World Health Organization
Monkeypox usually self-limiting but may be severe in some individuals: WHO
Monkeypox is usually self-limiting but may be severe in some individuals, such as children, pregnant women or persons with immune suppression due to other health conditions, says the World Health Organization (WHO) on Sunday.
Eating inadequately cooked meat and other animal products of infected animals is a possible risk factor, according to the WHO which is dedicated to the well-being of all people and guided by science.
Monkeypox virus is transmitted from one person to another by close contact with lesions, body fluids, respiratory droplets and contaminated materials such as bedding. The incubation period of monkeypox is usually from 6 to 13 days but can range from 5 to 21 days.
Also read: Israel confirms 1st monkeypox case
As of now, 92 laboratory confirmed cases, and 28 suspected cases of monkeypox with investigations ongoing, have been reported to the WHO from 12 Member States that are not endemic for monkeypox virus.
Monkeypox endemic countries are Benin, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana (identified in animals only), Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, and South Sudan.
Since 13 May 2022, cases of monkeypox have been reported to WHO from 12 Member States that are not endemic for monkeypox virus, across three WHO regions.
Epidemiological investigations are ongoing, however, reported cases thus far have no established travel links to endemic areas.
The situation is evolving and WHO expects there will be more cases of monkeypox identified as surveillance expands in non-endemic countries.
Reported cases thus far have no established travel links to an endemic area, said the WHO on Sunday.
Based on currently available information, cases have mainly but not exclusively been identified amongst men who have sex with men (MSM) seeking care in primary care and sexual health clinics.
To date, all cases whose samples were confirmed by PCR have been identified as being infected with the West African clade.
Also read: African scientists baffled by monkeypox cases in Europe, US
Genome sequence from a swab sample from a confirmed case in Portugal, indicated a close match of the monkeypox virus causing the current outbreak, to exported cases from Nigeria to the United Kingdom, Israel and Singapore in 2018 and 2019.
The identification of confirmed and suspected cases of monkeypox with no direct travel links to an endemic area represents a highly unusual event.
Surveillance to date in non-endemic areas has been limited, but is now expanding.
WHO expects that more cases in non-endemic areas are likely to be reported. Available information suggests that human-to-human transmission is occurring among people in close physical contact with cases who are symptomatic.
In addition to this new outbreak, WHO continues to receive updates on the status of ongoing reports of monkeypox cases through established surveillance mechanisms (Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response) for cases in endemic countries [1], as summarized in table 2.
Epidemiology of the Disease
Monkeypox is a viral zoonosis (a virus transmitted to humans from animals) with symptoms very similar to those seen in the past in smallpox patients, although it is clinically less severe.
It is caused by the monkeypox virus which belongs to the orthopoxvirus genus of the Poxviridae family.
There are two clades of monkeypox virus: the West African clade and the Congo Basin (Central African) clade.
The name monkeypox originates from the initial discovery of the virus in monkeys in a Danish laboratory in 1958. The first human case was identified in a child in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970.
Various animal species have been identified as susceptible to the monkeypox virus. Uncertainty remains on the natural history of the monkeypox virus and further studies are needed to identify the exact reservoir(s) and how virus circulation is maintained in nature.
Human infections with the West African clade appear to cause less severe disease compared to the Congo Basin clade, with a case fatality rate of 3.6% compared to 10.6% for the Congo Basin clade.
Suspected Case Symptoms
A person of any age presenting in a monkeypox non-endemic country with an unexplained acute rash; and one or more of the following signs or symptoms, since 15 March 2022 – headache, acute onset of fever (>38.5oC), lymphadenopathy (swollen lymph nodes), myalgia (muscle and body aches), back pain and asthenia (profound weakness).
WHO Risk Assessment
Endemic monkeypox disease is normally geographically limited to West and Central Africa.
The identification of confirmed and suspected cases of monkeypox without any travel history to an endemic area in multiple countries is atypical, hence, there is an urgent need to raise awareness about monkeypox and undertake comprehensive case finding and isolation (provided with supportive care), contact tracing and supportive care to limit further onward transmission.
Cross-protective immunity from smallpox vaccination will be limited to older persons, since populations worldwide under the age of 40 or 50 years no longer benefit from the protection afforded by prior smallpox vaccination programmes.
There is little immunity to monkeypox among younger people living in non-endemic countries since the virus has not been present there.
WHO Advice
Identification of additional cases and further onward spread in the countries currently reporting cases and other Member States is likely.
Any patient with suspected monkeypox should be investigated and if confirmed, isolated until their lesions have crusted, the scab has fallen off and a fresh layer of skin has formed underneath.
Countries should be on the alert for signals related to patients presenting with an atypical rash that progresses in sequential stages – macules, papules, vesicles, pustules, scabs, at the same stage of development over all affected areas of the body – that may be associated with fever, enlarged lymph nodes, back pain, and muscle aches.
In non-endemic countries, one case is considered an outbreak. Because of the public health risks associated with a single case of monkeypox, clinicians should report suspected cases immediately to national or local public health authorities regardless of whether they are also exploring other potential diagnoses.
