AFP UK

Researchers have urged people to wear masks this holiday season after finding that multiple Covid infection increases the risk of health issues

People who have had Covid more than once are two or three times more likely to have a range of serious health problems than those who have only had it once, the first major study on the subject said Thursday.

Multiple infections have surged as the pandemic rumbles on and the virus mutates into new strains, but the long-term health effects of reinfection have not been clear.

The US researchers said their new study published in the Nature Medicine journal was the first to look at how reinfection increases the risk of health problems from acute cases as well as long Covid.

The researchers analysed the anonymous medical records of 5.8 million people in the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ national healthcare database.

More than 443,000 had tested positive for Covid at least once between March 1, 2020 and April this year. 

Nearly 41,000 of that group had Covid more than once. Over 93 percent had a total of two infections, while six percent had three and nearly one percent had four. 

The other 5.3 million never contracted Covid.

When the researchers compared the health outcomes of the different groups, they found that “people who got reinfected have an increased risk of all sorts of adverse health problems,” Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St Louis and the study’s senior author, told AFP.

People with repeat infections were twice as likely to die prematurely and three times more likely to be hospitalised with illness than those who had not been reinfected, the study found.

Heart and lung problems were more than three times more common for people who had been reinfected. 

Reinfection also contributes to brain conditions, kidney disease and diabetes, the study said.

And the risk of such problems could increase with each infection, it suggested.

– ‘Worrisome’ –

Al-Aly warned that this means that continuous reinfections “would likely elevate the burden of disease in the population”.

Ahead of a feared Covid spike during the holiday season, he called on people to wear masks to protect themselves.

He also urged authorities to do more to stop Covid circulating.

“The reason reinfection is happening is that our current vaccine strategy does not block transmission,” he said.

“I think reinfections will continue to happen until we have vaccines that block transmission, offer more durable protection, and are variant proof.”

The authors said the limitations of the study included that most of the veteran participants were older white males.

When the study was released as a preprint in June, US expert Eric Topol described the findings as “worrisome”.

In a Substack post, Topol pointed out that reinfections became “much more common” after April, when the study’s time frame ended, due to new, more transmissible Omicron variants.

In more positive news, earlier this week Al-Aly published a pre-print study, which has not been peer-reviewed, which found that people who took Pfizer’s drug Paxlovid within five days of testing positive had a reduced risk of getting long Covid.

A Ukrainian soldier fires artillery towards Russian positions outside Bakhmut on November 8, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine

The Ukraine war has shown the heavy toll military conflict takes not just on people but also on the planet, say experts at the UN climate summit in Egypt.

From the emissions caused by diesel-powered tanks, fighter jets and missile blasts to urban and forest fires and massive waves of refugees, the conflict has also spewed out huge amounts of greenhouse gases.

“This is a field of significant emissions and nobody has really dealt with this problem,” said Axel Michaelowa, head of the University of Zurich’s International Climate Policy research group.

Russia’s invasion has plunged Ukraine into misery, heightened geopolitical tensions, driven up global energy and food prices and distracted the world community from the urgent need for climate action.

A fast-heating world “cannot afford a single gunshot”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the COP27, arguing that the aggressors “are destroying the world’s ability to work united for a common goal”.

But, aside from such massive global shockwaves, the actual carbon footprint of war — and of peacetime armies — is also enormous, experts have argued, while acknowledging that so far they lack precise data.

Estimates of planet-warming emissions from the world’s militaries range between one and five percent of the global total, according to a commentary published in the journal Nature last week.

That can be compared to shipping or aviation — both around two percent, according to the paper led by researchers in Britain.

If the US military, the world’s biggest by expenditure, were a country, it would have the world’s highest per capita emissions, at 42 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per member of its personnel.

When one of its F-35 fighter planes flies 100 nautical miles, it hurls into the atmosphere as much CO2 as the average British petrol car does in a year, the experts wrote.

– ‘Conflicts past and present’ –

Ukraine has started to calculate emissions linked directly and indirectly to the invasion launched by Russia on February 24, a first for a country at war.

Fires in buildings, forests and fields sent into the skies 23.8 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, and the fighting itself 8.9 million tonnes, according to the project called the Initiative on GHG Accounting of War.

The displacement of people caused 1.4 million tonnes, said the project created two months into the war, while reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure will cause another 48.7 million tonnes of carbon emissions.

The total comes to nearly 83 million tonnes as a direct consequence of the war, now in its eighth month — compared to around 100 million tonnes produced from all sources by the Netherlands over the same period, according to the initiative.

“It shows us how much we are missing from other conflicts past and present,” said Deborah Burton, co-founder of the group Tipping Point North South. “We have not had this level of detail on Iraq or Syria or other conflicts.”

