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SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage copyrightReutersIndia has reached the devastating figure of 200,000 coronavirus deaths, with the pressure on many hospitals showing no sign of abating amid a surging second wave.The real number of fatalities is thought to be far greater, with many not being officially recorded.Oxygen supplies remain critically low across the country, with the black market the only option for some people.Crematoriums are operating non-stop, with makeshift pyres in car parks.There have been at least 300,000 new infections every day in the past week, with more than 360,000 new cases in the past 24 hours on Wednesday. Overall, more than 17.9 million cases have been registered.What are other countries doing to help? Foreign aid has started to arrive from the UK and Singapore. Russia, New Zealand and France have pledged to send emergency medical equipment, and even regional rivals Pakistan and China have put aside their differences and promised to help.On Thursday, the US said it would start delivering supplies worth more than $100m, in addition to individual US states and private companies also readying oxygen, equipment, and supplies for Indian hospital. However, experts say the aid will only have a limited effect in a nation that has a population of 1.3 billion.As it happened: BBC’s live coverage on India’s Covid surgeWhy India’s Covid crisis matters to the whole worldIndia’s round-the-clock mass cremationsA government website where Indians can register for a vaccination programme crashed soon after it launched on Wednesday, as tens of thousands of people tried to access it.And in the state of Assam, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake damaged hospitals which were already under intense strain. People ran from their homes and other buildings in panic.How bad is the situation in India? The numbers we are seeing are staggeringly high – but the real number of fatalities are thought to be much higher.Mortality data in India is poor and deaths at home often go unregistered, especially in rural areas. There are reports of journalists counting bodies at morgues themselves, to try to get a more accurate number. In Uttar Pradesh, health officials said 68 people had died on one day earlier this month across the state. But a Hindi newspaper pointed out that officials also said there were 98 Covid funerals in the capital, Lucknow, alone.image copyrightReutersCrematoriums continue to work throughout the night to keep up with the number of bodies arriving, and many families are facing long waits before their loved ones can receive funeral rites. Some say they were asked to help speed up the process by piling the wood themselves.In the southern city of Bengaluru, one doctor told the BBC people were panicking. It is one of the worst-hit cities in India, with some estimates saying there are about 300 active Covid cases per square kilometre.”We were not prepared for this second surge,” the consultant said. “For the first surge it was well organised. This time there are more cases, it was more sudden, and the situation was not prepared for.”The World Health Organization (WHO) reported in its weekly epidemiological update that there were nearly 5.7 million new cases reported globally last week – and India accounts for 38% of them.It also said that the B.1.617 variant of the virus detected in India has a higher growth rate than other variants in the country, suggesting increased transmissibility.Can India make enough vaccines to meet demand?How is India’s vaccination drive going?Are people getting vaccinated? India is carrying out the world’s biggest vaccination drive, but less than 10% of the population has so far received an initial jab and there are concerns about meeting demand.The US is helping India with the raw materials it needs for vaccine production, after India’s biggest vaccine maker, the Serum Institute of India, complained of shortages of specialised imports from the US.Meanwhile, the first batch of the Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, is set to arrive in India on 1 May, The New Indian Express reports. It has not yet been revealed how many doses will be delivered.image copyrightGetty ImagesWhat is the government doing? India is heading towards state elections, and there is increasing anger towards both state authorities and the central government for the handling of the pandemic. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been accused of ignoring scientific warnings to participate in election rallies and allowing a massive Hindu festival to go ahead in northern India.Dr Navjot Dahiya, the vice-president of the Indian Medical Association, called Mr Modi a “super spreader” who had “tossed all Covid norms in the air”.The prime minister said he had held three meetings on Tuesday to discuss ways to increase oxygen capacities and medical infrastructure, including the use of trains and military aircraft to speed up transport of oxygen supplies.Why has the situation in India been allowed to escalate so much?India Kumbh festival goes ahead amid Covid surgeHave India’s rallies helped spread coronavirus?The BBC’s Yogita Limaye says many people are asking why the military and disaster response teams have not been put on a war footing to build field hospitals.”There is a sense of abandonment in the country, of people being left to fend for themselves,” our correspondent reports.State and union territory governments, from Delhi to Karnataka, have been criticised for allowing Covid protocols to lapse and failing to prepare for what epidemiologists say was an inevitable surge in infections.

