Day: January 18, 2021

Coronavirus deaths are rising in nearly two-thirds of American states as a winter surge pushes the overall toll toward 400,000 amid warnings that a new, highly contagious variant is taking hold.  As Americans observed a national holiday Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pleaded with federal authorities to curtail travel from countries where new variants are spreading. Referring to new versions detected in Britain, South Africa and Brazil, Cuomo said: “Stop those people from coming here. … Why are you allowing people to fly into this country and then it’s too late?” The U.S. government has curbed travel from some of the places where the new variants are spreading — such as Britain and Brazil — and recently it announced that it would require proof of a negative COVID-19 test for anyone flying into the country. But the new variant seen in Britain is already spreading in the U.S., and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that it will probably become the dominant version in the country by March. The CDC said the variant is about 50% more contagious than the virus that is causing the bulk of cases in the U.S.  FILE – A health care worker tends to a COVID-19 patient in the intensive care unit at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center during the coronavirus pandemic in San Jose, California, January 13, 2021.While the variant does not cause more severe illness, it can cause more hospitalizations and deaths simply because it spreads more easily. In Britain, it has aggravated a severe outbreak that has swamped hospitals, and it has been blamed for sharp leaps in cases in some other European countries. Many U.S. states are already under tremendous strain. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths is rising in 30 states and the District of Columbia, and on Monday the U.S. death toll surpassed 398,000, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University — by far the highest recorded death toll of any country in the world.  One of the states hardest hit during the recent surge is Arizona, where the rolling average has increased over the past two weeks from about 90 deaths per day to about 160 per day on January 17.Rural Yuma County — known as the winter lettuce capital of the U.S. — is now one of the state’s hot spots. Exhausted nurses there are now regularly sending COVID-19 patients on a long helicopter ride to hospitals in Phoenix when they don’t have enough staff. The county has lagged on coronavirus testing in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods and just ran out of vaccines.  But some support is coming from military nurses and a new wave of free tests for farmworkers and the elderly in Yuma County. FILE – Tents are set up so people who have registered can get their COVID-19 vaccinations as they drive through the parking lot of the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, January 12, 2021.Amid the surge, a vast effort is under way to get Americans vaccinated, but the campaign is off to an uneven start. According to the latest federal data, about 31.2 million doses of vaccine have been distributed, but only about 10.6 million people have received at least one dose. In California, the most populous state, counties are pleading for more vaccine as the state tries to reduce a high rate of infection that has led to record numbers of hospitalizations and deaths. Although the state last week said anyone age 65 and older can start receiving the vaccine, Los Angeles County and some others have said they don’t have enough to inoculate so many people. They are concentrating on protecting health care workers and the most vulnerable elderly in care homes first. On Monday, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District sent a letter asking for state and county authorization to provide vaccinations at schools for staff, local community members — and for students once a vaccine for children has been approved. The death rate from COVID-19 in Los Angeles County — an epicenter of the U.S. pandemic — works out to about one person every six minutes. On Sunday, the South Coast Air Quality Management District suspended some pollution-control limits on the number of cremations for at least 10 days in order to deal with a backlog of bodies at hospitals and funeral homes.  In other areas of the country, officials are working to ensure that people take the vaccine once they’re offered it amid concerns that many people are hesitant to take it. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, in a livestreamed event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, received a shot, and urged other Marylanders to do likewise. “We’re all looking forward to the day we can take off and throw away our masks … when we can go out for a big celebration at our favorite crowded restaurant or bar with all our family and friends,” Hogan said. “The only way we are going to return to a sense of normalcy is by these COVID-19 vaccines.” In New York, Cuomo said the state, which has recorded more than 41,000 deaths, is “in a footrace” between the vaccination rate and the infection rate. He said federal authorities needed to improve their efforts to get vaccine doses distributed swiftly. 
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Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera has introduced new lockdown measures to contain a jump in confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19.  The restrictions include school closures, a night-time curfew, and no gatherings over 50 people.
 
The measure comes five days after Chakwera declared a state of national disaster in response to the recent spike in COVID-19 cases.
 
The new measures, he said, are being enacted because the situation is getting worse in the second wave of the pandemic.    
 
“This year alone, a total of 5,091 people have tested positive for Covid-19 across the country. This means that of all the people confirmed to have contracted the virus since April last year, 43% have been found with the virus this year alone, showing a sharp rise in infections and a lapse in prevention,” he said.
   
