Health Canada cautioned against the use of malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to prevent or treat COVID-19 on Saturday.
The Canadian health department said the two drugs may cause serious side effects, including serious heart rhythm problems. It advised use of the two drugs only if prescribed by a doctor.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also cautioned against the use of malaria drugs in COVID-19 patients on Friday.
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine can have serious side effects. These drugs should only be used under the supervision of a physician: <a href=”https://t.co/ohNj1mqd8r”>https://t.co/ohNj1mqd8r</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/medsafety?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#medsafety</a>
Earlier, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it’s premature to talk of so-called “immunity passports” for Canadians because the science is unclear about whether people who have recovered from COVID-19 are protected from catching it a second time.
As some provinces began opening up their economies from COVID-19 lockdowns, Trudeau said on Saturday none of those recovery plans hinge on people being immune to catching COVID-19 twice.
Trudeau said he spoke to premiers Friday and they discussed a basic framework that provinces will use as they reopen businesses, schools and other institutions. The focus, he said, is on preventing the spread of the virus through physical distancing and personal protective equipment.
“It is very clear that the science is not decided on whether or not having had COVID once prevents you from having it again,” he told reporters. “It’s something we need to get clearer answers to and until we get those clearer answers, we need to err on the side of more caution.”
Trudeau was responding to a recent World Health Organization brief stating there is no evidence that people who have recovered from the virus have antibodies that protect them from getting infected again.
The WHO issued the brief in the context of certain countries announcing the possibility of providing so-called “immunity passports” or “risk-free certificates” to citizens who have already been infected.
WATCH | Tam says it’s ‘premature’ to consider immunity passports:
Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam said that without a clear understanding of immunity tests for COVID-19, it’s too early to think about issuing passes for those who might be protected. 0:53
Also on Saturday, Canada’s top doctor says there isn’t enough evidence to back herd immunity as a way to reopen society.
Herd immunity is conferred when enough people in a given population have been infected with a virus, marking them immune to reinfection and slowing down the rate at which the virus spreads on its own.
“The idea of … generating natural immunity is actually not something that should be undertaken,” Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam said Saturday, urging people to be “extremely cautious” about the concept.
Sask. and N.B. unveil multiphase plans
As the global death toll from COVID-19 topped 200,000 on Saturday, countries and jurisdictions around the world took cautious steps toward easing some lockdowns, while fears of infection made even some pandemic-wounded businesses reluctant to reopen.
At his regular news conference at Rideau Cottage on Saturday, Trudeau said any plans to reopen the economy will be based on science, data and expert advice.
Trudeau said Canada shouldn’t be reopening any sector without a plan to protect workers, which hinges on adequate supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE). He says planeloads of PPE are expected in the coming weeks, and domestic production will be on line soon.
WATCH | Trudeau details joint guidelines to reopen economy:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discussed how Canada’s provinces are working on a jointly-drafted set of guidelines to establish principles for reopening the country’s economy. 0:42
In addition to multiphase plans unveiled by New Brunswick and Saskatchewan this week, the federal government has circulated a set of draft guidelines that could form the basis of the joint document. The federal guidelines were prepared largely by the Public Health Agency of Canada and include feedback from provincial medical officers.
N.B. Premier Blaine Higgs released early details of a phased reopening plan for that province Friday afternoon. Also on Friday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that his government will offer some details early next week about its reopening plans.
The framework will provide a “gradual and measured approach” to opening up, Ford said, adding that health and safety will “always come first.”
WATCH | Some good news from around the world on Saturday:
With much of the world struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic, there are still some good-news stories to report. Here’s a brief roundup. 2:53
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has called for a national plan, expressing concern about a “possible patchwork approach across the country.”
Higgs said New Brunswick’s plan would begin immediately with the loosening of physical distancing restrictions to allow two-household gatherings. Post-secondary students, who require access to their campus to fulfil their course requirements, will be able to do so, but elementary, middle and high schools won’t reopen until at least September.
