"On
the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the
time.”
George
Orwell.
Covid-19 Corner This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Tokyo Emergency Mulled; Thailand Sees
Record Cases: Virus Update Bloomberg News January
3, 2021, 11:08 PM GMT Updated on January 4, 2021, 5:12 AM GMT
Global
coronavirus infections climbed above 85 million, after daily cases in the U.S.
soared to a record of nearly 300,000 after the New Year holiday.
Japan’s prime minister is considering another state of emergency for the Tokyo
area, with cases at records and a vaccine rollout more than a month away.
Thailand imposed fresh curbs amid record infections.
China’s foreign minister said outbreaks outside the country
may have caused the pandemic, as scrutiny grows over the pathogen’s origins.
The U.K. is poised to give the first shots of AstraZeneca’s vaccine
on Monday, in a race against a faster-spreading variant that’s prompted
lockdowns across the country. India granted emergency approval for the Astra
shot. Anthony Fauci said the U.S.’s vaccine rollout is picking up speed after a slow start.
Key Developments:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-03/fauci-upbeat-on-vaccine-rollout-n-y-cases-slow-virus-update?srnd=coronavirus
Mexican doctor hospitalized after
receiving COVID-19 vaccine January 2, 20214:14 PM
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican
authorities said they are studying the case of a 32-year-old female doctor who
was hospitalized after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
The doctor, whose name has not been
released, was admitted to the intensive care unit of a public hospital in the
northern state of Nuevo Leon after she experienced seizures, difficulty
breathing and a skin rash.
“The initial diagnosis is
encephalomyelitis,” the Health Ministry said in a statement released on Friday
night. Encephalomyelitis is an inflammation of the brain and spinal cord.
The ministry added that the doctor
has a history of allergic reactions and said that there is no evidence from
clinical trials that anyone has developed an inflammation of the brain after
the vaccine’s application.
Pfizer and BioNTech could not
immediately be reached for comment.
More than 126,500 people have died
from COVID-19 in Mexico. The country began distributing the first round of
COVID-19 vaccines to healthcare workers on Dec. 24.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-mexico-vaccines/mexican-doctor-hospitalized-after-receiving-covid-19-vaccine-idUKKBN2970H3
Ministry of Health and Wellness
approves Ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment Vejea Alvarez December 22, 2020
The drug Ivermectin has been approved by Belize’s
Ministry of Health as a treatment option for persons with Covid-19.
According to the Acting Director of Health Services, Dr Melissa Diaz-Musa the
drug can only be obtained with a prescription. She explained to Love News
what spurred the ministry’s approval of the drug.
The drug Ivermectin has been
approved by Belize’s Ministry of Health as a treatment option for persons with
Covid-19. According to the Acting Director of Health Services, Dr Melissa
Diaz-Musa the drug can only be obtained with a prescription. She
explained to Love News what spurred the ministry’s approval of the drug.
Dr. Melissa Diaz-Musa, Acting
Director of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Wellness: “To clarify it’s an anti-parasitic
drug. It’s a medication that’s been used safely in humans and animals alike for
many years. In the 1980’s Ivermectin actually won the Nobel Peace Prize for its
use as an anti-parasitic in developing nations so that speaks a lot about it’s
safety profile as well. Over the last few months as you know many countries
researchers have been trying to look for medications that can help to reduce
viral replication or look for a cure and we do know that this has not been
established as yet there is no known cure.
But the medical response team along
with our Ministry of Health team here we sat down and we revised the research
papers, all the articles, everything that we could to look at Ivermectin and
its use in other countries and its use in protocols in other countries and we
found that it had significant evidence that it has been beneficial in reducing
the viral replication – so the multiplication of the virus in your body and
some studies have also shown that it has helped with prophylaxis as well.
So when we look at the pros and cons
with using Ivermectin a decision was made to put it on our protocols for many
reasons. It has a significantly high safety profile, it is effective, it is
accessible and it is cost effective as well. So when you look at the flip side
of not adding it, when you look at a drug like this that you know some
protocols in the US and in developing countries have it in place and these
protocols the one in the US is a group of critical care physicians who have
sent out protocols that are being used all over the world now and they have it
in their protocol as a drug to mange COVID. Ivermectin in the research that we
have done has shown that it helps to reduce the virus multiplying in your
system so once it enters your nasal tract or your mouth or your eyes it gets
into your system and in some people it multiplies significantly and in other
people it doesn’t. So the mode of action basically it reduces the viral
replication so it helps to reduce the severity of the virus. So it’s not a
wonder drug, it has shown to help.
We do know that countries have had
Ivermectin in their protocols like Peru, Brazil and they still do have a high
mortality and morbidity in their population but because when we look at the
safety profile the cost effectiveness, the data, the evidence that it has on it
it’s basically looking at the risks versus benefits and the decision was then
made that it would have more benefits.”
More
https://lovefm.com/ministry-of-health-and-wellness-approves-ivermectin-as-a-covid-19-treatment/
The Mutated Virus Is a Ticking
Time Bomb There is much we don’t know about the new COVID-19
variant—but everything we know so far suggests a huge danger.
Zeynep Tufekci December 31, 2020 A new variant of the
coronavirus is spreading across the globe. It was first identified in the
United Kingdom, where it is rapidly spreading, and has been found in multiple
countries. Viruses mutate all the time, often with no impact, but this one
appears to be more transmissible than other variants—meaning it spreads more
easily. Barely one day after officials announced that America’s first case of
the variant had been found in the United States, in a Colorado man with no
history of travel, an additional case was found in California. There are still many unknowns, but much concern has focused
on whether this new variant would throw off vaccine efficacy or cause more
severe disease—with some degree of relief after an initial study indicated
that it did not do either . And while we need more data to feel truly
reassured, many scientists believe that this variant will
not decrease vaccine efficacy much , if at all. Health officials have
started emphasizing
the lack
of evidence for more severe disease .
