The French cities of Lyon, Lille, Grenoble and Saint-Étienne will go on maximum coronavirus alert from Saturday, French Health Minister Olivier Véran said on Thursday.

Paris, Marseille and the overseas territory of Guadeloupe have also been put on maximum alert in recent weeks, leading to the closure of local bars and cafés.

Véran added that the situation in Toulouse and Montpellier was worrying and that those cities could also be moved to the maximum Covid-19 alert level starting early next week.

“The health situation in France, alas, is continuing to worsen,” he said. “Every day in France, more and more people are being infected, more and more are falling ill, and more and more are suffering serious effects that require hospitalisation.”

Véran’s announcement came shortly after officials reported 18,129 new Covid-19 infections on Thursday, with the daily tally staying above 18,000 for the second day running after Wednesday’s all-time high of 18,746.

The health minister urged the public to help fight the virus by wearing face masks and keeping a safe distance from others, even at home where there has been a concerning increase in the number of young people infecting older, more vulnerable family members.

Meanwhile, hospitals in the Paris region moved into emergency mode on Thursday, cancelling staff holidays and postponing non-essential operations, as coronavirus patients made up close to half of all patients in intensive care units (ICUs).

The number of people in hospital for Covid-19 stood at a three-month high of 7,624 on a national level, an increase of 88 over 24 hours. That total is still lower than an April 14 peak of 32,292 but up versus an August 29 low of 4,530.

There were 11 more patients in ICUs for the disease, making a tally of 1,427, almost four times higher than a July 31 low of 371.

The number of people in France who have died from Covid-19 rose by 76, a figure higher than the seven-day moving average of 73, and now stands at 32,521.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)

As many as 115 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty this year due to the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the World Bank warned Wednesday.

That is a devastating reversal after decades of progress, and higher than the bank previously estimated, even as recently as August, when the worst case was put at 100 million.

And the bank’s new report estimates that by 2021, 150 million could be living below the extreme poverty threshold of less than $1.90 a day.

“The pandemic and global recession may cause over 1.4 percent of the world’s population to fall into extreme poverty,” World Bank President David Malpass said in a statement.

If the pandemic had not struck, the global extreme poverty rate was expected to fall to 7.9 percent, but now could climb as high as 9.4 percent, the bank said in its flagship report.

World Bank economists say the dire estimates for new victims of poverty this year, which range from 88 million to 115 million, depend on the outlook for the global economy, which the Washington-based crisis lender estimates range from a contraction of five percent to eight percent in the worst case scenario.

That would erode years of success in reducing extreme poverty, and the authors warn create “poverty hotspots” in areas that face a double-hit from economic crisis and conflict: more than 40 percent of the poor live in conflict-affected areas.

The research also finds a rising share of those living in extreme poverty are in urban areas, which threatens to overwhelm existing support programs that are designed for rural populations.

A distant goal

Instead of achieving the goal of eradicating poverty by 2030, the convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic with the pressures of conflict and climate change will put the goal “beyond reach without swift, significant and substantial policy action,” the World Bank said, warning that the global poverty rate could be about seven percent in the next decade.

“In order to reverse this serious setback to development progress and poverty reduction, countries will need to prepare for a different economy post-COVID, by allowing capital, labor, skills, and innovation to move into new businesses and sectors,” Malpass said.

The bank said the policy response must be commensurate with the severity of the crisis, including modernizing education and online learning and deploying new technology to expand the reach of social protection programs.

“Failure to act comprehensively and urgently will create even bigger challenges in the future,” the authors warned.

Looking at a broader definition of poverty, the report found that close to a quarter of the world’s population lives below the $3.20 line and more than 40 percent — almost 3.3 billion people — live below the $5.50 line.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicenter of the problem, and could see an additional 40 million people fall into extreme poverty this year, and move closer to 500 million next year, according to the report.

And climate change will drive 68 million to 135 million into poverty by 2030, with Sub-Saharan Africa again the most vulnerable.

Latin America could see an increase of five million in the worst case scenario, and East Asia an additional nine million. The report does not include estimates for South Asia given the lack of data from India.

(Source: Agencies)

Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and Briton Michael Houghton won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus, the Nobel Committee announced Monday.

The three were honoured for their “decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people around the world,” the jury said.

“The discovery of Hepatitis C virus revealed the cause of the remaining cases of chronic hepatitis and made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives”, it added.

