In #India's 🇮🇳 most populous state Uttar Pradesh, the state gov. has initiated house-to-house active case finding of #COVID19 in rural areas to contain transmission by testing people with symptoms for rapid isolation, disease management & contact tracing
👉bit.ly/3vOEz8m
Monitoring teams visit homes in 97,941 villages to test everyone with #COVID19 symptoms. Those who tested positive are:
✅isolated
✅given a medicine kit with advice on disease management
All contacts of those who tested positive are quarantined & tested. bit.ly/3vOEz8m
People without signs of #COVID19 are urged to get vaccinated & follow COVID-appropriate behaviours to prevent transmission in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh 🇮🇳, home to 230 million people.
The Uttar Pradesh state government has deployed 141,610 teams and 21,242 supervisors from the state health department to ensure all rural areas are covered with this #COVID19 case finding activity.
"Globally, we are now seeing a plateauing in the number of #COVID19 cases and deaths, with declines in most regions including the Americas & Europe, the two worst-affected regions"-@DrTedros
"But it’s an unacceptably high plateau, with more than 5.4 million reported #COVID19 cases and almost 90 thousand deaths last week"-@DrTedros
"Since the beginning of the pandemic, WHO has called consistently for national unity and regional and global solidarity. And that is exactly what the African Union has demonstrated."-@DrTedros
"Africa is the only region to have developed a unified continental strategy on #COVID19."-@DrTedros
WHO today listed the Sinopharm #COVID19 vaccine for emergency use in all countries, a prerequisite for a potential #COVAX roll-out. Interim policy recommendations were also issued for the vaccine usage.
The Sinopharm product is an inactivated #COVID19 vaccine called SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine (Vero Cell). Its easy storage requirements make it highly suitable for low-resource settings, boosting supply to underserved countries.
The Sinopharm #COVID19 vaccine is the first to carry a vaccine vial monitor, a small sticker on the vaccine vials that changes color as the vaccine is exposed to heat, letting health workers know whether the vaccine can be safely used.
"Wednesday’s announcement by the #UnitedStates🇺🇸 that it will support a temporary waiver of intellectual property protections for #COVID19 vaccines is a significant statement of solidarity and support for #VaccinEquity."-@DrTedros
"I know that this is not a politically easy thing to do, so I very much appreciate the leadership of the #UnitedStates🇺🇸, and we urge other countries to follow their example."-@DrTedros#COVID19
🆕 Joint Statement by International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA) & WHO calls on the pharmaceutical industry to provide wide access to clinical data for all new medicines and vaccines.
#COVID19 shows that information & data are 🔑 to support:
🔸academics, researchers & industry in dev. vaccines & therapeutics
🔸regulators & health authorities' decision-making
🔸healthcare professionals' treatment decisions
🔸public confidence in deployed vaccines & therapeutics
To ensure public health interest, clinical trial reports should be published without redaction of confidential information. Both positive & negative clinically relevant data should be made available, while only personal data & individual patient data should be redacted.
Most people consume 2x the WHO-recommended 5g of daily #salt intake, putting themselves at greater risk of the heart diseases & strokes that kill an estimated 3 million people each year.
🆕 WHO benchmarks help countries reduce salt intake & save lives👉 bit.ly/3ems7qA
The WHO Global Sodium Benchmarks aim to guide for countries and industry to reduce the sodium content in processed foods.
Consumption of processed food is a rapidly increasing source of sodium bit.ly/3ems7qA
The Global Sodium Benchmarks target several categories of high-sodium 🧂 food products: