A senior official of the European Medicine Agency (EMA) on Sunday urged European Union members to refrain from granting approval for Sputnik V, Russia's COVID-19 vaccine.

Currently, the agency is reviewing the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and has asked national approvals to not be handed out.

"We need documents that we can review. We also don't at the moment have data...about vaccinated people. It is unknown. That's why I would urgently advise against giving a national emergency authorisation," EMA managing board head Christa Wirthumer-Hoche said on an Austrian talk show.

"We can have Sputnik V on the market here in future when the appropriate data have been reviewed. The rolling review has begun now at EMA," she added. The agency launched a review last week.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/russia-austria-agree-to-talks-on-sputnik-v-vaccine-366506" hreflang="en">Russia, Austria agree to talks on Sputnik V vaccine</a> 
 
"Data packages are coming from Russian manufacturers and of course they will be reviewed according to European standards for quality, safety and efficacy. When everything is proven then it will also be authorised in the European Union," she further said. 
 
Currently, Sputnik V has received approval or is being assessed for approval in three member states of the EU - Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. In addition, EU officials say that the bloc would begin negotiations with the makers of Sputnik V if at least four member states request the same.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/russias-sputnik-v-vaccine-gets-all-clear-in-hungary-362021" hreflang="en">Russia's Sputnik V vaccine gets all-clear in Hungary</a>

Wirthumer-Hoche additionally said that EMA's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) would conduct a meeting on March 11 to review Johnson &amp; Johnson's coronavirus vaccine and whether it can be used in the EU. 
 
"We expect a positive assessment and that the (European) Commission will quickly grant authorisation," she added.

(With inputs from Reuters)

A senior official of the European Medicine Agency (EMA) on Sunday urged European Union members to refrain from granting approval for Sputnik V, Russia's COVID-19 vaccine.

A senior official of the European Medicine Agency (EMA) on Sunday urged European Union members to refrain from granting approval for Sputnik V, Russia's COVID-19 vaccine. Currently, the agency is reviewing the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and has asked national approvals to not be handed out. "We need documents that we can review. We also don't at the moment have data...about vaccinated people. It is unknown. That's why I would urgently advise against giving a national emergency authorisation," EMA managing board head Christa Wirthumer-Hoche said on an Austrian talk show. "We can have Sputnik V on the market here in future when the appropriate data have been reviewed. The rolling review has begun now at EMA," she added. The agency launched a review last week. Also read: Russia, Austria agree to talks on Sputnik V vaccine "Data packages are coming from Russian manufacturers and of course they will be reviewed according to European standards for quality, safety and efficacy. When everything is proven then it will also be authorised in the European Union," she further said. Currently, Sputnik V has received approval or is being assessed for approval in three member states of the EU - Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. In addition, EU officials say that the bloc would begin negotiations with the makers of Sputnik V if at least four member states request the same. Also read: Russia's Sputnik V vaccine gets all-clear in Hungary Wirthumer-Hoche additionally said that EMA's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) would conduct a meeting on March 11 to review Johnson & Johnson's coronavirus vaccine and whether it can be used in the EU. "We expect a positive assessment and that the (European) Commission will quickly grant authorisation," she added. (With inputs from Reuters)

EU regulator urges caution on Sputnik V, Russia's coronavirus vaccine

Many US states easing their restrictions, movie theatres have begun reopening one of the worlds most significant movie markets that is new york. But this comeback will be its own constraints, restrictions will include 25% occupancy or a maximum of 50 patrons. So what does this move holds for an industry battled by the pandemic for more than a year now?

United States: Can theatres afford re-opening with limited capacity?

In a crucial political movement for democrats, the US senate has clear the 1.9 trillion dollars COVID-19 relief bill. With this US President Joe Biden and his democratic allies has become successful in passing a mammoth bill aimed at the country's economic recovery from the Pandemic.

US senate 1.9 trillion dollars COVID-19 relief bill

South Korea and the united states will be scaling down their joined military drill amid the Coronavirus pandemic. The drill will not include outdoor manoeuvres which have been carried out throughout the year, and the number of troops and equipment will be minimized due to COVID-19 restrictions.

South Korea and the United States will be scale down

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Saturday that the pandemic risked rolling back progress made on gender equality, as women take on the lion's share of childcare in lockdown and are more likely to work in at-risk jobs.&nbsp;

"We have to make sure that the pandemic does not lead us to fall back into old gender patterns we thought we had overcome," Merkel said in a video message ahead of International Women's Day on March 8.&nbsp;

Women have been disproportionately affected by the health crisis, she said, while being underrepresented in decision-making positions.&nbsp;

"Once again it's more often women who have to master the balancing act between homeschooling, childcare and their own jobs," said the veteran leader.&nbsp;

Women also outnumber men in care professions at a time when those jobs are "particularly challenging".&nbsp;

"More than 75 per cent of those working in the health sector are women, from doctor's offices and hospitals, to labs and pharmacies," Merkel said -- yet women account for barely 30 per cent of management positions in those areas.&nbsp;

"It cannot be that women are to a large extent carrying our society yet at the same time are not equally involved in important political, economic and societal decisions," she added.&nbsp;

Merkel welcomed recent legislation requiring listed German companies to include more women on their executive boards.&nbsp;

But she said more should be done to support women, including through expanding childcare facilities and equal pay.&nbsp;

"Women must finally earn the same as men," she said.&nbsp;

Germany has one of the European Union's largest gender pay gaps, with women earning on average 19 per cent less than men in 2019 -- partly because many German women work part-time.&nbsp;

The gap narrows to six per cent when comparing men and women in the same jobs.&nbsp;

Merkel's warnings were echoed in the EU's annual report on gender equality released earlier this week.&nbsp;

The study found that the pandemic "has exacerbated existing inequalities between women and men in almost all areas of life".&nbsp;

On top of increased childcare burdens from school and nursery closures, it said women were also more likely to work in low-paid jobs in the services sector worst affected by the shutdowns, leaving them at higher risk of unemployment.&nbsp;

It could "take years, or even decades" to overcome the gender setbacks caused by the pandemic, it said.&nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)&nbsp;

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Saturday that the pandemic risked rolling back progress made on gender equality, as women take on the lion's share of childcare in lockdown and are more likely to work in at-risk jobs.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Saturday that the pandemic risked rolling back progress made on gender equality, as women take on the lion's share of childcare in lockdown and are more likely to work in at-risk jobs. "We have to make sure that the pandemic does not lead us to fall back into old gender patterns we thought we had overcome," Merkel said in a video message ahead of International Women's Day on March 8. Women have been disproportionately affected by the health crisis, she said, while being underrepresented in decision-making positions. "Once again it's more often women who have to master the balancing act between homeschooling, childcare and their own jobs," said the veteran leader. Women also outnumber men in care professions at a time when those jobs are "particularly challenging". "More than 75 per cent of those working in the health sector are women, from doctor's offices and hospitals, to labs and pharmacies," Merkel said -- yet women account for barely 30 per cent of management positions in those areas. "It cannot be that women are to a large extent carrying our society yet at the same time are not equally involved in important political, economic and societal decisions," she added. Merkel welcomed recent legislation requiring listed German companies to include more women on their executive boards. But she said more should be done to support women, including through expanding childcare facilities and equal pay. "Women must finally earn the same as men," she said. Germany has one of the European Union's largest gender pay gaps, with women earning on average 19 per cent less than men in 2019 -- partly because many German women work part-time. The gap narrows to six per cent when comparing men and women in the same jobs. Merkel's warnings were echoed in the EU's annual report on gender equality released earlier this week. The study found that the pandemic "has exacerbated existing inequalities between women and men in almost all areas of life". On top of increased childcare burdens from school and nursery closures, it said women were also more likely to work in low-paid jobs in the services sector worst affected by the shutdowns, leaving them at higher risk of unemployment. It could "take years, or even decades" to overcome the gender setbacks caused by the pandemic, it said. (With inputs from agencies)

Merkel warns coronavirus pandemic risks undoing gains for women  

California has found a much different way to beat stress– by breaking things into a million little pieces in rage rooms. These rage rooms have gained popularity in the United States, the step has been taken to distress from the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on oneself.

California residents flock to Rage Rooms to fight COVID-19 stress

"Stop whining. How long are you going to keep crying about it?", says Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to its citizens over COVID-19 pandemic.

'We've all the vaccine needed': Jair Bolsonaro

The past year has been challenging for film-makers, who had to battle coronavirus travel restrictions and social distancing rules to participate in what is ordinarily a team activity.

But one film in this year`s Berlin Film Festival line-up embraced the spirit of the pandemic like no other: American director Natalie Morales`s 'Language Lessons'&nbsp;is a drama enacted via Zoom, revealing new artistic possibilities in the process. 
 
The film casts Morales as Carino, a language teacher from Costa Rica giving Spanish lessons via video call to Adam, a wealthy Oakland, California house husband played by Mark Duplass. But a sudden emotional blow transforms their relationship. 
 
"We didn`t know if it would work," Morales said of the film, shot over the summer by a skeleton crew entirely from the perspective of the two characters` webcams. 
 
"We didn`t really know how we were going to shoot it or if it was going to look good or if people were going to be bored to death or if we were going to be bored to death," she added. 
 
Duplass, who co-wrote the script with Morales, said he had been inspired by the experience of taking online language classes during lockdown. 
 
"We developed a bond just through the screen. And I thought this could be an interesting way to make a movie with the limitation of the COVID lockdown," he said." 
 
All of the films in this year`s Berlinale were shaped by the pandemic they were shot during. Actors wear masks in several films, notably Romanian director Radu Jude`s black sex comedy `Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn`, whose characters seem to poison their own environment as efficiently as any virus. 
But `Language Lessons` embraces the lived experiences of home workers during a pandemic year, exploring the curious ambivalence and intensity of online relationships conducted over weeks and months. 
 
"We`re still tired of Zoom, but we`re so used to it that it`s a language we understand," Morales said. "You relate to the nature of that relationship in a way that you wouldn`t have two years ago." 
&nbsp;

The past year has been challenging for film-makers, who had to battle coronavirus travel restrictions and social distancing rules to participate in what is ordinarily a team activity.

The past year has been challenging for film-makers, who had to battle coronavirus travel restrictions and social distancing rules to participate in what is ordinarily a team activity. But one film in this year`s Berlin Film Festival line-up embraced the spirit of the pandemic like no other: American director Natalie Morales`s 'Language Lessons' is a drama enacted via Zoom, revealing new artistic possibilities in the process. The film casts Morales as Carino, a language teacher from Costa Rica giving Spanish lessons via video call to Adam, a wealthy Oakland, California house husband played by Mark Duplass. But a sudden emotional blow transforms their relationship. "We didn`t know if it would work," Morales said of the film, shot over the summer by a skeleton crew entirely from the perspective of the two characters` webcams. "We didn`t really know how we were going to shoot it or if it was going to look good or if people were going to be bored to death or if we were going to be bored to death," she added. Duplass, who co-wrote the script with Morales, said he had been inspired by the experience of taking online language classes during lockdown. "We developed a bond just through the screen. And I thought this could be an interesting way to make a movie with the limitation of the COVID lockdown," he said." All of the films in this year`s Berlinale were shaped by the pandemic they were shot during. Actors wear masks in several films, notably Romanian director Radu Jude`s black sex comedy `Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn`, whose characters seem to poison their own environment as efficiently as any virus. But `Language Lessons` embraces the lived experiences of home workers during a pandemic year, exploring the curious ambivalence and intensity of online relationships conducted over weeks and months. "We`re still tired of Zoom, but we`re so used to it that it`s a language we understand," Morales said. "You relate to the nature of that relationship in a way that you wouldn`t have two years ago."

Shot during pandemic, Berlinale film explores lives lived on Zoom

The television audience for Hollywood`s virtual Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday fell sharply from last year`s event, according to preliminary estimates on Monday. 
 
Ratings data reported on Monday by The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline showed that only about 5.4 million Americans watched the three-hour telecast on the NBC network. 
 
The preliminary figures do not reflect viewing on the US&nbsp;West Coast, but they nevertheless reflect a drop of about 60% from early audience estimates for the 2020 show. 
 
NBC has yet to release any figures and did not return a request for comment.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/hollywood/news-golden-globes-2021-celebs-slam-hollywood-foreign-press-association-for-having-zero-black-voters-367070">Golden Globes 2021: Celebs slam Hollywood Foreign Press Association for having zero Black voters</a> 
 
In 2020, 18.3 million Americans, the smallest audience in eight years, watched the Golden Globes ceremony on television, according to final Nielsen data. 
 
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Sunday`s show, hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, was a mostly virtual affair with no red carpet and with celebrities taking part via video links from their homes and other locations. 
 
It was also overshadowed by a controversy over the lack of Black members within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which decides on the winners. Members of the HFPA appeared briefly on stage and pledged to do better.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/golden-globe-2021-chadwick-boseman-to-chloe-zhao-the-big-winners-of-the-night-367046">Golden Globe 2021: Chadwick Boseman to Chloe Zhao, the big winners of the night</a> 
 
Drama "Nomadland" and comedy "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" won the top prizes on Sunday. 
 
Reviewers slammed the show, which usually takes place as a boozy gala dinner in Beverly Hills and is one of the more popular awards telecasts.

Variety called it "a lazy, clueless ceremony that likely convinced many viewers to change the channel." 
 
Britain`s Daily Telegraph described it as a "shambolic hellscape of Zoom ineptitude" that it said boded ill for the Oscars in April. 
 
In one of the less harsh reviews, Entertainment Weekly said broadcasters "made a valiant (if not always successful) effort to deliver some awards show glamour."

The television audience for Hollywood`s virtual Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday fell sharply from last year`s event, according to preliminary estimates on Monday.

