Russian ISS cosmonauts struggle to find an air leak.

Cosmonauts are considering sealing off the affected area, but worry this would impact the overall operation of the orbital station. Russia's space agency has said it can send more oxygen to the ISS, if necessary.

The 20-year-old spacecraft has hosted a wide variety of experiments in zero gravity.

The International Space Station is still losing oxygen but the situation is under control, Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Saturday, adding that the agency was ready to send an additional supply of oxygen if the problem escalates.

The leak is affecting the Russian section of the ISS, with the fault apparently located in an access section to the Zvezda module. The exact location is not yet clear, Russian media reported.

"We have had this leak for quite some time, the rate is very small, nothing has happened. One of the leaks was found and reduced, but it still remains," Roscosmos Program Director Sergei Krikalev told Russia's Interfax news agency.

The pressure to find the source of the leak is growing, as oxygen reserves and air pressure continues to decrease.

Cause of damage unknown

A 4.5-centimeter (1.7-inch) rip was already uncovered in October with the help of a floating tea bag, and sealed.

The astronauts, unaware of what caused the damage, then realized there was another leak from elsewhere in the same section of the 20-year-old spacecraft. However, they failed to find the fault during a spacewalk in November.

The astronauts are considering the possibility of sealing off the affected section and using oxygen reserves, but say this would impact the overall operation of the ISS.

Everything is under control

Roscosmos has said there is no danger to the seven people onboard the ISS, which includes four Americans, two Russians, and a Japanese astronaut.

Agency head Dmitry Rogozin assured the public that there were reserves of oxygen on board and that scheduled cargo delivery in February would include oxygen.

"First, the station itself has oxygen reserves. That is, if it is necessary to replenish oxygen and nitrogen in the event of atmospheric pressure losses, we have such reserves. And we are going to send a cargo ship to the ISS in February. It already has a supply of oxygen," Rogozin was quoted as saying by Russia's TASS news agency.

"If necessary, we can use our relationship with NASA and send part of the cargo, including oxygen, with an American cargo ship," said Rogozin. "There is no need to worry, everything is fine, everything is under control."

 

HUBBLE'S EXCITING UNIVERSE: FINDING SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES

 Hubble’s sharp vision has helped astronomers solve a number of mysteries about supermassive black holes, including their abundance and their influence on galaxies in the evolving universe.

Einstein’s theory of general relativity first described the characteristics of such hypothesized gravitationally collapsed objects. His theory described an event horizon swallowing light, which would prohibit telescopes from ever directly seeing such objects.

The actual term “black hole” wasn’t coined until six decades later by astrophysicist John Wheeler. In the early 1970s, the first black-hole candidate, Cygnus X-1, was discovered in X-rays coming from superheated material swirling around a black hole orbiting a normal star. The black hole is 15 times the mass of our Sun.

In the early 1990s, Hubble began to provide compelling circumstantial evidence for the existence of gargantuan black holes measuring millions or billions of times the mass of our Sun. Because of Hubble’s ability to discern faint objects in the vicinity of bright objects, the telescope made definitive observations showing that quasars (very distant, compact sources of intense radiation) dwell in the cores of galaxies. These galaxies are greatly outshined by the quasar’s “floodlight-beam” brilliance. Hubble revealed that most of the galaxies were seen in the process of colliding with other galaxies, and, according to theory, these violent encounters would fuel a central black hole. Engorged with gas, the black hole loses some material to blazing jets that shoot out of a galaxy’s center like a blowtorch, which are easily resolved by Hubble.

Next, Hubble greatly bolstered the idea of supermassive black holes by measuring their masses, providing the first observational measurements that proved their existence. In 1997, Hubble astronomers looked at the nearest “mini-quasar,” the brilliant core of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. Astronomers used spectroscopy (dividing starlight into its component colors) to “weigh” a black hole to see if the amount of its unseen mass far exceeded the mass that could be attributed to stars alone. Hubble’s spectrograph measured the speed of gas trapped in the gravitational field of a black hole at the center. The extreme velocities indicated the presence of an ultra-compact central mass that could only be explained as a black hole.

