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Texas is now dealing with surges in Covid-19 coronavirus cases in many different parts of the state. … [+] Pictured here is Texas Governor Greg Abbott. (Photo by Lynda M. Gonzalez-Pool/Getty Images)
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The Covid-19 coronavirus is not a great way to welcome someone to the world.
Nonetheless, as the following CBS DFW news segment shows, 85 infants in Nueces County, Texas, have tested positive for the Covid-19 coronavirus so far:
Nueces County is where Corpus Christi is located. It’s not clear how most of these infants are now doing health-wise. According to Alexandria Rodriguez and Ashlee Burns reporting for the Corpus Christi Caller Times, a six-week-old boy, who had tested positive for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) ending up dying of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). However, it is not yet clear what specific role the Covid-19 coronavirus may have played in the infant’s death.
These are real infants and not adults acting like infants. So you can’t blame them for catching the virus. Infants aren’t the ones ignoring public health recommendations, claiming that masks are suppressing their freedoms, and posting on social media conspiracy theories such as claiming that the pandemic is a hoax. Infants aren’t the ones who have failed to take enough action to contain the virus and instead looked for others to blame. Correction, infants who are less than one year of age, aren’t the ones. Instead, real infants kind of lay around, cry, and burp.
Nonetheless, add infants to the rapidly rowing list of people directly affected by the U.S.’s failure to contain the virus. Infants are of particular concern not just because they are cute and supposed to have their whole lives ahead of them but also because they have weaker immune systems. Weaker immune systems may make them more susceptible to worse outcomes from Covid-19 coronavirus infections. Their immune systems are like Ryan Gosling in the movie Remember the Titans. They haven’t quite figured things out yet, needing time to fully develop and learn from the world around them.
Plus, a study published in Nature suggests that infants may have weaker immune systems for another reason. Weaker immune systems may allow good bacteria, such as the kind that makes poop smell bad, to move in and colonize their bodies. Of course, if this is the case, then leaving the door open in this way, could allow some bad visitors as well.
Since the Covid-19 coronavirus is still so new, there haven’t been too many studies on what happens to different infants when they get infected. A new publication in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society does detail four cases of newborns hospitalized with fevers and found to have SARS-CoV-2 infections. Two of these infants had such difficulty breathing that they had to be admitted to the intensive care unit. One of the newborns ended up receiving remdesivir. Although all four newborns ended up surviving, this case series showed that Covid-19 can be much more than a mild illness for infants.
Infants probably won’t be raising their little fists and saying, “darn you 2020,” because they can’t quite talk yet and have no other year as a point of reference. However, adults should know that this year infants may face even more risks and tougher times than in previous years. When you don’t follow recommended public health measures, you put infants at risk, even if you aren’t an infant yourself or don’t have any infants at home. For example, opening schools prematurely would not only put the students, teachers, and school staff at risk but also could result in students bringing the virus home with them and subsequently infecting any infants who may be in the same household.
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]]>More than 80 infants under a year old have tested positive for the coronavirus in one Texas county, a local public health official announced, as the United States set a single-day record in the tally of new cases.
The public health director in Nueces County on the Texas Gulf Coast said at a meeting Friday that a review of coronavirus statistics showed that 85 infants in the county have tested positive.
“These babies have not even had their first birthdays yet,” director Annette Rodriguez said. “Please help us to stop the spread of this disease. Stay social distanced from others; stay protected. Wear a mask when in public and for everyone else please do your best to stay home.”
Her announcement came as the U.S. set a single-day record with 75,775 newly-reported cases of the virus, according to NBC News’ tally. The death toll in the country has now passed 140,000.
Globally, more than 14 million people have tested positive for the virus, and more than 600,000 have died, according to data by Johns Hopkins University and NBC News.
In India, the number of cases has surpassed one million, with 26,273 deaths, according to the counry’s health ministry website. Meanwhile in Brazil, more than two million cases of coronavirus have been reported.
This is a developing story; check back for updates.
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]]>The post At least 80 million infants could be at risk of various diseases as coronavirus outbreak disrupts routine vaccination appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Nurses working with the WHO (World Health Organization) administer the Ebola vaccine to a local doctor at the town all of Mbandaka on May 21, 2018 during the launch of the Ebola vaccination campaign.
Junior D. Kannah | AFP | Getty Images
At least 80 million children under a year old could be at risk of diseases such as diphtheria, measles and polio as Covid-19 disrupts routine immunizations around the world, according to data released by global health experts on Friday.
Of the 129 countries reporting data to the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Gavi and the Sabin Vaccine Institute, 53% indicated that routine childhood immunization services were moderately to severely disrupted or were totally suspended from March to April of this year.
“Disruption to immunization programmes from the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to unwind decades of progress against vaccine-preventable diseases like measles,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director general, said in the report.
The reasons vaccine services have been disrupted varied. Some parents are reluctant to leave home because of restrictions on movement, lack of information or because they fear Covid-19 infection, according to the report.
Many health-care workers are unavailable because of restrictions on travel or because resources have been redeployed toward the coronavirus pandemic response. UNICEF reported that planned vaccine deliveries have been delayed because of global lockdown measures and the decline in commercial flights and the limited availability of charters.
