Tag: Study

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Health

Infants and Toddlers Unfold Coronavirus in Properties Extra Simply Than Teenagers, Examine Finds

Babies and Toddlers Spread Coronavirus in Homes More Easily Than Teens, Study Finds

In most cases, the chain of transmission ended with the infected child, but in 27.3 percent of households, children passed the virus on to at least one other resident.

Updated

Aug 16, 2021, 11:26 p.m. ET

Young people were most likely to bring the virus into the home: children aged 14 to 17 made up 38 percent of all index cases. Children who were 3 or younger were the first to get the disease in only 12 percent of households – but they were most likely to spread the virus to others in their homes. The likelihood of household transmission was about 40 percent higher if the infected child was 3 years or younger than if they were between 14 and 17 years old.

The results could be due to behavioral differences between toddlers and teenagers, medical experts said.

“When we think about what the social behavior of teenagers outside the home is, they spend a lot of time together, are often confined, often touching or sharing a drink,” said Dr. Susan E. Coffin, an infectious disease specialist at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital who was not involved in the study.

These behaviors could lead teenagers to contract the virus and bring it home, she said.

On the other hand, while very young children are likely to have less social interactions outside of the home, they tend to be in close physical contact with others in their household and, in addition, frequently put their hands and other objects in their mouths, which contributes to the spread could be the virus. “Once they get it into the household, it can be easily spread,” said Dr. Coffin.

It’s also possible that the youngest children have higher levels of virus in them or have higher levels of virus shedding than teenagers, the researchers found. Some studies have shown that although young children rarely become seriously ill, they can carry similar or even higher levels of the virus than adults. Although viral load is not a perfect predictor of infectivity, the data suggest that children may be as contagious as adults.

But the dynamics of disease transmission are complex, and the exact role children play in spreading the virus remains uncertain.

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Health

Blood clots linked to AstraZeneca shot have 22% mortality charge: research

Blood clots linked to AstraZeneca shot have 22% mortality rate: study

A paramedic prepares doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for patients at a walk-in COVID-19 clinic at a Buddhist temple in the Smithfield suburb of Sydney on Aug. 4, 2021.

Saeed Khan | AFP | Getty Images

A new study has provided further details on the “rare but devastating” blood clotting complications associated with the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.

In a peer-reviewed article published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, Massachusetts Medical Society scientists analyzed the first 220 cases of the disease reported in the UK.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine – now one of the most widely used Covid vaccines in the world – was launched in the UK in January, making it the first country to give the vaccine.

A very small number of people who were vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine have developed blood clots. Described by health officials as “extremely rare”, it is characterized by blood clots accompanied by low platelet counts.

The Massachusetts Medical Society study uses data identified from 294 patients who presented to UK hospitals between March 22nd and June 6th.

All of these patients had received their first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot and were hospitalized with symptoms between five and 48 days after their vaccination. The average time between vaccination and hospitalization was 14 days, the results showed.

The overall mortality rate for VITT in the study was 22%.

The researchers also found that 41% of patients who presented with VITT were not diagnosed with any underlying health problems. Of those reporting a past or current illness, the study found that no illnesses or medications that were “unexpected in the general population” were prevalent.

“Against the background of a successful vaccination program in the UK, VITT has emerged as a rare but devastating complication,” the study’s authors said in their report. “We found that it often affects young, otherwise healthy vaccine recipients and is associated with high mortality.”

“In our cohort, 85% of the patients were younger than 60 years, although the (Oxford / AstraZeneca) vaccination was predominant in older adults,” the scientists found.

As a precaution, Great Britain has been offering people under 40 an alternative to the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine since May.

People diagnosed with VITT ranged from 18 to 79 years old, with the mean age being 48, the study showed.

As of July 28, inclusive, an estimated 24.8 million first doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine had been administered in the UK, with an estimated 23.6 million second doses received.