The Hubble image on the left shows the core of the galaxy where the suspected black hole dwells. Astronomers mapped the motions of gas entrapped in the black hole’s powerful gravitational pull. The change in wavelength, or color, records whether an object is moving toward or away from the observer. The larger the excursion from the centerline—seen as a green and yellow along the center strip—the greater the rotational velocity. If no black hole were present, the line would be nearly vertical across the scan.

Astronomers used Hubble to measure the velocities at which stars and gas swirl around a black hole, to catalog black holes in active and quiescent galaxies. A Hubble census of galaxies showed that supermassive black holes are commonly found in a galaxy’s center. The survey suggests that black holes may have been intimately linked to the birth and evolution of galaxies. This idea is bolstered by a relationship, developed by Hubble observations, that a black hole’s mass is tied to the mass of a galaxy's central bulge of stars. The more massive the bulge, the more massive the black hole. This relationship implies there is some feedback mechanism between the growth of a galaxy and its central black hole.

NASA:Apophis asteroid Could Hit Earth in 2068.

 

Earth has been bombarded by space rocks throughout its history, but we’re lucky no large ones have slammed into the planet lately. Astronomers keep a careful watch on the skies, hoping to spot potential impactors far enough in advance that we can do something about it, and one of the most worrying objects is 99942 Apophis. This skyscraper-sized asteroid might still hit Earth in 2068, according to a new analysis from the University of Hawaii and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

Scientists discovered Apophis in 2004, sounding the alarm when initial observations suggested it had a worryingly high 2.4 percent chance of hitting Earth in 2029. Thankfully, further study lowered that probability to zero. Still, astronomers have been keeping an eye on Apophis ever since — it’s currently considered the third-highest impact threat to Earth, behind 101955 Bennu and 29075 (1950 DA). However, the highest impact risks for those objects are centuries out. 

NASA’s Sentry Risk Table shows a 1 in 150,000 chance of Apophis hitting Earth in 2068, but that doesn’t take into account a phenomenon known as the Yarkovsky effect. As asteroids tumble through space, they absorb energy from the sun. That energy is radiated back into space as heat, but the process is not uniform over the object’s entire surface. The result is a small but measurable push that alters the object’s orbit. Davide Farnocchia at NASA and Dave Tholen from the University of Hawaii used data from the Subaru Telescope to try and pin down how much the Yarkovsky effect changes our odds. 

                                                        This is our best guess at Apophis’ shape.

Tholen says the true impact risk is probably closer to 1 in 530,000, a number used by the NEODyS impact monitor service that includes the Yarkovsky effect. The new observations will probably push NASA’s Sentry risk to a similarly low level. So yes, it’s probably less likely Apophis will hit Earth in a few decades, but astronomers will need to monitor its orbit over time to make sure. There is still a very real, non-zero chance that Apophis will get caught in Earth’s gravity in 2068. 

You don’t want to take any risks with an object like Apophis. While it’s not quite “mass extinction” big, an impact would be catastrophic. It’s a simple matter of physics — Apophis hitting Earth results in an explosion equivalent to 1,151 megatons of TNT. By comparison, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated by humans was around 57 megatons. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa clocked in at about 200 megatons. Apophis could level a small country, cause massive tidal waves, and spark widespread wildfires. All in all, a pretty bad day for Earth. 

In the event Apophis is ever on a collision course, astronomers should be able to tell us well in advance. Maybe it’ll even be early enough to try one of those pie-in-the-sky asteroid deflection systems we always hear about.

YouTube was down in India and other countries; Now back up: Know what happened

 

This widespread issue started at around 4 p.m. PT, with YouTube on Twitter confirming the problem. The company is “aware of the issue and working on a fix.” Given the timing, the outage is being particularly felt across the US.

YouTube on all platforms is currently browseable, but users are not able to play videos. Initially, the thumbnail image would appear on mobile, but be accompanied by a continuously loading progress indicator. Later on in the outage, an error message appeared. Searching for videos still works, but there is a slight delay before everything loads.

A similar issue plagues YouTube TV, which was only available in the US. The YouTube Music app does not appear to be impacted, but the streaming service was not loading on Smart Displays, speakers, or other Assistant devices.The Play Store was also affected. Android apps was downloading, but the install process failed.

The issue also affected YouTube TV and the movies and TV shows people purchase through Google TV. The platform was fixed after more than an hour.

