Health

Hospitals in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital Kinshasa are “overwhelmed” by a rise in COVID-19 infections, President Felix Tshisekedi said on Saturday, as the country was hit by a third wave of the disease. Like many African countries, Congo has officially registered relatively few cases. But the virus has …

The variant first identified in India currently accounts for more than 90 percent of Britain’s new COVID-19 cases. Health authorities in Britain have said the new Delta coronavirus variant is 60 percent more transmissible in households than the previous dominant Alpha variant that forced the United Kingdom to lock down …

Dengue fever cases have been cut by 77% in a “groundbreaking” trial that manipulates the mosquitoes that spread it, say scientists. They used mosquitoes infected with “miraculous” bacteria that reduce the insect’s ability to spread dengue. The trial took place in Yogyakarta city, Indonesia, and is being expanded in the …

China administered about 14.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines on June 8, bringing the total number administered to 808.96 million, data from the National Health Authority showed on Wednesday.

Pfizer Inc said on Tuesday it will begin testing its COVID-19 vaccine in a bigger group of children under age 12 after selecting a lower dose of the shot in an earlier stage of the trial. The study will enroll up to 4,500 children at more than 90 clinical sites …

U.S. regulators on Monday approved Biogen Inc’s aducanumab as the first treatment to attack a likely cause of Alzheimer’s disease despite controversy over whether the clinical evidence proves the drug works. Aducanumab aims to remove sticky deposits of a protein called amyloid-beta from the brains of patients in earlier stages …

Renewed interest in coronavirus origin hypothesis after criticism over WHO inquiry and arrival of new US administration. There is growing public support among the world’s scientific community for fully exploring the possibility the coronavirus may have emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, leading to the global outbreak that has …

Diversity in flu virus strains and lineages has declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, with some experts speculating the potential extinction of certain virulent strains, news reports revealed. Over the years, flu continuously evolves to weaken and evade immune defenses developed by humans to fend them off and in the years …

Australian authorities in the southeastern state of Victoria have detected a “highly transmissible” variant of the deadly coronavirus, stoking concerns of a major spike in cases. Authorities in Victoria said on Friday that the Delta COVID-19 virus variant has for the first time been detected through genomic sequencing among infections …

A study indicates that antibodies are still present up to a year after infection with the coronavirus, according to the Associated Press. Immunologist Ali Ellebedy at Washington University in St. Louis discovered that nearly a year after people recovered from COVID-19 they had plasma cells, one of the body’s immune …

The World Health Organization has issued an emergence use listing for the COVID-19 vaccine made by Sinovac in adults aged 18 and over, the second such authorization it has granted to a Chinese company. In a statement Tuesday, the UN health agency said data submitted to its experts showed that …

A 41-year-old man in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu has been confirmed as the first human case of infection with the H10N3 strain of bird flu, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said on Tuesday. The man, a resident of the city of Zhenjiang, was hospitalised on April 28 after developing …

A medical source reported that the two mucormycosis (Black Fungus) death had been registered in Dhi Qar southern Iraq. The source said that the disease was discovered by coincidence upon the death of the first patient. “The man’s initial death document stated that he died from a fungus in the …

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced a new naming system for variants of Covid-19. From now on the WHO will use Greek letters to refer to variants first detected in countries like the UK, South Africa, and India. The UK variant for instance is labelled as Alpha, the South …

The World Health Organization, battling to coordinate the global response to the coronavirus pandemic, agreed on Monday to study recommendations for ambitious reforms made by independent experts to strengthen the agency. Under the resolution put forward by the European Union, and adopted by consensus, member states are to be firmly …

British intelligence agencies now believe it is “feasible” that the COVID-19 pandemic began with a coronavirus leak from a Chinese laboratory, a media report said on Sunday, prompting UK”s Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi to demand that the WHO must fully investigate the origins of the deadly virus. The origins of …

The British oncologist and Norwegian virologist, who have been working on a COVID-19 vaccine, believe the deadly strain’s origins lie in ‘Gain of Function’ research, where viruses are genetically modified to grant them new abilities to studying their transmission and reproduction. Two senior vaccine researchers have claimed COVID-19 bears the …

Vietnam Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said on Saturday the country has detected a new variant of the coronavirus, a mix of the COVID-19 variants from India and the United Kingdom that spreads quickly by air, online newspaper VnExpress reported. After successfully containing the coronavirus for most of last year, …

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved the Covid-19 vaccine made by the US-German partnership Pfizer-BioNTech for children aged 12 to 15, allowing kids in the bloc to be vaccinated against the virus for the first time. New data shows that the ‘Comirnaty’ vaccine is safe for the younger cohort, …

A group of German scientists claims to have found the cause of the rare blood clots linked to the Oxford/AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccines – and they say the jabs could be altered to prevent the problem The research, led by Professor Rolf Marschalek from Goethe University, in …