Lawyers accused prison authorities of blocking access to the opposition leader.
March 25, 2021, 2:45 PM
• 5 min read
Lawyers for the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny said they are concerned about his health in prison and have accused authorities of blocking access to him.
Navalny, known as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, arrived in a penal colony about 60 miles east of Moscow earlier this month, where he has been sent to serve a two-and-a-half year prison sentence he received in a trial widely criticized as political.
Lawyers for Navalny on Wednesday said they had tried to make a scheduled visit to him at the prison, Correctional Colony No 2, but were stopped from seeing him by prison authorities, whom they accused of hiding Navalny. The lawyers, Olga Mikhailova and Vadim Kobzev, said they were worried Navalny’s health was deteriorating in prison.
They said Navalny had been suffering back pain for several days and that one leg had now gone numb and he was unable to stand on it. He had been seen by a doctor last Friday but had since been denied any treatment, besides being given two ibuprofen tablets, the lawyers said.
Navalny chose to return to Russia after narrowly surviving a nerve agent poisoning last summer that has been linked to the Russian security services. His supporters fear he could still face fresh attempts on his life in prison.
“In the circumstances that we are all aware of, the sharp worsening of his well-being cannot but cause extreme concern,” the two lawyers wrote in a statement.
Following the reports, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service on Thursday announced it had conducted a medical examination of Navalny at the prison and that his health was “considered stable, satisfactory.”
The prison where Navalny is being held in the Vladimirskaya region is notorious among Russian prisoners for its strictness and for frequently blocking access to inmates’ lawyers and relatives. Prisoners spend much of the day on their feet and have virtually no free time, former inmates have told ABC News and other media.
Denying inmates adequate medical care is also routine in Russian prisons, according to human rights monitors. Prisoners can go weeks requesting medical examinations before seeing a doctor and treatment is often limited to ibuprofen tablets.
Navalny spent months recuperating in Germany following his near fatal poisoning with a nerve agent last August that left him in a coma. Navalny, 41, had to relearn how to move, undergoing physical therapy in Germany, but he has appeared to recover well. His doctors, however, said the Novichok nerve agent could leave lingering nerve damage and other health problems.
In recent weeks Navalny himself has posted upbeat messages from prison via his lawyers. In messages from the penal colony this week, he compared inmates being forced to line up each morning to that of Stormtroopers in the “Star Wars” films.
Navalny’s team recently announced plans for a new street protest later this spring. Tens of thousands of people joined protests across Russia in late January after Navalny was arrested following his return to Moscow. But after two weeks of intense crackdown that saw thousands detained, Navalny’s organizers called off any further street demonstrations, saying the movement needed to conserve its strength and that it would be irresponsible to continue when it was clear short-term demonstrations would not force the Kremlin to release Navalny.
Although the protests were unusually large for Russia, they were were easily dispersed by authorities with riot police. On the day of Navalny’s jailing, only a couple of thousand people demonstrated in Moscow.
Navalny’s team said they were taking a different approach and would not name a date for the new protest until around 500,000 people had said they would attend by registering at a website created by Navalny’s group. After more than two days, the website shows nearly 247,000 people have registered to take part in the protest.
Over 2 million Americans are receiving vaccinations every day, fueling hope the end of the pandemic is near. But since the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged in Wuhan, China 14 months ago, over 100 million people worldwide have been infected. And with each infection, the virus has had the chance to mutate into genetic offspring called variants. One of those variants, first identified in the U.K., has spread across the U.S. and is estimated to be 50% more transmissible than the original virus, and likely more deadly.
Nationwide, COVID-19 cases have fallen, but public health officials are warning if these variants continue to spread, they could trigger a new surge of infections.
News the U.K. variant had reached American shores came last December at the University of California San Diego. The variant was found as part of an extensive coronavirus surveillance and testing system that has kept nearly 25,000 people living and working on campus.
Vending machines designed to dispense candy bars, now offer nasal swabs for COVID testing. And golf carts go on daily runs, collecting samples taken from wastewater.