Chakwera said that so far this year, 111 Malawians have died from COVID-19, an average of seven people per day.
 
“This means that of all the deaths from COVID-19 in the past nine months, over a third have happened in the past 16 days, showing a sharp rise in fatalities,” he said.
 
To reverse this, Chakwera ordered that all schools to be closed for three weeks, except for students currently doing Certificate of Education examinations.
 
Chakwera also said all students in boarding schools must be screened for COVID-19 before they go home.   
 
The Ministry of Education disclosed Monday that out of 605 students at one girls’ secondary school in Lilongwe, 311, or just over half, have tested positive for coronavirus.
 
As for the lockdown measures, the president ordered markets to be closed at 5 p.m. and drinking establishments to close by 8 p.m.  He said no one should be on the streets between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m., and banned gatherings of over 50 people.
 
Benedicto Kondowe, executive director for the Civil Society Education Coalition,  argues that closing schools should be the last option.
 
“Schools were closed for not less than seven months in the first wave of COVID, and registered unprecedented number of teenage pregnancies in excess of 40,000. And that’s why we are saying ‘Could there be a mechanism of mitigating and containing the virus while the schools are still in sessions?” he asked.
   
Kondowe says the government should devise a plan that allows some students to continue with their education.
 
“We do not know for how long COVID will remain with us. If COVID takes three years, five years and you are seriously saying that ‘education should be suspended.’ What future will he have created for generations to come?” he asked.
   
However, George Jobe, executive director for Malawi Health Equity Network, commends the new measures.
 
He advises Malawians to strictly observe all restrictions for the sake of their own health, and not wait for police to enforce them.   
  
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The decision by social media giants to police more content, along with banning U.S. President Donald Trump and some of his supporters from posting, is intensifying a debate in Europe over how to regulate platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.The hotly contested debate has mostly focused on whether governments should intervene to censor and curtail freedom of speech, or whether they should protect opinion from being blocked or scrubbed by the social media giants, however offensive the views. But a growing number of European leaders sees a third way to reduce fake news, hate speech, disinformation and poisonous personal attacks — by treating social media providers not as owners of neutral platforms connecting consumers with digital content creators but as publishers in their own right. This would help sidestep fears over state censorship of speech, they say.Amending laws to make them legally responsible, just as traditional newspapers and broadcasters are for the content they carry, would render the social media companies liable for defamation and slander lawsuits. By blocking content and banning some users, social media companies have unwittingly boosted the argument that they are content providers, as they are now in practice taking on a greater role as editors of opinion.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a news conference in Downing Street on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, in London, Dec. 24, 2020.“I do think there’s a real debate now to be had about the status of the big internet companies and whether they should be identified as mere platforms or as publishers, because when you start editorializing, then you’re in a different world,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a parliamentary committee last week. Many European Union leaders have criticized social media companies for banishing Trump and his supporters from their platforms. Facebook has blocked or deleted content that uses the phrase, “Stop the Steal,” which refers to false claims of election fraud. Twitter says it has suspended more than 70,000 accounts of QAnon conspiracy theorists who believe Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping pedophiles in government, business and the media.German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses the media during a statement at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Nov. 9, 2020 on the results of the US elections.German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her concerns about the blocking and deleting, calling it a step too far.“The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance,” her spokesperson, Steffen Seibert, told reporters.Some countries led by populist governments, such as Poland, are considering drafting legislation that would prohibit Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies from censoring opinions, fearing the social media giants will censor them.But political pressure is also mounting in other countries for the state to regulate speech and to police social media platforms.The idea that social media companies should be subject to similar regulation as newspapers and television and radio broadcasters is not new. Newspaper owners have long bristled at the social media platforms being treated differently under the law from traditional media. They have complained that Facebook and others are piggy backing off the content they produce, while reaping massive profits selling ads.FILE – The Facebook application is displayed on a mobile phone at a store in Chicago, July 30, 2019.Last year, Facebook pushed back on the idea of social media platforms being treated like traditional media, arguing in a report that they should be placed in a separate category halfway between newspapers and the telecommunications industry. The company agreed that new regulatory rules are needed but argued they should focus on the monitoring and removal of mechanisms that firms might put in place to block “harmful” posts, rather than restrictions on companies carrying specific types of speech or being liable for content. Johnson’s advocacy of treating social media giants like traditional media is being echoed in the United States, where Congress passed the Communications Decency Act in 1996. The measure largely allowed the companies to regulate themselves and shielded them from liability for much of the content posted on their platforms.Section 230 of the legislation stated: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Ironically, Section 230 has drawn the disapproval of both Trump and President-elect Joe Biden. Both have called for the section’s repeal, which would make social media legally responsible for what people post, rendering them vulnerable to lawsuits for defamation and slander. Last week, Biden told The New York Times he favored the internet’s biggest liability shield being “revoked, immediately.” 
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The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warns the inequitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines between rich and poor countries will prolong the global pandemic.  Tedros delivered this stark warning Monday at the opening of a week-long meeting of the WHO Executive Board. WHO chief Tedros called the development and approval of safe, effective vaccines less than a year after the coronavirus emerged a stunning scientific achievement.However, he warned that hopes of quickly ending the pandemic are in danger.  This, because the richer countries are buying up and hoarding all the available vaccines, leaving none for the poorer countries.“More than 39 million doses of vaccine have now been administered in at least 49 higher-income countries.  Just 25 doses have been given in one lowest-income country.  Not 25 million; not 25,000; just 25,” he said.A global initiative, COVAX, was formed nine months ago to ensure fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for every country.  The organization has managed to secure two billion doses from five producers, with options to receive more than a billion more doses.But Tedros said plans to start vaccine deliveries in February to many of the world’s poorer countries is now at risk. He said he fears a number of high-income countries may backtrack on their promises of equitable distribution.“I need to be blunt:  the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure—and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries,” he said.Tedros said he considers this me-first approach self-defeating.   He warned rich countries will pay a heavy price in ignoring the needs of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.These actions, he said, will prolong the pandemic, and added that the restrictions needed to contain the virus will increase human and economic suffering. 
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The head of the World Health Organization is calling for greater global equity in COVID-19 vaccinations, saying rich countries need to share vaccines with poor countries.
 
