Category: Life & Style

On Tuesday, the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) raised its travel advisory for three countries to “Level 4: Very High”. CDC warned against travel to Sri Lanka, Jamaica, and Brunei due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases.

The ratings for the Netherlands, Malta, Guinea-Bissau, and United Arab Emirates were eased from “Level 4: Very High” to “Level 3: High by the CDC ”. It urges unvaccinated Americans to avoid traveling to those destinations. The CDC raised “Level 1: Low” to “Level 2: Moderate for Australia. An advisory was raised by the CDC for Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Ghana, Grenada, Turks, and Caicos Islands to “Level 3”.

The current list issued by the CDC includes 80 destinations out of around 200 ranked as “Level: 4” that included the US territories. In Seattle, it was made mandatory for the fans who attend the pro-sporting events to show proof that they have been vaccinated against the COVID-19 or that they have been tested negative for the coronavirus.

On Tuesday, the University of Washington and Washington State University announced updated policies for the fans attending the games this season.

More than 50 ministers and heads of the climate departments and development talks treat adaptation as “urgent”. The extreme weather and rising seas are hitting faster than expected which called the UN leaders for more money and political help for people to adopt the new reality.

The committee said that the adaptation that will range from building higher flood defenses to grow more drought-tolerant crops and relocating coastal communities had not benefited the same attention. It is “exposed to a climate emergency unfolding faster than predicted”. The committees further added that the “adaption can no longer go under-prioritized”

The 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was initially scheduled to take place from 9-19 November 2020 in Glasgow, UK.

COP26 will bring the parties together to accelerate actions towards the goals of the Paris Agreement. They urged the UN Framework Convention on “Climate Change”. The UK also committed to work with the countries and join the forces with civil society, companies, and people on the frontline of climate change to inspire climate action ahead of COP26.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has signed a bill that will limit tech giant’s power to remove content. The decree is aimed at restricting the power of social media companies to remove accounts and content.

According to Bolsonaro a change of regulation was needed to combat the “arbitrary removal” of profiles. He said that the new legislation will help in protecting freedom of speech. Twitter and Facebook have removed several posts throughout the coronavirus pandemic, posted by the president and his supporters that were deemed misleading.

The details of the decree so far are only that the tech giants will have to provide “just cause and motivation” ahead of removing an account or content. The new law will focus on providing clarity on the power of social media companies to police content on their platforms. The law will be enforced despite being unclear.

The President and his allies have frequently posted on social media which were removed since the start of the pandemic. Approximately 15 videos were removed from a channel that belonged to Bolsonaro for spreading misinformation regarding COVID-19. Facebook also complied with an order last year by the Brazilian Supreme Court to block the accounts of many of the president’s top allies accused of promoting misinformation against federal judges.

Singapore will roll out measures to slow down the spread of COVID-19 community cases. The nation will expand its testing regime aggressively to keep the situation under control. The number of new cases last week doubled to more than 1,200 as compared to 600 cases last week.

On Monday, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong announced a range of measures to slow the spread of infection. He said that the workers in more sectors will now have to undergo mandatory fast and easy restored routine testing. The frequency of these tests has been increased from 14 days to once a week. Individuals identified with close contacts of the patients for an extended period will be issued with a Health Risk Warning (HRW) by the government to ring-fence cases more quickly.

Those who will receive HRW will be required by the law to get Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). They will also have to self-isolate till they receive a negative result for their first test along with this they will be required to do an antigen rapid test (ART) after that again with PCR on the 14th day.

Thanks to the nation’s high vaccination coverage, the rate of severe illnesses and death among vaccinated individuals are low.

This month Israel will present COVID-19 booster shot data to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The data will be presented from an extensive rollout of the vaccine. This data will accompany White House plans to begin a booster drive in the United States.

The head of the Public Health at Israel’s Health Ministry Sharon Alroy-Preis said that the ministry had been asked by the United States FDA to brief its advisors in a meeting on September 17. The discussion on the third booster shot of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine will be considered in the virtual session along with other matters. The head said that they were asked to come and present Israel’s experience and their data so that they can truly help the whole world to learn.

The nation started offering Pfizer COVID-19 booster to young people 12 years and above in a campaign that began a week ago. So far 2.6 million people have been vaccinated with three doses of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel, out of 9.3 million population. The vaccine drive in Israel has slowed down due to a surge in coronavirus infection of the new Delta variant.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has rejected some vaccines offered through the UN-backed immunization program. Kim ordered his officials to launch a tougher epidemic prevention campaign in “our style” as he rejected COVAX’s offer.

