Tag Archives: Children

A family business: how and why smugglers are bringing more children to the U.S. border

By Laura Gottesdiener

LA TECNICA, Guatemala (Reuters) – Honduran mother Alicia Cruz handed herself and her son in to border agents in Texas, then watched as unaccompanied children were separated for release from the group of migrants before adults and families, including hers, were expelled into Mexico.

That’s when she contracted a smuggler to ferry Jeffrey, 17, across the border again – alone.

“Leaving my son destroyed me,” Cruz said this month, speaking from the Guatemalan-Mexican border as she headed south towards Honduras. She said her son was with relatives in Texas. “The last thing he said was ‘let me go to study, work so I can help you’.”

Almost 10,000 under-18s from Central America crossed illegally from Mexico into the United States without their parents in February, nearly double the previous month’s figures, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

The spike comes after U.S. President Joe Biden’s government, citing humanitarian reasons, said in early February it would not rapidly expel unaccompanied minors, a policy shift from the previous administration.

More than any other group of migrants, these children pose a political, logistical and moral challenge for Biden, testing the administration’s ability to safely process and house new arrivals fleeing poverty and violence in Central America.

Reuters spoke to over a dozen self-identified smugglers in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador to gain insight into how and why so many unaccompanied minors are moving through the region and crossing the border alone. All requested anonymity or nicknames in order to freely discuss the illegal industry.

The story of how the children reach the United States is varied. Some, like Jeffrey, come as far as the border with their parents; others cross with friends or relatives who are not their legal guardians.

A third group, including children as young as two years old, make the perilous journey through some of Mexico’s most lawless, cartel-controlled territory in the care only of human smugglers.

CBP did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the cases detailed by the smugglers and Cruz. Reuters was not able to independently verify the events they described.

More than half the smugglers consulted said they had transported unaccompanied minors in recent weeks, moving them by bus, car, boat and even by plane, which one well-connected smuggler called his network’s “faster new method” to bring children up from Central America.

The trips cost thousands of dollars per child and are often financed by parents or relatives already in the United States.

Three smugglers told Reuters they have been encouraging parents to send their children alone as a result of the shift in U.S. policy.

“It’s good to take advantage of the moment, because children are able to pass quickly,” said Daniel, a Guatemalan smuggler. “That’s what we’re telling everyone.”

A White House spokesperson said last month that Biden’s approach was to deal with immigration “comprehensively, fairly and humanely” and not to expel unaccompanied children who arrive at U.S. borders.

A FAMILY BUSINESS

Many children that the U.S. government classifies as “unaccompanied” actually travel with other family members – cousins, uncles, or older siblings.

But some smugglers said their networks have also been organizing children-only trips in recent weeks.

Vazquez, a Mexican smuggler who said he specializes in unaccompanied children, said the youngest child he has transported in recent weeks was a 2-year-old toddler who traveled without any other family members. On his most recent trip, he transported a group of 17 children between the ages of 5 and 9 from southern Mexico across the border into Texas.

Of those 17 children, the majority of their parents were already living in the United States, and none of them were accompanied by other family members, he said.

After moving the children across Mexico by bus, he kept them in his own home near the U.S. border, where his wife and older daughter helped care for them until it was time for him to cross them into Texas and turn them over to U.S. border agents.

“It’s a family business,” he said.

Vazquez said the cartel that controls the territory along the border in his region mandates that he and other smugglers use the migrant children as a decoy for the cartel’s own drug smuggling operations.

Smugglers offer cheaper trips for families and unaccompanied children who plan to surrender themselves to U.S. border agents and ask for asylum, compared to those who seek to enter the United States undetected.

“We deliver children to immigration (agents) and immigration (agents) are responsible for delivering them to their family members in the United States,” said Daniel.

Guatemalans make up the largest group of unaccompanied minors, CBP data shows. A second smuggler in Guatemala said that pre-existing relationships between families and smugglers in small towns often make parents more willing to send their kids alone.

“They send their kids with someone they know, who has already transported other family members,” he said.

He estimated about 100 children were leaving the city of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, without their parents each week in March, which he said was well above ‘normal’ levels.

