‘With lives at stake given the high number of hospitalizations associated with COVID-19, the Ministry of Health & Wellness is pursuing all efforts to support public health facilities that are low or otherwise now out of oxygen.”

According to the Ministry, all hospitals were low in supply and those that were out and had to be supplemented. It said that the Ministry is now in dialogue with oxygen suppliers IGL Limited, who are seeking to have stores increased on Monday and into Tuesday.

“All hospitals – through the regional technical directors at the regional health authorities (RHAs) and senior medical officers – have, in the interim, been instructed on oxygen conservation while the island awaits the restoration of supplies.”

In his tweet message on Monday, Tufton urged Jamaicans to get vaccinated as the country continues to struggle with a third wave of COVID-19 infections.

On Sunday, the authorities reported that the island recorded 929 new COVID-19 infections and confirmed 21 deaths.

The new cases moved the total number of infections to 66,663 since the first case was recorded last year while the death toll climbed to 1,504.

CMC/

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Shortly after midday on Monday, for the second consecutive week, parts of Trinidad were jolted by a light magnitude 4.6 earthquake west of the country.

The University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre recorded this quake at 86 kilometres depth.

The Centre also notes that this earthquake has been reviewed by an analyst.

This earthquake was reportedly widely felt across Northern and Central Trinidad.

Earthquakes in this area are typical for Trinidad and Tobago. This is the third felt earthquake this month, with the last two occurring on August 23rd at a magnitude 4.0 and the other, a magnitude 4.4, on August 12th.

Generally, across the Eastern Caribbean, a seismically active area, earthquakes of this magnitude, up to M8.0 and greater, are possible. Seismologists have repeated this statement at the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre for decades.

Each year, over 2,200 seismic events are recorded in the Eastern Caribbean. On average, the Eastern Caribbean has seen a pattern of major (M7.0-M7.9) quakes every 20 to 30 years. That pattern has stayed true. The last major earthquake occurred north of Martinique in 2007.

Three years ago, on August 21st and August 22nd, 2018, Trinidad and Tobago was struck by two large earthquakes registering a magnitude 6.9 and 5.9, respectively, the largest quakes to strike near T&T in recent history.

Reporter: Kalain Hosein

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NAN KONSEY, Haiti, Aug 30 (Reuters) – In a tent encampment in the mountains of southern Haiti, where hundreds of villagers sought shelter after a powerful earthquake flattened their homes this month, a single charred cob of corn was the only food in sight.

“I’m hungry and my baby is hungry,” said Sofonie Samedy, gesturing to her pregnant stomach.

Samedy had eaten only intermittently since the 7.2-magnitude earthquake on Aug. 14 destroyed much of Nan Konsey, a remote farming village not far from the epicenter. Across Haiti, the quake killed more than 2,000 people and left tens of thousands homeless.

In Nan Konsey, the earth’s convulsions tore open the village’s cement cisterns used to store drinking water and triggered landslides that interred residents’ modest subsistence farms.

Since then, Samedy and the rest of the community have camped alongside the main highway, about a 40-minute walk from their village, hoping to flag down the rare passing truck to ask for food and water.

“I’m praying I can still give birth to a healthy baby, but of course I’m a little afraid,” she said.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has long had one of the world’s highest levels of food insecurity. Last year, Haiti ranked 104 out of the 107 countries on the Global Hunger Index. By September, the United Nations said 4 million Haitians – 42% of the population – faced acute food insecurity.

This month’s earthquake has exacerbated the crisis: destroying crops and livestock, leveling markets, contaminating waterways used as sources of drinking water, and damaging bridges and roads crucial to reaching villages like Nan Konsey.

The number of people in urgent need of food assistance in the three departments hardest-hit by the earthquake – Sud, Grand’Anse and Nippes – has increased by one-third since the quake, from 138,000 to 215,000, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

“The earthquake rattled people who were already struggling to feed their families,” Lola Castro, WFP’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement.

“The compound effects of multiple crises are devastating communities in the south faced with some of the highest levels of food insecurity in the country.”

‘IN THE HANDS OF GOD’

Just off the highway leading to Nan Konsey, a few dozen men gathered at a goat market, where they sold off their remaining livestock to secure cash to feed their children or to pay for family members’ funerals.

Before the quake, farmer Michel Pierre had tended 15 goats and cultivated yams, potatoes, corn, and banana trees. He arrived at the market with the only two animals that survived the earthquake.

With his crops also buried beneath landslides, he hoped to earn about $100 from the sale to feed himself, his wife and his children.

