covid-19 – News Agency nabakhabar

Children hit hardest by the pandemic are now the big kids at school. Many still need reading help

News Agency nabakhabar — Sat, 02 Sep 2023 20:26:12 +0000

They were the kids most disrupted by the pandemic, the ones who were still learning to write their names and tie their shoes when schools shut down in the spring of 2020.

Now, they’re the big kids at elementary schools across the United States. Many still need profound help overcoming the effects of the pandemic.

To catch up, schools have deployed a wide range of strategies. And among some incoming fourth-graders, there are encouraging signs of gains. However, as this generation progresses, many will need extra reading support that schools are not as accustomed to providing for older students.

Beyond third grade, fewer teachers each year know how to help students who are lacking key foundational reading skills, said Elizabeth Albro, an executive at the U.S. Department of Education’s independent research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences.

“ Middle and high school teachers aren’t expecting to have to teach kids how to read,” Albro said.

Nationally, students suffered deep learning setbacks in reading and math during the pandemic. Last year’s third-graders, the kids who were in kindergarten when the pandemic started, lost more ground in reading than kids in older grades and were slower to catch up. With federal pandemic relief money, school systems added class time, brought on tutors, trained teachers in phonics instruction and found other ways to offer extra support to struggling readers.

But even after several years of recovery, an analysis of last year’s test scores by NWEA found that the average student would need the equivalent of 4.1 additional months of instruction to catch up to pre-COVID reading levels.

The one bright spot was for incoming fourth-graders, who made above-average gains and would need about two months of additional reading instruction to catch up. Karyn Lewis, who leads a team of education policy researchers at NWEA, described them as “a little bit less worse off.”

The school system in Niagara Falls, New York, is seeing similar results, said Marcia Capone, the district’s assessment administrator. The district brought on additional reading specialists, but Capone said it will take time to bring struggling students up to speed.

“I do not believe it’s hopeless, but it’s not something that’s going to occur in, say, three years’ time,” Capone said.

The problem for children who don’t master reading by third grade: School becomes that much harder in later grades, as reading becomes the foundation for everything else.

Schools have plenty of experience with older students who struggle. Even before the pandemic, only about a third of fourth graders scored as proficient in reading in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “nation’s report card.”

But the pandemic made it worse, particularly for low-income students and kids of color.

So some schools are targeting some upper-grade students with the “ science of reading,” a push to embrace research-backed strategies for reading based on phonics. Many new laws endorsing the phonics-based approach target students beyond third grade, according to a July report from the nonpartisan Albert Shanker Institute.

In Virginia, for instance, a law signed in March mandates extra help for struggling readers through eighth grade. It is one of the most aggressive efforts yet.

“There’s an implicit recognition,” wrote the authors of the Shanker report, “that reading improvement needs to address a greater span of grades, and that reading difficulties do not necessarily end in 3rd grade.”

That will require a major shift. Historically, phonics and help decoding words have gradually disappeared in the upper grades.

Most English teachers at that level are no more prepared to teach a student to read than a math teacher would be, said Miah Daughtery, who advocates for effective literacy instruction for the NWEA research organization.

“They’re prepared to teach text,” she said. “They’re prepared to teach literature, to analyze ideas, craft, story structure, make connections.”

The federal pandemic relief money that bolstered many schools’ academic recovery efforts soon will run out, leaving some experts less optimistic.

“We’re past the point where we’re likely to see a quick rebound,” said Dan Goldhaber, of the American Institutes for Research.

Teachers are reporting it is taking more time to get through the material, according to Tonya Perry, the vice president of the National Council of Teachers of English. Some school systems are turning to programs that break grade-level subject matter down into a variety of reading levels, so strong and weak readers can still learn the concepts, she said.

“Now we have to spend more time building the foundation for what we’re asking students to do,” she said.

Early in the pandemic, some students repeated a grade. But that was only a short-term solution, often taken reluctantly because of concerns about the effect on kids’ social lives and academic futures. By last year, grade retention numbers were trending downward again.

One thing teachers can do is rely less on silent reading in class, and instead have small group activities in which strong and weak readers can be paired together, Daughtery said.

Lewis, of the NWEA, said the takeaway should not be that the COVID kids are beyond help.

“The message has to be: We’re doing the right things. We’re just not doing enough of it,” she said. “And we need to amp up and certainly not take our foot off the gas pedal anytime soon.”

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This country is finally reopening after Covid. But it still requires a one-week quarantine

News Agency nabakhabar — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 14:20:52 +0000

North Korea has announced it will allow its citizens living abroad to return home in an easing of its coronavirus-era border controls. But it will still require them to do a one-week quarantine.

The country has decided to “adjust the anti-epidemic degree in reference to the eased worldwide pandemic situation,” according to the State Emergency Epidemic Prevention Headquarters.

The announcement, reported by state media outlet KCNA on Sunday, comes months after most other Asian countries relaxed the last of their coronavirus-era restrictions.

China, which had long operated one of the region’s toughest Covid regimes, abandoned its zero-tolerance approach in December 2022.

Recent moves by North Korea, which closed its borders in early 2020 in response to the pandemic, have signaled that the country is reopening, but Pyongyang will still require even returning citizens to quarantine on arrival.

“Those who return will be put under proper medical observation at quarantine wards for a week,” it said in the announcement.

The news comes after a North Korean flight from Pyongyang arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, in what was the first known international commercial flight to leave North Korea since January 2020.

Flights between North Korea and Russia are also set to resume, with four flights between Pyongyang and Vladivostok this month.

Also this past week, about a hundred North Korean Taekwondo athletes arrived in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, to compete in the 22nd International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF) World Championship in what is believed to be the first overseas trip taken by a North Korean sports team since restrictions were imposed in the country in 2020.

