The World Health Organization (WHO) called Wednesday for countries to avoid giving out extra COVID jabs until year-end, pointing to the millions worldwide who have yet to receive a single dose."I will not stay silent when the companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think the world's poor should be satisfied with leftovers," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists.Speaking from WHO's headquarters in Geneva, Tedros urged wealthy count

A fire tore through an overcrowded Indonesian prison in the early hours of Wednesday when most inmates were asleep, killing 41 people and injuring dozens of others, an official said.Firefighters extinguished the blaze – which was mostly contained within one block that housed prisoners jailed on drug charges – at around 3 am (2000 GMT Tuesday) and evacuated the victims.A video released by the Justice Ministry office showed the ceiling collapsing as the fire tore through the block."40 died

As COVID-19 cases and deaths exploded in India in April and May, New Delhi’s premier Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and several others ran so short of oxygen that many patients in the capital suffocated.When the Reuters news agency visited the hospital on Friday, its last coronavirus patient was readying to leave after recovery - remarkable turnaround health experts attribute to growing levels of immunity from natural infection and vaccinations.But hospitals have learned from bitter experience during

Myanmar’s shadow government has called for a “people’s defensive war” against the country’s military, prompting a flare-up in fighting in borderlands, according to media reports, as several powerful ethnic groups expressed support for the call to arms.Duwa Lashi La, the acting president of the National Unity Government (NUG), formed by the elected legislators who were deposed in a 1 February coup, issued the call for the nationwide uprising on Tuesday. “With the responsibility to pro

There will be enough COVID-19 vaccine doses produced by the end of this year to cover the global population, industry heavyweights said Tuesday.There is a yawning gap in vaccination rates between rich and poor countries, but the threshold of 7.5 billion vaccine doses will be reached in September, Thomas Cueni, the head of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) told a news conference in Geneva.Up to 70 percent of adults have received two vaccine d

Here are the latest developments in the coronavirus crisis:Cuba Jabs Toddlers Cuba becomes the first country in the world to vaccinate children from the age of two against the virus, using home-grown jabs not recognised by the World Health Organization (WHO). The communist island of 11.2 million people aims to inoculate all its children before reopening schools that have been closed for the most part since March 2020.

Each phone call from Vietnam causes Thai Duong’s heart to skip a few beats.For Duong, who grew up in District 4 of Ho Chi Minh City but currently lives in California, every contact with home poses the possibility of bad news.

Britain's new HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier has paid a port call to Japan, in a mission that adds to pressure from Tokyo, the United States (US) and allies on China over its increasingly assertive regional maritime presence.The Queen Elizabeth is the flagship of the United Kingdom's (UK) Carrier Strike Group (CSG) deployment, which has been making stops around Japan and carrying out exercises along with vessels from allied nations in recent weeks."This port call to Japan

The Philippines will lift a stay-at-home order in the capital Manila this week as it trials "granular lockdowns", an official said Monday, in a bid to rein in coronavirus cases and revive the economy.More than 13 million people in the national capital region – the country's economic heartland – have been in lockdown since 6 August amid record infections fuelled by the hyper-contagious Delta variant.The move to ease restrictions from Wednesday comes after nationwide daily cases

Wealthy countries could potentially have a surplus of more than one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses available by the end of the year that are not designated as donations to poorer nations, according to a new analysis.Vaccine stock in Western countries has reached 500 million doses this month, with 360 million not earmarked for donations, according to new research by data analytics firm Airfinity.