French President Emmanuel Macron has joined African leaders to kick off a planned $1 billion project to accelerate the rollout of vaccines in Africa.

Internal documents obtained by The Associated Press show that the World Health Organization has paid $250 each to at least 104 women in Congo who say they were sexually abused or exploited by Ebola outbreak responders.

Health authorities in Africa say they are treating the expanding monkeypox outbreak here as an emergency and call on rich countries to share the world's limited supply of vaccines.

Genetic analysis of recent monkeypox cases suggests there are two distinct strains in the United States That raises the possibility that the virus has been circulating undetected for some time.

The World Health Organization’s top monkeypox expert said she doesn’t expect the hundreds of cases reported to date to turn into another pandemic.

Health experts say South Africa is seeing a rapid surge in COVID-19 cases driven by yet another version of the coronavirus.

The World Health Organization says overuse of gloves and “moon suits” and the use of billions of masks and vaccination syringes to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus have spurred a huge glut of health care waste worldwide.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prestigious Peace Prize, has issued a very rare admonition to the 2019 winner, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, over the war and humanitarian crisis in his country’s Tigray region.

The crowd deaths at a Houston music festival have added to the long list of people who have been crushed at a major event.

COVID-19 vaccinations and masks will be required for all Broadway audience members when theaters reopen in the coming weeks.

Africa is facing a devastating resurgence of COVID-19 infections whose peak will surpass that of earlier waves as the continent’s countries struggle to vaccinate even a small percentage of the population.

The IOC vice president in charge of the Tokyo Olympics says the games will open in just over two months even if the city and other parts of Japan are under a state of emergency because of rising COVID-19 cases.

COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new virus, stands for coronavirus disease 2019. | Illustration by Henry Keller(Update: The briefing is over. The World Health Organization on Tuesday is giving a briefing on their report on the Wuhan field visit to find the origins of the novel coronavirus. A draft of the report obtained by the AP states that the joint WHO-China study says that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario. Read more: WHO report: COVID likely 1st jumped into humans from animals

Dr. Patrick Ramsey, Medical Director for Inpatient OB services at University Health answered commonly asked questions for women that are pregnant and want to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The WHO recently reversed their recommendation that pregnant women not get the Moderna vaccine, and took a similar position on the Pfizer vaccine. “We have no evidence that the vaccine causes any problems for women to be able to get pregnant,” said Dr. Ramsey. Read the University Health FAQ page on topics about appointments, preparing for your vaccination and how to receive notifications about vaccine availability. AdKSAT Community operates in partnership with University Health, Energy Transfer and Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union.

But that knowledge belongs to the large pharmaceutical companies who have produced the first three vaccines authorized by countries including Britain, the European Union and the U.S. — Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. AdThe deal-by-deal approach also means that some poorer countries end up paying more for the same vaccine than richer countries. AstraZeneca said the price of the vaccine will differ depending on local production costs and how much countries order. Pharmaceutical companies say instead of lifting IP restrictions, rich countries should simply give more vaccines to poorer countries through COVAX, the public-private initiative WHO helped create for more equitable vaccine distribution. “People are literally dying because we cannot agree on intellectual property rights,” said Mustaqeem De Gama, a South African diplomat involved in the WTO discussions.

Scientists say there is reason for concern and more to learn but that the new variants should not cause alarm. Worry has been growing since before Christmas, when Britain’s prime minister said the coronavirus variant seemed to spread more easily than earlier ones and was moving rapidly through England. A: New variants have been seen almost since the virus was first detected in China nearly a year ago. Scientists are still working to confirm whether the variant in England spreads more easily, but they are finding some evidence that it does. A: Scientists believe current vaccines will still be effective against the variant, but they are working to confirm that.

The World Health Organization says more people around the world have been trying to quit tobacco products this year because smoking increases the chance of serious illness or death from COVID-19. The “Commit to Quit” initiative started Dec. 8 and will go through next year. The organization recognizes that quitting tobacco products is challenging, especially with added social and economic stresses during the pandemic. The WHO is publishing a list of 100 reasons to quit smoking. The World Health Organization also started a way to chat with someone on WhatsApp.

