Tag: Covid19

Health

Surgeon Normal Assails Tech Corporations Over Misinformation on Covid-19

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Post date July 16, 2021

President Biden’s surgeon general used his first formal piece of advice to the United States on Thursday to deliver a broadside against tech and social media companies that he accused of not doing enough to spread dangerous health misinformation – in particular about Covid-19 – stop.

The officer, Dr. Vivek Murthy declared such misinformation to be “an urgent threat to public health”. His announcement came just days after his office representatives met with Twitter officials, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Surgeons in general have traditionally used advice – brief statements designed to draw Americans’ attention to a public health problem and make recommendations for its resolution – to talk about health topics such as tobacco use, opioid addiction, suicide prevention, and breastfeeding.

But dr. Murthy’s Counselor, a 22-page report with footnotes, had a more political context. Fox News presenters like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, along with their guests, are among those who have raised doubts about Covid-19 vaccines, which studies show are very effective in preventing death and hospitalization from the disease.

Dr. Murthy formulated his criticism of technology companies in a broader statement about the dangers of inaccurate and inaccurate health information, including misinformation about coronavirus vaccinations. He urged all Americans to endeavor to share correct information and said the United States needs “a societal approach” to address the problem.

But at a press conference on Thursday, Dr. Murthy appealed to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, making it clear that technology and social media companies are his primary target, saying they have a unique responsibility to be more aggressive against misinformation and citing Facebook by name.

“Modern technology companies have allowed misinformation to poison our information environment without being held accountable to their users,” said Dr. Murthy.

“We expect more from our tech companies,” he added. “We ask them to work with greater transparency and accountability. We ask you to monitor misinformation more closely. “

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube said Thursday that they have taken steps to crack down on misleading health information in line with their coronavirus misinformation guidelines. All three said they had introduced features to direct users to authoritative health sources on their platforms.

“We are permanently banning pages, groups and accounts that repeatedly violate our Covid misinformation rules, and that includes more than a dozen pages, groups and accounts from some of the people referred to in the press conference today,” said Dani Lever, a spokeswoman for Facebook.

Updated

July 15, 2021, 7:14 p.m. ET

YouTube said in a statement that it welcomes many aspects of the surgeon general’s report. Twitter said it agreed with Dr. Murthy’s approach and welcomed his partnership.

Calling tech and media companies out is a tricky business, and the White House has raised the question of whether it would try to regulate companies like Facebook that have become platforms for health disinformation. Asked about this at her briefing on Wednesday, Ms. Psaki was non-binding.

“Of course, decisions to regulate or hold a platform accountable would certainly be a political decision,” she said. “But in the meantime we will continue to shout disinformation and indicate where this information is going.”

Hours after Dr. Murthy announced in a press release by the Rockefeller Foundation that it would allocate $ 13.5 million in new funding to step up coronavirus response efforts in the United States, Africa, India and Latin America, and in particular “health.” To fight grievances ”. – and disinformation. “

The Digital Public Library of America also said it will work with the surgeon general by bringing together librarians, scholars, journalists and citizen leaders to discuss the role libraries can play in combating misinformation.

Misinformation about social distancing, mask use, treatments, and vaccines was rampant during the pandemic. The report is a sign that the Biden government is more determined to face this in the face of a sharp drop in the number of new vaccinations. Less than 50 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, and many top health experts have urged the president to do more to reach people who haven’t been vaccinated.

While nationwide cases and hospital admissions remain relatively low, more local hotspots are emerging and national trends are moving in the wrong direction, fueled by the spread of the more contagious delta variant. Vaccines are effective against the variant. Counties that voted for Mr Biden had higher vaccination rates on average than those that voted for former President Donald J. Trump. Conservatives are far more likely to reject vaccinations than Democrats.

The General Surgeon’s report is eagerly apolitical and does not identify any specific providers of misinformation. But some Republican leaders, worried the virus is spreading rapidly in conservative parts of the country, are beginning to promote vaccination and speak out against media and elected officials who cast doubts about vaccines.

Health misinformation is not a new phenomenon – and is not limited to the news media. In the 1990s, the report said that “a poorly designed study” – later withdrawn – falsely claimed that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine caused autism. “Even after the withdrawal, the claim gained momentum and contributed to lower vaccination rates over the next 20 years,” the report said.

It cites evidence of the spread of misinformation, including a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation that found in late May that 67 percent of unvaccinated adults had heard at least one Covid-19 vaccine myth and either believed it to be true or unsafe. An analysis of millions of social media posts in Science Magazine found that hoaxes are 70 percent more likely to be shared than true stories.

Another recent study showed that even brief exposure to misinformation reduces the likelihood that people will want a vaccine, the surgeon general said.

Tags Assails, companies, Covid19, General, misinformation, surgeon, Tech

Health

Homeopathic Physician Is Charged With Promoting Pretend Covid-19 Vaccine Playing cards

Post author By
Post date July 15, 2021

A homeopathic doctor in California is the first person to be charged by the federal government for selling fake Covid-19 vaccination cards, authorities said.

The doctor Juli A. Mazi from Napa, California, also sold Covid-19 “vaccine pellets” to patients, the federal prosecutor said. She was arrested on Wednesday and charged with wire fraud and false testimony regarding health matters, according to a criminal complaint. Ms. Mazi could face up to 20 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, authorities said.

Ms. Mazi sold pellets for $ 243, which she said contained a “very tiny amount” of the coronavirus that would trigger an immune response and provide “lifelong immunity to Covid-19,” the complaint said. To encourage customers to buy the pellets, prosecutors said Ms. Mazi falsely told them that the three Covid-19 vaccines approved for use in the US contained “toxic ingredients.”

It also offered homeopathic vaccinations for childhood diseases that it falsely claimed would meet vaccination requirements for California schools, the complaint said.

Ms. Mazi was not immediately available for comment. It wasn’t immediately clear whether she had a lawyer.

She describes herself on her website as a naturopathic doctor who received her PhD from the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon. She is trained in “traditional medical sciences” and “ancient and modern modalities” that nature says use for healing.

It also offers “classic homeopathy”, a medical system developed in Germany more than 200 years ago. It uses the theory that a substance can be cured by a substance that causes similar symptoms and the notion that drugs are more effective at minimal dosages, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. There is little evidence that homeopathy is an effective treatment for disease, the center said, citing a 2015 assessment by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council. A number of concepts in homeopathy are inconsistent with basic scientific concepts agreed, said the center.

Authorities began investigating Ms. Mazi after someone filed a complaint in April that relatives bought her the Covid-19 vaccine tablets and had not received any of the approved Covid-19 vaccinations. In addition to the pellets, Ms. Mazi also sent the family’s Covid 19 vaccination cards, on which Moderna was listed, according to the prosecutor. She instructed them to mark the cards to falsely indicate that they received the vaccine on the day they ingested the pellets.

It is unclear how many people bought Covid-19 vaccine pellets from Ms. Mazi, but she received more than $ 200,000 through Square, a digital payment processing company, from January 2020 to May 2021, the complaint said. Most of the transactions did not specify the purpose of the payments, but 25 transactions worth more than $ 7,500 were recorded to indicate that the complaint was for Covid-19 treatments.

“This defendant allegedly betrayed and endangered the public by exploiting fears and spreading misinformation about FDA-approved vaccinations while selling counterfeit treatments that put people’s lives at risk,” said Lisa O. Monaco, assistant attorney general , in a statement. She added that using false vaccination cards allowed people to “bypass efforts to contain the spread of the disease”.

Steven J. Ryan, special envoy for the inspector general’s office for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the department will continue to investigate “scammers” who are misleading the public.

“This doctor has violated the important public trust in health professionals at a time when integrity is most needed,” he said in a statement.

In May, California authorities arrested the owner of a bar on charges of selling fake Covid-19 vaccination cards in his shop. There is also concern that people who share photos of their vaccination card with their name and date of birth could leave them at risk of identity theft or fraud.

