Category:

Disaster & Management

World’s three hottest Julys happened in the last five years

In the Arctic, which has been warming at more than twice the global rate in recent decades, the expanse of sea ice shrank to its lowest level recorded for any July since 1979. The data service said satellite images reveal ice-free conditions “almost everywhere” along the Siberian coastline – a shipping route that, until a few years ago, could be crossed only with an ice-breaking vessel. 

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Fauci warns COVID-19 vaccine may be only partially effective, public health measures still needed

“We don’t know yet what the efficacy might be. We don’t know if it will be 50% or 60%. I’d like it to be 75% or more,” Fauci said in a webinar hosted by Brown University. “But the chances of it being 98% effective is not great, which means you must never abandon the public health approach.”

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Rare syndrome linked to COVID-19 found in nearly 600 U.S. children -CDC

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) is a rare but severe condition that shares symptoms with toxic shock and Kawasaki disease, including fever, rashes, swollen glands and, in severe cases, heart inflammation.

It has been reported in children and adolescent patients about two to four weeks after the onset of COVID-19.With rising COVID-19 cases, there could be an increased occurrence of MIS-C, but this might not be apparent immediately because of the delay in development of symptoms, said the report’s authors, including those from the CDC’s COVID-19 response team.

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Covid’s spreading fast because billions don’t have water to wash

Underprivileged people in cities are particularly vulnerable as they often live in densely populated areas where social distancing is hard, especially if they have to share a water source. Transmission in the Americas has been tougher to contain in poor urban areas that have limited access to water, sanitation and public health services, said Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization.

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University of Washington forecasts 300,000 U.S. COVID-19 deaths

“We’re seeing a rollercoaster in the United States. It appears that people are wearing masks and socially distancing more frequently as infections increase, then after a while as infections drop, people let their guard down,” Dr Christopher Murray, director of the IHME, said in announcing the university’s revised forecast.

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 stands at more than 159,000, the most of any country in the world, with nearly 4.9 million known cases

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Facebook’s dilemma: How to police claims about unproven COVID-19 vaccines

Determining what constitutes a false claim regarding the COVID-19 shot is much harder than fact-checking a claim about an established vaccine with a proven safety record, Facebook fact-checkers told Reuters.

“There is a lot of content that we see and we don’t even know what to do with it,” echoed Emmanuel Vincent, founder of Science Feedback, another Facebook fact-checking partner, who said the number of vaccines in development made it difficult to debunk claims about how a shot would work.

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Serum Institute to produce up to 100 mn COVID-19 vaccine doses for India, other countries

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, via its Strategic Investment Fund, will provide at-risk funding of USD 150 million to Gavi, which will be used to support the Serum Institute of India (SII) to manufacture the potential vaccine candidates and for future procurement of vaccines for low- and middle-income countries via Gavi’s COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC), the statement said

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