In a press briefing on June 25, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said that the current official count of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. may actually be a drastic underestimate. Redfield said the new, much-higher estimate, is based on growing data from antibody testing, which picks up the presence of immune cells that react to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. People will test positive for antibodies to the virus if they have been infected—whether or not they ever got sick or even developed symptoms. Previously, testing was focused only on those with symptoms. But because so many who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 could either have mild disease or not know they were infected at all, Redfield said, current information on the burden of cases is an underestimate. “The traditional approach of looking for symptomatic illness, and diagnoses obviously under estimated the total number of infections,” Redfield said. “Now that serology tests are available, which test for antibodies, the estimates we have right now show about 10 times more people have antibodies in the jurisdictions tested than had documented infections.” That fact may also be contributing to the recent downward trend in the average age of people being diagnosed, since, as Redfield noted, those people were likely not being diagnosed in the past—younger people are less likely to experience the severe symptoms that bring them to the attention of the health care system, where the early cases were documented. Now that testing is more widely available in the community, it’s becoming clear that more people are currently infected or have recovered from COVID-19 than was previously believed. On the press call, the CDC also announced changes to its definitions of people at high risk of COVID-19; it now includes those with asthma, dementia and a history of stroke, as well as people who are pregnant. The absolute risk of infection for these groups is still low, but compared to those without these conditions, the risk is worth noting. Based on new data, the CDC also updated its list of underlying medical conditions that could make people more vulnerable to COVID-19 to now include obesity and type 2 diabetes, conditions that are both common in the U.S. population, including among younger people. from https://ift.tt/2NuhJ1N Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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(AUSTIN, Texas) — Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday halted elective surgeries in Texas’ biggest counties and said the state would “pause” its aggressive re-opening as it deals with a surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations that has made it one of the nation’s virus hotspots. The suspension of elective surgeries is designed to protect hospital space in the Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio areas. Statewide, the number of COVID-19 patients has more than doubled in two weeks. Texas has reported more than 11,000 new cases in the previous two days alone. Read more: America Is Done With COVID-19. COVID-19 Isn’t Done With America The pause on further re-openings does not roll back previous orders that already allowed much of the economy to reopen. But it would appear to slow down any planned expansion of occupancy levels at places like bars, restaurants and amusement parks and other venues. “We are focused on strategies that slow the spread of this virus while also allowing Texans to continue earning a paycheck to support their families,” Abbott said in a statement. “The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses. This temporary pause will help our state corral the spread until we can safely enter the next phase of opening our state for business.” By reimposing a ban on elective surgeries, the Republican is returning to one of his first actions when the virus first emerged in Texas in March. He later rescinded the order during an aggressive reopening of the state in May that lifted lockdown orders ahead of most of the U.S. Abbott this week has taken a newly urgent tone about the worsening trends and is now telling the public they should stay home. On Thursday, the number of hospitalizations climbed to nearly 4,400 patients, setting a new record for a 13th consecutive day. Abbott has also urged Texans to wear masks in public. The governor hasn’t issued a statewide mask order, but the state’s cities and counties has imposed new orders on businesses to require customers and workers to wear face coverings. from https://ift.tt/3dBKofQ Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ (BERLIN) — German pharmaceutical company Bayer says it’s paying up to $10.9 billion to settle a lawsuit over subsidiary Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup, which has faced numerous lawsuits over claims it causes cancer. In a statement Wednesday, Bayer said it was also paying up $1.22 billion to settle two further cases, one involving PCB in water. The Leverkusen-based company said the Roundup settlement would “bring closure to approximately 75%” of the current 125,000 filed and unfiled claims. It said the agreement is subject to approval by Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Bayer said it would also pay up to $400 million to settle cases involving the weedkiller dicamba having drifted onto plants that weren’t bred to resist it, killing