Day: September 4, 2021

GENEVA – The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, is calling on the United States and other nations to end COVID-19 border restrictions that keep Central American refugees from seeking asylum.

Forced displacement within Central America and Mexico has been soaring over the last five years. The United Nations refugee agency says factors, including chronic violence and insecurity, climate change and natural disasters have forced people to flee their homes in growing numbers.

UNHCR spokeswoman Aikaterini Kitidi told VOA the effects of COVID-19 and Hurricanes Eta and Iota, which struck the region with devastating force last year, have triggered further large-scale displacement.

In particular, she said these disasters have created great economic hardship for women and children who have lost their source of income and have difficulty obtaining basic services.

“As a result, such people are forcibly displaced, and they are compelled many times to embark to even further dangerous onward journeys. What they are exposed to are smugglers, traffickers, and to other risks like, for example, sexual exploitation, abuse, or even murder,” she said.

Kitidi said a staggering 1 million people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have been forced to flee their homes, creating an unprecedented displacement crisis in the region.

Due to public health COVID-19 travel restrictions, she said Central American refugees face extreme difficulties in obtaining protections they need in countries of asylum. She said the UNHCR has appealed to the U.S. government to end the Title 42 public health-related asylum restrictions.

“Under which we see the ports of entry to the United States remaining closed to most asylum seekers with exemptions for some categories of populations with vulnerabilities. And we have asked for the expulsions that are occurring of these people to stop and for the right to claim asylum in the United States to be restored,” she said.

Kitidi said all countries in the region have agreed to share the responsibility to provide protection for those fleeing danger and persecution. She added that discussions are continuing with regional authorities in the hopes they will live up to their agreement.

Source: Voice of America

Brazil has placed a 90-day suspension on the use of more than 12 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine because they were made in a plant that had not been authorized by Anvisa, Brazil’s federal health regulator, Reuters reported.

“The manufacturing unit … was not inspected and was not approved by Anvisa in the authorization of emergency use of the mentioned vaccine,” the regulator said Saturday in a statement.

Brazil’s Butantan Institute, a biomedical center that has partnered with China’s Sinovac Biotech to locally finish the vaccines, alerted Anvisa on Friday about the doses, but neither disclosed the location of the plant. Anvisa said it would seek to inspect the plant during the 90-day ban.

Butantan said 9 million more doses made at the same plant were on their way to Brazil.

Concerns spur boosters

Several cities in Brazil have begun providing vaccine booster shots even though most citizens have yet to receive their second jabs. The booster shots were prompted by concerns older Brazilians have about the efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine, The Associated Press reported.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s delta variant epicenter and home to one of its largest elderly populations, began administering the boosters Wednesday. Northeastern cities Salvador and Sao Luis started on Monday, and the most populous city, Sao Paulo, will begin Monday. The rest of the nation is expected to follow the next week.

France, Israel, China and Chile are among those countries giving boosters to some of their older citizens, and a U.S. plan to start delivering booster shots for most Americans by September 20 is facing complications that could delay third doses for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday.

Japan and South Korea, both of which wrestled with slow vaccine rollouts, are planning booster shots in the fourth quarter of this year. Malaysia also is considering boosters, but Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said those who had yet to receive their first shots were being prioritized.

Thailand began giving booster shots this week, but only for health and frontline workers.

Russia, Hungary and Serbia also are giving boosters, although there has been a lack of demand in those countries for the initial shots amid abundant supplies.

According to AP, France’s worst coronavirus outbreak is unfolding 12 time zones away from Paris, devastating Tahiti and other idyllic islands of French Polynesia.

Regional health officials say the South Pacific archipelagos lack enough oxygen, ICU beds and morgue space — and that the vaccination rate is just half the national average.

France’s highest rate

With more than 2,800 COVID cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the region now holds France’s record for the highest infection rate. The majority of the region’s 463 documented COVID-19 deaths have taken place in the past 30 days.

New Zealand officials on Saturday reported the country’s first COVID-related fatality in more than 200 days. Doctors said the nonagenarian had several underlying health problems in addition to COVID-19.

American boxer Oscar de la Hoya was hospitalized with COVID-19 late on Friday, forcing him to drop out of a comeback fight scheduled for next month. The Hall of Fame fighter said on Twitter that he was fully vaccinated earlier this year.

German news agency dpa on Saturday reported that a man attacked two members of a vaccination team operating a shopping mall medical kiosk in the east German town of Gera after he demanded a vaccination certificate without being vaccinated. The man, who was not identified, injured a nurse and a medical assistant after they refused to comply with his demands.

Police later arrested the man, who was also injured in the attack, at a nearby parking garage.

