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A mother has warned that anyone can die from COVID-19, even young people, after her teenage daughter died just days after contracting the virus.
Jorja Halliday, 15, from Portsmouth, died at the Queen Alexandra Hospital on 28 September after she tested positive for the coronavirus four days earlier.
Her mother, Tracy Halliday, 40, said: "Some children are sort of a bit blas about, the say 'it's not going to happen to me, I'm going to be fine'. I just want people to know that it can happen to anybody, at any age, at any time. Even if you're young and healthy."
Ms Halliday described her daughter, who was studying her GCSEs at The Portsmouth Academy, as a "loving girl" and "beautiful young lady", who was a talented kick-boxer and aspiring musician.
"I'm still too shocked for words, I can't actually comprehend what's happened. It's almost like I'm beyond belief, even though I was there with her, my mind's still not believing it," Ms Halliday told Sky News.
"I want definite answers as to why this has happened to a young, healthy 15-year-old girl.
"It was hard, but I also understood they were doing their best they could to save her. It was heartbreaking to see and to witness, but I never would have forgiven myself if I wasn't there.
"Now I just want her to live on in our hearts, memories and minds forever."
Jorja's mother told Sky News that her daughter died from COVID myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart caused by the virus.
She said: "One of the registrars at the hospital was saying to me, they seem to be seeing it in teenagers around that age, that COVID symptoms are causing inflammation in the body.
"In Jorja's case it turned into inflammation of the heart and that's why when they put her on the ventilator her heart couldn't take the strain."
She said her daughter first developed flu-like symptoms before she underwent the PCR test, which gave a positive result, leading to her isolating at their home.
Ms Halliday added that she was struggling to eat on Sunday but by 27 September she could not eat at all due to her throat hurting, and she contacted a doctor who prescribed antibiotics.
But when Jorja's condition worsened, she was seen by a doctor who said her heart rate was double what it should be, and she was taken to hospital.
Ms Halliday said that when the doctors realised how serious her daughter's condition was, they allowed her to spend time with her in the hospital.
"They realised how serious it was, and I was still allowed to touch her, hold her hand, hug her and everything else. I was with her the whole time," she said.
Ms Halliday said that Jorja did not have any known underlying medical conditions and added: "She was going to have the jab on Tuesday.
"But because she tested positive on Saturday, she was isolating. When her isolation period was over, she was going to get it.
"The day that she passed away was the day that she would have had it done."
My husband occasionally roots through our freezer and pulls out forgotten items, giving me a can we please throw this away look.
This time the container read Lentil Surprise in my neighbor Kerens cheerful handwriting.
Keren and her family lived two doors up. Four years ago, she was diagnosed with leukemia. A bone marrow transplant from her sister that year seemed to work the needed miracle, but she dealt with side effects from radiation, chemotherapy and the immune-suppressing drugs that kept her from rejecting the transplant.
Kerens husband, Mike, had his own autoimmune issues and had turned to a vegan diet low in oils, salt and sugar to help control his symptoms. Their daughter Ariella, who was 7 when Keren was first diagnosed, was a picky eater.
Keren loved good food, but she was often exhausted and money was tight, so takeout wasnt a frequent option. Trying to meet everyones dietary restrictions often left her nibbling chicken fingers or raw veggies for dinner. I cant cook three different meals, shed lament.
Soon thereafter, I texted her that Id made a cauliflower feta frittata. It was warm. Could I bring her some?
Next week my husband made spanakopita. Would she like a piece?
Soon we were regularly trotting over with entrees for Keren.
Then Keren asked if I wanted some old veggies and freezer-burned chicken they were throwing out.
I did.
A chicken and veggie pasta soon bounced back to Keren and provided our own dinner. It didnt suit the vegan or the picky eater, but Keren loved it.
I couldnt heal Keren. But sharing our food with her felt primal and life-affirming. With each bite, I imagined her growing stronger. I had to imagine it because once COVID-19 hit, we ate at separate tables two houses apart. Id see the three of them at dusk moving like slender masked ghosts on neighborhood walks. Id place food on their porch, ring the bell, then retreat 20 feet. Theyd open the door in their N95 masks and wed shout out conversations.
