Category: General

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA – For many Americans, pets offer a rare source of comfort during uncertain times. Dog lovers are quick to say their pets aren’t just companions, they’re like members of the family.

“I’m really happy to have Bentley,” said teenager Aisha Simmons, as she walked the black Labrador retriever around her neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington.

Her family adopted the dog about a year ago from a local animal shelter. They were among the thousands of people across the country who bought, fostered or adopted animals last year during the coronavirus pandemic.

With the stress of the pandemic, more people suddenly wanted a pet to snuggle and to have as company to prevent loneliness during quarantine, Kurt Krukenberg, president of the Humane Society Silicon Valley in San Jose, California, told VOA.

“With more people working from home, this may be first time they felt they could take care of a pet,” he said.

This was wonderful for dogs and cats in shelters or foster situations waiting for their “forever homes,” said Amy Good, director of development at the Dane County Humane Society in Madison, Wisconsin.

“The number of adoptions we had last year were absolutely phenomenal, and there were even times we were out of animals for people to adopt,” she said.

Jim Bouderau, the executive director of the Tompkins County SPCA in Ithaca, New York, said the shelter got an influx of people who wanted to adopt a cat or dog.

During this flurry of adoptions, though, some shelters were concerned that people adopting pets might not have fully thought through the commitment and might choose to return them later.

So far, this isn’t happening often, according to surveys of new pet owners in the U.S.

“I think people with pandemic pets have bonded with them, and so I’m not surprised we’re seeing fewer returns now,” said Gina Hardter, marketing director for the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria in Virginia.

“We’re actually seeing a lower number of animal returns or surrenders than we did in 2019,” she told VOA.

New owners in San Jose are also sticking with their pets, said Krukenberg.

“We were worried about whether this would happen, but fortunately that turned out not to be the case,” he said.

Good agreed, saying, “Our returns are the lowest we’ve had in five years.”

“More people are figuring out ways to keep their animals,” said Steve Bardy, executive director at Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando in Florida, “because they appreciate what a dog or cat adds to their lives.”

“There is no way I would ever bring back Luna,” said Amber Wright from Chevy Chase, Maryland, also near Washington, as she cuddled the little cream-colored pup she adopted last year.

Some animal welfare organizations say they are beginning to see more returns or surrenders from people who already had a pet before the pandemic began, though.

Kerry D’Amato, executive director at Pet Haven in Minneapolis, Minnesota, said her group is getting pandemic pet returns, not from her organization, but from shelters where people can walk in and take any dog without being screened. A year and a half later, a number of these people, “who were not equipped to handle behavioral challenges,” want to give up the animal that they never properly trained or socialized during quarantine.

The returns are also happening for other reasons.

Financial strains related to the pandemic are causing people to rethink pet ownership, Cindy Sharpley, executive director of Last Chance Animal Rescue in Waldorf, Maryland, told VOA.

“People were at home getting unemployment benefits during the pandemic and now they’re not,” she said.

In other cases, with parents returning to in-person work and children returning to school, there may not be anyone to care for the pet, she said. Other pet owners are suffering from long-term effects from COVID-19 and are forced to part with a pet, she added.

Now, another change is making life difficult for pets and their owners. The federal freeze on eviction moratoriums that recently expired means thousands of people, and their pets, may have to find a new place to live. This concerns Hardter, who said the organization would offer temporary boarding for these animals until their owners can find a home that allows pets.

“We are also working on a foster program where volunteers would temporarily care for the pets in their homes,” she said. “So, our goal is to try to keep people with their pets.”

Source: Voice of America

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL – Brazil’s World Cup qualifying match against Argentina was dramatically suspended shortly after it began Sunday as controversy over COVID-19 protocols erupted.

The match at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena between the two giants of South American football came to a halt when a group of Brazilian public health officials came onto the pitch, triggering a melee involving team staff and players.

Argentina’s players trudged off the pitch to the locker room as the furor raged. Argentina captain Lionel Messi later re-emerged from the tunnel without his team shirt on as confusion swept around the stadium.

The stunning intervention came just hours after Brazil’s health authorities said four players in Argentina’s squad based in England should be placed in “immediate quarantine” for breaching COVID-19 protocols.

According to Brazil’s National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA), Premier League players Giovani Lo Celso (Tottenham), Emiliano Martinez (Aston Villa), Emiliano Buendia (Aston Villa) and Cristian Romero (Tottenham) provided “false information” upon their entry to Brazil.

