Day: October 27, 2023

Iceland’s meteorological office reported Friday the Nordic Island nation’s southwestern Reykjanes Peninsula has been experiencing a “seismic swarm” of small earthquakes over the last three days, with at least 5,800 recorded since it began and around 1,000 since midnight Thursday.

In a series of reports on its website, the meteorological office — known as the “Met” office — said the vast majority of the quakes have been under magnitude 3, although two in the last three days were over 4.

The largest tremor, on Wednesday, measured 4.5 north of the town of Grindavík.

While small earthquakes are a daily occurrence in the nation, situated between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, the so-called seismic swarm is unusual.

The earthquakes prompted the national police commissioner to declare a Civil Protection “Level of Uncertainty,” encouraging residents to secure loose objects in their homes and noting that the earthquakes could trigger rocks or loose earth to slide in areas with steep slopes.

The Met office attributed the seismic swarm to stress changes in the earth’s crust induced by the flow of magma — molten rock — toward the surface beneath the Fagradalsfjall volcanic system.

In an interview with Reuters, Met Office Research division chief Matthew Roberts said the earthquakes are a warning sign for a volcanic eruption sometime in the next 12 months, although he added that predicting the timing of earthquakes is difficult.

Iceland’s last volcanic eruption, in July, occurred in an uninhabited part of the Reykjanes Peninsula after similar intense earthquake activity.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.
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Wu Zunyou, an epidemiologist who helped drive the country’s strict zero-COVID measures in China that suspended access to cities and confined millions to their homes, died on Friday. He was 60.

An announcement from China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention about Wu’s death gave no cause but said that “rescue measures failed.”

Wu’s health had been poor. He disappeared from the public eye for months last year while battling cancer.

Wu, who earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, had spent much of his early career working on HIV/AIDS prevention in China.

Wu was instrumental in developing China’s flagship policy in the HIV epidemic among intravenous drug users, according to his biography on the UCLA website. In recognition of this work, he was awarded the 2005 International Rolleston Award. Later, he was also awarded a UNAIDS Gold Medal in 2008 for his overall work.

Yet, as China battled the COVID-19 virus, Wu came to be criticized by some for his choice to publicly voice support for the country’s strict virus control measures even as the weaknesses of the strategy became more pronounced.

“Dynamic zero-COVID is appropriate for China’s reality and is the best choice to control our country’s current COVID situation,” he said in April 2022, during the height of Shanghai’s lockdown.

The strategy bought China time in the early days of the pandemic, but by 2022, as the virus became more and more easily spread, it showed signs of strain.

The mega city of Shanghai was unprepared for a lockdown, and its residents scrambled for groceries and basic necessities, while many also found it hard to access urgent medical services as people were barred from leaving their homes or even entering hospitals. Many were also angry about a key aspect of virus controls, which involved mass field hospitals where people who tested positive were forced to go by public health workers.

In private, Wu disagreed with the excesses of the zero-COVID strategy but felt powerless to go against it.

As zero-COVID became unsustainable in the fall of 2022, he wrote an internal report urging the government to avoid excessive measures. But in public press conferences throughout the past few years, he voiced the official line.

Wu visibly aged during the virus fight. He was pictured in 2020 with mostly black hair; by 2022, his locks had gone entirely gray.

The news of Wu’s death came just hours after the death of former Premier Li Keqiang was announced. Li was the country’s No. 2 leader during the pandemic.
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Researchers in Brazil have developed a vaccine designed to fight addiction to cocaine and its potent derivative crack — by preventing addicts from feeling the effects of the drugs and helping them stay on track for recovery.

The drug, known as Calixcoca, was developed by a team at Brazil’s Federal University of Minas Gerais. Preliminary tests on animals were positive and the drug is set to move to human trials.

Should it receive regulatory approval, the drug would be the first vaccine used to fight cocaine addiction, said the coordinator for the research team, psychiatrist Frederico Garcia.

Garcia told Agence France-Presse the drug works by prompting the body to produce anti-cocaine antibodies that bind to the drug, making them too large to pass into the brain’s mesolimbic system, or “reward center,” where the drug normally stimulates high levels of pleasure-inducing dopamine.

Testing suggests the drug also could reduce the risk of overdosing, as cocaine molecules, bound to the antibodies produced by the vaccine, would be unable to act on the heart or the arteries. 

Tests on pregnant rats indicated the antibodies are passed on through a mother’s milk, suggesting the vaccine could protect nursing babies as well.

Garcia cautioned the vaccine would not be a panacea and said it would be most helpful for recovering addicts who do not want to get hooked on the drug again following rehabilitation.

He said clinical trials conducted by Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa will be needed to determine how the drug might be used and discover any side effects or long-term impact on a patient’s health.

The research team received a $530,000 award last week for their work, sponsored by the Brazil-based pharmaceutical company Eurofarma.

Some information for this report was provided by Agence France-Presse. 
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