Tag Archives: WHO

Where COVID-19 is spreading fastest as U.S. cases rise 46% in past week

By Chris Canipe and Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – The United States saw a 46% increase in new cases of COVID-19 in the week ended June 28 compared to the previous seven days, with 21 states reporting positivity test rates above the level that the World Health Organization has flagged as concerning.

Nationally, 7% of diagnostic tests came back positive last week, up from 5% the prior week, according to a Reuters analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.

The World Health Organization considers a positivity rate above 5% to be a cause for concern because it suggests there are more cases in the community that have not yet been uncovered.

Arizona’s positivity test rate was 24% last week, Florida’s was 16%, and Nevada, South Carolina and Texas’s were all 15%, according to the analysis.

Thirty-one states, mostly in the U.S. West and South, reported more new cases of COVID-19 last week compared to the previous week, the analysis found. Florida, Louisiana, Idaho and Washington state saw new cases more than double over that period.

In response to the new infections, Louisiana and Washington state have temporarily halted the reopening of their economies. Washington also mandated wearing masks in public.

Florida ordered all bars and some beaches to close. Idaho was not immediately available for comment.

Nationally, new COVID-19 cases have risen every week for four straight weeks. While part of that increase can be attributed to a 9% expansion in testing, health experts have also worried about states relaxing stay-at-home orders that had been credited with curbing the outbreak.

State officials across the country report the same trend in the new cases: People under 35 years old are going to bars, parties and social events without masks, becoming infected, and then spreading the disease to others.

Cases continue to decline in Northeast states, but some Midwest states that had new infections under control are seeing cases once again rise, including Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

 

(Reporting by Chris Canipe in Kansas City, Missouri, and Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

WHO sending team to China to investigate origins of coronavirus

GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization is sending a team to China next week to investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus, its head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing on Monday.

The United States, the WHO’s largest critic which has said it is leaving the U.N. agency, has called for an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have said it may have originated in a laboratory, although they have presented no evidence for this and China strongly denies it.

(Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Alison Williams)

Oil falls on fears of more COVID-19 cases

(Reuters) – Oil prices fell on Wednesday on fears about fresh outbreaks of COVID-19 but prices drew some support from stimulus measures and positive tests of a drug that could save some critically ill patients.

Brent crude was down 38 cents, or 0.9%, at $40.58 a barrel at 1335 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) fell 56 cents, or 1.5%, to $37.82 a barrel.

The World Health Organization said it was moving to update its guidelines after results showed the corticosteroid medication dexamethasone cut death rates by about a third among the most severely ill COVID-19 patients.

Yet concerns persisted about the spread of the virus in some regions and the risk of second waves in places where the spread had started to slow.

“The pandemic is rapidly evolving and the outlook for oil demand will, therefore, remain plagued by a degree of uncertainty,” said Stephen Brennock of broker PVM.

To contain the spread of a new virus outbreak in Beijing, scores of flights were canceled and schools shut.

“We think the oil market is not currently pricing in a significant probability of either second waves of coronavirus cases in key consumers and the associated lockdowns, or anything less than a rapid return to economic business-as-usual,” Standard Chartered analysts said, pointing to a downside risk for prices in the medium term.

Weak economic activity is still weighing on demand for crude. Oil imports in Japan, the world’s fourth-biggest crude buyer, slumped in May to the lowest in almost three decades.

However, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries forecast a gradual recovery in oil demand and said record supply cuts by the group and other producers were already helping rebalance the market.

Business confidence at Asian companies sank to an 11-year low in the second quarter, a Thomson Reuters/INSEAD survey found, with two-thirds of firms polled seeing a worsening COVID-19 pandemic as the biggest risk over the next six months.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London; Additional reporting Jane Chung in Seoul; Editing by Louise Heavens, Mark Potter and David Clarke)

Coronavirus patients most infectious when they first feel unwell: WHO

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Studies show people with the coronavirus are most infectious just at the point when they first begin to feel unwell, World Health Organization (WHO) experts said on Tuesday.

This feature has made it so hard to control the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, but it can be done through rigorous testing and social distancing, they said.

“It appears from very limited information we have right now that people have more virus in their body at or around the time that they develop symptoms, so very early on,” Maria van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist and technical lead on the pandemic, told a live session on social media.

Preliminary studies from Germany and the United States suggest that people with mild symptoms can be infectious for up to 8-9 days, and “it can be a lot longer for people who are more severely ill”, she said.

Earlier, some disease experts questioned her statement on Monday that transmission of COVID-19 by people with no symptoms is “very rare”, saying this guidance could pose problems for governments as they seek to lift lockdowns.

