Author: GHealth News

By: Lawrence O. Gostin Italian army nurse helps a COVID patient at a camp hospital in Perugia that was opened to relieve the burden on nearby Santa Maria della Misericordia hospital. In December of 2020, the world continued to struggle with the pandemic's successive waves. Credit: Tommaso Ausili/Contrasto/Redux Pictures Moments of existential crisis can turn into opportunities for bold reform. World War II led to the creation of transformative institutions—the United Nations in 1945 and the World Health Organization in 1948. The birth of the WHO came the same year that the U.N. adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The COVID pandemic marks just such a moment of crisis. But instead of ushering in significant change, it has fractured global solidarity. That, in turn, ha...

GHealth News - People with a vitamin D deficiency are more likely to have a severe or critical case of COVID-19, according to a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE. The study is based on data from Israel’s first two coronavirus waves before vaccines were widely available. The scientists stressed that vitamin supplements aren’t a substitute for vaccines but that they can help immunity levels. “We found it remarkable, and striking, to see the difference in the chances of becoming a severe patient when you are lacking in vitamin D compared to when you’re not,” Amiel Dror, MD, the lead study author and a doctor at Galilee Medical Center, told The Times of Israel. Although the study was conducted before the Omicron var...

WHO has recommended two new drugs for COVID-19, providing yet more options for treating the disease. The extent to which these medicines will save lives depends on how widely available and affordable they will be. The first drug, baricitinib, is strongly recommended for patients with severe or critical COVID-19. It is part of a class of drugs called Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors that suppress the overstimulation of the immune system. WHO recommends that it is given with corticosteroids. Baricitinib is an oral drug, used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. It provides an alternative to other arthritis drugs called Interleukin-6 receptor blockers, recommended by WHO in July 2021. WHO has also conditionally recommended the use of a monoclonal antibody drug, sotrov...

Conditions are ripe for Covid-19 to mutate into more new variants, and it is dangerous to assume the pandemic is approaching its endgame, the WHO’s top official warned on Monday. Addressing the WHO’s executive board, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said since the omicron variant was identified just nine weeks ago, more than 80 million Covid cases had been reported to the WHO — more than were reported in the whole of 2020. Last week, an average 100 cases were reported to the WHO every three seconds, Tedros added, and someone lost their life to the virus every 12 seconds. While cases have been surging, Tedros noted that the “explosion” in cases had not been matched by a surge in deaths, although fatalities were rising in all regions, particularly in Africa where cou...

Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme attends a news conference on the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Geneva, Switzerland, March 16, 2020.Christopher Black | WHO | Reuters The World Health Organization on Tuesday said the pandemic will not end as the omicron variant subsides in some countries, warning the high levels of infection around the world will likely lead to new variants as the virus mutates. “We’re hearing a lot of people suggest that omicron is the last variant, that it’s over after this. And that is not the case because this virus is circulating at a very intense level around the world,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, said during a coronavirus update in Geneva. Ne...