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By Caitlin Tilley, Health Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Published: 00:05 EDT, 13 September 2023 | Updated: 00:05 EDT, 13 September 2023

A Russian missile attack on President Zelensky‘s home town has killed a policeman and injured at least 52 others, with civilians pulled out from the rubble of their destroyed homes.

Ten buildings were damaged in the strike on Kryvyi Rih after a wave of Russian attacks overnight in the centre and the east of the country. 

Three of the people hauled from the rubble were left in a serious condition, with photos showing smoke spewing from the ruins of a building as rescue workers carried an injured person to an ambulance. 

In one image of the aftermath a group of men can be seen pulling at concrete foundations to reveal a police officer, whose face is bloodied from the blast. Other photographs show ruined cars coated in rubble and firefighters sweeping through the wreckage.

Three administrative buildings and seven residential ones, including a high-rise, were damaged in the attack, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said. 

The police administrative building was destroyed and rescue workers pulled several people out of the rubble, Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s minister of Internal Affairs, said on Telegram. 

A Russian air strike killed three civilians and wounded four other people on Friday in the village of Odradokamianka in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson.

Three people were also injured in a missile attack in the eastern city of Sumy. 

Ukraine’s internal affairs ministry said one person was wounded in a Russian missile attack on Zaporizhzhia city in southern Ukraine.

Moscow also carried out its fifth drone attack this week on the southern Odesa region, home to Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea and the Danube River that are used to export grain and other agricultural products.

Russia has intensified air attacks on Ukrainian grain export infrastructure on the Danube River and in the port of Odesa since mid-July, when Moscow quit the U.N.-brokered deal that allowed safe Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea.

Officials said air defences shot down 16 of the 20 drones fired by Russia overnight. The Southern military command said 14 drones had been brought down over Odesa region and two more over the southern region of Mykolaiv.

Oleh Kiper, Odesa’s regional governor, said a non-residential building had been damaged by debris from a drone but gave no further details. He reported no casualties in the region.

Also on Friday, a funeral was being held for an 18-year-old who was among 17 people killed on Wednesday in a Russian missile strike on a market in Kostiantynivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

The attack, which wounded at least 32 others, destroyed the market and overshadowed a two-day visit by US secretary of state Antony Blinken aimed at assessing Ukraine’s three-month-old counter-offensive and signalling continued US support with the announcement of an additional one billion dollars (£801 million) in aid.

Britain announced on Friday that it will host a global food security summit in November in response to Russia’s withdrawal of a Black Sea grain deal and attacks on Ukraine’s grain supply.

The announcement came as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived in India for a Group of 20 summit, where he hopes to marshal international resources to counteract the war’s impact on the global food supply.

Sunak’s government said Royal Air Force aircraft will fly over the Black Sea as part of efforts to deter Russia from striking cargo ships transporting grain from Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia is holding local elections in the part of the Kherson region it controls. 

Local elections are also being held in the Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

In Kherson, local residents and Ukrainian activists say election poll workers have made house calls accompanied by armed soldiers.

Ukraine has dismissed the elections, calling on its allies to condemn Russia’s actions and urging them not to recognise any administration created as a result of the vote.

Zelensky said on Friday that Russian air superiority was ‘stopping’ Kyiv’s counter-offensive, complaining of the slow rate of both Western arms deliveries and sanctions on Russia.

Ukrainian officials have expressed frustration at criticism over the speed of its counter-offensive.

‘If we are not in the sky and Russia is, they stop us from the sky. They stop our counter-offensive,’ Zelensky said, calling for more ‘powerful and long-range’ weapons.

Kyiv has repeatedly asked for planes to battle Russia’s invasion, but many of its Western allies have been hesitant.

Ukraine has for weeks complained about the slow process of getting US-made F16s to improve its Soviet-era fleet.

Arms deliveries to Kyiv and new rounds of sanctions on Russia were becoming ‘complicated and slower’, Zelensky added.

