Category: General

The White House has announced the United States will co-host the second global COVID-19 summit virtually on May 12 to discuss increasing efforts to end the pandemic internationally and prepare for future variants of the coronavirus.

“The emergence and spread of new variants, like omicron, have reinforced the need for a strategy aimed at controlling COVID-19 worldwide,” the White House said in a joint news release.

The U.S. will host the summit with Belize, chair of the Caribbean Community, or CARICOM, Germany, the current president of the Group of Seven leading economies, or G-7; Indonesia, which currently holds the presidency of the Group of 20 largest economies, or G-20; and Senegal as African Union chair.

The news comes amid concerns regarding a resurgence of the pandemic after recent COVID-19 restrictions in China, and the rise of a new BA.2 variant of the coronavirus in the U.S., where Philadelphia has reinforced an indoor mask mandate, making it the first big American city to do so.

“The Summit will redouble our collective efforts to end the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for future health threats,” the five countries said in the statement.

They emphasized supporting locally-led solutions that include “getting shots into arms; deploying tests and treatments, especially for the highest-risk populations; and expanding and protecting the health workforce.”

U.S. President Joe Biden, who called for international cooperation to end the pandemic, convened the first global COVID-19 summit last September. The delta and omicron variants of the coronavirus spread soon after.

“We know we must prepare now to build, sustain, and finance the global capacity we need, not only for emerging COVID-19 variants, but also future health crises,” the joint statement said.

The summit is calling on world leaders, philanthropists, NGOs, and the private sector to support their mission to increase the vaccination rate internationally and sustain health security.

Source: Voice of America

Unpredictable local COVID-19 policies combined with China’s zero-pandemic approach to the coronavirus are taking a toll in Hong Kong, where residents and others say they are feeling increased pressures during the pandemic’s worst wave.

Reports of dead bodies filling hospital rooms, old people on beds outside hospitals in winter rain, long lines in freezing cold for mandatory PCR tests and complaints of neglect in government quarantine facilities have been in newspaper headlines in the last three months.

The city recorded the highest COVID death rate across the globe in early March, and residents witnessed the highest dissatisfaction rate with the government since the pandemic began.

Lack of support

One Hong Kong resident, requesting anonymity, was among those experiencing weeks of stress during the omicron wave. The 28-year-old’s mother started coughing in late February, and soon tested positive with at-home test kits.

At the time, the government only recognized COVID tests conducted in designated testing stations, which struggled to cope with explosive demand.

“My mother wanted to go to the stations for a test, but she was refused due to her symptoms. And there were so many people lining up – seriously even if I wasn’t infected, I probably would have contracted the virus if I had to line up like that,” the education worker told VOA.

Doctors at private clinics refused to see her mother because of her COVID symptoms. Then she went to the hospital to be told she would be better off going home as she would have to wait for over 10 hours if she stayed.

“My mother was extremely anxious at the time, and we didn’t know what to do since we didn’t know how bad it could get. We tried calling the government hotline for more support, but no one picked up. I couldn’t sleep for a few nights,” she said.

The daughter tested positive a few days later using the at-home test but given the reported conditions in quarantine facilities – including unpalatable food, negligence and shared toilets – she did not to report her test result to authorities to avoid being sent to one.

Inconsistent policies

On February 18, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced a citywide testing plan under its zero-COVID approach to single out the confirmed patients and send some to quarantine facilities. At the time, she said a lockdown would not “go hand in hand” with the citywide testing.

Ten days later, Health Secretary Sophia Chan told public broadcaster RTHK that the city would not rule out a lockdown along with mass testing. That statement fueled fears among Hong Kongers, who were seen emptying supermarket pharmacy shelves in preparation.

A day later, Lam urged people to stay calm and not to believe in “rumors” of a lockdown, despite Chan’s comments. Eight days later, Lam said the city would drop citywide testing – which had been supposed to launch in March – as a priority.

Starting April 21, dining in in restaurants will resume, and recreational venues, including gyms, cinemas and theme parks will reopen.

Another Hong Kong resident, who wished to stay anonymous, told VOA she did not report testing positive to the government because of “mercurial” policies.

“I can’t even begin – they [the government] didn’t have any organizational skills. Their measures are mercurial, so residents don’t know how to adapt. When I was sick, I couldn’t get my hands on any medication because by that point, people already stocked up a lot [during panic buying]. I was worried that my symptoms could be very serious,” she said.

Financial and mental strains

Hong Kong residents fear losing their jobs due to mandatory quarantine, Benjamin Cowling, division head of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Hong Kong, told VOA in an email.

