Month: October 2022

Taiwan lifted all its COVID-19 entry restrictions Thursday, allowing tourists unfettered access to the self-ruled island after more than 2 1/2 years of border controls. Hong Kong and Taiwan, together with mainland China, required most visitors to complete a mandatory quarantine period throughout the pandemic, even as most countries reopened their borders to tourists. Visitors…

As Australia prepares to end mandatory coronavirus isolation rules Friday, new research shows that almost a third of adults have had symptoms of long COVID. In Canberra, a parliamentary health committee has heard clinics are being contacted by more patients struggling with ongoing ailments. COVID-19 cases reported in Australia continue to fall, but the consequences…

Early in World War II, the U.S. Navy battled Nazi U-boats off the East Coast of the United States in an area that came to be known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” For VOA, Genia Dulot takes us on an underwater tour of some of those wrecks, which are now artificial reefs popular with…

Case numbers in the global monkeypox outbreak have now topped 70,000, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced Wednesday as it warned that a decline in new cases did not mean people should drop their guard.  The WHO said that case numbers last week were on the rise in several countries in the Americas and it…

The U.S. on Wednesday authorized updated COVID-19 boosters for children as young as 5, seeking to expand protection ahead of an expected winter wave. Tweaked boosters rolled out for Americans 12 and older last month, doses modified to target today’s most common and contagious omicron relative. While there wasn’t a big rush, federal health officials…

Scientists have transplanted human brain cells into the brains of baby rats, where the cells grew and formed connections. It’s part of an effort to better study human brain development and diseases affecting this most complex of organs, which makes us who we are but has long been shrouded in mystery. “Many disorders such as…

The White House on Tuesday said eligible Americans should get the updated COVID-19 boosters by Halloween to have maximum protection against the coronavirus by Thanksgiving and the holidays, as it warned of a “challenging” virus season ahead. Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 coordinator, said the U.S. has the tools, both from vaccines and…

A spacecraft that plowed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles away succeeded in shifting its orbit, NASA said Tuesday in announcing the results of its save-the-world test. The space agency attempted the first test of its kind two weeks ago to see if in the future a killer rock could be nudged out…

Energy infrastructure will become more vulnerable to extreme weather such as heatwaves and hurricanes, the World Meteorological Organization warned on Tuesday, with a senior official saying that climate change poses as big a threat to global energy security as the war in Ukraine. This year was illustrative of what the WMO says are the challenges…

Malawi’s health ministry says it will soon roll out Africa’s first malaria vaccine for children under age five. The RTS,S vaccine, which was tested in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, took more than 30 years to develop. While the vaccine has a relatively low level of effectiveness, it has raised hopes of saving some of the…

As awareness grows around the world about the problem of food waste, one culprit in particular is drawing scrutiny: “best before” labels. Manufacturers have used the labels for decades to estimate peak freshness. Unlike “use by” labels, which are found on perishable foods like meat and dairy, “best before” labels have nothing to do with…

Monday is World Mental Health Day. To mark the day, the World Health Organization has launched a campaign to “raise awareness and spur action” in regions where there are high rates of death by suicide. The world health body said that the pandemic has created “a global crisis for mental health,” in a statement Monday,…

Older people with limited mobility and those with chronic health conditions requiring the use of electrically powered medical devices were especially vulnerable when Hurricane Ian slammed into Southwest Florida, and experts warn such risks to society’s oldest are growing as disasters increase with the impact of climate change. Almost all of the dozens of people…

The city of Philadelphia issued an apology Thursday for the unethical medical experiments performed on mostly Black inmates at its Holmesburg Prison from the 1950s through the 1970s. The move comes after community activists and families of some of those inmates raised the need for a formal apology. It also follows a string of apologies…