COVID19

By Vikas Pandey - On Monday, a senior official from India's federal government told journalists that there was no shortage of oxygen in Delhi or anywhere else in the country. As he spoke, several small hospitals - only a few miles from where he stood in the capital - were sending out desperate messages about them running out of oxygen, putting patients' lives at risk. The chief doctor of one of the hospitals - a specialist paediatric facility - told the BBC that "our hearts were in our mouths" because of the risk of children dying. They got supplies just in time, after a local politician intervened. And yet, the federal government has repeatedly insisted that there was no shortage. "We are only facing problems in its transportation," Piyush Goyal, a senior official from India's ho...

CNBC- Pfizer’s experimental oral drug to treat COVID-19 at the first sign of illness could be available by the end of the year, CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC. The company, which developed the first authorized COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. with German drugmaker BioNTech, began in March an early stage clinical trial testing a new antiviral therapy for the disease. The drug is part of a class of medicines called protease inhibitors and works by inhibiting an enzyme that the virus needs to replicate in human cells. Protease inhibitors are used to treat other viral pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis C. If clinical trials go well and the Food and Drug Administration approves it, the drug could be distributed across the U.S. by the end of the year, Bourla told CNBC’s “Squawk...

by Michael Safi They will be remembered as India’s lost months: the stretch between September and February when Covid-19 cases in the country defied global trends, falling sharply throughout the coldest months of the year until they reached four-figure daily totals. It was inexplicable. Was it the Indian climate? A protection conferred by childhood immunisations? Some speculated India may have naturally reached herd immunity. It was a tantalising idea that took hold in India’s highest circles of policymaking, media and science – even a government-commissioned study suggested herd immunity may indeed have been achieved. It would prove one of the most fatal miscalculations of the Covid-19 pandemic so far. Now, with daily cases crossing 360,000, and recorded deaths beyond 3,200 per ...

By Sandee LaMotte Have you recently had the single-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine? Get medical attention quickly if you suffer persistent, severe headaches, blurred vision, shortness of breath, chest pain, leg swelling, persistent abdominal pain or unusual bruising within three weeks of getting the J&J vaccine, the US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control said Monday in a new posting on its website. Those could be signs of an extremely rare, severe blood clotting syndrome that may be linked to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The risk appears greatest for women under the age of 50, the CDC said. "This adverse event is rare, occurring at a rate of about 7 per 1 million vaccinated women between 18 and 49 years old," the CDC wrote. "For women 50 y...

Reuters- India ordered its armed forces on Monday to help tackle surging new coronavirus infections, as nations including Britain, Germany and the United States pledged urgent medical aid to try to contain an emergency overwhelming the country’s hospitals. The situation in the world’s second most populous country is “beyond heartbreaking”, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that WHO is sending extra staff and supplies including oxygen concentrator devices. In a meeting with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat said oxygen would be sent to hospitals from armed forces reserves and retired medical military personnel would join COVID-19 health facilities. Where possible, military medical infrastructur...

By Heather Grey In December 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for two vaccines against COVID-19 — one produced by Pfizer and BioNTechTrusted Source, and one by ModernaTrusted Source. Now the FDA is reviewing another EUA request for a vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary company, Janssen Biotech. All these vaccines appear to have mostly mild side effects that over-the-counter pain relievers can treat. In rare cases, severe allergic reactions have been reported, but in all those cases, people were successfully treated. If the FDA finds that Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is safe and effective enough to distribute, that will drastically increase the stock of vaccine doses in the country. “We ...

The current evidence on the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients is inconclusive. Until more data is available, WHO recommends that the drug only be used within clinical trials. This recommendation, which applies to patients with COVID-19 of any disease severity, is now part of WHO’s guidelines on COVID-19 treatments. Ivermectin is a broad spectrum anti-parasitic agent, included in WHO essential medicines list for several parasitic diseases. It is used in the treatment of onchocerciasis (river blindness), strongyloidiasis and other diseases caused by soil transmitted helminthiasis. It is also used to treat scabies. A guideline development group was convened in response to the increased international attention on ivermectin as a potential treatment for COVID-...

New guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 can safely visit with other vaccinated people and small groups of unvaccinated people in some circumstances, but there are still important safety precautions needed. Covid-19 continues to exert a tremendous toll on our nation. Like you, I want to be able to return to everyday activities and engage with our friends, families, and communities," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at the White House briefing Monday. "Science, and the protection of public health must guide us as we begin to resume these activities. Today's action represents an important first step. It is not our final destination." As more people get vaccinated, levels of Covid-19 infection decline in co...

By LOIS QUAM, RACHEL VOGELSTEIN From the household to the national stage, women play crucial roles in global health systems. Governments should adopt inclusive strategies before another crisis strikes. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed the limitations of the United States and Europe’s current approach to global health. Experts had long predicted the rapid spread of a contagious respiratory virus. But while global health spending increased at an average annual rate of 3.9 percent from 2000 to 2017, countries around the world were ill-prepared for the coronavirus pandemic, global shutdowns, and the economic shocks that followed. Women experience unique challenges during global health crises, and COVID-19 has exacerbated preexisting gender inequalities, including domestic violenc...

It’s a question that has generated yearlong discord between China and the West: how did this virus that plunged the world into crisis begin in the first place? Last Thursday, a team of World Health Organization experts touched down in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected in 2019, to start a much-delayed mission into the origins of the virus that has now killed more than two million people worldwide. But first, like all travelers to China, the team of 10 must undertake a strict two-week quarantine. Some of them have been tweeting from their hotels in Wuhan, using Virtual Private Networks to circumvent a ban on Twitter in the country. On Monday -- day four of their quarantine -- British-American zoologist Peter Daszak tweeted a picture of his b...