Coronavirus Breaking News

India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare published a new COVID-19 Update on July 11, 2021, which is summarized below:

• 37.60 Cr. Vaccine Doses (377 million)administered so far under Nationwide Vaccination Drive
• India reports 41,506 new cases in the last 24 hours
• India's Active Caseload currently at 4,54,118
• Active cases constitute 1.47% of total cases
• 2,99,75,064 Total Recoveries across the country so far
• 41,526 patients recovered during the last 24 hours
• Recovery Rate increases to 97.20%
• Weekly Positivity Rate remains below 5%, currently at 2.32%
• Daily positivity rate at 2.25%, less than 3% for 20 consecutive days
• Testing capacity substantially ramped up – 43.08 cr tests total conducted

If you have questions related to COVID-19, ask our expert by tweeting your questions with #COVIDCHARCHA. Prof (Dr.) Nitin M. Nagarkar, Director and CEO, AIIMS Raipur, will be joining us on July 13th.

The European Medicine Agency (EMA) announced on July 9, 2021, the safety committee (PRAC) has recommended that people who have previously had capillary leak syndrome must not be vaccinated with COVID-19 Vaccine Janssen.

The PRAC reviewed three cases of capillary leak syndrome in people who had received COVID-19 Vaccine Janssen, which occurred within 2 days of vaccination. One of those affected had a history of capillary leak syndrome, and two of them subsequently died.

The PRAC also recommended that capillary leak syndrome be added to the product information as a new side effect of the vaccine, together with a warning to raise awareness among healthcare professionals and patients of this risk.

Capillary leak syndrome is a very rare, serious condition that causes fluid leakage from small blood vessels, resulting in swelling mainly in the arms and legs, low blood pressure, thickening of the blood, and low blood levels of albumin.

Healthcare professionals should be aware of the signs and symptoms of capillary leak syndrome and of its risk of recurrence in people who have previously been diagnosed with the condition, says the EMA.

As of June 21, 2021, more than 18 million doses of COVID-19 Vaccine Janssen had been administered worldwide. People vaccinated with COVID-19 Vaccine Janssen should seek immediate medical assistance if they experience rapid swelling of the arms and legs or sudden weight gain in the days following vaccination. These symptoms are often associated with feeling faint, says the EMA.

This review was carried out by EMA's Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC), the Committee responsible for evaluating safety issues for human medicines in the context of a procedure known as a 'type II variation.' The PRAC’s recommendations will be submitted to EMA’s human medicine committee, CHMP, for endorsement.

Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera indicated the government plans to buy the Sputnik V vaccine to ensure the possibility of immunization of the population with the third dose of the coronavirus vaccine, reported TASS on July 8, 2021.

Pinera did not provide any details on the talks with the Gamaleya Research Institute.

Chile currently uses the Pfizer-BioNTech (Comirnaty), China’s Sinovac Biotech, and the British-Swedish AstraZeneca (Vaxzevria) vaccines to immunize the population.

As of July 8, 2021, the Chilian Ministry of Health had confirmed 1,579,591 cases of COVID-19, with a reducing number of new cases being reported.

The U.S. Embassy in Chile confirmed the country is under a daily nationwide curfew from 10:00 pm to 5:00 am, and Chile will remain under the State of Emergency through September 2021.

The journal Nature published an article on July 7, 2021, indicating researchers are learning how COVID-19 damages the human brain. In addition, new evidence suggests that the coronavirus’s assault on the brain could be multipronged.

An infection with the SARS-CoV-2 beta coronavirus can cause memory loss, strokes, and other effects on the brain.

SARS-CoV-2 might attack certain brain cells directly, reduce blood flow to brain tissue, or trigger the production of immune molecules that can harm brain cells.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers speculated that the virus might cause damage by somehow entering the brain and infecting neurons, the cells responsible for transmitting and processing information.

But studies have since indicated that the virus has difficulty getting past the brain’s defense system and that it doesn’t necessarily attack neurons in any significant way.

With millions of people already affected — neurological symptoms appeared in 80% of the people hospitalized with COVID-19 who were surveyed in one study — researchers hope that the growing evidence base will point the way to better treatments.

The question Serena Spudich, a neurologist at Yale University in New Haven, CT, asked, “Can we intervene early to address these abnormalities so that people don’t have long-term problems?”

The read Michael Marshall's full article is available on this weblink.

A new study found men with symptomatic COVID-19, who were found to have low testosterone, were more likely to become severely ill and die from the disease. The study, carried out in Milan, Italy, during the first wave of coronavirus in 2020.

These researchers found that the lower the levels of testosterone, the higher the likelihood that male patients would need intensive care, be intubated on a ventilator, and remain in hospital over a longer period.

The likelihood of these men dying from COVID-19 increased six-fold.

The findings are presented at the European Association of Urology Congress, EAU21, which runs this week from July 8-12, 2021.

Even when age, pre-existing conditions, and body mass index were considered, the differences in hormonal profiles and clinical outcomes were still stark.

Professor Andrea Salonia, a specialist in urology and endocrinology at San Raffaele Hospital, stated in a press release issued on July 6, 2021, "At the start of the Covid pandemic, we were seeing far more men than women coming to the hospital and suffering very severe forms of the disease."

"We immediately thought this might be related to male hormone levels, particularly testosterone."

"The relationship is very clear: the lower the testosterone, the higher the severity of the condition and likelihood of death. I've never seen anything like it in my 25 years in the field."

Because the research team did not have data on the testosterone levels in the patients before they contracted Covid-19, they cannot say whether low testosterone was a pre-existing long-term condition that exacerbated the disease or whether a SARS-COV-2 coronavirus infection caused it.

The USA and Swiss-based study found that nearly all patients with cancer developed a good immune response to the experimental COVID-19 mRNA vaccines three to four weeks after receiving their second vaccine dose and reported a study published by the journal Cell on June 18, 2021.

But the fact that a small group of the patients exhibited no response raised questions about how their protection against the virus will be addressed moving forward. Among the 131 patients studied, 94% developed antibodies to the coronavirus. Seven high-risk patients did not.

"We could not find any antibodies against the virus in those patients," said Dimpy P. Shah, M.D., Ph.D., of the Mays Cancer Center, home to UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson, in a press release issued on June 30, 2021.

Seroconversion rates and antibody titers in patients with hematological malignancy were significantly lower than those with solid tumors. In addition, none of the patients with a history of anti-CD-20 antibody in the 6 months before vaccination developed antibody response.

Antibody titers were highest for clinical surveillance or endocrine therapy groups and lowest for cytotoxic chemotherapy or monoclonal antibody groups. Patients on chemotherapy that is toxic to cells developed antibody response, but it was muted compared to the general population.

“How that relates to protection against COVID-19, we don’t know yet,” Dr. Dimpy Shah said. "That has implications for the future. For example, should we provide a third dose of vaccine after cancer therapy has completed in certain high-risk patients?"

The Delta variant and other SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus mutant viruses were not examined in the study. The team also did not analyze the response of infection-fighting T cells and B cells in patients with cancer.

France-based Valneva SE announced today it will host a virtual symposium titled, “Developing new vaccines to protect against infectious diseases at home and abroad” on July 9, 2021, at 14:15 CEST at the 31st European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases.

Adam Finn, Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Bristol and Consultant at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, will discuss data from the Phase 1/2 study of VLA2001, the only whole-virus, inactivated adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine candidate in clinical trials in Europe.

To digitally attend the symposium, you can register at this weblink.