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Produced by | Sohu Health
Author | Zhou Yichuan
Edit | Yuan Yue
In 2022, "Sohu Pharmaceutical Ogawa Broadcast" launched a weekly condensed column to take you to read international medical news in three minutes.
1. The Omicron outbreak has led to a spike in child morbidity
In the global COVID-19 epidemic brought by Omicron, the proportion of children infected has increased significantly. In the week ended Jan. 1, 4.3 people in the United States were hospitalized for infection for every 100,000 children under the age of 5, significantly higher than the previous week's 2.6 people, and the number of admissions for children under the age of 18 was an average of 797 per day, an increase of 80% over the previous week.
Dr. Fauci, an infectious disease expert in the United States, believes that although Omicron is less toxic than Delta, it has already undergone large-scale community transmission in the United States, while children's vaccination rates are low, and the number of hospitalizations has risen rapidly. Buddy Creech of Vanderbilt University believes that Omicron is more susceptible to respiratory epithelial cells and is susceptible to the virus due to the narrower airways of young children. Inflammation caused by the virus is more prone to blockages, breathing like the "roar" of a dog or seal, and a violent cough. Parainfluenza virus and respiratory syncytial virus are prone to the same symptoms.
It is reassuring to note that pediatric patients currently have a high proportion of mild and asymptomatic overall symptoms, and the "howling" that sounds a little scary is the most commonly treated symptom by pediatricians, with rich experience in medication. However, this does not mean that childhood infection can be ignored, and in addition to being at risk of severe illness, it can also lead to infection in families or other groups of people.
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed the protective effects of vaccines on children, with 4 percent of hospitalized patients being vaccinated and 96 percent unvaccinated. Universal child-wide vaccination is therefore still the most practical means of preventing infection.
2. Omicron has less than 15% of ICU beds in many states in the United States, and 40,000 medical care in the United Kingdom have left the post, but experts say that victory is imminent?
Whether the diagnosis is six or seven figures every day seems to be painless or itchy for americans and British people... However, Omicron really bites!
The seemingly "mild" Omicron brought more hospitalizations and also led to more infection isolation among healthcare workers. The number of hospitalizations in the United States has exceeded 150,000, and the number of ICU beds in 19 states has been less than 15%, and the number of hospitalizations in 4 states has been less than 10%. According to the UK's NHS, the number of healthcare workers leaving work has increased at a rate of 2% per week, and more than 40,000 people have now left their jobs.
Meanwhile, Bill Gates said in an interview that if Omicron infects the entire country, it will become a common seasonal disease; David Heymann of the School of Tropical Hygiene of the University of London also said in an interview with the media that if 95% of the British people have antibodies due to widespread infection, then the United Kingdom will become the first country to rise from the epidemic.
When will experts on TV listen to the opinions of the frontline healthcare in the ICU?
3. Pfizer is developing an anti-Omicron vaccine and is expected to be available in March
Pfizer CEO Albert Burra said in an interview with the media that a vaccine for the Omicron variant, Coronavirus Pneumonia, will be ready in March, and the company has already started producing these doses.
4. American scientists completed the world's first human transplant pig heart surgery
On January 10, the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the United States announced that it had completed the world's first swine heart transplant! The patient achieves blood pumping by the pig's heart, and the patient can now walk on the ground.
If the organ is broken, you can change it at any time in the future?
The shortage of donors is the biggest problem in organ transplant surgery, with about 110,000 people in the United States waiting for transplantation and 6,000 people dying each year due to waiting for transplantation. There is also a very strict time limit for transplant surgery, and after the donor is available, it is necessary to race against the clock to transport and carry out the operation. Cultivating human organs in animals has sufficient donor sources and time preparations, and pigs' organs match the size of humans best, making them an important potential transplant donor.
Of course, the case of directly loading animal organs into a human body can only appear in mythological novels, where the human immune system immediately recognizes heterogeneous cells and initiates a strong attack, that is, an acute rejection reaction; in this operation, scientists use genetically modified means to avoid rejection. Ethically, patients have been severe enough to receive a human heart transplant and fully understand the risks of surgery, which has been approved by the FDA. Whether this condition can be replicated depends on the patient's subsequent survival effect.
The author once interviewed a biological heart valve company, they provide patients with a set of different types of pig heart valves, in the valve repair surgery to choose the right size. If the genetically modified pig breeding human organs are available and safe for a long time, organ failure patients will also have a more suitable organ choice, and once the organ fails, they can choose to order a pig organ for use.
The Second Master Brothers really paid too much for mankind!