West African countries are taking steps to prevent a regional outbreak of Ebola after the deadly virus killed at least five people in Guinea.  As Guinea launched an Ebola vaccination drive Tuesday, after an outbreak in the West African nation’s southern Nzérékoré region, its neighbors were also preparing. The last Ebola outbreak in 2013 also started in Guinea and killed 11,300 people over three years as it spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. There were also cases in Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal and as far away as Europe and the United States.   Locations of current Ebola virus disease outbreaks in Guinea and DRC as of Feb. 22, 2021.The Ebola outbreak this month was traced to a funeral for a nurse who is suspected to have died of the virus.  Out of four confirmed and four probable cases, a total of five people have died.   Nzérékoré, the capital of the region, is the second-biggest city in Guinea, and a regional transport hub. Neighboring Sierra Leone declared a level two emergency response. Doctors Without Borders’ Lindis Hurum in Kenema district, one of the regions hardest hit by the last outbreak, says they are now better prepared.  “Both the government — the Ministry of Health — and the population themselves will be more prepared this time for Ebola just because of the fact that they lived through that really large and painful outbreak in 2014-16.  This we see already that people know what it is now,” said Hurum.In neighboring Mali, which was largely spared from the last Ebola outbreak, authorities were focused on the country’s borders. Dr. Akory Ag Iknane, the director of Mali’s National Institute for Public Health, says a team of health workers went to the border the day after Guinea declared the Feb. 14 outbreak.   ”The next day we went to the border at Kourémalé, between Mali and Guinea, to see some of the measures being taken,” he said.  “We noted that the measures are in place to reinforce the border with equipment and Personal Protective Equipment [PPE], and to reactivate the vigilance team there, who were already set in motion in 2014 during the last epidemic.”   During the last outbreak, non-Ebola related healthcare was severely impacted because of the strain the deadly virus put on the region’s healthcare systems.  While Guinea works to prevent the outbreak from spreading, Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) Hurum says in Sierra Leone they will remain community focused. “We know that the lessons learned from last time are very clear, and it’s to involve the community in all aspects, from day one, because they are the ones affected and they are the ones we need to listen to and engage with in order to stop the transmission,” said Hurum.FILE – Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfun gets inoculated with an Ebola vaccine in Goma, DRC, Nov. 22, 2019.Ebola vaccines were developed after the 2013 West African outbreak and have already been used in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s 2018 outbreak. The World Health Organization delivered 11,000 doses of Ebola vaccine to Guinea on Monday evening and has teams helping with the vaccination campaign.   
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As the United States races against time and devastating winter weather to vaccinate more than 300 million people against COVID-19, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a new set of guidelines that removes a key requirement for vaccine approval. The FDA announced Monday that drug makers would not need to perform a new round of massive clinical trials involving thousands of volunteers to test vaccines that have been adapted to target new variants of the coronavirus.  The agency said companies can test the efficacy of the updated vaccines through a similar process used for annual flu shots.FILE – A clinical trial patient receives a dose of AstraZeneca test vaccine at the University of Witwatersrand facility in Soweto, South Africa, Nov. 30, 2020. The process involves giving the newly adapted vaccine to a small group of volunteers and comparing the strength of its immune response to that of the original version.  Researchers can test the newly adapted vaccine as either a first shot or a booster shot for those who have already been inoculated. Drug makers are already working to revise their vaccines to meet the rapidly evolving strains of the coronavirus that have been identified in Britain, Brazil and South Africa, that may reduce the effectiveness of the existing vaccines.   The FDA’s new guidelines were released on the same day the United States surpassed 500,000 COVID-19 fatalities, first among all nations and the only one to reach such a  grim milestone in the 14-month long global pandemic.   U.S. President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden attend a candle-lighting ceremony to commemorate the grim milestone of 00,000 U.S. deaths from COVID-19, at the White House, Feb. 22, 2021.But the tragic milestone comes as the nation appears to be turning a corner in the fight against the coronavirus:  the average number of new COVID-19 infections and deaths has declined since its peak in early January, while vaccine distribution and inoculation rates are gradually rising despite an initial shortage of vaccines and the recent snowstorm that struck much of the U.S. this month, which delayed new shipments of vaccines by several days.    
