In a Sunday release, Island Health has declared an outbreak at the Victoria Chinatown Care Centre long-term care home.
To date, two cases of COVID-19 have been identified within the care home.
All thirty one residents as well as staff are being tested for COVID-19. Communication with residents, family and staff is ongoing.
https://www.victoria...ntown-victoria/
A Vancouver paramedic with more than 30 years experience says she is disheartened and on the verge of quitting after the protests against mandatory COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine passports that took place Wednesday outside hospitals across the country.
The paramedic, whose identity CBC has agreed to keep confidential because she fears she could lose her job, says it was an emergency call during the protests that pushed her to the edge.
"I watched someone start to bleed to death when they didn't have to, when time would have made all the difference in the world," she said. "That was my last straw."
The paramedic and her team had picked up the patient — who had been critically injured in an industrial accident and had an arterial bleed — from a site on Vancouver's waterfront.
They headed to St. Paul's Hospital in downtown Vancouver. But a trip that would have normally taken around eight minutes took more than twice as long due to traffic.
"When we did finally get to St. Paul's, there were protesters blocking the driveway — they've got signs and they're yelling. So it's the first we knew about anything going on," she said.
https://www.cbc.ca/n...tests-1.6164508
Dr. Alex Wong, an infectious diseases doctor at Regina General Hospital, says the current state of COVID-19 in Saskatchewan is, in a word, "bad."
"We're on the exact same trajectory as Alberta, you know, and we have less restrictions than Alberta, and our critical care capacity is obviously already maxed out," Wong said.
"We don't expect anything is going to change dramatically over the next ... two or three weeks unless there are very significant measures put in place."
That means going further than the restrictions announced by the province last week, which included bringing back a mandatory mask mandate and introducing a proof-of-vaccination policy.
https://www.cbc.ca/n...-down-1.6182367
A microsimulation study found that mortality burden of the COVID-19 pandemic may be far greater than death statistics suggest. The researchers found that the pandemic cut aggregate U.S. life expectancy by more than 9 million years, with Black and Hispanic persons losing more than twice as many quality adjusted life years (QALY) per capita compared to their White peers. The findings are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
https://medicalxpres...ife-people.html
Lugano, Switzerland, 20 September 2021 – The long-awaited confirmation of the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccination in patients with cancer has arrived, on time to be disseminated to a global audience at the annual congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO Congress 2021), the leading professional society for medical oncology. With a multitude of studies supporting similar conclusions still to be presented (tomorrow), new research revealed today that individuals with cancer have an appropriate, protective immune response to vaccination without experiencing any more side-effects than the general population. Indirect evidence suggests that a third “booster” shot could further increase the level of protection among this patient population.
As patients with cancer were excluded from the clinical trials conducted to develop the vaccines and support their authorisation for use, the questions of whether the vaccines are safe in this vulnerable population and whether they provide adequate protection against severe forms of COVID-19 to individuals whose immune system may be weakened by various anticancer medicines had until now been left open.
“The ESMO annual congress, held for the second time in a virtual format this year in an extra effort to protect our colleagues, has devoted significan efforst to making COVID-19 a priority,” said ESMO Chief Medical Officer George Pentheroudakis. “The fact that we have received more than 90 abstracts on the topic, with excellent data, is a clear demonstration that this was the right thing to do.”
https://www.alphagal...y/ItemId/212735
The researchers studied bats from four different limestone caves in Laos with coronaviruses that featured incredible similarities to Sars-CoV-2. The discovery is a massive step in proving that COVID-19 originated in nature and not in a lab.
A research team in Laos has discovered a bat with a Sars-CoV-2-like receptor-binding domain allowing ACE2-mediated entry into human cells.
While the team did not find SARS-CoV-2 in any of the bats, they found coronaviruses that were small mutations away from it.
"Sequences very close to those of the early strains of SARS-CoV-2 responsible for the pandemic exist in nature, and are found in several Rhinolophus bat species,” the authors wrote.
