Category: Covid-19

Shenzhen Gets Shut Down Due to Hong Kong Covid Surge
A drone aerial view of the shenzhen city
China’s health authorities have locked down Shenzhen to prevent the spread of Covid-19 from Hong Kong, which is experiencing a surge of the virus.
Shenzhen is a significant manufacturer of consumer electronics, including vapor hardware, for the global market. The city houses tech powerhouses, such as iPhone manufacturer Foxconn, and more than 170,000 vaping-related businesses. The local vapor industry employs more than 3 million people and supplies more than 90 percent of the vapor hardware used around the world, according to some estimates.
The Shenzhen lockdown will last for at least seven days. All nonessential workers must stay home, adults must take PCR tests and public transportation is being halted.
A lockdown in Shenzhen might further disrupt global supply chains because Shenzhen has one of the world’s largest ports. An outbreak in Shenzhen in late spring of last year held up port operations and caused a steep spike in global shipping rates that helped drive up prices for imported goods in the United States and elsewhere.
According to The New York Times, Hong Kong has reported nearly 3,780 Covid-19 deaths and nearly 700,000 new cases since late January. Shenzhen reported 66 new cases in a population of 17 million on Sunday.
March 14, 2022
Scientists Say Some EVALI Cases May Have Been Covid-19
Some victims of the mysterious vaping-related lung disease that swept through all 50 U.S. states in 2019 were actually Covid-19 patients, according to a group of Chinese scientists and radiologists. After reviewing some 250 chest CT scans from published papers, the group says they are confident in the conclusion that some patients were wrongly diagnosed with e-cigarette or vaping use-associated lung injury (EVALI).
Credit: Kawee
The scientists are now urging U.S. officials to start screening for Covid-19 in patients who in 2019 were diagnosed with EVALI. . According to the Global Times, sources close to the matter said that after studying 250 chest CT scans of 142 EVALI patients selected from some 60 related studies that have been published, the scientists found that 16 EVALI patients were involved in viral infections, which indicates that they could have had Covid-19. Five of the cases were determined as “moderately suspicious.”
The 16 EVALI patients were all from the U.S., and in 12 patients symptoms started before 2020. Researchers concluded that there were viral infection cases among EVALI infections reported in the U.S. in 2019, and the possibility of Covid-19 in the vaping-related lung disease in the U.S. cannot be ruled out, sources said.
Yang Zhanqiu, a virologist at Wuhan University, said that due to the similarity of symptoms between EVALI and Covid-19 patients and since no nucleic acid detection kits were available at the time, it’s highly likely that some Covid-19 patients were actually misdiagnosed as EVALI patients in 2019.
August 7, 2021
Researchers Study Nicotine’s Protection Against Covid-19

Photo: meryll
Researchers at the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris are investigating whether Covid-19 can be treated with nicotine, reports RFI.
The project is in response to an observation made by doctors in the first months of the pandemic that there were fewer smokers among their most serious Covid cases. The ‘smokers’ paradox’ was observed in China and in peer review studies around the world. A French study that found that out of 11,000 hospitalized patients, only 8.5 percent were smokers, compared to 25.4 percent of the general population.
Some suggest the nicotine in cigarettes could be slowing the virus. Many Covid-19 deaths are caused by an overreaction of the immune system. Scientists speculate that nicotine helps moderate such overreactions because it lowers the immune system’s activity.
Last year French researchers analyzed public health data of people who used nicotine substitutes, like patches or gum. They noticed that those people had less Covid than those who did not use them.
To test the hypotheses, Paris hospitals launched three clinical studies using nicotine patches. One of the studies, concluded in April, involved 220 patients in intensive care units for severe Covid. Half were given nicotine patches and the others given placebos. The data is being analyzed, and the first results should be out in June.
While the findings are interesting, Pitie-Salpetriere doctor Zahir Amoura warns people against taking up smoking to protect themselves from Covid. “Smoking is a scourge. It’s important to repeat that,” he told RFI.
May 25, 2021
Video: Coping With Covid
Watch Cara Leach, Patricia Kovacevic, Monica Vialpando and Elise Rasmussen discuss how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected them personally and professionally.
March 10, 2021
Pandemic Leads to Rise in Combustible Tobacco Use
Pandemic-related anxiety, boredom, and irregular routines were cited as major drivers of increased nicotine and combustible tobacco use during the initial Covid-19 “lockdown,” according to research released by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Credit: Columbia University
“Pandemic response policies that intentionally or inadvertently restrict access to lower risk products – through availability, supply chains, or even postal service slowdowns – while leaving more harmful products widely accessible may have unintended consequences that should be considered during policy development,” said Daniel Giovenco, PhD, assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia Mailman School, and the study’s lead author.
The study highlights ways that public health interventions and policies can better support quit attempts and harm reduction, both during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. The findings are published in the International Journal of Drug Policy.
Nearly all participants reported increased stress related to Covid-19 – namely, fears about the virus, job uncertainty, and the psychological effects of isolation – and described this as the primary driver of increased nicotine and combustible tobacco use. Decreased use, while less common, was prevalent among “social” tobacco users, who cited fewer interpersonal interactions during lockdown and a fear of sharing products.
Between April-May 2020, the researchers conducted telephone interviews with adults across the US who use traditional cigarettes and/or electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), such as e-cigarettes. Participants in the study were recruited using an advertisement campaign on Facebook and Instagram.
During this window, nearly 90 percent of the U.S. population experienced some form of state lockdown, with 40 states ordering non-essential businesses to close and 32 states enacting mandatory stay-at-home orders. At the time of their interviews, all participants were voluntarily isolating at home unless required to leave the house.
At the community level, retail access impacted cigarette and ENDS use differently. While cigarettes were universally accessible in essential businesses, such as convenience stores and gas stations, access to preferred ENDS products was more limited, since “vape shops” and other specialty ENDS retailers were typically deemed non-essential and required to close or limit hours, according to a press release.
This drove some ENDS users to order their products online, which often resulted in long wait times due to shipping delays, or product backorder as a result of high demand. As a result, some dual users of cigarettes and ENDS increased their use of readily-available cigarettes.
March 5, 2021
New Jersey Prioritizes Smokers for Vaccine

