Category: Symptoms
UK: 5% of children hospitalized with Covid-19 develop brain or nerve complications
A new UK study has found that around 1 in 20 of children hospitalised with COVID-19 develop brain or nerve complications linked to the viral infection. The research, published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health and led by the University of Liverpool, identifies a wide spectrum of neurological complications in children and suggests they may be more common than in adults admitted with COVID-19.
Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay
USA: Cape Cod superspreader – 79% of breakthrough infections symptomatic, 80% of hospitalized were fully vaccinated
Scientists researching the Provincetown, Cape Cod Covid outbreak reported that 79 percent of the breakthrough infections were symptomatic. Four of five people who were hospitalized were fully vaccinated.
The CDC study “raises the very worrisome possibility that high viral loads can occur in people who have Delta, and this is a fundamental as we have to approach the fall and winter,” said David O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Image by Mark Martins from Pixabay
USA: Provincetown, Cape Cod outbreak – 882 infections, 74% fully immunized, most reporting symptoms
As of Thursday, 882 people were tied to the Provincetown outbreak. Among those living in Massachusetts, 74% of them were fully immunized, yet officials said the vast majority were also reporting symptoms. Seven people were reported hospitalized.
Image by Christophe Schindler from Pixabay
USA: Sars-CoV-2 antibodies detected in 33% of White-Tailed Deer samples
Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 were detected in 33% of the 481 samples collected from January 2020 through 2021. None of the deer populations surveyed showed signs of clinical illness associated with SARS-CoV-2. Results of the study indicate that certain white-tailed deer populations in Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania were exposed to SARS-CoV-2.
It is important to note that this surveillance was designed to determine exposure of deer to SARS-CoV-2 in their natural environment. It was not designed to determine whether the deer were replicating and shedding SARS-CoV-2.
Image by Robert Woeger from Pixabay
Israel: 60% of severely ill Covid patients are fully vaccinated
At least 153 patients in Israel’s hospitals are in serious condition, of whom 28 are ventilated. 93 out of the 153 severely ill patients have been fully vaccinated, or 60% of the total.
According to the Israeli Health Ministry, 102 of the severely ill patients are aged 65 and over, 76 of whom are fully vaccinated. At least 39 of the severely ill are between the age of 40 and 65, while 16 of them are fully vaccinated. Six of the severely ill are below the age of 40 but only one of them is fully vaccinated.
Israel: Are recovered Covid patients more protected than the vaccinated?
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Brazil: previously infected and fully vaccinated subjects with high anti-S IgG titers are susceptible to infection by VOC
Here we show that even previously infected and fully vaccinated subjects with high anti-S IgG titers are susceptible to infection by VOC, highlighting that immune responses induced by either natural infection or vaccination may not be sufficient to prevent infection by SARS-CoV-2 variants.
For this study we selected 72 SARS-CoV-2 recently tested positive individuals with nasopharyngeal swabs collected between mid-January and March 2021 with SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR Ct values <30. These include both cancer patients and healthcare workers (HCW) from the Brazilian National Cancer Institute (INCA), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Of those 72 subjects, six were vaccinated prior the current infection and two out of those six were also reinfection cases. Another three subjects also represented reinfections, showing a previous infection during the first wave of the pandemic in Brazil.
Six HCW included in this study have been fully or partially vaccinated with one of the vaccines available in Brazil, either CoronaVac (Sinovac/Butantã) or ChAdOx1-S/nCoV-19 (AstraZeneca/Oxford/Fiocruz). All six tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR after at least one vaccine dose and reported mild symptoms during infection.
ScienceDirect.com preprint: New infections by SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern after natural infections and post-vaccination in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Image by Rafael Moura Sb. from Pixabay
USA: Long covid patient engagement and care needs
A video conference outlining the incredible suffering and extraordinary symptoms that Long Covid patients are having to endure.
Key Points
- Survivor Corps is a 170,000 member grassroots organization founded in 2020 to support and educate people with COVID-19 and those who continue to experience long-lasting symptoms of COVID-19.
- People who experience long-term, after-effects of COVID-19 report feeling alone and desperate due to the difficult and dissatisfying medical care they receive and their medical provider’s lack of knowledge about long-term COVID.
- Long-term COVID patients want to be heard and believed by medical professionals who are thorough in their examination and testing methods.
- Survivor Corps advocates for crucial research to be done on the symptoms that cause the most human pain and suffering, and not just the symptoms that are experienced most frequently.
- COVID-19 research can be done at a faster pace if we engage citizen-scientists and quickly release NIH research funding.
- The life-or-death struggles of people with long-term COVID illustrate the need to treat this condition as an emergency medical situation—the same as we would treat an acute case of COVID-19.
Indonesia: Mortality rate in children as high as 40% in PCR confirmed Covid-19 cases
During the study period, 490 [child] patients were admitted and diagnosed with suspected and probable COVID-19. Of these patients, 50 (10.2%) were confirmed to have COVID-19, and 20 (40%) had a fatal outcome.