On July 28, government figures show that for every million first or unknown doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca shot, 14.9 people developed a rare blood clot with low platelet counts. After a second dose of the vaccine, the number dropped to 1.8 cases per million.

The overall death rate for that period was 18%, the government data showed, with 73 deaths. Six of these occurred after the second dose.

Late last month, AstraZeneca published a study that found the VITT rate was 8.1 per million after the first dose of its vaccine, which dropped to 2.3 per million after a second dose.

According to official information, 411 suspected cases of VITT had been reported in Great Britain by July 28.

Benefits vs. Risks

In a statement Thursday, AstraZeneca said the research published in the New England Journal of Medicine was drawn from “a small sample size.”

“Recent practical evidence from millions of people shows that AstraZeneca’s vaccine has a similar safety profile to other vaccines and that thrombosis with thrombocytopenia is extremely rare and treatable,” said a spokesman.

The spokesman added that the infection with Covid-19 “poses a far greater risk” for rare blood clotting events.

“Vaccines remain the most effective protection against Covid-19 and the best way out of this pandemic,” they said.

Both the UK and EU drug regulators have identified possible links between the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clots.

In April, the company announced it would comply with government requests in the UK and Europe to update its Covid vaccine labels. However, it stressed that the WHO had said “a causal relationship is considered plausible but not confirmed”.

The UK Joint Vaccination and Immunization Committee has stated time and time again that for the vast majority of people, the benefits of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine continue to outweigh the risks.

Several health authorities, including the WHO, the European Medicines Agency and the International Society on Thrombosis and Hemostasis, agree that the benefits of giving the vaccine outweigh the risks.

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CDC research reveals 74% of individuals contaminated in Massachusetts Covid outbreak had been absolutely vaccinated

CDC study shows 74% of people infected in Massachusetts Covid outbreak were fully vaccinated

Boston EMS medics work to resuscitate a patient on the way to the ambulance amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Boston, Massachusetts, April 27, 2020.

Brian Snyder | Reuters

About three-fourths of people infected in a Massachusetts Covid-19 outbreak were fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to new data published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new data, published in the U.S. agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, also found that fully vaccinated people who get infected carry as much of the virus in their nose as unvaccinated people, and could spread it to other individuals.

“This finding is concerning and was a pivotal discovery leading to CDC’s updated mask recommendation,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement. “The masking recommendation was updated to ensure the vaccinated public would not unknowingly transmit virus to others, including their unvaccinated or immunocompromised loved ones.”

On Tuesday, the CDC reversed course on its prior guidance and recommended fully vaccinated Americans who live in areas with high Covid infection rates resume wearing face masks indoors. The guidelines cover about two-thirds of the U.S. population, according to a CNBC analysis.

While the delta variant continues to hit unvaccinated people the hardest, some vaccinated people could be carrying higher levels of the virus than previously understood and are potentially transmitting it to others, Walensky told reporters on a call Tuesday. She added the variant behaves “uniquely differently from past strains of the virus.”

A CDC document that was reviewed by CNBC warned that the delta variant sweeping across the country is as contagious as chickenpox, has a longer transmission window than the original Covid strain and may make older people sicker, even if they’ve been fully vaccinated.

Delta, now in at least 132 countries and already the dominant form of the disease in the United States, is more transmissible than the common cold, the 1918 Spanish flu, smallpox, Ebola, MERS and SARS, according to the document. Only measles appears to spread faster than the variant.

The data published Friday was based on 469 cases of Covid associated with multiple summer events and large public gatherings held in July in Barnstable County, Mass., according to the CDC. The events were held in an unnamed town in Barnstable, which encompasses Cape Cod and is just outside Martha’s Vineyard. Approximately three quarters, or 74%, of the cases occurred in fully vaccinated people who had completed a two-dose course of the mRNA vaccines or received a single dose of Johnson & Johnson’s.