The authors of the Nature commentary argued it is high time to address the issue.

“Why are reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and United Nations climate summits silent on military emissions?” they wrote. 

“The short answer is politics, and a lack of expertise.”

– ‘Blind spot’ –

Ukraine’s project aims to remedy this “sort of blind spot” in the calculation of global emissions, said Lennard de Klerk, a private-sector specialist on carbon emissions who took part in the initiative. 

The experts of the Nature commentary hope the COP27 and next year’s climate conference in Dubai will bring “opportunities to formalise this change”. 

“The best step in our view would be to actually bring this directly to the IPCC process,” Michaelowa told AFP.

“The challenge is that military data are usually kept confidential, but there are possibilities to actually find proxies.

“You know which aircraft are operating in which area, you have an idea of the emission intensity of certain types of vehicles,” explained Michaelowa.

“So, by using proxy data, you should be able to have estimates of military emissions that are at least accurate in the level of plus or minus 10-20 percent.”

The Nature authors argued that carbon emissions “must be officially recognised and accurately reported in national inventories, and military operations need to be decarbonised”.

“Military emissions need to be put on the global agenda.”

Tighter emissions standards could come into place in a few years, even as Europe plans to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035

The European Commission on Thursday unveiled new proposals to tighten vehicle emissions standards, but immediately ran into fresh criticism that Brussels officials are too close to the car industry.

European Union capitals have already agreed to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035 as part of the 27-nation bloc’s effort to build a carbon-neutral economy by 2050.

For the motor lobby, the investment needed to transition to electric cars is already a high enough cost to impose on a sector that employs millions of workers in the main EU economies.

But green groups, citing evidence that air pollution from road transport kills 70,000 Europeans per year, are pushing for tighter emissions standards to cover the final decade of internal combustion engines.

On Thursday, the EU executive unveiled its proposed Euro 7 vehicle emissions standards to apply from 2025.

These, it said, would reduce the emission of NOx — the nitric and nitrogen oxides that cause smog and acid rain — by 35 percent from cars and 56 percent from trucks and buses compared to the previous rules.

There will also be steep reductions in the permitted levels of particulate matter in exhaust gas and of metal particles from brake pad abrasion.

For green campaigners the proposed rules do not go far enough. For the motor industry, they are a step too far.

“Unfortunately, the environmental benefit of the commission’s proposal is very limited, whereas it heavily increases the cost of vehicles,” said BMW chief Oliver Zipse, president of the ACEA lobbying group.

ACEA argues that exhaust emissions are already at a “barely measurable level” and that it makes no sense to spend to improve petrol and diesel vehicle standards when manufacturers are transitioning to electric.

But campaigners like the environmental NGO Transport and Environment and Green MEP Karima Delli accused Brussels of backing down to pressure from automakers and their allies in Paris, Berlin and Rome.

“The negotiations are likely to be tough and complicated,” Delli said, predicting that the European Parliament could yet seek tougher rules than those set out by the commission.

“Nevertheless, we must save lives, we cannot afford to miss the boat. We in the European Parliament will therefore do our utmost to raise the ambitions of this proposal.”

US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at UN climate talks in Egypt on Thursday that she hopes Republicans will cooperate in the fight against global warming regardless of the outcome of midterm elections.

Pelosi led a delegation of Democrats at the COP27 conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh as the final results of Tuesday’s vote have yet to be known, though Republicans look poised to reclaim the House.

Speaking to reporters, Pelosi refused to speculate about the possibility of losing the House of Representatives, which Democrats have held since 2018.

“But just win or lose, we still would like to have bipartisanship in saving the planet,” she said.

“I think what you saw in this election was young people voting on this subject that took everyone by surprise, not us,” Pelosi said.

At a panel discussion earlier, the powerful lawmaker said that when climate legislation was discussed in the House of Representatives, Republicans said there was “no climate crisis. It’s all a hoax.”

“We have to get over that,” she said.

Pelosi touted the passage in August of the $370 billion Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark bill that includes massive investment in renewable energy.

No Republican lawmakers supported it.

But Democratic lawmaker Kathy Cantor said the future of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, which she chairs, would be at risk.

“It’s quite likely if for some reason the GOP ekes out control of the House of Representatives they will nix the climate committee,” she told the panel.

“They have not really been partners in tackling the climate crisis and it’s inexplicable because the world’s top scientists are telling us we are running out of time.”

US President Joe Biden will address the climate talks on Friday, facing pressure from other world leaders to fulfil pledges to help finance the green transition in developing countries and back the create of a compensation fund for damages caused by natural disasters.

