Category: Covid-19

There was an influenza epidemic in Q1 2023 that lasted fourteen weeks, during which more people died than in Q1 2022. However, in the remaining quarters of 2023, fewer people died than in the corresponding quarters in 2022. The relatively high mortality rate in Q4, a pattern which has been evident every year since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, persisted in 2023.

COVID-19 is steadily decreasing as a cause of death. In the first three quarters of 2023, this was the cause of death for less than 2 percent of deaths. In 2022, it was the cause of death for 5 percent of deaths, in 2021 for 13 percent and in 2020 for 14 percent.

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Fewer deaths in 2023 - Statistics Netherlands

The COVID-19 virus mutated 223 times across the world, but its harmful effects have come down substantially over time, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said in the Lok Sabha on February 9.

The Minister added that COVID-19 will continue to remain like influenza and its present variants are not deadly.

When a virus mutates more than 100 times, its harmful effects are reduced.So far, the Covid virus has mutated 223 times and like influenza, which hits people once or twice every year Covid is with us and it will remain, the Minister added.

Stating that India has a robust medicine production infrastructure, and the world has recognised this during COVID, the Minister said that health is such an issue where all stakeholders and countries should come together and work.

While India is now the producer of 70% of HIV/AIDS medicines of the world, we have also seen the positive results during the pandemic when we all worked together, he said.

The Minister also said that due to the Ayushman Bharat scheme, under which free medical treatment up to 5 lakh is provided to the poor, 13 crore people got benefited as they have gone above the poverty level since they did not have to spend money for treatment.

During the tenure of the previous government, 5.5 crore people came under the poverty line as they had to spend a large amount of money for medical care, he said. The Minister said the Modi government is now spending 1.35% of the GDP in comparison to 1.13% spent by the earlier government.

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COVID-19 virus mutated 223 times, will continue to remain like influenza: Health Minister - The Hindu

CorDx has submitted an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) application for its CorDx TyFast Flu A/B & COVID-19 Multiplex Rapid Test to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The multiplex lateral flow immunoassay is designed to distinguish between COVID-19, influenza A, and influenza B from samples collected using nasal swabs from individuals suspected of having a viral respiratory infection. It delivers results in 10 minutes, CorDx said in a statement.

The test was designed for use in point-of-care settings and for home use; it can be administered by either healthcare professionals or individuals.

CorDx received an EUA for its COVID-19 Ag Test in late 2022.

"The introduction of this multiplex rapid test is a critical step forward in our fight against respiratory viral infections. Weve received a high volume of calls from across the country expressing interest in us developing this type of multiplex rapid test solution, and we will urgently expand our production lines in Georgia and California to meet this surging demand immediately after FDAs EUA confirmation, said Jeff Aiiso Yufeng Li, founder and chief scientific officer of CorDx.

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CorDx submits EUA application for COVID-19/influenza rapid test - LabPulse

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COVID-19 symptoms or flu symptoms? How to tell the difference - Oklahoman.com

Astudy of US veterans finds that healthcare visits rose significantly in the month after COVID-19 infection and then leveled off but remained higher than those of their uninfected peers through 1 year.

The Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care Systemled study, published today in JAMA Network Open, matched 202,803 COVID-infected veterans with the same number of uninfected veterans to track primary care, specialty care, surgery, mental health, emergency, and diagnostic and/or other visits from January 2019 to December 2022.

The average veteran age was 60.5 years, and 88.1% were men. The team obtained data from the VA Corporate Data Warehouse and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Fee-for-Service Carrier/Physician Supplier file for the year before and after COVID-19 infection.

In the year before infection, rates of outpatient healthcare visits were similar in the two groups (0.70 and 0.65 visits per week in the infected and uninfected groups, respectively). The week of infection, healthcare visits increased (4.02 vs 0.65 visits the previous week), with attenuation after the first month post-infection (from 0.83 to 0.66 visits).

