health
Khaleda still in vulnerable condition: Fakhrul
Though BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia was taken back to a cabin from the Coronary Care Unit (CCU) of Evercare Hospital, she is still not out of health risk, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said on Friday.
“Madam (Khaleda) was shifted to a special cabin yesterday (Thursday), but she has not yet recovered. It can be said that she’s still in a hazardous and vulnerable condition,” he said.
Speaking at a press conference, Fakhrul said, “Her (Khaleda’s) heart, kidneys and lungs are at risk, though she doesn’t have any lung infection. Still, she has heart and kidney problems.”
Read: Khaleda taken back to cabin from CCU
BNP arranged the press conference to give its official reaction to the proposed national budget for fiscal year 2021-22.
Fakhrul said Khaleda was affected by some post-Covid reactions while staying in the CCU for a long time. “A reaction was dangerous as she had some infections in her blood."
The BNP leader said the doctors moved the BNP chief to a special cabin as there is a high risk of infection at the CCU.
Read: Refrain from making reckless comments on Khaleda: Fakhrul
On Thursday, Khaleda was taken back to a cabin from the CCU of the hospital after a month of treatment there.
The BNP chairperson is being given treatment for post-Covid complications with CCU facilities in the cabin.
The 76-year-old BNP chief, who tested positive for Covid-19 on April 11, was admitted to Evercare Hospital on April 27.
She was shifted to the CCU of the hospital with shortness of breath on May 3.
Read: Govt not allowing Khaleda to go abroad: Fakhrul
On April 28, a 10-member medical board, headed by Prof Shahabuddin Talukder, was formed for the treatment of Khaleda at the Evercare Hospital a day after her admission there.
She tested negative for Covid-19 on May 8, 27 days after she had been infected with the deadly virus, but the BNP chief has still been suffering from post-Covid complications.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, the government freed Khaleda Zia from jail for six months through an executive order suspending her sentences on March 25 last year.
Heart reaction probed as possible rare vaccine link in teens
Health authorities are trying to determine whether heart inflammation that can occur along with many types of infections could also be a rare side effect in teens and young adults after the second dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
An article on seven U.S. teen boys in several states, published online Friday in Pediatrics, is among the latest reports of heart inflammation discovered after COVID-19 vaccination, though a link to the vaccine has not been proven.
The boys, aged 14 to 19, received Pfizer shots in April or May and developed chest pain within a few days. Heart imaging tests showed a type of heart muscle inflammation called myocarditis.
Read:US to swiftly boost global vaccine sharing, Biden announces
None were critically ill. All were healthy enough to be sent home after two to six days in the hospital and are doing ’’doing pretty well,” said Dr. Preeti Jaggi, an Emory University infectious disease specialist who co-authored the report.
She said more follow-up is needed to determine how the seven fare but that it’s likely the heart changes were temporary.
Only one of the seven boys in the Pediatrics report had evidence of a possible previous COVID-19 infection and doctors determined none of them had a rare inflammatory condition linked with the coronavirus.
The cases echo reports from Israel in young men diagnosed after receiving Pfizer shots.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alerted doctors last month that it was monitoring a small number of reports of heart inflammation in teens and young adults after the mRNA vaccines, the kind made by Pfizer and Moderna.
Read:Vaccine maker Serum seeks indemnity protection in India
The CDC hasn’t determined if there’s really a link to the shots, and continues to urge that everyone 12 and older get vaccinated against COVID-19, which is far riskier than the vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine is available to those as young as 12; the Moderna shot remains cleared only for adult use.
This kind of heart inflammation can be caused by a variety of infections, including a bout of COVID-19, as well as certain medications -- and there have been rare reports following other types of vaccinations.
Authorities will have to tease out whether cases following COVID-19 vaccination are occurring more often than that expected “background rate.”
For now, the CDC says most patients were male, reported symptoms after the second dose, and their symptoms rapidly improved.
