India’s health ministry Monday announced a record 273,810 new COVID cases in the previous 24-hour period while officials in the capital, New Delhi, announced a weeklong lockdown. The infections reported Monday are the most the country has seen in a single day since the pandemic began. About 1 in 3 people tested for COVID-19 in New Delhi recently returned a positive result, according to the city’s chief minister Sunday.  “The bigger worry is that in last 24 hours, positivity rate has increased to around 30% from 24%,” Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister of Delhi, told a news briefing Sunday.  “The cases are rising very rapidly. The beds are filling fast,” he said.  People in Delhi have turned to social media to complain about the lack of oxygen canisters and the shortages of hospital beds and drugs.  People queue outside a wine store to buy liquor after the Delhi government ordered a six-day lockdown to limit the spread of the coronavirus disease, in New Delhi, India, April 19, 2021.With more than 15 million total infections, India is second to the United States, which has recorded 31.6 million cases.  Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, 88, was hospitalized Monday in New Delhi after testing positive for COVID-19. Just more than 1% of India’s population has been vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.  Indian officials announced Monday that everyone 18 or older will be eligible to receive a vaccine beginning May 1. Greta Thunberg In other developments Monday, global climate change activist Greta Thunberg said it was unethical for rich countries to vaccinate their younger citizens before vulnerable groups in developing countries receive inoculations. FILE – Climate activist Greta Thunberg arrives for a news conference in Berlin, Germany, Aug. 20, 2020.”Vaccine nationalism is what is running the vaccine distribution,” Thunberg said from Sweden during a virtual press briefing by the World Health Organization in Geneva. WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “We have the tools to bring this pandemic under control in a matter of months if we apply them consistently and equitably.” In Turkey, deaths from COVID-19 reached a new daily high of 341. The country began Monday making COVID-19 vaccines available for all people 55 and older. Also Monday, pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech said they would provide 100 million more doses of their coronavirus vaccine to the European Union this year. The extra doses bring the total doses promised by Pfizer and BioNTech to the EU to 600 million in 2021.  In IranOn Sunday, Iran reported its highest daily death toll from the coronavirus in months, as hospitals in the capital and elsewhere were filling to capacity.  Iran’s health ministry reported 405 deaths from the virus and confirmed more than 21,000 infections Sunday.  Iran’s vaccination campaign has been slow and dependent on a range of domestically made vaccines. About one-tenth of 1% of its population has been fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins.  Vaccine numbersMeanwhile Sunday, Israel lifted the requirement that masks be worn outdoors. Nearly 56% of its population is fully vaccinated against the virus, according to Johns Hopkins.  Pedestrians walk on a boulevard as Israel rescinds the mandatory wearing of face masks outdoors in the latest return to relative normality, boosted by a mass-vaccination campaign against the coronavirus pandemic, in Tel Aviv, Israel, April 18, 2021.The United States reported Sunday that just over half of its adult population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.  The United States halted use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine while it investigates rare incidents of blood clots, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said he expects use of the shot to resume within a week.  “I doubt very seriously if they just cancel it. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I do think that there will likely be some sort of warning or restriction or risk assessment,” Fauci said on NBC’s Meet the Press.  There have been more than 3 million global deaths from the coronavirus.   
 
…

South Sudan health officials have stopped administering 60,000 doses of the COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccine that are past the expiration date but still have a shelf life of at least six months, according to the drugmaker and the World Health Organization.  The doses, which were donated by the mobile telecommunications network MTN and the African Union (AU), arrived in Juba about three weeks ago. Dr. Richard Lako, the incident manager for COVID-19 operations at the South Sudan health ministry, told reporters Sunday in Juba that the vaccine is no longer being used. “We later discovered the lifespan of this vaccine is just remaining 14 days, so immediately we started engaging because if we start them, we may not be able to finish, so the ministry is now engaging the AU and the team with regards to that effect,” Lako said. FILE – A member of South Sudanese Ministry of Health Rapid Response Team takes a nasal sample from a woman at her home in Juba, South Sudan, April 14, 2020.The health ministry is working with the country’s food and drug authorities to safely dispose of the doses, according to Lako.   “Not all medicine disposal can be done easily. Vaccines are very difficult and it has to be handled differently. The drug and food authority already led the policy which, as a ministry, we have to abide by and now engage with the AU and other people to see how we deal with this,” he said. World Health Organization officials present at the briefing declined to answer questions about the vaccine’s expiration date, but India’s drug regulator has allowed the vaccine — which goes by the brand name Covishield and is made by the Serum Institute of India — to be used for up to nine months from its manufacture date, rather than the prescribed six months. AstraZeneca says its product can be stored, transported and handled at normal refrigerated conditions for at least six months. The World Health Organization website also gives the shelf life of six months for Covishield and the South Korean-made AstraZeneca shot. The AstraZeneca doses have been exported to dozens of countries, including South Sudan. Dr. Guyo Argata Guracha, the WHO emergency team leader in South Sudan, noted at Sunday’s weekly COVID press briefing the vaccine’s expiration date is different from the vaccine’s shelf life. “From the WHO point of view, these are new vaccines, the expiry or it is called shelf life not even expiry date really — actually let it be shelf life, we don’t have to talk about expiry date — the shelf life of this vaccine is six months from now. We cannot say it is really expired but we can talk of the shelf life, which is six months,” Guracha said. The doses donated by MTN and the AU arrived in Juba shortly after 132,000 AstraZeneca doses arrived in the capital from the COVAX facility, a global collaboration that was formed to speed up the production and equitable distribution of COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines. Lako said the COVAX doses remain usable up to July. He said about 2,000 people — mostly health workers — have been vaccinated in South Sudan. The government recently lifted a partial lockdown on the country after registering a significant drop in COVID-19 cases over several weeks, but that doesn’t mean the public should stop wearing face masks, Lako said. “The cases are coming down but COVID-19 is there, we still have some pockets of reporting areas. We have actually spotted in the last three or four weeks still places like Pariang, Pamet, Nimule, Mapuordit and Agok in particular,” added Lako. To date, South Sudan has recorded 10,475 positive cases, 10,215 recoveries, and 114 COVID-19 deaths.   
 
