Category: General

The World Health Organization said on Monday it is tracking a few dozen cases of two new sub-variants of the highly transmissible omicron strain of the coronavirus to assess whether they are more infectious or dangerous.

It has added BA.4 and BA.5, sister variants of the original BA.1 omicron variant, to its list for monitoring. It is already tracking BA.1 and BA.2 — now globally dominant — as well as BA.1.1 and BA.3.

The WHO said it had begun tracking them because of their “additional mutations that need to be further studied to understand their impact on immune escape potential.”

Viruses mutate all the time but only some mutations affect their ability to spread or evade prior immunity from vaccination or infection, or the severity of disease they cause.

For instance, BA.2 now represents nearly 94% of all sequenced cases and is more transmissible than its siblings, but the evidence so far suggests it is no more likely to cause severe disease.

Only a few dozen cases of BA.4 and BA.5 have been reported to the global GISAID database, according to WHO.

The UK’s Health Security Agency said last week BA.4 had been found in South Africa, Denmark, Botswana, Scotland and England from Jan. 10 to March 30.

All the BA.5 cases were in South Africa as of last week, but on Monday Botswana’s health ministry said it had identified four cases of BA.4 and BA.5, all among people aged 30 to 50 who were fully vaccinated and experiencing mild symptoms.

Source: Voice of America

WASHINGTON — A COVID-19 patient was in respiratory distress. The Army nurse knew she had to act quickly.

It was the peak of this year’s omicron surge and an Army medical team was helping in a Michigan hospital. Regular patient beds were full. So was the intensive care. But the nurse heard of an open spot in an overflow treatment area, so she and another team member raced the gurney across the hospital to claim the space first, denting a wall in their rush.

When she saw the dent, Lt. Col. Suzanne Cobleigh, the leader of the Army team, knew the nurse had done her job. “She’s going to damage the wall on the way there because he’s going to get that bed,” Cobleigh said. “He’s going to get the treatment he needs. That was the mission.”

That nurse’s mission was to get urgent care for her patient. Now, the U.S. military mission is to use the experiences of Cobleigh’s team and other units pressed into service against the pandemic to prepare for the next crisis threatening a large population, whatever its nature.

Their experiences, said Gen. Glen VanHerck, will help shape the size and staffing of the military’s medical response so the Pentagon can provide the right types and numbers of forces needed for another pandemic, global crisis or conflict.

One of the key lessons learned was the value of small military teams over mass movements of personnel and facilities in a crisis like the one wrought by COVID-19.

In the early days of the pandemic, the Pentagon steamed hospital ships to New York City and Los Angeles, and set up massive hospital facilities in convention centers and parking lots, in response to pleas from state government leaders. The idea was to use them to treat non-COVID-19 patients, allowing hospitals to focus on the more acute pandemic cases. But while images of the military ships were powerful, too often many beds went unused. Fewer patients needed non-coronavirus care than expected, and hospitals were still overwhelmed by the pandemic.

A more agile approach emerged: having military medical personnel step in for exhausted hospital staff members or work alongside them or in additional treatment areas in unused spaces.

“It morphed over time,” VanHerck, who heads U.S. Northern Command and is responsible for homeland defense, said of the response.

Overall, about 24,000 U.S. troops were deployed for the pandemic, including nearly 6,000 medical personnel to hospitals and 5,000 to help administer vaccines. Many did multiple tours. That mission is over, at least for now.

Cobleigh and her team members were deployed to two hospitals in Grand Rapids from December to February, as part of the U.S. military’s effort to relieve civilian medical workers. And just last week the last military medical team that had been deployed for the pandemic finished its stint at the University of Utah Hospital and headed home.

VanHerck told The Associated Press his command is rewriting pandemic and infectious disease plans, and planning wargames and other exercises to determine if the U.S. has the right balance of military medical staff in the active duty and reserves.

During the pandemic, he said, the teams’ make-up and equipment needs evolved. Now, he’s put about 10 teams of physicians, nurses and other staff — or about 200 troops — on prepare-to-deploy orders through the end of May in case infections shoot up again. The size of the teams ranges from small to medium.

Dr. Kencee Graves, inpatient chief medical officer at the University of Utah Hospital, said the facility finally decided to seek help this year because it was postponing surgeries to care for all the COVID-19 patients and closing off beds because of staff shortages.

Some patients had surgery postponed more than once, Graves said, because of critically ill patients or critical needs by others. “So before the military came, we were looking at a surgical backlog of hundreds of cases and we were low on staff. We had fatigued staff.”

