Migraine is one of the 20 diseases disabling diseases in the world, and it is estimated that it affects 15% of the world’s population. Hammering in the head or temples, vomiting, dazzling and even sometimes tingling or limbs falling asleep. The first time you experience it is always traumatic, to the point that some people come to believe that they are suffering something more serious, like a stroke. Unfortunately, they have no cure, and the only thing that can be tried is to prevent them.
But what if prevention is even worse? This is what happened to a 24-year-old Indian woman, as collected ‘Live Science‘: the medicine he was taking for his migraine gave him a strange burning sensation in his legs and the loss of one of his toes, he also experienced problems walking and, according to the doctors, his legs were’ cold to the touch ‘ . When she went to the doctor, worried about her situation, she explained that four days before she had started taking ergotamine to fight the headaches caused by the migraines she suffers. The woman was born with HIV and, in addition, has to take several antiviral drugs to treat the disease.
During the Middle Ages, ergot poisonings were common. The disease began with an intense cold in the extremities
After studying the case, the doctors she was diagnosed with ergotism, also called san antonio fire, a disease caused by ergot poisoning, a parasitic fungus of this cereal. One of the substances produced by this fungus is the aforementioned ergotamine, whose main medical indication is day in migraine crisis when they are resistant to traditional painkillers. It is reserved for severe cases, but its use in migraines with aura is debated and is generally discouraged. The effects of its poisoning translate into hallucinations, seizures, arterial contraction, necrosis or appearance of gangrene in the extremities.
During the Middle Agesergot poisonings were frequent and hospitals were even created that were exclusively dedicated to caring for these patients. The disease started with sudden intense cold in all limbs to become a sharp burn. Many victims managed to survive but were mutilated: they could lose all their limbs. The patient could also suffer abdominal pain that ended in sudden death and, in pregnant women, caused abortions.
Treatment did not come fast enough to prevent gangrene in one of the toes on his left foot, which had to be amputated
Public health measures to prevent ergotism, such as removing infected (looking black) kernels from the crop, began in the 19th century, and the disease has since been listed as rare. In the case of medicines that contain ergot and are used for medical purposes, as we have already mentioned, some people can develop ergotism despite taking the recommended doses, this can occur when they are also taking other medications. This is what happened to the woman who came to the hospital two weeks ago, as she was taking ritonavir as part of her HIV treatment.
Doctors treated her ergotism with heparin, and Your symptoms they soon got better: the pain subsided and her legs warmed up. However, the treatment did not come quickly enough to prevent gangrene in one of the toes of your left foot, which had to be amputated. Two weeks later, the subsequent follow-up reportedly found that he had better blood flow in both legs.
Among children and young people, the coronavirus has left deep cracks. In addition to the imminent risk of contagion, this health crisis has had a profound impact on their well-being, creating a series of fears despite the fact that little by little we have been recovering some of the habits that we had abandoned due to the quarantine.
On repeated occasions, medical specialists have expressed that children and adolescents have the same probability of being infected as any other age group and can spread the disease, although the virus would cause a milder infection than in other people.
Only in Barranquilla, according to figures from the Ministry of Health, 6,184 positive cases have been reported among children under 25 years of age, which corresponds to about 19.6% of total cases (31,624, as of August 7) .
“This has been the expected behavior for Colombia. Unfortunately, young populations and young adults are asymptomatic, ”said Humberto Mendoza, Secretary of Health.
And although in the collective imagination it is valid that all the deceased have been elderly, in the capital of the Atlantic it is reported that – as of August 7 – 12 people under the age of 25 have died from this disease. which corresponds to 0.8% of total deaths.
“This is not a game. Many young people believe that this is never going to touch us and when it does, it is a very strong shock for one and, of course, for your entire family, “said a 21-year-old girl, who for more than a month was fighting against the new coronavirus.
