Medical workers in Hong Kong are staging a second consecutive day of strikes Tuesday as the Chinese territory reports its first death from a coronavirus that has killed 425 people in mainland China.Hong Kong shut down nearly all land and sea border crossings with the mainland at midnight local time after more than 2,000 medical workers walked off the job Monday demanding that all border crossings be closed completely.  Hong Kong was hit hard by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002-03.Hong Kong health authorities have identified the victim as a 39-year-old male with a pre-existing illness who had recently visited Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.  Meanwhile, the Chinese gambling territory of Macau announced Tuesday that it will temporarily shut down all casino operations for two weeks to help curb the spread of the virus.  The total number of confirmed cases of people sickened by the new coronavirus in …

The World Health Organization reports cancer is on the increase globally. But it says preventive measures can save the lives of millions of cancer sufferers over the next decade. This report comes in regard to World Cancer Day on Feb. 4.Over the past decade, nearly every country in the world has seen an increase in the number of cancer patients. The World Health Organization reports one in six people will develop cancer in their lifetime, causing at least 10 million deaths from this disease every year.  If current trends continue, WHO warns, new cancer cases will rise by 60% by 2040, more than 80% in low- and middle-income countries.The technical officer in cancer control at WHO, Andre Ilbawi, says more people are dying from cancer in the poorer countries because they lack the services and cancer control measures that exist in the richer countries. He says controlling the disease does …

Wai Htet Aung, age 27, waits for his turn at a crowded betel quid stand in downtown Yangon. Customers have lined up by the table to place their orders. “It’s tasty,” he says. “I have bad breath and I want my mouth to smell better.”The signs of this popular habit are easy to spot from the roadside stands across the country to the red stains on teeth as well as on streets and sidewalks that stem from betel quid spit. “After I chew betel quids my mouth feels better,” says Ko Zaw Naing. “My mind feels relaxed.”Figures from the World Health Organization show that more than 60% of men in Myanmar chew betel quids and almost 25% of the women do. Aung Thura is 30-years-old and has been chewing betel quids for eight years. “It keeps me awake and keeps me from getting bored when I’m working,” he says.Betel quids …

The latest trial of a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has been halted as results show it is not working.The Maryland-based U.S. National Institutes of Health announced Monday it has stopped the HVTN 702 study in South Africa, following a recommendation of an independent data and safety monitoring board.The study, also called Uhambo — meaning travel or a journey in Zulu — enrolled 5,407 HIV-negative volunteers at 14 sites across South Africa beginning in 2016. Participants were sexually active men and women between the ages of 18 and 35, who were randomly assigned to receive six injections of either the investigational vaccine regimen or a placebo.Over a period of 18 months, enough time for the vaccine regimen to stimulate an immune response, there were 129 HIV infections among the vaccine recipients and 123 HIV infections among the placebo recipients. The findings showed there wasn’t significant evidence that …

 The World Health Organization is working with Google to ensure that people get facts from WHO first when they search for information about the new virus that recently emerged in China.       Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the opening of WHO’s executive board meeting on Monday that social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Tencent and TikTok have also taken steps to limit the spread of misinformation and rumors about the virus and outbreak that first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December and has now spread to 23 other countries.      “To that end, we have worked with Google to make sure people searching for information about coronavirus see WHO information at the top of their search results,” he said.       WHO officials like Tedros have heaped praise on China’s response repeatedly in public, echoed Beijing’s calls to avoid panic, sought to reinforce …

As the deadly coronavirus continues to spread worldwide, it has killed its first patient outside China. News reports from the Philippines say a Chinese man from Wuhan, in Hubei province where the virus was first detected, died in a hospital in Manila a few days after arriving there. Many countries, including the United States, are denying entry to all foreign visitors who had recently been to China as part of a global effort to stop the spread. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports people returning home from China are being quarantined. …

*/ /–>/ /–>/ /–>/ /–>/ /–>/ The Latest:Passengers arrive at LAX from Shanghai, China, after a positive case of the coronavirus was announced in the Orange County suburb of Los Angeles, California, U.S., January 26, 2020.Chad Wolf, acting Homeland Security secretary, said that the overall risk to Americans remains low. He added that the new rules could add stress and travel time for some passengers, but “public health and security experts agree these measures are necessary to contain the virus and protect the American people,” he said.President Donald Trump told Fox News that the United States has “shut down” the coronavirus coming in from China, even as officials in San Francisco reported a ninth confirmed U.S. case.”We’ve offered China help but we can’t have thousands of people coming in who may have this problem, the coronavirus,” Trump said. “So we’re going to see what happens, but we did shut it …

