Category: General

Doctors in Israel began administering a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine Monday as part of a trial study to determine if the extra shot can boost immunity against the virus.

The trial study involving about 150 staffers at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv comes just days after a special health advisory panel recommended that people 60 years old and older, as well as those with compromised immune systems and medical workers, receive a fourth dose of the Pfizer vaccine.Health Ministry Director Nachman Ash must give final approval to the panel’s recommendation.

Israel has outpaced much of the world in vaccinating its citizens, including offering booster shots, but the pace has slowed in recent weeks as it faces a fifth wave of new COVID-19 infections driven by the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The fast-spreading variant has led to chaotic closures and cancellations around the world since it was first identified last month in a handful of southern African nations.

Thousands of flights in the United States and around the world were cancelled as flight crews called in sick after testing positive for COVID-19, leaving passengers stranded and unable to join family and friends during the Christmas holiday weekend.

Impact on sports events

In U.S. college football, two post-season “bowl” games scheduled this week are the latest to be cancelled due to a large outbreak of COVID-19 infections among players. Boston College was forced to withdraw from Monday’s contest against East Carolina in the Military Bowl inAnnapolis, Maryland, while the University of Virginia pulled out of its matchup against Southern Methodist University Wednesday in the Fenway Bowl, which was to be staged at the iconic home of Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox. The two programs join the University of Hawaii, Texas A&M and Miami to withdraw from their respective bowl games because of a high rate of infections that left them without enough players available for the game, which will cost the programs hundreds of thousands of dollars for failing to participate.

New restrictions in France

Elsewhere in the world, French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to announce a new set of COVID-19 related restrictions Monday after holding an emergency meeting with his Cabinet.

The new measures come as France posted a new single-day record of100,000 new coronavirus cases on Saturday.Among the expected new measures is limiting France’s health passport, which is required to enter restaurants and other indoor public venues, only to those who have been fully vaccinated.

China

And authorities in the northern Chinese city of Xi’an have tightened its strict lockdown of the city of 13 million residents as it continues to battle a spike in new COVID-19 cases. The new rules announced Monday bans residents from driving even within city limits unless for work or taking part in virus control work, with violators facing 10 days in detention and up to $78 in fines. Residents are already banned from leaving their homes unless they have essential jobs.

Xi’an, the home of the world-famous Terracotta Warriors, recorded 150 new cases for Sunday, bringing its total number of new infections since December 9 to well over 600, although it is not known if the surge is being driven by omicron or the previous delta variant.

Source: Voice of America

The U.S. flu season has arrived on schedule after taking a year off, with flu hospitalizations rising and two child deaths reported.

Last year’s flu season was the lowest on record, probably because COVID-19 measures — such as school closures, distancing, masks and canceled travel — prevented the spread of influenza or because the coronavirus somehow pushed aside other viruses.

“This is setting itself up to be more of a normal flu season,” said Lynnette Brammer, who tracks flu-like illnesses for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The childhood deaths, Brammer said, are “unfortunately what we would expect when flu activity picks up. It’s a sad reminder of how severe flu can be.”

During last year’s unusually light flu season, one child died. In contrast, 199 children died from flu two years ago, and 144 the year before that.

In the newest data, the most intense flu activity was in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., and the number of states with high flu activity rose from three to seven. In CDC figures released Monday, states with high flu activity are New Mexico, Kansas, Indiana, New Jersey, Tennessee, Georgia and North Dakota.

The type of virus circulating this year tends to cause the largest amount of severe disease, especially in the elderly and the very young, Brammer said.

Last year’s break from the flu made it more challenging to plan for this year’s flu vaccine. So far, it looks like what’s circulating is in a slightly different subgroup from what the vaccine targets, but it’s “really too early to know” whether that will blunt the vaccine’s effectiveness, Brammer said.

“We’ll have to see what the impact of these little changes” will be, Brammer said. “Flu vaccine is your best way to protect yourself against flu.”

There are early signs that compared with last year’s figures, fewer people are getting flu shots. With hospitals already stretched by COVID-19, it’s more important than ever to get a flu shot and take other precautions, Brammer said.

“Cover your cough. Wash your hands. Stay home if you’re sick,” Brammer said. “If you do get flu, there are anti-virals you can talk to your doctor about that can prevent severe illness and help you stay out of the hospital.”

Source: Voice of America

Australia’s most populous state reported a record number of new COVID-19 cases on Sunday and a sharp jump in hospitalizations while thousands of people were isolating at home after contracting the virus or coming into contact with someone who has.

