Three hospitals not functional, others overwhelmed after Beirut blast: WHO

Geneva, Switzerland: Three hospitals in Beirut are not functional, two are only partially working and other medical facilities are overwhelmed after a massive warehouse explosion sent a devastating blast wave across the cities, killing at least 100 people and injuring nearly 4,000, WHO said on Wednesday.

A powerful blast in port warehouses near central Beirut storing highly explosive material sent seismic shockwaves that shattered windows, smashed masonry and shook the ground across the Lebanese capital. "As a result of yesterday's deadly blast, three hospitals in Beirut are not functional at the moment two others are only partially working, while other medical facilities are overwhelmed with number of injured people", said World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman, Tarik Jasarevic.

The health agency is airlifting supplies from Dubai which should arrive in Beirut tonight, he said. The blast was the most powerful ever to rip through Beirut, a city still scarred by civil war three decades ago and reeling from an economic meltdown and a surge in coronavirus infections. It sent a mushroom cloud into the sky and rattled windows on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, about 100 miles (160 km) away.

Brazil, hotbed for COVID-19 vaccine testing, may struggle to produce its own

Sao Paulo: Brazilian officials say they can start making COVID-19 vaccines developed by British and Chinese researchers within a year. Experts say it will take at least twice as long, leaving Brazil reliant on imports to slow the world's second-worst outbreak.

If Brazil's underfunded medical institutions are unable to meet their ambitious goals, it would mark the latest failure by President Jair Bolsonaro's government to control the virus. It would also leave Brazil vulnerable to a frenzied global scramble for vaccine supplies. Some of the most advanced COVID-19 vaccine candidates - including from AstraZeneca Plc in partnership with Oxford University, and China's Sinovac Biotech Ltd - are undergoing large clinical trials in Brazil, which has more than 2.7 million reported cases and almost 95,000 deaths, second only to the United States. Researchers can get results faster by testing vaccines where active virus spread is rampant.

As part of their agreements with Brazilian authorities, AstraZeneca and Sinovac have promised the federal government and the Sao Paulo state government, respectively, tens of millions of doses of their potential vaccines. They also pledged to transfer technology so Brazil can eventually produce them domestically at leading biomedical institutes Fiocruz, in Rio de Janeiro, and Butantan, in Sao Paulo.

The institutes say production of new vaccines will begin by the middle of 2021. Brazil's federal government has said it will invest 1.9 billion reais ($355 million) to process and produce the AstraZeneca vaccine. But three experts told Reuters money alone would not be enough, saying it could take between two and 10 years for Brazil to produce COVID-19 vaccines, due to the difficulty of transferring technology and years of under-investment in the two production facilities.

A former head of federal health regulator Anvisa, who asked not to be named to avoid professional conflicts, also doubted Brazil could become self sufficient in a timely manner. Brazil's Health Ministry said such predictions are premature and will depend on vaccine trial results. But officials have admitted the announced timeline may be hard to attain.

Brazil's state and federal governments are discussing additional late-stage coronavirus vaccine trials with U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc, China's Sinopharm Group and Russian diplomats. But they quickly made big bets on the first two candidates to start testing in the country from AstraZeneca and Sinovac.

The Sinovac deal obliges Butantan to invest 85 million reais ($16 million) to conduct trials of the Chinese vaccine. In exchange, the Sao Paulo government, which runs Butantan, will get enough doses to vaccinate 60 million people. The federal government's memorandum of understanding with AstraZeneca requires it to buy 30 million doses of its still-unproven vaccine at a cost of $97 million, even if it fails in pivotal trials. The deal gives Brazil priority to buy 70 million more doses if the vaccine works.

As part of that deal, Brazil pledged to invest 1.9 billion reais to produce the vaccine. About 1.3 billion will go toward technology transfer, and 95 million reais for updating Fiocruz facilities. The rest will be spent on processing the vaccine. 

Brazil's government has hedged its bets by joining the World Health Organization's COVAX initiative, which intends to guarantee fast and equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines, and aims to deliver 2 billion doses by the end of 2021.

China team interviewed Wuhan scientists over virus origins: WHO

Geneva: A World Health Organization (WHO) team sent to China to launch a probe into the origins of the new coronavirus had "extensive discussions" with Chinese counterparts, including video exchanges with scientists in Wuhan where the outbreak was first detected, a spokesman said on Tuesday, August 4.

The final results of the investigation are keenly awaited by scientists and governments around the world, none more so than Washington, which lobbied hard for the mission. The Trump administration accuses the WHO of being China-centric and plans to leave the agency over its handling of the pandemic. "The team had extensive discussions with Chinese counterparts and received updates on epidemiological studies, biologic and genetic analysis and animal health research," WHO's Christian Lindmeier told reporters.

