World
Hunger deaths to ‘rice bowl’: How Odisha’s Kalahandi-Balangir-Koraput corridor turned a corner
Ram Nath Bagh still looks a little disbelieving when he surveys his flourishing two-hectare field, located on the outskirts of Bhawanipatna, the main town of Odisha’s Kalahandi district. The 39-year-old farmer says 15 to 20 years ago, he could cultivate just enough rice for subsistence, but his yield has doubled in recent years, reports The Print.
“Currently we produce at least 19-20 quintals of rice… This is double the amount I used to harvest two decades back. Earlier, we just about managed to get by, but now we even register a profit at times,” a beaming Bagh tells ThePrint, crediting this improvement to better irrigation from the nearby Indravati Dam as well as higher quality fertilisers.
It’s harvest time, and adjacent to Bagh’s land is another big paddy field where a thresher is hard at work. A decade or so ago, such a sight would have been nearly impossible in this region.
Odisha’s Kalahandi-Balangir-Koraput (KBK) corridor — which encompasses the eight districts of Koraput, Malkangiri, Nabarangpur, Rayagada, Balangir, Sonepur, Kalahandi, and Nuapada — was once known as one of India’s most backward tracts. The largely rural and tribal-dominated region saw deaths due to starvation and malnourishment and large sections of the population lived in extreme poverty.
However, the KBK corridor’s fortunes have been changing, and a 2020 report of the state government noted that the region recorded a food surplus. Kalahandi is now the second-largest producer of rice in Odisha, while Balangir is the largest grower of cotton.
Somesh Upadhyay, project director of Kalahandi’s District Rural Development Agency, tells ThePrint that “starvation deaths and abject poverty are things of the past” and that the district is now known for its agricultural bounty.
However, while there are clear improvements in the region due to better irrigation and farmer-centric policies, it is evident on the ground that not every district has benefited uniformly.
Big strides
A 2005 report of the Planning Commission (which has since been replaced by the NITI Aayog) attributed the backwardness of the KBK region to three main factors — a hilly terrain prone to droughts and floods; a low literacy rate and extreme poverty in tribal communities; and a poor health profile due to under-nutrition, endemic malaria, and other localised diseases.
However, this dire situation has turned around quite dramatically. A 2020 report, produced jointly by the state government’s Planning and Convergence Department and the United Nations World Food Programme, went as far as to say that “Bargarh, Ganjam and Kalahandi are the food grains bowl of the state”.
According to Upadhyay, irrigation projects from the Indravati Dam, which was completed in 1996, have been the “game-changer”, along with upliftment efforts like the Biju KBK Yojana, a state government scheme named after former CM Biju Patnaik, the late father of current CM Naveen Patnaik, that provides extra funds to develop the region.
Kalahandi District Magistrate Gavali Parag Harshad explains that although the Indravati Dam was built in the 1990s, it took nearly two decades to properly irrigate the nearby fields. In January this year, the state government also officially launched the Upper Indravati Lift Canal, which essentially channels water up to the Kalahandi highlands.
Harshad adds that the administration is also encouraging farmers to turn to pisciculture (fish farming) and cash crops like bananas since paddy cultivation is water-intensive and costly. “The more people who move out of paddy, the better it is. Paddy procurement is a big problem too. Our main focus is to ensure a stable livelihood for farmers,” Harshad says.
In Balangir district, which neighbours Kalahandi, District Magistrate Chanchal Rana says a “major transformation” has taken place after identifying and addressing “migration-prone” blocks. Rana says under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), such blocks in Balangir as well as Nuapada districts provide 300 days of guaranteed employment to counter distress migration. MGNREGA usually covers wages for 100 days of employment, but the state government covers costs for 200 additional days.
Another promising scheme, according to Rana, is ‘Mission Shakti’ under the Odisha Livelihood Mission, which encourages women to form self-help groups focusing on livelihood.
