LAHORE, Jan 20 (FD):  The first environmental samples from Lahore of 2023 confirmed the existence of poliovirus in the provincial capital. In the first month of 2023, poliovirus has been confirmed in the environmental samples collected in the Punjab capital, prompting the authorities to start a vaccination campaign in 26 union councils. According to a statement, the National Institute …

  BEIJING, Jan 19 (FD):  Chinese drugmakers rushed to make anti-fever medicines and other treatments for Covid-19 on Thursday, after President Xi Jinping said he was worried about an influx of holiday travellers to rural areas ill-equipped to deal with sudden outbreaks. Xi’s comments come just over a month after his government abruptly axed his strict “zero-Covid” controls that had …

  Muzaffarabad,, Jan 19 (FD): There’s a dire need to adopt a sustainable National Tobacco Control Policy which ensures that no anti-child move is made now or in future. These views by shared in a dialogue organized by Society for Protection of Rights of the Child (SPARC) with policy makers to stress upon the need of implementing strict tobacco control …

  JAKARTA, Jan 17 (Reuters):  Families of Indonesian children who died because of tainted cough syrup demanded restitution as an Indonesian court on Tuesday started hearing their class-action lawsuit against government agencies and pharmaceutical firms. About 200 children have died of acute kidney injury in Indonesia since last year and authorities have said two ingredients, ethylene glycol and diethyelene glycol, …

  Passengers laden with luggage flocked to rail stations and airports in China’s megacities on Monday, heading to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year holidays that health experts fear could intensify a raging Covid-19 outbreak in areas less equipped to handle it. After three years of strict anti-virus controls, China abruptly abandoned its “zero Covid” policy in early December, …

  BEIJING, Jan 15 (AP): The World Health Organization has appealed to China to keep releasing information about its wave of Covid-19 infections after the government announced nearly 60,000 deaths since early December following weeks of complaints it was failing to tell the world what was happening. The announcement Saturday was the first official death toll since the ruling Communist …

  New research that links cooking with natural gas to around 12% of childhood asthma cases has sparked debate about the health risks of kitchen stoves, as well as calls in the United States for stepped-up regulation. The authors of the study said their findings suggested that around 650,000 US children would not have developed astham if their homes had …

  Most symptoms from long Covid clear up within a year for people who had mild initial infections, a large Israel study said Thursday, with the findings welcomed as “reassuring”. At least 17 million people in Europe suffered from long Covid symptoms months after recovering from their initial infection during 2020 and 2021, according to modelling from the World Health …

  LONDON, Jan 11 (Reuters): Countries should consider recommending that passengers wear masks on long-haul flights, given the rapid spread of the latest Omicron subvariant of COVID-19 in the United States, World Health Organization (WHO) officials said on Tuesday. In Europe, the XBB.1.5 subvariant was detected in small but growing numbers, WHO and Europe officials said at a press briefing. …

  JERUSALEM, Jan 10 (Reuters): The Omicron-adapted Covid-19 vaccine booster developed by Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE) sharply reduced hospitalizations among older patients, Israeli researchers said on Monday, in some of the first evidence of the jab’s real-world effectiveness. The study by researchers from healthcare provider Clalit, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Sapir College has not yet …