Health (Page 89)

How well do vaccines protect against the new variants of the coronavirus? This is a question we – a group of scientists and doctors in Nottingham – set about answering earlier this year, having collected blood samples from a number of nurses and doctors throughout the pandemic. We started taking blood from healthcare workers back in April 2020, in the peak of the first wave, to see how many of them had been infected with the coronavirus and what their levels of antibodies were. We followed up with them in the summer and then again in the autumn, so we knew exactly who had had COVID-19 and when. We then asked a group of them to give us blood samplesContinue Reading

Corona Borealis Studio/Shutterstock The UK medicines regulator has just approved a new COVID-19 treatment. Branded Ronapreve in the UK and REGEN-COV in the US, the drug was developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals with Roche. It first grabbed headlines in October 2020 when President Trump received it during his COVID-19 infection. Already licensed for emergency use in more than 20 countries – including the US, Japan and India – it is used to treat or prevent acute COVID-19 infection, though isn’t a substitute for vaccination. Administered by injection or infusion, it’s intended for people at high risk of developing severe COVID-19. It can be given either to people already showing symptoms or those who have recently been exposed to someone infected toContinue Reading

Kittrat Roekburi/Shutterstock For many people, the social restrictions experienced during lockdown will have long-lasting effects. These include stress, depression, insomnia, fear, anger, frustration, boredom and stigma associated with quarantine. But during the pandemic, NHS staff had to face all these things and deal with working on the frontline. As a result, many health workers will grapple with a lasting impact on their mental health and well-being. Nurses working in respiratory care have played a particularly important role treating and managing COVID-19 patients, and they were also extensively involved in co-ordinaring services, screening, vaccination, emergency and intensive care. Based on an online survey of 255 nurses working in clinical areas during the pandemic, our initial study in November 2020 revealed thatContinue Reading

Halfpoint/Shutterstock When COVID-19 arrived, it quickly became clear that older age was the biggest risk factor for developing severe disease. Indeed, there are few diseases for which age is so clearly the most important risk factor. NHS doctors have seen this daily. There have been over 131,000 UK deaths from COVID-19, but early research (still awaiting review by other scientists) suggests that very few children (fewer than 30 in the UK) have died from COVID-19 or related conditions. Consequently, children have been regarded as being at low risk. However, as the consensus grows that the virus will become endemic, and with most high-risk people (in rich countries) now vaccinated, questions about how COVID-19 affects children have become prominent. We thereforeContinue Reading

The pace of acute therapy and vaccine development for COVID have been dizzying. But even as we hope a route to bringing the pandemic under control is within sight, we’re now facing the possibility of another urgent public health emergency thanks to what’s known as long COVID, a group of symptoms that last long after the initial infection. With such a potential crisis looming, it is reasonable to ask what we are doing about it, and why treatments don’t appear to be forthcoming. There are a few reasons why the long COVID story may pan out differently. Let’s take the first problem: long COVID is not a diagnosis itself. It encompasses many different problems, from blood clots and lung scarringContinue Reading

After an incredible start, the UK’s vaccination programme is now slowing down. Over 80 million doses have been administered, but more than 10% of the UK adult population still hasn’t been vaccinated. With COVID-19 cases once again rising, the question of how to boost vaccine uptake among the hesitant is a pressing concern. Previous research suggests that uptake depends on how threatened people feel by the virus, how effective they believe vaccines are in countering this threat, and the risks they associate with vaccination. Of these, “perceived efficacy” – people’s perception of how protective the vaccine is – may be the best predictor of intentions and decisions to take a COVID-19 vaccine, as we know this strongly influences people’s decisionsContinue Reading

NIAID/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, recently announced that the delta variant is no longer of concern because it now comprises 98% of new cases in the country and is therefore “the normal variant”. This virus has spread to at least 90 countries and is 50% more transmissible than the alpha variant (the variant first identified in Kent), which is around 50% more transmissible than the original coronavirus that caused the pandemic. With cases rising exponentially and restrictions lifted, it is important to understand how well the vaccines are faring against the delta variant. A new study from the Pasteur Institute in France found that the delta variant is less sensitive to neutralising antibodiesContinue Reading