Technology that can predict bushfires is being developed in Australia, one of the world’s most fire-prone countries. It will offer real-time visual displays of how fires are likely to spread. It comes as dozens of homes already have been destroyed this year by fires on the outskirts of the Western Australian state capital, Perth.Bushfires are a perennial menace in Australia. This week, Perth has confronted twin emergencies: raging flames and a coronavirus lockdown.“When I had to evacuate, I didn’t want to come to the evacuation center because I, obviously with the lockdown, I was so concerned that this was going to be like a COVID hot spot,” one resident said. “Yeah, grabbed my animals and just headed straight for the beach, actually. I ended up trying to sleep in my car,” she said.Firefighting in Australia is becoming increasingly sophisticated. A new simulator is being developed to predict well in advance how bushfires will move across the landscape.Currently, there are varying systems of modeling bushfires across Australian states and territories. The new technology could give emergency crews a critical advantage.Mahesh Prakash, a senior principal research scientist at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, is working in collaboration with other organizations.“We take real-time weather as well as satellite data feeds for being able to predict the bushfires,” the scientist said. “We also take fuel and vegetation inputs. We are also working with state-based emergency management agencies who are trialing it out as we speak on a monthly basis while we are developing new features in the system as well as making it more robust. In the Australian context, we are intending it to be a nationally operational system over the next two to three years. We are also engaging with agencies in the U.S. such as CAL FIRE as well as with a few organizations in Europe, especially ones based in Spain, Portugal and Italy.”During Australia’s unforgettable Black Summer disaster of 2019 and ’20, 24 million hectares of land were burned, 33 people died and more than 3,000 homes were destroyed. An official report into the tragedy warned that bushfires would become “more complex, more unpredictable, and more difficult to manage.”Authorities said Saturday that most of the huge fire that has been threatening parts of Perth had now been contained.
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Day: February 6, 2021
As the Trump administration was nearing the end of an unprecedented string of executions, 70% of death row inmates were sick with COVID-19. Guards were ill. Traveling prisons staff on the execution team had the virus. So did media witnesses, who may have unknowingly infected others when they returned home because they were never told about the spreading cases.Records obtained by The Associated Press show employees at the Indiana prison complex where the 13 executions were carried out over six months had contact with inmates and other people infected with the coronavirus but were able to refuse testing and declined to participate in contact tracing efforts and were still permitted to return to their work assignments.Other staff members, including those brought in to help with executions, also spread tips to their colleagues about how they could avoid quarantines and skirt public health guidance from the federal government and Indiana health officials.The executions at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, completed in a short window over a few weeks, likely acted as a superspreader event, according to the records reviewed by AP. It was something health experts warned could happen when the Justice Department insisted on resuming executions during a pandemic.Active inmate cases spikeIt’s impossible to know precisely who introduced the infections and how they started to spread, in part because prisons officials didn’t consistently do contact tracing and haven’t been fully transparent about the number of cases. But medical experts say it’s likely the executioners and support staff, many of whom traveled from prisons in other states with their own virus outbreaks, triggered or contributed both in the Terre Haute penitentiary and beyond the prison walls.Of the 47 people on death row, 33 tested positive between Dec. 16 and Dec. 20, becoming infected soon after the executions of Alfred Bourgeois on Dec. 11 and Brandon Bernard on Dec. 10, according to Colorado-based attorney Madeline Cohen, who compiled the names of those who tested positive by reaching out to other federal death row lawyers. Other lawyers, as well as activists in contact with death row inmates, also told AP they were told a large numbers of death row inmates tested positive in mid-December.In addition, at least a dozen other people, including execution team members, media witnesses and a spiritual adviser, tested positive within the incubation period of the virus, meeting the criteria of a superspreader event, in which one or more individuals trigger an outbreak that spreads to many others outside their circle of acquaintances. The tally could be far higher, but without contact tracing it’s impossible to be sure.Active inmate cases at the Indiana penitentiary also spiked from just three on Nov. 19 — the day Orlando Cordia Hall was put to death — to 406 on Dec. 29, which was 18 days after Bourgeois’ execution, according to Bureau of Prisons data. The data includes the inmates at the high-security penitentiary, though the Bureau of Prisons has never said whether it included death row inmates in that count.In all, 726 of the approximately 1,200 inmates at the United States Penitentiary at Terre Haute have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to Bureau of Prisons data. Of them, 692 have recovered.Social distancing difficultiesAdvocates and lawyers for the inmates, a Zen Buddhist priest who was a spiritual adviser for one prisoner, and even the families of some of the victims fought to delay the executions until after the pandemic. Their requests were rebuffed repeatedly, and their litigation failed. And some got sick.Witnesses, who were required to wear masks, watched from behind glass in small rooms where it often wasn’t possible to stand 2 meters apart. They were taken to and from the death-chamber building in vans, where proper social distancing often wasn’t possible. Passengers frequently had to wait in the vans for an hour or more, with windows rolled up and little ventilation, before being permitted to enter the execution-chamber building. And in at least one case, the witnesses were locked inside