Louis Leipoldt Emergency Room

05/05/2023

Influenza A :

Influenza season is here!

We've seen a sudden spike in Influenza cases, please make sure you get your Influenza shot!

15/10/2021

Get your vaccination.

16/09/2021

We back the vaccine - article about the Pfizer

Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.

12/07/2021

31/03/2021

Often forgotten....

29/03/2021

Four different types of Covid vaccines:

24/03/2021

Well done to this pair for putting the emotion of working with COVID on air.
For us, that was “there” brings back so many hard memories, but it's good to hear it again.
We are not alone.

http://bit.ly/IG_InTheCovidUnit

20/02/2021

Grateful.
After months of fighting this virus, we have been given a shield.
The shield will grow in our bodies in the next few weeks.
Grateful!

11/02/2021

We've been saying this for months.

Coronavirus is an airborne disease, rather than a touch (surface) disease.

Being an airborne virus makes wearing a mask (and isolating when coughing or sneezing) much more critical than sanitising your hands.

Not transmitting on surfaces would also partly explain why other people in a household would not catch Covid if the positive person is not coughing or sneezing.

J&J vaccine soon.....

Coronavirus is in the air — there's too much focus on surfaces
https://link.researcher-app.com/NmX2

- via Researcher ()

Nature8 days agoCoronavirus is in the air — there's too much focus on surfaces A year into the pandemic, the evidence is now clear. The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted predominantly through the air — by people talking and breathing out large droplets and small particles called aerosols. Ca...

05/02/2021

C19 Friday night update:

The numbers have continued to decline, but Covid is not gone.

Guess we will see the virus around till we have herd immunity. That means continued infection or vaccination is the only way to stop the pandemic.

With not much happening, I thought I'd give an update on the expected vaccines South Africa will get and how they work.

The one that has already landed in ZA is the Astra Zeneca Oxford (AZO) vaccine. AZO is a vector vaccine.

Currently, there are two types of Coronavirus vaccines - vector and generic (mRNA) vaccines.

Vector:
Astra Zeneca Oxford (UK)
Johnson and Johnson (US)
Sputnik (Russia)
Sinopharm (China)

mRNA:
Pfizer
Moderna

The aim of all these vaccines is to produce a piece of the outside of the virus (antigen) for the body to produce antibodies (IgM and IgG). Antibodies are the body’s natural defence and will then recognise future attacks of the virus with an immune response.

The short way to explain the antigen production is that the mRNA vaccine skips one step in getting the body to produce the antigen. An injection of a tiny piece of mRNA (generic material) for the body to absorb and make a spike protein of the virus - brilliant.
The vector viruses use another deactivated virus, in this case, an Adenovirus, to deliver the piece of genetic material via infection to trick the body to make the spike protein.

The challenge for us in ZA (and everywhere else) is to keep a cold chain at minus 20Celcius (Moderna) or minus 70Celcius (Pfizer). No one is set up to keep that amount of vaccines at dry ice type temperatures.
We should be OK with the cold chain of Astra Zeneca and J&J, as that we do daily with fridge (2-4Celcius) temperatures.

All in all, the results coming through is looking better and better.

I for one cannot wait to get my shot - hopefully in the next week or two.

Stay healthy people and wear your masks.

**Get better our sister currently in the ward fighting the C19 (you know who you are) - we are praying for your protection.**

21/01/2021

We've seen a definite downturn in the Covid-19 case load in our Emergency Department.
Long may it continue!

27/12/2020

Please be sensible people - don't let this be us.....

December has been the nation's deadliest month since the Covid-19 pandemic's start -- with more than 63,000 Americans lost to the virus in the past 26 days.