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For Some Food Professionals, COVID Has Cast a Long Shadow on Their Senses

News Agency nabakhabar — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 20:33:33 +0000

Anaïs Saint-André Loughran remembers every cheese she’s ever tasted. The owner of Chantal’s Cheese Shop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recalls that when she decided she wanted to be a cheesemonger—at age 4—“all the doors of my memories were tied to cheese, and where and how I tasted it.”

So when Loughran lost her sense of smell after she contracted COVID in March 2020, she was devastated. On the second day, she says, “I woke up, I tried to eat something, and it felt like I was eating nothing.” Since then, her career has been irrevocably changed.

Many food professionals have shared their stories about how COVID impacted their sense of taste and smell. New York Times restaurant critic Tejal Rao, food and wine writer Lisa Denning, and Arden Wine Bar owner and sommelier Kelsey Glasser all also experienced temporary bouts with loss of smell and taste. But there are others, like Loughran, who are experiencing a longer-term distorted experience of smell called parosmia, a common symptom of long COVID.

“I realized I had parosmia by drinking rotten milk without knowing,” says Loughran.

At first, she recalls, “I could barely eat food. Everything tasted like sewage.” Now, three years later, she says her sense of smell and taste has returned, but it’s completely different than before. “I didn’t get to try the cheese in my shop for a very long time. I had to go through hating everything I had loved, and also liking things I used to hate.” She worked at eating things that now tasted rotten a little bit at time to get used to it and to relearn the new tastes. “Onions were horrible. Still today, raw onions make my stomach jump,” says Loughran.

Before Loughran got sick, she could easily give recommendations for cheese pairings or substitutions. Then, once she began living with long COVID, none of the flavor matched what she had previously known. “Everything came crashing down,” she says.

Cheese is directly tied to Loughran’ earliest memories of her childhood in France. And the work she does is closely tied to her identity, as is the work of many other food professionals who rely on their senses. When her sense of smell and taste changed, everything else had to change too.

Loughran is just one of many people in the food industry who are suffering from long-haul sensory loss that affects her professional life. Holly Fann is a food writer, dining critic, and chef based in St. Louis. She contracted COVID for the first time in October 2021 and her sense of smell and taste have yet to return.

“I was a dining critic at that time and had a regular column,” says Fann. “Everything I do is freelance. There were no resources for me. I contacted the Freelancers Union, and they told me, ‘Maybe there’ll be resources someday, but there aren’t any now.’”

When trying to get support from doctors, she said, “It took six months to get my first appointment,” but there was no cure. “They tell you the best thing to do is to take time off and rest. The best treatment is weeks of incredibly reduced activity—but for anyone who works freelance or with food, you can’t take that time off.”

To help with her loss, Fann has joined a support group for people with long COVID.

“It’s amazing how many other people had the same odd symptoms,” she says, referring to the support group, “but I noticed that there were no people from the hospitality industry.” And while many of the members spoke of chronic pain and other systemic health issues, she was the only one there specifically to talk about her experience with parosmia.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines long COVID very broadly as a “range of ongoing health problems,” it’s typically associated with symptoms lasting more than four weeks: brain fog, lightheadedness, sleeping problems, depression and anxiety, and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or “chronic fatigue syndrome,” to name a few. Aside from neurological symptoms, it can also trigger health conditions including heart disease, diabetes, and kidney disease.

Last summer, a CDC analysis found that more than 40 percent of adults in the United States had reported having COVID in the past, and nearly one in five of those reported at least one lingering post-infection symptom that is seriously affecting their daily life. In recent CDC surveys, 14 percent of respondents say they have experienced some form of long COVID. As of August, an estimated 2 to 4 million of those people were out of work due to their ongoing symptoms.

Dr. Nancy Rawson, a scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, shared the science behind parosmia in an interview with KCRW, describing parosmia as an incorrect aroma experience. “It actually happens quite commonly in people that are recovering their sense of smell following having lost it completely from COVID,” she added. The olfactory system, which controls the mechanisms behind our sense of smell, doesn’t recover equally across all of the nerve pathways that detect thousands of different chemicals.

“Some nerves may be regenerating sooner than others,” she continued. “In order to get the full impact of a coffee aroma, for example, you need to be able to detect many different chemicals in a particular proportion in the way that the brain interprets that as coffee. But if you’re only now able to detect a few of those … they don’t smell anything like what you think the coffee should smell like.”

Smell is directly tied to taste, through a retronasal pathway that creates nuances of flavor, and without that, we lose the ability to identify food. This is especially detrimental to food workers experiencing parosmia and anosmia. According to an article in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), parosmia can turn previous sources of joy into causes of distress, as well as depression, anxiety, loss of appetite, and malnourishment, and many patients feeling trivialized by their healthcare providers when seeking help for these experiences.

Jameeale Arzeno is a chef based in New York City who contracted COVID in July 2020 and experienced a radically reduced sense of taste and smell within a few days. “My taste was diminished to salty, sweet, spicy, and sour. I could not discern specific flavors,” she said. After 28 days, she says she could only smell “sulfur and a metallic bergamot.”

Arzeno was devastated; she felt like she couldn’t trust her senses in the kitchen, and she had to stop taking private clients. “I didn’t feel I could fulfill my commitment to the quality of work I had delivered in the past,” she says.

Loughran and Fann have also worried about their credibility.

Loughran opted to restructure her entire business. “I had to hire more people. My dream to be behind the counter talking with folks about cheese and tasting with them for the rest of my life has changed,” she says. “I had many months of crying. I have imposter syndrome because I now have no confidence in myself.”

Fann recalls encountering a moral dilemma with her work. “Ethically, I was torn between letting people know [my sense of taste and smell was diminished] and worrying that my integrity would be questioned if I did.” She ended up having to table her food column until she was recovered, and losing out on regular writing gigs, which relied on her ability to write criticism.