Addressing a WHO executive board meeting in Geneva Monday, executive director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it is “not right that younger, healthier adults in rich countries are vaccinated before health workers and older people in poorer countries.”
 
“More than 39 million doses of vaccine have now been administered in at least 49 higher-income countries.  Just 25 doses have been given in one lowest income country,” he said.
 
“I need to be blunt: the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure – and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries,” the WHO chief said. “Vaccine equity is not just a moral imperative, it is a strategic and economic imperative.”
 
Meanwhile, the top U.S. infectious disease expert said Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden’s ambitious plan to inoculate 100 million people with the COVID vaccine in the U.S. during the first 100 days of his presidency “is absolutely a doable thing.”
 
Speaking on NBC Television’s “Meet the Press,” Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that with the current vaccines and additional vaccines scheduled to come to market soon, combined with adherence to wearing masks and observing social distancing, he believes the U.S. could be in “good shape.”  
 
Currently, the U.S. is far from being in “good shape.” With nearly 24 million COVID cases, it has more infections than any other country.  The rollout of the U.S. vaccination campaign has been problematic, with far fewer people inoculated by the end of last year than the Trump administration predicted.   
 
India and Brazil follow the U.S. with COVID infections with 10.5 million and 8.4 million respectively.  
 
Mexico’s president said Sunday that his country is complying with a United Nations’ request for wealthy countries to delay receiving some of their vaccine shipments, which would allow poorer countries to receive more doses.  
 
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Sunday while Mexico’s Pfizer vaccines would be delayed, Mexico is “already seeking out other vaccines,” including Astra-Zeneca, Chinese CanSino and Russian Sputnik V vaccines, according to an Associated Press report.  
 
Brazil approved two vaccines for emergency use against the coronavirus Sunday as the country’s death toll from COVID-19 neared 210,000 and some of its hospitals grappled with an oxygen shortage.
 
Brazil approved emergency use of vaccines from both Britain’s Astra-Zeneca and China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd. Hours later, a nurse in Sao Paulo was inoculated with the Chinese vaccine known as “CoronaVac.”
 
Britain announced Sunday that it plans to have every adult in the country, roughly 51 million people, inoculated by September.
“If we can do it faster than that, great, but that’s the road map,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told SkyNews Sunday.
 
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