Health

A second Global COVID-19 Summit will be held virtually next month for countries to discuss efforts to end the pandemic and prepare for future health threats, according to a joint statement on Monday. “The emergence and spread of new variants, like Omicron, have reinforced the need for a strategy aimed …

The Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use authorization to a new COVID-19 test that can detect infections with only a sample of a patient’s breath, using a device that can yield results in less than three minutes. The agency says the InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyzer will only be available …

Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 500 million on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, as the highly contagious BA.2 sub-variant of omicron surges in many countries in Europe and Asia. The rise of BA.2 has been blamed for recent surges in China as well as record infections in Europe. It has …

A new COVID-19 vaccine might also protect cancer patients with weak immune systems, a new study found. Researchers from the American Association for Cancer Research found that CoVac-1, a new vaccine developed in Germany, induced T-cell (part of the immune system that develops stem cells in the bone marrow to …

Viruses mutate all the time but only some mutations affect their ability to spread or evade prior immunity from vaccination or infection, or the severity of disease they cause. The World Health Organization said on Monday it is tracking a few dozen cases of two new sub-variants of the highly …

The global average of true infection numbers is believed to be 16 times higher than the number of confirmed reported cases – but could have been 97 times higher in Africa, WHO says. More than two-thirds of people living in Africa may have contracted COVID-19 over the past two years, …

China’s President Xi Jinping commended the country’s “tested Zero-Covid” strategy on Friday even as Shanghai prepared nearly 130,000 beds for new coronavirus patients. At an event to honor Olympic athletes, Xi lauded the country’s efforts to hold the recent Winter Games which he said showed the country’s virus policy “once …

The risk of developing serious bleeding or potentially deadly blood clots is elevated for months after experiencing even a mild COVID-19 infection, Swedish researchers found. While the dangers of post-COVID clotting are well known, it’s less clear how long the risk lasts and what should be done to prevent it. …

African American adults have been hospitalized at a higher rate than whites during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC report released on Friday showed that in a period beginning on Dec. 19, 2021, and ending on Jan. …

The World Health Organization (WHO) has sounded the alarm over a global rise in COVID-19 cases, despite reduced testing and several weeks of declining infections. According to reports, the WHO said COVID cases were especially on the rise in parts of Asia, after more than a month of decline, urging …

The number of new coronavirus cases and deaths globally have continued to fall in the past week, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, with only the Western Pacific reporting an increase in COVID-19. In its latest report on the pandemic issued on Wednesday, the UN health agency said new COVID-19 …

AstraZeneca said on Thursday that preliminary data from a trial showed that its COVID-19 shot, Vaxzevria, generated an increase in antibodies against the Omicron and other variants when given as a third booster dose. The increased response, also against the Delta variant, was seen in a blood analysis of people …

The Omicron variant of COVID-19 is killing people across the globe and should not be dismissed as mild, the World Health Organization insisted Thursday. According to reports, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the record numbers of people catching the new variant — which is rapidly out-competing the previously-dominant Delta …

The simultaneous circulation of the Delta and Omicron variants of the coronavirus is creating a “tsunami of cases”, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news briefing on Wednesday. “Delta and Omicron are now twin threats driving up cases to record numbers, leading to spikes in hospitalization …

The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 can within days move from the respiratory system into the brain, heart, and nearly every organ system in the body, and stay there for months, a new study says. A team from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) described their research as the …

U.S. health regulators on Thursday authorized the second pill against COVID-19, providing another easy-to-use medication to battle the rising tide of omicron infections. The Food and Drug Administration authorization comes one day after the agency cleared a competing drug from Pfizer. That pill is likely to become the first-choice treatment …

The World Health Organization does not yet have enough data on the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus to say if it is more transmissible than the Delta variant, an official said on Wednesday, almost a month after South Africa first raised the alarm about its emergence. “We have not …

The fast-spreading Omicron variant has become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the United States, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Omicron now accounts for 73.2 percent of new US cases over the past week ending on Saturday, the CDC reported on Monday. In some …

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from the COVID-19 disease, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. “There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly …