Federal regulators are allowing hospitals and other laboratories to develop their own tests for the coronavirus in an effort to relieve what critics say is a shortage of testing for the virus.  The urgency for testing is growing as health officials report several new coronavirus cases in the United States and the country’s first death — a man in his 50s from Washington state.The new policy unveiled on Saturday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), follows criticism that a lack of testing has allowed the virus to spread undetected.”It’s going to be really useful for greatly expanding the number of places that can do the tests,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.  Hospitals have been sending samples to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta for testing. Getting results takes 48 hours.Problems with CDC testThe CDC had …

Officials in Ecuador on Saturday confirmed the first case of the new coronavirus in the South American nation, while Mexico reported two more cases and Brazil one more. Ecuador’s Health Minister Catalina Andramuno Zeballos said a more-than-70-year-old Ecuadoran woman who lives in Spain arrived in the country on Feb. 14 showing no symptoms of illness. “In the following days she began to feel badly with a fever,” Andramuno said at a news conference, adding that she was taken to a medical center. The National Institute of Public Health and Investigation in Ecuador confirmed the virus. The deputy minister of health, Julio Lopez said that the patient’s condition was “critical.” It was the second case in South America, following a Brazilian case reported on Wednesday. The Sao Paulo state health department reported another Brazilian case later on Saturday _ a person who had recently visited Italy. Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno sent …

U.S. President Donald Trump, flanked by Vice President Mike Pence and members of the administration’s coronavirus task force, on Saturday sought to reassure the country as the first domestic death from the new disease was reported.Trump called for the media and politicians “not do anything to incite a panic because there’s no reason to panic at all.””Whatever the circumstance, we’re prepared,” he said.Trump’s administration is imposing further travel restrictions related to Iran due to a significant coronavirus outbreak there and issuing “do not travel” warnings for the regions of Italy and South Korea that have been hardest hit by COVID-19.Trump has authorized a ban on foreign nationals who have traveled to Iran in the past 14 days, announced by Pence, who added that the State Department is working with the Italian and South Korean governments to enhance screenings in those countries of individuals traveling to the United States.  Additional travel …

NASA is preparing to send a new rover to Mars for a human exploration mission of the Red Planet. Voice of America reporter Verónica Villafañe saw the space vehicle up close and spoke with members of the mission.   …

Nigerian Health authorities  are preparing to handle any possible outbreak and urge citizens to remain calm. “We have enough reagents to do the checking now, there are four laboratories in Nigeria that can test for this particular virus,” Health Minister Emmanuel Osagie said. “We also have a system for sample transport, so samples can be taken from somewhere and transported to a testing center within a few hours. So that is part of the network that we have prepared.”The effort comes as officials confirmed the country’s  first case of the coronavirus.  Nigerian health authorities say the patient is a man from Italy — a country hit hard by the virus — who works in Nigeria and returned from the Italian city of Milan to Nigeria’s economic hub, Lagos, days ago.This makes Nigeria the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to record a case of the virus, which is blamed for more …

Nigerian officials have confirmed a case of coronavirus in the country, the first confirmed case in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa is braced for a potential coronavirus pandemic as experts warn health systems on the continent could be overwhelmed.  However, experts say the apparent delay in the virus reaching Africa has given health officials precious time to prepare, as Henry Ridgwell reports. …

Mexican health authorities announced Friday they have confirmed the first two cases of coronavirus in Mexico.A man in Mexico City who recently visited Italy tested positive Friday, and another patient is confirmed in the northern state of Sinaloa. Brazil is the only other country that has coronavirus in Latin America.The coronavirus emerged in at least five other countries Friday: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Lithuania, New Zealand and Nigeria.The case in Nigeria, detected in the economic capital Lagos, is the first case in sub-Saharan Africa and the third to be confirmed in Africa. Nigerian officials said the case involved an Italian citizen who entered the country this week.In Azerbaijan, a Russian citizen who had arrived from Iran has been confirmed with the virus, and in Belarus an Iranian student who arrived from Azerbaijan tested positive.Lithuania also announced Friday, a woman who returned this week from a visit to Italy tested positive.New Zealand confirmed …

