Dramatic loss of food plants for insects

Posted on 24/04/2020 by Boris Clair

Plummeting insect numbers are becoming a concern. Academic discourse focused on three main causes: the destruction of habitats, pesticides in agriculture and the decline of food plants for insects. A team of researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL have now demonstrated for the first time that the diversity of food plants for insects in the canton of Zurich has dramatically decreased over the past 100 years or so. This means that bees, flies and butterflies are increasingly deprived of their food base. The study, which is representative for all of Central Europe, has now been published in the journal “Ecological Applications.”

“Over the past 100 years, there has been a general decline in food plants for all kinds of insects in the canton of Zurich,” says Dr. Stefan Abrahamczyk from the Nees Institute for Biodiversity of Plants at the University of Bonn. The homogenization of the originally diverse landscape has resulted in the disappearance of many habitats, especially the wetlands, which have shrunk by around 90 percent. Human settlements have spread more and more at the expense of cultivated land, and the general intensification of pasture and arable farming has led to a widespread depletion of meadows and arable habitats. The researchers compared the abundance of food plants of different insect groups, based on current mapping for the years 2012 to 2017, with data-based estimates from the years 1900 to 1930 in the canton of Zurich (Switzerland).

The food plants of specialized groups of flower visitors are particularly affected by the decline. For instance, the Greater Knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa) is pollinated by bumblebees, bees and butterflies, as their tongues are long enough to reach the nectar. The decline is particularly dramatic for plant species that can only be pollinated by a single group of insects. In the case of Aconite (Aconitum napellus), for example, this can only be done by bumblebees because the plant’s toxin evidently does not affect them.

Overall, all plant communities have become much more monotonous, with just a few dominant common species. “It’s hard for us to imagine what vegetation looked like 100 years ago,” says Dr. Michael Kessler from the Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany at the University of Zurich. “But our data show that about half of all species have experienced significant decline in their abundance, while only ten percent of the species have increased.”

250 volunteers helped with mapping

Residents with appropriate botanical knowledge helped with the current survey. They mapped the entire canton of Zurich by plotting an area of one square kilometer each at intervals of three kilometers. The focus here was on the different types of vegetation and the abundance of different plants. “Without the assistance of more than 250 volunteers, who not only mapped the current flora but also processed the historical collections, a project of this scope would not have been feasible,” says Dr. Thomas Wohlgemuth of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, who initiated the mapping project ten years ago with the Zurich Botanical Society.

The most important source on the earlier flora in the canton of Zurich was the unpublished manuscript of Eugen Baumann, a collection of about 1200 handwritten pages. It contains precise and detailed information on the abundance and distribution of plant species before 1930. Dr. Abrahamczyk researched which of the listed species belong to those flowering plants that are visited by insects in search of pollen and nectar. The “customers” include bees, bumblebees, wasps, butterflies, hoverflies, flies and beetles.

Results are largely transferable to Central Europe

Dr. Abrahamczyk has been working on pollination biology for about ten years. He wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Zurich, then conducted research at the LMU Munich and joined the Nees Institute of the University of Bonn in 2014. When, in late 2018, his former doctoral supervisor, Dr. Michael Kessler, suggested that the recently completed mapping of the canton’s flora be combined with pollinator data, Dr. Abrahamczyk was immediately enthusiastic — also because this subject is highly topical. “The laborious literature search and analysis then took some time, and now the study could finally be published,” says the scientist from the University of Bonn. “The results are transferable to the whole of Central Europe with minor regional restrictions.”

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Water may look like a simple liquid; however, it is anything but simple to analyze

Posted on 24/04/2020 by Boris Clair

An international team of scientists lead by Professor Martina Havenith from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) has been able to shed new light on the properties of water at the molecular level. In particular, they were able to describe accurately the interactions between three water molecules, which contribute significantly to the energy landscape of water. The research could pave the way to better understand and predict water behaviour at different conditions, even under extreme ones. The results have been published online in the journal Angewandte Chemie on 19 April 2020.

