File photo of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The WBDF has asked the West Bengal government to ensure healthcare institutions have a 24X7 real time digital system that shows availability of beds in hospital.
Kolkata: The West Bengal Doctors’ Forum (WBDF) has raised concern over the sudden flooding of spurious COVID-19 protective gears in the markets, and black marketing of masks and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) which is causing severe problems for the people and heath workers.
“Doctors in private capacity have resumed clinics and many will do so shortly. While doing so, there are challenges in procurement of personal protective gears and other sanitisation and safety equipment. It has been noticed that markets are flooded with spurious COVID-19 protective equipments. Not the least, black marketing is adding to the woes of the common man and the health care workers,†Dr Koushik Chaki, WBDF Secretary, told News18.
“I personally visited markets to enquire and was given a fake N-95 mask by a pharmacist. Such masks should be manufactured while following strict norms. But I found that N-95 masks are available in Kolkata at a price ranging from Rs 110 to Rs 450. Similar faults have been observed in other protective gears as well,†he said.
He added, “We had a meeting with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and requested her that the sale of protective gears must be done after proper checking via stringent notifications and appropriate quality. These gears should be made available at affordable prices through fare price government outlets or through government designated vendors immediately. There needs to be an emphasis on the fact that an unsafe healthcare provider is unsafe for the common people too. More than 200 healthcare workers are already affected and several are in quarantine. The already meagre healthcare force is being stretched too far for about four months now. We are hopeful that the government would act against these racketeers stringently.â€
The WBDF also urged the West Bengal government to ensure every healthcare institution has a 24X7 real time digital display system notifying impatient category-wise bed availability status for the knowledge of people and healthcare providers. The doctors’ forum believes that widespread public awareness efforts to notify general public and the healthcare workers about COVID-19 and non-COVID treatment centers will minimise harassment of the sick people running around to go to the appropriate place for appropriate care.
Expressing concern over rates of RT-PCR test for SARS-COV-2 in private nursing homes and hospitals, the WBDF asked state government to intervene and reduce its pricing and look into the issue of designating treatment facilities for healthcare workers who need hospitalisation for COVID-19 treatment.
“The cost of treatment of Healthcare providers must be borne by the employer institutes irrespective of whether there is health insurance or not,†Dr Chaki said.
MEPs want the German government to prioritize transparency of legislative policymaking in the Council and of lobbyist meetings with officials in Brussels and Berlin | Genevieve Engel/European Union
Ending corporate sponsorship of presidencies and proactive legislative transparency are among their demands.
Nearly 100 members of the European Parliament on Friday urged German Chancellor Angela Merkel to step up her government’s transparency practices ahead of its presidency of the Council of the EU, which begins on July 1.
In a letter, they called on the German government to prioritize transparency of legislative policymaking in the Council and of lobbyist meetings with officials in Brussels and Berlin. It also demands the adoption of new rules and practices to prevent “excessive corporate influence,” and for the government to refuse all corporate sponsorships of its presidency.
The letter to Merkel was coordinated by watchdog NGOs Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl and co-signed by 92 MEPs from left-leaning groups in the European Parliament including the Greens/European Free Alliance, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), and the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) plus the liberal/centrist Renew Europe.
Notably absent from the list are members of the Parliament’s largest political group, the European People’s Party — which houses members of Merkel’s own Christian Democrats.
“We as politicians serve the citizens of Europe, and they deserve to know what their elected officials are fighting for and who they are influenced by,” said one of the signatories of the letter, Marianne Vind (S&D). “Greater transparency is absolutely crucial to ensure democratic support for the European project.”
The German government did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
Germany did not endorse a document published in January by Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Sweden and the Netherlands calling for the proactive publication of EU legislative documents — one of the new letter’s key demands.
Ahead of the presidency, the German permanent representative in Brussels and his deputy began proactively publishing a list of their lobby meetings. But the letter claims that this “likely reflects only a small percentage” of the overall number of lobby meetings held by German officials in Brussels, and “should be rapidly expanded to cover all meetings with lobbyists.”
It also urges Germany to champion inter-institutional negotiations on a joint mandatory Transparency Register for lobbyists, which restart on June 16. The Council is merely an observer of the existing voluntary register for lobbyists, which is jointly run by the Commission and the European Parliament.
The letter also identifies the “urgent” need to “adopt new rules and a new culture to prevent excessive corporate influence.”
And it calls on Germany to cancel its existing contracts for corporate sponsorship for its presidency, and “initiate a process in the Council to ban the practice for all future Presidencies.” As of January, Germany had signed “some smaller local business sponsorship contracts” aiming to promote “regional interests” during its presidency.
