Covid-19 News

Quote from Fm1

some thoughts on vaccines, interesting

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This person is always missing the mark because he doesnt know how to synthesize.

What is the incidence of these clots in the population who get exposed to Sars-Cov-2?

I doubt it is 500 per million.

If it is 50 per million, then we are equivalent to the mRNA vaccines.

So in terms of clots, suppose it is the same. However, if you are in the younger groups and with no comorbidities your risk is far less.

So taking a vaccine will be greater risk than Covid itself for clots.

Add Ivermectin and you're good.

Quote from Shane D.

Is there some evidence lockdowns work they are basing this decision on? I read articles every day saying at best the evidence is inconclusive.

At the end of this video on the

1918 Spanish Flu a survivor says Be Aware.

Probably as good advice as you

could get.

Definition of aware

1: having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge be aware of the of the latest advances in medicine

2archaic : WATCHFUL, WARY

Quote from Fm1

some thoughts on vaccines, interesting

He exactly repeats my findings: The Big pharma mafia (Pfizer..) is trying to cheat away the well working vaccines (J&J, Astra Zeneca) with false claims in reality RNA vaccine produce 40x more thromboses that (J&J, Astra Zeneca).

This is the old free mason trick they use since centuries. As soon as you know you fail attack the others for the failure even if only the slightest evidence is there that supports you.

So a clear recommendation Do not use an RNA vaccine.

The risk you die or get live long damage from a complication is 40 x higher with a Pfizer RNA vaccine!

Use J&J or Astra Zeneca in case you will get a jab!

Quote from Shane D.

Reference?

https://www.ama-assn.org/pract…essionals-during-covid-19

Quote from Wyttenbach

Also good Austrian wine contains Glycol's...

that has been more than thirty years ago!

If we are allowed to travel more freely again I bring you a nice bottle!

It may well boost your immune system, since it is considered nowadays bio!

Quote from Shane D.

Is there some evidence lockdowns work they are basing this decision on? I read articles every day saying at best the evidence is inconclusive.

Of course the answer is ... it depends.

As I am sure you are aware, lockdowns are not a fix for Covid19 any more than vaccines are.

According to the already mentioned Swiss Cheese approach to defense against the virus a range of measures should be applied, including masks, hand washing etc each somewhat effective.

A lockdown can slow or flatten the curve of the epidemic thus preventing health services from being overwhelmed.

A well managed lockdown should reduce the number of cases, but without other measures e.g. testing etc it will not, of itself, be a solution to the pandemic.

I would expect even with lockdowns the large majority would eventually catch the virus, it would just take a lot longer.

Nonetheless governments around the world have resorted to lockdowns which everyone agrees are very expensive and carry their own physical and psychological costs.

Presumably governments are willing to take this desperate measure because the best advice they have is that lockdowns will be beneficial to controlling the spread.

So maybe the health experts giving this advice are mistaken, I guess that can be argued, but likely not backed up.

But then I have read sources that suggest that much of the viral spreading comes from super spreaders in situations with groups of people.

From a point of view of logic; As a though experiment I would suppose that the opposite strategy to lockdowns, i.e. having lots of parties and political, religous and sports gatherings at large venues would probably be a bad thing in respect of spreading the virus.

So I could cite some practical examples;

I read in the news that India is having lots of crowded political and religious gatherings so there should be some evidence coming from that direction.

Similarly Brazil had not been successful in taking strong measures to control the virus and the results are very clear and very tragic.

The case of the town of Zamora in 1918 has previously been referenced on this board. It recorded the highest flu-related death in any city in Spain.

I guess from a strictly scientific point of view you could argue that these are data points, or perhaps merely anecdotal.

After the first UK lockdown the curve did indeed flatten and then go down. Is this evidence? Maybe it was a coincidence. But we are seeing the figures falling drastically again after the latest lockdown. So lockdowns do clearly seem to be having a positive effect

On the other hand your reference is the American Institute for Economic Research. Now while I might rely on this august body for steering on economic matters I am not convinced that they are the best source for advice on controlling pandemics. Along with the airlines industry and the cruise industry they are entitled to make their cases but I am sure you recognize that they come to the table with a predetermined goal, which is to protect their own interests.

Ironically the cruise industry did try an experiment in November 2020 with the SeaDream. The object was to prove that cruising during a pandemic could be safe. Turned out it wasn't.

