Today in Berlin, we launched WHO’s new Heat–Health Action Plans Guidance – a practical roadmap to help countries, regions and cities protect people from extreme heat.
I was pleased to launch it together with 🇩🇪Federal Environment Minister @schneidercar and Berlin Senator Dr Ina Czyborra, as well as 🇪🇺 Commissioner @WBHoekstra and @UN Assistant Secretary-General @SelwinHart, who joined us online.
Europe is warming faster than any other continent. More than 200,000 people across the Region have died from heat in just the past 4 years. We can prevent these deaths with the right systems in place.
The Guidance is available here: https://t.co/Q7dvlFDfQT
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Bad news: many kids under 8 never received the original Wuhan #COVID vaccines. Their immunity was shaped mostly by Omicron infections. New data suggest the "Cicada" variant (BA.3.2.2), now re-emerging in several countries, may be particularly good at evading immune responses.
We might also need to rethink pediatric SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. Future strategies may need to weigh the immediate benefits of variant-matched antigens against the long-term necessity of establishing a broad antibody baseline to ensure balanced protection across all ages.
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Our latest preprint is out, where we investigated a profound SARS-CoV-2 epidemiological anomaly: BA.3.2.2 is selectively infecting children. Here, we show that the lack of ancestral-strain immune imprinting is promoting BA.3.2.2 pediatric infections.
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https://t.co/qwnjic0pzf
Do our politicians act like they are properly aware that their actions today are changing climate on Earth for thousands of years to come?
Do they have sleepless nights and intensive exchange with experts over this huge responsibility?
Three scenarios discussed in our article illustrate the choices and risks we face. Let's aim for the green one.
We still have a choice, and are not yet destined to bequeath a much less habitable planet to future generations. Our children and grandchildren deserve a fair chance.
Rates of infection with other pathogens after a +ve #COVID test versus a neg test - more brilliant work from @zalaly and team. COVID causes immune dysregulation and ⬆️risk of other infections. https://t.co/yIZ9LvD2NF
@rahmstorf So true, and unfortunately the scale of ocean change is already so great, that stripping back instrumentation cannot hide it. More from me on this on ABC TV News a few nights ago: https://t.co/vSqTC1s1fo
@hannahspierMD@dysclinic 19/and sometimes my patients get the answers before I do, or explain an observation that I take to my research scientist colleagues to research….and often the patients are right. We need to listen to them xx warm regards
I wrote to the Health Minister about this yesterday. Women with breast cancer and endometriosis will be denied a critical drug "for commercial reasons", while men with prostate cancer will still be able to access it.
Our PBS is still awaiting the reform called for by the Health Technology Assessment review, and that's costing vulnerable Australians.
https://t.co/0A7L9FNVqD
El Niño is arriving on our doorstep in the coming months with 90% certainty.
The world must treat it as the urgent climate warning it is.
The only effective response is #ClimateAction equal to the crisis – ending the addiction to fossil fuels, accelerating the shift to renewables, protecting the most vulnerable, and delivering early warning systems for all.
https://t.co/owmmCChyb3
We desperately need universal masking to be standard in health care.
It is ridiculous that a critically ill patient has to be forced into conflict with nurses and other providers who don't feel like protecting them.
In 2029–30, students and graduates will pay more in HECS indexation than multinational gas corporations pay in tax on our oil and gas. Let that sink in.
Australians deserve a fair share of our natural resources, and a government with the courage to stand up for them.
“You can only insure against unlikely events . . . The insurance industry will not help people in 20 years’ time with their flooded houses.” – Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO
✍️ Add your name to the call for a climate disaster levy!
https://t.co/umd9X1Ptyj
Transmission of #Ebola is being debated yet again. In the catastrophic West African epidemic in 2014, health workers were forced to work in surgical masks and many got infected. Medical journals refused to publish us, instead, publishing articles saying "less PPE is better". A nursing journal published us, because #nurses are at the frontline 1/2 https://t.co/vFtMO3sYul
Dear @Mark_Butler_MP
Can we please access this new, effective cvd antiviral from Japan that helps prevent infection in Australia asap? Could be a game changer
Cc: @Mon4Kooyong
"Despite the deaths of 3 people who had been onboard the ship, and eight other confirmed cases, doctors from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the Spanish foreign health service assessed the French woman and dismissed her symptoms as anxiety or stress" #hantavirus H/T @NjbBari3 https://t.co/tYfSMPuhp6
The myth that the Finnish model was worth copying still won’t die. Finland’s 2000s PISA success was because of the more traditional model that preceded it by decades…which they abandoned right as their PISA scores shone. So people went there and oohed and aahed at a model that would lead eventually to their educational deterioration. Never stop pointing this out.
I'm looking to talk to a handful of people who understand the teacher union space. Especially around teacher's rights to a safe and healthy workplace.
Too many teachers are getting sick from airborne viruses floating in the air in classrooms.
Willing to chat with me for 20 min?
As you may already know well, "young patients who experienced a second confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection during the omicron period were more than twice as likely to receive a clinician-documented diagnosis of post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) as those in the same calendar period after a first infection..
[In this cohort study of >465,000 patients younger than 21 years,] the incidence of clinician-documented PASC was roughly 1,884 cases per million children after a second infection, compared with about 904 cases per million after a first infection..
Beyond formal PASC diagnoses, children and adolescents who experienced reinfection had an elevated risk of a wide range of symptoms and conditions previously associated with long COVID.
These outcomes spanned multiple organ systems, including:
- cardiovascular complications such as myocarditis, arrhythmias, heart disease and chest pain;
- neurologic and cognitive effects such as headaches, cognitive impairment, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and other forms of dysautonomia;
- kidney injury;
- thrombotic events; and
- more common symptom clusters including fatigue, abdominal pain and musculoskeletal pain.
Myocarditis risk was more than three times higher after a second infection, and the risk of thrombotic events more than doubled..
These findings directly contradict the common assumption that because acute omicron illness is usually mild in children, and reinfection is clinically inconsequential.."
SARS-CoV-2 is different.
'Reinfection raises Long COVID risk in children and adolescents'
https://t.co/5x6y9gNfSq