Overall, 274 vaccinated patients with a breakthrough infection were symptomatic, according to the CDC. The most common side effects were cough, headache, sore throat, muscle pain and fever. Among five Covid patients who were hospitalized, four were fully vaccinated, according to the agency. No deaths were reported.

Testing identified the delta variant in 90% of specimens from 133 patients.

The CDC the data has limitations. The agency noted that as population-level vaccination coverage increases, vaccinated persons are likely to represent a larger proportion of Covid cases. Additionally, asymptomatic breakthrough infections might be underrepresented because of detection bias, the agency said.

The CDC also said the report is “insufficient” to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the authorized vaccines against Covid, including the delta variant, during this outbreak.

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Entertainment

Examine Exhibits Extra Incapacity Tales Onscreen, however Few Disabled Actors

Study Shows More Disability Stories Onscreen, but Few Disabled Actors

Let’s start with the good news: The significant representations of disability in film and television programs have almost tripled in the past decade compared to the past 10 years.

However, almost all of these titles still do not include disabled actors.

This is the conclusion reached by a new study published Wednesday by Nielsen and the nonprofit RespectAbility that analyzed the portrayal of disabled characters in film and television shows published from 1920 to 2020.

The titles come from a Nielsen database that contains more than 90,000 films and television shows that premiered in the last century. Of these, 3,000 titles were labeled with important topics or content on disabilities.

Movies fared better than television – about 64 percent (1,800) of depictions of disabled characters were in feature films and 16 percent (448) were in regular series. (The remaining representations were included in other categories such as short films, limited series, television films or specials.) The database also found a significant increase in the number of productions with disability topics from 41 in 2000 to 150 in 2020.

According to the report, about one in four adults in the United States has a physical or mental disability.

A survey accompanying the study also found that people with disabilities are slightly more likely to have problems with depictions of disabled characters. Viewers with disabilities were 8 percent more likely than those who were not disabled to describe a television presentation as inaccurate, and 7 percent were more likely to say that disabled characters are not adequately represented on screen.

Lauren Appelbaum, vice president at RespectAbility, said that although the number of disabled characters continues to grow, about 95 percent of those roles are still being played by actors who have no disabilities.

“When disability is part of a character’s story, content too often positions people with disabilities as someone to pity or heal, rather than portraying disabled people as full members of our society,” she said in a statement.

Several films with disabled characters made headlines with their casting last year: “Sound of Metal”, which tells the story of a drummer (Riz Ahmed) who loses his hearing, has been criticized for casting Paul Raci, a hearing actor who is a child of a deaf adult as a deaf mentor to Ahmed’s character. (Raci said he was comfortable with the casting because his character lost his hearing in the Vietnam War and was not deaf from birth.) CBS’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel “The Stand” also opposed casting a hearing actor, Henry Zaga, as Nick Andros, a character who is deaf and signed throughout the series.

Last fall, “The Witches,” the Warner Bros. adaptation of the Roald Dahl story, starring Anne Hathaway as the witch with disfigured hands, was criticized for its split-hand resemblance or ectrodactyly, leading to the debate over the portrayal a disability flared up again as evil.

But there were also positive representations, such as Pixar’s “Luca”, which shows a character who was born without an arm and who takes the rare step of depicting a character with different limbs without making it a defining characteristic.

The report, coordinated to mark the 31st anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, is the first in a three-part series by Nielsen and RespectAbility that also analyzes representations of disability in advertising and the media perception of viewers with disabilities. These reports will be published in August.

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Health

One Dose of J.&J. Vaccine Is Ineffective Towards Delta, Examine Suggests

One Dose of J.&J. Vaccine Is Ineffective Against Delta, Study Suggests

The coronavirus vaccine manufactured by Johnson & Johnson is much less effective against the Delta and Lambda variants than against the original virus, according to a new study published online on Tuesday.

The results show that the 13 million people who used the J. & J. The vaccine may need to be given a second dose – ideally one of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna mRNA vaccines, the authors said.

