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 ->
Cape Town – As South Africa records over 930,000 COVID-19 cases and its scientists race to understand whether a new variant is driving the country’s second wave of infections, countries across the African continent are reporting an increase in cases. But there is widespread anecdotal evidence that many African countries are massively  under-reporting their COVID-19 […] Continue reading ->
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced on Monday that it would recommend conditional marketing authorization for the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine – positioning Europe to finally begin rolling out vaccines across the continent – albeit after the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Israel have already moved into high gear vaccine campaigns.   Mass vaccinations were […] Continue reading ->

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European countries rushed to impose travel bans on UK and South African travellers after both countries reported individual new variants of SARS-CoV-2, thought to be much more infectious than the ones already circulating worldwide. In the past few days, there have been reports of new variants of the COVID-19 virus in South Africa and the […] Continue reading ->
Despite the “enormous” contributions that migrants have made to society, they still face discrimination, social exclusion, and struggle to access health services even years after migrating, especially during the current pandemic, the first survey ever of migrant health during COVID-19 has found. The report, which was led by Ghent University and the University of Copenhagen […] Continue reading ->
Second in a series: In the wake of the expanding media attention to a suppressed WHO report evaluating the early days of Italy’s COVID-19 pandemic response, WHO has begun circulating guidelines to staff for responding to the media over questions that have remarked about recommendations for Q&A The internal WHO memo obtained by Health Policy […] Continue reading ->
The World Health Organization’s suppression of an independent report that critically examined both the strengths and weaknesses of Italy’s COVID-19 pandemic response – sets a dangerous precedent that compromises the international organization’s credibility  at a time when WHO’s independence has been questioned – and the Italian national pandemic response is under intense scrutiny as well, […] Continue reading ->
The combined health and economic shocks triggered by COVID-19 have revealed profound weaknesses in health systems, with direct consequences on the future of healthcare, says a new World Health Organisation report on global health financing systems.  “COVID-19 has revealed [the] underlying weakness of country and global health financing systems. There needs to be a proactive […] Continue reading ->
Just hours after the UK jabbed its first citizen against the coronavirus, researchers have confirmed that Oxford’s vaccine is safe and effective in the first peer-reviewed publication of a Phase III coronavirus vaccine trial yet.  “The results for me are very compelling,” said AstraZeneca’s executive vice president Mene Pangalos on Wednesday at a press conference. […] Continue reading ->