Category Archives: World Health Organization

‘Paradigm shift’ needed in way WHO is funded, says director general

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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says Covid pandemic has proven that health is ‘an international issue’

The head of the World Health Organization has warned member countries that the UN’s global health body is being “set up to fail” without a “paradigm shift” in the way that it is funded and supported.

In stark language delivered to the WHO’s executive board, the organisation’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 5.5 million lives, had underlined the need to strengthen health systems as well as pandemic preparedness plans.

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Testing for fully vaccinated travellers to UK to be scrapped; new vaccine pass rules in France – as it happened

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UK transport secretary says testing rules for travellers into country will change from 4am on 11 February; new France rules come into force

That’s it from me, Helen Livingstone, for today. I’m handing you over to my colleague Martin Belam.

Before I go, here’s a roundup of what’s been happening over the past 24 hours:

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Covid live: Ireland to lift almost all curbs from 6am on Saturday; France reports 400,851 new cases

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Ireland’s premier Micheál Martin says ‘we have weathered the Omicron storm’; France reports 400,851 daily cases and 233 Covid-linked hospital deaths

China has reported its lowest daily tally of local confirmed Covid-19 cases in nearly two months, after a national strategy to stamp out flare-ups and lock down affected cities.

China reported 23 domestically transmitted infections with confirmed symptoms for Thursday, official data showed, down from 43 a day earlier.

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Covid news live: WHO recommends lifting international travel bans, says proof of vaccination not necessarily needed

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Blanket travel bans ineffective against Omicron spread, WHO says; Austria to introduce national vaccine lottery to encourage people to get jabs

Hong Kong will likely suspend face-to-face teaching in secondary schools from 24 January, local media reports.

The city’s Education Bureau made the announcement on Thursday, because of a rising number of coronavirus infections in several schools.

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Covid live: Czech Republic scraps mandatory jabs as daily cases hit record; UK reports 108,069 cases

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Czech government scraps decree to avoid ‘deepening fissures’ in country; UK records a further 359 deaths

China has reported its lowest daily count of local Covid infections in two weeks after cities clamped down on high-risk areas, quarantined infections and conducted mass testing on residents.

Mainland China reported a total of 55 domestically transmitted infections for Tuesday, according to data from the national health commission, lower than the 127 recorded a day earlier and marking the fewest since 1 January.

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Medics in Tigray plead with Ethiopia for insulin airlift as supplies run out

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Thousands of diabetics in region face ‘agonising death’ amid blockage on food, fuel and medicines in 14-month conflict

Doctors at Tigray’s main hospital are urging the Ethiopian government to allow supplies of insulin to be airlifted into the region, warning that their stocks will run out within a week and that patients with type 1 diabetes are “at serious risk of death”.

At the Ayder referral hospital in Mekelle, the largest in the region of 7 million people, staff have been told they only have 150 vials of insulin left and no oral diabetes medicines, according to a statement late on Friday.

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Covid live: UK reports nearly 400 virus-linked deaths for second day; Germany chancellor calls for mandatory jabs

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UK reports 129,587 new positive Covid-19 cases and 398 more deaths; Germany should make vaccinations mandatory for adults, says Olaf Scholz

India is reporting almost 200,000 new Covid infections in a single day.

The Asian nation recorded 194,720 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, the most since late May, health ministry data shows.

We cannot directly rule out that the virus is imported directly, because the spread of virus is not only through humans, but it can be spread via objects or environmental [contamination].

We are still investigating other possibilities for the virus to be imported to Tianjin directly…There is another option – would it be possible that it is not imported but came from other areas [in China] and spread to Tianjin? We are tracing this simultaneously and we have found some clues already.”

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‘Tit for tat’: why hunt for Covid’s origins still mired in politics and controversy

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Scientific consensus absent as impasse between China and west continues to hamper tracing effort

Robert Garry, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane medical school in Louisiana, got a call from his university management telling him that agents from the FBI and CIA had requested a chat about his research into the origins of Covid-19.

Garry agreed and on 30 July three agents flew down to Louisiana to talk to him in person.

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We can vaccinate 70% of the world against Covid by mid-2022. Here’s how

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The WHO’s vaccination goal is achievable – but it will take proper funding, better vaccine distribution and jabs with longer shelf lives

While western countries scramble with their booster rollout to deal with the Omicron wave, only 8.4% of people in low-income countries have had at least one Covid vaccination dose.

The gap in the vaccination rates between high- and low-income countries is wider than ever. We cannot keep turning a blind eye to it.

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Covid live: France reports over 200,000 cases for second day in a row; eastern Europe’s death toll reaches 1 million

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French officials report over 206,000 cases; number of people to die from Covid in eastern Europe has reached 1 million people

Here’s a reminder of the news overnight that NHS England is looking to set up new “pop-up” Covid facilities. My colleagues Rowena Mason and Aubrey Allegretti report:

NHS England confirmed that it was creating new small-scale “Nightingale” facilities with up to 100 beds each at eight hospitals across the country. The health service said it had asked trusts to identify empty spaces to accommodate beds in places such as gyms or teaching areas. NHS managers are aiming to create up to 4,000 beds as surge capacity if needed, with work on the first tranche, in temporary structures, starting this week.

