The international team assembled by the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the origins of SARS-CoV-2 has identified animal transmission – through an elusive ‘Animal X’ – as the most likely route of infection. The long-awaited report was released on Tuesday after the 17-person expert team, together with a 17-person team of Chinese scientists, visited […] Continue reading ->
CAPE TOWN – Johnson & Johnson (J&J) will deliver its COVID-19 vaccine to Africa from October after reaching an agreement with the African Union to supply the continent with up to 400 million doses over the next two years.  However, Africa may still be struggling to obtain vaccine supplies for some months following last week’s decision […] Continue reading ->
COVAX has run out of COVID-19 vaccines to supply the last 20 countries in the world that have not yet started vaccinations, and it urgently needs a donation of 10 million doses from either manufacturers or countries that have piiled up surplus doses, according to World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. While […] Continue reading ->
European Parliament members (MEPs) expressed overwhelming support for a coronavirus-related “Digital Green Certificate” to ease travel within the European Union, voting by a more than two-thirds majority to accelerate approval by the summer.   But parliamentarians also warned that all efforts to recover from COVID-19 will be void unless Europeans are vaccinated more quickly.  “We need […] Continue reading ->
NEW DELHI – Scientists have sequenced a new “double variant” of the coronavirus first identified  in India – along with a handful of other variants of concern that are appearing during the second biggest wave of the virus since the pandemic began. The new double variant, bearing two significant mutations in the coronavirus spike protein, […] Continue reading ->
Tuberculosis care is quintessentially colonial, even in 2021. While many countries have been emancipated from their colonizers, the heritage of the colonial mindset, culture and even entire economies is deeply embedded within high burden TB countries in the post-colonial era.   A disease of poverty, TB has historically been terribly neglected. Although the number one infectious […] Continue reading ->
In a decisive act of global solidarity, Norway has offered almost a third of its allocation of COVAX vaccines to poorer countries, according to Dag-Inge Ulstein, Norway’s Minister of International Development. Norway has only fully vaccinated about 5% of its population – 260,000 people – and unlike many other European countries, it has not stockpiled […] Continue reading ->