(NEW YORK) — Israel is now the first in the world to give a third booster COVID-19 vaccine shot to those over 60 and other vulnerable people as cases rise.
The U.K. expected to roll out boosters next month.
Watch the full report from ABC’s Good Morning America:
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(CASABLANCA, Morocco) — “I feel very happy to carry my child,” 26 year-old Halima Cissé told ABC News, while holding newborn Muhammad, one of the nine babies to beat the world record for most babies born at one birth.
Cissé, already a mother to a little girl, gave birth to nine children on May 5. “All the children are doing well,” said Dr. El Alaoui, head of the clinic.
The four boys, named Muhammad, Bah, El Hadj and Oumar and five girls — Adama, Hawa, Fatouma, Oumou and Kadidia, are being taken care of at the clinic Ain Borja in Casablanca, Morocco.
Cissé, a 26 year-old student and Abdelkader Arby, a 35 year-old adjudant in the Malian army, say they have always wanted children. ” Everybody wants children … but if they had told me that I, Abdelkader Arby, would one day be the father of nine, I would not have believed it,” he told ABC News.
The parents say the extraordinary birth is a “gift from God,” and said the “responsibility is heavy,”
After a consultation with an OB-GYN revealed that Cissé, was carrying seven fetuses, authorities organized her transfer from Bamako, Mali, to the clinic Ain Borja in Morocco where she would received specialized care.
The clinic prepared for the unusual birth of seven , before discovering during the operation two others.
“A lot of things were going through my mind, fear for myself, fear for my kids, how it was going to unfold,” Cissé told ABC News.
El Alaoui, head of the clinic Ain Borja, told ABC News that they tried to postpone the birth as long as they could to keep the babies’ chances high.
Cissé, who nearly lost her life due to blood loss and had to be operated on after the delivery, spent a month at the clinic on her back before the birth. She describes the difficult nights when she couldn’t sleep on the side until the day of birth, at 30 weeks pregnant.
“We thought, if we manage to save four, five children it’s already not bad,” said El Alaoui.
The birth of nine children is an extremely rare phenomenon. Only two others were recorded so far, in Australia in 1971 and in Malaysia in 1999. But Cissé’s is the the first example of nonuplets born alive.
Soumia Arkoubi, head nurse at the clinic, said “they take care of [the nonuplets] like it’s our own children” and that “it will be hard to see them go.”
With diapers changed every three hours at the clinic, the nine bundles of joy go through nearly 75 diapers a day and 100 bottles of milk.
American Nadya Suleman, nicknamed “Octomom,” holds the current Guiness world record after giving birth to eight children following an IVF treatment.
However, according to the parents and the medical staff at Ain Borja, Cissé’s children were conceived naturally.
The children were all born prematurely, the smallest weighing only one pound at birth.
They will have to stay in the neonatal care at the clinic for at least another month before they can hope to meet their big sister in Mali.
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(ST. PETERSBURG, Russia) — At the start of June, St. Petersburg’s local administration stopped publishing information about how many COVID-19 patients had been hospitalized in the Russian city.
The sudden disappearance of the previously daily reported figures happened to coincide with the opening of one the city‘s most prestigious annual events, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
The forum, a gathering of Russia’s elite and a showcase for its biggest companies, has become a flagship event under President Vladimir Putin. Over five days, 13,000 people were expected to attend the event, where Putin told the audience that life was “gradually returning to its normal routine” after the pandemic.
But the forum was opening just as St. Petersburg was seeing a terrifying surge in COVID-19 cases, as a third wave fueled in part by the delta variant bore down on the country. The last bulletin before the numbers vanished had shown St. Petersburg hospitalizing 500 people a day — a record number and one that meant the city would run out of hospital beds within days.
Journalists and critics of the government quickly started asking if the disappearance of the COVID-19 statistics was connected to holding the forum. St. Petersburg’s administration refused to comment and the latest figures weren’t published again until nearly three weeks later. They were no longer updated daily, either.
“They need to create the impression that everything is OK,” said Boris Vishnevsky, an opposition lawmaker from St. Petersburg’s city assembly, who also opposed holding the forum. “They don’t care about people’s lives and health.”
Throughout the pandemic, Russian authorities have been accused of massaging statistics to hide the real scale of the country’s COVID-19 impact. The Kremlin has repeatedly suggested that although it has been difficult, Russia has fared better than most other countries, even as it has neglected to impose tough lockdown measures.
But publicly available mortality statistics, as well as other data, show an ever growing, yawning gap between Russia’s official COVID-19 figures and what are likely the far larger real numbers. The data suggest the true death toll may already be over a half-million people. Far from doing better than most, the data suggests that, in reality, Russia has suffered one of the deadliest COVID-19 epidemics in the world.
The toll is growing even steeper now as Russia endures a deadly third wave that has remained largely unchecked amid few restrictions and poor vaccination uptake — the latter caused in part by some of the highest levels of vaccine scepticism in the world.
Russia’s official COVID-19 death toll, published by the government’s coronavirus task force, currently stands at around 155,000. In total numbers, that still places Russia fourth in the world, behind only Brazil, India and the United States. But, given the size of the country’s 144 million population and the number of cases it has had, that number appears puzzlingly low.
There is a consensus among experts internationally that the best method to assess the true toll of the pandemic in Russia is by counting so-called “excess deaths.” That is, comparing the total number of deaths from any cause in a country during the pandemic periods with the total number of deaths in an average year.
Almost every country hit by the pandemic has seen a steep increase in total deaths compared to the average. Although some of those extra deaths can be attributed to other causes, such as disruption to health systems, most experts believe the vast majority are COVID-19 deaths.
Russia’s official death toll doesn’t take into account excess deaths, but its national statistics service, Rosstat, has quietly continued to release total mortality data for each month, publishing it in spreadsheets on its website. That has allowed independent demographers and journalists to calculate excess deaths for Russia during the pandemic.
The mortality data so far released by Rosstat shows that in 2020, Russia suffered 340,000 more deaths than in 2019. For the first five months of 2021, there were 133,000 more excess deaths.
That means Russia has sustained at least 473,000 more deaths during the pandemic than usual, already three times higher than its officially reported toll. That does not yet include June and July, the deadliest months of the current third wave.
“I think that by the end of September, the overall excess mortality will be at least 700,000 people,” said Alexey Raksha, an independent demographer who previously worked at Rosstat. “It is a huge number.”
By proportion of the population, the current figures give Russia the highest death toll of any major country in the world and place it in the top five of any country in the world, behind only Peru, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Serbia, according to a ranking by The Economist tracking excess deaths globally.
“In November and December of last year, the number of deaths have been record. The biggest in history, in post-war history in Russia,” said Raksha.
Raksha was fired from his job as a demographer at Rosstat last year after he publicly pointed out the discrepancies in the official COVID-19 statistics. He has accused Russian authorities of crudely manipulating the numbers, which he says is visible in the unnatural anomalies in the data released by the country’s coronavirus task force.
He points to line graphs showing monthly deaths for Moscow, where steep curves indicating increasing deaths at certain times suddenly flatline and hold steady for several days.
“It’s in contradiction with all statistical, epidemiological, demographical law,” Raksha said. “It’s just impossible.”
He said the sudden plateaus are nicknamed the “Soybanin’s Shelf,” referring to Moscow’s Mayor Sergey Sobyanin. He said they were the result of city officials simply putting a limit on the number of deaths that could be published that day.
“At some point, Sobyanin just ordered not to show more than 75 deaths daily in Moscow. That’s it,” Raksha said.
Russian health officials have previously said they take a more conservative approach to assessing COVID-19 deaths. But that does not explain the vast difference and, at times, officials have acknowledged the real death toll is substantially higher.
In December, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova, who oversees the COVID-19 response, acknowledged that around 81% of all excess deaths in Russia were caused by COVID-19. The federal statistics service in June also published an estimate suggesting there had been over 270,000 COVID-19 deaths.
