Five more people have recovered from the novel coronavirus in London-Middlesex and there are no new cases or deaths as of Sunday, the Middlesex-London Health Unit (MLHU) reported.
The total number of COVID-19 cases in the region remains unchanged at 555, the death count stands at 56 and the number of recoveries has risen to 413 — about 74.5 per cent of cases.
The city of London is where 518 of the region’s cases have been reported — about 93 per cent — while 20 cases have been reported in Strathroy-Caradoc and seven Middlesex Centre.
Elsewhere, four cases each have been reported in North Middlesex and Thames Centre, and one each has been reported in Lucan Biddulph and Southwest Middlesex.
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The health unit says the COVID-19 assessment centre at Oakridge Arena in London is changing its hours to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday starting Monday, June 8.
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Three outbreaks remain active — at Kensington Village, Sisters of St. Joseph and Chelsey Park Retirement Community. They were declared April 3, April 17 and May 30, respectively.
At least 19 of the 24 outbreaks that have been declared locally during the pandemic have involved seniors’ facilities.
Local seniors’ homes, which includes both long-term care and retirement homes, have seen 169 cases of COVID-19. This includes 104 residents and 65 staff members. Additionally, 36 people have died.
In terms of total case count, the most severe of the three outbreaks has been at Sisters of St. Joseph, where at least 25 cases have been reported, involving 13 residents and 12 staff members.
Of those, three residents and one staff member have died.
The number of hospitalized patients in the city declined by one to eight as of midnight Friday, according to the most recent update from London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC).
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The figure is a combination of cases at University and Victoria hospitals. It’s not clear whether any patients are in intensive care.
LHSC announced last week that it would stop releasing an updated number of positive cases among staff members unless the tally increased by five or greater. The organization said it was to protect staff privacy.
No new cases, recoveries or deaths were reported Sunday in the region.
Officials with Southwestern Public Health (SWPH) say there are still 68 recoveries, the total number of confirmed cases remains at 75 and no new deaths have been reported since April 22.
Officials say an outbreak at Secord Trails that has left at least eight staff sickened remains active as of Saturday. The long-term care facility in Ingersoll has seen an active outbreak since May 18.
Of the three cases that remain active in the region, one is in Oxford County in Tillsonburg, while two remain active in Elgin County, both in St. Thomas.
As of Sunday, 5,870 tests had been conducted in Elgin and Oxford counties, of which 650 remained pending results.
Huron and Perth
Health officials reported one new case of COVID-19 on Sunday.
There are now 55 reported cases in the region, of which 46 people have recovered and five have died. No new deaths have been reported in the region since April 29.
The newest case was reported in Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh.
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The number of active outbreaks remains at zero. A total of seven have been declared, involving 27 cases.
All but seven of those cases were reported at Greenwood Court in Stratford. An outbreak there saw six residents and 10 staff members test positive, and four people die. It was declared over May 11.
Twenty-six cases have been reported in Stratford, while 13 have been reported in Huron County and 11 in Perth County.
Four cases have been in St. Marys, including the region’s first two.
The health unit said 3,919 tests had been administered in Huron and Perth as of Sunday. Of those, 109 were awaiting test results.
Sarnia and Lambton
One person has died in the area due to COVID-19 as of Sunday, according to Lambton Public Health (LPH).
The deceased was a resident at Vision Nursing Home in Sarnia, where 26 residents and 25 staff members have tested positive for the virus. Ten residents have since died.
LPH says this is the only active outbreak in the area.
Still-positive residents from the home have been moved to Bluewater Health hospital to keep the outbreak from spreading.
Additionally, another person has tested positive for the virus, and there are no new recoveries.
This brings the area’s total number of coronavirus cases to 268, the death toll to 25 and the number of recoveries remains unchanged at 223.
Bluewater Health says it’s treating 11 COVID-19 patients as of Sunday, along with 19 who are suspected positive or are awaiting tests, two fewer than the day before.
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.
There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.
The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.
Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.
Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.
Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.
“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.
But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.
That includes his own teenage daughter.
“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.
It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.
“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”
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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.
New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.
“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.
The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.
Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.
It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.
Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.
Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.
The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.
The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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