“Many countries are now experiencing difficulties obtaining oxygen concentrators,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “Demand is currently outstripping supply.”

The health agency has bought 14,000 oxygen concentrators from manufacturers and plans to send them to 120 countries in the coming weeks, Tedros said. A further 170,000 concentrators – worth about US$100m – will be potentially available over the next six months.

Cases worldwide passed 9.4 million on Thursday, with the WHO saying it expected global infections to pass 10 million by the end of the week. At least 480,000 people have died so far.

Cases continue to surge in the Americas, with the United States confirming its second-highest one-day total in the pandemic so far, according to Oxford University data project Our World in Data, with 34,700 new infections. It is the highest since 26 April, when a record 48,529 cases were confirmed in 24 hours. Researchers from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicted that US deaths would reach 180,000 by 1 October, up from the current toll of 121,969.

The head of the WHO emergencies program, Dr. Mike Ryan, said many Latin American countries experienced a 25%-50% increase in cases in the past week.

“I would characterize the situation in the Americas in general as still evolving, not having reached its peak yet, and likely to result in sustained numbers of cases and continued deaths,” he said, The Guardian reported.

Mexico confirmed its second-highest coronavirus deaths so far, with 947 fatalities on Wednesday. The highest daily toll came on 3 June with 1,092 deaths. Mexico has 196,847 known cases.

The death toll from the coronavirus in Latin America is expected to skyrocket to 390,000 by October, with Brazil and Mexico accounting for two-thirds of fatalities as other nations in the region contain their outbreaks, the University of Washington said on Wednesday.

This week, deaths in the region passed 100,000 and cases have tripled from 690,000 one month ago to 2 million.

Meanwhile, in Australia, the economic fallout for airlines continued, with Qantas announcing 6,000 job losses and 15,000 employees to be stood down as it predicted that most international flights were unlikely to resume until mid-2021. The airline also canceled a $200m dividend payment it was due to make to shareholders in September.

In the state of Victoria, more than 1,000 Australian defense force personnel will door-knock two suburbs at the heart of the latest outbreak of COVID-19, with residents, offered free testing, as 33 more cases of the virus were identified in the state overnight.

In other news from around the world:

New Zealand citizens returning home from coronavirus hotspots are facing a backlash from some as people worry that the arrivals will bring a resurgence in cases

Brothels in the Netherlands can reopen on 1 July after being shut for more than three months, the government announced on Wednesday

Volunteers in the UK, Brazil and South Africa received their first doses of an experimental vaccine as part of a human trial run by Oxford University, as cases continue to rise and concerns grow over potential access to life-saving treatments

The pilots of a plane that crashed last month in Pakistan, killing 98 people, were preoccupied with the coronavirus crisis and tried to land with the aircraft’s wheels still up, according to initial official reports.

In the US, democrats will hold an almost entirely virtual presidential nominating convention in Milwaukee using live broadcasts and online streaming. Joe Biden plans to accept the presidential nomination in person during the 17-20 August convention, but it remains to be seen whether there will be a significant in-person audience there to see it.

German airline Lufthansa’s top shareholder said on Wednesday he would back a €9bn government rescue package, removing the threat of a last-minute veto that could have plunged the airline into bankruptcy, AFP reports.

China reported 19 newly confirmed cases of coronavirus amid mass testing in Beijing, where a recent outbreak appears to have been brought under control. Of the new cases it reported Thursday, 13 were in Beijing and one in the neighboring province of Hebei. Officials say the other five were brought by Chinese travelers from outside the country. No new deaths were reported.

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Some truths about the Universe and our experience in it seem immutable. The sky is up. Gravity sucks. Nothing can travel faster than light. Multicellular life needs oxygen to live. Except we might need to rethink that last one.

Earlier this year, scientists discovered that a jellyfish-like parasite doesn’t have a mitochondrial genome – the first multicellular organism known to have this absence. That means it doesn’t breathe; in fact, it lives its life completely free of oxygen dependency, SomagNews reported.

To date, we have been taught that no multicellular animal can survive without oxygen. However, like everything in science, this topic proved that science has never been precise. The researchers found for the first time a multicellular animal that did not need oxygen.

Researchers who discovered a jellyfish-like parasite earlier this year found that this animal did not have a mitochondrial genome. Thus, the jellyfish-like parasite was registered as the first multicellular organism that did not have a mitochondrial genome.