“I think we’re in the waiting period where we need to see whether this is cause-and-effect or not,” said John Grabenstein of the Immunization Action Coalition, a former director of the Defense Department’s immunization program.
Read: Free beer, other new incentives for Biden’s ‘vaccine sprint’
A Pediatrics editorial noted that among U.S. children under age 18, there have been over 4 million COVID-19 cases, more than 15,000 hospitalizations and at least 300 deaths.
It said the heart inflammation cases warrant more investigation but added that ’’the benefits of vaccination against this deadly and highly transmissible disease clearly far outweigh any potential risks.”
Editorial co-author Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, head of an American Academy of Pediatrics infectious diseases committee, is involved in Pfizer vaccine studies, including a COVID-19 vaccine study in children.
Finance Minister starts unveiling national budget
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has started presenting the national budget in Parliament for the 2021-22 fiscal year with a focus on health, agriculture, social safety nets and job creation. The finance minister began rolling out the Tk 603,681 crore budget around 3:05 pm outlining measures to save lives and create more jobs so that people can cope with the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Read:Cabinet approves proposed budget for new fiscal The budget also has a big focus on disaster management and food security apart from addressing the Covid-related issues. This is the third time Mustafa Kamal presenting the budget themed as "Priority on lives and livelihoods, tomorrow's Bangladesh.", while it is the 13th budget in a row for the Awami League government and the 50th for the country. Earlier, President Abdul Hamid authenticated the national budget and the revised budget for placing before the Jatiya Sangsad.
Read: New national budget to be presented Thursday, aims at regaining fast economic growth The total revenue collection has fixed at Tk 389,000 crore, where National Board of Revenue (NBR) will collect Tk 330,000 crore while Tk 16,000 crore will come from non-NBR sector and Tk 43,000 will come from non-tax segment. Besides, Tk 3490 crore will come from foreign aid, grants and loans.
Read:President to attend parliament to witness budget presentation
Slow to start, China mobilizes to vaccinate at headlong pace
In the span of just five days last month, China gave out 100 million shots of its COVID-19 vaccines.
After a slow start, China is now doing what virtually no other country in the world can: harnessing the power and all-encompassing reach of its one-party system and a maturing domestic vaccine industry to administer shots at a staggering pace. The rollout is far from perfect, including uneven distribution, but Chinese public health leaders now say they’re hoping to inoculate 80% of the population of 1.4 billion by the end of the year.
As of Tuesday, China had given out more than 680 million doses — with nearly half of those in May alone. China’s total is roughly a third of the 1.9 billion shots distributed globally, according to Our World in Data, an online research site.
Read: China reports human case of H10N3 bird flu, a possible first
The call to get vaccinated comes from every corner of society. Companies offer shots to their employees, schools urge their students and staffers, and local government workers check on their residents.
That pressure underscores both the system’s strength, which makes it possible to even consider vaccinating more than a billion people this year, but also the risks to civil liberties — a concern the world over but one that is particularly acute in China, where there are few protections.
“The Communist Party has people all the way down to every village, every neighborhood,” said Ray Yip, former country director for the Gates Foundation in China and a public health expert. “That’s the draconian part of the system, but it also gives very powerful mobilization.”
China is now averaging about 19 million shots per day, according to Our World in Data’s rolling seven-day average. That would mean a dose for everyone in Italy about every three days. The United States, with about one-quarter of China’s population, reached around 3.4 million shots per day in April when its drive was at full tilt.
It’s still unclear how many people in China are fully vaccinated — which can mean anywhere from one to three doses of the vaccines in use — as the government does not publicly release that data.
Zhong Nanshan, the head of a group of experts attached to the National Health Commission and a prominent government doctor, said on Sunday that 40% of the population has received at least one dose, and the aim was to get that percentage fully vaccinated by the end of the month.
In Beijing, the capital, 87% of the population has received at least one dose. Getting a shot is as easy as walking into one of hundreds of vaccination points found all across the city. Vaccination buses are parked in high foot-traffic areas, including in the city center and at malls.
