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The U.N. Program on HIV and AIDS warns that stigma and discrimination against marginalized populations are driving both the AIDS crisis and COVID-19 and must be tackled and eliminated to end what officials call the dual, colliding pandemics. In a report released in advance of World AIDS Day on December 1, the U.N. agency called on governments to put the most vulnerable at the center of their pandemic responses.HIV/AIDS emerged nearly 40 years ago. While progress in the treatment of the disease has been made, AIDS remains a public health menace. Last year, UNAIDS reported 1.7 million people were infected with HIV and 690,000 died.Health officials said the global response to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 was off track even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The rapid spread of coronavirus, they said, is creating additional setbacks.Part of UNAIDS’ new strategy for tackling AIDS is to direct money to the people most at risk. Yet, Sigrid Kaag, minister for foreign trade and development cooperation in the Netherlands,  said that is not happening.She noted a study commissioned by the Netherlands found only 2 percent of AIDS funding worldwide targets those who are most at risk.“Sixty-two percent of new HIV infections are among gay men, sex workers, drug users and transgender people,” Kaag said. “How can we end the HIV pandemic, or any pandemic for that matter, if we ignore those most at risk? Stigma and criminalization impede access to medical services, and this is exactly how pandemics continue to spread.”FILE – Sibongile Zulu is seen in her home in Johannesburg, South Africa, July 28, 2020. Zulu is HIV-positive and has had trouble getting medication. Around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the supply of antiretroviral drugs.Eastern and southern Africa is the region most heavily affected by HIV. The region is home to nearly 21 million out of the 38 million people living with HIV worldwide. The study said 12 million were not receiving treatment for their illness.Yet even under these circumstances, countries such as Eswatini and Botswana in sub-Saharan Africa and Cambodia and Thailand in Asia have made remarkable progress in tackling the deadly disease by implementing people-centered policies.UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said governments must focus on helping the most vulnerable, marginalized people. She said they must target preventive measures and reproductive and other health services toward them and not just implement policies that are politically palatable.“We are going to have to be more focused, focusing on the hot spots, not choosing what we want to address because that is what we are comfortable with,” Byanyima said. Efforts must be “evidence based, targeting closely where the risk is, not where we do not want to see.”Byanyima said governments also must focus on reducing the inequalities that are the drivers of HIV and COVID-19. She said more investment must be made in strengthening health systems and providing treatment and care to all in need. She said respecting the human rights of people most at risk is crucial in beating back the twin pandemics.
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As a second wave of coronavirus approaches, Africa has a plan, says the continent’s top health official.     In recent weeks, the continent has started to distribute 2.7 million rapid antigen tests. By mid-2021, health officials hope to vaccinate 60 percent of the continent’s population with one of the several promising new vaccines.     Now, says Dr. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s up to the continent’s leaders to try to make that happen.    “That will also require that we mobilize up to about $10 to $12 billion  including the cost of buying the vaccines and the cost of delivering the vaccines,” he told journalists on Thursday by teleconference. “So that is the 60 percent mark that we really want to achieve. And I just really want everyone on this platform and our partners to understand that as a continent that is aspiration and our goal.”    Dr. Nkengasong added that experts are working to bring more clinical trials to the continent. But, he stressed, as COVID-19 numbers rise in some countries — notably, South Africa, Kenya and Algeria — the continent’s health facilities appear to be weathering the onslaught.  FILE – John Nkengasong, Africa’s Director of the Centers for Disease Control, speaks during an interview with Reuters at the African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 11, 2020.“We are not seeing hospitals being overwhelmed with COVID patients,” he said. “That is clearly what the situation is. We were very encouraged that during the first wave we didn’t see that kind of overwhelming, which we were very worried and concerned with. “That doesn’t tell us that the second wave will not happen. It only tells us that we have to prepare, and prepare using the three T’s — which is the tests, the tracing and the treatment.”     As the continent approaches end-of-year holidays, Nkengasong underscored one piece of advice:    “Do not relent in wearing masks,” he said. “One message that is emerging across the visits we are conducting across the continent is that people are not masking enough. And in some settings, absolutely it seems like they are not masking at all. And that is extremely dangerous. “My worry and fear is that the sacrifices and gains that were made since the beginning of this year … those gains that were made in terms of bringing the pandemic down to where we were in October could be completely wiped out if we relent at this point.”  
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There is rising optimism in India about getting access to a COVID-19 vaccine after Britain-based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced clinical trials of its vaccine candidate have shown it prevented infections. As Anjana Pasricha reports from New Delhi, an Indian vaccine manufacturing company is already making the vaccine, even though final approvals have still to come. Experts say this could give India a head start in rolling out vaccines.  Producer:  Marcus Harton
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National reading and math tests long used to track what U.S. students know in those subjects are being postponed from next year to 2022 over concerns about whether testing would be feasible or produce valid results during the coronavirus pandemic, the National Center for Education Statistics announced Wednesday.The biennial National Assessment of Educational Progress evaluations used for the Nation’s Report Card were slated for early next year for hundreds of thousands of the country’s fourth- and eighth-graders. But widespread remote learning and health protocols would have added big complications and costs because the model uses shared equipment and sends outside proctors to conduct the testing in schools.Pushing ahead with testing in 2021 runs the risk of spending tens of millions of dollars and still not getting the data necessary to produce a reliable, comparable picture of state and national student performance, NCES Commissioner James Woodworth said in a statement. By law, they would have to wait another two years for the next chance at testing.Testing in 2022 instead “would be more likely to provide valuable — and valid — data about student achievement in the wake of COVID-19 to support effective policy, research, and resource allocation,” the leaders of the National Assessment Governing Board said in a separate statement supporting the move.The nonpartisan Council of Chief State School Officers also supported the NAEP postponement.Ohio Department of Education spokesperson Mandy Minick called it “entirely understandable” given the extensive disruptions schools are facing.”I think we’re all on the same page about trying to stress health and safety,” she said.However, the decision also delays data that could help show how the pandemic is impacting learning.Woodworth suggested that results from states’ annual tests — generally conducted using schools’ own equipment and staff, and perhaps therefore more feasible than the national tests — could help bridge the gap and provide a state-level look at the impact. But the NAEP postponement might have ripple effects in the debate about whether those state tests even happen in spring 2021.State tests, which are federally mandated and are used more for accountability purposes, were canceled last spring under federal waivers as the pandemic surged. The current presidential administration had indicated states shouldn’t expect to be granted another round of waivers if they request them, but it’s an issue likely to come up again after President-elect Joe Biden’s administration takes office.”If the national assessment can’t be done in ’21, states are legitimately going to say, ‘Well, why are we expected to test in ’21?'” said Chester Finn, a former chair of the National Assessment Governing Board and president emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute who advocates results-based accountability.If states get to skip the tests again this spring, that could create a multiyear gap in data that helps inform other decisions and identify concerns, and that’s problematic, Finn said.”If you’re not held accountable for your results, or there’s no way to do it because there’s no information about your results, then all sorts of bad things happen to the education system and to the kids in the education system,” he said. “We sort of go back to the pre-accountability days, when, you know, the only thing you knew about a kid’s learning was the teachers’ grades, and the only thing you knew about a school’s performance was what the principal said it was, and nobody had data on gaps between different groups of kids.”
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