The television audience for Hollywood`s virtual Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday fell sharply from last year`s event, according to preliminary estimates on Monday. Ratings data reported on Monday by The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline showed that only about 5.4 million Americans watched the three-hour telecast on the NBC network. The preliminary figures do not reflect viewing on the US West Coast, but they nevertheless reflect a drop of about 60% from early audience estimates for the 2020 show. NBC has yet to release any figures and did not return a request for comment. Golden Globes 2021: Celebs slam Hollywood Foreign Press Association for having zero Black voters In 2020, 18.3 million Americans, the smallest audience in eight years, watched the Golden Globes ceremony on television, according to final Nielsen data. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Sunday`s show, hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, was a mostly virtual affair with no red carpet and with celebrities taking part via video links from their homes and other locations. It was also overshadowed by a controversy over the lack of Black members within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which decides on the winners. Members of the HFPA appeared briefly on stage and pledged to do better. Golden Globe 2021: Chadwick Boseman to Chloe Zhao, the big winners of the night Drama "Nomadland" and comedy "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" won the top prizes on Sunday. Reviewers slammed the show, which usually takes place as a boozy gala dinner in Beverly Hills and is one of the more popular awards telecasts. Variety called it "a lazy, clueless ceremony that likely convinced many viewers to change the channel." Britain`s Daily Telegraph described it as a "shambolic hellscape of Zoom ineptitude" that it said boded ill for the Oscars in April. In one of the less harsh reviews, Entertainment Weekly said broadcasters "made a valiant (if not always successful) effort to deliver some awards show glamour."

TV audience for virtual Golden Globes show appears to have fallen sharply

Reaching the milestone of administering 50 million doses of the COVID vaccine since taking office, US President Joe Biden celebrated the pace of his efforts to end the pandemic in the country.

Joe Biden marks 50 million COVID vaccine shots in US

The U.S. economy remains mired in a pandemic winter of shuttered storefronts, high unemployment and sluggish job growth. But on Wall Street and in Washington, attention is shifting to an intriguing if indistinct prospect: a post-COVID boom.

Forecasters have always expected the pandemic to be followed by a period of strong growth as businesses reopen and Americans resume their normal activities. But in recent weeks, economists have begun to talk of something stronger: a supercharged rebound that brings down unemployment, drives up wages and may foster years of stronger growth.

There are hints that the economy has turned a corner: Retail sales jumped last month as the latest round of government aid began showing up in consumers’ bank accounts. New unemployment claims have declined from early January, though they remain high. Measures of business investment have picked up, a sign of confidence from corporate leaders.

Economists surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia this month predicted that U.S. output will increase 4.5% this year, which would make it the best year since 1999. Some expect an even stronger bounce: Economists at Goldman Sachs forecast that the economy will grow 6.8% this year and that the unemployment rate will drop to 4.1% by December, a level that took eight years to achieve after the last recession.

“We’re extremely likely to get a very high growth rate,” said Jan Hatzius, Goldman’s chief economist. “Whether it’s a boom or not, I do think it’s a V-shaped recovery,” he added, referring to a steep drop followed by a sharp rebound.

The growing optimism stems from the confluence of several factors. Coronavirus cases are falling in the United States. The vaccine rollout, though slower than hoped, is gaining steam. And largely because of trillions of dollars in federal help, the economy appears to have made it through last year with less structural damage — in the form of business failures, home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies — than many people feared last spring.

Lastly, consumers are sitting on a trillion-dollar mountain of cash, a result of months of lockdown-induced saving and successive rounds of stimulus payments. That mountain could grow if Congress approves the aid to households that President Joe Biden has proposed.

When the pandemic ends, cash could be unleashed like melting snow in the Rockies: Consumers, released from their cabin fever, compete for hotel rooms and restaurant tables. Businesses compete for employees and supplies to meet the demand. Workers who were sidelined by child care responsibilities or virus fears are drawn back to the labor force by suddenly abundant opportunities.

“There will be this big boom as pent-up demand comes through and the economy is opening,” said Ellen Zentner, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley. “There is an awful lot of buying power that we’ve transferred to households to fuel that pent-up demand.”

That vision is far from a certainty. Delays in the vaccine rollout could stall the recovery. So could new strains of the virus that render vaccines less effective. A political standoff in Washington could hold up aid for unemployed workers and struggling businesses. And even if the economy avoids all of those traps, there is unlikely to be a single moment when public health officials give an “all clear”; it could be years before people pack into bars and sports stadiums the way they did before the pandemic.

A boom also carries risks. In recent weeks, prominent economists including Lawrence H. Summers, a Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, have warned that Biden’s relief proposal is too large and could lead the economy to overheat, pushing up prices and forcing the Federal Reserve to bring the party to a premature end. Fed officials have largely dismissed those concerns, noting that the consistent problem in recent decades has been too little inflation rather than too much.

Other economists fear that the rebound will primarily benefit those at the top, compounding inequities that the pandemic has widened.

“We may see a boom in the future, but that may just leave some people even further behind, or may give them a trickle when they need a waterfall,” said Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist.

But for many businesses and households that have struggled to stay afloat during the pandemic, those concerns pale in comparison with the opportunities that a boom could provide.

Workout Anytime, a chain of 24-hour fitness clubs, was hit hard by the early stages of the pandemic, which shut down gyms nationwide. Business has since rebounded, but not to previous levels, as customers remain wary about working out in close quarters.

But Greg Maurer, a company vice president, sees better times ahead. The pandemic hasn’t dampened people’s enthusiasm for working out, he said — if anything, it has made the importance of physical fitness clearer. As soon as people are sure it’s safe, he said, he expects business to be gangbusters.

“This may be the biggest growth period we’ve ever had coming up,” he said. “There is a huge group of people out there saying, ‘I cannot wait to get back to the club.’”

Maurer doesn’t just expect to get all his old customers back, or even to resume the company’s old growth trajectory. He expects business to leap ahead of its path before the virus. That’s partly because the pandemic has wiped out many smaller gym chains, leaving less competition. But it is also because the pandemic led Workout Anytime and other chains to adopt digital tools, like online bookings and video workouts, that could open up new revenue streams.

“We are a way better organization today as a result of these challenges than we were a year ago because we had to get better,” Maurer said.

Stories like his are behind one of the most intriguing possibilities for the post-COVID-19 era: a surge in productivity. Companies and workers have been forced to embrace a wide range of technologies and policies — online meetings, file sharing, flexible work schedules — that could make their operations more efficient. Spread across the whole economy, such changes could allow faster growth that is sustainable over decades, not just a short-term burst.

Constance L. Hunter, chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG, likened the possibility to the period after World War II. The war led to the development of new technologies and spread existing ones to factories across the country. Those advancements helped make the postwar period one of the best on record for productivity growth, and for economic growth in general.

There is no single definition of a boom, nor a committee of elite economists who agree when one has begun, as there is with recessions. But economists generally agree that booms are characterized by a combination of strong growth and a high absolute level of activity. By that standard, the period after World War II certainly qualifies as a boom. So do the late 1960s.

In recent decades, however, booms have become less common. Growth never took off after the mild recession that hit in 2001, and while the unemployment rate hit a half-century low after the last recession, it took a decade to get there.

There are reasons to think this recovery could be different. For one thing, the economy was fundamentally healthy when the recession began. There was no housing bubble; household debt was low; banks weren’t sitting on a tower of dubious loans that could collapse at any moment. That means there is no reason, at least in theory, that the economy can’t pick up more or less where it left off.

Policymakers have also responded much more aggressively to this crisis than to past ones. The Fed moved quickly to prevent the pandemic from setting off a financial crisis. Congress spent trillions of dollars to make sure unemployed workers could keep their homes and feed their families, and to help small businesses.

Those efforts were far from a total success. The unemployment system buckled under the crush of applicants, and millions had to wait weeks or months to get benefits, if they got them at all. Government aid was inadequate, or came too late, to save thousands of businesses. State and local governments have slashed jobs. Hunger rates have risen.

But government aid appears to have been largely effective at preventing deep structural damage that could prevent a strong rebound. There has been no wave of foreclosures or corporate bankruptcies. Rates of entrepreneurship have soared, signaling that Americans are optimistic and have access to the capital necessary to act on that optimism.

Even if there is a strong rebound, however, economists warn that not everyone will benefit.

Kara Gray and her husband, Christopher DeSure, spent years building their small Ohio construction company into a successful business. Then the pandemic shut them down, and, having a daughter at home with a compromised immune system, they haven’t felt comfortable returning to in-person work.

With the housing market strong, Gray is confident they will be able to get back to work once the pandemic is over. But she worries they won’t be able to take full advantage of the boom. She and her husband were forced to spend the money they had set aside to buy a house, and have fallen behind on bills and run up credit card debt. That could make it hard for them to qualify for a mortgage or for a business loan to expand their company.

“It’s going to affect me and my husband longer term,” she said. “It’s not just ‘Can I pay my bills this month?’ It’s that once this is over, I’m going to have to start all over.”

Stories like Gray’s point to a challenge for policymakers. Standard economic statistics like the unemployment rate and gross domestic product could mask persistent challenges facing many families, particularly the Black and Hispanic workers who have borne the brunt of the pandemic’s economic pain. That could lead Congress to pull back on aid when it is still needed.

“The risk is that within the aggregate data that look relatively encouraging, the stories of many, many households are going to get lost,” said David Wilcox, a former Fed economist who is now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Still, for all its shortcomings, a boom may be the best chance many workers have to make up lost ground. The strong labor market that preceded the pandemic was delivering wage gains to low-income workers and giving opportunities to people with disabilities, criminal records and other barriers to employment. A quick drop in the unemployment rate won’t heal all the wounds caused by the pandemic, but it might at least stanch the bleeding.

“Root for the boom,” Sinclair said. “But don’t count on the boom doing everything for us.”

The U.S. economy remains mired in a pandemic winter of shuttered storefronts, high unemployment and sluggish job growth. But on Wall Street and in Washington, attention is shifting to an intriguing if indistinct prospect: a post-COVID boom.

