"COVID 19 - CORONAVIRUS DISEASE"

Schoolchildren around the world have lost an estimated 1.8 trillion hours, and counting, of in-person learning since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. As a result, young learners have been cut off from their education and the other vital benefits schools provide. UNICEF

WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the longer COVID-19 vaccine inequity persists, “the more the virus will keep circulating and changing, the longer the social and economic disruption will continue, and the higher the chances that more variants will emerge that render vaccines less effective.” WHO

Secretary-General António Guterres said the United Nations "has a key role to play in humanitarian aid" in Afghanistan and that "it was our duty to engage with the Taliban to create the conditions" to deliver aid. UNIFEED

WHO chief Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus called for a global moratorium on booster COVID-19 vaccine doses until “at least the end of the year,” to enable every country to vaccinate at least 40 percent of its population. WHO

The World Health Organization said 42 of Africa’s 54 countries are set to miss the goal of vaccinating the world’s most vulnerable 10 percent against COVID-19 by the end of September, spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told journalists in New York. UNIFEED

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), inaugurated a new WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, based in Berlin. WHO

Despite the unprecedented worldwide expansion of social protection during the COVID-19 crisis, more than 4 billion people around the world remain entirely unprotected, according to a new International Labour Organization (ILO) report. ILO

WHO’s Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the global number of COVID-19 cases and deaths was “stable” last week, “but it is stable at a very high level – more than 4.5 million cases and 68,000 deaths.” WHO

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “Vaccine injustice is a shame on all humanity and if we don’t tackle it together, we will prolong the acute stage of this pandemic for years when it could be over in a matter of months." WHO

United Kingdom Ambassador James Kariuki told reporters that the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar “is getting worse each day as a third wave of COVID ravages the country.” UNIFEED