Dr. Jon LaPook: Oh, there’s the fluid.
Smruthi Karthikeyan: There you go. Do you see it?
Dr. Jon LaPook: Yeah. Sure.
Smruthi Karthikeyan: So now, if we pick this up…
Smruthi Karthikeyan
Environmental engineer Smruthi Karthikeyan showed us how robots, placed near over 300 student dorms and research buildings, suck up sewer samples, looking for early evidence someone might be infected with the virus.
Dr. Jon LaPook: And if there’s a positive, what happens?
Smruthi Karthikeyan: If there’s a positive they will send targeted notices saying, “your building, the wastewater has been positive. And please go get tested.”
Many positive samples from wastewater and nasal swabs are sent here, to nearby Scripps Research, where infectious disease researcher Kristian Andersen’s lab performs genetic sequencing to identify any variations.
Kristian Andersen: It’s really important that we keep an eye on the virus. How is it evolving? How is it transmitting? How is it changing?
Genetic sequences from around the world are constantly being analyzed in a database called Nextstrain that Andersen and other scientists use to visualize how variants are spreading.
Dr. Jon LaPook: These are beautiful colors but what am I looking at?
Kristian Andersen: you can think of this as a family tree. And what we have is down here… this is the first one in Wuhan. Viruses mutate over time. You see mutations coming up. And that’s when you start getting these branching patterns. Then you have sisters and brothers here and then you have aunts and uncles.
Dr. Jon LaPook: And what’s the practical use of having a tree like this?
Kristian Andersen: The practical use is that somebody like me can go in and let’s look at, like, how is this all related.
Dr. Jon LaPook speaks with Kristian Andersen
Since the original virus was first identified in December 2019, thousands of variants have been documented. Andersen says scientists are keeping a close eye on three of them they call “variants of concern.”
Kristian Andersen: That’s the U.K. variant which was, you can see here, was identified– dates back to about September of last year. And then all of a sudden, you get a lot of these? And that’s because it’s more transmissible.
So transmissible the Centers for Disease Control has projected the U.K. variant will be the dominant strain in the U.S. in the next month. The variants from Brazil and South Africa have already spread to dozens of countries, including the U.S.
Variants arise because the SARS-CoV-2 virus is constantly making copies of itself. As it replicates, tiny mistakes, or mutations, can occur in its genetic code. They’re rare and usually insignificant, but once in a while one or more mutations team up to create a more dangerous variant of the virus.
Dr. Francis Collins: We are reading evolution’s lab notebook. Every time one of these pops up, it’s telling us exactly how evolution benefits at the expense of the fitness of humankind.
Dr. Francis Collins
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, is a geneticist who 20 years ago oversaw the decoding of the human genome. He says he’s surprised by how much this virus is evolving.
Dr. Jon LaPook: Why are the variants of concern that we’re seeing in places like the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil of such concern?
Dr. Francis Collins: It turns out that some of these mutations actually change the behavior of this virus in a way that makes it more infectious or more serious. And the evidence is that, for both the B117, which is primarily seen in the U.K. but increasingly in the U.S. and the South African, B1351, that they are more transmissible. They’re just really successful.
Dr. Jon LaPook: We’re seeing evolution in motion?
Dr. Francis Collins: I think it’s been rarely seen as clearly as right now how evolution works. In that way, it was pretty predictable. What wasn’t predictable for me anyway was that there would be so many copies of this virus that even a slow evolutionary process could in just a matter of a few months produce some viruses that we’re worried about.
Dr. Jon LaPook: And there are so many copies because?
Dr. Francis Collins: It’s a pandemic. And it’s been very successful in infecting millions and millions of people.
An early clue about how the virus was mutating came last summer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Infectious disease specialist Dr. Ghady Haidar says a cancer patient with a compromised immune system came in with a COVID-19 infection that persisted for over 70 days — far beyond the typical few weeks.