Rana also says the district is now developing its own irrigation projects. “We will develop the Lower Indra Project, which will irrigate close to 50,000-55,000 hectares of land. In addition, we are also looking at avenues for flood irrigation in areas where there are less water-efficient crops,” he says.
“We have also rolled out our cluster borewell project. In this, five farmers can get together and purchase a borewell, which we will give at subsidised prices. We are also looking at farm ponds for areas where irrigation is not possible,” Rana says, adding that the farm ponds will also be equipped with solar water pumps. However, he acknowledges that many farmers still live under bleak conditions.
Uneven improvements
Just 50 km from Bhawanipatna, on the outskirts of Kalahandi and bordering Balangir district, is Kessinga village. Here, the paddy fields are not as rich, and farmers usually produce just about enough to feed themselves.
Momona Banwali Thandi, a farmer in Balangir’s Luchkibahal village, who owns land with his son, laments that this season’s paddy crop is kharab (spoilt) due to lack of rainfall, as he examines a fistful of the crop he just cut. “Water is the main issue. We can’t sell any of this… it is only for us to eat,” Thandi says, although he does acknowledge that food production is much better than it was a couple of decades ago.
Water is still the biggest source of worry for farmers — the general refrain is that irrigation is patchy, which means that most farmers are still dependent on rainfall. Unlike central Kalahandi, where most people are dedicated to farming alone, farmers in and around Balangir also double up as carpenters and labourers to sustain themselves.
In Kalahandi, too, there is scope for improvement. Many farmers say that though they do register a profit, these proceeds go primarily into buying fertilisers and equipment geared towards paddy cultivation.
“We want loans from the government so that we have more cash in our pockets,” Basanto Kumar Deep, a paddy farmer in Kalahandi, says.
Closing the gaps: Ragi cultivation, iron tablets part of solution
Local officials in Kalahandi and Balangir say efforts are underway to ensure a stable income for farmers and to steer them away from water-intensive paddy by encouraging them to shift to cash crops like ragi, banana, and tomato, or to explore new ventures like pisciculture.
DM Rana says ragi cultivation is a particularly promising pivot. “In the [Naxal] extremism-prone areas of the district, we have also kickstarted massive ragi cultivation as it barely requires any water and is a low maintenance crop,” Rana says, adding that dairy farmers are also being given interest-free loans.
Another problem in the region is that despite the much-touted food surplus, the nutritional indices are still below par. According to the state government report cited earlier on food security and nutrition, the KBK region (all eight districts) still sees a high rate of stunting and malnutrition. There is also a high incidence of anaemia — 67.4 per cent of the under-five population is anaemic. Most people are also consuming far less than the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of fats, protein, and energy.
The district magistrates of both Kalahandi and Balangir say they are working towards addressing the issue of nutritional deficiencies. Efforts are now on, they say, to distribute iron tablets to combat anaemia. De-worming tablets are also being distributed as parasites have been identified as one of the main reasons for poor nutrition.
South Africa's case drop may show omicron peak has passed
South Africa's noticeable drop in new COVID-19 cases in recent days may signal that the country's dramatic omicron-driven surge has passed its peak, medical experts say.
Daily virus case counts are notoriously unreliable, as they can be affected by uneven testing, reporting delays and other fluctuations. But they are offering one tantalizing hint — far from conclusive yet — that omicron infections may recede quickly after a ferocious spike.
South Africa has been at the forefront of the omicron wave and the world is watching for any signs of how it may play out there to try to understand what may be in store.
After hitting a high of nearly 27,000 new cases nationwide on Thursday, the numbers dropped to about 15,424 on Tuesday. In Gauteng province — South Africa’s most populous with 16 million people, including the largest city, Johannesburg, and the capital, Pretoria — the decrease started earlier and has continued.
Read:U.S. announces first recorded Omicron-related death
“The drop in new cases nationally combined with the sustained drop in new cases seen here in Gauteng province, which for weeks has been the center of this wave, indicates that we are past the peak," Marta Nunes, senior researcher at the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics department of the University of Witwatersrand, told The Associated Press.
