The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the global monkey pox outbreak to be a “public health emergency of international concern.” This is the organization’s second such declaration of the past two years, after Covid-19 in 2020.
The Covid-19 vaccine Covifenz made by Canada’s Medicago, approved for use in the country in February, has been rejected for review by the World Health Organization (WHO) on grounds that the company is partly owned by tobacco company Philip Morris.
In a decision that could sound a cautionary note for other countries hoping to boost Covid-19 vaccination numbers this way, a US appellate court has put a temporary hold on US president Joe Biden’s plan to introduce a vaccine mandate through an executive order called the Emergency Temporary Standard on Vaccination and Testing (ETS).
As the G20’s first global health summit convened virtually in Rome, Italy, on May 21, the leaders of 19 countries and the EU called for greater global cooperation to end the coronavirus crisis. Major Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson pledged to make a total of 2.3 billion doses available to poor countries over the next 2 years. The commitments call for 1.3 billion doses to be delivered in 2021 and 1 billion in 2022.
After four years of Donald Trump rolling back Obama era environmental legislation, newly inaugurated US president Joe Biden on Jan. 20, his first day in office, rolled back a number of the Trump administration’s rollbacks.
