Dangerous fungal infections are on the rise, and a growing body of research suggests warmer temperatures might be a culprit.
The human body’s average temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheithas long been too hot for most fungi to thrive, infectious-disease specialists say. But as temperatures have risen globally, some fungi might be adapting to endure more heat stress, including conditions within the human body, research suggests. Climate change might also be creating conditions for some disease-causing fungi to expand their geographical range, research shows.
“As fungi are exposed to more consistent elevated temperatures, there’s a real possibility that certain fungi that were previously harmless suddenly become potential pathogens,” said
Peter Pappas,
an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Deaths from fungal infections are increasing, due in part to growing populations of people with weakened immune systems who are more vulnerable to severe fungal disease, public-health experts said. At least 7,000 people died in the U.S. from fungal infections in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, up from hundreds of people each year around 1970. There are few effective and nontoxic medications to treat such infections, they said.
Photos: What We Know About Deadly Fungal Infections
In the video game and HBO show “The Last of Us,” a fungus infects people en masse and turns them into monstrous creatures. The fungus is based on a real genus, Ophiocordyceps, that includes species that infect insects, disabling and killing them.
There have been no known Ophiocordyceps infections in people, infectious-disease experts said, but they said the rising temperatures that facilitated the spread of the killer fungi in the show may be pushing other fungi to better adapt to human hosts and expand into new geographical ranges.
A January study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that higher temperatures may prompt some disease-causing fungi to evolve faster to survive.
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Researchers at Duke University grew 800 generations of a type of Cryptococcus, a group of fungi that can cause severe disease in people, in conditions of either 86 degrees Fahrenheit or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers used DNA sequencing to track changes in the fungi’s genome with a focus on “jumping genes”—DNA sequences that can move from one location on the genome to another.
Asiya Gusa, a study co-author and postdoctoral researcher in Duke’s Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Department, said movement of such genes can result in mutations and alter gene expression. In fungi, Dr. Gusa said, the movement of the genes could play a role in allowing fungi to adapt to stressors including heat.
Dr. Gusa and her colleagues found that the rate of movement of “jumping genes” was five times higher in the Cryptococcus raised in the warmer temperature.
Cryptococcus infections can be deadly, particularly in immunocompromised people. At least 110,000 people die globally each year from brain infections caused by Cryptococcus fungi, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Candida auris, a highly deadly fungus that has been reported in about half of U.S. states, also appears to have adapted to warmer temperatures, infectious-disease specialists said.
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“Fungi isn’t transmitted from person to person, but through fungal spores in the air,” Dr. Gusa said. “They’re in our homes, they’re everywhere.”
An analysis published last year in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases said some potentially deadly fungi found in the soil, including Coccidioides and Histoplasma, have significantly expanded their geographical range in the U.S. since the 1950s. Andrej Spec, a co-author of the analysis and an associate professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said warming temperatures, as well as other environmental alterations associated with climate change, could have played a role in this spread.
Cases of Coccidioidomycosis or Valley fever, a disease caused by Coccidioides, were once mostly limited to the Southwest, Dr. Spec said. Now people are being diagnosed in significant numbers in most states. Histoplasma infections, once common only in the Midwest, have been reported in 94% of states, the analysis said. Histoplasma is also spread through bat droppings and climate change has been linked to changing bat migration patterns, Dr. Spec said.
The World Health Organization has identified Cryptococcus, Coccidioides, Histoplasma and Candida auris as being among the fungal pathogens of greatest threat to people.
“We keep saying these fungi are rare, but this must be the most common rare disease because they’re now everywhere,” Dr. Spec said.
Write to Dominique Mosbergen at dominique.mosbergen@wsj.com
BEIJING—Chinese health authorities plan to lift Covid-19 quarantine requirements on international arrivals early next month, taking one of the country’s biggest steps to ease restrictions since the pandemic began even as case numbers remain high.
China has maintained among the world’s most restrictive coronavirus lockdown measures, slowing its economy significantly and sparking anger. Following waves of protests this fall, authorities abruptly abandoned the country’s stringent zero-Covid-19 strategy early this month.
From Jan. 8, China will scrap all quarantine measures for Covid-19, including requirements for inbound visitors, both foreigners and Chinese nationals, according to the National Health Commission.
The commission late Monday issued a plan to stop treating Covid-19 as a “Class A” infectious disease, which calls for stringent control measures, and downgrade the management of the virus to “Class B,” which requires more basic treatment and prevention. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that China was weighing such a move, which would give it room to further loosen public-health measures.
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The change means people traveling to China from abroad will need to have only a negative Covid-19 test within 48 hours to be allowed into the country, the NHC said. International arrivals will no longer be required to be tested on arrival or undergo quarantine—a major step toward opening up for a country that has been largely closed off to the outside world for three years.
The commission in its statement pledged to facilitate foreigners’ visits to China, including those for business, studying and family reunions, and to provide visa assistance.
The shift came as fever clinics and hospital emergency rooms in Beijing continued to overflow with patients on Monday and Chinese leader
Xi Jinping
called on local officials to take pains to save lives.
Before Monday’s loosening of Covid restrictions, Mr. Xi addressed his country’s new pandemic reality for the first time in comments marking the 70th anniversary of the Patriotic Health Movement, a campaign to wipe out flies and mosquitoes launched by
Mao Zedong
during the Korean War to fortify China against the possibility of American germ warfare.
“At present, our country’s Covid prevention and control efforts are facing new circumstances and a new mission,” Mr. Xi said. China should launch “a more targeted Patriotic Health Movement” to “effectively guarantee the lives and health of the people.”
Visits to three major hospitals in Beijing by the Journal on Monday showed the capital’s healthcare system still swamped with an influx of patients following the government’s about-face on Covid-19 controls, which has left many citizens, especially the elderly, scrambling to find treatment.
In the emergency room of eastern Beijing’s Chaoyang Hospital, known for treating respiratory diseases, hallways at the intensive-care unit were packed with dozens of elderly patients lying on portable beds. One nurse said all the ICU beds were full and only patients with the most life-threatening symptoms were being admitted. “Those patients with less severe symptoms can only get a temporary bed and stay in the hallway,” she said.
To cope with the surge in patients, Beijing’s Chaoyang Hospital opened a second fever clinic in a nearby sports stadium for some Covid-19 patients.
Photo:
Chen Zhonghao/Zuma Press
On Monday, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report showing fewer than 2,700 new infections and no new deaths on Christmas Day. Over the weekend, local officials presented a much grimmer picture.
A senior health official in the coastal province of Zhejiang, home to e-commerce giant
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
, said on Sunday that new daily infections had topped one million, with the wave expected to peak at around two million cases around New Year’s Day.
Roughly half a million people were being infected every day in the northeastern city of Qingdao, a local health official said in a since-removed interview with a state-owned broadcaster.
To minimize the impact of the infection surge on China’s already battered economy, some cities said people could return to work even if they had mild symptoms. Authorities in Shanghai said Saturday that the city’s 25 million residents wouldn’t need to be isolated at home for more than seven days, even if they are still testing positive.
Rapid transmission of Covid-19 in China raises the likelihood for fresh outbreaks beyond its borders and the emergence of risky virus variants, said
Michael Osterholm,
director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
“New variants are a huge possibility, and they could have a tremendous impact on the rest of the world,” Dr. Osterholm said.
In his own comments marking the anniversary of the Patriotic Health Campaign, which evolved over the years to target infectious diseases such as malaria, China’s Premier
Li Keqiang
said adjustments to the country’s Covid-19 policies were being implemented in an orderly manner, but urged officials at every level of government to address public demands for medical care and supplies.
Covid-19 cases in China have surged after authorities scrapped most of its restrictions, prompting residents to self-isolate and stockpile medication. WSJ’s Jonathan Cheng reports from Beijing on the risks that come with the country’s rapid reopening. Photo: Xiaoyu Yin/Reuters
China’s health system, thinly resourced even before the pandemic, has struggled to contend with the fast-spreading Omicron variant. The growth in infections has sent people scrambling to buy up home test kits along with ibuprofen and other medications.
At Chaoyang Hospital’s emergency room on Monday, digital screens showed a long wait list for people seeking treatment at the internal-medicine department. In an interview last week with China’s state broadcaster, Mei Xue, deputy director of the hospital’s emergency department, said around 400 patients were coming seeking internal medicine treatment every day—roughly four times the normal number.
“These patients are all elderly people with underlying diseases. After the combination of fever and respiratory infection, they are all very seriously ill,” he said.
A staffer with Beijing’s emergency medical center, which coordinates requests for urgent medical care in the city, said he and his colleagues had been working nonstop to transfer patients to Chaoyang Hospital in recent weeks and he expected the current situation to last for a few more weeks.
To cope with the surge in patients, the hospital has opened a second fever clinic in a nearby sports stadium for Covid-19 patients with mild symptoms.
Peking Union Medical College Hospital and Peking University First Hospital, both located in the center of Beijing, were similarly overwhelmed.
A sign outside the Peking Union emergency room warned patients it could take more than four hours to see a doctor. A nurse at Peking Union’s fever clinic said that for weeks patients had been forced to wait in the hallways for beds to open up. One elderly patient, unable to secure a bed, was lying on a metal bench just inside the entrance of the fever clinic.
A nurse at Peking University First Hospital’s emergency room said beds there were all full and the wait time at the internal medicine department was roughly six hours. The hospital public address system announced that nearly 50 patients were waiting to be seen.
In recent weeks, doctors and nurses from around China have been dispatched to Beijing to support the capital. Shandong province sent a team of medical staff to Beijing, according to state media reports.
In the U.S., the State Department on Friday updated its travel advisory and is asking that people reconsider travel to China due to the surge in Covid-19 cases, arbitrary enforcement of local laws and Covid-19-related restrictions.
—Xiao Xiao and Dominique Mosbergen contributed to this article.
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt—President Biden is moving to tighten restrictions on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and boost funding for developing countries to adapt to the effects of climate change and transition to cleaner technologies, according to the White House.
Mr. Biden is expected to announce the measures in a speech before a United Nations climate conference, known as COP27, according to a fact sheet released by the White House ahead of the address. The measures include plans for the Environmental Protection Agency to require oil-and-gas companies to monitor existing production facilities for methane leaks and repair them, according to administration officials.
Methane is 80 times as potent at trapping heat from solar radiation as carbon dioxide over its first 20 years in the atmosphere. It is responsible for about half a degree Celsius of global warming since the preindustrial era, and its levels are rising fast, according to measurements made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The planned rules affect hundreds of thousands of U.S. wells, storage tanks and natural-gas processing plants, and require companies to replace leaky, older equipment and buy new monitoring tools.
EPA Administrator
Michael Regan
said flaring—a technique used by gas producers to burn off excess methane from oil and natural-gas wells—would be reduced at all well sites under the planned rules. Owners would be required to monitor abandoned wells for methane emissions and plug any leaks, he said.
“We’ve tightened down to limit flaring as much as possible without banning it,” Mr. Regan said.
President Biden met on Friday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi in Sharm El Sheikh.
Photo:
KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS
The American Petroleum Institute, which represents U.S. oil and gas producers, said it was reviewing the proposed rule.
“Federal regulation of methane crafted to build on industry’s progress can help accelerate emissions reductions while developing reliable American energy,”
Frank Macchiarola,
API’s senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs, said in a statement.
Lee Fuller of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a Washington, D.C., trade group that represents many smaller producers, said his group would be reviewing the regulations closely.
“While everyone wants to produce oil and natural gas using sound environmental procedures, there will always be a need to assure that the regulatory structure is cost effective and technologically feasible,” he said in a statement.
Rachel Cleetus, lead economist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group, said in a statement that the EPA had “taken an important step forward by issuing a robust standard for methane emissions from oil-and-gas operations.”
Mr. Biden is walking a political tightrope during his brief stopover in Egypt on his way to summits in Cambodia and Indonesia. The war in Ukraine has unleashed turmoil in energy markets, underscoring the world’s continued reliance on fossil fuels.
Control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives still hinged on races that were too close to call as of early Friday morning, with both parties girding for a final outcome that might not be known for days. If Republicans win control of either chamber it would mean more power to a party that is deeply skeptical of Mr. Biden’s climate agenda and reluctant to spend billions of dollars to help other countries transition to cleaner sources of energy.
The White House said Mr. Biden is expected to announce an additional $100 million for the United Nations Adaptation Fund, which helps countries adapt to floods, droughts and storms that climate scientists say are increasing in frequency and severity as the earth’s atmosphere and oceans warm. The U.S. has yet to pay the $50 million it pledged to the fund at last year’s climate talks in Glasgow.
