September 3, 2021

Airport COVID-19 testing lab from BGI safeguards Ethiopia-China Route

Fast and accurate testing labs at international terminals offer a new solution, as airports continue to be a focal point in the global spread of COVID-19

SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — From April to August, 2021, BGI’s COVID-19 testing lab has helped 5,500 Chinese travelers safely fly out of the Addis Ababa Bole International Airport. In April, BGI set up the “Huo-Yan” laboratory, a COVID-19 testing lab, at the airport for passengers flying to China in cooperation with Ethiopia Airlines. Since then, the lab has contributed to around five consecutive months without a single flight suspension on the route.

The pre-flight testing procedures pioneered at the lab present an option for reducing the pressure of containment measures at destinations.

The "Huo-Yan" laboratory at the Addis Ababa Bole International Airport, Ethiopia

The lab provides quick, accurate nucleic acid polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing and antibody testing services to passengers at the Airport. The lab can test up to 400 samples within three hours and 5,000 samples per day, reducing inconvenience for departing and transiting at the Airport.

The lab helps reduce imported cases. Passengers are required to quarantine first. They are not allowed to board until obtaining negative results for both a COVID-19 nucleic acid PCR test and an antibody test.

Since the start of operations at the lab, the number of outbound positive cases found on arrival has sharply decreased. To date, no flights have been suspended between Ethiopia and China, making this the only direct flight from the African continent to China that has been continuously operating during this period.

“From April 21 to August 31, the laboratory has provided testing services for more than 5,500 passengers on 19 flights to China,” said Chen Songheng, the head of the “Huo-Yan” laboratory in Ethiopia.

BGI has built more than 30 “Huo-Yan” laboratories with partners in over 80 countries and regions. By providing one-platform solutions with accurate, efficient testing, the labs play a vital role in contributing to the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

BGI leads innovative development in genomics and life sciences. Through its integrated model, it incorporates industry development, education and research in compliance with international bioethical protocols. It applies frontier multi-omics research findings to areas including medicine, healthcare and resource conservation, and provides cutting-edge proprietary life science instruments and devices, technical support and solutions to revolutionize the current healthcare system towards precision medicine and healthcare.

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September 3, 2021

‘Very Brutal’: In Ethiopia, Tigray Forces Accused of Abuses

As they bring war to other parts of Ethiopia, resurgent Tigray fighters face growing allegations that they are retaliating for the abuses their people suffered back home.

In interviews with The Associated Press, more than a dozen witnesses offered the most widespread descriptions yet of Tigray forces striking communities and a religious site with artillery, killing civilians, looting health centers and schools and sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in the past two months.

In the town of Nefas Mewucha in the Amhara region, a hospital's medical equipment was smashed. The fighters looted medicines and other supplies, leaving more than a dozen patients to die.

"It is a lie that they are not targeting civilians and infrastructures," hospital manager Birhanu Mulu told the AP. He said his team had to transfer some 400 patients elsewhere for care. "Everyone can come and witness the destruction that they caused."

The war that began last November was confined at first to Ethiopia's sealed-off northern Tigray region. Accounts of atrocities often emerged long after they occurred: Tigrayans described gang-rapes, massacres and forced starvation by federal forces and their allies from Amhara and neighboring Eritrea.

Source: Voice of America

September 3, 2021

Mali Police March on Prison, Free Commander Held in Protest Deaths Inquiry

A special forces commander in Mali was freed on Friday after angry police officers marched to the prison where he was detained for allegedly using brute force to quash deadly protests last year.

The head of the police counterterrorism unit, Oumar Samake, had been held in the Sahel state over lethal skirmishes between security forces and opponents of ex-President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Anti-Keita protests rocked Mali last year and eventually culminated in the president's ouster in a military coup.

One such protest on July 10, 2020, sparked several days of deadly clashes with security forces.

Mali's political opposition said at the time that 23 people were killed during the unrest. The United Nations reported that 14 protesters were killed, including two children.

An investigation was opened into the killings in December 2020.

Police special-forces commander Samake was detained Friday for his alleged role in the violence, a senior legal official told AFP.

But the move infuriated police officers, some of whom marched on the prison in the capital, Bamako, where he was held.

Prison guard Yacouba Toure told AFP that large numbers of well-armed policemen turned up at the jail.

"We did not resist," he said, adding that police left with Samake "without incident."

A justice ministry official, who requested anonymity, said the government decided to free Samake "for the sake of peace."

"This is not a court decision," the official said, adding that the investigation into Samake would continue.

The dramatic events underscored the sensitivity of such investigations in chronically unstable Mali.

The country's military deposed Keita in August 2020 after weeks of protests fueled by grievances over alleged corruption and the president's inability to stop the long-running jihadist conflict.

Army officers then installed a civilian-led interim government to steer Mali back toward democratic rule. But military strongman Colonel Assimi Goita deposed these civilian leaders in May in a second coup.

Goita has pledged to restore civilian rule and stage elections in February next year.

