Health
COVID-19 outbreak: Here’s what’s happening around the world Friday

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The world prepared for a coronavirus pandemic on Friday as hopes the disease could be contained to China vanished and investors dumped equities in expectation of a global recession.
Asian stock markets plunged further Friday amid spreading virus fears, deepening an global rout after Wall Street endured its biggest one-day drop in nine years.
Tokyo’s benchmark plummeted by an unusually wide margin of 3.7 per cent and Seoul and Sydney dropped by more than three per cent; Hong Kong and Shanghai saw losses of over 2.5 per cent. Oil prices slumped on expectations industrial activity and demand might contract.
Investors had been confident the disease that emerged in China in December might be under control. But outbreaks in Italy, South Korea and Iran have fuelled fears the virus is turning into a global threat that might derail trade and industry.
The global count of those infected exceeds 83,000, with China still by far the hardest-hit country. But South Korea has surged past 2,000 cases, and other countries have climbing caseloads and deaths. Iran, with 26 deaths and more than 250 cases, has the most in the Middle East.
Mainland China — where the virus originated late last year — reported 327 new cases on Friday, the lowest since Jan. 23, taking its total cases to more than 78,800 with almost 2,800 deaths.
“This virus has pandemic potential,” World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva on Thursday. “This is not a time for fear. This is a time for taking action to prevent infection and save lives now.”
1st cases for Nigeria, New Zealand
Nigeria’s health authorities reported the country’s first case of the new coronavirus in Lagos, the first confirmed appearance of the disease in sub-Saharan Africa. Cases of the virus were already confirmed in Egypt and Algeria in north Africa.
The Commissioner for Health for Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, said Friday that an Italian citizen who entered Nigeria on Feb. 25 from Milan on a business trip fell ill the next day.
Commissioner Akin Abayomi said the man was transferred to Lagos State Biosecurity Facilities for isolation and testing. The patient was clinically stable with no serious symptoms and was being managed at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Yaba, Lagos.
He said officials were working to identify all of the man’s contacts since he arrived in Nigeria.
New Zealand health officials also said on Friday that the country had its first case, found in a person in their 60s who recently returned from Iran.
Health officials said the results of a test came through positive on Friday afternoon. The person was being treated at the Auckland City Hospital and the person’s household members had also been isolated as a precaution.
New Zealand’s Ministry of Health said in a statement it was confident the public health risk from the infection was being well managed.
Here’s what’s happening in South Korea
South Korea reported 256 additional cases Friday, raising its total to 2,022, with most occurring in the region around the city of Daegu. Many cases there have connections to a church and health workers are testing thousands of its members.
Thirteen people have died.
A Hyundai worker tested positive for the virus on Friday, leading to a suspension of production at one the automaker’s factories in the southeastern city of Ulsan
The country’s National Assembly has passed a law strengthening the punishment for those violating self-isolation, more than tripling the fine and adding the possibility of a year in prison.
The military also called off joint drills planned with U.S. troops.
The outbreak has prompted South Korean boy band BTS to cancel its scheduled April concerts in Seoul, according to its music label, Big Hit Entertainment.
BTS had scheduled a “Map of the Soul” tour for April 11-12 and 18-19 at Seoul’s Olympic Stadium.
Here’s what’s happening in Japan
Japan’s schools prepared to close for almost a month, in a move that would send nearly 13 million children home and leave few people untouched by the virus in the world’s third-biggest economy.
Sporting events and concerts in Japan have already been cancelled, and Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea said, too, they would close until mid-March. The closure of Disney resorts in Japan will last through March 15, their Japanese operator, Oriental Land Co., said Friday. Disney parks in Hong Kong and Shanghai remain closed.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had called for all schools to close until late March, though the decisions to do so were being made locally.
“The most important thing is to prevent infections, so there aren’t many other options,” said Norinobu Sawada, vice principal of Koizumi primary school.
Here’s what’s happening in Canada
Quebec’s first presumptive case of the coronavirus was detected in a woman who recently returned from a trip to Iran, the provincial health minister said Thursday evening.
The woman took a plane from Iran to Qatar before arriving at the Montreal airport on Monday, Health Minister Danielle McCann said at an impromptu news conference.