Further steps would see the province eventually reopen elective surgeries, child-care facilities, barbers, churches and other facilities in stages over the coming weeks, as long as cases in the province remain low.
$62.5M for fish and seafood sector
Also Saturday, Trudeau announced $62.5 million to support fish and seafood processors.
The prime minister said the money will help processors buy personal protective equipment, adapt to new health protocols and support physical distancing.
He says the funding can also help pay for other equipment, such as freezers, so that companies can store food products while they adapt their factories to ensure workers can maintain a safe distance from one another.
WATCH | Trudeau says new funds will help industry adapt to COVID-19 challenges:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that new funds for Canada’s fish and seafood processors will help them adapt to challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. 0:58
According to a Johns Hopkins University database, there are now more than 2.8 million known COVID-19 cases worldwide, with more than 200,000 deaths. The U.S., where some states are also taking steps toward reopening, accounts for more than 906,000 of those cases, as well as 52,000 deaths.
As of 6 p.m. ET on Saturday, Canada had 45,354 confirmed and presumptive cases, with 16,438 listed by provinces and territories as resolved or recovered. A CBC News tally of coronavirus-related deaths, which is based on provincial data, local public health information and CBC reporting, put the death toll at 2,555 in Canada, plus two deaths abroad.
Public health officials caution that the numbers don’t capture the full story, as they don’t include people who haven’t been tested or potential cases that are still being investigated.
A resident and staff wave at Orchard Villa Retirement Residence in Pickering, Ont., on Saturday. (Carlos Osorio/Reuters)
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, has urged people to behave as though there is coronavirus in their community, even if there aren’t any officially recorded cases. There are no proven treatments or cures for the novel virus.
Read on for a look at what’s happening in Canada, the U.S. and around the world.
Here’s a look at what’s happening in the provinces and territories
British Columbia reported two new deaths on Saturday, including the province’s first death related to COVID-19 in a First Nations community. B.C. also reported 95 new cases. Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says there are no new outbreaks at long-term care facilities.
The province also announced it is enacting a public safety order to move homeless people living in tent city encampments into hotels in Vancouver and Victoria during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ministers Mike Farnworth, Shane Simpson and Judy Darcy made the announcement, along with representatives from BC Housing, on Saturday morning. The plan is supported by an order under the Emergency Program Act and the ongoing provincial state of emergency. Read more about what’s happening in B.C.
A notice is seen posted outside a homeless camp at Oppenheimer Park in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside on Saturday. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)
In Alberta, the government has authorized the finance minister to borrow up to $25 billion to deal with the crisis. The opposition NDP supports the move, but has suggestions on how that money should be spent. Read more about what’s happening in Alberta.
Saskatchewan is reporting that seven of its eight new COVID-19 cases are in the province’s far north. In total, there were 349 cases in Saskatchewan Saturday, and four people have died.
Premier Scott Moe announced Friday that non-critical travel to the province’s north was being restricted as the region deals with an outbreak in the remote community of La Loche, about 600 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon. Moe said the far north had 25 active cases — more than anywhere else in the province. Read more about what’s happening in Saskatchewan.
WATCH | See how Saskatchewan plans to handle a phased reopening:
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe unveiled the province’s plan to start easing COVID-19 restrictions starting in May. 2:03
Manitoba is set to ramp up surgeriesafter a month of postponements due to COVID-19. The number of new coronavirus cases continues to be low enough that health officials say they can pivot some of the system’s resources back toward surgeries.
“Our numbers have been looking like they’re in the right direction, and we’re at a position right now where we can start to plan on gradually loosening some of these restrictions,” Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin said. Read more about what’s happening in Manitoba.
WATCH | First Nations take extreme measures to prevent COVID-19 spread:
For remote First Nations communities, keeping COVID-19 at bay is particularly crucial. 2:00
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says front-line workers, including people working at shelters and long-term care homes, will receive a raise of $4 per hour for the next four months as they help in the fight against COVID-19. Ford says eligible workers will also receive an extra payment of $250 per month if they work more than 100 hours in a month. The provincial government says 350,000 workers will be eligible for the pay premium.
