Category: Sports

The White House says about 10% of eligible kids aged 5 to 11 have received a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine since its approval for their age group two weeks ago.

At least 2.6 million kids have received a shot, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday, with 1.7 million doses administered in the last week alone, roughly double the pace of the first week after approval. It’s more than three times faster than the rate adults were vaccinated at the start of the nation’s vaccination campaign 11 months ago.

Zients said there are now 30,000 locations across the country for kids to get a shot, up from 20,000 last week, and that the administration expects the pace of pediatric shots to pick up in the coming days.

Kids who get their first vaccine dose by the end of this week will be fully vaccinated by Christmas, assuming they get their second shot three weeks after the first one.

Pace varies among states

State-by-state breakdowns of doses given to the age group haven’t been released by the White House or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but figures shared by states show the pace varies. About 11% to 12% of children in that age group have received their first doses in Colorado, Utah and Illinois, but the pace is much slower in places like Idaho (5%), Tennessee (5%) and Wyoming (4%), three states that have some of the lowest rates of vaccination for older groups.

The White House was stepping up its efforts to promote kid vaccination, with first lady Jill Biden and the singer Ciara taping a video Wednesday encouraging shots for kids.

The first lady also visited a Washington pediatric care facility along with Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, the Washington Mystics’ Alysha Clark and the Washington Wizards’ Thomas Bryant.

“You’re the real heroes,” Biden told newly vaccinated kids. “You have your superpower and now you’re protected against COVID.”

Biden also warned parents against misinformation around the vaccines and emphasized their safety.

“I want you to remember and share with other parents: The vaccine protects your children against COVID-19,” she said. “It’s been thoroughly reviewed and rigorously tested. It’s safe. It’s free, and it’s available for every single child in this country 5 and up.”

Source: Voice of America

Health workers in Cameroon are fighting a cholera outbreak that claimed 13 lives this week in two major cities of the central African state. The outbreak, which has affected several hundred people, comes as Cameroon prepares to host the African Football Cup of Nations, or AFCON, in about two months.

Cameroon’s health minister Manaouda Malachie in a release this week said thousands of civilians in the capital city Yaounde and Ekondo-Titi, an English-speaking western town, are threatened by cholera.

Cholera is an infectious and often fatal bacterial disease of the small intestine, typically contracted from infected water supplies and food. It causes severe vomiting and diarrhea and can kill within hours if left untreated.

Amos Kome Njikang, the medical doctor in charge of the Ekondo-Titi hospital, dispatched health workers to the community to search for and transport cholera patients to the hospital.

“Four more cases came in between yesterday and early this morning,” he said. “We have made plans for the transportation of new cases from the community to the health facility at Bamousso. We have also tried to increase personal hygiene, hand washing, washing of whatever we consume. We are trying to tell them how to purify water before they drink.”

The health ministry said several hundred patients were rushed to hospitals in Yaounde and Ekondo-Titi. The government said it recorded at least 13 cholera-related deaths in the two towns since Monday.

It’s feared the outbreak may have claimed more lives in villages which lack health infrastructure.

This week, the ministry of health said it dispatched several dozen health workers to warn civilians that eating uncooked food and unwashed fruits, or drink water that’s not boiled, increases the risk getting cholera.

The cholera outbreak comes as Cameroon prepares to host the African Football Cup of Nations, AFCON, starting on January 9.

Yaounde, which will host teams from eight African nations in the continental soccer event, has reported at least 100 cholera cases.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Yaounde mayor Luc Messi Atangana said he’s cleaning up the city and improving the drinkable water supply to stop cholera from spreading.

He said the outbreak is provoked by increased refuse dumped by civilians on street corners, and he’s hired 30 trash trucks to add to 200 others that clear Yaounde of municipal solid waste. He expects Yaounde to be clean and free from cholera within the next two weeks.

