Spanish PM says its time to consider COVID endemic but WHO disagrees

Jan 12 2022

The World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a warning on Tuesday against treating COVID-19 as an endemic illness, like the flu, rather than as a pandemic.

Touting how the spread of the Omicron variant has not yet stabilised, the warning follows comments by Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez last Monday.

Sanchez had stated that it may be time to change how it tracks COVID-19’s evolution to a method more similar to how it follows the flu. This is because ‘lethality has fallen’ said the PM, implying the switch to endemic treatment.

He said that it would be a gradual, cautious process but said that it is time to open the debate ‘at the technical level and at the level of health professionals, but also at the European level.’

However, WHO’s senior emergency officer for Europe Catherine Smallwood said that ‘we still have a huge amount of uncertainty and a. Virus that is evolving quite quickly, imposing new challenges. We are certainly not at the point where we are able to call it endemic.’

The US National Institutes of Health says that a virus (like COVID-19) transitions from pandemic to endemic when a virus does not go extinct but merely drops in prevalence and severity over a long period of time.

It remains to be seen what approaches Spain will take to make this transition from pandemic to endemic treatment. The question also arises whether other countries which have low hospitalisation and death rates as well as high vaccination rates, like Malta, will follow suit.

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Record number of irregular migrants repatriated from Malta in 2021

Jan 11 2022

Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri said that a record number of irregular migrants living in Malta were repatriated in 2021.

Responding to a parliamentary question tabled by MP Beppe Fenech Adami, the Minister revealed that a total of 448 irregular migrants were repatriated, 40 of whom did so voluntarily.

That means that over 400 people were forcibly returned to their home country. Camilleri praised the work being done by the Police and the Returns Unit to repatriate people to their home countries. No details were however given on which countries the people were repatriated to.

Roughly 90% of all repatriations were male. The Minister also gave some insight into the costs behind repatriation.

He revealed that for the first nine months of the year, the government spent €554,800.80 to help return people to their home country. Around €393,477.22 came from EU funds, whereas €161,323.58 came from public coiffeurs.

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Malta 15th best out of 43 countries for IVF treatment policies

Jan 11 2022

In a comparative index, Malta ranked 15th out of 43 European countries with a score of 71% in the Atlas of Fertility Treatment Policies.

Malta has been classified as having a very good score in the same category as England, Sweden, Spain, Finland and Denmark by the atlas which is a joint initiative between Fertility Europe, a lobby group, and the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights.

Malta is ahead of other countries which have been offering IVF services for far longer such as Germany, Italy, Ireland and Cyprus.

The report uses three indicators, the first of which focuses on legislation which includes regulation and available treatments. Malta passed 14 out of the 18 sections after failing to provide PGT testing and strictly anonymous gamete and embryo donation.

In regards to public funding, Malta also scored high as IVF and intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection are partially government funded. The island however scored low reading patient’s perspectives as it does not provide state-funded fertility education programmes, with an infertility patients association non-existent.

Malta was still awarded points for providing psychological support however. Health Minister Chris Fearne revealed on Monday that in 2021, 41 pregnancies resulted from IVF. He also said that it was a positive year for the Embryo Protection Authority (EPA), with the number of pregnancies higher than in 2020.

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Uno release Uno All Wild with just the special cards

Jan 11 2022

The point of beloved, but also rage inducing, card game Uno is to discard your hand one card at a time by matching colours or numbers to the previously played card.

However, Mattel, the company which owns the game, has decided to create a variant of the classic game by removing all the numbers and colours and keeping just the wild cards.

It is not some sort of joke – it’s real and available at Mattel.com for just six bucks. Players are handed a hand from a deck of 112 cards. Players then take turns playing cards from their hand until they get rid of all their cards.

With all cards being wild, players can play at any turn as there’s no need to match colours or numbers. Despite this making it theoretically faster, special cards can slow things down.

There are of course skip and double-skip cards, reverse cards as well targeted ‘draw 2’ cards as well. These cards also allow players to choose which of their opponents have to expand their hand.

There are also cards which force hand swaps, meaning players have to switch their entire decks with others. Its Uno, but not really. It also retains the necessity of having to shout out ‘UNO!’ when someone has one card remaining – something everyone definitely remembers to do.

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