Ukraine relied on Western arms deliveries to launch its long-anticipated counter-offensive this summer.

It has acknowledged the advance has been slow due to heavily-mined territory.

But Kyiv has also reported some success recently.

It declared a strategic victory last week with the capture of the southern village of Robotyne, which it said would pave the way for forces to push deeper towards Moscow-annexed Crimea.

Zelensky on Thursday singled out military units in the east and south for their fighting and military officials reported some breakthroughs in Bakhmut and near the village of Robotyne.

Russia said on Friday it had repelled numerous Ukrainian attacks along the front line and inflicted hundreds of losses on enemy forces, challenging Kyiv’s assertion that Ukraine was making slow but steady progress in its counter-offensive.

Russia controls about 18 per cent of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea which it annexed in 2014 and a swathe of eastern and southern Ukraine which it took control of in 2022.

Doctors have been put on high alert about rising cases of a potentially severe respiratory virus in parts of the United States, which could signal a bad nationwide outbreak is to come. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned medical professionals the rising rates of respiratory syncitial virus, or RSV, in Florida and Georgia in recent weeks signal the start of the respiratory virus season.  

And the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has advised healthcare workers to brace for what could be a ‘tripledemic’ of RSV, flu, and Covid-19 cases this winter.

RSV infects the lungs and the respiratory tract and typically causes cold-like symptoms, though it can be deadly to seniors who have weaker immune systems and infants whose already-narrow airways fill with mucus, making it hard to breathe. 

RSV is the leading cause of hospitalization for infants one or younger in the US. Each year, the virus causes up to 80,000 hospitalizations and 300 deaths in children under age 5. 

And in seniors, the virus can cause up to 160,000 hospitalizations and 10,000 fatalities every year.

Treatments and preventive measures for RSV have become more widely available in just the past year, and the CDC is urging clinicians to stock up on vaccines for adults and pregnant women and monoclonal antibodies for infants when they become available.    

This summer ushered in the most substantial win for protecting babies FROM RSV, though, with the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of a monoclonal antibody to protect against RSV called Nirsevimab, which will become available in October.

Nirsevimab is a single-shot monoclonal antibody that, in clinical trials, cut the chance of serious RSV infection requiring hospitalization by nearly 75 percent. 

For seniors 60 years and older, there are now two new vaccines to help fend off the virus, with one of them proving to be 80 percent effective at preventing RSV infection. 

But the vaccines for older adults are not like a traditional flu shot that is available to all who want one. Doctors must decide after consultation with their patients whether the rare, yet potentially severe health risks associated with the vaccine, such as atrial fibrillation and neurological complications, outweigh the benefit of protection. 

Regional increases early in the season, such as those currently occurring in the Southeast, offer health officials a glimpse of what may be to come for the rest of the country in the next several months. 

Agency officials monitoring disease testing results in Florida found the number of diagnostic tests coming back positive for RSV exceeded five percent for about a month. The typical test positivity rate for RSV this time of year is around three percent. 

In Georgia, the CDC observed an uptick in the number of hospitalizations due to RSV. Around two for every 100,000 children in Georgia were hospitalized for RSV during the week ending on August 5. By August 19, that rate had risen to seven hospitalizations per 100,000 children. 

The uptick in cases this time of year would not otherwise be noteworthy, as seasonal RSV, along with influenza, typically begins in early fall and peaks in the winter. 

But the last few years have been an exception to that rule thanks to pandemic-era social distancing measures like masking and isolation. Meant to stave off Covid, the measures also largely stamped out seasonal virus outbreaks as we knew them.

But when the world gradually reopened in 2021 after Covid-19 vaccines became available, seasonal viruses came back too. 

Last year’s RSV season was among the worst. 

Covid, flu, and RSV began to circulate with some overlap, garnering fears of a ‘tripledemic’. 

Now, there is renewed concern of another ‘tripledemic’, a situation in which three diseases join forces and overwhelm the healthcare system, which so far has not had the devastating consequences at the scale many epidemiologists feared. 

