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Coronavirus may be the 'disease X' health agency warned about – MENAFN.COM

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(MENAFN – Gulf Times) The World Health Organisation cautioned years ago that a mysterious ”disease X could spark an international contagion. The new coronavirus, with its ability to quickly morph from mild to deadly, is emerging as a contender.
From recent reports about the stealthy ways the so-called Covid-19 virus spreads and maims, a picture is emerging of an enigmatic pathogen whose effects are mainly mild, but which occasionally and unpredictably turns deadly in the second week. In less than three months, it”s infected about 77,000 people, mostly in China, and killed more than 2,200.
”Whether it will be contained or not, this outbreak is rapidly becoming the first true pandemic challenge that fits the disease X category, Marion Koopmans, head of viroscience at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, and a member of the WHO”s emergency committee, wrote on Wednesday in the journal Cell.
The disease has now spread to more than two dozen countries and territories. Some of those infected caught the virus in their local community and have no known link to China, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
”We are not seeing community spread here in the US yet, but it”s very possible – even likely – that it may eventually happen, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC”s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on Friday.
Unlike Sars, its viral cousin, the COVID-19 virus replicates at high concentrations in the nose and throat akin to the common cold, and appears capable of spreading from those who show no, or mild, symptoms. That makes it impossible to control using the fever-checking measures that helped stop Sars 17 years ago.

Spreading surreptitiously
A cluster of cases within a family living in the Chinese city of Anyang is presumed to have begun when a 20-year-old woman carried the virus from Wuhan, the outbreak”s epicentre, on January 10 and spread it while experiencing no illness, researchers said on Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Five relatives subsequently developed fever and respiratory symptoms. Covid-19 is less deadly than Sars, which had a case fatality rate of 9.5%, but appears more contagious. Both viruses attack the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, via which they can potentially spread.
While more than 80% of patients are reported to have a mild version of the disease and will recover, about one in seven develops pneumonia, difficulty breathing and other severe symptoms. About 5% of patients have critical illness, including respiratory failure, septic shock and multi-organ failure.
”Unlike Sars, COVID-19 infection has a broader spectrum of severity ranging from asymptomatic to mildly symptomatic to severe illness that requires mechanical ventilation, doctors in Singapore said in a paper in the same medical journal on Thursday. ”Clinical progression of the illness appears similar to Sars: patients developed pneumonia around the end of the first week to the beginning of the second week of illness.

Unpredictable illness
Older adults, especially those with chronic conditions, such as hypertension and diabetes, have been found to have a higher risk of severe illness. Still, ”the experience to date in Singapore is that patients without significant co-morbid conditions can also develop severe illness, they said.
Li Wenliang, the 34-year-old ophthalmologist who was one of the first to warn about the coronavirus in Wuhan, died earlier this month after receiving antibodies, antivirals, antibiotics, oxygen and having his blood pumped through an artificial lung.
The doctor, who was in good health prior to his infection, appeared to have a relatively mild case until his lungs became inflamed, leading to the man”s death two days later, said Linfa Wang, who heads the emerging infectious disease programme at Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School.
A similar pattern of inflammation noted among Covid-19 patients was observed in those who succumbed to the 1918 ”Spanish flu pandemic, said Gregory A Poland, the Mary Lowell Leary emeritus professor of medicine, infectious diseases, and molecular pharmacology and experimental therapeutics at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
”Whenever, you have an infection, you have a battle going on, Poland said in a phone interview on Thursday. ”And that battle is a battle between the damage that the virus is doing, and the damage the body can do when it tries to fight it off.