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage copyrightGetty ImagesIndia’s deadly Covid-19 second wave has devastated big cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow and Pune. Hospitals and crematoriums have run out of space, and funerals are taking place in car parks. But the pandemic has now firmly gripped many smaller cities, towns and villages where the devastation is largely under-reported.Rajesh Soni spent eight hours taking his father from one hospital to another in a tuk-tuk in Kota district in the northern state of Rajasthan on Tuesday. He couldn’t get an ambulance and the rickety vehicle was his only option. At 5pm, he decide to end his search for a hospital bed as his father’s condition was deteriorating. He then “left everything to fate” and came home.”I am giving him medicines at home, but I am not sure that he will survive. We have been left to die on the streets,” Rajesh said. He says several private hospitals even “conned” him and took money to do tests, only to tell him later to take his father away as there were no beds.”I am not a wealthy person. I spent whatever I had to pay the tuk-tuk driver and to hospitals. Now I am going to borrow some money to get an oxygen cylinder at home.”Why second Covid wave is devastating IndiaWhy India’s Covid crisis matters to the whole worldSuch stories have become common in Delhi, the worst affected city in India, but similar accounts are now coming in from smaller cities and towns across the country.The BBC looks at what’s happening in five different states to see how fast the virus is spreading there. Kota, Rajasthan stateThe city and surrounding district has reported more than 6,000 cases in the past week, and 264 deaths since the pandemic began – but 35% of those happened in April alone. Up to 7 April, it was taking 72 days for the number of cases to double, but now it’s 27 days.All oxygen beds were occupied, and only two out of the district’s 329 ICU units were free on 27 April. A senior journalist in the city told the BBC that hospitals were overrun and “this suggests that the actual numbers are much higher”.There is an acute shortage of oxygen and drugs like remdesivir and tocilizumab. The district is home to many coaching centres for students from all over the country taking exams to get into prestigious medical and engineering colleges. But the students have left and the district is now in turmoil and largely away from the radar of national and international media. The journalist said the city’s hospitals were not ready for what he described as a Covid tsunami. He said there was an urgent need to add “more oxygen and ICU beds before more people start dying on the streets”.Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh stateThe city, also known as Prayagraj, had recorded 54,339 cases up to 20 April, but it has registered a 21% increase since then, adding 11,318 cases in the past week. About 32% of the reported 614 deaths in the city happened in April alone. There is no official data on healthcare facilities in the city, but several people the BBC spoke to said they had been unable to find a bed for their loved ones.Several calls and written questions to the city’s chief medical officer about the shortage of beds went unanswered. A senior journalist in the city said the actual death toll was much higher as cremation and burial grounds were functioning day and night. Yogi Adityanath, the state’s chief minister, recently said there was no shortage of drugs, hospital beds or oxygen, but experts say the reality on the ground is vastly different.image copyrightGetty ImagesSocial media is awash with posts from people from the state pleading for beds, oxygen and drugs like remdesivir. The chief minister has also warned that action will be taken against any private hospital that “falsely reports” an oxygen shortage.An employee of one small private hospital told the BBC that arranging oxygen had become difficult, but he would not complain because he feared retribution. “But I fail to understand why would any hospital falsely report a shortage. It makes no sense,” he said. There have also been reports about deaths due to oxygen shortages in the state. Several other districts and villages in Uttar Pradesh are also reporting that hospitals have run out of beds.Man charged over oxygen SOS for dying grandfatherIndia’s round-the-clock mass cremationsAshish Yadav’s father is in a critical condition in Kanpur district but he is unable to get him a bed and he doesn’t even have access to a doctor. “I have begged and pleaded everywhere, but nobody helped. Nobody is picking the helpline numbers that have been advertised,” he told the BBC.Kabirdham, Chhattisgarh stateThe central Indian district did not have any active cases of Covid-19 on 1 