COVID-19 News and Discussions

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Time_Traveller
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Public inquiry into UK Covid-19 response opens
Thu 21 Jul 2022 12.51 BST

Ministers will have a year to prepare before cross-examination at the UK’s Covid-19 public inquiry, its chair, Heather Hallett, announced, as she opened what is likely be one of the broadest statutory investigations in the country’s history.

The first cross-examinations of the government response to the pandemic, including decisions on lockdowns, maintaining public confidence and handling of scientific advice, will begin in summer 2023, two and a half years after the arrival of coronavirus, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives in the UK.

Hearings on the UK’s preparedness will start in late spring 2023, as Lady Hallett said she wanted to move as “speedily as possible so lessons are learned before another pandemic strikes”.

Boris Johnson had been repeatedly criticised by campaigners for the bereaved and Labour for delaying the launch of the inquiry. Hallett said it would scrutinise the “performance and effectiveness” of central government decision-making and its messaging – topics likely to expose current and former ministers.

The inquiry has powers to compel the production of evidence and appearances of witnesses.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... onse-opens
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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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International Study Identifies Risks for Long COVID in Children
July 22, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Nearly 6 percent of children who presented to the Emergency Department (ED) with COVID-19 reported symptoms of long COVID 90 days later, according to a study conducted in eight countries and published in JAMA Network Open. Initial hospitalization of 48 or more hours, four or more symptoms at the initial ED visit, and age 14 years or older were associated with long COVID.

“We found that in some children, illness with COVID-19 is associated with reporting persistent symptoms after 3 months,” said Principal Investigator Stephen Freedman, MDCM, MSc, with the Cumming School of Medicine at University of Calgary, and Alberta Health Services. “Our results suggest that appropriate guidance and follow-up are needed, especially for children at high risk for long COVID.”

The study included 1,884 children with COVID-19 who had 90-day follow-up. Long COVID was found in nearly 10 percent of hospitalized children and 5 percent in children discharged from the ED.

“Reported rates of long COVID in adults are substantially higher than what we found in children,” said Co-Principal Investigator Nathan Kuppermann, MD, MPH, from University of California, Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento. “Our findings can inform public health policy decisions regarding COVID-19 mitigation strategies for children and screening approaches for long COVID among those with severe infections.”

The most reported persistent symptoms in children were fatigue or weakness, cough, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/959647
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In Brief: COVID-19 Vaccine Does Not Negatively Affect Placental Health
July 22, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Vaccination against COVID-19 had no impact on the health of placentas in pregnant women, according to new research by pathologists at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. The findings ( https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-937 ... /fulltext ), published June 27 as a research letter in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology , further emphasize the safety of vaccination during pregnancy for babies and pregnant women, the investigators note.

Most previous studies on the impact of COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy have focused on maternal and infant outcomes. By contrast, for this study, the investigators examined 18 indicators of placental health, such as the presence of lesions, blood clots and inflammation associated with a higher risk of adverse health issues for babies and their mothers. They also collected data from clinical records on the babies’ birth weights and the score that assesses babies’ well-being at one minute and five minutes after birth, called the Apgar score.

The researchers analyzed findings for 431 women who gave birth to single babies at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center between April 2020 and July 2021 and compared results for 164 women who were fully vaccinated during pregnancy, defined as having received at least two doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna), with 267 unvaccinated women. All women included in the study had no evidence of current or prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. The investigators found no significant differences in placental health indicators, birth weights or Apgar scores between vaccinated and unvaccinated women.

As expected from previous research, 95 percent of babies born to vaccinated mothers had detectable antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in umbilical cord blood. Other studies have shown that vaccinating mothers during pregnancy not only protects them from severe illness from COVID-19, but also helps protect their babies for several months after birth.

Overall, the findings add to the existing body of knowledge demonstrating that COVID-19 vaccines are safe during pregnancy, the authors concluded.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/959633
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COVID Virus May Tunnel through Nanotubes from Nose to Brain

By Stephanie Pappas on July 20, 2022

As familiar to everyone as the COVID-causing coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has become over the past two years, feverish research is still trying to parse a lingering puzzle. How, in fact, does the pandemic virus that has so changed the world cross over into the brain after entering the respiratory system? An answer is important because neurological complaints are some of the most common in the constellation of symptoms called long COVID. The mystery centers around the fact that brain cells don’t display the receptors, or docking sites, that the virus uses to get into nasal and lung cells.