All good and no cause for alarm, right? Wrong.
A more transmissible variant of COVID-19 is a potential
catastrophe in and of itself. If anything, given the stage in the pandemic we
are at, a more transmissible variant is in some ways much more dangerous than a
more severe variant. That’s because higher transmissibility subjects us to a
more contagious virus spreading with exponential growth, whereas the risk from
increased severity would have increased in a linear manner, affecting only
those infected.
----To understand the
difference between exponential and linear risks, consider an example put forth by Adam Kucharski, a professor
at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine who focuses on
mathematical analyses of infectious-disease outbreaks. Kucharski compares a 50
percent increase in virus lethality to a 50 percent increase in virus
transmissibility. Take a virus reproduction rate of about 1.1 and an infection
fatality risk of 0.8 percent and imagine 10,000 active infections—a plausible
scenario for many European cities, as Kucharski notes. As things stand, with
those numbers, we’d expect 129 deaths in a month. If the fatality rate
increased by 50 percent, that would lead to 193 deaths. In contrast, a 50
percent increase in transmissibility would lead to a whopping 978 deaths in
just one month—assuming, in both scenarios, a six-day infection-generation
time. More https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/12/virus-mutation-catastrophe/617531/ Next, some vaccine links
kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most
informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World
Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines . https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY
Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker . https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford
Website . https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
Regulatory
Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker . https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
https://rt.live/
Covid19info.live
https://wuflu.live/
Centers for Disease Control
Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The Spectator
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported.
Graphene-based electrochemical
sensor can detect COVID-19 in less than five minutes University of Illinois researchers have used graphene to
develop a rapid, ultrasensitive test using a paper-based electrochemical sensor
that can detect the presence of the virus in less than five minutes.
“Currently, we are experiencing a
once-in-a-century life-changing event,” said bioengineering graduate student
and co-leader of the study, Maha Alafeef. “We are responding to this global
need from a holistic approach by developing multidisciplinary tools for early
detection and diagnosis and treatment for SARS-CoV-2.”
There are two broad categories of
COVID-19 tests on the market. The first category uses reverse transcriptase
real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and nucleic acid hybridization
strategies to identify viral RNA. Current FDA-approved diagnostic tests use
this technique. Some drawbacks include the amount of time it takes to complete
the test, the need for specialized personnel and the availability of equipment
and reagents. The second category of tests focuses on the detection of
antibodies. However, there could be a delay of a few days to a few weeks after
a person has been exposed to the virus for them to produce detectable
antibodies.
In recent years, researchers have
had some success with creating point-of-care biosensors using 2D nanomaterials
such as graphene to detect diseases. The main advantages of graphene-based
biosensors are their sensitivity, low cost of production and rapid detection
turnaround. “The discovery of graphene opened up a new era of sensor
development due to its properties. Graphene exhibits unique mechanical and
electrochemical properties that make it ideal for the development of sensitive
electrochemical sensors,” said Alafeef. The team created a graphene-based
electrochemical biosensor with an electrical read-out setup to selectively
detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material.
There are two components to this
biosensor: a platform to measure an electrical read-out and probes to detect
the presence of viral RNA. To create the platform, researchers first coated
filter paper with a layer of graphene nanoplatelets to create a conductive
film. Then, they placed a gold electrode with a predefined design on top of the
graphene as a contact pad for electrical readout. Both gold and graphene have
high sensitivity and conductivity which makes this platform ultrasensitive to
detect changes in electrical signals.
Current RNA-based COVID-19 tests
screen for the presence of the N-gene (nucleocapsid phosphoprotein) on the
SARS-CoV-2 virus. In this research, the team designed antisense oligonucleotide
(ASOs) probes to target two regions of the N-gene. Targeting two regions
ensures the reliability of the senor in case one region undergoes gene
mutation. Furthermore, gold nanoparticles (AuNP) are capped with these
single-stranded nucleic acids (ssDNA), which represents an ultra-sensitive
sensing probe for the SARS-CoV-2 RNA.
The researchers previously showed
the sensitivity of the developed sensing probes in their earlier work. The
hybridization of the viral RNA with these probes causes a change in the sensor
electrical response. The AuNP caps accelerate the electron transfer and when
broadcasted over the sensing platform, results in an increase in the output
signal and indicates the presence of the virus.
The team tested the performance of
this sensor by using COVID-19 positive and negative samples. The sensor showed
a significant increase in the voltage of positive samples compared to the
negative ones and confirmed the presence of viral genetic material in less than
five minutes. Furthermore, the sensor was able to differentiate viral RNA loads
in these samples. Viral load is an important quantitative indicator of the
progress of infection and a challenge to measure using existing diagnostic
methods.
This platform has far-reaching
applications due to its portability and low cost. The sensor, when integrated
with microcontrollers and LED screens or with a smartphone via Bluetooth or
wifi, could be used at the point-of-care in a doctor's office or even at home.
Beyond COVID-19, the research team also foresees the system to be adaptable for
the detection of many different diseases.
Source: ACS Nano
bioengineering.illinois.edu
https://www.graphene-info.com/graphene-based-electrochemical-sensor-can-detect-covid-19-less-five-minutes
Every
generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before
it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
George Orwell.
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