What’s Tomato flu and what’s the effect?
The state of Tamil Nadu has increased its border surveillance after “tomato flu” cases were detected in Kerala. Red blister flu, named for the red blisters it causes, has sparked concern in Coimbatore, with a team of officials deployed at the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border screening people crossing from the neighboring state. Deputy director of health services P Aruna told The Indian Express, “Three teams comprising revenue inspectors, health inspectors, and police have been deployed in shifts. Those with fever and rashes will be noted down.”
Children under five years old are most affected by the flu. Rashes, skin irritation, and dehydration are symptoms of this flu, also called tomato fever. In addition to fatigue, joint pain, stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, coughing, sneezing, runny nose, high fever, and body aches, the flu may also cause tiredness. The color of the legs and the hands may also change in some cases.
The flu is a self-limiting one and there is no specific treatment. If supportive care is given, the symptoms will resolve on their overtime. Tomato fever is contagious, just like other flu-like illnesses. “If someone is infected with this flu, they should be isolated since the virus can spread quickly from one person to another,” as per the doctor.
It is important to prevent children from scratching flu blisters. Children should also rest and keep themselves clean. To prevent the spread of the flu, utensils, clothes, and other items used by infected people must be sanitized.
Dehydration can also be countered by fluid intake. The most important thing to remember is to seek the advice of your physician if you notice any of the above symptoms.
At the Walayar check post on the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border, revenue, health, and police officials are screening people arriving from the neighboring state.
Three teams monitor the border round-the-clock on a shift-by-shift basis in Coimbatore.
If someone displays symptoms such as fever or rashes, they will note them.
The flu is primarily affecting children, so authorities are screening Anganwadi centers throughout the district, and around 24 mobile teams with health officers have been deployed to complete the process.
2nd Global Covid Conference
The president will call for a renewed commitment to attack Covid-19 as he convenes the second global summit at a time when a lack of resolve at home threatens that response.
Eight months after he announced that he would donate 1.2 billion vaccine doses to the world during the first such summit, the urgency of the US and other nations to act has diminished.
Vaccinations and treatments have lost momentum despite the rise of new and more infectious variants and the fact that billions of people remain unprotected across the globe. Congress has declined to provide another $22.5 billion in what Biden has called critical aid funding.
Biden will deliver pre-recorded remarks at the opening of the virtual summit on Thursday morning, making the case that Covid-19 must remain a priority for international cooperation. The US is co-hosting the summit with Germany, Indonesia, Senegal, and Belize.
More than 110 countries and territories have received vaccine doses from the US, according to the State Department.
Having delivered more than 1 billion vaccines to the developing world, the issue is no longer that there aren’t enough shots, but a lack of logistical support to get the doses to the affected areas. The government reports that more than 680 million donated vaccine doses were left unused in developing countries because they were about to expire and could not be administered quickly enough. More than half of the Covid-19 vaccines sent to 32 poorer countries had not yet been used as of March.
US assistance to promote and facilitate vaccinations overseas dried up earlier this year. Biden has requested about $5 billion to continue the effort through the end of the year.
“We have tens of millions of unclaimed doses because countries don’t have the resources to build out their cold chains, which are refrigeration systems; to fight disinformation; and to hire vaccine providers,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week. Psaki added that the summit is “a great opportunity to highlight the fact that we need additional funding for this work around the world.” “We will continue to fight for more funding,” she said.
Congress has balked at the price tag for Covid-19 relief and has thus far refused to take up the package due to political opposition to the impending end of pandemic-era migration restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Even after a brief consensus on virus funding emerged in March, lawmakers decided to scrap global aid funding and focus aid solely on supporting US supplies of vaccines and booster therapies.Biden warned that the US could lose access to the next generation of vaccines and treatments unless Congress acts and that the nation will not have an adequate supply of booster doses or the antiviral drug Paxlovid by the end of this year. It also raises the alarm that more variants will emerge if the US and the world don’t do more to contain the virus globally.
“To defeat the pandemic here, we must defeat it everywhere,” Biden said last September during the first world summit. The virus has killed more than 995,000 people in the United States and at least 6.2 million worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. Demand for COVID-19 vaccines has fallen in some countries as infections and deaths have declined worldwide in recent months, particularly as the Omicron variant has proven less severe than previous versions of the vaccine.
For the first time since its inception, the unsupported COVAX effort “is sufficiently in place to allow countries to meet their national immunization goals,” according to Dr. Seth Berkley, Executive Director of the Gavi Vaccine Alliance responsible for COVAX.Even though more than 65% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, less than 16% of people in poor countries have been vaccinated. Countries are very unlikely to meet the World Health Organization’s target of vaccinating 70% of people by June.
In countries like Cameroon, Uganda, and Ivory Coast, officials have struggled
to get enough refrigerators to ship vaccines, send enough syringes for mass campaigns, and get enough health workers to inject the syringes. Experts also point out that more than half of the health
workers needed to administer vaccines in the poorest countries are underpaid or unpaid. Donating even more vaccines, critics say, would miss the point entirely.
“It’s like donating a bunch of fire trucks to countries that are burning but have no water,” said Ritu Sharma, vice president of charity CARE, which has helped people in more than 30 countries including India vaccinate. , South Sudan, and Bangladesh.
“We cannot give countries all these vaccines, but there is no way to use them,” he said, adding that the same infrastructure that administered the vaccinations in the US is now needed elsewhere.”We had to address this issue in the US, so why not use that knowledge now to get vaccines to the people who need them most?” Sharma said more investment is needed to address vaccine hesitancy in developing countries, where there are deeply rooted beliefs about the potential dangers of Western-made drugs.
“Leaders must agree to pursue a cohesive strategy to end the pandemic rather than a piecemeal approach that will extend the lifespan of this crisis,” said Gayle Smith, executive director of The ONE Campaign.
GAVI’s Berkley also said countries are increasingly requesting Pfizer’s and Moderna’s more expensive messenger RNA vaccines, which are not as readily available as the AstraZeneca vaccine, which made up the bulk of COVAX’s supply last year.
The emergence of variants such as Delta and Omicron has prompted many countries to switch to mRNA vaccines, which appear to offer more protection and are in greater demand worldwide than traditionally manufactured vaccines such as AstraZeneca, Novavax, or those of China and Russia.
edited and proofread by nikita sharma
