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The number of global under-five deaths dropped to its lowest point on record in 2019 – down to 5.2 million from 12.5 million in 1990, according to new mortality estimates released by UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the World Bank Group.

Since then, however, surveys by UNICEF and WHO reveal that the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in major disruptions to health services that threaten to undo decades of hard-won progress.

“The global community has come too far towards eliminating preventable child deaths to allow the COVID-19 pandemic to stop us in our tracks,” said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director. “When children are denied access to health services because the system is overrun, and when women are afraid to give birth at the hospital for fear of infection, they, too, may become casualties of COVID-19. Without urgent investments to re-start disrupted health systems and services, millions of children under five, especially newborns, could die.”

COVID-19 has caused the delay and cancellation of many professional sports and their seasons this year. Fortunately, the 2020 US Open Tennis Championships has pressed forward thanks to prevention strategies to decrease the risk for transmission of COVID-19 from a team of infectious disease experts, orthopedic surgeons, sports medicine physicians and musculosketal radiologists at Mount Sinai Health System who have collectively helped create a comprehensive health plan to guide athletes in safely playing at this year’s tournament. Mount Sinai will serve as the official medical services provider for the eighth consecutive year at the tournament, which begins on Monday, August 31, and run through Sunday, September 13. The Mount Sinai team is providing around the clock care for athletes onsite at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center Grounds in Flushing, New York. Through the relationship with the United States Tennis Association (USTA), Mount Sinai also treated athletes during the 2020 Western & Southern Open, a tournament usually held in Cincinnati that was relocated this year to New York in order to limit player travel and minimize risk of infection.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Minister of Health Yuli Edelstein have decided to appoint the Director of Ichilov Hospital Professor Ronni Gamzu as National Coronavirus Project Coordinator and as Director of the Special Operations Control Center.