A study aimed at countering online misinformation finds that health measures taken by governments to protect against COVID-19 helped save lives and reduce the number of people hospitalized in 2020.
Comments closedTag: SARS-CoV-2
Topic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
“Living through a mass disabling event”: Will Congress finally take long COVID patients seriously?
Over the last four years, Angela Meriquez Vázquez has faced a long list of health scares and conditions, any of which could have had a profound impact on her life individually. From mini-strokes to brain swelling to seizures to painful heart palpitations — not to mention severe shortness of breath, extreme confusion and numbness in her face — Vasquez didn’t start to experience these events until after she got infected with COVID-19 in March 2020.
Prior to the infection, Vázquez was a healthy runner for nearly 20 years. Today, she is on 12 different prescription medications, including weekly IV treatments at the hospital. She has a “strict pacing regimen” that allows her to work from home, but not much else.
“I do not socialize, or enjoy my old hobbies, and I don’t really leave my home, especially now that I am now considered high-risk,” Vázquez said in a hearing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, emphasizing that Congress needs to treat long-COVID like the crisis it is. “We are living through what is likely to be the largest mass disabling event in modern history.”
Vázquez was one of three long COVID patients who confronted Congress about the issue for the first time on Jan. 18 in Washington D.C.
Comments closedTopic: PaxlovidView all posts for the topic: Paxlovid
Once touted as a COVID-19 ‘game changer,’ Paxlovid is now a question mark for clinicians
If you catch the virus behind COVID-19 and you’re at a high risk of serious illness, there’s one major tool in a physician’s arsenal to keep you out of hospital: Paxlovid.
Pfizer’s antiviral drug was hailed as life-saving when it burst onto the scene midway through the pandemic. Clinical trials, conducted on people who’d never been vaccinated, showed it protected those vulnerable individuals from becoming dangerously sick, with a nearly 90 per cent reduction in the risk of hospitalization and death.
Comments closedTopic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
Long-COVID signatures identified in huge analysis of blood proteins
Researchers have developed a computational model that predicts how likely a person is to develop long COVID, based on an analysis of more than 6,500 proteins found in blood.
In a study published on 18 January in Science, the team compared blood samples from people who tested positive for COVID-19 with ones from healthy adults, and found notable differences in the composition of proteins in people with long COVID, those who recovered and those who were never infected.
The analysis suggests that proteins involved in immune responses, blood clotting and inflammation could be key biomarkers in diagnosing and monitoring long COVID, which affects an estimated 65 million people worldwide.
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Topic: N95 respiratorsView all posts for the topic: N95 respirators
Study: Infection-control measures stemmed COVID spread in hospitals from 2020 to 2022
Implementation of ventilation standards of at least five clean-air changes per hour, COVID-19 testing, the use of personal protective equipment (PPE), and universal wearing of respirators prevented most SARS-CoV-2 transmissions in a California healthcare system from 2020 to 2022, suggests a study published yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
For the study, University of California (UC) researchers used electronic health records and movement data of patients and staff to conduct viral genomic and social network analyses to estimate COVID-19 spread in the UC–San Diego Health system. The team analyzed 12,933 viral genomes from 35,666 infected patients and healthcare workers (HCWs) (out of 1,303,622 tests [2.7%]) from November 2020 to January 2022.
Comments closedTopic: the pandemic is not overView all posts for the topic: the pandemic is not over
COVID Isn’t Going Anywhere. Masking Up Could Save My Life.
The answers lie in poop. Based on the latest national sample of wastewater taken on January 13, 2024, the concentration of the SARS-Cov-2 virus is 1,132 copies/mL of sewage, an alarming increase compared to 280 copies/mL six months ago. This is one sign that cases of COVID infections have been rising, resulting in more hospitalizations, deaths, and people developing long COVID.
Like millions of other high-risk people who are service workers, older, chronically ill, disabled, or immunocompromised, I have done everything I can to remain as safe as possible. Due to neuromuscular disability and respiratory failure, my chances of surviving an infection are slim to none. With the latest JN.1 variant likely even more contagious – or better practiced at evading immune system defenses – than previous ones, I wonder if this is the surge when I will become infected, which is terrifying.
Comments closedTopic: ChinaView all posts for the topic: China
China’s population dropped for a second straight year as deaths jumped after COVID lockdowns ended
China’s population dropped by 2 million people in 2023 in the second straight annual drop as births fell and deaths jumped after the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, the government said Wednesday.
The number of deaths rose by 690,000 to 11.1 million, more than double last year’s increase. Demographers were expecting a sharp rise in deaths because of COVID-19 outbreaks that started at the end of the previous year and continued through February of last year. The total population stood at 1.4 billion, the statistics bureau said. China, long the most populated country in the world, dropped into second place behind India in 2023, according to U.N. estimates.