Still, the CDC is recommending doctors ramp up testing for RSV, as well as Covid and the flu, in schools, daycares and long-term care facilities, and stockpile the latest medicine. 

The health agency also recommends all infants under eight months born during RSV season should receive the antibody within their first week of life, while infants born outside the typical season should get Nirsevimab before the next RSV season begins. 

While the shot has been shown to be extremely effective, the CDC acknowledged not all hospitals will have it in their arsenal immediately due to high demand. 

Pregnant women can also receive a vaccine that confers immunity to their unborn babies for a continuous six months of protection after birth. 

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By Cassidy Morrison Senior Health Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Updated: 13:35 EDT, 8 August 2023

An ex-convict fighter in Putin‘s war went on the rampage with an accomplice killing six after being freed from jail, say law enforcement in Russia.

The bodies of five men and one woman with stab and serious burn wounds were found in two separate houses blitzed by fire in a village in northern Russian region, Karelia.

Igor Sofonov, 38, a hardened criminal, had been recruited to serve in Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

His alleged accomplice – who had also served jail time for serious crimes – was named as Maxim Bochkarev, 37.

Both men have been detained initially for two months on suspicion of murder, the Russian Investigative Committee said. A video shows them being taken by armed police into court where they were remanded in custody.

Bochkarev and Sofonov are reported to have previous convictions for murder, rape, robbery, and drugs.

Russians have expressed deep alarm about former convict fighters in the war being pardoned by Putin as a reward for fighting then allowed home after serving at the frontline.

Investigators suspect the two houses were set on fire in a bid to hide the massacre, with footage showing the gutted homes following the blaze.

The dead in one house in the village of Derevyannoye included Konstantin Lonin, 42, his brother Dmitry, 47, and Vladimir Sergeenko, 76.

In the same house was a woman named only as Svetlana, 38.

In the other house, on Friendship Lane, the bodies of Vladimir Tereshchenko, 70, and his son Artyom, 39, were found.

Artyom’s children had jumped from windows when the intruders broke in, and went to raise the alarm with their grandfather in a neighbouring house.

The children are now safe but their grandfather was killed along with his son when he later came to the scene. 

‘According to the preliminary version, the cause of the incident was a long-standing conflict on domestic grounds,’ reported Karelia News.

It is unclear if Sofonov was serving for the mercenary army Wagner Group – as some reports suggest – or Putin’s regular army.

He was freed from the war and allowed home in spring, said reports.

Both suspects were in a state of ‘extreme intoxication’ when they were detained, according to reports, and the accomplice was described as a ‘strong, tall, wiry man’.

Vladimir Putin has suffered his worst daily air force losses of the war after Wagner fighters killed 39 pilots and crew by downing strike helicopters and a military plane during Prigozhin’s rebellion, it has been claimed. 

Putin is also believed to be facing the humbling expectation to replace his top two war commanders – close ally defence minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the army staff general Valery Gerasmivov – or face new insurrection.

Coup leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, once a Putin loyalist, has agreed to be based across the border in Belarus – for now. Out of jail, and free to run his large mercenary army, he still poses an acute threat to the 70-year-old Russian president.

Putin is believed to have suffered grievous losses as he sought to halt the Wagner ‘march of justice’ against his corrupt regime towards Moscow as the Wagner Group reportedly killed pilots and crew members during their attempted ‘military coup’.  

The Wagner group claimed to have shot down multiple Russian helicopters during its assault. Shocking footage shows huge black plumes of smoke rising into the air on a field after what is claimed to be a helicopter was targeted and burst into flames. 

Russian forces appeared to confirm three of their attack helicopters had been shot down by Wagner. 

The Russians are reportedly seeking to cover-up the losses of up to 39 pilots and crew in a few hours. 

They allegedly included some of Russia’s leading air force crew members with one account saying 20-plus combat pilots were killed.

