H5N1

Keep groups small this long weekend, health officials say as BC sees 50 new COVID-19 cases

Via CBC News: Keep groups small this long weekend, health officials say as B.C. sees 50 new COVID-19 cases.

B.C. health officials are cautioning people to keep groups small this long weekend as the province confirmed 50 new cases of COVID-19 Friday. 

Stick to people you know, avoid passing around drinks and stay outside, the province advises as part of a new resource titled the Good Times Guide.  

Officials have doubled down on messaging about safe socializing as Kelowna grapples with an outbreak linked to large indoor parties around Canada Day. 

"We can make this B.C. Day holiday weekend one where we find the right balance: having those important social connections with our friends and family, while taking precautions to protect ourselves and those around us," Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix said in a written statement. 

One more person has died in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, bringing the province's death toll to 195. 

There are 278 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, and 3,168 people have recovered.  

Hospitalizations remain low, with five people in hospital, two of whom are in intensive care. 

Henry and Dix announced one new outbreak at Dania Home, a long-term care home in the Fraser Health region. Two long-term care facilities and one acute-care facility are now dealing with active outbreaks. 

There are no new community outbreaks, and public health officials are monitoring outbreaks in Haida Gwaii and at a Fraser Valley fruit packing plant.  

Dix said the majority of the 41 new cases announced Thursday were linked to those two outbreaks.

Another COVID-19 patient in Vietnam dies

Against comorbidities and COVID-19, even Vietnam can't win them all. Via VietnamPlus: Another COVID-19 patient in Vietnam dies.

Hanoi (VNA) – Another COVID-19 patient in Vietnam died on July 31, according to Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Truong Son. 

The 61-year-old male resident of the central city of Da Nang died of septic shock on the basis of other serious illnesses and COVID-19, he said. 

The patient had had chronic kidney failure, hypertension, diabetes and gout before he was found to have COVID-19 on July 27 at Da Nang Hospital. 

Earlier the same day, another COVID-19 patient with multiple comorbidities died of myocardial infarction with chronic diseases of hypertension, heart failure, end-stage chronic renal failure, and complication of respiratory failure due to heart failure and COVID-19. This is the first COVID-19 patient to have died in Vietnam, according to the National Steering Committee on COVID-19 Prevention and Control.  

COVID-19 US death toll passes 150,000: Hispanics among hardest-hit

Via The Washington Post: Covid U.S. death toll passes 150,000: Hispanics among hardest-hit. Excerpt:

When the virus first swept across the country, it devastated Black communities, killing African Americans at a disproportionately high rate in nearly every jurisdiction that published race data. In recent weeks, Hispanics and Native Americans have made up an increasing proportion of covid-19 deaths. The disease now accounts for nearly 20 percent of all deaths among those groups, higher than any other race or ethnicity in recent weeks, according to a Post analysis of the CDC data. 

Both in hot-spot states, and in states where the total number of deaths has decreased, Hispanics make up an increasing share of those deaths — a signal that the pandemic’s shifting demographics are not due to its shifting geography.  

The death rate among Native Americans, meanwhile, has stayed somewhat consistent, even as it declines for other groups.  

States have reported an average of more than 1,000 virus-related deaths per day this week, the highest rate since late May, and experts say the toll is likely to increase rapidly. 

“We’re playing with fire and gasoline and pine needles, and it could very well explode in our face, and I’m very concerned it will without serious and concerted action,” said Howard Markel, a historian and physician at the University of Michigan. “I fear that we are headed, given the way it’s being handled, to the worst contagious crisis in human history.” 

Official government tallies tell only part of the story. The true toll probably exceeded 150,000 weeks ago. Epidemiologists say the country’s shoddy testing infrastructure has allowed virus fatalities to go undiagnosed. Also, the pandemic’s far-reaching effect on the health-care system has almost certainly contributed indirectly to many more deaths — in people afraid to seek medical care for other maladies, for example. 

Some fear the growing toll will have a numbing effect on Americans’ psyches. 

“At some point, the numbers get so big that they lose their impact,” said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “I worry as we continue to mark these milestones that they just become numbers, and they stop really resonating with us as deaths.”