However, the conclusions contradict those from smaller studies published earlier this month by Johnson & Johnson, which suggest that a single dose of the vaccine is effective against the variant even eight months after being vaccinated.

The new study had not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal and was based on laboratory experiments. However, it is consistent with observations that a single dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine – which has a similar architecture to the J. & J. Vaccine – only shows about 33 percent effectiveness against symptomatic diseases caused by the Delta variant.

“The message we wanted to get across wasn’t that people were making the J. & J. Vaccine, but we hope it will be reinforced with in the future either another dose of J. & J. or a boost with Pfizer or Moderna, ”said Nathaniel Landau, a virologist at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine who led the study.

Other experts said the results are what they expected as all vaccines seem to work better when given in two doses. “I have always thought and often said that J. & J. Vaccine is a two-dose vaccine, ”said John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.

Dr. Moore pointed to several studies in monkeys and humans that showed greater effectiveness with two doses of the J. & J. Vaccine compared to a dose. He said the new study was particularly credible because it was published by a team with no ties to any of the vaccine manufacturers.

But the data from the new study “doesn’t speak about the whole nature of immune protection,” said Seema Kumar, a spokeswoman for J. & J. Company-sponsored studies suggest that the vaccine “produces strong, sustained activity against the rapidly spreading Delta variant,” she said.

The delta variant is the most contagious version of the coronavirus to date. It accounts for 83 percent of infections in the United States, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

The variant could also be responsible for a recent surge in infections: although they’re still low compared to last winter, cases are increasing in all 50 states and hospital admissions are increasing in almost all. In the two weeks ended Tuesday, there were an average of 268 deaths per day in the nation.

Delta can cause more breakthrough infections than previous forms of the virus, but more than 99 percent of hospitalizations and deaths occur in unvaccinated people. The vaccination rates in the country have stalled, almost 60 percent of adults are fully protected against the virus.

Several studies have shown that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines retain their effectiveness against the coronavirus, including all variants identified so far. For example, a recent study showed that the vaccines trigger a sustained immune response in the body that can protect against the coronavirus for years.

Updated

July 20, 2021, 4:10 p.m. ET

But evidence for the J. & J. The vaccine was limited as it was introduced later than the mRNA vaccines. Most of the studies on the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccines were conducted in medical centers and hospitals, based on samples from staff who had received the mRNA vaccines.

The J. & J. The vaccine has also been followed by reports of blood clots and a rare neurological syndrome, as well as contamination problems at a Baltimore manufacturing facility.

Small studies published by researchers associated with J. & J. suggested that the vaccine against the Delta variant was only slightly less effective than against the original virus and that the antibodies stimulated by the vaccine grew in strength within eight months.

Dr. Landau would likely have seen a similar increase in the vaccine’s effectiveness if they looked at the data over time, said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. The data for the J. & J. The strength of the vaccine against the Delta variant on day 29 is not much different from what was reported in his own study, said Dr. Barouch.

“Basically, I don’t see any discrepancies,” he said. “The question is that of kinetics, it’s not just size, because immune responses are not static over time.” The new study does not consider other components of the immune system either, he added.

Dr. Landau and colleagues examined blood samples from 17 people who received two doses of an mRNA vaccine and 10 people who received one dose of the J. & J. Vaccination.

The J. & J. Vaccine started with less potency than the mRNA vaccines and showed a greater potency drop against the Delta and Lambda variants. “The lower baseline means that what is left against Delta is very weak,” said Dr. Moors. “That is a major concern.”

Very few vaccines are given as a single dose because the second dose is needed to raise antibody levels, noted Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. Persons familiar with the J. & J. Vaccines “rely on this primary response to maintain high levels of antibody, which is particularly difficult against the variants,” she said.

Boosting immunity with a second dose should raise antibody levels high enough to counter the variants, she said.

For the second shot, let’s turn to an mRNA vaccine rather than another J. & J. Shot, Possibly Better: Several studies have shown that combining a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine with a dose of the Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccine is more effective than two doses of AstraZeneca.