Read: China easing birth limits further to cope with aging society
But Beijing’s abundance is not shared with the rest of the country, and local media reports and complaints on social media show the difficulty of getting an appointment elsewhere.
“I started lining up that day at 9 in the morning, until 6 p.m., only then did I get the shot. It was exhausting,” Zhou Hongxia, a resident of Lanzhou, in northwestern Gansu province, explained recently. “When I left, there were still people waiting.”
Zhou’s husband hasn’t been so lucky and has yet to get a shot. When they call the local hotlines, they are told simply to wait.
Central government officials on Monday said they’re working to ensure supply is more evenly distributed.
Before the campaign ramped up in recent weeks, many people were not in a rush to get vaccinated as China has kept the virus, which first flared in the country, at bay in the past year with strict border controls and mandatory quarantines. It has faced small clusters of infections from time to time, and is currently managing one in the southern city of Guangzhou.
Although there are distribution issues, it is unlikely that Chinese manufacturers will have problems with scale, according to analysts and those who have worked in the industry.
Sinovac and Sinopharm, which make the majority of the vaccines being distributed in China, have both aggressively ramped up production, building brand new factories and repurposing existing ones for COVID-19. Sinovac’s vaccine and one of the two Sinpharm makes have received an emergency authorization for use from the World Health Organization, but the companies, particularly Sinopharm, have faced criticism for their lack of transparency in sharing their data.
“What place in the world can compare with China on construction? How long did it take our temporary hospitals to be built?” asked Li Mengyuan, who leads pharmaceutical research at Western Securities, a financial firm. China built field hospitals at the beginning of the pandemic in just days.
Read: China, Philippines swap protests over Manila-occupied island
Sinovac has said it has doubled its production capacity to 2 billion doses a year, while Sinopharm has said it can make up to 3 billion doses a year. But Sinopharm has not disclosed recent numbers of how many doses it actually has made, and a spokesman for the company did not respond to a request for comment. Sinovac has produced 540 million doses this year as of late May, the company said on Friday.
Government support has been crucial for vaccine developers every step of the way — as it has in other countries — but, as with everything, the scope and scale in China is different.
Yang Xiaoming, chairman of Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group, recounted to state media recently how the company initially needed to borrow lab space from a government research center while it was working on a vaccine.
“We sent our samples over, there was no need to discuss money, we just did it,” he said.
Chinese vaccine companies also largely do not rely on imported products in the manufacturing process. That’s an enormous benefit at a time when many countries are scrambling for the same materials and means China can likely avoid what happened to the Serum Institute of India, whose production was hobbled because of dependence on imports from the U.S. for certain ingredients.
But as the availability of the vaccine increases so, too, can the pressure to take it.
In Beijing, one researcher at a university said the school’s Communist Party cell calls him once a month to ask him if he has gotten vaccinated yet, and offers to help him make an appointment.
Read:China may buckle down to reunify Taiwan after crackdown on Hong Kong
He has so far declined to get a shot because he would prefer the Pfizer vaccine, saying he trusts its data. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns he could face repercussions at his job at a government university for publicly questioning the Chinese vaccines.
China has not yet approved Pfizer for use, and the researcher is not sure how long he can hold out — although the government has, for now, cautioned against making vaccines mandatory outright.
“They don’t have to say it is mandatory,” Yip, the public health expert, said. “They’re not going to announce that it’s required to have the vaccine, but they can put pressure on you.”
After pandemic pause, Avengers swing, soar into Disneyland
Now that it’s getting safer to assemble, the Avengers are at last descending on Disneyland.
A Spider-Man ride that lets visitors blast bots with virtual webs from their bare hands and a show of strength from the royal guard of Wakanda are among the highlights of the new Avengers Campus at Disney’s California Adventure Park, whose debut was paused for about a year by the coronavirus pandemic before it opens to the public Friday.
