Day: March 29, 2021

A joint World Health Organization-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is “extremely unlikely,” according to a draft copy obtained by The Associated Press.The findings offer little new insight into how the virus first emerged and leave many questions unanswered. But the report does provide more detail on the reasoning behind the researchers’ conclusions.The team proposed further research in every area except the lab leak hypothesis — a speculative theory that was promoted by former U.S. President Donald Trump among others. It also said the role played by a seafood market where human cases were first identified was uncertain.Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director at the National Institute Of Allergy and Infectious Diseases speaks at a U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Washington, March 18, 2021.Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious diseases expert, said he would like to see the report’s raw information first before deciding about its credibility.”I’d also would like to inquire as to the extent in which the people who were on that group had access directly to the data that they would need to make a determination,” he said. “I want to read the report first and then get a feel for what they really had access to — or did not have access to.”The report, which is expected to be made public Tuesday, is being closely watched because discovering the origins of the virus could help scientists prevent future pandemics. But it’s also extremely sensitive because China bristles at any suggestion that it is to blame for the current one.White House press secretary Jen Psaki said experts from seven U.S. government organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Health and the Department of Homeland Security had the report in hand.”Seventeen experts, longstanding leaders from the field, including epidemiology, public health, clinical medicine, veterinary medicine, infectious disease, law, food security, biosafety, biosecurity — we have a lot of experts in government — will be reviewing this report intensively and quickly,” she said at a daily briefing.Matthew Kavanagh of Georgetown University said the report deepened the understanding of the virus’s origins, but more information was needed.”It is clear that the Chinese government has not provided all the data needed and, until they do, firmer conclusions will be difficult,” he said in a statement.Last year, an AP investigation found the Chinese government was strictly controlling all research into the origins of the coronavirus. And repeated delays in the report’s release have raised questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew its conclusions.”We’ve got real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a recent CNN interview.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian takes a question at the daily media briefing in Beijing on April 8, 2020.China rejected that criticism Monday.”The U.S. has been speaking out on the report. By doing this, isn’t the U.S. trying to exert political pressure on the members of the WHO expert group?” asked Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.Still, suspicion of China has helped fuel the theory that the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus was first identified. The report cited several reasons for all but dismissing that possibility.It said that such laboratory accidents are rare, that the labs in Wuhan were well-managed and there is no record of viruses closely related to the coronavirus in any laboratory before December 2019.The report is based largely on a visit by a WHO team of international experts to Wuhan. The mission was never meant to identify the exact natural source of the virus, an endeavor that typically takes years. For instance, more than 40 years of study has still failed to pinpoint the exact species of bat that are the natural reservoir of Ebola.In the draft obtained by the AP, the researchers listed four scenarios in order of likelihood for the emergence of the new coronavirus. Topping the list was transmission from bats through another animal, which they said was likely to very likely. They evaluated direct spread from bats to humans as likely, and said that spread to humans from the packaging of “cold-chain” food products was possible but not likely.That last possibility was previously dismissed by the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but researchers on this mission have taken it up again, further raising questions about the politicization of the study since China has long pushed the theory.While it’s possible an infected animal contaminated packaging that was then brought to Wuhan and infected humans, the report said the probability is very low.Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, said even that “very low probability” was an overstatement.”There’s no compelling evidence of people actually being infected through packaging,” he said, calling the theory “far-fetched.”Woolhouse said it was possible the source of COVID-19 might never be identified.”The emergence of a new (disease) is always a sequence of unlikely events,” he said. “It’s hard to be definitive and rule anything out.” But he said most scientists agree that bats are the most likely source.Bats are known to carry coronaviruses and, in fact, the closest relative of the virus that causes COVID-19 has been found in bats.The report said highly similar viruses have been found in pangolins, a scaly anteater prized in traditional Chinese medicine, but scientists have yet to identify the same coronavirus in animals that has been infecting humans.The AP received the draft copy on Monday from a Geneva-based diplomat from a WHO-member country. It wasn’t clear whether the report might still be changed before its release, though the diplomat said it was the final version. A second diplomat confirmed getting the report, too. Both refused to be identified because they were not authorized to release it ahead of publication.FILE – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, speaks in Geneva, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2021.WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged he had received the report over the weekend and said it would be formally presented Tuesday.”All hypotheses are on the table and warrant complete and further studies,” he said at a news conference.The report is inconclusive on whether the outbreak started at a Wuhan seafood market that had one of the earliest clusters of human cases in December 2019. Research published last year in the journal Lancet suggested the market may have merely served to further spread the disease rather than being its source.The market was an early suspect because some stalls sold a range of unusual animals — and some wondered if they had brought the new virus to Wuhan. The report noted that animal products — including everything from bamboo rats to deer, often frozen — were sold at the market, as were live crocodiles.