Nearly 15M deaths associated with COVID-19: WHO
The World Health Organization is estimating that nearly 15 million people were killed either by the coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems in the past two years, more than double the official death toll of 6 million. Most of the fatalities were in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas.
In a report released on Thursday, the U.N. agency’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the figure as “sobering,” saying it should prompt countries to invest more in their capacities to quell future health emergencies.
Also read: WHO recommends Pfizer's Covid pill Paxlovid
Scientists tasked by WHO with calculating the actual number of COVID-19 deaths between January 2020 and the end of last year estimated there were between 13.3 million and 16.6 million deaths that were either caused directly by the coronavirus or were somehow attributed to the pandemic’s impact on health systems, like people with cancer unable to seek treatment when hospitals were full of COVID patients.
The figures are based on country-reported data and statistical modelling. WHO did not immediately break down the figures to distinguish between direct deaths from COVID-19 and others caused by the pandemic.
“This may seem like just a bean-counting exercise, but having these WHO numbers is so critical to understanding how we should combat future pandemics and continue to respond to this one,” said Albert Ko, an infectious diseases specialist at the Yale School of Public Health who was not linked to the WHO research. For example, Ko said, South Korea’s decision to invest heavily in public health after it suffered a severe outbreak of MERS allowed it to escape COVID-19 with a per-capita death rate around a 20th of that of the U.S.
Accurate numbers on COVID-19 deaths have been problematic throughout the pandemic, as the figures are only a fraction of the devastation wrought by the virus, largely because of limited testing and differences in how countries count COVID-19 deaths. According to government figures reported to WHO and to a separate count kept by Johns Hopkins University, there have been more than 6 million reported coronavirus deaths to date.
Scientists at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington guessed there were more than 18 million COVID deaths from January 2020 to December 2021 in a recent study published in the journal Lancet, and a team led by Canadian researchers estimated there were more than 3 million uncounted coronavirus deaths in India alone.
Also read: WHO says global COVID cases, deaths declined again last week
Some countries, including India, have disputed WHO’s methodology for calculating COVID deaths, resisting the idea that there were many more deaths than officially counted. Earlier this week, the Indian government released new figures showing there were 474,806 more deaths in 2020 compared to the previous year, but did not say how many were tied to the pandemic. India did not release any death estimates for 2021, when the highly infectious delta variant swept through the country, killing many thousands.
Yale’s Ko said better figures from WHO might also explain some lingering mysteries about the pandemic, like why Africa appears to have been one of the least affected by the virus, despite its low vaccination rates. “Were the mortality rates so low because we couldn’t count the deaths or was there some other factor to explain that?” he said, adding that the crush of deaths in rich countries like Britain and the U.S. proved that resources alone were insufficient to contain a global outbreak.
Dr. Bharat Pankhania, a public health specialist at Britain’s University of Exeter, said we may never get close to the true toll of COVID-19, particularly in poor countries.
“When you have a massive outbreak where people are dying in the streets because of a lack of oxygen, bodies were abandoned or people had to be cremated quickly because of cultural beliefs, we end up never knowing just how many people died,” he explained.
Although Pankhania said the currently estimated COVID-19 death toll still pales in comparison to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic — when experts estimate up to 100 million people died — he said the fact that so many people died despite the advances of modern medicine, including vaccines, is shameful.
He also warned the cost of COVID-19 could be far more damaging in the long term, given the increasing burden of long COVID.
“With the Spanish flu, there was the flu and then there were some (lung) illnesses people suffered, but that was it,” he said. “There was not an enduring immunological condition that we’re seeing right now with COVID,” he said.
“We do not know the extent to which people with long COVID will have their lives cut short and if they will have repeated infections that will cause them even more problems.”
Maternity hospital among 18 Ukraine medical centers hit: WHO
An airstrike on a maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol wounded women waiting to give birth and buried children in the rubble as Russian forces intensified their siege of Ukrainian cities. Bombs also fell on two hospitals in another city west of Kyvi.
The World Health Organization said Wednesday that it has confirmed 18 attacks on medical facilities since the Russian invasion began two weeks ago.
Ukrainian officials said the attack at a medical complex in Mariupul wounded at least 17 people.
The ground shook more than a mile away when the series of blasts hit. Explosions blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building. Police and soldiers rushed to the scene to evacuate victims, carrying a bleeding woman with a swollen belly on a stretcher past burning and mangled cars.
Read:700 evacuate Russia-occupied towns near Kyiv
Another woman wailed as she clutched her child. In the courtyard, a blast crater extended at least two stories deep.
“Today Russia committed a huge crime,” said Volodymir Nikulin, a top regional police official, standing in the ruins. “It is a war crime without any justification.”
In Zhytomyr, a city of 260,000 to the west of Kyiv, bombs fell on two hospitals, one of them a children’s hospital, Mayor Serhii Sukhomlyn said on Facebook. He said there were no injuries.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Mariupol strike trapped children and others under debris.
