COVID-19 is on the rise again in the Americas as many countries have abandoned measures like masking and social distancing and many lag in vaccination rates, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on May 18.

FDA

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration decided not to authorize the antidepressant fluvoxamine to treat COVID-19, saying the data has not shown the drug to be an effective therapeutic for fighting the virus.

Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 500 million on April 14, according to a Reuters tally, as the highly contagious BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron surges in many countries in Europe and Asia.

The Food and Drug Administration placed a partial hold on CytoDyn’s HIV program and a full clinical hold on the company’s COVID-19 program in the United States.

Negotiations on boosting the World Health Organization’s budget to help it prepare for future pandemics made mixed progress last week, with Washington withdrawing criticism but other donors voicing opposition, sources involved in the talks told Reuters.

The coronavirus pandemic reached a grim new milestone in the United States on Feb. 4 with the nation’s cumulative death toll from COVID-19 surpassing 900,000, even as the daily number of lives lost began to level off, according to data collected by Reuters.

Early research suggesting that a popular non-psychoactive compound derived from marijuana might help prevent or treat COVID-19 warrants further investigation in rigorous clinical trials, researchers say.

The United States – the World Health Organization’s top donor – is resisting proposals to make the agency more independent, four officials involved in the talks said, raising doubts about the Biden administration’s long-term support for the U.N. agency.

COVID-19 infections are reaching new peaks in the Americas with 7.2 million new cases and more than 15,000 COVID-related deaths in the last week, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on January 19.

The spread of COVID-19 in the Americas driven by the Omicron variant of the virus reached levels of transmission never before seen during the pandemic, with cases doubling to 6.1 million over the past week, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on January 12.