The U.S. economy remains mired in a pandemic winter of shuttered storefronts, high unemployment and sluggish job growth. But on Wall Street and in Washington, attention is shifting to an intriguing if indistinct prospect: a post-COVID boom. Forecasters have always expected the pandemic to be followed by a period of strong growth as businesses reopen and Americans resume their normal activities. But in recent weeks, economists have begun to talk of something stronger: a supercharged rebound that brings down unemployment, drives up wages and may foster years of stronger growth. There are hints that the economy has turned a corner: Retail sales jumped last month as the latest round of government aid began showing up in consumers’ bank accounts. New unemployment claims have declined from early January, though they remain high. Measures of business investment have picked up, a sign of confidence from corporate leaders. Economists surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia this month predicted that U.S. output will increase 4.5% this year, which would make it the best year since 1999. Some expect an even stronger bounce: Economists at Goldman Sachs forecast that the economy will grow 6.8% this year and that the unemployment rate will drop to 4.1% by December, a level that took eight years to achieve after the last recession. “We’re extremely likely to get a very high growth rate,” said Jan Hatzius, Goldman’s chief economist. “Whether it’s a boom or not, I do think it’s a V-shaped recovery,” he added, referring to a steep drop followed by a sharp rebound. The growing optimism stems from the confluence of several factors. Coronavirus cases are falling in the United States. The vaccine rollout, though slower than hoped, is gaining steam. And largely because of trillions of dollars in federal help, the economy appears to have made it through last year with less structural damage — in the form of business failures, home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies — than many people feared last spring. Lastly, consumers are sitting on a trillion-dollar mountain of cash, a result of months of lockdown-induced saving and successive rounds of stimulus payments. That mountain could grow if Congress approves the aid to households that President Joe Biden has proposed. When the pandemic ends, cash could be unleashed like melting snow in the Rockies: Consumers, released from their cabin fever, compete for hotel rooms and restaurant tables. Businesses compete for employees and supplies to meet the demand. Workers who were sidelined by child care responsibilities or virus fears are drawn back to the labor force by suddenly abundant opportunities. “There will be this big boom as pent-up demand comes through and the economy is opening,” said Ellen Zentner, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley. “There is an awful lot of buying power that we’ve transferred to households to fuel that pent-up demand.” That vision is far from a certainty. Delays in the vaccine rollout could stall the recovery. So could new strains of the virus that render vaccines less effective. A political standoff in Washington could hold up aid for unemployed workers and struggling businesses. And even if the economy avoids all of those traps, there is unlikely to be a single moment when public health officials give an “all clear”; it could be years before people pack into bars and sports stadiums the way they did before the pandemic. A boom also carries risks. In recent weeks, prominent economists including Lawrence H. Summers, a Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, have warned that Biden’s relief proposal is too large and could lead the economy to overheat, pushing up prices and forcing the Federal Reserve to bring the party to a premature end. Fed officials have largely dismissed those concerns, noting that the consistent problem in recent decades has been too little inflation rather than too much. Other economists fear that the rebound will primarily benefit those at the top, compounding inequities that the pandemic has widened. “We may see a boom in the future, but that may just leave some people even further behind, or may give them a trickle when they need a waterfall,” said Tara Sinclair, a George Washington University economist. But for many businesses and households that have struggled to stay afloat during the pandemic, those concerns pale in comparison with the opportunities that a boom could provide. Workout Anytime, a chain of 24-hour fitness clubs, was hit hard by the early stages of the pandemic, which shut down gyms nationwide. Business has since rebounded, but not to previous levels, as customers remain wary about working out in close quarters. But Greg Maurer, a company vice president, sees better times ahead. The pandemic hasn’t dampened people’s enthusiasm for working out, he said — if anything, it has made the importance of physical fitness clearer. As soon as people are sure it’s safe, he said, he expects business to be gangbusters. “This may be the biggest growth period we’ve ever had coming up,” he said. “There is a huge group of people out there saying, ‘I cannot wait to get back to the club.’” Maurer doesn’t just expect to get all his old customers back, or even to resume the company’s old growth trajectory. He expects business to leap ahead of its path before the virus. That’s partly because the pandemic has wiped out many smaller gym chains, leaving less competition. But it is also because the pandemic led Workout Anytime and other chains to adopt digital tools, like online bookings and video workouts, that could open up new revenue streams. “We are a way better organization today as a result of these challenges than we were a year ago because we had to get better,” Maurer said. Stories like his are behind one of the most intriguing possibilities for the post-COVID-19 era: a surge in productivity. Companies and workers have been forced to embrace a wide range of technologies and policies — online meetings, file sharing, flexible work schedules — that could make their operations more efficient. Spread across the whole economy, such changes could allow faster growth that is sustainable over decades, not just a short-term burst. Constance L. Hunter, chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG, likened the possibility to the period after World War II. The war led to the development of new technologies and spread existing ones to factories across the country. Those advancements helped make the postwar period one of the best on record for productivity growth, and for economic growth in general. There is no single definition of a boom, nor a committee of elite economists who agree when one has begun, as there is with recessions. But economists generally agree that booms are characterized by a combination of strong growth and a high absolute level of activity. By that standard, the period after World War II certainly qualifies as a boom. So do the late 1960s. In recent decades, however, booms have become less common. Growth never took off after the mild recession that hit in 2001, and while the unemployment rate hit a half-century low after the last recession, it took a decade to get there. There are reasons to think this recovery could be different. For one thing, the economy was fundamentally healthy when the recession began. There was no housing bubble; household debt was low; banks weren’t sitting on a tower of dubious loans that could collapse at any moment. That means there is no reason, at least in theory, that the economy can’t pick up more or less where it left off. Policymakers have also responded much more aggressively to this crisis than to past ones. The Fed moved quickly to prevent the pandemic from setting off a financial crisis. Congress spent trillions of dollars to make sure unemployed workers could keep their homes and feed their families, and to help small businesses. Those efforts were far from a total success. The unemployment system buckled under the crush of applicants, and millions had to wait weeks or months to get benefits, if they got them at all. Government aid was inadequate, or came too late, to save thousands of businesses. State and local governments have slashed jobs. Hunger rates have risen. But government aid appears to have been largely effective at preventing deep structural damage that could prevent a strong rebound. There has been no wave of foreclosures or corporate bankruptcies. Rates of entrepreneurship have soared, signaling that Americans are optimistic and have access to the capital necessary to act on that optimism. Even if there is a strong rebound, however, economists warn that not everyone will benefit. Kara Gray and her husband, Christopher DeSure, spent years building their small Ohio construction company into a successful business. Then the pandemic shut them down, and, having a daughter at home with a compromised immune system, they haven’t felt comfortable returning to in-person work. With the housing market strong, Gray is confident they will be able to get back to work once the pandemic is over. But she worries they won’t be able to take full advantage of the boom. She and her husband were forced to spend the money they had set aside to buy a house, and have fallen behind on bills and run up credit card debt. That could make it hard for them to qualify for a mortgage or for a business loan to expand their company. “It’s going to affect me and my husband longer term,” she said. “It’s not just ‘Can I pay my bills this month?’ It’s that once this is over, I’m going to have to start all over.” Stories like Gray’s point to a challenge for policymakers. Standard economic statistics like the unemployment rate and gross domestic product could mask persistent challenges facing many families, particularly the Black and Hispanic workers who have borne the brunt of the pandemic’s economic pain. That could lead Congress to pull back on aid when it is still needed. “The risk is that within the aggregate data that look relatively encouraging, the stories of many, many households are going to get lost,” said David Wilcox, a former Fed economist who is now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Still, for all its shortcomings, a boom may be the best chance many workers have to make up lost ground. The strong labor market that preceded the pandemic was delivering wage gains to low-income workers and giving opportunities to people with disabilities, criminal records and other barriers to employment. A quick drop in the unemployment rate won’t heal all the wounds caused by the pandemic, but it might at least stanch the bleeding. “Root for the boom,” Sinclair said. “But don’t count on the boom doing everything for us.”

On the post-pandemic horizon, could that be ... a boom?

Ask Lucia DeClerck how she has lived to be 105, and she is quick with an answer.

“Prayer. Prayer. Prayer,” she offers. “One step at a time. No junk food.”

But surviving the coronavirus, she said, also may have had something to do with another staple: the nine gin-soaked golden raisins she has eaten each morning for most of her life.

“Fill a jar,” she explained. “Nine raisins a day after it sits for nine days.”

Her children and grandchildren recall the ritual as just one of DeClerck’s endearing lifelong habits, like drinking aloe juice straight from the container and brushing her teeth with baking soda. (That worked, too: She did not have a cavity until she was 99, relatives said.)

“We would just think, ‘Grandma, what are you doing? You’re crazy,’” said her 53-year-old granddaughter, Shawn Laws O’Neil, of Los Angeles. “Now the laugh is on us. She has beaten everything that’s come her way.”

It is a long list. Born in 1916 in Hawaii to parents who came from Guatemala and Spain, she lived through the Spanish flu, two world wars and the deaths of three husbands and a son.

She moved to Wyoming, California and back to Hawaii before finally arriving in New Jersey, where she lived with her oldest son. After turning 90, she moved to an adult community in Manahawkin, New Jersey, along the Jersey Shore, where she remained active until she injured herself in a fall about four years ago.

“She is just the epitome of perseverance,” O’Neil said. “Her mind is so sharp. She will remember things when I was a kid that I don’t even remember.”

DeClerck, the oldest resident of her South Jersey nursing home, learned that she had contracted the virus on her 105th birthday, Jan. 25, the day after she had gotten her second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to Michael Neiman, the home’s administrator.

At first, she said she was scared. She did not like being isolated, and she missed the daily chatter from the parade of caregivers at Mystic Meadows Rehabilitation and Nursing, a 120-bed facility in Little Egg Harbor.

She showed few symptoms, Neiman said. And within two weeks she was back in her room, holding her rosary beads and wearing her trademark sunglasses and knit hat.

To her two surviving sons, five grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great grandchildren, who call her Grandma Lucia, she has a new moniker, O’Neil said: “The 105-year-old badass who kicked COVID.”

On Monday, she got a shout-out from Gov. Phil Murphy, who described a phone call with her during a coronavirus news briefing.

“What an uplifting conversation,” the governor said.

DeClerck’s family gathered in January 2020 at Mystic Meadows to celebrate her 104th birthday before the onset of the pandemic. When they learned that she had contracted the virus, they braced for the worst.

“We were very concerned,” her son, Phillip Laws, 78, said.

“But she’s got a tenacity that is unbelievable,” he added. “And she’s got that rosary — all the time.”

A devout Catholic, DeClerck led rosary prayers each week at the nursing home and, before the pandemic, was a fixture at weekly Mass.

She raised three sons and ran a corner store for decades with her first husband, Henry Laws Jr., in Los Angeles. She married twice more after returning to Hawaii, where she worked as a home health aide and welcomed grandchildren for summerlong visits.

DeClerck is one of 62 residents of Mystic Meadows to have contracted the virus; four patients died, including three who were receiving hospice care, Neiman said.

“We’re as careful as possible,” he said, “but this finds a way of sneaking in.”

In January, residents were being tested twice a week, and a rapid test in the last week of the month showed that DeClerck had contracted the virus.

“At first she was a little apprehensive, a little scared, but she said, ‘God will protect me,’” Neiman said.

She had also been vaccinated, which most likely contributed to her recovery. The first studies of Britain’s mass inoculation program showed strong evidence Monday that even one dose of vaccine can help slash coronavirus-related hospitalizations.

DeClerck is not the oldest person to beat the virus.

Europe’s oldest-known resident, Sister André, contracted the virus at 116. She celebrated with a glass of Champagne on her 117th birthday earlier this month at a nursing home in Toulon, a city in southeastern France.

Like Sister André, DeClerck may be ready for a toast.

But it is likely to involve gin and a handful of golden raisins. Her family is following suit.

“Now all of us are rushing out and getting Mason jars and yellow raisins and trying to catch up,” O’Neil said.

Ask Lucia DeClerck how she has lived to be 105, and she is quick with an answer. “Prayer. Prayer. Prayer,” she offers. “One step at a time. No junk food.” But surviving the coronavirus, she said, also may have had something to do with another staple: the nine gin-soaked golden raisins she has eaten each morning for most of her life.

Ask Lucia DeClerck how she has lived to be 105, and she is quick with an answer. “Prayer. Prayer. Prayer,” she offers. “One step at a time. No junk food.” But surviving the coronavirus, she said, also may have had something to do with another staple: the nine gin-soaked golden raisins she has eaten each morning for most of her life. “Fill a jar,” she explained. “Nine raisins a day after it sits for nine days.” Her children and grandchildren recall the ritual as just one of DeClerck’s endearing lifelong habits, like drinking aloe juice straight from the container and brushing her teeth with baking soda. (That worked, too: She did not have a cavity until she was 99, relatives said.) “We would just think, ‘Grandma, what are you doing? You’re crazy,’” said her 53-year-old granddaughter, Shawn Laws O’Neil, of Los Angeles. “Now the laugh is on us. She has beaten everything that’s come her way.” It is a long list. Born in 1916 in Hawaii to parents who came from Guatemala and Spain, she lived through the Spanish flu, two world wars and the deaths of three husbands and a son. She moved to Wyoming, California and back to Hawaii before finally arriving in New Jersey, where she lived with her oldest son. After turning 90, she moved to an adult community in Manahawkin, New Jersey, along the Jersey Shore, where she remained active until she injured herself in a fall about four years ago. “She is just the epitome of perseverance,” O’Neil said. “Her mind is so sharp. She will remember things when I was a kid that I don’t even remember.” DeClerck, the oldest resident of her South Jersey nursing home, learned that she had contracted the virus on her 105th birthday, Jan. 25, the day after she had gotten her second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to Michael Neiman, the home’s administrator. At first, she said she was scared. She did not like being isolated, and she missed the daily chatter from the parade of caregivers at Mystic Meadows Rehabilitation and Nursing, a 120-bed facility in Little Egg Harbor. She showed few symptoms, Neiman said. And within two weeks she was back in her room, holding her rosary beads and wearing her trademark sunglasses and knit hat. To her two surviving sons, five grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great grandchildren, who call her Grandma Lucia, she has a new moniker, O’Neil said: “The 105-year-old badass who kicked COVID.” On Monday, she got a shout-out from Gov. Phil Murphy, who described a phone call with her during a coronavirus news briefing. “What an uplifting conversation,” the governor said. DeClerck’s family gathered in January 2020 at Mystic Meadows to celebrate her 104th birthday before the onset of the pandemic. When they learned that she had contracted the virus, they braced for the worst. “We were very concerned,” her son, Phillip Laws, 78, said. “But she’s got a tenacity that is unbelievable,” he added. “And she’s got that rosary — all the time.” A devout Catholic, DeClerck led rosary prayers each week at the nursing home and, before the pandemic, was a fixture at weekly Mass. She raised three sons and ran a corner store for decades with her first husband, Henry Laws Jr., in Los Angeles. She married twice more after returning to Hawaii, where she worked as a home health aide and welcomed grandchildren for summerlong visits. DeClerck is one of 62 residents of Mystic Meadows to have contracted the virus; four patients died, including three who were receiving hospice care, Neiman said. “We’re as careful as possible,” he said, “but this finds a way of sneaking in.” In January, residents were being tested twice a week, and a rapid test in the last week of the month showed that DeClerck had contracted the virus. “At first she was a little apprehensive, a little scared, but she said, ‘God will protect me,’” Neiman said. She had also been vaccinated, which most likely contributed to her recovery. The first studies of Britain’s mass inoculation program showed strong evidence Monday that even one dose of vaccine can help slash coronavirus-related hospitalizations. DeClerck is not the oldest person to beat the virus. Europe’s oldest-known resident, Sister André, contracted the virus at 116. She celebrated with a glass of Champagne on her 117th birthday earlier this month at a nursing home in Toulon, a city in southeastern France. Like Sister André, DeClerck may be ready for a toast. But it is likely to involve gin and a handful of golden raisins. Her family is following suit. “Now all of us are rushing out and getting Mason jars and yellow raisins and trying to catch up,” O’Neil said.

This 105-year-old beat COVID. She credits gin-soaked raisins.

Not long after Japan ramped up its fight against the coronavirus last spring, Nazuna Hashimoto started suffering panic attacks. The gym in Osaka where she worked as a personal trainer suspended operations, and her friends were staying home at the recommendation of the government.

Afraid to be alone, she would call her boyfriend of just a few months and ask him to come over. Even then, she was sometimes unable to stop crying. Her depression, which had been diagnosed earlier in the year, spiraled. “The world I was living in was already small,” she said. “But I felt it become smaller.”

By July, Hashimoto could see no way out, and she tried to kill herself. Her boyfriend found her, called an ambulance and saved her life. She is speaking out publicly about her experience now because she wants to remove the stigma associated with talking about mental health in Japan.

While the pandemic has been difficult for many in Japan, the pressures have been compounded for women. As in many countries, more women have lost their jobs. In Tokyo, the country’s largest metropolis, about 1 in 5 women live alone, and the exhortations to stay home and avoid visiting family have exacerbated feelings of isolation. Other women have struggled with the deep disparities in the division of housework and child care during the work-from-home era, or suffered from a rise in domestic violence and sexual assault.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/japan-appoints-minister-of-loneliness-to-fight-pandemic-driven-isolation-364026">Japan appoints 'Minister of Loneliness' to fight pandemic-driven isolation</a>

The rising psychological and physical toll of the pandemic has been accompanied by a worrisome spike in suicide among women. In Japan, 6,976 women took their lives last year, nearly 15% more than in 2019. It was the first year-over-year increase in more than a decade.

