COVID-19: AstraZeneca, Moderna leading vaccine race, says WHO

New Delhi, Mar 16: A recent survey across 140 districts of the country shows that about 54 per cent of Indians are finding travelling to be unsafe as the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic sweeps globally.

The big worry that people have is community transmission, something that researchers from around the world have approximated at 10 per cent of total infections and more common in places like Wuhan in China, South Korea, Iran and Italy.

The months of March to June have historically been high travel season for most Indians, largely due to the summer vacations in schools. "But it seems that Indians do not want to take a chance with this rather scary virus and are either cancelling or postponing their travel plans," concluded the survey by LocalCircles.

The survey gathered more than 22,000 responses from participants in tier one, two and three cities. It said 48 per cent Indians plan to cancel their international business travel for the next four months.

Besides, nearly 38 per cent of respondents said they had to pay cancellation fee to the website, travel agent, airline or railways.

"These are testing times for the entire travel and tourism industry -- airlines, hotels, travel agents as well as small tour and taxi operators. The best solution at this point is to adjust cost structures, stay flexible and work with a collective approach to minimise the period of impact to both citizens and business," said LocalCircles.

London, Jul 2: The World Health Organisation says smoking is linked to a higher risk of severe illness and death from the coronavirus in hospitalised patients, although it was unable to specify exactly how much greater those risks might be.

In a scientific brief published this week, the U.N. health agency reviewed 34 published studies on the association between smoking and Covid-19, including the probability of infection, hospitalisation, severity of disease and death.

WHO noted that smokers represent up to 18% of hospitalised coronavirus patients and that there appeared to be a significant link between whether or not patients smoked and the severity of disease they suffered, the type of hospital interventions required and patients' risk of dying.

In April, French researchers released a small study suggesting smokers were at less risk of catching Covid-19 and planned to test nicotine patches on patients and health workers — but their findings were questioned by many scientists at the time who cited the lack of definitive data.

WHO says "the available evidence suggests that smoking is associated with increased severity of disease and death in hospitalized Covid-19 patients. It recommends that smokers quit.

UN, Jul 14: There will be no return to the "old normal" for the foreseeable future as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and too many countries were still headed in the wrong direction, the chief of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned.

"The virus remains public enemy number one, but the actions of many governments and people do not reflect this," Xinhua news agency quoted WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at as saying a regular briefing on Monday.

He noted that mixed messages from leaders are undermining trust, which is the most critical ingredient of any response, while the only aim of the virus is to find people to infect.

Things are going to "get worse and worse and worse", he warned, unless governments communicate clearly with their citizens and roll out a comprehensive strategy focused on suppressing transmission and saving lives, while populations follow the basic public health principles of physical distancing, hand washing, wearing masks, coughing etiquette and staying home when sick.

COVID-19 has been gaining its momentum lately.

According to Tedros, Sunday saw a record of 230,000 cases reported to WHO, of which almost 80% were from just 10 countries and about half from just two countries.

"But it does not have to be this way," he said, asking every single leader, government and individual "to do their bit to break the chains of COVID-19 transmission and end the collective suffering".

To control the disease and get on with people's lives, Tedros said, three things are required. The first is to focus on reducing mortality and suppressing transmission; the second is to focus on an empowered, engaged community that takes individual behaviour measures in the interest of each other.

And the third is a strong government leadership and coordination of comprehensive strategies that are communicated clearly and consistently.

"We weren't prepared collectively, but we must use all the tools we have to bring this pandemic under control. And we need to do it right now," he added.

At the WHO briefing on Monday, health experts also said there was evidence to suggest that children under the age of 10 were only very mildly affected by Covid-19, while those over 10 seemed to suffer similar mild symptoms to young adults.

To what extent children can transmit the virus, while it appears to be low, remains unknown.

On Tuesday, the number of global coronavirus cases cross the 13 million mark, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

The total number of cases currently stood at 13,070,097, while the fatalities rose to 572,411, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed in its latest update.

The US accounted for the world's highest number of infections and fatalities at 3,363,056 and 135,605, respectively, according to the CSSE.

Brazil came in the second place with 1,884,967 infections and 72,833 deaths.