So I would be reluctant to rely on the cruise industry spokespersons or the AIER spokespersons to provide advice on handling a pandemic. Indeed I would bet that if they had solid evidence that locking down large sections of business did in fact work well against the pandemic that the AIER would not publish such evidence because;

1. that is not their job.

2 the industries they lobby for would demand the immediate resignation of the chief of the AIER.

However if you want more scientific credentials then a quick search found these;

University of Minnesota reporting on Imperial College London results on UK lockdown.

Study from the Lancet on UK lockdown effectiveness.

"Lockdown measures outperform less stringent restrictions in reducing cumulative deaths. We projected that the lockdown policy announced to commence in England on Nov 5, with a similar stringency to the lockdown adopted in Wales, would reduce pressure on the health service and would be well timed to suppress deaths over the winter period, while allowing schools to remain open. Following completion of the analysis, we analysed new data from November, 2020, and found that despite similarities in policy, the second lockdown in England had a smaller impact on behaviour than did the second lockdown in Wales, resulting in more deaths and hospitalisations than we originally projected when focusing on a Wales-stringency scenario for the lockdown."

So as you can see ... it depends. The findings in England were smaller than originally projected, but nonetheless significant.

Why a lockdown is more effective in one scenario or area and less so in another is open to debate.

Different govenments have provided different financial support for businesses in lockdown so clearly that is one issue.

Similarly is a second lockdown less effective because many people have had enough? I don't know.

I do know that some people just won't lockdown, whereas at the other end there are people that even if the government lifted lockdown and announced all was safe would continue to feel the need to isolate and protect themselves.

I am sure that by this stage of the pandemic we all know of tragedies of lives lost, as well as financial tragedies.

Quote from ZenoOfElea

Nonetheless governments around the world have resorted to lockdowns which everyone agrees are very expensive and carry their own physical and psychological costs.

Presumably governments are willing to take this desperate measure because the best advice they have is that lockdowns will be beneficial to controlling the spread.

It's all about the goal.

Lockdowns do not reduce deaths they just delay it for some weeks/months.

Switzerland from this Monday on has relaxed the Lockdown (despite double the cases within 4 weeks) . Gyms are open again and outdoor restaurant seats too, groups sport allowed for smaller groups.

Main argument for a lock down originally was gain of live time. But now analysis shows this is a no argument as it it reality is marginal. We now have (again) the second excess negative mortality phase. So at least here CoV-19 kills almost only people that would die for an other reason too. The same has been reported for UK where an analysis did show that only about 13% did die from CoV-19. This was clear from day on, because live expectance did not go down and was the same for CoV-19 victims.

So why did we do it?? Ask the FM/R/J mafia!

I have read several positive studies about ivermectin. I even used it myself when I tested positive for Covid. My experience with Covid was extremely minimal. I have had worse common colds. My wife, taking covid at the same time had no worse symptoms than me, other than she did lose taste and smell from about 4 days. With that said, I cannot prove it was the vitamin D, Zinc and Quercetin we had been taking for six months and then the ivermectin at diagnosis that was responsible for such outcome. An extremely mild and insignificant case. Or if we were just lucky. To the supporters of D, Zinc and Ivermectin, they will surely say these supplements were the reason. To the skeptics, they will say it was just luck.....

My personal experience is that I continue to take D, Zinc and Quercetin and will take Ivermectin immediately if symptoms arise again. Number one, D, Zinc and Quercetin could and should be taken even if Covid was non-existent. These are known and proven supplements to aid the immune system. There is NO reason NOT to take them. For the medical field not to be pushing these as much as masks, is simply unbelievable.

Now, with that said, I have to ask the "ivermectin supporters" who may have more data than I....

It is my understanding that India has approved and is using ivermectin against covid..... yet the daily new case and daily death count are sky rocketing there.

Why is this the case if ivermectin works and India is using it? This is hard to explain. Is it used widely in India?

India has a massive population with many states that are run very differently in terms of healthcare. They are experiencing peaks at different times. Many states that were largely spared in the first wave are getting hit hard in this wave, as might be expected. I've heard that the country has largely reopened from the lockdown starting in March of 2020. Workers who had fled the cities and returned to their homes in the countryside in the spring of last year have been incentivized to return to work in the cities. I suspect the trains are more crowed now, as well as city workplaces. This, along with some new variants, are probably behind the recent surge. Yes many states use ivermectin as part of a treatment package delivered to infected people to use at their homes, and I assume it is helping immensely. But any data correlating ivermectin use to decreased covid morbidity and mortality in the various states is probably a long way off.