On Thursday, during the Politburo meeting, the Korean Central News Agency said that Kim announced that the officials must bear in mind that strengthening epidemic prevention is an extremely important task that must not be sickened for a moment. Earlier Kim also called for North Koreans to brace for prolonged COVID-19 restrictions and indicated that the nation’s border should stay closed despite worsening economic and food conditions. The nation used tough quarantine and border closures to prevent the outbreak of the virus though Kim claimed the nation is entirely virus-free is widely doubted.

According to Unicef, North Korea proposed its allotment of about 3m Sinovac shots be sent to severely affected countries instead. The nation was also scheduled to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine through the COVAX but the delivery for the same has been delayed.

The health minister of North Korea said that they will continue to communicate with COVAX over future vaccines. Initially, 1.9 million doses of AstraZeneca would be enough to vaccinate 950,000 people but only 7.3% of 26 million people were vaccinated.

COVID-19 rates among the children and teens are rising as young Americans are starting a new school year. The surge in cases is seen after the winter pandemic before vaccines were widely available.

Local leaders of America are noticing a sharp uptick in cases among the children. The coronavirus cases in Maricopa county, Arizona make up to one-sixth of the country’s positive cases and 6% rate of the hospitalization needed for children. Children under 18 are making nearly 40% of cases in Tennessee state. The surge in cases is over 14,000 among children. 20,256 cases were reported in the new school year in the state of Texas along with the staff with 7,488 cases.

Children represented nearly 15% of COVID-19 cases across the country by the end of August. Mild symptoms are seen among most of the children that include runny nose, coughs, and fevers whereas some children are with severe symptoms that lead to a hospital stay.

As the cases among the children and teens were rare once and now seem to be more transmissible, the Delta variant has made the younger demographics more susceptible to the virus. This has increased the pressure to approve the vaccine for younger children if under 12 to be eligible to get the vaccine shots.

On Tuesday, India broke its own COVID-19 record for vaccination of a maximum number of individuals in a single day. It was announced by Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya that more than 1.09 crore doses of the coronavirus vaccine were administered today.

The Union Health Minister had tweeted with his official Twitter handle, “Country has reached a new milestone! Breaking the previous record of administering over 1.09 crore doses of vaccine, today a new record was made”. He further added that today more than the previous number of highest doses have been administered and the number is continuously rising.

The confirmation came from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that 65 crore COVID-19 doses have been administered in India to date. On Friday, it logged its highest ever daily vaccination figure and the mark of 1,00,64,032 doses which was above one crore. The highest state to inoculate over 29 lakh beneficiaries in a single day was Uttar Pradesh.

The top officials of the country including Indian Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi and Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya hailed it as a big feat for the nation. The BJP Chief JP Nadda has earlier said that he has full confidence that they will be able to vaccinate the entire eligible population by the end of the year as there is an increase in supply for the jab.

The European Union has issued new COVID-19 travel restrictions for the United States of America. The EU has recommended a pause on all non-essential travel from the US as the cases in coronavirus have surged.

The average hospital admission daily has raised over 100,000 for the first time since last winter. The Delta variant is the most severe in the South US. However, the surge is seen throughout the nation. The recommendation which came from the EU is nonbinding. The term non-binding is used when the individual countries will be allowed to decide if they want to allow the visitors with proof of vaccination, negative tests or quarantine. Earlier, the EU had lifted the travel restrictions in June for the US but the US kept the ban on European non-essential travel in place from March 2020.

The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the lack of reciprocity will not be allowed to “drag on for weeks”. The death rates have also risen for the nation to 1,000 per day even after more than half of Americans have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

The EU has also removed Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro and North Macedonia from the safe travel list.

Denmark’s capital Copenhagen has been named as the world’s safest city as per the recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The study included 60 cities across 76 indicators, covering digital, health, infrastructure, personal, and environmental security scored out of 100.

Copenhagen leads the chart with 82.4 points out of 100. It took over Toronto and Singapore as the safest city. Toronto stood in second place with 82.2 points and Singapore the third place with 80.7 points. Singapore slipped from its second-place amid the pandemic.

Indian cities New Delhi and Mumbai scored 56.1 and 54.4 points and grabbed their places in the list of Top 50 list. The national capital made it to 48th rank in the list and the economic capital of India Mumbai secured its place at the 50th position. New Delhi scored 47.5 for Digital security, 59.8 for its infrastructure, and 63.6 for Healthcare. Meanwhile, Mumbai scored 57.3 for its Infrastructure, 45.4 for Digital Security, and 60.8 for Healthcare.

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the pandemic has “changed the whole concept of urban safety” and it has shifted considerable focus towards digital security.