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Is it better to give more people partial protection from COVID-19, or maximum protection to fewer people? As limited supplies of vaccines begin rolling out in parts of the world, some experts are suggesting authorities go against the recommended vaccine schedule. Rather than giving two shots spaced three or four weeks apart, they say it would be better to delay the second shot and instead focus on giving as many people their first shots as possible. With an out-of-control pandemic, they say, some protection is better than nothing.  And new data suggest that the vaccines work pretty well after one shot.  Many experts don’t like the idea, however. Big questions remain about how long protection lasts after the first shot and whether one shot is enough to protect against emerging variants.  Experts agree that everyone needs a second shot to get the highest level and longest-lasting protection. The question is how soon after the first. The longer the second shot can wait, the more people can potentially get the first.  First shot promising Some new data suggest that the first dose of vaccine provides pretty good protection. The British government Monday released figures showing that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 72% effective against infection after one dose. It reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by 75%. In those older than 80, the shot cut the risk of death by more than half.  Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks with a woman waiting to receive an Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, during his visit at a vaccination center at Cwmbran Stadium in Cwmbran, south Wales, Britain, Feb. 17, 2021.The report follows an Israeli study published last Thursday that showed similar results for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. It is welcome news for the British government, which decided to postpone second shots for up to 12 weeks when a new, highly contagious variant drove up COVID-19 cases late last year.  “[P]rioritizing the first doses of vaccine for as many people as possible on the priority list will protect the greatest number of at-risk people overall in the shortest possible time,” Britain’s chief medical officers said in a statement announcing the policy December 30.This approach “will have the greatest impact on reducing mortality, severe disease and hospitalizations, and in protecting the NHS (National Health Service) and equivalent health services,” they said. A pharmacist prepares a syringe with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a COVID-19 vaccination site at NYC Health + Hospitals Metropolitan, in New York, Feb. 18, 2021.The British Society for Immunology backed the government’s decision, saying that a longer wait between shots would not make the second one less effective. “Most immunologists would agree that delaying a second ‘booster’ dose of a protein antigen vaccine … by eight weeks would be unlikely to have a negative effect,” the group said in a statement. Durability One big concern, however, is how long protection from one dose lasts.  FILE – Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, prepares to receive his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Md., Dec. 22, 2020.”Although the numbers [from] a single dose do look interesting, the one thing we don’t know is how durable it is,” chief U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said in a briefing Friday. Since the virus is so new and the vaccines are even newer, scientists just don’t have much evidence to go on.  But some researchers say they know enough, based on what they have learned from other vaccines.  “Once you get good protection, it doesn’t suddenly disappear. It gradually wanes over time,” said Danuta Skowronski, epidemiology lead for influenza and respiratory diseases at the British Columbia Center for Disease Control. “You have the time to make those decisions about the second dose.” “What you don’t have time for is waffling on giving the first dose of vaccine while so many people are dying,” she added. The second shot not only generates a longer-lasting immune response, however. It also ratchets up the strength of the response.  That may be especially important with new variants circulating.  All the current vaccines are less effective against these variants. But they still seem to prevent the most serious COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and death.  “You want enough of a … response that even if you diminish it, you don’t diminish it so much to get out of the realm of protection,” Fauci said. But scientists do not know what that level is.  It is also possible that people with less-than-complete protection can help breed tougher variants that undermine the vaccines.  However, some note, the virus mutates the more it spreads, and even partial protection will slow that spread.  FILE – A South African woman is briefed before taking a COVID-19 test at the Ndlovu clinic in Groblersdal , 200 kms north-east of Johannesburg, Feb. 11, 2021.The variants that have emerged already “arose before any vaccine was there at all,” noted Harvard University epidemiologist William Hanage.  Biologists who study viral evolution are “generally comparatively relaxed” about the threat of undervaccinated people breeding variants, Hanage said. “I don’t think that there’s any particular reason to think that a delay is going to produce more vaccine escape variants.”  
