WHO
WHO: COVID-19 deaths rise, reversing a 5-week decline
After five weeks of declining coronavirus deaths, the number of fatalities reported globally increased by 4% last week, according to the World Health Organization.
In its weekly assessment of the pandemic issued on Thursday, the U.N. health agency said there were 8,700 COVID-19 deaths last week, with a 21% jump in the Americas and a 17% increase in the Western Pacific.
WHO said coronavirus cases continued to fall, with about 3.2 million new cases reported last week, extending a decline in COVID-19 infections since the peak in January. Still, there were significant spikes of infection in some regions, with the Middle East and Southeast Asia reporting increases of 58% and 33% respectively.
“Because many countries have reduced surveillance and testing, we know this number is under-reported,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier this week. He said there was “no acceptable level of deaths from COVID-19,” given that the global community now has the vaccines, medicines and diagnostics to stop the virus.
While many rich countries in Europe and North America have mostly dropped their virus restrictions, China’s extreme COVID-19 policies have meant more mass testing, quarantines and sequestering of anyone who was in contact with a case.
Read: Declare COVID-19 vaccines a global common good: Global leaders
China’s capital put school back online this week in one of its major districts amid a new COVID-19 outbreak linked to a nightclub. Residents in Beijing are still undergoing regular testing — mostly every other day — and must wear masks and swipe a mobile phone app to enter public places and facilitate case tracing.
China has maintained its “zero-COVID” policy despite considerable economic costs and an assertion from the head of the World Health Organization that the policy isn’t sustainable.
This week, U.S. officials moved a step closer to authorizing coronavirus vaccines for the youngest children, after the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisers gave a thumbs-up to vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech for children under 5.
The outside experts voted unanimously that the benefits of the shots outweigh any risks for children under 5 — that’s roughly 18 million youngsters. They are the last age group in the U.S. without access to COVID-19 vaccines, and many parents have been anxious to protect their little children.
If all the regulatory steps are cleared, shots should be available next week.
WHO convenes experts to decide if monkeypox is an emergency
The World Health Organization will convene an emergency committee of experts to determine if the expanding monkeypox outbreak that has mysteriously spread outside Africa should be considered a global health emergency.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday he decided to convene the emergency committee on June 23 because the virus has shown “unusual” recent behavior by spreading in countries well beyond parts of Africa where it is endemic.
“We believe that it needs also some coordinated response because of the geographic spread,” he told reporters.
Declaring monkeypox to be an international health emergency would give it the same designation as the COVID-19 pandemic and mean that WHO considers the normally rare disease a continuing threat to countries globally.
The U.K. said Monday it had 470 cases of monkeypox across the country, with the vast majority in gay or bisexual men. British scientists said last week they could not tell if the spread of the disease in the U.K. had peaked.
The meeting of outside experts could also help improve understanding and knowledge about the virus, Tedros said, as WHO released new guidelines about vaccinating against monkeypox.
Dr. Ibrahima Soce Fall, WHO’s emergencies director for Africa, said case counts were growing every day and health officials face “many gaps in terms of knowledge of the dynamics of the transmission” — both in Africa and beyond.
“With the advice from the emergency committee, we can be in a better position to control the situation. But it doesn’t mean that we are going straight to a public health emergency of international concern,” he said, referring to WHO’s highest level of alert for viral outbreaks. “We don’t want to wait until the situation is out of control to start calling the emergency committee.”
The U.N. health agency does not recommend mass vaccination, but advises the “judicious” use of vaccines. It said controlling the disease relies primarily on measures like surveillance, tracking cases and isolating patients.
Last month, a leading adviser to WHO said the outbreak in Europe and beyond was likely spread by sex at two recent rave parties in Spain and Belgium.
Scientists warn that anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, is susceptible to catching monkeypox if they are in close, physical contact with an infected person or their clothing or bed sheets.
Also read: Suspected Chuadanga patient not infected with monkeypox, says medical board
WHO has been working with partner countries to create a mechanism by which some vaccines for smallpox — a related disease — might be made available to countries that are affected, as research continues into their effectiveness against the new outbreak.
Tedros said more than 1,600 cases and nearly 1,500 suspected cases have been reported this year in 39 countries, including seven where monkeypox has been reported for years. A total of 72 deaths have been reported but none in the newly affected countries, which include Britain, Canada, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United States.
Also read: Brazil confirms 2nd case of monkeypox
The ongoing outbreak of monkeypox in Europe and elsewhere marks the first time the disease has been known to spread among people who have no travel links to Africa.
