Wuhan (Novel) Corona Virus -looming pandemy of deadly pneumonia? - Pandemy ongoing!

(January 14, 2021) Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce join a push for digital vaccination credentials.
Airlines, workplaces and sports stadiums may soon require people to show their coronavirus vaccination status on their smartphones before they can enter.
A coalition of leading technology companies, health organizations and nonprofit groups — including Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Cerner, Epic Systems, the Mitre Corporation and the Mayo Clinic
announced on Thursday morning that they were developing technology standards to enable consumers to obtain and share their immunization records through health passport apps.
“For some period of time, most all of us are going to have to demonstrate either negative Covid-19 testing or an up-to-date vaccination status
to go about the normal routines of our lives,” said Dr. Brad Perkins, the chief medical officer at the Commons Project Foundation,
a nonprofit organization in Geneva that is a member of the vaccine credential initiative.

(January 14, 2021) Abbott fulfills US Federal Government purchase of 150 million BinaxNOW Covid-19 rapid tests
Abbott is announcing the fulfillment of the US federal government's order of 150 million BinaxNOW Covid-19 Ag tests.
These rapid tests were distributed through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to states, territories and targeted entities,
such as nursing homes, assisted living facilities, home health and hospice agencies, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and the Indian Health Service.
The University of Wisconsin System will be the first customer in the US
to secure BinaxNOW at scale, procuring 480,000 tests over six months for use at its universities and branch campuses.
"The University of Wisconsin System strives to be a national leader in combating Covid-19 and our robust testing strategy is one of our most effective means to do it," said Tommy Thompson,
president, University of Wisconsin System. "We will continue to be aggressive in acquiring and implementing tests at our universities
and our partnership with Abbott is key to making this happen."

(January 11, 2021) Study links severe COVID-19 disease to short telomeres
Patients with severe COVID-19 disease have significantly shorter telomeres,
according to a study conducted by researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO)
in collaboration with the COVID-IFEMA Field Hospital, published in the journal Aging.

The CNIO group has shown in previous studies that one of the causes of the disease
is damage to the telomeres of the cells involved in regenerating the lung tissue,
the alveolar type II pneumocytes. And these are precisely the cells that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infects in lung tissue.

As Blasco explains, "we know that the virus infects alveolar type II pneumocytes
and that these cells are involved in lung regeneration;
we also know that if they have telomeric damage they cannot regenerate, which induces fibrosis.
This is what is seen in patients with lung lesions after COVID-19:
we think they develop pulmonary fibrosis because they have shorter telomeres,
which limits the regenerative capacity of their lungs."

What could not be foreseen, and this is the most important finding, is that the telomeres of the most seriously ill patients were also shorter, irrespective of age.