Health Alerts

The WHO epi update this week notes a stabilisation in new global cases and mortality, and all regions except Europe experienced an overall decline in numbers. The latest Johns Hopkins report provided more details: in the past fortnight ‘16 European countries have reported increases in daily incidence of 25% or greater, including Czechia (+102%), Latvia (+118%), and Poland (+123%) with greater than 100%’. Most of the countries reporting increases are in Central and Eastern Europe (except for Ireland, Iceland and the UK). Russia’s daily case and death incidences are at record highs with just under one third of the country fully vaccinated. According to a WHO study, only one in seven COVID-19 cases in Africa are detected, so actual numbers are more likely to be 59 million cases and not the more than eight million recorded. Eight countries are to participate in a program of ramped-up screening and preventive measures initially funded by the agency - Burundi, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Republic of the Congo, Senegal and Zambia. In our region, overall both new cases and deaths are lower, but notably, Papua New Guinea has reported a 481 percent rise in the weekly reporting of new deaths.

In related news:

- An ABC article elaborates on the two COVID-19 treatments recently approved in Australia - Ronapreve and PF-07321332.  

- ‘Why easing COVID restrictions could prompt a fierce flu rebound’, as other respiratory viruses return in unexpected ways: Nature

- The WHO and SAGE have recommended that people aged over 60 who received either the Sinovac or Sinopharm COVID vaccines receive a third dose of the same or another vaccine to ensure sufficient protection as ‘the immunity from two doses of either vaccine wanes rapidly, and the protection offered to older people is limited’. Read more

- In the US, the FDA is scheduled to consider amending ‘Pfizer-BioNTech’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for administration of their COVID-19 mRNA vaccine to children 5 through 11 years of age’ on Oct 26.

-  International COVID-19 vaccination certificates are now available to download through MyGov. They are linked to a physical passport and are compatible with IATA's Travel Pass. Read more  

- Each week the ECDC publishes updated maps through which ‘a coordinated approach to the restriction of free movement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic’ is outlined through the use of colour-coding.

- A Strategy to Achieve Global Covid-19 Vaccination by mid-2022 and 40 percent by the end of 2021, as planned by the WHO.

- The TGA has approved several self-test kits for use at home from the beginning of next month Read more

- CIDRAP commentary articles: What can masks do? Part 1: The science behind COVID-19 protection and Part 2: What makes for a good mask study — and why most fail. Read more