She used to joke that I could Iron Chef any leftovers in her fridge. My attempts with Kerens celery failed, partly due to my own distaste for it, but I gave it to my sister who found success with it in her home. Zero waste!
Keren was homebound long before COVID, but she was a lively correspondent. I was only one of the many helpers after her illness descended, but proximity made it easy to lend a hand.
For four years our culinary highway was in full swing, with plates of food, raw materials and compost donations (Keren was an avid composter) flying back and forth in a series of insane Tupperware exchanges. She even saved scraps for our dog and dropped off teas and jarred sauces that her family rejected. Now I realize she was cleaning house so Mike wouldnt have to deal with it when she was gone.
On good days, Keren cooked up a storm. Some endeavors succeeded wildly, like a vegan chocolate cake. Others not so much.
Mike wont eat it anymore, shed say, offering me a tub of vegan stew, Feel free to toss, but I cant bear to throw it out.
The addition of oil, salt, spices and alliums which Mikes diet severely limited were all Kerens dishes usually needed for my palate. But Lentil Surprise stumped me. Envisioning a vegan meatloaf, shed added a lot of ketchup. The dish was sweet and bland. I shoved it into the freezer and forgot about it.
Hanukkah and Christmas 2020 came and went, with holiday cookies chugging back and forth. Keren was thinner and visibly strained.
It wasnt clear whether Kerens immunocompromised system would be too frail for a COVID vaccine. She was in and out of the hospital for tests, and it made her cry when staffers didnt wear masks or slung them below their noses.
Late last year, Keren no longer had the energy to tend the compost bin. I wish I could say that I took it over, but I was too busy.
Then came the day Keren called me from her car. The cancer had returned.
Within two weeks, she was gone.
The food highway was no more.
And in my grief, I was left with bottled condiments and Lentil Surprise.
Just throw it away, my husband said sensibly.
I couldnt. Even though Keren would have laughingly told me to dump it, salvaging it was my way to honor the culinary friendship wed forged.
I was on a mission. First, I cooked more lentils. Then I sauted aromatics and spices and added tomatoes to make a masala, a nod to Kerens South Indian ancestry.
I mixed everything with Lentil Surprise and served it over brown rice. Only for myself my family wanted nothing to do with this experiment.
It was still sweet. But with every bite, I remembered meals Keren and I had shared and our zealous two-woman crusade against waste. And how, with almost everything Ive cooked in the last four years, Ive thought, Ill bring some to Keren.
When I washed out the container, I considered leaving Kerens handwritten label intact. But fearing it would cause Mike pain, I peeled it off and threw it away.
Then I filled the container with watermelon, walked up two houses and rang the bell.
Denise Hamilton, a former reporter at the Los Angeles Times, is a native Angeleno, a novelist and a Fulbright scholar.
According to a new study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, even a mild COVID infection can lead to symptoms that may last a lifetime. "The research found that over 1 in 3 patients had one or more features of long-COVID recorded between 3 and 6 months after a diagnosis of COVID-19," the authors concluded."This illness affects patients with both severe and mild Covid-19," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said. "Part of the challenge is that patients with long COVID could have a range of different symptoms that can be persistent or can come and go." Read on for 9 signs you may have Long COVIDand to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss these Sure Signs You've Already Had COVID.
Pain, in general, is a frequent complaint for Long Haulers, as you'll read about in future slides, but pain localized in the chest and throat area can be quite common, including chest tightness, costochondritis (an inflammation of the rib cage near the lungs), a sore throatsome of these pains can scarily resemble a heart attack.
Abnormal breathing is unfortunately common among Long Haulers. Lucy Gahan, a clinical psychologist from the UK, told CNN: "I can only walk as far as the corner," she said. "In terms of running, I can't imagine when that will happen, if ever." She continued at the time: "I'm a clinical psychologist, and this is not anxiety," she said. "If doctors just say 'We don't know,' it's better than saying Covid symptoms only last two weeks."
