Regional authorities, medical professionals and residents of Ethiopia’s Afar region say they are in dire need of medical aid with hundreds of hospitals and health centers destroyed by conflict. The World Health Organization says it is struggling to fulfill the country’s needs as crises around the world intensify. Henry Wilkins reports from Berhale, Ethiopia.
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Month: July 2022
Reports: Refugees in Rwanda Suffering from ‘Urban’ Disease
A report Monday in the British newspaper The Guardian said a growing number of people in the Mahama refugee camp in Rwanda are registering in health centers for non-communicable diseases, or NCDs, that are usually seen in older people and in urban areas.
Examples cited in the paper included a hypertensive 6-year-old, a 2-year-old with respiratory problems, a 40-year-old woman with kidney failure who became hypertensive during a pregnancy, and a 20-year-old woman, diagnosed with diabetes after falling into a coma.
The report says while the number of people with NCDs at Mahama is at 5% of the total caseload, the figures are rising every month. Mahama houses 58,000 of the country’s 127,000 refugees, The Guardian reported.
Dieudonne Yiweza, senior regional public health officer for East and Horn of Africa at the U.N. refugee agency told the publication, “Before, we said NCDs affect urban settings. Now, they are attacking refugee settings . . . Now, they are affecting children and young people. For refugees, this is a challenging situation.”
Yiweza said it is not uncommon to encounter children as young as 10 or 15 who have suffered strokes.
Contributing factors to the NCDs in young people, Yiweza said, include poor housing, a limited diet that often lacks protein, and trauma.
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Germany on Cusp of Recession, says Ifo, as Business Sentiment Sinks
German business morale fell more than expected in July, the Ifo business sentiment survey showed on Monday, as the institute that compiles it said high energy prices and looming gas shortages had left Europe’s largest economy on the cusp of recession.
The Ifo institute’s closely watched business climate index dropped to 88.6, its lowest in more than two years and below the 90.2 forecast in a Reuters poll of analysts. June’s reading was marginally revised down to 92.2.
“Recession is knocking on the door. That can no longer be ruled out,” said Ifo surveys head Klaus Wohlrabe.
Germany faces the threat of gas rationing unprecedented in generations this winter following a significant drop in supplies from Russia, whose president, Vladimir Putin, the West accuses of weaponizing energy in response to sanctions levied against him over the war in Ukraine.
Russia says it is conducting a “special military operation” there to fight nationalists.
Russia this month shut down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that supplies Germany with gas via the bed of the Baltic Sea for 10 days of maintenance that some feared would be extended.
Pumping resumed on Thursday, but at only 40% of capacity.
Wohlrabe told Reuters in an interview that if German gas deliveries continued at that level “there will be no recession.”
However, Germany’s gas network regulator said on Friday that, if gas through the pipeline continued to be pumped at only 40%, the country would need to take “additional measures” to reach the 90% of storage capacity set as a target to avert winter rationing.
The government has said it would prioritize residents over the corporate sector in the event of rationing, and Monday’s Ifo index, which surveys about 9,000 firms, showed expectations for business to significantly worsen in the coming months.
“The Ifo business climate index, like the purchasing managers’ index, now clearly points to a downturn in the German economy,” said Commerzbank economic analyst Jorge Kraemer.
“How bad it ends up unfortunately lies mainly in Putin hands.”
S&P Global’s flash Purchasing Managers’ Index (PM) for German services and its index for manufacturing both fell to 49.2 in July, data showed on Friday, below analyst forecasts for them to hold above the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction.
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Semiconductor Bill Unites US Politicians From Left, Right — in Opposition
A bill to boost semiconductor production in the United States has managed to do nearly the unthinkable — unite the democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and the fiscally conservative right.
The bill making its way through the Senate is a top priority of the Biden administration. It would add about $79 billion to the deficit over 10 years, mostly as a result of new grants and tax breaks that would subsidize the cost that computer chip manufacturers incur when building or expanding chip plants in the United States.
Supporters say that countries around the world are spending billions of dollars to lure chipmakers. The U.S. must do the same or risk losing a secure supply of the semiconductors that power the nation’s automobiles, computers, appliances and some of the military’s most advanced weapons systems.
Sanders and a wide range of conservative lawmakers, think tanks and media outlets have a different take. To them, it’s “corporate welfare.” It’s just the latest example of how spending taxpayer dollars to help the private sector can scramble the usual partisan lines, creating allies on the left and right who agree on little else.
Sanders said he doesn’t hear from people about the need to help the semiconductor industry. Voters talk to him about climate change, gun safety, preserving a woman’s right to an abortion and boosting Social Security benefits, to name just a few.
“Not too many people that I can recall — I have been all over this country — say: ‘Bernie, you go back there and you get the job done, and you give enormously profitable corporations, which pay outrageous compensation packages to their CEOs, billions and billions of dollars in corporate welfare,'” Sanders said.
Sanders voted against the original semiconductor and research bill that passed the Senate last year. He was the only senator who caucuses with the Democrats to oppose the measure, joining with 31 Republicans.
While Sanders would like to see the spending directed elsewhere, several Republican senators just want the spending stopped, period. Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, said the spending would help fuel inflation that is hurting the poor and middle class.
“The poorer you are, the more you suffer. Even people well-entrenched in the middle class get gouged considerably. Why we would want to take money away from them and give it to the wealthy is beyond my ability to fathom,” Lee said.
Conservative mainstays such as The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, the Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks have also come out against the bill.
“Giving taxpayer money away to rich corporations is not competing with China,” said Walter Lohman, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.
The opposition from the far left and the far right means that Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and fellow Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, will need help from Republicans to get a bill over the finish line. Support from at least 11 Republican senators will be needed to overcome a filibuster. A final vote on the bill is expected in the coming week.
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney is among the likely Republican supporters. Asked about the Sanders’ argument against the bill, Romney said that when other countries subsidize the manufacturing of high technology chips, the U.S. must join the club.
“If you don’t play like they play, then you are not going to be manufacturing high technology chips, and they are essential for our national defense as well as our economy,” Romney said.
The most common reason that lawmakers give for subsidizing the semiconductor industry is the risk to national security from relying on foreign suppliers, particularly after the supply chain problems of the pandemic. Nearly four-fifths of global fabrication capacity is in Asia, according to the Congressional Research Service, broken down by South Korea at 28%, Taiwan at 22%, Japan, 16%, and China, 12%.
“I wish you didn’t have to do this, to be very honest, but France, Germany, Singapore, Japan, all of these other countries are providing incentives for CHIP companies to build there,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“We cannot afford to be in this vulnerable position. We need to be able to protect ourselves,” she said.
The window for passing the bill through the House is narrow if some progressives join with Sanders and if most Republicans line up in opposition based on fiscal concerns. The White House says the bill needs to pass by the end of the month because companies are making decisions now about where to build.
