COVID-19 News and Discussions

[Ozzie guy]

Another covid breakout in Melbourne Australia we may be stuffed for a while.

[wjfox]

Another covid breakout in Melbourne Australia we may be stuffed for a while.

Your case numbers are absolutely miniscule compared to ours though. Wish the UK was in Australia's position.

[Time_Traveller]

Tokyo Olympics: Asahi Shimbun newspaper says Japan Games must be cancelled

Wed 26 May

A major Japanese newspaper has called for the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics, warning that the Games pose a threat to public health and will place additional strain on the country’s health service as it struggles to contain the latest wave of coronavirus.

In an editorial on Wednesday, the liberal Asahi Shimbun – an official Olympic partner – urged the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, “to calmly and objectively assess the situation and decide on the cancellation of the event this summer”.

The Asahi is the first of several Japanese media organisations listed as official Tokyo 2020 sponsors to call for the Games to be scrapped, less than two months before they are due to open.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... reak-japan

[wjfox]

3,180 new cases in the UK yesterday.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

[Ozzie guy]

Australian state "Victoria" (where I live) going into lockdown.

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

Covid: China hits back as US revisits Wuhan lab leak theory
Source: BBC

China has denounced US efforts to further investigate whether Covid-19 came from a Chinese lab.

US President Joe Biden has called on intelligence officials to "redouble" their work to find out how the virus was first transmitted to humans.

China's foreign ministry accused the US of "political manipulation and blame shifting".

It has rejected any link between Covid-19 and a virus research lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57267729

[weatheriscool]

CVS Offers Money, Cruises And A Superbowl Trip To Convince People To Get Vaccines
Source: MSN/The New York Times

(1 hr. ago). Facing a national decline in Covid-19 vaccination rates and an underwhelming response to vaccines in its own stores, the U.S. pharmacy chain CVS will offer a chance at money, vacations and a Super Bowl trip to persuade the unvaccinated to start going in for their shots.

CVS said in April that it could administer 25 million shots each month, but as of this week it had only administered about 17 million doses in total as mass vaccination sites ended up playing a bigger role in the nation’s early vaccination campaign.

The CVS incentives could not only help get more people vaccinated, but provide a boost to the company: The Medicare payment to administer each dose is $40. Nationally, the average number of doses administered daily has slowed to 1.7 million, down from a peak of more than 3.3 million in April.

CVS said in a statement that in an effort to “provide a positive reminder of the activities that are possible once vaccinated,” it had joined with other companies to offer prizes to people who get a shot at one of its pharmacies. Among the incentives: Weeklong Norwegian Cruises, $100 dates sponsored by the dating app Hinge and a trip to Super Bowl LVI next year...

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/cv ... ar-AAKrAfr

[weatheriscool]

New imaging tech finds hidden lung damage in long COVID patients
By Rich Haridy
May 26, 2021
https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/x ... -patients/

A new type of imaging technology has detected lung damage in patients suffering from the long-term effects of COVID-19. The weakened lung function was not visible on standard MRI or CT scans and its detection will help clinicians understand the persistent breathing impairments seen in patients with long COVID.

The phenomenon of long COVID is still a bit of a mystery, with researchers only just beginning to grasp the long-term implications of infection with this novel coronavirus. Fatigue and breathlessness are two of the most commonly reported lingering symptoms in COVID-19 patients following discharge from hospital. Yet standard MRI and CT scans often deliver normal results leaving many clinicians unable to empirically explain these patient symptoms.

An ongoing study in the UK, called PHOSP-COVID, is tracking a large number of patients closely for many months following hospitalization, and a small arm of that study is investigating long-term lung problems in this cohort.

The research is using a new kind of imaging technology called hyperpolarized xenon MRI (129Xe MRI). The technology offers incredibly detailed insights into lung function and gas transfer into the bloodstream.

[Yuli Ban]

There have been 7m-13m excess deaths worldwide during the pandemic