Covid Cases, Hospitalizations Rise In US, Oman Drops Covid-19 Restrictions | Global Pandemic Updates

Global Covid-19 cases continue to fall but despite that, earlier last week World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the pandemic is ‘certainly not over’. According to News18 Covid dashboard, as of Tuesday morning, there were 23,248,906 active Covid-19 cases and 6,301,821 people died due to Covid-19.

Here are some other global updates related to Covid-19:

1. Covid-19 continues to ravage China and North Korea. For several reasons but primarily because of the Omicron’s virulent nature, Covid-19 cases continue to soar in China and North Korea. North Korea’s health authorities have said that they have observed a downward trend but Pyongyang observers have dismissed North Korea’s Covid stats claiming that they are essentially nonsense.
2. The US Food and Drug Administration will meet next month to discuss Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for the youngest children. According to a New York Times report, 18 million children under the age of 5 are the one who are unvaccinated and their parents have raised concerns and demanded that a step be taken to ensure their safety.
3. Pfizer and BioNTech said that three doses of their coronavirus vaccine in children aged below 5  generated a strong enough immune response to meet the criteria for regulatory authorization, the New York Times reported.
4. The United States reported at least 108,000 coronavirus cases every day for the past week and also reported a rise in hospitalizations. The NYT said in a report that hospitalizations were up by 30% to roughly 24,700 per day.
5. Oman, the Western Asian nation, was among the latest to drop all Covid-19 restrictions. Last week, the Sultanate of Oman dropped the mask mandate and the previous restriction suggesting people to avoid large crowds.  Oman has recorded less than 20 cases per day last week and the population has shed its vaccine skepticism to boost vaccination rates in the country.
6. China has ordered all residents of Henan province to take a Covid test every two days. Henan’s provincial capital of Zhengzhou will begin the mass testing exercise towards the end of May. Shijiazhuang in the northern province of Hebei will also take similar tests, thus again forcing millions in China to take the Covid-19 test under the orders from the Chinese Communist Party (CPC).

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