Category: Covid-19

Ireland: Call for Outdoor Vaping Ban as Pubs Reopen

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay
The Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) has called for a smoking ban in outdoor pub areas.
As businesses begin opening back up in Ireland and social distancing policies are put into place to keep the coronavirus from spreading further, the RCPI has stated that outdoor areas of pubs should be nonsmoking areas to prevent secondhand smoke exposure.
“Des Cox, chair of the policy group on tobacco at RCPI, has sent a letter to Minister Simon Harris at the Department of Health calling for this proposal to be implemented as part of the country’s reopening strategy,” wrote the Limerick Post.
“Customers who are seated in the outdoor areas of bars should not be exposed to secondhand smoke,” Cox said. “If bar staff are providing table service to all customers—including customers seated in the outdoor areas—they too will be exposed to secondhand smoke.”
May 13, 2020
Tax Free World Association Cancels Duty-Free Conference
The Tax Free World Association (TFWA) has canceled the 2020 TFWA World Exhibition and Conference scheduled for Sept. 27 to Oct. 2 due to the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.
The TFWA board and management committee took into account the continuing uncertainty surrounding the travel and health situation as well as the worldwide fall in industry activity.
“By agreeing significant reductions to space rental fees, making changes to the format and working with our partners in Cannes to reduce the cost of taking part in the event, we did what we could to attempt to ensure the TFWA World Exhibition and Conference could take place,” said Alain Maingreaud, TFWA president.
“Since making those changes, we have monitored the situation daily and been in constant contact with our members and partners. The way in which the situation has developed with the economic impact of the crisis becoming increasingly serious amid continuing uncertainty over restrictions on travel has forced us to review our plans.
“The management committee was unanimous in its decision to cancel the 2020 edition and in its desire for the association’s events to play a central role in the industry’s recovery from 2021.
“The cancellation of TFWA World Exhibition and Conference will have a significant impact on the association’s finances, but thanks to the sound management of our resources up to now, we have been able to build reserves to help us cope with difficult periods such as this.
“We remain determined to do all we can to help our industry emerge from its most difficult period, keep our members and partners informed and help coordinate our industry’s response to the current crisis.”
May 12, 2020
Report: Pandemic Impact Will Last for a Long Time

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
The disruption caused by the coronavirus will be felt for a long time even in the traditionally recession-resilient tobacco industry, according to a new report made available by Research and Markets.
“This report examines the outlook for the coronavirus (Covid-19) global pandemic on the tobacco industry,” according to Businesswire. “The social, economic and health effects of the Covid-19 crisis will be felt in every global market for several years to come. While it is the case that the tobacco industry is less dramatically impacted in the near term in most (though not all) world markets, the temptation to treat the pandemic as a short period of disruption before a return to normalcy should be avoided.”
The report covers the economic outlook, industry impact, geographic impact and the corporate response to the pandemic.
May 11, 2020
Mexican Government is Hiding Huge Coronavirus Toll

Credit: Jezael Melgoza
The Mexican government is not reporting hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths from the coronavirus in Mexico City, dismissing anxious officials who have tallied more than three times as many fatalities in the capital than the government publicly acknowledges, according to officials and confidential data reviewed by Azam Ahmed of The New York Times.
The tensions have come to a head in recent weeks, with Mexico City repeatedly alerting the government to the deaths, hoping it will come clean to the public about the true toll of the virus in the nation’s biggest city and, by extension, the country at large.
But that has not happened.
Doctors in overwhelmed hospitals in Mexico City say the reality of the epidemic is being hidden from the country. In some hospitals, patients lie on the floor, splayed on mattresses. Older people are propped up on metal chairs because there are not enough beds, while patients are turned away to search for space in less-prepared hospitals. Many die while searching, several doctors said.
“It’s like we doctors are living in two different worlds,” said Dr. Giovanna Avila, who works at Hospital de Especialidades Belisario Domínguez. “One is inside of the hospital with patients dying all the time. And the other is when we walk out onto the streets and see people walking around, clueless of what is going on and how bad the situation really is.
Mexico City officials have tabulated more than 2,500 deaths from the virus and serious respiratory illnesses that doctors think are related to Covid-19, the data reviewed by The Times shows. Yet the federal government is reporting about 700 deaths in the area, which includes Mexico City and the municipalities on its outskirts.
The government says Mexico has been faring better than many of the world’s largest countries, and on Monday its Covid-19 czar estimated that the final death toll would be around 6,000 people.
May 9, 2020
US City Gives Marijuana, Tobacco to Homeless

