Hospitalizations and new daily COVID cases drop to 1-month lows, although deaths remain significantly higher than they were one month ago, as reported by Morning Star.
Collective trauma
After years of “collective trauma” suffered from COVID-19, the World Health Organization’s treaty on pandemic prevention and preparedness offers a “glimmer of hope” that the necessary tools will be provided to combat pandemics. “Building manufacturing capacity in developing countries is critical to controlling pandemics, which will ultimately save lives everywhere,” Mohga Kamal-Yanni, policy co-lead for the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said on Wednesday after seeing a draft of the treaty.
The Intergovernmental Negotiating Body will submit a progress report to the World Health Assembly scheduled for May 30, then present its “outcomes for consideration” at the 2024 World Health Assembly.
Strengthening manufacture capacity
In the conceptual zero drafts released in November 2022, member states will “build and sustain an equitable, transparent, rapid, resourced, coordinated, uninterrupted and reliable global supply chain and logistics network for pandemic response products.” In addition, the member states will promote and provide the relevant transfer of technology and know-how to manufacturers in all regions to strengthen manufacturing capacity.
Also providing some hope in the near term, the seven-day average of daily new COVID cases fell 23% over the past two weeks to 45,236 on Tuesday, the lowest total since Nov. There were only 12 U.S. states that have seen cases increase over the past two weeks, led by Tennessee with a 104% increase and Vermont with 85% growth.
Twin national emergency
Hospitalizations fell 22% from two weeks ago to 31,955 and the number of COVID-related patients in intensive-care units dropped 23% to 4,018, also the lowest numbers since Nov. Separately, President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he would end the twin national emergencies for addressing COVID-19 on May 11, as the Associated Press reported. In other COVID data, the number of people in the U.S., the global tally of COVID cases was at 670.89 million, and a total of 6,834,128 people have died, according to the latest data provided by Johns Hopkins University. , there have been 102.40 million cases of COVID reported, and 1,108,840 deaths.
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Source: Morning Star