In the pandemic’s first few months, deadly outbreaks in New York, along with surges in other cities in the Northeast and Midwest, fueled the country’s toll. In mid-April, New York state reported more than 1,000 deaths in a single day three times, accounting for nearly half of all deaths nationally. 

But now the virus is entrenched in the Sun Belt. Texas, Florida, California, Arizona and South Carolina have recorded the most average daily deaths in the past week. Mississippi and Louisiana have also seen sharp upticks in their numbers of fatalities per capita. 

And in many of these places, where the Hispanic share of the population is far higher than the national average, the coronavirus’s shifting demographic impact is most acute. 

In Florida, California and Arizona, Hispanics consistently made up a disproportionate share of covid-19 deaths in June and early July. The disparity may be persisting, but CDC data lags state statistics, and the agency’s most recent numbers were not complete enough to include in the analysis. (The federal data about age and gender among covid-19 deaths were not broken down at the state level over time, so those demographic factors were not included in the analysis.)  

In California, Hispanics account for 39 percent of the state population, but 46 percent of all virus deaths and 57 percent of virus deaths reported in the last week of June. In Texas, where Hispanics are 40 percent of the population, they account for an approximately proportional share of all virus deaths. In the last week of June, however, they made up 57 percent of the deaths.

COVID-19 in Florida: 9,007 new cases, 257 new deaths

A screenshot from Rebekah Jones's Florida COVID Action dashboard:

COVID-19 on Friday morning: 17,328,238 cases, 673,936 deaths

A screenshot from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) dashboard:

Xinjiang reports largest single-day spike in COVID-19 cases

Via Sixth Tone: Xinjiang Reports Largest Single-Day Spike in Coronavirus Cases. Excerpt:

China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on Monday recorded 57 new COVID-19 cases, the region’s largest-ever daily increase. Xinjiang’s coronavirus tally now stands at 235 total confirmed infections.  

In addition, 13 residents tested positive for the coronavirus without showing signs of infection, bringing Xinjiang’s count of asymptomatic cases — which are counted separately from “confirmed,” or symptomatic, infections — to 165.  

The bulk of the infections are in Urumqi, the region’s capital city, which has been shut down since a local outbreak was detected earlier this month. The city now accounts for 233 out of Xinjiang’s 235 total confirmed infections, including all of Monday’s newly added cases. 

Over the past two days, China has seen its largest spike in confirmed cases in three months, and authorities are on high alert against another wave of infections. On Monday, 68 additional cases were reported on the Chinese mainland, the highest daily figure for local infections since April. Four out of the 68 are imported infections, while the remaining 64 are locally transmitted. Among the local cases, 57 are in Xinjiang, six are in the northeastern port city of Dalian, and another is in Beijing. 

Last week, Dalian reported a COVID-19 cluster after a man working at a seafood processing factory tested positive for the virus. Health officials are now testing the city’s entire population, according to a notice Sunday. Nine cities including Beijing have reported COVID-19 cases linked to the Dalian cluster, and both Urumqi and Dalian have gone into “wartime mode” in response to spikes in infections.  

To contain the local outbreak, Xinjiang officials announced Sunday that Urumqi is conducting a second round of mass health screenings in the city’s two high-risk areas, Tianshan and Saybagh districts. Xinjiang’s first local patient was identified as a 24-year-old woman working at a Tianshan District shopping center.  

Zhang Wei, director of Urumqi’s health commission, said at a press briefing Sunday that the purpose of the additional screenings is to “check for omissions” after the first round.

China’s COVID-19 vaccines are leaping ahead – but face challenges as virus wanes

Via Nature.com: China’s coronavirus vaccines are leaping ahead – but face challenges as virus wanes. Excerpt:

Chinese companies are at the forefront of global efforts to create a vaccine for the coronavirus, with more than half a dozen candidates in clinical development. Last week, Tianjin-based CanSino Biologics published results1 from an early-stage clinical trial showing that its vaccine is safe and can trigger an immune response.  

Yet the companies could face difficulty as they try to push vaccines through phase III trials, a crucial stage of testing that is needed to prove efficacy and secure approval from regulators. These trials usually require tens of thousands of participants, and with the outbreak in China largely under control, companies are having to test their vaccines elsewhere. But researchers say they might still struggle to enrol so many participants and employ enough health-care professionals to collect data.