Dr. Ghady Haidar: We had no idea at the time that people could still be actively infectious for that long. And it really wasn’t until after he passed away that we started running some additional testing on samples that he had allowed us to collect from him no when he was alive. And that’s when we found that the virus really quickly began to develop all these deletions and mutations throughout the patient’s life.
Dr. Ghady Haidar
This electron microscope image shows a sample taken from the patient’s wind-pipe. Tiny spheres looked like the original virus from Wuhan, China.
But genetic sequencing revealed a different story, there were small gaps where information should be. Irish born University of Pittsburgh virologist Paul Duprex says the U.K. variant has some of these same deletions, leading some scientists to believe it may have started in an immunocompromised patient.
Dr. Jon LaPook: When you have a patient who is sick for so long, there’s the opportunity for the virus to replicate and replicate and replicate. And every time a virus has that opportunity to replicate, there’s also an opportunity for it to make a mistake, right?
Paul Duprex: And that’s how viruses change. Those mistakes give the virus just a little bit of a competitive edge. For example, can it get into a cell better?
Duprex says yes. He used this animation to show us how. It starts with the spike protein, seen in red, which the virus uses to latch onto and enter a human cell.
Paul Duprex: So if you’ve been infected, you’ll make antibodies, these blue molecules that bind to the outside of the virus spike. And what they do is they block the virus getting into the cell. They can’t bind to the receptor. Now, here’s a variant. The yellow illustrating the variant. The antibodies can no longer bind. The virus is able to attach to that receptor, latch on and bingo, that person gets infected.
Dr. Jon LaPook: Is there anything we can do to stop the virus from mutating so much?
Paul Duprex: Can certainly stop it making as many mutations by stopping it infecting as many people. If we block its transmission, if we wear a mask, if we get vaccinated, if we do social distancing. So there is a practical thing that we can do. But physically, biologically is there something that we can do? Is there a magic bullet that we can shoot at it that stops it making mutations? Nope.
Paul Duprex
To understand the threat posed by mutations, public health experts are studying the Brazilian city of Manaus. Last spring, COVID swept through the population, leaving about 70% infected. As a result, some researchers believed the city had reached herd immunity.
But then, starting this past December, epidemiologists suspect thousands were reinfected with the Brazilian variant. Hospitals there were overwhelmed. Health officials reported up to 150 deaths a day. And a recent study suggests the variant is more infectious than earlier strains and may be better at evading antibodies.
At Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Dr. David Ho, known for his groundbreaking HIV research, is now working to identify which variants are present in New York City. Since January, his team has analyzed over 2,000 nasal swabs taken from people who had tested positive for COVID-19.
Dr. David Ho: What was unexpected was there were only sporadic cases of the U.K., Brazilian and South African variants. But instead, we noticed that we had a homegrown variant.
Dr. Jon LaPook: Something new?
Dr. David Ho: Something new that was dominating and rising very rapidly.
Dr. Jon LaPook: How rapidly is it growing?
Dr. David Ho: It’s over 20%.
Dr. Jon LaPook: Over 20%? So that’s a rapid rise in the last couple of months.
Dr. David Ho: Right.
Dr. Ho says the New York City variant is doubling roughly every two weeks, and city health officials announced this past week they found the variant in 39% of the COVID-19 samples they recently sequenced. Dr. Ho is concerned because that variant shares a key mutation with one found in South Africa.
Dr. David Ho
Several studies have looked at the effectiveness of the three vaccines authorized in the U.S. Against that South African variant. Both in laboratory tests and clinical trials, the vaccines appear to be somewhat less effective at eliciting an immune response or preventing infection — but the companies anticipate the vaccines will still provide protection from severe disease from that South African variant.
Dr. Jon LaPook: What people are worried about is, “I got a vaccine. I thought I was safe. And now you’re talking about all these variants. Where am I?”
Dr. David Ho: I’m in the same boat. I got vaccinated and I felt protected for a while, until we realized there was so much of the homegrown variant in New York.
