The death toll from Covid-19 in the US surpassed 500,000 on Monday with President Joe Biden set to memorialise the staggering number of lives lost despite a recent decline in coronavirus cases.

It has been nearly a year since the pandemic upended the country with dueling public health and economic crises.

“It’s nothing like we’ve ever been through in the last 102 years since the 1918 influenza pandemic … It really is a terrible situation that we’ve been through – and that we’re still going through,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Covid-19 medical adviser and the nation’s top infectious disease official, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday.

The White House said on Sunday it planned a memorial event in which Biden would deliver remarks.

A White House spokesman said the president along with first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff would hold a moment of silence on Monday and there would be a candle-lighting ceremony at sundown.

Biden last month observed America’s Covid-19 deaths on the eve of his inauguration with a sundown ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool.

Biden will use “his own voice and platform to take a moment to remember the people whose lives have been lost, the families who are still suffering … at what is still a very difficult moment in this country”, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday.

Still at ‘very high’ level

More than 28 million Covid-19 cases have rocked the United States and 497,862 have died, even as daily average deaths and hospitalisations have fallen to the lowest levels since before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. The virus took a full year off the average life expectancy in the United States, the biggest decline since World War Two.

While the decline “is really terrific … we are still at a level that’s very high,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We want to get that baseline really, really, really low before we start thinking that we’re out of the woods.”

Fauci told CNN that Americans may still need masks in 2022 even as other measures to stop the virus’ spread become increasingly relaxed and more vaccines are administered, and they may also need a booster shot depending on how variants emerge.

Less than 15% of the US population has received at least one vaccine dose, with nearly 43 million getting at least one shot and nearly 18 million getting a second shot, US statistics show.

More localities are easing some restrictions, such as on indoor dining, and moving to reopen schools even as millions await their shots, sparking debate over the safety of teachers, students and others.

Financial pressures also continue to weigh even as economists express optimism for the year ahead. Congress is weighing Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, with the House of Representatives expected to vote on it this week and the Senate seeking to pass it before March 14.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

The coronavirus will probably continue to circulate long-term despite the roll-out of vaccines, the head of the EU’s ECDC health agency told AFP on Friday, urging Europe to keep its restrictions in place for now.

“It seems more likely that it would stay” than disappear, Andrea Ammon, the head of the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said in an interview.

“It seems very well adapted to humans. So we should be prepared that it will remain with us,” she added.

“It wouldn’t be the first virus that is with us forever, so it’s not an unusual feature for a virus.”

While vaccines dramatically reduce the risk of contracting the illness caused by Covid-19, scientists have not yet established with certainty whether they also reduce transmission of the virus.

So when will we know if they do?

“It will still take a few months. You need a certain amount of vaccinated people that you follow. Special studies are now being set up,” Ammon said.

There is particular concern that the vaccines may not be as effective against some variants of the virus, especially the South African and Brazilian ones.

– Running the last kilometres –

Ammon pointed out that vaccines for the seasonal flu have to be adapted annually as the virus that causes it changes.

“It might turn out that (the coronavirus) goes the same way, or that at one point it remains stable and we can use one vaccine for a longer period,” she told AFP.

Ammon called on EU countries to maintain their restrictions despite a decline in cases across much of Europe.

“It’s still a mixed picture… We are really not out of the woods,” she said, noting that all EU members, with the exception of Finland, were still in “an epidemiological situation of serious concern”, according to the ECDC’s criteria.

“Everybody’s fed up with the measures, but when you’re running a long distance course… (you) have to run the last kilometres,” she stressed.

The number of daily cases across Europe is currently around 150,000, compared to around 250,000 a month ago, according to official data compiled by AFP.

Any relaxing of measures has to be done gradually, one measure at a time, “and only when you observe that it’s either stable or further decreasing then you go to the next one.”

The European Union’s vaccination campaign, which began in late December, has gotten off to a rocky start, hampered by a lack of vaccines and delivery delays.

