Europe passed the grim milestone of one million coronavirus deaths on Monday, as the World Health Organization warned that infections are rising exponentially despite widespread efforts aimed at stopping them. The death toll across Europe's 52 countries, from official sources, totalled at least 1,000,288 by 1830 GMT."We are in a critical point of the pandemic right now," said Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on COVID-19."The trajectory of this pan

On Etsy, eBay, Facebook and Twitter, little rectangular slips of paper started showing up for sale in late January. Printed on card stock, sellers listed them for US$20 to US$60 each, with a discount on bundles of three or more.

A study in Chile, which has one of the furthest-advanced vaccination campaigns in South America - mainly with China's Coronavac, has found that a first dose alone does not protect against coronavirus infection.The study by the University of Chile found inoculation to be 56.5 percent effective in protecting recipients two weeks after the second dose, and 27.7 percent effective within the first two weeks.But for a single dose, efficacy in the 28 days between the first and second dose was o

In May last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that his country would soon provide safe and effective vaccines as a “global public good”, especially to the developing world.To this end, the Chinese leader launched a massive state-backed campaign, allocating large amounts of subsidies and corralling up to 22 firms and research institutes to work on as many as 17 vaccine projects.Some leaders in China’s immediate neighbourhood felt reassured by Xi’s rhetoric and hoped to capitalise on

Fasting practices in the United Kingdom (UK) during Ramadan last year did not lead to higher COVID-19 mortality rates among Muslims, according to a new report.The study, published on Thursday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Global Health, said there was no evidence to suggest that British Muslims who observed the holy month were more likely to die from a coronavirus infection.During Ramadan, which lasts about four weeks, Muslims across the world abstain from eating food and do not drink anyth

The United States (US) led a chorus of concern on Tuesday over a World Health Organisation (WHO)-backed report into the origins of the coronavirus in China, with accusations swirling that Beijing failed to give proper access to investigators.The United States released a statement with 13 of its allies - Britain, Japan and Australia among them - saying the inquiry had lacked the data and samples it needed.WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had earlier made a similar criticism, saying the tea

COVID-19 probably came to people through an animal, and likely started spreading no more than a month or two before it was noticed in December 2019, a World Health Organisation (WHO) draft report finds.The least likely source: a laboratory leak, the WHO's joint international team concluded.The WHO is scheduled to release the final report on its investigation into the origins of coronavirus on Tuesday, but a draft version of the report obtained by CNN shows there's still no smoking g

United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticised developed countries for creating a "stockpile" of COVID-19 vaccines, and called on them to share with the rest of the world to help end the pandemic."I'm very concerned with this very unfair distribution of vaccines in the world," Guterres said in an interview broadcast Sunday by the Canadian channel CBC. "It's in the interest of everybody to make sure that as soon as possible and in

Health officials have rolled out more than 500 million coronavirus vaccine doses around the world, according to an AFP tally on Friday, as European rows over hoarding and supply issues escalated dramatically.Despite the huge effort to get jabs into arms, the pandemic is still surging in Europe and Latin America – where Brazil has now passed 300,000 deaths and Mexico 200,000.And the rollout of vaccines is chronically unequal, with the United States (US) accounting for more than a quarter of th

The health officials were racing against the clock. Doses of the coronavirus vaccine had to reach Sabang, a city on the mountainous Weh Island in the Andaman Sea, by that afternoon.