Interactions via vibrations

Despite water is at first glance looking like a simple liquid it has many unusual properties, one of them being that it is less dense when it is frozen than when it is liquid. In the simplest way liquids are described by the interaction of their direct partners, which are mostly sufficient for a good description, but not in the case of water: The interactions in water dimers account for 75 per cent of the energy that keeps water together. Martina Havenith, head of the Bochum-based Chair of Physical Chemistry II and spokesperson for the Ruhr Explores Solvation (Resolv) Cluster of Excellence, and her colleagues from Emory University in Atlanta, US, recently published an accurate description of the interactions related to the water dimer. In order to get access to the cooperative interactions, which make up 25 per cent of the total water interaction, the water trimer had to be investigated.

Now, the team lead by Martina Havenith in collaboration with colleagues from Emory University and of the University of Mississipi, US, has been able to describe for the first time in an accurate way the interaction energy among three water molecules. They tested modern theoretical descriptions against the result of the spectroscopic fingerprint of these intermolecular interactions.

Obstacles for experimental research

Since more than 40 years, scientists have developed computational models and simulations to describe the energies involved in the water trimer. Experiments have been less successful, despite some pioneer insights in gas phase studies, and they rely on spectroscopy. The technique works by irradiating a water sample with radiation and recording how much light has been absorbed. The obtained pattern is related to the different type of excitations of intermolecular motions involving more than one water molecules. Unfortunately, to obtain these spectroscopic fingerprints for water dimers and trimers, one needs to irradiate in the terahertz frequency region. And laser sources that provide high-power have been lacking for that frequency region.

This technical gap has been filled only recently. In the current publication, the RUB scientists used the free electron lasers at Radboud University in Nijmegen in The Netherlands, which allows for high powers in the terahertz frequency region. The laser was applied through tiny droplets of superfluid helium, which is cooled down at extremely low temperatures, at minus 272,75 degrees Celsius. These droplets can collect water molecules one by one, allowing to isolate small aggregates of dimers and trimers. In this way the scientists were able to irradiate exactly the molecules they wanted to and to acquire the first comprehensive spectrum of the water trimer in the terahertz frequency region.

The experimental observations of the intermolecular vibrations were compared to and interpreted using high level quantum calculations. In this way the scientists could analyse the spectrum and assign up to six different intermolecular vibrations.

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Palaeontologists reveal ‘the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth’

Posted on 24/04/2020 by Boris Clair

100 million years ago, ferocious predators, including flying reptiles and crocodile-like hunters, made the Sahara the most dangerous place on Earth.

This is according to an international team of scientists, who have published the biggest review in almost 100 years of fossil vertebrates from an area of Cretaceous rock formations in south-eastern Morocco, known as the Kem Kem Group.

The review, published in the journal ZooKeys, “provides a window into Africa’s Age of Dinosaurs” according to lead author Dr Nizar Ibrahim, an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Detroit Mercy and Visiting Researcher from the University of Portsmouth.

About 100 million years ago, the area was home to a vast river system, filled with many different species of aquatic and terrestrial animals. Fossils from the Kem Kem Group include three of the largest predatory dinosaurs ever known, including the sabre-toothed Carcharodontosaurus (over 8m in length with enormous jaws and long, serrated teeth up to eight inches long) and Deltadromeus (around 8m in length, a member of the raptor family with long, unusually slender hind limbs for its size), as well as several predatory flying reptiles (pterosaurs) and crocodile-like hunters. Dr Ibrahim said: “This was arguably the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth, a place where a human time-traveller would not last very long.”

Many of the predators were relying on an abundant supply of fish, according to co-author Professor David Martill from the University of Portsmouth. He said: “This place was filled with absolutely enormous fish, including giant coelacanths and lungfish. The coelacanth, for example, is probably four or even five times large than today’s coelacanth. There is an enormous freshwater saw shark called Onchopristis with the most fearsome of rostral teeth, they are like barbed daggers, but beautifully shiny.”

Researchers from the Universities of Detroit, Chicago, Montana, Portsmouth (UK), Leicester (UK, David Unwin), Casablanca (Morocco), and McGill (Canada), as well as the Paris Museum of Natural History, have produced the first detailed and fully illustrated account of the fossil-rich escarpment, previously known as the “Kem Kem beds.” The researchers now define this sedimentary package as the Kem Kem Group, which consists of two distinct formations, the Gara Sbaa Formation and the Douira Formation.