Tags cards, charged, Covid19, Doctor, fake, Homeopathic, selling, Vaccine

Health

Covid-19 Delta Variant Widens Gulf Between Vaccinated and Unvaccinated

Post author By
Post date July 14, 2021

Während viele Amerikaner das scheinbare Abklingen der Pandemie feiern, wird die Sorge um die sogenannte Delta-Variante immer lauter.

Die Variante, die bisher ansteckendste Version des Coronavirus, macht mehr als die Hälfte der Neuinfektionen in den USA aus, berichteten Bundesgesundheitsbeamte diesen Monat. Die Verbreitung der Variante hat die Biden-Administration zu einem energischen neuen Impfschub veranlasst, und Bundesbeamte planen, medizinische Teams in Gemeinden zu entsenden, die mit Ausbrüchen konfrontiert sind, die jetzt unvermeidlich erscheinen.

Infektionen, Krankenhauseinweisungen und Todesfälle nehmen in einigen Bundesstaaten mit niedrigen Impfraten wie Arkansas, Missouri, Texas und Nevada schnell zu und beginnen in allen anderen kleine Anstiege zu zeigen. Auch in New York City haben sich die Kurven nach oben verschoben, und der Anteil positiver Tests in der Stadt hat sich in den letzten Wochen auf knapp über 1 Prozent verdoppelt.

Landesweit bleiben die Zahlen auf einem der niedrigsten Niveaus seit Beginn der Pandemie, tendieren jedoch wieder langsam nach oben, was eine Debatte darüber auslöst, wann Auffrischungsspritzen zum Schutz der Amerikaner erforderlich sein könnten.

Das Virus hat auch weltweit große Ausbrüche ausgelöst, von Japan und Australien bis Indonesien und Südafrika, was viele Länder dazu zwingt, strenge Beschränkungen für soziale Aktivitäten einzuführen. Selbst an Orten wie Großbritannien, wo weite Teile der Bevölkerung geimpft sind, hat die Delta-Variante die Impfbemühungen überholt, das Ziel der Herdenimmunität weiter außer Reichweite gebracht und ein Ende der Pandemie verschoben.

Wissenschaftler sagen jedoch, dass die Amerikaner, selbst wenn die Zahlen bis zum Herbst weiter steigen, die Schrecken des letzten Winters wahrscheinlich nicht erneut erleben oder in absehbarer Zeit Auffrischungsspritzen benötigen werden.

Wenn Großbritanniens Erfahrung ein Vorbote für das ist, was noch kommen wird, könnte die Gesamtzahl der Infektionen steigen, wenn sich die Delta-Variante in den USA ausbreitet. Krankenhausaufenthalte und Todesfälle werden jedoch wahrscheinlich viel niedriger sein als nach dem Aufkommen früherer Varianten, da sich das Durchschnittsalter der Infizierten nach unten verschoben hat und junge Menschen zu leichten Symptomen neigen.

Ebenso wichtig ist, dass Impfstoffe gegen die Delta-Variante wirksam sind und bereits ein Bollwerk gegen ihre Verbreitung darstellen.

„Ich denke, die Vereinigten Staaten haben sich aus einem national koordinierten Anstieg geimpft, obwohl wir so ziemlich überall Fälle erwarten“, sagte Bill Hanage, Epidemiologe an der Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

„Delta erzeugt eine Menge Lärm, aber ich glaube nicht, dass es richtig ist, eine riesige Alarmglocke zu läuten.“

Dennoch wird es wahrscheinlich vereinzelte Ausbrüche in Taschen mit geringer Impfung geben, sagten er und andere Wissenschaftler voraus. Der Grund ist einfach: Das Muster des Schutzes gegen das Coronavirus in den USA ist sehr uneinheitlich.

Im Großen und Ganzen weisen der Westen und Nordosten relativ hohe Impfraten auf, während der Süden die geringsten hat. Die geimpften und ungeimpften „zwei Amerikas“ – wie Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, der führende Berater der Regierung in Bezug auf die Pandemie, sie genannt hat – sind ebenfalls nach politischen Gesichtspunkten gespalten.

Landkreise, die für Herrn Biden gestimmt haben, durchschnittlich höhere Impfraten als diejenigen, die für Donald Trump gestimmt haben. Konservative lehnen Impfungen viel häufiger ab als Demokraten.

„Ich erwarte nicht, dass wir uns der Art von Chaos nähern, die wir zuvor gesehen haben“, sagte Kristian Andersen, Virologe am Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. “Es wird Cluster geben, und zwar in Staaten, in denen Sie niedrige Impfraten haben.”

In einem Land, das seine Pandemie mit einer großflächigen Impfung kurzfristig beenden sollte, ist die Delta-Variante gut darauf ausgelegt, die kulturelle Kluft zu nutzen. Das Virus scheint die schlimmsten Eigenschaften früherer Varianten zu kombinieren, bemerkte Dr. Andersen.

Die Variante wurde erstmals in Indien identifiziert, wo ihr ein überwältigender Anstieg zugeschrieben wird, der die Zahl des Landes auf fast 30 Millionen Infektionen und mindestens 400.000 Todesfälle brachte. Das Virus breitete sich schnell nach Großbritannien aus, wo es jetzt die Quelle von 99 Prozent der Fälle ist. Seitdem ist es in 104 Ländern und allen 50 amerikanischen Bundesstaaten aufgetaucht.

Von Public Health England gesammelte Daten zeigen, dass die Delta-Variante bis zu 60 Prozent ansteckender ist als die Alpha-Variante, die selbst mindestens 50 Prozent ansteckender war als die ursprüngliche Form des Virus. Delta scheint auch in der Lage zu sein, dem Immunsystem teilweise auszuweichen, wie die Beta-Variante, die erstmals in Südafrika identifiziert wurde, wenn auch in geringerem Maße. Und einige Berichte deuten darauf hin, dass Delta schwerere Infektionen verursachen kann.

Aber die Ansteckung macht die Delta-Variante zu einer gewaltigen Bedrohung, sagte Dr. Hanage. „Die Tatsache, dass Delta in diesen ungeimpften Teilen in der Mitte des Landes so schnell angekommen ist und sich so gut entwickelt hat, deutet für mich darauf hin, dass der Löwenanteil seines Vorteils aus dieser verbesserten Übertragbarkeit besteht“, sagte er.

Das bedeutet, dass die Strategien, die gegen frühere Versionen des Virus funktionierten, möglicherweise weniger effektiv sind, um die Ausbreitung von Delta einzudämmen und auf absehbare Zeit die Tür für sporadische Ausbrüche in den Vereinigten Staaten öffnen.

Wer gegen das Coronavirus geimpft wurde, muss sich keine Sorgen machen. Berichte über Infektionen mit der Delta-Variante bei vollständig geimpften Menschen in Israel mögen die Menschen alarmiert haben, aber praktisch alle verfügbaren Daten deuten darauf hin, dass die Impfstoffe einen wirksamen Schutz vor schweren Erkrankungen, Krankenhausaufenthalten und Tod durch alle bestehenden Varianten des Coronavirus bieten.

Selbst eine einzige Dosis von Impfstoffen, die zwei Impfungen erfordert, scheint die schwersten Symptome zu verhindern, obwohl dies eine geringere Barriere gegen symptomatische Erkrankungen darstellt – was es zu einer dringenden Priorität macht, Menschen an Orten wie Großbritannien, die sich dafür entschieden haben, die erste Dosis zu priorisieren, dringende Priorität.

Wie in Israel hat Großbritannien Delta-Infektionen bei geimpften Menschen gesehen, aber sie waren hauptsächlich bei Menschen, die großen Mengen des Virus ausgesetzt waren – zum Beispiel Gesundheitspersonal, Taxi- und Busfahrer – und bei denen, die möglicherweise eine schwache Immunantwort aufgebaut haben, weil ihres Alters oder Gesundheitszustands, sagte Dr. Muge Cevik, Experte für Infektionskrankheiten an der University of St. Andrews in Schottland und wissenschaftlicher Berater der britischen Regierung.

