Middle East Experience

Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hasan said Sunday the spread of COVID-19 was slowing down significantly in Lebanon, expressing hope that stepping up inoculations in the coming weeks would help the country resume normal life in the summer..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: Health minister says COVID-19 spread slowing in Lebanon

Lapid will have to tread carefully when it comes to the blame game for Meron
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Due to Meron tragedy, time is running out for Netanyahu to form gov't

Egypt's Al-Azhar religious authority criticised Yemen's Houthi rebels for reportedly preventing worshippers from performing nightly Taraweeh prayers in Ramadan..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: Top Islamic authority condemns ban on Ramadan Taraweeh prayers by Yemen's Houthi rebels

Balasha is spearheading the transition of what was once known as the Israel Free Loan Association (IFLA), an organization that has provided financial help since 1990, into something bigger.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: 'COVID forced us to innovate a new approach to philanthropy'

An Israeli court on Sunday postponed a decision to evict Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah area of east Jerusalem until next Thursday..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: Israeli court postpones eviction of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah until Thursday

Some 138 kidney transplant recipients and 80 liver transplant recipients participated in the study, as well as 25 individuals who did not present similar issues, to act as controls.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Transplant recipients less likely to develop corona antibodies

Patients were selected to participate in the study on the day they received their first vaccine shot and they were invited to come back between two to four weeks after the second dose
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Coronavirus vaccine effective on autoimmune disease patients, study finds

“They opened fire at my home, tossed stun grenades and broke the doors,” the candidate said.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Gunmen attack home of candidate who called on EU to halt funding to PA

A United Arab Emirates scientist is spearheading a study looking at how camels – immune to the COVID-19 virus – could provide vital answers into how to tackle the global pandemic and treat infected patients.Dr. Ulrich Wernery, a veterinary microbiologist in Dubai and head of the emirate’s Central Veterinary Research Laboratory, and his team are injecting dead samples of the COVID-19 virus into dromedaries to examine the antibodies produced by the desert animals, he told Al Arabiya English.For more coronavirus news, visit our dedicated page.While camels were a known host of the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) – the COVID-19 predecessor known to cause acute respiratory disease, gastrointestinal problems, kidney failure and death – studies have shown that dromedaries are actually immune to the new coronavirus – COVID-19.This is because camels do not have the virus receptor – a host cell recognized by the virus as a gateway to entry in the cell – that humans and other animals have which leave them vulnerable to COVID-19, Wernery said.“MERS-CoV, [camels] can harbor but they don’t get sick,” he explained. “With COVID-19, the virus cannot attach to the camels’ mucosa cells of the respiratory tract as the receptor is absent or dull.”“This makes it all very interesting. Besides humans, minks and cats – small and big, such as such a tigers and lions – can get COVID-19 and can transmit the virus into other cats and to humans and vice versa. But not camels.”COVID-19 have been found among some animals. Gorillas in a San Diego Zoo were the first non-human primates to test positive for the coronavirus.A cat in Surrey, in the United Kingdom, became Britain’s first animal to test positive. A tiger at Bronx Zoo was the first animal in the US to test positive. Other Big Cats have tested positive, including four lions at a Barcelona Zoo. A snow leopard at Kentucky Zoo also tested positive for the virus.A mutant strain of the virus was also found in a Danish mink, which led to 17 million being culled.A German Shepard was the first dog in the US confirmed with confirmed COVID-19.However, scientists and the World Health Organization (WHO) say the risk of animals spreading COVID-19 to humans is low.While the exact source of COVID-19 is unknown, WHO scientists believe it likely came from a bat.Wernery told Al Arabiya English he hopes his landmark study can provide further answers into COVID-19 – and potentially provide an alternative treatment option.“We have immunized our camels with a dead COVID-19 virus to produce antibodies and we use this blood to establish better tests for the diagnosis for COVID-19.”“We hope that maybe one day we can use the blood - the antibodies - from camels to treat humans against COVID-19 infections.”“This is all in the pipeline.”To date, vaccines – which work to recognize and fight off the viruses and the bacteria they target - are the only recognized form of treatment by the WHO.For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.At least seven different vaccines have been rolled out in countries across the world. At the same time, more than 200 additional vaccine candidates are in development.More than 150 million people worldwide have tested positive for COVID-19 since the outbreak of the pandemic.Read more:As the world battles COVID-19, Middle East wins war on its virus predecessor: MERSPlastic left by campers in UAE’s deserts is killing camels: Vet researcherWorldwide COVID-19 cases pass 150 million: AFP tally
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: UAE scientists injecting ‘immune’ camels with COVID-19 to study virus antibodies

The world has administered its first billion coronavirus vaccine doses, online news media Scientific American reported.For more coronavirus news, visit our dedicated page.The milestone comes four months after the World Health Organization (WHO) approved the world’s first vaccine for emergency use and countries began wide-scale rollouts. However, despite this achievement, unequal distribution of vaccines is still an issue, highlighting global disparity, Forbes reported last week.By April 27, 1.06 billion vaccine doses were administered to 570 million people, accounting for 7.3 percent of the world’s population currently sitting at 7.79 billion, who have received at least the first dose. According to Bloomberg, around 18.5 million doses are being given to people daily and at that pace, it could take 19 more months to vaccinate 75 percent of the world’s population.“It is an unprecedented scientific achievement. Nobody could have imagined that, within 16 months of the identification of a new virus, we would have vaccinated one billion people worldwide with a variety of different vaccines, using different platforms and made in different countries,” Scientific American quoted WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan as saying.Vaccine inequality While this milestone has been a great achievement for the world and serves as a reason for us to be hopeful for a potential return to ‘normalcy’, uneven vaccine distribution has highlighted inequality which needs to be eradicated more so now than ever before because the world’s recovery from the pandemic depends on it.The Associated Press last week reported that 87 percent of vaccine doses were administered in wealthy nations, meaning that 1 in 4 people in rich countries had received at least one dose versus 1 in more than 500 in poor countries, highlighting a significant need for better distribution. Only 0.2 percent of available vaccine shots have been distributed to low-income nations, data from the New York Times’ vaccination tracker suggests.In contrast, the supply of vaccines in the US began to outpace the demand for it, indicating a stark difference when put up against low-income countries that might not be able to receive any additional vaccine supply until June 2021, Forbes reported last week.“It’s absolutely amazing that in a short time we developed multiple vaccines and gotten a billion doses administered, but the way it’s happened has worsened inequities around the world,” Associate director for innovation at the Duke Global Health Institute in Durham, North Carolina Krishna Udayakumar told Scientific American.Disparities have also been highlighted on a nationwide scale.“Vaccinating only portions of the population is not an effective strategy, and leaves us vulnerable to new variants. A global pandemic can only be met with a global response,” Udayakumar added.Read more:US fully vaccinates 100 mln against COVID, says White House officialIndia expands COVID-19 vaccine eligibility categoriesUK study underscores need for second Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine dose
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: First billion COVID-19 vaccine doses administered globally