Fann shifted to write about other topics, such as her experience with ADHD, in order to get by. “Before becoming a food writer, I was a chef for 20 years,” she says. “My way of communicating has always been through food. When you have a convoluted sense of what your baseline is, it throws off your sense of self and makes you question everything.”

As a chef, Arzeno also relies heavily on her memory. She started cooking only dishes she had cooked for years, and no longer trusts herself to try or develop new ones. She has kept her experience of parosmia to herself: “I was ashamed, and for a long time I was trying to hide it,” she says.

Numerous clinics around the country are focused on helping patients manage and recover from long COVID through specified treatment and support. And yet there is no definitive treatment for COVID-induced parosmia or olfactory dysfunction. For instance, Fann was treated at the innovative Washington University Long COVID Care program, but she didn’t regain her sense of taste or smell.

Some patients find olfactory retraining to be helpful, and it’s something Loughran has committed herself to practicing by actively sniffing the same scents every day. “With time, I will be able to master a bigger flavor profile, I think,” she says.

For people in the food industry without health insurance, the effects of parosmia can be especially challenging. “There [is no] compensation offered for anyone in this situation. I wish there was free treatment,” says Arzeno. “Or that something was offered to those affected by long COVID.”

The Biden-Harris administration announced more resources to support individuals with long COVID in July 2021, with a website that workers can visit to understand their rights. There is also now language that exists at part of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protecting workers with symptoms of long COVID, such as fatigue, in the workplace. But these new guidelines don’t mention anosmia or parosmia, and there is no specific language or delineation for food workers who need their sense of smell and taste.

When reached via the notoriously flooded ADA information line, an unnamed ADA professional spoke about the lack of language around this issue, saying that “there is no concrete answer. If it affects their ability to do their job, [food professionals experiencing parosmia] may be able to get reasonable accommodation from their employment.”

But for some workers with parosmia who decide to apply for support, the long waits for disability assistance have ended in denial. While long COVID patients who can still work may ask their employers for accommodations, such as a space to rest or a more flexible schedule, chefs or food writers who rely on their senses may not find it easy to access such accommodations.

And while life has kept moving, and many COVID protections have been relaxed, support groups and advocacy organizations, such as Body Politic, are still working to support long COVID patients while educating the public about their experiences.

Even with these challenges and the overall lack of support, Loughran—who is nearly three years into the shift—says there have been positive moments as well. “In the long term, I’m taking it as a positive,” she adds. “Because I have no nostalgia and no memories about food tied to scent, I now try everything that comes my way.”

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COVID-19: WHO highlights critical importance of sharing virus sequences

News Agency nabakhabar — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 20:29:44 +0000

Although virus sequencing is vital to detect and track new variants in the COVID-19 pandemic, sharing this information must be stepped up globally, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday in Geneva.

“Since the peak of the Omicron wave, the number of sequences being shared has dropped by more than 90 percent, and the number of countries sharing sequences has fallen by a third,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking during his latest media briefing.

The WHO chief recalled that the first sequence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was shared with the world three years ago, which enabled the development of tests and vaccines against the disease.

“We urge all countries now experiencing intense transmission to increase sequencing, and to share those sequences,” he said.

Experts assess new variant

A WHO advisory group has published an assessment of the new Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5, which first emerged last October.

Sequences have been reported from 38 countries, though mainly from the United States.

“Based on its genetic characteristics and early growth rate estimates, XBB.1.5 may contribute to increases in case incidence,” said the Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution (TAG-VE).

“To date, the overall confidence in the assessment is low, as growth advantage estimates are only from one country, the United States of America.”

Unacceptable death rate

Tedros also emphasized the importance of testing, which is critical both for tracking variants and ensuring at-risk people receive adequate care.

Since February 2022, the number of COVID-19 deaths reported each week has dropped by nearly 90 percent, but they have been hovering at between 10,000 and 14,000 since mid-September.

“The world cannot accept this number of deaths when we have the tools to prevent them,” he said.

Last week, 11,500 people worldwide died from COVID-19, but “this number is almost certainly an underestimate given the under-reporting of COVID-related deaths in China,” he added.

Countries are also urged to provide better data on who is dying from the disease. Currently, just 53 out of 194 nations provide data that is disaggregated by age and sex.

Most deaths are among at-risk groups, with people 65 and older accounting for almost 90 per cent of all deaths reported during the last six months of 2022.

© UNICEF/Delil Souleiman/ A mother in Raqqa city, Syria, collects medicine for her children suffering with diarrhea and also receives instructions on how to sterilize water to guard against cholera.

Widespread cholera outbreaks

Tedros began the briefing by celebrating the end of the Ebola epidemic in Uganda.

He also welcomed the adoption this week of a Security Council resolution extending cross-border aid delivery into northwest Syria from Türkiye for another six months.

Syria, Haiti and Malawi are among 31 countries battling devastating cholera outbreaks that are both more widespread and deadly than normal.

“While we have had large cholera outbreaks before, we have not seen such a large number of simultaneous outbreaks,” said the WHO chief.

“The common denominator for many of these outbreaks is climate-related events, such as storms, floods and droughts.”

China engagement continues

WHO continues to appeal for more information from China regarding its ongoing COVID-19 surge.

The UN agency is working with the authorities to fill important gaps, including in understanding transition dynamics, the breakdown of increases or decreases in hospitalizations, virus sequencing, and differences in fatality rates between urban and rural areas.

“WHO still believes that deaths are heavily underreported from China, and this is in relation to the definitions that are used but also to the need for doctors and those reporting in the public health system to be encouraged to report these cases and not discouraged,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, Executive Director.

He also commended China’s efforts, citing measures such as expanding designated beds in intensive care units and prioritizing the use of antivirals in the early course of the disease.

