Search Results for: covid
The African Union (AU) Special Envoy on COVID-19 has bluntly blamed the WHO co-sponsored COVAX facility for the dire vaccine shortage on the continent, saying that it had failed to disclose its vaccine supply problems early enough. Strive Masiyiwa, AU Special Envoy and head of the African COVID-19 Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) said that […] Continue reading ->
African Union and WHO/African Region officials on Thursday sharply criticized the European Union decision to not grant the Indian version of AstraZeneca’s “Covishield” vaccine, distributed by the global COVAX facility, recognition in the new EU “Digital Green Pass programme” – amidst a growing chorus of global protests over the double standard. In a related statement, […] Continue reading ->
In the wake of COVID-19, both the needs and the skills of frontline healthcare workers need to be made integral to the design of global mental health services, said experts at a Wednesday webinar, sponsored by the Geneva-based Global Self-Care Federation (GSCF).     While mental health issues have come more to the forefront during the COVID […] Continue reading ->
Kenya has secured $130 million in funding from the World Bank to buy COVID-19 vaccines and help boost the country’s vaccination drive, the Bank announced on Tuesday. The funding comes as the Kenyan government starts to administer the second dose of AstraZeneca vaccines to citizens, amid an upsurge of infections across 13 counties in the […] Continue reading ->
The much-trumpeted European Union COVID Digital Green Pass, which launches 1 July and is meant to vastly ease travel to Europe for vaccinated and recovered passengers is being rolled out with one important hitch. Anyone vaccinated with an AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India would not be qualified to get the pass […] Continue reading ->
The United States may have experienced nearly 17 million additional COVID-19 cases in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH study,  published this week in Science Translational Medicine, suggests that for every coronavirus infection recorded until mid-2020, nearly 4.8 more […] Continue reading ->
Healthcare professionals, and particularly community health workers who have been the backbone of local and national health systems during the COVID crisis, are also unsung ‘first responders’ to the massive mental health fallout from the pandemic, now and going forward.   That is the central theme of a webinar panel on ‘COVID-19 and Frontline Workers’, Wednesday, 30th […] Continue reading ->
  In a first-ever tripartite meeting this year, the heads of the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO),  have agreed to step up their collaboration on tools and resources for fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.   The meeting was the first formal tripartite meeting since Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was […] Continue reading ->
A “terrible third wave” of the COVID-19 pandemic is now hitting Africa in full force – with about 20 of the continent’s 54 countries experiencing particularly sharp rises in new infections, African Centers for Disease Control director, John Nkengasong told Health Policy Watch at a press briefing on Thursday.  Per-capita rates of new SARS-CoV2 cases […] Continue reading ->