Telegraph Global Health Security
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Infectious diseases, Covid, conflict, health, reproductive rights from @telegraph. Free to read 🔑
Joined July 2019
🇫🇮Finland ranks best in Europe for fighting disinformation . And the country puts its success down to its children's robust education. @Harrietmbarber explains
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Photographed below, a man lifts his shirt to show the foot-long scar from selling his kidney; his son, brow furrowed, looks at his father’s face. As extreme hunger tightens its grip on Afghanistan, parents are sacrificing their bodies to feed their young.
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🦠 Health authorities are scrambling to halt a new Ebola outbreak. @ItsBillyMate explains what we know so far. 1/
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Tonga volcano: Experts have warned that Tonga’s future “looks grim” and health impacts after the volcanic eruption will be felt for years to come. @niccijsmith reports, video by @Harrietmbarber 📽️. @TelegraphWorld
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🚨 The Indian govt is blocking a new law which would criminalise marital rape. Women’s rights organisations have reacted with fury, describing the current law as a colonial era “relic” that has no place in modern India. #Thread. @Telegraph.
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💸Covid is set to cost the world at least £21.5 trillion💸. But scientists say the world needs to spend just £35 billion to make sure it never happens again. This is what they say we should spend the money on. @ClaireeBeers
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🛑 The worst ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic could have been avoided had the world not “lost” a month at the start of the crisis to indecision and complancancy, a major new report by @TheIndPanel has found.
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Illegal organ trading existed before the Taliban takeover in August 2021, but the black market has exploded after millions more were plunged into poverty due to international sanctions. Pictured: Afghan men who scars from selling kidneys. Credit: @kohsar
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🇩🇰 The land where Covid is now no worse than a cold. Denmark has scrapped its Covid laws, deeming the virus no longer a critical threat – cases remain high but the country has moved on. #Thread. @Telegraph @PaulNuki @sneweyy.
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🇻🇳 Vietnam has suspended international flights into Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City as it tries to control a new hybrid variant. @niccijsmith reports ~ 🧵.
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“The humanitarian disaster on the ground is on par with what we’ve seen in Myanmar… if it continues unabated it may reach Syria-type levels”. A brutal civil war is tearing through northern Ethiopia, @ZekuZelalem explains what we know so far
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“Rape in marriage is very, very widely experienced by women across India, especially in the context of child marriage where young girls get married and they have absolutely no agency to say yes or no because they don’t understand consent,” said Dr Ranjana Kumari.
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Three years ago, gunmen came to five-year-old Rachel Ngabusi’s village. One of the men cut off her sister's arm. Another tried to cut Rachel’s face off with a machete. Somehow the little one survived. Her mother did not 🧵.
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For the sixth consecutive week infections have plummeted worldwide. Our Global Health team asked the experts what could be behind the fall in cases and how the world can sustain it .
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A 2018 Thomson Reuters study found India to be the most dangerous country in the world for women, due to the high risk of sexual violence and likelihood of women being forced into exploitative bonded labour. (AFP)
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In 2014 the government embedded media literacy into the curriculum, teaching children from the age of six to read sources critically.
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Women’s activists say the law is the major reason for marital rapes in India, as men know they can act with impunity.
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🚨🇮🇳Approximately 90% of India’s 500 million-strong workforce are employed informally, living hand to mouth, day in and day out. As the country's Covid-19 crisis continues to spiral, thousands of them are now going hungry, unable to work.
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Hundreds of women are rushing to Tigray’s hospitals in northern Ethiopia for emergency contraception and HIV prevention drugs after being systematically raped by Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers. @annapmzn and @berhe_lucy spoke to survivors. This is what they uncovered
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India is one of around 30 countries in the world where it is still legal for a husband to sexually assault his wife. The High Court in Delhi is expected to deliver a judgement later this month on whether marital rape should be made a criminal offence.
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Locals have been instructed to wear face masks to avoid inhaling ash particles, which could cause asthma symptoms to flare up. (Credit: AFP/UNITAR)
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💉This sleepy town in Brazil is running a huge coronavirus vaccine experiment. The aim is to track the real-world impact of jabs, as scientists work to understand how effective Covid vaccines are at halting transmission. @djknowles22 explains the science behind the methodology⬇️
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There are two unrelated outbreaks: one in Guinea & the Democratic Republic of Congo. While the DRC is battling a resurgence of the disease, all eyes are on West Africa where Ebola sparked the world’s worst outbreak between 2013-2016. @sneweyy reports.
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Current @UN estimates suggest more than 24m people – 59 per cent of the population – are in need of lifesaving humanitarian aid, 30 per cent higher than in 2021. “I had to do it for the sake of my children,” 32-year-old Nooruddin told news agency AFP from Herat.