But Russia’s primary official death toll, which is most often used internationally and in state media, has not been updated to match those statements.
A recent investigation by three independent Russian investigative news sites also found evidence that internal government records show it is also concealing the scale of COVID-19 cases in the country by as much as five times.
The sites, Meduza, Kholod and Mediazona, reported that an oversight by Russia’s health ministry in issuing certificates confirming recent COVID-19 patients had inadvertently revealed the ministry has a database containing 29 million recorded COVID-19 cases. The official public count currently only shows six million.
The government has denied the reports, but issued conflicting responses, saying the database was not accurate and that it also contained vaccination numbers.
Critics have said the efforts to make Russia’s bout with the pandemic appear less deadly are making it worse by discouraging people from taking the virus seriously, which they say also hampers its push to vaccinate. Although Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has been found to be effective, authorities are struggling to persuade Russians to get it.
With few restrictions in place and still less than 20% of the population fully vaccinated, doctors in the city told ABC News they feared a fourth wave in the autumn was already inevitable.
“Doctors will answer for it, not the government,” said a paramedic in St. Petersburg, who requested anonymity over concerns she could face retaliation.
In St. Petersburg last week, Alexander Yablokov, a 68-year-old soccer manager, said he did not believe the official death toll after he spent three weeks in a COVID-19 hospital. While there, he said he was in a small ward where all but one of seven patients with him died within a week. He said he had pulled his blanket over his head whenever he heard the sound of a gurney coming down the corridor, knowing another of his neighbors had passed.
“I thought I had found myself in a morgue. Not a hospital but a morgue,” he said
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(LONDON) — Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has spent most of her adult life in the public spotlight, first as the wife of Prince Andrew and then as a favorite target of the British tabloid media.
Several decades later, another new royal bride, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, became the target of the tabloid media when she wed Ferguson’s nephew, Prince Harry, in 2018.
“I believe that everybody has a right to their own voice and there should be no judgment on race, creed, color or any other denomination,” Ferguson told Good Morning America about the press’ treatment of Meghan, who joined Harry in stepping down from their senior royal roles last year and moving to California.
“I personally would never be able to judge another, so I just am not like that,” she said. “I wish Harry and Meghan so much happiness and I know that [the late Princess] Diana would be so proud of her sons and their wives.”
Ferguson — whose latest chapter in life is as author of a new novel, Her Heart for a Compass — was a close friend of Princess Diana’s, her sister-in-law in Britain’s royal family. Though the two were pitted against each other in the British press, she calls Diana her best friend.
Diana, the mother of Princes William and Harry, died in 1997 after a car crash in Paris, but Ferguson said she keeps her friend’s memory alive to this day.
“She’s in my heart,” Ferguson said of the late princess, whom she calls her “laughing friend.”
“I always say it doesn’t matter whether you get the love back or you don’t get love back or she’s here or she’s not here, you can love anyway and keep the kindness,” she said
“I loved Diana and I will always love her even if she isn’t here in person. It’s a really lovely thing to have,” she said.
Ferguson, now 61 and a grandmother of one with another on the way, said she also imagines what life would be like now with Diana, whose two sons have five children between them.
“If she was here, we’d be racing to the bouncy castle with our grandchildren,” said Ferguson. “The funny thing is we’d be with our grandchildren running in the egg and spoon race. She was always a better, faster runner than me.”
Finding her voice through writing
Ferguson drew on her own journey in the spotlight to write her first novel, which is set in the Victorian era and is based on her distant relative, Lady Margaret.
“Lady Margaret is an extremely wonderful, strong, very resilient redhead who fights for her heart … against extraordinary confines of what is seen as noble and duty,” she said. “I think I couldn’t write that and I couldn’t explain it if I hadn’t had a hint of fighting my own journey through my own compass of my own heart.”
“She didn’t have a voice,” Ferguson added. “So it’s about literacy, empowerment, empowerment of a woman’s voice that has been shut away.”