“A children’s hospital. A maternity hospital. How did they threaten the Russian Federation?” Zelenskyy asked in his nightly video address, switching to Russian to express horror at the strike. “What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?”
He urged the West to impose even tougher sanctions, so Russia “no longer has any possibility to continue this genocide.”
Video shared by Zelenskyy showed cheerfully painted hallways strewn with twisted metal.
“There are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenseless,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be held “to account for his terrible crimes.”
The WHO said it had confirmed 10 deaths in attacks on health facilities and ambulances since the fighting began. It was not clear if its numbers included the assault on the maternity hospital.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken condemned Russia’s “unconscionable attacks” in a call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, the State Department said.
Two weeks into Russia’s assault on Ukraine, its military is struggling more than expected, but Putin’s invading force of more than 150,000 troops retains possibly insurmountable advantages in firepower as it bears down on key cities.
Despite often heavy shelling on populated areas, American military officials reported little change on the ground over the previous 24 hours, other than Russian progress against the cities of Kharkiv and Mykolaiv, in heavy fighting. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to assess the military situation.
Authorities announced new cease-fires to allow thousands of civilians to escape bombarded towns. Zelenskyy said three humanitarian corridors operated on Wednesday, from Sumy in the northeast near the Russian border, from suburbs of Kyiv and from Enerhodar, the southern town where Russian forces took over a large nuclear plant.
In all, he said, about 35,000 people got out. More evacuations were planned for Thursday.
People streamed out of Kyiv’s suburbs, many headed for the city center, as explosions were heard in the capital and air raid sirens sounded repeatedly. From there, the evacuees planned to board trains bound for western Ukrainian regions not under attack.
Read:Airstrike hits Ukraine maternity hospital, 17 reported hurt
Civilians leaving the Kyiv suburb of Irpin were forced to make their way across the slippery wooden planks of a makeshift bridge, because the Ukrainians blew up the concrete span leading to Kyiv days ago to slow the Russian advance.
With sporadic gunfire echoing behind them, firefighters dragged an elderly man to safety in a wheelbarrow, a child gripped the hand of a helping soldier, and a woman inched her way along, cradling a fluffy cat inside her winter coat. They trudged past a crashed van with the words “Our Ukraine” written in the dust coating its windows.
“We have a short window of time at the moment,’’ said Yevhen Nyshchuk, a member of Ukraine’s territorial defense forces. “Even if there is a cease-fire right now, there is a high risk of shells falling at any moment.”
Previous attempts to establish safe evacuation corridors over the past few days largely failed because of what the Ukrainians said were Russian attacks. But Putin, in a telephone call with Germany’s chancellor, accused militant Ukrainian nationalists of hampering the evacuations.
In Mariupol, a city of 430,000 people on the Sea of Azov, local authorities hurried to bury the dead from the past two weeks of fighting in a mass grave. City workers dug a trench some 25 meters (yards) long at one of the city’s old cemeteries and made the sign of the cross as they pushed bodies wrapped in carpets or bags over the edge.
About 1,200 people have died in the nine-day siege of the city, Zelenskyy’s office said.
Nationwide, thousands are thought to have been killed, both civilians and soldiers, since Putin’s forces invaded. The U.N. estimates more than 2 million people have fled the country, the biggest exodus of refugees in Europe since the end of World War II.
The fighting knocked out power to the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant, raising fears about the spent radioactive fuel that is stored at the site and must be kept cool. But the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said it saw “no critical impact on safety” from the loss of power.
The crisis is likely to get worse as Moscow’s forces step up their bombardment of cities in response to what appear to be stronger Ukrainian resistance and heavier Russian losses than anticipated.
The Biden administration warned that Russia might seek to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine. The White House rejected Russian claims of illegal chemical weapons development in the country it has invaded.
This week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova — without evidence — accused Ukraine of running chemical and biological weapons labs with U.S. support. White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the claim “preposterous” and said it could be part of an attempt by Russia to lay the groundwork for its own use of such weapons against Ukraine.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Russia’s assault will get “more brutal and more indiscriminate” as Putin tries to regain momentum.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said fighting continued northwest of Kyiv. Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol were being heavily shelled and remained encircled by Russian forces.
Russian forces are placing military equipment on farms and amid residential buildings in the northern city of Chernihiv, Ukraine’s military said. In the south, Russians in civilian clothes are advancing on the city of Mykolaiv, a Black Sea shipbuilding center of a half-million people, it said.
The Ukrainian military, meanwhile, is building up defenses in cities in the north, south and east, and forces around Kyiv are “holding the line” against the Russian offensive, authorities said.
WHO: New COVID cases drop by 19% globally, deaths stable
The number of new coronavirus cases globally fell by 19% in the last week while the number of deaths remained stable, according to the World Health Organization.
The U.N. health agency said late Tuesday in its weekly report on the pandemic that just over 16 million new COVID-19 infections and about 75,000 deaths were reported worldwide last week.
The Western Pacific was the only region to report a rise in new weekly cases, an increase of about 19%, Southeast Asia reported a decrease of about 37%, the biggest drop globally. The number of deaths rose by 38% in the Middle East and by about one-third in the Western Pacific.
