Month: August 2022

Microelectronics produced in the United States and allied countries are crucial components of Russian weapons systems used in the Ukraine invasion, according to a report by Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.

The RUSI report, Silicon Lifeline: Western Electronics as the Heart of Russia’s War Machine, says more than 450 foreign-made components have been found in Russian weapons recovered in Ukraine. The report’s authors say Moscow acquired critical technology from companies in the United States, Europe and Asia in the years before the invasion.

Ukraine says Russia fired more than 3,650 missiles and guided rockets into its territory in first five months of the war. Most of the weapons rely highly on Western-made microelectronic technologies, according to report co-author Gary Somerville, a research fellow at RUSI’s Open-Source Intelligence and Analysis Research Group.

“It doesn’t appear that they actually have the ability to reproduce – at least to the same level of sophistication and at scale – a lot of these critical microelectronics. These are the ones that would be absolutely essential for, for example precision-guided munitions which have very sophisticated processing units,” Somerville told VOA.

That includes Russia’s Iskander 9M727 cruise missile, one of its most advanced weapons. RUSI researchers recovered some missiles in the field inside Ukraine and inspect the microelectronics inside.

They found several Western-sourced components, including digital signal processors, flash memory modules and static RAM modules made by U.S.-based companies including Texas Instruments, Advanced Micro Devices and Cypress Semiconductor, along ethernet cabling that originated from American, Dutch and German companies.

Russia’s Kh-101 cruise missiles, some of which targeted the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, were found to contain 31 foreign components.

Common chips

All the microelectronics companies cited in the report said they comply with trade sanctions and they have stopped selling components to Russia. There is no suggestion in the report that the companies broke any export control laws.

“How is Russia possibly getting hold of this stuff? When we actually looked through a lot of these components, they are quite prosaic and in many ways ubiquitous, they can be found in any sort of electronics really – microwaves, dishwashers,” Somerville said.

Such microelectronics were freely available to Russia before its invasion of Ukraine.

However, RUSI also identified at least 81 components classified as “dual-use” by the U.S. Commerce Department and subject to U.S. export controls.

They include a high-performance CMOS static RAM microchip originally made by U.S.-based Cypress Semiconductor, found inside a handheld navigational system used by Russia’s special forces to pinpoint their position and estimate coordinates for precision artillery and air strikes.

“The component is a high-speed, ultra-low-power memory chip148 that is classified as a dual-use good for export purposes,” according to the RUSI report.

Two-thirds of the foreign components found in Russian weapons systems were manufactured by U.S.-based companies. Japan was the second-biggest supplier.

Export bans

Many of the microelectronics found in the weapons were decades old and, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, many states have banned the export of such components to Russia.

Somerville pointed to Russia’s history of using elaborate methods to procure technology, Somerville said.

“It’s through the use of a number of front companies that, on the surface when you conduct a due diligence check, appear to be legitimate — but in reality are actually, or can be somewhat affiliated with, large Russian companies that are actually members of the military-industrial complex,” he said.

The report details how Russia also uses false end-user certificates and transshipment companies based in third countries, including several in Hong Kong, to obscure the final destination.

It cites Russian customs records showing that in March 2021, one company imported $600,000 worth of electronics manufactured by Texas Instruments through a Hong Kong-based distributor. Seven months later, the same company imported another $1.1 million worth of microelectronics made by Xilinx, according to RUSI.

U.S. and allied sanctions imposed on Russian weapons manufacturers and companies supplying them with components must be tightened, Somerville said.

“What the sanctions and effective enforcement of these sanctions can do is raise the costs on Russia to acquire these particular microelectronics,” he said.

The report’s authors say Russia is now scrambling to procure microelectronics in bulk, and that its military could be permanently weakened if the supply can be cut off.

Some of the information in this report was provided by Reuters.
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A group of World Health Organization experts is recommending COVID-19 booster shots for people at the highest risk of severe illness and death. The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization or SAGE, which met in extraordinary session August 11, issued its updated guidance Thursday.

SAGE recommends continued use of the two-dose mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Since the vaccines’ efficacy wanes after several months, however, the group of experts advises a booster shot for everyone, beginning with those at highest risk.

This is the first time SAGE has updated its guidance on the administration of a second booster shot. Its recommendations are based on increasing evidence on the benefits of a second booster dose of COVID-19 vaccines for select groups of people.

SAGE chairman Alejandro Cravioto said the group recommends a second booster shot for people older than 55 who are considered at highest risk of developing severe disease and in need of hospitalization. He said SAGE does not advocate a second booster for the general public, for adults who are generally healthy and do not suffer from severe immunodeficiency.

“We also include persons with moderate and severe immuno-compromising conditions from, say, 6 months and above,” Cravioto said. “And that includes the children and adults with co-morbidities at higher risk of severe disease. We also include pregnant women and health workers.”