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NASA on Monday released the first high-quality video of a spacecraft landing on Mars, a three-minute trailer showing the enormous orange and white parachute hurtling open and the red dust kicking up as rocket engines lowered the rover to the surface. The quality was so good — and the images so breathtaking — that members of the rover team said they felt like they were riding along. “It gives me goose bumps every time I see it, just amazing,” said Dave Gruel, head of the entry and descent camera team. The Perseverance rover landed last Thursday near an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater to search for signs of ancient microscopic life. After spending the weekend binge-watching the descent and landing video, the team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shared the video at a news conference. The surface of Mars directly below NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is seen using the Rover Down-Look Camera in a combination of images acquired Feb. 22, 2021. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Reuters)”These videos and these images are the stuff of our dreams,” said Al Chen, who was in charge of the landing team. Six off-the-shelf cameras were devoted to entry, descent and landing, looking up and down from different perspectives. All but one camera worked. The lone microphone turned on for landing failed, but NASA got some snippets of sound after touchdown: the whirring of the rover’s systems and wind gusts. Flight controllers were thrilled with the thousands of images beamed back — and also with the remarkably good condition of the rover. It will spend the next two years exploring the dry river delta and drilling into rocks that may hold evidence of life 3 billion to 4 billion years ago. The core samples will be set aside for return to Earth in a decade. NASA added 25 cameras to the $3 billion mission — the most ever sent to Mars. The space agency’s previous rover, 2012’s Curiosity, managed only jerky, grainy stop-motion images, mostly of terrain. Curiosity is still working. So is NASA’s InSight lander, although it’s hampered by dusty solar panels.  This combination of images from video made available by NASA shows steps in the descent of the Mars Perseverance rover as it approaches the surface of the planet, Feb. 18, 2021. (NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP)Deputy project manager Matt Wallace said he was inspired several years ago to film Perseverance’s harrowing descent when his young gymnast daughter wore a camera while performing a backflip. Watching the video “I think you will feel like you are getting a glimpse into what it would be like to land successfully in Jezero Crater with Perseverance,” he said. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s science mission chief, said the video and also the panoramic views following touchdown “are the closest you can get to landing on Mars without putting on a pressure suit.” The images will help NASA prepare for astronaut flights to Mars in the decades ahead, according to the engineers. There’s a more immediate benefit. “I know it’s been a tough year for everybody,” said imaging scientist Justin Maki, “and we’re hoping that maybe these images will help brighten people’s days.” 
 
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With the Ebola virus flaring in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a new outbreak in Guinea, Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum is worried.“This is a great concern for us, especially since the COVID and Ebola crises are occurring” simultaneously, said Muyembe, who manages DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research and is coordinating his country’s responses to both infectious diseases.A renowned expert on the Ebola virus, the 78-year-old microbiologist sees it as a more urgent threat than COVID-19 in his country. Meanwhile, the pandemic’s official Locations of current Ebola virus disease outbreaks in Guinea and DRC as of Feb. 22, 2021In past Ebola outbreaks, anywhere from 25% to 90% of infected people died, the World Health Organization reports. By comparison, the overall mortality risk of COVID-19, a respiratory disease, is 1% or less, but rises with age and risk factors, according toThe Congolese government’s Ebola response coordinator, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, visits a new Doctors Without Borders Ebola treatment center in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Aug. 6, 2019. (Reuters)New tools to combat EbolaSome positive developments in Ebola prevention and treatment emerged, Muyembe noted, citing vaccines and drug therapies.