A family doctor receives a bag of KN95 medical masks during a donation drive for personal protective equipment and medical supplies to benefit long-term care homes, shelters, family physicians and hospitals in Ottawa on Saturday. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
Quebec Public Health Director Dr. Horacio Arruda has changed his guidance on masks, now recommending people wear them if they anticipate being in a situation where distancing isn’t possible. He said people should closely follow guidelines the government released yesterday for masks, including washing hands before putting one on and removing them. Arruda said people could make their own masks, as long as they are clean and have at least two layers of fabric.
Arruda had been adamant before that his fear was masks would provide Quebecers with a false sense of security because they may be more inclined to touch their face when wearing one. He also didn’t want people to purchase masks in short supply that would be more useful to health-care workers. Read more about what’s happening in Quebec
Paramedics transfer a patient to an ambulance from Notre-Dame-des-Anges seniors residence in Montreal on Saturday. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)
New Brunswick’s gradual recovery plan has already started, with physical distancing restrictions loosened to allow two households to partner in a “two-family bubble.” Public health reported no new cases on Saturday, marking one week since there was a positive case. Read more about what’s happening in N.B.
Nova Scotia is reporting six more deaths related to COVID-19, bringing the total to 22. Five deaths occurred at the Northwood long-term care home in Halifax Regional Municipality, while a man in his 80s with underlying medical conditions died in the Western Zone of the province. He was not a resident of a long-term care home.
The province is reporting 15 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the provincial total to 865 confirmed cases. There are 10 licensed long-term care homes and unlicensed seniors’ facilities in Nova Scotia with cases of COVID-19, involving 191 residents and 90 staff. Read more about what’s happening in N.S.
To date, Nova Scotia has 25,119 negative test results, 865 positive COVID-19 test results and 22 deaths. 11 people are in hospital, three in ICU. 412 people have recovered. More information is at <a href=”https://t.co/60eBOXRZvV”>https://t.co/60eBOXRZvV</a> .
Prince Edward Island is working on a plan to begin easing COVID-19 restrictions in May, but gatherings with people outside of one’s household still are not permitted for now, said Dr. Heather Morrison, P.E.I.’s chief public health officer. More details on P.E.I.’s plan to ease restrictions are expected in the coming week, said Premier Dennis King. Read more about what’s happening on P.E.I.
Newfoundland and Labrador announced one new case on Saturday, after going a full week without any new COVID-19 cases. Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, the province’s chief medical officer, on Friday praised people for the “dedication” they have shown and urged everyone to keep following public health rules. Read more about what’s happening in N.L.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is urging careful science to prove whether any of the drugs being explored as COVID-19 treatments actually work. Fauci, the infectious diseases chief at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said Saturday during an online meeting of the National Academy of Sciences that the only way to get answers beyond perpetual ambiguity is by doing randomized controlled trials.
“We need something out there, but safety and efficacy is something we owe to the global population,” Fauci said.
Fauci also stressed that caution is needed as economies reopen, pointing to a step-wise approach with restrictions gradually lifted as areas reach certain milestones.
Medical staff administer COVID-19 tests at a parking lot in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday. (Bryon Houlgrave/The Des Moines Register via AP)
“Any attempt to leapfrog over these almost certainly will result in a rebound, and then we can set ourselves back,” he said. “If we don’t get control of it we will never get back to normal. I know we will, but we’ve got to do it correctly.”
Fauci also cautioned against looking for a magic number of available tests needed as the U.S. reopens.
“We don’t want to get fixated on how many tests you need,” Fauci said. Instead, places must “have enough tests to respond to the outbreaks that will inevitably occur.”
Vehicles line up at a food donation drive in Baltimore, Md., on Saturday. (Julio Cortez/Associated Press)
Meanwhile, many governors warned it might be too soon to reopen their states.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo repeated his warning on Saturday that reopening businesses too soon was risky, while Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo pushed back against a protest at the State House in Providence as short-sighted, arguing it could force her to delay her restart date.
