Medically Speaking Team

Although monkeypox is not now considered a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General stated on Wednesday that the emergency nature of the occurrence required strong response activities.

Taking to Twitter, DG Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote, “While the Emergency Committee didn’t advise that the #monkeypox outbreak represents a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, they acknowledged the emergency nature of the event requiring intense response efforts.” “They advised that I should reconvene them quickly based on the evolving situation, which I will do,” he added.

The DG stated that youngsters and pregnant women are at a heightened risk of contracting the infection while voicing concerns over the virus’s continued dissemination.

“I am concerned about sustained transmission because it would suggest that the virus is establishing itself and it could move into high-risk groups including children, the immunocompromised and pregnant women,” WHO tweeted quoting DG Ghebreyesus.

He added that since 2017, Nigeria has been dealing with an outbreak of monkeypox. The nation has recorded more instances this year, which might indicate that the number meets or surpasses earlier peaks.

More than 50 nations have already confirmed cases of monkeypox, and the trend is expected to continue.

According to the DG, the nations should follow the recommendations made by the WHO to support public health organisations.

“Right now the action WHO would like to see: countries should increase surveillance by boost testing, countries should take a best practice approach to managing the response. WHO has published clinical guidance to assist public health agencies & on the frontlines,” WHO tweet read.

Speaking on the R&D front, he said, “WHO has been convening scientists via the R&D blueprint for epidemics to speed up research and development into tests, treatments and vaccines for monkeypox and develop a protocol for therapeutic development and rollout.”

Speaking on COVID-19, he said that even relatively “moderate” cases can cause disruption and harm, advising the public to fortify their immune systems to diminish the disease’s intensity and reduce the likelihood of developing a long-term or post-COVID condition.

In terms of research and development, he emphasised the necessity to create second-generation vaccinations that might stop the virus from spreading.

“Building on existing vaccines that limit severity and prevent death, developing second-generation vaccines that stop – or at least lower infection – would be a major step forward,” he said.

“On the R&D front, it is critical that there’s funding for second-generation vaccines as well as tests and treatments. While honing vaccines to the evolving virus variants makes sense, I am concerned that the pace of mutation means the world is continuing to play catch up,” he added.

He said that the ideal solution to the disease is the development of a pan-coronavirus vaccine that covers all variants so far and potentially future ones.added

“WHO continues to convene scientists & researchers; there has been a lot of research into this virus & understanding immunology overall. With WHO’s Solidarity Trials we can also offer global trials of vaccines to establish the safety and efficacy of quickly and effectively,” he added.

The COVID-19 pandemic, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is changing but is not yet gone, and more cases are being reported in 110 countries.

“This pandemic is changing but it’s not over. Our ability to track the #COVID19 virus is under threat as reporting and genomic sequences are declining meaning it is becoming harder to track Omicron and analyse future emerging variants,” Director-General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. He further added, “COVID19, driven by BA.4 and BA.5 in many places, cases are on the rise in 110 countries, causing overall global cases to increase by 20 per cent and deaths have risen in 3 of the 6 WHO regions even as the global figure remains relatively stable.”

During a media conference on COVID-19 and other topics relating to global health, Ghebreyesus stated that the WHO has urged all nations to immunise at least 70% of their populace.

He said that over 12 billion immunizations had been distributed worldwide in the last 18 months.

“On the flip side, hundreds of millions of people, including tens of millions of health workers and older people in lower-income countries remain unvaccinated, which means they are more vulnerable to future waves of the virus,” the WHO chief said.

“With only 58 countries hitting the 70 per cent target, some have said it’s not possible for low-income countries to make it,” he said.

Ghebreyesus used Rwanda as an example, where second dose immunisation rates are currently at or above 65% and continuing to rise. The head of the WHO emphasised the need of maintaining immunisation rates among the populations who are most at risk.

Although monkeypox is now not a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, DG Ghebreyesus had stated that the emergency nature of the occurrence required strong response measures.

Taking to Twitter, DG Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote, “While the Emergency Committee didn’t advise that the #monkeypox outbreak represents a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, they acknowledged the emergency nature of the event requiring intense response efforts.”

“They advised that I should reconvene them quickly based on the evolving situation, which I will do,” he added.

“They advised that I should reconvene them quickly based on the evolving situation, which I will do,” he added.
While expressing concerns over the sustained transmission of the virus the DG said that the children and pregnant women are at a high risk of catching the infection.

“I am concerned about sustained transmission because it would suggest that the virus is establishing itself and it could move into high-risk groups including children, the immunocompromised and pregnant women,” WHO tweeted quoting DG Ghebreyesus.

He added that since 2017, Nigeria has been dealing with an outbreak of monkeypox. The nation has recorded more instances this year, which might indicate that the number meets or surpasses earlier peaks.

More than 50 nations have already confirmed cases of monkeypox, and the trend is expected to continue.

According to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday, India recorded 18,819 new COVID cases in the last 24 hours, a rise of 4,313 infections from the day before.

On Wednesday, 14,506 new COVID cases had been reported across the nation. With this, the nation’s total of 1,04,555 active cases has surpassed the 100,000 threshold. There were 99,602 active cases as of Wednesday

.The daily positivity rate in the country also spiked from 3.35 per cent on Wednesday to 4.16 today.

According to the Ministry, 13,827 COVID patients recovered in the last 24 hours taking the total number of recoveries in the country since the onset of the pandemic to 4,28,22,493.

The recovery rate currently is 98.55 per cent.

39 patients succumbed to the virus during this period. The death toll in the country rose to 5,25,116.

Out of the 86.23 crore COVID tests conducted in the country so far, 4,52,430 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours. The weekly case positivity rate is 3.72 per cent.

Under the nationwide vaccination drive, 14,17,217 COVID vaccines were administered in the last 24 hours. A total of 1,97,61,91,554 vaccines have been jabbed so far.

As part of the nationwide vaccination drive, the Government of India has been supporting the States and UTs by providing them with COVID Vaccines free of cost. In the new phase of the universalization of the COVID19 vaccination drive, the Union Government will procure and supply (free of cost) 75 per cent of the vaccines being produced by the vaccine manufacturers in the country to States and UTs.

According to a new modelling research, Covid-19 vaccines are expected to have averted approximately 1.98 crore lives worldwide — out of a potential 3.14 crore fatalities — in the first year of the vaccination programme. In India, 42.10 lakh fatalities were avoided. The research was published in The Lancet Infectious Disease.

The analysis indicated that in the first year of the vaccination campaign, 1.98 crore out of a potential 3.14 crore COVID-19 fatalities were averted globally, based on excess deaths from 185 nations and territories.

According to the study, if the World Health Organization’s objective of vaccinating 40% of the population in each nation with two or more doses by the end of 2021 had been attained, an additional 5.99 lakh lives may have been spared.

Also Read: Unnoticed eye movements can be key for better self-driving cars: Study

Obesity, high blood pressure, hypertension, and diabetes are known stroke hazards, however they do not entirely explain women’s increased risk of stroke. Previous research on the relationship between infertility, miscarriage, and stillbirth and long-term stroke risk was equivocal.

To fill in the gaps, this study sought to examine the relationship between infertility, miscarriage, and stillbirth and the risk of fatal and non-fatal stroke, as well as the type of stroke.

The researchers examined data from 27 studies from the InterLACE collaboration, which collects data on reproductive health and chronic illness. The research includes data from eight studies from seven nations (Australia, China, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States).

Infertility, miscarriage, and stillbirth were all investigated using questionnaires. Non-fatal stroke data was also discovered using self-reported questionnaires or hospital records. Hospital data were utilised to identify fatal stroke patients and stroke subtypes (haemorrhagic or ischaemic).

