Category: Covid-19

(New York) - World Health Organization (WHO) member states should push for clear commitments to human rights protections in the text of a draft pandemic treaty being negotiated on November 6-10, four rights organizations said today. The current draft fails to enshrine core human rights standards protected under international law, most notably the right to health and the right to benefit from scientific progress, therefore risking a repeat of the tragic failures during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The WHOs Intergovernmental Negotiating Body is meeting to debate the draft of a new international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response with the goal of addressing the failures of the Covid-19 response and preventing another global crisis. However, rather than acting on the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, the current proposed text offers a weak framework for ensuring that countries will be accountable for maintaining a rights-compliant response to future pandemics.

This is the position taken by four international human rights groups: Amnesty International, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Commission of Jurists, and Human Rights Watch.

Creating a new pandemic treaty could offer an opportunity to ensure that countries are equipped with proper mechanisms for cooperation and principles to prevent the level of devastation wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the rights violations resulting from government responses, said Tamaryn Nelson, legal advisor at Amnesty International. By failing to ground the treaty in existing human rights obligations and inadequately addressing human rights concerns arising during public health emergencies, governments risk repeating history when the next global health crisis hits.

The drafting process has repeatedly failed to ensure effective and meaningful participation by all stakeholders, especially those from marginalized and criminalized communities. In early 2022, the Civil Society Alliance for Human Rights in the Pandemic Treaty drew attention to the need to ensure full participation in the drafting process. The negotiating body disregarded these calls. Instead, the draft reflects a process disproportionately guided by corporate demands and the policy positions of high-income governments seeking to protect the power of private actors in health including the pharmaceutical industry.

The current draft of the treaty includes only limited references to existing human rights obligations and compliance provisions, despite repeated calls from civil society to ensure a rights-based response to future pandemics.

For instance, the draft treaty says that requirements for preparedness, readiness, and resilience, are subject to applicable laws and national laws. But domestic law cannot be used as an excuse for failure to comply with provisions in international treaties to which governments are party, or with customary international law. Even more concerning is that parties appear to be merely encouraged to adopt policies, strategies and/or measures, but not to comply with specific laws. This approach significantly weakens the accountability of governments to carry out preparedness, prevention, response, and recovery in accordance with international human rights law.

Existing international human rights law and standards should be explicitly referenced throughout the document, recognizing that they are core to an effective and equitable pandemic response, the organizations said. It should also incorporate developments in international human rights standards reflected, for example, in principles developed by the Global Health Law Consortium and the International Commission of Jurists in the Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies, and the Civil Society Alliances Human Rights Principles For a Pandemic Treaty.

A global health architecture that puts profit-driven considerations at the center of global health decisions exacerbated the unprecedented magnitude of illness and death from Covid-19, said Julia Bleckner, senior health and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. Certain higher-income countries effectively hoarded vaccines and blocked a proposal to share the vaccine recipe, while those in lower-income countries died waiting for a first dose. An equitable and effective response to any future pandemic should ensure states carry out their obligation to, individually and collectively, regulate private entities to prevent them from undermining human rights.

Human rights standards clearly establish that scientific progress must be available, accessible, acceptable, and of good quality to all individuals and communities. Governments must take steps to ensure that everyone can access the applications of scientific progress without discrimination.

While the current draft of the proposed instrument emphasizes the importance of knowledge and technology transfer in delivering fair and timely access to testing, vaccines, and therapeutics, it fails to adequately ensure that governments protect the rights to these critical health products during an emergency in accordance with international human rights law and standards. Instead, the draft uses weak language encouraging states to promote knowledge and technology transfer, diluting the legal obligation of governments to ensure that intellectual property rights do not constitute a barrier to the right to health and the right to benefit from scientific progress and its application, especially during a public health emergency. The draft therefore reads as an attempt to bolster intellectual property rights without any corresponding acknowledgment or appropriate weighting of, among others, the rights to health and to science.

The new treaty should reiterate that governments are required under international human rights law to strictly monitor and regulate private actors when they are involved in financing and the delivery of healthcare, ensuring that all their operations contribute to the full realization of the right to health. But the draft fails to incorporate the human rights framework on strictly monitoring and regulating private actors in healthcare, as well as preventing any harmful impact of private actors involvement in healthcare on governments capacity to effectively respond to pandemics. For example, the new text includes that state parties should promote collaboration with relevant stakeholders, including the private sector without clear human rights guardrails.

The Covid-19 pandemic was both a health and human rights catastrophe. Without clear and binding commitments to human rights law and standards leading up to and during public health emergencies, the crisis gave way to a ripple effect of human rights violations and abuses. Governments enforced lockdowns, quarantines, and other restrictions in ways that often were disproportionate to the public health threat and undermined human rights. In some cases, governments weaponized public health measures to discriminate against marginalized groups and target activists and opponents.

Yet the draft treaty fails to give governments virtually any guidance on how to comply with international law and standards, requiring that any restrictions of human rights in the context of such emergencies to be evidence based, legally grounded, nondiscriminatory, and necessary and proportionate to meet a compelling human rights threat. To the extent that restrictions undermine full enjoyment of economic and social rights, social relief measures to ensure the protection of those rights should also be put in place.

