{"id":60343,"date":"2021-04-14T18:15:06","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T22:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=60343"},"modified":"2021-04-14T18:15:06","modified_gmt":"2021-04-14T22:15:06","slug":"go-ahead-risk-getting-meningitis-by-submitting-to-a-covid-nasal-swab-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=60343","title":{"rendered":"Go ahead, risk getting meningitis by submitting to a Covid nasal swab test!"},"content":{"rendered":"

French Nat\u2019l Academy of Medicine: COVID Nasal Swabs Associated with Increased Meningitis Risk<\/h1>\n

Europe Reloaded<\/p>\n

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ER Editor:<\/strong> With France now making auto-testing publicly available, thus feeding the psychosis around the virus, users may produce false negatives or injure themselves. You couldn\u2019t make this up \u2026 But maybe false negatives are a good idea to break the spell over the population.<\/p>\n

See this article from National Journal of Medicine<\/em> from January 2021, which is also linked to below: Meningitis due to cerebrospinal fluid leak after nasal swab testing for COVID-19<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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French Nat\u2019l Academy of Medicine: COVID nasal swabs associated with increased meningitis risk<\/h2>\n

The invasive up-the-nose tests \u2018are not without risks.\u2019<\/em><\/h4>\n

JEANNE SMITS<\/h3>\n
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The Acad\u00e9mie nationale de m\u00e9decine<\/em>, an independent but official learned society in France,\u00a0published a statement on Thursday<\/a>\u00a0warning that nasopharyngeal swabs used for PCR tests to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus \u201care not without risks.\u201d The alert came days before nasal auto-testing kits will become available in French pharmacies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the statement published online by the Academy, a growing amount of data show that \u201ccomplications\u201d can and do occur, some of them \u201cserious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most are \u201cbenign,\u201d and include \u201cdiscomfort, pain or bleeding.\u201d But the statement notes that over the last weeks, scientific articles have been appearing in medical journals describing undesirable events \u201cincluding breaches of the anterior skull base associated with a risk of meningitis.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Several studies were quoted by the Academy, including one\u00a0documenting<\/a>\u00a0\u201cmeningitis due to cerebrospinal fluid leak<\/strong> after nasal swab testing for COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nasopharyngeal swab is done with a long, thin cotton swab introduced high up into the nasal cavity, often successively via both nostrils, and rotated quickly each time in order to collect a sample of cells and mucus to analyze for the Wuhan virus using the highly controversial PCR test, or to be used in view of an antigenic test.<\/p>\n

The Academy noted that these tests have now become extremely common. The learned society is concerned because swabs are being increasingly used, and that more and more individuals are getting repeat tests, \u201csometimes in inadequate conditions.\u201d

\u201cIt is important to recall that precautions need to be taken and that risks do exist,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

The Academy advises that medical personnel should be making the swabs, and then exclusively those who received training to be able to observe the necessary \u201ctechnical conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

These include asking patients whether they had a medical history of accidents or surgery in the ORL field that may have modified the anatomy of the nasal and sinus cavities,<\/strong> and not placing their heads in hyperextension during sample taking: they should remain in a natural position, with the chin \u201cparallel\u201d to the floor. Swabs should be introduced \u201chorizontally following the base of the nasal cavity and they should under no circumstance be deviated upwards, in the direction of the base of the skull<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Acad\u00e9mie de m\u00e9decine appears to be particularly worried about children, strongly suggesting that they should be tested using saliva samples \u201cbecause of both their safety and their acceptability.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Regarding the upcoming auto-tests that also rely on nasal swabs, the statement said that their users should be warned about their use. \u201cAuto-sampling can lead to false negatives when the swab is too shy and too superficial, but it can also become dangerous when the swab goes too deep and is orientated in the wrong direction,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Auto-tests are not exactly like the nasal swabs used by health professionals in France since the beginning of the COVID crisis: the swab is shorter, wider, and less disagreeable and only requires entering three to four centimeters into the nasal cavity \u2013 some of these swabs, but not all, include a little \u201ccollar\u201d showing how far to go. Instead of being processed in special lab instruments, the auto-test will give a positive or negative result within minutes. If negative, people are advised to continue \u201csocial distancing\u201d and wearing masks (ER: So what\u2019s the point of the test?);<\/em><\/strong> if positive, the result needs to be confirmed by an RT-PCR test in order to mark the \u201cvariant\u201d and allow contact-tracing.(ER: In France, these have been revealed to be run at CT values of 40 or 45 where around 20 is advised.)<\/em><\/p>\n

French health authorities are hoping that the tests will be used by private individuals who want to know their status before a visit to a vulnerable person, for instance, but they also expect to use them for large-scale testing in apartment buildings or high schools for people aged over 15.<\/p>\n

In Germany, similar tests are being marketed and will include a flash code allowing the identification and tracking of \u201cpositive cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the crisis in March 2020, very little testing was done even on symptomatic patients, to the detriment of isolation procedures that would have stopped the spread of the virus much more efficiently. If early treatment of positive patients had been allowed and recommended, many would not have seen their condition worsen: according to Professor Christian Perronne<\/strong>, 24,500 deaths out of 30,000 during the spring epidemic last year could have been avoided. (ER: Especially as hydroxychloroquine was removed for public consumption while the political class and doctors had early access to it. This was revealed by Dr. Patrick Pelloux, an emergency medicine doctor who appears on TV at times of crisis.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Now testing in France is beyond imagination.<\/strong> Since March 1, 2020 and April 4 of this year, some 70 million tests were done: 57.7 million PCR tests, the rest antigenic, according to a public health statistics institution, DREES. And the numbers are going up and up: from March 29 to April 4, 3.8 million test results were validated in one week.<\/strong> They were obviously not limited to people with flu-like symptoms.<\/p>\n

PCR tests remain the so-called gold standard of COVID-19 testing, even though the World Health Organization (WHO)\u00a0has warned<\/a>\u00a0that they should mostly be considered as an \u201caid for diagnosis\u201d and that their results should be carefully interpreted according to manufacturers\u2019 guidance and accompanied by clinical observations, among others. The WHO also said that \u201cthe probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Present curves representing the evolution of positives, hospitalizations, and deaths in France show a slow increase of the latter and a fast increase of the former as thousands of people test each day and \u201cpositives\u201d keep climbing, while hospitalizations and deaths remain quite stable.<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the introduction of more and more kinds of tests and auto-tests, the \u201cepidemic of cases\u201d is not set to end. (ER: And presumably that is the point.)<\/em><\/h4>\n

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Source<\/a><\/h4>\n

Featured image: DIY13 \/ SHUTTERSTOCK.COM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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\nhttps:\/\/www.europereloaded.com\/french-natl-academy-of-medicine-covid-nasal-swabs-associated-with-increased-meningitis-risk\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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French Nat\u2019l Academy of Medicine: COVID Nasal Swabs Associated with Increased Meningitis Risk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}