WATCH: How Canada is preparing for a coronavirus outbreak
Earlier, Ontario reported a sixth case of COVID-19 on Thursday. The other seven cases in the country are in British Columbia.
Canada’s public health agency is taking stock of the need for personal protective equipment and other supplies to make sure there are enough to go around in case of a pandemic.
The virus, which does not yet have a cure or a vaccine, keeps spreading to new places around the world. Read on for a look at what’s happening in some of the countries dealing with the most cases of the novel coronavirus.
Health
Monkeypox call seen as catch-up bid – World – Chinadaily.com.cn – China Daily



US’ health emergency declaration may come too late to halt spread, experts say
The administration of US President Joe Biden on Thursday declared the country’s monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency, but many health experts fear that it may be too late to contain the spread of infections.
Criticism of the White House’s response to the disease outbreak has been building, with experts saying the authorities have been slow off the mark in distributing treatments and vaccines.
The White House’s declaration signals that the monkeypox virus now represents a significant risk to citizens. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, is considering a second declaration that would empower federal officials to expedite medical countermeasures, such as other potential treatments and vaccines, without going through comprehensive federal reviews.
That also would allow for greater flexibility in how the current supply of vaccines is administered, Becerra said.
Some 6,600 monkeypox infections have been reported in the United States, a number that has risen sharply over the past weeks.
Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University, said the declaration of the health emergency “signals the US government’s seriousness and purpose, and sounds a global alarm”. But he told The Associated Press that the action was overdue.
Gostin said the government has been too cautious and should have declared a nationwide emergency earlier.
On July 23, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the outbreak, with cases in more than 70 countries.
California, Illinois and New York have all made declarations recently, as have New York City, San Francisco and San Diego County.
Since doctors diagnosed the first US case on May 27, the virus has been spreading rapidly in the country, with the highest rates per capita reported in Washington, New York and Georgia.
More than 99 percent of the infections are among men who have sex with men.
The virus is transmitted mostly during close physical contact. So far, no deaths from the disease have been reported in the US.
The country now has the highest case count among nonendemic countries, and the number is expected to rise as surveillance and testing improve.
Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. Classification as endemic means a disease has a constant presence in a population but is not affecting an alarmingly large number of people, as typically seen in a pandemic.
‘Rarely fatal’
On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says of the virus: “Monkeypox virus is part of the same family of viruses as variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox. Monkeypox symptoms are similar to smallpox symptoms, but milder, and monkeypox is rarely fatal. Monkeypox is not related to chickenpox.”
There is increasing concern that the US may have lost its chance to contain the monkeypox virus. Some public health experts have pointed fingers at the administration for its slowness in rolling out vaccines and treatments.
“The window for containing monkeypox is rapidly closing,” Gostin warned in an interview with CNN late last month. He had called for the US to declare a national public health emergency and make more vaccine doses available.
“I do think it’s still possible to contain, but it’s also equally possible that this may become endemic in the United States,” he said.
Supplies of a monkeypox vaccine called Jynneos have been limited even as demand surges. The administration has been criticized for moving too slowly to expand the number of doses.
Federal officials have identified about 1.6 million people as being at the highest risk for monkeypox, but the US has received enough Jynneos doses to fully cover only about 550,000 people.
The shortage of vaccines was caused in part because the Department of Health and Human Services failed early on to ask that bulk stocks of the vaccine it already owned be bottled for distribution, reported The New York Times, citing multiple unnamed administration officials familiar with the matter.
The government is now distributing about 1.1 million vaccine doses, less than a third of the 3.5 million that health officials now estimate are needed to fight the outbreak. It does not expect the next delivery, of 500,000 doses, until October.
Health
Monkeypox call seen as catch-up bid – Chinadaily.com.cn – China Daily



US’ health emergency declaration may come too late to halt spread, experts say
The administration of US President Joe Biden on Thursday declared the country’s monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency, but many health experts fear that it may be too late to contain the spread of infections.
Criticism of the White House’s response to the disease outbreak has been building, with experts saying the authorities have been slow off the mark in distributing treatments and vaccines.
