COVID19 – Career Meaning

COVID-19: WHO designates JN.1 ‘variant of interest’ amid sharp rise in global spread

Though its current evaluation of the global public health risk is “low”, the UN health agency cautioned that with the onset of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the new variant “could increase” the burden of respiratory infections in many countries, noting other diseases such as RSV, influenza and childhood pneumonia that are already on the…

Updated guidelines on COVID-19 revise risk of hospitalisation

The guidance will assist healthcare professionals to identify those at high, moderate or low risk of hospitalization and to tailor treatment accordingly. WHO said current COVID-19 virus variants tend to cause less severe disease while immunity levels are higher due to vaccination, which has led to lower risks of severe illness and death for most…

Refusal to waive IP rights for COVID-19 vaccines violates human rights: Experts

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) adopted a decision under its “early warning and urgent action” procedures, stating that developed countries’ “persistent refusal” to waive COVID-19 vaccine IP rights – such as patents and trademarks – violated non-discrimination guarantees under international human rights law. CERD is one of the UN’s human rights…

With COVID-19 ‘here to stay’, new tools essential to continue fight: Tedros

The partnership, called the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), was launched in 2020, to facilitate timely, equitable and affordable access to COVID-19 health products through public health oriented, transparent and non-exclusive licensing agreements. “COVID-19 is here to stay, and the world will continue to need tools to prevent it, test for it and treat it,”…

Ukraine: Widespread learning loss continues due to war, COVID-19

“Inside Ukraine, attacks on schools have continued unabated, leaving children deeply distressed and without safe spaces to learn”, declared Regina De Dominicis, UNICEF Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia, who recently returned from the country. “Not only has this left Ukraine’s children struggling to progress in their education, but they are also struggling to…

COVID-19: WHO tracking EG.5 ‘variant of interest’

“The risk remains of a more dangerous variant emerging that could cause a sudden increase in cases and deaths,” he said. EG.5 is a sublineage of the omicron variant and has been detected in 51 countries, including the United States, China, South Korea and Japan, according to an initial risk evaluation. While overall risk is…

WHO chief declares end to COVID-19 as a global health emergency

“Last week, COVID-19 claimed a life every three minutes – and that’s just the deaths we know about”, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, briefing the media at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. According to WHO’s Coronavirus Dashboard which has collated key statistics since early in the pandemic, the cumulative cases worldwide now stand at 765,222,932, with nearly seven million…

55 countries face a health worker crunch linked to COVID-19: WHO

According to the UN agency, African nations have been worst-hit by the phenomenon, with 37 countries on the continent facing health worker shortages that threaten their chances of achieving universal health care by 2030 – a key Sustainable Development Goals pledge. The actions of wealthy countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) come under scrutiny in the WHO…

COVID-19: China ‘making enormous progress’ to get every older adult vaccinated

Dr. Kate O’Brien from the World Health Organization (WHO) explained that the change in China’s initial “zero-dose” policy for elderly people had left some unsure about asking for a coronavirus vaccine now. “Clearly with the need for protection of older adults, it’s been difficult for older adults to sort of change their understanding of the…

COVID-19: WHO highlights critical importance of sharing virus sequences

“Since the peak of the Omicron wave, the number of sequences being shared has dropped by more than 90 per cent, and the number of countries sharing sequences has fallen by a third,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking during his latest media briefing. The WHO chief recalled that the first sequence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus…