COVID-19 is well known to be a complicated virus with a wide variety of potential symptoms and long terms effects. Recently there has been a speculative line drawn between COVID-19 and myocarditis. Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle, which can affect your heart’s electrical system, reducing your heart’s ability to pump and causing rapid or abnormal heart rhythms. It can even lead to heart failure and death in serious cases if it isn’t treated in time. Luckily myocarditis is usually considered rare, with 3.1 million diagnoses in 2017 (about 0.04% of the world’s population). More info on it can be found here.
Dr. Curt Daniels spent three months working on a study, specifically testing college athletes, and discovered that nearly 15% of the ones who had tested positive for COVID-19, also showed signs of myocarditis. Almost all of these athletes had experienced only very minor, or no symptoms at all, from their COVID-19 infection. Unfortunately, Dr. Daniels’ study has not been published yet, and there is no pre-print available to look over at this time either. This being the case, we can not jump to any conclusions about its accuracy or validity yet. However, this is not the only study to look at the connection between heart conditions and COVID-19.
Back in late July, two studies from Germany were published on the heart complications discovered in COVID-19 patients. The first study was conducted on 100 patients who had recovered from the virus recently. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging revealed cardiac involvement in 78% and ongoing myocardial inflammation in 60%, which was independent of preexisting conditions, severity and the overall course of the acute illness. The second study was done on 39 autopsy cases and found that cardiac infection was frequent but not associated with myocarditis inflammation. CIDRAP at the University of Minnesota has an excellent article on the two studies, which can be found here.
In other news, The Lancet has recently published the details of the Sputnik-V Russian vaccine for COVID-19’s Phase 1+2 Human Trials Study, as well as an accompanying article about the vaccine itself, and its unique situation. It is important to state that so far Sputnik-V looks like it could be a successful vaccine to COVID-19. The results of the published study are positive, and under typical conditions, a phase 3 human trial would be the logical follow-up. Russia decided instead to grant immediate approval and begin emergency inoculations of at-risk essential workers. Of course, if you look at Russia’s own media reports on the situation, everything is considered 100% safe and their vaccine is the best in the world.
In other news, as of September 1st evictions will once again be allowed in BC. If you or someone you know has been unjustly evicted from a home in Vancouver, the Vancouver Tenants Union may be able to help you. You can contact them through their eviction report form here.
That’s all for now, stay safe everyone!
BC COVID-19 Info 