On Tuesday (December 19), the World Health Organization (WHO) officially listed the JN.1 variant of the new coronavirus as a "variant of concern".
Canada and the United States are currently experiencing a wave of infections, many of whom are Chinese. Someone has aphonia. After a 15-year-old girl was diagnosed with the new crown, she was diagnosed with paralysis of her vocal cords and unfortunately became "dumb".
According to the latest WHO announcement, the JN.1 variant is now officially listed as a "strain of concern", posing an additional risk to global public health, but the rating is currently assessed as "low".
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the rate of JN.1 infections more than doubled nationwide from late November to mid-December. As of December 8, the JN.1 variant has accounted for 15%-29% of the new coronavirus cases in the local area.
Although there is no evidence that this variant is more dangerous or deadly, the speed of transmission is clear. It is especially growing rapidly in the northeastern United States, where it is estimated that about one-third of new cases are responsible.
Recently, another special case has attracted the attention of health experts - a 15-year-old girl in Boston, USA, was transferred to the emergency room of a hospital in Massachusetts because of symptoms of breathing difficulties 2 weeks after being infected with the new crown.
Upon further examination, doctors found that both of the girl's vocal cords were paralyzed. After a series of tests, including blood tests, spinal fluid analysis, and psychiatric tests, doctors couldn't find a cause other than the coronavirus.
"It is very unusual for a healthy, young, energetic high school student to suddenly lose an important cranial nerve and be unable to speak or breathe. ”
The doctor could only cut her trachea open and insert a tube.
According to available reports, adults have occasionally been diagnosed with vocal cord paralysis due to COVID infection, but this is the first time it has appeared in adolescents.
Some experts believe that this is because of the inflammation associated with the immune response caused by the new coronavirus, which affects the nerves in the throat.
"Given that the virus is still circulating, any child who develops difficulty breathing, speaking and swallowing after a recent COVID diagnosis should consider it a complication. ”
Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have seen a recent surge in COVID infections as JN.1 spreads rapidly.
The number of COVID infections jumped to 32,000 in the week ended Dec. 2 from about 22,000 in the previous week, with JN.1 cases accounting for 60 per cent, according to Singapore's Ministry of Health.
The number of Covid infections in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, has been on the rise since November. The Jakarta Health Department confirmed two deaths in December, after two consecutive months without deaths.
Malaysia's Covid infections almost doubled in a week, with 6,796 infections in the week ending Dec. 2 from 3,626 the week before.
Canada is no better. In the past two weeks, many Chinese people on social platforms such as WeChat Moments and Xiaohongshu have shared their "course of illness", and they have not recovered from fever for 2 weeks, so they have asked for help online. A Chinese mother took her child back to China for a month and a half, but it just happened to catch up with the epidemic of mycoplasma pneumonia in China. She was just glad that she had done a good job of protection and hadn't been taken down.
As a result, the child fell ill after two days of school in Canada, and half of the children in the childcare center were sick. The child kept complaining of headaches, chills, and no appetite. On the first day, taking Tylenol had a mediocre effect on fever, and soon it restarted. Mom went to Costco to buy Advil to see results, and it is estimated that it will take a week to recover......
Below, a mother said that her daughter also had exactly the same symptoms, with a high fever of 40-42 degrees for 5 consecutive days. Ran to the emergency room + 2 trips to the pediatrician, said it was a viral infection, no medicine, that is, Tylenol every 4 hours, Advil every 6 hours. I just had a fever and had to wait 2 weeks for a cough.
Someone was infected by the virus that his child brought back from school and got sick three times a month. "The recent wave is so bad that I feel like my child's lungs are about to cough out. "I was infected by my husband, but the symptoms of the two were different, he had a fever, cough, runny nose + no sense of taste, I was alternating between cold and heat, muscle and joint pain, headache + sore throat + nasal congestion, and I couldn't sleep because of the pain. ”
"Our family is all down...... "Some people went to the emergency department and were diagnosed with pneumonia; some people saw their family doctor and said that they had a type A flu and coughed for a week and still didn't get better; some people collapsed with their whole family, and the test result was the new crown, and they couldn't get rid of the high fever. "I feel like I'm going to be 'burned', my eyes and ears are burned. "My whole body hurts, my fingers hurt. ”
"The whole family has been sick all over the place, fever + blade throat + body aches, and my sense of smell and taste has not recovered yet. "I feel that the nerves on my scalp have been burned, and the pain is even more uncomfortable than the previous diagnosis of the new crown. "Some people are sick for 10 days, and they have tried both Chinese and Western medicines, but they are not good. She went to the doctor to get some special anti-inflammatory drugs or antibiotics or something, but the doctor said that it was "the fifth patient to have these symptoms today", and she saw more than a dozen of them all with colds. Some people coughed for two or three weeks without being prescribed medication.
She had no choice but to go back to work. At the beginning of the evening, the vocal cords and throat were swollen, and it was not good to buy Chinese patent medicine. Someone was hit just after the flu vaccine, and his friends were also hit one after another, and the result was that it was the new crown. "I started to feel bad on Tuesday afternoon, I was dead on Wednesday, and I tested two bars yesterday. "It's the new crown, I tested it at home several times and it was yin, and I went to the hospital to test it twice and guessed yang. "It's been three weeks! I have an intermittent fever, and I have to go to work until I take 2 days off and 3 days off, and I want to cry without tears. "I'm 7 days old, I can't get out of bed at all, my head is about to explode. ”
Many of them had gone to the school company's pre-holiday party and then fell ill one after another. Someone goes to work and gets a notification that the entire office is down and all working from home. "Our office too, after the holiday party, it all collapsed, and I had unprecedented symptoms: drowsiness + extreme weakness, gasping for breath in a shower, and sweating in the middle of the night. "Our office was also turned over, and we finally got a fever and dizziness. ”
Some people have a fever hallucination, thinking that they are unlucky to be targeted by the virus, but when they see that they are all patients on the Internet, they have no choice but to joke: "I am relieved to see that everyone is cold and fever......" "New crown: I seem to see that I am too milky." Flu: My grandmother seems to be beckoning to me. COVID + Flu + Mycoplasma: I'm too milky to pull my hand......" "The new crown is like that big guy, directly turning on our immune system, and then all kinds of viruses and bacteria creeps begin to attack the city, it watches from the side, and from time to time inserts a foot to make trouble. ”
It's the end of the year, I hope everyone can take care of their health!