DownDetector website showed severe user reported problems with YouTube, indicating the problem was widespread and numerous users on Twitter reported that YouTube wasn't working for them.

"If you're having trouble watching videos on YouTube right now, you're not alone and our team is aware of the issue and working on a fix. We'll follow up here with any updates," YouTube said in a tweet.

"...And we're back. We're so sorry for the interruption. This is fixed across all devices & YouTube services, thanks for being patient with us," YouTube said.

Earlier, the DownDetector graph peaked with more than 280,000 user reports in less than an hour.

Taj Mahal opens with all COVID-19 norms in place

 

Taj Mahal

After being shut for tourists for around six months, one of the seven wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal reopened from Monday.

It was closed on March 17 after all heritage monuments protected under the Archeological Survey of India, after discussion with the Union ministry of culture, were asked to close for the visitors following the rapid outbreak of SARS-CoV-2.

One of the first few visitors to step inside the Taj Mahal's premises Debargha Sengupta, 25 arrived in Prayagraj on September 19 for SSB exam and later took a train to Agra to visit the monument for the first time ever.

"The government locker room was closed for which I had to keep my luggage in a private shop but as I took entry and saw Taj Mahal for the first time ever I remained speechless. It is mesmeric. Moreover, less crowd had added more essence of its majestic presence," he said.

Another visitor Nishant Vasisht said, "It's incredible and historical at the same time. This is the first time ever that Taj was shut for six months. We are here to witness the change. The new normal has to be expected and adopted for our good. I have come with my family, stood in the queue, got digital tickets, and all set to see Taj."

Shefali a guide by profession said, "We were allowed inside only after the guards checked our body temperature. Shoe sanitizers are there at the entry point. It feels great. There is not much crowd at this time (around 6:30 am) so the scene will be different."

To keep up with the COVID guidelines, the site has imprinted norms saying not more than 5,000 visitors are allowed in a day. Also, group photographs are not at all encouraged.

Guards are keeping strict vigil so that tourists do not touch the railing and walls of the monument and used tissue paper, mask, gloves shoe covers are dumped in the dustbin.

Although most of the historical sites under ASI were opened, Agra Fort and Taj Mahal remained closed as it fell under the containment zone.

A scientist's quick animation reveals that Earth has two types of day. Humans use the one that's 4 minutes longer.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this view of Earth from the spacecraft's vantage point in orbit around the moon.

• An animation by planetary scientist James O'Donoghue reveals that Earth has two types of the day: sidereal days and solar days.
• The sidereal day happens each time Earth completes a 360-degree rotation. That takes 23 hours and 56 minutes.
• The solar day — the one humans count in the calendar — happens when Earth spins just a little further, and the sun is at the same point in the sky as it was 24 hours ago.
• We count 365 days in a year even though Earth spins 366 times.

How long does it take Earth to complete a 360-degree rotation? Not quite 24 hours, it turns out — it's precisely 23 hours and 56 minutes.

But because Earth is constantly moving along its orbit around the sun, a different point on the planet faces the sun directly at the end of that 360-degree spin. For the sun to reach the exact same position in the sky, Earth has to rotate 1 degree further.

That's how humans have chosen to measure days: not by the Earth's exact rotation, but the position of the sun in the sky.

Technically, these are two different types of day. A day measured by the completion of a 360-degree rotation is called the sidereal day. A day based on the position of the sun, however, is a solar day. The latter is four minutes longer than the former, making the even 24 hours we're used to.

"It's only because we move around the sun in an orbit that the solar day takes 24 hours," James O'Donoghue, a planetary scientist at the Japanese space agency (JAXA), told Business Insider. "If we didn't orbit the sun, both days would be the same."

He made the below animation to show how this works.

Because we go by solar days in our calendars, we count 365 days in a year. But Earth actually completes a full rotation (a sidereal day) 366 times per year.

O'Donoghue describes the difference between these two types of the day as a matter of choosing which background object we use as a basis of comparison for Earth's rotation. A full rotation relative to the position of the sun is a solar day. A full rotation relative to all the other stars we see is a sidereal day.

If we used the sidereal day instead, "the sun would rise about four minutes earlier every day," O'Donoghue said. "After six months of doing this, the sun would be rising 12 hours earlier."

He added: "We've decided to tie our daily rhythm to the sun, not the stars. In fact, the stars rise about four minutes earlier every day because of our choice."

