The corona is fading in Israel, diphtheria appears in Pakistan and cholera outbreak in Syria.
Corona
Israel, joined the USA and other countries and began in recent days to offer a corona vaccine adapted to the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, as a booster vaccine for anyone who has received at least 2 doses of the original vaccine or has been sick in the past. The vaccine is especially recommended for those over 65 and for groups at increased risk or those with Professions that increase exposure to patients, but can be given to anyone who wants, as long as he meets the clinical criteria.
Another recommended vaccine this season is the flu vaccine that is available to everyone at health insurance companies. You can even get vaccinated in the same class where you get vaccinated with the adapted drive against Corona. If you are over 65 years old, be sure to ask at the health insurance company if you can get the Flozon flu vaccine, a boosted vaccine designed for this age group that improves the immune response and protection against the disease.
In terms of the corona disease in Israel, the situation is not bad at the moment. The infection rate is approximately 1. It is known that there are approximately 8,000 active patients (it must be remembered that many are not tested at all) and the number of patients in serious condition has decreased in recent days to around 80. Because of the holidays it is difficult to know how many patients there were each day, but a decrease in the corona index is seen in the monitoring of the sewage system, Which indicates a real decrease in morbidity compared to the previous month.
The number of deaths from corona in Israel has risen in recent days to around 11,700 victims since the outbreak of the plague, with the average number of deaths per day dropping from 2 to 3, according to the latest update last week.
Although many people no longer regard the plague as a problem, it is important to remember that it still exists. Every day, about half a million new patients are reported around the world, and this too in a situation where many are not tested, and over 1,300 daily deaths are attributed to the corona disease worldwide.
Ebola
Uganda has reported a serious outbreak of Ebola in its territory, caused by the Ebola-Sudan strain, a strain for which the existing Ebola vaccine has not been tested and has no known treatment. Some of the patients are health care workers. The virus has already spread to four districts in the country. There are dozens of known patients, at least seven dead, one of them a doctor from Tanzania who treated the first Ebola case, and probably many more dead who were buried before being examined. Although the Ebola-Sudan strain is less deadly than its brother Ebola-Zaire, it still kills about half of its patients. The disease is highly contagious through contact with bodily fluids of patients, and is not airborne. Treating patients and burying the dead are a common means of infection, and the incubation time, which can reach up to three weeks, makes it very difficult to locate and isolate contacts of the patients. In Uganda they are begging for funding to enable them to fight the epidemic. If you are planning a trip to Uganda soon, pay attention to the announcement of the Ministry of Health and the required precautions.
From the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, which also declared an Ebola outbreak a few weeks ago, there is good news. After no additional cases were found beyond the first and only patient, they recently announced the end of the outbreak there. However, the investigation into the circumstances of the infection is still ongoing.
cholera
In Syria, our neighbor to the north, where many infrastructures have been destroyed due to the war, there is now a cholera epidemic with hundreds of known patients and at least one laboratory-confirmed death, and probably additional unconfirmed deaths. Cholera is an infectious disease of the intestines, and its cause is a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae that passes through contaminated water and food, usually due to the infiltration of contaminated sewage into drinking water. The disease is almost non-existent in modern countries with adequate sanitation and good treatment of the drinking water that reaches homes. But in backward countries or those that have experienced natural or man-made disasters, sometimes the sewage and drinking water systems collapse, and then one patient who defecates in the wrong place can start a major epidemic. The disease can be treated in hospitals, but health systems also tend to collapse in such situations, and without treatment, the disease could kill many. Although there is a vaccine against cholera, its effectiveness is limited and does not last long. It is not a substitute for disease prevention through hygiene and infrastructure restoration.
Diphtheria
In Pakistan, which is still struggling with wild polio that has claimed another paralyzing victim and which has recently been swept away by deadly floods, 39 cases of diphtheria are now being reported, including ten deaths of children in the last two months. Dr. Asad Ali, an expert in pediatrics, claims that the actual number of cases may be at least five times higher. The vaccine against diphtheria is given as a routine vaccination, but the number of vaccinated children in Pakistan has dropped to about 70% or maybe even less than that, and diphtheria is one of the diseases that returns quickly in such situations. For those concerned, the vaccine is given in the same injection as the tetanus vaccine, and is part of the quintuple injection that babies in Israel receive four times until the age of one. Those who are vaccinated according to the recommendations of the Ministry of Health are protected from the disease.