In Ländern mit niedrigen Impfraten hat die Delta-Variante jedoch fruchtbaren Boden gefunden. In Afrika, wo nur etwa 1 Prozent der Bevölkerung vollständig geimpft ist, verdoppelt sich die Prävalenz der Variante etwa alle drei Wochen. Die Zahl der Fälle auf dem gesamten Kontinent stieg in der Woche zum 27. Juni im Vergleich zur Vorwoche um 25 Prozent und die Zahl der Todesfälle um 15 Prozent.

In den Vereinigten Staaten ist die Situation viel weniger schlimm, wo fast 60 Prozent der Erwachsenen vollständig geimpft sind. Sogar Mississippi, der Staat mit der niedrigsten Impfrate, hat 43 Prozent der Erwachsenen geschützt. Bundesweit ist Covid-19 von der führenden Todesursache im Januar auf die siebte mit durchschnittlich 330 Todesfällen pro Tag zurückgegangen.

In Landkreisen, in denen weniger als 30 Prozent der Einwohner vollständig geimpft sind, nehmen die Fälle jedoch schnell zu. Und der Trend wird sich wahrscheinlich beschleunigen, wenn das Wetter abkühlt und die Menschen nach drinnen gehen, wo das Virus gedeiht.

Wenn die Prävalenz in diesen Gemeinden hoch genug ansteigt, besteht auch für geimpfte Menschen das Risiko einer Ansteckung, wenn auch nicht einer schweren Erkrankung. Darüber hinaus kann die Variante Möglichkeiten finden, weiter im Umlauf zu bleiben.

Eine kürzlich durchgeführte Studie verband 47 Infektionsfälle mit der Delta-Variante mit einer Indoor-Sporthalle, darunter drei Personen, die eine Dosis des Pfizer-BioNTech- oder Moderna-Impfstoffs erhalten hatten, und vier Personen, die vollständig immunisiert waren.

Verstehen Sie die Covid-Krise in Indien

„Wenn es eine Population von ungeimpften Personen gibt, können die Impfstoffe ihre Aufgabe wirklich nicht erfüllen“, sagte Stacia Wyman, Expertin für Computergenomik an der University of California, Berkeley. “Und das ist, wo Delta wirklich ein Problem ist.”

Großbritanniens Erfahrungen mit der Delta-Variante haben gezeigt, wie wichtig nicht nur die Impfung ist, sondern auch die ihr zugrunde liegende Strategie. Das Land ordnete die Impfungen streng nach Alter an, angefangen bei den ältesten bis hin zu wenigen Ausnahmen für jüngere wichtige Arbeiter außerhalb des medizinischen Berufes.

Das bedeutete, dass die Schwächsten zuerst geschützt wurden, während der sozial aktivste Teil der Bevölkerung – jüngere Menschen – bis vor kurzem weitgehend ungeschützt war. Jüngere Menschen waren maßgeblich an der Verbreitung des Virus beteiligt.

In England bekam jeder in seinen späten Teenager- und Zwanzigerjahren erst Mitte Juni, zwei Monate später als in den Vereinigten Staaten, Anspruch auf eine Spritze, und viele warten immer noch auf eine zweite Dosis. Diese zweiten Dosen sind mit der Verbreitung von Delta umso wichtiger geworden, da die Variante in einigen Fällen die ersten Dosen übertrifft.

In einer Studie, die letzte Woche in der Zeitschrift Nature veröffentlicht wurde, konnten nur etwa 10 Prozent der Blutproben von Personen, die eine Dosis des AstraZeneca- oder Pfizer-BioNtech-Impfstoffs erhielten, die Delta-Variante neutralisieren, verglichen mit 95 Prozent derjenigen, die eine Dosis erhielten beide Dosen. (Andere Studien legen jedoch nahe, dass eine Einzeldosis mindestens ausreicht, um schwere Erkrankungen und den Tod zu verhindern.)

Mehr als 90 Prozent der Menschen über 55 sind in Großbritannien vollständig geimpft. Das hat den Tribut an Krankenhäusern nach der Verbreitung der Delta-Variante nicht ganz abgemildert: Die Patienteneinweisungen steigen in den letzten Tagen ebenso schnell wie die Fälle, ein Hinweis darauf, dass einige Infektionen immer noch unweigerlich zu schweren Erkrankungen führen. Der Anteil der Fälle, die zu Krankenhauseinweisungen führten, ist jedoch geringer als in den vorherigen Wellen.

„Das tatsächliche Übertragungsmuster konzentriert sich wirklich stark auf die ungeimpfte Bevölkerung, die in Großbritannien fast ausschließlich junge Menschen sind“, sagte Jeffrey Barrett, der die Coronavirus-Sequenzierungsinitiative am Wellcome Sanger Institute leitet. “Man bekommt Fälle, aber sie werden normalerweise nicht sehr krank.”

In den USA verzeichnen einige Bundesstaaten bereits einen Anstieg der Krankenhauseinweisungen. Auch wenn diese Zahlen im Vergleich zum letzten Winter gering bleiben, werden sie Krankenhäuser in Bundesstaaten wie Oregon, die aufgrund anderer Faktoren, wie der Hitzewelle, bereits voll ausgelastet sind, belasten.

“Wir haben nicht wirklich einen großen Spielraum für Fehler”, sagte Brian O’Roak, ein Genetiker an der Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. “Wenn wir einen starken Anstieg der Krankenhauseinweisungen sehen, werden wir wieder da sein, wo wir beim letzten Anstieg waren.”

In den vorangegangenen Wellen gab es in den USA einen sauberen, linearen Zusammenhang zwischen der Zahl der Infektionen, Krankenhausaufenthalte und Todesfälle. Glücklicherweise gelten diese Muster nicht für die Delta-Variante, da ein großer Teil der Menschen mit dem höchsten Risiko inzwischen geimpft wurde.

Das Land öffnete auch Impfungen für alle Erwachsenen und sogar für 12- bis 17-Jährige, die Übertragungsketten effektiver unterbrechen können als in Großbritannien.

Der in Großbritannien vertriebene AstraZeneca-Impfstoff scheint bei der Vorbeugung von Infektionen mit Delta weniger wirksam zu sein als die in den Vereinigten Staaten verbreiteteren mRNA-Impfstoffe. Auch das könnte den USA einen Vorteil gegenüber der Variante verschaffen.

Aufgrund der teilweisen Fähigkeit von Delta, das Immunsystem zu untergraben, scheint die Rate der Durchbruchinfektionen – Fälle, die trotz Impfung auftreten – bei der Variante mit Ausnahme von Beta höher zu sein als bei früheren Formen des Virus.

Viele Experten befürchten, dass selbst leichte Infektionen das Risiko für sogenanntes Long-Covid erhöhen, die Konstellation von Symptomen, die Monate nach Abklingen einer aktiven Infektion bestehen bleiben kann. Das warf eine erschreckende Aussicht auf: eine Zunahme von Langzeiterkrankungen in ungeimpften Regionen.

Aber viele Wissenschaftler glauben jetzt, dass es unwahrscheinlich ist, dass Durchbruchinfektionen das Syndrom verursachen. Wenn eine geimpfte Person infiziert ist, kann das Virus einige Replikationsrunden durchlaufen, aber “die Immunantwort ist so schnell und so robust, dass sie die Infektion im Grunde stoppt”, sagte Angela Rasmussen, Virologin bei Vaccine und Organisation für Infektionskrankheiten an der University of Saskatchewan in Kanada.

Die Coronavirus-Pandemie begann als Flickenteppich in den USA, und die Delta-Variante scheint das Muster wahrscheinlich wiederherzustellen, glauben viele Experten. Und das Virus wird wahrscheinlich nicht die letzte ernsthafte Bedrohung sein. Bereits die in Brasilien identifizierte Gamma-Variante hat im Bundesstaat Washington Fuß gefasst, und eine neuere Variante, Lambda, ist in Südamerika auf dem Vormarsch.

