Health

A handful of cases of monkeypox have now been reported or are suspected in Britain, Portugal, Spain, and the United States. The outbreaks are raising alarm because the viral disease, which spreads through close contact and was first found in monkeys, mostly occurs in the west and central Africa, and …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday authorized the use of a booster shot of Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11, making everyone in the country over the age of 5 eligible for a third shot. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention …

Iraq has recorded at least 12 deaths from Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever since the start of the year, health authorities said Tuesday amid efforts to contain the spread of the virus.

The patient, who is believed to have contracted the infection on a trip to Nigeria, is being treated at a specialist unit in London. Though monkeypox can be spread through close contact, there is a very low risk of transmission to the public.

The World Health Organization is estimating that nearly 15 million people were killed either by the coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems in the past two years, more than double the official death toll of 6 million. Most of the fatalities were in Southeast Asia, Europe, and …

The case comes amid concerns that a continuing outbreak among US birds could lead to more human infections. The first known human case of H5N1 bird flu in the United States has been detected in a person in Colorado, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The …

Moderna on Thursday asked U.S. regulators to authorize low doses of its COVID-19 vaccine for children younger than 6, a long-awaited move toward potentially opening shots for millions of tots by summer. Frustrated families are waiting impatiently for a chance to protect the nation’s littlest kids as all around them …

The European Commission said that between 60% and 80% of the EU population was estimated to have been infected with COVID-19, as the bloc enters a post-emergency phase in which mass reporting of cases was no longer necessary. In preparing for this less acute phase, European Union governments should ramp …

Denmark has become the first country in the world to suspend its COVID vaccination program. The country has cited its high vaccination rate vaccinated and ta reduction in the number of new infections and stable hospitalization rates as the reason for the move. The decision means that invitations for vaccinations …

The number of cases of unknown origin in children now stands at 169 reported in 12 countries. At least one child has died after an increase in hepatitis cases, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said. The number of cases of unknown origin in children now stands at 169 reported …

A new case of Ebola has been confirmed in the northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo, the National Institute of Biomedical Research said on Saturday, four months after the end of the country’s last outbreak. The case was detected in the city of Mbandaka, capital of Congo’s Equateur province, said the …

Pakistan’s prime minister said Saturday he will chair an emergency meeting of a national task force for polio eradication after authorities detected the country’s first case of the debilitating neurodegenerative disease in 15 months. Health officials announced the discovery of the wild polio case on Friday, saying a 15-month-old boy …

A second Global COVID-19 Summit will be held virtually next month for countries to discuss efforts to end the pandemic and prepare for future health threats, according to a joint statement on Monday. “The emergence and spread of new variants, like Omicron, have reinforced the need for a strategy aimed …

The Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use authorization to a new COVID-19 test that can detect infections with only a sample of a patient’s breath, using a device that can yield results in less than three minutes. The agency says the InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyzer will only be available …

Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 500 million on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, as the highly contagious BA.2 sub-variant of omicron surges in many countries in Europe and Asia. The rise of BA.2 has been blamed for recent surges in China as well as record infections in Europe. It has …

A new COVID-19 vaccine might also protect cancer patients with weak immune systems, a new study found. Researchers from the American Association for Cancer Research found that CoVac-1, a new vaccine developed in Germany, induced T-cell (part of the immune system that develops stem cells in the bone marrow to …

Viruses mutate all the time but only some mutations affect their ability to spread or evade prior immunity from vaccination or infection, or the severity of disease they cause. The World Health Organization said on Monday it is tracking a few dozen cases of two new sub-variants of the highly …

The global average of true infection numbers is believed to be 16 times higher than the number of confirmed reported cases – but could have been 97 times higher in Africa, WHO says. More than two-thirds of people living in Africa may have contracted COVID-19 over the past two years, …

China’s President Xi Jinping commended the country’s “tested Zero-Covid” strategy on Friday even as Shanghai prepared nearly 130,000 beds for new coronavirus patients. At an event to honor Olympic athletes, Xi lauded the country’s efforts to hold the recent Winter Games which he said showed the country’s virus policy “once …

The risk of developing serious bleeding or potentially deadly blood clots is elevated for months after experiencing even a mild COVID-19 infection, Swedish researchers found. While the dangers of post-COVID clotting are well known, it’s less clear how long the risk lasts and what should be done to prevent it. …