The health ministry said the cholera outbreak may be difficult to contain. Less than 30 percent of the population visits hospitals either because of ignorance or because some civilians prefer traditional African medicine. Health workers are urging civilians to refer suspected cholera cases to the nearest hospitals.

Source: Voice of America

Kenya’s Benson Kipruto won the pandemic-delayed Boston Marathon on Monday when the race returned from a 30-month absence with a smaller, socially distanced feel and moved from the spring for the first time in its 125-year history.

Diana Kipyogei won the women’s race to complete the eighth Kenyan sweep since 2000.

Although organizers put runners through COVID-19 protocols and asked spectators to keep their distance, large crowds lined the 26.2-mile course from Hopkinton to Boston as an early drizzle cleared and temperatures rose to the low 60s for a beautiful fall day.

They watched Kipruto run away from the lead pack as it turned onto Beacon Street with about three miles to go and break the tape in 2 hours, 9 minutes, 51 seconds.

A winner in Prague and Athens who finished 10th in Boston in 2019, Kipruto waited out an early breakaway by American CJ Albertson, who led by as many as two minutes at the halfway point. Kipruto took the lead at Cleveland Circle and finished 46 seconds ahead of 2016 winner Lemi Berhanu; Albertson, who turned 28 on Monday, was 10th, 1:53 back.

Kipyogei ran ahead for much of the race and finished in 2:24:45, 23 seconds ahead of 2017 winner Edna Kiplagat.

Marcel Hug of Switzerland won the men’s wheelchair race earlier despite making a wrong term in the final mile, finishing the slightly detoured route just seven seconds off his course record in 1:08:11.

Manuela Schär, also from Switzerland, won the women’s wheelchair race in 1:35:21.

Hug, who has raced Boston eight times and has five victories here, cost himself a $50,000 course record bonus when he missed the second-to-last turn, following the lead vehicle instead of turning from Commonwealth Avenue onto Hereford Street.

“The car went straight and I followed the car,” said Hug, who finished second in the Chicago Marathon by 1 second on Sunday. “But it’s my fault. I should go right, but I followed the car.”

With fall foliage replacing the spring daffodils and more masks than mylar blankets, the 125th Boston Marathon at last left Hopkinton for its long-awaited long run to Copley Square.

A rolling start and shrunken field allowed for social distancing on the course, as organizers tried to manage amid a changing COVID-19 pandemic that forced them to cancel the race last year for the first time since the event began in 1897.

“It’s a great feeling to be out on the road,” race director Dave McGillivray said. “Everyone is excited. We’re looking forward to a good day.”

A light rain greeted participants at the Hopkinton Green, where about 30 uniformed members of the Massachusetts National Guard left at 6 a.m. The men’s and women’s wheelchair racers — some of whom completed the 26.2-mile (42.2 km) distance in Chicago a day earlier — left shortly after 8 a.m., followed by the men’s and women’s professional fields.

“We took things for granted before COVID-19. It’s great to get back to the community and it puts things in perspective,” said National Guard Capt. Greg Davis, 39, who was walking with the military group for the fourth time. “This is a historic race, but today is a historic day.”

Kenya’s Lawrence Cherono and Worknesh Degefa of Ethiopia did not return to defend their 2019 titles, but 13 past champions and five Tokyo Paralympic gold medal winners were in the professional fields.

Held annually since a group of Bostonians returned from the 1896 Athens Olympics and decided to stage a marathon of their own, the race has occurred during World Wars and even the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. But it was first postponed, then canceled last year, then postponed from the spring in 2021.

It’s the first time the event hasn’t been held in April as part of the Patriots’ Day holiday that commemorates the start of the Revolutionary War. To recognize Indigenous Peoples Day, race organizers honored 1936 and ’39 winner Ellison “Tarzan” Brown and three-time runner-up Patti Catalano Dillon, a member of the Mi’kmaq tribe.

