Category: COVID

Categories : COVIDTags :

Gauteng to Brace for Second COVID Wave in January

On By ModernMedia

Speaking at a memorial for healthcare workers who have died from COVID, acting MEC of Health Jacob Mamabolo says that the Gauteng health department is expecting a second wave of the virus in January.

Gauteng, which represents 30.1% of all cumulative COVID cases nationwide, is expected to see a resurgence on the back of holiday festivities and travel, based on modelling information supplied to the provincial command council.

“We need to be reminded that the battle with Covid-19 is not yet over. We are still in the outbreak stage and not in the post-Covid-19 period yet. Here in Tshwane we still have hotspots and areas that are of great worry such as Atteridgeville, Sunnyside, Ga-Rankuwa and Mamelodi,” said Mamabolo.

He further added that alcohol consumption would lead to people being discouraged in following the COVID health and safety rules, and that staff were already exhausted from a long year of fighting the disease. He added that it was necessary that extra staff were approved for the fight in the coming year.    Source: Rekord East

Categories : COVID VaccinesTags :

Questions Raised over Oxford’s Unusual Vaccine Regimen

On By ModernMedia

The recent announcement of the Oxford’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial being 70% effective up to 90% effective has raised some pointed questions.

The trial had two treatment arms, one receiving two full doses of the AZD1222 vaccine and a half dose plus a full dose, with the doses being administered 28 days apart. The “half dose then full dose”  treatment arm reported the 90% protection. The problem was that the trial was never meant to have such an arm. 

It was noticed that some participants were only receiving a half dose because they were experiencing fewer effects than expected such as arm pain and headache. This was subsequently corrected so that they would still receive the full dose on the second administration.

Of particular concern is that the “90% effectiveness” is based on a much smaller subset of the trial participants, with a correspondingly higher statistical uncertainty. So much so that there is statistical overlap with their lower effectiveness of 62% quoted for the two full doses. Furthermore, the participants were from the initial stages of the vaccine trial, where they were aged 18-55 and therefore have little applicability to the results of the main trial which included older age groups as well. 

The details of exactly why the half-measure doses came to be administered in the first place have not been revealed by Oxford or AstraZeneca. Meanwhile in the US, a Phase III of the trial is being rolled out with 40 000 participants, and the “half dose then full dose” regimen may be included – however, uncertainty about it and whether it isn’t a statistical fluke will have to be cleared up first.

Source: Ars Technica

Categories : COVID Expert OpinionTags :

AI Solutions Are No Magic Bullet Against COVID

On By ModernMedia

A leading researcher in the field of medical image analysis has cautioned against the rush to provide AI solutions to the COVID pandemic, arguing that the need to help out must not compromise scientific principles.

Prof Hamid Tizhoosh, head of KIMIA Lab, Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo wrote a piece on Medical-News.Net where he laid out the problems involved in such “quick fix” solutions.

He explains that AI researchers often make “toy” datasets which they use to experiment with in their own labs. In the middle of the pandemic, it is difficult to collaborate with radiographers who have their hands full dealing with COVID patients’ images.

AI research requires the acquisition and curation of large amounts of high-quality data, and currently there is an absence of this. While there are still few publicly available X-ray images or CT images of COVID patients’ lungs, they are beginning to crop up on the internet. AI researchers and enthusiasts are scraping together these images for their data sets and supplementing them with those of pneumonia patients, which are much more readily available. The results of their AI work are being released in papers that are not peer reviewed, yet some claim to be authoritative solutions.

Tizhoosh draws attention to the validity of this data. In one instance, he saw that the data included a pneumonia case from a paediatric patient. He cautions that, “AI is neither a ventilator nor a vaccine nor a pill; it is extremely unlikely that the exhausted radiologists in Wuhan, Qom or Bergamo download the Python code of our poorly trained network (using insufficient and improper data and described in quickly written papers and blogs) to just obtain a flawed second opinion.”

He concludes that the AI developments must come after appropriate images are made available by hospitals, that ethics approval is received and the data is properly de-identified.

Categories : COVID Medical IndustryTags :

Netcare CEO Recounts Challenges and Lessons of 2020

On By ModernMedia

In an interview posted on Moneyweb, the CEO of Netcare, Dr Richard Friedland, related how the company had weathered a very hard financial year.