The Avengers Campus seeks to be an immersive experience that allows guests to become super-heroic across a series of rides, shows and eateries from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“We’re excited to finally open up the gates and let everybody in,” Scot Drake, a portfolio creative executive with Walt Disney Imagineering, said at the park Wednesday. “We had 70-plus years of stories and amazing characters to pull from, 23 epic films, and for us it was, ‘What is the best way to get our guests right in the middle of those stories, right in the middle of the action?”
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Central to that aim is “WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure,” which combines classic ride structure with an array of cameras that capture guests’ body motion and allows them to play Peter Parker.
They’re asked to help onscreen Spidey Tom Holland fight an outbreak of small, smart and powerful Spider-bots, creations that he and a team of inventive teens developed but lost control of in an old building donated by Tony Stark.
The experience resembles the videogame competition of Disneyland’s Buzz Lightyear ride, but the action and the tech behind it are in a different galaxy. With no equipment necessary (though enhancement gadgets for the wrist can be bought next door), riders can blast swarms of the little spider-bots (which can also be purchased next door), and a couple of not-so-little ones.
“What was really important to us was to try and make the interface disappear so the guests just had the superpowers themselves,” said Brent Strong, executive creative director of Walt Disney Imagineering. “So in order to do that we did a whole bunch of invention to try and make the technology as un-obvious as possible.”
Journalists got to take the ride for a few spins Wednesday. With each pass the experience changes, as guests start to master their web-slinging and figure out they can do more than just blast away with their powers.
Read: Ex-'Tarzan' actor among 7 plane crash victims in Tennessee
“You can start to grab on to shipping containers, open doors, grow things and shrink things,” Strong said. “We’ve hidden a million Easter eggs and fun little surprises in there.”
Elsewhere, majestic music blasts to announce the marching arrival of the Dora Milaje — the royal guard that protects T’Challa in “Black Panther.” With their leader Okoye, the shaven-headed women of Wakanda twirl their spears and explain their principles to give wannabe warriors in the audience a lesson in the fighting arts.
The show includes something rare for a day at Disneyland: a moment of silence for the dead. While Okoye tells the crowd she seeks to honor fallen kings and ancestors, the ritual, in a time of many such moments, feels like an acknowledgment of the many deaths during the pandemic that kept the park dark for more than a year. (It also feels like an acknowledgement of “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman, whose death last year stunned the world.)
Disney’s two Anaheim parks reopened with restrictions on April 30 and will reopen at something nearing normal on June 15.
The new section was also built to incorporate “Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout!” a drop-tower ride with funky tunes in place since 2017.
The storytelling on the Avengers campus even extends to the food, including an outlet of the Shawarma joint that Iron Man suggests his allies hit up after the Battle of New York depicted in 2012′s “The Avengers.” It was open for sampling Wednesday and as Tony Stark promised, it is, indeed, good.
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Another Avengers Campus is planned for Disneyland Paris. The California version will have major additions. Other heroes, including Thor and Iron Man, will make appearances, and Doctor Strange will work his wizardry in his Ancient Sanctum several times a day.
Some of those heroes, in Marvel’s movies, are dead, and for those who follow the events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with near-religious precision, it can be tough to tell what time period the campus is set in.
The creators say don’t overthink it.
We’ve summoned heroes from across all of space and time,” Strong said. “Time is a lot more squishy than any of us think. Trying to put a specific date to it can be challenging. But to us, Avengers Campus is here and now.”
China easing birth limits further to cope with aging society
China’s ruling Communist Party said Monday it will ease birth limits to allow all couples to have three children instead of two in hopes of slowing the rapid aging of its population, which is adding to strains on the economy and society.
The ruling party has enforced birth limits since 1980 to restrain population growth but worries the number of working-age people is falling too fast while the share over age 65 is rising. That threatens to disrupt its ambitions to transform China into a prosperous consumer society and global technology leader.