March. But it has added almost 3,000 cases in the past seven days. Kabirdham district hospital has seven ventilators but there are no trained doctors to operate the life-support machines. According to government data, the district hospital should have 49 specialist doctors, but it has only seven. There is also an acute shortage of nurses and lab technicians. Local journalists say that the district is not able to handle really sick patients as it did not prepare to manage the sharp uptick in cases. Several people have died without getting proper treatment in the district.Bhagalpur and AurangabadBhagalpur district in the eastern state of Bihar is also badly hit. It has recorded a 26% increase in its caseload since 20 April, and the number of deaths increased by 33% in the same period.Only Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College (JNMC) has ICU beds in the district, and all of its 36 units were occupied on 28 April. More than 270 out of 350 oxygen beds in the hospital were occupied. image copyrightGetty ImagesA senior official from the hospital told the BBC that out of its 220 doctors, 40 had tested positive in the past 10 days and four of them died. This has added to the pressure on the hospital. Aurangabad district in the west of the state is also badly hit. It has recorded more than 5,000 cases since 5 April, and six people died in the same period, according to official data. But senior journalists in the state say the actual numbers are higher as testing is a major problem in smaller towns and cities. Many people become critical and die without ever being able to get tested for Covid-19. Such deaths don’t go into official data. Sumitra Devi struggled to get a test done in Aurangabad. She couldn’t get an RT-PCR test done for days as her condition continued to worsen. Hospitals refused to admit her without a positive test result. So her family took her to a small private hospital in a nearby district where she tested positive, but the hospital said she was critical and they didn’t have facilities to treat her. The family then took her to a big hospital in the state’s capital Patna where she was made to wait for several hours before she could be admitted. She died two hours after finding a bed.Nainital, Uttarakhand stateThe tourist district in the Himalayas is struggling to cope with the rising number of cases. At least 131 out of its 142 ICU beds were occupied on 27 April and only 10 out of its 771 oxygen beds were free.image copyrightGetty ImagesIt has reported more than 4,000 cases and 82 deaths in the past week. The district is particularly finding it difficult to handle the rise because it also receives patients from remote towns and villages where healthcare facilities are negligible. A local doctor, who did not wish to be identified, said “the situation was dire and he was terrified”. “We are in this situation because the government didn’t plan to augment facilities in remote areas. I am worried that many people in remote Himalayan areas will die and we will never hear about them. They will never show up in statistics.”

Children born preterm (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) remain at high risk of developmental difficulties that can affect their behaviour and ability to learn, finds a study published by The BMJ today.
These difficulties were found not only in children born extremely preterm (22-26 weeks) but also in those born very and moderately preterm (between 27 and 34 weeks), say researchers.
Survival of preterm babies has increased worldwide. Children born early often have developmental issues, but studies have mainly focused on those born extremely preterm (22-26 weeks’ gestation) and less is known about children born very and moderately preterm (27-34 weeks’ gestation).
Given how important it is to identify children most at risk of developmental difficulties, researchers in France set out to describe neurodevelopment among children born before 35 weeks compared with children born at full term.
Their findings are based on 3,083 French children aged 5½ born after 24-26, 27-31, and 32-34 weeks gestation who were taking part in the EPIPAGE-2 study (designed to investigate outcomes of preterm children over the past 15 years) and a comparison group of 600 children born at full term.
Neurodevelopmental outcomes such as cerebral palsy, sensory impairments (blindness and deafness), and brain function (cognition), as well as behavioural difficulties and movement disorders, were assessed using recognised tests.

Omega-3 supplements are associated with an increased likelihood of developing atrial fibrillation in people with high blood lipids. That’s the finding of a study published today in European Heart Journal — Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).