To assemble the huge datasets and fossil images, which were originally included in his PhD thesis, Dr Ibrahim visited Kem Kem collections on several continents.

Shedding light on Africa’s ancient past is important says Professor Martill, “This is the most comprehensive piece of work on fossil vertebrates from the Sahara in almost a century, since the famous German palaeontologist Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach published his last major work in 1936.”

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Nursing homes prepared for pandemics, but COVID-19 reveals gaps

Posted on 24/04/2020 by Boris Clair

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit some nursing homes especially hard — including in the hotspot state of Michigan. Hundreds of deaths of residents in homes from Seattle to Boston have raised concerns about how well facilities are protecting the 1.3 million older Americans who live in them. Those concerns have prompted new federal and state requirements about testing and transparency.

But it might have been worse.

New data suggests that at least in Michigan, nursing homes that responded to a survey were far better prepared for this pandemic than they were for the last one. The study includes responses from 130 nursing homes to a survey performed during the week the state announced its first documented case of COVID-19.

It shows that nearly all had a pandemic plan in place. That’s compared with just over half of the 280 nursing homes that answered the same survey in 2007. Nearly all said they now have at least one staff member in charge of pandemic preparedness.

The findings are reported in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society by a team from the University of Michigan that has studied and worked to improve nursing home infection prevention for years.

Members of the team have several other recent publications with direct or indirect relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic, including putting forth recommendations for nursing homes and other housing facilities for older adults to use in planning how they will respond to pandemics such as COVID-19.

Lona Mody, M.D., M.Sc., a geriatrician at Michigan Medicine, U-M’s academic medical center, and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, is senior author of both of the new publications. She’s a professor of internal medicine, the associate director for clinical and translational research at the U-M Geriatrics Center, and director of the Infection Prevention in Aging research group.

“Our nursing homes house some of the most vulnerable in our society,” says Mody. “This virus unfortunately is very contagious, the disease it causes has incredibly poor outcomes in older adults with comorbidities, and nursing homes are communal settings with shared spaces and resource limitations. This creates a perfect storm of sorts. Being novel, we learn as go and have to learn really quickly.”

Mody heads the PRIISM, or Preventing Resistance and Infection by Integrating Systems in Michigan, project, which partners with skilled nursing facilities, hospitals and public health agencies across the state to perform research and create and test education and training materials for nursing home staff. The program’s website has many free materials for use by nursing homes everywhere.

Pandemic planning

The new survey data show Michigan’s nursing homes have done a lot to prepare for pandemics since the last time the U-M team performed the survey. That previous survey was taken before the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009, but after the H5N1 “bird flu” pandemic of 2005 raised national awareness of the importance of pandemic preparedness. Mody and colleagues published pandemic preparedness guidance for nursing homes at that time.

In mid-March of this year, 85% of nursing homes said they had stockpiled supplies before COVID-19 hit, compared with 57% after the H5N1 pandemic. Most of those that had stockpiled supplies had focused on surgical masks, gloves and hand sanitizer. Less than half had stockpiled N95 respirator masks, which are recommended by national and global health authorities for health care workers performing certain types of care on a COVID-19 patient.

Still, 42% of the nursing homes that answered a question about COVID-19-specific concerns said they were worried about running short of personal protective gear.

“Although the size and severity of COVID-19 outbreaks in some nursing homes have taken everyone by surprise, just as so much about this pandemic has, in general nursing homes knew exactly what their challenges were going to be in a pandemic — PPE shortages, staff shortages and worries that they did not have the capacity to care for COVID patients after their hospital stay.”

Nearly all now said they had trained staff on how their facility would respond in a pandemic, up from 42% in 2007. But only one-third had conducted a pandemic drill. And Mody notes that nursing homes have a much higher rate of staff turnover than hospitals — meaning that training on infection prevention and pandemic response has to be offered whenever a new person joins the organization.

Michigan’s nursing homes appear to have gotten better connected to the broader health care system in the past decade, with significantly more saying they now have communication lines established with local hospitals and public health departments.

Many also said they were drawing COVID-19 guidance not just from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but also from state and local health departments. Half also received guidance from their home’s corporate parent.