Read:Reduced brain function, immune disorder a possibility of "long COVID"
The biggest number of new COVID-19 cases was seen in Russia. Cases there and elsewhere in Eastern Europe doubled in recent weeks, driven by a surge of the hugely infectious omicron variant.
WHO said that all other coronavirus variants, including alpha, beta and delta, continue to decline globally as omicron crowds them out. Among the more than 400,000 COVID-19 virus sequences uploaded to the world’s biggest virus database in the last week, more than 98% were omicron.
WHO said the BA.2 version of omicron appears to be “steadily increasing” and its prevalence has risen in South Africa, Denmark, the U.K. and other countries.
Health officials have noted, however, that omicron causes milder disease than previous COVID-19 variants and in countries with high vaccination rates, hospitalization and death rates have not increased substantially, even with omicron’s spread.
Read: In reversal, FDA puts brakes on COVID shots for kids under 5
WHO’s Africa director, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, said last week there was “light at the end of the tunnel” for the continent and that even despite low vaccination rates, Africa was transitioning from the acute pandemic phase of COVID-19.
That optimism contrasts sharply with warnings from WHO Director-Feneral Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has said repeatedly the pandemic is not over and is premature for countries to think that the end might be imminent.
Omicron exposes inflexibility of Europe's public hospitals
A World Health Organization official warned last week of a “closing window of opportunity” for European countries to prevent their health care systems from being overwhelmed as the omicron variant produces near-vertical growth in coronavirus infections.
In France, Britain and Spain, nations with comparatively strong national health programs, that window may already be closed.
The director of an intensive care unit at a hospital in Strasbourg is turning patients away. A surgeon at a London hospital describes a critical delay in a man's cancer diagnosis. Spain is seeing its determination to prevent a system collapse tested as omicron keeps medical personnel off work.
“There are a lot of patients we can’t admit, and it’s the non-COVID patients who are the collateral victims of all this,” said Dr. Julie Helms, who runs the ICU at Strasbourg University Hospital in far eastern France.
Read:Tsunami threat recedes from huge Pacific volcanic eruption
Two years into the pandemic, with the exceptionally contagious omicron impacting public services of various kinds, the variant’s effect on medical facilities has many reevaluating the resilience of public health systems that are considered essential to providing equal care.
The problem, experts say, is that few health systems built up enough flexibility to handle a crisis like the coronavirus before it emerged, while repeated infection spikes have kept the rest too preoccupied to implement changes during the long emergency.
Hospital admissions per capita right now are as high in France, Italy and Spain as they were last spring, when the three countries had lockdowns or other restrictive measures in place. England's hospitalization rate of people with COVID-19 for the week ending Jan. 9 was slightly higher than it was in early February 2021, before most residents were vaccinated.
This time, there are no lockdowns. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a population health research organization based at the University of Washington, predicts that more than half of the people in WHO Europe's 53-country region will be infected with omicron within two months.
That includes doctors, nurses and technicians at public hospitals.
About 15% of the Strasbourg hospital system’s staff of 13,000 was out this week. In some hospitals, the employee absentee rate is 20%. Schedules are made and reset to plug gaps; patients whose needs aren’t critical must wait.
The French public hospital's 26 ICU beds are almost all occupied by unvaccinated patients, people ”who refuse care, who refuse the medicine or who demand medicines that have no effectiveness," Helms said.
She denied 12 requests for admission early in the week, and 10 on Wednesday night.
"When you have three patients for a single bed, we try to take the one who has the best odds of benefiting from it,” Helms said.
In Britain, like France, omicron is causing cracks in the health system even though the variant appears to cause milder illness than its predecessors. The British government this month assigned military personnel, including medics, to fill in at London hospitals, adding to the ranks of service members already helping administer vaccines and operate ambulances.
At the Royal Free Hospital in London, Dr. Leye Ajayi described a patient who faced delays in his initial cancer diagnosis.
“Unfortunately, when we eventually got round to seeing the patient, his cancer had already spread," Ajayi told Sky News. "So we’re now dealing with a young patient in his mid-50s who, perhaps if we’d seen him a year ago, could have offered curative surgery. We’re now dealing with palliative care.”
Nearly 13,000 patients in England were forced to wait on stretchers more than 12 hours before a hospital bed opened, according to figures released last week from the National Health Service.
Britain has a backlog of around 5.9 million people awaiting cancer screenings, scheduled surgeries and other planned care. Some experts estimate that figure could double in the next three years.
“We need to focus on why performance has continued to fall and struggle for years and build the solutions to drive improvement in both the short and long term,” said Dr. Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine.
Having the capacity to accommodate a surge is crucial, and it’s just this surge capacity that many in Europe were surprised to learn their countries lacked. The people in a position to turn that around were the same ones dealing with the crisis daily.
In the midst of the first wave, in April 2020, WHO’s Europe office put out a how-to guide for health systems to build slack into their systems for new outbreaks, including identifying a temporary health workforce.