Van Kerkhove, citing disease-modeling studies, clarified on Tuesday that some people do not develop symptoms, but can still infect others.

“Some estimates of around 40 percent of transmission may be due to asymptomatic (cases), but those are from models. So I didn’t include that in my answer yesterday but wanted to make sure that I made that clear,” she said.

Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergency expert, said that the novel coronavirus lodges in the upper respiratory tract, making it easier to transmit by droplets than related viruses such as SARS or MERS, which are in the lower tract.

“Now as we look at COVID-19, we have an infectious pathogen that is present in the upper airway for which the viral loads are peaking at the time you are just beginning to get sick,” he said.

“That means you could be in the restaurant feeling perfectly well and start to get a fever, you are feeling ok, you didn’t think to stay home, but that’s the moment at which your viral load could be actually quite high,” he said.

Ryan added: “And it’s because the disease can spread at that moment that the disease is so contagious, that’s why it spread around the world in such an uncontained way, is because it’s hard to stop this virus.”

But some countries have shown that transmission can be brought down to “an acceptable level or even to no level”, as New Zealand had recently demonstrated, he said.

(Additional reporting by Josephine Mason; Writing by Nick Macfie and Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Giles Elgood)

Bolsonaro threatens WHO exit as COVID-19 kills ‘a Brazilian per minute’

By Lisandra Paraguassu and Ricardo Brito

BRASILIA (Reuters) – President Jair Bolsonaro threatened on Friday to pull Brazil out of the World Health Organization after the U.N. agency warned Latin American governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus throughout the region.

A new Brazilian record for daily COVID-19 fatalities pushed the county’s death toll past that of Italy late on Thursday, but Bolsonaro continues to argue for quickly lifting state isolation orders, arguing that the economic costs outweigh public health risks.

Latin America’s most populous nations, Brazil and Mexico, are seeing the highest rates of new infections, though the pandemic is also gathering pace in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia.

Overall, more than 1.1 million Latin Americans have been infected. While most leaders have taken the pandemic more seriously than Bolsonaro, some politicians that backed strict lockdowns in March and April are pushing to open economies back up as hunger and poverty grow.

In an editorial running the length of newspaper Folha de S.Paulo’s front page, the Brazilian daily highlighted that just 100 days had passed since Bolsonaro described the virus now “killing a Brazilian per minute” as “a little flu.”

“While you were reading this, another Brazilian died from the coronavirus,” the newspaper said.

Brazil’s Health Ministry reported late on Thursday that confirmed cases in the country had climbed past 600,000 and 1,437 deaths had been registered within 24 hours, the third consecutive daily record.

Brazil reported another 1,005 deaths Friday night, while Mexico reported 625 additional deaths.

With more than 35,000 lives lost, the pandemic has killed more people in Brazil than anywhere outside of the United States and the United Kingdom.

Asked about efforts to loosen social distancing orders in Brazil despite rising daily death rates and diagnoses, World Health Organization (WHO) spokeswoman Margaret Harris said a key criteria for lifting lockdowns was slowing transmission.

“The epidemic, the outbreak, in Latin America is deeply, deeply concerning,” she told a news conference in Geneva. Among six key criteria for easing quarantines, she said, “one of them is ideally having your transmission declining.”

In comments to journalists later Friday, Bolsonaro said Brazil will consider leaving the WHO unless it ceases to be a “partisan political organization.”

President Donald Trump, an ideological ally of Bolsonaro, said last month that the United States would end its own relationship with the WHO, accusing it of becoming a puppet of China, where the coronavirus first emerged.

Bolsonaro’s dismissal of the coronavirus risks to public health and efforts to lift state quarantines have drawn criticism from across the political spectrum in Brazil, where some accuse him of using the crisis to undermine democratic institutions.

But many of those critics are divided about the safety and effectiveness of anti-government demonstrations in the middle of a pandemic, especially after one small protest was met with an overwhelming show of police force last weekend.

Alfonso Vallejos Parás, an epidemiologist and professor of public health at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said infections are high in Latin America as the virus was slow to gain a foothold in the region.

“It is hard to estimate when the pace of infection will come down,” he said.

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu and Ricardo Brito; Additional reporting by Gabriela Mello in Sao Paulo, Gram Slattery and Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro and Adriana Barrera in Mexico City; Editing by Brad Haynes, Rosalba O’Brien and Leslie Adler)

‘It’s not over’: COVID-19 cases rise in some nations easing lockdowns: WHO

WHO
GENEVA (Reuters) – Some countries have seen “upticks” in COVID-19 cases as lockdowns ease, and populations must protect themselves from the coronavirus while authorities continue testing, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

The epicenter of the pandemic is currently in countries of Central, South and North America, particularly the United States, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said.

