SARS

2022 - 3 - 28

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Image courtesy of "702"

ANC is tax compliant, the R102-million Sars debt is an old story ... (702)

African National Congress treasurer-general Paul Mashatile says the party is not bankrupt but just has cash-flow problems.

Read More Read More Read More We are not tax evaders. Those matters are private, I might be owing them R10 or R100. Those matters are private. Nothing was ever attached.Paul Mashatile, Treasurer-general - African National Congress

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The different actions of CBD in SARS-CoV-2 infection (News-Medical.net)

While the viral spike protein interacts with angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) on the host cell membrane to initiate viral entry, the main protease is ...

Taken together, it has been hypothesized in the study that cannabidiol can be used clinically to prevent hyperinflammation and lung tissue damage in COVID-19 patients. The stimulation of the WNT/ β-catenin pathway by transforming growth factor (TGF-β) has been found to increase lung fibrosis and infection in COVID-19 patients. In COVID-19, a crosstalk between ACE2 and WNT/ β-catenin pathway has also been observed. In addition, it binds to the CB2 receptor (type 2 cannabinoid receptor) and inhibits the secretion of proinflammatory macrophages in the lungs. Activation of PPARγ in alveolar macrophages has been found to reduce inflammation, control cytokine secretion, prevent tissue damage, and increase host recovery process. The compound has been found to inhibit the production of several proinflammatory cytokines in SARS-CoV-2-infected cells.

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The ANC didn't evade tax, it just has cash-flow problems, says ... (Eyewitness News)

Speaking to Clement Manyathela Show, Paul Mashatile claimed that this was not new information and that the party had been taking steps with SARS to ensure ...

Even at the time they did not evade tax, they were in arrears, which I went to sort out.” Mashatile claimed that this was not new information and that the party had been taking steps with Sars to ensure that their debt was paid with the most recent payment being 28 February this year. Speaking to Clement Manyathela Show, Paul Mashatile claimed that this was not new information and that the party had been taking steps with SARS to ensure that their debt was paid.

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No Adverse Outcomes Seen With SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination in ... (Physician's Weekly)

TUESDAY, March 29, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Vaccination against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) during pregnancy is not ...

The researchers found that vaccination occurred during the first, second, and third trimester for 0.7, 8.3, and 9.1 percent of individuals delivering, respectively. “Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy, compared with no SARS-CoV-2 vaccination during pregnancy, was not significantly associated with an increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes,” the authors write. There was no significant association for vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 with an increased risk for preterm birth (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.86; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.91 to 1.05), stillbirth (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.86; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.63 to 1.17), small for gestational age (adjusted odds ratio, 0.97; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.90 to 1.04), low Apgar score (adjusted odds ratio, 0.97; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.87 to 1.08), or neonatal care admission (adjusted odds ratio, 0.97; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.86 to 1.10). Maria C. Magnus, Ph.D., from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo, and colleagues conducted a registry-based retrospective cohort study involving 157,521 singleton pregnancies ending after 22 gestational weeks in Sweden (from Jan. 1, 2021, until Jan. 12, 2022) and Norway (from Jan. 1, 2021, to Jan. 15, 2022) to examine the risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes after vaccination against SARS-CoV-2. Of the participants, 18 percent were vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 while pregnant (12.9 percent with BNT162b2, 4.8 percent with mRNA-1273, and 0.3 percent with AZD1222). TUESDAY, March 29, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Vaccination against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) during pregnancy is not associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes, according to a study published online March 24 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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'So, the ANC blue ticked Sars?' — SA weighs in on ruling party's tax ... (TimesLIVE)

The party said it was unaware of an order to attach its assets should it fail to pay the amount it allegedly owes the SA Revenue Service.

Isn't this the same party that couldn't pay its employees not so long ago?— Rex The Gemini (@Rex_The_Gemini) pic.twitter.com/8RUbTGOXtn March 29, 2022 The court issued a judgment instructing the sheriff to attach ANCs assets valued at R102m. It is unclear if this was carried out. This thing of ANC owing SARS over R100m to the level of court order being granted against the ANC and the SA voters continued support of the same culprit shows how ignorant and misinformed SA voters are.— Siphakanyiswa Khanyile (@Siphakanyiswa10)

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SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein More Stable, Slower Changing Than ... (University of Arkansas Newswire)

The spike proteins of each, which bind to host cell angiotensin converting enzyme 2, otherwise known as the human cell receptor, have been targeted as the ...

The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. Though it is near the receptor-binding domain and is known to be targeted by some antibodies, function of the N-terminal domain in SARS-CoV-1 and -2 spike proteins is not completely understood. “Our study sheds light on the conformational dynamics of the SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins,” Moradi said. Models produced by Moradi’s team confirm the importance of the receptor-binding domain but also suggest that other domains, such as the N-terminal domain, could play a crucial role in the different binding behavior of SARS-CoV-1 and -2 spike proteins. The spike proteins of each, which bind to host cell angiotensin converting enzyme 2, otherwise known as the human cell receptor, have been targeted as the potential source of the different transmissibility.

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Why AfriForum is demanding access to the ANC's tax records (News24)

AfriForum filed a PAIA application with SARS to demand to access the ANC's tax records, citing suspicions of "preferential treatment".

Mashatile on Tuesday said the ANC had tax issues when he took over the office in 2017. We are paying SARS. The last payment was on 28 February this year. I travelled to Brooklyn in Pretoria to meet with SARS to deal with those arrears. Therefore, AfriForum is taking the next legal step," AfriForum said. "Someone took information that was sent to the ANC treasurer by SARS last year. While admitting the ANC had a tax bill issue, the ANC's treasurer-general, Paul Mashatile, said the party was not a tax evader.