Ferguson said she is just now learning in her own life to speak up and not be a self-described “people pleaser,” saying, “I don’t believe I’ve really spoken out until now, properly.”
In the novel, Margaret is portrayed as having a complicated but honest relationship with her mother, a relationship Ferguson said she never got to have with her own mom.
“When she left me, I was so young,” said Ferguson. “And then my sister went to Australia, so I became the head of the house around 13, 14 years old, and I think that that’s possibly why I still have the rebel in me.”
Ferguson spoke with GMA while doing one of her favorite activities, horseback riding, which she said she relied on as a child for stability in her life.
“My ponies really helped me so much when my mother went to live in Argentina because they were my friends,” she said, describing them as “consistent” and “steadfast.” “They don’t go anywhere and they didn’t answer back. They are just so special.”
Taking life ‘one step at a time’
Though she had a complicated time as a member of Britain’s royal family, Ferguson remains an ardent supporter of the monarchy.
“I am a number one fan of the monarchy,” she said. “And I stand very strongly for the extraordinary steadfastness of the queen.”
She also speaks fondly of Prince Andrew, whom she married in 1986 and divorced a decade later, though the two remain very close.
“He is a great man and [our wedding day] was the best day of my life,” she said. “I would do it all over again because he was a very good-looking sailor, but I fell in love with him and I think love conquers all.”
Andrew, who shares two daughters with Ferguson, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, has faced intense scrutiny over his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison in 2019.
Andrew, the third child of Queen Elizabeth, spoke out in a 2019 BBC interview and categorically denied allegations he had sex on multiple occasions with an American teenager who’s claimed she was trafficked to the prince at the direction of Epstein. Shortly after the interview, Andrew announced that he would step back from public duties, “for the foreseeable future” amid heavy criticism.
When asked how she has found resilience in the face of personal drama and tabloid scandal, Ferguson said she has learned to “take one step at a time.”
“You just look at it. What do I need to learn from this? How do I feel? [You] apologize profusely to yourself, to others, mostly to yourself for letting yourself down, perhaps, and you move forward and you get on and you take one step at a time,” she said. “I have destroyed myself many times, but the most important thing is to get up and get going.”
Ferguson also gives credit to the American public for helping her regain her footing after she and Andrew divorced. She credits Americans with welcoming her and supporting her through different ventures, including working with WW, formerly Weight Watchers.
“That’s why I want to say thanks to the American people, because they have given me a life,” she said. “And they’ve given me a chance to be able to have a platform to talk and to be able to say, ‘Be yourself.'”
Speaking of her ability to continually evolve both personally and professionally, Ferguson added, “I’m 61. I’m just starting my life. “
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(WASHINGTON) — The first Afghans who worked for the U.S. military and diplomatic missions are being evacuated and will arrive in the U.S. late Thursday night or early Friday morning, according to a source familiar with the plans.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that they would arrive “very, very soon,” speaking during a press conference in Kuwait. He confirmed that the U.S. and Kuwait have had diplomatic discussions about hosting another group of Afghans, including during the day’s meetings, but he did not announce an agreement to do so.
These arrivals are the first after President Joe Biden’s pledged to support Afghan interpreters, guides and other contractors who served alongside U.S. troops and diplomats — many of whom now face threats from the Taliban as the militant group gains strength amid the U.S. military withdrawal.
Biden ordered all remaining American forces out of the country by the 20th anniversary this fall of the Sept. 11th attacks, which first brought U.S. troops to Afghanistan to destroy al Qaeda’s operations in the country and topple the Taliban government that gave them sanctuary.
Afghans who worked for the U.S. mission and now face threats for that work are eligible for a special immigrant visa program for them and their families. There are approximately 20,000 Afghans who have applied, plus their family members, according to a State Department spokesperson — although it’s unclear how many of them the administration plans to evacuate.