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Nine out of 10 adults in the United States will be eligible for a coronavirus vaccine three weeks from now, President Joe Biden announced Monday during remarks that were dosed with a warning of a devastating resurgence of COVID-19 in the country.“We’re in a life-and-death race with a virus that is spreading quickly with cases rising again,” Biden said. “New variants are spreading and, sadly, some of the reckless behavior we’ve seen on television over the past few weeks means that more new cases are to come in the weeks ahead.”Earlier in the day, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, expressed a feeling of “impending doom,” pointing out a picture similar to that of Europe of a few weeks ago. Another wave of coronavirus infections is now sweeping the continent.Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention testifies during a hearing to examine the COVID-19 response on Capitol Hill, March 18, 2021.But Walensky said the latest virus figures from around the United States show the daily average for infections rising by 10% over the past week, to nearly 70,000 per day. Hospitalizations were up by more than 4% and deaths by almost 3%. Biden, with Vice President Kamala Harris standing in the background in the White House South Court auditorium, reiterated his call to governors, mayors and other local leaders not to relax restrictions on the mandatory wearing of masks.“Please, this is not politics, reinstate the mandate if you let it down,” implored the president, adding that businesses should also require masks.House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., responds during his weekly news conference at the Capitol in Washington, March 18, 2021.Republicans are criticizing Biden for being too slow to reopen the economy and what they deemed an overly cautious approach. “What America needs now is to fully reopen our economy and our classrooms,” House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Twitter.Biden also announced the federal government will ensure, by April 19, the number of pharmacies where people can get inoculated will double so that those eligible for the vaccine will have a site for the shot within 5 miles (8 kilometers) of their homes.Biden also said his administration is increasing the number of pharmacies in the federal vaccination program from 17,000 to nearly 40,000 across the country and will establish a dozen more mass vaccination sites by April 19. A new effort is also under way to fund community organizations to provide transportation and assistance for seniors and other groups deemed at high risk, such as those with disabilities, to be able to get access to vaccines, according to the president.New York, the fourth most populous state, announced Monday that starting March 30 all state residents who are 30 years old or older will be eligible for the vaccine.As of Monday, federal officials report that more than 95 million people have received at least one dose of vaccine and 52.6 million people have been fully vaccinated in the United States.  The coronavirus has killed nearly 547,000 people in the country and infected more than 30 million, according to the CDC.President Joe Biden walks past freezers used to store Pfizer-BioNtech’s COVID-19 vaccine as he tours a Pfizer manufacturing site, Feb. 19, 2021, in Portage, Mich.A study released Monday by the CDC shows that the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are highly effective at preventing COVID-19 in real-world conditions. The study was conducted among nearly 4,000 health care workers, first responders, and other essential workers in six U.S. states between mid-December of last year and the middle of this month. The results showed the risk of infection was reduced by 80 percent after one dose and 90 percent after two doses. CDC Director Walensky, speaking during a White House COVID-19 response team briefing, said the study showed the two vaccines can be effective not only in symptomatic infections but in asymptomatic infections as well. She called it “tremendously encouraging” and that it complements other recent studies.Meanwhile, a World Health Organization report on the origin of the COVID-19 virus is being reviewed by 17 U.S. experts, according to the White House.”We have been clear that independent, technically sound investigation is what our focus is on, and once this is reviewed, we’ll have an assessment about the steps forward,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday about the WHO report.The joint WHO study with China on the origins of COVID-19 says that the virus was probably transmitted from bats to humans through another animal and that a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan was “extremely unlikely” as a cause, according to media organizations which obtained an advance copy of the report.“All hypotheses are on the table and warrant complete and further studies from what I have seen so far,” commented WHO chief  Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
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Before the pandemic hit, 82 percent of clinics in the landlocked Southern African nation of eSwatini lacked hot running water. That has changed in the last 6 months, with the installation of solar-powered water heaters in every single government clinic, opening up clean health facilities to up to 10,000 people a day in a nation that has long struggled with building up infrastructure. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Lobamba, eSwatini. 