A ruling party meeting led by President Xi Jinping decided to introduce “measures to actively deal with the aging population,” the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said they agreed that ”implementing the policy of one couple can have three children and supporting measures are conducive to improving China’s population structure.”
Read: China, Philippines swap protests over Manila-occupied island
Leaders also agreed China needs to raise its retirement age to keep more people in the workforce and improve pension and health services, Xinhua said.
Restrictions that limited most couples to one child were eased in 2015 to allow two, but the total number of births fell further, suggesting rule changes on their own have had little impact on the trend.
Couples say they are put off by high costs of raising a child, disruption to their jobs and the need to look after elderly parents.
China, along with Thailand and some other Asian economies, face what economists call the challenge of whether they can get rich before they get old.
The Chinese population of 1.4 billion already was expected to peak later this decade and start to decline. Census data released May 11 suggest that is happening faster than expected, adding to burdens on underfunded pension and health systems and cutting the number of future workers available to support a growing retiree group.
The share of working-age people 15 to 59 in the population fell to 63.3% last year from 70.1% a decade earlier. The group aged 65 and older grew to 13.5% from 8.9%.
The 12 million births reported last year was down nearly one-fifth from 2019.
Read: China may buckle down to reunify Taiwan after crackdown on Hong Kong
About 40% were second children, down from 50% in 2017, according to Ning Jizhe, a statistics official who announced the data on May 11.
Chinese researchers and the labor ministry say the share of working-age people might fall to half the population by 2050. That increases the “dependency ratio,” or the number of retirees who rely on each worker to generate income for pension funds and to pay taxes for health and other public services.
Leaders at Monday’s meeting agreed it is “necessary to steadily implement the gradual postponement of the legal retirement age,” Xinhua said.
It gave no details, but the government has been debating raising the official retirement ages of 60 for men, 55 for white-collar female workers and 50 for blue-collar female workers.
The potential change is politically fraught. Female professionals welcome a chance to stay in satisfying careers, but others whose bodies are worn out from decades of manual labor resent being required to work longer.
The fertility rate, or the average number of births per mother, stood at 1.3 in 2020, well below the 2.1 that would maintain the size of the population.
Read:Biden’s solar ambitions collide with China labor complaints
China’s birth rate, paralleling trends in other Asian economies, already was falling before the one-child rule. The average number of children per Chinese mother tumbled from above six in the 1960s to below three by 1980, according to the World Bank.
Demographers say official birth limits concealed what would have been a further fall in the number of children per family without the restrictions.
The ruling party says it prevented as many as 400 million potential births, averting shortages of food and water. But demographers say if China followed trends in Thailand, parts of India and other countries, the number of additional babies might have been as low as a few million.
Plague of ravenous, destructive mice tormenting Australians
At night, the floors of sheds vanish beneath carpets of scampering mice. Ceilings come alive with the sounds of scratching. One family blamed mice chewing electrical wires for their house burning down.
Vast tracts of land in Australia’s New South Wales state are being threatened by a mouse plague that the state government describes as “absolutely unprecedented.” Just how many millions of rodents have infested the agricultural plains across the state is guesswork.
“We’re at a critical point now where if we don’t significantly reduce the number of mice that are in plague proportions by spring, we are facing an absolute economic and social crisis in rural and regional New South Wales,” Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said this month.
Bruce Barnes said he is taking a gamble by planting crops on his family farm near the central New South Wales town of Bogan Gate.
Read:Australia’s Victoria state to return to lockdown
“We just sow and hope,” he said.
The risk is that the mice will maintain their numbers through the Southern Hemisphere winter and devour the wheat, barley and canola before it can be harvested.
NSW Farmers, the state’s top agricultural association, predicts the plague will wipe more than 1 billion Australian dollars ($775 million) from the value of the winter crop.