Critics claim the practice damages the EU’s reputation. Recent examples include Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the Romanian presidency, and BMW’s sponsorship of the Finnish presidency. The current Croatian presidency has so far signed 16 sponsorship agreements, including with the country’s national oil company.
The Council in May told the European Ombudsman, in response to a complaint, that it would “explore the possibility” of providing best practice guidance on corporate sponsorships for countries holding the six-month rotating presidency.
“Meetings behind closed doors, minutes not publicly available, secret lobbying meetings and corporate sponsorship … in few other areas do the reality and self-perception of the EU diverge so much as in the lack of transparency in the Council,” said leftist MEP Martin Schirdewan.
Heavy rains have continued to batter southern China, causing riverbanks to burst, inundating homes and flooding farmlands, state media reported.
More than a dozen people have been killed in the floods since they started on June 2.
The central Chinese metropolis of Chongqing was hit hard on Thursday, triggering a level three emergency flood response.
Millions have been affected by the heavy rains in Guangxi, Hunan, Chongqing, and other southern provinces, and hundreds of thousands have been evacuated since the flooding started.
Floodwaters surround a village in Yangshuo in Guilin in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Some residents have been killed by flooding in a wide swath of central and southern China. (AP/AAP)
Over a thousand houses have collapsed, state media reported, and property damage due to the rains have been estimated at over 4 billion RMB (565.5 million US dollars).
Rescue crews have been deployed across the country to save people from flooded homes and take them to temporary shelters.
Seasonal flooding generally causes heavy damage each year in the lower regions of China’s major river systems, particularly those of the Yangtze and the Pearl to the south.
A young boy is carried to a boat by rescuers during an evacuation of a flooded village in Qingyuan in southern China’s Guangdong province. (AP/AAP)
Authorities have sought to mitigate the hardship by using dams, particularly the massive Three Gorges structure on the Yangtze.
Vans and cars are washed down a street in China. (Twitter)
China’s worst floods in recent years were in 1998, when more than 2,000 people died and almost three million homes were destroyed.
Historical Confederate monuments are being taken down and defaced from protests over the death of George Floyd.
Storyful
The national protest movement that has erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s death has rekindled a fire under the cultural tinderbox known as the American Confederacy.Â
While such efforts have flared in recent years, historians say the Black Lives Matter protest movement once again sweeping the nation after Floyd’s death has catapulted the issue to a place of unprecedented visibility that is likely to have lasting effects. Floyd, a 46-year-old black man in Minneapolis, was pinned to the ground by officers after being accused of passing a fake $20 bill at a grocery store. In a video of the encounter, Floyd gasped for breath as officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Â
“We’re in another world now, the mask is off in terms of these things being symbols of slavery,†says Stephanie McCurry, professor of American history at Columbia University in New York City and author of “Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South.â€Â “I don’t think there’s any going back from this moment.â€
The reckoning has been swift when compared to a patchwork of past efforts.
In 2015, after avowed white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina, the Confederate flag — also known as the Rebel Flag — was removed from the statehouse grounds.
Two years later, a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of one protester resulted in calls to tear down statues of Confederate leaders, but conservative local politicians largely managed to keep the statues in place.
“This to me seems to be a really simple fight. And the fact that it is so hard for us is an indication that we have a very, very, very long way to go,” says former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu. “It’s hard for people to change. Racism is a painful sickness this country has dealt with for a very long time.”
In 2015, Landrieu made national headlines as he successfully argued for removing statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and P. G. T. Beauregard, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He says the obstacles he faced shows how effectively the Confederacy’s supporters were able to obscure their support of slavery by instead making the war into a “noble cause.”
“Underneath all of that was the premise that black people were inferior to white people,” he says. “These monuments and these flags, although they are symbols, are up there because of an attitude of white supremacy and a bias toward the very simple notion that is utterly and completely wrong, that African Americans are not equal, and are less than.”
Recent events have generated changes at a comparatively breakneck pace.
This week alone saw statues taken down in Jacksonville, Florida, and Indianapolis, while an iconic statue of Southern General Robert E. Lee was ordered removed by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam as protesters in his state toppled other symbols of Confederate leaders.
The Confederate flag is inherently “a symbol of white supremacy and slavery. Which is why white supremacists throughout the years have flown the flag themselves because they, too, acknowledge it as a symbol of white supremacy,†says Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats have called for the removal of 10 statues of leading Confederate figures, while Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said he is open to renaming military bases bearing the names of Confederate brass. President Donald Trump tweeted his opposition to such a move.
“These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom,†Trump tweeted Thursday.
Hours later, the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee approved a sweeping amendment to strip the names of Confederate generals from bases, building, planes, ships and even streets within three years.
