The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday announced major international trials of three drugs to find out whether they improve the condition of hospitalised COVID-19 patients.Artesunate, imatinib and infliximab will be tested on thousands of volunteer patients in more than 600 hospitals in 52 countries."Finding more effective and accessible therapeutics for COVID-19 patients remains a critical need," said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.Artesunate is a treatme

China's drug regulator has approved the country's first mixed-vaccine trial, a company involved in the study said, as the rapid spread of the Delta variant raises concern about the efficacy of domestically produced jabs.The trial will test the efficacy of combining an "inactivated" vaccine made by China's Sinovac with a DNA-based one developed by United States (US) pharmaceutical company Inovio, a statement issued on Tuesday said.The statement was put out by Advaccine

Philippine tricycle driver Jesus Gomez struggled to make a living even before the capital Manila went back into a coronavirus lockdown last week that forced most of his customers to stay home and halved his meagre income. Six months behind in rent and unable to afford cooking gas, the 77-year-old joined hundreds of others on Wednesday at a covered basketball court to receive PHP1,000 (US$20) government handout. About 80 percent of the more than 13

The recent surge of COVID-19, driven by the Delta variant, has reignited political controversy around mask-wearing in the United States (US), with some governors opposing all measures to make masks mandatory despite advice from health authorities. The dispute feels familiar, harkening back to the early days of the pandemic when masks became a symbol of political affiliation in the US - the clash led by then-president Donald Trump, who made it a point of&amp

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday urged the 20 leaders with the power to overturn the "disgraceful" global imbalance in access to COVID-19 vaccines to reverse the tide before October.The WHO's Bruce Aylward said the world should be "disgusted" – and asked whether the situation could have been any worse had there been an active effort to block the planet's poor from getting vaccinated.The United Nations (UN) health agency has been increasingly infuria

Guinea confirmed a case of Marburg disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday, the first recorded in West Africa of the lethal virus that's related to Ebola and, like COVID-19, passed from animal hosts to humans.The virus, which is carried by bats and has a fatality rate of up to 88 percent, was found in samples taken from a patient who died on 2 August in southern Gueckedou prefecture, the WHO said."The potential for the Marburg virus to spread far and wide means w

The first-generation vaccine developed by BioNTech-Pfizer works against coronavirus variants such as the Delta strain and does not need to be modified for the moment, the chief executive of German company BioNTech said Monday."It is quite possible that in the next six to 12 months, further variants will emerge and that would require adaptation of the vaccine but it is at the moment not yet the case," Ugur Sahin told journalists.A decision to make a switch should be made only if it i

It was the evening after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha on 20 July when Hambal M Zain began to run a fever. The 61-year-old coffee shop owner, who lives in the city of Banda Aceh in the north-western Aceh Province, thought little of it at the time and in the days that followed the fever subsided and Zain went back to work as usual.About a week later however, the fever suddenly returned and Zain developed a crushing headache.

Myanmar protesters on Sunday marked the anniversary of a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that brought Aung San Suu Kyi to prominence, with flash mobs and marches of defiance against the ruling junta.The country has been in turmoil since the military coup in February – more than 900 people have been killed and thousands arrested in the subsequent crackdown on dissent, according to a local monitoring group.But protesters remain undeterred, taking to the streets daily in lightning-quick rallies to d

Here are the latest updates in the coronavirus crisis:US 'Failing' On COVIDA top United States (US) public health official says the country is "failing" as COVID-19 cases surge to their highest daily total in six months.China Tests 11 MillionChina announces that it has completed COVID-19 tests on all the residents of Wuhan, the city of more than 11 million people from where the virus first emerged.Israel's Rapid-Test DriveIsrael is rolling out rapid-test stations with