A Mining Company Blew Up A 46,000-Year-Old Aboriginal Site. Its CEO Is Resigning

 

                            Juukan Gorge cave site before and after mining works

Mining giant Rio Tinto is parting ways with its chief executive as it tries to quell public anger over the company's destruction of a 46,000-year-old sacred Aboriginal site in Australia.

In May, the company blasted through two rock shelters in Juukan Gorge in Western Australia in order to mine iron ore. Evidence of human habitation there dates back tens of millennia.

The destruction in the Pilbara region was not illegal under Australian law, according to local media reports. Rio Tinto obtained permission to mine in the area in 2013, "a right which was not affected by the discovery of ancient artefacts such as stone relics, faunal remains and human hair in one of the Juukan caves a year later," Australia's ABC noted.

But "what happened at Juukan was wrong," the company's chairman, Simon Thompson, said in a statement Friday. "We are determined to ensure that the destruction of a heritage site of such exceptional archaeological and cultural significance never occurs again at a Rio Tinto operation."

Jean-Sébastien Jacques, the company's chief executive and executive director, will depart by "mutual agreement," Rio Tinto said. He'll remain in the role until a replacement is found or by March 31, whichever comes first.

Two other high-ranking executives, iron-ore division head Chris Salisbury and corporate relations head Simone Niven, are also leaving the company.

A month after the destruction in Juukan Gorge, the company issued an apology and said it would support strengthening legal protections for Aboriginal heritage sites.

Last month, after a board review, Rio Tinto stripped the three executives of performance-related bonuses for this year. That review concluded that even though the company had legal permission, its actions "fell short of the Standards and internal guidance that Rio Tinto sets for itself."

Friday's announcement came after "significant stakeholders have expressed concerns about executive accountability," according to the company.

"We are also determined to regain the trust of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people and other Traditional Owners," Thomson said.

Critics of Rio Tinto say there is abundant evidence that the company was aware of the site's importance before the blasting. For example, as the BBC reported, "last week it was revealed that in the days running up to the caves' destruction in May, Rio Tinto hired lawyers in case opponents tried to seek injunctions to stop them."

The Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation released a statement saying their people had no comment on the executive shakeup, ABC reported.

"We will continue to work with Rio Tinto in the aftermath of the Juukan Gorge disaster," the statement said.

"Our focus continues to rest heavily on preserving Aboriginal heritage and advocating for wide-ranging changes to ensure a tragedy like this never happens again."

Jamie Lowe is the chief executive of the National Native Title Council, which advocates for Australia's traditional owners of the land. He said the group welcomes the changes at the top of Rio Tinto, but stressed there is more to be done.

"We do fear that if this is the behaviour of a company thought to have sector-leading standards, what is the risk another Juukan Gorge-type incident will happen again, without sector-wide reforms?" Lowe said in a statement.

He said Rio Tinto has so far refused to carry out an independent review of what led to the destruction — a step that the traditional owners see as critical to prevent further losses to priceless Indigenous sites.

'Black Panther' star Chadwick Boseman dies from colon cancer

 

LOS ANGELES: Chadwick Boseman, star of the groundbreaking superhero movie "Black Panther," has died after a private four-year battle with colon cancer, his publicist told AFP on Friday (Saturday in Malaysia).

Boseman, 43, never publicly discussed his condition and continued to work on major Hollywood films during and between "countless" operations and chemotherapy, his family said in a statement.

"It was the honor of his career to bring King T'Challa to life in 'Black Panther,'" they said.

"A true fighter, Chadwick persevered through it all," the statement added.

Boseman became the first black superhero to get his own standalone film in the record-breaking Marvel franchise with 2018's "Black Panther."

The movie, set in the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda, was adored by critics and audiences, becoming the first comic book film to be nominated for best picture at the Oscars and grossing over US$1 billion worldwide.

Earlier in his career, Boseman played black icons, Jackie Robinson, in "42" - today, ironically, was Jackie Robinson Day in the US - and James Brown in "Get on Up."

The news of Boseman's death sent shockwaves through Hollywood and around the world.

"The true power of @chadwickboseman was bigger than anything we saw on screen," wrote Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

"From the Black Panther to Jackie Robinson, he inspired generations and showed them they can be anything they want - even superheroes."

