Pope Cancels Main Public Appearances Over Coronavirus Outbreak

Pope Francis leads the weekly general audience at the Vatican, November 27, 2019. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane
Pope Francis leads the weekly general audience at the Vatican, November 27, 2019. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane
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Pope Cancels Main Public Appearances Over Coronavirus Outbreak

Pope Francis leads the weekly general audience at the Vatican, November 27, 2019. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane
Pope Francis leads the weekly general audience at the Vatican, November 27, 2019. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

Pope Francis has canceled his regular appearances in public to stop crowds gathering to see him and will stream them on the internet from inside the Vatican because of the coronavirus outbreak in Italy.

The Vatican said that on Sunday the pontiff will not address crowds from a window overlooking St. Peter's Square, and will also not hold his general audience from there this Wednesday. Both attract tens of thousands of people.

It will be one of the few times in the past 66 years that a pope will not appear at the window, a ritual deeply engrained in Roman tradition, with some families attending every week.

Both the address and general audience will be held without public participation inside the official papal library in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace and will be viewable on the internet or television, the Vatican said in a statement on Saturday.

Popes began giving regular Sunday blessing from the window in 1954 and have done so nearly every Sunday since, except for when the pontiff is sick or out of Rome.

On May 17, 1981, four days after he nearly died in an assassination attempt, Pope John Paul delivered the blessing with a feeble voice from his bed at Rome's Gemelli hospital.

The Vatican also said that the participation of the faithful at Francis' morning Mass in his residence has been suspended until at least March 15.

The 83-year-old pope canceled a Lent retreat for the first time in his papacy, but the Vatican has said he is suffering only from a cold that is "without symptoms related to other pathologies".

A Vatican employee tested positive for coronavirus on Friday, the first case in the tiny city-state that is surrounded by Rome.

A Vatican source said the patient had participated in an international conference hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Life last week in a packed theatre several blocks from the Vatican. Participants at the three-day conference on Artificial Intelligence included top executives of U.S. tech giants Microsoft and IBM.

The death toll from the new coronavirus in Italy, the worst-hit European country, stood at 197 on Friday with more than 4,600 cases, most of them in the north. In Rome province, 49 people have tested positive and one has died.



UN Says 14 Million Children Did Not Receive a Single Vaccine in 2024

A mother holds her baby receiving a new malaria vaccine as part of a trial at the Walter Reed Project Research Center in Kombewa in Western Kenya on Oct. 30, 2009. (AP)
A mother holds her baby receiving a new malaria vaccine as part of a trial at the Walter Reed Project Research Center in Kombewa in Western Kenya on Oct. 30, 2009. (AP)
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UN Says 14 Million Children Did Not Receive a Single Vaccine in 2024

A mother holds her baby receiving a new malaria vaccine as part of a trial at the Walter Reed Project Research Center in Kombewa in Western Kenya on Oct. 30, 2009. (AP)
A mother holds her baby receiving a new malaria vaccine as part of a trial at the Walter Reed Project Research Center in Kombewa in Western Kenya on Oct. 30, 2009. (AP)

More than 14 million children did not receive a single vaccine last year — about the same number as the year before — according to UN health officials. Nine countries accounted for more than half of those unprotected children.

In their annual estimate of global vaccine coverage, released Tuesday, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said about 89% of children under one year old got a first dose of the diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough vaccine in 2024, the same as in 2023. About 85% completed the three-dose series, up from 84% in 2023.

Officials acknowledged, however, that the collapse of international aid this year will make it more difficult to reduce the number of unprotected children.

In January, US President Trump withdrew the country from the WHO, froze nearly all humanitarian aid and later moved to close the US AID Agency. And last month, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it was pulling the billions of dollars the US had previously pledged to the vaccines alliance Gavi, saying the group had “ignored the science.”

Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has previously raised questions the diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough vaccine, which has proven to be safe and effective after years of study and real-world use. Vaccines prevent 3.5 million to 5 million deaths a year, according to UN estimates.

“Drastic cuts in aid, coupled with misinformation about the safety of vaccines, threaten to unwind decades of progress,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

UN experts said that access to vaccines remained “deeply unequal” and that conflict and humanitarian crises quickly unraveled progress; Sudan had the lowest reported coverage against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.

The data showed that nine countries accounted for 52% of all children who missed out on immunizations entirely: Nigeria, India, Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Angola.

WHO and UNICEF said that coverage against measles rose slightly, with 76% of children worldwide receiving both vaccine doses. But experts say measles vaccine rates need to reach 95% to prevent outbreaks of the extremely contagious disease. WHO noted that 60 countries reported big measles outbreaks last year.

The US is now having its worst measles outbreak in more than three decades, while the disease has also surged across Europe, with 125,000 cases in 2024 — twice as many as the previous year, according to WHO.

Last week, British authorities reported a child died of measles in a Liverpool hospital. Health officials said that despite years of efforts to raise awareness, only about 84% of children in the UK are protected.

“It is hugely concerning, but not at all surprising, that we are continuing to see outbreaks of measles,” said Helen Bradford, a professor of children’s health at University College London.

“The only way to stop measles spreading is with vaccination,” she said in a statement. “It is never too late to be vaccinated — even as an adult.”