News Update Times

THE HAGUE: The world on Thursday marked one year since the coronavirus threat was declared a pandemic, with vaccinations offering hope but much of humanity still enduring highly restricted lives and no clear path back to normality.

The enormity of the continuing global challenge was reflected in a stark warning by the International Council of Nurses that an exodus is looming of healthcare workers traumatised by the pandemic.

“They reach a point where they´ve given everything they can,” ICN chief executive Howard Catton told reporters.

While restrictions are easing in many parts of the world, hotspots persist such as Brazil, which on Wednesday reported a record 2,286 deaths in a single day as more contagious new variants fuel a surge there.

“It took a long time for the politicians to act… We are paying for it, the poor people,” said Adilson Menezes, 40, outside a hospital in Brazil´s biggest city Sao Paulo, where all non-essential businesses are closed to help fight the virus.

On the economic front, the US Congress passed one of its biggest stimulus efforts ever — a $1.9 trillion package that President Joe Biden said would give struggling American families a “fighting chance”.

Since first emerging in China at the end of 2019, the coronavirus has killed more than 2.6 million people and forced unprecedented curbs on movement that eviscerated economies.

The World Health Organization officially declared Covid-19 a pandemic on March 11 last year as infection numbers were beginning to explode across Asia and Europe.

About 4,600 deaths had been officially recorded around the world at the time.

But with the United States only just starting to feel the direct impacts of the pandemic, then-president Donald Trump played down the threat.

“The virus will not have a chance against us,” Trump told the nation.

Under his chaotic leadership, the United States would become the hardest-hit nation: the American death toll today stands at more than 528,000.

 

Geneva: At least 3,000 nurses have been killed by Covid-19, the global nurses´ federation said Thursday as it warned of a looming exodus of health workers traumatised by the pandemic.

Exactly one year on since the World Health Organization (WHO) first described Covid-19 as a pandemic, the International Council of Nurses said burn-out and stress had led millions of nurses to consider quitting the profession.

And once the pandemic is over, a dwindling number of experienced nurses could be left to handle the giant backlog of regular hospital care that had been postponed due to the crisis, the ICN warned.

The known death toll of nurses killed by the disease — compiled from just 60 countries — is likely to be a gross underestimate of the full total, the federation said.

ICN chief executive Howard Catton said nurses had gone through “mass traumatisation” during the pandemic, being pushed to physical and mental exhaustion.

PARIS: Some 12 million women may have lost access to contraception due to pandemic health disruptions, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency said Thursday, warning that the poorest and most vulnerable were the hardest hit.

UNFPA, based on 115 low-and-middle-income countries, found that a loss of family planning services for around three months had likely led to 1.4 million unintended pregnancies. “Covid has wrought havoc on the women and girls of the world. But the poorest and the most vulnerable now are seeing the most dire consequences,” UNFPA Executive Director Natalia Kanem said. She said data suggested “that in wealthier countries, fewer babies are being born, whereas in developing countries — more babies, lack of access to contraceptive services”. Lockdowns, fears of contagion and travel to health facilities led to fears over access to family planning when the virus began to spread globally last year, while global supply chain disruption has also posed a challenge.

UNFPA said that recent evidence suggested there were concentrated declines in family planning services in April and May, but that many countries were able to restore access after that. Its new projections used anonymous Google Mobility data for grocery stores and pharmacies as a proxy for access to essential services. They suggested that 12 million women may have been unable to access family planning because of the pandemic, although its estimates were a broad range from four million to 23 million.