Azhoni Marina had witnessed the havoc wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic up close as she nursed patients in a COVID ward for seven months at New Delhi’s Indraprastha Apollo Hospital. As she waited after her night shift to get her first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, however, she was apprehensive.“I heard from so many people that there is lot of side effect, so actually I was a bit worried before I received the vaccine,” Marina said.However, a sense of relief washed over her when she did not suffer any aftereffects during the half-hour mandatory wait after she got the shot.“I am now waiting for my second dose,” she said, heading home.Unlike most countries, for India the challenge is not availability of vaccines as it rolls out a nationwide inoculation drive – there are millions of doses ready in the world’s largest vaccine-producing country.Since launching the program in mid-January, though, health officials have been battling to overcome “vaccine hesitancy” as people scheduled to take shots failed to show up at inoculation centers.The waning pandemic in India, health officials warn, has led to a sense of complacency about the need to get vaccines, while initial reports about possible side effects have raised doubts among some. That includes some of the country’s 30 million health and front-line workers, who are first in line to get the shots.At the Apollo Hospital, doctors ramped up the numbers of inoculations by stepping forward to take the vaccine to allay doubts — the daily numbers of inoculations have grown nearly threefold here.Nurse Azhino Marina is apprehensive as she waits for her COVID-19 vaccine shot at New Delhi’s Indraprastha Apollo Hospital. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)“People were a bit scared, they asked a lot of questions, we kept on answering their questions and then when they saw that vaccine is quite safe, this helped us in building confidence in vaccines,” said Sanjeev Sharma, a hospital clinical pharmacologist.From talks by senior doctors, to individual counseling sessions, to selfie points where those who get vaccinated take photos and upload them on social media, the Indian capital has launched several initiatives to persuade people to take the shots.For Rajesh Kumar Kohli, who worked in the COVID section of the Apollo Hospital for several weeks, getting the vaccine’s first dose brought huge relief.“Even if something happened to me, I will now be safe,” he said.However, the decreased sense of urgency about getting inoculated as India’s case numbers dip dramatically is posing a challenge. India is reporting about 12,000 infections a day, compared to about 90,000 at its peak in September.Indian cities such as New Delhi that were hot spots for the pandemic are fully open. Markets are buzzing, movie theaters and restaurants have opened, the streets are again crammed with vehicles.The government’s decision to administer a homegrown vaccine, Covaxin, before final trial results become available has also created doubts among some, even though health experts have been reiterating that it is both effective and safe, and leading doctors in the city have taken the shot to instill confidence. This is one of the two vaccines being used at inoculation centers.A health care worker in New Delhi gets a photo taken at a selfie point set up to encourage people to come forward to get inoculated. (Anjana Pasricha/VOA)Several big Indian states, such as Tamil Nadu and Punjab, have vaccinated fewer than half of their health care workers who are due to be given shots.Health officials have been constantly reinforcing the message that only vaccinations will end the pandemic, saying the lower numbers present India a with window of opportunity to make sure it is not hit by a second wave, as many Western countries have been.“Where the footfall is not so good, we are organizing talks by senior consultants, we are involving local people and mobilizers to ask them to come to the centers,” said Dr. Pareejat Saurabh, an immunization officer in Delhi. Those steps have boosted numbers.India is expected to move to the next phase of its program next month, inoculating those over 50. This may pose greater challenges, though. Even in this vulnerable group, opinion on taking the vaccine is divided, with some saying they are anxiously awaiting their turn and others preferring to “wait and watch.”“Whenever my turn comes, I will take the vaccine,” said Veena Sawhney, shopping at a New Delhi market.A shop owner, Rajesh Mehta, however, was more cautious.“The old should take it. I want my mother to get it. But I am in no rush, my immunity is OK,” he told VOA.So far, more than 8 million people have been vaccinated – India says it has been the fastest to administer this many shots and plans to accelerate the drive in coming weeks.Given the massive scale of the task, though, the country with the second-highest number of infections after the United States could fall short of its target of reaching 300 million people, nearly one quarter of its population, by August.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered more than 50 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and delivered about 69.9 million doses.The tally of vaccine doses is for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET Saturday, the agency said.According to the tally posted on Friday, the agency had administered 48.4 million doses of the vaccines, and delivered about 69 million doses.The agency said about 37.1 million people had received one or more doses while more than 13 million people have got the second dose as of Saturday.About 5.7 million vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.   