Putin is believed to have lost six helicopters – including three Mi-8 MTPRs specialising in electronic warfare – as well as a sophisticated Il-22 plane used to conduct battle plans at high altitude.

A desperate quick fix deal saw Prigozhin’s Wagner heavily armed force halt their march on Moscow in return for a deal that drops all treason charges against him and his men.

It avoided a potential Russian v Russian bloodbath at the gates of Moscow.

Yet Putin has never seemed so weak in almost a quarter of a century at the helm of Russia as president or premier.

Russia analysts said that the 70-year-old – who has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999 – was wounded in the battle. 

Garry Kasparov, the chess champion who has become one of the foremost leaders of the Russian democratic opposition, said Putin had been ‘humiliated’ by Prigozhin.

‘The game ended with Putin’s worst humiliation – a run for his life from Moscow when Prigozhin’s army was hundreds of miles away,’ he told CNN.

Kasparov added: ‘Many of Putin’s top officials ran for cover. A dictator relies on his aura of invincibility.’

Sergey Sanovich, Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, who specializes in disinformation and autocracies, said Putin had never looked so weak.

He said needing Belarus’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, to negotiate with Prigozhin on his behalf was a sign of how enfeebled he was.

‘Prigozhin makes a daring move and gets away with it, potentially with additional gains to come,’ said Sanovich.

‘Lukashenko saves the day. Putin reduced to a bystander, complaining on TV and letting his top generals be humiliated.

‘Never in a quarter century Putin looked so ineffectual and hapless.’

Sanovich’s view on the involvement of Lukashenko was shared by Michael McFaul, Barack Obama’s advisor on Russia from 2009-11, who then became the U.S. ambassador to Moscow.

McFaul tweeted: ‘Putin could not control a mercenary force that he created & run by his buddy. He had to rely on Lukashenko of all people to cut a deal with a guy he called just hours ago a traitor.

‘These are signs of real weakness, not strength. What has weakened Putin’s grip on power? His disastrous war in Ukraine.

‘The longer the war continues, the weaker Putin’s regime becomes. Those that want to avoid Russian state collapse (i.e. Xi) should be pushing Putin to end his war.’

Among Putin’s losses is apparently a Ilyushin-22, which appears to have been shot down by a Pantsir missile system secretly supplied to Wagner by Russia’s own forces.

At first the aircraft was identified as an Il-18 turboprop plane, and it likely used such markings – but was in fact an Il-22 used for secretive command and control missions in wartime.

Ten crew were on board, according to Russian Channel One correspondent Irina Kuksenkova.

It is likely a ‘high ranking general’ and other top brass were on board, revealed former Soviet military tactician and politician Viktor Alksnis, now an analyst known as the Black Colonel.

But he indicated the death toll was almost certainly higher, amid reports that the Russian state media has been ordered to obscure the true figure.

‘I assume that the total number of cabin crew and task force on board the Il-22 ranged from 15 to 20 people. They all died,’ he posted.

Putin also lost a regular Mi-8, a Ka-52 strike helicopter and an Mi-35.

‘As a result of the destruction of five helicopters and one aircraft by the Wagner rebels between 34 to 39 people were killed,’ estimated Alksnis.

Some 19 of these were in the five downed helicopters, he made clear.

More damage was done in a day than the Ukrainians have managed in the war.

‘It should be noted that our Aerospace Forces did not suffer such losses even in the most difficult days of the special military operation in Ukraine,’ said the Black Colonel.

All the losses were caused by Russia’s Wagner forces shooting down Russia’s regular forces – yet under the terms of the patched-up peace deal no-one will be prosecuted. The bloody fiasco can only benefit Ukraine.

As part of the hasty peace deal between Putin and Prigozhin – brokered by Belarus tyrant Alexander Lukashenko – the billionaire Wagner chief will pay compensation of almost half a million pounds to the families of the slain Russian airmen.