The research comprised around 620,000 women ranging in age from 32 to 73 at the start.

Of them, 275,863 women had both non-fatal and fatal stroke data, 54,716 only had non-fatal stroke data, and 288,272 only had fatal stroke data. Among them, 9,265 (2.8%) women had their first non-fatal stroke at the age of 62, while 4,003 (0.7%) suffered a fatal stroke at the age of 71.

Women under the age of 40 who had a non-fatal stroke were excluded because they may have suffered a stroke before a history of infertility, pregnancy loss, or stillbirth could be established. Several other factors that may have impacted the results were considered, including ethnicity, weight, lifestyle, and underlying diseases.

The study discovered that infertility, miscarriage, and stillbirth were all related with an elevated risk of stroke, particularly recurrent miscarriages (three or more) and stillbirths.

Women with a history of infertility had a 14% greater risk of non-fatal stroke than women without a history of infertility.

Miscarriage was also linked to an 11% increased incidence of non-fatal stroke in comparison to women who had not experienced a miscarriage. The risk rose with the number of losses a woman experienced: one, two, and three miscarriages resulted in a 7%, 12%, and 35% increase in stroke risk, respectively.

Women who had three or more miscarriages had a 37% and 41% higher risk of non-fatal ischemic and haemorrhagic stroke, respectively. Similarly, for fatal ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, three or more miscarriages were associated with an 83% and 84% increase in risk, respectively.

A history of stillbirth was linked to a 30% increased risk of non-fatal stroke, and women who had many stillbirths (two or more) were almost 80% more likely to have a non-fatal ischemic stroke.

The study also discovered that recurrent stillbirth was related with a 40% increased risk of fatal stroke.

Endothelial dysfunction (narrowing of the heart’s blood channels) may explain the higher risk of stroke in women with a history of recurrent stillbirth or miscarriage, according to the researchers.

Lifestyle, infertility and miscarriage

However, studies also imply that unhealthy lifestyles (such as smoking or obesity) are linked to pregnancy loss and infertility, which may lead to an increased risk of stroke.

Also Read: Researcher finds molecular factors for treatment of melanoma skin cancer

Because this is an observational research, it cannot determine a causation. Alternative limitations of the study include the fact that information was gathered using questionnaires; the effects of other therapies were not investigated due to inadequate data; and definitions of infertility, stillbirth, and miscarriage may change among studies.

Nonetheless, this was a big, well-designed study, and the results remained mostly unaltered after additional analyses, indicating that the findings are sound.

“Having a history of recurrent pregnancy loss may be considered as a female-specific risk factor for stroke,” the researchers write.

They also advise that early monitoring of women with a history of miscarriage or infertility, as well as promoting healthy behaviours, may assist to reduce their risk of stroke later in life.

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According to a new study, a group of researchers discovered vital genomic information that might help scientists build more effective treatments and prevention techniques for difficult-to-treat melanoma skin cancer.

The research was reported in the journal “Nature Communications.” Researchers from The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) uncover and characterise critical aspects of a gene mutation that is responsible for 15 to 20% of all melanomas in this new article.

Also Read: Research: Skin disorders can affect mental health of children, young people

The research proves, using a preclinical laboratory model, that the frequency of a given NRAS gene mutation occurring in human melanoma is closely connected to that gene mutation’s potential to cause spontaneous melanoma development.

“This means that the properties of the mutant itself, rather than the ease with which that specific gene mutation occurs,” said corresponding author Christin Burd, an associate professor of molecular genetics in The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Molecular Genetics, and a member of the OSUCCC – James Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Program.

“NRAS-mutant cancers are challenging to treat because effective therapies beyond immunotherapy don’t exist yet,” said Burd. “Each cancer type seems to prefer a specific ‘flavor’ of mutant NRAS, and it has not been clear why this is.”