“It was a short wave ... and the good news is that it was not very severe in terms of hospitalizations and deaths,” she said. It is "not unexpected in epidemiology that a very steep increase, like what we saw in November, is followed by a steep decrease.”
Gauteng province saw its numbers start sharply rising in mid-November. Scientists doing genetic sequencing quickly identified the new, highly mutated omicron variant that was announced to the world on Nov. 25.
Significantly more transmissible, omicron quickly achieved dominance in South Africa. An estimated 90% of COVID-19 cases in Gauteng province since mid-November have been omicron, according to tests.
And the world seems to be quickly following, with omicron already surpassing the delta variant as the dominant coronavirus strain in some countries. In the U.S., omicron accounted for 73% of new infections last week, health officials said — and the variant is responsible for an estimated 90% or more of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest.
Confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.K. have surged by 60% in a week as omicron overtook delta as the dominant variant there. Worldwide, the variant has been detected in at least 89 countries, according to the World Health Organization.
In South Africa, experts worried that the sheer volume of new infections would overwhelm the country's hospitals, even though omicron appears to cause milder disease, with significantly less hospitalizations, patients needing oxygen and deaths.
But then cases in Gauteng started falling. After reaching 16,000 new infections on Dec. 12, the province's numbers have steadily dropped, to just over 3,300 cases Tuesday.
“It's significant. It's very significant,” Dr. Fareed Abdullah said of the decrease.
Read: Omicron sweeps across nation, now 73% of new US COVID cases
“The rapid rise of new cases has been followed by a rapid fall and it appears we're seeing the beginning of the decline of this wave,” said Abdullah, working in the COVID-19 ward at Pretoria's Steve Biko Academic Hospital.
In another sign that South Africa’s omicron surge may be receding, a study of health care professionals who tested positive for COVID-19 at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in Soweto shows a rapid increase and then a quick decline in cases.
“Two weeks ago we were seeing more than 20 new cases per day and now it is about five or six cases per day,” Nunes said.
But, she said, it is still very early and there are several factors that must be closely watched.
South Africa's positivity rate has remained high at 29%, up from just 2% in early November, indicating the virus is still circulating among the population at relatively high levels, she said.
And the country's holiday season is now underway, when many businesses close down for a month and people travel to visit family, often in rural areas. This could accelerate omicron’s spread across South Africa and to neighboring countries, experts said.
"In terms of the massive everyday doubling that we were seeing just over a week ago with huge numbers, that seems to have settled,” said Professor Veronica Uekermann, head of the COVID-19 response team at Steve Biko Academic Hospital.
“But it is way too early to suggest that we have passed the peak. There are too many external factors, including the movement during the holiday season and the general behavior during this period,” she said, noting that infections spiked last year after the holiday break.
It's summertime in South Africa and many gatherings are outdoors, which may make a difference between the omicron-driven wave here and the surges in Europe and North America, where people tend to gather indoors.
Another unknown factor is how much omicron has spread among South Africans without causing disease.
Some health officials in New York have suggested that because South Africa appears to have experienced a quick, mild wave of omicron, the variant may behave similarly there and elsewhere in the U.S. But Nunes cautions against jumping to those conclusions.
“Each setting, each country is different. The populations are different. The demographics of the population, the immunity is different in different countries,” she said. South Africa's population, with an average age of 27, is more youthful than many Western countries, for instance.
Most of the patients currently being treated for COVID-19 in hospitals are unvaccinated, Uekermann emphasized. About 40% of adult South Africans have been inoculated with two doses.
“All my patients in ICU are unvaccinated," Uekermann said. “So our vaccinated people are doing better in this wave, for sure. We have got some patients who are very ill with severe COVID, and these are unvaccinated patients.”
Australia PM meets with state leaders as virus cases surge
New COVID-19 cases in Australia’s most populous state surged to a pandemic record Wednesday, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison met with state leaders to discuss preventative measures.
Morrison emerged from the national cabinet meeting again rejecting lockdowns and mask mandates imposed by the federal government. He said policies on mask wearing were best left to state governments and to Australians who should follow “commonsense behavioral measures.”
