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Germany’s Health Minister Tests Positive for COVID
Germany’s health minister, an epidemiologist by training who has led the country’s fight against COVID-19 since December, has tested positive for the coronavirus.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach’s ministry said early Friday that the 59-year-old has only light symptoms and is working from home. It said that Lauterbach has had four vaccine shots and his infection “shows that, with the highly contagious omicron variant, an infection can’t be entirely ruled out even with utmost caution.”
Germany, like many other countries, has seen large — though recently declining — numbers of cases this summer as new subvariants of omicron drive infections.
UK: ‘Early Signs’ That Monkeypox Outbreak May Be Peaking
British health authorities said Friday the monkeypox outbreak across the country may be peaking and that the epidemic’s growth rate has slowed.
The U.K.’s Health Security Agency said in a statement there were “early signs that the outbreak is plateauing,” with 2,859 cases detected since May. No deaths have been reported. Last month, authorities estimated the outbreak was doubling in size about every two weeks, but the number of new infections has dropped in recent weeks.
“While the most recent data suggest the growth of the outbreak has slowed, we cannot be complacent,” said Dr. Meera Chand, Director of Clinical and Emerging Infections at the Health Security Agency. She said anyone who thought they might have monkeypox should skip meeting friends, social gatherings, and avoid sexual contact.
The Health Security Agency said its most recent analysis of the outbreak “shows that monkeypox continues to be transmitted primarily in interconnected sexual networks of gay, bisexual, or men who have sex with other men.” More than 70% of the U.K.’s cases are in London.
New York State Health Commissioner Warns ‘Hundreds’ More May Be Infected With Polio
A polio case in Rockland County, New York, may be the “tip of the iceberg,” state Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett warned Thursday, after officials said wastewater samples had detected the virus in an adjacent county.
Urging unvaccinated residents to get immunized against the virus, Bassett said there was the potential for “much greater” community spread.
“Based on earlier polio outbreaks, New Yorkers should know that for every one case of paralytic polio observed, there may be hundreds of other people infected,” she said in a statement.
Last month’s case of polio in Rockland County, north of New York City, was the first in the United States in nearly a decade. Polio was detected in the county’s wastewater before the patient’s case was confirmed, officials have said.
Cancer Explosion: Pathologist Reports on Rise of Aggressive Cancers Since mRNA Shots
Dr. Ute Kruger is a researcher and senior physician at Lunds University in Sweden. She’s the Chief of Pathology, a field that she’s worked in for the last 25 years, with a specialty in breast cancer diagnosis for the past 18 years. She’s studied thousands of autopsies and breast cancer samples.
She’s extremely familiar with the industry and patient age, tumor size, and malignancy grade are all within her field of expertise and have had a natural rhythm throughout her career. That natural rhythm came to a halt in 2021 once the vaccine rollout began.
Doctors for Covid Ethics posted an interview with her where she shared her concerns about unusual features that have been showing up in samples from the past year.
- Age – The average ages of the samples she received dropped, with a rise in the number of samples from people in their 30’s-50’s.
- Size – It used to be unusual for Dr. Kruger to find a tumor 3 cm in size. In this new environment, she’s regularly seeing tumors of 4 cm, 8 cm, 10 cm, and the occasional 12 cm. In a shocking anecdote, 2 weeks ago she found a 16 cm tumor that took up an entire breast.
- Multiple Tumors – Dr. Kruger has begun to see more cases of multiple tumors growing in the same patient, sometimes even in both breasts. She had 3 cases within 3 weeks of patients who had tumors growing in multiple organs. One had tumors in his/her breast, pancreas and lungs within months of getting vaccinated.
- Recurrence – There has been an uptick in patients who have been in remission from their cancer for many years, suddenly getting an aggressive recurrence of their cancer shortly after vaccination.
Dr. Kruger initially thought that these turbo cancers, as she calls them, were due to delayed doctor appointments from COVID lockdowns, but that period is long over, and the tumors are still growing aggressively, and in younger patients.
