Schools can safely reopen even if teachers are not vaccinated for the coronavirus, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.
As some teachers’ unions in the U.S. balk at resuming in-person instruction before teachers are vaccinated, Dr. Rochelle Walensky said that “vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe reopening of schools.” Walensky cited CDC data showing that physical distancing and wearing a mask significantly reduce the spread of the virus in school settings.
White House COVID-19 co-ordinator Jeff Zients called on Congress to pass additional funding to ensure schools have the resources necessary to support reopening.
How to safely reopen schools has been the subject of heated debate, not just in the U.S. but around the world. Walensky’s remarks come ahead of Ontario’s announcement that students will be back to class throughout the province by Feb. 16.
U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged to ensure that nearly all K-8 schools will reopen for in-person instruction in the first 100 days of his administration.
Teachers are prioritized as “essential workers” under the CDC’s vaccination plans, though many have yet to receive doses as the country continues to face a supply shortage of the vaccines.
Democrats, Republicans divided over rescue plan
The update from officials leading the new administration’s COVID-19 response came after Biden panned a Republican alternative to his $1.9 trillion US COVID-19 rescue plan as insufficient. Senate Democrats pushed ahead, voting to launch a process that could approve Biden’s sweeping rescue package on their own if Republicans refuse to support it.
Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen joined the Democratic senators for a private virtual meeting on Tuesday, both declaring that the Republicans’ $618-billion proposed plan was too small. They urged swift action to stem the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout.
As the White House reached for a bipartisan bill, Democrats marshalled their slim Senate majority, voting 50-49 to start a lengthy process for approving Biden’s bill with or without Republican support. The goal is to have COVID-19 relief approved by March, when extra unemployment assistance and other pandemic aid expires.
“President Biden spoke about the need for Congress to respond boldly and quickly,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the lunch meeting. “If we did a package that small, we’d be mired in the COVID crisis for years.”
The night before, Biden met with 10 Republican senators pitching their $618 billion alternative and let them know it was insufficient to meet the country’s needs. The president made it clear that he won’t delay aid in hopes of winning GOP support. While no compromise was reached during the late Monday session, White House talks with Republicans are privately underway.
The U.S. has seen more than 26.4 million cases of COVID-19 and has reported more than 447,000 deaths during the pandemic, according to a tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
The two parties are far apart, with the Republican group of 10 senators focused primarily on the health-care crisis and smaller $1,000 direct aid to Americans than the $1,400 payments Biden proposed, while the president is leading Democrats toward a more sweeping rescue plan to shore up households, local governments and a partly shuttered economy.
Winning the support of 10 Republicans would be significant, potentially giving Biden the votes needed in the 50-50 Senate to reach the 60-vote threshold typically required to advance legislation. Vice-President Kamala Harris is the tie-breaker.
–From The Associated Press and CBC News, last updated at 4:10 p.m. ET
What’s happening across Canada
WATCH | Students can go to school safely if some firm rules applied, says specialist:
Kids in southern Ontario can return to school safely, despite higher community spread of COVID-19, says Dr. Peter Jüni, scientific director of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. But he says it will be a challenge that needs to be well-managed. 7:31
As of 4:10 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Canada had reported 788,979 cases of COVID-19 — with 48,651 considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 20,328.
In Ontario, teachers, students and parents in several boards in the south of the province got word from the provincial government that students would be back in class by Feb. 8 in most parts of the province, and by Feb. 16 in Toronto, Peel and York Regions.
“We have seen a considerable decline in community transmission,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce said during the afternoon announcement. “Ontario is ready to reopen all our schools because it is safe.”
Ontario reported 1,172 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and 67 additional deaths. The update came a day after the province reported just 745 cases, though Health Minister Christine Elliott noted in a tweet on Tuesday that a data migration had impacted the daily count and the province anticipated “fluctuations in case numbers over the next few days.”
Hospitalizations in Ontario decreased to 1,066, according to a provincial dashboard updated Wednesday morning, with 336 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units.
In Quebec,health officials reported 1,053 new cases of COVID-19 and 37 additional deaths on Wednesday, a day after Premier François Legault announced that restrictions would be eased in some areas of the province. Hospitalizations in Quebec stood at 1,106, with 177 people in intensive care, according to a provincial database.
WATCH | Quebec moves toward gradual reopening:
With COVID-19 case counts and hospitalizations declining, Quebec has announced cautious plans to loosen some provincial restrictions, but major centres like Montreal won’t see much change for now. 4:05
The Northwest Territories has declared a COVID-19 outbreak at Gahcho Kué Mine, 280 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife. There are now two confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the mine, both involving non-resident workers.
The territory’s chief public health officer, Dr. Kami Kandola, said both active cases are self-isolating at the mine and doing well. Kandola said an outbreak was declared because the second person acquired the virus at the mine.
Here’s a look at what is happening across the country:
-From The Canadian Press and CBC News, last updated at 4:10 p.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
A bottle of hand sanitizer sits on a student’s desk, during a news conference at New Bridges Elementary School, ahead of schools reopening, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City last summer. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters)
As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 104.8 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 57.7 million of those listed as recovered or resolved, according to a tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 2.2 million.
