Concerns about covid 19 vaccine

North Korea’s daily fever cases dropped to below 100,000 for the first time, state media said on Saturday, less than three weeks after the country’s first acknowledgement of a COVID-19 outbreak. The isolated country has been in a heated battle against an unprecedented COVID wave since declaring a state of emergency and imposing a nationwide lockdown this month, fuelling concerns about lack of vaccines, medical supplies and food shortages. Some 88,520 more people showed fever symptoms as of Friday evening, compared with nearly 400,000 about 10 days ago, the official KCNA news agency said, citing data from the state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters. The total number of fever patients since April rose to 3.36 million among the 25 million population. KCNA did not report any additional death. As of Friday, the death toll stood at 69. North Korea has not confirmed the total number of people testing positive for the coronavirus, apparently lacking in testing supplies. … [Read more...] about North Korea Says New Fever Covid-19 Cases Under 100,000 as Virus Fight Heats Up

Many would remember the school-based campaigns of measles-rubella (MR) vaccination of children from 5 to 15 years, conducted in all States, in 2017. Success was good in a few States, but not in others. School managements, teachers, children themselves and parents were not informed of the basis of this new programme, which was a deviation from the past. There were some unanswered questions: why was it up to 15 years while the Universal (childhood) Immunisation Programme (UIP) covers only those up to five years? Why administer the rubella vaccine that was not in the UIP list in 2017? Why should children who have had one dose of the measles vaccine get another dose? Why are schools instead of health-care centres used for vaccination? Hurdle of poor information The Government decided to eliminate measles and rubella from India by the year 2020 — having missed the earlier set target of 2015. So, in 2017 there was an urgency to accelerate efforts. The basic plan was to create a very high … [Read more...] about Sighting the finishing line in measles-rubella elimination

Sign up for Tom’s newsletter, Peacefield, here. The U.S.-government mandate requiring mask wearing on transportation is now dead, and it was killed in the worst way possible. A judge deemed “not qualified” by the American Bar Association wrote a muddled decision that invalidated a regulation hated by the president who picked her, while overriding the authority of the executive branch and its expert advisers to make policy. And yet, Federal District Judge Kathryn Mizelle just did President Joe Biden a favor. She got him out from under a policy that served little purpose. His administration will challenge the Trump-appointed jurist’s ruling—and it should, not to reimpose the mandate, but to preserve the power of the executive branch to issue national health regulations when needed. But Biden should be glad, as the airlines clearly are, that the masking theater is over. Mask mandates were a stopgap, an emergency safety measure imposed by governments with few other options to … [Read more...] about The Playacting Over Masks Really Needed to End