China defends its COVID response after WHO, Biden concerns
Beijing/Shanghai, China Reuters China defended on Thursday its handling of its raging COVID-19 outbreak after US President Joe Biden voiced concern and the World Health Organisation said Beijing was under-reporting virus deaths. The WHO’s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, said on Wednesday that Chinese officials were under-representing data on several fronts, some of the UN agency’s […]
WHO chief: ‘Colour of skin’ may be why Tigray crisis not getting attention
London, UKReuters The World Health Organization’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has suggested that racism is behind a lack of international attention being paid to the plight of civilians in Ethiopia’s war-shattered Tigray region. Calling it the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world”, with six million people unable to access basic services, Tedros questioned in an […]
WHO sounds warning over fast-spreading Omicron
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from the COVID-19 disease, the head of the World Health Organization said on Monday. WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan added it would be “unwise” to conclude from early […]
WHO says it may be “last chance” to find COVID origins
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters The World Health Organization said on Wednesday its newly formed advisory group on dangerous pathogens may be “our last chance” to determine the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and urged China to provide data from early cases. The first human cases of COVID-19 were reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in […]
Hard-won gains at risk as Delta variant spreads – WHO
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters The world is at risk of losing hard-won gains in fighting COVID-19 as the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads, but WHO-approved vaccines remain effective, the World Health Organization said on Friday. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has described the Delta variant of the coronavirus as being as transmissible as chickenpox […]
WHO worried COVID “amnesia” will lead to another pandemic
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters The World Health Organization’s top emergency expert said on Monday that the world risked future pandemics if it suffered “amnesia” and did not learn from the current coronavirus crisis. “I have seen the amnesia that seems to descend upon the world after a traumatic event, and that’s understandable,” Mike Ryan told a briefing […]
One in 10 may have caught COVID, as world heads into “difficult period” – WHO
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters Roughly one in 10 people may have been infected with the coronavirus, leaving the vast majority of the world’s population vulnerable to the COVID-19 disease it causes, the World Health Organization said on Monday. Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergency expert, was addressing the agency’s executive board, where the United States made a […]
Global COVID-19 death toll could hit two million before vaccine in wide use – WHO
Geneva/Zurich, SwitzerlandReuters The global death toll from COVID-19 could double to two million before a successful vaccine is widely used and could be even higher without concerted action to curb the pandemic, an official at the World Health Organization said on Friday. “Unless we do it all, [two million deaths]…is not only imaginable, but sadly […]
WHO’s Ryan: don’t turn COVID-19 into “political football”
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters The World Health Organization’s top emergency expert, asked on Thursday about contradictory remarks by President Donald Trump and US health officials on COVID-19, said it was important for all countries to have “consistent messaging” for their public. Trump took exception on Wednesday to comments from the director of the US Centers for Disease […]
People should not fear spread of COVID-19 in food, packaging – WHO
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters The World Health Organization said on Thursday it saw no evidence of coronavirus being spread by food or packaging and urged people not to be afraid of the virus entering the food chain. Two cities in China said they had found traces of the coronavirus in imported frozen chicken wings from Brazil and […]