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‘Carnage’: 375 dead and 630,000 displaced after Typhoon Rai rips through Philippines. Report by @Harrietmbarber . #Thread. @Telegraph.
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Mother-of-three Aziza said that she is waiting to be matched with a patient who needs a kidney. “My children roam on the streets begging,” she said. “If I don’t sell my kidney, I will be forced to sell my one-year-old daughter.”.
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The black fungus killing hundreds across India could be related to the country’s highly infectious coronavirus variant, specialists believe. Last week, @joerwallen visited ten hospitals across the western state of Maharashtra – this is what he found.
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On Saturday, the Vietnamese authorities revealed they had discovered a “very dangerous” new coronavirus variant that combined mutations first found in India and the UK, and which spreads quickly by air.
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The practice has become so widespread in the western city that a nearby settlement has been nicknamed “one kidney village”. The price of a kidney, which once ranged from $3,500 to $4,000 (£2,600 to £3,000), has dropped to less than $1,500 (£1,100) since the Taliban took over.
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‘Let’s die at home’: 200 patients turned away as Tigray’s main hospital runs out of supplies. @__TomCollins reports. Free to read 🔓. @Telegraph.
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🩸There's no water available at Eunice Kalimbira's hospital in Malawi, so the midwife can't wash the blood off her hands after she helps women giving birth. Instead, she puts hand sanitiser on top, hoping it will keep her patients safe . @jriggers reports.
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Peter Kessler, @UNHCRAfg, said Afghanistan's streets are filled with children desperately searching through litter for food waste or jobs, and men pacing with wheelbarrows hoping for work transporting goods. Pictured: Children work to repair roads. Credit: S. Khodaiberdi Sadat
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The sunny days of Lockdown One feels very far away and if you're feeling fatigued, you're not alone. But just why does this lockdown feel so different this time round?. The answer, as our editor @paulnuki explains, is in the data
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China has also tightened its border security as its neighbour, once considered a pandemic success story, now plans to test all 13 million residents of Ho Chi Minh City and tighten social distancing measures.
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A survey of 49,000 people in English speaking countries has found that almost half of young adults are now at clinical risk of mental health disorders. @Harrietmbarber breaks down the findings of @MentalHealth1M's latest research below.
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Vietnam’s plight follows a now-familiar pattern of Covid-19 surges across Asia. Countries including Singapore, Laos, Thailand and Taiwan were once praised for beating the virus in 2020 but have now been caught out by a global vaccine shortage as new variants sweep the globe
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Meanwhile, teams are working to remove oil from Peru's beaches after strong waves from the eruption reached the its coast.
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Ash and chemicals have also polluted the water. Drinking it could lead to severe gastric problems and acute diarrhea. And the release of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide could cause acid rain that’s harmful to staple crops, compromising food security.
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Are lockdowns having an impact? . While no-one is totally sure what is driving the fall, it is clear that lockdowns and other interventions, like face masks, are make a huge difference, says @martinmckee.
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It is thought that the new strain, known as Delta or B.1.617, may be causing unprecedented damage to the pancreas of otherwise healthy people, triggering sudden onset diabetes and soaring blood glucose levels. This allows the deadly flesh-eating fungus to thrive
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Tonga was hit by a powerful volcanic eruption and tsunami at the weekend. Islands have been covered in a thick blanket of toxic ash that shot 30km into the air. The ash delayed rescue efforts by creating treacherous flying conditions and smothering the airport’s runway.
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The outbreak, which was officially declared an epidemic on Sunday, is close to the border with Liberia, raising concerns about the spread of the virus into neighbouring countries
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.@TheIndPanel has spent the past eight months reviewing the evidence around how Covid-19 became a pandemic, alongside the global and national responses. It highlighted 13 mistakes that plunged the world into the coronavirus crisis.
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Indian society is inherently patriarchal. Many women rarely leave their homes, and do not have the financial means or social support to file a legal or police complaint against their husbands. (AP)
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Guinea's first case was detected in a nurse who died in late January. Already at least seven people who attended her funeral have reported symptoms, including five people who have died . Others have been isolated in treatment centres, but experts warned more cases may emerge.
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At the extreme end of the spectrum, Singapore has withdrawn free healthcare for the unvaccinated, while Austria has confined some two million unvaccinated adults and children aged over 12 to their homes [Austrian police pictured monitoring compliance].
