El actor Fabio Restrepo estuvo hospitalizado varios días al igual que su hijo Andrés, murieron con algunos días de diferencia.
Noticias Colombia.
Entre las víctimas mortales que se sigue cobrando cada día el COVID-19, este domingo está el actor Fabio Restrepo, quien en enero había perdido a su hijo Andrés a causa de complicaciones por el mismo virus.
Andrés y Fabio Restrepo, ambos actores murieron con poco tiempo de diferencia tras contagiarsede COVID-19.
Aunque la familia no ha aclarado directamente el tema, el actor ni su hijo se habrían vacunado contra el virus.
Andrés Restrepo, hijo del artista tenía diabetes e hipertensión, por lo que sus complicaciones no dieron tiempo a nada, y tras unos días hospitalizado, falleció.
La noticia la recibió Fabio Restrepo en medio de una aparente recuperación cuando también se enfrentaba al virus, se presume que la perdida hizo que las complicaciones volvieran a aparecer y terminó en la UCI del hospital San Vicente, en Medellín, varios días.
“Hijo, nos veremos en presencia del eterno… solo es cuestión de tiempo”, le había escrito el actor, de 62 años de edad, a su hijo.
Andres y Fabio tenían una posición antivacuna, en mayo del 2021 recibieron mensajes con insultosy hasta amenazas, por pronunciarse y señalar «no nos maten» para pedir que no los obligaran a vacunarse.
Una de las últimas colaboraciones que habían hecho los actores, fue en la miniserie web que produjeron, ‘Oficina de Sicarios», y que describió Andrés como «el oscuro mundo de la corrupción y sus alcances».
The sweeping “zero-tolerance” strategy that China has used to keep COVID-19 case numbers low and its economy functioning may, paradoxically, make it harder for the country to exit the pandemic.
Most experts say the coronavirus around the world isn’t going away and believe it could eventually become, like the flu, a persistent but generally manageable threat if enough people gain immunity through infections and vaccines.
In countries like Britain and the U.S., which have had comparatively light restrictions against the omicron wave, there is a glimmer of hope that the process might be underway. Cases skyrocketed in recent weeks but have since dropped in Britain and may have leveled off in the U.S., perhaps because the extremely contagious variant is running out of people to infect. Some places already are talking about easing COVID-19 precautions.
China, which will be in the international spotlight when the Beijing Winter Olympics begin in two weeks, is not seeing the same dynamic.
FILE – In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a staff member disinfects parcels at a community where a locally transmitted COVID-19 case was found, in Haidian district, Beijing, China, Jan. 18, 2022.
Find and isolate
The communist government’s practice throughout the pandemic of trying to find and isolate every infected person has largely protected hospitals from becoming overwhelmed and staved off the deaths that have engulfed most of the world.
But the uncompromising approach also means most people in China have never been exposed to the virus. At the same time, the effectiveness of China’s most widely used vaccines has been called into question. New studies suggest they offer significantly less protection against infection from omicron, even after three doses, than people get after booster shots of the leading Western vaccines.
Together, those factors could complicate China’s effort to get past the pandemic. Experts say if the country of 1.4 billion people were to relax restrictions, it could face a surge similar to what Singapore or Australia experienced, despite a highly vaccinated population.
“China’s susceptibility to outbreaks is likely to be more because most people have not been exposed to the virus due to the stringent measures that were put in place, thus lacking hybrid immunity, which is supposed to prove better protection than vaccination alone,” said Dr. Vineeta Bal, an immunologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.
“It is risky for China to reopen right now because omicron is spreading globally, and even if the variant doesn’t cause major illness, it’ll spread like wildfire,” she added.
Dali Yang, a professor who studies Chinese politics at the University of Chicago, said, “It’s a big challenge, for leaders, especially their rhetoric on saving lives. How do you justify opening up and then having tens of thousands of people dying in the process?”
Workers from the restaurant industry line up for their covid tests in Beijing, China, Jan. 22, 2022. Chinese authorities have called on the public not to travel during the Lunar New Year.
Tough-minded strategy
Chinese President Xi Jinping has cited China’s approach as a “major strategic success” and evidence of the “significant advantages” of its political system over Western liberal democracies.
The world’s most populous nation was the only major economy to grow in 2020, and it accounted for a fraction of global deaths and infections.
As part of the country’s tough-minded strategy for keeping the virus at bay, residents in Chinese cities must display their infection status on a government-monitored app to enter supermarkets, offices or even the capital.
But weeks ahead of the Olympics, omicron is testing this approach with outbreaks in the southern province of Guangdong, as well as Beijing.
Organizers of the Olympics announced they will not sell tickets locally and will allow only select spectators in. Foreign fans are not allowed.
A man takes a photo at an overlook in Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei Province, Jan. 22, 2022.