The district administration has been working with educational and communication strategies for this population, with the main objective of banishing that false belief about the immunity of children to this virus, as well as raising awareness about the possibility that they can lead to this disease. your parents or grandfather.
KOMPAS.com –Stomach and heart are two organs that are closely positioned. That is why people often confuse the symptoms of pain stomach and heart disease.
Some people even feel it often you- degan when his stomach acid rises.
But, is it true that increased stomach acid can cause heart palpitations?
Acid reflux disease is a condition caused by acid reflux from the stomach stomach to the throat.
Medical specialist Heart and Blood Vessels as well as Interventional Cardiology Consultant and Electrifisiology Consultant dr. Ignatius Yansen NG., SP.JP (K), FIHA gave an explanation.
He said acid reflux causes a person’s stomach to contain excessive amounts of gas.
When this condition occurs, the stomach will expand and its position next to the heart makes the stomach sometimes can give pressure to the heart.
“So sometimes there is a pounding sensation or discomfort in the chest. That’s why patients with stomach complaints have the same complaints as heart patients.”
This was revealed by dr. Yansen inside Live Instagram with Eka Bekasi Hospital, Friday (7/8/2020).
Therefore, dr. Yansen reminded people who experience complaints in the stomach to stay alert.
Because, it is not impossible that the complaint leads to heart disease.
Especially if the complaint is experienced by parents who have several risk factors for heart disease, such as high blood pressure and diabetes and cholesterol.
From Friday 7 August to Sunday 9 August, Prime Minister Erna Solberg (H) will visit Nordland and Troms and Finnmark. On Saturday, she will visit Bø Museum, Kobbervågen crushing plant in Bø, Sortland shopping center and Fri Energi in Harstad. In the evening, she attends dinner with local businesses in the region.
Raja visits the Al-Noor Mosque
Al-Noor Islamic Center will inform Minister of Culture and Gender Equality Abid Raja (V) about his work after the terrorist attack in August last year. The mosque will also provide input to the forthcoming action plan against discrimination and hatred against Muslims.
Health worker demonstration in the UK
Employees of the UK Public Health Service will demonstrate in several places for better pay.
Large demonstrations in Beirut
Major protests have been announced against the Lebanese authorities in Beirut. At the same time, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel.
Protests after governor imprisonment in Russia
Several protests have been announced in Khabarovsk, Russia, where a popular governor has been jailed for a 2000s murder.
Mouthpiece injunction in France
Mouthpieces are mandated in Saint-Tropez, France, as a measure against the coronary pandemic.
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DECRYPTION – In Europe and the United States, the incidence rate has fallen by 13% in ten years for reasons still unexplained.
While the downward trend in the number of Alzheimer’s cases is the same in Europe as in the United States, this is not true for the rest of the world, particularly in Russia, Asia or South America.JAN TEPASS/bilderstoeckchen – stock.adobe.com
The risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or another form of neuronal degeneration at any given age has been reduced by 13% in ten years, reports a major study conducted in the United States and several European countries, and over more than twenty five years. This good news is all the more surprising given that we regularly hear that there will be an increase in the number of elderly people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or another related neurodegenerative disease in the years to come. And, unfortunately, this prediction is true. The marked drop in individual risk will not be enough to compensate for the aging of the population in our country. It will simply mitigate this wave.
“A few isolated studies had already reported a drop in the incidence of dementia, in certain countries and with very variable impacts, and we decided four years ago to bring together several cohorts to increase the statistical strength of the evidence,”
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At the age of 27, in order to get a change of scenery and to leave the hospitals of the metropolis for a while, Arthur (1) had chosen a medical internship in Guyana for the summer of 2020. It was just before the pandemic:
“I chose my period well, you will tell me: after the first deluge of patients in metropolitan France, the Guyanese wave. Without being a journalist myself, I will try to follow this quote from Albert Londres: “Our job is not to please, nor to do harm, it is to carry the feather in the wound.” This testimony will therefore necessarily be unique to me, with my vision as a caregiver, my bias as a metropolitan and the inherent bias in preserving anonymity while trying to remain faithful to what is happening away from cameras and institutional social networks. I will mainly talk about hospital and territorial management but will not address the issue of city medicine due to ignorance of the subject.
