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The AP is solely responsible for all content.Mutations and transient conformational movements of the receptor binding domain (RBD) that make neutralizing epitopes momentarily unavailable present immune escape routes for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. This story has been updated with the correct spelling of the surname Begum, not Begun. If they’re lucky, the person recovers, she says, adding: “If not, what can we do?”Īssociated Press writers Tom Odula in Nairobi Farai Mutsaka in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg contributed to this report. Moreover, the stigma associated with waste workers in India means they are often turned away from such facilities.Īny illness means visiting a drugstore, not a doctor, for medicine.
Vaccine scavengers free#
To get the free vaccine from an overburdened public hospital, she would have to wait there for days, and each day away from work is one without food on the table. To earn enough to get one shot of the vaccine, she said she would have to collect and sell an additional 31 pounds of plastic bottles. Toxic runoff from the landfill infiltrates the groundwater, so she must spend 40 rupees (5 cents) per day on bottled water the rest of what she earns goes for food. Now, getting even half that is difficult. Sahra Bano, 37, who lives near the Bhalswa landfill and sells what she can scavenge, says she used to earn about 400 rupees ($5) per day. cents, half of what it brought before the pandemic. In New Delhi, a pound of plastic bottles sells for the equivalent of 11 U.S. In many countries, closed borders brought recycling markets to a halt, lowering demand for reused materials that the workers collect. At private hospitals, each shot is sold for 250 rupees ($3.45), but they are free at government hospitals.īecause the pandemic sent the price of oil crashing, it became cheaper to make new plastic than to recycle it. India said it will give vaccines to everyone over 45 starting April 1. “The vaccine is just another, and very dramatic, example of an exclusion that has prevailed before COVID-19 came on the horizon,” said Jeffrey, who co-authored a book on waste in India in 2018. That many of these workers in India belong to poor Muslim or Dalit communities, who once were known as “untouchables” at the bottom of the country's caste system, adds a layer of prejudice. They often are already poor, moving to unfamiliar cities to eke out a living by sorting garbage, says Robin Jeffrey, a professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. The work is dangerous, and injuries are common, so governments have an incentive to not recognize them or provide benefits like health care, she said. In Mexico, scavengers help municipal workers on garbage trucks and often collect trash from neighborhoods not served by authorities. There is no doubt that these people provide an essential service, says Louise Guibrunet, a researcher at National Autonomous University of Mexico who has studied the issue.