“A lot of people could be uneasy about the idea of being locked inside a relatively small room for an unknown amount of time, and separated from their family members and pets. Some people have lost their jobs as a result of being isolated, because if they don’t show up to work, they will be replaced,” Cowling said.

The head of Soulgood, a local online counseling platform, told VOA the demand for counseling services jumped tenfold in the last three months.

“Mental stress has definitely increased in the past year due to COVID as there is more stress related to COVID policies…Main symptoms of this group were isolation, anxiety and depression,” Ben Cheung, CEO of the platform, wrote in an email.

More than 65,000 people applied for the government’s unemployment relief plan for COVID on the first day it was open, according to a government statement in late March.

A separate local survey revealed that that two-thirds of Hong Kongers would see their household income affected if they are restricted from going out during the citywide testing, and half think that they would be infected when getting their specimens collected at the testing station.

The survey also indicated that close to half of Hong Kongers do not support policies requiring confirmed patients to quarantine at government designated facilities.

Zero-COVID approach

Hong Kong cannot make the final decision on its COVID policies, according to Alfred Wu, assistant professor at the National University of Singapore specializing in governance in the Greater China region.

“It is clear that Beijing makes the final decision. … China thinks zero-COVID policy works, and so every city should try to implement that, including Hong Kong. The Hong Kong government knows they have to listen to Beijing, even when many people and businesses are opposed to stringent restrictions,” Wu told VOA by phone.

A zero-COVID approach is likely only effective when the population is mostly vaccinated, according to Dr. Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at the Canberra Hospital in Australia.

“Policies that keep covid at low levels or at zero levels are a good idea initially while you get you population vaccinated,” Collignon told VOA in an email.

Hong Kong’s elderly have been hit the hardest by the Omicron wave, with people aged over 80 witnessing the highest number of deaths. This group also saw the lowest vaccination rate – below 60%.

“The biggest mistake in Hong Kong was to presume they [the government] could maintain zero COVID but more importantly, not to ensure that those most likely to die from COVID when it inevitably entered Hong Kong and spread widely, the elderly, were vaccinated. Hence why the death toll in HK is so high per capita compared to other countries who also had low levels or zero covid before,” Collignon added.

Source: Voice of America

Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after six months aboard their country’s newest orbital station in the longest crewed mission to date for China’s ambitious space program.

The Shenzhou 13 space capsule landed in the Gobi desert in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, shown live on state TV.

During the mission, astronaut Wang Yaping carried out the first spacewalk by a Chinese woman. Wang and crewmates Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu beamed back physics lessons for high school students.

China launched its first astronaut into space in 2003 and landed robot rovers on the moon in 2013 and on Mars last year. Officials have discussed a possible crewed mission to the moon.

On Saturday, state TV showed images from inside the capsule as it traveled at 200 meters per second over Africa before entering the atmosphere.

The trio were the second crew aboard Tiangong, or Heavenly Palace. Its core module, Tianhe, was launched in April 2021. Plans call for completing construction this year by adding two more modules.

Authorities have yet to announce a date for launching the next Tiangong crew.

China is excluded from the International Space Station due to U.S. unease that its space program is run by the ruling Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army.

China was the third nation to launch an astronaut into space on its own after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

Tiangong is China’s third space station following predecessors launched in 2011 and 2016.

The government announced in 2020 that China’s first reusable spacecraft had landed following a test flight but no photos or details of the vehicle have been released.

On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping visited the launch site in Wenchang on the southern island of Hainan from which the Tianhe module was fired into orbit.

“Persist in pursuing the frontiers of world aerospace development and the major strategic needs of national aerospace,” Xi told staff at the site, all of them in military uniform.

Source: Voice of America

South Africa’s flood-ravaged east was hit by more rain Saturday after the deadliest storm to strike the country in living memory killed nearly 400 people and left tens of thousands homeless.

Floodwaters engulfed parts of the southeastern coastal city of Durban this week ripping apart roads, destroying hospitals and sweeping away homes and those trapped inside.

Emergency services in the southeastern KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, where Durban is located off the Indian Ocean coast, were on high alert.

Recovery operations and humanitarian relief were underway in the city of 3.5 million, which would normally have been teeming with Easter holiday-makers this weekend.

Toll rises

The death toll rose Saturday to 398 while 27 people were still reported missing, the government said in a statement. More than 40,000 have been rendered homeless.

“Sadly there are still bodies being recovered from homesteads, especially from the rural areas,” Shawn Herbst of the first responder company Netcare 911 told AFP.

“There is still damage taking place, especially with the rain we are experiencing today,” he added.

This weekend’s rainfall will not be “as hectic as it was in the past few days,” according to Puseletso Mofokeng, South Africa Weather Service forecaster.

