Quitting smoking might reduce severe coronavirus infection risk: Study

New York: Cigarette smoke spurs the lungs to make more of the receptor protein which the novel coronavirus uses to enter human cells, according to a study which suggests that quitting smoking might reduce the risk of a severe coronavirus infection. The findings, published in the journal Developmental Cell, may explain why smokers appear to be particularly vulnerable to severe COVID-19 disease."Our results provide a clue as to why smokers who develop COVID-19 tend to have poor clinical outcomes," said study senior author Jason Sheltzer, a cancer geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the US....read more

CMAAO IMA Coronavirus Facts and Myth Buster 100: Corona Seriousness

(With inputs from Dr Monica Vasudev)868: Even serious can recover: A WUHAN study found that survivors recovered after an array of complications: 42% had sepsis, 36% had respiratory failure, 12% had heart failure, and 7% had blood clotting problems.869: Which doctors are at risk: A survey data reveal that among all resident physicians who worked within the greater New York City area from March to April, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, and ophthalmology residents appeared to be at greatest risk of contracting COVID-19....read more

World Covid Meter 18th May: Living with COVID 1.0: End Fear of Pandemic

212 Countries affected, Crosses 4.80 M, Nearly 95K cases and 4-5K deaths per dayMinimum Likely Deaths: 323393, Total cases to cross 5 M by 21st May,Lockdown in north-eastern China - A new virus cluster in Jilin, another in Shulan, 8,000 people in quarantine. Beijing health authorities said it was no longer necessary to wear masks outdoors.World Cases: 1M: April 2, 2 M: April 15, 3 M: April 27, 4 M: May 8; 5 Million by ?21 May ,Ground Zero Wuhan - 1st Case in live animal market or cafeteria for animal pathogens: 10th January. ....read more

The Science behind Training and Development

Training in any field requires gaining knowledge, skills and positive mental attitude towards the object of learning.Knowledge is everything about what and why. In Yoga, it correlates with the Gyan (Gnana) Marg. Skill is all about how to do it and correlates with Karma Marg. ....read more

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India crosses one lac corona cases

Healthcare News Monitor

Covid-19 update: Natco Pharma donates chloroquine tablets for global trials

Hindustan Times- PTI

Drug firm Natco Pharma on Tuesday said it has donated chloroquine phosphate tablets through its marketing partner in the US to support a global clinical trial conducted by CROWN Collaborative in the wake of coronavirus pandemic. The trial will examine whether the anti-malarial drug can protect essential healthcare workers from COVID-19 virus. The company has donated the tablets through Rising Pharmaceuticals. Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis is the clinical coordinating center for this trial, Natco Pharma said in a BSE filing. COVID-19 Research Outcomes Worldwide Network (CROWN) Collaborative, is testing whether the anti-malaria drug chloroquine can prevent COVID-19 infection or decrease its severity in frontline healthcare workers, it added. For the study, chloroquine will be donated to the US arm of the chloroquine repurposing to health-workers for novel coronavirus mitigation clinical trials, Natco Pharma said. The collaborative and the trial are funded by the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, an initiative with contributions from an array of public and philanthropic donors, including Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Natco Pharma said. The trial aims to include at least 30,000 subjects across the frontline healthcare workers, it added.

Faster vaccines likely if Moderna effort succeeds

Hindustan Times- Sanchita Sharma

Moderna’s experimental vaccine against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has emerged the front-runner in the global effort to stop the pandemic after an early trial showed it produced virus-neutralising antibodies similar to those found in recovered patients. It is one of at least 20 experimental nucleic acid vaccines against Covoid-19 in various stages of clinical development that use the messenger RNA (mRNA) platform to elicit an immune response against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)’s draft landscape of Covid-19 candidate vaccines. Most of these vaccines encode the spike protein of Sars-CoV2. “If it is approved, it will be the first messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine against any disease in the world. We don’t fully know the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines as yet. However, there is high quality science and pre-clinical evidence for this fast and flexible platform for vaccine development. We will have to wait and see,” said Dr Anurag Agrawal, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology, New Delhi. The new vaccine, called mRNA-1273, encodes for a pre-fusion stabilised form of the spike (S) protein selected by Moderna in collaboration with the US Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. mRNA vaccines are promising alternatives to conventional vaccine approaches because of their high potency, capacity for rapid development and potential for low-cost manufacture and safe administration. “This is great news as RNA- and DNA-based vaccines are faster and cheaper to produce than synthetic vaccines as it involves synthetic production of the genetic material, and not the virus. The production is lab-based, so it can be quickly standardised and scaled up,” said Dr N K Ganguly, former director general, Indian Council of Medical Research.

IMA flays ‘inhuman treatment’ of suspended doctor by Vizag police

Hindustan Times- Srinivas Rao Apparasu

The Indian Medical Association on Tuesday expressed its strong disapproval at the alleged inhuman treatment meted out to Dr K Sudhakar, a suspended anaesthetist by Visakhapatnam police on Saturday. In a letter to Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, IMA national president Dr Rajan Sharma and secretary general Dr R V Asokan said Sudhakar was handled inappropriately by the police, though there were certainly civilised ways of handling the situation by the government. “That he was under suspension for allegedly raising safety issues in the hospital was all the more reason for sensitive handling of the issue,” the IMA representatives said. At the same time, they said the IMA wouldn’t hold a brief for Sudhakar uttering unparliamentary words against the chief minister. “Such public behaviour is unacceptable and a conscientious apology is in order,” they said. Sharma and Asokan, however, said the way a member of the medical profession was handled in public was very disturbing. It had hurt the doctors across the nation. “IMA, Andhra Pradesh unit, rose to the occasion in defending the dignity of the doctor and looking after his health,” they said. On behalf of the doctors of the nation, the IMA expected a fair investigation into the incident and his earlier suspension. Appropriate punishment may be apportioned for the erring police officials, they said. Videos of Sudhakar with his hands tied behind his back being beaten up by the police went viral in the social media triggering protests from the opposition parties.

Sion hospital conducts pilot study to detect antibodies in healthcare staff

The Hindu- Jyoti Shelar

Doctors at Sion hospital are conducting a pilot study to detect the presence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, in the blood of 2,000 healthcare workers. Doctors from the hospital’s microbiology department are carrying out the study using a dual testing kit approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research. The team has collected the samples of nearly 2,000 healthcare staff from Sion, Nair, KEM, Kasturba and SevenHills hospitals. They will be analysing the results of the tests. Dr. Ramesh Bharmal, dean of Sion hospital, said the study is to understand the behaviour of the virus in healthcare settings. “The presence of antibodies will tell us about the exposure of staff to the virus and if the test can be used as a surveillance tool,” he said. When a person is infected with the novel coronavirus, his body develops antibodies to fight it. The dual testing kit detects two types of antibodies: Immunoglobulin M (IgM) and Immunoglobulin G (IgG). Presence of IgM is considered a marker of an ongoing infection, while the presence of IgG indicates an old infection. A doctor said both antibodies are typically formed around two weeks after contracting the infection. “IgM remains in the body till a month or so, while IgG stays longer, for nearly three months,” said a doctor.