An expert group convened by the World Health Organization said Tuesday it “strongly supports urgent and broad access” to booster doses, in a reversal of the U.N. agency’s previous insistence that boosters weren’t necessary and contributed to vaccine inequity.

In a statement, WHO said its expert group concluded that immunization with authorized COVID-19 vaccines provide high levels of protection against severe disease and death amid the global circulation of the hugely contagious omicron variant.

It said vaccination, including the use of boosters, was especially important for people at risk of severe disease.

Last year, WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for a moratorium on booster doses while dozens of countries embarked on administering the doses, saying rich countries should immediately donate those vaccines to poor countries instead. WHO scientists said at the time they would continue to evaluate incoming data.

Numerous scientific studies have since proven that booster doses of authorized vaccines help restore waning immunity and protect against serious COVID-19. Booster programs in rich countries including Britain, Canada and the U.S. have been credited with preventing the surge in omicron infections from spilling over into hospitals and cemeteries.

WHO said it is continuing to monitor the global spread of omicron, including a “stealth” version known as BA.2, which has been documented to have re-infected some people after an initial case of omicron. There’s mixed research on whether it causes more severe disease, but vaccines appear just as effective against it.

WHO noted that the current authorized COVID-19 vaccines are all based on the strain that was first detected in Wuhan, China more than three years ago.

“Since then, there has been continuous and substantial virus evolution and it is likely that this evolution will continue, resulting in the emergence of new variants,” the agency said. It added that coronavirus vaccines would likely need to be updated.
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COVID-19 can cause the brain to shrink, reduce grey matter in the regions that control emotion and memory, and damage areas that control the sense of smell, an Oxford University study has found.

The scientists said that the effects were even seen in people who had not been hospitalized with COVID, and whether the impact could be partially reversed or if they would persist in the long term needed further investigation.

“There is strong evidence for brain-related abnormalities in COVID-19,” the researchers said in their study, which was released on Monday.

Even in mild cases, participants in the research showed “a worsening of executive function” responsible for focus and organizing, and on an average brain sizes shrank between 0.2% and 2%.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the Nature journal, investigated brain changes in 785 participants aged 51–81 whose brains were scanned twice, including 401 people who caught COVID between their two scans. The second scan was done on average 141 days after the first scan.

The study was conducted when the Alpha variant was dominant in Britain and is unlikely to include anyone infected with the Delta variant.

Studies have found some people who had COVID suffered from “brain fog” or mental cloudiness that included impairment to attention, concentration, speed of information processing and memory. Read full story

The researchers did not say if vaccination against COVID had any impact on the condition but the UK Health Security Agency said last month that a review of 15 studies found that vaccinated people were about half as likely to develop symptoms of long COVID compared with the unvaccinated.
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Chocolate makers are expected to raise prices this year due to higher costs of cocoa from exporters like Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer.

Hershey, the largest producer of chocolate products in the United States, said last month it will raise prices on its products across the board due to the rising cost of ingredients.   

Meanwhile, chocolate makers like Dana Mroueh said they are seeing cocoa prices rise in Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa producer.  

“We’ve noticed the price of cocoa is going up these few years, especially organic cocoa. So, from the beginning to today, those five years, we can say the price has risen 20 percent,” Mroueh said.  

Demand for chocolate in America increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and cocoa producers in Ivory Coast are struggling to keep up with that demand.   

Experts say one reason is the impact of climate change.  

Harvard University says that by 2030, parts of West Africa will be too hot and dry to adequately produce cocoa. The West African countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast alone produce 70 percent of global supply.  

Cocoa farmer Raphael Konan Kouassi took VOA to his plantation, a shady orchard where fat green and yellow cocoa pods hung from tree trunks. He said trees are yielding less due to rising temperatures and poor rains.  

“Almost all of the young plants die in the high season. If you have not been able to get water to them, you have no cocoa,” he said.  

Kouassi receives government assistance in the form of cocoa trees, which are more resilient to the fluctuations of climate change, but he said government distributions happen at the wrong time of year for the saplings to survive.  

Christian Bunn of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, a global scientific organization, said information about how the climate is changing can inform farmers on how to better nurture their crops.  