According to official data on Friday, only three percent of people in the EU had received at least one vaccine dose, and 1.4 percent two doses, with a total of 20 million doses administered.

“Everybody’s aiming for that, all the efforts are in that direction,” Ammon said when asked if the goal seemed realistic.

Source: AFP

Cameroon is seeing a resurgence of leprosy, the bacterial infectious disease that causes severe, disfiguring skin sores and nerve damage.  Cameroon health authorities, on Sunday’s World Leprosy Day, said infections have jumped by about 50% since 2018.  Leprosy patients say,  just as in ancient times, they are shunned and neglected. 

Cameroon two decades ago announced that it had eliminated leprosy, but around 200 cases continued to be reported each year. 

In 2019, cases of the bacterial disease, which damages skin and nerves, increased to 270 and last year jumped to over 300.   

Ernest Nji Tabah, the permanent secretary of Cameroon’s National Committee for Leprosy, says a number of Cameroon’s health districts have been reporting outbreaks of the chronic but curable condition. 

“About 70 new cases have been reported in the southwest.  We have hot spots in regions like the North, the Adamawa, the Southwest, the Northwest,” he said. “People think that leprosy is a spell, it is divine punishment, it is caused by witchcraft, it is hereditary and so on.  Leprosy is none of these.” 

Tabah was attending an event organized by the aid group Circle of Friends Cameroon for Sunday’s World Leprosy Day. 

Aid groups handed out small gifts of food, soap, and toiletries to 30 leprosy patients at the Jamot’s Hospital in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé.  

Patrice Essolla, 51, says they never received such attention as most families abandoned relatives with leprosy. 

He says they need more assistance because they have been rendered helpless by leprosy.  Essolla says communities should stop thinking that leprosy patients are witches and wizards and instead give care, support and comfort the patients need to recover from it.  He says they are poor and need help — not the mental torture some families inflict on them. 

The Cameroon Baptist Convention’s Center for Hope helps care for leprosy patients in the northwestern town of Mbingo.   

The head of the center’s leprosy department Fomban Oliver says Cameroon was too quick to declare the disease eradicated.   

Speaking via a messaging application, he says Cameroon shouldn’t have closed some treatment centers and stopped education on the disease. 

“If it is possible for the government to reinstate the treatment centers, that will be wonderful.  If we do not do that, something alarming is going to happen,” he said. “In the field, there are no longer leprosy inspectors or supervisors or those controlling leprosy.  Even the new nurses and the new doctors that are up now, they know nothing about leprosy and if something is not done in the nearest future, the increase will be alarming.” 

The Health Ministry official in charge of leprosy in Yaoundé, Dian Ndjock, says they are encouraging all suspected cases to be taken to hospitals.  

She says the government will never neglect the suffering of leprosy patients.  

Ndjock says patients are treated and given food free of charge in four specialized centers and that people with the disease can be rushed to any of the 380 district hospitals in Cameroon.  She says civilians should stop stigma and social exclusion of leprosy patients. 

The U.N. reports every year over 200,000 new leprosy cases are detected globally with India, Brazil, and Indonesia accounting for more than three quarters of infections.   

The World Health Organization says in the Africa region case numbers have dropped by 42% since the year 2000 but about one million people have leprosy induced disabilities. 

Source: VOA

A team of experts from the World Health Organization left quarantine in Wuhan on Thursday to begin a heavily scrutinised probe into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, after Washington urged a “robust and clear” investigation.

The group started a two-week quarantine on arrival on January 14 in the central Chinese city where the first known cluster of virus cases emerged in late 2019.

Wearing masks, they peered at the ranks of waiting media from the window of a bus which whisked them from the quarantine to another hotel on Thursday — although it was not immediately clear when and where their investigation will start.

“So proud to graduate from our 14 days… no-one went stir crazy & we’ve been v productive,” tweeted team member Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a global NGO focused on infectious disease prevention.