DIRECT BY PLANE

In 2019, smugglers sped up trips to the U.S. border by transporting unaccompanied minors from Central America on express buses.

But Roberto, a smuggler who said he is linked to a powerful cartel in Ciudad Juarez, said his network is now flying minors directly from Central America to the U.S. border by plane.

He was one of three smugglers who told Reuters they are moving children, including unaccompanied minors, on private or commercial flights between Guatemala and Mexico, or between Mexican cities.

Internal Mexican government assessments reviewed by Reuters also state that smugglers have been flying migrants directly to the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, or even into Houston, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona.

Mexican immigration agents detained 95 people, including eight unaccompanied minors, for traveling without proper documentation after they arrived on two domestic commercial flights into the northern city of Monterrey on Friday. The majority were Hondurans, while there were also a handful of people from El Salvador, Cuba and Guatemala, according to Mexican immigration authorities.

CBP, the Mexican foreign ministry, and Mexico’s immigration agency did not immediately respond to request for comment about smuggling via commercial flights.

Despite the growing demand, some smugglers told Reuters that they try to steer clear of transporting children.

“It’s a risk,” said a Salvadoran smuggler who goes by the nickname El Barrenga. “Maybe the child’s been stolen, for example. It’s safer if they’re with their parents.”

Even Vazquez, the smuggler who specializes in children, admitted that minors bring their own challenges.

“If an adult causes problems, you can ditch them, easily,” he said. “But you can’t abandon a child for having a temper tantrum.”

(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener in La Técnica, Guatemala, and Monterrey, Mexico; additional reporting by Dave Graham in Mexico City; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Rosalba O’Brien)

U.S. backs distance of three feet between students, which may help schools open

By Carl O’Donnell

(Reuters) – The U.S. government on Friday updated its COVID-19 mitigation guidance to narrow the acceptable distance between students who are wearing masks to at least three feet from at least six feet, potentially easing the path for schools that have struggled to reopen under previous recommendations.

The new recommendation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a boost to the Biden administration’s goal of reopening in-person learning for millions of public school students without sparking outbreaks of the virus.

Many schools continue to teach students remotely more than a year after the novel coronavirus prompted widespread closures across the United States.

The new guidance applies to students from kindergarten through high school and in areas with low, moderate, and substantial community transmission of COVID-19. Middle and high school students in communities with high levels of COVID-19 should stay six feet apart unless their school day contact can be limited to a single small group of students and staff.

Students should continue to maintain six feet of distance when interacting with teachers and other school staff and when eating, the CDC said.

The CDC has been under pressure to relax its guidance to schools and Director Rochelle Walensky said this week that the agency was looking at data in part from a recent study in Massachusetts which suggested tighter spacing had not impacted COVID-19 transmission.

Many schools do not have the space in classrooms to maintain six feet between students, and outside of the United States public health agency recommendations for social distancing start at about three feet and range to more than six.

The guidance urged schools to conduct widespread COVID-19 testing of students and said such regular use of screening tests offers added protection for schools that require fewer than six feet of separation.

School districts should expand screenings for students participating in sports or other extracurricular activities, and consider universal screening prior to athletic events.

The agency continues to recommend quarantines for anyone who has been within six feet of someone sick with COVID-19 for more than 15 minutes within a 24-hour period.

The White House said Wednesday said it would allocate $10 billion to states to support COVID-19 screening testing for teachers, staff and students to assist schools resume in-person instruction.

The CDC said students are required to wear masks on school buses and any other forms of public transit they use to get to school. The agency issued an order in February requiring travelers to wear masks when using public transit.

The Biden administration has urged states to vaccinate teachers and childcare workers, with the goal of getting all of them inoculated by the end of March.

Moderna begins study of COVID-19 vaccine in kids

(Reuters) – Moderna Inc has begun dosing patients in a mid-to-late stage study of its COVID-19 vaccine, mRNA-1273, in children aged six months to less than 12 years, the company said on Tuesday.

The study will assess the safety and effectiveness of two doses of mRNA-1273 given 28 days apart and intends to enroll about 6,750 children in the United States and Canada.

The vaccine has already been authorized for emergency use in Americans who are aged 18 and older.

In a separate study which began in December, Moderna is also testing mRNA-1273 in adolescents between 12 and 18 years old.

