Day: August 25, 2022

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday the number of new monkeypox cases fell 20% globally last week, but new cases increased in the Americas and said there is still “intense transmission” of the disease.

At a news briefing at agency headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there are signs the monkeypox outbreak is slowing in Europe, which he credited to a combination of effective public health measures, changes in behavior and vaccination.

But the WHO chief said the opposite is true in the Americas, particularly in Latin America, where insufficient awareness or public health measures are combining with a lack of access to vaccines to “fan the flames of the monkeypox outbreak.”

Tedros said in the early stages of the monkeypox outbreak, most reported cases were in Europe, with a smaller proportion in the Americas. He said, “That has now reversed, with less than 40% of reported cases in Europe and 60% in the Americas.”

The WHO chief said Danish drug maker Bavarian Nordic signed an agreement Wednesday with WHO affiliate the Pan-American Health Organization to support access to its vaccine in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Tedros also noted that this week, globally, the world crossed another tragic milestone, with 1 million reported COVID-19 deaths in 2022.

He said, “We can’t say we are learning to live with COVID-19 when 1 million people have died with COVID-19 this year alone, when we have all the tools necessary to prevent these deaths.”

The WHO director-general, once again, asked “all governments to strengthen their efforts to vaccinate all health workers, older people and others at the highest risk, on the way to 70% vaccine coverage for the whole population.”

Source: Voice of America

The first crewed flight of Boeing’s space capsule Starliner is scheduled for February 2023, the company and NASA announced Thursday, as the United States seeks to secure a second way for its astronauts to reach the International Space Station.

Since 2020, American astronauts have traveled to the ISS aboard SpaceX’s vessels, but the U.S. space agency wants to widen its options.

After a series of hiccups in its space program that led to serious delays, including a 2019 flight that did not reach the ISS, Boeing finally managed to send the gumdrop-shaped capsule to the station in May — without a crew.

This time, the aerospace giant will send up the Starliner with humans aboard to earn NASA’s green light to begin regular missions at an expected pace of one per year.

“Currently, we’re targeting a launch date as early as February of 2023,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told reporters.

“We’re in good shape to execute these plans to be ready for that flight in February,” added Mark Nappi, Starliner program manager at Boeing.

The test flight — aptly named CFT, or Crew Flight Test — will carry U.S. astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams.

They are expected to be docked for eight days at the ISS, where they will conduct a series of experiments, said ISS program manager Joel Montalbano.

“Our agency goal is to get two U.S. commercial providers up and running as soon as we can.”

Boeing had hoped to conduct this test flight before the end of the year, but a few glitches experienced in the uncrewed May flight led to necessary adjustments to the vessel.

An issue was detected in the propulsion system: two thrusters responsible for placing Starliner in a stable orbit failed, though officials insisted there was plenty of redundancy built into the system to overcome the problem.

Boeing’s teams later determined that “debris-related conditions” were to blame, Nappi said, adding that the origin of said debris was still unknown.

Some filters were removed to fix a pressure problem, and flight software was updated to avoid a data overload.

Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts in 2014, shortly after the end of the space shuttle program, during a time when the United States was left reliant on Russian Soyuz rockets for rides to the ISS.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX filled the void first, providing space “taxi” service since a successful test mission for its Dragon capsule in 2020.

Source: Voice of America