Public Health Emergency: COVID-19 Variants

A single molecular change in the lab enabled a coronavirus called Neocov to “efficiently infect” human cells using the same pathway that the  SARS-CoV-2  uses to infect human cells, researchers from Wuhan University, Wuhan, China said in a report that is yet to be peer-reviewed. Neocov has so far only been seen in bats and no instances have been reported in people but being closely related to the  Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronaviruses  - traditionally more lethal but less transmissible than Sarscov2 - the study has raised concern that this too may lethally proliferate in people. Experts however say that such fears are unwarranted. In their study, which is available on the online pre-print server bioRxiv.org, the scientists set out to find out they ways in which Neocov, a coronavirus known to be 85% similar to MERS coronaviruses,   infected animal cells . MERS has a mortality rate of around 35%, far more than the coroanviruses. Physician and fo...

Omicron has approximately 60 mutations, it is thought that its sister lineage may have 85 mutations. The   World Health Organization  (WHO) stated over the weekend that this lineage differs from the original Omicron strain by several mutations, including those of the spike protein, the SARS-CoV-2 protein that mediates host cell entry. This variant has also been termed the “stealth variant” due to a mutation that renders it ‘invisible’ as   Omicron  to PCR testing. BA.2 has spread to over 40 countries, including the US, UK, India, Australia, and Norway. In the latter, it currently accounts for half of Omicron cases. It is currently unknown why BA.2 has dominated so quickly in Norway; however, enhanced  immune escape  or transmissibility has been suggested. Current reports liken the symptoms of the new lineage to that of the original strain of Omicron: sore throat,  headaches , nausea, etc. It is believed that there are no differences in disease severity...

In a recent study researchers established and validated a strong approach for deducing public health-relevant epidemiological metrics, like relative variant abundance and variant-specific reproduction numbers, from wastewater (WW)-derived deep sequenced   severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2   (SARS-CoV-2) genomes in the context of a national-scale wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) initiative. SARS-CoV-2 surveillance  is critical to discover variants with different epidemiological features. Individual instances can be sequenced using WBE, which is unbiased and complimentary. National WBE surveillance programs, on the other hand, have not been widely deployed, and data analysis remains difficult. The findings show that WBE accurately reproduces  epidemiological screening programs  with a high spatiotemporal resolution, fewer samples, and less logistical effort. The virus aggregates in the WW represent the entire virus population, in contrast to the t...

T he overall incidence of AEFI was low at both first and second doses of the Moderna  vaccine , the incidence rates of both IHSR and ISRR were significantly higher after the first dose than after the second one. Over 80% of AEFI incidences were ISRR, and the incidence rate of IHSR was low, with only ~266 cases per 240 million doses among vaccine recipients, at both first and second doses, which is different from the estimated incidence rates reported previously. Consistent with the existing data reports for the US and UK, the  anaphylaxis  rate was also extremely low, at 2 cases per million doses. Only the female gender and history of allergy were associated with an increased risk of anaphylaxis to mRNA vaccines. The researchers identified several risk factors associated with the development of IHSR and ISRR, including comorbidities such as asthma, atopic dermatitis, and thyroid diseases. The vaccine recipients with these comorbidities, including thyroid disorders, were p...

The researchers concluded that booster doses provided protection against severe COVID-19 symptoms and also observed that the number of patients requiring   mechanical ventilation   and use of vasopressors, as well as in-hospital mortality, were lower in the FV&B cohorts as compared to the UV cohorts, despite a higher risk for in-hospital mortality in the FV&B cohort. When the researchers compared the FV&B patients who required ICU care to those who did not, it was observed that there may not have been enough time for the booster dose in these patients to be effective in preventing COVID-19 symptoms. Decreased in-hospital mortality was observed in FV&B patients compared to UV patients, even though the former group was older and had a higher rate of pre-existing ESRD, higher proportion of immunocompromised state, and a higher proportion of immunocompromised state risk of in-hospital death in the FV&B cohort. It was observed that even among elderly patients w...

The   severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2   (SARS-CoV-2) Mu variant (B.1.621, B.1.621.1) has been tagged as a Variant Being Monitored (VBM), and as of August 30, 2021, it had been detected in 39 countries. Colombia was identified as the epicenter of  SARS-CoV-2 infection  caused by the Mu variant. A huge surge of COVID-19 cases was reported in Columbia between March and July 2021, and SARS-CoV-2  infections caused by the gamma variant were found to be prevalent during the early stages of the surge. However, by May, the infections due to the Mu variant became dominant in Columbia. Reports from WHO suggest that the  Mu variant  bears mutations that increase the risk of resistance to currently available vaccines and that further investigations are required in this area. The Mu variant is still not considered as a variant of concern by WHO. Emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 are concerning. They need to be monitored carefully as they show increase...

On 26 November 2021,   WHO designated the variant B.1.1.529 a variant of concern, named Omicron, on the advice of WHO’s   technical advisory group on virus evolution  (TAG-VE). T his variant of the  coronavirus   has a higher rate of asymptomatic “carriage” than earlier variants. Both studies found a higher rate of infection than during previous outbreaks, and a higher proportion of asymptomatic carriers. Both studies are part of larger ones. ‘Ubuntu’, in sub-Saharan Africa, aims to evaluate the effectiveness of Moderna’s vaccine in people living with HIV. The other study is a sub-study of the ‘Sisonke’ study evaluating the effectiveness of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine. In Ubuntu, 230 participants were initially screened in December, and 31% tested positive, all of whom were later confirmed to be Omicron . “These data are in stark contrast to  Covid-19  vaccine studies conducted pre-Omicron, where the SARS-CoV-2 PCR positivity rate at the ...

