Month: July 2021

Amid a lack of proper support for Canadians receiving home-based support towards the end of their lives, a new risk calculator is helping predict how long seniors have left to live. The Risk Evaluation for Support: Predictions for Elder-Life in the Community Tool — dubbed ‘RESPECT’ for short — can predict death within six months, and was developed using data from more than 491,000 community-dwelling adults aged at least 50 years who used home care between 2007 and 2013. Read more: Canadian Senate passes Bill C-7, expanding assisted dying to include mental illness “The RESPECT calculator allows families and their loved ones to plan,” said Dr. Amy Hsu, investigator at the Bruyère Research Institute and lead author of the study. “For example, it can help an adult [or] ...

A 13-year-old Michigan boy died in his sleep three days after receiving the coronavirus vaccine and the Centers for Disease Control has opened an investigation into the death, a report said on Sunday. Jacob Clynick — who was preparing to enter high school in the fall — received his second dose of the Pfizer vaccine at a Walgreens in Zilwaukee, Mich. on June 13, his aunt told the Detroit Free Press. Jacob was healthy and had no underlying health conditions. The only side effects he had experienced from the vaccine were the ones most others had to deal with: fatigue and fever. On June 15, two nights after receiving the second dose, Jacob complained of a stomach ache before going to sleep and never woke up. “He passed away in the middle of the nigh...

Japan is making arrangements for its COVID-19 vaccination passports to be accepted by over 10 nations, including Italy, France and Greece, after the certificate program begins in late July, government sources said Sunday. If the agreements are reached, certificate holders will be exempt from quarantine or showing negative test results for COVID-19 when traveling from Japan to those countries, the sources said. But the Japanese government plans to continue requiring travelers entering Japan, including returnees, to quarantine for two weeks even if they have been vaccinated. The position has complicated negotiations with countries such as Singapore and Israel, which have called for mutual exemption, the sources said. So-called vaccine passports are official documents showing a pers...

For the first time in more than a year, we're feeling some hope - or at least cautious optimism - that the pandemic could recede to the background. But experts want us to know that there is still a concern that new mutations of the virus could bring it back, and it might be even stronger.   A major concern right now is the Delta variant, a highly contagious (and possibly more severe) SARS-CoV-2 virus strain, which was first identified in India in December. It then swept rapidly through that country and Great Britain as well, which has led to rising numbers of infections and deaths. The first Delta case in the United States was diagnosed a couple of months ago (in March) and now cases here are rapidly multiplying. Inci Yildirim, a Yale Medicine pediatric infectious diseases specialist...

Unvaccinated people can be a driving force for new variants, an infectious disease expert told CNN.  "Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories," infectious disease expert Dr. William Schaffner said.  Mutations that replicate can become variants and unvaccinated hosts more easily allow for that.  Loading Something is loading. ...