Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, wherever you are.
There are now more than half a million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 20,000 deaths.
These are tragic numbers, but let's also remember that around the world, more than 100,000 people have recovered.
Yesterday, I had the honour of addressing an extraordinary meeting of leaders from the G20 countries.
My message was threefold: we must fight, unite and ignite.
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sidereaRoxanne Nelson is a staff journalist for Medscape Oncology.
Roxanne Nelson
May 31, 2011 — The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today that radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer. According to the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), radiofrequency electromagnetic fields have been classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans (group 2B) on the basis of an increased risk for glioma that some studies have associated with the use of wireless phones.
This announcement was based on an extensive review of studies on cell phone safety by a working group of 31 scientists from 14 countries, who have been meeting regularly to evaluate the potential carcinogenic hazards from exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields. They reviewed exposure data, studies of cancer in humans and experimental animal models, and other relevant data.
More specifically,
( Read more... )
Daniel J. DeNoon
October 9, 2009 — Data from Australia and New Zealand's winter flu season suggest H1N1 swine flu will stress U.S. intensive care units in hard-hit areas.
Down Under hospitals are well equipped. Yet many had to struggle to keep up with severely ill swine flu patients, who have to be isolated from other patients to prevent spread of the pandemic flu.
From June through August -- winter in the Southern Hemisphere -- Australia and New Zealand ICUs admitted 15 times more patients with flu-like symptoms than in recent years.
"Our data indicate that the greatest effect on ICU resources in a given region occurs approximately four to six weeks after the first confirmed winter ICU admission, and that the extra workload lasts several weeks," report University of Western Australia researcher Steven A.R. Webb, PhD, MPH, and colleagues.
Among ICU patients with swine flu the death rate was 16%. That's the same death rate as Australian hospitals see in ICU patients with seasonal flu. But with seasonal flu, most patients with severe disease are elderly. Most patients with severe H1N1 swine flu were infants under age 12 months or adults 25 to 64.
In Australia and New Zealand, swine flu behaves very much as it does in the U.S. and elsewhere. About 30% of those with severe disease have no underlying condition.
But the majority of severe cases are among people with underlying conditions. In Australia and New Zealand, a disproportionate number of patients were pregnant, had chronic lung disease, or were morbidly obese. Indigenous populations were also disproportionately likely to be admitted to the ICU with swine flu.
Webb and colleagues report their findings in an early-release issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. Also appearing in this issue is a paper by CDC researcher Seema Jain, MD, and colleagues reporting on patients hospitalized with H1N1 swine flu from April through June 2009.
The U.S. data from last spring closely match the Down Under data from later in the year. Nearly 30% of patients hospitalized with H1N1 swine flu had no underlying condition. But most did. Those conditions have remained the same since last spring including: asthma, diabetes, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, neurologic disease, and pregnancy.
About one in four U.S. patients hospitalized with H1N1 swine flu were admitted to the ICU. Overall, 7% of hospitalized patients died.
SOURCES:
Webb, S.A.R. The New England Journal of Medicine, published online ahead of print, Oct. 8, 2009.
Jain, S. The New England Journal of Medicine, published online ahead of print, Oct. 8, 2009.
One quarter of Americans sick enough to be hospitalized with swine flu last spring wound up needing intensive care and 7 percent of them died, the first such study of the early months of the global epidemic suggests. That's a little higher than with ordinary seasonal flu, several experts said.
What is striking and unusual is that children and teens accounted for nearly half of the hospitalized cases, including many who were previously healthy. The study did not give a breakdown of deaths by age.
"Contrary to the perception among many people that this influenza, novel H1N1, is mild, these data vividly demonstrate that influenza can make you very, very ill," said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University flu expert and spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
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( Read more... )Influenza is widespread in most of the United States, with the incidence continuing to increase in some states and to decline very slightly in others, the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. The infections are "overwhelmingly" pandemic H1N1 influenza, commonly known as swine flu.
By Thomas H. Maugh II
October 7, 2009
Rest of story here: www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-swine-flu7-2009oct07,0,3404630.story
From BBC news today:
A town in the far-western Qinghai province of China has been sealed off after pneumonic plague killed three people.
Police have set up checkpoints around Ziketan, as medics disinfect the area and kill rats and insects.
Vivian Tan from the World Health Organization in Beijing said she was ''definitely concerned'' because this form of pneumonic plague ''is really quite lethal.''
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