“ ‘Long covid’ is still poorly understood but we hope through our research that we can contribute to better identification and management of this condition, which our data and others’ suggest may ultimately affect millions of people in the UK alone,” said Paul Elliott, an Imperial College epidemiologist who led the covid study, according to the BBC.
Here are some significant developments:
Delta variant helping to drive ‘incredibly worrying’ coronavirus rise in Africa
Many African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, are battling “incredibly worrying” rises in coronavirus cases — waves driven in part by highly infectious variants like the delta strain alongside limited vaccine access, according to the World Health Organization Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti.
“A mix of public fatigue and new covid-19 variants are driving this surge,” Moeti told a virtual press briefing Thursday. “The delta variant which dominated India’s second wave has been reported in 14 countries and has been detected in most samples sequenced in the past month in Congo and Uganda.”
Just around 1 percent of the millions of people who live between 54 African countries have been vaccinated, said Moeti. WHO has documented significant surges in 12 countries on the continent and is monitoring the situation in 14 others, she said.
“The third wave is picking up speed, spreading faster and hitting harder,” Moeti said. “We’ve surged past last year’s peak and at the current rate continental cases will surpass the second wave’s peak in just about three weeks. This is incredibly worrying. With rapidly rising cases numbers and increasing reports of serious illness, the latest surge threatens to be Africa’s worst yet. … Health systems are already pushed to the breaking point in a number of African countries.”
The continent has overall reported fewer covid-19 infections and fatalities than other regions, like Europe and North America. But experts say the numbers of confirmed cases and deaths in Africa are probably a large undercounting due to limited resources. The global pandemic has also had a severe economic impact on many African countries, where the kinds of social protections and government services provided in place likes Europe and North America are not available.
Tokyo Olympics just got an important no-confidence vote — from Japan’s emperor
TOKYO — Japanese Emperor Naruhito appears to be “concerned” that this summer’s Olympics in Tokyo could cause a rise in coronavirus infections, according to the head of the Imperial Household Agency.
“His majesty is very worried about the current infection situation of the COVID-19 disease,” Yasuhiko Nishimura, grand steward of the agency, told a regular news conference on Thursday, the Kyodo News agency reported.
“I suppose that he is concerned that while there are voices of anxiety among the public, the event may lead to the expansion of infections,” Nishimura said.
It is rare for him to speak out on such an important and controversial topic, and his words carry weight. His warning will embarrass the government and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), but it has almost certainly come too late to cause a change of heart among organizers.
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific airlines to require staff be vaccinated
Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific airlines has told its crew members that they must be vaccinated against the coronavirus or they risk losing their job.
In a memo sent out Thursday, the airlines said that it “will review the future employment of those who are unable to become vaccinated” by Aug. 31 and “assess whether they can continue to be employed as aircrew,” according to the BBC.
The airlines said that the logistics of employing both vaccinated and unvaccinated crew members were likely to be prohibitively complicated as it is “becoming clear that only fully vaccinated aircrew will be able to return without quarantine from most places,” the memo said, according to the BBC.
The airlines industry is eager to resume business after being hit with record losses by the global pandemic. International travel is starting to pick up as more people, mainly in Western and wealthy countries, receive vaccinations. But many countries still have quarantines in place for travelers — and are increasingly offering exemptions for those who can prove they’ve been vaccinated and have antibodies against coronavirus.
Despite plentiful supplies, Hong Kong’s population has shown a high degree of vaccine hesitancy.
British survey estimates 2 million people suffering from ‘long covid’ in the country
More than 2 million people living in England could have caught “long covid,” in which symptoms of the disease persist for months, with women and lower-income people particularly susceptible, a study supported by the British government has found.
The findings, which were collected by Imperial College London, were based on self-reported data from 508,707 adults between September 2020 and February 2021. More than a third of the respondents who indicated that they were infected also say that they had at least one symptom that lasted for more than three months, with fatigue being one of the most common.
Meanwhile, 15 percent said they had experienced three or more symptoms that lasted at least 12 weeks. The long-term problems were more common among women, especially as ages rose.
The two main categories of symptoms were ongoing respiratory issues and those related to fatigue.
“Long covid is still poorly understood, but we hope through our research that we can contribute to better identification and management of this condition, which our data and others’ suggest may ultimately affect millions of people in the U.K. alone,” said Paul Elliott, an Imperial College epidemiologist who led the covid study, according to the BBC.
A workshop at the National Institutes of Health held in December suggested that between 10 and 30 percent of the people infected with the virus suffer some kind of long-term symptoms. NIH launched in February a $1.15 billion initiative over four years to study the causes and treatment of long-haul covid.
