Abortion Up To 24 Weeks Decriminalized In Colombia

Noticias Telemundo for Axios: Colombia's Constitutional Court Decriminalizes Abortion 
Colombia's Constitutional Court on Monday voted 5-4 to decriminalize abortions in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy in what proponents called a historic decision for women's rights. It's the latest sign that views about the procedure are shifting in Catholic-majority Latin American countries, especially as the right to an abortion in the U.S., which served as a cultural example, is at risk. (Franco, 2/21)

AP: Colombia's Highest Court Legalizes Abortion Up To 24 Weeks
Colombia became the latest country in Latin America to expand access to abortion Monday as the nation’s Constitutional Court voted to legalize the procedure until the 24th week of pregnancy. The decision by the tribunal of nine judges fell short of the expectations of pro-choice groups that had been pushing for abortion to be completely decriminalized in Colombia. But it was nevertheless described as a historic event by women’s rights groups, which estimate 400,000 women get clandestine abortions in the country each year. Before the ruling, Colombia allowed abortions only when a woman’s life was in danger, a fetus had malformations or a pregnancy resulted from rape. (Rueda, 2/22)

In news from the U.K. —

The New York Times: England Lifts Rules As Queen Elizabeth Battles Infection
After almost two years of restrictions, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain on Monday said it was time to live with the coronavirus, announcing an end to England’s remaining legal curbs and most free testing, and making his country an outlier in its handling of the pandemic. Although careful not to declare the country’s health crisis officially over, Mr. Johnson sought to put the country firmly on the path to normalcy, albeit just a day after an announcement that Queen Elizabeth II had tested positive for the virus. (Castle, 2/22)

AP: UK: People With COVID In England Won't Need To Self-Isolate
People with COVID-19 won’t be legally required to self-isolate in England starting in the coming week, the U.K. government has announced, as part of a plan for “living with COVID” that is also likely to see testing for the coronavirus scaled back. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said ending all of the legal restrictions brought in to curb the spread of the virus will let people in the U.K. “protect ourselves without restricting our freedoms.” He is expected to lay out details of the plan in Parliament on Monday. “I’m not saying that we should throw caution to the winds, but now is the moment for everybody to get their confidence back,” Johnson told the BBC in an interview broadcast Sunday. (Lawless, 2/20)

Reuters: Top English Medic Warns New COVID Variants Could Be More Resistant To Vaccines
England's chief medical officer Chris Whitty warned on Monday there will be new COVID-19 variants and said some of them could be more resistant to vaccines. Earlier, Britain said it would end all coronavirus restrictions in England including mandatory self-isolation for people with COVID-19 and free testing, drawing scepticism from some scientists and political opponents. "We all expect... there to be new variants. And some of those new variants will just disappear," Whitty told a press conference. "But some of them will cause significant problems." (2/21)

Meanwhile, covid's impact is still felt around the world —

Reuters: S.Korea Says Omicron COVID Variant 75% Less Likely To Kill Than Delta Strain
People infected with the Omicron coronavirus variant are nearly 75% less likely to develop serious illness or die than those who contract the Delta variant, real world data released on Monday by South Korea's health authorities showed. A study by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) of some 67,200 infections confirmed since December showed the Omicron variant's severity and death rates averaged 0.38% and 0.18%, respectively, compared with 1.4% and 0.7% for the Delta cases. (Shin, 2/22)

AP: Iran Returns Donated Vaccines Because They Were Made In US
Iran has returned 820,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines donated by Poland because they were manufactured in the United States, state TV reported Monday. TV quoted Mohammad Hashemi, an official in the country’s Health Ministry, as saying that Poland donated about a million doses of the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine to Iran. “But when the vaccines arrived in Iran, we found out that 820,000 doses of them which were imported from Poland were from the United States,” he said. (2/21)

Reuters: Hong Kong Finds COVID In Samples From Packaging Of Pork, Beef Imports
Hong Kong authorities said they found COVID-19 in samples taken from the packaging of imports of frozen beef from Brazil and frozen pork skin from Poland, vowing to step up inspections of imported food. The global financial hub deploys a "dynamic zero COVID" strategy similar to mainland China's, aiming to eradicate any outbreaks at all costs. Authorities have been on high alert as a new wave of infections is proving harder to control. Daily infections numbers have risen sharply this year, reaching a record 7,533 cases on Monday, overwhelming the government's testing, hospital and quarantine capacities. (2/22)

Reuters: More Patients, Fewer Nurses: Hong Kong's Medical Frontline Struggles With COVID Surge
Yee, a nurse on the frontline of Hong Kong's fight against COVID-19, recently became one of the patients her hospital had to turn away, after isolation wards, and later corridors, became overpacked with people on gurneys. At home, the 25-year-old spread the virus to her father, and fears her mother and brother might also get it. Rules say she should be sent to a quarantine facility, but nobody got in touch for the past seven days to make arrangements. (Pang and Cheng, 2/22)

Also —

Stat: Malawi Polio Case Raises Concerns The Virus Could Reemerge In Region
A newly discovered case of wild polio in Malawi has raised the possibility that a virus that had been driven out of the African continent could again find a toehold there. Teams of international disease investigators arrived in the East African nation over the weekend to probe how it came to have its first wild polio case in three decades and the continent’s first in five years. “The reported case in Malawi comes as a big disappointment, but sadly not as a surprise,” said Kim Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a nonprofit organization that does disease modeling for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. “It’s definitely showing us that the quality of immunization has not been high enough. But it also raises questions about the quality of surveillance.” (Branswell, 2/22)