Emergency measures taken as 364,855 cases of mosquito-borne infection reported this year, a fourfold increase on year before
Dengue fever has surged in Brazil’s hot rainy season, forcing health authorities to take emergency measures and start mass vaccination against the mosquito-borne illness.
In the first five weeks of this year, 364,855 cases of infection have been reported, the health ministry said, four times more than dengue cases in the same period of 2023.
Continue reading...UN agency calls for ‘urgent vaccination efforts’ in region to prevent further spread of disease
The World Health Organization has issued an urgent warning over measles after an “alarming” 30-fold rise in cases across Europe.
The UN agency reported an enormous increase in numbers affected by the disease, which it said had “accelerated in recent months”. More than 30,000 cases were reported between January and October last year, compared with 941 cases in the whole of 2022 – a more than 30-fold rise.
Continue reading...More than 7,000 hospital admissions and deaths could have been avoided if people had been fully vaccinated
Older people are being urged to become fully vaccinated against Covid as a world-first study shows thousands of hospital admissions and deaths in the UK could have been avoided if everyone had had all of their doses.
The rollout began strongly in the UK, with 90% of the population over the age of 12 vaccinated with at least one dose by January 2022. However, rates of subsequent doses fell sharply, a study shows, with less than half the population fully jabbed by June 2022.
Continue reading...Rules reintroduced as ‘commonsense measure’ despite opposition from some regional administrations
Face masks will be mandatory in hospitals and health centres in Spain from Wednesday as the country experiences a surge in cases of flu, Covid and other respiratory illnesses.
The government decision, which was made six months after the use of masks ceased to be obligatory in health facilities and pharmacies, has been met with opposition from some regional administrations.
Continue reading...AMA criticises political leaders for ‘painful lack of collaboration’ on vaccines and urges faster rollout of national centre for disease control
The Australian Medical Association has accused some premiers of “actively undermining” public health officials at points during the pandemic and said governments were now seeking to avoid criticism of their actions throughout the Covid period.
In a submission to the federal Covid inquiry, the health lobby group also urged the Labor government to speed up its rollout of a national centre for disease control to combat future pandemics, while lashing former political leaders for “a painful lack of collaboration” during the vaccine rollout.
Continue reading...PM likely to be asked about WhatsApp messages from pandemic that he says are irretrievable, despite reports number accessed
Fresh questions are being raised over whether Rishi Sunak has handed over all relevant material to the Covid inquiry after reports that pranksters have been able to access an old phone number he used during his time as chancellor.
The prime minister will face a day of questioning at the inquiry on Monday, where he is expected to be questioned about his claims that scientists had too much power. He will also be asked detailed questions about the “eat out to help out” scheme that many experts believe allowed the virus to spread.
Continue reading...Former PM also angrily denies comments he made about letting Covid ‘rip’ meant he had been uncaring
Boris Johnson assumed that Rishi Sunak’s flagship “eat out to help out” hospitality scheme had been cleared by government scientists and was surprised to learn later it was not, the former prime minister has told the inquiry into Covid.
In evidence that could pose notable difficulties for the prime minister when he appears before the inquiry on Monday, Johnson said it would have been “normal” for advisers such as Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance to have been briefed, and that he assumed this had been the case.
Continue reading...Former prime minister also admits he should have worked more closely with devolved administrations
Hugo Keith KC is questioning Johnson.
He asks if Johnson’s approach has been to give all relevant material to the inquiry.
I understand the feelings of these victims and their families and I am deeply sorry for the pain and the loss and suffering of those victims and their families.
Continue reading...Continent must have more resilient health systems and local vaccine manufacturing to prevent next pandemic, says public health body
Africa’s leading public health body is using the first ever health day at Cop on 3 December to call for increased funding to fight the health impacts of the climate crisis on the continent and create more resilient systems to ensure it is prepared for the next pandemic.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) launched the second phase of its three-year, $1.5bn Saving Lives and Livelihoods drive this week, but its director general, Dr Jean Kaseya, said multiple disease outbreaks combined with the growing burden of non-communicable diseases and recovery from Covid means that much more financial support is needed.
Continue reading...Discredited ex-PM faces a demolition job in one of the few policy areas to which he and his allies still cling
Even at the height of his popularity, Boris Johnson routinely avoided close questioning – to the extent of once hiding in a fridge to dodge a TV inquisitor. The former UK prime minister is likely to be dreading next week’s appearance at the Covid inquiry. And he probably should.
It is no exaggeration to say that events on Wednesday and Thursday at the inquiry’s repurposed office building in Paddington, west London, could help define the post-power image and legacy of Johnson, and very possibly not for the good.
