Tag: UK

Categories : COVIDTags :

SARS-CoV-2: A ‘Predatory Virus’ That Raises All-cause Mortality Risk

On By ModernMedia
Source: CDC

SARS-CoV-2 is a “predatory virus” that appears to have multiplied the risk of death by a similar amount for most adults in the UK regardless of their underlying health status, according to new research published in PLOS Medicine.

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)-led research team estimated excess mortality in the UK during Wave 1 of the COVID pandemic in nearly 10 million adults aged 40 and over. They then estimated and compared relative rates of all-cause mortality in people with and without more than 50 health and socio-demographic characteristics before the pandemic and during Wave 1.

The rate of death during Wave 1 increased on average by a factor of just over 40% (x1.4) for the study population compared to before the pandemic. This relative increase in the rate of death was surprisingly consistent across much of the population, regardless of health conditions and other characteristics.

However, before the pandemic, those with pre-existing health conditions such as heart disease or asthma had a higher mortality rate than those without a further mortality rate increase of 40% had a bigger absolute impact on them.

Exceptions included those with dementia and learning difficulties; both groups had approximately 3x the rate of death compared to people without the condition before the pandemic but approximately 5x the rate of death compared to people without the condition during Wave 1.

Non-white ethnicities were another exception: black people had 20% reduced rate of death compared to white people before the pandemic but a 50% increase in relative rate of death compared to white people during Wave 1. Also, those living in London also had a lower rate of death before the pandemic compared to people living outside of London, but substantially elevated relative rate during Wave 1.

Researcher co-leader, LSHTM’s Dr Helen Strongman, said: “Our work has shown that the threat posed by COVID increases evenly with frailty or ill health caused by ageing and a wide range of respiratory and non-respiratory medical conditions. This compares to flu, which also tends to be more dangerous in the elderly but also affects young children and is more strongly associated with respiratory conditions such as asthma, COPD and smoking.”

Whilst the health and demographic factors studied are known to be associated both with mortality in non-pandemic years and mortality due to COVID during the pandemic, this is the first time the two have been linked – analysing all-cause mortality rather than COVID-specific mortality. 

Dr Strongman said: “As we learn to live with COVID, we all need to be aware of and manage our own risk and that of others around us. Our study shows that SARS-CoV-2 is a predatory virus, amplifying mortality rates across the board, and having the biggest impact on those with existing ill health or who are frail. This emphasises how important it is for everyone to protect themselves and the most vulnerable in society through measures such as vaccination and wearing face masks. However, more basic research about why and how the virus exploits any vulnerability is needed.”

Dr Helena Carreira from LSHTM and co-lead author, added: “While we saw increases in the rate of death during the first wave of the pandemic across the population, our study also reinforced how COVID has disproportionately affected some groups, including people with dementia and learning disabilities, possibly through higher levels of exposure due to institutional or home-based care or occupation.”

Further research is needed to clarify whether there were differences across waves in the UK, especially for ethnicity, deprivation and other factors, and independent effects of individual health and demographic risk factors should be investigated.

Limitations include possible misclassification of the date of death for some individuals and the misclassification of health factors through incomplete information. However, the similarity of the results obtained from sensitivity analyses suggest only a minor impact on their findings.

Source: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Categories : COVIDTags :

UK Takes SA off its Red List for Travel

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Lucas Davies on Unsplash

On Thursday, the UK government announced that South Africa has come of the COVID red list, which has been cut from 54 to just seven.

Brazil and Mexico also come off the red list, which requires travellers to quarantine in an approved hotel at their cost for 10 full days – at a cost of £2285 for one person.  The seven countries remaining on the red list are Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Vaccinated travellers from South Africa will be treated the same as returning fully-vaccinated UK residents so long as they have not visited a red-list country in the 10 days before arriving in England. All incoming travellers will still complete a passenger locator form.

UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the changes begin on Monday and “mark the next step” in opening travel.

The UK’s travel rues have recently been simplified, with the amber list removed entirely, and advice against holidays changed for 32 countries. Arrivals from 37 more destinations will have their vaccination status certificates recognised, meaning they can avoid more expensive post-arrival testing requirements.

Speaking to the BBC, British expats Matt and Hannah Pirnie, who have lived in South Africa for a decade, said the separation has been difficult.