SAGE recommends a second booster be given four to six months after the administration of the first. It says healthy children and adolescents remain at low risk of severe disease from COVID-19, so there currently is no recommendation for youth groups to be vaccinated.

Cravioto, however, said SAGE has made interim recommendations for the use of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in relation to their use in children.

“In the case of both vaccines, children from 6 months to 17 years with co-morbidities should be vaccinated to avoid a higher risk in these groups of severe disease. … This includes, of course, children with Down syndrome, who we know are at the highest risk of dying of COVID if they get infected.”

The group of experts notes the recommendations are based on the current available data. They say it is not a projection into the future but relates specifically to the omicron variant of the coronavirus. It says the guidance is likely to change depending on how the pandemic evolves and new variants circulate.
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The White House announced Thursday it will make an additional 1.8 million doses of monkeypox vaccine available for distribution beginning next week.

At a news conference, White House national monkeypox response coordinator Bob Fenton said the additional doses will be available for U.S. jurisdictions to order starting Monday, through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra also took part in the news briefing.

Fenton said in the less than 10 days since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the CDC authorized the Jynneos vaccine for emergency use against monkeypox in individuals 18 years of age and older, HHS has delivered nearly 1 million doses to U.S. states and cities, making it the largest program of its kind for monkeypox vaccine in the world.

Fenton said the additional doses are part of the National Monkeypox Response Team’s plan to address the viral disease’s outbreak in the United States and mitigate its spread.

He said HHS has been working on launching a pilot program that will provide up to 50,000 doses from the national stockpile to be made available for events that will have high attendance of gay and bisexual men.

While monkeypox is not classified as a sexually transmitted infection, or STI, it has been found to be disproportionally affecting men who have sex with men. The disease can spread through close or intimate physical contact such as hugging, kissing and sex. It can also be transmitted by touching infected items such as clothing, bedding or towels.

Fenton said the Biden administration has also significantly increased availability and convenience of monkeypox tests, expanding capacity from 6,000 tests per week to 80,000 tests per week.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Today’s sharks have nothing on their ancient cousins. A giant shark that roamed the oceans millions of years ago could have devoured a creature the size of a killer whale in just five bites, new research suggests.

For their study published Wednesday, researchers used fossil evidence to create a 3D model of the megalodon — one of the biggest predatory fish of all time — and find clues about its life.

At around 16 meters from nose to tail, the megalodon was bigger than a school bus, according to the study in the journal Science Advances. That’s about two to three times the size of today’s great white shark. The megalodon’s gaping jaw allowed it to feed on other big creatures. Once it filled its massive stomach, it could roam the oceans for months at a time, the researchers suggest.

The megalodon was a strong swimmer, too: Its average cruising speed was faster than sharks today and it could have migrated across multiple oceans with ease, they calculated.

“It would be a superpredator just dominating its ecosystem,” said co-author John Hutchinson, who studies the evolution of animal movement at England’s Royal Veterinary College. “There is nothing really matching it.

It’s been tough for scientists to get a clear picture of the megalodon, said study author Catalina Pimiento, a paleobiologist with the University of Zurich and Swansea University in Wales.

The skeleton is made of soft cartilage that doesn’t fossilize well, Pimiento said. So the scientists used what few fossils are available, including a rare collection of vertebrae that’s been at a Belgium museum since the 1860s.

Researchers also brought in a jaw’s worth of megalodon teeth, each as big as a human fist, Hutchinson said. Scans of modern great white sharks helped flesh out the rest.

Based on their digital creation, researchers calculated that the megalodon would have weighed around 70 tons, or as much as 10 elephants.

Even other high-level predators may have been lunch meat for the megalodon, which could open its jaw to almost 2 meters wide, Pimiento said.

Megalodons lived an estimated 23 million to 2.6 million years ago.

Since megalodon fossils are rare, these kinds of models require a “leap of imagination,” said Michael Gottfried, a paleontologist at Michigan State University who was not involved in the study. But he said the study’s findings are reasonable based on what is known about the giant shark. 
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A federal judge in Cleveland awarded $650 million in damages Wednesday to two Ohio counties that won a landmark lawsuit against national pharmacy chains CVS, Walgreens and Walmart, claiming the way they distributed opioids to customers caused severe harm to communities and created a public nuisance.

U.S. District Judge Dan Polster said in the ruling that the money will be used to abate a continuing opioid crisis in Lake and Trumbull counties, outside Cleveland. Attorneys for the counties put the total price tag at $3.3 billion for the damage done to the counties.

Lake County is to receive $306 million over 15 years. Trumbull County is to receive $344 million over the same period. Polster ordered the companies to immediately pay nearly $87 million to cover the first two years of the abatement plan.

In his ruling, Polster admonished the three companies, saying they “squandered the opportunity to present a meaningful plan to abate the nuisance” after a trial that considered what damages they might owe.