Dr. Jon LaPook: How do you put this in perspective for people who are watching this right now?
Dr. David Ho: I think we have to be a bit concerned. But that doesn’t say the vaccines don’t work. Even in South Africa, the vaccines still work to some extent, it’s just not as highly protective as we had against the original strain. In addition, the vaccine may not protect against infection, but may protect against disease or death.
Dr. Collins says so far the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines appear effective against the U.K. variant. And this past week a small laboratory study found the Pfizer vaccine elicited the same strong immune response against the Brazilian variant as against the original virus. Drug companies say they are working to re-tool their vaccines and create booster shots, as needed, to keep up with the variants.
Dr. Jon LaPook: What keeps you up at night in terms of the variants down the line?
Dr. Francis Collins: If I have an anxiety it’s that something worse than the South African variant is out there that will get to the point where the vaccines no longer appear to be fully protective against a bad outcome. And that will certainly drive us then to do a redesign of the vaccines as quick as we can.
Dr. Jon LaPook: Recently, a variant has been found in New York City that has some of the characteristics of the variant of concern found in South Africa.
Dr. Francis Collins: I’m not on the surface of it overly alarmed about that. But it’s gonna deserve a real lab experiment to make sure that our vaccines would still provide immunity against that.
Dr. Jon LaPook: There’s a ton of political, economic and other pressure to have these vaccines be successful. Is the government committed to being totally transparent about these variants, about whether or not the vaccines are working? Or is there some kind of a filter?
Dr. Francis Collins: There cannot be a filter. I will not stand for that. Neither will Dr. Fauci. And absolutely, if we ever come across as having the truth of the matter distorted by what is politically or economically convenient, then we will have lost the public trust.
Dr. Collins says right now we have a window of opportunity, and that Americans need to get vaccinated, avoid large gatherings, and wear masks to prevent the virus from spreading and mutating even more.
Dr. Francis Collins: To continue to hear that this isn’t over yet has got to be a hard thing for all of us. I don’t want to sound so pessimistic though, we are making amazing progress. We just gotta hang on and don’t blow it at the end. If you’re the guy running for the finish line, don’t trip right there on the 10-yard line. Try to get all the way to the goal. We– we can see it. We’re gonna get there. But this is not the moment to relax or stop running hard.
Produced by Denise Schrier Cetta. Associate producers, Katie Brennan and Amy Birnbaum. Broadcast associates, Annabelle Hanflig, Sheena Samu and Deborah Rubin. Edited by Michael Mongulla.
“Even though those thousands of people that were marching to the Capitol were trying to pressure people like me to vote the way they wanted me to vote, I knew those were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, and so I wasn’t concerned,” Johnson said during the radio talk show “The Joe Pags Show.” He was discussing his recent comments downplaying the danger that day and he has said he “never really felt threatened.”
“Now, had the tables been turned — Joe, this could get me in trouble — had the tables been turned, and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned,” Johnson continued.
CNN has reached out to Johnson’s office for comment.
Some conservatives have sought to draw a false equivalency between the events of January 6 and the unrest that took place over the summer in the wake of several high-profile police killings of Black Americans. Although there were incidents of violence and property destruction last summer, the January riot at the Capitol resulted in five deaths, including a Capitol Police officer, and more than 100 other police officers were injured.
The Justice Department is preparing some of the first guilty plea offers for people who were subsequently charged in the investigation, which has been called one of the “largest in American history,” with more than 400 possible defendants.
Johnson has repeatedly made incendiary comments mischaracterizing the riots. Last month, Johnson said that he didn’t believe that what had happened at the Capitol was an “armed insurrection,” despite court records indicating that supporters of then-President Donald Trump had brought dozens of weapons to Washington on the day of the insurrection, according to the Justice Department.
