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showing posts for 'covid-19'

Bank of England predicts rebound in the economy

"The Bank of England said Britain's economy would grow by the most since World War Two this year and slowed the pace of its trillion dollar bond-purchasing programme, but stressed it was not reversing its stimulus." Strong indications finally of a bounce back in the economy highlight the devastating...
Source: reuters.com

Covid-19: Project offers support to overwhelmed Indian doctors

Prof Parag Singhal from Somerset is among those offering online advice to help relieve pressure.
Source: bbc.com

IEA issues 'dire warning' on CO2 emissions as it predicts 5% rise

Global CO2 emissions from energy are seen rising nearly 5% this year, suggesting the economic rebound from COVID-19 could be "anything but sustainable" for the climate, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.
Source: reuters.com

Community Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Associated with a Local Bar Opening Event — Illinois, February 2021 CDC. Samira Sami.

Forty-six cases of COVID-19 were linked to an indoor bar
Source: cdc.gov

The US is about to have a vaccine surplus

Covid-19 vaccines are still hard to come by in many places, but supply in the US will soon outpace demand.
Source: technologyreview.com

Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible Christie Aschwanden. Nature 2021 591:7851.

Even with vaccination efforts in full force, the theoretical threshold for vanquishing COVID-19 looks to be out of reach. Even with vaccination efforts in full force, the theoretical threshold for vanquishing COVID-19 looks to be out of reach.
Source: nature.com

Can ultrasound novices develop image acquisition skills after reviewing online ultrasound modules? Elaine Situ-LaCasse.

Background Point-of-care ultrasound is becoming a ubiquitous diagnostic tool, and there has been increasing interest to teach novice practitioners. One of the challenges is the scarcity of qualified instructors, and with COVID-19, another challenge is the difficulty with social distancing between learners...
Source: biomedcentral.com

Vaccination isn’t the quick coronavirus solution many of us hoped for

Varying national approaches to dealing with the coronavirus and variance in how people respond to vaccines put new hurdles on the path to beating covid-19
Source: newscientist.com

Why European vaccine suspensions could have unintended consequences

Europe’s difficult rollout of covid-19 shots took another blow over the weekend, as several countries halted deployment of the AstraZeneca vaccine amid worries it could cause blood clots. On Monday Germany, Spain, Italy, and France were among those to suspend deployment of the vaccine, following similar...
Source: technologyreview.com

Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete & ending the new nuclear arms race

"COVID-19 has provided a vivid reminder of the power of biological threats. But the threat doesn’t come from natural sources alone. Weaponized contagious diseases — which were abandoned by the United States, but developed in large numbers by the Soviet Union, right up until its collapse — have...
Source: 80000hours.org

WHO's Ryan says some countries didn't hear early COVID-19 warning

Some countries should have listened more carefully when the World Health Organisation declared a global health emergency in January 2020, Mike Ryan, the WHO's top emergency expert, said on Monday.
Source: reuters.com

UK COVID cases will surge again even with vaccines, medical officer says

Britain will see a resurgence in coronavirus cases at some point and can't bring deaths from COVID-19 down to zero even with a successful vaccine rollout, England's Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said on Tuesday.
Source: reuters.com

COVID-19 has transformed education – here are the 5 innovations we should keep

"Five changes made to higher education during COVID-19 will be beneficial afterwards, according to an expert, including more creative assessment methods." Whilst this is written from the perspective of university education this authentic, rich, and active learning approach can and should be applied to...
Source: weforum.org

IEA says global CO2 emissions rising again after nearly 6% fall last year

"Global carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 5.8% in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic slowed economic activity, but they rebounded at the end of the year and are on course to rise further, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday." Whilst economic growth is sought to reduce national deficits following...
Source: reuters.com

Ghana kicks off coronavirus vaccination campaign with COVAX shots

"Ghana began its coronavirus vaccination drive on Tuesday with 600,000 AstraZeneca doses it received from the global COVAX vaccine-sharing facility aimed at providing shots to developing nations to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic." Great to see Ghana in the news and reading about the ITU nurses getting...
Source: reuters.com

UK rollout data on AstraZeneca shot should guide other countries: vaccine chief

Natural experiments can be a really useful source of data. "Data from Britain's vaccine rollout on the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University COVID-19 shot in older people should help other countries reassess their use of it, the head of the university's vaccine research group said on Tuesday."
Source: reuters.com

Why Are COVID-19 Case Numbers Dropping?

"We don’t know. That part is easy. Also easy is that case numbers really are falling — it’s not just reduced testing — and it’s happening pretty much everywhere. Urban areas and rural. Red states and blue. Places with broad vaccine rollouts and those with hardly any. North and South America,...
Source: jwatch.org

Eeek! or E484K mutation and the coronavirus pandemic

Rupert Beale · Eeek! · LRB 19 February 2021: "Uncontrolled spread – as we knew it would – led to an even greater wave of infections, hospitalisations and deaths than last spring. Children were sent to school for one day before the necessary ‘lockdown’ was reimposed. The impulse to keep schools...
Source: lrb.co.uk

A Convolutional Neural Network architecture for the recognition of cutaneous manifestations of COVID-19

To our best knowledge, this is the first machine learning-based study for automated detection of COVID-19 based on skin images and may provide a useful decision support tool for physicians to optimize contact-free COVID-19 triage, differential diagnosis of skin lesions and patient care. Mathur J, Chouhan...
Source: nih.gov

Declining Life Expectancy in the United States

This Viewpoint reviews the social and economic drivers of declines in longevity in the US, especially among lower socioeconomic status groups, and proposes policy options for the Biden-Harris administration to mitigate the trend, including an increase in the federally mandated minimum wage. Atheendar...
Source: jamanetwork.com