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
New UN Human Rights report finds 10 years of increased suffering repression and fear
The UN Human Rights Office on Friday published a report on the human rights situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) since 2014.
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Edited News | UNICEF , UNHCR
The ongoing humanitarian response to the devastating Afghanistan earthquake disaster continued on Friday, although essential services have been cut for operational reasons following reinforced Taliban restrictions on women working with the UN, the global body said.
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Press Conferences | WIPO , WMO , OHCHR , UNICEF , UNHCR , WHO
Michele Zaccheo, Chief, UNTV, Radio and Webcast Section, United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Geneva, chaired the hybrid briefing, which was attended by spokespersons and representatives from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Children's Fund, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, World Meteorological Organization, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
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Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
Un nouveau rapport du Haut-Commissariat des Nations Unies aux droits de l'homme sur la République démocratique du Congo évoque le spectre de crimes de guerre et de crimes contre l'humanité dans le Nord et le Sud-Kivu.,
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Press Conferences , Edited News | HRC
A high-level independent rights probe into the Sudan crisis on Tuesday condemned the many grave crimes committed against civilians by all parties to the war, citing disturbing evidence indicating that they had been “deliberately targeted, displaced and starved”.
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Edited News | WHO
Ukraine: ‘Relentless’ attacks rattle health system as winter approaches: WHO
Ambulances attacked, chronically ill patients lacking care and no peace in sight: for millions of Ukrainians, the run-up to another winter of war is just the latest life-or-death challenge they face, the UN health agency (WHO) said on Tuesday.
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Press Conferences | IFRC , OCHA , WHO , IOM , UNICEF
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 World Health Organization, UN Women, the International Organization for Migration, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the International Federation of the Red Cross.
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Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk on Monday delivered his report on Sri Lanka to the 60th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
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Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk on Monday delivered his global update to the 60th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
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Edited News | OHCHR
A UN report on the Democratic Republic of Congo raises specter of war crimes and crimes against humanity in North and South Kivu, according to UN Human Rights Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani.
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Press Conferences | IFRC , OHCHR
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 International Organization for Migration, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the World Meteorological Organization, the World Health Organization, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
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Edited News | WMO
As billions of people continue to breathe polluted air that causes more than 4.5 million premature deaths every year, UN climate experts on Friday highlighted how damaging microscopic smoke particles from wildfires play their part, travelling half-way across the world.