Hong Kong health experts on Friday said the city needs to change its pandemic strategies to cope with the rapidly increasing number of COVID-19 cases.  In recent weeks Hong Kong has been hit hard by a fifth wave of cases caused by the omicron variant, which is increasing pressure on the city’s already overburdened health system.  Since the pandemic began, the Hong Kong government has remained defiant, directing all positive cases to hospitals regardless of symptomatic severity. Omicron’s sharp rise in recent weeks, however, has triggered a deluge of cases, …

Health authorities in Malawi say a 3-year-old girl is paralyzed after contracting polio, the first known case in Africa in more than five years and the first in Malawi in three decades. Authorities say the child was infected by a strain of poliovirus that matches a strain found in Pakistan. Until this week, Malawi had last reported a polio case in 1992. The southern African country was declared polio-free in 2005 — 15 years before the whole continent achieved the same status. Dr. Charles Mwansambo, secretary for health in Malawi, …

Lam Foon, 98, sits propped up and swaddled in soggy woolen blankets in a hospital bed just outside the entrance to Hong Kong’s Caritas Medical Centre, waiting for tests to confirm her preliminary positive result for COVID-19. “I don’t feel so good,” she told Reuters through a surgical mask, next to a similarly wrapped patient wearing a mask and face shield. Lam was one of dozens of patients lying in the parking lot of Caritas on Thursday, after there was no more room inside the hospital that serves 400,000 people …

A Chinese rocket, according to astronomers, is expected to crash into the moon on March 4. It is the latest example of China’s presence in space. News of the predicted crash comes after Beijing released a development blueprint for satellite improvements, deep-space exploration and putting more people in orbit. Analysts expect Beijing to reach many of the goals outlined in its five-year plan for the development of outer space despite the odd mishap, according to experts. China’s space program stands to rival those of Russia and the United States, especially …

Hundreds of truckers clogging Canada’s capital stood their ground and defiantly blasted their horns Thursday, even as police arrested two protest leaders and threatened to break up the nearly three-week protest against the country’s COVID-19 restrictions. Busloads of police arrived near Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, and workers put up extra fences around government buildings. Police also essentially began sealing off much of the downtown area to outsiders to prevent them from coming to the aid of the protesters. “The action is imminent,” said interim Ottawa Police Chief Steve Bell. “We absolutely …

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced the first shift by a state to an endemic approach to the coronavirus pandemic. He said it emphasizes prevention and quick reactions to outbreaks over mandates, a milestone nearly two years in the making that harkens to a return to a more normal existence.  Newsom said the approach, which includes pushing back against false claims and other misinformation, means maintaining a wary watchfulness attuned to warning signs of the next deadly new surge or variant.  “This disease is not going away,” he told …

Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates met with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday in Pakistan to acknowledge the country’s progress against polio. During the trip, his first to Pakistan, Gates also stressed the need to curb virus transmissions in neighboring Afghanistan and preserve global gains. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries where wild polio virus continues to paralyze children, although not a single infection has been reported in Pakistan for more than a year. Gates told reporters in Islamabad at the end of his visit that …