To manage the spread of the coronavirus, runners had to show proof that they’re vaccinated or test negative for COVID-19. Organizers also re-engineered the start so runners in the recreational field of more than 18,000 weren’t waiting around in crowded corrals for their wave to begin; instead, once they get off the bus in Hopkinton they can go.

“I love that we’re back to races across the country and the world,” said Doug Flannery, a 56-year-old Illinois resident who was waiting to start his sixth Boston Marathon. “It gives people hope that things are starting to come back.”

Police were visible all along the course as authorities vowed to remain vigilant eight years after the bombings that killed three spectators and maimed hundreds of others on Boylston Street near the Back Bay finish line.

The race started about an hour earlier than usual, leading to smaller crowds in the first few towns. Wellesley College students had been told not to kiss the runners as they pass the school’s iconic “scream tunnel” near the halfway mark.

Source: Voice of America

Innovators are joining Paralympians to discuss how sport can help to build a more inclusive society in a series of online discussions organized by the UN to coincide with the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, which continues until 5 September.

After losing her right leg in a car accident as a Japanese high school student, Kaede Maegawa was grateful when her friends offered her support. Yet, she sometimes felt that she wouldn’t be capable of doing anything on her own.

In order to regain her confidence, she asked her friends and teachers to let her try do things on her own. This started her on the road to becoming an elite athlete, and a competitor at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.

Ms. Maegawa shares her story during SDG Zone at Tokyo panel discussion, in which three inspirational Paralympians talk about the power of sport to expand horizons, and what the Paralympic values – courage, determination inspiration, and equality, mean to them.

Ms. Maegawa, who competes in the long jump, is joined by renowned Sierra Leonean table-tennis para-athlete George Wyndham, and Miki Matheson, three-times Paralympic gold medalist in ice sledge speed racing.

Breaking barriers with technology

Innovations featured in the Paralympics can eventually help all disabled people, explains Ken Endo, CEO of the technology company Xiborg, in a conversation highlighting technology, design, and initiatives that are making sport more accessible and enjoyable for all.

Mr. Endo leads a project to make a running-specific prosthesis called “blade” available for all, not only for athletes, and is working to break down various barriers, especially in developing countries, exploring how locally available materials can be used to develop blades and increase the number of people using prostheses.

The panel also features Lucy Meyer, Spokesperson for the Special Olympics-UNICEF USA Partnership, for young people with disabilities, and a five-times gold medal swimmer in the Special Olympics.

Ms. Meyer, who also has cerebral palsy, says that doctors told her parents that she wouldn’t be able to sit up or swallow but “we are so happy to report that the doctors were very wrong!”

She is very active in Special Olympics programme which enables children with and without disabilities to compete together in team sports. “It’s important to me that everyone accepts and includes everyone, but especially people with disabilities, because we are no different.”

Looking to the future

The last session of the SDG Zone at Tokyo looks at what sport can bring to the next generation, and how it can help societies to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, and improve.

South Sudanese Olympic athlete Abraham Guem, recounts the many challenges he, his team and the team’s host city of Maebashi have faced during the pandemic, with the unexpected upside that, because of the postponement of the Games, he was able to spend more time in Maebashi than expected, building links and making friends with local people.

The mayor of Maebashi, Ryu Yamamoto testifies to the positive experience of hosting the South Sudanese athletes, and believes the city is changed as a result. “Everyone must have felt encouraged to see these young people, from such a distant place in Africa, absorbed in intensive practice”.

Looking towards Paris 2024, Roxana Maracineanu, the French Minister of Sport, and an Olympic medal-winning swimmer, shared her hope that the path towards the next Olympic and Paralympic Games will foster stronger collaboration between sports movements, sport education at schools, and various sectors to enable everyone to leverage the power of sport to improve the world.

The SDG Zone at Tokyo

SDG Media Zone brings together world leaders, influencers, activists, experts, content creators and media partners to highlight actions and solutions in support of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The SDG ZONE at TOKYO is organized by the UN Department of Global Communications (DGC), the United Nations Information Centre Tokyo (UNIC Tokyo), and the Asahi Shimbun Company, a founding member of the SDG Media Compact.