“Currently, fish oil supplements are indicated for patients with elevated plasma triglycerides to reduce cardiovascular risk,” said study author Dr. Salvatore Carbone of Virginia Commonwealth University, US. “Due to the high prevalence of elevated triglycerides in the population, they can be commonly prescribed. Of note, low dose omega-3 fatty acids are available over the counter, without the need for a prescription.”
Some clinical trials have suggested that omega-3 fatty acids may be associated with an increased risk for atrial fibrillation, the most common heart rhythm disorder. People with the disorder have a five times greater likelihood of having a stroke.
These studies tested different formulations of omega-3 fatty acids at different doses. The authors therefore performed a comprehensive meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials to answer the question of whether fish oils were consistently related to a raised risk for atrial fibrillation.
The analysis included five randomised controlled trials investigating the effects of omega-3 fatty acid supplementation on cardiovascular outcomes. Participants had elevated triglycerides and were either at high risk for cardiovascular disease or had established cardiovascular disease. A total of 50,277 patients received fish oils or placebo and were followed up for between 2 and 7.4 years. The dose of fish oils varied from 0.84 g to 4 g per day.
The researchers found that omega-3 fatty acid supplementation was associated with a significantly increased risk for atrial fibrillation compared to placebo with an incidence rate ratio of 1.37 (95% confidence interval 1.22-1.54; p

Researchers at the University of Bonn and the research center caesar have succeeded in ultra-fast freezing proteins after a precisely defined period of time. They were able to follow structural changes on the microsecond time scale and with sub-nanometer precision. Owing to its high spatial and temporal resolution, the method allows tracking rapid structural changes in enzymes and nucleic acids. The results are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
If you want to know what the spatial structure of a biomolecule looks like, you have a formidable arsenal of tools at your disposal. The most popular ones are electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, which can reveal even the smallest details of a protein. However, a significant limitation of those methods is that they usually deliver static images, which are often insufficient to understand biomolecular processes in precise mechanistic terms. Therefore, a long-term goal of many research groups worldwide has been to track the movements within a macromolecule such as a protein over time while it carries out its work, just like in a movie. The research groups led by Prof. Dr. Olav Schiemann from the Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Bonn and Prof. Dr. Benjamin Kaupp from the research center caesar of the Max Planck Society have now come a step closer to achieving this goal.
They chose an ion channel for their investigation. This is a protein that forms miniscule pores in the cell membrane that are permeable to charged particles called ions. “This channel is normally closed,” Schiemann explains. “It only opens when a cellular messenger, called cAMP, binds to it. We wanted to know how exactly this process works.”
Mini magnets to measure distances
To do so, the researchers first mixed the channel protein and cAMP and then rapidly froze the solution. In the frozen state, the protein structure can now be analyzed. For their method to work, they had attached molecular electromagnets at two points in the channel. The distance between these magnets can be determined with a precision of a few Angstrom (ten billionths of a millimeter) using a sophisticated method called PELDOR, which works like a molecular ruler. In recent years, the method was significantly refined and improved in Schiemann’s group.
“However, this only gives us a static image of cAMP binding to the ion channel,” Schiemann says. “We therefore repeated the freezing process at different times after mixing the two molecules. This allowed reconstructing the movements in the protein after cAMP binding — just like a movie, which is also made up of a sequence of images.”
At the center of this procedure is a sophisticated method that allows samples to be mixed and frozen very quickly at a precise point in time. The technique, called “microsecond freeze hyperquenching” (abbreviated MHQ), was originally developed at Delft University, but later fell into disuse. It was rediscovered and decisively refined by Kaupp’s group.
“In the MHQ device, the cAMP molecule and the ion channel are mixed at ultrafast speed,” Kaupp explains. “Then the mixture is shot as a hair-thin stream onto a very cold metal cylinder at -190 °C, which rotates 7,000 times per minute. It was particularly challenging to transfer the frozen samples for the PELDOR measurement from the metal plate into thin glass tubes, and to keep them frozen meanwhile. We had to design and build special tools for that.”
