COVID-19

Demonstrating what we know already -- COVID deaths are greatly under-reported.

Conn. Medical Examiner Says Office Identified Many COVID-19 Deaths
https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news...fice-identified-many-covid-19-deaths/2429776/

Dr. James Gill, the state’s chief medical examiner, told Connecticut legislators Tuesday that his investigators have “identified many deaths” that should have been certified as COVID-19-related but were not, including nursing home and assisted living residents who died during the pandemic.

Gill said many of the cases were discovered during investigations of remains about to be cremated, a procedure the office often conducts to make sure a homicide has not occurred.

“During that cremation review process, we’ve identified many deaths that were COVID deaths that were not certified as COVID deaths,” Gill told members of the General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee. “We went to funeral homes and swabbed people at funeral homes and identified COVID deaths through that mechanism.”

Gill said his office would take such steps when “respiratory failure” was listed as the cause of death.

“Well, is that caused by COVID-19, lung cancer, a drug overdose? We need to know what caused it, so we do further investigation,” Gill wrote in an email to The Associated Press following the committee’s hearing. “If we find out that the person lived in a nursing home and was not tested for COVID-19, we would go and do the testing.”

(More at above url)
 
Yes... the restrictions, masks, and social distancing for COVID plus increased flu vaccinations have effectively wiped out the flu this season.

Amid COVID-19 pandemic, flu has disappeared in the US
https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/amid-covid-19-pandemic-flu-has-disappeared-in-the-us/19545124/

February is usually the peak of flu season, with doctors' offices and hospitals packed with suffering patients. But not this year.

Flu has virtually disappeared from the U.S., with reports coming in at far lower levels than anything seen in decades.

Experts say that measures put in place to fend off the coronavirus — mask wearing, social distancing and virtual schooling — were a big factor in preventing a “twindemic” of flu and COVID-19. A push to get more people vaccinated against flu probably helped, too, as did fewer people traveling, they say.

Another possible explanation: The coronavirus has essentially muscled aside flu and other bugs that are more common in the fall and winter. Scientists don't fully understand the mechanism behind that, but it would be consistent with patterns seen when certain flu strains predominate over others, said Dr. Arnold Monto, a flu expert at the University of Michigan.

Nationally, “this is the lowest flu season we’ve had on record,” according to a surveillance system that is about 25 years old, said Lynnette Brammer of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hospitals say the usual steady stream of flu-stricken patients never materialized.

At Maine Medical Center in Portland, the state's largest hospital, "I have seen zero documented flu cases this winter,” said Dr. Nate Mick, the head of the emergency department.

Ditto in Oregon's capital city, where the outpatient respiratory clinics affiliated with Salem Hospital have not seen any confirmed flu cases.

“It's beautiful,” said the health system's Dr. Michelle Rasmussen.

The numbers are astonishing considering flu has long been the nation's biggest infectious disease threat. In recent years, it has been blamed for 600,000 to 800,000 annual hospitalizations and 50,000 to 60,000 deaths.

Across the globe, flu activity has been at very low levels in China, Europe and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. And that follows reports of little flu in South Africa, Australia and other countries during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter months of May through August.

The story of course has been different with coronavirus, which has killed more than 500,000 people in the United States. COVID-19 cases and deaths reached new heights in December and January, before beginning a recent decline.

Flu-related hospitalizations, however, are a small fraction of where they would stand during even a very mild season, said Brammer, who oversees the CDC's tracking of the virus.

Flu death data for the whole U.S. population is hard to compile quickly, but CDC officials keep a running count of deaths of children. One pediatric flu death has been reported so far this season, compared with 92 reported at the same point in last year’s flu season.

“Many parents will tell you that this year their kids have been as healthy as they’ve ever been, because they’re not swimming in the germ pool at school or day care the same way they were in prior years,” Mick said.

Some doctors say they have even stopped sending specimens for testing, because they don't think flu is present. Nevertheless, many labs are using a CDC-developed “multiplex test” that checks specimens for both the coronavirus and flu, Brammer said.

More than 190 million flu vaccine doses were distributed this season, but the number of infections is so low that it’s difficult for CDC to do its annual calculation of how well the vaccine is working, Brammer said. There’s simply not enough data, she said.

That also is challenging the planning of next season's flu vaccine. Such work usually starts with checking which flu strains are circulating around the world and predicting which of them will likely predominate in the year ahead.