“On upticks (in cases), yes we have seen in countries around the world – I’m not talking specifically about Europe – when the lockdowns ease, when the social distancing measures ease, people sometimes interpret this as ‘OK, it’s over’,” Harris told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.

“It’s not over. It’s not over until there is no virus anywhere in the world,” she said.

Harris, referring to U.S. demonstrations since the killing of George Floyd 10 days ago, she said that protesters must take precautions. “We have certainly seen a lot of passion this week, we’ve seen people who have felt the need to be out and to express their feelings,” she added. “”We ask them to remember still protect yourself and others.”

To avoid infection, the WHO advised people to maintain a distance of at least 1 metre (3 feet), frequently wash hands and avoid touching their mouth, nose and eyes, Harris said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Pravin Char)

Does drug touted by Trump work on COVID-19? After data debacle, we still don’t know

By Kate Kelland and Alistair Smout

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists are resuming COVID-19 trials of the now world-famous drug hydroxychloroquine, as confusion continues to reign about the anti-malarial hailed by U.S. President Donald Trump as a potential “game-changer” in fighting the pandemic.

The renewed research push follows widespread criticism of the quality of data in a study published by The Lancet, an influential medical journal, which found high risks associated with the treatment.

The World Health Organization, which had last week paused trials when The Lancet study showed the drug was tied to an increased risk of death in hospitalized patients, said on Wednesday it was ready to resume trials.

The WHO’s change of mind is “a wise decision”, according to Martin Landray, co-lead scientist on the Recovery trial, the world’s largest research project into existing drugs that might be repurposed to treat COVID-19 patients.

“What all this episode really reflects is that without randomized trials, there is huge uncertainty,” said Landray, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Oxford University.

Randomized studies are the gold standard in research, randomly assigning a treatment to one group of people and a dummy to another group so that the two can be compared. The Lancet study was a “retrospective observational” study, using a data set from an analytics firm, to see what effects the drug had had on some COVID-19 patients, compared to those who did not get it.

The WHO’s about-face came after nearly 150 doctors signed a letter to the Lancet outlining concerns about the study’s conclusions. The journal itself published an expression of concern about the research this week, saying “serious scientific questions have been brought to our attention”.

Some scientists said the episode had set back efforts to determine whether hydroxychloroquine was an effective or risky treatment for COVID-19, as some other trials around the world had also halted following the WHO’s initial decision to pause.

“It’s really impacted quite negatively the sort of studies that would be able to say if there is a benefit or harm,” Will Schilling told Reuters. He is co-lead on the UK COPCOV study which was paused last week, just days after its launch.

“At the moment, we don’t really know. That’s why these studies are needed, and now they’ve been slightly waylaid by all of this.”

Scientists acknowledge, though, that studies are being conducted at break-neck speed while garnering unprecedented levels of attention that could give findings unwarranted weight.

THE PRESIDENT’S TAKING IT

The drug has hit global headlines in large part because of its promotion by Trump, who said in March it could be a game-changer and last month revealed he was taking it himself, even after his own Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had advised that its efficacy and safety were unproven.

In the absence of clear scientific evidence, some authorities and consumers are buying up stocks of the drug in case it turns out to be effective. Britain, for example, is spending millions of pounds bulk-buying tablets.

Hydroxychloroquine has been shown in laboratory experiments earlier this year to be able to block the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, but this effect has not been replicated in rigorous trials in people.

A separate study by University of Minnesota scientists of the potential preventative effect of hydroxychloroquine against the new coronavirus found it did not protect patients who had been given it prior to being exposed to COVID-19.

Here again, though, the waters have been muddied. The New England Journal of Medicine, which published the research on Wednesday, noted in an editorial, however, that there were limits to the scope of the study.

The University of Minnesota study also was limited in the scenario it tested, said Richard Chaisson, a Johns Hopkins researcher who is running a separate trial of the drug to determine whether it is effective in treating patients with moderate to severe versions of COVID-19.

There is still a need for robust studies looking at whether it might work in low doses before or after exposure, as well as against mild cases, moderate cases, hospitalized patients and seriously ill ones, he added.

WHO’S KNOCK-ON EFFECTS

The WHO decision to halt its trials last week had knock-on effects across the drug industry and medical profession.