„Die Leute sind positiv gesinnt, aber das ist erst der Anfang“, sagt Ravindra Gupta, Virologe an der University of Cambridge. “Das wird ein langsames Brennen.”

Tags Covid19, Delta, Gulf, Unvaccinated, Vaccinated, Variant, Widens

Health

Fitbits Detect Lasting Modifications After Covid-19

Post author By
Post date July 7, 2021

Last spring, when the nation’s Covid-19 cases were soaring and tests were in short supply, some scientists wondered whether a new approach to disease surveillance might be on Americans’ wrists.

One in five Americans uses a Fitbit, Apple Watch or other wearable fitness tracker. And over the past year, several studies have suggested that the devices — which can continually collect data on heart rates, body temperature, physical activity and more — could help detect early signs of Covid-19 symptoms.

Now, research suggests that these wearables can also help track patients’ recovery from the disease, providing insight into its long-term effects.

In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open, researchers studying Fitbit data reported that people who tested positive for Covid-19 displayed behavioral and physiological changes, including an elevated heart rate, that could last for weeks or months. These symptoms lasted longer in people with Covid than in those with other respiratory illnesses, the scientists found.

“This was an interesting study, and I think it’s important,” said Dr. Robert Hirten, a gastroenterologist and wearables expert at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who was not involved in the new work. “Wearable devices offer an ability for us to be able to monitor people unobtrusively over long periods of time to see in an objective way — how really has the virus affected them?”

The results are from the Digital Engagement and Tracking for Early Control and Treatment (DETECT) trial run by scientists at the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, Calif. From March 25, 2020 to Jan. 24, 2021, more than 37,000 people enrolled in the trial.

Participants downloaded the MyDataHelps research app and agreed to share data from their Fitbit, Apple Watch or other wearable device. They also used the app to report illness symptoms and the results of any Covid-19 tests.

In October, the same researchers reported in Nature Medicine that when they combined wearable data with self-reported symptoms, they could detect Covid-19 cases more accurately than when they analyzed symptoms alone.

But the data, the researchers realized, could also help them track what happened to people after the worst of the illness had passed. People recovering from Covid have reported a wide range of lasting health effects, including fatigue, “brain fog,” shortness of breath, headache, depression, heart palpitations and chest pain. (These lingering effects are often known as long Covid.)

The new study focuses on a subset of 875 Fitbit-wearing participants who reported a fever, cough, body aches or other symptoms of a respiratory illness and were tested for Covid-19. Of those, 234 people tested positive for the disease. The rest were presumed to have other kinds of infections.

Participants in both groups slept more and walked less after they got sick, and their resting heart rates rose. But these changes were more pronounced in people with Covid-19. “There was a much larger change in resting heart rate for individuals who had Covid compared to other viral infections,” said Jennifer Radin, an epidemiologist at Scripps who leads the DETECT trial. “We also have a much more drastic change in steps and sleep.”

The scientists also found that about nine days after participants with Covid first began reporting symptoms, their heart rates dropped. After this dip, which was not observed in those with other illnesses, their heart rates rose again and remained elevated for months. It took 79 days, on average, for their resting heart rates to return to normal, compared with just four days for those in the non-Covid group.

Updated

July 7, 2021, 1:59 p.m. ET

This prolonged heart rate elevation may be a sign that Covid-19 disrupts the autonomic nervous system, which regulates basic physiological processes. The heart palpitations and dizziness reported by many people who are recovering from Covid may be symptoms of this disruption.

“Lots of people who get Covid end up getting autonomic dysfunction and a kind of ongoing inflammation, and this may adversely affect their body’s ability to regulate their pulse,” Dr. Radin said.

Sleep and physical activity levels also returned to baseline more slowly in those with Covid-19 compared to those with other ailments, Dr. Radin and her colleagues found.

The researchers identified a small subset of people with Covid whose heart rates remained more than five beats per minute above normal one to two months after infection. Nearly 14 percent of those with the disease fell into this category, and their heart rates did not return to normal for more than 133 days, on average.

These participants were also significantly more likely to report having had a cough, shortness of breath and body aches during the acute phase of their illness than did other Covid patients.

One limitation of the study is that it did not ask participants to continue reporting their symptoms in the weeks and months after they first fell ill. But the scientists are planning to ask volunteers to do that in future research.

“We want to kind of do a better job of collecting long-term symptoms so we can compare the physiological changes that we’re seeing with symptoms that participants are actually experiencing,” Dr. Radin said. “So this is really a preliminary study that opens up many other studies down the road.”

In February, the National Institutes of Health announced that it would provide $1.15 billion over the next four years to fund research on long Covid. The new study highlights the role that wearables could play in that research, Dr. Hirten said: “Combining these sort of techniques with other studies that are being done looking at this issue of long-term symptoms could really offer a nice objective insight into what’s going on with people.”

Tags Covid19, Detect, Fitbits, lasting

Health

Singapore minister on Covid-19 vaccination program, opening of borders

Post author By
Post date July 6, 2021

SINGAPORE – Singapore aims to immunize 75% of its population by early October to gradually relax border restrictions as the coronavirus becomes endemic over time, trade minister Gan Kim Yong told CNBC on Tuesday.

“Covid-19 is likely to be endemic in the future. That is why vaccination is so important. Because the transmission will continue and you will be confronted with a new variant from time to time when the virus mutates, “Gan told the” Squawk Box “from CNBC Asia.”

He said the goal is to vaccinate at least two-thirds of the country by August 9, when Singapore celebrates its national day, which marks the country’s independence after separating from Malaysia in 1965.

Data from the scientific publication Our World In Data showed that by July 3, nearly 37% of Singapore’s 5.6 million residents were fully vaccinated. This is a significantly higher percentage compared to more populous neighbors like Malaysia and Indonesia, who each vaccinated nearly 8% fully. and 5% of their population.

Vaccines can help limit transmission to some extent and reduce the severity of the disease, the minister said. This ensures that Singapore’s hospitals and medical facilities are not overwhelmed and would allow the country to “continue to live with Covid-19”.

Singapore’s national vaccination program runs vaccinations from Pfizer and Moderna, but some private clinics have been allowed to administer Sinovac for those who prefer the Chinese-made vaccine.

Travel corridors and reopening of borders

Vaccination rate will be an important marker in easing border restrictions to allow non-resident travelers to enter Singapore, Gan said.

“We hope that by the end of September or beginning of October we can cover 75% or more (of the population). Then we can open up our borders more to allow more.” Visitors to Singapore come both for business and pleasure, “added Gan.

Discussions about the establishment of travel corridors with Hong Kong and Australia have not yet produced any concrete results this year.

A bubble agreement would have enabled people from Hong Kong or Australia to travel to Singapore and vice versa without quarantine.

“We decided not to call it a travel bubble because it tends to burst,” said Gan. “We will continue to do our best to discuss with our partners and the discussion is moving forward.”

Singapore and its partners need to be prepared for potential travel corridors by making sure infection rates stay low and vaccination rates high, Gan said.

The city-state plans to conduct studies that will allow vaccinated travel between Singapore and several other destinations, he added. First, it will be done in small groups to test the process, and if those efforts are successful, it will be expanded to let more travelers into the country, Gan said.

“This will be very important for us to do it safely, build trust and allow us to refine our actions and process to ensure we can continue to protect Singapore and our visitors,” he added .

Loosen restrictions further

Singapore tightened restrictions in May as locally transmitted cases spiked and the highly contagious Delta variant was discovered in the city-state. These strict measures included a ban on eating in restaurants and grocery stores and restricting public social gatherings to two people.

Some of those measures have since been relaxed as cases are now under control and only a handful of unrelated infections are reported in the community each week.

We always believe that we have to find a very careful balance between protecting life on the one hand and preserving livelihoods on the other.

