Health

ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health Dr Faisal Sultan on Monday assured a parliamentary committee that the health-risk allowance will be paid to 12,000 government employees in the federal capital next week. He stated this while briefing the National Assembly Standing Committee on National Health Services (NHS) at a meeting chaired by MNA Khalid Hussain Magsi. Dr …

Australia’s biggest city of Sydney recorded its deadliest day of the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday as troops and police set up roadblocks to limit the movement of people, while Melbourne faced a nightly curfew and a further two weeks of lockdown. Sydney, which is in its eighth week of lockdown, is the epicentre of Australia’s third COVID-19 wave that threatens …

Alison Toni felt lucky to get Sinovac’s COVID-19 vaccine in Chile earlier this year. A month later, she was in Minnesota getting vaccinated again. Toni, an American living in Chile, was visiting her parents in Minneapolis in April when she got her first Pfizer shot at a CVS pharmacy. She traveled back for the second dose in June. She did …

ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health, Dr Faisal Sultan, said Monday that the Covid-19 situation has improved in Karachi as the number of daily coronavirus cases continued to decline in the provincial capital of Sindh. The spread of the coronavirus Delta variant reached alarming levels in Karachi, as public and some private sector hospitals ran out …

GlaxoSmithKline and CureVac said a study on macaque monkeys showed their jointly-developed mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate to be “strongly improved” in protecting against the virus compared with CureVac’s first attempt. The encouraging news on its “second-generation” vaccine gave CureVac’s German-listed shares an 8% lift, as the stock gradually recovers from a slump in June when the German biotech company’s first …

Here is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that have yet to be certified by peer review. Third vaccine dose ‘substantially’ aids transplant patients A third dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine provided immunocompromised organ transplant patients with “substantially” improved protection, according to a trial published …

International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N) said on Friday that it would allow only fully vaccinated US employees to return to offices, which are set to open from Sept. 7, given the rapid spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19. “We will still open many of our US sites, where local clinical conditions allow, the week of Sept. 7. However, the reopenings …

ISLAMABAD: The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Saturday revised the international travel list and included 15 countries in category C as Pakistan reels under the fourth wave of Covid-19 pandemic. On the other hand, Pak Covid-19 Vaccination Pass App has been launched, which will help identify fake vaccination certificates and facilitate inoculated people. According to data, 4,343 people …

GENEVA: The World Health Organization said on Friday it was setting up a new group to trace the origins of the coronavirus, seeking to end what it called “political point scoring” that had hampered investigations. The inability of the WHO to say where and how the virus began spreading has fuelled tensions among its members, particularly between China, where Covid-19 …

MANILA: The Philippines will extend a ban on travellers from India, Pakistan and eight other countries to the end of August because of concerns posed by the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, the presidential spokesperson said on Friday. Authorities in the Philippines are scrambling to contain a jump in coronavirus cases to a four-month high, with infections staying …