In an effort to end “period poverty,” the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday moved Scotland a step closer to becoming the first country in the world to to provide free sanitary pads and tampons in public places.The Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Bill passed 112-0, with one abstention. If the bill moves past the second phase, where legislators propose amendments, free menstrual products will be available in places such as pharmacies, community centers and youth clubs.Menstrual products are currently taxed as luxury items.The cost of the legislation is estimated to be $31 million a year. Scotland has already made strides in ending the 5% “tampon tax.”In 2018, the country created a national policy that ensured free pads and tampons in schools and universities. The European Union plans to remove a sales tax on menstrual products by 2022 and let individual countries decide the prices.“(This) is a milestone moment for normalizing menstruation in …

After a long and unsettling dry spell, the water at Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls is flowing again, fed by rains upstream in Angola and Namibia. But as Columbus Mavhunga reports from Victoria Falls, experts and environmentalists say global warming is having a huge impact across Africa, and the continent needs to take immediate action to help reverse the trend. …

None of the remaining 700-plus guests at a hotel in Spain’s Canary Islands on lockdown over the coronavirus have shown any symptoms of the virus and 130 of them have been cleared to leave, a spokesman for the regional government said on Thursday.”All these tourists, clients, guests present no symptoms … and a decision has been made that frees the hotel from the presence of 130 people,” he said in televised comments. “At the same time, there is the possibility that the remaining ones … could be leaving the hotel as soon as a similar situation is verified,” he added.The guests and staff in Tenerife’s H10 Costa Adeje Palace Hotel have spent three days in isolation after the coronavirus was detected there in four Italian tourists.Spain’s total number of active coronavirus cases rose to 15 on Thursday from 11, with the bulk of them linked to Italy, hit by the …

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday that he expects Senate appropriators to produce funding legislation within the next two weeks to fight the spread of coronavirus in the United States. McConnell, speaking on the Senate floor, said he has faith that bipartisan discussions on the Senate Appropriations Committee would agree on “the right sum … at this time to ensure our nation’s needs are fully funded.” “I hope they can work expeditiously so the full Senate would be able to take up the legislation within the next two weeks,” the Kentucky Republican said.   …

Small, mostly private companies that are the engine of China’s economy are back to operating at one-third of normal levels after anti-virus controls shut factories, shops and restaurants, regulators said Thursday, and they promised more low-cost loans and other aid.     The ruling Communist Party has ordered areas that are at lower disease risk to revive manufacturing and other businesses that have been shut for a month. That comes at a time when outbreaks in South Korea, Italy and Iran are leading to travel bans and other controls abroad.     At a news conference, officials expressed confidence China’s 18 million small and medium-size enterprises are recovering quickly. The category includes most of the privately owned restaurants, factories, stores and other companies that generate its new jobs and wealth.     Activity overall is back to 33% of normal levels, while manufacturing reached 43%, said an official of the …

Contemporary Moscow can often seem a glittery city of dreams — the Russian capital arguably more efficient, clean and well-run than many of its Western counterparts.  But behind the glamour lies an uncomfortable truth: Russia’s largest city is choking on garbage.     The city’s 12 million residents produce more than 7 million tons of waste per year — 20% of Russia’s entire output — according to government figures. Industrial waste raises that number even higher, and only a fraction of that amount is currently recycled.   For now, most ends up in places like Alexandrov, a picturesque historic town just a few hours’ drive from the capital that’s home to one of several dozen landfills that surround Moscow.  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can FILE – In this photo taken April 20, 2018, garbage trucks unload the trash at the Volovichi landfill near Kolomna, Russia.Whichever way the wind blows really mattersA …