Her mantra became, “All I can do is show up and hope it’s helpful.” She added, “And I just did that day after day after day for two years.”

Then in came a 25-member Navy medical team.

“A number of staff were overwhelmed,” said Cdr. Arriel Atienza, chief medical officer for the Navy team. “They were burnt out. They couldn’t call in sick. We’re able to fill some gaps and needed shifts that would otherwise have remained unmanned, and the patient load would have been very demanding for the existing staff to match.”

Atienza, a family physician who’s been in the military for 21 years, spent the Christmas holiday deployed to a hospital in New Mexico, then went to Salt Lake City in March. Over time, he said, the military “has evolved from things like pop-up hospitals” and now knows how to integrate seamlessly into local health facilities in just a couple days.

That integration helped the hospital staff recover and catch up.

“We have gotten through about a quarter of our surgical backlog,” Graves said. ”We did not call a backup physician this month for the hospital team … that’s the first time that’s happened in several months. And then we haven’t called a patient and asked them to reschedule their surgery for the majority of the last few weeks.”

VanHerck said the pandemic also underscored the need to review the nation’s supply chain to ensure that the right equipment and medications were being stockpiled, or to see if they were coming from foreign distributors.

“If we’re relying on getting those from a foreign manufacturer and supplier, then that may be something that is a national security vulnerability that we have to address,” he said.

VanHerck said the U.S. is also working to better analyze trends in order to predict the needs for personnel, equipment and protective gear. Military and other government experts watched the progress of COVID-19 infections moving across the country and used that data to predict where the next outbreak might be so that staff could be prepared to go there.

The need for mental health care for the military personnel also became apparent. Team members coming off difficult shifts often needed someone to talk to.

Cobleigh said military medical personnel were not accustomed to caring for so many people with multiple health problems, as are more apt to be found in a civilian population than in military ranks. “The level of sickness and death in the civilian sector was scores more than what anyone had experienced back in the Army,” said Cobleigh, who is stationed now at Fort Riley, Kansas, but will soon move to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

She said she found that her staff needed her and wanted to “talk through their stresses and strains before they’d go back on shift.”

For the civilian hospitals, the lesson was knowing when to call for help.

“It was the bridge to help us get out of omicron and in a position where we can take good care of our patients,” Graves said. “I am not sure how we would have done that without them.”

Source: Voice of America

Sultry musical “Cabaret” and fantastical literary adaptation “Life of Pi” were among the winners Sunday at British theater’s Olivier Awards, which returned with a live ceremony and a black-tie crowd after a three-year gap imposed by COVID-19.

The celebration of London theater, opera and dance came back to London’s Royal Albert Hall for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered Britain’s performance venues more than two years ago, weeks before the scheduled 2020 Oliviers show.

Kit Harington, Tom Felton, Emma Corrin and Jonathan Pryce were among the stars who walked the sustainable green carpet, made from reusable grass, before the glitzy, music-filled ceremony.

An intimate production of “Cabaret” that transformed London’s Playhouse Theater into the Kit Kat Club in 1930s Berlin had 11 nominations for the Oliviers, Britain’s equivalent of Broadway’s Tony Awards. Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley are nominated in musical leading actor categories for their roles as the Emcee and Sally Bowles.

“Cabaret” director Rebecca Frecknall took the directing trophy and said the war in Ukraine gave John Kander and Fred Ebb’s musical about the collapse of democracy and rise of fascism added poignancy.

“In a way it’s quite sad that every time it’s on it feels like it’s been written for today,” she said.

“Life of Pi,” adapted from Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel about a boy adrift at sea with a tiger, was named best new play. Hiran Abeysekera was named best actor in a play as title character Pi, while — in a first — the supporting actor prize went to seven performers who collectively play the show’s puppet tiger.

Fred Davis, one of the seven, said it was “a landmark moment for puppetry.”

Redmayne is up for best actor in a musical alongside Olly Dobson for “Back to the Future – The Musical;” Arinze Kene for “Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical;” and Robert Lindsay for “Anything Goes.”

Buckley is competing for best actress in a musical against Sutton Foster for “Anything Goes;” Beverley Knight for “The Drifters Girl;” and Stephanie McKeon for “Frozen.”

Knight said the theater community was ready to celebrate after a difficult couple of years.

“We have been bereft of theater for so long, just had nothing. And people only realize the importance of the place that theater and live entertainment played in any society when it was taken away,” she said.

