“Escalating bilateral deals” between pharmaceutical companies and World Health Organization (WHO) member states have complicated the global body’s vaccine delivery platform, the COVAX Facility, a number of top WHO officials told the WHO’s Executive Board yesterday in the opening day of the  EB’s 148th session, which focused largely on the pandemic. “Countries with bilateral deals […] Continue reading ->
WHO called on European countries to step up their game to curb the highly contagious COVID-19 variants that are overtaking the region, already straining overstretched health systems. Meanwhile some researchers were warning that the new virus variants could spell double trouble if the mutation first identified in South Africa, in particular, makes new vaccines just […] Continue reading ->
BREAKING – Two members of a 10 person WHO-sponsored mission to China to investigate the origins of the SARS-CoV2 virus were turned away at China’s doorsteps after official approvals that WHO understood to be finalized were held up at the last minute. One member has turned around and is now returning home, while the second […] Continue reading ->
BREAKING – Israel’s Ministry of Health on Tuesday approved the administration of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, making it the first country outside of North America to greenlight the US-based startup’s candidate. The announcement by Moderna said that deliveries of the vaccine to Israel would begin already in January – sharply advancing a schedule that was originally […] Continue reading ->
Ibadan, Nigeria. Several Nigerian states were unable to carry out preventative yellow fever campaigns late last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving thousands of people at risk of developing the disease as the country now faces a new winter yellow fever outbreak, Health Policy Watch learned. In early November, Nigeria’s Center for Disease Control […] Continue reading ->
The redacted WHO report on Italy’s pandemic response, “An Unprecedented Challenge” contained a brief timeline of events in the early days of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in China, which a number of WHO officials sought to amend or suppress even before the entire report was recalled. In fact, the so-called “China box” on the outbreak’s early […] Continue reading ->