As world leaders gather for the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, WSJ looks at how the war in Ukraine and turmoil in energy markets are complicating efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Photo: Mohammed Salem/Reuters
The U.S. also owes $2 billion to the U.N. Green Climate Fund, which finances renewable energy and climate adaptation projects in the developing world. The administration has asked for $1.6 billion for the fund in the fiscal 2023 budget.
The White House said Mr. Biden would also pledge $150 million to a U.S. fund for climate adaptation and resilience across Africa; $13.6 million to the World Meteorological Organization to collect additional weather, water and climate observation across Africa; and $15 million to support the deployment of early-warning systems in Africa by NOAA in conjunction with local weather-forecasting agencies.
The U.S. pledges don’t address demands from poorer nations to provide money for damage they say is the result of climate-related weather events—a new category of funding known as “loss and damage.” This week at the summit, Belgium and Germany pledged a combined 172 million euros, equivalent to $176 million, to support loss-and-damage payments to developing countries. Scotland pledged $5.8 million and Ireland pledged $10 million.
Developing countries have made a renewed push to set up a mechanism for loss-and-damage payments after severe floods in Pakistan this summer that caused $30 billion in losses, according to World Bank estimates, killed more than 1,700 people and displaced 33 million residents. Sen.
Sherry Rehman,
Pakistan’s federal minister for climate change, said she is hoping for more resources from the U.S. and other nations to help her country.
U.S. negotiators are concerned the concept of loss and damage exposes wealthier nations to spiraling liability. There is also the scientific uncertainty of determining which effects can be tied to human-induced climate change and which are part of normal seasonal variation. However, U.S. climate envoy
John Kerry
said this week at the conference that he is open to discussing loss and damage.
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“We need more,” Ms. Rehman said in an interview. “What you hear everywhere at COP is ‘action now.’ Everything else is fluff.”
Mr. Biden arrived at the climate summit Friday after most world leaders have departed. He met privately with Egyptian President
Abdel Fattah Al Sisi
at the conference, located at a resort town along the Red Sea. The U.S. and Germany were expected to announce Friday a $250 million financing program to build 10 gigawatts of new wind-and-solar energy facilities in Egypt while decommissioning 5 gigawatts of inefficient natural-gas power plants.
The Biden administration’s efforts to curb methane emissions follow an agreement reached on the sidelines of the Glasgow summit a year ago, in which China and the U.S. pledged to work on reducing emissions of the gas. Beijing this week announced a plan to cut methane emissions but hasn’t yet included the new measures in its climate plans submitted to the U.N.
Nigeria announced its first-ever regulations, including limits on flaring, to cut overall methane emissions by more than 60% over 2020 levels. Canada said Thursday it plans to cut emissions of methane from its oil-and-gas industry by more than 75% over 2012 levels by 2030.
Emissions from flaring are far higher than previous government and industry estimates, according to an analysis of 300 wells in four states published in September in the journal Science.
The White House says 260 billion cubic meters of gas are wasted every year from flaring and methane emissions within the oil-and-gas sector.
Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, countries aim to limit global warming to well under 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and preferably to 1.5 degrees. The gap between the emissions cuts pledged by 166 nations, including the U.S., and their current emissions puts the world on track to warm 2.5 degrees Celsius, or 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit, by the end of the century, according to a recent U.N. report.
White House officials point to Mr. Biden’s support of the Democrats’ climate, health and tax legislation that allocates hundreds of billions of dollars to climate and energy programs, including tax credits for buying electric vehicles and investments in clean technologies.
Administration officials said the legislation has helped put the U.S. on track to meeting Mr. Biden’s goal of cutting domestic emissions 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.
—Matthew Dalton and Scott Pattersoncontributed to this article.
said he was open to negotiations with Russia if they are focused on safeguarding Ukraine’s territorial integrity, compensating Kyiv and bringing to justice perpetrators of war crimes.
Speaking ahead of his address to a global climate summit in Egypt on Tuesday, Mr. Zelensky said late Monday: “Anyone who treats seriously the climate agenda should just as seriously treat the necessity of immediately stopping Russian aggression, resuming our territorial integrity and forcing Russia into genuine peace talks.”
Mr. Zelensky’s statement comes after the U.S., Ukraine’s key backer in its defense against Russia’s invasion, has urged Kyiv to publicly signal that it is open to talks with Moscow, to avoid alienating international opinion.
“One more time: restoration of territorial integrity, respect for the U.N. charter, compensation for all material losses caused by the war, punishment for every war criminal and guarantees that this does not happen again,” Mr. Zelensky said. “Those are completely understandable conditions.”
U.S. officials have said it is up to Ukraine to define the terms of any acceptable settlement. Many Western officials are skeptical that Russian President
Vladimir Putin
will be open soon to a settlement that involves Russian withdrawal from occupied regions of Ukraine—a key demand for Kyiv.
A building damaged by shelling in Shchurove, eastern Ukraine.
Photo:
Andriy Andriyenko/Associated Press
Since Mr. Putin said in late September that swaths of Ukraine’s east and south belonged to Russia, Kyiv has said it wouldn’t negotiate with Moscow until there is a different leader in the Kremlin. Mr. Putin’s insistence that Russia’s territorial demands are nonnegotiable, meanwhile, appears to leave little scope for talks at present.
“We’ve always made clear our readiness for such talks,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister,
Andrei Rudenko,
said Tuesday in comments carried by state news agency RIA. “From our side there are no preliminary conditions whatsoever, except the main condition—for Ukraine to show goodwill.”
Buoyed by recent battlefield successes, Ukraine has demanded that all occupied areas are returned to its control as a condition for any peace deal—including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas area that Russia seized in 2014.
Military realities will dictate how much of its internationally recognized borders Ukraine is able to restore, officials in Kyiv and Western capitals say.
Ever since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February, many Western governments have been skeptical about how much of its territory Ukraine can take back through fighting. Kyiv has sought to erase such doubts with offensives in eastern and southern Ukraine since late summer, which have made inroads, especially in the Kharkiv region.
Continued Western military and financial support is vital for Ukraine’s ability to advance, however. Many in Kyiv fear that a reduction in aid could scuttle Ukraine’s hopes of retaking occupied regions, forcing it into negotiations with a weak hand.
