Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Delta spreads ‘like wildfire’ as doctors study whether it makes patients sicker

By Deena Beasley

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – With a new wave of COVID-19 infections fueled by the Delta variant striking countries worldwide, disease experts are scrambling to learn whether the latest version of coronavirus is making people – mainly the unvaccinated – sicker than before.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that Delta, first identified in India and now dominant worldwide, is “likely more severe” than earlier versions of the virus, according to an internal report made public on Friday.

The agency cited research in Canada, Singapore and Scotland showing that people infected with the Delta variant were more likely to be hospitalized than patients earlier in the pandemic.

In interviews with Reuters, disease experts said the three papers suggest a greater risk from the variant, but the study populations are limited and the findings have not yet been reviewed by outside experts. Doctors treating patients infected with Delta described a more rapid onset of COVID-19 symptoms, and in many regions an overall increase serious cases.

But the experts said more work is needed to compare outcomes among larger numbers of individuals in epidemiologic studies to sort out whether one variant causes more severe disease than another.

“It’s difficult to pin down increase in severity and population bias,” said Lawrence Young, a virologist at the UK’s Warwick Medical School.

In addition, it is likely that the extraordinary rate of Delta transmission is also contributing to a greater number of severe cases arriving at hospitals, the experts said.

Delta is as contagious as chickenpox and far more contagious than the common cold or flu, according to the CDC report.

Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in San Diego, said the clearest indication that the variant may cause more severe disease comes from the Scotland study, which found that Delta roughly doubled the risk of hospitalization compared to an earlier version.

The majority of hospitalizations and deaths from coronavirus in the United States are occurring in people who have not been vaccinated. But there is evidence that the shots are less effective in people with compromised immune systems, including the elderly.

For vaccinated, otherwise healthy individuals, the odds are that if they contract COVID-19 they will only experience asymptomatic or mild disease, said Dr. Gregory Poland, infectious disease expert at the Mayo Clinic.

“But they can pass it on to family members and others who may not be so lucky,” Poland said. “We have to be vaccinated and masked or we will, for the fourth time now, endure another surge and out of that will come worse variants.”

‘FULL-ON FLAMES’

The rate of severe illness, especially in regions where vaccination rates are low, is again straining healthcare workers on the front lines of the pandemic.

“This is like a wildfire, this is not a smoldering campfire. It is full-on flames right now,” said Dr. Michelle Barron, senior medical director of infection prevention and control at Colorado’s UCHealth.

Research from China suggesting that the Delta variant replicates much faster and generates 1,000 times more virus in the body compared to the original strain highlights the biggest danger of this new wave, Barron said.

“It is hard to tell if they are more sick because of the Delta variant or if they would have been more sick anyway,” she said.

Other doctors said patients infected with Delta appear to become ill more quickly, and in some cases with more severe symptoms, than those they treated earlier in the pandemic.

“We are seeing more patients requiring oxygen sooner,” said Dr. Benjamin Barlow, chief medical officer at American Family Care, a 28-state chain of urgent care clinics.

At his clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, Barlow said that around 20% of patients are testing positive for COVID-19, compared with 2-3% a few weeks ago. Patients are assessed at that time for potential hospital admission and oxygen support.

David Montefiori, director of the Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine Research and Development at Duke University Medical Center, said the Delta variant is more infectious and leads to faster onset of illness – particularly for the unvaccinated.

“Frankly there’s a severity that comes from this variant that is a little more severe,” Montefiori said on a webcast last week. “It’s not just easier to transmit, it makes you sicker.”

(Reporting by Deena Beasley in Los Angeles, Josephine Mason in London and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Daniel Wallis)

Thousands more Afghans can resettle in U.S. as refugees, says State Dept

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Thousands more Afghans who may be targets of Taliban violence due to their U.S. affiliations will have the opportunity to resettle as refugees in the United States under a new program announced by the State Department on Monday.

Reuters exclusively reported on plans to set up the “Priority Two” refugee program, covering Afghans who worked for U.S.-funded projects and for U.S.-based non-government bodies and media outlets, earlier on Monday.

“In light of increased levels of Taliban violence, the U.S. government is working to provide certain Afghans, including those who worked with the United States, the opportunity for refugee resettlement to the United States,” the State Department said in the announcement.

“This designation expands the opportunity to permanently resettle in the United States to many thousands of Afghans and their immediate family members who may be at risk.”