them. A further payment of up to $820 million will be made to settle “most” claims for exposure to PCB, a highly carcinogenic substance, that Monsanto produced until 1977 and which has been found in U.S. waters Bayer said it would start making payments this year and these would be financed from existing liquidity, future income, proceeds from the sale of its animal health business and the issuance of additional bonds. from https://ift.tt/3fVlRUy Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Despite the many things we don’t know about COVID-19, one thing has been repeated so often and so loudly it seems almost indisputable: elderly people are more likely than young people to get sick and die from COVID-19. More recent data, however, show a more complex picture. Older people do seem more likely to die from COVID-19—but they aren’t necessarily more likely to get infected. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data from mid-March found that about half of U.S. COVID-19 patients with known ages at that time were 55 or older—even though only 29% of the country’s population is that old. Over time, though, the data has settled to better reflect the country’s overall age distribution (with the exception of kids 19 and younger, who still make up a very small portion of infections). The CDC’s most recent data, published on June 19, shows that nearly 70% of people in the U.S. who tested positive as of May 30 were younger than 60. The median age of U.S. COVID-19 patients during that time was 48, and it’s even lower in the country’s newer hotspots like Florida and Arizona, where case counts are surging. Testing likely plays a part in the shifting profile of COVID-19 patients. In the beginning of the outbreak, when tests were in short supply, only the sickest patients could get a test. Since many of the sickest patients are elderly, they were over-represented in the data early on. But now, with testing much easier to come by, public-health networks are able to capture more mild and asymptomatic cases, which includes many younger people who probably wouldn’t have gotten tested in March or April. “The more testing we do, the closer we get to the truth,” says Natalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida. “What we were doing before was skewed to the oldest ages.” Recent trends suggest infection rates are going up in the U.S. for all groups, including for younger people. If we were simply detecting more cases via more robust testing—as opposed to more infections actually occurring—Dean says she’d expect the overall percentage of tests that come back positive to go down, since more people who ultimately test negative would also be included in the data. That’s not happening in current COVID-19 hotspots like Texas, Florida and Arizona, which suggests a change in the underlying outbreak. More people of all ages seem to be getting sick in these areas, and we now have enough tests to see it happening. Even with more testing, the trends for severe disease and deaths are quite consistent. The oldest patients (as well as those with underlying health conditions) are still the most likely to die and become hospitalized from COVID-19, just as they’ve been throughout the outbreak. There might be slight fluctuations in the coming weeks—it takes a while, after someone gets infected, for them to get sick enough to need hospitalization—but “unless there’s a spike in infections in older people, we don’t expect a dramatic change in terms of hospitalizations,” Dean says. Because it’s been so clear that elderly adults and people with other health problems are at highest risk of severe disease, older adults may also be more cautious than younger ones as society reopens, Dean says—perhaps not rushing out to gyms, bars and restaurants with quite the same speed, and thus protecting themselves from possible exposure. If young people throw caution to the wind, though, it may have ripple effects for older and more vulnerable people. Young, healthy people who get mild or asymptomatic disease can still be carriers, potentially transmitting the virus to someone who goes on to have a much more severe case. “With younger age of recent infections in at least some places such as Florida, expect a lower death rate in this wave …until the 20-40 year olds who are infected today go on to infect others….,” former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden wrote on Twitter on June 21. For the sake of personal and community health, Dean says, it’s still important for people of all ages to practice social distancing and wear masks in public. from https://ift.tt/2YuH9Te Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ U.S. Inmates Mistakenly Received COVID-19 Stimulus Checks. Now the IRS Wants That Money Back6/24/2020 (BOISE, Idaho) — Hundreds of thousands of dollars in coronavirus relief payments have been sent to people incarcerated across the United States, and now the IRS is asking state officials to help claw back the cash that the federal tax agency says was mistakenly sent. The legislation authorizing the payments during the pandemic doesn’t specifically exclude jail or prison inmates, and the IRS has refused to say exactly what legal authority it has to retrieve the money. On its website, it points to the unrelated Social Security Act, which bars incarcerated people from receiving some types of old-age and survivor insurance benefit payments. “I can’t give you the legal basis. All I can tell you is this is the language the Treasury and ourselves have been using,” IRS spokesman Eric Smith said. “It’s just the same list as in the Social Security Act.” Read more: ‘A Double Whammy.’ Those Who Most Need The $1,200 Stimulus Checks May Wait the Longest To Get Them Tax attorney Kelly Erb, who’s written about the issue on her website, says there’s no legal basis for asking for the checks back. “I think it’s really disingenuous of the IRS,” Erb said Tuesday. “It’s not a rule just because the IRS puts it on the website. In fact, the IRS actually says that stuff on its website isn’t legal authority. So there’s no actual rule — it’s just guidance — and that guidance can change at any time.” After Congress passed the $2.2 trillion coronavirus rescue package in March, checks of up to $1,200 were automatically sent in most cases to people who filed income tax returns for 2018 or 2019, including some who are incarcerated. A couple of weeks later, the IRS directed state correction departments to intercept payments to prisoners and return them. The IRS doesn’t yet have numbers on how many payments went to prisoners, Smith said. But initial data from some states suggest the numbers are huge: The Kansas Department of Correction alone intercepted more than $200,000 in checks by early June. Idaho and Montana combined had seized over $90,000. Washington state, meanwhile, had only intercepted about $23,000 by early June. Some states, like Nevada, have refused to release the numbers, citing an IRS request for confidentiality. Prison officials nationwide have been trying to intercept the checks, with varying results. Officials in Vermont, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Arizona and California estimated that they each had intercepted fewer than a dozen checks as of early June. Oregon prison officials had seized 25 payments, with 21 returned to the IRS and four others given to relatives or other joint tax filers. Kaitlin Felsted, a spokeswoman for the Utah prison system, said the state had intercepted 28 checks so far but noted that any relief money sent to an inmate’s home address wouldn’t be touched by prison officials. Some states, like Alaska and Wyoming, aren’t tracking the number of payments they intercept. While the IRS says checks sent to jail inmates also should be returned, the sheer number of jails and detention centers across the U.S. makes it difficult to tell if many are following those instructions. The IRS seems to have decided by itself to pull back the payments approved by Congress, said Wanda Bertram, a spokeswoman for the Prison Policy Initiative, a think tank focusing on the harm of mass incarceration. She says prison officials are accustomed to intercepting tax documents to screen for potential scams, priming them to follow this request. “It appears that the IRS is just making this up,” Bertram said. Inmates and their families need the money, she said, especially as prisons try to reduce the spread of the virus by instituting lockdown conditions or releasing thousands of inmates who are then trying to get back on their feet. Lockdowns can increase expenses for inmates because they are often given lower-quality food or fewer meals and need to supplement by buying food from prison commissaries. Family and friends on the outside often cover those costs, and many have lost jobs during the economic downturn, Bertram said. “Loved ones right now are also under a squeeze because of the pandemic and being out of a job, so when you send a stimulus check for someone, the person in prison is not the only one who benefits from that,” Bertram said. Intercepting relief checks may also have a disproportionate impact on Black and Hispanic inmates, who are incarcerated at a higher rate than white Americans. Black people are imprisoned at roughly twice the rate of Hispanic residents, and more than five times the rate of whites as of last year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. It’s not clear if inmates have any recourse, said Erb, the tax attorney. Those who are released before year’s end can claim the missing money as a credit on their 2021 tax returns, but other inmates may be out of luck, Erb said. “I think somebody has to sue, and you have to have the resources to be able to do that,” she said. “I don’t know that there’s anything most people can do besides complain and see if they can attract some attention. You have to have somebody who will step up and be an advocate for that segment of the population.” ___ Associated Press journalists Amy Beth Hanson Jonathan Mattise, Andrew Selsky, Emily Wagster Pettus, Rachel La Corte, Michelle L. Price, Mark Scolforo, Don Thompson, John Hanna, Mead Gruver, Jacques Billeaud, Lindsay Whitehurst, Mark Thiessen and Wilson Ring contributed. from https://ift.tt/31elj87 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Daily U.S. Coronavirus Infections Reach Two-Month High Returning to Levels at Peak of Outbreak6/24/2020 (BEIJING) — New coronavirus cases in the U.S. have surged to their highest level in two months and are now back to where they were at the peak of the outbreak. The U.S. on Tuesday reported 34,700 new cases of the virus, according to a tally compiled by Johns Hopkins University that was published Wednesday. There have been only two previous days that the U.S. has reported more cases: April 9 and April 24, when a record 36,400 cases were logged. Read