When to unlock? Britain’s Boris Johnson is coming under mounting pressure from Conservative lawmakers and their allies in the media to keep to a previously outlined timetable that would see virtually all pandemic restrictions relaxed on June 21 in England.    But a sudden surge in coronavirus infections has triggered fierce counter-lobbying from the government’s scientific advisers, who want a delay to the final easing of restrictions to assess the latest data and to ensure that variants, including the now-dominant Delta variant, first detected in India, aren’t resistant to vaccines.  FILE – Pedestrians walk past a sign warning members of the public about a “Coronavirus variant of concern,” in Hounslow, west London, Britain, June 1, 2021.Ministers have been hinting for days of a delay in what was earmarked as the final unlocking phase, and government officials say they are in a race between vaccinating people and the Delta variant. Businesspeople are also expressing frustration at any delay. Those angered by talk of delay include Andrew Lloyd-Webber, theater impresario and the composer of musicals, “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Cats.” He issued a threat to the government Wednesday, vowing to risk arrest by reopening his London theaters on June 21. If the final stage of unlocking was postponed, “We will say, ‘come to the theater and arrest us,’” he told local media. The Delta variant is at least 40% more infectious than the previous strain dominating Britain, say government advisory panels, and the surge in cases is being seen largely among the unvaccinated under-30-year-olds. Some government advisers fear Britain’s national health service won’t be able to cope once again, if the virus is allowed to run rampant, and are predicting cases requiring hospitalizations could reach the previous peak seen in January.   More than 12,000 Delta-variant cases have been identified, and of those 126 led to hospital admissions. Eighty-three of those hospitalized hadn’t been vaccinated, 28 had received one vaccine dose and only three had received both jabs. Britain recorded more than 6,000 new daily coronavirus cases midweek, up 68% in the past seven days. Nonetheless, Cabinet ministers received a pessimistic briefing Wednesday from key advisers, Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, and Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser, with the pair telling the politicians that the latest data is “fairly grim,” according to Downing Street officials briefing local media. Government sources say they expect that Johnson on Monday will likely announce a delay of “between two weeks and a month” to the phase four reopening, but they say they are optimistic that the political fallout won’t be too great as many restrictions were lifted last month with non-essential shops and malls allowed to open. The government had planned to end on June 21 social distancing, dropping a one meter-plus rule between patrons of restaurants and bars. The rule of no more than six people gathering in homes would also be lifted, and nightclubs and discos would be allowed to operate. A 30-person limit on weddings would be lifted, and rules on wearing facemasks in public would be dropped. And the government would drop its guidance on people working from home, if their jobs allow it.    But traveling overseas for vacations is now being firmly discouraged after considerable government confusion and mixed messaging.FILE – People wait in queues at Faro airport amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Faro, Portugal, June 6, 2021.Earlier this week more than 10,000 British vacationers rushed back from Portugal, one of just a handful of countries Britons are permitted to visit without having to undergo ten days of self-isolation on their return. The British government had put Portugal on a “safe list” of countries just two weeks earlier but abruptly removed from the list this week. On Tuesday former Conservative minister Steve Baker urged Johnson to go ahead and keep to the “freedom day” he had earmarked to “make life worth living” again. He called it the “last chance” to save Britain’s hospitality and tourism industries and said the time had arrived to allow people to “reconnect with family and friends and regain our mental health.”    Half of all adults in Britain have had both vaccine doses. And official government figures for England show that around four in five over-50s and a third of those in their 40s have had both jabs.   FILE – People queue outside a vaccination center for those aged over 18 years old at the Belmont Health Centre in Harrow, in London, Britain, June 6, 2021.Those who oppose any delay point to the huge fall in deaths and hospital admissions, arguing that they prove vaccines have broken the link between infection and severe disease. They say government cautiousness is based on the adoption of a delusion — namely that the country, or any country, can be COVID-free.   “Scientists seem to be quietly advocating a zero COVIVD approach, wherein case numbers in themselves are deemed to be concerning even if they do not lead to an uptick in hospitalizations or deaths,” says the Daily Telegraph newspaper, which once employed Johnson as its Brussels correspondent. “They argue that the borders should be closed until global case numbers are brought down, for fear of new variants. This is the sort of New Zealand-style logic that would leave the country locked off from the world indefinitely.”  The newspaper complained that there is “an apparent failure to account for the costs of the lockdown measures when deciding policy” and “the worst predictions are always heeded” by the politicians.    “One day soon freedom will return,” Britain’s health minister Matt Hancock told lawmakers this week. “We must proceed safely and not see this go backwards,” he added.   Meanwhile, WHO’s special pandemic envoy, David Nabarro, has warned that the world will have to learn to live with the coronavirus and people will have to adapt their lifestyles, whether they are vaccinated or not. “I’m trying to really re-iterate it can’t just be about restrictions,” he said. “The future for humanity is that we adapt our lifestyles, so we make it hard for this virus to spread.”    Nabarro told Britain’s Sky News: “We know that [the virus] is constantly changing which means that although vaccination is a marvelous asset, it’s not going to be enough. We are going to have to continue to behave as though the virus is an ever-present threat.”    The White House Wednesday said it had set up working groups with a number of foreign countries, including Britain, to determine how to restart international travel safely. World leaders are to discuss the issue at the G-7 summit in Cornwall later this week. 
