Indonesia's COVID-19 cases topped the one million mark on Tuesday, as the archipelago launches one of the world's biggest vaccine drives to clamp down on a soaring infection rate.The Southeast Asian nation of nearly 270 million has recorded 1,012,350 virus cases and almost 29,000 deaths, according to official data.
A storm is raging over the European Union’s (EU) failure to have ordered more of the approved COVID-19 vaccines ahead of time.
Singapore began a coronavirus vaccination campaign Wednesday with a nurse receiving the first jab, making it among the first Asian nations to roll out inoculations.The city-state, which has suffered a mild outbreak, became the first country in Asia to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine earlier this month, and its programme kicked off with healthcare workers. Nurse Sarah Lim, 46, whose work includes screening suspected COVID-19 patients, was the first to be immunised, the health mini
European Union (EU) countries on Sunday embarked on a vaccination campaign to defeat the "nightmare" of COVID-19, with the first to be immunised expressing emotion after their jab and leaders hailing a milestone in the fight against the pandemic.The vaccine is a glimmer of hope for a continent yearning for a return to normal from a pandemic that has killed 1.76 million people worldwide since emerging in China late last year and caused at least 80 million confirmed cases, according t
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II will receive the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine within weeks, reports on Sunday said, as the biggest immunisation programme in United Kingdom (UK) history begins next week.The monarch, 94, and her 99-year-old husband Prince Philip are in line to get the jab early in the rollout, which gets underway Tuesday, due to their age and will not receive preferential treatment, several newspapers reported.Britain's most senior royals will "let it be know
The world's largest vaccine manufacturer by volume said Saturday it would apply for an emergency licence for a coronavirus vaccine within two weeks, and that confusion over the efficacy would not delay its distribution. Serum Institute of India chief executive Adar Ponnawala also confirmed that the Pune-based giant would be able to produce at least 100 million doses a month from early 2021 of Covishield, which was developed by Astrazeneca and Oxford University.Poonawalla spoke a
As of 10 March 2020, over 100,000 people have been infected with the deadly and contagious COVID-19, also known as the novel coronavirus. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like disease is a type of coronavirus that infects humans, bats and other mammals, and has killed over 4,000 people worldwide. Since the virus emerged in Wuhan, China, scientists from different nations have been racing to develop a vaccine to fight the deadly disease.
Malaysia has reported its first polio case in 27 years, health authorities said Sunday, announcing a three-month-old baby had been diagnosed on Borneo island.The Malaysian health ministry's director-general, Noor Hisham Abdullah, said the baby from Tuaran in eastern Sabah state had been admitted into intensive care after experiencing fever and muscle weakness."The patient is currently undergoing treatment in an isolation ward and is in a stable condition but needs respiratory suppor
As of November, Thailand health officials have recorded 1,500 cases and 12 deaths due to the outbreak of measles in the Southern provinces of the country.
Last week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) released data showing that over 41,000 children and adults in Europe have been infected with measles in the first six months of 2018, resulting in 37 deaths. Ukraine, plagued by conflict between the eastern secessionist territories and the Kiev government, has been the hardest hit with over 23,000 people affected.
One of the more ambitious targets of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the commitment to end preventable deaths of newborns and children over the next decade. If this target is met, by 2030 no country will have a neonatal mortality rate above 12 deaths per 1,000 births – a quarter of the current rate in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.Given the magnitude of the challenge, huge investments will be needed in health-care infrastructure and planning.