The announcement of the program comes as fighting surges in Afghanistan ahead of the formal completion of the U.S. troop withdrawal at the end of this month, with the Taliban pushing to capture key provincial capitals.

U.S. President Joe Biden has faced pressure from lawmakers and advocacy groups to aid Afghans at risk of Taliban retaliation because of their association with the United States during the 20-year war.

Those who worked as employees of contractors, locally employed staff and interpreters and translators for the U.S. government or armed forces are eligible for the new designation, as well as Afghans employed by a U.S.-based media organization or non-governmental organization (NGO), the State Department said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will deliver remarks on the program at 2 p.m. (1800 GMT), the department said.

The new program for Afghans requires applicants to be referred by a U.S. agency or for the senior-most U.S. citizen employee of an NGO or media organization headquartered in the United States.

Once they have applied, they will be contacted by email to let them know they are in the system and will then have to make their own way out of Afghanistan to a third country, a senior State Department official said.

The process from that point involves security screening and can take from 12 to 14 months, said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

“We’ve already been in discussion with neighboring countries, as well as (the U.N. refugee agency), to be prepared for potential outflows,” said another official who briefed reporters, adding that it was important that Pakistan’s borders with Afghanistan remained open, while others might travel to Turkey via Iran.

That requirement differs from an existing refugee program for Iraqis, which allows Iraqis to apply directly but has been indefinitely suspended while U.S. officials pursue a sweeping fraud investigation.

The Priority Two program applies to Afghans who do not qualify for the Special Immigration Visa (SIV) program that covers interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government, and their families.

About 200 SIV applicants whose visas are in the final stages of processing and family members flew into the United States last week at the start of an evacuation effort dubbed “Operation Allies Refuge” that could include as many as 50,000 people or more.

A second plane carrying several hundred more Afghan SIV applicants arrived overnight in the United States and they will join the first arrivals at Fort Lee, Virginia, a U.S. official said on Monday.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert, Ted Hesson, Jonathan Landay and Idrees Ali, Simon Lewis and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne, Timothy Heritage, Giles Elgood and Jonathan Oatis)

Greeks urged to use less power as worst heatwave in decades tests grid

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greek authorities urged citizens to conserve electricity as the worst heatwave in more than 30 years pushed the power system to its limits on Monday and wildfires continued to burn in many areas.

With the weather service forecasting temperatures as high as 44 Celsius (111 Fahrenheit) this week, energy authorities have warned that power demand will skyrocket, testing the capacity of an electricity grid already burdened by more than 3 million holiday makers during the summer tourist season.

“We’re dealing with the worst heatwave since 1987,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said after attending a meeting at a power management center. “Everything humanly possible has been done to secure the country’s power supply. But we are also asking consumers to help us.”

As Europe’s summer of extreme weather continued, Greek firefighters have tackled more than 100 forest fires in the last 24 hours, including one on the island of Rhodes, just across the Strait of Marmara from Turkey, where fires have killed at least 8 people.

Authorities advised people to limit power usage at peak times in the afternoon and evening to prevent the electricity system collapsing, with households and businesses turning up air conditioners to seek relief from the brutal heat.

Greece’s power grid operator IPTO might ask big industries to voluntarily disconnect from the grid for a few hours and seek to import power from neighboring countries.

More than 1,000 people died during the week-long 1987 heatwave and authorities have opened air conditioned rooms for the homeless.

“It’s just very hot. I am not used to it. It’s been a lovely day but very, very hot,” said Gordon Teahy, a tourist from Scotland, sitting in the shade of a tree outside the Acropolis of Athens, which was shut for part of the day on Monday to protect visitors from the heat.

(Reporting by Phoebe Fronista and Angeliki Koutantou)

Death toll from floods in China’s Henan province rises to 302

BEIJING (Reuters) -The death toll from last month’s floods in the central Chinese province of Henan rose to 302 as of Monday, officials said, triple the figure of 99 that was reported last week, with most of the fatalities reported in the provincial capital Zhengzhou.

In Zhengzhou, a city of 12 million that lies along the Yellow River, the death toll was 292, including 14 who perished when a subway line was flooded. In total, 39 people died in underground areas in Zhengzhou including garages and tunnels.

Over three days last month, 617.1 mm (24.3 inches) of rain fell in Zhengzhou, nearly equivalent to its annual average of 640.8 mm, causing widespread damage and disruption in a city that is a major transport and industrial hub.