Gan Kim Yong

Minister for Trade and Industry

“We have to be careful and take a cautious approach as we open up our economy and our community,” said Gan, the former health minister and still co-chair of Singapore’s Covid-19 task force.

“This is to ensure that we can continue to keep public health under control and ensure the safety of Singaporeans,” he said, adding, “We always believe that we can strike a very careful balance between protecting life and protecting ourselves Life “must find a livelihood on the other side.”

If things keep moving steadily forward, Gan said Singapore will allow in-person dining for up to five people from July 12th. Currently, only groups of two people are allowed to dine together outside of homes.

Tags borders, Covid19, Minister, opening, program, Singapore, Vaccination

World News

Covid-19 and Vaccine Information: Reside Updates

Post author By
Post date July 5, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Pool photo by Frank Augstein

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday that the government will likely lift most remaining Covid restrictions in England on July 19, and that he would likely leave it up to people to decide whether to keep wearing masks in subways, buses, and other confined spaces.

Mr. Johnson detailed plans for lifting the restrictions and loosening some travel rules at a news conference on Monday evening, stressing that a final decision on ending most pandemic limits would be made on July 12.

The announcement was met with both hope and trepidation. Although emerging variants have caused the number of infections in the country to rise in recent weeks, so far that has yet to be followed by a commensurate rise in hospital admissions or deaths — a sign Mr. Johnson and his advisers said that the vaccines are working.

“There’s only one reason why we can contemplate going ahead to Step 4 in circumstances where we’d normally be locking down further and that’s because of the continuing effectiveness of the vaccine rollout,” Mr. Johnson said.

Ahead of his address, Mr. Johnson had said people in the country had to “learn to live with this virus.”

And Monday evening, Mr. Johnson said beginning the July 19, the government will “move away from legal restriction and allow people to make their own decisions on how to manage the virus.”All businesses will be allowed to open. Social distancing and face coverings will no longer be mandatory, though, Mr. Johnson said there would be guidance for people who may wish to wear masks. Working from home guidance will no longer be in place.

The full reopening had been scheduled to take place last month, but was delayed because of worries over the more contagious Delta variant. The number of infections in the country has risen in recent weeks — primarily among younger people, who have only recently become eligible for vaccination. But 86 percent of adults in England have received at least one vaccine dose, among the highest rates in the world.

Organizers of nightlife and live events, which have largely fallen silent during the pandemic, had lobbied against further delays. Though many venues remain closed, Wembley Stadium will host the semifinals and finals of the European Championship soccer tournament in the coming days, with as many as 60,000 people allowed to attend if they show proof of vaccination or a negative virus test.

There are concerns, however, that the large gatherings will lead to further outbreaks. More than 2,000 people in Scotland tested positive for the virus last week after watching a Euro 2020 game at a stadium, fan zone or pub, according to National Health Scotland — nearly two-thirds of which were linked to a Euro 2020 game in London.

With England’s full reopening, restaurants and pubs will be able to serve more patrons, and limits on gatherings like weddings will be removed.

Britain reported over 24,000 new daily cases on Sunday, the highest number since early February, though the rates of hospitalizations and deaths remain low. And medical experts had urged officials to maintain some regulations, including mandatory face coverings and guidance on social distancing.

“It’s not a binary decision of all or nothing,” said Dr. Chaand Nagpaul, the chair of the British Medical Association Council, adding that such measures would minimize the impact of rising infections.

England has accelerated efforts to vaccine younger people in recent weeks, and officials said they were working on a program to offer booster shots to people over 50 and other vulnerable people this coming winter.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are working on separate, though similar timelines to also fully reopen the economy in their nations.

QueensGabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times
WashingtonTom Brenner for The New York Times
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Saugerties, N.Y.Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Hermosa Beach, Calif.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WashingtonTom Brenner for The New York Times

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President Biden said on Sunday that getting vaccinated against the coronavirus was “the most patriotic thing” that Americans could do. In remarks addressed to a crowd attending a Fourth of July party on the White House’s South Lawn, and broadcast nationally, he said the United States was emerging from the darkness of the pandemic but stressed that the country was not yet fully clear of it.

He singled out the Delta virus variant as a particular threat.

Mr. Biden had hoped to turn the Fourth of July into a celebration not just of the nation’s independence, but also of reaching his administration’s ambitious goal to have 70 percent of adults at least partly inoculated against the coronavirus before the holiday.

He didn’t quite make it. As of Friday, about 67 percent of people in the country 18 and older had gotten at least one vaccine dose, according to a New York Times tracker. Almost 60 percent of adults were fully vaccinated, and the highly contagious Delta variant was creating hot spots, particularly in states with low vaccination rates, like Missouri.

The shortfall did not dampen the White House’s outlook. The president had pressed ahead with an optimistic message, signaling that this year’s July Fourth celebration would be about “independence from the virus” and a return to some semblance of normal life.

On Saturday, Mr. Biden visited Traverse City, Mich., as part of what the White House called the “America’s Back Together” celebration. On Sunday, he and his wife, Jill Biden, hosted a party whose invitation list included 1,000 military personnel and essential workers, on whom Mr. Biden lavished thanks during his speech.

A sense of a new day seems to be shared by many Americans, who returned to prepandemic Fourth of July rituals in droves, flocking to the roads and the skies in the stiffest test yet for the nation’s travel infrastructure since the pandemic mostly shut it down in March 2020.

The Transportation Security Administration screened 2.197 million people on July 3, the most since March 5, 2020, about a week before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic.

Despite the new variant’s spread, reports of new cases across the country have been holding steady at 12,000 a day, the lowest since testing became widely available. The U.S. average of fewer than 300 daily deaths from Covid-19 is a decline of 23 percent over the past two weeks. Hospitalizations are also dropping.

Some public health experts cautioned, however, that scenes of celebrations might send the wrong message when wide swaths of the population remain vulnerable.

The continuing threat was brought into sharp focus on Saturday when the authorities announced that six emergency medical workers helping with rescue efforts at the site of a collapsed condo in Surfside, Fla., had tested positive.

On Friday, Mr. Biden urged people who have yet to get vaccinated to “think about their family” and get a shot as the Delta variant spreads.

“I am concerned that people who have not gotten vaccinated have the capacity to catch the variant and spread the variant to other people who have not been vaccinated,” he said. “Don’t just think about yourself.”

Credit…Sara Messinger for The New York Times

In the weeks since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its mask guidelines to allow fully vaccinated people to take their masks off in most indoor settings, a stark divide has emerged, particularly in wealthier enclaves where services are at a premium.

Those still wearing masks tend to be members of the service class — store clerks, waiters, janitors, manicurists, security guards, receptionists, hair stylists and drivers — while those without face coverings are often the well-to-do customers being wined and dined.

Employers are hesitant to discuss their mask policies, but there are sensible reasons for requiring staffers to keep their masks on.

Just under 50 percent of people in the United States are fully vaccinated. And coronavirus variants, some of which are highly infectious and may be more resistant to vaccines, are on the rise, said Dr. Lisa Maragakis, an epidemiologist and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Food servers, retail clerks, grocery cashiers and other public-facing workers interact all day with customers, which can put their health (and the health of their customers) at risk. This creates not only potential liability issues for employers, but also could hamstring a business at a time of worker shortages.

Even at establishments that give vaccinated employees the choice to take their masks off, many are keeping them on. “Who knows who has had their shot and who hasn’t,” said Michelle Booker, a store clerk from the Bronx who works at a Verizon store in Midtown Manhattan.

Credit…Giuseppe Lami/EPA, via Shutterstock

Nearly 900 people tried to take advantage of an overnight vaccination drive, called Open Night, over the weekend in an inoculation effort organized by the health authorities in the Lazio region of Italy, which includes Rome.

The initiative, organized in a cloister of the Santo Spirito hospital, near the Vatican, was targeted at “people on the margins of society, the most fragile,” said Angelo Tanese, the director general of ASL Roma 1, the region’s largest local health unit.