The White House’s declaration signals that the monkeypox virus now represents a significant risk to citizens. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, is considering a second declaration that would empower federal officials to expedite medical countermeasures, such as other potential treatments and vaccines, without going through comprehensive federal reviews.
That also would allow for greater flexibility in how the current supply of vaccines is administered, Becerra said.
Some 6,600 monkeypox infections have been reported in the United States, a number that has risen sharply over the past weeks.
Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University, said the declaration of the health emergency “signals the US government’s seriousness and purpose, and sounds a global alarm”. But he told The Associated Press that the action was overdue.
Gostin said the government has been too cautious and should have declared a nationwide emergency earlier.
On July 23, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the outbreak, with cases in more than 70 countries.
California, Illinois and New York have all made declarations recently, as have New York City, San Francisco and San Diego County.
Since doctors diagnosed the first US case on May 27, the virus has been spreading rapidly in the country, with the highest rates per capita reported in Washington, New York and Georgia.
More than 99 percent of the infections are among men who have sex with men.
The virus is transmitted mostly during close physical contact. So far, no deaths from the disease have been reported in the US.
The country now has the highest case count among nonendemic countries, and the number is expected to rise as surveillance and testing improve.
Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. Classification as endemic means a disease has a constant presence in a population but is not affecting an alarmingly large number of people, as typically seen in a pandemic.
‘Rarely fatal’
On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says of the virus: “Monkeypox virus is part of the same family of viruses as variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox. Monkeypox symptoms are similar to smallpox symptoms, but milder, and monkeypox is rarely fatal. Monkeypox is not related to chickenpox.”
There is increasing concern that the US may have lost its chance to contain the monkeypox virus. Some public health experts have pointed fingers at the administration for its slowness in rolling out vaccines and treatments.
“The window for containing monkeypox is rapidly closing,” Gostin warned in an interview with CNN late last month. He had called for the US to declare a national public health emergency and make more vaccine doses available.
“I do think it’s still possible to contain, but it’s also equally possible that this may become endemic in the United States,” he said.
Supplies of a monkeypox vaccine called Jynneos have been limited even as demand surges. The administration has been criticized for moving too slowly to expand the number of doses.
Federal officials have identified about 1.6 million people as being at the highest risk for monkeypox, but the US has received enough Jynneos doses to fully cover only about 550,000 people.
The shortage of vaccines was caused in part because the Department of Health and Human Services failed early on to ask that bulk stocks of the vaccine it already owned be bottled for distribution, reported The New York Times, citing multiple unnamed administration officials familiar with the matter.
The government is now distributing about 1.1 million vaccine doses, less than a third of the 3.5 million that health officials now estimate are needed to fight the outbreak. It does not expect the next delivery, of 500,000 doses, until October.
Health
Health unit to host monkeypox clinic Sunday – BlackburnNews.com


Health unit to host monkeypox clinic Sunday
File photo courtesy of © Can Stock Photo / jbruiz
August 6, 2022 6:00am
The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit is making a limited supply of the monkeypox vaccine available.
The health unit will set up a monkeypox vaccine clinic on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Windsor-Essex PrideFest, centred at Lanspeary Park. Acting Medical Officer of Health Doctor Shanker Nesathurai said the clinic will be geared toward high-risk individuals.
“The term is sometimes described as ‘pre-exposure prophylaxis’, and that will be offered at the Pride event this coming weekend,” Nesathurai said during a media briefing Friday morning.
Chief Nursing Officer Felicia Lawal said the health unit will work with PrideFest and Pozitive Pathways to operate the mobile clinic.
“Public health nurses will be available to provide health information and resources on monkeypox, as well as pre-exposure vaccination for those who meet criteria and qualify,” said Lawal.
Nesathurai said the health unit will have about a hundred doses available at the clinic, and that the unit had distributed monkeypox vaccines in the past.
The health unit also emphasized that even though the biggest risk group continues to be men who have sex with men, anyone can get the virus, which can be transmitted through close contact. Nesathurai added that the PrideFest clinic will be the best way to raise as much awareness of the virus as possible, but the health unit is working not to stigmatize any segment of the population.
So far, there has been just one confirmed case of monkeypox in Windsor-Essex.
Complete information about monkeypox and vaccines can be found on the health unit’s official website.
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