Each suicide — and suicide attempt — represents an individual tragedy rooted in a complex constellation of reasons. But the increase among women, which extended across seven straight months last year, has concerned government officials and mental health experts who have worked to reduce what had been among the highest rates of suicide in the world. (While more men than women killed themselves last year, fewer men did so than in 2019. Overall, suicides increased by slightly less than 4%.)

The situation has reinforced long-standing challenges for Japan. Talking about mental health issues, or seeking help, is still difficult in a society that emphasizes stoicism.

The pandemic has also amplified the stresses in a culture that is grounded in social cohesion and relies on peer pressure to drive compliance with government requests to wear masks and practice good hygiene. Women, who are often designated as primary caregivers, at times fear public humiliation if they somehow fail to uphold these measures or get infected with the coronavirus.

“Women bear the burden of doing virus prevention,” said Yuki Nishimura, a director of the Japanese Association of Mental Health Services. “Women have to look after their families’ health, and they have to look after cleanliness and can get looked down upon if they are not doing it right.”

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/pandemic-raises-japan-suicide-rate-after-decade-of-decline-358517" hreflang="en">Pandemic raises Japan suicide rate after decade of decline</a>

In one widely publicized account, a 30-something woman who had been recuperating from the coronavirus at home killed herself. The Japanese media seized on her note expressing anguish over the possibility that she had infected others and caused them trouble, while experts questioned whether shame may have driven her to despair.

“Unfortunately the current tendency is to blame the victim,” said Michiko Ueda, an associate professor of political science at Waseda University in Tokyo who has researched suicide. Ueda found in surveys last year that 40% of respondents worried about social pressure if they contracted the virus.

“We don’t basically support you if you are not ‘one of us,’” said Ueda. “And if you have mental health issues you are not one of us.”

Experts have also worried that a succession of Japanese film and television stars who took their own lives last year may have spurred a string of copycat suicides. After Yuko Takeuchi, a popular, award-winning actress, took her life in late September, the number of women taking their own lives in the following month jumped by close to 90% compared to the previous year.

Shortly after Takeuchi’s death, Nao, 30, started writing a blog to chronicle her lifelong battles with depression and eating disorders. She wrote candidly about her suicide attempt three years earlier.

Also read|&nbsp;<a data-ctorig="https://www.wionews.com/world/pandemic-raises-japan-suicide-rate-after-decade-of-decline-358517" data-cturl="https://www.google.com/url?client=internal-element-cse&amp;cx=006054055338965708568:09spwrlibei&amp;q=https://www.wionews.com/world/pandemic-raises-japan-suicide-rate-after-decade-of-decline-358517&amp;sa=U&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjLvbyH2__uAhWPxjgGHdJcC8s4ChAWMAN6BAgIEAI&amp;usg=AOvVaw2EHco3uKQXqvTpqcnnhg43" dir="ltr" href="https://www.wionews.com/world/pandemic-raises-japan-suicide-rate-after-decade-of-decline-358517" target="_blank">Pandemic raises Japan&nbsp;suicide&nbsp;rate after decade of decline</a>

Such openness about mental health struggles is still relatively rare in Japan. The celebrity suicides prompted Nao, whose family name has been withheld at her request to protect her privacy, to reflect on how she might have reacted if she had hit her emotional nadir during the pandemic.

“When you’re at home alone, you feel very isolated from society and that feeling is really painful,” she said. “Just imagining if I was in that situation right now, I think the suicide attempt would have happened a lot earlier, and probably I think I would have succeeded.”

Writing about her challenges, Nao, who is now married, said she wanted to help others who might be feeling desperate, particularly at a time when so many people are sequestered from friends and colleagues.

“Knowing someone went through or is going through something similar as you — and knowing that someone is seeking professional help for that and that it actually helped — would encourage people to do a similar thing,” said Nao, who said she wanted to help remove the taboos associated with mental illness in Japan.

Nao’s husband could see how much she struggled with the long working hours and brutal office culture at the consulting firm where they first met. Then when she quit, she felt adrift.

During the pandemic, women have suffered disproportionate job losses. They made up the bulk of employees within the industries most affected by infection control measures, including restaurants, bars and hotels.

About half of all working women hold part-time or contract jobs, and when business flatlined, companies cut those employees first. In the first nine months of last year, 1.44 million such workers lost their jobs, more than half of them women.

Although Nao quit her consulting job voluntarily to seek psychiatric treatment, she remembers feeling wracked with insecurity, no longer able to pay her rent. When she and her then-fiancé decided to accelerate their wedding plans, her father accused her of being selfish.

“I just felt like I lost everything,” she recalled.

Those feelings, she said, triggered the depression that led to her suicide attempt. After spending some time in a psychiatric hospital and continuing medication, her self-confidence improved. She found a four-day-a-week job working in the digital operation of a magazine group and is now able to manage the workload.

In the past, suicide rates in Japan have spiked during times of economic crisis, including after the burst of the property-based bubble in the 1990s and the global downturn in 2008.

During those periods, it was men who were most affected by job losses and who killed themselves at higher rates. Historically, suicides among men in Japan have outnumbered those among women by a factor of at least 2-1.

“They became more desperate after losing their jobs or fortunes,” said Testuya Matsubayashi, a professor of political science at Osaka University who specializes in social epidemiology.

Last year, Matsubayashi noted that in those Japanese prefectures with the highest unemployment rates, suicides among women under 40 rose the most. More than two-thirds of the women who killed themselves in 2020 were unemployed.

Among women under 40, suicides rose by close to 25%, and among adolescents, the number of high school girls taking their lives doubled last year.

In Hashimoto’s case, fears of financial dependence contributed to her sense of hopelessness.

Even when the gym where she worked as a personal trainer reopened, she did not feel emotionally stable enough to return. She then felt guilty about relying on her boyfriend, emotionally and financially.

She had met Nozomu Takeda, 23, who works in the construction industry, at the gym, where he was her training client. They had been dating only three months when she confided that her depression was becoming untenable.

Unable to afford therapy and suffering severe anxiety attacks, she said she identified with others who “felt very pushed into a corner.”

When she attempted suicide, all she could think about was freeing Takeda from the responsibility of taking care of her. “I wanted to take the burden off him,” she said.

Even those who have not lost jobs may have come under extra stress. Before the pandemic, working from home was extremely rare in Japan. Then women suddenly had to worry not only about pleasing their bosses from afar, but also about juggling new safety and hygiene protocols for their children, or protecting elderly parents who were more vulnerable to the virus.

The expectations to excel did not change, but their contact with friends and other support networks diminished.

“If they can’t get together with other people or share their stresses with other people, then it’s not really surprising” that they are feeling pressured or depressed, said Kumiko Nemoto, a professor of sociology at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies.

Having survived her own suicide attempt, Hashimoto now wants to help others learn to talk through their emotional problems and connect them to professionals.

Takeda says he appreciates how Hashimoto speaks openly about her depression. “She is the type of person who really shares what she needs and what is wrong,” he said. “So it was very easy for me to support her because she vocalizes what she needs.”

Together, the couple developed an app, which they are calling Bloste (short for “blow off steam”), to match therapists with those seeking counseling. Hashimoto is trying to recruit both seasoned professionals and those at the start of their careers, who are more likely to charge affordable rates for young clients.

Eventually, she would like to train as a therapist herself, with a special focus on women.

“The country has mainly focused on moving women up the career ladder and their economic well-being,” Hashimoto said. “But I would like to emphasize women’s mental health.”

—

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in the United States at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). In Japan, contact TELL Lifeline at 03-5774-0992 or telljp.com/lifeline/, or go to the Japanese-language site inochinodenwa.org. You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.

Not long after Japan ramped up its fight against the coronavirus last spring, Nazuna Hashimoto started suffering panic attacks. The gym in Osaka where she worked as a personal trainer suspended operations, and her friends were staying home at the recommendation of the government.

Not long after Japan ramped up its fight against the coronavirus last spring, Nazuna Hashimoto started suffering panic attacks. The gym in Osaka where she worked as a personal trainer suspended operations, and her friends were staying home at the recommendation of the government. Afraid to be alone, she would call her boyfriend of just a few months and ask him to come over. Even then, she was sometimes unable to stop crying. Her depression, which had been diagnosed earlier in the year, spiraled. “The world I was living in was already small,” she said. “But I felt it become smaller.” By July, Hashimoto could see no way out, and she tried to kill herself. Her boyfriend found her, called an ambulance and saved her life. She is speaking out publicly about her experience now because she wants to remove the stigma associated with talking about mental health in Japan. While the pandemic has been difficult for many in Japan, the pressures have been compounded for women. As in many countries, more women have lost their jobs. In Tokyo, the country’s largest metropolis, about 1 in 5 women live alone, and the exhortations to stay home and avoid visiting family have exacerbated feelings of isolation. Other women have struggled with the deep disparities in the division of housework and child care during the work-from-home era, or suffered from a rise in domestic violence and sexual assault. Also read| Japan appoints 'Minister of Loneliness' to fight pandemic-driven isolation The rising psychological and physical toll of the pandemic has been accompanied by a worrisome spike in suicide among women. In Japan, 6,976 women took their lives last year, nearly 15% more than in 2019. It was the first year-over-year increase in more than a decade. Each suicide — and suicide attempt — represents an individual tragedy rooted in a complex constellation of reasons. But the increase among women, which extended across seven straight months last year, has concerned government officials and mental health experts who have worked to reduce what had been among the highest rates of suicide in the world. (While more men than women killed themselves last year, fewer men did so than in 2019. Overall, suicides increased by slightly less than 4%.) The situation has reinforced long-standing challenges for Japan. Talking about mental health issues, or seeking help, is still difficult in a society that emphasizes stoicism. The pandemic has also amplified the stresses in a culture that is grounded in social cohesion and relies on peer pressure to drive compliance with government requests to wear masks and practice good hygiene. Women, who are often designated as primary caregivers, at times fear public humiliation if they somehow fail to uphold these measures or get infected with the coronavirus. “Women bear the burden of doing virus prevention,” said Yuki Nishimura, a director of the Japanese Association of Mental Health Services. “Women have to look after their families’ health, and they have to look after cleanliness and can get looked down upon if they are not doing it right.” Also read| Pandemic raises Japan suicide rate after decade of decline In one widely publicized account, a 30-something woman who had been recuperating from the coronavirus at home killed herself. The Japanese media seized on her note expressing anguish over the possibility that she had infected others and caused them trouble, while experts questioned whether shame may have driven her to despair. “Unfortunately the current tendency is to blame the victim,” said Michiko Ueda, an associate professor of political science at Waseda University in Tokyo who has researched suicide. Ueda found in surveys last year that 40% of respondents worried about social pressure if they contracted the virus. “We don’t basically support you if you are not ‘one of us,’” said Ueda. “And if you have mental health issues you are not one of us.” Experts have also worried that a succession of Japanese film and television stars who took their own lives last year may have spurred a string of copycat suicides. After Yuko Takeuchi, a popular, award-winning actress, took her life in late September, the number of women taking their own lives in the following month jumped by close to 90% compared to the previous year. Shortly after Takeuchi’s death, Nao, 30, started writing a blog to chronicle her lifelong battles with depression and eating disorders. She wrote candidly about her suicide attempt three years earlier. Also read| Pandemic raises Japan suicide rate after decade of decline Such openness about mental health struggles is still relatively rare in Japan. The celebrity suicides prompted Nao, whose family name has been withheld at her request to protect her privacy, to reflect on how she might have reacted if she had hit her emotional nadir during the pandemic. “When you’re at home alone, you feel very isolated from society and that feeling is really painful,” she said. “Just imagining if I was in that situation right now, I think the suicide attempt would have happened a lot earlier, and probably I think I would have succeeded.” Writing about her challenges, Nao, who is now married, said she wanted to help others who might be feeling desperate, particularly at a time when so many people are sequestered from friends and colleagues. “Knowing someone went through or is going through something similar as you — and knowing that someone is seeking professional help for that and that it actually helped — would encourage people to do a similar thing,” said Nao, who said she wanted to help remove the taboos associated with mental illness in Japan. Nao’s husband could see how much she struggled with the long working hours and brutal office culture at the consulting firm where they first met. Then when she quit, she felt adrift. During the pandemic, women have suffered disproportionate job losses. They made up the bulk of employees within the industries most affected by infection control measures, including restaurants, bars and hotels. About half of all working women hold part-time or contract jobs, and when business flatlined, companies cut those employees first. In the first nine months of last year, 1.44 million such workers lost their jobs, more than half of them women. Although Nao quit her consulting job voluntarily to seek psychiatric treatment, she remembers feeling wracked with insecurity, no longer able to pay her rent. When she and her then-fiancé decided to accelerate their wedding plans, her father accused her of being selfish. “I just felt like I lost everything,” she recalled. Those feelings, she said, triggered the depression that led to her suicide attempt. After spending some time in a psychiatric hospital and continuing medication, her self-confidence improved. She found a four-day-a-week job working in the digital operation of a magazine group and is now able to manage the workload. In the past, suicide rates in Japan have spiked during times of economic crisis, including after the burst of the property-based bubble in the 1990s and the global downturn in 2008. During those periods, it was men who were most affected by job losses and who killed themselves at higher rates. Historically, suicides among men in Japan have outnumbered those among women by a factor of at least 2-1. “They became more desperate after losing their jobs or fortunes,” said Testuya Matsubayashi, a professor of political science at Osaka University who specializes in social epidemiology. Last year, Matsubayashi noted that in those Japanese prefectures with the highest unemployment rates, suicides among women under 40 rose the most. More than two-thirds of the women who killed themselves in 2020 were unemployed. Among women under 40, suicides rose by close to 25%, and among adolescents, the number of high school girls taking their lives doubled last year. In Hashimoto’s case, fears of financial dependence contributed to her sense of hopelessness. Even when the gym where she worked as a personal trainer reopened, she did not feel emotionally stable enough to return. She then felt guilty about relying on her boyfriend, emotionally and financially. She had met Nozomu Takeda, 23, who works in the construction industry, at the gym, where he was her training client. They had been dating only three months when she confided that her depression was becoming untenable. Unable to afford therapy and suffering severe anxiety attacks, she said she identified with others who “felt very pushed into a corner.” When she attempted suicide, all she could think about was freeing Takeda from the responsibility of taking care of her. “I wanted to take the burden off him,” she said. Even those who have not lost jobs may have come under extra stress. Before the pandemic, working from home was extremely rare in Japan. Then women suddenly had to worry not only about pleasing their bosses from afar, but also about juggling new safety and hygiene protocols for their children, or protecting elderly parents who were more vulnerable to the virus. The expectations to excel did not change, but their contact with friends and other support networks diminished. “If they can’t get together with other people or share their stresses with other people, then it’s not really surprising” that they are feeling pressured or depressed, said Kumiko Nemoto, a professor of sociology at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. Having survived her own suicide attempt, Hashimoto now wants to help others learn to talk through their emotional problems and connect them to professionals. Takeda says he appreciates how Hashimoto speaks openly about her depression. “She is the type of person who really shares what she needs and what is wrong,” he said. “So it was very easy for me to support her because she vocalizes what she needs.” Together, the couple developed an app, which they are calling Bloste (short for “blow off steam”), to match therapists with those seeking counseling. Hashimoto is trying to recruit both seasoned professionals and those at the start of their careers, who are more likely to charge affordable rates for young clients. Eventually, she would like to train as a therapist herself, with a special focus on women. “The country has mainly focused on moving women up the career ladder and their economic well-being,” Hashimoto said. “But I would like to emphasize women’s mental health.” — If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in the United States at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). In Japan, contact TELL Lifeline at 03-5774-0992 or telljp.com/lifeline/, or go to the Japanese-language site inochinodenwa.org. You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.

