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Years late and billions over budget, NASA’s new moon rocket makes its debut next week in a high-stakes test flight before astronauts get on top. The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket will attempt to send an empty crew capsule into a far-flung lunar orbit, 50 years after NASA’s famed Apollo moonshots. If all goes well, astronauts could strap in as soon as 2024 for a lap around the moon, with NASA aiming to land two people on the lunar surface by the end of 2025. Liftoff is set for Monday morning from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The six-week test flight is risky and could be cut short if something fails, NASA officials warn. “We’re going to stress it and test it. We’re going make it do things that we would never do with a crew on it in order to try to make it as safe as possible,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The retired founder of George Washington University’s space policy institute said a lot is riding on this trial run. Spiraling costs and long gaps between missions will make for a tough comeback if things go south, he noted. Also read: NASA’s new telescope shows star death, dancing galaxies “It is supposed to be the first step in a sustained program of human exploration of the moon, Mars, and beyond,” said John Logsdon. “Will the United States have the will to push forward in the face of a major malfunction?” The price tag for this single mission: more than $4 billion. Add everything up since the program’s inception a decade ago until a 2025 lunar landing, and there’s even more sticker shock: $93 billion. Here’s a rundown of the first flight of the Artemis program, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister. ROCKET POWER The new rocket is shorter and slimmer than the Saturn V rockets that hurled 24 Apollo astronauts to the moon a half-century ago. But it’s mightier, packing 8.8 million pounds (4 million kilograms) of thrust. It’s called the Space Launch System rocket, SLS for short, but a less clunky name is under discussion, according to Nelson. Unlike the streamlined Saturn V, the new rocket has a pair of strap-on boosters refashioned from NASA’s space shuttles. The boosters will peel away after two minutes, just like the shuttle boosters did, but won’t be fished from the Atlantic for reuse. The core stage will keep firing before separating and crashing into the Pacific in pieces. Two hours after liftoff, an upper stage will send the capsule, Orion, racing toward the moon. MOONSHIP NASA’s high-tech, automated Orion capsule is named after the constellation, among the night sky’s brightest. At 11 feet (3 meters) tall, it’s roomier than Apollo’s capsule, seating four astronauts instead of three. For this test flight, a full-size dummy in an orange flight suit will occupy the commander’s seat, rigged with vibration and acceleration sensors. Two other mannequins made of material simulating human tissue — heads and female torsos, but no limbs — will measure cosmic radiation, one of the biggest risks of spaceflight. One torso is testing a protective vest from Israel. Unlike the rocket, Orion has launched before, making two laps around Earth in 2014. This time, the European Space Agency’s service module will be attached for propulsion and solar power via four wings.   FLIGHT PLAN Orion’s flight is supposed to last six weeks from its Florida liftoff to Pacific splashdown, twice as long as astronaut trips in order to tax the systems. It will take nearly a week to reach the moon, 240,000 miles (386,000 kilometers) away. After whipping closely around the moon, the capsule will enter a distant orbit with a far point of 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers). That will put Orion 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) from Earth, farther than Apollo. The big test comes at mission’s end, as Orion hits the atmosphere at 25,000 mph (40,000 kph) on its way to a splashdown in the Pacific. The heat shield uses the same material as the Apollo capsules to withstand reentry temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,750 degrees Celsius). But the advanced design anticipates the faster, hotter returns by future Mars crews. HITCHHIKERS Besides three test dummies, the flight has a slew of stowaways for deep space research. Ten shoebox-size satellites will pop off once Orion is hurtling toward the moon. The problem is these so-called CubeSats were installed in the rocket a year ago, and the batteries for half of them couldn’t be recharged as the launch kept getting delayed. NASA expects some to fail, given the low-cost, high-risk nature of these mini satellites. The radiation-measuring CubeSats should be OK. Also in the clear: a solar sail demo targeting an asteroid. In a back-to-the-future salute, Orion will carry a few slivers of moon rocks collected by Apollo 11′s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969, and a bolt from one of their rocket engines, salvaged from the sea a decade ago. Aldrin isn’t attending the launch, according to NASA, but three of his former colleagues will be there: Apollo 7′s Walter Cunningham, Apollo 10′s Tom Stafford and Apollo 17′s Harrison Schmitt, the next-to-last man to walk on the moon. APOLLO VS. ARTEMIS More than 50 years later, Apollo still stands as NASA’s greatest