A third of COVID-19 survivors in a study of more than 230,000 mostly American patients were diagnosed with a brain or psychiatric disorder within six months, suggesting the pandemic could lead to a wave of mental and neurological problems, scientists said reut.rs/2Q69eON
Researchers who conducted the analysis said it was not clear how the virus was linked to psychiatric conditions such as anxiety and depression, but that these were the most common diagnoses among 14 disorders they looked at
Post-COVID cases of stroke, dementia and other neurological disorders were rarer, the researchers said, but were still significant, especially in those who had severe COVID-19
Max Taquet, also an Oxford psychiatrist who worked with Paul Harrison, a professor of psychiatry at Oxford University who co-led the work, noted that the study was not able to examine the biological or psychological mechanisms involved
Health experts are increasingly concerned by evidence of higher risks of brain and mental health disorders among COVID survivors.
A previous study by the same researchers found last year that 20% of COVID survivors were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within three months
The new findings, published in @TheLancet Psychiatry journal found 34% of the analyzed health records had been diagnosed with neurological or psychiatric illnesses within six months.
Malaysia said it sent 267 containers of illegal plastic waste back to their countries of origin since 2019 and is in the process of returning 81 more reut.rs/31T5XVK 1/4
Malaysia became the destination of choice for the world’s plastic waste after China banned imports in 2018, but is struggling to fend off a deluge of generally unlicensed, unrecyclable garbage 2/4
New U.N. rules on the trade of hazardous waste under the Basel Convention came into force on Jan. 1, intended to discourage the production of hard-to-recycle plastics and to prevent rich countries dumping trash in the developing world 3/4
‘One of the main questions I get asked is "Is it real?"’ says Ole Bielfeldt, 20, from Cologne, Germany.
Like many people, he turned to video app TikTok to keep himself entertained during the pandemic. With no expectations, he posted a video and woke up to 7 million views 1/6
As @macrofying, Bielfeldt's photography videos zoom into ordinary, inanimate objects, revealing what we can’t see through the naked eye 2/6
‘I started the TikTok channel about a year ago, so it’s not that old. I’ve always been interested in photography and especially the different perspectives you could create.’ He decided to post one of his videos on the app - and reached 400,000 views in just a couple of hours 3/6
Health authorities in Denmark, Norway and Iceland suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine shots following reports of the formation of blood clots in some people who had been vaccinated reut.rs/38vNL8u 1/5
Austria earlier stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca shots while investigating a death from coagulation disorders and an illness from a pulmonary embolism 2/5
The European medicine regulator EMA said the vaccine’s benefits outweighed its risks and could continue to be administered. Europe is struggling to speed up a vaccine rollout after delivery delays from Pfizer and AstraZeneca 3/5
As @NASAPersevere explores the surface of Mars, scientists hunting for signs of ancient life on the distant planet are using data gathered on a mission much closer to home - at a lake in southwest Turkey reut.rs/2O7fNAn
.@NASA says the minerals and rock deposits at Salda are the nearest match on earth to those around the Jezero Crater where the spacecraft landed and which is believed to have once been flooded with water
Information gathered from Lake Salda may help the scientists as they search for fossilized traces of microbial life preserved in sediment thought to have been deposited around the delta and the long-vanished lake it once fed
The COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech was able to neutralize a new variant of the coronavirus spreading rapidly in Brazil, according to a laboratory study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reut.rs/3brKMjl
Blood taken from people who had been given the vaccine neutralized an engineered version of the virus that contained the same mutations carried on the spike portion of the highly contagious P.1 variant first identified in Brazil, the study found
The scientists said the neutralizing ability was roughly equivalent the vaccine’s effect on a previous less contagious version of the virus from last year.
The spike, used by the virus to enter human cells, is the primary target of many COVID-19 vaccines
A Dutch inventor has come up with what he hopes could be a potentially faster and easier method to screen for coronavirus infections: screaming 🗣️ reut.rs/3sJZsjq 1/4
Instead of unpleasant nasal swab tests, Peter van Wees asks participants to step into an airlocked cabin and to scream, or sing. An industrial air purifier collects all the particles emitted, which are then analyzed for the virus 2/4
Van Wees, a serial entrepreneur, has set up his booth next to a coronavirus testing center on the outskirts of Amsterdam to try his invention out on people who have just been tested 3/4