Quote from Shane D.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

India has one of the lowest deaths/million (129) in the world.

I remind you that, the media and govts do lie.
The PCR test is a fraud.

Vaccination causes immune suppression.

So trying to study the effect of Ivermectin in the midst of lies, is not science but fortune telling of statistics.

Ivermectin works because we have 52 studies saying it works. In a thousand years it will keep working because those studies in aggregate are too powerful.

Many science-friendly people fall guilty of missing the greater context and being unscientific and reading tea-leaves.

Quote from Navid

I remind you that, the media and govts do lie.
The PCR test is a fraud.

Vaccination causes immune suppression.

So trying to study the effect of Ivermectin in the midst of lies, is not science but fortune telling of statistics.

Ivermectin works because we have 52 studies saying it works. In a thousand years it will keep working because those studies in aggregate are too powerful.

Many science-friendly people fall guilty of missing the greater context and being unscientific and reading tea-leaves.

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Let me remind you not to trust internet gossip over serious science.

PCR tests are not fraudulent, and deliver accurate results. Do I need to unearth the papers for this? i will, if it is challenged seriously.

vaccination enhances both innate and adaptive immune response. Specifically wrt COVID there is evidence that a previous history of flu vaccinations delivers 24% protection against COVID over those with no such vaccination history. Hypothesised explanation is that innate immune response is less specific, but nevertheless still has memory.

Good overview showing why innate immunity matters https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00007-6.pdf

Flu vaccine can boost innate immune response: https://www.medrxiv.org/conten…101/2020.10.14.20212498v1

Flu vaccine protects against COVID https://www.ajicjournal.org/ar…-6553(21)00089-4/fulltext

Ivermectin works because we have 52 studies saying it works. No, you have 52 studies claiming correlations of various kinds of almost no merit. Correlation is not causation as the Vitamin D evidence shows. And Ivermectin blocking virus at concentrations much higher than can be safely used in humans does not help - the same is true of very many drugs.

https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/n…andomised-clinical-trials

I'm not saying ivermectin does not work. There no evidence for that either. But it remains a long shot with little supporting evidence. Thus far the things that do work have been different from these with internet PR campaigns behind them.

Many science-friendly people fall guilty of missing the greater context and being unscientific and reading tea-leaves. True, and perhaps unintentionally apposite to your comments here.

Coronavirus doesn't infect brain, yet causes considerable damage; new study shows

https://amp.ibtimes.co.in/coro…ge-new-study-shows-835362

Though the SARS-CoV-2 virus' primary target is said to be the respiratory system, the damage caused by the pathogen has not spared the other organs of the body. Now, a new study by researchers from Columbia University Irving Medical Center has reported that while the coronavirus does not infect the brain directly, it can still inflict considerable neurological damage.

According to the paper, which is the largest published report detailing COVID-19 brain autopsies involving over 40 patients, there were no signs of the virus in the brain cells of the afflicted. However, it is likely that the inflammation triggered by the virus in the brain's blood vessels or other parts of the body, can cause neurological changes in the brain.

At the same time, we observed many pathological changes in these brains, which could explain why severely ill patients experience confusion and delirium and other serious neurological effects--and why those with mild cases may experience 'brain fog' for weeks and months," said Dr. James E. Goldman, co-lead author of the study, in a statement.

For the study, the brains of 41 patients who had lost their lives to COVID-19 while hospitalized were examined by the authors. The patients were between the ages of 38 to 97. Of these, nearly half had received intubation. All their lungs had suffered damage by the virus. The duration of hospitalization was varied among these patients. While some succumbed shortly after being brought to the emergency room, others stayed in the hospital for a few months.

Exhaustive laboratory and clinical investigations had been carried out on all the patients, with some undergoing CT and MRI scans. Interestingly, several of the patients were of Hispanic ethnicity. In order to identify, the presence of the virus in the glia cells and neurons of the brain, the team utilized several methods. These included RT-PCR (a technique to detect viral RNA), RNA in situ hybridization (a method to detect viral RNA inside intact cells), and antibodies test (for the detection of viral proteins within cells).

No Evidence of Virus in the Brain

In spite of conducting extensive examinations, no proof of the virus' presence in the brain cells of the patients was found. While RT-PCR tests detected trace levels of the coronavirus' RNA, it can potentially be attributed to the virus present in the leptomeninges (two innermost layers of tissue covering the spinal cord and the brain) or the blood vessels surrounding the brain.