The Food and Drug Administration has said, “Americans who have been fully vaccinated don’t need a booster right now,” and the agency is unlikely to change its recommendations based on laboratory studies. But the new data should cause the FDA to reconsider its recommendations, said Dr. Landau: “I hope you read our paper and think about it.”

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Health

Coronary heart Failure Tied to Elevated Most cancers Threat, Examine Finds

Heart Failure Tied to Increased Cancer Risk, Study Finds

People with heart failure can be at increased risk of cancer.

Cancer patients are usually monitored for heart failure because some cancer drugs can damage the heart. Now, a new study suggests that heart failure patients who can live with the disease for many years could benefit from being monitored for cancer.

The researchers used a German health database to track 100,124 heart failure patients and compare them to the same number of controls who did not have heart failure. All were initially cancer-free, and the scientists tracked their cancer incidence over the next 10 years. The study is in the journal ESC Heart Failure.

The two groups were matched for age, gender, age, obesity, and diabetes incidence, although researchers lacked data on socioeconomic status, smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical activity, all of which are known to affect cancer risk.

Nevertheless, the differences in cancer incidence between the two groups were significant. Overall, 25.7 percent of patients with heart failure were diagnosed with some form of cancer compared with 16.2 percent in those without.

The increased rate of cancer in heart patients has been noted in other studies, but the large sample size in this analysis allowed researchers to identify differences between the cancers. Heart failure patients were more than twice as likely to develop cancer of the lip, oral cavity, and throat. The risk of lung cancer and other cancers of the respiratory tract was 91 percent higher, female genital cancer 86 percent, and skin cancer 83 percent higher. People with heart failure were 75 percent more likely to develop colon cancer, stomach cancer, and other cancers of the digestive system. Women with heart failure were 67 percent more likely to develop breast cancer and men were 52 percent more likely to develop cancer of the genital organs.

“I think it’s an interesting retrospective cohort study,” said Dr. Girish L. Kalra, Senior Cardiology Fellow at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA who was not involved in the work. “The study’s main flaw is that the database did not allow researchers to control the greatest risk of developing cancer and heart disease: smoking. Smoking cigarettes could be the common thread in this study. “

Although the strong association with oropharyngeal and respiratory cancers suggests that smoking might be an explanation, the association remained robust for a wide range of cancers. The study also controlled other factors associated with different types of cancer, including obesity, diabetes, and increasing age, as well as the frequency of medical consultations that could lead to increased detection of cancer.

In addition to smoking, there are other possible mechanisms that could explain the link. For example, a previous study found that a well-known protein biomarker for heart disease that occurs before symptoms appear also correlates with an increased risk of cancer. It is also possible, the researchers write, that chronic inflammation can be implicated in both heart failure and cancer. Alcohol consumption has also been linked to a wide variety of cancers.

“There are more correlations between heart failure and cancer than just common risk factors,” says lead author Mark Luedde, a cardiologist at Kiel University. “Heart failure is not a heart disease. It is almost always a disease of the heart and other organs. The importance of comorbidities for the prognosis and quality of life of those affected cannot be overestimated. “

Dr. Kalra agreed. “Ultimately, the heart is a guarantee for all health,” he said. “This study supports the belief that people with heart failure are a high risk group and deserve our greatest attention. As doctors, we should ensure that our heart patients are screened for cancer at the recommended intervals. And we should continue to urge our smokers to quit. “

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Health

The place Does Weed Come From? A New Examine Suggests East Asia.

Cannabis Was Domesticated in East Asia, New Study Suggests

By sequencing genetic samples of the plant, they found that the species had most likely been domesticated by the early Neolithic period. They said their conclusion was supported by pottery and other archaeological evidence from the same period that was discovered in present-day China, Japan and Taiwan.

But Professor Purugganan said he was skeptical about conclusions that the plant was developed for drug or fiber use 12,000 years ago since archaeological evidence show the consistent use or presence of cannabis for those purposes began about 7,500 years ago.

