Verma Heart And Lung Care Centre

17/07/2021

20/05/2020

Finally something practical and honest from the :
Head of the Infectious Disease Clinic, University of Maryland,
USA:

1. We may have to live with C19 for months or years. Let's not deny it or panic. Let's not make our lives useless. Let's learn to live with this fact.

2. You can't destroy C19 viruses that have penetrated cell walls, drinking gallons of hot water - you'll just go to the bathroom more often.

3. Washing hands and maintaining a
two-metre physical distance is the best method for your protection.

4. If you don't have a C19 patient at home, there's no need to disinfect the surfaces at your house.

5. Packaged cargo, gas pumps, shopping carts and ATMs do not cause infection.
Wash your hands, live your life as usual.

6. C19 is not a food infection. It is associated with drops of infection like the ‘flu. There is no demonstrated risk that C19 is transmitted by ordering food.

7. You can lose your sense of smell with a lot of allergies and viral infections. This is only a non-specific symptom of C19.

8. Once at home, you don't need to change your clothes urgently and go shower!
Purity is a virtue, paranoia is not!

9. The C19 virus doesn't hang in the air. This is a respiratory droplet infection that requires close contact.

10. The air is clean, you can walk through the gardens (just keeping your physical protection distance), through parks.

11. It is sufficient to use normal soap against C19, not antibacterial soap. This is a virus, not a bacteria.

12. You don't have to worry about your food orders. But you can heat it all up in the microwave, if you wish.

13. The chances of bringing C19 home with your shoes is like being struck by lightning twice in a day. I've been working against viruses for 20 years - drop infections don't spread like that!

14. You can't be protected from the virus by taking vinegar, sugarcane juice and ginger! These are for immunity not a cure.

15. Wearing a mask for long periods interferes with your breathing and oxygen levels. Wear it only in crowds.

16. Wearing gloves is also a bad idea; the virus can accumulate into the glove and be easily transmitted if you touch your face. Better just to wash your hands regularly.

17. Immunity is greatly weakened by always staying in a sterile environment. Even if you eat immunity boosting foods, please go out of your house regularly to any park/beach.
Immunity is increased by EXPOSURE TO PATHOGENS, not by sitting at home and consuming fried/spicy/sugary food and aerated drinks.

20/05/2020

Are Indians partially immune to Covid19?

With global numbers crossing a million cases, we are staring at an unprecedented crisis due to the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2) pandemic. The western world is reeling from healthcare infrastructure overflowing with serious patients and deaths numbering in thousands (Italy, USA, Germany, Spain, etc).
Geographical variations in the incidence, severity and mortality of COVID-19 have been well documented. Specifically, countries like India are not having such a high incidence of mortality. Some argue that the low numbers are because of inadequate testing. But could there be other reasons for the same? Are Indians protected to some extend from the COVID-19 virus? Perhaps most of us had a mild illness and recovered spontaneously.

We have previously reported in the Indian Journal of Medical Sciences that one of the factors giving immunity to Indians could be that we are living in a malaria endemic region. We believe that there is an inverse relation between past malaria exposure and COVID-19 infections.
Does having been exposed to malaria in the past also mean being exposed to viral RNA?

An analysis of published WHO data from 107 countries, comparing malaria incidence (per 1000 population at risk) data (from 2000-2017) and their number of COVID-19 positive cases till 24th March 2020, showed that the incidence rate of malaria and natural number of COVID-19 cases were inversely related at 95% confidence level (P-value < 0.0004; highly statistically significant).

Source: Feachem RG et al. Shrinking the malaria map: progress and prospects. Lancet. 2010 Nov 6;376(9752):1566-78.

Feachem et al, The Lancet, 2010

The answer is quite simple. The malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax carries with it Matryoshka RNA virus 1 (MaRNAV-1). Genomic sequencing shows that it shares a 93.75% identical sequence with that of the surface glycoprotein coding region of COVID-19 virus. This means that many Indians (especially adults) have already been exposed to a significant viral protein associated with malaria. Our immune system is therefore already primed to attack the surface glycoproteins of COVID-19 – basis for pre-existing immunological memory among Indians.
Is there any evidence that BCG vaccination confers a protective immunity against viruses?

Introduced mass BCG vaccination in 1948 and is currently part of our universal healthcare program. Earlier BCG Vaccination was shown to be effective in reducing the intensity of SARS infections. In the COVID-19 pandemic, those geographies that have the most cases (western world) had stopped their universal BCG vaccination from 1963 onwards. In fact, Australia and Netherlands have already commenced trials using BCG vaccine to protect their healthcare professionals against COVID-19.
While both these factors look promising to attenuate the impact of COVID-19 amongst Indians, we await further data to verify the real impact in protecting against the current global COVID-19 pandemic.