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South Dakota Pastor’s #ChurchOnTheGo Makes COVID Christmas Festive for Native Americans

In a normal year, Christmas is a joyful time for Episcopalians on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, home of the Sicangu Lakota Oyate (The Burnt Thigh Nation), which has seen as many as 30 new coronavirus cases in a day.  The year 2020 has been anything but normal. “We’ve had to change everything,” said Mother Lauren Stanley, the presbyter (priest-in-charge) for the west half of the Rosebud Episcopal Mission. Normally, Stanley offers services at the Church of Jesus, a small white clapboard building dating to 1875, and in three other churches under her supervision. “We shut down all in-person worship in March and immediately created something called ‘Love in the Time of Coronavirus,’ hashtag ChurchOnTheGo, where people can do drive-up Communion,” she said. “Folks drive up in their cars and come to their window and say, ‘So, what would you like to pray for?’ And if there’s a whole family, then I ask them each individually, starting with grandparents, then the parents, and then the children. And I’ll put that all in one prayer. And then we’ll do the Lord’s Prayer together.” After that, she will hand them Communion. Normally, the sacrament consists of bread in the form of small, unleavened wafers, and wine sipped from a communal cup. Rosebud Episcopal Mission worshipper Sandra Wilcox receiving communal wine “on the go” before wine was removed from sacrament due to COVID. (Courtesy: Rev. Lauren Stanley)“But we had to give up wine in February and just give out the body of Christ,” said Stanley. She laughed, “Well, we’re Episcopalians, and we don’t like that. Then, one of my colleagues gave me an idea.” Mother Lauren Stanley gives communion during #ChurchOnTheGo services on the Rosebud. (Courtesy: Rev.  Lauren Stanley) Fully gloved, Stanley said she lays the communal wafers on a large baking tray, then dips a pair of chopsticks into the wine and dots each wafer with a drop of what she admits is “really awful port.” “So, now I am giving them the body and blood,” she said. “When we started doing that, my people here were so overjoyed.” For those who do not have a car or are confined to home, Stanley conducts home visits, packing Communion wafers in plastic sandwich bags that she passes through front doors.  Communion hosts (wafers) with drops of wine on them, prepared for distribution on Christmas Eve and Christmas for Episcopal worshipers. (Courtesy: Rev. Lauren Stanley)She also Church of Jesus, the home of the Rosebud Episcopal Mission, Rosebud S.D. (Courtesy: Rev. Lauren Stanley)Stanley tries to introduce humor into every aspect of worship during the pandemic, a time when spirits are low. During one segment of the Episcopalian service, worshippers formally exchange greetings of peace with words and gestures — a kiss on the cheek, a handshake or a hug. “I like to keep it light,” she said. “At first, it was like, ‘OK, we can fist bump.’ And then, it was like, ‘No, no, we’re going do elbow bumps.’ And this was a big joke with the elders — ‘Fine, we’re going to do aerial bombardments!’ ”     She laughed again. “And now, we have a big joke about how to take Communion: ‘Do I pull the mask up or down?’ ”  In October, coronavirus cases began to climb on the 5,180-square-kilometer reservation, as on neighboring reservations in North and South Dakota. The tribe reported 400 cases among its 33,000 citizens and more than a dozen COVID-19 deaths. The tribe instituted its second lockdown of the year and other safety measures. COVID-19 is the illness caused by the coronavirus. Episcopal Mission priest Lauren Stanley, seen here in full PPE as she transports patients to and from the Rosebud Reservation Indian Health Service hospital. (Courtesy: Rev.  Lauren Stanley)A COVID Christmas This year, Rosebud’s Episcopalians will celebrate a very different kind of Christmas. Stanley is doing something she has never done before: Make a movie.  “We are recording a service in bits and pieces,” she said. “The whole service with eight or nine hymns on it. The whole nine yards. Then, I’ll edit the pieces together on my 11-year-old Mac.”  She chuckled, hoping the aging laptop is still up to the job. “And then, we will air it Christmas Eve morning,” she said. “And on Christmas Day until 3 o’clock, I will go and do the same thing — taking Communion to the community.” Normally on Christmas Eve, Stanley gives seven services in 14 hours.  “Now, I’m going to be doing #ChurchOnTheGo at three different churches on Rosebud. And then, I’ll be going to people’s houses the rest of the time,” she said. The church has had to cancel activities for GLORY, an acronym for “God Loves Our Rosebud Youth,” Rosebud’s weekly program for children ages 5-15 that is funded in part by St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas, Texas. To make up for that, Stanley and the mission’s senior catechist, Erroll Geboe, drove 130 kilometers to the town of Pierre, South Dakota, where they used the donated funds to go on a shopping spree. “We had a blast and spent a boatload of money!” she said. “And every child in our program — 106 total — is getting a stocking stuffed with coloring books, crayons and pencils, a ton of candy. And, you know our children. When you are poor, candy is a real treat.” They purchased craft items and stuffed animals for all. “And I have grandmas who make scarves, hats and gloves. So, everybody gets a set of those. And I have some additional donated items to give the older kids,” said Stanley.A few days ago, youth volunteers helped Stanley and Geboe assemble the stockings, which by Wednesday had been delivered. By 5 o’clock on Christmas Day, after being up until 3 a.m. the night before, the celebrations will end. That is when Stanley said she will go home to a Christmas dinner of Yankee pot roast. She admits it will be an exhausting weekend — she is just now getting over her second case of COVID-19. But that is what it takes to keep her flock together when they are forced to be apart.
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Economy & business/Silicon Valley & Technology
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Suspected Russian Hackers Used Microsoft Vendors to Breach Customers 

The suspected Russian hackers behind the worst U.S. cyberattack in years used reseller access to Microsoft Corp. services to penetrate targets that had no compromised network software from SolarWinds Corp., investigators said.Updates to SolarWinds’ Orion software were the only known point of entry until Thursday, when security company CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. said hackers had gained access to the vendor that sold it Office licenses and had used that to try to read CrowdStrike’s email. It did not specifically identify the hackers as being the ones that compromised SolarWinds, but two people familiar with CrowdStrike’s investigation said they were.CrowdStrike uses Office programs for word processing but not email. The failed attempt, made months ago, was pointed out to CrowdStrike by Microsoft on December 15.CrowdStrike, which does not use SolarWinds, said it had found no impact from the intrusion attempt and declined to name the reseller.”They got in through the reseller’s access and tried to enable mail ‘read’ privileges,” one person familiar with the investigation told Reuters. “If it had been using Office 365 for email, it would have been game over.”Many Microsoft software licenses are sold through third parties, and those companies can have near-constant access to clients’ systems as the customers add products or employees.Be on guardMicrosoft said Thursday that those customers need to be vigilant.”Our investigation of recent attacks has found incidents involving abuse of credentials to gain access, which can come in several forms,” said Microsoft senior director Jeff Jones. “We have not identified any vulnerabilities or compromise of Microsoft product or cloud services.”The use of a Microsoft reseller to try to break into a top digital defense company raises new questions about how many avenues the hackers, whom U.S. officials have alleged are operating on behalf of the Russian government, have at their disposal.FILE – This Feb. 11, 2015, photo shows FireEye offices in Milpitas, Calif.The known victims so far include CrowdStrike security rival FireEye Inc. and the U.S. departments of Defense, State, Commerce, Treasury and Homeland Security. Other big companies, including Microsoft and Cisco Systems Inc., said they found tainted SolarWinds software internally but had not found signs that the hackers used it to range widely on their networks.Until now, Texas-based SolarWinds was the only publicly confirmed channel for the initial break-ins, although officials have been warning for days that the hackers had other ways in.Microsoft reportReuters reported a week ago that Microsoft products were used in attacks. But federal officials said they had not seen it as an initial vector, and the software giant said its systems were not utilized in the campaign.
