The Ilocos Times

By Noralyn Dudt About three weeks ago on Dec. 15 th , 2022, I lost my bragging rights on board the Viking Jupiter along the coast of Puerto Montt in Chile. That was my 15 th day on the cruise and I tested positive for the coronavirus, finally.   I was asymptomatic (no symptoms) so, of course it came as a surprise. I would have never known had it not for   the Viking protocol to conduct PCR tests on   all 900 passengers and 400 crew members every morning. For two years I have been sort of bragging with "humility"   that the corona would never be able to get past my immune system. I have been healthy, didn't have underlying conditions and best of all I have had the two doses of the mRNA   vaccines plus the three boosters for the variants. Additionally, I have been wearing a mask in crowded and closed-in places. I was very sure that I was forever shielded from the virus and why shouldn't I have been entitled to some bragging rights? Those bragging   rights...

By Noralyn Dudt Now that a big chunk of the world population has had at least two doses of the coronavirus vaccine, scientists are focused   on designing a vaccine that is broadly protective and would last a long time. A tetanus-like shot is now the goal. The tetanus vaccine that my physician jabs into my arm every 10 years was designed to last 10 years. And now it's a scientist's dream to develop a vaccine for the Coronavirus that would last 10 years. The National Institutes of Health having taken that into account, awarded US$36 million to scientific teams last fall who were trying to answer basic questions that would lead to a breakthrough.   At a minimum, the world needs a truly variant-proof vaccines. Even better would be a vaccine that would stop a future pandemic—protection against a yet-unknown coronavirus. The first versions of coronavirus vaccines were powerful. From the virus that emerged in 2019, spiky proteins were taken from their surface and were tweaked to...

  By Noralyn O. Dudt THE OMICRON, we would like to think with a modicum of hope,   is the   pandemic's last act . As Omicron has behaved so brazenly chasing as many victims as it could, but not as potent as the Delta had been, the pandemic   ending is no longer a question of how but when.   So many cases of infections—serious and not too serious—have brought people to the hospitals that the light we thought we saw at the end of the tunnel suddenly looked dimmer.   However, these large numbers of infections had provided a "layer of immunity" to huge swathes of the world and may be moving us closer to an endemic stage as the virus is maxing out in its ability to make such big evolutionary jumps. For the first time since the spread of COVID-19 stunned the world in early 2020, many   epidemiologists are now willing to entertain the prospect that the virus might be making steps toward endemic status—the stage when COVID-19 is comparable to seasonal ...

By Noralyn Onto Dudt The END of the pandemic is not yet upon us, and with variants making their rounds, it looks like it may never end.   However,   as   the latest research holds promise and has the scientific community looking up, we can greet the New Year in good spirits. The COVID-19 emergency has unleashed an unprecedented surge of innovation and collaboration in research. Just as the virus started spreading   around the globe about two years ago,   scientists around the world   became more adept at rapid response,   sharing genetic sequences and clinical data at the speed of light, enabling more discovery. Although the first wave of vaccines showed their   limitations, they have performed magnificently. Millions and millions of the world population are fully vaccinated, and an enormous amount of suffering and death has been averted. However, vaccine efficacy does wane, facilitating the need for boosters as one   variant after anoth...

By Noralyn Onto Dudt OMICRON, the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet has been drafted   by the World Health Organization as the name for the new COVID-19 variant, technically known as the B.1.1.529 variant. The Omicron variant is a reminder of what scientists and medical experts have been saying for months: COVID-19 will thrive as long as vast numbers of the global population are not vaccinated. Scientists say that Omicron is the weirdest creature they have ever encountered with 30 unruly swarm of mutations scattered on three major prongs of the spike protein that is essential to the virus ability to infect cells,   a first of its kind with so many mutations gathered in "one package." Even though some of these mutations are recognizable,   many of them are new and utterly enigmatic. That said, scientists do not want to get ahead of the facts: no one knows exactly yet how this variant behaves in real-world situations. However, should they find a high degree of immune-...

By Noralyn O. Dudt SMALLPOX was on its way of being eradicated in 1979, and in the following year, the World Health Organization declared it official.   Its eradication was   not only due to   the aggressive vaccination programs that were launched,   but also due to the unique characteristics of the virus. These unique characteristics were:   the virus needed animal hosts to keep it alive;   the virus had clear features that made the disease easy to recognize in people who suffered from it;   the virus was   infectious for only a short period of time, and getting infected conferred immunity for life. Measles , on the other hand,   is an example of a disease that couldn't be eradicated. This highly transmissible respiratory virus only came under control after a vaccine was developed in 1963, and in highly vaccinated regions such as the United States, it has technically been eliminated, although occasional outbreaks still occur. The end...