“Before talking about Covid, I would like to paint a quick picture of the health situation here: Guyana is currently suffering from a dengue epidemic, and for a long time that of HIV. And that’s without counting the problems that are much more frequent than cardiovascular disease or cancer. Take Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni for example, for a population pool of several tens of thousands of people, the number of hospital beds in acute medicine outside the Covid-19 period is … 30. It is not to sink into the miserable but it is certain that 30, that calms down … In total, there are three hospitals on the coast distributed in the big cities (Cayenne, Kourou and Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni) and centers of health dispersed in land and along waterways. We all know that the investment and skills of caregivers are very heterogeneous in the hospital… but here we can say that it is pushed to its climax. Before detailing the dysfunctions in the management of this crisis, I would like to greet some incredible caregivers: those who have been pillars of care in this department for several years, those who have set up services, those who allow the hospital to stand up. But alongside these staff, we find jumbled mercenaries who don’t care, those who don’t have the skills but don’t realize it, and those who feed their ego. In such a difficult environment, the contrast is striking.
Staggering lack of communication
“You have to adapt in Guyana all the time. We have to adapt to patients: to a sometimes exacerbated precariousness, to the different language barriers, to their paperwork problems, to their life outside the big cities of the coast. We have to adapt to the means: digestive endoscopies are Cayenne, urology is Kourou, ophthalmology is Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. Certain biological examinations… it is the metropolis. So I can understand that we cannot work as I am used to in metropolitan France, that we have to juggle and make compromises. But some situations are just indecent. Not in France, not in 2020: we do not refuse to take a patient in his thirties in intensive care under the pretext that he is HIV and Brazilian. We do not die after having an epidural for childbirth. We are not saying that we do not care if we made a mistake because the patient speaks poor French and will not file a complaint. You cannot be unreachable when you are on call… I think that in metropolitan France, no one would accept some of the things that I have seen here. And that can be brushed aside with the back of the hand since “It’s that or nothing, there is no one else”. It is not acceptable, it is indecent. And still I’m lucky in my medical practice, I’m a guy, people listen to me. It sucks, but that’s how it is. This is clearly not specific to Guyanese hospitals: more than once when I was a student I was spoken to instead of my boss. But here it is exacerbated, I am ashamed to have to repeat what my female colleagues say so that less competent men listen to them. It is blatant, it is shameful.
“The patients, at least as far as I have come across, have illnesses made worse by many social problems. Two like that in your room in metropolitan France, it burns you out for the day. Here it is everyday. Illnesses as in the books and patients who do not fit into the administrative framework. I don’t want you to imagine the Wild West by reading this, but there are so many great projects to strengthen or create, I think our fellow citizens deserve to be done better. So inevitably, when a pandemic emerges, we are not serene. We had two major advantages: a young population and a few weeks ahead of the mainland. We quickly forget the weeks in advance, they were squandered by internal quarrels between hospital management, crisis management and the ARS. It was almost as if we were discovering the problems day to day, with a beautiful ball of hypocrites constantly parading in the media and on social networks. I am very happy to see the director of ARS Guyane, Clara de Bort, pose on the tarmac of the airport with her staff and congratulate herself on carrying out Evasan (medical evacuations) in a beautiful cooperation with hospitals. Unfortunately, it has happened several times that some of these evacuations were announced on television or on the Internet… before warning the doctors who directly took care of the patients concerned. The first time it was a family who came to ask us at what time their loved one would be evacuated when we had not been informed …
“Finally, I would have had the right to the same speech here as at the start of the wave in metropolitan France:” No, but France is different, it will not be like Italy “,” No, but Guyana, that will be fine, it won’t be like in the metropolis. ” One day you will explain to me which part of “pandemic” you did not understand. I don’t know, honestly, how we could confidently say that everything was ready, that we didn’t need help and that everything was going to be fine. I feel like I heard Macron say that we never ran out of masks. Nobody one day could assume to say “It’s shit, but we will adapt as quickly as possible, everyone is on the front”? Must always put everything under the carpet? Fortunately, we had help, a lot of help, a lot of people who came to give a helping hand whether it was on their leave, on an agreement between hospitals, via the army or the health reserve. However, I would still like to underline the astounding lack of communication between hospitals, ARS and health reserve. You try to round up your friends to fill in the holes, put on the patches to keep it going and you finally discover that a whole team is arriving but no one has seen fit to warn the staff. You may even hear the phrase “There are too many reinforcements” while services are still understaffed. I know that in the end the whole technostructure will congratulate itself on the excellent management and will go with its little comment, but it is the caregivers who make it possible to hold on.
