Covid-19 can cause ‘face blindness’: Study

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Covid-19 can cause ‘face blindness’: Study

Covid-19 can cause difficulty recognizing faces and navigational problems, according to a new study.

The study, published in the journal Cortex, is the first to report “prosopagnosia,” also known as face blindness, following symptoms consistent with Covid.

Previously it was known that Covid can cause a range of neurological problems, including the loss of smell and taste, and impairments in attention, memory, speech, and language, known as “brain fog”.

In the paper, researchers at Dartmouth College in the US, describe the case study of Annie — a 28-year-old customer service representative and a part-time portrait artist.

Annie was diagnosed with Covid in March 2020 and suffered a symptom relapse two months later. Shortly after the relapse, she noticed difficulty with face recognition and navigation.

“When I first met Annie, she told me that she was unable to recognize the faces of her family,” said lead author Marie-Luise Kieseler, a graduate student in the department of psychological and brain sciences and member of the Social Perception Lab at Dartmouth.

Annie now relies on voices to recognize people that she knows. She also experienced navigational deficits after having Covid.

“The combination of prosopagnosia and navigational deficits that Annie had is something that caught our attention because the two deficits often go hand in hand after somebody either has had brain damage or developmental deficits,” said senior author Brad Duchaine, Professor of psychological and brain sciences and principal investigator of the Social Perception Lab at Dartmouth.

“That co-occurrence is probably due to the two abilities depending on neighboring brain regions in the temporal lobe.”

To determine if other people have experienced similar problems due to long Covid, the team obtained self-reported data from 54 individuals who had long Covid with symptoms for 12 weeks or more; and 32 persons who had reported that they had fully recovered from Covid-19.

“Most respondents with long Covid reported that their cognitive and perceptual abilities had decreased since they had Covid, which was not surprising, but what was really fascinating was how many respondents reported deficits,” Kieseler said.

“One of the challenges that many respondents reported was a difficulty with visualizing family and friends, which is something that we often hear from prosopagnosics,” Duchaine.

“Our study highlights the sorts of perceptual problems with face recognition and navigation that can be caused by Covid-19 — it’s something that people should be aware of, especially physicians and other healthcare professionals,” Duchaine noted.

H3N2 virus: Health experts call for masks, better hygiene & flu shot

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H3N2 virus: Health experts call for masks, better hygiene & flu shot

Even as India is seeing a spurt in Influenza cases, caused by the H3N2 virus, health experts on Monday suggested people take precautionary measures such as the use of masks, and better hand hygiene, as well as an annual flu shot.

A total of 3,038 lab-confirmed cases of various subtypes of influenza including H3N2 have been reported till March 9 by the states, as per the latest data available on IDSP-IHIP (Integrated Health Information Platform).

This includes 1,245 cases in January, 1,307 in February, and 486 cases till March 9.

“In my opinion, for the time being, the government can again make masks mandatory at least in highly vulnerable zones like public transport, hospitals, airports, railway stations, and other public conveyances. People should avoid visiting crowded places, or wear a mask whenever in public,” Dr. Sunil Sekri, Associate Consultant – Internal Medicine, Max Hospital, Gurugram, told Media.

The respiratory virus “spreads through droplets, which means that the secretions can spread from person to person, and most people touch their nose and mouth at some point, or that secretions can remain on the fingers and when they shake hands with other people”, it can likely spread, said Dr. Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of the Indian Medical Association’s National Covid-19 Task Force, making a case for the need of masks particularly in crowded indoor gatherings.

According to data from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), there has been a combination of respiratory viruses ranging from Covid-19 virus, swine flu (H1N1), H3N2, and the seasonal Victoria and Yamagata lineages of influenza B viruses in circulation.

H3N2 and H3N1 are both types of influenza A viruses, commonly known as the flu.

Some of the most common symptoms include prolonged fever, cough, running nose, & body pain. But in severe cases, people may also experience breathlessness and/or wheezing.

Meanwhile, the Covid infection has also reported a spike after four months as 524 daily Covid cases were reported on Sunday.

“For the last three years, we have learned how respiratory infections can be prevented. Because the infections go out and come in from the nose and mouth, you need to cover this area and that is masking. Proper masks are needed, particularly when you are in crowded places,” said Dr. Iswar Gilada, an infectious disease expert.