Talking about the comprehensive nature of the current study, Dr. Goldman noted, "Though there are some papers that claim to have found virus in neurons or glia, we think that those result from contamination, and any virus in the brain is contained within the brain's blood vessels."

Dr. Peter D. Canoll, co-lead author of the study, emphasized that the low amounts of the virus within the brain is not correlated to the abundance or distribution of neuropathological observations. The team conducted tests on over two dozen regions of the brain including the all-important olfactory bulb.

These areas were investigated based on speculations in other studies that the virus may the brain from the nasal cavity using the olfactory nerve. "Even there, we didn't find any viral protein or RNA. Though we found viral RNA, and protein in the patients' nasal mucosa and in the olfactory mucosa high in the nasal cavity," noted Dr. Goldman.

Oxygen-deprived Damage

The brain pathology among the examined patients was distributed into two categories. The first group was those whose brains had suffered damage due to lack of oxygen or Hypoxic damage. "They all had severe lung disease, so it's not surprising that there's hypoxic damage in the brain," explained Dr. Goldman.

In some of the cases the damage—that was caused by strokes—spanned large areas. Most of the damaged areas, however, were very little and were detectable only under a microscope. Comparing it with other features, the researchers suggested hypoxic damage causes to these small areas were brought on blood clots that caused a temporary stoppage of oxygen supply to the said areas.

Indications of neural death

The second group of patients comprised of those who showed signs of damage to the neurons. Making an unexpected discovery, the researchers found that a large number of microglia had been activated in their brains, and attacked neurons through a process known as neuronophagia.

Microglia are immune cells found in the brain that are activated by pathogens. The activated microglia were mostly found in the lower brain stem (associated with heartbeat and consciousness), and hippocampus (involved in mood and memory).

Now, the team is conducting autopsies on COVID-19 survivors who died several months after making a recovery. "We know the microglia activity will lead to loss of neurons, and that loss is permanent. Is there enough loss of neurons in the hippocampus to cause memory problems? Or in other parts of the brain that help direct our attention? It's possible, but we really don't know at this point," concluded Dr. Goldman.

China is starting clinical trials of a Covid vaccine that can be inhaled

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/…-that-can-be-inhaled.html

China's CanSino Biologics will be starting clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine that is administered through inhalation next week, the company's co-founder and Chief Executive Xuefeng Yu told CNBC on Sunday.

Efficacy rates for China's Covid vaccines have been found to be lower than those developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Earlier this month, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control publicly acknowledged that Chinese vaccines "don’t have very high protection rates" and that they were considering giving people different Covid shots to boost vaccine efficacy.

Yu told CNBC that an inhaled vaccine could be more effective than those injected given that the coronavirus enters the human body through the airways.

CanSinoBIO is jointly developing the inhalation vaccine with the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology. To be clear, the company's Adenovirus Type 5 Vector vaccine — or Ad5-nCoV — administered by injection was already approved for use in China and several other countries.

Op-Ed: Why PCR Cycle Threshold Is Useful in Coronavirus Testing

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/90508

With the increase in positive COVID tests, physicians, contact tracers, and hospitals in our town are very busy. I would imagine the same can be said for your community. With this time of year being normally very high for hospital usage, a strain in the healthcare industry has come to all regions from all angles.

Might there be a better way we can use our resources wisely? Knowing COVID patients' cycle threshold (Ct) values could benefit patients, physicians, and their community

Many patients test positive for COVID without any symptoms. What does that mean? Medical tests need to be taken in context. Patients question whom they might have gotten it from, whom they might have given it to, and why their spouses -- whom they have lived with in close contact -- do not have it. Some become deniers of proper restrictions and proper healthcare, only making everyone more vulnerable.

For certain patients, knowing the Ct value is not useful. In the first few days when a patient may be early in their infection and not exhibiting any symptoms, the viral load may not have risen high enough to cause a useful Ct value. In these situations, antigen tests done sequentially may be more useful.

As the viral load increases, however, knowing Ct values becomes more helpful. These can be another piece of data that a physician can use to manage a patient's care.

Patients with symptoms who come to the hospital and have a high Ct number (meaning less viral load) and few comorbidities might be best triaged to outpatient treatments. Home oxygen saturation monitoring, daily contact with home health nurses to determine extent of new symptoms, or, if indicated, some of the new outpatient monoclonal antibodies or remdesivir, might be best given outpatient. This would save valuable resources for those symptomatic patients with comorbidities with lower Ct values (indicating higher viral loads) who need more elaborate inpatient treatment and monitoring.