Other military leaders already have weighed in.The Navy announced Tuesday it would ban the Confederate flag from its military installations. Last week, the Marine Corps began implementing a ban on displaying the flag in any form.
That decision is a nod toward the many African Americans serving in the armed forces, but it must be followed up with deeper reforms to fully integrate people of color, says Gaines Foster, history professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
“African Americans have been fighting against the use of the flag since the Civil War,†says Forster, a battle that only bore fruit after the murders at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina. “What happened after the Charleston shooting was just the final stage of what was a long fight.â€
NASCAR shocks with flag ban
In sports, NASCAR sent shockwaves through its fan base in announcing Monday its own ban on the Confederate flag, which are ubiquitous at stock car races given the sport’s Southern roots in illegal moonshine runs during Prohibition.
That move generated thanks from one of the sport’s few African American drivers, Bubba Wallace, who promptly adorned his car with a Black Lives Matter logo over a wheel arch. Seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson, who is white, also applauded the move.
“NASCAR is synonymous with the Confederate flag,†says Lecia Brooks, a civil rights attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center. “These are major movements. People are finally understanding and accepting what we mean by systemic racism. I think we’re at a real inflection point where people are really getting it.”
In an updated edition of the 2016 report “Whose Heritage?” the SPLC identified 114 Confederate symbols that were removed after the Charleston attack — and 1,747 that still stood.Â
Megan Kate Nelson, an author and historian of the Civil War, says the ongoing protests against racism have pushed government officials and corporations to come to terms with the legacy of the Confederacy.Â
“That has forced businesses to take action on a much larger scale. I have to say, I never thought I’d see the day NASCAR banned the Confederate flag from its events,†she says.
For many black Americans, the movement to strike Confederate imagery is a blow against oppressive daily reminders of the slave-owning intent of Southern Civil War leadership.
In Virginia, the Franklin County School Board voted unanimously Monday to ban displays of the Confederate flag under its school dress code. Penny Blue, a black woman and member at large for the Franklin County school board, began calling for the flag to be banned in January. She says the board was only moved to take action after Floyd’s death.Â
â€It’s sad that it took the horrible murder of a black man on national TV and protests… before they would actually listen,†she says.
School board member Jon Atchue, who is white and supported the ban, says those saying he was being too sensitive are not aware of the history of violence against black people. Atchue said many black students growing up listening to stories of Ku Klux Klan members terrorizing their ancestors while bearing the flag would be fearful of seeing the image on school grounds. The Klan was started by Confederate veterans.Â
“If you’re scared and you don’t feel safe, that’s going to impact the educational process,†Atchue says.
For some Southerners, the backlash against Confederate symbols does not sit well. One NASCAR driver, Ray Ciccarelli, announced Wednesday he would quit at the end of the season over the decision.
“I could care less about the Confederate flag,” he wrote on Facebook. “But there are people that do and it doesn’t make them a racist.”
Paul Gramling, commander-in-chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that advocates on behalf of Confederate history, called NASCAR’s ban on the Confederate flag a slap in the face to Southerners who helped build the sport and complained that African Americans will never be satisfied until all traces of Southern heritage are gone. Â
“We just wanted to be left alone and the North would not leave us alone,†says Gramling. “They keep bringing this up, causing problems that cause us to stand and defend what our ancestors did.â€
The Georgia chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans recently offered a $2,000 reward to anyone with information about damaged Confederate monuments in Georgia. Gramling says lawmakers or corporate leaders who ban Confederate images to promote inclusivity only cause more racial tension.
“Any time you take away or you attack someone’s heritage, especially Southern heritage, you’re not going to be making friends with them,†he says.Â
Salute relatives, but not the legacy
Southerners who want to honor ancestors who fought in the Civil War have the right to do so in a private setting, but foisting symbols of the Confederacy on those who were oppressed by it isn’t right, says Karen Cox,professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and author of “Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture.â€
Cox explains that in the decades after the Civil War, the goal of the Daughters of the Confederacy was not just to lionize parents and grandparents who fought, but also to reassert Confederate principles through those tributes.
“Some will say the monuments are not about white supremacy, but if you read speeches given during the ceremonies and even some plaques themselves, some say that these veterans accepted the terms of war, but in the aftermath they ‘rose up to defend Anglo Saxon supremacy,’†she says. “There’s no mistaking what that means.â€
Cox points out that many white Southerners have for decades been trying to help eradicate what they see as embarrassing symbols of a part of the country they love. Today’s movement will encourage more such collaboration.
She cautions that not only are actions taken against Confederate monuments and symbols more likely to happen in urban centers, they’re also more easily embraced in certain states.
