PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – Trinidad and Tobago registered its first mother to child transmission of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as health authorities also confirmed that a woman had died soon after giving birth from the virus.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The director of the Pan American Health Organization, (PAHO), Dr. Carissa F. Etienne Wednesday said that 617,000 indigenous people have been infected with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the Americas and urged countries to prioritize the hard-hit communities.

NASSAU, Bahamas – New COVID-19 restrictions have been announced by health officials here in an effort to stem an upsurge in cases of the virus in recent days.

Aetna and CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) will enter the individual insurance exchange marketplace in Florida (specifically in select counties in the South Florida and Southwest Florida markets) with their first Aetna CVS Health hybrid-branded insurance product, providing access to health care for more Floridians. Aetna and CVS Health bring together quality along with convenience and expanded services to meet consumer health needs, simply and affordably.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – The St. Vincent and the Grenadines government will on Thursday pilot legislation amending the Public Health (Amendment) Bill 2021 that it says will allow for certain categories of public sector employees to be vaccinated in order to work in “frontline” jobs.

GENEVA –The United Nations program that leads the global fight against HIV and AIDS, UNAIDS, says in a report that nearly half of the 1.7 million children worldwide, including many in the Caribbean, living with HIV were not on treatment last year.

KINGSTON, Jamaica – The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie, has appealed for continued adherence to the coronavirus (COVID-19) health and safety measures particularly during the Independence holiday period.

KINGSTON, Jamaica – A study on front-of-package labelling (FOPL) in Jamaica has found that octagonal warning labels perform best in helping local consumers make healthier food choices.

WASHINGTON, D.C.  – The director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Dr. Carissa F. Etienne Wednesday called on the year-old COVID-19 Genomic Surveillance Regional Network to keep “a close eye” on the emergence and spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) throughout the region.

 Kingston, Jamaica – In an effort to combat the spread of misinformation around Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus (HIV) and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) online, a group of civil society organizations hosted a three-day training with fifteen social media influencers. The training took place at a Trelawny-based hotel from Wednesday, July 28 to Friday, July 30.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) notes that while many countries are making progress in the fight against tobacco use, some are failing to address the problem of emerging nicotine and tobacco products.

 First detected in India, the Delta strain of the COVID-19 virus is a spike protein mutation that can spread faster and exhibit different symptoms than COVID-19.