Two key congressional groups, the Problem Solvers caucus and the New Democrat Coalition, have endorsed the measure in recent days,
The Problem Solvers caucus is made up of members from both parties. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, the group’s Republican co-chair, said Intel Corp. wants to build its chip capacity in the United States, but much of that capacity will go to Europe if Congress doesn’t pass the bill.
Rep. Derek Kilmer, a Democrat, said he believes the legislation checks a lot of boxes for his constituents, including on the front-burner issue of the day, inflation.
“This is about reducing inflation. If you look at inflation, one-third of the inflation in the last quarter was automobiles, and it’s because there’s a shortage of chips,” Kilmer said. “So this is about, one, making sure that we’re making things in the United States, and two, about reducing costs.”
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US Treasury Chief Downplays Recession as Wave of Economic Data Looms
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday said the U.S. economy is slowing but pointed to healthy hiring as proof that it is not yet in recession.
Yellen spoke on NBC’s “Meet the Press” just before a slew of economic reports will be released this week that will shed light on an economy currently besieged by rampant inflation and threatened by higher interest rates. The data will cover sales of new homes, consumer confidence, incomes, spending, inflation, and overall output.
The highest-profile report will likely be Thursday, when the Commerce Department will release its first estimate of the economy’s output in the April-June quarter. Some economists forecast it may show a contraction for the second quarter in a row. The economy shrank 1.6% in the January-March quarter. Two straight negative readings is considered an informal definition of a recession, though in this case economists think that’s misleading.
Instead, the National Bureau of Economic Research — a nonprofit group of economists — defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months.”
Yellen argued that much of the economy remains healthy: Consumer spending is growing, Americans’ finances, on average, are solid, and the economy has added more than 400,000 jobs a month this year, a robust figure. The unemployment rate is 3.6%, near a half-century low.
“We’ve got a very strong labor market,” Yellen said. “This is not an economy that’s in recession.”
Still, Yellen acknowledged the economy is “in a period of transition in which growth is slowing,” from a historically rapid pace in 2021.
She said that slowdown is “necessary and appropriate,” because “we need to be growing at a steady and sustainable pace.”
Slower growth could help bring down inflation, which at 9.1% is the highest in two generations.
Still, many economists think a recession is on the horizon, with inflation eating away at Americans’ ability to spend and the Federal Reserve rapidly pushing up borrowing costs. Last week, Bank of America’s economists became the latest to forecast a “mild recession” later this year.
And Larry Summers, the treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, said on CNN’s “GPS” Sunday that “there’s a very high likelihood of recession,” as the Fed lifts interest rates to combat inflation. Those higher borrowing costs are intended to reduce consumer spending on homes and cars and slow business borrowing, which can lead to a downturn.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve is likely to announce its second 0.75% point increase in its short-term rate in a row, a hefty increase that it hasn’t otherwise implemented since 1994. That will put the Fed’s benchmark rate in a range of 2.25% to 2.5%, the highest level since 2018. Fed policymakers are expected to keep hiking until its rate reaches about 3.5%, which would be the highest since 2008.
The Fed’s hikes have torpedoed the housing market, as mortgage rates have doubled in the past year to 5.5%. Sales of existing homes have fallen for five straight months. On Tuesday, the government is expected to report that sales of new homes dropped in June.
Fewer home sales also means less spending on items that typically come with purchasing a new house, such as furniture, appliances, curtains, and kitchenware.
Many other countries are also grappling with higher inflation, and slower growth overseas could weaken the U.S. economy. Europe is facing the threat of recession, with soaring inflation and a central bank that just last week raised interest rates for the first time in 11 years.
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde also sought to minimize recession concerns in a news conference last Thursday.
“Under the baseline scenario, there is no recession, neither this year nor next year,” Lagarde said. “Is the horizon clouded? Of course it is.”
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Explainer -What Is Behind Heat Waves Affecting United States?
Virtually all the contiguous United States experienced above normal temperatures in the past week, with more dangerously hot weather forecast.
The U.S. heat wave followed record heat that killed hundreds if not thousands of people and sparked wildfires in Europe.
Following is an explanation of what is causing the heat waves, according to scientists.
What is a heat wave?
A heat wave has no single scientific definition. Depending on the climate of a region, it can be determined by a certain number of days above a specific temperature or percentile of the norm.
Arctic warming and jet stream migration
The Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the globe as a whole, meaning there is ever less difference between northern temperatures and those closer to the equator.
That is resulting in swings in the North Atlantic jet stream, which in turn leads to extreme weather events like heat waves and floods, according to Jennifer Francis, senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
Heat domes
Warmer oceans contribute to heat domes, which trap heat over large geographical areas. This weekend the heat dome is stretching from the southern plains of the Oklahoma/Arkansas area all the way to the eastern seaboard, according to the U.S. Weather Prediction Center.
Scientists have found the main cause of heat domes is a strong change in ocean temperatures from west to east in the tropical Pacific Ocean during the preceding winter.
“As prevailing winds move the hot air east, the northern shifts of the jet stream trap the air and move it toward land, where it sinks, resulting in heat waves,” the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says on its website.
El Niño and La Niña
Every few years, the climate patterns known as El Niño and, less frequently, La Niña occur. El Niño brings warm water from the equatorial Pacific Ocean up to the western coast of North America, and La Niña brings colder water.
At present, La Niña is in effect. Because summer temperatures trend lower during La Niña, climate scientists are concerned about what a serious heat wave would look like during the next El Niño, when even hotter summer weather could be expected.
Human-influenced climate change
Climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels is a global phenomenon that is certainly playing a role in what the United States is experiencing, scientists say.
“Climate change is making extreme and unprecedented heat events both more intense and more common, pretty much universally throughout the world,” said Daniel Swain, climate scientist at UCLA.
“Heat waves are probably the most underestimated type of potential disaster because they routinely kill a lot of people. And we just don’t hear about it because it doesn’t kill them in, to put it bluntly, sufficiently dramatic ways. There aren’t bodies on the street.”
Francis, of the Woodwell Center, said with climate change the world is seeing changing wind patterns and weather systems “in ways that make these heat waves, like we’re seeing right now, more intense, more persistent, and cover areas that just aren’t used to having heat waves.”
Alex Ruane, researcher at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said as the world warms, “it takes less of a natural anomaly to push us into the extreme heat categories. Because we’re closer to those thresholds, it’s more likely that you’ll get more than one heat wave at the same time. We’re seeing this in the United States.”
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China Launches Second Space Station Module, Wentian
China on Sunday launched the second of three modules to its permanent space station, in one of the final missions needed to complete the orbiting outpost by year’s end.
A live feed on state broadcaster CCTV showed the 23-ton Wentian (“Quest for the Heavens”) laboratory module launching on the back of China’s most powerful rocket, the Long March 5B, at 2:22 p.m. (0622 GMT) from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan.