And while half of the nursing homes surveyed this year said they expected significant staff shortages due to COVID-19, most of them said they had a plan to deal with that. Most planned to ask existing clinical staff to work more hours, and to redeploy non-clinical staff. Two-thirds expected they’d need to require staff to work overtime.

The survey also explored the potential for nursing homes to relieve the burden on hospitals. In all, 82% said they’d be willing to take non-pandemic patients from overburdened hospitals now, compared with 53% in 2007. But the percent that said they’d be able to accept patients with the pandemic disease stayed the same, at one-third of responding homes.

Additional guidance

Mody and her colleagues John P. Mills, M.D. and Keith Kaye, M.D. from the U-M Division of Infectious Diseases recently published some recommendations regarding COVID-19 and older adults in the journal JCI Insight. Mody and Kaye are members of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

They note that it’s not just nursing homes with long-term residents that need to be ready to care for vulnerable older adults during pandemics.

In fact, the trend over the past decade to use nursing homes more often for short-term stays by patients who have been discharged from a hospital, and to create state and local programs that allow older adults to ‘age in place’ instead of moving to nursing homes for the long-term, have led to potential gaps for pandemic responses to help older adults.

They call for policymakers to address those gaps, by creating pandemic-specific plans for community-dwelling older adults, especially those with health needs.

As for nursing homes, they recommend that in areas where COVID-19 is spreading widely in the community, facilities should take these steps, and others:

place patients with known or suspected disease in the same area of the facility, away from others
perform rapid COVID-19 tests on all patients, both short-stay and long-stay
screen healthcare workers and other staff for symptoms including checking temperatures
limit visitors and group activities
require everyone wear a surgical mask
require additional protective gear for clinical staff

The limits on group activities tie in to other research by Mody and her colleagues, published in JAGS in December.

That study sampled surfaces, and the hands of patients and staff, in the common areas and rehabilitation gyms with in nursing homes, and looked for drug-resistant bacteria that can cause dangerous infections. Though the team didn’t look for the presence of viruses in these areas, they did find that half of the samples taken in rehab gyms contained at least one type of bacteria that was resistant to several types of antibiotics.

In addition to stockpiling PPE and cleaning supplies, the team recommends that nursing homes should use “burn calculators” to predict how quickly they’ll use those supplies based on their patient population.

If nursing homes and other residential facilities for older adults haven’t already done so, they should establish lines of communication with local health departments in advance of any outbreak of COVID-19 in their facility. They should also focus on staff retention, including providing for generous sick leave policies so that staff can stay home when ill, and hazard pay for those who can come to work.

And, the team says, nursing homes should make sure they have an infection prevention plan in place for staff when a patient has died of COVID-19.

Another gap in preparedness that the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing, Mody says, is a gap in communication with patients and their families. Keeping families informed, and enabling them to connect virtually with their loved ones when they can’t visit in person, is crucial, she says.

Health24.com | School closures could be adding to US kids’ waistlines

Posted on 24/04/2020 by Boris Clair

One side effect of the coronavirus pandemic could be long-lasting: school closures may worsen the child obesity crisis, experts warn.

Previous research has shown that kids tend to gain weight when they’re out of school during the summer – especially Hispanic and black youngsters and children who are already overweight.

“There could be long-term consequences for weight gained while children are out of school during the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Andrew Rundle, who studies ways to prevent childhood obesity. He’s an associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.

“Research shows that weight gained over the summer months is maintained during the school year and accrues summer to summer,” Rundle said in a university news release. “When a child experiences obesity, even at a young age, they are at risk for higher, unhealthy weight, all the way into middle age.”

Focus on comfort foods

Rundle and his colleagues predicted that Covid-19-related school closures will double out-of-school time this year for many children in the United States. And that, in turn, will aggravate risk factors for unwanted weight gain, they warned.

Physical distancing and stay-at-home orders limit opportunities to exercise, particularly for city kids living in small apartments. As a result, inactivity, screen time and snacking are likely to increase, Rundle and colleagues wrote in their study published recently in the journal Obesity.

They also noted that families stocking up on long-lasting food sources tend to focus on ultra-processed, calorie-dense comfort foods.