As pandemic took hold, suicide rose among Japanese women

Only 14 per cent out of 1 million office workers have returned to their desks. Will the pandemic led to the end of the offices, still remains a question especially in New York. A recent survey has also led work from home into the new normal and has been induced into the work culture.

Work from Home during pandemic became uncertain for offices

A nation numbed by misery and loss is confronting a number that still has the power to shock: 500,000.

Roughly one year since the first known death by the coronavirus in the United States, an unfathomable toll is nearing — the loss of a half-million people.

No other country has counted so many deaths in the pandemic. More Americans have perished from COVID-19 than on the battlefields of World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined.

The milestone comes at a hopeful moment: New virus cases are down sharply, deaths are slowing, and vaccines are steadily being administered.

But there is concern about emerging variants of the virus, and it may be months before the pandemic is contained.

Each death has left untold numbers of mourners, a ripple effect of loss that has swept over towns and cities. Each death has left an empty space in communities across America: a bar stool where a regular used to sit, one side of a bed unslept in, a home kitchen without its cook.

The living find themselves amid vacant places once occupied by their spouses, parents, neighbors and friends — the nearly 500,000 coronavirus dead.

In Chicago, the Rev. Ezra Jones stands at his pulpit on Sundays, letting his eyes wander to the back row. That spot belonged to Moses Jones, his uncle, who liked to drive to church in his green Chevy Malibu, arrive early and chat everybody up before settling in to his seat by the door. He died of the coronavirus in April.

“I can still see him there,” said Jones, the pastor. “It never goes away.”

There is a street corner in Plano, Texas, that was occupied by Bob Manus, a veteran crossing guard who shepherded children to school for 16 years, until he fell ill in December.

In the Twin Cities of Minnesota, LiHong Burdick, 72, another victim of the coronavirus, is missing from the groups she cherished: one for playing bridge, another for mahjong and another for polishing her English.

At her empty town house, the holiday decorations are still up. There are cards lined up on the mantel.

“You walk in, and it smells like her,” said her son, Keith Bartram. “Seeing the chair she would sit in, the random things around the house, it’s definitely very surreal. I went over there yesterday and had a little bit of a breakdown. It’s hard to be in there when it looks like she should be there, but she’s not.”

The Spaces Left Empty

The virus has reached every corner of America, devastating dense cities and rural counties alike. By now, about 1 in 670 Americans has died of it.

In New York City, more than 28,000 people have died of the virus — or 1 in 295 people. In Los Angeles County, which has lost nearly 20,000 people to COVID-19, about 1 in 500 people has died of the virus. In Lamb County, Texas, where 13,000 people live scattered on a sprawling expanse of 1,000 square miles, 1 in 163 people has died of the virus.

Across America, the holes in communities, punctured by sudden death, have remained.

In Anaheim, California, Monica Alvarez looks at the kitchen in the house she shared with her parents and thinks of her father, Jose Roberto Alvarez.

Jose Alvarez, 67, a maintenance supervisor, worked the overnight shift until he died from the virus in July. Before he got sick, he would come home from his usual workday and prepare an early-morning meal. Monica Alvarez, beginning her workday as an accountant from her computer in the nearby dining room, would chat with him while he scrambled a plate of eggs.

“With his passing, we’ve rearranged some rooms in the house,” she said. “I don’t work in the dining room anymore. I’m glad for that. I’m sad, but I’m glad. It’s a reminder, being there.”

A Staggering Toll

One year ago, as the coronavirus took hold in the United States, few public health experts predicted its death toll would climb to such a terrible height.

At a White House briefing March 31, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the country, and Dr. Deborah Birx, who was coordinating the coronavirus response at the time, announced a stunning projection: Even with strict stay-at-home orders, the virus might kill as many as 240,000 Americans.

“As sobering a number as that is, we should be prepared for it,” Fauci said at the time.

Less than a year later, the virus has killed more than twice that number.

The virus has disproportionately caused the deaths of Americans in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, where infections spread easily among vulnerable residents: They account for more than 163,000 deaths, about one-third of the country’s total. In New Hampshire, 73% of COVID-19 deaths were linked to nursing homes through last week. In Minnesota, it was 62%.

The coronavirus has been especially lethal to Americans 65 and older, who account for about 81% of the country’s COVID-19 deaths.

One of them was a man nearly everyone called Mr. Bob.

Bob Manus, 79, was an unmistakable presence on the corner of Clark and Yeary in Plano, Texas. There was his black whistle, hanging around his neck on a lanyard — sharp, shrill and authoritative. A neon vest that he wore as part of his safety uniform. And his careful way with the children he guided across the street each morning and afternoon.

“He knew the families. He knew their dogs,” said Ann Lin, who lives nearby and walks her children to school. After Manus died of the coronavirus in January, the block changed, she said. “There’s a noticeable difference now. It’s this heaviness. And it’s a reminder of what COVID took.”

A group of parents has planned an honorary plaque to be erected at the spot where Manus worked.

“My kids were devastated,” said Sarah Kissel, the PTA president. “They went from seeing him every day to him never coming back.”

Manus has not yet been replaced. For now, his corner sits empty.

Some families have moved away from the places that are so painfully entwined with memories.

In April, Karlee Greer picked up her father, Michael Horton, 66, from the hospital where he had been battling the coronavirus. The doctors said he was ready to continue his recovery at home, and Greer had him stay with her family, setting him up in a bed in her daughter’s room.

Four days later, he died there, without warning. Even now, 10 months after her father’s death, Greer remains haunted by the space.

“Every time I walk into my daughter’s room, it’s like I see him there,” she said. “I see him around the whole house. I can’t stand to be there.”

On Friday, the family moved out, hoping that a new home would bring new memories.

‘Sad Day in Our History’

As the United States approaches 500,000 deaths from the coronavirus, there are few events in history that adequately compare.

The 1918 influenza pandemic is estimated to have killed about 675,000 Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, when the country’s population was one-third of what it is now. But it also happened at a time when influenza vaccines, antibiotics, mechanical ventilation and other medical tools did not exist yet.

Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian and former president of Harvard University, said medical and societal achievements in the United States had caused many Americans to believe that “we were ready for anything — that we had conquered nature.”

“When there were field hospitals in Central Park, and bodies piled up because there was no capacity to bury them, we were just so shocked at ourselves and had not thought this would ever happen to us,” said Faust, whose book “This Republic of Suffering” explores how Americans grappled with death after the Civil War. “That sense of mastery over nature has been so seriously challenged by this pandemic.”

Deaths from COVID-19 in the United States came faster as the pandemic went on. The first known death occurred in February 2020, and by May 27, 100,000 people had died. It took four months for the nation to log another 100,000 deaths; the next, about three months; the next, just five weeks.

Although daily deaths are now slowing, about 1,900 deaths in America are being reported each day. As of Sunday evening, the toll had reached 498,649.

“This will be a sad day in our history,” said Dr. Ali Mokdad, a public health researcher at the University of Washington. “Our grandchildren and future generations will look back at us and blame us for the biggest failure in facing a pandemic, in the country that’s the richest country in the world. That we allowed people to die, that we didn’t protect our vulnerable populations — Native American, Hispanic and African Americans. That we did not protect our essential workers.”

It will still take months to vaccinate the American public, and new, more contagious variants of the virus could quickly undo the nation’s progress and lead to another spike.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent global health research center at the University of Washington, has projected that the nation could reach more than 614,000 deaths by June 1. Factors like how well people adhere to guidelines like mask-wearing and social distancing, plus the speed of vaccinations, could affect that estimate.

A nation numbed by misery and loss is confronting a number that still has the power to shock: 500,000. Roughly one year since the first known death by the coronavirus in the United States, an unfathomable toll is nearing — the loss of a half-million people.

A nation numbed by misery and loss is confronting a number that still has the power to shock: 500,000. Roughly one year since the first known death by the coronavirus in the United States, an unfathomable toll is nearing — the loss of a half-million people. No other country has counted so many deaths in the pandemic. More Americans have perished from COVID-19 than on the battlefields of World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined. The milestone comes at a hopeful moment: New virus cases are down sharply, deaths are slowing, and vaccines are steadily being administered. But there is concern about emerging variants of the virus, and it may be months before the pandemic is contained. Each death has left untold numbers of mourners, a ripple effect of loss that has swept over towns and cities. Each death has left an empty space in communities across America: a bar stool where a regular used to sit, one side of a bed unslept in, a home kitchen without its cook. The living find themselves amid vacant places once occupied by their spouses, parents, neighbors and friends — the nearly 500,000 coronavirus dead. In Chicago, the Rev. Ezra Jones stands at his pulpit on Sundays, letting his eyes wander to the back row. That spot belonged to Moses Jones, his uncle, who liked to drive to church in his green Chevy Malibu, arrive early and chat everybody up before settling in to his seat by the door. He died of the coronavirus in April. “I can still see him there,” said Jones, the pastor. “It never goes away.” There is a street corner in Plano, Texas, that was occupied by Bob Manus, a veteran crossing guard who shepherded children to school for 16 years, until he fell ill in December. In the Twin Cities of Minnesota, LiHong Burdick, 72, another victim of the coronavirus, is missing from the groups she cherished: one for playing bridge, another for mahjong and another for polishing her English. At her empty town house, the holiday decorations are still up. There are cards lined up on the mantel. “You walk in, and it smells like her,” said her son, Keith Bartram. “Seeing the chair she would sit in, the random things around the house, it’s definitely very surreal. I went over there yesterday and had a little bit of a breakdown. It’s hard to be in there when it looks like she should be there, but she’s not.” The Spaces Left Empty The virus has reached every corner of America, devastating dense cities and rural counties alike. By now, about 1 in 670 Americans has died of it. In New York City, more than 28,000 people have died of the virus — or 1 in 295 people. In Los Angeles County, which has lost nearly 20,000 people to COVID-19, about 1 in 500 people has died of the virus. In Lamb County, Texas, where 13,000 people live scattered on a sprawling expanse of 1,000 square miles, 1 in 163 people has died of the virus. Across America, the holes in communities, punctured by sudden death, have remained. In Anaheim, California, Monica Alvarez looks at the kitchen in the house she shared with her parents and thinks of her father, Jose Roberto Alvarez. Jose Alvarez, 67, a maintenance supervisor, worked the overnight shift until he died from the virus in July. Before he got sick, he would come home from his usual workday and prepare an early-morning meal. Monica Alvarez, beginning her workday as an accountant from her computer in the nearby dining room, would chat with him while he scrambled a plate of eggs. “With his passing, we’ve rearranged some rooms in the house,” she said. “I don’t work in the dining room anymore. I’m glad for that. I’m sad, but I’m glad. It’s a reminder, being there.” A Staggering Toll One year ago, as the coronavirus took hold in the United States, few public health experts predicted its death toll would climb to such a terrible height. At a White House briefing March 31, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the country, and Dr. Deborah Birx, who was coordinating the coronavirus response at the time, announced a stunning projection: Even with strict stay-at-home orders, the virus might kill as many as 240,000 Americans. “As sobering a number as that is, we should be prepared for it,” Fauci said at the time. Less than a year later, the virus has killed more than twice that number. The virus has disproportionately caused the deaths of Americans in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, where infections spread easily among vulnerable residents: They account for more than 163,000 deaths, about one-third of the country’s total. In New Hampshire, 73% of COVID-19 deaths were linked to nursing homes through last week. In Minnesota, it was 62%. The coronavirus has been especially lethal to Americans 65 and older, who account for about 81% of the country’s COVID-19 deaths. One of them was a man nearly everyone called Mr. Bob. Bob Manus, 79, was an unmistakable presence on the corner of Clark and Yeary in Plano, Texas. There was his black whistle, hanging around his neck on a lanyard — sharp, shrill and authoritative. A neon vest that he wore as part of his safety uniform. And his careful way with the children he guided across the street each morning and afternoon. “He knew the families. He knew their dogs,” said Ann Lin, who lives nearby and walks her children to school. After Manus died of the coronavirus in January, the block changed, she said. “There’s a noticeable difference now. It’s this heaviness. And it’s a reminder of what COVID took.” A group of parents has planned an honorary plaque to be erected at the spot where Manus worked. “My kids were devastated,” said Sarah Kissel, the PTA president. “They went from seeing him every day to him never coming back.” Manus has not yet been replaced. For now, his corner sits empty. Some families have moved away from the places that are so painfully entwined with memories. In April, Karlee Greer picked up her father, Michael Horton, 66, from the hospital where he had been battling the coronavirus. The doctors said he was ready to continue his recovery at home, and Greer had him stay with her family, setting him up in a bed in her daughter’s room. Four days later, he died there, without warning. Even now, 10 months after her father’s death, Greer remains haunted by the space. “Every time I walk into my daughter’s room, it’s like I see him there,” she said. “I see him around the whole house. I can’t stand to be there.” On Friday, the family moved out, hoping that a new home would bring new memories. ‘Sad Day in Our History’ As the United States approaches 500,000 deaths from the coronavirus, there are few events in history that adequately compare. The 1918 influenza pandemic is estimated to have killed about 675,000 Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, when the country’s population was one-third of what it is now. But it also happened at a time when influenza vaccines, antibiotics, mechanical ventilation and other medical tools did not exist yet. Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian and former president of Harvard University, said medical and societal achievements in the United States had caused many Americans to believe that “we were ready for anything — that we had conquered nature.” “When there were field hospitals in Central Park, and bodies piled up because there was no capacity to bury them, we were just so shocked at ourselves and had not thought this would ever happen to us,” said Faust, whose book “This Republic of Suffering” explores how Americans grappled with death after the Civil War. “That sense of mastery over nature has been so seriously challenged by this pandemic.” Deaths from COVID-19 in the United States came faster as the pandemic went on. The first known death occurred in February 2020, and by May 27, 100,000 people had died. It took four months for the nation to log another 100,000 deaths; the next, about three months; the next, just five weeks. Although daily deaths are now slowing, about 1,900 deaths in America are being reported each day. As of Sunday evening, the toll had reached 498,649. “This will be a sad day in our history,” said Dr. Ali Mokdad, a public health researcher at the University of Washington. “Our grandchildren and future generations will look back at us and blame us for the biggest failure in facing a pandemic, in the country that’s the richest country in the world. That we allowed people to die, that we didn’t protect our vulnerable populations — Native American, Hispanic and African Americans. That we did not protect our essential workers.” It will still take months to vaccinate the American public, and new, more contagious variants of the virus could quickly undo the nation’s progress and lead to another spike. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent global health research center at the University of Washington, has projected that the nation could reach more than 614,000 deaths by June 1. Factors like how well people adhere to guidelines like mask-wearing and social distancing, plus the speed of vaccinations, could affect that estimate.