However, there are doubts about whether the government will be able to hold elections within such a short time frame.

Mali has been struggling to quell a brutal jihadist insurgency, which emerged in 2012 and left swaths of the vast nation outside government control.

Source: Voice of America

September 3, 2021

Young Africans Struggle With Jobs, Education Amid Pandemic

The future looked promising for Tinashe Mapuranga, an intern at a leading bank in Zimbabwe who appeared set to get a staff position as soon as he completed his college degree. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Amid the lockdowns, the 24-year-old was one of the first to be laid off and has no idea when he'll be able to get his degree because of frequent school closures.

"It has really affected me a lot in my studies. I have no money to buy data and I don't have a personal laptop to study online and keep up like what others are doing," said Mapuranga, who lives with his mother in Chitungwiza, a sprawling working-class area southeast of Harare, the capital.

"I was supposed to finish in November or December 2021, but as of now, we haven't completed much of the work," he said. "Truly speaking, I am not sure when I will finish the degree. I can't wait to graduate and find a job and do something tangible in life."

Mapuranga spends most of his time at home, tending a tiny vegetable garden that is the family's main source of food. His mother ekes out a living traveling to South Africa to sell things like stone carvings and brooms on the streets, a trade also badly hit by the pandemic.

"We've been trying to hustle to get some money," he said. "I tried to do a small business selling cooking gas but the authorities chased us away from the streets. My father passed away. My mother is into informal business, but it's also down with these lockdowns. Things are not well right now. It's tough."

Mapuranga's situation might look dire, but he says he's concerned about some of his unemployed peers who have fallen into alcohol, drugs and prostitution.

"Many youths have lost hope," he said.

Across Africa, many others like Mapuranga are battling the economic downturn caused by COVID-19, losing jobs and seeing their education disrupted, a survey of people aged 18-24 in 15 countries has found.

The pandemic increased the already-high level of unemployment among the group, according to preliminary findings of the second annual Africa Youth Survey.

Nearly 20% of the 4,500 respondents said they became unemployed because of the pandemic and 37% were forced to stop or pause their education. Another 8% saw their pay docked, 18% had to move back home and 10% said they had to care for family members, according to the survey, which was commissioned by the Johannesburg-based Ichikowitz Family Foundation, whose founder, Ivor Ichikowitz, runs Paramount Group, an aerospace, security and military contractor.

Of the 1.3 billion people in Africa's 54 countries, an estimated 250 million are aged 18-24. The study was conducted in major urban and trading centers in Angola, Congo, the Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda and Zambia. The researchers for PSB Insights, a global polling company, were nationals of each country where the survey took place and went door-to-door for in-depth, face-to-face interviews.

People surveyed said the pandemic caused substantial disruptions to their schooling, emphasizing the need for more computers and internet access in Africa for online education.

Bola Badejo, 29, saw her salary at the broadcast station where she worked in Abuja, Nigeria, cut in half, and she complained that she could not make it on the equivalent of $146 a month.

"I was already poor and I was working just for the sake of doing the job," she said. Then, in April 202, she was laid off.

"I fell into depression because the whole thing was really sad. I felt I had nowhere to go," Badejo said.

After seven months without a job, she started a home cleaning business, and that has boosted her outlook, she said.

Badejo is typical of many who have found different ways to support themselves.

Source: Voice of America

September 3, 2021

African Union Makes Vaccine Deal for the Continent

The African Union has announced that Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines assembled in South Africa will no longer be exported to Europe and will instead be distributed among African countries.

In addition, millions of J&J vaccines already shipped to Europe, but currently stored in warehouses, will be returned to South Africa, African Union COVID-19 envoy Strive Masiyiwa said Thursday.

The deal between J&J and Aspen Pharmacare, the South African facility manufacturing the J&J vaccines that were sent to Europe, had received harsh criticism as less than 3% of the population of the African continent has been inoculated, compared to richer regions of the world that have begun or will soon begin booster shot campaigns.

The World Health Organization has warned that the pandemic cannot be brought under control unless all the world’s regions are equitably vaccinated.

Meanwhile, WHO has listed a new coronavirus strain as a “variant of interest.” The Mu variant is responsible for nearly 40% of the COVID cases in Colombia where it was first identified.

Greek health care workers demonstrated Thursday against a COVID mandate that went into effect Wednesday.

Under the new regulation, workers will be suspended without pay if they have not been inoculated or recovered from the coronavirus in the last six months.

Musicals are back on Broadway, after an absence of more than a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tony Award-winning Hadestown, a modern interpretation of the ancient Greek legend of lovers Orpheus and Eurydice, opened Thursday.

Also, the musical Waitress began a limited run Thursday, starring singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles.

Hamilton, The Lion King, and Wicked return to Broadway theaters Sept. 14.

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center has recorded 219 million COVID infections and 4.5 million coronavirus deaths. The center said early Friday that 5.3 billion vaccines have been administered.

Source: Voice of America