The authors outlined ways to prevent children from gaining weight during the coronavirus pandemic:

To reduce food insecurity, which is associated with unhealthy weight among kids, some school districts are offering students grab-and-go meals at school sites or on buses that run along their regular pick-up routes.
Farmers markets often provide specialty and ethnic produce and prepared foods sought by immigrant communities. Cities and states should consider them part of essential food services, but also create physical distancing plans for such markets, Rundle and colleagues recommended.
As schools switch to remote teaching, they should make physical education a priority, with home lesson plans for physical activity and/or streaming exercise classes, the authors added.

READ | Don’t abandon healthy eating during coronavirus pandemic

READ | Eat healthy, move your body during coronavirus pandemic

READ | 5 tips for eating healthier during the coronavirus lockdown

^{Image credit: iStock}

Creative Productivity

Posted on 24/04/2020 by Boris Clair

One goal that’s been on my Someday / Maybe list for many years is to write a novel (or even multiple novels). I’ve done lots of nonfiction writing, so I think it would be interesting to explore fiction writing. I like the idea of delving deeper into my imagination and connecting dots through a different medium.

I also love to turn personal goals into social goals by inviting people to join in such experiences.

This aligns well with the next deep dive I have planned, which is on the topic of creative productivity, tentatively called Amplify. I’d like to start creating this course during the summer.

I have a pretty large body of published work, including video games, articles, videos, podcasts, personal development courses, and hundreds of books published under my name in various languages. I wrote one of those books myself, and the others were compilations of different articles that people created from my uncopyrighted blog posts. I’ve also done many speeches and live workshops and even a little music.

Since 1993 the creative professional path has been my way forward in life. I got to see my first published commercial product (a collection of computer games) on the shelf at Comp USA shortly after I graduated from college. Those games weren’t very good, but that project got me started. I’m glad I got an early since since it took time to figure out how to earn a living from creative work and to become proficient.

The relationship between creativity and productivity fascinates me. It’s such a dance of yin and yang, part exploration and discovery and part disciplined action and goal focus. If this balance is off, it’s hard to converge on creative work that feels worthy of publishing. Either we crank out uninspired drivel, or we get lost in the idea space too long.

I’d love to explore this relationship between creativity and productivity more deeply this year and invite people to delve into this with me. So that’s the basis of our next deep dive. How can we be brilliantly creative and consistently productive at the same time?

I’d like to do something a bit more hands-on this time though. In addition to creating an all new course, I think it would be worthwhile to invite each person who participates to commit to creating some kind of creative work. What each person creates is up to them.

Possible creative works could include:

book (fiction or nonfiction)
screenplay
video game (at least a playable prototype)
software app
music album (or perhaps one well-polished song)
stand-up comedy routine
artwork
blogging / writing series
YouTube videos (build a following)

Alternatively, people could also use the deep dive to focus on creative skill building through exploration with smaller projects. This could include:

musical instrument practice
photography
painting
3D art
programming
cooking
chess
parenting

Many creative skills have much in common, especially when it comes to being productive. The lessons I learned from designing computer games apply well to designing personal growth courses or laying out a book. One key lesson I struggled to learn was how to adapt certain media to fit my strengths. It took me years to figure out how to create and publish courses efficiently after so many years of blogging. I had to learn different methods for managing short-form and long-form creative projects.

I’m still in the very early phase of figuring out the scope of this new deep dive, but the initial inspiration is leaning me towards inviting participants to work on a real creative project as they go through the course, so they can apply the lessons to a genuine project.

In fact, I would like to do the same by writing a novel as we go through the deep dive together. Since that’s a new medium for me, it would make it extra challenging. If I’m to weave two major projects together like this though (a major new course and a novel), I’d need to go at a gradual enough pacing, so I can devote sufficient time to each. So I may develop and publish the lessons of this course more slowly if I go that route. That would likely be fine since then it would give people doing the course more time to work on their own creative projects while they go through the course.

An alternative approach would be to have two phases: First we do the deep dive course, and then we tackle our creative projects as a separate phase. Perhaps we could have check-in calls for that second phase, do some Q&A, share lessons, and help each other work through any blocks that arise.