“What’s happening in Virginia is not happening in Mississippi,†she says. “Charge will be hard for some, because it’s a battle over their identity as white Southerners.â€
But such is the tenor of these times that change may well be coming to Mississippi, a cradle of some of the most strident civil rights protests in the 1960s. A bipartisan group of lawmakers are in the process of wrangling the votes needed to remove the Confederate flag from the Mississippi state flag.Â
Ultimately, white Southerners have for centuries lived with black Southerners — first as slaves and then as free men and women. By clinging to symbolic totems of a slave-owning American South, white Southerners are ignoring the painful fight of neighbors for basic human and civil rights, says Dewey Clayton, political science professor at the University of Louisville.  Â
“Once the Civil War ended in 1865, many Southern states had a significant African American population,†says Clayton. “So, when they talk about Southern pride and Southern heritage, they are refusing to recognize many of the taxpayers in those particular states were not in support of the Confederate flag and what it stood for.â€
Clayton says Confederate statues and flags can make not only black Americans feel unsafe, but also other minority groups. The time to divest of such icons is now, he says.
“What are we teaching our children?†he says. “As they grow up, they see these symbols of hatred and they see them everywhere in the public square. We’re sending the wrong message to them.â€
Former mayor Landrieu says he’s optimistic Americans are finally ready to have an open and honest conversation about racism.
“I think this country needs to have a reckoning, a collective reckoning, that what we have done in the past is wrong, that what we did in the past had consequences, and to make a commitment to change,” he says. “We have to have a full stop and look at this and fix this. A lot of white people think that racism is only when you walk down the street and call an African American a bad name.”
Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/12/confederate-statues-flags-banned-black-lives-matter-movement-grows/5346701002/
In its response to a petition brought to the European Parliament’s Petitions Committee asking for a moratorium on experiments on animals while their value is being assessed, the Commission has once again said that it is fully committed to the ultimate goal of fully replacing animal tests.
Cruelty Free Europe – a network of animal protection organisations dedicated to bringing animal testing to an end in the European Union – welcomes that commitment but believes that it is now time to put in place a road map to turn words into a plan of action.
Cruelty Free Europe Director of Science Dr Katy Taylor said: “Now more than ever, the EU should show ambition to develop better science and turn to more humane and human relevant research and innovation. 95% of all drugs shown to be safe and effective in tests on animals fail in human trials. The cost of this failure is huge monetarily and for animals and people. If any other system were failing so comprehensively, surely it would long ago have been scrapped and other better solutions secured?â€
“Back in 1993 – 27 years ago – in the fifth EU environmental action programme towards sustainability, a target was set to achieve as a priority by 2000 a 50% reduction in the number of vertebrate animals used for experimental purposes. By 1997, this action had been quietly dropped and the number of animal tests in Europe remains high. So we have heard the commitments before. It’s high time for change.â€
The Commission’s response also highlights its efforts to encourage the development of non-animal methods to replace animal research. Cruelty Free Europe recognises the ground-breaking work that has been done in Europe through organisations like ECVAM, collaborations like the EPAA and Horizon funding, but says that much more needs to be done.
Dr Taylor continued: “Take the Horizon research programme where our calculations suggest that funding for Horizon 2020 projects claiming primary and secondary benefits for non-animal methods comes to a mere 0.1% of the total €80 billion programme for the period 2014 to 2020. Consider that whilst 48 Horizon projects in some way claim to contribute to non-animal methods, in the region of 300 cite the use of ‘animal models’ as part of their methodology. If Europe is serious about its goal of replacing animal experiments, then it needs to really put its money where its mouth is.â€
In November 2019, a petition was submitted to the presidents of the European Commission and the European Parliament calling on the EU to carry out a systematic review of all research areas in which animals are used. In May this year, the European Parliament Committee on Petitions confirmed that the petition had been accepted as admissible and would be formally considered by the committee. Together with our European partners Cruelty Free Europe has been calling on the Commission to commit to a comprehensive plan with targets and timetables to bring an end to animal testing in the EU.
WEDNESDAY, June 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) — If there is one thing that recent police brutality protests have demonstrated, it is that life for black people in America is steeped in stress.
And while it might seem logical to assume that all that stress would translate into higher rates of mental health conditions like depression and anxiety, that doesn’t seem to be the case — at least not when actual diagnoses are tallied.
But official numbers don’t capture the whole story, as a multitude of factors stand in the way of good mental health care for black Americans.
“There’s an assumption that all people express symptoms of depression the same, but some culture groups express symptoms differently,” explained Sherry Davis Molock, an associate professor of psychology at George Washington University, in Washington D.C.