The study does not completely rule out the lab leak theory, but it does add further evidence that SARS-CoV-2 originated in nature. The idea that a ‘smoking bat’ with SARS-CoV-2 will be found remains a popular idea, but scientists have always cautioned against that line of thinking.
https://sputniknews....1089252795.html
study of the day
In a recent prospective clinical study, published in “Frontiers of Immunology” (the 5th most cited journal in Immunology and the most cited open-access journal in Immunology), an interdisciplinary team of immunologists, mathematicians, and clinicians from Belgium and Russia has identified a set of prediction markers which can be used to define the COVID-19 severity at the day of patient admission to the hospital. First author dr. Olga Krysko (Ghent University): “The advantage of these identified markers is that these markers can be easily measured in most conventional clinical laboratories worldwide, making this prediction analysis accessible for many hospitals wordwide.”
Artificial intelligence analysis
The prospective study analyzed 30 moderate and 30 severe COVID-19 patients and 17 healthy controls. Based on artificial intelligence analysis, eight parameters in blood serum (creatinine, glucose, monocyte number, fibrinogen, macrophage-derived cytokine, monokine induced by gamma interferon, C-reactive protein, and IL-6) have been shown to have a strong predictive value. Prof. dr. Dmitri Krysko (a co-senior author of the study from Ghent University): “This methodology allows to make a prediction with an accuracy of about 83 to 87% whether the patient will develop a severe disease. These results pave the way for the development of new prognostic criteria and markers for COVID-19 patients and will help in the management of COVID-19 patients. We have developed an online tool, which is available for clinicians to calculate and estimate the prognosis for a particular patient. By entering the values of eight parameters the risk of COVID-19 severe is automatically calculated.”
https://www.alphagal...y/ItemId/212736
https://www.frontier...021.715072/full
The survey findings revealed that women and socio-economically deprived participants are more likely to be hesitant or refusers. Moreover, a higher rate of vaccine hesitancy or refusal was observed among participants with lower educational backgrounds. Compared to administrative and non-clinical staff, who were mostly vaccine-hesitant, clinical staff, including nurses and medical assistants, exhibited a higher refusal rate. In contrast, vaccine acceptance behavior was mostly observed among physicians and related health professionals.
https://www.news-med...re-workers.aspx
Global Pandemic Caused Significant Surge in Demand For Black Bridal Dressers, Fashion Experts Say
https://sputniknews....1089254232.html
A gas station worker in the town of Idar-Oberstein, Rhineland-Palatinate, lost his life after a dispute with a customer over COVID-19 measures, police said Monday.
According to the police report, a 49-year-old man is suspected of having shot the gas station employee Saturday evening, over a mask-wearing requirement at the establishment.
https://www.dw.com/e...mask/a-59244387
WELLINGTON, Sept 21 (Reuters) - New Zealand on Friday announced higher fines of up to NZ$12,000 ($8,400) for individuals breaching coronavirus restrictions amid concerns that the current outbreak may spread beyond Auckland to other regions due to people breaking rules.
https://www.reuters....ers-2021-09-21/
According to Danish medical experts, the reasons to keep a large batch of unused vaccines are few, especially at a time when low-income countries are still struggling to get their vaccination programme started.
While Denmark currently has over 660,000 COVID shots from Johnson & Johnson in stock, the vaccine's future in the Scandinavian country is virtually non-existent, according to experts, who are calling for something to be done with them.
Unlike other vaccines, Johnson & Johnson has never been part of Denmark's inoculation programme, which is why experts are surprised the doses are still being kept. So far, merely 46,000 Danes have received the single-dose shot through a voluntary scheme, which is no longer available. To date, almost 76 percent of the Danish population has received at least one vaccine injection, which means that the pace of the rollout has slowed down, and the need for new doses - the first and second shots - has shrunk.
*snip*
According to Konradsen, once you get vaccines inside Denmark, it becomes complicated to pass them on.
“It's not just driving them to the airport, and then they move on. It requires an enormous amount of official and paperwork”, he said.
A major problem is that the international alliance Covax, which distributes vaccines to third world countries, will not accept them. Covax will only deliver directly from the individual manufacturer to the recipient country to ensure logistics and security.
https://sputniknews....1089260300.html
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro was pictured Sunday evening eating pizza in the streets of New York City after not being allowed into any local restaurant because he is not vaccinated against COVID-19.