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Four people have died of Ebola in Guinea in the first resurgence of the disease in five years, the country’s health minister said Saturday.Remy Lamah told AFP that officials were “really concerned” about the deaths, the first since a 2013-16 epidemic — which began in Guinea — left 11,300 dead across the region.One of the latest victims in Guinea was a nurse who fell ill in late January and was buried on February 1, National Health Security Agency head Sakoba Keita told local media.”Among those who took part in the burial, eight people showed symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding,” he said. Three died and four were in a hospital, he added.The four deaths from Ebola hemorrhagic fever occurred in the southeast region of Nzerekore, he said.Keita also told local media that one patient had “escaped” but had been found and hospitalized in the capital, Conakry. He confirmed the comments to AFP without giving further detail.The World Health Organization has eyed each new outbreak since 2016 with great concern, treating the most recent one in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an international health emergency.’Testing underway’Early Sunday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted that the U.N. health agency had been informed of two suspected cases of the deadly disease in Guinea.”Confirmatory testing underway,” the tweet said, adding that WHO’s regional and country offices were “supporting readiness and response efforts.”The DRC has faced several outbreaks of the illness, with the WHO on Thursday confirming a resurgence three months after authorities declared the end of the country’s latest outbreak.The country had declared the six-month epidemic over in November. It was the country’s 11th Ebola outbreak, claiming 55 lives out of 130 cases.The widespread use of vaccinations, which were administered to more than 40,000 people, helped curb the disease.The 2013-16 outbreak sped up the development of a vaccine against Ebola, with a global emergency stockpile of 500,000 doses planned to respond quickly to future outbreaks, the vaccine alliance Gavi said in January.  
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New research has shown that Australia is the “last stronghold on Earth” for four out of five threatened species of sawfish. With their serrated snouts, these predatory fish are one of the ocean’s most unusual and endangered animals.They have a snout, or rostrum, that looks like a hedge-trimmer or a chainsaw. Small electromagnetic sensors help the sawfish detect the heartbeat and movement of buried prey. They are generally unassuming creatures, but when threatened, the saw also serves as a weapon. They can grow up to 7 meters in length and move easily between fresh and salt water. In Australia, they’re found in Queensland, the Northern Territory and on the west coast.Around the world, they are hunted for their fins and other body parts, which are used in traditional medicines or sold as souvenirs. Habitat loss is a significant threat. So is entanglement in fishing nets as their serrated snout is easily caught up in the mesh.An international study published in the journal Science Advances, including research from Charles Darwin University in Australia’s Northern Territory, has found that sawfish are now extinct in more than 50 nations.Leonardo Guida is a shark scientist from the Australian Marine Conservation Society. He says sawfish have disappeared in many parts of the world.“Sawfish are facing the very real threat of global extinction because of overfishing and habitat destruction across the world,” he said. “So we know that in more than half of the countries that they live in, they are no longer found. That equates to about 55 out of 90 countries, and Australia is the lifeboat. It is the last place on Earth where we have chance to really save these species from global extinction.”New research has identified eight nations, including Tanzania, Brazil and Sri Lanka, where urgent action could help to save this unique species.Trade in sawfish is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, but deliberate and accidental killings still take place.
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The top public health agency in the U.S. said Friday that in-person schooling could resume safely with masks, social distancing and other strategies but that vaccination of teachers, while important, was not a prerequisite for reopening.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its long-awaited road map for getting students back to classrooms in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. But its guidance is just that — the agency cannot force schools to reopen, and agency officials were careful to say they were not calling for a mandate that all U.S. schools be reopened.Officials said there was strong evidence now that schools could reopen, especially at lower grade levels.The new guidance included many of the same measures previously backed by the CDC, but it suggested them more forcefully. It emphasized that all of the recommendations must be implemented strictly and consistently to keep schools safe. It also provided more detailed suggestions about what type of schooling should be offered given different levels of virus transmission, with differing advice for elementary, middle and high schools.Recommended measures included handwashing, disinfection of school facilities, diagnostic testing, and contact tracing to find new infections and separate infected people from others in a school. It was also more emphatic than past guidance about the need to wear masks in school.”We know that most clusters in the school setting have occurred when there are breaches in mask wearing,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, said in a call with reporters.FILE – Pre-kindergarten teacher Sarah McCarthy works with a student at Dawes Elementary in Chicago, Jan. 11, 2021.Extra ‘layer of protection’Although the guidance said vaccinating teachers should not be seen as a condition to reopen, Walensky said it could provide “an additional layer of protection.”The guidance was issued as President Joe Biden faces increasing pressure to deliver on his promise to get the majority of schools back to in-person teaching by the end of his first 100 days in office. The White House said this week that a national strategy would be guided by science.”This is free from political meddling,” Walensky said.There’s wide agreement that learning in the classroom is more effective and that students can face isolation and learning setbacks at home. But teachers unions in some areas say schools have failed to make buildings safe enough to return.CDC officials emphasized that in-person learning has not been identified as a substantial driver of coronavirus spread in U.S. communities, and that transmission among students is now considered relatively rare.The CDC also stressed that the safest way to open schools is by making sure there is as little disease in a community as possible. The agency urged local officials to assess whether a bad outbreak is occurring in a community when making decisions about sending adults and children in to schools.FILE – Students wear masks as they work in a fourth-grade classroom at Elk Ridge Elementary School in Buckley, Wash., Feb. 2, 2021.Chart offers guidanceThe guidance included a color-coded chart, from blue to red, on assessing