Outpatient healthcare visits of all types except for surgery were higher among infected veterans than among their uninfected counterparts, with an increase of 5.12 per 30 days, mainly due to primary care visits (increase of 1.86 visits per 30 days). The difference fell to 0.58 visits per 30 days but remained significantly higher during 184 to 365 days post-infection (increase of 0.25 visits per 30 days).

Visit increases for infected veterans were seen for in-person specialty care (0.74 more visits; 0.59 in person) and emergency care (0.73; 0.72 in person), but not for telehealth, the month following infection. But visit increases did occur in telehealth for primary, mental health, and other care the month after infection, an increase that persisted.

A total of 1.86 more primary care visits occurred the month after infection, with 1.32 of these visits through telehealth. Overall 0.19 more mental health visits were observed 1 month post-infection, 0.11 of them via telehealth.

Over the full year post-COVID, infected veterans had 9.59 more visits than those who were still uninfected during that time. Half of the increased visits took place via telehealth. The increase was highest for veterans aged 85 years and older (6.1 visits), compared with those aged 20 to 44 (4.8 visits), and unvaccinated participants (4.5 visits), compared with their vaccinated peers (3.2 visits).

The adverse health outcomes of COVID-19 infection translated into increased use of outpatient services for up to 12 months after infection, suggesting persistent effects of postCOVID-19 conditions.

The greatest effects of infection on visits occurred in the first pandemic wave (March to May 2020; 5.8 visits) and were still evident during the second wave (June to October 2020; 4.7 visits) and third wave (November 2020 to May 2021; 3.6 visits).

"The adverse health outcomes of COVID-19 infection translated into increased use of outpatient services for up to 12 months after infection, suggesting persistent effects of postCOVID-19 conditions," the study authors wrote. "The increased telehealth use for primary care and mental health care has been sustained since 2022, suggesting that the pandemic induced a modality switch for certain care types that may be more patient centered and clinically appropriate for patients with an infectious disease."

They called for future research into the degree to which the persistent increase in telehealth visits reflects patient preferences, healthcare provider or health-system change in the delivery of care, or other factors. "These results reinforce the value in determining which types of care may be equally effective when delivered by telehealth and which types of care are best delivered in person," they wrote.

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Report spotlights US veterans' higher healthcare use in the year after COVID-19 infection - University of Minnesota Twin Cities

A real estate developer from Vancouver was sentenced Friday to nearly two years in federal prison for fraudulently obtaining COVID-19 relief funds and laundering the money.

Michael James DeFrees, 62, pleaded guilty in October in U.S. District Court in Oregon to bank fraud, money laundering and two counts of wire fraud. In addition to his prison sentence, a judge also ordered him to forfeit $1.2 million and pay $1.3 million in restitution to the U.S. Small Business Administration, according to a U.S. Attorneys Office news release.

Between April 2020 and April 2022, DeFrees claimed Economic Injury Disaster Loans and Paycheck Protection Program loans for two businesses under false pretenses, the news release states.

Prosecutors said that on applications for the loans, DeFrees claimed he was the sole owner of two businesses construction company Gateway National Corporation in Washington and real estate development company Yacht Harbor in Oregon and that he had never been convicted of a crime or placed on parole or probation. But investigators say that when he submitted the applications, he was serving a term of probation for a 2017 Washington conviction for falsifying records in a bankruptcy proceeding.

Once he received the loan payments, DeFrees then laundered some of the money through a third business, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.

Michael DeFrees crimes demonstrated his indifference to both the many businesses suffering the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and American taxpayers who funded the relief programs created to alleviate these impacts, Ethan Knight, chief of the U.S. Attorneys Offices Economic Crimes Unit, said in the news release. Prosecuting COVID-19 fraud remains a top priority for the Department of Justice and our partners.

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Developer from Vancouver gets 2 in prison years for COVID-19 relief fraud - The Columbian

Researchers in Nantes, France, working on a COVID-19 vaccine in 2021. The use of preprints to disseminate research findings saw a major uptick during the pandemic.Credit: Loic Venance/AFP/Getty

The COVID-19 pandemic saw an explosion in publication of preprint articles, many by authors who had never produced one before. Now it seems a high proportion of these scientists are likely to continue the practice.

