WHO projects COVID-19 peak in October | Daily News

WHO projects COVID-19 peak in October

ISRAEL,US: The World Health Organisation expects a rise in COVID-19 in Ukraine to peak in October, possibly bringing hospitals close to their capacity threshold, WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday.

“We are now seeing an increase in cases of COVID-19 in Ukraine. We project that transmission could peak in early October and hospitals could approach their capacity threshold,” Ghebreyesus told WHO’S Regional Committee for Europe conference in Tel Aviv.

“Oxygen shortages are predicted because major supply sources are in occupied parts of the country,” he said.

Oxygen is essential for patients with a range of conditions, including COVID-19 and those with other critical illnesses stemming from complications of pregnancy, childbirth, sepsis, injuries and trauma.

Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine has greatly impacted healthcare, with the WHO confirming more than 500 attacks on health infrastructure there, resulting in some 100 deaths. Ghebreyesus also said that the war could increase polio spread.

“We are also deeply concerned about the potential for the international spread of polio due to the gaps in immunization coverage and mass population movement linked to the war,” he said.

Ukraine has low vaccination coverage for both COVID and polio, an infectious disease mainly affecting children that can cause paralysis and kill in rare cases. Two cases of polio were reported in Ukraine in 2021.

Meanwhile, Researchers have developed an intranasal anti-viral treatment for COVID-19 that decreases the amount of SARS-CoV-2 shed from infected animals and limits transmission of the virus.

By the time people test positive for COVID-19, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has already taken up residence in their respiratory system. With each breath, people expel invisible viral particles into the air -- a process known as viral shedding.

Existing drugs aimed at treating COVID-19 address symptoms of the virus but do little to quell viral shedding.

Researchers at Gladstone Institutes in the US previously developed a novel approach for treating infectious diseases: a single-dose, intranasal treatment that protects against severe SARS-CoV-2 infection.

In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they show that this treatment, called a therapeutic interfering particle (TIP), also decreases the amount of virus shed from infected animals and limits transmission of the virus.

“Historically, it has been exceptionally challenging for antivirals and vaccines to limit the transmission of respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2,” said Gladstone investigator Leor Weinberger, senior author of the new research.

“This study shows that a single, intranasal dose of TIPs reduces the amount of virus transmitted, and protects animals that came into contact with that treated animal,” Leor Weinberger said.

The researchers noted that it is the only single-dose antiviral that reduces not only symptoms and severity of COVID-19, but also shedding of the virus.

Leor Weinberger and Sonali Chaturvedi, a research investigator at Gladstone and first author of the research, treated hamsters infected with SARS-CoV-2 with the antiviral TIPs and then measured, daily, the amount of virus in the animals’ noses.

Compared to hamsters that had not received the TIPs (called control animals), treated animals had less virus in their nasal passages at every time point. - NDTV


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