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Covid live: UK cases hit new daily record of 183,037; Spain cuts isolation period to seven days

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Case figures include delayed data from Northern Ireland; Spain cuts quarantine despite record rise in cases

India has recorded another 9,195 confirmed coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, according to recently released data from its health ministry.

A further 302 deaths were also recorded, bring the total death toll to 480,592.

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Covid live: Catalonia to introduce curfew; Italy bans public NYE celebrations

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Latest updates: UK says risk of hospitalisation 70% lower with Omicron; France set to report highest case numbers

The premier of Australia’s most populous state of NSW, Dominic Perrottet, addressed the media on Thursday to confirm masks will be mandated for inside areas and density limits would also be imposed.

As of midnight tonight, we will be requiring that masks are worn in indoor settings.

We are encouraging people, particularly over the holiday period, if you can work from home, please work from home.

In addition to that, we’re encouraging people not to mingle and when you’re out and out at a restaurant or cafe and a pub or a club, please where possible don’t mingle.

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‘We cannot boost our way out of the pandemic’: WHO head on global vaccine inequality – video

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The World Health Organization has said booster programmes are more likely to lengthen the pandemic rather than shorten it, as vaccine inequality means many countries have not yet hit their 40% vaccination target while wealthier nations move on to offer booster jabs. The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Covid would continue to mutate and spread through unvaccinated populations

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WHO boss: western countries’ Covid booster drives likely to prolong pandemic

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Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says there will be enough vaccines for world’s adults – if they are not hoarded

The world will have enough doses of Covid vaccines early next year to inoculate all of the global adult population – if western countries do not hoard those vaccines to use in blanket booster programmes, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday there would be sufficient vaccine supplies in global circulation in the first quarter of 2022.

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Covid live: fourth vaccine dose ‘could be needed against Omicron’; France ‘could soon have 100,000 cases per day’

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Latest updates: German health minister says ‘offensive booster campaign’ needed to fight variant; French health minister says Omicron will be dominant in early January

Researchers in Melbourne, Australia, have turned one of the world’s most-used blood-thinning drugs into a nasal spray which they hope could prevent Covid-19 transmission.

Northern Health medical divisional director Don Campbell and researchers at Melbourne, Monash and Oxford Universities found that heparin can block the transmission of Covid-19 and prevent infection.

It won’t matter if a new variant comes along, this drug will block that protein from infecting the cells.

I’m very confident that we can demonstrate that it will work, and people will be using this before they go to the shops and before they go to school.”

Due to large-scale flooding near the Port of Vancouver … and the global supply chain crunch caused by the coronavirus pandemic, there are delays in the supply of potatoes.”

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Israel announces fourth jab for over-60s; hospital bosses in England brace for ‘dangerous situation’

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Portugal tells people to work from home from 26 December; Sweden announces working from home and tighter social distancing rules

Singapore has detected a cluster of three Covid-19 cases linked to a gym, its ministry of health said late on Monday.

The variant was found in two men, aged 24 and 21, and an 18-year-old woman.

On Monday morning, a mid-level staff member, who does not regularly have contact with the President, received a positive result for a Covid-19 test.

Three days earlier, on Friday, that staff member had spent approximately 30 minutes in proximity to the President on Air Force One, on the way from Orangeburg, South Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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‘An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled’: WHO urges rethink of holiday events – video

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The World Health Organisation has sounded a new warning about the Omicron variant, arguing some events over the festive period should be postponed. 'All of us are sick of this pandemic,' said WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The fastest way to do this, he said, could mean potentially cancelling or delaying holiday events. 'An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled,' he said. The WHO says there's now consistent evidence that the Omicron strain is spreading faster than the Delta variant

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WHO chief warns over festive gatherings: ‘An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled’

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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says Omicron is infecting people who have been vaccinated and could double its infections every 1.5 to three days

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that holiday festivities would in many places lead to “increased cases, overwhelmed health systems and more deaths” and urged people to postpone gatherings.

“An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

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Global Covid vaccination failure will harm Britain, Gordon Brown warns

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Exclusive: Ex-PM says virus will have ‘free rein to mutate’ unless richer countries fund $23bn vaccine drive

The failure to vaccinate the world against coronavirus will come back to haunt even fully vaccinated Britons in 2022, Gordon Brown has warned.

The former prime minister said the emergence of Omicron was “not Africa’s fault”, and added that new variants would continue to wreak havoc because richer countries such as the UK had “stockpiled” hundreds of millions of vaccines.

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WHO says Omicron in 89 countries and spreading rapidly

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Cases doubling every 1.5 to three days if there is community transmission but clinical severity of variant unknown

The Omicron coronavirus variant has been reported in 89 countries and the number of cases is doubling in 1.5 to three days in areas with community transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

Omicron is spreading rapidly in countries with high levels of population immunity, but it is unclear if this is due to the virus’s ability to evade immunity, its inherent increased transmissibility or a combination of both, the WHO said in an update.

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