Over 200 people have been sickened by a norovirus outbreak linked to raw oysters from Texas, causing the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) to issue a recall and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to open an investigation into the mollusks. 

The CDC on Thursday announced that it is working in partnership with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the DSHS and other public health partners to find the cause of the outbreak. The DSHS issued a recall for the affected oysters, and the FDA shared an advisory warning. 

The contaminated oysters were harvested in the southeastern portion of Galveston Bay from Nov. 17 to Dec. 7, the DSHS said. The recall includes both shucked and shelled oysters. The area from which the oysters originated was closed to harvesting on Dec. 8, after reports of illnesses started coming in from parts of Texas and Florida....

A third supermarket has been added to the list of sites where a toxic batch of spinach has been recalled after almost 50 people fell ill after eating it....

...“No one has died, so we’re very happy with that and we hope it remains that way, but these people are quite sick … to the point of marked hallucinations, where they are seeing things that aren’t there,” he said....

... Overall, China says more than 90% of its population has been fully vaccinated. However, less than half of people aged 80 and over have received three doses of vaccine. Elderly people are more likely to suffer severe Covid symptoms...

... The [Chinese] government hasn't officially reported any Covid deaths since 7 December...

... However, there are anecdotal reports of deaths linked to Covid appearing in Beijing. Hospitals there and in other cities are struggling to cope with a surge, which has also hit postal and catering services hard. Meanwhile, China's largest city, Shanghai, has ordered most of its schools to take classes online as cases soar.

India's health ministry is on alert following a surge of Covid cases in neighbouring China...

... India witnessed two deadly waves of Covid in 2020 and 2021, but has seen low infection levels this year.

According to government data, the country reports roughly 1,200 Covid cases every week. Over 2.2 billion Covid vaccine doses have been administered so far...

What is wrong with just reporting the truth?

Absence rates across schools in England rose sharply at the start of December as more pupils missed class due to illness...

... The proportion of children off sick rose to 7.5% in the week commencing 5 December - up from 6.1% the previous week and 2.6% at the start of the term...

... A head teachers' union said it was "concerning" for health and education...

Hospitals in China appear to be filling up amid concerns about a fresh Covid-19 wave hitting the country...

... China figures show no-one died of Covid on Wednesday but there is scepticism [of that figure]...

... The German vaccines are to be administered initially to expats in China - estimated to be about 20,000.

It is the first foreign Covid-19 vaccine to be delivered to China, although no details have been released about the time or the size of the delivery. Last month during a visit to Beijing, Chancellor Olaf Scholz pressed for the vaccine to be made freely available to Chinese citizens as well.

A sudden lifting of many of China's Covid restrictions has caused nationwide outbreaks - as well as confusion and anger on social media.

Amid a severe shortage of rapid test kits, several provinces like Zhejiang and Anhui, as well as Chongqing, are implementing a new policy that allows people with mild symptoms or no symptoms to go back to work.

On Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, the hashtag related to this announcement has been read 33 million times since Monday. There is shock and fury.

"There has been no preparation in the past three years, and all of a sudden the restrictions are lifted and you are allowed to go to work while ill - our lives are worthless like ants,"...

... Issues were first uncovered earlier in the year when auditors found a number of "significant errors" in the health board's account for the 2021-22 financial year...

... known as the R rate - refers to the number of people an infected person will pass the virus onto.

At the height of the pandemic both the R rate and growth rate for England were published weekly.

Since April this year it has been published fortnightly.

Dr Watkins said it served as a useful and simple indicator to inform public health action and government decisions.

"Vaccines and therapeutics have allowed us to move to a phase where we are living with Covid-19,"

... an inexpensive, easy-to-construct air filter can protect against illness caused not only by viruses but also by chemical pollutants," Braun said. "This type of highly-accessible public health intervention can empower community groups to take steps to improve their air quality and therefore, their health."...

It's soon a new year and...

Don't Look Up!...

UK Covid modelling data to stop being published
wrote:

... known as the R rate - refers to the number of people an infected person will pass the virus onto.

At the height of the pandemic both the R rate and growth rate for England were published weekly.

Since April this year it has been published fortnightly.

Dr Watkins said it served as a useful and simple indicator to inform public health action and government decisions.

"Vaccines and therapeutics have allowed us to move to a phase where we are living with Covid-19,"

... for the week ending 9 December 2022 for England...

... In England, the estimated number of people testing positive for COVID-19 was 1,197,200 ... equating to 2.20% of the population (an increase from 2.01% in the previous week), or around 1 in 45 people...

Italy has become the latest country to impose mandatory Covid tests on Chinese tourists, after China announced it would reopen its borders next week.

Tighter measures have also been brought in by Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and India - while the US said it is considering imposing more rules.

After almost three years of restrictions, China will let people travel more easily from 8 January. At the same time, the country is facing a surge in Covid cases...

The US is considering imposing new Covid restrictions on Chinese arrivals, after Beijing announced it would reopen its borders next month.

American officials say this is due to a lack of transparency surrounding the virus in China, as cases surge [there]...

Apple and Tesla stocks have tumbled over growing concerns about delays in their production lines in China.

Apple shares hit their lowest point since June 2021. Tesla's stock has dropped 73% from a record high in November 2021.

Companies have struggled to keep production going in China due to Covid restrictions and weeks of lockdowns.

Now they are facing a staffing crunch as China battles a Covid wave...

... Given the spike in Covid cases in key manufacturing hubs, analysts say production will take time to ramp up once again...

Passengers arriving in England from China will have to provide a negative Covid test before they board a flight...

... people travelling from China on direct flights from 5 January will be asked to take a pre-departure Covid test...

