‘Coronavirus No Longer Just Affecting The Old & Frail’-SAGE Committee Member

We speak to Prof. Calum Semple, a member of the SAGE Committee that advises Boris Johnson. He discusses the changing pattern of hospitalisations with younger people including children filling up hospitals rather than the elderly, the growing threat of ‘long COVID’ causing additional health problems for those who have recovered from the initial infection and the damage caused by COVID to internal organs during hospitalisation, reports of the U.K. government considering rolling out vaccinations to 12-15 year olds and why the case for vaccinating children is growing stronger, whether we will see a new British variant as lockdowns restrictions have been lifted with much of the population still not fully vaccinated and much more!

We contact Dr. Ahmed Elgazzar about the allegations made in this show about Ivermectin and he said:
“1-Have you corresponded with Research Square about the retraction?
My answer,yes I sent mail to Research Square on Jul 20 and received reply on Jul 21 from the site, regret and apologize for that. They informed me, the subject is under investigation.

2- Sentences in the introduction with very similar wording to other published work.
My answer, It is a norm for researchers, when writing scientific papers, read each other’s publications. Often phrases are commonly used, including the whole sentence and referenced . Unless the whole long paragraph is copied, accusing plagiarism in a phrase or a sentence that is commonly used is lame.

3-- Raw data samples that appear to be duplicated (patients have identical data and initials)
My answer , this is not mine,my raw data are coded, protected, kept under lock and key, and not allowed to be retrieved from electronic system, during and after the trial. The retrieval system is well protected.

4--The research was simply sent to research square for presentation on open digital platforms dedicated to the pre-print process. It is known (and surely the Guardian knows this!!!) that preprint sites are dedicated to presenting scientific research to the scientific community in order to take opinions, notes and comments in preparation for correcting errors and modifying the text and then sending it to a refereed journal in preparation for its publication. All preprint sites put on their homepage a notice “that the research published on the site is only preprint and did not take the status of the published research because it did not obtain accreditation and approval, which is issued by the peer review process and the editor-in-chief of a peer review journal.”
The site adds that it warns the reader not to take remedial decisions and it is not correct to base any preprint research on any medical steps or procedures.”