CVS, Walmart and Walgreens said they will appeal the ruling. It is unclear whether the companies will have to immediately pay the nearly $87 million during their appeals.

Trumbull County Commissioner Frank Fuda praised the award in a statement, saying “the harms caused by this devastating epidemic” can now be addressed.

Lake County Commissioner John Hamercheck said in a statement: “Today marks the start of a new day in our fight to end the opioid epidemic.”

A jury returned a verdict in November in favor of the counties after a six-week trial. It was then left to Polster to decide how much the counties should receive from the three pharmacy companies. He heard testimony in May to determine damages.

The counties convinced the jury that the pharmacies played an outsized role in creating a public nuisance in the way they dispensed pain medication into their communities.

It was the first time pharmacy companies completed a trial to defend themselves in a drug crisis that has killed a half-million Americans since 1999.

Attorneys for the pharmacy chains maintained they had policies to stem the flow of pills when their pharmacists had concerns and would notify authorities about suspicious orders from doctors. They also said it was doctors who controlled how many pills were prescribed for legitimate medical needs, not their pharmacies.

Walmart issued a statement Wednesday saying the counties’ attorneys “sued Walmart in search of deep pockets, and this judgment follows a trial that was engineered to favor the plaintiffs’ attorneys and was riddled with remarkable legal and factual mistakes.”

Walgreens spokesperson Fraser Engerman said, “The facts and the law did not support the jury verdict last fall, and they do not support the court’s decision now.

“The court committed significant legal errors in allowing the case to go before a jury on a flawed legal theory that is inconsistent with Ohio law and compounded those errors in reaching its ruling regarding damages.”

CVS spokesperson Michael DeAngelis said, “We strongly disagree with the court’s decision regarding the counties’ abatement plan, as well as last fall’s underlying verdict.”

CVS is based in Rhode Island, Walgreens in Illinois and Walmart in Arkansas.

Two chains — Rite Aid and Giant Eagle — settled lawsuits with the counties before trial. The amounts they paid have not been disclosed publicly.

Mark Lanier, an attorney for the counties, said during the trial that the pharmacies were attempting to blame everyone but themselves.

The opioid crisis has overwhelmed courts, social services agencies and law enforcement in Ohio’s blue-collar corner east of Cleveland, leaving behind heartbroken families and babies born to addicted mothers, Lanier told jurors.

Roughly 80 million prescription painkillers were dispensed in Trumbull County alone between 2012 and 2016 — equivalent to 400 for every resident. In Lake County, 61 million pills were distributed during that period.

The rise in physicians prescribing pain medications such as oxycodone and hydrocodone came as medical groups began recognizing that patients have the right to be treated for pain, Kaspar Stoffelmayr, an attorney for Walgreens, said at the opening of the trial.

The problem, he said, was “pharmaceutical manufacturers tricked doctors into writing way too many pills.”

The counties said pharmacies should be the last line of defense to prevent the pills from getting into the wrong hands.

The trial before Polster was part of a broader constellation of about 3,000 federal opioid lawsuits consolidated under his supervision. Other cases are moving ahead in state courts.

Kevin Roy, chief public policy officer at Shatterproof, an organization that advocates for solutions to addiction, said in November that the verdict could lead pharmacies to follow the path of major distribution companies and some drugmakers that have reached nationwide settlements of opioid cases worth billions. So far, no pharmacy has reached a nationwide settlement.

Also on Wednesday, attorneys general from numerous states announced they had reached an agreement with Endo International to pay as much as $450 million over 10 years to settle allegations the company used deceptive marketing practices “that downplayed the risk of addiction and overstated the benefits” of opioids it produced.

Based in Ireland, Endo’s U.S. headquarters are in Malvern, Pennsylvania. The company did not respond Wednesday to telephone and email requests for comment.

The agreement calls for the $450 million to be divided among participating states and communities. It also calls for Endo to put opioid-related documents online for public viewing and pay $2.75 million in expenses to publicly archive those documents.

Endo can never again market opioids, according to the agreement.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday night.

Endo produces generic opioids and name brands such as Percocet and Endocet. The company’s Opana ER opioid was withdrawn from the market in 2017. The attorneys general say Endo “falsely promoted the benefits” of Opana ER’s “so-called abuse deterrent formulation.” The attorneys general said the formulation did not deter abuse of the drug and led to deadly outbreaks of hepatitis and HIV resulting from people injecting the drug.
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The head of the top U.S. public health agency on Wednesday announced a shake-up of the organization, intended to make it more nimble.

The planned changes at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — CDC leaders call it a “reset”— come amid ongoing criticism of the agency’s response to COVID-19, monkeypox and other public health threats. The changes include internal staffing moves and steps to speed up data releases.

The CDC’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, told the agency’s staff about the changes on Wednesday. It’s a CDC initiative, and was not directed by the White House or other administration officials, she said.

“I feel like it’s my my responsibility to lead this agency to a better place after a really challenging three years,” Walensky told The Associated Press.