“It’s been a long pandemic for us. Not seeing family, not being allowed to go back, but more importantly grandparents not being able to come here and see their grandkids. It’s been a long two years,” Matt said.

“First of all when all the aeroplanes stopped initially – that was quite anxiety provoking – and then to be put on the red list for so long has just been quite hard to wrap your head around why,” Hannah adds.

Announcing the latest changes, Mr Shapps said the government was “making it easier for families and loved ones to reunite”. He said that with fewer restrictions “and more people travelling, we can all continue to move safely forward together along our pathway to recovery”.

In addition to the much-abbreviated red list, the government said passengers would soon be able to use a photograph of a lateral flow test as a minimum requirement to verify a negative result, and the more expensive ‘day two’ PCR test was to be replaced with a lateral flow test.

Source: BBC News

Categories : COVID HospitalsTags :

One in Ten COVID Cases Infected After Hospital Admission

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Gustavo Fring from Pexels

In the UK’s first wave, more than one in ten COVID hospitalised patients acquired the disease in a hospital according to researchers conducting the world’s largest study of severe COVID.

Dr Jonathan Read from Lancaster University with colleagues from other UK universities led the research into hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) which was published in The Lancet.

For the study, researchers analysed records of COVID patients in UK hospitals enrolled in the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections Consortium (ISARIC) Clinical Characterisation Protocol UK (CCP-UK) study, who became ill before 1st August 2020.

The researchers found that at least 11.1% of COVID patients in 314 UK hospitals were infected after admission. The proportion of hospital-acquired infections also rose to between 16% and 20% in mid-May 2020, well after the first wave’s peak in admissions.

“We estimate between 5699 and 11 862 patients admitted in the first wave were infected during their stay in hospital. This is, unfortunately, likely to be an underestimate, as we did not include patients who may have been infected but discharged before they could be diagnosed,” the researchers said.

“Controlling viruses like SARS-CoV-2 has been difficult in the past, so the situation could have been much worse. However, infection control should remain a priority in hospitals and care facilities,” said Dr Read.

Dr Chris Green, University of Birmingham, said: “There are likely to be a number of reasons why many patients were infected in these care settings. These include the large numbers of patients admitted to hospitals with limited facilities for case isolation, limited access to rapid and reliable diagnostic testing in the early stages of the outbreak, the challenges around access to and best use of PPE, our understanding of when patients are most infectious in their illness, some misclassification of cases due to presentation with atypical symptoms, and an under-appreciation of the role of airborne transmission.”

According to the type of care provided, there were notable differences in infections. Lower proportions of hospital-acquired infection were seen in hospitals providing acute and general care (9.7%) than residential community care hospitals (61.9%) and mental health hospitals (67.5%).
Professor Calum Semple, University of Liverpool, said: “The reasons for the variation between settings that provide the same type of care requires urgent investigation to identify and promote best infection control practice. Research has now been commissioned to find out what was done well and what lessons need to be learned to improve patient safety.”

Source: Lancaster University

Categories : Gastrointestinal General InterestTags :

Woman Suffered ‘Excruciating’ Pain From Rare Gastrointestinal Condition

On By ModernMedia

An undiagnosed, rare gastrointestinal condition left a 32-year old UK woman in “excruciating” pain for 16 months before a life-saving emergency operation.

In January 2020,  Rebecca Bostock started to experience stomach swelling and had difficult keeping her food down. After she was rushed into hospital on Good Friday this year, her mysterious illness was found to be Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome (SMAS).

“I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through,” she said.

Ms Bostock, 32, underwent an emergency operation at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. Nurses there told her they had only treated three cases of SMAS in 27 years. She was also told that she likely survived because she had been rushed into hospital on that day.

“My stomach was swollen so much that I couldn’t breathe, I was being sick and couldn’t keep any medication down,” Ms Bestock said. “I was on a downward spiral. They took me into imaging and diagnosed SMAS and I was taken away for the operation. They said I needed the operation straight away or I wouldn’t survive even a couple more hours.”

Ms Bostock said she had been experiencing pain for 16 months, with stomach swelling, fever, sickness, diarrhoea and dizziness, and visited the GP and emergency departments several times. She was told there that the pain was likely to be caused by endometriosis or irritable bowel syndrome. 