The latest study is being conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

Children lose parents as thousands flee after Equatorial Guinea blast

By Aaron Ross

(Reuters) – Hospitals have run out of morgue space and are piling bodies into refrigerated shipping containers. Radio and television stations are flooded with calls trying to locate the parents of unaccompanied children. Thousands have fled for the countryside.

Three days after a series of explosions levelled much of Equatorial Guinea’s largest city Bata, killing at least 105 people and injuring more than 600 others, its residents are still coming to grips with the full scale of the tragedy.

Drone footage aired on state television showed block after block of public housing in the coastal city either completely destroyed or close to it, the remnants of their roofs and walls strewn across the neighborhood’s dirt roads.

“There are many children without parents,” said a teacher in Bata, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from the authorities in the tightly-controlled central African country. “In the long (term) what do we do with those children?”

The reclusive government blamed the explosions on fires set by farmers living near the military base and the negligent handling of dynamite stocks by the military unit guarding them.

It has decreed three days of national mourning from Wednesday, declared Bata a catastrophe zone, unblocked 10 billion ($18.19 million) CFA francs for the response and appealed for international aid.

Firefighters continued to comb the rubble on Wednesday for bodies as onlookers wept, state television showed. The authorities appealed for donations of blood and basic goods.

A five-year old girl was pulled on Wednesday from the rubble of a house in the military camp where the blast occurred, Equato-Guinean media AhoraEG said.

Officials have been forced to turn to refrigerated containers to store bodies, said the teacher and Alfredo Okenve, a human rights activist who lives in exile in Europe.

Okenve said his information indicated the number of deaths was between 150 and 200, significantly higher than the government’s official toll of 105.

The government’s information ministry did not immediately respond to written questions.

TRAUMATISED

Bata residents are traumatized from the explosions, which lasted for hours on Sunday, and fearful of additional blasts.

The first explosion “was so big that all of us and the people around us were shouting: ‘This is a bomb, this is a bomb!'” said the teacher.

“People were crying, shouting, running, trying to stay somewhere, but it was panic. We started to see police cars and firemen and people bleeding. It was awful.”

The health ministry said in a tweet that it was deploying psychiatrists and psychologists.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that the World Health Organization and children’s agency UNICEF had mobilized teams to control infection and provide logistical support. Spain has sent a first batch of emergency aid.

The former Spanish colony has been run by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Africa’s longest-serving leader, since 1979.

It is the Central African country’s worst tragedy in recent memory, and while the government, charitable organizations and private citizens have kept everyone fed and sheltered for now, most of Equatorial Guinea’s 1.4 million people live in poverty.

The country is also suffering a double economic shock from the coronavirus pandemic and a drop in the price of crude oil, which provides about three-fourths of state revenue.

State media has provided wall-to-wall coverage of the disaster, including the appeals over the lost children, a rarity in a country that human rights activists consider one of Africa’s most repressive and where bad news is often suppressed.

Okenve said the scale of the tragedy had left the government with no choice.

“If there is information coming out, it is because it is impossible to control,” he said.

($1 = 549.9000 Central African CFA franc BEAC)

(Reporting by Aaron Ross in DAKAR; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

North Korea enslaving political prisoners to fund weapons program: South Korea rights group

By Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea has been enslaving political prisoners, including children, in coal production to boost exports and earn foreign currency as part of a system directly linked to its nuclear and missile programs, a South Korea-based human rights group said on Thursday.

The Seoul-based Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR) released a study analyzing an intricate connection between North Korea’s exploitation of its citizens, the production of goods for export, and its weapons programs.

The report, titled “Blood Coal Export from North Korea: Pyramid scheme of earnings maintaining structures of power,” said Pyongyang had been operating a “pyramid fraud-like” scheme to force those held in prison camps to produce quotas of coal and other goods for export.

Its findings offered a deeper look into how the camps contribute to North Korea’s shady coal trade network, after the United Nations banned its commodity exports to choke off funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and after human rights agencies reported on gross rights violations within the camps.

There was no immediate reaction from North Korea’s diplomatic mission in Geneva to a request for comment.