The CDC, with a $12 billion budget and more than 11,000 employees, is an Atlanta-based federal agency charged with protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats. It’s customary for each CDC director to do some reorganizing, but Walensky’s action comes amid a wider demand for change.

The agency has long been criticized as too ponderous, focusing on collection and analysis of data but not acting quickly against new health threats. But public unhappiness with the agency grew dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts said the CDC was slow to recognize how much virus was entering the U.S. from Europe, to recommend people wear masks, to say the virus can spread through the air, and to ramp up systematic testing for new variants.

“We saw during COVID that CDC’s structures, frankly, weren’t designed to take in information, digest it and disseminate it to the public at the speed necessary,” said Jason Schwartz, a health policy researcher at the Yale School of Public Health.

Walensky, who became director in January 2021, has long said the agency has to move faster and communicate better, but stumbles have continued during her tenure.

In April, she called for an in-depth review of the agency, which resulted in the announced changes. Her reorganization proposal must be approved by the Department of Health and Human Services secretary. CDC officials say they hope to have a full package of changes finalized, approved, and underway by early next year.

Some changes still are being formulated, but steps announced Wednesday include:

—Increasing use of preprint scientific reports to get out actionable data, instead of waiting for research to go through peer review and publication by the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

—Restructuring the agency’s communications office and further revamping CDC websites to make the agency’s guidance for the public more clear and easier to find.

—Altering the length of time agency leaders are devoted to outbreak responses to a minimum of six months — an effort to address a turnover problem that at times caused knowledge gaps and affected the agency’s communications.

—Creation of a new executive council to help Walensky set strategy and priorities.

—Appointing Mary Wakefield as senior counselor to implement the changes. Wakefield headed the Health Resources and Services Administration during the Obama administration and also served as the No. 2 administrator at HHS. Wakefield, 68, started Monday.

—Altering the agency’s organization chart to undo some changes made during the Trump administration.

—Establishing an office of intergovernmental affairs to smooth partnerships with other agencies, as well as a higher-level office on health equity.

Walensky also said she intends to “get rid of some of the reporting layers that exist, and I’d like to work to break down some of the silos.” She did not say exactly what that may entail, but emphasized that the overall changes are less about redrawing the organization chart than rethinking how the CDC does business and motivates staff.

“This will not be simply moving boxes” on the organization chart, she said.

Schwartz said flaws in the federal response go beyond the CDC, because the White House and other agencies were heavily involved.

A CDC reorganization is a positive step but “I hope it’s not the end of the story,” Schwartz said. He would like to see “a broader accounting” of how the federal government handles health crises.
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Despite a nationwide vaccination campaign that started in May, Malawi is struggling to contain a cholera outbreak that has infected more than 1,073 people and caused 44 deaths. 

The figures from the Malawi Ministry of Health, updated as of Aug. 16, 2022, are triple the numbers recorded when the vaccination campaign was launched three months ago. 

The report also says the outbreak has spread to 10 districts from eight in May. The hardest hit districts include Blantyre with 489 cases, Neno with 128 cases, and Nsanje with 289 cases.  

George Mbotwa, spokesperson for a health office in Nsanje district, which borders Mozambique south of Malawi, said continued incidents of cholera in the district are largely because of movements of people between the two countries. 

“What is worrisome is that we have now continued to record the cases when by now we would have contained the situation,” he said. “It’s because some of these cases we are sharing with Mozambique. So, the cases will be coming from Mozambique and then reporting to health facilities in Nsanje, then being recorded as Nsanje cases.”

Mbotwa said the situation is slowly improving, after officials on the Mozambican side agreed during recent discussions to set up cholera treatment sites on their side of the border.  

“The Mozambican side by then didn’t have cholera treatment sites, and now they have them there, so people are able to report the cases right there, unlike coming with cases to Malawi,” he said. 

Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection caused by ingesting food or water contaminated with bacteria. The disease affects both children and adults, and if untreated, it can kill within hours.  

Penjani Chunda, environmental health officer in Blantyre, said although Blantyre is largely an urban area, cholera cases are on the rise because most people fetch water from unprotected sources like rivers and streams. 

“In most parts of Blantyre, we don’t have portable water sources,” he said. “It might be like an urban setup, but it has no portable water sources, and we have got dry taps in some of the areas and [water] kiosks are not working at all.”  

The spokesperson for the Health Ministry, Adrian Chikumbe, said health authorities are currently distributing chlorine for water treatment, and providing public education on good hygiene.  

Chikumbe also hopes the second phase of the national oral cholera vaccination campaign, which is expected to start soon in the most-hit districts, will help contain the situation.     

 
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In the past year, there has seen a dramatic transformation in the way customers pay for their purchases in Banuri, a village in the Himachal Pradesh state of North India. Whether at a small grocery store or a street cart, instead of handing over cash, they use a simple system that involves scanning a code on a smartphone to make an online payment.