For now I’m just sharing an early version of this idea, which still needs a lot of development. If you find this theme of creative productivity appealing and want to share feedback about it, please let me know your thoughts. I think it has some potential to be a really engaging and rewarding deep dive.

If you join Conscious Growth Club next week – we open for new members April 27 to May 1 – you’ll get access to this new deep dive as part of your membership automatically. Then we can also use the CGC forums to support each other as we go through it. I’ll also make it available as a standalone deep dive, as with our other courses.

Coronavirus: Uncertainty over maternity care causing distress

Posted on 24/04/2020 by Boris Clair

Women say the uncertainty during the coronavirus outbreak is “making a stressful situation harder”.

Health24.com | Benefits of physical distancing outweigh economic toll, in US – study

Posted on 24/04/2020 by Boris Clair

The lifesaving benefits of strict physical distancing rules during the coronavirus pandemic far outweigh their projected harm to the US economy, a new report claims.

“Our benefit-cost analysis shows that the extensive physical distancing measures being adopted in the US likely do not constitute an overreaction,” said lead author Linda Thunstrom, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

“Physical distancing saves lives but comes at large costs to society due to reduced economic activity,” she said in a university news release. “Still, based on our benchmark assumptions, the economic benefits of lives saved substantially outweigh the value of the projected losses to the US economy.”

Assuming that physical distancing measures are adopted widely enough to reduce contact between people significantly, their benefits will surpass the economic costs by $5.2 trillion (R99 trillion), according to Thunstrom and colleagues.

A rapid assessment

The findings – published online in the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis – are based on the most recent data on coronavirus spread and its impact on economic activity.

Study co-author Stephen Newbold said, “It should be possible to conduct a more detailed analysis after more data are available.” Newbold is an assistant professor of economics.

“But a rapid assessment, based on the best currently available information, adds much-needed rigour to the public discussion about the policy response to this outbreak,” he explained in the news release.

The analysis includes the potential impact of Covid-19 on the US healthcare system. The Wyoming researchers estimated that current physical distancing measures will reduce the average contact rate among individuals by 38%. And that, in turn, will reduce the peak of the infection curve by more than half, helping avoid overwhelming the healthcare system and keeping the death rate below worst-case scenarios.

The analysis didn’t assess how physical distancing will affect specific groups of people.

“It stands to reason that the most vulnerable groups in society will be the hardest hit. For example, the service industry will be disproportionately affected by these policies, which will lead to mass layoffs of low-income workers,” the researchers wrote.

It is also likely that the most economically disadvantaged groups will suffer the worst health consequences from Covid-19, the study authors said.

Painful costs and consequences

In theory, the researchers said, the uneven impact of the pandemic and physical distancing measures could be addressed “with appropriate redistributions of resources.”

The researchers also said the United States needs to better prepare for future disease outbreaks.

“Our analysis suggests that the aggressive physical distancing policies currently promoted in the US probably are justified, given that no good contingency plans were in place for an epidemic of this magnitude,” they wrote. “But the costs and consequences will be painful. To avoid these in the future, there are likely large social benefits to ensuring that we are better prepared for the next pandemic.”

READ | Multiple measures of physical distancing required to slow coronavirus

READ | How 4 US cities helped slow coronavirus spread

READ | Wuhan study shows how social distancing to curb the spread of coronavirus is saving lives

^{Image credit: Sharon McCutcheon, Unsplash}

Coronavirus: Virus tests now available to millions of workers

Posted on 24/04/2020 by Boris Clair

But the government is still some way short of its target of 100,000 tests a day by the end of April.

Health24.com | Coronavirus morning update: What’s next for lockdown, the 5 levels, and Western Cape now has most cases

Posted on 24/04/2020 by Boris Clair

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN SA

Cases update:

The latest number of confirmed cases is 3 953.

According to the latest update, 75 deaths have been recorded in the country.

So far, 143 570 tests have been conducted – nearly 10 000 new tests were conducted.

Latest news:

On the same day the country recorded its biggest spike in the number of positive Covid-19 cases, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the lockdown would be eased from 1 May.

Addressing the nation on Thursday night, Ramaphosa announced the government would follow a five-level phased approach towards easing lockdown restrictions.

He said it would implement a risk-adjustment strategy that would be deliberate and cautious.