Infernal mixture of care, public opinion and political interests
“The health reserve I still have a few complaints. Throwing in the room retired general practitioners who have not done hospitality since their start of their careers and putting hospital workers in town, doesn’t that sound like a bad idea? I have no desire to be ungrateful to my colleagues, more than courageous, who volunteered to come, but maybe estimating the needs and positioning the reinforcements accordingly would be a good start. So inevitably when by ego we say that all is well in the services, we find ourselves hearing that a pulmonologist or infectious disease specialist is not necessary in Guyana. Anyway, we are no longer close. Ah and I greet you dear resuscitator colleague who did not want to see respiratory distress because you were eating. I do not forget you. Same for the reinforcements who complained about not being able to tour, I do not forget you either.
The climax of this infernal mixture between care, public opinion and political interests was the trial planned for plasma therapy (with plasma from patients who had developed antibodies). If we summarize the situation, a trial concerning the interest of plasma therapy in Sars-CoV-2 infection had started in metropolitan France and was to continue in Guyana. There are two advantages to this: to provide patients with a potentially useful treatment and to succeed in including enough patients to reach a robust conclusion. In a context of mistrust of health authorities, media hubbub and the habit of this department being left behind, announcing this news from Paris was very clumsy. Let us add to this that this was done not by a PUPH (university professor-hospital practitioner) but by a PUPH, Karine Lacombe, and it was gone. Everyone has gone there from their affiliations to promote themselves, deputy, local collectives, close to Didier Raoult’s IHU. And in this mess, in the end, people were therefore pushed to demonstrate to refuse the help of an infectious disease specialist and her team in a territory that badly needed it. Admittedly, the announcement was awkward, but we saw people chanting loud and clear that they refused therapeutic help. I thus saw a good number of messages passing to say that the Guyanese patients were not guinea pigs. It’s such a no-brainer: no one is ever forcibly included in an essay if they don’t want to. This is the very basis of our ethical principles. But obviously to say it would do a disservice to the conspiracy discourse. On the other hand, promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine without any proof of its effectiveness in Covid, that was to use patients as guinea pigs. Associations have been calling for the creation of a university hospital in Guyana for years… and when a university team comes to do research, the door is vehemently slammed in its face.
“All this reflects a profound ignorance of clinical research and its functioning. So I hope that some people’s political agenda was worth it. In all of these ego bickering, whenever politics take precedence over caregivers and scientists for the wrong reasons, it is the patients who drink. While the Guyanese are worth it that we are interested in their territory, that we invest in improving access to healthcare here and that it be worthy of France. ”
Cloving hospital on the basis of the Medical Scientific and Educational Center (ISSC) Moscow State University named after M.V.Lomonosov took the first patients on April 21 and completed his work on June 13. It turned out that it was possible to achieve the best treatment results for COVID-19 in Moscow. Over the entire period, 4 patients died, and among severe patients who got mechanical ventilation, the mortality rate was less than 14% (for comparison, the average for the city and the world was up to 70 – 80%). Eighteen doctors out of 220 employees of the hospital were infected with coronavirus, there were no deaths among the medical staff.
