In the wake of a large outbreak of COVID-19 in northwestern Saskatchewan — the most serious of any Indigenous community in Canada — health officials and local leaders are relying on what they learned during the three-month ordeal to plan for potential outbreaks in other remote, rural areas.
"When it first hit us, we were basically clueless of how to contain this," said Chief Teddy Clark of the Clearwater River Dene Nation (CRDN), 600 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.
But now, given what he's learned, Clark said he feels "a little bit at ease" that he'd be ready for a surge in cases.
https://www.cbc.ca/n...unity-lessons-1.
Two First Nations in northern B.C. confirmed 27 new cases of COVID-19 last week, and reported the death of an elder due to the disease.
Aileen Prince, chief of the Nak'azdli Whut'en First Nation near Fort St. James, confirmed 13 active cases on Friday, nearly double the number of active cases from the previous week.
On the same day, the Witset First Nation near Smithers confirmed 14 new cases.
The elder who died was a woman from the Nak'azdli Whut'en First Nation.
https://www.cbc.ca/n...tions-1.57422775 cases of COVID-19 linked to outbreak at Kelowna church
Anyone who attended services on Sept. 20 is being told to self-isolate until Oct. 4
https://www.cbc.ca/n...hurch-1.5742585COVID-19 in Canada will get worse before it gets better, experts say, and here's why
https://www.cbc.ca/n...umber-1.5742535Nine in 10 recovered COVID-19 patients experience side effects: South Korean study
https://www.channeln...ffects-13160000Students used their mobile phones for over 8 hours a day during lockdown
https://www.alphagal...y/ItemId/197844special issue of Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B all about COVID-19
https://www.alphagal...y/ItemId/197814دراسة صينية: حليب الأم قد يكون وقائيا ضد فيروس كورونا حتى دون وجود أجسام مضادة ضد المرضchinese study says breast milk protects against coronavirus even without the presence of antibodies
https://arabic.rt.co...مضادة-ضد-المرض/Pandemic sets off future wave of worsening mental health issues
Worry, fear of COVID-19 amplifies risk of substance abuse
https://www.eurekale...h-pso092820.phpCovid-19: Social distancing is more effective than travel bans
Travel bans will delay the peak of infection with days, while social distancing has a much stronger impact, amounting in up to 4 weeks delay, scientists report.
https://www.sdu.dk/e.../20_09_28_covidhttps://www.scienced...00928125020.htmFor researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), understanding viral infection is a matter of mathematics rather than a purely molecular analysis. They are using an advanced mathematical tool called hypergraphs to identify how human cells respond to viral infection, including the new coronavirus. The key proteins participating in that response might be targets for developing medicines to treat COVID-19.
PNNL mathematician Emilie Purvine and computational biologist Jason McDermott recently presented their work virtually at the Association for Computing Machinery's SIGKDD (Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining), an annual conference for data mining, data science, and analytics.
*snip*
He and his colleagues identify relationships between two molecules at a time. Then they categorize connections between many separate interactions. Those connections quickly tangle into complex graphs representing molecular networks that keep cells functioning.
The researchers analyze the structure and shape of those graphs, looking for meaningful patterns that indicate molecular components with key roles. Centrality, or when one molecule has many connections to others, is one type of pattern.
The entire structure of a graph is another meaningful pattern. Some central connections act like bridges to keep information flowing between different parts of the network. Genes or proteins involved in these "betweenness" connections likely keep an entire cell functioning properly.
Hypergraphs represent a potential leap forward. Instead of representing connections between individual components, hypergraphs show relationships among groups of things. Since biological networks operate through molecular groups, scientists believe hypergraphs could represent their structure more realistically than standard graphs.
https://phys.org/new...complexity.html Bahar and her team created a computer model of the interaction between the SARS-CoV-2 viral spike protein and the receptors on human T cells, the foot soldiers of the immune system. Under normal circumstances, T cells help the body fight off infection, but when these cells are activated in abnormally large quantities, as is the case with superantigens, they produce massive amounts of inflammatory cytokines--small proteins involved in immune system signaling--in what's known as a "cytokine storm."
