The authorisation is recommended as a two dose regimen, given as two standard doses with a flexible inter-dose interval of four to twelve weeks, which was shown in clinical trials to be safe and effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19, with no severe cases and no hospitalisations more than 14 days after the first injection.https://www.research.ox.ac.uk/Article/2020-12-30-oxford-vaccine-regulatory-faq
Our FAQ offers further details about the Oxford coronavirus vaccine and the UK regulatory authorisation.www.research.ox.ac.uk
Foreign NHS workers treating Covid patients are at risk of being denied vaccinations because of internal guidelines about who can receive the jab, the Guardian has learned.Shameful! At least in some cases, they're vaccinating people who currently have no NHS number and then registering them later. These people are often front-line workers who MUST have the vaccine.
Documents circulated among staff at one leading hospital show vaccinators have been told they must not immunise anyone without an NHS number.
Guidelines at one hospital say only those with NHS number can have jab, excluding those from abroadwww.theguardian.com
Including “Covid is only as deadly as a bad flu”, “lockdowns don’t reduce cases” and “we aren’t seeing excess deaths”.#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
There has been a huge amount of misinformation during the pandemic. Much of it was unavoidable, especially at the start as we dealt with a new virus, but some myths are persisting a year into the pandemic. The myths range from the ridiculous to the merely implausible, but together they are misleading the public about the danger of Covid-19 and other variants. These false claims could also have serious consequences, such as fuelling premature calls to end social distancing measures before the vaccination rollout has reached a safe level. To combat some of this misinformation, a group of scientists, journalists, economists and other researchers have created Anti-Virus, a website that tries to address the biggest myths surrounding the pandemic, and highlight claims or points of view that have been expressed by figures in academia or the media that are no longer credible. Myth 1: We are overreacting to a disease that 99.5 per cent of people will survive This claim implies that fewer than one in 200 of those infected with the virus will die in a best-case healthcare scenario. However, even this blunt statistic misses the disease’s deadliness for the elderly, as well as the longer-term health problems faced by many who “recover”. Covid's infection fatality rate (IFR) is highly variable with age. If you're under 45, it's a very low 0.03 per cent, but it rises as people get older, meaning those aged 45-64 have a 0.5 per cent fatality rate, 65-74 have a 3.1 per cent fatality rate, and over-75s have a truly horrifying 11.6 per cent fatality rate – not much better than playing Russian roulette. And even a 0.5 per cent IFR across the whole population means a lot of death – around 90,000 people have died so far from only around 20 per cent of the population having had it. These rates would also rise across the board as more people became infected at the same time (for example, if the government had not imposed a lockdown this month), because the health service would be overwhelmed and unable to treat everybody. There's also a growing body of evidence that "Long Covid" is real, leaving some people who survive the virus with long-term side effects, including serious organ damage. Myth 2: Covid is only as deadly as a bad flu This myth comes from mixing up case fatality ratios (CFRs) and infection fatality ratios (IFRs). The CFR only measures how many people with symptoms die of a disease, whereas the IFR tries to estimate how many people both with symptoms and without symptoms have died of it. The CFR of Covid is much higher than that of the flu – a current estimate of the CFR of Covid in the UK is 2.1 per cent, compared to a CFR of 0.1 per cent for the seasonal flu given by the US's Center for Disease Control (CDC). In other words, Covid's CFR is 21 times higher than the seasonal flu, and more deadly for all age groups except, possibly, pre-teen children. Covid is also much more infectious than the flu, according to the CDC, so outbreaks will infect more people with this much-deadlier virus. And, as the FT's John Burn-Murdoch demonstrates, Covid has already caused far more hospitalisations than even the worst flu seasons, and that is against the backdrop of unprecedented social distancing measures. [See also: Get the latest data on Covid-19 where you live with the New Statesman's tracker] Myth 3: We're witnessing a "Casedemic" of false positives from doing too many tests This claim does not explain why Covid cases have risen and fallen independently of testing rates during the pandemic, or why hospitalisations and deaths have risen in line with the rise in positive Covid cases (which is hard to explain if false positives were a significant issue). Moreover, other countries with major testing programmes have not seen waves of false positive tests that believers in this theory claim are inevitable. South Korea, which controlled and suppressed its Covid outbreak, has done more than five million tests to date and only found 73,918 cases in total. And even if this bogus claim were true, it would merely force us to conclude that Covid was much deadlier than we believe it to be, since we would have the same number of deaths from a much smaller number of cases. Myth 4: We aren't seeing excess deaths The various ways of counting Covid deaths may be confusing, but it is indisputable that we are seeing significantly more deaths during this pandemic than we have in previous