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by Julie CHARPENTRAT PARIS, France (AFP) — Disinformation around Covid vaccines has existed as long as the jabs themselves. Unverified studies, unproven claims and out-of-context data are regularly shared on websites and social media across the globe — fuelling dangerous myths about the virus and the vaccines. As Austria becomes the first European Union country to make vaccines mandatory this week, AFP looks at some common disinformation surrounding the jabs: – Causation vs chronology – […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Testing in humans of an HIV vaccine that uses messenger RNA technology has begun, the biotech firm Moderna and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative said Thursday. This Phase 1 trial is being carried out in the United States among 56 healthy adults who are HIV negative. Despite four decades of research, doctors have yet to develop a vaccine to protect people from the virus that causes AIDS, which kills hundreds […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US biotech company Moderna announced on Wednesday that it has begun clinical trials of a booster dose of vaccine designed specifically to combat the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. The trials will involve a total of 600 adults — half of whom have already received two doses of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine at least six months ago, and half of whom have received two doses plus the previously authorized booster dose. […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The risk level related to the Omicron variant remains very high, the WHO said late Tuesday, with the numbers of new Covid-19 cases hitting another record high last week. “Over 21 million new cases were reported, representing the highest number of weekly cases recorded since the beginning of the pandemic,” the World Health Organization said in its weekly epidemiological coronavirus update. The UN health agency said the number of new infections […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Pfizer and BioNTech have begun enrollment for a clinical trial to test the safety and immune response of their Omicron-specific Covid-19 vaccine in adults aged up to 55, the companies said in a statement Tuesday. Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla previously said at a conference that the pharmaceutical giant could be ready to file for regulatory approval of the shot by March. The company’s head of vaccine research Kathrin Jansen said […]
NUKU’ALOFA, Tonga (AFP) – A Covid-19 outbreak on an Australian warship threatened to disrupt Tonga eruption aid efforts Tuesday, as survivors of the deadly volcanic blast described how they fled with only the clothes on their backs. The January 15 eruption generated huge tsunami waves and blanketed the Pacific kingdom in toxic ash when it obliterated an uninhabited island with explosive forces more powerful than a nuclear bomb. Australia has led international relief efforts, rushing […]
Latest Omicron subvariant dubbed BA.2 detected in Britain, 40 other countries including India, Denmark and Sweden by Isabelle TOURNÉ Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Scientists are keeping a close watch on a recently-discovered sub-variant of the Omicron version of the Covid-19 virus to determine how its emergence could effect future pandemic spread. The initial Omicron variant has become the dominant virus strain in recent months but British health authorities have notably identified […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — Superbug infections killed 1.2 million people in 2019, according to a study published Thursday, which authors described as the most comprehensive assessment of the impact of antimicrobial resistance to date. The death toll means infections by bacteria resistant to antibiotics are directly responsible for more deaths than HIV/AIDS or malaria. The report, published in the Lancet, also found antimicrobial resistance played a role in up to 3.68 million other deaths. […]
by Joe Prezioso NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Exhausted and overwhelmed by the influx of mostly unvaccinated Covid patients, Dr James Samuel Pope, an intensive care physician at Hartford Hospital in the US state of Connecticut, hopes the Omicron wave of the pandemic will be the last. “It’s been very much the wild west for about the last two weeks,” says Pope, medical director of the ICU at Hartford Hospital. “More ER visits in […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — During America’s last surge of the coronavirus driven by the Delta variant, people who were unvaccinated but survived Covid were better protected than those who were vaccinated and not previously infected, a new study said Wednesday. The finding is the latest to weigh in on a debate on the relative strengths of natural versus vaccine-acquired immunity against SARS-CoV-2, but comes this time with the imprimatur of the US Centers for […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, the World Health Organization chief said Tuesday, cautioning against a narrative that the fast-spreading Omicron variant is risk-free. “This pandemic is nowhere near over,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters from WHO’s headquarters in Geneva. Tedros warned against dismissing as mild the coronavirus variant Omicron, which has spread like wildfire around the globe since it was first detected in southern Africa in November. The Omicron […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — The World Health Organization approved two new Covid-19 treatments on Friday, growing the arsenal of tools along with vaccines to stave off severe illness and death from the virus. The news comes as Omicron cases fill hospitals around the world with the WHO predicting half of Europe will be infected by March. In their recommendation in British medical Journal the BMJ, WHO experts said arthritis drug baricitinib used with corticosteroids to […]