So far, the administration has announced that some 750 Afghans who have already been approved and cleared security vetting will be brought to the U.S., along with their family members — 2,500 in total. They will be housed and provided temporary services at Fort Lee, a U.S. Army base in central Virginia, for seven to 10 days as they undergo medical exams and finish their application processing.
A second group of some 4,000 Afghan applicants, plus their family members, will also be housed overseas, possibly including at U.S. military installations, according to senior State Department officials. A U.S. official told ABC News the administration has had conversations with Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and several Central Asian countries — Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
But during his visit to Kuwait, Blinken did not announce a new agreement with the U.S. ally to house Afghans there, where there are several U.S. military installations.
Blinken confirmed for the first time that the U.S. and Kuwait are discussing the mission, including in his meetings Thursday at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but it seemed they were unable to reach an agreement.
“We’re talking to a number of countries about the possibility of temporarily relocating” Afghans, Blinken told reporters. “That’s one of the issues that came up in our conversations today, but we are very much focused on making good on our obligations.”
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(WASHINGTON) — The first Afghans who worked for the U.S. military and diplomatic missions are being evacuated and will arrive in the U.S. late Thursday night or early Friday morning, according to a source familiar with the plans.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that they would arrive “very, very soon,” speaking during a press conference in Kuwait. He confirmed that the U.S. and Kuwait have had diplomatic discussions about hosting another group of Afghans, including during the day’s meetings, but he did not announce an agreement to do so.
These arrivals are the first after President Joe Biden’s pledged to support Afghan interpreters, guides and other contractors who served alongside U.S. troops and diplomats — many of whom now face threats from the Taliban as the militant group gains strength amid the U.S. military withdrawal.
Biden ordered all remaining American forces out of the country by the 20th anniversary this fall of the Sept. 11th attacks, which first brought U.S. troops to Afghanistan to destroy al Qaeda’s operations in the country and topple the Taliban government that gave them sanctuary.
Afghans who worked for the U.S. mission and now face threats for that work are eligible for a special immigrant visa program for them and their families. There are approximately 20,000 Afghans who have applied, plus their family members, according to a State Department spokesperson — although it’s unclear how many of them the administration plans to evacuate.
So far, the administration has announced that some 750 Afghans who have already been approved and cleared security vetting will be brought to the U.S., along with their family members — 2,500 in total. They will be housed and provided temporary services at Fort Lee, a U.S. Army base in central Virginia, for seven to 10 days as they undergo medical exams and finish their application processing.
A second group of some 4,000 Afghan applicants, plus their family members, will also be housed overseas, possibly including at U.S. military installations, according to senior State Department officials. A U.S. official told ABC News the administration has had conversations with Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and several Central Asian countries — Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
But during his visit to Kuwait, Blinken did not announce a new agreement with the U.S. ally to house Afghans there, where there are several U.S. military installations.
Blinken confirmed for the first time that the U.S. and Kuwait are discussing the mission, including in his meetings Thursday at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but it seemed they were unable to reach an agreement.
“We’re talking to a number of countries about the possibility of temporarily relocating” Afghans, Blinken told reporters. “That’s one of the issues that came up in our conversations today, but we are very much focused on making good on our obligations.”
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(WASHINGTON) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged Wednesday during a joint press conference in India that the situation in Afghanistan is headed in the wrong direction — noting the Taliban is “making advances” and calling reports that the group has committed atrocities “deeply, deeply troubling.”
They “certainly do not speak well of the Taliban’s intentions for the country as a whole,” he told ABC News.
Blinken made a quick visit to New Delhi, where he and senior Indian officials focused on deepening U.S.-Indian cooperation on key challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic, China, and climate change. But with the security situation in nearby Afghanistan deteriorating quickly, their meetings also focused on the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the Taliban’s swift efforts to control more territory.
As he and other Biden officials have argued, however, he said that the international community would make a “pariah state” of an Afghan government that “does not respect the rights of its people, an Afghanistan that commits atrocities against its own people.”
