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BEIJING, China (AFP) — China placed 1.7 million people under lockdown in central Anhui province, where authorities reported nearly 300 new cases Monday in the latest of a string of outbreaks testing Beijing’s no-tolerance approach to Covid-19. The country is the last major economy wedded to a zero-Covid strategy, responding to all cases with strict isolation orders and tough testing campaigns. The outbreak in Anhui — where officials first found hundreds of cases last week […]
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AFP) — The World Health Organization called on Friday for “urgent” action to prevent the spread of monkeypox in Europe, noting that cases had tripled in the region over the past two weeks. “Today, I am intensifying my call for governments and civil society to scale up efforts… to prevent monkeypox from establishing itself across a growing geographical area,” WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Henri Kluge said. “Urgent and coordinated action is […]
Copenhagen, Denmark (AFP) – The World Health Organization said Thursday it expected “high levels” of Covid-19 in Europe this summer and called on countries to monitor the spread as cases tripled in the past month. “As countries across the European region have lifted the social measures that were previously in place, the virus will transmit at high levels over the summer”, WHO Europe regional director Hans Kluge told AFP. “This virus won’t go away […]
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AFP) — Pollution is linked to more than 10 percent of cancer cases in Europe, a report by the European Environment Agency said Tuesday. Most of these cases are preventable, it said. “Exposure to air pollution, carcinogenic chemicals, radon, UV (ultraviolet) radiation and second-hand smoke together may contribute over 10 percent of the cancer burden in Europe,” the agency said in a statement. But EEA expert Gerardo Sanchez said “all environmental and occupational […]
Rizal province with highest Covid positivity rate at 11.9 percent (Eagle News) – Metro Manila’s COVID-19 positivity rate continued to increase, reaching 5.9 percent from 3.9 percent the previous week, according to OCTA Research. Rizal province also reached a high of 11.9 percent Covid positivity rate as of Saturday, June 25. Seven other provinces breached the World Health Organization (WHO) Covid-19 positivity threshold of five percent (5 percent). After Rizal, the areas with the high […]
LIMA, Peru (AFP) — Peru’s government on Sunday declared that a fourth wave of Covid-19 infections had begun to hit the country, which has one of the highest mortality rates from the virus in the world. “We are currently in a fourth wave, as we have seen the increase (of cases)… in different provinces of our country, such as Junin, Arequipa, Cusco and the capital,” Health Minister Jorge Lopez told local broadcaster RPP radio. According […]
by Robin MILLARD Agence France Presse GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — A World Health Organization committee of experts met Thursday to decide whether the monkeypox outbreak constitutes a global health emergency. The outcome of the in-private meeting will be issued on Friday at the earliest, the WHO said. A surge of monkeypox cases has been detected since May outside of the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic. Most of […]
BANGKOK, Thaland (AFP) — Thailand has dropped rules requiring people to wear masks from Friday, the government says, as Covid-19 cases fall and the tourism-dependent kingdom seeks to lure back foreign visitors. Face masks had been compulsory in public since mid-2021, when the country saw a wave of cases driven by the spread of the Delta variant. But the kingdom is keen to kickstart its stuttering economy and is relaxing Covid-19 restrictions, including discarding […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — Covid vaccines prevented nearly 20 million deaths in the first year after they were introduced, according to the first large modelling study on the topic released Friday. The study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, is based on data from 185 countries and territories collected from December 8, 2020 to December 8, 2021. It is the first attempt to estimate the number of deaths prevented directly and indirectly as a result […]
by Camille Bas-Wohlert Agence France-Presse COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AFP) — As the lone laboratory manufacturing a licensed vaccine against monkeypox, Danish company Bavarian Nordic has seen its order book fill up as the usually rare disease spreads around the world. “The approval we got in 2019, when we only sold maybe a few hundred doses, all of a sudden became very, very relevant for international health,” the company’s vice president Rolf Sass Sorensen says with a […]
YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia (AFP) — The global food crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine will kill millions by leaving the hungriest more vulnerable to infectious diseases, potentially triggering the world’s next health catastrophe, the head of a major aid organization has warned. A Russian naval blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports has stopped grain shipments from the world’s fourth-largest exporter of wheat and corn, raising the specter of shortages and hunger in low-income countries. The […]
PARIS, June 22, 2022 (AFP) – by Isabelle Tourne, Isabelle Cortes and AFP European bureaus A resurgence of Covid-19 cases in Europe, this time driven by new, fast-spreading Omicron subvariants, is once again threatening to disrupt people’s summer plans. Several Western European nations have recently recorded their highest daily case numbers in months, due in part to Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5. The increase in cases has spurred calls for increased vigilance across a continent […]
