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by Robin MILLARD Geneva, Switzerland (AFP) – The World Health Organization said Wednesday it will reconvene its monkeypox experts to decide if the worsening outbreak now constitutes a global public health emergency — the highest level of alert. The UN health agency’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he would hold a second meeting of the emergency committee on monkeypox, with more than 6,000 cases now confirmed in 58 countries. A surge in monkeypox infections has […]
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 […]
by Isabelle CORTES Agence France Presse PARIS France (AFP) — The world is still not using one of its most effective weapons against Covid — properly ventilating public spaces — more than two years into the pandemic, experts warn. At the moment there is a “fragile, armed peace” with Covid-19, said Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva. “In the hopes of stemming the tide of the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
COPENHAGEN, June 22, 2022 (AFP) – Denmark’s government said Wednesday the country will begin offering a fourth dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to risk groups next week and all over-50s after the summer, amid the emergence of a new variant. “Authorities believe the new variant is more infectious than the previous one, which is why we are acting now… to protect the most vulnerable and the elderly”, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told reporters. She said […]
