Day: March 2, 2021

Texas is lifting its mask mandate, Gov. Greg Abbott said Tuesday, making it the largest state to no longer require one of the most effective ways to slow the spread of the coronavirus.The announcement in Texas, where the virus has killed more than 42,000 people, rattled doctors and big city leaders who said they are now bracing for another deadly resurgence. One hospital executive in Houston said he told his staff they would need more personnel and ventilators.Texas Governor Greg Abbott delivers an announcement in Montelongo’s Mexican Restaurant on March 2, 2021, in Lubbock. Abbott announced that he is rescinding executive orders that limit capacities for businesses and the state wide mask mandate.Federal health officials this week urgently warned states to not let their guard down, warning that the pandemic is far from over.Abbott, a Republican, has faced sustained criticism from his party in America’s biggest red state over the statewide mask mandate — which was imposed eight months ago — as well as business occupancy limits that Texas will also scuttle next week. The mask order was only ever lightly enforced, even during the worst outbreaks of the pandemic.”Removing statewide mandates does not end personal responsibility,” said Abbott, speaking from the crowded dining room of a restaurant in Lubbock, surrounded by several people not wearing masks.”It’s just that now state mandates are no longer needed,” he said.The repeals will take effect March 10.The full impact of Texas’ reversal was still coming into focus. Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, said he had no immediate plans to change the limits on fans at home games. Their biggest crowd so far this season was about 3,000 spectators.Restaurant owners began confronting whether they, too, would relax COVID-19 safeguards in their dining rooms. And school administrators scrambled to figure out how the end of the mask mandate would impact the state’s 5 million public school students.”While we’ve made significant progress, I’d hate to have that go away,” said Tinku Saini, the CEO of Tarka Indian Kitchen, which has locations across Texas. He said Abbott’s announcement left him with mixed feelings, and that he would now allow customers to go maskless but still require face coverings for staff and keep tables spread apart.Abbott joins a growing number of governors across the U.S. who are easing coronavirus restrictions. Like the rest of the country, Texas has seen the number of cases and deaths plunge. Hospitalizations are at the lowest levels since October, and the seven-day rolling average of positive tests has dropped to about 7,600 cases, down from more than 10,000 in mid-February.Only California and New York have reported more COVID-19 deaths than Texas.”Absolutely reckless,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, tweeted in response to Abbott’s announcement.Texas is doing away with the restrictions just ahead of the spring break holiday, which health experts worry could lead to more spread as people travel.”The fact that things are headed in the right direction doesn’t mean we have succeeded in eradicating the risk,” said Dr. Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor of integrative biology and director of the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium.She said the recent deadly winter freeze in Texas that left millions of people without power — forcing families to shelter closely with others who still had heat — could amplify transmission of the virus in the weeks ahead, although it remains too early to tell. Masks, she said, are one of the most effective strategies to curb the spread.The top county leader in Houston, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, called the announcement “wishful thinking” and said spikes in hospitalizations have followed past rollbacks of COVID-19 rules.”At worst, it is a cynical attempt to distract Texans from the failures of state oversight of our power grid,” said Hidalgo, a Democrat.Dr. Joseph Varon, chief medical officer at Houston’s United Memorial Medical Center, said he called the hospital’s top leaders immediately after Abbott’s announcement and said they will need more staff and ventilators.”I am just concerned that I am going to have a tsunami of new cases,” Varon said. “I truly hope I am wrong. But, unfortunately, history seems to repeat itself.”Early in the pandemic, Abbott stripped local officials of their power to implement tougher COVID-19 restrictions, but now says counties can impose “mitigation strategies” if virus hospitalizations exceed 15% of all hospital capacity in their region. However, Abbott forbade local officials from imposing penalties for not wearing a face covering.Retailers and other businesses will also still be allowed to impose capacity limits and other restrictions on their own.Abbott imposed the statewide mask mandate in July during a deadly summer surge. But enforcement was spotty at best, and some sheriffs refused to police the restrictions at all. And as the pandemic dragged on, Abbott ruled out a return to tough COVID-19 rules, arguing that lockdowns do not work.Politically, the restrictions elevated tensions between Abbott and his own party, with the head of the Texas GOP at one point leading a protest outside the governor’s mansion. Meanwhile, mayors in Texas’ biggest cities argued that Abbott wasn’t doing enough.Most of the country has lived under mask mandates during the pandemic, with at least 37 states requiring face coverings to some degree. But those orders are increasingly falling by the wayside: North Dakota, Montana and Iowa have also lifted mask orders in recent weeks.In Texas, it was only last week that emergency restrictions on restaurants and businesses were relaxed in the Rio Grande Valley, which has been walloped by the virus like few other places in America.”I appreciate Governor Abbott’s desire to return to normalcy, but I remained concerned that, at least in Hidalgo County, we may be moving too quickly,” Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez said. 
