{"id":208442,"date":"2020-06-07T07:19:49","date_gmt":"2020-06-07T07:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=208442"},"modified":"2020-06-09T06:48:43","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T06:48:43","slug":"coronavirus-appears-to-be-declining-in-potency-us-doctors-reveal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=208442","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus appears to be declining in potency, US doctors reveal"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>Dr Donald Yealy of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center suggested on Thursday that COVID-19 could be losing potency\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>He said people seem to be contracting the virus less easily and cases appear to be less severe than when the pandemic first took hold in the US\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>Earlier this week doctors in Italy said patients there were showing much smaller amounts of the virus in their system<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>But World Health Organization experts said there is no evidence to support the assertion that coronavirus is becoming weaker\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Megan Sheets \u2013 Daily Mail June 5, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Doctors at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center say the <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/coronavirus\/index.html\"><strong>coronavirus<\/strong><\/a> appears to be becoming less potent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Dr Donald Yealy, chair of emergency medicine at UPMC, explained at a press conference on Thursday that people seem to be contracting the virus less easily and cases appear to be less severe then when the pandemic first took hold in the US early this year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8216;The virus may be changing,&#8217; Yealy said.\u00a0 &#8216;Some patterns suggest the potency is diminished.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">He noted that UPMC has successfully treated more than 500 coronavirus patients since March, and in recent weeks fewer patients are requiring ventilators to help them breathe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Less than four percent of all tests and only 0.2 percent of tests in asymptomatic patients are coming back positive, he said, indicating that the virus is less prevalent in the communities UPMC serves.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The doctors&#8217; findings that the virus could be declining in potency came days after <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.yourdestinationnow.com\/2020\/06\/us-doctors-say-coronavirus-appears-to.html\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>researchers in Italy announced<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that patients there were showing much smaller amounts of the virus in their system, compared to samples taken during the peak of the crisis in March and April.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Professor Alberto Zangrillo, head of intensive care at Italy&#8217;s San Raffaele Hospital in Lombardy, went so far as to say that the virus &#8216;<a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=208158\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>clinically no longer exists<\/strong><\/span><\/a>&#8216; during a Sunday interview on state television.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">But World Health Organization experts and a range of other scientists quickly rejected Zangrillo&#8217;s claims on Monday, saying there is no evidence to support the assertion that the coronavirus has been losing potency.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8216;In terms of transmissibility, that has not changed, in terms of severity, that has not changed,&#8217; WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove told reporters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">It is not unusual for viruses to mutate and adapt as they spread. The pandemic has so far killed nearly 386,000 people and infected more than 6.5 million.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Martin Hibberd, a professor of emerging infectious disease at the London School of Hygiene &amp; Tropical Medicine, said major studies looking at genetic changes in the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 did not support the idea that it was becoming less potent, or weakening in any way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8216;With data from more than 35,000 whole virus genomes, there is currently no evidence that there is any significant difference relating to severity,&#8217; he said in an emailed comment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Zangrillo, well known in Italy as the personal doctor of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said his comments were backed up by a study conducted by a fellow scientist, Massimo Clementi, which Zangrillo said would be published next week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Zangrillo told Reuters: &#8216;We have never said that the virus has changed, we said that the interaction between the virus and the host has definitely changed.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">He said this could be due either to different characteristics of the virus, which he said they had not yet identified, or different characteristics in those infected.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The study by Clementi, who is director of the microbiology and virology laboratory of San Raffaele, compared virus samples from COVID-19 patients at the Milan-based hospital in March with samples from patients with the disease in May.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8216;The result was unambiguous: an extremely significant difference between the viral load of patients admitted in March compared to&#8217; those admitted last month, Zangrillo said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Oscar MacLean of the University of Glasgow&#8217;s Centre for Virus Research said suggestions that the virus was weakening were &#8216;not supported by anything in the scientific literature and also seem fairly implausible on genetic grounds&#8217;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Experts and representatives of Johns Hopkins University, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, George Washington University and Northwell Health also said they were not aware of evidence suggesting that the virus had changed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8216;The suggestion by the Italian doctor is potentially dangerous as it gives false reassurance based on no evidence,&#8217; said Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8216;There is no scientific evidence for there having been a change in the coronavirus. It&#8217;s a highly transmittable and highly contagious disease. We need to be as on guard as ever.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-8390849\/University-Pittsburgh-doctors-say-coronavirus-appears-declining-potency.html\">Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite this being backed by a separate Italian study, other health \u2018experts\u2019 were quick to dismiss these claims. As if they wanted to keep the public anxious and uncertain  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=208442"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208445,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208442\/revisions\/208445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=208442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=208442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=208442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}