Space agency staff, seen on the live feed observing the progress of the launch from a control room, cheered and applauded when the Wentian separated from the rocket about 10 minutes after the launch.
The launch was “a complete success”, CCTV reported shortly after.
China began constructing the space station in April 2021 with the launch of the Tianhe module, the main living quarters, in the first of 11 crewed and uncrewed missions in the undertaking.
The Wentian lab module, 17.9 meters long, will be where astronauts can carry out scientific experiments, along with the other lab module yet to be launched – Mengtian (“Dreaming of the Heavens”).
Wentian features an airlock cabin that is to be the main exit-entry point for extravehicular activities when the station is completed.
It will also serve as short-term living quarters for astronauts during crew rotations on the station, designed for long-term accommodation of just three astronauts.
Mengtian is expected to be launched in October and, like Wentian, is to dock with Tianhe, forming a T-shaped structure.
The completion of the structure, about a fifth of the International Space Station (ISS) by mass, is a source of pride among ordinary Chinese people and will cap President Xi Jinping’s 10 years as leader of China’s ruling Communist Party.
On board the space station are Shenzhou-14 mission commander Chen Dong and teammates Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe. They are slated to return to Earth in December with the arrival of the Shenzhou-15 crew.
Tomorrow’s ‘Top Gun’ Might Have Drone Wingman, Use AI
Maverick’s next wingman could be a drone.
In the movies, fighter pilots are depicted as highly trained military aviators with the skills and experience to defeat adversaries in thrilling aerial dogfights.
New technologies, though, are set to redefine what it means to be a “Top Gun,” as algorithms, data and machines take on a bigger role in the cockpit — changes hinted at in “Top Gun: Maverick.”
“A lot of people talk about, you know, the way of the future, possibly taking the pilot out of the aircraft,” said 1st Lt. Walker Gall, an F-35 pilot with the U.S. 48th Fighter Wing based at RAF Lakenheath in England. “That’s definitely not something that any of us look forward to.”
“I’d like to keep my job as long as possible, but I mean, it’s hard to argue with newer and newer technology,” he said. “And if that’s the way of the future, that’s what it is. But I’m just here to enjoy it while I can.”
The future for fighter pilots was on display this week at the Farnborough International Airshow near London, one of the world’s biggest aviation, defense and aerospace expos.
Defense contractors outlined how artificial intelligence and other technologies will be used in the newest warplanes as global military delegations browsed mockups of missiles, drones and fighter jets. At stake are many billions of dollars as countries update military fleets or pump up defense procurement budgets amid rising geopolitical tensions.
The original “Top Gun” movie released in 1986 follows Tom Cruise’s hot-shot Navy pilot, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, through fighter weapons training school. In the sequel, an aging Maverick, now a test pilot, learns the top secret hypersonic plane he’s working on is being canceled so the funding can be used for a pilotless drone program.
It’s a debate that’s been playing out for years in the real world. Drones have been used extensively in the war between Russia and Ukraine and other modern conflicts, raising the question of just how much need there is for human pilots to fly expensive fighter jets and other aircraft — or whether unmanned aerial vehicles could do the job.
At the Farnborough show, experts said the future of air warfare is likely to be manned and unmanned aircraft working together.
One day, fighter pilots will “have a drone aircraft that’s flying as a loyal wingman” under their control, said Jon Norman, a vice president at Raytheon Technologies Corp.’s missile and defense business.
Norman, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot, said he used to complain about drones controlled from the ground that got in his way when he was flying fighter jets.
The latest communications systems let fighters, drones and other aircraft talk to each other, he said.
Technology has already removed the need for a second person to sit in the backseat to work the radar — a role portrayed in the original “Top Gun” movie by the character Goose.
It will continue to play a bigger role in the cockpit, Raytheon executives said. Artificial intelligence will analyze reams of data from sensors placed on planes, drones, the ground or missiles flying through the air to give pilots in the sky and commanders back at headquarters a better sense of the battlefield.
In future battles, AI might allow a pilot to send an armed drone close to an enemy position “and have them just fire at will,” Norman added.
But it’s too soon to write an epitaph for the pilot.
“If we had had this conversation 20 years ago, almost everyone was certain that some (drones) would be serving in a combat aircraft replacement role. That simply hasn’t happened,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at consultancy AeroDynamic Advisory.
Nowadays, he said, drones mainly support manned military aircraft, which “allows them to get out there with a greater combat aircraft punch.”
There was speculation that the F-35 fighter, which went into operation in 2015, would be the last manned fighter jet, said Gareth Jennings, aviation editor at defense intelligence provider Janes. “But no one says that anymore.”
The F-35, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., is a stealthy fighter part of today’s generation of warplanes. There is a next generation of fighter jets in the concept stages offering even more high-tech advances, including potentially pilotless versions, but they won’t arrive before the next decade at the earliest.
Gall, who recently graduated from fighter pilot training school, said the F-35 is easy to fly and that technology would likely make its successors even easier. But he stressed that the fighter pilot’s role would remain intense.
Even if that role isn’t going away anytime soon, the Pentagon is working on transforming it.
The Air Combat Evolution program, run by the Pentagon’s DARPA research agency, is working on incorporating artificial intelligence into warfighting, including designing a plane that can fly itself in a dogfight.
The program has already carried out a live simulation of air combat, pitting a virtual plane piloted by an AI agent against a human pilot. If all goes well, researchers plan to carry out a live dogfight with AI-enabled planes by 2024.
Experts, though, are skeptical pilots will be eliminated from the cockpit in the near future.
“I don’t think we’ll be at the stage of not needing fighter pilots for a few decades yet,” said Jennings, the aviation editor. “Unmanned technology and the public willingness to accept not having a human in the loop are just not there, and won’t be for at least another 30 years or so.”
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Arrests as Madagascar Opposition Protest Living Costs
Police in Madagascar detained two leading members of the main opposition party on Saturday during a protest in the capital against rising living costs and economic hardship.
Several hundred anti-government demonstrators gathered in the center of Antananarivo in the morning, watched by a heavy military and police presence.
Police said they arrested Rina Randriamasinoro, the secretary general of the opposition Tiako I Madagasikara (TIM) party, and its national coordinator Jean-Claude Rakotonirina following tensions between demonstrators and security forces. The pair were later released.
“They were arrested and placed in police custody because they made comments inciting hatred and public unrest,” Antananarivo’s prefect Angelo Ravelonarivo told AFP.
Inflation has soared to the highest level in decades in many countries, fueled by the war in Ukraine and the easing of COVID-19 restrictions.
Organizers had wanted to hold the rally inside a warehouse belonging to opposition leader Marc Ravalomanana, but demonstrators arrived to find security forces blocking access to the venue.
Protesters then staged a sit-in outside the building.