A ripple effect of loss: US COVID deaths approach 500,000

Thousands of students taking a part-time job is actually the norm. as it helps them pay their tuition fee, rents, and their living expenses. But due to pandemics, many students cannot take up these side jobs as result they are facing a financial crunch.

Many foreign students are facing financial distress amid the pandemic

More than 91 lakh people have received the coronavirus vaccine till now, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Wednesday. 
 
Out of 91,86,757 vaccinations, 61,79,669 healthcare workers have received the first dose, 3,42,116 have received the second dose, while 26,64,972 frontline workers have been inoculated. 
 
A total of 37 people have been hospitalised post-vaccination till now, while 29 deaths have been reported. The percentage of hospitalisation against vaccination is 0.0004 per cent. 
 
"No case of serious/severe AEFI/death attributable to vaccination till date," the ministry said in a statement. 
 
The vaccination of the healthcare workers had started on January 16 while the frontline workers started receiving the vaccine shots from February 2.

More than 91 lakh people have received the coronavirus vaccine till now, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Wednesday. Out of 91,86,757 vaccinations, 61,79,669 healthcare workers have received the first dose, 3,42,116 have received the second dose, while 26,64,972 frontline workers have been inoculated.

More than 91 lakh people have received the coronavirus vaccine till now, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Wednesday. Out of 91,86,757 vaccinations, 61,79,669 healthcare workers have received the first dose, 3,42,116 have received the second dose, while 26,64,972 frontline workers have been inoculated. A total of 37 people have been hospitalised post-vaccination till now, while 29 deaths have been reported. The percentage of hospitalisation against vaccination is 0.0004 per cent. "No case of serious/severe AEFI/death attributable to vaccination till date," the ministry said in a statement. The vaccination of the healthcare workers had started on January 16 while the frontline workers started receiving the vaccine shots from February 2.

Over 91 lakh people vaccinated till now: India's Health Ministry

International pop sensation Ronan Keating says the Covid pandemic brought him closer to his family, and gave him time to write new music, though he yearns to get back on the stage and perform live. 
 
"I got to spend so much time at home with my family and my children, it has been wonderful. I have written a lot of music, which has been nice to be back in the studio in the house -- writing and that`s been wonderful," Keating told IANS while talking about how the pandemic impacted him and his life. 
 
"We have learned a lot about ourselves, and learnt a lot about the people that are important to us in our lives," he added. 
 
The one thing he misses is going on stage to perform. 
 
"I wouldn`t do anything differently (in my journey). I am missing live performance, I am missing getting out there and performing. I`m finding it very difficult. So, I would absolutely love to get back to performing again. That`s the dream. That is what I love to do. I need to get back to perform. So more than anything else would be to just get the music industry back up and running again and to get back performing," said the 43-year-old singer. 
 
Talking about his bond with his fans, he said: "I`ve been lucky. I have never been in situations like that (where fans go crazy). In the early days with Boyzone, it was a bit crazy, we used to land at the airports and there would be thousands of people waiting at the airport. 
 
"It was a bit insane. Things changed when I went solo. I still had the same success. But it wasn`t the same. The craziness about us and the hype was different. I have been lucky that I have kept my feet on the ground. I am respectful to everybody. They are respectful to me. I have never been in a situation where I`m scared, nor have I had an awful fame," he added. 
 
At the moment, the singer is working on "getting back to performing and singing again". 
 
"It has been so long since I have stood on a stage and, so I am getting myself back to the match, ready to perform and sing. That is really what my next goal -- it is to tour and (play) this album that I brought out last June," he said. 
 
"I haven`t had a chance to tour that yet and sing those songs live. So that`s the next process, (maybe) a world tour, which will take me through into 2022-2023 and then I will work on a new album during that time. But the next album won`t be for another couple of years," said Keating, who has associated with the GoNuts platform. 
 
&nbsp;

International pop sensation Ronan Keating says the Covid pandemic brought him closer to his family, and gave him time to write new music, though he yearns to get back on the stage and perform live.

International pop sensation Ronan Keating says the Covid pandemic brought him closer to his family, and gave him time to write new music, though he yearns to get back on the stage and perform live. "I got to spend so much time at home with my family and my children, it has been wonderful. I have written a lot of music, which has been nice to be back in the studio in the house -- writing and that`s been wonderful," Keating told IANS while talking about how the pandemic impacted him and his life. "We have learned a lot about ourselves, and learnt a lot about the people that are important to us in our lives," he added. The one thing he misses is going on stage to perform. "I wouldn`t do anything differently (in my journey). I am missing live performance, I am missing getting out there and performing. I`m finding it very difficult. So, I would absolutely love to get back to performing again. That`s the dream. That is what I love to do. I need to get back to perform. So more than anything else would be to just get the music industry back up and running again and to get back performing," said the 43-year-old singer. Talking about his bond with his fans, he said: "I`ve been lucky. I have never been in situations like that (where fans go crazy). In the early days with Boyzone, it was a bit crazy, we used to land at the airports and there would be thousands of people waiting at the airport. "It was a bit insane. Things changed when I went solo. I still had the same success. But it wasn`t the same. The craziness about us and the hype was different. I have been lucky that I have kept my feet on the ground. I am respectful to everybody. They are respectful to me. I have never been in a situation where I`m scared, nor have I had an awful fame," he added. At the moment, the singer is working on "getting back to performing and singing again". "It has been so long since I have stood on a stage and, so I am getting myself back to the match, ready to perform and sing. That is really what my next goal -- it is to tour and (play) this album that I brought out last June," he said. "I haven`t had a chance to tour that yet and sing those songs live. So that`s the next process, (maybe) a world tour, which will take me through into 2022-2023 and then I will work on a new album during that time. But the next album won`t be for another couple of years," said Keating, who has associated with the GoNuts platform.

Ronan Keating misses 'getting out there and performing'

US president Joe Biden has slammed Donald Trump's for preparing for mass vaccination effort. Biden said his transition team is led to believe that there is much more vaccine available than what was the actual truth.

US president Joe Biden slams Donald Trump's Pandemic response

Another leading bank from Germany has added its name into the list of loss-making entities in the year 2020. Germany's Commerzbank reported $3.3 Billion fourth-quarter loss.

World Business Watch: Germany's Commerzbank gets listed in loss-making entities in 2020

In an appeal hearing to begin on Thursday, Denmark's top court will be asked to decide if coughing at someone while shouting 'corona' constitutes threatening behaviour. &nbsp;

The 20-year-old defendant in the case was arrested in March, when the country was under a full coronavirus lockdown, after subjecting police to what prosecutors called the 'ruthless and thoughtless' actions during a routine traffic stop. He subsequently tested negative for Covid-19.&nbsp;

First acquitted in a local court, he was later convicted of the offence at Denmark's Western High Court and, at his Supreme Court appeal against that conviction, prosecutors are seeking jail term of three to five months. The Supreme Court is expected to give its verdict in the coughing case on February 18.&nbsp;

Other similar incidents of coughing directed at police were reported in Denmark last year, in part a reflection of simmering public discontent in some quarters against the government's handling of the Covid-19 crisis.&nbsp;

The government, which says it follows a 'precautionary principle' in managing the virus, enjoyed almost unequivocal public support for swift action against Covid-19 early last year.&nbsp;

But opposition parties have begun to question what some consider an overly cautious approach as infection rates fall, and 30 per cent of Danes now think, the government's measures are too far-reaching, according to a recent Aarhus University study.&nbsp;

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen this week said lifting the lockdown required 'complete epidemic control'.&nbsp;

In recent months, thousands have taken to the streets in protests, some violent, calling for authorities to ease lockdown curbs which they say limit their freedom and are crippling businesses.&nbsp;

Virologists, health authorities and the government have defended the current curbs - which have locked down most of the county apart from essential shops - as vital to contain more infectious coronavirus variants, notably ones first identified in Britain and South Africa, that have reached Denmark.

In an appeal hearing to begin on Thursday, Denmark's top court will be asked to decide if coughing at someone while shouting 'corona' constitutes threatening behaviour.

In an appeal hearing to begin on Thursday, Denmark's top court will be asked to decide if coughing at someone while shouting 'corona' constitutes threatening behaviour. The 20-year-old defendant in the case was arrested in March, when the country was under a full coronavirus lockdown, after subjecting police to what prosecutors called the 'ruthless and thoughtless' actions during a routine traffic stop. He subsequently tested negative for Covid-19. First acquitted in a local court, he was later convicted of the offence at Denmark's Western High Court and, at his Supreme Court appeal against that conviction, prosecutors are seeking jail term of three to five months. The Supreme Court is expected to give its verdict in the coughing case on February 18. Other similar incidents of coughing directed at police were reported in Denmark last year, in part a reflection of simmering public discontent in some quarters against the government's handling of the Covid-19 crisis. The government, which says it follows a 'precautionary principle' in managing the virus, enjoyed almost unequivocal public support for swift action against Covid-19 early last year. But opposition parties have begun to question what some consider an overly cautious approach as infection rates fall, and 30 per cent of Danes now think, the government's measures are too far-reaching, according to a recent Aarhus University study. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen this week said lifting the lockdown required 'complete epidemic control'. In recent months, thousands have taken to the streets in protests, some violent, calling for authorities to ease lockdown curbs which they say limit their freedom and are crippling businesses. Virologists, health authorities and the government have defended the current curbs - which have locked down most of the county apart from essential shops - as vital to contain more infectious coronavirus variants, notably ones first identified in Britain and South Africa, that have reached Denmark.

Danish top court to decide if coughing a crime in pandemic

Wuhan virus mutations are testing the vaccines. South Africa has paused the rollout of the Oxford vaccine after a study claimed it offered reduced protection against the virus. Does that mean the vaccine doesn't work?

Gravitas: Is the pandemic ending or worsening?

The Lunar New Year period is usually the busiest time of the year for tour operator Scenic World in Australia's iconic Blue Mountains, with many Asian tourists visiting to ring in the new year. But in 2021 with borders closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and still recovering from the 2020 bushfires, the normally bustling cableway, the world's steepest railway and glass-floored skyway carriages are almost empty.

Blue Mountains tourism slumps without tourists from Asia

COVID-19 has disrupted the world economy. With the rollout of vaccines, things are slowly limping back to normal. Not everyone gets vaccinated at the same time. How can nations ease‌ the COVID-19 travel restrictions, some say a vaccine passport could be the answer. WION brings you more details.

Does a vaccine passport is a practical solution, will it allow traveling freely?

The Pandemic has led to a shutdown of most places of leisure, from Shopping complexes to restaurants, to gaming lounges. But Ukrainian took this time to embrace nature.

