1/6/2021
HELLO
J. Harris: The state seems to be having trouble keeping their data updated, intermittently. However, they do pretty well considering everything. Notice that our active cases/1000 population is CLIMBING.
Marshall-Harrison County Health District COVID vaccine appointments filled
J. Harris: But help may be on the way soon from the state for injections at the Civic Center, which will be grand and which I encourage all of our public officials and medical leaders to support.
STATE VACCINATION INFORMATION:
First Texas case of more contagious coronavirus variant identified in Harris County
Allergic Reactions Including Anaphylaxis After Receipt of the First Dose of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine — United States, December 14–23, 2020 (MMWR) During December 14–23, 2020, monitoring by the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System detected 21 cases of anaphylaxis after administration of a reported 1,893,360 first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (11.1 cases per million doses); 71% of these occurred within 15 minutes of vaccination.
Another Covid-19 Vaccine Developer Gets Help From Big Pharma (Wall Street Journal) Chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer AG is joining forces with Germany’s CureVac NV to support the biotech firm in its development of a Covid-19 vaccine. Under the deal, Bayer, best known for its aspirin, will support CureVac with expertise in drug development and infrastructure, including supporting clinical work, regulatory affairs and supply-chain management, the two companies said. The partnership is part of a now-familiar pattern in which big pharmaceutical companies have swooped in to help smaller players with promising Covid-19 vaccine candidates.
Study: US COVID Cases, Deaths Far Higher than Reported (CIDRAP) An estimated 14.3% of the US population had antibodies against COVID-19 by mid-November 2020, suggesting that that the virus has infected vastly more people than reported—but still not enough to come close to the proportion needed for herd immunity, according to a study published today in JAMA Network Open.
Los Angeles paramedics told not to transport patients with little chance of survival
The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency issued a directive Jan. 4 telling paramedics not to transfer adult patients who experience cardiac arrest unless spontaneous circulation can be restored on the scene. The EMS agency said the directive is effective immediately due to the “severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on EMS and 9-1-1 receiving hospitals.”
The agency issued a separate memo Jan. 4 instructing ambulance crews to only administer bottled oxygen to patients whose oxygen saturation levels fall below 90 percent, according to the report.
“[We] are emphasizing the fact that transporting these patients arrested leads to very poor outcomes. We knew that already and we just don’t want to impact our hospitals,” she added.
J. Harris: Maybe I’ll wait another year before I’m discovered by Hollywood.
How did the pandemic begin? WHO team to seek answers in China
“It was estimated that probably the first human cases probably occurred some time in late October or early to mid November,…That was after the study in February in the Lancet that showed that the first case that was definitely identified was December 1 and it was a person who had no connection to the Wuhan seafood market. The seafood market was super-spreading event, but it wasn’t the event that caused the virus to jump over from animals into people that probably happened before that.”
J. Harris: The WHO was not allowed into China in early January. This publication has several good Covid articles of current and historical interest. This publication has not any great love for the Chinese Government (nor for the US Government most of the time).
MORE JOHNS HOPKINS SELECTIONS:
1. Early High-Titer Plasma Therapy to Prevent Severe Covid-19 in Older Adults (NEJM) Early administration of high-titer convalescent plasma against SARS-CoV-2 to mildly ill infected older adults reduced the progression of Covid-19. In the intention-to-treat population, severe respiratory disease developed in 13 of 80 patients (16%) who received convalescent plasma and 25 of 80 patients (31%) who received placebo (relative risk, 0.52; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.29 to 0.94; P=0.03), with a relative risk reduction of 48%. A modified intention-to-treat analysis that excluded 6 patients who had a primary end-point event before infusion of convalescent plasma or placebo showed a larger effect size (relative risk, 0.40; 95% CI, 0.20 to 0.81).
3.The U.S. Paid a Texas Company Nearly $70 Million for Ventilators that Were Unfit for Covid-19 Patients. Why? (Washington Post) This spring, amid a panic over a shortage of ventilators to treat the anticipated surge in coronavirus cases, the Pentagon announced the purchase of $84 million worth of breathing machines from four companies. One of the ventilators, the SAVe II+, made by a small Plano, Tex.-based company called AutoMedx, stood out from the rest. To start, the deal was for an upgraded version of the SAVe II that hadn’t even been designed yet, according to the company’s chairman. In addition, the existing $6,000 SAVe II machine, developed with military backing as a lightweight ventilator to keep wounded soldiers alive while being transported from the battlefield, had specifications far below the other three ventilators the Pentagon purchased. In a research study conducted for the Pentagon years earlier, the SAVe II had been declared unfit for use in a respiratory pandemic.
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