The state government has ordered 5,000 liters (1,320 gallons) of the banned poison Bromadiolone from India. The federal government regulator has yet to approve emergency applications to use the poison on the perimeters of crops. Critics fear the poison will kill not only mice but also animals that feed on them. including wedge-tail eagles and family pets.
“We’re having to go down this path because we need something that is super strength, the equivalent of napalm to just blast these mice into oblivion,” Marshall said.
The plague is a cruel blow to farmers in Australia’s most populous state who have been battered by fires, floods and pandemic disruptions in recent years, only to face the new scourge of the introduced house mouse, or Mus musculus.
The same government-commissioned advisers who have helped farmers cope with the drought, fire and floods are returning to help people deal with the stresses of mice.
The worst comes after dark, when millions of mice that had been hiding and dormant during the day become active.
By day, the crisis is less apparent. Patches of road are dotted with squashed mice from the previous night, but birds soon take the carcasses away. Haystacks are disintegrating due to ravenous rodents that have burrowed deep inside. Upending a sheet of scrap metal lying in a paddock will send a dozen mice scurrying. The sidewalks are strewn with dead mice that have eaten poisonous bait.
Read:111-year-old Australian recommends eating chicken brains
But a constant, both day and night, is the stench of mice urine and decaying flesh. The smell is people’s greatest gripe.
“You deal with it all day. You’re out baiting, trying your best to manage the situation, then come home and just the stench of dead mice,” said Jason Conn, a fifth generation farmer near Wellington in central New South Wales.
“They’re in the roof cavity of your house. If your house is not well sealed, they’re in bed with you. People are getting bitten in bed,” Conn said. “It doesn’t relent, that’s for sure.”
Colin Tink estimated he drowned 7,500 mice in a single night last week in a trap he set with a cattle feeding bowl full of water at his farm outside Dubbo.
“I thought I might get a couple of hundred. I didn’t think I’d get 7,500,” Tink said.
Barnes said mouse carcasses and excrement in roofs were polluting farmers’ water tanks.
“People are getting sick from the water,” he said.
The mice are already in Barnes’ hay bales. He’s battling them with zinc phosphide baits, the only legal chemical control for mice used in broad-scale agriculture in Australia. He’s hoping that winter frosts will help contain the numbers.
Farmers like Barnes endured four lean years of drought before 2020 brought a good season as well as the worst flooding that some parts of New South Wales have seen in at least 50 years. But the pandemic brought a labor drought. Fruit was left to rot on trees because foreign backpackers who provide the seasonal workforce were absent.
Plagues seemingly appear from nowhere and often vanish just as fast.
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Disease and a shortage of food are thought to trigger a dramatic population crash as mice feed on themselves, devouring the sick, weak and their own offspring.
Government researcher Steve Henry, whose agency is developing strategies to reduce the impact of mice on agriculture, said it is too early to predict what damage will occur by spring.
He travels across the state holding community meetings, sometimes twice a day, to discuss the mice problem.
“People are fatigued from dealing with the mice,” Henry said.
EU takes on AstraZeneca in court over vaccine deliveries
The European Union took on vaccine producer AstraZeneca in a Brussels court on Wednesday with the urgent demand that the company needs to make an immediate delivery of COVID-19 shots the bloc insists were already due.
AstraZeneca’s contract signed with the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, on behalf of member states foresaw an initial 300 million doses for distribution among all 27 countries, with an option for a further 100 million. The doses were expected to be delivered throughout 2021. But only 30 million were sent during the first quarter.
Deliveries have increased slightly since then but, according to the European Commission, the company is set to provide only 70 million doses in the second quarter. It had promised 180 million.
EU lawyer Rafael Jafferali told the court that the company now expects to deliver the total number of doses by the end of December, but he added that “with a six-month delay, it’s obviously a failure.”
Read: Malawi destroys 20,000 expired doses of AstraZeneca vaccine
His main argument is that AstraZeneca should have used production sites in the bloc and the U.K. for EU supplies as part of a “best reasonable effort” clause in the contract. He said that 50 million doses that should have been delivered to the EU went to third countries instead, “in violation” of their contract.