“At this point to violate social distancing rules, it’s just selfish,” Raimondo told a briefing, referring to the protest against a lockdown in effect until at least May 8.
“If everybody today went out and violated the rules I will definitely have to push back the date at which we can reopen the economy.”
Nurses and an EMT stand in counter-protest in response to a demonstration against stay-at-home orders at the State House in Providence, R.I., on Saturday. (Michael Dwyer/Associated Press)
Cuomo said Saturday that his state began conducting antibody tests of nurses, doctors, police officers, grocery clerks and other essential workers while also allowing local pharmacies to collect samples for diagnostic tests.
The focus on testing comes as the crisis appears to be subsiding in New York, the epicentre of the pandemic in the United States, with hospitalizations falling to their lowest in three weeks. “Twenty one days of hell, and now we are back to where we were 21 days ago,” Cuomo told a daily briefing. “Testing is what we are compulsively or obsessively focused on now.”
Yet New York also reported an additional 437 coronavirus-linked deaths, up from 422 a day earlier and the first rise in four days. New Jersey, its neighbour to the south, disclosed 249 more deaths. Together the two states account for about half of the nearly 53,000 fatalities in the United States.
People wearing face shields are seen at a New York City park on Saturday. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said that while his curve of cases was “undeniably flattening” he would not yet open parks or beaches and suggested he would move cautiously with broad parameters of the state’s reopening plan to be disclosed as soon as Monday.
“We need to see more progress and more slowing before we can begin implementing any effort to get ourselves on the road to the new normal that awaits our state on the other side of this pandemic,” Murphy told a daily briefing.
Here’s a look at what’s happening around the world
Italy has reported 415 deaths and 2,357 new cases in the last 24 hours. The Italian health ministry puts Europe’s highest death toll at more than 26,000. The total known infections stand at more than 195,000.
The Lombardy region registers the most cases in Italy, adding some 700 on Saturday for a total of nearly 72,000 cases there since Italy’s first case in that northern region on Feb. 20.
Meanwhile, nearly 200,000 Italian companies have asked authorities for permission to be able to operate during the lockdown, either because they help essential businesses or because they deem themselves strategic for the national economy during the coronavirus pandemic. The interior ministry said Saturday that a streamlined procedure is being implemented that “trusts the sense of responsibility of individual business persons” in allowing companies to resume operations.
People wave and chant from their windows with the Italian flags draped on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Italy’s Liberation Day in Rome on Saturday. (Andrew Medichini/Associated Press)
Spain’s health authorities say 2,944 new infections were confirmed in the previous 24 hours, taking the total to nearly 206,000 cases. There were 378 reported deaths in that period, bringing the death toll since the start of the pandemic in Spain to nearly 23,000.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced in a televised address Saturday that Spaniards will be allowed to leave their homes for short walks and exercise starting on May 2 after seven weeks of strict home confinement “if the evolution of the epidemic remains favourable as it has recently.”
Since the start of the state of emergency, Spaniards have only been allowed to leave home for essential shopping, except those workers in industries who cannot work from home. Sanchez also announced that he would present a detailed plan on the “de-escalation” of the lockdown on Tuesday that he hopes to put into effect in the coming weeks.
A volunteer in protective gear take samples at a COVID-19 testing centre at the seaport city of Hondarribia, Spain, on Saturday. (Ander Gillenea/AFP via Getty Images)
France’s President Emmanuel Macron is aiming to ease some lockdown measures on May 11 with schools reopening first, although the government has yet to finalize how it might work in practice.
France has also offered retailers some relief by saying it wants them to reopen when the lockdown is due to end on May 11, although some curbs could remain in certain areas to delay a new wave of the coronavirus.
The country’s health ministry reported 369 new deaths on Saturday, bringing the toll to 22,614.