“We have the tools to vaccinate and to treat the sick. Thus, we break the chain of transmission, and the virus can go back into the forest,” he said.In late 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Ervebo, a one-shot vaccine. Last July, the European Union approved Zabdeno, with a two-dose regimen.Gains also have been made in treatment. Late last year, the FDA approved two therapies for treating Ebola infections: the antibody cocktail Inmazeb and the human monoclonal antibody Ebanga. The DRC institute worked with the U.S. National Institutes of Health to develop the latter, Muyembe said, noting that his team revisited promising research that Western partners had asked them to set aside more than a decade ago.The institute has sent some of the treatment to North Kivu, Muyembe said, and “we will also send some shipments to Guinea to treat the sick. This is something we can do in the framework of African solidarity to help our friends in Guinea.”He added that Congolese health experts also would be sent there.Distribution of the Ebola vaccine is targeted, not widespread, as is planned for COVID-19 vaccines. In part, that is because Ebola spreads through direct contact; COVID can spread from an infected person through droplets that hang in the air and are harder to avoid.“If you’re spending money manufacturing vaccine and getting it into the arms of every person in a given country, that’s money that’s not being spent on something else that’s way more common, like (the) measles vaccine, or even other non-health-related issues,” Tiffany Harris, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, told VOA. Raising awarenessMuyembe made a point of getting a shot in front of news cameras as soon as the Ebola vaccine was available. He will do the same with a COVID-19 vaccine, he said, to bolster public awareness and to allay suspicions of a Western ploy to sterilize or otherwise harm Africans.Misinformation is “amplified here in Africa,” Muyembe said. “It is up to us to convey the true messages of peace and security” to get people “to accept the COVID vaccine. But it’s not easy.”Health authorities have ramped up public awareness campaigns in Ebola-affected areas, joining much broader COVID-19 awareness campaigns on radio, social media and other platforms throughout Africa.“You can end an epidemic, but you cannot end the virus,” Muyembe said of Ebola. “… It can come back, so we have to be vigilant.”Adam Phillips of VOA’s English to Africa Service contributed to this report.    Photos uploaded to Voltron:DRCONGO-HEALTH-EBOLA-VACCINATION (AFP 000_1MH6OU)Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum gets inoculated with an Ebola vaccine November 22, 2019, in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo. (AFP) (Ebola-Muyembe-Reuters)Congolese government’s Ebola response coordinator Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum visits the new MSF (Doctors Without Borders) Ebola treatment center in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, August 6, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner Map:Suggested revised text for caption:      – Instead of: Current EVD outbreaks in Guinea and DRC     – Suggested revise: Locations of current Ebola virus disease outbreaks in Guinea and DRC as of Feb. 22, 2021  On the map itself, can we replace Katwa either with North Kivu or say Katwa, North Kivu    
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans Monday to begin easing coronavirus lockdown measures. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, Johnson credited Britain’s rapid vaccination program for allowing the country to begin reopening — amid growing scientific evidence that the vaccines will help to bring the global pandemic under control. Camera: Henry Ridgwell   
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A NASA unmanned resupply ship docked at the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday carrying more than 3,600 kilograms of research equipment and supplies to the orbiting laboratory. The spacecraft, built by aerospace company Northrop Grumman, was bolted into place on the Earth-facing port of the ISS shortly after arrival.  Along with basic supplies for the space station, the ship’s cargo included equipment to conduct science investigations into the creation of artificial retinas for treating degenerative human eye diseases, zero-gravity advanced computer capabilities, and the cause of muscle weakening that astronauts can experience in microgravity using tiny worms. Northrop Grumman named the supply capsule the S.S. Katherine Johnson, after the African American NASA mathematician whose work was made famous in the movie “Hidden Figures.” Her calculations contributed to the February 20, 1962, flight in which John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth. The supply ship blasted off from Wallops Island in Virginia on Saturday. It will remain at the space station until May, when it will depart for Earth carrying several tons of trash. 
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The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is appealing for $9.4 million to fund efforts to prevent a new Ebola outbreak from spreading across West Africa.   
 
The IFRC said Monday the money will be used to step up “surveillance and community sensitization efforts” in Guinea, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
 
“Ebola does not care about borders,” said Mohammed Mukhier, the IFRC’s Regional Director for Africa.  “Close social, cultural and economic ties between communities in Guinea and neighboring countries create a very serious risk of the virus spreading to Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone, and potentially even further.”