“We bring in multi-millions and that’s week in, week out. So we are part of giving the economy buoyancy, but more than that, we feed the nation’s soul,” she added.

The contenders for best new musical are “Back to the Future – The Musical;” “The Drifters Girl;” “Frozen;” “Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical;” and “Moulin Rouge!”

The show also paid musical tribute to a theater titan — composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who died last year at 91.

The last Oliviers ceremony, held largely remotely in October 2020, awarded work done before the British government ordered U.K. theaters to shut down in March 2020.

Venues began reopening in mid-2021, and shows are largely up and running again, although the number of international visitors, vital to sustaining West End shows, remains well below pre-pandemic levels.

The awards were founded in 1976 and named for the late actor-director Laurence Olivier. Winners in most categories are chosen by a panel of stage professionals and theatergoers.

Source: Voice of America

“Sonic the Hedgehog 2” sped to the top of the charts in its opening weekend, earning an impressive $71 million according to studio estimates Sunday. Paramount’s PG-rated sequel easily bested the weekend’s other major newcomer, Michael Bay’s “Ambulance,” which faltered in theaters.

“Sonic 2,” which brings back the first film’s director, writers and cast, including James Marsden, Jim Carrey and Ben Schwartz, who voices the blue video game character, opened in 4,234 locations and actually surpassed its predecessor’s opening weekend. The first “Sonic the Hedgehog” opened over the Presidents Day holiday weekend in February 2020, earning $58 million in its first three days.

“The normal pattern domestically is that sequels slide a little bit,” said Chris Aronson, the president of domestic distribution for Paramount. “But we certainly bucked that trend.”

For a sequel to open 22% above the first, Aronson added, is “quite remarkable.”

“Sonic 2” got mixed to positive reviews from critics and audiences were even more enthusiastic. They gave the CG/live-action hybrid a strong “A” CinemaScore.

“The filmmakers did a great job of being in service of not only the general audience but Sonic fans themselves,” Aronson said. “Many feel it’s a bigger, better film than the first one.”

It’s an important weekend not just for the “Sonic” franchise, but for PG-rated family films too. Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian said that one of the big questions of the pandemic was whether families would return to movie theaters with seemingly limitless viewing options available at home. According to exit polls, families made up 58% of the “Sonic 2” audience.

“There’s been some indication that they wanted to go back with movies like ‘Sing 2,’ but it’s moved in fits and starts,” said Dergarabedian. “This says once and for all that families want to go back. It’s a really good indicator of things to come for family films in 2022 with ‘Lightyear’ and the next ‘Minions’ movie.”

“Sonic 2” is also the latest in a string of theatrical hits for Paramount in 2022, including “Scream,” “Jackass Forever” and “The Lost City,” which is still in the top five.

“A lot of credit goes to our marketing and distribution teams,” Aronson said. “We’ve been judicious about picking our dates and knowing who our audience was for each.”

And their next release could be their biggest yet. “Top Gun: Maverick” opens on May 27.

Meanwhile, “Ambulance” got off to a bumpy start in its first weekend. With an estimated $8.7 million in grosses, it opened behind Sony’s “Morbius,” down 74% in weekend two, and “The Lost City.” Bay’s nail-biter about a botched bank robbery was released by Universal and stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Eiza Gonzalez.

Its tepid launch proved a head-scratcher for many. Reviews weren’t terrible (it’s at a 69% on Rotten Tomatoes versus “Sonic 2’s” 67%) and on paper “Ambulance” appears to be the kind of throwback, big screen blockbuster spectacle that would draw significant crowds to the theaters.

“This is a filmmaker who will forever be looked at as a blockbuster director, whether you like his movies or not. The bar is always raised for someone like that,” Dergarabedian said. “But this is a different kind of movie and I think that’s why we’re seeing these numbers. It’s not trying to be ‘Transformers.’ If Bay’s name wasn’t on it, expectations wouldn’t be as high.”

“Sonic 2” wasn’t the only success of the weekend. A24’s critical darling “Everything Everywhere All at Once” expanded nationwide in its third weekend in theaters and earned $6.1 million from only 1,250 screens.

“A24 has done a spectacular job of rolling it out on a platform release and building buzz,” Dergarabedian said.

The film, directed by the Daniels and starring Michelle Yeoh, will expand to more theaters in the coming weeks.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” $71 million.

2. “Morbius,” $10.2 million.

3. “The Lost City,” $9.2 million.

4. “Ambulance,” $8.7 million.

