Free Republic

Brazil is facing a 'biological Fukushima' and is seeing lethal new Covid variants every week that could threaten to destabilise the world, one of the country's leading health experts has warned. The country's P1 variant - believed to be 150 times more contagious than the original Covid-19 virus - is of the most concern. It can reinfect those who had the first strain, and has killed thousands of people in their 30s, 40s and 50s. The variant has infected hundreds in Canada, including players in professional ice hockey team the Vancouver Canucks, and has been recorded in 27 people in...

Doctors warn of more serious COVID cases among younger adults placing them in hospitals I have seen a very clear increase in COVID patients at the ER in Detroit, and many of them need to be hospitalized. .. Now the most concerning trend is in the number of middle-aged people with severe COVID-19. “We have about a quarter of the patients who are hospitalized at our main hospital actually in the intensive care unit (ICU) right now,” said Dr. Geneva Tatem. Tatem is a critical care specialist in the ICU at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. “We’ve seen a shift...

A study from Tel Aviv University found that a South African variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus affects people vaccinated with the Pfizer shot more than unvaccinated people. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, indicated that the B.1.351 variant of the virus—also known as the novel coronavirus—was found eight times more than individuals who were unvaccinated, or 5.4 percent against 0.7 percent. Clalit Health Services, a top Israeli health-care provider, also helped in the study. “We found a disproportionately higher rate of the South African variant among people vaccinated with a second dose, compared to the...

Scientists have found seven separate but similar variants of the coronavirus that have emerged within the United States and appear share a similar genetic mutation to more contagious U.K. and South African types, raising concerns that the U.S. may have to deal with multiple variants of the virus that likely spread more easily. Key FactsA preprint study released on Sunday, found that the seven variants—all of which evolved independently—have been spotted in several states.It is not yet clear if their mutations—which are similar to the more contagious foreign variants—make either of the seven types more contagious, but scientists suspect this...

Source: University of Maryland, College Park Released: Mon 16-Apr-2007, 16:30 ET “Bird Flu” Genome Study Shows New Strains, Western Spread A team of researchers report the first ever large-scale sequencing of western genomes of the deadly avian influenza virus, H5N1, that confirms not only that the virus has very recently spread west from Asia, but that two of the new western strains have already independently combined, or “reassorted,” to create a new strain. The arrows represent the movement of the H5N1 virus into the three distinct regions represented in the genome study. The green, pink and yellow arrows depict the...