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ANC denies SARS ultimatum to pay tax bill (Jacaranda FM)

The African National Congress (ANC) says it has not been informed of the 10 day ultimatum by the South African Revenue Services (Sars) to settle more than ...

“The ANC is neither aware nor informed of such an ultimatum by SARS and therefore dismisses such inaccurate, malicious, dubious and divisive media reports with the contempt they deserve.” According to Mabe, matters related to taxation of the ANC are private and handled by the Treasurer General’s Office (TGO) who engages with SARS from time to time on such affairs. “The ANC has noted an article that appeared in one of the online newspaper accusing the organisation of being a ‘tax evader’ and further that the South African Revenue Services has issued a 10 day ultimatum for the payment of over 100 million in tax debt.

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Molecular consequences of SARS-CoV-2 liver tropism - Nature ... (Nature.com)

Extrapulmonary manifestations of COVID-19 have gained attention due to their links to clinical outcomes and their potential long-term sequelae1.

Protein expression of SR-B1 (cyan) in one post-mortem liver sample – and co-expression with SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (orange) within the same cell. ACE expression (orange) and DNA (grey) in the human liver. *, p-value = 0.0122 (Mann-Whitney test, two-tailed). Box plot: box extending from the 25th to the 75th percentile with the median shown as a line in the middle and whiskers indicating smallest and largest values. Nat. Methods 13, 731–740 (2016). Nat Genet. 45, 580–585 (2013). Nat. Genet. 45, 580–585 (2013). 19 reported strong protein expression of SRB1 in the human liver, we confirmed messenger RNA expression of SCARB1 (SRB1 gene) in multiple human organs, showing the highest expression levels in the liver followed by the brain, small intestine, lung, kidney and muscle (Extended Data Fig. 9). In addition, we confirmed SRB1 protein expression on human hepatocytes and in association with the expression of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (Extended Data Fig. 10). It is plausible that even if the expression of ACE2 in hepatocytes is relatively low at both RNA and protein levels, high levels of SRB1 may enhance the potential for SARS-CoV-2 entry. Then, these coefficients were used to compute three contrasts: effect of COVID-19+/PCR− based on COVID-19−/PCR− samples (negative versus Ctrl); effects of COVID-19+/PCR− based on COVID-19−/PCR− samples (positive versus Ctrl); and the difference between these two comparisons (positive versus negative). The first and second contrasts were aimed at detecting systematic changes in activity when an early or late-stage COVID-19 infection was taking place. In each sample, genes were ranked according to their normalized TPM value and used as input for single-sample enrichment analysis using the fgsea R package v.1.12.0 (ref. 38) with MSigDB gene set v.7.1 (ref. 39) and ConsensusPathDB v.34 (ref. 40). In all gene sets, the enrichment score was calculated based on a random walk over the ranked list of genes. Thus, liver tissues from a subset of COVID-19 autopsies were selected for transcriptomic and proteomic analyses (n = 11; Fig. 2e). Briefly, 3 comparison groups were defined a priori: (1) patients with COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2-positive livers (n = 5 for transcriptomics and n = 6 for proteomics); (2) patients with COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2-negative livers (n = 5 for transcriptomics and proteomics) to account for the systemic effect of COVID-19; and (3) patients with non-COVID-19-related deaths (n = 5 for proteomics and n = 7 for transcriptomics, that is, Ctrls) to account for pleiotropic effects resulting from autopsy-related collection and storage. Transcriptional changes associated with SARS-CoV-2 hepatic tropism revealed a significant upregulation of type I and II interferon (IFN) responses (Fig. 2f and Extended Data Fig. 6). Gene Ontology (GO) analysis confirmed upregulation of IFN and viral responses and increases in lipid and phospholipid metabolic processes (Extended Data Fig. 7), supporting a recent study linking perturbations of lipid metabolism with SARS-CoV-2 infection 19. 2) and a subset of autopsy livers, showing a similar range but a lower median viral RNA load in hepatic specimens (Supplementary Fig. 2a; n = 18 lung, n = 16 pharynx and n = 18 liver), and we quantified the number of SARS-CoV-2 spike-positive cells in a small subset of our autopsy samples (n = 6 liver samples, that is, n = 3 SARS-CoV-2 PCR+ and n = 3 Ctrls with quantification provided in Supplementary Fig. 2b), both of which may explain the lack of overt cytopathic changes (that is, hepatitis). Notably, we isolated infectious SARS-CoV-2 from 2 out of 3 autopsy livers and corresponding lungs, confirming the infectivity of postmortem liver tissue samples, leading to a 1,000 time increase in viral RNA after 48 h of cell infection in vitro (Fig. 2d), as previously reported in the kidney 13.

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Nanobodies From Alpacas May Protect Against SARS-CoV-2, Study ... (ABP Live)

The researchers discovered multiple antibodies which in cell cultures and mice effectively blocked infection with different SARS-CoV-2 variants, ...

Fu2 has been named after the alpaca Funny. The researchers used electron cryo-microscopy (a structural biological method that is used to determine the 3D structures of biomacromolecules) and found that Fu2 naturally binds to two separate sites on the viral spike. Nanobodies are fragments of antibodies that occur naturally in camelids and can be adapted for humans. The researchers discovered multiple antibodies which in cell cultures and mice effectively blocked infection with different SARS-CoV-2 variants.

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