Footage shared on social media showed police pulling Randriamasinoro and Rakotonirina from the crowd before taking them away in a police vehicle.
“The rally was authorized yesterday by the prefect and then this morning we discovered the police outside the gate,” said opposition lawmaker Fetra Ralambozafimbololona.
The arrests sparked further remonstrations, with demonstrators vowing not to leave the area until the two men were released — before eventually dispersing in the afternoon.
Randriamasinoro and Rakotonirina were eventually let go early in the evening, a police spokesperson said, adding authorities were yet to decide whether to press charges against them.
Protests are rare in the country with the opposition and rights groups accusing the government of President Andry Rajoelina of stifling dissent and rarely allowing demonstrations.
“We can’t say anything anymore,” said Samuel Ravelarison, a 63-year-old accountant attending the rally. “We came to demonstrate against the high cost of living.”
Ravelonarivo, the prefect, said that while the demonstration had not been banned, he had suggested it be held at a different location away from the city center.
One of the poorest nations in the world, Madagascar is still reeling from the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic and a series of extreme weather events.
Tropical storms and cyclones have battered the country this year, killing more than 200 people, adding to the damage of a severe drought that has ravaged the island’s south leading to malnutrition and instances of famine.
Rajoelina, 48, first came to power in 2009, ousting Ravalomanana with the backing of the military.
He returned to the presidency in 2019, after beating his predecessor in an election beset by allegations of fraud.
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Monkeypox Declared Global Health Emergency
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus used his authority Saturday to declare Monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern. The action comes after an Emergency Committee convened to review the situation was unable to reach consensus.
When the Emergency Committee last met a month ago, more than 3,000 cases of monkeypox in 47 countries had been reported to the WHO. Since then, the outbreak has grown, with more than 16,000 cases reported in 75 countries. Five deaths from the disease also have been reported.
As happened the last time it met, the committee again was unable to reach consensus on whether monkeypox posed a global health threat. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says he has evaluated the information under consideration and has determined there is a clear risk of further international spread of the disease.
“So, in short, we have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly, through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria in the International Health Regulations,” said Tedros. “For all of these reasons, I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern.”
Tedros says the WHO believes monkeypox poses a moderate risk globally and in all regions, except in the European region, where it assesses the risk as high. Although there is a potential for further international spread, he says the danger of interference with international traffic remains low for now.
The monkeypox virus is spread from person to person through close bodily contact. For now, the outbreak is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners.
Since the outbreak is largely contained in one group, Tedros says monkeypox can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups.
“It is therefore essential that all countries work closely with communities of men who have sex with men, to design and deliver effective information and services, and to adopt measures that protect the health, human rights, and dignity of affected communities,” he said. “Stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus.”
Tedros says the necessary tools for tackling the outbreak are available. However, he adds the world must act together. It must act in coordination and solidarity to bring the monkeypox virus under control and prevent it from gaining a foothold in the countries where it is found.
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WHO: Monkeypox Outbreak Constitutes Global Health Emergency
The rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak represents a global health emergency, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a media briefing Saturday.
The WHO label – a “public health emergency of international concern” – is designed to sound an alarm that a coordinated international response is needed and could unlock funding and global efforts to collaborate on sharing vaccines and treatments.
There are already effective treatments and vaccines for monkeypox, but they are in short supply. The WHO has also already been providing advice and updates since the outbreak began in early May.
At the first meeting of the expert committee, the group said it would reconsider its position on the emergency declaration if the outbreak escalated.
In Europe and the United States, cases have almost entirely been reported among men who have sex with men, and the committee also said it would reconsider if other groups began to report cases, particularly children or others who have been more vulnerable to the virus in past outbreaks in endemic countries.
On Friday, the United States identified its first two monkeypox cases in children.
Any changes to the virus itself, which spreads through close contact and causes lesions and flu-like symptoms, could also spark a rethink, the committee has said.
The group is now split between those who think an emergency declaration would accelerate efforts to contain the disease, and those who do not think it meets the criteria because it has not yet spread to new groups of people or had a high fatality rate, the sources said.
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‘Day by Day’: Trade Bans, Inflation Send Food Prices Soaring
As inflation surges around the world, politicians are scrambling for ways to keep food affordable as people increasingly protest the soaring cost of living. One knee-jerk response has been food export bans aimed at protecting domestic prices and supplies as a growing number of governments in developing nations try to show a nervous public that their needs will be met.
For business owners, the rising cost of cooking ingredients — from oil to chicken — has prompted them to raise prices, with people paying 10% to 20% more at Soki Wu’s food stall in Singapore. For consumers, it has meant paying more for the same or lesser-quality food or curbing certain habits altogether.
In Lebanon, where endemic corruption and political stalemate has crippled the economy, the U.N. World Food Program is increasingly providing people with cash assistance to buy food, particularly after a devastating 2020 port blast that destroyed massive grain silos. Constant power cuts and high fuel prices for generators limit what people can buy because they can’t rely on freezers and refrigerators to store perishables.
Tracy Saliba, a single mother of two and business owner in Beirut, says she used to spend around a quarter of her earnings on food. These days, half her income goes to feeding her family as the currency loses strength amid soaring prices.
“I’m not buying (groceries) like I used to,” Saliba said. “I’m just getting the necessary items and food, like day by day.”
Food prices have risen by nearly 14% this year in emerging markets and by over 7% in advanced economies, according to Capital Economics. In countries where people spend at least a third or more of their incomes on food, any sharp increase in prices can lead to crisis.
Capital Economics forecasts that households in developed markets will spend an extra $7 billion a month on food and beverages this year and much of next year due to inflation.
The pain is being felt unevenly, with 2.3 billion people going severely or moderately hungry last year, according to a global report by the World Food Program and four other U.N. agencies.
Food prices accounted for about 60% of last year’s increase in inflation in the Middle East and North Africa, with the exception of oil-producing Gulf countries. The situation is particularly dire for Sudan, where inflation is expected to hit 245% this year, and Iran, where prices spiked as much as 300% for chicken, eggs and milk in May, sparking panic and scattered protests.
In Somalia, where 2.7 million people cannot meet their daily food requirements and where children are dying of malnutrition, sugar is a source of energy. In May, a kilogram of sugar cost about the equivalent of 72 cents in Mogadishu, the capital. A month later, it had shot up to $1.28 a kilogram.
“In my home, I serve tea (with sugar) three times a day, but from now on, I have to reduce it drastically to only making it when guests arrive,” said Asli Abdulkadir, a Somali housewife and mother of four.
People there are bracing for even higher costs after India announced it would cap sugar exports this year. Even if that doesn’t reduce India’s sugar exports compared with previous years, news of the restriction was enough to cause speculation among traders like Ahmed Farah in Mogadishu.
“The cost of sugar is expected to surge since Somalia counts heavily on the white sugar exported from India and a few brown sugars from Brazil,” he said.
