California Nurse Tested Positive for Covid-19 a week after receiving Pfizer-BioNtech's Vaccine

 Matthew W, a nurse at two different local hospitals, said in a Facebook post on December 18 that he had received the Pfizer vaccine, telling the ABC News affiliate that his arm was sore for a day but that he had suffered no other side-effects.

Image Source: Google

World News / Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker : A 45-year-old nurse in California tested positive for COVID-19 more than a week after receiving Pfizer Inc's coronavirus vaccine, an ABC News affiliate reported on Tuesday.

Matthew W, a nurse at two different local hospitals, said in a Facebook post on December 18 that he had received the Pfizer vaccine, telling the ABC News affiliate that his arm was sore for a day but that he had suffered no other side-effects.

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Six days later on Christmas Eve, he became sick after working a shift in the COVID-19 unit, the report added. He got the chills and later came down with muscle aches and fatigue.

He went to a drive-up hospital testing site and tested positive for COVID-19 the day after Christmas, the report said.

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Christian Ramers, an infectious disease specialist with Family Health Centers of San Diego, told the ABC News affiliate that this scenario was not unexpected.

"We know from the vaccine clinical trials that it's going to take about 10 to 14 days for you to start to develop protection from the vaccine," Ramers said.

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"That first dose we think gives you somewhere around 50%, and you need that second dose to get up to 95%," Ramers added.

News Source: Reuters

6 Who Arrived In India from UK Tested Positive For UK Mutant Strain

Three of the patients are in NIMHANS, Bengaluru, two in Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology, Hyderabad and one in National Institute of Virology, Pune.

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World News/ Covid-19 : Six cases of a mutant strain of coronavirus that first surfaced in the UK, have been detected in the country. The new strain is believed to be 70 per cent more infectious, but doctors have said there is no reason yet to believe that it is more lethal or will not be controlled by a vaccine. All six patients have recently returned from the UK, where cases have spiralled within days.

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Three of the patients are in NIMHANS, Bengaluru, two in Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology, Hyderabad and one in National Institute of Virology, Pune.

All patients have been kept in "single room isolation" in designated healthcare facilities by the state governments. Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine. Comprehensive contact tracing has been started for co-travellers, their families and others, the government said.  

Around 33,000 passengers arrived from the UK between November 25 and December 23. Of them, 114 have tested positive for Covid.  Genome sequencing for other specimens is on, the government has said. The states where these passengers arrived, meanwhile, is tracing them and their contacts for Covid RT-PCR tests.

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The UK strain surfaces at a time the spread of the infection -- after hitting a peak in September -- has slowed down. Over the last 24 hours, the country logged 16,432 cases -- the lowest since June 24, when 15,968 cases were recorded. The overall coronavirus figure is now 1,02,24,303, the highest after the US.  

"The situation is under careful watch and regular advice is being provided to the States for enhanced surveillance, containment, testing & dispatch of samples to INSACOG labs," read a government statement announcing the UK strain.

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The government had released details of the genomic surveillance consortium INSACOG, which has been formed to detect the presence of different strains of coronavirus in India. Ten labs across the country will be carrying out genome sequencing.

Besides UK returnees, 5 per cent samples of people who tested positive in the country since November 23 will also be sent for genome sequencing. The samples must have "proper representation particularly from the metro cities where there is high probability of having the new SARS-CoV-2 variant", the government said.

Regular monitoring will help in understanding the evolution of the virus, its effect on transmission of the disease and will also assist in developing potential vaccines in the future, the government said.

On December 21, India temporarily banned flights from the UK and soon extended it to the Vande Bharat flights. The bar was to stay in place till December 31. Mumbai, the city hit worst by coronavirus, announced a night curfew.

The day before, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had announced the emergence of the new strain.

"Given the early evidence we have on this new variant of the virus, and the potential risk it poses, it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you we cannot continue with Christmas as planned," his tweet read.  

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The strain – described as out of control" by British health secretary Matt Hancock – was first detected in southeast England in September and quickly became the dominant strain in London and other parts of the UK.

So far, several nations including Denmark, Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore have reported the detection of the UK strain.

News Source: NDTV

China jails citizen-journalist for four years over Wuhan virus reporting

World News/Covid-19 : A Chinese court on Monday handed down a four-year jail term to a citizen-journalist who reported from the central city of Wuhan at the peak of this year’s coronavirus outbreak on the grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, her lawyer said.

