Category Archives: Infectious Diseases

‘Covid is affecting all of acute care – so the system sludges up’

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A hospital doctor in Yorkshire explains how Omicron is testing northern hospitals’ resources, with staff juggling beds to control infection and dealing with a huge influx of patients

“Hospitals in the north of England are incredibly busy now, in particular because of Omicron. At the hospital where I work we’ve gone from 26 Covid inpatients on Boxing Day to 104 now.

Unlike previous waves of Covid, only four people are being cared for in ICU, whereas in previous waves we were maxed out at 20 people in ICU. That’s good from the patients’ point of view. But it does stress the rest of the system, including the bit of the system I work in – acute medicine.

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Could microclots help explain the mystery of long Covid? | Resia Pretorius

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My lab has found significant microclot formation in long Covid patients. Unfortunately, these are missed in routine blood tests

One of the biggest failures during the Covid-19 pandemic is our slow response in diagnosing and treating long Covid. As many as 100 million people worldwide already suffer from long Covid. That staggering number will eventually be much higher, if we take into account that diagnoses are still inadequate, and that we still do not know what the impact of Omicron and future variants will be.

Patients with long Covid complain of numerous symptoms, the main ones being recurring fatigue and brain fog, muscle weakness, being out of breath and having low oxygen levels, sleep difficulties and anxiety or depression. Some patients are so sick that they cannot work or even walk a few steps. There is possibly also an elevated risk of stroke and heart attacks. One of the biggest sources of concern is that even mild and sometimes asymptomatic initial Covid-19 infection may lead to debilitating, long-term disability.

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Covid live: France, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and Netherlands report record daily cases as Omicron surges

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France reports 335,000 new Covid cases as Italy, Portugal, Netherlands and Turkey all see record cases

India is reporting 58,097 new Covid cases, twice the number seen only four days ago, according to health ministry data.

Wednesday’s figure takes the cumulative total to more than 35 million.

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Parts of NHS may be overwhelmed by Covid wave, admits Boris Johnson

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PM says England can ‘ride out’ Omicron without lockdown but acknowledges service is under huge pressure

Parts of the NHS may be overwhelmed in the coming weeks, Boris Johnson has admitted for the first time as he insisted England can “ride out” its biggest ever Covid wave “without shutting down our country once again”.

The prime minister acknowledged the health service is under huge pressure after four more NHS trusts – all outside London – declared critical incidents amid rising staff absences and Covid patients. On Tuesday evening hospitals across Greater Manchester announced some non-urgent surgery and appointments would be suspended.

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Detained, missing, close to death: the toll of reporting on Covid in China

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Activists say crackdown is driven by Xi Jinping, who has ‘declared a war on independent journalism’

Chen Kun was living in Indonesia with his wife and daughter when he learned from his brother Mei’s boss that he had been “taken away for investigation” by Chinese police.

He immediately suspected it was to do with his brother’s website, a citizen news project called Terminus 2049. Since 2018 Mei, his colleague Cai Wei, and Cai’s partner – surnamed Tang – had been archiving articles about issues including #MeToo and migrant rights, and reposting them whenever they were deleted from China’s strictly monitored and censored online platforms. It was April 2020, and for the last few months Terminus 2049 had been targeting stories about the Covid-19 outbreak and response.

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Covid live news: Boris Johnson warns of pressure on NHS for weeks as Omicron ‘continues to surge’ in UK

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Latest updates: UK prime minister warns hospitals will be under ‘considerable’ pressure for the ‘next couple of weeks and maybe more’

Québec, Canada proceeded with the first of three planned closures of non-essential retail stores on Sunday as the provincial government attempts to curb a new Covid wave and strain on hospitals.

Québec premier Francois Legault announced last week that the majority of the province’s stores would be closed for the next three Sundays, with the exception of pharmacies, convenience stores and petrol stations.

The last thing businesses need during these difficult times is additional restrictions. We must leave the choice to businesses to open or close at the time that makes the most sense for them, their employees and their customers.

