Congress has poured tens of billions of dollars into state and local public health departments in response to the coronavirus pandemic, paying for masks, contact tracers and education campaigns to persuade people to get vaccinated.
GENEVA (AP) — A top official at the World Health Organization said that a genetic analysis of the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Guinea suggests it may have been sparked by a survivor of the devastating West Africa epidemic that ended five years ago.
At a press briefing in Geneva, WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan described the results of the genetic sequencing of the virus in Guinea as “quite remarkable.”
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Guinea has officially declared it has an Ebola epidemic after at least three people have died and four others have been infected in the West African nation.
Neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia have put their citizens on high alert as the three West African nations battled the world's deadliest Ebola outbreak from 2014 to 2016, which began in Guinea and in which more than 11,300 people died.
BENI, Congo (AP) — A second case and death of Ebola has been recorded in Congo’s North Kivu province, according to officials.
The victim was a 60-year-old woman who died Wednesday in the health zone of Biena, according to provincial health minister Nzanzu Syalita. He said she had been to the same health post as the first victim.
The health ministry said it has deployed authorities to the Biena and Katwa health zones to trace more than 100 contacts.
BENI, Congo (AP) — Health officials in Congo confirmed another Ebola outbreak in the country’s east on Sunday, the fourth in less than three years. On February 3, a woman died in Butembo town in North Kivu province, Minister of Health Eteni Longondo announced.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden is turning to a veteran of the Department of Homeland Security to lead the agency created after the Sept. 11 attacks but reshaped by President Donald Trump to carry out his hardline immigration and law enforcement agenda.
Biden on Monday announced the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas, who served under President Barack Obama as deputy secretary of homeland security and director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has chosen his longtime adviser Ron Klain to reprise his role as his chief of staff, installing an aide with decades of experience in the top role in his White House.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has chosen his longtime adviser Ron Klain to reprise his role as his chief of staff, installing an aide with decades of experience in the top role in his White House.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — When a contact tracer called the Iraqi woman to say her 18-year-old daughter tested positive for the coronavirus and could quarantine for free in a hotel, the woman panicked — recalling the family's terror of risking separation forever during their flight from Baghdad after a bomb killed her brother.
U.S. regulators Wednesday approved the first drug for the treatment of Ebola.
The Food and Drug Administration OK'd the drug developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for treating adults and children with the Zaire Ebola virus strain, the most deadly of six known types. It typically kills 60% to 90% of patients.
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Dr. Mamadu Baldeh can’t forget the 18-year-old who came into his hospital with COVID-19, gasping for air until the day he died. This suffering was all too real for Baldeh, who battles asthma just as that young man did.
At the time, Baldeh, 32, was the only physician treating COVID-19 patients at Sierra Leone’s main public hospital.
With a coronavirus vaccine still months off, companies are rushing to test what may be the next best thing: drugs that deliver antibodies to fight the virus right away, without having to train the immune system to make them.
Antibodies are proteins the body makes when an infection occurs; they attach to a virus and help it be eliminated. Vaccines work by tricking the body into thinking there’s an infection so it makes antibodies and remembers how to do that if the real bug turns up.
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia on Tuesday became the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, a move that was met with international skepticism and unease because the shots have only been studied in dozens of people.
BENI, Congo (AP) — Eastern Congo marked an official end Thursday to the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, which killed 2,280 people over nearly two years, as armed rebels and community mistrust undermined the promise of new vaccines.
Thursday's milestone was overshadowed, though, by the enormous health challenges still facing Congo: the world's largest measles epidemic, the rising threat of COVID-19 and another new Ebola outbreak in the north.
CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — Guinea’s best hope for coronavirus patients lies inside a neglected yellow shed on the grounds of its main hospital: an oxygen plant that has never been turned on.
Throughout January, the World Health Organization publicly praised China for what it called a speedy response to the new coronavirus. It repeatedly thanked the Chinese government for sharing the genetic map of the virus “immediately,” and said its work and commitment to transparency were “very impressive, and beyond words.”
MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — The voice is strong, and the words are resolute: “Let’s protect ourselves to save our family and our country; let’s stop the public gatherings.”
The singer? She’s 9 years old.
Joselia Kollie’s song has been getting airplay on Liberian radio, and praise from health officials. She said she wanted to do her part to stop the spread of COVID-19 because “whenever bad things happen, we, the children, will always suffer.”
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — One of the hard lessons the World Health Organization learned during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was this: Other diseases can be forgotten and take a deadlier toll.
The WHO is now warning that the battle against malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, where it already kills hundreds of thousands of people a year, could be set back by 20 years as countries focus energy and resources on containing the coronavirus.
NEW DELHI (AP) — Lavina D’Souza hasn’t been able to collect her government-supplied anti-HIV medication since the abrupt lockdown of India's 1.3 billion people last month during the coronavirus outbreak.
Marooned in a small city away from her home in Mumbai, the medicine she needs to manage her disease has run out. The 43-year-old is afraid that her immune system will crash: “Any disease, the coronavirus or something else, I'll fall sick faster."
BENI, Congo (AP) — Congo has been battling an Ebola outbreak that has killed thousands of people for more than 18 months, and now it must also face a new scourge: the coronavirus pandemic.
Ebola has left those living in the country’s east weary and fearful, and, just as they were preparing to declare an end to the outbreak, a new case popped up. Now, they will now have to manage both threats at once.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hospitals are gearing up to test if a century-old treatment used to fight off flu and measles outbreaks in the days before vaccines, and tried more recently against SARS and Ebola, just might work for COVID-19, too: using blood donated from patients who’ve recovered.
Doctors in China attempted the first COVID-19 treatments using what the history books call “convalescent serum” -- today, known as donated plasma -- from survivors of the new virus.
LONDON (AP) — To offset the crushing costs of trying to stem a global epidemic, the World Bank and partners announced the creation of “pandemic bonds” several years ago: the idea was to leverage private capital from Wall Street firms that would help stricken poor countries.
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — The West African nation of Mali has roughly one ventilator per 1 million people — 20 in all to help the critically ill with respiratory failure. In Peru, with more than 32 million people, about 350 beds in intensive care units exist.
The coronavirus is now moving into parts of the world that may be the least prepared. Some countries in Africa and Latin America lack the equipment or even trained health workers to respond.
WASHINGTON (AP) — If Dr. Anthony Fauci says it, you'd be smart to listen. As the coronavirus has upended daily life across the globe, Fauci has become the trusted voice in separating fact and fiction.
The fear and confusion of outbreaks aren't new to Fauci, who in more than 30 years has handled HIV, SARS, MERS, Ebola and even the nation's 2001 experience with bioterrorism — the anthrax attacks.
LONDON (AP) — As cases of the coronavirus surge in Italy, Iran, South Korea, the U.S. and elsewhere, many scientists say it's plain that the world is in the grips of a pandemic — a serious global outbreak.
The World Health Organization has so far resisted describing the crisis as such, saying the word “pandemic” might spook the world further and lead some countries to lose hope of containing the virus.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has not proved to be the bearer of reliable information when calamity threatens and people want straight answers about it. That's happening again as he addresses the prospect of a coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerian authorities on Friday confirmed the first case of the new coronavirus in sub-Saharan Africa as the outbreak spread to a region with some of the world's weakest health systems.
The health commissioner for Lagos, Africa's largest city with more than 20 million people, said an Italian citizen who entered Nigeria on Tuesday from Milan on a business trip fell ill the next day. Commissioner Akin Abayomi said the man was clinically stable with no serious symptoms.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Monday sent lawmakers an urgent $2.5 billion plan to address the deadly coronavirus outbreak, whose rapid spread and threat to the global economy rocked financial markets.
LONDON (AP) — The death of a doctor who issued an early warning about the new virus in China represents a grim reminder that the first health care workers to recognize new outbreaks are sometimes among their earliest victims.