SARS-CoV-2, though, may have come up with an ingenious work-around. It may completely do away with the molecular maneuverings needed to attach to and unlock a cell membrane. Instead it wields a blunt instrument in the form of nanotube “bridges”—cylinders constructed of the common protein actin that are no more than a few tens of nanometers in diameter. These tunneling nanotubes extend across cell-to-cell gaps to penetrate a neighbor and give viral particles a direct route into COVID-impervious tissue. Researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris demonstrated the prospects for a nanotube-mediated cell crossing in a study in a lab dish that now needs to be confirmed in infected human patients. Given further proof, the findings could explain why some people who get COVID-19 experience brain fog and other neurological symptoms. Also, if the intercellular conduits could be severed, that might prevent some of these debilitating aftereffects of infection.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -to-brain/


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Riverside, San Bernardino counties reach 'high' COVID level; no plans for indoor mask mandate
Source: ABC 7 Eyewitness News
Cotton credits vaccinations, booster shots and available therapies, but he cautions that people who are immune compromised still need to take precautions in public.

Orange County reached the "high" community transmission level last week. Health officials said the surge in cases is due to the highly transmissible omicron subvariants.

Leaders in Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties all say they have no plans to implement new mask mandates unless they are ordered to do so by the state.
L.A County is also in the "high" COVID transmission level, and has been since July 14.

If the county stays at the high category for two weeks straight, officials would bring back rules requiring the wearing of masks during most indoor public activities. At earliest that would be July 29.
Read more: https://abc7.com/riverside-county-covid ... /12067808/
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SARS-CoV-2 Hijacks Nanotubes Between Neurons to Infect Them
July 25, 2022

Extract:
(EurekAlert) COVID-19 often leads to neurological symptoms, such as a loss of taste or smell, or cognitive impairments (including memory loss and concentration difficulties), both during the acute phase of the disease and over the long term with "long COVID" syndrome. But the way in which the infection reaches the brain was previously unknown. Scientists from Institut Pasteur and CNRS laboratories have used state-of-the-art electron microscopy approaches to demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 hijacks nanotubes, tiny bridges that link infected cells with neurons. The virus is therefore able to penetrate neurons despite the fact that they are lacking the ACE2 receptor that the virus usually binds to when infecting cells.
Further extract:
According to this new study, SARS-CoV-2 is also thought to be capable of inducing the formation of nanotubes between infected cells and neurons, as well as among neurons, which would explain how the brain is infected from the epithelium. The research team revealed multiple viral particles located both inside and on the surface of nanotubes. Since the virus spreads more rapidly and directly from within nanotubes than by exiting one cell to move to the next via a receptor, this mode of transmission therefore contributes to the infectious capacity of SARS-CoV-2 and its spread to neuronal cells.

But the virus also moves on the external surface of nanotubes, where it can be guided more quickly to cells that express compatible receptors. "Nanotubes can be seen as tunnels with a road on top," suggests Chiara Zurzolo, Head of the Institut Pasteur's Membrane Traffic and Pathogenesis Unit, "which enable the infection of nonpermissive cells like neurons but also facilitate the spread of infection between permissive cells."
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/959801

For a technical discussion of the study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abo0171
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Coronavirus Jumped to Humans at Least Twice at Market in Wuhan, China
July 26, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) In a pair of related studies, published July 26, 2022 online via First Release in Science
( https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337), researchers at University of California San Diego, with colleagues on four continents, show that the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 was at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, and resulted from at least two instances of the SARS-CoV-2 virus jumping from live animal hosts to humans working or shopping there.

The findings, first reported in February after the papers were posted online as preprints awaiting peer review, garnered international attention, primarily focusing on identifying the market as the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization estimates that there have been more than 566 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide and 6.3 million deaths since the pandemic was declared in early 2020.

“It’s vital that we know as much about the origin of COVID-19 as possible because only by understanding how pandemics get started can we hope to prevent them in the future,” said Joel O. Wertheim, PhD, associate professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and a co-author on both papers.
Further extract:
(The findings undercut a circulating and persistent theory that the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located a few miles from the market.)
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/959920

Edit: The study is also discussed in this article: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists ... f-covid-19
Last edited by caltrek on Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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