Food export restrictions aimed at protecting domestic supplies and capping inflation is one reason for the rising cost of food.
Food prices had been steadily climbing worldwide because of drought, supply chain issues, and high energy and fertilizer costs. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says food commodity prices were up 23% last year.
Russia’s war in Ukraine further sent the price of wheat and cooking oils up, fueling a global food crisis. There was a breakthrough this week to create safe corridors for Black Sea shipments, but Ukrainian ports have been blocked from exporting these key goods for months and it will take time to get them moving again to vulnerable countries worldwide.
There’s concern that the impact of all these factors will lead more countries to resort to food export bans, which are felt globally. When Indonesia blocked the export of palm oil for a month in April, palm oil prices spiked by at least 200%.
Analysts say food export bans are shortsighted because they have a domino effect of driving up prices.
“I would say that roughly 80% of the bans we see are ill-advised — a kind-of, sort-of gut reaction by certain politicians,” said David Laborde, who is credited with creating a food trade policy tracker at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
“In the world where you will be the only one to do it, that can make sense,” he said. “But in a world where other countries can also do it, actually that’s far from being a good idea.”
Laborde said bans are “a very selfish policy … because you try to get better by making things worse for others.”
The list of food export restrictions Laborde has been tracking since the COVID-19 pandemic is long and changes constantly. Examples of their impact include Kazakhstan’s restrictions on grains and oil on prices in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan; Cameroon’s rice export restriction on Chad; and Tunisia’s fruit and vegetable restrictions on Libya.
In Singapore, 29-year-old Wu is hopeful he can keep the family business running as Singapore’s government signed off on Indonesia as a new chicken supplier.
“Things will get better,” he said. “(This) will only make us more resilient.”
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2 Children in US Have Monkeypox, Officials Say
Two children have been diagnosed with monkeypox in the U.S., health officials said Friday.
One is a toddler in California and the other an infant who is not a U.S. resident but was tested while in Washington, D.C., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The children were described as being in good health and receiving treatment. How they caught the disease is being investigated, but officials think it was through household transmission.
Other details weren’t immediately disclosed.
Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, but this year more than 15,000 cases have been reported in countries that historically don’t see the disease. In the U.S. and Europe, most infections have happened in men who have sex with men, though health officials have stressed that anyone can catch the virus.
In addition to the two pediatric cases, health officials said they were aware of at least eight women among the more than 2,800 U.S. cases reported so far.
While the virus has mostly been spreading among men who have sex with men, “I don’t think it’s surprising that we are occasionally going to see cases” outside that social network, the CDC’s Jennifer McQuiston told reporters Friday.
Officials have said the virus can spread through close personal contact, and via towels and bedding. That means it can happen in homes, likely through prolonged or intensive contact, said Dr. James Lawler, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
“People don’t crawl on each other’s beds unless they are living in the same house or family,” he said.
In Europe, there have been at least six monkeypox cases among kids 17 years old and younger.
This week, doctors in the Netherlands published a report of a boy who was seen at an Amsterdam hospital with about 20 red-brown bumps scattered across his body. It was monkeypox, and doctors said they could not determine how he got it.
In Africa, monkeypox infections in children have been more common, and doctors have noted higher proportions of severe cases and deaths in young children.
One reason may be that many older adults were vaccinated against smallpox as kids, likely giving them some protection against the related monkeypox virus, Lawler said.
Smallpox vaccinations were discontinued when the disease was eradicated about 40 years ago.
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How China Became Ground Zero for the Auto Chip Shortage
From his small office in Singapore, Kelvin Pang is ready to wager a $23 million payday that the worst of the chip shortage is not over for automakers – at least in China.
Pang has bought 62,000 microcontrollers, chips that help control a range of functions from car engines and transmissions to electric vehicle power systems and charging, which cost the original buyer $23.80 each in Germany.
He’s now looking to sell them to auto suppliers in the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen for $375 apiece. He says he has turned down offers for $100 each, or $6.2 million for the whole bundle, which is small enough to fit in the back seat of a car and is packed for now in a warehouse in Hong Kong.
“The automakers have to eat,” Pang told Reuters. “We can afford to wait.”
The 58-year-old, who declined to say what he had paid for the microcontrollers (MCUs), makes a living trading excess electronics inventory that would otherwise be scrapped, connecting buyers in China with sellers abroad.
The global chip shortage over the past two years – caused by pandemic supply chaos combined with booming demand – has transformed what had been a high-volume, low-margin trade into one with the potential for wealth-spinning deals, he says.
Automotive chip order times remain long around the world, but brokers like Pang and thousands like him are focusing on China, which has become ground zero for a crunch that the rest of the industry is gradually moving beyond.
Globally, new orders are backed up by an average of about a year, according to a Reuters survey of 100 automotive chips produced by the five leading manufacturers.
To counter the supply squeeze, global automakers like General Motors, Ford and Nissan have moved to secure better access through a playbook that has included negotiating directly with chipmakers, paying more per part and accepting more inventory.
For China though, the outlook is bleaker, according to interviews with more than 20 people involved in the trade from automakers, suppliers and brokers to experts at China’s government-affiliated auto research institute CATARC.
Despite being the world’s largest producer of cars and leader in electric vehicles (EVs), China relies almost entirely on chips imported from Europe, the United States and Taiwan. Supply strains have been compounded by a zero-COVID lockdown in auto hub Shanghai that ended last month.
As a result, the shortage is more acute than elsewhere and threatens to curb the nation’s EV momentum, according to CATARC, the China Automotive Technology and Research Center. A fledgling domestic chipmaking industry is unlikely to be in a position to cope with demand within the next two to three years, it says.
Pang, for his part, sees China’s shortage continuing through 2023 and deems it dangerous to hold inventory after that. The one risk to that view, he says: a sharper economic slowdown that could depress demand earlier.
Forecasts ‘hardly possible’
Computer chips, or semiconductors, are used in the thousands in every conventional and electric vehicle. They help control everything from deploying airbags and automating emergency braking to entertainment systems and navigation.
The Reuters survey conducted in June took a sample of chips, produced by Infineon, Texas Instruments, NXP, STMicroelectronics and Renesas, which perform a diverse range of functions in cars.
New orders via distributors are on hold for an average lead time of 49 weeks – deep into 2023, according to the analysis, which provides a snapshot of the global shortage though not a regional breakdown. Lead times range from six to 198 weeks.
German chipmaker Infineon told Reuters it is “rigorously investing and expanding manufacturing capacities worldwide” but said shortages may last until 2023 for chips outsourced to foundries.
“Since the geopolitical and macroeconomic situation has deteriorated in recent months, reliable assessments regarding the end of the present shortages are hardly possible right now,” Infineon said in a statement.