5. “The Batman,” $6.5 million.

6. “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” $6.1 million.

7. “Uncharted,” $2.7 million.

8. “Jujutsu Kaisen 0,” $825,000.

9. “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” $625,000.

10. “RRR,” $570,000

Source: Voice of America

Shanghai is China’s most populous city, a place marked by an expansive worldview and keen sense of its own identity. But now it is chafing at Beijing’s rigid containment methods designed in accordance with the national zero-COVID policy.

Since a wave of infections struck the metropolis of some 25 million people last month, Shanghai officials have imposed a temporary lockdown (March 28), designed a policy separating infected children from their parents (April 2), extended the lockdown indefinitely (April 5), buckled before a public outcry to ease the child-parent separation policy (April 6) and seen the daily count of new cases hit a record 22,000 (April 8).

Viral videos appear to show residents tackling health workers in hazmat suits and charging through a barricaded street shouting “We want to eat cheap vegetables,” according to France24. Some residents are facing the mandatory tests “in very Shanghainese style” tweeted one.

What are thought to be government drones whir through residential areas urging people against the temptation to break out from lockdown.

And local authorities have reported more than 73,000 cases in the current wave, virtually all originating with the omicron BA.2 variant, which is more infectious but less lethal than the previous delta strain as evidenced by the lack of any reported deaths in the city.

Shanghai Lingang Fangcai Hospital officially opened on April 5 with nearly 14,000 beds, half of which are already available. Authorities are converting the National Exhibition and Convention Center into a temporary hospital with more than 40,000 beds.

The Global Times, a state-controlled media outlet, reported April 6 that more than 38,000 medical personnel from more than 10 provinces in China had been dispatched to Shanghai to help along with more than 2,000 from the People’s Liberation Army.

Zero-COVID policy

When Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan visited the city on April 2, she stressed “unswerving adherence” to Beijing’s zero-COVID policy, a control measure China has put in place throughout the country since 2020 to curb the spread of the virus.

“It is an arduous task and huge challenge to combat the omicron variant while maintaining the normal operation of core functions in a megacity with a population of 25 million,” Sun said, according to Chinese state-controlled media outlet, Xinhua.

According to Ren Ruihong, the former head of the medical relief department of the Red Cross Foundation of China, the probability of China achieving “zero infection goal” is almost zero judging from the movement of the omicron variant through the nation.

“You can’t test everyone in the entire country every day. When you can’t do that, a lot of asymptomatic or late-infected people have already spread the virus,” Ren told VOA Mandarin.

On Thursday, Human Rights Watch said on its website that Beijing’s insistence on draconian lockdown measures has significantly impeded people’s access to health care, food and other life necessities in Shanghai.

“The Chinese government’s ‘Zero-COVID’ approach to pandemic control by imposing stringent citywide lockdowns has resulted in the systematic denial of medical needs of people with serious but non-COVID related illnesses,” said Yaqiu Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch.

According to HRW’s statement, an unknown number of people have died after being denied medical treatment for their non-COVID related illnesses.

‘Completely chaotic’ response

Shanghai officials also expressed their disappointment in the implementation of Beijing’s zero-COVID measures in Shanghai.

“Shanghai’s epidemic-prevention policy is completely chaotic,” said a community management committee secretary in a nine-minute recorded conversation circulated on Chinese social media, adding that the prevention work she has been assigned is “killing” her.

In another recording of a conversation between a Shanghai citizen and a frontline epidemic-prevention official, the official urged the resident not to go to a hospital and said that mild and asymptomatic patients should be isolated at home.

“When I went to the Fangcang shelter hospital, even the professionals were going crazy because no one listened to what they said,” according to the official speaking to the resident in an audio since deleted from Chinese social media. “Now we all feel complete despair.”

Lin Baohua, a former professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai who now lives in Taiwan, told VOA Mandarin that recent signs indicate that grassroots officials in Shanghai are becoming sympathetic to Shanghai residents’ dissatisfaction.

The last thing the Beijing government wants to see is the collective action of the people, he added.

Xiao Shan, a Chinese news analyst in Beijing, said Shanghai officials are unlikely to oppose the zero-COVID policy, as they have used it to consolidate their power.

“Suddenly they could become managers overnight, wearing red armbands shouting to hundreds of thousands of people in the community.”

Fan Shihping, a Taiwan Normal University professor, told VOA Mandarin that China’s enforcement will have a great impact on Shanghai residents because they did not expect that they, citizens of a Tier 1 city, would be treated in the same way under the zero-COVID policy as residents of second- and third-tier cities.

