Data on confirmed Covid cases in England show how the Omicron variant is already taking hold in the country
Proportion of confirmed positive tests that didn’t detect the spike protein increased from 0.1% to 0.3%
One scientist said it equates around 60 more cases with hallmark than usual, suggesting Omicron infections
Comes as R rate spirals from less than one to 3.5 in South Africa’s Omicron epicentre Gauteng province
Lead UK epidemiologist says Omicron infections likely appear mild because of immunity from past infections
WHO officials suggested on Thursday that Covid cases were milder in those who caught the Omicron strain
Millions of over-75s in England will miss out on routine health checks until April to free up GPs to help with the UK’s anti-Omicron booster drive.
Campaigners accused the Government of breaking its promises to boost face-to-face appointments and slammed the decision as a ‘self defeating exercise’, as over-75s will flood into A&E with their health problems.
The decision to suspend the health checks came from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) in response to the Government’s mammoth effort to turbocharge the UK’s Covid booster to ward off Omicron.
Hayley Hodgson, 26, moved to Darwin from Melbourne to escape the never-ending lockdowns — only to find herself locked up in a Covid Internment Camp without even having the virus.
She’s just returned from a 14-day detention at Howard Springs, the 2000-capacity Covid camp outside Darwin to which regional Covid cases are transported by the authorities. In an exclusive interview with Freddie Sayers, she recounted her experiences.
Backup mirrors:
Scientists believe they have solved the mystery behind the extremely rare blood clots caused by the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
A team of international experts, involving researchers from AstraZeneca, say that in a very small number of cases, the vaccine can set off a chain reaction which leads to the body confusing its own blood platelets for fragments of virus.
Perhaps the most dangerous three words in the English language are ‘Protect the NHS’.
After 18 months of discouraging people from getting treatment in hospital, we are now seeing the catastrophic results.
A report from the National Audit Office (NAO) this week found that up to 740,000 potential cancer patients have been missed since the beginning of the first lockdown in March 2020.
These are people who should have been referred urgently for investigation in hospital, for a disease where delays exponentially increase the risk of death.
The NAO estimates that, since the pandemic began, between 35,000 and 60,000 fewer people than expected have started treatment for cancer.
Vaccines derived from chimpanzee adenovirus Y25 (ChAdOx1), human adenovirus type 26 (HAdV-D26), and human adenovirus type 5 (HAdV-C5) are critical in combatting the severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. As part of the largest vaccination campaign in history, ultrarare side effects not seen in phase 3 trials, including thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a rare condition resembling heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), have been observed. This study demonstrates that all three adenoviruses deployed as vaccination vectors versus SARS-CoV-2 bind to platelet factor 4 (PF4), a protein implicated in the pathogenesis of HIT. We have determined the structure of the ChAdOx1 viral vector and used it in state-of-the-art computational simulations to demonstrate an electrostatic interaction mechanism with PF4, which was confirmed experimentally by surface plasmon resonance. These data confirm that PF4 is capable of forming stable complexes with clinically relevant adenoviruses, an important step in unraveling the mechanisms underlying TTS.
http://archive.today/2021.12.02-125456/https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abl8213
Scotland international Siobhan Cattigan has died aged 26, Scottish Rugby has announced.
Up to 740,000 potential cancer cases that should have been urgently referred by GPs have been “missed” since the first lockdown, according to a damning report.
Watchdogs also warned that NHS waiting lists could keep growing until 2025 and even reach double the current six million.
Charities said the report by the National Audit Office (NAO) reflected a “devastating” situation for many patients, with medics warning of “the biggest cancer catastrophe ever to hit the NHS”.
A fit and active 26-year-old man has mysterious died with fears he may have suffered fatal side effects 12 days after receiving Pfizer’s Covid vaccine.
Rory James Nairn, 26, had heart palpitations for several days before collapsing to the floor of his Dunedin home in New Zealand on November 17.
The analysis identified 72 studies that might potentially have provided evidence on the effectiveness of masks, social distancing and hand washing. Of those, just six (not eight, 30 or 72) were sufficiently relevant — and of sufficient quality — that they could provide any useful information on mask efficacy. And how reliable were the six? Four were assessed to have a moderate risk of bias, and two to have a serious or critical risk.
The boss of the drugmaker Moderna has warned that Covid-19 vaccines are unlikely to be as effective against the Omicron variant in comments that have added to uncertainty about its impact and unsettled financial markets.
“There is no world, I think, where [the effectiveness] is the same level we had with Delta,” Stéphane Bancel told the Financial Times. “I think it’s going to be a material drop. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to … are like, ‘this is not going to be good’.”
Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who Omicron variant, says the symptoms are extremely mild.
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.
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
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.