Photo: torstensimon from Pixabay
Smokers in New Jersey are now eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, along with other groups that the state considers to be at risk for severe complications from the virus, reports The New York Times. Those groups include those 65 and older and younger people with underlying health problems, including cancer, heart conditions and diabetes.
The announcement came a day after the Trump administration told states to expand eligibility and to quickly use existing vaccine or risk losing future allocations.
New Jersey’s decision to immediately adopt all of the recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for priority vaccination has prompted a backlash because it puts these groups ahead of some essential workers, including teachers.
On Friday, Governor Philip Murphy called criticism that smokers were jumping the line a “cheap shot” and a “false narrative,” noting that the state is hewing closely to CDC guidelines.
The CDC includes smoking on a list of medical conditions that it recommends be prioritized in state vaccination programs because of the higher risk of serious complications from Covid-19. But to date, only one other state, Mississippi, appears to have authorized vaccinations for people younger than 65 based solely on the criterion that they smoke cigarettes.
New Mexico and Texas have made people with other high-risk medical conditions eligible for the vaccine, but not smokers. Alaska, Maine, Massachusetts and North Carolina include smokers, but not until later phases.
As of Friday, New Jersey had administered less than half of the 658,800 doses of vaccine shipped to the state, according to the CDC, a rate that lags behind most other states in the Northeast.
January 18, 2021
Anti-Tobacco Activist Joins U.S. Covid Team

Bechara Choucair
(Photo: Kaiser Permanente)
President-Elect Biden has appointed Bechara Choucair as vaccinations coordinator of the White House Covid-19 response team.
Choucair is senior vice president and chief health officer for Kaiser Permanente and a board member of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK). Previously, he served as Chicago’s public health commissioner.
Choucair will step down from his board position at CTFK as he assumes his new position.
“In appointing Dr. Choucair as vaccinations coordinator, President-Elect Biden has chosen an extraordinarily experienced and capable public health and medical leader,” said Matthew L. Myers, president of the CTFK, in a statement. “We congratulate Dr. Choucair and look forward to working with him in the future.”
December 30, 2020
Internet Covid-19 ‘Vape’ Vaccine Picture is Hoax
A photo purportedly showing a 510-threaded e-liquid tank for delivering Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is talking the internet by storm. The photo and product are a hoax. It was widely shared humorously as early as Dec. 19, however, recently some social media users have reported the meme as true.
The photo being shared shows a package containing a cartridge that would be used in an electronic cigarette and inhaled as a vapor (here). It carries Pfizer-style branding and is described as a “single dose” vaccine cartridge. There are signs the label was printed as a joke; the box describes Pfizer as “makers of ‘the boner pill’”.
While most shares of the image appear to recognise that the product is not real, it nonetheless generated confusion for some, according to Reuters. A string of social media users shared the image with captions such as “Could this be fake?”, “Can you escape the RESET?” and “Why’s the Pfizer vaccine made in China?”, the latter comment being in response to text on the fake package reading “MADE IN CHINA”.
The real vaccine is being made using Pfizer and BioNTech’s combined manufacturing network in Germany, Belgium and the United States, the story states. Reuters contacted Pfizer who confirmed by email the vaporiser cartridge was fake. The real Pfizer vaccine is injected into the upper arm and given as two doses 21 days apart.
December 27, 2020
South Africa Vaping Ban Ruled Unconstitutional