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🏡For months, our streets have been silent and empty, as people stayed at home during the third national lockdown. But as England’s strictest rules lifted these spaces were soon transformed. These are the pictures from the pandemic you may never see again ⬇️
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Briton released from death row accused of inciting genocide in Ethiopia
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According to a 2016 Indian government study more than 30 per cent of the 610,000 women surveyed in five Indian states had experienced physical or sexual abuse by their spouse. The figure rose to 44 per cent and 40 per cent in the states of Karnataka and Bihar, respectively. (AP)
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As conflict rages in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, women and girls are being used as sex slaves and forced to marry insurgent fighters. #Thread. @pulitzercenter @Telegraph.
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The numbers of dead in Gaza don’t add up – and there is no easy explanation. Why have a disproportionate number of male UNRWA workers been killed? @MarkZlochin explores this and more difficult questions about the conduct of the war and its death toll.
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Mark Lowcock, who was the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs until last year, said that Ethiopia had managed to block a declaration of famine in the Tigray region in 2021. @_Will_Brown reports reports⬇️ @Telegraph.
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🚨Priests who survived the killings told the @Telegraph the number of dead clergymen could be much higher than 78.
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Silenced with violence: doctors paid a heavy price for treating Covid patients in Nicaragua. The world’s least-restricted country has a bad case of Covid denialism – and its scepticism comes from the top. @Harrietmbarber reports 👇. @Telegraph.
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Residents of Queensland, Australia, have until Dec 15 to get vaccinated or face difficulty entering public spaces or finding a job. “You won’t be able to hide,” said a head of the Australian Medical Association.
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Vital aid supplies, like water containers, temporary shelters kits and electricity generators, are finally starting to arrive in Tonga.
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Typhoon Rai, which hit the country last week, is the strongest the archipelago has faced this year, with peak winds reaching 146mph. It has left chaos in its wake, with roughly 2.2 million people directly affected. The numbers known to be dead or injured is increasing.
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Tigray is facing world’s biggest health "catastrophe", the WHO has warned. Six million people “sealed off from the outside world” for 500 days in Tigray are facing an unparalleled health crisis. @Telegraph.
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But experts have warned that further explosions, ashfall or tsunamis cannot be ruled out. Read the full dispatch – not behind the paywall – below ⬇️. @Telegraph.
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Countries like the UK and US, suffered the most because they had to scramble to purchase PPE and establish track and trace capacity after the fact. While South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and New Zealand all had detailed suppression strategies mapped out in advance.
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How decriminalisation made Vancouver the fentanyl capital of the world. The city now has more overdose deaths per capita than any other. Locals say overly liberal drug laws sparked a catastrophe. Striking dispatch by @hellosarahgreen .
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In sunny Suffolk, Nick and his family are finally celebrating the Christmas they were unable to have. They had planned a festive celebration in December when escalating Covid infections caused a screeching government u-turn on gatherings. Now it’s crackers and turkey for Easter
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🚨 From prison threats to fines: How the world is turning up the heat on the unvaccinated. As the Novak Djokovic saga has shown, politicians across the world are losing patience with the unvaccinated. #Thread. @Telegraph.
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‘It is like a concentration camp’: Life inside the forgotten crisis on Europe’s edge. A blockade has been imposed on the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, limiting the flow of vital supplies and threatening 120,000 lives. @JessieWill5 reports.
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🚨 Wet market disease warning: Scientists say pathogens are ‘ubiquitous’ in wildlife trade and markets could spark a new pandemic. @niccijsmith reports ⬇️ 🧵.@Telegraph.
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The devastating “black fungus”, overwise known as mucormycosis, is a fast-moving, aggressive infection that attacks a person’s sinuses, lungs and brain and is deadly if not treated
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On Tuesday $15 million was allocated from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund to respond to the outbreaks in Guinea & DRC. DRC began vaccinating on Monday while Guinea authorities said on Weds that vaccines will arrive within 72 hours. @LHRouse reports.
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🚨 Almost a year after they were arrested and locked up in 'hellish' detention centres in Saudi Arabia, tens of thousands of migrants will be repatriated to Ethiopia after a series of @Telegraph investigations exposed the appalling conditions 🚨.
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"You can have the best data, the best interventions, the best drugs. But if you don't have the political and social structures to implement them at the right time, they're not going to work," @PeterHorby, the inaugural director of @UniofOxford's new Pandemic Sciences Centre, said
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"Africa is in the midst of a full-blown third wave," @MoetiTshidi said. "The sobering trajectory of surging cases should draw everyone to urgent action. “We've seen, in India and elsewhere, how quickly Covid-19 can rebound and overwhelm health systems".
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Vietnam has so far seen just over 7,100 Covid-19 cases and 47 deaths, but more than 4,000 of these cases have emerged in an outbreak that first came to light on April 27
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How did Butan managed to vaccinate more than half its citizens in a single week?. The tiny mountain kingdom may have an advantage when it comes to population size but there's more to this story than first seems. @joerwallen explains 🧵.