“There is also a shift in the definition away from COVID pneumonia as the reporting disease, to COVID infection as the main basis for disease reporting, and we hope that that will encourage more reporting – and more reporting to WHO of the true situation on the ground in China,” said Dr. Ryan.

‘Long COVID’ burden

Meanwhile, more research is still needed to better understand the burden of post-COVID-19 condition on human health globally.

Although many people recover from the disease, some patients have persistent symptoms across many different body organs, and over long periods of time, giving way to the condition, commonly known as “long COVID.”

Experts from across WHO are working with counterparts worldwide in the different types of clinical management of cardiac care, brain health and respiratory health.

“What we are targeting is making sure that there is recognition of post-COVID-19 condition, in which this can be described and analyzed,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the agency’s lead on COVID-19.

WHO has already published a case definition for long COVID, which is being adapted to cover children, but she said “there is much more work that needs to be done in this space, including recognition, research and rehabilitation.”

Mask up indoors

WHO has encouraged people everywhere to still wear masks, for example in crowded rooms or in places where ventilation is poor or not known.

Dr. Van Kerkhove explained that coronavirus transmission is dependent on factors such as distance between people, setting, ventilation, time spent in the particular location, and mitigation measures that are in place.

“There’s a number of other factors that are important as well, but masks are one of the measures that we recommend when you are indoors when you cannot distance,” she said.

“This is one of the recommendations that we continue to advise, and we are working with governments to tailor the use of this in the right types of contexts.”

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WHO continues to urge China to share more data amid COVID-19 surge

News Agency nabakhabar — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 21:35:11 +0000

The World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned about the COVID-19 surge in China, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday, in his first virtual briefing for the year.

“We continue to ask China for more rapid, regular, reliable data on hospitalizations and deaths, as well as more comprehensive, real-time viral sequencing,” he said, speaking from Geneva.

WHO is concerned about the risk to life in the world’s most populous country and reiterated the importance of stepping up vaccination coverage, including booster doses, particularly for vulnerable groups such as older persons.

Comprehensive data needed

“With circulation in China so high and comprehensive data not forthcoming – as I said last week it is understandable that some countries are taking steps they believe will protect their own citizens,” Tedros added.

A number of countries, including the United States from tomorrow, have announced new COVID testing requirements for travelers from China to gain domestic entry, amid concerns over the spread of the latest variants.

Speaking later in the briefing, WHO’s Emergencies Director Dr. Mike Ryan also stressed the need for more information from the Chinese authorities.

“We know there are difficulties in all countries very often in recording hospital releases, admissions and use of ICU (intensive care unit) facilities,” he said.

“We believe that the current numbers being published from China underrepresents the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, in terms of ICU admissions, and particularly in terms of deaths.”

Meetings with experts

WHO has held high-level meetings with Chinese authorities over the past week to discuss the rise in cases and hospitalizations.

Its Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) also met on Tuesday with Chinese experts to discuss the situation.

During that meeting, scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention presented data from what they described as imported and locally acquired coronavirus infections.

The analysis showed that most of the viruses circulating in the country are of two Omicron lineages, BA.5.2 and BF.7, which accounted for 97.5 percent of all local infections, as well as a few other known Omicron sublineages.

“These variants are known and have been circulating in other countries, and at the present time no new variant has been reported by the China CDC,” the TAG-VE said in a statement on Wednesday.

So far, 773 sequences from mainland China have been submitted to the virus database operated by the global science initiative, GISAID.

Most, 564, were collected after 1 December. Of this number, only 95 are labeled as locally acquired cases, while 187 are imported and 261 “do not have this information provided.”

The majority of the locally acquired cases, 95 percent, belong to the two Omicron lineages.

“This is in line with genomes from travelers from China submitted to the GISAID EpiCoV database by other countries. No new variant or mutation of known significance is noted in the publicly available sequence data,” the statement said.

© PAHO/Baro Brizuela

Pandemic threat persists

At the top of the briefing, Tedros noted that the pandemic is now in its fourth year, and despite progress, it is still a threat to health, economies, and societies.

“We are really concerned about the current COVID-19 epidemiological picture, with both an intense transmission in several parts of the world and a recombinant sub-variant spreading quickly,” he said.

COVID-19 was on the decline for most of 2021, Tedros reported, citing factors such as increased vaccinations worldwide and the identification of new lifesaving antivirals.

10,000 deaths a week

However, there are still major inequities in access to testing, treatment and vaccination.

“Every week, approximately 10,000 people die of COVID-19, that we are aware of. The true toll is likely much higher,” he said.

Furthermore, the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is on the rise in the United States and Europe and has been identified in nearly 30 countries.

XBB.1.5 was initially detected in October 2022. It is the most transmissible subvariant yet, according to Dr. Maria Van Kherkove, the WHO Technical Lead for COVID-19.

Keep up surveillance

“We do expect further waves of infection around the world, but that doesn’t have to translate into further waves of death because our countermeasures continue to work,” she said.

Meanwhile, the TAG-VE experts are also working on a related risk assessment that should be published in the coming days.

Dr. Van Kherkove emphasized the importance of continued COVID-19 surveillance around the world to track known subvariants that are in circulation.

Last month, more than 13 million cases of the disease were reported, though WHO believes the toll is higher,

“But more concerning, we’ve had a 15 percent increase in deaths in the last month and again, we know that that is an underestimate because there are delays in reporting, and with the holiday period and with mixing, those trends are expected to continue,” said Dr. Van Kherkove.

Uganda Ebola progress

In his remarks, Tedros expressed hope that the pandemic will be defeated in 2023.

“COVID-19 will no doubt still be a major topic of discussion, but I believe and hope that with the right efforts, this will be the year the public health emergency officially ends,” he said

He also pointed to good news from Uganda, which has been battling an Ebola outbreak since September.