The virus is believed to have come from bats and to have initially spread from a wet market in Wuhan where wild animals were sold as food.

The WHO insists the visit will be tightly tethered to the science of how the virus — which has killed more than two million people — jumped from animals to humans.

But in a sign of the political baggage attached to their mission, US President Joe Biden’s new administration weighed in before the experts had even finished quarantine.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, new White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said it was “imperative we get to the bottom” of how the virus appeared and spread worldwide.

Psaki voiced concern over “misinformation” from “some sources in China” and urged a “robust and clear” probe.

Beijing snapped back on Thursday, warning the United States to “respect facts and science, respect the hard work” of the WHO experts.

They must be allowed to work “free from political interference”, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters.

But in a mission dogged by delays and obfuscation from their Chinese hosts, it was not clear what the expert team will be allowed to see in Wuhan — or what useful evidence remains a year after the outbreak in a country which has vigorously controlled the narrative of how the pandemic began.

The early days of the outbreak remain among the most sensitive topics in China today, with the Communist leadership seeking to stamp out any discussion that shows its governance in a poor light.

Beijing has also sought to seed doubt into the origin story, floating the unsubstantiated theory that the virus emerged elsewhere.

Another theory, amplified by former US president Donald Trump, is that it leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan where researchers were studying coronaviruses.

Relatives of Wuhan’s coronavirus dead have called for a meeting with the team from the UN health agency, saying they have been facing new levels of official obstruction since the WHO team arrived.

According to official Chinese figures the virus killed nearly 3,900 in Wuhan, accounting for the vast majority of the 4,636 dead China has reported.

China is taking no risks in bringing a resurgence of the virus to heel, conducting anal swabs, localised lockdowns and cancelling flights as it makes travel before the Lunar New Year difficult.

(AFP)

More than 100 million Covid-19 cases have now been recorded worldwide, according to an AFP tally on Tuesday, as newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden pledged to ramp up the United States’s struggling vaccine program.

The number of cases, compiled from data provided by national health agencies, represents just a fraction of the real infections as the coronavirus has spread around the globe.

The United States, which passed 25 million confirmed cases last weekend, remains the country with the largest outbreak — and the largest death toll of over 420,000.

Biden is seeking to turn around the fight against the virus, which took a ferocious grip on the country during Donald Trump’s presidency when the risks were downplayed and officials gave mixed messages on mask-wearing and socialising.

Biden said vaccinating the entire US population was a daunting challenge, and the program inherited from the Trump administration “was in worse shape than we anticipated or expected.”

“This is a war-time undertaking. It’s not hyperbole,” he said, announcing the US was buying an additional 200 million doses and will have enough to vaccinate 300 million Americans — virtually the entire population — by early fall.

In another day of grim milestones, Britain surged past 100,000 Covid-19 deaths, and other European nations looked to tighten their borders, hoping to keep out new, more transmissible virus strains.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was “hard to compute” the loss felt by British families after his country became the first European country to surpass 100,000 Covid-19 deaths.

But he said his government, which faced criticism over its initial response to the outbreak, “did everything that we could to minimise suffering and minimise loss of life.”

‘Drastic measures’

The UK has struggled to counter a brutal third wave blamed on a new variant that emerged there before Christmas before spreading to dozens of countries around the world.

Neighboring Ireland said Tuesday it would enact mandatory travel quarantines for the first time, as well extending its third national lockdown until March 5.

Among other European nations looking to strengthen border controls was Germany, which said it is considering almost completely halting flights into the country.

“The danger from the numerous virus mutations forces us to consider drastic measures,” Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told the Bild newspaper.

Iceland meanwhile started to issue vaccination certificates to ease travel for those who have had both required doses.

The new measures came as anger rises over grinding anti-coronavirus restrictions, with the Netherlands rocked by nightly riots since it imposed a curfew on Saturday.

More than 400 people were arrested after the worst unrest to hit the country in four decades, but the Dutch government said it would not back down.