The fact that the current draft of the text does not even repeat well established and existing standards in regard to legality, necessity, and proportionality of response measures is as disappointing as it is confounding. The result is a treaty that does not reflect the experience of individuals throughout the world who were subjected to human rights abuses in the name of public health response, said Timothy Fish Hodgson, senior legal advisor at the International Commission of Jurists. It is imperative that the negotiated text explicitly includes the necessary safeguards required under international human rights law when responding to a public health threat.

The Covid-19 pandemic underscored the need for a social safety net and the consequences of failing to substantively account for the social and commercial determinants of health. While the current draft recognizes the ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated inequalities, it does not explicitly commit governments to effectively protect the rights that guarantee key underlying determinants of health, including social security, food, education, housing, water, and sanitation, without discrimination.

In order to genuinely achieve its commitments to the principle of equity at the centre of pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body should include in the draft explicit language on the obligations to proactively protect the rights of persons from marginalized groups, and to emphasize the human rights protections against discrimination.

The global health response to the Covid-19 pandemic prioritized profit over the lives of the worlds most marginalized, Rossella De Falco, programme officer on the right to health at the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights said. If countries are serious about preventing the inequities and loss of the Covid-19 pandemic, they will commit to a rights-aligned agreement for future pandemics.

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Draft Pandemic Treaty Fails to Protect Rights - Human Rights Watch

On his mind was a new mysterious virus, and what if a patient who had been traveling showed up in the emergency room with COVID-19-like symptoms? He felt a sense of calm having seen other viruses such as the H1N1 flu outbreak causing hype and hysteria but were ultimately managed and contained.

Why would this time be any different?

Thats where Desais story and memoir begins. Burning Out on the COVID Front Lines: A Doctors Memoir of Fatherhood, Race and Perseverance in the Pandemic (McFarland & Company, $29.95) is being released this month and takes readers inside some of those terrifying, chaotic and difficult days of the pandemic.

I want people to realize that we demand and expect so much from front-line workers, said Desai. The reality is all of us who provide care are human and can struggle. I want people to know its OK to be vulnerable. We have spent far too long marching forward without processing what has been happening.

All author proceeds will go to the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation, started in honor of Breen, an ER doctor caring for COVID patients early in the pandemic in New York and who died by suicide.

Here are excerpts from Desais book along with an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution with his reflections on the pandemic and what his life looks like now, nearly four years since COVID-19 swept the globe. The excerpts have been edited for length and clarity.

Chaos ensues

On hospital days spent in meetings and caring for patients all day, the question looming largest was, Am I taking the coronavirus home with me? My son was only three weeks old, and his immune system was still developing. What if he got COVID?

My wife, Yogita, and I talked, and came up with a plan. I would change out of my scrubs into street clothes at the hospital, to protect against any remnants in the car. (Hospital laundry was done separately.) Then, at home, I would disrobe in the garage and go take a shower before touching anyone. We adapted to the new and strange.

Caring for patients with communicable diseases was not new, I had done it for years and I never took extra precautions beyond the basics. Yet even with these elaborate protocols in place, we worried. Should I isolate myself at home? We couldnt be sure. I had colleagues staying with friends or at hotels, keeping themselves away from their families for days after working in the hospital. For me this was not an option. I refused to separate from my family. I am a father and husband first and I need them.

Even with all the exhaustion and stress, I still felt a sense of exhilaration in those first early months. I was officially part of the pandemic and leading a team of frontline physicians. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Colleagues advised me to take a day off, away from anything hospital-related, but I couldnt detach, even when I tried. The drama was (and is) unfolding directly before me and I need to stay, to be part of whatever happens next. I felt paternal working with my team: I could advocate, navigate, advise and ultimately protect them a huge responsibility, that kept my fire lit during those chaotic first weeks.

During subsequent weeks, my colleagues and I had a small stash of PPE that we kept in our offices, acquired from our homes, stores or through individual donations. We first had to protect ourselves before we could protect others. We were communal by nature and team players all, but given the risk of depleting PPE, we had to look after ourselves and I encouraged it. I wasnt worried about getting in trouble with the administration for procuring and stashing our own limited supply, but I was indeed worried that we well might run out.

Not finding joy

I dont have time or energy for this!

My daughter needed me right now to take her outside to ride her bike, and this was my first thought. What I needed most was to lie down and close my eyes, if only for a few precious minutes. Outside was sweltering, ninety degrees. It didnt matter. I couldnt say no.

I had come home to a sink full of dishes, the TV on, toys strewn helter-skelter, and nothing put away. Hey was all I could manage to my wife as I brusquely moved past her to go change my clothes. I felt tense, angry, frustrated and exhausted. I know she felt that way too.

Kaiya, though, wanted to go outside, so out we went, under a blistering sun. I helped tighten her pink Barbie helmet, and she got on her bike, pushing slowly on the pedals, wobbly and anxious, with me running behind and holding her from the back.

Im scared, Daddy! she squealed as I ran, sweaty and short of breath. Reassuring her, at last I let go, hoping for that magic moment of momentum when, sustained by the pedals, she would maintain her balance and ride free, unencumbered.