"But there's not a lot of (flu) viruses to look at," Brammer said.
 
How long has the past year felt? This was one year ago today:

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Health Canada approves use of AstraZeneca vaccine

Canada's regulator estimates vaccine efficacy to be 62.1%
CBC News · Posted: Feb 26, 2021 8:06 AM ET | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago

virus-outbreak-brazil.jpg

A health worker shows a vial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for COVID-19 being used during a priority vaccination program for the elderly at a vaccination centre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on Feb. 1. (Silvia Izquierdo/The Associated Press)

Health Canada has approved use of the COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca, clearing the way for millions of more inoculations in Canada.

Canada's regulatory experts had been assessing the submission from AstraZeneca and Oxford University for safety and efficacy since October, and announced their approval this morning.
More...

"AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine is indicated for active immunization of individuals 18 years of age and older for the prevention of coronavirus disease 2019," reads their website.

"The efficacy of the vaccine was estimated to be 62.1 per cent. Overall, there are no important safety concerns and the vaccine was well tolerated by participants."
Canada has secured access to 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Earlier this week, Dr. Supriya Sharma, Health Canada's chief medical adviser, told the House of Commons health committee that the regulator has received all the necessary scientific information from the company but was still looking into questions about labelling and the product monograph — the information disseminated by Health Canada to medical professionals about how and when a vaccine should be administered and in what groups.

Health Canada has approved the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are already being rolled out in Canada.

Unlike those two shots, which are based on mRNA technology, the AstraZeneca uses a more conventional viral vector load vaccine technology.

Other countries — notably Australia, the European Union and the United Kingdom — have already authorized AstraZeneca for use in their jurisdictions.
wrbtrader
 
More COVID re-infection examples - this time in nursing homes.

CDC study finds nursing home residents who appear to have recovered from Covid were reinfected with an even worse case
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/25/cdc...were-reinfected-with-worse-case-of-covid.html
  • A new CDC study published Thursday suggests some people may be susceptible to reinfection from the coronavirus and could have worse outcomes following their second infection.
  • Reinfection means that a person was infected with the virus, recovered and then later became infected again, though it’s thought to be rare, according to the CDC.
  • The new study found five nursing home residents tested positive during two separate outbreaks with multiple negative tests in between, suggesting they were reinfected with the virus.
A new CDC study found that some elderly people who apparently recovered from the coronavirus later came down with a second, even worse case — indicating that asymptomatic or mild cases may not provide a lot of protection against becoming reinfected with Covid-19.

The study, published Thursday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, studied two separate outbreaks that occurred three months apart at a skilled nursing facility in Kentucky. Between mid-July and mid-August, 20 residents and five health-care personnel tested positive for the virus, according to the study.

The second outbreak, between late October and the beginning of December, was worse — 85 residents and 43 health-care personnel tested positive for the virus. Among the residents who tested positive during the first outbreak and were still living in the facility, five of them tested positive a second time more than 90 days after their first positive test.

Though Covid-19 reinfections do happen, they are generally rare.

Through frequent surveillance after the first outbreak, all five residents had at least four negative tests between outbreaks, suggesting they were potentially reinfected with the virus later on, the study found. Reinfection means that a person who had Covid-19 recovered and then got it again, according to the CDC.

“The exposure history, including the timing of roommates’ infections and the new onset of symptoms during the second outbreak, suggest that the second positive RT-PCR results represented new infections after the patients apparently cleared the first infection,” wrote Alyson Cavanaugh, one of the researchers who led the study.

While only two of the five residents experienced slight symptoms during the first outbreak, all five potentially reinfected residents showed signs of illness the second time. The two residents who reported symptoms during the first outbreak “experienced more severe symptoms during the second infectious episode,” according to the study. One resident was hospitalized and subsequently died.

According to the study’s researchers, this was “noteworthy” because it suggests the possibility that people who show mild to no symptoms during their first infections “do not produce a sufficiently robust immune response to prevent reinfection.” The results “suggest the possibility that disease can be more severe during a second infection.”

“The findings of this study highlight the importance of maintaining public health mitigation and protection strategies that reduce transmission risk, even among persons with a history of COVID-19 infection,” Cavanaugh wrote.

The study noted some limitations. Because specimens were not stored, researchers couldn’t conduct genomic sequencing, a laboratory technique that breaks down the virus’s genetic code, to confirm reinfection, researchers said. Also, “no additional test results exist to support the initial test result as a true positive” during the first outbreak, they said.