“Even if someone buys only half a kilogram of vegetables, he can pay digitally. We do the smallest of transactions,” said Nishant Sharma, a vegetable vendor in Banuri as he hands over a cauliflower to a customer that costs 75 cents. “It is much easier than handling cash.”

In recent years, a government initiative called “Digital India” has helped millions plug into new digital technologies as internet access expands to distant areas. One of them is a payments system that is transforming the way retail business is transacted in vast rural areas and small towns, where more than two thirds of India’s 1.4 billion people live.

Much like glitzy city stores, street vendors to small shops are making the switch to digital payments. But instead of credit or debit cards, they use India’s Unified Payment Interface popularly known as UPI. It is a payment system that involves no merchant fees and can be used for the smallest of transactions to make instant transfers across bank accounts. It was developed under the initiative of India’s Central Bank.

“It is the ease of the technology and overall reduction in transaction cost that has made this system popular. It takes place with the click of a button, it is cost-effective, and easy to manage,” said economist N.R. Bhanumurthy, Vice Chancellor at D.R. Ambedkar School of Economics University in Bengaluru. “It is certainly a huge transformation from what we did in the past and has changed the way we do business.”

Its expansion has also been helped by a massive push in recent years to bring more people into the banking system. More than 80% of adults now have bank accounts, compared to just one-third of adults some years ago. Affordable smartphones that cost as little as $50 are in the hands of about 750 million people. The COVID-19 pandemic, when cash transactions were discouraged, also prompted many to switch to digital payments.

“The Digital India Movement can bring about revolutionary changes in India and the lives of the common man,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at an Independence Day address on Monday. According to the Indian leader, 40% of the real-time digital transactions made in the world now take place in India.

Whether in big towns, cities, or small villages, India’s retail sector is dominated by millions of small stores and shops, who for decades only did business in cash.

The speed and scale with which they are embracing the new payment system is evident in Banuri village. The owner of a chemist shop, Akhilesh Sharma, said about 70% of his customers pay online. It has eased his life.

“Whenever I open PhonePe or Google Pay app, all the transactions are done in my business account,” said Sharma. “In cash, I have to count the money at the end of the day, and it is a little long process. Then I have to go to bank and deposit the cash.”

Economists say digital payments boost business by facilitating transactions. Small town and village residents, especially younger customers, are also discovering the benefits of going cashless.

“I don’t have to worry about carrying money,” said Vikas Sharma, a resident of Palampur. “Earlier when I went to a crowded place, I worried about getting my wallet stolen. Now all I need is my phone.”

Digital transactions are just one of the benefits that the internet has brought people living in outlying areas. For older people such as a retired government employee, Romesh Dogra, the biggest benefit is connecting via video calls with his three daughters who live outside his district.

“I get energized daily when I talk to my grandchildren,” said Dogra, a retired official. “I can watch them growing up. Life has become good.”

There are still gaps to plug in — internet speeds can pose a challenge, especially in villages and small towns. And while the numbers of people with access to the internet have doubled to nearly 700 million in the last five years, millions are still not connected. But with rapid progress, it may not take long for India’s digital footprint to expand.
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In India, an initiative to bring internet access across the country has helped millions plug into new digital technologies. One of them is a payments system that is transforming the way business is being done in the vast rural areas of the country. Anjana Pasricha has a report.
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China’s dominance in global sector creates supply chain and national security concerns, says US solar manufacturer
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NASA’s gigantic Space Launch System moon rocket, topped with an uncrewed astronaut capsule, is set to begin an hourslong crawl to its launchpad Tuesday night ahead of the behemoth’s debut test flight later this month. 

The 98-meter-tall rocket is scheduled to embark on its first mission to space — without any humans — on August 29. It will be a crucial, long-delayed demonstration trip to the moon in NASA’s Artemis program, the United States’ multibillion-dollar effort to return humans to the lunar surface as practice for future missions to Mars. 

The Space Launch System, whose development in the past decade has been led by Boeing, is scheduled to emerge from its assembly building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida around 9 p.m. EDT on Tuesday (0100 GMT on Wednesday) and begin the 6-km-long trek to its launchpad. Moving less than 1.6 km per hour, the rollout takes roughly 11 hours. 

Sitting atop the rocket is NASA’s Orion astronaut capsule, a pod built by Lockheed Martin Corp LMT.N. It is designed to separate from the rocket in space, ferry humans toward the moon’s vicinity and rendezvous with a separate spacecraft that will take astronauts down to the lunar surface. 

But for the August 29 mission, called Artemis 1, the Orion capsule will launch atop the Space Launch System without any humans and orbit around the moon before returning to Earth for an ocean splashdown 42 days later. 

If bad launch weather or a minor technical issue triggers a delay from August 29, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has backup launch dates on September 2 and September 5. 