 
Microsoft then hinted that its customers should still be wary. At the end of a long, technical blog post Tuesday, it mentioned seeing hackers reach Microsoft 365 Cloud “from trusted vendor accounts where the attacker had compromised the vendor environment.”Microsoft requires its vendors to have access to client systems in order to install products and allow new users. But discovering which vendors still have access rights at any given time is so hard that CrowdStrike developed and released an auditing tool to do that.After a series of other breaches through cloud providers, including a major set of attacks attributed to Chinese government-backed hackers and known as CloudHopper, Microsoft this year imposed new controls on its resellers, including requirements for multifactor authentication.The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Security Agency had no immediate comment.Also Thursday, SolarWinds released an update to fix the vulnerabilities in its flagship network management software Orion following the discovery of a second set of hackers who had targeted the company’s products.That followed a separate Microsoft blog post Friday saying that SolarWinds’ software had been targeted by a second and unrelated group of hackers in addition to those linked to Russia.The identity of the second set of hackers, or the degree to which they may have successfully broken in anywhere, remains unclear.Russia has denied having any role in the hacking.
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Science & Health
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Mexico First Latin American Country With COVID-19 Vaccination Program

Mexico became the first Latin American country Thursday to launch a COVID-19 vaccination initiative, offering hope to a nation that has lost some 120,000 people to the pandemic. Maria Irene Ramirez, the 59-year-old head nurse at the intensive care unit at Mexico City’s Ruben Lenero hospital, was the first to get the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, in keeping with the country’s strategy to focus first on health care workers. “This is the best gift that I could have received in 2020,” Ramirez said after being inoculated in a ceremony broadcast by national media. Chile will immediately start inoculations of health care workers after receiving the first 10,000 doses of a 10-million dose order of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine on Thursday, officials said. Also on Thursday, Costa Rica was preparing to vaccinate two senior citizens in a home near San Jose with the vaccine, while Argentina received about 300,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. The first batch of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine arrives at the Juan Santamaria International Airport, as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak continues, in Alajuela, Costa Rica, Dec. 23, 2020.In the USThe United States is about to complete its second week of vaccinations with about 1 million inoculations, mainly among health care workers and elderly residents of nursing homes. The numbers, however, are far short of the goal set by Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s effort to mass produce millions of doses of vaccines, to inoculate 20 million Americans by the end of the year.   U.S. Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui has warned that it would take longer to administer the doses.  “The commitment that we can make is to make vaccine doses available,” Slaoui said during a press call. “How fast the ramp-up of immunizations, the shots in arms, is happening is slower than we thought it would be.” The Trump administration has reached a deal worth $2 billion to secure an additional 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which would boost the nation’s supply to 200 million doses by mid-July 2021. With surges throughout the U.S. leading to 327,000 COVID-19 deaths and 18.5 million coronavirus infections, according to Johns Hopkins University, the speed with which immunizations can be administered becomes increasingly important.Intensive Care Unit Nurse Merlin Pambuan, 66, is cheered by hospital staff as she walks out of the hospital where she spent eight months with COVID-19, at Dignity Health – St. Mary Medical Center, in Long Beach, California, Dec. 21, 2020. California became the first U.S. state Thursday to record 2 million coronavirus cases. The grim Christmas Eve milestone was reached as the state was under a strict stay-at-home order and hospitals were overwhelmed with the largest number of infections since the pandemic began more than nine months ago. The coronavirus causes the COVID-19 disease. Sinovac vaccineBrazilian researchers said Wednesday the coronavirus vaccine developed by Chinese drug maker Sinovac Biotech was found to be more than 50% effective in a late-stage clinical trial.   But officials at the state-run research institute Butantan say they are withholding the results of the trial at Sinovac’s request, raising issues once again about the lack of transparency involving the vaccine’s development.   Tests of the Sinovac vaccine, dubbed CoronaVac, were halted last month after an “adverse, serious event” involving a volunteer participant in late October.   Sinovac is one of many drug makers around the world that have been racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19, which has killed more than 1.7 million people out of more than 79 million confirmed infections, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.   New variantChina on Thursday became the latest country to suspend all travel with Britain after the discovery of a new and more contagious strain of the novel coronavirus. The new variant has swept through southern Britain in recent weeks, prompting British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to impose more restrictive lockdown measures in some parts of the country ahead of Christmas Day.   