New South Wales reported 6,394 new infections, up from 6,288 a day earlier. Case numbers in the state have surged over the past two weeks but hospitalizations have lagged behind new infections.

More than 70% of cases in some Australian states are the omicron variant of the coronavirus but New South Wales does not routinely carry out genome testing to identify the variant. State Health Minister Brad Hazzard indicated Sunday that omicron is widespread.

“We would expect that pretty well everybody in New South Wales at some point will get omicron,” Hazzard said. “If we’re all going to get omicron, the best way to face it is when we have full vaccinations including our booster.”

Health officials reported 458 active cases in hospitals across the state, up sharply from 388 the day before. There were 52 people in intensive care in New South Wales.

A major laboratory in Sydney, which is located in New South Wales, said Sunday that 400 people who’d been informed a day earlier they had tested negative for COVID-19 had in fact tested positive. The lab’s medical director said those people were being contacted and informed of the error.

“An emergency response team is now investigating the cause of this mistake, which is believed to be due to human error. We sincerely apologize,” said SydPath medical director Anthony Dodds.

Doctors and pharmacists in New South Wales have said they are running short of vaccine doses amid a rush for shots spurred by concern over the omicron variant.

Victoria, the country’s second most populous state, reported 1,608 new COVID-19 cases and two deaths on Sunday, with 374 people in hospitals, including 77 in intensive care.

More than 30,000 people in Victoria spent Christmas isolating at home, unable to celebrate with family or friends. Of those, about half were reported to be active cases who contracted the virus in the days leading up to Christmas.

Source: Voice of America

Hundreds of thousands of people in the Philippines, Asia’s largest Roman Catholic nation, marked Christmas on Saturday without homes, adequate food and water, electricity and cellphone connections after a powerful typhoon left at least 375 people dead last week and devastated mostly central island provinces.

Elsewhere, New Zealanders are celebrating Christmas in the warmth of mid-summer with few restrictions, in one of the few countries in the world largely untouched by the omicron variant of COVID-19.

Australia is marking the holiday amid a surge of COVID-19 cases, worse than at any stage of the pandemic, which has forced states to reinstate mask mandates and other measures.

And adding more pain for travelers, airlines around the world canceled hundreds of flights as the omicron variant jumbled schedules and drew down staffing levels.

According to FlightAware, there are more than 3,900 canceled flights on Friday and Saturday, with close to half of the cancellations by Chinese airlines. About 30% of affected flights — more than 1,100 — were to, from or within the U.S. This is still a small fraction of global flights. FlightAware says it has tracked more than 100,000 arrivals in the past 24 hours.

Before Typhoon Rai hit on Dec. 16, millions of Filipinos were trooping back to shopping malls, public parks and churches after an alarming spike in infections in September eased considerably.

Gov. Arthur Yap of hard-hit Bohol province, where more than 100 people died in the typhoon and about 150,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, asked foreign aid agencies on Saturday to help provide temporary shelters and water-filtration systems to supplement Philippine government aid.

“I refuse to believe that there’s no Christmas spirit today among our people. They’re conservative Catholics. But it’s obviously very muted. There is overwhelming fear, there are no gifts, there were no Christmas Eve dinners, there is none of that today,” Yap told The Associated Press.

Yap said he was happy that many Filipinos could celebrate Christmas more safely after COVID-19 cases dropped, but he pleaded: “Please don’t forget us.”

In Manila, which was not hit by the typhoon, Filipino Catholics were relieved to be able to return to churches on Christmas, although only a fraction were allowed inside and worshippers were required to wear masks and stand at a safe distance from each other.

In South Korea, tough social distancing rules remained in place, requiring churches to allow only a limited number of worshippers — 70% of their seating capacity — and attendees had to be fully vaccinated.

In Seoul’s Yoido Full Gospel Church, the country’s biggest Protestant church, thousands of masked worshippers sang hymns and prayed as the service was broadcast online. Many churches across the country offered both in-person and online services.

South Korea has been grappling with soaring infections and deaths since it significantly eased its virus curbs in early November as part of efforts to return to pre-pandemic normalcy. The country was eventually forced to restore its toughest distancing guidelines, such as a four-person limit on social gatherings and a 9 p.m. curfew for restaurants and cafes.

Christmas celebrations were subdued in much of India, with more decorations than crowds as people feared a new wave of the omicron variant potentially sweeping the country in the coming weeks.

