Heena Sharma Blog

  When the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic one year ago Thursday, it did so only after weeks of resisting the term and maintaining that the highly infectious virus could still be stopped. A year later, the U.N. agency is still struggling to keep on top of the evolving science of COVID-19 , to persuade countries to abandon their nationalistic tendencies and help get vaccines where they're needed most. The agency made some costly missteps along the way: It advised people against wearing masks for months and asserted that COVID-19 wasn't widely spread in the air. It also declined to publicly call out countries particularly China for mistakes that senior WHO officials grumbled about privately. That created some tricky politics that challenged WHO's credibility and wedged it between two world powers, setting off vociferous Trump administration criticism that the agency is only now emerging from. President Joe Biden's support for WHO may...

  A World Health Organisation team has emerged from quarantine in the Chinese city of Wuhan to start field work in a fact-finding mission on the origins of the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers, who were required to complete 14 days in quarantine after arriving in China, could be seen leaving their hotel and boarding a bus on Thursday afternoon. It wasn't immediately clear where they were headed. The mission has become politically charged, as China seeks to avoid blame for alleged missteps in its early response to the outbreak. A major question is where the Chinese side will allow the researchers to go and whom they will be able to talk to. Read More

  "There is now real hope that vaccines, in combination with other tried and tested public health measures, will help to end the pandemic," said the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The WHO chief's remarks came after drugmaker AstraZeneca said on Monday that its COVID-19 vaccine , developed with Oxford University, was up to 90 percent effective, making it the third major drug company after Pfizer and Moderna to have reported late-stage data for a potential COVID-19 vaccine, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday. "The significance of this scientific achievement cannot be overstated. No vaccines in history have been developed as rapidly as these. The scientific community has set a new standard for vaccine development," Tedros added. He pointed out now the international community must set a new standard for access, as "the urgency with which vaccines have been developed must be matched by the same urgency to d...

India added 13,586 in total coronavirus cases , the highest single-day jump yet, taking its tally to 380,532. Simultaneously, the death toll has reached 12,573, with 336 new fatalities in a day. Speaking of states that have reported the biggest 24-hour jump in active cases are Maharashtra (1,980), Tamil Nadu (1,075), Andhra Pradesh (297), Uttar Pradesh (218), and Assam (159). However, with 10,386 new recoveries being reported, India’s recovery rate has improved to 53.8 per cent while the death rate remains unchanged at 3.3 per cent. Read More

With a daily increase of 10,996 in total cases, India’s tally has risen from 286,579 to 297,535, an increase of 3.8 per cent, listing India as the fourth-most-affected nation by number of coronavirus cases . Death toll has reached 8,498 with 396 new fatalities, the most ever in a day. The number of active cases across India has increased by 4,394, compared with 3,816 on Thursday. States that have reported the biggest 24-hour jump in active cases are Maharashtra (1,894), Delhi (1,290), Tamil Nadu (480), Haryana (305), and West Bengal (221). Read More

With a daily increase of 9,987 in total Corona Virus cases , the biggest single-day jump yet, India’s tally has risen from 256,611 to 266,598, reporting an increase of 3.9 per cent. That apart, the death toll has reached 7,466, with 331 new fatalities, the most in a day so far. And, the number of active cases across India has increased by 4,536, compared with 4,975 on Monday. States that have reported the biggest 24-hour jump in active cases are Delhi (1,483), Tamil Nadu (1,017), Maharashtra (783), Haryana (395), and West Bengal (255). Read More

Despite the severe strain on public health systems due to the Covid-19 pandemic , countries around the world must also focus on other health emergencies like malaria or polio, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Sunday. "Public health systems are coming under severe strain as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Countries must also continue to focus on other health emergencies and make progress against diseases such as malaria or poliomyelitis (polio)," WHO said in its daily coronavirus situation report. The global number of those infected with coronavirus has increased by almost 85,000 in the past 24 hours, climbing to 2,804,796 Covid-19 cases. Read More

