Category: Feature Stories

Millions of refugees in Pakistan could miss Corona vaccination, infections despite vaccination in U.S., Hong Kong considers donation of unused vaccine doses.More than 167.6 million people have tested positive for the virus worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 3.4 million infected people have died. More than 1.7 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide. In Pakistan, millions of Afghan refugees could miss out on the Corona vaccine. Some 2.8 million Afghans live in the South Asian country, some without any documents, others with a special refugee card. There…

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The first advanced corona vaccines could be approved this year if successful, according to the German Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (vfa). “A number of manufacturers and institutes are working on vaccines and vaccination regimens that should also be effective against such new variants of Sars-CoV-2, for which the first-generation vaccines have so far offered only weaker protection,” a vfa spokesman said. Three main strategies are being pursued: The first involves stronger immunization by activating the immune defenses even more, for example through antibodies. In the second case, work is…

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At the opening of the World Health Organization’s annual meeting, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on the international community to confront the global corona crisis with the same strategy as in a war. “We are at war with a virus,” Guterres said Monday. He said the world needs “the logic and urgency of a war economy” to ensure that all countries have equal access to the “weapons” to fight the pandemic. The pandemic has unleashed a “tsunami of suffering,” Guterres lamented. More than 3.4 million people have died since it…

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The unloved Corona rapid tests by swabbing the nose or throat may soon be a thing of the past: Health authorities in Singapore have given preliminary approval to a novel breath test that is said to detect the virus “accurately within one minute,” the National University of Singapore (NUS) said Monday. The test was developed by the company Breathonix. The company, founded by NUS graduates, is working closely with the Southeast Asian city-state’s Ministry of Health during the trial phase. The “BreFence Go Covid-19 Breath Test System” will reportedly now…

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The Corona vaccines from Pfizer/Biontech and Astrazeneca offer fairly high protection against disease with the B.1.617.2 variant of the virus, which first appeared in India, according to a study from the United Kingdom. After two vaccinations, the two preparations protect almost as effectively against corona disease caused by this variant as against that caused by the British variant B.1.1.7. British study on Pfizer/Biontech and AstrazenecaAccording to a study by the government agency Public Health England (PHE), Pfizer/Biontech’s vaccine protects against disease caused by B.1.617.2 with 88 percent effectiveness two weeks…

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Currently, fatigue syndrome is often talked about, especially in connection with long covid, or the late effects of a corona infection. However, severe fatigue also occurs after other illnesses. The translation from French makes it clear what it is all about: “Fatigue” means tiredness. But those who are affected by fatigue syndrome need more than just a little rest. Symptoms of fatigue syndrome“Fatigue is defined as pathological exhaustion and exhaustibility that defies the usual recovery strategies,” explains Sabine Herzig, a specialist in neurology at the Day Clinic for Cognitive Neurology…

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Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) plan to provide 3.5 billion CoV vaccine doses to poor countries. They pledged that amount for 2021 and 2022 at the World Health Summit in Rome yesterday. U.S. company Pfizer, working with German company Biontech, plans to supply two billion doses of its vaccine to countries, Moderna up to 995 million and J&J up to 500 million. In the run-up to the summit, the EU Commission had contacted the manufacturers, with whom the EU had good experience, about this, according to…

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Getting “caught” by a stinging nettle isn’t exactly pleasant. That’s probably one of the main reasons why most people tend to avoid this plant or immediately consider it a weed. Yet the stinging nettle not only contains an extremely large number of nutrients, it seems to be a veritable miracle herb. Hardly any wild plant is as robust as the stinging nettle. And there is hardly a meadow, path or forest edge where it cannot be found. Only very few people take the opportunity to pick it and use it…

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The good news: vaccination protection lasts – at least according to current knowledge – for six to nine months, with minor deviations. The bad news is that we will probably have to get a booster this year. The manufacturers have long been working on adapting their vaccines in the best possible way. “We will have to settle the vaccine booster on a broader scale in autumn,” said vaccination expert Herwig Kollaritsch, “the logistics for this are in the making.” Soon there should be a recommendation from the National Immunization Panel,…

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