She said that while depression is typically defined as someone who has lost interest in activities they used to enjoy and a persistent sad mood for at least two weeks, in black and Asian people depression is more likely to present with physical symptoms like headache or digestive issues. Those differences could translate to fewer people getting diagnosed in the earlier stages of mental illness: Molock noted that black people are more likely to be diagnosed with severe mental health conditions.
Another issue that can stand in the way of people of color getting mental health care is the stigma of mental illness.
One man’s story of depression
Pervis Taylor III, a life coach and author from New York City, had a tough start in life. Before he was an adult, Taylor was bullied and molested, and his father passed away at a young age from a heroin overdose. Taylor said he now thinks his father had undiagnosed mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder from serving in Vietnam.
When Taylor became depressed, he didn’t know what resources were available to him and it never even occurred to him to reach out to mental health professionals for help.
“When I was in my 20s, I thought therapy was taboo. I didn’t know the benefits of therapy. And, being a man in our society, you’re not supposed to go to therapy or have emotions, and being a black man on top of that, you think you can pray it away,” Taylor said.
Taylor — now 39 — eventually did get therapy, and now he tries to help other people see the value in sharing their stories with others.
“Stories help build connections. When I tell people that I get therapy, it can be a first step in helping make therapy attractive to them. People think, ‘If you made it through, I can make it, too,'” Taylor said.
Cost and access to mental health care professionals are additional barriers to mental health treatment.
Mistrust is another concern. David Fakunle, an associate faculty member in mental health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said, “When it comes to utilizing the health care systems we have, there’s a distrust. From the Tuskegee airmen to Henrietta Lacks, there’s a history of the black body being mistreated in the name of science and medicine. That distrust has been passed down from generation to generation.”
More black mental health professionals needed
Within that cultural context, Fakunle noted that “it would be easier for black people to access mental health treatment if there were more black faces [offering treatment]. We need more black mental health professionals.” And, he pointed out that this issue is not just inherent to black people — it’s important to encourage more diversity in mental health care for all races and ethnicities.
“We need a greater investment in the mental health infrastructure for people of color,” he said.
Molock agreed that cultural norms don’t encourage black people to seek mental health care.
“We have to get more people of color providing services and doing the research,” she said.
Traditionally, black people have sought care in other ways — through family or church. But, as society has become more mobile and people aren’t as connected to family or church, those traditional ways of seeking help may not be enough anymore, Molock said.
Both Molock and Fakunle said that black people in America have learned to be resilient.
“Black people are amazingly resilient. We have survived what would appear to be insurmountable odds, and yet somehow find ways to find joy,” Molock said. But she also noted that having a resilient attitude might discourage people from seeking care.
Fakunle agreed. “Resiliency has become a kind of crutch to not address mental health issues. We think, we’ve dealt with so much already, how can we have mental health issues? We’ve learned to endure and be resilient, but there are ramifications from the constant trauma and constant stress of being black in the United States,” he said.
Like Taylor, Fakunle believes strongly in the power of storytelling to help destigmatize mental health conditions and treatment.
“People telling their stories, talking about what’s happened to them, especially people who you think have everything, when they talk about their challenges and say, ‘It’s affected my mental health,’ that’s the human element that unites us all,” Fakunle said.
SOURCES: Sherry Davis Molock, PhD, M.Div., associate professor, department of psychology, George Washington University, Washington D.C.; David Fakunle, PhD, associate faculty, department of mental health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and co-founder and CEO, DiscoverME/RecoverME: Enrichment Through the African Oral Tradition, Baltimore; Pervis Taylor III, New York City
By Robin Foster and E.J. Mundell HealthDay Reporters
THURSDAY, June 11, 2020 — The number of confirmed U.S. coronavirus cases passed 2 million on Thursday, as public health experts warned of the emergence of new COVID-19 hotspots across the country.
Just three weeks after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey lifted the state’s stay-at-home order, there has been a significant spike in coronavirus cases, with lawmakers and medical professionals warning that hospitals might not be able to handle a big influx of new cases. Already, hospitals in the state are at 83 percent capacity, the Associated Press reported.
But Arizona is not alone in seeing increases in hospitalizations: new U.S. data shows at least eight other states with spikes since Memorial Day.
In Texas, North and South Carolina, California, Oregon, Arkansas, Mississippi and Utah, increasing numbers of COVID-19 patients are showing up at hospitals, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
For example, Texas has reported two consecutive days of record-breaking coronavirus hospitalizations. That state, which was one of the first to reopen, has seen a 36 percent increase in new cases since the end of May, with a record 2,056 hospitalizations recorded by Tuesday afternoon, the Post reported.
The hospitalization data challenges the notion that the country is seeing a spike in new coronavirus cases solely because of increased testing, the Post reported. By Thursday, the U.S. coronavirus death toll passed 113,000.
