COVID-19 continues to mutate -- UNLV researcher hopes to track new strains through - News3LV
COVID-19 continues to mutate -- UNLV researcher hopes to track new strains through - News3LV |
- COVID-19 continues to mutate -- UNLV researcher hopes to track new strains through - News3LV
- Have you herd (sic), immunity coming soon - The Garden Island
- Scientists are identifying disease in urban sewage systems - World Economic Forum
| COVID-19 continues to mutate -- UNLV researcher hopes to track new strains through - News3LV Posted: 25 Nov 2020 05:57 PM PST [unable to retrieve full-text content]COVID-19 continues to mutate -- UNLV researcher hopes to track new strains through News3LV  |
| Have you herd (sic), immunity coming soon - The Garden Island Posted: 26 Nov 2020 02:05 AM PST  The scenario, 200 people waiting to be tested for COVID, not one of these people has any symptoms. Some are awaiting tests since they are required for work, some for travel, others for medical procedures, and contract tracing after being exposed to humans who tested positive for COVID. Statistically, 2% to 15% of these people will test positive, with 85% or more testing negative while having little or no symptoms. Those who test positive will be told to quarantine for two weeks. This brings to question: How many have never been tested that had the virus and after 14 days develop their immunity? Most likely they number in thousands if not millions. On the contrary, how many people felt sick and were never tested? How many people reading this have never been tested, but very well at some point could've had COVID? Grocery-store and other front-line workers who are exposed to the public on a daily basis and not tested on a regular basis most likely at some point may have had COVID and had never known. The young and middle-aged healthy people when testing positive for COVID experience mild or no symptoms. We see healthy athletes, celebrities and government officials testing positive and after two weeks of rest and required quarantine are fine. They were never hospitalized, felt sick, or needed ventilators, or on their death beds. The vast majority of people dying are seniors with underlying conditions. If someone with stage 4 cancer gets COVID and dies in our country, the death certificate will read "COVID." In other countries, the death certificate might read "cancer." This is the dilemma — terminally ill people with threatened immune systems who get COVID would most likely die from any other sickness including but not limited to the flu or pneumonia. Therefore, the number of deaths is believed by many to be highly inflated. The media tells us 250,000 deaths from the virus in the U.S. thus far, however, only 20,000 have died from COVID without any other underlying conditions. The survival rate for children who test positive is 99.9%, yet our schools and local sports remain closed and ironically tourism opened to outsiders. 99.5% of teachers and people under 70 recover from COVID. Many believe the high rate of increased cases of COVID is the highly increased rate of testing. There is some doubt from some medical professionals on whether or not one becomes immune to COVID after testing positive and recovering and testing negative. There are a few cases where some victims of the virus have caught the virus for a second time. It is also believed by many doctors that after contracting COVID, recovering and testing negative that one is now immune from the disease and reaches herd immunity. For the purpose of this writing and with what I've herd (sic) through the grapevine and other reliable sources, let's assume that one is immune from the virus after testing positive and then recovering. Herd immunity is usually achieved through vaccination, but it can also occur through natural infection. You can develop resistance naturally. When your body is exposed to a virus or bacteria, it makes antibodies to fight off the infection. When you recover, your body keeps these antibodies. Your body will defend against another infection. Vaccines can also build resistance. They make your body think a virus or bacteria has infected it. You don't get sick, but your immune system still makes protective antibodies. This is what stopped polio in the United States. The bottom line, most people who test positive are asymptomatic and quarantine for 14 days. It is not a bad thing when the population at large is testing positive and the vast majority are asymptomatic and not being hospitalized. This is a great step in building herd immunity along with the upcoming vaccine. There's a good chance many of you reading this already had the virus and never knew it because you never got tested. Therefore, many of us could possibly be immune without knowing. Please continue to wear a mask when and where required by law. God-willing, this should all be over soon. A special mahalo nui to grocery-store and all front-line workers, for serving and putting up with 'we the people.' Happy Thanksgiving! ••• James "Kimo" Rosen lives in Kapa'a with his dog, and blogs as a hobby at dakinetalk.blogspot.com.  |
| Scientists are identifying disease in urban sewage systems - World Economic Forum Posted: 30 Oct 2020 12:00 AM PDT 