“There is still much that is unknown about the rate and spread of the virus. Action we take must be measured and incremental.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa has shed light on what the country’s new reality will look like when the lockdown continues beyond the end of April, albeit in another format.

South Africans entered the lockdown at midnight on 26 March to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was expected to end on 16 April, however, Ramaphosa announced a few days before its end it would be extended for a further two weeks.

The lockdown in its current form is expected to end on 30 April.

During his address to the nation on Thursday evening, Ramaphosa announced that beyond the end of April, a risk-adjusted strategy would be implemented to ease the current lockdown restrictions.

While the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) will continue to support the police in enforcing Disaster Management Act regulations, as the country enters a new phase of the lockdown, soldiers will be providing assistance in other essential areas, including health care.

After 27 days of a hard lockdown, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a new level on Thursday evening, allowing for the gradual easing of restrictions from 1 May.

Ramaphosa also clarified the mobilisation of more than 70 000 soldiers, one of South Africa’s biggest deployments in history.

“As we slowly ease the lockdown restrictions, we are substantially and rapidly increasing our public health response

“Some activity will be allowed, subject to extreme precautions,” the president said.

Businesses that are allowed to resume activity will be allowed to do so under specific conditions. Every business will have to adhere to detailed health and safety protocols to protect their employees, and plans will have to be put in place for disease surveillance and to prevent infection.

Ramaphosa did not announce which businesses would be allowed to reopen – though he did say cigarettes, and some other additional goods, would be on sale. Food retail stores that are already open are expected to be allowed to sell the full line of products within their existing stock.

In weighing up whether a sector would be allowed to operate, its economic contribution, the effect on livelihoods, and the risk of transmission in each sector would be considered, he said.

From 1 May, smokers will be happy to know that they can light up once again, and some businesses will be allowed to operate, under specific conditions, as government gradually begins to lift the coronavirus lockdown.

In an address to the nation on Thursday, the president said that while there has been progress in limiting the spread of the Covid-19, the lockdown cannot continue indefinitely.

It was instituted on 26 March. Several businesses, not deemed essential services, have had to close temporarily, leading to a loss of income for many South Africans.

The Reserve Bank has projected that the impact of the Covid-19 crisis would see SA’s economy contract by 6.1%. Ratings agency Moody’s projects a 2.5% contraction and the International monetary fund (IMF) a 5.8% contraction.

Another viral WhatsApp message is doing the rounds making claims about the coronavirus crisis in South Africa, supposedly authored by a top Cape Town doctor.

Health24 can confirm, however, that the message was not authored by him.

The message claims to be the 13-point “outcomes” of a discussion on the pandemic, with “some doc friends of mine in the school group”, and claims to be “written by The Head of Trauma at Groote Schuur Hospital, Prof Andrew Nicol”.

In an e-mail, Professor Nicol – the Director of the Groote Schuur Hospital Trauma Centre and a professor of surgery at the University of Cape Town – denied that he was involved.

“Fake news. I am not the author,” Prof Nicol said, and added that his expertise was trauma, not Covid-19.

The traditional Muslim greeting of Ramadan Mubarak, or Happy Ramadan, will wait one more day after the moon was not sighted on Thursday evening.

This means the holy month will begin on Saturday in South Africa.

Three members of the Crescent Observers Society were authorised to visit the promenade at Three Anchor Bay on Cape Town’s Atlantic Seaboard to search the skies for the moon.

A traditional period of several minutes is taken to scour the darkness for a precious glimpse of the slender-lit moon, which heralds the official start of Ramadan.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE REST OF THE WORLD

Cases update:

For the latest global data, follow this interactive map from Johns Hopkins University & Medicine.

Late on Thursday night, positive cases worldwide were almost 2.7 million, while deaths were more than 187 000.

The United States had the most cases in the world – nearly 865 000, as well as the most deaths – nearly 48 000.

Latest news:

Iran called on Thursday for the US to be held accountable for “cruel” sanctions that have hampered its efforts to fight a coronavirus outbreak that it said claimed another 90 lives.

The Islamic republic has been struggling to contain the virus that causes the Covid-19 disease since revealing its first cases more than two months ago.

It accuses its arch enemy the United States of making the crisis worse through sanctions imposed unilaterally since Washington pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.