Later in February, Johnson advanced the conspiracy theory that there had been professional provocateurs within the mob at the Capitol. The FBI has said there is no evidence that Antifa or any other groups of leftist instigators were part of the January 6 crowd — much less were the ones inciting violence — and nearly a dozen Trump supporters charged in connection with the insurrection have said that such groups weren’t involved in the attack. Many of the people arrested identify with far-right groups like the Oath Keepers, not with any groups on the far left.
CNN’s Marshall Cohen, Zachary Cohen and Evan Perez contributed to this report.
New Mexico Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has concerns with President Biden’s moratorium pausing oil and gas leasing on federal lands that she said “hurts New Mexico.”
Within his first week in office, Biden signed an executive order to temporarily suspend new oil and gas leases on public lands and offshore waters for drilling and fracking for 60 days.
“I’m clearly concerned that right out of the gate with very little guidance, we have an announcement to stall … a moratorium on lease applications, and the reality is: a lot of oil and gas … in the Permian [Basin] is on private land in Texas,” she said during a Wednesday event with the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce.
The Delaware Basin is one component of the Permian Basin — the largest oil basin in the U.S. — located partially in the southeastern area of New Mexico.
More than 60% of New Mexico’s oil and gas production is on federal land while 55% of state wells are located on federal land, according to the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD).
ALASKA WAS ‘OPENLY’ TARGETED BY BIDEN ORDER, MURKOWSKI CLAIMS
More than 50 gas companies produce more than a million barrels per day from the Delaware, supporting about 18,000 jobs and helping to produce millions in tax revenue for the state, Forbes reported in January. The New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee confirmed to Fox News that 18,000 is a “fair estimate.”
Twenty-four wells located in the Delaware, about half of which is federal land, produced more than 500,000 barrels of gas in 2020, Forbes reported.
BIDEN’S BAN ON OIL AND GAS LEASES ON FEDERAL LANDS A ‘DIRECT ATTACK’ ON WYOMING, SAYS GOVERNOR
Grisham continued: “So, wherever you are — wherever you are in the country or on the chamber, however you feel about that — you can simply just move, and that just hurts New Mexico, and there are no environmental standards there.”
She added that her administration has “initiated both conversations and a pretty strongly worded letter that this doesn’t make any sense.”
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“The last issue is: It’s an economic problem for the state, but rather, it’s also a message to states to not do anything and wait for you to do it, and you’re not going to get as far as fast. If you’re looking for innovation [in] environmental policy, you’re going to stall that,” the governor said.
Biden’s moratorium is an effort to combat climate change in the U.S. The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Fox News.
A worker at a CVS in Eastchester, New York, checks in a person with an appointment to receive the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine on February 12. Gabriela Bhaskar/Bloomberg/Getty Images
CVS is now providing Covid-19 vaccinations through the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program in 29 states and Puerto Rico, the pharmacy chain said in a press release Thursday.
This is nearly double the 17 states where CVS was previously offering vaccinations.
“We’re increasing the number of active stores and expanding to additional states as fast as supply allows,” said Karen S. Lynch, President and Chief Executive Officer, CVS Health in the statement.
Appointments in the newly activated states and jurisdictions will start to become available for booking on Saturday, March 13, CVS said.
CVS now offers vaccinations in nearly 1,200 stores in: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.
Not every CVS location in these states will be offering vaccinations, and eligibility requirements in each jurisdiction still apply.
The Biden administration announced last week that Federal Retail Pharmacy Program participants would prioritize teachers and child care workers.
“From March 3 to March 10, this population accounted for more than 30 percent of COVID-19 vaccine appointments at CVS Pharmacy locations,” according to CVS’ statement.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Infectious disease experts are expressing concern about Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Iraq, given a sharp rise in coronavirus infections there, a fragile health care system and the unavoidable likelihood that Iraqis will crowd to see him.
No one wants to tell Francis to call it off, and the Iraqi government has every interest in showing off its relative stability by welcoming the first pope to the birthplace of Abraham. The March 5-8 trip is expected to provide a sorely-needed spiritual boost to Iraq’s beleaguered Christians while furthering the Vatican’s bridge-building efforts with the Muslim world.