To help draw in the crowds, a jazz pianist serenaded those present on Saturday night, while free espresso and cornetti — Italian croissants — were offered on Sunday morning.

Doctors and nurses administered the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to homeless people, undocumented migrants, foreign students and foreigners who legally work in Rome but are not registered with the national health service.

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which requires only one dose — unlike the two-shot regimens made by AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech — is especially useful for inoculating people who may be harder to reach or may not return for a second dose. About 80 percent of the people at the Santo Spirito clinic were undocumented migrants, Mr. Tanese said.

As of Sunday, nearly 20 million people in Italy had been fully vaccinated — about 32 percent of the total population.

Credit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Metropolitan Opera has reached a tentative agreement for a new contract with the union that represents its stagehands, increasing the likelihood that the company will return to the stage in September after its longest shutdown ever.

The company’s roughly 300 stagehands were locked out late last year because of a disagreement over how long and lasting pandemic pay cuts would be. But the opera house is in desperate need of workers to prepare its complex operations if it is to reopen in less than three months.

Pressure on the talks had increased as the two sides negotiated for nearly four weeks.

The Met, which says it has lost more than $150 million in revenue since the pandemic forced it to close in March 2020, has asked for significant cuts to the take-home pay of union members.

Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, has said that in order to survive the pandemic and prosper beyond it, the company must cut payroll costs for those unions by 30 percent, effectively cutting take-home pay by about 20 percent. Union leaders have resisted the proposed cuts, arguing that many of its members already went many months without pay.

Credit…Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

BoltBus, the bus service known for offering its passengers Wi-Fi and $1 lottery seats, is shutting down operations indefinitely after months of low ridership during the pandemic, according to Greyhound, its parent company.

The discount bus operator said last month that it was transferring most of its routes to Greyhound in order to “undergo renovations.” BoltBus had suspended service earlier in the pandemic, but its parent company said last week that the operator had no plans to put its buses back on the road.

“Currently there is not a timeline to return BoltBus operations,” Emma Kaiser, a Greyhound spokeswoman, told The Seattle Times.

Greyhound, which operates the largest intercity bus fleet in North America, teamed up with Peter Pan Bus Lines in 2008 to start BoltBus. The companies wanted to offer an affordable ride to people put off by grubbier alternatives.

At least one seat on every BoltBus ride sold for $1 plus a booking fee. Passengers could reserve seats, unlike on Greyhound. BoltBus offered passengers Wi-Fi, individual power outlets and extra legroom, according to its website.

Other cheap intercity bus operators that are still running, including FlixBus, Peter Pan and Megabus, may see a surge in riders, because domestic travel is on the rise as pandemic restrictions loosen.

Credit…Trisha Krauss

Millions of Americans decided that this past year was an opportune time to rip out some walls and build a new kitchen, bathroom or addition.

For those who muscled through and stayed in their homes while the work was underway, the experience was of a 24-7 construction site. With offices closed, conference calls took place against a noisy backdrop of hammering and sanding. So much for Zoom school when the Wi-Fi goes down without warning. Need a quick meal because the kitchen is gutted down to the studs? It’s not so easy when restaurants are closed for indoor dining.

Rajiv Surendra, a calligrapher and actor in his early 30s who is best known for his role in the 2004 movie “Mean Girls,” renovated the kitchen in his Upper West Side one-bedroom last year. He installed wainscoting, sanded cabinets, and made bracket shelves and a peg rail by hand. With his entire apartment turned into a work site, he had almost no space that felt like his own.

So he found something that could mentally take him away from a space he rarely left. Every night, he would spend two hours practicing the harp and the piano, teaching himself Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2. “That was a very good thing, for me to get my mind away from that stuff,” he said.

Tags Covid19, Live, News, Updates, Vaccine

Health

The White Home is taking proper method in preventing the Covid-19 delta variant, Gottlieb says

Post author By
Post date July 2, 2021

The Biden government is taking the right approach in tackling the highly contagious Covid-19 Delta variant by deploying response teams to vulnerable communities, said Dr. Scott Gottlieb on Thursday.

“I think the government is doing the right thing when it comes to changing its strategy,” Gottlieb, the former FDA chief under former President Donald Trump, told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” about the grassroots approach new government.

Gottlieb explained that the targeted response can help teams focus on vaccinating the communities prone to Covid and the Delta variant.

“Right now we need to move to a grassroots strategy and try to put resources into local communities so that local groups can encourage people to get vaccinated, put the vaccines in the hands of doctors, and find ways to get more vaccines to get into the hands of small providers who can encourage their patients to vaccinate, “said Gottlieb.

The Delta variant is driving a sharp spike in new Covid cases across the country and currently accounts for about 25% of the new cases sequenced in the US. Officials believe it will become the dominant strain in the country, dwarfing the currently dominant alpha variant.

Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, attributed the increase in part to delayed vaccination rates. The CDC director added that about a third of all counties across the country have so far vaccinated less than 30% of their population. She said most of them are in the South and Midwest.

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC employee and a member of the board of directors of Pfizer, genetic testing startup Tempus, health technology company Aetion Inc., and biotechnology company Illumina.

Tags Approach, Covid19, Delta, fighting, Gottlieb, House, Variant, White

World News

Covid-19 and Delta Variant Information: Dwell Updates

Post author By
Post date July 1, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Jaime Reina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Digital Covid-19 certificates aimed at facilitating free movement in the European Union came into force across the bloc on Thursday, a long-awaited milestone for countries hoping to boost their ailing tourism industries.

Free movement is a key pillar of European integration, and E.U. officials said last month that the certificates would “again enable citizens to enjoy this most tangible and cherished of E.U. rights.”

Through a Q.R. code issued by their country of residence, certificate holders will be able to show that they have been either fully vaccinated, tested negative or have immunity after a recent recovery. That will exempt them from most travel or quarantine restrictions.

Many European governments have already eased such rules, and each member nation can still revive protective measures if a country’s health situation deteriorates. Germany, for instance, has imposed restrictions on travelers coming from Portugal, which has faced a surge of new cases driven by the spread of the Delta variant.

While countries have agreed that national health authorities will issue the certificates — most E.U. countries have already been doing so — they are divided over who should check them, where and when.

Credit…Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Citing privacy concerns, Germany and Austria have not given airlines access to verification devices that they would need to scan the Q.R. codes. France has distributed such tools in airports, and Spain has built a system whereby Q.R. codes can be checked before passengers travel to the airport.

And one country, Ireland, has yet to set up a verification system for the digital certificates, after its national health system was recently targeted by cyberattacks, according to E.U. officials.

The divergences have highlighted the challenges that the E.U. faces in allowing free movement across the bloc.

This week, a group of airlines and airport representatives urged member states to set up verification systems before departure — alongside online check-ins, for instance — to avoid chaotic situations at airports upon arrival.

Echoing some concerns shared by the travel industry, the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, noted that the 27 E.U. member states had planned more than 10 verification processes.

“The digital Covid-19 certificate is an important tool that ideally will give people confidence in the easing of travel restrictions,” said Thomas Reynaert, the managing director of Airlines for Europe, an organization based in Brussels that represents the bloc’s largest carriers. “But this can only work for travelers if member states implement it in a harmonized way.”

Credit…Tatan Syuflana/Associated Press

In Indonesia, grave diggers are working into the night, as oxygen and vaccines are in short supply. In Bangladesh, urban garment workers fleeing an impending lockdown are almost assuredly seeding another coronavirus surge in their impoverished home villages.

And in countries like South Korea and Israel that seemed to have largely vanquished the virus, new clusters of disease have proliferated. Chinese health officials said on Monday that they would build a giant quarantine center with up to 5,000 rooms to hold international travelers. Australia has ordered millions to stay at home.

A year and a half since it began racing across the globe with exponential efficiency, the pandemic is on the rise again in vast stretches of the world, driven largely by the new variants, particularly the highly contagious Delta variant first identified in India. From Africa to Asia, countries are suffering from record caseloads and deaths, even as wealthier nations with high vaccination rates have let their guard down, dispensing with mask mandates and reveling in life edging back toward normalcy.