What approaches were used at the University Hospital of Moscow State University to achieve such results? We continue the conversation with the head. Department of Therapy, Faculty of Fundamental Medicine, Moscow State University, Head of the Department of Age-Associated Diseases, Medical Scientific and Educational Center, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Cardiologist Yana Orlova.
MEDICINE FOR COUGH FOR 80 RUBLES
– Most of those who are ill or are afraid to get sick are worried about fibrotic changes in their lungs. They say that you have developed special therapy that can reduce the risk of developing fibrosis. Is it possible?!
– Yes, we launched an appropriate clinical study. There are no final results yet, but we have developed clinical practice.
“What did you do to save the lungs?”
– We used a combination of bromhexine and spironolactone (both are long-known very cheap drugs. – Ed.). Bromhexine is an expectorant that has been prescribed to patients with pneumonia and cough for many years. At the same time, experimental data showed that this drug can block a specific enzyme and impede the penetration of coronavirus into cells. True, it was on this effect that we counted to a lesser extent in inpatients, since such an effect is important mainly in the early stages of the disease. But the expectorant effect of bromhexine really helps patients with COVID. I heard that our colleagues in Peter launched a study of bromhexine for prophylactic purposes. We will wait for the results.
Coronavirus infected 18 doctors from 220 employees of the hospital, there were no deaths among the medical staffPhoto: Ivan MAKEEV
FIBROSIS OBSTACLE
– The second drug – spironolactone – is traditionally widely used in cardiology for the treatment of heart failure, severe hypertension. It has a small diuretic, magnesium and potassium-preserving effect, continues Yana. Orlova. – It has several mechanisms through which it can be useful in coronavirus infection.
Firstly, a mechanism that prevents the development of fibrosis in general in the body. There are works that, in particular, show that spironolactone reduces fibrosis in the heart. At the same time, it is known that the tendency to fibrosis is not local, but systemic – where there is more inflammation, there will certainly be fibrosis. And we see, of course, fibrotic changes in the “covide” in our patients. Therefore, we prescribed spironolactone as a drug for the prevention of this process.
Secondly, this drug blocks sex hormone receptors, in particular testosterone. Some published studies suggest that “high-testosterone” men suffer from “covid” more often and develop more severe fibrotic changes. Therefore, blocking these receptors for several weeks during COVID treatment may be useful in reducing the severity of complications. We are not talking about a longer intake, since male patients are unlikely to agree with a decrease in testosterone levels in the long term.
And perhaps the most important point. In almost all of our patients, we observed hypokalemia (a decrease in potassium levels. – Ed.). With coronavirus infection, potassium is intensely excreted from the body, and scientific articles even suggest that hypokalemia serves as the trigger for a cytokine storm. So spironolactone has a real chance to reduce the risk of this dangerous complication. But the main thing, in my opinion, is that lowering the level of potassium in the body is extremely harmful to the heart and triggers life-threatening rhythm disturbances, increasing the risk of sudden death. We, like all others, replenished potassium with droppers, but it was more effective to retain it in the body with the help of spironolactone.
Men certainly get worse than women; the elderly are heavier than the young; overweight people are heavier than overweight patientsPhoto: Ivan MAKEEV
WHEN PRESCRIBED PATIENTS
– Yana Arturovna, how many patients did you have on average?
– About 10 – 14 days. But someone and 50 days.
– Have you noticed signs by which it can be assumed that the disease in the person brought is likely to go the hard way?
– Such studies were carried out in the world, our clinical practice confirmed them. Men certainly get worse than women; the elderly are heavier than the young; overweight people are heavier than overweight patients. Men with a classic male type of baldness, a lot of facial hair, we can say brutal men get sick harder.