The latest fatalities given by the health ministry for the past 24 hours took the overall death toll in Iran from the coronavirus to 5 481.

The European Medicines Agency on Thursday added its voice to growing concern about an anti-malarial drug widely touted as a potential cure for the Covid-19 disease, warning about fatal side effects.

Beneficial effects of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which count US President Donald Trump as a major backer, have “not yet been demonstrated,” the Amsterdam-based EMA said.

“Recent studies have reported serious, in some cases fatal, heart rhythm problems with chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, particularly when taken at high doses or in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin,” the EMA said in a statement.

They could also cause liver and kidney problems, nerve cell damage that can lead to seizures, and low blood sugar, it said.

Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest shrines, has announced that the holy fasting month of Ramadan will start Friday, as Muslims worldwide face unprecedented restrictions to counter coronavirus.

“Based on the sighting of the new month’s moon … it has been decided that Friday is the start of the month of Ramadan,” the royal court said on Thursday in a statement cited by the SPA news agency.

King Salman said he is saddened that Muslims cannot pray at mosques because of coronavirus restrictions.

“I am pained that the holy month arrives amid circumstances that make us unable to perform group prayers and Taraweeh – special Ramadan night prayers – at mosques due to precautionary measures to protect the peoples’ lives and health in combating the coronavirus pandemic,” the king said in a statement cited by SPA.

LATEST RESEARCH

The continued ban on cigarette sales during lockdown appears to be a bone of considerable contention. From a general health perspective, the message is pretty clear – smoking is bad for you, and at Health24, we agree – the studies are clear, and we have a section dedicated to stopping smoking – here.

This stance won’t change, but, in relation to this unprecedented period in our history, we are still not clear on the relevance of this ban to the lockdown.

The word draconian crops up regularly, to describe the ban – frankly, warnings regarding smoking have been around for years, it’s front and centre on packaging, yet people still choose to smoke.

So, why has this choice been taken away? We reached out to a few medical experts to find out more.

Even as scientists are slowly learning more about the new coronavirus, the virus which causes Covid-19, there are still many grey areas.

One of these is whether someone who became infected with the new coronavirus and contracted Covid-19 will be immune against the virus.

Experts can’t provide a clear answer at this stage, even though it’s assumed that once you get ill from a virus, you acquire immunity, even if it’s just for a short while.

“Being immunised means that you have developed an immune response against a virus such that you can repulse it,” stated Eric Vivier, a professor of immunology in the public hospital system in Marseilles in a news report.

Preliminary data from two clinical trials using the antiviral drug remdesivir to treat Covid-19 patients is encouraging, researchers report.

One trial is providing the drug to patients with moderate illness and the other focuses on patients with severe illness.

A number of the patients are now recovering and have been released from the hospital. While it’s too early to tell, the researchers said there are also indications that remdesivir can possibly stave off being put on a ventilator.

“Early results are promising, and that is important right now. Much of what we are learning about Covid-19 management is centred around preventing quick deterioration. Timing is everything. I can’t say for certain they [patients] would have been intubated otherwise, but it’s encouraging,” said Katherine Perez, an infectious diseases pharmacist who is co-leading the trials.

As researchers hunt for ways to treat severe Covid-19 infections, a new trial will ask whether an old arthritis drug can prevent serious complications in the first place.

The medication, called colchicine, is an oral anti-inflammatory that has long been prescribed for gout, a form of arthritis. Its history goes back thousands of years, and the drug was first sourced from the autumn crocus flower.

Doctors also sometimes use colchicine to treat pericarditis, where the sac around the heart becomes inflamed.

Now researchers in the United States and Canada are testing it for a different purpose: Keeping high-risk Covid-19 patients from getting sick enough to land in the hospital.

HEALTH TIPS (as recommended by the NICD and WHO)

• Maintain physical distancing – stay at least one metre away from somebody who is coughing or sneezing

• Practise frequent hand-washing, especially after direct contact with ill people or their environment

• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth, as your hands touch many surfaces and could potentially transfer the virus

• Practise respiratory hygiene – cover your mouth with your bent elbow or tissue when you cough or sneeze. Remember to dispose the tissue immediately after use.

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