Thanks to their discovery, highly sensitive blood tests for the virus are now available and these have “essentially eliminated post-transfusion hepatitis in many parts of the world, greatly improving global health”, the Nobel Committee said.

Their discovery also allowed the rapid development of antiviral drugs directed at Hepatitis C.

“For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating Hepatitis C virus from the world population,” the jury said.

“Prior to their work, the discovery of the Hepatitis A and B viruses had been critical steps forward,” the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said in a statement.

The award for work on a virus comes as the world battles the new coronavirus pandemic.

The trio will share the Nobel Prize sum of 10 million Swedish kronor (about $1.1 million or €950,000).

Celebrations overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic

While the Nobel awards will go ahead as planned this year, celebrations have been overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Nobel Foundation has cancelled the traditional banquet, which forms the centre-piece of the celebrations in December, replaced with a televised ceremony showing the laureates receiving their awards in their home countries.

They would normally receive their prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.

This year’s winners will be invited to celebrate alongside the 2021 laureates, assuming the pandemic has eased by then.

Last year, the honour went to US researchers William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza and Britain’s Peter Ratcliffe on for discoveries on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.

The winners of this year’s physics prize will be revealed on Tuesday, followed by the chemistry Prize on Wednesday. The literature prize will be announced on Thursday and the peace prize on Friday. The economics prize will wrap up the Nobel Prize season on Monday, October 12.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP & Reuters)

Coronavirus tests that deliver results in 15-30 minutes are to be rolled out across the United States and in scores of poorer countries, as health authorities worldwide try to get a handle on a disease that has now killed more than a million people.

US President Donald Trump announced 150 million tests would be distributed in America, while the World Health Organization said 120 million more would be available for the developing world at $5 each as long as funding was secured.

The testing push comes as the virus shows no sign of receding, with infection numbers climbing rapidly in Europe again and governments there clamping down on movement in an attempt to curb the surge.

Paris, London and Madrid have all been forced to introduce controls to slow infections, and on Monday Dutch authorities became the latest to tighten curbs, while the Czech Republic and Slovakia said they were preparing to declare a state of emergency.

The WHO said its $600 million scheme to roll out the quick diagnosis kits across 133 countries in the next six months would enable low- and middle-income nations to close the gap in testing with the rich world.

The kits are far faster, cheaper and easier to administer than regular standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) swab tests but are less sensitive and more likely to return false negatives.

“This will enable the expansion of testing, particularly in hard-to-reach areas that do not have lab facilities or enough trained health workers to carry out PCR tests,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference.

Experts have for months been calling for widespread adoption of this low-cost technology so that people can test themselves several times a week.

Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina said the testing drive “is terrific and is a great start”.

But the amount being distributed by the US government was “simply not sufficient” and production should be multiplied ten- or twentyfold, he added.

– ‘Whatever is necessary’ –

The tests are part of a limited toolkit available to governments as they seek ways to get the wheels turning on economies that have been crippled in recent months by lockdowns and other restrictions on people’s lives.

A million Madrid residents are under partial lockdown, with the city and the surrounding region at the centre of Spain’s second wave.

The national government on Monday warned the local authorities of drastic measures if the region failed to move decisively to slow the uncontrolled spread.

“There is no doubt that (the central government) is prepared to do whatever is necessary,” Justice Minister Juan Carlos Campo told Spain’s RNE public radio.

– ‘Made peace with it’ –

Worldwide the virus has now infected more than 33 million people and killed over a million, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources.

On Monday the number of cases in India surpassed six million, with the country on course to overtake the United States in the coming weeks as the nation with the most infections.

Locals in Delhi said while they remained cautious, their fears had lessened since the pandemic began earlier this year.

Himanshu Kainthola, 61, who recovered from the virus last month, said his family’s worries had “reduced substantially”.

“We take the necessary precautions and invest in increasing our immunity rather than being anxious or scared of it,” he said. “We have made peace with it.”

Source: AFP

The global death toll from the new coronavirus, which emerged less than a year ago in China and has swept across the world, passed one million on Sunday.

The pandemic has ravaged the global economy, inflamed geopolitical tensions and upended lives, from Indian slums and Brazil’s jungles to America’s biggest city New York.

World sports, live entertainment and international travel ground to a halt as fans, audiences and tourists were forced to stay at home, kept inside by strict measures imposed to curb the virus spread.

Drastic controls that put half of humanity — more than four billion people — under some form of lockdown by April at first slowed its pace, but since restrictions were eased cases have soared again.