Taiwan chipmaker United Microelectronics told Reuters it has been able to reallocate some capacity to auto chips due to weaker demand in other segments. “On the whole, it is still challenging for us to meet the aggregate demand from customers,” the company said.
TrendForce analyst Galen Tseng told Reuters that if auto suppliers needed 100 PMIC chips – which regulate voltage from the battery to more than 100 applications in an average car – they were currently only getting around 80.
Urgently seeking chips
The tight supply conditions in China contrast with the improved supply outlook for global automakers. Volkswagen, for example, said in late June it expected chip shortages to ease in the second half of the year.
The chairman of Chinese EV maker Nio, William Li, said last month it was hard to predict which chips would be in short supply. Nio regularly updates its “risky chip list” to avoid shortages of any of the more than 1,000 chips needed to run production.
In late May, Chinese EV maker Xpeng Motors pleaded for chips with an online video featuring a Pokemon toy that had also sold out in China. The bobbing duck-like character waves two signs: “urgently seeking” and “chips.”
“As the car supply chain gradually recovers, this video captures our supply-chain team’s current condition,” Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng posted on Weibo, saying his company was struggling to secure “cheap chips” needed to build cars.
All roads lead to Shenzhen
The scramble for workarounds has led automakers and suppliers to China’s main chip trading hub of Shenzhen and the “gray market,” brokered supplies legally sold but not authorized by the original manufacturer, according to two people familiar with the trade at a Chinese EV maker and an auto supplier.
The gray market carries risks because chips are sometimes recycled, improperly labeled, or stored in conditions that leave them damaged.
“Brokers are very dangerous,” said Masatsune Yamaji, research director at Gartner, adding that their prices were 10 to 20 times higher. “But in the current situation, many chip buyers need to depend on the brokers because the authorized supply chain cannot support the customers, especially the small customers in automotive or industrial electronics.”
Pang said many Shenzhen brokers were newcomers drawn by the spike in prices but unfamiliar with the technology they were buying and selling. “They only know the part number. I ask them: Do you know what this does in the car? They have no idea.”
While the volume held by brokers is hard to quantify, analysts say it is far from enough to meet demand.
“It’s not like all the chips are somewhere hidden and you just need to bring them to the market,” said Ondrej Burkacky, senior partner at McKinsey.
When supply normalizes, there may be an asset bubble in the inventories of unsold chips sitting in Shenzhen, analysts and brokers cautioned.
“We can’t hold on for too long, but the automakers can’t hold on either,” Pang said.
Chinese self-sufficiency
China, where advanced chip design and manufacturing still lag overseas rivals, is investing to decrease its reliance on foreign chips. But that will not be easy, especially given the stringent requirements for auto-grade chips.
MCUs make up about 30% of the total chip costs in a car, but they are also the hardest category for China to achieve self-sufficiency in, said Li Xudong, senior manager at CATARC, adding that domestic players had only entered the lower end of the market with chips used in air conditioning and seating controls.
“I don’t think the problem can be solved in two to three years,” CATARC chief engineer Huang Yonghe said in May. “We are relying on other countries, with 95% of the wafers imported.”
Chinese EV maker BYD, which has started to design and manufacture IGBT transistor chips, is emerging as a domestic alternative, CATARC’s Li said.
“For a long time, China has seen its inability to be totally independent on chip production as a major security weakness,” said Victor Shih, professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego.
With time, China could build a strong domestic industry as it did when it identified battery production as a national priority, Shih added.
“It led to a lot of waste, a lot of failures, but then it also led to two or three giants that now dominate the global market.”
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Monkeypox Virus Could Become Entrenched as New STD in US
The spread of monkeypox in the U.S. could represent the dawn of a new sexually transmitted disease, though some health officials say the virus that causes pimple-like bumps might yet be contained before it gets firmly established.
Experts don’t agree on the likely path of the disease, with some fearing that it is becoming so widespread that it is on the verge of becoming an entrenched STD — like gonorrhea, herpes and HIV.
But no one’s really sure, and some say testing and vaccines can still stop the outbreak from taking root.
So far, more than 2,400 U.S. cases have been reported as part of an international outbreak that emerged two months ago.
Health officials are not sure how fast the virus has spread. They have only limited information about people who have been diagnosed, and they don’t know how many infected people might be spreading it unknowingly.
They also don’t know how well vaccines and treatments are working. One impediment: Federal health officials do not have the authority to collect and connect data on who has been infected and who has been vaccinated.
With such huge question marks, predictions about how big the U.S. outbreak will get this summer vary widely, from 13,000 to perhaps more than 10 times that number.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the government’s response is growing stronger every day and vaccine supplies will soon surge.
“I think we still have an opportunity to contain this,” Walensky told The Associated Press.
Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. It does not usually spread easily among people.
But this year more than 15,000 cases have been reported in countries that historically don’t see the disease. In the U.S. and Europe, the vast majority of infections have happened in men who have sex with men, though health officials have stressed that anyone can catch the virus.
It spreads mainly through skin-to-skin contact, but it can also be transmitted through linens used by someone with monkeypox. Although it’s been moving through the population like a sexually transmitted disease, officials have been watching for other types of spread that could expand the outbreak.
Symptoms include fever, body aches, chills, fatigue and bumps on parts of the body. The illness has been relatively mild in many men, and no one has died in the U.S. But people can be contagious for weeks, and the lesions can be extremely painful.
When monkeypox emerged, there was reason to believe that public health officials could control it.
The tell-tale bumps should have made infections easy to identify. And because the virus spreads through close personal contact, officials thought they could reliably trace its spread by interviewing infected people and asking who they had been intimate with.
It didn’t turn out to be that easy.
With monkeypox so rare in the U.S., many infected men — and their doctors — may have attributed their rashes to some other cause.
Contact tracing was often stymied by infected men who said they did not know the names of all the people they had sex with. Some reported having multiple sexual interactions with strangers.
It didn’t help that local health departments, already burdened with COVID-19 and scores of other diseases, now had to find the resources to do intensive contact-tracing work on monkeypox, too.
Indeed, some local health officials have given up expecting much from contact tracing.
There was another reason to be optimistic: The U.S. government already had a vaccine. The two-dose regimen called Jynneos was licensed in the U.S. in 2019 and recommended last year as a tool against monkeypox.
When the outbreak was first identified in May, U.S. officials had only about 2,000 doses available. The government distributed them but limited the shots to people who were identified through public health investigations as being recently exposed to the virus.
Late last month, as more doses became available, the CDC began recommending that shots be offered to those who realize on their own that they could have been infected.
Demand has exceeded supply, with clinics in some cities rapidly running out of vaccine doses and health officials across the country saying said they don’t have enough.
That’s changing, Walensky said. As of this week, the government has distributed more than 191,000 doses, and it has 160,000 more ready to send. As many as 780,000 doses will become available as early as next week.
Once current demand is satisfied, the government will look at expanding vaccination efforts.