“We have certainly felt the effects financially and we haven’t been able to pay a dividend to shareholders. But, as I’ve said to all of our frontline workers, we paid a dividend to South Africa in terms of looking after so many thousands – more than 28 000 Covid patients. That is far more significant than anything we could have done in monetary terms,” said Friedland.

The company learned valuable lessons, being at “the tip of the spear” of the COVID pandemic. Following their first cases on March 9, a large outbreak occurred at St Augustine’s, followed by a much smaller one at Kingsway. 

Friedland spoke of the sacrifices the staff had made over the past months, saying “This is not a time to abandon them. It’s a time to stand with them. It does mean our recovery will be longer, but we’ll do that together. And I think it’s critically important, given the headwinds we’re facing in South Africa.”

The company made much of its profit from asset disposal, but Friedland said that they were seeing a return to demands for elective surgery, excepting their two hospitals in the Nelson Mandela Bay area. He noted that there was a noticeable uptick in cases, similar to what they had experienced in the first wave, and that their hospitals were relatively full. However, they were putting their lessons learned into practice by having readied adequate stores of PPE and oxygen, for example. The length of stay has been reduced from 22 days to seven. He remarked on how stressful the pandemic had been for all concerned, but he said that continued efforts must be made.

“[…]Covid nearly robbed us of our humanity, and we need to be very careful about that going forward, particularly as healthcare workers, when patients cannot see their loved ones, when they’ve got to communicate with us through masks and spaces. We’ve managed to find other ways, through Facetime and mobiles, to communicate with their loved ones; but there’s no excuse for [not] improving communication all the time. I think Covid exposed that and there’s been a lot of anxiety as a result that we still need to manage,” concluded Friedland.

Categories : COVIDTags :

SA Medicinal Plants Show a COVID Treatment Promise in New Study

On By ModernMedia

Researchers at the Durban University of Technology and the University of KwaZulu-Natal have been examining plants used in traditional African medicine to see if they have any application in treating COVID.

There has been increasing interest in investigating medicinal plants for compounds to use in the treatment of COVID, which still lacks an effective treatment despite effective vaccines being demonstrated.

The researchers began with 29 compounds from medicinal plants known to be effective in treating the common cold, flu, other respiratory conditions, as well as their antimalarial, antiviral and antioxidant activity.

Using a biocomputational approach that does simulated “molecular docking” with various compounds and the known molecules of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers found a number of plants, including the Rooibos bush, contained useful compounds. These displayed favourable binding orientations and were thus identified as being potential inhibitors of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain and SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent polymerase. Four compounds showed extremely good binding to the virus, indicating that they may prevent viral replication.

The next stage of their work will be an in vitro study, before moving onto animal models but is contingent on the team being able to secure funding.

Source: The Conversation

Categories : COVIDTags :

Effectiveness of COVID Government Interventions Compared

On By ModernMedia

Currently, the most widely used tool to deal with the spread of COVID are non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), which involve measures such as social distancing. In the face of the sudden emergency of the COVID pandemic, governments around the world implemented a wide range of NPIs, some based on scientific advice and some not. The effectiveness of these government interventions is compared in a new study.

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of these responses, researchers studied government interventions across 79 countries and territories. Each item was ranked, making a comprehensive dataset of 6068 interventions and compared to the reproduction number, Rt. They were analysed with four computational methods, including machine learning.

The study found that the most effective interventions were those that restricted movement such as travel restrictions and lockdowns, as well as social distancing. Cancellations of gathering also seemed to be effective. The least effective were appeals for international aid, tracking and tracing, disinfecting surfaces had the least impact.

Interventions also had differing effectiveness depending on what stage of the pandemic they were implemented in.

The most consistently effective intervention across all locations was contact tracing and quarantine.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Categories : COVIDTags :

China in discussion with WHO over possible use of its vaccines worldwide

On By ModernMedia

Despite not having clinical trials not being completed, essential workers in China have been given Chinese-developed vaccines, writes the Daily Maverick. The World Health Organisation (WHO) had reportedly held the first talks aimed at getting the Chinese COVID vaccine. Socorro Escalate, WHO’s coordinator for essential medicines and health technologies in the Western Pacific region, said:

“Potentially through this emergency use listing the quality and safety of these vaccines and efficacy could be assessed. ..and then this could be made available for our licensees.”