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Mild symptoms
Doctors studying a 50-year-old man who died in China last month found Covid-19 gave him mild chills and dry cough at the start, enabling him to continue working. But on his ninth day of illness, he was hospitalised with fatigue and shortness of breath, and treated with a barrage of germ-fighting and immune system-modulating treatments.
He died five days later with lung damage reminiscent of SARS and MERS, another coronavirus-related outbreak, doctors at the Fifth Medical Center of PLA General Hospital in Beijing said in a February 16 study in the Lancet medical journal. Blood tests showed an over-activation of a type of infection-fighting cell that accounted for part of the ”severe immune injury he sustained, the authors said.
Controversially, he had been given 80 milligrams twice daily of methylprednisolone, an immune-suppressing corticosteroid drug that”s in common use in China for severe cases, though has been linked to ”prolonged viral shedding in earlier studies of MERS, Sars and influenza, according to the WHO.
The patient”s doctors recommended corticosteroids be considered alongside ventilator support for severely ill patients to prevent a deadly complication known as acute respiratory distress syndrome.
He was given at least double what would typically be recommended for patients with the syndrome and other respiratory indications, said Reed Siemieniuk, a general internist and a health research methodologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Based on what was observed with Mers, the drug may delay viral clearance in Covid-19 patients, he said.
”Corticosteroids could cause more harm than good because of that risk, Siemieniuk said in an interview. ”I wouldn”t want to let a patient die without trying steroids, but I would wait until patients were extremely ill.

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Measles case reported locally turns out to be negative: health unit

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NEWS RELEASE
SIMCOE MUSKOKA DISTRICT HEALTH UNIT
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On March 26, the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit (SMDHU) was notified by Public Health Ontario’s (PHO) laboratory that due to laboratory error, the case of measles that had been lab-confirmed positive on March 12, based on symptoms and a positive urine measles laboratory result by PHO’s laboratory, is in fact negative for the measles virus.

“With this new information of the negative lab result, we believe that that individual was not infected with measles and that there has not been any public exposure to measles resulting from this individual’s illness,” said Dr. Charles Gardner, medical officer of health. “We recognize that notifying the public of what we believed to be a positive measles case in our area created worry, anxiety and disruption for some, and we regret this.

“We do know that, despite best efforts, on rare occasions laboratory errors can occur. We are working closely with the PHO’s laboratory to do all that we can to ensure that such an incident does not occur again.”

Measles is a highly contagious viral infection that spreads very easily through airborne transmission. The measles virus can live in the air or on surfaces for up to two hours.

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Symptoms of measles begin seven to 21 days after exposure and include fever, runny nose, cough, drowsiness, and red eyes. Small white spots appear on the inside of the mouth and throat but are not always present. Three to seven days after symptoms begin, a red, blotchy rash appears on the face and then progresses down the body.

The risk of transmission to those vaccinated with two doses is low, and when it does occur tends to show a reduction in the severity of these symptoms.

“Although we are relieved for the individual involved, and for all Simcoe-Muskoka residents, that this case has now been confirmed as negative, we know that measles is still active in Ontario at this time and the potential remains for new cases to arise, especially given the increase in Ontarians travelling to areas in the world that have higher numbers of measles cases,” said Dr. Gardner. “This is why we continue to advise individuals to keep up to date with their routine immunizations, including measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination.”

The risk of measles is low for people who have been fully immunized with two doses of measles vaccine or those born before 1970; however, many children have been delayed in receiving their routine childhood immunizations and people who have not had two doses of measles vaccine are at higher risk of contracting the disease.

People who do get sick usually recover without treatment, but measles can be more severe for infants, pregnant women, and those with compromised immune systems. Possible complications include middle-ear infections, pneumonia, diarrhea, or encephalitis (swelling of the brain) and occasionally death in the very young. Even individuals who are up to date with the measles vaccine should watch for symptoms of measles for 21 days after exposure.

For more information about measles, please visit smdhu.org or call Health Connection at 705-721-7520 or 1-877-721-7520, Monday to Friday between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. to speak with a public health professional.

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Kate Middleton Not Alone. Cancer On Rise For People Under 50, Say Experts

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Kate Middleton revealed on Friday that her cancer was discovered after she received abdominal surgery

London:

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When Catherine, Princess of Wales, revealed she was being treated for cancer last week, part of the shock was that an otherwise healthy 42-year-old has a disease that mostly plagues older people.

However, researchers have been increasingly sounding the alarm that more and more people under 50 are getting cancer — and no one knows why.

Across the world, the rate of under-50s diagnosed with 29 common cancers surged by nearly 80 percent between 1990 and 2019, a large study in BMJ Oncology found last year.

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The researchers predicted the number of new cancer cases among younger adults will rise another 30 percent by the end of this decade, with wealthy countries particularly affected.

