COVID-19 Coverage is a daily report by Poynter on narrative concepts about the coronavirus and other hot topics for journalists, written by Senior Professor Al Tompkins. Check in here to have it delivered to your inbox every morning of the week.
Instances of COVID-19 are emerging in Russia and Ukraine. The Guardian reports that the virus is widespread in Ukraine, with new instances reaching pandemic records there. But within the military, as new positive tests multiply, serious illnesses are still rare:
General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s floor forces, told the Guardian that out of about 150,000 in its ranks, 2,400 have become inflamed with Covid.
The tests were only done before special occasions or in case of symptoms, he said, suggesting the actual number may be much higher. Ukrainian army bases have been closed to visitors to prevent the spread.
COVID-19 News in Russia (Johns Hopkins)
There is still widespread skepticism about vaccines in Russia and Ukraine, so vaccination rates in both countries are low. But they are much higher in their armies. 99% of the Ukrainian army is vaccinated with two doses. However, the Ukrainian government told The Guardian that COVID-19 infections are spreading on the Russian battlefront.
The White House has begun unveiling sanctions President Joe Biden promised if Russia invades Ukraine. Biden’s management is expected to detail the sanctions today. The first sanctions will consist of banning new investment, trade and financing through Americans and entities in the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. But today’s announcement will be aimed at the Russians themselves.
The UK will announce its sanctions today.
Harsh sanctions against a country as giant as Russia would have far-reaching repercussions. It remains to be seen whether Russia would respond to countries joining the sanctions by cutting off the supply of herbal fuel. Meanwhile, cybersecurity experts in Europe and the United States favor cyberattacks.
In the coming days you will hear references to Russia’s separation from SWIFT. Tell me what it’s all about, because it’s a big deal.
SWIFT stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. This network connects 11,000 banks and money establishments in two hundred countries around the world and allows users to message each other to move money. It may be difficult for Russia to move money, but that would not make foreign industry impossible. Several experts in Washington say this may be a move to come, but perhaps not right away.
Biden can also ban any U. S. bank from taking action. The U. S. does business with Russia.
The New York Times compiled a list of other imaginable actions:
But the real damage to Russia’s $1. 5 trillion economy would come from the largest state-owned banks, as well as the government’s Russian Direct Investment Fund, which has prominent Western leaders on its advisory board. Under President Donald J. Trump, Iranian banks are much smaller and less incorporated into the global economy than Russian banks.
Once the branch put Russian banks on what officials call their “endgame” sanctions list, known as the S. D. N. List, foreign entities around the world would avoid doing business with the banks, which would have an effect on Russian companies.
USA. The U. S. would also adopt sanctions to decrease lending to Russia through foreign creditors of $100 billion or more, according to Anders Aslund, an economist and an Atlantic Council report on U. S. sanctions. U. S. Although Russia has taken steps since 2014 to rely less on foreign debt to spend, such a loss could further devalue the ruble, shake up the stock market and freeze bond trading, he added. Aslund.
One by one, states are finalizing information about COVID-19, switching to weekly information reports, and in some cases, ending public PCR testing and notification of positive tests, as many now use at-home testing. Here’s a rundown of some of the first states to take a step back from extensive reporting.
While COVID-19 verification knowledge is losing popularity as an indicator of global infections, one sign that remains promising is wastewater surveillance. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has opened COVID-19 wastewater surveillance that includes knowledge of thirteen states. This map gives you a concept of where tracking is taking position in 335 locations.
(CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION)
Knowledge of wastewater comes with some caveats. CNN explains:
It is difficult to compare knowledge between sewer basins because other spaces use other sampling methods. Some take water patterns with thin cotton swabs encased in 3D-printed submarines, while others collect and model biosolids. Sewers can be very different sizes, which also complicates comparisons. The new CDC panel presents knowledge at the zip code level.
This type of test cannot detect when a network is free of the virus because the detection threshold (how many other people will have to be positive in a domain to see themselves in a water pattern) is not known.
When in a community’s data, pay maximum attention to the “replacement concentration percentage” at that site for the past 15 days. The online surveillance page will also give you the number of detections at a given site in the last 15 days – compare that to all samples taken for a percentage of positive cases. If you’re thinking about starting to track and report local data, it would possibly be a smart concept to communicate with the other people sampling to see if there are other points to consider, as each collection site is possibly different.
