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Results for pandemic

Wednesday 29 December 2021
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New York, USA
New York Times reporting: The U.S. record for daily coronavirus cases has been broken, as two highly contagious variants — delta and omicron — have converged to disrupt holiday travel and gatherings, deplete hospital staffs and plunge the United States into another long winter. As a third year of the pandemic loomed, the seven-day average of U.S. cases topped 267,000 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times database.
Wednesday 4 August 2021

New York, USA
New York Times reporting: The rise of the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus has raised new questions about how the vaccinated can stay safe and avoid breakthrough infections. We asked the experts for advice. As long as large numbers of people remain unvaccinated, vaccinated people will be exposed to the Delta variant. “Vaccinations give you that extra protection you wouldn’t normally have,” says Dr. Erin Bromage. “But when you hit a big challenge, like getting near an unvaccinated person who has a high viral load, that wall is not always going to hold.”
Saturday 24 July 2021

Tokyo, Japan
New York Times reporting and photos: The athletes marched into the arena masked and waving exuberantly. Dancers in pastel costumes and hats clapped and waved their arms in the air to whip up excitement. But there were no fans and no cheering audience — only row upon row of mostly empty seats stretching into the reaches of the vast Olympic Stadium in central Tokyo.
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Thursday 22 July 2021

Suva, Fiji
Two pregnant women in their early 30s from Lami were among the 21 new COVID-19 deaths in Fiji reported as new infections and deaths surge there. Neither of the pregnant women had been vaccinated. “Maternal deaths due to COVID-19 are a clear indication of the severity of this outbreak,” said Fiji Permanent Secretary for Health, Doctor James Fong, who urged Fijians to stay at home.
Wednesday 7 July 2021

Sydney, Australia
New York Times reporting: Three days after the emergence of a rare COVID-19 case in Sydney, around 40 friends gathered for a birthday party. Along with cake and laughter, there was a hidden threat: One of the guests had unknowingly crossed paths with that single COVID case, an airport driver who had caught the Delta variant from an American aircrew. Two weeks later, 27 people from the party have tested positive. And the seven people at the gathering who were not infected? They were all vaccinated. By Damien Cave.
Thursday 24 June 2021

Suva, Fiji
Fiji has 279 new cases, their highest daily case count so far, indicating widespread community transmission, said Fiji's Health and Medical Services Head of Health Protection, Dr Aalisha Sahukhan on June 23, reporting four new deaths. To date 45% of Fijians have received one dose of vaccines, and 5% have received a second dose.
Wednesday 26 May 2021

Wellington, New Zealand
New York Times reporting: More than 50,000 New Zealanders have flocked home during the pandemic, offering the country a rare opportunity to win back some of its best and brightest. The question is how long the edge will last. The Ardern government has announced no specific measures aimed at retaining citizens who return. But it is using its border shutdown as a moment to “reset” its immigration priorities, saying last week that it would loosen controls for wealthy investors while curtailing temporary visas for the migrants the country has long relied on as citizens moved away.
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Monday 10 May 2021

New York, USA
The combination of export bans, hoarding, and supply shortages has meant that COVAX has so far managed to deliver only one in five of the Oxford-AstraZeneca doses that were supposed to arrive in countries by the end of this month. At this rate, advanced economies will be able to vaccinate their entire populations before many low-income countries even begin their vaccine rollout. By Rosalind McKenna
Thursday 29 April 2021

Geneva, Switzerland
Globally, new COVID-19 cases increased again with nearly 5.7 million new cases reported last week, surpassing previous peaks, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) weekly COVID-19 update on April 25. For the third consecutive week, the South-East Asia region reported the highest relative increases in both case and death incidences.
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Wednesday 31 March 2021