Tier 1 cities, like Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, are the most modern, the most populous and have the best infrastructure and locations, according to Investor Insights Asia. Tier 2 cities are relatively economically developed but less so than new first-tier cities. Tier 3 cities have large populations but little economic or political significance.

Some Shanghai residents have refused to hide their dissatisfaction with the government’s strict COVID measures.

“This is worse than the Cultural Revolution,” said an old man in a video circulated on social media.

Mao, the first leader of the People’s Republic of China from 1949-76, launched the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1966. By the time its turmoil ended a decade later, between 500,000 and 2 million people had died.

“Parks are not open. Shops are not open. We haven’t experienced a horror like this even when the Red Sun, Mao Zedong, died in 1976,” the man continued. “Now I don’t go out and I’m stuck in prison all day.”

Source: Voice of America

Millions of Americans voluntarily left their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the quit rate hitting a record high of 3% — 4.5 million people — in November 2021. So, where did all those workers go?

Chris Decker, an economics professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha, says the pandemic hastened retirement for some older workers.

“A lot of folks were either furloughed or perhaps laid off, and perhaps they were in their mid to late 50s,” Decker says. “Many, from what I’ve been able to glean, chose an early retirement path, and that kind of fueled, I believe, a lot of the spikes that we’ve seen.”

The latest numbers put the quit rate at 2.9%. So, while 4.4 million workers decided to leave their jobs in February 2022, about 6.7 million people were hired during that same time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Yes, lots of people are quitting, but they’re going someplace else. They’re not sitting on their couches,” says Jay Zagorsky, a senior lecturer at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, who doesn’t embrace the theory that COVID-19 drove more people to retire. “The ‘Great Resignation,’ in some ways, is real. And in other ways, it’s a bit of a fable.”

A fable, in part, because quit-rate data has been collected only since December 2000, meaning there are no official BLS numbers from before 2000 to compare with today’s numbers.

‘Great Job Switch’

Also, the fact that 6.7 million people got hired in February suggests that something else might be going on, according to Zagorsky.

“It’s not so much … about the ‘Great Resignation’ — like everyone’s quitting and going off and, you know, writing the great American novel or connecting with their family,” he says. “Instead, lots of people are quitting, but they’re getting rehired someplace else. They’re switching jobs. I would call it not the ‘Great Resignation’ but the ‘Great Job Switch.'”

But the “Great Job Switch” isn’t happening everywhere. For example, government employees are, for the most part, staying put. Quit rates are highest in the leisure and hospitality industries, such as hotels, restaurants and bars, as well as in retail.

“We’re also seeing it among the young, and especially geographically, in the South,” Zagorsky says. “Why is that? That, I can’t tell you.”

Decker says younger people might be furthering their education.

“I think a lot of people decided that rather than go right back into the labor force after getting furloughed … or actually getting laid off, chose to go back to school full time,” he says. “I know our university is seeing an increase in enrollment in some of our professional degree programs.”

Quitting trend

Government data suggests that except for a few dips, American quit rates rose steadily in the 20 years leading up to the pandemic.

“The story in my mind is that the U.S. has always had exceptionally high quit rates,” Zagorsky says. “We have a very fluid labor market. The question is, do we have too fluid a labor market?”

A recent Harris/USA Today poll found that 20% of people — 1 in 5 — who quit during the past two years now regret doing so. Twenty-five percent said they miss the job culture at their previous place of employment.

Zagorsky says people need to have a better understanding of what a job entails before they take it, while employers must understand that the appeal of a position involves more than money.

“Is my job important? Am I helping others besides myself? Am I getting positive feedback? All these kinds of things have nothing to do with pay but have a lot to do with why people quit,” Zagorsky says. “People quit because of nonfinancial reasons. People need to feel they’re valued and not being abused and not being disrespected. If people feel valued, if they feel respected, if they feel they’re an important part of an organization, they tend not to quit.”

Decker expects labor demand to continue to be robust in the long term, while the labor supply will be challenging as America deals with an aging population. Labor supply will be an issue particularly in the Midwest, where Decker lives and works, as educated younger workers move to bigger cities. He sees one potential fix, which could be politically controversial.

“Revisit the immigration policies to see if there’s some way to balance the immigration flow, perhaps with a little bit less caustic and difficult political environment, to one that might be a little bit more based on numbers and potential impacts on labor force,” Decker says.

Source: Voice of America