India will witness a peak in the number of COVID-19 cases by next month (February 2022) with the expectation of reporting five lakh cases per day, a US-based health expert said, adding that however "the severity of the variant will be less this time in the country than Delta variant. Dr Christopher Murray, Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and Chair of the Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington said: "You are entering the Omicron wave, as many countries around the world are, and we expect that there will be more cases per day at the peak than you had in April last year for the Delta wave, but Omicron is much less severe." As many experts in India say that the country has hybrid immunity due to which Omicron will be less effective, Dr Murray said: "What we know from a place like South Africa where there was a tremendous amount of prior infection, both Delta as well as Beta. Vaccination doses provide considerable prote...

We aimed to develop and deploy draw conclusions from different experiences around the world on the control of epidemics for use in public health system settings. This is a qualitative study. We have opted for a comparative and analytical approach to the different countries strategies to control the COVID 19 pandemic. We compared countries and WHO guidelines and interpreted the challenges to provide evidence-based solutions. The comparison of the different systems is based on the notion of scoring ranging from (1) weak; (2) medium and (3) strong. Considering the result between process indicators and effectiveness indicators scoring the result of our study is a categorization of the different countries into three categories of pandemic control: Excellent level of control for Germany South Korea, Hong Kong and turkey of a score higher than 15, a medium level with a score that varies between 10 and 15 for China, USA, France, Spain, Italy and Morocco. The present analysis will...

A novel coronavirus was subsequently identified as the causative pathogen, provisionally named 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) is an infectious acute respiratory infection caused by the novel coronavirus the virus is a positive-strand RNA virus with high homology to bat coronavirus. As per WHO’s situation report of 28 April 2020, Coronavirus is continuing to spread globally with now more than 3000004 cases worldwide. All Arab countries have reported COVID-19 cases. The confirmed cases of the corona virus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic were announced in Arab gulf countries, as follows, the first case of the COVID-19 disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the United Arab Emirates was confirmed on 29th January 2020, the source of the infection was from China. In February 2020, it was first reported that the ongoing global pandemic was transmitted to Iraq, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait and the source of the viral admission were from Iran. On 2n...

Diverticulosis is a disease of the large intestine. However, diverticulosis of the small intestine is a rare pathological entity. We report a case of diverticular disease of the small intestine. A 78-year-old man presented a 2-days history of abdominal pain. The pain was of gradual onset, severe and was associated with constipation and vomiting which was bilious. Abdominal examination revealed a distended abdomen with mild epigastric and periumbilical tenderness and an empty rectum on digital rectal examination. Imaging investigations showed features of bowel obstruction evidenced by dilated bowel loops with multiple air fluid levels. Intra-operatively, there were multiple diverticulosis of the jejunum and ileum with fibrous bands attaching the intestines to the anterior abdominal wall and thickened greater omentum. The operative procedure performed was excision of fibrous bands and restoration of luminal patency. Diverticulosis is a disease of the large intestine and occurrence...

This paper will review the current literature regarding perceived wellness and COVID-19 and how it relates to a return to work during the pandemic. CINAHL, Google Scholar and Academic Search Complete are searched, and 17 articles are found to be relevant to the topic of review. Most research on the subject focused on healthcare workers. A few articles are found that review wellness or stress during the pandemic related to Native Americans, music therapists, students, teachers and the general population (usually involving Italy, UK and China). Most research agrees that COVID-19 and the ensuing, lockdowns, deaths, social isolation, financial hardships, and alterations to normal life has caused an increase in the amount of stress and a decrease in perceived wellness. This increase in baseline stress contributes to wellness in the workplace. Workplace culture and interventions have been found to either worsen or mitigate these stressors. Tools used to measure wellness focused mainl...

 HI... TRIDHA Scholars is an open access Publishing company of India and it publishes all kind of paper related to clinical and medical field of Science. We have around 10 running journals on the very kind of particular topic of Clinical Science. Here is the list of the journals below. 1. Journal of Clinical Cases and Report 2. International Journal of Clinical and Medical Informatics 3. Clinical Surgery Journal 4. Cancer Medicine Journal 5. Journal of Medicine and Biology 6. Clinical Practice and Investigation 7. Journal of Heart 8. Case Reports in Dental Science 9. Food Processing and Nutrional Science 10. International Journal of AAYUSH and Traditional Medicine (Official Journal of  SGM, Ayurveda Mahavidyalaya, Pusad, Pune, India ) So, we would like to share it and help us to contribute in scientific community by publishing their work on time. We assure the quality process and complete the peer review process without any fail. Web: https://www.tridhascholars.org/ Conta...

In recent periods, we have faced several new diseases occurred in various areas geographically, by pathogens counting Ebola virus, Zika virus, Nipah virus, and most recent coronavirus (CoV). It is entirely different viral infection emerged in Wuhan City, China, and it is highly mutated virus and its genomic data of this virus does not match with the previous sequenced genome of CoV, and suggest a novel CoV strain (2019-nCoV), which has now been named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoV-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Though coronavirus disease COVID-19 shows less severe pathogenesis but higher transmission competence whereas (SARS-CoV-2) is a highly transmissible and pathogenic coronavirus that emerged in late 2019 which threatens human health and public safety. In this blog, we describe that in the past few decades, the virus has been able to mutate and adapt to infect humans, resulting in an animal-tohuman species barrier jump. The emergence of a novel coronavirus poses a serious global public hea...