Since the first April 2024 distribution of free LFD Covid lateral flow devices has stopped in England. These will now be only accessible for specific targets of the population via health services. Routine screening of Covid patients being admitted to hospital has stopped and discharge planning for patients returning to hospice or the care home are no longer being delayed by the routine testing demands.
Polymerase chain reactions (PCR) tests are still being deployed to diagnose highly symptomatic individuals, especially immunosuppressed patients. And steroids remains the first line of management. Dexamethasone 6 mg for 10 days, unless there are clear indications to stop early. Tocilizumab is also on the market being recommended on individuals with COVID -19 having systemic steroids, needing supplemental oxygen or mechanical ventilation and if there is no evidence of bacterial or other viral infections.
For high risk patients who are at risk of progression to severe COVID illness and complications Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir) remains the recommended drug of choice with Sotrovimab being used as a second line drug.
Even as of today May 4th 2024 COVID still lingers around us but our patients are more symptomatic and unwell with flu than the COVID. This virus from the same family of corona viruses as the deadly SARS and the MERS; in just 2 years by December 2021 had taken an estimated 14.9 million lives according to WHO since its outbreak in December 2019. Although the case fatality rate was estimated to be as high as 20% at the start of the pandemic, a review paper of multiple researches published in 2020 suggested a reduced mortality rate of 5.6%. This number has most certainly decreased to much a lower value since then in 2024. In comparison, the fatality rate with SARS was 13% and with MERS was 35%. But despite its low mortality rate, COVID was a calamity to be feared. The death tolls with COVID significantly higher than both combined.
In 1889 a pandemic with influenza-like illness spread all across Europe, Asia, Africa, South America taking an estimate of 1 million lives worldwide. Similarities in the presentation with the 1889 pandemic with a constellation of signs and symptoms, epidemiology, recovery period and mortality rates has piqued interest of many researchers of the Covid 2019 pandemic. And it is now believed that the pandemic of 1889 was also due to a member of Coronavirus named HCoV-OC43.
A lot of conspiracy theories continue to surround the public today. Was COVID virus a lab produced bioweapon? Is it only a strange coincidence that the Wuhan city, China with the institute of Virology studying the corona virus was the major epicenter of the wave? Did major countries and corporations like and from the United States have a role in the outbreak? Was the pandemic a mass weapon of global destruction reproduced with specific targets of population in mind and with specific objectives for the new post pandemic world? Will it be used again in the future?
Is there any truth to conspiracy theories? I don’t know. All I can say is, COVID outbreak as a means of mass population control conspiracy sounds silly. We are at the brink of third world war here. Russia and Ukraine have been bombing each other since February 2022. At this rate we will eliminate each other way before any other pandemic eliminates us…
Ladyoneyellowcoat 