Health News Roundup: Unrelenting COVID rules cast clouds over Hong Kong schools; WHO sees October COVID surge in Ukraine, cites polio concerns and more

Further delays to normal school life are likely to exacerbate youth mental health problems as well as give more people reason to leave the city, further undermining its status as an Asian financial hub, educators and business leaders warn. WHO sees October COVID surge in Ukraine, cites polio concerns The World Health Organisation expects a rise in COVID-19 in Ukraine to peak in October, possibly bringing hospitals close to their capacity threshold, WHO's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday.

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

Unrelenting COVID rules cast clouds over Hong Kong schools

In Hong Kong, stringent COVID-19 curbs have long made life for school students extremely hard. Now, a new rule requiring higher vaccination levels could upend what progress has been made towards resuming full-day in-person classes. Further delays to normal school life are likely to exacerbate youth mental health problems as well as give more people reason to leave the city, further undermining its status as an Asian financial hub, educators and business leaders warn.

WHO sees October COVID surge in Ukraine, cites polio concerns

The World Health Organisation expects a rise in COVID-19 in Ukraine to peak in October, possibly bringing hospitals close to their capacity threshold, WHO's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday. "We are now seeing an increase in cases of COVID-19 in Ukraine. We project that transmission could peak in early October and hospitals could approach their capacity threshold," Ghebreyesus told WHO'S Regional Committee for Europe conference in Tel Aviv.

J&J reaches $205 million settlement in Australian pelvic mesh class action

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has reached a A$300 million ($204.90 million) settlement in two Australian class action suits filed by Shine Lawyers for selling defective pelvic mesh implants to Australian women, the law firm said on Monday. The settlement, which Shine Lawyers said was the largest settlement in a product-liability class action in Australian history, follows multiple court proceedings involving more than 11,000 claimants, the pharmaceutical giant, and its subsidiary Ethicon.

U.S. abortion clinic moves up the street to escape one state's ban

The women's health clinic in Bristol, Tennessee, had a seemingly simple solution to continue providing abortions after its home state banned the procedure this summer: It moved a mile up the road to Bristol, Virginia, where abortion remained legal.

But relocating between the twin cities brought a host of challenges.

Fight against AIDS, TB and malaria bounced back post-COVID - but not enough

Efforts to tackle AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria began to recover last year after being hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but the world is still not on track to defeat these killer diseases, according to a report. In its 2022 report, released on Monday, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said the number of people reached with treatment and prevention efforts rebounded last year after declining for the first time in almost 20 years in 2020.

New Zealand ends most COVID restrictions as pandemic worry eases

New Zealand scrapped mask-wearing rules and vaccine mandates on Monday, bringing an end to some of the toughest COVID-19 pandemic rules in the world about two years after they were put in place. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a weekly news conference that it was time to safely turn the page on the country's COVID-19 management and live without the extraordinary measures it previously used.

Amgen says Lumakras cuts risk of lung cancer progression by 34%

Amgen Inc's Lumakras pill reduced the risk of disease progression in patients with advanced lung cancer by 34% compared with chemotherapy in a clinical trial, the company said on Sunday. There was no significant difference in overall survival between the two treatments in the confirmatory study required by U.S. regulators as a condition of accelerated approval for Lumakras. But Amgen said the trial was not designed to detect a survival difference.