Coronavirus daily news updates, June 8: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world

Vietnam’s health minister and the mayor of the capital Hanoi have been arrested as part of an expanding investigation into massive price gouging of COVID-19 tests, state media reported.

Nguyen Thanh Long was dismissed from his ministry post and Chu Ngoc Anh, who previously was the science minister, was fired as Hanoi mayor, Tuoi Tre online news outlet reported Tuesday. They are being investigated for abuse of power, according to the Ministry of Public Security, and have been expelled from the ruling Communist Party.

An investigation concluded earlier that mismanagement in the science and health ministries had allowed Viet A Technology Corporation to inflate prices for test kits supplied to hospitals and health centers in Vietnam.

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Mallory Stanislawczyk was hesitant to make the call. She hadn’t spoken to her friend for years. But the friend, who gets around in a wheelchair, was the only person the 34-year-old nurse practitioner could think of who would understand her questions. About being ready to accept help. About using a wheelchair. And about the new identity her battle with long COVID had thrust on her.

“I think she is the first person I said to, ‘I’m disabled now,'” Stanislawczyk recalled telling the friend. “‘And I’m working on accepting that.'”

The coronavirus pandemic has created a mass-disabling event that experts liken to HIV, polio or World War II, with millions suffering the long-term effects of infection with the coronavirus. Many have found their lives dramatically changed and are grappling with what it means to be disabled.

The dramatic influx of newly disabled Americans changes the calculus for disability advocates, who have in recent years been uniting around a shared identity, pushing back against historic marginalization by affirming their self worth and embracing their disabilities.

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New Hampshire’s attorney general said Tuesday that he will not bring criminal charges against protesters who disrupted an Executive Council meeting in September before it began, forcing Gov. Chris Sununu to postpone it.

The state would not have been able to prove any potential criminal charges beyond a reasonable doubt, said Attorney General John Formella in a statement.

The postponement delayed a council vote on $27 million in federal aid to boost New Hampshire’s vaccination efforts.

Angry opponents of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate moved around the room at St. Anselm College on Sept. 29, shouting, “Shut it down,” before the meeting got could get underway.

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The Biden administration said Wednesday that a funding crunch is forcing it to divert more than $10 billion in coronavirus relief from test procurement and other efforts as it tries to come up with money to secure the next generation of vaccines and treatments for some high-risk Americans.

The White House said it has been left with “no choice” but to cut back on orders of at-home rapid tests that have supported a domestic manufacturing base for the easy diagnostic tests. It also is scaling back funding for research and development of new COVID-19 vaccines and limiting orders of personal protective equipment in an effort to maintain some stockpiles of vaccines and treatments for Americans heading into the winter.

Even then, the Democratic administration says, there will only be enough money available to provide treatments and vaccines to some people. It urged Congress to act to provide enough money to secure doses for all who might want or need them.

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Have you thought about Malm, Kivik or Trotten?

Swedish retailer Ikea, known for the distinctive names of its flat-pack home products, is suggesting parents browse its "name bank” with more than 800 listings when looking for baby names. .

Ikea names its products after Swedish towns, lakes and other geographical features, but also uses names that have traditionally gone to people.

The branch noted that while retailers saw “both a shortage of raw materials and challenges with delivery times” during the COVID-19 pandemic, “there is at least no shortage of children” in Norway.

The Scandinavian country registered the births of 56,060 babies last year, or 3,081 more than in 2020.

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Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine appears to largely prevent severe disease from the coronavirus omicron variant’s sublineages BA.4 and BA.5, a study by South Africa’s biggest health insurer shows.

The two-shot Pfizer course offers 87% protection against being hospitalized with the strains that are driving the country’s fifth wave of infections, according to Discovery Health Ltd., basing its study on the the more than 1 million clients it has in Gauteng province. That level of protection was based on infection in patients one to two months after receiving their second dose.

The study showed that protection waned to 84% three to four months after the second dose and 63% at five to six months post inoculation, Ryan Noach, the company’s chief executive officer, said in a LinkedIn post dated June 6. A third dose, or booster, improved protection to 85% three months after the dose, with that climbing to 88% by four months, Noach said, citing research led by Shirley Collie, Discovery’s chief health analytics actuary.

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Moderna’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine that combines its original shot with protection against the omicron variant appears to work, the company announced Wednesday.

COVID-19 vaccine makers are studying updated boosters that might be offered in the fall to better protect people against future coronavirus surges.

Moderna’s preliminary study results show people given the combination shot experienced a higher boost in omicron-fighting antibodies than if they just got a fourth dose of the original vaccine.

Today’s COVID-19 vaccines all are based on the original version of the coronavirus. They’re still providing strong protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death even after the appearance of the super-contagious omicron variant — especially if people have had an initial booster dose.

But the virus continues to mutate rapidly in ways that let it evade some of the vaccines’ protections and cause milder infections.

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Two years after the first COVID-19 patients raised alarms that symptoms could last for months, it’s clear the phenomenon is common — but medical experts still don’t know much about what causes it or how to treat it.

A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looking at 353,000 COVID-19 survivors found that about one in four who are 65 or older and one in five adults younger than 65 developed a new health condition that could be related to their bout with the virus.

There’s not much data about why some people are stuck with symptoms months after most COVID-19 patients have recovered, or when they might expect to feel better, though.

Diagnosing what’s become known as long COVID is mostly a process of ruling out everything else that could be causing a patient’s symptoms, said Dr. Thomas Campbell, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and chief clinical research officer at UCHealth.

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