“I was referred to a gynaecologist around the time of the first lockdown but everything shut down and I didn’t see one for months,” she said. “I was advised to change my diet, which seemed to help at first, but then the symptoms deteriorated again to the point where I struggled to walk and couldn’t breathe.”

SMAS is a rare disease, affecting some 0.1 to 0.3% of the population, and is defined as compression of the third portion of the duodenum between the abdominal aorta and the superior mesenteric artery. It is now mostly treated by laparoscopic duodenojejunostomy. The operation released the blockage, “re-plumbing” her stomach as the surgeon told her.

She is still unable to eat solid foods but hopes to introduce them to her diet soon and wants to raise awareness of the rare condition so that others can learn to spot the signs earlier.

“I want to tell my story to raise awareness I feel blessed and relieved,” she said. “I’m so thankful to the doctors and nurses who saved my life. I get so emotional thinking about it and I can’t thank them enough. It is so rare and even doctors don’t know about it, so helping people to spot the signs and be able to rule it out is so important.”

Source: BBC News

Categories : COVID General Interest VaccinesTags :

After Receiving Vaccine, Queen Elizabeth Encourages Others

On By ModernMedia

After receiving her COVID vaccine, Queen Elizabeth encouraged those who were wary to think of others and do the same.

She and Prince Philip received their vaccine in the initial wave of vaccinations for the elderly in the UK. Prince Philip, 99,  is currently in hospital for a non-COVID related illness. There are concerns about the health of her husband Prince Philip, but the palace says that he is responding to treatment, but likely to remain in hospital for a few more days.

“Once you’ve had a vaccine you have a feeling of you know, you’re protected which I think is very important and as far as I could make out it was quite harmless,” the 94-year old monarch queen said in a video call with health officials supervising inoculations across the UK.

“It was very quick, and I’ve had lots of letters from people who have been very surprised by how easy it was to get the vaccine. And the jab – it didn’t hurt at all,” she added, likening the virus to a plague.

Earlier this week, the UK’s vaccine minister said that 11% to 15% of people were hesitant about receiving a vaccine, especially among minority groups.

“It is obviously difficult for people if they’ve never had a vaccine because they ought to think about other people other than themselves,” said the queen.

She praised the “remarkable” Britain’s rollout of the vaccination, one of the world’s fastest. Other members of the royal family including Prince Charles and his son Prince William, have been visiting vaccination centres over the last two weeks to convey their thanks to staff and volunteers for their work.

Data from Public Health England suggest that the vaccines are 80% effective in preventing serious COVID in the elderly.

Source: Reuters

Categories : COVIDTags :

UK to Look at Mixing of Different Vaccines

On By ModernMedia

The UK is launching a trial to explore the mixing of vaccines can be combined. Some, like Russia’s Sputnik vaccine, already combine two different types of vaccines, but these were specifically designed and tested to work together. 

Current guidance in the UK says that anyone who receives a Pfizer-BioNTech or Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine dose should get the second dose of that same vaccine. Only in exceptional circumstances such as not knowing what vaccine was given will a different vaccine be administered.

The main aim was to enhance logistical flexibility. The Oxford/AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax vaccines can all be stored at normal refrigerator temperatures, while the Moderna vaccine must be stored at -20C, within normal freezer range, and Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine needs an ultra-cold -70C. Not requiring a second dose of the same vaccine could ease up storage requirements. 

However, with previous vaccines, mixing different vaccine types worked and even strengthened their overall effectiveness. Some Ebola immunisation programmes, for example, combine two different vaccines to achieve greater protection.

The trial will comprise some 800 participants aged 50 or older, receiving a combination of Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech in either order.

Some vaccines that work by using a virus to deliver the antigens, and there is some evidence to suggest that the immune system starts to focus on the viral delivery system instead of the antigen. Thus, combining vaccines will keep the immune system’s attention on the antigens.

Chief investigator, Prof Matthew Snape from the University of Oxford, said the “tremendously exciting study” would provide critical information for vaccine rollouts.

Animal studies have shown “a better antibody response with a mixed schedule rather than the straight schedule” of vaccine doses, he said.

“It will be really interesting to see if the different delivery methods actually could lead to an enhanced immune response [in humans],” he said, “or at least a response that’s as good as giving the straight schedule of the same doses”.

Source: BBC News