Health

OTTAWA, Feb 24 (NNN-Xinhua) — Air Canada said that a passenger aboard one of its flights from Montreal to Vancouver on Feb 14 has tested positive for COVID-19.

The airline said it was informed by health authorities on Saturday.

“Air Canada is working with public health authorities and has taken all recommended measures,” a spokesperson of the airline said Sunday.

The British Columbia Center for Disease Control is following up with other passengers on that flight to inform them of the news, according to Air Canada.

ADDIS ABABA, Feb 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The World Health Organization warned that African health systems would be ill-equipped to respond to the deadly coronavirus outbreak should cases start to proliferate on the continent.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on African Union member states “to come together to be more aggressive in attacking” the virus, known as COVID-19.

BEIJING, Feb 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — China had 889 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections on Thursday, the National Health Commission said on Friday, up from 394 cases a day earlier.

That brings the total accumulated number of confirmed cases in mainland China so far to 75,465.

The death toll from the outbreak in mainland China reached 2,236 as of the end of Thursday, up by 118 from the previous day.

The central province of Hubei, the epicentre of the outbreak, reported 115 new deaths, while in the provincial capital of Wuhan, 99 people died. 

SINGAPORE, Feb 19 (NNN-BERNAMA) — Singapore’s Ministry of Health today confirmed three additional cases of COVID-19 in the republic, bringing the total number of positive cases to 84.

All three new cases are Singapore citizens with no recent travel history to China. One of them is a 54-year-old man who is linked to The Life Church and Missions Singapore church, and who travels frequently to Malaysia for work purposes.

Islamabad, Feb 17 (PTI) Pakistan on Monday launched a countrywide anti-polio campaign to vaccinate about 39.6 million children under the age of five in the country as the government appealed to the people for their support to eradicate the crippling disease.

Special Assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan on Health Services Zafar Mirza said the government is committed to reach every child with the polio vaccine.

15 Feb 2020; MEMO: Turkey will in coming days export to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan locally-produced coronavirus detection kits that can get results in about two hours, its health minister said on Friday, according to a report by Reuters.

China’s coronavirus outbreak has showed no sign of peaking with health authorities reporting more than 5,000 new cases earlier on Friday.

THE HAGUE, Feb 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Dutch farm ministry has ordered all commercial poultry farmers should keep their birds confined indoors as of midnight on Tuesday following reports of a German outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus.

The measures are to ensure that Dutch commercial poultry do not catch the disease from potentially infected wild birds from neighbouring Germany, the ministry said in a press release.

MOSCOW, Feb 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Russia discharged a Chinese national from hospital in the Siberian city of Chita on Wednesday after he recovered from a Covid-19 infection, local authorities said.

He was the second of Russia’s two confirmed cases of coronavirus to recover. The other victim, also a Chinese national, was said by authorities on Tuesday to have recovered and been released from quarantine in Siberia’s Tyumen region.

LOS ANGELES, Feb 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Nearly 200 people evacuated from the China Covid-19 outbreak were released from quarantine in California on Tuesday with officials urging Americans not to shun them, or workers who helped them, after both groups faced discrimination.

The 195 U.S. citizens, mostly U.S. State Department employees and their families, underwent the United States’ first mandatory quarantine since 1963 after they were evacuated from the coronavirus-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan.

GENEVA, Feb 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The World Health Organisation said “Covid-19” would be the new official name for the deadly coronavirus that was first identified in China on Dec 31.

“We now have a name for the disease and it’s Covid-19,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva, explaining that “co” stood for “corona”, “vi” for “virus” and “d” for “disease”.

Meanwhile, scientists from around the world are reviewing how Covid-19 is transmitted and possible vaccines at a WHO conference that kicked off on Tuesday.