As recriminations sounded today, Telegram channel Fighterbomber – with almost 400,000 followers – demanded: ‘Which idiot with big stars on his shoulder straps ordered a transfer of the Pantsir air defence system to an illegal armed group [Wagner], a gang…? Will this idiot go to a military tribunal?’

Putin and his top commanders ‘gave birth to this monster [Prigozhin] and now they are trying to fight it’.

By today, no details of the dead air crew were revealed and Moscow was apparently engaged in a campaign to keep their names secret.

Hours after saying the coup leaders including Prigozhin would suffer ‘inevitable punishment’ he revealed that no-one would suffer sanctions over the insurrection.

‘There was a higher goal: to avoid bloodshed, to avoid internal confrontation, to avoid clashes with unpredictable results,’ said his spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Highways used by tens of thousands of Wagner troops marching on Moscow yesterday remained closed today.

A deadly bacteria that kills up to 50 percent of people it infects has now been listed as an endemic along the US gulf coast.

Dr Julia Petras, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who made the warning, said Burkholderia pseudomallei was now likely lurking in soil and stagnant water across the 1,600 miles from Texas to Florida.

People infected with the bacteria suffer melioidosis, a severe condition that can trigger pneumonia and sepsis and can be fatal.

Doctors are now on alert for the disease, which can initially be misdiagnosed as another infection. 

The CDC declaration comes less than a year after it was detected in the US for the first time in soil from the Mississippi coast.

 Dr Petras said: ‘It’s estimated that there’s probably 160,000 cases a year around the world and 80,000 deaths.

‘This is one of those diseases that is also called the great mimicker because it can look like a lot of different things.

‘It’s greatly under-reported and under-diagnosed and under-recognized — we often like to say that it’s been the neglected tropical disease.’

The bacteria — also known as B. psuedomallei — is native to tropical areas in South East Asia and northern Australia.

But the CDC is now warning it has been identified in the Gulf states: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

In these areas, the agency warns it may be lurking in topsoil or muddy fresh- or brackish water.

People can become infected after coming into contact with the water or soil — including through open wounds — or ingesting it.

It is unclear how the pathogen arrived in the United States, although this may have traveled by infected travelers. 

The deadly bacteria has been present in Puerto Rico since 1982, according to an Oxford University-backed study.

About 12 Americans are struck down by the bacteria every year, estimates suggest, although they are normally linked to foreign travel.

This is thought to be a major underestimate because many cases are misdiagnosed as other conditions.

Four cases were recorded in the US — including two deaths — in 2021, with cases later linked to a contaminated aromatherapy spray imported from India.

Another two were detected in 2020 and 2022 in unrelated individuals who lived near each other in Mississippi.

This prompted the CDC to take soil and water samples from within and around the patients’ homes, revealing the presence of the bacteria B. pseudomallei. Both patients recovered from the infection.

Dr Petras, who is an epidemic intelligence service officer, said: ‘It is an environmental organism that lives naturally in the soil, and typically freshwater, in certain areas around the world — mostly subtropical and tropical climates.

‘A lot of patients will have pneumonia with sepsis, and or sepsis, which is associated with higher mortality and worse outcomes.’

She added: ‘We have antibiotics that work. 

‘What I’m talking about is IV antibiotics for at least two weeks, followed by three to six months of oral antibiotics.

‘It’s an extensive treatment, but if you’ve finished the full course and you’re diagnosed early, which is the really key thing, your outcome is probably going to be quite good.’

Humans can become infected with the bacteria via contact with contaminated soil and muddy water, particularly if they have an open wound.

In rare cases, it can also be transmitted between humans — although this has only been reported via sexual contact and during pregnancy.

In most cases, the bacteria do not trigger symptoms because the immune system can to fight it off.

But when an infection begins, patients may suffer from symptoms including joint pain, fever and headaches in the early stages.

This can then progress to melioidosis, with the CDC warning that between 10 and 50 percent of cases are fatal.

Individuals who live along the gulf coast and have conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease and chronic lung disease are particularly at risk.