“Despite the fact that countries thought they were prepared for a pandemic that might come along, they were not. So it’s building the ship as it sails,” said Dr. David Heymann, who previously led the World Health Organization’s infectious diseases department.
But France had been cutting back hospital beds — and doctors and nurses — for years before the pandemic. Building it back up in a matter of months proved too much when the current wave infected hospital staff by the hundreds each day. Even allowing symptomatic COVID-19-positive health workers to report for work hasn’t been enough.
Read:France eases entry rules for vaccinated travelers from U.K.
Britain's NHS Confederation, a membership organization for sponsors and providers, says the public health service went into the pandemic with a shortage of 100,000 health workers that has only worsened.
The first wave of the pandemic pushed Spain's health system to its limit. Hospitals improvised ways to treat more patients by setting up ICUs in operating rooms, gymnasiums and libraries. The public witnessed, appalled, retirees dying in nursing homes without ever being taken to state hospitals that were already well over capacity.
After that, the Spanish government vowed not to let such a collapse happen again. Working with regional health departments, it designed what officials call “elasticity plans” to deal with sudden variations in service demands, especially in ICUs.
The idea is that hospitals have the equipment and, in theory, the personnel, to increase capacity depending on the need. But critics of government health policy say they've warned for years of inadequate hospital staffing, a key driver of the difficulty delivering care in the current wave.
“The key thing is flexibility, having flexible buildings that can expand, having staff that are flexible in terms of accepting task shifting, having flexibility in terms of sharing loads more of a regional structure,” said Dr. Martin McKee, a public health professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Ultimately, though, McLee said: “A bed is an item of furniture. What counts is the staff around it,” McKee said.
Helms, the Strasbourg intensive care doctor, knows that all too well. Her unit has space for 30 beds. But it has only enough staff to care for the patients in the 26 beds currently occupied, a situation unlikely to change quickly after omicron burns through the region.
In the same hospital's infectious diseases unit, frantic schedulers are borrowing staff from elsewhere in the facility, even if it means non-COVID-19 patients get less care.
“We’re still in the middle of a complex epidemic that is changing every day. It’s hard to imagine what we need to build for the future for other epidemics, but we’re going to have to reflect on the system of how we organize care,” said Dr. Nicolas Lefebvre, who runs the infectious diseases unit at the Strasbourg hospital.
He said Europe is prepared to handle isolated outbreaks as it has in the past, but the pandemic has exposed weakened foundations across entire health systems, even those considered among the world's best.
Frédéric Valletoux, the head of the French Hospital Federation, said policymakers at the national level are acutely aware of the problem now. For 2022, the federation has requested more resources from nursing staff on up.
“The difficulty in our system is to shake things up, especially when we're in the heart of the crisis,” Valletoux said.
WHO says measures against delta work for omicron variant too
World Health Organization officials in the Western Pacific say border closures adopted by some countries may buy time to deal with the omicron coronavirus variant, but measures put in place and experience gained in dealing with the delta variant should remain the foundation for fighting the pandemic.
While a few regional countries are facing surges, COVID-19 cases and deaths in many others have decreased and plateaued, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific Dr. Takeshi Kasai told reporters Friday in a virtual news conference broadcast from Manila, Philippines.
“Border control can delay the virus coming in and buy time. But every country and every community must prepare for new surges in cases,” Kasai said. “The positive news in all of this is that none of the information we have currently about omicron suggests we need to change the directions of our response.”
Much remains unknown about the new variant, including whether it is more contagious, as some health authorities suspect, or if it makes people more seriously ill, and whether it can thwart the vaccine.
Read:India reports first two Covid cases of Omicron variant
Kasai said omicron has been designated a variant of concern because of the number of mutations and because early information suggests it may be more transmissible than other variants of the virus. More testing and observation is necessary, he said.
Thus far, four countries and regions in the Western Pacific — Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea — have reported cases of the omicron variant, said WHO Regional Emergency Director Dr. Babatunde Olowokure. That number is likely to go up as more cases are discovered globally, Olowokure said.
Singapore and Malaysia have also reported their first cases in the last 24 hours, along with India, which falls just outside the WHO Western Pacific Region.
In the Philippines, government epidemiology bureau director Althea de Guzman said Friday that one of 71 people located by authorities after arriving in the country from South Africa in the last two weeks had tested positive for the coronavirus and still more tests are underway to determine if it’s the omicron variant.
“We are preparing and bracing our health system in case, first, omicron enters here and, second, we suddenly see a spike in cases,” de Guzman said.
The emergence of omicron is of particularly concern for organizers of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, now just weeks away.
Beijing is adopting a “series of comprehensive prevention and control measures to minimize the risk of the spread of imported outbreaks, effectively protect the health of all participants and people of the hosting cities, and ensure that the competition runs safely and smoothly as scheduled,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Weidong
China has adopted a zero-tolerance policy for COVID-19 transmission and has some of the world’s strictest border controls. Games participants will have to live and compete inside a bubble and only spectators who are residents of China and have been vaccinated and tested will be permitted at venues.
Beijing’s measures would seem to be adequate for now.