“You don’t capitulate to people who smash shop windows,” Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra said, calling the rioters “scum.”

Israeli police also clashed with protesters, arresting 14 people after ultra-Orthodox Jews demonstrated against lockdown measures.

With the global death toll at 2.1 million, the world has looked to vaccines to break the gloom, but bickering over access to doses has intensified.

Tensions have in particular mounted between the European Union and pharmaceutical firms over delays to deliveries.

“Europe invested billions to help develop the world’s first Covid-19 vaccines,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen told the virtual World Economic Forum (WEF). “And now, the companies must deliver. They must honour their obligations.”

‘Vaccine nationalism’

Europe’s vaccination campaign stumbled after British-Swedish drugs company AstraZeneca warned it would not be able to meet promised targets on EU shipments — a week after US group Pfizer said it was also delaying delivery volumes.

AstraZeneca’s CEO insisted Tuesday that the company was not selling vaccines ordered by the EU to other countries at a profit.

The widening gap for vaccine supplies between rich and poor countries led both South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to lash out at “vaccine nationalism.”

Ramaphosa told the WEF that low- and middle-income countries were being shouldered aside by wealthier nations able to acquire “up to four times what their population needs.”

The row over access to vaccines at the WEF — normally held at the Swiss ski resort of Davos — comes as the pandemic compounds economic inequality.

Despite Lebanon being under one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, father-of-six Omar Qarhani told AFP he was still selling vegetables on the side of a road in Tripoli because he is desperate to support his family.

“I’m not scared of corona — what scares me is being in need and poverty,” he said.

Brazil banned flights from South Africa — both countries have their own new variants — while virus deaths in Mexico passed the 150,000 mark on Monday just a day after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he tested positive.

The IMF now predicts a “cumulative output loss” of $22 trillion — the equivalent of the entire US economy — over 2020-25.

Nevertheless, optimism that vaccines will bring the pandemic under control and allow economic activity to resume, coupled with stimulus in major economies, boosted the IMF’s growth forecast this year to 5.5 percent.

(AFP)

In solidarity with the Government of Cameroon’s efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, the British High Commission in Yaounde led the British Business Community in Cameroon on a distribution campaign dubbed, “UK in Cameroon COVID-19 Relief Caravan”. The purpose was to handover personal protective equipment (PPE), to over 10,000 persons within semi-urban and rural populations, with focus on vulnerable communities, women and persons living with disability.

This outreach aimed at building resilience in communities through an inclusive strategy of community mobilisation, donation of personal preventive equipment and sensitising/ educating communities in an effort to support the national strategy to combat the spread of COVID-19 in Cameroon.

The British High Commissioner to Cameroon, Rowan Laxton said:

The coronavirus pandemic is a global public health emergency. The disease is life-threatening for people of all ages everywhere in the world. To help save lives and provide support, the UK Government and the British Business Community in Cameroon, together with our implementation partner, Local Youth Corner (LOYOC), is organising a nationwide COVID-19 Relief Caravan.

The Caravan will reach out to some semi-urban and rural areas in the country and touch persons with disabilities. Women and girls will be particularly targeted. We hope the Caravan will also raise awareness on the importance of inclusion and solidarity towards those experiencing great difficulty in these trying times. Please stay safe!

Source: Gov.uk

Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) on Friday (Jan. 22) confirmed two new domestic and six imported cases of the Wuhan coronavirus.

The cases, announced by CECC head Chen Shih-chung, bring the country’s total to 881. The latest imported cases include a man from Cameroon, the first person from that country to be diagnosed with COVID-19 in Taiwan, as well as a Taiwanese citizen and four migrant fisheries workers.

Each case had submitted a negative result of a coronavirus test taken within three days of his flight, and each went directly to their residence to begin quarantine upon arrival in Taiwan.

Chen said that Case No. 875 is a Cameroonian male in his 30s who works in Taiwan. He had returned to Cameroon in early December of last year.