Pedal, pedal! I yelled but she wobbled and fell, her own fear preventing her from moving forward. How to get past it, this hesitation and dread, the fear of falling?

We do it again, and try a little harder.

Watching and helping Kaiya learn to ride a bike does make me proud, yet I failed to feel any joy or excitement. In fact, I was barely smiling, and had to force out a Yay! for my daughter. I just wanted to go inside, get evening chores done and move on to whatever was next. In that moment, I catch myself and see that my mood is off, but I cant snap out of it. Instead, I soldier through, trying hard to reassure myself that tomorrow will be better.

The reality was, I couldnt escape the overwhelming daily stress of being at once a father, husband, physician and leader.

No amount of medication could fix that and frankly, part of me was disappointed. I still wanted to be able to do it all. I was trained to do it all. I was trained to not show defeat or make mistakes. I couldnt accept defeat. A wise leader even told me, more than a few times throughout the pandemic, Dont be afraid to say no and walk away when you need to.

Walking away wasnt in my vocabulary. My entire approach to this point had been to keep working, under any circumstance. I had come this far by doing just that, is how I would always rationalize it: after all, this is what makes me a doctor, correct?

Moreover, this is no time to stop. Its my turn now to show that I can lead by example. That means showing that I can persevere through any challenge. I wasnt afraid to show weakness, but the thought of caving to the stress in the eyes of my peers filled me with unnamable dread.

Compassion fatigue, like burnout, is real and had become an epidemic of its own among healthcare workers, including me. Clearly, the ongoing COVID surges and threats had brought out the worst in the best of us. With no way to win or please everyone, what more could we possibly do? Colleagues would come to me, desperately wanting to know, Whats going to happen next? Are we all changed forever?

Q: A recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found health care workers feel burnout more frequently than they did before the COVID pandemic. Are you surprised?

A: I am not surprised. The pandemic brought such significant challenges to an already stressed system. The constant chaos from poor staffing, financial constraints, pandemic pressures, nonclinical work related to documentation and metrics continues to take health care workers away from what can bring them the most joy caring for a patient.

Its frustrating and demoralizing and challenges us all to reassess how to restructure the system and ourselves to ensure there is joy in practicing. Health care workers are front-line workers who have just as much stress as others from personal, family, health and social crises.

There comes a time when they cant give more, and their mental health takes a toll.

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Q: Can you talk about your mental health today?

A: I am far better than I was in the heat of the pandemic. As I talk about it in the book, it was a journey and realization for me that Im no different than others. I realized that I needed to slow down and take care of myself. I still struggle with sleep disturbances associated with shift work and am working to prioritize rest and self-care (whether its exercise, meditation, napping).

There are times when I question why things cant be a little smoother without so many variables and challenges to our daily work. It has helped me to set boundaries and align with the idea that I cant control and change everything.

For me, Im still on the journey to optimize all aspects of my physical and mental health. Its how I maintain myself, and nothing has changed for me on that. Im grateful to have shared my path and am sincerely hopeful it will help others to find their path. Mental health is health.

Q: What level of precautions do you take for yourself and your family and what about the future?

A: The No. 1 precaution that we, as a family, take at this point is vaccination. We follow all vaccination recommendations, including COVID and influenza this fall. I still feel it is the best way to prevent disease and even more so prevent major complications from disease.

If we are dealing with upper respiratory symptoms, we will work to mask in public to help protect others.

Do we currently mask everywhere? The answer is no because we feel that we are at a safer point and doing our part with vaccination and disease prevention.

We are also in favor of dialing up stringent masking based on community prevalence of COVID. And, of course, hand hygiene and vigilance on hygiene in general (especially for our children) is key.

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Q: What are some of the challenges still in a hospital? What has changed? What needs to change?

A: There are still challenges with staffing issues. This is not unique to local health care systems, but its something I know that is happening nationally. We also see across the country increased threats towards health care workers, physically and verbally. I stand by and applaud the firm rule of zero tolerance policies against any violence (physical and nonphysical) towards health care workers. Most health care systems are doing this but sustaining it and actually acting on it speak volumes. Any patient who intentionally attacks or abuses a health care worker simply cannot and should not be allowed to receive health care in that institution.

For health care, with increased pressure on metrics, nonclinical tasks, and often being pushed to do more with less from pressures from insurance company regulations, it can be very challenging to find the energy to be compassionate.

Patients are so vulnerable, and they need and deserve a compassionate approach. Compassion and love come hand-in-hand, and I truly feel approaching my patients with love allows me to care, navigate, and advocate for them. I will continue to encourage this to my colleagues and hope to be able to coach the newer group of health care workers on the importance of loving our patients. Its the fundamental way to feel value in our daily work.