Deep-freezing in 82 millionths of a second
The entire mixing and freezing process takes only 82 microseconds (one microsecond equals a millionth of a second). “This allows us to visualize very rapid changes in the spatial structure of proteins,” explains Tobias Hett, one of the two doctoral students who contributed significantly to the success. The advantage of the method is its combination of high spatial and temporal resolution. “This represents a major step forward in studying dynamic processes in biomolecules,” Kaupp emphasizes.
The researchers now plan to use their method to take a closer look at other biomolecules. They hope to gain new insights, for example into the functioning of enzymes and nucleic acids. The importance of such insights is best illustrated by the recent worldwide surge of structural research on the SARS coronavirus-2: The so-called spike protein of the virus also undergoes a structural change when human cells are infected. Clarifying this mechanism will provide valuable information how to target the infection mechanism with new drugs.
The preparation of the samples, the experimental execution, and the analysis of the data is very complex. The results of the study therefore also reflect a successful scientific cooperation with researchers led by Prof. Dr. Helmut Grubmüller of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and Prof. Dr. Heinz-Jürgen Steinhoff of the University of Osnabrück.
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The move has been long sought by public health and civil rights groups, after decades of marketing aimed at Black smokers.The Biden administration is planning to propose a ban on menthol cigarettes, a long-sought public health goal of civil rights and anti-tobacco groups that has been beaten back by the tobacco industry for years, according to a federal health official.For decades, menthol cigarettes have been marketed aggressively to Black people in the United States. About 85 percent of Black smokers use menthol brands, including Newport and Kool, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Research shows menthol cigarettes are easier to become addicted to and harder to quit than plain tobacco products.The F.D.A. is being forced to act by a court deadline — a federal district judge in Northern California had ordered the agency to respond by April 29 to a citizens’ petition to ban menthol. But the odds are unlikely that a ban would take effect anytime soon, because any proposal is likely to wind up in a protracted court battle. The proposal would also include a ban on all mass-produced flavored cigars, including cigarillos, which have become popular with teenagers. The ban would not, however, apply to e-cigarettes, which are being considered as a means to help smokers of regular menthol cigarettes quit. Most e-cigarette brands, including Juul, are undergoing an F.D.A. review that will determine whether they are sufficiently beneficial to public health to be allowed to stay on the market. Details of the proposal were first reported by The Washington Post. Delmonte Jefferson, executive director of the Center for Black Health and Equity, one of the organizations behind the petition, called the decision a victory for African Americans and all people of color.“This has been a long time coming,” said Mr. Jefferson. “We’ve been fighting this fight, since back in the 1980s. We told the industry then, we didn’t want those cigarettes in our communities.”Steven Callahan, a spokesman for Altria, which owns Philip Morris, U.S.A. said the company remained opposed to a menthol ban.“We share the common goal of moving adult smokers from cigarettes to potentially less harmful alternatives, but prohibition does not work,” Mr. Callahan said. “A far better approach is to support the establishment of a marketplace of F.D.A.-authorized non-combustible alternatives that are attractive to adult smokers.”Three years ago, the F.D.A., under Dr. Scott Gottlieb, President Trump’s first F.D.A. commissioner, proposed a similar menthol ban. But the Trump administration backed down after intense resistance from tobacco state lawmakers, led by Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina.Pressure to resurrect a ban had been building since President Biden’s election, and as the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement further exposed sharp racial disparities in the country’s public health and medical systems.While Black smokers smoke less, they die of heart attacks, strokes and other causes linked to tobacco use at higher rates than white smokers do, according to federal health statistics.Matthew L. Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which was part of the citizens’ petition, also noted that menthol and other flavors appeal widely to teenagers.“Menthol cigarettes are the No. 1 cause of youth smoking in the United States,” he said. “Eliminating menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars used by so many kids will do more in the long run to reduce tobacco-related disease than any action the federal government has ever taken.”Menthol is a substance found in mint plants, and it can also be synthesized in a lab. It creates a cooling sensation in tobacco products and masks the harshness of the smoke, making it more tolerable. Decades ago, marketing research showed it was more appealing to Black smokers than white smokers and cigarette companies began to focus their marketing on Black consumers.Support has also been growing in Congress to enact a ban through legislation. Several states and municipalities, including Massachusetts and California, have instituted their own menthol bans, but many of those are tied up in litigation too.The F.D.A. has not yet announced details of the proposal, which will have to go through a formal federal rule-making process, that can take several years and is likely to face stiff tobacco industry challenges.