New South Wales state on Wednesday recorded 3,763 new cases, up 706 from Tuesday, though the number of omicron cases was not known because genomic sequencing is not routinely carried out there.
State and territory leaders were expected to press Morrison to reduce the gap between second vaccine doses and booster shots. Morrison said any decision on reducing the gap from five to four months would be made by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunization.
Australia has been battling the omicron variant of COVID-19 for about four weeks and cases have been steadily rising in populous New South Wales and Victoria states.
Read: US population growth at lowest rate in pandemic’s 1st year
Victoria reported 1,503 cases on Wednesday, of which about 60 were reportedly omicron.
Morrison said Australia is taking the highly transmissible omicron strain “very seriously,” adding that “what we’re dealing with is a much greater volume of cases.”
“The cases themselves don’t necessarily present the challenge, as we’ve always said. What really matters is how many people are experiencing serious illness and how many people are having to draw on the considerable resources of ICUs and our hospital system,” he added.
Morrison said state and territory leaders told him that despite the increase in cases they have not yet seen any significant impact on the hospital system.
The federal government from Wednesday will pay doctors and pharmacists an additional $10 to administer booster shots, Morrison said.
Read: 5 children die in bouncy castle accident in Australia
He said that mask wearing indoors is “highly recommended whether it is mandated or not” and that compliance with “commonsense rules” would ensure Australians celebrate Christmas with fewer disruptions.
“My message is to stay calm, get your booster, follow the commonsense behavioral measures as you’re going into Christmas and we look forward to that,” Morrison said.
Harvard professor found guilty of hiding ties to China
A Harvard University professor charged with hiding his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program was found guilty on all counts Tuesday.
Charles Lieber, 62, the former chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, had pleaded not guilty to two counts of filing false tax returns, two counts of making false statements, and two counts of failing to file reports for a foreign bank account in China.
The jury deliberated for about two hours and 45 minutes before announcing the verdict following five days of testimony in Boston federal court.
Lieber’s defense attorney Marc Mukasey had argued that prosecutors lacked proof of the charges. He maintained that investigators didn’t keep any record of their interviews with Lieber prior to his arrest.
He argued that prosecutors would be unable to prove that Lieber acted “knowingly, intentionally, or willfully, or that he made any material false statement.” Mukasey also stressed Lieber wasn’t charged with illegally transferring any technology or proprietary information to China.
Read: US population growth at lowest rate in pandemic’s 1st year
Prosecutors argued that Lieber, who was arrested in January, knowingly hid his involvement in China’s Thousand Talents Plan — a program designed to recruit people with knowledge of foreign technology and intellectual property to China — to protect his career and reputation.
Lieber denied his involvement during inquiries from U.S. authorities, including the National Institutes of Health, which had provided him with millions of dollars in research funding, prosecutors said.
Lieber also concealed his income from the Chinese program, including $50,000 a month from the Wuhan University of Technology, up to $158,000 in living expenses and more than $1.5 million in grants, according to prosecutors.
In exchange, they say, Lieber agreed to publish articles, organize international conferences and apply for patents on behalf of the Chinese university.
The case is among the highest profile to come from the U.S. Department of Justice’s so-called “China Initiative.”
The effort launched in 2018 to curb economic espionage from China has faced criticism that it harms academic research and amounts to racial profiling of Chinese researchers.
Read: Dubai ruler must pay ex-wife $700M in divorce settlement
Hundreds of faculty members at Stanford, Yale, Berkeley, Princeton, Temple and other prominent colleges have signed onto letters to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland calling on him to end the initiative.
The academics say the effort compromises the nation’s competitiveness in research and technology and has had a chilling effect on recruiting foreign scholars. The letters also complain the investigations have disproportionally targeted researchers of Chinese origin.
Lieber has been on paid administrative leave from Harvard since being arrested in January 2020.