The increase in cases — and soaring global population — means that the number of deaths among under 50s from cancer has risen by nearly 28 percent over the last 30 years.

This occurred even as the odds of people of all ages surviving cancer have roughly doubled over the last half century.

Shivan Sivakumar, a cancer researcher at the UK’s University of Birmingham, called it an “epidemic” of young adult cancer.

Since Kate Middleton revealed on Friday that her cancer was discovered after she received abdominal surgery earlier this year, Sivakumar and other doctors have spoken out about the uptick in younger cancer patients they have been seeing at their clinics.

While breast cancer remains the most common for people under 50, the researchers expressed particular concern about the rise of gastrointestinal cancers — such as of the colon, pancreas, liver and oesophagus — in younger adults.

Colon cancer is now the leading cause of cancer deaths in men under 50 in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society. For women, it is number two — behind only breast cancer.

One high profile case of colorectal cancer was “Black Panther” actor Chadwick Boseman, who died at the age of 43 in 2020.

Why is this happening?

“We just don’t have the evidence yet” to say exactly what is causing this rise, Sivakumar told AFP, adding it was likely a combination of factors.

Helen Coleman, a cancer epidemiology professor at Queen’s University Belfast who has studied early onset cancer in Northern Ireland, told AFP there were two potential explanations.

One is that people in their 40s were exposed to factors known to cause cancer — such tobacco smoke, alcohol or being obese — at an earlier age than previous generations.

She pointed out that the “obesity epidemic” did not start until the 1980s.

Sivakumar felt that at least part of the puzzle could be explained by obesity.

However, there is “another wave” of under-50 patients who are neither obese nor genetically predisposed still getting cancer, he emphasised, adding that this could not be put down to “statistical chance”.

The other theory, Coleman said, is that “something different” has been going on with her generation.

Fingers have been pointed out a range of possible culprits — including chemicals, new drugs and microplastics — but none have been proven.

Some have suggested that so-called ultra-processed foods could be to blame. “But there’s very little data to back any of that up,” Coleman said.

Another theory is that the food we eat could be changing our gut microbiome.

While there is nothing conclusive yet, Coleman said her own research suggested that cancer causes changes to the microbiome, not the other way around.

Anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists have even tried to blame Covid-19 vaccines.

This is easily disproven, because the rise in young adult cancer has taken place over decades, but the vaccines have only been around for a few years.

What can be done?

To address the rise in younger colorectal cancer, in 2021 the US lowered the recommended age for screening to 45. Other countries have yet to follow suit.

But the researchers hoped that Catherine’s experience would remind people at home that they should consult their doctor if they sense anything is wrong.

“People know their bodies really well,” Sivakumar said.

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“If you really feel that something isn’t right, don’t delay — just get yourself checked out.”

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Almost 3,000 students suspended in Waterloo Region over immunization issues

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Close to 3,000 children attending elementary school across Waterloo Region were suspended from school on Wednesday morning for not having up-to-date immunization records.

The region says Waterloo Public Health suspended 2,969 students under the Immunization of School Pupils Act (ISPA).

For several months, the region has been campaigning for people to get their children’s vaccinations up to date, including sending letters home to parents on a couple of occasions, warning that students’ records needed to be up to date or they would be suspended.

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It announced in January that 32,000 students did not have up-to-date records: 22,000 elementary students and 10,000 high school students.


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“We have made remarkable progress from the original 27,567 immunization notices we sent to parents in November and December 2023,” Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang, medical officer of health, stated.

“Since that time, we have resolved more than 24,500 outdated vaccination records, providing students with valuable protection against these serious and preventable diseases.”

The high school students still have a few weeks to get their records up to date or else face suspension.

The ISPA requires students to have proof-of-vaccination records for diphtheria, polio, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (chickenpox) and meningitis, which must be on file with public health.

Public health says caregivers whose children are suspended will need to book an appointment at regionofwaterloo.ca/vaccines for clinics, which will be held in Cambridge and Waterloo on weekdays.

“Given the high number of suspensions, it may take several days before you can be seen at an appointment and return your child to school,” a release from the region warns.

“Record submission and questions must be done in person to ensure immediate resolution.”

The last time suspensions over immunizations were issued was in 2019, when 1,032 students were suspended.

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