“Masking is important, particularly for those who are both with comorbidities and the family members of those who are having such kind of people at their home,” he said.

The experts also suggested people wash their hands before eating or utilizing any public transit with soap or sanitizer to minimise the risk of infection.

Another thing is flu shots, which need to be taken annually to help boost immunity. It is because “a vaccine that you took last year might not necessarily cover the influenza virus that’s going to come next year or the year after. It will give you some baseline protection but it may not give you the best protection”, Dr. Jayadevan told Media.

Meanwhile, the experts also stated that antibiotics should be avoided in treating the flu as it works only against bacteria and not viruses.

“Antibiotics are not effective against viral infections like influenza or Covid-19. Antibiotics are designed to target and kill bacteria, not viruses. In some cases, antibiotics may be prescribed if a bacterial infection is suspected or if there is a secondary bacterial infection, such as pneumonia, that develops as a result of a viral illness,” Dr. Laxman Jessani, Consultant, Infectious Diseases, Apollo Hospitals, Navi Mumbai, told Media.

“However, it is important to use antibiotics judiciously and only when they are truly necessary to help prevent the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” Jessani added.

Scientists call for finding future viral threats to human health

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Scientists call for finding future viral threats to human health

There is an urgent need to build a framework that can help identify likely future viral threats to human health, before the next outbreak takes the world by surprise, according to scientists.

Writing in a Perspective article in the journal Science, two virologists from the Universities of the Ohio State and Colorado, said the scientific community should invest in a four-part research framework to proactively identify animal viruses that might infect humans.

“We are continually going to be exposed to the viruses of animals. Things are never going to change if we stay on the same trajectory,” said Cody Warren, Assistant Professor of Veterinary Biosciences at The Ohio State University.

Instead of just “sequencing viruses in nature”, “experimental studies of animal viruses are going to be invaluable,” Warren said.

Along with Sara Sawyer, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, he proposed a series of experiments to assess an animal virus’s potential to infect a human.

While it can be difficult to pick an animal virus and prioritise it for further study, Warren and Sawyer suggest, to look into “repeat offender” viral families currently infecting mammals and birds.

Those include coronaviruses, orthomyxoviruses (influenza) and filoviruses (causing hemorrhagic diseases like Ebola and Marburg). In 2018, the Bombali virus — a new ebola virus — was detected in bats in Sierra Leone, but its potential to infect humans remains unknown.

And then there are arteriviruses, such as the simian hemorrhagic fever virus that exists in wild African monkeys, which Sawyer and Warren recently determined has decent potential to spill over to humans because it can replicate in human cells and subvert immune cellsa� ability to fight back.

The 2020 worldwide lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19 is still a fresh and painful memory, but Warren notes that the terrible outcomes of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 could have been much worse. The availability of vaccines within a year of that lockdown was possible only because scientists had spent decades studying coronaviruses and knew how to attack them.

“So if we invest in studying animal viruses early and understand their biology in more detail, then in the case that they were to emerge in humans later, we’d be better poised to combat them,” Warren said.

H3N2 Flu cases rise in UP’s Kanpur

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H3N2 Flu cases rise in UP’s Kanpur

Nearly 50 patients have been admitted in a day at Hallet Hospital in Kanpur after they complained of high fever, persistent cough, and shortness of breath.

The rising number of H3N2 subtype influenza cases in Kanpur has raised the concerns of health department officials.

There is a long queue of patients not just outside government hospitals, but even private hospitals are also struggling with the same.

Cases with flu-like symptoms, including high fever, persistent cough, and acute respiratory issues, have been reported in Kanpur in large numbers.

The hospital authorities at Hallet were forced to shift patients to different wards after the emergency ward was full.

Dr. Richa Giri, Head of the Medicine Department of Hallet Hospital, said, “Every year due to changes in weather, many such cases are seen, but this time the number of patients is very high.”

Patients are coming to Kanpur from adjoining districts like Aurraiya and Kanpur Dehat.

She said, “In the past 24 hours, only 23-24 patients have been admitted complaining of difficulty in breathing, who are being given oxygen support. Some have been put on ventilators.”