Scientists believe the Delta variant may be twice as transmissible as the original coronavirus, and its potential to infect some partially vaccinated people has alarmed public health officials. Unvaccinated populations, whether in India or Indiana, may serve as incubators of new variants that could evolve in surprising and dangerous ways, with Delta giving rise to what Indian researchers are calling Delta Plus. There are also the Gamma and Lambda variants.

“We’re in a race against the spread of the virus variants,” said Professor Kim Woo-joo, an infectious disease specialist at Korea University Guro Hospital in Seoul.

Credit…Carl Recine/Associated Press

Crowds gathering in stadiums, pubs and bars to watch the European Championship soccer games have driven a rise in coronavirus cases across Europe, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, raising concerns about another wave of infections even though vaccination campaigns have made progress.

“We need to look much beyond just the stadiums themselves,” said Catherine Smallwood, the W.H.O.’s senior emergency officer. “We need to look at how people get there: Are they traveling in large, crowded convoys of buses? And when they leave the stadiums, are they going into crowded bars and pubs to watch the matches?”

In Scotland, more than 2,000 people tested positive after watching a Euro 2020 game either at a stadium, a fan zone or at a pub, according to National Health Scotland. (Nearly two-thirds of those cases were linked to a Euro 2020 game in London in mid-June.) Around 120 fans from Finland were infected after traveling to St. Petersburg, Russia, to watch their team play.

After months of virus restrictions, and with the European Championships postponed for a year, soccer fans have been eager to travel across borders to watch the games in person. Finnish tourists attended games in Russia, French fans traveled to Romania, and Welsh ones supported their team in the Netherlands. In countries like Belgium, Britain and France, bars had reopened just weeks before the tournament began.

But given that most European countries have fully vaccinated less than a third of their populations, the risks are high. Experts say that the lax restrictions imposed on travel for the soccer championship may have serious consequences later in the summer or in the fall.

The rise in cases linked to the tournament comes more than a year after soccer games hosted early last year led to some of the first outbreaks in Europe.

Germany’s interior minister, Horst Seehofer, called the decision by European’s soccer governing body, UEFA, which runs the tournament, to allow large crowds in stadiums “utterly irresponsible.”

Despite the warnings by the W.H.O., British officials are allowing 60,000 fans to attend each of the tournament’s three final games in London next week.

Credit…Novrian Arbi/Antara Foto, via Reuters

Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, announced new restrictions on Thursday for parts of Java and Bali islands to contain the rapidly spreading Delta variant, including closing mosques, schools, shopping malls and sports facilities.

The measures will take effect on Saturday and last until July 20, encompassing the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, a major event in Indonesia that falls on July 19 and is usually celebrated with large gatherings and the sacrifice of goats and cows.

“As we all know, the Covid-19 pandemic has been growing rapidly in the last few days because of the new variant, which is also a serious problem in many countries,” Mr. Joko said in an address to the nation. “This situation requires us to take more resolute steps so that together we can curb the spread of Covid-19.”

The number of reported cases has been rising daily, reaching a record 24,836 on Thursday, along with 504 deaths, another high. Just six weeks ago, it appeared that the vast Southeast Asian archipelago was making progress against the virus, with fewer than 2,500 daily cases reported.

The Delta variant, first detected in India, is driving a surge of the coronavirus in many parts of the world. In Indonesia, health experts say that the variant has led to the recent rise in cases, which has swamped hospitals and cemeteries, especially in the capital, Jakarta.

The Delta variant makes up 87 percent of the cases in Jakarta, the governor, Anies Baswedan, said earlier this week.

“Hospitals are overflowing, around one in five tests in Indonesia are reportedly coming back positive, and we’re experiencing more deaths now than at any point of the pandemic so far,” said Ade Soekadis, Mercy Corps’ country director for Indonesia.

The new measures stop short of the complete lockdown urged by some health experts.

All places of worship will be closed, workers in nonessential jobs must work from home, restaurants can provide only takeout food, local transit will operate with reduced capacity and public parks will be closed. Weddings with up to 30 attendees will still be allowed.

The measures will apply to nearly all of Java, which includes Jakarta and has a population of about 140 million, and to the most heavily populated parts of Bali, where tourism officials had been hoping to reopen to foreign tourists.

Most hospitals on Java are already over capacity and some are turning away patients, said Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University in Australia. According to his projections, the current surge would not peak until at least the end of July and could reach 500,000 cases and 2,000 deaths a day if tougher measures are not adopted.

“The government should do a lockdown,” he said. “Now we are facing our most serious and critical time. If we don’t respond to this situation in a serious way, then we will lose many lives.”

Credit…Robert Ghement/EPA, via Shutterstock

While many countries are desperately trying to get their hands on coronavirus vaccines, others are now finding their supply outstripping demand because of low uptake — to the extent that they are seeking ways to reduce their stockpiles.

Romania is a case in point.

On Tuesday, the Danish government said it had bought more than a million doses of the Pfizer vaccine from Romania. “We can do this deal because Romania is experiencing low vaccination backing and therefore wants to sell excess vaccines which they won’t be able to use,” Denmark’s health minister, Magnus Heunicke, said in a statement. The vaccines were sold at cost.

Last week, Valeriu Gheorghita, the head of Romania’s national coronavirus vaccination campaign, said that 35,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine would probably need to be destroyed because they were set to expire at the end of June. In a news conference on Thursday, he said he had asked AstraZeneca whether the doses’ shelf life could be extended.

Despite a promising start this year to its vaccine rollout, Romania has seen a considerable decline in recent months in the number of people getting vaccinated.

In early May, the country was administering more than 100,000 doses a day, but the number has since dropped significantly. In a 24-hour period ending Wednesday, 20,800 doses were administered, and most of those were the second of the two doses that many vaccines require.

Overall, 4.7 million people in Romania, which has a population of about 19 million, have received one or both doses.

“We had a fraction of the population, maybe 30 percent, who were eager to get the vaccine, and that was very clear from December when they ran the first opinion polls,” said Sorin Ionita, a policy analyst at the Expert Forum, a Bucharest-based research group. “You absorb this fraction of the population, and then everything stops because there was no proper campaign to inform, to change the profound attitudes in the population.”

Romania is one of the most rural countries in the European Union, he said, and that adds to the challenge.

“Even if you get to the village and you organize a vaccine center in the town hall,” Mr. Ionita said, “it doesn’t necessarily mean that people who are 85 can get there easily from the margins of the village.”

The drop in vaccination uptake in Romania also comes as infection rates have fallen sharply: Sunday was the first day in more than a year that the capital, Bucharest, did not record a single new case. But there are concerns about a potential new wave later in the year, especially if vaccination rates remain sluggish.

To date, there have been more than a million confirmed cases in Romania and more than 33,000 related deaths.

Credit…Carla Carniel/Reuters

When a commercial plane carrying 2.5 million doses of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine took off on Wednesday from Dallas for Islamabad, Pakistan, U.S. officials had just finished a dizzying bureaucratic back-and-forth to get them there.

The United States had arranged a donation agreement with Moderna and Covax, the year-old vaccine-sharing initiative. Covax had previously worked out indemnity agreements with Moderna, which shield the company from liability for potential harm from the vaccine. U.S. Embassy officials in Islamabad had worked with regulators there to evaluate the Food and Drug Administration’s review of the vaccine. And Pakistani regulators had to pore over reams of materials on the vaccine lots and the factory where they were made before authorizing the shots for use.

The result was a so-called tripartite agreement, a type of deal that has increasingly come to consume the Biden administration’s pandemic response efforts.

Amid criticism from some public health experts that President Biden’s vaccine diplomacy efforts have been slow and insufficient, the White House plans to announce on Thursday that it has fulfilled the president’s pledge to share an initial 80 million doses by June 30.