French drugmaker Sanofi temporarily stopped enrolling recruits to its own study and pulled supplies of the drug for treatment. The UK COPCOV trial, aimed at establishing if hydroxychloroquine can prevent healthcare workers from contracting COVID-19, hit pause just a week after its launch.

Those studies are yet to resume.

Several European countries also have stopped using the drug for treating some COVID-19 patients.

Some trials have, however, continued despite the WHO’s move.

Novartis has not changed course with its study and the UK Recovery trial paused only briefly before moving ahead after safety checks. It is still enrolling patients and has signed up 4,500 recruits so far – 1,500 patients who are on the drug and around 3,000 who aren’t.

In short, the jury’s still out on hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19, according to Landray at Recovery.

“People can quote data, people can quote experts, but there is continuing huge uncertainty,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Michael Erman in New York; Writing by Josephine Mason and Peter Henderson; Editing by Pravin Char)

Explainer: Are asymptomatic COVID-19 patients safe or silent carriers?

By Cate Cadell and Roxanne Liu

BEIJING (Reuters) – China said 300 symptomless carriers of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic, had not been found to be infectious, in a bid to reassure people as countries ease restrictions. But some experts say asymptomatic infections are common, presenting a huge challenge in the control of the disease.

WHAT IS ASYMPTOMATIC AND PRE-SYMPTOMATIC?

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200402-sitrep-73-covid-19.pdf asymptomatic cases as those who don’t show symptoms but have been confirmed infected through a lab test. WHO notes there are few reports of truly asymptomatic cases.

The incubation period, or the time a person takes to show symptoms after getting infected, is the pre-symptomatic phase, the WHO says. Carriers can infect others during this period.

Health experts are not yet sure whether asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic cases are infectious. Some say data so far suggests those cases are probably equally likely to be able to spread infection.

The WHO agrees that pre-symptomatic carriers are infectious, and adds that there is also a possibility – although little evidence so far – that people who are asymptomatic may also transmit the virus. The WHO had said in early April that there had been no documented asymptomatic transmissions.

WHAT ELSE DOES CHINA SAY?

China has reported around 83,000 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. It does not include asymptomatic cases in that total official count, but began reporting them separately on a daily basis on March 31.

That has raised concerns about Beijing’s commitment to transparency, and some experts say it could also paint a misleading picture of how the virus spreads.

“If you watch (such asymptomatic cases) really closely, you would see something … that probably fits with a more realistic mild disease than a complete asymptomatic,” Ian Mackay, a virologist at the University of Queensland said.

“But the term is around now and it’s going to stick. It’s a nice piece of theatre, but I don’t think it’s going to give useful information.”

Asymptomatic cases under medical observation in China dropped to 357 as of Tuesday from 1,541 as of March 30.

Wuhan has tested almost its entire population of 11 million and found no new COVID-19 cases.

Wuhan’s low rate of symptomless carriers is in line with China’s previous reporting, said Zhong Nanshan, the government’s senior medical adviser, adding that the result showed that the country didn’t cover up the epidemic as some U.S. politicians claimed.

HOW ABOUT REST OF ASIA?

Some countries in Asia include asymptomatic carriers in their total confirmed cases.

In Vietnam, which has just over 300 COVID-19 cases, almost 37% were symptomless, according to health ministry data.

Researchers concluded that asymptomatic infection was common and found two asymptomatic patients had infected at least four other people.

South Korea, which had early success in taming the outbreak through aggressive testing, said 20%-30% were asymptomatic. A senior health official said the virus could be widely transmitted during the incubation period, but asymptomatic patients were less likely to transmit it.

Singapore, which has the highest number of cases in Southeast Asia, does not give data on asymptomatic cases but has said an overwhelming majority of positive cases in its crowded migrant workers’ dormitories show mild or no symptoms.

The Philippines said about 13% of its nearly 19,000 cases were asymptomatic. In India, some 28% of 40,184 people who tested positive between Jan. 22 and April 30 were asymptomatic, according to a study.

(Reporting by Cate Cadell and Roxanne Liu in Beijing; Additional reporting by Kate Kelland in London, John Mair in Sydney, James Pearson in Hanoi, John Geddie in Singapore, Neil Jerome Morales in Manila, Sangmi Cha in Seoul, Rocky Swift in Tokyo and Miyoung Kim in Singapore; Writing by Sayantani Ghosh in Singapore; Editing by Kim Coghill)

U.N. warns of global mental health crisis due to COVID-19 pandemic

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – A mental illness crisis is looming as millions of people worldwide are surrounded by death and disease and forced into isolation, poverty and anxiety by the pandemic of COVID-19, United Nations health experts said on Thursday.