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Can you capture the complex reality of the pandemic with numbers? Well, we tried… | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters

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Throughout 2021, two leading lights of the Royal Statistical Society Covid-19 Task Force drew on data for a weekly Observer column, and found themselves in the middle of Covid culture wars

Individual experiences and suffering are, of course, at the heart of the pandemic. But one way to understand what has happened is through putting those experiences together – and statistics are those personal stories writ large. And this pandemic has brought unprecedented demand to explain all the numbers that have been flying around.

This has not been without its problems and we’ve had to learn some hard lessons, such as the journalistic skill of brevity. Since January 2021, we’ve been writing a weekly column in this paper about Covid numbers, covering everything from infections to deaths, vaccines to mental health, masks to lockdowns.

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Britain got it wrong on Covid: long lockdown did more harm than good, says scientist

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A new book outlines the mistakes and missteps that made UK pandemic worse

There was a distinctive moment, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, that neatly encapsulated the mistakes and confusion of Britain’s early efforts to tackle the disease, says Mark Woolhouse. At a No 10 briefing in March 2020, cabinet minister Michael Gove warned the virus did not discriminate. “Everyone is at risk,” he announced.

And nothing could be further from the truth, argues Professor Woolhouse, an expert on infectious diseases at Edinburgh University. “I am afraid Gove’s statement was simply not true,” he says. “In fact, this is a very discriminatory virus. Some people are much more at risk from it than others. People over 75 are an astonishing 10,000 times more at risk than those who are under 15.”

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New studies reinforce belief that Omicron is less likely to damage lungs

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Six research groups’ findings all suggest variant multiplies more in throats and causes less serious disease

A growing body of evidence indicates that the Omicron Covid variant is more likely to infect the throat than the lungs, which scientists believe may explain why it appears to be more infectious but less deadly than other versions of the virus. Six studies – four published since Christmas Eve – have found that Omicron does not damage people’s lungs as much as the Delta and other previous variants of Covid. The studies have yet to be peer-reviewed by other scientists.

“The result of all the mutations that make Omicron different from previous variants is that it may have altered its ability to infect different sorts of cells,” said Deenan Pillay, professor of virology at University College London.

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Grief, needle phobia, lack of trust: why we refused Covid jabs – and what changed our minds

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Three former refuseniks reveal their misgivings about having the vaccination and what finally convinced them to take the plunge

The UK’s vaccine rollout has largely been a success: more than 90% of the population aged 12 and over has now had at least one dose, with just over half having had a second dose and the booster.

However, there are thousands of people who still haven’t had a jab, despite estimates suggesting that 90% of the most severely ill Covid patients in hospital at the moment are unvaccinated.

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I’m a UK Covid scientist. Here’s a sample of the abuse in my inbox

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Messages may contain unhinged expletives, threatening tropes … or one of my interviews set to music

“You scaremongering ignorant fucking cunt, you and your retarded team made predictions that could have fucked this country for billions of pounds, fucked Christmas for a second time and cost thousands thier [sic] jobs only to have your most pessimistic ballshit [sic] now found to be just that. How fucks like you can sleep at night is beyond me and I hope you are fucking held to account for what you have done and could have done if there weren’t some people in the government with a brain.”

How would you like to get this in your inbox? As a senior scientist advising the government on Covid, I get this sort of email on a fairly regular basis. Indeed, (someone calling himself) Mr Roberts (who sent this) is a regular offender. What particularly upset me about this email was that it wasn’t sent to me, but to a junior member of my team. Awful, isn’t it?

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German optimism over Omicron as Europe dampens new year revelry

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Covid expert hopeful for ‘relatively normal’ winter 2022 but prevalence limits celebrations across continent

Germany’s leading coronavirus expert has expressed optimism that his country could expect a “relatively normal” winter in 2022 as Europe prepared to ring in the new year in muted fashion, with many countries limiting celebrations.

As the highly transmissible Omicron variant fuels a record-breaking surge in Covid infections across the continent, many governments have curtailed mass public gatherings and either closed or imposed curfews on nightclubs.