achievement. Using 1960s technology, NASA took just eight years to go from launching its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, and landing Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon. By contrast, Artemis already has dragged on for more than a decade, despite building on the short-lived moon exploration program Constellation. Twelve Apollo astronauts walked on the moon from 1969 through 1972, staying no longer than three days at a time. For Artemis, NASA will be drawing from a diverse astronaut pool currently numbering 42 and is extending the time crews will spend on the moon to at least a week. The goal is to create a long-term lunar presence that will grease the skids for sending people to Mars. NASA’s Nelson, promises to announce the first Artemis moon crews once Orion is back on Earth. WHAT’S NEXT There’s a lot more to be done before astronauts step on the moon again. A second test flight will send four astronauts around the moon and back, perhaps as early as 2024. A year or so later, NASA aims to send another four up, with two of them touching down at the lunar south pole. Orion doesn’t come with its own lunar lander like the Apollo spacecraft did, so NASA has hired Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide its Starship spacecraft for the first Artemis moon landing. Two other private companies are developing moonwalking suits. The sci-fi-looking Starship would link up with Orion at the moon and take a pair of astronauts to the surface and back to the capsule for the ride home. So far, Starship has only soared six miles (10 kilometers). Musk wants to launch Starship around Earth on SpaceX’s Super Heavy Booster before attempting a moon landing without a crew. One hitch: Starship will need a fill-up at an Earth-orbiting fuel depot, before heading to the moon.

The death toll from a Russian rocket attack as Ukraine observed its Independence Day has risen to 25, including an 11-year-old boy found under the rubble of a house and a 6-year-old killed in a car fire near a train station that was the target, a Ukrainian official said Thursday. Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces used an Iskander missile to strike a military train that was carrying Ukrainian troops and equipment to the front line in eastern Ukraine. The ministry claimed more than 200 reservists "were destroyed on their way to the combat zone.” The deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, did not say if the 25 victims he reported from Wednesday’s attack all were civilians. A total of 31 people sustained injuries, he said. The lethal strike in Chaplyne, a town of about 3,500 residents in the central Dnipropetrovsk region. nonetheless served as a brutally painful reminder that Russia's military force is causing civilians to suffer and testing Ukraine's resilience after six months of a grinding war. In Geneva on Thursday, the U.N.’s human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, decried the time since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into the neighboring country as “unimaginably horrifying.” She called on Putin “to halt armed attacks against Ukraine.” The train station strike took place after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Moscow might attempt “something particularly cruel” this week as Ukraine marked both its 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union and the six-month point of Russia's invasion on Wednesday. Tetyana Kvitnytska, deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional health department, said the people wounded in the attack suffered a range of injuries. Also read: 15 reported killed in Independence Day attack in Ukraine “There are craniocerebral injuries, limb fractures, many patients with explosive and shrapnel injuries, burns," she said. "People were in a difficult condition, both physically and psychologically.” “Now our efforts are focused on the children who suffered. We work with four children. Three children out of four are in serious condition. In addition to severe stress, they have blast and shrapnel injuries, burns, and fractures," Kvitnytska said. "The children are in serious condition.” The Russian government has repeatedly claimed following attacks in which civilians died that its forces only aimed at legitimate military targets. Hours before the train station attack, Russia insisted it was doing its best to spare civilians, even at a cost of slowing down its offensive in Ukraine. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, speaking Wednesday at a meeting of his counterparts from a security organization dominated by Russia and China, said Russia was carrying out strikes with precision weapons against Ukrainian military targets, and “everything is done to avoid civilian casualties.” “Undoubtedly, it slows down the pace of the offensive, but we do it deliberately,” he said. It was the second time Shoigu has made such a claim; he said the same thing in late May. Elsewhere in Ukraine, three people were killed in the eastern region of Donetsk on Wednesday and one more was wounded, Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram. Nikopol, a city across the river from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, came under more Russian shelling overnight, Valentyn Reznichenko, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said.

