#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40011232

The United States is bracing for “tough weeks” ahead in many parts of the country as the Omicron surge has not yet peaked, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has warned.

In an interview with CNN, Murthy spoke of the good news of the plateaus and drops in known cases in the Northeast, especially in New York City and New Jersey, while noting that challenges remain ahead, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

“The challenge is that the entire country is not moving at the same pace,” he said, adding “we shouldn’t expect a national peak in the coming days,” the report said.

“We have seen incredible challenges in our health care network,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas told CBS in an interview as the Omicron variant had overwhelmed hospitals in his city. “It is a substantial concern.”

Medical workers take nasal swab samples for COVID-19 testing in Washington, D.C., the United States, on Jan. 13, 2022. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

Published : January 18, 2022

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40011227

As high-altitude winds make for a brisk morning, people in Tibet board trains to return home, carrying heavy luggage and high anticipation. Their palpable delight marks the start of this years Spring Festival travel rush in the plateau region.

At 8 a.m. and 8:20 a.m. on Monday, two advanced Fuxing bullet trains running in southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region departed from the region’s capital city of Lhasa for the cities of Xigaze and Nyingchi, respectively carrying 680 and 219 passengers.

“I’ve been working in Lhasa for three years. This is the first time I have taken a bullet train back to my hometown,” said Dondrup, who is from Nyingchi’s Mirig Township.

“For the past few years, I had to take bus home, a very long and strenuous journey. Now, the train takes three and a half hours, which not only saves time but is also safer,” Dondrup said.

The opening of the railway from Lhasa to Nyingchi in June 2021 provided southeastern Tibet with access to rail services for the first time in the region’s history. With a designed speed of 160 kilometers per hour, the 435-kilometer railway is the first electrified railroad operating in Tibet.

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Pumo Anyi, a 23-year-old from Nyingchi’s Puchu Township, became a security inspector at the Nyingchi railway station after graduating from college.

She said that the opening of the railway brought many jobs to her village.

“More than 40 people in our village work at the Nyingchi and Shannan railway stations, with monthly salaries ranging from 2,500 yuan (about 393 U.S. dollars) to 3,200 yuan,” Anyi said.

Since the railway opened six months ago, three trains, two of which are bullet trains, have linked Lhasa, Nyingchi, Shannan and Xigaze. A train leaving Lhasa can arrive in Shannan after 70 minutes, and in Nyingchi after 3 hours and 29 minutes.

The Lhasa-Nyingchi railway had handled 621,000 passenger trips and carried over 7,900 tonnes of cargo by the end of 2021, according to the China Railway Qinghai-Tibet Group Co., Ltd.

Staff at the Lhasa railway station are strengthening their COVID-19 prevention and control work, and the station and trains are operating smoothly with nearly 500 cameras monitoring the whole railway line.

Station head Wang Fu said that the station is expected to handle 200,000 passenger trips during China’s largest annual travel rush this year, with an average daily passenger trip volume of approximately 5,000.

Published : January 18, 2022

By : Xinhua

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40011197

Hu Manli, an auxiliary police officer, was on duty on January 1, 2022 at Xinjiekou subway station in downtown Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province.

Xinjiekou Station, as the interchange station of lines 1 and 2, is the busiest subway in Nanjing, handling the largest number of passenger trips. Therefore, it requires more efforts to maintain the order of the line and deal with various kinds of things including trifles or even incidents possibly occurred at the station.

A day’s work is always tiring. Hu, like all the other metro policewomen, has received strict training. She is always well prepared for handling any emergent things.

“Safeguard the station, love the city is my mission,” Hu said. “My duty is to ensure the stable and safe running of this interchange station. This is also my contribution to safeguarding the peace and security of the city as a whole.”

As an official at the Xinjiekou Station said: “Woman is superior to man in handling daily trifles. So policewomen usually do a better job in many aspects including answering passengers’ questions, giving road directions, finding missing people or lost articles, and offering first-aid treatment, among many others.”

Published : January 17, 2022

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40011180

Chinas per capita disposable income stood at 35,128 yuan (about 5,523 U.S. dollars) in 2021, up 9.1 percent year on year in nominal terms, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed Monday.

After deducting price factors, per capita disposable income rose 8.1 percent from the previous year.

Separately, urban per capita disposable income came in at 47,412 yuan, up 8.2 percent in nominal terms and 7.1 percent in real terms, while income in rural areas stood at 18,931 yuan, up 10.5 percent in nominal terms and 9.7 percent in real terms.

Monday’s data also showed that China’s gross domestic product expanded 8.1 percent year on year in 2021. 
 

Published : January 17, 2022

By : Xinhua

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40011176

Residents are warned to remain cautious near the coastline “as lingering strong currents likely exist.”

The tsunami advisory triggered Saturday by a volcanic eruption near Tonga has been canceled in the U.S. state of California, including the San Francisco Bay Area, the National Weather Service said Sunday.

The advisory ended Saturday night for the Bay Area and early Sunday for the rest of the state, the weather service tweeted.

Tsunami advisories can be canceled when wave heights stay below 0.3 meters for three hours, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center protocol.

California officials warned residents to remain cautious near the coastline “as lingering strong currents likely exist,” the weather service said.

Tsunami warnings were also lifted in countries around the Pacific Rim, with the U.S. Tsunami Warning System map showing none in effect Sunday morning, according to a report by San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday.

The underwater volcanic eruption near Tonga triggered tsunami along California’s Pacific coast Saturday, resulting in beach closures, evacuations in Berkeley’s Marina and flooding at the Santa Cruz Harbor, the report said. 

