Disaster Risk Reduction

US experts debate: Who should be next in line for vaccine? NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. COVID-19 vaccination campaign has begun, and the few available doses are mostly going into the arms of health-care workers and nursing home residents. But what... AP NEWS

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. COVID-19 vaccination campaign has begun, and the few available doses are mostly going into the arms of health-care workers and nursing home residents.

Damage from whopper hurricanes rising for many reasons A destructive storm is rising from warm waters. Again. America and the world are getting more frequent and bigger multibillion dollar tropical catastrophes like Hurricane Laura, which is... AP NEWS

 ...America and the world are getting more frequent and bigger multibillion dollar tropical catastrophes like Hurricane Laura, which is menacing the U.S. Gulf Coast, because of a combination of increased coastal development, natural climate cycles, reductions in air pollution and man-made climate change, experts say.

A runner tries to navigate a flooded section of sidewalk underneath the Longfellow Bridge in Cambridge, Mass.  Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe

statnews.com - by Kate Sheridan - February 15, 2019

. . . the potential risks of climate change — and the attendant increase in natural disasters — stand to outstrip any … incremental gains, as the companies described in recent risk assessment reports to the British nonprofit CDP.

Hurricanes and superstorms, power outages and flooding all threaten manufacturing facilities and research sites, particularly when animals are involved. Droughts, too, threaten critical water supplies. Forest fires, even if remote from a given plant or research facility, bring smoke and air pollution that can similarly disrupt the day-to-day work for drug makers and their supply chain . . .

. . . STAT surveyed the risk assessment plans for more than a dozen major pharmaceutical companies and spoke with officials at labs that survived extreme weather events and others who are planning to avoid their repercussions. All emphasized that the risks are already real — and underscored how hard the industry is working to prepare to meet the challenge.