It is the first of the SDG Media Zone series to be organized fully by a DGC country office.

The first half of the online discussion was held between 28 and 30 July, timed with the Olympic Games.

Source: UN News Center

For decades, African athletes have traveled all over the world to take part in the Olympic Games. At the recent Tokyo Games, they took home gold, silver and bronze medals. And yet Africa has never hosted the Games, and some people are asking what it would take for the Olympics to be held on African soil.  

In Kenya, thousands cheered on one of their favorite long-distance runners, Eliud Kipchoge, who won the gold medal in the men’s marathon. One Kipchoge fan had a special request for the government: Develop the country’s sports infrastructure.   

“We are very happy, all of us from Rift Valley and Kenyans as a whole. … [But we] just [want] to implore our leaders to address the issue of stadiums. … The Kipchoge Keino Stadium is dilapidated. And today, Kipchoge has shown the world that we are more than capable,” said Mandela Kiplimo, a resident of Eldoret, about 40 kilometers from the Olympic champion’s hometown of Kapsisiywa.

Having subpar sports facilities that don’t meet international norms is one of the biggest challenges for countries that want to host the Olympic Games. For many of them, it’s just too expensive, said Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist, who edited the book Rio 2016: Olympic Myths, Hard Realities.

“You might read, for instance, that in Tokyo they spent roughly $15 billion, or that in Brazil or Rio 2016 they spent $12 to $15 billion. But the real numbers in Tokyo are above $35 billion, and the real numbers in Rio are above $20 billion,” Zimbalist told VOA.

Zimbalist said developing countries face even higher costs. 

“They don’t have the necessary transportation, communications, and security and hospitality infrastructure, so the amount of money they have to invest to do it is much, much larger,” he said. “Sochi spent somewhere between $51 to $65 billion to host the Winter Olympics in 2014. … China — Beijing — spent somewhere north of $44 billion to host the Games in 2008. And the problem is that more often than not, you are constructing infrastructure for the purpose of hosting the Games, not for the purpose of solving development bottlenecks in your country.” 

Youth Olympic Games

For now, Senegal is preparing to host its first Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in 2026.

The YOG were added to the Olympics in 2010 to give athletes ages 14 to 18 the chance to compete.

Experts say the YOG in Buenos Aires in 2018 had an Olympic Village with about 4,000 athletes from 260 countries. That contrasts with the estimated 12,000 athletes for the larger Olympics. Generally, experts say, the YOG will require about one-third of the investment needed for the Olympic Games.

While Senegalese officials say they are excited and honored to make history as the first African country to host the YOG, they also understand the responsibility that comes with it.

“There are expectations from the whole African continent, and Senegal has to organize games that would live up to the standards of previous Youth Olympics. And because of that, Senegal is going to make sure it’s a success and serves as a catalyst for mobilizing and engaging Senegalese youth in particular, and African youth in general,” Babacar Makhtar Wade, president of the Senegal Judo Federation, told VOA.

Wade, who is also treasurer of the Senegal National Olympic and Sports Committee, said renovation plans are well under way. 

“We are planning to first renovate three main venues — the Iba Mar Diop Stadium, which will host track, rugby and other sports. There’s also our Olympic pool, which needs to be renovated. It has an adjacent park, which will host a few events such as the BMX freestyle, basketball 3 on 3 and hockey games. And there is also the Caserne Samba Diery Diallo, where the equestrian-related activities will take place,” he said.

There will also be venues in hubs outside Dakar including a popular seaside resort that will host beach volleyball, boating and other events, and Diamniadio, site of a new 50,000-seat multipurpose stadium and other facilities. President Macky Sall said at last year’s groundbreaking ceremony that the stadium will be available for future local and international competitions.

Source: Voice of America