Published : January 17, 2022

By : Xinhua

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40011175

Moscow is “ready to take countermeasures” if Russia and West cannot reach a consensus, Peskov said.

Russia will station troops on its own territory near the Ukrainian border due to tensions with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Sunday.

“We find it necessary to keep those troops due to a very tense situation and very unfriendly environment,” Peskov said in an interview with U.S. broadcaster CNN.

Russia has to take measures of precaution in response to NATO military build-up, drills and frequent flights of fighter jets and reconnaissance planes near the Russian borders, he said.

However, Russia is not considering a military action even if negotiations with the United States and NATO on security guarantees fail, Peskov stressed.

Nevertheless, Russia is “ready to take countermeasures” if both sides cannot reach a consensus, he said.

Earlier this week, Russian diplomats held talks with the United States in Geneva, with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in Vienna, and then with NATO in Brussels. They all ended without any breakthrough.

Peskov told CNN that NATO is reluctant to promise that it will not grant Ukraine membership or deploy offensive weapons on the Ukrainian territory, which are part of Russia’s red lines.

Published : January 17, 2022

By : Xinhua

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40011172

Under the new law, negative COVID-19 tests will no longer be valid to gain access to public venues. Bars, restaurants and cafes are allowed to verify the identity of vaccine pass holders when in doubt.

The French National Assembly, or the lower house of the Parliament, adopted on Sunday evening a law which will transform the health pass into a stricter vaccine pass in a bid to curb the country’s surging COVID-19 cases.

The National Assembly adopted the law by a vote of 215 for and 58 against and after debates and discussions during the past two weeks.

The French government hopes to adopt the law as soon as possible after the approval of the Constitutional Council, the country’s highest constitutional authority.

A woman wearing a face mask is seen at the Trocadero Place near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, Jan. 5, 2022. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)

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Under the new law, negative COVID-19 tests will no longer be valid to gain access to public venues. Bars, restaurants and cafes are allowed to verify the identity of vaccine pass holders when in doubt.

The vaccine pass concerns people over the age of 16. Children between the ages of 12 to 15 are not obliged to have a vaccine pass but must present a health pass.

On Thursday, the French Ministry of Health announced that at least 600,000 people would lose their health pass on Jan. 15 as they have not received their booster shot.

France reported on Thursday 305,322 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours.  
 

Published : January 17, 2022

By : Xinhua

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40011170

The unvaccinated remain at a much higher risk of infection, hospitalization, and even death from COVID-19.

COVID-19’s current crisis appears to be mirroring the projections made by officials and health experts that cases in New York are beginning to dip as sharply as they rose around Christmas, local media reported on Sunday.

New York City Health Department data has shown “very high transmission” of COVID-19 across the city, with thousands of new cases being detected every day, according to amNY.com, a leading news site in New York City. However, COVID-19-related infections and hospitalizations have begun to decline, signaling that the five boroughs of the city have passed the peak of the pandemic’s biggest wave.
Progress has been seen in the 7-day positivity rates across the five boroughs. Fifty-two areas reported 30 percent or higher COVID-19 positivity between Jan. 5 and 11, but no area of the city has rates exceeding 40 percent. During the previous week from Dec. 29 to Jan. 4, the city had 23 areas with 40 percent or higher positivity rates.

People walk past a COVID-19 testing site in Times Square in New York, the United States, Jan. 9, 2022. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)

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On Jan. 14, the citywide 7-day positivity rate was 27.65 percent, compared to 32.59 percent on Jan. 4.

Currently, the only rate that hasn’t fallen is the death rate, which has continued to rise due to long-term and more severe COVID-19 infections reported in recent days. As of Jan. 14, the average 7-day death rate was 73, according to amNY.com.

The unvaccinated remain at a much higher risk of infection, hospitalization, and even death from COVID-19. Health department data shows that unvaccinated New Yorkers are four times as likely to contract COVID-19, eight times as likely to be hospitalized from it, and nine times as likely to die from it than vaccinated New Yorkers, it noted. 

Published : January 17, 2022

By : Xinhua

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40011158

The recent surge in COVID-19 cases at ICE detention sites came amid the rapid nationwide spread of the Omicron variant, which has been found to be more transmissible than other strains of the virus.

NEW YORK, – The number of coronavirus infections among immigrants detained at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers has surged by 520 percent since the start of 2022.

On Thursday, 1,766 immigrants were being monitored or isolated at ICE detention facilities due to confirmed coronavirus infections, a more than sixfold jump from Jan. 3, when there were 285 active cases, CBS News reported, citing government statistics.

The number of detainees with active COVID-19 cases represents 8 percent of the 22,000 immigrants ICE is currently holding in its network of 200 detention centers, county jails and for-profit prisons, according to the report.

Since the outset of the pandemic, more than 32,000 immigrants have tested positive for the coronavirus while in ICE custody, and ICE has so far reported 11 coronavirus-related deaths of detainees, it added.

The recent surge in COVID-19 cases at ICE detention sites came amid the rapid nationwide spread of the Omicron variant, which has been found to be more transmissible than other strains of the virus.

An anonymous senior ICE official defended the agency’s pandemic response, noting that it expected an increase in infections due to the Omicron variant, and requires immigrants to undergo testing and a 14-day quarantine upon entering a detention facility.

In a statement released on Friday, ICE said the coronavirus positivity rate in some of its detention facilities “is lower — in some spots significantly lower — than the local community because of the stringent testing and quarantine protocols in place.”

Published : January 16, 2022