People wearing face masks practice social distancing as they waits to buy produce in Groslay, France, on Saturday. (Thibault Camus/Associated Press)
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be back at work on Monday, a Downing Street spokesperson confirmed on Saturday. Johnson has been recovering from COVID-19 at Chequers, his official country residence, after spending three nights in intensive care earlier this month.
The government says 20,319 people with COVID-19 have died in British hospitals, an increase of 813 from the day before. The figure doesn’t include deaths in nursing homes, which are likely to number in the thousands.
There are signs the United Kingdom outbreak has peaked, with the number of people hospitalized declining. But the government says it is too soon to ease a nationwide lockdown imposed on March 23 and extended to May 7. Still, some businesses are planning to reopen after implementing physical distancing measures. Several automakers say they will restart production in May.
People wearing protective masks walk past a social distancing banner in London on Saturday. (Alberto Pezzali/Associated Press)
China for the 10th straight day reported no new deaths. Twelve new cases were reported on Saturday, 11 of them brought from overseas and one local transmission in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang bordering Russia, according to the National Health Commission.
Just 838 people remain hospitalized with COVID-19, while another 1,000 people are undergoing isolation and monitoring for being either suspected cases or having tested positive for the virus while showing no symptoms.
China, widely believed to be the source of the global pandemic, has reported a total of 4,632 deaths among 82,816 cases.
People wearing face masks pose for a selfie at a public park overlooking the Forbidden City, which remains closed to the public, in Beijing on Saturday. (Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press)
In Brazil, there are concerns Latin America’s largest country is veering closer to becoming a pandemic hot spot.
Medical officials in Rio de Janeiro and four other major cities warned that their hospital systems are on the verge of collapse or already overwhelmed.
In Manaus, the biggest city in the Amazon, officials said they have been forced to dig mass graves in a cemetery. Workers have been burying 100 corpses a day — triple the pre-virus average.
A health worker is seen at Tide Setubal public hospital, where three workers died from suspected coronavirus disease, in Sao Paulo. (Amanda Perobelli/Reuters)
South Africa plans to reopen its agriculture sector and allow some manufacturing and retail to resume as the country balances the need to restart the economy and curb the spread of the coronavirus, Trade Minister Ebrahim Patel said on Saturday.
Iran says it registered 76 more deaths in the previous 24 hours. That puts the reported death toll from COVID-19 at 5,650 and confirmed cases at over 89,000. Iran is the country hardest hit by the virus in the Middle East.
Health Ministry spokesperson Kianoush Jahanpour says more than 1,100 new confirmed cases were detected from the previous day. Jahanpour added nearly 3,100 patients are in critical condition.
Shoppers wearing face masks and latex gloves buy produce from a merchant in Tajrish Bazaar in Tehran on Saturday. (Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)
South Korea on Saturday reported no new deaths for the second straight day. The figures released from South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brought national totals to 10,718 cases, while deaths remained at 240.
While a slowing caseload has allowed South Korea to relax its social distancing guidelines over the past week, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun raised concern over possible transmissions by “quiet spreaders” and instructed officials to conduct antibody tests in Daegu and nearby towns.
Chung also called for stronger financial tools to ease the epidemic’s economic shock, which has caused severe cash flow problems for airlines while also hurting major exporters, such as carmakers and shipbuilders. The government is looking to create a 40 trillion won ($45 billion Cdn) fund through bonds issued by state-run banks to protect jobs in key industries, but the plan needs parliamentary approval.
People sit far apart from each other during an exam in Seoul on Saturday. (Lee Jin-man/Associated Press)
Turkey’s health ministry has documented 106 new deaths, bringing the death toll to 2,706. Minister Fahrettin Koca shared daily figures Saturday, showing 2,861 new confirmed cases. The total number of confirmed infections has reached 107,773.
“The rate of positive tests is decreasing,” Koca tweeted and urged continued precaution.
Turkey ranks seventh in the world for the number of confirmed infections, according to Johns Hopkins University. But experts believe the actual toll of the pandemic around the world is higher than the tally.
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.
___
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.
___
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.