North Korea violated United Nations sanctions to earn nearly $200 million in 2017 from banned commodity exports, according to a confidential report by independent U.N. monitors released in early 2018.

The NKHR report cited interviews with former prisoners who escaped to the South and other defectors with knowledge about the dealings, along with other sources such as satellite images, and data from the South Korean and U.S. governments.

The United Nations estimates up to 200,000 people are held in a vast network of gulags run by Stasi-like secret police, many of which are located near mining sites. A 2014 U.N. Commission of Inquiry report said the prisoners are facing torture, rape, forced labor, starvation and other inhumane treatment.

Last December, the United States imposed new sanctions, blacklisting six companies, including several based in China, and four ships accused of illicit exports of North Korean coal.

“Quotas of products for export are met through the enslaved labor of men, women and children in detention camps owned and operated by secret police,” the NKHR report said.

Camp 18, for example, is in the central mining county of Bukchang. Former prisoners interviewed by the NKHR reported at least 8 million tonnes of coal was produced there in 2016.

The secret police, formally known as the Ministry of State Security, handle shipments of goods exported by Bureau 39, a covert secret fund for leader Kim Jong Un’s family, with links to the production of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the report added.

Joanna Hosaniak, deputy director general at the NKHR, said the investigation was intended to highlight the key role of the “state-sponsored system of slavery” in shoring up Kim’s political and financial power and its nuclear programs, just as U.S. President Joe Biden reviews his North Korea policy.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Kim Coghill)

UK variant not causing worse illness in children; COVID-19 breath test shows promise

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

UK variant not causing worse illness in children

The coronavirus variant first identified in the UK does not cause more severe disease in children than variants circulating earlier in 2020, new data suggest. Doctors at King’s College Hospital in London compared 20 children hospitalized for COVID-19 during the pandemic’s first wave and 60 hospitalized during the second wave, when most infections were caused by the new variant. While more children were hospitalized in the second wave, “this might be due to the higher prevalence of SARS-CoV-2” at the time, study leader Dr. Atul Gupta said. The number of adult patients also increased in the second wave, he noted. Hospitalized children in both waves had similar ages, rates of underlying medical conditions, socioeconomic status and other risk factors, the researchers reported in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. In both periods, few needed oxygen therapy or mechanical ventilation. Those were actually needed less often in the second wave, Gupta said. “We have found no evidence of more severe disease having occurred in children and young people during the second wave,” he concluded, “suggesting that infection with the B.1.1.7 variant does not result in an appreciably different clinical course” in this age group.

COVID-19 breath test shows promise in study

A commercially available electronic “nose” manufactured by Dutch company Breathomix can tell when a person does not have COVID-19 and would be a useful screening tool, researchers have found. They studied more than 4,500 individuals who came to coronavirus test facilities in The Netherlands between August and December 2020. First, using breath samples from a small subset of those individuals, they taught the “eNose” what a breath profile of a COVID-19 patient looks like, “comparable with how your nose can distinguish the smell of coffee from the smell of tea,” said study leader Dr. Geert Groeneveld of Leiden University Medical Center. Later, the device was able to reliably rule out infection – with or without symptoms – in 70% to 75% of all individuals tested, with results available within seconds. In cases in which the eNose cannot reliably rule out the virus, patients can undergo traditional throat-swabbing tests. The study results, posted on Tuesday on medRxiv ahead of peer review, “demonstrate that in a scenario where eNose is used as a screening test, this can reduce the number of throat and nasopharyngeal swabs,” Groeneveld said, “which in turn can reduce the burden on individuals, economy and healthcare.”

Protective antibodies detectable in dried blood spots

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a laboratory test for measuring neutralizing antibodies against the coronavirus that requires only a single drop of blood, collected and dried on filter paper. “Blood samples can be self-collected at home, and sent to the lab in the mail,” said Thomas McDade, whose team described the technique in a report posted on Tuesday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. Currently, to determine if someone has the neutralizing antibodies that protect against the virus that causes COVID-19, blood must be drawn at a clinic or doctor’s office and sent for analysis. The Northwestern test “produces results that are comparable to results from venous blood, and the protocol can be implemented in a short amount of time with widely available laboratory infrastructure,” McDade said. “This method allows for large-scale testing of neutralizing antibodies against COVID-19, which may be useful for evaluating the effectiveness of vaccines and the level of protective immunity in the general population.” The researchers have not yet used their test to look for neutralizing antibodies against emerging variants. “We can modify the test for specific variants as needed,” McDade said.