 
Health officials in Guinea declared an epidemic Sunday after three cases were detected in Gouécké, a rural community in N’Zerekore prefecture. At least one victim there has died. It is the first Ebola outbreak in Guinea since 2016.
 
The 2014 Ebola outbreak, the biggest in history, killed more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
 
Guinea was expecting the delivery of 11,000 doses of Ebola vaccine from the World Health Organization Sunday, but the Reuters news agency says the shipment was delayed due to heavy dust brought by winds from the Sahara Desert.  The shipment is now due to arrive in Conarky on Monday, with vaccination efforts due to begin on Tuesday.   
 
Guinea is also expecting another 8,600 doses of vaccine from the United States.   
 
There have also been four confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including two deaths. WHO has around 20 experts supporting national and provincial health authorities in the DRC.
 
The United Nations announced it is releasing $15 million from its emergency relief fund to help fight the outbreaks in both Guinea and the DRC.
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Israel closed all its Mediterranean beaches until further notice Sunday, days after an offshore oil spill deposited tons of tar across more than 160 kilometers (100 miles) of coastline in what officials are calling one of the country’s worst ecological disasters.Activists began reporting globs of black tar on Israel’s coast last week after a heavy storm. The deposits have wreaked havoc on local wildlife, and the Israeli Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry determined Sunday that a dead young fin whale that washed up on a beach in southern Israel died from ingesting the viscous black liquid, according to Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster.  Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority has called the spill “one of the most serious ecological disasters” in the country’s history. In 2014, a crude oil spill in the Arava Desert caused extensive damage to one of the country’s delicate ecosystems.  The Environmental Protection Ministry and activists estimate that at least 1,000 tons of tar, a product of an oil spill from a ship in the eastern Mediterranean earlier this month, have washed up on shore. The ministry is trying to determine who is responsible. It declined commenting on details of the investigation because it was ongoing.  Yoav Ratner, coordinator of the ministry’s oil spill contingency plan, said that there were still many “unknown unknowns” about the extent of the ecological damage and therefore it was difficult to say how long cleanup would take.  Thousands of volunteers took to the beaches on Saturday to help clean up the tar, and several were hospitalized after they inhaled toxic fumes. The military also deployed thousands of soldiers to assist in the operation.  The Environmental Protection, Health and Interior Ministries issued a joint statement Sunday warning the public not to visit the entire length of the country’s 195-kilometer (120-mile) Mediterranean coastline, cautioning that “exposure to tar can be harmful to public health.”  Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel told Hebrew media that her department estimates the cleanup project will cost millions of dollars.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured one of the country’s tar-pocked beaches on Sunday and praised the ministry’s work.Representatives from a coalition of Israeli environmental groups said in a press conference on Sunday that the ministry was woefully underfunded, and that existing legislation did little to prevent or address environmental disasters.  Arik Rosenblum, director of the Israeli environmental group EcoOcean, said that the Environmental Protection Ministry is “fighting this situation and many other situations with their hands tied behind their back” because of inadequate legislation.  They cautioned that this disaster should be a wake-up call for opposition to a planned oil pipeline connecting the United Arab Emirates and Israeli oil facilities in Eilat — home to endangered Red Sea coral reefs.