UT Health responds to WHO remdesivir studyPublished: October 16, 2020, 5:32 pmA UT Health official says he has an issue with a study by the World Health Organization that concludes that the drug remdesivir may not be as effective as once thought.

Europes second wave of coronavirus infections has struck well before flu season even started. Spain this week declared a state of emergency for Madrid amid increasing tensions between local and national authorities over virus containment measures. “I have to say clearly that the situation is not good," the Czech interior minister, Jan Hamacek, acknowledged this week. “We are in the fall wave without having resolved the summer wave,” she told an online forum this week. Half of Campania’s 100 ICU virus beds are now in use.

LONDON The chief scientist at the World Health Organization estimates that about 50% to 60% of the population will need to be immune to the coronavirus for there to be any protective herd immunity effect. Herd immunity is usually achieved through vaccination and occurs when most of a population is immune to a disease, blocking its continued spread. In the pandemics earlier stages, countries including Britain proposed achieving herd immunity as an outbreak response strategy. But Swaminathan pointed out that achieving this effect with a vaccine is much safer than letting the virus rip through the population. She says that to achieve herd immunity through natural infection, you need to have several waves and you will see the morbidity and mortality that we see now.

BEIJING Two World Health Organization experts will spend the next two days in the Chinese capital to lay the groundwork for a larger mission to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 120 nations called for an investigation into the origins of the virus at the World Health Assembly in May. China has insisted that WHO lead the investigation and for it to wait until the pandemic is brought under control. The last WHO coronavirus-specific mission to China was in February, after which the teams leader, Canadian doctor Bruce Aylward, praised Chinas containment efforts and information-sharing. An Associated Press investigation showed that In January, WHO officials were privately frustrated over the lack of transparency and access in China, according to internal audio recordings.

LONDON More than 200 scientists have called for the World Health Organization and others to acknowledge that the coronavirus can spread in the air a change that could alter some of the current measures being taken to stop the pandemic. The WHO has long maintained that COVID-19 is spread via larger respiratory droplets, most often when people cough or sneeze, that fall to the ground. It has dismissed the possibility of airborne transmission, except for certain high-risk medical procedures, like when patients are first put on breathing machines. The authors cited previous studies suggesting that germs closely related to the new virus were spread via airborne transmission. We are concerned that the lack of recognition of the risk of airborne transmission of COVID-19 and the lack of clear recommendations on the control measures against the airborne virus will have significant consequences, the scientists wrote.

The World Health Organization tried on Tuesday to clear up confusing comments about how often people can spread the coronavirus when they do not have symptoms. On Monday, Van Kerkhove had said that what appear to be asymptomatic cases of Covid-19 often turn out to be cases of mild disease. Van Kerkhove added that she was referring to reports from WHO member states when she made her comments on Monday. He said it "was not correct" to describe asymptomatic spread of the coronavirus as rare. The best scientific studies to date suggest that up to half of cases became infected from asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people.

There is a lot of information coming out each day about the novel coronavirus COVID-19, but amid the pandemic, there are also a lot of myths. The World Health Organization is setting straight some invalid things you might have seen or heard about COVID-19. There are no specific medicines to prevent or treat the COVID-19 virus. COVID-19 virus can be transmitted in hot and humid climates. This specific virus, because it’s so new and different, will need its own vaccine.

Does anyone else feel like we’re in the midst of some pretty unsettling times? Even if you’re trying to keep a level head about where things stand with the coronavirus pandemic, it’s easy to turn on the TV or open social media and start to feel pretty overwhelmed, pretty quickly. For some, you can’t go out to eat, you’re now working from home and your kids aren’t even going to school. And with that, we thought we’d provide the following playbook. Yes, there is some science jargon involved here, but we tried to break it down for you in a way that’s easy to read and digestible.