Of the 50 people still missing in Henan province, 47 were from Zhengzhou, local officials told a briefing on Monday.

Direct economic losses in Henan reached 114.27 billion yuan ($18 billion), with more than 580,000 hectares of farmland affected.

China’s State Council said it will set up a team to investigate the disaster in Zhengzhou and will hold officials accountable if found to have derelicted their duty, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

($1 = 6.4592 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom and Tony MunroeEditing by Mark Heinrich and David Holmes)

Peru’s new Marxist PM says ‘don’t worry’ as chances of radical policy shift rise

By Marco Aquino

LIMA (Reuters) -Peru’s newly appointed hard-left prime minister sought to soothe worried markets on Friday after President Pedro Castillo named members of his Marxist Free Peru party to key cabinet posts, sending both bond markets and the country’s currency tumbling.

Guido Bellido, a hardliner from the Andean city of Cuzco who is little known in Lima circles, was named prime minister on Thursday, scuttling investor hopes that Castillo would choose moderate advisers and sending an immediate chill through markets.

Castillo also tapped Ivan Merino, a little known mining specialist close to Free Peru, to oversee the sprawling metals industry in the world’s No.2 copper producer. Castillo, a self-described Marxist-Leninist, campaigned on promises to hike taxes on miners to underwrite health and education reforms.

Markets remained on edge throughout the day Friday as investors anxiously awaited Castillo’s choice for the key finance minister position. Most of the rest of the cabinet had been sworn in on Thursday.

“Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine,” Bellido said in brief comments to reporters early in the day.

Investors were not reassured. The local sol currency fell 3.6% to an all-time closing low of 4.068 to the dollar. Peruvian sovereign bonds plunged and the country’s benchmark stock index was also on track to close at its lowest since November.

Castillo, inaugurated on Wednesday, took to Twitter in the early hours of Friday to defend his new government.

“Our cabinet belongs to the people. It answers to the people,” Castillo wrote.

“Our commitment is to Peru and to no other interest than to dedicate each and every one of our efforts to build a more just, free and dignified country. We will not disappoint your trust.”

Investors are growing wary about Peru’s prospects under Castillo, who won last month’s election against conservative Keiko Fujimori by a razor-thin margin. After a campaign in which his pledges to distribute wealth more evenly had spooked investors but won him votes from Peru’s rural poor, he had in recent weeks appeared to take a more moderate tack.

Political wrangling between the radical leftwing arm of his Free Peru party and more centrist allies followed his win. Sources close to Castillo before his swearing-in had said the economy minister role would likely go to Pedro Francke, a moderate left-leaning economist who had helped soften the outsider candidate’s image.

(Reporting by Marco Aquino, writing by Hugh Bronstein and Dave Sherwood,Editing by Marguerita Choy and Rosalba O’Brien)

Airlift begins for Afghans who worked for U.S. during its longest war

By Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Some 200 Afghans were set to begin new lives in the United States on Friday as an airlift got under way for translators and others who risk Taliban retaliation because they worked for the United States during its 20-year war in Afghanistan, U.S. officials said.

The operation to evacuate U.S.-affiliated Afghans and family members comes as the U.S. troop pullout nears completion and government forces struggle to repulse Taliban advances.

The first planeload of 200 evacuees arrived at Fort Lee, a military base in Virginia, for final paperwork processing and medical examinations.

The Afghans are being granted Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) entitling them to bring their families. As many as 50,000 or more people ultimately could be evacuated in “Operation Allies Refuge.”

“These arrivals are just the first of many as we work quickly to relocate SIV-eligible Afghans out of harm’s way — to the United States, to U.S. facilities abroad, or to third countries — so that they can wait in safety while they finish their visa applications,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a separate statement that the U.S. would continue to use “the full force of our diplomatic, economic, and development toolkit” to support the Afghan people after the United States’ longest war.

The first group of arrivals is among some 2,500 SIV applicants and family members who have almost completed the process, clearing them for evacuation, said Russ Travers, Biden’s deputy homeland security adviser.

The Afghans were expected to remain at Fort Lee for up to seven days before joining relatives or host families across the country.

The evacuees underwent “rigorous background checks” and COVID-19 tests, Travers added. Some were already vaccinated, and the rest will be offered shots at Fort Lee.