US population growth at lowest rate in pandemic’s 1st year
U.S. population growth dipped to its lowest rate since the nation’s founding during the first year of the pandemic as the coronavirus curtailed immigration, delayed pregnancies and killed hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents, according to figures released Tuesday.
The United States grew by only 0.1%, with an additional 392,665 added to the U.S. population from July 2020 to July 2021, bringing the nation’s count to 331.8 million people, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The U.S. has been experiencing slow population growth for years but the pandemic exacerbated that trend. This past year was the first time since 1937 that the nation’s population grew by less than 1 million people.
“I was expecting low growth but nothing this low,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan policy program, Brookings Metro. “It tells us that this pandemic has had a huge impact on us in all kinds of ways, and now demography.”
Once there’s a handle on the pandemic, the U.S. may eventually see a decrease in deaths, but population growth likely won’t bounce back to what it has been in years past because of fewer births. That will increase the need for immigration by younger workers whose taxes can support programs such as Social Security, Frey said.
“We have an aging population and that means fewer women in child-bearing ages,” Frey said. “We see younger people putting off having children and they’re going to have fewer children.”
Read: Thousands of Afghans seek temporary US entry, few approved
The decision not to have children by young families may be driven by financial worries as much, if not more, than health concerns, said Linda Kahn, a professor at New York University and lead researcher in a study that showed that almost half of New York City mothers who had been trying to become pregnant before the pandemic began in the U.S. in March 2020 stopped in the first few months of the outbreak.
“COVID really was a stress test of our whole system and how it fails to support women and families,” Kahn said. “Women were much harder hit in the pandemic. They lost their jobs at greater rates and had to give up their jobs, often to do home-schooling. The pressures on women were enormous and there’s really no safety net in the U.S.”
The population estimates are derived from calculating the number of births, deaths and migration in the U.S. For the first time, international migration surpassed natural increases that come from births outnumbering deaths. There was a net increase of nearly 245,000 residents from international migration but only about 148,000 from new births outnumbering deaths.
International migration dropped by about half from the previous year because of COVID-19 restrictions, such as borders being closed for nonessential travel and the closure of many consulates abroad where visas are issued. As recently as 2016, the U.S. had a net increase of more than 1 million international migrants.
In more than two dozen states, most notably Florida, deaths outnumbered births. Deaths exceeded births in Florida by more than 45,000 people, but the state’s saving grace was a migration gain of more than 259,000 people, the nation’s highest.
University of New Hampshire demographer Kenneth Johnson described the decline in the United States’ natural population increase as “stunning,” saying it was the smallest spread of births over deaths in more than 80 years.
“Of course most of this is COVID, but not all of it,” Johnson said. “U.S. natural increase was already at a low ebb prior to COVID with the fertility rate hitting a new record low each year and deaths steadily rising due to the population aging.”
Between 2020 and 2021, 33 states saw population increases, primarily through domestic migration, while 17 states and the District of Columbia lost population.
Read: Omicron sweeps across nation, now 73% of new US COVID cases
States in the Mountain West saw the biggest year-over-year growth rate, with Idaho growing by almost 3%, and Utah and Montana each seeing population increases of 1.7%. The District of Columbia lost 2.9% of its population, while New York and Illinois lost 1.6% and 0.9% of their populations, respectively. In pure numbers, California had the greatest net population loss of any state from people leaving: almost 353,000.
While the pandemic gave some people the option of working remotely, data released last month by the Census Bureau shows there was no great migration in the U.S. because of it.
Some did take advantage of the opportunity, however. Tired of the heat, hurricane threats and traffic in Houston, tech worker Heidi Krueger moved to a small town south of Knoxville, Tennessee, in September. She can see the Great Smoky Mountains from her front porch.
“Because I was working from home during the pandemic, it made it feasible to move and still keep my same job,” Krueger said. “As long as I have internet, I can still connect to our clients.”
Dubai ruler must pay ex-wife $700M in divorce settlement
A British court on Tuesday ordered the ruler of Dubai to pay his ex-wife and their children close to 550 million pounds ($730 million), in one of the most expensive divorce settlements in British history.