community spread, including rates of new cases per 100,000 people and the percentage of positive tests.That said, high community transmission does not necessarily mean schools cannot be open — especially those at the elementary level. If school mitigation measures are strictly followed, the risk of spread in the schools should still be low, the guidance suggested.The document suggested that when things get risky, elementary schools could go hybrid, providing in-person instruction at least on some days, but that middle and high schools might go virtual.Biden has been caught between competing interests as he works to get students into classrooms without spurning the powerful teachers unions that helped get him elected. Critics say he has bowed to unions instead of taking more aggressive action on reopening.Unlike former President Donald Trump, who pressured schools to open and blasted the CDC for issuing guidance that he said was impractical, Biden has kept his distance from the CDC as it works on recommendations. Even after the CDC’s director recently said that vaccinations were not a prerequisite for reopening, the White House declined to take a firm stance on the question.No White House inputWhite House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that “no one on our senior staff” had seen the CDC guidelines ahead of their release. “I can assure you that the White House is not directing the CDC.”FILE – Paul Adamus, 7, waits at the bus stop for the first day of school in Dallas, Ga., Aug. 3, 2020.Getting students back into classrooms is seen as a key to getting parents back to work. As part of Biden’s coronavirus relief package, he’s calling for $130 billion to help schools update buildings, buy protective gear and enact other recommended safety measures.Biden’s national strategy says the administration “will also work with states and local school districts to support screening testing in schools, including working with states to ensure an adequate supply of test kits.”But the CDC guidance stops short of recommending testing, saying, “Some schools may also elect to use screening testing as a strategy to identify cases and prevent secondary transmission.”Some education leaders complained that CDC guidance provided under Trump did not go far enough and that information issued to schools was inconsistent. On masks, for example, it said face coverings were recommended if students could not be spaced 2 meters apart, but with social distancing, it said masks “may be considered.”Early concernsIn the early days of the U.S. epidemic, some health experts worried that schools might become cauldrons of coronavirus infection, with kids infecting each other and then spreading it to family members — as seems to be the case during cold and flu season.Those concerns were stoked by reports of an explosive outbreak in May at a high school in Israel, shortly after schools in that country reopened after a lockdown.But with the economy reeling after lockdowns of schools and businesses last spring, the Trump administration pushed hard for schools to reopen.In July, Trump accused the CDC of “asking schools to do very impractical things” in order to reopen. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos incorrectly said research showed there was no danger “in any way” if kids were in school, and Vice President Mike Pence promised that the CDC would issue new guidance.The CDC did post revised documents late that month that kept many of its earlier recommendations. But in response to reporters’ questions, CDC officials said that the decision on whether to send kids back to school really rested with parents. The agency also posted an introductory document — written by government officials outside the CDC — that stressed the potential risks of children not attending school.   
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In Malawi, health care workers have come under attack several times recently while trying to bury victims of COVID-19 without spreading the coronavirus.Health care workers now want a review of guidelines that say they should handle the burials.The incident happened Tuesday in Mchinji district in central Malawi where villagers threw stones at an ambulance carrying the dead body, in an effort to force the heath care workers to release the body for viewing.The pandemonium forced the heath care workers to return the body to the mortuary.This came a week after villagers in Zomba district in southern Malawi chased away health care workers who had come to bury a COVID-19 victim.They too claimed that their loved one died of other illnesses, not COVID-19, and demanded to bury the body themselves.Shouts Simeza is chairperson for the Human Resources for Health Coalition.He says if the attacks continue, the health care workers will refuse to bury any more bodies.“Because of harassment and abuse, we always leave in fear,” Simeza said. “If the situation continues, all of us heath care workers, we will withdraw ourselves from the service of escorting the remains of our brothers and sisters in the communities.”Families have argued they see no reason they can’t bury COVID-19 victims after health care workers disinfect the bodies. They say they believe the body is safe from coronavirus after disinfection.But Simeza says the health care workers are only following guidelines on how to bury the victims of COVID-19.“The guidelines still demand that the health workers should support in escorting and burying of remains for safety of the public,” Simeza said, “So, the direction now is to work on the guidelines, what we have at hand; review them. For that to be carried out, we will need to involve community so that they can appreciate the scourge.”In the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts warned that dead bodies were infectious, like bodies of those killed by the Ebola virus.More recently, however, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued a burial guide that said, “it is believed there is little risk of getting COVID-19 from a dead body.”The guide said the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, spreads mainly through droplets produced when a person coughs, sneezes or talks.Malawi has seen a surge in COVID-19 cases since November.Health authorities put the current average number of daily infections at 300 cases compared to 10 during the first wave of the pandemic.   
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The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is calling on the world community to make sure Africa gets a fair share of COVID-19 vaccines.  
 