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The head of UNAIDS said Tuesday that inequalities are a chief driver of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, just as they are with COVID-19. “Inequalities in power, status, rights and voice are driving the HIV pandemic,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS. “Inequalities kill.” Since the first cases were reported 40 years ago, UNAIDS says 77.5 million people have been infected with HIV, and nearly 35 million have died from AIDS. Byanyima told a high-level meeting of the U.N. General Assembly that nations must end the inequalities that perpetuate HIV/AIDS if they want to meet their target of ending the epidemic by 2030. “Today we are setting bold, ambitious goals to reach 95% of those in need with HIV treatment and prevention,” she said. “To get there we need to re-imagine HIV services, making them easy to access and designed around people’s lives.” Byanyima said the COVID-19 pandemic has shown how political will can help push science and that the same sort of push needs to be made for HIV/AIDS treatments, prevention, care and vaccines. FILE – Charlize Theron attends a movie screening in Los Angeles, California, July 31, 2020.U.N. Messenger of Peace Charlize Theron addressed the meeting in a video message Tuesday. The South African actress said it is often the most vulnerable people who are the least likely to have access to the services they need. “Because the fact remains, that whether you live or die from AIDS is still too often determined by who you are, who you love and where you live,” Theron said. U.N. member states adopted a political declaration on scaling up progress in order to reach the 2030 goal, but it was not without some controversy. Just before the adoption, Russia’s representative tried to get the assembly to agree to three amendments, which would have eliminated language on respecting the human rights of persons living with HIV/AIDS and ending discriminatory and restrictive laws based on a person’s HIV status. The amendments were overwhelmingly voted down, and the original draft text, which was the result of lengthy negotiations and compromises among member states, was adopted with 165 votes in favor, four against and no country abstaining. Belarus, Nicaragua and Syria joined Russia in voting against the declaration.  
 
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The World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations climate agency, reported Tuesday that Europe saw its coldest March through May since 2013, with temperatures 0.45 C below the 1991-2020 average.During a briefing from the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis cautioned that Europe’s cool start did not reflect any pause in the world’s climate change problems.In fact, data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service show that the global average temperature for May was 0.26 C higher than the 1991-2020 mean, according to the U.N. News website.  Greenhouse Gases Threaten Ocean Ecosystems: WMOThe ocean absorbs around 23 percent of the annual atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide and acts as a buffer against climate changeAlso according to U.N. News: “Temperatures were well above average over western Greenland, north Africa, the Middle East and northern and western Russia while below-average May temperatures were reported over the southern and central United States, parts of northern Canada, south-central Africa, most of India, eastern Russia, and eastern Antarctica.”  Nullis said there was also “quite a considerable rise” in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere at the Mauna Loa Observatory, an atmospheric monitoring station operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in Hawaii.She said, “The fact CO2 does have such a long lifetime in the atmosphere does mean that future generations — and we’re not just talking about one or two, we’re talking about many generations — will be committed to seeing more impacts of climate change.”  Nullis warned rising CO2 levels will also have a “very serious impact” on the planet’s oceans, which absorb almost a quarter of CO2 emissions. 