The U.S. military said early Wednesday it carried out airstrikes in eastern Syria that targeted areas used by militias backed by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. There was no immediate acknowledgment by Syria’s state-run media of the strikes hitting Deir Ez-Zor. Iran as well did not acknowledge the attack. The U.S. military’s Central Command said the strikes “took proportionate, deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation and minimize the risk of casualties.” It did not identify the targets, nor offer any casualty figures from the strikes, which the military said came at the orders of President Joe Biden. “Today’s strikes were necessary to protect and defend U.S. personnel,” Central Command spokesman Col. Joe Buccino said in a statement. Read: Nadler defeats Maloney in battle of top House Democrats The colonel added the attack was in response to an Aug. 15 attack targeting U.S. forces. That attack saw drones allegedly launched by Iranian-backed militias target the al-Tanf Garrison used by American forces. U.S. Central Command described the assault as causing “zero casualties and no damage” at the time. Deir Ez-Zor is a strategic province that borders Iraq and contains oil fields. Iran-backed militia groups and Syrian forces control the area and have often been the target of Israeli war planes in previous strikes. U.S. forces entered Syria in 2015, backing allied forces in their fight against the Islamic State group.

The United Nations faces a record humanitarian aid shortfall amid soaring needs and the focus of wealthy countries' on Ukraine, as aid agencies are forced to cut programs over a lack of funding, The New York Times reported. The newspaper said that donations from rich countries have increased this year, but at a much slower rate than the volume of funds needed, which has led to funding to ease humanitarian crises falling critically behind the volumes needed to meet basic needs. Read: Its largest lake is so dry, China digs deep to water crops “This is the biggest funding gap we’ve ever seen, mostly because the number of vulnerable people who need support is increasing fast,” Martin Griffiths, chief of the UN’s humanitarian and emergency relief office, said.

Six in 10 medical students in the United Kingdom are forced to cut spending on food, clothing and heating because of a "broken" system of allowance assistance from the state, a survey found. The study published Tuesday by the British Medical Association said 61.8 % of those polled were struggling to afford essentials, while 53.6% said they had to work during terms to pay their bills. Most of those forced to work said this adversely affected their studies. The BMA study also revealed that students eligible for National Health Service bursary found that it covered just 30% of their expenses. Students see their income drop further in the final two years of their studies when they are on clinical placements in the NHS and have less time to work. Read: Its largest lake is so dry, China digs deep to water crops BMA medical students committee co-chair Omolara Akinawonnu called the UK’s student finance system "broken and in urgent need of reform." She said that students saddled with "astronomical" debts were questioning their future in the NHS, which is already short of 8,000 doctors in England alone. "This is no way to train our future doctors. We have a mental health emergency in universities that is about to implode as inflation skyrockets and the cost-of-living spirals out of control," she warned. The survey of 1,119 medical students across the UK also found that almost 1 in 25 students reported accessing food banks. The funding shortfall was disadvantageous to the poorest students and jeopardizing their future careers in the NHS.

For years, global health officials have used billions of drops of an oral vaccine in a remarkably effective campaign aimed at wiping out polio in its last remaining strongholds — typically, poor, politically unstable corners of the world. Now, in a surprising twist in the decades-long effort to eradicate the virus, authorities in Jerusalem, New York and London have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there. The original source of the virus? The oral vaccine itself. Scientists have long known about this extremely rare phenomenon. That is why some countries have switched to other polio vaccines. But these incidental infections from the oral formula are becoming more glaring as the world inches closer to eradication of the disease and the number of polio cases caused by the wild, or naturally circulating, virus plummets. Since 2017, there have been 396 cases of polio caused by the wild virus, versus more than 2,600 linked to the oral vaccine, according to figures from the World Health Organization and its partners. “We are basically replacing the wild virus with the virus in the vaccine, which is now leading to new outbreaks,” said Scott Barrett, a Columbia University professor who has studied polio