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U.S. pharmaceutical giant Merck has agreed to help manufacture rival Johnson & Johnson’s new coronavirus vaccine to help speed production of millions of new doses of the single shots to inoculate more Americans in the coming months, White House officials said Tuesday.Johnson & Johnson has encountered unexpected production problems, even as it won emergency use approval last weekend for the vaccine. The company has manufactured 3.9 million doses so far, but says it is on pace to produce 100 million doses by the end of June.President Joe Biden is set to spell out details of the agreement between the two pharmaceutical companies later Tuesday. But officials familiar with the deal say Merck will use two sites in the U.S., one to help make the vaccine and the other to provide “fill-finish” services, the final stage in the production process in which the vaccine is placed in vials and packaged for distribution.The Merck agreement with its drug-making rival could sharply increase the number of doses Johnson & Johnson could make on its own, the officials said.  Merck failed in its efforts to develop its own coronavirus vaccine, but the company has made vaccines for a century. It is the sole U.S. supplier of the combination childhood vaccine that protects against measles, mumps and rubella. It developed Gardasil, which protects against the human papillomavirus, while the Food and Drug Administration approved its Ebola vaccine in 2019.With the approval of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the U.S. now has three medical treatments to fight the spread of the virus, along with two-shot regimens produced by drug makers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.Pharmacy technicians fill syringes with a COVID-19 vaccine at an inoculation site in Portland, Maine, March 2, 2021.After the FDA’s approval of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the company said it would immediately ship nearly 4 million doses in the United States, and a total of 20 million by the end of March. That is 17 million less than originally expected although the company still says it expects to markedly increase its production pace in coming months.A top Johnson & Johnson executive told Congress last week that it hopes to manufacture 1 billion doses worldwide by the end of 2021.The mass inoculations in the U.S. are first targeting health care workers, older people living in nursing homes, such essential personnel as police and firefighters, teachers, people 65 and older and those with underlying health problems.U.S. health officials are hoping that the country’s sense of normalcy might return by the end of 2021, but that is dependent on the widespread vaccination of millions of adults and later, possibly children.  So far, 75 million vaccine doses have been administered to about 15% of the country’s adult population, with half that percentage receiving both shots of the two-shot Pfizer and Moderna regimens. About 1.7 million shots are being administered daily.The spread of the coronavirus has slowed in the U.S. But 50,000 or 60,000 new cases are still being diagnosed each day and another 1,500 people or so are dying.The U.S. has totaled more than 514,000 deaths and more than 28.6 million infections, both higher totals than in any other country, according to Johns Hopkins University. 
