Latest in WHO

As the United States careens closer to an official tally of 1 million lives lost to Covid, the World Health Organization this morning provided Deadline and other outlets with a detailed estimate of the “full death toll” that can be attributed either directly or indirectly to Covid worldwide. Called “excess mortality,&#8221…

The CDC announced this week that the BA.2 Omicron variant, which is reportedly 30% more transmissible than the original BA.1 Omicron strain — has become dominant among new cases sequenced in the United States. That’s a startling rise for a variant that was less than 1% of all sequences as recently as January. But…

UPDATED with latest: One week after the World Health Organization reported that the BA.2 Omicron variant had become the dominant strain globally, accounting for 75% of new cases sequenced, the U.N. body is reporting that dominance has risen to 85.96%. The original Omicron variant, dubbed BA.1, has shrunken to just…

“It's premature for any country either to surrender, or to declare victory,” said World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus about the fight against Covid yesterday. “This virus is dangerous, and it continues to evolve before our very eyes,” said Ghebreyesus in opening remarks at the organization’s…

The World Health Organization issued a series of warnings today about the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, among them that “We are now starting to see a consistent picture of rapid increase in transmission.” That transmission appears to be aided by “increased risk of re-infection with Omicron.” On the plus…

At the top of Sunday’s new episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver started the night by commenting on the unimpressive Amy Coney Barrett hearings preordained by the Republican party and touching on Thursday night’s dueling Town Halls between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. In particular, he focused on Trump’s high point…