“The Chinese companies will need to step outside of China,” says Jerome Kim, director-general of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul. “The race is on,” he says, “and it’s really about who can set up in a high-risk area most quickly.” 

Chinese vaccine-makers will face other challenges, too. Vaccines will probably face extra scrutiny, given the country’s opaque regulatory system and previous vaccine scandals, say scientists. In 2018, hundreds of thousands of children reportedly received defective diptheria, tetanus and whooping cough vaccines.  

Quick to act 

As the country where the coronavirus outbreak began, China was fast out of the gate in developing vaccines. CanSino’s offering is made from a common-cold virus, tweaked to mimic the coronavirus. Sinopharm, a state-owned pharmaceutical company in Beijing, is developing two vaccines made using particles of the coronavirus that have been inactivated so that they can no longer cause disease. The company said in press releases in June that both vaccines had produced antibodies in all participants in preliminary phase I and II trials. And Beijing-based company Sinovac has announced similarly promising results for its own inactivated-virus vaccine.  

This month, Sinovac launched a phase III trial of its vaccine in Brazil. Sinopharm will be testing its inactivated vaccines in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Only three other coronavirus vaccines have entered phase III trials: one produced by biotech company Moderna in Cambridge, Massachusetts; one by the University of Oxford and drug maker AstraZeneca, based in Cambridge, UK; and one by biotech company BioNTech of Mainz, Germany, in collaboration with New York City-based drug firm Pfizer.  

CanSino is also poised to launch a phase III trial. But the Chinese government has already said that its vaccine can be used by the military — making CanSino the first company to have a vaccine for COVID-19 approved for limited use in people. China has worked hard “to generate an efficient vaccine as soon as possible and to be transparent” when doing so, says Stéphane Paul, a vaccine researcher at the University of Lyon in France.  

The speed with which Chinese vaccine-makers are moving has raised hopes around the world. Sinopharm has even promised to have a vaccine ready to distribute by the end of the year.

Migrant worker who got COVID-19 says he was fired from Ontario farm for speaking out

Via CTV News: Migrant worker who got COVID-19 says he was fired from Ontario farm for speaking out. Excerpt:

TORONTO -- After migrant worker Luis Gabriel Flores Flores tested positive for COVID-19 following an outbreak at an Ontario produce farm, he turned to journalists to share his fears over what he described as unsafe working conditions. 

A few weeks later -- only one day after his bunkmate had died of COVID-19 -- his employer came looking for Flores at the bunkhouse where the workers lived. He was told that he, and three others who were suspected of speaking to press, were being fired.

They told Flores they would be “sending [him] back to Mexico at dawn,” he said.  

These allegations, which the farm in question denies, are described in an 8-page legal complaint to the Ontario Labour Relations Board, and in a letter Flores delivered this week to the office of Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino in downtown Toronto. 

The complaint alleges that Flores’s employment was terminated unjustly in a reprisal against him for speaking out about the poor working conditions his employer subjected him to. As part of his complaint, Flores is seeking $28,000 in damages for direct and future earning losses, as well as $10,000 for emotional pain and suffering he endured. 

Flores and the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC) held a press conference on Thursday to let the public know that Flores’s experience is one of many. 

And they are raising an alarm in the hopes that the federal government will hear them.  

“We’re here because we’re calling on the federal government of Canada to give full and permanent immigration status for all,” Syed Hussan, Executive Director of MWAC, said in the press conference. 

“Migrant workers want to protect their health, want to protect their safety, but it’s federal immigration rules that make it impossible for them to do so.” 

Three migrant workers have died of COVID-19 in Canada so far, Hussan said, and 1,100 are sick.

Vietnam records first Covid-19 death

Via BBC News: Vietnam records first Covid-19 death.

Vietnam has recorded its first Covid-19 fatality, in a devastating blow for a country proud of its zero deaths.  

The 70-year-old man was from the central city of Hoi An, state media said on Friday.  

No new infections had been reported for more than three months before an outbreak was reported in the nearby resort of Da Nang earlier this week. 

