The photo above is of mothers and children lined up for a polio vaccine trial in 1954. A vaccine was approved in 1961. People lined up to get their children vaccinated. Everyone knew someone who had been affected by this virus which maimed and killed. Vaccine hesitancy was not as prevalent then and polio has almost been eradicated.
This is a text that I received from a friend who is a primary care physician in Sandton, a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa.
We are pretty sure the majority of our cases are omicron.so ever hopeful it is a mild one for the vaxxed. We are in our 4th wave seeing lots of covid all vaxxed and so far it appears to be mild. Only hospital admissions are non vaxxed . We will have this covid b*****d for rest of our lives. I think annual vax and we will be ok. we hope
Testing for Omicron
Normally, in order to isolate a variant of Covid 19 you have to do genetic sequencing, a laborious process which is only done in specialty labs. Because of the genetic mutations present in the Omicron variant, it may be detected on some PCR testing. The test that we use is from PRL which uses a platform produced by Omicron. It is a nucleic acid amplification test which is similar to a PCR. This means that we will know quickly how this variant is spreading.
Next, I want to cover medications for the treatment of Covid 19. There are some new drugs available and some which will soon be available. There is also a repurposed drug which appears to be effective. No, it’s not ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. It’s fluvoxamine, a drug used for OCD.
Stay tuned!