Romero, Lo Celso and Martinez were all in the Argentina starting lineup that kicked off Sunday’s game, triggering the intervention onto the field of officials wearing ANVISA shirts.

The four Premier League players were accused of failing to disclose that they had spent time in the United Kingdom in the 14 days prior to their arrival.

“We got to this point because everything that ANVISA directed, from the first moment, was not fulfilled,” ANVISA director Antonio Barra Torres said on Brazilian television.

“(The four players) were directed to remain isolated while awaiting deportation, but they did not comply. They went to the stadium and they entered the field, in a series of breaches,” the official added.

A government order dating from June 23 prohibits the entry into Brazilian territory of any foreign person from the United Kingdom, India or South Africa, to prevent the spread of variants of the coronavirus.

“ANVISA considers that this situation represents a serious health risk and recommends that the local health authorities (of Sao Paulo) order the immediate quarantine of the players, who are prohibited from taking part in any activity and from remaining on Brazilian territory,” the agency said in a statement earlier Sunday.

ANVISA said Brazil’s Federal Police had been notified so that “the necessary measures are taken immediately.”

Brazilian website Globoesporte said the Argentina Football Association (AFA) could request an exceptional authorization from authorities in Sao Paulo to allow the players to take the field against Brazil.

The controversy comes after nine Brazilians based in the Premier League failed to travel to South America following objections from their clubs.

Source: Voice of America

MIAMI – Funeral director Wayne Bright has seen grief piled upon grief during the latest COVID-19 surge.

A woman died of the virus, and as her family was planning the funeral, her mother was struck down. An aunt took over arrangements for the double funeral, only to die of COVID-19 herself two weeks later.

“That was one of the most devastating things ever,” said Bright, who also arranged the funeral last week of one of his closest friends.

Florida is in the grip of its deadliest wave of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, a disaster driven by the highly contagious delta variant.

While Florida’s vaccination rate is slightly higher than the national average, the Sunshine State has an outsize population of elderly people, who are especially vulnerable to the virus; a vibrant party scene; and a Republican governor who has taken a hard line against mask requirements, vaccine passports and business shutdowns.

As of mid-August, the state was averaging 244 deaths per day, up from 23 a day in late June and eclipsing the previous peak of 227 during the summer of 2020. (Because of the way deaths are logged in Florida and lags in reporting, more recent figures on fatalities per day are incomplete.)

Hospitals have rented refrigerated trucks to store more bodies. Funeral homes have been overwhelmed.

‘Weird dream state’

Cristina Miles, a mother of five from Orange Park, is among those facing more than one loss at a time. Her husband died after contracting COVID-19, and less than two weeks later, her mother-in-law succumbed to the virus.

“I feel we are all kind of in a weird dream state,” she said, of herself and her three children.

Hospitals have been swamped with patients who, like Miles’ husband and mother-in-law, hadn’t gotten vaccinated.

In a positive sign, the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 in Florida has dropped over the past two weeks from more than 17,000 to 14,200 on Friday, indicating the surge is easing.

Florida made an aggressive effort early on to vaccinate its senior citizens. But Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Florida, said the raw number of those who have yet to get the shot is still large, given Florida’s elderly population of 4.6 million.

“Even 10% is still a very large number, and then folks living with them who come in contact with them are not vaccinated,” Cherabuddi said. “With delta, things spread very quickly.”

Cherabuddi said there is also a “huge difference” in attitudes toward masks in Florida this summer compared with last year. This summer, “if you traveled around the state, it was like we are not really in a surge,” he said.

DeSantis’ stances

Governor Ron DeSantis has strongly opposed certain mandatory measures to keep the virus in check, saying people should be trusted to make decisions for themselves. He has asserted, too, that the spike in cases is seasonal as Floridians spend more time indoors to escape the heat.

At his funeral home in Tampa, Bright is working weekdays and weekends, staying past midnight sometimes.

“Usually we serve between five and six families a week. Right now, we are probably seeing 12 to 13 new families every week,” he said. “It’s nonstop. We are just trying to keep up with the volume.”

He had to arrange the burial of one of his closest friends, a man he had entrusted with the security code to his house. They used to carpool each other’s kids to school, and their families would gather for birthday and Super Bowl parties.

“It is very, very difficult to go through this process for someone you love so dearly,” he said.

Pat Seemann, a nurse practitioner whose company has nearly 500 elderly, homebound patients in central Florida, had not lost a single patient to COVID-19. Then the variant she calls “the wrecking ball” hit.

In the past month, she lost seven patients in two weeks, including a husband and wife who died within days of each other.

“I cried all weekend. I was devastated, angry,” she said.

Elderly hit hardest

Overall, more than 46,300 people have died of COVID-19 in Florida, which ranks 17th in per capita deaths among the states.

The majority of the deaths this summer — like last summer — are among the elderly. Of the 2,345 people whose recent deaths were reported over the past week, 1,479 of them were 65 and older, or 63%.

“The focus needs to be on who’s dying and who’s ending up in the hospital,” Seeman said. “It’s still going after the elderly.”

But the proportion of under-65 people dying of COVID-19 has grown substantially, which health officials attribute to lower vaccination rates in those age groups.

Aaron Jaggi, 35, was trying to get healthy before he died of COVID-19, 12 hours after his older brother Free Jaggi, 41, lost his life to the virus. They were overweight, which increases the risk of severe COVID-19 illness, and on the fence about getting vaccinated, thinking the risk was minimal because they both worked from home, said Brittany Pequignot, who has lived with the family at various times and is like an adopted daughter.

After their death, the family found a whiteboard that belonged to Aaron. It listed his daily goals for sit-ups and push-ups.

“He was really trying,” Pequignot said.

Source: Voice of America

Brazil has placed a 90-day suspension on the use of more than 12 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine because they were made in a plant that had not been authorized by Anvisa, Brazil’s federal health regulator, Reuters reported.

“The manufacturing unit … was not inspected and was not approved by Anvisa in the authorization of emergency use of the mentioned vaccine,” the regulator said Saturday in a statement.

Brazil’s Butantan Institute, a biomedical center that has partnered with China’s Sinovac Biotech to locally finish the vaccines, alerted Anvisa on Friday about the doses, but neither disclosed the location of the plant. Anvisa said it would seek to inspect the plant during the 90-day ban.

Butantan said 9 million more doses made at the same plant were on their way to Brazil.

Concerns spur boosters

Several cities in Brazil have begun providing vaccine booster shots even though most citizens have yet to receive their second jabs. The booster shots were prompted by concerns older Brazilians have about the efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine, The Associated Press reported.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s delta variant epicenter and home to one of its largest elderly populations, began administering the boosters Wednesday. Northeastern cities Salvador and Sao Luis started on Monday, and the most populous city, Sao Paulo, will begin Monday. The rest of the nation is expected to follow the next week.

France, Israel, China and Chile are among those countries giving boosters to some of their older citizens, and a U.S. plan to start delivering booster shots for most Americans by September 20 is facing complications that could delay third doses for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday.

Japan and South Korea, both of which wrestled with slow vaccine rollouts, are planning booster shots in the fourth quarter of this year. Malaysia also is considering boosters, but Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said those who had yet to receive their first shots were being prioritized.

Thailand began giving booster shots this week, but only for health and frontline workers.

Russia, Hungary and Serbia also are giving boosters, although there has been a lack of demand in those countries for the initial shots amid abundant supplies.

According to AP, France’s worst coronavirus outbreak is unfolding 12 time zones away from Paris, devastating Tahiti and other idyllic islands of French Polynesia.

Regional health officials say the South Pacific archipelagos lack enough oxygen, ICU beds and morgue space — and that the vaccination rate is just half the national average.

France’s highest rate

With more than 2,800 COVID cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the region now holds France’s record for the highest infection rate. The majority of the region’s 463 documented COVID-19 deaths have taken place in the past 30 days.

New Zealand officials on Saturday reported the country’s first COVID-related fatality in more than 200 days. Doctors said the nonagenarian had several underlying health problems in addition to COVID-19.

American boxer Oscar de la Hoya was hospitalized with COVID-19 late on Friday, forcing him to drop out of a comeback fight scheduled for next month. The Hall of Fame fighter said on Twitter that he was fully vaccinated earlier this year.

German news agency dpa on Saturday reported that a man attacked two members of a vaccination team operating a shopping mall medical kiosk in the east German town of Gera after he demanded a vaccination certificate without being vaccinated. The man, who was not identified, injured a nurse and a medical assistant after they refused to comply with his demands.