Stay home for the new year
Authorities have also asked people to not visit their hometowns around the Lunar New Year at the start of February, a move that will dampen spending during China’s most important family holiday. And the major city of Xi’an in the west and parts of Ningbo, a busy port south of Shanghai, are under lockdown.
With the Communist Party gearing up for a major meeting this fall, at which Xi is expected to be appointed to a third term as party leader, China is unlikely to relax its policies in a major way any time soon.
“If the numbers from COVID start to skyrocket to big levels, then this will reflect badly on his leadership,” said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese political leadership at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
China relies heavily on its own Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines, along with several others made domestically. It has not approved the Pfizer shot, even though a Chinese company bought distribution rights in 2020.
Instead, the focus is on developing China’s own mRNA vaccines, like the Pfizer and Moderna formulas. One such vaccine is in late trials.
Another option for China may be to track how the virus is evolving and put off opening its borders until it becomes even milder. But it’s anyone’s guess when or if that might happen.
“What will the next variant be? How serious will it be? You can’t tell,” Bal said.
The researcher Diego Clemente, from the National Hospital for Paraplegics in Toledo, considers that the association of the Epstein-Barr virus with multiple sclerosis could open a door towards prevention in the population at risk.
Neuroimmuno-Repair Laboratory of the National Hospital for Paraplegics in Toledo where multiple sclerosis is investigated. EFE/Ana Soteras
Epstein-Barr virus and multiple sclerosis, a possible route to prevention
The biologist specifies that being infected with the Epstein-Barr virus is not a determining factor, but it is necessary or precipitating, to develop this chronic autoimmune disease.
This association between the virus and multiple sclerosis is what has been most convincingly proven by research carried out by the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University in a macro-study that originally included ten million US soldiers from of which 955 were diagnosed with this inflammatory disease of the central nervous system.
Clemente specifies that this research demonstrates “a strong association” of the virus with the disease, but not exactly causality, since the origin of multiple sclerosis is also due to predisposing genetic factors and influencing environmental factors, such as vitamin D deficiency. , smoking or obesity.
The truth is that 95% of the population is infected with this virus (kissing disease is one of its consequences) but only a few develop multiple sclerosis, so it is not a determining factor. In Spain, about 2,000 cases are diagnosed each year, the majority in women.
“The most interesting thing about this study is that if this association is so strong” a path is opened for prevention in people with clear risk factors, says the director of the Neuroimmuno-Repair Laboratory of the National Paraplegic Hospital of Toledo.
It would be children or young people who have not developed the disease, which usually appears between the ages of 20 and 40, but who have risk factors such as siblings and parents with multiple sclerosis (although it is not a hereditary disease, there is a greater family probability). or certain mutated genes that predispose.
“If there were a vaccine against the Epstein-Barr virus and it was administered to these people at risk and they did not develop the disease, we would be demonstrating that this virus is the cause of the disease together with the other genetic and environmental factors to which they are exposed. these people”, points out the biologist.
Regarding the possibility of treating the ongoing disease with antivirals against this pathogen, Clemente indicates that it could be more effective in newly diagnosed patients than in long-term patients, since from the time the virus infection occurs until the disease emerges An average of five years passes and it is possible that this time plays against it, but it is something that is not yet known.
The relationship between the Epstein-Barr virus and multiple sclerosis has been the subject of research in previous studies, but this Harvard research is the one that most emphatically demonstrates this association by following up to 20 years of a group of recruits: of the 10 original million, 955 develop multiple sclerosis, 801 are followed up and only one is not infected with the virus but is still affected by the disease.
Diego Clemente, director of the Neuroimmuno-Repair Laboratory of the National Hospital for Paraplegics in Toledo. Photo: Juan Carlos Monroy Escalona.
SEN specifies that the cause of multiple sclerosis is uncertain
The Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN) points out that, despite the study published in «Science», in which once again a possible association between the Epstein-Barr virus and multiple sclerosis seems to have been found, «it is not clear why multiple sclerosis manifests itself in some people and not in others».
Many studies have been carried out to try to identify which, or which, are the environmental factors directly related to the development of the disease without, until now, having been able to establish a definitively consistent relationship with any of them, he points out in a statement.
Currently, the cause of multiple sclerosis is unknown, although most of the studies carried out support the existence of environmental factors that, acting on genetically predisposed individuals, trigger the autoimmune phenomenon through which inflammatory and degenerative processes develop in the central nervous system.
The influence of these environmental factors seems crucial during childhood, as shown by studies carried out in populations that migrate from areas of low frequency of the disease to others of high risk, or vice versa, being able to modify the susceptibility to suffer from the disease so that The first two decades of life seem fundamental for establishing the risk of suffering from multiple sclerosis.
The disease does not follow a conventional inheritance pattern, associated with a single gene, but more than 200 genes have been identified that seem to give the individual a greater risk of developing it when exposed to the aforementioned environmental factors.