Ukrainians Embrace nature amid Pandemic

A group of parish councillors in Britain has been accused of holding "Britain's worst Zoom meeting", after a chaotic and frequently aggressive online session.

For the unversed, parish councils have long been seen as the genteel backbone of local democracy in towns and villages across England, overseeing the upkeep of bus stops, and the maintainance of footpaths and street lighting.

The uploaded footage of an online meeting of Handforth Parish Council saw council chairman Brian Tolver and clerk Jackie Weaver getting into a spat, and the entire con-call descending into chaos.

It so happened that the meeting of the council in northwest England in December was plagued by technical problems.&nbsp;

Members forgot to turn their mics off, following which one councillor interrupted to take a phone call. It also appeared that participants arriving late weren't sure if the meeting has officially started.

But simmering tensions from the start between Tolver and his nemesis Weaver boiled over on an issue of bureaucracy -- whether the meeting was called legally and who was in charge.

"You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver! No authority at all!" Tolver bellowed down the camera after the clerk threatened to eject him from the meeting.

Moments later, Weaver quietly carried out her earlier threat and kicked the chairman out.

After she suggested a vote for a replacement, vice-chairman Aled Brewerton erupted.

"I take charge!" he said before telling Weaver to "read the standing orders".

"Read them and understand them!" Brewerton shouted before he in turn was booted out of the virtual meeting by Weaver.

The footage did not take much time to make its way into the mainstream media.

"I'm not actually sure who was in charge," Weaver told BBC radio on Friday in one of several media appearances.

Tolver also remained steadfast in his own view and called Weaver's actions an "appalling attack on democratic rights".

Actually... Britain's worst-ever!

A group of parish councillors in Britain has been accused of holding "Britain's worst Zoom meeting", after a chaotic and frequently aggressive online session. For the unversed, parish councils have long been seen as the genteel backbone of local democracy in towns and villages across England, overseeing the upkeep of bus stops, and the maintainance of footpaths and street lighting.

A group of parish councillors in Britain has been accused of holding "Britain's worst Zoom meeting", after a chaotic and frequently aggressive online session. For the unversed, parish councils have long been seen as the genteel backbone of local democracy in towns and villages across England, overseeing the upkeep of bus stops, and the maintainance of footpaths and street lighting. The uploaded footage of an online meeting of Handforth Parish Council saw council chairman Brian Tolver and clerk Jackie Weaver getting into a spat, and the entire con-call descending into chaos. It so happened that the meeting of the council in northwest England in December was plagued by technical problems. Members forgot to turn their mics off, following which one councillor interrupted to take a phone call. It also appeared that participants arriving late weren't sure if the meeting has officially started. But simmering tensions from the start between Tolver and his nemesis Weaver boiled over on an issue of bureaucracy -- whether the meeting was called legally and who was in charge. "You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver! No authority at all!" Tolver bellowed down the camera after the clerk threatened to eject him from the meeting. Moments later, Weaver quietly carried out her earlier threat and kicked the chairman out. After she suggested a vote for a replacement, vice-chairman Aled Brewerton erupted. "I take charge!" he said before telling Weaver to "read the standing orders". "Read them and understand them!" Brewerton shouted before he in turn was booted out of the virtual meeting by Weaver. The footage did not take much time to make its way into the mainstream media. "I'm not actually sure who was in charge," Weaver told BBC radio on Friday in one of several media appearances. Tolver also remained steadfast in his own view and called Weaver's actions an "appalling attack on democratic rights". Actually... Britain's worst-ever!

Britain's worst-ever! Parish council meeting descends into chaos, goes viral

Dr. Sheetal Khedkar Rao, 42, an internist in suburban Chicago, can’t pinpoint the exact moment when she decided to hang up her stethoscope for the last time. There were the chaos and confusion of the spring, when a nationwide shortage of N95 masks forced her to examine patients with a surgical mask, the fears she might take the coronavirus home to her family and the exasperating public disregard for mask-wearing and social distancing that was amplified by the White House.

Among the final blows, though, were a 30% pay cut to compensate for a drop in patients seeking primary care, and the realization that she needed to spend more time at home after her children, 10 and 11, switched to remote learning.

“Everyone says doctors are heroes and they put us on a pedestal, but we also have kids and aging parents to worry about,” said Rao, who left her practice in October. “After awhile, the emotional burden and moral injury become too much to bear.”

Doctors, paramedics and nurses’ aides have been hailed as America’s frontline COVID warriors, but gone are the days when people applauded workers outside hospitals and on city streets.

Now, a year into the pandemic, with emergency rooms packed again, vaccines in short supply and more contagious variants of the virus threatening to unleash a fresh wave of infections, the nation’s medical workers are feeling burned out and unappreciated.

Over the last year, there have been the psychological trauma of overworked intensive care doctors forced to ration care, the crushing sense of guilt for nurses who unknowingly infected patients or family members, and the struggles of medical personnel who survived COVID-19 but are still hobbled by the fatigue and brain fog that hamper their ability to work.

Researchers say the pandemic’s toll on the nation’s health care workforce will play out long after the coronavirus is tamed. The impact, for now, can be measured in part by a surge of early retirements and the desperation of community hospitals struggling to hire enough workers to keep their emergency rooms running.

“Everyone wants to talk about vaccines, vaccines, vaccines, but for our members, all they want to talk about is workforce, workforce, workforce,” said Alan Morgan, chief executive of the National Rural Health Association. “Right now our hospitals and our workers are just getting crushed.”

Some health care experts are calling for a national effort to track the psychological well-being of medical professionals, much like the federal health program that monitors workers who responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“We have a great obligation to people who put their lives on the line for the nation,” said Dr. Victor J. Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine.

As vaccinations ramp up, it is tempting to imagine that the pandemic’s horrifying effect on health care workers is poised to recede. But it is unclear whether vaccinated health care workers can still spread the virus to others and how the ever-changing variants will affect the effectiveness of the vaccines.

And while supplies of personal protective equipment have improved in recent months, health care workers in much of the country are still reusing N95 masks that were designed to be thrown away after each patient.

Celia Nieto, 44, an intensive care nurse in Las Vegas, said many Americans had scant appreciation for the tribulations that she and her colleagues face day after day. There is the physical exhaustion of lifting and turning patients on their bellies so they might breathe easier, the never-ending scramble to adjust ventilators and pain medication, and the mental anguish of telling relatives she doesn’t have the time to help them FaceTime with their loved ones.

“It feels like we’re failing, when in actuality we’re working with what we’ve got and we don’t have enough,” she said. “We feel quite helpless, and it’s a real injury to our psyches.”

Dr. Donald Pathman, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he was struck by the early results of a study he has been conducting on the pandemic’s effect on clinicians who serve in poor communities. Many of the 2,000 medical, dental and mental health professionals who have participated in the survey so far say they are disillusioned.

“There is a lot of personal trauma,” Pathman said. “Many people have been scarred by their experiences during the pandemic, and they will look to leave their practices.”

In interviews, doctors who have recently left the field or are considering early retirement said the pandemic had exacerbated frustrations spurred by shifts in the business of medical care that often required them to work longer hours without increased compensation.

In a survey released in September by the online site Medscape, two-thirds of American doctors said they had grappled with intense burnout during the pandemic, with a similar percentage reporting a drop in income. A quarter of respondents said their experiences with COVID had led them to exit the medical field.

Another survey, by the Physicians Foundation, found that 8% of doctors in the United States had closed their offices during the pandemic, translating to 16,000 fewer private practices.

Dr. Erica Bial, a pain specialist from suburban Boston who barely survived COVID-19 last spring, said she felt increasingly drained.

“We put on our masks and come to work every day because we don’t have the luxury of working from home in our pajamas, but the apathy and ennui that’s taken hold of society just makes our job feel thankless,” said Bial, who works full time despite struggling with the lingering effects of her illness. “It’s so demoralizing.”

Staffing shortages have been especially acute at nursing homes and long-term care facilities. They were already struggling to retain employees before the pandemic, but many are now facing an existential shortage of skilled workers. According to a study released last week by the nonpartisan U.S. PIRG Education Fund, more than 20% of the nation’s 15,000 nursing homes reported severe shortages of nursing aides in December, up from 17% in May, a significant jump over such a short period.

As more and more medical staff members fall ill or quit, those who remain on the job have to work harder, and the quality of care invariably suffers, said Dr. Michael L. Barnett, assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who served as a consultant to the study.

“It’s a recipe for a collapse in the workforce,” he said.

So far, the federal government has shown little interest in addressing what Dzau, of the National Academy of Medicine, writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, described as a “parallel pandemic” of psychological trauma among health workers.

He and other experts say the government should start by making a concerted effort to accurately count medical worker infections and fatalities.

Thousands of health care workers have already paid the ultimate price for their workaday devotion. Since March, more than 3,300 nurses, doctors, social workers and physical therapists have died from COVID-19, according to a tally by Kaiser Health News and the Guardian.

Experts say the death toll is most likely far higher. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts 1,332 deaths among medical personnel, which is striking given that its sister agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, lists roughly the same number of deaths just among nursing home workers — a small portion of those employed by the nation’s hospitals, health clinics and private practices.

A number of studies suggest that medical professionals made up 10% to 20% of all coronavirus cases in the early months of the pandemic though they comprise roughly 4% of the population.

Many medical workers who have survived COVID-19 face more immediate challenges. Bial, the pain specialist from Boston, is still plagued by fatigue and impaired lung function.

“The day before I got sick, I could comfortably run 8 to 10 miles,” said Bial, 45, who started a Facebook group memorializing doctors lost to COVID. “Now I go out for a brisk walk and my heart is pounding. I’m starting to wonder whether these effects could be permanent.”

Dr. Andrew T. Chan, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who has been studying the pandemic’s disproportionate toll on health care workers, said his preliminary research suggested that long haulers in the medical field suffer greater health challenges than the overall population. That is in part because they are often exposed to increased levels of virus, which can lead to more severe illness.

Another factor, he said, is that the worsening staffing shortages in much of the country lead many COVID survivors to return to work before they have fully recovered.

“If health care workers are not given the opportunity to fully heal after getting COVID and are subjected to the continued physical and mental stress of working through the pandemic, they are likely to experience a greater risk of long-term complications,” Chan said. “COVID could impact our health care system for years to come by not only depleting our workforce but by impairing the ability of survivors to do their jobs.”

Dr. Sheetal Khedkar Rao, 42, an internist in suburban Chicago, can’t pinpoint the exact moment when she decided to hang up her stethoscope for the last time. There were the chaos and confusion of the spring, when a nationwide shortage of N95 masks forced her to examine patients with a surgical mask, the fears she might take the coronavirus home to her family and the exasperating public disregard for mask-wearing and social distancing that was amplified by the White House.