Zinc, vitamin C show no benefit in randomized trial

In adults with COVID-19 who were not sick enough to be hospitalized, high doses of zinc or vitamin C, or both, failed to improve their symptoms or speed their recovery, researchers reported on Friday in JAMA Network Open. They randomly assigned 214 patients to 10 days of treatment with either a high dose of zinc, vitamin C, both, or neither. Everyone also received standard supportive treatments from their healthcare providers. There was no significant difference between the groups in the number of days required to reach a 50% reduction in symptoms like fever, cough, shortness of breath, and fatigue. There was also no difference in the number of days until patients no longer had severe symptoms, in need for other prescribed medications, or in rates of hospitalizations and deaths. Zinc and vitamin C (ascorbic acid) supplements “cannot be recommended” to ease the course of COVID-19 in outpatients, the researchers concluded. “Most consumers of ascorbic acid and zinc are taking significantly lower doses of these supplements, so demonstrating that even high-dose ascorbic acid and zinc had no benefit suggests clear lack of efficacy,” they said.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Some lingering COVID-19 issues seen in children; patients’ antibodies attack multiple virus targets

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Long lasting COVID-19 effects seen in children

“Long COVID” – a term that refers to effects of the virus that linger for weeks or months – may be a problem for children, too, a small study suggests. Doctors at a large Italian hospital tracked 129 children and teens with COVID-19 who were otherwise generally healthy. At an average of about five months after their diagnosis, only about 42% had completely recovered. Roughly one in three youngsters still had one or two symptoms and more than one in five had three or more, according to a report posted on Tuesday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. The most common persistent problems were insomnia (reported by 18.6%), respiratory symptoms including pain and chest tightness (14.7%), nasal congestion (12.4%), fatigue (10.8%), muscle pain (10.1%), joint pain (6.9%), and concentration difficulties (10.1%). Although these issues were more common in children who had been obviously sick, they also developed in infected youths with few or no symptoms initially. There is increasing evidence that restrictive measures aimed at curbing the pandemic are significantly impacting children’s mental health, the researchers acknowledge. Still, their findings suggest, the potential long-term effects COVID-19 can have on children should be considered when developing measures to reduce the impact of the pandemic on their overall health.

Patients’ antibodies target virus from many angles

Most antibody treatments and vaccines targeting the coronavirus focus on stimulating an immune response against the spike protein it uses to break into cells. Targeting other sites on the virus as well may be a better approach, researchers say. Their study of COVID-19 survivors whose immune systems had generated strong responses to the virus showed that more than half of those antibodies targeted components of the virus other than the spike protein. The most common non-spike targets of the antibodies were the closed capsule in which the virus stores its genetic instructions and specific segments of those instructions, such as stretches of its RNA code. This suggests that non-spike related antibodies may play a significant role in clearing the virus, the research team said in a paper posted on Thursday on bioRxiv ahead of peer review. In terms of natural immunity, it also suggests that when faced with new spike protein variants, the immune system will have other sites on the virus that it can still remember and attack. A spokesperson for the researchers said their company, Immunome Inc, is developing a cocktail of antibodies that target multiple sites on the virus.

COVID-19 may affect kidney filtering

COVID-19 impairs the kidneys’ ability to filter waste and toxic substances in some patients, a new report suggests. Kidney filters do not usually allow much protein into the urine. Researchers who studied 103 COVID-19 patients found that about 24% of them had high levels of the protein albumin in their urine, and 21% had high levels of the protein cystatin c in their urine. About 25% of the patients had a noninfectious piece of the coronavirus in their urine, but none of the samples contained infectious virus. That suggests the virus particles researchers did see were “a direct result of a filtration abnormality rather than a viral infection of the kidney,” according to a report posted on Sunday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. None of the patients had signs of kidney dysfunction, other than the filtration issues. “At this stage, we do not know whether or not these abnormalities are a sign of long-term consequences,” said coauthor Choukri Ben Mamoun of the Yale School of Medicine. “It is for this reason that we report these findings and emphasize the need for long-term examination of the consequences of this infection.”