more: America Is Done With COVID-19. COVID-19 Isn’t Done With America New cases in the U.S. have been surging for more than a week after trending down for more than six weeks. While early hot spots like New York and New Jersey have seen cases steadily decrease, the virus has been hitting the south and west. Several states on Tuesday set single-day records, including Arizona, California, Mississippi, Nevada and Texas. Cases were also surging in other parts of the world. India reported a record daily increase of nearly 16,000 new cases. Mexico, where testing rates have been low, also set a record with more than 6,200 new cases. But China appears to have tamed a new outbreak of the virus in Beijing, once again demonstrating its ability to quickly mobilize vast resources by testing nearly 2.5 million people in 11 days. In the U.S. state of Arizona, which on Tuesday reported a record 3,600 new infections, hundreds of young conservatives packed a megachurch to hear President Donald Trump’s call for them to back his reelection bid. As he did at a rally in Oklahoma over the weekend, Trump referred to the virus with a pejorative term directed at its emergence in China. Ahead of the event, the Democratic mayor of Phoenix, Kate Gallego, made clear that she did not believe the speech could be safely held in her city — and urged the president to wear a face mask. He did not. Trump has refused to wear a mask in public, instead turning it into a red-vs.-blue cultural issue. Earlier Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congress that the next few weeks are critical to tamping down the surge. “Plan A, don’t go in a crowd. Plan B, if you do, make sure you wear a mask,” said Fauci, the infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health. In China, an outbreak that has infected more than 200 people in the capital this month appeared to be firmly waning. China on Wednesday reported 12 cases, down from 22 the day before. Beijing reported seven new cases, down from 13. Officials in Beijing said they tested more than 2.4 million people between June 12 and June 22. That’s more than 10% of the capital’s population of about 20 million. Authorities began testing people at food markets and in the areas around them. They expanded that to include restaurant staff and the city’s 100,000 delivery workers. China also said it used big data to find people who had been near markets for testing, without specifying how. The vast majority have tested negative, though one courier delivering groceries from supermarkets tested positive. A single inflatable mobile lab in one district was capable of conducting 30,000 tests a day, the official Xinhua News Agency said. South Korea, which successfully tamed its first wave of infections, is seeing another rise. While the first outbreak was centered in its fourth-largest city, the current outbreak is in the Seoul region, where most South Koreans live. Authorities reported 51 cases Wednesday. Its increase of 40 to 50 cases every day over the past two weeks comes amid increased public activity and eased attitudes on social distancing. In India, with a population of more than 1.3 billion, the densely populated cities of Mumbai and New Delhi have been hardest hit. The country has reported more than 450,000 cases of the virus, including more than 14,000 deaths. The situation in New Delhi is a rising concern, with the federal government criticizing its poor contact tracing and a lack of hospital beds. Mexico reported nearly 800 new deaths on Wednesday. The country has recorded more than 190,000 cases and more than 23,000 deaths, although officials acknowledge both are undercounts due to extremely low testing rates. Mexico has performed only about half a million tests, or about one for every 250 inhabitants. Worldwide, more than 9.2 million people have contracted the virus, including more than 477,000 who have died, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. ___ Perry reported from Wellington, New Zealand. Associated Press reporters around the world contributed. from https://ift.tt/3hUZBMp Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ COVID-19 and its associated quarantine have messed with pretty much every aspect of our lives. Work time, meal time, family time, play time; our moods, our stress level, our tolerance; our ability to spend so much as one more minute staring at the same four walls of the same den or living room or home office in which we spend most of our days. And if you’re like plenty of people, the quarantine has also completely bollixed up your sleep cycle, wrecking what might have been the most predictable and peaceful eight hours of your day. Unless, that is, you’re like plenty of other people—and the quarantine has led to some of the best and most consistently restful sleep you’ve ever had. If the pandemic itself has been an unalloyed bad, its impact on sleep has been much more ambiguous. “There are both upsides and downsides,” says Dr. Cathy Goldstein, associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Sleep Disorders Center. “We have more time in general so we’re devoting more of it to sleeping. When people run out of discretionary time, the first thing they do is condense their sleep. Now we can get that full eight hours—but we can also get too much.” At the same time, she points out, the pandemic might be causing other people to get too little sleep, or at times none at all. Broadly, Goldstein