Authorities reintroduced nighttime curfews and restrictions on gatherings of more than five people in big cities like New Delhi and Mumbai. People attended midnight Mass in Mumbai and elsewhere but in smaller numbers.

Christians comprise just over 2% of India’s nearly 1.4 billion people.

In New Zealand, where 95% of adults have had at least one dose of the vaccine, making it one of the world’s most vaccinated populations, the only omicron cases that have been found have been safely contained at the border.

As the pandemic spread around the world the past two years, New Zealand used its isolation to its advantage. Border controls kept the worst of the virus at bay. By Christmas this year, New Zealand had recorded 50 deaths in a population of 5.5 million.

But that success has come at a cost. There were empty chairs at some tables this holiday season because some New Zealanders living and working overseas were not able to return home due to limits in the country’s managed isolation and quarantine program.

The traditional dining tables of a northern winter — turkey and all the trimmings — are common. But Kiwis also celebrate in an antipodean manner, with barbeques on beaches fringed by the native pohutukawa tree, which blooms only at Christmas.

At New Zealand’s Scott Base in Antarctica, some New Zealanders enjoyed a white Christmas. During summer on the frozen continent, the sun never dips below the horizon and in 24 hours of daylight the temperature hovers around 0 degrees Celsius.

Around 200 people pass through the base over the summer season — scientists, support staff and defense personnel who provide communications and other services. Numbers are lower this year because of the pandemic and all staff traveling to the continent have had to isolate and undergo COVID-19 testing before departure.

Most Pacific Island nations whose health systems might have been overwhelmed by COVID-19 outbreaks have largely managed to keep out the virus through strict border controls and high vaccination numbers.

Fiji has an ongoing outbreak and has had almost 700 deaths. About 92% of the adult population is now fully vaccinated, 97.7% have received at least one dose and many in the deeply religious nation will celebrate Christmas at traditional church services and family gatherings.

Health Secretary James Fong, in a Christmas message, urged Fijians to “please celebrate wisely.”

In remote Macuata province, residents of four villages received a special Christmas gift: Electricity was connected to their villages for the first time.

In his Christmas message, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison referred to the COVID-19 toll.

“This pandemic, it continues to buffet us,” Morrison said. “The omicron variant is just the latest challenge that we have faced. But together, always together and only together, we keep pushing through.”

The omicron variant is prevalent in some states and is estimated to represent more than 70% of all new cases in Queensland.

Summer heat might have discouraged outdoor Christmas feasts in some places. The temperature in Perth in Western Australia was expected to hit 42 degrees Celsius on Saturday, making it the hottest Christmas since records began more than a century ago.

On Christmas Eve, a student driver in the Northern Territory made off with a truck containing more than $10,000 in Christmas hams that was empty when it was found.

“This behavior can only be described as Grinch-like,” police detective Mark Bland said.

Source: Voice of America

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, built to give the world a glimpse of the universe as it existed when the first galaxies formed, was launched by rocket early Saturday from South America’s northeastern coast, opening a new era of astronomy.

The revolutionary $9 billion infrared telescope, hailed by NASA as the premiere space-science observatory of the next decade, was carried aloft inside the cargo bay of an Ariane 5 rocket that blasted off at about 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT) from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) launch base in French Guiana.

The flawless Christmas Day launch, with a countdown conducted in French, was carried live on a joint NASA-ESA Webcast.

After a 27-minute ride into space, the 14,000-pound instrument was released from the upper stage of the French-built rocket, and it should gradually unfurl to nearly the size of a tennis court over the next 13 days as it sails onward on its own.

Live video captured by a camera mounted on the rocket’s upper stage showed the Webb moving gently away high above the Earth as it was jettisoned. Flight controllers confirmed moments later that Webb’s power supply was operational.

Coasting through space for two more weeks, the Webb telescope will reach its destination in solar orbit 1 million miles from Earth – about four times farther away than the moon. And Webb’s special orbital path will keep it in constant alignment with the Earth as the planet and telescope circle the sun in tandem.

By comparison, Webb’s 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, orbits the Earth from 340 miles away, passing in and out of the planet’s shadow every 90 minutes.

Named after the man who oversaw NASA through most of its formative decade of the 1960s, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than Hubble and is expected to transform scientists’ understanding of the universe and our place in it.

Webb mainly will view the cosmos in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to gaze through clouds of gas and dust where stars are being born, while Hubble has operated primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.