Various studies show that people of color are disproportionately exposed to air pollution in the United States. However, it was unclear whether this unequal exposure is due mainly to a few types of emission sources or whether the causes are more systemic. A new study that models peoples’ exposure to air pollution — resolved by race-ethnicity and income level — shows that exposure disparities among people of color and white people are driven by nearly all, rather than only a few, emission source types.
The study led by University of Illinois Urbana Champaign civil and environmental engineering professor Christopher Tessum is published in the journal Science Advances.
“Community organizations have been experiencing and advocating against environmental injustice for decades,” Tessum said. “Our study contributes to an already extensive body of evidence with the new finding that there is no single air pollution source, or a small number of sources, that account for this disparity. Instead, the disparity is caused by almost all of the sources.”
The team used an air quality model to analyze Environmental Protection Agency data for more than 5,000 emission source types, including industry, agriculture, coal electric utilities, light- and heavy-duty gasoline vehicles, diesel vehicles, off-road vehicles and equipment, construction, residential sources, road dust and other miscellaneous small emissions sources. Each source type studied contributes to fine particle air pollution, defined as particles being 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, the study reports.
To identify patterns of air pollution exposure associated with race-ethnicity and income, the researchers combined the spatial air pollution patterns predicted in their air quality model with residential population counts from the U.S. Census Bureau to identify differences in exposure by race-ethnicity and income.
The researchers found that for the 2014 U.S. total population average, fine particle air pollution exposures from the majority of source types are higher than average for people of color and lower than average for white people. The data indicate that white people are exposed to lower-than-average concentrations from emissions source types that, when combined, cause 60% of their total exposure, the study reports. Conversely, people of color experience greater-than-average exposures from source types that, when combined, cause 75% of their total exposure. This disparity exists at the country, state and city level and for people within all income levels.

Harmful exposures during pregnancy, including some that occur even before pregnancy is recognized, appear to significantly increase a child’s risk for psychiatric or behavioral problems early in life, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital report.
In their study of 9,290 children from the ages of 9 to 10 living in 21 communities in the United States, the researchers found that children subjected during pregnancy to two or more of six adverse exposures were significantly more likely to have clinically significant scores on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), indicating a higher level of problems such as depression, attention difficulties or anxiety.
The adverse prenatal exposures are unplanned pregnancy; maternal use of alcohol, tobacco or marijuana before pregnancy was recognized; complications during pregnancy (such as high blood pressure or gestational diabetes); and complications during labor and delivery. Pre-term birth or Caesarean delivery were not associated with increased risk.
“While individually these factors had previously been associated with similar risks in prior, often smaller studies, this is the first time that we were able to gauge the effect of cumulative exposures, which were fairly dramatic,” says lead author Joshua L. Roffman, MD, MMSc, director of the Mass General Early Brain Development Initiative.
For example, while children with none of the exposures during their mother’s pregnancy had only a 7% chance of developing clinically significant psychiatric symptoms, this risk increased steeply and in a linear fashion, such that those with four or more of the exposures had a 29% chance of clinically significant symptoms.
As the researchers report in their study, published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, they saw similar patterns across a range of specific symptoms, from mood and anxiety to attention and thought disturbances.
The associations between prenatal exposures and psychiatric symptoms in childhood held up even when the researchers accounted for other factors that might skew the results, such as the mother’s socioeconomic status, or exposures after birth that are known to increase a child’s risk for psychiatric disorders, such as a traumatic life event.