years. There were around 604,000 deaths registered across England and Wales in 2020, 73,000 deaths (14 per cent) higher than the baseline from the previous five years. It is clear that excess deaths overall are coinciding with Covid deaths, and that the number of excess deaths since the start of the pandemic closely tracks the number of deaths where Covid is mentioned on the death certificate. Myth 5: Lockdowns don't reduce cases, as cases are falling before they are imposed The main basis for this claim is that cases on self-reporting apps such as Zoe seem to fall before lockdowns are implemented, but the people who diligently report their symptoms daily for these apps may not be representative of the wider population. According to more representative surveys, lockdowns have always been the point at which rising cases have begun to fall. The ONS infection survey shows that the infection rate in the UK on 18 December 2020 was one in 85, and this rose to one in 50 by 2 January 2021. It was only after this point, when a nationwide lockdown was imposed, that cases began to fall. The same is true for the November and March lockdowns, with one study concluding that, if lockdown been introduced a week earlier in March, it “could have reduced the first wave death toll from 36,700 to 15,700... while delaying lockdown by a week would have increased the deaths to 102,600”. This analysis from November looks at over 200 countries and finds that national lockdowns are at the very top of the effectiveness table. Another paper found that "closing all educational institutions, limiting gatherings to ten people or less, and closing face-to-face businesses each reduced transmission considerably". Myth 6: Lockdowns lead to a rise in suicide and self-harm rates There has been no statistically significant rise in suicides after lockdowns were imposed in the UK, and nor has there been a recorded rise in rates of self-harm. This is true in most countries that have been studied that imposed lockdowns: studies in Germany, Norway, the US, and Victoria, Australia (which had one of the world's longest lockdowns) all show either no increase in suicide rates or a reduction. A recent study showed that suicides did rise significantly in the second half of 2020 in Japan, but Japan has not imposed lockdowns, so it may be the pandemic rather than lockdowns that has contributed to this. This is not to suggest that the pandemic has not had an impact on mental health. However, claims of an increase in suicides and self-harm are unsubstantiated, and mental health deterioration is just as likely to be a consequence of the pandemic itself as of lockdowns. [See also: It’s not just you: Why the current lockdown is having an extreme effect on mental health] Myth 7: We could just isolate the most at-risk and let everyone else get on with their lives as normal This is the proposal of the Great Barrington Declaration, published in October by three epidemiologists, which suffers from a number of problems. The first is how to look after the 15 million at-risk people in the UK who would have to self-isolate for months, unable to go to the shops to buy food or visit a GP's surgery for medical care, because the virus would be so widespread among the rest of the population. The second is that many, many people in the wider population would be hospitalised with Covid: applying the hospitalisation rates estimated by the British Medical Journal, if 50 per cent of the younger population caught Covid along with 5 per cent of pensioners, that would mean an estimated 860,000 people would be hospitalised. That would completely overwhelm the health service – there are only 4,123 adult critical care beds in England. The "benefits" of this approach are also unclear, since many businesses would struggle to function with mass staff absences due to illness and customers afraid to enter their shops. Now that we have vaccines and rollout is under way, this strategy seems redundant. Myth 8: Misinformation from prominent figures in academia and the media Anti-Virus has documented claims and points of view from prominent figures in academia and the media that have now been proven not to be credible. Sunetra Gupta, a professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University, claimed in March that half the UK's population had already been infected by coronavirus, a claim which has now been disproven. In May, Gupta said that the IFR of Covid was "closer to one in 10,000"; by this point, more than one in 10,000 of the UK's entire population had died of Covid. Journalists including Allison Pearson and Toby Young have consistently criticised the effectiveness of a national lockdown. Last week the press regulator Ipso ruled that Young wrote a "significantly misleading" column in the Daily Telegraph in July 2020, when he claimed that the common cold could provide "natural immunity" to Covid-19 and that London was "probably approaching herd immunity". Sam Bowman is director of competition policy at the International Centre for Law and Economics, a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, and one of the founders of Anti-Virus. [See also: Britain currently has the worst death rate in the world but the number of new cases each day appears to be falling]www.newstatesman.com
Pretend it didn't happen – expert advice on how to behave after receiving a single dose of any of the Covid-19 vaccines.When it's claimed that a single dose of a vaccine is 97% effective, what does that mean? No, I had no idea either, because no one has explained it adequately. This article explains. Whether it does so adequately or not kind of depends on you. If you get your first dose of the vaccine and stay indoors for two weeks, then it probably has.