The OSUCCC – James was curious about what distinguished melanoma-promoting NRAS mutations from those that promote other cancer types. According to the researchers, this understanding might help them pinpoint the early processes that lead to melanoma development and design therapies to avoid the cancer.

Burd and colleagues publish their findings in Nature Communications on June 7, 2022.

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Andrea Benucci and colleagues at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science have built artificial neural networks that learn to detect things more rapidly and precisely.

The study, which was just published in the scientific journal PLOS Computational Biology, focuses on all of our unconscious eye movements. It demonstrates that they play an important role in helping us to recognise items consistently.

These discoveries may be used to machine vision, for example, to help self-driving cars learn how to distinguish crucial road elements.

Objects in the environment do not blur or become unidentifiable despite our frequent head and eye movements throughout the day, despite the fact that the actual information striking our retinas changes continually.

This perceived constancy is most likely enabled by brain copies of movement commands. These copies are supposed to be transmitted throughout the brain each time we move, allowing the brain to account for our own motions and maintain our perception steady.

In addition to steady perception, research shows that eye movements and associated motor duplicates may assist humans in recognising things in the world, albeit how this occurs is unknown.

Benucci created a convolutional neural network (CNN) that solves this challenge. The CNN was created to maximise item categorization in a visual scene while the eyes are moving.

First, the network was taught to categorise 60,000 black-and-white photos into ten groups. Although it performed well on these pictures, when tested with shifted images that mirrored naturally changing visual input that would occur as the eyes moved, performance plummeted to the level of chance.

However, categorization improved dramatically after training the network using altered pictures, as long as the direction and magnitude of the resulting eye movements were also incorporated.

In particular, adding the eye movements and their motor copies to the network model allowed the system to better cope with visual noise in the images. “This advancement will help avoid dangerous mistakes in machine vision,” said Benucci. “With more efficient and robust machine vision, it is less likely that pixel alterations–also known as ‘adversarial attacks’–will cause, for example, self-driving cars to label a stop sign as a light pole, or military drones to misclassify a hospital building as an enemy target.”

Also Read: WHO declares Monkeypox as Public Health Emergency

Bringing these results to real-world machine vision is not as difficult as it seems. As Benucci explains, “the benefits of mimicking eye movements and their efferent copies implies that ‘forcing’ a machine-vision sensor to have controlled types of movements, while informing the vision network in charge of processing the associated images about the self-generated movements, would make machine vision more robust, and akin to what is experienced in human vision.”

The next step in this research will involve collaboration with colleagues working with neuromorphic technologies. The idea is to implement actual silicon-based circuits based on the principles highlighted in this study and test whether they improve machine-vision capabilities in real-world applications.

According to reports, AIIMS Delhi Director Dr. Randeep Guleria is likely to be given a three-month extension. According to reports, the top decision-makers have agreed to extend Dr Guleria’s tenure as AIIMS Director.

The Prime Minister’s Appointments Committee (ACC) has requested further names for consideration for the position of AIIMS director from the Union Health Ministry.

According to sources, this does not mean that the names supplied before after being shortlisted by the search-cum-selection committee would not be considered.

Also Read: Unnoticed eye movements can be key for better self-driving cars: Study

According to reports, AIIMS Delhi Director Dr. Randeep Guleria is likely to be given a three-month extension. According to reports, the top decision-makers have agreed to extend Dr Guleria’s tenure as AIIMS Director.

The Prime Minister’s Appointments Committee (ACC) has requested further names for consideration for the position of AIIMS director from the Union Health Ministry.

According to sources, this does not mean that the names supplied before after being shortlisted by the search-cum-selection committee would not be considered.

Three persons have been arrested for attacking the medical staff of Neendakara Taluk hospital in the Kollam district, informed state president of KGMOA, Dr G S Vikayakrishnan on Wednesday.

The arrests were made after the Kerala Government Medical Officers Association (KGMOA) staged a protest against the attack. According to Dr G S Vikayakrishnan, the protesting doctors had demanded immediate arrest of the people who attacked health officials (doctor, nurse) and the security personnel on Tuesday night.