Cosmological History Lesson

The new telescope’s primary mirror – consisting of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-coated beryllium metal – also has a much bigger light-collecting area, enabling it to observe objects at greater distances, thus farther back into time, than Hubble or any other telescope.

That, astronomers say, will bring into view a glimpse of the cosmos never previously seen – dating to just 100 million years after the Big Bang, the theoretical flashpoint that set in motion the expansion of the observable universe an estimated 13.8 billion years ago.

Hubble’s view reached back to roughly 400 million years following the Big Bang, a period just after the very first galaxies – sprawling clusters of stars, gases and other interstellar matter – are believed to have taken shape.

Aside from examining the formation of the earliest stars and galaxies in the universe, astronomers are eager to study super-massive black holes believed to occupy the centers of distant galaxies.

Webb’s instruments also make it ideal to search for evidence of potentially life-supporting atmospheres around scores of newly documented exoplanets – celestial bodies orbiting distant stars – and to observe worlds much closer to home, such as Mars and Saturn’s icy moon Titan.

The telescope is an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies. Northrop Grumman Corp was the primary contractor. The Arianespace launch vehicle is part of the European contribution.

Webb was developed at a cost of $8.8 billion, with operational expenses projected to bring its total price tag to about $9.66 billion, far higher than planned when NASA was previously aiming for a 2011 launch.

Astronomical operation of the telescope, to be managed from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, is expected to begin in the summer of 2022, following about six months of alignment and calibration of Webb’s mirrors and instruments.

It is then that NASA expects to release the initial batch of images captured by Webb. Webb is designed to last up to 10 years.

Source: Voice of America

While many countries are fighting off their worst coronavirus outbreaks yet, Japan is detecting hardly any COVID-19 infections at all. Observers are trying to figure out why.

As recently as late summer, Japan’s coronavirus outlook wasn’t great. An outbreak coinciding with the Tokyo Olympics was killing dozens per day and overwhelming hospitals.

Starting in September, though, as Japan ramped up its vaccination campaign, the country saw a dramatic plunge in the number of reported cases and eventually the number of deaths.

Since then, the situation has only improved. Japan this month has reported an average of less than one COVID-19 death per day – a shockingly low number for a country of 126 million.

No one knows exactly why Japan has experienced such success — especially while other countries, even its immediate neighbors, have been hit by serious winter waves of the coronavirus.

There are many possible explanations. Nearly 80% of Japan’s population is fully vaccinated. Virtually everyone wears masks. Even after the government relaxed restrictions this autumn, people continued to socially distance themselves.

Some researchers have pointed to Japan’s low rates of obesity. Several recent studies have concluded that COVID-19 is more severe in obese individuals.

Cultural customs may also play a role. For instance, Japanese do not typically kiss, hug, or even shake hands during greetings. Many Japanese are also relatively quiet in public settings, points out Kentaro Iwata, an infectious disease specialist at Japan’s Kobe University.

“Masking and keeping silent in public places is very important [for fighting the virus]. Everybody knows it, but practicing it can be very difficult in some parts of the world, maybe due to cultural reasons,” said Iwata, who has dealt with infectious outbreaks for more than 20 years, by email.

Those factors, however, do not explain why neighboring South Korea, which shares many cultural traits, is dealing with its worst COVID-19 outbreak yet.

One possible explanation is that Japan is testing far fewer people, Kenji Shibuya, an epidemiologist and researcher at the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research, said.

In the first half of December, Japan tested an average of 44,623 people per day, according to government data. South Korea, whose population is less than half that of Japan, conducted an average of 238,901 tests per day during the same period, according to official data.

Because of Japan’s lack of testing, it is difficult to believe that official case figures reflect reality on the ground, Shibuya told VOA in an email.

If the lack of testing were a major factor, though, Japan would have likely seen a surge in other indicators, such as the number of hospitalizations or deaths from respiratory illnesses, as other experts have noted.

In the absence of any definitive explanation, some researchers have tried to identify a so-called X-factor. One study even suggested many Japanese people share a genetic feature linked to white blood cells that helps the fight against COVID-19. Others theorize that the coronavirus variant spreading in Japan may have mutated itself into extinction.

Whatever the reason for Japan’s success, the battle is not over, said Shibuya, who said he still expects the country to see a winter wave of infections.

In a possible ominous sign, Japan this week identified its first cases of community transmission of the omicron variant, which scientists say spreads much faster than previous iterations of the virus. Many of those found to be infected with omicron had no history of overseas travel, officials said.

Source: Voice of America