Category:

Health

Latest

COVID-19 pandemic will push 47 million more women, girls into extreme poverty by 2021: UN

The pandemic will push 96 million people into extreme poverty by 2021, 47 million of whom are women and girls. This will increase the total number of women and girls living in extreme poverty to 435 million, with projections showing that this number will not revert to pre-pandemic levels until 2030, the UN agencies said.

read more

India leads global rise in new weekly COVID-19 cases,while deaths down: WHO

Overall global new deaths in the past seven days fell by 3% compared to the previous week, the WHO reported, adding that overall new infections around the world rose by 1.8 million.

The respiratory disease is also spreading in the Americas, which continues to account for more than half of reported cases and deaths worldwide, although there have been slight decreases in some areas, WHO said in its latest update.

Peru, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina have seen “increasing trends”, it said.

read more

Pandemic brings hard times for farmers, worsening hunger

The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization forecasts that the number of undernourished people will increase by up to 132 million in this year, while the number of acutely malnourished children will rise by 6.7 billion worldwide due to the pandemic.

“We are facing two pandemics. COVID-19, which beyond its health toll is crushing livelihoods, and hunger, a scourge the international community pledged to eradicate by the end of this decade,” Qu Dongyu, the FAO’s director-general said in a commentary ahead of the virtual meeting.

read more

78,357 new cases take India’s COVID-19 tally past 37 lakh, death toll rises to 66,333

The death toll climbed to 66,333 with 1,045 more fatalities reported in 24 hours. India has so far reported 37,69,523 cases of the viral disease, according to the data updated at 8 am.

The total number of COVID-19 recoveries in the country has surged to 29,01,908, while the fatality rate has further declined to 1.76 per cent. There are 8,01,282, active cases in the country which comprises 21.26 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.

read more

COVID-19 antibodies present in patients four months after recovery – study

An editorial that accompanied the study cautioned that it is unclear if recovered patients’ antibodies will protect them from reinfection.

However, it suggested that antibody tests may be a cost-effective alternative to infection testing alone, and may work better in surveying populations as countries look to safely reopen their economies and schools.

read more

Google, Apple roll out built-in COVID-19 exposure notifications to phones

The new system – called Exposure Notifications Express – will allow public health officials to submit a small configuration file to Apple and Google. The two tech companies will then use the file to set up systems that phone owners can opt in to in order to determine whether they have been near someone who has tested positive for the novel coronavirus

read more