It’s thought that the risk of reinfection for the general population is still low, but nursing home residents may be particularly at risk given their congregate living and high number of exposures, according to the study.

“Skilled nursing facilities should use strategies to reduce the risk for SARS-CoV-2 transmission among all residents, including among those who have previously had a COVID-19 diagnosis,” Cavanaugh wrote.
 
Looks like Japan is all butthurt about China's new COVID testing method...

Tokyo asks China to stop anal swab tests for COVID-19 on Japanese citizens
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-japan-idUSKCN2AT21Q

Tokyo has requested Beijing to stop taking anal swab tests for COVID-19 on Japanese citizens as the procedure causes psychological pain, a government spokesman said on Monday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said the government has not received a response that Beijing would change the testing procedure, so Japan would continue to ask China to alter the way of testing.

“Some Japanese reported to our embassy in China that they received anal swab tests, which caused a great psychologial pain,” Kato told a news conference.

It was not known how many Japanese citizens received such tests for the coronavirus, he said.

Some Chinese cities are using samples taken from the anus to detect potential COVID-19 infections as China steps up screening to make sure no potential carrier of the new coronavirus is missed.

China’s foreign ministry denied last month that U.S. diplomats in the country had been required to take anal swab tests for COVID-19, following media reports that some had complained about the procedure.
 
I think that out of an abundance of caution and to be responsive to the concerns expressed by the Chicago Teachers Union, we should tell them that anal swabs of teachers will be required upon their arrival each day.

Sure, it is an extra step but it lets them know that we have heard their concerns and are taking action.

:cool:
 
TreeFrogTrader said:
I think that out of an abundance of caution and to be responsive to the concerns expressed by the Chicago Teachers Union, we should tell them that anal swabs of teachers will be required upon their arrival each day.

Sure, it is an extra step but it lets them know that we have heard their concerns and are taking action.

:cool:
More...

TreeFrogTrader, Tsing Tao and CPAC attendees have agreed to provide anal swabs for educators....

fark_XID3tctuP5ywSzuVvscnSfjKu-4.jpg



:)
 
WHO: 'Premature,' 'unrealistic' COVID-19 will end soon
https://www.wral.com/who-premature-unrealistic-covid-19-will-end-soon/19552556/

A senior World Health Organization official said Monday it was “premature” and “unrealistic” to think the pandemic might be stopped by the end of the year, but that the recent arrival of effective vaccines could at least help dramatically reduce hospitalizations and death.

The world’s singular focus right now should be to keep transmission of COVID-19 as low as possible, said Dr. Michael Ryan, director of WHO's emergencies program.

“If we’re smart, we can finish with the hospitalizations and the deaths and the tragedy associated with this pandemic” by the end of the year, he said at media briefing.

Ryan said WHO was reassured by emerging data that many of the licensed vaccines appear to be helping curb the virus' explosive spread.

“If the vaccines begin to impact not only on death and not only on hospitalization, but have a significant impact on transmission dynamics and transmission risk, then I believe we will accelerate toward controlling this pandemic.”

But Ryan warned against complacency, saying that nothing was guaranteed in an evolving epidemic.

“Right now the virus is very much in control," he said.

WHO's director-general, meanwhile, said it was “regrettable” that younger and healthier adults in some rich countries are being vaccinated against the coronavirus before at-risk health workers in developing countries.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said immunizations provided by the U.N.-backed effort COVAX began this week in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, but lamented that this was happening only three months after countries such as Britain, the U.S. and Canada began vaccinating their own populations.

“Countries are not in a race with each other,” he said. “This is a common race against the virus. We are not asking countries to put their own people at risk. We are asking all countries to be part of a global effort to suppress the virus everywhere.”

But WHO stopped short of criticizing countries who are moving to vaccinate younger and healthier populations instead of donating their doses to countries that haven't yet been able to protect their most vulnerable people.

“We can't tell individual countries what to do,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior WHO adviser.

Tedros also noted that for the first time in seven weeks, the number of COVID-19 cases increased last week, after six consecutive weeks of declining numbers. He described the increase as “disappointing,” but said it wasn't surprising.

Tedros said WHO was working to better understand why cases increased, but that part of that spike appeared to be due to the “relaxing of public health measures.”
 
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