More than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists from some of the world's biggest polluters have registered to the climate talks in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, an analysis by groups including Global Witness and Corporate Accountability found

Fossil fuel lobbyists have flooded UN climate talks in Egypt, a report by watchdog groups said Thursday, even as calls grow at the summit for a windfall tax on oil majors’ bumper profits.

More than 600 lobbyists from some of the world’s biggest polluters have registered to the climate talks in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, up 25 percent from last year, the analysis by groups including Global Witness and Corporate Accountability found.

That is more than the number of representatives from the 10 most climate-affected countries combined, they said.

“There’s been a lot of lip service paid to this being the so-called African COP, but how are you going to address the dire climate impacts on the continent when the fossil fuel delegation is larger than that of any African country?” said Philip Jakpor of Corporate Accountability.  

The groups scoured the official list of registered participants looking for those either directly affiliated with oil and gas companies, or people who are attending as part of delegations that “act on behalf of the fossil fuel industry”.

Last year at the UN climate meeting in Glasgow, they counted 503 fossil fuel lobbyists registered.

The groups called on the United Nations to restrict access to the talks for fossil fuel firms, which the UN chief Antonio Guterres has said are “poisoning our planet”.

They added that there are more fossil fuel lobbyists than any single national delegation, except for the United Arab Emirates — the host of next year’s talks — which has registered over a thousand delegates, 70 of whom are directly linked to fossil fuel interests.

– ‘Planet is burning’ –

Oil companies have scored tens of billions of dollars in profits this year as crude prices soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley called Monday for a 10 percent tax on oil companies to fund loss and damage.

Other small island nations threatened by rising seas caused by global warming joined her call on Tuesday.

“While they are profiting, the planet is burning,” said the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, adding that company profits should go towards the creation of a “loss and damage” fund to help vulnerable countries cope with the here-and-now impacts of climate change.

The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu became this week the second country to join calls for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, an initiative that seeks to stop new investments in coal, oil and gas globally and phase out production.

Activists gathered for a small rally at the climate conference, calling for big emitters to be thrown out. 

“Polluters out! People in!” they chanted.  

COP presidency representative Ambassador Wael Aboulmagd said it was difficult to unpick exact numbers for lobbyists, adding that other high-emitting sectors such as the cement, fertilisers and steel industries were also present. 

The aim was to show that firms can cut their emissions, he said at the presidency’s “decarbonisation day”.

“The context isn’t going to be to allow anyone to come and pretend they’re doing something,” he told reporters. 

Some fossil fuel delegates said it was legitimate for them to represent their interests at the talks.  

“We have no apology for our position here,” Omar Farouk Ibrahim, head of the African petroleum producers organisation, told AFP. 

Wind turbines near Bizerte in northern Tunisia

Russia’s war in Ukraine has forced a short-term scramble for fossil fuels but the rise of solar, wind and other clean energies is “unstoppable”, the head of International Renewable Energy Agency told AFP.

Speaking at the UN COP27 climate summit in Egypt, Francesco La Camera said market forces now all but ensure renewables will keep growing fast — but also warned that the pace will need to double to prevent a climate catastrophe.

The Ukraine war has led to a serious energy supply crunch and oil and gas price spikes that have forced especially European countries to quickly search for new suppliers as they head into winter.

“In the short term, this will have an impact,” said La Camera, director general of IRENA. 

“But in the medium and long term, there is no other way than to accelerate decarbonisation. Because ultimately renewables are not only good for the climate, jobs, GDP, but are a real way to ensure energy independence.”

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg also highlighted the strategic aspect of a shift away from dependency on Russia and other oil and gas suppliers to clean and safe renewables.

Russia’s “use of energy as a weapon”, he said, “is a stark reminder of the need to transition from dependence on fossil fuels to renewables, because that will make us less dependent on Russian gas and Russian oil”. 

Helping NATO allies and countries everywhere shift to green power will not just help mitigate global warming, he said, but will also “be good for our security”.

– ‘Market is the engine’ –

As delegates meet in Egypt, US President Joe Biden was assessing the likely election loss of the House of Representatives to the Republicans, many of whom are hostile to his climate policies.

But La Camera said he saw no danger of the United States backsliding in Biden’s push to expand clean energies.

“The market is the engine,” he said. “The market is already saying clearly that we are moving toward a system based on renewables and complemented by hydrogen, mainly green. No one can stop this progress.”

Even under ex-president Donald Trump, “coal-fired power plants were already closing in the United States,” said La Camera. 

“The question is not where we are going but how fast and at what scale.”