Ukraine also fears any cease-fire would allow Russian forces to regroup and that Mr. Putin would use talks to consolidate Russian control of occupied areas.
Kyiv officials continue to warn the West of the dangers of premature talks.
“What do you mean by the word ‘negotiations’? Russian ultimatums are well-known: ‘we came with tanks, admit defeat and territories loss.’ This is unacceptable. So what to talk about? Or you just hide the word ‘surrender’ behind the word ‘settlement’?,” Ukrainian presidential adviser
Mykhailo Podolyak
said Tuesday in a tweet.
As Russia suffers losses in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has made veiled threats to use nuclear weapons—a scenario that security experts still deem unlikely. WSJ looks at satellite images and documents to understand how the process of launching a strike would work. Photo composite: Eve Hartley
Widespread evidence of alleged Russian war crimes in places such as Bucha and Izyum, which Moscow has denied, has hardened Ukraine’s insistence of a full Russian withdrawal from its territory.
However, the global economic toll of the war and signs of fraying political consensus in Western nations are raising uncertainty about how long the U.S. and Europe will continue to back Kyiv’s position.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan has in recent months engaged in confidential conversations with top aides to Mr. Putin in an effort to reduce the risk of the war widening, while warning Moscow against using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, U.S. and allied officials said Monday.
The aim has been to guard against the risk of escalation and keep communications channels open, and not discuss a settlement of the war in Ukraine, the officials said.
Ukraine has continued to call for further arms deliveries from the West to protect its cities against Russian missile-and-drone attacks and help it recapture occupied territories.
A firefighter works at the scene of a damaged residential building in Lyman, eastern Ukraine.
Photo:
Andriy Andriyenko/Associated Press
Mr. Zelensky, in his comments late Monday, hailed the provision this week of the U.S.-Norwegian National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or Nasams, and of Spanish-supplied Aspide air-defense systems, after weeks of Russian attacks that have caused substantial damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and caused numerous blackouts in Ukrainian cities.
“The defense of Ukraine’s sky is obviously not complete, but gradually we are moving toward our goal,” Mr. Zelensky said. He added that Russia had hit 50 towns and cities across Ukraine with missile attacks on Monday, the latest barrage aimed at sapping Ukrainian morale as winter sets in.
Ukraine’s military offensive against Russian occupation forces in the south has slowed as both sides tire after weeks of fighting and as muddy ground in some areas makes advancing difficult for armored vehicles.
In the southern Kherson region, Russian-installed officials say they have almost completed a mass-evacuation campaign aimed at clearing the regional capital of residents in advance of their planned defense against advancing Ukrainian forces. Some elite Russian forces have left the city, Ukrainian officials say, and in their place Moscow has brought in newly mobilized soldiers tasked with holding the line if Kyiv’s forces reach the city.
A market in downtown Kyiv.
Photo:
Bernat Armangue/Associated Press
Western officials said Tuesday that Russia has begun constructing defensive structures near occupied Mariupol, a city deep behind the front lines in the country’s southeast that was captured by Russia in May after months of intense fighting that reduced much of it to rubble.
Russian occupation authorities in Mariupol are producing concrete antitank structures known as dragon’s teeth as part of efforts to reinforce the area, the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday. Dragon’s teeth have also been sent to the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which Russia partly controls and now claims as part of its territory, the ministry said.
The reported construction of fortification lines far from areas of active fighting is evidence of a Russian campaign to shore up occupied areas as fortunes on the battlefield shift in Kyiv’s favor, Western officials say.
“This activity suggests Russia is making a significant effort to prepare defenses in depth behind their current front line, likely to forestall any rapid Ukrainian advances in the event of breakthroughs,” the U.K. Defense Ministry said.
People line up for soup, bread and hot food at a stand in Kyiv.
Photo:
Ed Ram/Getty Images
Write to Matthew Luxmoore at Matthew.Luxmoore@wsj.com and Marcus Walker at marcus.walker@wsj.com
As a global outbreak of monkeypox loses steam, disease researchers said they need a better understanding of how the virus spreads, and how well vaccination protects against it to predict whether it could come roaring back.
A global outbreak that gained momentum in May spread the virus much farther than it had been found previously. The virus might have reached new animal hosts, increasing the risk of future outbreaks, said epidemiologists and infectious-disease specialists. The extent to which vaccination has protected the most at-risk people from catching monkeypox is unknown.
“We can’t get lulled into this sense that monkeypox has disappeared,” said Jason Kindrachuk, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba with a focus on emerging viruses.
Case numbers have been steadily declining since early August. Daily reported cases in the U.S. have fallen to around 40, from a peak of around 440. In Ontario, once a hot spot, health officials in the Canadian province said they are considering whether to declare the outbreak over.
The slowdown is attributed to a combination of a buildup of immunity and behavioral change, disease researchers said. The exact role each played hasn’t been determined. “They are working together in many cases,” said
David Heymann,
professor of infectious-disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Dozens of countries bet that Jynneos, a vaccine made by Denmark’s
Bavarian Nordic
A/S that had sat in stockpiles as a biodefense against a possible reintroduction of smallpox, could curb the spread of monkeypox, which is part of the same virus family. Studies on smallpox vaccines in Africa had found that they were around 85% effective at preventing monkeypox, but no such studies had been undertaken with Jynneos.
Early evidence from Jynneos’s use during the outbreak suggests the bet paid off. A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that among men ages 18 to 49 in the U.S. who were eligible for Jynneos, case rates among the unvaccinated were 14 times higher than for those who had received at least one dose at least two weeks earlier. As of Oct. 18, around 647,400 people in the U.S. had received at least one dose of Jynneos, according to the CDC.
Immunity doesn’t fully explain the drop in cases, disease experts said. In the U.K., new cases started to fall before a vaccination campaign gained momentum, said Jake Dunning, senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Pandemic Sciences Institute.
Early evidence indicates that use of the Jynneos vaccine has helped contain monkeypox.
Photo:
patrick t. fallon/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
“Vaccine probably helped to bring things down and keep it as one curve, rather than more of a roller coaster,” he said.
Also driving down cases, disease experts said, was a reduction in sexual contact by men at the highest risk of catching monkeypox. In an August survey of around 800 men who have sex with men in the U.S., around half reported taking at least one measure in response to the monkeypox outbreak to limit their number of sexual contacts. Those measures included reducing one-time sexual encounters and cutting down the number of sex partners. A U.K. report published in September found that rates of two sexually transmitted diseases that also disproportionately affect men who have sex with men fell in August, suggesting that behavior change contributed to the decline in monkeypox.