Ahead of a visit to the Central African Republic, one year after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was reported there, ICRC President Peter Maurer said in a statement Friday that “[i]t is a moral imperative that Africa’s access to needed vaccines is drastically improved, but also that COVID vaccination campaigns do not come at the cost of other key health concerns.”  
 
He said as new COVID-19 variants start to spread, “[n]o one is safe until everyone is safe,” adding that “equitable access to its vaccine today is a critical step towards more equitable access to vaccines more generally.”
 
The World Health Organization said this week that the UN-led COVAX initiative aims to start shipping about 90 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Africa this month.  It said the immunization rollout will be the continent’s largest ever mass vaccination campaign.
 
Most of the doses will be of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
 
The ICRC said as more vaccines become available, it is of paramount importance that authorities give high priority to displaced people, migrants and refugees, people in detention, and to communities in areas under non-government control, the statement said.
 
“Vaccinating vulnerable groups across the globe makes economic sense,” Maurer said.
 
The ICRC, in close cooperation with Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies and other partners, is ready to help with vaccine roll outs, Maurer said.  
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The Australian Open in Melbourne is underway, but without any spectators. Instead of enjoying the tournament, tennis fans and the millions of people who live in Victoria state are under a five-day snap shutdown, following a coronavirus outbreak at a quarantine hotel in Melbourne, Victoria’s capital. Tennis players have been classified as essential workers. Germany is banning travel from its Czech border regions and Austria’s Tyrol because of an alarming COVID surge in the two locations.  The restrictions go into effect Sunday.Missionaries in some remote areas of Brazil have convinced some Indigenous people that the COVID-19 vaccine is not good for them. The residents of one Amazon village picked up bows and arrows to fight off healthcare workers set on inoculating the region’s residents. Brazil has 9.7 million COVID-19 cases, coming in third place in the world’s infections, behind only India with 10. 8 million and the U.S. with 27.3 million cases. There are more than 107 million global infections. FILE – Packages of protective face masks are show after being donated to Miami-Dade Transit employees during a news conference April 24, 2020, in Miami.In US, N95 mask shortage
In Washington, the White House is working with mask manufacturers and medical supply companies to ensure that frontline workers have the N95 masks they desperately need. U.S. President Joe Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator read in The New York Times about the disconnect between mask makers, supply companies and hospitals and has begun facilitating connections. Jeffrey D. Zients said in a statement, “We will do all we can to get frontline workers the personal protective equipment they need, including breaking down barriers for N95 manufacturers.”“The COVID-19 pandemic has been a stark reminder of the importance of integrating mental health into preparedness and response plans for public health emergencies,” said Dévora Kestel, the World Health Organization’s director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Use at a recent executive board meeting.  “The inclusion of this issue at the next session of the World Health Assembly is an important next step towards being better prepared to provide people with the support they need for their mental health during future public health emergencies.”The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. 
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A warning by the World Health Organization that the COVID-19 pandemic could harm efforts to eradicate malaria appears to be coming true in Nigeria. Nigerian officials say people are refusing to get treatment for fear of catching the virus at a clinic.Fatima Mohammed is in her home at a camp for displaced people in Abuja, tending to her two sons who are currently down with malaria.She says she’s can’t afford huge hospital bills and is afraid that taking them to the hospital could potentially expose them to COVID-19 or result in a misdiagnosis.”I don’t have money to take them to the hospital — and, again, at the hospital, they’ll easily call it coronavirus,” she said. “I don’t have money for that.”Malaria and COVID-19 present similar symptoms, but fear and stigma attached to the pandemic are reasons many like Fatima are seeking alternatives to hospital treatment.Health experts say in-hospital visits for malaria declined significantly in Nigeria since reporting the coronavirus in February 2020.The World Health Organization’s World malaria