On Tuesday, another Post analysis showed that parts of the country that had been spared the worst of the coronavirus pandemic are now tallying record-high cases of new infections.
Since the start of June, 14 states and Puerto Rico have recorded their highest seven-day average of new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, data tracked by the Post shows. Those states are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Carolina, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
On Tuesday, the country’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, described COVID-19 as his “worst nightmare” and delivered a warning, The New York Times reported. “In a period of four months, it has devastated the whole world,” Fauci said. “And it isn’t over yet.”
Masks, lockdowns show benefit
But a new British study offers some hope: Scientists report that the widespread use of face masks — not more lockdowns — could slow the spread of the virus to tolerable levels, the Post reported.
“Our analyses support the immediate and universal adoption of face masks by the public,” said study leader Richard Stutt, a Cambridge University professor, the newspaper reported.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A scientific journal, also suggest that lockdowns alone can’t fight the coronavirus if and when it spikes again.
Meanwhile, New York City finally reopened its economy on Monday after being the epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic for months, while a new study showed that stay-at-home orders may have been worth it, preventing nearly 60 million U.S. infections.
That report, published in the Nature medical journal, examined how different social distancing policies and measures might have limited the spread of COVID-19, the Post reported.
The University of California at Berkeley researchers examined six countries — China, the United States, France, Italy, Iran and South Korea — and estimated how more than 1,700 different interventions, such as stay-at-home orders, business closings and travel bans, altered the spread of the virus.
The report concluded that those six countries collectively managed to avert 62 million test-confirmed infections, which the researchers estimated would correspond to roughly 530 million total infections, the newspaper said.
School closures had no significant effect, although the authors said the issue requires further study, the Post reported.
Even as all states have now reopened, public health officials have raised concern about future coronavirus spread following days of protests against police brutality across the country. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday it was closely monitoring the demonstrations and warned such gatherings could spur coronavirus transmission, CNN reported. Some states are already seeing upward trends in new cases.
The protests make it hard to follow social distancing guidelines and “may put others at risk,” CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said in a statement, CNN reported.
Economic upswing
On Thursday, another weekly batch of new jobless claims suggested that the damage the pandemic has wrought on the U.S. economy may be slowing. Roughly 1.5 million people filed for state unemployment insurance. That’s a continued decline from the 6 million claims seen in a single week in March, the Times reported. More than 40 million claims have been filed since the coronavirus pandemic began.
“We’re slowly seeing the labor market recovery begin to take form,” said Robert Rosener, an economist at Morgan Stanley, but “there’s still an enormous amount of layoffs going on.”
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve said the unemployment rate should hit 9.3 percent by the end of 2020, dropping to 5.5 percent in 2022, the Times reported. Prior to the pandemic, jobless rates were at historic lows.
In other news, the U.S. government’s supply of remdesivir, the only drug known to work against COVID-19, will run out at the end of the month, Dr. Robert Kadlec, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official, told CNN.
QUESTION
What is the Wuhan coronavirus? See Answer
The government’s last shipment of the drug will go out the week of June 29. Gilead Sciences, the company that makes remdesivir, is ramping up to make more, but it’s unclear how much will be available this summer.
“Right now, we’re waiting to hear from Gilead what is their expected delivery availability of the drug as we go from June to July,” Kadlec said. “We’re kind of not in negotiations, but in discussions with Gilead as they project what the availability of their product will be.”
The government has been working to help Gilead “with some of their supply chain challenges in terms of raw materials and being able to accelerate the process,” said Kadlec, the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response.
He added that it’s clear that “whatever the supply may be, there may not be enough for everyone who may need it.”
Meanwhile, the search for an effective vaccine goes on. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in late May that it would provide up to $1.2 billion to the drug company AstraZeneca to develop a potential coronavirus vaccine from Oxford University, in England.
The fourth, and largest, vaccine research agreement funds a clinical trial of the potential vaccine in the United States this summer with about 30,000 volunteers, the Times reported.
The goal? To make at least 300 million doses that could be available as early as October, the HHS said in a statement.
The United States has already agreed to provide up to $483 million to the biotech company Moderna and $500 million to Johnson & Johnson for their vaccine efforts. It is also providing $30 million to a virus vaccine effort led by the French company Sanofi, the Times reported.
According to a Times tally, the top five states in coronavirus cases as of Thursday are: New York with nearly 385,000; New Jersey with over 165,300; California with over 140,000, Illinois with nearly 131,000 and Massachusetts with over 104,000.
Nations grapple with pandemic
Elsewhere in the world, the situation remains challenging.
