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by Patrick GALEY PARIS, France (AFP) — None of the trials of Covid-19 candidate vaccines can detect a reduction in serious outcomes such as hospitalization or death, a leading public health expert said Thursday. Writing in the BMJ medical journal, associate editor Peter Doshi warned that not even phase 3 trials under way in the race for a vaccine can prove their product will prevent people contracting Covid-19. In a sobering essay, Doshi said those […]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Brazil’s health minister said Tuesday the country would add the Chinese-made CoronaVac vaccine against Covid-19 to its national immunization program, despite a political and diplomatic row over whether to use it. Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello said the federal government had reached a deal with Sao Paulo state, which is helping test and produce the vaccine, to buy 46 million doses to be administered starting in January. “This vaccine will […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — More than a million people in northern England will be banned from mixing with other households under tougher new coronavirus rules announced by government minister Robert Jenrick on Wednesday. The county of South Yorkshire, which includes the city of Sheffield, will enter into “very high alert” restrictions from 12.01am on Saturday (2301 Friday GMT). “Given rates are amongst the highest in the country, I am pleased that we were able […]
BANGKOK, Thailand (AFP) — Thailand has welcomed its first group of tourists in seven months, as part of an experiment aimed at testing if a wider opening is possible as the coronavirus cripples the kingdom’s economy. A planeload of 39 Chinese tourists flew into Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport Tuesday evening from Shanghai to a welcome from staff in full protective equipment. The visitors underwent health checks and had their luggage disinfected, before donning protective clothing themselves […]
by Peter MURPHY / Géza MOLNAR BUDAPEST, Hungary (AFP) — As the second coronavirus wave bites, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — who shut the borders in September — is holding back on tougher measures such as a lockdown, despite growing criticism of his response. During the first wave, the Central European EU member had relatively low numbers of infections and deaths from the virus compared with most European countries. But in October more Hungarians […]
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — The Spanish government said Tuesday it was considering imposing a nighttime curfew to halt a rise in virus infections as has been put in place in other European nations like France and Belgium. “The possibility of imposing a curfew, I insist, is something we have to consider. We have to study that possibility and we are open to everything,” Health Minister Salvador Illa told a news conference. The minister said “several” […]
by Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS PARIS, France (AFP) — Bottle-fed babies may ingest more than a million pieces of microplastics each day, new research showed Monday highlighting the abundance of plastics in our food products. There is growing evidence that humans consume huge numbers of the tiny particles, formed when larger pieces of plastic break down, but very little is known about the knock-on health consequences. Researchers in Ireland looked at the rate of microplastic release in […]
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AFP) — Argentina surpassed one million coronavirus cases Monday, with areas outside the capital Buenos Aires bearing the brunt of recent infections. The latest report from the Ministry of Health showed 12,982 new infections in the previous 24 hours, pushing the total to 1,002,649. The number of deaths stood at just over 26,700, while more than 800,000 infected people had already recovered. Argentina — which in March suffered South America’s first coronavirus-related […]
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — British researchers on Tuesday said they hope to expose healthy volunteers to the virus that causes Covid-19 in a groundbreaking study to discover the amount needed for people to become infected. The Human Challenge Programme — a partnership that includes Imperial College London — hopes the work will ultimately help to “reduce the spread of the coronavirus, mitigate its impact and reduce deaths”. In what researchers called a world […]
ROME, Italy (AFP) — Italy’s northern Lombardy region prepared Tuesday to impose a nighttime curfew, the most restrictive anti-coronavirus measure the country has seen since emerging from a national lockdown in the spring. The curfew from 11 pm (2100GMT) to 5 am is expected to begin on Thursday night and last to November 13. Health Minister Roberto Speranza gave his consent late Monday to the more restrictive measure proposed by the regional government, after an […]
OTTAWA, Canada (AFP) — Canada, in the midst of the second wave of Covid-19 illnesses, topped 200,000 cases and inched closer to 10,000 deaths Monday, according to official data compiled by Canadian broadcasters CBC and CTV. About 80 percent of these cases and more than 90 percent of the deaths were recorded in the country’s two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec, which has been the epicenter of the country’s epidemic since it broke out […]
by Thomas PERROTEAU LAGANES, Spain (AFP) — At Severo Ochoa hospital in a Madrid suburb badly-hit during the pandemic’s first wave, the intensive care unit is once again full and exhausted medics dread a repeat of the same “horror”. “We’re swamped,” admits Ricardo Diaz Abad, head of intensive care at this hospital in Leganes, south-west of Madrid, standing in front of the unit’s 12 beds, all filled with gravely ill Covid-19 patients. “Unfortunately we lost […]