WHO for making mental health support part of climate action plans
Mental health support must be included in national responses to climate change, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday at the Stockholm+50 environmental summit.
Climate change poses serious risks to people's mental health and well-being, the UN agency said in a new policy brief, which concurs with a report published in February by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC study revealed that rapidly increasing climate change is a rising threat to mental health and psychosocial well-being, from emotional distress to anxiety, depression, grief, and suicidal behaviour.
"The impacts of climate change are increasingly becoming part of our daily lives, and there is very little dedicated mental health support available for people and communities dealing with climate-related hazards and long-term risk," said Dr Maria Neira, director of the WHO's Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health.
The mental health impacts of climate change are unequally distributed, with certain groups disproportionately affected depending on factors such as socioeconomic status, gender and age, according to the WHO brief.
Read: WHO believes COVID getting worse, not better in North Korea
However, the UN agency said it was clear that climate change affects many of the social determinants that already are leading to massive mental health burdens globally.
Out of 95 countries surveyed last year, only nine included mental health and psychosocial support in their national health and climate change plans.
"The impact of climate change is compounding the already extremely challenging situation for mental health and mental health services globally. Nearly one billion people are living with mental health conditions. In low and middle-income countries, three out four do not have access to needed services," said Dévora Kestel, director of the WHO's Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse.
"By ramping up mental health and psychosocial support within disaster risk reduction and climate action, countries can do more to help protect those most at risk," she added.
Read: WHO: Monkeypox won’t turn into pandemic, but many unknowns
The WHO urged the governments to integrate climate considerations with mental health programmes, merge mental health support with climate action, and build upon their global commitments.
Authorities should also develop community-based approaches to reduce vulnerabilities, and close the large funding gap that currently exists for mental health and psychosocial support, it said.
Among the pioneering countries cited in the WHO report is The Philippines, which rebuilt and improved its mental health services after super typhoon Haiyan in 2013, reportedly one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded.
India also scaled up disaster risk reduction while at the same time preparing cities to respond to climate risks and address mental health and psychosocial needs.
WHO believes COVID getting worse, not better in North Korea
A top official at the World Health Organization said the U.N. health agency assumes the coronavirus outbreak in North Korea is “getting worse, not better,” despite the secretive country's recent claims that COVID-19 is slowing there.
At a briefing on Wednesday, WHO's emergencies chief Dr. Mike Ryan appealed to North Korean authorities for more information about the COVID-19 outbreak there, saying “we have real issues in getting access to the raw data and to the actual situation on the ground.” He said WHO has not received any privileged information about the epidemic — unlike in typical outbreaks when countries may share more sensitive data with the organization so it can evaluate the public health risks for the global community.
Also read: WHO: Monkeypox won’t turn into pandemic, but many unknowns
“It is very, very difficult to provide a proper analysis to the world when we don’t have access to the necessary data,” he said. WHO has previously voiced concerns about the impact of COVID-19 in North Korea's population, which is believed to be largely unvaccinated and whose fragile health systems could struggle to deal with a surge of cases prompted by the super-infectious omicron and its subvariants.
Ryan said WHO had offered technical assistance and supplies to North Korean officials multiple times, including offering COVID-19 vaccines on at least three separate occasions.
Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and other top officials discussed revising stringent anti-epidemic restrictions, state media reported, as they maintained a widely disputed claim that the country’s first COVID-19 outbreak is slowing.
The discussion at the North’s Politburo meeting on Sunday suggested it would soon relax a set of draconian curbs imposed after it announced the outbreak in early May out of concern about its food and economic situations.
North Korea's claims to have controlled COVID-19 without widespread vaccination, lockdowns or drugs have been met with widespread disbelief, particularly its insistence that only dozens have died among many millions infected — a far lower death rate than seen anywhere else in the world.
Also read: WHO: COVID-19 cases mostly drop, except for the Americas
The North Korean government has said there are about 3.7 million people with fever or suspected COVID-19. But it disclosed few details about the severity of illness or how many people have recovered, frustrating public health experts' attempt to understand the extent of the outbreak.
“We really would appeal for for a more open approach so we can come to the assistance of the people of (North Korea), because right now we are not in a position to make an adequate risk assessment of the situation on the ground,” Ryan said. He said WHO was working with neighboring countries like China and South Korea to ascertain more about what might be happening in North Korea, saying that the epidemic there could potentially have global implications.