As per the KGMOA President, three “anti-social people” had attacked a doctor, security staff, and ambulance driver of Taluk hospital in Kollam with iron rods, due to which the nurse was admitted to a medical college as she sustained injuries to her scalp.

They claimed that everything transpired for no reason because they were irritated because of the complaint filed against them two days before for abusively threatening medical workers.

Notably, the accused took their mother to the hospital on Sunday, when they were instructed to wear a face mask and a large gathering was prohibited.

Also Read: AIIMS Delhi Director Randeep Guleria likely to get extension for three months

“The hospital attack is a continuous story in Kerala. In the last two years, there is a significant increase in such cases in both the government and private hospitals. We staged a protest boycotting the outpatient and casualty services in Taluk hospital,” the president said.

“We demanded to arrest the culprits as such attacks affect the hospitals. The reason behind this attack was the lack of security personnel…We need trained persons as security otherwise it will affect our morale,” the president added.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will lead a Covid review meeting with the core team of specialists on Thursday, according to reports. Sources from ANI have also verified that the meeting will take place in person in the afternoon.

Previously, on June 13, Mandaviya presided over a video conference with Health Ministers and top officials from States and Union Territories (UTs) to examine the success of the immunisation campaign HarGharDastak 2.0.

“COVID is not over yet. There are reports of rising cases of COVID in some states. It is important at this time to be alert and not forget COVID Appropriate behaviour (CAB) such as wearing masks and maintaining physical distance to prevent the spread of the infection,” he had stressed.

Mandaviya added that expanded and timely testing will enable early detection of COVID patients and assist to prevent the spread of the illness among the population, citing higher case positive in various districts and States and lower COVID-19 testing.

He had asked states and universities to maintain and expand monitoring while focusing on genome sequencing to find novel mutants/variants in the country.

Also Read: Kollam: Three arrested for attacking medical staff at hospital

He added that States/UTs must maintain and monitor the five-pronged strategy of Test, Track, Treat, Vaccination, and Adherence to Covid Appropriate Behavior (CAB).

States were also asked to prioritise the implementation of the COVID-19 Operational Guidelines for Revised Monitoring Strategy, which focuses on surveillance of incoming foreign travellers as well as surveillance through health institutions, labs, and communities.

Stressing on the importance of COVID vaccination among the vulnerable age groups, he urged the State Health Ministers to personally review the status and progress of the special month-long drive Har Ghar Dastak 2.0 campaign which started on June 1.

“Let us accelerate our efforts to identify all beneficiaries in the 12-17 age group for the first and second doses, so they can attend schools with the protection of the vaccine,” the health minister had said.

He had urged States for focussed coverage of 12-17 age groups through school-based campaigns (Government/Private/ informal Schools like Madrasas, Day Care Schools), along with targeted coverage of non-school-going children during the summer vacation.

He added that the population group of above 60 years of age is a vulnerable category and needs to be protected with the precaution dose.

“Our healthcare workers are going door-to-door to ensure that the vulnerable population is administered the precaution dose”, he said.

The States Health Ministers were urged to also review the administration of precaution doses to the 18-59 years age group with the private hospitals on a regular basis.

He said that we can utilize the learning from the first Har Ghar Dastak campaign to achieve 100 per cent coverage among the eligible population for ensuring extended protection against COVID.

“Adequate vaccine doses are available across the country. Let us ensure accelerated coverage of COVID vaccination during the second phase of the Har Ghar Dastak campaign,” he had stressed.

Latest Covid numbers

Meanwhile, India reported 13,313 new COVID-19 infections and 38 deaths in a 24-hour span, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Thursday.

The latest updates pushed the country’s overall COVID-19 numbers to 4,33,44,958 cases, 5,24,941 deaths and 83,990 active cases, the data showed.