The fatality rate was higher in patients aged ≥10 years, categorized with severe disease upon admission, PaO2/FiO2 ratio ≤300 mmHg and chronic underlying diseases. The most common clinical manifestations were generalized symptoms, while acute respiratory distress syndrome (8/20) and septic shock (7/20) were the two most common causes of death. Increased procalcitonin, D-dimer, lactate dehydrogenase and presepsin levels were found in all fatal cases. One patient met the criteria of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.
Conclusion: Our work highlights the high mortality rate in paediatric patients with positive SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction test. These findings might be related to or co-incided with COVID-19 infection. Further studies are needed to improve understanding of the role of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 in elaborating the mechanisms leading to death in children with comorbidities.
Pubmed paper: Mortality in children with positive SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction test: Lessons learned from a tertiary referral hospital in Indonesia
See also:
NYtimes report: Children Are Dying as Virus Surges in Indonesia – hundreds have died from Covid-19 in recent weeks, many of them under the age of 5.
Image by Fikih Firmansyah from Pixabay
Preprint: Fatal neuroinvasion of SARS-CoV-2 in mice
Here, we show that in a widely used transgenic mouse model of COVID-19, lethality is invariably associated with viral neuroinvasion and the ensuing neuronal disease, while lung inflammation remains moderate.
BiorXiv preprint: Fatal neuroinvasion of SARS-CoV-2 in K18-hACE2 mice is partially dependent on hACE2 expression
Image by Tibor Janosi Mozes from Pixabay
More than half of young people with mild Covid-19 infections experienced Long Covid
Researchers at Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, Norway, have followed 312 Covid-19 patients for an entire year. 247 of them home-isolated, while 65 were hospitalized. At six months, 61 per cent of all patients had persistent symptoms, the researchers found. Among those who home-isolated, 52 per cent still experienced various symptoms after half a year.
Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash
Lancet: cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from COVID-19
People who had recovered from COVID-19, including those no longer reporting symptoms, exhibited significant cognitive deficits versus controls when controlling for age, gender, education level, income, racial-ethnic group, pre-existing medical disorders, tiredness, depression and anxiety.
The deficits were of substantial effect size for people who had been hospitalised, but also for non-hospitalised cases who had biological confirmation of COVID-19 infection. Analysing markers of premorbid intelligence did not support these differences being present prior to infection. Finer grained analysis of performance across sub-tests supported the hypothesis that COVID-19 has a multi-domain impact on human cognition.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
USA: Vaccine breakthrough at the White House
Vaccine breakthrough cases at the White House
O'Keefe: "You confirmed today there's been a breakthrough case."
Psaki: "Yep."
O'Keefe: "But you're also confirming there have been other breakthrough cases?"
Psaki: "Yep."
O'Keefe: "But you had not previously disclosed that there had been?"
Psaki: "And — that's correct."— Kathryn Watson (@kathrynw5) July 20, 2021
Image by David Mark from Pixabay
UK: 60% of UK Covid-19 hospital cases are double vaccinated
Sir Patrick Vallance has said in the latest 10 Downing Street press conference that 60% of people hospitalized with Covid-19 have had two vaccine jabs.
In the video below, at 18 minutes:
Q: Out of all the daily announced Covid cases what percentage of these have had none, one or both of their vaccination injections?
Patrick Vallance: Well, in terms of the number of people in hospital, who have been double vaccinated, we know it’s around 60% of the people being admitted to hospital with Covid have been double vaccinated, and that is not surprising, because the vaccines are not 100% effective, they’re very, very effective, but not 100%, and as a higher proportion of the population is double vaccinated, it’s inevitable that those 10% of that very large number remain at risk and therefore will be amongst the people who both catch the infection and end up in hospital.
UPDATE: Patrick Vallance has since issued a statement saying that his remarks at the press conference were incorrect. Apparently only 40% of Covid-19 hospital cases are vaccine breakthroughs at the moment!
An absolutely bizarre "error" considering that you went on to explain exactly why the 60% figure was so high. This is all very odd and suspicious 🤔
pic.twitter.com/VHbW7PahFn— Jon Chalk (@Jon_Chalk1) July 19, 2021
** BREAKING NEWS **
Last week, the UK vaccine breakthrough figure was 47% and that included people with just one vaccine jab:
UK: vaccine breakthroughs now nearly HALF of all new Covid-19 cases
Gupta Lab: Delta variant emergence, replication and immune evasion
Bad news from the Gupta Lab who have been looking at the Delta variant.
“Taking replication we originally showed increased growth of Delta virus in vitro using airway organoids compared to Alpha. Now we show increased virus production in two other systems: Calu-3 epithelial lung cell lines (shown here) and airway epithelial cells”
“We now further define Delta immune evasion using a panel of 38 monoclonal antibodies, showing significant loss of potency of NTD and RBD targeting antibodies. Imdevimab, part of the REGN2 dual monoclonal antibody cocktail is compromised by Delta.”
“We also show loss of activity for casivirimab, part of the Lily dual therapy cocktail. These dual therapies could be less effective against Delta particularly in the setting of immune compromise could lead to escape variants emerging/ transmitting.”
“We also found that the Delta virus appears to be in a predominantly cleaved form as compared to Alpha. This may suggest that each virus particle is more infectious in addition to more virus particles being produced“
BiorXiv Preprint: SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 Delta variant emergence, replication and immune evasion
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