When that money runs dry, he said, he isn’t sure what he will do. He is still in debt from when Hurricane Matthew ravaged Haiti in 2016.

“Day by day, it’s getting harder to be a farmer,” he said. “I am in the hands of God.”

Haiti was largely food self-sufficient until the 1980s, when at the encouragement of the United States it started loosening restrictions on crop imports and lowered tariffs. A subsequent flood of surplus U.S. crops put droves of Haitian farmers out of business and contributed to investment in the sector tailing off.

In recent years, climate change has made Hispaniola – the island Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic – increasingly vulnerable to extreme droughts and hurricanes. Spiraling food costs, economic decline and political instability have worsened the shortages.

For Gethro Polyte, a teacher and farmer living north of the town of Camp-Perrin, the earthquake decimated his two main sources of income: leveling the school where he taught fourth grade, and submerging his crops and livestock in an avalanche of earth.

Before the disaster, he and his family had been able to pull together two meals a day and draw water from underground springs, he said. But since then, his food supplies have dwindled down to a few yams and bananas, and the water has been contaminated with silt.

Polyte doubted the school would be rebuilt for classes to start in September and for him to receive a paycheck, given the chaos following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July. And with bank loans still to pay off, he doubted he’d be able to secure money to invest in rebuilding his farm.

“We are living now by eating a little something just to kill the hunger,” he said. “And, of course, things will only grow worse in the coming days.”

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A booster jab of Covid-19 vaccine for vulnerable people is not a luxury but a good way to protect them, the World Health Organization has said, as surging infection rates and a pan-European vaccination slowdown produced a “deeply worrying” situation.

“A third dose of vaccine is not a luxury booster taken away from someone who is still waiting for a first jab,” Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, said on Monday. “It’s basically a way to keep the most vulnerable safe.”

The comments seemed to a contradict a statement by the WHO earlier this month that available data did not suggest a need for booster shots. The body had warned that topping up already fully vaccinated people would only serve to increase vaccine inequality between wealthier and lower-income countries.

More than 30 of the 53 states that make up the organisation’s European region last week reported a rise of 10% or more in their 14-day Covid-19 incidence rate, Kluge said, while vaccine take-up, particularly among at-risk groups, was still low in several.

The combination of high transmission rates and relatively low vaccine coverage was “deeply worrying”, Kluge said, adding that several countries were starting to see an increase in hospital admissions and deaths across the region surged 11% last week.

Kluge said vaccine scepticism and science denial were preventing some European countries from controlling the pandemic, describing slower inoculation rates as a “serious concern” as case numbers climb once more.

Anti-vaxx sentiment is “holding us back from stabilising this crisis”, he said. “It serves no purpose, and is good for no one.” Health authorities must “look very closely into what determines vaccination uptake by population groups, then establish tailored interventions to boost uptake”

Kluge added that some countries in the region were also being held back by a lack of access to vaccines, with only 6% of populations in lower and lower-middle income countries having completed a full series of vaccinations.

And while across the region nearly three-quarters of health workers were now fully vaccinated, some countries had managed to jab only one in 10. “There is a clear need to increase production, share doses and improve vaccine access,” he said.

Nearly 850m vaccine doses had been administered in the Europe region over the past eight months, Kluge said, and nearly half its population were now fully vaccinated. But take-up had slowed markedly in the past six weeks.

“The stagnation in vaccine uptake in the region is of serious concern,” he said. “Now that public health and social measures are being relaxed in many countries, public vaccination acceptance is crucial to avoid greater transmission, more severe disease, an increase in deaths and a bigger risk of new variants.”

Kluge said “significant growth” in case numbers was being driven by the more transmissible Delta variant, which was now present in 50 countries in the region, a general easing of public health measures and a surge in summer holiday travel.

Other protective measures such as masks were also important, he said, but vaccines are “the path towards reopening societies and stabilising economies – and we remain challenged by insufficient production, insufficient access and insufficient vaccine acceptance.”

As millions of children return to school after their summer holidays, Kluge also reiterated a joint demand with the UN children’s fund, Unicef, that keeping schools open – and making them safe – must be a top priority for all governments.

===============================================

US intel review inconclusive on COVID-19 origin

The 90-day sprint to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID-19 found … not much.

A summary of an intelligence community report released Friday was inconclusive as to whether COVID-19 originated in a lab or jumped from animals to humans naturally, though U.S. officials stated that it was not developed as a biological weapon.