The High Court said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum must pay 251.5 million pounds to his sixth wife, Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, and make ongoing payments for their children Al Jalila, 14, and Zayed, 9, underpinned by a bank guarantee of 290 million pounds.
The total amount the children receive could be more or less than 290 million pounds, depending on factors including how long they live and whether they reconcile with their father. The settlement includes 11 million pounds a year to cover security costs for Princess Haya and the children while they are minors.
Judge Philip Moor said the family needed “water-tight security," and that “absolutely uniquely,” the main threat to them came from Sheikh Mohammed, rather than outside sources.
Haya, 47, fled to the U.K. in 2019 and sought custody of her two children through the British courts. The princess, who is the daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan, said she was “terrified” of her husband, who is alleged to have ordered the forced return to the Gulf emirate of two of his daughters.
Sheikh Mohammed, 72, is also the vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and a major horse breeder. The founder of the successful Godolphin horse-racing stable, he is on friendly terms with Queen Elizabeth II.
Haya, a graduate of Oxford University, is also a keen equestrian and competed in show jumping for Jordan at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
A separate British family court judge ruled in October that Sheikh Mohammed had authorized the hacking of Princess Haya’s phone during their legal battle.
Judge Andrew McFarlane said the sheikh gave his “express or implied authority” to hack the phones of the princess and her attorneys using Pegasus spyware produced by NSO Group of Israel, the court said. The software is licensed exclusively to nation states for use by their security services.
Sheikh Mohammed denied knowledge of the hacking.
McFarlane earlier ruled that Sheikh Mohammed had conducted a campaign of fear and intimidation against his estranged wife and “ordered and orchestrated” the abduction and forced return to Dubai of two of his adult daughters: Sheikha Shamsa in August 2000 and her sister Sheikha Latifa, in 2002 and again in 2018.
The divorce bill eclipses the 450 million pound settlement awarded Tatiana Akhmedova in her 2016 split from Russian billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov, at the time cited as Britain's most expensive divorce.
Tuesday's settlement includes a holiday budget of 5.1 million pounds, an annual sum of just over 450,000 pounds for the children’s staff and around 275,000 pounds for their animals, including two ponies and a horse.
It is possible, but rare, for financial divorce settlements to be appealed in England.
A spokesman for Sheikh Mohammed said in a statement that the ruler “has always ensured that his children are provided for. The court has now made its ruling on finances and he does not intend to comment further.”
U.S. announces first recorded Omicron-related death
An unvaccinated man living in Harris County, Texas, is believed to be the first victim having died from the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in the United States, local media reported Monday.
"Sad to report the first local fatality from the Omicron variant of COVID-19. A man in his 50s from the eastern portion of Harris County who was not vaccinated," Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo tweeted earlier in the day.
The victim had an underlying health condition, she added.
Read: Omicron sweeps across nation, now 73% of new US COVID cases
Reports from ABC News and Fox News said this is believed to be the first recorded Omicron-related death in the United States.
Omicron accounts for 73.2 percent of new cases across the country in the week that ended on Dec. 18, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.
Philippine governor warns of looting without typhoon aid
The governor of a central Philippine province devastated by Typhoon Rai last week pleaded on radio Tuesday for the government to quickly send food and other aid, warning that without outside help, army troops and police forces would have to be deployed to prevent looting amid growing hunger.
Governor Arthur Yap of Bohol province said he could no longer secure rice and other food aid after his contingency fund ran out and added that many of the 1.2 million people in his island province, which remained without power and cellphone service five days after the typhoon struck, have become increasingly desperate.
The most powerful typhoon to hit the Philippine archipelago this year left at least 375 dead and 50 others missing mostly in its central region, including nearly 100 dead in Bohol, according to officials.
President Rodrigo Duterte visited Bohol over the weekend and witnessed the extensive devastation. Yap said the government’s social welfare department promised to send 35,000 food packs, an inadequate amount for the province’s 375,000 families, but even those have not yet arrived.