Dr. Sheetal Khedkar Rao, 42, an internist in suburban Chicago, can’t pinpoint the exact moment when she decided to hang up her stethoscope for the last time. There were the chaos and confusion of the spring, when a nationwide shortage of N95 masks forced her to examine patients with a surgical mask, the fears she might take the coronavirus home to her family and the exasperating public disregard for mask-wearing and social distancing that was amplified by the White House. Among the final blows, though, were a 30% pay cut to compensate for a drop in patients seeking primary care, and the realization that she needed to spend more time at home after her children, 10 and 11, switched to remote learning. “Everyone says doctors are heroes and they put us on a pedestal, but we also have kids and aging parents to worry about,” said Rao, who left her practice in October. “After awhile, the emotional burden and moral injury become too much to bear.” Doctors, paramedics and nurses’ aides have been hailed as America’s frontline COVID warriors, but gone are the days when people applauded workers outside hospitals and on city streets. Now, a year into the pandemic, with emergency rooms packed again, vaccines in short supply and more contagious variants of the virus threatening to unleash a fresh wave of infections, the nation’s medical workers are feeling burned out and unappreciated. Over the last year, there have been the psychological trauma of overworked intensive care doctors forced to ration care, the crushing sense of guilt for nurses who unknowingly infected patients or family members, and the struggles of medical personnel who survived COVID-19 but are still hobbled by the fatigue and brain fog that hamper their ability to work. Researchers say the pandemic’s toll on the nation’s health care workforce will play out long after the coronavirus is tamed. The impact, for now, can be measured in part by a surge of early retirements and the desperation of community hospitals struggling to hire enough workers to keep their emergency rooms running. “Everyone wants to talk about vaccines, vaccines, vaccines, but for our members, all they want to talk about is workforce, workforce, workforce,” said Alan Morgan, chief executive of the National Rural Health Association. “Right now our hospitals and our workers are just getting crushed.” Some health care experts are calling for a national effort to track the psychological well-being of medical professionals, much like the federal health program that monitors workers who responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “We have a great obligation to people who put their lives on the line for the nation,” said Dr. Victor J. Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine. As vaccinations ramp up, it is tempting to imagine that the pandemic’s horrifying effect on health care workers is poised to recede. But it is unclear whether vaccinated health care workers can still spread the virus to others and how the ever-changing variants will affect the effectiveness of the vaccines. And while supplies of personal protective equipment have improved in recent months, health care workers in much of the country are still reusing N95 masks that were designed to be thrown away after each patient. Celia Nieto, 44, an intensive care nurse in Las Vegas, said many Americans had scant appreciation for the tribulations that she and her colleagues face day after day. There is the physical exhaustion of lifting and turning patients on their bellies so they might breathe easier, the never-ending scramble to adjust ventilators and pain medication, and the mental anguish of telling relatives she doesn’t have the time to help them FaceTime with their loved ones. “It feels like we’re failing, when in actuality we’re working with what we’ve got and we don’t have enough,” she said. “We feel quite helpless, and it’s a real injury to our psyches.” Dr. Donald Pathman, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he was struck by the early results of a study he has been conducting on the pandemic’s effect on clinicians who serve in poor communities. Many of the 2,000 medical, dental and mental health professionals who have participated in the survey so far say they are disillusioned. “There is a lot of personal trauma,” Pathman said. “Many people have been scarred by their experiences during the pandemic, and they will look to leave their practices.” In interviews, doctors who have recently left the field or are considering early retirement said the pandemic had exacerbated frustrations spurred by shifts in the business of medical care that often required them to work longer hours without increased compensation. In a survey released in September by the online site Medscape, two-thirds of American doctors said they had grappled with intense burnout during the pandemic, with a similar percentage reporting a drop in income. A quarter of respondents said their experiences with COVID had led them to exit the medical field. Another survey, by the Physicians Foundation, found that 8% of doctors in the United States had closed their offices during the pandemic, translating to 16,000 fewer private practices. Dr. Erica Bial, a pain specialist from suburban Boston who barely survived COVID-19 last spring, said she felt increasingly drained. “We put on our masks and come to work every day because we don’t have the luxury of working from home in our pajamas, but the apathy and ennui that’s taken hold of society just makes our job feel thankless,” said Bial, who works full time despite struggling with the lingering effects of her illness. “It’s so demoralizing.” Staffing shortages have been especially acute at nursing homes and long-term care facilities. They were already struggling to retain employees before the pandemic, but many are now facing an existential shortage of skilled workers. According to a study released last week by the nonpartisan U.S. PIRG Education Fund, more than 20% of the nation’s 15,000 nursing homes reported severe shortages of nursing aides in December, up from 17% in May, a significant jump over such a short period. As more and more medical staff members fall ill or quit, those who remain on the job have to work harder, and the quality of care invariably suffers, said Dr. Michael L. Barnett, assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who served as a consultant to the study. “It’s a recipe for a collapse in the workforce,” he said. So far, the federal government has shown little interest in addressing what Dzau, of the National Academy of Medicine, writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, described as a “parallel pandemic” of psychological trauma among health workers. He and other experts say the government should start by making a concerted effort to accurately count medical worker infections and fatalities. Thousands of health care workers have already paid the ultimate price for their workaday devotion. Since March, more than 3,300 nurses, doctors, social workers and physical therapists have died from COVID-19, according to a tally by Kaiser Health News and the Guardian. Experts say the death toll is most likely far higher. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts 1,332 deaths among medical personnel, which is striking given that its sister agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, lists roughly the same number of deaths just among nursing home workers — a small portion of those employed by the nation’s hospitals, health clinics and private practices. A number of studies suggest that medical professionals made up 10% to 20% of all coronavirus cases in the early months of the pandemic though they comprise roughly 4% of the population. Many medical workers who have survived COVID-19 face more immediate challenges. Bial, the pain specialist from Boston, is still plagued by fatigue and impaired lung function. “The day before I got sick, I could comfortably run 8 to 10 miles,” said Bial, 45, who started a Facebook group memorializing doctors lost to COVID. “Now I go out for a brisk walk and my heart is pounding. I’m starting to wonder whether these effects could be permanent.” Dr. Andrew T. Chan, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who has been studying the pandemic’s disproportionate toll on health care workers, said his preliminary research suggested that long haulers in the medical field suffer greater health challenges than the overall population. That is in part because they are often exposed to increased levels of virus, which can lead to more severe illness. Another factor, he said, is that the worsening staffing shortages in much of the country lead many COVID survivors to return to work before they have fully recovered. “If health care workers are not given the opportunity to fully heal after getting COVID and are subjected to the continued physical and mental stress of working through the pandemic, they are likely to experience a greater risk of long-term complications,” Chan said. “COVID could impact our health care system for years to come by not only depleting our workforce but by impairing the ability of survivors to do their jobs.”

A parallel pandemic hits health care workers: Trauma and exhaustion

While the world struggles to contain the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, scientists are warning of another one which is likely to come from a yeast-like fungus.

Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were cited by The Sun as saying that the next pandemic could be caused by "Candida Auris", a fungus which resembles the Black Plague. 
 
They referred to CA as the "perfect pathogen" for a much serious pandemic. The CDC claimed that if the fungus permeates one's bloodstream, it will most certainly become fatal. If it enters the body through catheters or other tube-based equipment in hospitals, it would be even more fatal.

Also read:&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/lsd-allows-brain-to-trespass-anatomical-rules-new-study-finds-360681" hreflang="en">LSD allows brain to trespass anatomical rules, new study finds</a> 
 
The fungus was initially identified in 2009, and remains largely triumphant in the face of antifungal drugs.

An epidemiologist from Imperial College, London - Johanna Rhodes said that the fungus can survive on surfaces for long periods. "One of the things that make Candida Auris so scary is the fact it can linger on inanimate surfaces for long periods and withstand whatever you throw at it," Rhodes told The Sun.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/scientists-decode-how-coronavirus-damages-lung-cells-within-hours-360434" hreflang="en">Scientists decode how coronavirus damages lung cells within hours</a>

Rhodes was one of the scientists involved in containing a fungus outbreak in the UK in 2016. The fungus was compared to the Black Plague only after a CDC doctor found that the fungal makeup resembled substances that are found in lagoons, and other areas brimming with bacteria.

"It is a creature from the black lagoon. It bubbled up and now it is everywhere," The Sun quoted CDC's Dr Tom Chiller as saying.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/phases-of-moon-dictate-our-sleep-patterns-study-359785" hreflang="en">Phases of moon dictate our sleep patterns: Study</a> 
 
After COVID-19 emerged and brought to light the loopholes in global healthcare structures, scientists warned that many such pandemics could pop up in the coming years. Many have attributed it to human activity and the depletion of natural resources, with climate change also emerging as an important variable.

Now, scientists are warning global healthcare professionals to buckle up, and governments to invest more in healthcare and disease prevention to wade off potential pandemics, many of which could be more fatal than COVID-19.

While the world struggles to contain the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, scientists are warning of another one which is likely to come from a yeast-like fungus. Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were cited by The Sun as saying that the next pandemic could be caused by "Candida Auris", a fungus which resembles the Black Plague.

While the world struggles to contain the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, scientists are warning of another one which is likely to come from a yeast-like fungus. Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were cited by The Sun as saying that the next pandemic could be caused by "Candida Auris", a fungus which resembles the Black Plague. They referred to CA as the "perfect pathogen" for a much serious pandemic. The CDC claimed that if the fungus permeates one's bloodstream, it will most certainly become fatal. If it enters the body through catheters or other tube-based equipment in hospitals, it would be even more fatal. Also read: LSD allows brain to trespass anatomical rules, new study finds The fungus was initially identified in 2009, and remains largely triumphant in the face of antifungal drugs. An epidemiologist from Imperial College, London - Johanna Rhodes said that the fungus can survive on surfaces for long periods. "One of the things that make Candida Auris so scary is the fact it can linger on inanimate surfaces for long periods and withstand whatever you throw at it," Rhodes told The Sun. Also read: Scientists decode how coronavirus damages lung cells within hours Rhodes was one of the scientists involved in containing a fungus outbreak in the UK in 2016. The fungus was compared to the Black Plague only after a CDC doctor found that the fungal makeup resembled substances that are found in lagoons, and other areas brimming with bacteria. "It is a creature from the black lagoon. It bubbled up and now it is everywhere," The Sun quoted CDC's Dr Tom Chiller as saying. Also read: Phases of moon dictate our sleep patterns: Study After COVID-19 emerged and brought to light the loopholes in global healthcare structures, scientists warned that many such pandemics could pop up in the coming years. Many have attributed it to human activity and the depletion of natural resources, with climate change also emerging as an important variable. Now, scientists are warning global healthcare professionals to buckle up, and governments to invest more in healthcare and disease prevention to wade off potential pandemics, many of which could be more fatal than COVID-19.

Deadly fungus could cause a pandemic more fatal than COVID-19, scientists warn

Amsterdam's zoo Artis, one of the oldest animal parks in Europe, said on Thursday it will stop keeping lions because it can't afford them due to the financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

Amsterdam zoo Artis gives up lions amid coronavirus cash crunch

New Zealand, Vietnam and Taiwan appear as the top three countries with the best worldwide handling of the crisis.

Global ranks of the countries that handled COVID pandemic; Where India ranks?

It may take four to five years for the COVID-19 pandemic to end and the world to look to a post-Covid normal, a senior Singaporean minister has warned.

Speaking at the Singapore Perspectives 2021 conference hosted by Singapore's Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) on Monday, Singapore's Education Minister Lawrence Wong, who co-chairs the COVID-19 multi-ministry task force, said there are still many uncertainties to contend with in the next few years, while sharing his hopes about how the future can be "reset" once the pandemic is over, the Channel News Asia reported.

"At some point of time the pandemic will pass, but it may take four to five years before we finally see the end of the pandemic and the start of a post-Covid normal. What will this new post-Covid world look like? No one can tell," Mr Wong said.

He said there was still a great uncertainty about how the coronavirus will shape society in the coming years.

He said adhering to safe management measures like mask-wearing and avoiding crowds will continue for this year and "maybe a good part of next year".

"Beyond that, the availability of COVID-19 vaccinations will progressively restart global travel, but getting the world vaccinated won't be quick or easy," he said during the conference.

The Government has planned for everyone in Singapore to be vaccinated by the third quarter of this year, but Mr Wong conceded that there could still be "bumps along the way".

He noted that the current vaccines may not be so effective against new mutant strains of the virus, and will have to be modified to counter them.

"In the positive scenario, this means the vaccine becomes a bit like an annual flu jab ... or perhaps we develop a vaccine that works for all strains. But in the worst case, we end up always a step behind an evolving virus, and you will not be able to catch up in time," he said.

"So there are still tremendous uncertainties ahead of us. And the bottom line is that we live in a shared world and no one is safe until everyone is safe," the report quoted the minister as saying.

Looking ahead to the post-pandemic future, Mr Wong said the current crisis can set the stage for a "software update" or a "reboot" of Singapore after the damage inflicted by the virus.

"We must reset our social compact to emerge as a fairer and more equal society. The pandemic may be indiscriminate about who it infects but its impact is anything but equal. It has, in fact, widened the gulf between the haves and the have-nots," he said.

Mr Wong said that Singapore started to prioritise reducing inequality a decade ago, and that last year, many emergency measures were introduced to help lower-income groups.

But this year, the temporary measures will have to "taper down" as the economy improves.

However, the minister foresees that Singaporeans will need more assurance and support in a more uncertain and volatile world.

"The impact of the pandemic has created an added impetus to strengthen our social support system. There will be a permanent shift towards further strengthening of our social safety nets in Singapore to protect the disadvantaged and vulnerable," he said, adding that it will have to be done in a "sustainable manner over the long term".

It may take four to five years for the COVID-19 pandemic to end and the world to look to a post-Covid normal, a senior Singaporean minister has warned. Speaking at the Singapore Perspectives 2021 conference hosted by Singapore's Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) on Monday, Singapore's Education Minister Lawrence Wong, who co-chairs the COVID-19 multi-ministry task force, said there are still many uncertainties to contend with in the next few years, while sharing his hopes about how the future can be "reset" once the pandemic is over, the Channel News Asia reported.

It may take four to five years for the COVID-19 pandemic to end and the world to look to a post-Covid normal, a senior Singaporean minister has warned. Speaking at the Singapore Perspectives 2021 conference hosted by Singapore's Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) on Monday, Singapore's Education Minister Lawrence Wong, who co-chairs the COVID-19 multi-ministry task force, said there are still many uncertainties to contend with in the next few years, while sharing his hopes about how the future can be "reset" once the pandemic is over, the Channel News Asia reported. "At some point of time the pandemic will pass, but it may take four to five years before we finally see the end of the pandemic and the start of a post-Covid normal. What will this new post-Covid world look like? No one can tell," Mr Wong said. He said there was still a great uncertainty about how the coronavirus will shape society in the coming years. He said adhering to safe management measures like mask-wearing and avoiding crowds will continue for this year and "maybe a good part of next year". "Beyond that, the availability of COVID-19 vaccinations will progressively restart global travel, but getting the world vaccinated won't be quick or easy," he said during the conference. The Government has planned for everyone in Singapore to be vaccinated by the third quarter of this year, but Mr Wong conceded that there could still be "bumps along the way". He noted that the current vaccines may not be so effective against new mutant strains of the virus, and will have to be modified to counter them. "In the positive scenario, this means the vaccine becomes a bit like an annual flu jab ... or perhaps we develop a vaccine that works for all strains. But in the worst case, we end up always a step behind an evolving virus, and you will not be able to catch up in time," he said. "So there are still tremendous uncertainties ahead of us. And the bottom line is that we live in a shared world and no one is safe until everyone is safe," the report quoted the minister as saying. Looking ahead to the post-pandemic future, Mr Wong said the current crisis can set the stage for a "software update" or a "reboot" of Singapore after the damage inflicted by the virus. "We must reset our social compact to emerge as a fairer and more equal society. The pandemic may be indiscriminate about who it infects but its impact is anything but equal. It has, in fact, widened the gulf between the haves and the have-nots," he said. Mr Wong said that Singapore started to prioritise reducing inequality a decade ago, and that last year, many emergency measures were introduced to help lower-income groups. But this year, the temporary measures will have to "taper down" as the economy improves. However, the minister foresees that Singaporeans will need more assurance and support in a more uncertain and volatile world. "The impact of the pandemic has created an added impetus to strengthen our social support system. There will be a permanent shift towards further strengthening of our social safety nets in Singapore to protect the disadvantaged and vulnerable," he said, adding that it will have to be done in a "sustainable manner over the long term".

Covid pandemic could last 4 to 5 years: Singapore minister

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