The summary said both the natural theory and lab leak theory are plausible, but noted that Chinese officials “did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged.”

“The IC assesses that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, probably emerged and infected humans through an initial small-scale exposure that occurred no later than November 2019,” according to a two-page summary of the report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered,” the report stated, while noting two elements of the intelligence community did not believe there was sufficient evidence to draw a conclusion.

Impact: The push to find the origin of the virus has been politically charged from the start, and Friday’s report is unlikely to significantly change the debate over the issue. The report shows an intelligence community largely divided over the origins of the disease, with several of the 19 different agencies that comprise it coming to different conclusions.

CDC director calls out schools with outbreaks that aren’t following guidance

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky called on schools that are not following guidance to “do the right thing” and implement COVID-19 precautions, like masking, to avoid outbreaks and protect children from the virus.

“In our outbreak investigations, large-scale quarantines or large number of cases are generally occurring in schools, because schools are not following our guidance, particularly our recommendations for teachers as well as students aged 12 and over to be vaccinated and for everyone right now to be masked,” Walensky said during a Friday briefing.

“I want to strongly appeal to those districts who have not implemented prevention strategies and encourage them to do the right thing to protect the children under their care,” Walensky said. “We know these multi-layered mitigation strategies work, and thanks to the American Rescue Plan schools have the resources to implement these strategies.”

The CDC director said studies have shown prevention strategies, including masking, social distancing, testing, ventilation and vaccination, help to thwart COVID-19 spread in schools.

For example: One of those studies involved an unvaccinated teacher from Marin County, Calif., who was symptomatic and took off her mask to read her class. A total of 27 people, including the teacher and more than half of the students in the class, ended up infected.

Roadblock: But some schools face obstacles in requiring masks as several GOP governors, including Gov. Greg Abbott (Texas) and Gov. Ron DeSantis (Fla.), have banned schools from mandating masks, which has prompted defiance from school officials and court battles.

Speaking of school safety: Judge blocks DeSantis from banning school mask mandates

School districts in Florida will be allowed to impose mask requirements after a district judge on Friday blocked an executive order from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) banning the mandates.

Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper ruled in favor of a group of parents who sued DeSantis over his executive order, arguing it was unconstitutional. He ruled the order is “without legal authority” and is by definition “arbitrary” and “capricious.”

Cooper issued an injunction stopping the Department of Education from taking any action against local districts that require masks in schools without a parental opt-out.

The judge said the state’s new “Parents’ Bill of Rights” does not allow the governor or the Department of Education to prohibit school districts from mandating masks.

“The law expressly permits school boards to adopt policies regarding the health care of students, such as a mask mandate, even if a parent disagrees,” Cooper said. “Parents’ rights are very important, but they are not without some reasonable limitations.”

DeSantis previously said he would appeal if the ruling was not in his favor.

Biden officials weighing shorter timeline for booster shots

President Biden on Friday said that discussions are underway over whether COVID-19 booster shots should be administered five months after second vaccine doses, a shorter timeline than the eight months previously discussed by health officials.

“This booster program is going to start here, September the 20th, pending approval of the FDA and a CDC committee of outside experts,” Biden said ahead of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

“And the question raised is should it be shorter than eight months, should it be more or less five months, and that’s being discussed. I spoke to Dr. Fauci this morning about that,” Biden added, referring to White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci.

Background: The administration earlier this month outlined a plan to give out booster shots starting Sept. 20, recommending it for most Americans who have received the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine. Health officials have said people would need boosters beginning eight months after their second dose of either vaccine.

More questions: Health experts noted that, yet again, it appeared Biden was getting ahead of the health agencies. Typically the FDA and CDC need to sign off before the White House even considers a public announcement, but the administration has been pushing forward nonetheless, raising concerns.

US opens COVID-19 vaccination site for Afghan arrivals

The U.S. has opened a mass COVID-19 vaccination site near the Dulles airport in Northern Virginia for Afghans fleeing the Taliban, the White House said Friday.

The site is operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine being administered by the Department of Health and Human Services.

A White House official said the vaccination clinic is set up at the Dulles Expo Center, which is where all arrivals from Afghanistan are screened.

Under rules from U.S. Customs and Immigration, all “humanitarian parolees” are required to get vaccinated against COVID-19 if they do not have proof of prior vaccination.

Evacuees are tested upon arrival and quarantined if they are positive, according to the White House. State Department translators are available to answer questions.