Among these environmental factors, vitamin D levels have been studied, in direct relation to exposure to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, smoking, salt consumption, obesity in adolescence and exposure to different infectious agents such as the Epstein Barr virus (EBV).
For many years, the existence of infectious agents has been proposed that would increase the risk of multiple sclerosis if they were acquired in adolescence, but not if the first contact with them occurred during childhood.
Supporting this “hygiene theory” hypothesis, the epidemiological findings indicate that the prevalence of the disease is low in developing countries and tends to increase in regions with a higher socioeconomic status and sanitation, where the age of these primary infections is delayed.
Interestingly, the timing of primary infection with this virus is generally considered a marker of childhood hygiene and has been linked to an increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis.
Generally acquired in early childhood in developing countries, primary Epsteni-Barr virus infection is drastically delayed in developed areas, with a much lower seroprevalence in the young so that when it does occur, the risk of infection is significantly increased. develop infectious mononucleosis while in childhood the infection can present a very trivial or even asymptomatic clinic.
While several studies provide strong evidence that infectious mononucleosis is an important risk factor for developing multiple sclerosis, it is also true that the very high prevalence of EBV seropositivity in the general population (95%) and the relatively low frequency of incidence of Multiple sclerosis poses a great challenge to prove the direct causality between the risk of developing the disease and the previous viral infection.
According to the SEN, Epstein-Barr virus infection before the age of 15 could influence the risk of developing multiple sclerosis and this age dependency could be due to altered immune responses after contact with the virus in adolescence and old age early adulthood, but the fact that a person has developed an infection by this virus does not imply that they will necessarily develop multiple sclerosis since, as we previously pointed out, the disease is multifactorial.
Thus, they reiterate that research continues to point to a combination of genetic factors with other environmental factors and not just a single factor.
El director del Centro de Diagnóstico e Investigación de la Universidad de Valparaíso, el médico infectólogo Rodrigo Cruz, indicó que, desde el punto de vista estrictamente epidemiológico, la propuesta del Colegio Médico toma en cuenta las recomendaciones que diversos especialistas han ido planteando en cuanto a modificar una metodología que fue diseñada hace ya un año, para evitar que la pandemia de COVID-19 se expandiera.
No obstante, en su opinión, ésta se mantiene en la lógica de cortar los contagios por medio de medidas de shock y cierres de actividades, lo que hasta ahora no ha dado los resultados esperados.
«Debemos saber que el desafío que tenemos por delante no solo debe ser el de cortar el circuito de los contagios, sino también el de diseñar una medida que nos permita convivir con el virus en forma permanente, porque con o sin burbujas territoriales, con o sin cierres productivos, con o sin cuarentenas o pases de movilidad, este virus no va a desaparecer hasta varios años más”, sostiene el especialista.
Para Cruz, el rebrote que en estos momentos vive Chile -ad portas del invierno- es consecuencia de una movilidad alta que ya no puede ser frenada mediante confinamientos masivos o acotados, porque las cifras están disparadas y se han estabilizado en torno a los 6 mil casos diarios a nivel nacional.
“Lo que propone el Colegio Médico podría terminar funcionando igual que las cuarentenas y solo servir para hacer caer momentáneamente el número de contagiados, pero no para que éste descienda de manera significativa y se mantenga en niveles bajos en forma permanente, para descomprimir la red asistencial. La gente -y los diferentes sectores productivos- ya no aguantan encierros de ningún tipo, por estrés o necesidad económica. Entonces, tenemos que lo que la gente quiere es salir. Cuidarse, pero salir. Ese es un hecho de la causa”, acota el director del CDIEI-UV.
Por lo anterior, el médico infectólogo sugiere potenciar lo planteado por el Colmed en cuanto a avanzar más hacia una modalidad que permita a la gente estar al aire libre, desplazarse por parques, cerros, plazas y playas, manteniendo la distancia física y usando siempre mascarilla, y, de paso, impedir su desplazamiento hacia otras regiones, independiente de la fase en que éstas se encuentren, hasta que el índice de transmisibilidad sea sustancialmente inferior a 1.
En cuanto al comercio, le parece adecuado no autorizar el funcionamiento de centros de acceso masivo que operan bajo techo y a restaurantes o lugares en que las personas tiendan a aglomerarse en espacios limitados, pero no a nivel de locales de barrio o ferias libres, que atienden público con aforo reducido y donde el riesgo se sabe que es menor.
“Es decir, nuestro desafío es lograr convivir y controlar el contagio del virus. Asumir que la movilidad se mantendrá y que se debe privilegiar una mayor libertad de movimiento- como ya ocurre en otros países- para practicar ejercicio, caminar y recrearse al aire libre, pero exclusivamente dentro de la comuna en la que se vive, en ningún caso para que viajar a otras zonas del país ni menos al extranjero”, argumenta el doctor Rodrigo Cruz.
