The WHO says the outbreak is particularly concerning since Afghanistan faces surging food insecurity and malnutrition.
We analysed 681 stories on COVID-19 to explore the ways in which the papers presented the COVID-19 pandemic to their readers.
The shortages are the result of COVID-19 vaccine campaigns, with billions more syringes than normal being used worldwide, badly denting global supplies.
UNICEF, the United Nation's fund for children, is predicting an "imminent shortfall" of up to 2.2 billion of the single-use syringes used to give jabs, WHO Africa said.
Health authorities in the country confirmed West Africa's first recorded case of Marburg on August 9, in a man whose infection was detected after he had died a week earlier.
The WHO's target is to have 40% of all countries' population vaccinated by the end of this year and 70% of the world's population by the middle of next year.
The leaders also announced a series of workshops to boost the flow of information in the push to get equitable access to COVID-19 technology.
The World Health Organisation said choosing South Africa to run the hub would help low-income countries not to rely on vaccine-producing countries to supply their needs.
Covax was set up to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines, particularly to low-income countries, and has already delivered more than 80 million doses to 129 territories.
Under the new system, the variants of concern take on the following names: the hitherto so-called British variant B.1.1.7 becomes Alpha; the B.1.351 first discovered in South Africa becomes Beta, while the Brazilian P.1 becomes Gamma.
The National Council Against Smoking's Sharon Nyatsanza said 21% of South Africans use tobacco products.
So far, more than 3.4 million deaths worldwide have officially been attributed to COVID-19 since the disease first surfaced in China in late 2019.
World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus voiced outrage that a number of rich countries were now vaccinating children and teenagers, while poorer states had barely begun vaccinating health workers and the most vulnerable groups.
Detected cases of COVID infection in the region rose 22% last week, while deaths rose 17%, said Ahmed al-Mandhari, the Cairo-based chief of the WHO for the eastern Mediterranean.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus - a fierce critic of wealthy countries buying up vaccine supply for themselves - blasted the scarcity of doses available for poorer nations.
In response to the swirl of claims around the cheap anti-parasite drug, the WHO issued guidelines saying ivermectin should only be used on COVID-19 patients in clinical trial settings.
The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is being produced under licence in India for the Covax scheme, also led by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is meant to ensure that low-income countries can access COVID-19 jabs.
The partial or complete shutdown of transport and industry for months at a time in 2020 reduced average levels of so-called PM2.5 pollution across the world, including in major cities, the IQAir quality report found.
