Vaccination Flu Pandemic

30 pathogens are likely to trigger the next global public health crisis, claims WHO. More than 200 scientists surveyed some 1,652 pathogen species to reduce it down to 30 priority pandemic triggers

The research was conducted in Haryana on a sample of 3,180 female vocational trainees between June and August 2022

The World Health Organisation begins its annual meeting on Monday with government ministers and other top envoys hoping to reinforce global preparedness for the next pandemic in the devastating wake of COVID-19. But the most ambitious project, to adopt a pandemic treaty, has been shelved for now after 2 1/2 years of work failed to produce a draft that countries could unite behind by Friday, as originally hoped. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insists it's not a failure and the World Health Assembly this week can still plot the way forward. When diplomats, health officials and activists were still attempting to produce a draft treaty, he predicted the assembly could be one of the most significant in WHO's 76-year history. Not anymore. WHO officials and others have been eager to build on the momentum of concern from the coronavirus pandemic, with the risk that the more it fades into history, the less the public and policymakers will be interested in preparing for a

US officials last week said they were moving bulk vaccine from CSL Seqirus that closely matches the current virus into finished shots that could provide 4.8 million doses of vaccine

A global treaty to fight pandemics like COVID is going to have to wait: After more than two years of negotiations, rich and poor countries have failed for now to come up with a plan for how the world might respond to the next pandemic. After COVID-19 triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies and killed millions, leaders at the World Health Organization and worldwide vowed to do better in the future. In 2021, member countries asked the U.N. health agency to oversee negotiations to figure out how the world might better share scarce resources and stop future viruses from spreading globally. On Friday, Roland Driece, co-chair of WHO's negotiating board for the agreement, acknowledged that countries were unable to come up with a draft. WHO had hoped a final draft treaty could be agreed on at its yearly meeting of health ministers starting Monday in Geneva. We are not where we hoped we would be when we started this process," he said, adding that finalizing an international

Many countries are bouncing back from the COVID-19 pandemic, but the poorest are not and a significant number are seeing conditions deteriorating, a report from the UN Development Progamme said on Wednesday. Achim Steiner, head of the agency, said that after two decades during which rich and poor countries were coming closer in terms of development, the finding is a very strong warning signal that nations are now drifting apart. The Human Development Index that the agency has produced since 1990 is projected to reach record highs in 2023 after steep declines during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. But development in half of the world's poorest countries remains below 2019 pre-pandemic levels, the report said. It's a rich person's versus a poor person's world in which we are seeing development unfolding in very unequal, partially incomplete ways, Steiner said at a news conference. Why does this matter? Not only because it creates more vulnerability, it creates also more misery a

According to ASI data, the employment in the manufacturing sector during the Covid pandemic year (FY21) declined by 3.2 per cent (year-on-year) to 16.08 million

Praising India and other countries for contributing to a global pandemic fund, a top official of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Tuesday said the world is yet not fully prepared to deal with any future pandemic and a lot more work needs to be done. Speaking to PTI on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, where 'Disease X' is one of the key areas of discussions, Dr Christopher J Elias said we have learnt our lessons after Covid-19 but further efforts and discussions are needed, including on financing requirements. "A really important discussion had started nearly eight years ago after the Ebola outbreak and that discussion cake into very clear focus after Covid-19 that the world needs to be better prepared," he said. "The world needs to be ready for infections and diseases that we know such as influenza but also diseases that we don't know and may be new such as Disease X. But I don't think we are fully prepared yet," he added. Elias noted that there hav

The annual number of deaths from fungal disease worldwide has risen to 3.75 million, double the previous estimate, according to a study using data from over 80 countries, including India. The research, published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, calculated an annual total at about 6.55 million acute cases. The updated mortality figures of fungal disease dwarf deaths from other single pathogens, killing six times more people than malaria, and almost 3 times as many than tuberculosis, the researchers said. The work is the result of a collaboration of over 300 professionals across the world who contributed to published estimates for their country and individual fungal diseases. Previous estimates were imprecise as many fungal disease exacerbate an existing disorder, itself often severe, such as leukaemia or AIDS, said David Denning, a professor of infectious disease at The University of Manchester, UK. However according to the study, of the deaths linked to fungal disease, .

India has recorded 609 new cases of Covid, while the number of active cases of the infection has declined to 3,368, the health ministry said on Friday. Three deaths -- two in Kerala and one in Karnataka -- have been reported in a span of 24 hours, according to the ministry's data updated at 8 am. The number of daily cases had dropped to double-digits till December 5, 2023 but cases began to increase after emergence of a new variant and cold weather conditions. After December 5, 841 new cases were reported on December 31, 2023 which was 0.2 per cent of the peak cases reported in May 2021, official sources said. Of the total active cases, a large majority of these (around 92 per cent) are recovering under home isolation. "The currently available data suggests that the JN.1 variant is neither leading to an exponential rise in new cases nor a surge in hospitalisation and mortality," the official source stated. India has witnessed three waves of COVID-19 in the past with the peak inci

Robust growth in H1FY24 signals rebound in medical tourism, fuels bigger expectations

Number of Global Capability Centres likely to reach 3,000 by 2030, employing more than 3 million people

The DoCA had held a meeting with online travel aggregators to discuss issues prejudicial to consumer interest in the travel sector

Children infected with the Omicron variant remain infectious for three days on average after testing positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, according to a study. Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) and Stanford University in the US noted that school policies that require students with COVID-19 to stay out of the classroom for five days are more than sufficient. "We are basically saying five days is more than sufficient; public health and education leaders may consider shorter durations, said study co-author Neeraj Sood, Director of the COVID-19 Initiative and a senior fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center. The study, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, found that the median time of infectivity was three days, with 18.4 per cent and 3.9 per cent of children still infectious on day five and day 10, respectively. The researchers also found no association between how long children were infectious and whether they were vaccinated, suggesting return-to-school polici

Kate Bingham, who chaired the UK's Vaccine Taskforce from May to December 2020, stated that scientists have identified 25 virus families, any of which could mutate into a deadly pandemic

Earlier, on Tuesday, the state Health department issued an alert for Kannur, Wayanad and Malappuram districts after the confirmatin of Nipah infection in Kozhikode

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported unusual spikes in cases across the United States last month

In a worst-case scenario, a bird flu type virus that mutates to allow human-to-human transmission could kill as many as 15,000 people in the UK in a single day

Experts stressed that the Covid-19 outbreak is in the endemic stage and the spurts in cases are not of a huge concern

Number of flu-related deaths in Arkansas rose by 19 from last week, totalling 64 so far this season, according to US health department