The World Health Organization says coronavirus cases have tripled across Europe in the past six weeks, accounting for nearly half of all infections globally.

The World Health Organization’s Europe chief has warned that monkeypox cases across the region have tripled in the last two weeks and called on countries to take stronger measures to ensure the previously rare disease does not become entrenched on the continent.

The World Health Organization says the rates of people who are obese and overweight in Europe have hit “epidemic proportions."

There were more than 7 million new cases of the omicron variant of COVID-19 across Europe in the first week of January, more than doubling in just two weeks, the World Health Organization.

The World Health Organization’s top official in Europe urged governments to prepare for a “significant surge” in coronavirus cases across the continent with the rise of the omicron variant.

The World Health Organization’s office for Europe says that children in the 5 to 14 age group now account for the highest rates of reported COVID-19 infection in the region.

Belarus has ordered a halt to routine medical care at state clinics in order to devote more resources to coronavirus patients.

A top official from the World Health Organization says Europe has surpassed 1 million deaths from COVID-19.

Gov. Gavin Newsom says nearly half of Californians eligible for vaccination have received at least one shot against the coronavirus.

A senior World Health Organization official says immunization campaigns against COVID-19 across Europe “unacceptably slow” and risk prolonging the pandemic.

(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)LONDON — Ireland has given out half a million coronavirus vaccinations about two months after the first inoculation. Evidence suggests this variant can spread more easily than most currently circulating strains of the coronavirus, health officials say. State health officials urge people to maintain precautions, particularly during spring break and Easter gatherings, as the state tries to ramp up vaccinations. Sri Lanka has so far received 1 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured in neighboring India, which donated half of the doses. The Missoulian reported Friday that in Missoula County, Granite Pharmacy has enough vaccine doses to vaccinate all 2,000 county teachers.

The so-called UK variant is of greatest concern in the 53 countries monitored by WHO in Europe. We have to hold the fort and be very vigilant.”AdIn Lombardy, which bore the brunt of Italy’s spring surge, intensive care wards are again filling up, with more than two-thirds of new positive tests being the UK variant, health officials said. Poland is opening temporary hospitals and imposing a partial lockdown as the U.K. variant has grown from 10% of all infections in February to 25% now. AdAustria's health minister said Saturday the U.K. variant is now dominant in his country. It took the brunt in the resurgence in November and December, and was caught completely off guard when the U.K. variant arrived, racing through schoolage children before hitting families at home.

(AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)SAN DIEGO -- The San Diego Zoo has vaccinated nine great apes for the coronavirus after a troop of gorillas in its Safari Park became infected. AdThere have been no new community cases of the virus found in Auckland or elsewhere in New Zealand for the past five days. Ad___SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah will open up COVID-19 vaccine appointments to people ages 50 and older on Monday. ___JACKSON, Miss.-- People ages 50 and older in Mississippi are now eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine, Gov. — Arkansas’ highest court and the governor are at odds over whether judges, prosecutors and other court employees should be immediately eligible for the coronavirus vaccine.

Kate Brown on Thursday extended Oregon’s declaration of a state of emergency until May 2 as confirmed COVID-19 cases drop but hundreds of new cases continue to be reported daily. The Oregon Health Authority on Thursday reported 553 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, bringing the state total to 154,554. ___MISSOURI __ Missouri teachers and child care providers will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in mid-March, Gov. The nation of 10.7 million had almost 1.2 million cases with 19,835 deaths. AdLast week the Democratic governor announced that at least 10% of the state’s vaccine supply would go to education workers.

The World Health Organization and the European Union announced Thursday Feb. 11, 2021, the launch of a 40-million euro (dollars 48.5 million) program to help deploy COVID-19 vaccines in six former Soviet republics including Belarus. The program will involve Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova, and complements the work of an existing EU program and the WHO-backed COVAX Facility that aims to deploy vaccines for people in all countries in need whether rich or poor, Dr. Hans Kluge said. But only if we ensure that all countries, irrespective of income level, have access to them,” Kluge told reporters from WHO Europe headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the region, some 7.8 million people have completed immunizations against the coronavirus, Kluge said. He added that the number of vaccine doses administered has outstripped the number of reported COVID-19 cases, with some 41 million doses given compared to the 36 million cases reported in the region during the pandemic.

FILE - In this Tuesday, May 26, 2020 photo released by Nucleus Network/ABC, clinical trial participants are monitored during Novavax COVID-19 vaccine testing in Melbourne, Australia. (Patrick Rocca/Nucleus Network/ABC via AP)MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia’s second-largest city will begin its third lockdown due to a rapidly spreading COVID-19 cluster centered on hotel quarantine. The first of Australia’s 20 million doses of German manufactured Pfizer vaccine is to be administered in late February. Ad___WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand’s first coronavirus vaccine doses are due to arrive in the country next week, with border workers getting inoculated from Feb. 20, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Friday. The state's Health Department said Thursday that wastewater testing in Burlington found the presence of two virus mutations associated with the variant.