WHO's criticism of North Korea's failure to provide more information about its COVID-19 outbreak stands in contrast to the U.N. health agency's failure to publicly fault China in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
In early 2020, WHO's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeatedly praised China publicly for its speedy response to the emergence of the coronavirus, even as WHO scientists privately grumbled about China's delayed information-sharing and stalled sharing the genetic sequence of COVID-19.
WHO: Monkeypox won’t turn into pandemic, but many unknowns
The World Health Organization’s top monkeypox expert said she doesn’t expect the hundreds of cases reported to date to turn into another pandemic, but acknowledged there are still many unknowns about the disease, including how exactly it’s spreading and whether the suspension of mass smallpox immunization decades ago may somehow be speeding its transmission.
In a public session on Monday, WHO’s Dr. Rosamund Lewis said it was critical to emphasize that the vast majority of cases being seen in dozens of countries globally are in gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men, so that scientists can further study the issue and for populations at risk to take precautions.
“It’s very important to describe this because it appears to be an increase in a mode of transmission that may have been under-recognized in the past,” said Lewis, WHO’s technical lead on monkeypox.
Still, she warned that anyone is at potential risk of the disease, regardless of their sexual orientation. Other experts have pointed out that it may be accidental that the disease was first picked up in gay and bisexual men, saying it could quickly spill over into other groups if it is not curbed. To date, WHO said 23 countries that haven’t previously had monkeypox have reported more than 250 cases.
Lewis said it’s unknown whether monkeypox is being transmitted by sex or just the close contact between people engaging in sexual activity and described the threat to the general population as “low.”
Also Read: WHO: COVID-19 cases mostly drop, except for the Americas
“It is not yet known whether this virus is exploiting a new mode of transmission, but what is clear is that it continues to exploit its well-known mode of transmission, which is close, physical contact,” Lewis said. Monkeypox is known to spread when there is close physical contact with an infected person or their clothing or bedsheets.
She also warned that among the current cases, there is a higher proportion of people with fewer lesions that are more concentrated in the genital region and sometimes nearly impossible to see.
“You may have these lesions for two to four weeks (and) they may not be visible to others, but you may still be infectious,” she said.
Last week, a top adviser to WHO said the outbreak in Europe, U.S., Israel, Australia and beyond was likely linked to sex at two recent raves in Spain and Belgium. That marks a significant departure from the disease’s typical pattern of spread in central and western Africa, where people are mainly infected by animals like wild rodents and primates, and epidemics haven’t spilled across borders.
Most monkeypox patients experience only fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. People with more serious illness may develop a rash and lesions on the face and hands that can spread to other parts of the body. No deaths have been reported in the current outbreak.
WHO’s Lewis also said that while previous cases of monkeypox in central and western Africa have been relatively contained, it was not clear if people could spread monkeypox without symptoms or if the disease might be airborne, like measles or COVID-19.
Monkeypox is related to smallpox, but has milder symptoms. After smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980, countries suspended their mass immunization programs, a move that some experts believe may be helping monkeypox spread, since there is now little widespread immunity to related diseases; smallpox vaccines are also protective against monkeypox.
Lewis said it would be “unfortunate” if monkeypox were able to “exploit the immunity gap” left by smallpox 40 years ago, saying that there was still a window of opportunity to close down the outbreak so that monkeypox would not become entrenched in new regions.
World No Tobacco Day tomorrow
World No Tobacco Day will be observed in the country on Tuesday as elsewhere in the globe.
The theme of the World No Tobacco Day for 2022 as set by the World Health Organization (WHO) is “Tobacco: Threat to our environment.”
This theme is particularly relevant for Bangladesh and other developing countries where 90 percent of all tobacco production is concentrated, said a press release from PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress), an anti-tobacco platform.
The President and thePrime Minister have issued separate messages on the occasion.
Also read: 18 anti-tobacco groups want duty hike on tobacco products
President Abdul Hamid called upon the government as well as civil society members, professional organizations, non-governmental organizations and the media to make concerted efforts to save people, especially the younger generation, from the dangers of smoking and tobacco.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said, “At the South Asian Speakers Summit 2018, I announced that Bangladesh will be tobacco free by 2040. Our government is working relentlessly towards that goal as we need healthy and strong population to build a developed and prosperous Bangladesh."
Tobacco causes over 84 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually and creates the world’s most littered item, cigarette butts.
