The country’s spy agency is warning companies in the vaccine supply chain that malicious foreign actors could threaten the largest inoculation program in Canadian history — by targeting their workers, among other tactics.
Just prior to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses in Canada, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) recently offered a briefing to industry players about the emerging threat.
One of the people taking part in that briefing was Pina Melchionna, president of the Canadian Institute of Traffic and Transportation. The non-profit association helps Canadian companies manage delivery logistics.
Melchionna said some of her corporate members are taking part in vaccine deployment, including Air Canada Cargo and Shoppers Drug Mart.
“We’ve been told that the Canada supply chain in particular has been the interest of many foreign actors, and perhaps bad actors in that respect,” she told CBC News.
“I think … my takeaway from that session was definitely that this isn’t like TV, where spies are coming over to get our data. They are targeting people already working within companies who either have vulnerabilities, or who may be sloppy because of the tight deadlines we have in getting the vaccine to market.”
WATCH | Who could target Canada’s vaccine rollout?
Former CSIS director Ward Elcock says governments are likely watching for threats from organized crime and state actors when prepping vaccine security plans. 0:59
Many foreign intelligence agencies are known to manipulate individuals abroad — often through threats, harassment or the detention of family members. It’s an old-school espionage tactic described in a landmark intelligence report earlier this year.
But the threat is more alarming now, as Canadian government officials and distributors prepare to vaccinate millions of people against COVID-19 by the end of next year.
A spokesperson for CSIS said the agency has reached out to supply chain associations and industry to tell them what to look out for as they brace for threats to the vaccine rollout.
“CSIS observes persistent and sophisticated state-sponsored threat activity, including harm to individual Canadian companies, as well as the mounting toll on Canada’s vital assets and knowledge-based economy,” said agency spokesperson John Townsend.
“As a result, CSIS is working closely with government partners to ensure that as many Canadian businesses and different levels of government as possible are aware of the threat environment and that they have the information they need to implement preemptive security measures.”
When asked which foreign actors might be targeting Canada’s vaccine rollout, Townsend pointed to a July briefing CSIS gave to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce which flagged China and Russia as countries actively involved in commercial espionage.
Earlier this summer, intelligence agencies warned that a hacker group “almost certainly” backed by Russia was trying to steal COVID-19-related vaccine research in Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. And the United States recently confirmed that hackers — widely believed to be backed by Moscow — hit multiple federal departments in a months-long operation.
A bid to ‘undermine confidence’?
Jessica Davis is a former senior intelligence analyst with CSIS who now heads the private consulting firm Insight Threat Intelligence. She said state-sponsored actors have a laundry list of motivations for interfering in Canada’s vaccine rollout strategy.
“Perhaps to again gain access to the vaccine, or also to prevent adversaries from gaining access to the vaccine or a fully vaccinated population. There are economic and security benefits from being the first, or among the first countries to achieve that status,” she said.
“If they can get into the supply chain, that demonstrates [their] capability to get into it, probably at a variety of different points. So it undermines confidence in that distribution system … that could be one of the primary purposes there.
“Gaining access to one vaccine or one distribution site isn’t necessarily the end goal, but undermining that process could be the end goal for a state actor.”
Other antagonists, like terrorist organizations, might be looking to disrupt the rollout itself, Davis said.
“Or it could also be people who are actually opposed to vaccines in and of themselves who are seeking to take action against that distribution,” she said. “So there’s a wide variety of actors here. And with CSIS and potentially other law enforcement agencies briefing members of the supply chain, that really tells me the number of actors could be really large and the threats are very real.”
Former CSIS director Ward Elcock said organized crime is also likely interested in getting its hands on vaccines as shipments fan out across the country.
“This is as valuable as gold at this point in time,” he told CBC’s Power and Politics last week. “If you’re a criminal organization, you can make money out of anything. People make money off of cigarettes. They make money off of drugs. This is no different than any other commodity.”
The first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine were unloaded in Ontario on Sunday, kicking off a complex rollout plan. (Office of Premier Doug Ford)
Melchionna said CSIS also warned companies about the need to keep their data secure. For example, a smaller company with more relaxed security protocols could put others at risk if it’s breached.
“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link and I think that absolutely holds true for the supply chain,” she said.
“The project vaccine deployment is so large and involves so many organizations working against aggressive timelines that I think bad actors are hoping to capitalize on sloppiness in the supply chain. And [the] supply chain is very data-rich.”
CSE watching for foreign threats
A spokesperson for the Communications Security Establishment, the country’s foreign signals intelligence agency, said the intelligence agency has been providing cybersecurity advice as well, through regular calls with the health care sector to share threat information.
“CSE and its Canadian Centre for Cyber Security continue to work with our domestic and international partners to support the Government of Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including vaccine research and distribution,” said Evan Koronewski.
“It is always important to note that we continue to monitor for cyber threats through our foreign intelligence mandate. We are working with our Canadian security and intelligence partners, including the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces, to address foreign and cyber threats facing Canada.”
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the military commander leading vaccination logistics at the Public Health Agency of Canada, said the agency is aware of the threats to their mass distribution plan.
Britain, the United States and Canada accused Russia in July of trying to steal information from researchers seeking a COVID-19 vaccine. (Ted Warren/Associated Press)
“So we pay attention to the wide range of threats. Agencies, the police services are paying to those threats that fall … in their lanes, and [are] very much ensuring that the appropriate levels in the provinces and territories are made aware of what those are. And they will continue to do that moving forward,” he said during a briefing in Ottawa last week.
“But I think the underlying issue that you’re raising here is that we need to ensure that some information is not divulged, for obvious reasons. So when it comes to the exact routing [of vaccine shipments], we prefer not to disclose the routing, the exact location or transfer points in the cold chain to protect the integrity of the … supply chain.”
Spotting anomalies harder in 2020
While the threat is severe, industry players say they’re taking it seriously and Canadians shouldn’t be concerned.
“Every key player, from manufacturing to distribution, is keenly aware of the security risks inherent in this operation and is therefore continually assessing and actively preparing for the full gamut of potential threats, including [threats] to infrastructure, personnel and cybersecurity, among others,” said Simona Zara, a spokesperson for Supply Chain Canada, a group which represents the supply chain sector in this country.
“An operation this complex requires collaboration and clear communication between government, the private sector and stakeholders.”
Drone Delivery Canada, which has been in talks with the federal government about delivering vaccines to remote communities, said it knows immediately if a drone is tampered with or goes missing.
“Our drones are federally regulated. They have a tail number. So if you planned to interfere with one of our drones that’s [not even] carrying … vaccines, even just PPE or just regular cargo, it would be a federal offence,” president Michael Zahra said.
“I think it’s highly unlikely, given the security that we have at point of origin and point of destination. We are constantly tracking our drones exactly where they are. So we know what the situation is with a drone. If anything were to happen — which is, again, highly unlikely — we know exactly where everything is in real time.”
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.