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🛑 The sheer scale of the crisis unfolding in India has grabbed worldwide attention, but its health system is not the only one under strain. In recent weeks countries ranging from Laos to Thailand have all been reporting significant surges in cases ~ 🧵.
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And they've faced the wrath of President Ortega for their work. “The government punished doctors who were treating people. They fired doctors, they took away medical licences, and sent police to their house,” said Dr Saenz Coen, who was arrested 8 times and beaten for his work.
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🚨 Rebel officials have warned aid still hasn’t reached Ethiopia’s conflict-ridden Tigray region, where thousands are at risk of starvation, despite the promise of a humanitarian truce last week. @__TomCollins reports – free to read⬇️. @Telegraph.
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"What's frustrating is right before the pandemic we were in the initial stages of building a global early warning radar, or weather map, to identify and track new microbes," Dr DeRisi told the @Telegraph
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Rachel is a victim of a conflict that the world has learned to forget. Since 2017, frenzied armed gangs in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo have forced almost half the population of a region the size of Ireland to flee their homes
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News of the potential new variant follows warnings from health bodies who say a “two-track pandemic” is emerging, where inequitable vaccine distribution is leaving millions vulnerable to the virus and allowing deadly variants to boomerang around the world.
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Is this the world’s worst job?. Manual sewage clearing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world – with workers risking venomous snakes and toxic gases – but is widespread among India's outcasts. Dispatch by @joerwallen, photos by @SimonTownsley 🧵.
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Vikram Trivedi is one of those patients. Five days ago, doctors removed his left eyeball, maxillary sinus and the roof of his mouth. The unthinkable was a necessary evil, to save his life from the aggressive, deadly flesh-eating fungal infection
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Anyone looking at these pictures from a pandemic-free future will find much that is unrecognisable. But there are other things that remain quintessentially British. Including this picture of two men eating breakfast in the sleet on April 12 when outdoor dining reopened once again
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The Scandinavian nation has become the first country in Europe to put an end to all coronavirus-related laws. In the eyes of the Danish government and, crucially, the vast majority of its 5.8m citizens, the virus is no longer deemed a “critical threat to society”.
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Dr Joe DeRisi, a biochemist who first sequenced the Sars virus in 2003 and a pioneer in genetic sequencing, speaks for everyone who is anyone in pandemic planning when he says the world needs a new "early warning radar" for the detection of new pathogens.
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Taiwan has long lived with the terrifying prospect of invasion by neighbouring China, but one of the biggest threats to its economic security and prosperity of its society lies from within – the lowest birth rates in the world. #Thread . @Telegraph.
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🇮🇳India's coronavirus outbreak is escalating. But beneath the headlines, a wider hunger crisis is building, one that if left unchecked could start to engulf large parts of the country.
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“Ethiopian authorities continue to saturate the airwaves with the false claim that humanitarian aid was flowing into Tigray on a daily basis,” it said in a statement on Monday.
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The independent 86-page report was commissioned last May by the @who at the behest of member states and calls for radical reform, including a shift towards acting early on the “precautionary principle”, rather than waiting for proof of an emerging threat.
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But the country has managed to inoculate its children against the scourge of fake news by teaching them how to to sift good claims from bad. It's a technique backed by rigorous scientific research, as @annegulland explained back in 2018 .
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A more seductive theory is that we have reached some level of herd immunity. In some areas - notably South Africa where cases and deaths fell by 25-30% last week - this is a possible explanation.
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🚨 The world faces an omicron ‘tsunami’ as a quarter of countries report record Covid infections. @sneweyy @bienbutcher and @benfarmerDT look at the data 🔽. #Thread. @Telegraph.
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“Covid-19 is the 21st century’s Chernobyl moment,” says the report. “The system as it stands now is clearly unfit to prevent another novel and highly infectious pathogen, which could emerge at any time, from developing into a pandemic”.
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Could the crackdown on the unvaccinated spark an anti-vaxx backlash?. @Harrietmbarber reports ⬇️. 🔓Full story:
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🚨 Covid variants found in New York’s sewers and Lagos’ slums could undo two years of Covid gains, world leaders have warned, as they urged high-income nations to donate $16.8bn to end the pandemic. #Thread. @Telegraph.
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This fall in cases, though, is not uniform across the world, he points out. Exceptions are the Eastern Mediterranean and South East Asia, which had a slight increase in cases of 7% and 2% respectively last week. These numbers are driven largely by Iran, Iraq, India & Indonesia
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But the Indian government has instructed the court to throw out the proposed amendment – which would be enforced across the country – because it says it will lead to women making false claims of rape against their husbands.
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