The CDC believes that 1.5 million U.S. men are considered at high risk for the infection.
Testing has also expanded. More than 70,000 people can be tested each week, far more than current demand, Walensky said. The government has also embarked on a campaign to educate doctors and gay and bisexual men about the disease, she added.
Donal Bisanzio, a researcher at RTI International, believes U.S. health officials will be able to contain the outbreak before it becomes endemic.
But he also said that won’t be the end of it. New bursts of cases will probably emerge as Americans become infected by people in other countries where monkeypox keeps circulating.
Walensky agrees that such a scenario is likely. “If it’s not contained all over the world, we are always at risk of having flare-ups” from travelers, she said.
Shawn Kiernan, of the Fairfax County Health Department in Virginia, said there is reason to be tentatively optimistic because so far the outbreak is concentrated in one group of people — men who have sex with men.
Spread of the virus into heterosexual people would be a “tipping point” that may occur before it’s widely recognized, said Kiernan, chief of the department’s communicable disease section.
Spillover into heterosexuals is just a matter of time, said Dr. Edward Hook III, emeritus professor of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
If monkeypox becomes an endemic sexually transmitted disease, it will be yet another challenge for health departments and doctors already struggling to keep up with existing STDs.
Such work has long been underfunded and understaffed, and a lot of it was simply put on hold during the pandemic. Kiernan said HIV and syphilis were prioritized, but work on common infections like chlamydia and gonorrhea amounted to “counting cases and that’s about it.”
For years, gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis cases have been rising.
“By and large,” Hook said, doctors “do a crummy job of taking sexual histories, of inquiring about and acknowledging their patients are sexual beings.”
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Cheetahs to Return to India After 70 Years in Deal With Namibia
India and Namibia have signed an agreement to bring cheetahs to the forests of the South Asian country, where the large cat became extinct 70 years ago.
According to the agreement signed Wednesday, eight African cheetahs will be transferred from Namibia to India in August for captive breeding at the Kuno National Park (KNP) wildlife sanctuary, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Indian officials said that as part of the “ambitious” project, 12 more African cheetahs from South Africa are expected to be brought to the park, though a formal agreement between the two countries has not yet been signed.
The KNP wildlife sanctuary is the new Indian home for African cheetahs, complying with International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) guidelines, including a specific focus on site quality, abundant prey base and vast swaths of grasslands.
“The main goal of cheetah reintroduction project is to establish viable cheetah metapopulation in India that allows the cheetah to perform its functional role as a top predator,” a statement from the Indian Environment Ministry said.
The arrival of the cheetahs is expected to coincide with India’s 75th Independence Day celebrations on August 15, 2022.
After signing the agreement in New Delhi with Namibia’s Deputy Prime Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav tweeted: “Completing 75 glorious years of Independence with restoring the fastest terrestrial flagship species, the cheetah, in India, will rekindle the ecological dynamics of the landscape.”
In another tweet, he said, “Cheetah reintroduction in India has a larger goal of re-establishing ecological function in Indian grasslands that was lost due to extinction of Asiatic cheetah. This is in conformity with IUCN guidelines on conservation translocations.”
A statement from the Environment Ministry said the KNP can currently host up to 21 cheetahs, but after the restoration of a wider landscape, its capacity will be increased to about 36.
The cheetah, the fastest land animal, has been rapidly heading toward extinction and is classified as a vulnerable species under the IUCN’s red list of threatened species. An estimated 7,000 cheetahs remain in the wild and almost all of them are in Africa.
The plummeting number of cheetahs across the world is blamed mostly on the depletion of habitats and poaching. Hunting, loss of habitat and food scarcity led to the animal’s extinction in India.
It is believed that more than 10,000 Asiatic cheetahs roamed the wilds of India during the 16th century.
The cheetah population in India dwindled during the 19th century, largely because of bounty hunting by local Indian kings and ruling British officials.
The last three Asiatic cheetahs were hunted down in 1948 by an Indian king in central India. In 1952, the cheetah was declared officially extinct in the country.
Just a dozen or so Asiatic cheetahs are left in the wild right now — all in Iran.
In 2010, India initiated an effort to revive the cheetah population at the KNP wildlife sanctuary by bringing in African cheetahs. But in 2012, an Indian court stalled the project, noting it would come in conflict with a then-ongoing plan to introduce lions in the sanctuary.
In 2020, India’s Supreme Court announced African cheetahs could be introduced in a “carefully chosen location” in India on an experimental basis. Since then, India has been making an effort to ship in the African cheetahs.
Indian officials are hopeful that this time, the plan to introduce African cheetahs in India is going to succeed, and the country will be able to revive its cheetah population.
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Ukrainian Experts Turn to Israel for Mental Trauma Training
Ukrainian therapist Svitlana Kutsenko thought she was making progress with her patients — army veterans recovering from mental trauma suffered during fighting with Russia in 2014. Then, war erupted again.
Now, five months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kutsenko says the situation looks bleaker than ever. Many of her patients have returned to the front lines, while ordinary citizens scarred by the horrors of life in wartime are now seeking treatment.
“Sometimes it’s bearable, sometimes it’s not,” Kutsenko, who lives in Kyiv, told The Associated Press. “Some people are suffering from huge fear — fear of death, fear of their relatives’ death and some are pretty angry about what’s going on and they want to somehow take this anger under control.”
Kutsenko was among 20 Ukrainian mental health professionals who spent the past two weeks in Israel receiving training on how to treat trauma cases.
Israel, which has gone through several wars with its Arab neighbors and has a large population of Holocaust survivors, has deep experience in treating psychological or mental trauma.
But in Ukraine, awareness for recognizing and treating mental trauma remains relatively low. And despite a conflict with Russia that has been ongoing since 2014, the country is not equipped to deal with the numbers of people affected by the Russian invasion.
Kutsenko said that there is a great difference between treating patients struggling to come to terms with events from the past and helping people who are under fire cope with grief and fear in real time.
“Right now, in Ukraine, it’s not just, you know, shooting and people” being killed by missiles and bombs, Kutsenko said, adding that torture, rape and other terrible acts are also happening.
The course’s instructor, Danny Brom, says treating mental trauma in Israel has taught him how to provide therapy to victims who are both post-trauma and still in immediate danger. These lessons, he said, have helped him relate to mental health professionals from conflict zones across the world and especially Ukraine.
“They understand that we Israelis know what we are talking about. This … has happened to us in the different wars, so there’s a very special connection between them and us. They really feel that we understand what we are talking about,” said Brom, a clinical psychologist who is director of Metiv, an Israeli nonprofit that trains mental health professionals to treat trauma victims.
The group included 20 psychologists from across Ukraine, including some who have been displaced throughout the war. The course included training in cognitive behavior therapy techniques, or CBT, which are commonly used to treat depression and anxiety.