 
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New York health officials announced in July that an unvaccinated adult man from Rockland County had been diagnosed with polio—the first case of the life-threatening disease in the United States since 2013. The virus that causes polio was later detected in New York City wastewater, and city and state health officials now say the virus is probably circulating in the city.

The virus identified in New York is a vaccine-derived poliovirus. Wild polioviruses were eliminated from most of the world and now circulate only in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But vaccine-derived viruses, which emerge when the weakened viruses in the oral polio vaccine mutate and spread in unvaccinated populations, still occasionally cause outbreaks.

VOA spoke with three polio experts about vaccine-derived polioviruses and the oral polio vaccine. Here’s what you need to know.

What are vaccine-derived polioviruses?

Vaccine-derived polioviruses are related to the active viruses in the oral polio vaccine (OPV).

OPV works by infecting cells in the gut with weakened polioviruses, allowing the body to safely develop immunity to polio without the risk of paralysis posed by the real disease.

“[The weakened viruses] would still infect you. They would still replicate in your gut. You will develop a lifelong immunity, but you will not get paralyzed,” said virologist Konstantin Chumakov, a Global Virus Network Center of Excellence director and an adjunct professor at The George Washington University.

“But the [vaccine-derived] virus will still be able to transmit [from person to person],” Chumakov added. “It was considered a big advantage of the vaccine, because basically, you can immunize several kids with one dose.”

This transmission becomes problematic in communities with low vaccination rates. If the virus can spread for a long time, it has many chances to mutate and revert to a dangerous paralytic form.

Why is the oral polio vaccine (OPV) used?

Although OPV is linked to vaccine-derived polioviruses, it also has a number of advantages over the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) — the injected vaccine — which is still used in most of the world.

People who receive OPV cannot be “silent spreaders.” After developing an immune response to the vaccine, they are immune to polio for life. Polioviruses cannot replicate in their gut and infect others.

In contrast, IPV protects against paralysis, but does not prevent the virus from replicating in the gut. People who receive IPV can spread polio, even though they won’t get sick from it.

“In populations where you want to stop the spread, that ‘gut immunity’ that OPV confers is essential,” said Captain Derek Ehrhardt, a polio incident manager at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “If you have just IPV, it’s possible that the child will be protected, but they could still spread [paralytic polio] to their neighbor, their brother, their sister, whomever.”

This made OPV instrumental in the eradication of wild polio from most of the world, including in countries such as the United States that now use IPV exclusively.

OPV also has other advantages.

“We work with oral polio vaccine because it is low cost,” said Richter Razafindratsimandresy, head of the National Reference Laboratory for Poliomyelitis at the Institut Pasteur de Madagascar. “And it is easy to administer, because it is oral — they don’t need to inject the children, and it is not a problem for the parents to accept.”

If OPV prevents silent spread, why are the U.S. and other nations using only IPV?

After the United States and other wealthy countries eliminated wild polio, they stopped using OPV because it carries the risk of creating vaccine-derived polioviruses in undervaccinated communities, and because it has a slight risk of causing paralysis. This happens between roughly two and four times per million births, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). Because there are so few cases in the U.S., thanks to the very successful campaigns with OPV, that risk is now seen as unacceptable.

The U.S. and other wealthy countries have robust health care systems and can effectively acquire the more expensive IPV and get it into every arm. So, using IPV means the well-vaccinated populations in these countries are well-protected from paralysis from polio, despite being less protected against catching and spreading polioviruses.

How do vaccine-derived poliovirus cause outbreaks?

Countries with weak vaccination systems are more likely to experience outbreaks of vaccine-derived poliovirus. That’s happened several times in Madagascar, Razafindratsimandresy said.

“[The virus] is not from another country. Because in Madagascar, we have … immunization coverage [that] is very, very low,” he said.

Imported vaccine-derived polioviruses can also cause outbreaks in countries with high vaccination rates, especially if IPV is used instead of OPV.

“Basically, it can transmit from person to person to person without causing any symptoms, because everybody is protected from paralysis,” said Chumakov. “But at some point, the virus can hit an unvaccinated person or a person with immune deficiency, and then it can paralyze this person. And this is exactly what happened in New York.”

Is OPV safe?

“Our vaccines are safe and effective,” said Ehrhardt. “We need to vaccinate our under- and unimmunized children to stop the ongoing spread of these viruses.”

Chumakov said that developing better versions of OPV could reduce risks while also keeping the gut immunity provided by OPV, which he said is important for preventing silent spread. He was previously involved in a GPEI effort to develop a safer oral vaccine for Type 2 polioviruses. Clinical trial data suggest the novel OPV is less likely to revert to a dangerous form.

While the future may bring improved vaccines, vaccinating as many children as possible with existing OPV remains a priority in much of the world.

According to the CDC, global polio vaccination coverage sunk to 81% in 2021, the lowest in a decade. This was largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but not all countries have enough resources for vaccination campaigns even in normal times.