Bangladesh ranks 14th in the world on the basis of area used for tobacco cultivation, 12th for tobacco production in quantity, and holds a share of 1.3% of global tobacco production.
According to Tobacco Atlas, tobacco cultivation accounts for 31 percent of deforestation in Bangladesh.
The use of tobacco causes around 161,000 deaths in Bangladesh a year. It has been ranked as the fourth major contributing factors behind premature deaths in the country.
Also read: Experts want THR in tobacco control plans
PROGGA suggests amending existing tobacco control law, hiking cigarette and tobacco product prices imposing specific excise taxes, divesting government’s investment from British American Tobacco, promoting alternative farming and livelihood options, expediting the adoption of a code of conduct in line with FCTC Article 5.3 for all government officials as necessary measures to curb the prevalence of tobacco use.
WHO: COVID-19 cases mostly drop, except for the Americas
The number of new coronavirus cases and deaths are still falling globally after peaking in January, the World Health Organization said.
In its latest weekly assessment of the pandemic, the U.N. health agency said there were more than 3.7 million new infections and 9,000 deaths in the last week, drops of 3% and 11% respectively. COVID-19 cases rose in only two regions of the world: the Americas and the Western Pacific. Deaths increased by 30% in the Middle East, but were stable or decreased everywhere else.
WHO said it is tracking all omicron subvariants as “variants of concern.” It noted that countries which had a significant wave of disease caused by the omicron subvariant BA.2 appeared to be less affected by other subvariants like BA.4 and BA.5, which were responsible for the latest surge of disease in South Africa.
Read: Global Covid cases near 530 million
Salim Abdool Karim, an infectious diseases expert at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said it appeared that South Africa had passed its most recent wave of COVID-19 caused by the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants; the country has been on the forefront of the pandemic since first detecting the omicron variant last November.
Karim predicted that another mutated version of omicron might emerge in June, explaining that the large number of mutations in the variant meant there were more opportunities for it to evolve.
Read: Davos climate focus: Can ‘going green’ mean oil and gas?
Meanwhile in Beijing, authorities in the Chinese capital ordered more workers and students to stay home and implemented additional mass testing Monday as cases of COVID-19 continue to rise. Numerous residential compounds in the city have restricted movement in and out, although lockdown conditions remain far less severe than in Shanghai, where millions of citizens have been under varying degrees of lockdown for two months.
China is vowing to stick to a “zero-COVID” policy despite the fact that the WHO describes the policy as “unsustainable,” given the infectious nature of omicron and its subvariants.
Expert: Monkeypox likely spread by sex at 2 raves in Europe
A leading adviser to the World Health Organization described the unprecedented outbreak of the rare disease monkeypox in developed countries as “a random event” that might be explained by risky sexual behavior at two recent mass events in Europe.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Dr. David Heymann, who formerly headed WHO’s emergencies department, said the leading theory to explain the spread of the disease was sexual transmission among gay and bisexual men at two raves held in Spain and Belgium. Monkeypox has not previously triggered widespread outbreaks beyond Africa, where it is endemic in animals.
“We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission,” said Heymann.
That marks a significant departure from the disease’s typical pattern of spread in central and western Africa, where people are mainly infected by animals like wild rodents and primates and outbreaks have not spread across borders.
To date, WHO has recorded more than 90 cases of monkeypox in a dozen countries including Britain, Spain, Israel, France, Switzerland, the U.S. and Australia.
Also read: Monkeypox: Govt orders screening passengers at all airports, land ports
Madrid’s senior health official said on Monday that the Spanish capital has recorded 30 confirmed cases so far. Enrique Ruiz Escudero said authorities are investigating possible links between a recent Gay Pride event in the Canary Islands, which drew some 80,000 people, and cases at a Madrid sauna.
Heymann chaired an urgent meeting of WHO’s advisory group on infectious disease threats on Friday to assess the ongoing epidemic and said there was no evidence to suggest that monkeypox might have mutated into a more infectious form.
Monkeypox typically causes fever, chills, rash, and lesions on the face or genitals. It can be spread through close contact with an infected person or their clothing or bedsheets, but sexual transmission has not yet been documented. Most people recover from the disease within several weeks without requiring hospitalization. Vaccines against smallpox, a related disease, are also effective in preventing monkeypox and some antiviral drugs are being developed.
The disease can be fatal in about 10% of infections, but no deaths have been reported among the current cases.