No cases have been detected since 27 November, and if this holds, the outbreak will be declared over, shortly.

WHO will also celebrate its 75th anniversary this year, and Tedros said more details will be shared in the coming weeks.

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Which countries have placed COVID curbs on travellers from China?

News Agency nabakhabar — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 17:52:59 +0000

Governments around the world have imposed or considering restrictions on travellers from China as coronavirus cases in the country surge following its relaxation of “zero-COVID” rules.

Countries have cited a lack of information from China on variants and are concerned about a wave of infections. The World Health Organization has called the precautionary measures “understandable” in light of the lack of information and urged Beijing to share more data on genetic sequencing, as well as figures on hospitalisations, deaths and vaccinations.

China has rejected criticism of its COVID-19 data and said it expects future mutations to be potentially more transmissible but less severe.

Here is a list of countries that have imposed restrictions on travellers from China:

United States

The US will impose mandatory COVID-19 tests on travellers from China beginning January 5. All air passengers aged two and older will require a negative result from a test no more than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macau.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said US citizens should also reconsider travel to China, Hong Kong and Macau.

United Kingdom

The UK will require a pre-departure negative COVID-19 test from passengers from China as of January 5, the Department of Health said on Friday.

France

France will require travellers from China to provide a negative COVID test result less than 48 hours before departure. Since January 1, France is also carrying out random PCR COVID tests upon arrival on some travellers coming from China, a government official told reporters.

The French government has also urged all 26 other European Union member states to test Chinese travellers for COVID.

Airport staff wait for passengers coming from China in front of a 
COVID-19 testing area set at Roissy Charles 
de Gaulle airport near Paris [Aurelien Morissard/AP Photo]

Australia

Those travelling from China to Australia will need to submit a negative COVID-19 test from January 5, Australian Health Minister Mark Butler said on Sunday.

Butler cited Beijing’s “lack of comprehensive information” about COVID-19 cases as the reasoning behind the travel requirement.

India

China’s South Asian neighbour has mandated a COVID-19 negative report for travellers arriving from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Thailand. Passengers from those countries will be quarantined if they show symptoms or test positive.

Canada

Air travellers to Canada from China must test negative for COVID-19 no more than two days before departure, authorities in Ottawa said.

Japan

Japan requires a negative COVID-19 test upon arrival for travellers from mainland China. Those who test positive will be required to quarantine for seven days.

The new border measures for China went into effect at midnight on December 30. The government will also limit requests from airlines to increase flights to China.

Masked travellers check their passports as they line up at the international 
flight check-in counter at the Beijing 
Capital International Airport [File: Andy Wong/AP Photo]

Italy

Italy has ordered COVID-19 antigen swabs and virus sequencing for all travellers from China. Milan’s main airport, Malpensa, had already started testing passengers arriving from Beijing and Shanghai.

Spain

Spain says it will require a negative COVID-19 test or a full course of vaccination against the disease upon arrival of travellers from China.

Malaysia

Malaysia will screen all inbound travellers for fever and test wastewater from aircraft arriving from China for COVID-19.

Taiwan

Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center said all passengers on direct flights from China, as well as by boat at two offshore islands, will have to take PCR tests upon arrival, starting on January 1.

South Korea

South Korea will require travellers from China to provide negative COVID test results before departure, South Korea’s News1 news agency reported.

Morocco

Morocco will impose a ban on people arriving from China from January 3, whatever their nationality, citing the need to avoid “a new wave of contaminations” and “all its consequences”.

Qatar

Qatar will require travellers arriving from China from January 3 to provide a negative COVID-19 test result taken within 48 hours of departure, state news agency QNA said.

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China’s travellers look towards reopening after years at home

News Agency nabakhabar — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 14:45:32 +0000

Mandy Yang, a marketing professional in Beijing, is all set to travel abroad once China’s borders reopen on January 8. Yang, 42, and her family renewed their passports in November and have recently been looking for flights to Chiang Mai in Thailand.

For Yang, like many other Chinese, it will be her first overseas trip since China slammed its borders shut in March 2020.

“Once I travel, I will want to experience local customs and cuisine,” Yang told Al Jazeera. “I don’t have to buy luxury items, but I will choose to spend my money on four or five-star hotels.”

Not only does Yang appreciate the history and culture of Chiang Mai, which was founded in the 13th century as the capital of the Lan Na Kingdom, but she was also impressed to see Thailand’s tourism ministry propose offering free COVID-19 vaccine boosters to attract tourists. On China’s social media platform WeChat, articles about the so-called “free vaccine package” have been attracting considerable attention.

“The strategies might be different, but the bottom line here is these countries want to keep their citizens healthy and safe first,” said Yang, adding that she planned to get a booster shot during her trip. “Only then can tourists feel safe as well.”

Before the COVID-19 pandemic plunged the country into isolation, China was the world’s largest outbound tourism market, with its tourists spending more than $127.5bn in 2019.

After China’s announcement on Tuesday that it would scrap quarantine for arrivals as part of the unwinding of its strict “zero-COVID” policy, Trip.com posted a 254 percent increase in outbound bookings compared with the previous day.

On Wednesday, China’s immigration authorities announced that they would also resume the processing of passport applications and issuance of entry and exit permits for travelers bound to and from Hong Kong, which has a separate immigration system from the Chinese mainland.

After nearly three years stuck at home, however, China’s travelers face a growing list of restrictions overseas.

The United States, South Korea, Japan, India, Italy, and Taiwan have introduced COVID tests for travelers from China in recent days amid concerns surging cases in the country could lead to the emergence of new and potentially more dangerous variants. Chinese state media have labeled the measures “discriminatory”, while some health experts have questioned their necessity.