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The global COVAX vaccine distribution plan aims to deliver tens of millions of vaccine doses to low-income countries — many of them in Africa – in the coming months, top global health officials say, describing this as a turning point in the quest to quash the coronavirus pandemic.The world’s largest, fastest, and most ambitious vaccine drive delivered 11 million vaccine doses Tuesday to Angola, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria. Between now and the end of May, said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the COVAX facility will deliver 270 million doses to 142 participating countries and economies.The global initiative was set up last April to ensure that poorer nations aren’t left out of the worldwide scramble for vaccine access. The program, which is projected to cost about $11 billion, is funded by donor nations, foundations and corporations. It is part of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, a global collaboration that works on the development, production, and equitable access to tests, treatments, and vaccines.Last week, the West African nation of Ghana became the first to benefit from COVAX, receiving 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Among the first recipients were President Nana Akufo-Addo and the first lady, who received their shots on national television Monday in what he said was an effort to boost public confidence in the vaccine. Akufo-Addo plans to vaccinate the rest of his country by the end of the year, he said.  “The world has seen already the great value of the COVAX facility,” he told journalists via teleconference on Tuesday. “COVID-19 is a global problem. It requires a global solution. Unless every country is protected, no country will be safe. We all fell together. Let us all rise together.”Ivory Coast also launched its COVAX vaccination program this week.“We’ve now see Africa’s first vaccinations and the COVAX doses in Ghana and Ivory Coast. Truly moving ceremonies in both countries were held yesterday,” said UNICEF director Henrietta Fore. “But what took place on Monday is more than a feel-good story that speaks to our collective best natures. It is a necessary first step that speaks to our collective best interests. The only way out of this pandemic is to ensure vaccination is available around the globe and that people from less wealthy countries are not left behind in the race to be protected.”Tedros says while the vaccine deliveries are good news, he’s thinking much bigger.  “When the history of the pandemic is written, I believe that the accelerator and COVAX will be one of the standout successes,” he said. “This is an unprecedented partnership that will not only change the course of the pandemic, but will also change the way the world responds to future health emergencies.”Officials say the next step is to bring vaccine manufacturing to the continent. Currently, most vaccines available to the continent come from the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India. Akufo-Addo said Ghana is working on a plan to manufacture vaccines locally. And Dr. John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the African Union will meet next month to discuss how to do this as a continent.“All of that speaks to the need for our own ability to stand up and say that we, as the people, of 1.2 billion people, will continue to invest in our own health security, our economic security that increasingly is being threatened by covid-19,” he said. “It is this perspective that we look forward to working with all countries that will be receiving these COVAX vaccines to ensure that they are distributed effectively, [to] provide the appropriate support from the African CDC and partnerships that will enable us to distribute these vaccines in a timely fashion.”This vaccine rollout, Nkengasong said, is the first step in a thousand-mile journey. But in this voyage, he said, the African continent is — finally — keeping step with the rest of the world.   
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From a smart dog collar that can tell you your pet’s emotional state to toys that automatically move, the pet tech industry is growing, especially during the pandemic when many people staying at home have been adopting dogs and cats.  VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has more on the latest tech devices for pets.Camera:  Elizabeth Lee, Sam Verma   
Producer: Elizabeth Lee
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France will now vaccinate people aged 65 years and older with the COVID-19 vaccine jointly developed by Oxford University and British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca.   The decision was announced Tuesday by Health Minister Olivier Veran during a televised interview.  Veran said anyone older than the age of 50 with pre-existing conditions can receive the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, “including those between 65 and 74.” France was among many European nations that refused to approve the Oxford-AstraZeneca for its elderly citizens.  The developers did not enroll many people in those age groups for their large-scale clinical trials, leading to a lack of data about its potential efficacy.  French President Emmanuel Macron even went so far as describing the vaccine as “quasi-ineffective.”   FILE – A medical worker holds a vial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in a mass vaccination center at the Cecchignola military compound, in Rome, Italy, Feb. 23, 2021.But health officials say further data from clinical trials has proved its efficacy among older people.  The reversal is sure to jumpstart France’s slow vaccination campaign, which has been hampered by a shortage of vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.  France’s change of heart coincides with a real-world study conducted in Britain that found the COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford University-AstraZeneca are highly effective in protecting elderly people from the disease after receiving just one shot. Researchers at Public Health England say the respective two-dose vaccines are more than 80% effective at preventing people in their 80s from being hospitalized around three to four weeks after the first shot is administered.  