“It is difficult to differentiate this virus from Covid-19 and it is possible only after the test because it is a subtype of influenza A. It becomes difficult to test it because there is a separate kit for each subtype,” she added.

US records 18K flu deaths so far this season: CDC

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US records 18K flu deaths so far this season: CDC

There have been at least 26 million illnesses, 290,000 hospitalisations, and 18,000 deaths from flu so far this season in the US, according to the latest estimates published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A total of 117 pediatric flu deaths have been reported in the country this season, according to the CDC on Friday.

The number and weekly rate of flu hospital admissions continued to decline in the country. About 1,500 people were hospitalized with flu in the latest week ending February 25, CDC data showed.

The CDC recommends that everyone aged 6 months and above get an annual flu vaccine as long as flu activity continues, Xinhua news agency reported.

There is also prescription flu antiviral drugs that can be used to treat flu illness, which need to be started as early as possible, said the CDC.

UN, humanitarians allocate $9.5 mn to fight cholera outbreak in Lebanon

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UN, humanitarians allocate $9.5 mn to fight cholera outbreak in Lebanon

The UN and the Lebanese Humanitarian Fund have allocated $9.5 million to prevent the spread of cholera in Lebanon, a UN Spokesman said.

Stephane Dujarric, the Chief Spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said on Wednesday that the funds from the world organization’s Central Emergency Response Fund with the non-governmental organization humanitarian funds are for targeting more than 1.5 million people across Lebanon, including refugees from Syria and Palestine.

“The UN team in Lebanon, led by UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Imran Riza, is working with authorities and partners to combat the spread of cholera in a country that is already plagued by a severe economic and financial crisis,” Dujarric added.

“There have been more than 6,500 suspected and confirmed cases of cholera and 23 associated deaths since the first case was reported five months ago.”

He said that as of February 15, with the support of the World Health Organisation and the International Coordination Group, 1.1 million oral cholera vaccines had been administered. The vaccination campaign that began in mid-November 2022 had a coverage rate of more than 90 percent by the end of last year, Xinhua news agency reported.

Lebanon has been suffering from an economic and financial crisis, which began in 2019 and has put more than 80 percent of the population into poverty.

Covid most likely originated from Chinese lab: FBI chief

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Covid most likely originated from Chinese lab: FBI chief

Christopher Wray, Director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has said that the Covid-19 pandemic “most likely” originated from a “Chinese government-controlled lab” in Wuhan city.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Wray said: “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan… Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.

“I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing. And that’s unfortunate for everybody.”

He went on to say that the FBI has specialists who focus on “the dangers of biological threats, which include things like novel viruses like Covid, and the concerns that they (are) in the wrong hands (of) some bad guys, a hostile nation-state, a terrorist, a criminal”.

Some studies in the past have suggested that the virus made the leap from animals to humans in Wuhan, possibly at the city’s seafood and wildlife market, reports the BBC.

The market is a 40-minute drive from a world-leading virus laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducted research into coronaviruses.

But China has denied the lab leak theory.

The FBI chief further told Fox News that the Chinese government has been trying to block investigative work into the origins of the coronavirus.

Wray’s comments come after the US Department of Energy had recently assessed that the Covid-19 pandemic was likely caused by an accidental lab leak in China.

The National Intelligence Council as well as four other government agencies assess at “low confidence” that Covid-19 originated as a result of natural transmission from an infected animal, but the CIA and other government agencies remain undecided.

On Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that President Joe Biden supports “a whole-of-government effort” to discover how Covid began.

But he added that the US still lacks a clear consensus as to what happened.

“We’re just not there yet. If we have something that is ready to be briefed to the American people and the Congress, we will do that,” the BBC quoted Kirby as saying.

Covid-19 first emerged in late 2019 and has since led to the deaths of nearly seven million people across the world.

Covid virus can be detected in tears sampled by ocular swab: Study

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Covid virus can be detected in tears sampled by ocular swab: Study

A team of researchers found that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can be detected in tears sampled by ocular swabs, a new study has shown.

The researchers analyzed samples from patients diagnosed with the disease by conventional methods and admitted to the Hospital, according to the study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.

SARS-CoV-2 was detected in 18.2 percent of the samples, suggesting this method could be an alternative to the conventional swabbing method, which is unpleasant.