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Nausea, diarrhea and vomiting are common symptoms of Long COVID, as is abdominal pain. "For two months, I was bloated and had zero appetite," one long hauler told us. He had his stomach x-rayed, and motility tests done, and was diagnosed with GERD and a hernia before doctors finally conceded it was Long COVID-related. "Some people don't immediately realize that their GI symptoms coincided with their COVID-19 infection, and they may not think the symptoms are related to COVID-19 because they're not respiratory in nature," said Dr. Jordan Shapiro, assistant professor of medicine gastroenterology at Baylor.
Fatigue is one of the most frequently reported symptoms of Long COVID. One recent study says Long COVID may be "reminiscent of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). ME/CFS is a debilitating condition, often triggered by viral and bacterial infections, leading to years-long debilitating symptoms including profound fatigue, post exertional malaise, unrefreshing sleep, cognitive deficits, and orthostatic intolerance."
RELATED: This is a "Significant" Factor in Getting Dementia, Study Shows
"Some people have sleep disorders, you might be able to help with sleep medications or ease or cognitive behavioral therapy," Dr. Walter Koroshetz, Director of NINDS, said during a panel about "The COVID Long Haulers Facing the Cognitive and Physical Consequences." "With the tremendous anxiety that comes from having had COVID and wondering if you're going to die, or family members may have had it as well.Then you think you're over it, you're not over it. So the amount of post-traumatic stress disorder that folks have been describing or even depression is actually quite dramatic."
"The long-COVID features involving pain were notable for 3 reasons," say the study's authors. "First, the overall incidence of pain (of any kind) recorded after COVID-19 was 34.2%, higher than any of the other features, and higher than after influenza (24.0%). Second, pain was the only feature that had a higher incidence in the 3- to 6-month period than in the 0- to 3-month period. Pain, therefore, appears to be a prominent and relatively persistent element of long-COVID. Third, headache and myalgia had characteristics that differed from the other pain categories: They were more common in women and in younger patients, and notably so in those who had been less acutely ill (as proxied by not requiring hospitalization or ITU admission, and without leukocytosis). In each case, this was in the opposite direction to the overall burden of long-COVID features. As such, post-COVID headache and myalgia may result from a different mechanism than the other long-COVID features."
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"We know that headaches can occur at any time during the COVID infection. Actually, people are having headache as one of the first symptomsit's been described as one of the top five symptoms people can have early on during their COVID infection, and people can continue to experience headaches long after their acute illnesses over," Dr. Valerie Klats, a neurologist of Hartford Healthcare's Headache Center, told Channel 8. "Headache is just one of the things that can happenmore likely to happen than the other more severe neurologic problems people can experience due to COVID.These are very disturbing symptoms and very painful and difficult to function, can wreck your life."
Long Haulers suffer from "brain fog," or what Dr. Fauci calls an "inability to concentrate." "Within each organ system, there's a span of severity that in neurology can range from headache to encephalopathy, to muscle weakness, to brain fog that looks like dementia, memory gaps, trouble finding words, inability to do simple math, such as calculating a tip," Elizabeth Cooney, a writer at Stat, said during that panel about "The COVID Long Haulers Facing the Cognitive and Physical Consequences." "People can suffer months, even if their infection was never serious enough to require hospitalization."
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the President and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has described "myalgia" as a frequent symptom of Long COVID. It's basically muscle aches and pains, and they can be anywhere on your body.
RELATED: Dr. Fauci Just Issued This "Formidable" Warning
There is no cure yet for Long COVID. Until effective treatments have been discovered, talk to your medical professional, who will try to address your symptoms. "Symptomatic treatmentthat's really important because that's what makes people feel better. So you have to parse out the symptoms and go after them one by one," says Koroshetz. There may also be a Post-COVID clinic near you. Studies like this new one may help. "The fact that the risk is higher after COVID-19 than after influenza suggests that their origin might, in part, directly involve infection with SARS-CoV-2 and is not just a general consequence of viral infection. This might help in developing effective treatments against long-COVID," say the authors. And to protect your life and the lives of others, don't visit any of these 35 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID.