Using this computer model, the team was able to see that a specific region on the spike protein with superantigenic features interacts with T cells. Then, they compared this region to a bacterial protein that causes toxic shock syndrome and found striking similarities in both sequence and structure. Importantly, the proposed SARS-CoV-2 superantigen showed a high affinity for binding T cell receptors--the first step toward touching off a runaway immune response.
"Everything came one after another, each time a huge surprise. The pieces of the puzzle ended up fitting extremely well," said Bahar, co-senior author on the study.
By finding protein-level similarities between SARS-CoV-2 and the bacterial structure that causes toxic shock syndrome, the researchers said they may have opened up new avenues for treating not only MIS-C patients, but also adults with COVID-19 infection experiencing cytokine storm.
https://www.eurekale...p-cms092820.phpWHO, partners to roll out 120 mln rapid COVID-19 tests to low- and middle-income countries
http://www.ecns.cn/n...pz4255432.shtml20 sentenced for illegal border crossing during COVID-19 in SW China’s Yunnan
https://www.globalti...t/1202312.shtmltoday's "umm... what?" story
A Romanian mayor who died from coronavirus complications has secured a landslide victory in local elections.
Ion Aliman won a third term as mayor of Deveselu, a village in southern Romania, securing 64% of the vote.
Officials said his name was already printed on ballots and could not be removed after he died in the capital, Bucharest, on 15 September.
Another election will be held, officials told Reuters, but locals have visited his grave to pay respects.
A video on social media shows a large group of villagers gathering around Mr Aliman's tombstone.
"It is your victory," one man can be heard saying in the video.
"He was a real mayor to us," another woman told local outlet ProTV, Reuters reported. "He took the side of the village, respected all the laws. I don't think we will see a mayor like him again."
https://www.bbc.com/...europe-54318499Putin, new Japanese PM discuss cooperation in creating coronavirus vaccine
https://tass.com/politics/1206421 On 28 September, Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone conversation with his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, announced his readiness to visit the country after getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is considering inoculating against COVID-19, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said in a statement.
"Naturally, in the case of the head of state, special precautions are taken. He has already stated that he is thinking about the vaccination. Therefore, let's wait until he makes such a decision", Peskov suggested, answering a question from journalists about the Russian president potentially getting vaccinated.
https://sputniknews....9-kremlin-says/ Iran was one of the first countries to open its economy back up to avoid bankruptcy and economic catastrophe, and, predictably, by mid-May fatalities were climbing back up. The second wave has so far proven more deadly than the first. The contrast with neighboring Turkey, which has very similar health indicators to Iran (in 2019 life expectancy was 77 years in Turkey vs 76 in Iran and their HDI values were, respectively, 0.81. and 0.80), is instructive. It provides a rough idea of the human cost of the sanctions. Assuming that Iran could have followed the path of Turkey after mid-May, when the fatality rates of the two countries started to diverge, about 13,000 deaths might have been avoided. Given that Iran had shown that it can flatten the curve like other countries by shutting down the economy, it is not entirely unrealistic to conclude that had sanctions eased when the pandemic hit Iran, thousands of Iranian lives could have been saved.
Many critics of the Islamic Republic insist that Iran is hiding the real coronavirus death toll. If that is the case, the 13,000 death toll from sanctions is an under-estimate. Interestingly, Iran’s own death registration data (link in Persian) confirm the undercounting of fatalities due to COVID-19. Estimates based on the number of excess deaths during the winter and spring quarters of this year compared to the same quarters in the preceding two years are 4,800 and 19,300, for a total of 25,100 excess deaths. During the same period Iran reported 9,392 fatalities to WHO (the data depicted in the above graph). Extrapolation based on this difference (2.7 times) jives well with the higher number of deaths in a leaked document, which led the BBC to decry a coverup. If Iran was trying to cover up its deaths due to coronavirus, it was doing it very badly.
https://www.brooking...s-and-covid-19/Public mourning processions of Arbaeen, 40th day after martyrdom of Imam Hussein (AS) is banned in Tehran due to the pandemic infection and warning of a third wave of the novel coronavirus in the Iranian capital.
https://en.abna24.co...us_1074271.htmlأعلنت السعودية، الثلاثاء، عن إجراءات احترازية ستتبعها مع بدء السماح بأداء العمرة تدريجيا؛ لمنع تفشي فيروس كورونا، ومنها منع الوصول إلى الكعبة والحجر الأسود.