Read: More than 200 dead after typhoon slams Philippines
In an interview on DZBB radio network, Yap thanked Duterte for visiting his province but said, “If you would not send money for food, you should send soldiers and police, because if not lootings will break out here.”
Some lootings mostly of small merchandise stores have occurred, Yap said, adding that the situation remained under control. But he warned that the lootings could worsen if people, especially in hard-hit island municipalities, grow more desperate. People cannot withdraw money from banks without cellphone connections and power, and fuel and water shortages have also sparked long queues, he said.
The national police said widespread lootings were not a problem in the typhoon-ravaged regions and added that they were ready to deal with any lawlessness.
Typhoon Rai packed sustained winds of 195 kilometers (121 miles) per hour with gusts of up to 270 kph (168 mph) at its most lethal before blowing out into the South China Sea on Friday. At least 375 people were killed mostly by falling trees and in flash floods, with 56 others missing and 500 injured, according to the national police. But the toll may still increase as emergency crews restore communications and power to more towns and villages.
Nearly a million people were lashed by the typhoon, including more than 400,000 who had to be moved to emergency shelters as the typhoon approached. Some have begun to return home but others either lost their houses entirely or need to do major repairs.
Read: Powerful typhoon hits Philippines, nearly 100,000 evacuated
Emergency crews were working to restore electricity in 227 cities and towns, officials said Monday, adding that power had been restored in only 21 areas so far. Cellphone connections have been restored in at least 106 of more than 130 cities and towns. Two local airports remained closed Monday except for emergency flights, but most others have reopened, the civil aviation agency said.
Duterte said government emergency funds have been mostly used for the coronavirus pandemic but promised to raise 2 billion pesos ($40 million) from government agency savings to provide additional funds to typhoon-hit provinces.
The Philippines has not appealed for international help but Japan said it was sending power generators, camping tents, sleeping pads, water containers and tarpaulin roofing sheets to hard-hit regions while China announced it was providing 20,000 food packs and rice.
About 20 tropical storms and typhoons annually batter the Philippines, which also lies along the seismically active Pacific “Ring of Fire” region, where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions frequently occur, making the Southeast Asian nation of more than 100 million people one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.ucci, File)
Biden to urge Americans to get vaccinated as Christmas nears
As coronavirus cases surge in the days before Christmas, President Joe Biden plans to stress in a speech the importance of getting vaccinated to protect from the wave of infections tied to the new omicron variant.
The world is confronting the prospect of a second straight holiday season with COVID-19 as families and friends begin to gather while the variant quickly spreads. Scientists don’t yet know whether omicron causes more serious disease, but they do know that vaccination should offer strong protections against severe illness and death.
In a preview of Biden’s speech Tuesday afternoon, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at Monday’s press briefing that the president doesn’t plan to impose any lockdowns and will instead be encouraging people to get inoculated — and, if they’re eligible, to get their booster shot.
“This is not a speech about locking the country down. This is a speech about the benefits of being vaccinated,” Psaki told reporters.
Read: Boosters key to fight omicron, lot still to learn
Biden’s top medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said over the weekend that Biden will issue “a stark warning of what the winter will look like” for unvaccinated Americans.
Biden has found himself in the delicate position of both alerting the country to the dangers posed by omicron and reassuring Americans that the vaccines will protect them. White House officials are looking to ease the nation back toward accepting the reality of an endemic virus with far lower stakes for the vaccinated. This has meant setting a difficult balance as cases rise and as deaths and serious illness among the unvaccinated dominate headlines.
Underscoring how widespread the virus is, the White House said late Monday that Biden had been in close contact with a staff member who later tested positive for COVID-19. The staffer spent about 30 minutes around the president on Air Force One on Friday on a trip from Orange, South Carolina, to Philadelphia. The staffer, who was fully vaccinated and boosted, tested positive earlier Monday, Psaki said.
