COVID-19: (Smaller countries) – 2021/09/16

The overall picture among the smaller countries is much the same as last week. Ukraine and Canada are the two countries with the greatest upwards movement. Ukraine moved back to more than 50 cases per million per day (74) and Canada, which had 99 cases per million last week, moved up to 113. Four of the countries are reporting less than 10 mortalities per day, while Argentina is the only country among this group with more than 100 deaths per day being reported (144).

I didn’t have the time over the past few days to do any other reading on the pandemic, but I was able to look at a few interesting articles today. The first one concerns so-called long COVID, also known as Post COVID-19 syndrome. I’ve mentioned this quite often over the past few weeks, as this changes the picture to a large extent. Many of those who survive COVID-19, struggle for a long time with symptoms linked to the COVID infection. In up to 13% of patients, symptoms persisted for 1-2 months, in 4.5% of the cases symptoms lasted for longer than two months and in 2.6% of cases, they lasted for longer than three months. The symptoms included fatigue, headache, difficulty in breathing and anxiety or depression. People need to take note of this. An article that appeared yesterday, covers this topic in depth. Please take time to read it here:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/94524?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2021-09-16&eun=g1759597d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Top%20Cat%20HeC%20%202021-09-16&utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition

Last week I mentioned the double-edged sword of diabetes. Diabetes increased the risk of severe COVID or even death, but at the same time COVID also often starts or worsens diabetes, even in people who have had no sign of diabetes before getting COVID-19. In a short excerpt from a planned webinar hosted by the Foundation for Professional Development, it is said that mortality amongst the diabetic population is three times more than that of the general population. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the webinar, but anyone may attend (free of charge) and you will know whether this is something which you need to listen to. The keynote speaker will be Professor Paul Rheeder, a trained specialist physician with a PhD in Clinical Epidemiology at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital. If you are interested in the topic, you can register here:
https://foundation.eventsair.com/…/regist…/Site/Register

I’ve moved past the Ivermectin debate, but I did notice this morning that a recent article once again proved that Ivermectin “isn’t a helpful treatment for COVID-19” after two groups with COVID-19 were monitored in hospital, 65 of whom were given Ivermectin plus standard care and 67 received only standard care. The outcome was that there was no difference between the two groups. You can read a summary of the trial outcome here:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/ers/94408

Lastly, after England recently lifted most of their COVID restrictions, it was clear that the infection rate was climbing at a steep rate “with cases, hospitalisations and deaths all higher than a year ago despite the success of the vaccination programme” and government scientific advisors have now warned Boris Johnson that fresh restrictions might have to be implemented soon, saying that “you have to go earlier than you think you want to, you have to go harder than you think you want to”. Whether this will be done, remains an open question. The Guardian published a lengthy article on the current situation in England, which you can read here:
https://www.theguardian.com/…/bring-in-measures-soon-or…