South African health officials are urging COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Aspen to keep its plant in the Eastern Cape province open. This follows a Reuters article quoting Aspen’s senior director saying they may have to shut down as there have been no orders for their rebranded COVID vaccine. A South African-owned subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Aspen struck a deal with American company Johnson & Johnson in March to package, price, sell and distribute its vaccine in Africa. This vaccine was rebranded as Aspenovax. The move was hailed by many as there had been much concern about Africa’s reliance on imported vaccines which were often costly and at times in short supply. But there have been no orders for Aspenovax.  South Africa’s National Health Department Spokesperson Foster Mohale said the lack of orders is due to low vaccination rates not only at home, but globally. “Vaccine hesitancy is one of the factors …

A body inside a barrel was found over the weekend on the the newly exposed bottom of Nevada’s Lake Mead as drought depletes one of the largest U.S. reservoirs. Officials say the discovery could be the first of more grim finds.  “There is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” Las Vegas police Lt. Ray Spencer told KLAS-TV on Monday.  The lake’s level has dropped so much that the uppermost water intake at drought-stricken Lake Mead became visible last week. The reservoir on the Colorado River behind Hoover Dam has become so depleted that Las Vegas is now pumping water from deeper within Lake Mead, which also stretches into Arizona.  Personal items found inside the barrel indicated the person died more than 40 years ago in the 1980s, Spencer said.  He declined to discuss a cause of death and …

Health officials are still trying to identify the cause of cases of acute and severe hepatitis that have infected scores of children in 16 countries, mainly in Europe. Over 170 cases of acute severe hepatitis in children aged between 1 month and 16 years have been reported from 16 countries, 12 in Europe.  Most cases have been found in Britain.  Other infections have been reported from the United States, Canada, Israel, and Japan. The World Health Organization reports 17 children have required liver transplantation and one child has died.  Hepatitis in children sometimes can lead to chronic liver disease and liver failure. Philippa Easterbrook is a scientist at the WHO’s program of Global HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections.  She said the origin of these infections in children remains unknown.  She said investigations have shown that none of the children have the common viral causes of hepatitis A, B, C …

Many Chinese are marking a quiet May Day holiday this year as the government’s zero-COVID approach restricts travel and enforces lockdowns in multiple cities. All restaurants in Beijing are closed to dine-in customers from Sunday through the end of the holiday on Wednesday, open only for takeout and delivery. Parks and tourist attractions in the Chinese capital are limited to 50% of their capacity. The Universal Studios theme park in Beijing, which opened last year, said it had shut down temporarily. The pandemic situation varies across the vast nation of 1.4 billion people, but the Transport Ministry said last week that it expected 100 million trips to be taken from Saturday to Wednesday, which would be down 60% from last year. Many of those who are traveling are staying within their province as local governments discourage or restrict cross-border travel to try to keep out new infections. China is sticking …