COVID-19 Briefs: New Delta And BA.5 Recombinant Variant Found! BA.5 Symptoms, COVID-19 Cases Rising Globally, ATK Test Not Reliable For New Variants
Source: COVID-19 Briefs Jul 16, 2022 2 years, 4 months, 1 week, 11 hours, 15 minutes ago
COVID-19 Briefs:
Symptoms Associated With BA.5 Infections.
Doctors all over Europe and the United States are reporting that patients infected with the new BA.5 variant and its emerging subvariants are no longer showing loss of taste nor loss of smell that was typically seen in the Delta or Omicron BA.1 and Ba.2 surges, rather patients are manifesting symptoms like dry cough, sore throat, headaches, neck pains and stiff joints, nerve pains, body and muscular pains along with fatigue. Some express chills and short duration of fevers. A smaller subset had stuffed or runny noses. But most complained of shortness of breath in the later parts of the infection or in ‘post-recovery’ stages. Cognitive decline, difficulty in concentration and confusion were other most commonly reported symptoms.
Many experts and physicians now believe that the BA.5 variant and its emerging subvariants are more neuropathogenic.
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-sars-cov-2-ba-5-variant-could-be-more-neuropathogenic-urgent-studies-warranted-to-assess-long-covid-threats-to-the-brain-and-cns
COVID-19 Briefs:
COVID-19 Cases Rising Globally Along with Hospitalization Rates.
From the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the UAE, India, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Australia, COVID-19 infections are rising exponentially and so are hospitalizations. Governments and mainstream media are however are trying to conceal the true impact of the BA.4 and BA.5 variants surge and also it has been found that majority of the public around the world (ie about 88%) are not the least bothered about the COVID-19 ongoing crisis nor are there interested in taking precautions but are more concerned about economic issues!
In the United Kingdom, daily new COVID-19 cases are averaging between 320,000 to 350,000 cases a day and the latest data is showing that reinfections are taking place in shorter intervals of between 4 to 6 weeks!
https://twitter.com/timspector/status/1546825441310572544
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/15july2022
In America, 179,239 new daily COVID-19 infections were reported for the 15
th of July along with 567 American dying from COVID-19 on that day. More than 40,000 American were reported hospitalized for
COVID with about 4609 in ICU.
https://charts.medriva.com/us ) (It should be noted that most of the American data is not accurate and reliable and actual figures could be as high as 3 to 5 fold as many states are either not reporting data or are underreporting data as the Biden ad
ministration is basically trying to conceal the real COVID-19 situation in the United States as midterms are fast approaching.)
COVID-19 Briefs:
ATK Or Rapid Antigen Test Kits Are Turing To Be Less Reliable In Detecting Infections With New Variants.
Numerous members of the public and also physicians everywhere are complaining the current ATK test kits are totally unreliable in terms of detecting infections with the new variants such as the BA.4 or BA.5 variants or their emerging subvariants. Many are reporting days of negative results despite having symptoms and only after several test and days later, are these test showing positive in some cases. Reconfirming negative ATK test results at hospitals or clinics using PC test typically shows a positive infection.
COVID-19 Briefs:
Possible New Delta And BA.5 Recombinant Variant Detected In South Africa
Researchers have discovered a new worrisome Delta and BA.5 recombinant variant in South Africa.
https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/844
Researchers are still deciphering out the possible parentage of the new variant and initially it was though to be a recombination of three lineages including the BA.2, AY.45 and BA.5.
Thailand
Medical News will provide more updates on this new variant.
For many that are unaware, the new BA.2. BA.4 and BA.5 are still evolving rapidly and mutating and spawning lots of newer concerning strains including the BA.2.75. BA.2.77, BA.2.78. BA.5.2.1, BA.5.3.1 and BA.5.5.
We can expect more virulent and lethal variants that are also different in pathogenesis emerging very soon in coming weeks or months considering the current kinetics of the pandemic.
COVID-19 Briefs:
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Can Help In Long COVID
A new Israeli study has found that hyperbaric oxygen therapy can help in Long COVID
Data from a small clinical trial found that patients with long COVID may see some improvement after breathing pure oxygen in a high-air-pressure environment.
The study team randomly assigned 73 patients with post-COVID symptoms lasting at least three months to receive hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) or a sham treatment. Patients in the HBOT group spent 40 sessions breathing pure oxygen in a chamber in which the air pressure was two-to-three times higher than normal, allowing the lungs to receive more oxygen than they normally would. Shortly after the last treatment, the HBOT group showed "significant improvement" compared to the sham group in thinking skills, energy, sleep, psychiatric symptoms, and pain.
Symptomatic improvement was associated with magnetic resonance imaging evidence of structural and functional brain healing and improved delivery of oxygen-carrying blood to the brain, the study team said.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy or HBOT is often used to treat wounds that are not healing well and has recently been tested as a treatment for traumatic brain injury, but this is the first randomized trial to test it for long COVID. Larger studies are needed to confirm the findings and to identify patients who might benefit, the study team said.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-15565-0
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