3 weeks ago
2 Pakistan suspends staff after oxygen shortage kills Covid patients
Seven workers at a Pakistan hospital who left scores of Covid-19 patients without sufficient oxygen for hours have been suspended after several of their charges died, authorities said.
Five patients in the Covid isolation ward and one in the intensive care unit at the government-run hospital in Peshawar died due to the delay in sourcing oxygen, a preliminary report said late Sunday.
The chronic oxygen deficiency "went unnoticed, unsupervised and unchecked", the report said, adding that no backup oxygen supply had been put in place.
The hospital director was among those suspended with immediate effect.
AFP
DRCongo coronavirus treatment hindered by lack of oxygen
Hospitals in Kinshasa are struggling to treat rising coronavirus cases because of a lack of oxygen supplies, health officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo said Saturday.
"The number of cases is rising and the cases are more and more serious," said epidemiologist Jean-Jacques Muyembe, head of the team leading the country's response to the pandemic.
"The big problem for hospitals, it's the lack of oxygen," he added. The work of the factory in Kinshasa producing oxygen was being hampered by the capital's frequent power cuts, he said.
The country has so far recorded just over 13 400 cases of coronavirus, more than 10 000 of them in Kinshasa.
Since the first death recorded from the virus on 10 March, the DR Congo's toll has risen to 342, and the number of cases being recorded daily has been rising in recent weeks.
AFP
France unlikely to reach 5 000 daily Covid infections goal by 15 December - scientist
The number of new Covid-19 infections per day in France is unlikely to fall to a 5 000 target by 15 December as the population is not sufficiently respecting social distancing measures, one of France’s top coronavirus experts said on Monday.
Eric Caumes, head of infectious diseases at Paris hospital La Pitié-Salpêtrière, told LCI television that if the French are not cautious enough over Christmas and year-end holidays, it will lead to a third wave of the virus in mid-January.
President Emmanuel Macron has said the French lockdown that started on 30 October could be lifted on 15 December, if by then the number of new infections per day has fallen to 5 000.
"No, I do not think this target can be reached as the trend downward stopped, it is stabilising. So it will be difficult to reach that target," Caumes said.
French health authorities reported 11 022 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Sunday, down from the 12 923 new infections detected the previous day.
Reuters
South Korea, Japan to deploy military to combat Covid-19
South Korea and Japan are deploying their militaries to assist healthcare workers in combatting Covid-19, with South Korean soldiers called in to expand coronavirus testing and tracing and Japanese military nurses tapped to fill a shortage of staff at hospitals in the hard-hit regions of Hokkaido and Osaka.
Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korea, on Monday ordered the government to mobilise “every available” resource to track infections and to expand testing by deploying the military and more people from the public service, presidential Blue House spokesperson Chung Man-ho told a briefing.
Moon said testing sites should operate longer hours to allow workers to get tested at their convenience and more drive-through testing facilities should be set up, Chung said.
The positive rate for the latest batch of tests was about 4.2 percent, compared with the year’s average of 1.2 percent, according to the KDCA.
Aljazeera
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