But from a purely epidemiological standpoint, as well as the public health message it sends, a papal trip to Iraq amid a global pandemic is not advisable, health experts say.
Their concerns were reinforced with the news Sunday that the Vatican ambassador to Iraq, the main point person for the trip who would have escorted Francis to all his appointments, tested positive for COVID-19 and was self-isolating.
In an email to The Associated Press, the embassy said Archbishop Mitja Leskovar’s symptoms were mild and that he was continuing to prepare for Francis’ visit.
Beyond his case, experts note that wars, economic crises and an exodus of Iraqi professionals have devastated the country’s hospital system, while studies show most of Iraq’s new COVID-19 infections are the highly-contagious variant first identified in Britain.
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Dr. Navid Madani, virologist and founding director of the Center for Science Health Education in the Middle East and North Africa at Harvard Medical School’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The Iranian-born Madani co-authored an article in The Lancet last year on the region’s uneven response to COVID-19, noting that Iraq, Syria and Yemen were poorly placed to cope, given they are still struggling with extremist insurgencies and have 40 million people who need humanitarian aid.
In a telephone interview, Madani said Middle Easterners are known for their hospitality, and cautioned that the enthusiasm among Iraqis of welcoming a peace-maker like Francis to a neglected, war-torn part of the world might lead to inadvertent violations of virus control measures.
“This could potentially lead to unsafe or superspreading risks,” she said.
Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious disease control expert at the University of Exeter College of Medicine, concurred.
“It’s a perfect storm for generating lots of cases which you won’t be able to deal with,” he said.
Organizers promise to enforce mask mandates, social distancing and crowd limits, as well as the possibility of increased testing sites, two Iraqi government officials said.
The health care protocols are “critical but can be managed,” one government official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity.
And the Vatican has taken its own precautions, with the 84-year-old pope, his 20-member Vatican entourage and the 70-plus journalists on the papal plane all vaccinated.
But the Iraqis gathering in the north, center and south of the country to attend Francis’ indoor and outdoor Masses, hear his speeches and participate in his prayer meetings are not vaccinated.
And that, scientists say, is the problem.
“We are in the middle of a global pandemic. And it is important to get the correct messages out,” Pankhania said. “The correct messages are: the less interactions with fellow human beings, the better.”
He questioned the optics of the Vatican delegation being inoculated while the Iraqis are not, and noted that Iraqis would only take such risks to go to those events because the pope was there.
In words addressed to Vatican officials and the media, he said: “You are all protected from severe disease. So if you get infected, you’re not going to die. But the people coming to see you may get infected and may die.”
“Is it wise under that circumstance for you to just turn up? And because you turn up, people turn up to see you and they get infected?” he asked.
The World Health Organization was diplomatic when asked about the wisdom of a papal trip to Iraq, saying countries should evaluate the risk of an event against the infection situation, and then decide if it should be postponed.
“It’s all about managing that risk,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19. “It’s about looking at the epidemiologic situation in the country and then making sure that if that event is to take place, that it can take place as safely as possible.”
Francis has said he intends to go even if most Iraqis have to watch him on television to avoid infection. The important thing, he told Catholic News Service, is “they will see that the pope is there in their country.”
Francis has frequently called for an equitable distribution of vaccines and respect for government health measures, though he tends to not wear face masks. Francis for months has eschewed even socially distanced public audiences at the Vatican to limit the chance of contagion.
Dr. Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton’s Faculty of Medicine, said the number of new daily cases in Iraq is “increasing significantly at the moment” with the Health Ministry reporting around 4,000 a day, close to the height of its first wave in September.
Head said for any trip to Iraq, there must be infection control practices in force, including mask-wearing, hand-washing, social distancing and good ventilation in indoor spaces.
“Hopefully we will see proactive approaches to infection control in place during the pope’s visit to Baghdad,” he said.
