More than 800,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine should be delivered to South Sudan by the end of the month according to a South Sudanese health ministry official.  
 
Doctor John Rumunu, director-general for preventive health services at the national health ministry said the vaccine will first be administered to the country’s most vulnerable populations.
 
Rumunu told reporters in Juba Sunday that South Sudan met all of the requirements necessary to acquire the vaccine.
 
“I’m happy to let you know that the 864,000 doses are from AstraZeneca, and AstraZeneca is using the same chain like we are using for the routine vaccination, meaning you need fridges that can keep vaccines in conditions of two to eight degrees centigrade. We have that all over the country,” he said.
 
Rumunu said COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) assessed all vaccines and determined that AstraZeneca was best suited to South Sudan’s capacity to preserve the vaccine.
 
Concerns have been raised over the safety and efficacy of preserving COVID-19 vaccines in hot climate countries like South Sudan, concerns triggered primarily by misinformation circulating on social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook.
 
Dr. Guyo Guracha, the World Health Organization’s emergency coordinator in the South Sudan capital Juba, said AstraZeneca is safe to use in South Sudan.
 
“There should be no worry about safety and efficacy because we have an elaborate mechanism in place as WHO and the country also has its own. Many countries also will be looking at it on their own, independently,” Guracha said.
 
Health Ministry spokesperson Dr. Loi Thuou strongly advised the public against sharing misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines on the internet.
 
“We need to be very careful in handling and sharing that information with, let’s say innocent people, who may not necessarily have their own analytical capacity. I mean, if someone really wanted to actually do something against Africa or black race, why should it be through vaccines?” Thuou said in Juba.
 
Africans are consuming many other common drugs from the Western world like malaria medications such as Artimisin, according to Thuou.
 
He urged South Sudanese to practice social distancing and follow other preventative measures to prevent transmission of the virus in markets and other places where people congregate.
 
“Part of the reason why partial lockdown is mandatory is the behavior of our people. If you go to Konyokonyo [marketplace]… before partial lockdown was declared, you will not have a sense that there’s COVID-19 in this country, people are just mingling [in the] crowd and nobody cares, hardly people wear masks,” said Thuou.
 
Health officials are reporting a rapid jump in the number of COVID-19 cases in parts of South Sudan, particularly Central Equatoria state, which in recent days reported more than 300 new cases.
 
As of Sunday, South Sudan registered 4,609 positive COVID-19 cases, 861 active cases, 66 deaths and 3,692 recoveries.
 
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A British health official Monday downplayed a study suggesting the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine was minimally effective against a variant of the virus and suggested the vaccine could be modified to address such strains.  
 
South Africa halted its rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine after researchers from the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Oxford said the vaccine provided minimal protection against mild or moderate infection from the so-called South African variant among young people.
 
But in an interview Monday, Britain’s Minister of State for Health Edward Argar and other health experts looking at the study suggested there was no evidence that the vaccine would not be effective in preventing hospitalization and severe illness and death from the South African strain.
 
Argar also suggested the vaccine could be modified the way flu vaccines are each year to address a variety of strains.  He said the German pharmaceutical company CurVac – with which the British government has a contract – is already working on this.  
 
Argar said just 147 people are known to have been infected with the South African variant in Britain.
 
The country has the world’s fifth worst COVID-19 death toll with more than 110,000.  So far, a little more than 12 million Britons have received first doses of COVID-19 vaccines. 
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Emergency teams in northern India are working Monday to rescue 37 power plant workers trapped in a tunnel after part of a Himalayan glacier broke away, slamming water and debris into a dam and at least two hydroelectric plants early Sunday.  Authorities say at least 18 bodies have been recovered, but more than 165 people are missing and feared dead.  More than 2,000 people have been deployed to the search-and-rescue operation in the valley, including members of the military and police. The floods destroyed a hydroelectric plant on the Alaknanda river and damaged another on the Dhauli Ganga river. The two rivers flow out of the Himalayan mountains and meet before merging with the Ganges river.Rescuers leave on a boat to search for bodies in the downstream of Alaknanda River in Rudraprayag, northern state of Uttarakhand, India, Feb.8, 2021.The incident sent a massive amount of water and debris downhill, flooding the Dhauli Ganga River and forcing the evacuation of downstream villages. Video from the area shows floods of gray glacial water and debris traveling through a valley and surging through the dam in the northern state of Uttarakhand. Scientists have blamed global warming for the glacier’s catastrophic melting.    
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The Democratic Republic of Congo reported Sunday that a woman has died of Ebola, three months after the country declared the end of the previous outbreak.
 
The woman’s husband had contracted the disease and survived in the previous outbreak in 2020. Samples from the hospital in Butembo, in the northeastern part of the country, were being sent to the capital, Kinshasa, to determine whether her illness is linked to the previous outbreak or constitutes a new one.
 
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the previous outbreak in the northwestern state of Equateur over in November of last year, after 55 people in the state died of the disease.
 
More than 2,200 people died of Ebola in the region between 2018 and 2020.
 
“It is not unusual for sporadic cases to occur following a major outbreak,” the WHO said Sunday.The patient was the wife of an #Ebola survivor. Samples have been sent to the National Institute of Biomedical Research in Kinshasa, #DRC for genome sequencing to determine link to the previous outbreak. It is not unusual for sporadic cases to occur following a major outbreak. pic.twitter.com/YVAMuOmvFn— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) February 7, 2021Still, extensive contact tracing in connection with the victim is already under way, according to the WHO.
 