Larysa Zasiekina is a psychologist from western Ukraine, where internally displaced people have flocked to seek refuge from the fighting.
Before the war, she treated adults, but now she sees mothers and children who have had to suddenly leave everything behind as their husbands and fathers head off to battle.
Zasiekina says the course has given her new methods to cope with this new reality, especially when it comes to working with young people.
“We used a lot of imaginary exercises, and I think these exercises are very good for children because actually they have a lot of imagination,” says Zasiekina. “They want to play.”
Throughout the course, the participants were never far from having to deal with horrific news from back home.
During her time in Jerusalem, Kutseno got word that the building across from her family home in Vinnytsia, where her parents still live, had been bombed. Her parents weren’t harmed in the barrage, which killed 23 people that day, but it was a terrifying reminder.
“Even being here, feeling safe, war is still (in) the background of everything I do here,” Kutseno said.
“It’s not like I will get back to something that will have changed,” she added. “What I will find there is war.”
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Biden Positive for COVID-19, ‘Fully Carrying Out His Duties’
The White House says President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing “very mild symptoms.” The president’s diagnosis comes amid another wave of the coronavirus in the United States, driven this time by the BA.5 variant. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Why Aren’t More Americans Getting COVID-19 Booster Shots?
New cases of COVID-19 have been sweeping across the United States in recent weeks. On Thursday, President Joe Biden tested positive. His symptoms of tiredness, a runny nose and dry cough are considered mild.
The highly infectious and transmittable BA.5 subvariant of the coronavirus’s omicron variant is making up nearly 80% of new cases, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID Data Tracker.
Although the initial vaccinations are effective at preventing hospitalization and death, their immunity weakens over time.
“So, more people, even those who might have protection from past infection or vaccination, have gotten COVID-19,” according to the CDC.
That’s why the CDC is recommending that immunized adults and children 5 years and older follow up with a vaccination booster in five months, and those 50 and older get a second booster shot for renewed protection. But so far, the CDC reports that only about half of adults have gotten a booster and just 28% of those age 50 and older have received a second dose, which provides even further protection from the illness.
This leaves millions of people more vulnerable to the most recent variants of omicron.
“It’s very concerning that many individuals who are eligible for boosters are choosing not to get them,” David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, told VOA. “There’s really strong research suggesting the protective effects of these boosters against COVID.”
The White House issued a warning this week about the spike in BA.5 subvariant cases and urged Americans over the age of 50 to get the booster shots.
“It could save your life,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the administration’s COVID response coordinator.
Many health advocates are alarmed that public momentum over COVID-19 has waned.
Some people “don’t feel a sense of urgency to get booster shots even though they are available in most parts of the country,” Grabowski said.
Part of the reason may be a lack of communication by public health officials that is confusing to the public, said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
“Public health officials have not communicated clearly when you should get a booster and that it is an important step,” Grabowski told VOA.
Dr. David Aronoff, chair of the Department of Medicine at Indiana University’s School of Medicine, explained that in some instances, “people may have had a booster shot and not have realized they were eligible for another in several months.”
There is also the idea that since the symptoms from BA.5 are usually mild for people who are vaccinated, then why bother getting a booster, said Tina Runyan, a professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. With a highly contagious strain going around, some people think they will get COVID anyway, so getting a booster won’t protect them that much, she said.
But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said that’s not true.
“If you are not vaccinated to the fullest, namely, you have not gotten boosters according to what the recommendations are, then you’re putting yourself at an increased risk that you could mitigate against by getting vaccinated,” he said during a July 12 press briefing with the White House COVID-19 response team and public health officials.
Despite that warning, health experts say COVID-19 fatigue is causing a lack of response.
“People are ready to put COVID behind them and they just want to return to a more normal way of life,” explained Schaffner.
Going back to normal may be fleeting as new subvariants continue to pop up.
“We have to start thinking about the booster as something we might do annually to protect ourselves and others,” said Keri Althoff, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.
Meanwhile, new vaccines are in the works to target omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.
“Getting vaccinated now will not preclude you from getting a variant-specific vaccine later this fall or winter,” said Jha, the White House COVID response coordinator.
“We’re hoping we get new vaccines in the future that will target particular variants as they come up,” Aronoff said, but the currently available vaccines, which include boosters, “are keeping people out of hospitals and from dying from COVID.”
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New York State Reports First US Polio Case in Nearly a Decade
An unvaccinated young adult from New York recently contracted polio, the first U.S. case in nearly a decade, health officials said Thursday.
Officials said the patient, who lives in Rockland County, had developed paralysis. The person developed symptoms a month ago and did not recently travel outside the country, county health officials said.
It appears the patient had a vaccine-derived strain of the virus, perhaps from someone who got live vaccine — available in other countries, but not the U.S. — and spread it, officials said.
The person is no longer deemed contagious, but investigators are trying to figure out how the infection occurred and whether other people may have been exposed to the virus.
Most Americans are vaccinated against polio, but unvaccinated people may be at risk, said Rockland County Health Commissioner Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert. Health officials scheduled vaccination clinics nearby soon and encouraged anyone who has not been vaccinated to get the shots.
“We want shots in the arms of those who need it,” she said at a Thursday press conference announcing the case.
Feared disease
Polio was once one of the nation’s most feared diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis, many of them in children.
Vaccines became available starting in 1955, and a national vaccination campaign cut the annual number of U.S. cases to fewer than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 1979, polio was declared eliminated in the U.S., meaning there was no longer routine spread.
Rarely, travelers have brought polio infections into the U.S. The last such case was in 2013, when a 7-month-old who had recently moved to the U.S. from India was diagnosed in San Antonio, Texas, according to federal health officials. That child also had the type of polio found in the live form of vaccine used in other countries.
There are two types of polio vaccines. The U.S. and many other countries use shots made with an inactivated version of the virus. But some countries where polio has been more of a recent threat use a weakened live virus that is given to children as drops in the mouth. In rare instances, the weakened virus can mutate into a form capable of sparking new outbreaks.
U.S. children are still routinely vaccinated against polio with the inactivated vaccine. Federal officials recommend four doses: to be given at 2 months of age; 4 months; at 6 to 18 months; and at age 4 through 6 years. Some states require only three doses.
According to the CDC’s most recent childhood vaccination data, about 93% of 2-year-olds had received at least three doses of polio vaccine.
How it spreads
Polio spreads mostly from person to person or through contaminated water. It can infect a person’s spinal cord, causing paralysis and possibly permanent disability and death. The disease mostly affects children.
Polio is endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although numerous countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia have also reported cases in recent years.
Rockland County, in New York City’s northern suburbs, has been a center of vaccine resistance in recent years. A 2018-19 measles outbreak there infected 312 people.
Last month, health officials in Britain warned parents to make sure children have been vaccinated because the polio virus had been found in London sewage samples. No cases of paralysis were reported.
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