US Secretary of Health Robert Kennedy Jr. has lifted the recommendation that pregnant women and healthy children be vaccinated against COVID-19. The Agency for the Control of Infectious Diseases has indicated that vaccinations should be given to the most vulnerable people. But the minister, who criticized vaccinations, did not take into account the luminaries of medicine. Meanwhile, a new strain of the virus is spreading from China, Singapore, India, and other Asian countries across Europe.
Epidemiologists in the United States say Kennedy set a dangerous precedent. Once the vaccination against one disease is canceled, it may be followed by the cancellation of vaccinations against other diseases, such as measles. But how dangerous is the new COVID-19 strain? Health authorities in Hong Kong and Singapore, where the majority of the population is Chinese, report that the number of infections has increased significantly.
According to information from the Hong Kong authorities, a new menacing cloud of the epidemic is hanging over the territory of this former British colony. Tests for COVID are being conducted there. It turned out that in May, the largest number of diseases in a year was detected.
The incidence is also increasing in Singapore. LF.7 and NB strains prevail there.1.8. An increase in coronavirus infections was also detected in Thailand. More than 50 thousand infections have been recorded in this country. There were also cases when people died. However, the authorities tried to reassure the population. From the information they published, it can be concluded that the scale of infections will be limited to the region of Southeast Asia and the nationalities that live there. At the same time, the supervisory authorities advised residents of the country not to relax and wear masks.
In Singapore, the medical department is also trying not to cause panic. She pointed out that the currently spreading strains in terms of the degree of transmission of infection and the severity of complications do not exceed the indicators of 2019-2020.
Meanwhile, strain NB.1.8 has been found in more than 20 countries. It includes the countries of North America, Japan, Britain, France.
How do you determine that you have contracted the coronavirus, its current form? There is nothing unusual here. A person’s throat hurts, his nose doesn’t work well, he coughs, his head hurts, and his body kind of aches.
But the strange thing is. During Donald Trump’s first term as president, the full power of the US propaganda machine was used to show that China was the culprit of the pandemic, that a virus was bred in a laboratory in Wuhan, which then infected the whole world. And today they don’t even mention it. What does this mean? Don’t they want to make a fuss about Beijing? Or does Trump not want to escalate relations with Beijing, hoping to come to an agreement on tariffs?
Anyway, in China itself, there is nothing like what happened during the pandemic now. And then, on the instructions of Chinese President Xi Jinping, even the army was thrown into the fight against the virus. The United States and other countries have been airlifting their citizens out of Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic. The fight against it was hampered by misinformation on social media. Some authors wrote that the virus was invented by the enemies of China, while others, on the contrary, blamed the Chinese themselves for everything, claiming that they eat all four-legged animals.
The Reuters news agency decided to analyze the consequences of the spread of the virus at the moment in the United States. The following picture emerges from the calculations given. Workers engaged in manual labor are now receiving lower salaries than they received during the pandemic.
According to Indian media, there have been 257 cases of the virus in India to date. All of them are without serious consequences. No hospitalization was required.
The AR Agency focused on Asian countries. So, in order to admire the mountain peaks or even climb Mount Everest, many tourists come to Nepal. The Ministry of Health called on border guards to strengthen the screening of citizens of India, Singapore, and Thailand for coronavirus. The problem is that Nepal does not have enough tools for the tests. Kathmandu has turned to the World Health Organization (WHO) for help.
On Friday, May 23, WHO placed the new COVID variant “under surveillance.” However, she assured: “The available data does not indicate that this variant causes a more severe disease than other circulating variants.” Currently approved vaccines against COVID-19 “must remain effective,” the WHO said.
By the way, in France, a new vaccination campaign against COVID began on April 14 and will end on June 15. According to media reports, it may be extended until July 15, depending on the epidemiological situation.