In terms of what countries should be doing now, our experiences over the last few years, especially in responding to delta, provides a guide of what we need to do, as well as how to cope with future surges in a more sustainable way, Olowokure said in Manila.
Those include full vaccination coverage, social distancing, mask wearing and other measures. The goal is to “ensure we are treating the right patients in the right place at the right time, and so therefore ensuring that ICU beds are available, particularly for those who need them,” he said.
Read:US reports 1st case of omicron variant in returning traveler
Despite the positive trends in handling the pandemic in the Western Pacific region, largely through high vaccination rates, “we cannot be complacent,” Kasai said.
Globally, cases have been increasing for seven consecutive weeks and the number of deaths has started to rise again too, driven largely by the delta variant and decreased use of protective measures in other parts of the world, he said.
“We should not be surprised to see more surges in the future. As long as transmission continues, the virus can continue to mutate as the emergence of omicron demonstrates, reminding us of the need to stay vigilant,” Kasai said.
He warned especially about the likelihood of surges due to more gatherings and movement of people during the holiday season. The northern winter season will likely bring other infectious respiratory diseases such as influenza alongside COVID-19, Kasai said.
“It is clear that this pandemic is far from over and I know that people are worried about omicron,” he said. “But my message today is that we can adapt the way we manage this virus to better cope with the future surges and reduce their health, social and economic impacts.”
The WHO Western Pacific Region includes 37 countries and areas from Palau to Mongolia.
New omicron variant stokes world fears, triggers travel bans
The discovery of a new coronavirus variant sent a chill through much of the world Friday as nations raced to halt air travel, markets fell sharply and scientists held emergency meetings to weigh the exact risks, which were largely unknown.
A World Health Organization panel named the variant “omicron” and classified it as a highly transmissible virus of concern, the same category that includes the delta variant, the world’s most prevalent. The panel said early evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection.
In response, the United States joined the European Union and several other countries in instituting travel restrictions on visitors from southern Africa.
The White House said the U.S. will restrict travel from South Africa and seven other countries in the region beginning Monday. It did not give details except to say the restrictions will not apply to returning U.S. citizens or permanent residents, who will continue to be required to test negative before their travel.
Medical experts, including the WHO, warned against any overreaction before the variant that originated in southern Africa was better understood. But a jittery world feared the worst nearly two years after COVID-19 emerged and triggered a pandemic that has killed more than 5 million people around the globe.
“We must move quickly and at the earliest possible moment,” British Health Secretary Sajid Javid told lawmakers.
There was no immediate indication whether the variant causes more severe disease. As with other variants, some infected people display no symptoms, South African experts said. The WHO panel drew from the Greek alphabet in naming the variant omicron, as it has done with earlier, major variants of the virus.
Read: EU wants to stop flights from southern Africa over variant
Even though some of the genetic changes appear worrisome, it was unclear if the new variant would pose a significant public health threat. Some previous variants, like the beta variant, initially concerned scientists but did not spread very far.
The 27-nation European Union imposed a temporary ban on air travel from southern Africa, and stocks tumbled in Asia, Europe and the United States. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 1,000 points. The S&P 500 index was down 2.3%, on pace for its worst day since February. The price of oil plunged nearly 12%.
“The last thing we need is to bring in a new variant that will cause even more problems,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said. The member nations of the EU have experienced a massive spike in cases recently.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said flights will have to “be suspended until we have a clear understanding about the danger posed by this new variant, and travelers returning from this region should respect strict quarantine rules.”
She insisted on extreme caution, warning that “mutations could lead to the emergence and spread of even more concerning variants of the virus that could spread worldwide within a few months.”
Belgium became the first European Union country to announce a case of the variant.
“It’s a suspicious variant,” Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke said. “We don’t know if it’s a very dangerous variant.”
It has yet to be detected in the United States, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert. Abroad, the variant “seems to be spreading at a reasonably rapid rate,” he told CNN. And although it may be more transmissible and resistant to vaccines than other variants, “we don’t know that for sure right now.”
Read:South African scientists detect new virus variant amid spike
Showing how complicated the spread of a variant can be, the Belgian case involved a traveler who returned to Belgium from Egypt on Nov. 11 but did not became sick with mild symptoms until Monday, according to professor Marc Van Ranst, who works for the scientific group overseeing the Belgian government’s COVID-19 response.
Israel, one of the world’s most vaccinated countries, announced Friday that it also detected its first case of the new variant in a traveler who returned from Malawi. The traveler and two other suspected cases were placed in isolation. Israel said all three were vaccinated, but officials were looking into the travelers’ exact vaccination status.
After a 10-hour overnight trip, passengers aboard KLM Flight 598 from Capetown, South Africa, to Amsterdam were held on the edge of the runway Friday morning at Schiphol airport for four hours pending special testing. Passengers aboard a flight from Johannesburg were also being isolated and tested.
“It’s ridiculous. If we didn’t catch the dreaded bugger before, we’re catching it now,” said passenger Francesca de’ Medici, a Rome-based art consultant who was on the flight.
Some experts said the variant’s emergence illustrated how rich countries’ hoarding of vaccines threatens to prolong the pandemic.
Fewer than 6% of people in Africa have been fully immunized against COVID-19, and millions of health workers and vulnerable populations have yet to receive a single dose. Those conditions can speed up spread of the virus, offering more opportunities for it to evolve into a dangerous variant.
“This is one of the consequences of the inequity in vaccine rollouts and why the grabbing of surplus vaccines by richer countries will inevitably rebound on us all at some point,” said Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at Britain’s University of Southampton. He urged Group of 20 leaders “to go beyond vague promises and actually deliver on their commitments to share doses.”
The new variant added to investor anxiety that months of progress containing COVID-19 could be reversed.
“Investors are likely to shoot first and ask questions later until more is known,” said Jeffrey Halley of foreign exchange broker Oanda.
In a sign of how concerned Wall Street has become, the market’s so-called fear gauge known as the VIX jumped 48% to a reading of 26.91. That’s the highest reading for the volatility index since January, before vaccines were widely distributed.
Speaking before the EU announcement, Dr. Michael Ryan, head of emergencies at the WHO, warned against “knee-jerk responses.”
“We’ve seen in the past, the minute there’s any kind of mention of any kind of variation and everyone is closing borders and restricting travel,” Ryan said. “It’s really important that we remain open and stay focused.”
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed and strongly discouraged any travel bans on countries that reported the new variant. It said past experience shows that such travel bans have “not yielded a meaningful outcome.”
Yet the U.S. announced restrictions on visitors from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi, hours after governments took similar steps.
The U.K. banned flights from South Africa and five other southern African countries at noon on Friday and announced that anyone who had recently arrived from those countries would be asked to take a coronavirus test.
The Japanese government announced that Japanese nationals traveling from Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho will have to quarantine at government-dedicated accommodations for 10 days and take COVID-19 tests on the third, sixth and tenth days. Japan has not yet opened up to foreign nationals.
Fauci said U.S. public health officials were talking Friday with South African colleagues. “We want to find out scientist to scientist exactly what is going on.”
The WHO’s technical working group says coronavirus infections jumped 11% in the past week in Europe, the only region in the world where COVID-19 continues to rise.
The WHO’s Europe director, Dr. Hans Kluge, warned that without urgent measures, the continent could see an additional 700,000 deaths by the spring.
Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels, Colleen Barry in Milan, Pan Pylas in London, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Mike Corder in The Hague, Dave McHugh in Frankfurt, Carley Petesch in Dakar, Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.
Global Covid cases top 259 million
The overall number of Covid cases has surged past 259 million amid the global race to vaccinate masses against the infectious disease.
According to Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the total case count mounted to 259,380,413 while the death toll from the virus reached 5,173,924, Thursday morning.
The US has recorded 48,090,894 cases to date and more than 775,369 people have died so far from the virus in the country, as per the university data.
Brazil, which has been experiencing a new wave of cases since January, registered 22,043,112 cases as of Wednesday, while its Covid death toll rose to 613,339.
Read: French prime minister positive for COVID-19, as cases rise
India's Covid-19 tally rose to 34,535,763 on Wednesday, as 9,283 new cases were registered in 24 hours across the country, as per the federal health ministry data.
Besides, 437 deaths due to the pandemic since Tuesday morning took the total death toll to 466,584.
The World Health Organization’s Europe office says projections show its 53-country region could face another 700,000 deaths in the pandemic by next spring, topping two million in total, reports AP.
WHO Europe, which is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, also cited growing evidence of a decline in protection against infection and mild disease through vaccines, and said a “booster dose” should be given as a priority to the most vulnerable populations -- including people with weakened immune systems -- as well as people over age 60 and healthcare workers.
Read: As virus surges in Eastern Europe, leaders slow to act
The UN health agency’s international headquarters in Geneva, however, has repeatedly called for a moratorium on the use of boosters through year-end so that doses can be made available for many developing countries that have faced a severe lack of the Covid vaccines compared to the rich world.
Situation in Bangladesh
Bangladesh reported three more Covid-linked deaths for the second consecutive day along with 312 fresh cases in 24 hours till Wednesday morning.
With this, the daily case positivity rate rose to 1.49 percent on Wednesday from Tuesday’s 1.45 percent, said the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The positivity rate kept rising for the last three days as it was 1.42 percent on Monday and 1.16 on Sunday.
Among the deceased, two were women and one was a man. Each of the deceased was from Chattogram, Rajshahi and Khulna divisions.
With the fresh numbers, the total fatalities rose to 27,961 while the caseload mounted to 1,574,948.
However, the mortality rate remained static at 1.78 percent.
The fresh cases were detected after testing 20,770 samples, the directorate added.
Besides, the recovery rate remained static at 97.73 percent, with the recovery of 338 more patients during the 24-hour period.
On Saturday, Bangladesh logged zero Covid-linked deaths with 178 cases.
So far, 3,54,14,244 people have fully been vaccinated in the country while 5,64,02,543 received the first dose as of Tuesday, according to the directorate.