A nurse administers the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to a resident at DomusVi nursing home in Alcala Henares, Spain, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)GENEVA – National tensions are erupting over slow coronavirus vaccine rollouts and production delay issues are real, but “no one is safe until everyone is safe,” the European chief for the World Health Organization said Thursday. The cautionary note comes as the EU has accused pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca of failing to deliver the coronavirus vaccine doses that it promised to the 27-nation bloc despite getting EU funding to ramp up vaccine production. The company says the production issues at EU plants are slowing the amount of vaccines available, and it can't give what it does not have. Fellow vaccine maker Pfizer has had supply issues too, due to a production upgrade at a plant in Belgium.

Plastic surgeon Daniel Suver receives the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine from Andrea Castelblanco during a vaccine clinic on Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2020, at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska. Anchorage is averaging about 60 new COVID-19 cases a day, said Dr. Janet Johnston, the epidemiologist for the Anchorage Health Department. More than 90 million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine will be produced in Japan. Ad___SACRAMENTO -- California reported its second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths — while the rates of new coronavirus infections and hospitalizations continue to drop. ___ALBANY, N.Y. — New York may have undercounted COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents by thousands.

Dr. Deborah Birx says people also have to observe social distancing and wash their hands to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The number is second only to the 238 deaths reported Wednesday. Gary Herbert says Utah plans to prioritize front-line health care workers after it receives its first round of coronavirus vaccine doses. The number of new daily coronavirus cases reached 23,225 on Thursday, falling after three tiers of regional restrictions put in a month ago. ___WASHINGTON — Three former presidents say they’d publicly take a coronavirus vaccine, once one becomes available, to encourage all Americans to get inoculated.

There were 1,225 new confirmed COVID-19 cases increasing the state total to 60,873. ___WASHINGTON -- Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech will seek emergency government approval for their coronavirus vaccine, as the U.S. aims to begin administering doses by the end of the year. ___LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — Kentucky reported a new daily record of 3,649 coronavirus cases Thursday amid warnings by Gov. He and public health experts are warily watching the number of patients hospitalized with the COVID-19 disease caused by the coronavirus. ___WASHINGTON — Infection disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says he “wants to settle” concerns about a coronavirus vaccine as he returns to the White House podium for the first time in months.

LONDON – The World Health Organization’s Europe director said Thursday that the 54-country region has again reached a new weekly record for confirmed cases, with more than 1.5 million confirmed last week and more than 10 million since the start of the pandemic. “Europe is at the epicenter of this pandemic once again,” Kluge said. Along with the usual European countries, WHO includes includes Russia and some central Asian countries like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in its Europe region. But numerous countries across Europe such as Britain, failed to do so. “We are also confident that children and adolescents are not considered primary drivers of COVID-19 transmission," he said.

The head of the World Health Organizations Europe office said the exponential surge of coronavirus cases across the continent has warranted the restrictive measures being taken, calling them absolutely necessary to stop the pandemic. In a meda briefing on Thursday, Dr. Hans Kluge warned that even more drastic steps might be needed in such unprecedented times. (David Barrett/World Health Organization via AP)LONDON – The head of the World Health Organization’s Europe office said the exponential surge of coronavirus cases across the continent has warranted the restrictive measures being taken, calling them “absolutely necessary” to stop the pandemic. But he warned that relaxing measures could lead to a five-fold increase in deaths by January. “We don't have the luxury of time,” she said, acknowledging that surveillance and response systems in some countries are imperfect.

Coronavirus infections are surging again in the region of northern Italy where the pandemic first took hold in Europe, renewing pressure on hospitals and health care workers. Well after Europe seemed to have largely tamed the virus that proved so lethal last spring, newly confirmed infections are reaching unprecedented levels in Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy and Poland. Dr. Hans Kluge, the head of the World Health Organization’s Europe office, urged governments to be “uncompromising” in controlling the virus. So far in the new surges, deaths have not increased at the same pace as infections. And nursing homes, which were ravaged by the virus last spring, have gotten better at controlling infections.

Connecticut has seen an uptick in virus cases in communities across the state over the past few weeks. There were 3,747 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases reported Thursday, breaking the record of 3,279 set on Tuesday. The day of high case numbers comes just two weeks after the Republican governor repealed that same statewide mask mandate, citing declining numbers of virus cases. Mississippi has had more than 108,000 virus cases and at least 3,152 virus-related deaths. Mississippi’s state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said Monday that six hospitals have no beds available in their intensive care units.

Kluge insisted that countries should only reduce the standard two-week quarantine period if it was scientifically justified. Smallwood added that several countries were considering reducing their required quarantine periods — a move that is not endorsed by WHO. “We would really re-emphasize that our position is that a 14-day quarantine is important for patients that have been exposed to the virus,” she said. During a press briefing with both substance and symbolism, the two WHO Europe officials both wore masks during a video conference from Copenhagen. Switzerland and France, which all but surrounds Geneva, both have reported a surge in confirmed virus cases in recent weeks.

LONDON The World Health Organizations Europe office said it has begun discussions with Russia to try to obtain more information about the experimental COVID-19 vaccine the country recently approved. Last week, Russia became the first country in the world to license a coronavirus vaccine when President Vladimir Putin announced its approval. Russian officials claimed the vaccine would provide lasting immunity to COVID-19 but offered no proof. This concern that we have around safety and efficacy is not specifically for the Russia vaccine, its for all of the vaccines under development, said Smallwood. Two other potential COVID-19 vaccine candidates have already started such studies in the U.S. and elsewhere, and will require about 30,000 people to receive the immunization and be tracked afterward.