... From 8 January, the UK Health Security Agency will also launch surveillance, which will see a sample of passengers arriving from China tested for the virus as they arrive...

... The Chinese government is reporting about 5,000 cases a day, but analysts say such numbers are vastly undercounted - and the daily caseload may be closer to one million. The true toll of daily cases and deaths in China is unknown as officials have stopped requiring cases to be reported, and changed classifications...

... "Trying to ban a virus by adjusting what we do with travel has already been shown not to work very well. We've seen that with the bans on travel from various countries during the pandemic, that hasn't stopped those viruses travelling around the world eventually."

But there is concern that more infections can provide more opportunities for the virus to mutate...

There were more than 3,700 patients a day in hospital with flu last week - up from 520 a day the month before... Of these, 267 people needed specialised care in critical care beds last week...

... This time last year, when social mixing was low, there were only 34 patients in hospital a day with flu...

Health Secretary Steve Barclay says the government is focussed on supporting the NHS, but has blamed [lame excuses]...

... In recent days, a number of hospitals have declared critical incidents, suggesting they cannot function as usual because of extraordinary pressure.

Senior doctors have described the NHS as on a knife edge, with some accident and emergency units in a "complete state of crisis".

It comes as the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has reiterated the importance of people wearing masks if they are ill and need to go out. The UKHSA has also asked parents to keep children off school if they have a fever. There have been sharp rises in the numbers of people in hospital with Covid and flu in recent weeks - about one in eight beds in England is now occupied by patients with these infections...

... Prof Phil Banfield, who chairs the British Medical Association, which represents doctors, called on the government to "step up and take immediate action".

The situation was "intolerable and unsustainable", he said, with the NHS's survival on a knife edge and patients needlessly dying because of a political choice...

Who profits?

Who profits?

LAWYERS!

Vaccination and boosting, especially when recent, helped to limit the spread of COVID-19 in California prisons during the first omicron wave...

... demonstrates the benefits of vaccination and boosting, even in settings where many people are still getting infected, in reducing transmission. And it shows the cumulative effects from boosting and the additional protection that vaccination gives to those who were previously infected. The likelihood of transmission fell by 11% for each additional dose.

"A lot of the benefits of vaccines to reduce infectiousness were from people who had received boosters and people who had been recently vaccinated,"...

... Breakthrough infections were common, despite the residents' relatively high vaccination rate of 81% with the primary vaccine series. But the rate of serious illness was low. In just over five months, there were 22,334 confirmed SARS-CoV-2 omicron infections, 31 hospitalizations and no COVID-19 deaths.

Vaccinated residents with breakthrough infections were significantly less likely to transmit [further infection]...

... tissue samples from the autopsies of 44 people who died with COVID-19 shows that SAR-CoV-2 virus spread throughout the body—including into the brain—and that it lingered for almost eight months...

... All of the patients died with COVID-19, and none were vaccinated...

... SARS-CoV-2, as expected, primarily infected and damaged airway and lung tissue. But the researchers also found viral RNA in 84 distinct body locations and bodily fluids, and in one case they isolated viral RNA 230 days after a patient's symptoms began...

... "the thinking in the field was that SARS-CoV-2 was predominantly a respiratory virus." Finding viral presence throughout the body—and sharing those findings with colleagues a year ago—helped scientists explore a relationship between widely infected bodily tissues and "long COVID," or symptoms that persist for weeks and months after infection...

... equipped close to 5,000 [people] with smartwatches and monitored their physiological parameters over two years. Of those monitored, 2,038 received the booster dose of the coronavirus vaccine, allowing the researchers to objectively compare measures before and after the participants took the vaccine...

... In addition ... the researchers examined the safety of the booster by analyzing the medical files of 250,000 people...

... "We saw clear and significant changes after administration of the vaccine, such as an increase in heart rate compared to the pulse rate measured before vaccination, and then we saw a return to the participant's baseline, i.e., the pulse [rate] after vaccination returned to their previous levels after six days. Hence, our study confirms the safety of the vaccine,"...

... "the most surprising finding was that the watches were more sensitive than the people they were monitoring. Many participants reported fatigue, headache, etc. after receiving the vaccine, and after two or three days reported that they felt normal and well. In contrast, from examining their watches, we saw distinct changes in heart rate that continued for several more days. There were also vaccinated participants who did not report any side effects at all and yet definitely experienced physiological changes, based on data from their smartwatches. In other words, we learned that the smartwatches were more sensitive to changes in general feeling than the participants themselves."...

... In the medical literature, 25 unusual side effects attributed to the COVID vaccine [are] reported, and the researchers paid special attention to look for [these] rare cases ... checked the frequency of these unusual side effects among a quarter of a million [people] and found no increase in serious incidents of any kind associated with vaccination...

... found that simple air filtration devices called Corsi-Rosenthal boxes are effective at reducing indoor air pollutants.

The study, which analyzed the effectiveness of Corsi-Rosenthal boxes installed at the School of Public Health to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, is the first peer-reviewed study of the efficacy of the boxes on indoor pollutants, according to the authors.

Lowering indoor air concentrations of commonly-found chemicals known to pose a risk to human health is a way to improve occupant health...

"... an inexpensive, easy-to-construct air filter can protect against illness caused not only by viruses but also by chemical pollutants," Braun said. "This type of highly-accessible public health intervention can empower community groups to take steps to improve their air quality and therefore, their health."...

... So why do we have so many Chinese and others elsewhere in the world still unprotected?!...

she says she's young, she's not afraid of COVID-19 anymore, she doesn't feel the need to get a shot until China re-opens to the world and she believes the virus is changing too quickly for the vaccines available in China — all of them made in China — to have decent efficacy.