The Iraqi government imposed a modified lockdown and curfew in mid-February amid a new surge in cases, closing schools and mosques and leaving restaurants and cafes only open for takeout. But the government decided against a full shutdown because of the difficulty of enforcing it and the financial impact on Iraq’s battered economy, the Iraqi officials told AP.
Many Iraqis remain lax in using masks and some doubt the severity of the virus.
Madani, the Harvard virologist, urged trip organizers to let science and data guide their decision-making.
A decision to reschedule or postpone the papal trip, or move it to a virtual format, would “be quite impactful from a global leadership standpoint” because “it would signal prioritizing the safety of Iraq’s public,” she said.
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Kullab reported from Baghdad. Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.
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Follow all of AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio CPS Energy customers say they’re worried about the elderly and sick neighbors who are without power during the ongoing rotating outages happening across the state.
Carlos Correa has been routinely checking in on his 90-year-old neighbors since they have been without power since 2 a.m. Monday morning due to ongoing rotating outages. He says his calls to CPS Energy for answers about when the power would be restored have gone unanswered.
“We’ve called everybody. CPS Energy has no one to speak to, no one to give us any type of information as to even when our electricity is going to come back on,” Correa told KSAT on Monday evening. “As much as we pay into our electric usage every single month, (they’re) just so unprepared with anybody, with any type of customer service or any type of emergency command center to give us some sort of answer as to when we’re going to be getting some sort of electricity back.”
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CPS Energy: Most customers subject to rotating outages as winter weather continues
CPS Energy says the energy demand has been up to four times higher than expected. Some systems have been impacted by the high demand and others by equipment failure due to the cold temperatures.
CPS Energy CEO Paula Gold-Williams said every energy system is stressed across the state.
“We are absolutely sorry that this is occurring. It is an unprecedented weather event that we actually had thought that the cold weather was behind us,” Gold-Williams said.
Rudy Garza, with CPS Energy, says CPS Energy is reaching out to its customers via all social media platforms, calls, and emails. The utility company says it is also contacting the elderly and sick who are on their list.
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“In some cases, we have done automated calls to customers in this group, letting them know that if they find themselves in a medical emergency where they are, maybe their home gets too cold or their oxygen tank runs out or something happens, dial 911 and seek medical attention,” Garza said.
While temperatures will continue to affect the energy consumption, CPS Energy expects the outages to continue, so the company urges customers to make plans.
Correa urges others to check in on their neighbors as well.
Late Monday night, Gold-Williams issued the following statement:
“We hope to see improvements overnight, but we are facing unprecedented challenges. Our focus tonight is to restore the consistency of the grid. Conservation is important, and we ask our community to continue to do all they can to limit electric and natural gas energy use. We understand that this is a big ask of our customers and sincerely apologize for the problems that this is causing them. Our customers are our neighbors, families and friends, and we are doing everything we can to make sure we work to make things better for everyone.”
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“Rotating outages began across the state around 1:30 a.m. on Monday morning. Utility system operators are making real-time decisions with real-time information coming from ERCOT, and these decisions are made in a nondiscriminatory manner. While increasingly difficult to accommodate, utilities work to preserve power for critical functions (i.e., hospitals, governmental entities, etc.) to limit the impact on those facilities. It is through this outage management process, executed over the same timeframe in major cities across the state, that the grid can and must be re-stabilized.
“Please know that all participants in the ERCOT grid are taking the same measures. The extreme weather has driven record-breaking energy use across the state. With energy reductions driven by outage management, CPS Energy used more than 4,954 MW yesterday, which was a winter record. If the outages had not been proactively managed thus far, winter energy demand would have exceeded summer maximums for the first time in CPS Energy’s history.
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To assist with keeping residents off the road and safe, CPS Energy’s walk-in centers will be closed on Tuesday, February 16, 2021. Additionally, Braunig and Calaveras parks and lakes are closed until further notice.”
The utility company offered the following tips for customers to keep warm and conserve power:
Stay warm by dressing in layers of loose-fitting clothing instead of a single heavy layer.