By Noralyn Onto Dudt "Is it ever going to end?" This has been the central question of late. Obsessively pondering covid's endgame can be dangerous to your mental   health. Pandemics do end as history tells us. But many pandemics become endemic, meaning they morph into something that is no longer an emergency, but rather an annoyance, an ugly even painful fact of life that people simply learn to cope with, like the flu or common cold. Malaria, a mosquito-borne life-threatening   disease is still around but curable.   In 1980 the World Health Organization triumphantly declared that due to aggressive global vaccination programs, the dreaded disease smallpox had been eradicated. With several Corona variants that have been popping up, the question is when and how do we get to that point. Some of the world's most prominent epidemiologists and public health experts say we are already there. "The emergency phase of the disease is over," said a well-known prof...

Senator Imee Marcos said the country should prepare for a worst-case scenario wherein herd immunity could no longer be attained. “Herd immunity remains theoretical and has become a moving target. Last year it was 70% of the population, today it’s 90%, but tomorrow it may well be out of range,” Marcos said. “With booster shots already in high demand, even as first doses have yet to reach populations in less developed countries, will vaccine manufacturers be able to provide?” Marcos asked. Besides precarious global vaccine supply, Marcos added that breakthrough infections among the vaccinated, the emergence of more variants, the uncertain length of vaccine efficacy, and the possible reduction of healthcare capacities due to hospital shutdowns and worker protests are also among the factors that make attaining herd immunity seem unlikely. “I’d rather be the bearer of bad news than of false hope. The fact is, pandemic control worldwide has become a Sisyphean struggle,” Marcos added...

By Noralyn Onto Dudt We have not gotten out of the "COVID-19 woods", yet. The Delta variant is sweeping the globe and new laboratory research on this swiftly spreading variant is highlighting the threats posed by viral mutations. It's an urgent call for accelerated vaccination efforts across the globe. First, it's important to understand how this version of the virus emerged. Viruses cannot live alone and, technically, they are not living things. They need a host, a living host.   They invade the host's cells and hijack their machinery to get energy and replicate, and find ways to infect other living organisms and start the process over again. The coronavirus can mutate when it replicates, especially when circulating at high rates (a.k.a. the absence of vaccinations). Mutations involve changes in the sequences of an organism's genetic code.   As we have learned, viruses typically mutate more rapidly than human cells do. This is because human cells have me...

By Dominic B. dela Cruz Staff Reporter Solsona , Ilocos Norte--The municipal government here has realized its dream to have a new evacuation center, and at the same serve as quarantine facility, as they held a groundbreaking ceremony for the project on June 30, 2021 at the project site, Brgy. Santiago, this municipality. Solsona Mayor Joseph De Lara said the project was in response to his request to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) main office thru DPWH Region I Director Rommel Tan on October 2019.    De Lara believes the project “will be of great help especially in this time of pandemic as it will serve as a quarantine facility and evacuation center in case of calamities”. The one-storey building will sit in a lot with a total land area of 1,450 square meters; the lot is owned by the provincial government and municipal government of Solsona, and is the municipality’s counterpart for the project. The Ilocos Times learned that the project has a ...

By Noralyn Onto Dudt COLLABORATION is one of those terms with both positive and negative meanings.   Unfortunately, a younger me used to associate the word only with mischief as in "collaborating with the enemy" in time of war; or collaborating with someone to cheat the system; or to do harm to others.   And then about four decades ago when I was tasked to edit scientific reports for publication in journals, I came to recognize and appreciate its positive meaning:   The Action of Working with Someone to Produce or Create something.   When a research scientist writes a paper explaining the result of an experiment for publication in a scientific journal, he or she cites his references—those past experiments that he/she tried to replicate or ones that had similar theories but also went beyond or diverged into other direction for other goals. For example, a theory might be: "if patients with metabolic syndrome have dysregulation of cellular lipid metabolism, could it b...

By Noralyn O. Dudt The adage , "NECESSITY is the mother of invention" comes to mind when we pause to take stock of where we are in this COVID-19 era and see that 11 vaccines are currently in use worldwide.   Certainly, a technological feat, as it has only been barely a year when the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic. Those 11 vaccines are being successfully injected into people's arms but they are not enough to fulfill the global need in the short term. According to Science News, only about 1.9 percent of the world's more than 7 billion people have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus as of April 5 th . As the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines need to be stored in freezers, transporting them to far-flung areas can be logistically challenging. The necessity for other types of vaccines that would not require refrigeration has spurred scientists to think "outside the box."   To reach herd immunity around the globe we need as man...