Even as the pandemic is easing in Europe and some parts of Asia, it is worsening in India. The country has loosened some of the social distancing enacted in the world’s largest lockdown, even as cases surge. Three weeks ago, the country had 100,000 cases. As of Thursday, the country has more than 286,500 cases, a Johns Hopkins tally shows.
Brazil has become a hotspot in the coronavirus pandemic. By Thursday, the South American country had reported over 39,600 deaths and over 772,400 confirmed infections, according to the Hopkins tally. Trump has issued a ban on all foreign travelers from Brazil because of the burgeoning number of COVID-19 cases in that country, CNN reported.
President Jair Bolsonaro’s government had stopped publishing a running total of coronavirus deaths and infections, the AP reported. Critics called the move, which came after official numbers showed Brazil had the third-highest number of deaths and the second-highest number of cases in the world, an attempt to hide the true toll of the disease. A Supreme Court justice on Tuesday ordered publication of the cumulative totals of cases and deaths be resumed, the wire service reported.
Cases are also spiking wildly in Russia: As of Thursday, that country reported the world’s third-highest number of COVID-19 cases, at over 501,000, the Hopkins tally showed.
One country had good news to report this week: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday she’s confident her country has halted the spread of the coronavirus after the last known infected person in the country recovered, the AP reported. It has been 19 days since the last new case was reported in New Zealand.
Worldwide, the number of reported infections passed 7.3 million on Thursday, with over 417,000 deaths, according to the Hopkins tally.
WEDNESDAY, June 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) — A little romance may go a long way toward helping breast cancer survivors thrive.
New research showed that a strong romantic relationship wasn’t the cure-all, but it was linked to lower psychological stress and lower inflammation, which is a key to staying healthy.
“It’s important for survivors, when they’re going through this uncertain time, to feel comfortable with their partners and feel cared for and understood, and also for their partners to feel comfortable and share their own concerns,” said lead author Rosie Shrout, a postdoctoral scholar in the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University.
“Our findings suggest that this close partnership can boost their bond as a couple and also promote survivors’ health even during a very stressful time, when they’re dealing with cancer,” she said in a university news release.
For the study, 139 female breast cancer survivors, average age 55, completed questionnaires and gave blood samples.
One survey assessed relationship satisfaction. The other questionnaire evaluated their level of psychological stress.
Researchers analyzed blood samples for levels of proteins that aid inflammation. Inflammation is linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease, among other conditions.
The more satisfied women felt about their romantic relationships, the lower their stress and inflammation, the researchers found.
“This gave us a unique perspective — we found that when a woman was particularly satisfied with her relationship, she had lower stress and lower inflammation than usual — lower than her own average,” Shrout said. “At a specific visit, if she was satisfied with her partner, her own inflammation was lower at that visit than at a different visit when she was less satisfied.”
Although the findings related to breast cancer survivors, Shrout believes a strong romantic relationship would be helpful to people with other serious illnesses by lowering their stress.
The report was published online recently in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.
THURSDAY, June 11, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Social restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic can be especially hard for people who can’t visit loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease who are in nursing homes.
Despite an easing of restrictions, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says nursing homes shouldn’t allow outside visitors until the last phase of its reopening guidelines.
“One of the hardest parts of the COVID-19 pandemic for families who have relatives with Alzheimer’s disease living in a care setting is not being able to see their loved ones in person,” said Jennifer Reeder, director of educational and social services for the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.
“Many nursing homes are likely to continue limiting or prohibiting outside visitors, given how fast COVID-19 can spread and the high risks to seniors with underlying health conditions,” Reeder added.
However, there are several ways families can stay connected from afar, she said in a foundation news release.
Use technology. Video chat platforms like FaceTime, Zoom or Skype allow you to see and talk with your loved one. Many care facilities provide this type of service, so ask if it’s available. Phone calls, emails and letters are also good ways to keep in touch.
Send a care package. Drop off some of your loved one’s favorite snacks, trinkets and other fun items to give them comfort, improve their mood and reduce stress or anxiety. Check with the care center first to find out if any items are prohibited for health reasons.
Share photos. Some care centers regularly send pictures of their residents to loved ones and also invite families to send photos in return. Sending residents family photos can help trigger memories.
Get updates. Ask the staff for regular updates on your loved one. If he or she requires physical or occupational therapy, or personal care services such as nail clipping, find out how these services are being provided or what alternatives are in place.
Ask about activity programs. Music, art, dance/movement, crafts and exercise programs can help keep your loved one engaged and active.
In addition, all care facilities are required to have plans to monitor and prevent infections and should be able to provide you with information about these measures if you ask.
THURSDAY, June 11, 2020 (HealthDay News) — The boisterous bustle of students jostling down crowded hallways to reach lockers and classrooms has long served as one of the most powerful memories of high school life for many.