Vietnam, which has a population of around 95 million, has reported just 509 cases since the pandemic began.  

Unlike many other countries, Vietnam acted before it even had confirmed cases, closing its borders early to almost all travellers, except returning citizens. Anyone entering the country must quarantine in government facilities for 14 days and undergo testing. 

And for a while, this approach appeared to be highly effective, with no new local transmissions reported since mid-April. 

The country received praise for both its timely efforts to contain the virus and for the care it was able to offer a Scottish pilot who spent two months in a coma after developing Covid-19. 

But earlier this week came the difficult news that new cases had been discovered in the popular resort of Da Nang. 

Tens of thousands of tourists from across the country were in the city at the time, many of whom believed the threat from coronavirus had passed. 

The government initially closed the city to visitors, before ordering a total local lockdown on Wednesday. 

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc warned that every province and city in the country following the outbreak in Da Nang.  

"We have to act more swiftly and more fiercely in order to control the outbreak," state media quoted him as saying. 

What this means for Vietnam 

By Bui Thu, BBC News Vietnamese 

At first, Vietnamese mainstream newspapers cited coronavirus as the main cause of the man's death. But then, just a moment later, the story was deleted from most of the country's state media websites. 

The story only appeared again on their websites as the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control finally confirmed the news.  

Talking to the BBC Vietnamese Service, Dr Luong Ngoc Khue, vice-director of the Treatment Subcommittee under the National Covid-19 Taskforce, said the person "died of heart attack, kidney cancer, high blood pressure and other severe diseases while positive for coronavirus". 

Some speculate that the government found it difficult to announce the first death for fear of public embarrassment.  

But as the news was confirmed today, Vietnam is trying to carry out an aggressive prevention strategy to contain the virus, with many quarantine facilities and mobilising all means and resources to treat every patient.  

Since July 25, 93 cases linked to Da Nang have been reported, and now the city is under a lockdown again. Restrictions are also being reintroduced in many other cities and provinces.

Meanwhile, Tuo Tre News reports Vietnam adds 82 coronavirus patients, including 26 imported cases, in a single day.

Africa approaches 1 million COVID-19 cases

A news release from WHO AFRO: Over 10 000 health workers in Africa infected with COVID-19. Excerpt:

Brazzaville/Cairo, 30 July 2020 – COVID-19 infections in Africa will exceed one million cases in the coming days as the pandemic surges in several hotspot countries. In a little more than three weeks, the number of cases on the continent almost doubled to 889 457, with 18 806 deaths.   

Overall, the pandemic is accelerating with the number of new cases increasing by 50% during the last 14 days compared with the previous fortnight. However, only five countries account for about 75% of the cumulative COVID-19 cases – they are Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. South Africa alone accounts for around half of the continent’s total cases. Deaths are also increasing. A total of 4376 new deaths were recorded during the last 14 days, representing a 22% increase from the previous two weeks.   

Seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa which had imposed lockdowns and have now started easing them have experienced a 20% jump in cases over the past two weeks. Some countries such as the Republic of the Congo and Morocco have had to re-implement partial restrictions because of an increase in cases.   

“As Africa approaches one million cases, the continent is at a pivotal point,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa. “The virus has spilled out of major cities and spread into distant hinterlands. Countries need to keep apace and urgently decentralize their key response services. We can still stop COVID-19 from reaching full momentum, but the time to act is now.”   

One of our most important collective responsibilities is to protect front line health workers, who are at high risk. Forty-one African countries have reported nearly 14 000 health worker infections. In 16 countries which reported health worker infections over the past month, nearly a quarter recorded an increase in the past two weeks compared with the preceding fortnight.    

Expanding the scale and quality of public health measures such as testing, contact tracing, isolation and care of patients remain central to the response, as well as preventing infection through handwashing, physical distancing and wearing of masks. Lifting of lockdowns that have helped to slow down the spread of COVID-19 should be evidence-based, phased and targeted.

As borders start to re-open and with the Islamic holiday, Eid al-Adha, about to begin on Friday marked by social and religious gatherings, there is a concern that the virus could spread further, even to areas that are still untouched by COVID-19, if necessary precautions are not taken.