While Thailand, which welcomed more than 10 million Chinese visitors annually before the pandemic, has not announced any new restrictions, the prospect of a large influx of travelers with COVID-19 has prompted some unease in the Southeast Asian country.

“We should have some guards up … and tests should be administered to find out what kind of variants are coming in from China to find out if they are more severe than the variants that have been found in Thailand,” Chaturon Chaisang, a former deputy prime minister and a senior member of the Pheu Thai main opposition party, was quoted as saying in the Thai Enquirer on Tuesday.

China was the world’s largest outbound tourism market before the pandemic, 
with its tourists spending 
more than $127.5bn in 2019 [File: Tingshu Wang/Reuters]

A 32-year-old university counselor in Beijing, who asked to remain anonymous, said she had planned to visit Japan this spring but was put off by the restrictions.

“I really want to visit Tokyo, but when I saw the news on Weibo about the restrictions, I knew that it wasn’t the right time to go there,” she told Al Jazeera. “There’s nothing I can do about it. I might stay in Beijing or go somewhere in China to travel this summer.”

Leon Liu, who operates a number of travel agencies in China, said he considers the measures being taken by other countries “very normal and understandable” and he does not expect them to last a long time. Liu said he expects a “buffer period” of three to six months after the Chinese New Year festivities before Chinese tourists can return to pre-pandemic levels of travel.

“Most airlines I have talked to say they plan for an April rebound,” Liu told Al Jazeera. “In our case, we have hired new employees and began training them to prepare for the tourists who will travel abroad.”

Liu said he does not expect the tourism industry to see a strong rebound during the “buffer period” because of the potential for sudden changes in regulations.

Crystal Zhou, a tour operator in Beijing, said her company is still reeling from the downturn of the past three years.

Zhou said she has yet to see a substantial uptick in bookings, although she has received more inquiries from guests seeking information about visas, flight tickets and travel rules overseas.

For now, she is cautious about the effect of China’s slated reopening.

“Of course, we are happy with the reopening, but on the other hand, we are really worried about the health of our guests because there hasn’t been such a quick change of policies before,” Zhou told Al Jazeera.

Despite the imminent lifting of border restrictions, Liu has been advising his customers to “stay in China and spend the upcoming Spring Festival holiday with family”.

“Wait for the situation to normalize first,” he said. “It is the best for everyone.”

As for Yang, who is still searching for the cheapest tickets to Thailand, she hopes the ease of pre-pandemic travel returns with a bang in 2023.

“I hope that the changes like testing and quarantine won’t happen again,” she said. “I want to live and travel the same as before. After all, I am fortunate to be able to go out now.”

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We Need an Abundance Agenda

News Agency nabakhabar — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 15:08:17 +0000

Long-lasting shortages in the United States were unheard of before COVID-19. But in the last two years, scarcity has gripped countless industries. Baby formula, timber, paper products, butter, computer chips, meat and poultry, passenger cars as well as trash trucks and other commercial vehicles have all been on backorder. The same goes for many other items, including fiber optic cables, electronics, jewelry, clothing, pet supplies and garden items.

At a recent checkup, my father’s primary doctor asked him if anything was giving him problems. While the doctor was talking about physical ailments, my dad said: “The biggest stressor in my life is that me or my wife have to spend half of the day on the phone dealing with these medical supply companies.”

It wasn’t a stint in the hospital, physical therapy or a new dietary regimen that was bothering my dad. What was bothering him were ongoing supply chain problems that he and my mom were then navigating.

Although it is not as common to hear about it on the news as it was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply constraints still grip the medical field. Saline solution, tubes, vials, pipettes, ventilators, defibrillators, amoxicillin and Adderall are all in short supply. In total, some 34 product categories currently are listed in critical need, according to the Food and Drug Administration. What’s more, the agency expects these conditions to continue into the near future.

Meanwhile, when people moved during the pandemic, limited housing became a national issue. According to current estimates, at least 5 million homes need to be built.

As this long list makes clear, disruptions to production and trade directly translate into material deprivation and hardship. But they also bring into focus another important issue: that we are living at a time of artificial scarcity.

It doesn’t need to be that way.

After the pandemic hit the U.S., new, groundbreaking vaccines were developed, tested and out to the public in less than a year. So, why does it take a decade or more to do the same with cancer drugs? Even today, nearly three years since the pandemic began, the number of physicians needed to treat our population remains in short supply. As Robert Orr uncovered in careful research, the federal government deliberately crafted and implemented a plan to limit the supply of doctors.

Policymakers, the commentariat and others in positions of power are waking up to the fact that scarcity is a serious public policy problem. While some of that scarcity comes from technological limitations which will require innovation, a good deal of it is self-inflicted. What is needed is a reversal of the policies that created these scarcity trends. What is needed is an agenda based on abundance.

Scarcity, Enrichment and Slow Decline

Scarcity is the true state of nature. For almost all of our recorded and unrecorded history, scarcity has been the bane of human existence. Only recently, in the last 200 years or so, have we been able to build abundance.

Scarcity used to cause all kinds of inadequacies. Malnutrition, famines, disease and early death were common. Today an injury might require a cast or perhaps outpatient surgery, but 300 years ago it would often lead to permanent disfigurement or even death. All of these ills were created by scarcity.

To take one particularly bad time, the 14th century, France experienced serious famine in 21 growing seasons. Sometimes these famines would last for two or three years. The Great Famine, from 1315 to 1317, was one of the worst, killing one out of every 10 people.

Then two decades later, when children of that era came to adulthood, the Black Death swept through the population, decimating cities and the countryside once again and this time killing up to half of all people. It is now thought that the two are connected. Malnutrition and hardship early in life meant the population was susceptible to disease as they grew to adulthood.