– Under what conditions did you discharge patients?
– We acted as close as possible to the recommendations Ministry of Health: so that the temperature for three days was not higher than 37.5 degrees; so that C-reactive protein (an indicator of inflammation) is lower than 10 mg / l, and saturation, that is, the level of oxygen in the blood, is higher than 96%.
“HEAD OF EPIDEMIOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF ITSELF WORKED AT SANPROPUSNIK”
– How often do you get sick doctors and nurses?
– In the first month no one got sick at all. We have a very powerful epidemiological service. The head of the sanitary-epidemiological department, a senior researcher, correctly organized the whole process, and for the first two weeks she personally worked in the sanitary inspection room at the exit from the “red zone” and helped doctors and nurses who were exhausted after the shift safely remove protective clothing.
Then both people’s fatigue and viral load accumulated. By the middle of the second month, sick people began to appear. There were no seriously ill patients. We treated part of the staff in our observation, part of it was treated at home. In total, 18 people were infected from the medical staff (less than 10%).
– Doctors take something for prevention? Vitamins C, D, Zinc?
– I saw the recommendations of American nutritionists, they speak out positively about taking zinc, melatonin and vitamin C. There were somewhat conflicting data on vitamin D. But we did not give any such recommendations to our employees. We have all the prevention was associated with minimizing contacts and other measures of epidemiological safety.
Physicians are the heroes of our time.“If you think that you are special and that a pandemic will not affect you, you are deeply mistaken,” listen to what the doctors who are fighting with coronavirus say
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A team of Spanish virologists found traces of the new coronavirus in a sample of wastewater collected in Barcelona in March 2019, nine months before the first case of Covid-19 in China was identified, the University of Barcelona said. The investigation will now be reviewed by other experts.
The discovery of the presence of the virus genome so early in Spain, when confirmed, will imply that the disease may have appeared much earlier than the scientific community thought. The University of Barcelona team, which has been analyzing wastewater since mid-April 2020 to identify possible new outbreaks, has also decided to study older samples.
The group of experts had already discovered that the virus was present in Barcelona on January 15, 2020 for the first time, 41 days before the first case was officially registered in the city. They then studied samples collected between January 2018 and December 2019, finding the presence of the virus genome in one of them, collected in March 2019, “where SARS-CoV-2 levels were low more positive,” said Albert Bosch, responsible for the investigation.
“All samples were negative for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genomes, with the exception of the March 12, 2019 sample, where SARS-CoV-2 levels were very low, but were clearly positive,” he explained. the specialist in a statement issued by the University of Barcelona.
Doctor Joan Ramón Villabí, a member of the board of the Spanish Society for Public Health and Sanitary Administration, added to Reuters that it was too early to draw definitive conclusions.
The number of deaths in the capital since the beginning of the pandemic reached 3,761, more than 220 thousand people fell ill
Photo: Alexey Maishev / RIA Novosti
Over the last day in Moscow, 23 people died with coronavirus infection COVID-19, according to the operational headquarters to combat the disease. In all patients, pneumonia was confirmed.
Since the start of the pandemic, the total number of deaths in the city has reached 3,761.
How the number of coronavirus survivors and deaths in Russia is changing
Recover (new cases)
Dead (new cases)
Source: Federal and Regional Anti-Virus Activities
Russian data i
The capital is in first place in the number of coronavirus victims among Russian regions. Following, according to the website Stopkoronavirus.rf, go St. Petersburg (1086), Moscow Region (864), Dagestan (371) and Nizhny Novgorod Region (226). According to the data of the operational headquarters on the morning of June 28, a total of 9073 deaths were recorded in Russia.
Since the spread of infection in Moscow, more than 220 thousand cases of coronavirus have been identified. In total, 634.4 thousand people were infected in Russia, 399 thousand patients fully recovered.
European epidemiologists warn which countries should start preparing for a second wave of covid-19.
