October COVID-19 Chronicle

A-   We remember well the way people in China started to get sick in December 2019 with an atypical pneumonia, announcing a new infectious disease due to a “Coronavirus”. It was due to a  SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible of an acute respiratory syndrome. A pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO), and it started in Wuhan.

B-   Recently, the administration Biden declared that the pandemic was over but the FDA authorized and the CDC recommended a new updated COVD-19 for all American 12 and above. This make the USA, the first country with a new vaccine that matches the Omicron variant which is still dominant around the world and the USA. These vaccines have caught up with the virus allowing people to keep themselves healthy and safe. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are safe and more than 600 million of doses were administered in the USA alone and billions of people around the world have received it as well since 2020. These vaccines have protected against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death. The new updated vaccines contain both the original SARS-CoV1 virus and the Omicron BA1 variant and has induced even higher level of neutralizing antibodies in individuals recovering from the disease. Det your updated vaccine.

C-   The virus has continued to evolve and now we have a new updated vaccine to protect again the new strain. This provides people a better ability to protect themselves and manage the virus moving forward. In doing so, we may be able to get a single annual COVID shot for a full year protection, a little like the Flu shot. Older people above eighty, people with liver transplantation may require more precaution. People in the nursing homes can also benefit from it.

D-   The pandemic is not over the way the administration is claiming. A recent publication if JAMA demonstrated that healthcare workers who received one, two or three doses of the vaccine were less likely to have Long COVID compared to the one not vaccinated.

E-    The Oxygen saturation by pulse oximetry (SpO2) is used to estimate the blood oxygen levels. This is a key parameter to define disease severity in patients with COVID-19 non hospitalized patients. Minor update in Remdesivir, Interleukins-6 Inhibitors, Vitamin C and D as well as Z
Maxime Coles MD