Those loud, happy throngs might now belong to a bygone era, thanks to COVID-19.
Schools planning to reopen in the fall are weighing what’s called the “pod” approach, in which middle and high school students remain isolated with their peers in the same classroom all day, said Dan Domenech, executive director of The School Superintendents Association.
The traditional between-class hallway jam “really is conducive to infection, as opposed to isolating them in the same room for the whole day,” Domenech said during a HealthDay Live! interview.
It’s one of many ways that schools might operate differently in the days of COVID-19, if infection rates in their communities even allow them to reopen next school year.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that middle and high schools consider adopting the elementary school model, in which “high school kids remain in the same room and the teachers move around,” Domenech said.
Staggered school hours would make sure hallways remain relatively empty as students enter and leave the building. There’s even talk of keeping the cafeterias closed and serving the kids lunch in their classroom “pod,” so they remain in the classroom nearly all the school day.
A CDC checklist holds that schools should feel safe reopening if COVID-19 outbreaks are contained in their communities; teachers and students have been drilled on the importance of hand hygiene, face masks and social distancing; and ongoing monitoring is in place to detect and respond to an outbreak at the school.
“It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when there will be an outbreak, because there will be outbreaks. We know that. We can expect and plan for it,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.
Most kids not vulnerable to severe COVID-19
Parents should feel reassured about their child’s safety in going back to school, said Christakis, who also spoke with HealthDay Live!
“If a child gets COVID, there’s a one in 1,000 chance that they will be hospitalized with it, and there is a one in 100,000 chance they will die from it,” Christakis said. “Those are long odds, as they say. Your child’s risk of getting hit by lightning over the course of their lifetime is one in 15,000, to give some perspective.”
Precautions put in place at schools to prevent outbreaks are instead designed to protect adults — teachers, parents and family members, Christakis explained.
“We know children themselves are at very low risk of getting sick with COVID. We don’t know how big a risk they pose to pass COVID on to either teachers or family members,” Christakis said. “It’s unfortunate we don’t know that, because that would make our decision-making a lot easier. We don’t know how contagious they actually are.”
The CDC recommends that schools reopen with plans to routinely clean and disinfect surfaces and objects that are frequently touched, stagger arrival and dismissal times for students, avoiding mixing students in common areas, and increasing the space between desks.
Time-honored traditions like “Career Day” likely will fall by the wayside, as schools are being encouraged to limit all non-essential visitors.
It also could be some time before kids attend group events that promote school spirit, such as student assemblies, school sports, student concerts and dances. The CDC is asking schools to reconsider any event that would bring kids in close contact with each other.
Parents also should be ready for the school to be closed at a moment’s notice, in the event of an outbreak. The CDC recommends students and most staff be sent home at least two to five days upon finding a confirmed case at a school, so health officials can perform contact tracing and staff can disinfect areas used by the infected person.
All these changes are going to take place amid ongoing turmoil at schools related to both the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on the economy, Domenech said.
Schools may face shortages in funding, teachers
“School districts that are already going to be suffering financially because of the economy may not have the dollars they need to implement the guidelines as they should be implemented,” Domenech noted.
Further, some schools are likely to have a workforce shortage because teachers are afraid for their health, Domenech added.
“We already heard from quite a few teachers who are older and who have medical issues saying that they don’t plan to come back,” Domenech said. “They don’t want to take the risk of being in an environment that’s going to make them sick.”
Elementary school teachers are going to be particularly challenged, since it’s nearly impossible to make first-, second- and third-graders wear masks or adhere to social distancing, Domenech and Christakis said.
“You cannot expect kindergartners to social distance,” Christakis said. “That’s how children that age learn. They need to play with their peers. They will not get a meaningful experience if they’re not hands-on with their peers.”
That makes the “pod” strategy an even stronger option, the experts said.
QUESTION
What is the Wuhan coronavirus? See Answer
“If there’s an outbreak in classroom A, it’s less likely it will spread to classroom B or C or D,” Christakis said.
There also will need to be a sea change in the way health care is provided at schools, the experts added.
“School nurses are not allowed to do much in terms of medical practice,” Domenech said. “They can’t even give an aspirin unless the students bring their medication with them and it’s in the office and the nurse can administer it.”
To check sick students and detect potential outbreaks, schools are going to need health specialists in the building who can check temperatures and monitor symptoms, Domenech said.
“It has to go beyond what the nurse right now is allowed to do,” Domenech said.
SOURCES: Dan Domenech, PhD, executive director, The School Superintendents Association; Dimitri Christakis, MD, MPH, director, Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development, Seattle Children’s Research Institute
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
