▲ A health worker collects supplies next to a testing booth for coronavirus cases on the streets of Shanghai.Photo Afp
App and Xinhua
Newspaper La Jornada
Friday, August 19, 2022, p. 16
London. New cases of covid-19 reported globally fell by almost a quarter last week, a 24 percent decrease from the previous period with 4.5 million new infections, while deaths fell by 6 percent, although they remained elevated in parts of Asia, according to a report released yesterday by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Infections fell worldwide, including nearly 40 percent in Africa and Europe; as well as 33 percent in the Middle East. Deaths from the virus rose in the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia by 31 percent and 12 percent, respectively, but fell or remained stable in the rest of the world, the agency added.
The WHO vaccine advisory panel yesterday recommended for the first time that people most vulnerable to covid-19, including the elderly, people with comorbidities and health workers, receive a second booster. Other health agencies and some countries made this recommendation months ago.
The group of experts indicated that it evaluated data from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna antigens for young children and noted that children are not a priority to receive these vaccines, as they are less likely to suffer from severe symptoms.
Joachim Hombach, a member of the panel, said it’s not yet clear whether experts will back offering boosters for the general population or a new vaccine targeting the omicron variant.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States (CDC, for its acronym in English), Rochelle Walensky, admitted that the agency did not meet expectations in handling the pandemic.
For 75 years, the CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big time, we reliably underperformed
he claimed.
My goal is a new action-oriented public health culture at CDC that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication, and opportunity.
he added.
Walensky appointed Mary Wakefield, deputy secretary of health in the administration of President Barack Obama, to lead the effort and outlined several organizational changes at the CDC in the coming months to correct errors and failures that occurred in the last two and a half years of the emergency. sanitary.
The pandemic has left a balance of 593,880 confirmed cases and 6,447,308 deaths, reported Johns Hopkins University.