Uncertainty regarding the precise roles played by immunity and behavior change mean that it is impossible to predict the trajectory of the virus, disease experts said. “If there’s a significant proportion that is attributed to behavior change, if that behavior change is not sustainable, will we see increases again?” said Anne Rimoin, professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has been researching monkeypox in the Democratic Republic of Congo for many years.
Even if the virus fades in some places, it is likely to be reintroduced through international travel because it is present in so many countries, said Emma Thomson, a professor of infectious disease at the University of Glasgow.
Testing sewage to track viruses has drawn renewed interest after recent outbreaks of monkeypox and polio. WSJ visited a wastewater facility to find out how the testing works. Photo illustration: Ryan Trefes
It hasn’t been determined whether the virus made its way into any new animal populations during the global outbreak. While monkeypox is mainly associated with forest-dwelling rodents in western and central Africa, it has been detected in other animals. An Italian greyhound in Paris caught monkeypox in June, likely from one of its owners, according to a case report in the Lancet.
“More human infections may arise because of that,” Geoffrey Smith, an expert on poxviruses at the University of Cambridge, said of potential animal reservoirs.
In 2003, around 50 people in the U.S. caught monkeypox from pet prairie dogs that had contracted the virus after sharing caging and bedding with small animals imported from western Africa. None of those cases went on to infect other people.
The global outbreak has prompted fresh calls for more research. A U.K. government-backed science funding group this week provided 2 million pounds, the equivalent of $2.2 million, for monkeypox research to 25 scientists spanning 12 universities. The researchers said their work would include detailed genomic sequencing, studies into the immune response to vaccination, developing new therapies and investigating the potential for animals to spread monkeypox.
Scientists said they want more research into monkeypox in central Africa, where a more-severe strain of the virus known as clade I circulates, to reduce transmission in countries there and to lower the risk of its sparking a more widespread outbreak. Dr. Dunning said that a global outbreak arising from the milder clade II virus raised the possibility that it could happen with clade I.
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Monday offered “audacious” economic assistance to North Korea if it abandons its nuclear weapons program while avoiding harsh criticism of the North days after it threatened “deadly” retaliation over the COVID-19 outbreak it blames on the South.
In a speech celebrating the end of Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula, Yoon also called for better ties with Japan, calling the two countries partners in navigating challenges to freedom and saying their shared values will help them overcome historical grievances linked to Japan’s brutal colonial rule before the end of World War II.
Yoon’s televised speech on the liberation holiday came days after North Korea claimed a widely disputed victory over COVID-19 but also blamed Seoul for the outbreak. The North insists leaflets and other objects flown across the border by activists spread the virus, an unscientific claim Seoul describes as “ridiculous.”
North Korea has a history of dialing up pressure on the South when it doesn’t get what it wants from the United States, and there are concerns that North Korea’s threat portends a provocation, which could possibly be a nuclear or major missile test or even border skirmishes. Some experts say the North may stir up tensions around joint military exercises the United States and South Korea start next week.
Yoon, a conservative who took office in May, said North Korea’s denuclearization would be key for peace in the region and the world. If North Korea halts its nuclear weapons development and genuinely commits to a process of denuclearization, the South will respond with huge economic rewards that would be provided in phases, Yoon said.
Yoon’s proposal wasn’t meaningfully different from previous South Korean offers that have already been rejected by North Korea, which has been accelerating its efforts to expand its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program leader Kim Jong Un sees as his strongest guarantee of survival.
“We will implement a large-scale program to provide food, providing assistance for establishing infrastructure for the production, transmission and distribution of electrical power, and carry out projects to modernize ports and airports to facilitate trade,” Yoon said.
“We will also help improve North Korea’s agricultural production, provide assistance to modernize its hospitals and medical infrastructure, and carry out initiatives to allow for international investment and financial support,” he added, insisting that such programs would “significantly” improve North Korean lives.
Inter-Korean ties have deteriorated amid a stalemate in larger nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, which derailed in early 2019 over disagreements in exchanging a release of crippling U.S.-led sanctions against the North and the North’s disarmament steps.
North Korea has ramped up its testing activity in 2022, launching more than 30 ballistic missiles so far, including its first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles since 2017. Experts say Kim is intent on exploiting a favorable environment to push forward his weapons program, with the U.N. Security Council divided and effectively paralyzed over Russia’s war on Ukraine.
North Korea’s unusually fast pace in weapons demonstrations also underscore brinkmanship aimed at forcing Washington to accept the idea of North Korea as a nuclear power and negotiating badly economic benefits and security concessions from a position of strength, experts say. The U.S. and South Korean governments have also said the North is gearing up to conduct its first nuclear test since September 2017, when it claimed to have detonated a nuclear warhead designed for its ICBMs.
In face of growing North Korean threats, Yoon has vowed to bolster South Korea’s defense in conjunction with its alliance with the United States and also strengthen security ties with Japan, which is also alarmed by the North’s nuclear and ballistic weapons program.
South Korea’s relations with Japan declined to post-war lows over the past several years as the countries allowed their grievances over history to extend to other areas including trade and military cooperation.
While Yoon has called for future-oriented cooperation with Japan, history may continue to pose an obstacle to relations. The countries have struggled to negotiate a solution after Japanese companies rejected South Korean court rulings in recent years to compensate South Koreans who were subject to wartime industrial slavery, an issue that could cause further diplomatic rupture if it results in the forced sales of the companies’ local assets.
“In the past, we had to unshackle ourselves from Imperial Japan’s political control and defend our freedom. Today, Japan is our partner as we face common threats that challenge the freedom of global citizens,” Yoon said. “When South Korea and Japan move toward a common future and when the mission of our times align, based on our shared universal values, it will also help us solve the historical problems that exist between our two countries.”
While Washington has said it would push for additional sanctions if North Korea conducts another nuclear test, the prospects for meaningful punitive measures are unclear. China and Russia recently vetoed U.S.-sponsored resolutions at the U.N. Security Council that would have increased sanctions on the North over its ballistic missile testing this year.
North Korea’s state media said Monday that Kim exchanged messages with Russian President Vladimir Putin and celebrated their strengthening ties.