the execution chamber for more than four hours with little ventilation and no social distancing.Prison staff told their colleagues they should first get on planes, go back to their homes and then they could take a test, according to two people familiar with the matter. If they were positive, they said, they could just quarantine and wouldn’t be stuck in Terre Haute for two weeks, said the people, who could not publicly discuss the private conversations and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.Following Hall’s execution in November, only six members of the execution team opted to get coronavirus tests before they left Terre Haute, the Justice Department said in a court filing. The agency said they all tested negative. But days later, eight members of the team tested positive for the virus. Five of the staff members who had tested positive were brought back to Terre Haute for more executions a few weeks later.Yusuf Ahmed Nur, the spiritual adviser for Hall, stood just feet away inside the execution chamber when Hall was executed on Nov. 19. He tested positive for the virus days later.Writing about the experience, Nur said he knew he would be putting himself at risk, but that Hall had asked him to be at his side when he was put to death. He, and Hall’s family, felt obliged to be there.“I could not say no to a man who would soon be killed,” Nur wrote. “That I contracted COVID-19 in the process was collateral damage” of executions during a pandemic.Later, two journalists tested positive for the virus after witnessing other executions in January, then had contact with activists and their own loved ones, who later tested positive as well. Despite being informed of the diagnoses, the Bureau of Prisons knowingly withheld the information from other media witnesses and decided not to initiate any contact tracing efforts.‘Clear to work’By mid-December, prison officials said that both Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs were sick. They were the last two prisoners to be executed, just days before President Joe Biden took office.Death row was put on lockdown after their results, inmates told Ashley Kincaid Eve, a lawyer and anti-death penalty activist. But even though they had also tested positive, she said Higgs and Johnson were still moved around the prison — potentially infecting guards accompanying them — so they could use phones and email to speak with their lawyers and families as their execution dates approached. Eve said prisons officials may have worried a court would delay the executions on constitutional ground if that access was denied.In response to questions from the AP, the Bureau of Prisons said staff members who don’t experience symptoms “are clear to work” and that they have their temperatures taken and are asked about symptoms before reporting for duty. (The AP has previously reported that staff members at other prisons were cleared with normal temperatures even when thermometers showed hypothermic readings.)The agency said it also conducts contact training in accordance with federal guidance and that “if staff are circumventing this guidance, we are not aware.”Officials said staff members were required to participate in contact tracing “if they met the criteria for it” and agency officials couldn’t compel employees to be tested.“We cannot force staff members to take tests, nor does the CDC recommend testing of asymptomatic individuals,” an agency spokesperson said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The union for Terre Haute employees declined to comment, saying it did not want to “get into the public fray of this whole issue.”Elsewhere, union officials have long complained about the spread of the coronavirus through the federal prison system, as well as a lack of personal protective equipment and room to isolate infected inmates. Some of those issues have been alleviated, but containing the virus continues to be a concern at many facilities.‘Extensive efforts’No more executions have yet been scheduled under Biden. The Bureau of Prisons has repeatedly refused to say how many other people have tested positive for the coronavirus after the last several executions. And the agency would not answer questions about the specific reasoning for withholding the information from the public, instead directing the AP to file a public records request.The Bureau of Prisons said it also “took extensive efforts to mitigate the transmission” of the virus, including limiting the number of media witnesses and adding an extra van for the witnesses to space them out.It has argued witnesses were informed social distancing may not be possible in the execution chamber and that witnesses and others were required to wear masks and were offered additional protective equipment, like gowns and face shields. The agency also refused to answer questions about whether Director Michael Carvajal or any other senior leaders raised concerns about executing 13 people during a worldwide pandemic that has killed more than 450,000 in the U.S.Still, it appears their own protocols weren’t followed. After a federal judge ordered the Bureau of Prisons to ensure masks were worn during executions in January, the executioner and U.S. marshal in the death chamber removed their masks during one of the executions, appearing to violate the judge’s order. The agency argued they needed to do so to communicate clearly and that they only removed their masks for a short time and disputes that it violated the order.Hundreds of staffers participatedIn a Nov. 24 court filing on the spread of COVID at Terre Haute, Joe Goldenson, a public health expert on the spread of disease behind bars, said hundreds of staff participated in one way or another at each execution, including around 40 people on execution teams and those on 50-person specialized security teams who traveled from other prisons nationwide. He said he had warned earlier that executions were likely to become a superspreader.Medical and public health experts repeatedly called on the Justice Department to delay executions, arguing the setup at prisons made them especially vulnerable to outbreaks, including because social distancing was impossible and health care substandard.“These are the type of high-risk superspreader events that the (American Medical Association) and (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) have been warning against throughout the pandemic,” James L. Madara, the executive vice president of the AMA, wrote to the Department of Justice on Jan. 11, just before the last three federal executions were carried out.