“This operation has been stood up in real time to ensure we are not wasting one minute, and making sure everyone arriving in the United States is able to enter the country safely and not spread COVID-19,” a White House official said. “As more arrivals from Afghanistan come, we hope to model this, including in Philadelphia, which is on track to vaccinate passengers in the next few days once flights begin to arrive.”

 

 

 

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The cruise industry has worked exhaustively during its pandemic pause to figure out how to carry passengers safely. But the restart is now being complicated by conflicting vaccine protocols that challenge its very business model.

The most impactful among them are the contradicting rules from the cruise industry’s home base and main embarkation point, Florida, and the popular ports its ships visit in the Caribbean.

On Aug. 19, the Bahamas issued an emergency order requiring that all adult cruise ship passengers be vaccinated in order for any ship to call in the islands. The Bahamas has emerged as a particularly important country for cruise lines, since it’s a close and convenient destination from Florida and is home to most of the lines’ private islands.

Several major lines changed their vaccination policies on their cruises from Florida to comply with the order: Carnival Cruise Line, Disney Cruise Line, MSC Cruises and Royal Caribbean International all now require that any cruiser 12 or older provide proof of vaccination to sail.

However, if not for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ (NCLH) victory in a lawsuit against Florida, the lines would not likely have been able to make those changes.

Earlier this year, Florida made it illegal for businesses to require proof of vaccination for service. The law affected cruise ships embarking passengers in the state. Royal Caribbean, for example, changed what had been an adult-vaccine requirement on cruises from Florida to a suggestion, since it could not legally ask for proof of the jabs. MSC came out of the gate saying that it would not mandate passengers be vaccinated on its cruises, which launched this month.

NCLH, however, has stuck to its 100% passenger-vaccination mandate on its three brands, Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises. And so it sued the state to invalidate its law, and earlier this month it won. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction enabling NCLH’s brands to ask for proof of inoculation on sailings from Florida.

That has enabled the other lines to comply with the Bahamas order by being able to ask passengers for vaccination status. As CLIA said in a statement, the decision by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams “concluded that a cruise line engaged in international commerce could legally require proof of vaccination.”

Or as Mark Pestronk, a Washington-based lawyer specializing in travel law and a columnist for Travel Weekly explained, “if the state tried to enforce the law against them, they could file the same suit and get the same result.”

But that ability may be fleeting.The Celebrity Edge and Royal’s Freedom of the Seas docked in Nassau earlier this summer. Photo Credit: Tom Stieghorst

Florida’s next move

Florida issued a notice of appeal, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has vowed to fight.

“We disagree with the judge’s legal reasoning and will be appealing to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals,” his office said in a statement.

Equally entrenched, NCLH CEO Frank Del Rio called it “shameful” that the company had to fight Florida for the right to keep passengers healthy.

“Here is a state that relies on tourism as its No. 1 industry,” he said in an interview with Yahoo Business. “And the No. 1 priority of any hospitality business is to keep their customers safe. I mean, that’s de rigueur. And you would expect that government, again, would do everything possible to support that. Instead, we had to go to court.”

No date has yet been set to hear the appeal, but Pestronk said that once it gets to the appeals court, NCLH may not prevail.

“The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals leans right, so the odds are fairly good that the injunction will be overturned,” Pestronk said. “However, it all depends on the luck of the draw, as appeals cases are generally heard by a three-judge panel, and you cannot predict which three judges will get assigned.”

Stakes are rising

The stakes have only risen since the Bahamas law went into effect. The U.S. Virgin Islands, another important call for cruise ships, last week formally updated its guidance and also requires all passengers age 12 and up on arriving cruise ships to be vaccinated.

In its original complaint against the Florida law, NCLH said that many foreign ports to which the line has scheduled cruises also require proof of vaccination to enter without testing, including the British Virgin Islands, Honduras and Belize, where the cruise company has a private destination, Harvest Caye.

This early look at the potential morass of pandemic-era regulation is particularly difficult for an industry that operates in various global jurisdictions on almost every trip.

“Florida’s ban poses significant burdens for NCLH, an internationally focused cruise line,” the cruise company said in its complaint. “Within as little as 30 minutes of departing from PortMiami, NCLH’s ships reach international waters and sail to interstate and foreign ports.”

In siding with NCLH, Judge Williams took note of this.

“It is undisputed that nearly every country and port that plaintiffs intend to set sail to during the remainder of the year have varying, often complicated requirements,” she wrote. “It is also clear that Covid-19 vaccination documents are the fulcrum of many of these requirements.”

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