Good morning. North Korea’s outbreak grows, India bans most wheat exports and South Korea amends its surgical procedure legal guidelines.
North Korea’s outbreak grows
State media reported 21 new deaths and a huge jump in suspected coronavirus cases on Saturday, as North Korea struggled to include its first reported outbreak.
State media mentioned an extra 174,400 folks had signs, like a fever, that could possibly be attributable to Covid-19 — a tenfold leap from the 18,000 such cases reported on Friday. North Korea has reported a complete of 524,400 folks with Covid-like signs since late final month.
“North Korea is reporting solely ‘folks with fever’ as a result of it doesn’t have sufficient take a look at kits,” an knowledgeable mentioned. Covid will not be inflicting all these fevers, he mentioned, however the variety of asymptomatic circumstances is probably going a lot larger than the official depend.
Vaccines: North Koreans are unvaccinated, although some elites might have acquired photographs. Worldwide well being organizations and the South Korean authorities have mentioned that they had been able to ship vaccines, therapeutics and different assist.
India bans most wheat exports
Including to considerations of worldwide meals insecurity, the world’s second-largest wheat producer has banned most exports of the grain. India’s commerce ministry mentioned {that a} sudden worth spike had threatened the nation’s meals safety.
The transfer, an obvious about-face, might compound a worldwide shortfall and exacerbate a dire forecast for world starvation. In April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi advised President Biden that India was prepared to provide the world with its reserves.
Background: The battle has interrupted wheat production in Ukraine and Russia, and blockades within the Black Sea have disrupted transport of the grain. And local weather change poses a dire risk. Agricultural specialists mentioned that India’s ongoing heat wave might have an effect on the harvest this 12 months. Torrential rains introduced on poor harvests in China, whereas drought in different international locations additional snarled provides.
South Korea’s surgical procedure surveillance
South Korea has grow to be one of many first international locations to require cameras in operating rooms that deal with sufferers beneath normal anesthesia, a measure meant to revive religion within the medical system.
For years, hospitals have fielded complaints about docs turning sufferers over to unsupervised assistants who carry out “ghost surgical procedures.” About 5 sufferers have died from such surgical procedures up to now eight years, a affected person advocate mentioned.
In response to affected person advocates, surgeons deputize nurses to carry out operations, thereby packing in additional procedures and maximizing earnings. They argue that cameras will defend sufferers and supply medical malpractice victims proof to make use of in court docket.
However ethicists and medical officers the world over have cautioned that surveilling surgeons might damage morale, violate affected person privateness and make physicians much less more likely to take dangers to avoid wasting lives.
Background: The surreptitious surgical procedures started occurring at cosmetic surgery clinics within the 2010s, after South Korea began promoting medical tourism, based on authorized specialists. They unfold to spinal hospitals, specialists mentioned, which principally carry out comparatively uncomplicated procedures in excessive demand among the many nation’s getting old inhabitants.
Tattooing and not using a medical license is prohibited in South Korea, the place ornamental physique artwork has lengthy been related to organized crime. However the regulation is crashing into rising worldwide demand for what are generally known as “k-tattoos,” and the nation’s tattoo artists argue that it’s time to end the stigma towards their enterprise.
Lives lived: Katsumoto Saotome compiled six books of survivors’ recollections of the 1945 Tokyo firebombing and based (with out authorities assist) a memorial museum. Saotome died at 90.
ARTS AND IDEAS
The way forward for paralysis?
Sixteen years in the past, Dennis DeGray’s thoughts was almost severed from his physique. He ran to take out the trash in a rainstorm, slipped, landed arduous on his chin, and snapped his neck, paralyzing him from the collarbones down.
For a number of years, he “merely laid there, watching the Historical past Channel,” he mentioned. However then he met Jaimie Henderson, a neurosurgeon at Stanford, who had been growing a brain-computer interface. Henderson requested DeGray if he wished to fly a drone. DeGray determined to take part.
Now, implants in his brain permit DeGray some management, despite the fact that he can not transfer his arms. Simply by imagining a gesture, he can transfer a pc cursor, function robotic limbs, purchase from Amazon and fly a drone — albeit solely in a simulator, for now.
There are apparent therapeutic functions. Curiosity from an rising variety of high-profile start-ups additionally suggests the opportunity of a future by which neural interfaces improve folks’s innate skills and grant them new ones — along with restoring these which were misplaced.
PLAY, WATCH, EAT
What to Prepare dinner
That’s it for at this time’s briefing. See you subsequent time. — Amelia
P.S. Elisabeth Goodridge, The Occasions’s deputy journey editor, will examine journey reporting in an period of local weather change as a 2023 Nieman fellow at Harvard.
The newest episode of “The Daily” is on America’s Covid loss of life toll.
You’ll be able to attain Amelia and the group at [email protected].