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The head of the World Health Organization called Friday for pharmaceutical companies to share manufacturing facilities to increase the production of COVID-19 vaccines.Speaking at an online news briefing from Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said what is needed is “a massive scale-up in production.”He noted that France’s pharmaceutical company Sanofi announced it would make its manufacturing infrastructure available to support production of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and called on other companies to do the same.“We encourage all manufacturers to share their data and technology to ensure global, equitable access to vaccines.”He also repeated his call for rich nations to share doses with poorer countries once they have vaccinated health workers and older people.Tedros said 75% of all COVID-19 vaccinations worldwide have been given in just 10 countries, while nearly 130 nations have not given a single vaccination.“The longer it takes to vaccinate those most at risk everywhere, the more opportunity we give the virus to mutate and evade vaccines,” Tedros said, adding that unless the virus is suppressed everywhere, it could resurge globally.China’s Sinovac Biotech said Friday that late-stage trial data of its COVID-19 vaccine from Brazil and Turkey showed the vaccine prevented hospitalization and death in COVID-19 patients in 100% of participants but said it was only 50.65% effective at keeping people from getting infected.The trial of Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine involved nearly 12,400 people and also found the vaccine was 83.7% effective in preventing COVID-19 cases that required any medical treatment.A dog sits next to numbered crosses at the Iraja cemetery, where many COVID-19 victims are buried in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Feb. 5, 2021.In the United States, President Joe Biden’s administration announced Friday that the Pentagon had approved the deployment of 1,100 active-duty troops to assist with COVID-19 vaccination efforts. It said that number will likely rise soon.The U.S. supermarket chain Kroger said Friday it would give $100 to workers who get a COVID-19 vaccination, joining a growing number of companies incentivizing employees to get vaccinated.Coronavirus cases in the United States have been decreasing in recent weeks. However, medical officials are urging U.S. residents to not turn Sunday’s Super Bowl, a yearly football game, into a superspreader event. Fans usually gather at large home parties or in bars and restaurants to watch the game on television. Medical authorities this year, however, are urging football fans to watch the game “with the people you live with.”In France, coronavirus hospitalizations fell for a third day in a row. Officials said the number of people in the hospital with the virus fell by 194 to 27,614 and the number of people in intensive care fell by five to 3,245.Greece announced stricter lockdown restrictions in the capital, Athens, as well as other parts of the country to stop the spread of the pandemic. The restrictions include a curfew that will start at 6 p.m. Saturday.New Zealand said it is open to receiving refugees once again. The new measure comes almost a year after New Zealand closed its doors to foreigners in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.Fiona Whiteridge, the general manager of New Zealand’s refugee and migrant service, said in a statement, “With health protocols in place and safe travel routes, we are ready to welcome small groups of refugee families as New Zealand residents to this country, to begin their new lives.”Students wearing COVID-19 protective gear social distance during snack time on their first day back to in-person class since March 2020 at Liceo Lunita, a private school in Chia on the outskirts of Bogota, Colombia, Feb. 5, 2021.In another development Friday, Pfizer told Reuters in a statement that it has withdrawn its application in India for emergency-use authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine developed with Germany’s BioNTech.Pfizer did not conduct a trial with its vaccine in India, a measure India usually requires.Pfizer’s decision to withdraw came after its meeting earlier this week with India’s drug regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization.The drug regulator said Pfizer’s vaccine was not recommended because there were no data from an Indian trial and because of reported side effects from the vaccine in its use abroad.Pfizer said it will “re-submit its approval request with additional information as it becomes available in the near future.”India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reported 12,408 new coronavirus cases Friday.There are more than 105 million global GOVID-19 cases and nearly 2.3 million deaths from the coronavirus, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.The United States remains at the top of the list as the location with the most infections, with more than 26.8 million cases, followed by India with 10.8 million and Brazil with 9.4 million.
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