“What we’re seeing is that the onset of both dry and wet season can change. It’s less reliable. During the season, there may be breaks in terms of rain during the dry season, or there’s a dry spell during the wet season, and the overall distribution or amounts of rainfall they’re receiving may change,” Bunn said.  

The data shows it may be better for farmers to stop producing cocoa and diversify into other crops, he said.   

However, Olga Yenou, the CEO of an Ivorian company that supplies The Hershey Company, said higher prices for cocoa could be welcomed by farmers.  

“My opinion is that these farmers should have better prices, should earn more, because they work hard. Most are poor,” Yenou said.  

Her wish appears to be coming true. As climate change continues to bite, prices continue to surge.  

 
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Hammered by climate change and relentless deforestation, the Amazon rainforest is losing its capacity to recover and could irretrievably transition into savannah, with dire consequences for the region and the world, according to a study published Monday.   

Researchers warned that the findings mean the Amazon could be approaching a so-called tipping point faster than previously understood.    

Analyzing 25 years of satellite data, researchers measured for the first time the Amazon’s resilience against shocks such as droughts and fires, a key indicator of overall health. 

Resilience has declined across more than three-quarters of the Amazon basin, home to half the world’s rainforest, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Climate Change. 

In areas hit hardest by destruction or drought, the forest’s ability to bounce back was reduced by approximately half, co-author Tim Lenton, director of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, told AFP. 

“Our resilience measure changed by more than a factor of two in the places nearer to human activity and in places that are driest,” he said in an interview.   

Climate models have suggested that global heating – which has on average warmed Earth’s surface 1.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels – could by itself push the Amazon past a point of no return into a far drier savannah-like state. 

If carbon pollution continues unabated, that scenario could be locked in by mid-century, according to some models. 

“But, of course, it’s not just climate change – people are busy chopping or burning the forest down, which is a second pressure point,” Lenton said. 

“Those two things interact, so there are concerns the transition could happen even earlier.” 

Besides the Amazon, ice sheets on Greenland and the West Antarctic, Siberian permafrost loaded with CO2 and methane, monsoon rains in South Asia, coral reef ecosystems, and the Atlantic Ocean current are all are vulnerable to tipping points that could radically alter the world as we know it. 

Global fallout 

Deforestation in Brazil has surged since far-right President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019, hitting a 15-year high last year. 

Scientists reported recently that Brazil’s rainforest – 60% of the Amazon basin’s total – has shifted from a “sink” to a “source” of CO2, releasing 20% more of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere over the past decade than it absorbed. 

Terrestrial ecosystems worldwide have been a crucial ally as the world struggles to curb CO2 emissions. Vegetation and soil globally have consistently absorbed about 30% of carbon pollution since 1960, even as emissions increased by half.  

“Savannification” of the Amazon would be hugely disruptive, in South America and across the globe.  

More than 90 billion tons of CO2 stored in its rainforest – twice worldwide annual emissions from all sources – could be released into the atmosphere, pushing global temperatures up even faster. 

Regionally, “it’s not just the forests that take a hit,” said Lenton. “If you lose the recycling of rainfall from the Amazon, you get knock-on effects in central Brazil, the country’s agricultural heartland.” 

Ominously, the new findings marshal data pointing in the same direction. 

“Many researchers have theorized that a tipping point could be reached,” said co-author Niklas Boers, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.  

“Our study provides vital empirical evidence that we are approaching that threshold.” 

‘Saving grace’ 

To assess change in the resilience of the rainforest, Lenton, Boers and lead author Chris Boulton from Exeter University analyzed two satellite data sets, one measuring biomass and the other the “greenness” of the canopy.   

“If too much resilience is lost, dieback may become inevitable – but that won’t become obvious until the major event that tips the system is over,” said Boers. 

There may be a “saving grace” that could pull the Amazon back from the brink. 

“The rainforest naturally has a lot of resilience – this is a biome that weathered the ice ages, after all,” said Lenton. 

“If you could bring the temperature back down again even after passing the tipping point, you might be able to rescue the situation.” 

“But that still puts you in the realm of massive carbon dioxide removal, or geoengineering, which has its own risks.” 

