The World Health Organization said yesterday it “strongly recommended” Pfizer’s Covid-19 antiviral pill Paxlovid for patients with milder forms of the disease who were still at a high risk of hospitalisation.

The World Health Organization launched its Global Centre for Traditional Medicine at a site in India on Tuesday, aimed at unlocking its potential by blending ancient practices with modern science.

The World Health Organization yesterday said it was monitoring cases of hepatitis of unknown origin in dozens of children in Britain, some of whom required a liver transplant.

The World Health Organization’s emergency committee unanimously agreed that now is not the time to lower the guard on Covid-19, the group’s head told a press conference yesterday.

More than two-thirds of Africans may have contracted Covid-19 over the past two years, around 97 times more than reported infections, a World Health Organization report suggested on Thursday.

The World Health Organization advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in the country’s public health laboratories to prevent “any potential spills” that would spread disease among the population, the agency told Reuters.

The Covid pandemic has taken a dire toll on mental health, the WHO said yesterday, indicating that cases of anxiety and depression had swelled by over 25 percent globally.

The World Health Organization lamented that half a million Covid-19 deaths had been recorded since the Omicron variant was discovered, calling the toll “beyond tragic”.

China and the World Health Organization have discussed the need for “stronger collaboration” on tracing the origins of Covid-19, amid tensions over the WHO’s plans to further investigate the theory that the virus could have leaked from a Wuhan lab.

The risk level related to the Omicron variant remains very high, the WHO said late Tuesday, with the numbers of new Covid-19 cases hitting another record high last week.

The World Health Organization has warned that the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, as France, Germany and Brazil posted new infection records in the past 24 hours.

The World Health Organization approved two new Covid-19 treatments yesterday, growing the arsenal of tools along with vaccines to stave off severe illness and death from the virus.

The World Health Organization said Friday that the spread of Omicron was down to a combination of factors including the make-up of the Covid-19 variant and increased social mixing. 

The more infectious Omicron variant of Covid-19 appears to produce less severe disease than the globally dominant Delta strain, but it should not be categorised as “mild”, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.   

Omicron still poses “very high” risk and could overwhelm healthcare systems, the WHO warned yesterday, as the highly transmissible coronavirus variant fuelled record outbreaks in many countries. 

The WHO yesterday warned that the Omicron coronavirus variant could lead to overwhelmed healthcare systems even though early studies suggest it leads to milder disease, as China and Germany brought back tough restrictions to stamp out new infection surges.

The WHO warned that rich countries cannot use boosters to escape the coronavirus, as nations scrambled to contain Omicron surges.

The World Health Organization’s top official in Europe urged governments to prepare for a “significant surge” in coronavirus cases across the continent due to the Omicron variant, which is already dominant in several countries.

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from the Covid-19 disease, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is spreading significantly faster than the Delta strain in countries with documented community transmission, with the number of cases doubling in 1.5 to 3 days, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.