Time for some good news, page-71

The headlines about the covid situation in Brazil today are truly frightening, and very, very sad.

The new coronavirus variant sweeping through Brazil, and spreading to other nations around the world, is proving to be up to three times more deadly for young people, according to research.It is also spreading more quickly among younger people with cases among Brazilians in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are up by 565 per cent, 626 per cent and 525 per cent respectively since the beginning of January, according to Brazilian public health institute Fiocruz.In comparison, during the same periods the increase in the overall population was much lower at 316 per cent, suggesting the virus infections are making “a shift to younger age groups”.There is also growing evidence shows that young people are not only more likely to get infected with the new strain – dubbed P. 1 – but also to die from it.

The variant is widely agreed to be more infectious and transmissible generally – by as much as 2.2 times – and 25 to 61 per cent more capable of reinfecting people who had been infected with an earlier strain of the virus, according to recent studies conducted by researchers at the University of Sao Paulo in collaboration with Oxford University and Imperial College London.It is now spreading in many nations around the world, and a high-profile series of infections in Canada is adding to significant concerns about how it affects young and healthy people.

And this about the South African Strain

So, the South African strain, there are some studies from the South African CDC that say among those who were previously infected last summer and spring and using their blood ... versus the pseudovirus, 50% of the people who were previously seropositive had no appreciable neutralization against the new pseudovirus of the South African strain, B.1.3.5.1. That is a lot, and 90% have reduced neutralization.

in other words, the antibodies that were made from the original infection, so antibodies against the original virus, did not neutralize B.1.3.5.1, South Africa's variant pseudovirus, in 50% of people.That is quite a large number.

IMO, Testing will be with us for a very long time, antigen testing for new strains as the vaccine generated antibodies rapidly lose effectiveness.

When NanoDX finally hits the market, the market will be around for a long time.