World Running Out Of Names: UN Body As 2020 Hurricanes Breeze Through Alphabet

Only "Wilfred" remains unused in 2020, meaning a switch to Greek alphabet is looming (Representational)

Geneva, Switzerland:

There have been so many Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms this year that the world is running out of names for them, the United Nations said Tuesday.

The storms are given first names in alphabetical order but this year they are set to run out.

"The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is so active that it is expected to exhaust the regular list of storm names," Clare Nullis, spokeswoman for the UN's Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization (WMO), told a media briefing.

"If this happens, the Greek alphabet will be used for only the second time on record."

Throughout the annual hurricane season which runs from June 1 to November 30, storms are assigned alternating male and female names, this year beginning with Arthur and Bertha.

Storms are named to make them easier to identify in warning messages.

The names are overseen by the WMO. They are reused every six years, though if the hurricanes are particularly devastating, the name is retired and replaced.

The name lists use 21 of the 26 letters of the alphabet due to the difficulty in finding a balance of six easily recognisable English, Spanish, French and Dutch names starting with Q, U, X, Y and Z -- the languages spoken in the Atlantic and Caribbean regions affected.

This year, only the name Wilfred remains unused, meaning a switch to the Greek alphabet is looming.

Joint record

In the latest state of play, Hurricane Paulette had its eye over Bermuda on Monday; Tropical Depression Rene has now dissipated; Hurricane Sally is likely to cause flash flooding on the US Gulf coast on Tuesday; Tropical Storm Teddy is expected to become a hurricane on Tuesday, while Tropical Storm Vicky is over the Atlantic.

To have five tropical cyclones over the Atlantic basin at the same time ties a record set in September 1971, said Nullis.

And according to the US National Hurricane Center, an area of low pressure has formed near Cape Verde and has a 50 percent chance of tropical cyclone formation in the next 48 hours.

The Greek alphabet was only ever used once before in 2005, when the first six letters were used as names for storms: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta.

That exceptional year saw the devastating hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, whose names were all retired.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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2020 Hurricane Names Storm names World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

MADRID: Some volunteers have quit Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine trial in Spain after news of side effects in a participant in AstraZeneca’s trial, the Spanish programme’s lead investigator told Reuters on Tuesday.

The investigator, Alberto Borobia, said there were enough reserve volunteers for the trial to continue as normal, however.

“Many have called to ask us some more detail about the risk of the vaccine, whether what happened with that vaccine had anything to do with the one we are studying, these types of questions,” Borobia said.

He did not say how many people had dropped out.

AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine trials were placed on hold worldwide on Sept. 6 after a serious side effect was reported in one volunteer in Britain.

Trials resumed in Britain and Brazil on Monday following the green light from British regulators but remain on hold in the United States.

Johnson & Johnson’s Belgian Janssen unit began Phase II trials of its COVID-19 vaccine on 190 people in Spain on Monday with those tests due to conclude on Sept. 22.

Trials are also being carried out in the Netherlands and Germany, taking the total number of participants in all three countries to 550.

Johnson & Johnson was one of nine companies to commit last week to uphold scientific standards in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine amid rising concerns that safety and efficacy standards might slip in the rush to halt the pandemic.

Phase II trials are designed to test which dose and schedule of a vaccine generates the most antibodies while Phase III tests the vaccine’s efficacy. Borobia said Phase II was scheduled to run for 14 to 16 months.

If some doses and schedules generate considerable amounts of antibodies, an intermediate Phase III analysis could be conducted before the end of Phase II, Borobia said.

He said volunteers in the third phase would be far more diverse than for Phase II, which only involves people in good health, divided into those aged 18 to 55 and those 65 and above.

“In the third phase, we will include all types of people. It is necessary to include a certain number of hypertense patients, white patients, Asian patients … The population in Phase III is totally heterogeneous,” he said.

The firm aims to test 60,000 people globally in Phase III with a third of the volunteers in hard-hit Latin America, according to Josue Bacaltchuk, vice-president of medical affairs for the Jannsen unit in the region..

The first vaccines are due to be available in early 2021.

Pfizer and BioNTech SE proposed on Saturday to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand their Phase III vaccine trial to 44,000 participants from 33,000 to enrol a more diverse set of volunteers.

Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor

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Running Out Of Names: UN Body As 2020 Hurricanes Breeze Through Alphabet

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Some Volunteers Quit J&J COVID-19 Trial In Spain After AstraZeneca Scare: Investigator

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