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Israel has reopened many schools, malls and gyms that were closed for several weeks. Some venues, however, are open only to those with a “green passport,” a document showing they have received both doses of the coronavirus vaccine. The opening comes amid reports that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine works better than expected.  Malls reopened after almost two months, and there were lines outside some of the stores. Parking lots were jammed, and many children went back in school for the first time in months. But some venues, like gyms, cultural events and hotels, are open only to those with a green passport, a document showing that they have either received both shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or have recovered from COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said Israel is not imposing an obligation to get vaccinated.   Edelstein said that contrary to what he called “fake news,” Israel is not imposing sanctions on anyone who does not get vaccinated.   At the same time, some in Israel said that limiting venues like gyms and hotels to those who have been vaccinated was in effect a sanction on those who hadn’t received the shots.   FILE – Israelis receive a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from medical professionals at a coronavirus vaccination center set up on a shopping mall parking lot in Givataim, Israel, Feb. 4, 2021.So far, about one-third of Israel’s population of 9.2 million has received both doses, and nearly half have received the first shot. A further 3 million Israelis are not eligible to receive the vaccine, either because they are under 16 or because they have recovered from the infection. The director of Israel’s Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, Ronni Gamzu, says the results of the Pfizer vaccine are even better than in clinical trials. They show that the vaccine is very effective and very, very minor side effects almost, you know what, almost none, we have seen cases here and there, and we have seen the effectiveness is what was stated in the studies of Pfizer and Moderna, around 95 percent, and if you look at people admitted to the hospital it is even more than that. The protection is solid, said Gamzu.Israel’s Health Ministry said that after two doses, Israelis saw their risk of illness from the coronavirus drop 98.5 percent, and their risk of hospitalization drop almost 99 percent. The statement was based on data from a poll  of 1.7 million Israelis who had received both shots by the end of January.  Among those being vaccinated are Arab citizens of Israel, and Palestinians in east Jerusalem, which is under Israeli control; but, the 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have yet to be inoculated.  The Palestinian minister of health said on Friday that Israel has agreed to vaccinate 100,000 Palestinian laborers who work regularly in Israel. Some human rights groups say that because Israel controls entry and exit into the West Bank and Gaza, it is responsible for providing vaccinations for the residents there.   
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Major winter storms, extreme cold and power outages shut down more than 2,000 vaccination sites and delayed delivery of 6 million vaccine doses in all 50 states last week, White House senior adviser Andy Slavitt said in a briefing with reporters Friday.Extreme weather has spread across large swaths of the United States since Feb. 14. Crippling snowfall and record-cold temperatures hit Oklahoma and Arkansas and triggered power outages across Texas.The storms set back the Biden administration’s efforts to ramp up vaccine delivery. Earlier in the month, more than 1.5 million doses per day were delivered on average. Preliminary data from last week show a steep drop-off, but full numbers are not yet available.The weather delayed President Joe Biden’s visit to a Kalamazoo, Michigian, plant producing vaccine from drugmaker Pfizer from Thursday to Friday.The weather is improving and deliveries are getting back on track, with 1.4 million doses shipping Friday, Slavitt said. But the backups will take time to clear.”We anticipate that all the backlog doses will be delivered within the next week, with most being delivered within the next several days,” he said.The weather caused disruptions all along the supply chain, Slavitt said.A plant packaging vaccines from pharmaceutical company Moderna was knocked offline by a winter storm.”Roads are being cleared for the workforce to leave their homes,” Slavitt said. “They are working today through Sunday to package the backlogged orders.”Road closures held up deliveries between manufacturing, distribution and shipping sites. And workers at all three major shipping companies, UPS, FedEx and McKesson, have been snowed in, he added, holding up shipments.Vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech need to be kept extremely cold while stored, but Slavitt told CNN Thursday that “there hasn’t been a single vaccine that’s spoiled” due to the delays.”The vaccines are sitting safe and sound in our factories and hubs, ready to be shipped out as soon as the weather allows,” he told reporters Friday.The disruptions were severe enough for Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker to discuss sending the state’s National Guard to rescue doses trapped in Kentucky and Tennessee.After federal officials rushed 135,000 doses to the state, Baker spokesperson Kate Reilly said Friday that the governor “appreciates the efforts made to get this critical shipment here and is not anticipating additional delays from the federal government for vaccine shipments at this time.”Slavitt said the federal government is asking vaccinators to extend hours and offer extra appointments to catch up.”We will be able to catch up, but we understand this will mean asking more of people,” he said.
