Dr K K Aggarwal

167 CMAAO CORONA FACTS and MYTH COVID

Dr K Aggarwal

President CMAAO

With inputs from Dr Monica Vasudev

1019: Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, placed Kaesong City, near the country’s border with the South, under lockdown and declared a national emergency after acknowledging that his country might have its first case of the coronavirus.  A North Korean who defected to South Korea three years ago but secretly crossed back into Kaesong City last week was “suspected to have been infected with the vicious virus,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said on Sunday. Until now, North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated countries, has said that it has no cases of Covid-19, although outside experts have questioned the claim.

1020: Vietnam, which had gone 100 days without a case of locally transmitted coronavirus, said on Saturday that a 57-year-old man in the central city of Danang had tested positive for the virus. A second man has since tested positive. How they were infected remained a mystery.

Vietnam, will evacuate tens of thousands of tourists from Danang after four residents there tested positive this weekend.

1021: President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil said on Saturday that he no longer had the coronavirus, appearing to have experienced only mild symptoms from a scourge he has repeatedly downplayed. More than 86,000 people in Brazil have died from the virus.

1022: Australia on Sunday reported its highest one-day death toll — 10 people, all in the state of Victoria.

1023: France will do COVOD 19 testing free for all

1024:  Biocon suffered a setback on Sunday with the Union health ministry announcing that the firm’s itolizumab drug has not been included in national treatment protocol for Covid-19 patients. Less than two weeks ago, the Drug Controller General of India had given permission for the drug’s use on moderate to severe coronavirus patients, leading to a surge in the company’s share price.

1025: Hong Kong is shutting down all dine-in restaurant service and limiting public gatherings to two people after it recorded more than 100 new cases for the sixth day in a row.

1026: President Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, has tested positive for the coronavirus, making him the most senior White House official known to have contracted the virus.

1027:  Japan takes masks to a new level:  In Japan, where masks were widespread even before the pandemic, there has been a big push to innovate. Inventors have dreamed up masks with motorized air purifiers, Bluetooth speakers and even sanitizers that kill germs. In South Korea, the electronics giant LG has created a mask powered with fans that make it easier to breathe. One company is trying to build a mask with a translator. Masks were first used in epidemics in the early 20th century, when Wu Lien-teh, a doctor of Chinese descent, began promoting simple gauze masks to battle an outbreak of pneumonic plague. During the 1918 flu, the practice went global.

1028: perinatal transmission of COVID-19 unlikely if precautions taken: Mothers positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) at delivery are unlikely to transmit the infection to their infants during the perinatal period provided proper precautions are undertaken, a study in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health has found. "This is the largest cohort of neonates born to mothers positive for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of delivery, with prospective follow-up up to 1 month of life," Christine M Salvatore, Departments of Pediatrics, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York Presbyterian—Komansky Children's Hospital, New York, NY, and colleagues noted.