The South African doctor who discovered the Omicron variant has suggested the UK may be panicking unnecessarily about the new Covid strain.
Dr Angelique Coetzee said that patients had been presenting with ‘extremely mild’ symptoms in her country, though the population there is significantly younger than in the UK.
The chair of the South African Medical Association suspects the variant is already widely in the UK but added she had not seen any confirmed cases admitted to hospital – adding that other colleagues had seen the ‘same picture’.
…She listed symptoms of Omicron as extreme tiredness, headaches and a scratchy cough – but not a loss of smell or taste.
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Madrid’s rising star leader on Friday attacked “paternalistic” Left-wing governments for confining people to their homes as she warned that any return to a Covid lockdown would be remembered as a “historical error”.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the president of Madrid’s regional authority, defied Spain’s socialist government to free her city from a lockdown she believed was doing more harm than good.
…”I received an unprecedented level of pressure, both politically and in terms of the media. I was insulted and called a murderer,” she said. “But time has shown I was right because we were clear about what we were doing. Since the regions took back control of the health situation, infections in Madrid have tailed off.
A woman who died from “unrecognised” complications after having a Covid-19 vaccine was wrongly diagnosed with gastroenteritis, a coroner has said.
An inquest heard Michelle Barlow developed blood clots and died 16 days after having the AstraZeneca jab.
http://archive.today/2021.11.29-102246/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-59434281.amp
Face masks and other social distancing measures may in fact impede on children’s development, a new study executed by Brown University has found
The probe analyzed the cognitive development of the youngsters through infancy, childhood and adolescence
In the study, researchers first analyzed 1,070 assessments administered on 605 kids prior to March 2020, when COVID lockdowns and masking began
A further 154 assessments from 118 kids administered between March 2020 and June 2021, during the height of the pandemic, were then carried out
Thirty-nine children born in 2018 and 2019 were analyzed over the course of the pandemic, into 2021.
The report found that there was a 23 per cent drop in scores measuring kids’ intelligence quotients since the start of the pandemic
The study also found similar dips in the same span in regards to developing children’s ability to communicate, both verbally and though subtle facial cues
A woman has described how she had to learn how to talk again after she said she was left partially-paralysed due to the side effects of her Covid-19 vaccine.
Kerry Hurt, from Rotherham, suffered a stroke after undergoing surgery for a blood clot two weeks after having the AstraZeneca jab.
http://archive.today/2021.11.26-215159/https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c41nlvy5x85o
At a glance
A woman has described how she had to learn how to talk again after she said she was left partially-paralysed due to the side effects of her Covid-19 vaccine.
Kerry Hurt, from Rotherham, suffered a stroke after undergoing surgery for a blood clot two weeks after having the AstraZeneca jab.
http://archive.today/2021.11.26-215159/https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c41nlvy5x85o
The five most vaccinated states in the United States—Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut and Massachusetts—are all experiencing surges in new COVID-19 cases, as the Biden administration urges people over 50 to get their booster jabs.
Vermont, which is the most vaccinated state, with 73 percent of its population fully jabbed, saw an 18 percent rise in new daily COVID cases over the last 14 days before November 24, according to New York Times data.
The UK is suffering a wave of excess deaths not fully explained by the coronavirus, according to official statistics.
There were 12,050 deaths registered in England and Wales in the seven days to November 12, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows. That was 1,719 more than the five-year average for 2015-19, or a 16.6 per cent increase.
Terrified Indigenous Australians are being taken by army to quarantine facilities
At-risk remote Aboriginal communities have been hit by a new Covid outbreak
Authorities have started moving positive cases and contacts to Howard Springs
Elder from Larrakia country claimed people were ‘being taken against their will’
But Indigenous man quarantining in facility said everyone is being treated well
Binjari and Rockhole residents aren’t allowed to shop or even go for a walk
It is currently the strictest lockdown on earth with hundreds trapped at home
FC Sheriff Tiraspol star Adama Traore went to ground clutching his chest in concerning scenes during Wednesday night’s Champions League encounter against Real Madrid.
High COVID-19 vaccination rates were expected to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in populations by reducing the number of possible sources for transmission and thereby to reduce the burden of COVID-19 disease. Recent data, however, indicate that the epidemiological relevance of COVID-19 vaccinated individuals is increasing. In the UK it was described that secondary attack rates among household contacts exposed to fully vaccinated index cases was similar to household contacts exposed to unvaccinated index cases (25% for vaccinated vs 23% for unvaccinated). 12 of 31 infections in fully vaccinated household contacts (39%) arose from fully vaccinated epidemiologically linked index cases. Peak viral load did not differ by vaccination status or variant type.
A professional musician died after suffering a brain haemorrhage ‘induced by his first dose of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine’, an inquest has heard.
