World Health Organization
China reported the world's first human infection of the H10N3 bird flu strain on Tuesday but said the risk of it spreading widely among people was low.A 41-year-old man was admitted to hospital with fever symptoms in the eastern city of Zhenjiang on April 28 and was diagnosed with H10N3 a month later, China's National Health Commission (NHC) said in an online statement."The risk of large-scale spread is extremely low," the NHC said, adding that the man was in a stable cond
COVID-19 variants are to be known by letters of the Greek alphabet to avoid stigmatising nations where they were first detected, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Monday.The new system applies to variants of concern – the most troubling of which four are in circulation – and the second-level variants of interest being tracked."They will not replace existing scientific names, but are aimed to help in public discussion," said Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's COVID-19
It has now been a year and a half since we started living with – and too often dying from – COVID-19. Although the pandemic is by no means over, it is not too soon to take a step back and draw some preliminary conclusions from the experience.One conclusion that has turned out to be especially tentative concerns the source of the pandemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned Friday that efforts to uncover the COVID-19 pandemic's origins were being hampered by politics, insisting scientists needed space to work on solving the mystery."We would ask that we separate the science from the politics, and let us get on with finding the answers that we need in a proper, positive atmosphere," WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan told reporters."This whole process is being poisoned by politics," he warned.&am
China on Wednesday accused the United States (US) of "spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation" as the theory resurfaced that the coronavirus emerged from a Wuhan laboratory, while urging Washington to open its virology facilities to scrutiny.Led by the US, pressure is mounting for a new probe into the origins of COVID-19 after a World Health Organization (WHO) mission to China, beset by delays and dogged by political baggage, returned inconclusive findings.The Wuhan Institu
Long dismissed as a kooky conspiracy theory favoured by the far right, the idea that COVID emerged from a lab leak in Wuhan has been gaining increasing momentum in the United States (US).The government's position has shifted to agnosticism in recent weeks, with top pandemic advisor Anthony Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky both saying they are open to all possibilities."We need to get to the bottom of this and we need a completely transp
The United Nations (UN) on Monday declared the world "at war" against COVID-19, as India's death toll passed 300,000 and Japan opened its first mass vaccination centres.But just two months ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, the United States (US) on Monday advised its citizens against travelling there.UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged governments to apply wartime logic to stark inequalities in the response to the pandemic.Despite rapidly advancing vaccination rollouts in we
The COVID-19 pandemic will not truly end until everyone has access to vaccines, including people in the poorest countries. Worldwide vaccination offers the best hope for stopping the spread of infections, saving lives, and protecting livelihoods. People cannot reach their potential until they can again study, work, travel, and socialise in the confident knowledge that they are safe from COVID-19.
Coronavirus vaccine producers promised billions of doses for poorer countries at a G20 health summit Friday, where leaders vowed to expand access to jabs as the only way to end the pandemic.The bosses of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson announced they would supply around 3.5 billion vaccine doses at cost or discount to low- and middle-income countries this year and next.Meanwhile the European Union (EU) pledged to donate 100 million doses and invest in regional manufacturing hubs
Here are the latest developments in the coronavirus crisis:Don't Travel, Says WHOProgress against the pandemic remains "fragile" and international travel should be avoided, warns the World Health Organization's (WHO) Europe director Hans Kluge.But he adds that all the vaccines authorised by the WHO are effective against the "COVID-19 virus variants that have emerged so far".EU Health PassThe European Parliament and European Union (EU) member states reach a deal p
World health experts issued a grim warning Friday that the second year of COVID-19 was set to be "far more deadly", as Japan extended a state of emergency amid growing calls for the Olympics to be scrapped."We're on track for the second year of this pandemic to be far more deadly than the first," said the World Health Organization's (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.The mood also darkened in Japan where the coronavirus state of emergency took in a
As special envoys on COVID-19 for the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), we have witnessed first-hand the intensity of the suffering caused by the pandemic, especially in poorer communities.