As China reported a continued slowdown in new coronavirus cases, world health officials praised the country’s response while alerting other governments to be ready to aggressively react when cases appear within their borders.Chinese health officials said Wednesday there were 406 new cases, almost all of them in Hubei province which has been the center of the outbreak. Of the 52 new deaths, all were in Hubei, an area that has been on lockdown for weeks to prevent the virus from spreading to other areas.Bruce Aylward, who led a joint World Health Organization-China mission on the virus, said at a news conference that his team concluded China’s response “changed the course of this outbreak” and may have prevented hundreds of thousands of people in the country from becoming infected.”What was a rapidly escalating outbreak has plateaued and then come down faster than one would have expected if we had looked at …

Imagine how life would change for so many people who need a replacement organ if scientists could just print a new one that works. That’s exactly one of the projects scientists at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are working on – 3D bio printed human organs. They’re also working to develop artificial blood vessels and miniature models of a human body using 3d bio printing.  Lesia Bakalets has the story from Winston-Salem, North Carolina in this report narrated by Anna Rice. …

A group of Spanish fishermen will receive financial support to catch plastic as well as fish, in an innovative new project aimed at tackling the huge amount of garbage dumped in the world’s oceans.Around 12 million tons of plastic waste are dumped into the oceans every year, polluting the water, killing wildlife, and creating microplastics that enter the food chain.Among those taking part in the scheme is Carlos Martin, who skippers the ‘Bonamar 2’ from its home port in Barcelona. VOA joined Martin and his crew at five o’clock on a cold February morning on the dockside, as they began the first task of the day: removing countless strands of cellulose-type plastic from the nets.Some 800 shopping bags made of plastic sewed together in the shape of a fish are laid out by environmental activist group Greenpeace, in a protest against the pollution of oceans by plastic, in a street …

President Donald Trump sought Tuesday to minimize fears about coronavirus spreading rampantly throughout the U.S., saying the situation is “very well under control in our country.”     At the same time, the Trump administration on Monday asked Congress for an additional $2.5 billion to prepare in case of a widespread outbreak and to assist other nations.     “We have very few people with it,” the president said at a news conference in India near the close of a two-day visit.     Trump referenced a group of 14 Americans who tested positive for coronavirus and were among hundreds of U.S. citizens recently evacuated from a cruise ship off the Japanese coast and brought to U.S. facilities.     Trump said those individuals were placed into quarantine and “we think they’ll be in very good shape very, very soon.”     In earlier remarks Tuesday, Trump said he wants …

A scathing new report reveals that dozens of HIV-positive women were forced or coerced into sterilization after giving birth at public hospitals in South Africa.The Commission for Gender Equality’s report this week says it investigated complaints by at least 48 women of “cruel, torturous or inhumane and degrading treatment” at the hospitals. At times it occurred when women were in labor.      In many cases, “the hospitals’ staff had threatened not to assist them in giving birth” if they didn’t sign the consent forms for sterilization, the report says. The commission is a statutory body that operates as an independent watchdog.      The forced sterilizations at 15 public hospitals in South Africa between 2002 and 2005 have sparked public outrage. Some of the hospitals are in some of the country’s largest cities such as Johannesburg and Durban.      “When I asked the nurse what the forms were …

The coronavirus outbreak has upended air travel and caused people to question the safety of cruises. Travelers have canceled trips to Asia and gone so far as to refrain from eating Chinese food prepared in countries that don’t have any widespread outbreak of the virus called COVID-19.Doctors have warned that an infectious disease anywhere is hours away from being everywhere.Case in point: SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome. It was first discovered in China in February 2003. It lasted only about six months, but before it was finished, it had spread to more than two dozen countries, mostly through air travel.Christos Nicolaides is a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who sets up computational models to look at the spread of disease. He spoke to VOA by Skype.”The air transportation network is the main pathway for a global disease spread,” Nicolaides said.Think of all the things you and others touch …