Day: October 6, 2022

Around 3.9 million people in the United States received updated COVID-19 booster shots over the past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.

he CDC said a total of 11.5 million Americans had received the shot as of Oct. 5, the first five weeks the booster has been available. This is up from the 7.6 million people who received the shot as of Sept. 28.

The 11.5 million figure represents only 5.3% of the 215.5 million people in the United States aged 12 or older who are eligible to receive the shots because they have completed their primary vaccination series.

The shots are being administered at a slower pace than last year, when the United States initially authorized COVID-19 boosters just for older and immunocompromised people. Around 20 million people received their third shot in the first five weeks of that vaccination campaign.

A survey conducted by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly two-thirds of adults in the United States do not plan to get updated COVID-19 booster shots soon.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer and Moderna’s Omicron-tailored shots in August in preparation for the country’s ongoing fall revaccination campaign.

The CDC tally includes booster shots from both Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna.

While the Pfizer/BioNTech updated COVID-19 booster is approved for those aged 12 and above, Moderna’s shot is approved for individuals aged 18 and above.

These Omicron-tailored shots aim to tackle the BA.5 subvariants, which makes up a significant majority of the currently circulating variants in the United States, according to government. These shots are expected to also be effective against the BA.4.6 subvariant.
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The Biden administration will begin redirecting U.S.-bound travelers who had been to Uganda within the previous 21 days to five major American airports to be screened for Ebola as public health officials sent an alert to health care workers.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday issued an alert to health care workers to raise awareness about the outbreak but said there were currently no suspected or confirmed U.S. Ebola cases from the Sudan strain, which is behind the latest Uganda infections.

According to Uganda’s Health Ministry at least nine people had died of the disease in Uganda by October 3. Authorities in the east African nation announced the outbreak of the deadly hemorrhagic fever on September 20. There are 43 total cases, including the deaths.

U.S. screening began Thursday at the airports but the funneling requirements are expected to take effect within the coming week or so, a source told Reuters.

“Out of an abundance of caution (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will apply new layers of screening at these five U.S. airports in response to the Ebola outbreak in Uganda,” the U.S. Embassy in Uganda said

Travelers from Uganda need to arrive at New York-John F. Kennedy, Newark, Atlanta, Chicago O’Hare or Washington Dulles airports for screening. There is no approved vaccine for the Sudan strain of the disease, triggering fears of a major health crisis in the country of 45 million people.

Two sources said about 140 people who had recently been in Uganda arrive daily in the United States, with 62% landing at one of those five airports. Officials will conduct a temperature screening, ask health questions and report arrivals to local health departments.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, said the CDC’s health alert is an important message to both the public health and the medical community that they should be prepared for possible cases in the United States, as happened in the 2014-2016 Western Africa outbreak.

“We can handle Ebola safely in the hospital setting and provide best care to the patient, but you have to be aware that it might even be a possibility,” he said, referring to the 2014 incident in which a traveler from Liberia was evaluated initially at a hospital in Dallas and was turned away.

That patient was not admitted until two days later, when he arrived at the hospital by ambulance, potentially exposing emergency responders to the deadly virus.

The U.S. Embassy in Uganda said Thursday “the risk of Ebola domestically is currently low,” adding “enhanced screening applies to all passengers, including U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and visa holders (to include diplomatic and official visas).”

On Wednesday, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra spoke with Ugandan Health Minister Jane Aceng Ocero to discuss Ebola and U.S. efforts “to support Uganda throughout this challenging period,” HHS said.

On Saturday, a Tanzanian doctor working in Uganda who contracted Ebola has died, the first health worker killed by the disease in the latest outbreak in the country, Uganda’s health minister said.
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NASA makes history yet again. Plus, why a Mars rover’s doom may signal a new beginning, and a look back at a pioneering spacecraft’s suicide mission to Saturn. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Drought that stretched across three continents this summer — drying out large parts of Europe, the United States and China — was made 20 times more likely by climate change, according to a new study.

Drought dried up major rivers, destroyed crops, sparked wildfire, threatened aquatic species and led to water restrictions in Europe. It struck places already plagued by drying in the U.S., like the West, but also places where drought is more rare, like the Northeast. China also just had its driest summer in 60 years, leaving its famous Yangtze river half its normal width.

Researchers from World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists from around the world who study the link between extreme weather and climate change, say this type of drought would only happen once every 400 years across the Northern Hemisphere if not for human-caused climate change. Now they expect these conditions to repeat every 20 years, given how much the climate has warmed.

Ecological disasters like the widespread drought and then massive flooding in Pakistan, are the “fingerprints of climate change,” Maarten van Aalst, a climate scientist at Columbia University and study co-author, said.

“The impacts are very clear to people and are hitting hard,” he said, “not just in poor countries, like the flooding Pakistan …. but also in some of the richest parts of the world, like western central Europe.”

To figure out the influence of climate change on drying in the Northern Hemisphere, scientists analyzed weather data, computer simulations and soil moisture throughout the regions, excluding tropical areas. They found that climate change made dry soil conditions much more likely over the last several months.

This analysis was done using the warming the climate has already experienced so far, 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit), but climate scientists have warned the climate will get warmer, and the authors of the study accounted for that.

With an additional 0.8 degrees C degrees warming, this type of drought will happen once every 10 years in western Central Europe and every year throughout the Northern Hemisphere, said Dominik Schumacher, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich, a university in Switzerland.

“We’re seeing these compounding and cascading effect across sectors and across regions,” van Aalst said. “One way to reduce those impacts (is) to reduce emissions.”
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