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Israel military minds aid COVID battle and rapid vaccine rollout – Nikkei Asia

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TOKYO — The world is watching Israel and its unmatched coronavirus vaccination drive. Israel, meanwhile, is watching COVID-19 around the world with a “Knowledge Center” spearheaded by military intelligence.

Much has been made of the tiny Middle Eastern state’s rapid vaccine rollout. It has administered nearly 66 shots per 100 residents, according to the latest figures from statistics website Our World in Data. That was far ahead of the best of the West, the U.K.’s nearly 19, let alone Asia, where Singapore was leading at about three.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week reported that confirmed cases in the 60-plus age group had dropped 45% thanks to inoculations. But if the up-for-reelection Netanyahu has made himself a prominent face of the campaign — touting 17 rounds of talks with Pfizer’s CEO and being the first to get jabbed — the military has provided crucial support.

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When COVID-19 first reached the country almost exactly a year ago, the government sought to trace and quarantine people who had been in contact with patients. As it quickly became clear that the Ministry of Health lacked the resources to confront the crisis alone, the authorities turned to the Israel Defense Forces.

A military spokesman told Nikkei Asia that IDF contact tracers have conducted roughly 240,000 epidemiological investigations, while Home Front Command facilities have accounted for about 50% of all COVID testing. He said the military also dispatched personnel to reinforce hospitals and laboratories while providing 29 quarantine locations.

Another endeavor was to create a Coronavirus National Information and Knowledge Center, led by the IDF Intelligence Directorate. The basic idea was to soak up all kinds of information on the virus and vaccines — from the ministry itself, from health care providers and from research published across the globe — to help the government make better decisions. Policymakers receive daily reports from the center.

“We brought people from different disciplines — the intelligence people, from the military, many people from academia, to sit together and to try to assess properly all different aspects which are relevant for us,” Dr. Asher Salmon, head of the Health Ministry’s international relations department, told Nikkei.

Asher declined to disclose the scale of the center but explained it “does many things,” from conducting risk analysis to formulating mathematical models. “We need somehow to understand, are we going to have a massive outbreak in the coming weeks? Where is it going? How will it respond to different measures?”

It has not always worked. Initially a success story, Israel later struggled to contain outbreaks and resorted to multiple lockdowns, while the virus surged through some communities that defied social distancing guidelines. The nation of about 9 million has recorded over 700,000 infections and more than 5,000 deaths. It continues to see thousands of daily cases, though the curve is trending downward.

“I have to tell you that after being in this [coronavirus] business for a year, it’s not very easy,” Asher said. “Not every assessment or analysis has proven itself. But [the Knowledge Center] is certainly a tool that helps everybody, from the prime minister and the cabinet down to us, to really try and plan properly.”

The operation extends to monitoring progress on vaccines.

Within Israel, the center tracks the number of people inoculated, how the doses are distributed across demographics, reports of side effects, and where more educational support might be needed to persuade residents to go and get the shots. It also watches how vaccines are working outside the country and how mutations might affect them.

In late January, the Knowledge Center warned of the danger of an Israeli variant emerging. “The mass vaccine campaign taking place parallel to the active outbreak in Israel may lead to ‘evolutionary pressure’ on the virus,” it said in a report quoted by The Times of Israel news site.

The IDF spokesman said the Home Front Command and the military’s Unit 8200 — an intelligence organ known for its cyber capabilities — have “teamed up” on a task force focused on variants. “The contacts of each person confirmed to be infected with one of the variants will be thoroughly investigated using a combination of specially trained investigators and an algorithm to trace contacts two ‘generations’ back,” he said.


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives his second dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Jan. 9.

  © Reuters

Asher stressed: “We are doing whatever we can to limit [variants], to contain them. Because there is conflicting data regarding the effectiveness of the current vaccines against these variants.”

The IDF, meanwhile, is offering on-the-ground assistance to get vaccines out as quickly as possible. The government recruited about 700 reserve medics to help with mass inoculations.

“Those reserve medics have been deployed to 104 vaccination centers across Israel,” where they assist with shots and logistics, the spokesman said. He added that the IDF helps arrange vaccinations for people with mobility issues, who cannot reach an inoculation site.

IDF involvement in a time of crisis is nothing unusual in Israel — a country that has fought multiple conflicts dating back to its foundation in 1948. Although Israel is not in a state of war today, it is constantly on guard and faces rising tensions with Iran.

Legally, all citizens are required to serve after turning 18, with exceptions for Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews. This makes the IDF part of the community in a way that, say, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are not. The SDF has dispatched small numbers of nurses to help certain prefectures cope with COVID-19, but even its disaster relief operations are tightly controlled by pacifist laws.


An IDF medic consults with a man getting vaccinated in Tzrifin, in central Israel. (Photo courtesy of IDF)

Although the IDF is aiding the coronavirus fight, Asher emphasized that it is only part of the story.

“It looks very interesting, exciting, sexy, but in the end, it’s just people with proper knowledge assessing [the situation] and really trying to predict what is unpredictable,” he said, pointing to the mathematicians, computer experts and businesses also on the case.

Asher said this cross-sector approach should be remembered for the next pandemic, whenever it strikes.

“What I try to tell my colleagues is, it’s not the business of the Ministry of Health or the health system. It’s a national business,” he said. “The consequences of this crisis are national and are relevant to almost every discipline in the country. So we have to work together and use the strong sides of every organization.”

Another lesson, he said, is the importance of restricting movement of people within and across borders. “It’s the best way to stop it. Certainly China is still successful by massively limiting people. And I do believe if that had been done from the beginning, we may be in a whole different place now.”

With reporting by James Hand-Cukierman.

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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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