Rich countries should not be ordering booster shots for their vaccinated populations while other countries have yet to receive COVID-19 vaccines, the World Health Organization said on Monday. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said deaths were again rising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Delta variant was becoming dominant, and many …
Read More »Everything we know about the Lambda variant so far
While the world reels under the effects of the Delta variant, a new Covid-19 mutation is now on the radar of several countries. The Lambda variant, or C.37, believed to have originated from Peru, was designated as a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization (WHO) on June 14. …
Read More »‘It isn’t over’: WHO warns against easing COVID curbs too soon
Warning by top WHO expert against premature rush back to normality comes amid growing concerns over spread of Delta variant of coronavirus. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned governments around the world against easing COVID-19 restrictions too soon, saying countries that did so risked paying a heavy price for …
Read More »HIV generic drug for babies distributed in Africa, says UNITAID
Aid agencies have distributed a strawberry-flavored tablet for children living with HIV in six African countries, the first generic pediatric version of a key anti-retroviral, global health agency UNITAID said on Sunday. UNITAID and Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) funding procured 100,000 packs of the dolutegravir formulation across Nigeria, Malawi, …
Read More »Delta Variant is Dangerous & is Continuing to Evolve and Mutate: WHO Chief
The world is in a very “dangerous period” of the COVID-19 pandemic compounded by more transmissible variants like Delta, which is continuing to evolve and mutate, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned. He said in countries with low vaccination coverage, terrible scenes of hospitals overflowing are again …
Read More »WHO warns new COVID wave inevitable in Europe as cases rise
UN health agency sounds the alarm and calls for ‘discipline’ as highly infectious Delta variant races through the region. The third wave of infections is now inevitable unless citizens and legislators are “disciplined”, the World Health Organization (WHO) warns, saying a 10-week decline in new coronavirus infections across Europe has …
Read More »Mandatory mask rules extended in Sydney as COVID-19 cluster grows
Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), on Tuesday, reported its biggest rise in new locally acquired COVID-19 cases in nearly a week, prompting authorities to extend a mask mandate in Sydney for a week.
Read More »WHO declares end to second Ebola outbreak in Guinea
The second outbreak, which was announced in February, killed at least 12 people. An Ebola outbreak which started in Guinea in February, infecting 16 people and killing 12, has been declared over, the West African country’s health ministry and the World Health Organization said on Saturday. “I have the honour …
Read More »Delta COVID variant becoming globally dominant, WHO official says
The Delta variant of COVID-19, first identified in India, is becoming the globally dominant variant of the disease, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist said on Friday. Soumya Swaminathan also voiced disappointment in the failure of CureVac’s (5CV.DE) vaccine candidate in a trial to meet the WHO’s efficacy standard, in …
Read More »Africa COVID trajectory is ‘very concerning’, WHO official says
The trend of COVID-19 cases in Africa is very concerning, a senior World Health Organization official said on Friday. Absolute numbers do not make Africa look in bad shape, said Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergency expert, adding that in the last week it had recorded just over 5% of …
Read More »Health experts say India missed early alarm, let deadly coronavirus variant spread
A veteran public health expert warned top Indian officials in early March that a new variant of the coronavirus was spreading quickly in a rural district in the heart of the country and that the outbreak required urgent attention. Federal health authorities failed to respond adequately to that warning, Dr …
Read More »Venezuela accuses US of blocking its access to Covax vaccines with sanctions
Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has stated that US sanctions are preventing the South American nation from accessing Covid vaccines by blocking a $10 million payment to the global Covax scheme. The statement made by the Venezuelan government official during a televised broadcast claimed that the US is blocking “resources …
Read More »Why are calls growing to investigate the Wuhan lab leak theory?
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 …
Read More »Australia’s COVID-19 hotspot logs four new local cases
Australia’s second-most populous state Victoria on Sunday reported two new locally acquired COVID-19 cases, with the low number raising hopes that a hard lockdown in the state’s capital Melbourne will be eased on June 10. Two other new cases were reported on Sunday by an aged care home, but the …
Read More »Climate change responsible for about a third of heat deaths, study says
Heat-related deaths are a serious problem in a warming world Heat is a killer — and climate change is driving up its body count. On average, about 37 percent of heat deaths can be tied back to human-caused climate change, according to a new study in Nature Climate Change. The …
Read More »Covid: WHO renames UK and other variants with Greek letters
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 …
Read More »WHO agrees to study major reforms, meet again on pandemic treaty
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 …
Read More »Opinion | Do people believe Covid myths?
Misinformation could be causing real harm in the community Like viruses, false information spreads through networks. In March 2020, more than a quarter of the top Covid-19 related videos on YouTube contained misleading claims and those had more than 60m views worldwide. The World Health Organization’s Covid “myth-busters” page counters …
Read More »COVID-19 origin: Wuhan lab leak theory is ‘feasible’, says British intelligence
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 …
Read More »Europe sees dramatic fall in COVID-19 cases just in time for summer
When Italy won the Eurovision Song Contest with an over-the-top glam-rock performance, the victory signaled more than just a psychological boost for one of the countries hardest hit by COVID-19: Held before a live, indoor audience of 3,500, the annual kitsch fest confirmed that Europe was returning to a semblance …
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