…

The U.S. space agency, NASA, Monday received images and data confirming its small helicopter, Ingenuity, successfully performed the first controlled powered flight of an aircraft on a planet other than Earth. Scientists in the control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology burst into applause and cheers when data confirmed Ingenuity had successfully spun its rotors, lifted off to a height of three meters and landed safely back on the surface of Mars.   “Wow!”The @NASAJPL team is all cheers as they receive video data from the @NASAPersevere rover of the Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter flight: pic.twitter.com/8eH4H6jGKs— NASA (@NASA) April 19, 2021A picture taken by the small craft of its own shadow on the ground below it arrived seconds later, as did video of the flight taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover probe several meters away.   
 
Ingenuity, weighing a mere 1.8 kilograms, was stowed away on the Perseverance when it landed on Mars in February. It was unfolded and dropped from the rover about two weeks ago to prepare its launch.  The first test of the helicopter had been scheduled for more than a week ago, but a software problem was discovered that required an update.  In this image from NASA, NASA’s experimental Mars helicopter Ingenuity lands on the surface of Mars, April 19, 2021. The helicopter is considered by NASA to be a technology demonstration, designed to test a new capability — in this case, flight in the thin Martian atmosphere — for the first time. It has specially designed rotors that spin much faster than they would have to on Earth to achieve flight. It also has innovative batteries and solar cells for recharging. 
 
Aside from cameras, Ingenuity carries no scientific instruments.  
…

India’s Health Ministry Monday announced a record 273,810 new COVID cases in the previous 24-hour period. About 1 in 3 people tested for COVID-19 in the Indian capital of New Delhi recently returned a positive result, according to the city’s chief minister Sunday. “The bigger worry is that in last 24 hours positivity rate has increased to around 30% from 24%,” chief minister Arvind Kejriwal told a news briefing Sunday. “The cases are rising very rapidly. The beds are filling fast,” he said. People in Delhi have turned to social media to complain about the lack of oxygen cannisters and the shortages of hospital beds and drugs. With more than 15 million people with the infection, India is second to the U.S. which has 31.6 million infections. Just more than 1% of India’s population has been vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Cases surge in Iran On Sunday, Iran reported its highest daily death toll from the coronavirus in months, as hospitals in the capital and elsewhere were filling to capacity. Iran’s Health Ministry reported 405 deaths from the virus and confirmed more than 21,000 infections Sunday. The country’s highest single-day death toll was 480 last November. People walk next to closed shops of Tehran Bazaar following the tightening of restrictions to curb the surge of COVID-19 cases, Tehran, Apr. 10, 2021. (Majid Asgaripour/(West Asia News Agency via Reuters)Iran has battled one of the worst outbreaks in the region but has said it cannot sustain long lockdowns to quell the virus for fear of too much economic damage. Iran’s vaccination campaign has been slow, dependent on a range of domestically made vaccines. About one-tenth of 1% of its population has been fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins. Meanwhile Sunday, Israel lifted the requirement that masks be worn outdoors. Nearly 56% of its population is fully vaccinated against the virus, according to Johns Hopkins. The mask mandate remains in place, however, for enclosed spaces. Half US adult population vaccinatedThe United States reported Sunday that just over half of its adult population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. FILE – A woman receives the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a FEMA vaccination center at Miami Dade College, April 5, 2021.The United States halted use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine while it investigates rare incidents of blood clots, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said he expects use of the shot to resume within a week. “I doubt very seriously if they just cancel it. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I do think that there will likely be some sort of warning or restriction or risk assessment,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Fauci, former President Barack Obama and several American celebrities appeared Sunday night on “Roll Up Your Sleeves,” a nationally televised special aimed at decreasing vaccine hesitancy in the United States. France to impose quarantinesBeginning April 24, France will require all travelers from Brazil, as well as Argentina, Chile and South Africa, to quarantine for 10 days over concerns of coronavirus variants coming in from those regions, the government announced Saturday. Police is tasked at monitoring arrivals to ensure compliance. Cemetery workers wearing protective gear lower the coffin of a person who died from complications related to COVID-19 into a gravesite at the Vila Formosa cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil, April 7, 2021.Brazil had 13.9 million COVID cases as of early Monday, according to Johns Hopkins. Only the U.S. and India have more cases. Flights from Brazil into France will remain suspended until the new rules take effect.  More than 373,000 people have died in Brazil from COVID, according to data from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The U.S. is the only country that has more COVID deaths, at more than 567,000. There have been more than 3 million global deaths from the coronavirus.  
…