Just under 20% of the Amazon rainforest – straddling nine nations and covering more than 5 million square kilometers (2 million square miles) – has been destroyed or degraded since 1970, mostly for the production of lumber, soy, palm oil, biofuels and beef. 
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Afghanistan faces a serious risk of backtracking to its notoriously high maternal mortality rates because of sudden drops in foreign funding, a shortage of health care workers, mobility restrictions and worsening poverty, health professionals have told VOA.  

More than 1,600 Afghan mothers were dying for every 100,000 live births in 2001. With strong technical and financial support from donors, the country reduced the rate to about 640 deaths by 2018.  

Donors were spending about $1 billion annually on Afghanistan’s health sector, but all development funding ceased immediately when the Taliban returned to power in August.  

The abrupt funding shortage crippled the country’s donor-dependent public health system amid a global pandemic and a nearly universal poverty rate in the country.  

By September 2021, more than 80% of the country’s health care facilities were reported as dysfunctional because of a lack of funding and medical supplies and a shortage of personnel.  

“After the change of the government in August, there was a significant drop [cumulative around 25%] in the availability and utilization of maternal health services,” Joy Rivaca Caminade, a communication specialist with the World Health Organization in Afghanistan, told VOA.  

The United Nations’ children’s agency, UNICEF, gave a similar bleak assessment. 

“Following the events of mid-August 2021, Afghanistan’s health sector was close to collapse, with coverage of many lifesaving interventions for women and children falling between 20 and 30% within days,” said Joe English, a UNICEF spokesperson.  

Such setbacks have given rise to one of Afghanistan’s long-standing health crises — high maternal mortality. 

Mortality rates during childbirth might even have gone back to what they were in 2001, said Nadia Akseer, a scientist at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.  

While there is no data showing how much infant and maternal mortality rates have worsened over the past six months, public health experts say the situation has deteriorated and the future remains uncertain.  

Too little aid  

After aid organizations warned that Afghanistan was facing widespread starvation and famine during the cold season, Western donors agreed to provide only lifesaving humanitarian assistance, to be delivered through U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations.  

In December, the World Bank announced it was transferring $100 million from the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund — a multidonor fund set up to coordinate international aid — to UNICEF and WHO to fund emergency health activities in the country until June 2022.  

U.N. agencies have welcomed the funding resumption and say the aid flow must continue or there will be serious public health consequences.  

There are also concerns about the insufficiency of the funding as well as the mechanisms established for disbursement.  

In addition to the nearly $1 billion in foreign assistance, the former Afghan government used to allocate about $200 million for the health sector from domestic resources annually.  

The current humanitarian funding is only a fraction of what the country used to spend on health programs. And while the aid is insufficient, some are criticizing the U.N.-led aid disbursement regime. 

“We know that U.N. agencies have high overhead costs, and they have their own fees,” Akseer told VOA, adding that donors must find a more cost-effective aid delivery system and consider removing economic sanctions on Afghanistan.  

The World Bank and other Western donors have said no funding should be given to or disbursed through the Afghan Health Ministry, which manages public health facilities and personnel all over the country.  

The United States, the largest humanitarian donor to Afghanistan, has imposed strong economic and political sanctions on the Taliban government, blocking access to about $9 billion in foreign assets, held mostly by the U.S. To help mitigate the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the U.S. Treasury has issued special licenses for the delivery of essential aid to needy Afghans on the condition that the aid will not directly benefit the Taliban.  

U.N. and partner health care NGOs use foreign funds to ensure health facilities remain operational and to tackle a host of public health crises facing Afghanistan, including the pandemic, a recent increase in measles cases, growing malnutrition among children, and infectious diseases — not just infant and maternal health.  

Brain drain  

According to a Doctors Without Borders statement on February 23, “The Afghan heath system has been under-funded, under-staffed and dysfunctional for years. Most health facilities in Afghanistan remain under great pressure due to shortages of staff and equipment—some are barely functioning or are closed altogether.”  

Even in 2016, Afghanistan had the lowest number of doctors per every 1,000 people (0.3) in Asia, according to the World Bank.  

Tens of thousands of educated Afghans, among them health care professionals affiliated with international organizations, have been evacuated out of Afghanistan over the past six months.  

This has created a “brain drain of health professionals,” Akseer said.  