IRENA calculated in a report published for COP27 that the energy transition is not yet on track to meet the Paris Agreement goals of keeping global warming well below two degrees Celsius and preferable at 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era. 

“The figures say that we must double the ambition between now and 2030,” he stressed.

Countries worldwide are now on track for 5.4 terawatts of installed renewable electricity capacity by that year — only half of the 10.8 TW that would be needed to meet climate commitments.

– ‘Phenomenal potential’ –

Africa, where the COP is being held this year, has enormous potential to harness renewables, especially the power of the sun, but is so far lagging behind, experts say.

Investment in renewables there fell to an 11-year low last year, according to a report by research organisation BloombergNEF. 

The continent captured only 0.6 percent of global investments in the sector. 

“Africa has phenomenal potential,” said the IRENA chief. “They can produce 1,000 times the electricity and energy they need. This continent is an incredible powerhouse.

“But we need to review the way cooperation works,” he added. “Africa cannot develop and move towards a clean energy system without the right physical and legal infrastructure.”

La Camera warned against the temptation to promote new fossil fuel projects, a dream cherished by several countries including Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

“It’s in the interest of the continent to jump on the new train” and not “stay stuck in old technologies,” he said, predicting this would generate millions of new jobs and accelerate economic growth. 

“But this can only be done,” La Camera said, “if developed countries are ready to facilitate, to support, to work with Africans to make this possible.”

Net profit for the Covid-vaccine maker came in at $1.64 billion in the July-September period

British pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca on Thursday announced a return to third-quarter profit on increased revenue from sales of its drugs.

Net profit for the Covid-vaccine maker came in at $1.64 billion in the July-September period, a statement said.

That compared with a loss after tax of $1.65 billion in the third quarter of last year, in part on costs linked to its takeover of US biotech company Alexion.

For the third quarter of this year, revenue jumped 11 percent to almost $11 billion as AstraZeneca began to profit from the Alexion purchase that cost it $39 billion.

AstraZeneca was benefitting also from “sustained investment in research and development (R&D)”, chief executive Pascal Soriot said in Thursday’s statement.

While overall sales jumped, driven by cancer drugs, revenue from its Covid jab Vaxzevria slumped 83 percent in the quarter to $173 million.

Revenue from AstraZeneca’s new drug Evusheld, developed for patients at risk of death from Covid, came in at $537 million.

“In all, required investment costs in drug development continue to weigh, and falling sales of its Vaxzevria Covid-19 vaccine have pushed emerging market sales down a tenth during the quarter,” noted Keith Bowman, investment analyst at Interactive Investor. 

“What’s more, Astra’s purchase of Alexion… is still to be fully justified.”

AstraZeneca’s share price jumped 2.1 percent to £110 ($125) on London’s top FTSE 100 index, down slightly overall in late morning deals.

Analysts said the shares were boosted by a positive earnings outlook.

“Progress in drug innovation and approvals is evident” for the group said Bowman, adding that “cancer treatment sales accounted for over a third of overall revenues during this latest period”.

A local resident rides past an abandoned Russian tank marked Z near Kharkiv in Ukraine on September 30, 2022

The global scramble for natural gas after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, scientists said Thursday on the sidelines of UN climate talks in Egypt.

Projected emissions from Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects under construction, approved and proposed up to 2050 would eat up a big chunk of humanity’s carbon budget for a 1.5C world, analysis from research NGO Climate Action Tracker showed.

The energy crisis spurred by restricted supply from Russia has seen a major push to expanded LNG production and import capacity in Europe, Africa, North America, Asia and Australia.

“The world has overreached in its bid to respond to the energy crisis,” said Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, which contributed to the report. 

“Our analysis shows proposed, approved and under construction LNG far exceeds what’s needed to replace Russian gas.”

In 2030, LNG could surge 500 million tonnes, equivalent to nearly five times the European Union’s 2021 Russian gas imports, and double total global Russian exports. 

The resulting emissions — some two billion tonnes of CO2 every year by 2030 — is incompatible with pathways to a carbon neutral world by mid-century, including one laid out by the intergovernmental International Energy Agency (IEA).  

– ‘Emergency mode’ –

“Increasing our reliance on fossil gas cannot be the solution to today’s climate and energy crises anywhere,” Hare said.

Annual projections of how much government plans and pledges will curb global warming show virtually no movement compared to year ago. 

Few governments have increased their short-term targets or made new longer horizon “net zero” commitments since the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in November 2021. 

All countries honouring their carbon pledges so far under the 2015 Paris treaty would see the rise in global temperatures top out at 2.4C above pre-industrial levels.

With nearly 1.2C of warming to date, the world has seen a rapid crescendo of deadly and costly heat waves, floods, droughts and storm surges made worse by rising seas. 