Brussels, Belgium
New York Times reporting: Citing what they call “the biggest challenge to the global community since the 1940s,” the leaders of more than two dozen countries, the European Union and the World Health Organization on Tuesday floated an international treaty to protect the world from pandemics. The current pandemic is “a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe,” the leaders write. The suggested treaty is an acknowledgment that the current system of international health institutions, symbolized by the relatively powerless WHO, a U.N. agency, is inadequate to the problem.
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Tuesday 16 March 2021

New York, USA
New York Times reporting: The coronavirus must have infected someone with a weak immune system, allowing it to adapt and evolve for months into far more contagious variants, experts hypothesize. If true, the idea has implications for vaccination programs, particularly in countries that have not yet begun to immunize their populations, especially those with diabetes and other health conditions. People with compromised immune systems — such as cancer patients — should be among the first to be vaccinated, said a virus expert. The faster that group is protected, the lower the risk that their bodies turn into incubators for the world’s next supercharged mutant.
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Tuesday 26 January 2021

New York, USA
Just as political leaders like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro have forced a reckoning about the historical persistence of fascist politics, so have their disastrous responses to the COVID-19 pandemic renewed the relevance of the concept of genocide. How else are we to come to grips with so many culpably avoidable deaths? As in Brazil, Indigenous communities in the US have suffered disproportionately from the pandemic. By Federico Finchelstein and Jason Stanley.
Thursday 17 December 2020

Nuku'alofa, Tonga
Tonga is looking to the COVAX Facility to obtain a safe COVID-19 vaccine for Tonga in 2021, the CEO for Ministry of Health, Dr Siale ‘Akau‘ola said today at a press briefing at Vaiola Hospital. Tonga needs to wait for a vaccine that can be stored in the hospital freezers.
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Monday 23 November 2020

New York, USA
New York Times reporting: At the end of a tough year, spiritual leaders offer some ways to prepare yourself for whatever comes next. By Erik Vance.
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Wednesday 11 November 2020

Nuku'alofa, Tonga
Seventeen people are now in managed quarantine in Samoa, after a CoViD-19 infected container ship passed through Apia on the weekend. Meanwhile, Vanuatu has recorded its first CoViD-19 case, and Solomon Islands has seen more COVID cases arriving.
Thursday 8 October 2020

New York, USA
Without a vaccine, COVID-19 won't "go away" through a strategy of herd immunity. Two scientific case studies have already confirmed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 can reinfect an individual and that our immunity to coronaviruses is alarmingly short-lived. I have previously called herd immunity a “reckless and ineffective strategy.” Now that COVID-19 reinfections are not just a possibility, but a reality, I would add “lethal” to my description. By William A. Haseltine
Thursday 13 August 2020

Nuku'alofa, Tonga
The immediate family of HM King Tupou VI remain abroad during the CoViD-19 pandemic.
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Wednesday 22 July 2020

Geneva, Switzerland
During the 2009 swine flu pandemic, a few countries cornered the vaccine market, leaving the vast majority of the global population with no vaccine at all until the outbreak was effectively over. This scenario must be avoided at all costs during the current crisis – and, thanks to the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility, it can be. By Seth Berkley, Richard Hatchett, and Soumya Swaminathan.
Monday 13 April 2020

Nuku'alofa, Tonga
An Australian doctor in Tonga warns that it’s too early for children to return to school tomorrow because we do not know for certain if the recent arrivals in Tonga were free of the virus or just had no symptoms. “If they did pass it to people they have contacted, those contacts may still be incubating the disease...To relax these restrictions now risks an outbreak of the disease, with potentially terrible consequences.” he said. There are no CoViD-19 tests here, so Tonga is “flying blind”.
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Friday 3 April 2020

Austin-Texas, USA
China's success in "flattening the curve" of the COVID-19 epidemic has been held up as a model for the rest of the world to emulate. But what the world really needs to understand is that "victory" required massive sacrifices by doctors, nurses, and other health workers whose names we will never know. The doctors and nurses on the front lines having lived through hell, see little to celebrate, much to mourn, and reason to remain fearful.

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