“Let’s say a midwife who worked in a typical village in Afghanistan and who was trained by an international organization, that affiliation is her ticket out of the country.” 

WHO confirmed the shortage of health professionals but added there was no data to measure how this was impacting the delivery of essential health services across the country.  

Afghanistan’s health problems have been compounded by economic and institutional crises.  

“The increase in poverty to over 97%, the large-scale loss of livelihoods, and widespread displacement do not bode well for maternal and child health,” said English, the UNICEF spokesperson.  

The Taliban’s restrictions on women’s mobility has also limited Afghan mothers’ access to health care services, aid agencies say.  

“It’s very possible that just in the past six months we’ve seen higher rates of maternal mortality and maternal illness than maybe the country has seen in the past 15 years,” Akseer said.  
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Trafficking in pangolins continues to rise in Malawi as the country registers a drop in ordinary wildlife crime, such as trafficking in elephant tusks and rhino horns. Wildlife authorities say pangolin-related arrests in Malawi more than tripled between 2019 and 2020. Police in Malawi say a month rarely passes with no pangolin-related arrest. Authorities fear this may lead to extinction of the endangered mammals.

The latest is the arrest last Thursday of five people in Mangochi district, in the south of Malawi after they were found selling a live pangolin.

“The four suspects are Malawian while their accomplice is a well-known businessman from Pakistan,” said Ameena Tepani Daudi, who speaks for the police in the district. “The five were arrested at the Pakistan national’s house following a tip from members of the community. We found all of them in a bedroom while negotiating about selling price. And the pangolin was found hidden in a sack bag.”

Daudi said via a messaging app that suspects are expected in court soon.

“All suspects have been charged with illegal possession of specimens of listed species which contravenes section 110(b) of National Parks and Wildlife Act. And they will appear before court, possibly next week,” she added.

Police say the incident is among many pangolin-trafficking arrests in recent years.

Last year’s report by Lilongwe Wildlife Trust says Malawi is a range state for the Temminck’s ground pangolin, the only pangolin species found in southern Africa, now threatened with extinction.

Brighton Kumchedwa, the director of Malawi’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife, says the increase in pangolin trafficking is not surprising, considering recent research estimating that global pangolin populations have declined by 80% in the last 20 years.

“For Malawi, we can speculate that a shift from ivory trafficking to pangolin is because, one, the size of a pangolin is so small, easy to conceal but also it is fetching a reasonable amount of money on a black market. But also the existence in the country of foreign nationals that eat pangolin pangolins as delicacy, but also use of scales in medicine, that’s why an increase in pangolin trafficking,” he said.

Kumchedwa says last  week’s arrest of a Pakistani national in connection with pangolin trafficking confirms that the presence of some foreign nationals, particularly from Asia is fueling trafficking in pangolin.

Kumchdewa says strategies are in place to prevent possible extinction of the endangered mammals in Malawi and these include stiffer penalties to perpetrators.

According to the revised anti-wildlife-trafficking law in Malawi, perpetrators caught in possession of live pangolins or any of their derivatives face a prison sentence of up to 30 years, with no option for a fine.

“But also we have our own investigation unit, which is helping quite a lot, because it is largely intelligence-led law enforcement. But also, more than that, is how the courts have indeed applied the law. They are giving custodial sentences. We are seeing people taken to jail for seven years, five years found in possession of a pangolin,” he said.

Kumchedwa asked Malawians to be more patriotic and help the government by reporting to authorities about people involved in illegal pangolin trade, as well as in other protected animals.
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A new variant of the coronavirus found in white-tailed deer in Canada was later discovered in a person who lived nearby and had contact with the deer population, according to a recent study. The researchers say it’s possible the deer transmitted the virus to the human.

Emerging evidence that COVID-19 is gaining a foothold in wildlife could have negative long-term consequences for humans, according to Nükhet Varlik, associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark.

“Even if we managed to vaccinate the entire human population, the disease can still come back — from the animals back to us — which is, in fact, what happened with some of the other historical pandemics,” Varlik says. “So, in the long term, I don’t think COVID can be eradicated, to be honest.”

Six out of every 10 infectious diseases in people are zoonotic, meaning they pass between species, from animals to humans.

Examples of zoonotic viruses include the flu, West Nile virus, the plague, rabies and Lyme disease.