2022 has been a year of climate havoc, with Pakistan still underwater after flooding submerged a third of the country in August. 

This year has also seen wildfires raging across Europe, Russia and North America, and record heatwaves on three continents. 

“With governments focussing on the energy crisis, this has been a year of little action on the climate,” said Niklas Hohne, an analyst at NewClimate Institute. 

“To limit warming to 1.5C, countries need to flip to emergency mode on climate as they do on the energy crisis.”

More than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists from some of the world's biggest polluters have registered to the climate talks in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, an analysis by groups including Global Witness and Corporate Accountability found

Fossil fuel lobbyists have flooded UN climate talks in Egypt, a report by watchdog groups said Thursday, as calls grow at the summit for a windfall tax on oil majors’ bumper profits.

More than 600 lobbyists from some of the world’s biggest polluters have registered to the climate talks in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, up 25 percent from last year, the analysis by groups including Global Witness and Corporate Accountability found.

They said that is more than the number of lobbyists from the 10 most climate-affected countries combined.

“There’s been a lot of lip service paid to this being the so-called African COP, but how are you going to address the dire climate impacts on the continent when the fossil fuel delegation is larger than that of any African country?” said Phillip Jakpor of Corporate Accountability.  

The groups scoured the official list of registered participants looking for those either directly affiliated with oil and gas companies, or people who are attending as part of delegations that “act on on behalf of the fossil fuel industry”.

Last year at the UN climate meeting in Glasgow, they counted 503 fossil fuel lobbyists registered.

The groups called on the United Nations to restrict access to the talks for fossil fuel firms, which the UN chief Antonio Guterres has said are “poisoning our planet”.

Oil companies have scored tens of billions of dollars in profits this year as crude prices have soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley called Monday for a 10 percent tax on oil companies to fund loss and damage.

Other small island nations threatened by the rise in seas caused by global warming joined her call on Tuesday.

“While they are profiting, the planet is burning,” said the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, adding that company profits should go towards the creation of a “loss and damage” fund to help vulnerable countries cope with the here-and-now impacts of climate change.

The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu became this week the second country to join calls for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, an initiative that seeks to stop new investments in coal, oil and gas globally and phase out production.

People fight the wind at Causeway Beach Park before Hurricane Nicole makes landfall in Jensen Beach, Florida

Tropical Storm Nicole slowed after making landfall in the US state of Florida, meteorologists said Thursday, with high winds raising concerns that a long-delayed NASA rocket launch could be disrupted.

The storm, a rare occurrence this late in the year, sparked mandatory evacuation orders just weeks after Florida was battered by Hurricane Ian.

But just an hour after Nicole made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane it was downgraded to a Tropical Storm, the US-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in a statement Thursday.

The NHC said Nicole was packing sustained maximum winds of up to 70 miles (110 kilometers) per hour and heading towards Georgia and South Carolina, which would also be affected.

The storm could also possibly hit Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York later in the week, it said.

Nicole passed over the Bahamas on Wednesday, with the level of destruction not immediately clear.

A tropical storm warning was issued for Florida’s eastern coast from the city of Boca Raton to the boundary between Flagler and Volusia counties, the NHC said.

“Strong winds, dangerous storm surge and waves, and heavy rains continue over a large area,” it said.

Forty-five of the state’s 67 counties were under a state of emergency, Governor Ron DeSantis said, while four counties were under mandatory evacuation orders, according to the state’s Division of Emergency Management.

More than 100,000 customers in the affected areas were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us.

In preparation for the storm’s impact, DeSantis said 16,000 people had been recruited to respond to power outages and 600 national guardsmen had been activated.

The death toll from Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the United States, stands at more than 100 in Florida alone.

– NASA launch delay –

Nicole has also raised concerns that a long-delayed NASA rocket launch could be disrupted again.

The storm is heading towards NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, located near Florida’s eastern city of Orlando, having already disrupted plans to launch the agency’s most powerful rocket next week.

The Artemis 1 mission had been due to launch on November 14, but NASA said on Tuesday it would be delayed to November 16.

A backup launch date has been set for November 19.

NASA said it would leave the giant 322-foot (98-meter) SLS rocket on the launch pad, where it had been placed several days before.

Experts have voiced concern that the rocket, which is estimated to cost several billion dollars, could be damaged by debris from the hurricane if it remains exposed.

After two launch attempts were scrubbed this summer because of technical problems, the rocket had to be returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building to protect it from Hurricane Ian.

The uncrewed mission aims to bring the United States a step closer to returning astronauts to the Moon five decades after humans last walked on its surface.