More than 100 million Americans are facing an abnormal heat wave, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius during the day in some states, the Associated Press reported Friday.
The National Weather Service (NWS) said more than 115 million people are at risk from the high temperatures. Many cities are experiencing temperatures above 38 degrees Celsius. The heat wave is severe in the states of Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas and California.
The NWS warns that temperatures will climb even higher this weekend. Americans living in central and southern California could face the hottest weather of the year. In desert areas, temperatures could rise to 48.8 degrees during the day and stay at 26.6 degrees at night.
In some cities across the state, authorities are equipping public spaces with air conditioning, water and places to rest.
Also because of the heat wave, organizers of the California State Fair, which begins Friday in Sacramento, had to cancel a horse race because of concerns about animal welfare.
Temperatures in Las Vegas, Nevada, are forecast to rise to 47 degrees on Saturday, which would be a record for the city.
In Phoenix, Arizona’s capital, the heat has held at least 43 degrees for 14 days in a row. If the weather in the city does not change, it will break the record of 1974, when the temperature exceeded this mark for 18 days. The city has about 200 equipped public spaces with cooling systems, but most of them close around 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., while even at night temperatures can rise to 35 degrees. Authorities said their opening hours may be extended from next week.
Vaccination against the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease reduces the risk of hospitalization and severe disease by 15 times, according to the website of the Ministry of Health.
According to a report citing preliminary data from the analysis of COVID-19 cases in Ukraine over the past three months, only 0.7% of people diagnosed with COVID-19 were fully vaccinated, and 0.4% of those hospitalized were fully vaccinated.
The risk of getting sick among unvaccinated people is almost 8.5 times higher, and the risk of being hospitalized is almost 15 times.
The Ministry of Health notes that these are preliminary data, and they do not take into account asymptomatic diseases, as well as those cases in which patients did not do tests and did not seek medical help. However, statistics shows that all vaccines used by Ukraine effectively prevent severe disease.
The Ministry of Health, with the involvement of the British procurement agency Crown Agents, will purchase 1.41 million doses of influenza vaccines to vaccinate medical workers, educators, police and border guards, the press service of Chief Sanitary Doctor of Ukraine Viktor Liashko has reported.
The changes to government resolutions No. 255 dated March 13, 2019 and No. 129 dated February 19, 2020 were approved by the government at a meeting on Monday.
The agency will procure vaccines at the expense of the remaining balance of funds for 2019, provided for the procurement of drugs to accompany patients with cancer.
“All available vaccines have passed WHO prequalification and confirmed their safety. The countries of origin are the leaders in the production of vaccines in the world – France, the Netherlands and South Korea,” the press service said.
Ernst & Young is waiting for a spike in proposals to insure cybersecurity risks in Ukraine in 2019, according to a study by Ernst & Young Global Limited posted by the Ukrainian representative office of the company.
“The high level of damage to business from cybercrime around the world encourages companies to look for ways to manage these risks from the outside. One of the available options is to insure cyber risks, so similar offers from insurance companies are the expected trend of 2019 in Ukraine,” Senior Manager of information technology and IT risk management department of EY in Ukraine Dmytro Lazuchenkov said.
According to EY Global Information Security Survey 2018–2019, Ukrainian businesses are still characterized by the active migration of large Enterprise IT solutions to cloud services and the performance of business-critical operations in public “clouds.”
In a highly competitive environment, cloud solution providers are trying to reduce costs by reducing investment in technical tools and staff skills that are necessary to ensure the security of a cloud solution. This leads to the fact that cloud environments are becoming more susceptible to attacks by cybercriminals,” the company said in a press release.
EY said that the state-run institutions of Ukraine also should not forget about countering cyber threats.
According to EY Global Information Security Survey 2018-2019, vulnerabilities with the most increased risk exposure over the past 12 months were careless/unaware employees (34%), Outdated security controls (26%), unauthorized access (13%), and related to cloud-computing use (10%).
Most organizations (82%) are not sure if they successfully identify cybersecurity incidents. Among organizations suffered from incidents over the past 12 months, less than one third (31%) say that the incident was revealed by the cybersecurity service of the company.
EY said that 60% of organizations say that the person directly responsible for information security is not a board member. Only 18% of organizations say that information security fully influences business strategy plans on a regular basis.