But with soil being oversaturated with water, more flooding is expected.

Rugby match canceled

Despite the light rains falling on the city, a local premiership league football match between AmaZulu and Maritzburg United went ahead at the 2010 World Cup Moses Mabhida Stadium Saturday.

But a Currie Cup rugby match between local team, the Sharks, and the Bulls from Pretoria, scheduled for the city was canceled Friday as a mark of respect for victims of the flooding.

Troops, police and volunteers are leading the search and rescue operation.

Residents of Mariannhill, desperate for news of their missing relatives were relieved at the sight of rescuers, but the dread of fresh rains lingered.

“We have the rescue team finally … reach here, but seeing the rain that is coming back, they are going to be disrupted,” said Dumisani Kanyile after recovery teams failed to find any of the 10 members of one family missing in the Durban district.

Mesuli Shandu, 20, a close relative of the family, was still in a state of disbelief “that a massive number of people died in one day, including babies.”

“When I came, I thought it was a dream, maybe someone would pinch me and say it was a dream, just wake up.” But “I see all the rescuers and the dogs searching for their bodies.”

Another disaster

Six days after the floods first struck, hope of finding survivors is fading, and Durban emergency medical services representative Robert McKenzie said the response was now focused on recovery and humanitarian relief.

“We have moved from the emergency phase to the recovery phase of the disaster, more to humanitarian relief effort and restoration of services,” he told AFP.

Survivors are still desperately looking for missing relatives.

The floods have damaged more than 13,500 houses and destroyed around 4,000, leaving 58 hospitals and clinics “severely affected,” said a government representative.

Clean water is scarce, and authorities have promised to deploy water tankers. Residents were using shopping trolleys to carry water buckets.

Relief aid and donations

The government has announced 1 billion rand ($68 million) in emergency relief funding.

Confederation of African Football (CAF) chief billionaire Patrice Motsepe donated what he called a “humble contribution” of 30 million rand ($2 million, 1.9 million euros).

“Our people are suffering,” said Motsepe at a hall sheltering displaced people.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has postponed a working visit to Saudi Arabia that was scheduled to begin Tuesday, his office said.

“The loss of nearly 400 lives and thousands of homes, as well as the economic impact and the destruction of infrastructure, calls for all hands on deck,” Ramaphosa said.

South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized country, is still struggling to recover from the 2-year-old COVID pandemic and deadly riots last year that killed more than 350 people, mostly in the now flood-struck southeastern region.

Source: Voice of America

The U.S. is again trudging into what could be another COVID-19 surge, with cases rising nationally and in most states after a two-month decline.

One big unknown?

“We don’t know how high that mountain’s going to grow,” said Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious-disease expert at Johns Hopkins University.

No one expects a peak nearly as high as the last one, when the contagious omicron version of the coronavirus ripped through the population.

But experts warn that the coming wave — caused by a mutant called BA.2 that’s thought to be about 30% more contagious — will wash across the nation. They worry that hospitalizations, which are already ticking up in some parts of the Northeast, will rise in a growing number of states in the coming weeks. And the case wave will be bigger than it looks, they say, because reported numbers are vast undercounts as more people test at home without reporting their infections or skip testing altogether.

At the height of the previous omicron surge, reported daily cases reached into the hundreds of thousands. As of Thursday, the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose to 39,521, up from 30,724 two weeks earlier, according to data from Johns Hopkins collected by The Associated Press.

Dr. Eric Topol, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute, said the numbers will likely keep growing until the surge reaches about a quarter the height of the last “monstrous” one.

Higher level of immunity

Keeping the surge somewhat in check, experts said, is a higher level of immunity in the U.S. from vaccination or past infection compared with early winter.

Ray said the U.S. could wind up looking like Europe, where the BA.2 surge was large in some places that had comparable levels of immunity.

Both experts said BA.2 will move through the country gradually. The Northeast has been hit hardest so far — with more than 90% of new infections caused by BA.2 last week compared with 86% nationally. As of Thursday, the highest rates of new COVID cases per capita over the past 14 days were in Vermont, Rhode Island, Alaska, New York and Massachusetts. In Washington, D.C., which also ranks in the top 10 for rates of new cases, Howard University announced it was moving most undergraduate classes online for the rest of the semester because of “a significant increase in COVID-19 positivity” in the district and on campus.

Some states, such as Rhode Island and New Hampshire, saw the average of daily new cases rise by more than 100% in two weeks, according to Johns Hopkins data.

In New Hampshire, the increase in cases came two weeks after the closure of all 11 state-managed vaccination sites, and the governor is being pressured by some advocates to reverse course.