Global Covid cases top 256 million
The overall number of Covid cases has surged past 257 million with increases in cases in the Americas, Europe and Asia.
According to Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the total case count mounted to 257, 158,204 while the death toll from the virus reached 5,146,154 Sunday morning.
The World Health Organization says coronavirus deaths in Europe rose 5% in the last week, making it the only region in the world where COVID-19 deaths increased.
The U.N. health agency said confirmed cases jumped 6% globally, driven by increases in the Americas, Europe and Asia, reports AP.
In its weekly report on the pandemic issued late Tuesday, WHO said COVID-19 deaths in all regions other than Europe remained stable or declined, and totaled 50,000 worldwide last week. Of the 3.3 million new infections reported, 2.1 million came from Europe.
Read:US opens COVID boosters to all adults, urges them for 50+
It was the seventh consecutive week that COVID-19 cases continued to mount across the 61 countries and territories that WHO counts in its European region, which stretches through Russia to Central Asia.
While about 60% of people in Western Europe are fully immunized against COVID-19, only about half as many are vaccinated in the eastern part of the continent, where officials are struggling to overcome widespread vaccine hesitancy.
In the last week, Austria has put tight restrictions on the movement of unvaccinated people, the Netherlands and some other European countries have reintroduced lockdown measures to try to slow infections, and the U.K. decided to roll out booster doses to everyone over 40.
The US has recorded 47,701,872 cases to date and more than 771,013 people have died so far from the virus in the country, as per the university data.
Brazil, which has been experiencing a new wave of cases since January, registered 22,012,150 cases as of Saturday, while its Covid death toll rose to 612, 587.
India's COVID-19 tally rose to 34,499,925 on Saturday, as 10,302 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the federal health ministry's latest data.
Besides, 267 new deaths due to the pandemic since Friday morning took the total death toll to 465,349.
Situation In Bangladesh
Confronting a tumultuous time since reporting its first death from Coronavirus on March 8, 2020 followed by the wrath unleashed by delta variant in 2021, Bangladesh finally reported zero death from the deadly virus in 24 hours till Saturday morning.
The country, however, logged 178 more infections during the 24-hour period.
Bangladesh recorded its first Covid cases on March 8 and the first death on March 18 of the last year.
The daily case positivity rate has declined to 1.18 per cent today from Friday’s 1.40%, said the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
With the fresh numbers, the total fatalities rose to 27,946 while the caseload mounted to 1,573,889.
However, the mortality rate remained static at 1.78 per cent.
The fresh cases were detected after testing 15,107 samples, the DGHS added.
Besides, the recovery rate remained the same as 97.72 per cent with the recovery of 190 more patients during the 24-hour period.
Read: Zero death from Covid brings relief for Bangladesh
Covid-19 Waves
On January 12 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan City of Hubei Province in China.On December 31, 2019, China reported to the WHO some cases of pneumonia with unknown causes.
Bangladesh was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic along with many other countries across the globe on March 8 last year when Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) reported the first three cases.
During mid-January to the first week of March, 2021 the infection rate remained below 5 and from the last week of March 2021, the infection and death toll gradually increased suggesting the start of the second wave of Covid-19 in the country.
Dhaka breathes “unhealthy” air in the morning, says a global monitor
The air quality in the capital city Dhaka was reported “unhealthy” on Thursday morning as the AQI index hovered between 189 and 106 until around 11 am, according to a global air monitoring agency.
At 09:05 am Dhaka city was ranked the fourth worst among the world’s major cities with an AQI score of 189, said AQAIR, a Swiss company that constantly monitors air quality of the world’s major cities. But at 10:52 the air quality of Dhaka came down to 106, but still considered “unhealthy”
People, especially the sensitive sections, are advised to avoid going outdoors when AQI score remains between 100 and 200, according to AQAIR.
Read: Dhaka's air quality continues to be 'unhealthy'
Pakistan’s Lahore (425), India’s Delhi (310) and China’s Wuhan (191) occupied the top three positions in the list of cities with worst air quality on Thursday morning.
Similarly, an AQI between 201 and 300 is said to be 'poor', while a reading of 301 to 400 is considered 'hazardous', posing serious health risks to residents.
AQI, an index for reporting daily air quality, is used by government agencies to inform people how clean or polluted the air of a certain city is, and what associated health effects might be a concern for them.
In Bangladesh, the AQI is based on five criteria pollutants -- Particulate Matter (PM10 and PM2.5), NO2, CO, SO2 and Ozone.
Dhaka has long been grappling with air pollution issues. Its air quality usually turns unhealthy during winter and improves during monsoon.
A report by the Department of Environment (DoE) and the World Bank in March 2019 pointed out that the three main sources of air pollution in Dhaka "are brick kilns, fumes from vehicles and dust from construction sites".
With the advent of winter, the city’s air quality starts deteriorating sharply due to the massive discharge of pollutant particles from construction works, rundown roads, brick kilns and other sources.
Read: Bangladesh assumes IORA chairmanship; eyes inclusive development
As per the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution kills an estimated seven million people worldwide every year, largely as a result of increased mortality from stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and acute respiratory infections.