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An Emory doctor's memoir shares the chaos and heartache during COVID-19 - The Atlanta Journal Constitution

NEW DELHI: A Covid-19 variant that may be more infectious and could evade vaccine immunity has caused alarm among scientists tracking the adaptability of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This latest emerging variant, JN.1, was identified in Luxembourg on August 25, 2023, followed by England, Iceland, France, and the US. Scientists were specially astonished by the sheer amount of differences in the variant compared to other leading Covid strains today such as XBB.1.5 and HV.1. The XBB.1.5 variant is the target of the latest vaccine boosters in the US and most emerging variants are descendants of this virus, which means that current vaccines work on all of them. HV.1 is a relative newcomer and boasts a few differences from XBB.1.5 but is mainly similar to its parent strain. But JN.1 is vastly different. 'A devious strain' While there are ten additional unique mutations in HV.1 compared to XBB.1.5, JN.1 contains 41 additional unique mutations compared to XBB.1.5. Most of the changes in JN.1 are found in the spike protein, which likely correlates to increases in infectivity and immune evasion. This might mean that current vaccines will not work to keep the virus at bay. "Due to a mutation on its spike protein JN.1 seems to be much more immune evasive than its parents, making it quite devious. As a result, we may be at risk of getting more infections, said Dr Thomas Russo, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Buffalo in New York. There is some data that suggest JN.1s parent BA.2.86 may be more transmissible than previous variants, he added. Such vast differences in spike proteins of variants were first seen in 2021, during the start of the pandemic, in the alpha and beta versions of SARS-CoV-2. Their reemergence in JN.1 is noteworthy, said scientists. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), however, said initial data suggest that updated Covid vaccines will help protect against JN.1. It also said an analysis from the federal governments SARS-CoV-2 Interagency Group suggests treatments and testing will remain effective.

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Why the newest Covid variant 'JN.1' is worrying scientists - IndiaTimes

Anyone who has been on the planet for the last four years will know how viruses that evolve to jump across species, given the right conditions, can rapidly become a serious global crisis. While COVID-19 was a rare perfect storm for a zoonotic virus to get out of control, international researchers believe we're now in an alarming new age of vertebrate animal-to-human infections.

A comprehensive study of epidemiological data dating back 60 years has turned up a worrying trend in zoonotic infections in humans, with prevalence and morbidity increasing at an exponential rate, according to the researchers.

Emerging zoonotic viruses that subsequently spread from human to human are the focus of this analysis because they were the cause of most 20th century pandemics, and account for 60% of all emerging human diseases, the researchers from US biotechnology organization Gingko Bioworks noted.

Drawing on a range of datasets, the researchers analyzed 3,150 zoonotic outbreaks and epidemics between 1963 and 2019, looking for trends in infections and mortality. They were particularly interested in the viruses that had the COVID-19-style perfect storm potential for exponential spread the ones posing the biggest risk to public health, economic and political stability.

They zeroed in on 75 spillover events in 24 countries, which resulted in 17,232 human deaths. Incidentally, 15,771 of those deaths, in 40 outbreaks, were caused by Filoviruses. Filoviruses, which include Ebola and Marbug, were among the four bad news pathogens identified. The other three of interest were SARS Coronavirus 1, Nipah virus and Machupo virus.

If these annual rates of increase continue, we would expect the analyzed pathogens to cause four times the number of spillover events and 12 times the number of deaths in 2050 than in 2020, they estimated.

While COVID-19 is a zoonotic outlier and as such was excluded from the data, the number of spillover events and reported deaths from the four groups of viruses has increased by 4.98% and 8.7%, respectively, every year from 1963 to 2019.

Our evaluation of the historical evidence suggests that the series of recent epidemics sparked by zoonotic spillover are not an aberration or random cluster, but follow a multi-decade trend in which spillover-driven epidemics have become both larger and more frequent, they wrote.

Nipah virus (NiV), which has a reservoir in fruit bats or flying foxes, results in encephalitis and can cause everything from mild illness to death. Similarly, flying foxes are thought to be the natural reservoir for Ebolaviruses.

The Severe Acute Respirator Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus is also thought to have crossed over into human populations from bats.

Machupo virus, a highly infectious hemorrhaging infection, is considered the Bolivian cousin of Ebolaviruses and jumped to humans in the 1950s due to increased interaction with the Calomys field rodent.

But while zoonotic virus outbreaks have been isolated and largely contained in the past, with a few very obvious exceptions, their increased frequency and severity now has scientists very concerned.

Adding to the worry is lax and fragmented historical data detailing viral outbreaks, which makes modeling for future epidemics or, worse, pandemics, difficult.

The ultimate package of measures to support global prevention, preparedness, and resilience is not yet clear, they note. What is clear, however, from the historical trends, is that urgent action is needed to address a large and growing risk to global health.

This comes as scientists are learning more about the extent and evolution of mpox, or MPXV (formerly monkeypox, since it likely spread from rodents, not monkeys), and as avian influenza H5N1 threatens to swap favored host from bird to mammal.

Zoonotic pathogens can be bacterial, viral or parasitic, and can spread to humans through direct contact or via food, water or the environment. According to the World Health Organization, there are now more than 200 known zoonoses, or diseases that can be transmitted to humans from animals.

The study was published in the journal BMJ Global Health.

Source: Ginkgo Bioworks

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12 times more people will die from zoonotic viruses by 2050, study says - New Atlas

The new Covid variant is a descendant of BA.2.86, also known as 'Pirola'.

Scientists across the world are worried about a new COVID-19 variant that could be more infectious and could evade vaccine immunity. The JN.1 strain of coronavirus has recently been detected in the United States and in 11 other countries, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This variant is causing a surge in infections worldwide yet again and raising alarm bells among health authorities.

