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
The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that the collaborative research team led by Dr. Kwan Hyi Lee from the Biomaterials Research Center and Professor In Gab Jeong from Asan Medical Center developed a technique for diagnosing prostate cancer from urine within only 20 minutes with almost 100% accuracy. The research team developed this technique by introducing a smart AI analysis method to an electrical-signal-based ultrasensitive biosensor.#science #medicine #health #cancer
Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers among men. Patients are determined to have prostate cancer primarily based on PSA, a cancer factor in blood. However, as diagnostic accuracy is as low as 30%, a considerable number of patients undergo additional invasive biopsy and thus suffer from resultant side effects, such as bleeding and pain.phys.org
The findings could open avenues for treatments for other illnesses, such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease#science #medicine #health #eczema
The findings could open avenues for treatments for other illnesses, such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel diseaseinews.co.uk
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
Scientists are a step closer to being able to reverse the damage caused by motor neurone disease (MND).#science #medicine #health #MotorNeuroneDisease #MND
University of Edinburgh experts have found a problem with MND patients' nerve cells which could be repaired by repurposing drugs approved for other diseases.
University of Edinburgh scientists are a step closer to being able to reverse the damage caused by MND.www.bbc.co.uk
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
Boris Johnson’s government has for the first time confirmed the existence of a prime ministerial task force which is reportedly planning a “radical shake-up of the NHS”.One more step towards total privatisation and the loss of a free public service.
Freedom of Information disclosures to openDemocracy show the new “No.10 Health and Social Care Taskforce” reports to a Steering Group chaired by Munira Mirza, the influential head of Boris Johnson’s policy unit, and that it “met weekly” from July to September with a further meeting in October.
Mirza, a political appointee who previously worked for Johnson when he was London mayor, has no background or policy experience in health.
Munira Mirza heading up group meeting ‘daily or weekly’ to plan ‘radical NHS shakeup’.www.opendemocracy.net
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
Wearable devices have become more sophisticated in recent years, with the ability to track everything from abnormal heart rates and atrial fibrillation to stress and even blood oxygen levels. However, monitoring blood pressure is a challenge for a wrist-worn device. Wearable components maker Valencell says it’s figured out how to measure blood pressure using photoplethysmography (PPG) heart rate sensors from your finger or wrist.Apple has already filed its own patent on measuring blood pressure with an Apple Watch. It will be interesting to see how quickly this technology comes to market.
This new tech could be game-changing for wearables.gizmodo.com
A new report released Tuesday by the American Cancer Society provides some good news: Americans who had cancer in 2018 were less likely to die from it than they were a year earlier, continuing a steady decline in cancer mortality over the past 30 years. As hopeful as this trend is, though, there are still lower survival rates in different parts of the country and among Black Americans. Experts also worry that the covid-19 pandemic will end up erasing some of this progress.#science #medicine #health #cancer
A new report released Tuesday by the American Cancer Society provides some good news: Americans who had cancer in 2018 were less likely to die from it than they were a year earlier, continuing a steady decline in cancer mortality over the past 30 years. As hopeful as this trend is, though, there are still lower survival rates in different parts of the country and among Black Americans. Experts also worry that the covid-19 pandemic will end up erasing some of this progress.gizmodo.com
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.
A new medical study, published by the Heart Rhythm, claims that iPhone 12 can deactivate the life-saving cardiac defibrillator function of an implanted pacemaker.#technology #tech #Apple #iPhone #health #HealthAndSafety
The study published by the Heart Rythym claims iPhone 12 “can potentially inhibit lifesaving therapy in a patient particularly while carrying the phone in upper pockets.” The study, mostly, blames the new MagSafe and its array of magnets that could pose a threat of deactivating the pacemaker.
Whether it’s heart health or exercise routines, there are plenty of biometrics Apple Watch can keep tabs on. But could it also be used to monitor cognitive performance and possible decline?#technology #tech #Apple #AppleWatch #health
That’s the basis of a new, multi-year observational research study announced Monday. A collaboration between Apple and neuroscience company Biogen, the aim is to assess the role the Apple wearable and the iPhone could play in measuring cognitive health.
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
One main reason humans need to get a flu vaccine annually; flu strains mutate regularly so vaccines need to be slightly altered every year. During past flu seasons, the CDC has noted a vaccine effectiveness range between 40-60%, and a reduced the risk of flu-related illness by 40-60% within the overall population.#science #medicine #health #Influenza
There are, however, several “universal” flu vaccines currently being studied that aim to make annual flu vaccinations a thing of the past.
- Articles from The Weather Channel | weather.comweather.com
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
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.
Fungal diseases are a worldwide public health problem. Oftentimes, the treatment for these diseases are antibiotics. However, the use of antifungal medications are not entirely beneficial. The continuous use of antibiotics led to the increase in drug-resistant fungal infections, making them more difwww.naturalnews.com
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
The past three decades saw a dramatic improvement in our understanding of what brings about Alzheimer’s disease. Two proteins are thought to be responsible: amyloid and tau. The most widely accepted theory is that a critical level of amyloid in the brain triggers the build-up of the more toxic tau protein. This has led to several studies testing drugs and vaccines that remove amyloid and tau to see if they can improve or even prevent dementia. Results have been disappointing.But the hunt is on for new tests.
We now have the technology to identify people who are on a fast track to developing dementia.theconversation.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.
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
The roll out of Covid-19 vaccines in the UK and US this week has led to a spate of new false claims about vaccines. We've looked into some of the most widely shared.#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic #ConspiracyTheory
We examine widely shared false claims about vaccines - from "disappearing" needles to a "dead" nurse.www.bbc.co.uk
In the Western world, humans spend 90% of their time indoors. The average American spends even more than that—93%—inside buildings or cars. For years scientists have sounded the alarm that our disconnect from the outdoors is linked to a host of chronic health problems, including allergies, asthma, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, and obesity. More recently, experts in various fields have begun studying why buildings, even those designed to be as germ-free as possible, are vectors for disease, not the least Covid-19.#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) in St. Louis have spent some years investigating the links between circadian rhythm and Alzheimer’s, and have recently been making some real inroads. Following a 2018 study demonstrating how disrupted sleep can accelerate the buildup of toxic plaques associated with the disease, the team has now identified a protein implicated in the progression of the disease that appears highly regulated by the circadian rhythm, helping them join the dots and providing a potential new therapeutic target.#science #medicine #health #dementia #Alzheimers
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) in St. Louis have spent some years investigating the links between circadian rhythm and Alzheimer’s, and have recently been making some real inroads. Following a 2018 study demonstrating how disrupted sleep can accelerate the buildup of…newatlas.com
A new research study found that a variety of eye issues can sometimes indicate an early coronavirus infection.#science #medicine #health #Covid-19 #CoronaVirus #pandemic
The most common eye issues associated with a COVID-19 infection include sore eyes, extreme sensitivity to light, and itchy eyes.
Patients with eye-based issues reported that the symptoms typically went away within two weeks.