The coronavirus outbreak has been linked to a market in Wuhan, China, where live animals were slaughtered on site. And although the virus is classified as zoonotic, no animal reservoir of the disease has been found.

Any new COVID-19 variant that animals might pass back to humans has the potential to mutate into something totally new.

“It’s definitely going to evolve differently in an animal than it will in a human,” says Cody Warren, a virologist and immunologist who is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Now we have what we’re considering a human virus trying to evolve to grow in an animal, and so, it’s going to undergo its own unique evolutionary trajectory in that animal.”

Multiple COVID-19 variants such as delta and omicron have been found in humans, and scientists cannot rule out the possibility that some variants came from animals.

“Most of the attention and resources are focusing on, ‘How do we test humans?’ and ‘How do we coordinate hospital beds?’” says Suresh Kuchipudi, a professor and chair of emerging infectious diseases at Pennsylvania State University. “But, in this process, we haven’t really been looking at animals. …That’s why we have a lot of missing links to trace back the origins of these viruses. So, it may be that we haven’t been looking into some animal species in some part of the world where this evolution largely may have happened. We have lots of gaps in connecting the dots.”

Kuchipudi, a veterinary virologist, co-authored a separate study that found evidence of COVID-19 in white-tailed deer in Staten Island, New York. Researchers tested the animals between December 12, 2021, and January 31, 2022, and found COVID-19 antibodies in 19 of the 131 animals sampled.

When a virus goes from humans back into animals, the process is referred to as spillback.

“And what I think is most concerning about that is that it gives new opportunities for the virus to evolve in new, unique and innovative ways,” says Warren. “And that virus could potentially evolve in a way and then jump back into humans and spread again throughout the human population as a new disease.”

Kuchipudi emphasizes the need to begin monitoring high-risk animals where the force of infection is high and based on their frequent exposure to humans in order to stop, or at least minimize, transmissions from animals to humans.

“Then we can track down what is happening in terms of the virus evolution. But will we also be able to determine what are the routes through which this exposure has happened? Is it through wastewater or leftover food?” says Kuchipudi. “Although we found deer have the virus, it is not entirely clear how the free-living deer, that don’t really come close to humans typically, are picking up the infection.”

Right now, there is no coordinated, concerted effort nationally or internationally to address the problem of COVID-19 in animals, according to Kuchipudi. But he is hopeful that is changing. The American Rescue Plan provides $300 million for the monitoring and surveillance of animals believed susceptible to COVID-19.

“I see a lot of momentum happening,” Kuchipudi says. “A lot of relevant people recognize this is a problem. And I think most federal and state agencies are very seriously discussing looking into this.”
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The head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, is again threatening to end service to the International Space Station, saying Russia will stop supplying rocket engines to the United States and may curtail cooperation on the station in retaliation for Western sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. NASA says operations on the orbiting observatory are normal.  

In an interview with Russian state television Thursday, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said, considering the situation, “We can’t supply the United States with our world’s best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what.”

Rogozin said Russia has delivered 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S. since the 1990s, of which 98 have been used to power Atlas launch vehicles. The Washington Post said the engines are also used by United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing to launch national security missions for the Pentagon. 

Russia said it would cut off the supply of the RD-181 engines used in Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which is used to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. 

Projects with Germans scrapped

Rogozin tweeted Thursday that Russian cosmonauts would not cooperate with Germany on joint experiments on the Russian segment of the ISS. Roscosmos will conduct them independently. He went on to say the “Russian space program will be adjusted against the backdrop of sanctions; the priority will be the creation of satellites in the interests of defense.” 

Earlier in the week, in another interview with state television, Rogozin noted Russia is responsible for space station navigation, as well as fuel deliveries to the orbiting lab. He said Roscosmos “will closely monitor the actions of our American partners and, if they continue to be hostile, we will return to the question of the existence of the International Space Station.”

Russia had announced earlier that it was suspending cooperation with Europe on space launches from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana in response to Western sanctions.

Cooperation in space has traditionally avoided politics, and when asked about the situation Tuesday during a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “Despite the challenges here on Earth, and they are substantial …. NASA continues the working relationship with all our international partners to ensure their safety and the ongoing safe operations of the ISS.”

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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