RICHMOND, Va. -- In an effort to provide accurate, easy-to-read information on the COVID-19 pandemic and on-going vaccination efforts, WTVR.com will update this post weekly with statistics from the Virginia Department of Health.
COVID-19 IN VIRGINIA (Scroll to bottom for U.S. stats)
Positive COVID-19 Cases Since Start of Pandemic: 869,328 (+19,463 from last Friday)People Hospitalized Since Start of Pandemic: 36,711 (+579 from last Friday)COVID-19-Linked Deaths Since Start of Pandemic: 12,806 (+295 from last Friday)
Total Tests: 12,854,826 (+316,759 from last Friday)All Health Districts Current 7-Day Positivity Rate Total: 9.0% (Down from 9.6% last Friday)
People Vaccinated with at least One Dose: 55,784,359 (+26,585 from last Friday)% of Population with at least One Dose: 67.8% (Up from 67.5% last Friday) People Fully Vaccinated: 5,145,393 (+28,325 from last Friday)% of Population Fully Vaccinated: 60.3% (Up from 60.0% last Friday)
Click here for complete city/county-by-county breakdown of COVID-19 cases in Virginia
NOTE: This update data is provided from the Virginia Department of Health daily at 10 a.m. Officials said their cutoff for data is 5 p.m. the previous day. (Cases/testing data is now available Monday-Friday while vaccination data is updated seven days a week.) Get the latest charts and updated numbers from VDH here.
**Scroll down for week-to-week COVID cases comparison**
WTVR
VACCINATE VIRGINIA: Virginians age 12+ are eligible for COVID-19 vaccine. Register for the COVID-19 vaccine on the Vaccinate Virginia website or call 877-VAX-IN-VA (877-275-8343). You can also search for specific vaccines as well as which ones are available near you via the Vaccine Finder website.
VACCINE SUPPLY USAGE
COMPLETE COVERAGE: COVID-19 HEADLINES (App users, click here for a complete list.)
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4:49 PM, Oct 03, 2021
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9:38 AM, Oct 03, 2021
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8:58 PM, Oct 02, 2021
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9:28 AM, Oct 02, 2021
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10:04 PM, Oct 01, 2021
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8:20 PM, Oct 01, 2021
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2:52 PM, Oct 01, 2021
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Chloe Nordquist
2:35 PM, Oct 01, 2021
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1:33 PM, Oct 01, 2021
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10:24 AM, Oct 01, 2021
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10:18 AM, Oct 01, 2021
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Kyle Hicks
9:09 AM, Oct 01, 2021
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6:16 AM, Oct 01, 2021
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WMAR Staff
10:37 PM, Sep 30, 2021
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The Associated Press
8:11 PM, Sep 30, 2021
Problem Solvers Investigations
Melissa Hipolit
5:34 PM, Sep 30, 2021
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Dan Grossman
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TRACKING COVID IN VIRGINIA: WEEK-BY-WEEK COMPARISON
Week of Sept. 27-Oct. 1 Positive COVID-19 Cases : +19,463People Hospitalized: +579COVID-19-Linked Deaths: +295
Week of Sept. 20-24Positive COVID-19 Cases : +22,668 People Hospitalized: +718COVID-19-Linked Deaths: +269
Week of Sept. 13-17Positive COVID-19 Cases : +25,370 People Hospitalized: +718COVID-19-Linked Deaths: +233
Week of Sept. 6-10Positive COVID-19 Cases : +23,660People Hospitalized: +670COVID-19-Linked Deaths: +137
Week of Aug. 30 - Sept. 3
Positive COVID-19 Cases : +23,515People Hospitalized: +682 COVID-19-Linked Deaths: +130
Week of Aug. 23-27
Positive COVID-19 Cases: +20,573 People Hospitalized: +674 COVID-19-Linked Deaths: +122
Week of Aug. 16-20
Positive COVID-19 Cases: +16,253 People Hospitalized: +577 COVID-19-Linked Deaths: +48
Week of Aug. 9-13
Positive COVID-19 Case: +13,162 People Hospitalized: +465 COVID-19-Linked Deaths : +41
Week of Aug. 2-6
Positive COVID-19 Cases: +10,280 People Hospitalized: +292 COVID-19-Linked Deaths: +26
Week of July 26-30