Kim said the countries’ relations were forged by the Soviet contributions in Japan’s World War II defeat and that they were strengthening their “strategic and tactical cooperation and support and solidarity” in the face of enemies’ military threats. Putin said closer ties between the countries would help bring stability to the region, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.
North Korea has repeatedly blamed the United States for the crisis in Ukraine, claiming the West’s “hegemonic policy” justified Russia’s offensive in Ukraine to protect itself.
For more than half a century, monkeypox was a rare infectious disease confined to one region of the world. A few months ago, that suddenly changed. Scientists are building a picture of what happened.
The explosion of monkeypox around the world is a case study in how infectious diseases can leap from limited circulation to wide geographic spread with just a few chance events. Infectious-disease experts knew that the virus was on the rise in parts of West and Central Africa. All it took for monkeypox to take off around the world was for the virus to get into a group that would give it more opportunities for transmission.
“You have a virus that was able to establish itself in a dense social and sexual network and transmit efficiently because there’s no immunity,” said Anne Rimoin, professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
A gradual decline of herd immunity against the closely related smallpox virus gave monkeypox more possibilities to jump from its natural animal hosts, infection-disease experts say. And one day, years ago, it infected someone who was part of a network with close physical contact between members—maybe a gay man with multiple sexual partners, or a sex worker—allowing it to spread sustainably among humans for the first time, these experts theorize.
In 2017, researchers in Central Africa were examining animals who may have carried the monkeypox virus.
Photo:
The Washington Post via Getty Images
That spread likely continued for years, undetected, until someone—or some people—with the virus traveled to large international events in Europe in May. Some attendees caught the virus and brought it back to their home countries, setting in motion the global outbreak that has now infected more than 29,000 people.
In the 1970s, many countries stopped routine vaccination against smallpox. A long-running campaign to eradicate one of the world’s deadliest diseases had the added benefit of preventing human infections of monkeypox, a closely related, though less severe, virus.
Starting in 1970, sporadic cases of monkeypox sprang up, mainly in people who lived in small villages in the rainforests of Central and West Africa, in close proximity to some animal populations—such as tree squirrels and other rodents—known to harbor monkeypox. Between 1970 and 1979, the World Health Organization recorded 45 cases. The majority were young children who had been infected by an animal. The virus spread to a close family member on four occasions, but went no further.
As the proportion of unvaccinated people increased, so too did the frequency of monkeypox. A 2010 study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that in one of the most affected regions in Congo, the rate of monkeypox was 20 times higher between 2005 and 2007 than during the 1980s, a period when the WHO conducted widespread testing for the virus.
Before this year, the longest known chain of person-to-person infections for monkeypox was just nine people, according to the World Health Organization.
Photo:
NurPhoto via Getty Images
Almost all cases were in younger people who had been born after mass vaccination ended in 1980. UCLA’s Dr. Rimoin, who led the study, at the time urged governments to tackle the rise of monkeypox in central Africa, while the disease’s geographic range was still limited.
As population immunity declined, the virus was still held back by its limited ability to spread between people. Monkeypox requires close contact to spread. Typically, that means direct contact with the skin lesions caused by the virus, although it can also spread through shared personal items like bed linens or respiratory droplets from prolonged face-to-face contact. African researchers believe that, for most of the last five decades, monkeypox outbreaks quickly fizzled out, with a person catching the virus from an animal and then maybe spreading it to a few people they lived with. Before this year, the longest known chain of transmission—meaning the number of successive person-to-person infections—for monkeypox was just nine people, according to the WHO.
Now, though, virologists and infectious-disease experts say that at some point in the past few years, the virus jumped from an animal to a person and then kept spreading.
Genomic analysis of samples from the current outbreak suggests that the virus has been spreading among people for years, according to Geoffrey Smith, professor of pathology at the University of Cambridge and an expert in poxviruses. The pattern of mutations, he says, is consistent with genetic blips that would have been introduced by a human protein that interferes with viral replication.
So far, there is no evidence that those mutations have led to the virus becoming more transmissible, or brought about any other new properties such as drug resistance or increased severity, said Prof. Smith.
U.S. health officials have declared monkeypox a public-health emergency, after the World Health Organization declared it a global health emergency in late July. WSJ explains what you should look out for and what scientists know about how the virus is spreading. Illustration: Adele Morgan
It isn’t known precisely when that sustained human-to-human transmission began. The number of genetic mutations linked to the human protein suggests that the current outbreak can be traced to an animal-to-human infection that took place around April 2016, according to researchers at the University of Edinburgh.
Dimie Ogoina, an infectious-disease doctor in Nigeria, said he suspected that sexual contact had become an important route of transmission for monkeypox when the virus suddenly resurfaced in that country in 2017, after nearly four decades without a case.
An early clue, he said, came from a husband and wife. The husband had a rash that was most prominent in his genitals. The wife later developed a single lesion in her genital area, but had no other symptoms. The couple had two children at home under the age of 10, neither of whom caught the virus.
Dr. Ogoina, who has treated a few dozen cases since 2017, said he could link the virus with sexual contact in the majority of patients that he has seen. However, when he shared this observation with colleagues at a conference in 2019, some were skeptical, as it didn’t fit with how monkeypox had spread in the past.
“It’s a roll of the dice as to whether or not it’s going to end up in a dense network,” said Dr. Rimoin. She said it is likely that the virus was already circulating among men who have sex of men and that some of them traveled to large gatherings in the Canary Islands and Belgium that took place in May. Those events were linked to multiple cases that were later identified in various European countries including the U.K., Spain and Portugal.
Although the virus is circulating predominantly through sexual networks of gay and bisexual men, that isn’t its only mode of spread. A small number of women and children have also caught the virus by, for example, catching it from someone they live with.
“This is something that was wholly predictable if monkeypox got itself into the right population for spread,” said Dr. Rimoin. “Now we have to wake up and get to work.”
The U.S. has reported more than 3,400 confirmed or suspected monkeypox cases, federal data showed, becoming the country with the most known infections since the onset of the global health emergency.
The rise in cases comes as the U.S. expands testing capacity, broadening the ability to spot new infections, but also as the global outbreak continues to grow. Some public-health experts said rising transmission heightens the chances a broader population will face the risk of infections as the opportunity to slow and potentially stop the outbreak is fading.