According to experts, the new Covid variant is a descendant of BA.2.86, also known as 'Pirola' - which came from Omicron. "Neither JN.1 nor BA.2.86 is common in the United States right now. In fact, JN.1 has been detected so rarely that it makes up fewer than 0.1 percent of SARS-CoV-2 viruses," CDC wrote on its site.

There is only a single change between JN.1 and BA.2.86 and that is in the spike protein. The spike protein - called a "spike" because it looks like tiny spikes on the virus' surface - plays a crucial role in helping the virus infect people," the CDC explained, adding, "Because of this, the spike protein is also the part of a virus that vaccines target, meaning vaccines should work against JN.1 and BA.2.86 similarly".

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Further, it also said that nearly all viruses circulating in the United States now are part of the XBB family and that JN.1 makes up less than 0.1% of SARS-CoV-2 viruses. The initial data by the CDC also suggest that updated covid vaccines will help protect against BA.2.86, and it expects a similar effect against JN.1. It even stated that an analysis from the federal government's SARS-CoV-2 Interagency Group suggests treatments and testing will remain effective.

"For as long as we have COVID-19, we'll have new variants. Nearly all represent relatively small changes compared with previous variants. CDC and other agencies monitor for impacts of new variants on vaccines, tests, and treatments, and will alert the public quickly if anything concerning is detected," the CDC said, adding, "Most of the time, new variants make little to no impact".

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What Is JN.1? The New Covid Variant That Has Sparked Worry Among Scientists - NDTV

Opinion

For many people, Covid is not a thing of the past. A renewed effort is needed to find out exactly what it is, and how to treat it

Among the more sobering moments at the UK Covid-19 inquiry over the past few weeks was the palpable dismay and affront shown by the mild-mannered NHS respiratory consultant Prof Chris Brightling, when he noted that Boris Johnsons response to a Department of Health briefing on long Covid was to write bollocks across it in large letters. Brightling said he was deeply saddened and made extremely angry by the comment. Does he mean bollocks to the science? he mused, or is it bollocks to the patients? For the millions of sufferers whose lives, careers and finances have been shattered by the disease, it may be hard to disengage from the idea that this opinion fed into the disease being wilfully ignored.

The inquiry is a reminder that even as public (and policy) attention span for all things Covid has inevitably waned, it is worth looking at the state of play for the many millions of patients, advocates and researchers around the world still very much grappling with long Covid. From where I sit somewhere between the international long Covid medical research community, the patient support groups, and those running long Covid clinical services Id describe it as a rather bleak period, with a continuing crisis of confidence for all concerned.

In each of these spheres there has come the stark realisation that the initial momentum (and with it, much of the funding) has fallen off the cliff edge. There have been incredible scientific advances in our understanding of the disease, but we are also learning how little we actually know. Gez Medinger, my colleague and co-author, has described the initial research as being like a huge jigsaw puzzle with some of the easy bits in place around the edge, and everyone trying to guess if the picture in the middle is of a horse or a steam engine. Some thousands of peer-reviewed publications later, many more pieces are in place and the edge of the jigsaw is going well, but weve come to realise that the disease the way it works, and its symptoms is so heterogeneous that we may actually have mixed up several jigsaws of horses, steam engines and sunsets, yet are trying to solve a single one from the jumbled pieces.

This is similar to the state of diabetes diagnoses, before we stratified them into type 1 and type 2 and several states in between. It may be that someday what we now call long Covid will be stratified into several different disease entities.

For researchers working in the many medical areas that appear to be affected by long Covid such as blood coagulation, autoimmune disease, viral persistence, organ damage, or any number of others the big picture remains challenging. How can these areas be pulled together in such a way as to make a real clinical difference? A new study published in Cell gives us a sense of the problem, as it reports intriguing new information about how long Covid may work, but also complicates our overall understanding.

The results show that persistent coronavirus infection in the gut triggers an inflammatory response, impairing the guts ability to take in the amino acid tryptophan. This matters because tryptophan is needed to make the neurotransmitter serotonin which can have an effect on everything from neurocognition and depression to vasoconstriction. This suggests long Covid may in time be helped by treatments such as tryptophan supplements, or drugs targeting serotonin signalling. It offers a new avenue for exploration, yet further complicates the big picture, as it adds a new effect and possible treatment approach to the many already being studied.

In terms of long Covid clinics, sufferers elsewhere look at the UK with some envy in terms of an agreed and costed masterplan for ongoing national provision. However, services are uneven across the country, and many long Covid sufferers express their frustration at what they perceive as the lack of a substantive care pathway or therapeutic options to get them back up to speed. The comprehensive package of research programmes put into place by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) in July 2021 will soon come to a hard stop. They have offered many important insights for future directions, but unsurprisingly given how long medical research takes to deliver no substantive answers that have yet cured anybody.

Discussions in the world of long Covid sufferers now often turn to the incredibly harsh realities of terminated work contracts, medical retirement, or the search for part-time work from home. And evidence from those who suffered the closely related long-Sars after the 2003-04 outbreak is that the more severe cases may never return to their former lives and employment.