Not all tests used today give us this information. Qualitative PCR testing only indicates a simple positive or negative based on the internal cut-off point at which the machine shuts off. Quantitative testing where you actually know the cycle threshold value is becoming more available. Each have their benefits and limitations.

The FDA has given lab manufacturers a wide latitude in determining the cycle threshold cut-off number of their qualitative tests to determine positive versus negative. These tests were approved under Emergency Use Authorization and have not been subjected to typical FDA scrutiny. With this in mind, the state of Florida has required all laboratories doing COVID testing to report the cycle threshold numbers used in qualitative and quantitative tests.

So how does a qualitative RT-PCR test work? Basically, the manufacturer sets the test to turn off the cycling or amplification process when a certain number is hit. For a qualitative test set at 40, after 40 amplification cycles, if any viral material is detected, it turns off and is reported as positive. If none is detected, it would be reported as negative. If the number of amplification cycles was really 15 or 25, it would still run until it gets to 40 and be reported as positive.

With these type of tests, it's critical to use an agreed-upon cycle threshold value such as 33 (CDC) or 35 (Dr. Fauci) rather than setting it at a potentially misleading 40 or 45. Many of the current tests in use are preset by the manufacturer to these higher numbers.

The World Health Organization issued a notice last week telling the labs "the cut-off should be manually adjusted to ensure that specimens with high Ct values are not incorrectly assigned SARS-CoV-2 detected due to background noise." Could this be a reason why many people test positive but remain asymptomatic? In that same memo, WHO said all labs should report the cycle threshold value to treating physicians.

A quantitative test is designed to come up with the actual cycle threshold value as the cycling process turns off when detecting any virus. There is not a preset value, so a quantitative measure is obtained. A test that registers a positive result after 12 rounds of amplification for a Ct value of 12 starts out with 10 million times as much viral genetic material as a sample with a Ct value of 35. Above that level, Fauci has said the test is just finding destroyed nucleotides, not virus capable of replicating.

It's not only physicians who can use this information. Contact tracers who know Ct values can direct their attention to those with the lowest numbers. "If 100 files land on my desk as a contact tracer, I will prioritize the highest viral loads first because they are the most infectious," Michael Mina, MD, PhD, an epidemiologist at Harvard, has said.

The CDC has been less supportive of reporting Ct values to help guide the treatment of patients. The agency rightly points out that Ct values are not indicated to determine when a person is no longer infectious. That information is just not known. Moreover, the CDC does not agree that Ct thresholds measure viral load in an individual patient.

Still, CDC guidance does acknowledge that "serial Ct values may be useful in the context of the entire body of information available when assessing recovery and resolution of infection." I am not suggesting using Ct values to determine when one's infectivity is over, but certainly when used appropriately and serially it can only help in predicting severity in the management of patients.

Knowing a patient's Ct value is not the panacea for all ills. Ct numbers are not perfect and vary from machine to machine, but at this point they are all we have. Viral cultures are near impossible to obtain and take much too long. Ct values are an important piece of data, especially if it is routinely reported accurately so that skilled physicians can incorporate it in their decision-making process. I suspect some physicians are already finding ways to access this information. It is of utmost importance that labs use correct reference values that give healthcare workers a chance at directing care effectively.

Simply knowing a yes or no answer is no longer enough. For a qualitative test, at the minimum a positive or negative result AND reporting the lab-cut off Ct value is essential. Ideally knowing the absolute number from a quantitative test is best. I would make an analogy to a hemoglobin and hematocrit test simply being reported as normal or abnormal -- none of us in healthcare would accept that.

There are nuances in medicine that we need to know to best treat our patients-cycle threshold levels are one of those. So if you will, push your labs to tell you your patient's Ct value. It will make triaging and "predicting the future," which we all are being asked to do, much more accurate. After all, is this not a patient care issue?

Robert Hagen, MD, is recently retired from Lafayette Orthopaedic Clinic in Indiana. He's an adjunct professor at Indiana University, a past president and board member of the Indiana Orthopaedic Society, and a past member of the Board of Councilors for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

Quote from THHuxleynew

PCR tests are not fraudulent, and deliver accurate results. Do I need to unearth the papers for this? i will, if it is challenged seriously.

Quote from Fm1

As the viral load increases, however, knowing Ct values becomes more helpful. These can be another piece of data that a physician can use to manage a patient's care.