The outbreak has largely been recorded among men who have sex with men, as the virus exploits social networks among people in close contact. This is already a concern, but spreading more broadly means the potential added challenge of trying to educate and protect a broader population, health experts said.
“We are at a very critical juncture in the outbreak,” said Jay Varma, a physician and epidemiologist who directs Weill Cornell Medicine’s Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response in New York City.
The continuing spread of monkeypox has prompted the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency. WSJ’s Denise Roland explains what you need to know about the outbreak. Photo: Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images
The U.S. surpassed the reported case count in Spain after recently surpassing other European countries, including Germany and the U.K. There are now at least 17,852 cases in nearly 70 countries where the viral disease doesn’t typically occur, including at least 3,487 in the U.S., which has a significantly larger population than European countries that also have outbreaks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The true case count is likely significantly higher than the known count, in part due to more limited testing early on in the outbreak, and completely beating back the virus is already unlikely, Dr. Varma said. But there is still a chance through vaccinations, education and treatment to hem the virus in, slowing transmission enough to make it a very rare disease, he said.
The World Health Organization on Saturday said monkeypox is a public-health emergency of international concern, marking the first such declaration since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in January 2020.
Another risk from a growing outbreak is that the virus will reach a U.S. animal population, creating a reservoir where it could be passed back to people, said Aileen Marty, a distinguished professor of infectious disease and outbreak response at Florida International University.
“The last thing we need is for our animals to get infected,” Dr. Marty said.
Classic monkeypox starts with flulike symptoms including fever and aches, with the later appearance of a rash usually starting on the face. In the current outbreak, doctors have described some cases in which the rash appears before a fever and other cases in which the rash remains concentrated in the genital area, for example.
Health authorities have been focusing vaccination and outreach efforts among gay and bisexual men, since the outbreak thus far has been heavily concentrated in that population. But there are also two known pediatric infections in the U.S., one in a California toddler and the other in an infant in Washington, D.C., according to the CDC.
The two cases are likely the result of household transmission and aren’t related, a CDC spokeswoman said Monday. The cases are under investigation, and both children, though symptomatic, were in good health and receiving treatment medication, she said. In the case of children, monkeypox could spread through activities like holding, cuddling, feeding and shared items like towels and bedding, the CDC said.
The virus requires close contact to spread. Health authorities haven’t reported deaths beyond Africa in the current outbreak, but there have been several deaths in two African countries since the start of the year, WHO data show.
Although there are available vaccines to combat the monkeypox outbreak they have been in short supply.
Photo:
EDUARDO MUNOZ/REUTERS
Because some countries such as the U.S. have invested in adding defenses against smallpox, which is related to monkeypox, there are already available vaccines to combat the current outbreak. Still, the vaccines have been in short supply as gay and bisexual men clamor for shots.
U.S. health authorities, criticized by some activists for not moving faster to bolster the vaccine stockpile, have said the numbers are growing. The Department of Health and Human Services says it has shipped more than 300,000 doses of the two-dose Jynneos vaccine, made by
Bavarian Nordic
A/S, to jurisdictions around the U.S. The government said it accelerated inspection for another 800,000 doses coming this summer and that there are millions of shots that are set for delivery by mid-2023, HHS said.
Supply constraints have improved, but demand still seems to be outpacing available shots, said Amanda Babine, executive director with the advocacy group Equality New York.
New York City, which recently counted more than 1,000 confirmed and presumed cases, said there are likely many more cases that haven’t been diagnosed.
Meanwhile, testing capacity, another bottleneck, has improved. With private laboratories now online, U.S. capacity recently reached 80,000 tests a week, up from 6,000 a week at the start of the outbreak, HHS said.
The world is living through a unique moment: In the past five or six weeks, the Omicron coronavirus variant has likely gotten more people sick than any similar period since the 1917-18 flu pandemic, according to global health experts.
While Omicron infections have peaked in many places, February is likely to see similar case loads as the variant continues to spread before it flames out, causing worker shortages from hospitals to factories and spurring debate about Covid-19 restrictions, particularly since Omicron appears to be causing less serious illness.
In England, more than one in six residents are estimated to have caught the coronavirus since Omicron emerged in late November, surveys and modeling by the Office for National Statistics indicate. In Denmark, about one in five have caught the virus, and in Israel one in nine, authorities estimate.
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“This is an unbelievably unique moment when so many people get infected by a pathogen at the same time,” said Christopher Murray, the director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which tracks global health.
Roughly one in five Americans had contracted Omicron by the mid-January peak, a number that could double by the time the surge ends in mid-February, Trevor Bedford, a virologist at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center, estimated. “Having ~40% of the population infected by a single pathogen in the span of 8 weeks is remarkable and I can’t think of an obvious modern precedent. Flu seasons generally have perhaps 10% infected in the span of 16 weeks,” he wrote on Twitter.
Unlike previous waves of the pandemic, which infected fewer people and often surged in different parts of the globe at different times, the current wave is largely world-wide, even if parts of Asia still haven’t seen a substantial Omicron outbreak.
Factory workers lined up for Covid-19 boosters in Mexico on Tuesday.
Photo:
JOSE LUIS GONZALEZ/REUTERS
“If you don’t have friends infected right now, you don’t have friends,” Brenda Crabtree, a Mexican infectious-disease specialist, said on Twitter.
Not everyone who gets infected gets sick. The IHME estimates that as many as 80% to 90% of those infected may be asymptomatic, compared with about 40% with the Delta variant of the coronavirus and similar numbers for influenza. But that still likely leaves a record number of sick people in such a short period.
“Even if just 5% of those who got infected are sick, those are still very big numbers,” said Mr. Murray, adding that about 10% of his own university’s hospital—approximately 900 staff—were either out sick or tending to someone sick in mid-January. And influenza, while less prevalent than before the pandemic, is also circulating, adding to the rolls of the ill. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates two million Americans have had symptomatic flu so far this season, which began in October.
A Covid-19 testing site at a New Delhi hospital last month.
Photo:
ANUSHREE FADNAVIS/REUTERS
The impact on labor markets is threefold: Those who get sick, those who have to stay home to tend to sick family members, and those who are asymptomatic but test positive and have to stay home because of workplace and government guidelines.