Psaki said Biden has tested negative twice since Sunday and will test again on Wednesday. Citing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Psaki said Biden didn’t need to quarantine and would continue with his regular schedule.
There are 40 million eligible but unvaccinated American adults. Efforts to increase vaccination rates have struggled to overcome a series of political, social and cultural divides. Psaki said the president plans to appeal to survival instincts.
“Our health experts assess that you are 14 times more likely to die of COVID if you have not been vaccinated versus vaccinated,” she said Monday.
Leana Wen, the former public health commissioner for Baltimore, said she would like to hear Biden commit in his speech to having enough tests available within three months so that every family can test twice a week. Other countries have already done this, she noted.
“Every family testing twice a week is the goal that we should get to,” Wen said in an interview.
Wen, who teaches public health at George Washington University, said she’d also like to see more restrictions put in place on the still-sizable portion of the public that remains unvaccinated, such as following some cities and requiring proof of vaccination to be admitted to bars, restaurants, concert venues and gyms, for example.
Read: Queen Elizabeth II to skip Christmas trip amid omicron surge
Further complicating Biden’s message is uncertainty about the omicron variant.
Scientists say omicron spreads even easier than other coronavirus strains, including delta. It has already become the dominant strain in the U.S., accounting for nearly three-quarters of new infections last week.
Early studies suggest that the vaccinated will need a booster shot for the best chance at preventing an omicron infection but that even without the extra dose, vaccination should still largely protect people from serious sickness or death.
In New York City, nearly 42,600 people citywide tested positive from Wednesday through Saturday — compared to fewer than 35,800 in the entire month of November. The city has never had so many people test positive in such a short period of time since testing became widely available; there’s no clear picture of how many people got the virus during the city’s first surge in the spring of 2020.
The latest outbreak reflects the global challenges of stopping the pandemic.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said officials have decided against imposing further restrictions, at least for now.
“We will have to reserve the possibility of taking further action to protect the public,” Johnson said Monday. “The arguments either way are very, very finely balanced.”
The Dutch government began a tough nationwide lockdown on Sunday to rein in sharply rising infections, but many European leaders have opted for something less.
France and Germany have barred most British travelers from entering, and the government in Paris has banned public concerts and fireworks displays at New Year’s celebrations. Ireland imposed an 8 p.m. curfew on pubs and bars and limited attendance at indoor and outdoor events, while Greece will have 10,000 police officers on duty over the holidays to carry out COVID-19 pass checks.
In Spain, the national average of new cases is double what it was a year ago. But authorities in the country with one of Europe’s highest vaccination rates are betting primarily on mandatory mask-wearing indoors and the rollout of booster shots, with no further restrictions planned.
Neighboring Portugal is telling most nonessential workers to work from home for a week in January, but the country has no other new measures in the pipeline.
Stock markets in Asia, Europe and the U.S. fell on Monday with the expectation that the infections could weigh on global economic growth and worsen global supply chain challenges.
Queen Elizabeth II to skip Christmas trip amid omicron surge
Queen Elizabeth II has decided not to spend Christmas at the royal Sandringham estate in eastern England amid concerns about the fast-spreading omicron variant.
The palace said Monday that the 95-year-old queen will spend the holidays at Windsor Castle, west of London, where she has stayed for most of the pandemic.
Other members of the royal family are expected to visit over the Christmas period, with precautions taken against spreading the virus.
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Coronavirus infections are surging in Britain — up 60% in a week — as omicron replaced delta as the dominant variant, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said more new restrictions may have to be introduced to slow its spread. His health minister has refused to rule out imposing new measures before Christmas.
For years, members of Britain's extended royal family have spent the holidays at Sandringham, where crowds gather to watch them attend the local church on Christmas Day.
The queen has cut down on travel and work since spending a night in the hospital in October and being told to rest by her doctors. She has since undertaken light duties including virtual audiences with diplomats and weekly conversations with the prime minister.
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This is the queen’s first Christmas since the death of her husband of 73 years, Prince Philip, in April at 99. The royal couple spent their final Christmas together at Windsor last year.