Many countries have also suspended vaccination campaigns intended to prevent other diseases such as cholera, measles, meningitis, polio, tetanus, typhoid and yellow fever, due to risk of Covid-19 transmission, global health officials said in the report.
Mass vaccination campaigns for polio and measles have been hit the hardest, with measles campaigns suspended in 27 countries and polio campaigns put on hold in 38 countries.
The findings from global health leaders comes after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its report on Monday that found routine vaccinations for children across the country have fallen for the first half of the year as families stay home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The CDC’s report analyzed the vaccination status of babies and toddlers in Michigan between 1 and 24 months old and found that vaccinations, except hepatitis B, fell in all age groups. The agency warned that there could be a measles outbreak if widespread vaccinations don’t resume.
In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday that the number of administered vaccine doses has declined by 63% for all children in the city from a year ago. For children over age 2, the number of doses is down a “shocking” 91%, he said.
“This is essential work, getting your child vaccinated is essential work. Getting your child vaccinated is a reason to leave your home,” de Blasio said.
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]]>An infant’s first year is an important time of development, both physiologically and emotionally. It is also a period where verbal language is barely emerging, and much is unknown about the ways in which the connection between parent and child establishes.
Touch appears to play a pivotal role in this preverbal conversation, and scientists from Toho University in Tokyo, Japan, have recently published the results of a study that quantifies the manner in which infants physiologically respond to being held and hugged.
First author Sachine Yoshida says, “Like most parents, we love to hug our children. We also know that children love to be hugged by their parents. But what surprised us, as scientists, is how little we know about hugging.”
The heart rate of an infant as young as 4 months old relaxes when the child a parent or primary caregiver gives them a hug. Simply being held for feeding or carrying does not produce the same change, nor does a tight embrace.
The researchers’ open source study appears now iniScience.
In general, the study notes, a parent holds or hugs a baby for two different reasons. A hold is a functional posture, positioning an infant for feeding or carrying.
A hug has another purpose altogether. It is an expression of affection, expressing, the study says, “joy, love, happiness, and warmth.”
Both holding and hugging involve the application of some degree of pressure to the child’s back. The researchers wondered whether an infant perceives its meaning or simply responds positively to the application of pressure. If so, would any amount of pressure be welcome, and could anyone apply it?
“RRI is the reciprocal of the heartbeat rate,” says the study, “meaning that the RRI ratio increases when the heartbeat rate decreases.” Researchers consider a higher RRI value as a greater degree of relaxation in the infant, and, thus, as a positive response.
The scientists measured infants’ RRI as either a parent or a stranger held, hugged, or hugged them tightly.
In each case, the individual lifted an infant from a crib to hold, hug, or tightly hug them for 20 seconds before putting them back to their previous position.
Three electrocardiogram electrodes that the researchers attached to the baby tracked RRI while an accelerometer provided movement data. Tests with a parent usually involved the child’s mother, though fathers took part, too.
When infants older than 4 months were hugged by a parent, the researchers found that the RRI measurements increased, suggesting that the child found the hug calming.
They observed similar RRI increases for mothers and fathers. No such effect occurred when a parent or stranger simply held the child. Likewise, during tight hugs, the researchers saw no positive change to RRI ratios.
The study notes that people may think of a hug as an unspoken type of social contract between infant and parent or caregiver, and the authors of the study saw evidence that a hug’s calming effect may, indeed, be reciprocal.
Says Yoshida: “Parents also showed a high increase ratio of heartbeats intervals by hugging their infants. We found that both infants and parents come to relax by hugging.”
For infants under 4 months in age, the researchers found that a hold was as good as a hug, with a similar increase in RRI for both, suggesting that younger infants do not differentiate between the two.
When it comes to the infants’ response to the attention of strangers, however, things are a bit different, at least for the older infants in the study.
“The infants older than 4 months old showed a [higher] increase ratio of heartbeat intervals during hugging by their parents than by female strangers,” reports Yoshida.
The study notes previous research that supports this finding. By the time an infant is 12 weeks old, the authors write, infants can discriminate between a parent or primary caregiver and a stranger. Also, synchrony in vocal patterns, gaze, and heart rhythm may begin to appear as young as 3–5 months.
One of the surprising takeaways of the study is that the RRI value of hugging only applies to infants who are not currently busy crying or being fussy.
When a child is upset, the study suggests a hug is unlikely to do much good.
According to co-author Hiromasa Funato, “Due to this inconspicuous feature, we think that the experimental data, indicating the relaxing effect of a parent-infant hug, had been a missing piece for a while, even though there was much situational evidence.”
Nonetheless, the study finds a warm hug is a powerful and effective means of expressing affection between parent and child:
“Your baby loves to be hugged and loves how you hug your baby. Even though infants cannot speak, they recognize their parents, through various parenting methods, including hugging, after 4 months old, at latest. We hope that knowing how your baby feels while being hugged helps ease the physical and psychological workload of taking care of infants too young to speak.”
— Sachine Yoshida
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