The global tally for the coronavirus-borne illness climbed above 234 million on Saturday, while the death toll rose above 4.79 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. continues to lead the world with a total of 43.6 million cases and 700,327 deaths, after passing 700,000 overnight. The U.S. is now averaging almost 2,000 deaths a day, according to a New York Times tracker, , a slight improvement over recent trends and new cases and hospitalizations are declining. There was positive news from Merck MRK, +8.37% and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics Friday that the the oral antiviral they developed as a treatment for COVID-19 reduced the risk of hospitalization or death in at risk adult patients with mild-to-moderate COVID by about 50% in an interim analysis of data from a Phase 3 trial. Some 7.3% of patients who received molnupiravir were either hospitalized or died through Day 29 following randomization, compared with 14.1% of patients given a placebo. The companies will submit an application for an emergency use authorization to the FDA and other regulators. India is second by cases after the U.S. at 33.8 million and has suffered 448,573 deaths. Brazil has second highest death toll at 597,255 and 21.4 million cases. In Europe, Russia has most fatalities at 205,297, followed by the U.K. at 137,171.
Riverhead, NY | 1d
98 inmates have had COVID-19 since April, Sheriff Errol Toulon says, announcing new jail protocols as delta variant sparks rise in cases.
SUFFOLK COUNTY, NY After the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office canceled its Open House and Family Day due to COVID-19 and staff shortages, new protocols were announced Friday to handle the delta variant.... Read more
Will a Pfizer vaccine for elementary students shift the conversation on COVID-19 safety? AZCentral.com
WASHINGTON The U.S. is turning the corner on the most recent surge in COVID-19 cases and more people need to get vaccinated to keep infections on a declining trend, infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci said.
Fauci, who is President Joe Bidens chief medical adviser, said that while the full vaccination rate has reached 55%, the key risk is the 70 million eligible people in the U.S. who havent gotten a shot.
We certainly are turning the corner on this particular surge, Fauci said on ABCs This Week on Sunday. The way to keep it down, to make that turnaround continue to go down, is to do what we mentioned: get vaccinated.
Study results showing that a Merck & Co. experimental pill slashed the risk of getting seriously ill or dying from COVID-19 are very impressive, Fauci said on CNNs State of the Union.
So we really look forward to the implementation of this and to its effect on people who are infected, he said. The pill is a big deal, he said on ABC.
Merck agreed in June to a $1.2 billion deal with the U.S. government to supply 1.7 million courses of the treatment, which raises the possibility that many virus patients could be treated before reaching the hospital. Fauci said the government has the option for millions more.
And now that we have this success, the company certainly is going to rev up and make tens and tens of millions more for the rest of the world and for us, he said on CBSs Face the Nation.
U.S. deaths since the start of the pandemic surpassed 700,000 last week in what Biden called an astonishing death toll thats yet another reminder of just how important it is to get vaccinated.
Fauci dismissed attempts to blame immigrants and tourists as a major source of the spread of COVID in the U.S., a belief held by 37% of Americans overall and 55% of Republicans, according to a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
If you just look at the data and look at the people who have gotten infected, look at the people who are in the hospital, look at the people who died this is not driven by immigrants, Fauci said on CNNs State of the Union. This is a problem within our country, the same way its a problem with other countries throughout the world.
He declined to weigh in on whether he saw a medical reason for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to continue imposing a rule that makes it easier to expel migrants due to the pandemic.