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Duty-Free King Quietly Gives Away $8 Billion

Among the celebrity philanthropists who donate extreme amounts of money to education and lifting others, Chuck Feeney’s name is not as well-known as Bloomberg, Gates or Buffett.Those billionaires — Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett — are highly recognizable names of great wealth, and their efforts are well-known.But Feeney, 89, has donated more than $8 billion in the past 38 years more quietly, espousing the slogan “Giving While Living” through his Men look at cosmetic products in a Duty Free store at the Fraport airport in Frankfurt, Germany, Nov. 14, 2012.Numerous educational programs have benefited from Atlantic Philanthropies, but none more than Cornell, where Feeney graduated from its vaunted hotel management program. Cornell has received $1 billion from Feeney’s generosity.“Physical markers of his giving are sprinkled around all corners of Cornell’s campus, funding everything from student scholarships to North and West Campus living facilities, hospitality research support, the Martin Y. Tang Welcome Center and athletics programs,” the university reported to the Cornell Daily Sun. Feeney’s giving was “transformative,” said Cornell President Martha Pollack, and “deserves the highest recognition we can give,” the Cornell Daily Sun reported.Feeney has been giving internationally, too.“While his generosity towards Ireland and Cornell University is well-known, his relationship with the people of Vietnam has flown relatively under the radar,” blogged John W. Conroy in 2017.In Vietnam, Feeney’s contributions rebuilt medical facilities, expanded libraries and increased educational opportunities.“Viet Nam was the right place at the right time with the right people,” wrote Lien Hoang in a book for Atlantic Philanthropies. “The energy and commitment to change, the unfair legacy of brutal conflict, and the possibilities to improve responses to fundamental human needs in health and education were all evident.” Feeney “has been the savior of our people and we will never forget that,” Conroy quoted Dr. Tran Ngoc Thanh, Da Nang Hospital director.In Cuba, AP awarded $5.8 million in November to Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC), “a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California that has worked to promote US-Cuba health collaboration and highlight Cuba’s public health contributions to global health equity and universal health,” according to its website.That brings AP’s total contribution to MEDICC to $16.7 million since 2002.Feeney is not alone, just less public, about his philanthropy.Last week, MacKenzie Scott, former wife of world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, donated $4.2 billion to groups helping the vulnerable, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.Scott last year signed a “giving pledge” to donate the bulk of her wealth to charity. In a round of donations early this year, Scott gave nearly $1.7 billion to groups devoted to race, gender and economic equality, as well as other social causes.She is among other donors who have signed the pledge, saying they intend to donate much of their wealth in their lifetimes. Issues include “poverty alleviation, refugee aid, disaster relief, global health, education, women and girls’ empowerment, medical research, criminal justice reform, environmental sustainability, and arts and culture,” according to the pledge website.Included are Canadian Marcel Arsenault whose foundation promotes good governance to prevent war; Sudanese-British Mo Ibrahim who is dedicated to good governance and leadership in Africa; Emirati billionaire Mohammed Bin Musallam Bin Ham Al-Ameri who is dedicated to helping the underprivileged; Chinese investment banker Dong Fangjun who helps drop-out students, among others, from impoverished families; entrepreneur You Zhonghui, the first Chinese woman to sign the pledge; Emiratis Badr Jafar and Razan al Mubarak, who promote good governance and transparency in the Gulf Region; Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Indian entrepreneur and owner of biotech company Biocon Limited; and others. 