وذكرت وكالة الأنباء السعودية الرسمية أن تلك الإجراءات تشمل منع الوصول إلى الكعبة المشرفة، والحجر الأسود، مشيرة إلى أن الطواف سيكون من خارج الحاجز الموجود حاليا.
وأضافت أنها تشمل كذلك تعقيم المسجد الحرام 10 مرات يوميا، وتعقيمه قبل دخول كل فوج إليه، وبعد خروجه منه.
كما سيتم، حسب الوكالة، توزيع ماء زمزم على المعتمرين في عبوات مغلفة حفاظا على سلامتهم.saudi arabia announced new precautionary measures for umrah (pilgrimage to mecca not occurring during the month of hajj), such as restricting access to the kaaba & foundation stone, requiring the pilgrims to do their circumambulation outside a barrier, sanitizing the grand mosque 10 times/day and after every batch of pilgrims leaves, and water from the zamzam well will be packaged for people's protection
https://www.alsumari...زية-لمنع-تفشي-فOver 30 UK universities report COVID-19 cases
http://www.ecns.cn/n...pz4255396.shtmlUSDA funds $1 mln research project studying COVID-19 in US beef supply chain
https://www.globalti...t/1202212.shtml A retired Air Force veteran in Arizona who voted for President Trump in the 2016 election announced on Monday that he will be casting his vote for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in November after the man’s wife died of complications from COVID-19.
Dave Dahlstrom, a self-proclaimed lifelong conservative, told ABC’s Phoenix affiliate station, KNXV, that Trump and other top officials downplaying the threat of the virus after it first hit the United States earlier this year caused deaths and hardships that could have been prevented.
"Our leadership really failed the American people, and they failed my family, and they failed our friends,” he said. “I’m really bothered by all of that."
https://thehill.com/...iden-after-wifeLess Than Half of Americans Say They Would Get Covid-19 Vaccine if You PAID Them $100 to Take It
https://www.mediaite...100-to-take-it/ The largest nurses’ union in the U.S. revealed Monday that the federal government’s failure to track and report data on Covid-19 deaths has led to the deaths of at least 1,700 healthcare workers while leaving medical facilities with little incentive “to avoid becoming zones of infection.”
In its report, “Sins of Omission: How Government Failures to Track Covid-19 Data Have Led to More Than 1,700 Healthcare Worker Deaths and Jeopardize Public Health,” National Nurses United lists the names of at least 213 registered nurses who have died of complications from Covid-19.
The nurses are among 1,718 healthcare workers who have died, including 448 who worked in hospital settings.
https://www.rawstory...n-report-shows/ In a surprise announcement Friday afternoon, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis released a new executive order saying that the state will be immediately moving into Phase Three of its reopening plans, which allows restaurants and bars to operate at full capacity, along with virtually every other business. But Miami-Dade County, the hardest-hit county in the state for COVID-19 infections, is still enforcing its own set of protocols.
Nightclubs and bars can reopen in Miami-Dade County, but there will be limits. The “50 percent capacity limits for restaurants will remain in place as a minimum, with the expansion of more than 50 percent capacity allowed for restaurants and other venues that can accommodate more tables while also keeping a 6-foot separation between tables,” according to an announcement from Mayor Carlos Gimenez that was approved by the governor. Restaurants can reach 100 percent capacity by offering socially distant seating outdoors, but no more than 6 people can be seated per table or up to ten per household.
If the restaurant doesn’t have enough space to allow for 50 percent capacity while being socially distant and keeping tables 6-feet apart, they are now allowed to set tables closer together to reach 50 percent threshold and don’t have to abide by the 6-foot rule.
As for bars and nightclubs, bars that only have counter service will be allowed to reach 50 percent capacity with seating that is separated at the bar as “far as possible” while allowing for a minimum of 50 percent capacity. And nightclubs that offer dancing must require that masks be worn on the dance floor, and all food and beverage consumption may only be allowed at tables.
https://miami.eater....-lifted-covid19