In the US, there has been a call for a new moonshot of $1bn a year over the next decade for long Covid research. While its unlikely theres the political appetite in the UK for such an approach, we have a track record, having led the world in the globally game-changing Recovery clinical trials for treating acute Covid-19 during the pandemic. With an estimated 3% of our workforce currently pushed out of the economy by long Covid, a fitting rebuttal to the bollocks comment would surely be to lead a programme of clinical trials that might get those people their lives back, with all this entails for boosting the economy.

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There are new scientific insights into long Covid but political will is waning - The Guardian

New COVID-19 variant raises concerns, long COVID becomes third leading neurologic disorder in the US

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CHICAGO, Ill.

The CDC is tracking a new line of the COVID-19 virus. According to the lab, it has more than 30 mutations in total, which is much more than any other COVID variant circulating.

This comes at a time when COVID hospitalizations are beginning to rise up to more than 6,000 a week.

For one in every five people who get COVID, the symptoms persist for months, if not years.

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New research out of Northwestern Medicine found that millions of people who tested negative for the virus may actually have long COVID.

Brain fog, memory problems, fatigue, anxiety, depression, insomnia, breathing problems, muscle aches, and heart issues.

All are symptoms of long COVID.

Neurologist Igor Koralnik is part of a team that studied more than 1800 long COVID patients.

More than 90% of patients that we see in the clinic are people who have never been hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia," said Koralnik.

Their study found 83% of patients had abnormal CT chest scans, 51%, cognitive impairment, 45%, altered lung function, and 12% had an elevated heart rate.

Long COVID has become the third leading neurologic disorder in the US.

Among previously hospitalized patients, the average age is 54. But among people who had never been hospitalized, with a mild case of COVID-19 initially, the average age is 44," said Koralnik.

According to research, long COVID hits women in their forties, who were never hospitalized earlier due to COVID.

We think that long COVID is a new autoimmune disease which is caused by the virus. said Koralnik.

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Women are four times more likely than men to develop autoimmune diseases.

Now Doctor Koralnik encourages patients to keep looking for a customized treatment that works for them.

Researchers at Northwestern are looking at biomarkers in the blood to see if they hold answers as to why one persons symptoms linger on, while others recover quickly.

Doctor Koralnik said that although the COVID-19 vaccine continues to save lives, they do not believe it has an impact on whether or not a person will get long COVID.

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New COVID-19 variant raises concerns, long COVID becomes third leading neurologic disorder in the US - WJAR

CLAIM

Fauci frankensteined Covid bats on our soil a year before the pandemic, but then acted all shocked when the virus started spreading ; Faucis goons went to the Wuhan lab, bottled up a virus and brought it to a lab in America

DETAILS

Incorrect: The virus WIV-1 studied in the Montana NIAID lab in 2018 is unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2, a different coronavirus that is a distant relative of WIV-1. Inadequate support: The scientific publication describing the experiments conducted on the virus WIV-1 in Montana in 2018 explained that the researchers used synthetic viral particles that they produced locally. There is no indication that some viral particles were shipped from Wuhan.

KEY TAKE AWAY

Some coronaviruses pose a threat to human health, as illustrated by the 2003 SARS outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the coronaviruses that have been thoroughly studied is WIV-1, because it can infect humans. However, WIV-1 is only loosely related to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and thus isnt responsible for the pandemic.

Watters appears to follow the same modus operandi. An excerpt of his 1 November 2023 primetime show, which he posted on his Facebook page showed him claiming there was a connection between U.S. coronavirus research and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the claim in the excerpt, which received more than 380,000 views, is based on inaccurate or unsubstantiated assumptions. We review its central claims below.

Fauci frankensteined Covid bats on our soil a year before the pandemic, but then acted all shocked when the virus started spreading [] Lock Fauci up, lock everybody up in Montana that is responsible [] lets just try to save as many lives as possible.

The language in this claim, which is present in the videos caption, implies that former U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Anthony Fauci oversaw U.S. research on bats that is connected to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Watters, the animal rights group White Coat Waste Project, which shared misinformation about Fauci in the past, had uncovered documents describing coronavirus research done in Montana using Egyptian fruit bats.

A look at the White Coat Waste Project website shows that the group cited as supporting evidence a study from 2018 by Van Doremalen et al.

The study does describe research on coronavirus involving the Egyptian fruit bats Rousettus aegyptiacus and carried out at the NIAID laboratory in Hamilton, Montana[1]. However, a closer reading of the study shows that Watters claim is inaccurate.

Van Doremalen et al. worked on a virus called WIV-1[1]. WIV-1 is a coronavirus that was identified in 2013[2] and had sparked interest at the time because of a certain level of similarity to SARS-CoV-1, the virus responsible for the SARS outbreak of 2003. However, a comparison of the two viruses genomes shows that WIV-1 is different from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic[3-5].

Phylogenetic trees, which illustrate the evolutionary distance between organisms, indicate that WIV-1 is not a direct ancestor or even a close relative of SARS-CoV-2 (see Figure 1 below). It is instead more closely related to SARS-CoV-1. The bat coronavirus RaTG13 is the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2 to date.