“The isolation, the fear, the uncertainty, the economic turmoil – they all-cause or could cause psychological distress,” said Devora Kestel, director of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) mental health department.

Presenting a U.N. report and policy guidance on COVID-19 and mental health, Kestel said an upsurge in the number and severity of mental illnesses is likely, and governments should put the issue “front and centre” of their responses.

“The mental health and wellbeing of whole societies have been severely impacted by this crisis and are a priority to be addressed urgently,” she told reporters at a briefing.

The report highlighted several regions and sections of societies as vulnerable to mental distress – including children and young people isolated from friends and school, healthcare workers who are seeing thousands of patients infected with and dying from the new coronavirus.

Emerging studies and surveys are already showing COVID-19’s impact on mental health globally. Psychologists say children are anxious and increases in cases of depression and anxiety have been recorded in several countries.

Domestic violence is rising, and health workers are reporting an increased need for psychological support.

Reuters last week reported from interviews with doctors and nurses in the United States who said either they or their colleagues had experienced a combination of panic, anxiety, grief, numbness, irritability, insomnia and nightmares.

Outside of the health sector, the WHO report said many people are distressed by the immediate health impacts and the consequences of physical isolation, while many others are afraid of infection, dying, and losing family members.

Millions of people are facing economic turmoil, having lost or being at risk of losing their income and livelihoods, it added. And frequent misinformation and rumors about the pandemic and deep uncertainty about how long it will last are making people feel anxious and hopeless about the future.

It outlined action points for policy-makers to aim “to reduce immense suffering among hundreds of millions of people and mitigate long-term social and economic costs to society”.

These included redressing historic under-investment in psychological services, providing “emergency mental health” via remote therapies such as tele-counseling for frontline health workers, and working proactively with people known to have depression and anxiety, and with those at high risk of domestic violence and acute impoverishment.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, Editing by William Maclean)

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Trade deal in doubt?

U.S. President Donald Trump said he opposed renegotiating the “Phase 1” trade deal on Monday after Chinese-run state newspaper The Global Times reported some government advisers in Beijing were urging fresh talks.

Rising U.S.-China tensions over the coronavirus outbreak have cast the trade deal between the two countries, and proposed talks on a Phase 2 deal, into doubt.

The Global Times said that malicious attacks by the United States have ignited a “tsunami of anger” among Chinese trade insiders after China made compromises in the Phase 1 pact.

Dangerous calculation

WHO officials urged “extreme vigilance” on Monday as countries began to exit from lockdowns, stressing that early studies point to lower-than-expected antibody levels against the COVID-19 disease within the general population, meaning that most people remain susceptible.

Dr Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies program warned countries that have “lax measures” in place to be wary of counting on herd immunity to halt the spread of COVID-19, saying: “This is a really dangerous, dangerous calculation.”

Economic boost

Once Australia removes most social distancing restrictions by July, its GDP will rise by $6.5 bln each month, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was expected to tell lawmakers on Tuesday in a speech updating them on his budget planning.

Britain’s finance minister Rishi Sunak is similarly due to answer questions about the economic response to COVID-19 in parliament on Tuesday afternoon.

There, the focus is how Britain plans to continue the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which is paying employers 80% of the wages of more than 6 million workers who are on temporary leave from businesses affected by the coronavirus. The scheme is due to run until the end of June.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that coronavirus infections had peaked, and that people who could not work from home should return to their workplaces if possible.

Testing 11 million in 10 days

The Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of China’s coronavirus outbreak, plans to conduct nucleic acid testing over a period of 10 days, an internal document seen by Reuters showed and two sources familiar with the situation said, with every district told to submit a detailed testing plan by Tuesday.

The city of 11 million people reported its first cluster of new infections over the weekend after a months-long lockdown was lifted on April 8.

These plans come as the global alarm was sounded on Monday over a potential second wave of coronavirus infections after Germany reported that the reproduction rate of the pathogen had risen above 1.

Canceled Cannes

“It breaks my heart,” said Joseph Morpelli, leading member of the so-called ‘stepladder gang’ of ardent autograph-hunters and amateur paparazzi, as he stood across the street from the venue of the canceled Cannes Festival on Monday.

Usually, a hive of activity, the location where Morpelli and his fellow diehard fans could get a glimpse of celebrities walking down the red carpet is now deserted, as the film festival which was meant to start on Tuesday has been called off.

It was only the third time in its history that the festival has failed to take place. The two previous occasions were the outbreak of World War Two and 1968, when France was roiled by violent protests.

(Compiled by Karishma Singh)