Tag: health

China virus cases at six-month high despite grinding lockdowns

by Laurie CHEN Agence France-Presse BEIJING, China (AFP) — China reported its highest daily Covid caseload in six months Monday, despite grinding lockdowns that have heavily disrupted manufacturing, education and day-to-day life. Beijing over the weekend quashed hopes that its strict zero-Covid policy — in which spot lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing are employed to quash outbreaks — might be relaxed anytime soon. But a torrent of lockdown-related scandals where residents have complained of inadequate […]

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Apple says iPhone output at Foxconn China plant hit by Covid lockdown

  Beijing, China | AFP | Apple said Covid restrictions have “temporarily impacted” production at Foxconn’s vast iPhone factory in central China, after a surge in cases led the Taiwanese tech giant to lock down the world’s largest manufacturer of new devices. Foxconn, Apple’s principal subcontractor, has seen a surge in Covid-19 cases at its Zhengzhou site, leading the company to shutter the vast complex in a bid to keep the virus in check. Panicking […]

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India’s capital to shut schools as toxic smog chokes city

New Delhi, India | AFP | Primary schools in India’s capital New Delhi will shut to protect children from the toxic smog choking the megacity of 20 million people, authorities said Friday. Smoke from farmers burning crop stubble, vehicle exhaust and factory emissions combine every winter to blanket the capital in a deadly grey haze. On Friday, levels of the most dangerous PM2.5 particles — so tiny they can enter the bloodstream — were almost […]

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‘Hazardous’ smog chokes India’s capital

New Delhi, India | AFP | Smog in New Delhi hit “hazardous” levels on Thursday as smoke from thousands of crop fires in northern India combined with other pollutants to create a noxious grey cocktail enveloping the megacity. Levels of the most dangerous particles — PM2.5, so tiny they can enter the bloodstream — were 588 per cubic metre early on Thursday morning, according to monitoring firm IQAir. That is almost 40 times the daily […]

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China imposes Covid lockdown on 600,000 people around iPhone plant

  Beijing, China | AFP | by Jing Xuan TENG Chinese authorities imposed lockdowns on 600,000 people in the area surrounding the world’s largest iPhone factory on Wednesday after workers fled to avoid a coronavirus outbreak and the resulting restrictions. All people except Covid-prevention volunteers and essential workers “must not leave their residences except to receive Covid tests and emergency medical treatment”, officials from central China’s Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone said. The move comes after images […]

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China to ease mainland residents’ travel to Macau

Beijing, China | AFP | Mainland Chinese residents will be allowed to visit Macau using an online visa system as of Tuesday, officials said, streamlining travel to the world’s largest gambling hub after more than two years of pandemic restrictions. Macau is the only place in China where casinos are legal and the former Portuguese colony once dwarfed even Las Vegas for the scale of bets placed every month. But China’s strict Covid-19 controls have […]

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Rare canine rabies case discovered near Paris

Paris, France | AFP | A rare case of rabies has been detected in a dog in the Paris region which had bitten several people, the French agriculture ministry announced Thursday. “The Pasteur Institute confirmed a case of rabies in a Husky-cross dog held in a shelter in Evry-Courcouronnes in Essonne,” south of the French capital, the statement said. Before being isolated, the infected dog had “bitten several people who were quickly taken care of […]

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Residents on edge as Uganda reports Ebola cases in Kampala

  Kampala, Uganda | AFP | by Grace Matsiko Uganda has reported 14 confirmed cases of Ebola in the greater Kampala region, the country’s health minister said Monday, but sought to assure anxious residents that the situation in the capital was under control. So far, the death toll across the country from the Ebola epidemic declared in late September has climbed to 44, according to World Health Organisation figures issued last week. Uganda’s health ministry […]

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China Covid curbs disrupt production at world’s biggest iPhone factory

  Beijing, China | AFP | Wednesday  Millions of people in China were under tight Covid restrictions on Wednesday as sporadic outbreaks across the country prompted business closures and disruption at the world’s largest iPhone factory. China is the last major economy welded to a zero-Covid strategy, persisting with snap lockdowns, mass testing and lengthy quarantines in a bid to keep infections to a minimum. But fast-spreading virus variants have challenged that approach in recent […]

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For struggling Haiti, return of cholera is a ‘catastrophe’

by Jean Daniel SENAT with Lucie AUBOURG in Washington Agence France-Presse PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) — When humanitarian officials in Haiti try to describe their concerns over a new, fast-spreading cholera epidemic, they struggle to find words strong enough: “alarming,” “chaotic,” even “a catastrophe.” A sizable part of the island’s population has been isolated — and unable to access health care — either by serious fuel shortages or by the brutal armed gangs that control vast […]

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‘Close the windows’: Lebanon power plant sparks cancer fears

Zouk Mikael, Lebanon | AFP | by Jonathan SAWAYA After losing four relatives to respiratory illness, Zeina Matar fled her hometown north of Lebanon’s capital where she says a decaying power plant generates little electricity but very deadly pollution. Thick black smoke sometimes billows from its red-and-white chimneys, leaving a grey haze in the air above the Zouk Mikael industrial district where the toxins remain trapped by a nearby mountain chain. Zeina, aged 40, says […]

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Climate change puts one billion children at ‘extreme risk’: watchdog

  The Hague, Netherlands | AFP | Some one billion children are at “extremely high risk” due to climate change harms, a rights group warned on Wednesday, adding that youths’ living standards failed to improve in the last decade. The KidsRights index, based on figures supplied by UN agencies, also said more than one-third of the world’s children, some 820 million, were currently exposed to heatwaves. Water scarcity affected 920 million children worldwide, while diseases […]

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