Police later arrested the man, who was also injured in the attack, at a nearby parking garage.

Fifth variant

World Health Organization officials earlier this week designated the coronavirus variant known as mu or “B.1.621” as a “variant of interest,” becoming the fifth variant to be monitored by the global health body. Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday said U.S. public health officials were “keeping a very close eye” on a new variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 that was first detected in Colombia.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said Saturday evening that it had recorded nearly 220.2 million global COVID-19 infections and 4.6 million deaths. The center said 5.4 billion vaccines had been administered.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA – The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, is calling on the United States and other nations to end COVID-19 border restrictions that keep Central American refugees from seeking asylum.

Forced displacement within Central America and Mexico has been soaring over the last five years. The United Nations refugee agency says factors, including chronic violence and insecurity, climate change and natural disasters have forced people to flee their homes in growing numbers.

UNHCR spokeswoman Aikaterini Kitidi told VOA the effects of COVID-19 and Hurricanes Eta and Iota, which struck the region with devastating force last year, have triggered further large-scale displacement.

In particular, she said these disasters have created great economic hardship for women and children who have lost their source of income and have difficulty obtaining basic services.

“As a result, such people are forcibly displaced, and they are compelled many times to embark to even further dangerous onward journeys. What they are exposed to are smugglers, traffickers, and to other risks like, for example, sexual exploitation, abuse, or even murder,” she said.

Kitidi said a staggering 1 million people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have been forced to flee their homes, creating an unprecedented displacement crisis in the region.

Due to public health COVID-19 travel restrictions, she said Central American refugees face extreme difficulties in obtaining protections they need in countries of asylum. She said the UNHCR has appealed to the U.S. government to end the Title 42 public health-related asylum restrictions.

“Under which we see the ports of entry to the United States remaining closed to most asylum seekers with exemptions for some categories of populations with vulnerabilities. And we have asked for the expulsions that are occurring of these people to stop and for the right to claim asylum in the United States to be restored,” she said.

Kitidi said all countries in the region have agreed to share the responsibility to provide protection for those fleeing danger and persecution. She added that discussions are continuing with regional authorities in the hopes they will live up to their agreement.

Source: Voice of America

HANOI – Vietnam’s coronavirus epicenter Ho Chi Minh City, which has kept residents confined at home under lockdown, is considering reopening economic activity from September 15, shifting from a “zero COVID-19” strategy to a policy of living with the virus.

The city of 9 million people is targeting a phased reopening and the full vaccination of its citizens by the end of this year, according to the draft seen by Reuters, which has yet to be endorsed.

Ho Chi Minh City last month deployed troops to enforce its lockdown and prohibited residents from leaving their homes to slow a spiraling rate of deaths. Just 3% of Vietnam’s 98 million population has been fully vaccinated.

Vietnam’s biggest city, a business hub flanked by industrialized provinces, aims to “promote economic recovery … and move towards living with COVID-19,” the draft proposal said.

The reopening would be gradual, and low-interest loans and tax cuts would be offered to affected firms, it said.

Ho Chi Minh City alone has recorded 241,110 coronavirus infections and 9,974 deaths, representing half of the country’s cases and 80% of its fatalities.

The vast majority of those have come in recent months, ending hopes that Vietnam could continue to achieve success it showed in 2020, when aggressive contact tracing and quaratining led to one of the world’s best COVID-19 containment records.

The ministry of health on Friday reported 14,922 coronavirus infections, a record daily increase, raising its caseload to 501,649 with 12,476 deaths.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Wednesday warned Vietnam could be facing a lengthy coronavirus battle and cannot rely on lockdown and quarantines indefinitely.

During a visit to a smartphone factory of Samsung Electronics in the northern province of Thai Nguyen on Friday, Chinh urged the company to help Vietnam procure vaccines from South Korea and to maintain its long-term investment in Vietnam.

Foreign firms operating in the country, including Samsung “can put their trust in Vietnam’s efforts in tackling the pandemic,” Chinh said.

The health ministry on Friday called on recovered COVID-19 patients to help the city battle the epidemic.

In capital Hanoi, where dozens of new cases per day have been recorded in recent weeks, authorities will extend strict lockdown in most parts of the city beyond September 6 and will conduct 1 million tests from now through the end of Sunday.

Source: Voice of America