COVID19

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...

GHealth News - After several weeks of declines in new reported cases of COVID-19, the numbers are increasing globally once again, particularly in parts of Asia and Western Europe, the World Health Organization says. "These increases are occurring despite reductions in testing in some countries, which means the cases we're seeing are just the tip of the iceberg," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said at a news briefing Wednesday. As a result, local outbreaks and surges in COVID-19 cases are likely, "particularly in areas where measures to prevent transmission have been lifted," he said. And death rates remain high in many nations, particularly those with low levels of vaccination. "Each country is facing a different situation with different challenges, but t...

By: Lawrence O. Gostin Italian army nurse helps a COVID patient at a camp hospital in Perugia that was opened to relieve the burden on nearby Santa Maria della Misericordia hospital. In December of 2020, the world continued to struggle with the pandemic's successive waves. Credit: Tommaso Ausili/Contrasto/Redux Pictures Moments of existential crisis can turn into opportunities for bold reform. World War II led to the creation of transformative institutions—the United Nations in 1945 and the World Health Organization in 1948. The birth of the WHO came the same year that the U.N. adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The COVID pandemic marks just such a moment of crisis. But instead of ushering in significant change, it has fractured global solidarity. That, in turn, ha...

GHealth News - People with a vitamin D deficiency are more likely to have a severe or critical case of COVID-19, according to a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE. The study is based on data from Israel’s first two coronavirus waves before vaccines were widely available. The scientists stressed that vitamin supplements aren’t a substitute for vaccines but that they can help immunity levels. “We found it remarkable, and striking, to see the difference in the chances of becoming a severe patient when you are lacking in vitamin D compared to when you’re not,” Amiel Dror, MD, the lead study author and a doctor at Galilee Medical Center, told The Times of Israel. Although the study was conducted before the Omicron var...

WHO has recommended two new drugs for COVID-19, providing yet more options for treating the disease. The extent to which these medicines will save lives depends on how widely available and affordable they will be. The first drug, baricitinib, is strongly recommended for patients with severe or critical COVID-19. It is part of a class of drugs called Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors that suppress the overstimulation of the immune system. WHO recommends that it is given with corticosteroids. Baricitinib is an oral drug, used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. It provides an alternative to other arthritis drugs called Interleukin-6 receptor blockers, recommended by WHO in July 2021. WHO has also conditionally recommended the use of a monoclonal antibody drug, sotrov...

Conditions are ripe for Covid-19 to mutate into more new variants, and it is dangerous to assume the pandemic is approaching its endgame, the WHO’s top official warned on Monday. Addressing the WHO’s executive board, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said since the omicron variant was identified just nine weeks ago, more than 80 million Covid cases had been reported to the WHO — more than were reported in the whole of 2020. Last week, an average 100 cases were reported to the WHO every three seconds, Tedros added, and someone lost their life to the virus every 12 seconds. While cases have been surging, Tedros noted that the “explosion” in cases had not been matched by a surge in deaths, although fatalities were rising in all regions, particularly in Africa where cou...

Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme attends a news conference on the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Geneva, Switzerland, March 16, 2020.Christopher Black | WHO | Reuters The World Health Organization on Tuesday said the pandemic will not end as the omicron variant subsides in some countries, warning the high levels of infection around the world will likely lead to new variants as the virus mutates. “We’re hearing a lot of people suggest that omicron is the last variant, that it’s over after this. And that is not the case because this virus is circulating at a very intense level around the world,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, said during a coronavirus update in Geneva. Ne...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir tablets and ritonavir tablets, co-packaged for oral use) for the treatment of mild-to-moderate coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in adults and pediatric patients (12 years of age and older weighing at least 40 kilograms or about 88 pounds) with positive results of direct SARS-CoV-2 testing, and who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19, including hospitalization or death. Paxlovid is available by prescription only and should be initiated as soon as possible after diagnosis of COVID-19 and within five days of symptom onset.  “Today’s authorization introduces the first treatment for COVID-19 that is in the form of a pill that is taken orally — a major step forwa...

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Top US pandemic adviser Anthony Fauci has warned of a bleak winter ahead as the Omicron coronavirus variant spurs a new wave of infections globally, sparking restrictions and concerns over hospital capacity. “One thing that’s very clear … is [Omicron’s] extraordinary capability of spreading,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told broadcaster NBC News on Sunday. “It is just … raging through the world.” Since it was first reported in southern Africa in November, Omicron has been identified in dozens of countries, prompting many to reimpose travel restrictions and other measures in an attempt to slow outbreaks. Despite some preliminary i...

Travellers in personal protective equipment load luggage into a taxi outside the international terminal at Sydney Airport, as countries react to the new coronavirus Omicron variant amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Sydney, Australia, November 29, 2021. Existing vaccines should still protect people who contract the Omicron variant from severe Covid cases, a World Health Organization (WHO) official says. It comes as the first lab tests of the new variant in South Africa suggest it can partially evade the Pfizer jab. Researchers say there was a "very large drop" in how well the vaccine's antibodies neutralised the new strain. But the WHO's Dr Mike Ryan said there was no sign Omicron would be better at evading vaccines than other variants. "We have highly effe...