explains, sleep is governed by two systems: the homeostatic and the circadian. The homeostatic system is more internal and is simply a function of how much sleep you’ve had and when you need more. The circadian system is pegged more to the external—the 24-hour clock and the daylight-nighttime cycle. “The two systems are independent but interlocking,” Goldstein says. Left to ourselves, with no external clock but the rising and setting of the sun—humans in the state of nature in other words—we would all fall naturally into an approximate midnight to 8:00 AM sleep cycle, with 4:00 AM the peak and midpoint of rest. Those times are not fixed, of course, with the entire eight-hour cycle shifting earlier during the summer, when the sun might rise before 6:00 AM. Ten to midnight seems like a relatively late bedtime, but in that same state of nature there were also evening matters to tend to: getting children fed and put to sleep, tending the fires, watching out for predators. Indeed, Goldstein says, it’s normal for all of us to have a burst of evening alertness from 7:00 to 9:00 PM, which is more or less when our long-ago ancestors would have been performing these chores. During quarantine, it appears that a lot of people are finding their way back to that primordial sleep state. In two papers currently in pre-publication for the journal Current Biology—one a study of 435 European respondents, and the other of 139 students at the University of Colorado, Boulder—researchers had only good news to report. “They found the subjects were sleeping slightly longer and at more consistent times across the course of the week,” Goldstein says. “They found a reduction in ‘social jet lag,’ which is the deviation from the midnight to 8:00 AM natural cycle. The discrepancy is much reduced—with subjects sleeping more consistently across seven days.” But things are also more complicated—and less rosy—than that. People with jobs that allow them to work from home may be less physically active than they normally would be, which can disrupt the homeostatic system; they may have less exposure to outdoor light and dark, which can disrupt the circadian system. They may be eating more or at irregular times, which can put the digestive and sleep cycles in opposition to each other. “There is a risk for a breakdown in the biological clock,” says Dr. David Neubauer, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a faculty member at the school’s Sleep Disorders Center. “Maybe you’re staying up later, eating regular meals in the evening but snacking or napping during the day. We have had people in whom circadian rhythmicity disintegrates.” And those are people in the best and most enviable work situations. People who are out of a job are likely to suffer profound anxiety over finances and the future that working people don’t. Others, like those on the front lines of the pandemic—working in hospitals or at other essential jobs—now define their lives by little but work, which takes its own toll. “It’s incredibly stressful,” Neubauer says.” They’re working with patients who are in extreme conditions or are dying. They’re working long shifts. When they come home it’s difficult to relax and drift off to sleep.” In either case, this can lead to what sleep researchers call “acute insomnia,” an inability to relax and fall asleep due to a “precipitate stressor.” “There is depression, loneliness, anxiety and all of that undermines the ability to sleep,” Neubauer says. Other kinds of anxiety cut across employment lines. No one is completely safe from COVID-19. Virtually everyone knows what it means to wear a mask, to socially distance, to randomly cough or sneeze and wonder if it is the first sign of a deadly disease. That chronic stress takes its own toll. Neubauer reports people having anxiety dreams in which they’re not wearing a mask when they should, or are getting too close to other people when they shouldn’t. Other factors that mess with our sleep are more within our control, especially our media diets—both what we’re consuming and how we’re consuming it. The news has been all bad—or at least all distressing—lately, involving the coronavirus itself; police killings, systemic racism and the uprisings to protest the inequities; and the usual partisan mud fights over the economy and other issues. Gorge on that all day and you go to bed stuffed and anxious. When it comes to news then, less is more. “We can get a good update in five minutes,” Neubauer recommends. “We don’t need five hours.” The news delivery system also matters. We use phones, tablets and computers all day, and then carry them right into our beds at night. That exposes us to both overstimulating information and to blue-wavelength light that is thought to suppress the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin (though some research has called that widely accepted wisdom into question). Either way, if your screen is the last thing you see before you turn out the lights, you’re probably not doing your sleep any favors. “I have people put their phones to bed at least one hour before they go to sleep,” Goldstein says. “It’s a hard cutoff from both the information and the light.” Consistency matters too. Goldstein recommends that even if work does not require us to be up at a certain hour, we try to set an alarm for 8:00 AM—or another fixed but early hour—to align our circadian cycles better with the sun. And if at all possible, no