France might be affluent now, but on the eve of the Industrial Revolution, as Adam Smith pointed out, the country was poor. In “The Wealth of Nations,” he wrote that laborers “of both sexes appear there publickly [sic], without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes bare-footed.” It is difficult to imagine the good life living, even in Paris, during winter without shoes.

The Industrial Revolution changed all that, radically reshaping life and bringing with it an explosion of wealth and income. Since the 1800s when the Industrial Revolution fully kicked off, the average person has experienced a real income increase of 1,550%. The U.S. figure is even higher. As of today, we are 2,100% wealthier than we were in 1800.

In just the last 100 years, life has gotten measurably better. Today’s workplace is about 30 times safer than it was a century ago. At the turn of the 20th century, a worker would be on the job upwards of 60 hours during an average week. Today that number is just under 35 hours. In 1920, 28% of American youth aged 14 to 17 were in high school. Today, that number is over 90%. During the same 100-year period, life expectancy has increased from just over 53 years to just under 79 years.

Rightly so, Deirdre McCloskey calls this change the Great Enrichment.

Increasingly though, the Great Enrichment is being challenged by the Great Stagnation, a slowdown in growth rates. Beginning after World War II and continuing into the early 1970s, the productivity growth rate grew about 2% per year. But for some reason (or some confluence of reasons), it slowed down to 1% per year beginning in 1971. The United States and other wealthy countries just aren’t growing like they used to.

The decline from 2% to 1% might not seem like much, but like interest paid to savings account depositors, growth compounds over time. Today, households bring in about $70,000 in income every year. Had the U.S. grown at 2% per year over the last half century, the median household would be close to $150,000 in income.

Using more sophisticated models than simple linear extractions, researchers estimate that the missing growth in the last 50 years comes to about $11 trillion in lost annual GDP.

If not for the Great Stagnation and 50 years of 1% growth, Americans would already live in an era of abundance.

The Causes of Decline

While there is substantial evidence documenting the slowdown in the 1970s, there is little agreement on what exactly caused this economic stall-out. Two of the biggest possible culprits come in the form of energy prices and the expansion of the regulatory state.

J. Storrs Hall’s “Where is My Flying Car?” is a book-length treatise on how these two forces interact. Over 20 chapters, Hall’s book explains what happens when energy usage fails to expand. It means that we don’t get technical innovations like flying cars.

In a blog post that adds some context to the book, he explains,

We have had a very long-term trend in history going back at least to the Newcomen and Savery engines of 300 years ago, a steady trend of about 7 percent per year growth in usable energy available to our civilization. Let us call it the “Henry Adams Curve.” The optimism and constant improvement of life in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries can quite readily be seen as predicated on it. To a first approximation, it can be factored into a 3 percent population growth rate, a 2 percent energy efficiency growth rate, and a 2 percent growth in actual energy consumed per capita.

The Henry Adams Curve, named for the novelist and historian who wrote about these trends in his 1907 autobiography, is a rough approximation of the old path of U.S. energy usage. From 1800 until 1970, actual energy consumption in the United States grew at a brisk pace, following the trend that Hall computed. But in the 1970s, this consumption plateaued.

Why is this important? Because there is an “extreme interconnectedness of energy and economic systems,” as one researcher has framed it. In other words, there is a clear connection between energy consumption and economic growth, and the flatlining in the 1970s helps tell us why growth slowed at the same time. The way modern economies produce, package and consume energy isn’t advancing like it once did. So, if we are going to punch out of our economic rut, we should look to punch out of our energy consumption rut.

Some of this flatlining since the 1970s is due to hard technical limitations. Energy goes into personal homes, for heating and lighting offices and other buildings, for transportation as well as for industry. Moving up the curve means consuming more of everything, but there are limits to the number of cars a household can own and the size of a home they can afford. The United States is one of those rare countries that is already on the far edge of energy consumption. If we have hit a limit, then perhaps there is an upper limit to energy consumption, if not economic growth.

However, the flatlining of the Henry Adams Curve also has come as a result of regulation. In fact, most of the slowdown is the result of bad decisions rather than tough challenges. For instance, nuclear power should have been the primary source of electricity for the U.S., and it was on track to be that way, as Hall has explained. Yet, changes in the regulatory structure of energy generation in the 1970s stymied that upgrade. Today, the U.S. gets about 20% of its electricity from nuclear, while France, which went on a nuclear-plant-building spree in the 1970s, gets over 77%. It shouldn’t have been like this.

What’s more, energy isn’t the only industry being held back by excessive permitting and ill-considered government processes. Nearly every sector in the economy faces challenges because of the layers of permission needed to operate. All combined, this needless regulatory crust creates a system of vetocracy, or rule by veto. As I explained earlier this year, “A good part of the rise in housing costs and home prices can be accounted for by these veto forces. Rail and other infrastructure projects face decades-long delays. Vetocracy restricts projects throughout the United States,” and any agenda aiming to make the future more innovative must tackle this phenomenon.

The Abundance Agenda in Practice

An agenda of abundance would confront the twin problems of artificial scarcity and technological scarcity. For starters, this means addressing the housing crisis. The game plan here is well-trodden. Cities and states need to deregulate land use, which would allow denser housing and mixed-use neighborhoods to develop on their own. After World War II, Tokyo built its way to abundant housing, and U.S. cities can, too.

Another central part of the abundance agenda would aim to upgrade our energy system. Building an electricity transmission line needs to be easier, geothermal permitting should be simplified and the next generation of nuclear reactors, which are safe to operate, should be ushered through the approval process rather than subjected to layer upon layer of regulatory obstacles.

To directly combat the problem of technological scarcity, an abundance agenda would need to be focused on ensuring an abundance of capable minds. That means that immigration reform has to be a key part of this. As my colleague Josh Smith has suggested, there are a range of options on the table. Policymakers could automatically make a U.S. college degree into a work visa for foreign students, expand the H-1B visa program and use immigration-generated fees to promote retraining for native-born Americans.