Figure 1Phylogenetic tree based on whole genome comparisons of betacoronaviruses. In a phylogenetic tree, the closer two viruses are on the tree, the more related they are. The group of viruses more closely related to SARS-CoV-1 is highlighted in blue. SARS-CoV-1 variants have been highlighted in dark blue. The group of viruses more closely related to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is highlighted in red. SARS-CoV-2 variants are highlighted in dark red and bold. Note that the closest relative of SARS-CoV-2 is the bat virus RaTG13 and how WIV-1 is more distantly related to SARS-CoV-2, and actually closer to SARS-CoV-1. Source: Hu et al.[4]

Phylogenetic analysis showed that the most recent common ancestor between RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2 dates back fifty years ago[6,7]. RaTG13 shares 96% of genetic identity with SARS-CoV-2. But scientists deemed that even 4% of genetic differences was too large of a gap to be bridged by lab experiments.

So, we know that SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 diverged fifty years ago and that lab experiments on RaTG13 could not lead to SARS-CoV-2. And we know that WIV-1 is more distantly related to SARS-CoV-2 than RaTG13 is. This means that SARS-CoV-2 and WIV-1 are separated by at least five decades of evolution. This genomic evidence invalidates the implication in Watters video title that the research on WIV-1 conducted in Montana was connected to the pandemic.

In 2018, Faucis goons went to the Wuhan lab, bottled up a virus and brought it to a lab in America ; Grabbed a dozen Egyptian fruit bats, threw them in the back of a van

Watters also claimed that the researchers involved in the 2018 study imported the WIV-1 virus from Wuhan, and captured and transported Egyptian fruit bats with a reckless disregard for biosafety and animal welfare (by transporting them in the back of a van).

While it is true that WIV-1 was first isolated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (hence the initials WIV)[2], nothing indicates that Van Doramalen and colleagues actually shipped the viral particles from Wuhan.

The Materials and Methods section of Van Doremalen et al. explains that the viral particles of WIV-1 used in the study were produced locally, using a method described in a previous publication by Menachery et al[8].

Menachery et al. explained that the viruses used for their study are a synthetic construction using a published sequence. The Acknowledgments section also mentions that Menachery et al. obtained information and material from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but not the virus particles themselves.

Furthermore, Van Doremalen et al. specified in their Materials and Methods section that Animal experiments were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (ASP 2016-021E, 05/2016). Such committees oversee animal use activity and animal research facilities to ensure the welfare of animals used in research. Nothing indicates that the bats were rounded up and thrown in the back of a van, as Watters claimed.

Conspiracy theories surrounding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 have circulated since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rooted in some of these theories is the belief held by some that dangerous or inappropriate research on coronaviruses was the cause of the pandemic. This belief has also served as the basis for calls to curtail funding for coronavirus research.

However, a look at history can help us understand why such research is being pursued by scientists. In 2003, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-1, spread rapidly across Asia and claimed more than 700 lives in a few months. Scientific evidence so far strongly indicates that SARS-CoV-1 originated from bats, spilled over to an intermediate host (possibly civets), and then to humans. Later research showed that bats hosted many other SARS-like viruses[9,10], leading to concerns that there could be other potentially deadly coronaviruses lurking around. If such a coronavirus was capable of also causing a pandemic, a spillover event into humans could be disastrous.

In order to address this looming threat, researchers stepped up their efforts to discover and understand existing bat coronaviruses that resembled SARS-CoV-1. At first, it appeared that SARS-like bat coronaviruses identified by scientists were unable to infect human cells using the human protein ACE-2, contrary to SARS-CoV-1[11]. Thus, these coronaviruses were considered to pose little threat to humans.

But this understanding changed when scientists discovered WIV-1, which showed it could directly infect human cells[2,8]. This explains why WIV-1 became a topic of research. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. When facing a possible threat, it makes sense to study the threat so that one may act to defend oneself. Far from being frivolous research pursued by fringe scientists, as some may like to believe, the choice to study WIV-1 was justified by scientists earlier discoveries about bat coronaviruses.

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2018 coronavirus research in NIAID Montana lab is unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic, contrary to claim by Fox ... - Health Feedback

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Written By: Press Release Posted by David Elliott Published Date: 11-07-2023

The Kansas Department of Commerce has announced 15 Kansas communities would receive their share of $2 million from the Community Development Block Grant-COVID Resiliency (CDBG-CVR) competitive grant program.

This program was funded via the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

CDBG-CVR was designed to empower Kansas businesses to enhance their resiliency in the face of future community illnesses and public health emergencies.

"These grants will be a game-changer for many Kansas businesses," Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of Commerce David Toland said. "This investment in pandemic resiliency not only will help retain jobs but help our state attract new businesses, further boosting our emerging economy."

The grants support a wide range of projects, including technology and infrastructure upgrades, professional development and other initiatives aimed at preventing future closures due to public health crises. The awardee communities will distribute their funds to local businesses previously identified in their proposals.

The CDBG-CVR competitive grant program focused on the following key areas upgrades to ensure business continuity, technology, hardware and software upgrades, e-commerce updates, and professional development and training.

The 15 awardees represent a diverse range of businesses across Kansas, each with projects that align with the program's objectives.

