Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced Thursday that high schools would switch to distance learning beginning Monday through early January to slow the rate of COVID-19 infections in the country. Lofven made the announcement at a Stockholm news conference alongside Swedish Education Minister Anna Ekstrom. He said he hoped the move would have a “breaking effect” on the rate of COVID-19 infections. He added it was not intended to extend the Christmas break for students and he said he was putting his trust in them that they would continue to study from home. …

The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) European director Thursday called Britain’s approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine “phenomenal” but urged Europeans to remain vigilant.   Speaking at his headquarters in Copenhagen, Dr. Hans Kluge said the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the vaccines on the verge of approval elsewhere, along with 50 candidate vaccines currently in human trials, provide phenomenal promise. He said the vaccines, combined with other public health measures, can bring the end of an acute phase of the pandemic.   While the rest of Europe awaits the vaccine, Kluge called on …

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, is meeting virtually Thursday with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team about the surging coronavirus pandemic in the country and the likely start soon of widespread vaccinations of millions of Americans.Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, was for months the face of the government’s response to the pandemic.But his dire warnings about the health risks of the virus eventually peeved President Donald Trump, who sidelined him in favor of more optimistic medical views ahead of last month’s …

More than 100 world leaders and high-ranking government officials will convene a two-day virtual special session of the United Nations General Assembly Thursday to discuss the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to craft a recovery strategy.Brendan Varma, a spokesman for General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir, said the special session is aimed at creating a multilateral strategy among the countries, U.N. actors, the private sector and vaccine developers to craft a recovery strategy.UN Appeals for Record $35 Billion as COVID-19 Wreaks HavocWorld body says it must provide a humanitarian …

VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren interviewed the National Institute of Health Director Frances Collins. Among the issues discussed are the COVID-19 vaccine and its development.Here is a transcript of that interview:Greta Van Susteren: Nice to talk to you, sir.Francis Collins: Nice to talk to you, Greta.Van Susteren: Well, we Americans know what NIH is and we’re very proud of it but what is NIH?Collins: The National Institutes of Health, it’s the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world. Basically, everything that the U.S. is doing in terms of research …

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned Wednesday of a bleak winter ahead as the country continues to see nationwide surges of COVID-19 cases.”The reality is that December, January and February are going to be rough times,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in a livestream presentation hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. “I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation.”Redfield said the current surge in cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, …

A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday.Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery in September. But NASA’s top asteroid expert, Paul Chodas, quickly suspected it was the Centaur upper rocket stage from Surveyor 2, a failed 1966 moon-landing mission. Size estimates had put it in the range of the old Centaur, which was about 10 meters long and 3 …

U.S. hospitals slammed with COVID-19 patients are trying to lure nurses and doctors out of retirement, recruiting students and new graduates who have yet to earn their licenses and offering eye-popping salaries in a desperate bid to ease staffing shortages.With the virus surging from coast to coast, the number of patients in the hospital with the virus has more than doubled over the past month to a record high of nearly 100,000, pushing medical centers and health care workers to the breaking point. Nurses are increasingly burned out and getting …

The Transportation Department issued a final rule Wednesday covering animals on airlines. It decided that only dogs can fly as service animals, and companions that passengers use for emotional support don’t count. The rule aims to settle years of tension between airlines and passengers who bring their pets on board for free by saying they need them for emotional help. Under a long-standing department policy, all the passengers needed was a note from a health professional. Airlines argued that passengers abused the situation to bring a menagerie of animals on board, including …