A survey published in PeerJ1 questioned researchers who had posted preprints relating to COVID-19 or the virus SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, across four preprint servers: arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv and ChemRxiv. Of the 673 people who completed the survey, just under 58% had posted their preprints on the biomedical server medRxiv; around 18% on arXiv, which focuses on mathematics and physical sciences; 14% on the life-sciences server bioRxiv; and 7% on ChemRxiv, a chemistry repository.

For two-thirds of respondents, this was the first time they had published a preprint. Almost 80% of these said they intended to post preprints of at least some of their papers going forward.

AI writes summaries of preprints in bioRxiv trial

One of the most intriguing findings is the number of respondents who received feedback on their preprints, says study co-author Narmin Rzayeva, a scientometrics researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Fifty-three per cent received comments from peers, more than half of which were delivered privately through closed channels such as by e-mail or during meetings. Around 20% of respondents received comments on the preprint platforms, which are publicly accessible.

We expected much lower numbers, Rzayeva says, because preprint papers dont typically receive much feedback.

Previous work2 found that by the end of December 2021, just 8% of preprints posted on medRxiv since it launched in mid-2019 had received comments online. But that study considered only publicly posted comments.

Preprint feedback is having an effect, albeit unevenly. Of all survey respondents, just 1.9% reported making major changes to the results section of their preprints as a result of feedback. By contrast, 10.1% received such changes in response to peer review conducted as part of conventional journal publication. Rzayeva suspects that this is partly because authors feel obliged to make changes after receiving feedback from journal peer reviewers.

Of the survey respondents who reported receiving feedback on their preprints, 21.2% said they had made substantial changes to their discussion and conclusions sections. I find it pretty exciting and encouraging that authors are making the amount of changes to their preprints that they do in response to preprint commentary, says Jessica Polka, executive director of ASAPbio, a non-profit organization in San Francisco, California, that promotes innovation in the life sciences.

Polka notes that preprint feedback tends not to be as thorough as a review commissioned by a journal. An analysis of comments left on bioRxiv preprints posted between May 2015 and September 2019 found that only around 12% of non-author comments resembled those from conventional peer review3.

Australian funder backflips on controversial preprint ban

Polka encourages researchers to strike up discussions over preprints. By conducting peer review in the open, you integrate many more perspectives than you would by doing it behind closed doors, she says.

The preprint experience seems to have been positive for the survey respondents, 87% of whom said they had later submitted their paper to a peer-reviewed journal. Preprints shouldnt replace journal articles, Rzayeva says, but should complement them and become an integral part of the publishing system.

Rzayeva acknowledges that the survey covered only 4 servers, which accounted for around 55% of all COVID-19 preprints published in 2020. As with most surveys, there was also a self-selection bias, meaning that the proportion of individuals with certain views could be overestimated.

Anita Bandrowski, an information scientist at the University of California, San Diego, says the survey is important, but notes that it did not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools that are giving automated feedback on preprints. Bandrowski was part of a group of biologists and software specialists who developed a set of automated tools that measure the rigour and reproducibility of COVID-19 preprints and post the results on the social-media platform X.

Similar tools could become common as researchers consider ways to assess the rapidly growing number of preprints, and it will be important to find ways to track the results, says Bandrowski. She predicts that there will be much more adoption of preprints in the future among biologists as a result of researchers dipping their toes in during the pandemic.

Polka agrees. The pandemic gave us a window into what is possible with preprints. Its just a matter of tweaking policies in order to make use of that potential.

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COVID's preprint bump set to have lasting effect on research publishing - Nature.com

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The state's highest court will decide if Minnesota's governor went too far during the pandemic.

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Minnesota Supreme Court hears lawsuit over Gov. Walz's handling of COVID-19 pandemic - CBS Minnesota

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) A federal appeals court shot down claims Monday that New Jersey residents refusal to wear face masks at school board meetings during the COVID-19 outbreak constituted protected speech under the First Amendment.

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in two related cases stemming from lawsuits against officials in Freehold and Cranford, New Jersey.