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Brazilian Researchers Say Chinese-Made COVID-19 Vaccine is Effective

Brazilian researchers said Wednesday the coronavirus vaccine developed by Chinese drug maker Sinovac Biotech was found to be more than 50% effective in a late-stage clinical trial.  But officials at the state-run research institute Butantan say they are withholding the results of the trial at Sinovac’s request, raising issues once again about the lack of transparency involving the vaccine’s development.  Tests of the Sinovac vaccine, dubbed CoronaVac, were halted last month after an “adverse, serious event” involving a volunteer participant in late October.  Sinovac is one of many drug makers around the world who have been racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19, which has killed more than 1.7 million people out of more than 78.7 million total confirmed infections, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.  Latin America received its first doses of COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, with a shipment landing in Mexico City. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 2 MB480p | 3 MB540p | 4 MB720p | 8 MB1080p | 16 MBOriginal | 50 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioMexico Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard was on hand when the flight carrying the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine landed from Belgium. “Today is the beginning of the end of that pandemic,” Ebrard said. Mexico is scheduled to receive 1.4 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Officials on Wednesday did not say how large the shipment was, however, but said they planned to begin Thursday vaccinating health workers in Mexico City and Saltillo, in Mexico’s north. Other Latin American countries are expecting vaccine shipments or, as Argentina did on Wednesday, approving vaccines for use in their countries.The United States is about to complete its second week of vaccinations with about 1 million inoculations, mainly among health care workers and elderly residents of nursing homes.  But the numbers are far short of the goal set by Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s effort to mass produce millions of doses of vaccines, to inoculate   20 million Americans by the end of the year.  U.S. Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui  has warned that it would take longer to administer the doses. “The commitment that we can make is to make vaccine doses available,” Slaoui said during a press call. “How fast the ramp-up of immunizations, the shots in arms, is happening is slower than we thought it would be.”The Trump administration has reached a deal worth $2 billion to secure an additional 100 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, which would boost the nation’s vaccine supply to 200 million doses by mid-July 2021.New COVID-19 Variant More Infectious Than Other Strains, British Scientists Say  Researchers says new strain first detected in southern Britain is also more transmissible in children; discovery has prompted dozens of countries to impose restrictions or temporary bans on travelers from BritainChina on Thursday became the latest country to suspend all travel with Britain after the discovery of a new and more contagious strain of the novel coronavirus.  The new variant of the novel coronavirus has swept through southern Britain in recent weeks, prompting British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to impose more restrictive lockdown measures in some parts of the country ahead of Christmas Day.  
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Economy & business/Silicon Valley & Technology
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SolarWinds Hackers ‘Impacting’ State, Local Governments, US Cyber Agency Says

The U.S. cybersecurity agency said on Wednesday that a sprawling cyber espionage campaign made public earlier this month is affecting state and local governments, although it released few additional details.The hacking campaign, which used U.S. tech company SolarWinds as a springboard to penetrate federal government networks, was “impacting enterprise networks across federal, state, and local governments, as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a statement posted to its website.The CISA said last week that U.S. government agencies, critical infrastructure entities, and private groups were among those affected but did not specifically mention state or local bodies. So far only a handful of federal government agencies have officially confirmed having been affected, including the U.S. Treasury Department, the Commerce Department, and the Department of Energy.CISA did not identify the state or local agencies affected and did not immediately return an email seeking additional detail on the notice.Reuters has previously reported that Pima County, Arizona, was among the victims of the wave of intrusions.The county did not immediately return a message seeking comment late Wednesday. The county’s chief information officer previously told Reuters his team had taken its SolarWinds software offline immediately after the hack became public and that investigators had not found any evidence of a further compromise.Senior U.S. officials and lawmakers have alleged that Russia is to blame for the hacking spree, a charge the Kremlin denies.