WHO said the outbreak is “atypical” and said the fact that cases are being seen in so many different countries suggests the disease may have been silently spreading for some time. The agency’s Europe director warned that as summer begins across the continent, mass gatherings, festivals and parties could accelerate the spread of monkeypox.
Other scientists have pointed out that it will be difficult to disentangle whether it is sex itself or the close contact related to sex that has driven the recent spread of monkeypox across Europe.
“By nature, sexual activity involves intimate contact, which one would expect to increase the likelihood of transmission, whatever a person’s sexual orientation and irrespective of the mode of transmission," said Mike Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London.
On Sunday, the chief medical adviser of Britain’s Health Security Agency, Dr. Susan Hopkins, said she expected more monkeypox cases to be identified in the country “on a daily basis.”
Also read: Monkeypox usually self-limiting but may be severe in some individuals: WHO
U.K. officials have said “a notable proportion” of the cases in Britain and Europe have been in young men with no history of travel to Africa and who are gay, bisexual or have sex with men. Authorities in Portugal and Spain also said their cases were in men who mostly had sex with other men and whose infections were picked up when they sought help for lesions at sexual health clinics.
Heymann, who is also a professor of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the monkeypox outbreak was likely a random event that might be traceable to a single infection.
“It’s very possible there was somebody who got infected, developed lesions on the genitals, hands or somewhere else, and then spread it to others when there was sexual or close, physical contact,” Heymann hypothesized. “And then there were these international events that seeded the outbreak around the world, into the U.S. and other European countries.”
He emphasized that the disease was unlikely to trigger widespread transmission.
“This is not COVID,” he said. “We need to slow it down, but it does not spread in the air and we have vaccines to protect against it.” Heymann said studies should be conducted rapidly to determine if monkeypox could be spread by people without symptoms and that populations at risk of the disease should take precautions to protect themselves
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.
WHO: COVID-19 falling everywhere, except Americas and Africa
The number of new coronavirus cases reported worldwide has continued to fall except in the Americas and Africa, the World Health Organization said in its latest assessment of the pandemic.
In its weekly pandemic report released late Wednesday, the U.N. health agency said about 3.5 million new cases and more than 25,000 deaths were reported globally, which respectively represent decreases of 12% and 25%.
The downward trend in reported infections began in March, although many countries have dismantled their widespread testing and surveillance programs, making an accurate count of cases extremely difficult.
WHO said there were only two regions where reported COVID-19 infections increased: the Americas, by 14%, and Africa, by 12%. Cases remained stable in the Western Pacific and fell everywhere else, the agency said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned during a press briefing this week that “the rising cases in more than 50 countries highlights the volatility of this virus.”
Read: North Korea raises alarm after confirming 1st COVID-19 case
Tedros said COVID-19 variants, including mutated versions of the highly infectious omicron, are driving a resurgence of COVID-19 in several countries, including South Africa, which was the first to identify omicron in November.
He said relatively high rates of population immunity are preventing a spike in hospitalizations and deaths but cautioned that “this is not guaranteed for places where vaccination levels are low.” Only about 16% of people in poorer countries have been immunized against COVID-19.
WHO’s Africa office said Thursday that cases in South Africa have quadrupled in the last three weeks and COVID-19 deaths have doubled. WHO said that so far, hospitalizations were only about 20% of what was seen during the last infection wave in December.
The agency noted that the most concerning omicron subvariants are BA.4 and BA.5, due to their large number of mutations and uncertainty as to how they might affect immunity. COVID-19 cases in Namibia and Eswatini, which border South Africa, also reported 50% more cases in the past two weeks.
Read: Bill Gates says he has COVID, experiencing mild symptoms
“This uptick in cases is an early warning sign which we are closely monitoring,” said Abdou Salam Gueye, WHO Africa’s emergencies chief.
WHO’s report noted that some of the biggest jumps in COVID-19 cases were seen in China, which saw a 145% rise in the last week.
Earlier this week, Chinese authorities doubled down on pandemic restrictions in Shanghai after a brief period of loosening up. The move frustrated residents who were hoping a more than monthlong lockdown was finally easing after complaints of food shortages and quarantines where some people were forced to surrender their house keys.
WHO’s Tedros said Tuesday he didn’t think China’s “zero-COVID” strategy was sustainable, “considering the behaviour of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future.”
On Thursday, North Korea announced its first coronavirus outbreak and imposed a nationwide lockdown. The size of the outbreak wasn’t immediately known, but it could have serious consequences because the country has a poor health care system and its 26 million people are believed to be mostly unvaccinated.