Razafindratsimandresy said that even though Madagascar aims to vaccinate all children with OPV, the country doesn’t have enough personnel and often runs out of vaccine.

“These immunity gaps must be closed for us to stop these diseases,” Ehrhardt said. “If you have polio anywhere, then children everywhere are still at risk.”

 
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The widely used tuberculosis vaccine also fends off a slew of unrelated infectious diseases, and its immune boost can protect newborns for more than a year, researchers in Australia have found.

The bacillus calmette-guérin (BCG) vaccine for tuberculosis causes front-line immune cells to make long-lasting biological “marks” on their DNA, changing how they read genetic instructions for fighting off viruses, the researchers say.

“The DNA is like the manual for the cell. It tells you what it can and can’t do,” study author and molecular immunologist Boris Novakovic of the University of Melbourne told VOA. “You might have a sentence that says, ‘If you see a virus, turn the following genes on.’ And what we’ve done with the BCG vaccine [is] sort of [change] that full stop at the end of that sentence to an exclamation mark.”

The findings were published in the Science Advances journal.

“What is new here is the durability, the long-lasting imprinting effects of BCG vaccine at birth in these Australian babies, and also [that] they can show [in detail] how that takes place,” vaccine epidemiologist Christine Stabell Benn, of the University of Southern Denmark, said in an interview with VOA. She was not involved in the study.

Developed more than a century ago, the BCG vaccine contains live, weakened bacteria. It is one of the oldest vaccines still used and is the most frequently administered vaccine in the world.

Decades ago, Benn and her colleagues noticed that children in Guinea-Bissau who received the tuberculosis shot were less likely to die from other, unrelated diseases. They later confirmed this in a randomized trial, showing that low-birthweight babies who got BCG at birth were about a third less likely to die in their first month of life than those who got BCG later on the normal schedule. Later trials in Guinea-Bissau and Uganda corroborated these findings.

Today, this “non-specific effect” of BCG vaccination has been observed in babies, healthy adults and elderly people. The vaccine’s immune boost is used to treat bladder cancer. Clinical trials are ongoing to see if it could help protect against COVID-19.

There is growing evidence that BCG trains the innate immune system — the non-specific, fast-acting response that activates to fight a wide range of threats.

But it wasn’t until recently that scientists started to figure out how this “trained immunity” that the BCG vaccine generates actually works.

Previous studies found marks of trained immunity a month to three months after BCG vaccination in adults. But the vaccine is typically administered to young babies, and scientists had not tested whether training could last for a long time.

Novakovic and his colleagues compared the immune cells of 63 newborns who received the BCG vaccine right after birth to those of 67 babies who didn’t get the vaccine. They found that exposure to BCG left marks on virus-fighting regions of the genome that tell cells to activate specific genes more or less often. Immune cells passed down these marks, generation to generation, as they divided to make new cells. The marks of trained immunity persisted for more than a year.

In lab tests using cultured human immune cells, the scientists were able to piece together the cellular machinery involved in making these marks more precisely than before.

“We were able to look at all these different levels to see, in a really comprehensive way, what happens to these cells when they directly get exposed to BCG,” said Novakovic.

In the future, Novakovic — who also works at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute — said he’d like to see if the study’s findings hold in different populations — especially in places where infectious disease is more common than in Australia. And in the long term, he thinks scientists should design vaccines that specifically target the immune-boosting pathways BCG incidentally activates.

“The BCG vaccine is great — it’s safe, and it works. But it’s a bit of a dirty method because we don’t really know what it does. We just know it works,” he said. “Imagine you can just make a purely trained-immunity vaccine.”

Benn said future studies should consider factors such as sex and mother’s vaccination status, which epidemiologists have noticed can affect the immune boost from BCG. For instance, boys seem to benefit from the vaccine’s extra protection more than girls during the first weeks of life, she said.

But beyond more research, Benn hopes the new study will give public health officials more confidence in off-target immunity from BCG, a vaccine she says should be recommended as protection against death from infectious disease — not just as a tuberculosis vaccine.

“I feel that we’re sitting on our hands,” she said, “waiting for biological mechanisms while children could be saved.”
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Banks along parts of the Colorado River where water once streamed are now just caked mud and rock as climate change makes the Western U.S. hotter and drier. 

More than two decades of drought have done little to deter the region from diverting more water than flows through it, depleting key reservoirs to levels that now jeopardize water delivery and hydropower production. 

Cities and farms in seven U.S. states are bracing for cuts this week as officials stare down a deadline to propose unprecedented reductions to their use of the water, setting up what’s expected to be the most consequential week for Colorado River policy in years. 

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in June told the states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — to determine how to use at least 15% less water next year, or have restrictions imposed on them. The bureau is also expected to publish hydrology projections that will trigger additional cuts already agreed to. 

Tensions over the extent of the cuts and how to spread them equitably have flared, with states pointing fingers and stubbornly clinging to their water rights despite the looming crisis. 