More than 80 million have been formally offered to about 50 countries, the African Union and the 20-nation Caribbean consortium, with around half already shipped and the rest to be scheduled in the coming weeks, said Natalie Quillian, the Biden administration’s deputy Covid-19 response coordinator.

Researchers have estimated that 11 billion doses of Covid vaccines are needed worldwide to try to stamp out the pandemic. To date, more than three billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, equal to 40 doses for every 100 people. Some countries have yet to report a single dose, even as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads around the world, further exposing vaccine inequities.

“If this is the pace at which it will continue, then unfortunately, it’s much slower than what is needed,” Dr. Saad B. Omer, the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, said of the U.S. effort.

Credit…Saul Martinez for The New York Times

A new poll has found that Americans are sharply divided by household over vaccination status, with 77 percent of vaccinated adults saying everyone in their household is vaccinated and a similar share (75 percent) of unvaccinated adults saying no one they live with is vaccinated.

Sixty-seven percent of Democrats reported living in households where everyone had been vaccinated, compared with 39 percent of Republicans. Ten percent of Democrats said they lived in homes where no one had been vaccinated, compared with 37 percent of Republicans, according to the poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has been tracking the public’s attitudes toward and experiences with vaccinations.

Overall, half of U.S. adults live in a fully vaccinated household and one in four lives in a completely unvaccinated household. The remainder, about one in five adults, lives in a household occupied by both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, including children under 12 who are not currently eligible to receive a vaccine.

The telephone survey of 1,888 adults 18 and older living in the United States was conducted from June 8 to June 21 and had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

As policymakers continue to experiment with lotteries, free beers and other incentives, the poll found that workers were more likely to get the shot when their employers encouraged them to and provided paid time off to make it easier. Two-thirds of the employed adults surveyed said their employer had encouraged workers to get vaccinated, and half said their employer had provided them paid time off to get the vaccine and to recover from side effects.

The workers who said their employer had taken either one of those steps were more likely to report having been vaccinated, even after the poll controlled for other demographic variables. The finding suggested that more employers’ encouraging vaccination and offering paid time off could lead to higher vaccination rates among workers.

As virus cases fall across much of the United States, the poll found that optimism over the idea that the pandemic may be ending could hamper vaccination efforts, with half of unvaccinated adults polled saying that the number of cases is now so low there is no need for more people to be vaccinated.

If adult vaccinations continue their current seven-day average rate, about 67 percent of U.S. adults will have received at least one shot by July 4, just shy of President Biden’s target of having 70 percent of adults at least partly vaccinated by that date, according to a New York Times analysis.

Lazaro Gamio contributed reporting.

Tags Covid19, Delta, Live, News, Updates, Variant

Health

South Korea on Covid-19 herd immunity and journey bubble packages

Post author By
Post date June 29, 2021

Customers wearing protective masks pay for their purchase at a vegetable stall in Mangwon Market in Seoul, South Korea on Tuesday, February 9, 2021.

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South Korea wants to open up its economy and work on travel bubble programs as it has been relatively successful in controlling the spread of Covid-19, its deputy prime minister told CNBC in an exclusive interview.

The government plans to boost consumption and further boost the economy in the second half of this year – and steps are being taken to achieve that goal, said Hong Nam-ki, who is also South Korea’s economy and finance minister.

“I would say the current government has been relatively successful at both infection control and vaccination,” he told CNBC’s Chery Kang on Friday, according to a CNBC translation of his Korean remarks. “Based on the achievements, the current government now wants to promote economic growth while maintaining such health measures.”

In fact, he said that South Korea is aiming for herd immunity by November, which means the virus will no longer be able to spread rapidly as most of the population is either fully vaccinated or has become immune from infection.

By last week, 30% of the South Korean population had received their vaccinations and Hong says the country can reach 70% by September.

Our plan now is to achieve herd immunity by November – but in my personal opinion we will be able to move the schedule forward.

Hong Nam-ki

South Korea’s Deputy Prime Minister

The country has reported more than 155,500 cases and at least 2,015 deaths as of Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University – numbers that are relatively controlled compared to most Asian countries.

In contrast, India – with the highest number of cases in Asia – officially reported more than 30.2 million cases on Monday, according to Hopkins. Indonesia has 2.11 million cases while the Philippines has nearly 1.4 million case numbers, the data showed.

“Our plan now is to achieve herd immunity by November – but in my personal opinion we will be able to move the schedule forward,” said Hong.

“If the vaccination goes as planned, we believe the Covid-19 situation is under control. Then the measures to support consumption and economic recovery can be carried out without interruption from July onwards.

However, should the pandemic worsen, it would be difficult to push these growth-promoting measures, he warned.

Travel bubble?

The South Korean government plans to support travel bladder programs for fully vaccinated people, Hong said. A travel bubble is a pre-agreed agreement with another country that provides that travelers from both countries are allowed quarantine trips if certain conditions are met – such as negative Covid tests or full vaccinations.

However, whether the travel bubble will pop depends on vaccination progress and conversations with other countries, he said, declining to name those countries.

In early June, the Singaporean newspaper Straits Times reported that South Korea is exploring travel bladders with some countries, including Singapore and Taiwan, to enable quarantine-free travel for vaccinated people.

“I believe that depending on their health status, vaccination rates and the convenience of immigration, more countries will be on the list of countries in demand,” Hong told CNBC.

“I think we need to continue working with private tour operators to investigate the virus situation to decide exactly which countries,” he added.

One initiative that citizens can at least indulge in for the time being could be “flights to nowhere”, a target-free concept that some countries introduced during the pandemic.

“Even if you cannot travel abroad, no landing flights have been offered,” said Hong. “Passengers could fly all the way to Japan, hover over the Japanese sky, and then come back without landing. Lots of people showed interest in it and it was used a lot, ”he said, referring to such flights that were introduced in South Korea last year.

“So if the health situation improves and the vaccination campaign accelerates more strongly, we believe that we are going in (that) direction.”

Tags Bubble, Covid19, herd, immunity, Korea, Programs, South, travel

Health

Brazil Reported One of many Highest Covid-19 Dying Tolls within the World

Post author By
Post date June 20, 2021

The death toll of Covid-19 in Brazil has now exceeded 500,000, just behind the United States, which recorded 600,000 deaths last week, and India, where the death toll can range from 600,000 to 4.2 million.

Almost 18 million people have become infected so far, and the country is seeing an average of nearly 73,000 new cases and about 2,000 deaths per day, according to official figures. However, many experts believe the numbers underestimate the true scale of the country’s epidemic, as is the case in India.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has been heavily criticized for dismissing the threat from the virus despite contracting himself last year. On Saturday, thousands of people protested his response to the pandemic, including his opposition to regulations on wearing masks and the slow adoption of vaccines, according to Reuters. It is believed that only 11 percent of residents are fully vaccinated.

A severe drought has also struck the country, the worst in at least 91 years, and experts say a terrible fire season could further complicate the country’s battle to fight the virus. The smoke could even make cases of Covid-19 worse by increasing inflammation in the lungs.

“It’s a dangerous situation,” said Dr. Aljerry Rêgo, professor and director of a Covid facility in the Amazon state of Amapá. “And, of course, the greatest risk is to further overwhelm the public health system, which is already precarious in the Amazon.”

In a recent testimony to a legislative committee, Brazil’s former Health Minister described Bolsonaros’ confusing belief that an anti-malaria drug would be effective against Covid-19, and a Pfizer executive said the company was offering millions of doses of its Covid-19 vaccine I went to Brazil last year – but received no response from the government for months.

Mr. Bolsonaro shrugged off the revelations. Last month, his government announced that Brazil would host the Copa America soccer tournament later this year after Argentina decided it would be irresponsible to do so while the virus continued to spread.

On Friday, officials reported that 82 people linked to the tournament had contracted Covid-19, according to The Associated Press. The Brazilian Ministry of Health said in a statement that 37 players and employees of the 10 tournament teams and 45 employees are infected.

Tags Brazil, Covid19, Death, highest, Reported, Tolls, world