How we regulate transport also needs a major overhaul. Among other things, the Jones Act needs to be abolished, ports and railways need to be automated and commerce in space must be encouraged and nurtured.

Finally, there are a host of smaller changes that need to be implemented. More modest fixes include allowing people to purchase better sunscreens, giving all patients access to ordering prescription glasses online and making telehealth services available to everyone—permanently. And that is just a small fraction of an ever-expanding list.

It remains uncertain if the public and policymakers will actually advance an abundance agenda.

Still, there are reasons to be hopeful. Recent polling conducted by my organization, The Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University, finds that people aged 18–29 are—among all age groups—the most optimistic about the future. It is also clear that young people want to own a home and build successful careers.

Making the right kind of arguments for the abundance agenda could be a winning ticket for future politicians. In fact, politicians today may already be jumping on board. Earlier this year, for example, Democrats and Republicans came together to pass the CHIPS Act, which will pump $52.7 billion into domestic semiconductor manufacturing. It is a landmark bill that came about because both sides wanted to counter China. It’s not a bad reason, and it may be the impetus to passing more abundance items like the ones my colleagues at The Center for Growth and Opportunity have outlined for Congress.

Looking to the Future

I recently told my dad, by some reckonings, this is the year George Jetson was born. “I always wanted a flying car,” he responded.

Truth be told, we aren’t far off the timeline. “The Jetsons” is set 40 years in the future, and in the next decade, a new generation of vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, also known as eVTOLs, is set to take the skies.

“The Jetsons” was a world where robots, floating cities and flying cars were the backdrop to life. If we are smart enough to work toward abundance, we can soon live in a world of flying cars as well as one with bountiful medical supplies.

But abundance offers more than just cool new stuff or even better access to necessary things. By creating substantially more wealth, an abundance agenda means more resources to solve big problems. And by creating a substantially wealthier society, abundance means more opportunities for more Americans of all stripes to pursue their professional and personal goals.

The best part is that we already have everything we need to make this new world a reality. Going forward, the only question is whether we will settle for continued stagnation or make the kind of decisions that take us toward a more abundant future.

The choice is ours. So let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.

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Chronic pain associated with poor health—and COVID-19 infection—decades later

News Agency nabakhabar — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 19:40:11 +0000

People who suffer from chronic pain at age 44 are more like to report pain, poor general health, poor mental health outcomes and joblessness in their 50s and 60s, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College, US, and Alex Bryson of University College London, UK.

Chronic pain—pain lasting at least three months—is a serious problem affecting a large number of people: according to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, more than 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain.

In the new work, the researchers studied people enrolled in the National Child Development Survey, a study following all those born in one week in March 1958 in England, Scotland and Wales. The main pain data used were from the Bio-Medical Survey conducted in 2003 when most of the 12,037 respondents were age 44. Additional health data was collected in 2008, 2013 and 2021.

Overall, two-fifths of those in their 40s reported suffering chronic pain. The study pinpointed multiple factors predicting pain at this age, including a person’s father’s social class at birth as well as pain in childhood. Both short-term and chronic pain at age 44 was associated with pain and poor health in later decades of life, with associations strongest for chronic pain. Among those reporting chronic pain at age 44, for example, 84% still reported “very severe” pain at age 50. Chronic pain, but not short-term pain, was also associated with poor mental health outcomes, lower life satisfaction, pessimism about the future, poor sleep and joblessness at age 55. Additionally, the researchers found that pain at age 44 predicts whether a respondent had been infected with COVID-19 in the 2021 survey, at age 62, suggesting that pain is associated with broader health vulnerabilities.

The authors conclude that chronic pain shows persistence across the life course and is, in part, passed between generations.

The authors add: “Tracking a birth cohort across their life course we find chronic pain is highly persistent. It is associated with poor mental health outcomes later in life including depression, as well as leading to poorer general health and joblessness. We hope the study highlights the need for academics and policymakers to focus more attention on the problems of chronic pain.”

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China’s Nio halts production, Foxconn park locks down over COVID

News Agency nabakhabar — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 11:32:24 +0000

China’s electric carmaker Nio has suspended production due to tightened COVID-19 restrictions, while an industrial park that hosts Apple supplier Foxconn has gone into lockdown amid rising cases.

Nio on Wednesday confirmed that production had been “temporarily suspended” after local news outlet 36Kr earlier reported that COVID curbs had halted operations at its two factories in the central city of Hefei.

The company, which ranks 13th for sales among electric vehicle makers in China, acknowledged the disruption would “impact on production and delivery schedules”.

Nio apologized to customers on Monday for delayed deliveries, which it said fell 7.5 percent in October compared with the previous month.

Nio shares on Wednesday fell as much as 7.5 percent to 75.50 Hong Kong dollars ($9.62) following news of the latest disruptions.

Separately, the Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone, which hosts an iPhone factory belonging to Foxconn, said it would bar all residents from going out and only allow approved vehicles on the roads until at least November 9.

The announcement comes after authorities in Zhengzhou, the capital of central Henan province, reported 64 cases during the previous 24 hours.

Foxconn produces about 70 percent of the world’s iPhones, most of them at the Zhengzhou plant, where it employs about 200,000 people.

The industrial park did not specify how the measures might affect Foxconn, and Foxconn and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Foxconn has been working to retain staff and smooth over tensions in the factory after workers complained about their treatment and provisions under COVID-19 prevention measures.

Several employees also fled the factory, prompting Foxconn to offer generous bonuses to retain staff.

China has stuck to its harsh “dynamic zero-COVID” policy, which aims to stamp out the virus at almost any cost, despite mounting economic and social costs, and the rest of the world’s shift to living with the virus.

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