The 66-year-old head of state is to take part in Tuesday's meeting at the United Nations General Assembly. In any case, his ordinary man life was worthy of a much wider press coverage than his meeting Monday morning with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
“Luxury dinner in New York,” joked on Twitter Brazil's Minister of the Secretariat of the Presidency, Luiz Eduardo Ramos, with a photo of Bolsonaro enjoying a slice of pizza with other members of his entourage. “Let's go for Pizza with Coca Cola,” Tourism Minister Gilson Machado wrote on Instagram.
It is customary that the President of Brazil delivers the opening speech at the UN General Assembly, although this time around Bolsonaro's participation was in doubt due to New York City health regulations which regarded UN's General Assembly amphitheatre as any other “convention centre” and therefore subject to local sanitary rules which call for proof of vaccination to let people through.
https://en.mercopres...of-un-s-meeting
В Аргентине анонсировали строительство завода про производству вакцины "Спутник V" с нуля
Argentina announced the construction of a plant for the production of the vaccine "Sputnik V" from scratch
https://ria.ru/20210...1751161061.html
Vietnam Signs Cuban COVID-19 Vaccine Supply Deal
The deal will see Vietnam purchase 10 million doses of the communist state’s homegrown Abdala vaccine.
https://thediplomat....ne-supply-deal/
Russia has fully overcome economic decline caused by pandemic — Putin
The Russian leader noted that industrial growth in January-July was 4.4%
https://tass.com/economy/1340639
Alabama’s Deaths Outpace Births for First Time in History
https://www.webmd.co...st-time-history
US population in 1918 was only ~103 million though
The Covid-19 pandemic has become the deadliest disease event in American history, with a death toll surpassing that of the 1918 Spanish flu.
The Spanish flu was previously the disease event that caused the biggest loss of life in the United States; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 675,000 Americans died during the 1918 pandemic, in waves of illness that stretched out over roughly two years in this country.
According to STAT’s Covid-19 Tracker, Covid deaths stand at more than 675,400.
https://www.statnews...erican-history/
https://www.rawstory...-than-1918-flu/
More than half (58%) of government employees support vaccine mandates at work, according to a survey conducted in August by experience management firm Qualtrics.
The percentage of government employees supporting vaccine mandates is on par with the 60% of American employees across all industries who support a vaccine mandate, and slightly lower than tech workers—75% of whom favor vaccine mandates. Among government employees surveyed, 11% said they would strongly consider leaving their jobs if forced to comply with a vaccination requirement, while 27% of tech employees and 23% of overall employees said the same.
https://www.nextgov....andates/185473/
The pandemic is taking even more of a toll on nurses than many realize. In a new survey, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses found that out of 6,000 critical care nurses surveyed, 66% have considered leaving their jobs because of the pandemic.
Sixty-seven percent are afraid of putting their family’s health at risk, and 92% believe the pandemic will shorten nurses’ careers. Of those surveyed, 76% believe patients who are unvaccinated undermine nurses’ physical and mental well-being.
"We know that nurses are leaving in record numbers now, but I was very troubled by these numbers,” Wathen says. “They should be concerning to everyone.”
The extent to which health care workers are suffering amid the pandemic has been highlighted by other research as well. A May study published in the journal EClinicalMedicine, for example, found that out of nearly 21,000 U.S. health care workers surveyed, 61% had significant fear of exposing themselves or their families to COVID-19.
Half the workers suffered from burnout, and 38% said they were dealing with anxiety or depression.
Nurses have always been a vulnerable group, long before COVID-19 filled the hospitals. One study found that, according to data from 2007 to 2018, women nurses in particular were at twice the risk of dying by suicide as women outside of health care.
“Nurses are feeling like we're at our breaking point. But I am surprised by how large and overwhelming the numbers are,” says Amanda Bettencourt, PhD, president-elect of the association. “I’ve never seen this number of nurses considering leaving our profession. This was the stress test for an already stressed system.”
https://www.webmd.co...tting-due-covid
Edited by amor de cosmos, 21 September 2021 - 07:50 AM.
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