eradication. “I would assume that countries like the U.K. and the U.S. will be able to stop transmission quite quickly, but we also thought that about monkeypox.” The latest incidents represent the first time in several years that vaccine-connected polio virus has turned up in rich countries. Earlier this year, officials in Israel detected polio in an unvaccinated 3-year-old, who suffered paralysis. Several other children, nearly all of them unvaccinated, were found to have the virus but no symptoms. In June, British authorities reported finding evidence in sewage that the virus was spreading, though no infections in people were identified. Last week, the government said all children in London ages 1 to 9 would be offered a booster shot. In the U.S., an unvaccinated young adult suffered paralysis in his legs after being infected with polio, New York officials revealed last month. The virus has also shown up in New York sewers, suggesting it is spreading. But officials said they are not planning a booster campaign because they believe the state's high vaccination rate should offer enough protection. Genetic analyses showed that the viruses in the three countries were all “vaccine-derived,” meaning that they were mutated versions of a virus that originated in the oral vaccine. The oral vaccine at issue has been used since 1988 because it is cheap, easy to administer — two drops are put directly into children's mouths — and better at protecting entire populations where polio is spreading. It contains a weakened form of the live virus. Read:WHO updates Covid strategy to vaccinate all health workers, vulnerable groups But it can also cause polio in about two to four children per 2 million doses. (Four doses are required to be fully immunized.) In extremely rare cases, the weakened virus can also sometimes mutate into a more dangerous form and spark outbreaks, especially in places with poor sanitation and low vaccination levels. These outbreaks typically begin when people who are vaccinated shed live virus from the vaccine in their feces. From there, the virus can spread within the community and, over time, turn into a form that can paralyze people and start new epidemics. Many countries that eliminated polio switched to injectable vaccines containing a killed virus decades ago to avoid such risks; the Nordic countries and the Netherlands never used the oral vaccine. The ultimate goal is to move the entire world to the shots once wild polio is eradicated, but some scientists argue that the switch should happen sooner. “We probably could never have gotten on top of polio in the developing world without the (oral polio vaccine), but this is the price we’re now paying,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “The only way we are going to eliminate polio is to eliminate the use of the oral vaccine." Aidan O’Leary, director of WHO's polio department, described the discovery of polio spreading in London and New York as “a major surprise,” saying that officials have been focused on eradicating the disease in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where health workers have been killed for immunizing children and where conflict has made access to some areas impossible. Still, O'Leary said he is confident Israel, Britain and the U.S. will shut down their newly identified outbreaks quickly. The oral vaccine is credited with dramatically reducing the number of children paralyzed by polio. When the global eradication effort began in 1988, there were about 350,000 cases of wild polio a year. So far this year, there have been 19 cases of wild polio, all in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Mozambique. In 2020, the number of polio cases linked to the vaccine hit a peak of more than 1,100 spread out across dozens of countries. It has since declined to around 200 this year so far. Last year, WHO and partners also began using a newer oral polio vaccine, which contains a live but weakened virus that scientists believe is less likely to mutate into a dangerous form. But supplies are limited. To stop polio in Britain, the U.S. and Israel, what is needed is more vaccination, experts say. That is something Columbia University's Barrett worries could be challenging in the COVID-19 era. “What’s different now is a reduction in trust of authorities and the political polarization in countries like the U.S. and the U.K.,” Barrett said. “The presumption that we can quickly get vaccination numbers up quickly may be more challenging now.” Oyewale Tomori, a virologist who helped direct Nigeria’s effort to eliminate polio, said that in the past, he and colleagues balked at describing outbreaks as “vaccine-derived,” wary it would make people fearful of the vaccine. “All we can do is explain how the vaccine works and hope that people understand that immunization is the best protection, but it’s complicated,” Tomori said. “In hindsight, maybe it would have been better not to use this vaccine, but at that time, nobody knew it would turn out like this.”