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A seaside aqua fitness workout isn’t just about exercise, water, sun and sea breezes. It also provides a way to recover from injury and to find camaraderie, as Allison Lékogo Fernandes discovered, filing this report from Senegal.Camera: Mbaye Ndir
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The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations met Monday with the head of the U.N. Population Fund in the first such high-level engagement in more than four years.The U.S. Mission to the United Nations said Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield highlighted the resumption of extensive support to the organization, which provides life-saving health care to millions of women and girls around the world.“I’m delighted to announce the resumption of U.S. humanitarian funding for UNFPA, including support for the Rohingya refugee crisis, Afghanistan, Sudan and those fleeing the Tigray region,” Thomas-Greenfield tweeted after the meeting. To mark our renewed commitment to @UNFPA, I met today with Executive Director Natalia Kanem. I’m delighted to announce the resumption of U.S. humanitarian funding for UNFPA, including support for the Rohingya refugee crisis, Afghanistan, Sudan and those fleeing the Tigray region. pic.twitter.com/aMJ9cAbgpL— Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield (@USAmbUN) June 7, 2021In April 2017, the Trump administration withdrew funding to UNFPA, saying it “supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization” in China. For decades, China had a “one-child policy” for couples, which it revised in 2016 to a “two-child policy.” The country had been accused of using forced sterilization and abortions to enforce the restrictions. Last week, it relaxed the policy further, saying it would allow families to have up to three children, due to decreasing birth rates.The United Nations rejected the Trump administration’s accusation, but that did not persuade Washington to restore the nearly $76 million the U.S. contributed to the agency’s core operating budget. It was also the beginning of what many Western diplomats and activists said was the former Republican administration’s war on women’s health and reproductive rights at the United Nations.Since taking office in January, the Biden administration has offered the agency nearly $31 million toward its core operating budget. Washington has also resumed funding UNFPA’s humanitarian activities, including $2.6 million for the Rohingya refugee crisis and nearly $1.2 million for Ethiopian refugees in Sudan fleeing the conflict in the Tigray Region. The U.S. is also contributing nearly $1.5 million for international protection issues in Afghanistan and $1.3 million to assist Sudan in improving the response to gender-based violence for internally displaced persons and vulnerable communities.In 2015, UNFPA received $979 million in total contributions for its work in more than 150 countries. The United States provided nearly $76 million to the fund’s core budget and specific programs and initiatives, making it one of the top international donors. 
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The annual peak of global heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50% higher than when the industrial age began.And the average rate of increase is faster than ever, scientists reported Monday.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average carbon dioxide level for May was 419.13 parts per million. That’s 1.82 parts per million higher than May 2020 and 50% higher than the stable pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million, said NOAA climate scientist Pieter Tans.Carbon dioxide levels peak every May just before plant life in the Northern Hemisphere blossoms, sucking some of that carbon out of the atmosphere and into flowers, leaves, seeds and stems. The reprieve is temporary, though, because emissions of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas for transportation and electricity far exceed what plants can take in, pushing greenhouse gas levels to new records every year.”Reaching 50% higher carbon dioxide than preindustrial is really setting a new benchmark, and not in a good way,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the research. “If we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we need to work much harder to cut carbon dioxide emissions and right away.”Climate change does more than increase temperatures. It makes extreme weather — storms, wildfires, floods and droughts — worse and more frequent, and causes oceans to rise and get more acidic, studies show. There are also health effects, including heat deaths and increased pollen. In 2015, countries signed the Paris agreement to try to keep climate change to below what’s considered dangerous levels.The one-year jump in carbon dioxide was not a record, mainly because of a La Nina weather pattern, when parts of the Pacific temporarily cool, said Ralph Keeling, Scripps Institution of Oceanography geochemist. Keeling’s father started the monitoring of carbon dioxide on top of the Hawaiian mountain Mauna Loa in 1958, and he has continued the work of charting the now famous Keeling Curve.Scripps, which calculates the numbers slightly differently based on time and averaging, said the peak in May was 418.9.Also, pandemic lockdowns slowed transportation, travel and other activity by about 7%, earlier studies show. But that was too small to make a significant difference. Carbon dioxide can stay in the air for 1,000 years or more, so year-to-year changes in emissions don’t register much.The 10-year average rate of increase also set a record, now up to 2.4 parts per million per year.”Carbon dioxide going up in a few decades like that is extremely unusual,” Tans said. “For example, when the Earth climbed out of the last ice age, carbon dioxide increased by about 80 parts per million, and it took the Earth system, the natural system, 6,000 years. We have a much larger increase in the last few decades.”By comparison, it has taken only 42 years, from 1979 to 2021, to increase carbon dioxide by that same amount.”The world is approaching the point where exceeding the Paris targets and entering a climate danger zone becomes almost inevitable,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who wasn’t part of the research.