My feeling has always been that focusing on immigrants, expelling them or what have you, is not the solution to an outbreak, he said.
People walk by The Kobuk on W. Fifth Avenue in downtown Anchorage on Monday, Aug. 23, 2021. (Emily Mesner / ADN)
Alaska is at a critical point in the pandemic. Twenty health care facilities across the state are now operating under crisis standards of care, a reflection of the added pressure facing hospitals that are contending with scarce resources and high COVID-19 patient counts and bracing for worse. Alaskas recent per-capita case rate is the highest in the U.S., and higher than that of any country in the world.
At the same time, recent statements from public officials paint a much different picture of the pandemic, warranting closer scrutiny.
In Anchorage over the past week, a divided city debated whether to implement a mask mandate, and Mayor Dave Bronson touted a debunked medical treatment, pointed to data that he said showed Alaskas case counts were actually declining and questioned the effectiveness of masks.
We fact-checked some of these claims.
Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, who opposes a proposed citywide mask mandate and COVID-19 mandates in general, recently cited a graph on the citys COVID-19 dashboard that he said showed a decline in the city and state. His remarks during Wednesday nights tumultuous Anchorage Assembly meeting came in response to a testifier who was speaking in support of the mask ordinance.
Bronson said to the testifier: Im looking at the case onset by date graph, and I see that the seven-day moving average for both the state and municipality have been decreasing significantly since Sept. 13. Im just curious, in your mind, which mandate caused those decreases? A video of Bronsons remarks popped up the next day, posted by his mayoral Facebook account.
In the graph Bronson was looking at, onset date refers to the day a persons symptoms first began or, if theyre asymptomatic, the day they got tested.
Because the date a person gets tested or first experiences symptoms occurs earlier than the date the state reports that case, the last few weeks of data in the case onset graph are missing information that will get added in the coming days, Louisa Castrodale, an epidemiologist with the state health department, explained last week.
Because the onset date is something thats in the past, if youre looking at the onset data curve, youll always see it falling off at the end there, she said. That dip is even more pronounced because of recent backlogs in data processing.
Pictured are two graphs from the Municipality of Anchorage's COVID-19 dashboard: At top is a graph showing cases by onset date, which Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson referenced in a recent Assembly meeting. State health officials say the last few weeks of data in the case onset graph are missing information and will always show a drop-off. At bottom is a graph showing COVID-19 cases by report date, or when those positive test results were reported by the state. (Screengrabs from Municipality of Anchorage's COVID-19 dashboard)
At a time when theres really fast turnarounds with the labs, the report date and the onset date might be super close together, but when we know labs are having trouble processing specimens, and sometimes reporting in those results, you can really see a difference between that onset date and the report date, she said.
A better way to measure Alaskas current surge is by looking at week-to-week trends, said Dr. Joe McLaughlin, state epidemiologist.
By that measure, Alaskas daily cases are still increasing last week saw a 10% increase in cases compared to the week before and the states seven-day per capita case rate is currently the highest in the nation. Specifically looking at Anchorage, the municipalitys seven-day per capita case rate is also higher than any other states, and theres no evidence in the case numbers of a recent decline.
[Are Alaskas hospitals short-staffed over COVID-19 vaccination mandates? Not yet.]
Essentially, it depends: Are you looking at the pandemic overall, or are you looking at how Alaskas doing more recently?
Based on data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Alaska continues to have one of the lowest death rates in the nation since the start of the pandemic, along with Oregon, Maine, Vermont and Hawaii. Alaska has averaged 76 deaths per 100,000 people since January 2020, giving it the fourth-lowest death rate in the country for that time frame.
Its a statistic often touted by Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Mayor Bronson, even while other data points like hospital intensive care unit capacity and current case rates continue to raise alarm from health officials.
However, looking at just the past week, Alaska as of Friday had the highest death rate in the nation, with 11.4 deaths per 100,000 people.