The United States is stepping up to buy about 150,000 metric tons of grain from Ukraine in the next few weeks for an upcoming shipment of food aid from ports no longer blockaded by war, the World Food Program chief has told The Associated Press. The final destinations for the grain are not confirmed and discussions continue, David Beasley said. But the planned shipment, one of several the U.N. agency that fights hunger is pursuing, is more than six times the amount of grain that the first WFP-arranged ship from Ukraine is now carrying toward people in the Horn of Africa at risk of starvation. Beasley spoke Friday from northern Kenya, which is deep in a drought that is withering the Horn of Africa region. He sat under a thorn tree among local women who told the AP that the last time it rained was in 2019. Their bone-dry communities face yet another failed rainy season within weeks that could tip parts of the region, especially neighboring Somalia, into famine. Already, thousands of people have died. The World Food Program says 22 million people are hungry. “I think there’s a high probability we’ll have a declaration of famine” in the coming weeks, Beasley said. He called the situation facing the Horn of Africa a “perfect storm on top of a perfect storm, a tsunami on top of a tsunami” as the drought-prone region struggles to cope amid high food and fuel prices driven partly by the war in Ukraine. The keenly awaited first aid ship from Ukraine is carrying 23,000 metric tons of grain, enough to feed 1.5 million people on full rations for a month, Beasley said. It is expected to dock in Djibouti on Aug. 26 or 27, and the wheat is supposed to be shipped overland to northern Ethiopia, where millions of people in the Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions have faced not only drought but deadly conflict. Ukraine was the source of half the grain that WFP bought last year to feed 130 million hungry people. Russia and Ukraine signed agreements with the U.N. and the Turkish government last month to enable exports of Ukrainian grain for the first time since Russia’s invasion in February. But the slow reopening of Ukraine's ports and the cautious movement of cargo ships across the mined Black Sea won't solve the global food security crisis, Beasley said. He warned that richer countries must do much more to keep grain and other assistance flowing to the hungriest parts of the world, and he named names. Read: Ukraine grain shipments offer hope, not fix to food crisis “With oil profits being so high right now — record-breaking profits, billions of dollars every week — ... the Gulf states need to help, need to step up and do it now,” Beasley said. “It’s inexcusable not to. Particularly since these are their neighbors, these are their brothers, their family.” He asserted the World Food Program could save “millions of lives” with just one day of Gulf countries’ oil profits. China needs to help as well, Beasley said. “China’s the second-largest economy in the world, and we get diddly-squat from China,” or very little, he added. Despite grain leaving Ukraine and hopes rising of global markets beginning to stabilize, the world’s most vulnerable people face a long, difficult recovery, the WFP chief said. “Even if this drought ends, we’re talking about a global food crisis at least for another 12 months,” Beasley said. “But in terms of the poorest of the poor, it’s gonna take several years to come out of this." Some of the world's poorest people without enough food are in northern Kenya, where animal carcasses are slowly stripped to the bone beneath an ungenerous sky. Millions of livestock, the source of families’ wealth and nutrition, have died in the drought. Many water pumps have gone dry. More and more thousands of children are malnourished. “Don’t forget us,” resident Hasan Mohamud told Beasley. “Even the camels have disappeared. Even the donkeys have succumbed.” With so many in need, aid that does arrive can disappear like a raindrop in the sand. Local women who qualified for WFP cash handouts described taking the 6,500 shillings (about $54) and sharing it among their neighbors — in one case, 10 households. “The most interesting thing we hear is people saying, ‘We’re not the only ones,’” WFP program officer Felix Okech told the AP. “'We’re the ones who have been selected (for handouts), but there are many more like us.' So that is very humbling to hear.” In a small crowd that had gathered to listen to stories of children too weak to stand and milk gone dry, one woman at the edge of the woven plastic mat spoke up. Sahara Abdilleh, 50, said she makes perhaps 1,000 shillings ($8.30) a week from gathering firewood, scouring a landscape that gives less and less back every day. Like Beasley, she was thinking globally. “Is there any country, like Afghanistan or Ukraine, that is worse off than us?” she asked.

At least 10 people were killed in an attack by Islamic militants who stormed a hotel in Somalia’s capital late Friday, police and eyewitnesses said. Several other people were injured and security forces rescued many others, including children, from the scene of the attack at Mogadishu’s Hayat Hotel, they said. The attack started with explosions outside the hotel before gunmen entered the building. Gunfire could still be heard early Saturday as security forces tried to contain the last gunmen, who were thought to be holed up in the hotel. It was unclear how many militants remained on the hotel’s top floor. Also read: Somali forces kill 20 al-Shabab militants in central region The Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest of its frequent attempts to strike places that are often visited by government officials. There was no immediate word on the identities of the victims. “We were having tea near the hotel lobby when we heard the first blast followed by gunfire. I immediately rushed toward hotel rooms on the ground floor, and I locked,” eyewitness Abdullahi Hussein told the AP by phone. “The militants went straight upstairs and started shooting. I was inside the room until the security forces arrived and rescued me.” He said that on his way to safety he saw “several bodies lying on the ground outside hotel reception.”

