Infection

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News

CDC removes guidance saying coronavirus spreads through air – Washington Examiner

The CDC has long maintained that the coronavirus is transmitted through droplets spread among people in close proximity to one another. On Friday, it updated its guidelines, adding that the virus also spreads through “respiratory droplets or small particles, such as those in aerosols, produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, talks, or breathes,” adding that this is the main vector of infection.

The guidance no longer says COVID-19 can be spread through the air, and the agency said it will update the language once its review process “has been completed.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cdc-removes-guidance-saying-coronavirus-spreads-through-air

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Opinion

This second wave of coronavirus is simply not as deadly… if we panic, so many more lives will be lost, says PROFESSOR KAROL SIKORA – Daily Mail

Britain is now in grave danger of sleepwalking into a second national lockdown. The consequences of doing so would be disastrous.

We find ourselves in this wretched position partly because the Government’s main achievement since the pandemic first emerged in China has not been suppressing the virus or saving lives or the economy, but in spreading irrational fear.

  • A blanket lockdown is the last thing we should be contemplating if we are serious about the nation’s mental and physical well-being.
  • This second wave will not trigger the explosion in deaths we saw in the spring.
  • Not a single young child has died in the UK from Covid without some other serious pre-existing condition.
  • According to Cambridge statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter, anyone under 50 is more likely to die in a car crash than from the virus.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8748883/This-second-wave-coronavirus-simply-not-deadly-says-PROFESSOR-KAROL-SIKORA.html

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Publications

Did COVID-19 infections decline before UK lockdown? – Prof Simon Wood, arXiv

The number of new infections per day is a key quantity for effective epidemic management. It can be estimated by testing of random population samples. Without such direct epidemiological measurement, other approaches are required to infer whether the number of new cases is likely to be increasing or decreasing: for example, estimating the pathogen reproductive rate, R, using data gathered from the clinical response to the disease. For COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) such R estimation is heavily dependent on modelling assumptions, because the available clinical case data are opportunistic observational data subject to severe temporal confounding. Given this difficulty it is useful to reconstruct the time course of infections from the least compromised available data, using minimal prior assumptions. A Bayesian inverse problem approach applied to UK data on COVID-19 deaths and the disease duration distribution suggests that infections were in decline before full UK lockdown (24 March 2020), and that infections in Sweden started to decline only a day or two later. An analysis of UK data using the model of Flaxman et al. (2020, Nature 584) gives the same result under relaxation of its prior assumptions on R.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.02090

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News Opinion

Top Belgian scientist calls for herd immunity coronavirus strategy – The Times

The resurgence of coronavirus is nothing to be feared and lockdown measures are doing more harm than the pandemic itself, a leading Belgian medical scientist has said.

Jean-Luc Gala, head of the prestigious Université Catholique de Louvain Saint-Luc clinic and a specialist in infectious diseases, has broken ranks with other scientists and tried to quell fears over the rise of the Belgian infection rate.

He said that it was not dangerous for the virus to circulate and the lack of a vaccine could help to bring about herd immunity in the population.

“Is the rise in infections worrying? No. It is completely normal. Is it dangerous for the virus to circulate? No, once again,” he told La Dernière Heure newspaper.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/top-belgian-scientist-calls-for-herd-immunity-coronavirus-strategy-gxwqj887m

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News

Hopes for normality grow as Covid shifts to the young: Two-thirds of new UK infections are in under-40s while rate in older people FALLS – raising hopes deaths will remain low without lockdowns – Dail Mail

The number of over-50s with Covid-19 represents a fifth of those nationwide

Just three per cent are aged over 80, down from 28 per cent six months ago

Peak age range for infections is now in the 20s but used to be in the 80s 

Sparked hope further restrictions could soon be reduced as older people shield 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8700399/Covid-shifts-young-Two-thirds-new-infections-UK-40s.html

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Publications

Diagnosing COVID-19 infection: the danger of over-reliance on positive test results – medRxiv

Unlike previous epidemics, in addressing COVID-19 nearly all international health organizations and national health ministries have treated a single positive result from a PCR-based test as confirmation of infection, even in asymptomatic persons without any history of exposure. This is based on a widespread belief that positive results in these tests are highly reliable. However, data on PCR-based tests for similar viruses show that PCR-based testing produces enough false positive results to make positive results highly unreliable over a broad range of real-world scenarios. This has clinical and case management implications, and affects an array of epidemiological statistics, including the asymptomatic ratio, prevalence, and hospitalization and death rates. Steps should be taken to raise awareness of false positives, reduce their frequency, and mitigate their effects. In the interim, positive results in asymptomatic individuals that haven’t been confirmed by a second test should be considered suspect.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v3

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Videos

Prof. Carl Heneghan On Masks

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QNI2ocgosgA
  • Masks and gloves have been shown in studies to help in the medical setting but not in the home setting.
  • Cloth masks are worse and may increase infection.
  • Masks in the UK were supposed to reduce infections by 40% but in fact, infections went up.
  • Study in Norway: 200,000 people would have to wear a mask in order to prevent one infection. Public health impact of mask wearing is negligible.
  • This advocating mask-wearing have cherry-picked low-quality observational evidence to suit the evidence.