Its important to consider how those death rates get calculated, according to state epidemiologist Dr. Joe McLaughlin. The CDC includes all deaths that were added to the states COVID-19 dashboard, which last week included many deaths that had occurred earlier in the year. There were actually only 20 that took place in the last seven days, rather than the 80 deaths that pushed Alaska into highest death rate nationally last Friday.
So, we can probably expect Alaskas national position for the seven-day death rate to fluctuate in the next few days. Some might misinterpret the drop in death rate as an example of the state turning the corner on the virus, but thats not exactly the case, said Rosa Avila, who works with COVID-19 data at the states health department. Rather, its just that the CDC was no longer including those additional older deaths in the seven-day death rate.
The bottom line, McLaughlin said, is cases are soaring right now.
And we know that anytime we see a spike in cases, deaths will follow, he said.
Thats what has played out across the state as case counts have risen since summer. In June, there were six Alaska residents who died with COVID-19, while there were 21 who died in July, 75 in August and 71 so far reported in September and that tally could change as health officials tracking the virus receive more information about recent deaths.
[Watching themselves die: Fairbanks nurse describes panic and air hunger among COVID patients in video encouraging vaccination]
In a recent op-ed opposing Anchorages proposed mask mandate, Mayor Bronson wrote: Certainly, there are many studies that support the use of masks but ... there are also several studies that have found masking and mask mandates largely ineffective. That is why even the World Health Organization has recognized the science on masking is inconsistent and inconclusive.
Hes referencing WHO guidance from December 2020 that advised the wearing of masks as one part of a more comprehensive strategy to limit virus spread. The WHO said at the time: At present there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2.
Bronson also cited a May 2020 article in a CDC journal that included research from 2018 and earlier, and found limited evidence of the effectiveness of surgical masks at preventing flu virus transmission.
Bronson was right that some of those early studies on masking were sometimes confusing and inclusive. But the science behind masking has evolved since those studies he referenced.
The vast majority of research now backs the theory that masks work that they significantly protect both the wearer and those they come into contact with.
More than 10 studies cited by the CDC have since confirmed the benefits of universal masking at preventing community spread including an analysis conducted last spring among 12 hospitals in Massachusetts that employees over 75,000 health care workers, a German study published in June 2020 and an Arizona study that tracked transmission rates before and after mask mandates were widely enforced, among others.
Each analysis demonstrated that, following directives from organizational and political leadership for universal masking, new infections fell significantly, the CDC said.
In Alaska, public health officials and medical providers have near-universally and consistently recommended the use of mask-wearing as one of the most effective, easy and inexpensive ways to slow community transmission, protect hospital capacity and prevent deaths.
Ivermectin meant for livestock was in high demand at some Alaska feed stores after it gained traction on social media as a purported treatment for COVID-19. The FDA has approved ivermectin in both people and animals for some parasitic worms and for head lice and skin conditions but the FDA hasnt approved its use in treating or preventing COVID-19 in humans. The agency has strongly urged people not to use it to treat COVID-19, especially since many were turning to formulations meant for animals, not humans.
Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce, who has no background in health or medicine, publicly backed the use of the treatment. Speaking at an Anchorage Rotary Club meeting last week, Bronson claimed the treatment worked very well.
Its an approved drug and its very effective, he said. Its not a horse pill.
Merck, the drug company that manufactures ivermectin, in February explicitly said that researchers found no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies and no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19. The company also cited a concerning lack of safety data in most studies.
Taking too much ivermectin can cause nausea, diarrhea, low blood pressure, itching and hives, dizziness, balance problems, seizures and even death, according to the Oregon Poison Control Center. Ingesting ivermectin formulations that are designed for animals is especially dangerous, as veterinary medications are often more concentrated and many of their ingredients arent considered safe for human use.
Dr. Anne Zink, Alaskas chief medical officer, said last week that there is no proven benefit to taking ivermectin. Vaccination is the best way to fight the virus, and monoclonal antibody treatment can help those who do contract it to stay out of the hospital, she said.
[Touted by some as a cure, monoclonal antibody demand is high in Alaskas least-vaccinated places but its no replacement for a vaccine]