When he returned to Taiwan on Jan. 5, he did not report experiencing any symptoms to quarantine officers. After the end of his quarantine, he took a coronavirus test at his own expense on Jan. 20 and was diagnosed with on Jan. 22.

Since the man is asymptomatic and those who interacted with him at the quarantine facility and hospital wore adequate protective equipment, no contacts have been listed.

Case No. 876 is a Taiwanese male who had been working in Indonesia since last August. On Jan. 1 of this year, he began to experience a sore throat and abnormalities with his sense of smell and taste.

He chose to take over-the-counter medication and did not seek medical attention. When he returned to Taiwan on Jan. 19, he informed quarantine officers that he had been experiencing symptoms of the virus and underwent a coronavirus test at the airport.

He tested positive for COVID-19 on Jan. 22. The health department has identified eight passengers who sat near him on the flight and nine crew members.

The passengers have been told to begin home isolation, while the crew members have been asked to start self-health monitoring, as they were deemed to have worn proper protective gear.

Cases 877, 878, 879, and 880 are all male fisheries workers in their 20s and 30s. Three are Indonesian (Cases 877, 879, and 880), and one is Filipino (Case No. 878).

The four came to Taiwan for work on Jan. 7 and have been asymptomatic so far. The four were tested for the coronavirus on Jan. 20, as their quarantines were set to end, and were diagnosed on Jan. 22.

Since all four have been asymptomatic throughout and did not come in contact with others during their quarantine, no contacts have been listed in their cases.

Since the outbreak began, Taiwan has carried out 142,424 COVID-19 tests, with 139,699 coming back negative. Out of the 881 officially confirmed cases, 774 were imported, 68 were local, 36 came from the Navy’s “Goodwill Fleet,” two were from a cargo pilot cluster, one is an unresolved case, and one (Case No. 530) was removed as a confirmed case.

Up until now, seven individuals have succumbed to the disease, while 777 have been released from hospital isolation, leaving 97 patients still undergoing treatment in Taiwan.

Source: Taiwan News

Health professionals in France are concerned about the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines on their patients whose immune systems are weakened, for instance by chemotherapy since clinical trials for the vaccines did not focus on immunocompromised patients.

Like many people with immune systems weakened by disease or chemotherapy, Delphine welcomes the idea of a new Covid-19 vaccine.

Since March of last year, Delphine and her seven-year-old daughter have mostly kept to themselves, avoiding social occasions with friends and loved ones. She’s now eager to regain some measure of normalcy. “The vaccine brings hope, to protect us and protect those who are close to us,” Delphine explains.

But health professionals worry about the effectiveness of the vaccines on immunocompromised people. Specialists estimate that vaccines are only about 30% effective for cancer patients.

While the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have so far proven over 90% effective in the general population, immunocompromised patients have been overlooked in clinical trials.

Source: France 24

US President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming chief of staff Ron Klain has warned that the COVID death toll in the US will reach 500,000 by the end of February as Biden is set to assume control of a struggling economy and surging coronavirus outbreak in less than two days.

“The virus is going to get worse before it gets better. People who are contracting the virus today will start to get sick next month, will add to the death toll in late February, even March, so it’s going to take awhile to turn this around,” Klain said

The United States is fast approaching 400,000 virus deaths, with about 3,300 Americans dying from the coronavirus every day in the country.

More than 23,983,600 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus as of Monday.

Over the past week, there have been an average of 218,971 cases per day in the US, an increase of 3 percent from the average two weeks earlier.

Klain said the Biden’s team was “inheriting a huge mess” in terms of vaccine production and distribution in comments directed at states’ disappointment that a reserve of additional vaccines that the Trump administration had promised to release did not exist, US media say.

“But we have a plan to fix it,” said Klain, who has been critical of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We think there are things we can do to speed up the delivery of that vaccine.”