A rocket attack on a crowded market in a town held by Turkey-backed opposition fighters in northern Syria killed 15 people on Friday and wounded dozens, an opposition war monitor and a paramedic group said. The attack on the town of al-Bab came days after a Turkish airstrike killed at least 11 Syrian troops and U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, blamed Syrian government forces for Friday’s shelling, saying it was in apparent retaliation for the Turkish airstrike. The Observatory said three children were among the 15 killed, and that there were more than 30 wounded. The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, had the same death toll but said 28 people were wounded. The paramedic group said its members evacuated some of the wounded and the dead bodies. “This is the worst massacre committed by regime forces since the battles stopped between the regime and the opposition,” said the Observatory’s chief Rami Abdurrahman, referring to a cease-fire in March 2020 that ended a wide Syrian government offensive on rebel-held areas. The U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said in a statement that its fighters did not shell al-Bab. There was no comment from the government. Turkey has launched three major cross-border operations into Syria since 2016 and controls some Syrian territory in the north. Although the fighting has waned over the past few years, shelling and airstrikes are not uncommon in northern Syria — the last major rebel stronghold in the country. Syria’s conflict, which began in March 2011, has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. President Bashar Assad’s forces have regained control of most parts of Syria over the past few years, with the help of their allies, Russia and Iran. Also read: Market blast in north Syria kills at least 9, wounds dozens In other developments, the Observatory and the U.S. military said a drone strike late on Thursday night in northeastern Syria killed four women and wounded several others. The Observatory blamed Turkey for the strike, saying it targeted a facility where Syrian Kurdish women were doing sports. A female Syrian Kurdish commander with the U.S.-backed forces was visiting at the time of the attack, the Observatory said. A U.S. military commander, Maj. Gen. John Brennan, condemned the attack and said the drone struck a group of teenage girls playing volleyball under a U.N. education and outreach program. “Such acts are contrary to the laws of armed conflict, which require the protection of civilians,” Brennan, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force, said in a statement. Brennan also said the “increase in military hostilities in northern Syria is creating chaos in a fragile region” and called for immediate de-escalation from all sides in the conflict, citing the still-present threat of the Islamic State group in the area.

King County, which includes Seattle, on Friday officially declared the local monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency as infections continue to increase in the city and other parts of the state. “We are fortunate to have one of the best public health organizations in the nation right here in King County, and today’s action ensures they will have all the tools needed to take on the challenge of monkeypox,” King County Executive Dow Constantine said in a written statement. The local emergency proclamation will free up needed resources for Public Health — Seattle & King County, as well as give the department more flexibility with hiring and contracting protocols, according to the statement. The proclamation will support efforts to contain the virus, which can cause a rash, fever, headache, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes and fatigue. Washington has reported 333 monkeypox infections, 275 of which were confirmed in King County, according to the state Department of Health. Two weeks ago, the state had confirmed 166 cases, The Seattle Times reported. Public health officials have recorded 21 cases in Pierce County, seven in Snohomish County, five in Spokane County, five in Clark County and four in Yakima County, state health officials said. The Washington State Department of Health reported the state’s first pediatric monkeypox case in a 17-year-old on Thursday, KING5 reported. Oregon identified its first pediatric monkeypox case on Wednesday. Also read: Monkeypox cases cross 35,000: WHO “It’s an important time for public health to have the flexibility it needs to be able to respond and reach the communities most impacted, including ensuring equitable access to vaccine,” Dennis Worsham, interim director of Public Health — Seattle & King County, said in the statement. Monkeypox vaccines have been scarce, and while Constantine’s proclamation won’t bring more doses to the state in the near term, it will help public health teams more quickly deliver vaccines when larger quantities become available, according to the executive’s office. Currently, those considered at highest risk and who are eligible for a monkeypox vaccine in King County include anyone who has had sexual or close, intimate contact with someone who has tested positive for monkeypox, among other criteria. San Francisco and New York City were the first cities in the country to declare a health emergency over the outbreak in late July. The federal government gave a similar announcement in early August and the World Health Organization issued a global health emergency in July.