14 communities each will receive $141,642 for distribution. They include the cities of Baldwin City, Holton, Horton, McPherson, Smith Center and WaKeeney, as well as Cloud, Graham, Lincoln, Mitchell, Rawlins, Rooks, Smith and Sumner Counties. The city of Columbus was awarded $17,000.

The grants will help businesses survive challenging times and position them for long-term success.

CDBG-CVR is the fourth and final round of the Kansas CDBG-CV program, which has had a profound impact, providing essential assistance to 1,356 small businesses across the state. Since 2020, the program has disbursed more than $16.1 million in grant funds, demonstrating Commerce's commitment to supporting the resilience of local enterprises. These investments were key to small business survival during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The Kansas Department of Commerce works tirelessly to advance the economic well-being of the state by promoting job creation, workforce development and business growth," Community Development Director Kayla Savage said. "Through grants like CDBG-CVR, the department seeks to create a thriving and prosperous Kansas for all."

The Kansas Department of Commerce extends itscongratulationsto the awardees and commends their dedication to business resiliency.

(Information courtesyKansas Department of Commerce.)

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Commerce Announces $2 Million in CDBG-COVID Resiliency Competitive Grants - KRSL

Fourteen pilot virtual urgent care (VUC) programs in Ontario, Canada, designed to divert patients with non-serious ailments from seeking in-person emergency department (ED) care during the COVID-19 pandemic had little effect, according to a study published yesterday in CMAJ.

University of Toronto researchers compared subsequent 30-day healthcare use and outcomes of 19,595 patients using adult or pediatric VUC with those of matched patients visiting an ED from December 2020 to September 2021.

"When physical distancing was strongly encouraged, it was difficult to arrange a nonurgent, in-person health care visit," the study authors wrote. "In-person primary care visits declined by nearly 80%, and emergency department visits decreased by 50%. Although technologies to deliver health care through means other than face-to-face contact have been available for decades, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic saw large growth and rapid adoption of virtual care."

In fall 2020, the Ontario Ministry of Health approved up to $4 million for a provincial VUC pilot program. All VUC patients were evaluated by an emergency physician.

The average VUC patient age was 28 years, 60% were female, and 85% had a primary care physician. Of all VUC patients, 12.5% made an in-person visit to an emergency department within 72hours and 21.5% within 30days of the first visit. A total of 70% of virtual visits were managed by a VUC provider without the need for referral to an ED or other care.

VUC and in-person patients had similar rates of index-visit hospital admissions (9.4% vs 8.7%), 30-day ED visits (17.0% vs 17.5%), and hospitalizations (12.9% vs 11.0%). VUC patients were more likely to visit an ED within 72 hours (13.7% vs 7.0%), 7 days (16.5% vs 10.3%), and 30 days (21.9% vs 17.9%), but hospitalizations were similar within 72 hours (1.1% vs 1.3%) and higher by 30 days for patients released to home from an ED (2.6% vs 3.4%).

The average hospital stay was longer for patients initially receiving VUC (6.2 vs 5.2 days). The number of deaths was not significantly different between the two groups.

There is a need to better understand the inherent limitations of virtual care and ensure future virtual providers have timely access to in-person outpatient resources, to prevent subsequent emergency department visits.

The most common reasons for VUC patients who subsequently visited an ED within 72 hours and 30 days were fever and abdominal pain, with COVID-19 being the top ED discharge diagnosis. The most common reasons among patients who had a subsequent ED visit within 72 hours after an initial in-person ED visit were imaging tests, abnormal lab results, and abdominal pain, with unspecified abdominal pain being the No. 1 ED discharge diagnosis.

"The impact of the provincial VUC pilot program on subsequent health care utilization was limited," the researchers wrote. "There is a need to better understand the inherent limitations of virtual care and ensure future virtual providers have timely access to in-person outpatient resources, to prevent subsequent emergency department visits."

The team also said that, given the non-severe nature of VUC visits, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, or primary care physicians could probably substitute for emergency physicians at lower cost as part of a "primary-care-first" strategy.

Future research, the researchers said, should engage community members from vulnerable populations to identify strategies to improve awareness and uptake of VUC among underserved populations, especially in rural and communities.

In a related commentary, Catherine Varner, MD, also of the University of Toronto, said she was not surprised that the VUC program had little impact. "Low-acuity visits are not the root cause of emergency department crowding,and Ontario-wide telephone triage services without pre-existing patient-to-provider affiliation have not been shown to affect the proportion of patients who access care in person in an emergency department," she wrote.

Rather, VUC programs should be targeted to patients or regions most likely to benefit. "Virtual urgent care diverts emergency department visits in children, and, when rolled out as a pandemic response, pediatric urgent virtual care programs offloaded low-acuity visits from pediatric acute care hospitals," Varner wrote.

She added that the challenges and complexities of implementing health-system interventions and the importance of timely, rigorous, and transparent evaluation will become evident amid the rapidly changing healthcare environment in Canada: "Without critical evaluation, however, health system leaders, providers and constituents cannot assume that the stated objectives of novel programs are being met, and health dollars risk being wasted."

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Pilot virtual urgent care programs had marginal effect on emergency visits amid COVID - University of Minnesota Twin Cities