Pretend it didn't happen – expert advice on how to behave after receiving a single dose of any of the Covid-19 vaccines.www.bbc.com
The harms of the covid-19 pandemic go well beyond the illnesses and deaths directly caused by the virus. One particular repercussion, according to a new study out Thursday, has been more kids getting hurt from alcohol-based hand sanitizer ending up in their eyes.I'm amazed that someone even thought of doing this! Though I probably shouldn't be...
A new study describes an increase in hand sanitizer-related eye injuries among children.gizmodo.com
Evidence is growing that self-attacking ‘autoantibodies’ could be the key to understanding some of the worst cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection.www.nature.com
One of the mysteries of Covid-19 is why oxygen levels in the blood can drop to dangerously low levels without the patient noticing.You don't need any medical training to use one, either. You just put it on the end of your finger and turn it on and wait. In a few seconds, it should give you a reading of somewhere between 95 and 100 if you're healthy.
It is known as "silent hypoxia".
As a result, patients have been arriving in hospital in far worse health than they realised and, in some cases, too late to treat effectively.
But a potentially life-saving solution, in the form of a pulse oximeter, allows patients to monitor their oxygen levels at home, and costs about £20.
Doctors say people should buy a pulse oximeter to monitor their oxygen levels at home.www.bbc.co.uk
Germany is the latest country to discover a new mutation of the coronavirus, with a new variant identified among a group of hospital patients in Bavaria.#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
An unknown variant of the virus had been discovered among 35 patients at a hospital in the Bavarian ski town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, southeast Germany.
Further tests are being carried out on virus samples from the patients.
Germany is the latest country to discover a new mutation of the coronavirus, with a new variant found among a group of hospital patients in Bavaria.www.cnbc.com
Moderna Inc said on Tuesday it had received a report from California’s health department that several people at a center in San Diego were treated for possible allergic reactions to its COVID-19 vaccine from a particular batch.#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
The company’s comments come after California’s top epidemiologist on Sunday issued a statement recommending providers pause vaccination from lot no. 41L20A due to possible allergic reactions that are under investigation.
Moderna Inc said on Tuesday it had received a report from California's health department that several people at a center in San Diego were treated for possible allergic reactions to its COVID-19 vaccine from a particular batch.www.reuters.com
Behavioural psychologist says many people mistakenly think they are safe as soon as they receive jabI'm pretty sure that most people on Diaspora* aren't stupid, and won't just get their vaccination and go out and party. But I'm posting this in case you know some people who are likely to do just that.
Behavioural psychologist says many people mistakenly think they are safe as soon as they receive jabwww.theguardian.com
About one in 10 people across the UK tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies in December, roughly double the October figure, data has shown.This is just in the people who were tested.
Estimates from the Office for National Statistics suggest between 8% of people in Northern Ireland and 12% of people in England showed signs of past Covid infection.
Some 10% of the UK population is showing signs of recent infection, a doubling since October, says ONS.www.bbc.co.uk
Nearly a third of people who were discharged from hospitals in England after being treated for Covid-19 were readmitted within five months – and almost one in eight died, a study suggests.Almost certainly not just in England, but I haven't seen any other figures.