report 2020 suggested the pandemic is threatening years of progress made against malaria and warned that death rates from the mosquito-borne disease could double.WHO malaria consultant Lynda Ozor says disruption of preventive measures is to blame.”The use of long-lasting insecticidal nets, seasonal malaria chemo prevention and prevention of malaria in pregnancy were interrupted,” she said. “So, assuming all these preventive interventions were interrupted, then it was expected, and the model shows that there will be very negative effects.”Nigeria accounts for about a quarter of malaria cases worldwide, and about 23% of deaths globally.Even before COVID-19 hit, many Nigerians took malaria less seriously, says Adeboyega Adeyogo, who heads pharmaceutical operations at WellaHealth, a Nigerian health company focusing on eliminating malaria.”Due to advances in health and technology, many people resolve malaria within days,” Adeyogo said. “So, you see that many Nigerians now take it with a lot of levity because of the ease of treatment. But if they decide to avoid it, then it becomes a major issue and you now start seeing the serious complications associated with malaria.”Nigeria’s National Malaria Elimination Program planned to provide 31 million people with free mosquito nets, anti-malaria drugs and malaria testing last year. But disruptions caused by COVID-19 meant they reached only half of their goal.That has increased concern that malaria, along with COVID-19, will remain a threat to Nigerians for years to come.
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday criticized his predecessor’s vaccination program and urged Americans to be patient as he fixed it.”My predecessor — I’ll be very blunt about it — did not do his job in getting ready for the massive challenge of vaccinating hundreds of millions,” Biden said at the National Institutes of Health.”We won’t have everything fixed for a while. But we’re going to fix it,” he added.Biden also announced that the United States had acquired enough vaccines to inoculate 300 million of the 328 million U.S. population by the end of July.President Joe Biden listens as Kizzmekia Corbett, an immunologist with the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health, speaks during a visit at the NIH Feb. 11, 2021, in Bethesda, Md. NIH Director Francis Collins is at center.The country is on track to exceed Biden’s goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans within his first 100 days in office.According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 46 million doses of the vaccine have been administered.Earlier Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious-disease expert, said by April, anyone in the United States who wants a COVID-19 vaccination should be able to get one.The United States has recorded more cases and deaths from COVID-19 than any country in the world — over 27 million and over 470,000, respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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Health experts say allocating and delivering adequate supplies of COVID-19 vaccines to the developing world will continue to be a challenge. They add that collective and cooperative solutions will be needed — and failing to provide them will imperil human health worldwide. More with VOA’s Mariama Diallo.
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It’s a busy time on the Red Planet as three Mars missions from three countries converge on their target.  Plus, there’s money to be made on what space drops on our planet.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the Week in Space.Camera: NASA/Reuters/AP/CCTVProduced by: Arash Arabasadi  
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Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday that by April, anyone in the United States who wants a COVID-19 vaccination should be able to get one.
 
In an interview with the NBC morning television program “Today,” Fauci, who also is the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said projections indicate top priority groups, such as U.S. frontline workers and the elderly, should have received their vaccinations by April.
 
Fauci said after that, it would be “open season, namely, virtually everybody and anybody, in any category, could start to get vaccinated.” From there, he said, given logistics, it likely would take several more months to get vaccines to all who want them.  
 
Fauci was hopeful that by July or August, “the overwhelming majority of people in the country will have been vaccinated.” He credits new vaccines becoming available and an increased capacity to deliver them with speeding the process.  
 
An Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs poll released late Wednesday indicate 67 percent of U.S. citizens plan to get vaccinated, and about one-third say probably or probably will not. Those who have doubts said vaccine safety was their number one concern.
 
 
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