Rush as cancer center reopens
SHANGHAI Cancer Center’s Xuhui branch reopened yesterday at 8am.
The hospital was under closed-loop management after a worker tested positive for COVID-19 on January 21. Last Thursday, people quarantined in the hospital were able to leave after 14 days.
By Monday noon, more than 3,500 people had made appointments for outpatient services on yesterday’s reopening, a hospital official said.
According to an outpatient office staff, that number of appointments is normal.
“Everything is going smoothly at the hospital,” a patient surnamed Liu said.
Liu made an appointment on Saturday when the booking system for outpatient services restarted. She has melanoma and wanted to be treated before the upcoming Spring Festival.
A security guard said every hospital building has only one entrance and one exit and other doors have been locked.
Serpentine passages to prevent crowds were set up around the hospital, including the front gate and windows for registration and payment. Rules for virus prevention remain intact, such as mask wearing, providing green health QR codes and having temperatures taken before entering the hospital.
A woman surnamed Dai helped her 70-year-old mother — who should have been hospitalized for chemotherapy during the lockdown — through the admission procedure.
“I was worried about my mom because she wasn’t able to get treatment during the lockdown,” Dai said. “Fortunately, I received a phone call from a doctor who told me she can be hospitalized today.”
After receiving negative nucleic acid test results, Dai and her mother entered the inpatient department.
“I know the hospital was locked down for two weeks, but I trust the city’s strict measures for coronavirus prevention and control,” she said.
In order for patients to be treated as quickly as possible, more than 50 medical workers in the radiotherapy center will work overtime during the upcoming holiday, except on Saturdays and Sundays, according to Xu Qing, the center’s technical team leader.
“Two employees in the center even delayed their engagement parties,” Xu said.
CLIMATE scientists have known for years that the Arctic is warming far faster than anywhere else on the planet. But even those of us who follow the Arctic closely were shocked by the changes that occurred in 2020, a year of broken records, retreating glaciers, and shattering ice sheets. The alarm bells are ringing louder than ever: We must urgently and drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
Last year, temperatures in the Arctic Circle reached their highest-ever recorded levels.
A heatwave in Arctic Siberia brought temperatures to 38 degrees Celsius — 18 degrees higher than the average maximum daily temperature in past years. Meanwhile, fierce Arctic wildfires released a recordbreaking level of carbon dioxide and set a new pollution record for the region.
With the heat turned up, the Arctic landscape has been changing fast. For the first time since records began, sea ice in the Arctic’s Eurasian sector had not yet begun freezing in October. The previous month, an ice sheet the size of Paris broke off from Greenland’s largest glacier shelf, and in July, Canada’s intact ice shelf — 4,000 years old — fragmented. As Arctic ice melts, sea levels rise, threatening countries worldwide.
Over the last year, scientists have also spotted worrying signs of future climate breakdown. As higher temperatures cause Arctic plants to grow taller, permafrost is thawing faster — a process that releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and methane (a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2), accelerating the temperature rise. Last year, a 164-foot-deep (4.16meter-deep) crater or “funnel,” one of many reported in recent years, was found in northern Siberia after an underground pocket of methane, formed by melting permafrost, burst through the tundra.
Domino effect
If the events of 2020 have shown us anything, it is that what happens in the Arctic does not stay there. On the contrary, rising Arctic temperatures threaten to trigger a devastating domino effect that ends in global catastrophe.
That is because of two natural phenomena. First, Arctic warming weakens the jet stream — the river of air that flows high above Earth’s surface.
The jet stream is propelled by the contrast between the planet’s frozen poles and its hot equator. As that contrast is diminished, the jet stream slows and even stagnates. Scientists believe this change in the jet stream is behind a number of deadly weather events, including wildfires in California and Siberia, extreme winter storms in the Eastern United States, and record-high temperatures in the Mojave Desert.
The second way Arctic warming affects the rest of the world is by disrupting the polar vortex, a low-pressure weather system that sits above each pole and keeps cold air there. As the Arctic warms, the cold air contained in the polar vortex is thought to be displaced and moved to the south, leading to extreme and unusual cold weather in faraway places.
This winter, Italy, Japan and Spain experienced extreme snowfall.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, “build back better” has become something of a mantra. Measures to preserve the Arctic must be at the center of this effort.
Fortunately, a growing number of decision-makers seem to recognize the Arctic’s critical importance. The World Economic Forum’s recently released “Global Risks Report 2021” ranked extreme weather, weak climate action, and human-induced environmental damage among the most likely — and highest-impact — risks we face over the next decade.
It is comforting to imagine the Arctic as a snowy faraway place, populated by reindeer and polar bears. In fact, it is a cornerstone of the climate system that keeps our weather stable, our communities habitable, and our economies prosperous.
THE Chinese Year of the Ox begins on Friday, and in the shadow of Hong Kong’s futuristic urban skyline, wild bovines are getting some love.
Cattle and water buffalo embody hard work and serenity in the 12-animal Chinese zodiac, and were used on Hong Kong farms for centuries to plough rice fields, pull carts and provide milk and meat. But as farms began to shut down in the the 1970s, many animals were abandoned and their descendants became the wild cattle and buffalos now commonly seen in rural Hong Kong.
Ho Loy of the Lantau Buffalo Association and her team of volunteers dedicate most weekends to checking on the cattle that roam the biggest island within Hong Kong. Starting mid-morning they distribute grass and hay bought with donated funds to different herds around the island.
“The animals are a very important part of our culture, of our city planning, especially rural planning,” Ho said. The animals provide an opportunity to explore “what that means to Hong Kong people about the nature, the remaining nature value in Hong Kong.”
Hong Kong’s Agricultural, Fisheries and Conservation Department estimates there are approximately 1,100 brown cattle and 120 water buffalo across Lantau Island and rural parts of the New Territories near the mainland.
The Lantau Buffalo Association hopes to preserve the animals and their habitat, reduce friction with growing human communities and lobby for long-term environmental preservation policies.
While Hong Kong is best known for its neon-lit, densely-packed urban environment, more than three-quarters of the southern Chinese territory of 7.5 million people remains green hills and forests.
Over her 14 years, Ho, a Lantau resident herself, has come to know them well.
Water buffalo are “very shy, they spend most of the time in the wetland. Cattle, on the other hand, are very sociable, especially if you have food.”