The discovery of the jellyfish-like parasite mitochondrial genome also marked that it was not breathing. Of course, this resulted in the conclusion that this animal does not need oxygen. This discovery of researchers could be used to study not only life on Earth but perhaps extraterrestrial life.

Mitochondria, one of the cell organelles, is located inside the cells of any animal’s body (except red blood cells). Mitochondria are one of the most basic structures of breathing. These organelles divide oxygen and form molecules called adenosine triphosphatase. Adenosine triphosphatase is the molecule that powers the cells of organisms.

Although an animal that needs very little oxygen has been discovered to date, an animal without mitochondria has never been discovered. You may be wondering how the animal, which does not need oxygen due to this deficiency, survives. But even scientists haven’t been able to explain it yet.

According to some estimates, this jellyfish-like parasite might have been getting adenosine triphosphatase from the living creature. Of course, it has not been possible to reach a definitive conclusion yet. However, with this example, nature proved again how unpredictable it is.

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According To Iran News, Astronomers have detected molecular oxygen in another galaxy over half a billion light-years away for the first time outside the Milky Way.

Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the Universe, behind hydrogen (naturally) and helium. So its chemistry and abundance in interstellar clouds are important for understanding the role of molecular gas in galaxies, Science Alert reported.

Astronomers have searched for oxygen again and again, using millimetre astronomy, which detects the radio wavelengths emitted by molecules; and spectroscopy, which analyses the spectrum to look for wavelengths absorbed or emitted by specific molecules.

But these searches have turned up a puzzling lack of oxygen molecules. Which means “a comprehensive picture of oxygen chemistry in different interstellar environments is still missing,” wrote a team of astronomers led by Junzhi Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in a new paper.

One place molecular oxygen has been detected is the Orion nebula; it’s been hypothesised that out in space, oxygen is bound up with hydrogen in the form of water ice that is clinging to dust grains.

But the Orion nebula is a stellar nursery, and it’s possible that the intense radiation from very hot young stars shocks the water ice into sublimation and splits the molecules, releasing the oxygen.

Which brings us to a galaxy called Markarian 231.

Markarian 231 is special. It’s 561 million light-years away, and powered by a quasar. That’s an extremely luminous galactic nucleus with an active supermassive black hole in the centre. They’re the brightest objects in the Universe, and Markarian 231 contains the closest quasar to Earth.

In fact, astronomers think Markarian 231 might have two active supermassive black holes in its centre, whirling around each other at a furious rate.

An active galactic nucleus drives molecular outflows, producing continuous shocks of the kind that might release oxygen from water in molecular clouds. The molecular outflows in Markarian 231 are particularly high velocity, so Wang and colleagues went looking for oxygen.

Using the IRAM 30-metre radio telescope in Spain, they took observations of the galaxy for four days across a number of wavelengths. In those data, they found the spectral signature of oxygen, in line with the shock hypothesis.

“With deep observations toward Markarian 231 using the IRAM 30 meter telescope and NOEMA, we detected (molecular oxygen) emission in (an) external galaxy for the first time,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

“The detected O2 emission is located in regions about 10 kpc (32,615 light-years) away from the center of Markarian 231 and may be caused by the interaction between the active galactic nucleus-driven molecular outflow and the outer disc molecular clouds.”

The team’s measurements revealed that the abundance of oxygen compared to hydrogen was around 100 times higher than that found in the Orion nebula, so the galaxy could be undergoing a more intense version of the same molecule-splitting process.

As Markarian is a starburst galaxy, undergoing furious star formation, this could be possible. Just one region in the galaxy is forming new stars at a rate of over 100 solar masses a year. The Milky Way, by contrast, is pretty quiet, with a star formation rate of around 1 to two solar masses.

On the other hand,these findings could also mean that more observations need to be taken to confirm that the astronomers are correct in interpreting their results as oxygen.

If the results hold, the phenomenon could be used to understand more about both molecular oxygen in galaxies, and the molecular outflow from an active galactic nucleus, the researchers said.

“This first detection of extragalactic molecular oxygen provides an ideal tool to study active galactic nucleus-driven molecular outflows on dynamic timescales of tens of megayears,” they wrote.

“O2 may be a significant coolant for molecular gas in such regions affected by active galactic nucleus-driven outflows.”

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According To Iran News, The world’s oceans are gasping for breath, a report issued Saturday at the annual global climate talks in Madrid has concluded.