Credit: Jared Erondu
In order to increase the number of guests who stay in isolation and quarantine, the U.S. city of San Francisco’s city leaders and health officials say they are meeting homeless people where they are, according to abc7news.com. In some cases, that includes the distribution of some alcohol, tobacco and marijuana to those in quarantine.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health tells ABC7 News the alcohol and tobacco is funded by private donations. Also that DPH staff store and administer the substances under the guidance of licensed physicians.
“Our behavioral health experts are offering services every day, medication assisted treatment including nicotine and opiate replacement, behavioral health counseling and in cases where people decide that they are going to continue to use, our focus is using the best evidence to help people manage their addictions,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco’s Public Health Director.
DPH tells ABC7 News that in a few cases, DPH staff have helped patients buy their own medical cannabis but that they do not facilitate purchases of recreational cannabis. Also that any staff member who does not wish to distribute these substances to guests may opt out of doing so.
No “safe injection” or “supervised consumption” is part of the isolation and quarantine sites according to DPH.
San Francisco Police Chief William Scott says police are enforcing drug laws in the Tenderloin, where some have been taking advantage of those who are vulnerable.
“We’ve made arrests in encampments we’ve seen people go in with bags of drugs and distribute them to others to sell in these encampments and we’ve arrested those people. We’ve confiscated their money, we’ve confiscated their drugs and we will continue to do that.”
DPH says the distribution of alcohol and tobacco to those in quarantine is not unique to San Francisco.
May 9, 2020
Foundation Debates Covid-19 Crisis’ Impact on Harm Reduction

Sally Satel during the 2019 GTNF in Washington DC | Photo David Parker
The Reason Foundation will host a webinar on May 19, 2020, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time to discuss how Covid-19 is affecting tobacco harm reduction and policymaking.
Guy Bentley, director of consumer freedom research for the Reason Foundation, will host the webinar. Other speakers will include Sally Satel, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michelle Minton, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Tim Andrews, executive director for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
The webinar is open to the public.
May 6, 2020
Scientists Urge Caution With Smoking-and-Covid Claims

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Recent studies that have found a disproportionally low number of smokers among Covid-19 patients have not provided direct evidence that smoking is protective against the illness, according to Health Feedback, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to science education.
Claims that smoking might protect against Covid-19 have been reported in several media outlets and are currently going viral, with more than 410,000 interactions on Facebook in April 2020.
However, the Health Feedback scientists point out several problems with findings. A French study, for example, did not appropriately factor in comorbidities such as diabetes and hypertension, which can also adversely affect the clinical course of Covid-19, according to the Health Feedback scientists.
“While the preprint did report the prevalence of such conditions within the combined study cohort of inpatients and outpatients, it did not report age or disease prevalence according to smoking status,” they wrote. “It is therefore unclear whether the nonsmoking group comprised more older individuals and/or those with preexisting health conditions than the other, which might have influenced the results.”
Other studies showed similar shortcomings, according to the Health Feedback scientists.
While acknowledging that the findings of disproportionally low numbers of smokers among Covid-19 patients are interesting and deserving of further investigation, the Health Feedback scientists say it would be unwise to begin smoking based on unproven claims that it might protect against Covid-19.

May 4, 2020
‘Male smokers suffer higher Covid mortality’

According to researchers in Spain from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, men are dying from Covid-19 at twice the percentage rate of women in Spain because men have a higher smoking prevalence rate than women in the country.
The researchers’ findings, which can be found in the journal Tobacco Induced Diseases, noted that smoking tobacco can upregulate the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), which Covid-19 uses as a cellular entry receptor by joining itself to ACE2 receptors in the lower respiratory tract of infected individuals to gain access to the lungs.
The researchers confirm that “existing data suggests that patients with COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or who smoke have a higher risk of becoming more seriously ill from Covid-19, since it increases ACE2 expression in weaker airways, which this type of patient has.”
May 1, 2020
COP9 and MOP2 Postponed to November 2021

The World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) said it would postpone its major conferences for a year.
“In light of the COVID-19 global pandemic and its impact on the conduct of international global conferences and travel, the Bureaus elected by COP8 and MOP1, after consulting the host country, have decided that convening the Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO FCTC (COP9) and the Second Session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products (MOP2), scheduled for November 2020, is no longer possible,” the organization states on its website.
As a result, the Bureaus, in consultation with the host country and the Secretariat, decided during their Third Joint Meeting on 21 April 2020 to postpone the sessions of COP9 and MOP2 to the following dates:
COP9: 8–13 November 2021; .
MOP2: 15–17 November 2021.
The meetings will convene on those dates in The Hague, Netherlands.
April 28, 2020
Trump Says China Could Have Stopped Covid-19
Donald Trump has renewed his attacks on China, saying his administration was conducting “serious investigations” into Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak and suggesting he would seek damages for the US.
The US president had stopped giving press briefings after his advisers reportedly warned him that his marathon news conferences, including his widely-ridiculed comments about disinfectant as a possible treatment for Covid-19 – were hurting his re-election campaign, according to an article in The Guardian.
The pause only lasted the weekend however. On Monday morning the White House announced that the day’s briefing was cancelled, only to reverse the decision hours later.
At the briefing Trump launched another forthright attack on China, saying there were “a lot of ways you can hold them accountable” for the pandemic.
“We’re doing very serious investigations … We are not happy with China,” the president said. “We believe it could have been stopped at the source. It could have been stopped quickly and it wouldn’t have spread all over the world.”
Trump responded to questions about a German newspaper editorial calling for China to pay Germany $165bn, suggesting he would also seek damages. “Germany is looking at things, we are looking at things. We are talking about a lot more money than Germany’s talking about … we haven’t determined the final amount yet,” Trump said. “It’s very substantial.”
April 28, 2020