Edited News , Press Conferences | WHO , UNOG , UNITED NATIONS
European COVID infections indicate ‘east-west divide’: WHO
Europe is seeing a “steady” decline in COVID-19 infections, although the generally positive trend has not happened in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe, the UN health agency said on Tuesday.
“In Western Europe we are seeing a steady decline – it’s not speedy – but there’s a steady decline in new cases being reported daily,” said Dr Margaret Harris, spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO).
Speaking via videoconference from WHO headquarters in Geneva, she added that although the level of new cases remained “significant”, the numbers reported “are coming down – except for Russia and Eastern Europe, we are still seeing the rise. So, it’s more an east-west picture in Europe.”
According to latest WHO data, Russia has identified 414,878 cases of infection with 4,855 deaths.
Asked about the significance of results from Wuhan city in China where authorities have just finished testing nearly 10 million people for infection, finding only 300 mainly asymptomatic cases, the WHO spokesperson insisted that much more research needed to be carried out globally to put this data into context.
“A big study like that gives you a little piece of the puzzle, gives you a little bit of information. But it may be related to a setting, there’s much more work that needs to be done around the world,” Dr Harris said.
Earlier this year, a WHO-led international mission to China and Wuhan – where the virus emerged last December - suggested that while asymptomatic transmission might play a part in spreading the disease, it did not appear to be not be the main “driver” of the outbreak, Dr Harris explained.
To date, China has reported 83,022 infections and 4,645 deaths, according to WHO.
“It was clear from the mission that returned from China, they said at the time that they did not think that asymptomatic - people who are asymptomatic - were significant drivers of the virus,” she said, referring to people who displayed no symptoms of the disease. “Now there have been different opinions on that and we really won’t have an answer until we have got that kind of data from around the world.”
Globally, on 2 June 2020, WHO reported more than six million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 373,548 deaths.
The Americas is the epicentre by region, with more than 2.8 million cases, followed by Europe (2.2 million), Eastern Mediterranean (536,148), South-East Asia (272,512), Western Pacific (184,305) and Africa (108,121).
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Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk on Friday warned of the risk of the violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo escalating throughout the Great Lakes sub-region, following the recent takeover of Goma city by the Rwandan-backed M23 armed group.
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Edited News | HRC
UN human rights chief Volker Türk expressed profound concerns at the ongoing violent escalation in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) caused by the ongoing Rwanda-backed M23 offensive. “If nothing is done, the worst may be yet to come, for the people of the eastern DRC, but also beyond the country’s borders,” he told a Special Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
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Press Conferences | UNAIDS , UNICEF , WHO
Alessandra Vellucci, Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired a hybrid press briefing, which was attended by the representatives and spokespersons of UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
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Edited News | UNAIDS
US aid funding cuts create confusion, put HIV prevention at risk, says UNAIDS
The US pause in foreign assistance funding has created “a lot of confusion” in community HIV prevention work, despite the waiver issued for HIV/AIDS programmes, the UN agency to combat AIDS (UNAIDS) said on Friday.
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Edited News | UNFPA , OCHA , UNOG
UN agencies offered a dire assessment on Tuesday about the global impact of deep cuts to grassroots humanitarian funding by the incoming US administration and reiterated calls for Washington to retain its position as a global aid leader.
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Press Conferences | OCHA , UNECE , UNFPA , UNRWA , UNWOMEN , WHO
Alessandra Vellucci, Director of the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Geneva, chaired the hybrid briefing, which was attended by spokespersons and representatives from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the United Nations Population Fund, United Nations Women, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Health Organization, the Human Rights Council and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.
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Edited News | UNRWA
While West Bank camp is destroyed, UNRWA delivers bulk of aid in Gaza
Large swathes of Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank have been completely destroyed following a series of controlled detonations by the Israeli security forces (ISF), the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said on Tuesday.
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Edited News | OHCHR
The UN Human Rights Office on Friday raised the alarm about the growing human rights crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
At the UN bi-weekly press briefing in Geneva, UN Human Rights spokesperson Jeremy Laurence and the head of UN Human Rights Myanmar team James Rodehaver, describedunprecedented levels of killing in 2024, four years since the coup.
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Press Conferences | OHCHR , UNCTAD , UNOG , UNRWA , WFP , WHO
Rolando Gómez, from the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Geneva, chaired the hybrid briefing. In attendance were spokespersons or representatives of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
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Edited News | WHO , UNRWA
The largest UN agency in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, UNRWA, said on Friday that its staff are still helping the people of Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem who depend on them “for their sheer survival”, a day after the Israeli parliament ban on its activities entered into force.
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Press Conferences | OCHA , ICRC , WHO , WFP , UNHCR , OHCHR , UNECE
Alessandra Vellucci of the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Geneva, chaired the hybrid briefing, attended by spokespersons and representatives of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.