napping if you fall out of alignment; that just scrambles the homeostatic system. Sleep, which is easily the most passive thing we do, ought not be a thing that requires so much work. And under ideal circumstances it doesn’t. But the current circumstances are not remotely ideal—awful for some, at the very least stressful for everyone else. We can’t control the pandemic; we can control our response to it. Improving our sleep might be one of the healthiest responses of all. from https://ift.tt/3fZy9LX Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ (BRUSSELS) — Americans are unlikely to be allowed into Europe when the continent reopens its borders next week, due to how the coronavirus pandemic is flaring in the U.S. and President Donald Trump’s ban on Europeans entering the United States. European nations appear on track to reopen their borders between each other by July 1, and their representatives in Brussels are now debating what virus-related criteria should apply when lifting border restrictions to the outside world that were imposed in March. Read more: Mapping the Spread of the Coronavirus Outbreak Around the U.S. and the World In recommendations to EU nations on June 11, the European Commission said “travel restrictions should not be lifted as regards third countries where the situation is worse” than the average in the 27 EU member countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. That is likely to rule out the United States, where new coronavirus infections have surged to the highest level in two months, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. After trending down for well over a month, new U.S. cases have risen for more than a week. The U.S. on Tuesday reported 34,700 new cases of the virus, bringing its total to more than 2.3 million and over 121,000 dead — the most anywhere in the world. The virus outbreaks in Brazil, India and Russia are remarkably high too, and it’s also unlikely that the EU will let their citizens in. In contrast, aside from a notable new outbreak tied to a slaughterhouse in western Germany, the virus’s spread has slowed notably across the EU and particularly in the 26 nations that make up Europe’s visa-free travel zone known as the Schengen area, which more than 15 million Americans visit each year. For the EU’s executive arm, the key criteria for opening up to the outside world should include the number of new infections per 100,000 population — the exact ceiling is up for debate — and the country’s overall response to the pandemic, in terms of testing, surveillance, treatment, contact tracing and reporting cases. But more than this, the country should lift its own travel restrictions for Europeans from all EU and Schengen nations, the commission said, adding “it cannot be applied selectively.” Brussels fears that opening up to countries outside in ad hoc way could lead to the reintroduction of border controls between nations inside the Schengen area, threatening once again Europe’s cherished principle of free movement, which allows people and goods to cross borders without checks. This principle of reciprocity on its own should rule out U.S. citizens, at least initially. The aim is to revise the list of acceptable countries every two weeks based on developments. In a decree on March 11, Trump suspended the entry of all people in the Schengen area. More than 10 million Europeans visit the United States each year. “The potential for undetected transmission of the virus by infected individuals seeking to enter the United States from the Schengen Area threatens the security of our transportation system and infrastructure and the national security,” Trump’s proclamation said. from https://ift.tt/31b383i Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ (BELGRADE, Serbia) — Top-ranked tennis player Novak Djokovic announced Tuesday he and his wife have COVID-19 after he played in a series of exhibition matches he organized in Serbia and Croatia with zero social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic. Raising questions about the full-fledged return of tennis, including the U.S. Open, planned for August, Djokovic — who stands third in the history of men’s tennis with 17 Grand Slam titles — is the fourth player to test positive for the illness after participating in the matches held in Belgrade and Zadar, Croatia. The others were three-time Grand Slam semifinalist Grigor Dimitrov, Borna Coric and Viktor Troicki. “Unfortunately, this virus is still present, and it is a new reality that we are still learning to cope and live with. I am hoping things will ease with time so we can all resume lives the way they were,” Djokovic said in a statement released Tuesday. “I am extremely sorry for each individual case of infection. I hope that it will not complicate anyone’s health situation and that everyone will be fine.” Djokovic has been in the news frequently in connection to the COVID-19 outbreak, which led to the suspension of the ATP and WTA professional tennis tours in March. Plans were announced last week for the sport’s sanctioned events to return in August. In April, he was criticized for saying he would not want to take a vaccine for the virus in order to be able to compete, even if it were mandatory for travel. In May, when he was staying in Spain, Djokovic broke local lockdown rules by practicing at a tennis club about a week before it was allowed. More recently, Djokovic complained about