President Donald Trump says the United States has “shut down” the coronavirus coming in from China even as officials in San Francisco report the ninth confirmed U.S. case.”We’ve offered China help but we can’t have thousands of people coming in who may have this problem, the coronavirus,” Trump told Fox News in a special Super Bowl pregame interview. “So we’re going to see what happens, but we did shut it down.”National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told CBS’s Face the Nation that the administration has offered China help — specifically sending experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But China has yet to accept the U.S. offer.”So far, the Chinese have been more transparent certainly than in past crises and we appreciate that,” O’Brian said. “We’ve got tremendous expertise. This is a worldwide concern. We want to help our Chinese colleagues if we can.”CDC experts are on the ground …

*/ /–>/ /–>/ /–>/ /–>/ /–>/ The Latest:A clerk wearing a face mask and a plastic bag stands in a pharmacy in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province, Jan. 31, 2020.Reports, including some from Wuhan residents, indicate that early information about the outbreak was covered up, and many people, including doctors, speaking about the virus in December were threatened by the government or even detained.”These rumors were already flying around the Chinese internet,” Flora Fauna, an American Wuhan resident who asked to be referred to by her pseudonym, told VOA Mandarin about the beginning of the outbreak in December.”So, in response, the city governments dispatched the police to arrest people who were spreading this information,” she said.Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during a news conference on the situation of the coronavirus, at the United Nations’ European Headquarters, in Geneva, Jan. 29, 2020.The World Health …

Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike promised Sunday to implement “thorough measures” to protect people from the deadly coronavirus in the run-up to this summer’s Olympic Games.At the opening of the $330 million Ariake Arena, venue for Olympic volleyball and Paralympic wheelchair basketball, Koike said:”I will implement even more stringent measures to tackle infectious diseases. I am having discussions this weekend with senior officials to assure the safety and security of people in Tokyo — specifically focusing on ways to prevent the spread of the virus and strengthen testing systems.”Koike also urged people to wash their hands and wear surgical masks to help protect them from disease.Japan has warned citizens against non-essential travel to China, where the outbreak began, and fast-tracked new rules including limits on entering the country as it tries to contain the spread of the virulent new coronavirus.The flu-like pathogen, which originated in Hubei’s provincial capital Wuhan, has resulted …

As if health officials in China don’t have enough on their hands with a spreading coronavirus, now officials announced an outbreak of bird flu.China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs announced Saturday an outbreak of a highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu at a farm in the southern province of Hunan.The virus was discovered on a farm with nearly 8,000 chickens — more than half of them have already died because of the outbreak.China is not alone in trying to tamp down the spread of this virus.Earlier this week authorities in India started culling chickens and destroying eggs to contain the bird flu virus.And a different strain — the H5N8 virus — has spread throughout eastern Europe in recent weeks.A bird flu outbreak in China back in 2013 ended up costing $6.5 billion in economic losses, according to U.N. experts. …

A vaccine against the new Wuhan coronavirus may start testing in as little as three months, according to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci.That’s fast.It took 20 months before a vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, was ready for clinical trials.That doesn’t mean you can line up for a shot in three months. The vaccine will need to be tested for safety and efficacy. That will take months more.But the time it takes to go from outbreak to vaccine candidate is shorter than ever, thanks in part to a new kind of vaccine.A lab assistant works on samples with Christian Drosten, director of the institute for virology of Berlin’s Charite hospital on his researches on the coronavirus in Berlin, Jan. 21, 2020.Eighteenth century techEver since Edward Jenner developed the first vaccine in the 18th century, against smallpox, vaccines have worked essentially the same way. Patients …

*/ /–>/ /–>/ /–>/ The Latest:Q: “And about the death rate, I think I’ve seen that it’s like, you know, there’s just the raw numbers coming out of China. It’s about 2 percent, but that’s people who have been in the hospital right?”PEKOSZ: “Exactly! And so the big variable that we really just can’t quantify right now is how many people are getting sick with mild symptoms that don’t have them seek out health care? And how many actually don’t really have significant symptoms at all? And both of those numbers are going to be important for two things. One, like you said, it’s going to help us understand the true sort of fatality rate associated with this virus. And the second thing is that’s going to — knowing that number is going to help us understand how best to contain this disease in a certain — in the areas that it …