Future Timeline

Thu 25 Jan 2024 18.40 GMT

Ministers have been accused of throwing away taxpayers’ money “as if it were confetti” after official figures revealed that the government wasted nearly £10bn on defective or unusable personal protective equipment during the Covid crisis.

Annual accounts for the Department of Health and Social Care published on Thursday show that nearly three-quarters of the money it spent on PPE during the pandemic has been written off.

The figures show £9.9bn of the £13.6bn worth of PPE that the department bought between 2020 and 2022 was unusable or its value is now less than the government paid for it. This includes defective or unsuitable equipment as well as PPE that could not be used before its expiry date.

Gareth Davies, the comptroller and auditor general of the National Audit Office, said: “Ongoing efforts to detect, prevent and recover fraud must continue, improving public confidence that this drain on the public finances is being tackled effectively and efficiently.”

The figures come as the National Crime Agency investigates allegations of bribery and fraud in the awarding of PPE contracts.

wjfox wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 4:52 pm

(Eurekalert) Simple breathing exercises done twice daily while using a mobile phone app can help relieve the symptoms of Long Covid, new research has found.

Resonant breathing, which consists of a four second inhale and six second exhale through the nose repeated for 10 minutes, significantly improved symptoms among the 13 Long Covid patients in the University of Leeds study, which is published today.

Participants used a free heart rate variability app on their mobile phones, which provided breathing guides that allowed them to track the effects of the technique. They monitored the effects using a chest strap heart rate monitor while completing the breathing exercises. Data from this, combined with heart rate data from a smart watch worn for the duration of the study, was used to analyse their progress.

After the four-week intervention, participants reported a reduction in their symptoms, better sleep and improved physical functioning.

The research was led by Dr Manoj Sivan, Associate Professor and Consultant in Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Leeds’ School of Medicine, and research lead for the Long Covid service at Leeds Community Healthcare Trust.

(Eurekalert) University of Queensland researchers have used machine learning to help predict the risk of secondary bacterial infections in hospitalised COVID-19 patients.

The machine learning technique can help detect whether antibiotic use is critical for patients with these infections.

“To reduce the risk of bacterial co-infections, it would be theoretically possible to just treat all COVID-19 patients with antibiotics.

“However, there’s a danger that over-treating with antibiotics could potentially lead to antibiotic resistance and the creation of bacterial superbugs.

“We’ve helped develop a robust predictive model to determine the risk of bacterial infections in COVID-19 patients, facilitating a careful use of antibiotics.”

(Eurekalert) The new study provides the most compelling data yet to suggest that excess mortality rates from chronic illnesses and other natural causes were actually driven by COVID-19 infections, disproving high-profile claims that have attributed these deaths to other factors such as COVID vaccinations and shelter-in-place policies.

Nearly 1,170,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States according to official federal counts, but multiple excess mortality studies suggest that these totals are vastly undercounted. While excess mortality provides an estimation of deaths that likely would not have occurred under normal, non-pandemic conditions, there is still little evidence into whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus contributed to these additional deaths, or whether these deaths were caused by other factors such as healthcare disruptions or socioeconomic challenges.

Now, a new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) provides the first concrete data showing that many of these excess deaths were indeed uncounted COVID-19 deaths.

Published in the journal PNAS, the study compared reported COVID-19 deaths to excess deaths due to non-COVID, natural causes, such as diseases and chronic illnesses, and found that increases in non-COVID excess deaths occurred at the same time or in the month prior to increases in reported COVID-19 deaths in most US counties.

(Eurekalert) National Harbor, Md. ― While there is a growing body of research about the long-term effects of COVID in the general adult population, little research has been done on the long-term impacts on those who get COVID while pregnant.

In a new study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting™, researchers will unveil findings that suggest that approximately 1 in 10 people who have COVID during pregnancy will develop long COVID.

Researchers followed a group of individuals from 46 states plus Washington, D.C., who got COVID while pregnant to see whether they developed long COVID and, if so, what factors put people at greater risk. The pregnancy cohort is part of a larger study, the NIH RECOVER Initiative, that aims to learn more about the long-term effects of COVID in adults and children.

Of the 1,503 people in the pregnancy cohort, slightly more than half (51 percent) were fully vaccinated before contracting COVID; and the average age at infection was about 32 years old. The study looked at a person’s pre-existing conditions, socioeconomic status, and severity of COVID during pregnancy.

Researchers found that 9.3 percent of pregnant people developed long COVID when evaluated six months or more after their initial infection. The most common symptoms people reported included feeling worn out after even minor physical or mental activity, also known as post-exertional malaise, fatigue, and dizziness.