Representatives from the seven states convened in Denver last week for last-minute negotiations behind closed doors. Those discussions have yet to produce concrete proposals, but officials close to the negotiations say the most likely targets for cuts are Arizona and California farmers. Agricultural districts in those states are asking to be paid generously to bear that burden. 

The proposals under discussion, however, fall short of what the Bureau of Reclamation has demanded and, with negotiations stalling, state officials say they hope for more time to negotiate details. 

“Despite the obvious urgency of the situation, the last 62 days produced exactly nothing in terms of meaningful collective action to help forestall the looming crisis,” John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority wrote in a letter Monday. He called the agricultural district demands “drought profiteering.” 

The Colorado River cascades from the Rocky Mountains into the arid deserts of the Southwest. It’s the primary water supply for 40 million people. About 70% of its water goes toward irrigation, sustaining a $15 billion-a-year agricultural industry that supplies 90% of the United States’ winter vegetables. 

Water from the river is divided among Mexico and the seven U.S. states under a series of agreements that date back a century, to a time when more flowed. 

But climate change has transformed the river’s hydrology, providing less snowmelt and causing hotter temperatures and more evaporation. As the river yielded less water, the states agreed to cuts tied to the levels of reservoirs that store its water. 

Last year, federal officials for the first time declared a water shortage, triggering cuts to Nevada, Arizona and Mexico’s share of the river to help prevent the two largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — from dropping low enough to threaten hydropower production and stop water from flowing through their dams. 

The proposals for supplemental cuts due this week have inflamed disagreement between upper basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and lower basin states — Arizona, California and Nevada — over how to spread the pain. 

The lower basin states use most of the water and have thus far shouldered most of the cuts. The upper basin states have historically not used their full allocations but want to maintain water rights to plan for population growth. 

Gene Shawcroft, the chairman of Utah’s Colorado River Authority, believes the lower basin states should take most of the cuts because they use most of the water and their full allocations. 

He said it was his job to protect Utah’s allocation for growth projected for decades ahead: “The direction we’ve been given as water purveyors is to make sure we have water for the future.” 

In a letter last month, representatives from the upper basin states proposed a five-point conservation plan they said would save water, but argued most cuts needed to come from the lower basin. The plan didn’t commit to any numbers. 

“The focus is getting the tools in place and working with water users to get as much as we can rather than projecting a water number,” Chuck Cullom, the executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission, told The Associated Press. 

That position, however, is unsatisfactory to many in lower basin states already facing cuts. 

“It’s going to come to a head particularly if the upper basin states continue their negotiating position, saying, ‘We’re not making any cuts,'” said Bruce Babbitt, who served as Interior secretary from 2003-2011. 

Lower basin states have yet to go public with plans to contribute, but officials said last week that the states’ tentative proposal under discussion fell slightly short of the federal government’s request to cut 2 to 4 million acre-feet. 

An acre-foot of water is enough to serve 2-3 households annually. 

Bill Hasencamp, the Colorado River resource manager at Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District, said all the districts in the state that draw from the river had agreed to contribute water or money to the plan, pending approval by their respective boards. Water districts, in particular Imperial Irrigation District, have been adamant that any voluntary cut must not curtail their high priority water rights. 

Southern California cities will likely provide money that could fund fallowing farmland in places like Imperial County and water managers are considering leaving water they’ve stored in Lake Mead as part of their contribution. 

Arizona will probably be hit hard with reductions. The state over the past few years shouldered many of the cuts. With its growing population and robust agricultural industry, it has less wiggle room than its neighbors to take on more, said Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke. Some Native American tribes in Arizona have also contributed to propping up Lake Mead in the past and could play an outsized role in any new proposal. 

Irrigators around Yuma, Arizona, have proposed taking 925,000 acre-feet less of Colorado River water in 2023 and leaving it in Lake Mead if they’re paid $1.4 billion or $1,500 per acre-foot. The cost is far above the going rate, but irrigators defended their proposal as fair considering the cost to grow crops and get them to market. 

Wade Noble, the coordinator for a coalition that represents Yuma water rights holders, said it was the only proposal put forth publicly that includes actual cuts, rather than theoretical cuts to what users are allocated on paper. 

Some of the compensation-for-conservation funds could come from $4 billion in drought funding included in the Inflation Reduction Act under consideration in Washington, U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona told the AP. 

Sinema acknowledged that paying farmers to conserve is not a long-term solution: “In the short term, however, in order to meet our day-to-day needs and year-to-year needs, ensuring that we’re creating financial incentives for non-use will help us get through,” she said. 

Babbitt agreed that money in the legislation will not “miraculously solve the problem” and said prices for water must be reasonable to avoid gouging because most water users will take be impacted. 

“There’s no way that these cuts can all be paid for at a premium price for years and years,” he said. 

 
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