Readmission rate for Covid patients 3.5 times greater, and death rate seven times higher, than for other hospital patientswww.theguardian.com
The Apple Watch may be able to detect if a wearer has coronavirus days before they are diagnosed or symptoms appear, a new body of research shows.#technology #tech #Apple #AppleWatch #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
In some cases, wearable devices like Apple Watch or Fitbit devices can predict a COVID-19 infection even before a user becomes symptomatic or the virus is detectable by standard tests, according to studies from a number of leading medical institutions (via CBS News).
The Apple Watch may be able to detect if a wearer has coronavirus days before they are diagnosed or symptoms appear, a new body of research shows.appleinsider.com
An anti-lockdown protester who has been photographing hospital wards in a bid to show they are “empty” has been fined £200 by police.There has been a block on news about what has been happening in UK hospitals, imposed by the NHS Executive, but that has now eased. So we've seen what's happening in the Covid treatment wards; we've been kept informed by top doctors and nurses on Twitter; we know how harrowing it has been for front-line staff. Covid deniers won't be able to get away with this kind of behaviour for much longer.
An NHS spokesman branded the social media posts ‘untrue and highly disrespectful’www.standard.co.uk
The disruption to the vaccine rollout comes after parts of the North saw snowfall overnight and more is forecast later today.But, of course, the government planned in advance for the bad weather. Didn't they? Doesn't look like it. The UK pays an obscene amount for the upkeep of military forces. Can they not be deployed to affected areas?
The disruption to the vaccine rollout comes after parts of the North saw snowfall overnight and more is forecast later today.news.sky.com
The UK is "taking steps" to keep out cases of a coronavirus variant discovered in Brazil, the prime minister has said.#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
The UK is "taking steps" to keep out cases of a coronavirus variant discovered in Brazil, the prime minister has said.news.sky.com
A large-scale trial of a new treatment it is hoped will help stop Covid-19 patients from developing severe illness has begun in the UK.Inhaling nebulised interferon beta stimulates the immune system cut the odds of a Covid-19 patient in hospital developing severe disease - such as requiring ventilation - by almost 80%.
It is hoped the treatment will help stop patients from developing severe illness from the virus.www.bbc.co.uk
Some of the people infected with the novel coronavirus who survive COVID-19 will then experience persistent symptoms for weeks or even months after the illness, in what’s known as “Long COVID.”#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
Doctors are still trying to understand the lingering symptoms, with the Westchester Medical Center in New York running a treatment and study program for long haulers.
Now, a new report explains another strange coronavirus symptom that can appear with Long COVID: Some people have experienced skin peeling off their hands and a strange purple discoloration in their fingers.
More than three quarters of people hospitalised with COVID-19 still suffered from at least one symptom after six months, according to a study published Saturday that scientists said shows the need for further investigation into lingering coronaviruswww.sciencealert.com
Boris Johnson was spotted seven miles from Downing Street cycling around the Olympic Park on Sunday afternoon.#Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic #lockdown #SocialIsolation #SocialDistancing #BorisJohnson #OneRuleForThem
The Prime Minister was wearing his TfL hat and a face mask when he was seen cycling with his security detail in Stratford, east London, at around 2pm.
Official Government guidance on exercise says it should be limited to once a day and “you should not travel outside your local area”.
Exclusive: The PM was ‘concerned’ after his cycle ride around the parkwww.standard.co.uk
Dr. Leana Wen explains how Covid-19 safety guidelines have changed, given what scientists now know about how it's spread.www.cnn.com
Cartoonist Charlie Mackesy dedicated his drawings to the people on the front line tackling Covid-19.www.bbc.co.uk
For people who are most sick with Covid-19 - those whose lungs have not been helped by a ventilator - there is another alternative: ECMO.#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
The ECMO machine is a lifeline for coronavirus patients whose condition has not improved using a ventilator.www.bbc.co.uk
This website was created for everyone to have a space to anonymously write about how they are feeling during these difficult times with COVID-19. I hope it helps people feel less alone and more connected to others. Looking after our mental health during the pandemic is so important.An 18-year-old doctor-to-be called Daisy Davidson from Shrewsbury created this.
Letters to the World was created to ensure nobody felt alone during times like these, especially when in isolation. Mental health is so important and I hope this website can help people feel less alone.www.letters2theworld.com
All of our patients who die, do so alone. There is nobody to hold their hand. Nobody to comfort themReporting restrictions in the UK seem to have been eased recently, as more and more front-line workers are telling us how harrowing it is in the Covid wards.