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Argentina’s health minister has resigned after he reportedly gave preferential treatment to those with personal connections when authorizing coronavirus vaccinations.The Associated Press reported that President Alberto Fernández, through his chief of staff, asked for Minister of Health Ginés González García’s resignation Friday after a high-profile local journalist said he had been vaccinated after personally asking the minister.González García had led the country’s COVID-19 strategy.The journalist was one of at least 10 people reported to have been inoculated without following protocol.The scandal heightened concerns about corruption in the region, as well as access to limited doses of vaccines.Two Cabinet officials in Peru resigned earlier this month following reports of hundreds of Peruvian officials inappropriately receiving vaccine doses.Praise from WHOMeanwhile, the World Health Organization said it welcomed the recent pledges of coronavirus vaccines from several Western countries to the international health group that will help ensure an equitable allocation of vaccines around the world.FILE – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, speaks during a session of the Executive Board on the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Geneva, Jan. 21, 2021.“There is a growing movement behind vaccine equity, and I welcome that world leaders are stepping up to the challenge by making new commitments to effectively end this pandemic by sharing doses and increasing funds to COVAX,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said recently. COVAX is the mechanism WHO established for the global distribution of coronavirus vaccines.German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday that the pandemic would not end until the world was vaccinated. In remarks after the videoconference of leaders of the G-7, the group of the largest, developed economies, she said Germany and other wealthy countries might need to give some of their own stock of vaccines to developing nations.French President Emmanuel Macron told the conference that Europe and the United States must quickly send enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to Africa to inoculate the continent’s health care workers or risk losing influence to Russia and China.The coronavirus death toll on the African continent surpassed 100,000 Friday, as African countries struggle to obtain vaccines to counteract the pandemic.South Africa alone accounts for nearly half of the confirmed deaths in Africa, with more than 48,000, according to data from the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center in the U.S. The country, which is facing its own variant of the virus, also accounts for nearly half the confirmed cases in the region, with more than 1.5 million. Total cases across the African continent are more than 3.8 million.The 54-nation continent of about 1.3 billion people reached 100,000 deaths shortly after marking one year since the first coronavirus case was confirmed on the continent, in Egypt on February 14, 2020.The actual death toll from the virus in Africa is believed to be higher than the official count as some who died were likely never included in confirmed tallies.FILE – A container with doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus disease is loaded into a truck, at the airport in Luque, Paraguay, Feb. 18, 2021.Russian vaccinesRussia’s deputy prime minister said Saturday on state television that Russia was on target to produce 88 million coronavirus vaccine doses in the first six months of 2021. Tatiana Golikova said 83 million of the doses would be the Sputnik V vaccine.Russia’s prime minister, also speaking on state television Saturday, said that Russia had approved a third coronavirus vaccine for domestic use.Mikhail Mishustin said the first 120,000 doses of CoviVac, produced by the Chumakov Centre in St. Petersburg, would be released in March.California’s governor said his state would set aside 10% of its vaccines for teachers and school employees, beginning March 1. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged U.S. school districts to reopen, teachers unions have pushed back against the action, saying safety precautions, such as vaccines for school staff, need to be in place first.Denmark is imposing stricter regulations at some of its border crossings with Germany and has temporarily closed others because of a COVID-19 outbreak in the German town of Flensburg.“Therefore, we are now introducing considerably more intense border checks and closing a number of smaller border crossings along the Danish-German border,” Danish Justice Minister Nick Haekkerup said in a statement.Johns Hopkins reported Saturday afternoon EST that there were more than 110,940,000 global COVID-19 cases.  The U.S. had more cases than any other country with 28 million, followed by India with 10.9 million and Brazil with 10 million. Global deaths were more than 2.4 million.FILE – A child wearing a mask to protect against the coronavirus rests on the bank of the Yangtze River in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province, April 16, 2020.Book dealA major publishing company has picked up a self-published children’s book, illustrated with simple line drawings, about a little boy struggling with all the changes in his life because of the COVID-19 pandemic.When Can I Go Back to School was written by Anna Friend, a theater director, about her son Billy. She told The Guardian newspaper, “I wrote the book to try and understand what was happening to him.”She asked Jake Biggin, a friend who is an artist, to do the illustrations. They started selling the book on Amazon and now they have a deal with Scholastic.  
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