The news comes as the country, like much of the world, battles the coronavirus pandemic.
 
The Ebola virus, formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, is a rare but severe and often fatal illness that spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids, triggering severe vomiting and diarrhea. 
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After hurtling hundreds of millions of kilometers through space since last summer, three robotic explorers are ready to hit the brakes at Mars.  The stakes — and anxiety — are sky high.  The United Arab Emirates’ orbiter reaches Mars on Tuesday, followed less than 24 hours later by China’s orbiter-rover combo. NASA’s rover, the cosmic caboose, will arrive on the scene a week later, on February 18, to collect rocks for return to Earth — a key step in determining whether life ever existed at Mars.Both the UAE and China are newcomers at Mars, where more than half of Earth’s emissaries have failed. China’s first Mars mission, a joint effort with Russia in 2011, never made it past Earth’s orbit.”We are quite excited as engineers and scientists, at the same time quite stressed and happy, worried, scared,” said Omran Sharaf, project manager for the UAE.All three spacecraft rocketed away within days of one another last July, during an Earth-to-Mars launch window that occurs only every two years. That’s why their arrivals are also close together.Called Amal, or Hope in Arabic, the Gulf nation’s spacecraft is seeking an especially high orbit — 22,000 kilometers by 44,000 kilometers (13,500 by 27,000 miles) high — all the better to monitor the Martian weather.  China’s duo — called Tianwen-1, or “Quest for Heavenly Truth” — will remain paired in orbit until May, when the rover separates to descend to the dusty, ruddy surface. If all goes well, it will be only the second country to land successfully on the Red Planet.The U.S. rover Perseverance, by contrast, will dive in straight away for a harrowing sky-crane touchdown similar to the Curiosity rover’s grand Martian entrance in 2012. The odds are in NASA’s favor: It’s nailed eight of its nine attempted Mars landings.Despite their differences — the 1-ton Perseverance is larger and more elaborate than the Tianwen-1 rover — both will prowl for signs of ancient microscopic life.Perseverance’s $3 billion mission is the first leg in a U.S.-European effort to bring Mars samples to Earth in the next decade.”To say we’re pumped about it, well that would be a huge understatement,” said Lori Glaze, NASA’s planetary science director.Perseverance is aiming for an ancient river delta that seems a logical spot for once harboring life. This landing zone in Jezero Crater is so treacherous that NASA nixed it for Curiosity, but so tantalizing that scientists are keen to get hold of its rocks.”When the scientists take a look at a site like Jezero Crater, they see the promise, right?” said Al Chen, who’s in charge of the entry, descent and landing team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “When I look at Jezero, I see danger. There’s danger everywhere.”Steep cliffs, deep pits and fields of rocks could cripple or doom Perseverance, following its seven-minute atmospheric plunge. With an 11½-minute communication lag each way, the rover will be on its own, unable to rely on flight controllers. Amal and Tianwen-1 will also need to operate autonomously while maneuvering into orbit.Until Perseverance, NASA sought out flat, boring terrain on which to land — “one giant parking lot,” Chen said. That’s what China’s Tianwen-1 rover will be shooting for in Mars’ Utopia Planitia.NASA is upping its game thanks to new navigation technology designed to guide the rover to a safe spot. The spacecraft also has a slew of cameras and microphones to capture the sights and sounds of descent and landing, a Martian first.Faster than previous Mars vehicles but still moving at a glacial pace, the six-wheeled Perseverance will drive across Jezero, collecting core samples of the most enticing rocks and gravel. The rover will set the samples aside for retrieval by a fetch rover launching in 2026.  Under an elaborate plan still being worked out by NASA and the European Space Agency, the geologic treasure would arrive on Earth in the early 2030s. Scientists contend it’s the only way to ascertain whether life flourished on a wet, watery Mars 3 billion to 4 billion years ago.NASA’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, considers it “one of the hardest things ever done by humanity and certainly in space science.”The United States is still the only country to successfully land on Mars, beginning with the 1976 Vikings. Two spacecraft are still active on the surface: Curiosity and InSight.  Smashed Russian and European spacecraft litter the Martian landscape, meanwhile, along with NASA’s failed Mars Polar Lander from 1999.  Getting into orbit around Mars is less complicated, but still no easy matter, with about a dozen spacecraft falling short. Mars fly-bys were the rage in the 1960s and most failed; NASA’s Mariner 4 was the first to succeed in 1965.Six spacecraft currently are operating around Mars: three from the U.S., two from Europe and one from India. The UAE hopes to make it seven with its $200-plus million mission.The UAE is especially proud that Amal was designed and built by its own citizens, who partnered with the University of Colorado at Boulder and other U.S. institutions, not simply purchased from abroad. Its arrival at Mars coincides with this year’s 50th anniversary of the country’s founding.  China hasn’t divulged much in advance. Even the spacecraft’s exact arrival time on Wednesday has yet to be announced.The China Academy of Space Technology’s Ye Peijian noted that Tianwen-1 has three objectives: orbiting the planet, landing and releasing the rover. If successful, he said in a statement, “It will become the world’s first Mars expedition accomplishing all three goals with one probe.”The coronavirus pandemic has complicated each step of each spacecraft’s 480 million-kilometer (300-million-mile) journey to Mars. It even kept the European and Russian space agencies’ joint Mars mission grounded until the next launch window in 2022. 
 
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