A selection of some of the most striking images taken by news photographers covering the coronavirus pandemic in the UK.#photography #photojournalism #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic #2020
Images that defined the year a pandemic dominated the nation.www.bbc.co.uk
New research out today looks to bring us closer to understanding how covid-19 can cause brain damage. The study suggests that while the viral infection may not directly reach the brain in most cases, it can spark the sort of destructive inflammation that’s seen with other neurological conditions, like stroke.#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
U.S. government scientists studied the brains of 19 people who died after contracting covid-19.gizmodo.com
It ignores a number of crucial facts.But it does show that a lot of younger, fitter people, the thousands who have protested in London, for example, seriously undervalue people who are older or less healthy.
James Rebanks the farmer and writer has long had a devoted following on social media for the pictures he posts of his land and animals in the Lake District fells, but the photographs have taken on an extra significance for some in this year of coronavirus. Here he explains how the pandemic has affected him.#photography #countryside #farming #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
Farmer and writer James Rebanks explains how the coronavirus pandemic has affected him.www.bbc.co.uk
Dexamethasone demonstrates power of large-scale, randomised trials in finding effective medicines#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
Dexamethasone demonstrates power of large-scale, randomised trials in finding effective medicineswww.theguardian.com
Exclusive: Antibody therapy could confer instant immunity to Covid-19 on at-risk groups#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
Exclusive: Antibody therapy could confer instant immunity to Covid-19 on at-risk groupswww.theguardian.com
This government has failed the people.#politics #uk #Tory #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic #Brexit
It has failed to protect lives during the COVID pandemic: the highest death toll in Europe; encouraging easing lockdown with the highest daily deaths; using care homes as death camps for the elderly
Millions more people in the east and south east of England are to enter tier four on Boxing Day, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced.#Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic #UK
The places moving into the highest level of restrictions - which include a "stay at home" order - border the areas already in tier four.
A number of areas will also move up into tiers three and two.
The areas facing tougher restrictions have seen a "significant number" testing positive for the new fast-spreading variant.www.bbc.co.uk
The UK has detected two cases of another "more transmissible" variant of coronavirus, the health secretary Matt Hancock says.#Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic #SouthAfrica
Both people had travelled to South Africa, where the variant has been linked to a surge in cases.
Travel restrictions with South Africa have been imposed.
Travel restrictions and quarantine rules have been introduced to limit the spread.www.bbc.co.uk
The government was operating an illegal “buy British” policy when it signed contracts with a small UK firm to supply Covid antibody tests, claim lawyers who have filed a case against the health secretary.#Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic #UK #government #Tories #crime
The Good Law Project said there were a number of other companies in a better position to supply antibody tests in June and August, when the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) agreed deals worth up to £80m with Abingdon Health without going out to tender.
The government had also agreed a deal to share in the profits the company made, the lawyers say.
Other firms better placed to supply antibody tests, argues case against health secretary Matt Hancockwww.theguardian.com
The rule, which came into force on December 2 and was updated on December 14, means that Boris and his fiancee Carrie Symonds can meet up with people from one other household over Christmas.#Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic #lockdown #SocialIsolation #SocialDistancing #Tier4 #BorisJohnson
Many other people could also take advantage of the exceptionwww.walesonline.co.uk
Canada joined several European nations in halting flights from the U.K. on Sunday in an effort to prevent a new, more contagious strain of the coronavirus from spreading to this country.#Canada #COVID19 #coronavirus #UK #Britain #travelrestrictions
CBC News obtained a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) issued by Transport Minister Marc Garneau stating that all commercial, private and charter flights transporting passengers from the U.K. will be suspended indefinitely as of midnight tonight. The restriction doesn't apply to cargo flights, aircraft landing for safety reasons or flights that land for technical stops where no passengers disembark.
The notice said the minister "is of the opinion it is necessary for aviation safety and the protection of the public, to prohibit the [operations]of commercial air ... from the United Kingdom for the transport of passengers on an inbound [flight]to Canada."