“I would like to see a much larger study with a larger sampling,” he said.

Luca Fumagalli, an author of the study and a biologist in Switzerland who specializes in conservation genetics, said the theory of a Central Asian origin was largely based on observational data of wild samples in that region.

“It’s easy to find feral samples, but these are not wild types,” Dr. Fumagalli said. “These are plants that escaped captivity and readapted to the wild environment.”

“By the way, that’s the reason you call it weed, because it grows anywhere,” he added.

The study was led by Ren Guangpeng, a botanist at Lanzhou University in the western Chinese province of Gansu. Dr. Ren said in an interview that the original site of cannabis domestication was most likely northwestern China, and that the finding could help with current efforts in the country to breed new types of hemp.

To conduct the study, Dr. Ren and his colleagues collected 82 samples, either seeds or leaves, from around the world. The samples included strains that had been selected for fiber production, and others from Europe and North America that were bred to produce high amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the plant’s most mood-altering compound.

Dr. Fumagalli and his colleagues then extracted genomic DNA from the samples and sequenced them in a lab in Switzerland. They also downloaded and reanalyzed sequencing data from 28 other samples. The results showed that the wild varieties they analyzed were in fact “historical escapes from domesticated forms,” and that existing strains in China — cultivated and wild — were their closest descendants of the ancestral gene pool.

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Health

Hashish Was Domesticated in East Asia, New Research Suggests

Cannabis Was Domesticated in East Asia, New Study Suggests

By sequencing genetic samples from the plant, they found that the species was most likely domesticated in the early Neolithic. They said their conclusion is supported by pottery and other archaeological evidence from the same period discovered in what is now China, Japan, and Taiwan.

But Professor Purugganan said he was skeptical of the conclusions that the plant was developed for drug or fiber consumption 12,000 years ago, as archaeological evidence shows that cannabis was consistently used or present for these purposes around 7,500 years ago.

“I would like a much larger study with a larger sample,” he said.

Luca Fumagalli, author of the study and a biologist in Switzerland who specializes in conservation genetics, said the theory of Central Asian origin is largely based on observational data from wild samples in that region.

“It is easy to find wild samples, but they are not wild types,” said Dr. Fumagalli. “These are plants that have escaped captivity and adapted to the wild environment.”

“That’s why you call it grass, by the way, because it grows all over the place,” he added.

The study was led by Ren Guangpeng, a botanist at Lanzhou University in western China’s Gansu Province. Dr. Ren said in an interview that the original location of cannabis domestication was most likely in northwest China and that the discovery could help in the country’s current efforts to breed new strains of hemp.

To conduct the study, Dr. Ren and colleagues 82 samples, either seeds or leaves, from around the world. Samples included strains selected for fiber production and others from Europe and North America bred to produce high levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the plant’s most mood-altering compound.

Dr. Fumagalli and his colleagues then extracted genomic DNA from the samples and sequenced them in a laboratory in Switzerland. They also downloaded and re-analyzed sequencing data from 28 other samples. The results showed that the wild varieties they analyzed were indeed “historical escapes from domesticated forms” and that existing varieties in China – cultivated and wild – were their closest offspring of the ancestral gene pool.

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Health

Covid Is Particularly Dangerous for Individuals With H.I.V., Giant Research Finds

Covid Is Especially Risky for People With H.I.V., Large Study Finds

“HIV knocks out all the brakes on the immune system, and as a consequence you get this inflammatory response that is robust and persistent – and now you still have Covid,” said Dr. Steven Deeks, an HIV expert at the University of California, San Francisco. “I would be surprised if HIV wasn’t linked to the progression of Covid-19”.

Updated

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

Dr. Deeks disagreed with the study researchers’ decision to adjust the calculations for the presence of other conditions such as obesity, as HIV infection itself can cause many of these diseases. “For 25 years we have argued that a history of HIV infection is an independent risk factor for the progression of heart disease, cancer and aging,” he said. Without this statistical adjustment, the increased risk of death for these patients would most likely have been higher than the 30 percent reported in the study.