Comments closedTopic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
Study: COVID-19 vaccine tied to lower risk of long COVID in kids
A study today in the journal Pediatrics from researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia suggests COVID-19 vaccines have a moderately protective effect in kids against long COVID.
The authors of the retrospective study mined electronic health records from 17 healthcare systems to assess whether the vaccine protected children from long COVID, which has been less common in kids than in adults. The study began in October 2022.
Comments closedTopic: New BrunswickView all posts for the topic: New Brunswick
COVID-19 and flu kill 14 in N.B., 5 young children among more than 100 hospitalized
COVID-19 and the flu have killed at least 14 New Brunswickers in a week and hospitalized more than 100 people, including five children under four, the latest figures from the Department of Health show.
COVID-19 activity remains “moderate,” according to the Respiratory Watch report. “All indicators remained stable throughout the current reporting period,” Dec. 31 to Jan. 6.
Influenza activity remains “elevated,” it says.
Eight people died from COVID-19, up from six the previous week. They were all aged 65 or older.
Their deaths raise the pandemic death toll to at least 997. Only confirmed cases who die in hospital are counted.
Comments closedTopic: TorontoView all posts for the topic: Toronto
Toronto may be past its flu peak, but COVID-19 remains high, public health agency says
Toronto likely reached its influenza season peak in December, but according to Toronto Public Health’s latest respiratory illness update, COVID-19 infections are expected to remain high for now.
The percentage of positive influenza tests dropped to 6.6 per cent the week of Dec. 31 to Jan. 6, down from 15.6 per cent the week prior, Toronto Public Health (TPH) told the city’s Board of Health Monday. When it comes to COVID-19, positivity dropped only slightly to 17.6 per cent for the week of Dec. 31 to Jan. 6 from 18.6 per cent the week before.
But getting over the influenza peak doesn’t mean there aren’t still high levels of the illness in the city.
Comments closedTopic: COVID infectionsView all posts for the topic: COVID infections
What to do if you get COVID
That moment you’ve been dreading has arrived (perhaps not for the first time). You or someone in your household woke up with a sore throat maybe, or a nagging cough, and you did the swab. Double red line. Dammit.
What to do now? “Pax and relax”? Sit it out and hope for the best? Go about your normal business (as an increasingly alarming number of “experts” seem to be advising)? Is it really all down to a matter of good luck, good genes and good health? Not really. The available science says that there are differences in outcomes for people based on the choices they make after they get COVID, provided they move quickly.
Comments closedTopic: OntarioView all posts for the topic: Ontario
Arguments begin in proposed class action against 304 long-term care homes
Lawyers representing long-term care residents who suffered or died during the COVID-19 pandemic argued a class-action suit against hundreds of homes is the best way for those patients — and their loved ones — to get justice.
On Monday, plaintiff lawyers laid out their case before a Superior Court judge who will decide whether or not the proposed class action can go ahead. The suit, which is actually eight proceedings combined, names 304 independent and municipal homes, capturing almost half of the long-term care facilities in Ontario.
Comments closedTopic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines
A spring COVID-19 booster? NACI has released updated guidelines
Canadians may be in the thick of winter, but the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) recently unveiled guidelines for an extra dose of the COVID-19 vaccine for the upcoming spring.
On Friday, NACI released updated guidelines on the COVID-19 boosters for spring 2024.
Comments closedTopic: AustraliaView all posts for the topic: Australia
Queensland GPs flooded with patients reporting heart problems after long Covid
Queenslanders are flooding GPs practices with heart problems sparked by long Covid, the state’s peak medical body has revealed.
Doctors are seeing more patients with myocarditis and pericarditis due to inflammation caused by the virus that can cause palpitations chest pain or shortness of breath.
Comments closedTopic: the pandemic is not overView all posts for the topic: the pandemic is not over
COVID levels are up to 19 times higher than reported, WHO says as it warns of the potential dangers of repeat reinfection: ‘We don’t know everything about this virus’
Comments closedFive years, 10 years, 20 years from now, what are we going to see in terms of cardiac impairment, pulmonary impairment, neurologic impairment? It’s year five in the pandemic, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about it.
Topic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines
Older, immunocompromised people may get COVID-19 vaccine dose in spring, NACI says
Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization says some groups of people vulnerable to severe illness from COVID-19 should be eligible for another dose of vaccine in the spring.
The recommendation issued Friday says people aged 65 and older, residents of long-term care homes and seniors living in other congregate settings may get another shot of the vaccine targeted to the XBB.1.5 variant.
It also says children and adults aged six months and older who are moderately to severely immunocompromised due to an underlying condition may also get the booster.
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