Source: Presstv

Global health experts gathered on Thursday to tackle new coronavirus strains blamed for a fresh surge in infections as countries including Britain and France tightened restrictions to head off a further worsening of the pandemic.

The World Health Organization (WHO) emergency committee session came as their colleagues were seeking the origins of the virus on a long-delayed mission to the pandemic ground zero in Wuhan.

Almost two million of the more than 91 million people who have caught the disease have died, but the figures are widely believed to be an underestimate.

“When you first met almost a year ago, just 557 cases of the disease we now call Covid-19 had been reported to WHO,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his opening remarks to the emergency meeting.

Much of the planet is facing a second or third wave of infections, with populations chafing under painful and economically damaging restrictions.

Already hard-hit by a new variant at home, Britain announced Thursday it was banning all arrivals from South America, Panama, Cape Verde and Portugal.

The step was taken over fears of importing yet another new coronavirus variant in Brazil, where the northern Amazonas state announced a 7 pm to 6 am curfew.

The health system has been pushed to breaking point in the state capital Manaus.

New variants

The strain, known as E484K, was detected initially in South Africa and on subsequent variants in Brazil and Japan, and it has raised greater alarm among researchers over its possible impact on immunity.

Partly over fears of new variants, France said it would impose a daily nationwide curfew at 6 pm starting Saturday and remaining in force for at least two weeks.

Most of France had been under an 8 pm curfew, with some areas, especially in the hard-hit east, already under the stricter 6 pm limit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday called for tougher restrictions to contain the country’s worsening coronavirus outbreak and pushed for crisis talks with regional leaders, sources from her party told AFP.

They quoted her as saying the virus could only be stopped with “significant additional measures”.

Lebanon meanwhile went into full lockdown with residents barred even from grocery shopping.

There was better news for those who have already had Covid-19, with a British study suggesting recovery can confer immunity for at least five months.

But the virus’s new strains were causing increasing worry and went under the WHO microscope in Geneva on Thursday after being logged in dozens of countries.

WHO’s emergency committee normally gathers every three months, but the meeting was brought forward by two weeks.

‘Very long journey’

In China, millions of people have been locked down again to try to tame a fresh outbreak that has now claimed the country’s first reported Covid-19 death in eight months.

The death comes as a 10-strong investigation team arrived in Wuhan, where the virus emerged in late 2019.

Mission leader Peter Ben Embarek said they would enter a two-week hotel quarantine before the probe begins in earnest.

It “could be a very long journey before we get a full understanding of what happened,” he cautioned.

Regardless of origins, scientists say large-scale vaccination is the only way out.

But while the rapid development of vaccines has raised hopes, 95 percent of doses so far administered were limited to only 10 countries, the WHO’s European branch said.

Progress on administering vaccines has often been slow, such as in the United States, where more than 4,000 people are dying every day and around 10 million have received a first shot.

Turkey launched a vaccination drive with China’s Sinovac jab on Thursday despite conflicting data abouts its efficacy, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan among those receiving the jab.

In Africa, where many countries have so far avoided the worst of the pandemic, governments were called on to take urgent steps to prepare for vaccine distribution.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis, aged 84, and his predecessor, former pope Benedict XVI, 93, have both received vaccines, the Vatican said Thursday.

However former world tennis number one Andy Murray’s participation in the Australian Open was thrown into doubt after it was revealed Thursday he had tested positive.

‘Bit of a worry’

Sport has provided some diversion for many trapped at home, but top-flight athletes were warned this week to lead by example.

English Premier League bosses warned clubs they could be sanctioned if players shake hands or hug after goals.

In India, hundreds of thousands of Hindu pilgrims gathered by the Ganges river for the Kumbh Mela festival — trusting in faith rather than masks to protect them.

“The pandemic is a bit of a worry, but we are taking all precautions,” said organiser Siddharth Chakrapani.

“I’m sure Maa Ganga will take care of their safety,” he said, referring to the sacred river.

(AFP)