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‘Tit for tat’: why hunt for Covid’s origins still mired in politics and controversy

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Scientific consensus absent as impasse between China and west continues to hamper tracing effort

Robert Garry, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane medical school in Louisiana, got a call from his university management telling him that agents from the FBI and CIA had requested a chat about his research into the origins of Covid-19.

Garry agreed and on 30 July three agents flew down to Louisiana to talk to him in person.

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We can vaccinate 70% of the world against Covid by mid-2022. Here’s how

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The WHO’s vaccination goal is achievable – but it will take proper funding, better vaccine distribution and jabs with longer shelf lives

While western countries scramble with their booster rollout to deal with the Omicron wave, only 8.4% of people in low-income countries have had at least one Covid vaccination dose.

The gap in the vaccination rates between high- and low-income countries is wider than ever. We cannot keep turning a blind eye to it.

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Two years of coronavirus: how pandemic unfolded around the world

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In December 2019 the WHO was told of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China. These charts show how Covid-19 has spread across the world since then

Two years ago today, as New Year’s Eve fireworks lit up skies across the world, news reached the World Health Organization (WHO) about an outbreak of “pneumonia” in Wuhan, China, the cause of which was unknown.

There had been several cases in December and possibly as far back as November in the region. But the subsequent WHO announcement was the first time that the world at large was made aware of its existence.

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Covid live: France reports over 200,000 cases for second day in a row; eastern Europe’s death toll reaches 1 million

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French officials report over 206,000 cases; number of people to die from Covid in eastern Europe has reached 1 million people

Here’s a reminder of the news overnight that NHS England is looking to set up new “pop-up” Covid facilities. My colleagues Rowena Mason and Aubrey Allegretti report:

NHS England confirmed that it was creating new small-scale “Nightingale” facilities with up to 100 beds each at eight hospitals across the country. The health service said it had asked trusts to identify empty spaces to accommodate beds in places such as gyms or teaching areas. NHS managers are aiming to create up to 4,000 beds as surge capacity if needed, with work on the first tranche, in temporary structures, starting this week.

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Covid: how long are people infectious and how do isolation rules vary?

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The US has cut the self-isolation period to five days, while in England it is seven with negative tests

The US has announced it is cutting the recommended self-isolation time with Covid to five days. How long are people with Covid infectious for, and why do the rules vary between countries?

What are the rules for self-isolation in the UK?

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Omicron is ‘not the same disease’ as earlier Covid waves, says UK scientist

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Sir John Bell says disease ‘appears less severe’ as other scientists criticise lack of new restrictions in England

Omicron is “not the same disease we were seeing a year ago” and high Covid death rates in the UK are “now history”, a leading immunologist has said.

Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University and the government’s life sciences adviser, said that although hospital admissions had increased in recent weeks as Omicron spreads through the population, the disease “appears to be less severe and many people spend a relatively short time in hospital”. Fewer patients were needing high-flow oxygen and the average length of stay was down to three days, he said.

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Covid live: US, UK, France, Portugal and Greece all break new daily cases records

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US reports 512,553 cases; UK reports 129,000; France reports 179,807; Portugal 17,172; and Greece 21,657

Stock markets have continued to gain ground despite the surge of Omicron around the world.

Asian markets lifted on Tuesday with the Nikkei in Japan up nearly 1%, Shanghai up 0.2%, Seoul up 0.1% and Sydney’s ASX200 is up 0.44%.

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Guidance v rules: which Covid measures work better?

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Analysis: the Tories are arguing against further restrictions – but what do scientists think works best to prevent the spread of Covid?

They are questions that have cast a shadow over the festive season: will new Covid measures be needed, and if so, when and what form will they take?

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has said peak admissions could be comparable with or even greater than previous highs without significant behaviour change or further interventions, but many Tory backbenchers have argued against legal restrictions, saying that the public should be trusted to make their own decisions on the risks they wish to take.

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