A further 320 new cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed this evening by the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet). They also confirmed that there were no additional deaths this evening. With 320 cases this evening, it means there has now been a total of 238,466 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Ireland. AdvertisementContinue Reading
While the immediate impact of Covid-19 on our health and daily lives is abundantly clear, there are still plenty of question marks over long Covid and how it will continue to have an impact on people’s lives. The psychological effects are already starting to be seen while how serious an impact it will have on people’s health remains to be seen. Dr Gillian Moore-Groarke, a specialist in health psychology, and Professor Robert Byrne, director of cardiology at the Mater Private Hospital, spoke to BreakingNews.ie about how long Covid is affecting Irish patients. Dr Moore-Groarke is the psychologist attached to the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork while she also has a private practice in Harley Court, Wilton, Cork. She has seenContinue Reading
DisobeyArt/Shutterstock Do you remember where you were when you heard that the COVID-19 outbreak had become a pandemic? For many of us, that day – March 11 2020 – was the day that everything changed. Suddenly, a rumbling news story about a mystery illness became a matter of concern for every single person on the planet. It’s easy to forget what things were like before the pandemic, now we are so used to wearing masks, washing our hands constantly and keeping metres apart from other human beings wherever we can. But the truth is that coronavirus has changed our lives completely – from the way we work to our social interactions and how we spend our leisure time. To reflectContinue Reading
British health authorities are currently hunting for an unknown person who has tested positive for a variant of the coronavirus known as P1. Sometimes called the Brazil variant, P1 is feared to be more transmissible than earlier forms of the coronavirus. It may also be partially resistant to immunity generated by prior infections or vaccination. Six people have tested positive with P1 in the UK, but one of them didn’t leave contact details behind when completing their test. This has sparked an urgent effort to find this person and trace their contacts to limit the variant’s spread. The variant is believed to have originated in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state in Brazil, and so is also known as theContinue Reading
As a middling but competent clinician-scientist, I feel desperately sorry for the general public trying to make head or tail of some of the scientific discussions on the pandemic right now. Science is being done, disseminated, argued about – sometimes peer-reviewed if we are lucky – and then immediately rewritten days later. Even with some experience, it’s hard to keep up. Data and reports come thick and fast, with little time to assess what they really mean. One particularly fast-moving topic at the moment is vaccine efficacy. The emerging data from vaccination programmes looks great and seems to strongly back up the findings of clinical trials. However, in keeping with these frenzied times, on closer inspection what’s being presented isContinue Reading
shutterstock The most common symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, a dry cough, and losing your sense of taste and smell. Other signs that are frequently seen include headaches, muscle and joint pain, nasal congestion, and fatigue. A less common symptom are rashes of various forms. These have been slower to be reported, partly due to the wide variety that have appeared in COVID-19 patients, making it more challenging to establish a consistent correlation. Nevertheless, knowing how COVID-19 affects the skin is important. A recent study found that for 17% of COVID-19 patients with multiple symptoms, skin rashes were the first symptom to appear, while for 21% of patients rashes were their only symptom. Being able to identify the effects ofContinue Reading
males_design/Shutterstock Coronavirus affects people differently – some infected develop life-threatening disease, while others remain asymptomatic. And a year aftere COVID-19 emerged, it’s still unclear why. To try and answer this question, researchers have started looking at the genetics of people who get COVID-19, and identifying links between developing the disease and variations in specific parts of our DNA. This raises the possibility that some of what makes people susceptible to COVID-19 lies in their genes. This wouldn’t be surprising. Genetic variation plays a role in susceptibility to a number of diseases, from HIV to malaria to TB. Researchers know this because they hunt for variations of interest by comparing people’s entire DNA sequences – their genomes – to see whetherContinue Reading
The UK’s COVID-19 response has been criticised severely. Britain is among the countries with the highest number of recorded COVID-19 cases and deaths. But with its vaccination campaign, its fortunes seem to have turned. The UK is one of the world’s front runners when it comes to vaccine coverage. On December 8 2020, it became the first country to start administering a fully trialled and tested COVID-19 vaccine to its citizens. Since then, more than 18 million people in the UK have received a first vaccine dose, with over 600,000 second doses also being administered. The UK government has pledged that all adults will be offered a vaccine before the end of July. This would be a huge achievement lessContinue Reading
We are living through an age of untold suffering. Over 500,000 people have died from coronavirus in the US alone, over 120,000 in the UK, and over two million worldwide. With COVID-19 dominating the news cycle, you would be forgiven for forgetting that other diseases still exist. And yet we know full well that diseases don’t stop just because one is hogging all the limelight. There have been plenty of reports on the troubling cost of the pandemic and associated lockdowns or shelter-in-place orders on people’s mental health. For example, it has had a profound effect on those living with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Studies from Europe show that between a third and half of those suffering from OCD had their symptomsContinue Reading
Editor’s note: Anne Moore is a senior lecturer in biochemistry and cell biology at University College Cork and a specialist in vaccine development. We spoke to her for episode 3 of The Conversation Weekly podcast on vaccine manufacturing. Below are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. First, are all the vaccines the same? No. Different COVID-19 vaccines use different technologies, or “platforms”. The most conventional one is the inactivated vaccine. It contains dead virus. Because the virus is still whole, it has all of the parts, in the correct shape, that can stimulate a response from the immune system – what we call the antigens. The immune response can be against multiple antigens. TheContinue Reading