The COVID-19 pandemic has reignited interest in wastewater surveillance, where sewage systems are monitored for the presence of viruses, bacteria and other pathogens. Non-infective fragments of the virus's genetic material have been found in untreated wastewater in Italy, Spain, France, the United States and Canada. Several cities are now using the approach to detect the infection, including Ottawa. At least one U.S. university has used wastewater surveillance to identify a COVID-19 outbreak, ordering the testing and quarantine of the nearly 300 students living in four campus residences — and stopping its spread. As a microbiologist with expertise in the surveillance of foodborne pathogens, such as Salmonella and E. coli, I'm always interested in better ways to identify infections in populations. Disease identification currently relies on sick people to seek medical help. But many sick people do not seek help and officials may be unaware of illnesses or outbreaks for days or weeks, leading to more illness and death. To address outbreaks of infectious disease, such as COVID-19, we need active surveillance systems that don't rely on the actions of sick people. Wastewater surveillance for disease detection Wastewater surveillance works because many infectious agents are excreted in bodily fluids, before and during active infection. When these fluids enter sewage systems, they are transported to a central wastewater treatment facility for processing where they can be detected. The utility of wastewater surveillance was first recognized during the 1960s, when researchers at Yale University conducted several experiments to assess the efficacy of polio vaccination campaigns. They tested the sewage in Middletown, Conn., for various strains of the polio virus before, during and after the vaccination program. Thirty-five years later, the sensitivity of wastewater surveillance to monitor polio virus vaccination programs was confirmed in an elegant study that came to be known as the Helsinki polio virus experiment. Scientists flushed a polio vaccine down a toilet 20 kilometres away from a wastewater treatment plant. The researchers then collected wastewater samples from the facility over four days, and showed they could still detect the vaccine after 800 million litres of wastewater had passed through the system. They concluded that one infected person shedding the polio virus could be detected in a community of 10,000 residents. Other research demonstrated that outbreaks could be predicted by monitoring wastewater. For example, in Israel in the 1970s, infectious polio virus was detected in sewage nine days before doctors identified the first case. This approach was later adapted to monitor the success of polio vaccine campaigns internationally. Monitoring sewage as an early warning system These experiments laid the foundation for the use of wastewater to monitor other diseases. In 2013, researchers in Sweden reported that wastewater surveillance provided early warnings of outbreaks of norovirus and hepatitis A virus, two causes of foodborne viral disease. Daily wastewater samples were collected every second week between January and May 2013 from a wastewater treatment plant in Gothenburg. Using a technique called the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, the researchers detected the norovirus's genetic material two to three weeks before identifying sick people. Multiple strains (genetic types) of hepatitis A virus were also detected in wastewater samples using PCR, and additional analysis showed that two strains were involved in an ongoing outbreak in Scandinavia and in Gothenburg during the spring of 2013. Researchers in Italy used a similar approach to show that hospital patients suffering diarrhea of an unknown cause were in fact infected with noroviruses. Social media surveillance One limitation of wastewater surveillance is that it cannot identify the actual people who are infected. "Social media syndromic analysis," in which social media posts are searched for descriptions of symptoms consistent with a given disease, has emerged as an effective tool for surveillance of infectious diseases including COVID-19. Putting wastewater monitoring and social media analysis together could detect community outbreaks that might have otherwise gone undetected because the approach identifies infected people who aren't yet showing symptoms (presymptomatic) or who do not show symptoms (asymptomatic). (Both groups can spread the virus.) This information can be used by public health officials to reinforce physical distancing and other isolation practices such as targeted testing of individuals to restrict community spread of the disease. Increasing international travel and globalization has led to rapid spread of infectious diseases. To combat this, global surveillance of infectious disease must be conducted in real time or near real time, and extend beyond simply monitoring the number of infected people to also include the ability to quickly recognize novel disease patterns. The low cost, speed and ability of wastewater surveillance to detect emerging pathogens before they become endemic enhances the ability to respond to disease outbreaks without delay, decreasing global illness and death.  |
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