To validate their findings, Roffman and colleagues also tested them in a separate group of non-twin siblings who differed in their exposures during pregnancy, and here too the data showed that the sibling with the higher number of exposures was at greater risk for more severe symptoms.
A limitation of the results is that they are based on the mother’s recall of events during pregnancy, although the frequency of adverse events closely followed national trends. The study did not measure the effects of maternal infections or stress during pregnancy, although each of these has also been associated with increased risk in previous studies.
Given the additive effects of the common exposures they studied, Roffman and colleagues speculate that the “floor” of risk for psychiatric symptoms may have been raised for children born during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our findings reinforce the importance of the prenatal environment for brain health and for reducing risk of psychiatric symptoms in childhood. This brings increased urgency to the need to discover, develop and implement early life interventions that mitigate some of these risks,” says Roffman, who is also an associate professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS).
Improving child brain development and psychiatric health is the main goal of the Mass General Early Brain Development Initiative, a multidisciplinary collaboration among staff in the Departments of Psychiatry, Obstetrics, Pediatrics and Medicine.

Scientists are developing a completely new ‘brain stress test’ for evaluating the mental status of patients with Parkinson’s disease, the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease worldwide. It involves awakening the ‘ghosts’ hidden in specific networks of the brain to predict the onset of hallucinations.
“We’re developing something similar to a cardiac stress test, but instead of testing the heart, we’re testing the brain,” says EPFL neuroscientist Olaf Blanke.
EPFL scientists are providing a new way to evaluate the onset of hallucinations in patients with Parkinson’s disease with the help of a newly developed brain stress test, focusing their research on presence hallucinations. They also provide evidence of a promising biomarker for predicting the severity of the disease’s progression. The results of their three-tier study, involving 56 patients affected by the disease and recruited at several centers in Switzerland and Spain, are published in today’s edition of Science Translational Medicine (STM).
“An important challenge with hallucinations is that they occur spontaneously, that their occurrence cannot be predicted, that many patients may not openly report them, possibly out of fear, and that it is currently very challenging for physicians to quantify their occurrence, phenomenology and intensity,” continues Fosco Bernasconi, co-first author of the paper. “We have established a robotic-medical device and procedure that can provoke a specific hallucination, the presence hallucination, safely and under controlled conditions in a hospital setting.”
A spectrum of hallucinations in Parkinson’s
Parkinson’s disease is well-known for leading to slowness of movement, muscle stiffness, as well as uncontrollable shaking of the limbs. But alterations of movement are far from being the only symptom of the disease.

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines are 94 percent effective at preventing hospitalization in fully vaccinated adults 65 or older, according to a small study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday.The findings, which are consistent with the clinical trial results, are the first real-world evidence from the United States that the vaccines protect against severe Covid-19. Older adults are at the highest risk of hospitalization and death from the disease. More than 573,000 people have died across the country related to the virus, according to a New York Times database, and as of Tuesday, 141.8 million people have received at least one dose of one of three federally authorized vaccines, including about 96.7 million people who have been fully vaccinated.“These findings are encouraging and welcome news for the two-thirds of people aged 65 and up who are already fully vaccinated,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said in a statement. “Covid-19 vaccines are highly effective and these real-world findings confirm the benefits seen in clinical trials, preventing hospitalizations among those most vulnerable.”The study is based on data from 417 patients who were admitted to 24 hospitals in 14 states between January 1 and March 26. Approximately half were 75 or older.Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two shots, spaced three to four weeks apart. Older adults who were partially vaccinated — that is, they had received one dose of the vaccine more than two weeks prior — were 64 percent less likely to be hospitalized with the coronavirus than unvaccinated seniors, the researchers reported.The vaccines did not reduce hospitalization rates in people who had received their first dose less than two weeks prior. The body requires time to mount an effective immune response, and people are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after the last dose in the series.“This also highlights the continued risk for severe illness shortly after vaccination, before a protective immune response has been achieved and reinforces the need for vaccinated adults to continue physical distancing and prevention behaviors,” the scientists wrote.