Carl Heneghan is a clinical epidemiologist with expertise in evidence-based medicine, research methods, and evidence synthesis.
He is Director of the NIHR SPCR Evidence Synthesis Working Group a collaboration of nine primary care departments across UK universities. He set up and directs the Oxford COVID Evidence Service, has over 400 peer-reviewed publications (current H Index 67); published 95 systematic reviews. He is Editor in Chief of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, and Editor of the Catalogue of Bias.

Director of CEBM & Programs in EBHC
Editor in Chief, BMJ EBM
NHS Urgent Care GP
NIHR Senior Investigator

Categories
News

No, Europe isn’t being engulfed by a deadly second wave – The Telegraph

An uptick in cases hasn’t been matched by an increase in deaths. It’s about time we had a more intelligent conversation about risk

Hard luck to those who switched their holidays to Greece when Spain was put back on the quarantine list. The Greek government has just officially declared a “second wave”. Once holidaymakers have explored the Aegean they face getting to know a lot more about the insides of their own homes upon their return, as Greece is now a favourite to be added to the ever-growing list of countries whose air bridges with Britain have collapsed.

But how real is this “second wave” apparently sweeping Europe? Look at the chart of new recorded infections in Greece and, sure enough, you can call it a second wave. Recorded cases began to inch upwards from mid-June onwards. The figure for Sunday – 202 – was markedly higher than the peak in new recorded infections in Greece’s first wave, which reached 156 on April 21. But then look at the chart for Greece’s Covid deaths and there is not the slightest trace of a second wave.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/11/no-europe-isnt-engulfed-deadly-second-wave/

Categories
Publications

Association of contact to small children with mild course of COVID-19 – medRxiv

It is known that severe COVID-19 cases in small children are rare. If a childhood-related infection would be protective against severe course of COVID-19, it would be expected that adults with intensive and regular contact to small children also may have a mild course of COVID-19 more frequently. To test this hypothesis, a survey among 4,010 recovered COVID-19 patients was conducted in Germany. 1,186 complete answers were collected. 6.9% of these patients reported frequent and regular job-related contact to children below 10 years of age and 23.2% had own small children, which is higher than expected. In the relatively small subgroup with intensive care treatment (n=19), patients without contact to small children were overrepresented. These findings are not well explained by age, gender or BMI distribution of those patients and should be validated in other settings.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.20.20157149v1

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News

One in ten Brits may have had coronavirus – The Spectator

All through the Covid-19 pandemic we have been hampered by a lack of data on just how many people have had the disease. Given that several studies have indicated that as many as 80 per cent of people who are infected show no symptoms whatsoever, it is extremely difficult to estimate this crucial figure – which determines the mortality rate of Covid-19 and also how far away we might be from achieving a position of herd immunity.

Today, however, comes some very substantial data. The Medical Research Council’s Biostatistics Unit has published estimates of infections derived from serological studies on samples collected from the NHS Blood Transfusion Service. 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/one-in-ten-brits-may-have-had-coronavirus

Categories
News

Coronavirus infections in England and Wales hit peak days before lockdown, study finds – The Telegraph

Modelling by Professor Simon Wood, of the school of mathematics at the University of Bristol, shows that the majority of people who died at the peak would have been infected roughly five days before the lockdown was introduced.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/04/coronavirus-infections-england-wales-hit-peak-days-lockdown/

Categories
Publications

Understanding the factors involved in determining the bioburdens of surgical masks – NCBI (2019)

Background

Surgical site infection (SSI) continues to be one of the most common postoperative complications. In our previous study, surgical mask (SM) bioburden was identified to be a potential source of SSI. In the present study, we investigated the factors involved in SM bioburden.

Methods

Bioburdens of the disposable SM (A: medical mask; B: medical surgical mask) and newly laundered cloth SM (C) were tested by immediately making an impression of the external surface of the mask on sterile culture media. SM microstructure was observed using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Filtering efficiency and airflow resistance were evaluated with TSI Automated Filter Tester 8130 (TSI Incorporated) according to GB/19083-2010. Whether speaking during operation and washing the face pre-operatively affect SM bioburdens was also evaluated. Surgical procedures were performed in a dynamic operation room. Fifty cases of mask use were enrolled in this study.

Results

The bioburden of mask A was the highest. The bioburden of mask B was the lowest. Mask C possessed the lowest filtering efficiency and the highest airflow resistance. SM bioburden was higher in the speaking group. SM bioburden showed no significant difference after washing the face, despite the finding that washing could significantly reduce facial bioburden.

Conclusions

Multiple factors influence SM bioburdens. Mask B showed the lowest bioburden and best protection effects. Mask C is not recommended to be used, especially considering that surgeons do not wash the cloth masks daily. Unnecessary talking during operation is not recommended, and washing the face before surgery is not strictly necessary.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6989980/

Categories
News

COVID antibody test in German town shows 15 percent infection rate – The Spectator

It seems that the British government’s assumption that COVID-19 would infect 80 percent of the population was borrowed from a 2015 flu pandemic planning report.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/covid-antibody-test-in-german-town-shows-15-per-cent-infection-rate-0-4pc-death-rate