Jafferali has said that the company should use all four plants listed in their contract for deliveries to the EU.
He also accused the company of misleading the European Commission by providing data lacking clarity on the delivery delays.
“The information provided by AstraZeneca did not allow us to fully understand the situation before mid-March 2021,” he said.
The EU has insisted its gripes with the company are about deliveries only and has repeatedly said that it has no problems with the safety or quality of the vaccine itself. The shots have been approved by the European Medicines Agency, the EU’s drug regulator.
While the bloc insists AstraZeneca has breached its contractual obligations, the company says it has fully complied with the agreement, arguing that vaccines are difficult to manufacture and it made its best effort to deliver on time.
Lawyers for the company will address the court later Wednesday.
As part of an advanced purchase agreement with vaccine companies, the EU said it invested 2.7 billion euros ($3.8 billion), including 336 million ($408 million), to finance the production of AstraZeneca’s serum at four factories.
The long-standing dispute drew media attention for weeks earlier this year amid a deadly surge of coronavirus infections in Europe, when delays in vaccine production and deliveries hampered the EU’s vaccination campaign.
Cheaper and easier to use than rival shots from Pfizer-BioNTech, the AstraZeneca vaccine developed with Oxford University was a pillar of the EU’s vaccine rollout. But the EU’s partnership with the firm quickly deteriorated amid accusations it favored its relationship with British authorities.
While the U.K. made quick progress in its vaccination campaign thanks to the AstraZeneca shots, the EU faced embarrassing complaints and criticism for its slow start.
Concerns over the pace of the rollout across the EU grew after AstraZeneca said it couldn’t supply EU members with as many doses as originally anticipated because of production capacity limits.
Read:Indonesia suspends AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine batch after death
The health situation has dramatically improved in Europe in recent weeks, with the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths on a sharp downward trend as vaccination has picked up. About 300 million doses of vaccine have been delivered in Europe — a region with around 450 million inhabitants, with about 245 million already administered.
About 46% of the EU population have had at least one dose.
In total, the European Commission has secured more than 2.5 billion of vaccine doses with various manufacturers. It recently sealed another major order with Pfizer and BioNTech through 2023 for an additional 1.8 billion doses of their COVID-19 shot to share between the bloc’s countries.
Following Wednesday’s hearing, a second one is slated for Friday, with a judgment to be delivered at a date to be announced. In addition to the emergency action, the European Commission has launched a claim on the merits of the case for damages for which a hearing hasn’t yet been set by the court.
South Korea mulls dropping masks for vaccinated
South Korean officials say they plan to allow people to drop their masks from July if they have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, as they mull incentives to promote inoculation.
Health Minister Kwon Deok-choel said Wednesday the plan is contingent on the government succeeding in its goal of administering first doses to 13 million people by the end of June. Officials say people will continue to be required to wear mask indoors or at outdoor gatherings where it’s difficult to maintain distance.
Read:Vaccine inequality in India sends many falling through gaps
Other incentives include providing vaccine-takers with discounts at public parks and museums and allowing them to participate in larger private gatherings. The country is currently clamping down on social gatherings of five or more people.
South Korea has wrestled with a slower vaccine rollout than many other developed economies.
Around 3.9 million people so far have received their first doses since the country launched its mass immunization program in late February, which represents less than 8% of the country’s 51 million population.
Health officials have lamented what they describe as excessive public fear of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been linked to rare blood-clotting side effects.
MORE ON THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:
— Vaccine inequality in India sends many falling through gaps
— Countries eager to reopen to travel as pandemic recedes
— UN official: Conflicts make controlling COVID more difficult
— A growing number of public schools in the U.S. are using mascots, food trucks and prize giveaways to encourage students to get vaccinated before summer vacation.