There has been anecdotal evidence in the United States that some people suffering form long covid symptoms improved after being vaccinated, but so far there have not been conclusive studies on the matter.
Indonesia jails extremist Muslim cleric for making false claim on covid status
A Jakarta court on Thursday jailed extremist Muslim cleric Rizieq Shihab for spreading false information about his covid status.
The four-year prison term, which was lighter than prosecutors had called for, comes shortly after Rizieq was sentenced to eight months in jail for organizing mass gatherings attended by thousands of people in the middle of a pandemic. The judges said that Rizieq had flouted the law, but “deemed the defendant’s knowledge, and family ties, on religion is still needed for society,” wrote Tempo, an Indonesian news publication.
Rizieq’s latest offense: making a video, posted on the YouTube channel of a hospital where he was being treated for covid, in which he said he was healthy. The video was aired by several news networks, the Associated Press reported, and prosecutors said he put the public at risk, considering that he had attended several events involving thousands of people.
The religious leader is best known for heading the now-banned Islam Defenders Front, which regularly disrupted LGBTQ events. He once lived in a compound where a large portrait of Osama bin Laden was hung, The Washington Post reported in a 2003 article.
Rizieq had spent several years in self-exile in Saudi Arabia after he was charged in Indonesia for violating the country’s pornography laws. The charges have since been dropped. Upon his return last year, thousands of followers breached distancing curbs to welcome him home.
Indonesia is struggling to tamp down a recent large spike in coronavirus cases. It has registered over 2 million cases and at least 55,500 deaths.
Merkel is fully vaccinated — and with mixed vaccine doses to dissuade public fears
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is fully vaccinated — but each of her two shots were from a different vaccine in a move meant to reassure the public not to worry about mixing doses if advised to by a doctor.
Merkel, 66, had her first shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine on April 16 and her second of the Moderna vaccine this week, her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.
“She can now perhaps take away the fears of people … who were or are worried about this so-called cross-vaccination,” he said.
When Merkel received the AstraZeneca in April, fears were rising over reports of the vaccine possibly causing very rare but serious blood clots. This led many people to opt out of taking that version of the vaccine, despite global shortages in doses.
Merkel’s decision to take AstraZeneca at that time also intended to counter the public’s fears, Seibert said.
Scientists say its safe to mix and match two-dose coronavirus vaccines based on preliminary data, though further studies are still underway. (The vaccine produced by Johnson & Johnson requires just one dose.)
Some countries facing shortages or delays in vaccine doses, such as Germany, have advised people to do so in consultation with their medical providers. Though some vaccines rely on different technologies than others, scientists say it should be safe as the ultimate end goal — building up antibodies to fight off the virus causing covid-19 — is the same.
Israel postpones reopening border to vaccinated tourists over delta variant fears
Israel has postponed plans to reopen its borders to vaccinated tourists in light of rising fears over the infectious delta coronavirus variant’s spread.
The government had set July 1 as its target and said details about infection-control measures for tourists were still under discussion.
But on Wednesday, Israel’s newly established coronavirus cabinet said it was pushing the date back to Aug. 1 amid concerns about outbreaks of the delta variant inside Israeli schools and the likelihood for cases to spread further once more international travel resumes.
“Our goal at the moment, first and foremost, is to protect the citizens of Israel from the delta variant which is raging in the world,” newly appointed Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said. “At the same time, we want to reduce as much as possible the disruption to daily life in the country. Therefore, we decided to act as early as possible — right now — so as not to pay a heavier price later on, by taking responsible and quick actions.”
Both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories depend heavily on tourism, which has been all but stopped by the coronavirus pandemic. Some groups of vaccinated tourists were allowed in beginning in May.
After an aggressive campaign to vaccinate Israeli citizens, life inside Israel has largely returned to pre-pandemic life.
But the vaccination program’s final leg has now hit a snag as cases of the highly contagious delta variant have started to climb, driven by outbreaks inside schools where vaccination rates are lowest. The government has urged parents to vaccinate children ages 12-to-15-years-old, the youngest demographic approved for the coronavirus vaccine inside Israel.
Bennett on Wednesday said that his government would also reimpose an indoor mask mandate if new coronavirus cases exceed 100 for at least a week.
Singapore sets out plan for living with ‘new normal’ of covid
Singapore’s success at containing the coronavirus has relied largely on two lockdowns, strict disease surveillance and sealed borders, combined with one of Asia’s fastest inoculation programs. But as distancing fatigue grows in one of the world’s smaller countries, its leaders have sketched out what a future living with the virus might look like.