The three-week advance mission comprising two specialists in animal health and epidemiology was tasked with laying the groundwork for a broader team of Chinese and international experts that will seek to discover how the virus that causes COVID-19 jumped the species barrier from animals to humans.

Lindmeier did not provide details on the timing or composition of the broader mission. Terms of reference for the broader mission have been produced together with Chinese authorities in draft form, he said, and were not yet publicly available.

Corona Crisis: There may never be a 'silver bullet' for COVID-19, WHO warns

Geneva, Switzerland: The World Health Organization warned on Monday, August 3 that, despite strong hopes for a vaccine, there might never be a "silver bullet" for COVID-19, and the road to normality would be long.

More than 18.14 million people around the world are reported to have been infected with the disease and 688,080 have died, according to a Reuters tally, with some nations that thought they were over the worst experiencing a resurgence. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan exhorted all nations to rigorously enforce health measures such as mask-wearing, social distancing, handwashing and testing.

"A number of vaccines are now in phase three clinical trials and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection," Tedros told a virtual news briefing in Geneva. "However, there's no silver bullet at the moment - and there might never be." Ryan said countries with high transmission rates, including Brazil and India, needed to brace for a big battle: "The way out is long and requires a sustained commitment."

The WHO officials said an advance investigation team was not yet back from China, where the virus originated. A larger, WHO-led team of Chinese and international experts is planned next, to study the origins of the virus in the city of Wuhan, although the timing and composition of that is not yet clear.

Tedros urged mothers to continue breastfeeding even if they had COVID-19, as the benefits "substantially" outweighed the risks of infection. WHO technical lead for COVID-19 response Maria Van Kerkhove said recent studies estimate the virus's fatality rate at 0.6 percent.

"That may not sound like a lot, but it is quite high if you think about a virus that can transmit readily, that can transmit well," she said. She said the development of tests that yield rapid results is a "positive thing" that could help control efforts against the disease's spread.

Germany: Coronavirus vaccine unlikely to be widely available before mid-2021

Berlin, Germany: German Research Minister Anja Karliczek said on Wednesday, July 29 that a coronavirus vaccine was unlikely to be widely available before the middle of next year.

"We must continue to assume that vaccines for the broader population will only be available from the middle of next year at the earliest," she told a news conference. Germany's BioNTech and Curevac are in the race to develop messenger-RNA vaccines while Dessau-based IDT Biologika is developing a viral vaccine, said Karliczek. 

"It is important that national and international efforts go hand in hand. That is why we have to work in multiple directions if we want to ensure that vaccines are available quickly and in sufficient quantities. We want to ensure that different groups can be supplied with a vaccine that is tailored to their needs. In the end, all citizens who want to be vaccinated should be given the opportunity to do so." also said Anja Karliczek.

The World Health Organization lists 11 experimental vaccines against the virus that causes COVID-19 as currently being tested on humans, according to a table posted on its website.

Corona Crisis: Number of COVID-19 cases double in 6 weeks: WHO

Switzerland: Six months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), it has received reports of nearly 16 million cases, and the pandemic continues to accelerate, said Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday.

Thursday marks the sixth month since WHO declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern. This is the sixth time a global health emergency has been declared under the International Health Regulations, but it is easily the most severe. Almost 16 million cases have now been reported to WHO, with more than 640,000 deaths. And the pandemic continues to accelerate. In the past six weeks, the total number of cases has roughly doubled, said Tedros.

He recalled that when the PHEIC was declared on January 30, there were less than 100 cases outside of China, and no deaths. The Emergency Committee of the WHO will be reconvened later this week to re-evaluate the pandemic and make proposals to the Director-General.

Tedros stressed that although the world has changed, the fundamental pillars of the response have not, which refer to political leadership, and informing, engaging and listening to communities. And nor have the basic measures needed to suppress transmission and save lives, which means to find, isolate, test and care for cases, and trace and quarantine their contacts.

Tedros pointed out that the pandemic was under control in many countries including China, Canada, Germany, South Korea, because the countries strictly followed WHO's advice. "Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they are not, cases go up. Countries and communities that have followed this advice carefully and consistently have done well, either in preventing large-scale outbreaks, like Cambodia, New Zealand, Rwanda, Thailand, Vietnam, and islands in the Pacific and Caribbean, or in bringing large outbreaks under control, like Canada, China, Germany and the Republic of Korea," said Tedros.

"The bottom line is that one of the most fundamental ingredients for stopping this virus is determination, and the willingness to make hard choices to keep ourselves and each other safe. Over the past six months, WHO worked tirelessly to support countries to prepare for and respond to this virus. I am immensely proud of our organization, WHO, and its incredible people and their efforts," he said.