Health

GENEVA: The world is at risk of losing hard-won gains in fighting Covid-19 as the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads, but WHO-approved vaccines remain effective, the World Health Organisation said on Friday. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has described the Delta variant of the coronavirus as being as transmissible as chickenpox and cautioned it could cause …

BEIJING: Hundreds of thousands of people in China were in coronavirus lockdown on Friday as the country battled its worst outbreak in months, while the United States intensified vaccination efforts in the face of a Delta variant-fuelled surge. The World Health Organisation has warned that the highly transmissible strain, first detected in India, could unleash more Covid-19 outbreaks in a …

RAWALPINDI: The number of active Covid-19 cases in the country crossed the 60,000 mark on Friday as 4,537 more people tested positive for the deadly virus while 86 patients died during the last 24 hours in the country. The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Friday decided to take all possible measures to assist the government in combating spread …

LAHORE: The Punjab health authorities have generated another threat alert after five cases of California “Epsilon” strain of Covid-19 virus have been detected in Lahore. The health department confirmed the presence of the new strain saying 23 samples were processed in a reference lab of the Punjab government. Of them, it said, five were confirmed to be positive for California …

who CAIRO/PARIS: The World Health Organisation said on Thursday the Delta variant has led to a “surge” in coronavirus outbreaks triggering a “fourth wave” in the Middle East, where vaccination rates remain low. The global health body said the highly transmissible strain, first detected in India, has been recorded in 15 out of the 22 countries and territories of the …

Saudi Arabia announced on Friday that it would reopen its borders to fully vaccinated foreign tourists after a 17-month closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, the state news agency said. However, Riyadh did not announce any lifting of restrictions on Umrah, which can be performed at any time and usually attracts millions of Muslims from across the globe each year. …

They spit. They wait. They hope. About 30,000 people from scores of nations are spitting into tiny plastic vials at the Olympics in a daily routine that’s grown crucial in going ahead with the pandemic-era Games, according to organisers. If you do the math for the two-week duration of the Olympics, that adds up to a half million saliva samples …

o ISLAMABAD: The Sub-National Immunisation Days (SNIDs) campaign will kick off on Aug 2 during which more than 23.6 million children in 68 districts of all four provinces as well as Islamabad will be administered anti-polio drops. Approximately, 179,000 frontline polio workers will go house to house, observing the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for Covid-19, to ensure children’s protection from …

LAHORE: The fourth wave of Covid-19 is quite challenging as the bed occupancy rate is gradually increasing in the state-run hospitals of the province. With 596 new positive cases reported all over the province during the last 24 hours (Thursday), the bed occupancy in intensive care units and high dependency units in the government hospitals of Punjab increased to 16 …

ISLAMABAD: While Pakistan reported more than 4,100 cases after a gap of over two months and PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz became the latest victim of Covid-19, a record number of people i.e. 778,000 were vaccinated in a single day. Vice Chancellor of the University of Health Scien­ces Dr Javed Akram suggested that the pace of vaccination should be expedited to …