“The Taliban says that it seeks international recognition, that it wants international support for Afghanistan,” and that it wants sanctions and travel bans on its leaders lifted, he added, saying there’s “only one path” to achieving those aims, “and that’s at the negotiating table.”
But it doesn’t seem that the Taliban — which now control nearly half of the country’s districts since launching their offensive in May, according to the Pentagon — agrees.
The group’s leadership has also denied responsibility for the atrocities Blinken mentioned, including extrajudicial killings, forced displacements and attacking civilian infrastructure — a sign that their promises remain empty and they do believe they can take power by force or that they don’t have full control of their fractured forces across the country.
President Joe Biden announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops before the 20th anniversary, this fall, of the Sept. 11th attacks that brought American forces to Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaida’s operations there and topple the Taliban government that gave them sanctuary.
In the weeks since then, the Taliban have won control of dozens of districts by force or through surrenders, as they dawdle at negotiations with the Afghan government meant to secure a ceasefire and decide on the country’s future government.
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, agreed with Blinken that, despite the deadlock in those talks, they were the only solution to Afghanistan’s fighting. But he declined to say how concerned India’s government is now about the deteriorating security situation, instead calling it “natural” and “inevitable” that “there will be consequences” to the U.S. military withdrawal.
“What is done is done. It is a policy taken, and I think in diplomacy, you deal with what you have,” he told ABC News – agreeing with Blinken that negotiations are the only solution.
But he subtly took issue with Pakistan, India’s neighbor and long-time adversary, adding that “not everyone who agrees … does what they say they will do.” Without a direct mention, he called its support for the Taliban a “reality of the last 20 years.”
A senior State Department official said after the day’s meetings that the two sides made no specific asks of one another, but committed to deepening cooperation and information-sharing on the situation.
“It’s a chance for us to talk about, sort of, the way forward and really where we can find points of leverage to try to bring the Taliban along and get toward a negotiated settlement,” they said.
The two foreign ministers were chummy after their day of meetings — cracking jokes and praising U.S.-Indian cooperation. Jaishankar said the two powers had “entered a new era,” with cooperation on COVID-19, defense, trade and investment, climate change, and regional issues.
In particular, Blinken said the two countries “will be leaders in bringing the pandemic to an end,” as India ramps up vaccine production and exports, and the U.S. launches the first of the 500 million doses next month that Biden promised during the G-7 summit.
The Biden administration had hoped to share three million of those doses with India, but they remain held up by Indian bureaucracy, which must first approve their import, according to the senior State Department official, who added they hoped for “some movement soon.”
While the increasing U.S.-India partnership has irked the Chinese government, which has accused both countries of trying to “contain” it, Jaishankar shot back Wednesday — saying, “People need to get over the idea that somehow other countries doing things is directed at them.”
“For groups of countries to work together is not strange. It’s the history of international relations,” he added, earning a laugh from Blinken.
But much of this visit has been focused on China — including Blinken’s meeting Wednesday morning with the Dalai Lama’s representative, Central Tibetan Administration Representative Ngodup Dongchung. It’s the first high-level engagement from the Biden administration with the Tibetan leader and his team — one that is sure to anger Chinese officials who have long opposed U.S. support for the spiritual figure.
The senior State Department official tried to downplay the meeting, saying they met “very briefly” so that Dongchung could present Blinken with a scarf as a “gesture of good will and friendship.”
Blinken also tried to send a message with another meeting Wednesday morning, starting his day before the cameras with a group of Indian civil society leaders. Before the press, he talked about how both countries’ democracies “are works in progress. … Sometimes that process is painful, sometimes it’s ugly, but the strength of democracy is to embrace it.”
That process in India has been particularly ugly in recent years. Earlier this year, Freedom House, the U.S. think tank, rated India as “partly free” for the first time in its annual global survey, as the government of Narendra Modi has been accused of curtailing minorities’ rights, especially Muslims; attacking political opponents and the free press; and restricting human rights groups and NGOs.