The suits revolved around claims that the plaintiffs were retaliated against by school boards because they refused to wear masks during public meetings. In one of the suits, the court sent the case back to a lower court for consideration. In the other, it said the plaintiff failed to show she was retaliated against.

Still, the court found that refusing to wear a mask during a public health emergency didnt amount to free speech protected by the Constitution.

A question shadowing suits such as these is whether there is a First Amendment right to refuse to wear a protective mask as required by valid health and safety orders put in place during a recognized public health emergency. Like all courts to address this issue, we conclude there is not, the court said.

The court added: Skeptics are free to and did voice their opposition through multiple means, but disobeying a masking requirement is not one of them. One could not, for example, refuse to pay taxes to express the belief that taxes are theft. Nor could one refuse to wear a motorcycle helmet as a symbolic protest against a state law requiring them.

Ronald Berutti, an attorney for the appellants, said they intend to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.

The lawsuits were filed by George Falcone and Gwyneth Murray-Nolan.

Falcone attended a Freehold Township school board meeting in early 2022 when masks were still required. He refused, according to the courts ruling, and was issued a summons on a trespassing charge. He also alleged a later school board meeting was canceled in retaliation for his not wearing a mask. A lower court found he didnt have standing to bring the suit, and he appealed.

Murray-Nolan, who had testified before lawmakers on her skepticism toward the efficacy of masking, attended an early 2022 Cranford school board meeting without a mask despite a requirement for them. Less than a month later at the boards next meeting, she was arrested on a defiant trespass charge after attending without a mask. A lower court found officers had probable cause to arrest her because she failed to wear a mask as required under the law at the time. She appealed.

Eric Harrison, an attorney for the officials named in the suit, lauded the ruling on Tuesday. In an emailed statement he said that refusing to wear a mask in violation of a public health mandate is not the sort of civil disobedience that the drafters of the First Amendment had in mind as protected speech.

New Jerseys statewide order for public masking in schools ended in March 2022, shortly after the incidents described in the suits.

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Not wearing a mask during COVID-19 health emergency isn't a free speech right, appeals court says - The Associated Press

New York prosecutors say a Brooklyn woman has been sentenced in connection with a sprawling COVID-19 fraud scheme

February 8, 2024, 9:02 PM ET

2 min read

NEW YORK -- A Brooklyn woman who pleaded guilty to fraud in connection with various pandemic-era relief schemes was sentenced Thursday to three years of probation and $650,000 in penalties.

Prosecutors said Chanette Lewis, 32, carried out some of the schemes by leveraging her job at a call center, part of a New York program meant to provide health care workers with isolation rooms in hotels. They said she provided free hotel rooms to people she knew werent eligible health care workers or COVID-19 patients, including herself.

During the pandemic, this defendant exploited a COVID-19 safe-lodging program for her personal profit; today she faces the consequences of her criminal conduct. I thank New York City Emergency Management for reporting this matter," New York Department of Investigation Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber said in a statement.

Its the latest example of how people are believed to have stolen an estimated $280 billion in government aid during the pandemic across the U.S., including New York. The sentencing Thursday was part of a larger case involving $400,000 of fraud in the hotel program.

Lewis admitted to defrauding the emergency programs, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said in a statement, and she separately forged legal documents purporting to come from judges, prosecutors and doctors to get 30 people into public housing or into larger public housing apartments.

Using stolen personal information from real health care workers, she and three co-defendants were accused of securing the hotel rooms and then advertising them on Facebook to rent out, according to the Department of Investigation Statement. Co-defendants in the case have admitted to getting unemployment benefits in multiple states, along with fraudulent small business loans.

The Associated Press left phone and email messages with a lawyer involved in a plea deal in the case. It wasn't immediately clear if that was Lewis' current attorney; requests to prosecutors and investigators for updated contact info were not immediately answered.

Lewis was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to forfeit $290,000 and pay another $360,000 in penalties. Her co-defendants received lesser sentences, or have yet to be sentenced.

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New York woman sentenced to probation and fines in COVID aid fraud schemes - ABC News