Boseman's Marvel co-star Mark Ruffalo tweeted: "Brother, you were one of the all-time greats and your greatness was only beginning. Lord love ya. Rest in power, King."

Leading US civil rights organization the NAACP praised Boseman for "showing us how to conquer adversity with grace" and "to walk like a King, without losing the common touch.""#RestInPower #BlackPantherForever," its tweet concluded.

Boseman had recently appeared in Spike Lee's Vietnam War-set "Da 5 Bloods," and was set to appear in a sequel to "Black Panther" due in 2022.

"Our hearts are broken and our thoughts are with Chadwick Boseman's family. Your legacy will live on forever. Rest In Peace," wrote the official Marvel Twitter account.

His character T'Challa, king and protector of technologically advanced Wakanda, was the first black superhero in mainstream American comics, having been featured in "The Fantastic Four" in 1966.

The Marvel film was celebrated as an important cultural moment for its mainly black cast, and for subverting stereotypes by depicting a prosperous African country that takes in refugees and extends its culture and technology to poorer nations. Boseman shrugged off doubters who tried to convince him not to give the superhero an African accent.

"There was a time period where people would ask me questions about whether or not an audience could sit through a movie with a lead character that spoke with that accent," he said at the time. "I became adamant about the fact that it's not true," he added.

Born in South Carolina, the son of a nurse and an upholstery entrepreneur, Boseman has roots in the West African state of Sierra Leone.

Before Marvel, he was best known for his acclaimed portrayal of the legendary Robinson in Brian Helgeland's "42" (2013), which had the highest-grossing debut for a baseball movie in Hollywood history.

He was also lavished with praise for his interpretation of soul singer Brown in "Get on Up" (2014), earning inclusion among the top 10 performances of 2014 by Time magazine.

Asteroid heading towards Earth has 0.41 per cent chance of hitting planet, NASA data shows

 

An asteroid which is projected to come close to Earth later this year has a 0.41 percent chance of hitting the planet, according to Nasa data.

The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the celestial object, known as 2018VP1, is predicted to pass near Earth one day before the US presidential election on 2 November.

The space agency said there were three potential impacts but, “based on 21 observations spanning 12.968 days”, it did not think a direct impact was likely.

2018VP1, which was first identified at Palomar Observatory, California, in 2018, is not considered a “potentially hazardous object” due to its small size - with a diameter of 0.002 km (about 6.5 feet), according to NASA data.

Potentially hazardous objects - usually asteroids or comets - are those which have an orbit taking them close to Earth and are large enough to cause significant regional damage if they ever hit the planet.

Earlier this week, an asteroid flew just 1,830 miles over the southern Indian Ocean - the closest such an object has flown past Earth on record.

The object, known as asteroid 2020 GC, was spotted by the Zwicky Transient Facility, a robotic camera which scans the sky, and is thought to be roughly the size of a large car.

Its small size meant asteroid 2020 GC did not pose much of a threat to Earth as it would have likely broken up in the planet’s atmosphere if it was on course for direct impact.

“It’s really cool to see a small asteroid come by this close because we can see the Earth’s gravity dramatically bend its trajectory,” Paul Chodas, director of CNEOS, said of the discovery.

“Our calculations show that this asteroid got turned by 45 degrees or so as it swung by our planet."

Linux users no longer safe from this up-and-coming DDoS botnet

 

An up-and-coming DDoS botnet known for infecting Windows devices and using them to mine cryptocurrency has now been ported to Linux.

The malware behind the botnet has been given the name Satan DDoS by its creators but security researchers have taken to referring to its as Lucifer in order to avoid confusion with the Satan ransomware.

Lucifer was first discovered by researchers at Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 back in May and at the time, the malware was being used to deploy an XMRig miner on vulnerable Windows systems. The firm's researchers began looking into the botnet after they discovered it while following multiple incidents involving the exploitation of a critical vulnerability in a component of the Laravel web framework which can lead to remote code execution.

• We've put together a list of the best Linux distros for privacy and security
• These are the best anonymous browsers on the market
• Also check out our roundup of the best malware removal software

The cybercriminals behind the botnet have already updated the capabilities of its Windows version to steal credentials and escalate privileges in addition to being able to mine for Monero using infected machines.