A United Nations-backed program to deploy COVID-19 vaccines to the neediest people worldwide has announced plans for an initial distribution of more than 100 million doses by the end of the first quarter.
The COVAX Facility says it aims for nearly 200 million doses by the end of June. Most of the vaccines in the first phase will be from AstraZeneca and the Serum Institute of India.
Another 1.2 million doses of a vaccine from Pfizer are expected to be shared by 18 countries in the first quarter.
The AstraZeneca vaccine rollout needs “emergency use” approval by the World Health Organization, which is expected in mid- to late February. The rollouts are contingent on regulatory approvals and the readiness of nations to receive the vaccines, which recently have been in short supply worldwide.
In the Asia-Pacific region, South Korean health officials said they have detected the first local transmissions of what are feared to be more contagious forms of the coronavirus first identified in Britain and South Africa.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said Wednesday it found four local cases of the variant first detected in the U.K.and one local case of the variant first detected in South Africa.
Since October, health workers have found 39 cases of new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19, also including a form that was first identified in Brazil. The previous cases were found in people arriving from abroad.
WATCH | A WHO team visits China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology:
A special team from the World Health Organization has visited China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, a key site in their search for the origins of the coronavirus. The team did not speak to waiting journalists after the visit. 1:25
In all five of the locally transmitted cases, the virus carriers had been infected from relatives who recently arrived from abroad, the agency said.
The KDCA said it is expanding contact tracing to determine whether the new variants could have circulated further. It also called for administrative officials to strengthen monitoring of passengers arriving from abroad so that they minimize their contact with other people during their two-week quarantine period, which in most cases can be done at home.
New Zealand’s medical regulator has approved its first coronavirus vaccine, and officials hope to begin giving shots to border workers by the end of March. Regulators granted provisional approval for the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for people aged 16 and over.
New Zealand has no community transmission of the virus, and border workers are considered the most vulnerable to catching and spreading the disease because they deal with arriving travellers, some of whom are infected.
In Africa, South Africa will get two million doses of vaccines by March from the COVAX vaccine distribution scheme co-led by the World Health Organization.
A health worker receives a dose of the Chinese-made Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination centre in Karachi, Pakistan, on Wednesday. (Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images)
Uganda has ordered 18 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine.
In Europe, EU lawmakers questioned chief executive Ursula von der Leyen for hours on Tuesday over the slow rollout and shortage of COVID-19 vaccines as she took responsibility for an export control plan that angered Britain and Ireland.
A German military medical team is heading to Portugal to help that country deal with a spike in coronavirus cases.
The team of 26 doctors and nurses was flying to Portugal on Wednesday from Wunstorf, in northern Germany. Dr. Ulrich Baumgaertner, head of the military’s medical service, said the team will help at a civilian hospital in Lisbon.
The COVID-19 situation in France remains fragile, but a new national lockdown is not necessarily inevitable, French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal told reporters on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian government is ready to cancel a nationwide lockdown and allow health authorities to ease lockdown measures in regions where COVID-19 cases are lower, Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said on Wednesday. The decision may be made in the coming days, he told a televised cabinet meeting.
WATCH | Capt. Sir Tom Moore dies at 100 after positive COVID-19 test:
Capt. Sir Tom Moore, the 100-year-old Second World War veteran who raised millions to fight the pandemic by walking in his garden, died in hospital where he was being treated after a positive COVID-19 test. 2:02
In the Americas, Colombia reported the highest incidence of cases, followed by Brazil, where the city of Manaus is still seeing exponential increases in both cases and deaths, Pan American Health Organization director Dr. Carissa Etienne said. Three new variants have been detected in 20 countries of the Americas, though their frequency is still limited, she said in a briefing.
Colombia’s president, Iván Duque, also warned Wednesday that the government’s plan to vaccinate more than 35 million people this year could face delays. The country said last week it had secured 61.5 million vaccine doses from a raft of pharmaceutical companies and via the World Health Organization-backed COVAX scheme.
A mortuary employee wearing full PPE checks coffins containing the remains of COVID-19 victims in a refrigerated container in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Tuesday. (Jerome Delay/The Associated Press)
But in a mid-week media briefing, Duque recognized that the process could face delays, including potential export limits placed on vaccines by other countries and a low uptake of shots amid circulating disinformation.
“Are there risks [to the roll-out]? Yes, without doubt risks exist,” Duque said.
Venezuela will send further shipments of oxygen to help neighbouring Brazil treat COVID-19 patients, President Nicolas Maduro said, after sending a convoy of oxygen-filled trucks to the Amazonian city of Manaus last month.
In the Middle East, Dubai will start vaccinating people with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the state media office has said, after receiving its first shipment from India.
-From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 3:15 p.m. ET
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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.
“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”
More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.
Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.
The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.
However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.
Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.
“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.
What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.
Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.
Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.
Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.
Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.
Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)
There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.
“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.
That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.
Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.
“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.
Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.
When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.
The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.
The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.
Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.
Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.
Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.
(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.
The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.
After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.
Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.
Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.
“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.
Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.
But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.
Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.
Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.
That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.
Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.
Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.