With his morning meetings, Blinken tried to send a message about that, talking up the importance of “a vibrant civil society” and talking openly about American democracy’s struggles and faults — including the events of Jan. 6.
But during their presser, Blinken was more conciliatory than critical of Modi and Jaishankar’s administration, saying Americans “admire” India’s “steadfast commitment to democracy, pluralism, human rights, fundamental freedoms.”
“As friends, we talk about these issues. We talk about the challenges that we’re both facing in renewing and strengthening our democracies, and I think humbly, we can learn from each other,” he added, clearly highlighting the common ground, rather than risk alienating this critical new partner.
Jaishankar had a sharper edge in response to the question — telling the reporter who asked that Modi’s changes are an effort to “really right wrongs when they have been done” — the kind of ‘don’t question’ attitude that critics say is at the heart of Modi’s democratic back-sliding.
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(TOKYO) — Tokyo reported a record number of 3,177 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday as the Olympic games remain underway.
It’s the second day in a row in which Japan’s capital reported record-breaking cases. On Tuesday, the city reported 2,484 COVID-19 cases, which exceeded its previous record of 2,520 cases set on Jan. 7, 2021, according to Kyodo News.
Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Disease (NIID) has estimated that the highly contagious delta variant is responsible for nearly 80% of infections in Tokyo.
Patients who make up the new cases mainly involve people ranging in age from their 20s to 40s, according to the NIID, which reported an increase in hospitalization in people under the age of 50.
As of Wednesday, at least 27% of the country has had at least one dose of the vaccine, according to a government report at the beginning of the month. Tokyo remains under its fourth coronavirus state of emergency.
Last week, the International Olympic Committee reported that nearly 80 people accredited to the games had tested positive for the virus, including more than two dozen athletes.
Although Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga urged people during a press conference Tuesday to avoid non-essential travel, he said there is no reason to consider suspending the Games at this time, saying, “Please watch the Olympic Games on TV at home.”
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(HELLA, Iceland) — Hotel Rangá in Iceland is looking for a photographer to chase the northern lights, also known as aurora borealis.
This dream job consists of three weeks chasing the lights from September to October.
The hotel is located in the Icelandic countryside, where temperatures typically average 40 to 50 degrees during the fall season.
The photographer chosen for the job will be required to provide high-quality photos and videos in order to receive travel to and from Iceland.
The requirements also include giving the hotel “unlimited license to mutually agreed-upon photographs and videos.”
“In exchange for providing content of the northern lights at the hotel, this seasonal employee will receive free room and board along with access to the hotel‘s stargazing observatory and hot tubs, not to mention the opportunity to explore the photogenic land of fire and ice on their days off,” the hotel wrote on its website.
In Iceland, aurora borealis can be seen between September and March.
The lights can appear at any time of the night and the hotel even has a so-called “aurora wake-up service” so guests don’t miss the lights.
Interested photographers can apply for this dream job now at hotelranga.is/lights-catchers-wanted.
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(LONDON) — Beginning next month, the United Kingdom will allow fully vaccinated U.S. citizens to enter the country without quarantining.
In a statement, the U.K. Department for Transport says the policy will apply to travelers from countries on their “green” and “amber” lists, but not for those from several dozen nations on the “red list.” It will go into effect on August 2, and will cover vaccines that have been approved by the European Medicines Agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or the Swiss vaccination program.
Those arriving in the U.K. will still be required to complete a pre-departure test before landing in England, as well as a PCR test for COVID-19 within their first two days there. Separate rules apply for those entering the U.K. from France.
The plan is expected to help the British economy, as well as enable fully vaccinated people from other nations to reunite with family and friends.
“We’ve taken great strides on our journey to reopen international travel,” said U.K. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps. “Whether you are a family reuniting for the first time since the start of the pandemic or a business benefiting from increased trade – this is progress we can all enjoy.”
More than 70 percent of adults in the U.K. have received both shots of a COVID-19 vaccine. Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid credited that fact with helping to build “a wall of defence against this virus so we can safely enjoy our freedoms again.”
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