Approximately 300 U.S. service members from several installations will provide logistics, temporary lodging, and medical support at Fort Lee, said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Around 75,000 other Afghans have been resettled in the United States in the last decade, he said in a statement, adding there is a “moral obligation” for the country “to help those who have helped us.”

The surging violence in Afghanistan has created serious problems for many SIV applicants whose paperwork is in the pipeline amid reports – denied by the Taliban – that some have been killed by vengeful insurgents.

Some applicants are unable to get to the capital Kabul to complete the required steps at the U.S. embassy or reach their flights.

The SIV program has also been plagued by long processing times and bureaucratic knots that led to a backlog of some 20,000 applications. The State Department has added staff to handle them.

The majority of those would likely miss out on the airlift operation, including the roughly 50% who were in the early stages of the process as the clock counts down towards the U.S. withdrawal by September.

Applicants in that group have held multiple protests in Kabul in recent months and they and advocates say they face the risk of violence while they wait that will be heightened once troops withdraw.

Ross Wilson, Charge D’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, told reporters that after the initial round of flights taking out those who received security clearances, around 4,000 applicants and their families who were in the later stages but still needed interviews would be taken somewhere outside the United States for processing.

That left roughly 15,000 applicants in earlier stages waiting in Afghanistan.

“We’ve felt it appropriate that we focus our energies on those parts of the SIV applicant pool who have demonstrated that they meet the criteria under the law and then work to relocate them,” he said, adding efforts were taking place in Washington to help early-stage applicants access documents.

Adam Bates, policy counsel for the International Refugee Assistance Project, which provides legal aid for refugees, said the United States had had 20 years to anticipate what the withdrawal would look like.

“It’s unconscionable that we are so late,” he said.

Kim Staffieri, co-founder of the Association of Wartime Allies, which helps SIV applicants, said surveys conducted over Facebook show that about half of the applicants cannot reach Kabul, including many approved for evacuation.

Wilson said that they believed the “overwhelming majority” of people the airlift was offered to were able to get to Kabul.

“We’re focusing our efforts on those that we can get out,” he said. “We cannot through this program solve every problem in this country.”

Congress created SIV programs in 2006 for Iraqi and Afghan interpreters who risked retaliation for working for the U.S. government.

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Additional reporting by Maria Ponnezhath and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Mary Milliken, Cynthia Osterman, Timothy Heritage, Mike Harrison and Nick Macfie)

Florida governor to order schools to allow parents to decide on masks

By Rich McKay

(Reuters) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Friday he planned to issue an executive order giving parents the right to decide whether their children will wear a mask at school, a move that would thwart mandates put in place in two of the state’s counties.

School districts in Broward and Gadsden counties said recently students would have to cover their faces when classes start next month, setting up a clash with the governor, who has taken a hard line stance against vaccine and mask requirements.

“In Florida, there will be no lockdowns, there will be no school closures, there will be no restrictions and no mandates in the state of Florida,” the Republican governor said on Friday during a speech in Cape Coral announcing the executive order.

The mandates in Broward and Gadsden countries follow the recommendation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that all students, teachers and staff wear masks regardless of whether they have been vaccinated.

DeSantis did not say when he would sign the order, and the governor’s office did not immediately respond to inquiries.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta and additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; editing by Diane Craft and Steve Orlofsky)

Greenland experienced ‘massive’ ice melt this week, scientists say

By Kate Abnett

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – With climate change fueling high temperatures across the Arctic, Greenland lost a massive amount of ice on Wednesday with enough melting to cover the U.S. state of Florida in 2 inches (5.1 cm) of water, scientists said.

It was the third-biggest ice loss for Greenland in a single day since 1950. The other two records, also within the last decade, happened in 2012 and 2019.

The rapid melt followed warm air being trapped over the Arctic island by a change in atmospheric circulation patterns, scientists said, noting that there could be more ice lost.

On Wednesday alone, some 22 gigatonnes of ice melted – with 12 gigatonnes flowing to the ocean and 10 gigatonnes absorbed by the snowpack where it can refreeze, said Xavier Fettweis, a climate scientist at the University of Liege in Belgium.

Polar Portal, a group of Danish Arctic research institutions, described it in a tweet as a “massive melting event.” While that volume was less than the record single-day ice melt in 2019, this week’s event covered a larger area, the group said.

Such events can create feedback loops that drive further warming and melting in Greenland, said Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University. As snow melts, it exposes darker ice or ground beneath, which absorbs more sunlight rather than reflecting it back out of the atmosphere.