Focus on hospitalizations

Joseph Wendelken, spokesperson for the Rhode Island Department of Health, said the metric state officials are most focused on now is hospitalizations, which remain relatively low. About 55 COVID-19 patients are hospitalized, compared with more than 600 at one point in the pandemic.

Officials credit high vaccination rates. State statistics show 99% of Rhode Island adults are at least partially vaccinated and 48% have gotten the booster dose that scientists say is key in protecting against severe illness with omicron.

Vermont also has relatively high levels of vaccination and fewer patients in the hospital than during the height of the first omicron wave. But Dr. Mark Levine, the health commissioner there, said hospitalizations and the numbers of patients in intensive care units are both up slightly, although deaths have not risen.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that new hospital admissions of patients with confirmed COVID-19 were up slightly in New England and the New York region.

On the West Coast, modelers from Oregon Health & Science University are projecting a slight increase in hospitalizations over the next two months in that state, where cases have also risen steeply.

As the wave moves across the country, experts said states with low rates of vaccination may face substantially more infections and severe cases that wind up in the hospital.

‘Watch the numbers’

Ray said government leaders must be careful to strike the right tone when talking to people about protecting themselves and others after COVID restrictions have largely been lifted.

“It’s going to be hard to institute restrictive, draconian measures,” Ray said. “Fortunately, we have some tools that we can use to mitigate risk. And so I hope that leaders will emphasize the importance for people to watch the numbers,” be aware of risks and consider taking precautions such as wearing masks and getting vaccinated and boosted if they’ve not done so already.

Lynne Richmond, 59, a breast cancer survivor who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, said she plans to get her second booster and keep wearing her mask in public as cases rise in her state and nearby Washington.

“I never really stopped wearing my mask. … I’ve stayed ultra-vigilant,” she said. “I feel like I’ve come this far; I don’t want to get COVID.”

Vigilance is a good strategy, experts said, because the coronavirus is constantly throwing curveballs. One of the latest: even more contagious subvariants of BA.2 found in New York state, known as BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1. And scientists warn that new and potentially dangerous variants could arise at any time.

“We shouldn’t be thinking the pandemic is over,” Topol said. “We should still keep our guard up.”

Source: Voice of America

Twitter’s board of directors on Friday voted unanimously to use a tactic called a “poison pill” to fend off Elon Musk’s attempt to take over the company.

In such a defensive tactic, all Twitter shareholders except Musk could buy more shares at a discount. This would dilute the world’s richest person’s stake in the company and prevent him from recruiting a majority of shareholders supporting his move.

If Musk’s ownership in Twitter grows to 15% or more, the poison pill would go into effect.

Musk, who earlier this week was revealed as the company’s largest individual shareholder, with 9.2% of the shares, later offered more than $43 billion, or $54.20 a share, to purchase the entire company.

Musk’s offer would provide a substantial premium over Twitter’s current stock price of just more than $45 a share.

Free-speech concern expressed

When Musk made his offer, he lamented the company’s stance on free speech.

“I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk said in the filing. “I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.”

But instead of putting Musk’s offer up for a vote with Twitter shareholders, the company’s board said Friday that it would instead offer its shareholders a chance to buy even more shares at a steep discount, effectively diluting the price of the stock.

The plan “will reduce the likelihood that any entity … gains control of Twitter through open market accumulation without paying all shareholders an appropriate control premium,” the company said.

The Twitter board’s plan will be effective for one year.

As rumors of a poison pill action circulated Thursday, Musk speculated via Twitter on what might happen.

“If the current Twitter board takes actions contrary to shareholder interests, they would be breaching their fiduciary duty,” he wrote. “The liability they would thereby assume would be titanic in scale.”

One analyst, Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, told the New York Post that the board’s move was a “defensive measure,” adding that shareholders would not likely view it positively.

“We believe Musk and his team expected this poker move, which will be perceived as a sign of weakness, not strength, by the Street,” Ives told the Post.

Josh White, a former financial economist for the Securities and Exchange Commission, told BBC that Musk’s negotiation tactics might not be the “right approach” if Musk wants to acquire the company.

“I actually think if he was truly serious about the takeover attempt, he would have started at a price and left the window open for negotiation,” White said.

Twitter ‘storm’?

Edward Rock, who teaches corporate law and governance at New York University’s law school, also had doubts about whether Musk was serious about buying Twitter.

As Rock told NPR, Musk can show he is serious by revealing how he plans to finance the takeover, which he did not show in his SEC filing, or launch a proxy contest to replace Twitter board members in response to its poison pill.

If Musk fails to do so, Rock said, “he’s not going to acquire the company, and people can just write it off like some of his other Twitter storms.”

Source: Voice of America