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

U.S. likely to start COVID-19 vaccination in children by late spring or early summer – Fauci

(Reuters) – The United States will likely start vaccinating children by late spring or early summer, top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said on Friday, as studies are underway to test the safety and effectiveness of Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccines in children under 16.

“Over the next couple of months, we will be doing trials in an age de-escalation manner so that hopefully by the time we get to the late spring and early summer we will have children being able to be vaccinated according to the FDA guidance,” Fauci said, speaking at a White House press briefing.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

Guatemalan families mourn death of children as hunger spreads

By Sofia Menchu

LA PALMILLA, Guatemala (Reuters) – Two-year-old Yesmin Anayeli Perez died this week of illnesses linked to malnutrition, the third small child to die from similar causes in an impoverished mountain village in eastern Guatemala within weeks, residents and health officials said.

Residents of the indigenous Mayan village, La Palmilla, and other parts of a region known as the Dry Corridor sunk deeper into poverty last year when economic damage wrought by droughts and two devastating hurricanes was compounded by the coronavirus lockdown.

The second of three children, Yesmin had a history of acute malnutrition, which causes rapid weight-loss and wasting, and for which she was hospitalized several times over the past year.

In the months before her death, Yesmin’s legs and arms were stick-like and her belly swollen by water retention, even though she had gained a little weight. Reuters visited her family in their home in October, where Yesmin, dressed in a purple t-shirt, was being fed a high protein mash by her mother.

In the early hours of Monday, Yesmin died, her eyes bulging and her frail body distorted by a persistent cough and long struggle with lung illness linked to her inadequate nutrition, her father Ignoja Perez told Reuters.

Just over half the normal weight for her age, she was suffering malnutrition and pneumonia made worse by the cold and damp weather that followed the hurricanes, local health official Santiago Esquivel said.

Sitting in front of her small coffin, in a home with a dirt floor and tin roof, her father said the family had been hopeful she would make a recovery.

“I bought her some vitamins on Sunday, to see if she would put on weight, we were going to start the treatment on Monday, with a spoonful,” Perez recalled. “But she got worse.”

Yesmin was buried on a hilltop along with some of her clothes, a bottle of water and a small, orange plastic drinking cup in a traditional ceremony on Tuesday.

The family had celebrated her second birthday with a bowl of chicken soup just a few weeks earlier.

The Guatemalan government denies that Yesmin was suffering malnutrition at the time of her death, or at any time during 2020. However, medical records reviewed by Reuters showed she was diagnosed as suffering from acute malnutrition at least until March.

Guatemala’s Food and Nutritional Security Secretariat said in a statement that Yesmin and her family had received support from authorities, in recognition that she had suffered malnutrition and lung problems at birth.

Asked why she was not classified as malnourished in 2020, the agency referred Reuters to the Health Ministry. The ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

TRAPPED BY POVERTY

Government data show acute malnutrition among the under-fives rose by 80% in Guatemala in 2020 compared to 2019.

The government said the jump was partly due to improved methodology. However, data gathered by Oxfam last year also showed large increases in families facing food shortages, including a four-fold jump in severe shortages in the province around La Palmilla.

At least 46 children under five died of hunger-related causes in 2020 in Guatemala, according to the government data, well below previous years. Ivan Aguilar, a humanitarian program coordinator based in Guatemala at Oxfam, said the drop appeared to be due to officials attributing deaths related to malnutrition to other causes, including the case of Yesmin.

Yesmin was the third young child to die in the village of around 3,000 people since October, local health official Esquivel said. Yesmin was buried a few feet away from another girl who died on Dec. 26.

The deaths are unusual even in a region that grew tragically accustomed to such deaths after drought destroyed crops every year for half of the past decade, Esquivel added.

“Sometimes a child would die, but not like this, one after the other,” he said.

The crisis is driving a new round of migration north.  But in La Palmilla and other villages in the eastern highlands, people said they lack the money to up and leave.

Without work for months during a lockdown from February, Perez borrowed money and sold his coffee crop, spending the little he raised to pay for Yesmin’s treatment in nearby city Zacapa.

