Category: Breaking News

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Mandatory vaccinations against the coronavirus are an “absolute last resort”, head of the World Health Organization’s Europe division, Hans Kluge, told reporters on Tuesday. “Mandates around vaccination are an absolute last resort and only applicable when all feasible options to improve vaccination uptake have been exhausted,” Kluge said.

PARIS, Dec 6 (Reuters) – Frace now has identified 25 positive cases of the Omicron COVID-19 virus variant, of which 21 were imported from people returning from Southern Africa, and four who were the result of local infection, Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Monday. Veran said the Omicron variant seems much more contagious than the Delta variant. He also said that France is aiming to start offering COVID-19 vaccination to all children aged 5 to 11 from December 20, provided health authorities give the go-ahead. Continue reading “France now has 25 Omicron Covid variant cases…. England has community transmission of Omicron variant, health minister says”

LONDON (Reuters) – Future pandemics could be even more lethal than COVID-19 so the lessons learned from the pandemic must not be squandered, one of the creators of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine said. “This will not be the last time a virus threatens our lives and our livelihoods,” Sarah Gilbert said in the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, the BBC reported. “The truth is, the next one could be worse. It could be more contagious, or more lethal, or both.” “We cannot allow a situation where we have gone through all we have gone through, and then find that the enormous economic losses we have sustained mean that there is still no funding for pandemic preparedness,” she said. “The advances we have made, and the knowledge we have gained, must not be lost.”

this is the promotional video for the very cruise that returned with a boatload of infected passengers…. so much for their safety protocols

(Reuters) – A cruise ship set to dock in New Orleans with over 3,000 passengers has detected 10 cases of COVID-19 among its crew and guests, the Louisiana Department of Health said late on Saturday. The cruise ship Norwegian Breakaway, owned by Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd, departed New Orleans on a weeklong cruise on Nov. 28 and had stops in Belize, Honduras and Mexico, the health agency said. “NCL has been adhering to appropriate quarantine and isolation protocols,” the department said in a tweet. The ship is set to reach New Orleans on Sunday morning, according to its itinerary. Everyone on board will be tested for COVID-19 before leaving and will be provided with post-exposure and quarantine public health guidance by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). People who test positive for COVID-19 will either travel to their homes or self-isolate according to CDC guidelines, the health agency said. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 likely acquired at least one of its mutations by picking up a snippet of genetic material from another virus – possibly one that causes the common cold – present in the same infected cells, according to researchers. This genetic sequence does not appear in any earlier versions of the coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, but is ubiquitous in many other viruses including those that cause the common cold, and also in the human genome, researchers said. By inserting this particular snippet into itself, Omicron might be making itself look “more human,” which would help it evade attack by the human immune system, said Venky Soundararajan of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based data analytics firm nference, who led the study https://osf.io/f7txy posted on Thursday on the website OSF Preprints. This could mean the virus transmits more easily, while only causing mild or asymptomatic disease. Scientists do not yet know whether Omicron is more infectious than other variants, whether it causes more severe disease or whether it will overtake Delta as the most prevalent variant. Continue reading “Omicron variant may have picked up a piece of common-cold virus”

Ireland will reintroduce some Covid-19 restrictions for the Christmas period following “very stark” advice from health officials. Restrictions will be in place from December 7 to January 9, including new limits on household gatherings, the country’s Taoiseach Micheal Martin said. It comes amid concern about increased socialising at Christmas and the threat posed by the new Omicron variant of coronavirus. In a national address on Friday, Mr Martin said: “The risks associated with proceeding into the Christmas period without some restrictions to reduce the volume of social contacts is just too high.” Among the measures taking effect from next Tuesday include strict social distancing requirements for bars and restaurants. Continue reading “Ireland sets new COVID restrictions”

LONDON (Reuters) -COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna that use mRNA technology provide the biggest boost to antibody levels when given 10-12 weeks after the second dose, a new British study has found. The “COV-Boost” study was cited by British officials when they announced that Pfizer and Moderna were preferred for use in the country’s booster campaign, but the data has only been made publicly available now. The study found that six of the seven boosters examined enhanced immunity after initial vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine, while all seven increased immunity when given after two doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. Continue reading “UK study finds mRNA COVID-19 vaccines provide biggest booster impact”

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (Reuters) – President Joe Biden on Thursday laid out his strategy to fight the coronavirus as the highly contagious Omicron spread across the globe with winter coming and hours after the first known U.S. case of community transmission of the variant was reported. With authorities around the world scrambling to contain Omicron, Biden warned in no uncertain terms that infections will rise this winter. “We’re going to fight this variant with science and speed, not chaos and confusion,” he said, speaking at the National Institutes of Health medical research facility in Maryland. New York has found five cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant, its governor said, becoming the fourth U.S. state to detect the variant and bringing the total number of infections in the country to eight. New York Governor Kathy Hochul told a news conference that one of the cases involved a 67-year-old Long Island woman with mild symptoms who had recently returned from South Africa. The woman had some vaccination history but it was not yet known how many doses she had received. Further information was not yet available on the other four people, all New York City residents, Hochul said. The other U.S. states that have found Omicron cases are California, Colorado and Minnesota, one in each state. In all three cases, the patients were fully vaccinated and developed mild symptoms. In California and Colorado, the patients had recently returned from trips to southern Africa and had not gotten booster doses. The case in Minnesota is the first known community transmission within the United States. The patient in Minnesota had recently travelled to New York City for an anime convention, prompting the city to launch contact tracing to try to contain the spread. “We are aware of a case of the Omicron variant identified in Minnesota that is associated with travel to a conference in New York City, and we should assume there is community spread of the variant in our city,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said ahead of Hochul’s announcement. Continue reading “U.S. reports first community transmission of Omicron as variant spreads across globe”