The Daily Maverick continues:

China has at least four experimental vaccines in the final stage of clinical trials – two are developed by state-backed China National Biotec Group (CNBG), and the remaining two are from Sinovac Biotech and CanSino Biologics respectively.

They are tested in such countries as Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

Last month, the UAE authorized the emergency use of a CNBG vaccine, the first international emergency clearance for one of China’s vaccines, just six weeks after human trials began in the Gulf Arab state.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said last month it would prioritise China and Russia in his country’s global shopping for a vaccine. 

Categories : COVIDTags :

Researchers calling for loss of smell to be recognised globally as Covid-19 symptom

On By ModernMedia

Health 24 reports that scientists are calling for loss of smell to be recognised as a main COVID symptom, based on studies which showed that a majority of people who listed loss of sense of smell as a symptom would test positive for COVID antibodies. This could have important ramifications for policymaking, which they go on to discuss:

Currently, many guidelines still urge members of the public to only self-isolate or test when they display flu-like symptoms.


Although the study has limitations, it strongly suggests that an acute loss of smell should be considered as a sign to isolate or test. It also suggests that there is an over-reliance on coughing and fever as the main Covid-19 symptoms.

Prof Batterham said, “Early self-recognition of Covid-19 symptoms by the members of the public, together with rapid self-isolation and PCR testing are vital in order to limit the spread of the disease. Currently, most countries around the world do not recognise a sudden loss of smell as a symptom of Covid-19.”

Categories : COVIDTags :

Global COVID study, fewer people are willing to give cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)

On By ModernMedia

The Daily Mail reports on a global study has found that, as a result of COVID, significantly fewer people are willing to give cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) than before:

Compared to before the Covid-19 era, 20 per cent fewer people would give mouth-to-mouth to a stranger, if they weren’t breathing. And 14 per cent fewer claimed they would give chest compressions, which could be the difference between life and death.   


The findings are concerning because it is already known that Britons are reluctant to carry out CPR, with around three in ten claiming that they would not assist in saving a dying stranger.

Survival rates for cardiac arrests — which are different to heart attacks — stand at less than 10 per cent. But CPR can more than double a person’s chance of survival outside hospital, according to the British Heart Foundation.

Scientists urged people not to be put off giving first aid due to Covid-19 and insisted the odds of getting the infection this way was tiny.

Chest compressions can still be done with a towel, while wearing a face covering to avoid catching the disease. But health regulators have already urged Britons not to carry out mouth-to-mouth over Covid-19 fears.

Categories : COVIDTags :

COVID and Vaping Lung Injuries can be Confused

On By ModernMedia

Three recent case studies show that breathing problems in teens could be a result of vaping or COVID, according to a UC Davis Health paediatric team.

Known as e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury (EVALI), it is present in large numbers. As of February 2020, 2758 cases of EVALI were hospitalised, with 64 deaths in the United States, and over half of those hospitalised were under 25 years old.

“EVALI and COVID-19 share many symptoms but have very different treatment plans,” said lead author Kiran Nandalike, associate professor of paediatrics. “For this reason, providers caring for pediatric patients with unexplained respiratory failure should consider EVALI and ask for relevant smoking/vaping history.”

EVALI and COVID patients often present with fever, cough, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhoea. Bilateral ground glass opacities are seen in chest imaging in both conditions.

Adolescents often use vaping with marijuana obtained through friends, family and unlicenced dealers, with products often containing vitamin E acetate, an additive which is strongly associated with lung injury. Isolation and stress as a result of the COVID pandemic increased usage.

In the case studies, all of the patients had fever, nausea and cough, as well as a high heart rate, rapid breathing and low blood oxygen levels. Laboratory results showed higher white blood cells (WBC) count and elevated inflammation, pointing to COVID inflammation. Chest imaging revealed nonspecific ground glass opacities. Despite all other findings indicating COVID, SARS-CoV-2 testing was negative. The patients were successfully treated with steroids, a potentially life-saving treatment for EVALI.

“To help reduce risk of EVALI recurrence, providers would recommend vaping cessation counseling to patients and close outpatient monitoring,” advised Nandalike.

Source: Medical Xpress