COVID19

By Jacqueline Howard As the world enters a new year, many public health and infectious disease experts predict that monitoring for new coronavirus variants will be an increasingly important part of Covid-19 mitigation efforts – and some are turning their attention to a surge in cases in China. Subvariants of the Omicron coronavirus variant continue to circulate globally, and “we’re seeing Omicron do what viruses do, which is it picks up mutations along the way that helps it evade a little bit of immunity that’s induced by previous infection or vaccination,” said Andrew Pekosz, a microbiologist and immunologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “We haven’t seen any major jumps in terms of Omicron evolution in some time,” he said. But “it’s ge...

People queue at a Covid testing station in Beijing. The capital is one of several Chinese cities where cases are rising rapidly © Noel Celis/AFP/Getty Images GHealth News - A top Chinese health official says he believes China is experiencing the first of three expected waves of Covid infections this winter. The country is seeing a surge in cases since the lifting of its most severe restrictions earlier this month. The latest official figures appear to show a relatively low number of new daily cases. However, there are concerns that these numbers are an underestimate due to a recent reduction in Covid testing. The government reported only 2,097 new daily cases on Sunday. Epidemiologist Wu Zunyou has said he believes the current spike in infections would run until mid-...

GHealth News - A week after China began dismantling its tough 'zero-COVID' controls, the World Health Organization warned of "very tough" times ahead and state media reported some seriously ill patients at hospitals in Beijing, raising fears of a wave of infections. China last Wednesday announced sweeping changes to testing and quarantine rules, aligning with a world that has largely reopened, after historic protests against mass lockdowns that caused mental strain for millions but kept the virus in check. The elation that met those changes has quickly faded amid mounting signs that China may pay a price for shielding a population that lacks "herd immunity" and has low vaccination rates among the elderly. "It's always very difficult for any country coming out of a situat...

Khalifa International Stadium, Doha, Qatar GHealth News - Fans attending the World Cup in Qatar must show proof of a negative COVID-19 test regardless of their vaccination status, organisers said in a statement on Thursday. All visitors aged six and over must present a negative result from a PCR test taken within 48 hours before their departure or from a rapid antigen test taken in the 24 hours before arriving, the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy said. Results of the rapid antigen tests will only be accepted if they are from official medical centres and not self-administered. No further tests will be required in Qatar if visitors do not develop symptoms of COVID-19. Visitors aged 18 and above will also be required to download a government-run contact tracing ph...

GHealth News - About 21 million people in the Chinese city of Chengdu have gone into lockdown as authorities raced to snuff out a new Covid-19 outbreak. China is the last major economy wedded to a zero-Covid policy, stamping out virus flare-ups with snap shutdowns, mass testing and lengthy quarantines. Chengdu, in the south-west, became the latest city to announce a shutdown, saying in an official notice that residents must “stay home in principle” from 6pm on Thursday to combat a new wave of infections. Each household will be allowed to send one person out to buy groceries and essential goods per day, provided they have tested negative in the previous 24 hours, the notice said. It said all residents would be tested for the virus between Thursday and Sunday, and urged them not ...

GHealth News - Biotechnology company Novavax announced on Friday that its Covid-19 vaccine has been authorized for emergency use by the U.S Food and Drug Administration for adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17. In July, Novavax’s two-dose Covid-19 vaccine for adults ages 18 and over got its emergency approval from the FDA. Having more vaccine options for adults and children will “hopefully help increase vaccination rates, particularly as we prepare for ongoing surges of Covid-19 with the start of fall and the back-to-school season,” Stanley C. Erck, president and CEO of Novavax, said in a statement. Novavax was one of the original participants in the U.S. government’s race to develop a Covid vaccine in 2020, receiving $1.8 billion in taxpayer funding from Operation Warp Speed...

GHealth News - The World Health Organization said that COVID-19 remains a global emergency, nearly 2-1/2 years after it was first declared. The Emergency Committee, made up of independent experts, said in a statement that rising cases, ongoing viral evolution and pressure on health services in a number of countries meant that the situation was still an emergency. Cases reported to WHO had risen by 30% in the last fortnight, although increased population immunity, largely from vaccines, had seen a "decoupling" of cases from hospitalisations and deaths, the committee's statement said. "COVID-19 is nowhere near over," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference from Geneva after the announcement. "As the virus pushes at us, we must push back." T...

GHealth News - Africa’s top public health agency (CDC) said it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Pfizer for countries on the continent to receive supplies of the Paxlovid pill to treat Covid-19. Data from a mid-to-late stage study last November showed the antiviral medication was nearly 90 percent effective in preventing hospitalisations and deaths compared with a placebo, in adults at high risk of severe illness. “We have signed the MOU with Pfizer and we are going to be able to make that particular treatment available to African countries,” said Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, the acting director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Ouma said the MOU would allow African countries to access Paxlovid at cost. The Africa CDC, an agency of the 55-member Afri...

GHealth News - Agreements including waiving patents for Covid vaccines and aiming to reduce overfishing have been passed by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The group of 164 countries spent five days negotiating deals which included pledges on health and food security. The partial intellectual property waiver deal for coronavirus jabs will allow developing countries to produce and export vaccines. But it will only last five years, and excludes disease treatments and tests. Director-general of the WTO Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the agreements, reached at a conference in Geneva, would "make a difference to the lives of people around the world". "The outcomes demonstrate that the WTO is in fact capable of responding to emergencies of our time," she added. The package of the...

GHealth News - Covid-19 cases in China’s largest city of Shanghai have risen again as millions remain isolated at home under a sweeping lockdown. Health officials on Sunday reported 438 confirmed cases detected over the previous 24 hours, along with 7,788 asymptomatic cases. Both figures were up slightly from the day before. While small by the standards of some countries, the daily case numbers are some of the largest since the virus was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019. Shanghai with its 26 million people last week began a two-stage lockdown, with residents of the eastern Pudong section supposed to be allowed to leave their homes Friday, while their neighbours in the western Puxi section underwent their own four-day isolation period.Advertisement Despit...