The two hurricanes in November wiped out his field of beans, leaving only corn in the ground, and the walls of his mud-block house cracked with the rain, letting the winter chill inside.

“I wish I could go to the United States, but without money, we have to stay,” he said, looking down at his daughter’s still body.

(Reporting by Sofia Menchu; Writing by Stefanine Eschenbacher; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Rosalba O’Brien)

COVID-19 reinfection detected in U.S. patient; saliva tests endorsed

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

COVID-19 reinfection seen in U.S. patient

A case of coronavirus reinfection has been documented in a U.S. patient from Reno, Nevada, according to doctors. The 25-year-old man tested positive for the virus in April after showing mild illness and then got sick again in late May, developing more severe COVID-19 symptoms. Doctors and Nevada public health officials said they were able to show through sophisticated testing that the virus associated with each instance of infection represented genetically different strains. Their report, released on Friday, is undergoing peer review by the Lancet medical journal. Last week, three reinfections were reported – one in Hong Kong and two in Europe. Unlike the Nevada case, the second infections in those patients were milder than the first. Reinfection “may represent a rare event,” the Nevada researchers wrote. But, they said, the findings implied that initial exposure to the virus may not result in full immunity for everyone who has been infected by it.

Saliva samples preferable for COVID-19 testing

Letting patients provide saliva samples for COVID-19 tests is easier and safer than swabbing the back of the nose and throat for samples to test, and the results are equally reliable, Yale University researchers said. Writing on Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine, they compared saliva and nasopharyngeal swab samples from 70 U.S. hospitalized COVID-19 patients and 495 asymptomatic healthcare workers, using gold-standard laboratory methods. In both groups, the saliva tests and the nasopharyngeal swab tests showed similar sensitivity for detecting the virus. For healthcare workers, unlike the collection of nasopharyngeal samples, collection of saliva samples by patients does not present a risk of infection and alleviates demands for supplies of swabs and personal protective equipment, the researchers said. In a separate study on Friday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, Canadian researchers employed an experimental saliva test kit and found that it might miss some mild or asymptomatic infections. But they agreed with the Yale researchers about the advantages of saliva tests and said they “may be of particular benefit for remote, vulnerable or challenging” patients.

Accuracy of faster COVID-19 tests is unclear

It is hard to know whether so-called point-of-care COVID-19 tests, which provide results in a couple of hours rather than days as some other tests do, are accurate, according to a research review. The authors of the review, published on Wednesday by the Cochrane Library, focused on two types of rapid point-of-care tests: antigen tests, which identify proteins on the virus using disposable devices, and molecular tests, which detect viral genetic material using portable or table-top devices. Altogether, they reviewed 22 studies from around the world that compared point-of-care tests to gold-standard so-called RT-PCR laboratory tests. Three-quarters of the studies did not follow the point-of-care test manufacturers’ instructions, they found. There also was little information about study participants, so it was not possible to tell if the results could be applied to people with no symptoms, mild symptoms or severe symptoms. And studies often were at risk for bias, or did not detail their methods. “The evidence currently is not strong enough and more studies are urgently needed to be able to say if these tests are good enough to be used in practice,” the research team led by Jonathan Deeks of the University of Birmingham in Britain wrote.

New studies add to data on COVID-19 in children

Children are far less likely than adults to get severe cases of COVID-19, British doctors found. At 138 hospitals in Britain, through June, less than 1% of COVID-19 patients were children, and 99% survived. Those who died had serious underlying health conditions. “We can be quite sure that COVID in itself is not causing harm to children on a significant scale,” said Malcolm Semple of the University of Liverpool, co-author of research published on Thursday in BMJ. While children’s risk for severe COVID-19 is low, Black children and obese children experienced higher risks. A separate study published on Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics suggests the proportion of U.S. children with asymptomatic COVID-19 may be low. At 28 hospitals, more than 33,000 children were tested during ear, nose and throat appointments or procedures. None were suspected of having the virus. Fewer than 1% were asymptomatically infected. Even without symptoms, infected children can shed virus for weeks, Korean doctors said on Friday in the JAMA Pediatrics.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid, Kate Kelland and Deena Beasley; Editing by Will Dunham)