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday lauded "India's tough and timely actions" against the coronavirus after Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended a nationwide lockdown till May 3. "It may be early to talk about results in numbers, but a six-week nationwide lockdown to facilitate effective physical distancing, coupled with the expansion of core public health measures such as detection, isolation and tracing contact of coronavirus positive people, would go a long way in arresting the virus spread," PTI quoted WHO's South-East Asia Regional Director, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh as saying. "Despite huge and multiple challenges, India has been demonstrating unwavering commitment in its fight against the pandemic," she said. "In these testing times, the action lies as much with the communities as with the authorities and the health workforce," she added. Read More

Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp said Wednesday that it would launch the WhatsApp Coronavirus Information Hub globally, in partnership with the World Health Organization, United Nations Children's Fund, and United Nations Development Programme, and a $1 million donation to the Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). The WhatsApp Coronavirus Information Hub will be available at whatsapp.com/coronavirus and provide simple, actionable guidance for health workers, educators, community leaders, nonprofits, local governments and local businesses that rely on WhatsApp to communicate. The site also offers general tips and resources for users around the world to reduce the spread of rumours and connect with accurate health information. Read More

The Coronavirus outbreak has taken the world by a storm, with governments globally scrambling to control the outbreak, which has so far infected over 125,000 people and killed more than 4,500 across 114 countries. Even as the virus forces countries to quarantine citizens, lock down borders and suspend travels, the number of recoveries across the world so far has been 68,000, according to data collated by the Johns Hopkins University & Medicine. The data show that over 50,000 people have recovered in China’s Hubei province alone. Hubei has been the most affected by the outbreak. Iran, also affected badly and facing difficulties owing to several US sanctions and poor medical facilities, has seen over 2,900 recoveries so far. The country has also reported over 400 deaths, the most after China and Italy. While over 90 per cent of the cases are confined to four countries – China, South Korea, Italy and Iran – the first two have lately seen a significant drop in new Covid-19 ca...

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Coronavirus a pandemic on Wednesday. But the question is will this declaration bring any change in the ways the nations are working to combat the novel coronavirus infection? But first, what is a pandemic? A WHO website defines pandemic as a “worldwide spread of a new disease.” This means, irrespective of how deadly or severe the disease or infection is, to become a pandemic, it has to spread far enough around the world. The last time a pandemic occurred was with H1N1 or Swine flu in 2009, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives across the globe according to experts. In case you are thinking about the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak, 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak and the 2016 Zika outbreak were not pandemics they did not impact as many people as Coronavirus despite spreading in more than one country. Read More

The Fitbit on your wrist not only counts your steps and minutes of sleep, it can also help tell if you’re coming down with the flu — and warn health authorities to get ready to help. A study in the United States has found that heart rate and sleep data from wearable fitness tracker watches can predict and alert public health officials to real-time outbreaks of flu more accurately than current surveillance methods. The study used data from more than 47,000 Fitbit users in five US states. The results, published in The Lancet Digital Health journal, showed that by using Fitbit data, state-wide predictions of flu outbreaks were improved and accelerated. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 6,50,000 people worldwide die of respiratory diseases linked to seasonal flu each year. Traditional surveillance reporting takes up to three weeks, meaning response measures — such as deploying vaccines or anti-virals and advising patients to stay at home — can often lag....

The healthcare access of a country reflects its economic, social and political standards and growth on the world stage. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), half the world's 7.3 billion population lacks access to essential health services. Around 800 million people have to spend 10 per cent of their income on their healthcare.  And more than 100 million people become severely poor due to the medical expenses they incur. This Universal Health Coverage Day, it is high time the country realised the potential of Ayurveda as a key to universal healthcare. Here are the five reasons for India to lead:  * Western medicine is becoming more expensive and ineffective in terms of assuring overall the health of the common citizen. Treatment costs are escalating day by day, making healthcare accessible only to a very small percentage of the country's ever increasing population * A holistic and preventive medical science, Ayurveda is the oldest system dati...