FILE – A woman receives the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine at the Pasteur Institute during a vaccination program, in Paris, Jan. 21, 2021.The study also found that the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was between 57% and 61% effective in preventing COVID-19 infections among people at least 70 years old, while the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was between 60% and 73% effective. The study, posted online Monday, has not undergone the customary peer-review process.  Britain was the first European country to approve the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for all of its citizens regardless of age.   US sticks to two-dose regimenIn the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The Washington Post  Tuesday the United States will stick with the two-dose regimen of both the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines. A growing number of public health experts have urged government health officials to use millions of doses intended to be used as second shots instead be used as first doses, as millions of adult Americans have not been inoculated due to an acute shortage of vaccines. But Dr. Fauci warned that switching to a single-dose strategy could leave people less protected and enable the growing number of variants to spread.  FILE – Workers for the U.S. federal government prepare the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines at a new mass vaccination center in Oakland, California, Feb. 16, 2021.The nation’s leading infectious-disease expert tells the Post that “the gap between supply and demand is going to be diminished and then overcome” very soon as both Pfizer and Moderna fulfill their commitment to provide 220 million total doses by the end of March, along with Johnson & Johnson’s pledge to deliver 20 million doses of its one-shot COVID-19 vaccine this month.   New cases on the riseThe World Health Organization said new coronavirus cases increased globally for the first time in seven weeks, and officials expressed concern that cases could again rise significantly.      “We need to have a stern warning for all of us that this virus will rebound if we let it,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead for COVID-19, said Monday at a news briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.     WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the rise in cases occurred in four regions: the Americas, the eastern Mediterranean, Europe and Southeast Asia. He said the development was “disappointing but not surprising” and said part of the spike appeared to be the result of the “relaxing of public health measures.”     FILE – Health staff attends to a patient at the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) dedicated ICU unit of the Tras-Os-Montes E Alto Douro Hospital, amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Vila Real, Portugal, Feb. 22, 2021.Michael Ryan, director of WHO’s emergencies program, said, “Right now, the virus is very much in control” and said it was “unrealistic” to think the pandemic might be stopped by the end of the year.     The warnings come after a sharp fall of coronavirus cases and deaths in many parts of the world, which along with vaccine developments, had led to hopes that the spread of the coronavirus would continue on a downward trend.     In the United States, health officials are warning that another surge in cases could be on the horizon, as newer and more infectious variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 are growing more frequently.      The new upward trend in cases comes as most states are easing coronavirus restrictions.  
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One in four of the world’s population will suffer from hearing problems by 2050, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday, calling for extra investment in prevention and treatment. The first-ever global report on hearing said that the causes of many of the problems — such as infections, diseases, birth defects, noise exposure and lifestyle choices — could be prevented.  The report proposed a package of measures, which it calculated would cost $1.33 per person per year. Against that, it set the figure of nearly $1 trillion lost every year because the issue was not being properly addressed. “Failure to act will be costly in terms of the health and well-being of those affected, and the financial losses arising from their exclusion from communication, education and employment,” said the report. One in five people worldwide have hearing problems currently, it said. But the report warned: “The number of people with hearing loss may increase more than 1.5-fold during the next three decades” to 2.5 billion people — up from 1.6 billion in 2019. Of the 2.5 billion, 700 million would in 2050 have a serious enough condition to require some kind of treatment, it added — up from 430 million in 2019. Much of the expected rise is the result of demographic and population trends, it added. Poor access to treatment A major contributor to hearing problems is a lack of access to care, which is particularly striking in low-income countries where there are far fewer professionals available to treat them. Since nearly 80% of people with hearing loss live in such countries, most are not getting the help they need. Even in richer countries with better facilities, access to care is often uneven, the report said. And a lack of accurate information and the stigma surrounding ear disease and hearing loss also prevents people getting the care they need. “Even among health-care providers, knowledge relevant to prevention, early identification and management of hearing loss and ear diseases is commonly lacking,” it noted. The report proposed a package of measures, including public health initiatives from reducing noise in public spaces to increasing vaccinations for diseases such as meningitis that can cause hearing loss. It also recommended systematic screening to identify the problem at key points in people’s lives. Among children, it said, hearing loss could be prevented in 60% of cases. “An estimated 1 trillion U.S. dollars is lost each year due to our collective failure to adequately address hearing loss,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the report. “While the financial burden is enormous, what cannot be quantified is the distress caused by the loss of communication, education and social interaction that accompanies unaddressed hearing loss.” 
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