Oxygen in the oceans is being lost at an unprecedented rate, with “dead zones” proliferating and hundreds more areas showing oxygen dangerously depleted, as a result of the climate emergency and intensive farming, experts have warned, Guardian reported.

Sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish species were at particular risk, scientists said, with many vital ecosystems in danger of collapse. Dead zones – where oxygen is effectively absent – have quadrupled in extent in the last half-century, and there are also at least 700 areas where oxygen is at dangerously low levels, up from 45 when research was undertaken in the 1960s.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature presented the findings on Saturday at the UN climate conference in Madrid, where governments are halfway through tense negotiations aimed at tackling the climate crisis.

Grethel Aguilar, the acting director general of the IUCN, said the health of the oceans should be a key consideration for the talks. “As the warming ocean loses oxygen, the delicate balance of marine life is thrown into disarray,” she said. “The potentially dire effects on fisheries and vulnerable coastal communities mean that the decisions made at the conference are even more crucial.”

All fish need dissolved oxygen, but the biggest species are particularly vulnerable to depleted oxygen levels because they need much more to survive. Evidence shows that depleted levels are forcing them to move towards the surface and to shallow areas of sea, where they are more vulnerable to fishing.

Some ocean areas are naturally lower in oxygen than others, but these are even more susceptible to damage when their oxygen levels are depleted further, the report’s authors said. Species that can more easily tolerate low oxygen levels, such as jellyfish, some squid and marine microbes, can flourish at the expense of fish, upsetting the balance of ecosystems. The natural oceanic cycles of phosphorus and nitrogen are also at risk.

The world’s oceans are already being overfished, and assailed by a rising tide of plastic waste, as well as other pollutants. Seas are about 26% more acidic than in pre-industrial times because of absorbing the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with damaging impacts on shellfish in particular.

Low oxygen levels are also associated with global heating, because the warmer water holds less oxygen and the heating causes stratification, so there is less of the vital mixing of oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor layers. Oceans are expected to lose about 3-4% of their oxygen by the end of this century, but the impact will be much greater in the levels closest to the surface, where many species are concentrated, and in the mid to high latitudes.

Intensive farming also plays a major role. When excess artificial fertilizer from crops, or manure from the meat industry, runs off the land and into rivers and seas, it feeds algae which bloom and then cause oxygen depletion as they decompose.

The problem of dead zones has been known about for decades, but little has been done to tackle it. Farmers rarely bear the brunt of the damage, which mainly affects fishing fleets and coastal areas. Two years ago, the meat industry in the US was found to be responsible for a massive dead zone measuring more than 8,000 sq miles in the Gulf of Mexico.

This year’s UN climate conference, known as COP25, was originally billed as the “Blue COP”, with a spotlight on the oceans for the first time in the history of the negotiations. The focus was chosen because of the original location in Chile, a country with more than 4,000km of coastline and a strong reliance on the marine economy.

But the move to Madrid, forced by political unrest in Santiago, has meant many of the planned events have been curtailed. Scientists and activists gathered in landlocked Madrid are trying to highlight the issues by demonstrating how vital the seas are in protecting us from climate chaos – as they absorb so much of the excess carbon dioxide, and excess heat, in the atmosphere – and how much they are at risk from its impacts.

Protecting marine life could help the oceans to function better, soaking up more carbon and providing barriers against sea level rises and storm surges, in the form of coral reefs and mangrove swamps.

“A healthy ocean with abundant wildlife is capable of slowing the rate of climate breakdown substantially,” said Dr Monica Verbeek, the executive director of the group Seas at Risk. “To date, the most profound impact on the marine environment has come from fishing. Ending overfishing is a quick, deliverable action which will restore fish populations, create more resilient ocean ecosystems, decrease CO2 pollution and increase carbon capture, and deliver more profitable fisheries and thriving coastal communities.”

“Ending overfishing would strengthen the ocean, making it more capable of withstanding climate change and restoring marine ecosystems – and it can be done now,” explained Rashid Sumaila, professor and director of the fisheries economics research unit at the University of British Columbia. “The crisis in our fisheries and in our oceans and climate are not mutually exclusive problems to be addressed separately – it is imperative that we move forward with comprehensive solutions to address them.”

A study published at COP25 by Greenpeace International showed that restoring marine ecosystems could play a major role in tackling climate chaos.

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