“Initially, we set out to develop a diagnostic test based on an easier collection of material without causing patient discomfort. Nasal and nasopharyngeal swabbing is not only unpleasant but also often performed incorrectly. For people with a nasal septum deviation, it can be a problem,” said Luiz Fernando Manzoni Lourencone, the last author of the article.

“We took the view that tear sampling would be easy to execute and more tolerable. We succeeded in showing this to be feasible. Among the limitations of the study was not knowing whether the amount of liquid collected for the test influences its result,” he added.

Moreover, the study cohort comprised 61 hospitalized patients, with 28 testing negative and 33 positives for Covid-19 by RT-qPCR via nasopharyngeal swab.

Tears were analyzed from all 33 positives and from 14 of the 28 negatives.

The findings suggest that the probability of detecting the virus in tears is greater when the patient has a high viral load, which can lead to viremia in body fluids, Laurence said.

MP govt hospital doctors go on indefinite strike

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MP govt hospital doctors go on indefinite strike

Medical services across all state government-run hospitals and healthcare centers were disrupted as doctors went on an indefinite strike on Friday.

The protest began at Bhopal’s Gandhi Medical College and was joined by over 10,000 doctors across Madhya Pradesh.

A junior doctor told Media that medical services of not only district-level hospitals but primary and community health centers in remote and rural areas will also remain suspended until the state government accepts their demands.

The OPD services have been shut in hospitals and the doctors have threatened to suspend emergency services also, a junior doctor associated with Hamidia hospital told Media. The services in many hospitals were partially suspended on Thursday also.

Notably, the alarm bells have been ringing for almost a month as doctors have been threatening to go on strike and they have begun a statewide mobilization rally under the banner of the MP government and autonomous doctors’ federation dubbed as ‘Chikitsa Bachao – Chikitsak Bachao’. From January 27 to February 7 the doctors held rallies across the state.

The federation comprises medical doctors from all 13 medical colleges which fall under the directorate of medical education. MP health department-associated doctors from primary health centers to specialists in district hospitals, Bhopal gas relief and rehabilitation associated doctors, along with ESI and home department are also part of the joint stir.

“It’s been over a month that we were trying to seek the attention of the government, but the approach of the administration left us with no option but to stop all services, including emergency services in all government hospitals. We have sought intervention to resolve the issues, which almost all states have implemented in favor of doctors,” said Dr. Rakesh Malviya, secretary of, the Medical Education Officers Association.

Sensing that the doctors’ strike will result in a crisis, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan late on Thursday held an emergency meeting with senior officials to review the situation.

“The Chief Minister held a meeting with the Collectors and Commissioners through video conferencing at the residence office, Samatva Bhavan late last night and got information about the health facilities in government hospitals and medical colleges,” the Chief Minister’s office tweeted on Friday.

WHO urges cross-border aid delivery between Turkey, Syria

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WHO urges cross-border aid delivery between Turkey, Syria

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged governments and civil society to work together to ensure cross-border delivery of humanitarian aid between Turkey and Syria and within Syria itself.

The WHO’s Regional Director for Europe, Hans Kluge, called the earthquakes “the worst natural disaster” in the region in a century, and emphasized the importance of all parties cooperating on aid delivery, Xinhua news agency reported.

“The needs are huge, increasing by the hour. Some 26 million people across both countries need humanitarian assistance,” said Kluge during a press conference on Tuesday.

Turkey has suffered cataclysmic casualties, Kluge underlined, with more than 31,000 deaths and 100,000 people injured due to the earthquakes. An additional one million people are estimated to have lost their homes and are currently living in temporary shelters.

Meanwhile, almost 5,000 people have died in northwest Syria across the border, and the death toll is expected to rise.

The WHO also warned that there were growing concerns over health risks related to cold weather, hygiene and sanitation, and the spread of infectious diseases. Meanwhile, with 80,000 people currently hospitalized, the Turkish health system, is under enormous strain — after suffering significant damage in the disaster.

The WHO has launched an appeal for $43 million to help with the earthquake response, and Kluge said this amount was likely to double in the coming days due to the huge scale of need.

According to Kluge, the funds would be used to assist the most vulnerable by providing trauma care, essential medicines, and mental and psychosocial support. They would also be used to ensure the continuity of routine health services.

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