Image Source: Google

Zhang Zhan, 37, the first such person known to have been tried, was among a handful of people whose firsthand accounts from crowded hospitals and empty streets painted a more dire picture of the pandemic epicentre than the official narrative.

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“I don’t understand. All she did was say a few true words, and for that she got four years,” said Shao Wenxia, Zhang’s mother, who attended the trial with her husband.

Zhang’s lawyer Ren Quanniu told Reuters: “We will probably appeal.”

The trial was held at a court in Pudong, a district of the business hub of Shanghai.“Ms Zhang believes she is being persecuted for exercising her freedom of speech,” Ren had said before the trial.

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Critics say that China deliberately arranged for Zhang’s trial to take place during the Western holiday season to minimize Western attention and scrutiny. U.S. President Donald Trump has regularly criticised Beijing for covering up the emergence of what he calls the “China virus”.

The United Nations human rights office called in a tweet for Zhang’s release.

“We raised her case with the authorities throughout 2020 as an example of the excessive clampdown on freedom of expression linked to #COVID19 & continue to call for her release,” it said.

Criticism of China’s early handling of the crisis has been censored, and whistle-blowers such as doctors warned. State media have credited the country’s success in reining in the virus to the leadership of President Xi Jinping.

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The virus has spread worldwide to infect more than 80 million people and kill more than 1.76 million, paralysing air travel as nations threw up barriers that have disrupted industries and livelihoods.

In Shanghai, police enforced tight security outside the court where the trial opened seven months after Zhang’s detention, although some supporters were undeterred.

A man in a wheelchair, who told Reuters he came from the central province of Henan to demonstrate support for Zhang as a fellow Christian, wrote her name on a poster before police escorted him away.

Foreign journalists were denied entry to the court “due to the epidemic”, court security officials said.

A former lawyer, Zhang arrived in Wuhan on Feb. 1 from her home in Shanghai.

Her short video clips uploaded to YouTube consist of interviews with residents, commentary and footage of a crematorium, train stations, hospitals and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Detained in mid-May, she went on hunger strike in late June, court documents seen by Reuters say. Her lawyers told the court that police strapped her hands and force-fed her with a tube. By December, she was suffering headaches, giddiness, stomach ache, low blood pressure and a throat infection.

Requests to the court to release Zhang on bail before the trial and livestream the trial were ignored, her lawyer said.

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Other citizen-journalists who have disappeared in China without explanation include Fang Bin, Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua.

While there has been no news of Fang, Li re-emerged in a YouTube video in April to say he was forcibly quarantined, while Chen, although released, is under surveillance and has not spoken publicly, a friend has said.

News Source: Reuters

Masked Santa lifts spirits for Romanian COVID-19 patients

 World News/ Covid-19 : Romanian nurse Ionut Ivan has spent the last nine months caring for so many coronavirus patients he has lost count.

But that has not dimmed his enthusiasm for bringing some festive cheer, dressing up as Santa Claus and distributing fruit and sweets to the almost 100 COVID-19 patients currently hospitalised at the Marius Nasta institute in Bucharest.

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His protective suit is red and a fake white beard made of wadding is taped to the edges of his mask and gown. He wears a Santa cap held in place by his face shield.

“Ho ho ho, Santa has come bearing gifts, though in this place I wish you health,” he tells Gheorghe Iulian Butca, a 63-year-old patient in the intensive care unit above the machine noise. “It’s good to see you.”

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The European Union state has reported 604,251 coronavirus cases since February and 14,766 deaths and the pandemic has brought Romania’s underdeveloped healthcare system into focus.

“We are at maximum capacity,” the institute’s manager Beatrice Mahler said. “We exceed the allotted number of COVID-19 beds daily, a situation we have been facing for more than a month.”

Mahler said Santa Claus visits the hospital’s children wing every year, but that in 2020 he expanded to adults because “he needs to offer a spark of hope and joy to COVID-19 patients”.

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Brindusa Gheorghiu, a 45-year-old veterinarian in intensive care for almost a week, said her Christmas wish was to get better and return to her husband and child. But for now she was making do with the good cheer of nurse Ivan.

“We are fighting to live and we are feeling better with him here,” she said.

News and Image Source: Reuters