said the new work fits better with climate models than observational data. Rate of warming Just because the world is bound to get more warming than international goals, that doesn’t mean all is lost in the fight against global warming, said Dessler, who cautioned against what he called “climate doomers.”  If the world gets to net zero carbon emissions soon, 2 degrees of global warming could be delayed enough so that it won’t happen for centuries, giving society time to adapt or even come up with technological fixes, he said.  “If we don’t, we’re going to blow through (climate goals) in a few decades,” Dessler said. “It’s really the rate of warming that makes climate change so terrible. If we got a few degrees over 100,000 years, that would not be that big a deal. We can deal with that. But a few degrees over 100 years is really bad.” 
 
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