Wear a hat, even indoors. Keeping your head warm helps keep your body warm.
Wear gloves or mittens to keep hands warm, and wear a scarf to keep your neck warm.
Use towels to block drafts around doors and windows.
Use extreme care when using gasoline-powered generators. Do not operate a generator inside your home or other inhabited building. Only operate generators outdoors, and be sure the exhaust is facing away from your home.
Do not use camping stoves or outdoor grills indoors, not even in your garage. These can cause carbon monoxide to build up in your home and can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning.
Conserve power on your mobile phone in case of emergency. Some battery-saving tips include:
Turn down the screen light
Turn off Bluetooth
Close all unused applications
If possible, use text to communicate instead of making a call
If you have multiple mobile phones in the household, keep one phone on for emergency updates and turn the others off to preserve battery life.
Unplug sensitive equipment during a power outage, including televisions, computers, and other electronics which helps protect against any voltage irregularities that may occur as power is restored.
If you have medication that requires refrigeration, please check with your pharmacist for instructions on storage during an extended power outage.
If you have a garage door opener, review the instructions for manually opening the garage door.
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The Houston Rockets are concerned that rising star Christian Wood could be “sidelined for an extended period” after reinjuring his ankle in Thursday’s win at Memphis, per ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. Wood appeared to badly roll his right ankle, which he initially sprained in mid-January, upon stepping on the foot of Grizzlies guard Ja Morant.
Wood pounded the floor in obvious agony and discomfort. After staying down for much of the timeout, Wood initially attempted to stay in the game to shoot free throws, since not shooting those would disqualify him. But Wood’s teammates talked him out of that idea, and he hobbled toward the tunnel — where a wheelchair was waiting for him.
According to reporters in Memphis, Wood was still in a wheelchair and with crutches in hand upon leaving the arena postgame.
The Rockets are concerned that star center Christian Wood could be sidelined for an extended period after injuring his right ankle for the second time in a span of less than three weeks, sources told ESPN.
“It didn’t look great,” coach Stephen Silas said. “It was unfortunate.”
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) February 5, 2021
In 20 minutes against the Grizzlies, Wood had 17 points (70% FG) and 7 rebounds as Houston raced out to a 21-point lead at the time of his departure. For the 2020-21 season, the 25-year-old big man entered Thursday averaging 22.3 points (55.3% FG) and 10.4 rebounds in 31.9 minutes per game, including 39.7% on 3-pointers. All are career-highs.
Wood’s injury comes at an awful time for the surging Rockets (11-10), who won for the seventh time in eight games at Memphis.
Houston’s next game comes Saturday at home versus San Antonio. Considering that Wood was wheeled off, and that it appeared to be a reaggravation of a previous injury, it would be a surprise if he can return quickly. “I don’t know,” Silas said postgame. “It didn’t look great.”
Stephen Silas didn’t have an update yet on Christian Wood’s ankle injury: “It didn’t look great..It was difficult for me. I had to sit down & collect my thoughts & gather myself. As good as he’s been playing..like a break-out season & doing everything we need him to do..it sucks” pic.twitter.com/qOT6zxxdjT
— Mark Berman (@MarkBermanFox26) February 5, 2021
“It was difficult for me,” Silas said. “I had to sit down and collect my thoughts and gather myself. As good as he has been playing, a breakout season, and doing everything we need him to do. … Yeah, it sucks.”
MacMahon reports that Wood will undergo an MRI on Friday to determine the injury’s severity, along with a potential timetable to return.
Christian Wood will undergo an MRI tomorrow to determine the severity of his ankle injury, a source said. He missed three games after rolling the ankle in similarly ugly fashion last month. https://t.co/2Utucal9b0
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) February 5, 2021
Christian Wood Contact Lateral Ankle Inversion
Unfortunate as he clips the toe box of the defenders foot as his foot plant occurs
Brooks last second help altered ball position & vision @bballbreakdown pic.twitter.com/L22NUEcZJg