“It really positions Greenland to be more vulnerable to the rest of the melting season,” said Tedesco, research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Scientists have estimated that melting from Greenland’s ice sheet – the second-biggest on Earth after Antarctica’s – has caused around 25% of global sea level rise seen over the last few decades.

Tedesco and other scientists have warned that models used to project future ice loss do not capture the impact of changing atmospheric circulation patterns – meaning they may be underestimating the future melting of Greenland, which is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.

Meanwhile, the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, due to factors including vanishing ice in the Arctic Ocean, which exposes darker water that absorbs solar radiation.

On Wednesday, air temperatures over Greenland were “worrisome,” the EU said, with temperatures in Constable Pynt on the east of the island hitting 23.2 C (73.8 Fahrenheit).

(Reporting by Kate Abnett in Brussels; Editing by Katy Daigle and Matthew Lewis)

FBI probe shows amount of chemicals in Beirut blast was a fraction of original shipment

(Reuters) – The amount of ammonium nitrate that blew up at Beirut port last year was one fifth of the shipment unloaded there in 2013, the FBI concluded after the blast, adding to suspicions that much of the cargo had gone missing.

As the first anniversary approaches on Aug. 4, major questions remain unanswered, including how a huge quantity of ammonium nitrate – which can be used to make fertilizer or bombs – was left unsafely stored in a capital city for years.

The blast was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded, killing more than 200 people, wounding thousands, and devastating swathes of Beirut.

The FBI’s Oct. 7, 2020 report, which was seen by Reuters this week, estimates around 552 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded that day, much less than the 2,754 tonnes that arrived on a Russian-leased cargo ship in 2013.

The FBI report does not give any explanation as to how the discrepancy arose, or where the rest of the shipment may have gone.

In response to a detailed request for comment, an FBI spokesperson referred Reuters to the Lebanese authorities.

FBI investigators came to Beirut after the blast at Lebanon’s request.

A senior Lebanese official who was aware of the FBI report and its findings said the Lebanese authorities agreed with the Bureau on the quantity that exploded.

Many officials in Lebanon have previously said in private they believe a lot of the shipment was stolen.

The ammonium nitrate was going from Georgia to Mozambique on a Russian-leased cargo ship when the captain says he was instructed to make an unscheduled stop in Beirut and take on extra cargo.

The ship arrived in Beirut in November 2013 but never left, becoming tangled in a legal dispute over unpaid port fees and ship defects. No one ever came forward to claim the shipment.

The senior Lebanese official said there were no firm conclusions as to why the quantity that exploded was less than the original shipment. One theory was that part of it was stolen. A second theory was that only part of the shipment detonated, with the rest blown out to sea, the official said.

The FBI report said “an approximate amount reaching around 552 metric tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded in warehouse 12.”

It noted the warehouse was large enough to house the 2,754 tonne shipment, which was stored in one-tonne bags, but added “it is not logical that all of them were present at the time of the explosion.”

(Editing by William Maclean)

Rio’s homeless brave unprecedented cold

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -As an unusual cold snap stuns residents of Rio de Janeiro, a Brazilian city famous for its sun, sand and sea, the city’s homeless have been struggling to sleep through the chill.

“It’s very cold. Even with two blankets and a quilt, I still felt horrible last night,” Flávio, who is homeless, said.

A polar air mass has been traveling toward the country’s center-south regions this week, bringing fast winds and rare snowfall to communities unfamiliar with low temperatures — and to street residents ill-equipped to handle them.

In Rio, Jeniffer Faria da Silva and Marlon Lemos Mollulo have been distributing warm food, blankets, clothes, shoes and bread to the city’s street residents as part of a project they began a year and a half ago. Traveling through the city at night, they’ve been placing thermal liners on concrete, where dozens of the city’s homeless sleep side by side to stay warm.

“There’s a lot of suffering, especially in Rio where we aren’t used to having these kinds of temperatures. We don’t have the right infrastructure to cope with the cold, and some of these people also have pets,” Silva said.

The polar air mass is slated to bring freezing temperatures to São Paulo and Minas Gerais, major producers of key commodities like sugar, citrus and coffee.

Temperatures in Rio are expected to drop to an unusual low of 9°C on Friday before gradually starting to warm up in August.

(Reporting by Sergio Queiroz, writing by Jimin Kang, Editing by Nick Zieminski)