Patients with symptoms who come to the hospital and have a high Ct number (meaning less viral load) and few comorbidities might be best triaged to outpatient treatments. Home oxygen saturation monitoring, daily contact with home health nurses to determine extent of new symptoms, or, if indicated, some of the new outpatient monoclonal antibodies or remdesivir, might be best given outpatient. This would save valuable resources for those symptomatic patients with comorbidities with lower Ct values (indicating higher viral loads) who need more elaborate inpatient treatment and monitoring.

All the above is dangerous as it only shows the total confusion among experts and scientists. It should be mandatory to tell the doctors & patients the cycle number, when the positive signal did occur. Low numbers need immediate treatment certainly not with the crap (monoclonal antibodies or Gilead poison) mentioned above. The only proven drug that stops RNA virus replication we have is Ivermectin. So the ivermectin dose (1x,2x,4x) should depend on the initial load "Cycle number!!"

Quote from THHuxleynew

https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/n…andomised-clinical-trials

The study ema did use was fabricated by big pharma. The setup was more than fake and despite this it still did show the exact same good result (2 days shorter recovery) as all the other studies among high PCR cycle positive...

But: Ivermectin should only be used after symptoms or by health care - as a preventive - personal that has high risk.

And of course the same happened as with the fake recovery trial HCQ stories. No zinc, no high dose V-D3 not anti anticoagulant...

This is how the FM/R/J mafia blocks useful drugs. See also fake news about dangerous blood cloths in lesser mafia members vaccines vs. more blood cloths in RNA vaccines.

At least we now already see fights inside the mafia...What shows we are close to the show down.

After spending the morning reading about cases rising in the US, it amazes me that none of the so called experts are saying Covid is seasonal. With the exception of florida, the states that see increase still has snow or cooler weather. Florida was invaded a month ago by these same states with spring break. A headline yesterday asked why Covid is more deadly in Brazil than India. No secret, it's Seasonal . Europe is still experiencing cooler weather. Once it warms the cases drop like a rock in water, just like last year. This wave will slow but as long as mutations continue the virus will remain and come September it's going to start all over again. It's been reported that just the United States have seen thousands of breakthrough infections because of these mutations and more are reported every day. The vaccines are only slowing this and by September will be useless based on previous attempts at designing an mrna stable vaccine. Doest anyone wonder why each month we hear that the vaccine induced antibodies are still working? It's because untill now no mrna vaccine targeting the spike protein remain stable longer than 9 months. It would truly be a miracle if these mrna vaccines do remain stable, but the science doesn't back this up. Get ready over the next couple of months for some very depressing vaccine news. Just my opinion!

A good example that Covid is seasonal

Coronavirus strain first detected in UK now accounts for more than 80% of cases in Spain, but has not overwhelmed hospitals

Experts blame the variant for the rise of the fourth wave, but say it has not pushed the healthcare system to breaking point as happened in other countries

https://english.elpais.com/soc…itals.html?outputType=amp

The strain of the coronavirus that was first detected in England has lived up to the threatening reputation that preceded it. The variant was said to be more contagious, and so it has proven to be. While in January it accounted for less than 2% of new cases, now that figure is in excess of 80%, according to the latest data from the Spanish Health Ministry. But there were also fears that it was more lethal, and would push Spain’s hospitals into a critical condition – something that has not happened so far. This is in contrast to what was seen in the United Kingdom at the start of the year and in France in recent weeks.

Experts consulted by EL PAÍS confirm that B.1.1.7, as the variant is known, is indeed causing some more serious cases of Covid-19, although more research is needed to determine whether it is genuinely increasing mortality. The same experts explain that the impact of the strain is having a lesser effect on the Spanish healthcare system. “The worst predictions have not come to pass, which is obviously good news, but it also shows that we still lack a lot of knowledge about the pandemic,” explains Quique Bassat, an epidemiologist and a researcher from ISGlobal, an institute for global health based in Barcelona. “It is not easy to explain why what has happened in other countries has not been repeated here.”

According to the latest report on new coronavirus variants published by the Health Ministry, and dated April 12, the British variant accounts for 90% of new cases in six of Spain’s 17 regions – Andalusia, Asturias, Castilla y León, Valencia, Galicia and Navarre – and 80% in the rest apart from Castilla-La Mancha (77%), Aragón (65%) and Madrid (64%).

Spain is experiencing spring weather!