Singapore is set to vaccinate about two-thirds of its residents with at least one dose by early July. “Our next milestone will be to have at least two-thirds of our population fully vaccinated with two doses [by mid-August],” wrote Gan Kim Yong, Lawrence Wong and Ong Ye Kung, ministers leading the country’s covid response, in an editorial for the state-affiliated Straits Times.
The trio said that data from Israel suggested that the hospitalization and fatality rates for a country that had achieved herd immunity would be comparable to those of a typical flu season in the United States. All of the roughly 120 fully vaccinated people in Singapore who were later infected — but who were not originally in a hospital or nursing home — were either asymptomatic or only had mild symptoms, they said. (The country’s national coronavirus vaccination program is built on Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots.)
They also said that testing would continue to play an important role, particularly at the border. This suggests that unlike the European Union and United States, where some international travelers no longer need a negative test to enter, Singapore intends to keep some virus controls at its frontier.
But within the country, testing would be used less as a tool for disease surveillance and more to ensure large events can go ahead safely. Rapid antigen tests, which are less sensitive but also much less invasive than “gold standard” polymerase chain reaction tests, could be more widely used.
Left unsaid was what would happen to TraceTogether, acontact-tracing program that has raised questions over privacy rights in Singapore.
The Southeast Asian island nation has logged over 62,000 infections and 35 deaths since the start of the pandemic. At least 36 percent of its residents are fully inoculated.
NEA widens pool of arts groups eligible for $80 million in pandemic relief
The National Endowment for the Arts announced Wednesday that it will make $80 million in pandemic relief available to more arts and cultural organizations, including first-time applicants and those that have never received support from the federal arts agency.
The relief funds will also support local arts agencies that will distribute the federal dollars to grass-roots organizations in their communities. The NEA hopes to significantly increase access to federal funds with this more inclusive approach, said Sonia Chala Tower, NEA director of public affairs and strategic communication and one of four officials President Biden appointed to the agency in January.
“We know that arts organizations large and small have been impacted by the pandemic. The arts sector was hit extremely hard. This funding will be critical. It will be a lifeline,” Tower said. “The goal is to really make sure we are providing resources to the arts community. It’s about rebuilding the creative community.”
Brazil sets national infections record as new coronavirus cases, deaths hit world’s worst
Brazil reported a national record of 115,228 new confirmed coronavirus cases in 24 hours, its Health Ministry said Wednesday, as its devastating third wave of infections shows no signs of relenting.
The country’s seven-day average for new infections and deaths is now the highest in the world, according to Our World in Data, which tracks publicly available figures.
Cases had dipped in April after a previous peak, raising hopes that the third wave was subsiding in the South American nation of more than 200 million people. But new infections and deaths have soared over the past two weeks, with around 2,000 people with covid-19 dying per day. Last week, the country’s death toll due to the pandemic surpassed 500,000, second only to the United States.
The spike comes despite Brazil boosting its sluggish vaccination program over the past two months. The country has fully vaccinated around 12 percent of its population.
Last week, thousands across Brazil protested President Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic. Bolsonaro has routinely played down the threat of the virus and the efficacy of social distancing and masks. Earlier this month, he was fined for leading motorcycle-riding supporters through the streets of Sao Paulo, a few weeks after he was fined for not wearing a mask at another rally.
Weighted Hula-Hoops: ‘Feel like a kid again’ with this pandemic fitness trend
Wang was smitten. Hooping was a great way to spice up her usual workouts, far more entertaining than, say, jogging on a treadmill. And it worked: She’s seen benefits from months of frequently using her 3.6-pound hoop, usually for about 15 to 30 minutes at a time. “It’s fun and different,” said Wang, 25, a content creator who lives in Philadelphia. “I feel like it definitely strengthened my abs, and my core section is just stronger in general.”
Though they’ve existed for more than a decade, weighted Hula-Hoops have emerged as a social media favorite during the pandemic, enticing fitness enthusiasts looking for new, affordable and convenient ways to work out at home with the promise of childlike fun.
Federal health officials cite ‘likely association’ between coronavirus vaccines and rare heart issues in teens, young adults
Federal health officials said Wednesday there is a “likely association” between two coronavirus vaccines and increased risk of a rare heart condition in adolescents and young adults, the strongest assertion so far on the link between the two.
Data presented to advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adds to recent findings, most notably from Israel, of rare cases of myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — predominantly in males ages 12 to 39, who experience symptoms after the second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Most cases have been mild and have taken place several days to a week after the second shot, officials said. Chest pain is the most common symptom. Patients generally recover from symptoms and do well.
There have been 1,226 reports of myocarditis out of about 300 million mRNA doses administered in the United States, as of June 11, according to Tom Shimabukuro, a CDC vaccine safety official.
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