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Ugandan environmentalist Vanessa Nakate is taking the fight against climate change to schools, rallying students to join the fight.  Ahead of Earth Day (April 22), Halima Athumani covers one of her school rallies from Kampala.Camera:  Francis Mukasa     
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After canceling plans for undersea cables connecting the United States with Hong Kong because of U.S. government pressure, Facebook and Google now say they will run similar cables to Singapore and Indonesia.  
“Named Echo and Bifrost, those will be the first two cables to go through a new diverse route crossing the Java Sea, and they will increase overall subsea capacity in the trans-Pacific by about 70%,” Facebook’s vice president of network investments, Kevin Salvadori, told the Reuters news agency.
Salvadori would not comment on the cost of the project.
He said the Echo cable, which is being built in partnership with Google and Indonesian telecommunications company XL, would be completed by 2023.
Bifrost, which is being done in partnership with Telin, a subsidiary of Indonesia’s Telkom, and Singapore’s Keppel Corporation, should be completed by 2024, he said.
Both projects will need regulatory approval.  
Most Indonesians who have internet access get it via mobile phones, Reuters reported, adding that only 10% have broadband access. Many have no access at all.
Facebook said plans for the cable to Hong Kong were scrapped because the U.S. government cited national security concerns about direct communication links to Hong Kong.  
Facebook and Google are involved in other cable projects around the world.  
Facebook announced last May that it was going to build a 37,000-kilometer-long undersea cable around Africa.
Google’s project, the Equiano undersea cable, could connect Europe and Africa when finished.
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The World Health Organization’s (WHO) director-general says despite leaked reports about the results of the agency-sponsored probe into the origins of virus that causes COVID-19, all theories remain on the table and will be studied further. The Associated Press reported Sunday a draft copy of a joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 concluded that the “transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario” for the emergence of the virus, and a lab leak of the virus to the public was deemed “extremely unlikely” by the joint investigation. During a news conference from Geneva, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged that he had received the report over the weekend and that it would be formally presented by the mission experts Tuesday. He added, “All hypotheses are on the table and warrant complete and further studies from what I have seen so far.” FILE – Peter Ben Embarek of the World Health Organization holds up a chart showing pathways of transmission of the virus during a press conference in Wuhan, China, Feb. 9, 2021.The WHO sent an international team to China earlier this year to explore the origins of the virus. But critics of that study say it was limited to only what China allowed them allowed them to see.  Death toll The report comes as the number of global coronavirus cases is at least 127,289,043 as of Monday, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. More than 2,785,682 people have died from COVID-19 around the world. Mexico has revised its coronavirus death toll figures, increasing the tally by 60%, which makes it one of the top three nations with the highest death toll. The new statistics are staggering as the Mexican population of 126 million is far below the populations of the U.S. and Brazil. FILE – People wait to receive the first dose of China’s Sinovac Biotech CoronaVac vaccine against COVID-19, in Ecatepec, Mexico state, Feb. 22, 2021.Public health analysts had warned that Mexico’s death count was likely higher than previous figures had indicated because the country’s healthcare system was overwhelmed by the pandemic, resulting in few available intensive care beds that led to many people dying at home whose deaths had not been included in the COVID count. The new numbers follow a government review of death certificates. Late Sunday, Mexico received 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, the foreign ministry said.  The vaccines were part of the 2.7 million doses the U.S. promised its southern neighbor in a pact reached earlier this month between the two countries.  The AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved for use in Mexico but has not yet been approved for use in the U.S., which has stockpiled the shots.  US infections plateau While the United States’ vaccination campaign against COVID-19 is well under way, daily rates of infection remain high. FILE – U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci speaks at the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Jan. 21, 2021.Anthony Fauci, the White House’s top adviser on the pandemic, expressed concern Sunday that this could be the result of states lifting some restrictions too early — especially around Spring Break. “I think it is premature,” Fauci told CBS, speaking of some states lifting restrictions as vaccination rates rise, warning that there is “really a risk” of seeing a third epidemic wave. Answering reporters’ questions Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden said he believes rates may be plateauing, instead of decreasing, because people are “letting their guard down.” 
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