Lucifer Linux port

According to a new report from Netscout's ATLAS Security Engineering & Response Team (ASERT), the Linux port of the Lucifer malware displays the same welcome message as its Windows counterpart.

The new Linux version of the malware has similar capabilities to the Windows variant and includes modules for cryptojacking and for launching TCP, UCP, and ICMP-based flooding attacks. Linux devices infected with Lucifer can also be used in HTTP-based DDoS attacks.

In their report, Netscout's researchers explained how Lucifer's operators can utilize infected Linux systems to launch even larger DDoS attacks, saying:

“The fact that it can run on Linux-based systems means that it can potentially compromise and make use of high-performance, high-bandwidth servers in internet data centers (IDCs), with each node packing a larger punch in terms of DDoS attack capacity than is typical of most bots running on Windows or IoT-based Linux devices.”

By adding support for Linux, Lucifer's operators will be able to add even more machines to their botnet which will allow it to mine for more cryptocurrency using infected systems.

Toshiba exits laptop business after 35 years

 

Toshiba was a pioneer in personal computer space and had launched its first laptop – T1100, in 1985.

Toshiba is out of the laptop business, officially, after transferring its remaining shares in Dynabook to Sharp Corporation.

The Japanese company said it has transferred the 19.9% of the outstanding shares in Dynabook Inc. that it held to Sharp Corporation. Toshiba had transferred 80.1% of the outstanding shares of Toshiba Client Solutions Co., Ltd, in 2018, which was renamed Dynabook in 2019.

“As a result of this transfer, Dynabook has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sharp,” Toshiba said in a statement.

Toshiba was a pioneer in personal computer space and had launched its first laptop – T1100, in 1985. It was an IBM PC-compatible laptop computer powered by an Intel 80C88 clocking at 4.77 MHz, with 256 kB RAM.

T1100 - Toshiba's first laptop, launched in 1985.   | Photo Credit: Toshiba

T1100 had a 3.5” floppy drive for internal storage, and a monochrome display. It worked on Microsoft’s DOS (2.11) operating system, weighed 4.1 kg, and was priced around $2000.

“The T1100 was a true pioneer in the development of laptop PCs, winning acceptance not only from PC experts but the business community as well,” the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) said in a report.

Toshiba was a prominent brand in the portable PC business, and in the past 35 years, it has developed several products. Its Satellite, Portégé, and Qosmio line of laptop computers were introduced during the 1990s and early 2000s; they competed against products made by IBM, Apple, and Dell.

Responding to Covid-19 — A Once-in-a-Century Pandemic?

In any crisis, leaders have two equally important responsibilities: solve the immediate problem and keep it from happening again. The Covid-19 pandemic is a case in point. We need to save lives now while also improving the way we respond to outbreaks in general. The first point is more pressing, but the second has crucial long-term consequences.

The long-term challenge — improving our ability to respond to outbreaks — isn’t new. Global health experts have been saying for years that another pandemic whose speed and severity rivaled those of the 1918 influenza epidemic was a matter not of if but of when.1 The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed substantial resources in recent years to helping the world prepare for such a scenario.

Now we also face an immediate crisis. In the past week, Covid-19 has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about. I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise.

There are two reasons that Covid-19 is such a threat. First, it can kill healthy adults in addition to elderly people with existing health problems. The data so far suggest that the virus has a case fatality risk around 1%; this rate would make it many times more severe than typical seasonal influenza, putting it somewhere between the 1957 influenza pandemic (0.6%) and the 1918 influenza pandemic (2%).2

Second, Covid-19 is transmitted quite efficiently. The average infected person spreads the disease to two or three others — an exponential rate of increase. There is also strong evidence that it can be transmitted by people who are just mildly ill or even presymptomatic.3 That means Covid-19 will be much harder to contain than the Middle East respiratory syndrome or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which were spread much less efficiently and only by symptomatic people. In fact, Covid-19 has already caused 10 times as many cases as SARS in a quarter of the time.

National, state, and local governments and public health agencies can take steps over the next few weeks to slow the virus’s spread. For example, in addition to helping their own citizens respond, donor governments can help low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) prepare for this pandemic.4 Many LMIC health systems are already stretched thin, and a pathogen like the coronavirus can quickly overwhelm them. And poorer countries have little political or economic leverage, given wealthier countries’ natural desire to put their own people first.