As a result, unprecedented numbers of people who can’t work remotely are absent, which is hitting hospitals, airlines, schools and sporting events. In Brazil, up to one-fifth of healthcare staff called in sick last week in Rio de Janeiro state, which has also been hit by a flu outbreak. Between 10% and 13% of factory employees in Mexico have called in sick in recent weeks, according to estimates from Coparmex, the country’s largest industry chamber of commerce. “Some manufacturing firms have had up to 20% of the workforce out,” said Ricardo Barbosa, head of the labor committee at the chamber. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”
The scale and speed of Omicron’s spread make it comparable only to the 1917-1918 influenza pandemic, in terms of the percentage of the global population infected with the same virus in such a short period, said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Vanderbilt medical school.
“Obviously there have been other influenza pandemics that have occurred which we would think of as being close to this, but I think we’re playing in the major leagues here,” he said.
In January, there were more than 84 million positive Covid-19 cases world-wide, almost exactly the number of positive Covid-19 results during all of 2020, the year the pandemic got under way, according to numbers from Our World in Data. Fortunately, widespread vaccination, previous infection and better treatments kept the Covid-19-related death toll relatively low during the month, at 217,442.
Commuters in London and Copenhagen (below) rode trains after Covid-19 restrictions were eased in recent weeks in the U.K. and Denmark.
Photo:
Victoria Jones/PA Wire/Zuma Press
Photo:
EPA/Shutterstock
Given that testing only captures a fraction of likely cases, however, as many as 95 million people a day around the world were likely catching Omicron in the early part of January, six times higher than the pandemic’s previous peak, according to IHME estimates. It forecasts a sharp decline in new infections over the next few weeks, with the global surge ending by mid-March.
In the first half of December, about three million people across the U.S. said they were at home from work either sick themselves or taking care of a sick family member, according to numbers tracked by the Census Bureau.
The workplace strains and the evidence that Omicron is less severe than earlier variants are prompting more governments to ease Covid-19 guidelines. The U.S. and U.K. have both reduced the isolation period for positive cases to five days from 10. Israel decided that students exposed to a confirmed case no longer need to miss in-person classes. In Dubai, authorities last week told healthcare workers exposed to the coronavirus that they don’t need to isolate if fully vaccinated and have no symptoms, state-backed media reported.
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Some governments are going further, encouraged by the idea that the wave of current infections will add to immunity from vaccines and set the stage for a significant decline in infections in coming months, ushering in a new stage where Covid-19 becomes endemic like a seasonal flu. Denmark and France this week said they would scrap many Covid-19 restrictions.
The World Health Organization warned against easing restrictions too quickly. “We’re concerned that a narrative has taken hold in some countries that because of vaccines, and because of Omicron’s high transmissibility and lower severity, preventing transmission is no longer possible and no longer necessary,” WHO Director-General
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
said on Tuesday. “Nothing could be further from the truth. More transmission means more disease.”
Amid a surge in cases, some countries are handing out second booster shots. In Israel, early data suggest a fourth vaccine dose can increase antibodies against Covid-19, but not enough to prevent infections from Omicron. WSJ explains. Photo composite: Eve Hartley/WSJ
Caroline Ball, an accountant in London, says she knows about 15 families currently infected with the virus—more than she has known of at any one time in the past two years. During two weeks in mid-January, her husband and three young sons tested positive for the virus days apart. Their symptoms ranged from fever and fatigue to no sign of illness at all.
“Especially with Omicron and the boys being at school, it did feel like our time was going to come,” she said. Children under 12 aren’t routinely eligible for Covid-19 vaccines in the U.K.
Hospitals have been most affected by the surge, with more patients and fewer staff. Staff out sick with Covid-19 in English hospitals peaked in early January at almost 50,000, before the government reduced the isolation period for positive cases to five days with two negative test results, according to data from the National Health Service. More than a third of staff at one of Argentina’s largest public hospitals, Hospital General Durand, were out sick or looking after sick family members, hospital officials say.
São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, hired several hundred new health workers to cope with staff absences. A local judge filed an injunction in mid-January preventing emergency-care health workers in São Paulo from going on strike after they planned walkouts this week over staff shortages.
“Everyone is exhausted…the biggest risk is that we get to a point where the system collapses,” said Victor Vilela Dourado, an anesthetist from São Paulo and head of the city’s doctors union.
In São Paulo, more than 600 bank branches temporarily closed in recent weeks because of lack of staff, according to the banking association. About 20% of workers at Brazilian bars and restaurants across the country have been sent home since December, according to the local industry association. Argentina’s state-run airline Aerolineas Argentinas said one-tenth of its 11,000 employees were out sick in mid-January, causing scores of flights to be canceled.
Health workers demanded better work conditions in a demonstration in São Paulo last month.
Photo:
CARLA CARNIEL/REUTERS
The virus has also hit the world of sports. About 21 Premier League games have been called off because of Covid-19 infections in the U.K. in the past month, far more than the six total games postponed in the 2020-21 season. Argentina’s soccer season is getting under way late because so many players are testing positive. India was forced out of the Women’s Asian Cup soccer tournament after a dozen Covid-19 cases among players.
New Delhi banker Abhishek Sharma is one of millions world-wide now faced with backed-up healthcare services. He kept trying to contact his family’s longtime pediatrician Sameer Maqsood after the banker’s 8-year-old came down with flulike symptoms. But the doctor wasn’t answering his phone or responding to texts. In desperation, Mr. Sharma drove to the doctor’s clinic in east Delhi and found a long line of sick children waiting. The doctor said he was forced to ignore his phone for the first time in two decades because of so many patients.
“Looks like everyone is falling sick,” the banker quoted Dr. Maqsood as saying.
People waited for Covid-19 testing outside a hospital in Buenos Aires in January.
Photo:
AGUSTIN MARCARIAN/REUTERS
—Luciana Magalhaes in São Paulo, Silvina Friedlewsky in Buenos Aires and Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv contributed to this article.
Write to David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com, Joanna Sugden at joanna.sugden@wsj.com and Rajesh Roy at rajesh.roy@wsj.com
Glaciers across the Himalayas are melting at an extraordinary rate, with new research showing that the vast ice sheets there shrank 10 times faster in the past 40 years than during the previous seven centuries.
Avalanches, flooding and other effects of the accelerating loss of ice imperil residents in India, Nepal and Bhutan and threaten to disrupt agriculture for hundreds of millions of people across South Asia, according to the researchers. And since water from melting glaciers contributes to sea-level rise, glacial ice loss in the Himalayas also adds to the threat of inundation and related problems faced by coastal communities around the world.
