A bipartisan group of Lehigh County voters asked a federal court for an emergency injunction Monday to stop the Lehigh County Board of Elections from certifying November’s results on Tuesday.

According to the filing, plaintiffs Linda Migliori, Francis J. Fox, Richard E. Richards, Kenneth Ringer and Sergio Rivas are among the 257 Lehigh County voters who did not write a date next to their signature on their mail-in ballots’ return envelope.

https://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-nws-lehigh-county-election-certification-undated-mail-ballots-20220131-3kojjdsb6fdw3adwwi2bec2q6u-story.html

Elon Musk appears to have thrown his support behind the Canadian truckers leading massive anti-vaccine-mandate protests in the country’s capital – as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday slammed protestors who urinated on the National War Memorial and brandished swastika flags.

“Taking a break from politics for a while. Here’s a nice photo of trucks,” Musk tweeted Sunday alongside a photo of freight vehicles creating gridlock on a highway.

https://nypost.com/2022/01/31/cops-investigating-after-protesters-allegedly-urinated-on-canadian-monuments/

What started as a convoy of truckers protesting Covid-19 mandates has snowballed into a blockade in the Canadian capital and the obstruction of a US-Canadian border crossing.

Some protesters pressured staff at a homeless shelter to give them food, the facility said.

And criminal investigations are underway after the alleged "desecration" of monuments during weekend protests that spilled into Monday.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/31/americas/canada-covid-19-vaccine-mandate-trucker-protests/index.html

More than 150 loads of beef are stuck at the border at Coutts, Alberta, the Canadian Meat Council said Monday. A blockade of vehicles has been slowing traffic at the crossing between Alberta and Montana since the weekend in a protest against rules that require truckers crossing the border to be fully vaccinated.

“It is not yet clear what the provincial or federal government is doing to facilitate a resolution. The longer this takes, it will cause more supply chain issues and this will affect everyone from producer to consumer,” Marie-France MacKinnon, a spokesperson for the council, said by email.

The vaccine mandate for truckers has sparked concerns about delivery problems and higher freight costs at a time when the supply chain is already under strain from weather disruptions and a lack of available workers. Canadian trucking groups have estimated as many as 90% of truckers are vaccinated, but in the U.S., only about half of truckers are vaccinated.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trucker-protest-strands-beef-shipments-234015392.html

A South African woman suffering from inadequately treated HIV, and who harbored Covid-19 for nine months saw the respiratory virus develop at least 21 mutations while in her body, according to a study.

Once the 22-year-old adhered to the anti-retroviral medication used to treat HIV and her immune system strengthened she was able to overcome the Covid-19 infection within six to nine weeks, the study, led by scientists from Stellenbosch and the University of KwaZulu-Natal showed. The research has not been peer reviewed.

The study adds to evidence that Covid-19 may mutate rapidly when harbored by immunosuppressed individuals, such as those not taking medication to treat HIV, and this may lead to the development of new variants. The beta variant, which the patient in the study was infected with, was discovered in South Africa, as was omicron.

“This case, like others before, describes a potential pathway for the emergence of novel variants,” the scientists said, stressing that it was still a hypothesis. “Our experience reinforces previous reports that effective anti retroviral treatment is the key to controlling such events.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-30/covid-infected-hiv-patient-developed-21-mutations-study-shows

>>15514495

South Africa should boost the provision of antiretroviral drugs for millions of people infected with HIV to potentially reduce the chance of new Covid-19 variants to emerge, scientists said.

In a revised study of an HIV sufferer with limited adherence to an antiretroviral therapy, or ART program, scientists led by Alex Sigal of the Durban, South Africa-based Africa Health Research Institute analyzed the mutations that developed as the female subject harbored the Covid-19 virus for 216 days. HIV, advanced cancer and some other diseases, suppress immune systems, allowing other infections to take hold. ART treatment restores the body’s ability to fight off infections.

“Characterizing SARS-COV-2 evolution in specific geographies may help predict the properties of variants coming from these regions,” Sigal said in the revised preprint, which was submitted on Tuesday. “If immunosuppression by advanced HIV drives SARS-COV-2 evolution, ART coverage should be increased to prevent it.”

While South Africa has the world’s biggest ART program, it also has 8.2 million people infected with the disease. Several of its neighbors have high HIV-prevalence rates. While the majority of sufferers in Africa’s most-industrialized nation are on treatment, several million are not. The pandemic has further disrupted the programs.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-09/omicron-like-covid-variants-could-be-stifled-by-aids-programs

>>15514517

The world’s biggest number of HIV cases is complicating South Africa’s efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic, raising the risk of more mutated versions emerging and spreading across the globe.

Many of the country’s 8.2 million HIV-infected people are immuno-compromised and scientists say they can harbor the coronavirus for longer, allowing it to mutate as it reproduces. A study of an HIV positive 36-year-old woman showed that Covid-19 stayed in her body for 216 days and mutated rapidly.

“There is good evidence that prolonged infection in immune-compromised individuals is one of the mechanisms for the emergence of SARS Covid-2 variants,” Tulio de Oliveira, a bioinformatics professor who runs gene-sequencing institutions at two South African universities, said at an Aug. 30 immunology conference. “You have this massive virus evolution, really the virus accumulating over 30 mutations.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-15/world-s-worst-hiv-epidemic-stymies-south-africa-s-covid-fight