By helping African and South Asian countries get ready now, we can save lives and slow the global circulation of the virus. (A substantial portion of the commitment Melinda and I recently made to help kickstart the global response to Covid-19 — which could total up to $100 million — is focused on LMICs.)

The world also needs to accelerate work on treatments and vaccines for Covid-19.5 Scientists sequenced the genome of the virus and developed several promising vaccine candidates in a matter of days, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations is already preparing up to eight promising vaccine candidates for clinical trials. If some of these vaccines prove safe and effective in animal models, they could be ready for larger-scale trials as early as June. Drug discovery can also be accelerated by drawing on libraries of compounds that have already been tested for safety and by applying new screening techniques, including machine learning, to identify antivirals that could be ready for large-scale clinical trials within weeks.

All these steps would help address the current crisis. But we also need to make larger systemic changes so we can respond more efficiently and effectively when the next epidemic arrives.

It’s essential to help LMICs strengthen their primary health care systems. When you build a health clinic, you’re also creating part of the infrastructure for fighting epidemics. Trained health care workers not only deliver vaccines; they can also monitor disease patterns, serving as part of the early warning systems that alert the world to potential outbreaks.

We also need to invest in disease surveillance, including a case database that is instantly accessible to relevant organizations, and rules requiring countries to share information. Governments should have access to lists of trained personnel, from local leaders to global experts, who are prepared to deal with an epidemic immediately, as well as lists of supplies to be stockpiled or redirected in an emergency.

In addition, we need to build a system that can develop safe, effective vaccines and antivirals, get them approved, and deliver billions of doses within a few months after the discovery of a fast-moving pathogen. That’s a tough challenge that presents technical, diplomatic, and budgetary obstacles, as well as demanding partnership between the public and private sectors. But all these obstacles can be overcome.

One of the main technical challenges for vaccines is to improve on the old ways of manufacturing proteins, which are too slow for responding to an epidemic. We need to develop platforms that are predictably safe, so regulatory reviews can happen quickly, and that make it easy for manufacturers to produce doses at low cost on a massive scale. For antivirals, we need an organized system to screen existing treatments and candidate molecules in a swift and standardized manner.

Another technical challenge involves constructs based on nucleic acids. These constructs can be produced within hours after a virus’s genome has been sequenced; now we need to find ways to produce them at scale.

Beyond these technical solutions, we’ll need diplomatic efforts to drive international collaboration and data sharing. Developing antivirals and vaccines involves massive clinical trials and licensing agreements that would cross national borders. We should make the most of global forums that can help achieve consensus on research priorities and trial protocols so that promising vaccine and antiviral candidates can move quickly through this process. These platforms include the World Health Organization R&D Blueprint, the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium trial network, and the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness. The goal of this work should be to get conclusive clinical trial results and regulatory approval in 3 months or less, without compromising patients’ safety.

Then there’s the question of funding. Budgets for these efforts need to be expanded several times over. Billions more dollars are needed to complete phase 3 trials and secure regulatory approval for coronavirus vaccines, and still more funding will be needed to improve disease surveillance and response.

Government funding is needed because pandemic products are extraordinarily high-risk investments; public funding will minimize risk for pharmaceutical companies and get them to jump in with both feet. In addition, governments and other donors will need to fund — as a global public good — manufacturing facilities that can generate a vaccine supply in a matter of weeks. These facilities can make vaccines for routine immunization programs in normal times and be quickly refitted for production during a pandemic. Finally, governments will need to finance the procurement and distribution of vaccines to the populations that need them.

Billions of dollars for antipandemic efforts is a lot of money. But that’s the scale of investment required to solve the problem. And given the economic pain that an epidemic can impose — we’re already seeing how Covid-19 can disrupt supply chains and stock markets, not to mention people’s lives — it will be a bargain.

Finally, governments and industry will need to come to an agreement: during a pandemic, vaccines and antivirals can’t simply be sold to the highest bidder. They should be available and affordable for people who are at the heart of the outbreak and in greatest need. Not only is such distribution the right thing to do, it’s also the right strategy for short-circuiting transmission and preventing future pandemics.

These are the actions that leaders should be taking now. There is no time to waste.