WHO: Record weekly jump in COVID cases
The World Health Organization said Thursday that a record 9.5 million COVID-19 cases were tallied over the last week as the omicron variant of the coronavirus swept the planet, a 71% increase from the previous 7-day period that the U.N. health agency likened to a “tsunami.” However, the number of weekly recorded deaths declined. In its weekly report on the pandemic, the agency said the weekly count amounted to 9,520,488 new cases — with 41,178 deaths recorded last week compared to 44 680 in the week before that.
Dozens of protesters, 12 police dead in Kazakhstan protests
Security forces in Kazakhstan killed dozens of protesters and 12 police officers died in an eruption of violence that saw demonstrators storm government buildings and set them on fire, authorities said Thursday. One police officer was found beheaded in the unrest, which poses a growing challenge to authoritarian rule in the former Soviet republic. Despite the severe response by authorities, protesters took to the streets again Thursday in the country’s largest city, Almaty, a day after breaking into the presidential residence and the mayor’s office there.
Lifesaving COVID treatments face rationing
At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, scarce ventilators and protective equipment faced strict rationing. Today, as the pandemic rages into its third year, another precious category of products is coming under tight controls: treatments to stave off severe COVID-19. That has forced state health officials and doctors nationwide into the fraught position of deciding which patients get potentially lifesaving treatments and which don’t. Some hospitals have run out of certain drugs, others report having only a few dozen treatment courses on hand and staff at some hospitals are scrambling to develop algorithms to decide who gets treatments.
‘Conversion therapy’ ban will soon go into effect in Canada
A Canadian law banning so-called conversion therapy is poised to go into effect Friday, making it a crime to provide or promote services intended to change or repress a person’s sexual orientation or gender expression. With the new law, Canada’s criminal code will prohibit forcing someone to undergo conversion therapy; taking a minor abroad to take part; and profiting from, promoting or advertising the practice. Violations can draw sentences of up to five years’ imprisonment. The law was the Canadian government’s second attempt last year to bring an end to the widely discredited practice and its third since 2020.
By wire sources