Many previous studies had a bias that could have masked some of the risk: Doctors tend to hospitalize Covid-19 patients with HIV out of caution, which means patients are less sick and more likely to survive compared to those who do not having HIV.This larger number of patients would make HIV infection seem less of a problem than it is, said Dr. Matthew Spinelli, an infectious disease doctor at San Francisco General Hospital.

“Early studies may have misled people on this issue,” he said. The results of the new study are more in line with large, population-based studies from South Africa and England showing HIV infection doubles the risk of dying from Covid-19, and from a similar study in New York state, he added added.

The new findings should prompt doctors to give people with HIV quick access to monoclonal antibodies or antiviral drugs to treat Covid-19, said Dr. Deeks. The data also underscores the need to understand how HIV infection affects a person’s response to a Covid vaccine and whether some people with HIV need a booster vaccination, as many immunocompromised people do.

AIDS activists successfully campaigned for the inclusion of people with HIV in clinical trials with coronavirus vaccines, but the data are limited. A clinical study in South Africa showed the coronavirus vaccine, manufactured by Novavax, to be more effective than analysis excluded people with HIV, suggesting that HIV infection undermines the immune response to vaccines.

Out of 100 countries that have released information, 40 listed people with HIV as a priority group for Covid-19 vaccination, said Dr. Meg Doherty, WHO directs HIV programs

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Health

Amazon rainforest now releasing extra carbon than it absorbs: research

Amazon rainforest now releasing more carbon than it absorbs: study

Smoke rises during a fire in an area of ​​the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia state, Brazil, September 10, 2019.

Bruno Kelly | Reuters

According to a new study, the Amazon rainforest emits more carbon than it can absorb.

The rainforest was once a carbon sink – that is, it absorbed more carbon than it released – but it now emits more than 1 billion tons of emissions each year, mainly due to forest fires and deforestation.

The nine-year research project, published on Wednesday, was led by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research in collaboration with scientists from several countries, including the United States, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

Drones collected samples to measure carbon levels in four locations in the Amazon, with the long time frame of the study allowing researchers to account for the annual variation in forest carbon levels.

The Amazon’s carbon footprint – the final balance between emissions and carbon uptake – showed that 1.06 billion tons of CO2 were released into the atmosphere annually between 2010 and 2018. According to the study, 0.87 billion tons of emissions came from the Brazilian Amazon.

Incineration was the largest source of CO2 emissions from the Amazon, accounting for 1.5 billion tons of CO2 emissions, according to the study. If there were no fires or deforestation, the agency said, the Amazon would remove nearly 0.5 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere.

Researchers found that regions of the rainforest where deforestation was above 30% had 10 times more carbon emissions than areas with 20% or less deforestation.

The most heavily deforested areas of the Amazon had drier, warmer, and longer dry seasons, the study found. In dry months, the temperature in these parts of the Amazon rose by 2 degrees Celsius, which increased the forest’s flammability and reduced its ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

Emanuel Gloor, one of the researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK, told CNBC that the study showed immediate need for action.

“The data shows that forests in much of the Amazon region that are increasingly exposed to the heat are suffering,” he said in an email. “It is another wake-up call that the attack on the Amazon forests should be stopped urgently.”

Although the Amazon stretches across nine countries, about 60% of the forest is in Brazil. According to Greenpeace, the Brazilian Amazon has lost more than 18% of its rainforest in the past 40 years.

In 2019, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro was criticized for telling a UN assembly that the Amazon was “untouched and virtually untouched” after the rainforest was found to burn at record speed.

After increasing international pressure, he later authorized the Brazilian military to fight the fires. Last month, Reuters reported that Bolsonaro put a 120-day ban on unauthorized outdoor fires and switched the military to contain forest fires in the Amazon.