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Hancock is now deploying the defence previewed in the Observer on Sunday. (See 9.58am.)
He says from the middle of January the DHSC was “trying to effectively raise the alarm”. He says:
We were trying to wake up Whitehall to the scale of the problem and this wasn’t a problem that couldn’t be addressed only from the health department. Non-pharmaceutical interventions cannot be put in place by a health department. A health department can’t shut schools. It should have been grasped and led from the centre of government earlier. And you’ve seen evidence that repeatedly the department and I tried to make this happen.
And we were on occasions blocked, and at other times our concerns were not taken as seriously as they should have been until the very end of February.
Continue reading...Data has been supplied to World Health Organization and China says flu and other known pathogens are culprits
A surge in respiratory illnesses across China that has drawn the attention of the World Health Organization is caused by the flu and other known pathogens and not by a novel virus, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday.
Recent clusters of respiratory infections are caused by an overlap of common viruses such as the influenza virus, rhinoviruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and adenovirus, as well as bacteria such as mycoplasma pneumoniae, which is a common culprit for respiratory tract infections, a National Health Commission spokesperson said.
Continue reading...Epidemiologists say wave in north, particularly among children, may be partly caused by ‘immunity debt’
Chinese health authorities have provided the requested data on an increase in respiratory illnesses and reported clusters of pneumonia in children, and have not detected any unusual or novel pathogens, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.
The WHO had asked China for more information on Wednesday after groups including the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases reported clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children in north China.
Continue reading...England’s chief medical officer says incomplete knowledge of epidemiological concepts can be ‘dangerous thing’
Sir Chris Whitty spent early parts of the Covid pandemic trying to “implore” people in government not to publicly discuss health concepts they did not fully understand such as “flattening the curve” of infections and herd immunity, he said.
Giving evidence to the inquiry into Covid, Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, said he did this after realising that incomplete knowledge could be “a dangerous thing”.
Continue reading...Chief scientific adviser in pandemic says lockdown should have come sooner and that Johnson is not great at science
Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser throughout Covid, has been giving evidence to the inquiry into the pandemic on Monday. Here is what we have learned so far.
Continue reading...PM would almost certainly have known concerns over ‘eat out to help out’ scheme, says former chief scientific adviser
Rishi Sunak would almost certainly have known scientists were worried about his “eat out to help out” scheme during the pandemic, Sir Patrick Vallance has said, directly contradicting the prime minister’s evidence to the Covid inquiry.
In potentially damaging testimony, Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser during the pandemic, said he would be “very surprised” if Sunak had not learned about objections to his plan to help the hospitality industry.
Continue reading...Study urges Australia to research new drugs as it warns rate of mutated infections ‘much worse than anticipated’
“Alarming” rates of babies with infections resistant to common antibiotics in the Asia-Pacific region should prompt urgent investment into new drugs for treating childhood diseases, findings from a new study suggest.
The misuse and overuse of antibiotics is driving bugs to mutate so that common drugs are no longer effective to kill them, known as antimicrobial resistance. Dr Phoebe Williams, an infectious diseases paediatrician and antimicrobial resistance researcher with the University of Sydney, said she regularly travelled to work in hospitals in the south-east Asia and Pacific region where she found “entire wards of babies that have multi-drug resistant infections, and there is nothing left to treat them with”.
Continue reading...Cases are rising in many parts of the country and critics are blaming chronic water shortages and poor sanitation systems
The Zimbabwean government has banned large gatherings in parts of the country and increased surveillance at ports of entry in an effort to contain a rise in cholera cases.
With 100 suspected deaths, most of them in September, and nearly 5,000 possible cases of the water-borne disease in more than 41 districts, including Harare, authorities fear a repeat of the 2008 epidemic where 4,000 people died.
Continue reading...Woman treated with antibiotics and hyperbaric oxygen therapy to survive infection by pathogen that causes blackleg disease in cattle and sheep
An Australian woman has became the first documented person in the world to survive a pathogen that is usually the cause of the deadly “blackleg” disease in cattle and sheep.
The woman’s doctors this week published the case in the Medical Journal of Australia, detailing the successful treatment of the pathogen, after the only other two known cases in humans – one in the US and the other in Japan – had proved fatal.
Continue reading...World faces ‘malaria emergency’ from resistance to insecticides, waning efficacy of drugs, funding shortfalls and climate change
African leaders have warned that the world is facing the “biggest malaria emergency” of the past two decades.
Heads of state and experts came together in a show of unity to call for urgent action on malaria at the UN general assembly on Friday, saying progress on eradicating the disease faced serious setbacks from mosquitoes’ growing resistance to insecticides, and the decreased effectiveness of antimalarial drugs and diagnostic tests.
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