World Health Organization
The catastrophic scale of the COVID-19 pandemic could have been prevented, an independent global panel concluded Wednesday, but a "toxic cocktail" of dithering and poor coordination meant the warning signs went unheeded.The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) said a series of bad decisions meant COVID-19 went on to kill more than 3.3 million people so far and devastate the global economy.Institutions "failed to protect people" and science-denyi
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday that a variant of COVID-19 behind the acceleration of India's explosive outbreak has been found in dozens of countries all over the world.The United Nations (UN) health agency said the B.1.617 variant of COVID-19, first found in India in October, had been detected in more than 4,500 samples uploaded to an open-access database "from 44 countries in all six WHO regions"."And WHO has received reports of detections from five a
The Biden administration’s decision to stop opposing a proposed COVID-19 waiver of certain intellectual-property rights under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules is a welcome move.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday approved the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use – the first Chinese jab to receive the WHO's green light.The United Nations (UN) health agency signed off on the two-dose vaccine, which is already being deployed in dozens of countries around the world.The WHO has already given emergency use listing to the vaccines being made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, and the AstraZeneca jab being produced at sites in India and
United States (US) President Joe Biden's administration on Wednesday announced support for a global waiver on patent protections for COVID-19 vaccines, offering hope to poor nations that have struggled to access the life-saving doses.India, where the death toll hit a new daily record amid fears the peak is still to come, has been leading the fight within the World Trade Organization (WTO) to allow more drug makers to manufacture the vaccines – a move pharma giants oppose.US Trade Represe
India is witnessing the worst phase of the pandemic while the World Health Organization (WHO) says a highly infectious Indian variant of the virus has already spread to 17 countries.India has reported 357,229 new coronavirus cases over the last 24 hours – the 13th straight day of more than 300,000 infections – taking its overall tally to more than 20 million.
Is there one pandemic, or two? That was a question being asked a year ago, when wealthy countries accounting for only 15 percent of the global population had 80 percent of the COVID deaths. Could it be that the rich world was more vulnerable, somehow, because its populations were older, or more individualistic, or had forgotten to be scared of infectious disease?Even then, some were warning that the worst was yet to come, once the disease took hold in poorer countries.
World leaders united Friday to demand US$19 billion of investment in weapons to beat the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the "miracle" of vaccines did not mean the end was in sight.One year on from the launch of the Access to COVID Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a multi-billion-dollar internationally-coordinated attempt to find vaccines, tests and treatments, the billionth vaccine dose is on the verge of being administered.But leaders warned that despite the progress so far, another push was ne
These couple of weeks have not been the Philippines’ finest hours because of the surge in COVID-19 cases mostly in the National Capital Region Plus (NCR Plus) bubble. This is again another uphill battle the country is trying to overcome.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday condemned the chasm between rich and poor nations in accessing coronavirus vaccines, saying more than a dozen countries were still completely unprotected.WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – a fierce critic of wealthy countries buying up vaccine supply for themselves – blasted the scarcity of doses available for poorer nations.His target of seeing vaccination under way in every country by Saturday – the 100th day of 2021 – is set to be missed.&q
30 cases of rare blood clotting have been recorded in Britain among more than 18 million people who have had the AstraZeneca vaccination, the national medicines regulator said Friday."The benefits of the vaccines against COVID-19 continue to outweigh any risks," the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said, urging the public to keep taking the vaccine.Up to 24 March, 22 reports of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) and eight of other thrombosis events wit
China has called on the World Health Organisation (WHO) to take the lead in respecting the conclusions of scientists, a day after the international body's director-general faulted the findings of a mission to study the origins of COVID-19 in China."We need to respect science and respect the opinions and the conclusions reached by scientists," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying told a daily briefing in Beijing on Wednesday (31 March).