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British Model, Fashion Muse Stella Tennant Dies at 50

Stella Tennant, the aristocratic British model who was a muse to designers such as Karl Lagerfeld and Gianni Versace, died suddenly at the age of 50, her family said Wednesday. Tennant, the granddaughter of a duke, rose to fame in the 1990s while walking the runway for Versace, Alexander McQueen and other designers. FILE – Model Stella Tennant poses during a photocall before Chanel Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2018 fashion collection presented in Paris, Jan. 23, 2018.In a statement, her family said: “It is with great sadness we announce the sudden death of Stella Tennant on Dec. 22.”  “Stella was a wonderful woman and an inspiration to us all. She will be greatly missed,” it said.  The family asked for privacy and said arrangements for a memorial service would be announced later. They did not disclose her cause of death.  Police Scotland said officers were called to an address in the Scottish Borders town of Duns on Tuesday following the sudden death of a 50-year-old woman. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances.  The granddaughter of the 11th Duke of Devonshire Andrew Cavendish and his wife Deborah Mitford of a glamorous, unconventional aristocratic family, Tennant was one of the leading British models of the 1990s. Late in the decade, Lagerfeld announced her as the new face of Chanel, with an exclusive modeling contract, and she became a muse to the designer. Fashion house Versace paid tribute to Tennant on Twitter, saying: “Versace is mourning the death of Stella Tennant. Stella was Gianni Versace’s muse for many years and friend of the family. We will miss you forever, Stella. Rest in peace.”  Donatella Versace posted a photo of Tennant on Instagram in a tribute to the model.”Stella, I cannot believe you are gone,” she wrote. “You have left us way too soon. We met when you were at the beginning of your career. I cherish every moment we spent together. Ciao. Rest in peace.” FILE – Italian designer Gianfranco Ferre, right, acknowledges applause on the catwalk with top model Stella Tennant, in Milan, March 2, 2003.Stella McCartney said she was “speechless” after hearing the news.”What sad, horrific news to end this already shocking year!” McCartney wrote in a post on Instagram that included a photo of her and Tennant. “Rest in peace, you inspiring woman. Your soul and inner beauty exceeded the external perfection, Stella.” Tennant also appeared in advertising campaigns for Calvin Klein, Chanel, Hermes and Burberry.  In 1999, Tennant married French photographer David Lasnet. She is survived by him and their four children. “From the first time I met Stella I was completely blown away,” fashion designer Marc Jacobs said on social media. “Her beauty, style and body language combined with her manners, kindness, sense of humor and personality were like no other. … My condolences to David and her family. What a terrible, heartbreaking loss.” 
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First COVID-19 Vaccines Arrive in Latin America

Latin America received its first doses of COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, with a shipment landing in Mexico City.Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard was on hand when the flight carrying the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine landed from Belgium.”Today is the beginning of the end of that pandemic,” Ebrard said.Mexico is scheduled to receive 1.4 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Officials on Wednesday did not say how large the shipment was, however, but said they planned to begin vaccinating health workers in Mexico City and Saltillo, in Mexico’s north, on Thursday.Other Latin American countries are expecting vaccine shipments or, as Argentina did on Wednesday, approving vaccines for use in their countries.Also Wednesday, researchers found that people who had contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, were much less likely to test positive again. Those people who developed antibodies were “at much lower risk” to get the disease again, and could remain virus free for up to six months or longer, the two studies found.Dr. Ned Sharpless, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, which conducted one of the studies, told the Associated Press that people who develop antibodies from natural infections develop “the same kind of protection you’d get from an effective vaccine. … It’s very, very rare” to get reinfected.The National Cancer Institute study involved more than 3 million people who had antibody tests. The NCI study found that only 0.3% of those who had antibodies later tested positive for the coronavirus, compared with 3% who lacked such antibodies, the AP reported.The second study, published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, involved a much smaller group. It followed 12,500 health workers, 1,265 of whom had coronavirus antibodies at the start. The study found that only two health workers tested positive in the following six months, and neither person developed symptoms, AP reported.U.S. Army General Gustave Perna, Operation Warp Speed chief operating officer, said Wednesday that the U.S. government would distribute nearly 4.7 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines next week.By the end of the first week of January, Perna said, about 20 million vaccine doses will have been delivered throughout the United States.U.S. Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui warned, however, that it would take longer to administer the doses.”The commitment that we can make is to make vaccine doses available,” Slaoui said during a press call. “How fast the ramp-up of immunizations, the shots in arms, is happening is slower than we thought it would be.”Public data show that health care workers in the United States have received about 1 million shots so far, a small fraction of the total shipped. U.S. officials said there was a lag in vaccination data of several days, however.Chile’s Santiago international airport is employing sniffer dogs in detecting travelers with COVID-19.A team of golden retrievers and Labradors wear green “biodector” jackets adorned with red crosses.Passengers will be required to wipe their necks and wrists with gauze pads. Once placed in glass containers, the dogs, who have been trained to detect the coronavirus, will give a sniff.Dogs are being used in airports in the United Arab Emirates and Finland. A recent study found dogs can identify individuals who have COVID-19 with 85% to 100% accuracy.Chile’s Carabinero police trained the dogs.
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