Matthew Dibble, 40, suffered a ‘catastrophic’ episode just two days after he self-presented at St Thomas’ Hospital in central London complaining of a headache on May 8.
Several care home residents in Scotland expecting to receive their dose of the coronavirus vaccine were instead injected with salt water.
Some 11 residents at Millbrae Care Home, in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, were mistakenly given a saline solution used to dilute the Pfizer vaccine once removed from freezers, according to the The Sunday Mail.
Trudi Marshall, Health and Social Care North Lanarkshire nurse director, told Metro.co.uk: ‘None of the residents who received the vaccine diluent came to any harm and they were re-vaccinated on the same day.
HEE is an executive non-departmental public body of DHSC, responsible for co-ordination of education and training within the health and public health workforce within England, including the training of doctors and nurses.
NHS Digital is a non-departmental public body responsible for the information, data and IT systems for commissioners, analysts and clinicians in health and social care in England.
NHSX is a joint unit of NHS England and DHSC, supporting local NHS and care organisations to digitise their services, connect the health and social care systems through technology and transform the way patients’ care is delivered at home, in the community and in hospital.
A power to enable formal legal mergers of DHSC’s arm’s length bodies is currently being considered by Parliament as part of the Health and Care Bill. The formal merger of HEE and NHSE/I is therefore subject to Parliament’s approval of that measure, expected in summer 2022.
NHS Digital and NHSX will form part of the new Transformation Directorate within NHSE alongside Improvement, and Innovation, Research and Life Sciences.
The NHSE/I Transformation Directorate will continue to lead the digital transformation agenda for the NHS and social care at national and ICS level.
NHSX will evolve into the strategy function of the Transformation Directorate.
Four months ago, I had my second dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. I work for the NHS and fully support Britain’s vaccination campaign, so it was a simple decision for me to make. I had no problems with my first dose and I knew that the vaccines have been found to be highly effective and safe, preventing up to 96 per cent of Covid hospitalisations.
The day after my second dose I began to feel some aches and pains, but I gave little thought to the vaccine and carried on as normal. Four days later though my chest was seriously aching. I tried various stretches and painkillers but my symptoms grew worse. Then there was a sharp pain, piercing into the left side of my chest, near my heart. After a quick call to NHS 111, they sent me directly to Accident & Emergency, where I was strapped up to an electrocardiogram (ECG) machine and given blood tests to see if I was having a heart attack. I’m in my early thirties and relatively healthy, with no family history of heart disease or underlying conditions, and I’d never felt this sensation before.
The £37billion Test and Trace scheme is already being dismantled – despite fears of a devastating winter Covid crisis.
A leaked dossier has laid bare plans to axe the shambolic system in 2022. But a major step in winding it down will come next week.
The Sunday Mirror understands the contact tracing system run by Sitel and Serco will be wound up early over crippling costs.
Up to 10,000 contact tracers and call handlers were last week told their jobs were being axed, insiders said.
In briefings by managers, teams were told there was “no money left”.
HARARE, ZIMBABWE — At a busy market in a poor township outside Harare this week, Nyasha Ndou kept his mask in his pocket, as hundreds of other people, mostly unmasked, jostled to buy and sell fruit and vegetables displayed on wooden tables and plastic sheets. As in much of Zimbabwe, here the coronavirus is quickly being relegated to the past, as political rallies, concerts and home gatherings have returned.
…But there is something “mysterious” going on in Africa that is puzzling scientists, said Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University. “Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” she said.
In the wake of federal vaccine mandates in the U.S., debate has erupted over the waves of fire fighters,police staff, and other workers who have applied for religious exemptions to getting their COVID-19 shots. The number of applications is likely to spike as the January 4 vaccination deadline nears for large private businesses and some healthcare facilities. And one common reason people give for religious exemptions is the link between vaccines and human fetal cells.
It’s true that such cells have been used either in the testing or development and production of COVID-19 vaccines. The cells are grown in a laboratory and were derived from a few elective abortions performed more than three decades ago. These same cell lines are also used to test and advance our understanding of several routine drugs, including acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and aspirin, and they continue to be used for treatment research in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and hypertension.
An investigation has been launched into a spike in deaths among newborn babies in Scotland.
Official figures reveal that 21 infants died during September within 28 days of birth, causing the neonatal mortality rate to breach an upper warning threshold known as the ‘control limit’ for the first time in at least four years.
Control and warning limits are designed to flag up to public health teams when neonatal, stillbirth or other infant deaths are occurring at unexpectedly high or low levels which may not be due to chance.
Concerns have previously been raised about the potential impact of Covid on maternity services and maternal wellbeing, but it is the first time since the pandemic began that neonatal deaths have been so abnormally above average.
Although the rate fluctuates month to month, the figure for September – at 4.9 per 1000 live births – is on a par with levels that were last typically seen in the late 1980s.