the U.S. Tennis Association’s plans to try to protect people from the virus during the U.S. Open with such measures as limiting the size of players’ entourages, going so far as to say he didn’t know whether he would go to the tournament in New York. The U.S. Open is scheduled to begin Aug. 31 without spectators, and the French Open — postponed from May — is supposed to start Sept. 27. Djokovic found himself defending the lax arrangements of his Adria Tour exhibitions, which were meant to raise money to help those affected by the pandemic but where the stands were packed and players casually interacted with fans and each other off the court. Djokovic and other players were seen hugging each other and partying in night clubs and restaurants. After Dimitrov said he tested positive over the weekend, the final of the competition in Croatia — in which Djokovic was supposed to play — was canceled. Next week’s tour stop in Bosnia has been called off, too. Croatia has 2,336 registered cases of the virus, with 107 deaths. Serbia has recorded about 13,000 cases and 263 deaths. “It was all born with a philanthropic idea, to direct all raised funds towards people in need and it warmed my heart to see how everybody strongly responded to this,” Djokovic said. “We organized the tournament at the moment when the virus has weakened, believing that the conditions for hosting the Tour had been met.” Both Serbia and Croatia lifted most of the lockdowns and other restrictions ahead of the elections held in Serbia last Sunday and to be held in Croatia on July 5. Opposition in Croatia has questioned whether the vote in Croatia should go ahead and whether Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and his government should self-isolate after he briefly met with Djokovic in Zadar during the tournament. Djokovic, who is not showing symptoms of COVID-19, said he will remain in self-isolation for 14 days. from https://ift.tt/3evjkjJ Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers should avoid using any hand sanitizers from a particular manufacturer because they could contain a toxic ingredient. The FDA says the products, manufactured by Eskbiochem SA de CV in Mexico, could contain methanol, which can be toxic when ingested or absorbed through the skin. In a statement on Friday, the FDA said it had identified the following Eskbiochem hand sanitizers:
The FDA said it had tested the Lavar Gel sanitizer and found it contained 81% methanol. The agency also said it had tested CleanCare No Germ sanitizer and found it contained 28% methanol. Methanol — also known as wood alcohol — “is not an acceptable ingredient for hand sanitizers and should not be used due to its toxic effects,” the FDA said in its statement. If you’ve been exposed to these sanitizers, the FDA recommends seeking immediate treatment as it is “critical for potential reversal of toxic effects of methanol poisoning.” Side effects can include “nausea, vomiting, headache, blurred vision, permanent blindness, seizures, coma, permanent damage to the nervous system or death,” the FDA said. And make sure to throw out the sanitizers in “appropriate hazardous waste containers” rather than pouring them down the drain or flushing them down the toilet, the FDA also advised. The FDA said it reached out to Eskbiochem on June 17 and recommended the company remove the sanitizers from the market due to their potential danger. As of Friday, the FDA said Eskbiochem had not taken steps to remove the products from the market. Eskbiochem was not immediately able to be reached for comment. However, Alexander Escamillo, an Eskbiochem representative, told the New York Times that Eskbiochem only learned of the FDA’s warning on Monday. He also told the Times that a broker who does not work for Eskbiochem but “had access to our company” registered it with the FDA and also “registered our labels and shipped sanitizers.” He told the Times the Eskbiochem had not registered itself with the FDA and would be taking action against the broker. “We would never do that, send a toxic chemical maliciously,” Escamillo told the Times. While everyone who has been exposed to these products should seek treatment, the FDA says children who accidentally ingest the sanitizers or young people who drink them to substitute alcohol are more at risk of poisoning. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues around the world, dependence on hand sanitizer has become a necessity for many. In its statement on Friday, the FDA said it is “concerned with false and misleading claims for hand sanitizers,” including that certain sanitizers can provide 24-hour protection against viruses like COVID-19. “[There] is no evidence to support these claims,” the FDA said in its statement. The FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends washing your hands often — especially after going to the bathroom, before eating or after coughing or sneezing — using soap and water for at least 20 seconds. The CDC also recommends using hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol if soap and water are not available. The FDA said that if you are experiencing any problems with a hand sanitizer you should submit a report to the MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program online, via a form or via fax at 1-800-FDA-0178. from https://ift.tt/385we5P Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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