Dr. Li Wenliang's death underlined the dangers health workers have faced in similar epidemics, including SARS and Ebola.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The flu-like virus that exploded from China has researchers worldwide once again scrambling to find a vaccine against a surprise health threat, with no guarantee one will arrive in time.
Just days after Chinese scientists shared the genetic map of the culprit coronavirus, researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health had engineered a possible key ingredient for a vaccine they hope to begin testing by April.
NEW YORK (AP) — West Nile virus, Lyme disease, Ebola virus.
And now: 2019-nCoV?
“Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?” said Trevor Hoppe, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who has studied the history of disease names.
NEW YORK (AP) — Three U.S. airports will screen passengers arriving from central China for a new virus that has sickened dozens, killed two and prompted worries about an international outbreak, health officials said Friday.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials say they will begin taking temperatures and asking about symptoms of passengers at three U.S. airports who traveled from the outbreak city of Wuhan.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A tragic airline crash with far-reaching consequences, cataclysmic cyclones that may be a harbinger of the future, the death of an African icon and a new leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize. These African stories captured the world's attention in 2019 — and look to influence events on the continent in 2020.
The battles against extremist violence and Ebola will also continue to be major campaigns in Africa in the coming year.
LONDON (AP) — The vaccine alliance GAVI announced Thursday it would invest $178 million to create a global stockpile of about 500,000 Ebola vaccines, a decision that health officials say could help prevent future outbreaks from spiraling out of control.
BENI, Congo (AP) — Ebola responders are on lockdown in the eastern Congo city of Beni after angry residents attacked a United Nations base to protest repeated rebel assaults, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. At least four protesters were killed, a local official said.
BENI, Congo (AP) — When Germain Kalubenge gets a request for a ride on his motorcycle it can be a matter of life or death. The 23-year-old is a survivor of the Ebola virus and often is the only driver his community trusts to help if someone suspects they are infected.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The Latest on the U.N. General Assembly's annual gathering of world leaders (all times local):
9:30 p.m.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is warning that the world is facing "an unprecedented threat from intolerance, violent extremism and terrorism" that affects every country, exacerbating conflicts and destabilizing entire regions.
BENI, Congo (AP) — The young Ebola patient who took his college entrance exam while being treated in isolation has passed the demanding test, to the joy of many in Congo where his story is now well-known.
Claude Mabowa is among the nearly 3,000 people who have been confirmed to have Ebola in what has become the second-deadliest outbreak of the virus in history.
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — Officials in Congo on Tuesday said a second Ebola case had been confirmed in Goma, the city of more than 2 million people whose first confirmed case in this yearlong outbreak was reported earlier this month.
BENI, Congo (AP) — They made their way through the thick forest like astronauts carrying a fallen comrade. Their booted steps were slow and deliberate as if they walked on the moon. A few men waited by a freshly dug grave, checking their smartphones. Without ceremony, the body of Mussa Kathembo was lowered into the ground.
BENI, Congo (AP) — Claude Mabowa Sasi had lost his mother, a brother and a sister to Ebola. Instead of fearing death when he, too, was diagnosed with the disease, the young man had a different worry: How would he complete his college entrance exams?
It had been his mother's greatest hope that Mabowa would go to college. To do so would require passing the secondary school baccalaureate, or "bac."
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — With the deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo now an international emergency , neighboring South Sudan and its war-weakened health system is a major concern, especially after one case was confirmed near its border. Health experts say there is an urgent need to increase prevention efforts.
GENEVA (AP) — The deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo is now an international health emergency, the World Health Organization announced Wednesday after a case was confirmed in a city of 2 million people .
BENI, Congo (AP) — After feeling sick for several days the pastor boarded a bus to eastern Congo's largest city. Only upon arrival at his destination did anyone suspect he had the highly deadly and infectious Ebola virus.
During his trip to Goma, the 46-year-old preacher managed to pass through three health checkpoints aimed at stopping those who are sick with Ebola and contagious.