Fifth variant

World Health Organization officials earlier this week designated the coronavirus variant known as mu or “B.1.621” as a “variant of interest,” becoming the fifth variant to be monitored by the global health body. Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday said U.S. public health officials were “keeping a very close eye” on a new variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 that was first detected in Colombia.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said Saturday evening that it had recorded nearly 220.2 million global COVID-19 infections and 4.6 million deaths. The center said 5.4 billion vaccines had been administered.

Source: Voice of America

MIAMI – Funeral director Wayne Bright has seen grief piled upon grief during the latest COVID-19 surge.

A woman died of the virus, and as her family was planning the funeral, her mother was struck down. An aunt took over arrangements for the double funeral, only to die of COVID-19 herself two weeks later.

“That was one of the most devastating things ever,” said Bright, who also arranged the funeral last week of one of his closest friends.

Florida is in the grip of its deadliest wave of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, a disaster driven by the highly contagious delta variant.

While Florida’s vaccination rate is slightly higher than the national average, the Sunshine State has an outsize population of elderly people, who are especially vulnerable to the virus; a vibrant party scene; and a Republican governor who has taken a hard line against mask requirements, vaccine passports and business shutdowns.

As of mid-August, the state was averaging 244 deaths per day, up from 23 a day in late June and eclipsing the previous peak of 227 during the summer of 2020. (Because of the way deaths are logged in Florida and lags in reporting, more recent figures on fatalities per day are incomplete.)

Hospitals have rented refrigerated trucks to store more bodies. Funeral homes have been overwhelmed.

‘Weird dream state’

Cristina Miles, a mother of five from Orange Park, is among those facing more than one loss at a time. Her husband died after contracting COVID-19, and less than two weeks later, her mother-in-law succumbed to the virus.

“I feel we are all kind of in a weird dream state,” she said, of herself and her three children.

Hospitals have been swamped with patients who, like Miles’ husband and mother-in-law, hadn’t gotten vaccinated.

In a positive sign, the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 in Florida has dropped over the past two weeks from more than 17,000 to 14,200 on Friday, indicating the surge is easing.

Florida made an aggressive effort early on to vaccinate its senior citizens. But Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Florida, said the raw number of those who have yet to get the shot is still large, given Florida’s elderly population of 4.6 million.

“Even 10% is still a very large number, and then folks living with them who come in contact with them are not vaccinated,” Cherabuddi said. “With delta, things spread very quickly.”

Cherabuddi said there is also a “huge difference” in attitudes toward masks in Florida this summer compared with last year. This summer, “if you traveled around the state, it was like we are not really in a surge,” he said.

DeSantis’ stances

Governor Ron DeSantis has strongly opposed certain mandatory measures to keep the virus in check, saying people should be trusted to make decisions for themselves. He has asserted, too, that the spike in cases is seasonal as Floridians spend more time indoors to escape the heat.

At his funeral home in Tampa, Bright is working weekdays and weekends, staying past midnight sometimes.

“Usually we serve between five and six families a week. Right now, we are probably seeing 12 to 13 new families every week,” he said. “It’s nonstop. We are just trying to keep up with the volume.”

He had to arrange the burial of one of his closest friends, a man he had entrusted with the security code to his house. They used to carpool each other’s kids to school, and their families would gather for birthday and Super Bowl parties.

“It is very, very difficult to go through this process for someone you love so dearly,” he said.

Pat Seemann, a nurse practitioner whose company has nearly 500 elderly, homebound patients in central Florida, had not lost a single patient to COVID-19. Then the variant she calls “the wrecking ball” hit.

In the past month, she lost seven patients in two weeks, including a husband and wife who died within days of each other.

“I cried all weekend. I was devastated, angry,” she said.

Elderly hit hardest

Overall, more than 46,300 people have died of COVID-19 in Florida, which ranks 17th in per capita deaths among the states.

The majority of the deaths this summer — like last summer — are among the elderly. Of the 2,345 people whose recent deaths were reported over the past week, 1,479 of them were 65 and older, or 63%.

“The focus needs to be on who’s dying and who’s ending up in the hospital,” Seeman said. “It’s still going after the elderly.”

But the proportion of under-65 people dying of COVID-19 has grown substantially, which health officials attribute to lower vaccination rates in those age groups.

Aaron Jaggi, 35, was trying to get healthy before he died of COVID-19, 12 hours after his older brother Free Jaggi, 41, lost his life to the virus. They were overweight, which increases the risk of severe COVID-19 illness, and on the fence about getting vaccinated, thinking the risk was minimal because they both worked from home, said Brittany Pequignot, who has lived with the family at various times and is like an adopted daughter.

After their death, the family found a whiteboard that belonged to Aaron. It listed his daily goals for sit-ups and push-ups.

“He was really trying,” Pequignot said.

Source: Voice of America