The covid-19 outbreak is far from over. The World Health Organization (WHO) points out that it is not long before the 10 million infected people are reached worldwide and there are even countries where the rate of new cases has increased again in recent weeks as restrictions are being lifted. One of the most worrying cases is Germany, but the country.
The second wave of SARS-CoV-2 has been mentioned even before most European countries have reached the peak of the outbreak internally, but no one has ever been able to predict when it would arrive, with the most consensus opinion that it should arrive after summer. But now there are those who say that this second wave may come during the summer months.
The scientific community defines the “wave” – albeit informally – in comparison with the waves of the sea. If the natural waves are counted from the moment the descent of water is replaced by a sudden flood. In the case of viruses, the end of the first “wave” is counted when a peak is reached and then it moves to a situation in which the pandemic is minimally controlled. When there is a systematic increase in cases again, the second wave is mentioned.
Even with a few hundred cases appearing every day in Portugal, a second wave could be talked about, according to researchers from the National Institute of Health Ricardo Jorge. “Since the first Covid-19 case notified in Portugal, the country remains in an epidemic situation”, however, in the region of Lisbon and Vale do Tejo (LVT) “the trend and the magnitude of the values of the epidemic curve do not allow us exclude – or conclude unequivocally – from a second phase of growth “, the researchers told Lusa.
The researchers say that the containment measures adopted led to a reduction in the rate of transmission of the infection in the community, but did not eliminate the circulation of the virus, allowing “flattening of the epidemic curve”, which is consistent with the continuous occurrence of new cases of disease over time. Hence it is not yet possible to speak of a new wave in Lisbon, but rather the continuation of the first wave of cases. The truth is that Portugal has had more than 700 cases per day (it had up to one day with almost 1,500 new infections) and currently it has been normally above 350, but below 400, with some variations.
However, there are countries that have had the outbreak under control and are now grappling with a large increase in cases. Iran, for example, which lifted restrictions in April, returned to around 3,000 cases a day in the past month after reaching less than 1,000 a day.
Germany is also preparing for a possible second wave after an outbreak in a slaughterhouse in the town of Gütersloh, which has been in confinement since Tuesday. The company had more than 1,500 positive cases of covid-19. However, the German government says it is acting quickly to control the outbreak and this Friday the number of new cases has decreased again, as well as the rate of contagion which stands at 0.59, after having been above 1 , 01 this week. Portugal and Switzerland also have an index above 1.0. But in Germany, new cases increased by 36.7%, while in Switzerland, they were 15.1% compared to the previous week.
The difference is that Portugal has already announced new restrictive measures (mainly in the Greater Lisbon region, where a new outbreak has been reported) and these two other European countries are resisting this decision, trying to control the outbreak without resorting to general confinement.
Maurizio Cecconi, a doctor at the Humanitas University Hospital in Milan, Italy, told the Euronews: “We are ready for second wave patients. What happened at the beginning of the epidemic is that we were taken by surprise”.
In an open letter published in the British Medical Journal, British experts alerted the government of that country to the evidence that indicates that local outbreaks are increasingly likely and a second wave a real risk “.
Jozef Kesecioglu, president of the European Society for Intensive Care Medicine, believes that the second wave is not as serious as the first and says that there is a plan, both at the level of national governments, local governments and hospitals for extra beds .
INSA researchers say that the likelihood of new epidemic waves may be influenced by external factors that favor the spread of the virus, or by the occurrence of genetic changes in the virus that increase its transmission capacity in the human population. “For example, other respiratory viruses, such as the flu virus, circulate with epidemic expression in the autumn and winter months, but it is not yet known whether this will be the case for SARS-CoV-2”, they add.
The researchers conclude that “the criteria for defining a second Covid-19 epidemic wave are not yet consensual in the world, which increases the complexity of interpreting epidemiological data and indicators, compounded by the effects of human intervention on the natural history of the disease. “.