I see stories across the country about hospitals being overrun, not by COVID-19 but by others whose surgeries were delayed because of the pandemic. WWMT-TV reports that a hospital in Kalamazoo told them, “Our operating rooms are now operating at full capacity and we are working diligently with the delays. These delays vary by physician and specialty, but we are making any and all efforts to eliminate them as temporarily as possible. “
The Cincinnati Enquirer reports:
“Starting next week, we will resume general plan-making operations to enable the development of plans for all types of elective surgeries,” Christ Hospital spokesman James Buechele said Friday.
“We are getting patients who have experienced cancellations to reschedule them first, before fully opening,” the St. S. spokesperson said. Elizabeth Healthcare, Guy Karrick, “but yes, we’re slowly moving forward with reopening. “
I see stories in Canada, where hospitals say they are looking to catch up with thousands of “elective” surgeries pending.
A box of ivermectin at a pharmacy as pharmacists paint in the background, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021, in Georgia. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
For much of the year, the Food and Drug Administration and others have said there is no evidence that ivermectin can be effective in saving you or treating COVID-19. But a Malaysian study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirms earlier studies. by suggesting that ivermectin does not protect you well or treat the condition. This study is just one of a number of ongoing studies indicating that ivermectin does not help COVID-19 patients.
The new study involved 241 high-risk patients with COVID-19 and another 249 patients who did not get the drug at 20 hospitals. Ivermectin was administered in a five-day dose. 21. 6% of COVID-19 patients who received ivermectin developed more severe illness, compared with 17% of those who did not get ivermectin. The researchers say the numbers aren’t particularly different.
The FDA has approved ivermectin as an antiparasitic remedy but not as a remedy against COVID-19. However, lawmakers in the states of Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania have filed charges to prevent any action against medical professionals who prescribe ivermectin.
For God’s sake, I have noticed an accumulation of cases of the omicron BA. 2 subvariant of COVID-19 and Iceland is rushing to the front of the line. Information about hospitalization is slow to arrive, but the number of cases is staggering.
(John Hopkins)
With those numbers in mind, this in Iceland Review:
On February 25, the Icelandic government plans to lift all remaining internal restrictions due to COVID-19, the country’s fitness minister, Willum Þór Þórsson, said. Fitness will continue to be encouraged to stay at home. Iceland’s National University Hospital continues to revel in tensions, particularly due to staff shortages caused by the COVID disease.
This is knowledge of a pre-printed study, meaning it hasn’t been peer-reviewed, so. But that matches what other reports have found, adding wildlife biologists across the country. Tail deer are inflamed in the United States at really extensive levels, which raises considerations about the formation of a new animal reservoir and the possibility of new variants returning to humans. “
In undeniable terms, this means that other people could have transmitted the virus to the deer, which could keep the virus long enough and return to humans. There are no known cases of deer transmitting the virus to humans, however, cross-species viral infections are common.
You can almost hear the deer say, “You.
I don’t know about you, however, for much of the pandemic, I wandered around my space without shoes or at least without what my father would call “substantial” shoes.
And so, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
Foot pain has increased the pandemic, as other people running out of the house had ditched their supportive shoes in favor of flimsy slippers and flip-flops, while others. . . They took advantage of the time to become more active, which put new pressure on their feet.
“Oh my God, everybody’s going to have plantar fasciitis and Achilles tendonitis,” Laura Virtue-Delayo, president of the Pennsylvania Podiatry Medical Association.
Their prediction turned out to be accurate: Podiatrists, orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists say they see more cases of plantar fasciitis and Achilles tendonitis, two situations of non-unusual foot pain, than ever before.
Virtue-Delayo, a podiatrist at Scranton, said her number of foot pain patients peaked over the summer, when she treated 35 percent more people for foot pain than usual. Pandemic levels, he said.
Dr. Kshitij Manchanda, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center, says the most common condition his patients experience is foot pain, whether it’s in the arch, heel or big toe. These disorders can be caused by other footwear or even walking barefoot.
It would be laughable if I didn’t hear it from more than one meteorologist.
Have other meteorologists gained a lot of “you’re part of the government’s cover-up task and creating the weather” lately?
– Andrew Kozak TV (@AndrewKozakTV) February 21, 2022
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