Photo: David Carillet – Dreamstime.com
South Africa’s ban on vaping and tobacco sales during the country’s hard lockdown earlier this year was unconstitutional, the country’s High Court ruled Dec. 11.
From March to August, the government prohibited sales of tobacco products and alcohol to help stem the spread of the coronavirus. Market leader British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA) and smaller companies united in the Fair-trade Independent Tobacco Association (FITA) challenged the ban, arguing that a short-term ban on a product whose health risks become evident only in the long run makes no sense.
They also questioned the rationale of the argument around cigarette sharing. Tobacco shortages and high prices of black-market cigarettes would only increase the likelihood of smokers sharing their “stompies,” the tobacco companies said.
The government lifted the ban before the matter had been heard in court, but BATSA decided to proceed with the court action to prevent the ban from being reintroduced at a later stage of the pandemic.
In its ruling Friday, the Western Cape High Court judges who presided over the case said Regulation 45, which Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma relied upon for the ban, “cannot and does not withstand constitutional scrutiny.”
In court, the government had argued that the ban was aimed at reducing the occupation of intensive care unit beds by smokers. If people didn’t vape or smoke, they would likely not get Covid-19 in a more severe form, it argued. But BATSA maintained the government had not justified the ban in law or science.
Tobacco companies expressed satisfaction with Friday’s ruling.
“British American Tobacco South Africa has been vindicated in its view that the disastrous ban on tobacco sales was unjustified and unconstitutional after the Western Cape High Court ruled in its favor,” the company wrote in a press release.
“The five-month ban on tobacco and vapor products sales was ill-considered, unlawful and has worsened the illicit trade in cigarettes and vapor products in the country.”
“We note and welcome the judgment of the full bench of the Western Cape High Court, wrote FITA in a statement.
“The court further found Regulation 45 to be neither necessary nor that it furthered the objectives set out in section 27(2) of the Disaster Management Act. This, of course, was one of the arguments advanced by FITA in its challenging of the ban on the sale of cigarettes and tobacco-related products, which the full bench of the North Gauteng High Court erred in finding same to be necessary.”
In the wake of the court ruling, BATSA also renewed its call for South Africa to urgently ratify the World Health Organization Illicit Trade Protocol to eradicate the illegal sale of cigarettes. The company stated that ratifying the protocol is “the only way for the country to claw back tax losses resulting from the explosion in illicit trade that occurred during the ban on tobacco and vapor products.”
In July, BATSA estimated that the ban on legal cigarette sales had cost South Africa ZAR4 billion ($241.7 million) in lost excise tax revenues and 30,000 lost industry jobs.
December 14, 2020
Parliament Member Backs Special Status Vape Shops

Mark Pawsey MP (Photo: UKVIA)
U.K. Member of Parliament Mark Pawsey, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Vaping, has called for vape stores to remain open during the Covid-19 lockdown to safeguard public health.
“Given its vital role in smoking cessation, even when compared to NRT [nicotine replacement therapy], the case for vaping’s essential status is growing ever stronger,” said Pawsey.
“Vape retailers do not just provide the tools for harm-reduction, but also the expert advice and support which empowers consumers to make a positive change. Now, more than ever, we should be safeguarding the country’s public health; vaping is an important part of that. Let’s support this sector, and all those who rely on it, by keeping vape stores open.”
Earlier this week, the U.K. Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) urged ministers to consider the essential status for vape stores.
Doug Mutter
“I have seen first-hand how U.K. vaping has risen to every challenge this year, with new safety measures, business practices and routines,” said John Dunne, director general of the UKVIA in a statement. “The passion for helping people in this industry is unrelenting, no smoker looking to quit is on their own. However, with government help we can do even more, because for many people the support of a face-to-face experience is vital.
“If the government does not grant essential status to vaping the impact on sales from stores could be as much as 45 percent-50 percent down,” said Doug Mutter, manufacturing and compliance director at VPZ.
November 5, 2020