On Sunday 2230 GMT the disease had claimed 1,000,009 victims from 33,018,877 recorded infections, according to an AFP tally using official sources.

The United States has the highest death toll with more than 200,000 fatalities followed by Brazil, India, Mexico and Britain.

For Italian truck driver Carlo Chiodi those grim figures include both his parents, who he says he lost within days of each other.

“What I have a hard time accepting is that I saw my father walking out of the house, getting into the ambulance, and all I could say to him was ‘goodbye’,” said Chiodi, 50.

“I regret not saying ‘I love you’ and I regret not hugging him. That still hurts me,” he told AFP.

With scientists still racing to find a working vaccine, governments are again forced into an uneasy balancing act: Virus controls slow the spread of the disease, but they hurt already reeling economies and businesses.

The IMF earlier this year warned that the economic upheaval could cause a “crisis like no other” as the world’s GDP collapsed.

Europe, hit hard by the first wave, is now facing another surge in cases, with Paris, London and Madrid all forced to introduce controls to slow cases threatening to overload hospitals.

Masks and social distancing in shops, cafes and public transport are now part of everyday life in many cities.

Mid-September saw a record rise in cases in most regions and the World Health Organization has warned virus deaths could even double to two million without more global collective action.

“One million is a terrible number and we need to reflect on that before we start considering a second million,” the WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan told reporters on Friday.

“Are we prepared collectively to do what it takes to avoid that number?

Waking up to Covid-19

The SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes the illness known as Covid-19 made its first known appearance in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, ground zero of the outbreak.

How it got there is still unclear but scientists think it originated in bats and could have been transmitted to people via another mammal.

Wuhan was shut down in January as other countries looked on in disbelief at China’s draconian controls, even as they went about their business as usual.

By March 11, the virus had emerged in over 100 countries and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic, expressing concern about the “alarming levels of inaction.”

Patrick Vogt, a family doctor in Mulhouse, a city that became the outbreak’s epicentre in France in March, said he realised coronavirus was everywhere when doctors started falling ill, some dying.

“We saw people in our surgery who had really big breathing problems, young and not-so-young who were exhausted,” he said. “We didn’t have any therapeutic solutions.”

Frustrations, protests

Nor did the virus spare the rich or famous this year.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent a week in hospital. Madonna tested positive after a tour of France as did Tom Hanks and his wife who recovered and returned home to Los Angeles after quarantine in Australia.

The Tokyo Olympics, Rio’s famed Carnival and the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca are among the major events postponed or disrupted by the pandemic. Premier League football has restarted but with empty stadiums. The French Open tennis tournament is limiting its audiences to 1,000 a day.

Israel has gone into full lockdown again and Moscow’s vulnerable have been ordered to stay home.

As the restrictions tighten, protests and anger are rising as businesses worry about their survival and individuals grow frustrated about their jobs and families in the face of another round of lockdown measures.

Anti-lockdown protesters and police clashed in central London on Saturday as officers dispersed the thousands at a demonstration.

“This is the last straw — We were starting to get back on our feet,” said Patrick Labourrasse, a restaurant owner in Aix-en-Provence, a French city near Marseille which is again being forced to close down bars and restaurants.

Along with the turmoil, though, lies some hope.

The IMF says the economic outlook appears brighter now than it had been in June, even if it remains “very challenging”.

Crucially, nine vaccine candidates are in last-stage clinical trials, with hopes some will be rolled out next year though questions remain about how and when they will be distributed around the world.

(AFP)

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Cameroon has said on September 23 that nine cholera cases have been confirmed and one death recorded in Buea, the chief town of the Southwest region of Cameroon since the declaration of the cholera outbreak last week, according to a news report by Cameroon Online.org.

Officials have expressed concerns that the epidemic could spread even more rapidly in the town that is hosting several internally displaced persons escaping from an armed separatist conflict principally in the rural areas of the region.

“The cholera outbreak declared in Buea is very concerning due to limited access to clean water, a health system weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that Buea town is hosting thousands of displaced people due to insecurity in the region,” OCHA said in a statement.

“Humanitarian actors are supporting the Regional Delegation of Public Health to develop a robust and rapid response, including the establishment of a Cholera Treatment Centre at Buea Regional hospital,” the statement added.

On Friday, health authorities in the region called on the residents to “be on the guard” and adopt hygiene and sanitation practices.

Cholera spreads through contaminated food and drinking water, causing diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting.

Source: Xinhuanet