Read:Japan opens mass vaccination centers 2 months before Games
— The British government is facing accusations of reintroducing local lockdowns on the sly after it published new guidelines for eight areas of England that it says are hot spots for the coronavirus variant first identified in India.
Intermittent Fasting: Health Benefits and Risks
At first, it may seem strange that abstaining from food could lead to healthier living. Since young, many were taught that the key to a healthy life revolves around exercise and nutritional meals. Although that is completely true, the fitness industry has started to get more creative with diets catered towards different goals and intermittent fasting promotes fat loss and even muscle definition! Although it occupies a niche and does it relatively well, this form of dieting has its fair share of risks that are associated with it. Here are the health benefits of intermittent fasting and possible risks to watch out for.
What Is Intermittent Fasting
The word “fasting” is straightforward enough, but “intermittent” can be a little misleading, and if done wrong, can lead to massive health consequences. Rather than an actual diet, Intermittent Fasting moderates the time you eat instead and that throws your body off its regular routine into something that can optimise its metabolism. The traditional fasting method is to abstain from food 16 hours a day, or even fasting a full day twice a week. This can sound extreme, but the logic lies in humans having the capacity to survive off food for a relatively long period of time.
Alternatively there is a strict calorie deficit rule that encourages to only consuming 500-600 calories on two separated days in a week. This is a moderated form of fasting that allows an easier transition for those who are new to this diet. The most common method of fasting is to go by the 16/8 method, which promotes sacrificing breakfast and only opening an eating window between 1pm to 9pm. This is the simplest method by far and does not require calorie counting, leaving a significantly smaller margin for error.
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Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
Alters Hormones and Genes
On a microscopic level, fasting makes a lot of alterations to the hormone and genetic components to the body, but not in a bad way. Insulin levels for example drop a fair bit which is good for the body to metabolise at a faster rate. Blood levels are also affected when fasting which does trigger natural growth hormones within the body to ensure muscle-building too.
Additionally, fasting doesn’t make any direct alterations to genetic material, but it does strengthen its protection from diseases and extend its longevity. These changes are rather detailed compared to other factors, but it is good to know how extensive the changes are just by conditioning your body.
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Burn Fat
Naturally, this would be the primary reason why anyone would choose to go on this rigorous journey, but its popularity is warranted. It isn’t any surprise that abstaining from food frequently would equate to fewer calories and that in turn, increases norepinephrine which is a compound used to break fat.
The intervals of intermittent fasting are relatively short compared to other types of fasts and are meant to kickstart the body to burn the fats reserved since no new sources are coming in. This style of dieting is the epitome of bodily conditioning; in order to get the most out of it, being careful with the type of food you eat and enforcing regular exercise is still critical to ensure that your body is burning fat from reserves.
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Reduces Risk of Diabetes
When the body is “starved” off its regular eating routine, you will start to lose insulin and that has large implications to building a tolerance for certain diseases. With a reduction of insulin, blood sugar is automatically lowered and this is the primary factor that determines whether type 2 diabetes surfaces or not. There are many foods that also reduce blood sugar and would go wonderfully with intermittent fasting to reduce the risks to almost zero.
Reduces Oxidative Stress and Inflammation
Oxidative stress is the cause of chronic diseases that stem from aging. When your systems get older, protein, DNA will start to age and see the damage. It was previously implied that fasting can help strengthen our genes and cell’s lifespan - which does inject a little more vitality into our immunity than many other ways of fasting. By separating yourself from a regular intake of food (especially unhealthy ones), other forms of inflammation will start to reduce, which is the cause for many common illnesses that strike the elderly.
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Good for the Heart
By improving blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and inflammatory markers, it’s no surprise that the heart will see benefits from these results. A high intake of sugar and fat can damage your arteries, which is where avoiding food for more than half the day will do wonders to stabilize blood flow and improve circulation. Fasting alone will not lead to complete improvement; cardiovascular activities and static exercises are good ways to reduce these risks better.