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In a nationwide address Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the federal government would take a larger role in obtaining vaccines for Indian states.“Government of India itself will buy 75% of the total vaccine production from vaccine manufacturers and give it free to the state governments.”FILE PHOTO: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses a gathering in Ahmedabad, India, March 12, 2021.According to the New York Times, less than 4% of Indians have been fully vaccinated.India’s health ministry on Monday reported 100,636 new COVID-19 infections, the lowest tally in 61 days, and 2,427 deaths in the previous 24-hour period.In other COVID-19 news, Britain’s health minister Matt Hancock said Sunday the delta variant of the coronavirus, first identified in India, may be up to 40% more transmissible than the alpha variant.The delta variant has become the dominant strain in Britain, replacing the alpha variant first identified in Kent, Hancock told reporters. It is possible the delta variant could threaten plans to lift lockdown restrictions by June 21, he said.Hancock stressed the importance of Britons getting their vaccinations. Early data show the vaccine is effective against the delta variant after people have received both doses, he said.People queue outside a vaccination center for those aged over 18 years old at the Belmont Health Center in Harrow, amid the coronavirus outbreak, in London, June 6, 2021.Currently, 40% of the United Kingdom’s population has been fully vaccinated, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. New cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, have dropped dramatically since the United Kingdom began its vaccination campaign.Uganda began a 42-day pandemic lockdown Monday, including the closing of schools and universities, and suspended public gatherings, including in churches and mosques.Public transportation will be suspended starting Thursday.The country has seen an uptick in cases in recent weeks, and officials say the current wave is impacting people 20 to 39 years of age.The global count of COVID-19 cases reached 173.4 million Monday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
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The first new drug against Alzheimer’s disease in nearly two decades received a conditional and controversial green light from U.S. drug regulators on Monday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved biotech company Biogen’s antibody drug aducanumab. The drug reduces the amyloid plaques that riddle the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.  But the approval drew sharp criticism from experts who note that the company has not proved that it slows the debilitating cognitive decline in patients with the disease.  The FDA will require Biogen to continue testing the drug after it is released and ultimately demonstrate that patients actually do fare better on the drug.  In the meantime, the company said the drug will cost each patient $56,000 per year, but is likely to be covered by most insurers, including Medicare.  FILE – A sign marks a Biogen facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jan., 26, 2017.Alzheimer’s, a degenerative neurological disease, is responsible for roughly two-thirds of the 50 million cases of dementia worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.  Aducanumab, marketed as Aduhelm, is the first approved treatment to target the underlying disease process of Alzheimer’s rather than just treat the symptoms.  In two clinical trials, aducanumab reduced amyloid plaques by 59% to 71% after 18 months.  However, those studies were stopped early because they did not show that patients taking aducanumab were declining in brain function any slower than patients who were not taking it.  Biogen reevaluated the data from a subset of patients in one trial and found a slight improvement in patients receiving the highest dose.  The FDA decided to approve the drug under what is called accelerated approval, which has a lower standard of evidence than full approval. The FDA said Biogen’s data show that reducing amyloid plaques is “reasonably likely to result in clinical benefit.”  “This pathway allows FDA to provide patients suffering with a serious disease earlier access to a potentially valuable drug when there is some residual uncertainty about the clinical benefit of the drug,” Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said on a call with reporters. Patients’ groups cheered. “This approval is a victory for people living with Alzheimer’s and their families,” Harry Johns, president and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association, an advocacy group, said in a statement.  “It is a new day,” he said. “This approval allows people living with Alzheimer’s more time to live better. For families it means being able to hold on to their loved ones longer. It is about reinvigorating scientists and companies in the fight against this scourge of a disease. It is about hope.” Not everyone agreed. “The FDA is saying, ‘Never mind the lack of determined effectiveness,'” said Lon Schneider, director of the California Alzheimer’s Disease Center at the University of Southern California. Reducing plaques is not the same as slowing the patient’s decline, he noted. It will be like doctors telling patients, “‘You need to be confident (that) because we’re knocking down the plaques, you’re benefiting.'” Others were skeptical that Biogen will do a satisfactory follow-up study to show its drug really works. “Past experience with accelerated approval ‘conditions’ has been disappointing in a lot of respects,” said Harvard Medical School professor Aaron Kesselheim, “with too many cases of ‘confirmatory trials’ taking too long, still testing surrogate measures rather than real clinical endpoints, and even keeping the drug indication on the labeling when the confirmatory trials are negative.” Other therapies are in the pipeline, and some hope that the FDA’s move opens the door to better treatments down the road. “History has shown us that approvals of the first drug in a new category invigorates the field, increases investments in new treatments and encourages greater innovation,” the Alzheimer’s Association’s chief science officer, Maria Carrillo, said in a statement. “While today’s approval is an important first step in our ongoing fight against Alzheimer’s,” the FDA’s Cavazzoni said, “it’s just that: the first step.” 
  
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