She reported some of these cases to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and while some higher-ups initially agreed to meet with her, they canceled the meeting with no explanation the next day and sent a phone agent to take her report instead.
U.S. Administers Over 7,300 Novavax Vaccine Doses – CDC
The United States has administered more than 7,300 doses of Novavax Inc’s COVID-19 shot, which health officials hope will convince more people to opt for vaccinations as it is based on a technology that has been in use for decades.
Over 330,000 doses of Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine have been distributed in the United States, and more than 2,300 people have been fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated on Thursday.
This is the first set of data on the vaccine’s use in the U.S. since its authorization last month.
How at Risk Are Kids in the Monkeypox Outbreak?
Even though there have been just five cases of monkeypox in kids reported in the U.S., it’s hard for parents not to worry about their own children, especially since the Biden administration has declared the outbreak a public health emergency.
Monkeypox has been spreading quickly in the U.S. and around the world. In May and early June, there were just a smattering of cases in the U.S., but since then, the virus has been spreading at an accelerating rate, with 812 new cases reported on July 25 alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As of Aug. 3, 6,617 monkeypox cases have been confirmed in the U.S.
“Two things are happening at once that, I think, can account for the rise in cases that we’re seeing,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a recent press briefing. “One is more widely available testing, and two is potentially more infections that are actually happening or a result of infections that happened two or three weeks ago.”
1 in 8 COVID Patients Will Develop Long COVID, Study Finds
Numerous people have reported lingering or new symptoms after a COVID-19 infection, though exactly how many people are struggling with long COVID has remained unclear.
Now, a new Dutch study finds about one of every eight (12.7%) patients who show long COVID symptoms.
The estimate is considered more reliable because researchers compared the number of people who experienced a new or increased health symptom three to five months after infection (21.4%) with those who experienced a new symptom but didn’t have an infection (8.7%).
The inclusion of uninfected populations gives a more accurate prediction of long COVID symptom prevalence and improved identification of the core symptoms of long COVID, according to the study. The findings were published Aug. 5 in The Lancet medical journal.
Less Than Half of U.S. Parents Plan to Vaccinate Young Kids Against COVID
A nationwide survey study of more than 2,000 U.S. parents of children aged 6 months to 4 years reveals that less than half intend to have their child vaccinated against COVID-19 and that only one-fifth say they plan to do so within 3 months of eligibility.
The research, from a team led by University of Iowa investigators for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was published yesterday in JAMA Network Open — 47% said they would wait 3 months or more.
The authors fielded an online survey of 2,031 U.S. parents of children 6 months to 4 years old about their intention to vaccinate their child against COVID-19 from Feb 2 to 10, which is 4 months before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) extended eligibility to this age-group.
‘The Next Public Health Disaster in the Making’: Studies Offer New Pieces of Long COVID Puzzle
There’s no test for long COVID. There’s no specific drug to take or exercises to do to ease its symptoms. There isn’t a consensus on what long COVID symptoms are, and some doctors even doubt that it’s real.
Yet with vast numbers of people having had COVID-19, and estimates ranging from 7.7 million to 23 million long COVID patients in the U.S. alone, researchers say it has the potential to be “the next public health disaster in the making.”
The Biden administration released two reports this week to initiate a whole-government effort to prevent, detect and treat long COVID. Two new studies also try to gather some of the small pieces of the puzzle that is long COVID.
President Joe Biden said in April that long COVID was a priority for his administration and ordered two reports: one that lays out a research agenda for the country and one that sketches out the federally funded services and support available for people in the U.S. with long COVID. A total of 14 government departments and agencies worked together to create these new long COVID plans.
The plan proposes a new long COVID office within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), but it does not offer specifics on how to fund or staff the office.
Biden Feeling ‘Very Well’ as COVID Rebound Recovery Continues
President Biden was feeling “very well” Thursday and only coughing occasionally as he continued to recover from his so-called rebound case of COVID.
Despite testing positive for the virus, Biden is making steady progress at ditching his mild symptoms, White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor said.
“He is experiencing a very occasional cough, but the cough is improving,” O’Connor said in a daily update on the president’s condition.
